(Daven’s Note: This is a reprint from The Daily Press and is used here by permission. I saw this article and knew that I had to link it here, and in the interest of keeping it available for future reference, I’m reposting it here. I hope that you all will respect their copyright and not reprint it without their permission.)

Tamara Dietrich
Originally posted on 7:59 PM EST, December 26, 2009

So it’s happened again, just as it does every year around this time: A concerted effort to subvert the real meaning of the holiday and twist it into something far removed from its origins.

To take an ancient and revered celebration and rebrand it.

That’s right – it’s the annual War on Wicca.

No, no. Just kidding. What I’m really talking about is the annual War on Paganism, of which Wicca is a small subset.

That’s right: Every year, pagan symbols and festivities stretching back thousands of years are co-opted in the name of Christmas. Without thanks or barest acknowledgment.

Christmas trees everywhere, but no mention of the pagans and their reverence for evergreens or lighting the yule log to chase away midwinter gloom, and whose “Yule” is now synonymous with Christmas.

No gratitude for evergreen wreaths and holly – pagan symbols of the feminine and masculine and of sacred cycles.

None for borrowing Santa Claus – an iconic figure in various pagan cultures, from a fourth-century Turkish bishop to Father Yule, the Winter King.

Mistletoe today may reference chaste romance, but it echoes the earthy sexuality of pagan Saturnalia celebrations in mid-December to honor the Roman god of agriculture. Saturnalias were jolly days of feasts and exchanging gifts.

Winter Solstice has morphed from a pagan mid-winter festival of the birth of the sun into a celebration of the birth of the son.

And December 25 has gone from the birthday of the Roman god Mithra to … well, you know.

“Most religions – one is built on another, built on another,” notes Betsy Ashby of the Pagan Resource Center. “Anybody who thinks their religion is original is deluding themselves.”

The resource center was located in Windsor, but recently relocated to the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. Ashby declines to say how she and her family celebrate Solstice – “For us, it’s a time of family; we do not do the commercial thing.”

Lots of Christians would applaud this. Of course, many would also say she’s on the path to eternal damnation. If only she believed in eternal damnation.

The good news about the perceived marginalization or underappreciation of Christmas is that complaints have declined in recent years.

They do still crop up now and then, as in this Feedback complaint in Monday’s paper, from a reader upset about a general decline in wishing others “Merry Christmas”:

“Why is there a systematic campaign to destroy the roots of Christianity?”

Editor Ernie Gates did a fine job pointing out that 1) people do still say “Merry Christmas” and 2) the hype over the so-called and dubious “War on Christmas” is fading. Finally. Even on Fox News, which churned those muddy waters in the first place.

But for those who truly believe Christmas is being undermined, its sectarian roots overtaken by the secular, a little history would go a long way.

It would show that modern religious celebrations and symbols are commonly the co-opted and reinterpreted versions of more ancient ones – outside of modern inventions like Kwanzaa or Festivas.

It would also show that Christians piggybacked their holiday surrounding the birth of Jesus onto pagan celebrations, the better to reach converts and, in those dangerous early days when being Christian could get you killed, to hide in plain sight.

And it would show that there’s more common ground among different faiths and their holidays than, unfortunately, many would care to acknowledge.

Not being pagan or Christian, myself, I don’t have a dog in this hunt. Burn your yule log or sing your Christmas matins – more power to you.

But, as noted in a recent Slate article, some Christians don’t appreciate a level playing field. One spokeswoman at a conservative Christian group was displeased when a clothing company gave equal time to various holidays in a television ad.

“As a Christian, I don’t put Christmas on the same plane as winter solstice,” noted Carrie Gordon Earll, a spokeswoman for Focus on the Family. “It kind of felt like a poke in the eye.”

I suspect pagans know the feeling.

Contact Dietrich at 247-7892 or tdietrich@dailypress.com.

Copyright © 2010, Newport News, Va., Daily Press

I have a new review up and I have at least one more coming. I’ve decided that since I’m not doing my Tools book anymore, that I will be reviewing the two tools books I have on my shelf.

Anyhow, here’s the review: The Wiccan Mystic

Now I just have to send this along to the five places I used to when I finished a review.

