The Pagan origins of Easter is still a popular topic of discussion nowadays, and back in the day, Blavatsky had her own take on this question in some brief, but suggestive remarks. For a full exposition on the world egg see The Secret Doctrince I, 2, ch. 6-The Mundane Egg.
Easter. The word evidently comes from Ostara, the Scandinavian goddess of
spring (1) She was the symbol of the resurrection of all nature and was worshipped
in early spring. It was a custom with the pagan Norsemen at that time to
exchange coloured eggs called the eggs of Ostara. These have now become
Easter-Eggs. As expressed in Asgard and the Gods (WilhelmWagner, 1880) : “Christianity
put another meaning on the old custom, by connecting it with the feast of the
Resurrection of the Saviour, who, like the hidden life in the egg, slept in the
grave for three days before he awakened to new life” . This was the more natural
since Christ was identified with that same Spring Sun which awakens in all his
glory, after the dreary and long death of winter (Asgard, p.114, 8th ed, 1917). (See “Eggs”.)
Eggs (Easter). Eggs were symbolical from an early time. There was the “Mundane Egg”, in which Brahmâ gestated, with the Hindus the Hiranya-Gharba, (2) and the Mundane Egg of the Egyptians, which proceeds from the mouth of the “unmade and eternal deity”, Kneph, (3) and which is the emblem of generative power. Then the Egg of Babylon, which hatched Ishtar, and was said to have fallen from heaven into the Euphrates. (4) Therefore coloured eggs were used yearly during spring in almost every country, and in Egypt were exchanged as sacred symbols in the spring-time, which was, is, and ever will be, the emblem of birth or rebirth, cosmic and human, celestial and terrestrial. They were hung up in Egyptian temples and are so suspended to this day in Mahometan mosques. (5) (Theosophical Glossary)
Orphic Egg |
(1) Bede. De temporum ratione ("The Reckoning of Time", Ch, 15:“Ēosturmōnaþ has a name which is now translated “Paschal month”, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Ēostre,
in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they
designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new
rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.”
Blavatsky is referring to the folklore speculations of the time. Very little historical evidence exists on the question. See
Ostara and the Hare: Not Ancient, but Not As Modern As Some Skeptics Think.
(2) In classical Purāṇic Hinduism, Hiraṇyagarbha is the term used in the Vedanta for the "creator". Hiraṇyagarbha is also Brahmā, so called because it is said he was born in a golden egg (Manu Smṛti 1.9)
(3) Kneph
(Eg.). Also Cneph and Nef, endowed with the same attributes
as Khem. One of the gods of creative Force, for he is connected with the Mundane
Egg. He is called by Porphyry “the creator of the world”; by Plutarch the
“unmade and eternal deity”; by Eusebius he is identified with the Logos;
and Jamblichus goes so far as almost to identify him with Brahmâ since he says
of him that “this god is intellect itself, intellectually perceiving itself, and
consecrating intellections to itself; and is to be worshipped in
silence”. One form of him, adds Mr. Bonwick “was Av meaning
flesh. He was criocephalus, with a solar disk on his head, and standing on
the serpent Mehen. In his left hand was a viper, and a cross was in his right.
He was actively engaged in the underworld upon a mission of creation.” Deveria
writes: “His journey to the lower hemisphere appears to symbolise the evolutions
of substances which are born to die and to be reborn”. (Catal. MSS. (1881), 49) Thousands of years before
Kardec, Swedenborg, and Darwin appeared, the old Egyptians entertained their
several philosophies. (James Bonwick, Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought C. Kegan Paul & Company, 1878., p. 105-106, 203)(Theosophical Glossary) (see also Chnoumis and Chnouphis)
Their God Kneph, out of whose mouth issued the Orphic egg,
whence the author of the Clementine Recognitions makes a hermaphroditic
figure to emerge, uniting in itself the two principles whereof Heaven
and the earth are forms, and
which enter into the organization of all beings which the heavens and
the earth engender by their concourse, furnishes another emblem of the
double power, active and passive, which the ancients saw in the
Universe, and which they symbolized by the egg. (Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, 1871, p. 654-656). See also W R. Cooper, The Serpent Myths of Ancient Egypt. 1873, p.17
For more about platonic sources of Kneph, see http://www.archaeologicalresource.com/Books_and_Articles/Iamblichus_Mysteries_3_Translations/Iamblichus_Mysteries.htm
(4) Pseudo-Hyginus’s Fabulae 197 reads as follows, as translated by R. Scott Smith:
“It is said that an egg of
remarkable size once fell from the sky into the Euphrates River and that
the fish pushed it out onto the bank. Doves came and alighted upon the
egg, and after it grew warm, it hatched. Out came Venus [i.e. Ishtar],
who afterward was called the Syrian Goddess. Since she was far more just
and upright than the rest of the gods, Jupiter gave her choice, and she
had the fish raised into the stars. Because of this the Syrians
consider fish and doves to be gods and do not eat them.” Smith, R. Scott & Trzaskoma, Stephen M. (transl.), Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology
(5) "Colored eggs appear on the altars made for the new year known as Nowruz, which
is celebrated at the vernal equinox. This tradition has ancient roots
in Persia and Zoroastrianism, but is now practiced across Eurasia by
Persian and Turkic peoples of various faiths.' Ancient Art of Decorating Eggs Stephanie Hall 2017 https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2017/04/decorating-eggs/
(6) (Pliny, Natural History, 29, 3*) There is also a sort of egg, famous in the provinces of
Gaul, but ignored by the Greeks. Innumerable snakes coil themselves into
a ball in the summertime. Thus they make it so that it is held together
by a bodily secretion and by their saliva. It is called an anguinum.
The Druids say that [the snakes] hiss and cast it upwards, and that it
is to be caught in a cloak so that it not touch the ground. One must
immediately ride off on a horse with it, for the snakes will continue to
pursue until the course of a stream blocks their way. If one tests it,
the anguinum will float against the current of a river even
when covered in gold. And, as the magi will throw a cloak of deception
over their trickery, they make out as though the eggs are to be taken
only on a particular point in the lunar cycle, as though it was up to
human beings to determine the snakes’ role in this procedure.
Nonetheless, I have seen one of these eggs myself. It was round the size
of a small apple. The shell was cartilaginous, and mottled with cups
like the tentacles of a squid. The Druids value it highly: it is praised
as insuring success in litigation and in going to audiences with kings.
However, this is nonsense; for once a man (a Roman knight and a
tribesman of the Vocontii) held one of these eggs against his body
during a trial, and was condemned to death by the Emperor Claudius, for
that reason alone so far as I can tell.
3,000 BC carved stone ball Aberdeenshire |
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