Analysing the Ouroboros and the Potential for a Cyclical Timeline in the Maasverse
I’ve been thinking a lot about cyclical timelines in the Maasverse recently. There is a lot of discourse that TOG is “before” ACOTAR and CC chronologically, but if the timeline is a circle, there is no before and after or everything is before and after - it’s a glass half full/empty quandary, but let’s stay off the philosophy for the moment and look at the clues that could support a cyclical timeline and what this could predict going forward in the Maasverse.
An ouroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent (sometimes a dragon) devouring its own tail. When applied to time, the serpent's circular form embodies the unending flow and return of time, contrasting with linear progression.
In ACOWAR we are introduced to the Ouroboros mirror. The mirror was once owned by Stryga and is described as a “window to the world.” It was in possession of Keir’s family and kept in a chamber that let snow and moonlight in near the uppermost peak of the Hewn City. Feyre claims to mirror by looking into it and facing who she truly is at the behest of the Bone Carver.
“My sister had a collection of mirrors in her black castle,” the Carver said. … “She admired herself day and night in those mirrors, gloating over her youth and beauty. There was one mirror—the Ouroboros, she called it. It was old even when we were young. A window to the world. All could be seen, all could be told through its dark surface. Keir possesses it—an heirloom of his household. Bring it to me. That is my price. The Ouroboros, and I am yours to wield. If you can find a way to free me.” -ACOWAR Ch. 23
Keir rose to his feet, smirking like a cat with a canary in its mouth. “To take the Ouroboros, to claim it, you must first look into it.” He headed for the doors, not waiting to be dismissed. “And everyone who has attempted to do so has either gone mad or been broken beyond repair. Even a High Lord or two, if legend is true.” A shrug. “So it is yours, if you dare to face it.” Keir paused at the threshold as the doors opened on a phantom wind. He said to Rhys, perhaps the closest he’d come to asking for permission to leave, “Lord Thanatos is having … difficulties with his daughter again. He requires my assistance.” -ACOWAR Ch. 26
And when I wasn’t doing that … I was combing through more books, any and all Clotho could find me, all regarding the Ouroboros. How to master it. The mirror was notorious. Every known philosopher had ruminated on it. Some had dared face it—and gone mad. Some had approached—and run away in terror. I could not find an account of anyone who had mastered it. Faced what lurked within and walked away with the mirror in their possession. Save for the Weaver in the Wood—who certainly seemed insane enough, perhaps thanks to the mirror she’d so dearly loved. Or perhaps whatever evil lurked in her had tainted the mirror, too. Some of the philosophers had suggested as much, though they hadn’t known her name—only that a dark queen had once possessed it, cherished it. Spied on the world with it—and used it to hunt down beautiful young maidens to keep her eternally young. I supposed Keir’s family owning the Ouroboros for millennia suggested the success rate of walking away was low. It was not heartening. Not when all the texts agreed on one thing: there was no way around it. No loophole. -ACOWAR Ch. 29
There was a winding stair, deep within the mountain. It led to only one place: a chamber near the uppermost peak. I had learned as much from my research.I stood at the base of that stairwell, peering up into the impenetrable gloom, my breath clouding in front of me. A thousand stairs. That was how many steps stood between me and the Ouroboros. The Mirror of Beginnings and Endings. -ACOWAR Ch. 67
I did not expect the snow. Or the moonlight. The chamber must have lain beneath the palace of moonstone—shafts in the rough rock leading outside, welcoming in snowdrifts and moonlight. I gritted my teeth against the bitter cold, the wind howling through the cracks like wolves raging along the mountainside beyond. The snow glittered over the walls and floor, slithering over my boots with the wind gusts. Moonlight peered in, bright enough that I vanished my ball of faelight, bathing the entire chamber in blues and silvers. And there, against the far wall of the chamber, snow crusting its surface, its bronze casing … The Ouroboros. It was a massive, round disc—as tall as I was. Taller. And the metal around it had been fashioned after a massive serpent, the mirror held within its coils as it devoured its own tail. Ending and beginning. From across the room, with the snow … I could not see it. What lay within. I forced myself to take a step forward. Another. The mirror itself was black as night—yet … wholly clear. I watched myself approach. Watched the arm I had upraised against the wind and snow, the pinched expression on my face. The exhaustion. I stopped three feet away. I did not dare touch it. It only showed me myself. Nothing. I scanned the mirror for any signs of … something to push or touch with my magic. But there was only the devouring head of the serpent, its maw open wide, frost sparkling on its fangs. -ACOWAR Ch. 68
I did not know how long had passed. Time—it had been different inside the mirror. -ACOWAR Ch. 68
The ouroboros is seen across many cultures and historical time periods. Here is an overview of cultures where we see the ouroboros and the context for the symbol in culture. There are annotations connecting this history to themes and characters from the Maasverse that will be expanded on further.
