The Phoenix is a mythological creature that symbolizes rebirth, resurrection, redemption and immortality.
The story goes that when the One living phoenix felt death was near he would build himself a funeral pyre of sweet smelling spices. After singing the only song of his life, one so beautiful that all the men and gods would stop and listen, he would burst into flame and be reduced into ashes. Then, from the ashes, a new Phoenix would rise renewed. His first duty was to gather up the bones and ashes of the old dead phoenix, gather them in an egg and place them on an alter in the city of the Sun.
I found this image to be a smooth progression from the previous two cards, the Sun and the Moon, whose alignment create a spectacular drama of the dying of the sun/son. Here, though, there is no vulture or falcon coming from the mouth, instead there is a spiral tongue. It’s the tongue that sings the beautiful song of rebirth which wakes the dead from their sleep and shows them the spiral cycle of death and rebirth. The spiral is not the same thing over and over, it is the same pattern progressing ever higher, lower, inward, or outward. Just as the Sun and Moon describes time as cycles within cycles, Judgment describes time as a giant spiral, an evolution.
