#WingedWordsWindsday: 12/8/2021 -- The Phoenix Bird & the Winter Solstice

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 6: December 8, 2021

 

 

“The Phoenix Bird and the Winter Solstice: A Tale of Fire and Ice”

By Rob Chappell, M.A.

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.

·         http://www.pantheon.org/articles/p/phoenix.html à Here is an overview of the phoenix myth from a multicultural perspective.

·         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.

 

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 partially visible from the American Midwest, just above the southern horizon, on early winter evenings. (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Changing the World Through Sharing What We Have Learned: My Philosophy of Education

CHANGING THE WORLD THROUGH SHARING WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED: MY PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

 

By Rob Chappell, M.A.

 

An Address to the UIUC Chapter of the

Golden Key International Honor Society

November 30, 2006

 

 

Introduction

 

        Ladies and gentlemen, members of Golden Key and honored guests:

         It is an honor and a privilege to be here with you this evening.  I can still remember my own reception into Golden Key, which took place on October 27, 1988 in this very same building.  Having come full circle, from being a neophyte to an alumnus of our great society, I would like to share with you some brief reflections on what can make our academic achievements most meaningful.

          As juniors and seniors at the University of Illinois, you are well on your way toward completing the undergraduate portion of your academic journey.  Some of you are no doubt making plans to attend graduate or professional school; while for others, the real world is beckoning through internships and the prospect of full-time employment.  No matter what your plans may be following graduation, you will still be faced with some momentous questions that I would like to put before you tonight.  What makes a college education meaningful, and why do we, as members of Golden Key, strive to achieve academic excellence at university?

          The answers may vary from person to person, and that is only to be expected, for there are many possible reasons why each of us has chosen to follow the path to scholastic excellence.  Admission to graduate or professional school, lucrative job opportunities, and the satisfaction of becoming a well-rounded individual are all laudable in and of themselves.  But I would submit to you that there is one reason to strive for academic achievement that surpasses all of these, without negating the others in any way.

          The highest goal to which we can aspire as members of Golden Key is to seize the opportunity to share what we have learned with others.  Learning profound truths about the world and thinking great thoughts are wonderful exercises for the mind – but they can only become meaningful if we share them with others.  Our parents and teachers, the professors and administrators of the University, and the agencies that have funded your education here, are all expecting something from us once we leave the classroom and dormitory behind, and that something is that somehow, somewhere, at sometime in the future, we will use what we have learned here to help change the world for the better.  This goal is put very eloquently by Captain John Sheridan in an episode from the second season of Babylon 5:

We have to make people lift their eyes back to the horizon, and see the line of ancestors behind us, saying, “Make my life have meaning.”  And to our inheritors before us, saying, “Create the world we will live in.”  I mean, we're not just holding jobs and having dinner.  We are in the process of building the future.

-- Episode #37: “And Now for a Word”

         How can we build the future by sharing what we have learned?  This endeavor can take manifold forms.  One person can become a volunteer mentor to schoolchildren at risk.  Another person may write a weblog about a recent study tour to Brazil.  Still another will present a seminar about how to stamp out hatred in a nearby city.  Do whatever you feel led to do – but be sure that you do something to make the world a better place because of what you have learned here, both inside and outside the classroom.

          As an alumnus of the School of Humanities at UIUC, allow me to share with you two brief examples of how sharing what we have learned can make the world a better place.  They are examples drawn from classic literature – from books that I hope you will read at some time in the future, if you haven’t perused them already.

I. The Gilgamesh Epic (Anonymous, Circa 2000 BC)

         In the Gilgamesh Epic, which was composed over 4000 years ago in Mesopotamia, the hero, King Gilgamesh, undertakes heroic deeds with his friend Enkidu to rescue people from dangerous monsters.  When Enkidu falls ill and dies, Gilgamesh goes on a final quest to find the secret of immortality.  Although the king fails to attain endless longevity, he does obtain lasting fame because, when he returned to his home city from all his adventures, he shared his experiences with his subjects and taught them what he had learned from his globetrotting adventures.  As the epic poet wrote of King Gilgamesh:

He who has seen everything, I will make known to the lands.  I will teach about him who experienced all things alike; Anu granted him the totality of knowledge of all.  He saw the Secret, discovered the Hidden; he brought information of the time before the Flood.  He went on a distant journey, pushing himself to exhaustion, but then was brought to peace.  Take and read out from the lapis lazuli tablet how Gilgamesh went through every hardship.  He walked through darkness and so glimpsed the light.