By Ben Gruagach
WitchGrotto Press (print on demand from Lulu.com) 2007, $19.99
ISBN13 978-0-6151-4311-8

Review by Daven

My Rating? ★★★★★ 

Mr. Gruagach (and no, I don’t know how to pronounce his last name myself) asked me to consider doing a review of his book, and obviously I agreed. I’m very glad I did.

The subtitle of this book is “Exploring a Magickal Spiritual Path”. That’s a very accurate subtitle. In this book, Ben gives a good description of not only what a mystic is, but how Wicca can be a mystical path just as well as any other spiritual path.

The impressions I got as I was reading this is that he has spent some time on this path himself. He has apparently thought about how to be a mystic and what it means to be a mystic. He gives instructions on how to be not only mystical, but also how to be a mystic on a path that is more practical than mystical.

The cover is plain white with a nice picture of a fossil of a snail shell and a pentagram in on the fossil. It is obviously a vanity press publication and there isn’t anything wrong with that. For it being a vanity book, it’s a good publication. But Lulu is a good “print on demand” company anyhow.

The contents are well laid out and well written. I have to compliment Ben on his writing style it is clear and concise, without being so esoteric that it loses the reader. Instead he goes out of his way to explain everything he is speaking on clearly and thoroughly.

I was surprised at the depth he went to in this book. Most books about such esoteric subjects tend to skim the surface of the topic and then expect the reader to do a lot of soul searching to find the answers to the more esoteric questions. But Ben does not do this. He clearly explains what is happening and why, how to live in a mystical mind set and he goes over basics of things like meditation and ritual, and how to apply them to your life.

I honestly can’t find anything to criticize in this book. I tried and it is not there. It is a shame that this is a Lulu imprint because I don’t think this will get the mass market circulation it deserves.

If you have multiple books on how to meditate, what sacred space is, how to live in a sacred space, what to do while you are there, you will probably not need to get this book. However, if you are just starting on this path, this is THE resource to buy instead of all the others works.

I’m giving this 5 stars of 5 and advising you to go get it. This is one book you won’t be sorry to have.

I reposted an entry I had on Dreamwidth about my invisible illnesses, and I realized that many people might not know about Sleep Apnea. Most of the other illnesses are pretty self-explanatory, but not that one.

Basically when I sleep, my throat relaxes. This isn’t a big deal since everyone’s does that, but in my case, it’s bad. It relaxes so much that the soft palate in the back of my throat collapses down and blocks my airway. I start choking.

What happens then is that my body sends a signal to my brain to wake me up and to get me breathing again. Not that big of a deal either, but in order to do that, I have to come from the beta, gamma or delta sleep I was in back up to the alpha state of sleep, so that I can tense the soft palate and start breathing.

All of this means that I choke myself all night long. It also means that I don’t get a full night’s sleep, since I keep waking up over and over and over again.

This is a condition that has been around for a REALLY long time. In other times it was called “Cheyne-Stokes“, but instead of suffocating due to brain injury, this is caused by the throat collapsing. It has been known to cause death in the past.

So the solution is to wear a CPAP machine. What this does is it creates a higher air pressure in my sinuses and mouth which holds the throat open at night, allowing me to breath normally. Here’s pictures:

The mask itself

The machine on my nightstand

What I look like at night in bed

The great part is that Mary gets to wear one of these too, almost identical to mine. We look like Borg and the vents on our masks blow on each other constantly. Really fun. Can’t talk, and they do take some time to get used to.

But, I do get a full night’s sleep now, unless the mask slips and I have to readjust it to seal it against my face. Or whatever. There’s a lot of times I wake up because the mask is bothering me. But I have managed to NOT pull the nearly $500 machine off my nightstand. I hope I continue this trend.

Is there another treatment I could have? Actually there is. It involves a minor surgery to inject an acid on the top of the soft palate to encourage scar tissue, and to pull it in and shrink the soft palate up. But it’s still experimental and I don’t think that I can get it done just because I wanna. Same with the diabetes, apparently injecting capsaicin into the liver will cure diabetes (the juice of a hot pepper that causes the tongue and mouth burn). But experimental treatments aren’t paid for by state insurance yet.

Anyhow, I thought I would post this to let you all know what this condition is. There was a link on the “invisible illness” post to the Sleep Apnea national group. Go and take a look to learn more.

Just thought I would share.

I’m putting this post up here because it is something that I think is needed to be known by a large segment of the people. I had posted it for “Invisible Illness Week” on Dreamwidth, but since I was in the middle of updating this Journal and didn’t repost it. So here this is.

