Ouroboros
The ouroboros is a symbol depicting a serpent or dragon biting its own tail, forming a continuous circle. It figures the eternal cycle, the unity of the whole, and the perpetual movement of death and rebirth. The symbol is attested in several ancient cultures.
Origin and etymology
The word comes from the Greek oura (tail) and boros (that which devours). The oldest known representation dates from ancient Egypt, on the shrine of Tutankhamun around 1320 BCE, where it surrounds cosmic divinities. It also appears on the same pharaoh's sarcophagus. The Greek tradition took it up in the context of Alexandrian alchemy: the Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra, a 3rd-century CE papyrus, shows an ouroboros with the inscription hen to pan (all is one). The Gnostic thought of the early centuries used it as a symbol of eternity. Norse mythology presents a close cousin with the Midgard serpent (Jormungandr), who encircles the world by biting his own tail.
Evolution and tradition
Medieval and Renaissance alchemy adopted the ouroboros as an emblem of the Great Work, of solve et coagula, and of the circular process of transformation of prime matter. It appears in many printed alchemical treatises from the 16th to the 18th century: Aurora consurgens, Atalanta fugiens by Michael Maier (1617). In the 19th century, the chemist August Kekule attributed to a dream of the ouroboros his discovery of the cyclical structure of benzene in 1865, an anecdote that made the symbol an emblem of creative intuition. Carl Gustav Jung analyzed it as the expression of the archetypal uroboros, the undifferentiated originary state of the preconscious psyche, in Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955-1956).
Practical use
The ouroboros is used in contemporary esoteric practice as a symbol of eternity, of cycle, and of self-sufficiency. It appears on jewelry, talismans, and illustrations. In tarot, it sometimes figures in the background of certain cards, and the cyclical reading of the initiatory journey from the Fool (0) to the World (XXI) and back to the Fool can be visualized as an ouroboric movement. On Tarotoui, the ouroboros is documented among the great cross-traditional symbols. Meditation on the ouroboros helps integrate the cyclical dimension of existence, as opposed to linear models of progression.
Going further
The ouroboros is not exactly identical to the Norse Midgard serpent or to the Indian Naga: these symbols share a family but have distinct cultural contexts. The Jungian reading of the archetypal uroboros (Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness, 1949) is useful but does not exhaust the historical richness of the motif. Note also that the ouroboros is sometimes confused with the simple circle or the caduceus, which are distinct symbols.