The Story of the Phoenix

There is a bird that lays no eggs and has no young. It was here when the world began and is still living today, in a hidden, faraway desert spot. It is the phoenix, the bird of fire.

The Phoenix lives for 500 years, the Phoenix feels the end of its life near. It was often tired, and it had lost much of its strength. It couldn’t soar so high in the sky, nor fly as fast or as far as it was young.

“I don’t want to live like this,” thought the Phoenix. “I want to be young and strong.”

So the Phoenix lifted it’s head and sang, “Sun, glorious sun, make me young and strong again!” but the sun didn’t answer. Day after day the Phoenix sang. When the sun still didn’t answer, the Phoenix decided to return to the place where it had lived in the beginning and ask the sun one more time.

It flew across the desert, over the hills, green valleys, and high mountains. The journey was long, and because the Phoenix was old and weak, it had to rest along the way. Now, the Phoenix has a keen sense of smell and is particularly fond of herb and spices.  So each time it landed, it collected pieces of cinnamon bark and all kinds of fragrant leaves. It tucked some in among its feathers and carried the rest in its claws. The Phoenix began to build itself a nest at the top of the tree, the Phoenix built a nest with the cinnamon bark and lined it with fragrant leaves.

Now everything was ready. The Phoenix sat down in its nest, lifted its head, and sang, “Sun, glorious sun, make me young and strong again!”

This time the sun heard the song. Swiftly it chased the clouds from the sky and stilled the winds and shone down on the mountainside with all its power.  Suddenly there was a flash of light, flames leaped out of the nest, and the Phoenix became a big round blaze of fire.

After a while the flames died down. The tree was not burnt, nor was the nest. But the Phoenix was gone. In the nest was a heap of silvery-gray ash.

The ash began to tremble and slowly heave itself upward. From under the ash there rose up a young Phoenix. It was small and looked sort of crumpled, but it stretched its neck and lifted its wings and flapped them. Moment by moment it grew, until it was the same size as the old Phoenix. It looked around, found the egg made of myrrh, and hollowed it out. Then it placed the ashes inside and finally closed up the egg. The young Phoenix lifted its head and sang, “Sun, glorious sun, I shall sing my songs for you alone! Forever and ever!”

When the song ended, the wind began to blow, the clouds scudding across the sky, and the other living creatures crept out of their hiding places.

The Phoenix lives still today. But every five hundred years, when it begins to feel weak and old it builds a fragrant nest on top of a palm tree, and there the sun once again burns it to ashes. But each time, the Phoenix rises up from those ashes, fresh and new and young again.

Stories of this bird can be found in mythologies from Egypt, Rome, China, and among Native America.

We at Phoenix Recovery Programs use this symbol of the Phoenix being reborn from addiction.

Several analogies can be seen in the story:

Fire = Treatment and early Recovery of our New Lives

Suffering = Introspection, the process of taking a look at the kind of person we have become due to our addiction.

Newborn Phoenix = The recovering addict building a new life out of the former addicts lifestyle.