The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol.
1
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 359 THE EGG-BORN GOD.
§ VI.
THE MUNDANE EGG.
WHENCE this universal symbol? The Egg was incorporated
as a sacred sign in the cosmogony of every people on the Earth,
and was revered both on account of its form and its inner mystery.
From the earliest mental conceptions of man, it was known as that
which represented most successfully the origin and secret of being.
The gradual development of the imperceptible germ within the closed
shell; the inward working, without any apparent outward interference
of force, which from a latent nothing produced an active
something, needing nought save heat; and which,
having gradually evolved into a concrete, living creature, broke
its shell, appearing to the outward senses of all a self-generated,
and self-created being -- must have been a standing miracle from
the beginning.
The secret teaching explains the reason for this reverence by
the Symbolism of the prehistoric races. The "First Cause"
had no name in the beginnings. Later it was pictured in the fancy
of the thinkers as an ever invisible, mysterious Bird that dropped
an Egg into Chaos, which Egg becomes the Universe. Hence Brahm
was called Kalahansa, "the swan in (Space and) Time."
He became the "Swan of Eternity," who lays at the beginning
of each Mahamanvantara a "Golden Egg." It typifies the
great Circle, or O, itself a symbol for the universe and its spherical
bodies.
The second reason for its having been chosen as the symbolical
representation of the Universe, and of our earth, was its form.
It was a Circle and a Sphere; and the ovi-form shape of our globe
must have been known from the beginning of symbology, since it
was so universally adopted. The first manifestation of the Kosmos
in the form of an egg was the most widely diffused belief of antiquity.
As Bryant shows (iii., 165), it was a symbol adopted among the
Greeks, the Syrians, Persians, and Egyptians. In chap. liv. of
the Egyptian Ritual, Seb, the god of Time and of the Earth, is
spoken of as having laid an egg, or the Universe, "an egg
conceived at the hour of the great one of the Dual Force"
(Sec. V., 2, 3, etc.).
Ra is shown like Brahma gestating in the Egg of the Universe.
The deceased is "resplendent in the Egg of the land of mysteries"
(xxii., 1). For, this is "the Egg to which is given life
among the gods" (xlii., 11). "It is the Egg of the great
clucking Hen, the Egg of Seb, who issues from it like a hawk"
(lxiv., 1, 2, 3; lxxvii., 1).
With the Greeks the Orphic Egg is described by Aristophanes, and
was part of the Dionysiac and other mysteries, during which
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 360 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the Mundane Egg was consecrated and its significance explained;
Porphyry showing it a representation of the world, [[Ermenenei
de to oon kosmon]]. Faber and Bryant have tried to show that
the egg typified the ark of Noah, which, unless the latter is
accepted as purely allegorical and symbolical, is a wild belief.
It can have typified the ark only as a synonym of the moon, the
argha which carries the universal seed of life; but had
surely nothing to do with the ark of the Bible. Anyhow, the belief
that the universe existed in the beginning in the shape of an
egg was general. And as Wilson has it: "A similar account
of the first aggregation of the elements in the form of an egg
is given in all the (Indian) Puranas, with the usual epithet Haima
or Hiranya, 'golden' as it occurs in Manu." Hiranya, however,
means "resplendent," "shining," rather than
"golden," as proven by the great Indian scholar, the
late Swami Dayanand Sarasvati, in his unpublished polemics with
Professor Max Muller. As said in the Vishnu Purana: "Intellect
(Mahat) . . . the (unmanifested) gross elements inclusive, formed
an egg . . . and the lord of the Universe himself abided in it,
in the character of Brahma. In that egg, O Brahman, were the continents,
and seas and mountains, the planets and divisions of the universe,
the gods, the demons and mankind." (Book i.,
ch. 2.) Both in Greece and in India the first visible
male being, who united in himself the nature of either sex, abode
in the egg and issued from it. This "first born of the world"
was Dionysius, with some Greeks; the god who sprang from the mundane
egg, and from whom the mortals and immortals were derived. The
god Ra is shown in the Ritual (Book of the Dead, xvii.,
50) beaming in his egg (the Sun), and he starts off as soon as
the god Shoo (the Solar energy) awakens and gives him
the impulse. "He is in the Solar egg, the egg to which is
given life among the gods" (Ibid., xlii.,
13). The Solar god exclaims: "I am the creative soul
of the celestial abyss. None sees my nest, none can break my egg,
I am the Lord!" (Ibid., LXXXV.).
