The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets

“As far back even as the fifth century before Christ we find an explicit description of this Oriental rite of blood-covenanting. ‘Now, the Scythians,’ says Herodotus, ‘make covenants in the following manner, with whomsoever they make them: Having poured out wine into a great earthen drinking-bowl, they mingle with it the blood of those making covenant, striking the body with a small knife or cutting it slightly with a sword. Thereafter they dip into the bowl sword, arrows, axe, and javelin. But while they are doing this they utter many invokings, and afterward not only those who make the covenant, but those of their followers who are of the highest rank, drink off the wine mingled with blood.’

“Again, Herodotus says of this custom in his day: ‘Now, the Arabians reverence in a very high degree pledges between man and man. They make these pledges in the following way: When they wish to make pledges to one another, a third man, standing in the midst of the two, cuts with a sharp stone the inside of the hands along the thumbs of the two making the pledges. After that, plucking some woollen from the garments of each of the two, he anoints with the blood seven stones as the “heap of witness” which are set in the midst. While he is doing this he invokes Dionysus and Urania. When this rite is completed, he that has made the pledges introduces the stranger to his friends, or the fellow-citizen to his fellows if the rite was performed with a fellow-citizen.

“Going back, now, to the world’s most ancient records in the monuments of Egypt, we find evidence of the existence of the covenant of blood in those early days. So far was this symbolic thought carried that the ancient Egyptians spoke of the departed spirit as having entered into the nature, and, indeed, into the very being, of the gods by the rite of tasting blood from the divine arm.

“‘The Book of the Dead,’ as it is commonly called, is a group, or series, of ancient Egyptian writings representing the state and the needs and the progress of the soul after death. A copy of this funereal ritual, ‘more or less complete according to the fortune of the deceased, was deposited in the case of eveiy mummy. ‘As the Book of the Dead is the most ancient, so it is undoubtedly the most important of the sacred books of the Egyptians;’ it is, in fact, ‘according to Egyptian notions, essentially an inspired work;’ hence its contents have an exceptional dogmatic value. In this book there are several obvious references to the rite of blood-covenanting. Some of these are in a chapter of the ritual which was found transcribed in a coffin of the eleventh dynasty, thus carrying it back to a period prior to the days of the patriarchs.

“‘Give me your arm; I am made as ye,’ says the departed soul, speaking to the gods. Then, in explanation of this statement, the pre-historic gloss of the ritual goes on to say: ‘The blood is that which proceeds from the member of the Sun after he goes along cutting himself,’ the covenant blood which unites the soul and the god is drawn from the flesh of Ra when he has cut himself in the rite of that covenant. By this covenant-cutting the deceased becomes one with the covenanting gods. Again, the departing soul, speaking as Osiris—or as the Osirian, which every mummy represents—says: ‘I am the soul in his two halves.' This was at least two thousand years before the days of the Greek philosopher. How much earlier it was recognized does not appear.

“Moreover, a ‘red talisman,’ or red amulet, stained with ‘the blood of Isis,’ and containing a record of the covenant, was placed at the neck of the mummy as an assurance of safety to his soul. ‘When this book [this amulet-record] has been made,’ says the ritual, ‘it causes Isis to protect him.’ ‘If this book is known,’ says Horus, ‘he [the deceased] is in the service of Osiris.... His name is like that of the gods.’”

Dr. Trumbull properly remarks:

“Thus in ancient Egypt, in ancient Canaan, in ancient Mexico, in modern Turkey, in modern Russia, in modern India, and in modern Otaheite, in Africa, in Asia, in America, in Europe, and in Oceanica, blood-giving was life-giving. Life-giving was love-showing. Love-showing was a heart-yearning after union in love and in life and in blood and in very being. That was the primitive thought in the primitive religions of all the world.

