Views
A white serpent emerging from the right eye-socket of a skull and re-entering by the left eye-socket – or vice-versa – in such a way that its head or the end of its tail are always, one or the other, inside the skull, symbolises for some the eternal destiny of things, the Great Year of the Pythagoreans (1), the general rhythm of the world with its alternations of dispersion and concentration. One is aware, on the other hand, of the role of the tempter in Genesis and the phallic significance everywhere attached to the serpent.
In Cairo, in the form of the wooden lizard (or crocodiles?) that many prostitutes hang over their doors by way of an immutable sign, I have perhaps seen the trace of the crocodile sacred to the Egyptians.
The wriggling of serpents, in the depths of swamps and in dungeons, their strange intertwinings, their combats with fangs, knots or venom will always be the exact image of human existence shot through from top to bottom by death and love.
(1) The Platonic, Great, or Perfect year (Annus Magnus), was estimated by early Greek astronomers at about 26, 000 years, at the end of which all the heavenly bodies are imagined to have returned to the places they occupied at the creation.