| May | JUN | Jul |
| 15 | ||
| 2012 | 2013 | 2014 |
COLLECTED BY
Collection: Alexa Crawls
Drawing by Theodoros Pelecanos, in the alchemical tract Synosius (1478).
The OuroborosorUroboros[a] is an ancient symbol depicting a serpentordragon eating its own tail.
The Ouroboros often self-reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things perceived as cycles that begin anew as soon as they end (compare with phoenix). It can also represent the idea of primordial unity related to something existing in or persisting from the beginning with such force or qualities it cannot be extinguished. While first emerging in Ancient Egypt, the Ouroboros has been important in religious and mythological symbolism, but has also been frequently used in alchemical illustrations, where it symbolizes the circular nature of the alchemist's opus. It is also often associated with Gnosticism, and Hermeticism. Carl Jung interpreted the Ouroboros as having an archetypal significance to the human psyche.[citation needed] The Jungian psychologist Erich Neumann writes of it as a representation of the pre-ego "dawn state", depicting the undifferentiated infancy experience of both mankind and the individual child.[1]
Gnostic gem from Roman-era Egypt (1st century AD), with an ouroboros surrounding a scarab and voces magicae, characters representing magic words
The first known appearance of the ouroboros motif is in the Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld, an ancient Egyptian funerary textinKV62, the tomb of Tutankhamun, in the 14th century BC. The text concerns the actions of the god Raand his union with Osiris in the underworld. In an illustration from this text, two serpents, holding their tails in their mouths, coil around the head and feet of an enormous god, who may represent the unified Ra-Osiris. Both serpents are manifestations of the deity Mehen, who in other funerary texts protects Ra in his underworld journey. The whole divine figure represents the beginning and the end of time.[2]
The ouroboros appears elsewhere in Egyptian sources, where, like many Egyptian serpent deities, it represents the formless disorder that surrounds the orderly world and is involved in that world's periodic renewal.[3] The symbol persisted in Egypt into Roman times, when it frequently appeared on magical talismans, sometimes in combination with other magical emblems.[4] The 4th-century AD Latin commentator Servius was aware of the Egyptian use of the symbol, noting that the image of a snake biting its tail represents the cyclical nature of the year.[5]
Engraving by Lucas Jennis, in alchemical tract titled De Lapide Philosophico.
The Ouroboros symbol appears in both 14th–15th century Albigensian printing watermarks[8] and is also worked into the pip cards of many early (14th–15th century) playing cards, including Tarot cards.[9] Watermarks similar to those used by the Albigensians appear in early printed playing cards, suggesting that the Albigenses might have had contact with the early authors of tarot decks.[10][11] The symbol commonly used as the ace of cups in early decks, which is one of the symbols frequently circled with an ouroboros, also frequently appears among Albigensian watermarks.[12] It is conceivable that this is the source of some of the urban legends associating this symbol with secret societies,[13] because the Albigenses were closely associated with the humanist movement and the inquisition it sparked. Because the Albigenses came from Armenia, where Zoroastrianism and Mithra worship were common, it may be that the symbol entered their iconography via the Zoroastrian Faravahar symbol, which in some versions clearly features an ouroboros at the waist instead of a vague disc-shape. In Mithran mystery cults the figure of Mithra being reborn (one of the things he is famous for) is sometimes seen wrapped with an ouroboros, indicating his eternal and cyclic nature,[14] and even references which do not mention the ouroboros refer to this circular shape as symbolizing the immortality of the soul or the cyclic nature of Karma, suggesting that the circle retains its meaning even when the details of the image are obscured.[15]
InNorse mythology, it appears as the serpent Jörmungandr, one of the three children of Loki and Angrboda, who grew so large that it could encircle the world and grasp its tail in its teeth. In the legends of Ragnar Lodbrok, such as Ragnarssona þáttr, the Geatish king Herraud gives a small lindworm as a gift to his daughter Þóra Town-Hart after which it grows into a large serpent which encircles the girl's bower and bites itself in the tail. The serpent is slain by Ragnar Lodbrok who marries Þóra. Ragnar later has a son with another woman named Kráka and this son is born with the image of a white snake in one eye. This snake encircled the iris and bit itself in the tail, and the son was named Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye.[16]
Early alchemical ouroboros illustration. From the work of Cleopatra the Alchemist (Greco-Roman Egypt).
