We tried with Herodotus, who may have quoted Hesiod, to “trap” the elusive Phoenix, but some questions remain unanswered. This myth is a central part of our researches because Wolfram claimed that the rebirth of the phoenix is due to the powers of the grail! Five hundred years after Herodotus, and about a thousand years before Wolfram, a famous scholar offered another important piece of the puzzle, which is also attributed to Hesiod. His treatise deserves our special attention because it confirms the planetary 854-year cycles.
Plutarch (ca. 46-120 CE) was an eloquent writer on religion in Greece when Matthew's simple gospel announced the birth of Christ and adoration of the Magi. He was also an erudite biographer, a priest of the Pythian Apollo, and according to his own testimonial (Treatise 10) initiated in the secret mysteries of Dionysus. In "de defectu oraculorum" (Moralia), he admits that some divine oracles have lost their power because people have changed, which resulted in some "defects of the oracles" in Delphi.
During his discussion of Plato's Timaeus, Plutarch features Cleombrotus who had made many excursions in Egypt and about the land of the cave-dwellers (the Essenes?) and who had sailed beyond the Persian Gulf (1). He suggests that it is not entirely clear whether the doctrine of the demons originally derived from the Magi, the disciples of Zoroaster, from Orpheus, from the Egyptians, or from the Phrygians. The discussion refers to Hesiod's fragment 304, because the Nymphs are mentioned there and included among the demons, and then turns to a riddle in Hesiod's fragment 183:
Nine generations long is the life of the crow
and its cawing,
(9)
nine generations of vigorous men. The lives of
four crows together
(9x4=36)
equal the life of a stag, and three stags the
old age of a raven;
(3x36=108)
nine of the lives of the raven the life of the
Phoenix do equal,
(108x9=972)
ten of the Phoenix we Nymphs, fair daughters
of Zeus of the aegis."
(972x10=9720)
After questioning the claim of the Nymphs, Plutarch deals with the problem of how to calculate vigorous men, because some make in their vigor 30 years, according to Heraclitus. Others prefer in their eld and assign 108 years to a generation; for they say that 54 marks the limit of the middle years of human life, a number which is made up of the first number, the first two plane surfaces, two squares and two cubes, numbers which Plato also used in his Generations of the Soul."
1 + (1x2) + (1x3) +4 +9 + 8 + 27 = 54
The (above) inserted numbers in red are based on Plutarch's next suggestion, that we could also consider the smallest "unit of one" for a generation, which is why the above 9720 is "less than most mathematicians think, and more than Pindar has stated when he says that the Nymphs are allotted a term as long as the years of a tree, and for this reason he calls them Hamadryads".
We should note that Plato's Timaeus was translated into Latin by Cicero and Calcidius, and widely discussed by the medieval clergy, although the general population was illiterate. Platonic and Pythagorean numbers were obviously a major part of the discussion, which explains why Wolfram said that the grail gives the phoenix the power of rebirth and used the above numbers to divide his poem. According to Otto Springer (2):
"Wolfram, like other medieval poets and in spite of his supposed illiteracy, has indulged in an almost mathematical symmetry as to the number of lines and sections... If we discount the first 108 sections of 30 lines each which constitute the Gahmuret prelude, we are left with 324 sections (109-432) before and 324 sections (503-826) after the Ninth Book, which itself numbers exactly 70 sections".
Furthermore, the oldest manuscript of Wolfram's Parzival, the Sankt Gallen, has each page divided into two columns of 54 lines, totaling 108, which is indicates that the poet conceived it this way. We don't really know what went through his mind, but we can imagine that six sections of 108 around a core of 70 could be put together like a phoenix or hexagram. However, we would have to "discount the first 108 sections", as professor Springer noticed, but why?
