The Seba library treats Donkey in 8 passages, across 8 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Jung, C.G., Harris, Russ).
the festum asinorum, which, so far as I know, was celebrated mainly in France… the ass procession went right into the church… the whole congregation brayed, that is, they all went ‘Y-a’ like a donkey
Jung identifies the Feast of the Ass as evidence of the trickster’s survival in Christian liturgy, where collective braying expresses the irrepressible animal-instinctual stratum of the psyche.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959thesis
The same is true of the ass. Balaam’s ass is a good example. The Middle Ages were very much occupied with it… animals might perhaps even know much more than man, for example, about the future.
Jung reads Balaam’s ass as a paradigmatic image of the unconscious exceeding conscious knowledge, particularly regarding foreknowledge, grounding the donkey in his broader theory of animal symbolism and the compensatory psyche.
, Dream Interpretation Ancient and Modern: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1941, 2014thesis
if you use that stick a lot, you end up with a pretty miserable donkey. On the other hand, if you motivate your donkey with carrots, you end up with a happy, healthy donkey
Harris deploys the donkey as a therapeutic metaphor to distinguish self-punishing motivation from compassionate self-encouragement, making the animal a pedagogical tool for the self-compassion debate within ACT.
, ACT Made Simple: An Easy-To-Read Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, 2009thesis
A mother donkey is lying beside the road, sides heaving, eyes glazed in helplessness
Signell presents a corrective dream image of an exhausted mother donkey as a warning symbol from the unconscious signalling dangerous self-neglect in the dreamer.
, Wisdom of the Heart: Working with Womens Dreams, 1991supporting
He tied his donkey to an old tree of life and drank something out of his gourd… Suddenly he heard the rustling of leaves near the temple, and a cool wind passed over his face (the famous wind which announces ghosts).
Von Franz situates the donkey in a Chinese fairy tale as a companion to the hero at a haunted threshold, associating the animal with liminal encounter between the human and spirit worlds.
, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, 1974supporting
Hyperboreans, donkey sacrifice, 69; and Delphi, 130
Burkert records the donkey as a sacrificial animal in Hyperborean ritual connected to Apollo and Delphi, placing it within the archaic sacrificial economy analysed in Homo Necans.
, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, 1972supporting
the relationship between Rocinante and Sancho’s donkey or that between the donkey and Sancho himself
Auerbach notes Sancho’s donkey as one axis of the relational network in Don Quijote, using the animal as a marker of the earthy, material register against which Quixotic idealism plays.
, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953aside
ὄνος ‘donkey’… because of the proverbial stubbornness of the donkey
Beekes notes the Greek etymological tradition linking the personal name Memnon to the appellative for donkey through the animal’s proverbial stubbornness, providing philological grounding for classical donkey symbolism.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside