WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY
Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)
Vol. 2, No. 6: December 7, 2022
“The Phoenix Bird and the Winter Solstice: A
Tale of Fire and Ice”
By Rob Chappell, M.A., J.S.H.C., E.F.M.
Adapted & Expanded from Articles and
Presentations by the Author Between 2008 and 2015
Each
year at the Winter Solstice (December 21/22), the Sun reaches its southernmost
point in the sky as seen from Earth. As this pivotal event approaches, the days
grow shorter and colder, and the Sun’s circular journey across the daytime sky
becomes far lower than it was at the Summer Solstice in June. To the
skywatchers of the ancient world, it appeared as if the Sun – the source of
growth, light, and warmth – was dying of old age. Then, shortly after the
Winter Solstice, which marked the shortest day and the longest night of the
year, something amazing happened! The Sun began to rejuvenate and started to
climb higher in the sky each day. Eventually, more daylight and warmth returned
to the world, and springtime would arrive three months later, at the Vernal
Equinox (March 19/20).
This
annual event – the metaphorical “death and rejuvenation” of the Sun at the
Winter Solstice – was definitely something worth celebrating! The cycle of the
seasons could continue to move forward because the Sun came back from the
threshold of oblivion. Light overcame darkness; warmth banished the cold; hope
replaced despair; and life defeated death. People celebrated the Winter
Solstice because it reminded them of the Sun’s rebirth and return, which made
agriculture possible. Hence we can understand why agriculture and astronomy are
so closely interrelated: We cannot have agriculture without a calendar, and we
cannot have a calendar without astronomy.
The
annual cycle of the seasons and its effects on our natural surroundings are
recurring themes throughout world mythology. The skywatchers and mythmakers of
long ago celebrated the changing of the seasons and the wonders of the natural
world in both poetry and prose. Using the storytelling techniques of their
prescientific age, they chose to personify the forces of Nature, the celestial
orbs, and abstract ideals in order to explain how and why the natural world and
the human social order function in the ways that they do. To explain what was
happening in the natural world around the time of the Winter Solstice,
skywatchers and mythmakers created many edutaining stories, but perhaps the
most famous tale related to the Winter Solstice is the story of the phoenix
bird.
From
Japan and China to Egypt and Greece, tales of this fabulous creature have been
spun for thousands of years. According to the most widespread tradition, there
was only one phoenix alive in the world at any given time. This legendary bird
was adorned with beautiful crimson, golden, and violet plumage, and it built
its nest of spices in a remote corner of East Asia (possibly in Japan, the Land
of the Rising Sun). It was also said that the phoenix had the most wonderful
song of all birds and that its tears could heal even mortal wounds. Since the
phoenix bird had originated on the Sun (where myriads of phoenixes were
supposed to dwell), it needed no earthly food; instead, it was nourished by
solar energy exclusively. (This might lead us to
wonder: Why wasn’t the phoenix green, since it was photosynthetic?). 😊
Every
500 years, the elderly phoenix would burst into flames and die in its nest of
rare spices – but from its ashes would hatch a rejuvenated young phoenix to
live for another five centuries. The newborn phoenix, as soon as it could fly,
would carry the bones and ashes of its former self to the Temple of the Sun in
Heliopolis, Egypt, where the priests would note in their chronicles that a new
“phoenix cycle” of 500 years had begun.
From
an astronomical perspective, we can see how the death, spontaneous combustion,
and rebirth of the phoenix symbolized the annual cycle of the seasons, in which
the Sun “dies” of old age at the Winter Solstice, only to rejuvenate and ascend
into the heavens once again with the approach of springtime. Drawing on such
mythological starlore, European Renaissance astronomers introduced a phoenix
into the sky as a constellation. The celestial phoenix can be seen just above
the southern horizon on early winter evenings from the American Midwest – a
starry witness to the changing seasons on the revolving wheel of the year.
