Sacrifice in Religious Experience

NUMEN BOOK SERIES

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY

OF RELIGIONS

WJ. HANEGRAAFF

A D V I S O R Y B O A R D

P . ANTES, M . DESPLAND, R I . J . H A C K E T T , M . ABUMALHAM M A S , A . W . G E E R T Z , G . TER H A A R , G . L . LEASE, M . N . G E T U I , I . S . GILHUS, P . M O R R I S , J . K . O L U P O N A

E . THOMASSEN, A . TSUKIMOTO, A . T . WASIM

V O L U M E X C I I I

SACRIFICE IN RELIGIOUS

EXPERIENCE

Cover illustration: Marcus Aurclius Sacrificing before the Capitoline Temple.One of three reliefs from the lost arch of Marcus Aurelius. Rome, Palazzo dei Conservatori © Copyright Alinari/Art Resource, NY.

D i e D e u t s c h e B i b l i o t h e k - C I P - E i n h e i t s a u f n a h m e

Sacrifice in religious experience / e d . by Albert I. Baumgarten. - Leiden ; Boston ; Köln : Brill, 2002

(Studies in the history of religions ; Vol. 93) ISBN 9 0 - 0 4 - 1 2 4 8 3 - 7

L i b r a r y o f C o n g r e s s C a t a l o g i n g - i n - P u b l i c a t i o n d a t a Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is also available

ISSN 0169-8834 ISBN 90 04 12483 7

© Copyright 2002 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,

mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that

the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910

DanversMA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. P R I N T E D IN T H E N E T H E R L A N D S

C O N T E N T S

Introduction vii

A . B A U M G A R T E N

P A R T O N E

S A C R I F I C E F R O M A C O M P A R A T I V E P E R S P E C T I V E

Sacrifice in African Traditional Religions 3

T . S U N D E R M E I E R

T o w a r d s a Gendered Typology of Sacrifice: W o m e n &

Feasting, M e n & Death in an Okinawan Village 13

S . S E R E D

Sacrifice in Mesopotamia 39

T . A B U S C H

W e r e the Firstborn Sacrificed to Y H W H ? T o Molek?

Popular Practice or Divine D e m a n d ? 49

J . M I L G R O M

T h e Semiotics of the Priestly Vestments in Ancient

J u d a i s m 57

M . D . S W A R T Z

Sacrifice and Sacrificial Ceremonies of the R o m a n Imperial

Army 81

P . H E R Z

Sacrifice and T h e o r y of Sacrifice during the 'Pagan

Reaction': Julian the E m p e r o r 101

N . B E L A Y C H E

Animal Sacrifice in Ancient Zoroastrianism: A Ritual and its

Interpretations 127

C O N T E N T S

VI

P A R T T W O

A L T E R N A T I V E S T O S A C R I F I C E

Forgiveness of Sins without a Victim: Jesus a n d the Levitical

Jubilee 151

A . D E S T R O a n d M . P E S C E

Eucharist: Surrogate, M e t a p h o r , Sacrament of Sacrifice 175

B . C H I L T O N

This is my Body: Sacrificial Presentation and the Origins of

Christian Ritual 189

B . L A N G

T h e Christian Exegesis of the Scapegoat between Jews a n d

Pagans 207

D J . S T Ö K L

T h e Body as T e m p l e in the High Middle Ages 233

J . A . H A R R I S

Firstfruits in the Q p r a n 257

J . B E N T H A L L

Reestablishing Sacrifice in Times of Trouble? S o m a

Morgenstern's Blutsäule as Negative Sacrificology 271

G . P A L M E R

Echoes of Sacrifice? Repertoires of Giving in the Great

Religions 291

I . F . S I L B E R

Contributors 313

I N T R O D U C T I O N

A L B E R T I . B A U M G A R T E N

T h e essays in this volume are revisions of selected papers presented at two international conferences, one "Sacrifice From a Comparative Perspective," held in 1998, and the second "Alternatives to Sacrifice," held in 1999. T h e papers from the first conference take up "hard core" sacrifice, instances in which an actual offering is m a d e on an altar. T h e y participate in the on-going discussion of sacrifice that has been so fruitful over the past decades and enriched our under-standing of the meaning of this primary religious ritual. Some of the papers aim at expanding the analysis provided by others, Burkert,1 Detienne-Vernant,2 Girard,3 Grotanelli-Parise4 and Jay,5 for exam-pie, while other papers offer critiques of the work done thus far in the hope of correcting apparent errors. These papers also attest to the rich variety of meaning sacrifice can offer. It is difficult, if not impossible, to reduce sacrifice to one basic archetype without doing injustice to some aspect of the p h e n o m e n o n somewhere. Yet these m a n y variations on the theme prove the place of sacrificing, indi-cated etiologically for the Biblical tradition in Genesis, when it ascribes the first offerings to the sons of A d a m .

T h e papers from the second conference take up a topic that has been less intensively discussed from a theoretical perspective. While individual studies have been written on particular topics in the past, the goal of the 1999 conference and of the second part of this vol-u m e is to open a broader discvol-ussion of alternatives to sacrifice across

1

In a series of monographs, beginning with Walter Burkert, Homo Necans: The

Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1983). 2

Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant (Eds.), The Cuisine of Sacrifice Among

the Greeks (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

3

René Girard, Violence and the Sacred Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977); The Scapegoat (Baltimore: J o h n Hopkins University Press, 1986).

4

Cristiano Grotanelli and Nicola F. Parise, Sacrificio e società nel mondo antico (Roma/Bari: Laterza, 1988). See now also Cristiano Grotanelli, II sacrificio (Bari/Rome: Laterza, 1999).

5

Nancy Jay, Throughout Tour Generations Forever: Sacrifice Religion and Paternity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

a n u m b e r of cultures through a collection of case studies. In both parts of this volume, as in previous T a u b e s Minerva Center publi-cations, no uniformity of approach was imposed on the authors. W e hope that as m a n y voices as possible will be heard, some in har-mony, others in counterpoint.6

T h e centrality of sacrifice, as a primary form of religious ritual, emerges from the papers in both sections. Indeed, the diversity and intensity of the alternatives offered to sacrifice (not limited to such obvious examples as prayer), a n d the role of sacrifice in providing a model for other forms of religious expression, prove the funda-mental place of sacrifice. W e m o d e r n worshippers in the A b r a h a m i c monotheistic traditions may sometimes imagine that sacrifice belongs deep in our past and is practiced today only by those w h o m we would label as "idolators." As the papers in this volume indicate, sacrifice remains much m o r e a part of the way we worship than we might care to concede. This is true even two thousand years after the "greatest reformer in history," Titus,7 severed the self-evident connection between the worship of the G o d of the Hebrew Bible a n d sacrificing.

This will be the last volume of T a u b e s Minerva Center essays. T h e vision of a full series of publications that would " m a k e the point," that is show the value of Religious Anthropology as a win-dow of insight into religious experience, will not be fulfilled. This volume and its three predecessors8 will have to bear that burden. Responsibility for the termination of this d r e a m lies with the senior administration of Bar Ilan University. Individual scholars will con-tinue, but the particular collective effort represented by the T a u b e s Minerva Center has come to an end.

Jerusalem J u l y 14, 2001

6

Compare Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy .Night (London: New English Library, 1974) 439. Lord Peter Wimsey, about to receive the consent of Harriet Vane to his pro-posai for marriage, pursued across many years and through several novels commented: "anybody can have the harmony if they would leave us the counterpoint."

7

See Elias J . Bickerman, The Jews in the Greek Age (Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press, 1988) 139.

