Knowra Sacrifice Sacrifice Sacrifice is a ritual act in which an offering is consecrated or destroyed to establish or transform relations with sacred powers. It can involve animals, plants, food, objects, or human beings.
Sacrificial offering : An object, food, plant, or living being presented in a ritual to sacred powers. The offering is the material focus through which sacrifice makes a relationship with sacred powers.
Vedic yajna : A Vedic ritual offering in which priests present substances to deities through fire. Yajna makes fire the medium linking offerings, priests, and divine recipients.
Prehistoric ritual : Ritual practices attested or inferred from archaeological evidence before written records. Archaeological deposits raise questions about ritual offerings before textual accounts of sacrifice.
Prayer : A religious practice of addressing or attending to a deity or sacred reality. Prayer can seek divine attention without presenting or transforming a material offering.
Scapegoat mechanism : A theory that groups channel conflict onto a victim and restore unity through the victim's expulsion or death. René Girard used sacrifice to explain how violence can contain further communal violence.
Consecration : A ritual act that sets a person, place, or object apart for sacred use. Consecration can transform an ordinary offering into something reserved for sacred powers.
Greek animal sacrifice : A Greek civic and religious rite in which an animal was offered and its meat often shared. Its division of animal portions connects divine offering with community feasting.
Göbekli Tepe : A monumental Neolithic site in southeastern Turkey, built before the region's earliest known farming villages. Its animal imagery and feasting evidence inform debates about ritual before settled agriculture.
Almsgiving : The voluntary giving of money or goods to people in need, often as a religious duty. Unlike sacrifice, almsgiving directs resources to human recipients rather than sacred powers.
René Girard : A French historian and literary critic known for theories of mimetic desire and sacrificial violence. Girard argued that sacrificial practices redirect conflict toward a victim.
Show all 28