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    Default A poem on the mystical nature of Love

    THE PHOENIX AND TURTLE

    This poem by William Shakespeare deals with the souls’ ascension to Divinity, the return of the multiple Two to the single One. It’s a poem rich in alchemical symbolism. We will take some stanzas from it and, with the help of the poets Robert Marteau and Jonathan Boulting, we will untangle their dense symbolism. (The notes were published by these poets on POESIE magazine, and later included on an edition of William Shakespeare’s The Phoenix and Turtle by Nicole d’Amonville Alegría.)

    The protagonists are a couple of birds. In the poem, the phoenix is female and the turtle (a turtledove) is male. Shakespeare called it ‘The phoenix and turtle’. Note how he uses only one definite article for the two birds: he does not write “the phoenix and the turtle”, he writes “the phoenix and turtle”. It’s not a grammatical error: it directly states the poem’s theme, which is the alchemical transformation, the conversion of the two birds, phoenix and turtledove, into one single androgynous bird.

    This “phoenix–and–turtle” is equivalent to the “man–and– woman”, to the Androgyne of ancient wisdom. Why did Shakespeare choose two birds to represent souls? And why a dove and a turtledove specifically? The depiction of the soul as a bird was normal in antiquity: by being of a spiritual nature, the soul was considered a light and flying substance, like birds. As for those two species in particular, there is something that the phoenix and the turtledove have in common, apart from wings: they are two traditional symbols of conjugal bliss and androgynous union. Unlike the turtledove, the phoenix is a mythological bird; it’s possible that Shakespeare chose it for its famous peculiarity: the ability of rising again from its ashes. Which is exactly what happens to this couple of birds: they rise again from the ashes of their Duality converted into the One. The first stanza reads:

    Let the bird of loudest lay,

    On the sole Arabian tree,

    Herald sad and trumpet be,

    To whose sound chaste wings obey.

    “The bird of loudest lay” is the rooster (Shakespeare gives it an Eastern touch by placing it perched on a palm tree, “on the sole Arabian tree”). When it crows, only the chaste birds may rise and fold their wings (those who during the night threw themselves to the pleasures of the flesh cannot rise that early in morning). In this veiled way, he is implying whom the poem is addressing. Meaning, he is warning us from the outset that the alchemical transmutation at stake is only within reach of those couples of souls that have purified their love, those who have cleansed it, to the extent possible, of contingencies. Those are the heroic lovers and this poem is for them.

    Now we will skip three stanzas describing the operations and go straight to the decisive moment, the moment of Coniuctio:

    And thou, treble–dated crow,

    That thy sable gender mak’st

    With the breath thou giv’st and tak’st,

    ‘Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.

    Shakespeare places the amorous copulation of the two birds under the auspice of another bird, the crow. With this, he is hinting at the spiritual nature of the Coniuctio, since there was the superstition, alluded to in these verses, that the crow conceives and gives birth through its beak: there is no sexual exchange between male and female, but –as in a kiss– the exchange of breaths and vital spirits. The crow is part of a funeral procession; it’s one of the mourners. But, who died? Our protagonists did: the phoenix and the turtledove have died. But they have died in Duality only to be reborn converted into a “mutual flame”:

    Here the anthem doth commence:

    Love and constancy is dead;

    Phoenix and the turtle fled

    In a mutual flame from hence.

    R. Marteau comments this stanza thus: The phoenix and the turtle “escape, disappear, spouses in the consummation they arouse in each other”. This consummation is the consummation of Unity, of Royalty. They crown each other as Kings. They are each other’s means to ascend to Divinity, which they can only reach together. It’s inevitable, then, that in some way they see one another as the symbol (let’s say) of Divinity, of the One/Whole. Hence J. Boulting’s observation, “The phoenix is the turtle’s Whole”, which also works the other way around… (This reminds me of a verse by a contemporary of Shakespeare, a verse by John Donne that says: “so we shall be one, and one another’s All”, John Donne, “Lover’s Infiniteness”, Songs and Sonnets.)

