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In ancient times, people were particularly cruel and bloodthirsty towards their enemies and guilty servants. Without any sympathy or pity, the rulers punished their subjects using the most sophisticated methods of torture. History also knows many examples of inhuman sacrifices that were particularly cruel and heartless. In the continuation of the article, you will learn about ten sacrifices of the past that will make your blood run cold.

Thugs from India

Bandits in India are commonly referred to as "thugs", a word synonymous with the Indian word "crook". This group was spread throughout India and varied in number from a few to hundreds. The thugs typically posed as tourists, and offered travelers company and protection. They then carefully watched their victims for several days or even weeks, waiting for the moment when the victim would be vulnerable to attack.

They performed their sacrifices in the latest “ritual fashion.” They believed that blood should not be shed, so they either strangled or poisoned their victims. It is estimated that over a million people died at the hands of Indian thugs between 1740 and 1840, and several mass graves have also been discovered in which the Thugas are believed to have made ritual sacrifices to their goddess Kali.

Victims of The Wicker Man

This type of ritual sacrifice was invented by the Celts, according to Julius Caesar, and involved the mass burning of people and animals in a structure that was shaped like a giant man. The Celts made sacrifices to their pagan gods in order to ensure that the year would be fertile, or to ensure victory in war, or in some other endeavor.

The first thing the Celts did was place animals in the “wicker man.” If there were not enough animals, they placed captive enemies, or even innocent people, there, covered the entire structure with wood and straw, and set it on fire.

Some people believe that the "wicker man" was invented by Caesar in order to portray his enemies as complete barbarians and gain political support. But in any case, the “wicker man” was, and remains, an incredibly frightening form of sacrifice.

Mayan sacrifices in sinkholes

The Mayans are well known for all kinds of ritual sacrifices. Offering living people to the gods was an important part of their religious practice. One such practice was the sacrifice of people in sinkholes where the Mayans jumped.

The Mayans believed that such sinkholes were gateways to the underworld, and that by offering sacrifices to local spirits they could appease them. They believed that if the spirits of the dead did not calm down, they could bring misfortune to the Maya, such as drought, as well as disease or war. For these reasons, they often forced people to jump into sinkholes, and some of them did so of their own free will. Researchers have discovered numerous sinkholes in South America literally littered with human bones, clearly indicating the extent to which the Mayans practiced religious human sacrifice.

Victims immured in buildings

One of the most terrible practices of humanity is the custom of burying people in the foundations of buildings in order to strengthen them. This practice has been adopted in parts of Asia, Europe, and North and South America. It was assumed that the larger the house, the more victims there should be. These victims ranged from small animals to hundreds of people. For example, Crown Prince Tsai in China was sacrificed in order to more reliably strengthen the dam.

Aztec human sacrifice

The Aztecs believed that human sacrifice was necessary to keep the sun moving across the sky. This means that thousands of people were sacrificed every year. The Aztecs had huge pyramidal structures, with steps leading to the top, on which was a sacrificial table. There people were killed, and their hearts were torn out of their chests and raised to the Sun.

The bodies of the people were then thrown down the steps to the cheering crowd. Many bodies were fed to animals, others were hung from trees, and cases of cannibalism were also known. In addition to sacrificing at the pyramids, the Aztecs also burned people, shot them with arrows, or forced them to kill each other, just like gladiators did.

Sacrifices of African albinos

The worst thing about African albino sacrifices is that they are still widely practiced in Africa today. Some Africans still believe that albino body parts are powerful occult objects that can be useful in witchcraft. They hunt for various body parts, they are collected due to their high occult value.

For example, albino hands are believed to bring financial success, a tongue is believed to bring good luck, and genitals can cure impotence. Belief in the magical potential of albino body parts has led to the murder of thousands of people, both adults and children. Many albinos are forced to hide because they fear for their lives.

Incan child sacrifices

The Incas were a tribe in South America. Their culture was heavily influenced by their religious practices, which heavily involved human sacrifice. Unlike other tribes and cultures that allowed the sacrifice of slaves, captives or enemies, the Incas believed that sacrifices should be valuable.

For this reason, the Incas sacrificed the children of high-ranking officials, the children of priests, leaders, and healers. Children began to be prepared several months in advance. They were fed, washed daily, and were provided with workers who were obliged to fulfill all their whims and desires. When the children were ready, they headed to the Andes. At the top of the mountain there was a temple where children were beheaded and sacrificed.

Lafkench tribe

In 1960, the strongest earthquake in history hit Chile. As a result, a devastating tsunami arose off the Chilean coast, killing thousands of people and destroying great amount houses and property. Today it is known as the Great Chilean Earthquake. It caused widespread fear and various speculations among the Chilean people. The Chileans came to the conclusion that the god of the sea was angry with them, and therefore they decided to make a sacrifice to him. They chose a five-year-old child and killed him in the most terrible way: they cut off his arms and legs, and put it all on poles, on the beach, overlooking the sea, so that the god of the sea would calm down.

Child sacrifices in Carthage

Child sacrifice was very popular in ancient cultures, probably because people believed that children had innocent souls and were therefore the most acceptable sacrifices to the gods. The Carthaginians had a sacrificial pit with fire into which they threw children and their parents. This practice outraged the parents of Carthage, who were tired of their children being killed. As a result, they decided to buy children from neighboring tribes. In times of great disaster, such as drought, famine or war, the priests demanded that even young people be sacrificed. In such times it happened that up to 500 people were sacrificed. The ritual was carried out on a moonlit night, the victims were killed quickly, and their bodies were thrown into a fiery pit, and all this was accompanied by loud singing and dancing.

Joshua Milton Blahy: Naked Liberian Cannibal Warlord

Liberia is a country in Africa that has experienced decades of civil war. The civil war in the country began due to a number of political reasons, and we witnessed the emergence of several rebel groups fighting for their interests. Very often their guerrilla warfare was surrounded by superstition and witchcraft.

One interesting case was that of Joshua Milton Blahey, a warlord who believed that fighting naked could somehow make him invulnerable to bullets.

He practiced many forms of human sacrifice. He was well known as a cannibal, and ate prisoners of war by slowly roasting them over an open fire, or by boiling their meat. Moreover, he believed that eating children's hearts would make him a braver fighter, so when his army raided villages, he stole children from them in order to harvest their hearts.

Historians of the past have recorded even more wild forms of interhuman relations among primitive tribes. Inca de la Vega, who has no reason to suspect of a penchant for lying, wrote in “History of the Incas” about the Charivans who lived in the neighborhood of the Inca Empire in the 15th-16th centuries:

“They had no religion and they did not worship anything... they lived like animals in the mountains without villages or houses, they ate human flesh, and in order to have it they raided neighboring provinces and ate everyone who was captured by them... ., and when they beheaded them, they drank their blood... They ate not only the meat of the neighbors they captured, but also their own people when they died. And after they ate it, they put the bones together jointly and mourned them and buried them in rock crevices or tree hollows... They were dressed in skins... When they united for copulation, they did not take into account whether they were either their sisters, daughters or mothers.”

In a similar way, Inca de la Vega describes the inhabitants of the province of Vaica Pampa, conquered by the Incas. But he adds: “They worshiped many gods. The Inca introduced the cult of the single Sun."

In de la Vega's descriptions of wild tribes, one can easily notice elements of ancient rituals - for example, eating the flesh of the dead in order to restore tribal unity. This tradition is still widespread among South American Indians, as well as among some tribes of the highlands of New Guinea.

The South American Guayak Indians burn their dead tribesmen, collect the ashes, mix them with bones ground into flour and, diluting them with water, consume them as sacred food. According to their ideas, the power of the dead passes into the living, and their spirits can no longer harm and become helpers and protectors of those who have taken on their flesh.

Endocannibalism (that is, eating people with whom you are related) is common in New Guinea among the southern Fore and Gimi. Only women eat from the Gimi, so that they are reborn in their wombs. After such acts of cannibalism, the men of the tribe gratefully offer their wives pork - the favorite meat delicacy of the Papuans. Some researchers explain New Guinea endocannibalism by a simple need for meat food, but most likely this is not the case. Next to the Fore and Gimi live equally poor tribes of Papuans who, with a very moderate meat diet, never eat their own dead and speak with contempt of their cannibal neighbors as “savages.”

The custom of endocannibalism is not associated with a lack of food, but with a belief in rebirth. For Gimi this is especially obvious. The wombs of Papuan women, like the womb of the earth itself, turn into the graves of the dead and into a necessary condition for their rebirth. But if in ancient religions, when comparing the “Mother - Damp Earth” to a woman’s womb, the difference between them was always assumed, since the deceased is a heavenly seed, and the funeral rite is the intercourse of Heaven and Earth, which made it possible to wait for the heavenly resurrection of a buried fellow tribesman, then modern Gimi carnivory assumes exclusively an earthly rebirth from the womb of an earthly woman who has taken into herself the flesh of a deceased relative.