Inalchemy, the Ouroboros is a sigil. Swiss psychologist Carl Jung saw the Ouroboros as an archetype and the basic mandala of alchemy. Jung also defined the relationship of the Ouroboros to alchemy:[17]
The alchemists, who in their own way knew more about the nature of the individuation process than we moderns do, expressed this paradox through the symbol of the Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. The Ouroboros has been said to have a meaning of infinity or wholeness. In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. This 'feed-back' process is at the same time a symbol of immortality, since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he therefore constitutes the secret of the prima materia which [...] unquestionably stems from man's unconscious.
The famous Ouroboros drawing from the early alchemical text The Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra dating to 2nd century Alexandria encloses the words hen to pan, "one is the all". Its black and white halves represent the Gnostic duality of existence. As such, the Ouroboros could be interpreted as the Western equivalent of the Taoist Yin-Yang symbol.
The Chrysopoeia Ouroboros of Cleopatra the Alchemist is one of the oldest images of the Ouroboros to be linked with the legendary opus of the Alchemists, the Philosopher’s Stone.
As a symbol of the eternal unity of all things, the cycle of birth and death from which the alchemist sought release and liberation, it was familiar to the alchemist/physician Sir Thomas Browne. In his A Letter to a Friend, a medical treatise full of case-histories and witty speculations upon the human condition, he wrote of it:
[...] that the first day should make the last, that the Tail of the Snake should return into its Mouth precisely at that time, and they should wind up upon the day of their Nativity, is indeed a remarkable Coincidence,
It is also alluded to at the conclusion of Browne's The Garden of Cyrus (1658) as a symbol of the circular nature and Unity of the two Discourses:
All things began in order so shall they end, so shall they begin again according to the Ordainer of Order and the mystical mathematicks of the City of Heaven.
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ouroboros |
|loc= ignored (help); Wikilink embedded in URL title (help); , Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0179%3Atext%3DTim.%3Asection%3D33c Missing or empty |title= (help).
(七)^ Hornung 2002, p. 74.
(八)^ Bayley 1909, p. 24.
(九)^ Place, Robert M (2005), The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, Penguin, p. 21.
(十)^ van Buren, Anne H; Edmunds, Sheila (Mar 1974), "Fifteenth Century Playing Cards and Manuscripts", The Art Bulletin 56(1): 12–30. See watermark on p 15 of the article.
(11)^ Bayley 1909, p. 24–27, 45.
(12)^ Waite, Arthur Edward (1909), The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Rider.
(13)^ Wilson, Robert Anton; Shea, Robert (1975), The Illuminatus Trilogy, Dell.
(14)^ "Mithraic Mysteries". Crystalinks. Retrieved 2012-10-22.
(15)^ "Faravahar – Winged Symbol of Zoroastrianism – The Winged Disk". Alt religion. About. Retrieved 2012-10-22.
(16)^ "Ouroboros". Crystalinks. Retrieved 2012-10-22.
(17)^ Carl Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 14 para. 513
(18)^ Roe, Peter (1986), The Cosmic Zygote, Rutgers University Press.
(19)^ p.96 in "Womb = Tomb = House = Body: Yagwoia Experience of Blissful Self-dissolution". Proceedings of The Australian and New Zealand Society of Jungian Analysts: The Uses of Subjective Experience. Conference held in Melbourne, 20-21st October 2007. Published in 2008:82-98. http://www.anzsja.org.au/subjective_experience/UsesOfSubjectiveExperience.pdf
↑Jump back a section
