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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.
The serpent, or snake, is one of the oldest and most widespread mythological symbols.The word is derived from Latin serpens, a crawling animal or snake.Snakes have been associated with some of the oldest rituals known to humankind [1] [2] and represent dual expression [3] of good and evil.
The symbol of perhaps the widest distribution is the Ichthys (Greek: ΙΧΘΥΣ, fish), used since the second century as an acronym for "Ίησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ" (Iesous Christos, Theou Huios, Soter), meaning "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour". [2]
(In the New Testament as well, ravens are used by Jesus as an illustration of God's provision in Luke 12:24.) Philo of Alexandria (first century AD), who interpreted the Bible allegorically, stated that Noah's raven was a symbol of vice, whereas the dove was a symbol of virtue (Questions and Answers on Genesis 2:38).
The purpose of the ritual is the atonement of the man's sins as the animal symbolically receives them; Jewish scholars in the ninth century wrote that, as symbolized by the Hebrew word gever or geber [69] meaning both "man" and "rooster", the rooster may serve as a religious vessel in place of man.
The Horses of Neptune, illustration by Walter Crane, 1893.. Horse symbolism is the study of the representation of the horse in mythology, religion, folklore, art, literature and psychoanalysis as a symbol, in its capacity to designate, to signify an abstract concept, beyond the physical reality of the quadruped animal.
Life on Earth would be so dull without animals. Lucky for us, there are more than 8 million different species of them on the planet, many of which we might never encounter in our lifetime. From ...
The ouroboros is often interpreted as a symbol for eternal cyclic renewal or a cycle of life, death and rebirth; the snake's skin-sloughing symbolises the transmigration of souls. The snake biting its own tail is a fertility symbol in some religions: the tail is a phallic symbol and the mouth is a yonic or womb-like symbol. [9]