The Issue of Ritual Human Sacrifice

Last week there were a couple of comments posted to a blog post I did last year about the beliefs, customs, and history of Samhain, specifically comments in relation to my statements regarding the practice of human sacrifice among the Celts and Druids during Samhain.  I am always a little surprised at the reactions of some folks when the subject of human sacrifice and the ancient world comes up, especially among modern day Pagans.  What surprises me the most is how many practitioners today, often those who follow Pagan traditions like neo-Wicca, are so quick to want to impose 21st century views, ideals, and values on 1st century cultures.  This is just one of those things that has me scratch my head and wonder why; why and how exactly does that makes sense to some people?  As I was reminded by a few people when discussing this subject we just often like to romanticize the past and see it with rose colored glasses.  I know that’s true for many but I don’t think that should trump knowing your history and accepting the past.  The past doesn’t define who you are today in any aspect of life, this one included, but it does help us to understand why we do what we do today and how we got here.Let me first start off by saying this post is going to include bits of comments I made in the original post from last year and then some other history and my personal thoughts on the subject.  Let me just say that I am not going to engage in any arguments about this subject in the comments or on Facebook should they arise.  If you wish to believe that Pagans of antiquity, be them Norse, Celtic, or from any other culture, never practiced human sacrifice, then stop reading.  If you really believe this with every fiber of your being and you refuse to accept that it is highly unlikely that the Druids never performed ritual human and animal sacrifices, stop reading.  If you think “Mists of Avalon” was real and that there were Pagan societies that lived in peace, never experiencing war, who spent all their days picking flowers and herbs and chanting together, stop reading.  However, if you can understand that there are cultures 3,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, and even farther back, who lived differently and believed differently than we do today in 2010, and you’re open to those ideas or already believe and agree with that fact, then read on.  Because frankly, if you are unwilling to accept that your Pagan ancestors weren’t all the benevolent, tree-hugging, healers that fantasy fiction would have you believe, then nothing I say and no historical evidence of any kind is ever going to change your mind.Now that that’s out of the way…Let’s start with the issue of historical evidence.  The Druids are one of the Pagan cultures that have long been known for having participated in sacrificial rites, both human and animal.  It’s believed that the Druids in Gaul and Britain practiced human and animal sacrifice where as the Celts of Ireland seem to have mainly practiced animal sacrifice with little evidence to support human ones.  It’s been suggested that there may have been a difference of belief and views on death in Ireland as in Gaul and Britain; death to those in Ireland was seen as something of a reward as it was the beginning of the next cycle of life rather than punishment.  To kill someone, either in a sacrificial way or strictly as punishment, would have been to reward to person.  Instead torture was likely more the normal practice for those that were criminals or people that had gone against the local governments, which consisted of the Druids (think “a fate worse than death”).  Many remains have been found over the years in Ireland that do support that animals were sacrificed in ritualistic ways and were likely used as offerings to the Gods for their favor and to appease spirits so they would be left in peace.Much like our symbolic ritual sacrifices we practice today as modern Pagans, it was important that something of value was given to the Gods or spirits to win their favor and, in an agricultural society what would be of more value to someone than an animal from their own herd of livestock that would otherwise be feeding and clothing the village?  Very little.But even with animal sacrifice being a common practice among the Irish Celts and other tribal cultures in Europe, another common sacrificial practice was that of human sacrifice.  One of the largest and most debated sources of historical evidence against the Druids and their practices of sacrifice came from Julius Caesar.   Caesar was working hard to vilify the Druids because, while trying to essentially conquer the world, he had his sights set on Gaul which was inhabited and partly run by the Druids.  Gaul consisted of many different tribal groups with their own council of elders and a king, but Caesar was mostly focused on the Druid tribes because he saw them as a force to be reckoned with as well as finding their religious practices confusing.  He began to write about what he saw of the Druids and talked at length about their violent practices, including sacrificial rites.“Commentarii de Bello Gallico” (translated to “Commentaries on the Gallic War”) also sometimes just called “The Gallic War”, is arguably one of Caesar’s most infamous writings.  It was published in eight books between 58 BC and 51 BC (the last book was actually written by Aulus Hirtius after Caesar’s death).  This is Caesar’s personal account of his battles to conquer Gaul and describes what he claimed to be accounts of the Druid’s practices in through the eyes of a Roman.  It’s been highly suggested that not only did Caesar never see the Druids do any of the things he claims in his writings, but he never spoke with anyone else that did either.  This is one of the reasons that many of his accounts of the Druid practices is highly suspect.  Adding to his biased view is the fact that Rome had been conquered 300 years earlier by the Celts under Brennus in the 3rd century BC.  So you could say that Caesar had reasons to want to remove the Druids by whatever means he had to.The Romans also had a really interesting double standard in their culture.  While they condemned the Druids, Celts, and other Pagan societies that used sacrifice as a method of working with the spirit world, the Romans still engaged in their own bloody activities for pure sport, mainly the gladiatorial games and feeding people to lions.   It could be that by making the sacrificial acts of the Druids seem so sinister and barbaric it would make what the Romans did seem more justified.However, because of the believed bias and the fact that Caesar may not have really had firsthand knowledge of the practices of sacrifice or the other proposed atrocities of the Druids, his writings about the Druids are often taken with a grain of salt by many, especially modern day Celtic practitioners.   