Hello,

Hilary suggested I ask this question under Divination discussion. (my question came up under an Open Discussion thread) Here is what I asked there:

Can someone please tell me why it is that sacrifice is thought to confer knowledge? The Mayans also practiced human sacrifice, to the 5th sun wasn't it? The Yi offers us an alternative, yarrow. Personally, I don't even like the idea of turtle sacrifices for oracles. Come to think of it, the whole business of oracles was founded on killing for knowledge.

Why would the act of killing be thought to confer the secrets of fate and time?

Thank you.

interesting realm, hester......is "killing" synonomous with "sacrifice"....or does sacrifice imply something deeper while killing may be a peripheral part of this...?
does that question make sense?

alexis

I agree with Alexis, absolutely.

I think that at a very basic level it has to do with exchange. If we give something to the spirits, it starts something flowing between us. So if the diviner wants knowledge to flow back to her, she must start by pouring something out for the spirits. And the quality and strength of her offering is important. What could be more potent or flow more strongly than something's life blood?

(Though I'm a vegetarian myself...)

Has there ever been a human society that didn't make offerings to their gods?

Hester, I find your view interesting. I can't speak with authority on this topic, but only based on my experiences with the spiritual aspect of using the Yi.

Given that, I'm agreeing with the above that killing need not be a part of "sacrifice" to higher spiritual powers. It might be, but so might sacrificing some of your time, some of your pride, doing a "good deed" - I think those kinds of things are equally valid as sacrifices. Maybe cook a nice meal (meatless being okay, IMO) and offer that as a sacrifice if you like...

I think from the Yi's perspective "sincerity" is what really counts in these sacrifices, rather than precisely what you offer or its value.

What I personally wouldn't do, would be to do an act I consider "evil" as sacrifice. In my view, that might set into motion "natural laws by which the evildoers actions return back to him" alluded to in Hexagram 23. (And, in my view, there probably aren't enough turtles left these days to make killing one "okay".)

It's interesting what you suggest about "trading" for knowledge when using the Yi. I'd never thought about it that way. I wonder if perhaps the Yi is constructed/written in such a way that if you follow the advice well, it "pays for itself." This would be in the sense that not only do you get good advice, but when you follow the advice it pleases the spiritual beings. This is, of course, speculation on my part, but could be the case.

I will say that I feel the Yi has "opened up" my spirituality for/with me. I feel a lot of gratitude for that, and, so far as I've seen, there's never been a required cost attached. (Although there is a cost in the sense that I feel kind of lonely because not many people seem to see/experience/understand what I do. And I've had to grow morally, but you know, I don't really mind that.)

My 2 cents...

- Jeff

"...the gods [small g] of light that feed on happiness..." - the Dhammapada

Tithing is also a practice which seems to be along these lines.......and its efficacy, magical.
MOney is like the LIfe Blood of humans....
and in tithing, one gives (sacrifices) money in order to "open out a way" for the return blessing.
Everything like this seems to operate in Circles.....what you put out returns to you in like measure.....you create the path for the return by throwing out the sacrifice

shrines, too, are offerings.....an altar is a place where we offer something...not sure if it is always blood.........the catholic church has the biggest example of blood sacrifice for the "greater GOOD".......always felt it was a barbaric miscomprehension, though, but maybe not.....
forgive me, i am rambling, more later.....

This question started in the OK city thread, world leaders sacrificng children, all that. I thought of the Mayans and wondered "Why is this still going on?" Why does knowledge come to the priests this way? Then I read this:

"It is a fact, unknown to history but revealed by Steiner's spiritual research, that while the Incarnation of Christ was happening in Palestine another stupendous drama played out in Mexico. A high initiate of the negative Mysteries, the most advanced "black magician" in the world, had reached, by repeated ritual murders of an especially horrible kind, the threshold of knowledge of certain deep, cosmic secrets. "

True or not, there is the idea of these horrible deaths giving the priest knowledge. I wondered if the priests transposed their conciousness into the victim, and learned secrets of the universe this way. Shamanic flight.

Gruesome. A whole civilization, and a calendar, built around this practice.

The Yi made a leap in conciousness, to have yarrow. We can now think of sacrifices figuratively, metaphorically, but it's origins, or perhaps what is now the Yi was transposed over, was a practice based on burning turtles?

Yes, you are right Gypsy, there is a difference. And Hilary makes it clearer, it is an offering, it is food. I like to think that the offering I am pouring out to the spirits is my own heart, in the question. The more heart, the more stuggle, the better.

