Written by Dyami Millarson
Performing blood sacrifices or being a witness to them for research may be impractical under many circumstances, although one should definitely try to perforn or witnessed it being perforned at some point in one’s career, because closely observing actual rite is, of course, the best way to conduct a proper investigation into it.
While it may be especially true that observation in this manner is a valid way to explore the nature of blood sacrifice in a polytheistic context, I would argue that we should not dismiss fantasy as a powerful tool in exploring the nature of blood sacrifice. The human imagination is an incredible faculty of the human mind, and this tool bestowed upon us by evolution should definitely not lie dormant as it is often ignored during the research process.
In fact, dreams or fantasies may be useful for formulating scientific hypotheses. Therefore, the creativity of the human imagination may play a vital role in Germanic blood sacrifice research. The human mind in its entirety offers opportunities that ought to be seized, we should definitely make full use of everything that we have got.
Just as the Icelanders still dreamed of pagan dances for many years after the conversion and included the theme of dancing in their fantastic folk stories and Snorri even used a dream setting to treat the Nordic folk religious narrative, one may consider that if one cannot perform blood sacrifices for whatever reason, one may still dream of blood sacrifices at night or fantasise about it during daytime.
Blood sacrifice, while an integral part of ancient Germanic cultural heritage, occupied the pagan psyche, and the ancient polytheists of Germanic Europe would therefore have dreamed of blood sacrifice at night as well. Among animistic-polytheistic peoples, dreams are regarded as valid forms of observation, and this notion may be philisophically interesting for research purposes as well, as we ought to remember that dreams/fantasies are valid ways to explore the pagan forest world, where blood sacrifice was practised, and consequently to develop scientific hypotheses based on these.
Plato’s cave allegory is well-known as well as his discussion of an ideal city. Polytheism researchers or philosophers may develop a forest allegory and the notion of an ideal sacrificial forest (perhaps with nearby human habitation in the form of a village?) to aid blood sacrifice research and draw on artistic inventions in order to further explore the world of the ancient past where there were sacrificial forests also known as sacred forests. The theme of the magical forest has persisted into pre-modern times in Germanic fairytales, as the forests remained a mysterious place essential to the folk psyche and from which he people drew artistic – or perhaps mythological, although I prefer not to use that word – inspiration.
Viking Religion 