Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz expresses a related idea in exploring ancient views on death and resurrection. Here von Franz focuses not on the uroboros but on the unus mundus, the One World, which, according to C. G. Jung, is “the potential world of the first day of creation, when nothing was yet ‘in actu,’ i.e., divided into two and many, but was still one.” Though she does not refer directly to the uroboros, von Franz does observe that the unus mundus is personified by the alchemical figure of Mercurius (Mercury) and there is evidence that Mercurius, for his part, is intimately linked to the uroboros. So, if “Mercurius is most often associated with the uroboros,” we may take the uroboros as personifying the unus mundus.

Recognizing the unus mundus at play in the religions of West Africa, ancient Egypt, and China, von Franz notes that, in each case, “the unus mundus is identical with the realm of the dead, the spirit land.” In each religion, moreover, the ultimate aim is rebirth after death, which means a transformative awakening of complete self-awareness in the midst of death. African medicine men, for example, venture into the underworld guided by a divinity called “Gba’adu,” who “represents the most powerful magic, and ‘the highest possible degree of self-knowledge a man can attain’.” Associating Gba’adu with the alchemical Mercurius, von Franz notes that, “According to certain ideas of the alchemists, the individuated human being who has become unified must join himself to this mercurial spirit.” This amounts to a reunion with the uroboros (as Neumann foresaw) that must entail an encounter with death…