From: sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer)
Subject: Peace-loving Paradise of the Goddess
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 92 03:17:13 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 


        
             Given our Euro-centric orientation, we tend to think of  the 
        ancient  "Goddess"  societies as having been  replaced  by  Indo-
        European  civilization. However, in other parts of  Eurasia,  the 
        Goddess-worshiping  societies continued more or  less  unmolested 
        until  very  recent  times. I came across  the  following  rather 
        alarming passage recently: it seems that, far from the  'blissful 
        paradise  of gentle femininity', the  Goddess-oriented  societies 
        were   extremely  bloodthirsty,  and  required   frequent   human 
        sacrifice.  (Loren,  following Gimbutas, concedes  that  the  Old 
        European  Goddess-worshipers probably practiced human  sacrifice, 
        but  apparently  only  when under extreme  duress,  like  when  a 
        recovering alcoholic falls off the wagon.) 
        
             From  the following passages, I think you'll agree  that  as 
        good  skeptics, we would have to conclude that the *most  likely* 
        reconstruction  of the "Goddess societies" of "Old Europe"  would 
        be  to  assume  them  more or less  like  the  surviving  Goddess 
        cultures  described  below, and not as  some  peaceful  "paradise 
        lost."
        
        
        
                     From "Human Sacrifice" by Nigel Davies. 
                (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1981, chapt. 5)
        
        
             ...in turning to India, we enter a new dimension in terms of 
        sacrifice.  Up  to  this point we have  studied  principally  the 
        peoples of the Ancient Near East and their descendants, the Jews, 
        the  Greeks and the Romans, who at least reduced the shedding  of 
        human  blood, even where it did not disappear. But in most  other 
        parts of the world, alien to the Greek and Christian  traditions, 
        nothing of the kind occurred. Whether in India, South-East  Asia, 
        Oceania,  Africa or pre-Columbian America, the slaying of men  to 
        placate the gods went on unabated until the advent of  Europeans, 
        whose cruelties were of another kind. In many lands, such as West 
        Africa,  or  Aztec  Mexico, sacrifice rose to  a  crescendo  that 
        appalled the first white intruders. The same forces seem to  have 
        been  at  work in India where the toll of  victims  had  probably 
        reached  a  low  point some two thousand  years  earlier  in  the 
        Buddhist era but had risen again to record levels by the time the 
        British  came  on the scene. The forms of  sacrifice  which  they 
        encountered  were so numerous that I prefer to concentrate  on  a 
        few of the more exotic rites, such as those of the Khonds of  the 
        north or the Thugs of Bengal. Suttee, the burning of widows, will 
        be considered in the following chapter on ritual suicide.
             At  times  rites to honour the Mother  Goddess  assumed  the 
        proportions  of  a  mass sacrifice. In  Assam,  in  north-eastern 
        India, when Rajah Nara Narayana rebuilt his temple in 1565  A.D., 
        he  celebrated the occasion by sacrificing one hundred and  forty 
        men, whose heads he offered to Kali on copper plates since he did 
        not  have enough gold to go around. The choice of volunteers  and 
        conscripts  to provide heads for Kali was rather  haphazard.  The 
        volunteers  were known as Bhogis; they were loaded with  favours, 
        and  until the annual festival of the goddess ended  their  days, 
        every woman was at their disposal. But when willing victims  were 
        lacking,  any  man of sound health and body caught  abroad  after 
        midnight might be snatched away for the purpose.....
        
             Of all the human offerings that survived into the nineteenth 
        century,  among  the  most bizarre were those of  the  Khonds  of 
        Orissa, an ancient tribe descended from the Dravidian peoples who 
        had lived in northern India before they were pushed southwards by 
        the  Arians in  1500 b.c. Their ritual has been  immortalized  by 
        Frazer,  whose  vivid  account was gleaned from  the  reports  of 
        British  officers. These rites were plainly linked to harvest  or 
        fertility,  and  served  as a perfect  example  of  Frazer's  own 
        theories. The Khonds offered men to the Earth Goddess Tari Pennu. 
        In particular they were thought necessary to ensure good crops of 
        tumeric; without the shedding of human blood and the planting  of 
        human flesh in the fields, the dye made from the plant would lose 
        its  deep red colour. The victims used were known as Meriahs  and 
        the goddess demanded that they should either have been bought  in 
        early  infancy or have been destined to this fate from birth,  as 
        sons of future victims who were kept alive specially in order  to 
        breed  more  Meriahs.  Those children not born  as  Meriahs  were 
        usually  bought  from the Pans, a weaving  tribe,  who  kidnapped 
        infants  from the plains for the purpose. During the  long  years 
        that the Meriahs were kept before they were given to the goddess, 
        they were pampered and shown every kindness, They were even given 
        lands  and  wives, with whom they had the children who  in  their 
        turn were one day to be sacrificed.
             Ten  or twelve days before the annual ceremony,  the  chosen 
        victim  had his hair shorn. Several nights of reveling  followed, 
        after which, on the night before the great event, he was  dressed 
        in  a  new  robe and led forth from the village  with  music  and 
        dancing in solemn procession to the Meriah grove, a clump of high 
        trees  situated  at a short distance and untouched  by  any  axe. 
        Great crowds gathered to see the sacrifice; as in Ancient Mexico, 
        no one stayed at home; everyone, men, women, and children had  to 
        be present. In the grove the Meriah was tied to a post,  anointed 
        with  oil and tumeric, adorned with flowers and revered as a  god 
        throughout  the day. The crowd danced round the  post,  addressed 
        the  earth  and said : "Oh god, we offer this sacrifice  to  you; 
        give us good crops, seasons and health". During this time  people 
        struggled  wildly for the tiniest relic from the Meriah's  person 
        including  even a drop of his spittle. In some  villages,  before 
        reaching  the  grove, he was taken round from door  to  door  and 
        people  would pluck a single hair from his head, The mode of  the 
        Meriah's  death  varied  from one village  to  the  next,  though 
        everywhere  the  principle was the same: it had to  be  slow  and 
        painful; as in Mexico, he must not make a show of resistance  and 
        was often dosed with a potent drug.




-- 
  
        Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - sheaffer@netcom.com
  
 Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized!

     "In the 1970's the world will undergo famines - hundreds of millions
     of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs 
     embarked upon now ... in 1985, when it is calculated [under the most
     optimistic scenario] that the major die-back will be over, ..."
       
                       Dr. Paul Ehrlich, "The Population Bomb," 1968

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