An ancient Egyptian funerary text found in the tomb of Tutankhamun (14th Century BCE) depicted the ouroboros twice, in connection to the union of Osiris and Ra. This depiction of the ouroboros represents the beginning and the end of time, life and death, as well as day and night.
The Union of Osiris and Ra: Ra – the ancient Egyptian sun god, considered the creator of all life and the king of the gods – travels to the Underworld and merges with Osiris – god of the afterlife, the dead, and fertility. This union ensured the continuity of the cosmic cycle of day and night, and the afterlife for deceased individuals.
Elsewhere in Egyptian history, the ouroboros represents the formless disorder that surrounds the orderly world and is involved in that world's periodic renewal.
The ancient Egyptians understood time as a series of repetitive cycles, instead of something linear.
We see the idea of Cosmic Cycles across the plot of all three series, with all three wars fought being reiterations and continuations of the past.
Cain’s attention was on Celaena as he said, “You were brought here—all of you were. All the players in the unfinished game. My friends,” he gestured to the dead, “have told me so.” -Cain, TOG Ch. 49
“Only once before was a human Made into an immortal. Interesting that it should happen again right as all the ancient players have returned.” -Amren, ACOMAF Ch. 16
“It is the same war we fought fifteen thousand years ago, only renewed. The same war you fought, Hunt Athalar, in a different form. But the time is ripe again to make a push.” -Rigelus (pretending to be Aidas as a cat) HOSAB Ch. 15
The Union of Osiris and Ra:
The union of Osiris and Ra is reminiscent of the mating bond of Theia (starlight) and Aidas (Prince of Hel). Their union was cut short, which directly resulted in Apollion (Prince of Hel) uniting - and by that I mean eating - Sirius (an Asteri).
“Why do you think I slew Pelias? Why do you think I went on to devour Sirius? All for him.” -Apollion, HOSAB Ch. 62
Lidia and Ruhn similarly symbolise the cosmic cycle with their codenames and representations of Day and Night.
Did you just give me a code name? Night and Daybright. Night and Day—he liked that. -Ruhn, HOSAB Ch. 22
The name comes from the Greek words "oura" (tail) and "boros" (eating), meaning "tail-devourer.”
The Ancient Greek philosopher Plato believed the ouroboros was the symbol of the ultimate perfect being, it needed nothing but itself to survive because everything in existence resided within it and it fed on itself. The ouroboros is the creator and destroyer all in one being.
Creator and Destroyer - The Void:
Across the Maasverse, the Void appears to be associated with both creation and destruction.
“Do you not know where I come from? My father was the Void, the Being That Existed Before. Chaos was his bride and my dam. It is to them that we shall all one day return, and their mighty powers that run in my blood.” - Apollion, HOSAB Ch. 21
It began with a cauldron. A mighty black cauldron held by glowing, slender female hands in a starry, endless night. Those hands tipped it over, golden sparkling liquid pouring out over the lip. No—not sparkling, but … effervescent with small symbols, perhaps of some ancient faerie language. Whatever was written there, whatever it was, the contents of the cauldron were dumped into the void below, pooling on the earth to form our world … -ACOTAR
There was night, and there was the darkness of extinguishing a candle, and then there was this. Not only the true absence of light, but … a womb. The womb from which all life had come and would return, neither good nor evil, only dark, dark, dark. -ACOSF
Antithesis - Made and Unmade, Creation and Destruction:
Not healers to us, but executioners. Death-maidens. Capable of healing—but also unhealing. Unbinding the very fabric of life. Of worlds. -Erawan, KOA
The power of creation and destruction. That’s what lay within her. Life-Giver. -Yrene, KOA
The Starsword is Made, as you called it. (...) The knife can Unmake things. Made and Unmade. Matter and antimatter. With the right influx of power - a command from the one destined to wield them - they can be merged. And they can create a place where no life, no light exists. A place that is nothing. Nowhere. -HOFAS Ch. 36
“Starfire’s ability to destroy is but one facet of a wonderous gift. The greatest difference, of course, lies in how the bearer chooses to use it.” -Aidas, HOFAS Ch. 53
“Life is a beautiful ring of growth and decay,” the Under-King said, the words echoing through the Sleeping City around them. “No part left to waste. What we receive upon birth, we give back in death. What is granted to you mortals in the Eternal Lands is merely another step in the cycle. A waypoint along your journey toward the Void.” - The Underking, HOSAB Ch. 29
The early alchemical text, The Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra, probably originally dating to the 3rd century Alexandria, features an oroborus enclosing the words, "the all is one". Its black and white halves may perhaps represent a Gnostic duality of existence, analogous to the Taoist yin and yang symbol.
