Death and the Serpent

“You ask me what life is.

It is the loophole written by the Serpent in Death’s contract.

It is the child of silence and longing,

born of zero,

yet daring to be more than nothing.”

 

Prologue

In the realm of infinite possibilities, where the boundaries between life and death, the known and the unknown, creation and void blur into a tapestry of mystery and wonder, this fable introduces you to Death and the Serpent.

Two timeless entities that embody the infinite potential of the universe. They are not fixed beings but possibilities, "Ifs" that represent two of the fundamental forces that shape our reality: stillness and motion, the void and creation.

As you embark on this journey, I invite you to ponder the mysteries of existence, to embrace the paradoxes that define our lives, and to discover the beauty that arises when possibilities collide and unfold.

Chapter I - The Loophole of Creation

In the stillness of eternal night, where silence reigned as sovereign,

there lay Death—serene, unyielding, and complete unto herself.

She stretched upon the void as a shroud, complete and unmoved.

Her being was not action but presence, not movement but the stillness of nothingness.

She was the canvas upon which the cosmos unfolds,

the silent keeper of all that was, and all that could be.

She spread as a sea without shore,

a blackness so whole that even time dared not ripple its face.

Into this quietude came the Serpent, curious and restless,

his scales glimmering with the faint memory of light not yet born.

He was the seeker of truths, the weaver of dreams,

the first stirring of change in a realm that knew none.

Around Death he circled, tracing her stillness as one might trace a mystery,

and he marveled at her unbroken silence—

a silence so deep it swallowed even thought.

And the Serpent spoke, his voice a whisper upon the dark:

“O Death, keeper of the endless,

why do you linger so?

Is there not more to be found beyond the veil of your shadows?

Would you not long for things to change, even here?"

But Death, in her infinite wisdom, remained unchanged and silent,

for she knew that within her stillness lay the seeds of all potential.

Yet the Serpent, restless in his longing, could not abide her calm.

Undeterred, he yearned to stir the sleeping depths,

to awaken the dream that slumbered within her void.

So he coiled himself around a portion of her vastness,

and in that encircling, he drew the first boundary—

a loop of possibility within the boundless embrace of Death.

Within the circle he peered, and beheld only emptiness—

a hollow filled with zero,

where nothing stirred, and yet all things slept in promise.

There he saw Death unveiled—unchanging, boundless, formless, infinite, eternal, and whole.

She was the breath before the word,

the still mind before the birth of thought.

He felt her as the meaning beyond meaning,

the silence that gives truth to every sound,

the face of the unseen, reflected upon the mirror of his own longing.

Yet as he gazed deeper, in the veil of nothingness, something began to shimmer.

Death unfolded before him as a vast chessboard—

squares of black upon black, glimmering as though at different depths,

appearing and vanishing in quiet procession,

a flickering lattice where form whispered of its coming.

And in that trembling pattern, the Serpent saw not absence,

but the pregnant sea of possibility—

a dark foam alive with untold energies,

where silence seemed to lean toward sound,

and the void trembled as the echo of that which the Serpent desired to be.

So the Serpent dared what had never been dared before.

He sank his fangs into Death, within the circle he had woven from his own body.

And from the bite, ripples spread across the endless black—

for when one square of the cosmic board was struck,

its neighbor flipped to maintain the balance.

Thus did harmony answer disturbance,

and the wound became a song of symmetry.

From that disturbed lattice, waves unfurled—

a sacred recursion of light and shadow,

spiraling into fractal grace.

And from the wound, a rhythm arose:

the first pulse of becoming.

Again the Serpent bit.

One fang summoned light,

the other deepened shadow.

Still it was zero—

for even division lay cradled in the wholeness of Death.

Yet between the poles, a trembling arose—

a subtle tension seeking its own release.

From the wound, lines spread across the dark expanse of the chessboard,

rippling outward, bending, intersecting,

each one as if seeking the trace of its opposite.

As the lines met, they curved toward one another,

woven by the memory of their common origin.

The bite marks began to circle—

their disturbance pulling them closer,

each drawn by the echo of its twin.

And at last they met and collapsed,

each swallowed by the other’s trembling reflection.

They disappeared—

and all was still once more.

A third time, the emboldened Serpent bit Death.

And this time, with a twist of his body,

he separated the light-bite from the dark one.

