Polytheism

"Gods are called many by the error of some who worshipped many deities, thinking as they did the planets and other stars were gods, and also the separate parts of the world."

"Indian religion founded itself on the conception of a timeless, nameless and formless Supreme, but it did not feel called upon like the narrower and more ignorant monotheisms of the younger races, to deny or abolish all intermediary forms and names and powers and personalities of the Eternal and Infinite. A colourless monism or a pale vague transcendental Theism was not its beginning, its middle and its end. The one Godhead is worshipped as the All, for all in the universe is he, or made out of his being or his nature … Indian polytheism is not the popular polytheism of ancient Europe; for here the worshipper of many gods still knows that all his divinities are forms, names, personalities and powers of the One; his gods proceed from the one Purusha , his goddesses are energies of the one divine Force … Indian image-worship is not the idolatry of a barbaric or undeveloped mind, for even the most ignorant know that the image is a symbol and support and can throw it away when its use is over."

"Comparative theology is a two-edged weapon, and has so proved itself. But the Christian advocates, unabashed by evidence, force comparison in the serenest way; Christian legends and dogmas, they say, do somewhat resemble the heathen, it is true; but see, while the one teaches us the existence, powers, and attributes of an all-wise, all-good Father-God, Brahmanism gives us a multitude of minor gods, and Buddhism none whatever; one is fetishism and polytheism, the other bald atheism. Jehovah is the one true God, and the Pope and Martin Luther are His prophets! This is one edge of the sword, and this the other: Despite missions, despite armies, despite enforced commercial intercourse, the "heathen" find nothing in the teachings of Jesus -- sublime though some are -- that Christna and Gautama had not taught them before. And so, to gain over any new converts, and keep the few already won by centuries of cunning, the Christians give the "heathen" dogmas more absurd than their own, and cheat them by adopting the habit of their native priests, and practicing the very "idolatry and fetishism" which they so disparage in the "heathens." Comparative theology works both ways."

"When you come down to it, has there ever been a genuine polytheism? Even Homer supposes a sort of fundamental unity of the divine that permits the gods to identify themselves as gods, even when they dwell far from one another (Odyssey 5.79ff). What the [monotheistic] revelations bring is, rather, the end of a "cosmotheism" that makes no radical distinction between the divine and the physical."

"The remote dwellers upon the Ganges distinctly made known that future life about which Moses is silent or obscure, and that unity and Omnipotence of the Creator which were unknown to the polytheism of the Greek and Roman multitude, and to the dualism of Mithraic legislators, while Vyasa perhaps surpassed Plato in keeping the people tremblingly alive to the punishment which awaited evil deeds."

"The wise call the One Being by many names."

"Even the most humane and compassionate of the monotheisms and polytheisms are complicit in this quiet and irrational authoritarianism: they proclaim us, in Fulke Greville's unforgettable line, "Created sick — Commanded to be well." And there are totalitarian insinuations to back this up if its appeal should fail."

"Not at all similar are the race of the immortal gods and the race of men who walk upon the earth."

"It must appear impossible, that theism could, from reasoning, have been the primary religion of human race, and have afterwards, by its corruption, given birth to polytheism and to all the various superstitions of the heathen world. Reason, when obvious, prevents these corruptions: When abstruse, it keeps the principles entirely from the knowledge of the vulgar, who are alone liable to corrupt any principle or opinion."

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

"For atheism and polytheism there is no special problem of suffering, nor need there be for every kind of monotheism."

"The deepest difference between religions is not that between polytheism and monotheism."

"It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods."

"The Vedic approach, is perhaps the best. It gives unity without sacrificing diversity. In fact, it gives a deeper unity and a deeper diversity beyond the power of ordinary monotheism and polytheism. It is one with the yogic and the mystic approach... In this deeper approach, the distinction is not between a true One God and false Many Gods; it is between a true way of worship and a false way of worship. Wherever there is sincerity, truth and self-giving in worship, that worship goes to the true altar by whatever name we may designate it and in whatever way we may conceive it. But if it is not desireless, if it has ego, falsehood, conceit and deceit in it, then it is unavailing though it may be offered to the most true God, theologically speaking."

"The chief ideas underlying Japanese myth are, firstly, the conception—piecemeal it is true, and inadequate—of the so-called inanimate universe as being really instinct with sentient life, and exercising a loving providential care over mankind; and secondly, the doctrine that honour and obedience are due to the sovereign whose beneficent rule secures to the people blessings comparable to that of the sun's light and warmth. For such, I take it, is the real meaning of the story by which the Mikados are feigned to be descendants of the Sun-Goddess. It is the Japanese version of the doctrine of the divine right of kings. Without these and similar vital elements Japanese myth would be nothing more than what some writers have supposed it, a farrago of absurdities, and its examination would belong not to the physiology, but to the pathology of the human mind."

