Late to the Feast

August 23, 2012 by P. Sufenas Virius Lupus

Continued from Page 1

The reasons that wars are being fought these days aren't necessarily for the safety of the United States, though certain factions in the government would like us to believe that. We often pay lip-service to the "sacrifice" that our service members make, whether they serve without major injury or death or not, and yet we do not class this as "human sacrifice." It's just as much human sacrifice as any lurid scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom -- and the latter at least has the decency to declare its purposes explicitly, rather than skirting around the issue that people's lives are being offered up on an altar of warfare with no prayers, little thanksgiving for their sacrifice, and for benefits that do not accrue to the community-at-large.

Much more could be said on this subject, and on the innumerable other ways that human sacrifice occurs without recognition of it as such (particularly in certain religious contexts), but I think I'll leave it there for the moment.

May the odds be ever in your favor . . .

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About P. Sufenas Virius Lupus

P. Sufenas Virius Lupus is a metagender and a founding member of the Ekklesía Antínoou (a queer, Graeco-Roman-Egyptian syncretist reconstructionist polytheist religious group dedicated to Antinous, the deified lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian and other related gods and divine figures). E is a contributing member of Neos Alexandria and a Celtic Reconstructionist pagan in the filidecht and gentlidecht traditions. Follow Lupus' work on the Aedicula Antinoi blog.

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