Love you all.

Invisible Illness Week

Sep. 13th, 2009 09:27 pm

30 Things About My Invisible Illness You May Not Know

1. The illness I live with is: Type 2 Diabetes, PTSD, Dysthimia, Bad Lower Back due to arthritis, Hypertension, Plantar Fasciitis, Sleep apnea
2. I was diagnosed with it in the year: Diabetes: 2001, PTSD: 2005, Dysthimia: 2005, Bad Lower Back: diagnosed in late 2009, Hypertension: 2001, Plantar Fasciitis: 2009, Sleep Apena: 2006
3. But I had symptoms since: Dysthimia: all my life, PTSD: since about 15, all others recently
4. The biggest adjustment I’ve had to make is: that I really AM sick
5. Most people assume: I’m lazy and malingering
6. The hardest part about mornings are: Actually getting out of bed. Most times I want to keep sleeping and not deal with the world at all. And I can get away with it since I don’t get good sleep anyhow.
7. My favorite medical TV show is: House, but I haven’t seen it in forever.
8. A gadget I couldn’t live without is: Duh, my computer.
9. The hardest part about nights are: Staying asleep. With the apnea, I tend to wake up about 50 times a night, and even with the CPAP machine, I still wake quite often.
10. Each day I take __ pills & vitamins. (No comments, please): Two batches. Morning: about 20, Evening: 9 (3 for diabetes, 2 for hypertension, 8 for anti-inflammatory, 3 for pain, 2 for allergies, 1 for acid reflux, multivitamin, 1 aspirin, 1 for cholesterol, three for depression.)
11. Regarding alternative treatments I: don’t care. There really is no working alternative treatment for what I have.
12. If I had to choose between an invisible illness or visible I would choose: not to be sick at all. But if those where the only two choices, I’d take the invisible one
13. Regarding working and career: Due to the PTSD, I can’t work. Most of the symptoms are mixed up with working, and I sabotage myself when I have a job.
14. People would be surprised to know: Even with all this, I don’t believe I’m sick and that I can do anything else anyone can do. I’m constantly having my conditions shoved back in my face.
15. The hardest thing to accept about my new reality has been: That I am actually normal and sick. Too often I have been told I’m malingering, and I’ve come to believe it.
16. Something I never thought I could do with my illness that I did was: Get better. When I’m on my meds, I do feel better and I can accomplish many things that I could when I wasn’t on my meds.
17. The commercials about my illness: Commercials don’t talk about Dysthimia. For them it’s only major depression.
18. Something I really miss doing since I was diagnosed is: Eating candy
19. It was really hard to have to give up: Sweets
20. A new hobby I have taken up since my diagnosis is: Blogging
21. If I could have one day of feeling normal again I would: I honestly don’t know. I’ve never felt normal before, so this is my *normal*, and I wouldn’t know what to do if I felt different from this.
22. My illness has taught me: nothing. I know I should get a life lesson from it, but mostly my time is spent surviving and getting to the next day. I feel like a waste of flesh.
23. Want to know a secret? One thing people say that gets under my skin is: “You could be so much better if you just pulled yourself up by your bootstraps.” or something similar. The dysthymia means I can’t even find my bootstraps, and pulling myself up doesn’t work.
24. But I love it when people: ???
25. My favorite motto, scripture, quote that gets me through tough times is:
    
    

    Don’t Quit

    When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
    When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
    When the funds are low and the debts are high,
    And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
    When care is pressing you down a bit,
    Rest, if you must, but don’t you quit.

    Life is queer with its twists and turns,
    As every one of us sometimes learns,
    And many a failure turns about,
    When he might have won had he stuck it out;
    Don’t give up though the pace seems slow–
    You may succeed with another blow.

    Often the goal is nearer than,
    It seems to a faint and faltering man,
    Often the struggler has given up,
    When he might have captured the victor’s cup,
    And he learned too late when the night slipped down,
    How close he was to the golden crown.

    Success is failure turned inside out–
    The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
    And you never can tell how close you are,
    It may be near when it seems so far,
    So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit–
    It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.