In view of this circular form, the "|" issuing from
the "
," or the
egg, or the male from the female in the androgyne, it is strange
to find a scholar saying -- on the ground that the most ancient
Indian MSS. show no trace of it -- that the ancient Aryans
were ignorant of the decimal notation. The 10, being the sacred
number of the universe, was secret and esoteric, both as the unit
and cipher, or zero, the circle. Moreover, Professor
Max Muller says that "the two words cipher and zero,
which are but one, are sufficient to prove that our figures
are borrowed from the Arabs.* Cipher is the Arabic "cifron,"
and means
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Max Muller's "Our Figures."
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 361 WHENCE OUR FIGURES?
empty, a translation of the Sanscrit name of
nought "sunya," he says.* The Arabs had their figures
from Hindustan, and never claimed the discovery for themselves.**
As to the Pythagoreans, we need but turn to the ancient manuscripts
of Boethius's Geometry, composed in the sixth
century, to find among the Pythagorean numerals*** the 1 and the
nought, as the first and final ciphers. And
Porphyry, who quotes from the Pythagorean Moderatus,****
says that the numerals of Pythagoras were "hieroglyphical
symbols, by means whereof he explained ideas concerning the nature
of things," or the origin of the universe.
Now, if, on the other hand, the most ancient Indian manuscripts
show as yet no trace of decimal notation in them, and Max Muller
states very clearly that until now he has found but nine letters
(the initials of the Sanscrit numerals) in them; on the other
hand, we have records as ancient to supply the wanted proof. We
speak of the sculptures and the sacred imagery in the most ancient
temples of the far East. Pythagoras derived his knowledge from
India; and we find Professor Max Muller corroborating this statement,
at least so far as to allow the Neo-Pythagoreans to have
been the first teachers of "ciphering," among the Greeks
and Romans; that "they at Alexandria, or in Syria, became
acquainted with the Indian figures, and adapted them to the Pythagorean
abacus" (our figures). This cautious admission implies that
Pythagoras himself was acquainted with but nine figures.
Thus we might reasonably answer that, although we possess no certain
proof (exoterically) that the decimal notation
was known by Pythagoras, who lived on the very close of the archaic
ages,***** we have yet sufficient evidence to show that the full
numbers, as given by Boethius, were known to the Pythagoreans,
even before Alexandria was built.****** This evidence we find
in Aristotle, who says that "some philosophers hold that
ideas and numbers are of the same nature, and amount to TEN in
all."******* This, we believe, will be sufficient to show
that the decimal notation was known among them at least as early
as four centuries B.C., for Aristotle does not seem to treat the
question as an innovation of the "Neo-Pythagoreans."
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* A Kabalist would be rather inclined to believe that as the Arabic
cifron was taken from the Indian Synya, nought,
so the Jewish Kabalistic Sephiroth (Sephrim) were taken
from the word cipher, not in the sense of emptiness but the reverse
-- that of creation by number and degrees in their evolution.
And the Sephiroth are 10 or 
.
** See Max Muller's "Our Figures."
*** See King's "Gnostics and their Remains," plate xiii.
**** "Vita Pythag."
***** 608 B.C.
****** This city was built 332 B.C.
******* "Metaph." vii., F.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 362 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
But we know more than that: we know that the
decimal system must have been known to the mankind of the earliest
archaic ages, since the whole astronomical and geometrical portion
of the secret sacerdotal language was built upon the number 10,
or the combination of the male and female principles, and since
the Pyramid of "Cheops" is built upon the measures of
this decimal notation, or rather upon the digits and their combinations
with the nought. Of this, however, sufficient was said
in Isis Unveiled, and it is useless to repeat
and return to the same subject.
The symbolism of the Lunar and Solar Deities is so inextricably
mixed up, that it is next to impossible to separate such glyphs
as the egg, the lotus, and the "sacred" animals from
each other. The ibis, for instance, sacred to
Isis, who is often represented with the head of that bird, sacred
also to Mercury or Thoth, because that god assumed its form while
escaping from Typhon, -- the ibis was held in the greatest
veneration in Egypt. There were two kinds of ibises, Herodotus
tells us (Lib. II. c. 75 et seq.) in that country:
one quite black, the other black and white.
