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Even if not ostensibly connected with religion, infliction of capital punishment is often highly ritualised and thus difficult to distinguish from human sacrifice. Death by burning historically has aspects of both human sacrifice (Wicker Man, Tophet) and capital punishment (Brazen bull, Tamar, tunica molesta). Detractors of the death penalty may consider all forms of capital punishment as secularised variants of human sacrifice. Similarly, lynching, pogroms and genocides are sometimes interpreted as human sacrifice following Theodor W. Adorno.
In modern times, even the once ubiquitous practice of animal sacrifice has virtually disappeared from all major religions (or has been re-cast in terms of ritual slaughter), and human sacrifice has become extremely rare. Most religions condemn the practice, and present-day secular laws treat it as murder. In the context of a society which condemns human sacrifice, the term ritual murder is used.
Similar killings for the purpose of ritual are still occasionally seen, with reports from the 2000s from Sub-Saharan Africa (muti killings), but also isolated cases in the immigrant African diaspora in Europe. In India, Sati, the immolation of a widow on her husband's funeral pyre, continued well into the 19th century, but in current practice has become very rare.
There has been a lot of debate on the primacy of myth vs. ritual, and the presence of a myth of human sacrifice should not be taken as necessarily implying the historical existence of the actual practice: human sacrifice may be taken as the re-enactment of an older myth, or conversely a myth can be taken as a memory of an earlier practice of human sacrifice. Theistic rationalisations of human sacrifice may involve the idea of offering to deities as payment for favourable interventions in an event of special importance, to forestall unfavourable events, or to purchase disclosures about the physical world.
Human sacrifice has been practised on a number of different occasions and in many different cultures. The various rationales behind human sacrifice are the same that motivate religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice is intended to bring good fortune and to pacify the gods, for example in the context of the dedication of a completed building like a temple or bridge. There is a Chinese legend that there are thousands of people entombed in the Great Wall of China. In ancient Japan, legends talk about Hitobashira ("human pillar"), in which maidens were buried alive at the base or near some constructions as a prayer to ensure the buildings against disasters or enemy attacks. For the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they killed about 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days. According to Ross Hassig, author of Aztec Warfare, "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were sacrificed in the ceremony.
Human sacrifice can also have the intention of winning the gods' favour in warfare. In Homeric legend, Iphigeneia was to be sacrificed by her father Agamemnon for success in the Trojan War. According to the Bible, Jephthah sacrificed his daughter after making a vow (Judges 11). Another motivation for human sacrifice is burial: in some notions of an afterlife, the deceased will benefit from victims killed at his funeral. Mongols, Scythians, early Egyptians and various Mesoamerican chiefs could take most of their household, including servants and concubines, with them to the next world. This is sometimes called a "retainer sacrifice", as the leader's retainers would be sacrificed along with their master, so that they could continue to serve him in the afterlife.
Another purpose is divination from the body parts of the victim. According to Strabo, Celts stabbed a victim with a sword and divined the future from his death spasms.
Headhunting is the practice of taking the head of a killed adversary, for ceremonial or magical purposes, or for reasons of prestige. It was found in many pre-modern tribal societies.
Human sacrifice may be a ritual practised in a stable society, and may even be conductive to enhance societal bonds (see Sociology of religion), both by creating a bond unifying the sacrificing community, and in combining human sacrifice and capital punishment, by removing individuals that have a negative effect on societal stability (criminals, religious heretics, foreign slaves or prisoners of war). But outside of civil religion, human sacrifice may also result in outbursts of "blood frenzy" and mass killings that destabilise society. Thus, the Thuggee cult that plagued India was devoted to Kali, the goddess of death and destruction. According to the Guinness Book of Records the Thuggee cult was responsible for approximately 2 million deaths. The bursts of capital punishment during European witch-hunts, or during the French Revolutionary Reign of Terror show similar sociological patterns (see also Moral panic).
Many cultures show traces of prehistoric human sacrifice in their mythologies, but have ceased to practise them before the onset of historical records. The story of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22) is an example of a myth explaining the abolition of human sacrifice. Similarly, the Vedic Purushamedha, literally "human sacrifice", is already a purely symbolic act in its earliest attestation. According to Pliny the Elder, human sacrifice in Ancient Rome was abolished by a senatorial decree in 97 BCE, although by this time the practice had already become so rare that the decree was mostly a symbolic act. Human sacrifice once abolished is typically replaced by either animal sacrifice, or by the "mock-sacrifice" of effigies, such as the Argei in ancient Rome.