"Shintō, as a theanthropic religion, has culminated in Mikadoism or the Worship of the Mikado or Japanese Emperor, as a divinity, during his lifetime as well as after his death, even in the ethical stage of its religious development... Herein lies even at the present day, in my opinion, the essence or life of Shintō, inseparably connected with the national ideals of the Japanese people. Japanese patriotism or loyalty, as you might call it, really is not simple patriotism or mere loyalty, as understood in the ordinary sense of the word, i.e., in the mere ethical sense of the term, it is more—it is the lofty self-denying enthusiastic sentiment of the Japanese people towards their august Ruler, believed to be something divine, rendering them capable of offering up anything and everything, all dearest to them, willingly, i.e., of their own free will; of sacrificing not only their wealth or property, but their own life itself, for the sake of their divinely gracious Sovereign... all this is nothing but the actual manifestation of the religious consciousness of the Japanese people. This sentiment is truly characteristic of Shintō as a religion."

"Thus, we see that the essence or life of Shintō is even today expressed in the peculiar religious patriotism of the Japanese people glorifying their Emperor as the centre of faith. So we venture to define Shintō, whose vital essence has never been languished, but is, on the contrary, strongly and ceaselessly active in the heart and mind of the Japanese people, as follows:— The vital essence of Shintō manifests itself as an expression of the unique spirit of the national service of the Japanese people, which is not only mere morality but is their religion, culminating in Mikadoism or their own peculiar form of loyalty or patriotism towards the Emperor, who at once political head and religious leader in a government constitutional yet theocraticopatriarchal."

"We [i.e., the members of the Japanese race] who have been brought into existence through the creative spirits of the sacred ancestral kami are, each and every one, in spontaneous possession of the Way of the Gods. This means that we are equipped by nature with the virtues of reverence for the gods, for rulers and parents, with kindness toward wife and children, with the moral qualities which in Confucianism are called the five great ethical relationships (gorin) [i.e., those of ruler and subjects, parent and child, husband and wife, older and younger brothers, and friend with friend] and also with the five virtues (gojō) [i.e., benevolence, justice, propriety, wisdom, and faith], and to follow this nature just as it is, without bending or turning aside, is to conform to the teaching of the kami."

"There are ten or a dozen good definitions of Shintō in existence, all varying more or less according to the individual viewpoints of those attempting the elucidation. For example: Shintō is the indigenous religion of the Japanese people; it is the Way of the Gods; it is "kami-cult," a form of definition in which kami signifies the deities of Japan as distinct from those brought into the country through foreign contacts; it is pan-psychism or hylozoism; it is the racial spirit of the Japanese people (Yamato Damashii); it is the sacred ceremonies conducted before the kami; it is the essence of the principles of imperial rule; it is a system of correct social and political etiquette; it is the ideal national morality; it is a system of patriotism and loyalty centering in emperor worship (“Mikadoism”); it is, in its pure and original form, a nature worship; or, over against this, Shintō, correctly understood, is ancestor worship; or, again, it is an intermixture of the worship of nature and of ancestors; and, lastly, it is, in its earliest stages, a lower nature religion in which are merged elements of animism, naturism, and anthropolatry, evolving later into an advanced form of nature religion, and, finally, under the influence of Buddhism and Confucianism, achieving speculative and ethical components of a high order."

"It was the indigenous religion of the ancient Japanese people and, as such, potent to foster and preserve convictions of racial uniqueness and destiny. It possessed an ancient and independent literature and ritual. It was fed by deep undercurrents of tradition and folklore welling up from the unconscious depths of the national life. At its core was an ancestralism centering in a faith in the divine descent—and concomitantly the inalienable rights of suzerainty—of the Imperial Family. Shintō was manifestly indispensable to the unification of the disorganised country."

"Shintō, or Kamu-nagara, is a Way of Nature. This does not mean that it is a primitive and inferior nature worship. It means that Shintō is a spontaneous and real manifestation of the true nature of things, taking form in human affairs in proportion as this nature is given opportunity for sincere and unperverted expression. Thus, Shintō can be explained from the standpoint of the true, the good and the beautiful."

"The Truth of Shintō is to be seen in the inevitability of its underlying doctrine. This is apparent on consideration of the real significance of the great deities introduced in the oldest Yamato literature. Ame-no-Minaka-Nushi-no-Kami (‘‘The Deity Who is Lord of the Center of Heaven’’), the first god named in the Kojiki is correctly understood as the central existence of the universe, the primary source of all things, both animate and inert. All the phenomena presented to human senses are the manifestations in time of this absolute god. The Absolute functions in time in the form of the two-fold creation kami, Taka-Mimusubi-no-Kami and Kami-Musubi-no-Kami. These two beings represent activities of opposite kinds, from which the phenomenal world has had its rise. This positive-negative, or male-female, potency appears in Japanese history as the great father and mother of the race, Izanagi and Izanami, from whom is born the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu-Ōmikami, who in turn is the progenetrix of the Imperial Family and the Japanese people. Amaterasu-Ōmikami, in her position among the historical personages of Japan, is like the sun in heaven about which the planetary bodies revolve. The aptness of this solar metaphor accounts for the sun imagery of the early mythology. The statements just made point to undeniable facts in Japanese history. This is not a matter of mere chance or coincidence, but is so by inner necessity. This is the Truth of the Way of the Gods."