8

See Albert I. Baumgarten, with J a n Assmann and Guy G. Stroumsa (Eds.), Self,

Soul and Body in Religious Experience (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1998); Albert I. Baumgarten

(Ed.), Apocalyptic Time (Leiden: Ε J . Brill, 2000); J a n Assmann and Albert I. Baumgarten (Eds.), Representation in Religion: Studies in Honor of Moshe Barasch (Leiden: E J . Brill, 2001).

P A R T O N E

S A C R I F I C E IN A F R I C A N T R A D I T I O N A L R E L I G I O N S

T H E O S U N D E R M E I E R

In our tradition the interpretation of sacrifice is so strongly marked by the R o m a n religion—which found its inculturized continuation in the Roman-Catholic form of Christianity—and the miscompre-hension of Greek philosophers, who no longer had a relationship with the old religious rites of the archaic religion and did not under-stand its symbolism, that it seems impossible to escape f r o m this track of interpretation. Therefore one tends to rush to support any new theory that seems to offer a way out of this dilemma. This makes it understandable from the view of history of religion that the different theories coming from other disciplines have enjoyed such strong acceptance, although they give monocausal, almost monisti-cally simplifying interpretations and attribute universal validity to them. T h r e e theories stand out in this context:

the psychoanalytical theory, which starts from the death instinct

("T0destrìeb", S. Freud) of the h u m a n being and offers the model

of sacrifice as an act of compensation;

the cultural-anthropological theory, which attributes to hunting a central value of origin in the emergence of sacrificial customs—a theory that has gained weight again through Walter Burkert (see below);

and at last the ethological theory, which understands sacrificing as a canalized aggressiveness and interprets the rites of sacrifice accordingly.

All that is known and does not have to be explained here. W h a t is solely interesting, is how these theories have recently been revitalised in modern form. For this R e n é Girard is the most renowned exam-pie. Certainly it is no coincidence that his radical scapegoat theory is j u d g e d rather sceptically by scholars of comparative religions, but scholars of humanities, particularly theologians, are especially fond of referring to it. It seems to offer the possibility of giving the idea

of sacrifice, which is very central in Israelite and Christian belief, plausibility also in our times.1

I

W . Burkert gave new impetus to the cultural-anthropological theory of K. Meulis—who saw the origin of sacrifice in hunting and the restitution of life—by combining it with the theory of aggression of the ethology of K o n r a d Lorenz.2 H o w e v e r , he c o n t i n u e s to be influenced by the scepticism of Greek philosophers, who did not find direct access to the rites of sacrifice and hardly could conceive their sense, as the original symbolism was not accessible to them. From the point of view of history of religion, this is not an unusual process.

T h e original rites continue to be h a n d e d down and performed, but with the change of society or the superimposition of the native religion by an alien, immigrated one, the original symbolism is for-gotten or is newly interpreted within the context of the secondary religion. T h e process of such "inculturation", as we would define it nowadays, is necessary and serves to facilitate both to preserve the given religion at least selectively and to give to the new religious practice the scope in which it re-orientates, colours and restructures the culture. If one looks at the result of such a fusion from outside as a rational theoretician—and that is what philosophers a r e — a n d if one does not take into account the mechanisms of superimposi-tion a n d the resulting complexity of symbolism, deep misunder-standings arise. T h e idea of the "fraud of the gods" is one such misunderstanding. Any scholar who passes it on still today, shows that he does not try to understand the religion from within its own context.

I want to briefly demonstrate this by the example of Walter Burkert. A kind of ideal-type reconstruction of Greek sacrifice is shown in the following picture, according to Burkert. After the animal has

1

T h e literature on René Girard goes on interminably. I refer to Norbert Lohfink (ed.), Gewalt und Gewaltlosigkeit im Alten Testament (Quaestiones disputatae 96; Freiburg/ Basel/Wien: Herder, 1983) where most of the relevant titles are listed.

2

Walter Burkert, Homo Necans: Interpretationen altgriechischer Trauerriten und Mythen (Berlin/NewYork: de Gruyter, 1972); Wilder Ursprung. Opferritual und Mythos bei den

Griechen (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1990); Griechische Religion der archaischen und der klassischen Epoche (Stuttgart e.a.: Kohlhammer, 1977).

been prepared for the sacrifice, in the opening rite the priest cuts some of its forehead hair, which is thrown into the fire. According to Burkert, now the animal is regarded as irreversibly damaged. It is no longer u n h u r t and intact. " T h e n the deadly blow follows. T h e women there give a cry. Shrill a n d loud". T h e "Greek custom of sacrificial cry marks the emotional culmination of the action, con-cealing the death rattle of the animal".3 Now the animal is cut up and taken apart. T h e ritual prescribes every detail. T h e entrails come "strange, bizarre a n d weird to the light" and are quickly roasted a n d eaten, with the exception of the inedible gall. T h e c o m m o n con-sumption turns "the shudder into pleasure".4 T h e bones and the gall, however, are put onto the altar in a natural order, so that they reflect the basic outline of the sacrificed animal and together with some pieces of meat symbolize the entirety of the killed animal. All those parts are then consumed by the fire or given to the gods, respectively. T h e skull of the animal, however, is preserved as a "per-m a n e n t witness to the 'act' of 'sanctification'".3 According to Burkert, a p a r a d o x results from this sacrificial practice, as the animal sacrifice that is m a d e to the gods (the gall bladder and the bones are burnt on the altar) ultimately aims at eating! T h e good meat "is taken by the pious community in a festive meal. T o sacrifice means to provide a banquet."6 T h e fact that Hesiod regarded this as "fraud of the gods" is for Burkert very well comprehensible, because he too asks himself how and for what reasons a " f r a u d " can turn into a rite.

A more precise insight into the process of ritual formation of sym-bols, more exactly: the formation of symbols in primary religions, could have helped Burkert remove the inner contradictions by means of insights from the history of religion. T o accomplish this, we have to follow the laws of analogy but also must have a knowledge of the practice of sacrifice itself.

A sheep or an ox, for example, never groans when its carotid artery is cut. Therefore the cries of the w o m e n do not drown out its groaning, but they are—if I see this right—the normal "hallel" shouts, which are m a d e with a stroke of the tongue at the palate,

3

Burkert, Homo Necans, op. cit., p. 12. 4

Ibid. p. 13. 5 _{Ibid. p. 14.} 6

Walter Burkert, Anthropologie des religiösen Opfers: die Sakralisierung der Gewalt (München: v. Siemens-Stiftung, 1983) 22.

as we know them from the Mediterranean up to the south of Africa. T h e y are always given at special, festive occasions. T h e y show a n d increase the joy. T h e slaughtering of an animal does not make the participants shudder, but it produces joy, as now they will have meat. Anyone w h o ever participated in a slaughtering in an archaic soci-ety knows that the entrails of the animals do not seem "bizarre a n d weird" to the participants. Instead, the slaughtering is a specially joy-ful action, because it opens the pleasant anticipation of the meal. In archaic societies meat is not an everyday food, but a feast! These were religious celebrations that provided the lower social level the opportunity to eat meat.

W h e n we are dealing with the traditions of the early epoch, m u c h could be said about the symbolical meaning of the bones and the gall bladder and why they are burnt. O n e thing however is certain, that in matters of sacrificing, the law "pars pro toto" is applied. It is a basic law of all rites, just as the d r e a m imaging. Without this law no communication would be possible. T h e r e f o r e " f r a u d " is out of the question.

II

In order to explain the inner coherence of my argumentation, we turn our attention to African religions, in which we still find traces of archaic culture a n d religion, as they were a n d still are to be found as basic religiosity in the primary religions in the whole world. T o exemplify this, we turn to the M b a n d e r u in Namibia, a m o n g w h o m I worked a n d researched for m a n y years.

