The Seba library treats Leviathan in 7 passages, across 2 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Edinger, Edward F.).
We can see from the example of Leviathan how the great ‘fish’ gradually split into its opposite, after having itself been the opposite of the highest God and hence his shadow, the embodiment of his evil side.
Jung argues that Leviathan exemplifies a psycho-mythological splitting process in which an original divine shadow bifurcates into a pair of opposed monsters, relocating God’s inner conflict onto an external cosmic drama.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
The two prehistoric animals, Leviathan (water) and Behemoth (land), together with their females, form a quaternio of opposites. The coniunctio oppositorum on the animal level, i.e., in the unconscious state, is prevented by God as being dangerous.
Jung identifies Leviathan and Behemoth as a quaternary of opposites whose premature union is suppressed by God to prevent consciousness from remaining arrested at the instinctual level.
, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955thesis
Another image of the mastering of Leviathan is found in certain medieval representations picturing Christ on the cross as the bait of God’s fishing line which catches Leviathan. This is another symbol of the ‘pious’ ego which, like Christ, willingly exposes itself to the primordial psyche for the purpose of transforming it.
Edinger reads the Christ-as-bait iconography as a symbol of the individuating ego voluntarily engaging the primordial unconscious in order to effect its transformation.
, The Creation of Consciousness Jung’s Myth for Modern Man, 1984thesis
According to the Syrian Apocalypse of Baruch, Leviathan shall rise from the sea with the advent of the Messiah. This is probably the ‘very great fish’ of the Abercius inscription.
Jung documents Leviathan’s eschatological role as a Messianic harbinger, linking it to the broader fish-symbolism complex operative in Jewish and early Christian tradition.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
The idea of Leviathan rising from the sea also links up with the vision in II Esdras 13:25, of the ‘man coming up from the midst of the sea.’
Jung connects Leviathan’s emergence from the sea to the apocalyptic figure of the Son of Man, suggesting a symbolic equivalence between chaos-monster and messianic redeemer.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
The Talmud commentator Solomon ben Isaac remarks that the tanninim are fishes, presumably basing himself on an older source. This remark is important, firstly because it takes the battle of the fishes as an eschatological event (like the fight between Behemoth and Leviathan).
Jung traces the antithetical pairing of Leviathan and Behemoth to Talmudic sources, situating the combat motif within an eschatological-astrological framework central to his Aion argument.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951supporting
sea monsters, 136; see also behemoth; leviathan
The Answer to Job index cross-references Leviathan under ‘sea monsters’ alongside Behemoth, confirming its categorical placement within Jung’s theology of divine evil and the dark side of the God-image.
, Answer to Job, 1952aside