In Genesis 22 as well as the Qur'an, there is a story about Abraham's binding of Isaac, although in the Qur'an the name of the son is not mentioned and assumed to be Ismail. In the Bible's version of the story, God tests Abraham by asking him to present his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah. No reason is given within the text. Abraham agrees to this command without arguing. The story ends with an angel stopping Abraham at the last minute and making Isaac's sacrifice unnecessary by providing a ram, caught in some nearby bushes, to be sacrificed instead. Many Bible scholars have suggested this story's origin was a remembrance of an era when human sacrifice was abolished in favour of animal sacrifice.
Another instance of human sacrifice mentioned in the Bible is the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter in Judges 11. Jephthah vows to sacrifice to God whatsoever comes to greet him at the door when he returns home if he is victorious. The vow is stated in Judges 11:31 as "Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering." When he returns from battle, his virgin daughter runs out to greet him. According to the commentators of the rabbinic Jewish tradition, Jepthah's daughter was not sacrificed, but was forbidden to marry and remained a spinster her entire life, fulfilling the vow that she would be devoted to the Lord.
Plutarch (ca. 46–120 CE) mentions the practice, as do Tertullian, Orosius, Diodorus Siculus and Philo. Livy and Polybius do not. The Bible asserts that children were sacrificed at a place called the Tophet ("roasting place") to the god Moloch. According to Diodorus Siculus' account of the Carthagians:
Plutarch, however claims that the children were already dead at the time, having been killed by their parents, whose consent—as well as that of the children—was required; Tertullian explains the acquiescence of the children as a product of their youthful trustfulness.
The Romans practised various forms of human sacrifice; from Etruscans (or, according to other sources, Sabellians), they adopted the original form of gladiatorial combat where the victim was slain in a ritual battle. During the early republic, criminals who had broken their oaths or defrauded others were sometimes "given to the gods" (that is, executed as a human sacrifice). The Rex Nemorensis was an escaped slave who became priest of the goddess Diana at Nemi by killing his predecessor. Prisoners of war were buried alive as offerings to Manes and Di Inferi (gods of the underworld). Archaeologists have found sacrificial victims buried in building foundations. Ordinarily, deceased Romans were cremated rather than buried. Captured enemy leaders, after the victorious general's triumph, would be ritually strangled in front of a statue of Mars, the war god. Dionysius of Halicarnassus refers to a sacrifice of Argei in the Vestal ritual that might have originally included sacrifice of old men. According to Pliny the Elder, human sacrifice was formally banned during the consulship of Publius Licinius Crassus and Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus in 97 BCE, although by this time it was so rare that the decree was largely symbolic. Most of the rituals turned to animal sacrifice like taurobolium or became merely symbolic. A Roman general might bury a statue of his likeness to thank the gods for victory. However, activities with a ritual origin and similarities to human sacrifice, such as the gladiatorial games and some forms of execution, continued for many years, and grew in popularity.
Archaeological evidence from the British Isles seems to indicate that human sacrifice may have been practised, over times long pre-dating any contact with Rome. Human remains have been found at the foundations of structures from the Neolithic time to the Roman era, with injuries and in positions that argue for their being foundation sacrifices.
Skeletons belonging to as many as 150 people and dating back to about the time of the Roman conquest were discovered in Alveston, England. Druids may have killed the victims in a single event.
Ritualised decapitation survives in the archaeological record such as the example of 12 headless corpses at the French late Iron Age sanctuary of Gournay-sur-Aronde.
Evidence of Germanic practices of human sacrifice predating the Viking Age depend on archaeology and on a few scattered accounts in Greco-Roman ethnography. For example, Tacitus reports Germanic human sacrifice to (what he interprets as) Mercury, and to Isis specifically among the Suebians. Jordanes reports how the Goths sacrificed prisoners of war to Mars, suspending the severed arms of the victims from the branches of trees.
By the 8th century, Germanic paganism had become restricted to Scandinavia. One account by Ahmad ibn Fadlan as part of his account of an embassy to the Volga Bulgars in 921 claims that Norse warriors were sometimes buried with enslaved women with the belief that these women would become their wives in Valhalla. In his description of the funeral of a Scandinavian chieftain, a slave volunteers to die with a Norseman. After ten days of festivities, she is stabbed to death by an old woman, a sort of priestess who is referred to as Völva or "Angel of Death", and burnt together with the deceased in his boat. This practice is evidenced archaeologically, with many male warrior burials (such as the ship burial at Balladoole on the Isle of Man, or that at Oseberg in Norway) also containing female remains with signs of trauma.
