Cooking, Crafting, and Composing for the Gods: Ritual Creativity Around Modern Druidic Sacrifice

This chapter analyses the reinvention of sacrifice in modern Druidry. Based on ethnographic data gathered in Quebec, one of the ten provinces of Canada, I highlight the ritual creativity of the modern Druids I have met, who shape their new ways of sacrifice around one purpose: banning ritual violence and killing. While ancient druids sacrificed animals and more rarely humans, modern Druids have substituted living offerings with non-living gifts, which can be of two types: material offerings, such as homemade food, drinks, or craft items, and immaterial offerings, like songs, poems, or hymns that they have composed. In order to fully examine modern Druidic sacrifice, this chapter relies on three ethnographic examples illustrating both the formal diversity of modern Druids’ rituals and their deep historical and religious reflexivity.