The former is credited with fighting and exterminating the winged
serpents which came every spring from Arabia and infested the
country. The other was sacred to the moon, because the latter
planet is white and brilliant on her external side, dark and black
on that side which she never turns to the earth. Moreover, the
ibis kills land serpents, and makes the most terrible
havoc amongst the eggs of the crocodile, and thus saves Egypt
from having the Nile infested by those horrible Saurians. The
bird is credited with doing so in the moonlight, and thus being
helped by Isis, as the moon, her sidereal symbol.
But the nearer esoteric truth underlying these popular myths is,
that Hermes, as shown by Abenephius (De cultu Egypt.),
watched under the form of that bird over the Egyptians, and
taught them the occult arts and sciences. This means simply that
the ibis religiosa had and has "magical" properties
in common with many other birds, the albatross pre-eminently,
and the mythical white swan, the swan of Eternity or Time, the
KALAHANSA.
Were it otherwise, indeed, why should all the ancient peoples,
who were no more fools than we are, have had such a superstitious
dread of killing certain birds? In Egypt, he who killed an ibis,
or the golden hawk -- the symbol of the Sun and Osiris --
risked and could hardly escape death. The veneration of some nations
for birds was such that Zoroaster, in his precepts, forbids their
slaughter as a heinous crime. We laugh in our age at every kind
of divination. Yet why should so many generations have believed
in divination by birds, and even in zoomancy, said by Suidas to
have been imparted by Orpheus, who taught how to perceive in the
yoke and white of
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 363 EGG-BORN LOGOI.
the egg, under certain conditions, that which the bird born from
it would have seen around it during its short life. This occult
art, which demanded 3,000 years ago the greatest learning and
the most abstruse mathematical calculations, has now fallen into
the depths of degradation: it is old cooks and fortune-tellers
who read their future to servant-girls in search of husbands,
by means of the white of an egg in a glass.
Nevertheless, even Christians have to this day their sacred birds;
for instance, the dove, the symbol of the Holy Ghost. Nor have
they neglected the sacred animals. The Evangelical zoolatry
-- the Bull, the Eagle, the Lion, and the Angel (in reality the
Cherub, or Seraph, the fiery-winged Serpent), is as much pagan
as that of the Egyptians or the Chaldeans. These four animals
are, in reality, the symbols of the four elements, and of the
four lower principles in man. Nevertheless, they correspond
physically and materially to the four constellations that form,
so to speak, the suite or cortege of the Solar
God, and occupy during the winter solstice the four cardinal points
of the zodiacal circle. These four "animals" may be
seen in many of the Roman Catholic New Testaments where the portraits
of the evangelists are given. They are the animals of Ezekiel's
Mercabah.
As truly stated by Ragon, "the ancient Hierophants have combined
so cleverly the dogmas and symbols of their religious philosophies,
that these symbols can be fully explained only by the combination
and knowledge of all the keys." They can be only
approximately interpreted, even if one finds out three
out of these seven systems: the anthropological,
the psychic, and the astronomical.
The two chief interpretations, the highest and the lowest,
the spiritual and the physiological, they preserved in the greatest
secrecy until the latter fell into the dominion of the profane.
Thus far, with regard only to the pre-historic Hierophants,
with whom that which has now become purely (or impurely) phallic,
was a science as profound and as mysterious as biology and physiology
are now. This was their exclusive property, the fruit of their
studies and discoveries. The other two were those which dealt
with the creative gods (theogony), and with creative man, i.e.,
the ideal and the practical mysteries. These interpretations were
so cleverly veiled and combined, that many were those who, while
arriving at the discovery of one meaning, were baffled in understanding
the significance of the others, and could never unriddle them
sufficiently to commit dangerous indiscretions. The highest, the
first and the fourth -- theogony in relation to anthropogony --
were almost impossible to fathom. We find the proofs of this in
the Jewish "Holy Writ."