Adam von Bremen recorded human sacrifices to Odin in 11th-century Sweden, at the Temple at Uppsala, a tradition which is confirmed by Gesta Danorum and the Norse sagas. According to the Ynglinga saga, king Domalde was sacrificed there in the hope of bringing greater future harvests and the total domination of all future wars. The same saga also relates that Domalde's descendant king Aun sacrificed nine of his own sons to Odin in exchange for longer life, until the Swedes stopped him from sacrificing his last son, Egil.
Heidrek in the Hervarar saga agrees to the sacrifice of his son in exchange for the command over a fourth of the men of Reidgotaland. With these, he seizes the entire kingdom and prevents the sacrifice of his son, dedicating those fallen in his rebellion to Odin instead.
The sacrifice of a high-ranking male's slaves, concubines or servants upon his death (called Xun Zang 殉葬 or more specifically Sheng Xun 生殉) was a more common form. The stated purpose was to provide companionship for the dead in the afterlife. In earlier times the victims were either killed or buried alive, while later they were usually forced to commit suicide.
Funeral human sacrifice was abolished by the Qin Dynasty in 384 BCE. Afterwards it became relatively rare throughout the central parts of China. However, the Hongwu Emperor of the Ming Dynasty revived it in 1395 when his second son died and two of the prince's concubines were sacrificed. In 1464, the Zhengtong Emperor in his will forbade the practice for Ming emperors and princes.
Human sacrifice was also practised by the Manchus. Following Emperor Nurhaci's death, his wife, Lady Abahai, and his two lesser consorts committed suicide. During the Qing Dynasty, sacrifice of slaves was banned by Emperor Kangxi in 1673.
Widely believed to be practices that occurred in the distant past there are however indications which must be taken seriously that up until this century Tibetans have had to surrender their lives willingly for ritualistic reasons. The (14th-century) Blue Annals, a seminal document in the history of Tibetan Buddhism, already reports upon how in Tibet the so-called "18 robber-monks" slaughtered men and women for their tantric ceremonies (Blue Annals, 1995, p. 697). The Englishman Sir Charles Bell visited a stupa on the Bhutan-Tibet border in which the ritually killed body of an eight-year-old boy and a girl of the same age were found (Bell, 1927, p. 80). Attestations of human sacrifice in the Himalayas recorded by the American anthropologist Robert Ekvall date from the 1950s (Ekvall, 1964, pp. 165–166, 169, 172).
In their criticism of lamaism, the Chinese make frequent and emphatic reference to such ritual killing practices, which were still widespread at the time of the so-called "liberation" of the country, that is until the end of the 1950s. According to them, in the year 1948 21 individuals were murdered by state sacrificial priests from Lhasa as part of a ritual of enemy destruction, because their organs were required as magical ingredients (Grunfeld, 1996, p. 29).
The morbid ritual objects on display in the Tibetan Revolutions Museum established by the Chinese in Lhasa, display objects such as: prepared skulls, mummified hands, rosaries made of human bones, ten trumpets made from the thigh bones of 16-year-old girls. Among the museum's exhibits is also a document which bears the seal of the Dalai Lama in which he demands the contribution of human heads, blood, flesh, fat, intestines, and right hands, likewise the skins of children, the menstrual blood of a widow, and stones with which human skulls had been staved in, for the "strengthening of holy order" (Epstein, 1983, p. 138). Further, a small parcel of severed and prepared male sexual organs which are needed to conduct certain rituals can also be seen there, as well as the charred body of a young woman who was burned as a witch.
Regarding possible Vedic mention of human sacrifice, the prevailing 19th-century view, associated above all with Henry Colebrooke, was that human sacrifice had little scriptural warrant, and did not actually take place. Those verses which referred to purushamedha were meant to be read symbolically or as a "priestly fantasy". However, Rajendralal Mitra published a defence of the thesis that human sacrifice, as had been practised in Bengal, was a continuation of traditions dating back to Vedic periods. Hermann Oldenberg held to Colebrooke's view; but Jan Gonda underlined its disputed status.
Human and animal sacrifice became less common during the post-Vedic period, as ahimsa (non-violence) became part of mainstream religious thought. This may correspond to the impact of Sramanic religions such as Buddhism and Jainism. The Chandogya Upanishad (3.17.4) includes ahimsa in its list of virtues. It was "more common" in the Southern parts of India, where it took on a scapegoating rather than purifying role.
