Executioners

by Phil Clarke

  Beltane

  The Beltane festival took place on 1 May and marked the centre point on the Celtic calendar between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice, like the festival of Samhain (the ancient Celtic equivalent of halloween). The festival of Beltane was seen as a time of year when the other world and its inhabitants were particularly close at hand. It was treated as an ideal time for transition and purification. Tradi­tionally, Beltane included a human sacrifice in order to ensure a good summer’s harvest. Historians believe that the ceremony began with the building of a large bonfire. In the fire, an oatmeal cake called a bannock was baked and a small portion of it was deliberately charred. The bannock was broken into small pieces, put in a bag and passed around. The unfortunate person who chose the charred piece of bread became the sacrifical victim, and was usually burnt on the bonfire. The Lindow bog man’s last meal was found to be a charred oatmeal substance, but he had escaped a death by fire – why?

  Prominent archaeologist Anne Ross believes that the Lindow bogman was certainly a prominent member of society – either a druid priest or a king, who chose to be sacrificed in ad 60, in order to stave off violent attacks by the Romans who were attempting to wipe out the Celts around this time. Given his position in society, it is unlikely that he would have been sacrificed in the same manner as a commoner – and a more respectful execution was planned instead.

  In a way, the Lindow bogman succeeded in his mission to ensure that the Celtic traditions lived on.

  If Andy Mould had not found the remains of the Lindlow bogman on that summer’s day in 1983, perhaps an important element of Celtic history, that of the Beltane sacrificial ritual, would have been lost forever.

  The Vikings

  The Vikings have lived on in the history books as a people committed to bloodthirsty and depraved violence. Life for a typical Viking was hard and short. The ancient Norse people worshipped a pantheon of war-like gods, and like many other civilisations, they believed in spilling human blood in order to ensure abundant crops, victory in battle and the continuing health and wealth of their people.

  The Cult of the Volvas

  The volvas were a group of high priestesses who were considered by some to be higher in status even than the gods themselves. An old Norse story describes Odin (head of all Norse Gods) consulting a volva for advice, whereby she taunts him – unafraid of his wrath. The volvas are generally portrayed as aged women who dressed in white robes – a Viking forerunner to our witch, and one of their main roles was to predict the future. A human sacrifice, usually a prisoner of war, was awarded to the volva’s. They would sprinkle his blood in order to prophesy coming events during a ceremony or ‘Blot’.

  Blot

  The blot was a sacramental meal or feast with a sacrifice at its centre, called a ‘blota’. The oldest form of the word ‘blot’ means ‘to summon with incant­ations’, ‘to worship with sacrifice’ or ‘to strengthen’. Often the sacrifice would have consisted of animals – a pig or a horse, but occasionally, perhaps when trouble was close at hand, or the gods were particu­larly needful, a prisoner would be sacrificed in the same manner. The meat was boiled in large cooking pits with heated stones, either indoors or out. As in many other cultures, the blood was thought to have special powers and was sprinkled on statues of the gods, on walls and on the attendees at the feast, using specially made blot-brushes. Such a festival must have been spectacularly grisly to behold.

  The number nine had magical significance in Norse mythology, and although different regions practised blot in different ways, the number nine was significant for all, so every nine years all Viking communities would stage some form of sacrifice, often involving humans – sometimes as many as ninety-nine prisoners would be executed and their remains offered to one of the three major gods – Odin, Frey or Thor, depending on the particular circumstances.

  The Ancient Chinese

  The Chinese of the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 bc) and the Zhou dynasty (1122–255 bc), worshipped a combination of nature gods ranging from forest imps to hill gods, earth gods, sky gods, wind gods, river maidens and rain spirits.

  The Brides of the Yellow River

  The kings of these early dynasties worshipped a special god named the ‘Gatherer of the Clouds’, otherwise known as a mighty rain god, who was often depicted in dragon form. This cloud gatherer required a sacrifice in order to guarantee good fishing for the year to come, along with an abundance of rain. A richly clad young girl would be made to lay in a raft of her bridal bed and be cast out into the Yellow River to perish alone. An traditional song was sung as the ceremony took place, the lyrics of which remain hauntingly resonant today.

  You mount the white turtle, Oh!

  your train is striped fish!

  I rove with you, Oh!

  by the aisles of the Ho.

  In the chaos of the sweeping thaw, Oh!

  down we shall go.

  We join our hands, Oh!

  as eastward we move.

  They escort the lovely one, Oh!

  to the south estuary.

  Waves in steady surge, Oh!

  come to welcome us –

  Fish in swishing tumult, Oh!

  are bridesmaids to me.

  Regular sacrifices were also made to the gods of war in order to guarantee victory in battle, and in honour of long dead ancestors in order to gain a connection with the heavens. The executioners used a bronze yueh axe (a ceremonial weapon) to behead their victims. The axe featured a very large blade which was often assymetric in shape and elaborately decorated, sometimes inset with precious stones.

