An Introduction to the Seminar on the Resurrection Archetype: Learning from the Phoenix

In the third part of Session Five of the Depth and Archetypal Psychology Course, we take a deeper look at the archetype of rebirth and what it means to accept it in life. Along this path, we examine the ancient archetype and myth of the phoenix.

The phoenix is the symbol and embodiment of rebirth. It burns in its own fire and becomes ash, then rises again from its ashes in a new birth. The myth begins with the phoenix as an extraordinarily beautiful bird in paradise. One day it decides to leave paradise and descend to earth, yet it never forgets to sing to the sun, because it is passionately devoted to the light the sun embodies. Each day it sings its most beautiful song for the sun. The phoenix never forgets the dream of the sun and loves it deeply. Eventually it becomes worn and its being begins to decline. Understanding what is happening, it prepares its nest with the most fragrant plants and waits there for the final sunrise of its life: the sunrise at which it sings the most beautiful song of all its years. The sun pauses for a moment in admiration in the sky and sends its brightest ray of light toward the earth. All living beings hide in fear of that light and seek shade, except the phoenix, which allows itself to burn in the flame of the light. From its ashes a young phoenix rises again. It is said that in every age there is only one phoenix in the world, and the one reborn is the same being that burned in the fire of its own light. What can we learn from this remarkable myth? In this seminar, we will decipher the Simurgh/phoenix archetype and the layers of meaning in this extraordinary story.

We will also consider how, looking back at our lives, we can recognise that again and again we have found ourselves in situations where there appeared to be no choice but to accept death and destruction—moments when we thought everything had ended and fallen into absolute darkness, yet eventually returned from this psychological death to life. We die and are reborn many times in life. Descent into the underworld is unavoidable if rebirth is to occur. The greatest battles always take place in the underworld, and the hero brings something back from that world for the world above. If we deeply believe that whenever we reach an ending there are invisible forces continually at work along the course of life, through this faith we can experience our rebirth.

Again and again we become captive to our shortcomings and to the tragedies and chaos of life. We fall to the ground and rise again. Accepting the possibility of psychological rebirth and resurrection means trusting that unseen forces can be stronger than death and our visible defects and limitations, and that through them a new birth can become possible. When we confront our psychological death, either we accept that deficiency, disorder, chaos, death, and non-being have the upper hand and will ultimately swallow everything, or we accept that although chaos may penetrate everything, the forces of order—continually reborn and developing—will not cease. They can make it possible for us once more to bring chaos into order and return to life with greater strength.

Rebirth is the condition for perfection and development to be real. It means that forces in the world advance consciousness and freedom throughout history and push death and darkness back. Rebirth and resurrection are in fact the path we travel toward realisation. These successive births on the way to the Self are beautifully represented by the concentric circles of the mandala, at whose centre sits the Self. The closer we come to the Self, the more coherent and integrated our personality becomes, so that amid the hardships and adversities of life we do not lose our integrity and behave in ways consistent with who we are in happiness and victory.

The first condition for giving birth to our higher Self is to allow death to encompass what we presently are, because rebirth and resurrection come only after the death of deficiency, incompleteness, and everything that is subject to decay. If we learn from time to time to burn away our deficiencies and defects, we can give ourselves a new birth like the phoenix.

Hannah Saatchi

Seminar link on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/6PaA9VfTpYU