Verse 19 of the Karpuradistotram (Hymn to Kali) lists humans as one of the species that are acceptable for sacrifice to the goddess. However, in 1922, Sir John George Woodroffe published a commentary on the Karpuradistotram by the Kaula commentator Swami Vimalananda. In it, he writes that the sacrificial animals listed in verse 19 are merely symbols for the six enemies, with "man" representing pride. He also states that the age of material sacrifice had long since passed away.
widow.]]
The Khonds, an aboriginal tribe of India, inhabiting the tributary states of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, became notorious, on the British occupation of their district about 1835, from the prevalence and cruelty of the human sacrifices they practised.
The Deori community has a notable culture and tradition which is a hidden treasure for the sociologists. The Deoris represent the class “priest”-a section of the whole Chutia community (now in Assam, India). In the first two decades of 13th century, before arrival of the Ahom, Name SADIYA. Deori's use to make a Narbali (human sacrifice) in terms to win the war, battle and to prevent the villagers from the evil atmosphere like floods, drought etc. This practice make them pure owing to satisfy the supreme Goddess. Only the class of Patorganya people were eligible for sacrificing. Ref.
The practice of Sati (सती) in some Hindu communities, whereby a widow would immolate herself on her husband's funeral pyre, continued well into the 19th century. Believed to guarantee the couple's salvation and reunion in the afterlife, it may be seen as a form of retainer sacrifice. India's Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act (1829) was designed to finally suppress it. There are no reliable figures for the numbers who died by sati across the country. A local indication of the numbers is given in the records kept by the Bengal Presidency of the British East India Company. The total figure of known occurrences for the period 1813 to 1828 is 8,135.
Only in the Post-Classic era did this practice become as frequent as in central Mexico. In the Post-Classic period, the victims and the altar are represented as daubed in a hue now known as Maya Blue, obtained from the añil plant and the clay mineral palygorskite.
According to Ross Hassig, author of Aztec Warfare, "between 10,000 and 80,400 people" were sacrificed in the ceremony. The old reports of numbers sacrificed for special feasts have been described as "unbelievably high" by some authors
Tlaloc would require weeping boys in the first months of the Aztec calendar to be ritually murdered.
.]] Sacrifices to Xipe Totec were bound to a post and shot full of arrows. The dead victim would be skinned and a priest would use the skin. Earth mother Teteoinnan required flayed female victims.
The study of the images seen in Moche art has enabled researchers to reconstruct the culture's most important ceremonial sequence, which began with ritual combat and culminated in the sacrifice of those defeated in battle. Dressed in fine clothes and adornments, armed warriors faced each other in ritual combat. In this hand-to-hand encounter the aim was to remove the opponent's headdress rather than kill him. The object of the combat was the provision of victims for sacrifice. The vanquished were stripped and bound, after which they were led in procession to the place of sacrifice. The captives are portrayed as strong and sexually potent. In the temple, the priests and priestesses would prepare the victims for sacrifice. The sacrificial methods employed varied, but at least one of the victims would be bled to death. His blood was offered to the principal deities in order to please and placate them.
The Inca of Peru also made human sacrifices. As many as 4,000 servants, court officials, favorites, and concubines were killed upon the death of the Inca Huayna Capac in 1527, for example. A number of mummies of sacrificed children have been recovered in the Inca regions of South America, an ancient practice known as capacocha. The Incas performed child sacrifices during or after important events, such as the death of the Sapa Inca (emperor) or during a famine. The Iroquois are said to have occasionally sent a maiden to the Great Spirit.
The Southern Cult or Mound Builders, of the Southeastern United States may have also practised human sacrifice, as some artifacts have been interpreted as depicting such acts. Early European explorers reported witnessing mass human sacrifices.
The torture of war captives by the tribes of the Eastern Woodlands cultural region also seems to have had sacrificial motivations. See Captives in American Indian Wars
In the northern parts of West Africa, human sacrifice had become rare early as Islam became more established in these areas such as the Hausa States. Human sacrifice was officially banned in the remainder of West African states only by coercion, or in some cases annexation, by either the British or French. An important step was the British coercing the powerful Egbo secret society to oppose human sacrifice in 1850. This society was powerful in a large number of states in what is now south-eastern Nigeria. Nonetheless, human sacrifice continued, normally in secret, until West Africa came under firm colonial control.
The Leopard men were a West African secret society active into mid-1900s that practised cannibalism. In theory, the ritual cannibalism would strengthen both members of the society as well as their entire tribe. In Tanganyika, the Lion men committed an estimated 200 murders in a single three-month period.
