Other Creations
A Saint Bernard, despite its name, is unwelcome in church. Any  dog, cat, sheep, bovine, terrapin, or bird clearly faces this same  prohibition. Modern religion seems to be for humans only, and the  absence of animals in our places of worship is taken for granted. It is  as if we have built glorious temples to zoophobia, showing that we  prefer to worship not in the richness of creation, but rather in what  Yeats called the "artifice of eternity," the purely human spaces of our  own making.Or do we? What would human spirituality be without  animals? The Bible portrays Satan as a snake, Jesus as the lamb of God,  the Holy Spirit as a dove. Cathedrals team with stone birds, stags, and  other animal images. We express our moral ideas through animal stories,  whether the Buddhist Jataka, Aesop's fables, or Orwell'sAnimal  Farm. At the prehistoric heart of humanity's attempts to articulate  spiritual sentiments, we find the caves of Lascaux and images not of  white-robed deities, but of the giant beasts of the Ice  Age.Other Creationsdetails the pervasive effect of animal  life on the human psyche, and ties it all together from past to present  in a fascinating study which is unlike any yet published. What is most  impressive is that as beautiful and evocative as animals are, they do  not simply decorate our spiritual lives but form the very texture of  human spirituality. Indeed far from being dead in ancient religion they  are very much alive today as immensely significant icons of popular  culture, as seen in phenomena such as stuffed animals, Disney movies,  and sports team mascots.