There is no reliable evidence of endocannibalism in the prehistoric past. Sometimes this tradition is assumed among the Zhoukoudian synanthropes. Professor Jindříha Matejka notes traces of endocannibalism among the Upper Paleolithic hunters of Předmosti (near Přerov, Czech Republic). But it should be frankly admitted that archaeologically endocannibalism is practically undiagnosable, and therefore for the most part it is attributed to ancient people by analogy with modern savages. It is better defined differently - the funeral rites of the people of the Paleolithic and Neolithic are such that they rather imply belief in the womb of the earth regenerating to Heaven, rather than in the womb of a cannibal woman regenerating to the same earth. The latter is more likely a secondary degradation, characteristic of modern non-literate peoples, the substitution of the earthly for the heavenly, than a relic of prehistory.

It is noteworthy that after eating, the Charivans, in de la Velie’s description, did not throw away the remains of their dead, but “placed the bones at the joints and mourned them,” and then buried them in hollows and crevices of rocks. These are, without a doubt, traces of an ancient funeral rite, well known to both paleoanthropologists and historians of ancient civilizations, for example, the Vedic one. But among the Vedic Aryans, the flesh of the dead was not eaten, but was given over to the fire of the funeral pyre, which carried it to heaven (this fire was called the carrier of flesh, blood vahana), and with the unburned bones the performers of the funeral rite did almost the same as the Andean Charivans (See South Asian Religions Part 2: Vedic Religion).

Speaking about the Charivans, Garcilas de la Vega mentions not only the endocannibalism of the funeral rite, but also exocannibalism (that is, the consumption of people of unrelated origin). For a descendant of the Inca aristocrats who converted to Christianity, savage raids on neighbors and eating all captured men were perceived only as bestial savagery, but the study of modern exocannibals convinces us that we are almost always dealing with a perversion not of gastronomy, but of religion.

Alfred Metro described the customs of the South American Tupinamba cannibals. They, like the Charivans, being at a very primitive level of socio-economic organization, wage wars with neighboring tribes solely for the sake of obtaining food for cannibal feasts, but the caught people are not immediately devoured. This is preceded by quite a long torment of the victims, as a result of which they ultimately die and only then are they eaten. Women dip their breast nipples in the blood of the dead, and then give them to their babies, who literally become cannibals with their mother's milk. Similar customs were repeatedly noted among the North American Indians. The Iroquois, for example, roasted prisoners over low heat for a week, forcing them to sing in frying pans. Military campaigns for the objects of cannibalistic meals with the subsequent torment of the victims are known in Polynesia, Melanesia, and New Guinea (northern Fore, Bimin-Kuskusmin, Miyanmin). Among the Bimins, some parts of killed enemies were eaten by women, others by men. Among the Miyanmings, only the bodies were eaten and the heads were buried. Oksapmin living nearby often become targets of such raids; They take cruel revenge on cannibals, but do not adopt their customs and speak of eating human flesh with disgust.

The cannibals themselves explain the tradition of torturing victims before being eaten by the fact that they want to eat not so much flesh as strength and courage. So that the victims show more courage and subject them to sophisticated torture. But this explanation can hardly be considered exhaustive, although it also testifies to the unconditional moral degradation of people who replace their own efforts for self-improvement, in order to correct before the Creator the shortcomings that separate man from God, with the acquisition of other people’s merits in such a terrible, “robbery” way.

But the real meaning of exocannibalism is deeper. Cannibals not only hope in this way to acquire someone else's wisdom and valor, but also, by forcing another to suffer and die, they themselves want to avoid punishment for their own misdeeds. By eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the sufferer, they then unite with his essence, purified by suffering, gaining purification without their own moral efforts and torment. In Volume III of The Golden Bough, Sir J. Frazer collected many similar examples. “In the Niger region, a girl was sacrificed to cleanse the country of lawlessness. When her body was mercilessly dragged along the ground, as if the consequences of all the atrocities committed were leaving the tribe with it, people shouted “atrocities!” "Atrocities!" The body was then thrown into the river."

S. Crowther and J. Tylor report that in the same places there was a custom for all people who committed serious crimes to pay a fine of 28 ngug (a little more than two British pounds in gold) at the end of the year. With all this money they bought two people who were sacrificed for the sins of the “penalties”. Very often, such atoning sacrifices were subjected to scourging and other tortures before death. It cannot be ignored that many ethnologists emphasized the necessity of cannibalism in human sacrifices in West Africa. “On the banks of the Niger, human sacrifice is not considered complete until the priests or all the community members have tasted the flesh of the victim. In some areas, pieces of the victim’s body are specially transported to all distant villages.” Similar customs, associated with the torment of the victim, were characteristic of the peoples of Peru and Central America, the Mayans and Aztecs, the Africans of Ghana and Benin, the inhabitants of the Hawaiian and Solomon Islands, the tribes of Northeast India and Upper Burma. And everywhere, eating the remains of the victim was considered obligatory.

In the princely state of Northeast India, Jaintia, for example, as in most of the mountainous regions of Northeast India, human sacrifices were performed regularly at the princely court even in the early 19th century. Voluntary sacrifices were preferred. People who declared that they wanted to be sacrificed to Durga (the wife of Shiva in the form of the goddess of death, apparently for these places, some local anciently revered divine being acted under the name of Durga), if they were suitable for this purpose for ritual reasons, the prince richly rewarded and everyone gave divine honors to the future victim - bhog kaora. He, in particular, had the right to get close to any woman - such closeness was considered a great divine gift for her.

However, the permissiveness did not last long. On the day of Navami, when Durga Puja took place, the washed and purified victim was dressed in new magnificent clothes, anointed with red sandalwood, and a flower garland was placed around his neck. Arriving at the temple surrounded by a magnificent procession, the person destined for slaughter climbed onto the platform in front of the image of the goddess and for some time plunged into meditation and recitation of mantras. Then he made a special movement with his finger and the performer of the sacrifice, also reading certain mantras, cut off his head, which was immediately placed on a golden tray in front of the image of the goddess. Then the light sacrifices were prepared and eaten by the priests - kandra yogis, and the rice cooked in the blood of the victim was sent to the palace and eaten by the rajah and people close to him. When there were no voluntary victims, people were kidnapped outside the princely state for Durga Puja. In 1832, one of these destined victims was able to escape from custody and tell the British authorities about the secret rituals of the princely court. The Raja was removed, and his possessions came under the authority of the British colonial administration1. But there is every reason to believe that such sacrifices were carried out secretly for a long time by both savage tribes and the Hindu rulers of North-East India. Perhaps, in some places in the remote corners of Arunchal Pradesh, they are still being committed.

Jaintia, of course, cannot be considered an “unwritten culture” - the principality had a higher educated class and monarchical power and some kind of historical tradition. But superficial Hinduization did not change religious ideas and the structure of social life. That is why human sacrifices and acts of cannibalism, so common among the unliterate tribes surrounding the principality, were carried out at court.

On both sides of the Patkai Range, which separates Indian Nagaland from Burmese Chindwin, regular human sacrifices continued for many decades after the abolition of the Jaintya princely state. In the Hukawang Valley (Northern Chindwin), there was a custom of sacrificing boys and girls in August, before the start of the rice harvest. The victims were kidnapped and were usually very young children. A rope loop was thrown around their neck and on this rope they were led from house to house throughout the village. In each house, one of the child's fingers was cut off, and all the inhabitants of the house were smeared with blood, they also licked the severed phalanx and rubbed the blood on the cooking pot. Then the victim was tied to a pole in the middle of the village and killed gradually, inflicting gentle blows with a spear. The blood from each wound was carefully collected in bamboo vessels and then all the villagers anointed themselves. The entrails of the deceased were taken out, the meat was removed from the bones, and all the flesh, placed in a basket, was displayed on a platform in the middle of the village as a sacrifice to the spirits. The villagers, all smeared with sacrificial blood, danced around the platform and cried at the same time. The basket and its contents were then thrown into the forest, according to Grant Brown. But it is very likely that the flesh of the victim was secretly eaten by the community members. Although outwardly the sacrifice of Chivdvin is understood as a sacrifice to the spirits of the harvest, in reality the rituals contain all the already familiar elements of communion with the flesh and blood of the sufferer. In this case, firemen and nagas preferably choose children and innocent girls as victims, that is, creatures who are minimally burdened by their own sins. In the Hinduized courts of the mountain princes of Northeast India, voluntary sacrifices were especially valued. The very fact of voluntariness washed away the sins of the future victim and freed him from the need to subject him to additional torture.

The classic form of human sacrifice followed by a cannibal meal consists of the following elements: an involuntary, possibly sinless victim is subjected to severe torture before and during the killing, and then eaten in whole or in part (licking the blood from severed fingers in Chindwin is, of course, a manifestation of carnivory). The preference of a human sacrifice is that not a single sacrificial animal has free will and therefore can only with a large degree of convention be likened to a free divine being with whom the sacrificer wishes to unite. Since the discovery of the principle of anthropomorphism of the divine image (see lecture 4), man could not help but be considered the most accurate icon of God. A sinless person (child, virgin) reproduced the divine image even more accurately.

From this position two paths diverge. One is the path of theistic religion, when, having realized his potential similarity to God, the adept seeks to actualize it through the destruction of everything in himself that does not correspond to this similarity. This is, as it were, a lifelong self-immolation, a sacrifice of oneself. “Our old man was crucified,” the Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans, “so that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin” [Rom. 6, 6]. For orthodox Hinduism, the final sacrifice of a person is the burning of his dead body in a cremation pyre. In these cases, a person voluntarily goes the sacrificial path in order to become one with God.

