``Sacrificers are not the ones to pity. The ones to pity are those they sacrifice." --Elizabeth Bowen

The word "Victim" means animal given to slaughter or...

In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil...

One should keep before one's eyes the strange fact that the God of goodness is so unforgiving that he can only be appeased by a human sacrifice.
--C.J. Jung, Answer to Job

The Lord said to Satan, ``Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him..."

Satan replied ``Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face..."

``When I think my bed will comfort me and my couch will ease my complaint, even then you frighten me with dreams and terrify me with visions, so that I prefer strangling and death, rather than this body of mine."
--Job, The Bible

To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.
--Jorge Luis Borges

Sacrifice Dreams

Let me speak, let me spit out my bitterness --
Born of grief and nights without sleep and festering flesh.
Do you have eyes?
Can you see like mankind sees?
Why have you soured and curdled me?
Oh you tireless watcher! What have I done to you?
That you make everything I dread and everything I fear come true?
--Joni Mitchell, The Sire of Sorrow (Job's Sad Song)

``Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?"
--the Lord, Book of Job

...And then they were asked by the lord: ``You have yet to kill a person! Make a sacrifice without death!" they were told. ``Very well," they said. And then they took hold of a human sacrifice. And they held up a human heart on high. And they showed its roundness to the lords. And now One and Seven Death admired it, and now that person was brought right back to life. His heart was overjoyed when he came back to life, and the lords were amazed: ``Sacrifice yet again, even do it to yourselves! Let's see it! At heart, that's the dance we really want from you," the lords said now. ``Very well, lord," they replied, and then they sacrificed themselves.

And this is the sacrifice of Hunahpu by Xbalanque. One by one his legs, his arms were spread wide. His head came off, rolled far away outside. His heart, dug out, was smothered in a leaf, and all the Xibalans went crazy at the sight...
--Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn, Dennis Tedlock trans.

Hear "Sundance and Sacrifice" in Real Audio.

The killer awoke before dawn.
He put his boots on.
He took a face from the ancient gallery
and he walked on down the hall.
--Jim Morrison, The End

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