The Great Goddess of darkness, Mother Night, Persephone, brought forth the World Egg in the beginning, mirrored now in the Moon. Then the world was one: warm, glowing, a single unsplit thing. It rocked gently; a crack appeared, and the multifarious world was born.
One half of the shell rose to become heaven; the other fell for earth. The first deity emerging was bisexual Eros, blinking his golden eyelashes. Or so said the Greek Orphics, followers of Orpheus, Dionysos' son, in whose mystery religion we all had multiple lives and strove ascetically to pull ourselves from the wheel of life.
When the Egyptians signed World Egg, they meant also woman's womb. They drew and cut in their stately buildings designs of downward-pointing phalli alternating with narrow mandorlas, feminine almond shapes, the latter topped by small triangles representing clitori. Classical Greeks countered with the egg-and-dart pattern, male trident-shaped darts trading with female ovals. Such symbolic friezes were created continuous; a break could mean a break in human generation.
The egg means fertility, both literally and in magick. When British Druids worked magick circles, they included eggs Ovates, green-robed officiants whom Barbara Walker in The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets opines were either priestesses or men impersonating women by wearing green, the Druidic color of life.
But that bunny handing out eggs is probably only wishing you children. He's traditional, too; the moon-hare escorted the German goddess Oestara. In 17th century France, according to Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, a bride when first she stepped across her threshold broke an egg so she'd procreate robustly. Germans and Slavs spread a mixture of eggs, bread and flour on their plows Thursday before Easter so the following harvest would be rich. According to Southern black folklore, to dream of eggs meant good luck, riches or a wedding. A lapful of eggs meant riches.
Pauline Campanelli in Wheel of the Year: Living the Magical Life notes that the connection of hen's eggs and equinox is ancient; hens begin to lay when their retinas are stimulated by more than 12 hours' daily sun. In the Ukraine, for Oestara (Easter, in the vulgar tongue), women still make the delicate and beautiful pysanky, eggs decorated using wax and dye: powerful amulets for fertility and protection. The Ukrainians, un-Christianized until 988 C.E., still retain their pagan egg symbolism, Campanelli writes. The golden yolk is the Sun God, the white shell the White Goddess, the whole rebirth. Designs drawn on pysanky include circular bands for the eternal cycle, which intersect in solar crosses, representing the union of spirit and material. The bands themselves are made of triangles representing the triune Goddess, squares for Earth, ladders for the planes of existence, rakes for agriculture and solar pinwheels and eight-pointed stars. Isosceles triangles are "wolves teeth," symbols of power and wisdom; meanders mean water or life; curls and spirals give protection; dots and small circles are stars, for luck and success. Properly inscribed pysanky bring the receiver fertility and protection and can contain an accidental fire. Those who receive pysanky keep them as amulets throughout the year.
Egg contests for Oestara are variously traditional. In the United States and Europe, and as easterly as Egypt, according to Funk & Wagnalls, children not only seek but knock Easter eggs; each holding an egg, they bump them two together. The owner of the least cracked walks home with the loser's. In Northern Bohemia, boys rolled red eggs downhill Easter Monday, and he whose egg rolled fastest won the others. Nowadays, a cache of eggs would arouse little ardor in your average 10-year-old, but in leaner times they might have been a welcome stomach-filler.
Eggs are also connected with tree-veneration, perhaps a kind of fertility worship, the egg the womb, the tree the phallus. The thorough Funk & Wagnalls tells us that, in the Harz Mountains on Midsummer's Eve, the ancient Germans decorated fir trees with flowers and red and yellow eggs and danced around them. In Moravia, on the third Sunday before Easter, village girls carried door to door trees decorated with flowers and dyed eggshells. On May Day in Alsace, people similarly carried trees while collecting eggs. Swedish markets sold Maypoles decorated with leaves, flowers, colored paper and gilt eggshells.
If the egg is fertility and life, we can hope it means resurrection. The ancient Maori buried their dead with a moa's egg held in one hand. The Khassia of Assam placed eggs in corpses' navels, and Romans and Slavs placed eggs in graves. In Greece, I sat one Easter Sunday with my mother eating brunch, watching the taverna proprietor hand red-dyed eggs to his friends. Not understanding, we signed we wanted the same. A little perturbed, he brushed us off, but later, taking pity, he returned, and I have a photograph of red eggshells broken to show mother-of-pearl interiors. Perhaps those eggs were fertile, a healing; my mother and I have never been on as bad terms since.
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