[the_old_crowd] which came first, the phoenix or the flame?

[Kat Macfarlane]

I'm sorry, Catlady, but I can think of only one confusing thing at a time these days, and right now I'm thinking about Heraclitus of Ephesus, who has always made my sinuses stuff up and my brain go off line. But if we interpret his fragments correctly, which is a highly dubious operation, he taught that the primal substance was fire, which condensed into air and then water, earth, stone, and for all I know, a phoenix egg, and then started the whole process back again, so that the phoenix, which hatched out of the egg reverted once again to earth, water, air, and then into fire again. However, Heraclitus says nothing about phoenices, and I am not in a position to speak for him, since I have developed a sinus headache and am going to go to bed. 

Whuffle, whuffle, whuffle, wheeeef.

Stuffy purrs,

--Gatta


  I know reptiles laid eggs before birds were invented... the first
  bird (wherever one draws the line of 'this is a bird') came from a
  dinosaur egg, and the first chicken came from the egg of some older
  species of bird. 

  But I don't know enough about phoenices. In the Potterverse, there is
  more than one phoenix; Fawkes gave only two feathers for wands, but
  there are a lot more phoenix feather wands. Dumbledore said they're
  'immensely long-lived', not immortal. Do they die of old age after too
  many fiery regenerations? Can they continue to regenerate from the
  damage of old age or Avada Kevadra an unlimited number of times? If
  neither old age or Avada Kevadra can kill them, what can? Other
  curses, like using a Severing Spell to decapitate him? Non-magical
  injuries, like being stabbed with a sword? Poison? 

  I kind of assume they increase their numbers by sexual reproduction
  and laying eggs. Outside of the Potterverse, I'm under the impression
  that the phoenix (there is only one) lies itself down on a fire of
  precious incense wood and burns to ashes, then under the ashes is
  found an egg incubating, from which the phoenix hatches as a chick. In
  the Potterverse, it seems they burst into flame, which leaves ashes
  with a hatchling among them. 

  If these assumptions are correct, I might answer that the phoenix
  comes BEFORE its (own) flame, as it had to be an egg, hatchling,
  fledging, adult, and old before its first regeneration.

  My first impulse was to say that that flame came first because the
  universe began as fire. I'm not at all sure I could defend the Big
  Bang, at 3 degrees Kelvin, as a fire -- "It was a cold fire!" But the
  Sun is surely a fire, and all the planets came from the Sun (from the
  gas cloud that was densifying from gravity to eventually become the
  Sun), and there was no Phoenix before there was an Earth for it to
  live on.

  But I can doubt whether wizards believe in astrophysics. I believe it
  was Hesiod who said that all began as chaos, from which Night (Nyx)
  emerged without a parent, and gave birth to (the Elder) Eros without a
  mate. Then Eros (attraction -- gravity, electromagnetic, the nuclear
  weak force and the nuclear strong force, quark glue) set all that
  chaos to order, with earth together underfoot and water together in
  the sea and air together atop earth and sea, and fire together up
  above. So there was a lot of stuff before there was fire, altho' I
  don't think any of that stuff was a phoenix.

  But in Ta-Meri ("the Beloved Land" ie Pharaonic Egypt), all began as
  muddy water aka watery mud, and a lotus grew and its flower rose above
  the water and opened and inside was ... Horus, or Ra, or Amun, or
  Aten, or Ptah, or Heka, or Bennu (Bennu is the Phoenix) or probably
  others I forget ... and whoever it was shone like the sun and dried up
  the water around that lotus, and that was the creation of earth. That
  first hill (islet?) was named Ben-ben, and I don't remember how there
  was a cow (Hathor, or Nuit) to nurse the newly-hatched god... Anyway,
  I think that would make the phoenix and flame simultaneous.



   

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