10:47 AM - Yukari Yakumo: Well Miko, like how you were looking for a schism connection in the movies - you're pretty close, but I think it more closely parallels the sacrifice of Christ - which in concept is obvious but it goes into the deeper nuances, with Kyubey paralleling the older way of doing things - paganism / Judaism. Before Christ, it was normal to sacrifice animals - larger ones were better, but the poor could only afford doves - as a way to purify the sin from one's soul. In essence, sacrificial vessels were filled with sin and then destroyed, purifying the one performing the sacrifice. However, after Christ's sacrifice, since the sacrifice was God and therefore infinitely large, there were no more animal sacrifices since the vessel already in place was infinite and could continue to take away the sins. This parallels the whole idea of witches and grief seeds - Madoka became the inifinite vessel that could take away despair, in hopes of removing the need for witches to exist.
10:48 AM - Yukari Yakumo: I say parallels instead of represents because they obviously weren't doing puella bible, and the idea of sacrifices removing impurity isn't unique to any one religion