In the last years I’ve hardly watched a handful of films, but one, recommended by a five-year-old girl, I’ve watched several times. It’s an extraordinary movie, full of symbolism. I’m talking about Spirited Away, an animated movie by the Japanese director Miyazaki. If you haven’t watched it yet, make a note on your agenda. It doesn’t disappoint and speaks to both children and adults.

The movie follows the adventures of a girl in a town inhabited by ghosts and her attempts to rescue her parents, turned into pigs by the Machiavellian old Yubaba. Beneath apparently a children’s story, runs a deeper message, the most important of adventures: The conquering of ourselves.

The ghost town represents ordinary life.

Old Yubaba represents our ego. She lives on top of a bathhouse (our body). She is constantly satisfying every whim of a giant baby, keeping him pampered, isolated from the outside in a room full of toys (our emotions).

Three identical heads jump from place to place in Yubaba’s room, a very visual way of representing the three developmental levels of our brain: reptilian, mammalian, and human (symbolized by an evil bird, the giant baby, and Yubaba respectively). In other words, our survival instincts, emotional reactions, and intelligence.

The genius of Miyazaki is in reflecting our existence in a ghost town: our life during the day is represented by the frenzied activity that takes place in the town overnight. When the sun rises over the ghost town Yubaba flies away from the bathhouse because when we go to sleep our ego seems to abandon us.

The bathhouse is home to a crowd of employees, serving the ghosts who arrive by boat every night. Logically, these employees represent the multitude of thoughts and mental activities that we have during the day to attract the wealth of ghosts (stimuli that attract our senses). Most of these employees are frogs, which, by their amphibian quality, are the ideal choice to symbolize the transition between our thoughts (water) and the corresponding materialization in actions (land).

Among the employees of the bathhouse, there are three characters who help the girl: the young Haku, the old Kamaji, and the maid Lin. Each one represents a key aspect needed for success in our spiritual conquest. Haku is a young man with powers, respected by all who live in the bathhouse, though not at ease with his situation because Yubaba has stolen his identity. He represents our potential for transformation; in fact, he is able to transform into a dragon. Between Haku and Chihiro arises a deep friendship, a pure love between the spiritual yearning and the capacity for transformation, a union that makes it possible to see through the fictional surface of the world.

Haku advises Chihiro to visit Kamaji in the boilers room at the lowest level of the bathhouse, where he works preparing aromatic waters. The old man represents the body in service of the mind, working hard to meet all her requirements. Even the cells are pictured as funny black balls that  throw rocks of coal into a boiler.

Kamaji tells Chihiro to go up and talk to Yubaba because she is the one who can decide whether the human girl can stay or not. To reach the top of the house where Yubaba dwells, Chihiro has to ascend in elevators. She does so in the company of Lin, a young maid who is always grumbling, but also willing to work and help out when needed. This young lady represents our capacity for sacrifice and effort.

Yubaba reluctantly agrees to hire the girl, stealing her name and assuming that the hard work will cause her to forget it completely, in which case she will have to stay as a slave. It is interesting how Miyazaki symbolizes the power of the ego over the body and will through the ownership of personal names, masterfully illustrating that the power of the ego is conceptual, intellectual.

Chihiro’s first job is to meet a huge smelly ghost. It is time to roll up our sleeves and begin to clean our minds and bad habits. With the effort of all, including Yubaba, they manage to cleanse all the crap the ghost had attracted to himself, thus revealing his true identity: a shining spirit of a river. The thankful spirit rewards the girl with a magical ball, which she thinks of using to break the spell on her parents. This episode represents the first and hardest of spiritual works: to cleanse our minds and correct our bad habits. The reward is a new power to carry on.

The second of the ghosts she has to deal with does not seem so terrible, in fact, Chihiro invites him to enter the bathhouse. This black shadow without a face has the ability to generate gold nuggets, which draws the attention of all the employees, eager to attend to him in exchange for the gold. But the ghost, as he devours the food, begins to increase in size and rude manners to the point of swallowing up a couple of the employees. The situation gets out of control and jeopardizes the bathhouse. However, Chihiro is not tempted by his gold; on the contrary, she feels pity and feeds the ghost with half of her magic ball. The ghost begins to vomit until he is totally purified, converted back into a shadow that now follows the child submissively. Logically, this episode represents the self-control of our impulses and appetites with the power of our cleansed minds.

The young Haku, wishing to gain his freedom and that of the girl, steals a talisman from another key character: the twin sister of Yubaba, who is physically identical but lives based on the opposite principles. Yubaba’s sister represents the other side of our ego, the result of transforming intelligence into wisdom. The sister comes into the rooms of Yubaba guided by the girl, without her knowing. Once inside, she transforms the giant baby into a mouse and the wicked bird into a fly. The effect of wisdom when it enters our mind is just that, to cut through our childish emotions and negative attitudes until they become harmless aspects of our personality.

Haku, transformed into a dragon, is seriously injured during the theft of the talisman. Chihiro gives him the other half of the magic ball to heal his injuries and decides to return the talisman to Yubaba’s sister. To do so, she has to take a long train journey on the waters surrounding the ghost town, in the company of the mouse, the fly, and the no-face ghost. Finally, they arrive at a lonely train station where they are greeted by a candle that precedes them up to where Yubaba’s sister dwells in the midst of nature, in a imple and welcoming country house. The sister receives them with hospitality and invites the faceless ghost to stay for good. This episode represents the long and lonely progress until we finally encounters the light of wisdom and tame our sensual appetites.

Haku appears soon after transformed into a powerful dragon, on which Chihiro returns back to the ghost town. Whilst flying, she recognizes the true identity of Haku as the spirit of a river in which she nearly drowned as a child. When she pronounces his name, Haku remembers his full name and breaks his curse. When a person is in total control of her emotions, and her desires are governed now by wisdom, she can recognize her true divine nature.

The adventure is about to end, but Yubaba still poses the last test. She asks Chihiro to identify her parents among a group of pigs. Chihiro answers that none of them are her parents, and, indeed, all pigs were enchanted servants. At that instant, our spiritual yearning has achieved its goal and can never be again deceived by the ego and his servants thoughts. Now we are free.

Chihiro returns to the town entrance, to the starting point of the adventure, where her parents are waiting, unaware of anything that has passed. We appear to be the same, but inside we are not; our internal transformation is so profound and irreversible that our actions will always be guided by wisdom.

Note: If you think this analysis was valid, you’ll find equally revealing my research on the classical myths, or the purpose of mankind’s oldest monuments. These interpretations and many others appear in my book Voyage Zero.