By Miss M. Beatrice Burtt
From The Animals' Champion (October-December 1970)
At this sacred season of the year, hearts and minds are lifted to a
consciousness of rejoicing and anticipation in Thanksgiving for the
sacred Festival of Christmas in the fullest significance of its meaning
and purpose. It is a time when we listen for the Angelic songs, the
Archangel Gabriel sounding through the Silver Trumpet the coming of the
King of Glory, a reign of Peace. We are able at this time, to sense the
vibrations and intonations of the approaching atmospheres of joy, hope
and triumph in the great mystery which lies behind this sacred Festival.
We seek to celebrate in consciousness the coming of a great event which
should have saved the world, the coming of a Prince of Peace, the
descent of a God to earth, the manifestation of a Divine Love so Mighty,
so Majestic and yet so Lowly as to be infinitely near to human hearts in
intimate consciousness.
Christmas is a sacred Festival
celebrated all over the world, in every home and village, in town and
country and in the great cities of every continent, in great
Ecclesiastical centres, schools, colleges and in the village churches.
Great Oratorios are sung in every land and language, and High Mass
is celebrated with much Pageantry and Ritual, Adoration and Worship for
the coming of a Reign of Peace, Love, Compassion and Infinite
Tenderness.
Great business houses exploit the sacred Festival
and its rising tide of human emotion and unconscious deep Thanksgiving,
making of this time a commercial carnival of the material nature,
bringing down the Spiritual Festival to a material level.
In the
symbolism of the decorated home, the evergreen ritual of recurring
remembrance and celebration, and in the heart of the tiny child there is
still wonder and a sense of awe and beauty as they gather round the
"Tree of Life" with its reflected lights and colour and the mysterious
gifts glistening in silver radiance.
Some Christmas Cards hold
the vision of a manger depicted in sublime simplicity with the tiny
creatures drawing magnetically out of the woods and fields to worship at
the shrine of beauty and purity, assured of their safety within the
stable, whilst the patient oxen gaze with docile awe upon the wonder of
Life and Light incarnate, taking their place in the great Redemptive
scheme.
Yet, at this time of great redemptive promise, when
Life, Light and Love descend upon the earth in human consciousness,
sufficient to bring the urge to rejoice and give thanks for a source of
hope and security in the great Realities, it is the time of great
darkness for the innocent creatures of our family on earth.
With
the atmospheres of the earth darkened by the tragic cries of the
creatures, it is as though a great wave of violence had descended, a
tragic crime deliberately wrought upon the earth, a great war declared
upon the innocent, the inhuman slaughter of millions of sentient lives
as these lives are taken from them to make carnival for the celebration
of a great Cosmic event which was to bring peace to the world and to all
the children, human and sub-human upon this planet.
The
blindness and inhumanity of man stands revealed in all its horror when
millions of innocent sentient creatures are sacrificed, suffering as
they do fear, pain and dread, their lifestream poured forth to satisfy
the fallen tastes and desires of men and women at this time, the untamed
and uncivilised savage elements still within the consciousness of an
unthinking, so-called human society.
The gaping wounds, the
tortured limbs, cry out to the Heavens for mercy and pity. Even the
birds whose songs mingle with the great symphony of nature in the
Heavens, are shot down and their joyous flight curtailed, filling the
air now with their minor lament of sorrow, their winged flight giving
joy to man, brought down or caged in imprisonment.
The blood
veil over the earth at this time was seen by Dr. Anna Kingsford in her
deep sensing of all that does happen at times like these in preparation
for what should be a Christ Mass of rejoicing, Peace, and Hope.
War itself will never cease whilst man makes war upon the creatures as
he does in this Festival time.
So much for the appalling
sacrifices for the celebration of the Sacred Festival. But what of the
sacrifices which are shut away and hidden in the physiological
laboratories? What of the untold millions of sentient creatures that are
killed - or worse still - tortured in the so-called name of science in
the belief that such sacrifices are necessary for the establishment of
the health of mankind?
Let us understand clearly that there is
no advance in the science of health or life or any other level of human
functioning by the breaking of moral laws - not ever - for there are
immutable laws by which, if we obey them, we become immune to disease
and disaster, and to disobey these laws must inevitably bring resultants
of a tragic nature, as seen in the ever increasing number of diseases,
hospitals, mental homes, keeping pace as they do with the 4,000,000
experiments each year on live creatures. It would seem that the laws of
compensation ever outwork themselves.
To our readers there is
little need to write of the exploitation of wild life in this and other
lands, the transportation of glorious birds and wild animals captured
for sacrifice - monkeys taken from their forest land and packed closely
like goods, transported through the air to these physiological
laboratories for experimentation. Also what of the circus animals and
their training? If it is proved that this is done without cruelty, it is
still an unnatural life exploited for commercial gain, and in the wild
life - the scene of hunting, shooting, and now vandalism. We are aware
also of the cruelty of blood sports - hunting and shooting, and now even
a section of the youth of the nation are deliberately indulging in such
vandalism as the torturing of the wild life even in the urban Parks.
