Ouroboros Quotes

“It’s the end of the day, but it feels like dawn, and a new beginning. It comes to me that both twilight periods are, in fact, symmetrical events on opposite sides of midnight, a cycle of endless creation and destruction, an Ouroboros.”
― Florian Armas, The Shamans at the End of Time

“Om is said to be a four-syllable word in Sanskrit, originally as AUM. A, the waking state. U, the dream state. M, the unconscious state. And the fourth, the silence that surrounds it—wherefrom everything arises and whereto everything inevitably returns.

It is the silence that surrounds om that contains everything. It is the silence in your own life that contains and gives birth to everything you have, and everything you will ever need.

It is this same silence we avoid, overlook, and disregard as nothing. The white space of life we abhor. We fill our lives with noise, drama, screens, people, and “stuff” to avoid the void that reminds us of our truth—that beyond flesh that once was not, and will inescapably become not, we are eternal.”
― Drew Gerald

“The most common form of sacred space to the witch is the magick circle. The circle is a symbol of the infinite and finite. It is everything and nothing. It is the Ouroboros, the serpent eating its own tail, symbolic of the never-ending cycle of creation and destruction, birth and death, and a symbol of the cosmos without beginning or end.”
― Mat Auryn, Psychic Witch: A Metaphysical Guide to Meditation, Magick & Manifestation

“I wanted to swallow myself by opening my mouth inordinately and turning it around over my head so that it would take in my whole body, and then the Universe, until all that would remain of me would be a ball of eaten thing which little by little would be annihilated: that is my way of seeing the end of the world.”
― Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers

“Deeply exciting, though, cliché was, as a concept. It was truth misted by overexpression, wasn't it, like a structure seen in a fog, something waiting to be re-felt, re-seen. Something dainty fumbled at through thick gloves. Cliché was true, obviously, which was why it had become cliché in the first place; so true that cliché actually protected you from its own truth by being what it was, nothing but cliché.”
― Ali Smith, The Accidental

“O’ serpentine Ouroboros,
semper salvus!
Semper tutis!
The end shall never consume us.”
― Lavinia Valeriana, Night Tide Musings

“I stare at my freakish eyeball, gaze into the distorted pupil until it expands and fills the mirror, fills my brain and I’m rushing through vacuum. Wide awake and so far at such speed I flatten into a subatomic contrail. That grand cosmic maw, that eater of galaxies, possesses sufficient gravitational force to rend the fabric of space and time, to obliterate reality, and in I go, bursting into trillions of minute particles, quadrillions of whining fleas, consumed. Nanoseconds later, I understand everything there is to understand. Reduced to my “essential saltes” as it were, I’m the prime mover seed that gets sown after the heat death of the universe when the Ouroboros swallows itself and the cycle begins anew with a big bang.”
― Laird Barron, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

“What is it like to disregard the body? How do we get around ourselves when we are always in the way? I wonder how badly the serpent wants the loop to end, to consume himself until the flesh is gone. Is that possible? What would that look like, that nothing-space? To complete the autocannibalism of revisiting one’s own trauma, for it to be over?”
― Alice Lesprenance

“O medo é o oroboro, a serpente que come a própria cauda. Cada acção ou pensamento tocado por este mecanismo autotrófico o alimenta e enraíza dentro de nós. Incapacitante, destrutivo, progenitor de almas consumidas e privadas de desígnio ou direcção, propensas a um dia darem um passeio nocturno até ao fim de um qualquer cais de madeira, onde a água é fria e funda.”
― Pedro Lucas Martins, As Sombras de Lázaro

“No final, sou engolido pela cobra de duas cabeças: como uma criatura mitológica e metamórfica, feita de duas esfinges que jamais eram decifradas pelos outros, mas adoravam se devorar.”
― Ben Oliveira

“Ia merasa dirinya sebagai raja yang ingin menaklukkan nafsunya sendiri. Menelisik setiap susunan bidak bidak yang berdiri di hadapannya. Algoritma rumit yang menimbang setiap langkah yang terlintas dalam benak seorang Grandmaster. Adakah sebuah varian istimewa yang bisa mewakili siasat yang ingin ia mainkan? Menentukan strategi pembukaan yang akan memastikan sebuah kemenangan berada di dalam genggaman tangannya. Menetapkan langkah, apakah ia mesti maju menyerang atau justru mundur bertahan?

