ouroboros
"This is most important to the closing and diminishing of the circle. We support, as expedient, all cyclic Orphism; and so we must support the effort of the returnees...Their concern that the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth be repeated has been a good one up to this time. The returnees must at all cost keep the world in this cycle. They cannot permit the world to ascend. They cannot even permit the cycle to become a helix, a spiral. We support them in one direction, but we do not support them in another. The cycle, of course, cannot be permitted to become an ascending or outgrowing spiral. Neither can it be permitted to remain a simple cycle forever. It must become a diminished concentric with each turn of it smaller and more refined than the last. We will diminish to a point. We will concentrate in one point."
Michael Fountain, Fourth Mansions, R.A. Lafferty
"The patricks and their castles will stand against him in that," said Croll who was a patrick. "We've stood for the open way even when it was stagnant; we won't accept the closed way even when it's in movement. Theirs isn't the eternal symbol of the snake with his tail in his mouth, forever repeating. That snake eats a little of his tail each time he goes around, and he becomes a much smaller snake. We'll stand together against them and their diminishment!"
Croll, the patrick, Fourth Mansions, R.A. Lafferty
"It is amusing to notice that many of the moderns, whether skeptics or mystics, have taken as their sign a certain eastern symbol, which is the very symbol of this ultimate nullity. When they wish to represent eternity, they represent it by a serpent with his tail in his mouth. There is a startling sarcasm in the image of that very unsatisfactory meal. The eternity of the material fatalists, the eternity of the eastern pessimists, the eternity of the supercilious theosophists and higher scientists of today is, indeed, very well presented by a serpent eating his tail, a degraded animal who destroys even himself."
The Maniac, Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton
Michael Fountain, Fourth Mansions, R.A. Lafferty
"The patricks and their castles will stand against him in that," said Croll who was a patrick. "We've stood for the open way even when it was stagnant; we won't accept the closed way even when it's in movement. Theirs isn't the eternal symbol of the snake with his tail in his mouth, forever repeating. That snake eats a little of his tail each time he goes around, and he becomes a much smaller snake. We'll stand together against them and their diminishment!"
Croll, the patrick, Fourth Mansions, R.A. Lafferty
"It is amusing to notice that many of the moderns, whether skeptics or mystics, have taken as their sign a certain eastern symbol, which is the very symbol of this ultimate nullity. When they wish to represent eternity, they represent it by a serpent with his tail in his mouth. There is a startling sarcasm in the image of that very unsatisfactory meal. The eternity of the material fatalists, the eternity of the eastern pessimists, the eternity of the supercilious theosophists and higher scientists of today is, indeed, very well presented by a serpent eating his tail, a degraded animal who destroys even himself."
The Maniac, Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton