Building Religions 24: Orgy and Ecstasy

"There are vocal qualities peculiar to men, and vocal qualities peculiar to beasts; and it is terrible to hear the one when the source should yield the other. Animal fury and orgiastic license here whipped themselves to daemoniac heights by howls and squawking ecstacies that tore and reverberated through those nighted woods like pestilential tempests from the gulfs of hell."—H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Building Religions 7: Sacrifice

Building Religions 7: Sacrifice

In sword & sorcery fantasy and occult horror, human sacrifice ranks up there with the use of the words "thews" and "squamous," respectively, in terms of popularity. What I want to do with this little essay is consider some theories about the purpose of sacrifice in real-world religions, and see how those might translate into fictional worlds. As usual, I'm not going to cover all the possible approaches -- just the ones that I find interesting.