Fish Dove Symbolism Spanning Cultures and Eras

Fish and Dove Symbolism Spanning Cultures and Eras

YIN AND YANG FISHES OR DOVES AS symbols have always been popular from the beginning of time with. The symbol Koi fishes as Yin and Yang, where Yin's eye is in/on the Yang fish, and Yang's eye is in/on the Yin fish.

The Yin‑Yang represents in Chinese philosophy how opposing forces interconnect, interact and are mutually dependent in the physical, natural world. Value judgments, also, have opposites (for example Empedocles 'love and strife'), and the symbols have been extended to religious philosophy and theology. A connection with the Yin‑Yang symbol are the Fishes, the Doves and the Cross.
The Yin‑Yang symbol originally represented Chinese classical thought of how apparently opposing forces interconnect, interact and are mutually dependent, in the natural world. The philosophy is extended to traditional Chinese science, medicine and martial arts. Male and female, hot and cold, wet and dry, up and down, good and evil, right and left... our world is full of mutual yet opposing forces which we attempt to balance. And from that balance, we have or make life as we know it.

The philosophy has its critics. Yes, there is 'black' and 'white', but there is also 'grey' they say. There is 'up' and 'down', 'left' and 'right', but there is also 'middle', and 'warm' is neither 'hot' nor 'cold'. However there is always the complimentary and contradictory in logos. Value judgments, also, have opposites and/or complements (wealth and poverty, happiness and sadness, love and hate, etc.), and so the symbol has been extended to religious philosophy and theology. As early as the 2nd century Titus Flavius Clemens (St. Clement of Alexandria), suggested that Christians identify themselves with a seal depicting a fish or dove. Even before that time, inscriptions on monuments. suggest that the fish and Dove symbols were familiar. 
The cross, the Dove and the Fish represents pure 'love'. And there is nothing simpler, purer, or easier to understand, than love. Love is so pure, that it is purity itself. God, is love, love is powerful. Love can destroy evil; evil in all its forms: hatred, envy, jealousy. This is why God is so powerful. 

Merging the Yin-Yang with the cross implies that with balanced development of our spiritual nature, we can attain love. 

Diving fish swooping geese (Chinese)

Chen yu luo yan

There is a story surrounding the greatest beauty in Chinese history, a woman named Xi Shi. It's said that she was so beautiful that when she looked at fish in a pond, the fish were so dazzled by her beauty that they forgot to swim and gradually sank to the bottom. Likewise, it was said that when geese/dove flew over a woman called Wang Zhaojun, they were so struck by her beauty that they would forget to flap their wings and swooped to the ground. Because of this, to this day, when a young Chinese man is in love with a Chinese woman, he may indicate that, to him, she is as beautiful as Xi Shi or Wang Zhaojun. To do this, he will say just four words: "Diving fish, swooping geese".

Little dove (Russian)

Golubchik (masc) / golubushka (fem)

Pushkin used the word "little dove" to refer affectionately to his elderly nanny in the lines of one of his best-known poems, but she could equally have used it to refer to him, when he was a child (and probably did). As a term of endearment it dates back at least to the Song of Songs, in the Old Testament ("O my dove... let me see thy countenance"), originally written in Hebrew. The Slavonic translation of the Bible had a profound influence on shaping the Russian language, so the Russian usage could have Biblical roots.

The fish was considered important enough to be mentioned many times in the Bible and more recently there have been several additional thoughts about the early use of this symbol. Carl Liungman wrote in his magisterial volume 'Dictionary of Symbols': 'Virgo' is based on the Hebraic letter 'mem' and the Phoenician symbol meaning 'fish'. It became, early on, a sign representing Jesus and the mystery of His virginal birth." As with the nimbus or mandorla this sign may be surrounded by the aurelia or gloria, emitting rays of light and is, heroically, limited to surrounding the Trinity or any member of the Trinity, most often Jesus. (Images of Mary may be seen surrounded by a mandorla but only if she holds the Christ Child in some way.)

Three of these interwoven shapes form a triquetra; a symbol of the Trinity. The triquetra is the basis of the Carolingian Cross.

Clemens was a Greek theologian and noted that letters of the Greek word for fish, ΙΧΘΥΣ (pronounced Ichthys), made the following neat little acrostic:

So in addition to the simple and easily recognisable symbol, there is also a motto that describes Jesus as Christ, God's Son, and Saviour.
This use of the fish might also have been partly a protest against the Pagan emperors of the time, who named themselves Theou Yios (God's sons), which appears on Alexandrian coins minted during of the reign of Domitian, 11th Emperor of the Roman Empire, 81-96 AD.

The Greek character for alpha (α) is similar to the fish symbol, as is the Omega (Ω) if rotated 90°. This may also have had some influence on the decision for Christians to adopt the symbol, since Jesus calls himself "the Alpha and the Omega"– the beginning and the end. (See also Alpha and Omega Cross.)

It doesn't take too much imagination to see "X" and "P" in the symbol, which form the monogram of Christ. (See also Chi-Rho Cross.

The original source of a Fish as a symbol is most probably to be found in the belief, that the origin of all life comes from the combination of air and water, a sensual idea which appears from the close connection of the Fish with a dove and the goddess Atargatis. A connection here where the fish and the Dove share in the origin of creation.

These two animals namely, a Dove and a Fish, one of water and one of air were symbolic in the creation story and were held in reverence in Mesopotamia and Levant.

