The Seba library treats Flock in 7 passages, across 6 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, von Franz, Marie-Louise, Rudolf Ritsema, Stephen Karcher).
there is an obvious simultaneity between the flock of birds, in its traditional meaning, and the death of the husband. The psychic state… appears to be dependent on the external event.
Jung establishes the flock of birds as a synchronistic sign whose traditional mantic significance coincides with actual death, arguing that the woman's unconscious was already constellated by the event.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis
the lamb has always been an appropriate picture for the 'herd person,' the 'mass man' our gregarious side that makes us indiscriminately do exactly what all the others do no matter how stupid an action it is.
Von Franz uses the flock's panic-driven, cliff-following behaviour as the defining archetype of collective unconsciousness and the annihilation of individual judgment.
, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997thesis
Christ is the Shepherd and we are the sheep. This is a paramount relevant image in our religious tradition and one which has created something very destructive; namely, that… we have been taught by the Church that we should not think or have our own opinions, but just believe.
Von Franz indicts the shepherd-flock metaphor as a culturally institutionalized defence against individual thinking, tracing psychological passivity directly to its religious encoding.
, Puer Aeternus: A Psychological Study of the Adult Struggle with the Paradise of Childhood, 1970thesis
Disarray, LUAN: throw into disorder, mislay, confuse; out of place; discord, insurrection, anarchy. Flock, CH'UN: herd, group; people of same kind, friends, equals.
The I Ching concordance defines 'Flock' (CH'UN) as a technical term for social grouping of equals, whose integrity is threatened by Disarray, thus framing the flock as a principle of social cohesion.
, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994supporting
It was found stocked abundantly with cheeses, flocks of lambs and kids penned apart, milk pails, bowls of whey… the owner came in, shepherding his flocks.
Campbell's retelling of the Cyclops episode deploys the flock as a mythological marker of pastoral bounty that ironically frames the boundary between civilisation and monstrous otherness.
, Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume III, 1964supporting
There were some male sheep, rams, well nourished, thick and fleecy, handsome and large, with a dark depth of wool. Silently I caught these and lashed them together with pliant willow withes.
Lattimore's Odyssey passage presents the flock as a narrative instrument of cunning escape, the rams serving Odysseus's trickster resourcefulness against the Cyclops's pastoral power.
, Odyssey of Homer, 2009aside
ποιμνη [f.] 'herd, flock of sheep'… Denominative verb ποιμαίνω 'to be a herdsman, to herd, pasture'… nwu, -εος [n.] 'flock of sheep' (epic, Il.).
Beekes traces the Greek lexical family for 'flock' back to PIE *peh2- 'protect, keep', linking the pastoral management of flocks etymologically to the concept of guardianship.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside