"A Pharmakós (Greek: φαρμακός) in Ancient Greek religion was the ritualistic sacrifice or exile by the sorcerers of a human scapegoat or victim.
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| Human sacrifice, as depicted in ancient Greek pottery |
The victims themselves were referred to as pharmakoi and the sorcerer was referred to as a pharmakon.[1] A slave, a cripple or a criminal was chosen by the pharmakon or sorcerer and expelled from the community at times of disaster (famine, invasion or plague) or at times of calendrical crisis, after being given pharmakeus or drugs by the pharmakon or sorcerer who was a practitioner of pharmakeia or pharmaceutics. It was believed that this would bring about purification.
On the first day of the Thargelia, a festival of Apollo at Athens, two men, the Pharmakoi, were led out as if to be sacrificed as an expiation. Some scholia state that pharmakoi were actually sacrificed (thrown from a cliff or burned).The earliest source for the pharmakos (the iambic satirist Hipponax) shows the pharmakos being beaten and stoned.
Walter Burkert and René Girard have written influential modern interpretations of the pharmakos rite.
Burkert shows that humans were sacrificed or expelled after being well-fed, and, according to some sources, their ashes were scattered to the ocean. This was a purification ritual, a form of societal catharsis".[2]
Today, this method social cleansing is called Agenda 21.
Φαρμακο = “pharmako” medicine or poison, craft [Revelation 22:15]
φαρμακον = “pharmacon” drug, poisonous cure [Revelation 22:15]
μαγεω mageuō = sorcery in regards to magic [Acts 8:9]
