The Uroboros
The tail-eater
The serpent that devours its own tail.
The Uroboros: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The serpent or dragon that eats its own tail appears in Greek alchemy, in the Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra, inscribed “One is the All.” Jung read it as the unity of opposites and the self-renewing circle of the work.
His student Erich Neumann made it the image of the psyche’s first state, before ego and world are divided, from which consciousness emerges.
Jung called the uroboros the basic mandala of alchemy: the dragon that eats its tail fertilises, kills, and begets itself, and so is the One that contains the opposites, the work that begins and ends in the same matter. He found it in the Egyptian funerary papyri around the sun and the earth, in the Gnostic gems, in the Codex Marcianus with the words hen to pan, “one, the all,” and on the title-page of the alchemical books.
Kekulé said that he saw the ring of benzene in a dream of a snake seizing its own tail, in 1865: the oldest symbol giving the shape of a modern molecule.
The Uroboros: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Jörmungandr encircling the world, the serpent about the sun in the funerary texts of the Egyptian New Kingdom, and the Mercurius of the alchemists. The Midgard serpent; the Milky Ocean churned with the serpent Vasuki; the ring of the year; the Möbius strip; the snake that bit Kekulé’s chemistry.
In the Press’s Books
The circle it makes is the figure of eternal recurrence.
From the Sources
Silberer identifies the circular wheel of the elements in a hermetic text with the serpent that bites its own tail, a power that always consumes and always renews itself.
“The above mentioned circular wheel is identical with the serpent that bites its own tail; it is a power that always consumes and always renews itself.”
Dr. Herbert Silberer, Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts (originally published as Problems of Mysticism and its Symbolism), Part II, Section IV, "Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry". Translated by Smith Ely Jelliffe, M.D., Ph.D.; Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1971, an unabridged republication of the work published by Moffat, Yard and Company, New York, in 1917 (Project Gutenberg eBook #27755). The text, read in part
Silberer reads the snake with its tail in its mouth as the cycle of the libido, the ever-rolling wheel of life and procreation that always procreates itself, and of the creation of the world.
“The snake with its tail in its mouth is the cycle of the libido, the always rolling wheel of life, of procreation, which always procreates itself, and of the creation of the world.”
Dr. Herbert Silberer, Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts (originally published as Problems of Mysticism and its Symbolism), Part III, Section I, B, "Effects of Introversion". Translated by Smith Ely Jelliffe, M.D., Ph.D.; Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1971, an unabridged republication of the work published by Moffat, Yard and Company, New York, in 1917 (Project Gutenberg eBook #27755). The text, read in part
Each passage is quoted from the text named, which the press fetched and read, and was checked word for word against a fresh copy of it; the link opens that copy. Passages are given as printed, without the editors’ footnote numbers, and with words broken across lines joined.
Where to Read
- Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12
- Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14
- Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness (1949)
- Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, ¶ 404
- Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness (1949), “The Uroboros”
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
In the Glossary: Eternal recurrence.
Also among Serpents and Dragons
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Uroboros.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/uroboros.
Symbols That Share Its Terms
The Eternal Return (Eternal recurrence) · The Door (The gate, the threshold) · The Ring
Nearby in the alphabet: The Two: The first division, and the tension that drives the psyche. The Unicorn: Wild power, tamed only by the pure. The Veil: What hides the mystery, and what may be lifted. The Vessel: The container in which change happens.