Cosmic Egg

The cosmic egg is a motif that is as old as humans' myth can go, dating back from civilizations predated what we considered ancient. Numerous tales about it can be found across the world, from Greece to China to Japan... All of them featured a cosmic egg in some way or another. It seems that either that tale has some forms of truth like that of the Great Flood, or that ancient people just really like their eggs.   _Carl Black_

The Cosmic Egg is a motif found in the creation myths of many cultures and civilizations throughout the world.

Myths and Legends

One of the earliest known references to the cosmic egg is in Ancient Greek times, which was known as the Orphic Egg. The Orphic Egg in the Ancient Greek Orphic tradition is the cosmic egg from which hatched the primordial hermaphroditic deity Phanes/Protogonus (variously equated also with Zeus, Pan, Metis, Eros, Erikepaios and Bromius) who in turn created the other gods. The egg is often depicted with a serpent wound around it.

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.

Cosmic Egg Stories

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. The Greeks had their own Cosmic Egg called the Orphic Egg, which was warmed by a snake until the first Deity known as the Protogonus hatched from it. 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.

Phanes was believed to have been hatched from the World-Egg of Chronos (Time) and Ananke (Necessity). His older sister Nyx (Night) called him Protogenus. As she created nighttime, he created daytime. He also created the method of creation by mingling. He was made the ruler of the deities and passed the scepter to Nyx. This new Orphic tradition states that Nyx later gave the scepter to her son Ouranos before it passed to Cronus and then to Zeus, who retained it.

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 earliest records of one such egg is the Brahmanda from Hinduism. 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.

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.

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.