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Ouroboros

(Redirected fromUroborus)
For other uses, seeOuroboros (disambiguation).

Theouroborosoruroboros(/ˌjʊərəˈbɒrəs/;[2]/ˌʊərəˈbɒrəs/[3]) is an ancientsymboldepicting aserpentordragon[4]eating its own tail.The ouroboros entered Western tradition viaancient Egyptian iconographyand theGreek magical tradition.It was adopted as a symbol inGnosticismandHermeticismand most notably inalchemy.Some snakes, such asrat snakes,have been known to consume themselves.[5]

An ouroboros in a 1478 drawing in analchemicaltract[1]

Name and interpretation

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The term derives fromAncient Greekοὐροβόρος,[6]fromοὐράoura'tail' plus-βορός-boros'-eating'.[7][8]

Theouroborosis often interpreted as a symbol for eternal cyclic renewal or acycle of life, death and rebirth;the snake'sskin-sloughingsymbolises thetransmigration of souls.The snake biting its own tail is a fertility symbol in some religions: the tail is aphallic symboland the mouth is ayonicor womb-like symbol.[9]

Historical representations

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First known representation of the ouroboros, on one of the shrines enclosing the sarcophagus ofTutankhamun

Ancient Egypt

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One of the earliest known ouroborosmotifsis found in theEnigmatic Book of the Netherworld,anancient Egyptian funerary textinKV62,the tomb ofTutankhamun,in the 14th century BCE. The text concerns the actions ofRaand his union withOsirisin theunderworld.The ouroboros is depicted twice on the figure: holding their tails in their mouths, one encircling the head and upper chest, the other surrounding the feet of a large figure, which may represent the unified Ra-Osiris (Osirisborn again asRa). Both serpents are manifestations of the deityMehen,who in other funerary texts protects Ra in his underworld journey. The whole divine figure represents the beginning and the end of time.[10]

Ouroboros swallowing its tail; based on Moskowitz's symbol for the constellation Draco

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.[11]The symbol persisted from Egyptian intoRoman times,when it frequently appeared on magicaltalismans,sometimes in combination with other magical emblems.[12]The 4th-century CE Latin commentatorServiuswas 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.[13]

Gnosticism and alchemy

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Early alchemical ouroboros illustration with the words ἓν τὸ πᾶν ( "The All isOne") from the work ofCleopatra the Alchemistin MSMarcianagr. Z. 299. (10th century)

InGnosticism,a serpent biting its tail symbolised eternity and the soul of the world.[14]The GnosticPistis Sophia(c. 400 CE) describes the ouroboros as a twelve-part dragon surrounding the world with its tail in its mouth.[15]

The famous ouroboros drawing from the earlyalchemicaltext,TheChrysopoeiaof Cleopatra(Κλεοπάτρας χρυσοποιία), probably originally dating to the 3rd centuryAlexandria,but first known in a 10th-century copy, encloses the wordshen to pan(ἓν τὸ πᾶν), "the all isone".Its black and white halves may perhaps represent aGnosticdualityof existence, analogous to theTaoistyin and yangsymbol.[16]Thechrysopoeiaouroboros ofCleopatra the Alchemistis one of the oldest images of the ouroboros to be linked with the legendaryopusof the alchemists, thephilosopher's stone.[citation needed]

A 15th-century alchemical manuscript,The Aurora Consurgens,features the ouroboros, where it is used among symbols of the sun, moon, and mercury.[17]

World serpent in mythology

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InNorse mythology,the ouroboros appears as the serpentJörmungandr,one of the three children ofLokiandAngrboda,which grew so large that it could encircle the world and grasp its tail in its teeth. In the legends ofRagnar Lodbrok,such asRagnarssona þáttr,the Geatish kingHerraudgives a smalllindwormas a gift to his daughterÞóra Town-Hartafter which it grows into a large serpent which encircles the girl'sbowerand bites itself in the tail. The serpent is slain by Ragnar Lodbrok who marries Þóra. Ragnar later has a son with another woman namedKrákaand 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 namedSigurd Snake-in-the-Eye.[19]

It is a common belief amongindigenous peopleof the tropical lowlands of South America that waters at the edge of the world-disc are encircled by a snake, often an anaconda, biting its own tail.[20]

The ouroboros has certain features in common with the BiblicalLeviathan.According to theZohar,the Leviathan is a singular creature with no mate, "its tail is placed in its mouth", whileRashionBaba Batra74b describes it as "twisting around and encompassing the entire world". The identification appears to go back as far as the poems ofKalirin the 6th–7th centuries.[citation needed]