But this is no reason to throw the whole concept out the window or to ignore other information about the state of human sacrifice and other such practices during this time.One of the other pieces of evidence that surrounds the concept of human sacrifice in the Celtic world comes from the bog bodies that have been found.  One of the most famous of these occurred in 1984 with the discovery of Lindow Man.   Lindow Man was the name given to the body of a 20-something male from the 1st century discovered at the Lindow Moss peat bogs in Cheshire in the North West region of England and created one of the big compelling cases for possible Druid human sacrifice.  However, like all such finds, the actual cause of death has been debated greatly; it's possible that he could have been killed by anyone for any reason, but there are many ideas that lend to the fact that was a ritual style killing and that there are virtually no signs that he struggled for his life and instead accepted it and was a quite possibly a willing victim.  You can see a small clip from a nice on National Geographic about the Lindow Man on YouTube.Other bog bodies have been found through Europe and some of had an interesting commonality; physical abnormalities or defects were found on a portion of these bodies.  Shortened limbs, spinal deformities, additional toes and fingers; these were just some of the unique traits that a number of bodies had.  While we might think that this was somehow a cruel acting out on someone who was different it’s actually believed by some who have researched human sacrifice in the European cultures that these people may have been specifically chosen because their physical differences lent to the idea that they had been “touched by the Gods” and therefore were sacred or special making them ideal sacrifices.The other thing that we need to think about is the reasons why societies, Celtic or otherwise, would have committed sacrifice, be it human or animal.  Sacrifice requires an exchange.  I give you something precious to me that is special to you in some way and in exchange you will give me something that is special to me.  In these cases it was the aid of spiritual and supernatural forces that were desired and usually for a greater cause such as tribal health and safety.  This wasn’t a case of people committing human sacrifice on their own in their homes for personal gain, but it would be something done as part of a communal rite to benefit the whole tribe.  The question does remain as to where the lines may be between the willing sacrifice and those who were somehow coerced into becoming the sacrificial token.5,000 years ago, when human sacrifice was practiced in a widespread manner, there is evidence to show everything from the individual who was sacrificed to the Gods in a ritual to ensure that the tribe would live through the winter all the way to rituals in Mesopotamia where mass sacrifices, not unlike the mass cult suicides we have seen in our time, had taken place where the guards, servants, slaves, and even family members would all enter a dead rulers tomb and take poison so they could die with their leader.  In 150 A.D. over 100 warriors were found sacrificed at the Temple of Quetzalcoatl in Mexico, believed to have been killed with the intention of them being supernatural, ghostly guardians of the temple.It was a different time and a different culture.  To me it seems a bit unrealistic and somewhat romantic to try and say that the Druids, or any other culture or society, was somehow above the need to practice an act that was commonplace and wide spread during these times.  The reasons that they performed these acts simply don’t make sense to us today with our 21st century thinking.   We hear stories of men, and in some societies, women, being dragged out to be sacrificed for the greater good of a community or tribe in a supernatural barter with the Gods and we cringe a little, thinking to ourselves “We’d never do anything like that today.”  You may not, but look at other cultures today outside of your own and you will see human sacrifice, sometimes willing sacrifice that someone has prepared for for quite some time.  Suicide bombers, Kamikaze pilots, people on hunger strikes, people who protest and put themselves in a place of possible death for their cause; how are these not seen as modern day human sacrifices?  These are people who have decided to willingly give their lives for the greater causes of their people and countries, their “tribes”, or they may have felt somewhat coerced to do so by cultural or societal pressures, as has been suggested in the case of some instances of ancient human sacrifice.  We turn around and call things like Jonestown “mass suicide” but what makes that so different from followers drinking poison at the gates of their king’s tomb?While we may not like to think that we have ancestors that may have participated in the act of carrying out human sacrifice, or maybe even been a sacrifice themselves, the fact remains that it is far more likely than not that this is the case.  Remember, many thousands of years ago our ancestors thought that when winter came and the sun was out of sight longer each day that it meant they were going to die because the sun was, in their eyes, dying.  Today that seems a bit silly to us but it was a fact for cultures and people thousands of years ago just like the idea that sacrificing someone of importance from their tribe as an offering to the Gods during the start of a particular season and festival would ensure the safety and protection of the greater tribe.Personally, I like what Brandan Cathbad Myers says about human sacrifice in his book “The Mysteries of Druidry”. “For those who want to believe the answer is yes, there is plenty of literary and archaeological evidence to justify that belief.  For those who want to believe the answer is no, there are plenty of other ways to interpret the evidence.”  This is very true and one of the many signs that show how even with the best technology and research today we still have so many gaps in the stories of our ancestral cultures and it’s hard to know without any uncertainty what happened there.  That’s why I stand by the need to stop and ask ourselves “what is more likely than not”, and in this case, in my estimation, it is far more likely that the Druids did in fact practice human sacrifice.Today we generally don’t practice human sacrifice, or at least not in most first world countries.  Not all of us practice animal sacrifice but there certainly are traditions that do and they have certain procedures and protocols for such practices.  With all of this it’s important to remember that, again, we simply need to be mindful of when we are working to impose our personal practices, morals, ethics, and beliefs on other practitioners, especially if they come from another tradition, another part of the world, or even another time in history.  Where we are today is not the same as where we were yesterday and it certainly doesn’t write in stone who we will be tomorrow.  That’s the beauty of being on a magickal, evolving path; we have the power to change our world and create the world we want to live in.