The mediating ἴυγξ: ornithology, love magic, mythology, and Chaldean and neoplatonic theology

Abstract

The Greek term ἴυγξ was originally designated for a bird: the wryneck. The physical features and behaviour of the bird may have given birth to the belief that it had magical powers and that, cross tied to a wheel by a sorceress, it would attract a beloved person. The Hellenistic mythographers exploited the theme of the wryneck as «bird of Aphrodite» and related two myths about the metamorphosis of Iunx into a bird. From the beginnings of the Classical Period the term ἴυγξ was acquiring new meanings to be derived, it seems, by metaphor, metonymy or synecdoche, meanings that are not always perfectly clear in the texts: ‘magic wheel’, ‘love spell’, ‘desire’, ‘charm’, etc. In heterogeneous passages of religious content the term ἴυγξ normally alludes to a sort of mediation between two worlds, the divine and the human. The philosophical speculation about the ἴυγγες as intermediaries or demonic entities reached its peak within the Neoplatonists who interpreted the Chaldean Oracles in a theological way.