Cindy’s Other Blog

One of the strangest and least understood myths of Ancient Egypt concerns the bennu bird or phoenix. A description of the symbolism which it was intended to invoke was given by Rundle Clark.

Clark: “One has to envision a perch extending out of the waters of the Void. On it rests a grey heron, the herald of all things to come. It opens its mouth and breaks the silence of the ancient night with the call of light and purpose, which ‘determines what is and what is not to be’…

The Phoenix, therefore, embodies the original the Word (or Logos) or declaration of destiny which mediates between the divine-mind and created things…In a sense, when the phoenix gave out the primeval call it initiated all those [calendrical] cycles, so it is the patron of all divisions of time, and its temple at Heliopolis became the centre of calendrical regulation.”

This confirms what we suspected, that the notion of the phoenix is closely related to the Great Pyramid as the epoch and timekeeper of pharaonic kingship, both mystical and historical. The shafts from the King’s and Queen’s chambers are calendrical in that they point toward specific stars and fixed their processional and other cycles.

The link, therefore, between the Great Pyramid and the phoenix is unmistakable. In the Book of the Dead (see chapter 17) the question is asked: “Who is he’? ..I am the great phoenix which is in Heliopolis. So the link connects the two as time keepers of the stars of Orion and the “soul” of the Osiris kings.

According to the interpretation of Rundle Clark, the phoenix was a great cosmic bird that came from a place called the Isle of fire. It was a a magical land and a place of everlasting light. It was from this place that gods were born and from this Isle of fire they were sent into this world.