PaganSquare


PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.

  • Home
    Home This is where you can find all the blog posts throughout the site.
  • Tags
    Tags Displays a list of tags that have been used in the blog.
  • Bloggers
    Bloggers Search for your favorite blogger from this site.
  • Login
    Login Login form
Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in sacrifice

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
What else is missing from Minoan art?

CW: animal sacrifice, human sacrifice

When I shared last week's post about what's missing in Minoan art on social media, I got an interesting response from a fellow Pagan writer, who guessed (before reading the post) that what was missing was war and violence.

There's something to that, but it's not a simple subject.

...
Last modified on

 

 

This conversation could have taken place before any sacrificial procession in antiquity.

In fact, it happened last week at the 2021 Midwest Grand Sabbat.

 

Why do we cover our heads when making sacrifice?

That's an interesting question, R___. Let me tell you both what I know, and what I infer.

The custom of covering the head while sacrificing is so old that everyone simply takes it for granted. I've never heard even one story explaining why we do it; by all authorities, the practice is simply assumed.

This, of course, is in itself odd: religious practices tend to accrete explanatory stories around them.

As a show of respect? Well, that's the reason sometimes given, though it's worth asking why a covered head should be considered more respectful than an uncovered one.

So let me speak instead out of my own experience: I can give you two good reasons, and both are to do with focus.

The first is the focus of the officiant. When offering, your entire focus needs to be on the act you are performing. Draping the head cuts off the peripheral vision and damps down the hearing, preventing—or at least lessening—the chance of distraction.

The second is the focus of those in attendance. As human beings, we automatically look to one another's faces. The act of draping the head de-emphasizes the face, and says: Look not at me, but at what I am doing; which, of course, is exactly the point in ritual.

Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

 

Well, now, there's something you don't see every day, Chauncey.”

What's that, Stanley?”

Oh, a bunch of pagans out on the front steps performing a sacrifice.”

 

Humans are herd animals. When we see a large group of people, all with their attention focused one way, we want to look with them to see what's going on. It's automatic, instinctive.

But, of course, this is Minnesota.

 

After the Rite of the Gates at Jane Hawkner's funeral yesterday—it's very simple, really: you open the Gates, the departed passes through, you close the Gates—we'd all trouped out onto the front steps of the domed and columned Lake Harriet Spiritual Community building to offer the traditional Fire Sacrifice in honor of the occasion.

(Let's be frank: pagan ritual has, for the most part, rung pretty hollow since the end of the days of animal sacrifice. But, of course, you don't have to kill an animal to offer sacrifice. Even in the old days, animal sacrifice was only one form of sacrifice.)

We'd set up the brazier on the landing between the two flights of stairs leading up to the door. As presiding priest, then, I stood with my back to the street, facing the Fire and the people coming out of the building.

So, unlike the rest of the worshipers there present, I didn't get to see the reactions of the passers-by.

 

Different places, different customs. Minneapolis having been, in its early days, largely populated by Scandinavians, we have—thanks to the infamous Founder Effect—a local culture of public privacy. You don't stare at other people, especially not at strangers. Really—so long as they're not doing anything harmful—it's best to act as if they're not even there.

(Dysfunctional as this may sound, it's probably the reason why there's such a large, self-assured pagan community here. Here, we could get away with it.)

So that's how it came to be that, on a beautiful early Saturday afternoon in high Summer, there can be a whole tribe of pagans out on the front steps doing something interesting with Fire, and the Minnesotans walking, biking, and driving by are wrestling—wrestling—with themselves not to look.

They'redoingsomethingthey'redoingsomethinginterestingIwannalookIwannalookI'mnotgonnalookI'mnotgonnalook I'm looking I'mnotlookingI'mreallynotlookingI'mjustwalkingjustwalkingby.

Last modified on
Recent comment in this post - Show all comments
  • Katie
    Katie says #
    As the offerings were given to the fire, two people drove by in a fancy convertible with a huge sparkly (I mean unicorns for littl

 

Image result for chocolate chip cookies

 

I grew up in a Catholic neighborhood in Pittsburgh and most of my friends went to St. Gabe's up on the hill so, although my family wasn't Catholic, I heard all the stories anyway. My favorite was the one about the little boy and the cookies.

 

The Little Boy and the Cookies

 

In preparation for First Communion, Sister X's second grade class was learning about the doctrine of the Real Presence: that Christ is literally, physically, present in the Eucharist.

Sweet, thought one little kid. After school one day he sneaked into church and knocked on the door of the tabernacle, the ritual cupboard on the altar in which the reserved eucharist is kept.

Hey, Jesus, he said, I brought you some cookies, and he laid out in front of the tabernacle the cookies that he'd saved from his lunch that day.

Preparing for mass next morning, Father Y found the cookies and, after (no doubt) puzzling a bit, ate them.

After school that day, the kid sneaked back into church. Pleased to see that his previous day's offering had been accepted, he once again knocked on the tabernacle door, and said: Hey Jesus, I brought you some more cookies. Once again he duly laid out that day's offering.

This went on for several days. Finally, one morning, the priest says, indignantly, Who's bringing all of these cookies?

(This line always got a laugh.)

Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

                                                    

 

The little girl was heartbroken.

They killed him! she sobbed. They killed him!

And him so tall and shining, and his antlers reaching up, up, up to the trees, and his velvet muzzle that you wanted to stroke.

And he called you his bonny wee bird, and his daughter.

And he came down from the altar and danced, danced with everyone.

And him so shining and full of life, and now he's dead. He's dead.

The mother takes the child into her arms and holds her head against her shoulder.

Oh, but only see, she whispers into her ear, turning her around again to face the altar.

Last modified on

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Offer It Up

I stood on a subway platform as trains roared by, oblivious, paralyzed. I had been frozen by a brief, polite encounter with a former co-worker, a few weeks after I’d been laid off from my very first job, as a community college English teacher. My last set of students—young men in practical disciplines — had filled their evaluations with comments on my dress and appearance: “She should wear shorter skirts.” “She should wear more make-up.” It was decided my relationship with them had been “too personal", and my contract was not extended. Standing on the platform, remembering all this, a renewed sense of shame burned in my heart.

 

Over the years I would understand what happened better, with a more sophisticated eye. But at the time I was looking for emergency first aid. And I found it in the practice of “offering it up.”

Last modified on
Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Carol P. Christ
    Carol P. Christ says #
    loved that
  • Archer
    Archer says #
    Thank you. That's high praise from someone I so admire.

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Sacrifice Revisited

So: here was my evil plan.

Step 1. To lay the groundwork, as it were, the first year we'd do the presentation: “Sacrifice in Theory and Practice.”

Step 2. The next year, we'd bring in the cute little lambie and let the kids get to know it through the course of the festival.

Then at the big ritual we'd kill it and eat it.

Needless to say, we never even got to Step 1.

***

Thirty years ago, they wouldn't even let us talk about sacrifice at PSG. “Too controversial,” they said.

Well, that was 30 years ago, and this is Paganistan.

Moral of the story: Don't wait for Step 2.

Last modified on

Additional information