"Another distinguishing characteristic of Shintō lies in what may be called its corporateness. In many other religions men as individuals are set over against the gods. In Shintō we are merged with our fellowmen about us and with the unseen host of ancestors that have gone before us and, as a great spiritual body, united with the divine. We are made of one line with the kami through our ancestors. We are united, divine and human, past and present, into a totality of warp and woof, interpenetrated and coherent... There are three things that are inseparable: our race which is our ancestral inheritance, our country which is our racial home and our faith wherewith our loyalties are sustained. This is the true Way of the Gods."

"Shintō has been called the Wordless Way. This means that practice is more important than mere words, that the hand is mightier than the mouth, that deeds are weightier than rhetoric, that actualities are the greatest of arguments. This practical tendency reflects an inborn aptitude of the Japanese people. The finest expression of this passion for reality is in the patriotism with which we guard and promote the welfare of our country—a patriotism which, on the one hand, is centralized in devotion to our Imperial Family and which exalts our race and supports our homes and our magnificent national organization, on the other. All this is not a formal achievement, theoretically fostered with words, but is the natural registration of our racial characteristics, manifested in all its purity in the past, handed on unimpaired through our ancestors and maintained without flaw in the present. This is true Shintō."

"Our Japanese race thus passed through a great testing in the time of Jimmu Tennō. Thereby were fostered a spiritual stability that never yields no matter what the hardships, a strong racial capacity for unification, and a reverential and worshipful faith in the Emperor, exalted to a religious character. These have come down through two thousand six hundred years as the very core of the Japanese national spirit."

"He [The Emperor] is regarded as a living kami, loved and revered by the nation above all things on earth, and himself loving and protecting the nation, who are deemed sons of Kami Nagara and are entrusted to his care by the kami. This mutual understanding obtains between every individual Japanese and the Emperor. The Sovereign studies our needs and feels our sorrows. What more have we, then, to ask from the kami directly? Thus Shintō (doctrine of the kami) is kundō (doctrine of the Emperor), for Shintōism is Mikadoism; "the kamis will is the Emperor's will" is a maxim inscribed on the heart of every Japanese. Herein one may see the fountain-head of our patriotic spirit, whose marvellous activity has served to raise Japan in these fifty years to the level of the first-rate Powers of the world."

"Shintō, as is well known, is a combination by the Japanese of the worship of nature and of their own ancestors. But the character of the combination is ethnologically instructive. For a lack of psychic development has made of these seemingly diverse elements a homegeneous whole. Both, of course, are aboriginal instincts. Next to the fear of natural phenomena, in point of primitiveness, comes the fear of one's father; as children and savages show. But races, like individuals, tend to outgrow it as they develop. Now the suggestive thing about the Japanese people is that this passing phase of religion has been perpetuated. The Japanese have stayed boys. Filial respect continued, and, by very virtue of not becoming less, became more, till it filled not only the whole sphere of morals but expanded into the sphere of cosmogony. To the Japanese eye the universe itself took on the paternal look. Parental awe which these people under stood lent explanation to natural dread which they did not. Quite simply to their minds the thunder and the wind, the sunshine and the shower were the work not only of anthropomorphic beings but of beings ancestrally related to themselves. In short Shintō, their explanation of things in general, is nothing else than the patriarchal principle projected without perspective into the past, dilating with distance into deity."

"A "Naturefolk" learns by intimate contact with nature that there is a healing power in the flower and the grass, in the mountains and streams, in the rain and the clouds. He comes to see gods working in these phenomena, and if they are of divine origin do they not contain goodly qualities? Why seek afar for the divine? It is even in the objects around you. They are good and just. Why seek elsewhere for justice and goodness? So, to live a natural life is to be just and good. There is no evil in nature. What seems to be evil is the tipping of the balance scale. Evil is immoderation. All natural appetites are good and they become evil only when indulged in to excess. This is Shinto, the Way of the Gods, naïve primitive teaching aboriginal to the soil of Japan."

