Willing to Make Sacrifices
written by Matthew Gorman - Vol 3 Issue 34

One of the most decidedly chilling notions to haunt the annals of the human psyche is that of human sacrifice. Throughout the ages, since ancient times, literally hundreds of cultures across the globe have participated in this bloodiest of rites. But what would be tantamount to murder in most civilized countries today was once considered a normal and often necessary way of life for the primitive cultures of the world. And still, despite the legal stringencies against ritual homicide, this practice continues today albeit in a far more clandestine light. So let us delve into both the past and present day as we explore those cultures and individuals who have found themselves willing to make sacrifices.

Ritual human sacrifice was conducted for a wide array of reasons in ancient cultures. Often it was slaves and servants, yet even the wives of a venerated chief or king have been known to be killed and buried with their husbands after death. This was done by many cultures including the Mongols, the Scythians and the Mesoamericans. It is historically referred to as a “retainer sacrifice,” as the expired leader was essentially retaining everything that he had possessed in life. The Vikings would murder slave girls to become the wives of their fallen heroes in Valhalla, or the afterlife. This ritual murder was conducted by an old woman called the “Angel of Death,” who would stab the young girls to death. They were subsequently placed in the funeral barge with the Viking’s corpse. Then, in traditional fashion, the barge was set alight with flaming arrows after being pushed out to sea.

Sometimes sacrifices were conducted for divinatory purposes. For example, the ancient Celts would stab a victim and determine the future from that person’s death spasms. Often human entrails were inspected as well, in a divinatory process known as anthropomancy. The early Egyptians engaged in this practice, typically employing children as their sacrificial victims. The Roman Emperor and magician Julian the Apostate was also quite fond of this method of divination, killing many children during his reign for this very purpose.

Of course, the most common motive for human sacrifice in the ancient world was to appease or to placate the gods. We’re all familiar, of course, with the almost pop-cultural imagery of South Sea Island natives tossing a virgin into a volcano in their efforts to quiet the angry volcano god. Often, the name Pele is bandied about as well. The truth is, while the early inhabitants of Hawaii did conduct human sacrifices to win the favor of their war god, Ku, it is doubtful that these ancient Polynesians actually threw anyone, let alone virgins, into any volcanos. True, the goddess (not god) Pele is said to live in the volcano Kilauea on the big island of Hawaii, and while people do throw offerings in to her (perhaps the origins of the myth), she is considered a giver of life and would never demand nor condone a human sacrifice. Interestingly enough, however, there are some reports of the Mesoamerican peoples (the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas) engaging in this volcanic method of ritual execution.

Indeed, the Mesoamericans were some of the most prolific of the primitive cultures in terms of the sheer volume of human sacrifices that were carried out by them. And while this fact was once believed by historians to be hyperbolic propaganda used by the invading conquistadors to mitigate the Spaniards’ own violence by comparison, excavations of ancient Aztec and Mayan structures show us today that the Spaniards, as horrible as they were, were telling the truth. Furthermore, during the course of the Spanish conquest, thousands of captured conquistadors, themselves, became sacrificial victims to the Aztec sun god, Huitzilopochtli.

The ancient Aztecs were well deserved of their fearsome reputation, and the Incas were well known for their human sacrificial rites as well. The Mayans, however, are generally overlooked as a more docile peoples when the subject of human sacrifice is broached. Nothing could be further from the truth. The majority of Mayan sacrifices were made to their rain god, Chac, in hopes that he would irrigate their lands to grow plentiful crops. Victims were painted blue to honor Chac and killed atop the Mayan pyramids or in temple courtyards in a very public display. If a great warrior was sacrificed the assemblage would feast upon his flesh. Most of the victims, however, were prisoners, slaves and children. Children, often purchased exclusively for sacrifice, were considered to be the greatest sacrificial offering, so full of the promise of new life as they were. The skeletons of babies have even been found piled up inside of Mesoamerican ruins, leading researchers to speculate on their role as sacrificial victims as well. The Mayans even had a tradition of putting their losing sports teams (in a hand ball game called Ulama) to use as sacrificial victims. The Mayans had many ways of sacrificing people but the most common was with four priests holding down a victim while a fifth, known as the nacom, cut out the victim’s heart. It was considered by many an honor to be sacrificed to Chac, insuring one’s entry into the Mayan heaven.

