Sacrifices?

Rasp

Senior Editor
[From: The Odinist, no. 26 (1977)]


SACRIFICES?


Most peoples have in the early stages of their cultural development sacrificed to appease the gods of Nature upon whose powers they were so dependent and with whom they so ardently tried to live in harmony.

Our present educators and historians make a big to-do about sacrifices, animal as well as human, being committed by our Scandinavian ancestors as late as during the Viking centuries. No one ever seems to explain what it really was; all the so-called learned brains always skip the truth.

Animal sacrifices were made at all big occasions when our pagan forefathers came together, such as the yearly Folk-Thing, because worship of the gods always included a feast. In order to feed a thousand people, or more, animals had to be slaughtered, and as the meal was part of the worship, these animals were dedicated to the gods in whose name the feast was held. -- We should like to see any church dinner served without animals being slaughtered, and at most such occasions Grace is being said before the meal which, in fact, is the same as our ancestors' pagan dedication.

When people were gathered at the 'Thing' part of the proceedings included a court of law. Judicial executions in the old times were not only a secular, but also a religious matter. A "Vargar in Vëum" was a destroyer of the divine, literally a "Strangler of the Holy," and to our early forefathers Nature was divine and as man was part of Nature his person and honour were holy and inviolate. Anyone who broke that law were treated according to common practice.

Adulterers were usually strangled; -- for more severe crimes, the criminal received other kinds of death penalties; some were strung up in trees for all to see what it meant to be a murderer or such; war criminals and traitors (oathbreakers) were spread eagled, the worst of dishonours.

Often, at the great Folk-Things, dozens of criminals were tried, sentenced and if committed to death, the penalty was carried out right then and there. If that is human sacrifices, so it be. In Denmark they dumped the bodies in the swamps, as probably was the case with the Toland man, because their kind was not deemed worthy of a decent burial or cremation. The Celts collected their criminals every year, incarcerated them in-wooden or wicker cages and burned them as a deterrent to crime. There was no softness or gentleness about the treatment of criminals or other undesirables; it was not a sentimental age.

The self-righteous Christians, keep teaching the children that our pagan ancestors were such malicious, savage brutes; they forget to mention that in Luke 19.27 Jesus is quoted as saying "But those mine enemies which would not that I should reign over them bring hither and slay them before me." This is what Christians mean by loving their enemies, and these people to be slain were only persons who did not want to accept the reign of their God of Love, they had committed no crime!

[E.S.]
 
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