There is a different path in demonistic religions. Here the adept, wanting to gain power over spirits, also strives, consciously or not, to acquire the divine nature of the ruler and creator of spiritual forces. What attracts him to God is not bliss, not the fullness of goodness, but power over the world and spirits. Through a human sacrifice, the most “similar” to God, and even previously purified by suffering, such a demonic sacrificer hopes to find what he wants, implementing the usual principle of sacrifice: through union with the victim, the sacrificer becomes like the object of the sacrifice. It is clear that such sacrifices are rarely voluntary and usually violence must be committed against the person being sacrificed. But violence does not confuse the sacrificer in the least, for in the very violence over the victim the god-like power that he strives to achieve as a result of the sacrifice is already manifested. “O man, thanks to my good karma you have appeared before me as a sacrifice,” declares the sacrificer in the Kalika Purana. Therefore, in a theistic religion, a person sacrifices himself for the sake of God, and in a demonistic religion, he sacrifices others for the sake of himself.

Even where ritual cannibalism is not widespread, it is found among sorcerers. “Sorcerers gain and renew their power by eating human flesh,” points out Paula Brown, “a sorcerer can gain power by consuming a victim.” And among the sorcerers of Siberia, and in Africa, and in Oceania, the death of a person is often explained by fellow tribesmen by the fact that a powerful sorcerer “ate” the soul of the deceased. The cannibal sorcerer is not limited to absorbing only the disembodied soul. In West Africa, cannibalism is mandatory for secret societies. Among the Nagas and Dayaks, killing a person and wearing the head of the killed person on a belt is an almost obligatory moment of age-related initiation for boys. It is clear that headhunting is a form of symbolic cannibalism. It is not at all necessary that the head on the hunter’s belt be the head of an enemy, taken in a fair fight. This could well be the head of a child or an old woman, killed in an ambush just for the sake of a coveted trophy that has enormous magical power.

With all the similarity of ritual cannibalism to the usual sacrifice of animals, which was practiced in almost all pre-Christian religions and in some places continues to this day, there is one difference that makes it impossible in a theistic religion to use a person as a sacrifice. During a sacrifice, any animal is symbolically identified with the object of the sacrifice, just like food, which, as a result of eating it, is identified with the eater. In some religious traditions, for such identification of the victim and the object of the sacrificial action, the image of a meal can be used - God eats the victim, taking the spiritual substance from it, and the human sacrifice then eats its material substance, thereby connecting with the object of the sacrifice. In other traditions, the sacrifice is sanctified, becoming itself heavenly food, the “body” of the incorporeal God.

But unlike any other earthly entity, which acquires divine, heavenly quality as a result of sacred rites, man is the “image of God” by nature. “Let us make man in our image and in our likeness,” the Bible quotes the words of the Creator of men [Gen. 1, 26]. Man is called to eternity and divine life, and therefore the use of a person by another person to achieve his own religious goals, sacrificing him in order to atone for sins and become deified, is lawlessness. The eternity of the victim is not one iota “cheaper” than the eternity of the sacrificer, for both are one and the same - their Creator and Maker. “The faith and wealth of one soul cannot be compared with all the glory and beauty of heaven and earth, and their other decoration and diversity,” said the early Christian Egyptian ascetic Macarius (4.17.18) [Good. 1.178]. Therefore, it is unlawful to buy another with one life, to gain one’s own with someone else’s eternity.

In many religions and cultures we encounter similar substitutions. No society, even one with a living theistic faith, can completely eliminate this terrible custom. Its particular prevalence among non-literate peoples is due to the fact that the very idea of man as the “image of God” is often forgotten here, along with the idea of God the Creator Himself. Man sometimes dissolves in the animal world and therefore may well be considered a victim. His similarity to the sacrificer becomes the quality that makes human sacrifices preferable to all others for some peoples, and the vague memory of man’s special calling in the universe gives them exceptional “power.”

In the extreme, human sacrifices and religiously motivated cannibalism turn into “gastronomic” cannibalism, not determined by any religious motives. If a person is indistinguishable from an animal, then he can be not only a victim, but also ordinary food. Exocannibalism among New Zealand Maoris, Fijians and a number of Bantu-speaking peoples of West Africa has become a culinary practice. Thus, in Fiji, when concluding an alliance, leaders exchanged gifts that included living women for sexual pleasures and dried men for gastronomic pleasures. Accusations of cannibalism are still used to this day to settle political scores in the election campaigns of some African states (Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Upper Volta).

There are several theories that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that explain the reasons for human sacrifice. Later studies added little to them. E. Tylor believed that the soul of a living person or an entire society is redeemed by the soul of the sacrificed person1. W. Robertson Smith, fascinated by the theory of totemism, pointed out that tribes whose totems were predatory animals could eat people from other tribes as ritual food, connecting through food with their deity2. Sir J. Fraser believed the meaning of human sacrifice was in the exchange of energy between the killed elders and the young applicants for power in the community who sacrifice them. Through such a sacrifice, the wisdom of the elders was united with the creative power of youth. Henry Hubert and Marcel Mauss saw the meaning of such sacrifices in making man like the gods. God, in creating the world, sacrifices himself, and, therefore, man, in order to reach God, must sacrifice to Him someone like himself3.

Indeed, the reasons for human sacrifice are manifold. Above, we mainly considered sacrifices, the purpose of which is either union with the deity or cleansing of the sins of the sacrificer. In both cases, the donor needs to identify himself with the victim. In striving for union with God, the sacrifice itself is either sanctified as the body of the deity or is food in the divine meal. In both cases, a person should eat from the sacrifice in order to achieve union with the object of the sacrifice, with God. In the case of cleansing the sins of the donor, the victim is often first tortured, and after the slaughter is eaten not to unite with God, but to unite with the person sacrificed, for with his suffering he atoned for the sins of the donors and, having turned into sacrificial food, conveys his innocence to those participating in the meal . In both of these cases, overt or symbolic ritual cannibalism may occur.

But the meaning of human sacrifice is revealed more clearly in its other forms. In his “Gospel Preparation,” Eusebius of Caesarea cites the words of the Hellenized Phoenician historian Philo of Byblos, a native of a country where human sacrifice was quite common: “The ancient rulers had the custom, in case of extreme danger for the city or people, in order to avoid complete destruction, to sacrifice appeasing the angry demons of the most beloved of his children.” Diodorus Siculus confirms this account by describing the horrific sacrifice of the firstborn of the noblest families of Carthage to "Cronus" when the city was besieged by the Roman troops of Agathocles.

We are talking about appeasing spirits thirsting for human blood. In India, cases have been recorded more than once when childless mothers or parents of seriously ill children killed someone else’s child in order to get their own or save his life.” Anna Smolyak points out that when a Nanai woman is infertile, the shaman usually “steals the soul” from a pregnant Yakut, Evenki or Russian woman. Then the newborn in appearance resembles representatives of the people from which he was “stolen.” The death of the fetus of a foreigner is a sacrifice for the life of a child of one’s own tribe. In The Gallic War, Julius Caesar describes the customs of human sacrifice among the Gauls: “All Gauls are extremely pious. Therefore, people affected by serious illnesses, as well as those who spend their lives in war and other dangers, make or vow to make human sacrifices; The Druids are in charge of this. It is the Gauls who think that the immortal gods can be appeased only by sacrificing a human life for a human life. They even have public sacrifices of this kind. Some tribes use for this purpose huge effigies made of twigs, the members of which they fill with living people; they set them on fire from below and people burn in the flames.”

In The Gallic War, unfortunately, it is not reported what form the “stuffed animals” were - human or animal, and this would have clarified a lot. If animal, then we are dealing with the replacement of ordinary animal sacrifice with human sacrifice. If the form was human, then this is a reproduction of the first sacrifice during the creation of the world, similar to that described in the famous 90th hymn of the X mandala of the Rigveda: “Man, born in the beginning, was sacrificed by the gods...”.

Indian texts of Vedic ritual contain vague references to human sacrifices, but always as something categorically forbidden and impossible. The Aitareya Brahmana tells of a certain king who made a vow to Varuna (the great heavenly guardian of justice among the Aryans) to sacrifice his first son if God gave him children. The son was born, but the father took pity on him. When the boy grew up and the king gathered the strength to fulfill his vow, the child, learning about the fate awaiting him, fled from home. The boy was caught and prepared for slaughter, but then Varuna appeared and forbade the sacrifice. The same text tells that the gods sacrificed a man, but his sacrificial part (medha) passed into a horse, then into a bull, then into a ram, then into a goat, then into the earth. The gods did not let her out of the ground, and she grew up as rice, which has been sacrificed ever since. Perhaps a reminiscence of this legend is the ancient custom of placing the skulls of a man, a horse, a bull, a ram and a goat under a brick altar when performing an agnikayana (a Vedic sacrifice, occasionally carried out today). During this action, the brahman read exactly the 90th hymn of the X mandala of the Rigveda.

But to believe in this regard, as the prominent Indologist Hasterman does, that human sacrifice was practiced in India until 900-700 BC. no reason. It's rather different here. Both the Aitareya Brahmana myth and the Agnikayana custom show that the great cosmogonic purushamedha (human sacrifice) in the human world must be matched by an animal sacrifice or even a simple offering of rice. The power of the sacrifice is not diminished by this, but human sacrifice, prohibited by the “thousand-eyed” Varuna, is completely lawless. An attempt by a person to repeat a cosmogonic act not in a symbolic, but in a literal form at the expense of another person and thereby achieve divine status himself is a demonic, not a divine matter.

