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On the Relationship between Birds and

Spirits of the Dead

Christopher M. Moreman
California State University, East Bay
christopher.moreman@csueastbay.edu

Abstract

Birds have an ambiguous symbolic significance across cultures throughout human his-
tory, ubiquitously relating to both life and death. Birds are routinely seen as portents of
impending calamity and death, while they are also often thought to bear or steal spirits
of the dead, sometimes even embodying those very spirits themselves. On the other
hand, birds are also commonly associated with life, fertility, and longevity. This paper
brings together cross-cultural evidence for the practically universal associations
between birds and both life and death. This paper offers an explanation for this associa-
tion as an expression of the deep-seated human ambivalence to mortality. As a form of
Jungian archetype, birds reflect a fundamental aspect of human nature—the denial of
death as finality through a desire for renewal, transformation, and rebirth.

Keywords

birds – Jungian – Jung – archetypes – death – rebirth – psychopomp – comparative

religion – folklore – cross-cultural – symbolism – afterlife – spirits

Introduction

While attending a dinner party, a woman approached me and, knowing that a

focus of my scholarship was the afterlife, asked me plainly whether there was
a life after death. Attempting to avoid the kind of lengthy discourse into which
academics are wont to launch when asked about their research, I offered a sim-
ple, “No.” This response was admittedly, in retrospect, insensitive. Rather than
coming off as the glib remark I had intended, my answer induced tears to well

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up in the woman’s eyes. She told me that her father had died only weeks earlier.
She went on to explain that the reason she’d asked about the afterlife was that
she’d had a strange experience after her father’s death.
While swimming in her pool, a tiny bird landed nearby. She and the bird
exchanged what seemed to her a moment of meaningful eye contact, which
prompted the woman to ask aloud, “Dad?” In response, the bird flew away, leav-
ing her with the distinct impression that she had been visited by her deceased
father.
I left the conversation having learned a lesson about the sensitivity of my
own research, and also wondering about a peculiar question: Why would any-
one recognize the spirit of a deceased human in a creature seemingly so dif-
ferent as a bird?
In a wide range of cultures, birds are symbolically connected with death in
a number of ways. They are often considered harbingers or omens of immi-
nent death. Some birds are thought to steal souls from people who are dying
or to act as psychopomps, carrying the souls of the dead to the “next world.”
As the story above illustrates, there is also the belief that birds might somehow
embody spirits of the dead. Ingersoll (1923) noted that the belief in birds as
“visible spirits of the dead” is “almost universal” (p. 13).
The casual reader might be inclined to accept all three connections between
birds and the dead (omens, carriers, and embodiments of the dead) as aspects
of one overarching belief in a general bird-death connection, but I will dem-
onstrate below how different factors come into play in each case. The various
facets of the bird-death connection point to a more complex set of symbolic
relationships. The symbolism of birds does not always focus on death, for
instance, but just as often relates to fertility, longevity, and life itself. I will argue
that it is, in fact, this last connection that will prove more useful in understand-
ing why birds should be so commonly linked to death in the folklore and popu-
lar imagination of people around the world.
Indeed, using Jung’s concept of the archetype, I will argue that the bird sym-
bolically encapsulates notions of transcendence and rebirth that are critical
elements of the general human tendency to ignore or deny one’s own mortal-
ity. Pointing to what might be taken as a problem for the application of Jungian
theory to human-animal studies, Shapiro (2010) suggests that “psychoanalytic
theoreticians and practitioners directly study neither animals nor actual
human-animal relationships. In psychoanalysis, an animal is not itself, but a
symbol of human psychological processes—typically [. . .] the Unconscious”
(p. 260). While it may be true that psychoanalysis does not deal directly with
explicit human-animal relationships, it must be understood that, especially in
Jungian psychoanalytic theory, the relationship is inherent in the archetype.

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Nothing is “itself” when perceived by any subject since all experience is

subjectively mediated. The subject, thus, mediates its experience of the Other
(whether human, nonhuman animal, or otherwise). With the archetypes, orig-
inating in inherited, instinctual areas of what Jung called the collective uncon-
scious, common parameters for experience are established allowing for shared
understanding across individuals. Our capacity to understand and evaluate
such shared experience is limited by our ability to communicate, thereby we
focus the phenomenological study of experience on the human, but there is no
reason to exclude out-of-hand the possibility of extending such shared experi-
ence across species. Of course, this is what Shapiro (1993) once pointed to as
a main purpose of this journal—“to foster [. . .] a substantive subfield, animal
studies, which will further the understanding of the human side of human-
nonhuman animal interactions” (p. 1).
Jung explained, through the concept of the collective unconscious, that
there are certain instinctual meaning structures (archetypes) common to all
human beings. As unconscious contents of the mind, when these structures are
recognized consciously they often evoke a noetic sense of having come from
elsewhere, lending experiences of archetypes a numinous quality. When the
woman described above felt that she was in contact with her deceased father,
she was in fact realizing unconscious archetypal content relating to the com-
mon human experience of death and personal mortality conveyed through the
appearance of a bird. Specifically, she was experiencing an archetypal rejec-
tion of death-as-finality. As instinctual elements of the human unconscious,
archetypes are often misunderstood as irrational in nature, in contrast to the
conscious world of rationality that we are commonly encouraged to inhabit.
The uncanny recognition of the familiar in the Other, and especially in the
animal, indicates more about the subject perceiving the Other than it does
about the object (or subject) being perceived. As archetypal signifiers, animals
are particularly suited to self-illumination since the unconscious “indicates
[humanity’s] own evolutionary kinship with animality” (Rohman, 2005, p. 124).
That the bird embodied the archetype in this case is not at all uncommon,
as there are specific symbolic elements that make the bird particularly well-
suited for such a role.
The first part of this paper will establish the near universality of a symbolic
connection between birds and death. The following sections will provide sev-
eral examples of each type of association, drawing on the folklore, supersti-
tion, and tradition of cultures spanning the world throughout history. In the
current paper, I am not so much interested in the specifics of why any one par-
ticular culture might have developed a given belief, but, rather, I am interested
in demonstrating the ubiquity of the specific symbolic connections between

