Being, Purpose and Fate

The Fish and the Ring

A long time ago, I had a dream in which I saw a fish swimming with a gold ring on its lower lip. It had that powerful presence one sometimes has with a spiritual encounter. I took it to a Jungian analyst I was seeing; I was having a lot of such dreams. He smiled, sat back, and told me that fish and the ring symbols were well recognised in dreams and culture. What did it mean? I had no idea, and he didn’t say. The years passed, and this, like other experiences, I filed in my memory under awaiting explanation, if there was one.

Recently, I travelled to Essex for the funeral of an uncle. I stayed with my sister, and the evening before the funeral, she brought out a book of English Fairy Tales. She had been reading them to her granddaughter and was struck by how violent and murderous they could be. The stories had been put together in the 1890s by Joseph Jacobs, as he travelled England talking to people about the tales they knew. https://archive.org/details/englishfairytal00jacogoog/page/n16/mode/2up

I flicked through the table of contents and found….. ‘The Fish and the Ring’. Well, I had to read on.

It is the story of a Baron with the gift of prophecy, who discovers that his son is going to marry a very poor young woman from a nearby village. He goes in search of her to stop the prophecy from coming true, finds her and tries various methods to stop such a wedding from happening. Each time he tries, she comes closer to the prophecy until she eventually has a secret marriage to his son. When he discovers the marriage, he takes her to a sea cliff edge with the intention of pushing her over. She begs him to spare her life. He takes a ring off his finger and throws it into the sea, telling her that when she can return the ring to him, he will accept her as the wife of his son. Until then, she must leave the household.

She leaves the marriage and finds work in a hostelry. She is a good cook, and one day the fishermen provide her with a large fish to cook. The Baron and his friends happen to be coming for supper that day. So she cooks the fish and, in its preparation, finds the Baron’s ring. She then presents the cooked fish and ring to the Baron, and he, true to his word, accepts her as his son’s wife. The moral of the story is that “you cannot escape your fate.”

Why this came to me in a dream all those years ago is not clear, but it might have been related to existential issues and my fear and uncertainty for my future, as my life and personality were disintegrating. My uncle had clearly met his fate around the time of this connection.

How do we know that the fate before us when we set out is the one we will end up with? I know of no way of knowing for sure.

The Fates

I had another dream around that time in which three old ladies were working in a back office. The same Jungian interpreted them as the Three Fates of Greek Mythology. One spun, another measured, and the other cut the yarn that represented our life. The fates would not be altered; they were in control. Known as the Moirai (meaning alloted portion), these three goddesses control the thread of life, which symbolises an individual’s fate. Once decided upon, even Zeus could not change fate. They ensure that every being, mortal and divine, lives out their destiny as assigned by the universe. They have parallels in other cultures.

Although the Fates were important in predestination, there was a belief amongst ancient Greeks that free will and fate coexist, with predetermined outcomes being driven by the choices individuals make, which is in accordance with who they are. What we are causes us to choose the life we live and the outcome it has.

We might consider this to be a quaint idea belonging to surpassed mythologies and tales of superstitious folk from the past. Well, my long and arduous journey has taught me to take them more seriously, as reflections of what goes on in the deeper currents of our being. How one relates to them might be dependent on one’s direct experience. These messages are communicated through symbols as images and mythologies, an older and more universal language, often difficult to interpret. The experience is of the truth they contain. If there was a message in my dreams, it might have been not to fret about the future, it is preordained in accordance with your role in this life, so live your life right now as you are. Before I had such experiences, I would have thought it implausible that their meanings could be profoundly important.