Bennu

“I flew straight out of heaven, a mad bird full of secrets. I came into being as I came into being. I grew as I grew. I changed as I changed.
My mind is fire, my soul is fire. I am the seed of every God, beautiful as evening, hard as light. I am the last four days of yesterday, four screams from the edges of the earth - beauty, terror, truth, madness - the phoenix on his pyre.
I will live forever in the fire spun from my own wings. I destroy and create myself like the sun that rises burning from the East and dies burning in the West.
To know the fire, I become the fire. I am power. I am light. I am forever. This is my deliverance.
I am the fire that burns you, that burns in you. To live is to die a thousand deaths, but there is only one fire, one eternity.”
- Hymn of the Bennu

The Bennu bird was the mythological phoenix of ancient Egypt - a heron. It was associated with the rising of the Nile, resurrection, and the sun. The image of the Bennu was frequently carved on amulets to help with rebirth. The Bennu Bird was thought to lead the spirits of the dead through the dangers of the underworld. Some spells in the Book of the Dead aim to assist the deceased to transform themselves into Bennu birds, so that they can travel freely between worlds.

Standing alone on isolated rocks of islands of high ground during the floods, the Bennu represented the first life to appear on the primeval mound which rose from the watery chaos at the first creation. Being the oldest living creature, the cry of the Bennu was the point which time began. It was also the Bennu who would announce the end of time and the return of the world to chaos.

According to Egyptian myth, the Bennu created itself from a fire that was burned on a holy tree in one of the sacred precincts of the Temple of Ra. Other versions say that the Bennu bird burst forth from the heart of Osiris. Because the Bennu represented creation and renewal, it was connected with the Egyptian calendar.

The Hymn of the Bennu says: “I am a blue heron, pure as bone. I know the stirrings of the Nile, the source where water rises overlapped by trees, where ibises dip and wade, where the fish are plentiful. I fly beneath an arch of trees straight into the eye of heaven. I make a long journey amid mud houses, singing. I know the cool mind of the sky and the hot mysteries of earth. I am a blue heron, the messenger, a reborn and dying god. By day I exist because I exist. By night I sail above the river, a single star wise in the darkness.”