Recently in your book SizeAndrés Manuel López Obrador considered it necessary to deny the existence of human sacrifice in Mesoamerican cultures. An attachment whose purpose is to reassert the value of indigenous peoples through the de-qualification these cultures suffered at the hands of the conquerors. A necessary task, no doubt, but not for this reason. Defamation against human victims is a moral issue that paradoxically corresponds to the European vision. The value of these cultures including their sacrifices is immeasurable; I would like to learn how to read them as I am and recognize them in terms of moral judgments that do not correspond to them.
Rituals of human sacrifice have been a fundamental part of many cultures since the dawn of civilization. This is how people repay their gods for favors they have received. Death, disease, natural phenomena were the signs that heralded the destruction of the world; through the ages they have required an offering that can transfer the cosmic balance; and no one has anyone to care for their life.
The context between two cultures has always generated crises. The intruder is after something, usually for revenge and domination, and usually acts with absolute incomprehension towards people he considers inferior. If an attacker were able to adopt the value of other civilizations, diversity would be a value and not a hindrance.
If we enter the primitive universes of non-Western cultures and are able to understand its meaning, we cannot consider it “retrospective” and respect our identity. But history is the story of one cosmogony and another. The imposition of the strongest, his form of truth on the world, created palimpsests, which are now also considered culturally relevant. We must not underestimate the effect that occurs when two worlds come together.
It is very difficult to appreciate the original culture and fully understand it. Misunderstandings, expansions and cancellations take the form of juzgarlas. We know that many of our traditions have been misinterpreted by Europeans.
If we look at the history of the world, we find a great diversity in the performance of human sacrifices as a way to purification and salvation. In Greece, one of the oldest myths tells how Cronos devoted himself to his sons to prevent the passage of time. In the archaic era, the greatest love of life was to die en plenitud. Young Spartans consider it a spiritual value to adorn and strengthen their hearts. They give up a life of comfort and join the army. To die young in war was an honor.
Although human sacrifices were not widespread, remains of human bodies were found on altars to Zeus. The most famous sacrifice in Greece is described in myth. Agamemnon, devoted to Artemis in order to appease her and achieve favorable victories during the Trojan War, sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia, satisfying one of the most famous tragedies of the classical tradition.
Dying to accompany a high-ranking ser in another life was a ritual accepted in Ur. At Abydus, inside Egypt, was the mausoleum of the pharaoh Horus Ah with three and six tombs attached to his servants sacrificed to accompany their master into the greater world. The Carthaginians, eternal enemies of Rome, sacrificed young children to seek favors with their gods in wars.
The Vikings gathered people and animals from the trees to make contact with the church; they choose people of lower rank and do so only when they are in want. To appease the Taranis, the gods to whom storms and torment were attributed, the Celts degollaban or quemaban on the pyre of their sacrifice.
Africa also produced human sacrifices. In Benin there is a temple with the tomb of King Ghezo and his heart and two wives. The year was 1858, when women accepted the entry alive as a sacrifice. Before drinking an elixir that will facilitate the process.
One of history’s most spectacular and spectacular medical sacrifices, a fusion of art, politics and life as I know it Seppuku (harassment of men), was the one who raised the great Japanese writer Yukio Mishima. After a failed coup d’état in the royal palace, he and his army committed suicide in front of journalists and television cameras. The idea of restoring traditional honor and criticizing the westernization of Japan. Mishima revived samurai tradition by slashing his stomach with a sword; he was beheaded by one of his followers.
If the Bible condemns human sacrifice, it tells the best knowledge of history. However, it was only intended; Abraham obeyed God, who regretted the sacrifice of his son Isaac as the forefather of faith.
A recreation of a pagan ritual from ancient Russia has been transformed into one of the most fascinating pieces of music thanks to composer Igor Stravinsky. Rhythm, dance, ecstasy, Rite of Spring She is a virgin sacrifice who only has to die to appease the gods.
As in India, China, the Fiji Islands and the Nubian king, among others, human sacrifice was an established ritual. In Mesoamerica and Peru he was the highest of all knowledge, an action in honor of his gods. Amidst the bullying and embarrassed by the wild smell of sahumerio, the victims were insulted by the victims. The blood that flowed was a representation of divinity, so the solar cycle was guaranteed. For the Mexicans, the sun was an archetype that contained the life force. Blood, Earth aspect. The healing that the body has, the ability to provide continuity to the vital flow. The eroticism felt by the cobra through death, Eros and Thanatos participate in the determination of the sacrificed body.
The Incas also recorded human sacrifices. The little boys of the nobles were chosen. The ritual is performed in places with low temperature, which are considered sacred. Those planted with chicha (fermented corn) and cocoa beans died of hypothermia. The mummified were wrapped in textiles and offered in gold and silver. The increase in casualties during the ecological phenomenon of El Niño is historic.
From the point of view of the French artist and thinker Antonin Artaud, sacrifice should not be understood as sadistic violence, but rather as a metaphysical necessity and cosmic rigor. His way lies in the regeneration of life. Influenced by Tarahumara culture on his travels to Mexico, he became involved with sacrifice as a step ritual to destroy his shared identity and renew himself through death and spiritual transformation. It is not sangre derramada, but “sangre que ilumina”. Therefore, I propose the theater of cruelty as a simulacrum of metaphysical sacrifice that frees the primitive forces of nature.
The meeting of European men with Native Americans was a civilizational shock. The lust for gold and silver that created justification had to meet those civilized people, it was a fight against the devil. Human sacrifice must be abolished. It is strange that they did not fail to use the greatest act of sacrifice in Western culture, Christ’s sacrifice for all our souls, “the foundation of human redemption.” The expansion of early civilizations, documented as an act of cannibalism and barbarism, allowed them to describe all kinds of cruelty and abuse.
Human sacrifices did not tend to be juzgados outside the historical and cultural context to which they belonged. That’s what politics is about.
@Suscrowley
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