Countless flocks of Doves greeted the travelers when they stepped on shore at Askalon, and in the outer courts of all the temples of Astarte one might see the flutter of their white wings. The Fish were preserved in ponds near to the Temple, and superstitious dread forbade their capture, for the goddess punished such sacrilege, smiting the offender with ulcers and tumors.” 

We can affirm with certainty that the Fish is a Life symbol of immemorial antiquity, and that the title of Fisher has, from the earliest ages, been associated with Deities who were held to be specially connected with the origin and preservation of Life. The true meaning of the Fish symbol, while still regarded as sacred, has been lost, and the explanations, are often fantastic afterthoughts. The Fish was sacred to those deities who were supposed to lead men back from the shadows of death to life. From the Flood Waters to Life.

In Indian cosmogony Manu finds a little fish in the water in which he would wash his hands, the fish asks, and receives protection, asserting that when grown to full size it will save Manu from the universal deluge. This is Matsaya, the greatest of all fish.

The first Avatar of Vishnu the Creator is a Fish. At the great feast in honor of this god, held on the twelfth day of the first month of the Indian year, Vishnu is represented under the form of a golden Fish. The Fish Avatar was afterwards transferred to Buddha. In Buddhist religion the symbols of the Fish and Fisher are freely employed. Thus in Buddhist monasteries we find drums and gongs in the shape of a fish. In the scriptures Buddha is referred to as the Fisherman who draws fish from the ocean of Samsara to the light of Salvation. There are figures and pictures which represent Buddha in the act of fishing, an attitude which, unless interpreted in a symbolic sense, would be utterly at variance with the tenets of the Buddhist religion.

This also holds good for Chinese Buddhism. The goddess a female Deity of Mercy and Salvation, is depicted either on, or holding, a Fish. The Chinese Fu-Hi, is pictured  having a fish’s tail with the mystic tablets containing the mysteries of Heaven and Earth.

The Babylonians had a Fisher, god, Oannes who revealed to them the arts of Writing, Agriculture and was, ‘teacher and lord of all wisdom,’ in other words the mysteries of Heaven and Earth.

There is thus little reason to doubt that, if we regard the Fish as a Divine Life saving symbol, of immemorial antiquity, we shall not go very far astray. 

In Babylonian cosmology Adapa the Wise, the son of Ea, is represented as a Fisher. 2

In the ancient Sumerian laments for Tammuz, god is frequently addressed as Divine Lamgar, Lord of the Net.

What may be regarded as the central point of Jewish Fish symbolism is the tradition that, at the end of the world, Messias will catch the great Fish Leviathan, and divide its flesh as food among the faithful.

As a foreshadowing of this Messianic Feast the Jews were in the habit of eating fish upon the Sabbath. During the Captivity, under the influence of the worship of the goddess Atargatis, they transferred the ceremony to the Friday, the eve of the Sabbath, a position which it has retained to the present day.

Eisler remarks that “in Galicia one can see Israelite families in spite of their being reduced to the extremest misery, procuring on Fridays a single gudgeon, to eat, divided into fragments, at night-fall. In the 16th century Rabbi Solomon Luria protested strongly against this practice. Fish, he declared, should be eaten on the Sabbath itself, not on the Eve.”

The elements of this mystic meal were Fish, Bread, and Wine, the last being represented in the Messianic tradition: “At the end of the meal God will give to the most worthy,i.e., to King David, the Cup of Blessing–one of fabulous dimensions.” 

Fish play an important part in Mystery Cults, as being the ‘holy’ food. Upon a tablet dedicated to the Phrygian Mater Magna we find Fish and Cup.

The groom of the Song of Solomon compares his bride's eyes to doves. He uses the word יונה (yona), which is the regular word for dove, but still, human eyes don't look like doves, but perhaps they act like doves: literally always searching for a place to land. Perhaps the core meaning of this root is not so much a scouting or exploring, but rather that upon which the eye falls, or what attracts the eye; beautiful things. Hence the women's apparel and the white dove. Also notice the similarity with the word תורה (torah), which is the word Torah, meaning Law.

Now compare this with the Irish story of the Salmon of Wisdom. The younger lad, who conceals his name, catches the fish. He is set to watch it while it roasts but is warned not to eat it. Touching it with his thumb he is burned, and puts his thumb in his mouth to cool it. Immediately he becomes possessed of all knowledge, and thereafter has only to chew his thumb to obtain wisdom.

A noted instance in point is the famous epitaph of Bishop Aberkios, over the correct interpretation of which scholars have spent much time and ingenuity. 1 In this curious text Aberkios, after mentioning his journeys, says:

Faith however always went ahead and set before me as food a Fish from a Fountain, a huge one, a clean one, Which a Holy Virgin has caught.
This she gave to the friends ever to eat as food,
Having good Wine, and offering it watered together with Bread.”

Monks, during their prolonged wanderings, annually ‘kept their Resurrection,’ i.e., celebrate their Easter Mass, on the back of a great Fish. 

Priests and initiates partook of this otherwise forbidden food, in the belief that they thus partook of the flesh of the goddess. “

Orpheus was connected with all the mysteries of the ordinary chthonic, cults in Greece and Italy. Christianity took its first tentative steps into the reluctant world of Graeco-Roman Paganism under the benevolent patronage of Orpheus.