Ouroboros

The Ouroboros or Uroboros (Greek Οὐροβόρος "Even consumer", literally " tail devourer ', from Greek oura " tail " and boros " consuming " ) is a Populated in the iconography of ancient Egypt picture symbol of a snake biting its own tail and so with her body forms a closed circuit.

Plato describes the Ouroboros in his dialogue Timaeus as an autonomous being. Self-sufficient because it as complete in itself, without reference to or requirement was introduced by an outside or an Other. He needs no perception, since nothing exists outside of his, no diet, as its food are the own excrement, and it needs no organs of locomotion, there is outside its not a place to which he could go. He revolves in and around itself, forming the circle as perfect of all forms.

The Ouroboros appears several times in the magical papyri of Hellenistic Egypt. He is a symbol of cosmic unity, resulting in the formula ἕν τὸ πᾶν hen to pan ( " One Is All " ) expresses, and in particular the correlation of micro-and macrocosm. Thus, the formula appears in the Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra, an ancient alchemical text, where it is surrounded by the form of the Ouroboros.

The Ouroboros dive but not only in ancient mythology and philosophy: The global Midgard Serpent of Norse mythology bites the Gylfaginning, a part of the Snorra Edda, according to its own tail and thus forms a world circle, and in the " kundalini yoga " Upanishad is also said of the kundalini serpent that it was withdrawing its tail in its mouth.

In alchemical symbolism of the Ouroboros is the icon of a coherent and repeated running conversion process of matter, which is to serve the heating, evaporation, cooling and condensing a liquid to refine substances. The closed circles for snake is often replaced by two beings that connect the mouth and tail end, the upper as a sign of volatility ( volatility) is represented as a winged dragon.

The analytical psychology used it as a metaphor for the early childhood development phase in which still takes place no conscious differentiation of inner and outer world and also no gender identity is assumed. Only the resulting self-consciousness breaks through the ouroborische phase and differentiates the world in matriarchal and patriarchal.