RITUAL AND SACRIFICE

1. RITUAL AND SACRIFICE • Ritual permeates daily social life in subtle ways. It is a form of communication, a kind of language, a system that involves the agencies of communication, speaker/addressee and message, in the simplest Saussurian model. What constitutes a ritual act is a vexed topic.[i] Walter Burkert discusses ritual as a repetitive pattern of action that suggests something extra- or super- human. [i]From the “myth and ritual Cambridge School” that regarded ritual as the source of myth, to phenomenological approaches to ritual that reduced its importance, ritual is situated at the crossroads of many different interpretative perspectives, often with a comparative stance from the viewpoint of anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, religion, to name a few. One of the most influential and representative works of the Cambridge School was Jane Harrison’s Prolegomena to the Study of Religion (1903). Phenomenological approaches like that of M. Eliade’s ritual as the narrative of myth (1976) shifted this way the focus of the Cambridge school. Sociological perspectives extended the discussion beyond myth and viewed ritual as part of a social process. While E. Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life is very different from works by Malinowski or Van Gennep, still, in all ritual is viewed as a mechanism with a certain social role.

2. SACRIFICE • Sacrifice: Working Sacred Things (word in English derives from Latin term) • Sacrifice is a central act in religious observance • Animal Sacrifice, straightforward act • Animals: ox, bull (the most ‘noble’ animals to be offered as sacrifice) • Most common sacrificial animals: sheep, goat, pig, piglet, poultry (birds, geese, pigeons are rare)

3. How is sacrifice done • Festive occasion for the community • Relation (perhaps contrast with) daily life. • Washing, dressing in clean garments, wearing a garland • The animal needs to be perfect, it is too adorned, entwined with ribbons (with horns gilded). • Procession to the altar

4. A maiden at the front of the procession carries on her head the sacrificial basket in which there is a knife and grains of barley or cakes. • Also necessary items: vase with water, incense burner. • Musicians accompany, male or female flute-players • Procession to the altar, only there must blood be shed.

5. A circle is marked upon the arrival of the procession to the altar, which includes the site of the sacrifice, the animal, and the participants • Structuralist approach, setting boundaries between the sacred and the profane • All stand around the altar • First water is poured from the vase over the hands of participants in order to begin the sacrifice: ARCHESTHAI (in Greek means to BEGIN)

6. Animal sprinkled with water, it usually nods its head, interpreted as consent • “That which willingly nods at the washing of hands I say you may justly sacrifice” according to the oracle of Delphi (oracle/sacred law, codification of sacrifice) • A bull is given water to drink > he bows the head

7. All participants take handful of barley groats (in Greek: oulai) from the sacrificial basket • Silence • Ceremonially, the sacrifice recites a prayer, invocation to a god, wish and vow. Then the participants hurl their barley groats onto the altar and the sacrifical animal (in some rituals, stones are thrown) • This is part of the beginning, Katarchesthai (in Greek)

8. Sacrificial knife uncovered • The sacrificer first cuts hair of the animal, the last part of the beginning (aparchesthai in Greek) • No blood yet. • Slaughter of the animal follows, cutting of the throat, an ox falls with a blow of an ax • Blood stains the altar (in Greek haimassein)

9. Women cry out in high tone (perhaps ululation, in greek ololyge) • Cry marks the emotional crescendo • Life vs death. • The animal’s inner organs are roasted first (heart and liver). The entrails tasted by the innermost circle of participants • Inedible parts: bones • Food offerings like cakes

10. Meat is roasted and consumed at the altar. • Meat is entirely for the festive feasting of participants • But all that reaches the sky, is the smoke. • According to Hesiod: when gods and mortals parted, sacrifice was created. • Historical approaches: sacrifice reminiscent of periods before agriculture, when hunting was important

11. Comedy of innocence, the fiction of the animal’s consent. • Agricultural rites incorporated • Religion and everyday life interpenetrate-ritual view of cooking • Membership of community, washing the clothes, communal meal.

12. Libation • In Greek “sponde” • The sponde is made from the hand-held jug or bowl, pouring liquid (wine, oil, water, even honey) in a controlled manner with one hand • Invocation to a god and prayer are inseparable from libation. Libation ‘validates’ prayer or invocation • Wine libations introduce sometimes the sacrifice, wine poured over the flames of the altar

13. Sacrifice of an animal while two young boys play the aulos (flute) and the lyre, c. 540 BC, National Archaeological Museum. One of four paintings on a piece of wood that survived, found in the village Pitsa (inside a cave ?) (Corinth) in the region around Sikyon, near Athens. Wooden Panel, example of early painting (unfortunately we have few examples)

14. Scene of sacrificed, red-figured, classical, Louvre Museum

15. Red figured

16. Libation (Athena)- classical red-figured

17. Young boy pouring libation

18. A winged Nike (Victory) with oinochoe and phiale pouring libations at an altar.

19. Ritual Offerings- Demeter and Persephone – Getty Museum

20. Mythic explanation of Sacrifice in Hesiod’s Theogony, epic poem of the 7th c. • Prometheus TitanIapetus by Themis or Clymene, one of the Oceanids. Hesiod introduces Prometheus as a lowly challenger to Zeus' omniscience and omnipotence., Prometheus played a trick against Zeus (545-557). He placed two sacrificial offerings before Zeus: a selection of bull meat hidden inside an ox's stomach (nourishment hidden inside a displeasing exterior), and the bull's bones wrapped completely in "glistening fat" (something inedible hidden inside a pleasing exterior). Zeus chose the latter, setting a precedent for future sacrifices; henceforth, humans would keep the meat for themselves and burn the bones wrapped in fat as an offering to the gods. Zeus angry and hid fire from humans to punish them. • Prometheus he stole the fire and gave it to mankind. This further enraged Zeus, who sent Epimetheus, brother of Prometheus, Pandora, the first woman. • Creation of woman related to origin of sacrifice