The last major centre of human sacrifice was the Benin Empire in modern Nigeria. The Benin Empire agreed with the British to prohibit human sacrifice in the 1890s. However, for five years the rulers continued human sacrifice on a large scale. After an incident in which British observers were killed in order to prevent them witnessing human sacrifice, the British authorities assembled forces to conquer the Benin Empire. This caused an escalation of human sacrifice as Benin's rulers sought to protect themselves from Britain by appeasing the gods with sacrifice. After a brief campaign the Benin Empire was conquered and human sacrifice suppressed.
Judges chapter 11 contains a story in which a Judge named Jephthah makes a vow to God to sacrifice the first thing that comes out of the door of his house in exchange for God's help with a military battle against the Ammonites. Much to his dismay, his only daughter greeted him upon his triumphant return. Judges 11:39 states that Jephthah kept his vow. According to the commentators of the rabbinic Jewish tradition, Jepthah's daughter was not sacrificed, but was forbidden to marry and remained a spinster her entire life, fulfilling the vow that she would be devoted to the Lord.
The beliefs of most denominations of Christianity hinge upon a single, specific human sacrifice: that of Christ. Christians believe that in order to gain access to paradise in the afterlife each individual person must somehow become a partaker in that all-important human sacrifice for the atonement of their personal sins. Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians believe that they participate in the sacrifice of Calvary through the Eucharist, which they believe is really the body and blood of Jesus Christ that they eat and drink. Many Protestants, however, reject this, and believe rather that the bread and wine of communion are merely symbolic. Although early Christians in the Roman Empire were accused of being cannibals, practices such as human sacrifice were abhorrent to them.
In modern Hinduism slaughter according to the rituals permitted in the Puranic scriptures has virtually disappeared. In the 19th and 20th centuries, prominent figures of Indian spirituality such as Swami Vivekananda, Ramana Maharshi, Swami Sivananda and A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami emphasised the importance of ahimsa.
The Supreme Court of India habitually issues the death penalty to those found guilty of practising human sacrifice.
In January, 2008, Milton Blahyi of Liberia confessed being part of human sacrifices which "included the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart, which was divided into pieces for us to eat." He fought versus Charles Taylor's militia.
In August 2004, a muti killing took place in Ireland; the headless corpse of a Malawi woman was found near Piltown, County Kilkenny.
The victim, 5-year-old José Luis Painecur, had his arms and legs removed by Juan Pañán and Juan José Paincur (the victim's grandfather), and was stuck into the sand of the beach like a stake. The waters of the Pacific Ocean then carried the body out to sea. The sacrifice was rumoured to be at the behest of local machi, Juana Namuncurá Añen. The two men were charged with the crime and confessed, but later recanted. They were released after two years. A judge ruled that those involved in these events had "acted without free will, driven by an irresistible natural force of ancestral tradition."
The story is also mentioned in a Time magazine article from that year, although with much less detail.
The instances closest to "ritual killing" in the criminal history of modern society would be pathological serial killers such as the Zodiac Killer, and mass suicides with doomsday cult background, such as the Peoples Temple, Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, Order of the Solar Temple or Heaven's Gate incidents. Other examples include the "Matamoros killings" attributed to Mexican cult leader Adolfo Constanzo and the "Superior Universal Alignment" killings in 1990s Brazil.
"The Lottery" is a 1948 short story that caused controversy in the United States. The Wicker Man is a 1973 film on the topic.
In Rosemary Sutcliff's 1977 historical novel Sun Horse, Moon Horse the main character accepts a duty as a sacrificial king and lays down his life for the redemption of his people, while inaugurating the creation of the Uffington White Horse.
The majority of the plot of The Beatles' film HELP! deals with a group that practises human sacrifice trying to kill Ringo Starr because he is wearing the sacrificial ring.
In Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun the Inca leader comes close to sacrificing Tintin, Captain Haddock, and Professor Calculus on a pyre to be set alight with parabolic mirrors. This was for Calculus having committed sacrilege for wearing the bracelet of Rascar Capac.
In the 1984 film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, high priest Mola Ram sacrifices men by magically removing their heart with one hand and lowering them in boiling lava. One sacrifice is shown, where the heart spontaneously combusts when the victim hits the lava. In Mel Gibson's Apocalypto human sacrifice is done to appease the Gods.
In the Dan Brown novel The Lost Symbol, the book's main antagonist Mal'akh, prepares himself for the human sacrifice throughout the story, believing that it is his great destiny to lead the forces of evil.
And in the 2010 Kannada film Jackie, Lakshmi is shown to be sacrificed by her maternal uncle who believes a human sacrifice would appease Goddess Kali, who would in turn grant him with a treasure. However this attempt is foiled by the male lead, Jackie, played by Puneet Rajkumar.
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