Abyss (Greek, abyssos, Latin abyssus). Myths about an abyss or bottomless pit are found in most cultures.
In Judaism the abyss lies deep within the earth, a place where evil spirits of the dead are banished (Job 32:22, Psalm 6:5, 143:7).
In ancient Greece the majority of the dead retire to a gloomy underworld, an abyss of “shades” where they endure punishment for worldly sins.
The ancient Greek idea of heaven is not well developed. In fact, only a few heroes pass on to the favorable Blessed Isles. After the 5th century BCE the belief that the dead reside among the stars appears. But this still radically differs from the concept of heaven as forwarded by Jesus Christ.
In Hindu lore, a popular version of the Ramayana epic portrays the heroine Sita being consumed by a great opening in the earth.
The Druidic tradition tells of evil foes falling down into bottomless caverns.
The biblical Satan is bound by an angel and cast into a bottomless pit (Rev. 20:3).
Mircea Eliade notes that myths about “binding” evil beings are quite plentiful.
New Testament (NT) accounts of an abyss refer to a hellish region from which a wild beast emerges to temporarily destroy prophets after they have completed their mission.
The Abyss in the NT is likewise described as a prison for evil spirits (Luke 8:31; Rev 9:1-2; 11; 11:7-8).
Interestingly, Victorian Fairy imagery is replete with watery underworlds inhabited by ghoulish beings, amidst which fairies are protected from harm by dwelling, often sleepily, within a sort of magical cocoon.
In the Beowulf myth, an evil water-troll is slain in her underwater lair by use of a magical sword discovered by the hero, deep under the water’s surface.
More recently, the invention of the bathysphere and the submarine opened the door for pulp fiction and numerous Hollywood “B” movies about underwater horrors.
An underwater abyss is also found in the science fiction film, The Abyss.
Sci-fi also depicts the abyss motif in outer space. In several episodes, Star Trek Voyager’s Captain Janeway stands perilously above an almost bottomless cylinder within a Borg ship.
Likewise, Star Wars‘ Luke Skywalker perches on a ledge over an abyss in the evil Emperor’s Death Star. And the more recent Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace is replete with strange subterranean beings.
In psychoanalytic terms, Freudians see the abyss as a symbol of the mother’s womb or the tumultuous forces of the instinctual id.
Jungians tend to regard the abyss as an archetypal image of the collective unconscious.
Regardless of which school one subscribes to, in the most general sense a fear of total destruction seems to coexist with a potential for victory over, and order arising from, the dark chaos of the abyss.
As Rod Serling put it in the close of the 1961 Twilight Zone episode “The Shelter” (pictured above), in which apparently normal American neighbors go beserk during an atomic bomb scare:
For civilization to survive the human race has to remain civilized.
Add to this, report errors, suggest edits or voice your opinion by posting a comment
Thanatos
