Khambesvari puujaa with buffalo sacrifice

[Stephen Hodge]

Allen W Thrasher wrote:

> Ronald Hutton, in The Pagan Religions of the British Isles, their
> Nature and Legacy, (Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell,
> 1991) maintains there was no such practice, and the belief that
there
> was is a misunderstanding of the texts.  His main point throughout
the
> book is that we know almost nothing about the pre-Christian
religions
> of the later UK and Ireland, and most of what we think we know we
> don't.

I didn't suggest this was necessarily done in the British Isles --
that's why I said Nordic (Scandinavia and Germany to be precise.
AFAIK, the "spread-eagle" was an offering to Odin / Wotan partly in
memory of his own sacrifice when he hung for nine days from the World
Ash tree.   Literary sources are bound to be limited and I must admit
that I have not made a special study of primary sources to evaluate
their reliability but I think Adam of Bremen's account (c10th CE) of
the goings-on at Uppsala should be taken into account.  I believe that
the practice in continental Europe is also mentioned in Roman Latin
sources but I do have references to hand.   I'll look out for Hutton's
book to see what he has to say.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge