Ouroboros: A Study

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Revision as of 08:45, 24 February 2025

Title: Ouroboros: A Study

Author: Jordan Cromwell

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History is littered with remnants of tales about a Lord of Time, a sort of watch repair man to the clock that is called creation. Elements of the void gathered together under some great design and our world was created perfect before the shattering.

This Lord of Time was supposed to carry the threads of time in his hands, and wear a cowl of the purest white.

I, like most disregarded these tales as myth and magical thinking.

Then I met this being, he joined me at my own table at tea time. Sat right across from me without opening the door or moving the curtain.

When he spoke the voice wrapped around my ears and chilled my spine. This was not supposed to be a man that cared about anything other than balance. But, he cared. I could tell that somewhere inside him was a man that deeply cared for Britannia and Sosaria as a whole. Some piece of him may have been human at one point, I wondered where such vast power had come from.

He asked questions, things he already knew the answers to. I think the questioning was for my benifit, less for his.

He asked about my father, about my mother. About my plans for family and my position within society. He then slid a ring across the table and told me that there would be others that bear the same symbol upon their ring.

That we should gather and trust eachother. He spoke of great change, great chaos and terrible war. He said that these families these special families would be the fulcrum on the scales that would edge the world into doom or glory.

He said that should I have a child, the ring should go to the first, never the second.

When I asked, should I have no children. He told me that the ring would find a new owner and that like the seed to a great tree, this ring would originate with me, and 23 others.

Then he was gone, I thought I had dreamt the whole thing, yet there lay the ring and his chair was cold, so very cold. Like it had been left in the snow over night.

I dare not wear it, not without more information. I am not one brave enough to meddle in the affairs of the infinite.

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The Ouroboros or Uroborus is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail.

The Ouroboros often represents self-reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things perceived as cycles that begin anew as soon as they end (compare with phoenix). It can also represent the idea of primordial unity related to something existing in or persisting from the beginning with such force or qualities it cannot be extinguished.

The Ouroboros has been important in religious and mythological symbolism, but has also been frequently used in alchemical illustrations, where it symbolizes the circular nature of the alchemist's opus.

The great wizard

• smudged* writes

of it as a representation of the pre-ego "dawn state", depicting the undifferentiated infancy experience of both mankind and the individual child.

In some circles, this serpent symbolized eternity and the soul of the world.

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I do wonder who these others are, what will become of us, and will we be able to stand in the midst of this great wave this great being called 'a time of great change'.