“An ancient Chaldean legend, as recorded by Bero-sus, ascribes a new creation of mankind to the mixture by the gods of the dust of the earth with the blood that flowed from the severed head of the god Belus. ‘On this account it is that men are rational and partake of divine knowledge,’ says Berosus. The blood of the god gives them the life and nature of a god. Yet, again, the early Phœnician and the early Greek theogonies, as recorded by Sanchoniathon and by Hesiod, ascribe the vivifying of mankind to the outpoured blood of the gods. It was from the blood of Ouranos, or of Saturn, dripping into the sea and mingling with its foam, that Venus was formed, to become the mother of her heroic posterity. ‘The Orphies, which have borrowed so largely from the East,’ says Lenormant, ‘said that the immaterial part of man, his soul, his life, sprang from the blood of Dionysus Zagreus, whom… Titans had torn to pieces, partly devouring his members.’

“Homer explicitly recognizes this universal belief in the power of blood to convey life and to be a means of revivifying the dead.

“Indeed, it is claimed, with a show of reason, that the very word (surquinu) which was used for ‘altar’ in the Assyrian was primarily the word for ‘table’—that, in fact, what was known as the ‘altar’ to the gods was originally the table of communion between the gods and their worshippers.”

From the writings of Livingstone, the African explorer, as well as from the reports of Stanley, it appears that the custom of blood-covenanting is kept up in Africa in these modern times.

Describing the ceremony, Livingstone says: “It is accomplished thus: The hands of the parties are joined (in this case Pitsane and Sambanza were the parties engaged). Small incisions are made on the clasped hands, on the pits of the stomach of each, and on the right cheeks and foreheads. A small quantity of blood is taken from these points, in both parties, by means of a stalk of grass. The blood from one person is put into a pot of beer, and that of the second into another; each then drinks the other's blood, and they are supposed to become perpetual friends or relations. During the drinking of the beer some of the party continue beating the ground with short clubs and utter sentences by way of ratifying the treaty.”

The primitive character of these customs is the more probable from the fact that Livingstone first found them existing in a region where, in his opinion, the dress and household utensils of the people are identical with those represented on the monuments of ancient Egypt.

Concerning the origin of this rite in this region, Cameron says: “This custom of making brothers, I believe to be really of Semitic origin.”

Henry M. Stanley, who was sent to rescue Livingstone, gives many interesting accounts of his experience with the blood-covenanters. In 1871, Stanley encountered the forces of Mirambo, the greatest of African warriors. They agreed to make “strong friendship” with each other. The ceremony is thus described:

“Manwa Sera, Stanley's ‘chief captain,' was requested to seal our friendship by performing the ceremony of blood-brotherhood between Mirambo and myself. Having caused us to sit fronting each other on a straw carpet, he made an incision in each of our right legs, from which he extracted blood, and, interchanging it, he exclaimed aloud, 'If either of you break this brotherhood now established between you, may the lion devour him, the serpent poison him, bitterness be in his food, his friends desert him, his gun burst in his hands and wound him, and everything that is bad do wrong to him until death.'” The same blood now flowed in the veins of both Stanley and Mirambo. They were friends and brothers in a sacred covenant—life for life. At the conclusion of the covenant they exchanged gifts, as the customary ratification or accompaniment of the compact. They even vied with each other in proofs of their unselfish fidelity in this new covenant of friendship.

Again and again, before and after this incident, Stanley entered into the covenant of blood-brotherhood with representative Africans more than fifty times, in some instances by the opening of his own veins; at other times by allowing one of his personal escort to bleed for him.

Thus we see that in ancient and modern times, among all people and in all portions of the earth, this idea of blood-friendship prevailed. In the primitive East, in the wild West, in the cold North, and in the torrid South this rite shows itself. “It will be observed,” says Dr. Trumbull, “that we have already noted proofs of the independent existence of this rite of blood-brotherhood or blood-friendship among the three great primitive divisions of the race—the Semitic, the Hamitic, and the Japhetic; and this in Asia, Africa, Europe, America, and the islands of the sea; again, among the five modern and more popular divisions of the human family—Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, Malay, and American. This fact in itself would seem to point to a common origin of its various manifestations in the early Oriental home of the now scattered peoples of the world.

