Synchronicity: The Fish that Swallowed a Snake

Synchronicity: The Snake that Swallowed a Fish

Jung found a snake that had choked in the act of swallowing a fish so that both had died.

This occurred in 1933. at the shore by his Bollingen retreat.

According to a family member, Jung saw this as a synchronicity since he was working on the relationship Christianity/Fish and Alchemy/Snake at the time, and the external event paralleled his views on how these systems’ inability to integrate their perspectives was fatal to each, leaving them dead.

This conjunction so impressed Jung that he carved the image of the snake swallowing the fish into a block of stone that serves as part of the base for the loggia at Bollingen.

His realization that he had been “alluding to the existence of this phenomenon [Synchronicity] on and off in my writing for twenty years without discussing it any further.

Joseph Cambray

Synchronicity: Nature and Psyche in an Interconnected Universe

Page 10

The Inscription

The inscription reads:

Because it devoured a fish too large the snake suffocated. In this way, both perished simultaneously, to testify that the (Christian) mass and the (alchemical) work are the same and not the same, namely their death an event coinciding and corresponding with my thoughts. In memory of this event, I, C.G. J., placed this stone in the year 1933.

Source

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The Unfinished Side of the Bollingen Stone: (Almost Merlin/Mercurius) Photo: Kornelia Grabinska, 2011 (That Jung left one side of the stone blank…

Bollingen Stone: This is Telesphorus…. (Inscription:) Ὁ Αἰὼν παῖς ἐστι παίζων, πεττεύων· παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη» · Τελεσφόρος διελαύνων τοὺς σκοτεινοὺς τοῦ κόσμου…

Stone Carving at Bollingen: The Orphan (Inscription:) I am an orphan, alone: nevertheless I am found everywhere. I am one, but opposed…

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