Jan 31 2010
Sunday Sacrilege: Blood on the Altar
I took this photo in a small Sicilian church. Relative to the rest of the church, the altar was quite large and ornate.
What are altars all about? Here’s the etymology of the term:
O.E., from L. altare (pl. altaria), probably originally meaning “burnt offerings” (cf. L. adolere “to worship, to offer sacrifice, to honor by burning sacrifices to”), but infl. by L. altus “high.” [source]
Today millions of people will go to their “high place.” The place where transcendant forces are supposedly manifest. Will they make sacrifices to their most high being? Their ancestors likely did.
Historically speaking, altars got splattered with blood. While the talk of body and blood sacrifice is purely metaphorical today, does that make the ideology any more lofty? In my opinion — to the contrary.