-- Gilgamesh Epic: Tablets I & XII

          Whatever historical truth may lie behind his legend, Gilgamesh is remembered still today because the life lessons that he exemplified are timeless truths that appear again and again throughout world literature.  Mortality will come to us all, Gilgamesh would say, but while life lasts, let us spend it in service to others through heroic deeds and teaching wisdom by example.

II. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum (1902)

          In L. Frank Baum’s classic holiday tale, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, we meet a young man named Claus, a human foundling raised by the immortal denizens of an enchanted forest.  In his young manhood, he chose to dwell among mortal humans because he wanted to share the joys of his own happy childhood with the children of humankind.  At first he simply played, sang, and shared stories with the children who lived near his home in the Laughing Valley of Hohaho, but afterward, he “invented” the first toys and spread the joy of giving Yuletide gifts around the world.  Unlike Gilgamesh, Claus obtained endless life within the circles of the world, when the immortals who had raised him endowed him with the Mantle of Immortality.  They gave Claus such a momentous gift because Claus had seen that the lives of mortal children in that long-ago time were filled with drudgery and misery, and he had determined to correct this injustice by sharing with them the fruits of his experience – namely, that a happy childhood, filled with kindness and giving, could lay the foundation for a better world when the children grow up.

          Baum summarizes so eloquently the lessons to be drawn from his mythical biography of Santa Claus that they require no further comment on my part.  He writes:

Everything perishes except the world itself and its keepers.  But while life lasts, everything on earth has its use.  The wise seek ways to be helpful to the world, for the helpful ones are sure to live again. ... Yet every man has his mission, which is to leave the world better, in some way, than he found it.

-- Book I, Chapters 6 & 7

It is true that great warriors and mighty kings and clever scholars of that day were often spoken of by the people; but no one of them was so greatly beloved as Santa Claus, because none other was so unselfish as to devote himself to making others happy.  For a generous deed lives longer than a great battle or a king's decree or a scholar's essay, because it spreads and leaves its mark on all nature and endures through many generations.

-- Book II, Chapter 11

“In all this world there is nothing so beautiful as a happy child,” says good old Santa Claus; and if he had his way, the children would all be beautiful, for all would be happy.

-- Book III, Chapter 3

Conclusion

          To me, these principles are not just words printed on a page; I have had the privilege to see them in action as I have pursued my own career as an administrative professional at the University of Illinois.  After obtaining my master’s degree, I spent three years at the Graduate College managing its Information Office.  There, I met and fell in love with student services – which led me to the College of ACES and its James Scholar Honors Program, where I have been working with hundreds of gifted students like you for the past six-and-a-half years.  Sharing educational experiences with them has had a profound impact on me.  Through my time spent with these future leaders of government and industry, my own hope for the future has been rekindled, for I see in them a sincere desire to serve humanity through their chosen career paths, both now and after graduation – and that’s what sharing one’s education with others is all about.

          There is one final thought that I’d like to leave with you tonight – sharing your educational experiences is contagious, and it never has to end.  It begins with you and then spreads out to the people around you until it becomes a chain reaction that has the potential to transform our society in ways that we can only dimly imagine now.  You may never know if that fellow classmate, younger sibling, niece, nephew, or child of yours is going to turn out to be the next Albert Einstein or Marie Curie.  That’s what makes sharing your education with others so exciting – you will never fail to be surprised by the friends that you make and the goals that you can help them to achieve.  As for me, I’m eagerly waiting to see what the ACES James Scholars are going to do next year, next decade, and so on and so on, into the bright human future among the stars that we all fervently wish for.

          Tonight, you are being recognized as new members of the Golden Key International Honor Society.  I would like to challenge you to discover how you can use your University of Illinois education to benefit the people and institutions that you will come into contact with throughout the rest of your life.  Golden Key will be most grateful – as will all the people who have supported your educational endeavors – if you will use your membership to unlock the door to a future of lifelong service to others, which will inevitably lead to a better world for us all.  In closing, let us remember and take to heart the words of Captain Sheridan from Babylon 5:

I mean, we're not just holding jobs and having dinner.  We are in the process of building the future.

         Congratulations to you all, thank you, and good night!  J

 

The cover of the original 1902 edition of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum.

Hollydaze Quotemail #1: The Phoenix Bird

Above: The resurrection of the phoenix bird, from the Aberdeen Codex (12th century CE).

