128 OCCULT PRINCIPLES OF HEALTH & HEALING
the head of the spinal cord, and like the fire on the
altar of the tabernacle, is of divine origin. This fire
emits a singing sound like the buzz of a bee, which is
the keynote of the physical body, and is sounded by
the archetype. It builds in and cements together that
mass of cells known as “our body”.
The fire burns high or low, clear or dim, according
to how we feed it. There is fire in everything in nature
except the mineral kingdom. It has no vital body and
therefore no avenue for the ingress of the Life Spirit,
the fire. We replenish this sacred fire partly from the
forces from the Sun entering the vital body through the
etheric counterpart of the spleen and from there to the
solar plexus where it is colored and then carried
upward through the blood. We alsofeed the fire from
the living fire we absorb from the uncooked food which
we eat and thus assimilate.
Looking at the matter of flesh-eating from the
ethical side also, it is against the higher conception to
kill to eat. In olden times man went out to the chase as
any beast of prey, rough and callous; now he does his
hunting in the butcher shop, where none of the
nauseating sights of the slaughter house will sicken
him. If each had to go into one of those bloody places
where horrors are enacted day after day to be able to
satisfy an abnormal injurious habit which causes more
sickness and suffering than even liquor craving; if each
had to wield the bloody knife and plunge it into the
quivering flesh of his victim, how much meat would
we eat? Very little. In order to escape doing this
nauseating work ourselves on occasion, we force a
fellow being to stand in that bloody pen day after day
killing thousands of animals every day of the week; we