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The ouroboros () or uroboros () is an ancient symbol depicting a snake or European dragon Autocannibalism. The ouroboros entered Western tradition via ancient Egyptian iconography and the Greek magical tradition. It was adopted as a symbol in Gnosticism and Hermeticism and, most notably, in alchemy. Some snakes, such as , have been known to consume themselves.
The ouroboros is often interpreted as a symbol for eternal cyclic renewal or a Eternal return; the snake's skin sloughing symbolises the Metempsychosis. The snake biting its own tail is a fertility symbol in some religions: the tail is a Phallus and the mouth is a yonic or womb-like symbol.
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. The symbol persisted from Egyptian into Roman Egypt, when it frequently appeared on magical , sometimes in combination with other magical emblems. The 4th-century CE 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.Servius, note to Aeneid 5.85: "according to the Egyptians, before the invention of the alphabet 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's De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii Book 1 (University of California Press, 1986), p. 159.
The famous ouroboros drawing from the early Alchemy text, The Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra (Κλεοπάτρας χρυσοποιία), probably originally dating to the 3rd century Alexandria, but first known in a 10th-century copy, encloses the words hen to pan (ἓν τὸ πᾶν), "the all is Henology". Its black and white halves may perhaps represent a Gnosticism duality of existence, analogous to the Taoism yin and 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.
A 15th-century alchemical manuscript, The Aurora Consurgens, features the ouroboros, where it is used among symbols of the sun, moon, and mercury.
It is a common belief among indigenous people of 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.
The ouroboros has certain features in common with the Biblical Leviathan. According to the Zohar, the Leviathan is a singular creature with no mate, "its tail is placed in its mouth", while Rashi on Baba Batra 74b describes it as "twisting around and encompassing the entire world". The identification appears to go back as far as the poems of Kalir in the 6th–7th centuries.
Ouroboros symbolism has been used to describe the Kundalini. According to the medieval Yoga-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).
Storl (2004) also refers to the ouroboros image in reference to the "cycle of samsara"."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."
The Jungian psychologist Erich Neumann writes of it as a representation of the pre-ego "dawn state", depicting the undifferentiated infancy experience of both humankind and the individual child.Neumann, Erich. (1995). The Origins and History of Consciousness. Bollington series XLII: Princeton University Press. Originally published in German in 1949.
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.
Hence the snake eating its tail is an accepted image or metaphor in the autopoietic calculus for self-reference,Varela, Francisco J. "A Calculus for Self-reference." International Journal of General Systems 2 (1975): 5–24. or self-indication, the logical processual notation for analysing and explaining self-producing autonomous systems and "the riddle of the living", developed by Francisco Varela. Reichel describes this as:
The calculus derives from the confluence of the cybernetic logic of feedback, the sub-disciplines of autopoiesis developed by Varela and Humberto Maturana, and calculus of indications of George Spencer Brown. In another related biological application:
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.Müller, K. H. Second-order Science: The Revolution of Scientific Structures. Complexity, design, society. Edition Echoraum, 2016. including D. J. Stewart's domain of "observer valued imparities".Scott, Bernard. "The Cybernetics of Systems of Belief". Kybernetes: The International Journal of Systems & Cybernetics 29, nos. 7–8 (2000): 995–998.
The Worm Ouroboros is a high-fantasy novel written by E. 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.
In Mexican Gothic the symbol is used throughout the story, portraying the immortality of the home and the family, as well as the persistence of outdated ideologies.
In The Wheel of Time and its 2021 television adaption, the Aes Sedai wear a "Great Serpent" ring, described as a snake consuming its own tail.
In the science fiction short story "All You Zombies" (1958) by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, the character Jane wears an Ouroboros ring, "the worm Ouroboros, the world snake". The short story later inspired the movie Predestination (2014).
In the SCP Foundation universe, the proposal tale "The Ouroboros Cycle" spans the story of the SCP Foundation from its creation to its ending.
In the A Discovery of Witches novels and television adaptation, the crest of the de Clermont family is an ouroboros. The symbol plays a significant role in the Alchemy plot of the story.
In The Witcher, the Ouroboros and the "snake biting its own tail" is a recurring theme.
The protagonist of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North (Catherine Webb) is part of a group of people called the Ouroborans or Kalachakra: when they die they are born again in the same circumstances, with the knowledge of their previous lives.
In Jeff Smith’s Bone comic book series, Mim, the dragon queen and creator of the valley, maintains balance in the world by revolving around the globe, tail in mouth, until being corrupted by the Lord of the Locusts.
Season 2 episode 6 (2016) of Fear the Walking Dead is entitled "Ouroboros". The character of Alpha in The Walking Dead wears an ouroboros belt buckle. In Season 1 (2018) of the cyberpunk Netflix series Altered Carbon, the protagonist Takeshi Kovacs gets an ouroboros tattoo in shape of an infinity 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. Season 4 (2021) of The Sinner features it throughout.
In the season 2 premiere of the television series Loki, a character named Ouroboros (played by Ke 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.
In the anime , members of the homunculi race are identified by having the symbol carved/tattooed/branded/marked on them.
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