Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Wicca in the Kitchen - Scott Cunningham 1990

The Mystic Egg
The magic of food

They come in all sizes, from the width of a fingernail to monstrosities nearly a foot long. Their showiest producers, birds, have always been linked with the skies and with the ancient deities that dwell there. As compact objects that contain the essence of life, eggs have been revered, cursed, collected, broken, eaten, buried, filled, and used in innumerable ways by humans desiring to tap their mysterious energies.

The earth itself is an egg. Life was created from a divinely produced egg. Eggs sustain human and animal life—much of which hatched from eggs.

Shiva created an egg out of which the earth and the sky were formed. Osiris, Aphrodite, Venus, and Eostra (whom we still revere today in the “Christian” festival of Easter) were all associated with eggs. Statues of Apollo show piles of eggs beside or beneath him.⁷⁹ In mythology throughout the world, eggs are intimately linked with the divine.

According to one belief, eggs are the perfect symbol of creation. Not only do they produce life itself (if they are fertilized), but the shell represents earth; the membrane air; the yolk fire; and the white water.⁷⁹ The “Akashic Egg,” thus, contains not only the four elements but also the potential of manifestation.

Eggs once were substituted for humans during ritual sacrifices. Since at least Paleolithic times, eggs have been used in foundation rites to protect the home being built.⁷⁹ 10,000 years later, this rite is still practiced in India to protect houses and their future inhabitants.⁷⁹

The “chicken,” which originated in Asia, is the source of most of the eggs that are eaten today around the world. (The eggs of other birds are also consumed, but most of the folk magical uses included in this chapter refer to chicken eggs.) This mystical object has long been used in magical rituals of all kinds. Here are some of the ways in which people have used eggs.

Healing

In Jamaica, eggs are thrown against a “magic” tree as a sacrifice to the spirits who have brought illness to the sick. This ritual is accompanied by drumming and singing.⁷⁹

Once Chinese grandmothers, on finding that their infant grandson or daughter was sick, took a bowl of rice, an egg, and two incense sticks to a street corner. The food was offered and the incense lit while the grandmother repeated the ailing child’s name.⁷⁹ Some Chinese also attempted to prevent smallpox by eating dove’s eggs.⁷⁶

In Morocco, ill persons inscribed invocations on to hard boiled eggs and ate them to effect a cure.⁷⁹

To maintain health, Germans once made small holes on both ends of an egg, blew out its white and yolk, and filled the egg with thirteen peppercorns and thirteen grains of salt. This egg was interred in the garden as a charm against fever (which is an indication of many types of infectious diseases).⁷⁹

Protection

Eggs were thought to give protection, perhaps because so many of them are white—the color long associated with purity and divinity.

In ancient Egypt, eggs were apparently held in the hand while reciting protective invocations. This was done to protect those onboard ship from drowning and from attacks by hostile monsters of all kinds.⁷⁹

Until recently, Germans customarily performed a special protective ritual on May Day. A fresh egg was buried under the threshold to guard the home from “evil.”

To break the effects of the “evil eye,” a Moslem living in India would wave salt, the herb turmeric, and an egg at the ailing victim. These three objects would then be thrown down at a crossroads.⁷⁹

In Europe, eggs were hung up in homes for protection from hail, to deflect lightning, and to guard against the infestation of pests.⁷⁹

Divination

The first egg laid by a hen has long been thought to possess special powers. Placing the first egg produced by a white pullet under the pillow was believed to produce a psychic dream of the sleeper’s future mate.⁸²

Records show that eggs have been used for divination in Europe since at least 1684.⁸² One ritual was often performed on Midsummer. The small end of an egg was perforated with a pin. Several drops of the white were allowed to fall into a basin or a glass filled with water. The egg whites spread in the water and, from their shapes, the future was discovered.⁸²

Similar practices continue throughout the world. For example, in contemporary Mexico, a sick person’s body is stroked with a fresh egg, herbs (including rosemary and pepper tree leaves), and a “magical” cologne known as siete machos. The egg is broken into a glass of water. If it foams or is “dirty,” the person has been subjected to bewitchment. There are many other ways of reading the egg’s message.¹²¹

Another such divination: the healer rubs a sick child with a freshly laid egg while praying. The egg is then placed under the child’s bed overnight. If, in the morning, the egg is found to have been “cooked,” the child will surely recover.⁴²

Simply dreaming of eggs, according to contemporary dream-interpretation folklore, can predict the future. Many eggs presage wealth; a few, its absence.⁷⁹ Double-yolked eggs have always been seen as signs of an impending wedding to the lucky finder.

Sex

Lore: In Morocco, women wouldn’t eat eggs while their husbands watched, because it was indecent.⁷⁹ Caviar (fish eggs) has long been celebrated as a stimulant of sexual desire, as is a raw egg, drunk or swallowed straight down.

Jewish women once attempted to cure sterility by eating double-yolked eggs. The fertilizing symbolism is quite plain.⁷⁹

Various uses: When a child was thought to be bewitched (and this was a serious consideration three hundred years ago), an egg was thrown into a lake or pond. If the egg sank, the child had been bewitched.⁷⁹ In the recent past, Russian peasants made offerings to their dead ancestors by throwing fried eggs over their shoulders.⁷⁹

When business is slow and money isn’t coming in, shopkeepers in India may rise early in the morning and walk to a crossroads with some salt and an egg. Words are uttered and the two mystic items are waved in the air. After breaking the egg and throwing its yolk and white onto the ground, the shopkeeper takes the shell and the salt back home (and/or to the shop) and burns them in the fire.⁷⁹

Magical uses: Eggs are, indeed, mysterious objects. We eat them. Children still collect bird’s eggs and nests. They are a powerful addition to a spirituality diet. They can be eaten in any form for this purpose. They’re also fine for protection and grounding diets (due to their high protein content), and to encourage physical fertility.

I remember walking out in the shivering cold of an Oregonian morning with my grandmother. My head barely reached the top of the cloth-covered basket that swung over her arm as we went to the chicken coop. Morning after morning, during those summer weeks spent at my grandparents’ farm, I’d find eggs that had mysteriously appeared under the feathered creatures.

The modern world has stripped away much of the magic of this basic food. Eggs, like our politics and morals, now come prepackaged. Many of us have little sense of their origin, and even less of the magic that humans once believed resided in them.

Until we find a double-yolked egg.

Stories occasionally hit the wire services of a chicken that has produced blue, purple, or red eggs. Public interest is often aroused by such seemingly miraculous events, and once more eggs (or at least, a representative few) are seen in all their former Pagan glory as symbols of creation, life, and the hidden forces behind nature.

I’ve been having breakfast while writing this chapter. What was on the menu?

Scrambled eggs.