“The Egyptian amulet of blood-friendship was red, as representing the blood of the gods. The Egyptian word for 'red' sometimes stood for 'blood.' The sacred directions in the Book of the Dead were written in red; hence follows our word ‘rubric,' The Rabbis say that when persecution forbade the wearing of the phylacteries with safety, a red thread might be substituted for this token of the covenant with the Lord. It was a red thread which Joshua gave to Rahab as a token of her covenant relations with the people of the Lord. The red thread in China to-day binds the double cup from which the bride and bridegroom drink their covenant draught of ‘wedding wine,' as if in symbolism of the covenant of blood. And it is a red thread which in India to-day is used to bind a sacred amulet around the arm or the neck. Among the American Indians scarlet, or red, is the color which stands for sacrifices or for sacrificial blood in all their picture-painting; and the shrine, or tunkan, which continues to have its devotees, 'is painted red, as a sign of active or living worship.' The same is true of the shrines in India; the color red shows that worship is still living there; red continues to stand for blood.”

When a Jewish child is circumcised, it is commonly said of him that he is caused “to enter into the covenant of Abraham and his godfather or sponsor is called Baal-beerith, master of the covenant.” Moreover, even down to modern times the rite of circumcision has included a recognition, however unconscious, of the primitive blood-friendship rite, by the custom of the a rabbi, God’s representative, receiving into his mouth the prepuce or foreskin that is cut from the boy, and thereby made a partaker of the blood mingled with the wine according to the method described among the Orientals, in the rite of blood-friendship, from the earliest days of history. We make this statement on the testimony of Buxtorf, who is a recognized authority in matters of Jewish customs, though he gives it in Latin, with a view of limiting a knowledge of the facts.

All that we have stated concerning the blood-covenant brings us nearer and nearer to the disgusting and beastly habit of cannibalism. Dr. Trumbull says: “It would even seem to be indicated, by all the trend of historic facts, that cannibalism—gross, repulsive, inhuman cannibalism—had its basis in man’s perversion of this outreaching of his nature (whether that outreach-ing were first directed by revelation or by divinely-given innate promptings) after inter-union and intercommunion with God, after life in God’s life, and after growth through the partaking of God’s food or of that food which represents God. The studies of many observers in widely-different fields have led both the rationalistic and the faith-filled student to conclude that in their sphere of observation it was a religious sentiment, and not a mere animal craving—either through a scarcity of food or from a spirit of malignity—that was at the bottom of cannibalistic practices there, even if that field were an exception to the world’s fields generally. And now we have a glimpse of the nature and workings of that religious sentiment which prompted cannibalism wherever it has been practised. In misdirected pursuance of this thought men have given the blood of a consecrated human victim to bring themselves into union with God; and then they have eaten the flesh of that victim which had supplied the blood which made them one with God. This seems to be the basis of fact in the premises, whatever may be the understood philosophy of the facts. Why men reasoned thus may indeed be in question. That they reasoned thus seems evident. Certain it is, that where cannibalism has been studied in modern times it has commonly been found to have had originally a religious basis; and the inference is a fair one that it must have been the same wherever cannibalism existed in earlier times. Even in some regions where cannibalism has long since been prohibited there are traditions and traces of its former existence as a purely religious rite. Thus, in India little images of flour paste or clay are now made for decapitation or other mutilation in the temples, in avowed imitation of human beings who were once offered and eaten there.”

Réville, treating of the native religions of Mexico and Peru, comes to a similar conclusion with Dorman, and he argues that the state of things which was there was the same the world over, so for as it related to cannibalism. “Cannibalism,” he says, “which is now restricted to a few of the savage tribes who have remained closest to the animal life, was once universal to our race. For no one would ever have conceived the idea of offering to the gods a kind of food which excited nothing but disgust and horror.” In this suggestion Réville indicates his conviction that the primal idea of an altar was a table of blood-bought communion.

There is something that looks very much like cannibalism in the sixth chapter of John's Gospel. The Jews murmured that Jesus spoke of himself as the bread which came down from heaven, and inquired, “How can this man give us of his flesh to eat? Jesus therefore said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father; so he that eateth me, he also shall live because of me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers did eat, and died; he that eateth this bread shall live for ever. These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum.”

