Ardor (58 page)

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In the battle between sacrificial and anti-sacrificial stances, the most plausible result could be that the former is gradually defeated, abandoned, repressed, forgotten, superseded in Hegelian manner. It would remain, if at all, an
archaic survival
(it could be said of almost everything that it is an archaic survival) and some scholar would take it upon himself to search out traces of it.

But this is not the case. In its Vedic variant—the most complex, intricate, subtle, staggering—the sacrificial stance contains an implication that goes very far: it is quite possible to ignore the very thought of sacrifice, but the world will continue just the same—whatever happens—to be a huge sacrificial laboratory. In the words of Paul Mus: “Beginning from
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
, 10.5.3.1–12, a closer examination of sacrificial doctrine shows that, if sacrifice is the reason for every life, life itself, even if it is not redeemed by it, is like a sacrifice which ignores itself.” Now, if any life whatsoever is “a sacrifice which ignores itself,” every attempt to overcome sacrifice will turn out to be illusory. But why should the whole world be a sacrificial laboratory? Simply because it is based—every part of it—on an exchange of energies: from outside in and from inside out. This is what happens with every breath. And likewise with eating and excreting. Interpreting physiological exchange as sacrifice is the critical step, on which all else depends. And it is a step that, reduced to its most elementary form, implies only that between everything internal and everything external there is a relationship, a communication that can have a meaning—and a wide diversity of meanings, up to the hypermeaningful fervor of the Veda.

The sacrificial attitude implies that nature has meaning, whereas the scientific approach offers us the pure description of nature, in itself devoid of meaning. And this absence of meaning in the description is not due to an imperfect state of knowledge that can one day be remedied. Indeed, from description it will never be possible to reach meaning. Knowledge about a neural pathway, however perfect, will never be translated into the perception of a state of consciousness. This is the ultimate, insurmountable obstacle that the sacrificial attitude sidesteps at the very beginning. Perhaps arbitrarily. Indeed, most certainly arbitrarily, so far as the detailed correlations that it then sought to establish. But is it not an equally arbitrary gesture if, starting with a particular point of scientific investigation, we seek to introduce meaning into what is described?

Meaning is a work of the mind—and we might say that the mind always keeps company with primordial doubt, when “in the beginning this [world], as it were, existed and did not exist: then there was only the mind.” For the Veda, “mind,”
manas
, has a sovereign position, but only insofar as it corresponds to a state in which the world itself did not know whether it existed or not. In a certain way, the Vedic absolutism of the mind is much more ready to entertain radical doubt about itself than is scientific empiricism, which always offers its results—however provisional and perfectible—as a verified (and therefore
true
) transcription of that which is.

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In many different times and places, a
rite
was created that practiced the
destruction
of something in connection with an
invisible counterpart.
If one of these elements is missing, there is no sacrifice. And, if all three are present, the ceremony can have many different—and even conflicting—meanings. But all will share at least one characteristic:
detachment
, yielding, abandoning something to an invisible counterpart. If such an action were performed onstage, half the stage would remain empty—the half featuring those for whom the sacrifice was made.

What is more, sacrifice has to have a
destructive
element. There can be no sacrifice unless something is consumed, dispersed, discharged, poured. And in a large number of cases the ceremony calls for a killing, the spilling of blood. To understand sacrifice we have to understand why, in offering something to an invisible entity, the offering has to be killed.

While the reason for the gesture of offering itself is not too difficult to find (made out of fear or respect, in order to corrupt, to establish a relationship), the reason justifying the act of killing is not at all clear. First, it is not clear why the entity or entities to which sacrifice is made require the offering to be destroyed. Nor is it clear why, even when the sacrifice is centered around the offering of a precious substance (
soma
), the offering must be accompanied by the killing of various animals.

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No theory about sacrifice manages to cover the phenomenon in its entirety. The rite is too plastic, changeable, adaptable to the various motives. Yet there is no difficulty in describing as
sacrifices
all those acts carried out in remote times and places. What holds them together is not so much the specific meaning as certain preconditions, which are unfailingly there.

And they are the following: that every sacrifice is a formalized sequence of actions addressed to an invisible counterpart; and that every sacrifice implies a destruction—something must be separated from what it belonged to and be dispersed. It may be life, for the animal that is killed; or money, for the taxpayer who is invited to make “sacrifices” (in this case we are no longer talking about ritual, but the word continues to be used in a broader sense); or it may be a liquid, even just water, which is poured as a libation; or a perfume, such as incense, which is dispersed; or the life of the sacrificer himself, as in the Roman
devotio.
The variants are many and subtle. The motives mean or sublime. The ceremonies age-old or improvised—the
Ś
atapatha Br
ā
hma
ṇ
a
described them as “supreme action (
ś
re
ṣṭ
hatama
ṃ
karma
).” In any case, it still has to be understood why, over thousands of years and in places far apart and unrelated to each other, it was felt necessary to turn to an invisible counterpart, performing a series of gestures that, without exception, include a destruction—and in any case the
detachment
of something from the animate or inanimate being to which it belonged. Sacri
fi
ce is in the first place a
caesura
, in the original sense of the word, which comes from
caedo
, to cut, a verb used in sacrificial killing. But, if the sacrifice introduces a
caesura
into life (into any life), then we must ask what happens if that
caesura
does not occur. There would then be another
caesura
, but this time in the sense of
interruption
, after an incalculable series of acts. The whole history of mankind can be seen from this standpoint, if we consider that evidence of sacrifices can be found from the Paleolithic age onward, long before any verbal testimony. Meanwhile, in certain places, on certain days, blood sacrifices are still performed, even today.

