Thursday, March 18, 2010

Deification

"Deification is the ultimate distorting mirror that man has held up to the horse in our shared history. While the ancient elevation of the horse to the status of god is hardly a tradition that endures to affect modern-day attitudes toward the horse, it is nonetheless a reflection of the intense emotions that the horse was –and still is—capable of evoking. When the ancients were overwhelmed they found an outlet for their feelings in religious and magical terms; in our more competitive age we are perhaps more likely to impute our motives more crassly, for instance in wishing to believe that our horses love to win ribbons at horse shows. We may not literally worship horses anymore, yet the religious awe that the horse once evoked is testimony to a basic inability to see straight on this subject, which endures."
- Stephen Budiansky, The Nature of Horses

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