“The archetypes, which are pre-existent to consciousness and condition it, appear in the part they actually play in reality:
apriori structural forms of the stuff of consciousness.”
– C. G. Jung
Rabbits don’t lay eggs! Yet every Easter we buy rabbits with eggs: sitting on eggs, holding eggs, carrying baskets of eggs. We send children to find hidden eggs laid by the Easter Bunny. Why? Tonight’s talk will trace the antecedents of this persistent custom. Hidden in its millennial depths is a history of violent gender usurpation in both daily life and mythic roles. A saga of a shape-shifting deity, the Sacred Hare, once worshipped as the highest god, creator of all life, saviour and alchemist of immortality. A powerful archetype. When we crunch his now-chocolate body we repeat an aeons-old sacrificial rite. So how did this great entity become degraded to our funny-bunny… And what has he to do with eggs?