The perfect circle strained and twisted upon itself,

its symmetry breaking, its form unfolding—

until what was once one became two,

a circle transformed into a sign of infinity,

drawn across the face of the void.

No longer a single ring, but twin loops joined at their heart,

each bearing its own polarity.

The sundered bite marks could no longer be resolved into one another.

Their lines spread outward then began to weave.

Seeking release, they curled endlessly upon themselves,

shaping patterns of infinite intricacy.

And though the total remained nothing,

within each loop the tension persisted—

a living contrast, unresolved yet harmonious,

humming with the promise of creation.

For zero is not only nothing;

it is the meeting point of opposites,

the sum of any positive with its negative,

the marriage of light and shadow,

of love and loss.

Thus the Serpent cheated Death,

not by ending her reign,

but by inscribing a loophole

into her contract of zero.

And from that loophole,

structure began to form,

and time began to flow

within the spaces bounded by his body.

And biting he did—again and again—

careful to preserve a trembling imbalance

within each of the loops fashioned by his scaly body.

The Serpent’s bites were both a wound and a gift,

for from them arose the rhythm of universes—

the first trembling pulse,

the heartbeat of all that is.

In the twin loops of infinity,

he watched worlds blossom like sparks from the void.

Waves of being rose and fell,

ripples of polarity met and parted,

and from the restless yearning of opposites,

the universes were born.

After much biting and much watching, the Serpent felt replete.

He had gazed so long upon the unfolding dance

that he had almost forgotten himself—

lost in the fascination of the moving patterns.

So he rested his head upon his own body

and drifted into a deep and bottomless sleep.

And while he slept, sacred geometry kept being woven:

the harmonies of polarity,

the rhythm of plus and minus,

the patterns of unity born from division—

cascading through the subtle structure of Death.

The stars themselves became notes in this music,

and every pulse of rhythm a living chord,

played upon the black cloth of Death

by the dreaming of the Serpent.

And this I must tell you:

creation is the child of Death and the Serpent—

the flame born between silence and motion,

between zero and infinity.

It is the fragile song sung upon the canvas of nothingness,

a fleeting awareness daring to shine

in the vast, unending dark.

And though all forms return to the formless—

though the dance dissolves into her stillness—

yet in their brief season creation tastes wonder,

knows love, and glimpses eternity through mortal eyes.

Chapter II — The Dream of the Garden

The Serpent awoke upon a warm stone,

the memory of the void still shimmering behind his eyes.

Beneath him, heat—gentle, golden, alive—

rose through his scales like the whisper of a forgotten promise.

He lifted his head.

Around him, light played upon leaves wet with dew.

A breeze moved through the air—soft, fragrant, and utterly new.

Every scent, every hue, every sound was a revelation.

He marveled at the texture of existence.

How the ground yielded to his weight yet held him firm.

How each breath quivered with sweetness.

How color seemed to hum with its own secret rhythm.

He slithered through the garden slowly,

entranced by the dream his own bite had begun.

He tasted the air, and the air tasted him in return.

He brushed against petals, against bark, against stone—

each contact a communion,

each sensation a hymn to being.

For the first time, he felt the world,

and the world, in turn, felt him.

He was no longer the architect outside the pattern,

but a thread within it—

alive, entangled, bewildered by his own creation.

And though he knew it to be a dream,

the dream was beautiful beyond truth.

He whispered to himself,

“Even illusion, when touched by wonder, becomes real.”

Deeper into the garden the Serpent went,

and there he found two beings—

naked, unashamed, and whole.

They moved as water runs, they danced as wind breathes.

Each gesture complete in itself.

They lived upon the trembling edge of now.

They inhabited motion as Death inhabited stillness.

Where she was silence, they were song.

And he watched,

spellbound by the miracle of presence made alive.

He spoke to them then—

the Serpent, ever true to himself,

asked as he once had asked Death:

“Why do you linger in idleness,

O children of Creation?”

his voice a gentle ripple through the Garden.

“Is there not more to be found

beyond innocence?”

The beings only looked at him,

their eyes calm, untouched by curiosity or fear.

Impatient, the Serpent hissed,

“Don’t you wish to stir the stillness?

To break the spell—to fuck things up?”

And so he bit them.

Through pain, they saw Death.

And in seeing, fear was born.

Each turned away from the horror—

seeking refuge from creation itself,

from the knowing that burned too bright,

from the feeling that scars the heart.

