Animal Sacrifice

Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing and offering of an animal to appease or maintain favour with a divine agency. Such forms of sacrifice are practised within many religions around the world and have appeared historically in almost all cultures, including those of the Sumerians, Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Germanics, Celts, Aztecs, and Mayans.

All or only part of a sacrificial animal may be offered, especially in the context of ritual slaughter.

Remnants of ancient animal sacrifice can also found in various contemporary practices, the bullfights of Spain, kapparos and shechita of Judaism, or ḏabīḥah of Islam, for example.

Read more about Animal Sacrifice:  Ancient World, Hinduism, Buddhism, Far East, African Traditional Religions

Famous quotes containing the words animal and/or sacrifice:

    All the lies and evasions by which man has nourished himself—civilization, in a word—are the fruits of the creative artist. It is the creative nature of man which has refused to let him lapse back into that unconscious unity with life which charactizes the animal world from which he made his escape.
    Henry Miller (1891–1980)

    Peace can endure only so long as humanity really insists upon it, and is willing to work for it and sacrifice for it. Twenty- five years ago American fighting men looked to the statesmen of the world to finish the work of peace for which they fought and suffered; we failed them, we failed them then, we cannot fail them again and expect the world to survive again.
    Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)