It is owing to the serpent being oviparous, that it became a symbol
of wisdom and an emblem of the Logoi, or the self-born. In
the temple of Philoe in Upper Egypt, an egg was artificially prepared
of clay made of
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 364 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
various incenses, and it was made to hatch by a peculiar process,
when a cerastes (the horned viper) was born. The same
was done in antiquity for the cobra in the Indian temples. The
creative God emerges from the egg that issues from the
mouth of Kneph -- as a winged serpent -- because the Serpent is
the symbol of the All-wisdom. With the Hebrews he is glyphed by
the "flying or fiery serpents" of the Wilderness and
Moses, and with the Alexandrian mystics he becomes the Ophio-Christos,
the Logos of the Gnostics. The Protestants try to show that the
allegory of the Brazen Serpent and of the "fiery serpents"
has a direct reference to the mystery of Christ and Crucifixion*;
but it has a far nearer relation, in truth, to the mystery
of generation, when dissociated from the egg with
the central germ, or the circle with its central point. The
brazen Serpent had no such holy meaning as that; nor was
it, in fact, glorified above the "fiery serpents"
for the bite of which it was only a natural remedy. The symbological
meaning of the word "brazen" being the feminine principle,
and that of fiery, or "gold," the male one.**
In the Book of the Dead, as just shown, reference
is often made to the Egg. Ra, the mighty one, remains in his Egg,
during the struggle between the "children of the rebellion"
and Shoo (the Solar Energy and the Dragon of Darkness)
(ch. xvii.). The deceased is resplendent in his
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* And this only because the brazen serpent was lifted
on a pole! It had rather a reference to Mico the Egyptian egg
standing upright supported by the sacred Tau; since the Egg and
the Serpent are inseparable in the old worship and symbology of
Egypt, and since both the Brazen and "fiery" serpents
were Saraphs, the "burning fiery"
messengers, or the serpent Gods, the nagas of India.
It was a purely phallic symbol without the egg, while when associated
with it -- it related to cosmic creation.
** "Brass was a metal symbolizing the nether world .
. . . that of the womb where life should be given . . . The word
for serpent was in Hebrew Nakash, but this is
the same term for brass." It is said in
Numbers (xxi.) that the Jews complained of the Wilderness where
there was no water (v. 5); after which "the
Lord sent fiery serpents" to bite them, when, to oblige Moses,
he gives him as a remedy the brazen serpent on a pole
to look at; after which "any man when he beheld the serpent
of brass . . . . lived" (?). After that
the "Lord," gathering the people together at the well
of Beer, gives them water, (14-16), and grateful Israel sang this
song, "Spring up, O Well," (v. 17). When, after
studying symbology, the Christian reader comes to understand the
innermost meaning of these three symbols -- water,
brazen, the serpent, and a few more --
in the sense given to them in the Holy Bible, he
will hardly like to connect the sacred name of his Saviour with
the "Brazen Serpent" incident. The Seraphim 
(fiery winged serpents) are no doubt connected with, and inseparable
from, the idea "of the serpent of eternity -- God,"
as explained in Kenealy's Apocalypse. But the word cherub also
meant serpent, in one sense, though its direct meaning is different;
because the Cherubim and the Persian winged [[gruphes]]
"griffins" -- the guardians of the golden mountain
-- are the same, and their compound name shows their character,
as it is formed of 
(kr)
circle, and 
"aub," or ob -- serpent -- therefore, a "serpent
in a circle." And this settles the phallic character of the
Brazen Serpent, and justifies Hezekiah for breaking it. (See
II. Kings, 18, 4). Verbum sat. sapienti.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 365 THE WINGED GLOBE.
Egg when he crosses to the land of mystery (xxii. i.). He is the
Egg of Seb (liv. 1-3). . . . The Egg was the symbol of life in
immortality and eternity; as also the glyph of the generative
matrix; and the tau, associated with it, only
of life and birth in generation. The Mundane
Egg was placed in Khnoom, the "Water of
Space," or the feminine abstract principle (Khnoom
becoming, with the fall of mankind into generation and
phallicism, Ammon, the creative God); and when Phtah,
the "fiery god," carries the Mundane egg in his
hand, then the symbolism becomes quite terrestrial and concrete
in its significance. In conjunction with the hawk, the symbol
of Osiris-Sun, the symbol is dual: it relates to both lives --
the mortal and the immortal. In Kircher's OEdipus Egyptiacus
(vol. iii., p. 124) one can see, on the papyrus engraved
in it, an egg floating above the mummy. This is the symbol of
hope and the promise of a second birth for the Osirified
dead; his Soul, after due purification in the Amenti, will
gestate in this egg of immortality, to be reborn from it into
a new life on earth. For this Egg, in the esoteric Doctrine, is
the Devachan, the abode of Bliss; the winged
scarabeus being alike a symbol of it. The "winged globe"
is but another form of the egg, and has the same significance
as the scarabeus, the Khopiroo (from the root Khoproo
"to become," "to be reborn,") which relates
to the rebirth of man, as well as to his spiritual regeneration.
