One dear Christian reader in comments on my neo-Viking celebration of axes, asks how neo-Odinists will approach the issue of sacrifice in the future. I define “future” to be a post-collapse, end of the rule of law situation, a return to the blessed Hobbesian war of all against all. The kindly reader suggests that Jesus fairs better because sacrifices were costly, and he is the final sacrifice, so it’s more economical. I think that this is a great critique that deserves an equally as great answer.
Sacrifices in Asatru/Odinism today, in the “Blot” typically involve sacrifices to the Gods of mead or food; in the past it was usually an animal:
“Many modern folk will be suspicious of a ritual such as this. Rituals which are deemed "sacrifices," such as the blot, have a certain lurid connotation and have been falsely re-interpreted by post-Pagan sources in order to denigrate or trivialize them. The most common myth about ritual sacrifice is that one is buying off a deity e.g. one throws a virgin into the volcano so it won't erupt. Nothing could be further from the truth. The other common misunderstanding of sacrifice is that the purpose is to gain some type of energy from the action of killing or the fear or suffering of the animal. This is also untrue, in actuality, if you do any kind of slaughtering—ritual or mundane—correctly there is neither. Our ancient spiritual forebears were slaughtering animals because they were farmers, and sacrifice was simply a sacred manner of doing so. In the way one might invite a friend to dinner, that bounty would be shared with the Gods.
The Norse conception of our relationship to the Gods is important in understanding the nature of sacrifice. In Asatru it is believed that we are not only the worshippers of the Gods but that we are spiritually and even physically related to them. The Eddas tell of a God, Rig (identified with Heimdall), who went to various farmsteads and fathered the human race. Symbolically, we see ourselves as kin to the Gods. On a more esoteric level, humankind is gifted with "ond" or the gift of ecstasy. Ond is a force that is of the Gods. It is everything that makes humans different from the other creatures of the world. As creatures with this gift, we are immediately connected to the Gods. We are part of their tribe, their kin. Thus we are not simply buying off the Gods by offering them something that they want, but we are sharing with the Gods something that we all take joy in.
Sharing and gift giving was an important part of most ancient cultures and had magical significance. Leadership was seen as a contract between the leader and follower. It is said, "A gift demands a gift." A good leader among the Norse was known as a "Ring giver," and it was understood that his generosity and the support of his war-band were linked and part of a complementary relationship. Giving a gift was a sign of friendship, kinship, and connection. Among the runes, gebo G encompasses the mystery of the blot. In English, the rune is named "gift," and the two lines intersecting are representative of the two sides of a relationship both giving to each other. By sharing a blot with the Gods we reaffirm our connection to them and thus reawaken their powers within us and their watchfulness over our world.
A blot can be a simple affair where a horn of mead is consecrated to the Gods and then poured as a libation, or it can be a part of a larger ritual. A good comparison is the Catholic Mass which may be part of a regular service or special event such as a wedding or funeral, or it may be done as a purely magical-religious practice without any sermon, hymns, or other trappings.” End of sermon on the mount 2.0:
Pre-Christian Germanics did engage in human sacrifice, but less than most pagan people, usually of a slave, but sometimes, when things were serious, someone of more value:
There is no evidence, that I could find, that such sacrifices were an odious financial burden.
All that may be something of a disappointment to latent barbarians reading this equally as sacred LaFondian blog. Not to frustrate, let me say that neo-Odinism is, unlike Christianity, unstructured, since Nordics-turned-Christians, did their best, as they are doing today with a little help from our furry friends, to destroy the ancient faiths. No, we have not forgotten you. Anyway, revisions are possible, since our Gods are part of our Jungian collective racial unconsciousness:
I would suggest a revision of the idea of “sacrifice,” as some sort of petitionary loss, but rather substitute the idea of an offering up of one’s enemies in the post-apocalyptic ruins. This could be done in splendid displays of torture that even the Vikings of old may need a few lessons in. Vlad the Lad had it right in setting up a field of impaled corpses, colorfully telling visitors, that they are most unwelcome. That’s economical too, at the Jesus level of economical, integrating ritual sacrifice, and security, and perhaps even a neat way of scaring the shit out of birds who would otherwise eat all of one’s fucking fruit from your fruit trees:
Trumpapocalypse Now: The Advent of an American Usurper at the fall of Western Civilization
Own the collected works of John Saxon, Professor X, Eirik Blood Axe, William Rapier and other counter culture critics, on Kindle, via the link below. Amazon:
The Great Train Wreck of the West
Heavens, for all our sakes don't start using derived terms like "LaFondian", especially in the same sentence with "sacred".