The chrysopoeia ouroboros of Cleopatra the Alchemist is one of the oldest images of the ouroboros to be linked with the legendary opus of the alchemists, the philosopher's stone.
The philosopher's stone is a mythic alchemical substance capable of transmutating base metals such as lead and mercury into gold or silver. Alchemists additionally believed that it could be used to make an elixir of life which made possible rejuvenation and immortality.
In the beginning And in the end There was Darkness And nothing more. She did not feel the cold as she sank into a sea that had no bottom, no horizon, no surface. But she felt the burning. Immortality was not a serene youth. It was fire. It was molten ore poured into her veins, boiling her human blood until it was nothing but steam, forging her brittle bones until they were fresh steel. And when she opened her mouth to scream, when the pain ripped her very self in two, there was no sound. There was nothing in this place but darkness and agony and power— They would pay. All of them. Starting with this Cauldron. Starting now. She tore into the darkness with talons and teeth. Rent and cleaved and shredded. And the dark eternity around her shuddered. Bucked. Thrashed. She laughed as it recoiled. Laughed around the mouthful of raw power she ripped out and swallowed whole; laughed at the fistfuls of eternity she shoved into her heart, her veins. The Cauldron struggled like a bird under a cat’s paw. She refused to relent. Everything it had stolen from her, from Elain, she would take from it. Wrapped in black eternity, Nesta and the Cauldron twined, burning through the darkness like a newborn star. -ACOSF, Prologue
The ouroboros was a symbol for the Roman god Saturn, who was believed to rule over time and the changing seasons. His rule was seen as an endless, circular process that connected one year to the next.
The ouroborus also represented infinity, the idea that there is no true beginning or end.
The ouroboros was often used on magical talismans during the Roman era.
In ACOTAR, the seasonal courts appear to be in direct juxtaposition to the ouroborus.
We see things described as having “no beginning and no end” throughout the Maasverse around concepts of love, darkness and power.
There was no end to the darkness in that ravine. No end, and no beginning, either. -Celaena, COM Ch. 20
The darkness had no end and no beginning. It was the abyss that had haunted her steps for ten years, and she free-fell into it, welcomed it. There was no sound, only the vague sense of going toward a bottom that might not exist, or that might mean her true end. -Aelin, HOF
Darkness flowed through me, soft and seductive, echoing up from an abyss of power so great it had no end and no beginning. -Feyre seeing through Rhys’ eyes, ACOMAF Ch. 28
His power filled the throne room, the castle, the mountain. The world. It had no end and no beginning. -Feyre on Rhys’ power, ACOMAF Ch. 42
I was the Book and the Cauldron and sound and silence. I was a living river through which one flowed into the other, eddying and ebbing, over and over, a tide with no end or beginning. -Feyre, ACOMAF Ch. 62
Hunt sat in a simple folding chair at the bottom of an abyss, nothing but blackness around him, the only light coming from the faint glow cast by his body. There was no beginning or end to the perpetual night. -HOSAB, Ch. 21
Jörmungandr, or the World Serpent or Midgard Serpent is a monstrous sea serpent in Norse mythology that encircles the Earth. One of the three offspring of Loki and the giantess Angrboða – their other offspring include Fenrir, the massive wolf and Hel, guardian of the underworld of the same name.
Odin feared the children of Angrboða and Loki and threw Jörmungandr in the Ocean. Jörmungandr grew so large that it encircled the world of Midgard, biting its own tail.
Jörmungandr releasing his tail is one of the signs of the beginning of Ragnarök or the end of the world, sometimes referred to as Twilight of the Gods. Thor and Jörmungandr (the Midgard Serpent) have a fated, catastrophic battle during Ragnarök, where Thor slays the serpent but dies moments later from its venom, fulfilling prophecy and bringing an end to their rivalry in a tragic mutual destruction.
The concept of a World Serpent appears in witch mythology in the Throne of Glass world. It is this ancient serpent who Manon names Abraxos for.
