From within the black void, my radiant consciousness stirs. This flutter kindles a smoldering ember, fragile as the wisp of smoke that gently undulates around me. For I am the Ember! Flames erupt and transform me from glowing, white-coated ash to deep crimson to scarlet to yellow to blinding light that pushes back the darkness. I am now crackling flames dancing wildly beneath the night sky. Scorching heat forces me up and up and up but I cannot escape the inferno. I am the Inferno! My incandescent wings unfold into a molten crescent against the luminous, eastern sky. I suddenly burst above the horizon, my aura a blossoming flower of fire! Yes! I am Reborn. I am Rebirth. I am new life pulsing with potential promise. I am the Sunbird. I am the Phoenix!
A little dramatic I admit, but this is resurrection, baby. Immortality is pretty big stuff! I am associated with the rising sun because I symbolize a new beginning. A new day. A new chance for life, wealth, and fertility*. I am life after hope has died. I am the spark of creation rising from nothing but a bunch of scattered ashes and singed feathers left over from my own funeral pyre. (Which I had to build when I felt my death approaching then in the end I became fire.
I have other avian incarnations. As the Chinese Feng-Huang, a personification of the primordial force of the heavens, I have the head and the comb of a pheasant and the tail of a peacock. The usually imaginative Egyptians saw me as a heron. We were big on embalming in our myths so I embalmed my own charred remains in an egg of myrrh and then carried it up to Heliopolis (City of the Sun) to sacrifice it upon the altar of the Sun God Ra.
My myth insists that there is only one of me at a time. So I have just this ONE long day (Which is either 500 or 1461 years depending on who you ask.) to ignite your Creativity with my dazzling, display of fortuitous, feathers of flame.
All images and written content copyright Mary Lee Mattison 1/8/1981 All rights Reserved
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