T h e M b a n d e r u belong to the patri- a n d matrilineally orientated Bantu, who originally immigrated from East Africa to Namibia as acephalically organized heavy-livestock nomads. Although they h a d been christianized long ago, they retained, like all nomadic peoples, m a n y of their old traditions. After a large n u m b e r of them had sepa-rated from the Lutheran Mission C h u r c h , old traditions were revi-talized, which the missionaries had thought to be extinct and forgotten. But exactly by the example of the burial rites and the national hoi-idays one could have realised how strongly in particular m o u r n i n g rites have persisted.

T h e Herero, who include the M b a n d e r u as a subtribe, have two herds of cattle. O n e of them belongs to the mother line and serves

T h e distribution of a Herero cow

for alimentation, and the other one belongs to the father line and may be slaughtered only for ritual purposes. W h e n the master of the house is buried, traditionally all the cattle of this herd must be slaughtered. T h e cattle goes back to a cow that the master of the house received as a gift from his father when he was a boy. Multiplying it was not only a m a t t e r of prestige, but also served to visibly strengthen the religion, because those cows are directly under the blessing of the ancestors, w h o m the father of the house serves daily by taking the "okuruuo", ancestor fire from his fireplace outside and lighting it ritually and bringing it back into his house at night. T h e "holy h e r d " reminds him daily and directly of his father, who him-self is only the last link in the ancestral line and as such the sym-bol of life in the tribe and the family.

Cattle n o m a d s live in such a close symbiosis with the cattle that either one can become the symbol for the other. T h e society finds itself again in the cattle. T h e people are composed as a bull is com-posed, said a Dinka chief to Godfrey Lienhardt.7 T h e same is true for the M b a n d e r u . Society is reflected in the cattle, and the

distri-7 _{Godfrey Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka (Oxford:} Clarendon Press, 1961) 23.

bution of the meat "is fixed like on a m a p " , an old H e r e r o said to me. W h a t does that mean?

T h e left back leg (7), on which the cow stands, goes to the chief of the kraal himself, on w h o m the familiy "stands", so to say. T h e right back leg goes to the m e n of the surrounding dwellings, with w h o m one keeps an especially close friendship, because co-operation with those m e n guarantees the peace of the area. T h e back (3) goes to the mother of the owner. T h e meat will strengthen her back, they say, because she once carried the owner of the kraal. As the most important representative of the mother line (eanda) she must be par-ticularly generously taken into account. She is the "backbone" of the eanda, and therefore has a determining influence on the life of the H e r e r o community. T h e flank and the filet (4), an especially popu-lar piece of meat, are cut into four parts a n d given to the neigh-bours; attention is payed to change the distribution of this meat at different occasions, so that everybody gets the best piece of meat once in a while. A m o n g the Kaokoveld-Herero the front legs (8) go to the younger brothers of the owner, because they are the smaller and weaker legs.8 T h e meat a r o u n d the genitals (6) may be eaten only by the chief of the kraal a n d the m e n who were circumcised with him in the same year. It strengthens their potency. For w o m e n this meat is taboo. T h e sparerib (1) is at the uppermost place, it is cut into three parts a n d sent to the adults of the neighbouring kraals. T h e head (9) goes to the boys and girls; the children must not eat the nose however, because then they will "raise their noses against the w o m e n " like cows, i.e. they become impudent.

W e abstain f r o m giving f u r t h e r details.9 W h a t has been said, sufficiently shows how the society of the Herero is fixed in the cow regarding their familiar and neighbourly relations, a n d their matri-lineal and patrimatri-lineal structures, which are renewed and reconfirmed each time a cow is slaughtered. T h e body (man a n d cattle are inter-changeable) becomes a symbol of society.

W h a t does all this have to do with "sacrifice"? W e remember: It is about slaughtering the animals of the "holy h e r d " attributed to ancestor veneration. At the same time it is a slaughtering on the

8

Among the Sotho tribes in Northern Transvaal, one foreleg is allocated to the older brother, as he is the "first", the "foremost".

9

As to further details see T h e o Sundermeier, Die Mbanderu. Studien zu ihrer Kultur

occasion of a burial. All cattle "accompany", so to speak, the dead person to the next world. T h e cows are the link to the ancestors. Even if it is not explicitly said, it is self-evident that they are pre-sent. D u r i n g the whole m o u r n i n g period those cows of the holy herd are slaughtered and eaten. At the end of the m o u r n i n g period, at the latest after one year, the skulls with the horns are piled up on the father's tomb, an obvious sign of the important m a n who is buried here. T h e skulls are a sign of remembrance, a "memorial". T h e ritual and the social functions of sacrifice, which must not be separated one from the o t h e r — W a l t e r Burkert is a victim of this e r r o r — a r e directly to be seen. Everything that belonged to the dead person is destroyed. At one time, at the end of the m o u r n i n g period, the house of the master of the kraal was also demolished. U n d e r the leadership of the new leader of the kraal the family's village had to be reconstructed at a place determined by the ancestors (mostly to the east(!) of the former kraal). So, it is evident that slaughter is an act of destruction. Everything, the cattle included, has to die just as the master died. Also the widows have to die ritually and have to be brought back to life, just as the deceased person is introduced to the new life with the ancestors by the burial rites.

At the same time the sacrifice serves life. T h e society reconstitutes itself. After the death of the master of the kraal everybody is given a new place in the hierarchical order and this place is confirmed by the distribution of the meat. T h e distribution of the meat publicly respects the value and the position of each family m e m b e r and of the neighbours and strengthens the bonds within the community. As on the one h a n d the killing of animals emphasizes and intensifies the experience of death, so on the other hand it makes possible the new constitution of the community. This is the most important func-tion of the sacrifice, as it helps to overcome the grief within the m o u r n i n g ceremonies. Nothing will strengthen a community more than a c o m m o n meal.

O n e thing must be emphasised here: T h e notion of a scapegoat is not to be found here. N o r should it be inserted. In every m o u r n -ing process at a certain phase the feel-ing arises that one is guilty of the deceased person's death, and one blames oneself or other per-sons. N o w a d a y s this is very well known due to the research of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross e.a. For this reason it is no surprise to see that those feelings are referred to ritually. Still today, the Herero liv-ing in the Kaokoveld look for the guilty person with the help of the

dead body.10 Ritually, however, this is another action, which must not be mistaken or mingled with the slaughtering of the cattle. Not every sacrifice has something to do with the thought of a scapegoat or has a representative function.

Also the linguistic background points to another direction. " O z o n -d j o z a " is the n a m e for the cattle slaughtere-d at the burial a n -d is in the first place a generic term for sacrificial cattle. T h e linguistic derivation, however, states more precisely: T h e y are the cattle which "go ahead".1 1 T h e cattle goes on a h e a d of the deceased person, namely into the reign of the forefathers.

Also other concepts like " o j a m b a n g a " , a word that is used for all sacrifices that relate to a dead person, point to another direction:

Communio. " O k u p a n g a " means "to invoke the ancestors", but it derives

from the root " - p a n g " = "to connect" and shows the original mean-ing of "invocation": to make a connection with the ancestors.

W h e n sacrifices are offered, everything is important and full of symbolism: the place, the conditions, the person who has the right to sacrifice, the prayers etc. W e have picked out only some aspects. It would also be important to ask, whether there is anything from the sacrificed cattle that is given directly to the ancestors but not eaten by the humans. For example, a m o n g all Bantu religions one has to mention the gall bladder. It is given directly to the ancestors, but not because it is inedible for humans. O n e has to understand the symbolism. As the ancestors live inversely to the h u m a n s '2 what is bitter for the h u m a n s is especially sweet there. T h e gall bladder is sweet "ambrosia"! "Deceiving'5 the ancestors is out of the ques-tion—this would be a real misinterpretation!

