Animal symbolism in film: The Lion King, Heraldry, The Golden Lion

Animals appear time and time again in movies and cartoons.

But it’s not about nature or cuteness at all.

For millennia, they have been one of the main languages of the Game.

Through them, Alpha reveals the fundamental duality of the world: light and darkness, life and death, war and peace, order and chaos.

• Cat and dog.
• The lion and the bull.
• The snake and the bird.

At first glance — just animals.

But within the space of the Game, they are masks — through which roles, sides of the conflict, and the very logic of the plot are distributed.

That is precisely why the same images recur endlessly in myths, religions, coats of arms, cartoons, and movies.

This is no coincidence.

It is an ancient language through which the Players show who stands in the center of the light, who acts from the shadows, and who goes through yet another cycle of death and rebirth.

And the best, purest textbook of this language is the animated film “The Lion King”.

I am Diana Surikova, and I deconstruct the Alpha Games in film.



Let’s analyze “The Lion King” as a classic chess game and a solar arc of the Game.

We see the light side — King Mufasa, the embodiment of the center, order, and power. He has a brother, Scar — his own shadow, the dark lion. They are mirrors of the Game in blood and spirit.

Between these two opposites appears Simba — the Star, heir to the light side.

Thus, a classic Triad is immediately formed, where each participant is dual by default:

• The Guardian (Mufasa).
• The Destroyer (Scar).
• and the Creator (Simba).

— just like in the Hindu Trimurti.

At this moment, a new narrative arc begins, concluding the old one: from zenith to sunset (a falling star), and from sunrise to zenith (a rising star).

The father is killed. The dark side seizes power. The light goes into exile. Simba undergoes an initiation in the “night” world — along with the viewer.

And all around, the hyenas are at work — the classic Shadow: outcasts, dirty work, chaos that feeds the dark side.

In the finale, Simba returns, defeats Scar, ascends the throne — and the circle closes. A new dawn. A new cycle.

This is not just a story about a lion cub. It is a pure narrative structure: the duality of light and darkness, the birth of the Triad, the conflict between sides, the changing of masks, exile, death, and rebirth.

The song “The Circle of Life” is the Game Cycle itself, a popular exposition of the Trimurti philosophy.

Like all animals, Rafiki the monkey is no accident here — he is a direct reference to ancient totems of wisdom, guides between worlds.



Now look around.

The very same animals we saw in “The Lion King” transition from cartoons into real symbols of power.

Heraldry is not just an old ornament or a pretty tradition.

It is a living dictionary of masks for Alpha Players.

Here we see the classic duality of the Game:

• The Lion and the Unicorn — an eternal pair of opposites.
• The double-headed eagle is a single entity looking in two opposite directions.
• The eagle on the U.S. coat of arms holds arrows of war in one talon and an olive branch of peace in the other. War and peace coexist here simultaneously, in the same image.
• The black and white swans on the coat of arms of Canberra are like two mirrors.
• The snake biting its own tail — Ouroboros — symbolizes an endless cycle, where the beginning and the end are joined as one.

The animal on the shield is not a cute symbol. It is a fixed role, function, and side in the Game.

What works as a plot in a cartoon works as a sign of power in reality.

The same masks move freely from coats of arms to the screen, from ancient reliefs to modern emblems.

This is the language of the Game in action.



And here’s the most interesting part: cinema crowns itself with these masks.

The main award of the Venice Film Festival is the Golden Lion.

This symbol has roots stretching deep into antiquity.

In Mesopotamia, lamassu — winged hybrid creatures with the body of a lion or bull, the head of a human, and the wings of an eagle — stood as guardians of temples and palaces, symbols of supreme authority and protection.

From these composite images, the Tetramorph later emerged — four distinct creatures: Man, Lion, Bull, and Eagle. The lion became the symbol of the evangelist Mark.

Thus, the ancient mask has endured through the centuries and become the film festival’s top prize.

The film doesn’t just show the masks of the Games — it hands them out itself.



The roots of this ancient language go back to Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt — the cradles of the Game.

Here, animals were never just animals. They were the functions and masks of the Players.

In Mesopotamia, the lion and the winged bull-shedu (Lamasu) symbolized royal power, protection, and cosmic power.

In Egypt, the lion and the cat embodied the manifest power of the sun. The god Ra himself took the form of the Great Cat to defeat the serpent Apophis — the embodiment of chaos.

The jackal and the dog are the classic Shadow: guides between worlds, guardians of the boundary between life and death. In Egypt, this is Anubis.

The bull, and especially the cow, represents the cosmos, fertility, and supreme power. In Egyptian tradition, the sky itself, with its stars, was the body of the Heavenly Cow.

And Water is the common foundation of the Game in both civilizations. The world emerged from the primordial ocean; renewal and the transition between states occurred through the great waters.

Thus, each image represents a fixed role in the eternal Game: center and periphery, light and shadow, order and transformation.



The Roman poet Ovid brilliantly compiled this system of transformations in *Metamorphoses*.

Here, a human becomes an animal, a hero ascends as a Star, and a god takes on any form. One mask replaces another.

Ovid created an encyclopedia of the Game — a universal code of meanings later inherited by Dante, Shakespeare, the language of heraldry, and modern cinema.

Heraldry is Ovid’s metamorphosis, frozen on a shield. Not decoration, but a captured moment of transformation: a mask in which power and essence do not hide, but emerge with utmost clarity.

The world is malleable. Form can change endlessly, but the essence and roles of the Game remain.



Animals in cinema are neither cute nor accidental.

They are the ancient interface of Alpha.

When you watch “The Lion King,” “The Stream,” “The Mask,” “Dogma,” “Twin Peaks,” or any other film featuring a lion, cat, dog, owl, jackal, or bull — you are actually looking at the masks of the Players.

Through them, the system reveals power, light and shadow, conflict, role-reversal, and the eternal cycles of the Game.

Understanding this language is the first real step toward ceasing to be merely a spectator and beginning to see the very structure behind the screen.

The full picture — the entire mechanics of the Game, how masks, conflicts, and mirrors, symbols, and arcs work — is revealed in the book “The Game Architecture of Cinema: How Alpha Makes Movies.”

Surikov Andrey

surikovand@gmail.com


Learn even more, ask questions, comment:

DeepL. The original is the Russian version of the book.