A Queer Bird Rising

There is a place where the Phoenix dwells. For seven thousand years, the devout of China have made offerings to this, one of the four celestial animals-spirits at the core of creation. He is said to reign over the South and his element is fire. He is the distillation of perfect light, Heaven’s grace, virtue, luck and happiness.

There is a realm where the Phoenix is and no physical being may follow. But at certain points on earth the Phoenix may appear, as it pleases him to show himself.

Heliopolis, City of the Sun, was such a place. In eternal Egypt, when the Sphinx was still new, the people raised a cut-off pyramid in honor of the Sun God. It was 66 feet high and its base was red polished granite. On top of the pyramid they erected a stone, the four-sided Ben-ben stone (“ben-ben” means outflow in Egyptian). The stone towered 118 feet high, its tip was a pyramidion covered with shining gold.

It was said in the sacred city of Heliopolis that this manmade mound marked the place where our material world rose, by the will of the creator Atum, out of the vast sea of chaos. So this is the place where “be-ing” changed to “becoming”. Out of the unmanifest rose this mound of mud. A reed (“what reed?” “How did a…” Be still. Listen.) floated onto the slowly rising hill. The reed takes root and grows. From out of the darkness a luminous bird of light appears and settles upon the reed. Who is this light-bird? It is the primordial form of Ra, the thought-form of Atum as he exists in the void. This is the Phoenix (benu bird) who begins to beat his great and multi-colored wings. Faster and faster he beats them until they glow with the colors of the rainbow! Suddenly light erupts into the universe. Ra, the golden orb, rises up magnificent, Ra the godhead made visible in the sun.

The ancient ones of Egypt had many creation stories with different gods taking the lead. They had no problem with this at all. One story said the universe was brought forth by the act of a single god Atum, who exists in thought and single consciousness. Before there was the duality of male and female there was the androgyn, the One.

“I was the one who came into bring as Atum. It was at Heliopolis that my phallus became erect. I grasped hold of it, and came to orgasm. Thus it was that the siblings Shu (form) and Tefnut (matter) were born.” - Pyramid Texts

He/she was lonely for creation, and grasping his erect cock, jacked the cosmos into existence! Out came duality, light and dark, male and female, and thus the gods, who brought forth all becomings. So some at Heliopolis say the ben-ben stone marked the spot where God’s semen fell, forming a great pillar at the dawn of time.

Always the flame and fire with the Phoenix! Always the sun in its eye. Even thousands of miles away in China the sun is connected to the multi-colored Feng-huang, the bird of paradise. The Feng-huang embodies all the virtues of Heaven. His head is like a red-gold cock, whose eye is the sun. Its back is like a swallow’s and is the crescent moon. Its wings are the four winds of change, purple and radiant. His tail is the lush exuberance of nature’s emerald and azure realm, representing the plants and seas and the creatures therein. Its feet are the solid earth itself. The Phoenix represents completeness but it will not manifest in times of corruption and bloodletting.

But back at Heliopolis they believe in the visitation of the Phoenix. The spirit of light, that has no parent, will come after a very long time, 500, 1,000 years? Herodotus, the “father of history”, was told the Phoenix brings the remains of its former self in an aromatic ball of myrrh, to be entombed at the holy city. In the fifth century B.C.E. was he told this, as he looked at the bird’s picture in the temple of Amon-Ra at Heliopolis.

The tale of the Phoenix is heard in Russia and Scandinavia, Persia, England and Africa and this is one:

“When the Phoenix grows ancient in years he makes a nest in the highest palm of Arabia. All manner of aromatic spices and bark are packed into it with rare gums and resins. As the divine Sun, Lord of Light, rises higher in the sky, the Phoenix sings a song of such poignant beauty that all creation is silent and still. At last, the desert sun climbs to its zenith and this rare and exquisitely colored bird sits on its pyre and begins to furiously beat its wings, like the first benu-bird at the dawn of time. The blur of feathers ignite the heated nest, flame bursts forth consuming resins, feathers, bark and all in a brilliant flare of white hot light.”

“I flew straight out of heaven, a mad bird full of secrets. I came into being as I came into being. I grew as I grew. I changed as I changed. My mind is fire, my soul fire. The cobra wakes and spits fire in my eyes. I rise through ochre smoke into black air enclosed in a shower of stars. I am what I have made. I am the seed of every god, beautiful as evening, hard as light. I am the last four days of yesterday, four screams from the edges of earth—beauty, terror, truth, madness — the phoenix on his pyre.”

“All that is left is a debris of smoldering ash. Is this, then, the end of creation’s song? But wait, in the debris of bone and ash, in the muck of destruction, stirs a tiny germ of becoming. A little golden worm is stirring! A little maggot of manifestation is renewing the Song of Light! Behold, it grows quickly assuming a chick-like shape and soon unfolds like a feathered lotus into a new and more radiant Phoenix! It arches its crimson neck and spreads out wings glowing like luminous gems. With a startling cry of triumph, it leaps into the heavens, sunlight flashing from every pigmented feather.” — Chapter LXXXIII The book of coming forth by day(Ani) 2300 B.C., Trans. Normandi Ellis in Awakening Osiris

Yes, the Phoenix is a queer bird. It has neither mate nor eggs. Is it then “unnatural” or a sacred mystery, like our own queer lives? How fitting then for we queer brothers to gather around our own ben-ben stone and altar. For the fire of passion burns within us.

It is a mystery we embrace like the Phoenix embraces the mystery of its own extinction, only to rise in splendid renewal. Isn’t part of our becoming the burning up of the old? The past is but a launch pad of our own transformation.

Remember, it was not enough for the creator God to; just be, in the unmanifest sea of the void. When we stand before the altar we feel the pull in our soul, the pull of a Great Becoming.

Ah, what will our wings look like when they unfurl?

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