Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Ouroboros

Ouroboros door knob knocker, via Ricasoli, Livorno
The Ouroboros is a symbol typical of ancient Egypt and Greece depicting a serpent eating its own tail, signifying the cyclicality of something constantly re-creating itself. As a Gnostic and alchemical symbol, it expresses the unity of all things, material and spiritual, which never disappear but perpetually change form in an eternal cycle of destruction and re-creation. You will find this door knob and knocker in Via Ricasoli.
Pagina XI de Il Tirreno del 19 dicembre 2013, Livorno
On December 19th, two days after this post was published, the above piece showed up on page XII of the local daily “Il Tirreno”: the text is copied verbatim from the Italian version of this blog. I think any further comment is unnecessary‪.
(Updated on December 22nd)
External links: Ouroboros (Wikipedia)
See also: Snakes

14 comments:

Revrunner said...

Yes, must have one for my door! Maybe it would cut down on the number of solicitors. :-)

Lois Evensen said...

Very nice!

Randy said...

Interesting post.

Jack said...

Do you think the owners of this house chose the doorknocker because of its symbolism or because they liked the style?

cieldequimper said...

I've learned something new this morning.

Duncan D. Horne - the Kuantan blogger said...

I'm sure this symbol popped up in a Dan Brown book too...

Duncan In Kuantan

Halcyon said...

I learned something today! I would have just thought this was a neat design. :)

Karl said...

Beautiful detail VP, I bet many passers-by do not even see it.

Gunn said...

Beautiful.

Stefan Jansson said...

Knock knock.

Dina said...

It is fun to say the word.

Unknown said...

Beautiful find!

Dina said...

Chutspah! Can we write to them in protest?

tapirgal said...

Plagiarism makes me so angry. And the "author" even signed it!!!