Carl Jung: Fish as nourishing influence of unconscious

The fish symbol the nourishing influence of unconscious contents, which maintain the vitality of consciousness by a continual influx of energy. (Carl Jung, CW 9I, para 248)

Carl Jung speaks of the fish as a well known symbol of Christ (122) and ...those who believe in him, as fishes, fish as the food eaten at the Agape, baptism as immersion in the fish-pond, ... all this points to no more than the fact that the fish symbols and mythologies which have always existed had assimilated the figure of the Redeemer; in other words it was a symptom of Christ's assimilation into the world of ideas prevailing at that time. (Jung, CW 9ii: 90) Jung also clarifies that the fish represents the soul and the Christ of the new Aeon; the Piscean era. The symbology of the Rich Fisher or Fisher King includes Gnosticism (Jung, CW 9ii: 93). The Fisher King is called Bron (Loomis 56). This second guardian of the Grail emulates the Last Supper and is said to have fed his followers with a single fish from the Grail emulating Christ's feeding of the five-thousand (Legend 335). According to Jean Markdale, the fish, is ... "a sacred animal in Celtic mythology and probably of Nordic 'Hyperborean' origin .... The symbolism of the salmon is extremely important" (Markdale Icon 170) as it is highly adaptable, and able to find its source. The return to Source is the desired goal for those on the quest. Markdale recalls an early story wherein followers of the archaic Arthur, Kay and Bedwyr, climb onto a salmon's back to breach prison walls and free Mabon, a feminine, maternal image leading to the Celtic Mother Goddess (170-171). This suggests that it may not be possible to return to Source without incorporating the Feminine Divine.
Carl Jung whose reading of the fish symbol as a guide into the realm of experience where the unknowable archetypes become living things, - C. G. Jung, The Collected Works, Volume 9, Part II, trans. by R. F. C. Hull (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959), pp. 182, 225. 000249 Concerning rebirth. 3. A typical set of symbols illustrating the process of transformation. In: Jung, C., Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9, Part 1. 2nd ed., Princeton University Press, 1968. 451 p. (p. 135-147). An example of the symbolism of transformation is found in the Khidr myth of Islamic mysticism which appears in the Eighteenth Sura of the Koran. The cave which appears in this text is seen as a symbol of the unconscious; the entry into the cave is the beginning of a process of psychic transformation which may result in a substantial personality change. Moral observations which follow the legend are considered as counsel to those who will not achieve transformation and who must substitute adherence to the law for true rebirth. The enusing story of Moses and his servant amplifies and explains the first tale; the catch and subsequent loss of the fish by Moses symbolizes an incomplete contact with the nourishing influenc I the unconscious. The appearance of Khidr in the legend is elt to represent the greater self which can guide the ego nsciousness (Moses) toward increased wisdom. An ab t transition follows, and a story is told by Moses concerning Khidr and his friend Dhulguarnein, although it is in fact Moses who is interacting with Khidr; this substitution is interpreted in terms of a retreat from the psychic danger of a direct confrontation of the ego consciousness with the self. An allusion to the rebuilding of walls is seen as a symbol of the protection of the self and of the individuation process. It is concluded that the Khidr figure's significance in Islamic mysticism is due to this legend's complete expression of the archetype of individuation.

Pisces, in which one fish represents Christ and the other its future opposite, the Antichrist. Below all this works the archetype of the hostile brothers; too, the astrological characteristics of the fish contain essential components of the Christian myth: the cross, the moral conflict and its splitting into two figures, the son of a virgin, the classical mother-son tragedy, the danger at birth, and the savior. For the alchemist, the fish also symbolized the Lapis; for Jung, unconscious wholeness. Two thousand years ago, the late Roman Empire saw a roar of libido emanating from the collective unconscious, an outpouring we can no longer imagine thanks to the psychological barriers erected by centuries of Christianity. The Roman gods were dying, foreshadowing Nietzsche and our era. Christian ritual and dogma contained and channeled the animal ancestral forces splashing across Europe and symbolized by the Colosseum, thereby exalting the individual, providing a new ethic, forging a new sense of community, giving people for whom the old religions and myths no longer worked a sense of purpose, and splitting spirit and nature so each could develop independently. The result: modern civilization, standing on the ruins of Rome. Starting with the Reformation (which was helped along by an interest in antiquity inspired by the fall of the Byzantine Empire under Islam's onslaught and by the resulting spread of Greek language and literature through Europe) that broke the church's authority, eroded ritual, and splintered Christianity, religious and traditional containers for the instinctual-archetypal forces began to lose their meaning. "The bridge from dogma to the inner experience of the individual has broken down" (Aion) The Reformation coincided with the point where the ecliptic intersects the meridian at the second fish's tail. The enantiodromia (conversion into an opposite) from Christ to Antichrist falls midway between the two fishes, which was around the Renaissance. At that time Post-Reformation Christianity gave the bipolar Self expression (the Incarnation of God in us) but compensated for the Gothic overemphasis on spirit by further dividing spirit from instinct and matter, faith from knowledge. 1750: Enlightenment - tail of second fish - reason replaces faith. Alchemy and astrology arose by way of further compensation and set the stage for scientific materialism, which could now oppose and control nature by reeling in our identification with/projections onto it. The result of all this: the vertical development of spirituality gave way to the horizontal development of materialism. Jung speculated that the polarity of the God-image was behind the Reformation and the split of modern society into two armed camps. Compensating for this: psychology, a symbol system potentially useful for containing and channeling the instinctual-archetypal forces and reuniting the God-image. Around and because of the French Revolution: an explosion of nonpersonal stuff piled up since the Enlightenment. The pagan in us got much stronger. The decay of traditional symbol systems increased. Ideally, the autonomous activity of the unconscious is zero; today it's higher than ever before. The freed surplus of libido also has caused inflation (because attributing things to the gods at least jibed with their nonego status and because an archetype that loses its container becomes identified with the conscious mind) and activated various isms, utopian fantasies, psychic infections, and a longing for herdism and the State (as opposed to the earlier traditions and heirarchical orders). Too, collective ideals compensate the rise of individuality that began with the Reformation. Meanwhile the rise of exogamous libidinal tendencies (stranger-love) prompted a counterreaction of endogamous (relative-love) libido that powers religions, sects, nations, and isms. Ultimately, however, only individuation can fuse the two tendencies and prevent the endogamous reaction from growing dangerously powerful. See cross-cousin marriage.

