The Fool the Mobius, & serpent

Infinity cycle

Egypt

Gnostic gem from Roman-era Egypt (1st century AD), with an

ouroboros surrounding a scarab and voces magicae, characters

representing magic wordsThe first known appearance of the ouroboros motif is in the Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld, an ancient Egyptian

funerary text in KV62, the tomb of Tutankhamun, in the 14th century BC. The text concerns the actions of the god Ra and

his union with Osiris in the underworld. In an illustration from this text, two serpents, holding their tails in their

mouths, coil around the head and feet of an enormous god, who may represent the unified Ra-Osiris. Both serpents are

manifestations of the deity Mehen, who in other funerary texts protects Ra in his underworld journey. The whole divine

figure represents the beginning and the end of time.[2]

The ouroboros appears elsewhere in Egyptian sources, where, like many Egyptian serpent deities, it represents the formless

disorder that surrounds the orderly world and is involved in that world's periodic renewal.[3] The symbol persisted in

Egypt into Roman times, when it frequently appeared on magical talismans, sometimes in combination with other magical

emblems.[4] The 4th-century AD Latin commentator Servius was aware of the Egyptian use of the symbol, noting that the image

of a snake biting its tail represents the cyclical nature of the year.[5]

The word infinity comes from the Latin term infinitas or "unboundedness.“the ∞ symbol is a variation of the ouroboros snake symbol in which the snake is twisted into the horizontal 8 position while in the process of eating its own tail. The symbol 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. A suitable symbol for infinity, no?