Phoenix
The legend of the Phoenix tells the story of a bird capable of being reborn from its own ashes. It is a universal symbol of death brought about by fire, resurrection, immortality, and the sun. It also represents delicacy, since it lives on dew alone without harming any living creature.
The myth of the Phoenix has been taken up by writers of every age, among them Dante and Quevedo.
As it is a widely disseminated story, it appears in different versions across traditions separated by great geographical distances. In China, where it takes the name Feng, it represents the empress and, together with the dragon, symbolizes an inseparable fellowship. The Simurgh represents an equivalent idea.
A local version of the Phoenix myth also appears in India: it concerns a bird that, upon reaching 500 years of age, immolates itself on the eve of spring upon an altar specially prepared for that purpose by a priest. But it is the bird itself that lights the fire. The following day, a larva appears among the ashes and later transforms into a small bird. On the third day, the Phoenix can once again be recognized as it returns to its place of origin. In Egyptian mythology it took the name Bennu.
It forms part of the symbolism of alchemy, through the idea of rebirth by fire. Indeed, this mythological bird, in the medieval legend of the Phoenix, lives in Arabia but flies to Egypt—the home of alchemy—to undergo its ritual death and regeneration. In this version, it is a purple or red bird that, as it grows old, builds a pyre of wood and spices into which it throws itself. The rays of the sun ignite the fire, and the bird fans the flames with its wings until it is entirely consumed. A new Phoenix then rises from the ashes left by the fire.
In Greco-Roman mythology, Hesiod affirmed that the Phoenix lived nine times longer than a crow. Ovid would rescue it in his Metamorphoses.
In Mexico, the Phoenix always appears in the company of the great god Quetzalcóatl, and for the early Christians it symbolized Christ, serving as an allegory of his death and resurrection.
Even Pliny included it in his Natural History, describing it as a large eagle bearing a golden collar around its neck, a purple body, and a blue tail with some pink feathers, which no one had ever seen feeding. He estimated its longevity at around five hundred and forty years and explained that its regeneration was due to a kind of worm born from the bones and marrow of the dead Phoenix. For his part, Isidore of Seville described it as a very long-lived bird (five hundred years) that, upon sensing its own aging, builds a pyre upon which to immolate itself and then be reborn from its own ashes.
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