Tantric Rituals of Animal Sacrifice

Siddhi B. Ranjitkar

“Read out mantras in the ear of a goat, sacrifice it to a deity, get empowered to achieve your goal,” says a Tantrik.

Nepalis particularly the Nevah have developed many Tantric rituals in the course of their social and cultural development during the last millennium. Our traditional socio-religious customs are explained in terms of Tantric rituals. We believe that Tantra and Mantra have been in practice since more than 3,000 years ago. We use such Tantra and Mantra for good purposes such as healing ailments, controlling natural phenomena, securing strength, and achieving perfection. Some of us even misuse these unique Tantra and Mantra harming others. Serious Tantriks could even emerge as deities by their Tantric power. Now, let us talk about the Tantric rituals of the sacrifice of a male goat to a deity. We believe in three main sacrifices such as life, soul and body of a goat.

Our tradition has it that sacrifice of a male goat to the ancestral tutelary deity called Kuldevta is mandatory once a year during the annual Devali Puja in May-June. We need to perform Devali Puja to our Kuldevta to initiate newborn babies and newly wedded brides to the clan called Devali. New babies and newly married brides would not get rights and privileges of the clan as long as they were not entered into the clan through the Devali Puja.

We also offer animal sacrifices to various deities for varieties of reasons. Following the tradition, we offer sacrifices of buffaloes and goats, ducks and chickens all males to Goddess Durga Bhavani during the Dasain festival: one of the main festivals we have. It is a fifteen-day festival. We also offer animal sacrifices to Goddess Kali and God Bhairava for power and strength, to God Ganesh for perfection and success of anything we do, and to God Bhimsen for profits and other gains.

Tantric gods and goddesses enjoy meat dishes, alcoholic drinks and accept offerings of animal blood. You might be surprised to know that Tantriks have brought almost all Shastriyas deities to the Tantric nets. So, you find that God Ganesh as a Shastriyas god loves to have sweet balls but when he comes under the Tantric net he drinks alcohol, eats meat dishes and accepts animal sacrifices. Even the supreme Hindu God Lord Shiva coming under the Tantric net becomes hidden Mahadev and enjoys all sorts of non-vegetarian dishes and accepts alcoholic beverages.

Usually, we make three sorts of offerings to gods and goddesses. One is a regular annual offering to gods and goddesses during the annual festival. All the citizenry make such an offerings. Another is the special offering to a god or a goddess to win his/her favor for meeting our wish. We make such an offering at a propitious time. If the deity does not meet our wish then we do not make an offering. The third offering we make to gods and goddess is for healing any ailment. In this case, we make an offering to a concerned deity in an anticipation of healing our ailment.

We need to make offerings to Lord Ganesh and his brother God Kumar before making offerings to any other gods and goddesses. We make full offerings to Lord Ganesh but a half offering to his brother Kumar. None of the deities accepts any offerings made to them without first offerings to Lord Ganesh and his brother Kumar. So, first we prepare one brass tray with various items of offerings to Lord Ganesh and a half offering on a broad leaf for Kumar. Kumar dwells in an eight-petal lotus carved into a flagstone and set at the entrance to each Nevah house. Lord Ganesh dwells at a temple built at each neighborhood called tole.

We prepare a special brass tray or a container with the items of offerings to all deities to be worshipped during a festival time, and a similar brass tray with the items of offerings to a deity of our choice for making the pledged offering in return for the favor we received from the deity or for making an offering to a deity in an anticipation of getting our ailment healed.

We decorate a sacrificial goat before taking it to a deity. A woman takes a brass tray with the offerings to be made to Lord Ganesh on her left hand and the items of offerings to be made to Kumar on her right hands. She drops off the offerings to Kumar on the eight-petal stone lotus at the entrance to the house while on the way to Lord Ganesh. On her return from Lord Ganesh, she decorates the horns of the goat with the vermillion and puts a garland of flowers around the neck of the goat, and consecrates the goat.

We make offerings of the animal sacrifices to deities at their field shrines. Most of our deities have town abodes and field shrines. So, a man pulls the sacrificial goat by a rope tied to its neck to the deity at the field shrine. The patriarch of a family holds the brass plate or a container with items of other offerings and follows the goat to the shrine.

The patriarch makes the offerings of all the items he has carried in a container or on a brass plate to the deity. He also makes offerings to a knife to be used for slitting the throat of the goat and calls on Lord Bhairava to dwell in the blade of the knife. This we do for Lord Bhairava taking the life of the goat not the person slitting the throat of the goat.

Then, the patriarch initiates the sacrifice of the goat. First, he offers worship to the goat taking a few items of offerings from the brass tray or a container. Then, he sprinkles holy water on the body of the goat and whispers some lines of incantation in the right ear of the goat. These lines are: “you have been born as an animal because of your past wrong deeds in your previous life; now, you will be relieve of your past sins, and of the animal life if you agree on sacrificing your body, life and soul to the deity.”

Then, everybody watches the goat to shake water off its body. Somebody continues to sprinkle water on the body of the goat, and waits the goat to shake it off. If the goat does not respond it then somebody pour water in the ear of the goat and waits for the goat to shake it off. Once, the goat shakes water off its body means it gave its approval to sacrifice.

