In The Return of the Dragon, I made the case that there is more to this world than the three spatial dimensions we are used to experiencing. I talked about how science (specifically quantum theory), philosophy, and theology all agree that there are other dimensions not normally visible or accessible. And as hard as it is to believe, I cited scientists, philosophers and theologians who argued that is at least possible that there are real entities that exist within these other dimensions. I then made the case that the weight of the evidence is that this is indeed true. As the subtitle of my book (“The Shocking Way Drugs and Religion Shape People and Societies”) suggested, this was a shocking result of the research and if taken seriously, it should affect the way that we look at the world around us. It should particularly affect supernatural and paranormal claims. A materialist answer to those claiming to have witnessed something miraculous such as “they must be dreaming or lying or mistaken” can no longer be our default. There really are such entities out there. The only question would be whether or not the stated experience was a real encounter with them.
I have been writing about technology recently and its spiritual consequences. I have talked about how so much of today’s tech is dehumanizing. I have also spoken about how throughout the development of science and technology there has been a strange dance with the occult on the part of many of the leading scientists and tech titans. I spoke on how many explicitly employed occult methods to gain power and how others followed Eastern religions and psychedelics to do so. These strange impulses were so important in the development of today’s technologies that someone asked me if I thought all technology was evil. And while I hesitate to go that far, I think that we should all be very wary given the history and the apparent effects. Something that was developed by people who sought to employ entities from the other realm to help them might not be exactly safe.
But as I have studied history, I have found that this pattern: seeking to reach the other realm to gain power and technology is nothing new. In fact, it goes back well before the modern scientific era and is present in the work of every pagan priest, shaman, and witchdoctor. And just as modern technology has dehumanizing effects, so too did the work of so many pagan priests lead to the destruction of humans. And often in a less subtle way.
There is a dark element to almost all ancient cultures that many people do not know: human sacrifice. In the Western world we have this narrative of the “noble savage” where we sort of picture this kind wise indigenous person who would have been way better off if the bad Europeans had not come and changed their culture. But the reality is so much darker. The depths of the darkness are obscure to most people who likely did not study history at all. And the few that did study history likely learned from authors writing in the post 1960s academic world that focused almost all criticism not on indigenous people but back on the West itself. But if you take time to read the primary accounts. The writings of the Spanish explorers who clashed with the Aztecs. Or the writings of the Romans as they marched on the Gauls of northern Europe. Or if you read the archeological findings in China. Or the findings among the tribes of the North American plains. If you dig into the actual history, you will find a theme that repeats over and over. On every continent and in every culture human sacrifice was used to achieve the hopes, goals, and objectives of the priests and of the people.
Human sacrifice is very well known in the study of the Ancient Near East. As Leslie Wilson, a Research Associate in the Near Eastern Languages Department at Yale University, writes in The Serpent Symbol in the Ancient Near East, “We have already admitted the practice of sacrifice of human beings in the ancient world as a datum.” The reason that they were done, according to Wilson, was to please the serpent gods they worshiped. Similarly, in ancient Egypt, there were periods—notably around 2,500 B.C. — in Lower Egypt in which human sacrifice became “systematic and substantial”.
Further north on the European continent, it is well established that the Druids practiced human sacrifice. Julius Caesar was among the first to report on this in his writings about his escapades through northern Europe; he famously wrote that the native Celts, "believe that the gods delight in the slaughter of prisoners and criminals, and when the supply of captives runs short, they sacrifice even the innocent.” Elsewhere he wrote that in times of danger, the Celts believed that "unless the life of a man be offered, the mind of immortal gods will not favor them." Roman author Pliny the Elder (born 23 AD) stated that the Celts practiced ritual cannibalism, eating their enemies' flesh as a source of spiritual and physical strength. And we have archeological evidence to back up these claims. In the 1980s, a 2,000-year-old, bog-mummified body was discovered. A young man’s head had been violently smashed, he had been strangled, and his throat was slashed. Then his neck had been constricted with a rope near the cut to “cause an enormous fountain of blood to rise up."
