Fish

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FISH

FISH . Inherent in fish symbolism is the sacred power of the abyss, the reciprocities of life and death. Paleolithic fish figurines have been found with the spiral of creativity carved on one side and the labyrinth of death on the other, evincing the spiritual world of early humankind in which fish represented propagating and perishing, killing and consuming, life renewed and sustained.

In the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean world, fish were associated with the great goddesses, archetypal images of femininity, love, and fertility. Astarte was worshiped in the form of a fish; Atargatis named her son Ichthys, Sacred Fish. In ancient Greece, Rome, and Scandinavia, the goddesses Aphrodite, Venus, and Frigg were assimilated to fish, and on Friday, the day sacred to them, fish were eaten as a way of participating in their fecundity. In many parts of the world—India, Greenland, Samoa, and Brazil—virgins were thought to be made pregnant by the gift of a fish, while a "fishing dance" was a common fertility rite in the women's societies of Africa. The dual nature of the symbol was manifested, and fish were regarded as unclean, wherever the goddess was characterized as libidinous and devouring. Fish gods were venerated as creators and vivifiers among Sumero-Semitic peoples and represented phallic power. An Assyrian seal of about 700 bce depicts "Fish Gods Fertilizing the Tree of Life." Babylonian seals bear the image of a great fish with a vase from which fish stream.

A ubiquitous food in much of the world, fish are a universal motif of plenty. They are an emblem of abundance and good augury on Buddhist altars and are cited as one of the five boons in the Tantric text Vāmācāris.

At ritual meals in the temples of Babylon, fish was the sacred food of the priests. In Judaism, fish was regarded as the food of the blessed in paradise and was eaten at the Sabbath meal. The old Jewish Passover was in the month of Adar, the Fish, and the traditional symbol of the national restoration that is to come with the advent of the Messiah is the great fish on which the righteous will feast. Sabbath utensils and the chalice of benediction are often decorated with images of fish.

Sacred fish occur in Syrian and Iranian myths. Throughout the dynastic period in Egypt, they were regarded as the manifestation or abode of a god. Hapi, father of the gods, was "Lord of the Fishes," and a fish denoted the phallus of the dismembered god Osiris. An attribute of the sea god Poseidon (or Neptune), fish were associated with lunar power, and when represented with an ax, as in Crete, designated both lunar and solar power. Pisces, the twelfth sign of the Zodiac, is a pair of parallel fishes pointing in opposite directions, symbolizing spiritual and temporal power, the upper and lower worlds, past and future, involution and evolution, the ending of one cycle and the beginning of another. A pair of fishes on Chinese Bronze Age vessels signifies creative power. The Japanese believed that the world was supported by a mighty fish. Among the primitive societies of Oceania, Africa, and North and South America, fish were sacred totemic figures, emblematic of the power of the clan. Peruvian Indians believed that the original fish had engendered all others; they worshiped the species that was caught in the greatest numbers. Sea gods riding on a fish signified freedom; shown on the footprint of the Buddha, a fish meant emancipation from attachment and desire.

A corollary of the fish as blessing is its assimilation to a savior. The alchemical sign for Salvator mundi is a fish. The Hindu god Viṣṇu, transformed into a fish by Brahma, recovered the Vedas from the flood, saved humankind, and started a new race. Christ was symbolized by the fish, as seen in carved inscriptions in the catacombs of Rome; in Greek, the initial letters of "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior" form the Greek word ichthus ("fish"). The depiction of Jesus standing in water confirms the metaphor of a fish drawn from the deep to bring salvation to humanity. The feeding of the multitude by the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes is the prototype of the Eucharist; the fish, like the bread, symbolizes the body of the Lord. The concept of Christ as both sacrificed and sacrificer is inherent in the Mass. Three fish with one head, or three intertwined fish—found in the iconography of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and Persia, and even down to modern times—is a universal symbol for unity in trinity, and came to represent Christian baptism. Christ's disciples and the newly baptized were denoted by the sign of a fish, and a neophyte in fish garb is depicted on early Christian lamps. In Christian mortuary painting, on pagan sarcophagi, and in representations of Chinese feasts of the dead, fish relate to resurrection and regeneration.

The experience of entering the belly of a whale or big fish, as in the Jonah story, is equated to a religious idea that informed the initiatory mysteries and rituals of death and of rebirth through newfound wisdom. Variants of this transition symbol are found worldwide, from the initiation rites of Oceania, West Africa, Lapland, and Finland to the North American Indian tale of Hiawatha, who was swallowed by the King of Fishes.

Fishing symbolizes both looking for souls and looking into the soul, that is, drawing the treasure of wisdom from the sea of the unknown. The Babylonians considered the sea the source of wisdom, and a mystic fisherman called "Warden of the Fish" is represented on a seal of the second millennium bce. The mythical hero Ea-Oannes, half man, half fish, rose from the waters to bring culture and wisdom to mankind. The figure evolved into a fish god, Lord of the Deeps, whose priests wore fish skins and a fish headdress and whose image was ultimately transmuted into the miter of Christian bishops. The name Orpheus derives from a term for "fish," and one of the figures on an Orphic sacramental bowl of the third or fourth century bce shows Orpheus as a fisher of men, with a fish and pole at his feet. The Celtic god Nodon was a fisher-god, and the Welsh god Bran the Blessed was called "Fisher of Men." His counterpart is the Grail King whom Parsifal found fishing as he waited for his deliverer. According to Augustine, Christ's exhortation "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men" implied that the world is a sea of fish to be converted. For the tenth-century Ṣūfī mystic Niffari, the sea of spiritual experience through which the mystic passes on his journey to God is full of strange and frightening fish.

Many forms of sea life embody specific religious symbols. The dolphin was regarded as a divine intermediary between the upper and lower worlds; as a guide to departed souls, he was depicted on Greek vases bearing warriors to the Isles of the Blest. The dolphin as psychopomp, or guide of the souls of the dead, is also represented in Christian art. The octupus was a favorite motif in the ceramic arts of ancient Crete, allied to the spiritual in symbolizing the mystic center and the unfolding of creation. In the Celtic legend of Finn, the hero eats the Salmon of Wisdom, which endows him with the foreknowledge of the gods. The European Stella Maris, or starfish, is a symbol of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit.

Bibliography

Baum, Julius. "Symbolic Representations of the Eucharist." In The Mysteries, vol. 2 of Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, edited by Joseph Campbell. New York, 1956. A close analysis of the symbolic acts of Christ represented in the rite of the Eucharist, based on fish iconography on sarcophagi and artifacts in sacramental chapels.

Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God, vol. 4, Creative Mythology, New York, 1968. A survey of the mystic fisherman symbolism in Orphic, Babylonian, and Christian artifacts, correlating the symbols of the mystagogue, Orpheus the Fisherman, and the Fisher King of the Grail legend.

Lengyel, Lancelot. Le secret des Celtes. Paris, 1969. The fish as symbol of wisdom in the Celtic legend of the hero Finn and his acquisition of supernatural knowledge by consuming the Salmon of Wisdom.

Neumann, Erich. The Origins and History of Consciousness. New York, 1954. Includes an account of the predominance of female deities in early fish cults and of culture heroes that rise from the waters, half fish, half man, to bring revelation and wisdom to humankind.

Zimmer, Heinrich. Philosophies of India (1951). Edited by Joseph Campbell. Reprint, Princeton, 1969. In his summary of the sastra of the Science of Wealth, the author examines the Indian doctrine of Matsyanyāya, or the law of the fishes, in which fish symbolize the breeding force of the sea—life abundant, self-sustaining, and self-consuming.