The
phoenix can still hold many meanings for us today. For example, the phoenix
might represent the power that we have to begin again after a personal tragedy
or some other great loss. It may also remind us of Nature’s ability to recover
and renew herself after disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes. On a more
metaphysical level, however, the phoenix was understood to represent human
immortality and the hope of a new Golden Age beyond the End of Days. This theme
is echoed in Erasmus Darwin’s [1731-1802] description of Nature’s
revivification after the Universe, in the far distant future, has “died”:
“Roll on, ye Stars! Exult
in youthful prime,
Mark with bright curves
the printless steps of Time;
Near and more near your
beamy cars approach,
And lessening orbs on
lessening orbs encroach;
Flowers of the sky! Ye
too to age must yield,
Frail as your silken sisters
of the field!
Star after star from
Heaven’s high arch shall rush,
Suns sink on suns, and
systems systems crush,
Headlong, extinct, to one
dark center fall,
And Death and Night and
Chaos mingle all!
Till over the wreck,
emerging from the storm,
Immortal Nature lifts her
changeful form,
Mounts from her funeral
pyre on wings of flame,
And soars and shines,
another and the same.”
à
The Botanic Garden (1789-1791)
As
the world awaits the beginning of the New Year, ten days after the Winter
Solstice, we would do well to remember these practical yet profound insights
from the skywatchers and mythmakers of long ago and far away. The core message
of all the Winter Solstice holidays – and the myth of the phoenix bird itself –
is summarized in this poem by one of my favorite authors, George MacDonald
(1824-1905):
“Up and Down”
Excerpted from Chapter 37 of At the Back of the North
Wind (1871)
The Sun is gone down, and
the Moon’s in the sky;
But the Sun will come up,
and the Moon be laid by.
The flower is asleep, but
it is not dead;
When the morning shines, it
will lift its head.
When Winter comes, it will
die – no, no;
It will only hide from the
frost and the snow.
Sure is the Summer, sure is
the Sun;
The night and the Winter
are shadows that run.
Webliography
To
learn more about the phoenix bird and its myriad meanings, readers may consult
the following resources.
·
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Claudian/Carmina_Minora*/27.html à Read an English translation of a Latin poem about the
phoenix, written by the Roman poet Claudian around 400 CE, which contains
perhaps the earliest reference to Japan (“the Land of the Sun”) in Western
literature.
·
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(constellation) à Here is an informative encyclopedia article about the
constellation Phoenix, which is visible close to the southern horizon on autumn
evenings from the American Midwest.
·
http://www.theoi.com/Thaumasios/Phoinix.html à This illustrated reference page includes brief articles and
citations from ancient Greek and Roman authors about the phoenix.
·
https://oldenglishpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/the-phoenix/ à “The Phoenix” is an Anglo-Saxon (Old English) poem about
the legendary firebird, preserved in the Exeter Book (10th
century CE).
·
https://archive.org/details/conference_of_the_birds-faridudin_attar à The Conference of the Birds is a classical
Persian poem by Attar of Nishapur (1151-1221 CE), in which the simurgh (the
Persian phoenix) plays a prominent role.
A
simurgh (Persian phoenix) hovers over an enthroned princess in this Persian
illustration from the 17th or 18th century CE. (Image
Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)
“The Phoenix Bird” (1850)
By Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)
In
the Garden of Paradise, beneath the Tree of Knowledge, bloomed a rose bush.
Here, in the first rose, a bird was born. His flight was like the flashing of
light, his plumage was beauteous, and his song ravishing. But when Eve plucked
the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, when she and Adam were
driven from Paradise, there fell from the flaming sword of the cherub a spark
into the nest of the bird, which blazed up forthwith. The bird perished in the
flames; but from the red egg in the nest there fluttered aloft a new one — the
one solitary Phoenix bird. The fable tells that he dwells in Arabia, and that
every hundred years, he burns himself to death in his nest; but each time a new
Phoenix, the only one in the world, rises up from the red egg.
The
bird flutters round us, swift as light, beauteous in color, charming in song.
When a mother sits by her infant’s cradle, he stands on the pillow, and, with
his wings, forms a glory around the infant’s head. He flies through the chamber
of content, and brings sunshine into it, and the violets on the humble table
smell doubly sweet.
But
the Phoenix is not the bird of Arabia alone. He wings his way in the glimmer of
the Northern Lights over the plains of Lapland, and hops among the yellow
flowers in the short Greenland summer. Beneath the copper mountains of Fablun,
and England’s coal mines, he flies, in the shape of a dusty moth, over the
hymnbook that rests on the knees of the pious miner. On a lotus leaf he floats
down the sacred waters of the Ganges, and the eye of the Hindu maid gleams
bright when she beholds him.
