18
Although slaves aren't specifically mentioned, Odin's burial laws tell us that "every one will come to Valhalla with the riches he had with him upon the pile":
Odin established the same law in his land that had been in force
in Asaland. Thus he established by law that all dead men should
be burned, and their belongings laid with them upon the pile, ...
15
The myth you're looking for is first outlined in Hesiod's Theogony.
Theogony 535-558:
[535] For when the gods and mortal men had a dispute at Mecone, even then Prometheus was forward to cut up a great ox and set portions before them, trying to deceive the mind of Zeus. Before the rest he set flesh and inner parts thick with fat upon the hide, covering ...
10
Probably not.
According to Apollodorus,
[VI. ZEUS CONFIRMS THE DIVINE PRIVILEGES OF HERMES.]
And Zeus made Hermes his personal herald and messenger of the gods beneath the earth."
It says that Zeus had to make him into his personal herald, and messenger, but there's no way that
[II. HERMES STEALS APOLLO'S CATTLE.]
Though he was laid out in swaddling-...
8
Blood and poetry.
Before I go any deeper, I want to clear up a misconception: Thor is not really a god of thunder. Yes, he does generate it, but his main function is as guardian against the forces of chaos (which goes directly against how gods of thunder storms are portrayed in some RPGs).
The main sources for the worship of the Norse gods are the ...
8
I think it's safe to say that at least the Norns knew the language of the runes from the Völuspá:
There stands an ash called Yggdrasil,
A mighty tree showered in white hail.
From there come the dews that fall in the valleys.
It stands evergreen above Urd’s Well.
From there come maidens, very wise,
Three from the lake that stands beneath the ...
8
Nope.
The story is known only through Hávamál, a piece of poetry from the poetic Edda, in which it takes up two stanzas. The relevant here is stanza 138:
Veit ek, at ek hekk
vindga meiði á
nætr allar níu,
geiri undaðr
ok gefinn Óðni,
sjalfr sjalfum mér,
á þeim meiði,
er manngi veit
hvers af rótum renn.
Hávamál, ...
6
This falls under the idea that it is an honor to be a sacrifice for the gods.
On film that may be worth looking at is Pasolini's 1969 film Medea. The film opens with Medea's royal family sacrificing her brother so the crops will grow. As I recall, the brother is smiling.
A good contrast is the 1973 film The Wickerman, which is partly an adaptation of ...
6
There's also an interesting Eddic poem called Sigrdrífumál in which the valkyrie Sigrdrifa instructs the hero Sigurd in runic magic. (Sigrdrifa, Victory-Bringer, is often identified with Brynhild, so it is possible she learned the runes from Odin, her former patron. The poem does not mention this, however.)
5
I've always thought it falls under Frazer's concept of Sympathetic Magic. In Ancient Greek, the idea of the lifeforce is bound with words related to breath or wind: ψυχή (psuke) and πνεῦμα (pneuma), specifically. Thus, releasing the life force, or breath, from Iphigenia's body raises the winds to sail to Troy. Likewise with Polyxena for the ride back.
...
5
We first a crown of low-growing lotus
having woven will place it on a shady plane-tree.
First from a silver oil-flask soft oil
drawing we will let it drip beneath the shady plane-tree.
Letters will be carved in the bark, so that someone passing by
may read in Doric: "Reverence me. I am Helen's tree."
Theocritus' epithalamium commemorating the ...
5
According to this article by Lee Perry-Gal et al.:
The arrival of chickens in Greece likely postdates Homer (around the eighth century B.C.E.), because the Greek poet does not mention this bird, but chickens are mentioned by Theognis of Megara in the sixth century.
However, this seems to contradict the fact that Homer mentions a character by the name ...
3
Those two sentences are based on the differences that scholars have observed in the ritual practices associated to Olympian and Chthonic gods, i.e. respectively the sky and earth deities. Indeed, there seemed to be a tendency to sacrifice white animals on raised altars to the heavenly gods, and black animals in pits to the subterranean ones. See for example ...
3
Homer nowhere mentions any sacrifice of Iphigenia, and debate is ancient on whether the “Iphianassa” whom Agamemnon offers as a potential bride to Achilles, at Iliad 9.145 & 9.287, is the same person. Since nowhere have I found any hint that Achilles was necrophiliac, this offer clearly implies that the daughter in question was still alive so ...
3
Given the amount of influence both ways, I'm surprised you didn't include Norse/Germanic mythology as "near enough" in your question.
Within it, there are two stories of sacrifice that contain several parallels to the Christian story.
The first, and more literal and obvious of the two, is the story of Baldr. While not sacrificed, he was slain and is said ...
3
Out of interest of spreading information, I'm copying here the answer I wrote yesterday to this question on Judaism.SE, with a few alterations:
A possible answer:
Maimonides on the mishnah states that this was done as part of worship of Baalim. The city of Baalbek, which was originally a Baal center of worship, eventually became a center of Bacchus (Dionysus ...
3
My esteemed brother-in-law just emailed me an answer. He wrote:
Shalsheleth Haqabbalah may not be as good as a bona fide dead clock
which (assuming it is analog) is exactly correct twice a day, but note
Clement of Alexandria in Protrept. I 2, PG VIII, 76a.
Although there we see the removal of the heart, the consumption of
bile may well be ...
3
Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but it looked promising.
"Odinn and His Cosmic Cross" (pdf)
https://skemman.is/bitstream/1946/27093/1/Thesis%20Final%20Draft%20pdf.pdf
The term used is sjalsforn (self-sacrifice). "...sjálfsfórn contains metaphysical concepts found in religions across the globe..."
"This work will broaden the discussion ...
2
I'm not finding any ancient sources that explicitly mention the issue, but there is a mediaeval text called the Third Vatican Mythographer, written in Latin, and using the Roman names of the gods, which does chime in, perhaps based on a genuinely ancient tradition.
According to Ch. 9, §2 of the aforementioned work, Mercury (the Roman equivalent of Hermes),
...
2
Herodotus, in his Histories, recounts the story of how Ariston took his third wife, the most beautiful woman in Sparta, from his friend Agetus, and says that she had been an ugly baby, but her nurse's constant prayers at Helen's shrine had caused Helen to appear and make her beautiful.
If the story is not accurate, nevertheless the existence of the shrine is ...
1
The "white" probably comes from Hesiod's Theogony 557 about Prometheus tricking Zeus:
So said Zeus whose wisdom is everlasting, rebuking him. But wily
Prometheus answered him, smiling softly and not forgetting his cunning
trick: “Zeus, most glorious and greatest of the eternal gods, take
which ever of these portions your heart within you bids.”
So ...
1
Going from a non-literary standpoint and into a metaphorical one, one could figure it was like the gods' version of making someone walk "barefoot on broken glass" to get what they want. A lot of them didn't want Troy to fall, so when they made that ultimatum with the wind, the idea was Agamemnon would see it as 'not worth it', but at the same time, they ...
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