In the following remarks by Miriam the Magdalene, she sounds very much like an animal rights activist. So much so, that I will follow her remarks with a section on Animal Rights activists throughout history.
Miriam Speaks Outside a Slaughterhouse in Bethany
1. Near a slaughterhouse in Bethany, Miriam and several of Her Companions conversed with a small crowd.
2. Miriam said: “The heart of the heaven-bound feels – and wishes to prevent – the pain of the animals in this slaughterhouse.
3. “In India, the following adage is well known: ‘Hell swallows those that swallow meat.’”
4. A bystander asked: “Do not all of us eat?
5. Even your disciples must eat.”
6. Miriam replied: “Look around you: bodies are swallowing bodies.
7. Heaven-bound humans swallow plants.
8. But I tell you truly, in the higher heavens no bodies are swallowed; for, those that swallow bodies will be swallowed.
9. Until you have attained the body that is not swallowed, you will be swallowed.”
10. A disciple asked Miriam: “Should I cease even now to swallow
11. Should I even now cease to swallow plants?
12. For, I want to follow Your teachings and attain the blessed life.”13. Miriam replied: “The baby crawls before it walks.
14. Yea, and the baby walks before it runs.
15. The humans of this world are not called to shed their bodies before their time.
16. That would not be appropriate.
17. Yet neither were humans intended by Elohim to eat meat.
18. Therefore, let the heaven-bound of this world be swallowers of plants.
19. Yea, and for those that wish, the food gifts of animals that are well-cared for is permitted, which gifts are milk and eggs, as in The Ten Commandments of Nasarean Moses.20. “But do not be a swallower of flesh.
21. For, the Hindu Yogis are correct: Hell swallows those that swallow meat!
22. Repent and be saved!”23. A mocker laughed and said: “Your religion is not for me!
24. I will never pass up a juicy slab of goat meat!
25. The bloodier the better!
26. And God himself enjoys a good animal sacrifice!”27. Miriam replied: “Better than ten thousand animal sacrifices is to save even one animal from being sacrificed or eaten.
28. The true God weeps for the creatures you kill!
29. And many think they serve God by sacrificing animals to him, when, in truth, they serve a demonic beast that poses as ‘God’.30. “Contemplate this precept: ‘Let the mocker beware: hurt comes to the hurtful!’
31. Also contemplate this precept: ‘The hurt you cause in the morning will return to you by the evening.’”32. A woman in the crowd said: “I must feed my daughter so that she will live.
33. I fear for her future should I withhold meat.”34. Miriam replied: “Only she who is kin to all creation truly lives; consider the rest dead.
35. Even so, I will teach you to eat as we Nasareans eat; your daughter will live and let live.
36. Only those daughters that let live, truly live heavenly lives.37. “Yea, I tell you truly, those that are kind to all creatures need not fear their own futures.
38. The reverse is also true!
39. And that is precisely why I have spoken so strongly on this topic today, even at risk of seeming rude, even at risk of being attacked.
40. I want to shock you enough that you might drop flesh-eating and so avoid the ‘hell-vibes’ associated with the extremely ‘un-heavenly’ act of murdering animals so as to steal their bodies from their souls.
41. And remember this: eating animals slows down your Shield of Light and enables negative entities to influence you in various ways!
42. Need I say more?”
Miriam knew that she was speaking so forthrightly that she could be perceived as ‘coming on too strong’. She acknowledged that, but she felt that the dark horror of the slaughterhouse that she was exposing needed to be seen by the flesh-eating public so that they themselves could repent rather than experience the karmic consequences of supporting such vile practices. She said:
39. “And that is precisely why I have spoken so strongly on this topic today, even at risk of seeming rude, even at risk of being attacked.
40. I want to shock you enough that you might drop flesh-eating and so avoid the ‘hell-vibes’ associated with the extremely ‘un-heavenly’ act of murdering animals so as to steal their bodies from their souls.”
That is the same motive that I have for sharing the horror associated with modern factory farming. And though many of my readers are already vegetarian, it is good for you to get a refresher course on this topic so that you can share the gory details with non-vegetarians that you feel are ready to look at the horrible facts related to factory farming and the modern slaughterhouse. But I am going to transition to the modern animal rights movement by first demonstrating that there have always been animal rights activists.
THERE HAS BEEN AN ONGOING ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENT THROUGHOUT RECORDED HISTORY. Here follows a sampling of excerpts on animal rights and the horrors of slaughterhouses from long ago right up to modern times. After sharing these excerpts we will focus not only on modern slaughterhouses but also on several heroes/heroines of the modern animal rights movement.
