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The symbol of the Ouroboros, the snake or dragon devouring its own tail is the par excellence alchemical symbol of eternal ocurrence. The alchemist-physicians of the Renaissance and Reformation were greatly influenced by the idea of eternal recurrence, in particular the physician-philosopher Sir Thomas Browne author of Religio Medici stated:

And in this sense , I say, the world was before the Creation, and at an end before it had a beginning; and thus was I dead before I was alive, though my grave be England, my dying placce was Paradise, and Eve miscarried of me before she conceived of Cain. (R.M.Part 1:59)

The idea of eternal recurrence is prominent in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche himself called the idea "horrifying and paralyzing". Eternal return contributes to his overarching philosophy of nihilism. Nietzsche first encountered the idea in the works of Heinrich Heine, who speculated that there would one day be a person born with the same thought processes as himself, and that the same was true of every other person on the planet. Nietzsche expanded on this thought to form his theory, which he put forth in The Will to Power. It was further expanded in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche, like the anient Egyptians and Pythagoras before him viewed time as circular and associated linear time with the slave morality of Judeo-Christianity.

Aside from an interpretation which makes the eternal recurrence a cosmologicalCosmology is the study of the large-scale structure and history of the universe. In particular, it deals with subjects regarding its origin and evolution. It is studied by Astronomy, Philosophy, and Religion. See also cosmogony. Subjects in cosmology incl claim, it is also possible to read it as a thought experimentIn philosophy, physics, and other fields, a thought experiment (from the German Gedankenexperiment is an attempt to solve a problem using the power of human imagination. These experiments are used to attempt to understand something about the universe. to be used to guide action, essentially asking us to live our lives in a way which we would be happy to repeat forever. Nietzsche notes that, upon learning about eternal recurrence, one could be overwhelmed with despair or joy:

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' ( The Gay Science )

In modern times eternal recurrence was a major theme in the teachings of the Russian mystics Gurdjieff and P. D. OuspenskyOuspensky ( 1878 1947), Pyotr Demianovich Ouspenskii also Uspenskii or Uspensky was born in Moscow and died in England. He was a Russian philosopher with an analytic and mystical bent who combined geometry and psychology in his discussion of higher dimens whose novel Strange tale of Ivan Osokin (first published St. Petersburg 1915) illustrated that even given free-will to alter events in one's life the same events will occur regardless, to the individual.