Blood Sacrifices

Blood sacrifice has been a widespread and complex phenomenon throughout history and across cultures. Sacrificial practices involving the killing of humans and animals and/or the use of the flesh, blood, or bones of their bodies for ritual purposes dates back at least twenty thousand years. The concept of blood sacrifice and magico-religious activities has traditionally been studied as a historical inquiry in the academic disciplines of anthropology, religion, philosophy and sociology. This book is unique in several significant aspects. First, the concept of human sacrifice is acknowledged as an active contemporary phenomenon. Second, blood sacrifice is not studied as a theoretical endeavor. Significantly, the authors are conducting applied research with real life implications, specifically the study of sacrifice as it pertains to violent non-state actors. Finally, the authors utilize a variety of unique symbolic and anthropological methodologies that analyze violent crime in the context of culture, symbol systems, religious experience, ritual, mythology, magical thinking and other atypical approaches to criminology. The result is a collection of important essays that demonstrate that research into historical acts of sacrifice is remarkably pertinent to brutal acts committed by violent non-state actors. The acknowledgment that blood sacrifice, particularly human sacrifice, actively occurs in the 21st century is a pivotal triumph in scholarly research. Twenty years ago, this book could not have been published. In most universities, think tanks, and government research facilities, characterizing any type of murder as sacrificial was viewed at best as a secondary motive and at worst as junk science. Many colleges and other prominent institutions still hold this view. Incidents involving beheadings, cannibalism, dismemberment, mutilation, torture, and a variety of other blood rituals are typically interpreted as either a form of psychological warfare, satanic panic, war crime, drug induced mania, or some specific form of sociopathy or psychopathy. The resistance to interpreting violence as a form of blood sacrifice is based on the Western philosophical tradition of rational scientific inquiry. Subsequently, the methodological foundations of criminology, sociology, and behavioral science are predicated on a logical, rational psychological worldview. Since the principle underlying theories of criminology and behavioral science are primarily responsible for the current accepted classifications and categories of violent crime, investigation and analysis has an inherent Western bias. Whereas alternative theories of violence, such as blood sacrifice, are predicated on magical religious worldviews. These philosophical differences in interpretation have substantial implications for research, intelligence analysis, homicide investigations, military strategies, and anti-drug trafficking approaches. Dr. Dawn Perlmutter