It is possible that such a practice was prohibited by the canonical Vedic text because it occurred as an erroneous interpretation of religious tradition.

A remarkable fact is the absence of human sacrifice and religiously motivated cannibalism among the most “backward” peoples living at the level of the Paleolithic economy (the aborigines of Central and South Australia, the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, the pygmies and Bushmen of Africa). On the contrary, among more “developed” non-literate peoples, who have mastered the Neolithic economy since ancient times, a person often becomes a victim and object of a cannibalistic meal. Noted by researchers more than once, this phenomenon may indicate that religious cannibalism and human sacrifices are a perversion of some Neolithic ritual practices, and the peoples who deviated into magic in the Paleolithic and stopped their social development at this stage, happily remained strangers to them.

Most likely, the awareness of the Middle Neolithic man that he, as the “image of God,” could portray the Heavenly God as similar to himself, in human form, gave rise to images of the great human sacrifice made by the gods during the creation of the world. It was this new idea that may have led Neolithic people to try to literally reproduce the heavenly sacrifice on earth, forgetting about the unique calling of each human person. Instead of the extremely difficult improvement of himself as the image of God, such a sacrificer chose the easy road of sacrificial substitution. Instead of a lifelong sacrifice of himself, he sacrificed another person identified with himself. It would seem that the mirror image of the earthly and heavenly required by the ritual was preserved, and the donor’s own efforts were saved. But the whole point is that with such a sacrifice the sacrificer could not really identify with the victim, since the victim was different personality. That person went to Heaven, purified by suffering, and the sacrificer was not only left with nothing, but fell deeply, cutting off the life of another person by force, for the sake of his own imaginary benefit.

Denial of the “life-giving spirit” in another person, in a victim, abolished the memory of him in the sacrificer himself, and along with such memory of the divine principle in himself, the living feeling of God the Creator twitched into oblivion. Man moved from standing before God to the world of spirits. Perverted theism gave way to demonism.

For some Neolithic human societies (Germany, the Alps), human sacrifices were almost unconditional. And they indicate that a change in the religious paradigm has occurred there.

Having immersed himself in the world of spirits, a person rethinks the practice of human sacrifice. Now they are understood as appeasing evil demons. That is why human sacrifices are widely practiced during diseases, epidemics, wars, and natural disasters. Pausanias talks about the Boeotian custom of sacrificing boys to appease Dionysus, who once sent a plague to this region of Hellas [Description. Elle. 9, 8, 2]. In Peru, when unseasonable weather threatened the harvest, children were sacrificed. In Benin, in the event of heavy rains, subjects asked the ruler to make “juju,” that is, to make a human sacrifice to the god of rain. They took a girl, read a prayer over her, put a message to God in her mouth, and then beat her to death with a club. The body was tied to the sacrificial post so that the rain could see. In a similar way, sacrifices were made to the solar deity when crops burned out due to lack of rain. Sir Richard Burton in the mid-19th century saw a young girl hanging from a tree, whose body was being pecked by birds of prey. Local residents explained to the traveler that this was “a gift to the spirit who gives rain.” During the epidemic, the North American Ojibwe (Chippewa) Indians chose the most beautiful girl tribe and drowned her in the river so that the spirit of infection would leave. Von Wrangel reports that in 1814 the Chukchi, in order to stop the pestilence among people and reindeer, sacrificed the spirits of a respected leader.

Among the Indian Gonds, until the middle of the last century, annual human sacrifices were made to the spirits of the earth - the victim was torn alive into pieces, which were then buried in the fields so that the earth would be more generous to farmers. The reinterpretation of the ancient Neolithic images of Mother Earth, giving birth to the Sky of the dead buried in her, here obviously degraded to the expectation of a good harvest of cereals (a symbol of rebirth in the Neolithic), guaranteed by the sacrifice of human flesh to the earth. The symbol and the prototype have completely changed places here.

In Northeast India, the Khasis sacrifice foreigners to the terrible carnivorous demon Kesai Khati with the sole purpose of feeding him and thereby preventing the death of their fellow tribesmen. Even at the beginning of the 20th century, the mountaineers of Tippera and Chittagong regularly appeased the “14 gods” with human sacrifices.

Different peoples have different understandings of the meaning of appeasing spirits with human sacrifices. The mountaineers of Northeast India are sure that spirits prefer to drink human blood and are ready to serve donors for it. Sometimes these can even be the patron spirits of the clan and family hearth, like the thlens among the Khasis. Among African tribes, a different idea prevails: “The souls of people sacrificed to spirits,” noted A.B. Ellis in an ethnographic study of the peoples of British West Africa, “immediately after the sacrifice they act, according to universal belief, in the service of these spirits, just as those sacrificed during funeral rituals become slaves of those dead on whose graves they were slain.” Offerings to the dead have also been known since the Neolithic era. But then they were few in number. Judging by the funeral inventory, most Neolithic communities did not have any ideas about the transition of the “souls” of things to another world in order for the deceased to use them. As in the Paleolithic, the relatively few objects placed with the deceased had a symbolic-religious, rather than utilitarian purpose. Posthumous existence in such communities was by no means an analogue of earthly existence, and earthly things were not considered necessary there at all. On the contrary, in communities that have switched to demonistic beliefs, as we remember, that world is substituted with an exact likeness of this world. Therefore, the person who died there needs the things and food of this world. For the same reason, if the deceased in this life resorted to the services of slaves and servants, had wives and concubines, they can be sent after the deceased master, sacrificed, killed on the grave and buried next to the owner. This is what the Slavs and Germans did before Christianization, and these are the customs of many African tribes.

In the 49th Psalm of David, called the “Psalm of Asaph,” God the Creator teaches people: “I am God, your God. It is not because of your sacrifices that I will reproach you... Do I eat the meat of oxen and drink the blood of goats? Sacrifice praise to God, and render your vows to the Most High, and call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will glorify Me” [Ps. 49, 7-15]. This lofty thought is sometimes considered a special spiritual achievement of the Israeli people. But a thousand years before King David, another crown-bearer of antiquity, the Egyptian king of Heracleopolis Heti Nebkaura (the name is presumably restored) taught his son, Prince Merikara: “Confirm your stay in the dwelling of the West (that is, in otherness) by creating truth and justice, for this is what is established human hearts. More pleasant<Богу>The grain offering of the righteous is better than the bull of the wicked” [Merikara, 128-129]. The only Russian translation of “The Teachings of Merikara” published so far, made by Academician. A.M. Korostovtseny states this passage completely incorrectly. Cm. A. Volten. Zwei Altagyptischc Politische Sclriften.Kobenhavn, 1945. P. 68-69.

For theistic religion, the only value in man that is pleasing to the Creator is his “righteousness,” that is, compliance with that absolute truth on which the world is built and which is therefore the most important quality of God as the Creator. Improving his righteousness, refusing free choice from evil, a person ascends to the Creator. The sacrifice made by a person as an affinity for Communion with God has in this context only an auxiliary, symbolic meaning, albeit a very important one. “All the animals in the forest and the cattle on a thousand mountains are mine; I know all the birds on the mountains and the animals in the fields before Me,” says the Creator in the same 49th Psalm. God does not need abundant human offerings, for everything that exists was created by Him and always remains “before Him.” God needs only the free human will of goodness and truth. This is the only valuable gift, but valuable, again, not for God, Who is completeness even without human righteousness, but for us, who only through righteousness approach the Righteous and Good Creator.

When righteousness is replaced by abundant sacrifices, we can always note the extinction of theistic faith; when, not content with “thousands of bulls and rams,” people begin to sacrifice people, then we are faced with not just darkness, but complete oblivion of the meaning of religious effort. By forcing another person to suffer and die, the sacrificer does not improve, but, on the contrary, destroys his own righteousness.

However, for spirits, beings who do not have completeness, as created and partial as man himself, sacrifice has a completely different meaning. It really “feeds” them, that is, it adds strength to them, which they, like everything partial, lack. The more energetically powerful the victim, the better for these creatures. A free, god-like human being is infinitely “more powerful” than bulls and goats, and therefore such a sacrifice is most desirable for spirits, and most effective for the donor. Another thing is that, by subordinating “hungry spirits” to such a donor, a human sacrifice infinitely distances him from the Creator.

If the historian of religion proceeds from the elementary scheme of the progressive development of religious ideas and practices from “savagery” to “civilization,” then he considers human sacrifices to be the norm in ancient societies, and in modern civilized ones he always considers them a relic. Meanwhile, when assessing human sacrifices, a religious scholar should use not a personal moral feeling, which always rebels against such cruelty, but theological logic. Theistic religions not only do not need such sacrifices, but are directly contraindicated. But for demonistic religions, where the objects of worship are created and partial beings, they are completely natural. Therefore, the practice of human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism is so often found among non-literate peoples who have taken God “out of the bracket” in their religious life.