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birds and death that have appeared and continue to appear cross-culturally.
Certainly, specific cultures may have unique explanations for why a given bird
may be associated with death in a particular way, but such idiosyncratic expla-
nations cannot account for the universal appeal of the general association. The
latter part of this paper will discuss a predominantly Jungian perspective on
how we might understand our relationship with the bird in the context of our
confrontation with mortality.

Birds as Omens of Death

The idea that a bird flying into one’s house portends a death in the family is
a common Anglo-American superstition (Opie & Tatem, 1990, pp. 25-26).
Sometimes robins are especially to blame for death (Platt, 1925, p. 192), while
elsewhere, a swallow flying down one’s chimney predicts death (Rowland,
1978, pp. 165-166). There are those who might refuse to allow pet birds or even
pictures of birds in the house for fear of inviting calamity!
The predictive power of birds often extends outside the bounds of the home
as well. In Virginia, the whip-poor-will can predict death by landing on the
house or simply alighting near the door (McAtee, 1955, p. 173), while crows in
England make similar predictions when landing on the garden fence (Opie &
Tatem, 1990, p. 112).
Blackbirds in particular are often the victims of profiling, as their color is
associated with evil and death. In Wales, there is a saying that a crow flying
over a house portends a death within (Hare, 1962, p. 61). Ravens may predict a
death by croaking (Tate, 2007, pp. 112-113). A Danish story holds that a raven’s
appearance in town portends the death of the local priest (Hare, p. 57).
Nocturnal birds are similarly pigeonholed. The popular legend of the Seven
Whistlers describes seven birds whose nocturnal cries predict impending
death (Hole, 1961, p. 172; Hare, 1962, p. 134). Similarly, a Somersetshire saying
warns: “If a bittern [a type of nocturnally active heron] flies over your head,
make your will” (Hare, p. 127). Many Native American legends attest to ambiva-
lence toward nocturnal birds (Krech, 2009, pp. 162-163). By way of explanation,
the ornithologist Edward Armstrong (1956) suggests that the cries of nocturnal
birds are generally eerier than the more musical sounds of songbirds—as if the
dark of night was not enough (pp. 217-224).
There are also legends warning of roosters inappropriately crowing at night.
In parts of England, a cock crowing at night indicates an imminent death (Opie
& Tatem, 1990, p. 91), whereas a Scottish variant specifies that the caregiver
must feel the rooster’s feet—if they are cold, then a death is indeed predicted,
but if they are warm, then there would instead be good news (Tate, 2007, p. 11).

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The uncanny timing of the bird’s call in these instances combines with the
general trepidation evoked by the dark of night, but birds acting oddly can
be taken as bad omens at any time. Tales from South Carolina, for instance,
include such portents as an eagle feeding with black vultures, a single wild
turkey standing under a great oak, or an albino robin appearing (McAtee,
1955, p. 173). An Appalachian legend explains that if a bird should nest “in your
shoe or pocket, or any of your clothes, you may prepare to die within the year”
(McAtee, p. 173).
On the other hand, the routine behavior of some birds has also led to sinis-
ter associations. The waxwing, for instance, is called strebe-vogel (death bird)
by the Swiss due to its association with the arrival of winter and its perceived
habit of voraciously gorging itself on berries that might otherwise feed people
during the barren months (Martin, 1993, p. 214). The Zoroastrian funerary tra-
dition of exposing the corpse includes the possibility that birds might indicate
the direction of the departed soul in the afterlife; if the carrion bird pecks out
the corpse’s right eye first, then the soul is headed to paradise, while if the left
eye is pecked out first, the soul’s fate is much worse (Sykes, 1901, p. 278).
Many omens of death relate to the king of nocturnal birds, the owl, harshly
described as “the avis turpissima, the most evil bird of all, the prophet of doom”
(Rowland, 1978, p. 115), and in Welsh as Aderyn y corph, the death-bird (Opie &
Tatem, 1990, p. 296). Virgil describes an owl keening “dirge-like” as Dido com-
mits suicide (Day Lewis, 1952, Aeneid IV, pp. 462-463). Ovid called the owl
“an omen dreadful to mortals,” and the emperors Augustus, Valentinian, and
Commodus Antonius were all said to have died after owls perched upon their
villas (Tate, 2007, p. 93).
In China, the owl is heard to cry, “wā, wā!” (dig, dig!), urging that a grave
will soon be needed (Rowland, 1978, p. 117). In South India, one can predict the
future by counting the cries of an owl, with a single cry denoting death, and
eight signifying sudden death (though other numbers are more auspicious)
(Tate, 2007, p. 94). Among some Apache, owls, along with other nocturnal birds
like nighthawks and whip-poor-wills, are almost synonymous with death, their
nocturnal habits equating them with ghosts (Opler, 1960, p. 138).