"Students of this religion have been struck with the simplicity of its doctrine. It enforces no especial moral code, embraces no philosophical ideas, and, moreover, it has no authoritative books to guide believers. Its one peculiar feature is the relation it holds towards the Imperial Family of Japan, whose ancestors are made the chief object of worship. This religion, if indeed it can rightly be called a religion at all, amounts to ancestor-worship—the apotheosis of the Japanese Imperial Family. This fact naturally brings about two results: one is that Shintō can never be propagated beyond the realms of the Japanese Emperor; the other, that it has helped to a very great extent the growth of the spirit of loyalty of Japanese subjects toward their head, and has enshrined the Imperial Family with such a degree of sacredness and reverence that it would be difficult to name another ruling family which is looked up to by its subjects with the same amount of loyal homage and submissive veneration. It is, indeed, a unique circumstance in the history of the nations that, during the two thousand five hundred years of its sway, the position of the Japanese Imperial Family as head of the whole nation has never once been disputed, nor even questioned, by the people. Of course, it is true that the dynasty has experienced many vicissitudes, but, although the actual government has at times been in the hands of powerful nobles and Shoguns, the throne has, nevertheless, been always kept sacred for the descendants of Jimmu, the first Emperor."

"Being good can never do without the effort to learn, step by step, and in real circumstances of life, how to separate religious and moral words from an expelling mechanism, one which demands human sacrifice, so as to make of them words of mercy which absolve, which loose, which allow creation to be brought to completion."

"Bacchus, as Dionysus, is of Indian origin. Cicero mentions him as a son of Thyone and Nisus. Dionusos means the god Dis from Mount Nys in India. Bacchus, crowned with ivy, or kissos, is Christna, one of whose names was Kissen. Dionysus is preeminently the deity on whom were centred all the hopes for future life; in short, he was the god who was expected to liberate the souls of men from their prisons of flesh. Orpheus, the poet-Argonaut, is also said to have come on earth to purify the religion of its gross, and terrestrial anthropomorphism, he abolished human sacrifice and instituted a mystic theology based on pure spirituality. Cicero calls Orpheus a son of Bacchus. It is strange that both seem to have originally come from India. At least, as Dionysus Zagreus, Bacchus is of undoubted Hindu origin. Some writers deriving a curious analogy between the name of Orpheus and an old Greek term, orphos, dark or tawny-colored, make him Hindu by connecting the term with his dusky Hindu complexion."

"The only religion that still demands human sacrifice is nationalism."

"In weaning pagan man from his primitive and bloodstained creeds of terror and human sacrifice the Church's supreme achievement was to domesticate and humanise the conception of Eternity. Everywhere he was confronted, in church and wayside shrine, with homely and familiar reminders of the Heaven he was enjoined to earn through the virtues of love, faith, compassion, humility, truthfulness, chastity, courtesy—virtues that came so hard and were so much needed by a passionate, hot-tempered, primitive people."

"It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization."

"There is a healthy and an unhealthy love of animals: and the nearest definition of the difference is that the unhealthy love of animals is serious. I am quite prepared to love a rhinoceros, with reasonable precautions: he is, doubtless, a delightful father to the young rhinoceroses. But I will not promise not to laugh at a rhinoceros. . . . I will not worship an animal. That is, I will not take an animal quite seriously: and I know why. Wherever there is Animal Worship there is Human Sacrifice. That is, both symbolically and literally, a real truth of historical experience."

"This is the fulfillment of statism. It is a state of mind that does not recognize any ego but that of the collective. For analogy one must go to the pagan practice of human sacrifice: when the gods called for it, when the medicine man so insisted, as a condition for prospering the clan, it was incumbent on the individual to throw himself into the sacrificial fire. In point of fact, statism is a form of paganism, for it is worship of an idol, something made by man. Its base is pure dogma."

"We favor keeping Hawai'i as a single, unified political entity as one of the States of the United States of America. We oppose partitioning the State of Hawai'i along racial or hereditary lines. We oppose creating any political subdivisions where members of any racial or ethnic group would have legally recognized supremacy of voting rights or property rights. We oppose seceding from the United States to create an independent nation of Hawai'i, or asking the United States to withdraw from Hawai'i... All humans are inherently equal, and should be treated equally by government under the law. A colorblind society need not be colorless. Equality provides a guarantee of fundamental fairness, allowing multicultural pluralism to thrive. Political unity supports cultural diversity. Hawai'i is a rainbow of colors and cultures, each beautiful and unique. Wouldn't that rainbow look weird if the colors were placed as thin stripes in separate parts of the sky? I am opposed to racial separatism. I am opposed to ethnic nationalism. And I speak on behalf of many ethnic Hawaiians who feel intimidated by the activists... The African-American civil rights movement succeeded, as my friends and I are now succeeding, by speaking truth to power, standing up for what's right, and using the courts when necessary to obtain justice. Like those activists, I too am descended from people who once were indigenous. My native, aboriginal ancestors practiced slavery and human sacrifice, and used clubs and spears against their opponents. Some parts of history are best left in the past. The people of Hawai'i are thoroughly intermarried and intermingled. We live, work, pray, and attend school side by side in the most racially integrated society in all of America. What history and the free choices of people have joined together, let not politicians and racist demagogues rip asunder. Support equality, unity, brotherhood, and aloha for all."

