Animal Sacrifice and Replacements.

So once again there is a hubub over blood/animal offerings, substitutions, and all such things. On one extreme you have people who say that such practices are either codes, or symbolic and can therefore be replaced with ease. Just dab a little colored water for blood and the spirits can’t tell the difference. On the other extreme you have people who feel that unless you are sacrificing animals you are basically a dilettante and pretender.  A student newish to magic asked me what my position was, so even though I think I have written about this in the past, I will do so again. As ever, I am between these extremes.

I have attended blood sacrifices. The largest I ever attended was in Dakshin Kali with a line of dozens of people bringing animals in what looked like a queue for a roller coaster. Far from macabre it was beautiful. I attended this several times, and if you eat meat, I really don’t see how you can be pissed. There are also a lot of sacrifices where the meat is not consumed by people, which maybe we can be offended at after we stop being 1000X more wasteful than that in our common western life.

I nearly wrote “ordinary” instead of common in the last sentence, but the thing to remember is that in traditional worship the world over animal sacrifice is ordinary. It is not a dark macabre thing or some blasphemous diabolism. It is an offering of something that might otherwise be eaten for dinner – mostly performed by people who do in fact get their meat that way.

I don’t do it regularly in my practice though because that is not how I normally get meat for dinner.

So what do I do?

Well for some rituals I use organs purchased from a butcher. The Hekate Course material introduces a group of spirits that will accept chicken hearts and chicken livers arranged in a certain way as an offering. This satisfies those spirits, but it would not satisfy all spirits.

Other rituals use substitutions like Red Tormas. In the picture here you can see a Ngakpa carrying what looks like a severed head, with three eyes. It’s a cake. This substitution goes back to the 8th century when Padmasambhava and other Mahasiddhas subdued different spirits and bound them as Dharma Protectors. These protectors formerly received blood offerings, but since Buddhists don’t sacrifice animals an arrangement had to be made.

So, are these substitutions fooling the spirits as some claim? No. Its a negotiation and a pact. Padmasambhava negotiated what could be accepted and other practitioners do the same today. YOU can do the same today – but there is a catch…. Spirits can say no. In which case you either have to force the issue or walk away. Most practitioners would do better to do the latter. If the spirits are always saying “yes” to whatever you suggest, perhaps you are not really communicating with them at all.

There are substitutions and adaptations for almost any materia, tool, or element in magic – but each substitution changes the nature of the work. Nothing remains the same. That is the beautiful thing about it.