I have already in this book shared some excerpts from ancient Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain texts on animal rights and vegetarianism that would fit here but will not repeat them. Fact is, there are plenty of other great excerpts to share. That is because there have been humane vegetarians throughout history. Let us start with Pythagoras.
PYTHAGORAS, 6th century B.C.
Here are two excerpts attributed to Pythagoras originally from the book Ovid that appeared in a book called The Metamorphoses, translated by Mary M. Innes:
Alas, what wickedness to swallow flesh into our own flesh, to fatten our greedy bodies by cramming in other bodies, to have one living creature fed by the death of another!
In the midst of such wealth as earth, the best of mothers, provides, nothing satisfies you but to behave like the Cyclopes, inflicting sorry wounds with cruel teeth! You cannot appease the hungry craving of your wicked, gluttonous stomachs except by destroying some other life….
Animals share with us the privilege of having a soul.
In regard to that last sentence above, the Nasarean Church of the Essene Way that I serve as High Priest is the only form of Christianity on record as affirming that animals do in fact have a soul. We agree with Pythagoras which is not surprising since The Holy Megillah informs us that he studied with Essene Nasareans.
This second excerpt attributed to Pythagoras is from a different section of the same book:
As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know of peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.
SENECA, born 5 B.C. died A.D. 65
Here are two excerpts from the first century philosopher Seneca. Both excerpts are from a text called Epistola:
In the simpler times there was no need of so large a force of medical men, nor of so many surgical instruments or of so many boxes of drugs. Health was simple for a simple reason. Many dishes have induced many diseases.
Note how vast a quantity of lives one stomach absorbs…. Insatiable, unfathomable, gluttony searches every land and every sea. Some animals it persecutes with snares and traps, with hunting nets, with hooks, sparing no sort of toil to obtain them…. There is no peace allowed to any species of being….
No wonder that with so discordant diet disease is ever varying….
Seneca wrote those words two thousand years ago, but they could have been written today!
The second excerpt from Seneca is from another section of the same book:
If these maxims are true, the Pythagorean principles as to abstaining from flesh foster innocence… and what loss have you in losing your cruelty? …. Let us ask what is best, not what is customary. Let us love temperance – let us be just – let us refrain from bloodshed. None is so near the gods as he who shows kindness.
MARCUS AURELIUS, born A.D. 121 died A.D. 180
Philosopher Marcus Aurelius, in his book Meditations, writes:
One man is proud when he has caught a poor hare, and another when he has taken a little fish in a net, and another when he has taken wild boars, and another when he has taken bears . . . Are not these robbers?
CLEMENTINE HOMILIES, Second Century
This is an early Ebionite Christian text attributed to a man named Clement (not the later more famous Clement):
The unnatural eating of flesh-meats is as polluting as the heathen worship of devils, with its sacrifices and its unpure feasts, through participation in which a man becomes a fellow-eater with devils.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, 1452 – 1519
The Middle Ages were not without vegetarian animal rights advocates. Leonardo da Vinci, the great renaissance man who painted the famous ‘Last Supper’ and equally famous ‘Mona Lisa’ is noted for being a great master of several arts and sciences. And he was that era’s greatest advocate of vegetarianism and animal rights.
In Romance of Leonardo da Vinci, we read:
Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds theirs. We live by the death of others: We are burial places!
Leonardo also wrote in his journals:
From an early age I have abstained from all use of meat, and the time will come when men will look upon the murder of animals for meat as they now look upon the murder of men.
Wow! What a powerful sentence! ☺
GEORGE CHEYNE, 1671 – 1743
In his Essay on Regimen, Cheyne seems so, well, ‘ahead of his time’:
To see the convulsions, agonies and tortures of a poor fellow-creature, whom they cannot restore nor recompense, dying to gratify luxury and tickle callous and rank organs, must require a rocky heart, and a great degree of cruelty and ferocity.
I cannot find any great difference, on the foot of natural reason and equity only, between feeding on human flesh and feeding on [other] animal flesh, except custom and example.
Now, if you doubt that a poem from the Middle Ages can sound just as forthright as a modern PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) animal rights activist, the following poem may convince you otherwise!
This is your opportunity, dear reader, to demonstrate to yourself that you can read a poem all the way through, beginning to end! ☺
An old-fashioned over three-hundred-year-old English poem no less! ☺ C’mon, you can do it! ☺
Actually, it really is quite radical not only for its own time – 16th Century England – but even in our time.
