Part 7 (2/2)
Clearly the wrong done could only be expiated by an equivalent sacrifice of some kind on the part of the man, or the tribe--that is by the offering to the totem-animal or to the corn-spirit of some victim whom these nature powers in their turn could feed upon and a.s.similate. In this way the nature-powers would be appeased, the sense of unity would be restored, and the first At-one-ment effected.
It is hardly necessary to recite in any detail the cruel and hideous sacrifices which have been perpetrated in this sense all over the world, sometimes in appeas.e.m.e.nt of a wrong committed or supposed to have been committed by the tribe or some member of it, sometimes in placation or for the averting of death, or defeat, or plague, sometimes merely in fulfilment of some long-standing custom of forgotten origin--the flayings and floggings and burnings and crucifixions of victims without end, carried out in all deliberation and solemnity of established ritual. I have mentioned some cases connected with the sowing of the corn. The Bible is full of such things, from the intended sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham, to the actual crucifixion of Jesus by the Jews. The first-born sons were claimed by a G.o.d who called himself ”jealous” and were only to be redeemed by a subst.i.tute. (1) Of the Canaanites it was said that ”even their daughters they have BURNT in the fire to their G.o.ds”; (2) and of the King of Moab, that when he saw his army in danger of defeat, ”he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead and offered him for a burnt-offering on the wall!”
(3) Dr. Frazer (4) mentions the similar case of the Carthaginians (about B.C. 300) sacrificing two hundred children of good family as a propitiation to Baal and to save their beloved city from the a.s.saults of the Sicilian tyrant Agathocles. And even so we hear that on that occasion three hundred more young folk VOLUNTEERED to die for the fatherland.
(1) Exodus x.x.xiv. 20.
(2) Deut. xii. 31.
(3) 2 Kings iii. 27.
(4) The Golden Bough, vol. ”The Dying G.o.d,” p. 167.
The awful sacrifices made by the Aztecs in Mexico to their G.o.ds Huitzilopochtli, Texcatlipoca, and others are described in much detail by Sahagun, the Spanish missionary of the sixteenth century. The victims were mostly prisoners of war or young children; they were numbered by thousands. In one case Sahagun describes the huge Idol or figure of the G.o.d as largely plated with gold and holding his hands palm upward and in a downward sloping position over a cauldron or furnace placed below. The children, who had previously been borne in triumphal state on litters over the crowd and decorated with every ornamental device of feathers and flowers and wings, were placed one by one on the vast hands and ROLLED DOWN into the flames--as if the G.o.d were himself offering them.
(1) As the procession approached the temple, the members of it wept and danced and sang, and here again the abundance of tears was taken for a good augury of rain. (2)
(1) It is curious to find that exactly the same story (of the sloping hands and the children rolled down into the flames) is related concerning the above-mentioned Baal image at Carthage (see Diodorus Siculus, xx. 14; also Baring Gould's Religious Belief, vol. i, p. 375).
(2) ”A los ninos que mataban, componianlos en muchos atavios para llevarlos al sacrificio, y llevabos en unas literas sobre los hombros, estas literas iban adornadas con plumages y con flores: iban tanendo, cantando y bailando delante de ellos... Cuando Ileviban los ninos a matar, si llevaban y echaban muchos lagrimas, alegrabansi los que los llevaban porque tomaban p.r.o.nostico de que habian de tener muchas aguas en aquel ano.” Sahagun, Historia Nueva Espana, Bk. II, ch. i.
Bernal Diaz describes how he saw one of these monstrous figures--that of Huitzilopochtli, the G.o.d of war, all inlaid with gold and precious stones; and beside it were ”braziers, wherein burned the hearts of three Indians, torn from their bodies that very day, and the smoke of them and the savor of incense were the sacrifice.”
Sahagun again (in Book II, ch. 5) gives a long account of the sacrifice of a perfect youth at Easter-time--which date Sabagun connects with the Christian festival of the Resurrection. For a whole year the youth had been held in honor and adored by the people as the very image of the G.o.d (Tetzcatlipoca) to whom he was to be sacrificed. Every luxury and fulfilment of his last wish (including such four courtesans as he desired) had been granted him. At the last and on the fatal day, leaving his companions and his wors.h.i.+pers behind, be slowly ascended the Temple staircase; stripping on each step the ornaments from his body; and breaking and casting away his flutes and other musical instruments; till, reaching the summit, he was stretched, curved on his back, and belly upwards, over the altar stone, while the priest with obsidian knife cut his breast open and, s.n.a.t.c.hing the heart out, held it up, yet beating, as an offering to the Sun. In the meantime, and while the heart still lived, his successor for the next year was chosen.
In Book II, ch. 7 of the same work Sahagun describes the similar offering of a woman to a G.o.ddess. In both cases (he explains) of young man or young woman, the victims were richly adorned in the guise of the G.o.d or G.o.ddess to whom they were offered, and at the same time great largesse of food was distributed to all who needed. (Here we see the connection in the general mind between the gift of food (by the G.o.ds) and the sacrifice of precious blood (by the people).) More than once Sahagun mentions that the victims in these Mexican ceremonials not infrequently offered THEMSELVES as a voluntary sacrifice; and Prescott says (1) that the offering of one's life to the G.o.ds was ”sometimes voluntarily embraced, as a most glorious death opening a sure pa.s.sage into Paradise.”