    - Author unknown

26. When someone is diagnosed I’d like to tell them: I know no one with the same diagnosis.
27. Something that has surprised me about living with an illness is: I’m not lazy.
28. The nicest thing someone did for me when I wasn’t feeling well was: just be there with me.
29. I’m involved with Invisible Illness Week because: It seems to be trendy
30. The fact that you read this list makes me feel: Grateful. Maybe if more people could understand this….

My Rating? ★★★★☆ 

This is the first time I’ve reviewed a program, much less one about Tarot. When I joined the American Tarot Association, I decided to really try to get my tarot certification and to start an online and phone based reading business. For that I needed something that would be really easy to use, easy to interpret and easy to install.

I think I got all that in this program.

Don’t fool yourself; it will take some time to get used to the interface and the controls. So plan on spending at least two days (like I did) learning how to do everything before using it for clients. But once you are past that initial learning stage, the program is really easy.

Before I begin, I want to state this: I encourage you all to buy the registered version. You can download and install the program, but until it is registered, you will get a nag screen when the program is opened, and some things have limited functionality (like only being able to use three decks). I found that there were a few more options available to me once it was registered, but if I hadn’t the money I would have been satisfied with the free version.

That said, I paid for a Single Machine License. It was the most inexpensive option for me, and since I only use one computer, it was a good choice. I can upgrade that later to the one user license which will let me use it on up to three machines, but that’s a purchase for the future.

The interface of the program is clean and uncluttered. There is a deck of cards, a “docking square” for the undelt deck if you want to get it out of the way, and the background. By default this comes as just a solid color, but you can put a tiled image in there if you wish to so you can have a “tarot table cover” if you want. That’s it. All the commands are accessed by right-clicking on the deck, which gives you the program, card and reading commands.

You can have an unlimited number of decks in the program in the registered version, and if you are like me, I tend to have about five or six I rotate through depending on my needs. Currently I have the “Housewives Tarot”, “The Robin Wood Tarot”, “The Celtic Tarot”, a rune deck and the Pagan Tarot. Other users are constantly developing and uploading their own decks, and with just a few clicks you can access those decks and any spreads they have developed.

When you click on the spreads, you get three by default. You will have to make your own or download others. You get a three card spread, a six card star and the Celtic Cross. These are good beginning tarot spreads, but if you are like me and have several other spreads, it may be worth a look on their P2P network to download some spreads.

I did note that while the unregistered version only allows you three decks, the top three alphabetically in the Windows list, you can have as many spreads as you want. To my mind, this is a good move by them so that they can encourage you to use their program.

I designed and uploaded my two unique spreads, and downloaded about ten others. I modified a couple for my own use (mostly by moving cards around so I can see them) and uploaded those modified spreads as well. I found that it was possible to see the spreads before you download them, which is perfect since I hate cluttering my PC with useless data. You can also go in and delete old decks and spreads that you don’t want anymore.

You can save readings for further interpretation later, and for emailing to clients. There is a screen capture option and a place where you can note the picture, doing a reading and sending it directly from your program to your client. My one word for that feature? Bonus.

You can toggle through the decks you have so you can get different nuances from different decks. You can compare the pictures of various decks to see which would be best. You can deal single cards in the middle of the reading if you want, and you can shuffle the deck while you have a spread out. There’s even a feature that will let you zoom in on a card so you can see the nuances of the artwork while reading.

While this is an excellent program, there are some problems.

First off, if you dock the cards in the docking square, there’s no way to access the program commands unless you undock the cards, then right-click. It’s a two step process and when you have a client on the phone, it may be a bit more time than you want to take. Since everything is off the right-click menu, including all the decks and spreads and how to deal the cards, it can be a bit of a pain to get it.

The next thing that is irritating is that you may have to tweak the spreads/cards extensively so you can use it. You get pop-up windows to display the card position and the card description if you want it, but not a lot of the spreads or decks out there have the descriptions in them. They may have the positions mapped out, but there is no guarantee that the author described it while making it. I had that problem with almost every deck I downloaded and almost all the spreads.

There was one deck that I had to totally re-write, but when it’s a non-standard deck of runes, it can be forgiven.

I would wish the hotkeys for the spreads were easier to use. There’s a bunch of hotkeys for the program options, but I wish there was a “repeat” for laying out another spread on top of the spread that is out. Currently the program forces you to gather all the cards up, shuffle and then re-deal them.

