The archetype of rebirth or resurrection is an archetype that, in many archetypal stories and myths, makes possible the hero’s return from certain death.

The idea of resurrection, rebirth, and the hero’s return also occupies a distinctive place in our ancient Iranian culture. It is from the little hoopoe’s truth-seeking arrival at Mount Qaf that the Simurgh of perennial wisdom is born; and from the spiritual fortress of Kang Dez many of the immortals of Iranian history—such as Kay Khosrow, Peshotan, and Garshasp—will return to the world at the time of Frashokereti, the renewal of existence, to stand beside the liberating Saoshyant in the final battle against darkness and the forces of Ahriman.
It may be said that, for millennia, the archetype of rebirth and resurrection has been one of the most fundamental ideas in the collective unconscious of Iranians.

In Attar’s story of the hoopoe and the birds, he tells of birds in search of the Simurgh, the king of birds, to guide them toward greatness, unaware that each of them carries a Simurgh hidden within.
The hoopoe, the wise bird, tells them that the Simurgh lives beyond Mount Qaf and at the same time warns them that reaching Mount Qaf is extremely dangerous and arduous. The birds, who at first appeared eager, then each find an excuse not to go. Each bird symbolizes one of the human qualities and weaknesses that prevent us from moving along the path of individuation and reaching our own Self, while the hoopoe is that small truth-seeker within us that calls us to meet our higher Self.

Relying on confidence in itself and in its capacities, the hoopoe moves from the smaller self, together with the other birds, toward the greater Self, manifested in the story as the king of birds. When, after many rises and falls, only thirty birds remain with the hoopoe and they finally reach the Simurgh, the hoopoe and those thirty birds disappear and the Simurgh takes their place.

The Simurgh is the evolved individuation that exists within every human being: the higher Self that becomes manifest in the external world only through the death and rebirth of the hoopoe within. The path of individuation always begins from the heroic position of the little hoopoe and becomes possible through standing before Mount Qaf, a symbol of the greatest and most formidable untravelled expanse of the world.

To believe in rebirth is to believe that there are enduring forces in the world that ultimately overcome the deficiencies of what is mortal, carry consciousness and freedom forward through human history, and make possible the birth of something better than what presently exists.

From the perspective of individual psychology, it can be said that each of us experiences psychological death again and again throughout life. Belief in rebirth, and the activation of this archetype within the individual personality, means believing in our capacity to return from psychological death in our own lives. Many times in life we encounter immense sufferings that can bring about the death of what we are while at the same time realizing a greater form of existence within us.

Resurrection and return from psychological death are the eternal promise to those who, on their journey of individuation, are prepared to accept the suffering of meeting the greatest and darkest mountain of life and the world, and who know that it is only by this path that we learn and grow.

Aeschylus, the great Greek epic poet, writes in enduring words:
“The one who learns must suffer. Awake and even in sleep, an agonizing pain that cannot be forgotten drips, drop by drop, upon our hearts, until at last, at the height of despair and helplessness and against the desire of our own heart, an understanding of that liberating wisdom sometimes arrives by way of the terrible kindness of God.”

Aydin Areta
Rewritten and edited by Samira Ghobadi