^* “Every snake biting its tail becomes a circle, a circle which the Gnostics discover over and over again at all levels,” writes Jacques Lacarriere, citing the cosmic level of the Leviathan “constituting the ring that divides the domain of darkness from the domain of light”; the terrestrial compass of Ocean encircling the globe; and the coils of the intestinal tract inside the body (The Gnostics, 81–82).

^† In Platonic idealism, says Michel Serres, “This is how the miracle is accomplished : the transparency of volumes, the metaphorical naming of the realism of idealities. From the cave to the world outside, the scenography turns into an ichnography : the shadow of solids played on the plane of representation and defined them by boundaries and partitions; now light goes through them and banishes the interior shadow” (Hermes, 94–95).