Pertaruhan martabat memaksanya berpikir keras, kemana pion pion hitam itu harus beranjak? Demi menegakkan wibawa yang menyerupai sebuah batu penjuru. Hasrat yang menunggu pintu gerbang terbuka untuk membuka jalan menuju kastilnya sendiri. Istana nan megah dengan halaman luas berupa taman yang tertata indah persis seperti di dalam mimpi Raja Nushirvan.

Demikianlah ia melihat Xiangqi terlahir di China, berkelana ke India sebagai Chaturanga dan lalu hijrah ke Persia sebagai Shatranj. Petak petak hitam putih di atas papan yang kemudian menjelma menjadi lingkaran ouroboros. Bala tentara Maharaja Gupta mulai bergerak serentak melewati setiap tatahan batu dan undak undakan tangga melewati lebih dari lima belas abad perjalanan waktu yang tak tahu kapan bakal berhenti.

Ialah titisan Sang Chandragupta, memberi aba aba kepada segenap prajuritnya dengan suara lantang. Langkah kakinya tegap dan mantap. Walau tidak seperti dulu, ia masih sanggup tegak berdiri, melihat dirinya sendiri di dalam pantulan cermin. Anggun dan memesona seperti seekor kuda bangsawan. Elok seperti Akhal Teke dan rupawan bagai Friesian. Dengan tubuh yang liat, kaki yang kuat, mata yang ekspresif dengan lengan berotot dan kejantanan yang tak ingin ia sembunyikan di balik benteng pikiran seekor gajah yang keras kepala dan keangkuhan hati seorang menteri yang bersikeras ingin diakui.

Itulah sebab mengapa ia tak akan pernah mengibarkan bendera putih. Walau ia tahu, setiap langkah punya arti untuk menang atau ditaklukkan. Ia tak akan menyerah tanpa melakukan perlawanan. Pada sisa waktu yang berdetak kian lambat dan perlahan memojokkan dirinya hingga sudut terjauh dari pertahanan papan caturnya sendiri.

Setiap petak hitam putih adalah pertaruhan antara hidup dan mati. Jengkal tanah yang mesti ia bela mati matian. Sepenuhnya tahu, di atas permukaan papan yang seakan tenang dan hening itu, ada pertempuran dahsyat dan berdarah darah. Perang yang telanjur mengubur semua ingatan atas waktu yang seolah tak pernah berubah.

Masih seperti dulu. Waktu yang masih bisa menertawakan kenaifannya akan dunia. Waktu yang mengajarkannya memahami absurditas hidup. Waktu yang secara ironis justru ingin menghancurkannya. Memaksa ia mencermati setiap langkah melewati  jebakan tarian tango sang ratu yang akan mengantarkannya menjemput ajal. Maut yang setia mengintai di setiap sudut dan tak akan pernah berhenti memaksanya untuk menyerah.”
― Titon Rahmawan

“There is a huge new frontier awaiting our exploration, and it is not the macrocosm of the universe but the microcosm of the mind.”
― Dennis William Hauck, The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation

“What draws ants to even the most remote sugar crystals? What entices bees to flowers? It's the fundamental code of life. Hunger is a taste of yearning your life code carries that, when seated into a human body, translates into mental and bodily desires. In the short term, within a single life, childhood limitations or arousals sow the majority of the seeds of desire. Most human goals frequently revolve around good food, good clothing, intimacy, artistic/scientific expression, and financial success. Across multiple lifetimes, it all ties back to our underlying evolutionary hunger. That is why some of our dreams are unexpectedly different from our waking life goals. That is why siblings born from the same parents, nurtured similarly, have weirdly different life goals - they are two different manifestations of two different derivative codes. This multi-life journey, when unaware, is exactly what we attribute to destiny, and when a little aware, we attribute to Karma. Once these little tributaries are done with their own little flow, they flow back to the original river.

In the grand existential scheme, as temporary and evolutionary desires are satisfied, we flow back with the current of existential hunger. This cosmic hunger is more of playfulness than a hunger, simply consciousness, with minimal interference from senses or other impurities, being drawn towards matter, like a playful snake chasing its own tail. Yes, it might be perplexing to our worldly mind. You remember the symbol Ying Yang? The dark dot is the matter in consciousness, and the white dot is the consciousness in Matter - like a lover playfully chasing their loved one. It's a merging of the two fundamental ingredients of existence.

Spirituality strives us to ride the original current, fulfilling and freeing us from temporary desires, allowing us to become one with that primordial life code. That is why a Buddha's desires can be attributed to the desires of existence itself. Life, in its microcosm, is complex enough, let alone the macro one.”
― Saroj Quotes