Jung on Christianity by Carl Jung

From Aion, CW 9ii, pars. 127–49

The figure of Christ is not as simple and unequivocal as one could wish. I am not referring here to the enormous difficulties arising out of a comparison of the Synoptic Christ with the Johannine Christ, but to the remarkable fact that in the hermeneutic writings of the Church Fathers, which go right back to the days of primitive Christianity, Christ has a number of symbols or "allegories" in common with the devil. Of these I would mention the lion, snake (coluber, ‘viper'), bird (devil) = nocturna avis), raven (Christ = nycticorax, ‘night-heron'), eagle, and fish. It is also worth noting that Lucifer, the Morning Star, means Christ as well as the devil. Apart from the snake, the fish is one of the oldest allegories. Nowadays we would prefer to call them symbols, because these synonyms always contain more than mere allegories, as is particularly obvious in the case of the fish symbol. It is unlikely that ' is simply an anagrammatic abbreviation of ', but rather the symbolical designation for something far more complex. (As I have frequently pointed out in my other writings, I do not regard the symbol as an allegory or a sign, but take it in its proper sense as the best possible way of describing and formulating an object that is not completely knowable. It is in this sense that the creed is called a "symbolum. ") The order of the words gives one more the impression that they were put together for the purpose of explaining an already extant and widely disseminated "Ichthys. " For the fish symbol, in the Near and Middle East especially, has a long and colourful prehistory, from the Babylonian fish-god Oannes and his priests who clothed themselves in fish-skins, to the sacred fish-meals in the cult of the Phoenician goddess Derceto-Atargatis and the obscurities of the Abercius inscription. The symbol ranges from the redeemer-fish of Manu in farthest India to the Eucharistic fish-feast celebrated by the "Thracian riders" in the Roman Empire. For our purpose it is hardly necessary to go into this voluminous material more closely. As Doelger and others have shown, there are plenty of occasions for fish symbolism within the original, purely Christian world of ideas. I need only mention the regeneration in the font, in which the baptized swim like fishes.