Also, features for selecting a significator and/or a segment of cards from the deck are non-existent. I occasionally like to find the significator for the querent and look at the cards immediately around that card as another tool for them, but the program doesn’t allow for that. Similarly, you cannot look at the bottom card of the deck either. There also aren’t any options for “jump out” cards while shuffling.

It is possible to turn off all the reversals though, which I appreciate. The only problem is that if you turn it off for all decks, and have it turned on for one, then you toggle to another deck, that deck will have a lot of reversals in it. There’s no really easy way to change that.

Personally? I’m going to keep this program for some time. While it will never replace a face to face reading, it will do wonders for doing readings over the phone or over the Internet. I’m giving this program Four Stars out of Five, the best that I have seen yet.

Okay, I’ve been slack in increasing my metaphysical library lately. One of the biggest areas of failure is classics of Wicca/Witchcraft. So I’m going to have an open request to everyone.

If you have old Wicca/Magick/Metaphysical books that are just taking up shelf space, please comment here *WITH YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS* (in a format to confuse the spammers, something like daven [at] davensjournal [dot] com ) and I will contact you to take them off your hands.

I can’t pay much for them, probably no more than shipping, but this keeps you from throwing them away and wasting trees.

Some of these I’ll review, some I might recycle. But here’s your chance to get them off your shelves and to someone who actually wants them.

This was shared with me by a friend of mine, Seshen Wolfsong, Priestess in the Lycian Way living in Texas and a friend of mine for as long as I can remember.

It’s a small story about the war on Yule, and I think that even though this is tongue in cheek, it’s still a heck of a commentary on Wicca, Yule and Paganism in general.

After all, all parody and jokes start with a nugget of truth.

Every Year, it’s the War on Wicca

Sometime in the future I plan on acquiring permission to repost and archive this article here at the Journal.

You will be seeing on many religion blogs either that Halloween is dangerous and should be avoided by those who are truly religious, or probably posts from various flavors of Pagansim who are defending the Sabbat of Samhain. I won’t go into all those again, I’ll just direct you to Isaac Bonewits’ pages on his website on Samhain. He’s done a much better job than I could.

The Real Origins of Halloween
Halloween Errors and Lies

There is a page here that talks about Samhain:

Samhain Sabbat in Seax-Wica (note there is deity substitution present, this has been changed to reflect my deities)

No, I’m not going to go over that information again. What I am going to do is do an electronic ritual for you all.

So be it.

And that is the end of that ritual. Thank you for reading along. I hope it was as moving for you as it was for me.

Originally posted on October 31, 2006. Thank you for reading

From time to time the topic of Pagans and Sacrifice comes up in various forums online. Unfortunately, the majority of people (including pagans) who talk about Sacrifice don’t seem to understand about sacrifice. Most think of sacrifice (in the connotation of Pagan religions) as dealing with human sacrifice or animal sacrifice. While those are ancient practices and valid forms of sacrifice, they are not all that is.

First we need to understand the definition of sacrifice. Sacrifice means simply “to make sacred”. It is from the Latin root and in modern times it is defined as giving up something of value to gain something you wish.

Pretty cut and dried, but when it is translated into Pagan Religion, all anyone can see is things like the Wicker Men of legend, bog drownings, burning bodies and cattle dropping dead.

Because of this persistent vision of what sacrifice is, the act of sacrificing something to the Gods has a VERY bad reputation.

But let’s think about this for a few moments. Sacrifice does not have to be bad, since it’s done all the time by most Pagans.

Ever think of the act of consecration? Cleansing it and going over it with the salted water and so on or whatever ritual you do to make that item sacred sacrifices it to the Gods. You just gave something to Them. Granted you still get to USE it in your rituals, but taking that special goblet that your grandparents drank their wedding toast out of and consecrating it to use in ritual has taken it from the realm of the mundane and special into the realm of the sacred. So that sacrifices it.

You have, in effect, given it to the Gods.

You can do this with any object; a knife, a harp, a person, a steer, a mouse, an owl, a candle, a poppet, a stuffed animal or anything else. Heck, you can even take food, already prepared and cooked food and sacrifice it to the Gods.

Time is another sacrificial object. Most people don’t realize that it can be sacrificed until someone points it out to them blatantly like this, but time, effort and energy can all be sacrificed. It takes time to do something, to make something, to create something of your own. That is a sacrificial act. Creating candles and dedicating them to the Gods is sacrificing them to those Gods, even if you go out and use them to burn on the altar or to light up the chapel or circle.

