The Ancient World · Death & the Afterlife
Symbol · The Ancient World
Triskelion
The Spiral of Life
Life as motion, not state — spiralling out and back, at the risk of losing the centre you turn on.
What it meansThree arms in rotation, all turning the same way, so the figure has no rest position — it reads as motion even when still. The reading is of life as process rather than state: always going round, and always around a centre that is itself empty.
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 · The Ancient World
Labyrinth
The Path to the Center
One path, not a maze — the turns that feel like going wrong are the way in, and the way back out.
What it meansIt has one path and no choices, so it cannot be solved and cannot be entered wrongly. Everything that feels like error — the sudden turn away from the centre — is the route. Walked in place of a pilgrimage, it makes the journey a matter of continuing rather than deciding.