propitiation

87:6.2In the early days of the cult, man’s ef­forts to in­flu­ence ghost ac­tion were con­fined to pro­pi­ti­a­tion, at­tempts by bribery to buy off ill luck. As the evo­lu­tion of the ghost cult pro­gressed to the con­cept of good as well as bad spir­its, these cer­e­monies turned to­ward at­tempts of a more pos­i­tive na­ture, ef­forts to win good luck. Man’s re­li­gion no longer was com­pletely neg­a­tivis­tic, nor did he stop with the ef­fort to win good luck; he shortly be­gan to de­vise schemes whereby he could com­pel spirit co-op­er­a­tion. No longer does the re­li­gion­ist stand de­fense­less be­fore the un­ceas­ing de­mands of the spirit phan­tasms of his own de­vis­ing; the sav­age is be­gin­ning to in­vent weapons where­with he may co­erce spirit ac­tion and com­pel spirit as­sis­tance.

89:0.2The sav­age was early pos­sessed with the no­tion that spir­its de­rive su­preme sat­is­fac­tion from the sight of hu­man mis­ery, suf­fer­ing, and hu­mil­i­a­tion. At first, man was only con­cerned with sins of com­mis­sion, but later he be­came ex­er­cised over sins of omis­sion. And the whole sub­se­quent sac­ri­fi­cial sys­tem grew up around these two ideas. This new rit­ual had to do with the ob­ser­vance of the pro­pi­ti­a­tion cer­e­monies of sac­ri­fice. Prim­i­tive man be­lieved that some­thing spe­cial must be done to win the fa­vor of the gods; only ad­vanced civ­i­liza­tion rec­og­nizes a con­sis­tently even-tem­pered and benev­o­lent God. Pro­pi­ti­a­tion was in­sur­ance against im­me­di­ate ill luck rather than in­vest­ment in fu­ture bliss. And the rit­u­als of avoid­ance, ex­or­cism, co­er­cion, and pro­pi­ti­a­tion all merge into one an­other.

4:5.4The bar­barous idea of ap­peas­ing an an­gry God, of pro­pi­ti­at­ing an of­fended Lord, of win­ning the fa­vor of De­ity through sac­ri­fices and pen­ance and even by the shed­ding of blood, rep­re­sents a re­li­gion wholly puerile and prim­i­tive, a phi­los­o­phy un­wor­thy of an en­light­ened age of sci­ence and truth. Such be­liefs are ut­terly re­pul­sive to the ce­les­tial be­ings and the di­vine rulers who serve and reign in the uni­verses. It is an af­front to God to be­lieve, hold, or teach that in­no­cent blood must be shed in or­der to win his fa­vor or to di­vert the fic­ti­tious di­vine wrath.

188:4.1Al­though Je­sus did not die this death on the cross to atone for the racial guilt of mor­tal man nor to pro­vide some sort of ef­fec­tive ap­proach to an oth­er­wise of­fended and un­for­giv­ing God; even though the Son of Man did not of­fer him­self as a sac­ri­fice to ap­pease the wrath of God and to open the way for sin­ful man to ob­tain sal­va­tion; not­with­stand­ing that these ideas of atone­ment and pro­pi­ti­a­tion are er­ro­neous, nonethe­less, there are sig­nif­i­cances at­tached to this death of Je­sus on the cross which should not be over­looked. It is a fact that Uran­tia has be­come known among other neigh­bor­ing in­hab­ited plan­ets as the “World of the Cross.”

89:4.7Gifts and bribes are given to men; but when ten­dered to the gods, they are de­scribed as be­ing ded­i­cated, made sa­cred, or are called sac­ri­fices. Re­nun­ci­a­tion was the neg­a­tive form of pro­pi­ti­a­tion; sac­ri­fice be­came the pos­i­tive form. The act of pro­pi­ti­a­tion in­cluded praise, glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, flat­tery, and even en­ter­tain­ment. And it is the rem­nants of these pos­i­tive prac­tices of the olden pro­pi­ti­a­tion cult that con­sti­tute the mod­ern forms of di­vine wor­ship. Pres­ent-day forms of wor­ship are sim­ply the rit­u­al­iza­tion of these an­cient sac­ri­fi­cial tech­niques of pos­i­tive pro­pi­ti­a­tion.

87:5.8Un­der the spirit cult, life was at best a gam­ble, the re­sult of spirit con­trol. One’s fu­ture was not the re­sult of ef­fort, in­dus­try, or tal­ent ex­cept as they might be uti­lized to in­flu­ence the spir­its. The cer­e­monies of spirit pro­pi­ti­a­tion con­sti­tuted a heavy bur­den, ren­der­ing life te­dious and vir­tu­ally un­en­durable. From age to age and from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, race af­ter race has sought to im­prove this super­ghost doc­trine, but no gen­er­a­tion has ever yet dared to wholly re­ject it.

89:4.4As re­li­gion evolved, the sac­ri­fi­cial rites of con­cil­i­a­tion and pro­pi­ti­a­tion re­placed the older meth­ods of avoid­ance, pla­ca­tion, and ex­or­cism.

90:0.1The evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious ob­ser­vances pro­gressed from pla­ca­tion, avoid­ance, ex­or­cism, co­er­cion, con­cil­i­a­tion, and pro­pi­ti­a­tion to sac­ri­fice, atone­ment, and re­demp­tion. The tech­nique of re­li­gious rit­ual passed from the forms of the prim­i­tive cult through fe­tishes to magic and mir­a­cles; and as rit­ual be­came more com­plex in re­sponse to man’s in­creas­ingly com­plex con­cept of the super­ma­te­rial realms, it was in­evitably dom­i­nated by med­i­cine men, shamans, and priests.