Characteristics of the victim:

The relationship between potential and actual victim cannot be defined in terms of guilt and innocence.

There is nothing to "redeemed". The collective is trying to turn on the relatively indifferent victim, on the victim "fertile" that violence which threatens to strike its own members, those whom it wants to protect at all costs.

Turning to the victim, violence loses sight of the originally intended object. But it must not completely forget either the original object or the transition from this object to the actually hardened victim - otherwise the substitution will disappear altogether and the sacrifice will lose its effectiveness.

This very division of sacrifice into two large categories - human and animal - reproduces, in a strictly ritual sense, the logic of sacrifice: it is, in essence, based on a value judgment, on the idea that only victims, people are especially unsuitable for sacrifice, while others, animals, are very well-offered. This is wrong, says the author.

To deal with this institution, it is necessary to consider it as a whole, without separating human sacrifice from animal sacrifice.

The sacrifice must be similar to what it replaces. Hence the question: Who is offered as a human sacrifice?

First of all, it includes those who do not belong or barely belong to society: prisoners of war, slaves. In most primitive societies, children and uninitiated young people also do not belong to society - they have practically no rights and obligations. Thus, for the time being, we are dealing with external or marginal categories that cannot establish the same ties with society as those by which its members are connected to each other. The full integration of the future victim into the community is hindered either by her position as a foreigner or enemy, or by her age, or by her condition as a slave. To determine the difference between suitability and unfitness for sacrifice through the completeness of belonging to society.

Farmak - the one who was the victim:

In case of need, that is, when a city was struck or threatened to be struck by some kind of disaster: an epidemic, famine, foreign invasion, internal strife, the collective always had at its disposal farmak.

Greek word pharmakon denoted both poison and antidote, and disease and medicine, and finally, any substance capable of exerting a very favorable or very unfavorable effect, depending on the case, circumstances, dose;

On the one hand, he is considered a miserable, despicable and even guilty creature, he is subjected to all sorts of ridicule, insults and even violence; on the other hand, he is surrounded by almost religious reverence, he plays a central role in a kind of cult. He must draw to himself all pernicious violence in order to transform it with his death into beneficent violence, into peace and fertility.

The victim is a stranger, the victim is an animal!

The community appears as the opposite of the sacred. Therefore, those who form part of the community are, in principle, less suitable for the role of scapegoat.

This explains why ritual victims are chosen outside the community, among beings already saturated with the sacred, since the sacred is their usual environment, that is, among animals, foreigners and slaves.

Members of the community are spared not because the community deviates from the rule of exact imitation, but because it carefully observes it. (imitates the victim. They cannot choose the victim of a member of the community - because there is no imitation here, or the case is a ram - an imitation is what is needed) The cunning of the sacrifice is the cunning of the institution itself, and not the priests, However, one should not conclude from the foregoing that the sacrifice must be perceived as merely an outsider to the community. She is nothing but monstrous double. It absorbed all differences, and in particular the difference between inside and outside; it seems to circulate freely from the inside out and back. In order to fulfill the role of this extraordinary victim, the ritual victim, ideally, should belong to straightaway both the community and the sacred.

Victim preparation:

every being chosen for sacrifice will always be deprived to some extent of one or another of the contradictory qualities that are required of her; it will always be flawed - either from an external or internal point of view, never from both at once.

The task is always the same: to make the victim fully fit for sacrifice. Therefore, sacrificial preparation in a broad sense appears in two very dissimilar forms: the first tries to make the sacrifice more external, that is, to saturate with the sacred the victim, too included in the community; the second, on the contrary, tries to include the victim, who is too outside, more closely into the community.

(the king, who first bathes in the mud of incest and cruelty - is separated from the community and becomes sacred, but also belongs to the community and can be sacrificed or a stranger. Who is placed in the community, lives there, and then is sacrificed)

Livestock sacrifice is the second type of sacrificial preparation.

With animals - the same mechanism!

