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On January 7, 2009, a gathering of hundreds of Shiite men unsheathed their daggers and slashed the scalps of boys in the annual ritual of Ashura, a public display of blood shedding to commemorate the death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Imam Hussein at the battle of Kerbala in the seventh century. The annual rite is known as “tatbeer,” and after receiving the wounds from the daggers, the boys march through the streets, spilling their blood, as they make their way to a shrine in northern Baghdad.

While many Shiites protest the rite of tatbeer as barbaric and in violation of Islam’s prohibition of intentionally bringing harm to the body, those young boys who participate in the bloodletting attest that they feel no pain because they are committing the act for the love of Imam Hussein.

Blood sacrifice, whether of humans or animals, is the oldest and most universal propitiatory act of the pious seeking favor from a benevolent or a wrathful god. An ancient Hittite cylinder seal from the second millennium B.C.E. depicts a human sacrifice in intricate detail.

The God of the Hebrews strictly prohibited his followers from imitating their neighbors in the offering of human sacrifices (Lev. 20:25; Deut. 18:10). The one God placed a high value on human life and forbade this practice (Lev. 20:2–5; Jer. 32:35).

While the Hebrew God on the one hand repeatedly emphasized that He, as Spirit, did not need or require food and that the true gift that He required was that of man’s love, commitment, and service, the Laws of Moses did require the blood of animals and the sacrifice of grain to God. These sacrifices were conducted for three basic reasons: Consecration, to dedicate oneself; Expiation, to cover one’s sin or guilt; Propitiation, to satisfy Divine anger.

Consecration sacrifices were vegetable or grain offerings, but they could not be brought to God unless they had been preceded by an expiatory offering of a blood sacrifice. There was no consecration or commitment to God apart from expiation. According to the law, man could not approach God and be right with Him without the shedding of blood. The sacrifice itself could only be carried out by a High Priest under the strictest obedience to the law. The High Priest himself had to be consecrated before entering the innermost part of the temple or Holy of Holies where the sacrifice was offered to God.

There seems to be a compulsion in various cults and sects to seek to appease the Dark Gods by the offering of the blood of willing—or unwilling—members (illustration by Ricardo Pustanio).

In the Christian cosmology, the surrender of Jesus to submit to the will of the Father and to accept the ignoble death of crucifixion was to serve as the final sacrifice and was forever to put the issue of blood sacrifice to rest.

The Upanishads of the Hindu sages, the Bhagavad-Gita of Lord Krishna, the Qur’an of Muhammad, the utterances of Zoroaster, the sayings of Confucius, the teachings of the Buddha—all contain central themes very similar to the preaching of Jesus, admonishing their followers to resist the demands of the flesh and to offer God works of the spirit rather than sacrifices of blood.

Regardless of the prohibitions against human sacrifice by major religious groups, there seems to be an atavistic compulsion in various cults and sects to seek to appease the various facets of divinity by offering the blood of their willing members or, in many cases, the blood and flesh of their very unwilling victims.