Sacrificial magic

Rituals, spells, prayer, meditation and magical acts.
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Smaragd
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Sacrificial magic

Post by Smaragd »

On the Finnish side of the forum there was a link to news article about people coming across the same sacrificial offering in the woods multiple times: animal heart, vodka, bread and tobacco. I started to wonder in a back to basics kind of way, what kind of views do we have on this simple magical act of sacrifice. Are you personally familiar to sacrificial practices and can you uncover some of the views you hold about it, and how it works? I believe it works in some way and I think I can churn the thought out by writing, but I'd like to hear your views on the idea in folk magic that you'd have some outer object within your possession, like bread, and then you sacrifice it to a spirit somewhere that isn't in the first place obviously related to such an object. To what are such connections based on in a magical act? Does it reveal something to you of the world we live in?
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
Angolmois

Re: Sacrificial magic

Post by Angolmois »

The only kind of "sacrificial magic" I perform is sacrifice of beer in sauna for Ukko Perkele and for the familiar spirits of the house; I normally pour out at least half of the bottle or can into the rocks and its practical function is to get that rye bread odour into the sauna.

The only exception to this thus far is visiting some times a local old sacrificial tree where I pour out booze and might leave some offerings like food, since it is one of the local geo-chakras that I have consecrated to my work.

I know very little of the mechanisms of this kind of magic, for me it has been more of symbolic kind of offerings made to the spirits of a place.
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Polyhymnia
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Re: Sacrificial magic

Post by Polyhymnia »

I'm very fascinated with this type of sacrificial magic, but I don't know much about it personally, just what I grew up watching growing up in an asian household and visiting friends and relatives with little offerings set up to keep spirits happy. But I suppose an offering is different from a sacrifice. I will sometimes offer live flowers or herbs on my altar to balance out various rituals, with the idea being an exchange of energy, but I couldn't tell you the exact physics behind it, it's just something I feel.
"Limited love asks for possession of the beloved, but the unlimited asks only for itself." -Kahlil Gibran
obnoxion
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Re: Sacrificial magic

Post by obnoxion »

Polyhymnia wrote: Wed Aug 12, 2020 7:18 am I'm very fascinated with this type of sacrificial magic
So am I. It is a very instinctual and poetic form of spirituality. But it can be harshly commiting practice, like in quimbanda.
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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Nefastos
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Re: Sacrificial magic

Post by Nefastos »

When I offer something material – instead of just spiritual things – I consider myself being in contact with only the physical energies of beings. Therefore I consider offerings being a part of "black" magic. By this I do not mean evil, but yes, something ambivalent that is not good either.

Since I do not personally think that spiritual things would need anything physical from me, my offerings are also usually of practical nature. I give them to the lowest, most physical order of goetic spirits, in order to get something from them. It's the old do ut des for me, even though there is love present in all my dealings: it is not easy for me to even consider being in contact with any entity without love – respect for the other's Otherness, individual beauty – being a part of an exchange. (A small heureka here: This aspect of sympathy might actually be a part why I consider being in contact with people so draining: one really has to consider what it means to meet another, not from one's own point of view, but that of the other's. That itself then becomes an offering of energy, usually gladly-given but still exhausting.)

Smaragd wrote: Tue Aug 11, 2020 6:01 pmand how it works?

Offerings make possible "a body" (of aether) for the spirits to work in our world. The vapours of blood, alcoholic spirits, slowly decaying flowers & so on give to the spirits the extremely subtle "mass" they need to work material things. To leave a plastic bottle for the spirits (like in the news you mentioned) is both useless & quite contrary to the idea of elemental offering, for the plastic material never decomposes to release the aethers for the spirits to habit. The same with the tobacco: the unsmoken tobacco itself helps the spirit very little. Yet there is another side. A person who leaves that kind of offerings is acting out Eliphas Levi's old axiom that "the most absurd is the most powerful in black magic", because in case one believes to the formula (or offering) enough to actually use it even though it is absurd, he has so much faith in the process that his (quite insane) astral logic helps the lowest spirits in the astral to work through that phantasm. It's like entering a dream. It could be thus said that those irrational offerings therefore become as sacrificium intellectus, offering one's own reason to the spirits. And now we're going to quite tantric depths.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Smaragd
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Re: Sacrificial magic

Post by Smaragd »

Nefastos wrote: Wed Aug 12, 2020 10:02 am Offerings make possible "a body" (of aether) for the spirits to work in our world.
First when you said that spiritual things would not need anything physical from us, this idea came to mind, but I take need is something more active; the spirits do not ”long for” they just Will.
Nefastos wrote: Wed Aug 12, 2020 10:02 am
Smaragd wrote: Tue Aug 11, 2020 6:01 pmand how it works?

