When confronted with a great animal power, whether in the shape of an actual animal or an animated image, we in our culture rarely bow down to it, sing to it, or dance in its honor, nor do we even run for cover.
Rather, our usual move is to interpret. We wave the hermeneutic wand to make the force go away by transforming it into a meaning. Our modern propitiatory rite is to look up “bull” in the symbol dictionary. Bull dissolves into “moon,” “father,” “fertility,” “thunder” … and takes on names from Gaelic to Hebrew to Latin to Urdu accruing ever more mythic tales as we research.
Civilized men and women in institutes of humanities and culture have met the bull with their own sort of bull: what they say about the bull. Myth, after all, is what is said about what is said: the bull about the bull.
— Imagination Is Bull, Animal Presences, UE 9