Conclusion: Sacrificial preparation, as we see, includes very different actions, sometimes diametrically opposed, but always ideally suited to the goal; She (preparation) tries to find or, if necessary, form a victim that is as similar as possible to the dual being that she saw in the original victim. Displace ritual sacrifice in relation to the original collective violence, thereby giving the funeral rite a cathartic force proportional to the needs of the society in which it should function.

2. Structure of sacrificial ceremonies:

It all starts with dancing or general fighting and chaos. Why they did it: they imitated a sacrificial crisis (the time when it is already impossible to endure. Everything is bad, grief, misfortune, a sacrifice is needed to settle everything)
All imaginary fights, which are usually located at the beginning of sacrificial ceremonies, all ritual dances, whose formal symmetry, constant being against each other, have a conflicting character from the very beginning, can be interpreted as an imitation of a sacrificial crisis.

During the reign of Emperor Tlakeelel in the Aztec Empire, Huitzilopochtli was proclaimed the supreme deity, revered as the god of the sun and the god of war. Rituals with human sacrifice became widespread, and numerous bloody rites claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Modern scholars know how some of these terrible rituals took place.

1. Aztec Wars to Capture Captives

The insatiable gods needed more and more sacrifices, and there were already not enough captives to sacrifice. Then the Aztecs agreed with the rulers of the neighboring city-state of Tlaxcala that they would wage wars among themselves only in order to capture captives. Now, when the battle was over, the soldiers of the defeated army understood what fate awaited them, but, nevertheless, meekly submitted to the enemy.

2. Voluntary self-sacrifice

The Aztecs considered it an honor to be sacrificed to the gods. Captives, criminals and debtors voluntarily offered their lives to the sacrificial altar. The captive Aztecs, whom the Spaniards once were about to release, were furious because they were deprived of the opportunity to die with dignity. Prostitutes also sacrificed themselves in honor of the Goddess of Love. During periods of long drought, many were forced to sell their children into slavery, receiving 400 corncobs for them. Children who did not work well, the owners had the right to resell. A twice resold slave could already be sent to the sacrificial altar.

3. Feast of Toxcatl

Toxcatl (from the word toxcahuia - drought) in honor of the god Tezcatlipoca was held in the fifth month of the Aztec calendar in honor of the harvest and was intended to ensure a good harvest in the future. A year before the holiday, a young handsome young man was chosen, usually from among the captured warriors, who was to be revered almost like a god for the whole next year. The chosen one lived in the palace, studied singing, playing the flute, and oratory. And on the day of the holiday, a ritual ceremony was performed at the top of the pyramid - on a long sacrificial stone, the priests opened the unfortunate chest, pulled out a beating heart, and threw the body down to the crowd, where he was beheaded. And the festival began, accompanied by eating the meat of the victim and dancing.

4. Sacrifices on the stone

Usually this ceremony was performed on a long sacrificial stone at the top of the pyramid. The victim was laid on a stone, the priest opened the chest and pulled out the still beating heart from it. Then the heart was torn into pieces and placed on the altar, later it was eaten by the priests. The body itself was thrown down from the pyramid, where it was beheaded, dismembered, and dishes were prepared from the meat for the upcoming feast.

5. Ritual Cannibalism

The meat of the victims was used to prepare various dishes for the priests and the nobility. Most often cooked meat baked with corn. The bones were used to make tools, weapons, and household utensils. The recipe for one of these dishes - pozole soup, which was prepared for the emperor from the victim's thigh, has survived to this day, only now pork is used for its preparation. Christians forced the Aztecs to replace human meat with pork.

6 Mass Sacrifice In Tenochtitlan

During the reign of the Aztecs in Mexico, about 250 thousand people were sacrificed every year. But the largest known sacrifice took place at the celebration of the completion of the Great Pyramid in Tenochtitlan. This sacred temple was built for many years, and in 1487 it was erected. For 4 days of celebration they killed incredibly big number people - 84 thousand.

