You don’t have to practice animal sacrifice at all to worship the Olympians, most ancient Greeks offered the gods food, wine and only sacrificed animals when they butchered livestock for food. Animal sacrifice is really just a way to obtain meat as an offering to the gods, so you can just burn hamburger on an altar without having to kill anything. Though since sacrificing beasts was crucial to ancient Greek religion so we should should understand the practice to complete our picture of Hellenic polytheism.

Homer’s Iliad describes animal sacrifice in step by step detail:

1. Purify yourself by washing your hands.

2. Recite a hymn to the deity then the prayer.

3. Cakes are thrown at the animal.

4. Kill the animal while it’s head is turned up towards the gods by slitting it’s throat, if the sacrifice is to the underworld gods then the creature’s head should be pointed down. Incense and libations can also be given by other people participating in the sacrifice.

5. The thighs and fat of the animal are selected to be thrown into the fire

6. Libation of wine.

7. The selected pieces are thrown into the fire to be turned to ash.

8. Cook and feast on the remaining meat with hymns or prayers to the gods, though it was taboo to eat the meat of animals sacrificed to seal an oath between people.

Instead of killing animals you could simply making offerings of expensive raw meat purchased from a grocery store; for that follow every step except numbers three and four. Offerings to the Olympians should be burned on a fire above ground while sacrifices to the Chthonic gods should be burned in a hole dug a few feet below ground. So if you offer Zeus lamb meat you should burn it in a BBQ bowl on a table, if you offer Hades goat meat you should burn it in a pit.

“Are you not aware that all offerings whether great or small that are brought to the gods with piety have equal value, whereas without piety, I will not say hecatombs, but, by the gods, even the Olympian sacrifice of a thousand oxen is merely empty expenditure and nothing else?”

-Emperor Julian

Kourbania (thinly christianized pagan sacrifice) gives us further insight into the process; the chosen animal would have been pampered, bathed, covered in flowers and lead to the sacrificial altar through the streets with a parade.

Different animals correspond to certain gods but virgin heifers could be sacrificed to any god.

*Zeus: oxen five years or older

*Poseidon: bulls, rams and boar pigs

*Athena: heifers and sheep

*Dionysus: goats

*Hestia: pigs

*Artemis: deer

*Aphrodite: doves

*Underworld gods: animals with black fur

Cold steel sells accurate reproductions of ancient Greek and Roman swords, that would make fantastic sacrificial blades and handsome props on any altar.