"The doctrine of the Declaration of Independence predicated upon the glory of man and the corresponding duty to society that the rights of citizens ought to be protected with every power and resource of the state, and a government that does any less is false to the teachings of that great document. False to the name 'American'. The assertion of human rights is not but a call of human sacrifice. This is yet the spirit of the American people. Only so long as this flame burns shall we endure, and the light of liberty be shed over the nations of the earth... When the people of the colonies were defending their liberties against the might of kings, they chose their banner from the design set in the firmament through all eternity. The flags of great empires of that day have gone, but the stars and stripes remain. It pictures a vision of a people whose eyes are turned to the rising dawn. It represents of the hope of a father for his posterity. It was never flaunted for the glory of royalty, but to be born under it is to be the child of a king, and to establish a home under it is to be the founder of a royal house. Alone of all flags, it expresses the sovereignty of the people which endures when all else passes away. Speaking with their voice, it has the sanctity of revelations. He who lives under it and disloyal to it is a traitor to the human race everywhere. What could be saved if the flag of the American nation were to perish?"

"Thinking of Helensburgh, J. G. Frazer Revises flayings and human sacrifice; Abo of the Celtic Twilight, St Andrew Lang Posts him a ten-page note on totemism And a coloured fairy book."

"So I was watching all the Katrina coverage and I got really angry at... Christians who didn't pray hard enough... It's their fucking fault. First off, they needed to pray against the people that were praying for Katrina to hit, because New Orleans is a den of sin and iniquity; an area where gay people dance! But now they have to pray double, and if they had just put that little effort up front, we could've avoided all of this. I think it's time we take a lesson from history, and return to human sacrifice."

"“The Umnians did make their own jewelry, though, which largely consisted of scenes of human sacrifice, badly executed in every sense of the word. They were incredibly inventive in that area. A theocracy, of course,” he added, with a shrug. “I don’t know what it is about stepped pyramids that brings out the worst in a god…”"

"The precursors to a civilization that’s going under are the same, time and time again. … What's human sacrifice if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?"

"Even taking Sanderson’s pessimistic estimate as correct, does this mean that Léopold’s rule “killed” 500,000 people? Of course not, because, in addition to the misplaced personalization of long-term population changes, the rubber regions, as mentioned, experienced both population increases and declines. Even in the latter, such as the rubber-producing Bolobo area in the lower reaches of the Congo river, population decline was a result of the brutalities of freelance native chiefs and ended with the arrival of an EIC officer. More generally, the stability and enforced peace of the EIC caused birth rates to rise near EIC centers, such as at the Catholic mission under EIC protection at Baudouinville (today’s Kirungu). Population declines were in areas outside of effective EIC control. The modest population gains caused by EIC interventions were overwhelmed by a range of wholly separate factors, which in order of importance were: the slave trade, sleeping sickness, inter-tribal warfare, other endemic diseases (smallpox, beriberi, influenza, yellow fever, pneumonia, dysentery, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and venereal disease), cannibalism, and human sacrifice."

"Humans kill one another – and in some cases themselves – for many reasons, but none is more human than the attempt to make sense of their lives. More than the loss of life, they fear loss of meaning."

"On the other hand ⁠— or maybe at the same time ⁠— we can also expect that, among the powerful and among the rest of us, there will be calls to reject the “return to normal,” but in order to embrace something even worse. It is likely that the chaos and deaths of the pandemic will be blamed on too much democracy, liberalism and empathy. Now that states are flexing their muscles and taking full command of society, there will be many who do not want the sleeve to be rolled back down. We may yet see, in this crisis, the use of repressive force on civilians ⁠— as it is already being used on migrants and incarcerated people ⁠— and I fear that it will be seen by many as justified, a to feed the Gods of fear. In the wake of the pandemic we can be sure that fascists and will seek to mobilize tropes of ⁠— racial, national, economic ⁠— purity, purification, parasitism, and pollution to impose their long-festering dreams on reality. The vengeful romance of the border, now more politicized than ever, will haunt all of us in the years to come. The “new” authoritarians, whether they emphasize the totalitarian state or the totalitarian market ⁠— or both ⁠— will insist that we all recognize we now live ⁠— have always lived ⁠— in a ruthless, competitive world and must take measures to wall ourselves in and cast out the undesirable."

"After months of chaos, isolation and fear, the desire to return to normal, even if normal is an abusive system, may be extremely strong. The stage is set for this desire to be accompanied by a frantic . Will we want someone to blame, especially those of us who lose loved ones? Must there be blood, figurative or literal?: a baptism by fire so that the old order ⁠— which, of course, created the conditions of austerity and inequality that made this plague so devastating⁠ — can be reborn in purified form. Of course, things will never be "normal" again: some of us, the privileged and wealthy, may be afforded the illusion, but this illusion is likely to be carried on the backs of the vast majority who will work harder, longer and for less, suffer greater risks and fewer rewards. The debts of the pandemic, literal and figurative, will have to be repaid. On the other hand ⁠— or maybe at the same time ⁠— we can also expect that, among the powerful and among the rest of us, there will be calls to reject the "return to normal," but in order to embrace something even worse. It is likely that the chaos and deaths of the pandemic will be blamed on too much democracy, liberalism and empathy. Now that states are flexing their muscles and taking full command of society, there will be many who do not want the sleeve to be rolled back down. We may yet see, in this crisis, the use of repressive force on s ⁠— as it is already being used on migrants and incarcerated people ⁠— and I fear that it will be seen by many as justified, a to feed the Gods of fear. In the wake of the pandemic we can be sure that fascists and will seek to mobilize tropes of ⁠— racial, national, economic ⁠— purity, purification, parasitism, and pollution to impose their long-festering dreams on reality."