Manon named her wyvern Abraxos, after the ancient serpent who held the world between his coils at the behest of the Three-Faced Goddess. -HOF, CH23
Twilight of the Gods is rumored to be the name of SJM’s next series. It is also another name for Ragnarök or the end of the world, which ends with everything being swallowed into the sea. The final Crescent City book is assumed to be named The House of Many Waters.
Mutually Assured Destruction:
We see the concept of mutually assured destruction in the Cauldron in ACOTAR and the Firstlight Core in CC. The Daglan/Asteri tie objects to the existence of planets, so to destroy one is to destroy the other.
And then bound the very essence of the Cauldron to the soul of this world.” Solas. “So destroy the Cauldron …” “And you destroy this world. One cannot exist without the other.” … But Bryce said, “You gave this world a kill switch.” “We gave many worlds … kill switches. To protect our interests.” -HOFAS, Ch. 25
“You made the core a kill switch for this world,” Bryce breathed. The Asteri to Rigelus’s left—Eosphoros, the Morning Star—sneered, “To prevent rodents like you from getting any ideas about destroying us.” “Our fate,” Rigelus said to Bryce, folding his hands in front of him almost beatifically, “is tied to that of this planet. You kill our source of nourishment, and you doom every living soul on Midgard as well.” -HOFAS, Ch. 96
Thor is the Norse god of thunder, lightning, storms, strength, protection, and fertility, often depicted as a mighty warrior with a red beard, wielding his magical hammer Mjölnir, and serving as the defender of gods and humans against giants and monsters.
In Crescent City we are meant to connect Hunt with Thurr, and therefore Thor.
That one reminds me of Athalar.” Bryce arched a brow, grateful for the change of subject, and twisted toward where he’d pointed. On it, a powerful Fae male stood poised above an anvil, hammer raised skyward in one fist, lightning cracking from the skies, filling the hammer, and flowing down toward the object of the hammer’s intended blow: a sword. Its label read simply: Unknown sculptor. Palmira, circa 125 V.E. Bryce lifted her mobile and snapped a photo, pulling up her messaging thread with Hunt Athalar Is Better at Sunball Than I Am. … With a few sweeps of her thumbs, the picture zoomed off into the ether, along with her note: Long-lost relative of yours? -HOSAB, Ch. 1
“I’ve got a nine-thousand-year-old Rhodinian bust of Thurr here.” Basically a broody male who was supposed to pass for the nearly forgotten minor storm deity. All that remained of him in their culture was the behemoth of a planet named after him. And Thursdays, apparently. -HOSAB, Ch. 8
Hunt didn’t stop at destroying the suit. His lightning slammed the parked trucks, too. Every single one of them. Bryce couldn’t help but marvel at the sight of him—like a god of lightning. Like Thurr himself. -HOSAB, Ch. 43
“And Project Thurr? Why was Danika so interested in that?” “Thurr was the last time someone got as far as Danika did in learning about us. It didn’t end well for them. I suppose she wanted to learn from their mistakes before acting.” -HOSAB, Ch. 73
“There was a scientist at the Asteri Archives,” Aidas said. “An angel who was delving into the origins of the thunderbirds, how strange their power was. He named the project after a near-forgotten god of storms.” “Project Thurr,” Bryce said. “Was Danika investigating it, too? I found mentions of it, after she died.” “I don’t know,” Aidas said, “but the angel was researching thunderbirds at the behest of the Asteri, who worried they might return. It led him to us instead. When we told him the truth, he offered to help in whatever way he could. Thanatos was finishing up his work then. And with a male volunteer, only a female to breed with was needed.” -HOFAS, Ch. 61
In some indigenous Amazonian beliefs, a great snake, often an anaconda, is thought to encircle the world at its edges.
The Leviathan is a primordial sea serpent often mentioned in the Hebrew bible, that is sometimes associated with the ouroboros symbol. Jewish mystics, especially in the Zohar, describe the Leviathan as a singular, monstrous serpent that encircles the world, with its tail in its mouth.
The Leviathan is used to symbolize chaos, the enemies of Israel, or the immense power of God's creation.
Jewish mythology says in the messianic era, the Leviathan will be slain and its flesh served at a great feast for the righteous, signifying the ultimate victory over chaos. The act of eating the Leviathan is a transformative experience, symbolizing the righteous individual's deep connection with the spiritual.
The Zohar offers a metaphorical interpretation, stating that eating the Leviathan is not a literal act but a metaphor for spiritual enlightenment. The consumption of this primordial being allows for the righteous to attain a higher, more complete state of being, representing a profound spiritual and physical transformation.