  Mayan Sacrifice

  To understand the Mayan’s use of ritual human sacrifice, and the individuals who were responsible for carrying it out, it’s worth looking briefly at the unusual and complex structure of their universe.

  The Mayan Universe

  The Mayans believed that the earth was flat, some­thing like the back of a crocodile resting in a pool of waterlilies. This mythical crocodile had a counterpart in the sky which took the form of a double-headed serpent. They believed that the sky itself was multi-layered, and that four strong and powerful gods called bacabs kept the sky suspended above the people, preventing it from falling in and destroying the earth beneath.

  According to ancient Mayan teachings, their gods had already destroyed and recreated the universe a number of times. This meant that any natural disaster – such as a violent storm, a hurricane or a flood – struck fear into the people because they thought that the gods may have become angry or even bored, and decided simply to wipe them out and start all over again.

  Out of Control

  It’s likely that the resulting atmosphere of mass-hysteria, coupled with the shamans’ use of mind-altering substances such as pulque (an alcoholic drink made from maize and agave), the leaves of wild tobacco plants and hallucinogenic mushrooms led the Mayans down the path of human sacrifice as a way of exerting some control over the elements, or at least creating the feeling that they were asserting themselves.

  A Pantheon of Gods

  The Mayans worshipped a large number of different gods and goddesses – at least 166 named deities – and each one required love and nourishment in order to ensure the health and wealth of the people. The people’s devotion needed demonstrating. This could take many forms, but the most extreme was that of bloodletting and human sacrifice.

  Mayan shamans controlled learning and ritual and were in charge of calculating time, festivals and ceremonies, fateful days and events, curing disease, writing and genealogies. The priesthood were not celibate, and the role was usually passed down through the generations from father to son. The Mayan year was dictated by a 260-day sacred round calendar and their rituals were based around this calendar which was controlled, like most everything else, by members of the priesthood.

  Blood Letting

  Many Mayan rituals involved self mutilation and bloodletting in order to annoint religious objects. The motive for the ritual dictated
where on the body blood was taken from, and what kind of sacrifice was made. The head of most Mayan households would give a small amount of blood every single night in order to stave off disaster.

  The Mayan elite were obsessed with blood, both their own and that of their captives. As the Mayan civilisation began to fall, kings of various territories rushed from city to city performing desperate blood-letting rights in order to invoke the protection of their gods. Some have argued that the reason for this bloodlust lies with the fact that meat was extremely scarce, and the people malnourished to the point of lunacy. Human sacrifice may have provided the Mayan aristocracy with their only reliable source of protein.

  Fertility Ritual

  In one particularly eyewatering fertility ritual, a king would use a stingray spine or an obsidian knife to make an incision in his penis before drawing a piece of rope through the wound in order to increase blood flow. He allowed the blood to collect on a piece of paper in a bowl. The paper would then be burnt, releasing human energy skyward and thus offering it as a sacrifice to the heavens in return for a son. It was believed that the gods could be seen in the smoke, communicating messages to their living subjects and issuing demands.

  The Mayan kings were able to do this, not because they had extraordinarily high pain thresholds, but through the use of potent hallucinogenic drugs, which propelled them to a place where pain no longer mattered very much.

  When a king acceded the throne, a captive would be sacrificed to the gods in order to cement the new king’s position. This was the most important ritual in a king’s life as it was the point at which he inherited the throne and became leader of his city.

  Human sacrifice was routinely practised on prisoners, slaves, orphans and illegitimate children who were specifically purchased for this prupose. The priests would gather on elevated platforms or on top of pyramids so that the people could gather beneath them to witness the special event. The priests were assisted in the sacrifice by four older men called chacs (after the Mayan rain god). These men would hold the arms and legs of a sacrificial victim while another man called a nacom opened up the chest. A shaman or chilam was also in attendance – he conversed with the gods in a trance-like state and relayed messages which were interpreted by the gathered priests.

  The Sacrificial Victim

  In this most exotic of rituals, the prisoner was first painted blue, and held over a sacrificial table by the chacs. The position of the altar meant that the prisoners chest was thrust upwards, making the fol­low­ing procedure easier to carry out. The prisoner’s chest was opened up, usually using a sharpened stone, and the heart was removed by the officiating priest. He then held it up above his head while it continued to beat, so that the crowd below could see it. Then he deposited the heart in a stone vessel which was held by another man who lay next to the sacrificial alter. The victim’s body was then decaptitated. On some occasions, the victim was shot through with arrows instead of having his heart ripped out. If the victim was a brave or important warrior, his dead body was then rolled down the steps of the temple to be devoured by the frenzied mob below. His skin was then taken and worn by shamen in further rituals.