In the Theogony of Mochus, we find AEther first, and then the
air, from which Ulom, the intelligible ([[noetos]])
deity (the visible Universe of Matter) is born out of the Mundane
Egg. (Mover's Phoinizer, p. 282.)
In the Orphic Hymns, the Eros-Phanes evolves from the
divine Egg, which the AEthereal Winds impregnate, wind
being "the Spirit of the unknown Darkness" -- "the
spirit of God" (as explains K. O. Muller, 236); the divine
"Idea," says Plato, "who is said to move AEther."
In the Hindu Katakopanishad, Purusha, the divine
spirit, already stands before the original matter, "from
whose union springs the great soul of the world," Maha-Atma,
Brahma, the Spirit of Life,* etc., etc.** Besides this there are
many charming allegories on this subject scattered through the
sacred books of the Brahmins. In one place it is the female creator
who is first a germ, then a drop of heavenly dew, a pearl, and
then an egg. In such cases -- of which there are too many to enumerate
them separately -- the Egg gives birth to the four elements within
the fifth, Ether, and is covered with seven coverings, which become
later on the seven upper and the seven lower worlds. Breaking
in two, the shell becomes the heaven, and the meat in the egg
the earth, the white forming the terres-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The latter appellations are all identical with Anima Mundi,
or the "Universal Soul," the astral light of the
Kabalist and the Occultist, or the "Egg of Darkness."
** Weber, "Akad Vorles," pp. 213, 214 et seq.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 366 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
trial waters. Then again, it is Vishnu who emerges from within
the egg with a lotus in his hand. Vinata, a daughter of Daksha
and wife of Kasyapa ("the Self-born sprung from Time,"
one of the seven "creators" of our world), brought forth
an egg from which was born Garuda, the vehicle of Vishnu, the
latter allegory having a relation to our Earth only, as Garuda
is the Great Cycle.
The egg was sacred to Isis; the priests of Egypt never ate eggs
on that account.*
Diodorus Siculus states that Osiris was born from an Egg, like
Brahma. From Leda's Egg Apollo and Latona were born, as also Castor
and Pollux -- the bright Gemini. And though the Buddhists do not
attribute the same origin to their Founder, yet, no more than
the ancient Egyptians or the modern Brahmins, do they eat eggs,
lest they should destroy the germ of life latent in them, and
commit thereby Sin. The Chinese believe that their first man was
born from an egg, which Tien, a god, dropped
down from heaven to earth into the waters.** This symbol is still
regarded by some as representing the idea of the origin of life,
which is a scientific truth, though the human ovum is
invisible to the naked eye. Therefore we see respect shown to
it from the remotest past, by the Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans,
the Japanese, and the Siamese, the North and South American tribes,
and even the savages of the remotest islands.
With the Egyptians, the concealed god was Ammon (Mon).
All their gods were dual: the scientific reality for
the Sanctuary; its double, the fabulous and mythical Entity, for
the masses. For instance, as observed in "Chaos, Theos, Kosmos,"
the older Horus was the Idea of the world remaining in
the demiurgic mind "born in Darkness before the creation
of the world;" the second Horus*** was the same
Idea going forth from the Logos, becoming
clothed with matter and assuming an actual existence. (Compare
Mover's "Phoinizer,"
p. 268.) The same with Khnoum and Ammon;**** both
are represented ram-headed, and both often confused, though their
functions are different. Khnoum is "the modeller of men,"
fashioning men and things out of the Mundane Egg on a potter's
wheel;
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Isis is almost always represented holding a lotus in one hand
and in the other a circle and the Cross (crux ansata),
the Egg being sacred to her.