The
Phoenix bird, do you not know him? The Bird of Paradise, the holy swan of song!
On the car of Thespis he sat in the guise of a chattering raven, and flapped
his black wings, smeared with the lees of wine; over the sounding harp of
Iceland swept the swan’s red beak; on Shakespeare’s shoulder he sat in the
guise of Odin’s raven, and whispered in the poet’s ear “Immortality!” and at
the minstrels’ feast he fluttered through the halls of the Wartburg.
The
Phoenix bird, do you not know him? He sang to you the Marseillaise, and you
kissed the pen that fell from his wing; he came in the radiance of Paradise,
and perchance you did turn away from him towards the sparrow who sat with
tinsel on his wings.
The
Bird of Paradise — renewed each century — born in flame, ending in flame! Your
picture, in a golden frame, hangs in the halls of the rich, but you yourself
often fly around, lonely and disregarded, a myth — “The Phoenix of Arabia.”
In
Paradise, when you were born in the first rose, beneath the Tree of Knowledge, you
received a kiss, and your right name was given you — your name, Poetry.
“Sonnet XVI: An Allusion to the Phoenix”
By Michael Drayton (1563-1631)
‘Mongst all the creatures
in this spacious round
Of the birds’ kind, the
Phoenix is alone,
Which best by you of living
things is known;
None like to that; none
like to you is found.
Your beauty is the hot and
splendorous Sun,
The precious spices be your
chaste desire,
Which being kindled by that
heavenly fire,
Your life so like the
Phoenix's begun;
Yourself thus burned in
that sacred flame,
With so rare sweetness all
the heavens perfuming,
Again increasing as you are
consuming,
Only by dying born the very
same;
And, winged by fame, you to
the stars ascend,
So you of time shall live
beyond the end.
“The Phoenix”
By George Darley (1795-1846)
O Blest unfabled Incense
Tree,
That burns in glorious
Araby,
With red scent chalicing
the air,
Till earth-life grow
Elysian there!
Half buried to her flaming
breast
In this bright tree, she
makes her nest,
Hundred sunned Phoenix!
When she must
Crumble at length to hoary
dust!
Her gorgeous deathbed! Her
rich pyre
Burnt up with aromatic
fire!
Her urn, sight high from
spoiler men!
Her birthplace when self-born
again!
The mountainless green
wilds among,
Here ends she her unechoing
song!
With amber tears and
odorous sighs
Mourned by the desert where
she dies!
Laid like the young fawn
mossily
In sun-green vales of
Araby,
I woke hard by the Phoenix
tree
That with shadeless boughs
flamed over me,
And upward called for a
dumb cry
With Moon-bread orbs of
wonder I
Beheld the immortal Bird on
high
Glassing the great Sun in
her eye.
Steadfast she gazed upon
his fire,
Still her destroyer and her
sire!
As if to his her soul of
flame
Had flown already whence it
came;
Like those that sit and
glare so still,
Intense with their death
struggle, till
We touch, and curdle at
their chill!
But breathing yet while she
doth burn
The deathless Daughter of
the Sun!
Slowly to crimson embers
turn
The beauties of the
brightsome one.
O'er the broad nest her
silver wings
Shook down their wasteful
glitterings;
Her brindled neck high
arched in air
Like a small rainbow faded
there;
But brighter glowed her
plumy crown
Moldering to golden ashes
down;
With fume of sweet woods,
to the skies,
Pure as a Saint's adoring
sighs,
Warm as a prayer in
Paradise,
Her life-breath rose in
sacrifice!
The while with shrill
triumphant tone
Sounding aloud, aloft,
alone,
Ceaseless her joyful
deathwail she
Sang to departing Araby!
This
illustration of the constellation Phoenix appeared in Johann Doppelmayr’s Atlas
Coelestis (plate 19), which was published in Nuremberg, Germany ca.
1742. The celestial Phoenix is visible from mid-northern latitudes, just above
the southern horizon, on early winter evenings. (Image Credit: Public Domain
via Wikimedia Commons)
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