Why do snakes shed their skins?

For an answer, I want to point you to the story of the tail-devourer, the serpent who was God's first Creation. Self-sufficient, the tail-devourer was perfection, an immortal creature of perpetual existence: when it hungered, it ate its own flesh; when it grew thirsty, it drank its own sweat. It simply turned and turned and turned and had no needs other than its own.

But God—that infallible Creator—well, God did not grow bored with the tail-devourer, nor did He admit to failure in its creation (because it was perfect, so how could that be considered a failure?). Nevertheless God decided to Create another creature. One that wasn't quite as self-sufficient. If the tail-devourer was the perfect circle, the zero, the aleph (and, quite possibly, as it devoured its own end, the taw), then his second Creation would be one—the first, the Indivisible.

He named this Creation His shadow.

If the serpent who crawls on the ground and hides in the brush is but a symbol of the tail-devourer, of God's infinitely perfect creation, then what is its cast-off skin?

Yes, what are all those things we throw away? The accretions of experience that we leave behind us like flakes of dry skin. The memories we collect out of instinctual reflex but that we store so shabbily. What are these histories we leave behind?

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