ABSTRACT
A CCORDING to the current theory, sacrifice is in its essence simply a gift offered to a supernatural being, who is believed to have human appetites and human wants. That this is really the idea most commonly connected with sacrifice among savage peoples cannot be doubted. On the other hand, it must be emphasized that the said definition does not by any means apply to all cases in which material things of one kind or another are ceremonially offered to gods and spirits. The readiness of many students of primitive religion to explain religious practices which outwardly resemble each other by the same principle, without examining their true nature more closely, is the chief cause of the confusion still prevailing with regard to the rites termed “sacrifices.” As I hope to show in this chapter, there is a whole class of both bloody and unbloody sacrifices and offerings, which cannot be explained as “gifts “to a deity in the ordinary sense of the word, but are “magical “in the sense that they are regarded as bearers of a mysterious power which is transferred to the object of the sacrificial act.
