Deity Appearances To Animals in Religious Lore
Human religious lore includes ancient literary recordings of deities appearing to animals, usually with the animals able to relate the experience to humans using human speech:
- In numerous creation stories, a deity or deities speak with many kinds of animals, often prior to the formation of dry land on earth.
- In the Hindu Ramayana, the monkey leader Hanuman is informed by deities, and usually consciously addressed by them.
- In Chinese mythology, the Monkey King speaks with bodhisattvas, buddhas, and a host of heavenly characters.
Read more about this topic: Theophany
Famous quotes containing the words deity, appearances, animals, religious and/or lore:
“Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Truth has scarce done so much good in the world as the false appearances of it have done hurt.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“For the time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Each religious sect has its own physiognomy. The Methodists have acquired a face; the Quakers, a face; the nuns, a face. An Englishman will pick out a dissenter by his manners.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The lore of our fathers is a fabric of sentences.... It is a pale gray lore, black with fact and white with convention. But I have found no substantial reasons for concluding that there are any quite black threads in it, or any white ones.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)