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4.12

Common component- sacred rituals

To be human and to be alive is cause for celebration. While our lives vary from periods of regret and hurt, we also experience periods of happiness and joy.

To be human is to participate at some point in celebration with others. In its simplest form it might be a celebration at the birth of a new family member. A celebration of one's birthday is often an occasion to join with others. The celebration of a marriage, or the funeral celebration of someone who has passed.

Physical celebration

Throughout human civilization, to celebrate is to celebrate physically, in one place at one time.

In ancient cultures, this celebration might have included dance and ceremony at some sacred landmark or temple. For two millennia, worship is more likely to have occurred in a church, temple or mosque.

In recent years, the advent of the nightclub and audio visual music systems has opened up a whole new form of celebration, the celebration of the dance.

To celebrate is to be human. It is good to rejoice. It is good to grieve. To celebrate these emotions together is the essence of what it is to be part of a human community.

Sacred ritual

Religions have always provided formal sacred rituals and practices around the major life events of human community. All religions have rituals for the welcoming of new children into the religion. All religions have rituals for marriage and union. All religions have rituals for "coming of age/adulthood". All religions have rituals for dying, death and funeral rites.

Bloody sacrifice and sacred ritual

In and around major life events are also the life events of new seasons, new crops, battles, wars, and infighting. Rituals also exist for these important events. And with these events have always been associated from the earliest times the bloody sacrifice of animals or humans.

Blood the food of the gods

There is overwhelming evidence that the practice of ritual sacrifice of both humans and animals has been going on in religious practice for over 10,000 years of human culture. As frightening as it might seem, the practice is still widespread. Even the harmless appearing ceremony of bread and wine in christian ceremonies is a bloody sacrifice ritual (although no body is actually killed in the ritual- the wine "becomes" blood of the sacrificial lamb-Jesus Christ).

Blood and blood sacrifice it seems has been the food of the gods since the earliest human rituals. The most bloody were probably the Aztecs and Incas at the time Mexico City just on the time of the Spanish conquest. The Sacrificial temples (now buried deep under the centre of Mexico City) were flowing in rivers of blood from the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocents.

The Sumerians and Akkadians were also known for human sacrifice to appease the gods. In contrast, Judaism and Islam replace the human sacrifice with animal sacrifice as re-enacted through the ceremony of Abraham.

Bread and wine rituals

One of the key distinctions of Asia-Minor religions from around 4,000 BCE was the replacement of public human sacrifices with alternate imagery and ritual- the bread and wine ceremony for example.

The bread and wine ceremony represents not only a ceremony of celebration, but fundamentally is one of sacrifice and cannibalism as part of a ritual feast. Today, the origin and fundamental purpose of such ceremonies is lost on most followers.

The most notable religions with bread and wine rituals are:

Saviour God	Culture of origin	1st known period of worship
Tammuz	Syria/Babylon	4,000 BCE
Horus	Egypt	2,000 BCE
Mithra	Persia	1,000 BCE
Dionysis	Persia	1,000 BCE
Baccus	Persia	1,000 BCE
Christos	Hellenic-Phoenecians	100 BCE
Messiah	Judea	60BCE
Son of Man	Qumran -Esscenes	0BCE
Jesus	Judea/Rome	70CE

Human sacrifice goes underground

While the bread and wine ceremony has replaced public rituals of sacrifice, bloody sacrifice remains associated with certain fanatical branches of major religions and black-magic satanic cults.

In countries such as the United States, UK, Australia individuals and groups mindlessly follow ancient practices of human sacrifice in some deluded belief that it brings power from their gods. In countries such as Haiti and many Caribbean/African countries, bloody sacrifice remains a central ritual.

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