But just as witchcraft and magic, that is, communication with demons, do not disappear in theistic societies, although on the part of orthodoxy an irreconcilable war can be waged with those who practice them, so also the terrible principles do not disappear in “written cultures” feeding spirits with godlike human nature. Occasionally, similar practices occur among state peoples the focus of all religious life is Near Eastern Canaan, Carthage, and Central American communities before the Spanish conquest. But the end of such states, as a rule, is sad; hecatombs of human sacrifices do not delay, but only bring closer their complete destruction.

More often, human sacrifices remain episodic deviations caused by temporary clouds of mass religious consciousness or special secret cults on the verge of perverted theism and magic. In less organized religious systems, like Hinduism or the Chinese religious complex, they appear quite often in various heterodox sects. But even in societies that profess such strict systems as Christianity or Islam, we will be able to find these practices.

For example, among non-literate peoples there is a widespread custom of making human sacrifices to spirits when laying foundations for buildings. Some researchers, although not very convincingly, see them as early as the Near Eastern Neolithic1. But the modern peoples of Africa, Asia and Oceania certainly have them. In Africa, in Galama, in front of the main gate of a new fortified settlement, a boy and a girl were usually buried alive in order to make the fortification impregnable. In Great Bassam and Yarrib, such sacrifices were common when laying the foundation of a house or founding a village. In Polynesia, Ellis observed them during the foundation of the temple of Mawa. They were practiced in Borneo by Milanau Dayaks and in Rus' and the Balkans by Slavic pagan princes during the founding of the Detinets. Occasionally, both the Rajahs of Punjab and the Hinayan kings of Burma do this (laying the foundation of the walls of Tavoy in 1780). In 1463, in Nogat (a village in Germany), peasants buried a drunken beggar at the base of a constantly eroding dam. In Thuringia, in order to make the castle of Liebenstein impregnable, they bought a child from the mother and put it in the wall. The child was left with food and toys. When they were walling him up, he shouted: “Mom, I still see you! Mom, I still see you a little! Mom, now I can’t see you anymore.” During the restoration of the Izborsk fortress, a human skeleton immured in masonry was found in one of the pillars of the belfry of the Bell Tower - actual evidence of ancient legends.

Who would imagine that the Izborian Russians or the Germans in the 15th century could have thought that such sacrifices were pleasing to God? By bringing them, they, of course, quite consciously “fed” the demons, and we will most likely never know how this connected with their Christian conscience. But then, in the 15th century, magical practices remained only a “shadow” of the religious aspirations of both Germans and Russian Christians. They failed to replace theism.

The word “sacrifice” refers to various ancient Greek rites performed in different circumstances and for different purposes. This includes offering fruits, grains and cakes to the gods, and burning incense, and killing animals and then eating the remaining meat, and burning whole animals, and the ritual libation of wine, milk, honey, water or oil, and the shedding of sacrificial blood to seal the oath .

The most common type of sacrifice among the ancient Greeks - the slaughter of livestock - was called thysia. The meat was partially burned: the gods got the smoke, and the ceremony participants got the meat.

The philosopher Theophrastus identified three purposes of sacrifice: to give honor to the gods, to thank them and to ask them for something. But this is only one of the possible interpretations of the ritual. Already in the twentieth century, the Hellenist and specialist in ancient Greek religion Walter Burkert put forward new version: The meaning of the sacrifice is the feeling of guilt that you experience after the murder. The ritual neutralizes the outburst of aggression associated with killing an animal. However, this theory was refuted as contradicting ancient evidence. Some historians believe that the purpose of the sacrifice is to establish a social hierarchy between the participants in the ritual, including the gods, through the distribution of the best and worst pieces of meat during a joint meal. Thus, the sacrifice, as it were, consolidates and justifies the socio-economic and political reality. From an anthropological point of view, sacrifice is an analogue of a gift: people present a sacred gift to the gods, counting on gifts in return. Such gifts form the basis of relationships both between people and with otherworldly forces.

The Greeks did not have a separate class of priests, so anyone could perform the sacrifice. A butcher was often called in to cut the meat. The sacrifice was made not inside the temple, but next to it, at the altar in the open air. Chamber home sacrifices were often held with the family. If lunch or dinner was planned after the ritual, the ritual feast was held in special rooms at the sanctuary or at home. Sometimes sacrificial meat was sold, but still most bones of domestic animals are found in sanctuaries. It turns out that the Greeks almost always ate meat after the ritual slaughter of an animal - that is, quite often, judging by the surviving calendars with instructions on when and to which gods to make sacrifices. A large number of livestock were slaughtered on the occasion of annual city holidays. During private ceremonies, as a rule, one small animal was used.

Stele with a calendar of holidays and sacrifices from the city of Thorikos. 430–420 BC e. Remi Mathis / CC BY-SA 3.0

Fragment of a stele with a calendar of holidays and sacrifices from the city of Thorikos. 430–420 BC e.Dave & Margie Hill / CC BY-SA 2.0

The rules of the ceremony were not compiled into a rigid system: the sequence of actions varied in different policies. We know about different types, methods and procedures of sacrifice from special ritual texts that had the status of laws and were carved in stone for public viewing. Other sources include ancient literature, vase painting, reliefs, and, more recently, zooarchaeology (analysis of the remains of animals sacrificed). This evidence allows us to understand some patterns thysia and reconstruct the features of the ritual.

1. Choose a victim

Bull sacrifice. Crater painting. Attica, 410-400 BC. e. A krater is a vessel for mixing water and wine. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

First you need to determine the budget for the sacrifice. The most expensive animal is a cow. If a big holiday is coming up (for example, the patron goddess of the city), it makes sense to spend money, for example, on 50 cows. But the piglets - cheap option, which is used in the purification ritual: the blood of the animal is sprinkled on the ritual participants, but the meat itself is not eaten. The most common sacrificial animal is the sheep: ideal value for money. The choice of animal also depends on who the sacrifice is intended for. Everything is important here - the animal’s age, gender and color. The gods will suit males, and the yum gods will suit females. Black animals are sacrificed to the underground chthonic gods. Before you start the ritual, check with special calendars and other ritual texts: for example, on the 12th day of the month of An-thesterion (falls in our February - March), the god of wine Dionysus needs to make a dark sacrifice -a red or black kid with undetected teeth, and to the goddess of fertility Demeter in the month of Munichion (April - May) - a pregnant sheep. The goddess of night witchcraft, Hecate, will have to sacrifice a dog, but this is a different type of sacrifice: the Greeks did not eat dog meat.

Important tip: Don't sacrifice people, even if you read about it in ancient Greek myths and literature. Human sacrifices are not attested in Greece.

2. Find a professional musician

Scene of sacrifice. A young man (left) plays the aulos. Crater painting. Attica, around 430-410 BC. e. The Trustees of the British Museum

Each stage of the ritual must be accompanied by music. Good performance pleases the gods and disposes them to the ritual. Special ritual hymns are called prosody and paeans. The first should be sung while the animal is being led to the altar (the music sets the rhythm of the procession), the second should be sung already at the altar itself. The singing takes place to the accompaniment of the pipe - avla. While the aulet plays, the procession waits for auspicious signs to begin the ceremony. The logic of the gods, however, is not always clear. Thus, Plutarch tells a story about the musician Ismenius, who played the flute for a long time, but there were still no signs. Then the impatient customer of the sacrifice took the flute from the professional and played it clumsily himself, and only then did the sacrifice take place. To which Ismenius replied that the gods liked his music, so they were in no hurry to make a decision, but, having heard the amateur’s music and deciding to get rid of it as quickly as possible, they nevertheless accepted the sacrifice.

Important tip: Avlet will have to pay, but this can be done by sharing the sacrificial meat with him.

3. Wash and dress up

Participants in the sacrifice ceremony wearing wreaths and white robes. Fragment of the crater painting. Attica, late 5th century BC. e. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Festive mood is important. Go to the baths, put on elegant white clothes and decorate your head with a wreath. At the altar you can take off your shoes to emphasize the sacred nature of what is happening. It is important not only to dress up yourself, but also to dress up the victim, because for the animal to participate in the ritual is a great honor. Gild the horns of a cow, as Elder Nestor did in the Odyssey, to please the goddess Athena (this service can be ordered in advance from a blacksmith). If finances do not allow, simply tie bows and wrap wreaths around the victim's head and stomach.

Important tip: Athenian laws say that sacrifices to Athena should be as beautiful as possible, so if you dedicate a festive ceremony to her, feel free to demand more money from the city budget for celebrations and decorations.

4. Organize a march

Girl with a basket with tools for the ceremony. Fragment of a skyphos painting. Attica, around 350 BC. e. Skyphos is a ceramic drinking bowl with a low stem and horizontal handles. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Everything is almost ready, and here one of the most important stages begins - the solemn procession. Participants in the ritual lead the animal to the altar accompanied by music and singing. It is important to organize the procession correctly and distribute roles: who follows whom, who has what in their hands and who does what. Don't forget to bring your ceremony tools to the altar - especially a knife. Place the knife in the basket, sprinkle it with barley grits (we'll explain why this is needed a little later) and decorate it with bows. Let a girl of aristocratic origin carry the basket on her head, she should lead the procession - after all, youth and innocence guarantee the success of the enterprise. If the girl could not be found, a simple slave will do. Someone must hold a jug of water for ritual sprinkling of the participants and the altar. Assign someone to carry the cakes and pies - they will also be useful for ritual purposes. At the beginning of the procession, loudly announce that a sacred act will now be performed. This can be done with the exclamation “Euphemia! Euphemia! — which literally translates as “reverent speech,” but in this case means more like “Attention! Attention!".

