THE SUBSTANCE OF BEING AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF BLOOD SACRIFICE IN AFRICAN TRADITIONAL WORSHIP

Abstract

Blood sacrifice has long occupied a controversial position in discussions of African traditional religion, often seen as a materialistic, irrational, or morally deficient practice. The dismissals typically arise from interpretive frameworks that compel external metaphysical and ethical assumptions upon African ritual life. This study uses a multidisciplinary methodological approach putting together interpretive anthropology, comparative metaphysics, ritual process theory, and African philosophical hermeneutics to examine the ontological and ethical grounds of blood sacrifice in African traditional worship. It preaches that African ontology conceives blood as the bearer of life-force—the substance of being—while material elements such as flesh function only as secondary or accidental components. When looked at within this ontological framework, blood sacrifice emerges as a coherent and morally monitored practice aimed at regaining relational balance between the human, ancestral, spiritual, and cosmic orders. The study questions reductionist interpretations inherited from early anthropological theory and demonstrates that African sacrificial ritual embodies a sophisticated ontological–ethical system rather than a crude material exchange.