Usually we think of delighted children scampering around searching for brightly-coloured eggs and symbolic rabbits hopping with baskets. However though these seem to be modern, they actually originate before the birth of Christianity. The pagan spring festival includes Ester, or Eostre, and it is a slightly different celebration of the holiday than most of us would think. Johnny Scott investigates this ancient spring festival.
Broc_Liath 1 points 3 years ago
1. If we're going to accuse pagans of human sacrifice we're going to need to do the same for christians. Arresting non-believers and burning them at the stake in the presence of religious authorities as an "act of faith" is human sacrifice. Not to mention that the entire religion is based on an act of human sacrifice (and one remarkably similar to indo-european myth at that). This critique also applies to atheist philosophies. Almost every society does or has executed people with all kinds of ceremony and social-theatre.
2. If we're going to excuse christianity and say that the auto-da-fé and similar rituals don't count, then we also need to discount almost all pagan human sacrifice. Most of it involved the killing of humans for a specific practical purpose (like executing thieves). The religious authorities were involved because they were involved in any important event, but that doesn't mean the event was religious and would not have happened in a christian society.
3. Actual pagan sacrifice purely for religious purposes was rare, but did occur. The only example I can think of where it involved an unwilling victim was the sacrifice of Iphigenia by Agamemnon, however this is typically treated as sacrilege and causes an enormous curse on his family. As for willing adult sacrifices I don't see those as degenerate provided that the victim and cause are worthy. Furthermore there are direct parallels in christianity in the form of mortification of the flesh and abstinence. This is usually non-fatal, but does rarely result in death and is usually treated as an act of faith rather than suicide. There are also similar practices among some buddhist sects whose monks begin eating a diet of preservative poisons eventually resulting in their body becoming mummified. They believe that in doing so they are able to alleviate natural disasters such as famine. This is clearly human sacrifice by a pagan group but is rarely treated as such by commentators.
TL;DR "Pagan human sacrifice" is only a problem if you apply special standards.