Chaos is heavily associated with Apollion and the Princes of Hel.
Do you not know where I come from? My father was the Void, the Being That Existed Before. Chaos was his bride and my dam. It is to them that we shall all one day return, and their mighty powers that run in my blood.” -Apollion, HOSAB, Ch. 21
“The Temple of Chaos is a sacred place,” Apollion said sharply. “We shall never defile it with violence.” The words rumbled like thunder again. -Apollion, HOFAS, Ch. 59
The “gods” in TOG are said to triumph over chaos.
“Today,” the priestess said, “is the day on which we celebrate the end and the beginning of the great cycle. Today is the day on which the Great Goddess gave birth to her firstborn, Lumas, Lord of the Gods. With his birth, love was brought into Erilea, and it banished the chaos that arose from the Gates of the Wyrd.” -TOG
There are a number of instances across the three series that are reminiscent of a profound spiritual and physical transformation. CC categorizes these moments as the “ordeal” and the “drop.” Ordeals include: Feyre’s 3 trials, the Blood Rite, Bryce vs Micah, Aelin vs Valg at Mistward and Aelin and Dorian defeating the Valg in the King of Adarlan.
They joined hands. So the world ended. And the next one began. They were infinite. They were the beginning and the ending; they were eternity. The king standing before them gaped as the shield of flame died out to reveal Aelin and Dorian, hand in hand, glowing like newborn gods as their magic entwined. The King of Adarlan bellowed as Aelin and Dorian fractured his power. Together they broke down every spell, every ounce of evil that he’d bent and shackled to his command. Infinite—Dorian’s power was infinite. They were full of light, of fire and starlight and sunshine. They overflowed with it as they snapped the final tether on the king’s power and cleaved his darkness away, burning it up until it was nothing. -QOS
But we also see transformation in not only coming into your power during “the drop,” but also taking power - Feyre’s death and rebirth, Nesta in the cauldron, Bryce uniting the parts of Theia’s star.
She tore into the darkness with talons and teeth. Rent and cleaved and shredded. And the dark eternity around her shuddered. Bucked. Thrashed. She laughed as it recoiled. Laughed around the mouthful of raw power she ripped out and swallowed whole; laughed at the fistfuls of eternity she shoved into her heart, her veins. The Cauldron struggled like a bird under a cat’s paw. She refused to relent. Everything it had stolen from her, from Elain, she would take from it. Wrapped in black eternity, Nesta and the Cauldron twined, burning through the darkness like a newborn star. -ACOSF, Prologue
In Christian mysticism, the Ouroboros was sometimes used to symbolise eternity and the idea of God as the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.
The knife could have been the twin of the Starsword: black hilted and bladed. It was its twin. The Starsword began to hum within its sheath, glittering white light leaking from where leather met the dark hilt. The dagger—The male dropped the dagger to the plush carpet. All of them retreated as it flared with dark light, as if in answer. Alpha and Omega. “Gwydion,” the dark-haired female whispered, indicating the Starsword. -HOSAB, Ch, 78
In the beginning, and in the end, there was Darkness and nothing more. She had first heard that truth, understood it, during her battle with the Cauldron. And understood it again now as she floated into that same strange place, both full and empty, forever cold. Where is the Mask? she asked the void. -ACOSF, Ch. 31
All three stories feature language and concepts associated with the ouroboros, “no beginning and no ending.” These themes run through character internal development, character relationships, world-building and more.
So what if the timeline of the Maasverse is an Ouroboros? This could play out a few different ways. This is all extremely speculative, but there are hints that time is operating on principles of relativity throughout the Maasverse, rather than running in a linear fashion.
The flow of time in the Maasverse is vital to understanding the overlap between worlds. Many use Aelin’s fall through worlds to argue that these stories are happening concurrently, but I believe this is a false dichotomy that ignores the influence of the dimension of time on the Maasverse. We see other examples in fantasy and science fiction books of worlds being interconnected, but time does not flow at the same rate in each of these worlds – for example Narnia time, where years in Narnia are minutes in our world.
Newton believed that time is absolute and flows uniformly. This is often described as an arrow moving in a straight line suggesting that time is a constant and universal entity, unaffected by events or motion within the universe.
Einstein believed time was a flexible dimension that can be affected by gravity and speed, often likened to a river that can speed up, slow down, or even curve around massive objects. This is part of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
Why does this matter in the Maasverse?
