Horus the Brave, the offspring of the Sun, Allglorious: whom the Sun has chosen, and the valiant Ares (Mars) has endowed. His goodness remains for ever, whom Ammon loves, who fills with good the temple of the Phoenix. To him the Gods have granted life, Horus the brave, the son of Heron Rhamestes, the king of the world: He has protected Egypt and subdued her neighbours: Him the Sun loves. The gods have granted him great length of life. He is Rhamestes, the Lord of the World, the Immortal. – The Obelisk of Heliopolis Third Verse

The Phoenix is one of the most sacred symbols to the brotherhood we know of as the Order of the Quest. It symbolizes the morning star who is the son of the sun, the father in which we celebrate through the rising of this most glorious fire-bird from the flames into immortality and reincarnation. The phoenix is the son and the messiah that has risen to become the soul of the Sun-God Ra.

This is represented today with the obelisk of the Porta del Popolo in Rome pictured to the right where we can find near the top an adoration of Ra with the words, ‘Rameses II, son of Ra, who rilled the temple of the Phoenix [ha-t-bennu] with his splendors.’ There is also seen in the Vatican on the wooden coffin of Hetepher-t-s a picture where it seen a hawk and a Phoenix with the words, ‘Glory be to Ra in the underworld!’ ‘Glory be to Ra when he rises!’

As Manly P. Hall said in his book, The Lost Keys of Freemasonry – “These were the immortals to whom the term ‘phoenix’ was applied, and their symbol was the mysterious two-headed bird, now called an eagle , a familiar and little understood Masonic emblem .”

It is in City of the Sun or in Greek, Heliopolis where the first written records were given to us by Herodotus in his work titled Euterpe had written how the Phoenix was first seen in Heliopolis during the reign of Sesostris and then in the reign of Amasis shortly after the days of Ptolemy. The most important temple in the City of the Sun at this time was the “Mansion of the Phoenix” or “Mansion of the  Benben.” It has also been called the temple of the sun. In Utterance 600 of the Pyramid Texts speaks of Atum as you rose up, as the benben, in the Mansion of the Benu in Heliopolis (Hart, p.16).

In the book titled, The papyrus of Ani: a reproduction in facsimile Volume 1 in the Seventh Section of the Tuat is guarded by a gate which is called “Pestit,” and its warder is the serpent-god Akhanarit where there are gods whose arms and hands are hidden, and who represent “invisible beings whom the dead are able to see.” Afu Ra promises them that they shall be with him in Het-Benben, i.e., the House of the Benben Stone in Anu (Heliopolis), wherein the spirit of the Sun-god was supposed to dwell on certain occasions years and place its new egg to signify a new era for mankind had started.

In Heliopolis there in the middle of the Temple of the Sun stood an Obelisk with a capstone resting on top that was symbolic of the sun (son), the “Benben Stone” (pictured to the left). A stone obelisk is the material embodiment of the divinity of the Sun Ra, the Father, Zeu pater (“O, father Zeus”) or Saint Peter from the Greeks and Romans, because he was the father of gods and men. The holy of holies in his temple was called ” the house of the benben.” The cap stone is the son, or Ben. The name Ben signifies “son.”

This is why many persons in both in the Old and New Testaments, are distinguished by the addition of the name “Ben” to that of their father in ancient times because they were the sons, AKA bright morning star of Venus and of the father, the Sun.

Hadad son of Bedad of Genesis xxxvi. 35, 36, who succeeded Husham in the range of Hor, and smote Midian in what afterwards became Moab. Ben-Hahdad was the father of the children of Ammon , Kgs. 15:18-20; 20; 2 Kgs. 6:24; 8:7-15; 2 Chr. 16:2-4. The same is seen in the Kings of Edom, in Genesis in the names of ” Hadad,” Bedad ( = Bendad, son of Dod or David), Samlah, Shaul ( = Saul), and Benhanan. Ben-hadad king of Syria, “worshipper of Hadad,” was the son of Tabrimon and grandson of Hezion.  Hadad which means “Son of Dod or David.” Be-dad, or Bon-dad, “the son of Dad,” was the father of the Edomite, Hadad. David, Daoud, or Dood means the beloved ; and as a mythical character the beloved one, the Lord’s anointed.