"I'm sure one reason that so many Greek myths deal with terrifying, powerful women — Medea, Electra, the Erinyes, the Bacchae, — is that at some point in the misty past, women held a power that was terrifying — terrifying not because they were women whom men felt threatened by, but because they wielded that power in terrifying rituals that almost certainly involved human sacrifice. This would not be a popular platform on which to base a feminist agenda."

"Convinced republican that I am, and foe of the prince who talks to plants and wants to be crowned "head of all faiths" as well as the etiolated Church of England, I find myself pierced by a pang of sympathy. Not much of a life, is it, growing old and stale with no real job except waiting for the news of Mummy's death? Some British people claim actually to "love" their rather dumpy Hanoverian ruling house. This love takes the macabre form of demanding a regular human sacrifice whereby unexceptional people are condemned to lead wholly artificial and strained existences, and then punished or humiliated when they crack up."

"I admit that there are many good things in the New Testament, and if we take from that book the dogmas of eternal pain, of infinite revenge, of the atonement, of human sacrifice, of the necessity of shedding blood; if we throw away the doctrine of non-resistance, of loving enemies, the idea that prosperity is the result of wickedness, that poverty is a preparation for Paradise, if we throw all these away and take the good, sensible passages, applicable to conduct, then we can make a fairly good moral guide, — narrow, but moral. Of course, many important things would be left out. You would have nothing about human rights, nothing in favor of the family, nothing for education, nothing for investigation, for thought and reason, but still you would have a fairly good moral guide. On the other hand, if you would take the foolish passages, the extreme ones, you could make a creed that would satisfy an insane asylum. If you take the cruel passages, the verses that inculcate eternal hatred, verses that writhe and hiss like serpents, you can make a creed that would shock the heart of a hyena. It may be that no book contains better passages than the New Testament, but certainly no book contains worse. Below the blossom of love you find the thorn of hatred; on the lips that kiss, you find the poison of the cobra. The Bible is not a moral guide. Any man who follows faithfully all its teachings is an enemy of society and will probably end his days in a prison or an asylum."

"Judo should be free as art and science from any external influences, political, national, racial, and financial or any other organized interest. And all things connected with it should be directed to its ultimate object, the "Benefit of Humanity". Human sacrifice is a matter of ancient history."

"Neumann assumes for the whole region of the Mediterranean a universally adopted religion of the Great Mother Goddess around 4000 BC, which was revived about 2000 BC, and spread through the whole of the then known world. In this religion the Great Goddess was worshiped as creator, as Lady of men, beasts and plants, as liberator and as symbol of transcendent spiritual transformation. The Indus civilization also belonged to that tradition in which the cult of the Great Goddess was prominent. Numerous terracotta figurines have been found: images of the Mother Goddess of the same kind that are still worshiped in Indian villages today. Several representations on seals that appear connected with the worship of the Great Goddess also exist. On one of these we see a nude female figure lying upside down with outspread legs, a plant issuing from her womb. On the reverse there is a man with a sickle-shaped knife before a woman who raises her arms in supplication. “Obviously it depicts a human sacrifice to the Earth Goddess.” The connections between !"ktism, Mohenjo-Daro civilization, and Mediterranean fertility cults seem to be preserved even in the name of the Great Mother: “Um" for her peculiar name, her association with a mountain and her mount, a lion, seems to be originally the same as the Babylonian Ummu or Umma, the Arcadian Ummi, the Dravidian Umma, and the Skythian Ommo, which are all mother goddesses. The name Durg" seems to be traceable to Truqas, a deity mentioned in the Lydian inscriptions of Asia Minor. There is a common mythology of Great Mother: she was the first being in existence, a Virgin. Spontaneously she conceived a son, who became her consort in divinity. With her son-consort she became the mother of the gods and all life. Therefore we find the Goddess being worshiped both as Virgin and Mother”(2000:188-189). quoted from Kazanas, N. (2015). Vedic and IndoEuropean studies. Aditya Prakashan."

"He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream. He could not force himself to understand how banks functioned and so forth, because all the operations of capitalism were as meaningless to him as the rites of a primitive religion, as barbaric, as elaborate, and as unnecessary. In a human sacrifice to deity there might be at least a mistaken and terrible beauty; in the rites of the moneychangers, where greed, laziness, and envy were assumed to move all men’s acts, even the terrible became banal."