  Phalaris

  Some powerful men cast a shadow over history. In many circles, they are written about and spoken of as progressive, intellectual renaissance men who worked tirelessly towards technological advance­ment, and ultimately for the good of their people. They are sometimes even regarded as heroic figures in their nation’s past, but scratch the surface and you will quickly unearth a different story, one of violence and cruelty involving cannibalism, ritual killing, genocide, institutionalised child molestation and a whole host of other bloodthirsty and depraved acts.

  Occasionally the reverse happens. A historical figure we perceive to be a murderous maniac will be revealed as a secret opera fan or crochet addict. It is well known that Adolph Hitler was a vegetarian and a keen painter, and the reason we find this odd is because it’s so difficult to marry Adolph the evil tyrant with Adolph the vegetable-loving, watercolourist. In these cases, it is often difficult to decipher which is truth and which fiction, but it’s likely there are elements of truth in both versions.

  The Hannibal Lectar Effect

  Hannibal Lectar, the cannabilistic psychopath in Silence of the Lambs, is a fictional manifestation of one of these characters, made all the more terrifying and dangerous by his apparent sophistication and capacity for intellectual thought. Phalaris, the tyrant of Acragas, demon­strated the ‘Hannibal Lectar effect’. Like Adolph Hitler, Vlad the Impaler, Ivan the Terrible and Saddam Hussein, Phalaris was a wolf in sheep’s clothing – a monster disguised as a diplomat.

  Phalaris: The Diplomat

  Phalaris has been credited with some very significant achievements. He was entrusted with the building of the Temple of Zeus Polieus in the citadel of the city, and took advantage of this position to rise to power in this part of Sicily. According to a later story, told by Polyaenus, Phalaris actually armed his labourers, effectively turning them into an army that occupied the citadel. It is however true that, once under his leadership, the city of Acragas enjoyed relative pros­perity. He single-handedly supplied the city with water by building an aquaduct, adorned it with other fine buildings and built defensive walls around Acragas in order to keep it safe from invaders. On the northern coast of the island he was elected general with absolute power – and by adopting an expansionist foreign policy (invading other Sicilian towns and cities) he eventually succeeded in making himself ruler of the whole island.

  Phalaris: The Monster

  However, despite his many achievements, Phalaris has become infamous as the prototype evil dictator who, among other things, enjoyed feasting on the flesh of suckling babies. Of course, it is very possible that these rumours of cannibalism were the invention of political enemies of Phalaris, who were attempting to cast him as nothing more than a bloodthirsty barbarian. It is also possible that Phalaris himself encouraged others to think of him in this light – afterall it takes a brave man to willingly attack someone mad enough to eat human baby flesh! One thing is for sure – cannibal or not – Phalaris definitely seems to have had a taste for the exotic when it came to torture and execution.

  The Brazen Bull

  As ruler of Sicily, Phalaris commissioned Perilaus, a well-known bronze-worker from Athens, to invent for him a new form of punishment. The result has gone down in legend as the Brazen Bull of Phalaris, and is still included in countless on-line lists of ‘the most horrible way a human being can die’. Perilaus cast a life-sized brazen bull with a door in the side. The victim was forced to climb into the contraption, and then the bull was locked up and a large fire was built around its base. The fire was lit and continuously fed while the prisoner slowly roasted to death. Perilous indeed!

  In a stroke of sheer engineering genius, the nostrils of the bull were so contrived with acoustic mechan­isms that the groans of the sufferer resembled the bellows of a mad bull. Phalaris commended the invention, and then ordered Perilaus to be the first to test it out. When the bronze-worker climbed inside the Brazen Bull, Phalaris is said to have slammed the hatch shut behind him and lit a fire. Some stories claim that Phalaris took pity on the half-dead artisan and removed him from the bull, throwing him off a nearby cliff to finish the job in a quick and efficient manner. Others end this harrowing story with Phalaris enjoying the death-cries of Perilaus as he roasted alive within the white-hot walls of his own design.

  It is quite likely that the Brazen Bull was used by Phalaris to sacrifice prisoners to his gods. It is true that human sacrifice was not uncommon in Carthage and Western Sicily. Sicilian rivers were often represented as bulls with human heads, so it would follow that Phalaris used his brazen bull to sacrifice people to a local river god. It is also true that the Pheonician Baal (Zeus Atabyrius), was sometimes worshipped in the form of a bull.

  The fate of Phalaris was much like that of other tyrants such as Saddam, Adolph and Vlad. He was eventu
ally overthrown in an uprising headed by Telemachus and put to death. He was apparently roasted alive in the very contraption that would make him so infamous.

  Buried Alive

  To die is natural; but the living death

  Of those who waken into conciousness,

  Though for a moment only, ay, or less,

  To find a coffin stifling their last breath,

  Surpasses every horror underneath,

  The sun of heaven, and should surely check,

  Haste in the living to remove the wreck,

  Of what was just before, the soul’s fair sheath,

  How many have been smothered in their shroud!