The Fish symbol

A) Symbols as universal signs

1. We can assume that all symbols, such as images, notes, letters and numbers, are the artwork of the coordinated effort of man to experience and understand the variations and vibrations of a global underlying harmony. Although symbols are shortcuts and references, what they refer to is something the symbols themselves are trying to interpret. For example the number is a symbol that man uses to express an order and harmony in the universe which he apparently did not create himself- even though he adopted it.

2. A common misinterpretation in astrology- even among the best astrologers- is that the planets exert a physical influence (i.e. through the physical forces) on the human psyche. Although physical forces may indeed influence the human body (e.g. the full moon causing some, even minute, tidal effects on body fluids), their psychological influence- if any- is ‘psychic,’ thus ‘symbolical.’ By ‘psychic,’ on one hand, it is meant that the influence is not mediated by a physical field propagating in space, but by some sort of action whose nature is yet unknown, while there isn’t any available mathematical description for this action (as is the case of a ‘physical field’). Such an action seems to act upon things and beings instantaneously (like the action which occurs in quantum entanglement)- as if it weren’t limited by spacetime.

3. By ‘symbolical,’ on the other hand, it is meant that the cause of the action is not a physical object (e.g. a planet) but something (such as a mathematical ‘operator’) which acts on objects and causes effects on the psyche. Therefore as far as planets in astrology are concerned, their alleged psychological effects should not be related to the physical form, but to some factor, which incidentally is represented by a ‘planet.’ In fact instead of the 12 celestial bodies or ‘houses,’ any kind of object (or even the first twelve numbers) would do equally fine. But the factor who acts upon either the human psyche or the planetary bodies is there- an archetype as it is commonly called.

B) The Fish archetype

4. Thus instead of a ‘planet’ one could use a ‘fish’ to represent some unknown and omnipresent factor- the acausal connecting principle as Carl Jung would have said. Here is how Jung describes a ‘meaningful coincidence’ in his influential book ‘Synchronicity: an acausal connecting principle,’ where an archetype- in the form of a fish- emerges and repeats itself in real life:

“To mention but one example out of many, I noted the following on April 1, 1949: Today is Friday. We have fish for lunch. Somebody happens to mention the custom of making an ‘April fish’ of someone. That same morning I made a note of an inscription which read: ‘Est homo totus medius piscis ab imo’ (‘It is man from the middle, fish from the bottom’). In the afternoon a former patient of mine, whom I had not seen for months, showed me some extremely impressive pictures of fish which she had painted in the meantime. In the evening I was shown a piece of embroidery with fish-like sea-monsters in it. On the morning of April 2 another patient, whom I had not seen for many years, told me a dream in which she stood on the shore of a lake and saw a large fish that swam straight towards her and landed at her feet. I was at this time engaged on a study of the fish symbol in history. Only one of the persons mentioned here knew anything about it…”

He also adds,

“As a pendant to what I have said above, I should like to mention that I wrote these lines sitting by the lake. Just as I had finished this sentence, I walked over to the sea-wall and there lay a dead fish, about a foot long, apparently uninjured. No fish had been there the previous evening. (Presumably it had been pulled out of the water by a bird of prey or a cat.) The fish was the seventh in the series…”

And he goes on to say,

“It is therefore, generally assumed that all coincidences are lucky hits and do not require an acausal interpretation. This assumption can, and indeed must, be regarded as true so long as proof is lacking that their incidence exceeds the limits of probability. Should this proof be forthcoming, however, it would prove at the same time that there are genuinely non-causal combinations of events for whose explanation we should have to postulate a factor incommensurable with causality. We should then have to assume that events in general are related to one another on the one hand as causal chains, and on the other hand by a kind of meaningful cross-connection.” [1]

5. A similar case of duplication is the experience of ‘déjà vu.’ For example, we visit a place which presumably we have never seen before, but which is peculiarly familiar (as if we had been there before). One may quickly discard such an experience as ‘false impression,’ without however asking oneself where the impression originally came from. But if impressions pre-exist in our mind in the form of pre- established ideas (i.e. active factors which effectively precondition perception) then what is wrong is not the original perception but the conclusion we finally jump to. Thus what if the world of phenomena is fake, while the archetypes are the only universal truth?

C) The Fish as a symbol of divinity

6. If we represent each archetype with a different kind of ‘fish’ then we will have a ‘pantheon’ of archetypes lurking around like fish in a cosmic ocean. If instead for simplicity we suppose that only one fish exists then we will conveniently have one truth instead of many. This truth will be what we commonly call God. Interestingly enough the initials of the word ‘Jesus’ in Greek mean ‘fish:’

The ichthys, from the Greek ‘ἰχθύς,’ ‘fish’) is a symbol consisting of two intersecting arcs, the ends of the right side extending beyond the meeting point so as to resemble the profile of a fish. The symbol was adopted by early Christians as a secret symbol. It is now known colloquially as the ‘sign of the fish’ or the ‘Jesus fish.’ It is an acronym for ‘Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ,’ which translates into English as ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.’

