The Owl
Wisdom that sees in the dark.
The Owl: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The owl sees in the dark and flies at night: wisdom, and also the uncanny. Hegel wrote that the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk, that understanding comes when a time is ending.
The owl of Athena stood on the coins of Athens for the city’s wisdom, and the same bird in Rome, the strix, was the witch who drank children’s blood: wisdom and the uncanny in one bird, which sees in the dark that we cannot. The screech owl of Isaiah 34, where the King James Bible puts Lilith, haunts the ruins with the satyrs.
In the Grimms’ tales and in the folklore of Europe the owl at the window is death’s messenger; in India it is the mount of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, so that its night-sight is the sight of fortune.
The Owl: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Athena’s owl, the owl as a bird of ill omen, the “screech owl” by which the King James Bible renders the demon Lilith, the owls of the witches. Blodeuwedd, made of flowers and turned into an owl for her treachery; the owls of Minerva and of Hegel; the strix of Ovid’s Fasti; the owl in the Bosch triptychs.
From the Sources
Frazer records the belief in Northern India that eating the eyeballs of an owl will let a person see in the dark like an owl.
“In Northern India people fancy that if you eat the eyeballs of an owl you will be able like an owl to see in the dark.”
Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: a study of magic and religion, Chapter LI, "Homoeopathic Magic of a Flesh Diet". Abridged edition (preface dated June 1922), Project Gutenberg eBook #3623. The text, read in part
Bulfinch says that Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, sprang fully armed from the head of Jupiter, and that her favourite bird was the owl.
“Minerva (Pallas, Athene), the goddess of wisdom, was the offspring of Jupiter, without a mother. She sprang forth from his head completely armed. Her favorite bird was the owl, and the plant sacred to her the olive.”
Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable, The Age of Chivalry, Legends of Charlemagne, The Age of Fable, Chapter I, "Introduction". Complete in one volume, Project Gutenberg eBook #4928. The text, read in part
Each passage is quoted from the text named, which the press fetched and read, and was checked word for word against a fresh copy of it; the link opens that copy. Passages are given as printed, without the editors’ footnote numbers, and with words broken across lines joined.
Where to Read
- G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820), preface
- The Book of Symbols, Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (2010)
- Ovid, Fasti VI.131–168
- Isaiah 34:14
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
Also among Birds
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Owl.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/owl.
Nearby in the alphabet: The One: Unity, before and after the many. The Orphan: Alone and without origin: the lonely beginning of the self. The Peacock’s Tail: All the colours at once, before the white. The Pearl: Beauty grown around a wound, in the depths.