“The story of Jonah and the whale is an example of a mythic theme that is practically universal, of the hero going into a fish’s belly and ultimately coming out again, transformed.
It’s a descent into the dark. Psychologically, the whale represents the power of life locked in the unconscious. Metaphorically, water is the unconscious, and the creature in the water is the life or the energy of the unconscious which has overwhelmed the conscious personality and must be disempowered, overcome and controlled.
In the first stage of this kind of adventure, the hero leaves the realm of the familiar, over which he has some measure of control, and comes to a threshold, let us say the edge of a lake or sea, where a monster of the abyss comes to meet him. [With] Jonah the hero is swallowed and taken into the abyss to be later resurrected….” -Joseph Campbell
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