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Locusts have represented greed, and more literally plague and destruction, while the fly has been used to indicate death and decay, and the grasshopper has indicated improvidence. The horsefly has been used from classical times to portray torment, appearing in a play by Aeschylus and again in Shakespeare 's King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra ...
These three states are delusion, also known as ignorance; greed or sensual attachment; and hatred or aversion. [1] [2] These three poisons are considered to be three afflictions or character flaws that are innate in beings and the root of craving, and so causing suffering and rebirth. [1] [3]
The art of the Middle Ages was mainly religious, reflecting the relationship between God and man, created in His image. The animal often appears confronted or dominated by man, but a second current of thought stemming from Saint Paul and Aristotle, which developed from the 12th century onwards, includes animals and humans in the same community of living creatures.
Meat eating was a status symbol, and animals were often cooked alive; Ryder writes that pigs were skewered alive on hot spits to improve the taste. He writes that there were nevertheless signs of tender feelings for animals in the poetry of Virgil (70–19 BCE), Lucretius (99–55 BCE), and Ovid (43 BCE–17 CE).
Animal examples of greed in literary observations are frequently the attribution of human motivations to other species. The dog-in-the-manger , or piggish behaviors are typical examples. Characterizations of the wolverine (whose scientific name (Gulo gulo) means "glutton") remark both on its outsized appetite, and its penchant for spoiling food ...
When the Great Spirit created all things, he kept them separate and stored them in cedar boxes. The Great Spirit gifted these boxes to the animals who existed before humans. When the animals opened the boxes all the things that comprise the world came into being. The boxes held such things as mountains, fire, water, wind, and seeds for all the ...
The spotted hyena is a sacred totem animal for some Pedi tribes, with the skin often being used as robes by chieftains and their bones as divining instruments. [8] According to the doctrine of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church , hyenas are unclean animals which represent sexual deviancy and lawlessness.
The symbolism which usually attaches to the various animals is derived for the most part from the bestiaries. Thus, for the lion, strength, vigilance, and courage; for the siren, voluptuousness; for the pelican, charity. The four animals which symbolize the leading characteristics of each of the Four Evangelists become more and more an ...