As a Pagan I constantly hear from the enemies of Paganism that the Pagans used to sacrifice humans to their gods. There is evidence they indeed did so, but those who present this evidence to us in books, or talk about this on TV documentaries and such, are not only most often Judeo-Christians, but of course always modern human beings. They see human sacrifice as an abomination, a horrible and utterly primitive religious practice from a distant past, that they “of course” are ashamed of, often on behalf of peoples and races that they not even belong to themselves.
Naturally, I am of another opinion…
Yes, you see, the gods and goddesses of Europe were present on Earth, also as real physical beings: the best men and women, boys and girls, impersonated them, became them and thus were them on Earth. When an individual in a society committed a crime, he had to stand trial in front of his gods, here on Earth. Most of the time he would be asked to pay fines – to repair the damage he had caused. Some times he was outlawed, usually for one year and a day – to give him a chance to improve, and to also protect the society from his darkness until he had. To the (in their eyes) more serious crimes such as murder (i. e. a dishonourable killing), horse theft, cowardice, homosexuality, adultery, and also repeating minor offenses (sort of like “three strikes out”) would result in a death sentence, though. The idea was that: “one bad apple spoils the barrel, so when we find one we need to get rid of it before it is to late.”
The gods were the judges, here on Earth, convicting the criminals, and therefore their priests or priestesses were responsible for carrying out the executions – in form of what we today describe as a human sacrifice – to the gods. So they didn’t just “sacrifice” people randomly to their deities. They were in fact just execution criminals judged (by the gods themselves!) unfit for life.
So what they did was pretty much exactly the same as many societies still do today, including the hard-core Judeo-Christian USA: they executed criminals…
The Pagan justice system was interwoven with the religion itself. There was no distinction between worldly and spiritual/religious power, no separate “state” and “church”. The kings and judges were also the gods. Therefore the executions of criminals where carried out as human sacrifices to the gods.
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As a Pagan I constantly hear from the enemies of Paganism that the Pagans used to sacrifice animals to their gods. They slaughtered the animals on their altars, and then ate them, and gave parts of the sacrificed animals to the gods themselves – or to their temples.
We do the same today, only on an industrial scale, and without offering anything to anybody, save to those who can pay for the product… after we have pumped water into it, so that it is more heavy (you pay by the pound, right!?), and after we have sprayed all sorts of more or less poisonous chemicals on it, for all sorts of mad reasons.
Our forebears had more closeness to nature and the animals they ate. They had the idea that they should think a bit before they killed an animal, and then offer parts of the animal back to the deity they belonged to, in gratitude to the animal giving its life so that man could eat. The deity was naturally a man or woman, boy or girl, impersonating the deity on Earth. Naturally they too had to eat, and they didn’t get any food from working as gods or goddesses in some temple, and nor did their priests and priestesses. Just like Buddhist monks today, they were depending on food gifts from people to survive. And therefore people sacrificed animals to their gods… so that everybody could eat well, thrive and live.
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There is no reason to complicate what or forebears did, and try to make “sacrifices” and “rituals” and “ceremonies” sound so bad. There is no reason to think sharing is bad: take some for yourself, and give some to the deities – those most wonderful and most beautiful individuals amongst us, who work for us, for our interests, as our kings and queens, gods and goddesses, and judges too, and who were selected for this task because they were the best suited. Sacrifice to them what you can afford, and not what some state tells you to, in percentage of your income….
