The Cosmic Egg is one of the most prominent icons in world mythology. It can be found in Egyptian, Babylonian, Polynesian and many other creation stories. In almost all cases, this embryonic motif emerges out of darkness, floating upon the waters of chaos. Within this egg typically resides a divine being who literally creates himself from nothing (AKA The ex nihilo). This creator then goes on to form the material universe.
This ‘ex nihilo’ creator either uses the material within the cosmic egg shell, or the substance of chaos to bring shape and order to the world. The tricky question is however, what came first, the god or the egg. In some myths, this egg has a maker, often a woman, who brings the creator god into existence.
For instance, in the Pelasgian myth of creation, Eurynome (a version of the Greek Gaia) lays the world egg on the waters of chaos and orders a cosmic snake ‘Ophion’ to encircle it until it hatched the world itself.
In the Finnish creation epic, the Kalevala, the world is created from the fragments of an egg laid by a duck on the knee of Ilmatar, the primordial sea goddess. The bird laid six golden eggs and one iron one. When Ilmatar moved her leg, the eggs fell into the sea and broke, the pieces becoming land, sky, stars, and sun.
In Zoroastrian tradition, Ohrmazd (the almighty god) created the world from chaos. He gathered the turbulent material and formed it into a great egg. From the upper part of its shell he formed the sky, and from the lower half he forged the earth. He then filled the lower part of the shell with primeval waters and set a flat earthen disk on top of it.
In Slavic mythology, Rod, the supreme being, created a divine egg from the void, inside of which rested Svarog, god of fire. As his life force grew, the egg cracked open. The lower shell became the earth and sea, out of which a grew a world tree, pushing the upper shell skyward, creating the firmament.
One Chinese creation myth describes a huge primordial egg containing the primal being Pangu. The egg broke and Pangu then separated chaos into the many opposites of the yin and the yang, that is, into creation itself.
Ancient Egyptians saw the cosmic egg as the soul of the primeval waters out of which creation arose. In one story the sun god Ra emerged from the primeval mound, itself a version of the cosmic egg resting in the original sea.
The Polynesian Tahitians have a myth in which the god Ta’aroa began existence in an egg and eventually broke out to make part of the egg the sky. Ta’aroa, himself, became the earth.
The later Orphic cult in Greece preached that in the beginning there was a silver cosmic egg, created by Time that hatched the androgynous being who contained the seeds of creation.
The Hindu scripture, there is a story primordial maternal waters of the pre-creation, which desired to reproduce. Through a series of prolonged rituals, the waters became so hot that they gave birth to a golden egg. Eventually, the creator, Prajapati, emerged from the egg and creation took place.
The later Orphic cult in Greece preached that in the beginning there was a silver cosmic egg, created by Time that hatched the androgynous being who contained the seeds of creation.
In Africa a Dogon myth says that in the beginning, a world egg divided into two birth sacs, containing sets of twins fathered by the creator god, Amma, on the maternal egg. Some say that Amma was the cosmic egg and fertilized himself.
In Japanese mythology, creation begins with the world as a chaotic, formless mass. Then an indefinable sound filled the void, setting the particles in motion which form into an egg. The lighter particles rose upward forming Heaven, while the heavier particles coalesced into a heavy, dense mass and became the Earth.
Finally, in Bantu Mythology, the earth was said to have derived from an egg. The upper half of the shell became heaven, including the god on high who presided over it, while the lower coalesced into the earth and its primordial mother. From both halves developed the sun, stars, trees and animals.
The Cosmic Egg is a metaphor of potentiality. It is the pre-creation held within chaos, waiting to become the cosmos. This duality, then, sets up a conflict found throughout world mythology, the duality of chaos and order, good and evil, light and dark, love and hate.
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