Aion (Collected Works of C.G. Jung)
The comparison of the fishes with a yoke of oxen ploughing merits special attention.
Oxen stand for the motive power of the plough. In the same way, the fishes represent the driving forces of the coming world of consciousness.
Since olden times the plough has stood for man’s mastery over the earth: wherever man ploughs, he has wrested a patch of soil from the primal state and put it to his own use.
That is to say: the fishes will rule this world and subdue it by working astrologically through man and moulding his consciousness.
Oddly enough, the ploughing does not begin, like all other things, in the east, but in the west.
This motif turns up again in alchemy.
“Know,” says Ripley, “that your beginning should be made towards sunset, and from there you should turn towards midnight, when the lights cease altogether to shine, and you should remain ninety nights in the dark fire of purgatory without light.
Then turn your course towards the east, and you will pass through many different colours,” etc.”
The alchemical work starts with the descent into darkness (nigredo), i.e., the unconscious.
The ploughing or mastery of the earth is undertaken “at the command of the Father.”
Thus God not only foresaw the enantiodromia that began in the year 1000, but also intended it.
The Platonic month of the Fishes is to be ruled by two principles.
The fishes in our text are parallel, like the oxen, and point to the same goal, although one is Christ and the other the Antichrist. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Page 149, Para 231.