Connection to Indian thought

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In theAitareya Brahmana,aVedictext of the early 1st millennium BCE, the nature of theVedic ritualsis compared to "a snake biting its own tail."[21]

Ouroboros symbolism has been used to describe theKundalini.[22]According to the medievalYoga-kundalini Upanishad:"The divine power, Kundalini, shines like the stem of a young lotus; like a snake, coiled round upon herself she holds her tail in her mouth and lies resting half asleep as the base of the body" (1.82).[23]

Storl (2004) also refers to the ouroboros image in reference to the "cycle ofsamsara".[24]

Modern references

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Jungian psychology

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Swiss psychiatristCarl Jungsaw the ouroboros as anarchetypeand the basicmandalaof alchemy. Jung also defined the relationship of the ouroboros to alchemy: Carl Jung,Collected Works,Vol. 14 para. 513.

The alchemists, who in their own way knew more about the nature of theindividuationprocess 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 theprima materiaof 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 'feedback' 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 theprima materiawhich... unquestionably stems from man's unconscious.

The Jungian psychologistErich Neumannwrites of it as a representation of the pre-ego "dawn state", depicting the undifferentiated infancy experience of both mankind and the individual child.[25]

Kekulé's dream

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The ouroboros,Kekulé's inspiration for the structure of benzene
Kekulé's proposal for the structure of benzene (1872)

The German organic chemistAugust Kekulédescribed theeureka momentwhen he realised the structure ofbenzene,after he saw a vision of Ouroboros:[26]

I was sitting, writing at my text-book; but the work did not progress; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by the repeated visions of the kind, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformation: long rows, sometimes more closely fitted together; all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke; and this time also I spent the rest of the night in working out the consequences of the hypothesis.

Cosmos

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Martin Reesused the ouroboros to illustrate the various scales of the universe, ranging from 10−20cm (subatomic) at the tail, up to 1025cm (supragalactic) at the head.[27]Rees stressed "the intimate links between the microworld and the cosmos, symbolised by theouraborus",as tail and head meet to complete the circle.[28]

Cybernetics

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W. Ross Ashbyapplied ideas from biology to his own work as a psychiatrist in "Design for a Brain" (1952): that living things maintain essential variables of the body within critical limits with the brain as a regulator of the necessary feedback loops. Parmar contextualises his practices as an artist in applying the cybernetic Ouroboros principle to musical improvisation.[29]

Hence the snake eating its tail is an accepted image or metaphor in the autopoietic calculus for self-reference,[30]or self-indication, the logical processual notation for analysing and explaining self-producing autonomous systems and "the riddle of the living", developed byFrancisco Varela.Reichel describes this as:

an abstract concept of a system whose structure is maintained through the self-production of and through that structure. In the words of Kauffman, is "the ancient mythological symbol of the worm ouroboros embedded in a mathematical, non-numerical calculus".[31][32]

The calculus derives from the confluence of the cybernetic logic of feedback, the sub-disciplines ofautopoiesisdeveloped by Varela andHumberto Maturana,and calculus of indications ofGeorge Spencer Brown.In another related biological application:

It is remarkable, that Rosen's insight, that metabolism is just a mapping..., which may be too cursory for a biologist, turns out to show us the way to constructrecursively,by a limiting process, solutions of the self-referential Ouroborus equation f(f) = f, for an unknown function f, a way that mathematicians had not imagined before Rosen.[33][34]

Second-order cybernetics,or the cybernetics of cybernetics, applies the principle of self-referentiality, or the participation of the observer in the observed, to explore observer involvement.[35]including D. J. Stewart's domain of "observer valued imparities".[36]

Armadillo girdled lizard

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The genus of thearmadillo girdled lizard,Ouroborus cataphractus,takes its name from the animal's defensive posture: curling into a ball and holding its own tail in its mouth.[37]

Pescadillasare often presented biting their tails.

In Iberian culture

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A medium-sizedEuropean hake,known in Spanish aspescadillaand in Portuguese aspescada,is often presented with its mouth biting its tail. In Spanish it receives the name ofpescadilla de rosca( "torushake ").[38]Both expressionsUma pescadinha de rabo na boca"tail-in mouth little hake" andLa pescadilla que se muerde la cola,"the hake that bites its tail", are proverbial Portuguese and Spanish expressions forcircular reasoningandvicious circles.[39]

Dragon Gate Pro-Wrestling

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TheKobe,Japan-basedDragon GatePro-Wrestling promotion used a stylised ouroboros as their logo for the first 20 years of the company's existence. The logo is a silhouetted dragon twisted into the shape of an infinity symbol, devouring its own tail. In 2019, the promotion dropped the infinity dragon logo in favour of a shield logo.

