The Seba library treats Lizard in 9 passages, across 7 authors (including Hillman, James, Damasio, Antonio, Campbell, Joseph).
I have yet to be given convincing demonstration that in dreams a lizard requires development into something warm-blooded and a hyena into something more kindly
Hillman argues that the dream-lizard possesses irreducible archetypal value as a cold-blooded image and need not be developmentally upgraded toward warmth or humanness.
, Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, 1985thesis
What did the lizard know of the ongoing event? I suspect nothing, in our sense of knowing. And what did he feel when he was eating his hard-won lunch?
Damasio employs the lizard's visuomotor hunting behavior as a philosophical limit-case for consciousness, distinguishing adaptive neural competence from reflexive self-knowing.
, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, 2010thesis
He reported to his friends. 'I have seen a red lizard.' He was firmly convinced that it was nothing but red. Another person, after visiting the tree said, 'I have seen a green lizard.'
Campbell uses the chameleon-lizard parable to illustrate the partial, culturally conditioned nature of doctrinal perception versus the mystic's capacity to apprehend the full, color-shifting reality.
, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959thesis
Frilled Lizard Man, Tortoise Woman, Little Wallaby Man, Emu Woman, and innumerable other Ancestors wandered, singing, across its surface, they shaped that surface by their actions
Abram identifies Frilled Lizard Man as one of the totemic Dreaming Ancestors whose nomadic singing shaped the landscape of Aboriginal Australia, making the lizard a world-creating mythic agent.
, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996supporting
things are getting dark; the crab-lizard appears, apparently an enormous thing. I asked, 'What about the crab, how on earth do you come to that?' He said, 'That is a mythological monster'
Jung analyzes a patient's dream in which an enormous crab-lizard emerges as a mythological monster, marking the psychic climax of a repressed complex and requiring symbolic amplification.
, Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976supporting
lion: 47, 104-106, 112, 170-171, 195, 271 devouring sun, 105 double, 70, 71, 72, 170 lizard, 19
Von Franz's alchemical index situates the lizard within a bestiary of symbolic transformation alongside the lion and dragon, confirming its membership in the corpus of chthonic alchemical imagery.
, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980supporting
upper right, lizard. To the left of each of these corner devices are the five day signs associated with the quarter in question.
Campbell identifies the lizard as one of four directional day-sign birds in Aztec cosmology, situating it within a pre-Columbian mythic spatial grid.
, The Mythic Image, 1974supporting
cruupo-KTOVOe; [m.] 'killer of lizards' (Plin.); on cruupo- ... name of a poisonous lizard (Arist., Plin.)
Beekes documents ancient Greek compound words referencing lizard-killing and poisonous lizard species, establishing the creature's lexical presence in Pre-Greek etymological strata.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside
name of a poisonous lizard (Arist., Plin.); as a TN town on Euboea (after the copper-mines), whence -lOlK6e;, -lOtK�; finally also = -Le; as a fish- and lizard-name
Beekes traces the Greek word for copper-colored creature through its application as both a fish-name and a lizard-name, suggesting color as a primary classificatory criterion in ancient zoological nomenclature.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside