There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

But before everything (else), know thy birth,
know thyself, that is, from what substance
you are, or from what form, or from what species.
Understand that you have come from three races:
from the earth, from the formed, and from the created.
The body has come into being from the earth with an earthly substance,
but the formed, for the sake of the soul,
has come into being from the thought of the divine.
The created, however, is the mind, which has come into being
in conformity with the image of God.

In alchemy the egg stands for the chaos apprehended by the artifex, the prima materia containing the captive world-soul. Out of the egg - which is symbolised by the round cooking-vessel - will rise […] the liberated soul, which is ultimately indentical to the Anthropos who was imprisoned in the embrace of Physis.

abandoned to the birds and the winds

Soul sang of death, the green decay of flesh,
And it was the murmur of the forest,
The fervid lament of the animals.