ouroboros (1)

(Fuseli's Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent)

The tail-devourer signifies the beginning as well as the end. It is a wheel of creation and destruction, circumscribed around the world in infinite repetition. Within that titanic embrace, the world serpent’s shape delineates a sphere of intelligibility and defines the most profound limits of that sphere. Because he predates the very possibility of continuity, time is meaningless to Jörmungandr, since he is essentially the primordial enemy *of* history. The only “time” that matters to the serpent is the moment when time itself will be destroyed. The paradox implied by a world serpent is fascinating. It exists within an epic, antagonistic contention with the world tree: Jörmungandr is the logical predicate of Yggdrasil.

(There's a lot of reading ahead - namely, Eliade and Pynchon. But the reptilian hordes have already assembled; Ragnarak has already begun. Bring it on bitches.)