Eliseo Ferrer, author.
(Electronic Book 2025): ELEMENTS FOR A MATERIALIST THEORY OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SACRED.
(More materials on the anthropic creation of the world and the sacred).
This digital edition contains the content of the printed book published in 2023: Human Sacrifices, Cannibalism, and Ritual Sexuality in the Ancient World. Far from sensationalism or disturbing intent, what the reader will find in this book is a set of phenomena, more or less related and sustained by structures and narratives of meaning, that constitute the foundation of virtually all ancient cultures.
Download Table of Contents and Preamble.
Elements for a materialist theory of the construction of the sacred (2025).
This work is not interested, in and of itself, beyond ritualized practices, in the primal violence of prehistoric cultures, nor in the more or less precarious living conditions of the late Paleolithic. Similarly, it is not interested in the sociological and psychological traits upon which the rites, myths, and primitive agricultural production systems of Neolithic farming societies were built. What interests it is ritualized violence and murder as part of a sacralized organic whole, based on a rationality prescribed in myths, through which very different elements manifested themselves within a cosmic totality of anthropic meaning. We are talking about the murder of the son of the Neolithic goddess or the sacred king; the dismemberment of the sacrificial victim and the consumption of part of their body, after having scattered their blood and the rest of their remains across the cultivated fields; of the death of the grain in winter and the resurrection of the crops in spring; of the phases of the moon; of the end of the solar cycle and the beginning of a new annual creation; etc., etc.
Download Table of Contents and Preamble.
Eliseo Ferrer. Elements for a materialist theory of the construction of the sacred.
____________________________________________________________
More Information (Spanish):
https://eliseoferrer.com/resenyas/
https://eliseoferreratstarpublishers.hcommons.org/
https://sites.google.com/view/libro-sacrificios-humanos
__________________________________________________________
By Patricia Aláez. © Messidor Comunicación.
November 7, 2025