The names Dod, Dad, Dan and David we have a specific true meaning behind these other names. This true meaning would be “Father.” Hence, when we find these many different names written in literature, they are referring to one “Lord and Father” and has I stated above, The cap stone is the son, or Ben. The name Ben signifies “son.”

The bennu bird, an ancient Egyptain deity ofte...

The Egyptian name of the Phoenix is bennu, from a root meaning ‘to turn/ so that the bennu signifies, as it were, the returning traveler. The Bennu bird serves as the Egyptian correspondence to the phoenix, and is said to be the soul of the Sun-God Ra. The Book of the Dead says, “I am the Bennu bird, the Heart-Soul of Ra, the Guide of the Gods to the Tuat” and other refrences to the Bennu bird such as “He Who Came Into Being by Himself,” “Ascending One,” and “Lord of Jubilees.”

Before the Old and New Testaments were written, we had the The Book of the Dead where in Chapter 13 we can find where the morning star reference was first originated: ‘I go in like the Hawk, and I come forth like the Bennu bird [the Phoenix], the morning star (?) of Ra’2—where, for ‘morning star.’

The planet Venus was called the ‘star of the ship of the Bennu-Asar’ (Osiris), and is mentioned as the Morning Star in this invocation to the sacred sun bird, Benu:

I am the Benu, the soul of Ra, and the guide of the gods in the Douat (Egyptian Underworld),

Let it be so done unto me that I may enter in like a hawk,

And that I may come forth like Bennu, the Morning Star.

In Greek mythology you will find that the phoenix or phenix (Ancient Greek φοίνιξ phóinīx) is a long-lived bird that is cyclically regenerated or reborn and had also represented the sun. It was said every morning at dawn to bathe in the water and sing a beautiful song that the sun god would stop his chariot to listen. There is said to only be one phoenix living at a time. When the phoenix feels its death approaching (every 500 or 1461 years) it builds a nest, sets it on fire, and is consumed by the flames. A new phoenix springs forth from the pyre. It then embalms the ashes of it’s predecessor in an egg of myrrh and flies with it to the City of the Sun. There the egg is deposited on the altar of the sun god.

The Phoenix flew into Egypt in the Consulship of XII Quintus Plannus, that it was brought to Rome in the Censorship of Claudius, in the eight hundred year of the City, and testified also in their records; but after all concludeth, Sed quc e falsa nemo dubitabit, As we read it in the fair and ancient impression of Brixia; as Aldrovandus hath quoted it, and as it is found in the manuscript Copy, as Dalechampius hath also noted.

The Greek poet Herodotus wrote in one of his passages from his writings of The Phoenix’s legend that the Phoenix comes back every 500 years in order to search the body of its predecessor. After making a myrrh egg, The Phoenix puts the body of its predecessor inside it, and takes it to the Temple of the Sun located in Egypt. 500 years later, Tacitus and Plinius agreed that many of the ancient myths were confusing so they investigated the chronology of The Phoenix. Through their studies, they concluded that The Phoenix lived an equivalent to a Platonic year, a calculation determined by the alignment of the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets known at that time needed to return to their original positions which in our time represents a period of 12.994 years.

We then find the phoenix with the Gnostics and then subsequently adopted as a symbol in Early Christianity that we now find today in the Eagle of Saint John which is really the phoenix. The picture to the right depicts Christ and the phoenix mosaic in the church of  SS. Cosma e Damiano, Rome. The phoenix is the the bright morning star in the bible in Isaiah 14:12 , “How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!” And also in Revelation 22:16 “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.”

The Phoenix is represented in Egyptian monuments as a bird of the heron family with feathers streaming from the back of the head, and a tuft on the breast. Its head is crowned by a splendid circle, the very image of the sun (Achilles Tatius; cf. Claudian, Ph. 17-20). The same Tufta that was once worn in Egypt as an emblem of supreme authority was then carried out and hundreds of years later we see the Tufta used only by Northumbrian kings titled Bretwalda like that of King Edwin of Northumbria (pictured to the left) who was said to have introduced the Tufa and then King Oslwald (Oswy) who was the seventh Bretwalda that that had united the tribes that were in constant warfare and then had made of them a real nation. This would be when the tribes of the Angles, Scots, Picts and Britons were given one common language that we know of today as “English.” Saint Bede had said “He learned to possess in hope the heavenly kingdom, which his fathers knew not and in this world God gave him a kingdom vaster than that possessed by any of his ancestors.”