Jeff it sounds really something, what you write about, your experience working with the Yi. It sounds quite wonderful Nothing like that has happened for me with the Yi, quite like what you describe. "Yi is constructed/written in such a way that if you follow the advice well, it "pays for itself." Ummmm. I like that very much. Your point about sincerity, reminds me of the line about the neigbor in the east and in the west. One who had a simple offering, and one who had a blood sacrifice. The simple one was happiest. "The gods of light that feed on happiness". Ah. May they dine at your table.

Gypsy, Tithing, is a way of making what goes around come around, and is related, but why does a dead chicken's entrails have the power it does? Does something, when it is about to die, absorb the demand of the sacrificer, and reveal?

Hester, intrals or monies? It all is a matter of social consciousness and what a society is programmed to believe will work.

"its origins, or perhaps what is now the Yi was transposed over, was a practice based on burning turtles?"

Divination in ancient China would be part of a bigger ritual that involved an offering. A lot of early divinations, as recorded on the oracle bones, were actually about what would be an acceptable offering. Vast numbers of animals were sacrificed - also, sometimes, prisoners of war. Probably it seemed a lot less remarkable when death was not taboo.

Freeman Crouch reckons that one of the themes of the ancient Yi is overcoming the need for human sacrifice. Certainly it has that idea that your state of mind when you make the offering, or maybe just whether you are the right person at the right time, is more important than sheer quantity.

I like the point that money nowadays is pretty much equivalent to blood and entrails. Imagine not just tithing (which is painless), but giving it all away, as Jesus suggested. Enough to make anyone quite squeamish...

A time when death was not taboo, this is true, yes, according to the rulers, those with the gold, we always have to buck up to what they decide is not taboo, like, for instance, a work week that takes up most of one's life, a lifestyle that is toxic to the planet. Art that is sanctioned to a museum, not to the hearth. If that isn't giving one's blood, what is. But to the prisoner who was about to be sacrificed, well, how not taboo was his death? Hilary that is an amazing scenario recorded on the oracle bones, the sheer numbers communicates to me just how important the question was, a question that concerned the entire society; drought or famine, and so it reckons that people and animals must be sacrificed for an answer.

Maybe it comes down to that some gods are carnivores and some are vegetarian.

I also wonder how much the origins of knowledge were accidental? And sacrificing was a way of trying to repeat the accident.

Thanks for the example as Jesus gave. Someone told me we cannot make progress int the spiritual world unless we give up what we have in the material. To give it all away is a giant leap into the unknown. Into the endless moment. One would not need divination anymore if one were to do that. Knowledge would be direct. And worn on the skin, the life, and the death. Deeper than a tatoo.

Thanks Gypsy, Hilary, Jeff, Jerry, for talking me through this.

I didn't mean taboo as in a ruler's decision. I meant taboo as in what death is for us today: taken out of the fabric of society, something that happens behind closed doors in special buildings. I'm 32, and I've never seen a dead body. (And you know, it's hard for me to write that! I do feel as if I'm breaking a rule.) Hardly worth remarking on in the West today; surely unheard-of in ancient China, or pretty much any other place or time.

Thank you for the very thought-provoking questions and suggestions.

Everybody should see a dead body. I am sorry it is taboo, and I personally feel so indebted to Elizabeth Kubler Ross for all the courageous work she did or tried to do regarding the meaning of death.
When my father died a few years ago, I rushed to his bedside and although I nearly collapsed in grief, absolutely nothing could have prepared me for what I then KNEW.......the body is a shell. It was his body, but it was NOT him... he was gone, flown away, transcended, out of there. That lifeless pale shell of a body had nothing whatever to do with the vibrant multi-expressions of life that had filled it just the day before.

the breadth and depth of Life goes so far beyond the shell that houses it for a time on earth. his conscious life was not lost, i simply knew that , as i touched the cold skin, the fingers that had held mine, his big toe, a feel of hisnose and cheeks. sooo sad to see this without him in it, the breathe was gone, the blood flow had ceased. how quickly cold... the room where nobody lives

Its rather like moving out of a house.........the life that was lived within those walls has its own essence, is its own creation, the house was simply where it took place. the house will eventually crumble....the life that was created there by living never dies. it moves on into another form or divides into even newer forms. death is a hoax
but i guess I am digressing here...

anyway, when did Jesus say to give up everything? I know he said "leave your nets" but that meant something different, I thought. He said "I have come that you may have LIfe and have it more abundantly." Life will always fill the forms, but it isnt the form, itself. leave your forms and attempts to hold life behind...come out of that conditioning

On earth, sometimes I think we confuse the forms with the life, we attach to the forms and call them reality. But the reality is what fills them, gives them meaning, significance. Forms come and go...23.6...when the form dies, the biggestfruit is still uneaten. It becomes something else. the small is destroyed (the ego mind?) but the superior man finds a carriage, new effectiveness.
"let the dead bury their dead.....follow me,
I am the Way, the Truth and the life"

Eliz kubler ross said to NEVER fear dying. Dying is the best thng that will ever happen to you.
Living is what is hard. and maybe it IS hard because we get so attached to the forms and feel like we are only a form, too.