In fiction

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Literature

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A variation of the Ouroboros motif is an important symbol in the fantasy novelThe Neverending StorybyMichael Ende:featuring two snakes, one black and one white, biting the other's tail, this symbol represents the powerfulAURYNand the infinite nature of the story. The symbol is also featured prominently on the cover of both the fictional book and the novel.

The Worm Ouroborosis a high-fantasy novel written byE. R. Eddison.Much like the cyclical symbol of the ouroboros eating its own tail, the novel ends as it begins. The main villain has a ring in the form of Ouroboros.

InMexican Gothicthe symbol is used throughout the story, portraying the immortality of the home and the family, as well as the persistence of outdated ideologies.[40]

InThe Wheel of Timeand its2021 television adaption,the Aes Sedai wear a "Great Serpent" ring, described as a snake consuming its own tail.[41]

In the science fiction short story "All You Zombies"(1958) by American writerRobert A. Heinlein,the character Jane wears an Ouroboros ring, "the worm Ouroboros, the world snake".[42]The short story later inspired the moviePredestination(2014).

In theSCP Foundationuniverse, the proposal tale "The Ouroboros Cycle"[43]spans the story of the SCP Foundation from its creation to its ending.

In theA Discovery of Witchesnovels andtelevisionadaptation, the crest of the de Clermont family is an ouroboros. The symbol plays a significant role in thealchemicalplot of the story.

Film and television

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The Ouroboros is the adopted symbol of theEnd Times-obsessedMillennium Groupin the TV seriesMillennium.[44]It also briefly appears whenDana Scullygets a tattoo of it inThe X-FilesSeason 4 episode "Never Again"(1997).[45]

"Ouroboros"is an episode of the British science-fiction sitcomRed Dwarf,in whichDave Listerlearns that he is his own father through time travel.[46]

In Season 1 (2012) ofNinjagotitled "Ninjago: Rise of the Snakes",the Lost City of Ouroboros (also referred to as the Ancient City of Ouroboros) serves as a pivotal location in the Serpentine's plan for vengeance against Ninjago. Once a massive Serpentine city, Ouroboros was buried beneath the Sea of Sand after the Serpentine War. The city was key to Pythor and the Serpentine's efforts to awaken the Great Devourer, which had been imprisoned beneath the city. After retrieving the four Fangblades, Pythor returned to Ouroboros and successfully released the Great Devourer, causing significant damage to the city. Despite the destruction, the Serpentine continued to use the city as a temporary base before abandoning it to journey to the tomb of the Stone Army.

In Season 3 (2014),Ninjago: Rebooted,during the Nindroid crisis, Pythor once again used Ouroboros as a base of operations. Here, he led an army of Nindroids and launched a giant rocket into space in search of the comet that held the remnants of the Golden Weapons.

In Season 1 (2018) of thecyberpunkNetflix seriesAltered Carbon,the protagonist Takeshi Kovacs gets an ouroboros tattoo in shape of aninfinity symbol,and it features in the show’s title sequence, tying in to the themes of rebirth and the twisting of the natural cycle of life and death.[47]

In the season 2 premiere of the television seriesLoki,a character named Ouroboros (played byKe Huy Quan) is introduced. He is an employee of the Time Variance Authority. In the fourth episode, he also references a snake biting its own tail.[48]

In the animeFullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood,members of thehomunculirace are identified by having the symbol carved/tattooed/branded/marked on them.[49]

The Abiranariba inThe Dark Crystal: Age of Resistanceis based on the ouroboros.

Gaming

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Splatoon 3has a serpent-like Salmonid creature named after it, the Horrorboros.[50]

The Legend of Heroes: Trailsfeatures the Enigma tic Society of Ouroboros, whose members serve as recurring antagonists in the series.

InXenoblade Chronicles 3,the player's party wields a power named after Ouroboros, which is subversively used toopposethe world's cycle of death and rebirth, rather than representing it.

