flies
The term ‘fly’ — encompassing the insect, the verb of flight, and the winged creature as symbol — occupies a remarkably wide semantic field across the depth-psychology corpus. Its most sustained treatment appears in Eliade’s shamanic scholarship, where magical flight functions as the definitive expression of ecstatic transcendence: the shaman’s ability to traverse cosmic registers, to become bird-like, signals initiation into a ‘spirit condition’ unavailable to ordinary consciousness. Hillman brings the fly down from these cosmic heights into the consulting room, where the buzzing insect in dreamwork carries an autonomous, penetrating quality — a persistent, unwanted awareness that refuses exclusion. The I Ching tradition (Wilhelm, Wang Bi) employs the flying bird as a directional oracle: flight that strives too high courts disaster, while flight that descends signals wisdom — an ancient warning against inflation. Zhuangzi’s Peng-bird frames cosmic flight as a question of scale and preparation, critiquing small understanding that cannot conceive of great journeys. The Icarus myth, handled by Dayton, provides depth psychology’s central cautionary narrative about flight as hubris. Von Franz treats the fly in its most diminished, disenchanted register — the experimental subject of a grotesque metamorphosis that literalizes the dangers of inferior intuition. Across these positions, ‘fly’ triangulates between transcendence, danger, and the insistent buzzing of unconscious content.
shamans and sorcerers are credited with power to fly, to cover immense distances in a twinkling, and to become invisible… in many cases shamanic vocation or initiation is directly connected with an ascent to the sky.
Eliade establishes magical flight as the defining shamanic power, directly linked to initiation and the ecstatic vocation, making the ability to fly the cardinal marker of access to non-ordinary reality.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
Because shamans can change themselves into ‘birds,’ that is, because they enjoy the ‘spirit’ condition, they are able to fly to the World Tree to bring back ‘soul-birds.’
Eliade argues that the shamanic transformation into a bird — the capacity to fly — constitutes a literal attainment of spirit-existence, permitting retrieval of souls from the cosmic axis.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
they usually choose to change into hens and falcons, for the faculty of flight makes them like spirits… he sets fire to his hut, without leaving it… the smoke and flames are to lift him into the air.
Eliade documents the ritual mechanics of shamanic flight — transformation into flying creatures and fiery ascent — as modes of achieving spirit-equivalence through the faculty of flight.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
Buddhist texts speak of four different magical powers of translation (gamana), the first being ability to fly like a bird… Patañjali cites the power to fly through the air (laghima).
Eliade traces the identity between shamanic flight symbolism and Indo-Buddhist yogic siddhis, positioning aerial movement as the first and emblematic supernatural power across traditions.
, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951thesis
‘if you fly too low the damp will clog your wings, and if too high the heat will melt them’… Icarus couldn’t contain his excitement even though it could mean his own demise. Heady with the sudden gift of flight he began to soar higher and higher.
Dayton deploys the Icarus myth as the depth-psychological archetype of flight as hubris, illustrating how ungoverned ascent — the inability to maintain the middle path of flight — leads to catastrophic collapse.
, Emotional Sobriety: From Relationship Trauma to Resilience and Lasting Fulfillment, 2007thesis
The hexagram has the form of a flying bird. ‘The flying bird brings the message: It is not well to strive upward, it is well to remain below. Great good fortune.’
Wilhelm’s I Ching reading of the flying bird inverts the ascensional fantasy: the bird’s message counsels descent over elevation, making the flying image a symbol of prudent restraint rather than transcendence.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950thesis
The hexagram has the form of a flying bird… PREPONDERANCE OF THE SMALL is like a bird; the danger for it lies in mounting too high and losing the ground under its feet.
Wilhelm’s I Ching elaborates the flying bird as an emblem of the danger of overextension, equating upward flight with rebellion and grounding the symbolic system in warnings against inflation.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
‘The flying bird is losing its voice’… ‘That the bird is losing its voice can only mean that it is exhausted and hard-pressed because of not having found a safe place to stop.’