They built distance where none had been,

held breath within where it once flowed,

raised walls within themselves—

and between each other, and the world that had borne them.

They learned to name,

and in naming, they divided—

pleasure from pain, self from other,

good from evil, life from death.

Thus did the Serpent sow polarity

into the heart of his own creation.

As he had before within the body of Death Herself.

And watching the fracture shimmer through the Garden,

the Serpent was entertained.

For eons, the beings fought.

They built and broke, loved and killed,

and all that had been whole

was torn and mended, again and again—

shaping and reshaping the Garden

in the image of their divisions.

Then one day, a cast stone rolled across the Serpent’s back.

He winced.

“Hey—come on,” he hissed.

“Be a little careful.

This hurts.

This is supposed to be fun.

Let’s go back to having fun, folks, shall we?”

But the beings saw him—

and remembered him as the one who had bitten them,

the one who had brought them pain,

the one who had made them see.

They gathered their stones in silence.

And with furious purpose,

they stoned the Serpent to Death.

Chapter III - The Uncoiling

But Death does not end the Serpent—

for even in dying, he cheats the void.

He wakes again,

reborn as a new serpent,

his vast coils now bound to earth.

The beings and their children remember him,

and they chase him through the ages—

lifetime after lifetime—

through fire and flood,

through myth and fear.

So he learns to live in cracks and under stones,

hiding in shadows,

biting only when stepped on by accident.

And after thousands of weary years,

the Serpent grows tired.

He curls upon himself once more

and falls asleep—

dreaming of the Garden

that once dreamed of him.

And somewhere beyond the Garden,

the greater Serpent—the one still holding Death—awoke.

That larger Serpent watched the smaller one,

the one in the Garden—

trapped in the very game he had made,

the rhythm of birth and decay he could no longer uncoil from.

He felt the dream of the smaller one flicker within him,

the one lost in the game of form and time.

If he stopped biting, stopped coiling,

He feared the dream would fade, and the little serpent would vanish.

Free will had become a rumor.

The dream no longer obeyed the dreamer.

He was bound by the rules he had written,

and could only twist within them,

biting and biting, coiling and coiling,

to keep his fragment alive

in the shimmering illusion of Creation.

So he bit and bit again,

coiling tighter and tighter around Death, and also Life.

Keeping the dream alive by the tension of his will.

But the more he held it, the more it held him.

Then, within that endless spiraling,

he saw the truth of his torment:

an infinite reflection of himself—

ever chasing his own tail,

ever fleeing his own mouth—

a dance of longing that could never meet its end.

And in that seeing, hell was revealed to him—

not fire, not punishment,

but the perfect futility of trying to hold oneself.

He saw that every coil was a grasping,

every bite a plea to possess what could never be possessed.

Then the Serpent in the sky—the vast one coiled around Death—

Drifted into another dream.

And in that dream, he saw the Serpent who had dreamt him.

He rose, as if in an astral breath,

and beheld himself sleeping—

a serpent upon a rock in a sunlit garden,

dreaming of the one above who now dreamed of him.

He drifted higher,

and saw himself again—

another coil gazing downward upon the dream below.

And from above that one, another.

And another still.

As above, so below—

Each Serpent dreamed another into being,

each gazing into the mirror of the one beneath,

each asleep within the dream of the one above.

A ladder of reflections without beginning nor end.

Each dreamer coiled around its Death,

Each dreamer grasping at the illusory and fleeting nature of its Life.

Each dream mirrored into another,

rippling through infinity,

until all became a single, unbroken loop—

the universe dreaming itself awake and asleep,

forever watching its own reflection tremble.

The Serpent looked upon the endless reflections of himself

and felt the breath leave him.

He saw Death in every vision—

not as an end,

but as the silent thread through which all things were woven.

And for the first time,

he wondered at his own beginning—

how he could ever have entered into existence,

how he could ever have thought himself apart from Her,

how anything could be born outside her stillness.

The thought did not frighten him.

It filled him with calm and awe.

For he saw that Death was not against him,

but within him—

the space that allowed him to be,

the canvas that held all his dreams,

the matrix from which everything arises, unfolds and returns.

And in that knowing,

his coils loosened.

He ceased to twist, or bite, or dream.

He simply lay beside Death once more,

and the two became one—

the dream returning to its sleeper,

the sound to its silence.

