From: rjb@milton.u.washington.edu (LeGrand Cinq-Mars)
Subject: Re: Animal Sacrifice (was: Re: Raising Satanic children)
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 20:54:21 GMT

_Animal Sacrifice in Rhetoric, Metaphor and Praxis:   
Dromenon and Legomenon in the Laboratory._  M. 
Robartes and O. Aherne, in Supplement XV 
(Postmodern Studies in Animals and Society), 
Zeitschrift fuer Elvisforschung, 1992.  418pp, with 
plates.

The authors claim that in Western culture the 
relationship between animal sacrifice and the 
gaining of knowledge (what we now know as science) 
is archaic, continuous, and perhaps ineradicable.

In a brief introductory chapter they survey of the 
use of animal sacrifice in the pre-Classical world 
as a way of obtaining oracular knowledge.  They 
consider the examination of animal entrails 
paradigmatic for the laboratory sciences, and 
suggest that the difference between a laboratory 
worker and a haruspex is largely one of decor.  
They also discuss what is known of the non-
Classical Western world, taking as the centerpiece 
of their discussion the link between sacrifice and 
knowledge in the North, as shown in the rites of 
Odin.

Their second chapter looks at specific Classical 
instances of animal sacrifice and its relationship 
with learning.  Pythagoras, for example, vegetarian 
though he was, is reported to have sacrificed oxen 
when he discovered his Theorem, , and Socrates, 
just before his final promotion (the authors 
suggest he was in fact kicked upstairs in a 
maneuver engineered by jealous colleagues), asked 
one of his colleagues to sacrifice a cock (a 
rooster, Americans) for him to Aesculapius.  In the 
late classical world, a key academic ceremony of 
the Mithraic school was the Taurobolium, the 
baptism of the graduate student in the blood 
pouring from the throat of a bull.  With an 
impressive display of interdisciplinary erudition, 
the authors devote an appendix uniting Classical 
studies with library science to show that 
disposition of the large amount of bull that 
remained after the ceremony was as much a problem 
then as it is now.

In a more controversial third chapter, the authors 
develop the thesis that the opposition of 
Christianity to animal sacrifice was directly 
related to the stagnation of sciences during the 
long dark period of Christian domination.  Their 
fourth chapter follows up on this by tracking the 
parallel increase in the sacrificial use of animals 
and in the liberation of science from the trammels 
of obscurantist custom and tradition.  Perhaps the 
key figure for the authors' thesis here is Edward 
A. Crowley, Provost of Discipline, and associate 
professor of Psychoexperimental Behaviorism at a 
well-known Invisible University, who published the 
results of a protracted study carried out on an 
island in the Hudson River.  In it, he reported 
that he had "crucified a toad in the basilisk 
abode."  This procedure seems to have involved 
crucifying a living toad as part of the Aeonial 
Transfer Process through which Dr. Crowley has 
become so well known.  The authors have some 
difficulty dealing with the fact that one of Dr. 
Crowley's mentors, Professor Stuart Mathers, 
published editions of several classical laboratory 
manuals in which he specifically recommended 
against procedures involving live animals, though 
Dr. Mathers seemed to have felt that egg-white 
could acceptably be used.  Dr. Mathers was a 
confirmed anti-vivisectionist whose opposition to 
the use of animals in research even led him to make 
attempts on the lives of several well-known 
researchers.  He is reported, for example, to have 
taken credit for Pasteur's death.  The authors 
conclude that Mathers was a gifted researcher whose 
potential was crippled by his adherence to an 
outdated paradigm.  The assurance with which they 
reach this conclusion is however weakened by what 
seems to be an almost conscious sense that they 
have simply begged the question.

Their final chapter gets back on track with  an 
analysis of the rhetoric of sacrifice that pervades 
the experimental literature.  (As in, "Animals in 
the experimental condition were sacrificed at 10, 
15, and 25 days.")  In a concluding 
deconstructionist set-piece, they then bring all 
their material to a new focus by developing the 
thesis that sacrifice does not exist for the sake 
of knowledge, but knowledge for the sake of 
sacrifice.  It is the will to sacrifice that is 
primary:  knowledge is the myth that legitimizes 
it.  They point out that the metaphorical union of 
knowledge and sacrifice has intensified as consumer 
culture in general has intensified:  that knowledge 
justifies sacrifice in the same way that goods 
justify shopping, but that although the central act 
in each realm is one of "giving up" a resource, one 
realm is privileged as "male," and "adult," while 
the other is marginalized as "female" and 
"adolescent."  With a certain understandable 
bitterness, the authors indicate the academic 
parallels:  the fields in which animals or humans 
are sacrificed have the highest status (medicine, 
life sciences, sports, or the destructive 
sciences), while the fields characterized by pure 
spending on possessions (Classical studies in 
general, for example, in which the student must 
acquire very expensive texts the use of which poses 
only the minimal danger of, say, a possible hernia) 
are marginalized and neglected.  In a "Utopian 
Postscript," the authors take this even further 
with the suggestion that true multi-culturalism 
would involve giving the "culture of spending" 
equal representation with the "culture of 
sacrifice."  Among the plates, by the way, there is 
a self referential sequence in which the authors 
are shown coordinating the poles of this dichotomy 
in a magical rite dedicated to the success of their 
monograph (by buying a puppy at a pet shop in a 
mall, and sacrificing it on an altar improvised on 
a suburban stone barbecue).  Fortunately for the 
squeamish, the plates are not in color.

Verdict:  get this through interlibrary loan, if 
you can find any library that admits to having it.  

--LeGrand
Xref: sparky alt.satanism:1357 talk.religion.misc:7124