If we look at Plutarch’s calculation of 972 years for the lifespan of the phoenix, our calculation of 854 is quite consistent with his concept. The search of truth takes us to the Nymphs, as suggested by Plutarch, who claim a lifespan of 10 phoenixes. Because we discovered that the phoenix is formed by planets, which is confirmed by the descriptions of Herodotus, we have no reason to trust the claim of "demonic creatures" that dwell in the moist, lower regions and may only live as long as a tree. Hence, the search for truth forces us to subtract their lies:
972-10 = 962.
This decides the next step, because we already know that 108 has to be subtracted to reach 854, which is also implied by Wolfram's mathematical structure. As this is about the truth, we must consider that most lifespans are plausible, but can't accept the ripe old age of 108 years for a raven, which has been proposed in some myths. Why did the ups and downs of the riddle take us twice to black birds? Wolfram uses a black and white bird, the magpie as a symbol of doubt, and like Plutarch, he also mentions Zoroaster verbatim in the context of the 54 victories of Parzival and Feirefis. He was obviously an initiate like Plutarch, and because we are seeking enlightenment as well, we simply subtract the second "darkness" of 108, because ravens don't live that long, and discover the lifespan of the phoenix, until it burns to ashes:
962-108 = 854.
It's that simple, if you already knew the answer! Because 854 could be a major discovery, many critics and skeptics will probably accuse us of over-simplifying the ancient mysteries. But the most famous riddle of Antiquity is just as simple:
The Sphinx sat on a high rock and guarded the entrance of Thebes. Although the exact wording varies from source to source, she asked each traveler the following question: “What has one voice and goes in the morning on four legs, at mid-day on two, and in the evening on three, and the more legs it has, the weaker it gets?” Then the Sphinx strangled and devoured anyone unable to answer the question, until Oedipus solved the riddle: "Man, who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two feet as an adult, and with a cane in old age". Bested at last, the Sphinx threw herself from the rock to her death.
If the Phoenix Myth, like the Grail Mystery, have such a simple solution, Plutarch may have read reports that the phoenix was seen by wise men in 860 and 6 BCE. This would explain why the phoenix has been connected to the birth and resurrection of Christ by the early Church, and confirms our interpretation of Kepler's findings, that the phoenix and the "Christmas Star" were the same phenomenon.
This hypothesis is also supported by the researches of the Dutch scholar R. van den Broek, author of "The Myth of the Phoenix". He translated a Coptic sermon from the 6th century that mentions several appearances of the phoenix, even the one at the birth of Christ (3):
...There is a bird called Phoenix. This bird, when the fire came from heaven and consumed
the sacrifice of Abel the righteous, the fire of that sacrifice (now) consumed that bird at the
same time, reduced it to ashes...
This bird indicates to us the resurrection of the Lord. Just as the bee eats from the flowers
of the field which are wax to it, and from the dew of heaven which is honey to it, so too the
phoenix lives on the dew of heaven and the flowers of the trees of Libanon. At the time (now)
that God brought the children out of Egypt by the hand of Moses, the phoenix showed itself
on the temple of On (i.e. Heliopolis), the city of the sun...
According to the number of its years it was the tenth time since genesis after the sacrifice of
Abel that it made a sacrifice of itself: in this year (now) the Son of God was born in Bethlehem.
And on the day the priest Zechariah was killed, they installed the priest Simeon in his place.
The phoenix burned itself on the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem. On the eighth day after
the holy Virgin had brought fourth our Savior, she took him with Joseph to the temple in order
to make a sacrifice for him as firstborn, he was named Jesus. From that moment on no one
has ever seen this bird up to this day. Our fathers have born witness: God shall shame the
idol worshippers on the day of judgment because of this bird, because ... you have not looked
at this same bird ... which after three days lives and assumes its former shape. This bird (now)
indicates to us the resurrection...
