The Seba library treats Ibis in 7 passages, across 5 authors (including Campbell, Joseph, von Franz, Marie-Louise, Cicero, Marcus Tullius).
in Egyptian, usually Thoth (the ibis god, the baboon god); in Christian, the Holy Ghost.
Campbell identifies the ibis as one of Thoth’s primary zoomorphic embodiments, placing it in a cross-cultural series of masculine supernatural guides who conduct souls through initiatory or afterworld passages.
, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, 2015thesis
they could fly about as an ibis. The highest goal of the resurrection was thought of as this ability to be completely free to change into any shape and to move about
Von Franz presents the ibis as one of the supreme shape-forms of the resurrected dead in Egyptian theology, making it a symbol of the highest psychic freedom and transformational completeness achieved through the resurrection process.
, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980thesis
the god Thoth (often represented as an ibis) adjudicates on those above.
Campbell situates the ibis-form of Thoth within the Egyptian weighing-of-the-heart ceremony, where Thoth functions as adjudicator and scribe, linking the ibis to psychic judgment and the axis between earthly and transcendent consciousness.
, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion, 1986supporting
ne fando quidem auditum est crocodilum aut ibin aut faelem violatum ab Aegyptio.
Cicero cites the ibis among the sacred Egyptian animals whose inviolability Romans found philosophically untenable, providing the rationalist counter-position against which depth psychology’s reclamation of Egyptian animal symbolism implicitly argues.
, De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), -45supporting
ibex, 143 ibis, 452
Jung’s index entry places the ibis within the comprehensive alchemical bestiary of Psychology and Alchemy, indicating its participation in the symbolic taxonomy of animal figures encoding transformative psychic processes.
, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944supporting
see also ape; baboon; bat; bear; birds; bitch; bull; cat; chick; cock; cockatoo; crocodile; crow; dog; dolphin; dove; dragon; eagle; fish; fox; grasshopper; hawk; hen; horse; ibis; jackal
Jung’s Collected Works index situates the ibis within an extended series of symbolic animals, confirming its established place in the archetypal bestiary employed throughout analytical psychology.
, Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907supporting
it was the heart of God that brought forth every issue and the tongue of God that repeated what the heart had thought
Campbell’s discussion of Ptah’s Memphite theology frames the intellectual and creative dimensions of Egyptian divinity that Thoth — and by symbolic extension the ibis — embodies as scribe and recorder of divine thought.
, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962aside