Well into the Christian era, Vikings continued these sorts of sacrifices. Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg (born 975 AD), describes how the Vikings met every nine years to “offer to their gods 99 people and just as many horses, dogs and hens or hawks, for these should serve them in the kingdom of the dead and atone for their evil deeds.” The monk, Adam of Bremen, wrote a similar account in 1072 A.D. regarding a region of Sweden. In a temple devoted to Thor, Odin, and Frey, the Vikings also met every nine years to sacrifice humans and all kinds of living creatures. There was a time when these accounts were thought to be exaggerations, but recent archaeological finds show that human sacrifice was a reality in the Viking era.
Historian Tom Holland tells an interesting story about how Iceland converted to Christianity. The Icelandic people were feeling increasing pressure to convert so that they could have better trade and military alliances with the rest of Europe. He writes that Thorgeir Thorkelsson, a well-respected pagan priest and leader among the Icelandic people, proclaimed that Iceland should convert to Christianity and that he would himself. But there were three provisions he insisted upon.
First, they could continue to eat horse meat — so far so good. But the second and third provisions show the extent to which the murder of innocents was part of Icelandic culture. Thorkelsson’s second provision was that infanticide should be allowed to continue for unwanted babies. And his third was that sacrifice might be allowed to continue on private estates (simply kept out of the public). Knowing what we know from Bishop Thietmar and Monk Adam, there is good reason to suspect these sacrifices included humans.
And I have recently written about how witches that struck fear in the hearts of Europe during the early Renaissance era were likely also practicing human sacrifice. I cited one 15th century witch testimony that said,
“This is the manner of it. We set our snares chiefly for unbaptized children...we kill them in their cradles or even when they are sleeping by their parents' side, in such a way that they afterwards are thought to have been overlain or to have died some other natural death. Then we secretly take them from their graves, and cook them in a cauldron, until the whole flesh comes away from the bones to make a soup which may easily be drunk. Of the more solid matter we make an unguent which is of virtue to help us in our arts and pleasures and our transportations; and with the liquid we fill a flask or skin, whoever drinks from which, with the addition of a few other ceremonies, immediately acquires much knowledge and becomes a leader in our sect.” Malleus Maleficarum (pp. 62-63)
As Christians traveled to the ‘New World,’ they discovered that these dark practices had not vanished from the world. For example, the Mayan brutality not only involved the enslavement of millions and practicing almost constant war, it included the ritual drowning of little children in sinkholes to appease their gods. Maya priests in the Yucatan peninsula would convince the gods to make it rain by throwing children as young as three years old into sacred sinkhole caves thought to be the entrance to the underworld. In one grisly find, Archeologist Guillermo de Anda of the University of Yucatan pieced together the bones of 127 boys between the ages of three and eleven that he found at the bottom of one of the nearby sacred caves.
Elsewhere in Mesoamerica, the Inca Empire worshiped various gods including Pachamama. Pachamama was a fertility goddess who watched over planting and harvesting. And this god of the plants was depicted as a woman who sometimes became a dragon. The Inca used ayahuasca to meet Pachamama and the other gods. They learned about the stars. They were given guidance on establishing a powerful empire. And the architectural skills they learned in building — constructing beautiful temples with incredibly precise stonework, using giant stones that they somehow got up into the high mountains — continue to confound even modern scholars. They also tracked the movement of the stars with astonishing precision. But these worshipers of the dragon and consumers of ayahuasca also enslaved millions. They practiced constant war. They practiced infanticide. And they sacrificed thousands of children to their gods.
Physical anthropologist John Verano of Tulane University expressed shock when he discovered the remains at one archeological site. What was so jarring to him was the grisly find that he and several other anthropologists uncovered — the skeletal remains of more than 140 children who had been ritually sacrificed on a high a wind-swept bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. This find confirmed the many horrific accounts of Inca priests sacrificing countless innocents which Spanish explorers had recorded in their journals.
