The gods are angry with us but I can fix that!

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There was a time when my idea of inconvenience was getting stuck behind a slow-moving tractor on the way to meet my buddy in Ballyseedy for a coffee. Or not being able to get a seat at the counter in my local pub.

Extreme inconvenience was when visitors called to the house just as Liverpool were about to kick off on the TV with me in my recliner, beer in hand. That’s not an issue now because we have neither visitors nor football but thankfully, we’re OK for the beer.

But now, we’re all learning what inconvenience is really about. We’ve been put out before of course with a few troublesome storms. A fallen tree blocking the road was inconvenient. Being without electricity for a few hours was more inconvenient but having no access to the Internet brought inconvenience to a new level.

I was caught in an airport in Edinburgh for one of those storms and my flight was delayed for seven hours and that was the end of the world. Things just couldn’t get any worse than that, it was inconvenience on a grand scale.

That was then, before we discovered the true meaning of inconvenience. Now most of us would gladly swop Covid 19 for a bit of wind and rain because the virus has brought us to a level of inconvenience, we hadn’t even thought possible.  

It’s not over yet and we won’t be really free of this virus until someone comes up with a vaccine. Even then, our new-found inconvenience may never completely leave us. So, what do we do? Do we learn to accept that, or do we try to change our circumstances? I reckon we should try to turn the odds more in our favour and I think I may have found a way of doing that.

If you talk to older people, even older than me, they will tell you of the warmer summers we had long ago. Summers that lasted longer and seasons that were more predictable and more defined. As a child I remember spending all day, every day, playing outside with my friends in good weather during the summer holidays. We only came inside to go to bed.

Those days have been replaced with severe storms, global warming and pandemics and that just didn’t happen by accident. It happened because we haven’t been paying attention to the Gods. I suspect they’re angry with us because we’ve been neglecting them, so they’re punishing us. They’re annoyed and it’s hard to blame them.

When was the last time we offered up a human sacrifice to the gods in this country? Cobh certainly hasn’t made any offerings during my lifetime and we need to rectify that if we expect to get them on side. Look at the evidence.

To the Aztecs, human sacrifice was a matter of survival. They believed the sun god Huitzilopochtli was waging a constant war against darkness, and if the darkness won, the world would end. To keep the sun moving across the sky and preserve their existence, the Aztecs had to feed Huitzilopochtli with human hearts and blood.

They also practiced a form of ritual cannibalism, but I propose that we skip that bit. I’m partial to a bit of meat but I draw the line at eating my neighbours.

In 2018 archaeologists working at the Templo Mayor excavation site in Mexico discovered proof of widespread human sacrifice among the Aztecs and found skull towers and skull racks. Prisoners and slaves were often used as human sacrifices and their skulls were hung on large poles on the outskirts of the town to ward off unwanted guests.

I suspect a few seaside towns here came close to using this tactic in recent times.

Some archaeologists believe that a game of ball would sometimes end with members of the losing team being sacrificed. Evidence for these sacrifices is mainly found in depictions of Maya art. Introducing that to the Premiership would raise the viewing figures.  

So, human sacrifice occupied a particularly important place in many cultures, because of the belief that they nourished the gods. Without them, the sun would cease to rise, and the world would end, so sacrificial victims earned a special, honoured place in the afterlife.

Closer to home, the skeleton of a man found buried in a ditch at Stonehenge has been interpreted by Jacqueline McKinley, an osteoarchaeologist, as a sacrificial victim. The man, who was 5 foot 10 inches and had a robust muscular build, was shot repeatedly with arrows. McKinley believes he was killed as part of a human sacrifice.

Women didn’t have it easy back in the day either. In Fiji, when a woman became a widow, she was strangled because a deceased husband was buried with his wife. In the case of great chiefs, their deaths simultaneously brought about the demise of their various wives. These women were then used as carpet for his grave.

The Irish druids had their own ways of pleasing the gods. Samhain was an important time for druids, a time of dread and anticipation. Days got shorter and nights got longer, a sign that nature’s decay was about to begin, and any crops left out after November 1st could be spoiled by the Fairies. Food was offered to the gods and the dead.

That makes complete sense. That’s why the weather was better, and we were all safer. The gods were happy and content so if we want to improve our circumstances, we must return to the old ways. Our first task is to place an ad in The Echo for a human sacrifice.

It will be a short-term position and pay and conditions won’t be great, but the successful applicant will be guaranteed an honoured place in the afterlife. Allegedly.