This Flash photo essay was taken by a friend over two years ago. Now, I finally have a place to post it. In the absence of working rituals, new rituals must be created. Bataille says it’s our too-much-ness that gets us into trouble: you have to get rid of some of it, and the ritual of sacrifice is one of the oldest ways to do it. This burnt offering was a devotion of an old, old addiction, one I still fight every morning when I wake up. The beauty of the system wanted to swallow me whole: give just a little more, a little more, until there’s nothing left to give (but still you give more).

Sacrifice doesn’t keep new excesses from piling up, unfortunately. It’s only ever a stop-gap –sometimes an effective one at that– but never much more. It could very well be that the next sacrifice could be something else entire, but unless the “accursed excess” is dumped regularly through some ritual, there will eventually be another sacrifice. And better to initiate the sacrifice yourself; some excesses have little patience and will just as easily sacrifice you.

Before you dismiss another’s sacrifice, be sure that they are not dispelling some demon you do not know. Remember your own time in the graveyard, starving, raving, manacled to the stones, throwing your words as weapons, unable to distinguish family from foe. There are as many vices as virtues in this world, and we should be thankful for any deliverance from either.