But perhaps the most perfected system of human sacrifice was found when the Spanish arrived in modern day Mexico and met the Aztec people. This Mesoamerican culture dominated central Mexico from the early fourteenth century until Cortes arrived in the 16th and were known for their beautiful architecture and technology. When the Spanish arrived they described Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, as a “Venice of the New World.” Its beautiful canals operated like roads that crossed throughout the vast city that stood in the shadows of great and beautiful pyramids.
But the Spanish quickly learned something dark cast a shadow over this beautiful city. They observed the unholy Trinity of psychotropic drugs, visions of serpents, followed by brutal human sacrifice.
The gods encountered as priests took mushrooms had dark demands. In order to appease them and partake of the promises they offered, sacrifices in the most literal sense had to be offered. And like perhaps no other known culture they were offered in earnest. Some scholars estimate as many as 250,000 men, women and children were offered up every year. Picture a priest standing on pyramid stairs. In front of him is a young man captured in war, drugged to pacify, painted and oiled. The priest takes the dangerously sharp obsidian blade, cuts open the chest of the man, and rips out a still-beating heart. He turns and raises it up to the sky and then turns to show it to the crowd below. Imagine the smell. The blood. The horror you might feel upon seeing this in person. Now imagine this not as a one off horrific event but as a production line of butchery. Imagine that just this day, around 700 victims would suffer the same fate. And 700 tomorrow. And the next. All year.
Conquistador Andrés de Tapia described the way the sacrifices helped build the Aztec empire. He said that the Aztecs had two rounded towers flanking the Templo Mayor made entirely of human skulls. Between them, he wrote, a towering wooden rack displayed thousands more skulls impaled on wooden poles. The architecture of the Aztecs was literally built with human sacrifice.
I will stop my survey of the world there although I could point to many more (the tribes of North America, the cults of South East Asia, and etc). Human sacrifice is a theme that is undeniable and pervasive in world history.
And like our modern tech titans and scientific elites, the goal of all these pagan sacrifices was always money, power, and knowledge. To the extent that these ancient peoples killed because the gods told them to, the gods only served as a conduit to the goals. The gods were a means to an end. The gods gave people the things they wanted. For the Inca that was empire. For the Aztecs that was global order (literally ensuring the world continued and the sun continued to rise). For the witches it might have been base desires like revenge or lust. But there is always a promise. A promise from the gods that if you just sacrifice that human being, you can achieve your heart’s desire.
Which brings us back to the science and technology of today. Why have so many scientists engaged in the occult? Why have so many tech titans sought the wisdom of entities encountered on ayahuasca or mushrooms? To satisfy those same objectives. And what do the entities demand this time? Technology itself may be enough for them. As I have written elsewhere it is reducing fertility rates, increasing isolation, and taking us away from the environment we were built to dwell in. But there is so much more that technology can do in terms of human destruction: nuclear bombs, biological weapons, and lethal chemical compounds. And technology brought us new and more effective means to stop babies from being born like birth control and abortion (interestingly, these were common objectives of witches during the middle ages).
We think we are somehow past human sacrifice but are we? Aren’t we as happy to do the same exact things for the same exact reasons? We are attempting to contact entities in the other realm. We are willing to destroy and kill to achieve our goals. The only question, that I began this article with, is whether there really is something there to be contacted who is pushing for all this. Why is it that when people get ambitious and turn to the occult, the promise always comes with dark strings attached? Why are the gifts of the gods always given in exchange for anti-human activities? Who are these entities? If they are imaginary as materialists suggest, none of it makes sense. But if, as I have argued in the past, real entities exist, then this pattern of behavior points to something deeper and darker. It has to be concluded that these entities have an antipathy to humanity. If true, there is nothing they would give for the benefit of humanity. Everything they give is for our detriment. And if modern tech was a gift of the occult (as many tech titans have stated), how does that change what we think of giving our kids iPhones and spending our days in front of screens?
Love it. Heavy echoes in your work to Abolition of Man: the close link between magic and science. Not surprised to see very dark similarities in the most zealous forms of each.