The Sacred Egg
Eaten, admired or gifted, the humble egg is at the center of many spiritual ceremonies and folkloric traditions the world over.
ARTICLE & RECIPES BY SIGNE LANGFORD
Eggs are part of many cultures’ spiritual celebrations and symbology. Around the world, they represent wholeness, fertility, good luck and good health. Eggs are thought to be a little magical, too, and have been employed in healing ceremonies, ancient and contemporary, from Thailand to Ukraine.
In some cultures, grooms are pelted with eggs before the wedding – the bride gets to lob the first one! — and, of course, we know all about dyed Easter eggs and Ukrainian pysanky. Bunga telur (“flower eggs”) are eggs — real or faux — lushly decorated in silk and sparkly things, gifted at Malaysian weddings as a fertility blessing.
Naturally, given the connection of eggs to Easter, symbolic egg dishes and traditions are found mostly around springtime. Eggs are often a rich indulgence given up for Lent, so they come roaring back at Easter — chocolate or otherwise! — plus they represent new life and all the good things that arrive in spring.
Mooncakes, a must-have treat for celebrating the Chinese mid-Autumn harvest festival, feature a glossy pastry case stuffed with bean, taro or lotus paste and a saltcured egg yolk. Given as gifts, the cakes are eaten when the moon is at its fullest and brightest. Also in China, red-colored eggs are given to the family of a newborn —with a black dot on one end for a boy — then at the child’s first month, then again at 100 days old, and on every birthday until the child reaches puberty.
Sometimes eggs are included in tasty, meaningful dishes, and sometimes they’re just sitting there, in their natural perfection, at the center of the table or as part of a religious tableau, marking a high holy day or the equinox. Enter the practice of trying to stand an egg up on its end at the spring equinox; the more mystically inclined believe the phenomenon has to do with the position of the moon and other such celestial beings, while the purely scientific have debunked it as just a fluke. Find an egg with its yolk in just the right spot and it will balance quite nicely, thank you very much, any time of year. You’re going to go try it now, aren’t you?
Signe Langford is a chicken-keeper, a gardener and a chef. She is the author of Happy Hens & Fresh Eggs: Keeping chickens in the kitchen garden, with 100 recipes.