According to the theologians of the Vedic era, the gods, like the demons, are born from sacrifice. It is thanks to it that they have ascended to the heavens, in the same way as the one who carries out a sacrifice still does. They gather around the sacrifice; they are the product of the sacrifice that they share among themselves, and it is this distribution that determines the way in which they share the world. Moreover, sacrifice is not only the author of the gods. It is a god itself, or, rather, the god par excellence. It is the master, the indeterminate, infinite god, the spirit from which everything proceeds, that ceaselessly dies and is reborn.

Sylvian Levi, from a nineteenth century text cited by Agamben