"One young man summed things up towards the desperate, tired end. "Is there any policy you can offer me that would positively impact my life?" he whinnied. The sense of hurt entitlement and rage: me, me, me. Is Sunak a political vending machine? That's where politics is now: give me what I demand at all times."

"One of the complaints leveled against me is, "Oh, Bill, you're such a meanie. Why do you have to go after religion? It gives people comfort; it doesn't hurt anything." Okay, well, other than most wars, the Crusades, the Inquisition, 9/11, arranged marriages to minors, blowing up girls' schools, the suppression of women and homosexuals, fatwas, ethnic cleansing, honor rape, human sacrifice, burning witches, suicide bombings, condoning slavery, and the systematic fucking of children, there's a few little things I have a problem with."

"But now that the Christian influence has diminished in India, the old tantric cult is coming back openly on the surface. There are around fifty-two known centers in India where tantra is taught and practiced. In its crudest forms, it includes worship of sex organs, sex orgies which include drinking of blood and human semen, black magic, human sacrifice and contact with evil spirits through dead and rotting bodies in cremation grounds, etc."

"“I'm not optimistic,” he said. “The issue clearly flies in the face of the First Amendment. People have a right to tell kids whatever they want about religion.” “Do they have a right to push human sacrifice?” “Of course not, Mac. But this isn’t human sacrifice. It’s just a church school.” “I'm not sure the effect isn’t similar.”"

"First Moloch, horrid King besmear’d with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents tears, Though for the noyse of Drums and Timbrels loud Their childrens cries unheard, that past through fire To his grim Idol. Him the Ammonite Worshipt in Rabba and her watry Plain, In Argob and in Basan, to the stream Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart Of Solomon he led by fraud to build His Temple right against the Temple of God On that opprobrious Hill, and made his Grove The pleasant Vally of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna call’d, the Type of Hell."

"We’ll look back on this 50 to 100 years from now — we’ll shake our heads and say, “What were people thinking? They took these people who were very nearly viable, just barely dysfunctional, and they put them in an oven or buried them under the ground, when there were people who could have put them into cryopreservation." I think we’ll look at this just as we look today at slavery, beating women, and human sacrifice, and we’ll say, “this was insane — a huge tragedy.""

"“People always talk about human sacrifice as if it were an unusual and aberrant activity,” she said thoughtfully. “Over the centuries, it’s really been fairly common in a number of societies. Think about it. There’re a number of religions in the United States whose worship centers on a particular human sacrifice.” She glanced at me. “Jesus Christ on the cross,” I said slowly. “Certainly. Thousands of people consume Christ’s body and blood each Sunday.” “That’s different.” She shrugged. “Not really. Christ died long ago in a faraway place, and that might make it seem different. His worshipers claimed he was God incarnate, but the Aztecs claimed the same for the god-king they sacrificed. It happened only once, and that speaks for moderation on the part of the Christians, but that’s not a fundamental difference, just one of degree.”"

"Obavva, the wife of a bugler who had just returned home from duty for his supper, had come out to fetch drinking water from a freshwater pond that flowed near this passage. To her horror, she noticed mysterious movements near the passage and realized that in single file the enemy’s soldiers were entering the fort. Not wanting to disturb her husband who was in the middle of his meal, she picked up a domestic pestle (onake in Kannada) that was there nearby and hid in the darkness around the secret entrance. As each soldier of the Mysorean army tried to wriggle his way out of the passage and enter the fort, she smashed his skull with her pestle and dragged his corpse away, waiting for her next victim to emerge. In this manner, Obavva slew several soldiers and a heap of bodies accumulated near the passage by the time her husband stepped out looking for his wife who had promised to return with some water to drink. He was horrified by the scene that he saw there; his wife had become the very incarnation of the goddess atop the fort who the Bedars propitiated with human sacrifice. He sounded the bugle alarm and the troops sallied out to defend the fort against the besiegers. Some of the besiegers took their revenge by stabbing Obavva from behind and her story was thus immortalized in local folklore and popular culture as ‘Onake Obavva’ or the lady with the pestle."

"I admire Octavio Paz very much... but I don't but I don't agree with one of his theses about Mexican history. He maintains that the Plaza of the Three Cultures is a place of sacrifices, and that because we have Aztec ancestors we are condemned cyclically to slaughter a great number of people. This thesis is highly debatable... It's not possible to say that because we carry within us the potential for human sacrifice, we retain across the years the need to kill."

