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Animal Symbolism: Animal Symbolism

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A fair amount of search has been done on Animal symbolism.
John Robinson describes the Bull and Cow Bison of Tuc D’Audoubert cave, which clearly defines their purpose, “The Bison are incredibly beautiful, powerful and immensely full of religious purpose. The cow is ready and the bull is scenting the air. The act of conception is about to be fulfilled, a new life is about to be created” (The Bison of Tuc D’Audoubert).
Ante Skrobonja, IvicaKontosic, et al. (2001) in their paper titled “Domestic animals as symbols and attributes in Christian iconography: Some examples from Croatian sacral art” throw light on the symbolism of domestic animals. They observed that some domestic animals including Bull appear accompanying about seventy Christian saints. The reason and explanation given of their association are mostly in the practical relation i.e., the way animal serves human and helps him like cow and sheep feed him, Bull, horse and donkey carry his burdens. In some cases the animals are attributed to saints because of similarity of names, St. Gall became the protector of poultry as ‘Gallus’ in Latin means ‘Cock’. Animals are also discussed as symbols of ethics and morality. According to them the Bull is associated with St. Sylvester who revived a perished bull, St. Blandin and as brass bull in flames it appears with St. Eustace to name a few.
In a research paper “The calf in bronze age Cretan art and society” Eleanor Loughlin (2002) concludes that there is a complex relationship
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