Oxyrhynchus and Osiris

Many are familiar with the myth of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife, son of Nut and Geb. He married his twin sister, Isis. By mistake, one night, he slept with his younger sister, Nephthys, who

was married to his younger brother, Seth. Seth finds out about the incident when Nephthys gives birth to Anubis. Seth doesnt take this very well and successfully schemes to kill Osiris. When Isis finds Osiris body, she uses a spell to bring him back to life, makes love to him and conceives Horus just before Osiris dies a second time supposedly from too much of a good thing. The very idea that Osiris came back to life was too much for Seth to bear so he searches for Osiris remains, finds it, and tears it into fourteen pieces and scatters the body parts throughout Egypt. Isis wants Osiris to have a proper burial so she gathers up all the pieces except for the phallus, which a fish ate the Oxyrhynchus. Most people are not aware that this very old myth also contains many Gnostic and alchemical symbols. The four siblings are the four elements arising from the chaos of duality. The good brother and the bad brother is a repetitive theme of good versus evil (Cain and Abel). Our wholeness of Self, the mystical marriage of Osiris and Isis, becomes fragmented in our journey through space and time. As our attention or consciousness becomes preoccupied with the things and ideas of the corporeal world, we lose our connection to our original transcendent state of being. Isis represents the female or inwardly directed force that acts to reunite us to our original state. We are resurrected from the level of scattered attention and reborn into awareness of the spiritual. It seems that there is no place in heaven for the phallus. Many women will agree. However, the role of the Oxyrhynchus fish, Echeneis remora, is an alchemical symbol. When this small fish attaches itself to a ship with its sucker, it has the power to stop the ship and bring it to a standstill (remora means delay). The power of the Oxyrhynchus to stop the largest ships gives us a visualization of the paradoxical nature of the process towards wholeness. The idea that our true reality and identity lies beyond the senses and reasoning is paralleled with the two zodiacal fish going in opposite directions. The true seeker must learn to swim against the tide of reason and against the externalization of desires (the large ships). From the alchemical point of view, the Oxyrhynchus exerts an attraction on the ships that is compared to the influence of a magnet on iron. It is the power of the magnet that draws out the iron from our base (carnal) nature. Hence, our spiritual resurrection begins only after we lose identity with outward desires and becomes androgynous, as it were. Carl Jung makes the distinction that the magnetic force, in the alchemical view, does not precede from the fish but from a magnet which [people] possess and which exerts the attraction that was once the mysterious property of the fish.(1) It is the magnet of the wise, that has the power to draw us out of the depths of the ocean of the unconscious, which is the real secret teaching of alchemy.

1. Jung, C.G., Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, Bollingen Series XX, Princeton University Press, 1979, par.239.

The Spirit Fish (From The Unconscious Spiritual Nature http://home.swipnet.se/~w-73784/spiritfish.htm) The following is a dream by a columnist in The Boston Globe and a former Catholic priest; a dream about a fish coming out of an oven (2007-07-23; here).
LAST NIGHT I had the strangest dream. Its soundtrack was the ticking of a kitchen timer. Suddenly, the timer sounded, which was my signal to take a large pot out of the oven. The roast of beef was finished cooking. But before I could remove the cut of meat, a live, footlong fish leaped out of the pot instead, flopping to the floor. I jumped back, startled and afraid. The fish was a glowing, translucent green. Indeed, only at

the sight of that exquisite color did I become aware that everything else in the dream was in black and white. By comparison, the fish was stunningly beautiful, but it was in trouble. As I watched the creature thrashing on the floor, I realized that, out of water, gills without oxygen, it was suffocating. Perplexed as I was about how the fish had come to be in the pot and how, for that matter, it had survived the roasting, I felt an urgent need to rescue the pitiable but beautiful thing. The feeling wascolor had come into the world, but was about to be extinguished, unless I found a way to save it. I didn't know I was dreaming. Despite my squeamishness, I picked the fish up and ran outside, where I was relieved to find a pool of water. I threw the fish in, but it bounced. The water was only an inch deep. I watched in horror as the fish desperately attempted to swim, splashing across the glistening but finally useless sheet of gray liquid. I myself began to choke, as if I too were oxygen deprived...