Birds as Bearers of Divine Wisdom

Birds bear wisdom in ancient forms of divination and are often equated with
prophecy and insight, echoed in the modern adage: “a little birdie told me.”
Birds are routinely associated with gods as familiar spirits or avatars. Athena
and Ishtar are both associated with owls, Zeus with the eagle, Odin with ravens.
The eagle is considered in many Native American tribes, especially among the

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Plains Indians and Southwestern Hopi and Pueblo groups, to be related to the
Great Spirit (White, 1913, pp. 135-137). The Navaho saw the bluebird as the her-
ald of the sun, “the supreme image of God” (Martin, 1993, p. 12). In Tibetan folk-
lore, birds are generally seen as divine messengers, divided into castes; those
birds considered “untouchable” include ravens, crows, vultures, hawks, and
owls, serving as emissaries for darker forces including death (Beér, 2004, p. 85).
Vultures represented the Classic Veracruz gods in their voracious acceptance
of sacrificial offerings (Kampen, 1978, pp. 120-121).
The dove is synonymous with the Christian Holy Spirit, and one is said to
have spoken revelations to the Prophet Muhammad. In their roles as divine
messengers, birds are analogous to angels in Abrahamic traditions; indeed,
when angels are imagined, they often have feathered wings. McClenon (1991)
found similar descriptions of the afterlife reported in near-death experiences:
East Asian descriptions include “jeweled trees, jeweled ground, voices of
many birds of variegated plumage,” while Christians envision pearly gates and
winged harp-playing angels (p. 334).
The “wise, old owl” is particularly recognized as an emblem of sagacity,
associated with the wisdom of Athena. Following a tradition of naturalistic
explanations for folklore, Rowland (1978) attributes this bird’s reputation for
supernatural knowledge to its “luminous eyes, its ability to remain awake at
night and to see in the dark” (p. 116). Holmgren (1988) counters, however, that
the seemingly calm thoughtfulness of owls stems simply from the fact that
they become stunned by sudden light (p. 26).
Just as with arguments concerning the sound or color of certain birds, or
even their eating habits, explanations for an association with one specific
type of bird are unnecessary given the number of birds associated not only
with death, but also with the attainment of knowledge more generally. Living
comfortably on land and in the air, not to mention water, birds easily access
places that humans can only access with difficulty if at all, and they are thereby
perceived as having access to much broader sources of information. As inster-
stitial beings, birds are symbolically appropriate signs for the attainment of
unconscious knowledge. Because death is a profound mystery, birds as divine
messengers with access to information far exceeding that of humans are
looked upon as sources of insight into this final frontier.

Birds as Psychopomps

Birds are sometimes described as stealing or transporting the souls of the

dead as psychopomps. The Romans, in apotheosis, released an eagle (itself

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associated with the god Jupiter) at the death of an emperor in order that it
might “conduct his soul aloft” (Hare, 1962, pp. 71-72; Ingersoll, 1923, p. 148).
Hawaiian myth includes birds named Halulu, Kiwa’a, and Iwa, who carry souls
to heaven (Beckwith, 1970, p. 91). Some Native American groups describe vul-
tures as bearing the dead into the spirit world (Martin, 1993, p. 210). In Norfolk,
swallows resting on a home predict death and are believed to snatch the soul
away; if they are perched on a church, they are deliberating upon which soul
to take (Tate, 2007, p. 138). Legends appear in both China and among certain
Native Americans that owls snatch souls from the dying (Martin, 1993, p. 136),
with some South-East Native American prayers intended to induce owls to
steal the souls of enemies (Krech, 2009, pp. 162-163).
In Jewish folklore, the owl is often linked to the legendary demoness, Lilith,
who is sometimes blamed for infant death. A Jewish prescription to ward off
the lethal effect of owls’ cries on children is to pour water in the courtyard as
distraction (Tate, 2007, p. 94). The Jewish tradition is not unique; the Filipino
asuang, a creature in the form of a bird, lurks beneath the house of a pregnant
woman in order to snatch the baby at birth (Ratcliff, 1949, p. 259).
Lilith, for her part, can be traced from Hebrew folklore into earlier
Mesopotamia, related to the goddess Ishtar/Innana (Baring & Cashford, 1991;
Patai, 1964). The Mesopotamian goddess is herself linked to the owl, famously
depicted in the eighteenth-century BC Babylonian bas relief (currently housed
in the British Museum) with owls flanking her half-woman-half-bird form.
Descending into the Underworld and returning therefrom mark her as a god-
dess of both death and rebirth, a cyclical pattern important to the overall sym-
bolism of birds generally.

Birds of Life and Death

The dual connection of birds with both death and life is common. Vultures,
for instance, play a central role in funerary customs involving exposure of the
corpse, such as in the Zoroastrian “tower of silence” and “sky burials” of Tibetan
Buddhism. This great carrion-eater is also mixed with the symbolism of life.
Pre-Islamic Arabs recognized the vulture for its longevity, a quality it obtained
devouring the life-blood of corpses; perhaps embodying deceased ancestors,
they devoured the sacrificial meals made in their names (Stetkevych, 1993,
pp. 67-69). In Tibetan folklore, through consuming the corpse, vultures are
believed to bear the dead away to a transitory place in the sky before rebirth,
and they are thought to be the earthly embodiments of the feminine divine
principle, dakini. The Egyptian Mother goddess, Mut, is also associated with

