SYMBOL DICTIONARY: EGG

“Usually it represents the life principle in its wholeness – the undifferentiated totality, with its potential for creative being, resurrection (Easter) and hope – hope for life in this world … One example of the egg as a symbol can be found in a Lithuanian tale called How the Woodcutter Outwits the Devil and Gets the Princess… where the egg serves as an important link between the imaginal and real worlds and is somehow related to being able to live creatively in both worlds at the same time.” – Donald Kalsched

This particular egg is a wooden one. I just had to have it when I saw it at a stall outside our local bakery one Easter, so much so that I bought two of them. Later I learnt about a thing called a darning egg – it turns out that this isn’t an Easter egg. It’s a darning egg. Which is used in the process of the women’s work of mending – making whole, wholeness – the potential of becoming something other than what is.

Because, after all, it’s about the life that is about to burst from the egg, isn’t it?

Written by: