The comparison of Christ with the serpent is
more authentic than that with the fish
GNOSTIC SYMBOLS OF THE SELF
287 Since all cognition is akin to recognition, it should not come as a surprise to find that what I have described as a gradual process of development had already been anticipated, and more or less prefigured, at the beginning of our era.
We meet these images and ideas in Gnosticism, to which we must now give our attention; for Gnosticism was, in the main, a product of cultural assimilation and is therefore of the greatest interest in elucidating and defining the contents constellated by prophecies about the Redeemer, or by his appearance in history, or by the
synchronicity of the archetype.
288 in the Elenchos of Hippolytus the attraction between the magnet and iron is mentioned, if I am not mistaken, three times.
It first appears in the doctrine of the NAASSENES, who taught that the four rivers of Paradise correspond to the eye, the ear, the sense of smell, and the mouth.
The mouth, through which prayers go out and food goes in, corresponds to the fourth river, the Euphrates.
The well-known significance of the “fourth” helps to explain its connection with the “whole” man, for the
fourth always makes a triad into a totality. The text says: “This is the water above the firmament,2 of which, they say, the Saviour spoke: ‘If you knew who it is that asks, you would have asked him, and he would have given you a spring of living water to drink/ 3 To this water comes every nature to choose its own
substances, and from this water goes forth to every nature that which is proper to it, more [certainly] than iron to the Heracleian stone,” 4 etc. 289 As the reference to John 4:10 shows, the wonderful water of the Euphrates has the property of the aqua doctrinae, which perfects every nature in its individuality and thus makes man
whole too.
It does this by giving him a kind of magnetic power
by which he can attract and integrate that which belongs to him.
The Naassene doctrine is, plainly, a perfect parallel to the
alchemical view already discussed: the doctrine is the magnet
that makes possible the integration of man as well as the lapis.
290 In the PERATIC doctrine, so many ideas of this kind reappear
that Hippolytus even uses the same metaphors, though in a more
subtle way.
No one, we are told, can be saved without the Son:
But this is the serpent. For it is he who brought the signs of the
Father down from above, and it is he who carries them back again
after they have been awakened from sleep, transferring them thither
from hence as substances proceeding from the Substanceless. This,
they say, is [what is meant by] the saying, “I am the Door.*’ 5 But
they say he transfers them to those whose eyelids are closed,6 as
naphtha draws everywhere the fire to itself,
exposition seems to be a trifle confused at this point,
itself those parts or substances In man that are of divine origin,
the varptKol xapa/cr^pe? (signs of the Father), and carries them back
to their heavenly birthplace. The serpent is an equivalent of the
fish. The consensus of opinion interpreted the Redeemer equally
as a fish and a serpent; he is a fish because he rose from the unknown
depths, and a serpent because he came mysteriously out
of the darkness. Fishes and snakes are favourite symbols for
describing psychic happenings or experiences that suddenly dart
out of the unconscious and have a frightening or redeeming
effect. That is why they are so often expressed by the motif of
helpful animals.
The comparison of Christ with the serpent is
more authentic than that with the fish, but, for all that, it was
not so popular in primitive Christianity. The Gnostics favoured
it because it was an old-established symbol for the “good” genius
loci, the Agathodaimon, and also for their beloved Nous. Both
symbols are of inestimable value when it comes to the natural,
instinctive interpretation of the Christ-figure. Theriomorphic
symbols are very common in dreams and other manifestations
of the unconscious.
They express the psychic level of the content
in question; that is to say, such contents are at a stage of
unconsciousness that is as far from human consciousness as the
psyche of an animal. Warm-blooded or cold-blooded vertebrates
of all kinds, or even invertebrates, thus indicate the degree of
unconsciousness. It is important for psychopathologists to know
this, because these contents can produce, at all levels, symptoms
that are localized to the corresponding organic or physiological
functions.
For instance, the symptoms may be distinctly correlated
with the cerebrospinal and the sympathetic nervous system.
The Sethians may have guessed something of this sort, for
Hippolytus mentions, in connection with the serpent, that they
compared the “Father” with the cerebrum (cy/ce^aXov) and the
“Son” with the cerebellum and spinal cord . The snake does in fact symbolize “cold-blooded/*
inhuman contents and tendencies of an abstractly intellectual as
well as a concretely animal nature: in a word, the extra-human
quality in man. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 287-289
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serpent serpent serpent serpent
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