Creating a poem is a sacrifice. I wrote an article on Lugh and on Tailtu at one point and sacrificed them to them during a ritual to get a new job. It’s perfectly valid to do so and a good and original sacrifice as well. It represented my willingness to sacrifice something that I spent time creating for Them.

In my opinion these original sacrifices are worth more than all the gold and food in the world. They show that one was thinking and that you actually took the tastes of the deity you are sacrificing to into consideration. If it were up to me, I would be more inclined to look favorably upon someone who was sacrificing something that was original than something that everyone gave.

In some cultures and deity sets, the more valuable a sacrifice is to the giver, the more acceptable it is to the Gods in question. One story I remember hearing as I grew up is of a ritual where the Gods would bless this town with health, wealth and prosperity if a sacrifice made to them was valuable enough. The Gods favor would be shown by the bell in the main cathedral ringing with no hand touching it. There had been ten years straight of famine so it was very important that this ritual come about and please the Gods. So the entire town gathered to make their sacrifices to the Gods, and as time passed things became more and more worrisome. Hundreds of people paraded past the altar and made their sacrifice with no result. From the poor to the rich, each gave what they considered to be a proper sacrifice to the Gods, but nothing happened. Finally the King himself knelt before the altar and placed his crown on the altar, sacrificing it to the Gods. Still no bells. The people were crushingly depressed. Finally, the last person to make an offering was this little beggar boy. He approached the altar with a silver coin he had begged from passers by. With this coin he could eat for a month. He placed it on the altar and when he moved away, the bells rang out for hours. The Gods were pleased with the monumental size of the sacrifice the beggar gave.

The beggar boy had given his entire worldly goods and in the process directly harmed himself to please the Gods, so his town could prosper. It showed a willingness to give that is the core of sacrifice.

The ritual of Cakes and Ale is a sacrificial ritual. Yes, it is also a ritual of Thanksgiving, one of sharing the bounty of the Earth with the Gods, but it is a Sacrificial rite.

Most people have this idea that sacrifice has to involve a living thing. But what about burning herbs in honor of the Gods? Is that a sacrifice? I say it is.

You worked to find those herbs. You dried them, and now you are giving them to the Gods in a ritual of honor. It takes energy and time to do all that, plus the herb you grew/found is now not usable by you for any reason. It is therefore a sacrifice. It may look like it is not since the Gods grew the plant and all you did was harvest it, but you fussed over it too. Even if you wild-crafted the herb (meaning you went and searched for it in the wild), you still had to do the work to find the herb if nothing else.

This point I have spent many hours in debate with the Gods about. It basically comes down to this; if you feel the Gods would enjoy something, if it is something you enjoy or that is valuable to you, then sacrifice it to Them.

I didn’t believe this, so I tried it once. I baked a loaf of bread for the Dagda for a spell I needed to come to pass. He loves bread and porridge, and I thought it was appropriate since it was something that looked to me as though it would be of little importance. I mean, bread is bread.

My wife and I made a big deal of it, grinding the meal (we added oats to the bread), pounding and rolling it out, braiding it and putting it in the oven. And I offered it to Him. He was very pleased and even more so when I gave it all to the Birds who would be hungry for it. But it was such a little thing and it gave so much joy to many people around us. And the Gods were pleased.

Which brings up the point of what about the Voodoo custom of bringing cakes and alcohol to celebrations and giving them to the spirits? Well, understand that I’m not a practitioner of Voodoo, but I have learned (despite everything) from some of the specials on voodoo on channels like Discovery. What I remember one mambo saying about that was that the loa eat the spirit or the essence of the food offerings, leaving the physical behind. It is only natural at that point for the celebrants to have that to share in the bounty with the loa. It’s like a partnership where one animal eats only the forequarters, and another eats only the hindquarters. It makes sense for them to hunt together at that point so there is no waste.

Now, what I have talked about are the other forms of sacrifice. Your time, your energy, items you made, your attention, spells, poems, service and so on can all be sacrificed to the Gods. Let’s grasp the nettle here and talk about Human, Animal and Blood sacrifice.

Any discussion of these three topics needs to start with the disclaimer of these are special case sacrifices, and the people participating in them HAVE to know what they are doing. Those who have no clue are letting themselves in for a world of hurt and are going to spoil what is a sacred rite.