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the vulture. Walker (1983) suggests that the association between motherhood
and the vulture stems from a time before humans understood the role of men
in the procreative process, believing that consumption of flesh led to the gesta-
tion of new life (p. 751). It was once thought that all vultures were female and
were impregnated by the wind (Jung, 1959, p. 46; Rowland, 1978, pp. 177-179).
The story of the legendary flutist Lan Ts’ai-ho is about a stork so enchanted
by the man’s music that the bird plucked him from the earth to play in heaven
(Tate, 2007, p. 33). In both China and Japan, cranes are said to carry the souls of
those who have achieved immortality to heaven (Rowland, 1978, p. 32; Martin,
1993, p. 34). Storks (deliverers of babies in not only European folklore but also
that of the Sioux) and cranes are also among those birds most often symbol-
izing fertility and longevity.
Some researchers (Tate, 2007, p. 131; Baring & Cashford, 1991, p. 14) have sug-
gested that the stork’s migratory pattern indicating the return of spring may
account for its association with fertility, but such a suggestion must surely
apply to a wide range of birds. Cranes add to the avian migratory pattern a
peculiar circular, hopping mating dance that is readily associated with various
cycles of nature, including those of the seasons and of life and death (Martin,
1993, p. 34). The dance has also been imitated by humans, being “common to
rituals enacted in funerary labyrinth and tumuli in many parts of the world.
As late as the eighteenth century the Ostiks of Siberia dressed their dancers in
the skins of cranes” (Rowland, 1978, p. 32). The duality of meaning has made it,
according to Armstrong (1943), “difficult and sometimes impossible to distin-
guish funerary from fertility elements” (p. 71).
The cuckoo is commonly recognized in Europe as a harbinger of spring, and
it is seen as responsible for “the return of the sun, the triumph of life over death
and the hopes of a plentiful harvest to come” (Tate, 2007, pp. 22-26). Despite
the life-affirming association, an English superstition states that one should
prepare for death if one hears the spring’s first cuckoo call while still in bed
(Tate, pp. 22-26). One nineteenth-century report opines that this belief “may
have been a pleasant fable invented to get milkmaids up early in the morn-
ing” (Opie & Tatem, 1990, p. 113). Certainly, what may seem to be a paradoxical
juxtaposition of life and death makes sense when the cuckoo’s death knell is
instead seen more positively as a call to life-affirming activity.
In other instances (the Faroe Islands, Siberia, and among the Ipiutak of
Alaska, for example), diving birds are thought to ferry spirits of the dead to the
next world, situated under water rather than in the heavens. It is important to
note that the same cultures recount origin myths of diving birds creating the
land by dredging it up from below the sea (Tate, 2007, pp. 30-34); similar legends
persist in other cultures, as, for example, Mexican Sonora gives the pelican a

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central role in Creation (Tate, p. 103). While birds act as psychopomps, they are
often just as likely to represent life as they are to represent death.

Birds Embodying Spirits of the Dead

That birds are often believed to actually embody spirits of the dead themselves
“is a widespread and extremely ancient belief” (Rowland, 1978, p. xiii). Friend
(1883) describes Buddhist rice offerings made to ancestral “house spirits” that
are eaten by birds, while similar rites are performed for crows in parts of India
(Pandey, 1969, p. 255). Crooke (1896) describes how, in Northern India, owls
and bats might embody “the malevolent dead” (p. 279). The Mongol Buryats of
Siberia believe that their loved ones might return in the form of diving birds
(Tate, 2007, pp. 32-33), and Aztec soldiers returned as hummingbirds (Martin,
1993, pp. 89-91). Among the Tlascaltecs of Central America, transmigration was
stratified along class lines with commoners becoming beetles, while nobles
transformed into beautiful birds (James, 1927, p. 345). Some Pima Indians
believe that at death the soul inhabits the body of an owl; an owl’s hooting
portends death as it calls out for a soul to embody (Russell, 1908, p. 252).
Similar beliefs can also be found in cultures not normally associated with
reincarnation. Ezekiel 13:20 equates the nephesh—the soul or animating
principle—with birds who are caught and released (Porter & Russell, 1978,
pp. 82-83). Virginian folklore describes the cries of owls as “ole folks talking”
(McAtee, 1955, p. 178). Various kinds of birds embody spirits of the dead in
Brazil and Paraguay (Spence, 1920, p. 127) and among the Asabano of Papua
New Guinea (Lohmann, 2005, p. 190). The North American Osage describe vari-
ous spirit worlds, the highest of which is populated by birds embodying human
souls (Beckwith, 1930, p. 387). Gulls, and other seagoing birds, are often seen
as spirits of departed sailors in many cultures both modern (Armstrong, 1956,
pp. 211-214; McAtee, 1955, p. 173) and ancient (Dionysius’ De Avibus; Pollard,
1977, p. 189).
In Sweden, ravens crowing at night are the souls of murder victims hid-
den in the woods (Hare, 1962, p. 57), while a New England tradition holds that
Canadian Jays embody those of hunters or lumberjacks who died at work
(McAtee, 1955, p. 174). The Seven Whistlers, mentioned above, are sometimes
described as the souls of unchristened babies or of seven Jews who assisted in
the crucifixion of Christ (Hare, 1962, p. 134; Armstrong, 1956, pp. 217-224; Tate,
2007, p. 113). In England, Cornwall, and Ireland, the legendary King Arthur
is sometimes said to have been transformed into a crow, raven, chough, or puf-
fin (Loomis, 1958, pp. 16-17; Hare, p. 55; Martin, 1993, p. 37). In Irish folklore,

