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So: a friend invited me to a sacrifice. A real one: you know, killing an animal. Blood, all that.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention: I'm vegetarian. Been that way for more than 50 years now.

Am I going? You bet.

Will I eat any? Um...ask me again later.

No matter what kind of -vore you are, others die so you can eat them and live.

It's not the killing, it's how you kill.

I've said for years that one of the reasons why I don't eat meat—besides, frankly, not liking it much—is that I'm not willing to eat something that hasn't been killed properly: i.e., in a sacred way.

Has the hunter said the prayers and made the offerings?

Does the sacrificer know what she's doing?

Has the animal been killed respectfully and cleanly?

Well, now the bristles hit the breeze. Were these just words of convenience, or did I really mean them?

Priest:

Great Stag,

our stag,

we hunger.

Father,

will you feed?

Horned:

Everything between

my left hand and my right

I give to you,

my beloved people.

Body and soul,

whole and all:

I give myself

to you.

(All pelt the Horned with grain.)

If you're not willing to sacrifice yourself for your people, you're not fit to lead.

Pagans know about sacrificial kings. In the past, this may have been—sometimes—a literal matter. But mostly, it's about the nature of leadership.

Sometimes, you have to put other people's interests before your own.

Trust Joe Biden to do what he sees as best for his people and his country.

His decision to pass the torch was courageous. I'm sure that it wasn't what he wanted. That's the nature of leadership. That's the nature of sacrifice.

That, ultimately, is what made him fit to lead.

Here's something else that pagans understand: sacrifice renews the world.

Dear Boss Warlock:

Always check pockets first.

So: a pen got into the dryer and now there's ink all over the dryer barrel. I fielded suggestions from the coven about what to do about the ink, but here's my question for you: how many chickens should I sacrifice?

Unlucky in Utica

Dear UU:

It is a wise witch who understands that there are no purely physical issues.

Annoying as the problem may be, on the grand scale of things, the situation sounds to me to be pretty well contained. In my estimation, one chicken should do the trick.

The dead god lies stretched out on the altar. Mine is one of the knives that killed him.

Tears run down my face. In the hunter's immemorial gesture, I dip my fingers into the pooled blood on his chest and paint it across my forehead.

We're witches, of the Tribe of Witches. What we do, we own. I've been vegetarian for nigh on 50 years now, but others still die that I may live. Acknowledging this, owning this, the hurt that I do in the world, I take the blood. On myself, I take it.

It's called responsibility.

The gore rills down, over my eyelids, my nose, my mouth. The face that I present must be one of red horror.

“Well, now, there's something you don't see every day, Chauncey.”

“What's that, Stanley?”

“Oh, a bunch of pagans out on the front steps performing a sacrifice.”

Humans are herd animals. When we see a large group of people, all with their attention focused one way, we want to look with them to see what's going on. It's automatic, instinctive.

But, of course, this is Minnesota.

After the Rite of the Gates at Jane Hawkner's funeral yesterday—it's very simple, really: you open the Gates, the departed passes through, you close the Gates—we'd all trouped out onto the front steps of the domed and columned Lake Harriet Spiritual Community building to offer the traditional Fire Sacrifice in honor of the occasion.

(Let's be frank: pagan ritual has, for the most part, rung pretty hollow since the end of the days of animal sacrifice. But, of course, you don't have to kill an animal to offer sacrifice. Even in the old days, animal sacrifice was only one form of sacrifice.)

We'd set up the brazier on the landing between the two flights of stairs leading up to the door. As presiding priest, then, I stood with my back to the street, facing the Fire and the people coming out of the building.

So, unlike the rest of the worshipers there present, I didn't get to see the reactions of the passers-by.

Different places, different customs. Minneapolis having been, in its early days, largely populated by Scandinavians, we have—thanks to the infamous Founder Effect—a local culture of public privacy. You don't stare at other people, especially not at strangers. Really—so long as they're not doing anything harmful—it's best to act as if they're not even there.

(Dysfunctional as this may sound, it's probably the reason why there's such a large, self-assured pagan community here. Here, we could get away with it.)

So that's how it came to be that, on a beautiful early Saturday afternoon in high Summer, there can be a whole tribe of pagans out on the front steps doing something interesting with Fire, and the Minnesotans walking, biking, and driving by are wrestling—wrestling—with themselves not to look.

They'redoingsomethingthey'redoingsomethinginterestingIwannalookIwannalookI'mnotgonnalookI'mnotgonnalook I'm looking I'mnotlookingI'mreallynotlookingI'mjustwalkingjustwalkingby.

So: here was my evil plan.

Step 1. To lay the groundwork, as it were, the first year we'd do the presentation: “Sacrifice in Theory and Practice.”

Step 2. The next year, we'd bring in the cute little lambie and let the kids get to know it through the course of the festival.

Then at the big ritual we'd kill it and eat it.

Needless to say, we never even got to Step 1.

***

Thirty years ago, they wouldn't even let us talk about sacrifice at PSG. “Too controversial,” they said.

Well, that was 30 years ago, and this is Paganistan.

Moral of the story: Don't wait for Step 2.