T o sum u p what has been said: T h e slaughtering of the cattle

10 _{In his youth one of my students participated in such a search of the guilty} person. T h e dead body is horizontally bound on a stick that is carried by at least four men. Now the dead is required to determine the guilty person. With an irre-sistible strength, which one cannot withstand, so the student said, you are now set in motion in the direction of a certain person. If he doesn't take to his heels on time the stick will run through him. About this see Theo Sundermeier, The Individual

and Community in African Traditional Religions. Lit, Hamburg 1988, pp. 77 ff.

11 _{Cf. H. Heinrich Brincker, Wörterbuch und kurzgefaßte Grammatik des otji-Herero,} ״ondjoza" Leipzig, 1886, p. 186.

12

T h a t means everything among them is inverted: black men have white ances-tors; what is done here with the right hand, is done there with the left one. This is the reason why at the graves everything is done with the left hand, etc.

during the mourning period has a multiple meaning. Five meanings shall be given:

1. T h e cattle accompany the dead person into the next world. T h e y are gifts to him. O r in other words: H e takes with him what belongs to him.

2. T h e sacrifice sets up a connection to the ancestors.

3. It renews the community a m o n g the members of the community, which was injured by death. T h e community is strengthened and can then re-constitute itself.

4. T h e heir and new master of the kraal will do everything to ensure that the cattle that he has inherited from his father will repro-duce at great numbers. T h e destruction of one herd gives space to another one. It will be under the blessing of the deceased per-son a n d will always be a reminder of him.

5. T h e erection of the funeral m o n u m e n t , the piling of the horns on the tomb becomes a sign of remembrance. T h e sacrifice, which at its core is a communio-sacrifice, becomes at the same time a sacrifice of remembrance.1 3 Its purpose is to turn entirely to the dead person and c o m m e m o r a t e him, but it also opens up the possibility of a later remembering. For example, if the son thinks the connection to the father as an ancestor is getting weaker and that his father's blessing is not felt anymore, then he will bring his herd to his father's grave and offer an " o n d j a m b e r o " there, a libation which consists of "omaere", sour milk, and pieces of meat. T h e dead person is also supposed to enjoy the roaring of the cattle, which will increase his desire to give blessings, so that he will again and more strongly comply with his duty to grant good things to his descendants and to protect them against damages.1 4

W e have compiled only a small spectrum of the rich practice of sacrificing of an African tribe. But one thing should have become clear: every reduction to one m e a n i n g is detrimental to the multidi-mensionality of every sacrificial practice. Every sacrifice is an ag-gregate of m a n y symbols, a well from which one can draw new interpretations again and again, which do not exclude but

comple-13

Cf. a similar expression in the Old Testament: "azkarah", Ps 38,70; Sir 39,11. 14

ment one another. Depending on the participants' individual cir-cumstances, their necessities and capacity of reception but also due to the superimposition by another religion, other and new aspects will come to the fore and replace older ones or re-interpret them. This reinterpretation is not violence to the sacrifice. Instead this is a sign of the liveliness of a given religion, since sacrifice is still a central p a r t of every religion, w h e t h e r it is really p e r f o r m e d or whether it is transformed into thoughts and symbolically revaluated.

It is not necessary to finally make a close comparison with the representation of the Greek sacrificial practise by Walter Burkert. For this, a m o r e detailed description would be necessary. But even a superficial phenomenological comparison can open our eyes to the fact that Burkert's ideal-typical summary is by no means objective but is charged emotionally and evidences the atmosphere of an " a r m -chair culprit" who wants to prove his theory of the homo necans by all means. A comparison from the point of view of history of reli-gion of those practices with the current sacrificial practices in archaic societies could have led Burkert closer to the reality of the sacrifice and its symbolism and the self-image of the person w h o makes the sacrifice.

T O W A R D S A G E N D E R E D T Y P O L O G Y O F S A C R I F I C E : W O M E N & F E A S T I N G , M E N & D E A T H I N A N

O K I N A W A N V I L L A G E

S U S A N S E R E D

T o determine the status of women in matters of sacrifice is to enter by the back door into the sys-tem of ritual acts in which eating behaviors con-stantly intermingle with political practices.1

Introduction

In 1 9 9 4 - 1 9 9 5 I c o n d u c t e d fieldwork in O k i n a w a , the only extant society in which the official, m a i n s t r e a m , publicly f u n d e d religion is led by w o m e n . W o m e n c o n d u c t almost all of the ritual sequences that comprise the O k i n a w a n religious repertoire. M e n , however, are the officiants at the small n u m b e r of rituals that involve any sort of animal sacrifice.

Cross-culturally, animal sacrifice is one of the most dramatically a n d consistently g e n d e r e d ritual constellations.2 In o r d e r to begin to m a k e g e n d e r e d sense both of sacrifice in the O k i n a w a n ritual m a p a n d of o t h e r instances of a n i m a l sacrifice described in historical a n d e t h n o g r a p h i c literature (usually not f r o m a g e n d e r e d perspective), I have b e g u n to develop a g e n d e r e d typology of sacrifice. While I do not think that g e n d e r is the only useful lens t h r o u g h which to study sacrifice, the conspicuous g e n d e r i n g of almost all recorded sacrificial rituals makes it an unavoidable one. T h e typology, which I present in the first p a r t of this p a p e r , is neither a n exhaustive n o r a natural classificatory system, a n d m a n y examples of sacrifice will fall be-tween, e n c o m p a s s m o r e than one category, or simply not fit any of

1

Detienne, Marcel. "The Violence of Wellborn Ladies: Women in the Thesmo-phoria." Translated by Paula Wissing. 111 The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks, edited by Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, 129 147. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 129.

2 _{I find it significant that in the Catholic Church the last holdout for men is the} Eucharist—a symbolic sacrifice. Women lay leaders are now permitted to perform almost all other priestly duties.

my proposed gendered sacrificial models.3 Still, the typology hope-fully will encourage the possibility of m o r e conscious a n d subtle understandings of why and how sacrifice is gendered in so m a n y different cultural contexts.

T h a t sacrifice tends to be highly gendered is, perhaps, not entirely surprising. Both gender and sacrifice are embodied cultural processes. G e n d e r is the mechanism through which social identities of ' w o m a n ' or ' m a n ' or 'other' are imprinted onto the bodies of individuals; the culturally recognizable gendered body is the result of the process of "doing gender."4 Similarly, sacrificial rituals are processes in which cultural meanings and symbols are imprinted onto the body of the sacrificial victim. Moreover, both sacrifice a n d gender are matters not only of embodiment, but also of disembodiment. In sacrificial rites, the victim is dismembered via a variety of ritual procedures such as cutting and burning. In a parallel m a n n e r , in m a n y gen-dering procedures women (and men) are dismembered, as Mary Daly has so persuasively argued, through circumcision, infibulation, foot binding, or witch and widow burning.׳' Sacrifice, then, can be seen to be analogous to gender; both are cultural processes of embodi-ment and disembodiembodi-ment in which certain groups or individuals are modified, marked, defined, set off, or classified.

Not infrequently, embodied discourses of gender are m a p p e d onto, appropriated by, or mystified via embodied sacrificial rituals; dis-courses of gender may include thoughts about who is expected to sacrifice what for whom. We can ask how the embodying and dis-embodying of sacrificial victims constructs, confounds, or parallels the gendering of h u m a n bodies in various cultural contexts. Are there patterns, paradigms, or problems of gender that are solved by or reflected in gendered sacrificial rites? H o w do the embodying and disembodying practices of sacrifice tie into the embodying and dis-embodying practices of gender?

From a gendered perspective, perhaps the most striking

observa-3

In order to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the material, I have chosen not to address the myriad instances of sacrificial myths for which there is no solid ethno-graphic or historical evidence of accompanying ritual. I also have not looked at the gender of the animal sacrificial victims in this typology. Again, this is a serious omission, but one that was necessary given the huge amount of material that focuses on the human participants.