7. The feast of flaying people

Tlacaxipeualiztli is one of the most feared Aztec festivals held in honor of the god Xipe Totec, “the lord without skin.” 40 days before the start of the holiday, several captured warriors and slaves were chosen, dressed in expensive clothes, and after that they lived in luxury, but only for 40 days. And on the first day of the holiday, which lasted 20 days, there was a mass sacrifice, during which they were skinned alive. The first day was completely occupied with the removal of the skin, and the second with the dismemberment of the bodies. The bodies were later eaten, and the priests wore the skin for 20 days, after which it was given to them for safekeeping, and the priests used it during their ritual dances.

8. Gladiator fights

During the feast of the Flaying, some victims were given a chance to escape. To do this, they had to defeat the famous Aztec warriors, armed to the teeth, with only a wooden sword in their hands, which, of course, did not give them the slightest chance of victory. The battles took place on the round sacrificial stone Temalacatl. But according to legend, one of the captives still managed to win this battle by killing 8 warriors. The Aztecs were so amazed at this outcome that the winner was offered command of the army as a reward. But he did not accept their offer, considering it offensive to himself, and preferred to die with dignity, being sacrificed to the gods.

9. The attitude of the Aztecs to the twins

The Aztecs were very ambivalent about twins. In some myths, they are presented as heroes or even deities, while in others they are presented as terrible killers. However, in real life the twins were unequivocally treated with disgust, considering them freaks. The patron god of the twins was the god Xolotl, the god of thunder and death, who, having a very unpleasant appearance, was himself one of the two twin gods. It was believed that the birth of twins was a life threat to their parents. Therefore, often only one of the twins was left alive, and the second was given as a sacrifice to the gods.

10. Child sacrifice

The Aztecs, for the sake of their religion, did not spare even children. In one of the temples in honor of the god Tlaloc, who controls the forces of rain, thunder and lightning, the most terrible ritual was performed during a drought. In order to beg God for rain, children were brought to the temple as victims and killed there. Many of the children did not want to go and wept loudly as they climbed the stairs to the top of the temple. Those who did not cry themselves were forced to do so, as their crying was a necessary part of the ritual. At the top of the pyramid, the children's heads were cut off, and their bodies were taken out of the city and stored in a special pit in the open. This was done so that blessed rain could also fall on them.

Throughout the history of mankind, people have had many different rituals. Some were associated with the holidays, others with the hopes of a good harvest, and still others with divination. But some peoples also had rather terrible rituals associated with attempts to summon demons and with human sacrifices.

1. Khonda Sacrificial Ritual

In the 1840s, Major McPherson lived among the Khond tribe in the Indian state of Orissa and studied their customs. Over the next few decades, he documented some Khond beliefs and practices that came as a shock to people all over the world. For example, these were the murders of newborn girls to prevent them from growing up and becoming witches. He also described a sacrificial ritual to the creator god called Bura Pennu, which was performed to ensure bountiful harvests and ward off evil forces from the villages. Victims were abducted from other villages, or they were "hereditary victims" born into families identified for this many years before.

The ritual itself lasted anywhere from three to five days and began with the shaving of the victim's head. Undertakings, the victim took a bath, put on new clothes and was tied to a post, covered with garlands of flowers, oil and red paint. Before the final killing, the victim was given milk, after which she was killed and cut into pieces, then buried in the fields that needed to be blessed.

2. The initiation rites of the Eleusinian mysteries

The Eleusinian mysteries, traditions that had existed for about 2000 years, disappeared around 500 AD. At the center of this cult was the myth of Persephone, who was kidnapped by Hades and forced to spend several months each year with Hades in the underworld. The Eleusinian mysteries were essentially a reflection of the return of Persephone from the underworld, by analogy with how plants bloom every spring. It was a symbol of the resurrection from the dead.

