A Rose a Day No. 5

In the latter part of his career the Belgian Surrealist René Magritte became  interested in the rose’s compelling cultural significance. In a letter from late 1951 he wrote: "My present research, at the beginning of the winter, is concerned with the rose. I must find something precious and worthy to say about it.” In ‘The Blow to the Heart’ (1952) [Illustration], Magritte seems to have painted what he discovered. A single red rose of the modern Hybrid Tea variety is shown growing on bare ground next to the ocean. Instead of prickles, it sports a large golden dagger. In a letter to the poet Paul Eluard, Magritte wrote: 

for about two months I have been looking for a solution to what I call 'the problem of the rose.’ My research now having been completed, I realize that I had probably known the answer to my question for a long time, but in an obscure fashion, and not only I myself but any other man likewise. This kind of knowledge, which seems to be organic and doesn't rise to the level of consciousness, was always present, at the beginning of every effort of research I made.... After completion of the research, it can be 'easily' explained that the rose is scented air, but it is also cruel.

Magritte’s insight was not entirely original, but his painting certainly made something that is always latently present strikingly manifest. I already mentioned the Sufi Sa’di, who declared that there is no rose without thorns, meaning that any desirable outcome inevitably has its disappointments and struggles, and this same wisdom is also found within mystical Christianity. The Catholic mystic Angelus Silesius writes: ‘Beauty I dearly love, and yet / I think that Beauty scarce adorns / Aught that I see, unless I find / It always set about with thorns.’  What these different voices remind us of is that the special power of the rose as a metaphor and symbol emanates from its duality, which makes it a fitting metaphor for the fact that pleasure and pain, life and death, exist in the same one-and-only world. But as Magritte’s reminds us, we tend to be in a state of knowing and not knowing simultaneously, we turn a blind eye, so to speak. Magritte’s insertion into his painting of a very visible dagger was obviously intended to make us apprehend what we usually don’t consciously see because we prefer not to acknowledge its implications. 

Here are some more paintings by Magritte that feature roses:

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.