James Hillman: Animal Presences – The Eagle
Eagle
To show the power of amplification for giving the dream an immediately recognizable topos, let’s begin with the amplification, then the dreams.
All birds, whatever their species, according to the bestiary books, are twice-born: once as an egg from the mother, and then born again from the egg.
A bird brings the element of air, orientation from above.
As Philo said, birds are messengers of God to strip us of material
embroilments; they present the intellectus agens, the higher active mind that descends into the human sphere but is not born of it, which implies that the higher mind is an animal, that ideas and intuitions are winged bodies with quick-beating hearts that can strike us with claws and
tearing beaks.
The vernacular association of birds with sexual organs and behaviors recognizes that the intellectus agens comes also in those singing, soaring excitements of sexual desire.
The bird is like the physical force of the metaphysical.
Of the birds, the eagle is king and it appears as emblem of kings and kingdoms.
At the cremation of a Roman Emperor, an eagle was released near the funeral pyre to conduct the imperial soul to the heavens.
Only the eagle, it is said, can look directly into the sun, as Moses into the face of God, and only the eagle cannot be killed by lightning.
The aged eagle renews itself by flying into the sun until its feathers become incandescent fire, and then, diving into water, it emerges young again.
So Christ is this resurrected brightness, and the Logos that enlightens is an eagle like John the Evangelist who, in exile on Patmos, was taken up to heaven for his apocalyptic visions.
Or, as the flight from Egypt, the Exodus, was accomplished on
eagle’s wings – the uplifting, inflating power of spirit over material entrapment.
The eagle “soon waxeth angry with spiritual arrogance” because its temperament is exceedingly hot and dry.
There is militancy, even violence, [22] in its mission, for the eagle is
always at war with lesser birds and creeping creatures: especially the dove – d’aquila non nasce colomba. [23]
Mighty, battle-mad Ajax takes his name from the eagle (aietos).
It seizes the frightened hare, the milky calf, the bleating lamb, the abandoned child; these weaklings fall prey to the seduction of a great grasp.
Any beautiful boy like Ganymede can be carried away by the ascending impetus.
Power. Knowledge.
To wing among the lightning flashes untouched, forever no more falls.
Each day, an eagle tears at the liver of Prometheus, eating into the passionate organic soul of ira and concupiscentia, the Promethean drive consumed by its day-world ambitions.
As Emperor, spirit, logos, immortal, the shadow of the eagle is the senex, aquilae senectus, so there is much in eagle lore about renewal and aging. [24]
It is said to die because of the increasing incurvature of its beak so that it either can no longer take food and starves or punctures its own throat.
We are able to expect that a dream showing movement in the eagle soul is of imperial, imperative force, bearing a large message, a collective mission.
We can further anticipate upward-sweeping, inflating consequences and that something weak and exposed has been the bait.
It might indicate the awakening of the intellectus agens as Logos in our culture and as a shamanistic initiation in archaic cultures. [25]
A woman dreams that she is going up the steps of the New York Public Library, when an eagle from towering height dives down on her, and she shields herself in terror.
The dream stayed with her for years.
This person, at the time of the dream, was a father’s daughter and
sheltered wife entrapped in the Egypt of her material security from which she slowly began an ambitious Exodus by means of further education and profession.
Another woman dreams:
I am standing in our kitchen brushing my hair with my daughter’s hairbrush before the mirror.
With each brush a large amount of hair is pulled out.
I realize my hair has holes, open spots, in it . I wonder if it will
grow in again.
I go on to a party and mention to several people about my hair having holes in it.
I ask if they think it will grow in again. They say no.
But each time I put my hand up to the holes, I feel small tight white
feathers – like the cap on an eagle’s head.
It feels lovely and I enjoy having this secret.
In the kitchen, by the mirror, mother-daughter, loss of hair – a concatenation of familiar transformational motifs.
In addition, here, the white eagle-feathered cap, appearing in the
absence of her own natural hair, in the lacunae, the open spots of her head.
Eagle-power emerges head-to-head and with it comes a paranoid potential: enjoying the loveliness of having this private secret in the midst of the “party,” and despite what others say.
A younger man dreams:
I am standing in the galley of the fishing boat on which I work.
With me are the four other crew men and the captain around the table.
I am becoming aware that there is a different animal associated with each of the five that they hold or have at their sides.
What animals they are is obscure since the men and the animals are
hidden in the shadows.
In addition, I am spellbound at the appearance in the center of the air of a blindingly bright and luminous form, that of a snow-white eagle whose feathers are covered with midnight-blue stars and crescents.
In awe I think the eagle wears the devices on the cloak of a wizard. The eagle alights upon me and spreads its wings.
Gradually I become aware of nothing else but this royal creature, which continues to spark lightning from its form and grow ever brighter.
I reflect this animal will bring good luck in fishing.
Because of our previous amplification of the eagle, we should not be surprised by the words in the dream: blindingly bright, white, blue, luminous, center of the air, royal, lightning, awe, or by the repetition of the Logos words I think, form, reflect, become aware.
Notice the contrast between the gradual dominion of the eagle and the fading of the other men and their companion animals.
Notice, too, how the motif of bright /obscure (hidden, shadow) is absorbed by the eagle who incorporates the midnight into its wizard-like form.
As the royal blinding grows brighter, “I become aware of nothing else.”
This is the spellbinding effect of the eagle spreading its wings upon him.
As Jung says, the archetype of the spirit is both wisdom and wizard, benefactor and sorcerer. [26]
The effect is similar to the paranoid possibilities of the eagle-coverings on the woman’s head.
Both dreamers become privately centered.
The raptus effect of the eagle, by which I mean the identification with its vision, comes out in this dream of an elderly man: I am in a landscape bordered by mountains. Birds in the sky.
Two eagles. Enormous, with a wingspan of some 30 to 50 meters.
I can hear the swish of their formidable wings beating as they gyrate around in some kind of love play.
The spectacle is awe-inspiring.
Nearby is a fishpond. Dark fish in it.
Suddenly I realize that on my left, as if hidden in a grotto just underneath the shore, is an enormous fish.
It is black and facing the open water.
A man connected with the place remarks that it is, or is not, dangerous.
On waking, I was a bit scared The fish was dangerous.
Maybe the eagles will catch the fish.
Here, as in the fishing-boat dream, light and darkness, sky and water, eagle and fish belong in the same image.
In both dreams the dreamer expects the eagle to catch the fish, envisioning them as opposed.
The black fish in the grotto is imagined in terms of danger (the eagle in terms of awe).
His identification is with eagle power, as if he has already been carried to its place in the sky.
Amplification can prepare us for these eventualities. ~James Hillman, Animal Presences, Page 13-14
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