Page 37 - Studio International - May 1974

The fish as a symbol

Cara Montgomery

The motif of the fish from ancient times has
been a plastic symbol describing ambivalent
natures. Of all the animal symbols revered by
primitive people, the fish, like the snake, with
which it is often associated, most completely
projects both positive and negative attraction.
As Jung notes about the symbol:
`It is unlikely that 'Ix0us is simply an
anagrammatic abbreviation of 'I[noous]
X[piotos] O[eou] Y[ios] E[wtnp], but rather
the symbolical designation for something far
more complex. As I have pointed out in other
of my 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. 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
"Icthyus"."
This transparence of nature is precisely what
confronts the observer of the symbol; for
despite its prevalence, its meaning is highly
contextual. The following illustrations of the
fish symbol in disparate cultures can do no
more than suggest the range of its mystique.
What is clear about the fish is that it haunted
cultures, assimilating the psychology of the
time it described as it appeared. Several
motives come forward as continual
preoccupations, like the special significance of
the golden fish or its vividness as an object in
continual motion. As it circles it becomes a sign
for transformation, and, as such, a perfect form
for those elements of thought, expressed
through ritual, which represent the sacred
aspect of the physical world. It is local but
everywhere, specific but reincarnated as it
evolves. This is a magnetism which draws us to
the figure of the fish, whose one consistency is
that he must always be brought up from the
deep.

The Pagan fish
The cult of the fish, and the fisher as priest,
anticipated what later became the Christian
symbolism of the fish. The cults seem to have
originated in the fish sanctuaries of western
Asia, where ceremonies were performed to
assure an abundant catch. Fish-shaped idols
were used; priests lured the fish to certain
locations by throwing food into the water.
Divination was practised, based on the
movements of the sacred fish towards the bait;
like the later Romans, these early priests
sometimes kept the fish alive in special pools on their backs, demonstrating how intimately fed by them. This totemism, coupled with the
and adorned them with jewels. Among the the form was absorbed into the mythology of fact that the human embryo in an early stage
Babylonians, priests of the deity wore fish this people who threw their dead back into the possesses rudimentary gill-clefts, leads Eisler
skins over their heads and bodies, or fish tails sea, that they might feed the fishes as they were in his work Orpheus the Fisher to suggest that
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