Alternative legends of the Phoenix?

[Icewalker]

I have been reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman, which has extensive roots in history and mythology from all over the place. In one story, it gives a quick description of a phoenix:

For the Phoenix when its time comes to die lays two eggs, one black, one white: From the white egg hatches the Phoenix-bird itself, when its time is com, but what hatches from the black egg no one knows.

Is this some culture's interpretation of the Phoenix? I have looked around and been unsuccessful in finding anything about it.

[Rettu Skcollob]

I have been reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman, which has extensive roots in history and mythology from all over the place. In one story, it gives a quick description of a phoenix:



Is this some culture's interpretation of the Phoenix? I have looked around and been unsuccessful in finding anything about it.

I have no idea, but that's awesome enough that I'm writing down as a possible adventure hook.

[Icewalker]

Yeah, honestly, I wanted to find out about whether there's a mythological basis, and then I think one way or another I'm going to stat up the creature which hatches from the second egg.

I have absolutely no idea what it might be just yet. We'll see what my mind digs up.

[golentan]

Yeah, honestly, I wanted to find out about whether there's a mythological basis, and then I think one way or another I'm going to stat up the creature which hatches from the second egg.

I have absolutely no idea what it might be just yet. We'll see what my mind digs up.

I'd assume that it is an Incarnation of Death, looking for a new friend. Unseen, unknown, unknowable, and rejected from the phoenix when it is reborn young and whole again?

Yeah.

[Anuan]

I'd assume that it is an Incarnation of Death, looking for a new friend. Unseen, unknown, unknowable, and rejected from the phoenix when it is reborn young and whole again?

Yeah.

That works so excellently that it isn't funny.

[Icewalker]

As a concept, the idea of it being the 'closeness to death' which the Phoenix has shed, seems quite apt. Will probably use something in that vein as part of its essence. Any knowledge on any original myth though, perhaps?

[Haven]

It's from the same place as that one guy who helped the woman get rich in American Gods.

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More like if he ever finally said who that was. Though I did read a rather convincing theory...but you know, I can't seem to remember it...

[HotAndCold]

I don't know if there's any relation between the two instances, but I recall reading a book in my youth in which the Phoenix and the Basilisk were brothers.

[Eldan]

Well, given that the Basilisk has about a dozen different origin stories himself, and always looks different, that may well be correct.

[Icewalker]

Yeah, somehow I felt like it should be the basilisk, but the thing is basilisks are one of the few mythological creatures with very vocal (and numerous) backgrounds of birth, and I believe they usually involve hatching from an egg. So it's probably due to that.

[Eldan]

One background I remember is that the basilisk is created when the egg of a black chicken is hatched by a toad (I would have assumed a snake, but I just checked again, it's a toad.)

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

If we look at this from a philosophical viewpoint, then golentan's point makes even more sense.

The Phoenix has always been a symbol of life and rebirth and radiance. In every single one of it's incarnations across the world that I know of, it is a metaphor for reincarnation.

Niel Gaiman has there being 2 eggs from which it hatches. Now, I haven't read the issue in question, only having read the first volume of Sandman, but in that volume, the character Death is very kind and involved with life, as it were, not being detached and unemotional, and actually helping Dream when he is depressed and detached himself. If the one egg is the phoenix's egg, it follows that the other egg would hatch a kind of anti-phoenix, a being that embodies the opposite ideas than a phoenix; primarily, death, but death in a rotary kind of way: looking at rebirth in a way that focuses on the death side of things, as opposed to the life side. It would not be out of character for Death to be involved with this cycle of life and death, and naturally, a being of death, she would connect more with the anti-phoenix than the phoenix.

However, I cannot think of a RL version of the Phoenix that fits this to a tee. All I can think of is the Hindu wheel of life and reincarnatin, which, of around 12(?) spokes, only 3 are the process of actually living, being born, and dying, all of the rest of the phases of life and death being part of death. Maybe he got his inspiration from there?

[RandomNPC]

i read a short story once where a bird that always cried out of self pitty. When the phoenix died it hopped in the ashes and it's tears became more of itself, Now when it dies it springs back to life out of a puddle of tears. Like a sad water phoenix.

but as the the egg, i'd go with the anti-phoenix.

[Pocketa]

I have been reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman, which has extensive roots in history and mythology from all over the place. In one story, it gives a quick description of a phoenix:



Is this some culture's interpretation of the Phoenix? I have looked around and been unsuccessful in finding anything about it.

Sounds like it probably isn't, because it says that "nobody knows".

[AstralFire]

It's only a very slight riff on classic Phoenix mythos; in some legends, the phoenix was reborn immediately and left behind a golden egg that would never hatch, while in others the phoenix turned into an egg on the pyre. Gaiman just had both co-existing.