The vapours of blood, alcoholic spirits, slowly decaying flowers & so on give to the spirits the extremely subtle "mass" they need to work material things. To leave a plastic bottle for the spirits (like in the news you mentioned) is both useless & quite contrary to the idea of elemental offering, for the plastic material never decomposes to release the aethers for the spirits to habit. The same with the tobacco: the unsmoken tobacco itself helps the spirit very little. Yet there is another side. A person who leaves that kind of offerings is acting out Eliphas Levi's old axiom that "the most absurd is the most powerful in black magic", because in case one believes to the formula (or offering) enough to actually use it even though it is absurd, he has so much faith in the process that his (quite insane) astral logic helps the lowest spirits in the astral to work through that phantasm. It's like entering a dream. It could be thus said that those irrational offerings therefore become as sacrificium intellectus, offering one's own reason to the spirits. And now we're going to quite tantric depths.
Interesting point of view reminding me of how somewhere in the Theosophic literature it is mentioned that to be successful in magic or mediumistic phenomena, one does not need to understand the metaphysics and the whole way the magical powers traverses. Like obnoxion said, ”it is very instinctual and poetic”. The instinctual side of it is like bringing the knowledge, the intuition, all the smaller parts we have learned to the one moment of being – a wholesome presence. The poetic side of it is like a series of small leaves from which we push ourselves up – something to grasp to and have something under our feet speeding up to flight. Knowledge in its narrow meaning is like pieces of words in poetry, cells in the leaves, very tiny part of the whole indeed. I think how we can instinctually find a way, like in the case of offering our reason instead of the plastic bottle we have initially offered, speaks alot of the world and the nature of metaphysics of the spirits in general. The macrocosmic interconnectivity allows the intuitive magician to find a way for things to happen; no form is able to bind the spirit. This is the airy quality of the spirits and ”the flight”. The window poetry is able to make is a kind of portal.

Still, it is supportive to have the knowledge and to try to further and further embody and internalize all the learned things in to alive connections and understanding. Deeper understanding is about wholism and balanced/guided interconnectedness. The adept being governs and connects those areas it is the master of. As we understand our offerings, the understanding and the subjects of our understanding becomes more and more part of us, tools and organs for the use of the master in us. Explaining the secret away would be destroying the potential of poetry - cutting the wings away, while explaining things in a way that opens our understanding and possibly reorganizes the thoughts, would be more like releasing fuel from our spiderwebby earthy layers, which the air element will take inside it’s poetic womb making way to the children of fire.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
obnoxion
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Re: Sacrificial magic

Post by obnoxion »

In my life, goetia and theurgia go hand in hand. I am a visual thinker, and handling items of traditional witchcraft is a manner of processing thoughts that I find inaccessable in words. That being said, I do subscribe to what fra Nefastos wrote above. And I take into consideration the etheric sympathies.

I've witnessed a sort of Buddhist "black mass" in a television documentary, where practicioners dress as celestial jesters, and use empty coke-bottles instead of ritual vessels. (I've mentioned it on old Finnish topic: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=120)

But on the example above from the Finnish news paper, I suppose it is a sort of poor man's sacrifice. What it lacks in etheric dynamics, it makes up in constancy. It certainly beings to mind examples from around the world that are considered more or less black magic, where a strong commitments is forged with potentially dangerous entities or forces.
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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Smaragd
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Re: Sacrificial magic

Post by Smaragd »

obnoxion wrote: Tue Aug 18, 2020 5:53 pm In my life, goetia and theurgia go hand in hand. I am a visual thinker, and handling items of traditional witchcraft is a manner of processing thoughts that I find inaccessable in words. That being said, I do subscribe to what fra Nefastos wrote above. And I take into consideration the etheric sympathies.
A tranquil expression, much appreciated.
obnoxion wrote: Tue Aug 18, 2020 5:53 pm I've witnessed a sort of Buddhist "black mass" in a television documentary, where practicioners dress as celestial jesters, and use empty coke-bottles instead of ritual vessels. (I've mentioned it on old Finnish topic: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=120)

But on the example above from the Finnish news paper, I suppose it is a sort of poor man's sacrifice. What it lacks in etheric dynamics, it makes up in constancy. It certainly beings to mind examples from around the world that are considered more or less black magic, where a strong commitments is forged with potentially dangerous entities or forces.
Thank you for reminding of the documentary. I have watched it before some years ago but I got much more out of it now with more knowledge on tantric buddhism. I started longing again for such festive and many coloured collective rituals. The black mass is an complementary element. Almost as if by the offering in the coke-bottles, parody, laughter and cunning it manages to please the doubting spirits, setting the minds open and "festive" for the main ritual. I have sometimes done something vaguely similar when dressing for a solo ritual. Although dressing isn't so much an offering in the aetheric sense, it is dressing for the ritual and connecting with the spirits.

The plastic bottles were a great example, but I must give credit for the aetheric working method of the reported forest offerings: despite being a plastic bottle, it was left open leaving the alcoholic bewerage free to fill the atmosphere of the ritual grounds.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
Seferoth
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Re: Sacrificial magic

Post by Seferoth »

Sacrificial magic makes the most sense to me. I give and i receive or i give and you give. It's fair. Yesterday i offered my blood to President Buer as i did not have all the required offerings he usually likes, i had no time to waste so i had to act quickly and i offered my blood instead. I hope it was enough and President Buer heard my plea and heals/helps my mother. My mother has tumors, several of them, i found out about it yesterday. I will do a full summoning next month when President Buer is at the peak of his strength and i have managed to collect all the offerings for him.
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