Observations placeholder
Cirlot on fish
Identifier
004816
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
A Dictionary of Symbols – J E Cirlot
In broad terms, the fish is a psychic being, or a 'penetrative motion' endowed with the heightening power concerning base matters – that is the unconscious. Because the close symbolic relationship between the sea and the Magna Mater, some peoples have held the fish to be sacred. There were some Asiatic rites that embraced fish worship and priests were forbidden to eat it.... the son of Atargatis (Ashtart or Astarte) was named Ichthys.
Schneider notes that the fish is the mystic Ship of Life, sometimes a whale, sometimes a bird, and at other times simply a fish or a flying fish.
By reason of its bobbin like shape, it becomes a kind of 'bird of the nether regions'..by virtue of the extraordinary number of its eggs it becomes a spiritual symbol [the connection with the egg]...........
The Fisher King belongs to the legend of the Holy Grail. According to Marx in Nouvelles recherches sur la Litterature Arthurienne this role of the mythical monarch relates him to the apostles or fishermen of the Sea of Galilee.