The only requirement to join the cult was knowledge of the Greek language and that the person had never committed murder. Even women and slaves could participate in the mysteries. Much of this knowledge has been lost, but today it is known that the initiation ceremony took place in September. When initiates reached the end of their long journey from Athens to Eleusis, they were given a hallucinogenic drink called kykeon made from barley and pennyroyal.

3. Aztec sacrifices in Tezcatlipoca

The Aztecs were widely known for their human sacrifice, but much of what happened during their sacred rites has been lost. Dominican priest Diego Duran described the vast number of Aztec rituals he studied. For example, there was a festival dedicated to Tezcatlipoca, who was considered not only a life-giving god, but also its destroyer. During this festival, a person was chosen as a sacrifice, who was sacrificed to a god. He was chosen from a group of warriors who were captured from neighboring states.

The main criteria were physical beauty, a slender physique and excellent teeth. The selection was very strict, they did not even allow any spot on the skin or a speech defect. This person began to prepare for the ritual during the year. 20 days before the ritual, he was given four wives with whom he could do whatever he wanted, and they also cut his hair like a warrior.

On the day of the sacrifice, this man was dressed in the traditional costume of Tezcatlipoca, led to the temple, after which four priests grabbed his arms and legs, and the fifth cut out his heart. The body was then thrown down the stairs of the temple.

Sir James George Fraser was a Scottish anthropologist who studied the evolution of magic in religion. In his work, he described a terrible dark mass that was held in the French province of Gascony. Only a few priests knew this ceremony, and only the pope himself could pardon the person who performed it.

Mass was held in a destroyed or abandoned church from 23-00 to midnight. Instead of wine, the priest and his assistants drank water from a well in which an unbaptized child had been drowned. When the priest made the sign of the cross, he turned it not on himself, but on the ground (this was done with his left foot).

According to Fraser, the further ritual cannot even be described, it is so terrible. The mass was done for a specific purpose - the person to whom it was addressed began to wither and eventually died. Doctors could not make a diagnosis and could not find a cure.

According to Maori beliefs, in order to make a new house safe for its inhabitants, a special ceremonial ritual must be performed. Since the trees that were cut down to build a house could anger the god of the forest, Tane-Mahut, people wanted to appease him. For example, sawdust was never blown away during construction, but was carefully brushed away, since human breath could defile the purity of trees. After the house was finished, a sacred prayer was said over it.

The first person to enter the house was a woman (in order to make the house safe for all other women), and then traditional foods were cooked inside the house and water was boiled to make sure it was safe to do so. Often, during the consecration of the house, a ritual of child sacrifice was performed (this was the child of the family that settled in the house). The victim was buried in one of the supporting pillars of the house.

6. Liturgy of Mithras

The Liturgy of Mithra is a cross between an incantation, a ritual, and a liturgy. This liturgy was found in the Great Magical Code of Paris, which was probably written in the 4th century. The ritual was performed for the purpose of elevating one person through the various levels of heaven to the various gods of the pantheon. (at the very end is Mitra).

The ritual was performed in several stages. After the introductory prayers and incantations, the spirit passed through various elements (including through thunder and lightning), and then appeared before the guards of the doors to heaven, fate, and before Mithras himself. The liturgy also contained instructions for preparing protective amulets.

7. Ritual of Bartsabel

According to the teachings of Aleister Crowley, Bartzabel is a demon who embodies the spirit of Mars. Crowley claimed to have summoned and talked to this demon in 1910. A supernatural being told him that major wars were coming soon, starting with Turkey and Germany, and that these wars would lead to the destruction of entire nations.

Crowley described in detail his ritual for summoning a demon: how to draw a pentagram, what names to write into it, what clothes the participants in the ritual should wear, what sigils to use, how to set up an altar, etc. The whole ritual was an incredibly long set of invocations and various actions.

8. Sacrificial heralds of Unyoro

James Frederick Cunningham was a British explorer who lived in Uganda during the British occupation and documented the local culture. In particular, he spoke about the ritual that was practiced after the death of the king. A hole was dug about 1.5 meters wide and 4 meters deep. The bodyguards of the dead king went to the village and grabbed the first nine men they met. These people were thrown into the pit alive, and then the king's body wrapped in bark and cowhide was placed in the pit. Then a cover made of leather was stretched over the pit and a temple was built on top.

