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Human sacrifice anybody??? Hey, it's just wholesome play...the simple life epitomized.
Human sacrifice From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search "Polyxena dies by the hand of Neoptolemus on the tomb of Achilles" (1900 drawing after an ancient cameo) Homicide Murder Assassination · Child murder Consensual homicide Contract killing · Honour killing Lust murder · Lynching Mass murder · Murder-suicide Proxy murder · Ritual murder Serial killer · Spree killer Torture murder · Feticide Manslaughter in English law Negligent homicide Vehicular homicide Non-criminal homicide Note: Varies by jurisdiction Justifiable homicide Capital punishment Human sacrifice Feticide By victim or victims Suicide Family Familicide · Avunculicide Prolicide (Filicide • Infanticide • Neonaticide) Fratricide / Sororicide Mariticide / Uxoricide Parricide (Matricide • Patricide) Other Genocide / Democide Gendercide (Feminicide / Viricide) Regicide / Tyrannicide v • d • e Human sacrifice is the act of killing human beings as part of a religious ritual (ritual killing). Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals (animal sacrifice) and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practiced in various cultures throughout history. Victims were typically ritually killed in a manner that is supposed to please or appease gods, spirits or the deceased, for example as a propitiatory offering, or as a retainer sacrifice when the King servants die in order to continue to serve their master in the next life. Closely related practices found in some tribal societies are cannibalism and headhunting. By the Iron Age, with the associated developments in religion (the Axial Age), human sacrifice was becoming less common throughout the Old World, and came to be widely looked down upon as barbaric already in pre-modern times (Classical Antiquity). Blood libel is a false charge of ritual killing against such taboos.
Even if not ostensibly connected with religion, infliction of capital punishment is often highly ritualised and thus difficult to distinguish from human sacrifice. Death by burning historically has aspects of both human sacrifice (Wicker Man, Tophet) and capital punishment (Brazen bull, Tamar, tunica molesta). Execution by burning of Christian heretics was introduced by Justinian I in the 6th century. Detractors of the death penalty may consider all forms of capital punishment as secularized variants of human sacrifice.[1] Similarly, lynching, pogroms and genocides are sometimes interpreted as human sacrifice following Theodor W. Adorno.[2]
In modern times, even the once ubiquitous practice of animal sacrifice has virtually disappeared from all major religions (or has been re-cast in terms of ritual slaughter), and human sacrifice has become extremely rare. Most religions condemn the practice, and present-day secular laws treat it as murder. In the context of a society which condemns human sacrifice, the term ritual murder is used.
Nonetheless it is still occasionally seen today, with reports from the 2000s from India and Sub-Saharan Africa (muti killings), but also isolated cases in the immigrant African diaspora in Europe.[3][4]
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