Man is the Sacrifice

Only God can make an offering to God, I tell W. That's why the priest making the sacrifice must undergo a purification. It's why an internal purification of trusting readiness, of the immersion in meditation, must be accompanied by the renewal of the forehead mark and the washing of the mouth.

Only God may worship God; but how does one become God? By sacrifice, say the holy texts. In the public rites of the srauta, milk, curds and ghee are offered to the fire, or sometimes vegetable cakes or stalks of the soma plant instead. Sometimes an animal sacrifice is necessary; there are even human sacrifices – though its victims were set free and a proxy burned in their place.

Fire brings these offerings as smoke to the sun. And when rain comes from the sky, a kind of cycle is completed: plants grow, crops grow and the creatures of the earth are nourished. But if God is to worship God, there must be another kind of sacrifice. If God is to return to God; if that cycle, too, is to be completed, then one must sacrifice oneself.

Man is the sacrifice, say the holy texts. To light the fire as a priest is to set oneself aflame. How else is the dross of one's lower life to be burned away? How else is the altar to truly become the falcon that soars up to the heavens? Man is the sacrifice; only God can make an offering to God: then the goal of all purification must be to die for the world, to take the world into oneself and let it burn.

And it is to absorb heaven, too. For the holy texts tell us also that the gods themselves are sacrifice. The gods, too, are vessels to be smashed; they, too, must be set aflame if there is to be a sacrifice. If you see the Buddha on the road, kill the Buddha. For the Hindu, the god is only a portal to God, and fire opens the door. The god is the wick and God the flame; the gods burn even as the soul of the priest springs up in the fire.

I'm offering him to the flames too, aren't I?, W. says, shuddering. His life, his whole career … Haven't I destroyed them both? It's all leading in one direction, he says. It's like The Wicker Man.