Scorpion
animal · 4 works · 6 mentions · 7 anchored passages
scorpion · Paiśeya · Paiśī · Peśa · a scorpion · little beasts · the beast
in the texts
Atharvaveda (Paippalāda)
A venomous scorpion directly addressed and stripped of its potency throughout a dedicated hymn.
the scorpion's venom is rendered powerless!
There is no potency in your claws, none in your head, nor yet in your middle.
Of the virulence-stripped scorpion that crawls downward and approaches — I have consumed all its venom;
Stromata
A scorpion used in an anecdote illustrating animal cooperation and communication.
And they say that in Libya a scorpion, if it cannot reach to strike a man, goes off and returns with several others, and, fastening one to another like a chain, in this way contrives to get the start in carrying out the plot — the irrational animals surely not using some unseen nod, nor indicating to one another by gesture, but, I think, by their own dialect.
Rigveda
Creature whose poison is declared powerless by the kuṣumbhaka.
'The poison of the scorpion is without power — without power is your poison, O scorpion.
Scorpiace
A venomous creature whose sting, tail, and seasonal aggression furnish the extended metaphor for heretics who attack the faith of Christians, especially during persecution.
Let the scorpion still drive at us, brandishing a homicide God;
So that venomous string of knots in the scorpion, the slender little vein within, rising in an arched assault, draws tight at the top its hooked sting on the principle of an engine of torture.
For now we are pricked concerning the will of God, and the scorpion redoubles its blow, denying this will, accusing this will, that he may either insinuate another God, whose will this is not, or nonetheless destroy our own, whose will is such, or altogether deny the will of God, if he cannot deny God himself.