Ouroboros

Did you ever go camping as a child - perhaps in the Scouts - and get coaxed into searching for hoop snakes? If so, you may have been tapping into the collective unconscious... While the hoop snake is an imaginary creature, the snake with its tail in its mouth is a symbol in many, many cultures. With origins in ancient Egypt, the ouroboros, as it is called, figures in Greek, Norse, Aztec, Hindu, Chinese, Native American, and Christian mythology. It appears in the symbology of alchemy and the zodiac. By completing the circle it represents the cycle of things, eternal renewal, wholeness. "The Ouroboros encircles the Universe; everything known and unknown is encompassed in its embracing coils, supporting and maintaining the earthly balance. It injects life into death and death into budding life. Its form suggests immobility with its locked jaws upon itself, yet at the same time it pushes the insistent message of perpetual movement through its twined coils." No wonder we could never catch it as kids!