Philosophy and the End of Sacrifice - Disengaging Ritual in Ancient India, Greece and Beyond - Peter Jackson
7. The All as logikê thusia:The Egyptian Prehistory of a Hermetic Idea
Philosophy and the End of Sacrifice - Disengaging Ritual in Ancient India, Greece and Beyond - Peter Jackson
Jørgen Podemann Sørensen [+]
University of Copenhagen
Description
Jørgen Podemann Sørensen explores how sacrifice, in its capacity as a necessary subspecies of ritual, has informed both modern theories of religion, and the speculative responses of its indigenous performers. He does this by instigating a specific sacrificial logic. He compares the ethnographically documented bear ceremonialism among the Ainu of Hokkaido with the ancient Egyptian sacrifice of the goddess Maat. These examples serve to bring the radicalized Hermetic idea of spiritual sacrifice into the broader context of sacrificial speculation. He thereby demonstrates how the radicalized idea of sacrifice always depends on its more traditional mode, even when the latter may appear to have come to an end.