A Rose a Day No.34

A tattoo of a rose wrapped around a cross. What are the origins of this fashionable ‘Goth’ symbol?

In alchemy the conjunction of a red rose and a wooden cross was understood to being together the "female" rose and the "male" cross. But the rose and the cross was especially important for the secret society known as Rosicrucianism, which was founded in the seventeenth century to study alchemy, Hermeticism, Cabala and Christian mysticism, and to merge them with the proto-scientific and humanist quest for deeper knowledge of the workings of the cosmos and advocacy of radical political reform of society. But even today, no one seems entirely sure why the Rosicrucians choose the title ‘rose’ and ‘cross’, but it probably derives from Christian Rosencreutz (‘Rose Cross’) the legendary figure at the centre of the so-called ‘Rosicrucian manifestos’ published in the second decade of the seventeenth century In fact, the ‘Ros’ in ‘Rosicrucian’ may not be referring to a plant at all, because in alchemy, the Latin ‘ros’ (dew) was  also a very significant symbol.

Incidentally, Rosicrucians is still alive and well. There’s an informative website, and ‘Lodges’ in most major cities, including London, where is is housed in a former Nonconformist chapel in Peckham.

But in the eighteenth century the mystical Hermetic and alchemical traditions which underpin Rosicrucianism came under increasingly devastating attack from the nascent scientific thinking that became fundamental to the Enlightenment, the “Age of Reason’, and subsequently to the entire modern age. Now, there was no place for the arcane pretensions of alchemists, Occultists or Rosicrucians. The scientific method rejected the ‘macrocosm-microcosm’ principal, replacing it by the system upon which today’s chemistry, physics, and biology are founded. This was a new worldview that proceeded based on the very different analogy in which the secrets of nature are understood according to the model of mechanism, and whose workings were reduced to mathematics. The seventeenth century philosopher had René Descartes argued that the only valid truth was that revealed through ‘clear and distinct thought’, which proceeds in a logical manner. This effectively overturned the pre-modern belief that if human reason is properly exercised, it grants spiritual or otherworldly illumination, and magical powers to transform reality. The ‘magician’ sought domination through drawing the world into the darkness of his own subjectivity, while the scientist externalized their subjectivity within the luminous world, dominating it through depersonalization. The mystical-occult insight into the macrocosm-microcosm was superseded by the abstract logical system of the modern scientist, which quickly reaped many benefits, especially in relation to medicine and technological innovation.

But the seemingly soulless society that the scientific worldview brought into existence under the sign of the mechanical analogy, quickly provoked a reaction, and as the nineteenth century unfolded, visionaries, thinkers, and artists emerged who hoped to strengthen the deep currents in Western mysticism and spirituality through the absorption of Eastern philosophical and religious traditions which were becoming increasingly known through the translation in Western languages of Buddhist and Hindu texts. Once again, the mystical rose would play its part. 

In France there was a briefly influential revival of Rosicrucianism, and in final decades of the century the Ordre Kabbalistique de la Rose Cross was founded by Joséphin Péladin and his fellow initiates. Péladin was a well-known literary figure and dandy, who promenaded around Montmartre dressed as a monk. He was also a fervent Roman Catholic, and soon broke with his colleagues to found l’Ordre de la Rose Croix Catholique, du Temple et du Graal, in which he aimed to connect occult beliefs with the Church and also with the arts. Péladin organized several exhibitions of art called Salons de la Rose-Croix, declaring: ‘The artist should be a knight in armour, eagerly engaged in the symbolic quest for the Holy Grail, a crusader waging perpetual war on the bourgeoisie!’ 

In Britain, the Hermetic Order of Golden Dawn was founded around the same time. This too proved briefly influential beyond the narrow confines of those uniquely interested in occult philosophy, such as the poet Swinburne and the writer Oscar Wilde. The Anglo-Irish poet W.B. Yates was an especially committed member of the Golden Dawn. Members wore a rose on a ‘rood’ – or cross – as a pendant to symbolize the ‘female’ rose of intellectual, spiritual, eternal beauty united with the ‘male’ cross of worldly suffering. The symbol was intended to be a talisman to remind initiates to strive to overcome the material world in their quest for spiritual transcendence. In ‘The Rose upon the Rood of Time’, Yeats wrote: ‘Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days! / Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways.’

In the early twentieth century, the German philosopher Rudolf Steiner founded Anthroposophy, another attempt to merge western humanistic science with Eastern and pre-modern European  religion and philosophy.  As Steiner described it, initiation into secret mystical knowledge must be as rigorous as any scientific experiment, and in his teachings, he described what he called the ‘Rose Cross Meditation’, which drew on the Hermetic and alchemical tradition. An initiate is invited to consider the red petals of the rose as analogous to human blood in a purified state, that is, after the destructive aspects of the human passions have died away. Next, the initiate mediates on a wooden cross symbolizing what is left behind when the passions die. Following that, the initiate visualizes seven red roses of purified, transformed blood forming a wreath around the wooden cross. This is now a composite image of a rose-cross, representing the victory of the higher, purified nature of the self over the lower animal dimension.

But I’m not sure how much knowledge of such recondite historical context and spiritual profundity lay behind the decision by the person to have the tattoo in the photograph.  This is what Wikipedia says about contemporary Goth fashion styling:

 Gothic fashion is marked by conspicuously dark, antiquated and homogeneous features. It is stereotyped as eerie, mysterious, complex and exotic. A dark, sometimes morbid fashion and style of dress, typical gothic fashion includes  black hair and black period-styled clothing.  Both male and female goths can wear dark eyeliner and dark fingernail polish, most especially black. Styles are often borrowed from punk fashion and—more currently—from the  Victorian and Elizabethan periods. It also frequently expresses pagan, occult or other religious imagery. Gothic fashion and styling may also feature silver jewelry and piercings [and tattoos].

……..

The New York Times noted: "The costumes and ornaments are a glamorous cover for the genre's somber themes. In the world of Goth, nature itself lurks as a malign protagonist, causing flesh to rot, rivers to flood, monuments to crumble and women to turn into slatterns, their hair streaming and lipstick askew".