bhaskar saikia

The Uraeus, the rearing cobra of ancient Egypt, once adorned the crowns of pharaohs. It was more than ornament—it was power, protection, and the mark of divine authority. Coiled at the brow, the serpent symbolized awakened energy, ever watchful, ready to strike. Yet if we look beyond its historical role, the uraeus becomes something more timeless: a pattern, an archetype, a reflection of how the universe itself coils and uncoils.

Consider how nature repeats itself. The serpent’s spiral is echoed in the curl of ferns, the double helix of DNA, and the arms of galaxies. These are fractals—self-repeating patterns where the part mirrors the whole. The uraeus, then, is not only Egyptian. It belongs to the language of the cosmos.

And the cosmos itself reveals this language through motion. If we were to photograph the Moon at the same time every day for about 28 days from the same place on Earth, the points would not form a circle but rather a graceful figure-eight pattern across the sky, known as the analemma. It looks uncannily like the infinity symbol (∞).

This orbital dance of the Moon is a living reminder that the heavens trace the same loops we find in symbols and myths. The infinity sign, the serpent devouring its tail, the uraeus rising from the pharaoh’s crown—all are variations of a single truth: life is cyclical, recursive, without beginning or end.

When the ancients placed the uraeus on the forehead of their kings, perhaps they intuited this fractal connection: the ruler as guardian, standing at the threshold between the finite and the infinite. Today, we see the same truth written not in myth but in the sky itself, in the patient arcs of celestial bodies.

The cobra, the fractal, the orbit, the infinity sign—they are all telling us the same story. That we are part of a vast pattern, endlessly repeating, endlessly renewing. That nothing ends, only loops back. That the coil of the serpent is the coil of the cosmos.