The Phoenix and Osiris relationship from The Theosophy Trust site:
The original Great Symbols articles from HERMES magazine, by Prof. Helen Valborg, online only at Theosophy Trust, contain profound insights into universal Nature.
theosophytrust.org
“…
The Egyptians identified the phoenix with the soul of Osiris, 'the rising god.' It connected the morning star (Venus), 'the heart of the renewed sun,' with the sun itself, representing light, life and consciousness. The
benu reflected this synthesis of creative impulses in the form of a bird which is two birds.
The Theosophical Glossary describes the
benu as the
Shen-shen (the heron) and the
Rech (a red bird), both sacred to Osiris. "It was the latter that was the regular Phoenix of the great Mysteries, the typical symbol of self-creation and resurrection through death – a type of the Solar Osiris and of the divine Ego in man. Yet both the Heron and the Rech were symbols of cycles; the former, of the Solar year of 365 days; the latter of the tropical year or a period covering almost 26,000 years. In both cases the cycles were the types of the return of light from darkness, the yearly and great cyclic return of the sun-god to his birth-place, or – his Resurrection."
The Egyptians described the phoenix as creating itself, rising in a fragrant flame over the celestial sycamore or Persea tree whose branches extend over the sarcophagus of Osiris. It is the soul of Osiris, the sun that rises and rests in the sacred tree over the tomb which embodies the god at Heliopolis. There the phoenix builds its nest of aromatics and is consumed in fire. Resurrecting itself from the flames, it rises once again in the red and golden dawn to commence a new cycle.
In identifying the phoenix with the soul of Osiris, the Egyptians were symbolizing the essence of the third Logos, the first manifesting deity which combines the aspects of the spiritual and terrestrial macrocosmically, and the dual Ego, divine and human, microcosmically. As a solar deity, Osiris presided over twelve minor gods who were the twelve signs of the zodiac. He had forty-two and seven aspects, the forty-nine aspects involved in cycles at every level of Being and culminating in man. "Thus the god is blended in man, and man is deified into a god." The essence of the Logos, the light of Daiviprakriti, is the god and the immortal Ego in man, and both arc symbolized by the phoenix. Although the essential life of the phoenix is out of time and space, it enters this world periodically to die and be reborn. The sarcophagus of Osiris represents the death of worldly existence, but the soul which will rise is never fully entombed. It awaits the new cycle wherein it may once again illuminate the material world. The sacred tree upon which the soul or phoenix
{benu) rests is a sycamore or Persea, a fruit-bearing tree native to Arabia. This suggests a connection with the date palm, which is etymologically connected with the word
benu. The soul of the sun-god resting in this tree indicates the time of rest when the northern hemisphere is tilting away from the sun, the autumnal equinox. The resurrection marks the spring equinox. The Great Pyramid constitutes clear evidence that the ancient Egyptians had an exact knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes, that they calculated its rate at one degree in seventy-two years, thereby indicating clearly a twenty-six thousand year cycle for the complete precession. The authors of the symbol of the phoenix had exact and vast cyclical processes fully in mind when describing the pilgrimage of the soul in man within the larger framework of the cycles of divine teachers, globes and solar systems…”