Note 489:4 — Chapter XXXIX
Reading edition
Une serpent qui tient sa queue dans sa gueule et dans le circle qu'il decrit, ces trois lettres Greques ΓΞΕ, qui sont le nombre 365. Le Serpent, qui est d'ordinaire un emblème de l'eternetè est ici celui de Soleil et des ses revolutions. (Beausobre: Hist. de Manich. tom. ii. p. 55. Quoted by Lardner, vol. viii. p. 379.)
"This idea existed even in America. The great century of the Aztecs was encircled by a serpent grasping its own tail, and the great calendar stone is entwined by serpents bearing human heads in their distended jaws."
"The annual passage of the Sun, through the signs of the zodiac, being in an oblique path, resembles, or at least the ancients thought so, the tortuous movements of the Serpent, and the facility possessed by this reptile of casting off his skin and producing out of itself a new covering every year, bore some analogy to the termination of the old year and the commencement of the new one. Accordingly, all the ancient spheres—the Persian, Indian, Egyptian, Barbaric, and Mexican—were surrounded by the figure of a serpent holding its tail in its mouth." (Squire: Serpent Symbol, p. 249.)