9 Nazca Heads

In the traditional art of the Peruvian Nazca tribe, one thing was constantly encountered - severed heads. Archaeologists have established that only two South American cultures, the Nazca and the Paracas, performed rites and rituals with the heads of the victims. After the victim's head was cut off with an obsidian knife, pieces of bone were removed from it and the eyes and brain were removed. A rope was passed through the skull, with the help of which the head was attached to the cloak. The mouth was fastened, and the skull was filled with cloth.

10. Capacocha

Ritual capacocha - the sacrifice of children among the Incas. It was held only when there were any threats to the life of the community. For the ritual, a child was chosen, who was led in a solemn procession from the village to Cuzco, the heart of the Inca empire. There, on a special sacrificial platform, they killed him (sometimes they strangled him, and in other cases they broke his skull). It is worth noting that for a long time before the sacrifice, the child was stuffed with coca leaves and drunk with alcohol.

The good news, perhaps, is that most of these bloody rituals have sunk into oblivion, as well as 10 Ancient Civilizations That Mysteriously Disappeared .

Killed girls of Sevastopol: victims of a maniac or ritual murders?

The topic of ritual murders is raised in the media from time to time, however, not because of them, but rather in spite of them. Oddly enough, most people cannot believe that such atrocities are possible in our time, preferring to ignore the obvious facts.

Two young residents, Anastasia Balyabina and Tatyana Mizina, who live in Sevastopol, left home to carol and did not return. It happened on January 4, 2011. Their bodies were found three weeks later, on January 29, near the Mechta garage cooperative.

They were looked for quite carefully: “...According to the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Sevastopol, “473 policemen and 125 servicemen of the internal troops were involved in the event. 661 basements and 563 attics were checked, as well as 63 places of concentration of youth”…”. The garage area was searched earlier, and the fact that they were not found immediately suggests that they were killed earlier and then planted.

After the discovery of the bodies, on February 11, the killer was found, it turned out to be the caretaker of the kindergarten, who confessed to the crime. It would seem that the case can be closed. However, in my humble opinion, the watchman has nothing to do with it. In this case, there was an ordinary ritual murder by Orthodox Jews.

What evidence is there for this?

Naturally, I have no direct evidence, but if I worked in the Sevastopol police, it is quite possible that I would provide more concrete evidence. But we will operate with what is in open sources. To begin with, I will write that such a thing as ritual murders still exists today. I refer all doubters to the appropriate one:

"...Today dangerous to one's own life to be "know-nothing" in matters of politics! It is time not only for Russians, but also for all other indigenous peoples of Russia, and for the Jews themselves (including those who profess Judaism) to finally find out the whole truth about the blasphemous ritual of killing children of the white race in order to obtain Christian blood. It is time to debunk the mindless fanaticism of the Talmudists, who claim that the use of the blood of those killed in a painful way is a remedy for many diseases for Jews ... "

Wrote more about ritual murders Vladimir Dal- Author of the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language. His real profession is a doctor, and he worked as a medical examiner investigating ritual murders. In addition to the above book, he also wrote "Investigation about the killing of Christian babies by Jews and the use of their blood." Published by order of the Minister of the Interior, 1844. Where he, with his characteristic scrupulousness and methodicalness, analyzes all cases of Jewish ritual sacrifices, starting from the 14th century. If you are interested, you can download this book and read it yourself.

Ritual killings occur in our time. One of the sensational cases is the ritual murder of the Schussler children in Chicago in 1955. Or the ritual murder of children in Krasnoyarsk in 2005.

Taking as a hypothesis that there are ritual motives in the murder of girls, we begin to collect clues that deny the maniac and confirm the hypothesis of Jewish sacrifice.

