Ouroboros
The tail-eating serpent circling the words 'the One, the All' — eternity as a closed circuit of self-renewal.
The earliest known Ouroboros encircles figures on the gilded shrines of Tutankhamun — eternity guarding the sleeper. Passing into Greek alchemy, the tail-eater appears in the Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra drawn around the words hen to pan: 'the One, the All.' It became Western alchemy's master-symbol: the closed circuit of energy, ending where it begins, transformed; the prima materia that consumes and regenerates itself. Jung read it as the self-containment of the psyche's deep process — the work that feeds on its own completion.
The SGE Reading
Integration's final image: the path ends where it began, and the ending is the nourishment of the next beginning.
Canon Resonance
The series' closing geometry: nine paths that curve, at the summit, into one circle.
A Micro-Practice
Revisit where a finished chapter of your life began. Write one sentence on what the ending fed.
Sources & Respect
Tutankhamun shrine iconography; Greco-Egyptian alchemical manuscripts.