Hawk

The hawk occupies a dispersed but symbolically charged position across the depth-psychology corpus. It appears most conspicuously as a figure of solar, predatory, and transcendent power—most explicitly in Jung’s invocation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, where the hawk’s emergence from the egg signals resurrection and self-generated divine consciousness. Hillman situates the hawk within the falconidae genus when correcting Freud and Neumann’s misidentification of Leonardo’s nibio as a vulture, insisting that the bird was a kite—a hawk-relative—and that this taxonomic distinction carries interpretive consequence for the analysis of the mother-complex. Campbell deploys the hawk’s image as the archetype par excellence: the chick’s innate response to a hawk silhouette becomes for him the exemplary demonstration of Jung’s archetype as an inherited releasing mechanism independent of personal experience. In I Ching commentary traditions, the hawk (SHUN, bird of prey used in hunting) appears in Hexagram 40 as the target of the prince’s decisive arrow, symbolising the elimination of obstructive power. In Winnebago mythology as recorded by Radin, the hawk appears as a literal and comic participant in Trickster’s manipulations, stripped of feathers and dignity. Von Franz records the hawk as the form assumed by Hecate in magical papyri. The term thus traverses archetype theory, solar mythology, divination symbolism, trickster narrative, and magical tradition.

In the library 11 passages

The chicks’ reaction to a real or constructed hawk exemplifies what Jung calls an archetype: a symbol releasing energy in terms of a collective image. Those chickens never experienced a hawk before, yet they responded to it.

Campbell uses the chick’s innate flight-response to a hawk—experienced or constructed—as his primary empirical illustration of the Jungian archetype as a pre-experiential, collectively inherited image-release mechanism.

Campbell, Joseph, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation, 2004thesis

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The Egyptian Book of the Dead says: ‘I have risen like the mighty hawk that comes forth from his egg,’ and: ‘I am the creator of Nun, who has taken up his abode in the underworld. My nest is not seen and my egg is not broken.’

Jung cites the hawk’s emergence from the egg in the Egyptian Book of the Dead as a mythological proof that divine transformation and self-generated rebirth are symbolised by the hawk’s ascent.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Symbols of Transformation, 1952thesis

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The bird, which came to Leonardo in his vision, was a kite, a relative of the hawk and like it a variety of the genus falconidae. (Hawk is the wider term, kite one of its va[rieties].)

Hillman corrects Freud’s and Neumann’s mistranslation of Leonardo’s nibio as a vulture by establishing that the bird was a kite—taxonomically a hawk-relative—arguing that this misidentification distorts the entire mother-complex interpretation.

Hillman, James, Senex & Puer, 2015thesis

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Six at the top means: The prince shoots at a hawk on a high wall. He kills it. Everything serves to further. The hawk on a high wall is the symbol of a p[owerful obstructor].

In Wilhelm’s I Ching commentary, the hawk perched on a high wall symbolises an entrenched obstructive force whose elimination by the prince signals decisive inner and outer resolution.

Wilhelm, Richard, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting

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Six at the top means: The prince shoots at a hawk on a high wall. He kills it. Everything serves to further.

This parallel I Ching passage confirms the hawk as an image of obstruction overcome, embedded in the hexagram of Deliverance as the final act of liberation.

Richard Wilhelm, Cary F. Baynes, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting

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Hawk, SHUN: bird of prey used in hunting; falcon, kestrel. 40.6a A princ[e shoots at a hawk on a high wall].

Ritsema and Karcher’s concordance entry defines the I Ching term SHUN as a hunting bird of prey and locates its sole hexagram appearance in position 40.6, anchoring the hawk’s divinatory meaning in active predatory precision.

Rudolf Ritsema, Stephen Karcher, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994supporting

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thou who, in the form of a hawk, keepest the fire… that [person’s name] be burned, that thou drivest her, [person’s name], unto me, for I hold in my right hand the two serpents.

Von Franz cites a Greek magical papyrus in which Hecate assumes the form of a hawk, linking the bird to chthonic-solar fire magic and the compulsion of desire—evidence of the hawk’s presence in Hellenistic depth-magical imagination.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting

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Thereupon he addressed the hawk, ‘Go, get out, for another tail is desired.’ So he loosened his hold and there was an odour of foul air. The hawk got up and walked away. All his feathers were gone.

In Radin’s Winnebago Trickster cycle, the hawk is a comic victim of Trickster’s bodily trickery—used as a grotesque tail-plug and expelled, stripped of feathers—inverting the hawk’s usual dignity of predatory power.

Radin, Paul, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology, 1956supporting

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the desiccated bodies of a black hawk, of an eagle and of a snake, a weasel skin, a number of eagle feathers… The black hawk body was to enable its possessor to fly when leading a war party.

Radin’s account of the Winnebago warbundle reveals the black hawk as a ritual object endowing the war leader with the capacity for flight, situating the hawk within the shamanic-military complex of indigenous North American symbolism.

Radin, Paul, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology, 1956supporting

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KLPKO<; 1 [m.] a hawk or falcon (Horn., A., A. R.); see Thompson 1895 s.v. ETYM Unknown.

Beekes records the Greek term kirkos for hawk or falcon with an unknown etymology, noting its attestation in Homer and Apollonius Rhodius, providing a philological grounding for the bird’s ancient Greek nominal history.

Beekes, Robert, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside

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cpaaaocpovoe; [m.] ‘killing pigeons, pigeon killer’ … ‘kind of hawk’ (Arist., Gal. etc.), -cpOVTT]e; [m.] ‘id.’ (Ael.)

Beekes’ etymological entry notes a Greek compound meaning ‘pigeon-killer’ that also designates a kind of hawk, attesting the hawk’s identity in ancient zoological and linguistic tradition as an avian predator of smaller birds.

Beekes, Robert, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside

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