The Christian context Sometimes we can understand a dream, at least to a degree, without recourse to much contextual information. This man had formerly been a Catholic priest. The fish has a very special meaning to such people, while it is a famous Christian symbol. Christ himself (ICHTYS) is symbolized by the fish and was so celebrated in the eucharistic meal of fishes. The fish also plays a prominent role in astrology since it is the zodiacal sign that governs the first two thousand years of the Christian era. When a Catholic priest dreams about a radiant fish we must suspect that it is connected with the Christ, although in this form the divine being appears as pure spiritual life-force, unlike the fossilized spirit of his former vocation. It might also signify the Christchild, i.e. the living spirit, especially due to its green light, which is the colour of the Holy Ghost.

The fish is also an analogue of the alchemical spiritus mercurialis who dwells in the oven of the unconscious, although the alchemists more commonly used the image of a living salamander surrounded by flames inside a vessel. In alchemical texts a "round fish in the middle of the sea" with no bones and a wonderful fatness is frequently mentioned, and later this fish was connected with a glowing fish which causes fever (cf. M-L von Franz, 1996, p.155). Alchemical texts make it clear that it is exclusively through greeness that the final goal of the opus is reached. The 'benedicta viriditas' is the green gold and it's a living philosophical

stone.

The unconscious content as spirit M-L von Franz says: Psychologically the fish is a distant, inaccessible content of the unconscious, a sum of potential energy loaded with possibilities but with a lack of clarity. It is a libido symbol for a relatively uncharacterized and unspecified amount of psychic energy, the direction and development of which are not yet outlined. The ambivalence regarding the fish derives from its being a content below the threshold of consciousness... (ibid.) At the ripe age of the dreamer the spiritual problem again surfaces, symbolized by the fish. The author says that all things are black, white, and grey in contrast to the colourful splendour of the fish. It's like colour has come into the world for the first time, so it appears to be of divine origin. This is the "other" passion, referenced in Goethe's Faust I, where Faust says to Wagner: Thy heart by one sole impulse is possess'd; Unconscious of the other still remain! Two souls, alas! are lodg'd within my breast, Which struggle there for undivided reign: One to the world, with obstinate desire, And closely-cleaving organs, still adheres; Above the mist, the other doth aspire, With sacred vehemence, to purer spheres...

The shallow pond, which the fish is thrown into, is situated outside the house. It probably signifies the outer world, more specifically the dreamer's own turf, namely the civic-minded consciousness of the author. In a sense, this is where he first tries to put the fish, when he publishes the dream in his own column in the Boston Globe. It does not seem to belong in this place. It is a shallow pond and not suitable for the living spirit. The unconscious content as "spirit" has been the subject of several authors (see Appendix).

The spiritual problem The fish is gasping for breath in this grey and shallow water. As yet, the author lacks the conscious faculties to take care of the fish. He doesn't know what to do with it. All the world appears grey to the author now, on comparison with the splendid fish. He begins to gasp for breath himself, because imperceptibly he has grown weary of worldly attachments. They now appear dull and lacking in life-giving oxygen. A thirst for the spirit, which is Goethe's "other impulse", has been brewing in him, and now it has surfaced. How is he to take care of the divine fish? Arguably, the fish would require a new vessel, a translucent one, i.e. the alchemical vas hermeticum, proper. In this glass vessel, unlike the former clay vessel, the spirit fish can be exposed to the rays of consciousness. It can be tended to and kept in an advanced environment where the climate is controlled, like in an

aquarium. The combination of unconscious life and a mild light of consciousness has powerful transformative properties. Thus the proper spiritual technique is applied, and the fish can thrive and metamorphose. Following M-L von Franz, the fish symbolizes a content loaded with possibilities, which are as yet undeveloped. Arguably, this is the reason why the author must find a proper aquarium, a glasshouse for the fish, allowing it to transform at its own pace, to show what potentialities it carries. To achieve this a mild heat of consciousness must be applied, but not too strong. The conclusion is that the unconscious wants to manifest a content of spiritual dimensions, but the conscious personality must find a means to deal with it. The important thing is that he takes the content seriously. He ought to take down any dreams revolving around this theme. Had he still been a priest, then he could make use of the ready-made theological edifice. However, while religion is institutionalized spirit, it could be argued that it functions as a substitute for a living relation to the spirit. Effectively, it is a bulwark against the spirit in that it denies the manifestation of "the Unknown" in the individual person. So this dream would scarcely represent the reentry of the author's former religious sentiment.