** The Chinese seem to have thus anticipated Sir William Thomson's
theory that the first living germ had dropped to the Earth from
some passing comet. Query! why should this be called scientific
and the Chinese idea a superstitious, foolish theory?
*** Horus -- the "older," or Haroiri, is
an ancient aspect of the solar god, contemporary with Ra
and Shoo; Haroiri is often mistaken for Hor (Horsusi),
Son of Osiris and Isis. The Egyptians very often represented the
rising Sun under the form of Hor the older, rising from a full-blown
lotus, the Universe, when the solar disc is always found on the
hawk-head of that god. Haroiri is Khnoum.
**** Ammon or Mon, the "hidden," the
Supreme Spirit.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 367 THE SCANDINAVIAN LOGOS.
Ammon-Ra, the generator, is the secondary aspect of the concealed
deity. Khnoum was adored at Elephanta and Philoe,* Ammon at Thebes.
But it is Emepht, the One, Supreme Planetary principle,
who blows the egg out of his mouth, and who is, therefore, Brahma.
The shadow of the deity, Kosmic and universal, of that which broods
over and permeates the egg with its vivifying Spirit until the
germ contained in it is ripe, was the mystery god whose
name was unpronounceable. It is Phtah, however, "he who opens,"
the opener of life and Death,** who proceeds from the egg of the
world to begin his dual work. (Book of Numbers.)
According to the Greeks, the phantom form of the Chemis (Chemi,
ancient Egypt) which floats on the ethereal waves of the
Empyrean Sphere, was called into being by Horus-Apollo, the Sun
god, who caused it to evolve out of the Mundane egg.***
In the Scandinavian Cosmogony -- placed by Professor Max Muller,
in point of time, as "far anterior to the Vedas" in
the poem of Voluspa (the song of the prophetess), the Mundane
egg is again discovered in the phantom-germ of the Universe, which
is represented as lying in the Ginnungagap -- the
cup of illusion (Maya) the boundless and void
abyss. In this world's matrix, formerly a region of night and
desolation, Nebelheim (the mist-place, the nebular
as it is called now, in the astral light) dropped a ray
of cold light which overflowed this cup and froze in it.
Then the Invisible blew a scorching wind which dissolved
the frozen waters and cleared the mist. These waters (chaos),
called the streams of Elivagar, distilling in
vivifying drops, fell down and created the earth and the giant
Ymir, who only had "the semblance of man"
(the Heavenly man), and the cow, Audhumla (the "mother"
or astral light, Cosmic Soul) from whose udder flowed four
streams of milk (the four cardinal points: the four heads
of the four rivers of Eden, etc., etc.) and which "four"
allegorically are symbolized by the cube in all its various
and mystical meanings.
The Christians -- especially the Greek and Latin Churches -- have
fully adopted the symbol, and see in it a commemoration of life
eternal,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* His triadic goddesses are Sati and Anouki.
** Phtah was originally the god of death, of destruction,
like Siva. He is a solar god only by virtue
of the sun's fire killing as well as vivifying. He was the national
god of Memphis, the radiant and "fair-faced God." (See
Saqquarah Bronzes, Saitic Epoch.)
*** The Brahmanda Purana contains the mystery about Brahma's
golden egg fully; and this is why, perhaps, it is inaccessible
to the Orientalists, who say that this Purana, like the Skanda,
is "no longer procurable in a collective body," but
"is represented by a variety of Khandas and Mahatmyas professing
to be derived from it." The "Brahmanda Purana"
is described as "that which is declared in 12,200 verses,
the magnificence of the egg of Brahma, and in which an account
of the future Kalpas is contained as revealed by Brahma."
Quite so, and much more, perchance.
[[Vol. 1, Page]] 368 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
of salvation and of resurrection. This is found in and corroborated
by the time-honoured custom of exchanging "Easter Eggs."
From the anguinum, the "Egg" of the
"pagan" Druid, whose name alone made Rome tremble with
fear, to the red Easter Egg of the Slavonian peasant, a cycle
has passed. And yet, whether in civilized Europe, or among the
abject savages of Central America, we find the same archaic, primitive
thought; if we only search for it and do not disfigure -- in the
haughtiness of our fancied mental and physical superiority --
the original idea of the symbol.
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