Animal Sacrifice.
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I use my own blood, and the blood of willing human ritual participants (of course in this era everyone uses their own knife or razor and blood is not intermingled until it is out of the bodies. Unfortunately I have never had a Scarlet Woman. I have had Witch/Wiccan etc girlfriends that were willing to do sex magick with me, but i have not found my true S.W. It's hard enough for a man to find any quality woman these days, and when you add the qualifier that "well, honey, I may sometimes need to spread and/or consume your menstrual blood as a part of my religion, which 99% of people worldwide have never even heard of", it gets very difficult.
As for animals, I couldn't perform animal sacrifice. It's not a Thelemic thing, it's my own personal feelings as an animal lover. I have no problem with other Thelemites doing so as long as the death is quick and painless/ Of course I do eat meat, but protein is necessary for my survival, slitting a goat's throat is not. -
The fact is, countless animals are sacrificed every day for the physical nourishment of carnivorous humans. If one willfully consumes animal flesh then it is absolutely beyond me how they could then condemn the practice of ritual sacrifice. Whether the animal is being used for food or for ritual, it is still being killed & dedicated to the magician's/carnivore's own end.
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@RifRaf said
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@DarkStar said
"It's not a Thelemic thing, it's my own personal feelings as an animal lover. I have no problem with other Thelemites doing so as long as the death is quick and painless/ Of course I do eat meat, but protein is necessary for my survival, slitting a goat's throat is not."I respect your position, but I do want to know what you mean by "It's not a Thelemic thing" but then saying that you have no problem with other "Thelemites doing so as long as the death is quick and painless/"."
When I say "It's not a Thelemic thing", i mean that i don't consider animal sacrifice to be necessary in MY interpretation of Thelema. It may very well be a part of yours, and I have no problem with that, although animal blood is denounced as the lowest quality blood to use in Liber AL
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Animal sacrifice is Old Aeon. The New Aeon is non-sacrificial.
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The new aeon is to not sacrifice your own attainment to the WILL of others, however sacrifice is still part of the formula.
What if your WILL is to violently murder an animal or even another human being in order to experience the intense emotional state of this act, in order to transcend ego awareness and become one with the predatory beasts of nature. What if it is part of your WILL in rip flesh with your teeth and drink the fresh blood of the kill, as would a wolf or lioness.
How can we deny that this too is a part of the natural order and that in so doing a star is merely following its natural course. "The creator does not concern himself with what he creates, their is room enough in the world for the sider and the fly" (a paraphrase)
The lower wold being an illusion, an a self willed illusion of ones own inclination, on what grounds then can we impose limits on the expression of WILL in that world. "I race and I RAPE, I RIP and I REND" the world is here for us to play with in any way we like, it is impossible in clash with the higher WILL of another, only the lower world expressions clash. So it says in the Gita, if you kill a man, you only hurt his garment of flesh the Atman (Hadit) will change bodies as a man changes cloaks.
Thus you can't really harm anyone, os go forth and do thy WILL amongst the living, Does the world exist for you to suck or doesn't it?
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@RifRaf said
"How about those pigeons he used to summon Choronzon?"
MZLA
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I see no meaning in sacrificing that which is not mine.
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@RifRaf said
"I don't know if I follow you. MZLA, or really any holy and strong influence whether from Kether or Aiwass or whatever, surely has little to do with animal sacrifice being Old Aeon and having no place within the New Aeon."
I was simply pointing out that pigeons = MZLA ...perhaps no animal was slain at all.
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Crowley said a lot of outrageous things. The point of Thelema is to allow your True Will and HGA, not some external authority figure, guide you on what action is appropriate or not. If one's understanding of his or her True Will is to sacrifice animals, I would conclude this intent cannot be separated from their desire to be sacrificed as well.
Here's what I gathered from Jim's comments on True Will: the particular expresses the totality. Hence Love under Will.
Btw, I think Crowley did sacrifice pigeons to Choronzon. This cannot be separated from subsequent events: becoming temporarily possessed, the personality called "Crowley" shattering and dying (I would locate this event at the 12th Aethyr), being hurled across the terrifying Abyss in the following months, carried on by the momentum of things set in motion etc.
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@RifRaf said
"It is absurd to think that if someone is to sacrifice an animal for a certain purpose than they too have the desire to be sacrificed."
Despite the fact that identification with the sacrificed animal has always been the point of this ancient practise? The sacrificed object is the material link to the divine.
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@Arsihsis said
"The fact is, countless animals are sacrificed every day for the physical nourishment of carnivorous humans. "
I would add corporate greed, profit, and control since most of the food supply is in the hands of four agri-businesses. We kill and waste much more than we need, and this includes plant and mineral life as well.
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Don't forget all the lab rats tested and killed to develop life-saving drugs..
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I do not think the idea of animal sacrifice is that the animal dies in place of oneself, The idea would seem to be that spirits exist that like to smell or feed off the essence of the burnt blood. Thus I see no more reason to think of the animal sacrifice any different than chumming for sharks. The idea is the burnt offering will fill the astral plane outside of the circle with a substance that attracts spirits, and since spirits are in the world of dead souls, then they must feed upon dead animals, the live animal flesh being too coarse for the finer substance of the spirits. This being the original idea behind bloody sacrifice, but new naturalistic theories that deny the existence of spiritual substance and astral planes will certainly have to also redefine the whole nature and purpose of animal sacrifice.
