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The bird, with its universally envied ability to soar high above the earth, generally symbolizes liberation, or freedom, and transcendence. For instance, the shaman’s power was said to "reside in his supposed ability to leave his body and fly about the universe as a bird" (Jung, 151). Recall that Daedalus and Icarus were able to free themselves from indefinite confinement in Daedalus’s own creation, the labyrinth, by flying up and out of the coiled structure, aided by two pairs of wings. The significance of this image lies in its references to the snake and the bird. As father and son liberated themselves, by transcending their human limitations through flight, they may have looked down upon the labyrinth, which would have appeared as coiled and fixed to the earth as a snake.
Other concepts, in addition to those previously noted, have been symbolized by a number of different birds. The Crane, significant to this discussion due to the previously mentioned "crane dance", has variously been believed to be a messenger of the gods, symbolized the ability to enter into higher states of consciousness, was sacred to Apollo as a herald of Spring and light, and was believed by the Celtic to be a herald of death.
Mythological deities associated with death sometimes had physical characteristics of birds. For example, the ancient Egyptian god of the underworld, Thoth, was generally depicted in human form with the head of an ibis. In order to judge the souls of the dead, he weighed their hearts against the feather of Truth. Images generally identified as being of Lilith, an ancient Sumerian goddess of death, depict her with wings, bird feet, and accompanied by screech owls, the bird of prey with which she is associated.
Labyrinths and their associated symbols are related not only to death but also to birth. The Siberian sandstone fish sculpture’s labyrinthine design in the shape of a womb can be related to a belief held in early India that associates the labyrinth figure with childbirth. An eighteenth century tantric diagram from India displays the culture’s long held conception regarding the process of childbirth before human anatomy and reproduction was fully understood. The diagram, included in a book of rituals, depicts a labyrinthine figure symbolizing the "uterus drawn out long, seven times convoluted,