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puffins are thought to be reincarnated spirits of monks (Martin, p. 151), while

in France, ravens and crows are the spirits of corrupt priests and nuns (Hare,
p. 61; Rowland, 1978, p. 35).
According to Slovene folklore, children manifest as little birds (Copeland,
1931, p. 427), and in Russia, dead children return as swallows in spring to con-
sole their parents (Porter & Russell, 1978, p. 188). A Yorkshire legend alternately
explains that unbaptized children return as nightjars, lamenting their fate by
crying in the night (Tate, 2007, p. 90; Hare, 1962, p. 111). Among the Danes, lap-
wings are said to be the souls of women who died as old maids, while green
sandpipers are the souls of old bachelors; the cries of the birds are understood
to say, respectively: “Why wouldn’t you?” and “Because we dare not” (Tate,
p. 75).
A pre-Islamic tradition that has survived in some parts of the Arab world
explains that a murder victim will return as a white owl, screeching for ven-
geance (Smith & Haddad, 1981, pp. 151-153; Stetkevych, 1993, p. 69). Further,
Islamic martyrs are described as becoming flocks of green birds (Hisham, 1968,
p. 400).
Spirits are also described in bird-like terms. Hawaiian souls “flutter” out-
side the body (Beckwith, 1970, pp. 145-151); in Homer’s The Iliad, they “flutter”
free from the body to go “winging” to the underworld;1 and Plato’s Phaedrus
describes the struggle for the soul to regain its wings. Algonquin, Finnish, and
Polynesian lore all describe ghosts that chirp, whistle, or squeak (Myers, 1883,
pp. 18-19). The Egyptian soul, called ba, is depicted as a bird with a human
head. Human-headed birds also appear among the ancient Greeks as sirens, or
soul-birds (seelenvogel) (Weicker, 1902).

Discussion

Explaining the Connection between Birds and Death

Many researchers have explained the bird-death relationship in naturalistic
terms—an approach limited, however, to specific birds, thus ignoring the prob-
lem of the relationship’s near universality. The owl, for instance, appears most
commonly as a death symbol. As Rowland (1978) explains: “The owl’s natural
characteristics, its sudden pounce on its victims, its eerie cry, its preference
for darkness, and the carrion smell of its nest made it the sinister messenger

1 The first translation is Lattimore’s (1961), the second Fagles’s (1990). The original πταμένη
connotes flight in the sense of a bird or insect (The Iliad, 22.362).

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of the death goddesses” (p. 117; cf. Hare, 1962, p. 64). Other birds—like the
curlew, nightjar, and bittern—are also related to death not only because they
are active at night, but also because they have uncanny voices (Armstrong,
1956, pp. 217-224; Tate, 2007, pp. 66, 88; Rowland, 1978, p. 9).
Going further, Armstrong (1956) suggests that the similarities of some bird
calls to the human voice causes an even more uncanny sensation, and “a dis-
turbing sense of affinity” between humans and birds is encouraged by their
bipedalism and the fact that some birds might look a person “straight in the
face with binocular vision” (pp. 22-23). I need not engage such naturalistic
explanations any more than to point out that none of them apply universally
to all birds. One could doubtless find individualized explanations designedly
applicable to each and every bird, and certainly those who are interested in
specific cultures will find such particulars useful, but they are unhelpful in
determining a generalized explanation for the widespread death-bird associa-
tion identified above.
An alternative “common sense” response would suggest that the connec-
tion is simple: birds, capable of flying, travel to heaven. Ingersoll (1923) believes
birds’ wings are a sufficient explanation for their connection to death (p. 149).
Armstrong (1956) is most impressed by birds’s “swift motion, sudden appari-
tion and disappearance, and the suggestion of communion with higher powers
implicit in their powers of flight” (pp. 22-23). Waterbury (1952) goes so far as to
suggest that birds first drew “man’s eyes away from his immediate surround-
ings, and ultimately were the cause of the belief that the soul went to the heav-
ens” (p. 57). Of course, this explanation fails when we consider that while the
bird-death connection appears cross-culturally, belief that the spirits of the
dead travel skyward does not—the Homeric cycle often places the dead in an
underworld, for instance, and I have mentioned that the Siberian spirit-world
is under water. To argue that the flight of birds indicates a skyward flight to
the afterlife stems from a particular bias in which such a view of the afterlife
is common. When looking more broadly at the connection between birds and
death, however, we must recognize that this connection also exists in cultures
that do not necessarily situate the spirit realm above, if there is even a particu-
lar realm to locate.
One might remain in the realm of avian travel by suggesting that the swift-
ness of bird flight indicates not only travel skyward, but also travel more gener-
ally over great distances, thereby pointing to an ability to move across worlds.
This is not entirely convincing, however, as many other swift animals do not
share the ubiquity of birds among death-symbols—horses or cheetahs do not
commonly carry the dead, and fish are rarely psychopomps, giving way instead