4

Lorber, Judith. Paradoxes of Gender. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). 5

Daly, Mary. Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. (Boston: Beacon, 1978).

tion that can be m a d e about sacrifice, and especially animal sacrifice, is that it is almost always a male dominated and oriented ritual activ-ity. Furthermore, in a surprisingly wide range of cultural contexts, m e n ' s involvement with sacrifice is—implicitly or explicitly—con-trasted to women's involvement with childbirth. In other words, in m a n y different cultures men and sacrifice stand in structural tension with, or opposition to, w o m e n and childbirth. Usually, this tension is expressed in terms of the opposition between life a n d death. H o w e v e r — a n d this "however" stands at the center of the typology that I a m about to present—the meaning of that tension, or, more precisely, the way that tension is played out, is always linked to specific cosmologies, gender ideologies, and social structures. In other words, the differences in gendered constructions of sacrifice are prob-ably more interesting than the similarities.

Men and sacrifice: questions of power, questions of death

T h e best-known analysis of sacrifice and gender has been developed by Nancy Jay.6 J a y reviewed a n u m b e r of African societies a n d con-eluded that there is an affinity between blood sacrificial religion and patrilineal social organization.' Sacrifice frequently serves as evidence of patrilineal descent and serves to constitute and maintain patri-lineal descent systems." J a y brings examples of societies such as the Nuer, D a h o m e y , and Tallensi a m o n g whom the word for patrilin-eage actually translates as "people who sacrifice together." A m o n g the cases which J a y cites is the West African Yako who organize themselves into both patrilineal and matrilineal descent groups, yet only the patrilineages practice sacrifice. O t h e r sacrificing societies, such as the R o m a n s or the Nuer, distinguish between biological and jural paternity in their vocabulary, for example, the Latin

distinc-tion between genitor and pater respectively. In these cases it is typi-cally the jural father who has sacrificial significance; in other words, sacrifice turns the jural father into the "true" father.9

6

J a y , Nancy. Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion and Paternity. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

7

More specifically, J a y links blood sacrificial religion with precapitalist societies in which there is some degree of technological development and in which rights in durable property are highly valued. See Throughout Tour Generations, p. 289.

8

Throughout Tour Generations, 285.

9

J a y asks why patrilineal societies need sacrifice. "Social structures idealizing 'eternal' male intergenerational continuity [i.e. patrilin-eages] meet a f u n d a m e n t a l obstacle in their necessary dependence on women's reproductive powers."1 0 J a y sees sacrifice as a means of establishing blood ties a m o n g men that supersede the "natural" blood ties produced through women's childbirth. In order to overcome the dissonance caused by women's empirical birthing of children, " W h a t is needed to provide clear evidence of social and religious paternity is an act as definite and available to the senses as birth.'"1 Sacrifice fits the bill especially well. In m a n y male dominated religions, child-birth blood is the ultimate pollution which can only be removed by animal sacrifice. In this polarity, men religious leaders a n d killing receive a positive value, and women and childbirth a negative value. T o phrase it differently, the blood of animal sacrifice purifies or neu-tralizes the blood of childbirth; kinship bonds are recreated through the blood of the sacrificial animal rather than through the blood of women.

J a y ' s a p p r o a c h has been criticized as a poor fit for certain exam-pies of sacrifice, most specifically, for Eucharistie sacrifice performed by w o m e n priests today in the Episcopal church.1 2 I would suggest that if J a y ' s schema is treated not as a universal theory of sacrifice but (as was her intention) as one of several gendered sacrificial mod-els, her analysis can be appreciated as an excellent fit for a rather wide spectrum of cultural situations.13

A somewhat more nuanced exposition of the sacrifice and patri-lineality model has been developed by M . E . Combs-Schilling in respect to the annual Islamic Great Sacrifice commemorating Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son Isma'el. According to Combs-Schilling, "Islam's great sacrifice myth glorifies patrilineality for it depicts the most valuable of h u m a n ties as that which links father and son. . . . It is father and son who in combination achieve G o d ' s favor and

10

Throughout Your Generations, 31.

11 _{Throughout Your Generations, 36.} 12

Raab, Kelley Ann. "Nancy Jay and a Feminist Psychology of Sacrifice." Journal

of Feminist Studies in Religion 13, no. 1 (1997): 75~89.

13 _{Diane Jonte-Pace, correctly (to my mind) considers this to be a "minor} van-ation in a very stable pattern"—a few women Episcopal priests are permitted to "act like men" as a result of the confluence of two symbol systems: one egalitar-ian and one matriphobic." See Jonte-Pace, Degalitar-iane. "New Directions in the Feminist Psychology of Religion: An Introduction." Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 13, no. 1 (1997): 6374־, esp. p. 68.

b r i n g eternal h o p e to h u m a n life."14 In the M o r o c c a n version of the ritual each male h e a d of household publicly kills a r a m . T h e size a n d virility of the r a m are symbolic of the m a n ' s own virility. T h e m e n of the household stand together d u r i n g the ritual, while w o m e n are seated offstage. Combs-Schilling draws attention to the similari-ties between sacrifice a n d both the spilling of the bride's blood at the m a r r i a g e c e r e m o n y (which verifies the m a l e ' s d o m i n a t i o n of w o m e n ' s fertility a n d sexuality) a n d the spilling of blood at child-birth.1 5 In the G r e a t Sacrifice, which is always p e r f o r m e d by m e n , a d r a m a t i c statement is m a d e a b o u t m e n ' s control of cultural rela-tions; the Islamic G r e a t Sacrifice eliminates the female f r o m the spir-itual birth process.1 6

A n o t h e r e x a m p l e of this model can be f o u n d in Valerio Valeri's brilliant e x p o s i t i o n of kingship a n d sacrifice in a n c i e n t H a w a i i . A c c o r d i n g to Valeri, t h r o u g h sacrifice a h u m a n is i n c o r p o r a t e d into, or establishes a spiritual association with, the god or goddess whose descendant he or she is. In fact, however, m e n d o m i n a t e all sacrificial rituals, except those few that concern i m p u r e deities (that is, sacrifice in the context of sorcery). T h u s , even though an individual sacrifices to a god or goddess analogous to his or h e r own gender, rank a n d class, "[Certain] p u r e goddesses often require male sacrificers as medi-ators between t h e m a n d w o m e n , while [certain] i m p u r e gods m a y in certain cases be a p p r o a c h e d . . . t h r o u g h female mediators. T h i s h a p p e n s because purity is an essentially masculine property, while

impurity is essentially feminine".1 7 Valeri then goes on,

The global inferiority of women relative to men in the sacrificial sys-tem contrasts sharply with their equality to men in the genealogically

14 _{Combs-Schilling, M.E. Saaed Performances: Islam, Sexuality, and Sacrifice. (New York:} Columbia University Press, 1989), p. 244.

15

Sacred Performances, 242-243.

16 _{Sacred Performances, 256. In a recent paper, J o h n Bowen has shown that among} the Gayo of highland Sumatra the Islamic Feast of Sacrifice has a rather different meaning. Gayo kinship is bilateral (not patrilineal like in Morocco), and the actual sacrifice at the Feast of Sacrifice receives relatively little notice. Smaller animals can be used, women are allowed to perform the sacrifice, and the killing takes place with hardly any ceremony. See Bowen, J o h n R. " O n Scriptural Essentialism and Ritual Variation: Muslim Sacrifice in Sumatra and Morocco." American Ethnologist

19, no. 4 (1992): 656-671. T h e point I wish to emphasize is that even within two Islamic societies—Moroccan and Gayo, the elaboration of sacrifice is correlated with patrilineality.

