THE OCCULT SIGNIFICANCE OF BLOOD

the devil is hostile to it, but rather because he desires to gain power over it.

Now, there is a remarkable perception underlying this passage, namely, that he who gains power over a man’s blood gains power over the man, and that blood is “a very special fluid” original: "ein ganz besonderer Saft." This is a famous quote from Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust. because it is that about which, so to speak, the real fight must be waged, when it comes to a struggle concerning the human being between good and evil.

All those things which have come down to us in the legends and myths of various nations, and which touch upon human life, will in our day undergo a peculiar transformation with regard to the whole conception and interpretation of human nature. The age is past in which legends, fairy-tales, and myths were looked upon merely as expressions of the childlike fancy of a people. Indeed, the time has even gone by when, in a half-learned, half-childlike way, it was the fashion to allude to legends as the poetical expression of a nation’s soul.

Now, this so-called “poetic soul” of a nation is nothing but the product of learned red-tape red-tape: here referring to rigid, academic over-simplification or "dry" intellectualism; for this kind of red-tape exists just as much as the official variety. Anyone who has ever looked into the soul of a people is quite well aware that he is not dealing with imaginative fiction or anything of the kind, but with some—