Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

As the first great civilisations developed in various parts of the world, in Sumer, Egypt and India, for example, the core symbolism – of the Great Goddess, the Bull, and sacred stones – developed and proliferated, taking on many different forms. Among early Indian gods, for example, Indra was constantly compared to a bull.⁶ In Iran the sacrifice of bulls was frequent.⁷ Bull gods were also worshipped in parts of Africa and Asia. In the Akkadian religion in early Mesopotamia the bull was a symbol of power and at Tel Khafaje (near modern Baghdad) the image of a bull was found next to that of the ‘Goddess Mother’.⁸ The main god of the early Phoenician religion was known as shor (‘bull’) and as El (‘merciful bull’). According to Mircea Eliade ‘the bull and Great Goddess was one of the elements that united all the proto-historic religions of Europe, Africa and Asia.’⁹ Among the Dravidian tribes of central India, there developed a custom whereby the heir of a man who had just died had to place by his tomb, within four days, a vast stone, nine or ten feet high. The stone was intended to ‘fasten down’ the dead man’s soul.¹⁰ In many cultures of the Pacific, stones represent either gods, heroes or ‘the petrified spirits of ancestors’. The Khasis of Assam believed that cromlechs, circular alignments, were ‘female’ stones, representing the Great Mother of the clan and that the menhirs, standing stones, were the ‘male’ variety.

Sacrifice may also have begun in a less cruel way, beginning at a time when grain was the main diet, and meat-eating still relatively rare. Animals may have been worshipped, and eating one was a way of incorporating the god’s powers. This is inferred from the Greek word thusia, which has three overlapping meanings: violent, excited motion; smoke; and sacrifice.¹¹ But sowing and reaping are the focal points of the agricultural drama, and these are invariably associated with ritual.¹² In many cultures, for example, the first seeds are not sown but thrown down alongside the furrow as an offering to the gods.¹³ By the same token, the last few fruits were never taken from the tree, a few tufts of wool were always left on the sheep and the farmer, when drawing water from a well, would always put back a few drops ‘so that it will not dry up’.¹⁴

Already, we have here the concept of self-denial, of sacrificing part of one’s share, in order to nourish, or propitiate, the gods. Elsewhere (and this is a practice that stretches from Norway to the Balkans) the last ears of wheat were fashioned into a human figure: sometimes this would be thrown into the next field to be harvested, sometimes it would be kept until the following year, when it would be burned and the ashes thrown on the ground before sowing, to ensure fertility.¹⁵ Records show that human sacrifice was offered for the harvest by certain peoples of central and north America, some parts of Africa, a few Pacific islands, and a number of Dravidian tribes of India.¹⁶ Apart from the Khonds, the Aztecs of Mexico showed the process most clearly, for a young girl was beheaded at the temple of the maize god in a ceremony performed when the crop was just ripe. Only after the ceremony was performed could the maize be reaped and eaten – before that it was sacred and couldn’t be touched. One can imagine why sacrifice, which began in holding back a few ears of corn, should grow increasingly elaborate, and seemingly cruel. Each time the harvest failed, and famine ensued, primitive peoples would have imagined the gods were displeased, unpropitiated, and so they would have redoubled their efforts, adding to their customs, increasing the amount of self-denial, in an attempt to redress the balance.¹⁷