The modern English noun phoenix derives from Middle English fenix (before 1150), itself from Old English fēnix (around 750). Old English fēnix was borrowed from Medieval Latin phenix and, later, from Latin phoenīx, deriving from Greek φοίνιξ phóinīx. During the Classic period, the name of the bird, φοίνιξ, was variously associated with the color purple, ‘Phoenician‘, and the date palm.  According to an etymology offered by the 6th and 7th century archbishop Isidore of Seville, the name of the phoenix derived from its purple-red hue, an explanation that has been influential. This association continued into the medieval period, albeit in a different fashion; the bird was considered “the royal bird” and therefore also referred to as “the purple one”.

As 33rd degree Freemasonic Author, Manly P. Hall said in his book, The Phoenix: An Illustrated Review of Occultism and Philosophy:

 “Among the ancients a fabulous bird called the Phoenix is described by early writers … in size and shape it resembles the eagle, but with certain differences. The body of the Phoenix is one covered with glossy purple feathers, and the plumes in its tail are alternately blue and red. The head of the bird is light in color, and about its neck is a circlet of golden plumage. At the back of its back the Phoenix has a crest of feathers of brilliant color … The Phoenix, it is said, lives for 500 years, and at its death its body opens and the new born Phoenix emerges. Because of this symbolism, the Phoenix is generally regarded as representing immortality and resurrection … The Phoenix is one sign of the secret orders of the ancient world and of the initiate of those orders, for it was common to refer to one who had been accepted into the temples as a man twice-born, or reborn. Wisdom confers a new life, and those who become wise are born again.” [p. p. 176-77]

“’The Phoenix, or Bennu is believed to be a divine bird going back to Egypt…This Phoenix destroys itself in flames and then rises from the ashes. Most occultists believe that the Phoenix is a symbol of Lucifer who was cast down in flames and who (they think ) will one day rise triumphant. This, of course, also relates to the rising of Hiram Abiff, the Masonic ‘christ.’” Burns, Masonic & Occult Symbols Illustrated, pp. 121-23

More often than not, when you see the symbol of this majestic bird, you can almost guarantee that it was left there by a descendant of this most ancient tribe as a sign that the phoenix has risen in that land. In 1782, Freemason William Barton had proposed a phoenix in flames as the original Great Seal in America as a symbol of a renewed liberty. In 1841, the phoenix was replaced by the eagle as our national bird. But as Manly P. Hall says, “upon the Great Seal is but a conventionalized phoenix, a fact plainly discernible from an examination of the original seal.”

We can now find the eagle that has taken the place of the phoenix on the rear of the dollar bill with the morning star, the star of David above its head.

Published anonymously in Altona in 1785, Gehime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer (Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians) contains alchemical and hermetic diagrams with many instances of the double-headed eagle. This book was purported to be a work of 16th and 17th century Rosicrucian adepts. The double-headed phoenix is a symbol of perfected man

Perfected man is also the two-faced king of the alchemists that we observe in Janus (Latin: Ianus) is the god of beginnings and transitions,[1] thence also of gates, doors, doorways, endings and time. He is usually a two-faced god since he looks to the future and the past. The month of January was named in honor of Janus by the Romans.In the 20th century the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung considered Janus  ‘a perfect symbol of the human psyche, as it faces both the past and future. Anything psychic is Janus-faced: it looks both backwards and forwards. Because it is evolving it is also preparing for the future’. CW 6 : 717.

