The Seba library treats Golden Wings in 6 passages, across 3 authors (including von Franz, Marie-Louise, Jung, Carl Gustav, Bly, Robert).
From it sprang in the course of time the God Eros, the one who arouses desire and who has golden wings on his back. He was similar to a whirlwind.
Von Franz identifies golden wings as the defining attribute of Orphic Eros, born from the primordial wind-egg, linking the image directly to cosmogonic desire and the origin of the gods.
, Creation Myths, 1995thesis
Four wings revolve leftwards about the centre, which is marked only by an orange-red spot. Here too the opposites are integrated and are presumably the cause of the centre’s rotation.
Jung interprets four revolving wings within a mandala as symbolic of the integration of opposites and the dynamic, self-generated rotation of the psychic centre.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959supporting
This is expressed in the motif of the protective black bird’s wings, which shield the contents of the mandala from outside influences.
Jung contrasts golden with protective dark wings in mandala symbolism, framing wings generally as guardians of the pneumatic interior of the self.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959supporting
The glory of the Woman with Golden Hair drifts down from its eternal luminous space onto a public figure such as Marilyn Monroe or Meryl Streep and then to a sixteen-year-old girl.
Bly treats golden luminosity as an archetypal, transpersonal force that descends onto mortal carriers, situating the golden motif within the mythopoetic discourse on anima projection and spiritual inheritance.
, Iron John: A Book About Men, 1990supporting
catching hold of the end of the golden thread is described as picking up a single feather from the burning breast of the Firebird.
Bly equates the golden thread and the Firebird’s feather as initiatory tokens of contact with the luminous interior self, tangentially evoking the winged-golden complex without naming it directly.
, Iron John: A Book About Men, 1990aside
They form the seventh light, the highest, the floating, which rises with flapping wings, released from the embrace of the tree of light with six branches and one blossom.
Jung’s soul-dialogue in the Red Book images the highest light as a winged, ascending entity released from a luminous tree, invoking the golden-winged motif within his personal cosmological schema.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009aside