The Hungry Gods

The other day I was listening to Todd Sheet's Nightwatch podcast. The guest, author Chris Ebert, was talking about Voodoo; early in the conversation he mentioned that an associate of his was a Voodoo priestess, and that she was also a member of PETA and didn't sacrifice animals. The first thought that sprang into my head (since I am completely ignorant of Voodoo, along with just about everything else) was, how could her rituals possibly be effective without a sacrifice to propitiate or otherwise engage the services of the powers? I know that asking that question shows I am relying on a number of assumptions -- all of which are probably wrong -- but, to rework the aphorism of the old duke, one of those incompetent toy soldier aristocrats whose fumblings in realpolitik ruined his king, bankrupted the nation, and butchered oppressed and impoverished peasantry by the hundreds of thousands, you think things out with the brain you have, not with the brain you wish you had.

Mr. Ebert went on to say that the decline in animal sacrifice is general, and that many Voodoo practitioners nowadays will ask for a sacrifice not of animals, but of money; not necessarily as a payment for their services (though that may be partially the case), but for you to prove to yourself, to the priest(ess), and to the spirit power that you are serious about your request: for in the 21st century, what is rarer and more precious to most of us than money or time? This was a novel thought to me, one that I'd never considered, but it rings true: If I had a goat or a pig it would be a considerable inconvenience to me and I'd be glad to get rid of it; but when I'm forced to give up an hour of drinking or vegetating time, that hurts!

But the reason for this post is not to talk about Voodoo, but to muse a little over the idea of sacrifice. I know others must have gone as far toward finding answers as it is possible to go: scholars, anthropologists, students of religion and who-not must have devoted countless hours of time and thought to investigating the origin and purpose of sacrifice in religion; if I really wanted to inform myself on this issue I could read them. But I did not come here to be informed, but only to talk things out to myself in an effort to provide some therapeutic stimulus to my too-long atrophied mind.

Looking at it from a purely rational standpoint, I suppose the argument goes something like this: early humans, with their childlike outlook on the world, couldn't understand scary and destructive natural forces like storms, floods, earthquakes, lions, and so forth, so as a coping mechanism they anthropomorphosized them, thinking of them as sentient beings who acted from some sort of motive and who could perhaps be reasoned or bargained with. I remember reading a dramatization of this idea in the caveman chapter of James Michener's The Source, in which the cavewoman who had discovered the rudiments of agriculture was faced with a flood sweeping toward her wheat field; she started grabbing up handfuls of wheat and tossing them into the water, screaming out that if they gave the flood some of their food maybe it would be satisfied and leave the rest alone.

As the millennia roll on civilization matures and primeval magical thinking develops into organized religion. We've all heard the saying that man makes the gods in his own image. The savage forces that bedeviled the children of nature give way to kingly superheroes dwelling in thronerooms in the sky, their power descending earthward unto man just as edicts and officials descend upon the populace from the palace in the city. The idea of sacrifice is retained: the gods must still be placated, just as taxes must be sent to the city treasury -- withhold either and mighty beings become discontented with you. Then too, the priests themselves must heavily encourage it; after all, there's no sense letting all that good mutton go to waste after the thighbones have been burnt, and the offerings of gold and silver have to be looked after by someone. What a sweet thought for a priest to discover that his own well-being and richness shows honor to the god!

But it's not just childish thinking and greed. As the levying of a cash fee in Voodoo suggests, sacrifice triggers the magical thinking gene to provide psychological stimulation: by offering up something so precious you are conditioning yourself to believe that weighty matters are at stake and that big mojo is being invoked on your behalf; you will then be more likely to accept your situation and keep on keeping on in this cruel hard world whatever the deity decides. Of course you'll get a big boost if your prayers are answered; but even if they're not, despite your disappointment you'll still believe at bottom that everything is fundamentally okay: the power is still there, it can still be invoked for you, it's just that it didn't happen to pan out this particular time.

On the surface this rationalist explanation, which I'm sure I've simplified to the point of absurdity -- and probably gotten wrong from the beginning, since my smattering of anthropological reading dates from books written during the Johnson administration (Lyndon, not Andrew) and it seems like much of the theory from those days has since been discredited or superseded -- on the surface this rationalist explanation makes a lot of sense, and I don't think any honest person can deny that it has to be pretty close to the truth -- on the surface. But at the same time I think that on questions like this rationalists are content with scratching the surface and behaving as if the gouge they've made constitutes the entire answer. Of course you can't blame them: as far as they're concerned the question really is solved, because the surface is all that there is. There are no gods, no magic, no mystic forces. Religious experience is an empty skin of paint with nothing underneath.

Perhaps it is. Probably it is. Yet I wonder (because I have the mind of a greedy child who needs security) if the nothing-to-see-here explanation doesn't rely on some unfounded assumptions.

Throughout history examples may be found of individual disbelief or crises of faith. In civilized societies, with large numbers of unconnected citizens and an entrenched religion, these individual experiences don't have the power to overturn the entire system of belief. But in the tiny confines of an ice-age nomad tribe, in which everyone knows everybody else and authority is honorary and ceremonial rather than a function of sociopathy and armed might, does the day never come when someone realizes that no matter how much wheat you throw into the flood, the grain still gets swept away? Or that no matter how many times you dance for rain or deer that the rain and deer don't come? Or that no matter what kind of hoodoo convolutions your shaman works up, the person who dies remains dead? Does the day never come when the great original atheist hero doesn't arise and gather all his friends and relatives around the campfire and grunt out, "Listen, I've been doing some thinking about things and all this magic we've been pouring our time into just isn't getting the job done?" and somebody else grunts back, "you know, now that you mention it...."

Is it reasonable to assume that these early people who had to be so perfectly attuned and observant of the natural world in every other way would turn into blind chuckleheads who kept throwing precious food away with no return on their investment? It seems to me, contrary to what smart people are looking for in this brouhaha about the proposed God Gene, that the natural world most definitely does not reward baseless magical thinking, no matter how fervently you believe in it. Once you get into cities you have some cushion, perhaps. You have farmers and silos. You have some amount of surplus. Perhaps you can afford to get a little screwy in your notions about what goes on in the sky. But can you afford it on the glaciers of Beringia?

There is more I want to say -- in fact I haven't even gotten to what I wanted to talk about when I started -- but this post is long enough for now. More to follow, if I don't get distracted.