Eke Ogba Ijele: The Symbol of Python Swallowing Its Own Tail

The serpent that swallows its own tail (Eke Ogba Ijele) is one of humanity’s oldest symbols of wholeness and transformation. Well documented in ancient Igbo civilization, it came to represent the eternal cycle of life, death, and rebirth: a universe feeding upon itself to renew its own existence. In Igbo esoteric thought, this symbol teaches that opposites—light and dark, creation and destruction, spirit and matter—are not enemies but reflections of one continuous process that emerge from Nnechukwu (the Source of All Creation). To “eat one’s own tail” is to acknowledge that all endings are beginnings, that renewal is born through dissolution, and that true unity arises only when the self can embrace and transform its contradictions.