Mischeviousfae: dewognatos: primalheart: thegreenwolf: Chaos Eternal: Pagan/Witch...

mischeviousfae:

littlecitywitch:

primalheart:

thegreenwolf:

paganbeauty:

dewognatos:

primalheart:

thegreenwolf:

Chaos Eternal: Pagan/Witch Survey that is going to offend you.

amber-and-ice:

thegreenwolf:

mischeviousfae:

SecularWitch: This is a survey meant to bring up unpopular opinions about certain topics within Paganism,…

I agree with what everyone is saying here. My one question is: if people are so okay with animal sacrifice, why do meat eater get hounded by vegetarians and vegans? Not saying that all of them do this, but a majority do. Unless everyone here who is making commentary also eats meat xD just a question I thought I’d bring up.

I think most of the people here, like most of the pagan population, is omnivorous. I am omnivorous, and I additionally work with animal parts in my shamanism and artwork. So definitely not a veg*n here (though I like good veg*n cooking!)

Yeah. I am a meat-eating omnivore. I have a roast of boar in my freezer that I am looking very much forward to. Food is incredibly important to me.

As I said before I can understand how a vegan would be against animal sacrifice. That makes sense.

But I do not understand the logic of those who eat meat (especially if it is from the meat industry) and hold the opinion that animal sacrifice is something only a sociopath would do. I can understand not feeling called to do so yourself for whatever reasons, but the vilification that comes from the mouths of people who do eat meat is just baffling.

^ Thank you primalheart. My thoughts exactly.

I don’t get the meat eaters that are incredibly against animal sacrifice; it seems a little hypocritical.

No. It’s more hypocritical for a vegan or a vegetarian to support animal sacrifice.

I think we can all agree that pretty much all vegans, by virtue of being vegan, would be against animal sacrifice. That’s not what we’re discussing, so let us leave it at that.

Animals such as cows, pigs and chickens that are raised on farms are meant for human consumption.

This is the rhetorical equivalent of saying, “Words mean things because they are words.” I’m pretty sure the definition of farm involves raising/harvesting food animals.

Many of our dietary staples comes from those three things when it comes to meat.

I’m not going to address the nutrition points, because that is beyond the scope of this conversation and largely irrelevant to this conversation. This is not an argument about why veganism is awesome or why meat eating is awesome. This is about the ethics of animal sacrifice, and its context in the larger context of society and culture, last time I checked.

I can recommend some books written by (non-vegan) nutritionists, if you’re interested.

Not only that but those three animals are bred on farms for those purposes: to be consumed.

Yes. Again, that’s the purpose of a farm, last time I checked.

If you think that a significant portion of meat for consumers comes from pastoral farms, you are sadly kidding yourself. By and large meat comes from industrialized factories, which is not a ‘farm’ by any stretch of the imagination, no matter how pastoral an image the company chooses to put on the package. My issue is the dissonance in a lot of meat eaters between understanding what meat is and where it comes from and a love of animals. I’m not saying that meat eaters can’t love animals - quite the contrary. But I’ve never met anyone who genuinely likes the idea of a factory farm - it’s usually something people put out of their minds. In our hyper-capitalist industrialized society, people are incredibly far removed from the processes of creating the things we purchase, use, and consume on a daily basis. Meat is one of those many things.

They are not raised on farms to be sacrificed to some deity.

I think this is where the crux of the discussion lies. To me, an animal sacrifice in a spiritual setting in which the animal is honoured and killed with respect, love, gratitude, and reverence is much preferable to dying in an industrialized factory farm where animals are psychologically terrorized, not killed quickly/humanely, and pumped up with hormones/antibiotics, and killed by people who do it so routinely that it ain’t no big deal. In industrial factory farms, killing becomes normalized. In animal sacrifice, it isn’t - it’s seen as a significant act. It’s got ‘sacrifice’ attached to it for a reason - the giving of something valuable and prized. In industrial meat farms, meat isn’t seen as valuable or prized and the animal’s life is seen as worthless. That is why to me animal sacrifice in a spiritual context seems much more ethical than industrial factory farmed meat.

About the only thing I would add to the above commentary is that in a lot of situations where animal sacrifice is practiced, the chicken/cow/etc. was raised within the community the sacrificer is a part of, if not by that person in specific. In Haiti, for example, you don’t have factory farms, but that’s where Vodou is most prominent. So you have people who are intimately familiar with the raising and killing and preparing of animals. And while not all reconstructionists can raise their own animals, I know of some who have land and have done so, and those who can’t will often buy an animal that has been cared for on a small farm and had a generally good life.

Great discussion, folks.