Into the Belly of the Beast: The Death and Rebirth of Self and Soul

A serpent the length of infinity slithers across the daylight sky, snaking hungrily to the glowing egg, the sun. Its jaw unhinges, opens wide, and slowly swallows the white-hot orb…

And then there is darkness. Night.

The sun moves through the length of the serpent, and then eventually emerges from the other end of the snake…

Rebirth. Dawn.

This is the way the ancients believed that day became night. Those nights must have seemed hopeless, restless. What if the snake didn’t purge the sun? What then—eternal darkness?

In life, people experience this darkness; in art, characters do, too.


We all go through a dark period in our lives—experiencing the separation of a loved one either through death or divorce, the loss of a job, prolonged sickness or disease. It’s inevitable. Certainly, I have gone through my share of dark nights.

Most people want to hurry through the darkness, fumble around, and scramble for the light at the other end. However, the darkness is part of us, part of our growth process. We’ll go into more of that later.

Art also imitates life. Every film or book that you read has a character experience their dark period, it’s a natural growth for the character; it’s a natural growth for you as a person.

Joseph Campbell called this “The Belly of the Whale” in his ubiquitous book The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Of course, this is from one of the most well-known of beast belly legends is where Hebrew prophet, Jonah ben Amittai, is sent by God to prophecy the destruction of the city of Nineveh. Jonah attempts to escape his divine mission by jumping overboard of his boat. However, he was swallowed by a giant fish (or whale) where he lives three days. Eventually, learning the error of his ways, Jonah is spit out onto shore from the gullet of the ocean dweller. Jonah is reborn with a new understanding of life in the light of day.

Before Jonah, there was the Greek myth of Persephone. She was a goddess who was abducted by Hades and brought to the underworld to rule as queen. Persephone’s descent and rise from the underworld because a popular paradigm among ancient mystics to explain the change of seasons.

In literature and films, the main protagonist must undergo a journey into the “underworld” in order to change and to grow. For example, in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is trapped by the Wicked Witch of the West in the bowels of her castle. It is only when the girl from Kansas undergoes this psychological and spiritual torture is she able to be strong enough to match wits with the witch.

Another almost literal example is in Star Wars: A New Hope, there are two instances. First, where the Millennium Falcon is sucked into the Imperial Death Star via the inescapable tractor beam, and second, where the Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewbacca must endure the sour stomach of the Death Star, the trash compactor. The smell alone must have been something Jonah experiences during his days imprisoned in his sea-going prison. The heroes manage to escape and at that point they are more courageous, more heroic, having escaped certain mechanical death.




There are so many other cinematic examples—the screaming lone survivor escaping the slaughterhouse in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the swamp scene in Stand By Me where the characters question their journey and wish to turn back, the extended action sequence in the intestines of the Vienna sewer system in The Third Man, Indiana Jones trapped by his adversary in the Well of Souls in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or even Kate and Leo trapped in the belly of the sinking Titanic.

Our own lives, for the most part, aren’t quite as dramatic as the cinematic heroes whom we like to root for. For some the journey can seem too dark, too hopeless, and they end their own lives. For others, hopefully, they endure the pain of the darkness and come out the other side into an undiscovered country of their consciousness, a healing of their plagued soul. It’s not necessarily an outward journey, like our cinematic counterparts, but a journey inward. These myths have allowed myself to endure. And I suspect, based on the popularity of myths, literature, and movies, for other people since the beginning of recorded history.

Of course, during this extended time of strife in their own “underworld,” a person might think that myths and legends don’t apply. These are important matters. If a person doesn’t listen to the demands of their own heart and soul during this dark journey, there is risk of a “schizophrenic crackup,” as Joseph Campbell once called it, where a person’s heart and mind will be off center. They will lose sight of their own values and identity and sink deeper into the mire.

So the next time that you’re swallowed up in the belly of the beast, don’t sweat it. Ride it out, light a match if you must to find your way, but know that this “death” is a part of living, a yin to the yang, a winter to summer, a night to day.

So when that serpent swallows your light, just know that the sun will roll out of the beast’s belly...

It’s a new day.