Maybe sacrifice is not a loss but an exchange for something better .

my father died very afraid of dying, thinking it to be total demise, no more, I told him about butterflies that had been carved all over the walls of the children's barracks at Aushwitz.....the symbol that they unconsciously drew foretelling their fate.

for a few days after he died, i felt no sense of his presence at all. only a cavernous vacancy in the center of my own life, bereft......i began to wonder if I was wrong..perhas it WAS his finality.

but on the third day, I was overwhelmed with a whooosh of Life force, an unmistakably crystal clear sense of aliveness, infilling my whole being, the strength of it shattering thru my griefand filling me with such a sacred sense of the gift true life is. He was infusing me, enlivening me, a transmission of life force so powerful that I felt extraordinary clarity about everything around me. And a sense of gratitude for life in every form. Carpe Diem was the phrase that came to mind. a resounding YES to life. It does not die. MY father was giving his life to me for the second time

He sent me butterflies then. One on the ground next to my car. the next day, a butterfly pin was next to my car in the same spot. on the next day, I asked him to send me a third so I would know that these were from him. and as I came back from my walk, i looked down and saw a small slip of paper face down on the sidewalk. I picked it up and on the front was the picture of a beuatiful buttrfly. Call me crazy, but I belive it was his way of saying that the story about the kids in the barracks was real.....death is a change, not an ending.

perhaps if death were not so taboo, and could comeout of the closed rooms, we could all learn of its beauty . They say that England is beset with lost souls who have died but have not passed on yet... they linger, clinging to illusory forms, and needing the unrepressed tears of grief to carry them like a river over into the new life awating them. Surrender, Dorothy. Sacrifice your most cherished illusions so that you may have Life more abundantly.

Thank you Micheline.

To the man involved in burial rites for his father, Jesus said, let the dead bury their own dead, follow me. That is an example of leaving everything. He said if your brother asks for your shirt, give him your coat. Yes he did say he would give life more abundantly, but it required giving up a previous way of life. Just as you say, Micheline, give up cherished illusions. Which also, at that time, had a lot to do with the orthadox religous practice, which was corrupt. And he did not have a home, he wandered.

He also said to visit the people in prisons. Imagine if a true disciple, an illuminated wild one who ate locust and honey, visited you in jail.

Far out post Micheline, yes. The froth of hex 55. I saw my uncle's body, it was rouged in the coffin. I felt a gasp of intense love for him even though I hardly knew him. I cried. My aunts are a nickypicky bunch and they were satisfied that I cried. Funerals are surreal. At a different funeral, a grieving mother kicked a grown neice out who had on a red polkadot dress and white knee socks and going around loudly bragging. The grieving mother kicked her out, and the niece went around complaining and the relatives said "Frankly, we cant believe she let you stay this long".

interesting story, Hester, big chuckle here.

excuse me , but where is candid?? his voice always pops up on threads, and frankly, I miss him. I won't get into why I suspect he may have flown this coop, but I do hope he comes back.

Hi Micheline thanks for the chuckle. In the haste of posting, I forgot to mention what an utter shock it was to see my uncles body like that. I know what you mean when you say you could not have prepared to have seen your father that way, because I never could have prepared for the fact that I was completely stunned dead in my tracks by the sight of the stiffness of his body. Life brings such softness. I didnt even like my Uncle, and here I was, stabbed with love for what his life was. That soft thing.

Something without life is so stiff. The softer we are the sweeter life is maybe the more it hurts but that is good in the long run.

I hope to be a real softy some day and weed out all the little hardnesses i developed to survive the edges and pains of this material world.

Micheline, I dont know where Candid is, i hope he is okay, but i notice lots of people dont say much here anyo=more.

I think that's okay becuse it seems to me people know each other pretty well on this forum and that is strange considering its all internet. How does that happen? Without sight, smell, touch, a group of people have come to know each other too welld, like a family.

My feeling is that we are leaping out of internet into a greater connectivity. I think it is happening. Perhaps less posting is not indicative of less connectgion, maybe there is a search for a even more subtle connection.

Rise up.

Hi Hester,

"I hope to be a real softy some day "

Someone told me once, and it felt so right, you can never be too gentle, either with your self or with others.

Water is so gentle, yet it wears away stone.

Very touching sentiment, Hester and QUITE TRUE. "WE are leaping out of the internet and into greater connectivity..." discovering that not anything is truly random......
Softy is the only way.......fear is contraction, it makes us hard and immutable.
Love is expansion, the dissolution of lines, the softest stuff in all the world.