The symbol of the self-born, who is the androgynous phoenix in the esoteric symbol. The double-headed phoenix is the prototype of an androgynous man, for according to the secret teachings there will. – 33rd Degree Freemason, Manly P. Hall

Has the Phoenix,  of the Seed of Atum (Adam), a New Man from the City of the Sun about to arrive on the world scene? This may have been recently represented in modern times during the  2012 Olympic ceremonies past where the glorious phoenix was again displayed to the world.

and also what appears to be the new race, a new man

What we can call the Seed of New Atum (Adam) that we had witnessed with the appearance of a new son/babies to ritualistically represent this momentous event. The Phoenix , the NewMan has found the Benben Stone in order to lay the new eggs that will usher in a new age of Aquarius, the Water Bearer.

‘Glory be to Ra in the underworld!’

‘Glory be to Ra when he rises!’

Amen!

FURTHER RESEARCH:

2. Its pyre is lighted from the sun’s rays (Dionysius, PseudoEustathius, De Aucupio, Lactantius, Claudian, Pseudo-Jerome).

3. It dies at sunrise (Horapollo), or faces the sunrise (Horapollo, Pseudo-Jerome), or turns to the sun’s ray (Isidore of Seville>Rabanus Maurus), or prays to the sun (Claudian), or stands toward the East and prays to the sun (Apost. Const.).

4. It is sacred to the sun (Tacitus, Pliny).

5. It is a symbol of the sun (Horapollo, Johannes Gazsus).

6. It rejoices more than other birds in the sun (Horapollo).

7. It is the sun’s bird (Claudian).

8. It is the friend of the sun (Dracontius).

9. It is descended from the sun (Achilles Tatius).

10. It resembles the sun (Pseudo-Eustathius).

11. It is the priest of the sun (Lactantius).

12. Its head is crowned by a splendid circle, the very image of the sun (Achilles Tatius; cf. Claudian, Ph. 17-20).

Book of the Dead:

Egypt1an Texts’

1. ‘The temple of obelisks’ of the Pankhy-inscription (below, p. xlviii), in which, as we shall see, Ra, the Sun-god, was adored, is in Egyptian ha-[t]-benben-[t]. Now on a hypocephalus in Paris a deceased person is represented as saying: ‘I am in the form of the Phoenix, which issues from ha-t-benben in Heliopolis.’

2. The obelisk of the Porta del Popolo at Rome, which represents near the top an adoration of Ra by one of the kings who erected it, bears in the left line of the northern face the words, ‘Rameses II, son of Ra, who rilled the temple of the Phoenix [ha-t-bennu] with his splendors.’2

3. In the Book of the Dead, chap. 17, we read3: ‘I am that

1 What here follows reposes chiefly upon Wiedemann, op. cit.

2 Marucchi, Gli Obelischi Egiziani di Roma, pp. 58, 146; cf. Ammianus Marcellinus 17. 4; Wiedemann, op. cit., p. 92.

‘Wiedemann’s translation; somewhat different in Budge, Book of the Dead.

great Phoenix- which is in Heliopolis; I unite everything which is there.’ What is the meaning of this? The Phoenix signifies the Osiris which is in Heliopolis; the union of everything which is there signifies his body, or, in other words, eternity and everlastingness, eternity signifying the day, and everlastingness the night.’

The Phoenix, then, signifies the union of day and night, or, one might say, of life and death; now as, according to Egyptian religious conceptions, Osiris represents the deceased, or, we might here say, death, and as the union of day and night, the point -where the two come together, is represented by the Phoenix, the Phoenix must be the rising sun, with the emphasis not on the night from which he emerges, but on the attributes of the sun as it issues from darkness or death.1

4. The Book of the Dead, chap. 13, has, in Budge’s translation: ‘I go in like the Hawk, and I come forth like the Bennu bird [the Phoenix], the morning star (?) of Ra’2—where, for ‘morning star,’ Wiedemann prefers to read ‘morning divinity,’ i. e., morning sun.3

5. On the wooden coffin of Hetepher-t-s in the Vatican we have, on each side of a central picture, a hawk and a Phoenix respectively. On the right, seated on a standard planted on the mountain of the sun, which is painted in red, is the hawk, with the legend, ‘Glory be to Ra in the underworld!’ On a similar standard on the left is the Phoenix, with the legend, ‘Glory be to Ra when he rises!’

