The Phoenix
Bennu
Burned, and risen from its own ashes.
The Phoenix: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The phoenix lives for centuries, burns itself on a pyre of spices, and rises again from the ashes. It stood at the end of the alchemical work, and Jung read it as the renewal of the whole personality through the fire of suffering.
Herodotus heard of the bird at Heliopolis, which came every five hundred years from Arabia carrying its father in an egg of myrrh; the Christian Physiologus made it the sign of the resurrection, and Michael Maier’s Symbola aureae mensae (1617) ends the work with it. Jung read the phoenix in Mysterium Coniunctionis as the goal of the rubedo: the renewed, winged self that comes out of the burning of the old.
Lactantius’s poem De ave phoenice gives it the fullest ancient telling, and it is the bird of the alchemical red, as the raven is of the black and the swan of the white.
The Phoenix: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
The Bennu of Heliopolis, whose story Herodotus tells, the early Christian sign of the resurrection, and the fire-bird of Russian tales. The Bennu on the sacred tree at Heliopolis; the fenghuang of China, which is not reborn but is a sign of harmony; the phoenix on the coins of the Roman emperors with the word aeternitas; Fawkes.
From the Sources
Bulfinch quotes Tacitus that the young phoenix takes up its father's body, flies with it to the altar of the Sun, and leaves it there to be consumed in flames of fragrance.
“…he takes up the body of his father and flies with it to the altar of the Sun, where he leaves it to be consumed in flames of fragrance.”
Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable, The Age of Chivalry, Legends of Charlemagne, The Age of Fable, Chapter XXXVI, "Modern Monsters": "The Phoenix". Complete in one volume, Project Gutenberg eBook #4928. The text, read in part
In the speech Ovid gives to Pythagoras, the phoenix is the one bird that renews and reproduces itself, living not on corn or grass but on frankincense and the juices of the amomum.
“…there is one bird which renews and reproduces itself. The Assyrians call it the Phœnix. It lives not on corn or grass, but on drops of frankincense, and the juices of the amomum.”
Ovid, The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books VIII-XV, Book XV, Fable I (the teaching of Pythagoras). Henry T. Riley's translation, e-text based on the 1893 George Bell reprint (Project Gutenberg eBook #26073). The text, read in part
Each passage is quoted from the text named, which the press fetched and read, and was checked word for word against a fresh copy of it; the link opens that copy. Passages are given as printed, without the editors’ footnote numbers, and with words broken across lines joined.
Where to Read
- Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14
- Herodotus, Histories II.73
- Lactantius, De ave phoenice
- R. van den Broek, The Myth of the Phoenix (1972)
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
In the Glossary: Rubedo.
Also among Birds
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“The Phoenix.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/phoenix.
Symbols That Share Its Terms
The King and Queen (Rex and Regina) · The Sacred Marriage (Hieros gamos, coniunctio) · Red (Rubedo) · Blood
Nearby in the alphabet: The Phallus: Generative power, which is more than sexual. Philemon: A figure of the psyche who knew more than Jung did. The Planets: The seven wanderers, each ruling a metal, a day, and a temper. Possession: An archetype taking hold of the whole person.