Book excerpt: Renowned esoteric author Manly P. Hall examines worldwide and age-old myths and symbolism of various creatures across the globe. The creatures inhabiting the water, air, and earth were held in veneration by all races of antiquity. Realizing that visible bodies are only symbols of invisible forces, the ancients worshiped the Divine Power through the lower kingdoms of Nature. Fishes, insects, animals, reptiles, and birds appear in the religious symbolism of nearly all nations, because the forms and habits of these creatures and the media in which they exist, closely relate them to the various generative and germinative powers of Nature, which were considered as prima-facie evidence of divine omnipresence.