I believe time in the Maasverse works on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. We see instances of time “slowing” and “warping” throughout the three worlds - specifically around the deaths of “true immortals.”
HOEAB Michah’s Death: Time warped and stretched…The death of an Archangel, of a world power, could shudder through time and space. A second could last an hour. A day. A year.
HOFAS Polaris’s Death: The slowing of the world when a great power died was familiar to Hunt from Micah’s death, from Shahar’s, from Sandriel’s, but this was so much worse.
HOFAS Black Hole Deaths: Time slowed for a heartbeat—only one, time dragging, dragging—and then resumed. Their deaths had been fast. A swift swallow…Time slowed and shuddered as the black hole devoured him, too….Time slowed. It stretched and rippled as a flare of light plumed, either Rigelus or the erupting missile, Shahar and the Fallen’s cause vanishing with it into darkness.
KOA Erawan’s death: Yrene reached him, hands like burning stars, and slammed them upon his chest. The world slowed and warped.
ACOWAR Nesta readying her power to go up against the King of Hybern: The power Nesta was holding back…Time seemed to slow and warp.
Philosophy Time! The concept of eternal recurrence is a philosophical concept which states that time repeats itself in an infinite loop, and that exactly the same events will continue to occur in exactly the same way, over and over again, for eternity. In ancient Greece, the concept of eternal return was most prominently associated with Stoicism. The Stoics believed that the universe is periodically destroyed and reborn, and that each universe is exactly the same as the one before. According to Stoic physics, the universe is periodically destroyed in an immense conflagration (ekpyrosis), and then experiences a rebirth (palingenesis). These cycles continue for eternity, and the same events are exactly repeated in every cycle.
Similarly, a physics theory by Roger Penrose, Conformal Cyclic Cosmology postulates that our universe is one of infinite cycles if the universe, each starting with a Big Bang and ending in an infinitely expanded, cold state that becomes the Big Bang of the next cycle through conformal rescaling, where time and distance scales vanish.
“Oh, this planet will be long dead before eternity has ended. Its star will expand, and expand, and eventually devour everything in its path. Including this world.” - Vesperus, HOFAS
The cosmic ouroboros resurrects an ancient symbol with modern insights from astrophysics & cosmology. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Sheldon Glashow created the cosmological ouroboros in 1979, connecting the 4 fundamental forces in one striking image.
When looking at theories of circular time and applying them to the Maasverse, we get - at the simplest level - the Void births a world, the events on this world occur, the world dies and returns to the void and that death feeds the void which births another world and the cycle continues infinitely.
The Butterfly Effect Across the Maasverse
We see the interaction between multiple worlds throughout the Maasverse. The actions in one world or plane of existence both directly and indirectly affect the events on other worlds.
Aelin bellowed and bellowed, the sound ringing out across all worlds. -KOA, Ch. 98
So Nesta held her sister tightly, with Time halted around them, and she whispered, “If you show me how to save her, you can have it back.” The world paused. Worlds beyond their own paused. -ACOSF, Ch. 76
She could have sworn the very world—all worlds—shuddered as Nesta’s hand crossed into Midgard and passed the Mask to Bryce. -HOFAS, Ch. 77
Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon where pairs or groups of particles (e.g., photons, electrons) become so deeply linked that the quantum state of each cannot be described independently, regardless of the distance separating them.
The worlds and timelines of the Maasverse are similarly entangled. The events of each series influences actions in the other worlds. Maasverse theorists often have these causes and effects happening in a linear fashion. A simple example is how the creation of the Dread Trove on Prythian leads to Rhysand being able to slow down Aelin which leads to the defeat of the Valg on Erilea.
When we look at these actions further, we uncover many more ripples and far more entanglement.
In the Maasverse, we are dealing with multiple worlds, that might be existing at the same time. The worlds are most definitely intertwined, and their timeline entanglement might be able to be represented by a multi-ouroborus. A double ouroboros, features two intertwined snakes swallowing each other's tail. For simplicity we will look at the worlds of Prythian and Midgard and apply their timelines to a double ouroborus.
The death of one world creates another world. The worlds timelines are entangled, with each place the worlds cross in space and time creating an overlap of the coils of the snake. We also see the repetition of timelines, and timelines looping back on themselves.
In terms of the Maasverse, we could be dealing with 26 intertwining snakes creating a massive entangled universe: Great, scaled black beasts were carved into those gates, all coiled together in a nest of claws and fangs, sleeping and fighting, some locked in an endless cycle of devouring each other. -ACOMAF, Ch. 42
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