Important tip: If you do not know where to recruit participants in the procession, call your household, children and slaves. Wife, daughters-in-law and daughters will be needed to perform the ritual female cry ololygmos during the slaughter of the victim. It is not entirely clear why the scream was needed - either to drown out the roar of the animal, or to mark the importance of what was happening.

5. Don't forget the details

You will need to say a prayer at the altar: think in advance what you want to ask the gods for. Before killing the animal, sprinkle barley grits on all participants Most likely, the use of barley in rituals is due to its psychedelic properties. and sprinkle with water. Now take out the ritual knife, cut off a clump of wool and throw it into the fire. If the animal is large, it is wiser to stun it with an ax and only then cut its throat with a knife. It is now that women must let out a ritual cry. It is important that the blood of the animal is spilled on the altar and not on the ground. Getting sacrificial blood on the ground is a bad sign and can lead to revenge and another bloodshed. In some cases, it makes sense to collect spilled blood in a special vase.

Sphageion is a vessel for collecting blood. Canossa, late 4th - early 3rd century BC. e.
From the collection of the Pushkin Museum. A. S. Pushkin / Wikimedia Commons

During cutting, the most important thing is to correctly separate those parts of the meat that are assigned to the gods. Usually these are the femurs. They need to be cleaned of meat, wrapped in fat and covered with other pieces on top. small size. You can keep the best pieces of meat for yourself: as the experience of Prometheus shows, the gods will not notice anything anyway. Add a tail with a rump, a gallbladder and any other to the altar internal organs. Burn it. It is important that the smoke goes to the sky, to the gods. Spill some wine on the altar so that the gods have something to wash down the meat. To cut up and cook the remaining meat, it is better to call a butcher. Now start the festive dinner. Don't forget to give the best pieces to the most honored guests.

Important tip: Watch the signs carefully. For example, how an animal’s tail behaves in fire or what happens to internal organs. The correct interpretation will allow you to understand whether the gods liked the ceremony. It is a good sign when the tail curls on fire and the liver is healthy, with equal shares. If the ritual is performed before a battle, victory is indicated by a strong fire that destroys the entire victim. Bad omens include scanty flames, as well as splashes from burning the gallbladder and other internal fluids.

Sources

Aristophanes. World.
Aristophanes. Birds.
Hesiod. Theogony.
Homer. Odyssey.
Naiden F.S. Smoke Signals for the Gods: Ancient Greek Sacrifice from the Archaic through Roman Periods.
Oxford University Press, 2013.
Ullucci D. Contesting the meaning of animal sacrifice.
Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice. Oxford University Press, 2011.
Van Straten F. T. Hierà kalá: Images of Animal Sacrifice in Archaic and Classical Greece.

In 2011, we began conducting trainings on making money on the Internet: “Fast money on the Internet” and “Money from the Internet. 50 ways to make money online."

Over a thousand people passed through them. These were explosive trainings. Participants earned money: legally, quickly, without any initial investments, without any special knowledge.

These methods are already used individually by hundreds of people (tens of thousands abroad, but in Russia this is still a new niche). But we have given all the methods in a condensed form - only the most valuable. What really works.

And in this book we offer you detailed step-by-step instructions for each of the methods: what and how to do, in what sequence to make money. And earn them immediately – literally within a few days. You just need to take and do what is written in this book.

Results of participants in the basic training group – 2 weeks after the start of the training

Of the 401 starters:

1) 289 earned more than 1000 rubles;

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3) 24 people earned more than 10,000 rubles;

4) 8 people have earned more than 35,000 rubles and are fighting for the super prize (the leader has 100,500 rubles so far).

For those who are interested, the fight and reports of the champions on the money earned can be viewed here: http://4winners.ru/training/fastmoney/fm-champion/

5) 11 people dropped out of the race - we returned their money and said goodbye forever - they will never participate in our trainings again (only 2% - we, frankly, thought there would be more).

After studying and implementing the proposed materials, you can continue to use all these methods (or the ones you like most) and earn money again and again. For some, this will become an additional source of income, while others will decide to quit their job altogether and start making money online. After all, this implies the opportunity to work anywhere – anywhere in the world. We ourselves spend a lot of time traveling and at the same time do not stop earning money.

In this book you will learn over 50 practical ways to make money online.

To ensure you really get results from this book, there are challenges at the end of each chapter—money-making challenges.

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The tasks are different for everyone, you yourself will decide at what level you need to complete them.

The most important thing you should take away from this book is the skill of making quick money. This skill is very, very important.

Then you will decide for yourself whether you should use one or another method or not, which one is best for you. But first, try to apply all the methods that will be discussed. Perhaps not all of them will work for you or not all of them will work fully, but some will work very well, and you will be able to make money with their help. The most important thing is that you will gain this skill and start making money online.

Sincerely,

Andrey Parabellum, infobusiness2.ru

Nikolay Mrochkovsky, ultrasales.ru

Kirill Belevich, belevichka.ru

Stop sitting in front of your computer, it's time to turn it into a money-making machine!

Reviews about the trainings

Feedback from participants in the “Fast Money” series trainings (http://ultrasales.ru/fastmoney.htmL) about the techniques described in this book.

Before six signs is, of course, far from me, but the amount earned is very pleasing

My results so far:

1. Concluded two contracts for the provision of hidden marketing services. One for 15,000 rubles per month, the second for 25,000 rubles per month. For each of them I received an advance payment of 50%. That is, the total is 20,000 rubles (I can provide scans of contracts as proof).

2. I sold my laptop for 10,000 rubles through Avito.

3. 45 rubles – writing texts.

4. 1000 rubles – PR.

5. 1500 rubles – photo.

6. 600 rubles – typewriter.

7. 2000 rubles – a set of tools.

8. 50 rubles – a soft toy (the woman who bought this soft toy, gave me shower gel, it was very nice).

Total: 35,195 rubles.

Of course, I am far from reaching six characters, but the amount I earned is very pleasing, considering that the last money (at that time) was spent on the training. :)

Alisa Zaks

Earned about 3500 rubles

How much money have you made?

In the first days I tried to sell computer hardware and, oddly enough, I sold not only what I wanted, but even more: something that had been lying around for months! In addition, he helped sell a friend his laptop. As a result, I earned about 3,500 rubles!

What did you like best?

I liked the topics about information business, call center, working with freelancers, PR, copywriting!!!

What method of earning money will you adopt?

Another interesting topic was about the buyers’ club, I’ve heard something like that before – great idea! By the way, I got really interested in copywriting, I didn’t understand anything about affiliate programs before, now I have something to work on!

I'll have to listen to the training again! The training is super, this week I have grown in online sales and now I know what is where and how to use it!

Sincerely, Azat Akhmetov

A mastodon like me was shaken, turned around and sent flying!

Well, here it is - a miracle! It's finished! I'm telling you. I sadly counted pennies from sold rubbish, pennies for articles, looked at the “pies in the sky” - my partners, at the thousand visible already on the horizon for a PR book. But it didn’t warm my soul, everything was somehow wrong!

On Saturday I turned on the phone, and calls from my chronic client-patients started pouring in. Well, they definitely weren’t my thing! And even after so many sleepless nights! I barked at them that I was no longer interested in treating their bodies and souls, but I would gladly treat their business in order to increase sales.

To my surprise, this boorish statement caused wild delight! (Oh yes Parabellum, oh yes!!!) As a result: on Sunday – two consultations, prepayment 2 X 5000 = 10,000, and annual consulting agreements! And this is completely different money! Moms, what have I done! I’m sitting here now, reading and watching everything that you, smart men, have about this... And I myself can’t sleep or eat...

What more can I say? Well, guys, you fucking give it!!! A mastodon like me was shaken, turned around and sent flying! THANK YOU! Now I’ll go raise my self-esteem and develop a commanding voice. :)

Elena Morozova

During the training I earned $300

During the training, I earned $300, to my great surprise: I sold a fur coat through Ebay, which was superfluous in Texas. :)

What I liked the most were the “by proxy” methods and the sale of physical goods. I still couldn’t get to this point, but here everything is on the shelf. Today I made a website about KINECT XBOX 360 in English, I think it will come in handy for Christmas. I will also continue to work on information products.

Introduction

In 2011, we began conducting trainings on making money on the Internet: “Fast money on the Internet” and “Money from the Internet. 50 ways to make money online."

Over a thousand people passed through them. These were explosive trainings. Participants earned money: legally, quickly, without any initial investments, without any special knowledge.

Results of participants in the basic training group – 2 weeks after the start of the training

Of the 401 starters:

1) 289 earned more than 1000 rubles;

3) 24 people earned more than 10,000 rubles;

4) 8 people have earned more than 35,000 rubles and are fighting for the super prize (the leader has 100,500 rubles so far).

For those who are interested, the fight and reports of the champions on the money earned can be viewed here: http://4winners.ru/training/fastmoney/fm-champion/

5) 11 people dropped out of the race - we returned their money and said goodbye forever - they will never participate in our trainings again (only 2% - we, frankly, thought there would be more).