So, too, on the door of a tomb figured by Lepsius,4 the middle is occupied by a picture of the bark of the sun; on the right is a Phoenix, with the legend, ‘He rises each day in the morning; he traverses the heaven as . . .’; while on the left is a hawk, with the words, ‘He enters into the underworld; he shines.’

1 So I, understand Wiedemann, pp. 93-4. ‘Similarly in chap. 122 (Budge, p. 185).

* Those who identify the Phoenix with Venus rely on the words ‘morning star,’ but Wiedemann shows (p. 100) that elsewhere Venus is called ‘the star of the bark of Bennu-Osiris.’ Now Bennu-Osiris, as we have seen under 3, means the rising sun, and hence Venus is here called, with all propriety, the star of the rising sun’s bark.

‘Denkmdler aus Aegypten 3. 272a.

6. In the Book of the Dead, chap. 24, we have1: ‘I am Chepera [the rising sun], who brings himself into being … in order to traverse the heaven like the Phoenix among the great gods.’

7. In the Book of the Dead, chap. 64, we read (Wiedemann): ‘He [Osiris] comes from Sekhem to Heliopolis to make known to the Phoenix the things of the underworld. “Hail, . . . thou creator of forms, like the god Chepera [the rising sun], issuing as sun-disk above the auta-incense.”‘

8. In a Louvre papyrus, No. 1. 2, the Phoenix appears with the red sun-disk on his head.

9. On the coffin of Suti-mes in the Louvre, and similarly on the coffin of Tent-Amon in Berlin, ‘the great god Phoenix’ says: ‘I am the Phoenix who begets himself, who gives incense to the Osiris.’

10. In a Louvre papyrus, No I. 1, we read: ‘Glory to thee, O Ra, . . . thou who comest into being above Heliopolis, O Phoenix, great god!’ Beside this are two pictures, one of Ra, and one of the Phoenix.

11. On a monument at Leiden he is called ‘the Phcenix, the soul of Ra,’ a scarab calls him ‘the heart of the renewed Ra,’ and a papyrus ‘the Phcenix of Ra.’2

To the foregoing may be added a few passages from the Book of the Dead (tr. Budge). Chap. 29 B (p. 77): ‘I am the Bennu [Phoenix], the soul of Ra.’ Chap. 77 (p. 132): ‘Those who were dwelling in their companies have been brought unto me, and they bowed low in paying homage unto me, and in saluting me with cries of joy. I have risen, and I have gathered myself together like the beautiful hawk of gold, which hath the head of a Bennu bird, and Ra entereth in day by day to hearken unto my words.’ Chap. 125 (p. 189): ‘He hath caused me to come forth like a Bennu bird, and to utter words.’

The ancient Egyptians conceived of the sun as describing a circle round the earth, and hence they gave it the name of bennu, the returning traveler. Now it’ happened that bennu was also

1 So Wiedemann; Budge differs.

2 Some other texts, cited by Wiedemann, are here omitted, as their bearing is less readily understood.

the name of a bird of passage which regularly disappeared and returned, and so this was declared holy to the sun, and one of its manifestations. The return of the sun took place in the morning, and so the bennu became the symbol of the rising sun. From this idea was evolved the further one that the sun engendered itself anew, and so likewise the bennu. He combined night and day into one whole, fashioned and guided time in a mystical and holy manner, and each morning rose to a spheral music, while the songs of gods and men resounded in joyful chorus to his praise. At his birth the heaven flamed in splendor, the new sun was born in fire, and from the dying flames of dawn he flew new-born up the sky. To him may be applied the words of the Boulak hymn to Ra1: ‘Glory is his in the temple when he arises from the house of flames; all the gods love his perfume when he approaches from Arabia; he is the lord of dew when he comes from Matau; he draws nigh in beauty from Phoenicia, encompassed by the gods.’2

Since the Phoenix in this, his central mythological aspect, may thus be identified with the deified sun at his rising, the hymns to Ra (or Khepera) will yield other passages applicable to the Phoenix of our poem. Thus the birds which follow and salute him are paralleled by the gods who follow Ra: ‘Ra riseth in his horizon, and his company of the gods follow after him.’3 ‘All the gods rejoice when they behold thee, the King of heaven.’4

Pin It on Pinterest