In Honor of Samhain and Halloween: Some Thoughts on Human Sacrifice

The torches glimmered around Stonehenge on the night of October 31. The Druid priests all stood ‘round in a circle, their cloaks and hoods shielding their faces. A hundred flickering torches cast elongated shadows on the dark grass. The night air was pierced with the cry of the infant child lying on the altar.

This child’s blood would nourish the earth and appease the dark gods of the sky and underworld. The head priest stepped forward to the sacrificial table, holding a dagger high in the air.

This is not the only type of human sacrifice the world has known. It’s just one of the more well-known scenes.

We’re familiar with the “primitive” forms of human sacrifice. The Druids and their Samhain rituals—attempts to appease angry gods—which lent themselves to the syncretistic holiday of Halloween. The Aztecs and Mayas who nourished the earth with the blood of ritually killed men and women. But the Aztec, Druid and Mayan civilizations aren’t the only ones that have been based on human sacrifice.

In fact, most of our world’s civilizations have done the same. In the name of a “greater good”, human lives are sacrificed on the altars of our different socio-economic systems, in one way or another.

Take Imperialism. The promise of Imperialism, whatever the century may be, is that an invading country will “make things better” by attacking another part of the world and taking it over. Whether Rome is invading the “barbarian” territories of northern Europe, Spain is attacking the city of Tenochtitlán or France is invading northern Africa, the philosophy is the same.

The lives of thousands of natives are sacrificed on the altar of “civilization,” with the promise that their blood will help bring about a newer and brighter future for everyone.

Or take Fascism, for instance. The gods of Fascism promise that a brighter Fatherland awaits everyone, if only the government will eliminate certain “undesirable” sectors of the population. The “weak” are eliminated in the name of social Darwinism, to build stronger generations in the future.

In the name of creating a nation that is more healthy, or homogenous, or “racially pure”, human beings are sacrificed. The physically handicapped, socially “deviant” and ethnic minorities are killed on the altar of Nationalism.

Many Communist countries have also practiced human sacrifice. The promise of Communism is that a world will be created where everyone has enough to eat, a place to sleep, an education, and medical care.

However, in order to build this bright new world, many communist countries have sacrificed the lives of political dissidents. In some cases, a few hundred members of the previous regime are sacrificed. In the most extreme examples of Stalin’s Russia and Kim’s North Korea, all citizens are under constant suspicion of being “anti-revolutionary.”

All are potential candidates for human sacrifice. The government promises that, after eliminating dissent through violence, it will be able to build a brighter tomorrow.

I’m not here to debate the validity of any of these promises for a better future. Whether or not Imperialism, Fascism or Communism do or do not improve future conditions of the territories they control, the common thread that unites them all is their use of human sacrifice to reach these goals.

Human blood is poured out onto the ground in the name of progress. Individual men, women and children are cut down in the name of development. Lives are snuffed out in the name of the Homeland and its future.

Of course, there is yet another religion that demands human sacrifice—the church of Cutthroat Capitalism. The promise of neoliberal economics, in their most extreme manifestation, is that a future of development and greater opportunities awaits us all if we will only let the hallowed Invisible Hand of the market do whatever it wants.

Instruct everyone to take their hands off the economy, let it “regulate itself,” don’t regulate prices or wages in any way, and things will even themselves out.

Of course, every time humans have applied this policy in the past century, we’ve seen results that are often chaotic. Many times, the results are destructive, tragic and devastating. Thousands of people are put out of work. Farmers are no longer able to receive a decent price for their products. Huge sectors of the population turn into unemployed migrants. Wages drop and prices rise.

And yet, the gods of Cutthroat Capitalism clamber for more. They promise us that, if we will allow these things to happen, the economy will be better off in the long run. If we just let the economy do whatever it wants, it will eventually create a better world, say these dark gods.

This is the long run promise—the “prophetic vision” of the Church of Cutthroat Capitalism, if you will.

In the short run, however, we quickly realize that these gods are calling for human sacrifice. We are asking the world’s most vulnerable populations to climb on the altar and sacrifice their own well-being in the name of this brighter tomorrow.

For it quickly becomes obvious that, in the short run, most of the poor will get poorer, and most of them will die that way. If we demand that the economy be given free reign with no interference, thousands of the world’s poor will never live to see this brighter future of development that is promised.

Of course, it may or may not be true that giving free reign to the all-powerful “Invisible Hand” of the free market eventually creates a more healthy economy in some distant, invisible future. For that matter, Fascism may also have created a more healthy population in some distant future, had it been allowed to proceed.

As far as the millions of souls presently living on our planet, however, the religion of Cutthroat Capitalism shares the element of human sacrifice with most of humanity’s other violent socioeconomic religions. The Druids would be proud of our willingness to spill human blood in the name of Fascism, Communism, Imperialism and Capitalist Development.

The gods of a promised brighter future, when this is to be bought at any cost, are dark gods indeed—whatever the names they bear or the masks they wear, their bloodlust is the same.