Jason Mankey
If you grew up in a Pagan or Christian household, it’s likely that you’ve hunted for either plastic or hard-boiled eggs in the springtime. My favorite Easter memories as a child had nothing to do with church and everything to do with those egg hunts! Today as a Witch, I host Ostara egg hunts for my coven and find just as much delight in the whole enterprise as I did as a child. Whether we play games with them, hide them, use them in story and ritual, or simply dye them, eggs are an inescapable part of early spring!
Ostara: The Incredible Magickal Egg
The egg is the perfect symbol of spring because it encapsulates exactly what’s going on around us. The darkness of winter is finally overtaken by the lengthening days, and as the sun grows in power in the sky, new life emerges from the ground. Even in places where winter’s grasp remains firm, spring’s potential can be felt stirring at Ostara. Eggs are justifiably praised as symbols of new life and fertility but, perhaps even more than that, eggs are symbols of potential. Eggs can hold new life or, perhaps, just breakfast.
Our ancient ancestors revered eggs, and every continent on earth (with the exception of Antarctica) has at least one culture with a creation story involving an egg. This creation egg is often called “the world egg” and generally emerges out of chaos or some sort of primordial sea. Sometimes the entire universe is born inside this egg, and in other versions of this type of myth, the egg cracks, with the top of the egg becoming the sky and the bottom the earth. The Orphics of ancient Greece believed that the world egg emerged out of various primordial forces such as time and fate, which in turn birthed the hermaphroditic god Phanes, who then created the other gods and much of the universe.
Eggs make sense as a symbol of the awakening earth in the spring, but no one is quite sure when the tradition of sharing colored eggs in March and April began. However, there is a direct link between pagan Rome and colored eggs, and it comes to us from the second century Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE). According to legend, on the day of Aurelius’s birth, April 25, his mother’s hen laid eggs speckled with red. The eggs were taken as a sign that baby Marcus would grow up to be a great emperor. When Aurelius eventually assumed the throne, eggs dyed red began to be passed out around the empire in his honor (Newall 1971, 265 , 268).
In many parts of Europe, especially in Eastern Orthodox areas, Easter eggs are still traditionally red. Though there are Christian legends surrounding the custom, it’s more likely that red eggs began as a Pagan way of celebrating Marcus Aurelius, or perhaps the dyed red eggs come from an even older custom that’s been lost to history?
For centuries eggs have been an important source of protein, and in many cultures, eggs were often the only easily available means of protein. During the Middle Ages, eggs were often given as gifts to priests and other religious figures as a form of payment on major holidays (Hutton 1996, 198). Often, these eggs were handed out in baskets, a possible origin for the inescapable “Easter basket” that’s so common in March and April. During the Christian season of Lent (the six-week period preceding Easter) the eating of eggs was banned in many European countries, leading children to decorate the eggs they were not allowed to eat.
Eggs have been used for divination for thousands of years and are still used for this purpose in many parts of Europe and the Americas. To divine the future with an egg, the shell of the egg was generally pierced with a needle or other sharp object, and the white, which dripped from the egg, was collected in a glass of water. The images that appeared in the water were then interpreted to tell the future. (Some countries preferred interpreting the yolk rather than the egg whites, so if you choose to do this, either way is fine!) A much messier version of egg divination comes from France where eggs were once smashed on a person’s head. The resulting mess was then interpreted by the person who broke the egg (Newall 1971, 334).
Eggs can also be used for good luck and to remove negative energies. During the early modern period, it was customary to leave eggs as an offering to evil spirits and malicious Witches. Once the spirit or Witch accepted the egg as a gift, it was believed they would never return (Newall 1971, 69). Deformed or yolk-less eggs were thought to carry bad luck, and in parts of England such eggs were tossed over houses to send the bad luck away (Newall 1971, 71).
Today, images of Witches on broomsticks are hard to escape, but in many parts of the world (including France, Germany, Mexico, and Russia) Witches also rode broken eggshells to their sabbat meetings. In addition to riding on eggshells, it was believed in many places that Witches also used eggshells as cups and plates when celebrating a sabbat (Newall 1971, 80–81). Because of these strange ideas about Witches and eggshells, it was customary in much of Europe to make sure an eggshell was smashed into very small pieces after being cracked (Newall 1971, 83). (What’s never explained is how Witches use something as small as an eggshell to get around; simply cracked or broken up into tiny pieces, eggs aren’t that big!)
People have been playing games with eggs for hundreds of years, and it’s possible that some of these games have origins in paganisms past. Games involving eggs in Northern Europe might have arisen from simple celebrations honoring the return of spring and being able to get out of the house. Egg rolling, which is most associated today with the front yard of the White House, is centuries old and might have originally been a charm meant to fertilize or awaken the earth. Even if that wasn’t the game’s original intent, it’s an interpretation that makes sense at Ostara and can easily be adopted by Witches. Whatever you do to celebrate spring this year, be sure to include an egg!
References
Forbes, Bruce David. America’s Favorite Holidays: Candid Histories. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015.
Newall, Venetia. An Egg at Easter: A Folklore Study. With a foreword by Robert Wildhaber. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1971.