Sacrifice functioned as a negotiated exchange with the gods for protection

Evidence

Sacrifices were fundamentally a trade: if the gods were kind in delivering a successful hunt or a healthy child, then it was only fitting to repay their kindness and increase the chances of future assistance. Lavish sacrifices of valuable resources were also symbols of potency and authority; by holding up their end of the deal with the gods through ritual sacrifices, humans gained a sense of control over life and death, a sense that the spirits would protect them in this life and welcome them to the next one. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 305

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly supports ‘On Sacrifice’ — the trade-model of sacrifice as both debt repayment and display of potency/authority.
• XREF: connects to: Sacrifice is the magical prototype of rational exchange for mastering gods — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 59; Exchange is sacrifice’s secularized form, not its offshoot — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 770; Religious and political sacrifice differ as sacrificing ‘to’ versus ‘for’ — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 422

Related

• Sacrifice is the magical prototype of rational exchange for mastering gods (similarity 0.89)
• Exchange is sacrifice’s secularized form, not its offshoot (similarity 0.83)
• Religious and political sacrifice differ as sacrificing ‘to’ versus ‘for’ (similarity 0.80)
• Sacrifice’s dual function—self-surrender and self-preservation—turns magic into cunning rationality. (similarity 0.80)
• Sacrifice deceives the god and grounds the ego’s deferral of present to future (similarity 0.78)