Sign of Life:  A Riddle and a Rhyme                          

    The Crux of the Mater:  Some “where” at a crossroad                     

Encountering its visage, the spectacle of its sign; its beguiling form in-guise a riddle, confronted by our serpent’s spine… 

Imagin-ations once provoked (solicited by our question’s sign);  we take our mental stabs at meaning – enticed to solve its reason’s rhyme…

Unravel thee –  in “tangled” form –  and all to “figure” out.

“What” – it is ..?           And that which “appears” to be happening …

In-form  of our incisive “crux” – where the head and its tail are in-volving.  

 The deeper we look – the more involved one becomes.   

                   

                                      Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field…

                                                                                                                                                                                – Genesis 3:1

Nosce te ipsum: A Forgotten Knowledge (a Greek key)

An ancient sign of uncertain origin – “ouroboros” in Hellenistic Greek means “tail-eater”.  Having once been regarded as a vital (or numinous) sigil – a sign of life  per se – even to the Hermetic philosophers of late antiquity (who probably coined the term),  the circular form of the serpent’s sign was already considered timeless… Much like Chronos (“time”) of the Orphic Greeks,  El Olam (“the eternal”) of the Phoenicians, or the Hellenistic Aion (“eternity”) to name but a few, like a proverbial “ancient of days” – the serpent was considered something that was old as time itself…  Or to put it somehow mythically:  According to our ancestors – its figure is as old as our human ability to reckon “time” as such  (in reference to ourselves, that is) – which would make it the stuff of memory… Which would also mean to say – that humanly speaking  (being somehow “there” since our beginning) – any kind of reference to our serpent’s sign (being “relative” to us) would make it rather old indeed. 

A LIFE OF “IT’S OWN”:  THE SIGN THAT SIGNIFIES THE SIGNIFIER SIGNIFYING “ITSELF”

Both perennial and timeless, the sign of the ouroboros was a fitting  image for the “living form”;  as the living image – to the science of “its time” – its mercurial emblem was a universal token for the animating principle…  And as the “universal” symbol  for our consciousness – to scholars of the time – the serpent’s tail-eating form came to aptly signify the nexus… Through the riddle of its visage  (the curious construction of its elegant design), its sign could somehow “characterize” the curios relations of being to becoming  as an intimate relationship between space & time.

Therefore – like its proverbial ancient ancestor – that “snake upon a pole” of old – the banner of its aegis became a fitting sign for the indeterminable totality of our conscious/unconscious continuum; that “thing” which all-together we call life… While likewise so it was, referring to one’s awareness (as a living human being) – that “a-sleep” or “a-wake” – the sign of the ouroboros became equally a short-hand for the frame of reference “personified”.  And being such that it is for both (a representative sign for the presence of a viewer) – being somehow “in the end” – its “tail-eating form” could so uniquely characterize the conscious experience  of mortal existence.

NOW RIDDLE THIS   

THE CLEW TO AN ENIGMA:  WHAT WALKS ON FOUR IN THE MORNING,  TWO AT NOON,  AND THREE BY EVENING?  

As a tutelary figure (much like our picture of the Möbius) – somehow “on its face” – the rubric of the ouroboros is a self-referring  construct.  And to receive somehow its boon (the unlocking of its cipher) – something like a mirror – one must stand before its sign and be “confronted” by the semblance of its visage; storied figure that it was – our serpent’s “tail” reads something like a re-ference to the fable of the Sphinx (whose name in Greek means “strangler”)…  And as its form is pondered (or so the story goes),  the “situation” (in) which we find our self  – “looks” – something like this:  A creature’s puzzling image is posed to the viewer – as the “form” of a question…*  And while referring to the querent (so the riddle goes ) – as one interrogates “its sign”  we somehow “find” – that we are “caught” within the gaze of an imaginary  beast:  Something like the hero in a maze (or some “thing” like the palindrome).. And being someways like a Theseus to (our) hapless young Oedipus (who somehow found their-selves  confronted by the hybrid) to solve the “riddle of the sign” – we gain the “clew” to an enigma…  Which would also mean  in some odd way – “the picture it portrays” – is nothing but “the knowledge of its question”… 

With its answer – for the moment  – being “man”…                     

                                                                                                      (The Greek Key)

Continue on to Chapter 5:  “The Problem with a Purpose”

* What am I ?

Color drawing above by C.G.Jung, from the Red Book