What is the ouroboros or uroboros?
The Uroboros (or Ouroboros) is the illustration of the snake or dragon eating its own tail. Sometimes two serpents (or dragons) are shown, with a lighter, winged serpent above and a darker, walking serpent below. Some say that the ouroboros represents the prima materia, the first matter of alchemy. As such, it shows that the devouring dragon eats itself in order to be reborn anew. It shows the normal cycle of life where what is dead nourrishes what lives. Nevertheless, this is the mundane interpretation of this alchemical symbol.
Carl Jung commented on this symbology in his book Mysterium Conjunctionis:
“In the age-old image of the uroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and tuning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists the Prima Materia of the art was man himself. The uroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e., the shadow. This feedback process is at the same time a symbol of immortality, since it is said of the uroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself and gives birth to himself.”
To Jung, the ouroboros is a representation of the sacrifice of the state of unconsciousness that he also call the "mother" in Symbols of Transformation. One has to outgrow that state of unconsciousness by integrating his personal unconscious, his shadow. This increase in consciousness leads to a new state akin to a "renaissance".
But the ouroboros means a lot more than that. Jung added:
“The alchemical parallel to this polarity is the double nature of Mercurius, which shows itself most clearly in the Uroboros, the dragon that devours, fertilizes, begets, slays, and brings itself to life again. Being hermaphroditic, it is compounded of opposites and is at the same time their uniting symbol” (CW 12, par. 460)
The uroboros is a symbol of the conjunction of opposites and those symbols are mystical experiences. It is hermaphroditic, as Jung says, a quality of conjoined opposites (male and female). The head eats the tail, the beginning and the end are one as with the prima materia. In some pictures, the head is crowned as a king and the tail or the second serpent has no crown nor wings thus depicting matter. When the serpent or the dragon is winged, it is showing a spiritual experience.
What is that experience that the ouroboros depicts?
It is the philosopher's stone, the second mystical experience of alchemy where spirit and matter are fused in a symbol. Conjunction of spirit and matter is very often experienced as if the outside world is inside the psyche. An experience that is difficult to explain. One of the best descriptions of that transcendent experience comes from Forrest Reid (1875–1947) who was a Northern Irish novelist and critic. He described his mystical experience as follows:
“It was as if I had never realized before how lovely the world was. I lay down on my back in the warm, dry moss and listened to the skylark singing as it mounted up from the fields near the sea into the dark clear sky. No other music ever gave me the same pleasure as that passionately joyous singing. It was a kind of leaping, exultant ecstasy, a bright, flame-like sound, rejoicing in itself. And then a curious experience befell me. It was as if everything that had seemed to be external and around me were suddenly within me. The whole world seemed to be within me. It was within me that the trees waved their green branches, it was within me that the skylark was singing, it was within me that the hot sun shone, and that the shade was cool.”¹
The dragon also illustrate somethingelse that is important. It shows the four elements: air, fire, water and earth. It flies, goes in the water, walks on the ground and breathes fire. The number four should always be associated with the four cognitive functions or the four sides of consciousness. In alchemy, the four elements are always a reference to the four temperaments of the Greeks that Jung renamed as Sensation, Intuition, Thinking and Feeling. The ouroboros dragon that eats its tail also show the process leading to the second mystical experience. It involves the sacrifice of a cognitive function and the differentiation of a new one.
This is a major topic that will be treated in another blog post.
¹ From IMERE website.
In the meantime, please refer to these
Carl Jung's Second Mystical Experience
Carl Jung's Answer to Job: the Birth of the Self