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to diving birds whose locomotion allows only partial access to watery depths.
What, then, distinguishes the bird from other creatures such that they are
ubiquitously associated with death more than any other?
Rowland (1978) provides an answer when she points to Jungian archetypes
(p. xiv). Waterbury (1952) also invokes archetypes in her cross-cultural analysis
of bird motifs, especially in their connection to the human soul, though she
offers no suggestion as to what the archetype might indicate. It is not enough
to invoke Jung’s archetypes simply to indicate that there is some commonal-
ity appearing across cultures. Rather, we must understand the nature of the
archetype underlying the commonality. Jung (1973) recognizes birds as omens
of death, but only uses the example as an instance of synchronicity, pointing
to an archetype of rebirth without elaboration (pp. 22-23). In one of very few
references to birds, Jung (1956) notes the presence of birds as “soul-images”
in a patient’s dream, though he offers no further analysis than to point to the
Mesopotamian associations indicated above (pp. 214-215).
Jung (1969a) explains archetypes as inherent structures shared by all
humans. Like the ability to construct language, or to make music, or even to
smile, there are certain aspects of humanity that are instinctual. Jung suggests
that there are symbolic structures that are also instinctually shared—these are
archetypes. When one finds a common symbol being recognized across a wide
range of cultural traditions, as in the relationship between birds and death,
one might be dealing with such an archetype. This is not to say that the bird,
specifically, is the archetype, but rather that something about birds manifests
the archetype.
In Hillman’s (1997) words, “A snake is not a symbol” (p. 25); applying mean-
ing to the bird as if it were merely a signifier for projected meaning eliminates
the need for the bird itself. Instead, Hillman (1997) argues for “animating the
image” (p. 28), allowing the bird to have its own voice so that it might com-
municate its significance effectively. It is not as if there is an instinctual bird-
image ingrained in the human psyche, but rather that particular instinctual
unconscious contents are evoked most clearly by characteristics particular to
birds. We do not so much project meaning upon the animal, but instead we
recognize the “voice” of the animal—what it “means”—on an unconscious
level.
What, then, is the archetype evoked by birds? The question cannot be
answered in terms of culturally specific beliefs or through naturalistic expla-
nations, but by understanding the significance of the symbolic interactions in
a generalized manner. As Hillman (1979) instructs:

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Relationship between Birds and dead | doi 10.1163/15685306-12341328 13

To find out who [the animals] are and what they are doing [. . .] we must
first of all watch the image and pay less attention to our own reactions to
it. [. . .] Then we might be able to understand what it means with us [. . .]
But no animal ever means one thing only, and no animal simply means
death. (p. 148).

Henderson says that in flight “the bird is the most fitting symbol of transcen-
dence” (Jung, von Franz, Henderson, Jacobi, & Jaffé, 1964, p. 151), relating it
to the spiritual journeys of shaman-types the world over. Experiences inter-
preted as “spiritual journeys,” “shamanic flight,” or “astral travel” are relatively
common among across cultures. Even if not all cultures locate the world of
the dead in a heaven, case studies on reports of out-of-body experiences
(OBEs) describe, almost universally, the autoscopic witnessing of one’s body
from above (Blackmore, 1982; Green, 1968). It is likely that this phenomenon
accounts for what Eliade (1968) termed “shamanic flight”. The noetic quality
inherent in such experience can be strong enough to convince the experient of
its objectivity despite empirical evidence to the contrary. Certainly, a relatively
common human experience of seeming to fly in a non-physical body draws a
personal connection to birds.
The question of “transcendence” remains, however, as birds ascend while
not necessarily transcending. The OBE offers the sense of transcending the
confines of one’s body, and if one equates the sense of transcendent spiritual
flight in the OBE to the natural flight of birds, then it is but one more turn to
suggest that the latter’s flight might also be “transcendent.” But, birds are not
the only creatures that fly; insects and bats, for instance, are rarely invoked as
spirits of the dead—and when they are, they are usually punishing incarna-
tions of evil (Rowland, 1978, p. 8). To fully appreciate the connection to birds
specifically, we must examine all aspects of their symbolism and not rely sim-
ply on an incomplete connection between ascension and transcendence.
Henderson (Jung et al., 1964) offers more details regarding the bird’s tran-
scendent significance, explaining: “It represents the peculiar nature of intu-
ition working through a ‘medium,’ that is, an individual who is capable of
obtaining knowledge of distant events—or facts of which he consciously
knows nothing” (p. 151). As illustrated above, birds are firmly entrenched as
divine messengers. Likewise, shamanic flight largely aims to collect informa-
tion from obscure sources. Flight, more than making a necessary connection to
the afterlife, provides easy access to otherwise unattainable locations, and an
elevated vantage point provides a definite informational advantage.

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The effortlessness with which a bird can ascend to such a view compared to
the lengths a person must go to scale a mountain or climb a tree clearly gives
the bird the edge. Further, while a bat can fly, it does not soar to the heights of
a bird, and while insects might fly as high as birds, their size makes them unno-
ticeable at a distance, thus giving birds the apparent advantage in both height
and distance. That certain birds also extend their range over water, and even
below its surface, allows them even greater access to knowledge. Indeed, when
Blackmore (1982) experimented with her own OBEs, her first inclination was to
test her experience’s validity by flying to otherwise inaccessible locations—of
course, her own visions turned out to have no connection to objective reality
(pp. 1-4).
Birds emblematize access to locations and knowledge that is difficult if not
impossible for humans to access—the mystery of death fits this description.
I contend that this last uncertainty is, in fact, the most profound one for all
humankind. That birds can know the unknowable might account for the first
of the three associations to death described above. If their flight allows them
access to information from the unknown worlds, their access to these worlds
might lead to the thought that they could bear souls away to these places.
Neither the OBE nor the shaman’s flight involves being carried by a bird, how-
ever, so the connection remains symbolic. To make the leap of assuming that
the soul becomes a bird, one must accept it only as a metaphor for the soul’s
own ability to fly, or perhaps the sense that one has a soul that can. The woman
mentioned at the beginning of this paper, however, did not ask me if the bird
might symbolically represent the spirit of her father, but rather explained that
she felt as if the bird was her father. Likewise, folklore and tradition, when
believed, are believed to be true, not metaphorical.
There must be more to the bird-death relationship than what has already
been mentioned before a person will come to experience the connection as
more than symbolic. The significance can be found through a deeper explora-
tion of the symbolism of birds in the context of not only death but also of life.
One of Jung’s (1969a) central archetypes is that of rebirth (Chapter 3). Jung
(1938) laments that, “[t]he modern mind has forgotten those old truths that
speak of the death of the old man and of the making of a new one, of spiritual
rebirth and similar old-fashioned ‘mystical absurdities’” (p. 41). The human
instinct, however, emerges from the individual’s collective unconscious in
moments of emotional need, as when one is confronted by the fact of personal
mortality. The archetype of rebirth incorporates the elements of transcend-
ing life and of personal transformation (Jung, 1969a, p. 117). These elements
are both necessary in order to avoid falling into a void of despair over one’s
impending extinction.

