The Seba library treats Dove in 6 passages, across 6 authors (including Hillman, James, Onians, R B, Jung, Carl Gustav).
the doves are the emotions of images, the animal in the air, in the mind, the mind as winged animal; and they are the excitation and tenderness released by imagining.
Hillman argues that alchemical doves represent the affective dimension of imagination itself — neither raw emotion nor pure intellect, but the mediating power of fantasy, identified with the transcendent function and the active engagement of Diana's lunar images.
, Alchemical Psychology, 2010thesis
the Spirit as a dove descending upon [or 'into'] him. And a voice came out of the heavens: 'Thou art my beloved son; in thee I am well pleased'. And straightway the Spirit driveth him forth into the wilderness
Onians locates the Gospel dove within a broader ancient framework equating spirit with life-fluid, arguing that the dove at Christ's baptism embodies the material-pneumatic tradition in which spirit enters, animates, and subsequently drives the individual into confrontation with the wilderness.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
Also of gentleness, tameness, peacefulness (dove of Noah), simplicity ('simplices sicut columbae,' Matthew 10: 16; DV: 'guileless as doves'). Christ, too, is called a dove: 'The Lord Jesus was a dove... saying Peace be unto you.... Behold the dove, behold the green olive-bran
Jung enumerates the dove's symbolic attributes — guilelessness, peacefulness, simplicity — and traces its Christological application, situating it within the alchemical and theological networks of the Mysterium Coniunctionis.
, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955thesis
Immediately, the dove was transformed into a little girl, about eight years of age, with golden blond hair... the dove was back and spoke slowly in a human voice. 'Only in the first hours of the night can I transform myself into a human being, while the male dove is busy with the twelve dead.'
This active imagination sequence, reproduced in the Jung corpus, presents the dove as a shape-shifting figure capable of human manifestation, linking it to alchemical, apostolic, and zodiacal mysteries and demonstrating its function as an anima-like messenger between realms.
, Jung on Active Imagination, 1997supporting
the idea is probably that of a post-mortal, transfigured state, in which those who are saved follow the Lamb, as virgins (dove). (Cf. Apoc. 7:14 ... and 14: 4: 'Virgines enim sunt. Hi sequuntur Agnum')
Von Franz reads the dove in the Aurora Consurgens as symbolizing the transfigured, virginal soul that follows the Lamb — a post-mortal condition of salvific purity consonant with the alchemical albedo and the whitening of the spirit.
, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966supporting
Eurynome, having become pregnant of the serpent, changed herself into a dove, hovering over the sea. (The analogy of the image
Hoeller invokes the Pelasgian creation myth, in which the primordial goddess transforms into a dove hovering over the waters, establishing a pre-Christian, cosmogonic parallel to the Spirit-as-dove motif and linking it to the Great Mother tradition.
, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982supporting