In this book you will learn over 50 practical ways to make money online.

To ensure you really get results from this book, there are challenges at the end of each chapter—money-making challenges.

The tasks are different for everyone, you yourself will decide at what level you need to complete them.

The most important thing you should take away from this book is the skill of making quick money. This skill is very, very important.

Sincerely,

Andrey Parabellum, infobusiness2.ru

Nikolay Mrochkovsky, ultrasales.ru

Kirill Belevich, belevichka.ru

Stop sitting in front of your computer, it's time to turn it into a money-making machine!

Reviews about the trainings

Feedback from participants in the “Fast Money” series trainings (http://ultrasales.ru/fastmoney.htmL) about the techniques described in this book.

Before six signs is, of course, far from me, but the amount earned is very pleasing

My results so far:

2. I sold my laptop for 10,000 rubles through Avito.

3. 45 rubles – writing texts.

4. 1000 rubles – PR.

5. 1500 rubles – photo.

6. 600 rubles – typewriter.

7. 2000 rubles – a set of tools.

8. 50 rubles – a soft toy (the woman who bought this soft toy gave me shower gel, it was very nice).

Total: 35,195 rubles.

Of course, I am far from reaching six characters, but the amount I earned is very pleasing, considering that the last money (at that time) was spent on the training. :)

Alisa Zaks

Earned about 3500 rubles

How much money have you made?

What did you like best?

I liked the topics about information business, call center, working with freelancers, PR, copywriting!!!

I'll have to listen to the training again! The training is super, this week I have grown in online sales and now I know what is where and how to use it!

Sincerely, Azat Akhmetov

A mastodon like me was shaken, turned around and sent flying!

What more can I say? Well, guys, you fucking give it!!! A mastodon like me was shaken, turned around and sent flying! THANK YOU! Now I’ll go raise my self-esteem and develop a commanding voice. :)

Elena Morozova

During the training I earned $300

During the training, I earned $300, to my great surprise: I sold a fur coat through Ebay, which was superfluous in Texas. :)

I’ll take into account everything that can be done with someone else’s hands, and the sale of physical goods through affiliate programs, here in the USA there are a great many of them.

The training is cool, inspiring and practical. Kirill conducted the training very well, with a pleasant manner of communication. When I signed up, I thought that I knew everything myself, and I went to check it out, but that was not the case: the information turned out to be extremely useful.

Thanks a lot!!!

Mila Hale

As they say, money is money

I did it!!! Their brains are boiling and aching, either from fatigue, or their heads have become cramped from so much active work. Super sensation!

I sold the wall through Avito for 12,000 rubles (I didn’t get it to Molotok – I didn’t have time). Now I’m delighted with Avito, they started calling from advertisements almost immediately. I didn't think it would be so easy.

I took it for promotion construction company, received an advance of 2000 rubles. The rest is after the work is done.

It hasn't worked with Ozone yet. In general, I check affiliate programs once every three days, more often it doesn’t work out - I don’t have time. But I gained a lot of experience working with freelancers.

Another 700 rubles – the sale of a chair, but this is already offline.

And another great achievement: for more than seven months I could not restore access to the old webmoney wallet (no matter what I did: I wrote to the support service, everything was useless). Finally learned how to restore access. So I got another 1,500 rubles. As they say, money is money!

P.S. Just a few days ago I thought that I wouldn’t be able to earn even 5,000 rubles before the end of the training. But everything turned out completely differently! So many emotions are boiling inside me! Adrenalin! So many thoughts in my head, so many ideas. Thank you!!!

Gulnur Galimova

I sent the product for sale by cash on delivery, I’m waiting for 5000 rubles

How much money have you made?

I sent a product for sale (I found a buyer through a bulletin board, or rather, he found me) cash on delivery, I’m waiting for 5,000 rubles.

What did you like best?

What method of earning money will you adopt?

I want to get into consulting, through webinars, books, information business, but I’m a little afraid. I want to find income for my daughter, so we choose from the above. Most likely, we’ll stick to photo banks: I’ve already registered with several, although one has so far refused, and I’ve sent another an agreement for cooperation.

Very cool! Everything was sorted into shelves. Very specific, shed light on many issues that I only knew about by hearsay. I started to recommend it, then I thought, stop: I’ll take contacts, post a report on the training and a link to the affiliate program - and make some money from it. Thanks a lot!

Victoria Leontyeva

I am happy with the training, it has turned my life around. Now there are more than 400 dollars in the account

I signed up for the training because I knew both Andrei and Nikolai in absentia from FM-4. But since then I’ve been sitting on the fence, although I wrote a book and conduct trainings. Knowing the trainers, I was sure that I would start earning money like a child from the first days of training.

But the first day I was a little confused. Being sure that neither Kolya nor Andrey were Captain Obvious, I patiently completed all the tasks. After the second day, I thought it was time to take the money back, but something in me said: shut up and do it! I was silent and did it.

And there was evening and there was morning—the fourth day. This is where it hit me! All the puzzles have started to come together! And on the fifth day during the cast, I managed to hire a freelancer for 100 rubles, and he did everything. That's 1000 rubles!

Moreover, I entrusted one order to freelancers and saved time. Before that, I delegated only website design, but now everything else. I just check and help if anything happens.

Before the training, I somehow didn’t dare, I tried to do everything myself. Special thanks for this, guys!

By the sixth day the affiliate worked – now I have more than $400 in my account. But most importantly, I went shopping to offer consulting. This is what I liked best. There are agreements, although only for a percentage for now.

In addition, I agreed with my son and nephew that they would help me search for tasks on freelance sites, and offer the same thing on others, but cheaper, in short, mediation on freelancers. And similarly in auctions. While we are understanding the nuances.

So I'm happy with the training, it turned my life around. Thank you!

Pavlo Belous

I decided to join the ranks of the “sect” of Parabellum - Mroczkowski - in my opinion, good guys

How much money have you made?

Total 1150 rubles. 150 rubles – after completing the order (calling competitors). 1000 rubles - sold my old DVD player on Avito.

What did you like most?

The topics I liked the most were: distant work on http://www.workzilla.ru, launching an online store, conducting webinars, consulting, making money on affiliate programs, selling goods on Avito and Molotka, doing work with someone else’s hands, using the labor of freelancers.

What method of earning money will you adopt?

I will test all the ways to earn money given during the training, then, after analyzing the results, I will choose the most effective methods for myself. In general, I was very interested in webinars and consulting, as well as copywriting - this is for the future.

What are your general impressions of the training?

I really liked the training because it was dynamic and informative! Kirill charged us with his positive energy, confidence in our abilities and was full of new ideas! Now just get down to business, implement it, get impressive results and enjoy life!

In general, I decided to join the ranks of the “sect” of Parabellum - Mroczkowski - in my opinion, these guys are worthwhile, they themselves live to the fullest and teach others this!:)

A separate super insight was that you can hire people for pennies for that tedious job that we all hate

How much money have you made?

Earned 3570 rubles.

What did you like best?

I liked the topics “Custom copywriting”, “Call center”, “Online store” and “Earnings from affiliate programs” most of all. A separate super insight was that you can hire people for pennies for that tedious job that we all hate. This training really costs much more than 2900 rubles. By hiring several freelancers, I have already saved ten thousand in time! And this is not counting the fact that he made money from sales and with his own head!

What method of earning money will you adopt?

Copywriting to order is very interesting, and in general all the methods that I indicated above.

What are your general impressions of the training?

The training is just great!!! I used to think that I already knew everything about the Internet. But this week I learned so much that my mind is boiling and exploding - simply incredible!!

It turned out that everything I knew before the training was just the tip of the iceberg. At the training I learned a lot about the inner workings of the Internet - about where exactly money is circulating on the Internet and how to earn it!

The only negative is that the final cast ended at half past three in the morning, according to my time, and I had to get up at six in the morning the next day. :)

I took Andrey's advice to walk along shopping center and sell consulting. It worked: 1 client – 3000 rubles advance. :)

Kirill

* * *

The training is the strongest!!! The information is very powerful and useful, after each new cast the brain is in full swing, and new ideas come all the time. Many thanks to Nikolai and Andrey!!! They give out a lot more information than I could have imagined!

Dmitriy

* * *

I really like what Andrey and Nikolay are doing with our brains, I’m delighted that my own are boiling, I’m holding back so that the pot doesn’t completely blow apart. Every day there are internal insights and expansion of the boundaries of consciousness, thank you very much, guys, for this!

Alla

* * *

So far I have earned little (only 1218 rubles), but I can already say: my brain exploded. Andrey and Nikolay, you directed me in the right direction, opportunities opened up that I had never even suspected before.

There is a lot of new stuff, it blows your mind, but it would be very difficult to find such knowledge, clearly systematized and laid out on shelves, step by step, somewhere outside the training. Thank you very much.

Dmitriy

* * *

For me, the training turned out to be work. :) Just a transformation of the brain... :) I was a techie and didn’t like sales, but now I looked at it from a different angle, and even excitement appeared. Thank you. Your trainings really work!

Anna

The fastest way to make money online

Sales are everything to us

If you want to learn how to make pretty good money, then first of all you need to learn how to sell.

The easiest way to start learning this is to sell some of your old or unnecessary things.

