Page 42 - Studio International - May 1974

God has not permitted me to catch anything
for the support of my family'. (Compare the
words : 'Master, we have toiled all the night
and have taken nothing' in Luke 5.5.) 'Wilt
thou return ?' said the Khalifa, 'to the Tigris
and cast thy net with my luck'. The fisherman
catches a heavy box which the Khalifa buys
for a hundred dinars. Like the neophytes
`putting on' of Christ, the ancient fisherman
`puts on' the luck of the King.
Jung has connected the ancient fish
symbolism with its Christian assimilation
through astrology:
`The Magi from the East were star gazers who,
beholding an extraordinary constellation,
inferred an equally extraordinary birth. This
anecdote proves that Christ, possibly even at
the time of the apostles, was viewed from the
astrological standpoint or was at last brought
into connection with astrological myths . . . to

Fifteenth-century Pisces sign from Signs of the Zodiac
Published by the Victoria and Albert Museum,
London
Crown copyright

the extent that Christ was regarded as a new
aeon, it would be clear to anyone acquainted
with astrology that he was born as the first fish
of the Pisces era, and was doomed to die as the
(Top) (Bottom)
James Ward Vittore Carpaccio last ram (lamb) of the declining Aries era'."
The Eildon Hills 1807 (146o/3-1523/6) Jung believes that Christ's appearance in
Oil on canvas Heron hunt in the Lagoon 1495 c. cultural history denotes both the development
40 - 68 in. Oil on panel 3o x 25 in.
Coll: National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (Showing Venetian fish reserves in the marshes of an integrative archetypal personality and the
enclosed by nets and stakes) Private Collection phenomena of synchronity . . . an astrological
228