This was spoken nearly two years before he is said to have instituted the memorial Supper, and has always been a mystery to commentators, though they allege that the whole mystery is explained in John 6: 63:

“It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.” This seems to be very farfetched indeed—an afterthought. It did not satisfy some of his disciples, for “from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.”

From this simple idea of securing faithfulness by the transfusion of the blood of two persons seems to have come the idea of propitiating the gods by offering them bloody sacrifices. In primitive times, among barbarous and uncivilized peoples, the conception was universal that the gods were very much like themselves, and that therefore they would be pleased with presents. When offended they could be conciliated, and when some crime had been committed they could be induced to forgive the transgressor by some valuable offering, such as the first-fruits of the soil or the most immaculate animals of the flock. This idea of obtaining favors from the invisible powers was carried to such extremes that for the honor of humanity we should feel inclined to doubt the monstrous stories were they not so well attested. The offering of these sacrifices became so degraded and disgusting by superstition that it ended in the belief that the deity's anger could be appeased, his revenge satisfied, his vanity flattered, and that he could be made generally pleased, by holocausts of human beings; so that the more costly the sacrifice, the more certain was the deity to smile upon the donor. The Moloch-worship, the mother placing the babe in the arms of the monstrous idol and seeing it burned before her own eyes, seems to exhaust the horrors of human ingenuity. We have only space to state that these abominations prevailed over most of the heathen world when the Old-Testament rites and ceremonies came into use among the Jews. We find the custom of offering sacrifices in the early pages of Genesis, when it led to the first murder. Cain’s sacrifice, sacerdotal-ists tell us, was not accepted by Jehovah because there was no blood in it, as there was in the offering of Abel. Abraham was about to slay his own son when the blood of a ram was provided instead; and, in fact, all the Bible patriarchs sacrificed, and the exodus from Egypt itself was brought about under the pretence that the people had to go to the desert to offer their accustomed sacrifice.

The Jews borrowed their idea of sacrifice from the heathen, and sometimes were more heathenish than the heathens themselves. Thousands and thousands of innocent animals were cruelly butchered for sacrifice, as the Jews were full of Egyptian reminiscences on one hand and of Canaanitish modes of worship on the other. It is said that Jehovah allowed these abominations because of the ignorance of these people and their hardness of heart, lest they might despise a naked religion and be dazzled by the imposing ceremonies by which they were surrounded. The whole system of bloody sacrifices was based upon anthropomorphic conceptions of their Jehovah, to whom the “agreeable smell” of the blood was a sweet satisfaction. The Jews adopted the very worst features of paganism in regard to these bloody sacrifices, which they offered on all occasions—so much so that their prophets cried out against them and Jehovah himself denounced them.

The life or blood of the animal was distinctly said to make “the atonement for the soul.” This notion of a representative victim is one that belonged to the whole ancient world, as can be seen by reference to any of the great cyclopaedias. It was adopted by the Jews, not revealed to them by Jehovah. The scape-goat (Lev. 16) and many other cases of seemingly expiatory sacrifices are embodiments of this idea, which was adopted by Christianity directly from Judaism, whose priests had adopted it from other people.

The practice of bloody offerings was common to Hindoos, Assyrians, Phœnicians, Greeks, and Northmen. There is a Hindoo ritual for human as well as for brute animals set forth in Asiatic Researches. In Fragments of Sanchoniathon, Kronos sacrifices his “only son” to his father Ouranos, his “father in heaven.” Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter, Iphigeneia,

before going to Troy, and Polyxena, daughter of Priam, was immolated on the tomb of Achilles to his manes. Repeatedly in the Punic wars children of noble families were burned alive to Æsculapius, god of medicine. Burning at the stake and hanging upon a gibbet were sacrifices to appease the divine justice. In short, all bloody sacrifices were propitiatory, to appease the rage of hunger in a famished god. Blood was excellent, because its aroma was the vehicle of life, and so afforded support to life.

In Homer's Odyssey, Ulysses slays animals before the ghosts of Hades, and these run up to be nourished by the blood. He draws his sword, rushes upon them, and drives them away. Then, selecting one with whom he wishes to talk, he feeds him with the invigorating vapor, and the ghost is then made strong enough to talk.