Every man has the seed of hybris deep within him, just waiting for a bit of adulation and praise to bring it questing for light and air, and growth ... and start of the path to destruction. Even the humblest are not immune, as the Greeks knew.
"Good essay, I agree" is one thing. "Sacred LaFondian Writings" or "Santiagan Cult Worship" will only end in tears .... (;>0)
If you want to install a particularist moral code, you'll have to re-constitute the Scandinavian tribes, long gone through exogamy.
I dont think anyone actually uses the term neo-odinists (feel free to call us neo pagans or even heathens) as that would seem to imply that the norsemen actually ever called themselves odinists to begin with. In fact, they didnt even have a name for their theology, which was just typical for most european theologies and perhaps even most religions in general. As for "blót", I dont see why its such a bad thing, the animal is supposed to be treated with respect and gratitude before being swiftly executed. Many butchers do far far worse and they never pay respect to the life that is being received. By the way, lets not forget the Semites who, to this day, bite off their newborns foreskin...
As for human sacrifices, if im not mistaken, this was primarily done in times where crops were failing and there was fear of starvation and even then I think the people either gave up their lives of their own free will or else they had committed some kind of crime. Nothing at all like the abhorrent witch burnings and the irrational trials they put women through to try and ascertain who was and was not a practitioner of witchcraft. One such methods was to simply drown them and see if they could survive and if they did, they were burned at the stake. In other words, it didnt matter if they were witches or not, they were still dead on the grounds of simply being unfortunate enough to be accused.
Now, if you want to go into us having been and still being an ununiformed religion; you guys have how many denominations? Hypocrite, the government essentially found some text for a violent desert theology and scrounged up as much of the source materials as possible and discarded at their own discretion what version of what story to keep and what books didnt belong until they had a "cohesive" (and I do use that term loosely) holy book. Of course this desert god mumbo-jumbo didn't really appeal to the gradually evolving european society, so they changed the names and the titles to something europeans would feel familiar with. If all that didn't work for you, then they would beat, kill or imprison you on the grounds of being an infidel (anyone see a pattern here). Whats really bad is that even then this could have only worked if you went around destroying religious manuscripts from all of your own peoples various belief systems. The fact that so much of the religion that we now call odinism has even survived such madness is truly outstanding. We seem to have most of the major practices still intact, as well as a good portion of the stories, and thankfully we even have the words of Odin (the Havamal). Heathenism is alive and well, more so than any other european faith.
If you want something to substitute as holy books then pick up "Myths of the Norsemen: From the Eddas and Sagas by H. A. Guerber"(I prefer the gorgeous Stan Lee leather bound edition),
"the Havamal",
"the prose Edda"(not as relevant as the poetic Edda but translator: Rasmus B. Anderson does a fine job and his work is for free online),
"the poetic edda"(the one every odinist must have and Im told that Asatru has a superior version),
and finally "Going to Hel: The Consequences of a Heathen Life by William P. Reaves"(also free and for those who erroneously believe that we do not have a heaven in our lore). Im told "The Viking Spirit An Introduction to Norse Mythology and Religion by DANIEL MCCOY" and the "icelandic sagas"(which you can get for 1USD a piece on amazon) are must haves.
Lets not forget, christmas is based off our yule, your name for hell comes from our afterlife, kissing under the mistletoe, and arguably possibly Halloween were all ours. A lot of work, rework, and appropriation went to making christianity palpable for the west.. well, after culling all those who werent having it. As they should with a foreign faith where even infants can be accused of being sinners and grotesque works such as Dantes Divine Comedy depicts even stillborn infants as hellbound
Thanks so much for the information.