Van den Broek has done substantial research on the phoenix, and we are greatly indebted to his findings although he disagrees with Plutarch and calculates the lifespan of the phoenix differently. But he suggests that the myth of the phoenix figured in Judeo-Christian traditions since Antiquity. On God's preference of Abel's sacrifice over Cain's (4), he compares texts on the heavenly fire that descended at the consecration of the temple at Jerusalem (2 Chron. vii.1), with the same event when Elijah sacrificed on Mount Carmel (I Kings xviii.38). If Coptic Christians related this "divine fire" to the death and rebirth of the phoenix, we have some evidence that this consecration occurred in 860 BCE, the year of Elijah's sacrifice and of Elisah's birth. This is supported in 1 Kings 19:16, the following chapter, where the Lord tells Elijah to anoint Elisah to be prophet in your place.
According to Margherita Guarducci, whom we quote on the excavations of Peter's tomb, "...a remarkable double phoenix (was) found in the tomb of Valerii in the necropolis below the Vatican. A niche in this grave carries a drawing of the head of Christ, the upper part of which makes a transition into two birds joined by one body". Guarducci dates it at the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century. On the common body of the two birds is the word Vibus (vivus, the living one), and next to the right hand bird appears the word Pho(e)neus, corrected by the same hand to read phoeniceus avis, "the Phoenician" or "purple-red bird". Under the left head is written vixisti (thou hast lived), and over the right head avis (r)evibis "thou liveth again, bird".(5)
From the same period is a description of phoenix by the Latin poet Claudian, an Egyptian by birth, who arrived in Rome during the late 4th century. This quote indicates that Claudian (6) was also familiar with our heavenly star that dissolves in the rays of the sun:
... according to Claudian, the deterioration of the phoenix is expressed in the weakening of the bird's light, in the slow extinguishing of its star, and the impotence of its wings...
The light that diminishes is the light that shines around the phoenix in a fiery ring and the star that fades is the star that rises above its head and pierces the dark with its brilliant light...
Claudian compares the decreasing light of this star with that of the moon retiring behind clouds ... We shall see that in Claudian it is in this sense, as bird of the sun, that the phoenix makes an appeal to the sun in order to accomplish the renewal of its life."
Substantially earlier is the above detail from the Black Obelisk at the British Museum, which shows the Israelite king Jehu paying tribute to king Shalmaneser III of Assyria (859-824 BCE). The bas-relief is from Nimrud, in northern Iraq, where it was erected as a public monument in 825 BCE. The detail may be the earliest depictions of the phoenix, with an Assyrian and an Israelite version, and it complements Claudian's description. The same symbolism is used by the French poet Chrétien de Troyes, when he says the grail "shines so brightly, the light of candles fades like the stars when the sun or moon rises". We know that he adapted Ovid's Metamorphoses before creating the Arthurian romances, which is one of many examples that he studied the Roman poets and Antiquity.
Chrétien version of Perceval's quest began the grail cycle in the 1180s, which was continued by two poets of the next generation, Robert de Boron and Wolfram von Eschenbach. In a brilliant construction of multi-layered allegories, the French master captured the spiritual ideals, Robert added some material facts (l'estoire), and Wolfram's adaptation completed the trilogy with a "triangular fusion" of these concepts to preserve the secret truth (of Mazadan). Their poetic magic (and alchemy) will be applied to our study of 849 CE, when the phoenix appeared again, with serious consequences. If their poems are interpreted correctly, the long-awaited "Second Coming" was overlooked by the Medieval Church, and the Vatican discovered its dilemma centuries after the fact. Apparently, Peter’s Chair had to be saved by an elaborate cover-up when popes and inquisitors eliminated the evidence and had scribes "under orders" falsify the records. It would have been a fait accomplit if Chrétien had not rhymed a mellor conte for which he may have paid the ultimate penalty.
Bibliography
1. Plutarch, de defectu oraculorum, (Moralia), Pearson/Sandbach, Vol. XI, (Harvard, 1927), pp.381-387
2. Otto Springer, Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. R. S. Loomis, (Oxford, 1959), p.247
3. R. van den Broek, The Myth of the Phoenix, (Leiden, 1972), pp.44-47
4. Ibid., p.119
5. Ibid., p.159
6. Ibid., p.163