    In the next stanza, Shakespeare describes the proper nature of Divinity, consisting of being “two in one”:

    So they lov’d, as love in twain

    Had the essence but in one;

    Two distincts, division none:

    Number there in love was slain.

    The essence of the Two is the One, and this essence is the fruit of their love. They are Two in love, One in the fruit it bears. In the fruit (in the explicit, that is) there is no distinction between the phoenix and the turtledove. However, in love (in the implicit) they remain two, different from one another. We could interpret the last verse in the following manner: by coming together, the two twin souls cancel each other out, that is to say, they annul their Duality, their division. In other words, they become zero. “This stanza is dedicated to the two in one –Boulting explains–. One in two and two in one are none,” they are zero, and zero, he adds, symbolises “the annihilation of the lover in the beloved and of the beloved in the lover”. In the explicit, that “number in love” (the Two) dies as a Duality, the number transforms into an infinity, into zero.

    The following stanzas describe the mystery of the “two in one”, which is the supreme mystery, the mystery of Divinity:

    Hearts remote, yet not asunder;

    Distance, and no space was seen

    ‘Twixt the turtle and his queen;

    But in them it were a wonder.

    Between the phoenix and the turtle there is distance, but at the same time, there is no space. Meaning that the Two are One at the same time. Marteau stresses that what inextricably joins the Two is precisely what distinguishes them: difference, otherness.

    So between them love did shine,

    That the turtle saw his right

    Flaming in the phoenix’ sight:

    Either was the other’s mine.

    Property was thus appall’d,

    That the self was not the same;

    Single nature’s double name

    Neither two nor one was call’d.

    Both are aware they are each other’s inseparable half. The other one is part of the self, the other one is another self. Property, then –what is mine as opposed to what is yours–, loses its meaning. “That the self was not the same”. This here is the essence of spiritual twin kinship: the fact that part of the self is outside the self, in another person who is the other self. Marteau comments: “Mine and yours are abolished. The two opposites are merged and confused without losing their difference. The self (the I) that was no longer seen as one’s own, identifies now with the self that is no longer mine, being yours, while yours is mine: a miracle performed by love. It’s the double Unit, the Tai Kih composed by the yin and yang, combined although separate”… To point out the coexistence of Unity and Duality in God, Shakespeare alludes, in the penultimate verse, to the ability each thing has to be called by different names.

    The next two stanzas narrate the surrender of reason to the power of love, a power capable of doing what reason considers impossible: making the One be simultaneously Two.

    Reason, in itself confounded,

    Saw division grow together;

    To themselves yet either–neither,

    Simple were so well compounded

    That it cried how true a twain

    Seemeth this concordant one!

    Love hath reason, reason none

    If what parts can so remain.

    The heavenly marriage of the phoenix and the turtledove meant their death. The death of split Duality. Their death as separate birds. But it has also meant their rebirth in Unity, their rebirth as one single bird. The phoenix and the turtle are dead, long live the Phoenix–and–Turtle!

    Death is now the phoenix’ nest;

    And the turtle’s loyal breast

    To eternity doth rest,

    Leaving no posterity:––

    ‘Twas not their infirmity,

    It was married chastity.

    The chastity of their marriage is evidenced by the fact that, despite not being sterile, they left no descendants. Although this is not entirely accurate because they did have one son, except that this son –the alchemists’ “Royal Son” – is themselves… themselves united in perfect union. As Marteau points out: both “are really their own posterity. In their union, they are their own royal progeny”. Their marriage (“a marriage between two chastities” as Boulting defines it) has borne fruit not in the lower but in the higher plane. It has given birth to the Phoenix–and–Turtle, one of the innumerable names of God.
    My soul is from elsewhere

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    Default Re: A poem on the mystical nature of Love

    Take a look at the Torah the turtledove is a common bird used for sin sacrafice. This will help you understand the poem.
    "A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today - and in fact we have forgotten. "John F. Kennedy


    Peace, Love and Consiousness
    Referee

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