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On the Symbolic Connection between Birds and Life

A final area of central importance is birds’ connection to birth, fertility, and

life more generally. It is exactly this connection that best illuminates the bird-
death archetype.
Migratory birds are associated with the cycle of seasons. Sometimes they
are lamented for causing the winter, as with the Swiss wax-wing above, but
more often they are celebrated as bringers of the spring, as with storks, herons,
or cuckoos (who so regulated the seasons that they’ve become ubiquitous
timekeepers). Migratory patterns, like other naturalistic explanations, cannot
explain everything, however, as not all birds have seasonal migrations.
The vibrancy of some birds’ colors, the forcefulness of their songs, and the
swiftness of their flights are all strongly suggestive of life’s vim and vigor. The
greatest sign of birds’ generative character, however, is their eggs. Eggs are
often central to creation myths the world over (Leeming, 2010, pp. 313-314). The
Egyptian god, Seb, laid an egg that produced the sun; the Indian and Chinese
creator-gods (Brahma and P’an lu, respectively) were born from cosmic eggs;
and the African Dogon describe how Amma, the creator god, fertilized himself
in the form of a great egg. Eggs are also widely considered aphrodisiacs. By
extension, birds also influence the language of sex and fertility with various
bird-related words sharing a sexual double-meaning across cultures (Rowland,
1978, p. xiv). Birds clearly exemplify the vibrancy of life in many ways, but it
remains to be explained why they also share an association with death.
The practically universal associations between birds and both life and death
stem from a deep-rooted human tendency to deny personal mortality. I do not
mean to imply here that the woman with whom I began this paper was engaged
in some form of willful self-deception about the death of her father; she was
quite aware that her father had died and that the bird was not physically him.
Despite this knowledge, however, she (in line with the long global tradition
of associating birds with the dead) also felt that the bird was the person. To
explain this paradox, I turn again to Jungian archetypes.
Residing as instinctual elements of the human psyche in what Jung called
a collective unconscious, the archetypes are not unique to the individual, and
so when they appear to our conscious minds, they appear foreign; we did not
consciously create them, and so feel as if they have their own agency. As mes-
sengers of our unconscious minds, archetypes have an inherently numinous
character, residing both within us and also being “other” to us (Jung, 1938,
pp. 4-5; cf. Jaffé, 1963, p. 29). In feeling as if they come from somewhere other
than ourselves, the numinous quality is suggestive of something greater than
us, what Otto (1968) called the Wholly Other.

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Jung (1969b) explained how the inner subjective and outer objective worlds
fuse in a kind of “psychic matrix” (p. 498) since one’s own understanding of
the outer world is limited by entirely subjective constraints. Whatever one
experiences or understands of the world-outside is actually based on a purely
subjective understanding. Truly objective reality remains unavailable to any
given individual subject. A matrix is formed, however, when unconscious
contents in the form of archetypes reflect off of objective reality and appear
to the conscious mind. In this way, unconscious contents become apparent
to the individual. Therefore, when one sees, say, a bird, one must recognize
that one is encountering not the fullness of that Other, but rather an aspect
of one’s own unconscious self reflected in its place. When one encounters
an Other, one cannot ever have a full, complete, and total understanding of
it since one’s own experience is limited to one’s own perspective and one’s
own capacity for understanding. As such, the entirety of the bird can never
be known, but instead one can only ever truly know what the bird means for
the individual experiencing it, or, archetypically, what the bird might mean
for humankind.
This is not to say that the human-centered psychology we are forced to con-
sider necessarily reduces birds, or any other creature, to mere symbolic objects.
Rather, the fact that elements of the human psyche might be reflected in other
creatures illustrates the inter-relationship between us and them. If birds, for
instance, hold such an important archetypal significance, their absence would
mark a severe lacuna in the experience of humankind. That no other animal
embodies the duality of life and death so completely and so universally as
birds do indicates the sheer importance of birds for humanity’s capacity to
understand itself and its place in the world.
Berger (1977) makes a number of important points in exploring animals
as metaphors. Berger points to the uncanny similarity in difference between
human and nonhuman animals, noting their difference predominantly in life,
whereas in death all mortals are the same. Individual animals, he suggests,
were not differentiated one from another, and so they encounter mortality
differently than individualized humans do. Specifically, individuals die while
the species lives on. “An animal’s blood flowed like human blood, but its spe-
cies was undying and each lion was Lion, each ox was Ox. This—maybe the
first existential dualism—was reflected in the treatment of animals. They were
subjected and worshipped, bred and sacrificed” (Berger, p. 504). Of course, the
continuance of the human species despite the deaths of countless individuals
is reflected clearly in the association between death and rebirth found most
explicitly in the bird.

