Sacrifice

Got quite a bit of feedback regarding my story post about how a date went wrong with a discussion of religion. I thought it would be best to discuss the matter further.

When we look at religious and cultural practices among people it's important to look at them in a historical perspective. Many of us don't think to much about human evolution much less the evolution of cultures and religion. We live in a fantasy world where early humans had a life akin to the Flintstones. Many have been thoroughly confused by Adam and Eve stories as to how people started out. And I don't mean to offend anyone with that statement, it's just that Genesis is, well, fiction. Just as many cultural "how life began" stories are either fictional or allegorical including Ifa's.

The fact of the matter is that humans started out in particularly brutal conditions. Naked, hot (or cold depending), and competing with a lot of other animals for food and struggling for survival against predators, insects and plain bad luck from eating the wrong plant. Indeed the fact of the matter is that for most of humanities existence we have been quite comfortable killing things. Indeed every carnivore and omnivore on the planet is comfortable taking a life to sustain itself. There is absolutely nothing abnormal or immoral with the taking of life in order to survive. Indeed among certain species, if they do not kill to eat, they cannot survive. For example vitamin B12 is contained in meat. Cats cannot synthesize B12 and therefore must eat meat in order to get that vitamin. Now a days we buy Tender Vittles and whatnot that has B12 in it and so our pets do not need to kill to get that particular vitamin. But that is artificial and yes, unnatural.

In human terms, we are separated from our natural need to kill that which we need to survive, because we have created an artificial food chain. We in essence outsource our hunting and killing to specialized professionals, who do our killing for us and who then offer this material for sale on various forms. An entirely artificial and unnatural state. Most of us who live in "developed" countries have absolutely no clue on how these things get to us and act accordingly. The "developed" countries, tend to waste more food than people in many less "developed" countries even consume. And so we have a situation where people are entirely separated from the process of life and therefore do not appreciate that which they have. If we look at the practice of animal sacrifice then, particularly in Ifa and it's related offshoots, we recognize that it is not about death and killing but about a recognition and appreciation of life.

One of my early experiences in grade school was studying Native Americans. One of the stories we were told was how when a hunter killed an animal, he would thank the spirit of the animal for allowing it's body to be given. It took me a long time to understand the full meaning of that but I do now. The Native American like the African saw that all things have a spirit, that spirit exists for some purpose and inhabits a particular physical form in which that particular purpose is carried out. Furthermore, it was understood that the only way life carries on is with the death of something else. Indeed life and death are partners in the cycle of the universe.

This is a totally logical position to have. If we look at how our own bodies work we would see this play out. We ingest food, be it meat or vegetable. the acids in our stomachs break down the food to smaller parts. The food enters our small intestines, where enzymes further break down these foods to get our amino acids, carbohydrates, etc. into a form that we can transport into our cells. These nutrients, once in our cells allow our bodies to maintain, grow and repair. Even in this process, we produce "waste" which we excrete in various forms and are picked up by plants, insects, bacteria, etc. which use these items for their own maintenance, growth and repair. So our own bodies confirms that death and life are all a part of one big cycle. If one needs any more proof of this, then think, imagine if every human being who ever lived was still alive. How many people would there be on Earth? And would we exist as a species? I don't have to answer that question because you know the answer.

And so one purpose of animal sacrifice within Ifa is the recognition by adherents of the significance of death and life. But there is more to it than that.

Recall in the beginning of this essay, I discussed the fact that humans have been intimate with the process of how they procured food. We also must recognize that for most of human history (and for much of Africa's history) the material wealth of a person was measured in livestock of some kind. This was probably due to the fact that if one had livestock, one had food. And since there wasn't fiat currency, if you needed to pay for someone's services, such as a priest, guess how that person was going to be paid? Sometimes animal sacrifice merely meant taking a goat or whatever and placing them at some holy site where a priest would later collect the sacrifice. I recall as a child, in church hearing "missionary stories" about how so and so missionary used the "Santa Clause" treatment to some unwitting native. The missionary would prove to their next victim that their idol wasn't a real god by showing the "idol worshipper" that the sacrifice or offering they gave never went anywhere. . The idol worshipper of course converted after such a demonstration.

What is lost particularly among persons with a novice level of understanding, is that many times the purpose of the sacrifice/offering is not so much that Ogun for example or the representative statuette, needs the food/money/wine/whatever. It is that the offerer needs to understand that nothing just "shows up" in life. The Yoruba visit a priest before just about everything. Planing a business? See a priest. Planning a family? See the priest. Taking a trip? You get the point. Success is facilitated by doing something. Much like that native American hunter who thanks the spirit of the deceased animal the offerer is made to understand that something must be sacrificed in order for one to get what one wants/needs. In other words, much of what happens in Ifa ceremonies are psychological in nature. The Ifa priest is in some ways a shrink. This is not an unfamiliar idea for many of us. Look at anyone who is successful in what he or she is doing and they will all tell you that they had to sacrifice things to get where they are. Matter of fact they had to sacrifice different things at different stages to get where they are.

So we see the psychology and history behind animal sacrifice as it pertains to the Yoruba (and others). It is not the bloodlusty, put a curse on somebody BS that has been perpetrated by movies people seeking to fatten their wallets.