A Rose a Day No. 4

The work shown here is the frontispiece of the Elizabethan magus Robert Fludd’s Summum Bonum (1629). It shows a single seven-petaled rose, designed like a medieval heraldic emblem, being pollinated by bees. Above, is written the Latin text: ‘Dat Rosa Mel Apibus’ – ‘The Rose Gives The Bees Honey’. The stem of the rose is also cruciform in shape. The seven petaled rose bloom symbolizes the solar wheel, the Rosa Mundi, and the number seven is sacred to alchemy, representing the path taken by the seeker after gnostic wisdom. The journey can be dangerous – thorny – but the final goal is sweet. like honey to the bee. 

The occult traditions shared a fundamental concept: the macrocosm-microcosm. Close but hidden harmonies were understood to exist between the ‘large-scale’ (macro) cosmos and the small-scale ‘little’ (micro) world of humanity, which when brought into correct alignment by an initiate who was inspired by true love of Theo-Sophia, made possible not only psychic but also seemingly ‘miraculous’ physical transformations. Belief in a correspondence between the macro- and microcosmic dimensions were therefore more than simply symbolic; they had transformational potential for those who knew how to bring the them into alignment. For example, the planets were believed to be in correspondence with specific animals and plants, and the human psyche. Therefore, assessing the alignment of the planets was important for spiritual and physical well-being. 

In the alchemical tradition it was believed that when the alchemist successfully established the correct inner-and outer-alignments it was possible to transmute base metal into gold. Important alchemical treatises included works with titles like The Rosary of the Philosophers and the Rosarium, which drew on the well-established convention of describing a treatise in floral terms, as well as the tradition of describing Mary as the ‘Rosa Mystica’, and prayers as roses or rosaries, envisaging the alchemical art as a rose garden, a metaphor borrowed from the Catholic tradition of likening Mary to a rose-garden.  Only those in possession of the ‘key’ could enter this secret realm. A key alchemical symbol was that of the pollination of the rose by the bee, which, allegorically speaking, stood for the lovers of Theo-Sophia streaming by from all directions to gather the truth.

The conjunction of a red rose and a wooden cross was understood in alchemical terms as the "female" rose being attached to the "male" cross. On another level of alchemical allegory, however, the rose and cross represent intellectual, spiritual, and eternal beauty being ‘crucified’ upon the cross of the suffering world, the fallen state the initiate hopes to transcend and purify.

This etching is from the Rosarium also features roses,  and is a visual allegory of the vital moment in the ‘Great Work’. The masculine spiritual energy is symbolized by the king standing on the sun, and the feminine soul energy of the bride stands atop the moon. They are brought into correspondence through the intertwining of rose branches, assisted by a dove, symbolizing the Holy Ghost, who reconciles the two opposing elements by adding a third rose branch. The union between sol and luna, male and female, is known as the coniunctio or The Chymical Wedding, and signals the transcending of the physical world and entrance into the spiritual. In some alchemical treatises, the red and white rose symbolize the male and female polarities, or the solar and lunar influences over the animal and vegetal world.  

The psychologist Carl Jung endeavored to comprehend the often bizarre seeming allegories of the esoteric mystical tradition in terms that were understandable to the modern mind. For Jung, alchemy was above all a way of visualizing the quest for physical, emotional, and cognitive individuation. He saw its bizarre symbolism not simply as illusions or fantasies but as mental projections corresponding to the modern psychology of the unconscious. Alchemists, Jung believed, had projected onto the realm of chemical change the same life-processes evident in the dream-worlds of his patients, and he saw their allegories as pre-modern attempts to describe the perennial struggle of the psyche to achieve total integration of the unconscious background to existence, which Jung called the process of ‘individuation’. Jung specifically studied the alchemical treatise the Rosarium from the perspective of his analytical psychology, and argued that this alchemical work symbolised the archetype of ‘relationship’. He pointed out that there is an inherent affinity between opposites, and that if they can be synthesized, they become more than just a bolted-on combination of parts. The image I discussed earlier of the marriage of Sol and Luna, with its intertwined rose branches, represented for Jung the integration of the animus and anima, the male and female aspects of the human psyche, which, if achieved, permits the psyche to achieve a deeper, more holistic, level of experience.