The philosophical egg is both birthplace of, and container for, the new attitudes symbolised by the alchemical goal of the coniunctio, the union of opposites (male and female, consciousness and the unconscious, etc.). Here that goal is pictured as hermaphrodite in triumph over the dragon and the winged globe of chaos, threatening faces of the unconscious. The seven planets represent different aspects of the personality and the seven stages of transformation. Jamsthaler, Viatorium spagyricum (1625).
