C.G. Jung: “The ‘fish’ was the name of the God who became a man.”

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Jung talks about Pisces, The Fishes, and the Fish

Above all it is the connections with the Age of the Fishes which are attested by the fish symbol, either contemporaneously with the gospels themselves (“fishers of men”, fishermen as the first disciples, miracle of loaves and fishes) or immediately afterwards in the post-apostolic era….

Although no connection of any kind can be proved between the figure of Christ and the inception of the astrological age of the fishes, the simultaneity of the fish symbolism of the Redeemer with the astrological symbol of the new aeon seems to me important enough to warrant the emphasis we place upon it.

If we try to follow up the complicated mythological ramifications of this parallel, we do so with intent to throw light on the multifarious aspects of an archetype that manifests itself on the one hand in a personality, and on the other hand synchronistically, in a moment of time determined in advance, before Christ’s birth.

Indeed, long before that, the archetype had been written in the heavens by projection, so as then, “when the time was fulfilled” to coincide with the symbols produced by the new era.

The fish, appropriately enough, belongs to the winter rainy season, like Aquarius and Capricorn (the goatfish).

As a zodiacal sign, therefore, it is not in the least remarkable.

It becomes a matter for astonishment only when, through the precession of the equinoxes, the spring-point moves into this sign and thus inaugurates an age in which the “fish” was used as a name for the God who became a man, who was born as a fish and was sacrificed as a ram, who had fishermen for disciples and wanted to make them fishers of men, who fed the multitude with miraculously multiplying fishes, who was himself eaten as a fish, the “holier food,” and whose followers are little fishes, the, “pisciculi.”

 

C.G. Jung
Aion  

Paragraph  147

Image:  The Calling of Apostles Peter and Andrew

3 Comments

  1. During times of persecution,early Christians would draw on the ground the upper part of the fish to be recognized as a christian by another person,

  2. There is a wonderful enlargement of Jung’s idea of God as a fish In Paul Klee’s painting, “The Golden Fish.” Like Jung, Klee was Swiss and was alert to the dangers rising up throughout Europe, especially in the German-speaking countries. He painted “The Golden Fish” in 1925/26, years when Jung was working at understanding the unconscious. The golden fish in the painting has been described by Sister Wendy as a “magical fish with runic signs upon his body.” Klee does not identify the fish as a Christ symbol, but we do not need any kind of literal statement about this glowing magical fish. He is a “splendor out of the depths,” to use words originally applied to Hermes but which fit Christ equally well.

  3. I watercolor from my dreams, and there are a few with fish. There is one where I have become the fish. Reading this article makes me regard that painting in a different light. I have to say wow.

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