Dr. Jung: Suppose we are in the year 2200 B.C., on the 21st of March, and Aries is just coming over the horizon at 1 degree.
This is the spring-point, that is, the intersection of the line of the ecliptic with the equator of the sky.
Each one of the zodiacal signs represents 30 degrees.
Slowly, through the precession of the equinoxes, the spring-point shifted through the sign of Aries toward that of Pisces until in 150 B.C.
Hipparchus observed that Aries was gone and the sun was coming up in a new sign.
In those days tremendous things were happening.
The gods changed when the stars changed. Here the Ram changed into the Fish, he died as a ram and was born as a fish.
The gods had bull's horns when the sun was in Taurus, and they had ram's horns during the Aries period.
Then the Fish became the symbol.
The Christian baptism in water has to do with this symbolism.
The Pope still wears the fisher ring-a gem that represents the miraculous draught of fishes, symbolizing the gathering of all Christians into the womb of the Church.
So a new psychology began to make itself felt.
It was the dawn of Christianity, and we can follow its course in the astrological picture.
The fishes are represented in a peculiar way in the zodiacal sign.
They lie almost tail to tail, joined by a commissure.
This double arrangement is supposed to indicate Christ and Antichrist.
That curious legend can be traced back to the first century-the idea that Christ had a brother, the Antichrist.
When the spring-point has progressed to the whole length of the first fish, we are in A.D. 900--about the climax of Christian influence.
Then it declines, and the spring-point is in the middle of the commissure, which would be in about 1500.
Mr. Bacon: A curious fact is that the temporal power of the Pope and the power of the Dalai Lama reached their highest points within fifty years of each other, and they also lost it within fifty years of each other.
Dr. Jung: Yes, that is very interesting, and there are other parallelisms of that kind.
Now in about 1500, we have Luther, and the Catholic Church was right in saying that he was the Antichrist.
When we come into the tail of the second fish, we are in 1750, the period of the French Enlightenment, when for the first time Christianity was dethroned and replaced by the Goddess of Reason.
The spring-point leaves the fishes before the head of the second fish is reached. For the time being we are headed for the utmost destruction of that principle.
About 1940 we strike the meridian of the first star of Aquarius.
That would be the turning point-about 1940 to 1950.
So we may look for new developments at about that time.
It remains to be seen, I shall make no predictions.
Now we can go back into the past and verify some of these astrological peculiarities.
At the time the sun was in Aries, about 400 to 500 B.C., there were particularly brilliant stars, and that time coincides with the greatest development of philosophy in Greece and China.
About 2000 B.C. Hammurabi announced himself as the great lawgiver. He declared himself the Ram.
It was the time when the sun was just coming into Aries.
Probably we are dealing here with unconscious laws of creative energy, of how things develop, which we only now begin dimly to divine.
It is a very pale spectre still, but things begin to take shape.
Each spring sign is, of course, balanced by an autumnal sign.
For Taurus, when the Zodiac was first made, it was Scorpio foretelling the suicide of the sun.
The hero Gilgamesh passes through the autumn gates guarded by the Scorpio giants in going to the Westland.
In Roman times, Scorpio had ceased to be the autumnal sign, it was Libra.
When the sun came into Pisces, Virgo became the autumnal sign, and astrology has connected that fact with the worship of the Virgin Mary.
When we get into Aquarius, we shall have Leo opposite, so we would have a deification of lion attributes the worship of the sun or sun-like personalities.
I hope that by the next seminar, you will have all this clearly in mind, because you won't be able to understand the next dream if you have not. ~Carl Jung, Dream Analysis Seminar, Pages
