Scorpion
animal · 7 works · 10 mentions · 11 anchored passages
scorpion · the scorpion · العقرب · ʻaqrab · Paiśeya · Paiśī · Peśa · Umm Yaqẓān · a scorpion · al-ʿaqrab
in the texts
Atharvaveda (Paippalāda)
A venomous scorpion directly addressed and stripped of its potency throughout a dedicated hymn.
Of the virulence-stripped scorpion that crawls downward and approaches — I have consumed all its venom;
There is no potency in your claws, none in your head, nor yet in your middle.
the scorpion's venom is rendered powerless!
Ansāb al-ʻArab al-qudamāʼ
The scorpion, totem of Senegambian tribes who trust it will not sting them.
they are confident that the venomous scorpion passes over the body of one of them and does him no harm.
And with them Umm Ḥubayn is the locust, Umm ʻAwf the dove, Umm Mahdī the hen, Umm Ḥafṣ the hoopoe, Abū al-Mayt the dung-beetle, Abū al-Ṣarāt the louse, Umm ʻUqbah the serpent and Umm Yaqẓān the scorpion — and so on.
Kitāb al-Safīnah al-Nūḥīyah fī al-sakīnah al-rūḥīyah
The scorpion, whose sting the author attributes not to present want but to an imagined anticipated harm it seeks to repel.
And the scorpion, the snake, the wolf and the leopard do harm only upon encounter, whereas man harms the near by striking and reviling and the far by backbiting and talebearing.
So the wolf and the leopard do harm in seeking what they need in the present, and the snake and the scorpion do harm for what they imagine they will need in the outcome, because they imagine something harmful and repel it.
In it is the greed of the dung-beetle and the pig, the ruinousness of the wolf and the leopard, the harmfulness of the scorpion and the snake, the lust of the cock and the ass, and the craving of the camel and the ox in eating;
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.
al-Saʻādah fī falsafat al-akhlāq
A scorpion, figure of a stinging disposition.
So beware, O man, of being a thicket within your own frame, holding a snake that strikes and a scorpion that stings, a leopard that tears and a camel that nurses rancour, a dog that dodges and a hare that turns coward before the truth, thorns and thistles that hurt, a lion that preys, and an ape with no portion but mimicry.
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.
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.
Let the scorpion still drive at us, brandishing a homicide God;