Many creation myths involve self-sacrifice by gods or ancient beings. In an early Hindu myth, Purusha (pronounced POOR-uh-shuh) is the primal being who allows himself to be dismembered so that creation can take place. His eye becomes the sun, his head the sky, his breath the wind, and so on. Purusha became a symbol of the acts of sacrifice that kept the heavens stable. The mythology of the Aztecs of central Mexico told how two of the gods formed the universe by splitting a goddess in half, so that one part of her became the sky and the other part became the earth. The Aztecs performed large-scale rites of human sacrifice as a way of repaying the goddess and the other deities for the violence and sacrifice of creation. In Norse mythology, Odin (pronounced OH-din), the chief of the gods, made a kind of self-sacrifice by hanging on the World Tree Yggdrasill (pronounced IG-druh-sil) for nine days to gain magical knowledge. For this reason, the Norse sometimes sacrificed war captives to Odin by hanging them, and Odin became known as the god of the hanged.
Sacrifice is often an act of worship or obedience. In the book of Genesis in the Bible, God tells Abraham to take his son Isaac to the top of a mountain and sacrifice him. Abraham builds an altar and prepares to sacrifice his son when a voice from heaven tells him to stop, saying, “Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” Turning around, Abraham notices a ram caught by its horns in a bush. He releases Isaac and sacrifices the ram instead.
Some myths present sacrifice as a way of setting right the relationship between people and gods. The Kikuyu (pronounced kee-KOO-yoo) people of Kenya in eastern Africa tell of a time when no rain fell for three years. The crops dried up, and the people asked their magician what they should do. After performing a magical ceremony, he told them to bring goats to buy a maiden named Wanjiru. The next day everyone gathered around Wanjiru, who began to sink into the ground. When her family tried to help her, those around gave them goats, so the family let her sink. As Wanjiru sank inch by inch into the ground, rain began to fall. By the time she disappeared into the ground, the rain was pouring down. Afterwards, a young warrior who loved Wanjiru went to the place where she had disappeared. Letting himself sink into the underworld, he found Wanjiru, brought her back to the surface, and married her.
Sacrifice may be linked to divination, or foretelling the future. The Druids of ancient Britain sacrificed both animals and humans in the belief that they could read the future in the victims’ dying movements or in the patterns of their intestines. In the story of Sunjata (pronounced soon-JAH-tuh), told by the Mandingo people of Mali in West Africa, a king sacrificed a bull in order to fulfill a prophecy, or prediction. A hunter predicted that if the king agreed to marry a hideous young woman, their child would become a great ruler. In Central America, the Mayan Vision Serpent ceremony—held to consult with the dead And determine the future—included offerings of blood drawn from the king.
World History
