Nietzsche, disciple of Dionysus

Abstract

The place where the phoenix lived is described in terms recreating those of the Golden Age of the Latin poets or the Judeo-Christian paradise. Claudian depicts the phoenix begging the sun to set it alight. The phoenix that is reborn from its own ashes is the salt of the Sages, and by this means their Mercur, it is the dry water, the ignited water and the universal Menses. In Die Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosenkreutz, a work written in the early seventeenth century, Andreae describes a scene of funereal rites for kings which involves the phoenix and evokes the initiation of the Rosicrucians. With the second half of the seventeenth century, the phoenix becomes a true literary myth. Towards the end of the passage the author calls on the Nile, home of the phoenix, to give birth to new signifiers and things signified. People should note the euphoric, positive nature of almost all the literary versions of the phoenix myth.

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