Orphic Egg

If the Prime Mover is the 'Push,' the Cosmic Egg is the 'Vessel.' It represents the universe in a state of superposition—where everything that could happen is held together in a single, fragile shell. Before the egg cracks, cause and effect do not exist because there is no separation between things. There is only the Whole. The serpent winding around it represents Time (Chronos), squeezing the potential until it bursts into reality.

The idea that the universe hatched is strikingly common. In the Rig Veda of India, it is the 'Golden Womb' (Hiranyagarbha) floating in the primordial waters. In Egypt, the sun god Ra hatches from an egg laid by a celestial goose. In Greece, the Orphics believed Phanes (the first born) burst from the egg to create the gods. This recurring image suggests a deep human intuition that complexity (the world we see) must emerge from simplicity (the egg).

Modern cosmology tells a story that sounds suspiciously like the Orphic Egg. The Big Bang theory posits that the entire observable universe was once compressed into a singularity—a point of infinite density and temperature. Then, in a moment of rapid expansion (inflation), it 'hatched.' Space, time, and matter unspooled from this single seed. The myth was not a literal truth, but it was a structurally accurate metaphor for the expansion of the cosmos.