May 14, 2003
Self-described “nerd” Betsy Devine has fun with the rose and all its scientific glories. Her piece got me thinking about the rich mythic history of that ancient pentacled flower.
This excerpted from Barbara Walker’s Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects:
Throughout the Orient, the “flower of the Goddess” was the red China rose, or scarlet hibiscus, five-petaled like the classical rose, before modern multipetaled varieties were created by selective breeding. Like the five-petaled apple blossom and the five-lobed apple, the rose formed a natural pentacle. Like the apple and its pentacle, the rose was sacred to the Goddess everywhere. Romans knew it as the Flower of Venus…. When the Great Mother of the Gods (Cybele) passed in solemn procession through Roman streets, her image was showered with “a snow of roses.” Gnostic scriptures said the first rose sprouted from the menarchal blood of Psyche, the virgin Soul, when she became enamored of Eros, symbol of sexuality.
Arab mystics spoke of a paradise called Bulistan, the Rose Garden, derived from the ancient Babylonian Goddess Gula……
….Rose windows in the western “female” façade of the cathedral usually featured Mary in the center. Church authorities claimed that Mary’s immaculate conception was brought about through the magic of a rose: Mary’s mother Anne (or Hana) conceived her daughter while smelling a rose. Like Aphrodite before her, Mary was addressed as Holy Rose….or Mystic Rose….
…Roses of various kinds also became mystic symbols of alchemy and hermetic lore. The blue rose stood for impossibility. The golden rose meant absolute achievement or perfection. A seven-petaled rose meant …seven degrees of enlightenment. Like the eight-petaled lotus of the Goddess Kali, the eight-petaled rose signified regeneration.
Then, of course, there’s the Rose Cross symbol of the Rosicrucians.
A rose is not only a rose, despite Gertrude Stein’s poetic assertion.
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Old Comments (2)
Betsy Devine on 15 May 2003
Wow, thanks for the new images about roses. You're not just a calla lily lady!
dzwonki polifoniczne on 14 Jun 2004
Hmmmmm interesting !!!