My end is my beginning...

...With all apologies to Mary I of Scottland, this phrase does not make me think of 16th century history (it's the title of Mary's autobiography). Instead, I equate this phrase with a symbol. That symbol is called an Ouroboros and it represents the cyclical nature of life and the essence of our very existence. I'm getting ahead of myself though, so let me back up and start from the beginning... or is it the end?

I was visiting various blogs, as I have been apt to do since starting this one, when I came across a particular post at a site named thptpth . The title of the post was "I am a snake head eating the head on the opposite side". Thanks to my buddy Mike (co-owner of the very cool business Anahuak Designs) I know that this symbol is called an Ouroboros. Just about every culture that has ever existed on this earth has had its own version of the Ouroboros (regardless of continent or time in which the civilization thrived). The Aztec version looks something like this:


the ancient Egyptians (independent of the aztecs) created this symbol:

here's the Japanese version, Pre 1400.


How can so many different cultures create the same symbol independently of each other? What is it about this symbol that speaks to so many divergent cultures on all sides of the globe? The answer has to do with the very nature of our existence.

The Ouroboros has several meanings interwoven into it. The serpent biting, devouring, eating its own tail symbolizes the cyclical nature of the universe. Creation out of destruction, life out of death. The snake eating its own tail to sustain its own life, in a neverending routine of renewal.

You need only look around to see the symbollic connotations: The cyclical nature of the seasons, the oscillations of the night sky, the rising and cesation of the tides, the revolutions of our earth, our joys, our sorrows, our successes, our triumphs our births, and our deaths. The idea that the beginning and the end are a continuous unending principal.

If you take these connotations and the influences we draw from them to their logical conclusion, how can't we live our lives with empathy and kind consideration for our fellow man? The Ouroboros, the universal symbol of life and death for all cultures is a symbol of the eternal unity of all things. It represents the totality of our existence, being born from nature, we mirror it, because it is what man wholly is a part of. These eternal principles, in their broadest sense, are symbolic of time and the continuity of life.

"By constantly consuming its own tail its a kind of bittersweet meditation on human life, reflecting hope in the immortal existence of the spirit while simultaneously referring to the cycles of birth, death, pain and loss that form the crux of the physical life in which the spirit finds itself." -Br. Matthew Vicar, Apostolic Gnostic Church in America

Regardless of your personal beliefs, the ultimate truth of this symbol and what it represents, permeates our very existence. It is not contradictory to gnostic beliefs, contrary to what most may think. Like the cross Jesus died on, the Ouroboros is a paradoxical symbol. An instrument of death becomes a sign of life, much like the destructive action of eating itself ultimately sustains the serpent in the Ouroboros.

To us Gnostics, this speaks about what Jesus taught us, that to gain eternal life we must in some fundamental way experience a "death to the world" and to physicality – not, of course, the bodily death that we all eventually will experience, but more fundamentally a spiritual death in which, as Lao-Tzu might say, we "make small our desires" and direct both our bodies and our minds to the work of the spirit, through the fundamental Gnostic moral principles of moderation, right intention, and non-harm. -Br. Matthew Vicar

You need only to look around you to see how this symbol permeates our daily lifes. Do these things look familiar to you?

The Ouroboros

Davinci

Zodiac

Clock


The Earth

The Milky Way Galaxy is the inspiration for the symbol of the Ouroboros. Myth refers to a serpent of light residing in the heavens. The Milky Way is this serpent, and viewed at galactic central point near Sagittarius, this serpent eats its own tail.