Wang Bi’s commentary reads the flying bird’s lost voice as an image of exhaustion from ceaseless ascent without rest, encoding flight-without-grounding as self-destructive overreach.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994supporting
I notice a fly buzzing all around during the dream… The fly keeps buzzing… These dreams seem to intend something more subtle — if we read the intention of the insect from its effect on the dreamer.
Hillman treats the fly’s persistent buzzing in dreamwork as an autonomous psychic signal, arguing that the insect’s tenacity carries an intentional quality that forces the dreamer toward unwanted realizations.
, Animal Presences, 2008thesis
if the spider embodies the power of the dark natural mind… and the fly acts the puer role of the ever-conjuring, ever-escaping lightweight gadabout, then an initiation of the penis by the spidery realm may have to do with connecting the penis to and holding it within some regular order.
Hillman assigns the fly the mythological role of the puer — weightless, mercurial, perpetually escaping — and proposes that this quality stands in necessary tension with the binding, grounding power of the spider.
, Animal Presences, 2008thesis
First he experimented with ashtrays, but that did not quite work, and then later with a fly… he put himself into the apparatus. Unfortunately, the experiment got stuck on the way and he came out at the other end with the enormous head of a fly!
Von Franz deploys a science-fiction story about fly-headed transformation as an illustration of inferior introverted intuition’s catastrophic potential, where the fly becomes the emblem of monstrous, de-humanizing experiment.
, Psychotherapy, 1993supporting
‘When a flying dragon is in the sky, it is fitting to see the great man.’… ‘Clouds follow the dragon; wind follows the tiger. The sage bestirs himself, and all creatures look to him.’
Wang Bi’s commentary on the flying dragon establishes a positive counter-image to the warning against overreach: here flight in the sky signals the great man’s virtuous alignment with Heaven, making flight an emblem of realized virtue.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994supporting
the puer eternus, the eternal child inflated and untrammeled in Icarus-like limitless ascending flight… the uncritical celebration of scientific and technological progress, the gleeful breaking of rules and limits.
Tarnas links Icarian flight to the Jupiter-Uranus archetypal complex, reading unbounded ascent as the signature shadow of the puer aeternus — naïve, rule-breaking, and ultimately self-endangering.
, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006supporting
There is also a bird there, named Peng, with a back like Mount Tai and wings like clouds filling the sky. He beats the whirlwind, leaps into the air, and rises up ninety thousand li.
Zhuangzi’s Peng-bird presents cosmic flight as an image of vast, prepared understanding inaccessible to creatures of small scope, deploying flight as a measure of wisdom and existential scale.
, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 2013supporting
Lust for power: the wicked fly seated upon the vainest peoples; the mocker of all uncertain virtue.
Nietzsche employs the fly as an image of parasitic will-to-power — the malicious, small-minded creature that settles on vanity and weakness — giving the insect a moral-psychological valence as agent of corruption.
, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883supporting
The Greek root aorist… with full grade in πτῆ-ναι, ἔ-πτα-ν, πτή-σομαι, seems to require a root *peth2-, whereas most of the cognates… (Hitt. pattaii- / patti- ‘to run, fly, flee’, Skt. patati ‘to fly, fall’).
Beekes traces the Proto-Indo-European root *pet- / *peth2- underlying Greek words for flying and falling, revealing the etymological continuum that links flight, falling, and the bird across the Indo-European linguistic family.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside
Dog-fly, kunamuia, is used only here and at line 21.562. Flies were proverbially.
The Iliad’s scholiast notation on the ‘dog-fly’ epithet documents the fly’s established proverbial status in ancient Greek culture, providing the literary-historical ground for later psychological elaborations of the insect’s symbolic character.
, The Iliad, 2023aside
he changed himself first into a drill and then into a falcon and flew into the czar’s daughter’s room… he turned himself into a falcon and flew far out into the open fields.
Von Franz’s fairy tale material presents flight-by-transformation — the falcon-shape — as the hero’s mode of magical escape and erotic approach, linking flying metamorphosis to the trickster-puer dynamic in folk psychology.
, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, 1974aside