ANIMAL WORSHIP).
The common meal is not a primitive rite of adoption. The custom of eating the body of the victim does not necessarily spring from any idea of communion with the god; it may also arise from a desire to incorporate the sanctity which has been imparted to it—an idea on a level with many other food customs (see COUVADE), and based on the idea that eating anything causes its qualities to pass into the eater. Where the victim is an animal specially associated with a god (the most conspicuous case is perhaps that of the corn spirit), it may be granted that the god is eaten; but pre cisely in these cases there is no custom of giving a portion of the victim to the god.
The object of certain sacrifices is to provide a tutelary deity of a house, town or frontier. (a) In many countries, those who die a violent death are held to haunt the place where they met their fate ; consequently, when a town is built living men are interred beneath the ramparts and the pillars of the gates. (b) In parts of North America the nagual or manitu animal, of which the Indian dreams during the initi ation fast and which is to be his tutelary spirit, is killed with certain rites. (c) Human representatives of the corn or vegeta tion spirits are killed ; in these, as in other cases of the sacrifice of the man-god, the killing of the old god is at the same time the making of a new god. (d) Suicide is treated as a means of rais ing a human being to the rank of a god. (e) Gods may be sacri ficed (in theriomorphic form) to themselves as a means of renew ing the life of the god. (f) The method of creating a fetish (see FETISHISM) on the Congo resembles deificatory sacrifice: but here there is no actual slaughter of a human being; magical means are alone relied upon.
Sacrifices tend to be interpreted as gifts to the god. Man seeks to influence his fellow men in vari ous ways, and it is quite natural to find the same ideas in the sphere of religion. Food is often given to a god because he is be lieved to take pleasure in eating; the germ of this idea may have been to nourish the divine life. With the spiritualization of the
god, comes a refinement of the tastes attributed to him, and the finer parts of the sacrifice, finally it may be only its savour, are alone regarded as acceptable offerings. Just as attendants are provided for the dead, so the god receives sacrifices intended to put slaves at his disposal. The gift theory of sacrifice is closely associated with that of the god as the ruler or king to whom man brings a tribute, just as he had to appear before his earthly king bearing gifts in his hands. The honorific sacrifice is essentially a propitiation but must be distinguished from the piaculum (see (below).
Sacrifices, especially of human beings, are offered immediately after a death or at a longer interval. Their object may be (a) to provide a guide to the other world; (b) to provide the dead with servants or a retinue suitable to his rank; (c) to send messengers to keep the dead informed of the things of this world; (d) to strengthen the dead by the blood or life of a living being, in the same way that food is offered to them or blood rituals enjoined on mourners.
Whereas the god receives a gift in the honorific sacrifice, he demands a life in the piacular. The es sential feature of the piaculum is that it is an expiation for wrong-doing, and the victim is often human.
If tradition is any guide, human sacrifice seems in many important areas to be of secondary character; in spite of the great development of the rite among the Aztecs, tradition says that it was unknown till 200 years before the con quest; in Polynesia human sacrifices seem to be comparatively modern ; and in India they appear to have been rare among the Vedic peoples. On the whole, human sacrifice is far commoner among the semi-civilized and barbarous races than in still lower stages of culture. In Australia, however, where sacrifice of the ordinary type is unknown, the ritual killing of a child is prac tised in connection with the initiation of a magician.