Night-Sea Crossing

This expression, frequent in works of symbology, originates in the ancient notion of the sun, in its nightly course through the lower abyss where it suffers death (which is sometimes conceived as a real death followed by resurrection, and at other times is purely figurative). This abyss was associated with the watery depths of the third - or infernal - level, either in the sense of a lower ocean or of a subterranean lake. According to Leo Frobenius, in Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes, all the sea-faring gods are solar symbols. For their passage they are shut up in a chest, hamper or trunk (symbolizing the maternal bosom) and exposed to a variety of perils. The direction of their journey is always contrary to the visible, daily course of the sun. Here is the account given by Frobenius of the archetypal avatars of this essential journey: ‘A hero is swallowed by a sea monster in the West. The animal journeys with him in is belly to the East. During the journey, the hero lights a fire in the belly of the monster and, feeling hungry, cuts off a slice of its heart.  Shortly afterwards he observes that the fish has reached land; he then begins to cut away the flesh of the animal until he can slip out. In the belly of the fish it was so hot that his hair fell out. Often the hero sets free those who have been swallowed before him and they escape with him.’ This basic situation takes on a variety of forms in a great many legends and folktales, but the essential features of devouring, confinement, enchantment and escape are always present. For Jung, this symbol is a kind of Journey into Hell comparable with the journeys described by Virgil and Dante, and also a sort of journey to the Land of Spirits, or, in other words, a plunge into the unconscious, also signify death - not in the sense of total negation but as the other side of life (or life in its latent state) and as the mystery which exerts its fascination over the consciousness from its abode in the abyss. The journey’s end is expressive of resurrection and the overcoming of death (and the same applies to the end of a dream or of an illness). Related in symbolism to this is the story of Joseph cast into the pit by his brothers, and Jonah in the belly of the whale.

Entry from J.E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols