As I was looking in ARAS1 for a specific image of the circle as the unmanifested, I "accidentally" stumbled on a photograph of the theatre at Epidaurus. It shows the curve of the seating on the hillside and the open circle of the orchestra in the foreground. Nothing, it seemed to me, could illustrate more clearly the circle as potential than the empty orchestra of a Greek theatre, the place where things could happen, where they will happen, but have not yet occurred. I remember sitting in the Greek theatre at Taraomina, looking across the empty orchestra and the scena to the broad sweep of the sea beyond the blue afternoon sky above; I felt something of the evanescence of human events in that cosmic setting. They appear, run their course, and then fade, leaving the hillside, the sea and the sky as silent witnesses of those passing events. Manifestation takes place out of emptiness and completes its full cycle. The round orchestra of the theater symbolizes the dynamic progression from nothing to nothing.
| [aras-image:3Ta.039,,10,,,Figure 2 Terra cotta bowl with uroborus.] |
| [aras-image:5Gs.581,,10,,,Figure 3 Alchemical engraving of uroborus.] |