Durkheim said that “society” was the god to whom primitive peoples sacrificed, the totem standing in for the clan for which it served as totem.
We might say, But of course. As FS Naiden (Smoke Signals for the Gods, 277) has recently pointed out, by the time of Durkheim and Robertson Smith, most sacrifices in European experience didn’t involve a god at all – the Mass being the main exception. They were precisely what Durkheim said they were, sacrificed to Patria, Societas, Motherland.
Sacrifice without gods was the norm in 19th-century France, and Durkheim merely projected this Eurocentric sacrifice onto the elementary forms of religious life.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Lift My Chin, Lord
Lift my chin, Lord,Say to me,“You are not whoYou feared to be,Not Hecate, quite,With howling sound,Torch held…
Letters
Two delightful essays in the March issue, by Nikolas Prassas (“Large Language Poetry,” March 2025) and Gary…
Spring Twilight After Penance
Let’s say you’ve just comeFrom confession. Late sunPours through the budding treesThat mark the brown creek washing Itself…
