"Life is a flat circle", "what goes around comes around". They say in wikipedia that the Ouroboros originated in ancient Egypt. The word itself is Greek, meaning "Tail devourer". The snake is a common symbol in many mythologies around the world, often connected with rebirth and the cyclical nature of life. Many cultures share the idea of the journey to the underworld and back. Greek myths revolving around Persephone and Demeter (which help explain the seasons), the Egyptian Osiris myth, the Sumerian Ishtar, to name a few.
According to Carl Jung :
"The alchemists, who in their own way knew more about the nature of the individuation process than we moderns do, expressed this paradox through the symbol of the Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. The Ouroboros has been said to have a meaning of infinity or wholeness. In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. This 'feed-back' process is at the same time a symbol of immortality, since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he therefore constitutes the secret of the prima materia which [...] unquestionably stems from man's unconscious."
In Flusser's "Towards a Philosophy of Photography" the idea of time became linear only after the advent of writing and record keeping. Initially our perceptions may have been circular, in viewing the rise and fall of the sun and the changing of the seasons. Life and death could be seen as circular as well. Perhaps linear thinking itself is just as much in the mind's eye as magical thinking.