(1) Conquest of Mexico, Bk. I, ch. 3.
Dr. Frazer describes (1) the far-back Babylonian festival of the Sacaea in which ”a prisoner, condemned to death, was dressed in the king's robes, seated on the king's throne, allowed to issue whatever commands he pleased, to eat, drink and enjoy himself, and even to lie with the king's concubines.” But at the end of the five days he was stripped of his royal robes, scourged, and hanged or impaled. It is certainly astonis.h.i.+ng to find customs so similar prevailing among peoples so far removed in s.p.a.ce and time as the Aztecs of the sixteenth century A.D.
and the Babylonians perhaps of the sixteenth century B.C. But we know that this subject of the yearly sacrifice of a victim attired as a king or G.o.d is one that Dr. Frazer has especially made his own, and for further information on it his cla.s.sic work should be consulted.
(1) Golden Bough, ”The Dying G.o.d,” p. 114. (See also S. Reinach, Cults, Myths and Religion, p. 94) on the martyrdom of St. Dasius.
Andrew Lang also, with regard to the Aztecs, quotes largely from Sahagun, and summarizes his conclusions in the following pa.s.sage: ”The general theory of wors.h.i.+p was the adoration of a deity, first by innumerable human sacrifices, next by the special sacrifice of a MAN for the male G.o.ds, of a WOMAN for each G.o.ddess. (1) The latter victims were regarded as the living images or incarnations of the divinities in, each case; for no system of wors.h.i.+p carried farther the identification of the G.o.d with the sacrifice (? victim), and of both with the officiating pri connection was emphasized by the priests wearing the newly-flayed skins of the victims--just as in Greece, Egypt and a.s.syria, the fawn-skin or bull-hide or goat-skin or fish-skin of the victims is worn by the celebrants. Finally, an image of the G.o.d was made out of paste, and this was divided into morsels and eaten in a hideous sacrament by those who communicated.” (2)
(1) Compare the festival of Thargelia at Athens, originally connected with the ripening of the crops. A procession was formed and the first fruits of the year offered to Apollo, Artemis and the Horae.
It was an expiatory feast, to purify the State from all guilt and avert the wrath of the G.o.d (the Sun). A man and a woman, as representing the male and female population, were led about with a garland of figs (fertility) round their necks, to the sound of flutes and singing. They were then scourged, sacrificed, and their bodies burned by the seash.o.r.e.
(Nettles.h.i.+p and Sandys.)
(2) A Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. ii, p. 97.
Revolting as this whole picture is, it represents as we know a mere thumbnail sketch of the awful practices of human sacrifice all over the world. We hold up our hands in horror at the thought of Huitzilopochtli dropping children from his fingers into the flames, but we have to remember that our own most Christian Saint Augustine was content to describe unbaptized infants as crawling for ever about the floor of h.e.l.l! What sort of G.o.d, we may ask, did Augustine wors.h.i.+p? The Being who could condemn children to such a fate was certainly no better than the Mexican Idol.
And yet Augustine was a great and n.o.ble man, with some by no means unworthy conceptions of the greatness of his G.o.d. In the same way the Aztecs were in many respects a refined and artistic people, and their religion was not all superst.i.tion and bloodshed. Prescott says of them (1) that they believed in a supreme Creator and Lord ”omnipresent, knowing all thoughts, giving all gifts, without whom Man is as nothing--invisible, incorporeal, one G.o.d, of perfect perfection and purity, under whose wings we find repose and a sure defence.” How can we reconcile St. Augustine with his own devilish creed, or the religious belief of the Aztecs with their unspeakable cruelties? Perhaps we can only reconcile them by remembering out of what deeps of barbarism and what nightmares of haunting Fear, man has slowly emerged--and is even now only slowly emerging; by remembering also that the ancient ceremonies and rituals of Magic and Fear remained on and were cultivated by the mult.i.tude in each nation long after the bolder and n.o.bler spirits had attained to breathe a purer air; by remembering that even to the present day in each individual the Old and the New are for a long period thus intricately intertangled. It is hard to believe that the practice of human and animal sacrifice (with whatever revolting details) should have been cultivated by nine-tenths of the human race over the globe out of sheer perversity and without some reason which at any rate to the perpetrators themselves appeared commanding and convincing. To-day (1918) we are witnessing in the Great European War a carnival of human slaughter which in magnitude and barbarity eclipses in one stroke all the acc.u.mulated ceremonial sacrifices of historical ages; and when we ask the why and wherefore of this horrid spectacle we are told, apparently in all sincerity, and by both the parties engaged, of the n.o.ble objects and commanding moralities which inspire and compel it. We can hardly, in this last case, disbelieve altogether in the genuineness of the plea, so why should we do so in the former case? In both cases we perceive that underneath the surface pretexts and moralities Fear is and was the great urging and commanding force.
<script>