Fate Magazine - Issue 738
Scholars’ debate when humans first adopted religion. Some insist it began with the advent of agriculture; some say much earlier but most would not extend it longer than 35,000 years ago. What is truly amazing is that on every continent on earth the gods were all God's of blood sacrifice. Blood sacrifice involves propitiating and seeking favour from the gods by offering them the life of an animal or a human being. The God devours the life force released at death and this ritual is repeated perpetually to please the God. In most cases of animal sacrifice the worshippers can then use the sacrifice as food. This however is rare but not unknown with human sacrifice. These gods then are the Vampire Gods. Blood sacrifice is feeding the gods. No ancient religion began differently.
This leaves two choices to be considered: either humans have an ingrained impulse to believe that the gods desire blood or the idea spread around the world after being conceived of within one culture. Australia presents the main difficulty in verifying the theory of world wide spread. Due to continental drift Australia separated from the rest of the world over 55,000 years ago including its Aboriginal inhabitants. Yet when Europeans arrived in Australia the Aborigines practiced both human and animal sacrifice. So at present the origins of religion are undecided.
“The blood is the life”What is sure is that in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Americas, Australia and even the scattered islands of the Pacific the gods demanded blood. “The blood is the life”. Thus our understanding of humanity's deep seated religious impulses must begin with this most notable fact. All religions arose from this amazing belief. After the initial impulse each tribe, people and nation embellished the core principle with their heroes, history and myths creating the unique religions that would vie against one another for dominance. The study of the sacrificial rites of many cultures has been the grist of serious scholarship for centuries. Yet little attention is given to the underlying unity that indicates blood sacrifice is a fixed category of the human psyche.
Sacrifice is varied in its forms and liturgical ramifications. The Aztecs created a mass spectacle by staging their human sacrifices atop their pyramids; they cut the still beating hearts out of their victims to offer to their gods. As far as we know the victims were captured enemy combatants and slaves.
In Jewish scripture there are only 3 passages dealing with human sacrifice. The most striking Judges 11 tells of Jephthah the military leader of the Israeli forces who pledges that he will sacrifice the 1st person he sees on returning from a God given victory. It is his virgin daughter who emerges. She begs a stay of 60 days which he grants and then he burns her alive as a burnt offering. Most familiar to us is God's demand that Abraham sacrifice his young son Isaac. And in 2nd Kings 3rd chapter the Moabite King having lost every battle with the Invading Israelites and facing final defeat burns his son as a sacrifice to their God. Thereafter his depleted forces lay waste to the Jewish army. In all these cases the supplicant was expected to offer up a son or daughter to his God. It's a harsh God that forces you to murder your child to feed its monstrous appetite. Mercifully Christianity ended all this with the sacrifice to end all sacrifice. God sacrificed his son to... (Per denominational determination) and therefore eternal life was conferred upon the elect. But again we see the motif of a father feeding their child into the jaws of a Vampire God.
That a heritage of cruel vampire gods worshipped by virtually all the peoples of earth for tens of thousands of years would birth only troubled civilizations is not surprising. What is surprising is the lack of curiosity that even the scholarly extend to this ripe field of intellectual inquiry. Looking away seems endemic. Apparently as the descendants of peoples inherently in the thrall of fearful blood sucking beasts we can't turn fully toward the shadow that warps our societies and relationships. Ancestors who fed their gods human life. Among the educated most know that every ancient religion of their awareness was sacrificial in nature. Yet no discussion has emerged that acknowledges blood sacrifice as a universal phenomenon. It constitutes a dark spot on the human soul. Anthropologists have long understood that when they discover cannibalism or human sacrifice in any cultures past this conclusion will be passionately contested by all the interested parties. But in point of fact we are all descended from ancestors who fed their gods human life. Does this heritage of blood sacrifice leave any mark on us today? Perhaps these atavistic passions lay buried in us awaiting triggers that we are unaware of. Certainly we see much violence in the world around us that is shocking and strangely irrational. Serial killers, mass murder, ISIS, genocides, convulsions of murderous hate, why are they so common yet fulfilling no reasonable purpose. Do humans still respond to the same murderous need that fueled our worldwide obsession to protect ourselves by offering spilled blood to the gods that owned us? Ultimately the mystery still resides at the beginning. Why did the entire human race bow down to the Vampire Gods?