But let us rejoice too in the knowledge that the scene is changing,
for enlightened men and women are becoming informed and aware of the
tragic picture above, aware too of the appalling truth that this cruelty
and slaughter is entirely unnecessary. We do not need to take the life
of the creatures that we might live, for it is proved that we are able
to build the new race of men and women on the abundant provision of
nature giving an immunity to disease and destruction of human tissue. It
is seen that we have wasted centuries of time and millions of lives
experimentally and entirely unnecessarily.
There is a rising
volume of thought all over the world, a positive consciousness towards a
redemptive creative love in all its sacrificial passion of being to
clear away this evil shadow upon the earth, a rising volume of powerful
thought moving as a mighty Fulcrum, lifting away the evil and tragedy,
the strain upon humanity, that we and the creatures may live again in a
purified redemptive atmosphere, "All life is one." This great mystery of
life is in the creatures as in man for the creatures are highly
organised, sensitive and sentient beings, and part of the great organic
octave of creation.
Illustrious names known to us all - Mahatma
Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, Dr. Robert Perks, Dr. Beddow Bayly, and all
the great company of Poets, Seers and Messengers of this and other ages
- Shelley, Browning, Whitman, all declare in unmistakable language born
of experience, scientific learning and vision, that "all life is one"
and in strong declamatory utterance "These things shall be, a loftier
race shall rise."
Can we conceive of a world set free from
cruelty, callous indifference, fear and dread? A world of peace, the
blood veil lifted, a reign of compassion and pity, even of joy - the
song of the birds again as they make their winged flight without fear,
upwards, their songs joining with the Angelic choiring "Glory to God in
the Highest" and the "Cattle upon a Thousand Hills" at peace, the whole
earth cleared of the tragedy of torture and despair.
Men and
women set free from blood guiltiness of a mistaken practice, the human
race once more assuming its Divinity as "sons of God" who is utterly
compassionate, all Love and sublimely pitiful. A God as sung in the
great oratorios, "His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the
ever-lasting Father, the Prince of Peace"; the Good Shepherd depicted in
sacred art with the Lamb carried in His arms.
We need in these
days a glorious crusade of manifesting Love in all its power and
strength, a mighty wave of great creative effort to bring in this Reign
of Peace, not only for the human race, but for the creatures within our
care. It is only then that we can sing in deep Thanksgiving, "O Come, O
Come, Emmanuel."
The world is changing before our eyes, we are
living through a most significant and tremendously important epoch.
History, is being made rapidly; old conditions are being swept away;
there are advances everywhere and on every level of human life, art,
science, medicine, exploration of space. Is not now the time when we
could sweep away the experimental laboratories of vivisection and
replace them by clinical research and investigation of a high order,
extensive clinical observations re-established free from the hells of
blood, terror, torture and despair, the vivisectors themselves freed
from the diabolical atmospheres, atmospheres far more terrible than the
Infernos of Dante?
Man himself despite the wonders of science
remains the unexplored mystery of the individuation of universal life
and consciousness. We need to study man in all his complex and highly
evolved constitution as a physical, mental and spiritual being and
approach him with some sense of reverence and responsibility.
The physicians of the future must be the physiological physicians - the
priest-physicians, undertaking the clean, clear clinical research into
the causes of disease and despair, the hidden causes of conflict. There
is arising in our midst a body of men and women, the true physicians,
priests, seers with illumined understanding, deep intuitive penetration,
able to diagnose the burdens imposed upon human and creature life, ready
to abandon the old worn-out devastating practices. "The light of
knowledge in their eyes" a new open purified atmosphere in which to
work, bringing as it must deeper wisdom, greater clarity of thought,
that divine spark of genius which brings the emergence of a solution,
the cure, and the secret of the re-generation of the life forces within
us all.
Can this time of the sacred Festival of Christmas be a
time in the history of man when with supreme strength and courage he
slams the doors of the abyss of evil, torture and darkness, and opens
the gates on a new vision of the glorious universal life of which we are
a part and are an individuation.
A vision of a world released
from fear. Men and women of true spiritual culture and stature of being
in the advance guard of our civilisation.
The opportunity is
with us now in the rapidly changing conditions, opportunities which
bring responsibility. Can we take up this challenge with dedication and
power and take command? For such dedication will bring as it must a
divine ratification. The cry of the Angel Gabriel ever reverberates
"Unto you - unto you", this day of opportunity.
NB. The Animals'
Champion was an animal rights publication which was issued by The World
League against Vivisection and for the Protection of Animals between the
1920s and 70s. The society exists today as the World League for
Protection of Animals http://www.wlpa.org/
See also:
Christmas
Contrasts
http://www.christianvegetarianarchive.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/christmas-contrasts.html
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