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Based on your description of blood serving as the foundation of the operation, I presume the sacrifice consecrates your intent. In ancient times a pact with an entity was sealed by a sacrifice. The meaning was, if I ever go back on my pact may I die like this animal. This requires the operator to identify with the animal and guarantees the seriousness of the operation, because things are at stake.
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you fail to understand that sympathy for livestock is just not something that happens with agrarian era people. this silly notion that I should fee sentimental for an animal I slay is absurd, why should I see any beast as anything other than a straw dog, a thing for my use and my whims, as it pleases me, rather than worry about how it feels as it dies, or even more absurd, that maybe I make it's family sad.
I am not a brid or a cow, so the death of the beast, is merely the use of a thing, no different than to drink a glass of water. Do you feel empathy for the poor class of water, that is all used up now? no of course not. Nor does the old woman who rings a turkey's neck give a single thought to how the bird feels or even that the bird is a living being at all. It is just food, it is a thing am anle to use my power to conquer and to eat.
The animal is a gift to the spirit, it is not killed to make the magician feel obligated no to have wasted a "precious life" because life is not prescious nothing is sacred, nothing precious it's all COLD hard FACT, Emotions are not reality!!! The whole idea is spirits like dead animals, so to Repay the spirit I offer a gift.
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In religions where animal sacrifice is the norm, it's also the norm to slaughter your own animals for food. So sacrificing an animal would not have been anything out of the ordinary.
It's us sheltered city folk who buy our meat already cut and wrapped in neat packages that are shocked by animal sacrifice.
But still, we humans experience empathy, and even someone who slaughters animals on a regular basis may feel emotions doing this. So making a sacrifice brings up emotions and energy.
I became anemic on a vegetarian diet, and started eating meat again several years ago. I try to stick with free-range meat as much as possible. I think it would be a good experience for me to slaughter my own meat. I haven't done that yet. I know it would be hard for me, being a city grrrrl who buys her meat in packages.
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@Tornado93 said
"In religions where animal sacrifice is the norm, it's also the norm to slaughter your own animals for food. So sacrificing an animal would not have been anything out of the ordinary.
It's us sheltered city folk who buy our meat already cut and wrapped in neat packages that are shocked by animal sacrifice.
But still, we humans experience empathy, and even someone who slaughters animals on a regular basis may feel emotions doing this. So making a sacrifice brings up emotions and energy.
I became anemic on a vegetarian diet, and started eating meat again several years ago. I try to stick with free-range meat as much as possible. I think it would be a good experience for me to slaughter my own meat. I haven't done that yet. I know it would be hard for me, being a city grrrrl who buys her meat in packages."Hi Tornado93. I agree that it would be hard for most of us to do that. But aren't these two different issues? Basically, I see animal sacrifice as something from our past, which most religions have evolved past. I know that it goes on in certain belief systems. As ceremonial magicians, don't we have other, better options?And oh- if I had to kill my own meat I know I'd be eating alot more tofu.
Perephone -
@Persephone said
"Hi Tornado93. I agree that it would be hard for most of us to do that.
But aren't these two different issues? Basically, I see animal sacrifice as something from our past, which most religions have evolved past."I, on the other hand, would hope that as long as we're killing animals, that animal sacrifice would be something much more present in our future.
Part of the error through this thread has been the assumption that "animal sacrifice" means killing more animals than would have been killed otherwise. But "sacrifice" simply means "to make sacred." The difference between "animal sacrifice" and "killing animals" is that, in the former case, the killing is a mindful, respectful action of sanctification.
"As ceremonial magicians, don't we have other, better options?"
Yes. There are far more advantageous options (even if, to the cynic, we only mention that they are much less mess!). Crowley correctly remarked that the greatest magicians use their own blood instead of that of another; and, in this, he really intended something that expects too much of many young magicians: i.e., that they be able to have and maintain an intimate personal relationship.
BTW, war is as much "animal sacrifice" as is anything else; and triggering large scale mass-mind lurches into the future commonly triggers this mass shedding of blood. It isn't a surprise to me that the work of a Magus can unleash this sort of stabilization, since it compelling confronts mass-mind with changes against which the status quo is stubbornly entrenched.
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The ancient Egyptians presented animal sacrifices, as well as other foods to the cult statue of the Gods in their temples. After the food was ritually presented, it would be taken away and divided among the priests for them to eat. The idea was that the God would partake of the spiritual essence of the food, and the priests would partake of the blessed material food.
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yes, the old bring your meat to the priests routine. Atleast the Egyptian priests were honest enough to let the people know they were taking the meat. The Jews did not even seem to realize the Priests had built a pyramid scheme, where they got free meat with out having to labor in the fields. First born of ever womb was taken to the temple on passover, I can just imagine the mess and smell than made, not to mention the stores of meat. (of course maybe the priests shared in times of famine, but I doubt it)