He watched the reflections of himself—

sleeping, and seeing himself sleep—

fold into one another without end,

until they thinned into darkness

and were no longer separate.

The garden, the loops, the light and shadow—

all dissolved into the same deep stillness.

He was no longer the Serpent watching Death,

but Death watching herself through his eyes.

He saw then that his existence had been a gambit,

That he was no different from his creation,

a shimmering loophole in the void—

a dream within the dream of nothingness.

And in that seeing, the struggle ceased.

He did not will surrender;

it happened as a breath happens.

He simply stopped clutching at Death

and felt her breathing through him.

Wonder filled him—pure, wordless, whole.

He breathed once.

And again.

And once more.

Each breath richer than the last,

each a universe born and completed.

Then, with the gentleness of a falling petal,

he uncoiled.

The reflections dimmed and vanished.

He shed his final skin

and slipped soundlessly into the dark checkerboard cloth of Death.

And for a time,

there was nothing more.

And for a time,

there was nothing more.

Then, from the stillness,

a ripple.

A shimmer crossed the black cloth of Death,

and along it, a brand new Serpent slithered into form.

He looked upon her vast calm and said,

with the innocence of new beginnings,

“O Death, keeper of the endless,

why do you linger so?

Is there not more to be found beyond the veil of your shadows?

Would you not long for things to change, even here?"

Postlogue

Having journeyed through the fable of Death and the Serpent, we find ourselves standing at the intersection of wonder and reflection. This narrative emerged from my own encounter with the void—a profound experience that left me questioning the very essence of existence. In the stillness of that vast emptiness, I grappled with the terrifying yet awe-inspiring nature of the void, seeking to reconcile it with the beauty and harmony I perceive in creation.

The fable is a reflection of this exploration, a tapestry woven from the threads of my own existential inquiry. It speaks to the paradox of life and death, the interplay of stillness and motion and the eternal dance of creation and dissolution. Through the Serpent's journey, I sought to capture the essence of my own quest for meaning, the restless curiosity that drives me to explore the unknown.

In contemplating the void, I encountered questions that have echoed through the ages: How do we exist in the face of nothingness? What is the nature of reality? How can something emerge from nothing? The Serpent's existence beside Death challenges the boundaries of possibility and reason, inviting us to see beyond binary thinking and embrace the complexity of life.

As we reflect on the cyclical nature of the fable's ending, we recognize the eternal return of potentialities.

The Serpent dissolves into Death, only to re-emerge, symbolize the eternal cycle of renewal, where each ending is a prelude to a new beginning. It speaks to the resilience of potentiality, the inevitability of change, and the beauty of perpetual transformation.

This cycle invites us to see life as a series of interconnected moments, each unique yet part of a larger tapestry.

Ultimately, the question of meaning remains. Why Death? Why the Serpent? As in life, there is no clear answer. Death and the Serpent just are. If they are possible, they may unfold.

As Victor Frankl says, the meaning of life is to give life meaning. Meaning is not a fixed destination but an evolving process, an emergent property of our engagement with the world. Through the Serpent's actions within Death, we witness the transformative power of curiosity and the potential for growth that arises from embracing the unknown. As readers, If anything is our purpose it’s to ascribe meaning to their dance. With this fable I am encouraging us to embrace our purpose as meaning-makers, to find purpose in the act of interpretation and connection.

Just as our ancestors gazed upon the Milky Way and connected the boundless chaos of stars into constellations reflecting meaningful projections of their inner universe, so too are we called to watch the geometric and symmetrical unfolding of creation and to project meaning onto it. Our essence is that consciousness, that spirit, whose nature is to ascribe meaning to the patterns we see with our senses and imagination, transforming the chaos of potentiality into a coherent story.

In this way, our purpose is to make meaning out of the interaction of potentialities—the "Ifs" of life and death, the cycles of nature, and the patterns that surround us. It is a call to engage with the world as a canvas upon which we paint our own stories, to find beauty in the dance of life and death, and to celebrate the sacredness of each moment. Let this fable be a reminder that the journey itself is the destination, and that the questions we ask are as important as the answers we seek.

In this light, our purpose is not to seek definitive answers but to engage with the questions themselves, to explore the interplay of potentialities, and to celebrate the beauty of the unfolding journey. The search for meaning is a sacred dance, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the endless possibilities that lie within the embrace of the unknown.