A very well written and throughly researched article. Many modern pagans are quick to hop on the train of historical revisionism when it comes to the question of human sacrifice. It is extremely difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff on this topic, what testimonies are true and which are falsified. It is important not only to cover Christian tactics to defame our ancestors, but jointly the propaganda used by imperial Rome, which was the genesis for much of the falsehoods writers like Adam of Bremen, Bede and other early Christian historians would come to spread about paganism.

But when we venture out of the realm of Christian foolery we have to come to our senses, and remember that our people do have a rich history of both animal and human sacrifice. Human sacrifice was a common occurrence, though unlike what these historians will have you believe, those offered to the gods were not innocents or children, and rarely were they from the community in which the sacrifice was taking place. We have much evidence that confirms the sacrifice of Roman soldiers in Celto-Germanic, Gaulic and Brythonic tribes during the empire’s various campaigns. Bodies were found at the Sutton Hoo burial site that show signs of hanging, likely being slaves of noble kinsmen buried within. Numerous corpses across the British isle recovered from bogs that were clear signs of human sacrifice, likely carried out by druids or other tribal equivalents.

I do not believe the outcome of this article was revisionism on the topic of human sacrifice in Heathenry, but nevertheless it serves as a reminder that we should not shy away from the more conventionally ‘gruesome’ or ‘immoral’ aspects of our spirituality. Human sacrifice was a part of our culture long before our distant ancestors even set foot in the continent of Europe, it is an inalienable part of pagan culture, and it should be embraced with open arms.