17

Valeri, Valerio. Kingship aiul Sacrifice: Ritual and Society in Ancient Hawaii. Translated by Paula Wissing. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 112.

determined hierarchy. . . . Men's superiority to women expresses only the superiority of a sacrificial relationship with the gods over a purely genealogical relationship with them. . . . The superiority of sacrificial links over genealogical ones is the superiority of action over passivity, of direct relations over indirect ones, and ultimately, of political rela-tionships over kinship.18

T o summarize this first and particularly wide-spread model, patriarchy1 9

flip-flops n a t u r e , proclaiming that m e n are the life-givers; patrilin-eality defines the f a t h e r as the relevant p a r e n t ; a n d male creator deities transpose birth into a male ability. I n patriarchy, spiritual b i r t h — t h e birthing that is d o n e by m e n a n d male gods, often via sacrifice, b e c o m e s the true birth, the p u r e birth, the birth that saves f r o m feminine pollution a n d chaos.2 0

T h e next model that I shall present is one that deals with some of the same issues: the construction a n d preservation of the male-oriented or male-defined c o m m u n i t y . In this model, not only are m e n the ritual officiants, b u t w o m e n are actually the sacrificial vie-tims. T h e clearest example here, of course, is I n d i a n suttee. In sut-tee—ritual i m m o l a t i o n of widows, purity is a central t h e m e . T h e widow's sexual purity is " s a f e g u a r d e d ; " in p r e p a r a t i o n for this ulti-m a t e purification she is cereulti-moniously b a t h e d ; a n d the suttee ritual is not p e r f o r m e d d u r i n g times w h e n the w o m a n is i m p u r e f r o m m e n -struation or childbirth.2 1 S u t t e e — t h e sacrifice of w o m e n — s e r v e s to preserve the patriline via the removal of marginal, foreign, extrane-ous a n d d a n g e r o u s w o m e n .

In the rituals of some cultures, only p a r t of the w o m a n ' s body is sacrificed. M o s t c o m m o n l y , those parts are associated with fertility or sexuality. T h e examples that come to mind here include infibulation, clitoridectomy, ritual defloration, or ritual rape of w o m e n accused of actual, or suspected of potential, sexual misbehavior such as

adul-18 _{Kingship and Sacrifice, 113-114.}

19 _{I use the word patriarchy to indicate societies in which men as a group are} systematically more powerful than women as a group. T h e manifestations of power vary from society to society, as does the extent to which men as a group have power over women as a group.

20 _{For other examples of this model see Delaney, Carol. The Seed and the SoiL·}

Gender and Cosmology in Turkish Village Society. (Berkeley: University of California Press,

1991); Hauser-Schaublin, Brigitta. "Blood: Cultural Effectiveness of Biological Conditions." In Sex and Gender Hierarchies, edited by Barbara Diane Miller, 83-107. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), esp. p. 102.

21

tery or promiscuity. T h e " w o m e n as the sacrificial victim m o d e l " is particularly p r o m i n e n t in cultures in which male-oriented g r o u p iden-tity a n d status is d e p e n d e n t u p o n w o m e n ' s sexual b e h a v i o r — s o called " h o n o r a n d s h a m e " cultures. T h r o u g h sacrificing w o m e n , the male c o m m u n i t y can be kept p u r e . T h i s sacrificial model often comple-m e n t s the first sacrificial comple-m o d e l ( N a n c y J a y ' s analysis) presented ear-lier. In o t h e r words, the ritual e m b o d i m e n t of birth a n d c o m m u n i t y as male enterprises is sometimes a c c o m p a n i e d by the ritual disem-b o d i m e n t of w o m e n , a n d especially of w o m e n ' s sexual a n d repro-ductive organs. T h i s kind of ritual discourse emerges, I would argue, because the core m e a n i n g of p a t r i a r c h y is that m e n p r o c u r e actual a n d symbolic p o w e r over w o m e n ' s reproductive capabilities.

A third g e n d e r e d model of sacrifice describes the variety of situ-ations in which, t h r o u g h eating the sacrificial food provided by h e r h u s b a n d ' s family or clan (or some o t h e r male-oriented institution), a w o m a n becomes a b s o r b e d into ( o r — m o r e accurately—absorbs into h e r body) some sort of male-defined or oriented g r o u p affiliation. As a result of eating the sacrifice, the w o m a n b e c o m e s r e - e m b o d i e d as "good e n o u g h " for the male c o m m u n i t y .

A c o m m o n variation of this m o d e l is a cultural rule that a m a r ried w o m a n can no longer eat f r o m the sacrifice of her natal f a m -ily, but only from the sacrifice of her husband's family. In Levi-Strauss's terms,2 2 this kind of ritual a r r a n g e m e n t symbolizes w o m e n ' s transi-tional or transformative role in patrilineal societies, mediating between two male-defined groups. A less prevalent variation of this m o d e l is the cultural notion that a m a n c a n n o t sacrifice without his wife's participation. This model has been eloquently developed by Stephanie J a m i s o n in h e r study of g e n d e r , ritual a n d hospitality in ancient India. I n t e r p r e t i n g a m y t h that is used in sacrificial contexts of the sort just m e n t i o n e d (that is, the m a n is the ritual officiant b u t his wife must be present a n d p e r f o r m certain secondary tasks), J a m i s o n argues that,

The wife is so prominent in the [ritual] story because she in some sense embodies exchange relations. She is a mediating figure between different realms, and whenever ancient Indian ritual or mythology requires or depicts the perilous contact between realms, a woman is often the central figure. This mediating quality is responsible both for

22

Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Translated by J . Bell and J . von Sturmer. (Boston: Beacon, 1969).

her power in the story and for her near sacrifice. And her role as

medi-ator, as exchange token, allows her to be treated as an alienable chat-tel, to be given at will.23

T h e sacrificial models that I have presented thus far have to do not only with the cultural construction of g e n d e r , b u t also with the cul-tural construction of g e n d e r h i e r a r c h y — o f patriarchy. T h i s t h e m e is particularly clear in the next model. In a variety of contexts, m e n p e r f o r m sacrificial rituals as demonstrations of power, or as ritual displays of the control of resources such as food or w e a p o n s or cat-Üe or w o m e n . T h r o u g h sacrificial rituals, certain m e n d r a m a t i z e their p o w e r over others, including w o m e n , w h o often are the required a u d i e n c e to the sacrifice. P e r h a p s the most d r a m a t i c examples here c o m e f r o m hierarchical societies in which kings are buried together with their "possessions," i n c l u d i n g — s o m e t i m e s — t e n s or h u n d r e d s of w o m e n wives, slaves a n d kin.24

While w o m e n sometimes are allowed or required to serve as the a u d i e n c e to the sacrificial ritual, m e n s t r u a t i n g w o m e n or p o s t - p a r t u m w o m e n m a y be f o r b i d d e n to touch, c o n s u m e or sometimes even look at the sacrifice. M e n s t r u a t i n g a n d p o s t - p a r t u m w o m e n are too fully e m b o d i e d as female to be r e - e m b o d i e d as m a l e - a p p r o p r i a t e ; they are, p e r h a p s , a physical r e m i n d e r that m e n ' s sacrifice c a n n o t fully replace w o m e n ' s childbearing.2 5 A slightly different m o d e l is w h a t I call "the absent a u d i e n c e . " In some cultural situations w o m e n are consistently defined as so thoroughly polluted, spiritually weak or d a n g e r o u s , that they are never allowed to be present at sacrificial rituals. At the s a m e time, however, they are required to actively acknowledge the ritual, for instance, t h r o u g h refraining f r o m certain activities or t h r o u g h conspicuously avoiding the ritual site. In this model, the absence of w o m e n should be r e g a r d e d as a key ritual element: T h r o u g h their absence w o m e n contribute to the constitu-tion of the all-male sacrificial c o m m u n i t y . T h e i r absence acknowl-edges m e n ' s p o w e r a n d control of resources.

