by Zane Maser
Each person is a demonstration of God’s love and beauty in the world.
The fragrant rose is a flower of Venus. If we imagine the various meanings of Venus as petals of a rose, with each petal enhancing and blending seamlessly into the next one, we can sense the kindly, gentle vibration of this peace-loving planet. Venus symbolizes our fundamental value system in terms of what we generally hold most dear. Thus, this first petal relates principally to how we value our self as an individual. This crucial sense of inner worth (or the lack of it) is anchored within the initial embrace of our family, which ideally treated us as a lovable, beautiful person. From this psychologically encouraging beginning, we have a firm foundation for building a life of meaning and significance. Venus mirrors outwardly, in so many ways, our perception of our internal worthiness and thus the degree of inner harmony we feel and radiate forth.
Moving to the next petal, Venus signifies the quest for and potential to attain harmony and balance within our self and our life. As the epitome of symmetry and poise, the Fourth Ray, that of Venus, represents harmony gained through conflict. Her central aim is always the on-going process of peace and equanimity, both inwardly and outwardly. Each time we resolve an internal, niggling discord we are more able to interact in ways that are gracious, cooperative, diplomatic, and unifying. We create fulfilling relationships based on mutual agreement and compromise, which take into account the feelings and needs of all involved
In yet another petal, we experience the feminine energy of Venus that leads us softly to our heart and opens the feeling side of our being. Our emotional heartbeat is a touchstone of Venus, for she is the round-edged planet of love, desire, pleasure, and sociability. She is emblematic of true femininity, and, together with the Moon, represents the qualities we associate with the anima (soul) or sensual feminine. The Moon is a more mature, security-oriented, motherly aspect of the feminine, while Venus tends to be youthful, flirtatious, and ardent in her passions.
Tenderness, nurturing, sharing, compassion, grace, and sensitivity are the positive expressions of woman, which also includes the feminine part of the male’s psyche. Her glyph is the circle of spiritual awareness placed above the cross of matter—the universal symbol for the female, which also depicts the legendary mirror of Venus. Being a Yin planet—one representing the negative or passive polarity—Venus is a receptive, often subtle influence that ideally expresses her power in tactful, persuasive ways rather than through a potent, harsh, or contentious demeanor.
As with all duality, Venus has her dark, self-indulgent side with its unattractive qualities. This contrast in the different faces of Venus demonstrates the Eternal law: as first within, so without. Hence, how we express our Venus energy inevitably draws to us exactly what we are: peace within, peace without; self-centered within, self-centered without. A classic example is Islam, a Venus-ruled religion and a word that means “peace,” but what face of Islam is predominantly seen or heard about in today’s press?
Another petal of the rose epitomizes Venus as the cosmic principle of attraction and the expression of beauty in all its myriad forms. From mythology, we know that Venus was the embodiment of beauty, so wherever she walked flowers grew. As the outer world simply responded to the internal beauty of Venus through the spontaneous blooming of flowers, our inner beauty is likewise naturally exuded in all we fashion outwardly in our lives. Were we to live the highest essence of Venus, flowers might also bloom at our feet!
Well known as the morning or evening star, Venus is the loveliest, most luminous sparkle in the sky after the Sun and Moon (our Celestial Parents). Phosphoros, Greek for ‘light bearer,’ was an early name for Venus, and in flawless style her orbital path between the Earth and the Sun is an almost perfect circle! Pythagoras illuminated an ancient, mystical connection between Venus and the Sun (our spiritual heart wherein burns the inner flame) when he called her the sol alter, meaning the ‘other Sun,’ due to her radiant glow. No wonder she is the archetypal goddess who inspires our aesthetic ideals and the planetary vibration that magnetizes to us all that is eternally lovely and refined in thought, form, touch, fragrance, color, and sound.
Venus is associated with the mind in the heart and the higher mental and celestial planes, thus with all we create by the steady control of our thoughts. As the key to spiritual unfoldment, the heart chakra is closely linked with Venus (and to the Air signs), along with her symbols of the six-pointed Star and rose blooming within the heart. The geometric pattern formed from Venus’ cycle in relationship to the Earth, as seen from the Earth, is a five-petaled rose. Every eight years, when Venus shows the same face to the Earth, the pair ‘kiss’ and another petal is formed. These stunningly symmetrical patterns of the Venusian ‘dance’ actually form both a heart and a rose!