Sculpture

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Ouroboros,an immersive, public sculpture by Australian artistLindy Leeat theNational Gallery of Australiaforecourt.[51]

See also

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References

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Notes

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  1. ^Theodoros Pelecanos's manuscript of an alchemical tract attributed toSynesius,inCodex Parisinus graecus 2327in the Bibliothèque Nationale, France, mentioneds.v.'alchemy',The Oxford Classical Dictionary,Oxford University Press, 2012,ISBN0199545561
  2. ^"uroboros".LexicoUK English Dictionary.Oxford University Press.Archived fromthe originalon 19 December 2019.
  3. ^"ouroboros".Dictionary.Random House.
  4. ^"Salvador Dalí: Alchimie des Philosophes | The Ouroboros".Academic Commons.Willamette University.
  5. ^Mattison, Chris (2007).The New Encyclopedia of Snakes.Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. p. 105.ISBN978-0-691-13295-2.
  6. ^Liddell & Scott (1940),οὐροβόρος
  7. ^Liddell & Scott (1940),οὐρά
  8. ^Liddell & Scott (1940),βορά
  9. ^Arien Mack (1999).Humans and Other Animals.Ohio State University Press. p. 359.
  10. ^Hornung, Erik.The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife.Cornell University Press,1999. pp. 38, 77–78
  11. ^Hornung, Erik (1982).Conceptions of God in Egypt: The One and the Many.Cornell University Press. pp. 163–64.
  12. ^Hornung 2002,p. 58.
  13. ^Servius,note toAeneid5.85: "according to the Egyptians, before the invention of the Alpha bet the year was symbolized by a picture, a serpent biting its own tail because it recurs on itself"(annus secundum Aegyptios indicabatur ante inventas litteras picto dracone caudam suam mordente, quia in se recurrit),as cited by Danuta Shanzer,A Philosophical and Literary Commentary on Martianus Capella'sDe Nuptiis Philologiae et MercuriiBook 1(University of California Press, 1986), p. 159.
  14. ^Origen,Contra Celsum6.25.
  15. ^Hornung 2002,p. 76.
  16. ^Eliade, Mircea (1976).Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions.Chicago and London: U of Chicago Press. pp. 55, 93–113.
  17. ^Bekhrad, Joobin."The ancient symbol that spanned millennia".BBC.Retrieved24 July2021.
  18. ^Lambsprinck:De Lapide Philosophico.E Germanico versu Latine redditus, per Nicolaum Barnaudum Delphinatem.... Sumptibus LUCAE JENNISSI, Frankfurt 1625,p. 17.
  19. ^Jurich, Marilyn (1998).Scheherazade's Sisters: Trickster Heroines and Their Stories in World Literature.Greenwood Publishing Group.ISBN978-0-313-29724-3.
  20. ^Roe, Peter (1986),The Cosmic Zygote,Rutgers University Press
  21. ^Witzel, M., "The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools: The Social and Political Milieu"in Witzel, Michael (ed.) (1997),Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts. New Approaches to the Study of the Vedas,Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora vol. 2, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. p. 325 footnote 346
  22. ^Henneberg, Maciej; Saniotis, Arthur (24 March 2016).The Dynamic Human.Bentham Science Publishers. p. 137.ISBN978-1-68108-235-6.
  23. ^Mahony, William K. (1 January 1998).The Artful Universe: An Introduction to the Vedic Religious Imagination.SUNY Press. p. 191.ISBN978-0-7914-3579-3.
  24. ^"When Shakti is united with Shiva, she is a radiant, gentle goddess; but when she is separated from him, she turns into a terrible, destructive fury. She is the endless Ouroboros, the dragon biting its own tail, symbolizing the cycle of samsara."Storl, Wolf-Dieter (2004).Shiva: The Wild God of Power and Ecstasy.Inner Traditions / Bear & Co. p. 219.ISBN978-1-59477-780-6.
  25. ^Neumann, Erich. (1995).The Origins and History of Consciousness.Bollington series XLII:Princeton University Press.Originally published in German in 1949.
  26. ^Read, John (1957).From Alchemy to Chemistry.Courier Corporation. pp. 179–180.ISBN978-0-486-28690-7.
  27. ^M ReesJust Six Numbers(London 1999) pp. 7–8
  28. ^M ReesJust Six Numbers(London 1999) p. 161
  29. ^Parmar, Robin. "No Input Software: Cybernetics, Improvisation, and the Machinic Phylum." ISSTA 2011 (2014). He further discusses the cybernetics in elementary actions (like picking up a drum stick), the evolution of cybernetic science fromNorbert WienertoGordon Pask,Heinz von Foerster,and Autopoiesis, and in related fields such asAutocatalysis,the philosophical system ofGilles DeleuzeandFélix Guattari,andManuel DeLanda.