T h e models that I have presented until n o w have not especially e m p h a s i z e d w h a t seems to m e to be a, if not the, p r i m a r y element

23

Jamison, Stephanie W. Sacrificed Wife, Sacrijicer's Wife: Women, Ritual, and Hospitality

in Ancient India. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), esp. p. 25.

24

For example, on the Rajputs of northern India see Walker, Benjamin. The

Hindu World: An Encyclopedic Survey of Hinduism. (New York: Praeger, 1968), esp. pp.

462-463.

of sacrificial rituals—killing. T h r o u g h killing the sacrificial victim, the sacrificer d e m o n s t r a t e s his p o w e r to g e n e r a t e d e a t h . In the next model, m e n are dramatically a n d ritually g e n d e r e d as e m p o w e r e d to kill. W h e r e a s N a n c y J a y ' s model (my first model) treats sacrifice as ritualizing m e n ' s control over life, this m o d e l highlights sacrifice as ritualizing m e n ' s control over d e a t h . W h e r e a s the first model gen-ders life-giving as a male enterprise, this m o d e l gengen-ders life-taking as a male enterprise. Both lifegiving a n d lifetaking, in these m o d -els, are, of course, e m b o d i m e n t s of power.

Rosaldo a n d Atkinson have perceptively argued that,

Killing, unlike childbirth, grants men wilful control over the processes of nature, and in particular, over the natural processes of life and death. Such an association is made explicit for cultural interpretations of forms of killing as distinct as warfare in New Guinea . . . and live burial among certain African groups . . . . We would suggest, then, that the critical difference between giving and taking life is rooted in the fact that a man's killing is always an act of will, directed towards a body other than his own; giving life through childbirth, on the other hand, is a natural function of a woman's body, and usually is some-thing over which she has little intentional control. Men's life-taking, because of its intentionality, becomes a means of culturally transcending the biological; whereas childbearing, despite values attached to it as the means of perpetuating a social group, remains grounded in the

'naturalness' of women's sexual constitution.26

T o their analysis, I would a d d that sacrifice—completely intentional, ritualized, a n d "cultural" d e a t h , can be viewed as the most "per-feet" f o r m of life-taking, a n d as such, particularly valorizes m e n a n d m e n ' s roles.

T h e association between m e n a n d sacrifice is so strong that in certain cultures even w h e n w o m e n are the leaders a n d officiants at sacrificial rituals, a m a n briefly enters the ritual a r e n a in o r d e r to carry out the actual sacrificial killing. T h i s m o d e l has been brilliantly explicated by Marcel Detienne in regard to the ancient Greek Thesmo-p h o r i a . T h r o u g h analyses of a wide range of literary a n d Thesmo-pictorial evidence, D e t i e n n e concludes that in the very few a n d clearly n o n -historical G r e e k stories in which w o m e n are depicted as h o l d i n g

26

Rosaldo, Michelle Zimbalist, and J a n e Monnig Atkinson. "Man the Hunter and Woman: Metaphors for the Sexes in Ilongot Magical Spells." In The Interpretation

0fSymb€lim1, edited by Roy Willis, 43-76. (New York: J o h n Wiley and Sons, 1975), esp. p. 70.

sacrificial weapons, the message seems to be that when women kill, they become dangerous to men. Thus, the fact that a m a n is needed to dart out into the ritual arena to perform the sacrifice indicates, "Nothing is at stake other than the maintenance of the male privi-lege to shed blood at a time that [this priviprivi-lege] seems most threat-ened by a ritual order, that of the Thesmophoria, which calls both for the banishing of males, and the inauguration of a society of w o m e n having the high power to sacrifice animal victims."27

W h e t h e r killing or maleness are understood as superior or super-ordinate to life or femaleness depends upon specific cultural under-standings of death and life. In some cultures, death is valorized, m e n associated with death are considered heroic, and sacrificial rituals dramatize men's control over death. It seems to me that this model tends to be found in militaristic cultures, a n d may be related to another form of male sacrifice—male self-sacrifice in times of war. In this model, the body of the self-sacrificial victim is reconstructed as a fully gendered, indeed a perfect male b o d y — t h e military hero. Any androgynous elements are stripped away, leaving the essence, the ideal, of gendered masculinity. T h r o u g h self-sacrificial rituals, the ambiguously natural h u m a n body is disembodied in order to be re-embodied in a more clearly and perfectly gendered m a n n e r . J u s t as Nancy J a y ' s model shows how sacrifice reconstitutes the community into a more perfect one that is born of men rather than women, heroic male self-sacrifice reconstitutes the individual body into a more perfect one—into one in which male-oriented culture rather than female-oriented birth has left its imprint.

Moreover, as Carolyn Marvin a n d David Ingle have argued in their analysis of the centrality of blood sacrifice in the establishment of both religious a n d national identity, heroic self-sacrifice distin-guishes and reconstitutes not only the individual body but also the social body by setting off Us (those on whose behalf the sacrifice is made) from Them.2 8 Marvin and Ingle do not specifically address questions of gender, yet it is implicit in their argument that the com-munity typically is constructed out of the [male] bodies of those who are sacrificed, and by those [men] who exercise killing power.

Self-27

"Violence," 143-144. 28

Marvin, Carolyn, and David W. Ingle. "Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Revisiting Civil Religion." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64, no. 4 (1996): 767-780.

sacrifice defines the male-oriented community via the deaths of cer-tain chosen m e n . T h e efficacy of the sacrifice is maximalized, it would seem, when the chosen victim is perceived as perfect (young, male a n d unblemished): In national contexts the self-sacrificial vie-tims often are described as "the flower of our y o u t h / ' "the best a n d the brightest," or "a few good m e n . " In religious contexts the most perfect self-sacrifice may be the son of God himself.29

Self-sacrifice takes differently gendered forms a m o n g m e n a n d a m o n g w o m e n . W o m e n ' s self-sacrifice has been extensively docu-mented by Caroline Bynum in her studies of medieval Christian reli-gious women.3 0 I find it especially significant that one of the most prevalent forms of women's self-sacrifice—extreme fasting, can lead to singularly gendered manifestations—the sacrifice of female sec-ondary sexual characteristics and fertility. W h e n women's weight falls below a certain point, menstruation ceases. T h e self-sacrificial model described by Bynum may be particularly evident in religious systems in which it is believed that women can attain high spiritual powers or status, but the mainstream paths to spiritual power a n d status are dominated by men. I would suggest that unlike men's self-sacrifice that tends to reembody m e n as more perfecdy male, women's self-sacrifice generally disembodies women as a means of making them less female. As Jesus declared in the Gospel of Thomas, "Every w o m a n who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

A rather different model that I wish to present focuses upon the gendering of death itself. Cross-culturally, we find in the ethnographic, literary and historical literature a rather widespread conceptual or symbolic association between women and death. According to psycho-logist of religion Diane Jonte-Pace, in patriarchal cultures "death, the unrepresentable, the ultimate absence, is symbolized as w o m a n ;

29

Another well-known form of male self-sacrifice is sexual self-sacrifice. T h e clear-est example would be ritual castration. Like in the heroic variation, the sexual self-sacrifice disembodies in order to construct a more perfect male body—in this case one that is exempt from the earthy and polluting processes of sexual reproduction. Similarly, in many cultural contexts circumcision both is understood to create a more perfect male, and serves as an initiation into the community of men that supersedes the domestic unit into which a boy was born and in which he was raised. In circumcision rituals, the mother may be required to physically or sym-bolically hand over H E R son to the community of men, an act that could also be considered a form of women's self-sacrifice for the good of the male-constituted community. O n Africa and New Guinea see "Blood," esp. p. 102.

