Pagan · Death & the Afterlife
Symbol · The Ancient World · 1323 BCE
Ouroboros
The Serpent of Eternity
The end feeds the beginning: nothing is lost, only transformed — or nothing ever escapes the loop.
What it meansThe earliest drawing of it carries the legend hen to pan — the all is one — written inside the circle. The serpent eats itself and is not consumed, which is the alchemists' figure for a process that supplies its own material and therefore never has to stop.
Symbol · Esoteric Symbols · 1948
Triple Moon
The Goddess in Three Phases
Maiden, Mother, Crone: every phase of a life holds its own power, none of them worth hurrying past.
What it meansMaiden, mother, crone, and the reading's force is that the third is not a decline. Each phase is a distinct power rather than a stage of losing the first, which is what the moon's own cycle is taken to demonstrate — waning is not diminishment if it returns.
Symbol · Northern European Folk
Valknut
The Knot of the Slain
Three interlocking triangles associated with Odin, representing the transition between life and death.
What it meansIt appears on memorial stones and on ship burials, beside Odin and beside the dead — three triangles that cannot be separated without cutting. The reading is a binding at the passage out of life, which is Odin's own office as the god who takes the slain.