Calf

Moses's anger waxed hot; and he, when he saw the people dancing before the Golden Bull-Calf smashed the very tablets of the Law… This image had remembrances in it not only of Apis and Egypt and Ishtar and Babylonia but of all the many gods and statues and images of all the other Mediterranean and Asian and African bulls and oxen and cows and steers and calves of all the surrounding heathen, pagan, polytheistic, animistic, iconophilic peoples

Hillman argues that the Golden Calf concentrates the entire suppressed theriomorphic sacred of the ancient world, making its destruction by Moses the founding act of Biblical iconoclasm against animal-religion.

Hillman, James, Animal Presences, 2008thesis

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the paradigm of this sin of preferring the created over the Creator is the confrontation between Moses, who like an eagle could look into the face of the highest, and the red or golden calf… The division between 'calf' and 'eagle' can lead to the division between nature and spirit, created and creator, as emphasized in the theologies of Paul and Augustine.

Hillman identifies the calf/eagle binary as the structural axis through which Pauline and Augustinian theology encodes the opposition between immanent animal-religion and transcendent spirit.

Hillman, James, Animal Presences, 2008thesis

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on the reverse there is a calf between two tall bundles of reed such as in this art always represent the gate to the precincts of a temple of the goddess. The calf is there for sacrifice and yet, as it were, safely within the womb.

Campbell interprets a Sumerian seal image in which the calf simultaneously occupies the position of sacrificial victim and womb-contained sacred life, linking the motif to the Christian birth-death amalgamation.

Campbell, Joseph, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962supporting

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I could not imagine how the stork could manage to carry a whole calf in its bill. Besides, the farmers said the cow calved, not that the stork brought the calf.

Jung recounts how the empirical reality of the calf's birth forced him as a child to abandon mythological explanations, marking a characteristic move from inherited narrative toward direct natural observation.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1963supporting

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Her mother replied, 'Yes, dear, but you are going to have to watch the calf being born.' From the calf being born to making cheese — Margaret Mead was taught as a child to do entire processes, from beginning, to middle, to end.

Sasportas uses the birth of the calf as an image of initiatory process-knowledge, illustrating how modern culture has severed itself from the natural rhythms of organic life.

Sasportas, Howard, The Twelve Houses: An Introduction to the Houses in Astrological Interpretation, 1985supporting

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in the shape of the Ram, the Bull, the Crab, the Lion, the Scorpion, the Fish, and so on — the signs of the Zodiac. The Egyptians represented the goddess Hathor as cow-headed, the god Amon as ram-headed… St. Luke has the ox, St. Mark the lion, and St. John the eagle.

Jung situates bovine imagery within the broad cross-cultural repertoire of theriomorphic symbolism linking zodiacal signs, Egyptian deity-forms, and the Evangelist emblems of Christian tradition.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Man and His Symbols, 1964aside

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LSD interacts directly with purified calf thymus DNA, probably by intercalation, causing conformational changes in the DNA.

Grof cites experimental data on LSD's biochemical interaction with calf thymus DNA in a purely technical pharmacological context unrelated to symbolic meaning.

Grof, Stanislav, LSD Psychotherapy: The Healing Potential of Psychedelic Medicine, 1980aside

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