But none of these sacrifices were strictly vicarious. The old gods were angry at neglect, but never had the kind of justice that a sheep or goat or cow could not appease. The Jews were not unfamiliar with human sacrifices (Lev. 27:28,29; Judg. 11:30-39), and even the early Christians are said to have offered bloody sacrifices of human beings. The deification of Jesus to correspond with the apotheosis of other personages required a divine parentage. This idea was not gotten up until the second Christian century. Justin made Jesus a second god. But the earlier Fathers did not connect the notion of the vicarious atonement with that of original sin and total depravity. Basilides maintained that penal suffering or suffering for purposes of justice of necessity implies personal criminality in the sufferer, and therefore cannot be endured by an innocent person as a substitute.

Prof. Robertson Smith, LL.D., in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in his learned article on “Sacrifice," says part: “Where we find a practice of sacrificing honorific gifts to the gods, we usually find also certain other sacrifices which resemble those already characterized, to be consumed in sacred ceremony, but differ from them, inasmuch as the sacrifice—usually a living victim—is not regarded as a tribute of honor to the god, but has a special or mystic significance. The most familiar case of this second species of sacrifice is that which the Romans distinguished from the hostia honoraria by the name of hostia piacularis. In the former case the deity accepts a gift; in the latter, he demands a life. The former kind of sacrifice is offered by the worshipper on the basis of an established relation of friendly dependence on his divine lord; the latter is directed to appease the divine anger or to conciliate the favor of a deity on whom the worshipper has no right to count” (vol. xxi. p.. 132).

Piamlar Sacrifices.—“The idea of substitution is widespread among all early religions, and is found in honorific as well as piacular rites. In all such cases the idea is that the substitute shall imitate as closely as is possible or convenient the victim whose place it supplies; and so in piacular ceremonies the god may indeed accept one life for another, or certain select lives to atone for the guilt of a whole community; but these lives ought to be of the guilty kin, just as in blood-revenge the death of any kinsman of the manslayer satisfies justice. Hence such rites as the Semitic sacrifices of children by their fathers [Moloch], the sacrifice of Iphigeneia and similar cases among the Greeks, inasmuch as something is given up by the worshippers nor the offering up of boys to the goddess Mania at Rome....

“In advanced societies the tendency is to modify the horrors of the ritual, either by accepting an effusion of blood without actually slaying the victim—e. g. in the flagellation of the Spartan lads—or by a further extension of the doctrine of substitution: the Romans, for example, substituted puppets for the human sacrifices to Mania, and cast rush dolls into the Tiber, at the yearly atoning sacrifice on the Sublician Bridge. More usually, however, the life of an animal is accepted by the god in place of a human life.... Among the Egyptians the victim was marked with a seal bearing the image of a man bound and kneeling with a sword at his throat. And often we find a ceremonial laying of the sin to be expiated on the head of the victim (Herod, ii. 39; Lev. 4: 4, compared with 14: 21).

“In such piacular rites the god demands only the life of the victim, which is sometimes indicated by a special ritual with the blood (as among the Hebrews the blood of the sin-offering was applied to the horns of the altar or to the mercy-seat within the veil), and there is no sacrificial meal. Thus, among the Greeks the carcase of the victim was buried or cast into the sea [comp, with most important Hebrew sin-offerings and sacrifice of children to Moloch—outside the camp or city].

“When the flesh of the sacrifice is consumed by the priests, as with certain Roman piacula and Hebrew sin-offerings, the sacrificial flesh is seemingly a gift accepted by the deity and assigned by him to the priests, so that the distinction between a honorific and a piacular sacrifice is partly obliterated. But this is not hard to understand; for just as a blood-rite takes the place of blood-revenge in human justice, so an offence against the gods may in certain cases be redeemed by a fine (e. g. Herod, ii. 65) or a sacrificial gift. This seems to have been the origin of the Hebrew trespass-offering (p. 136).

