In many cults, sacrifices are distinguished by frequency of performance into two types, regular and special. Regular sacrifices may be daily, weekly, monthly, or seasonal (as at planting, harvest, and New Year). Also often included are sacrifices made at specific times in each man’s life—birth, puberty, marriage, and death. Offerings made on special occasions and for special intentions have included, for example, sacrifices in times of danger, sickness, or crop failure and those performed at the construction of a building, for success in battle, or in thanksgiving for a divine favour.

In the Vedic cult the regular sacrifices were daily, monthly, and seasonal. The daily rites included fire offerings to the gods and libations and food offerings to the ancestors and the earth divinities and spirits. The monthly sacrifices, conducted at the time of new and full moons, were of cakes or cooked oblations to sundry deities, especially the storm god Indra. Some daily and monthly sacrifices could be celebrated in the home by a householder, but only the official priesthood could perform the complex seasonal sacrifices, offered three times a year—at the beginning of spring, of the rainy season, and of the cool weather—for the purpose of expiation and of abundance. Of the occasional sacrifices, which could be celebrated at any time, especially important were those associated with kingship, such as the royal consecration and the great “horse sacrifice” performed for the increase of the king’s power and domain.

In ancient Judaism the regular or periodic sacrifices included the twice-daily burnt offerings, the weekly Sabbath sacrifices, the monthly offering at the new moon, and annual celebrations such as Pesaḥ (Passover), Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), and Sukkoth (Feast of Tabernacles). Special sacrifices were usually of a personal nature, such as thank and votive offerings and “guilt offerings.”

The common place of sacrifice in most cults is an altar. The table type of altar is uncommon; more often it is only a pillar, a mound of earth, a stone, or a pile of stones. Among the Hebrews in early times and other Semitic peoples the altar of the god was frequently an upright stone (matztzeva) established at a place in which the deity had manifested itself. It was bet el, the “house of God.”

Frequently, the altar is regarded as the centre or the image of the universe. For the ancient Greeks, the grave marker (a mound of earth or a stone) was the earth altar upon which sacrifices to the dead were made and, like other earth altars, it was called the omphalos, “the navel” of the earth—i.e., the central point from which terrestrial life originated. In Vedic India the altar was regarded as a microcosm, its parts representing the various parts of the universe and its construction being interpreted as a repetition of the creation of the cosmos.

Method of sacrifice

Along with libation and the sacrificial effusion of blood, one of the commonest means of making an oblation available to sacred beings is to burn it. In both ancient Judaism and Greek religion the major offering was the burnt or fire offering. Through the medium of the fire, the oblation was conveyed to the divine recipient. In ancient Greece the generic term for sacrifice (thysia) was derived from a root meaning to burn or to smoke. In Judaism the important sacrifices (ʿola and zevaḥ) involved the ritual burning, either entirely or in part, of the oblation, be it animal or vegetation. For the Babylonians also, fire was essential to sacrifice, and all oblations were conveyed to the gods by the fire god Girru-Nusku, whose presence as intermediary between the gods and men was indispensable. In the Vedic cult the god of fire, Agni, received the offerings of men and brought them into the presence of the gods.

As burning is often the appropriate mode for sacrifice to celestial deities, so burial is often the appropriate mode for sacrifice to earth deities. In Greece, for example, sacrifices to the chthonic or underworld powers were frequently buried rather than burned or, if burned, burned near the ground or even in a trench. In Vedic India the blood and entrails of animals sacrificed on the fire altar to the sky gods were put upon the ground for the earth deities, including the ghosts and malevolent spirits. In West Africa yams and fowls sacrificed to promote the fertility of the earth are planted in the soil.

In sacrifice by burning and by burial, as also in the effusion of blood, the prior death of the human or animal victim, even if ritually performed, is in a sense incidental to the sacrificial action. There are, however, sacrifices (including live burial and burning) in which the ritual killing is itself the means by which the offering is effected. Illustrative of this method was the practice in ancient Greek and Indian cults of making sacrifices to water gods by drowning the oblations in sacred lakes or rivers. Similarly, the Norse cast human and animal victims over cliffs and into wells and waterfalls as offerings to the divinities dwelling therein. In the Aztec sacrifice of human beings to the creator god Xipe Totec, the victim was lashed to a scaffold and shot to death with bow and arrow.

There are also sacrifices that do not involve the death or destruction of the oblation. Such were the sacrifices in ancient Greece of fruits and vegetables at the “pure” (katharos) altar of Apollo at Delos, at the shrine of Athena at Lindus, and at the altar of Zeus in Athens. These “fireless oblations” (apura hiera) were especially appropriate for the deities of vegetation and fertility—e.g., Demeter and Dionysus. In Egypt bloodless offerings of food and drink were simply laid before the god on mats or a table in a daily ceremony called “performing the presentation of the divine oblations.” In both Greek and Egyptian cults such offerings were never to be eaten by the worshippers, but they were probably surreptitiously consumed by the priests or temple attendants. In ancient Israel, on the other hand, the food offerings of the “table of the shewbread” (the “bread of the presence” of God) were regarded as available to the priests and could be given by them to the laity. In Hinduism the daily offering of cooked rice and vegetable, after its consecration, is distributed by the priests to the worshippers as the deity’s “grace” (prasada). In some cases the sacrificial gifts are put out to be eaten by an animal representative of the deity. In Dahomey wandering dogs consume, on behalf of the trickster deity Eshu (Elegba), the consecrated food oblations presented to the god each morning at his shrines.

Recipient of the sacrifice

Sacrifices may be offered to beings who can be the object of religious veneration or worship. They will not be made to human beings unless they have first been deified in some way. In some cases sacrifice is made only to the god or gods; in others it is made to the deity, the spirits, and the departed; in others it is made only to the spirits and the departed, who are considered intermediaries between the deity and men. The Nkole people of Uganda, for example, are said to make no sacrifices to God, thinking he does not expect any. But on the third day following the new moon, they make offerings to the guardian spirits (emandwa), and they also make offerings at the shrines of ancestors (emizimu) of up to three generations back. Worship of spirits and of ancestors, often including the offering of sacrifices, occurs in widely distributed cultures; in fact, according to some scholars, probably the major recipients of sacrifice in non-Western traditions are the ancestors.