 

Hello everyone –

This will be the first of three weekly Hollydaze Quotemails for the month of December. To start things off in a blaze of glory, I’d like to share with you a faery tale by Hans Christian Andersen and two poems about one of my favorite fantastic beasts: the phoenix bird!

 

“The Phoenix Bird” (1850)

By Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)

(Slightly Modernized by the Editor)

Archived @ https://hca.gilead.org.il/phoenix.html

                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!

 

Editor’s Note:

I’d like to take this opportunity to invite my readers to visit my recently expanded blog at https://rhcfortnightlyquotemail.blogspot.com, which includes a new feature entitled “Winged Words Windsday” – an ongoing series of edutaining episodes, presented in both poetry and prose. I’ve also launched a new personal Twitter account at https://twitter.com/RHCLambengolmo. Today’s edition of Quotemail is actually a lead-in to next week’s edition of Winged Words Windsday, which will cast the spotlight onto the phoenix bird and its astronomical relationship to the Winter Solstice.

Until next time –

Rob 😊

 

#WingedWordsWindsday: 12/1/2021 -- Celebrate the Holidays with the Evenstar!

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 5: December 1, 2021

 

 

Celebrating the Holidays with the Evenstar

 

Editor’s Note

                The planet Venus is shining brightly in the early evening sky, visible as a brilliant starlike object above the southwestern horizon as dusk turns into night. Venus is hard to miss, as it’s the third-brightest object in our sky, after the Sun and Moon. Here are some poems about the planet Venus in its aspect as the Evening Star.

 

“Ëala Ëarendel engla beorhtast,

ofer middan-geard monnum sended.”

“Hail Ëarendel, brightest of angels,

over Middle-Earth to humankind sent.”

à Cynewulf (Old English, 9th Century CE)

 

“To the Planet Venus”

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

What strong allurement draws, what spirit guides,

Thee, Vesper! brightening still, as if the nearer

Thou com’st to man’s abode the spot grew dearer

Night after night? True is it Nature hides

Her treasures less and less. Man now presides

In power, where once he trembled in his weakness;

Science advances with gigantic strides;

But are we aught enriched in love and meekness?

Aught dost thou see, bright Star! of pure and wise

More than in humbler times graced human story;

That makes our hearts more apt to sympathize

With heaven, our souls more fit for future glory,

When Earth shall vanish from our closing eyes,

Ere we lie down in our last dormitory?

 

“To the Evening Star”

By William Blake (1757-1827)

Thou fair-haired angel of the evening,

Now, whilst the Sun rests on the mountains, light

Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown

Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!

Smile on our loves, and while thou drawest the

Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew

On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes

In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on

The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes,

And wash the dusk with silver. Soon, full soon,

Dost thou withdraw; then the wolf rages wide,

And then the lion glares through the dun forest:

The fleeces of our flocks are covered with

Thy sacred dew: protect them with thine influence!

 

“The Evening Star”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Lo! in the painted oriel of the West,

Whose panes the sunken Sun incarnadines,

Like a fair lady at her casement, shines

The Evening Star, the star of love and rest!

And then anon she doth herself divest

Of all her radiant garments, and reclines

Behind the somber screen of yonder pines,

With slumber and soft dreams of love oppressed.

O my beloved, my sweet Hesperus!

My Morning and my Evening Star of love!

My best and gentlest lady! even thus,

As that fair planet in the sky above,

Dost thou retire unto thy rest at night,

And from thy darkened window fades the light.

 

“February Twilight”

By Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

I stood beside a hill

Smooth with new-laid snow,

A single star looked out

From the cold evening glow.

There was no other creature

That saw what I could see –

I stood and watched the Evening Star

As long as it watched me.

 

“Evening Star”

By H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)

I saw it from that hidden, silent place

Where the old wood half shuts the meadow in.

It shone through all the sunset’s glories — thin

At first, but with a slowly brightening face.

Night came, and that lone beacon, amber-hued,

Beat on my sight as never it did of old;

The Evening Star — but grown a thousandfold

More haunting in this hush and solitude.

It traced strange pictures on the quivering air —

Half-memories that had always filled my eyes —

Vast towers and gardens; curious seas and skies

Of some dim life — I never could tell where.

But now I knew that through the cosmic dome

Those rays were calling from my far, lost home.

 

The planet Venus, as photographed by the space probe Mariner 10 in 1974. (Photo Credit: NASA – Public Domain)