  30. ^Varela, Francisco J. "A Calculus for Self-reference." International Journal of General Systems 2 (1975): 5–24.
  31. ^Kauffman sub-reference: Kauffman L. H. 2002. Laws of form and form dynamics. Cybernetics & Human Knowing 9(2): 49–63, pp. 57–58.
  32. ^Reichel, André (2011)."Snakes all the Way Down: Varela's Calculus for Self-Reference and the Praxis of Paradis"(PDF).Systems Research and Behavioral Science.28(6): 646–662.doi:10.1002/sres.1105.S2CID16051196.
  33. ^Gutiérrez, Claudio, Sebastián Jaramillo, and Jorge Soto-Andrade. "Some Thoughts on A. H. Louie'sMore Than Life Itself: A Reflection on Formal Systems and Biology."Axiomathes 21, no. 3 (2011): 439–454, p. 448.
  34. ^Soto-Andrade, Jorge, Sebastia Jaramillo, Claudio Gutierrez, and Juan-Carlos Letelier. "Ouroboros Avatars: A Mathematical Exploration of Self-reference and Metabolic Closure"."One of the most important characteristics observed in metabolic networks is that they produce themselves. This intuition, already advanced by the theories of Autopoiesis and (M,R)-systems, can be mathematically framed in a weird-looking equation, full of implications and potentialities: f(f) = f. This equation (here referred to as Ouroboros equation), arises in apparently dissimilar contexts, like Robert Rosen’s synthetic view of metabolism, hyper set theory and, importantly, untyped lambda calculus.... We envision that the ideas behind this equation, a unique kind of mathematical concept, initially found in biology, would play an important role in the development of a true systemic theoretical biology. "MIT Press online.
  35. ^Müller, K. H.Second-order Science: The Revolution of Scientific Structures. Complexity, design, society.Edition Echoraum, 2016.
  36. ^Scott, Bernard. "The Cybernetics of Systems of Belief". Kybernetes: The International Journal of Systems & Cybernetics 29, nos. 7–8 (2000): 995–998.
  37. ^Stanley, Edward L.; Bauer, Aaron M.; Jackman, Todd R.; Branch, William R.; Mouton, P. Le Fras N. (2011). "Between a rock and a hard polytomy: Rapid radiation in the rupicolous girdled lizards (Squamata: Cordylidae)".Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution58(1): 53–70. (Ouroborus cataphractus,new combination).
  38. ^Spínola Bruzón, Carlos."Pescadilla; entre pijota y pescada.- Grupo Gastronómico Gaditano".grupogastronomicogaditano(in European Spanish). Grupo Gastronómico Gaditano.Retrieved28 October2021.La pescadilla se fríe en forma de rosca, de modo que la cola esté cogida por los dientes del pez.
  39. ^"pescadilla".Diccionario de la lengua española(in Spanish) (24th ed.). RAE-ASALE. 2014.Retrieved28 October2021.
  40. ^"LitCharts".LitCharts.Retrieved23 August2024.
  41. ^Jacobs, Mira."The Wheel of Time Star Hints at What to Look For in Aes Sedai Rings".Comic Book Resources.
  42. ^Gomel, Elena (2010).Postmodern Science Fiction and Temporal Imagination.Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 55.
  43. ^"The Ouroboros Cycle Proposal".Retrieved19 December2023.
  44. ^Black, A. J. (2020).Myth-Building in Modern Media The Role of the Mytharc in Imagined Worlds.McFarland. p. 43.
  45. ^Delasara, Jan (2015).PopLit, PopCult and The X-Files A Critical Exploration.McFarland. p. 9.
  46. ^"Ouroboros".Red Dwarf: The Official Site.Grant Naylor Productions.Retrieved10 October2022.
  47. ^"Why Takeshi's Tattoo In Altered Carbon Means More Than You Think".Looper.
  48. ^Owens, Lucy."Loki Season 2: There's A Secret Meaning Behind A Fan Favorite Character's Name".Game Rant.
  49. ^Kemner, Louis; Aravind, Ajay; Turner, Lauren (5 October 2019)."The Symbols & Logos In Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Explained".CBR.Retrieved27 March2024.
  50. ^"Splatoon 3: Big Run's King Salmonid Continue a Clever Boss Pattern".Game Rant.
  51. ^Jefferson, Dee (23 October 2024)."National Gallery of Australia's $14m behemoth artwork unveiled – and it's a showstopper".TheGuardian.

Bibliography

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  • Bayley, Harold S (1909).New Light on the Renaissance.Kessinger. Reference pages hosted by the University of Pennsylvania{{cite book}}:CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Hornung, Erik (2002).The Secret Lore of Egypt: Its Impact on the West.Cornell University Press.
  • Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert (1940).A Greek-English Lexicon.Oxford: Clarendon Press – via perseus.tufts.edu.
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