30

Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

w o m a n becomes, through metonymy, death. Maternal absence, mat-ricide, and castration (absence as female), are [then] negated in the religious promise of presence through eternal life a n d paternal love (presence as male)."31 Jonte-Pace carefully traces the association of w o m e n with death in western religious a n d psychoanalytic thinking,32 citing for example, the fourth century Church Father St. J o h n Chrysos-torn who called the female body a "white sepulcher." In contrast, Christians are truly born (or "born again") through the sacrificed male body of Christ. In this kind of discourse, patriarchal religion is pre-sented as the only means for conquering female-embodied death. In sacrifice—a controlled and ritualized form of death-causing, m e n are symbolically cast as able to control death, a n d by extension, death's e m b o d i m e n t — t h a t is, women. This model tends to be found in cul-tures characterized by dualistic thinking; that is, culcul-tures in which male a n d female are understood to be core dichotomous categories, intrinsically linked to such other key dualisms as spirit and body.33

Gender and sacrifice in Okinawa

W e turn now to the one clearly sacrificial ritual found in Okinawa's rather vast ceremonial repertoire. My observations are drawn from the fieldwork that I carried out in 1 9 9 4 - 1 9 9 5 on H e n z a , a small one-village island located near the coast of Okinawa's main island.34

31

Jonte-Pace, Diane. "Situating Kristeva Differently: Psychoanalytic Readings of Women and Religion." In Body/Text in Julia Kristeva: Religion, Woman, Psychoanalysis, edited by David Crownfield, 1-22. (Albany: State University of New York Press,

1992), esp. p. 21. 32

An association of women and death or absence is also expressed in psycho-analytic theories. "Female genitals in Freud's analysis . . . are a gap, a lack, an absence: the female acknowledges the fact of her castration, and with it, too, the superiority of the male and her own inferiority" ("Situating Kristeva," 20). Winnicot, according to Jonte-Pace, somewhat softens the equation of women and absence, yet does not eliminate it: Winnicot writes that when the mother is away the child per-ceives her as dead—the mother's absence is the very meaning of death. Julia Kristeva maintains the homology of women and death: the feminine as the image of death is a screen for both the fear of castration and for the matricide that is necessary for the individual to become autonomous. Jonte-Pace clarifies that association between women and death in western thinking is not always explicit or visible; to the con-trary, the public discourse in the west tends to be that of "woman as life-bearer." This discourse, however, is also used to restrict women's freedom and social power.

33

Sacrifice also can be seen as a corrective for Death's non-cognizance of gender. 34 _{For a more complete discussion of gender and Okinawan religion see Sered,} Susan. Women of the Sacred Groves: Divine Priestesses of Okinawa. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

Men's rituals

Susan: Are there any rituals that involve killing an animal?

Village man: Ame tabore, also harna ogami. Pig. Kill the pig, ask them to bring

the bowl.

Susan׳. Is killing the pig a job for men?

Village man: Mr. Shiidu [a male ritual role] will cut the pig, and Mr. Tobaru

[another male ritual role], all men.

Ame tabore—a rain ritual—is the only ritual that I have ever h e a r d

O k i n a w a n villagers spontaneously categorize as a ' m e n only' ritual. It also is a flamboyantly blood-oriented ritual, i n c o r p o r a t i n g actual animal sacrifice a n d a t h e m e of symbolic h u m a n sacrifice.35 Ame tabore

centers u p o n the sacrifice of a goat. M e n d a n c e a r o u n d the goat's h e a d which is placed next to pots of water, a boy is d u n k e d into the pot, a n d then the m e n eat soup m a d e f r o m the goat m e a t .

I never saw ame tabore, both because w o m e n do not attend, a n d b e c a u s e it is a ritual t h a t is only p e r f o r m e d in years of severe

drought.3 6 H e r e is how one village m a n describes ame tabore״.

We go to a place in the mountains and circle around it [the goat] seven times. We sing a song: ame tabore, ame tabore [please rain, please rain]. And then we come down from the mountain. We go to a river and pick up some water from there and carry it and go to the

nun-duruc/ii's [chief priestess's] place. And then all the important men of

the village get together there and say to have rain. And then we grab a little boy, and there is a big bowl with water, and we push down the boy into the water to sit down in the water. If Henza does ama

goi [ame tabore], strangely, it brings rain. Four years ago they did this

and it rained.

A n o t h e r village m a n , w h o has organized ame tabore, fills in a few m o r e details:

Up there [in the mountains] they kill the goat and bring it to the river and clean it and go someplace to cook it. The goat is usually male— there is more meat on male goats. They decorate the cooked food with the head. There is a big water bowl and a little bit of the juice of the goat is put in, and the boy is dumped in it in front of the

35

T h e human sacrifice motif seems obvious to me, but I never heard a villager suggest that line of interpretation.

36 _{O n e informant said it has been done four or five times in the past 65 years,} but another informant said it is done far more often because droughts are frequent on the island.

kami-ya ["god house"]. The boy doesn't like to be the one who is

dunked. Henza's ame tabore is very famous. [Neighboring] islands have their own ritual, but if Henza doesn't do it, it won't rain.

In light of the typology of g e n d e r a n d sacrifice i n t r o d u c e d in the first p a r t of this p a p e r , the association between m e n a n d the one sacrificial ritual p e r f o r m e d in H e n z a is r a t h e r predictable. As I have a r g u e d , sacrifice often has to d o with the ritual construction, mysti-fication a n d e m b o d i m e n t of g e n d e r a n d g e n d e r hierarchy. T h i s rit-ual design makes sense in the m a n y religious settings in which the idealization of p a t r i a r c h y is a cosmological a n d ceremonial goal.

In O k i n a w a , however, w o m e n fill all o t h e r ritual roles, w o m e n serve as the clan a n d village priestesses, only w o m e n connect with the kami-sama (deities), a n d there is n o ideology of male superiority or purity.3 7 M o r e o v e r , villagers do not p r o m o t e any sort of an ide-ology of g e n d e r difference: M e n a n d w o m e n m a y carry out different tasks, b u t there are n o traits, statuses, or roles that are inherently gender-linked.

If p a t r i a r c h y is not p a r t of the cosmological or ritual a g e n d a in O k i n a w a n religion, the specific models suggested earlier should not be expected to fit the O k i n a w a n ritual reality. T h u s , a last model that I wish to propose is one that flip-flops the previous models. W e find that an association between m e n a n d d e a t h (as opposed to an association between m e n a n d the p o w e r to o v e r c o m e or b r i n g a b o u t death) is present in certain, although p e r h a p s not m a n y , cultural contexts. In some of these contexts, the association between m e n a n d d e a t h is treated as parallel to the association between w o m e n a n d life. 111 these societies, only m e n can c o n d u c t sacrificial rituals because w o m e n are so totally associated with life that they choose not to, or are not p e r m i t t e d to, participate in d e a t h or blood ori-ented rituals. C o n t a c t with blood or d e a t h rituals m a y be perceived as w e a k e n i n g the spiritual p o w e r that w o m e n need to create life. I would suggest that this m o d e l tends to be f o u n d in societies char-acterized by a strong matrifocal or matrilineal emphasis, a n d in which birth a n d m e n s t r u a t i o n are not considered polluting (although d e a t h

37

For somewhat different interpretations of Okinawan religion and gender see Mabuchi, Toiclii. "Spiritual Predominance of the Sister." In Ryukyuan Culture and

Society, edited by Allan H. Smith, 79-91. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,

1964); Kawahashi, Noriko. Kaminchu: Divine Women of Okinawa. Ph.D. diss. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University, 1992.