Life Moves in Circles

 Why Spirals Appear in Every Culture

Spirals are one of humanity’s oldest symbols. 

Long before writing, people carved them into stone, painted them on pottery, wove them into clothing, and traced them into the earth. They show up in Hopi, Celtic, Māori, Norse, African, Greek, and Hungarian traditions, cultures separated by oceans, mountains, and centuries.

So why this shape? Why everywhere?

Because the Universe Is Built from Spirals. Ancient people didn’t need telescopes to notice the pattern. Snail shells, fern leaves unfurling, tornadoes, water swirling down a drain, the Milky Way. The spiral is nature’s signature, a quiet reminder that the small and the cosmic mirror each other.

Life Moves in Circles, Not Lines.

Many cultures saw the spiral as the map of a human life: Inward means memory, ancestry, the self. Outward means growth, destiny, transformation. It’s the shape of becoming, always returning, always expanding. Spirals appear in every culture because humans kept noticing the same thing: The universe is always turning, and we are turning with it.