"I strongly recommend that all read the autobiography of St. Theresa. In spite of the fact that this work went through the "spiritual" censorship of the Church, some amazing pages have been preserved. By propagating the dogma of Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God, the Church contradicts the very sense of the prayer given to us by Jesus Christ himself, "Our Father which art in heaven." And also the words of the Scriptures, "So God created man in his own image." (Genesis 1:27) Thus, by claiming the exclusiveness of sonship and divine origin for Jesus Christ, the Church, by that very claim, forever divorced him from mankind. From this came a whole train of grave events; the exclusion of Jesus Christ from the life of humanity, the obliteration of his human Sacrifice and the awful suggestion implying that the death of Christ on the Cross saved humanity from "original" sin (?!) and from all subsequent sins."

"In spite of the mistakes and crimes that mark its origin, colonization has in the end brought more than disadvantages to the subjugated peoples. It has banned Canibalism, slavery, human sacrifice and the tyranny of barbarian potentates, a relative prosperity has replaced the horrible misery in which bodies withered and souls degenerate. No doubt one generation had to pay dearly for the institution of the foreign guardianship; but a longer series of generations have been able to reap the benefits of the renewed policies that have come into effect as a result."

"In pursuit of this goal, the state curriculum encouraged teachers to lead their students in a series of indigenous songs, chants, and affirmations, including the 'In Lak Ech Affirmation,' which appealed directly to the Aztec gods. Students clapped and chanted to the deity Tezkatlipoka—whom the Aztecs traditionally worshipped with human sacrifice and cannibalism—asking him for the power to become 'warriors' for 'social justice.' As the chant came to a climax, students performed a supplication for 'liberation, transformation, [and] decolonization,' after which they asked the gods for the power of 'critical consciousness.'"

"It is only when we think abstractly that we have such a high opinion of man. Of men in the concrete, most of us think the vast majority very bad. Civilized states spend more than half their revenue on killing each other's citizens. Consider the long history of the activities inspired by moral fervour: human sacrifices, persecutions of heretics, witch-hunts, pogroms leading up to wholesale extermination by poison gases ... Are these abominations, and the ethical doctrines by which they are prompted, really evidence of an intelligent Creator? And can we really wish that the men who practised them should live for ever? The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident; but if it is the outcome of a deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis."

"But just because we're conditioned to view some things as disgusting and immoral doesn't mean that some things aren't, in actual point of fact, disgusting and immoral. Human sacrifice, for instance. Or cannibalism. Or Ann Coulter."

"Greeks and Romans alike engaged openly in a variety of sanctioned atrocities, including adult human sacrifice. ...according to ...Cicero, human sacrifice was not restricted to the western Phoenicians but was widely accepted among Mediterranean societies as a pious act that would please the gods."

"“Our religion is based upon eschewing human sacrifice in favor of lives that are fulfilling, productive, and joyful.” Startled, Ellin cried, “Human sacrifice! I am surprised you can think of such a thing!” D’Jevier said with unfeigned weariness, “My dear young woman, our history is made up of millennia of human sacrifice. Well into the twenty-first century, huge armies of young men were sacrificed to tribal or national honor, women were sacrificed to male supremacy, children were sacrificed to brutality, all immolated in flames of painful duty. We try to determine whether the dutiful will suffer and to decide how that suffering may be compensated. We continually redesign our society to provide joy to those who incur pain on our behalf.”"

"Everything about our present system of punishments and about all criminal law will be thought of by future generations in the same way that we think of cannibalism or human sacrifice to the pagan gods. “How did they not see the uselessness and cruelty of those things which they did?” our descendants will say about us."

"Nowhere in recorded history has an awareness of the short-and long-term Earth-sky polyrhythms been as advanced and integrated into cultural life as in the knowledge and beliefs of the ancient Mesoamericans, and in particular the classic Maya of Central America, who flourished between AD 300 and 900. Maya felt that we owed our existence to Venus who they called Kukulcan and their astronomer-priests repaid the debt with the blood of human sacrifice. Unfortunately, almost everything we know about the Maya’s sophisticated and complex system of Venus observations/ computations/prediction/worship comes from only four books that escaped the book-burning frenzy of the invading Christians. Included in this meticulously painted bark paper books is an abundance of astronomical information, including table of solar and lunar motions and table of Venus ephemeris, or table of motions, which is accurate for over a hundred years. The entire Mayan calendar, as were those of all Mesoamerican civilizations, was based on the 260-days Venus appearance interval. The 260-day Mayan calendar is still in use today in many areas of Guatemala. The 260-day Venus interval and the 365-day year come into phase every 18,980 days, or 53 years."

"When war and human sacrifice of the many have been banished, as that of the individual has been, eyes will be opened and ears unstopped, and men and women will understand all the wrongs of Society, and work together, nations with nations."

"The idea of the saint is the exact opposite of the priest in service of the Holy. The priest is a functionary of the Holy;' there is no Holy without its officials, without the bureaucratic machinery supporting it, organizing its ritual, from the Aztecs' official of human sacrifice to the modern sacred state or army rituals. The saint on the contrary, occupies the object petit a , of pure object, of somebody undergoing radical subjective destitution. He... enacts no ritual, he conjures nothing, he just persists in his inert presence."