Thoughts on sacrifice

I have been thinking a lot about this most unfashionable of subjects recently. We witches have a problem with it - we're not the only ones as we shall see below - & the immediate reason for this is the media image of 'satanic' 'ritual' abuse (notice the only word not in parentheses) which is wrongly connected with us. In fact it's wrongly connected with anything resembling reality & is better understood as a modern group delusion or hysteria, just like the witch scares were, in fact.

The troubled relationship with sacrifice is connected to our WASP-ish ideas of progress & civilisation. What started me off thinking about this was a comment on flickr, on a photo of an offering being made in someone's home Buddhist shrine:

'When I lived in Asia it always disturbed me that the local people in Bali and China used the word 'Sacrifice' to describe the deep devotional offerings of flowers, incense and other traditions which they placed on their altars at home and in temples. I helped them to explore the meaning of the English word 'Offering'.

'So much painful history and intent seems attached to the word Sacrifice - but the word Offering rises up with prayers from folded hands. "May all beings be free from suffering".'

(Source: http://m.flickr.com/#/photos/roomwithaview/8597436231/)

Well, bully for the local people having the advantage of 'Room With A View' help them explore a better idea than the terrible one they've been following for millenia! So much imperialism & condescension seems attached to her attitude, which reflects a problem our society has with sacrifice. We are inheritors of a tradition of missionaries taking Christianity & civilisation to other cultures - I believe missionaries try to be more sensitive to what they find in other cultures now, but that sensitivity is too late as in parts of the two-thirds world Christianity is equated with civilisation, & Western ways with progress.

At the heart of this is a denial of the real nature of the central mystery of Christianity: yes, kids, that's right, it's a sacrifice. The attempts to tidy it up detract from the fact that Christianity's divine economy is as messy as any ancient religion's.

They even deny sacrifice yet expect self-sacrifice. I found a Catholic priest's blog post making a binary opposition - such a monotheist thing to do - between self-sacrifice & self-fulfillment:

'Self-fulfillment is a way that leads to death: the death of every relationship around you as you consistently put yourself first in front of friends and family, and ultimately the death of yourself because as your relationships dry up, there is nothing left of your life. Because self-sacrifice for the good of others gives them life, the more authentic our sacrifice is, the more we end up fully living, because we are thriving in the midst of flourishing friends and family.'

(Source: http://brotherpriests.com/2012/03/hippies-self-sacrifice-and-disappearing-nun/)

Needless to say this makes me extraordinarily uncomfortable as a witch, because this is exactly the sort of philosophy that makes me see abuse built in to the structure of Christianity. You have to sacrifice yourself to live fully. There is no guarantee that your friends & family will not respond by using & abusing you at all, but you must carry on sacrificing yourself because if you are not doing that you are self-seeking & then it really is all your fault. As a witch I don't want to make myself or anyone else the last & least - because for me that will not lead to them being first - I want everyone to act & be treated decently & with kindess.

This denial of sacrifice has been incorporated into modern witchcraft from the start - 'I do not demand sacrifice,' says the Goddess in the Charge, & Gardner messed that up by prefacing the Charge with the line about the Spartan youth making due sacrifice. It is unfortunate if that is intended to be a theologising of the ritual scourging - as it is sometimes understood - since Wiccan ritual involves no sacrifice & the scourging is for a quite different purpose.

That said, sacrifice can carry a broader meaning, descended from two Latin words & meaning 'to make holy'. When a witch consecrates any tool, she is essentially sacrificing it - making it for ritual use only.

I am aware that this post is becoming a perfect form-example of the history of modern witchcraft - almost completely defining everything by saying we don't do what another group does. Another example of that would be that modern witchcraft's cyclical understanding of history implies a different understanding of sacrifice. In linear history you sacrifice something - to propitiate a divinity or whatever - & that's it, over. The whole point of the wheel of the year is that everything dies & is reborn over & over. A chant goes, 'one thing becomes another, in the mother, in the mother,' & the idea of sacrifice not leading to something else would be alien to our cosmology. If everything dies & is reborn, the ending of one thing - situation, relationship, life, thought - for us is a fertile thing, causing the start of a new thing.

At its heart, witchcraft is always about life & death, it's about blood & bone. Our Goddess does not require sacrifice because sacrifice is an inescapable part of human life. In our initiations - whether 'ritual' ones or enacted in the field of active service - sacrifice a bit of us. This is the tradition that the magician is always in some sense sacrificing himself: every time a part of us dies we open the gates to a new self, a magical self. This is the Great Work.

That's not to say that things can't be helped along by a real sacrifice. There was a great tradition in the ancient world of Hecate's suppers: leaving food at the crossroads. I like doing this with the sesame seeds that are sacred to her. If you're frightened of being discovered then leaving dog food for the hounds would merely put you in the eccentric category if you had to explain it. Blood is always good in a sacrifice, & it should cost something, if not in money - although sirloin steak ticks both boxes - then in terms of the time it takes you or the difficulty of getting to the place. Now, Lady Nemesis, if you're reading this, I haven't forgotten to mention your sacrifice of a black pudding!

'One thing becomes another' is the essential bit, so it is important to walk away from your sacrifice & just leaving it, knowing that a process of rearrangement is in action, & keeping your magical intent in mind, if that is what your sacrifice is for.

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