Topic: Uroboros Image Gallery

[Matt Koeske]

I found a Uroboros image gallery online today . . . and I guess I've been feeling Uroboric of late.

Images are linked below.  The first one's a lemniscate Uroboros . . . maybe I can rework that into a logo w/gears and generator.

-Matt

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Maria]

http://www.crystalinks.com/ouroboros.html:





http://www.lib.umich.edu/pap/magic/def1.display.html :





and this one is also quite interesting:



at http://www.coinsofromanegypt.org/html/library/gems/gem_god.html

[Maria]

[Sealchan]

Here is a mental movie to play regarding the uroborus...

When you are born, your consciousness is overwhelmed by the unconscious.  The uroborus that represents your consciousness is a head that tapers quickly to the tail that it is eating.  Moments of consciousness are short and rare as the creative head powers are quickly devoured by the destructive mouth powers of the original, psychic situation.

As you grow your uroboric body lengthens...gradually you have sustained periods of consciousness.  As your snake body lengthens further and further you have time to reflect on your periods of consciousness...you begin to see cycles of emergence and consumption, ascending and descending, zenith and bottoming out.  Gradually the snake coils and you see a gradual, long term elevation through the cycles.  Circumambulating about a unmarked center, the snake's coils stack one upon another.  There is a sense of repetition, going back again, but each time there is somethnig new, moving you forward.  Ever anew, we step off the cliff, enter the tunnel, climb the staircase, exit the tunnel, peer out across the land, take the dive... 

Stepping back you wonder if this is a cycle without end, life feeding off of death, creation from destruction, like some endless perpetual motion machine moving on in its own circular logic; differentiating, developing but ever cyclical.

[Maria]

(Dear Sealchan,

that's an interesting "movie". I never thought about the ouroboros that way... when I look at the uroboros now, I associate to the "relationship" between the mind and the body, between "spirit" and "matter". Perhaps because I have just read an article mentioning a theory about the difference between postmodernity as questioning the hegemony of the modern image of humankind as the ruler of the world, etc, vs. returning to pre-modernity and giving back all the control over our lives to God / destiny / karma, etc.

So at the moment what I see in the uroboros symbol is that when the mind / spirit explores itself, it will finally have to realize that it is "feeding" on the body / matter, and that spirit is an aspect of matter, or, "made of" matter, just like the brain is body, while matter, too, is an aspect of spirit, that it lacks, and has always lacked the emptiness the spirit wished so much to "fill", as matter is always and already full of itself, and spirit is already part of it, and vice versa, et cetera ad (in)finitum.

love,

Maria)

[Kafiri]

Here is a mental movie to play regarding the uroborus...

When you are born, your consciousness is overwhelmed by the unconscious.  The uroborus that represents your consciousness is a head that tapers quickly to the tail that it is eating.  Moments of consciousness are short and rare as the creative head powers are quickly devoured by the destructive mouth powers of the original, psychic situation.

As you grow your uroboric body lengthens...gradually you have sustained periods of consciousness.  As your snake body lengthens further and further you have time to reflect on your periods of consciousness...you begin to see cycles of emergence and consumption, ascending and descending, zenith and bottoming out.  Gradually the snake coils and you see a gradual, long term elevation through the cycles.  Circumambulating about a unmarked center, the snake's coils stack one upon another.  There is a sense of repetition, going back again, but each time there is somethnig new, moving you forward.  Ever anew, we step off the cliff, enter the tunnel, climb the staircase, exit the tunnel, peer out across the land, take the dive... 

Stepping back you wonder if this is a cycle without end, life feeding off of death, creation from destruction, like some endless perpetual motion machine moving on in its own circular logic; differentiating, developing but ever cyclical.

...Every problem, therefore, brings the possibility of a widening of consciousness, but also of the saying goodbye to childlike unconsciousness and trust in nature.  This necessity is a psychic fact of such importance that it constitutes one of the most essential symbolic teachings of the Christian religion.  It is the sacrifice of the merely natural man, of the unconscious, ingenuous being whose tragic career began with the eating of the apple in Paradise.  The biblical fall of man presents the dawn of consciousness as a curse.  And as a matter of fact it is in this light that we must first look upon every problem that forces us to greater consciousness and separates us even further form the paradise of unconscious childhood...
C. G. Jung, The Stages of Life, found in The Portable Jung, p. 5.

Two things "fall out" of this quote for me:  First, creation myths, if examined closely, are often about the coming of consciousness to a people, culture, society, not about the actual creation of the universe.  Second, in the dominant myth of our culture the snake, the serpent plays a pivotal role in beginning of human consciousness.

[Embrace (Entheos)]

Sharing one of my own images that incorporates the theme of the uroboros.  I could not figure out how to insert it into the message body from its saved location on my computer, so have temporarily placed it as my avatar.

Best,
Embrace

[Entheos]

Here it is in somewhat greater detail.

This is another image that was born out of my body, that came during a movement of psychic energy, when "looking into the mirror" one day.  



(Entheos) Embrace

[sonota14]

These pictures of Ouroborus are closed ones. They represent potencials. Ourboroses in your article http://uselessscience.com/forum/index.php?topic=260.msg985#msg985 are opened, manifested. There is still circle in the middle but through their mouths the World is "barfed". Not "barfed" but created. The winged one(dragon) exhale fire the other(snake) cold wind. Well, maybe this is the third (and fourth, too)stage of Ouroboros and this I associate with Axiom of Maria the Prophetess and article about archetype of trinity from Edinger`s Ego and archetype.

[simionescu]

I'll share some stuff about the idea (or "form") behind all manifestations (or "in-form/ations") that are those images containing what we usually call ouroboros.

The basic etymological study tells us about "tail"+"eaten". However, in an ancient greek context, a hermeneutic would reveal that, first of all, this represents some beings or in-formations of the form of being-its-own-self (sounding a bit more heideggerian). Modern abstract in-formations oh this form could be, for example, natural numbers, where the "minus" infinite constantly touches the "plus" infinite.

Aristotle "saw" (with his mind / psyche) that this form is in in-formations in the sky realm. Before this, I want to share some details here. In the Physica, Meteora and Peri genesis kai phitoras, Aristotle talks about matter, form, time and change. In the earth (or sublunar) realm, change (meta-ballein or beyond-the-throw // ballein-ballistics ) goes from something to something-opposite. A red apple always changes from red to un-red etc. Time is just a consequence of change. However, Aristotle was wondering how can the stars in the sky realm move and remain eternal...

His answer was what he called circular change, where the something is in fact its very own something-opposite. This particular kind of change generates no time "dimension", being what we would call "a movement that doesn't change".

Now this was around the year 400 BC. Many mystics later drew upon this (though not only this) to represent (various) higher meanings (here i think about crossing different paradigms: Being - God - Sky - Eternity (as a consequence of circular change)).

[Sealchan]

The most recent use of the uroboros I have encountered is the idea of the Strange Loop that Douglas Hofstadter bases his understaning of the final mystery of consciousness on and uses this to indicate a route to the creation of artificial intelligence.

[Matswin]

The Armadillo lizard is the real life uroboros. It curls into a circle and bites its own tail as a protective measure. /Mats

[Matswin]