Other cultures have existed as well in which the human sacrifices were not always unwitting victims or enemy combatants. Such may be the case, say many learned anthropologists, with the ancient Celtic “Lindow Man,” one of many “bog bodies” found in a peat bog near Manchester, England. These bodies were preserved from putrefaction by being submerged in the peat bog, and the Lindow man, himself, dates from around 2 B.C. to 119 A.D. He was found to have suffered three blows to the head, to have had his throat cut, as well as having been asphyxiated with a garrote twisted taut around his neck with an attached stick. This deliberate three-fold execution, as well as the remains of a ritual cake in the cadaver’s preserved stomach, have led researchers to speculate that this ancient pagan may have been an active participant in his own ritual execution. Of course, the Celts also have a documented history of willing sacrifices. “The Sacrifice of the Divine King”, was a ritual in which the people systematically slayed their kings or chieftains before they became old and weak in order to prevent the gods’ disfavor. This eventuality was accepted by all who rose to lead their people.

The Celtic druids, particularly those in the Gaulish regions, had another interesting sacrificial practice as well. Victims would be killed in a manner that was pleasing to the particular divinity with which the druids and their congregations sought to win favor. Thus, victims sacrificed to Esus, the harvest god, were hung. Victims of Taranis, god of thunder and lightning, were immolated inside of giant wicker figures. And the victims sacrificed to Teutates, a war god, were suffocated.

Today, human sacrifices are rarely carried out by the primitive peoples of tradition as they were in the past. Instead, they have become the province of isolated cults and individuals often operating within the quasi-Judeo-Christian framework of modern-day Satanism. Still, the instinct for murderous sacrifice remains, perhaps as an intrinsic element within the human psyche. Whatever the explanation, there’s a lot of it going around.

In 2001, the world was shocked by the cultish and brutal exploits of Daniel and Manuella Ruda, a German couple who murdered a co-worker of Daniel’s in cold blood. The two were heavily into Satanism, neo-Nazism and vampirism, with Manuella sleeping in a coffin and claiming attendance at “bite parties” where she drank the blood of willing donors. They murdered the co-worker, one Frank Haagen, by beating him repeatedly with a hammer, stabbing him 66 times and leaving the body with pentagram carved into the chest from which a scalpel protruded. The couple admitted in court to having drank Haagen’s blood and to having had sex in Manuella’s coffin after completing the murder. Daniel Ruda continues to assert that he was commanded by Satan to commit the crime.

But the cults carrying out modern sacrifices do not necessarily link themselves to the Christian concept of Satan. In the year 2000 in Argentina, a man by the name of Juan Carlos Vaz Purez was ritualistically murdered by his own daughters. Silvina, age 21, and Gabriela, age 29, stabbed their father over 100 times and consumed part of his face. The family and their friends belonged to a cult known as the “Alchemy Center For Transmutation,” a Gnostic cult professing the principles of alchemy.

In another instance in 1997 in Tura, Russia, a Russian Orthodox priest was murdered by Roman Krishnits, a member of a sect of Krishna Consciousness. He claims he was ordered to do so by his guru. He stabbed the priest in the heart, decapitated him and then engaged in a ritualistic procession with the severed head before placing it upon the church’s altar.

Dr. Hendrick Sholtz, a South African pathologist and expert on African ritual killings, claims that Europe is currently seeing an influx of Muti killings, a form of ritual murder derived from African tribal cults wherein body parts are taken for occult purposes and blood is often imbibed from the victims’ skulls. This seemed to be the case with “Adam,” the headless, legless and armless torso of a young boy who was found floating in the Thames river in London in 2001. Also, later found washed up on the south shore was a sheet with seven half-burned candles wrapped up inside. Written on the sheet was a name from the Yoruba tribe’s (of Nigeria) spiritual pantheon.

And while many of these modern groups or individuals are disparate and misguided, there are, according to experts such as Sholtz, those who are truly implementing these rituals in a quest for power. It is almost inconceivable how many reports of modern sacrifice exist today; one website this author examined had over 200 documented cases! In our modern age, the reported presence of these groups alone is unsettling enough. But this fact is made all the more disturbing when you take into account that anybody could be their next victim – even you...