Uroboros

THE UROBOROS
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Drawn by an anonymous medieval illuminator, ca 7th C
Copied in 1478 by Theodoros Pelecanos
Way back in grad school (1985 or so), when I took a class in Modern British Fiction from Professor Joe Buttigieg (yes, Pete's dad ~ *see "Comments" below), we studied the imagery of the mystical uroboros (also spelled ouroboros). The snake or dagon swallowing or biting its own tail is an ancient symbol of eternity and fertility, representing the cyclical nature of life, death, and rebirth; the process of eternal renewal, and the transmigration of souls. In connection with E. M. Forster's novel A Passage to India, Professor Wilfred H. Stone analyzes the narrative as an attempt to put together the pieces of a great symbolic "circle of perfection":

The echoes and the caves are both examples of this circle imagery; the significance of such imagery to the novel is that "Passage is less a dialectic of dualisms than it is a revelation that unity already exists -- if we would but recognize it. . . . The entire novel is implied" in Forster's descriptions of the caves and echoes. Stone provides extensive explanation of how the three sections of the novel -- Mosque, Caves, Temple -- and the events they contain represent (or are represented by) a cycle (i.e., a circle) of nature.

Stone concludes a discussion of the sky with the observation that "The 'arches' of the book extend through microcosm, geocosm, macrocosm, infinite in both directions: 'Outside the arch there seemed always an arch, beyhond the remotest echo of silence.'" Other arch and circle related symbols referred to are the uroboros (the snake swallowing its tail, one of "man's earliest imaginings") and the mandala ("one of those encircled squares which have served immemorialy as archetypes of wholeness affording a vision of unity around a disordered multiplicity").

~notes from The Cave and the Mountain:
A Study of E. M. Forster, 1966

The Mandala
~ click for many more examples ~

The Uroboros
~ click for many more examples ~

In modern science fiction, the uroboros represents a never - ending time loop, beautifully complete yet endlessly frustrating. Despite the time traveler's flexibility to travel backward and avert disaster, history may not be subject to modification but instead plays itself out continuously according to its own plan. This conundrum recurs like a repeating decimal throughout both the literary canon and our popular culture: The Apparition of Mrs. Veal, Our Town, Damn Yankees, The White Hotel, Back to the Future, Sliding Doors, to name only a handful. I'm sure a dozen other favorites will leap (or should I say "leap frog" or "time leap"?!) immediately to your mind.

Nebula Award winner Ted Chiang (b 1967), for example, writes beautifully of the mandala's ability to focus all of time simultaneously:

"Blinding, joyous, fearful symmetry surrounds me. So much is incorporated within patterns now that the entire universe verges on resolving itself into a picture. I'm closing in on the ultimate gestalt: the context in which all knowledge fits and is illuminated, a mandala, the music of the spheres, kosmos.

"I seek enlightenment, not spiritual but rational. I must go still further to reach it, but this time the goal with not be perpetually retreating from my fingertips. With my mind's language, the distance between myself and enlightenment is precisely calculable. I've sighted my final destination." (p 67)

"Instead of racing forward, my mind hung balanced on the symmetry underlying the semagrams. The semagrams seemed to be something more than language; they were almost like mandalas. I found myself in a meditative state, contemplating the way in which premises and conclusions were interchangeable. There was not direction inherent in the way propositions were connected, no 'train of thought' moving along a particular route; all the components in an act of reasoning were equally powerful, all having identical precedence." (p 152, emphasis added)

In his footnotes, Chiang includes this intriguing comment from Kurt Vonnegut's introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of Slaughterhouse-Five: “Stephen Hawking . . . found it tantalizing that we could not remember the future. But remembering the future is child's play for me now. I know what will become of my helpless, trusting babies because they are grown-ups now. I know how my closest friends will end up because so many of them are retired or dead now . . . To Stephen Hawking and all others younger than myself I say, 'Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are.” (p 334)

~ all passages from Stories of Your Life and Others
(2002) (see also the 2016 movie Arrival)

In Robert Heinlein's 1958 story " '—All You Zombies—' " (and the 2014 movie Predestination) the Bartender struggles against the inevitable repeating decimal of his own personal timeline. Signifying his perpetual conflict with the universe, he wears a uroboros ring and mentions "the snake that eats its own tail forever and ever." Thus ancient mysticism comes full circle with contemporary sci - fi.

Here's a similar ring ~ available from amazon ~ with an impressively literary product description: "The Uroboros pictures on tombs symbolize immortality, eternity and wisdom. In many myths it encompasses the whole world and identifies itself with the circular flow of the earth's waters. It can support the world and its existance, and at the same time it brings death into life and life into death. Immobile on the outside, it symbolizes the eternal movement always returning to itself."

Also available as necklace & bracelet.
[**See "Comments" below]

More recently, Stephen King's 2011 novel, 11 / 22 / 63 re-examines the assassination of JFK. Maybe it's not too late to change the course of history and make some other improvements along the way, but -- inevitably -- the past "pushes back" (watch the 2016 miniseries) and the orginal chain of events remains unchanged; or in fixing one thing, the time traveler breaks another (warning: Butterfly Effect ~ Everything You Need to Know ~ the movie, 2004). Perhaps that's why "you shouldn't be here!"

As the Yellow Card Man insists:
"Close the circle!"

Next Fortnightly Post
Wednesday, October 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Mandala inspired medicine wheel
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www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

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