Fish are mentioned and given symbolic meaning several times in the Gospels. Several of Jesus’ 12 Apostles were fishermen. He commissions them with the words “I will make you fishers of men.” Having been resurrected, Jesus is offered some grilled fish in Luke. The fish is also used by Jesus to describe ‘the Sign of Jonah.’ This is symbolic of Jesus’s resurrection, upon which the entire Christian faith is based. [2]

7. The representation of God as a fish is generally as old as religion. The primordial Babylonian God Oannes is an example:

Oannes, in Mesopotamian mythology, is an amphibious being who taught mankind wisdom. Oannes, as described by the Babylonian priest Berosus, had the form of a fish but with the head of a man under his fish’s head and under his fish’s tail the feet of a man. In the daytime he came up to the seashore of the Persian Gulf and instructed mankind in writing, the arts, and the sciences. Oannes was probably the emissary of Ea, god of the freshwater deep and of wisdom. [3]

8. But how come the Greek letters for ‘fish’ coincide with ‘God?’ Is this a mere coincidence or is there some deeper underlying truth? But why a fish in the first place? Indeed there is a fundamental connection between all living creatures and water. We all develop as embryos in the amniotic fluid, which consists mostly of water. In fact during the early stages of development we look like fish or something similar. Fish are the first creatures to appear on the planet during the evolution of the species. Furthermore fish have the ability to swim without drowning even during the heaviest flood. Therefore fish could be seen as a symbol of survival in relation to the mythological Cataclysm.

9. And how come fish are related to wisdom? Why a God- according at least to Sumerian mythology- should take the form of a fish in order to teach the human race? Is this some representation of the unconscious mind, where all primordial instincts and fundamental ideas are found, before they are manifested and interpreted by the conscious mind? If this is so then the symbols, which such elementary ideas consist of, comprise the essence of the world. Incidentally if archetypes are some sort of fundamental vibrators (like the strings in string theory) then such vibrations could compose not only the physical properties (objects) but also the ‘psychic’ properties (the contents of the psyche and of the mind). No matter how one might formulate and formalize such an option, the image we have of a ‘flapping fish’ could be our own unconscious impression of the ‘vibrating archetypes.’

D) About mermaids and sirens

10. Although mythology, which is an artifact of human imagination, is full of fish-like creatures, Gods and semi-gods like sirens and mermaids, apparently such creatures have never existed at any stage of evolution. However, even as imaginary creatures, they seem to have their own independent existence and to affect or influence human beings:

“The beauteous mermaids and sirens were a mythological merging of the female body with fish or birds, respectively. They inhabited aquatic and rocky spaces and their sensual voices and music were their defense against men. In the bestiaries, they were manifestations of licentiousness, debauchery and carnal temptation, whilst all kinds of legends and myths told of their enticing men into the unfathomable, watery deeps, luring sailors with their magical singing and leading them along the pathway to their deaths…

In The Odyssey, the classical hero Odysseus overcomes their deadly singing by instructing his sailors to plug their ears with wax and ordering that he himself be bound to the mast so that he might listen intently to the rare sensuality of their voices. Odysseus, consciously and resolutely sets out for the encounter in order to see them, but, not hearing their singing, merely glances at them and then ignores them. The power of the glance overcomes the power of the voice here and it is the man who emerges victorious from the duel. It is he who beguiles the sirens and they who ultimately suffer death.” [4]

11. We see therefore that even if mermaids and sirens are imaginary creatures, they have their own way of influencing our mind. By assuming or even believing that they exist, we occasionally treat them as real, so that they become powerful factors to be controlled and surpassed. This way we may use them as conditions in order to improve ourselves.

E) A quantum fish

12. Apart from the implications of the Fish symbol in religious or artistic contents, its unifying aspects could also be helpful to science. In a more abstract sense and replacing the fish (as primordial creatures) by some fundamental entities (such as the archetypes) we can then imagine the ‘flapping’ (vibrating) effects these entities produce on the cosmic ocean of spacetime. All these kinds of vibrations then interfere either constructively or destructively, forming the picture of the world as we know it. Such a form of ‘quantum resonance’ is explained in the following passage:

“Quantum resonance is an example of fundamental characteristics inherent in experience (or existence). It provides some explanation for questions that remain inexplicable, such as the origin of life, consciousness, probability laws, and the nature of subjective experience. The term refers to a collective or unified (quantum) field of consciousness (resonance) manifested in every aspect, content or uniqueness. However, the theory of quantum coordination expresses this concept in a new way. On the one hand, the individual moment exists as a uniqueness within a wider set, while on the other hand the individual moment exists as the wider set in which the individual exists.” [5]

