KILLING THE DIVINE ANIMALITY: Killing the Sacred Falcon.

In the previous chapters, we saw that many societies that have evolved to the point of primarily living off agriculture tend to kill and eat their flour-based deities, either in the pure form of wheat, rice, and similar grains, or in borrowed forms of animals and humans.

We must demonstrate that both hunting and pastoral tribes, just like agricultural peoples, have the habit of killing the beings they worship. Among the revered beings or gods, if they indeed deserve this name, which hunters and shepherds worship and kill, there are genuine and simple animals and not animals considered to be incarnations of other supernatural beings.

Our first example comes from the California Indians, who, although they live in a fertile land and under calm and mild meteorological conditions, are almost at the bottom of the scale of wild civilization.