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Old 16-04-2012, 06:24 PM
Reverend Keith Reverend Keith is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Occultist
Zechariah 5:9 two women as agents of evil (partly because the stork is an unclean bird, Lev 11:19), Many think it translates as the temptation remember women were temptresses to man and made him fall in the very beginning by feeding him from the Tree of knowledge.

There is no indication that the winged women are agents of evil. In fact, once the angel has sealed wickedness up in the basket, the two winged women carry the evil contained in the basket away from Jerusalem and back toward Babylon. They appear to be doing God's work in removing evil from the newly re-settled land.

The stork is not unclean because it is "evil". In fact it's name is "chaciydah" means the kind or merciful ones. And it was highly regarded as a metaphor of piety, maternal duty, mercy and sacrifice - because of the tradition that it was particular kind and self-sacrificial toward its young, and its own elderly. This symbolism persisted well into the middle ages, and is possibly why storks came to be associated with babies. I have an old Catholic missal that contains a drawing of a stork piercing it's breast with it's beak in order to feed its babies with its own blood - the drawing being used as a symbol of Christ.

The stork was put into the lists of "unclean" birds probably because it was reputed to dine on snakes and carrion. In fact, it was so highly regarded for ridding an area of unwanted snakes that in some ancient locals, it was a capital crime to kill one. The symbolism of destroying snakes makes stork wings an entirely appropriate symbol for two angels tasked with removing evil from a location.

So rather than being a symbol of evil, the presence of stork wings on female angels would symbolize high and particularly feminine virtues.
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