Eliseo Ferrer, author.
(Book 2023): HUMAN SACRIFICES, CANNIBALISM AND RITUAL SEXUALITY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD.
(Material Foundations of the Creation of the World and the Sacred).
Material Bases of the Creation of the World and the Sacred: A World in Permanent Construction by Operative Subjects who found the first “sense” in their relationship with animals and in regularity of the of cosmic movements.
Download Table of Contents, Preamble and Bibliography.
Human Sacrifices, Cannibalism, and Ritual Sexuality in the Ancient World (2023 Book).
Eliseo Ferrer includes the contents of this work within the context that established the transit between the Paleolithic cults to the animals (“primary religion”) and the mythological cults of the Neolithic (“secondary religion”); in that time in which the agricultural revolution took place, followed by the urban revolution of the first cultivators next to the great river basins. These are contents that were partly suggested in his book Sacrifice and Drama of the Sacred King (2021), but that here he expands and reformulates with a view, among other objectives, to reinforce the basic elements of an anthropological theory of the construction of the sacred. However, as the author himself acknowledges, with the broader purpose of reconsidering and returning to the study of a series of socio-cultural phenomena secularly subjected to theological and ideological interpretations, and to all kinds of cultural and religious prejudices. This is what generally happens when we speak of “human sacrifices”, “sacred prostitution”, “ritual cannibalism” or “atonement and redemption in the ancient world”.
Through an elaborate preamble in which he expounds Gustavo Bueno’s materialistic philosophy of religion, Eliseo Ferrer takes precautions to avoid the exposed contents (really strange and surprising for a contemporary reader) “from appearing to be constructed from an idealistic formalism, which leaves its referents floating between the most absolute ontological void and the fictions of the author’s whim. On the contrary, he points out, “I am obliged to clarify that the five great phenomena addressed (ritualized human sacrifice, the sacred king murdered and resurrected, ritual cannibalism, ritual sexuality and atonement and redemption in the ancient world) are part of a real (and not imaginary or literary) reconstruction, methodologically subject to a dialectical and processual timeline, within contexts that encompass them and subject them to constant interaction: a process that has its origin in the action, the work with different material elements and the interaction of men with the environment through tools and the rational use of different survival techniques”.
Far from a supernatural revelation and far from a creator and omnipotent god, Ferrer lays the foundations of the creation of the world and the birth of the first sacred institutions in the relations of the different human groups with the surrounding material environment. As he has repeated on countless occasions, all the ideas of theology (not only of philosophy) come from practical concepts, of a technical nature, which arose from the first system of production in history: that which manifested itself in Neolithic cultures through the discovery and practice of agriculture. Here, in the repetition of cosmic cycles,” he explains, “is the anthropological and prehistoric basis that excludes any other metaphysical or theological interpretation of the primordial notions of immortality, reincarnation, resurrection, etc.”.
Consequently, and according to this perspective, there was no supernatural revelation or transcendent manifestation of the sacred at a given moment in history. Paradoxical as it may seem, the basis of the spiritualist construction (which had been forged since the Paleolithic through the relationship of the first men with the animals) developed in symbiosis, within a continuous spiral of reciprocal interrelations, with the manipulation of the natural environment through the hands, through tools, hunting weapons and the first techniques of production of goods for use and consumption.
Download Table of Contents, Preamble and Bibliography.
More Information (Spanish):
https://eliseoferrer.com/resenyas/
https://eliseoferreratstarpublishers.hcommons.org/
https://sites.google.com/view/libro-sacrificios-humanos
https://eliseoferrerautorsacrificioshumanos.hcommons.org/
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Review by: Patricia Aláez. © Messidor Comunicación.
May 16, 2025