In modern times, human sacrifice in the classic sense is regarded with disdain, but analogous behaviors have certainly erupted. The 15th – 18th century witch craze was promulgated by agricultural communities beset by the Little Ice Age, crop price increases, the wars of Reformation, and plague. The burning witch was meant to purify and restore the community to previous norms of fecundity and order. It shocks people, but it really shouldn’t – the Roman Catholic Inquisition played a significant role in ending the witch craze. Priests like Friedrich Spee and Alonso de Salazar Frías recognized that the witch craze violated authentic Christian theology.
Some interpret Islamic honor killing as a form of human sacrifice. A fragile, mythical commodity – a family’s honor – is damaged when a female has unsanctioned contact with a male. Only her blood, spilt when a family member murders her, can ritually “cleanse” the non-existent substance, family honor.Who was chosen for human sacrifice?
Those without power. Typical victims included children, slaves, and war captives. When reports of human sacrifice emerge from modern-day India, victims are often Dalits, or untouchables, the lowest, most disempowered caste.Note that there is no record of a permanently efficacious human sacrifice, no “once for all time and never again” sacrifice, unless you want to include Jesus’ crucifixion. In all other human sacrifice, the world is never set right for any longer than a ritually determined cycle of time. When that period has run its course, the ritual must be repeated. Ritual time never moves forward on a linear trajectory. It always moves in circles. The past is never released or transcended. There is no progress.
That human sacrifice was so widespread indicates how deeply it reflects the “logic” of the human mind. The logic of human sacrifice is completely divorced from actual facts and cause and effect. Human sacrifice occupies a space that completely rejects any real attention to real facts and real potential solutions.
Source: Black Lives Matter, Rich White Liberals, and Human Sacrifice | Frontpage Mag
