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Fish are cold blooded creatures, hence do not course with the same passions as do warm-blooded mammals. With few exceptions they could be eaten, But among the animals we find all carnivorous ones excluded: they were a type of greed and selfishness: living on others. Also some like the horse and camel which were especially adaptable to man’s service, were special wards of more mature spirits, and hence not to be eaten. We find the same exclusion among the birds of prey. In their realm (birds especially symbolize spirits) were also the carrion eaters – which typify the UNclean spirits.
No doubt, some of such meats were far less wholesome for man than fish, fowl, mutton and beef; but the truly important factor was the SYMBOLOGY involved for, God conforms ALL unto the Central Pattern.
Blood was not to be eaten. So far as we know, the blood of a healthy animal is ‘quite wholesome food. But He said that ‘the life is in the blood.’ HE might have added: Much soul substance permeates the blood; eating thereof you derive – in a measure – that which is not your own, and that at the expense of another. But the people could not have understood that: in fact, to many it would have been a temptation to appropriate other soul-life.