1. Date of death. According to preliminary conclusions, it came about a week ago from the moment the corpses were discovered. That is, the corpses were found on January 29, which means that death occurred on January 20-23. January 20th is a full moon. Just on the full moon, many rites of black magic are performed.

2. Since the girls were abducted on January 4, they had to be kept somewhere for a good two weeks before the murder. That is, there should be a room like a prison cell. This room must meet certain requirements. First of all, it must be strong so that it is impossible to escape from it. Secondly, it should be relatively remote from crowded places. The deaf basement of the synagogue is the most suitable place. If anyone hears, then everyone is there.

In the case of a maniac, he would have to equip a separate room specifically for this purpose. Make it soundproof and strong so you can't get out. Which is clearly beyond the power of a simple watchman alone. No, well, of course, you can equip such a room in an apartment, buy a lot of sound-absorbing material, upholster the whole room, close up the window. To protect the sound-absorbing material itself from being torn by doomed victims. But such a room would attract attention, due to its unusualness, and they wrote about it in detail. It is possible to keep prisoners in a country house, but even there it is necessary to equip an appropriate room.

3. Taking into account the fact that the captives were in captivity for two weeks, they had to be fed and watered all this time. Food is not taken from the sky, even the simplest must be bought in the store for money. You also need to clean up after the prisoners. Or lead to the toilet under escort. Can you imagine such a maniac who will do all this until X hour? Hardly! Although the actions of maniacs are difficult to predict, none of them will wait for two weeks for something incomprehensible, and after that, inflict multiple stab wounds.

This haste is alarming in itself. The fact is that ritual murder differs from the ordinary one in the nature of stab wounds. If you take an ordinary maniac or a murderer, then the knife blows will be inflicted randomly. If a professional killer is operating, then one or two blows are enough.

In the case of ritual murder, the task is somewhat different. It is important not to kill, but to collect as much blood as possible. Therefore, the incisions are small, they are all located in the places where large vessels pass. These incisions are made with special tools. They are two types of scalpels, one similar to a scalpel, has the Hebrew name Kusulta, and the other is pointed, called Masmar, which in Hebrew means a nail. With these scalpels, corresponding incisions are made, in Hebrew Ribda. The nature of these wounds, in combination with complete exsanguination, gives reason to assert with a probability of 99.9% that this murder is ritual.

Summing up what has been said, we can conclude that there are certain Jewish sects that practice human sacrifice. Their wealth and the presence of their people in law enforcement structures make it possible to commit ritual murders with impunity on a regular basis. All these murders are committed mainly on the eve of Easter in all major cities every year. The blood obtained in this way is used to make matzah, which is used on the great Jewish holidays. Usually they look for street children so that there is less noise, but sometimes ordinary children also come across in their net ...

You can also read “On the Other Side of the Talmud. Christian-Jewish Mystery of Secrets. The Ultimate Meaning of the Jewish Ritual Sacrifices. Or Igor Savin's article “From Kosher Beef to the Ritual Use of Christian Blood. Jewish Sources on Blood Sacrifice in Modern Judaism.

K. Levi-Strauss considers sacrifice as an exchange between people and supernatural beings: the relationship of a person with spirits is built on the principle of the contract "you - to me, I - to you." When giving gifts to supernatural beings, people expect lavish gifts in return, or at least demand compensation. In case of non-fulfillment of the contract, either party will be subject to punishment. So, researchers traveling through Siberia noted with surprise that Samoyeds beat their gods ( wooden idols) with whips if they did not fulfill their requests.

Forms of animal behavior

Speaking about the killing of the victim as the basis for the experience of the sacred, the researchers point to biological roots that go back to the stereotypical forms of animal behavior. Under such conditions, the connection in the human psyche of the experience of the sacred, the idea of ​​death and rebirth with violence, aggression, suffering and sexuality is taken for granted.

