The fabled phoenix is a crimson, gold, and purple bird with sweeping tail and jeweled eyes. It lives in a distant garden of flowers and crystal springs. When its wings become heavey with age, the bird builds a nest of spices, herbs, and resin in the top of a date palm. The heat of the sun ignites the twigs, and the phoenix stands in the flames with outspread wings. The bird burnes to ashes. In cool starlight, a young phoenix forms in the remains of its parent. The reborn bird rises with the rising sun and spreads its bright new wings to greet the day. Its own parent and its own child, the only one of its kind in the world, the aged phoenix dies and is reborn over and over again, through all eternity.
This version of the story is the most common in our time. The Western phoenix lives and dies in many ways in different versions, and its life cycle varies from story to story, from 100 years to thousands. The bird's legendary counterparts in China and Japan never die at all, but live in the Land of the Immortals.
From it's ancient beginnings, though, the phoenix has always been likened to the sun. The shining bird of fable forever renews itself like the sun, dying fiery red at the end of the day and rising golden the next morning. Greatest of mythical birds, the phoenix is the triumphant symbol of rebirth and renewal of the human spirit.

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Picture 2By Cindy E. Alexander
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