JOHN GAY, 1685 – 1732
The Wild Boar and the Ram
Against an elm a sheep was tied;
The butcher’s knife in blood was dyed;
The patient flock, in silent fright,
From far beheld the horrid sight;A savage Boar, who near them stood,
Thus mocked to scorn the fleecy brood.
“All cowards should be served like you.
See, see your murderer is in view;”“With purple hands and reeking knife
He strips the skin yet warm with life:
Your quartered sires, your bleeding dams,
The dying bleat of harmless lambs.“You should call for revenge, O stupid race!”
Yet the heart that wants revenge is base,
I think,” an ancient Ram replies;
“We have no terror in our eyes,“Yet think us not of soul so tame,
that no repeated wrongs inflame;
not Insensible of every ill,
just because we lack Boar tusks to kill.“Know: Those who violence do pursue
Give to themselves the vengeance due,
For in these massacres they find
The two chief plagues that waste mankind.”
You did it! ☺ All the way through, beginning to end! And it did not even hurt! Nor was it boring! Actually, I found the old poem to be very spiritual, wise, and deep.
And here comes some more obscure sayings that you likely would never have come across in your entire life had you not made the infinitely wise choice to read this book! ☺
And yes, I am intentionally getting in a lot of smiley faces now, while I still can, before we get into the most tragic section of this chapter.
GEORGE T. ANGELL, 1823 – 1909
In one of his lectures, Angell wrote:
I am sometimes asked “Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?” I answer: “I am working at the roots.”
Get it? If not, read it again and ponder it like one would a Zen Buddhist koan. No smiley face here because I am very serious!
Well, okay: ☺
The next one is truly obscure but also truly PROFOUND:
GEORGE S. ARUNDALE, 1878 – 1945
In his book, The Night Bell, Arundale writes:
The world stands at a parting of the ways and those who suffer know this with deeply anxious hearts. One way leads to destruction. It is the way of the tolerance of cruelty, if not the active engagement in it.
It is the way of hunting for sport, the way of vivisection, the way of killing for self-adornment, the way of killing animals for food, the way of making slaves of animals without thought for their happiness and well-being. This is the way the world has been treading.
The other way leads to salvation. It is the way of harmlessness, the way of the recognition of brotherhood with all creatures, the way of tenderness and compassion, the way of service and not of selfishness.
Besides famous vegetarians, I am introducing you to many relatively unknown animal rights activists to demonstrate that we have existed through the centuries, even in times and places where you would not have expected it, beyond the handful of well-known examples.
Hey, I have a question for y’all: Did you know that both Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein were vegetarians and into Ahimsa and animal rights? It is true, and I will prove it:
THOMAS A. EDISON, 1847 – 1931
Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
— Harper’s Magazine, 1890
ALBERT EINSTEIN, 1879 – 1955
It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.
— Letter to Vegetarian Watchtower, 1930
ERNEST BELL, 1851 – 1933
This next excerpt is a compilation of quotations from Ernest Bell’s excellent, Summer School Papers. It is exceptionally good.
Vegetarianism is not a fad. It is a great and essential part of the religion of humanity. It is a step into a higher, because a less selfish, plane of life.
It makes progress possible, and both individual and social development is at present seriously blocked by the meat habit and all that it implies and involves.
As long as we treat other living, sensitive creatures with like feelings as ours only as carcasses for the market, and meat to be consumed, we must shut our eyes to the real kinship of all living things, and thus lose an essential factor in learning to understand, even in some degree, this mysterious world in which we find ourselves.
Let us not think that [vegetarianism] is the end in itself. It is a means only to the end, and we must not be content to be vegetarians only. The end is the cultivation of the universal feeling of brotherhood, on which it rests, not towards animals only, but also towards all mankind…. Our treatment of our fellow-humans is largely reflected from our behavior towards the sub-human races.
As long as our ethics in this matter are based on barbaric cruelty and selfish tyranny it will forever be well-nigh impossible to attain a high and just social morality….
Hitherto, education has aimed almost exclusively at educating the head, while the heart has been almost entirely forgotten.
The essential point of education should not be mathematics, science or languages – all good things in their way – but the development of character, the working out of the savage still in us, and the evolution of the qualities which make for sympathy and justice.
To attain this end, nothing is better in the case of children, than the awakening in them of a feeling of interest and love for animals.