The phenomenon of hunting

Some authors see the origins of the sacrificial act in the phenomenon of hunting: affective states caused by the sight and smell of blood when the animal is killed, the experiences of danger and good associated with this event create tension (W. Wundt). Then certain actions, red color, noises become stimuli for the reappearance of the corresponding states. Their rhythm and repetition, exaggeration of feelings form actions into a ritual. Delight in the killing of a predator, when a person turns from an object of hunting into a hunter, the discovery of anatomical similarity, accompanied by guilt, joint killing as proof of devotion to the collective - these are the initial data for the emergence of sacrifice and the accompanying religious faith.

Awareness of the relationship between death and good (food, strength, continuation of life) occurred even in hunting communities, in which survival directly went back to the killing of a totem animal. One of the meanings of the rite was to send the murdered ancestor to another world, so that he could return the next year, bringing with him many relatives. Later, this is what they do with people: they are sent to creatures that live in other worlds, in the hope of getting something useful in return.

primitive communities

In primitive hunting communities, hunting itself probably turned into a sacred act. It seems that instinctive actions aimed at survival were colored with very strong emotions in order to remain, to gain a foothold in the mind as something important and necessary. Sacrificial rites of animals are similar all over the world among different peoples. Their antiquity is confirmed by the similarity in the order of action and the general scheme of conduct: killing the beast, begging for forgiveness for the murder, making requests and a collective meal. However, given the identity of cult actions, the rite does not exclude various semantic levels that have emerged over time.

The earliest meaning, in all likelihood, is not too removed from instinctive grounds and is associated with the food requirements of the ancient hunter. The functional core of practical benefit is overgrown with a complex of ideas, among which the central one is identification, gaining unity with the eaten character. Taking into themselves, absorbing the meat of the murdered victim, turning its body into their own flesh, the participants in the ritual meal become attached to the sacred nature of the animal, acquire its qualities.

totemism

Further, new ideas appear: in hunting cultures, the sacrifice of an ancestor totem is interpreted as sending the soul of the beast to the heavenly ruler in order to convey the prayers and petitions of people. The killed animal should return the next year and bring many relatives with it, providing the hunters with a successful hunt. It is necessary to pay attention to the duality of the meaning of the rite. On the one hand, the beast is revered as a blood father, on the other hand, it is killed in order to provide the tribe with food. This situation itself gives rise to fear and guilt.

Both ethnographic and historical material confirms that the essential moment of the ritual of sacrifice is connected with the removal of guilt. An important aspect of sacrificial rites is to find an object on which the whole community can be blamed. Since the whole tribe participates in the slaughter rites, it means that everyone is to blame, but no one separately. Guilt is distributed among all members of the community, thereby reducing it. But it is desirable that it can be eliminated altogether.

Thus, the rite of sacrifice has many variations, but its essence is always the same - to remove sins from oneself and get rid of guilt. material from the site

• During the Greek holiday of Buffonius (the ritual slaughter of a bull), the executioner shifted the blame to the ax with which he carried out the killing. The instrument of slaughter was subject to punishment, the hatchet was to be executed.
• Participants of the "Bear Holiday" northern peoples, addressing with prayers and apologies to the killed beast, they assure him that the murder was not their fault, but the culprit is the gun that the Russian merchant sold them.
• In African societies, the ruler had to commit various sins on the feast of sacrifice. Then, symbolically, the guilt was transferred to the animal, which was intended for slaughter. So, along with the killed beast, the sins of the entire tribe, taken on by the leader of the community, disappear. He is a victim, and by his death he must cleanse society from dirt, evil spirits, and sin. The victim transfers his evil qualities to the victim.
• The Jewish rite is endowed with similar semantics, in which the sins and vices of the members of the community are transferred to the goat, which is driven into the wilderness. Atonement consists in removing the impurity of a person transferred to a ritual sacrificial animal. The feeling of guilt is weakened by the fact that the goat is not killed, but released. Although this means the death of the animal, people do not put it to death with their own hands, as if they had nothing to do with it.

• Libations.
• Animal sacrifices.