(Wholesome picture, but really for our purposes this symbolizes something like the the Ladder of Divine Ascent icon, which makes this real weird)
So I've been reading St. Gregory of Nyssa's treatise on the Life of Moses (which is EXCELLENT, by the way) and listening to some podcasts on symbolism and whatnot (Peterson, Pageau, etc.), and I'm fascinated by the relations of various animals to the Christian. Christ is the lion and the lamb dwelling together, we are little lambs who follow the Good Shepherd, the demons surround us like wolves and Satan like a lion, we are fishes drawn up by the great fisherman, Christ is the pelican who sacrifices His body for His kin, and both Christ and we are like are worms (caterpillars) that enter into death and come out gloriously radiant as butterflies who dwell in heavenly places.
However, there were two animals that I'm mulling over right now: the frog and the turtle.
Gregory relates the plague of the proliferation of frogs with the dwelling demons. Frogs belong neither to land nor sea, they have a sort of slimy verminous quality to them, and they are born in the water, symbolizing chaos. In the same way, the demons like to pervert the natural order, as seen in the cases of things like transgenderism, which seeks to take a somewhat rightly ordered thing (ie. the man or woman) and make them into something that is not, something that often ends up being neither completely man nor completely woman, like the eunuchs of pagan religions (happy pride month). The same is true of frogs as well as classical monsters, like the centaur, satyr, chimera, or mermaid. They are often not entirely alien to us, like those of the Lovecraftian variety (though that would be interesting to ponder at another time), but they are a kind of extreme other in taking up the space between two worlds--the wilderness and civilization, land and sea, docility and ferocity, you name it. In addition, they also take part in the same natural grotesqueness and absurdity which the demons do in their wiles. They are spirits of chaos, promoting irrationality and absurdity in favor of the corruption of the Lord's gifts to men. This chaos is manifested in the symbolism of water, which the frogs are born into and in which they most often dwell. Like smaller creatures, we must be on our guard that we do not follow their song and become stuck to their tail lest we be dragged into their maw and into the murky depths below.
The contrary symbol, then, I would propose, is that of the turtle. They are not born into chaos but into order, just as man was in the beginning. However, these same turtles find themselves with the natural predisposition towards the water and will either find themselves succumbing to the chaos of their own whims in the sea or will become the feast of the birds (which could be angelic or demonic symbolism, depends on your view of the infant). However, there are two different kinds of turtles in this system. Some, in their descent into chaos, shed their shells, that thing that makes them really a turtle, and become like the frogs, breathing in discord with every stroke. The others, however, keep their home on their back, that is, bear paradise, which is the Church and Christ's body itself, in their bodies. This home is able to protect them from harm and though it appears heavy and unwieldy, the creature remains fully able to bear it, like our Lord's easy yoke and light burden. In addition, the frog eats other creatures, be they bugs, fish, or even other frogs. The turtle, however, finds a garden beneath the sea from which he is able to eat bountifully. In a similar way, thought Eden is drowned and the serpent has dragged the life-giving vine into the sea, the Christian has been equipped with strong lungs, that is, patience and endurance in this life to resist temptation; powerful limbs, which are faith, hope, and love, so that we can run the race deeper into the sea; and finally, the aforementioned strong shell, which protects us from the enemies that assail us on our way to the paradise on the other side of chaos.
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