OUROBOROS IN ORBIT

J. Daniel Batt

 

The image of the Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail, appears across many mythologies. While the details differ across mythologies and cultures, the symbol tends to represents eternity, the joining of opposites, and resurrection.

 

In Western mythology, the Ouroboros first appeared in a collection of Egyptian writing known as The Enigmatic Book of the Underworld, which was found in the tomb of Tutankhamen. In this text, the serpents represent the beginning and end of time. In ancient Greece, Plato described the Ouroboros as the first being in the universe: a completely self-sufficient creature.

 

The Gnostics took the image of a snake up a notch, by picturing the sun as a disc surrounded by a dragon with its tail in its mouth. In Norse mythology, Jorgamunder is a giant serpent, the progeny of Loki and Angrboda. Once Jorgamunder grew large enough to encircle the earth, he earned the name Midgard Serpent. He bites his own tail, and when he lets go, the world will end. In parts of South America, indigenous people believe that the world is a disc with water at the edges, and that a giant anaconda circles these waters. Ouroboros imagery is seen in Aztec and Mayan art, Yogic traditions, and Gnosticism. It's also found in nature. The armadillo girdled lizard protects itself by putting its tail into its mouth and rolling into a ball when threatened.

 

The Ouroboros has taken on new life in the modern era of chemistry. August Kekule used Ouroboros imagery to figure out the structure of Benzene. He dozed off while working and dreamed that atoms were forming twisting rows, like snakes. One of these atom snakes circled around and bit its own tail. Kekule woke up and used this image as the basis for his hypothesis regarding Benzene's structure.

 

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The disparity first arose as they slipped into the elliptical of the solar system. All sensors were aimed at the oxygen-thick globe. There were no rings around this planet, and yet, as they viewed it from the safety of the asteroid belt, a shimmering silver belt encircled Earth. It defied all attempts at explanation. They could see it through their telescopes, but every other sensor confirmed the initial projection that this was an unguarded world.

So, they moved the armada, each ship several miles long and decorated with cascading cannons. Only when they crossed into Mars orbit did they see it fully. Even then, they did not understand. The silver ribbon writhed, a glimmer of green racing across its back.

The cluster of ships were within Mars’ wake when they witnessed the serpent unwrap itself from around the Earth. Gliding between planet and moon, it slung its head to face the fleet, its eyes shining like small suns.

Aboard a hundred vessels armed for conquest, soldiers and strategists roared in alarm. The invaders had braved the dark quiet between stars to find this world. Earth had been chosen for its simple societies and lush world. Easy to win. Easy to hold. But the gigantic creature that was uncoiling itself was an unknown. Their robotic scouts, sent over decades before to monitor every pulse of the planet, had alerted them of no such thing. The analysts, under the shouts of their commanders, wrestled to reconcile what their eyes saw against what their data had promised.

With eyes not born of the soil of Earth, the invaders saw the serpent slink from its sleep and pass through the expanse of space to where the fleet stood. If anything was alien, this was alien. Hundreds of worlds had fallen to them. They had conquered a forgotten number of planets, from infant world with barbaric scavengers burrowing across their surfaces to civilizations exploring their planetary neighbors to empires with system-wide defenses. Yet, there had been nothing like this. A world guarded by a spirit. A world whose soul wrapped around itself in wait.

Named Jormungandr by the shivering, teeth-chattering berserkers, the serpent had nursed on the blood and milk of trickster gods. The dead grew it. It fed until it looked at planets and planetoids as peers. Invisible to the eyes of those born under its guard, it was still seen by the dreamers and inward-looking visionaries of the varied civilizations to skitter across Earth’s surface. The pyramid-makers knew it and named it Ouroboros, the tail-devouring snake. The philosophers and the gnostics carved its image into stone. The forgotten son held its image up in the desert and healed his people.

Its scales glittered green and red, the galaxy’s stars dancing disturbed through its skulking form. The serpent drifted ever outwards. Even if their sensors could not discern it, they still feared it. Ouroboros’ dancing bright eyes first opened in the dawn state of Earth. Its eyes blazed with every hope and dread of humanity. The serpent set its gaze on the largest of the ships.

From the deck of that capitol ship, his own heart racing in fear, the commander directed his squadrons apart to circle the creature. And the serpent waited. And pulsed. A spirit of a world, of an entire species, brushed against the cold minds of the invaders, minds of metal and engines, minds that had explored nebulae but never imagined the soul.

Maybe it was out of that spark of fear, maybe out of restlessness, but one of the ships, far from the capitol ship, launched its volley of concussive cannons.

The beast swung its head around. It struck swiftly, snapping far and slicing through the squadrons. Every ship responded with their entire salvos. But it was useless. The serpent was every where at once and at once, it was every serpent. At once an anaconda, thick and consuming. And to another ship, the cobra, furled back and striking with precision to cripple and then, to kill. To another ship, it was the python, clutching and choking until the ironed vessel split in two, spilling its crew like blood into space. The serpent launched itself against those arrayed around it.

As the bodies of millions of would-be conquerors floated into the empty, Ouroboros returned to its orbit, taking its tail up again between its fangs, slowly closing its continent-sized eyelids to sleep. It rested, circling the globe, waiting for the next threat to come from the stars.

And its future? As its humans reach into space, will it grow with them? As humanity colonizes its neighbors, will the serpent twist around the system, basking in the light of the Sun? As we move through this galaxy, will the serpent grow, will the soul of Earth travel with us?

Or will it still rest, spinning slowly, around a forgotten planet? Will it wait for us to remember our soul? To remember our serpent soul?