The Limitless Divine, and the Sign Over the Magician

Beyond mathematics the endless loop has been read as an emblem of eternity and of the limitless divine, of that which is without beginning, end or measure. The idea it pictures has deep religious roots: the mystical theology of the Kabbalah names the ultimate Godhead Ein Sof, the Without-End, the infinite beyond all limit and name, and many traditions figure the eternal by the circle, the endless knot or the serpent that swallows its tail, kindred images of a whole that has no edge.

In the modern esoteric tradition the lemniscate was set explicitly over the head of the Magician, and again with the tamer of the lion in the Strength card, of the influential Waite-Smith tarot of 1909, as a sign of unlimited spiritual power and of the eternal life-force channelled through the adept. The figure's wide decorative use today, on jewellery and as a token of endless love, is a recent and popular extension of this old meaning of the boundless.