Blood and Symbols: The History of Human Sacrifices

The book «Blood and Symbols» is an overview of the tradition of human sacrifices, the roots of which go back to ancient times, and numerous echoes in the form of various bloodless rituals are preserved to this day.
Readers who want... to thrill themselves with bloody scenes are immediately warned by the authors that they have tried to minimize the description of cruelties. Moreover, sacrifices were not always bloody. In many religions of the world, for example, traditions of dedicating living people to the gods are known, who continued to live and thrive, but already being the «property» or «spouse» of a deity. The authors aimed to show the connection of human sacrifices with the spiritual and cultural development of human communities; to trace how, over thousands of years, humanity has slowly but surely moved towards replacing bloody rituals with spiritual ones. And how, finally, it was the unfulfilled human sacrifice — Abraham's offering of his son Isaac — that became the foundation of the three great religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.