Abdellah Hammoudi, a professor of anthropology at Princeton, a Moroccan of Sunnite family, decided one day in 1999 to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, as numerous relatives, friends, and co-nationals had done. He wanted to understand, as an anthropologist. And to discover what remained of his education as an Islamic believer. The pilgrimage to Mecca imposes various obligations, including the task of choosing a lamb and slitting its throat at the Feast of the Sacri
fi
ce. Hammoudi wanted to avoid it. He paid a “charitable works corporation” to perform the act in his place. Hammoudi would be just a spectator.

When the day approached, “in Mina, the sheds looked like a giant concentration camp for animals: two, three, four million heads or more. An immense crowd of pilgrims was preparing to sacrifice them as an ‘offertory,’ along with the sacrifices of expiation or alms … We were gathered here to save our own lives, a salvation requiring that we kill these animals. The mass of pilgrims, who had reached the peak of renunciation—after the station at Arafa, the prayer at Muzdalifa and the stoning at Mina—was about to snuff out millions of lives … Modernization of the
hajj
certainly had something to do with it: the optimal-productivity animal pens, closed-off areas, grid-like arrangements of space, failsafe security and surveillance systems. Each domain had its own camp: the masses of animals in their sheds and, not far off, the masses of humans in their camps surrounded by high chain-link fences stretching ad infinitum along the straight streets … Police vehicles on the ground and helicopters constantly circling overhead completed the picture. This order would allow the human masses to annihilate the animal masses in the name of God.”

So far as secular society, sacrificial ceremonies are not allowed. Even though the word is still in common use, like a poisonous snake accidentally applied for therapeutic purposes. And then it is always pronounced in worthy contexts, in reference to noble gestures of abnegation and self-denial. But above all it will come back into frequent and timely use in wartime, to describe those killed, all of those killed, including those who were most averse to being killed in a war.

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The ultimate question that sacrifice poses: why, in order to establish contact between human and divine, does a living being have to be killed? Or at least, why does a certain quantity of a certain material have to be destroyed—burned or poured away? Strangely, this very question, which lies at the root of all others, has been avoided in the various conflicting theories about sacrifice. Girard doesn’t avoid it, but this is because he regards sacrifice purely as a social fact, where the divine is just a convenient façade. And sacrificial violence then becomes the outlet for general violence. But if the divine, as the ancient theologians meant it, existed—indeed were the fullness of existence—how could we explain the continual repetition of bloody acts devoted to it?

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Secular society, in its purity, ignores ritual ceremonies. But ridding itself of them is not easy. To achieve this, squads of protestants had to clear the way, leaving as a legacy, among other things, the religious wars, a model for every civil war, and a certain way of behaving, a model for that chimera that was later to be called “secular morality.” Rituals survive in secular society for certain legal necessities: the swearing of oaths in trials, the preset pattern of words in marriages. All the rest are ingrained customs, such as birthdays. The same with military processions or New Year speeches by heads of state. Customs that come and go, practices that we can—if we wish—ignore. Strictly speaking, with a little care and planning, we could avoid being involved in any kind of ritual, from the cradle to the grave. For death there are no rites. Not even at funerals. At such moments even established customs seem particularly feeble.

Waking up each morning, rain or shine, and knowing there are no duties to follow. Making coffee, looking out the window. A feeling of blankness. Indifference. To reach this state, various millennia had passed. But nothing remained of it, apart from an opaque curtain, on all sides. No one celebrated this fact as an achievement. It was normality, reached at last. A characterless state, prior to desires. A mute foundation to existence. There would be no shortage of time for whims, plans, survival strategies. And this was the central point: time was not taken up, measured, assailed by obligatory gestures, without which there was a fear that all might fall apart. This might well have produced a feeling of exhilaration. But it was not to be. Indeed, the first sensation was of emptiness. And with it, a certain tedium. The metaphysical animal looked around, not knowing what to grasp hold of.

So secular society has not learned how to value its discoveries. It has felt no sense of relief. Instead, looking at itself, it has found itself insubstantial. Immediately it has felt the need for some
cause
to espouse, to give itself substance and regain solidity. And with causes once more there are obligations. A network of ready-established meanings has settled once more on the world. Why then have rituals been abandoned?
Causes
are always cruder than rituals. They are
parvenus
of meaning. Rituals, on the other hand, brought together the whole of the past, certain gestures repeated innumerable times, until they became part of human physiology, as a strange trust in their effectiveness grew. The fall of ritual also brought with it a heavy aesthetic decline. Free expression was always more awkward, more imprecise than the prescribed gesture. And forms tended to become uncertain and inert, now that they could develop unimpeded.

Secular society (and this would potentially include the whole planet) has therefore lost a great opportunity. It could have rediscovered a sense of wonder at the world, though this time from a safe distance that prevented it from being overwhelmed. But something else happened. A potent compound has been formed between technical procedures and ignorance of powers, which has left its mark on everyday life.

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How might we define a
secular society
? Before resorting to complicated theories, we might say that such are societies that share the same airport boarding procedures. Therefore a network of societies that covers the planet. Essential in defining the
secular society
is the acceptance of a certain number of procedures. Those of airports are among the simplest, but in other cases the procedures can reach a dizzying complexity, especially where money is concerned. Once applied, the procedures may then be associated with very different forms of societies: tribal or authoritarian or cosmopolitan or libertarian or communist or theocratic or democratic or feudal. The range is vast, with unforeseeable opportunities for hybridization. But the basis doesn’t change—and is made up of procedures. This is the crucial innovation, compared with every previous form of society. As for the social forms themselves, they can also consider themselves mutually incompatible and fight each other with lethal expedients. Nevertheless they have much more in common than what we are prepared to admit. And that common basis could also have a greater heft than all the religious and ideological differences. From the point of view of procedures, secular society is the first
universal society
, marred by numerous civil wars, wars that seem to have been part of its physiology from the very beginning.