“The most curious developments of piacular sacrifice take place in the worship of deities of the totem type. Here the natural substitute for the death of a criminal of the tribe is an animal of the kind with which the worshippers and their god alike count kindred—an animal, that is, which must not be offered in a sacrificial feast, and which indeed it is impious to kill. Thus, Hecaté was invoked as a dog, and dogs were her piacular sacrifices. And in like manner in Egypt the piacular sacrifice of the cow-goddess Isis-Hathor was a bull, and the sacrifice was accompanied by lamentations as at the funeral of a kinsman.”

Under the head of Mystical or Sacramental Sacrifices—i. e. sacrifices at initiations and in the Mysteries: “According to Julian, the mystical sacrifices of the cities of the Roman empire were… offered once or twice a year, and consisted of such victims as the dog of Hecaté, which might not ordinarily be eaten or used to furnish forth the tables of the gods.... The mystic sacrifices seem always to have had an atoning efficacy; their special feature is that the victim is not simply slain and burned or cast away, but that the worshippers partake of the body and blood of the sacred animal, and that so his life passes, as it were, into their lives and knits them to the deity in living communion.

“In the Old Testament the heathen mysteries seem to appear as ceremonies of initiation by which a man was introduced into a new worship.... But originally the initiation must have been introduction into a particular social community.... From this point of view the sacramental rites of mystical sacrifice are a form of blood-covenant.... In all the forms of blood-covenant, whether a sacrifice is offered or the veins of the parties opened and their own blood used, the idea is the same: the bond created is a bond of kindred, because one blood is now in the veins of all who have shared the ceremony.”

A learned friend writes me: “I doubt whether a real distinction can be made between propitiatory and expiatory sacrifices. Propitiation is by expiation. The basic idea in all sacrifices of that nature appears to be substitution; that is, something taking the place of the offender.... It seems that the basis of all sacrifice is to be found in a relationship, or kinship (through blood), between the deity—who is only the representative of the tribal head regarded as still living in the spirit-world—and the worshipper.

“I may add that the idea of pollution by wrongdoing—i. e. offending the tribal deity—to be got rid of only by the shedding of blood, is not unknown to so-called savages. This applies especially to offences against chastity, as with the Mâlers of Rajmahal, India, and the Dyaks of Borneo. The pig is the animal usually sacrificed—probably because it is the most valuable animal food. The Pâdam Abors of Assam look upon all crimes as public pollutions which require to be washed away by a public sacrifice. Here we have the idea of cleansing by the application of blood, and this appears to be the idea also with the Mâlers, and probably among the aboriginal hill-tribes of India generally.”

Mommsen, the Roman historian, says: “At the very core of the Latin religion there lay that profound moral impulse which leads men to bring earthly guilt and earthly punishment into relation with the world of the gods, and to view the former as a crime against the gods, and the latter as its expiation. The execution of the criminal condemned to death was as much an expiatory sacrifice offered to the divinity as was the killing of an enemy in just war; the thief who by night stole the fruits of the field paid the penalty to Ceres on the gallows, just as the enemy paid it to mother earth and the good spirits on the field of battle. The fearful idea of substitution also meets us here: when the gods of the community were angry, and nobody could be laid hold of as definitely guilty, they might be appeased by one who voluntarily gave himself up (devovere se).”

But it was left for Anselm of Canterbury, late in the eleventh century, to first formulate the doctrine of vicarious atonement. Before this there seemed to be among the theologians the idea that in some way Christ came to restore, at least in part, all that was lost in Adam. During the first four centuries of the Christian era there seems to have been no fixed opinion as to whether there was a ransom-price paid to God or the devil. Under the article “Devil " in the Encyclopœdia Britannica it is said:

“He [the devil] was, according to Cyprian (De Unitate Ecd.), the author of all heresies and delusions: he held man by reason of his sin in rightful possession, and man could only be rescued from his power by the ransom of Christ's blood. This extraordinary idea of a payment or satisfaction to the devil being made by Christ as the price of man's salvation is found both in Irenæus (Adv. Hcer., v. 1. 1.) and in Origen, and may be said to have held its sway in the Church for a thousand years. And yet Origen is credited with the opinion that, bad as the devil was, he was not altogether beyond hope of pardon."