The Roses and the Lilies

What a lovely topic!

I began wondering what would roses or lilies mean to Pamela Colman Smith, a young design graduate of the Pratt Institute, but also well-versed in stage settings and influenced by mystical Waite and in the same company of poets and writers...but all I could find were Victorian sentimental meanings...

Not quite roses and lilies, but the idea of red and white roses together in some symbolism:


http://www.hugkiss.com/flowermean.shtml


And perhaps the 1909 designs provided by Holly Volly and the transcribed Waite text might assist--that is for students looking for the online versions of images to refer to for Rider Waite designs...

http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/xr/ar01.htm

Hope this is helpful to you....great symbolic study!

Regards,

Cerulean Mari

Cerulean...thank you! I especially loved the first link!

I already have the other saved for quick reference.

terri

White...achieving spiritual purity....rebirth of spirit...

Red....achieving recognition of your spiritual or divine essence while in your physical body....

White Queen and the Red King....the blending in the physical plane towards achieving...Gold...the Great Work!

this came up in a reading yesterday......and after the reading I revisited this thread...good discussion!

i was just doing a reading and that came up!!!

Roses and lilies are an always-elusive symbol for me. i see them in a reading and I usually just see mystery . . . Of course, I can FORCE myself to be pedantic and put a "meaning" into words, but they just seem more etherial and spiritual than other symbols on cards.

Anyway, I was obsessively scanning cards . . . and found roses and/or lilies on the following cards:

Fool's clothes?
Magician, of course
Empress's dress? (roses)
Hierophant's followers
Strength (roses)
Death (white rose flag)

2 Wands, of course
2 Cups? (wreath on man's head are roses?)
6 Cups? (are the star flowers lilies?)
9 Swords (roses on quilt)
Ace Pentacles
3 Pentacles? (is that a rose in the carving?)
5 Pentacles (roses in the stained glass window)
Queen Pentacles (in a rose bower)

Both the Rose and the Lily have been associated with the Virgin Mary at various times, and in different countries.

elnor

The 1=10 Initiation of the Golden Dawn includes the reference “thine is the Kingdom, and the Power and the Glory, the Rose of Sharon and the Lilly of the Valley, Amen”.

And from the Bible.
Song 2:1,6-8,16 (NIV) I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys... O that his left hand were under my head, and that his right hand embraced me!

I found this discussion about it
http://www.osogd.org/library/biscuits/Lily-Rose.html

Elnor said:

Both the Rose and the Lily have been associated with the Virgin Mary at various times, and in different countries.

elnor

Click to expand...

I think this is the key insight here: didn't PCS have a life-long interest in Catholicism? Didn't she finally convert?

Thanks very much Similia and Frelkins. Of course it's etherial and elusive--it's KABBALISTIC!! Two aspects of divine feminine, Malkuth on the throne of Binah, the rose with the lily.

I'm also thinking of the lily presented to Mary in the annunciation and the celestial rose of the Divine Comedy. This kind of switches the attributions, the rose is the mother (presence of god?) and the daughter (Mary) is the lily. That's probably the point--the lowest shall be the highest. The humble maidservant becomes the Queen of Heaven.

Ahh, roses and lilies put my head in the heavens!!

The woman that was my spiritual teacher for some time claimed the troubadoures of old, the 'Minnesänger', said the Goddess' beauty was " wie die Lilie, die bei der Rose steht' - as the lily standing next to the rose.