Here’s the point of these sacrifices; there should be no pain. The goal of these sacrifices is the energy bleed off.

When a life ends, there is a rush of energy that is released by that death. This is true for ANY living thing, plant, animal, human or whatever. It happens when a bacteria dies (but it’s so miniscule that most people don’t sense it). This life energy is exactly like the “Force” of Star Wars fame, and it can be channeled into the same purposes. That energy is simply lost when something dies, but those that know what they are doing can gather that energy and force it into spells or into other uses to boost it. BUT pain and anger and hatred and fear “taints” that energy. Just like using a paint stick that has mixed red paint to mix white paint without cleaning it first will result in a bucket full of pink paint, so too will fear and anger make this energy useless.

Blood sacrifice is exactly that, spilling your blood and offering that to the Gods. For some there is a mystic use for blood. Like Lugh (the Celtic God) had to store his spear (which had a flaming head) in a bucket of puppy blood to keep it from burning down everything from an unquenchable fire. For others, there is no greater essence of life than blood. Plus, it is nutritional all on it’s own. You can eat blood and live off it. Granted it’s very hard to do so and you will get sick, but what do you think Blood Sausage is? It’s mostly cooked blood.

But those that have been analyzing the attraction of Vampires have done a better job than I could do in telling you about the mystic use of blood. It is a primordial substance and an essential one. Because of CENTURIES of association with life, spilling blood voluntarily becomes a huge sacrifice for others.

Now, I’m not saying that every deity out there will enjoy a sacrifice of blood. Far from that, most will be repelled. However, there are some that do demand blood sacrifice and have demanded it in the past, therefore sacrificing blood to them will help your cause with that deity. Should you do this lightly? Not at all. It should be done only when there is little else that can be done and when there is great need.

Are there other solutions besides just letting it drip out of your hand/arm? Certainly. One of the most original blood sacrifices is dealt with in this article.

As to animal sacrifice. This one is a lot more problematic. There are traditions out there who practice it currently as part of their holy rites. There are some versions of Santeria, Voodoo and some pagan beliefs that do so as well. In EVERY case, the animal is treated with respect and honor. It is fed the best of the best, it is praised and sung to and the death it experiences is quick and painless. Great care is taken to ensure that the animal does not suffer during the actual sacrificial process. For the object of the sacrifice to suffer and to have a torturous experience is a terrible omen and will destroy the sanctity of the rite like nothing else will.

This is not about pain. This is about an offering to the Gods. The best animal in the herd is offered to the Gods, the energy is taken to fuel the ritual or spell the animal was sacrificed for, the soul of that animal is sent to the Gods for THEIR feast, and the flesh of that animal is eaten in a mirror feast among the practitioners. It’s not discarded or thrown into the ditch as some believe (that is an act of sacrilege and wasteful. Why praise and take care of the animal, thanking it for sacrificing itself and then throw it aside casually like day old bread?) but it is eaten and partaken of in a sacred rite. It also occurs to me that this act can have the same effect as other eating rituals.  Eating the heart of a deer one has hunted and killed ritualistically takes the power of the deer into oneself.  Ritually eating the body of a sacrificed animal takes the purity and those blessings of the Gods into oneself.

Human sacrifice is a different order of magnitude. Let me state that this is NOT practiced by any sect or religion that I know of currently. It may be done illegally, but if it is, the participants would be charged with murder under most laws of Western Nations. However, it was a valid form of worship back in the day.

Basically it’s the same as animal sacrifice with two differences: The first was that the sacrifice went to plead the case of those committing the sacrifice directly to the Gods themselves and second, the flesh was (normally) not eaten afterward. I say “normally” because some cannibal tribes probably did eat it.

Once again the sacrifice themselves was the best of the best, someone who was pampered and praised and made to feel special, then they were killed in a ritual that did the least amount of pain to them. When the soul got to the afterlife, they were normally under orders by the priests to plead whatever case they had to the Gods directly. This showed the Gods that the situation was very serious and that immediate help was needed. I mean, if you are willing to give up your life to talk to the Gods about a problem the tribe is having….

One special note on Human sacrifice; the people who were the sacrifices were volunteers. It may have been a case of “I can sacrifice you in a ritual, or we can starve/torture you to death, but either way you are going to die” kind of a choice, but they could trade a potentially painful death for one that would allow you to die at peace. But they were volunteers.