In case a goat does not shakes water off its body means it does not approve to sacrifice and we do not sacrifice such a goat to a deity. Then, we hang a small bell on its neck and let it go free in the name of the deity it was supposed to be sacrificed. It lives the divine life. Everybody treats it as a god-sent goat and respectably feeds it. It dies of a natural death.

Once, the goat shakes water off its body. Two men take it to the deity for sacrificing. A man holds it on his left thigh, holds its head by his left hand and pulls it back and takes the knife in his right hand and touches it head before slitting the throat of the goat. This means taking the approval of Lord Bhairava to slit the throat of the goat. The second man holds the four legs of the goat under the thigh of the first man for easing him to cut the throat of the goat.

Slitting the throat of the goat, the man makes three offerings of the goat to the deity. The man slits the throat of the goat and lets the blood flow to the image of the deity. This is the offering of life. Then, both the men holding the goat in the same position mentioned above go round the shrine offering the blood to other deities there, and come back to the deity again. He then slits the throat of the goat taking off its breath, and offers the blood again to the deity. This is the offering of soul. He cuts a piece of meat from the neck of the goat, and offers it to the deity. This is the offering of body.

Then, the man separates the head of the goat and cuts a piece of its tail and inserts it in its mouth and sets the head at the image of the deity facing to the deity. It represents the whole body of the goat. The patriarch takes a bunch of cotton wicks soaked in the mustard seeds oil and light them and sets them on the head of the severed head of the goat. It means the light takes the soul of the goat to the deity and merges it with the divinity.

We take the meat of the goat thus sacrificed as the blessed food, and we never sell it but share it among the family members, or members of a clan or among the guests. We offer it to the members of the extended family as the blessing from the deity, sometimes to the guests of the larger community if we have made a feast for them on the occasion of an adulthood ceremony called ‘kayata puja’ in the Nevah language and ‘bratabandh’ in Nepali or a wedding feast and so on.

We reserve the head of the sacrificed goat especially for the senior members of the clan. We meticulously cut the head of the goat into eight specific parts such as two eyes including two horns, two ears, two jawbones, a nose and a tongue altogether are called sii-u. We offer the sii-u to the senior members of the clan in the Tantric feast called ‘sikaaya bhu’ held at the end of the feast.

To match the Tantric feast, we use the leaves-plates stitched following the Tantric rules. For example, we stitch two broad leaves to a base leaf, and then six leaves around the two leaves making a nine-leaf plate. The top eight leaves represent eight mother goddesses. Then, we set eight different food items representing eight mother goddesses on such leaf plates.

Then, all the patriarch members of the clan or a household depending on the sort of the offerings made to a deity sit at the leaf plate following the protocol of seniority. If the sacrifice of a goat is of the community offerings, then, the patriarch members of the clan share the sii-u; if the sacrifice of a goat is only a household affair then the members of the household share the sii-u. The senior most receives the right eye then the second senior most the left eye, then the right ear, left ear, right jawbone, left jawbone, nose and finally the youngest one receives the tongue, the rest of the members receive some meat to compensate for not having any sii-u for them. The spouse of the chief patriarch receives the tail.

A person usually a woman makes the offerings of the sii-u to the members of the clan. She takes the sii-u and a piece of a meat on her left and a brass cup filled up with home-brewed liquor on her right hand and crosses her hands and makes the offering of those items to the members of the clan starting from the chief patriarch. The concerned man receives the brass cup on his right hand and the sii-u on his left hand. He sips the liquor and then takes a bite of the sii-u. This means accepting the life of the sacrificial goat. Then, the woman adds some liquor to the brass cup the man holding. It is done for refreshing the liquor. He sips the liquor and takes a bite of the sii-u for the second time. This means accepting the soul of the sacrificial goat. The woman adds few drops of liquor to the brass cup the man is holding. Then, the man sips the liquor and takes a bite of the sii-u for the third time. This means accepting the body of the sacrificial goat. Thereafter, he sets the brass cup on the floor and continues to eat the sii-u. The woman repeats this process of sii-u offerings to all patriarch members of the clan.

We believe that this process of the sii-u offering is the symbol of performing the fire-worship called ya-jna. Our stomach is the fireplace where fire god dwells and eating the sii-u and drinking the liquor mean the offerings of these items to the fire-god in our stomach. Thus, we perform fire worship to accomplish the sacrifice of a goat for freeing the sacrificial animal from the need to be born as an animal and for completing the Tantric offering of a sacrificial goat to a Tantric deity.

When the gods and goddess are under the Tantric net they accept animal blood, meat dishes and alcoholic beverage. For example, when Lord Shiva comes under the Tantric net he becomes Lord Bhairava and ‘Luku Mahadya’ and accepts all sorts of non-vegetarian offerings and blood of animals and birds. We believe that they are powerful deities and they make us powerful, too.

We also believe that such an animal sacrifice is the supreme offering to deities. We do it to gain strength and power to achieve our goals. The result of such offering is not only the gain for the person making such an offering but also to the sacrificial animal, as the animal never needs to reborn as an animal and thus gets emancipated from the animal life. This is our belief.

March 6, 2009.