The Ouroboros, from the ancient Greek ourá (“tail”) and boros (“eating”), is a serpent or dragon that bites its own tail to form a circle. An ancient and universal symbol, it spans cultures and eras. It embodies the eternal cycle of death and rebirth, endless destruction and regeneration. The Ouroboros evokes the eternity of time, the unity of opposites, and perpetual renewal. This article explores its origins, philosophical interpretations, and cultural manifestations.
The Ouroboros and the Fragmentation of Being
When we refuse to see that life is change, we become like the Ouroboros: a lost serpent biting its own tail.
The Ouroboros is the symbol of all vicious circles. It embodies every attempt to fragment our being, to make one part dominate another: valuing what is deemed “positive” and repressing what is deemed “negative.” By doing so, we resist our true nature and trap ourselves in this self-feeding circle.
In The Wisdom of Insecurity, Watts reminds us that true freedom and security arise from accepting change and our complete nature, not from resistance and avoidance.
Watts suggests that when we try to make our life or self permanent, or resist the natural flow of change, we embody this vicious circle. The Ouroboros symbolizes these self-negating actions, these inner resistances where conflict arises from the separation between “self” and “life.”
The Self-Sufficient and Perfect Creature
Plato imagined the first living creature as circular, self-sufficient, and perfect, needing nothing outside itself. This cosmic figure brought order out of chaos and foreshadowed the Ouroboros, the being that sustains itself.
In Greek tradition, the Ouroboros appears more through mystical and esoteric circles than through a god. It symbolized the cyclical order of the cosmos and the eternity of nature, a vision of time as a circle rather than a straight line.
Universal Symbolism and Eternal Cycle
The Ouroboros conveys the idea of an endless cycle. The serpent devouring itself suggests that end and beginning meet.
For the ancients, it expressed the “eternal return”: life, death, and rebirth follow one another in a circular movement. It illustrates the cycles of nature, from seasons to celestial bodies, from civilizations to cultural renaissances.
The serpent sheds its old skin and is reborn: a symbol of regeneration, showing that the soul can be reborn after death, thus carrying the idea of immortality and the perpetuation of vital force.
Unity of Opposites and Paradoxes
The circle of the serpent suggests the union of opposites. Head and tail meet. Some medieval images show it half white and half black, like yin and yang, illustrating the harmony of opposites: day and night, good and evil, heaven and earth.
The Ouroboros thus becomes the emblem of the coincidence of opposites, where extremes meet and resolve. It also embodies paradox: some concepts “devour themselves,” like the serpent consuming itself. It reminds us that within each pole lies a seed of its opposite, and that the universe is a Whole where opposites are merely two faces of the same reality.
Renewal and Self-Fertilization
By devouring and recreating itself endlessly, the Ouroboros symbolizes the being’s capacity to regenerate itself.
Medieval alchemists saw in it universal autopoiesis: nature destroys and fertilizes itself to create the new. The mouth and tail joined together represent primordial self-fertilization, the creative act where life arises from itself. The Ouroboros shows that the seed of renewal is already in what dies: after destruction, something always rises from past substance.
For alchemists, it meant that everything is One, and matter returns to the primordial Unity to be purified and recreated.
Hermeticism, Gnosticism, and Eternal Return
In modern times, philosophers and thinkers continue to draw inspiration from this eternal circle. Nietzsche popularized the idea of the eternal return, often illustrated by the Ouroboros: cyclical time endlessly returns the same events.
“Everything must return, and everything must return eternally; and there is nothing truer than what I affirm: all that has been will return, and all that is will return again.”
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885)
The serpent unites its head and tail; thesis and antithesis merge into a higher synthesis. The Ouroboros reminds us that the Whole is one, that beginning and end merge, and that wisdom may lie in embracing this circle rather than fleeing it.
Psychological Interpretations
Carl Gustav Jung saw in the Ouroboros a universal archetype, a primitive alchemical mandala, central to inner transformation. It symbolizes the process of individuation: integrating unconscious contents to realize the Self, the psychic totality.
“The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol of the integration and assimilation of opposites, namely the shadow. It kills and resurrects itself, fertilizes and is born from itself.”
Erich Neumann described the “ouroboric state” as the original phase of consciousness, before the separated ego: an ocean of unity, comparable to the serpent without beginning or end, often linked to the Great Mother. The Ouroboros is thus matriarchal, containing and enveloping, like the womb where the child is not yet conscious of itself.
Conclusion
A multifaceted symbol, the Ouroboros captivates human imagination:
“One is the All”
Every end carries within it a renewal; opposing forces—light/darkness, life/death, spirit/matter—are linked, two halves of the same reality.
The Ouroboros invites us to adopt a holistic view of existence, both humble and confident: humble, because we are caught in vast cycles beyond us; confident, because at the heart of chaos lies a principle of order and continuity.
In our philosophical or spiritual quests, this ancient serpent whispers that evolution is an eternal recommencement and that the secret of wisdom may lie in embracing the cycle rather than fleeing it.
Thus, far from being a mere decorative motif, the Ouroboros remains for humanity a powerful symbol of wholeness, eternity, and rebirth, its relevance resonating even in the modern era—a mystical ring connecting ancient traditions with contemporary aspirations for unity and renewal.
© NOIR KĀLA
Sources:Carl Gustav Jung. Psychology and Alchemy. 1944.
Erich Neumann. The Origins and History of Consciousness (Die Geschichte des Ursprungs des Bewusstseins). 1949.
Mircea Eliade. The Myth of the Eternal Return (Le Mythe de l’éternel retour). 1949.
Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1949.
Alan Watts. The Wisdom of Insecurity (Éloge de l’insécurité). 1951.
