Hands Off Peta, It's Part Of A Myth.

" But it is the bear-festival of the Aino which concerns us here. Towards the end of winter a bear cub is brought and brought to the village. If it is very small, it is suckled by an Aino woman, but should there be no Aino woman to suckle it, the little animal is fed by the hand or mouth. During the day it plays about the hut with the children and is treated with great affection. But when the cub grows big enough to pain people by hugging or scratching them, he is shut up in a strong wooden cage, where he generally stays for two to three years, fed on fish and millet porridge, till it is time for him to be killed and eaten."-Frazer, page 607

In looking at our own view of animal cruelty, the above passage might seem barbaric in the least. But for the Aino people of Japan, the bear represents a most-sacred animal. The death of a bear can be seen as a renewal of life within the village. Nothing of the carcass is wasted, skins are used as clothing, the meat is in fact part of the Aino's staple diet, and the skulls are given places of honor within the home. The bear is a deity both precious in life and death. The women of the tribe will readily nurse cubs at their own breast, just as the entire tribe will readily crush the bear to death in order to obtain its sacred flesh. This fragile balance of overpowering devotion versus the lust to cull the sacred animal is mirrored in many other cultures besides the Aino.

Witness the Japanese whose slaughter of the whales has brought down so much wrath from the rest of the world. The Japanese, however, have a long and rich history with the species. In one of the Yuukara songs(though this is an extension of Aino culture it has strong ties to the traditional Japanese) a man is described as coming upon a breached whale and saying the following: "Killer whale, god of the ocean, please bring more than one and a half whales every year. Then, I will be pleased to give my sweet daughter as your bride." Here, it is plain to see that the whale is grounded in myth and history for the Japanese.Though their reasons for killing whales nowadays are less about myth and more about economy, the roots of the tradition bear the same needs as the Aino's tradition of killing bears. The Acagchemem tribe of California, too, has its roots in the same need with their sacred buzzard, as do the People of Fernando Po in Africa with their Cobras, and also the ancient Greeks with their rams to Zeus.

What is this reason to kill animals in often slow, cruel ways? Why would a tribe kill with zest that which they hold sacred? Why do we allow it in even modernized societies? Perhaps Frazer can help. "...he imagines that a species left to itself will grow old and die like an individual, and that therefore some step must be taken to save from extinction that particular species which he regards as divine.The only means he can think of to avert the catastrophe is to kill a member of the species in whose veins the tide of life is is still running strong and has not yet stagnated among the fens of old age." Frazer, page 600. What Frazer means to say here is that by killing one or two young, sacred animals, the death of the entire species is prevented. Old age and the natural processes of death are staved off for those chosen animals. In this, the sacred lives. By the death of a whale or a bear or a buzzard, the species lives on while bringing the people closer to the divine through their flesh. Which brings about the answer as to why the flesh of a sacred animal is often eaten.

In relation to the continuing myth, eating the flesh of a sacred animal(or any animal really) brings the diner back to that moment of the animal's creation, back to the power of first creation. Mircea Eliade sums this up quite nicely "Feeding oneself is not merely a physiological act but is equally a "religious" act; one eats the creations of the Supernatural Beings, and one eats them as they were eaten by the mythical ancestors for the first time, at the beginning of the world."-page 43. So, by eating the flesh of a bear, or a whale, the consumer is taken back to not only the animal's creation, but also to a time when the Gods were present and the world was fresh with new power. Here, lies the reason as to why such killings occur today as with the Tlingit people or the Japanese(both hunt whales, though the Tlingit by traditional methods only). It is a recreation of their myth, and a renewal of their cherished animals. It is myth in life today.

As important as it is to the people to kill in order to renew, there's the small issue of endangered species. Though the myths are still living today, and the people able to sustain those myths, the creatures they rely on are close to vanishing. When those creatures do vanish, so will the living myth. It is important, then, to protect those animals which are held as sacred, for not only their benefit, but for that of the cultures which cherish them.


That was a horribly long post, I will personally congratulate and thank any who read it in its entire. At least now you can defend yourself about being carnivorous. Just state that you hold the chicken as a sacred animal, and by eating its flesh, you are reliving the creation of the very world. I think it's a pretty good excuse....