When a human being kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice.
In many ways, astrology, numerology and palmistry are corruptions of the occult because they have attempted to make a practice out of something that is essentially imaginative.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that practices like astrology, numerology, and palmistry distort the true essence of the occult by commercializing and trivializing imaginative concepts.
Isaac Bashevis Singer expresses a critical view of astrology, numerology, and palmistry, suggesting that these practices have taken elements of the occult, which are fundamentally imaginative and symbolic, and turned them into commercialized practices. This implies that true understanding of the occult requires depth and creativity, rather than superficial methods that aim to predict the future or provide answers. In essence, Singer cautions against reducing imaginative experiences to mere formulas or systems.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a debate about the validity of astrology in modern times.
More from Isaac Bashevis Singer
All quotes βThere will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.
Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.
As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.
Sometimes love is stronger than a man's convictions.
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.
Similar quotes
One of the most persistent ambiguities that we face is that everybody talks about peace as a goal. However, it does not take sharpest-eyed sophistication to discern that while everbody talks about peace, peace has become practically nobody's business among the power-wielders. Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the things that make for peace.
To practice virtue is to selflessly offer assistance to others, giving without limitation one's time, abilities, and possessions in service, whenever and wherever needed, without prejudice concerning the identity of those in need.
Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. ... Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them.
Thus we arrive at the singular conclusion that of all the information passed by our cultural assets it is precisely the elements which might be of the greatest importance to us and which have the task of solving the riddles of the universe and of reconciling us to the sufferings of life -- it is precisely those elements that are the least well authenticated of any.
What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself.
Those who have a tolerable knowledge of human nature will not stand in need of such lights.