This too [the attribution of physical characteristics such as wings to the angels] will be a wonder in the eyes of the literalists, and they will think that in this too there is form, and the matter is not [to be taken] according to its literal meaning. They do not understand that the literal sense (peshat) and the symbolic (remez) are one thing like the soul and the body, for the one is the image and likeness of the other. If the soul would change its limbs from the limbs of the body, of necessity the former could not be clothed in the latter. A small vessel cannot contain a larger one; and if the latter goes inside the former, it cannot go inside with all its parts. In this manner the literal meaning of Scripture (peshatei ha torah) must be like the soul of the Torah and its inwardness (nishmat ha torah u penimiyutah) for the body is the image of the soul. It is also necessary that the inwardness be something spiritual, for if not it would have no need to be clothed, as [it follows from] the way of the literalists who explain the beginning of the Torah.

Translated by Elliot Wolfson in- “Beautiful Maiden Without Eyes- Peshat and Sod in Zoharic Hermeneutics.” In The Midrashic imagination – Jewish exegesis, thought, and history. Edited by Michael Fishbane, Albany – State University of New York Press, 1993, pp. 155-203.