The Seba library treats Magpie in 5 passages, across 5 authors (including McGilchrist, Iain, Watson, Burton, Jung, Carl Gustav).
Chicks approach their parents or an object on which they have imprinted using their left eye (right hemisphere), as do Australian magpies.
McGilchrist marshals Australian magpies as empirical evidence that right-hemisphere dominance in social attachment and imprinting is an evolutionarily ancient, cross-species phenomenon.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009thesis
The magpie hatches its young; the fish spit out their milt; the slim-waisted wasp has its stages of transformation; and when baby brother is born, big brother howls.
Zhuangzi’s Laozi invokes the magpie as a natural exemplar of spontaneous transformation, using it to counsel Confucius that genuine change in oneself must precede any hope of changing others.
, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 2013thesis
talking, 215; see also bear; bees; beetle; birds; bull; butterfly; cat; cow; coyote; crab, crayfish, crocodile; crow; dog; dolphin; dove; eagle; elephant; elk; falcon; fish; goat; goose; hare; hawk; horse; lamb; leopard; lion; magpie; monkey; octopus; peacock; pig; raven; sea-horse; serpent; sheep; snake; spider; swan; tiger; tortoise; vertebrates; vulture; wolf; worm
Jung’s index classifies the magpie among symbolic ‘talking birds,’ situating it within the broader Jungian typology of animals that serve as vehicles of unconscious communication and archetypal mediation.
, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959supporting
citrus ‘citron magpie’, and refers to the well-known gluttony of the bird… thus, Klaouw originally means ‘to behave like a magpie’.
Beekes traces a Greek verb meaning ‘to behave like a magpie,’ grounding in etymology the classical association of the bird with indiscriminate voraciousness and acquisitive excess.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting
not portending the weather but actually making it… It was in Italy not Greece that the royal woodpecker lived on, and it is there that we shall find him realize his function not as omen-bird but as magician-king.
Harrison’s comparative ornithology of ritual birds — distinguishing omen-birds from magician-kings — provides a frame within which the magpie’s dual folkloric valence (omen and trickster) can be contextually situated.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912aside