F) The implicate order

13. In fact there already exists a physical theory- that of David Bohm- which describes such an aspect of quantum resonance, and attempts to unify physical reality and the human mind. This is an example from his own book ‘Wholeness and the Implicate Order:’

‘‘A more striking example of implicate order can be demonstrated in the laboratory, with a transparent container full of a very viscous fluid, such as treacle, and equipped with a mechanical rotator that can ‘stir’ the fluid very slowly but very thoroughly. If an insoluble droplet of ink is placed in the fluid and the stirring device is set in motion, the ink drop is gradually transformed into a thread that extends over the whole fluid. The latter now appears to be distributed more or less at ‘random’ so that it is seen as some shade of grey. But if the mechanical stirring device is now turned in the opposite direction, the transformation is reversed, and the droplet of dye suddenly appears, reconstituted… Then we will see what appears to be a ‘solid’ object (e.g. a particle) moving continuously through space…

When the dye was distributed in what appeared to be a random way, it nevertheless had some kind of order which is different, for example, from that arising from another droplet originally placed in a different position. But this order is enfolded or implicated in the ‘grey mass’ that is visible in the fluid. Indeed, one could thus ‘enfold’ a whole picture. Different pictures would look indistinguishable and yet have different implicate orders, which differences would be revealed when they were explicated, as the stirring device was turned in a reverse direction…” [6]

14. Here the ‘fish’ (‘an object moving in space’) is represented by a wave interference pattern, according to Bohm’s description. Thus one might ask “What is a fish?” “Where is the fish to be found?” The answer may seem unintuitive but the explanation can be based on the function of our brain as our own thought may conceive. If the ‘fish’ appears as a specific combination of interference patterns then these patterns are presumably produced by some fundamental vibrations (i.e. of the archetypes). Each archetype stands for a certain action which can be perceived by the senses, with a corresponding shape, and can also be linked with an aspect of our emotional sphere. Thus any ‘fish’ will stand for both a certain shape perceived by the senses as physical, and a content felt by our psyche as an emotion. In reality any physical object triggers at the same time an emotional response. But such a coincidence cannot be understood if we are not aware that the physical and the emotional (psychic) world are two aspects of the same underlying principle. If we get used to such an idea then apparently our mentality as a species will remarkably change, while any mathematical description of the unified phenomenon of Consciousness will follow as a natural consequence. [7]

G) Selective bias

15. But why chose one kind of fish over another kind? A related answer is given by Nick Bostrom in his book ‘Anthropic Bias:’

“How big is the smallest fish inside a lake? You get a hundred fish, all of which are larger than fifteen centimeters. Does this feature support the assumption that no fish in the lake is much smaller? Not if the net cannot catch smaller fish...” [8]

16. The term refers to the- more or less arbitrary- choices we make with respect to what is reality and what is not. In the previous example, we select one species of fish over all the rest. This brings to mind Young’s double slit experiment, in which an electron behaves either as a particle or as a wave, depending on the conditions of the experiment. In other words here we are not concerned with the size but with the form of the ‘fish.’ How many possible forms could an electron have- although we are familiar with just two?

17. Another example used by Bostrom is why it seems that the universe is ‘fine- tuned’ with the appearance of intelligent life. If the physical constants or initial conditions were even a little different then life could not exist, at least as we know it. Here we see the anthropic bias in the use and interpretation of the data. If the universe is infinite or there is an infinite number of parallel universes with different fundamental physical constants then obviously it is the ‘nets’ we use to blame- as we choose only a region of space where life- bearing conditions are similar to ours, naively thus considering that this region is the only worthwhile and suitable for observation.

18. Such an approach- that reality as we know it can only be a fraction of what reality could ever be (i.e. no matter what, it will always be a ‘fish’ or another)- deprives us of thinking about the possibility that the truth could be different altogether. No matter how much objective we might be, we should ask ourselves what other forms of intelligence could exist, beyond any anthropic reasoning- either biased or unbiased. In such a sense the ultimate question is not about the size of the ‘nets’ we use, but whether we should have taken up ‘fishing’ in the first place.

[1]:[https://www.scribd.com/document/223463118/SYNCHRONICITY-An-Acausal-Connecting-Principle-Jung]
[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthys]
[3]: [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Oannes]
[4]: [http://www.academia.edu/4589755/Death_of_a_Mermaid._A_study_on_Ren%C3%A9_Magritte_s_LInvention_Collective_Collective_Invention_Honza_Zamojski_Fishing_with_John_Nero_Publishing_Milan_2013_pp._131-143]
[5]:[https://user.xmission.com/~mkeener/]
[6]:[http://www.gci.org.uk/Documents/DavidBohm-WholenessAndTheImplicateOrder.pdf]
[7]:[https://archive.org/details/TheoryOfTheForm]
[8]:[http://www.anthropic-principle.com/?q=book/table_of_contents]

10/22/2018

Image: The dreamer’s painting, Man and His Symbols, C.G. Jung