Stalking the Amphisbaena

Abstract

AMPHISBAENA: A fabulous animal, keeper of the “Great Secret,” according to. a sixteenth-century Italian manuscript that belonged to Count Pierre V. Piobb. -It is a symbol that occurs with some frequency in heraldic images, marks, and signs. It was known to the Greeks, and it owes its name to the belief that, having a head at both ends, it could move forward or backward with equal ease. Sometimes it is depicted with the claws of a bird and the pointed wings of a bat (Piobb 1950). According to Diel (1952), it was probably intended to express the horror and anguish associated with ambivalent situations. Like all fabulous animals, it instances the ability of the human mind to reorder aspects of the real world, according to supralogical laws, blending them into patterns expressive of man's motivating psychic forces (Cirlot 1962).