Being perfectly polarized, the Star of Venus signifies the ultimate attainment of harmony between mind and heart, between the inner and outer life. From this point of equilibrium, when opposites unify and conflicts vanish, when the thoughts and emotions are silenced yet finely attentive, comes our deepest capacity for intimate relationships, true love, and creative expression. By tuning in to the underlying spirit of Oneness, we are able to mingle with all levels of life and attract further opportunities to serve the Whole in our encounters. Through the power of love and serenity of heart, we become the Living Rose. And Venus, patroness of heavenly grace and good fortune, generously rewards us by bestowing her many gifts—the greatest being not outer possessions but the sacred union with our Divine Self.
Although the individual petals of the Venusian rose illustrate her various domains, each sphere of influence merges one with another. Softening the edges of life, Venus works through synthesis. For this reason, self-worth is deeply wedded to an inner sense of harmony that results in personal charisma and the desire for relationships. Love, as the feeling language of the heart, is both the greatest unifier and inspiration behind all forms of creativity, whether it is in the joy of gardening, composing music, designing jewelry, or setting an elegant table.
In her most blessed form, Venus represents the awakened spiritual soul. Her kindhearted vibrations manifest at their purest when in Pisces, the sign in which Venus is exalted. In her watery realm, Venus exemplifies the soul who has transformed feelings of selfishness into selflessness, who expresses love not from the personal level but from the universal. As the goddess of the gentle way, one of her sacred animals is the white dove of peace, a bird that is symbolic of the all-encompassing, omnipresent love of God. When we allow ourselves to be enfolded within the spiritual rose of Venus, we are blessed with a peace and beauty that surpasses worldly understanding and thereby helps not only to quicken the vibratory rate on Earth but also to elevate, ever so slightly, the consciousness of humanity.
1. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung, Roman de la Rose.
For Love it prayeth, and also
Commaundeth me that it be so
And if ther any aske me,
Whether that it be he or she,
How [that] this book [the] which is here
Shal hote, that I rede you here;
It is the Romance of the Rose,
In which al the art of love I close …
Le Roman de la Rose (i.e., The Romance of the Rose) is a French medieval poem begun by Guillaume de Lorris and continued by Jean de Meung; Chaucer began translating it into English (though he never finished doing so), and the lines quoted above are from the Chaucer translation (also linked to above, side-by-side with the French original).
It takes the form of an allegorical dream vision, where ‘Rose’ refers both to the name of the lady in the poem and the concept of female sexuality. A long work to begin this pick of rose poems, but a classic!
2. Edmund Waller, ‘Go, Lovely Rose’.
Go, lovely rose!
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be …
Roses can also symbolise the beauty of the beloved. Even in the seventeenth century, this was an old idea, as Edmund Waller’s famous song ‘Go, Lovely Rose’ suggests. But this is a charming lyric, and proved very influential on later love lyrics (and it was much parodied).
3. Robert Burns, ‘A Red, Red Rose’.
O my Luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune …
Roses are beautiful, blooming, delicate, pretty, and (at least in many poems) the redness of the roses also calls to mind the hot and passionate (and romantic) associations of the colour red. Bob Dylan once said that Burns’s poem was the single greatest influence on him; here’s Burns’s classic lyric.
4. William Blake, ‘The Sick Rose’.
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy …
In his study of William Blake, the scholar D. G. Gillham draws a helpful distinction between metaphorical and symbolic imagery, arguing that in ‘The Sick Rose’ Blake does not compare one thing neatly with something else (metaphorical), but rather offers up an image (or collection of images) without telling us what they are to be compared to.
This makes ‘The Sick Rose’ symbolic, because the rose, its bed, and the worm which destroys it are all clearly representative of something else, but Blake does not tell us what this something else is.
5. John Keats, ‘To a Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses’.
As late I rambled in the happy fields,
What time the skylark shakes the tremulous dew
From his lush clover covert;—when anew
Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields;
I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields,
A fresh-blown musk-rose; ’twas the first that threw
Its sweets upon the summer: graceful it grew
As is the wand that Queen Titania wields.
And, as I feasted on its fragrancy,
I thought the garden-rose it far excelled;
But when, O Wells! thy roses came to me,
My sense with their deliciousness was spelled:
Soft voices had they, that with tender plea
Whispered of peace, and truth, and friendliness unquelled.
So concludes this charming sonnet from a second-generation Romantic poet, John Keats (1795-1821), in response to being sent some roses. Here we find the intense sensuousness we expect from Keats, and the unexpected idea of the roses have ‘voices’ only adds to the sensory overload.
The Goddess Mother 