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Relationship between Birds and dead | doi 10.1163/15685306-12341328 17

Berger (1977) goes on: “Between two men the two abysses [of understand-
ing] are, in principle, bridged by language. [. . .] [The animal’s] lack of common
language, its silence, guarantees its distance, its distinctness, its exclusion, from
and of man” (p. 504). Of course, one can find mutual understanding even with
a lack of common language just as one can fail to understand another even
when common language exists. When one accepts that one’s own experience
limits one’s ability to fully comprehend the objective world, then one must also
realize that one can never fully transmit one’s precise intentions without the
mediation of the subject receiving it while distorting its meaning. Berger offers
the perspective that animals, too, ought to be seen as holding knowledge of
their own, and humans fail to understand them.
Hillman (1997) agrees, noting: “[Animals] were the first psychoanalysts.
[ . . . They] could make us aware of ourselves. They do not need words to reveal
their nature to one another” (p. 16). It is our duty to listen to them not with
“mere allegorical moralisms or metaphors [. . .] Instead, it needs to rediscover
the animal eye of the caveman facing the cave wall, that aesthetic perception
which responds to the significance and power of the displayed form” (Hillman,
1997, p. 16). Essentially, we must not impose meaning on the animal, but instead
realize what the animal speaks—not with words, but with the unconscious
instincts common across animal-kind. We must “unlearn [original italics] one
of the basic lessons of human subjectivization: to be a person, one must not
be an animal” (Rohman, 2005, p. 125) and instead recognize the one-ness of
animal and human.
As such, the world of human experience can be seen as a matrix of intercon-
nected subjects, each seeing reflections of one’s self in one another. As Noske
(2008) points out, “Nobody can completely overcome his or her anthropocen-
trism since we hardly can ‘leap over’ our own humanity. Animals are not things
out there in the world, simply given to our senses. All representations of ani-
mals are human constructs but some leave more room for the animal Other
to constitute its own world than do others” (p. 86). Hillman (1997) suggests,
however, that “[a]nthropomorphism can liberate the animals from the condi-
tion we have long called ‘dumb’ (because of our deafness) and free us from
the prison of our subjectivity. Anthropomorphism recognizes that humans
and animals participate in a common world of significations” (p. 22). The
important element for Jung is the interplay between conscious observation
and unconscious contents; if nonhuman animals can be considered conscious
agents, then one might assume that they, too, have their own species-specific
psychic matrices—and speculating even more broadly might lead to an even
greater matrix of cross-species consciousness.

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Conclusion

Returning to the present paper specifically—since it is during liminal states

that the blurred boundaries between self and other are most pronounced, the
interstitial character of birds sets them apart as an appropriate locus for this
uncanny blending of interconnected opposites. In my introductory story, the
association of bird with father can be seen as a kind of reassuring apparition
(thematically, a mainstay of folklore worldwide; see Green & McCreery, 1975,
pp. 200-203), albeit in a physical form. The bird was surely present in a way that
an apparition is not.
The presence of the woman’s father, however, was subjective. The sub-
jective aspect of the experience is indicative of the archetype in its latching
on to the physical bird to form meaning. As a symbol of transcendence, the
bird-archetype does more than simply console. For Jung, the “transcendent
function of the psyche” (Jung et al., 1964, p. 149) is the full realization of the
individual self through the acceptance of the unconscious by the conscious in
a process called “individuation.” The question remains as to what unconscious
contents must be accepted consciously through the recognition of this par-
ticular archetype.
von Franz (1986) concludes: “All of the dreams of people who are facing
death indicate that the unconscious, that is, our instinct world, prepares con-
sciousness not for a definite end but for a profound transformation and for a
kind of continuation of the life process, which, however, is unimaginable to
everyday consciousness” (p. 156). That is, the archetype of rebirth asserts itself
when the conscious mind confronts its own mortality. As Kübler-Ross (1969)
explains, “in our unconscious, death is never possible in regards to ourselves”
(p. 16). And yet, each of us knows that we will die. One might rationally accept
the concept of mortality. Conceptually, however, one’s own end remains
impossible.
The paradoxical knowledge of our own death coexisting with an utter
inability to conceive of this fact as reality does have an important practical
advantage. Soëlle (2007) suggests that, “never are people so self-involved as
when they fear death” (p. 5). The fear of death leads to selfishness in its most
profound form, while human society requires a cooperation that is not always
obviously in the best interests of every individual at any given point. In this
case, the rebirth archetype serves to calm fears of personal extinction through
the unconscious denial of one’s own mortality by evoking feelings of tran-
scendence and transformation, explicitly revealed in characteristics held by
birds writ large.

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Relationship between Birds and dead | doi 10.1163/15685306-12341328 19

Birds combine a number of factors to embody the quintessential archetype

for the transcendence of the fear of death and its resulting selfishness. In their
winged swiftness and ability to reach places and see sights unavailable to land-
locked humans, birds make the ideal messenger, whether between humans
and gods or between the conscious self and the unconscious. Birds are associ-
ated with death not because some are black, eat carrion, or have nocturnal
habits, but because they embody the fullness of life. Therefore, if one senses
in a bird the presence of some departed loved one, one hear the voice of the
unconscious calling upon the individual to live fully and unselfishly without
fear for one’s own individual mortality.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to faculty writing-circle members Aline Soules, E. Maxwell Davis,

Monika Sommerhalter, and Sarah Taylor, and to the journal’s anonymous
reviewers for their suggestions for improvements to earlier drafts of this paper.

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