There are some who may still practice this, but it is not a matter of someone else doing it to them, but more along the lines of self-sacrifice in the form of suicide. Groups like the Heaven’s Gate cult can be seen as practicing self-sacrifice to bring about a specific end. It is simultaneously a form of protest and channeling their lives into a greater goal. Buddhists used to do this all the time.

Some notes on sacrifice: There are those who believe that sacrifice, especially willing human sacrifice, has the power to change the world. Not the extreme cults either, but Judeo-Christianity believes this. Let’s look at the biggest sacrifice in history, Jesus’ crucifixion. According to the belief of the followers of Christ, his sacrifice saved the entire world, past, present and future from the fires of Hell so long as they believe that he sacrificed himself for their sins. And that is a hugely powerful magickal act.

Scapegoating has been known for centuries by many peoples. It is basically a cleansing ritual in which the purest animal in the village is ritually “loaded down” with all the evilness, pettiness and sins of the people of the village, then it’s sacrificed to the Gods. That takes all the sins of that village to the Gods and the people are clean again. This allows for closure on many things that could fester and get worse and worse over time for those people.

And if you look at it, the sacrifice of Jesus was just another form of scapegoating. Ritually cleansing the whole planet so long as they buy into the ritual in the first place.

Now, all that said, I know of very few groups who still practice Blood or Animal sacrifice and I know of no groups who actively practice Human sacrifice. But this is not to say that those who do are wrong. It is saying that their practices are not my practices and may not be YOUR practices. It makes them different, not wrong.

If you think of it, there are mainstream practices of Animal sacrifice all the time. Kosher law (in which the blood is removed and the rabbi checks to make sure the animal is clean) is a sacrifice of a kind, and saying prayers before dining CERTAINLY is an animal sacrifice. In case you don’t get it, the animal is killed and made into hamburger patties. Then you bless and thank the animal for sharing its body with you. That is one definition of a sacrifice, since the food is now blessed and sacred. This happens every day. So don’t jump to conclusions too quickly about the need or evils of sacrifice. And this holds true for any meal you eat, it was a living thing that has given its life for you and you have thanked it, therefore it is now a sacrifice.

I mean, if you base an entire religion around a human sacrifice, it can’t be THAT bad, can it?

Let me add a personal observation here.  Sacrifice is not bad.  It simply is.  Animal sacrifice may not have any place in Wiccan practices, but that does not mean it is not a valid form of worship for others.  Human sacrifice isn’t bad either, so long as it is not done casually and care is taken for the person to be sacrificed, but unfortunately most law enforcement agencies aren’t going to see it that way.  Thankfully this is not that big of a problem, no matter what the fanatics try to convince you of otherwise.

Update March 3, 2006

I was contacted by a lady who read this article and had some things to add to it.  I’ll share her comments with you here:

By Cassi Dixon

Thoughts on Sacrifice, in specific animal sacrifice:

Animal sacrifice in which the animal is eaten afterwards also serves the purpose of connecting the participants with the cycle of life/death.  In industrial society most people get their meat prepackaged and are very removed from the actual process of animal husbandry and slaughter.  There’s little relationship between the cellophane wrapped bundles in the store and the animal that gave up its life to bring you dinner.  Most people have no idea of their place in the lifecycle because they have no relationship to their food.

You cannot have an functional acknowledgment of the cyclic nature of life without seeing yourself in that lifecycle.  Animal sacrifice serves to drive home “something dies, you eat – you die, something else eats”.  This of course has even broader implications for most practitioners of Pagan religions because our gods are not only gods of life, but gods of death as well.  In many cases our gods have even died in order to keep the lifecycle moving.  Bringing our awareness to our place in the divine order brings us into unity with the Divine itself.  Sacrifice not only makes the food sacred and consecrated to the Gods, it makes the person who consumes the food sacred as well.

You can do this of course with plant products, but most people are not capable of easily making the leap that plants are also alive until we kill them for food.  Many sacred stories and practices were created in the past to try to illustrate the point to us, the God of the grain dies at harvest time and is consumed by the followers in a ritual manner, but even in modern day Paganism such practices and stories are rarely observed.

Sounds good to me.  I wish I had thought of this.