Nowadays you can buy anything on the Internet: from toilet paper to Boeing. Internet sales will soon exceed real ones. People can now purchase any products and goods via the Internet without any problems. Any!

People are willing to buy used items to save money. And you can sell them your old things. And it is this way of earning money that we want to give you as one of the basic ones.

It's unlikely to be your main source of income, but it's a great way to start learning how to sell online.

Unfortunately, in Russia there is no such popular service as eBay. If sales on eBay were actively developed in Russia, it would be possible to make a very, very decent amount of money from this alone.

When you move and start sorting through all the rubbish that you have accumulated (books, clothes, computer hardware, some telephone systems, printers), you realize that if you haven’t used these things for a year, then most likely never again and you won't use it.

There are very good rule: throw away old things that are no longer needed. And since your goal is to earn money, it would be logical to sell these things.

Take a look around. Now find three things that you will sell online. We are not talking about selling an apartment or a car. No. Choose something small. For example, old mobile phone, laptop, sofa, piano, stamp collection and so on.

Used products that people often refurbish sell quite well. For example, mobile phones and computer components. There is a good demand for women's clothing, because fashion changes regularly. You can sell handbags, shoes and other accessories. Just look at what you have that you don’t need—what you haven’t used for a long time and will never use again.

There are many websites selling used items in Russia. The most famous of them:

http://www.avito.ru

http://www.sLando.ru

http://www.irr.ru

http://www.molotok.ru

The most popular abroad is http://www.ebay.com. Thanks to such sites, you can make a pretty good sale on something that you, in principle, no longer need.

Your job is to decide what three things you will sell and create an ad.

You can use an online auction and display your goods there. Let's say you want to sell your old laptop for 9,000 rubles. You put a price on it of 1000 rubles and start an auction for a week. Potential buyers themselves will raise the price for it. This is very interesting, worth a try. People start competing and offer higher and higher prices.

Auctions can be opened on the website http://www.molotok.ru. There are two options for displaying goods: either sell them immediately for a fixed price, or put them up for auction. We recommend that you try both options.

You must learn how to make money by selling products online. Subsequently, you can expand this activity to the scale of an online store.

How to create an advertisement?

You need to embellish your ad as much as possible. And now we will talk about how to do this.

Bright headline

A bright, emotional headline is very important to attract customers.

The most important thing you need to know is you only have three seconds to interest and retain a potential buyer.

Three seconds to prevent the client from closing your ad and moving on to look for something more suitable for him.

Why three seconds? It's simple: if a person does not see anything interesting or sees continuous text, then he becomes bored!

The main way to attract potential client at least read your ad - this is the headline. In it you can immediately show the benefit for the buyer - what he will receive.

The gist of the title is this:

♦ stand out among the mass of similar advertisements;

♦ make sure that potential buyer I started reading your text.

Correct description

That is, of course, technical description you need - how much it weighs, what kind of battery, what size. But this is standard information that is usually available on the manufacturer’s websites. All this is necessary, but under no circumstances should you put technical characteristics at the beginning.

The first block should be descriptive: “Here is a printer that prints this way and that way. I typed this and that on it.”

That is, you at least describe the subject. If you are selling jet printer Epson, you must specify the following:

♦ what he prints;

♦ what is it for?

♦ how often do you need to change the cartridge;

♦ how it compares with other models.

The most advanced method is to compare “apples to oranges.” That is, to compare the incomparable. Such things that are not entirely correct to compare from a logical point of view.

If we continue to talk about the printer, compare it not with a similar printer of the same brand, but with a more expensive one. That is, let’s say, you will compare an Epson printer from three years ago with some new Epson, which is more expensive, or a printer of another model, which much expensive.

You can also compare how much it costs to print one sheet of paper in some Internet cafe and how much it will cost if you print at home. This way you show how much your customer will save.

Note from Andrey Parabellum

A good example is the book “Selling Air,” which I recently published, which outlines the course “Infobusiness from A to Z.” How do we demonstrate the value of this book?

“If you bought only these trainings, it would cost you about 45,000 rubles. Instead of spending 45,000 rubles on these trainings, you get a book for 1,000 rubles plus the opportunity to earn money, since it contains step-by-step instruction“How to earn your first $10,000 in the information business.”

That is, we compare the 1,000 rubles you pay for the book with the 45,000 rubles you could spend on the course itself, and with the 300,000 you can earn using this information.

This comparison makes your ad stand out. And it will be much easier for a person to make a purchasing decision.

Personal story

An important detail is that your personal story must be present in the product description, no matter what you are selling.

If you're selling a knitting kit, show what you've knitted with it. Tell us that your beloved grandmother gave it to you for your birthday.

That is, you tell a piece of personal history associated with using this product. It’s clear that this shouldn’t be a forty-page story, but you need to write at least two or three paragraphs.

Stories sell!

For many people, shopping online is an event. Sometimes – Event with capital letters. Perhaps this is the most striking event that happened to them on this day or this week. Naturally, they will tell others about this - they need something to brag about.

They won’t brag: “You know, I bought this hard drive for 5400 grt.” It’s only IT people who brag to each other like that, but normal people don’t. They will say: “I bought a hard drive for only 3,000 rubles, but in fact it cost 8,000.” The fact that it cost 8,000 three years ago is something history is silent about. But people need stories.

And you don’t need to invent anything, you need real stories– not about anything abstract, but about you. For them you are a real person, they are interested.

You can write something like this: “I stored photos of my children on this disk. And now I bought a larger disk for this, and I don’t need this small one anymore. So I decided to sell it to someone and use the proceeds to buy my daughter a doll stroller.”

Pieces of your personal life included in the product description are good at stimulating sales. They increase sales, especially if your customers are women. For women, emotions generally decide a lot.

Photos to enhance sales

An important factor that contributes to sales success is product photography. And the photos are not glamorous, which you download from the manufacturer’s website (although you can add them too), but taken with your own “point-and-shoot” (ordinary camera).

It is best to take photos against a white background. Ideally, you take three sheets of whatman paper, place it at the corner of a cube and glue together a small light box. Take photographs of the item in it different sides: frontal, side, top, bottom and two or three side views (corner).

How more photos you do, the more chances you have of convincing a potential buyer that this item is real, and that you are a living person and are selling something that is on

actually exists. This will add credibility to your ad.

If any documents, boxes, disks or instructions are attached to the product, all this must also be photographed.

Second. You can and should shoot one or two videos, post them on YouTube and embed them (that is, insert the html code into the description). And the potential buyer will see how you twist this product in your hands, how much it weighs, how heavy it is.

Showing your product different ways, you seriously increase the chances of selling it.

Bonuses and goodies

In the product description, indicate the bonuses that you include with the product. Let's say that along with your laptop you give away a mouse, speakers and a case for free.

Bonuses are very good at stimulating sales. And the more of them (even if insignificant), the easier it will be for you to sell your product.

Confidence

Don’t forget that online sales are greatly influenced by trust or mistrust, so the about yourself block is extremely important. Give a link to your VKontakte page, Facebook, LiveJournal, your website, write your mobile phone number, put at least one photo of yourself.

You must show that you are a real person.

You need to show who you are. That you really are, that you answer the phone, that you are not deceiving anyone. “You need this printer - please come and get it!”

In the event that on some resource you cannot provide direct links to your identity, you can at least put your photo, you can give a description of how to find you, give your phone number. You can say: “Find me on VKontakte, here is my first and last name.”

If you live in a provincial town, you can put your home phone number in the ad.

In Moscow you may never see a person again in your life, but in small town you are not going anywhere, you are easier to find. Therefore, it is much easier to give a guarantee there; the trust factor plays a better role there.

P.S

When you do everything exactly like this (write a killer headline, give a description, weave in a personal story, provide a guarantee and bonuses, and include photos and videos), you will sell something online big problem is not.

What else do you need to understand? With your sales you change people's lives. The fact that a person bought something should add positive emotions to him. This needs to be understood, and, naturally, it needs to be modeled.

Example of an ad from Alexey Tolkachev

It was with this laptop that I created several working businesses and earned my first million! It was with him that I went to the world championship in parachuting and alpine skiing and became a champion!

Thanks to the stickers on the back cover of the laptop, I was able to meet representatives of the opposite sex more than once while working in cafes and restaurants. :)

With the help of this laptop, I managed to organize a dance school, build an information business, write my first book and meet my other half!

That is why it is very difficult to part with him. He has done a lot in my life! As time has shown, it brings SUCCESS to its owner!

Works like a clock. Several very “heavy” programs can work together. At the same time, without losing speed or freezing. I bought more memory for it and installed a new one. I also replaced the fan with a new one - the one that was there was very noisy.

The diagonal is 15 inches, which allows you to watch movies like in a cinema. :) Your eyes will thank you!

Selling because I bought myself a Mac Book Pro.

Disadvantages:

♦ Works only from the network. If you work on a battery, it lasts for 3-5 minutes. If you really need it, you can buy a battery at any Acer store.

♦ The number 6 is glued to the keyboard. It works, but is slightly wobbly.

♦ The fan makes a little noise when you run heavy applications or programs.

As a gift I will give a mouse + new Philips headphones (which I bought for 800 rubles).

I will also give away my first book “Extreme Time Management. Take everything from life" with an autograph! :)

The cost of the laptop is only 9,000 rubles.

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