The Roses and the Lilies

Chronata

As I get further in my creation of my own tarot, I have been, (feverishly and obsessively, ya might say!) deconstructing all the symbolism that I love from the RWS and reexamining, redefining and rediscovering them...

And I get to the roses and the lillies found on several of the cards.

Now some cards have only the red roses pictured in them...(the Queen of pents..the 4 wands)

but there are those few with the red rose and the white lily combined...
the obvious for me have always been the Magician, the 2 wands, and the Ace of Pentacles.

and now...I have just discovered them in the robes of the two men in the Hierophant.

In my earliest tarot studies...and the many classes I took from various tarot "gurus..." I have come to believe that the rose and lily together symbolize the balance of thought and desire. (lily=thought...rose=desire) or put more simply...the balance of the head and the heart.

but now, I have heard that there are many other ideas about what they symbolize.

I have also heard that the red rose is the blood/body/physical self
and that the white lily is the pure/soul/astral self

Another is that the lily is creative thought and inspiration and that the rose is manefestation. The ideas behind creative visualization .

also the rose is love, the lily purity...so together they represent pure love, or unconditional Love (beyond simply the physical relationship love)

I'm interested if anyone else has any other thoughts or meanings to atribute to these flowers...or even thoughts as to why they appear in the cards that they do!
 

Imagemaker

Random thought as I skim your post:
roses for weddings
lilies for funerals

Is that tradition? It's what comes to mind (though I've seen plenty of roses at funerals).
 

Chronata

Very interesting thought, Imagemaker...thanks!

It brings to mind the sad fate of ritual in modern western (especially USA) society. That the only real "Rituals" left to us our those associated with weddings and funerals.

Every ritual symbolizes a passage or a change of some sort.
There used to ancient rituals for many stages and many passages...like birth, or when children pass into adulthood...and now we have only these two left...

weddings/marriages to symbolize the union... the passage from being individual to being in a partnership..
and the funeral/death...the passage from one world to the next..

roses...love union partnership
lilies...grief hope? death rebirth

I'll have to think some more on this...already my mind is spiralling off in different directions!
 

Imagemaker

There are modern versions of coming-of-age rituals--people still have celebrations of these, in the family at least:

learning to drive a car
leaving the parents' home (often for school, a trade for another form of authority--but graduation ceremonies are definitely a ritual)
baby showers as a ritual for the coming child
baptism, in some families
some modern women have a ritual to celebrate a daughter's first period

At the college where I work, there are multiple rituals for students as they progress through the grades--a "hooding" for pre-graduation, a sophomore-class "investiture" to mark that they have committed to the college, and others.

It strikes me that our rituals are much more variable and private than for past generations. But I think they're still there in some form.

In my husband's family, the way we spent Christmas Eve and Day was a set ritual (pattern of events). His parents want to do everything the same, year after year, they make Everything a ritual in the sense that certain patterns and expectations must be followed.

So what is a ritual, anyway? (Did I ask that question wa-ay too late?)
 

tmgrl2

I am also coming to reflect on the black, white, red and gold in terms of their alchemical meaings...here's a link, someone kindly sent me... The Camoin-Jodo TdM deck also says they consider the black, white and red as the basic alchemical colors..this separates the colors from the flowers, but just a thought....

http://www.soul-guidance.com/houseofthesun/alchemyintro.htm#Contents

terri
 

Catpaw

Lily & Rose

Lily is also the sign of illumination and purity of original intentions.
 

tmgrl2

Did a search on "roses and lilles," I found exactly the thread I wanted. Last night I read the opening chapter in Kaplan's Volume III of The Encyclopedia of Tarot. It is a bio on Pamela Colman Smith. It was quite interesting.

The end of her life was quite sad, as she died owing volumes of money, leaving her "estate" to a companion. The estate and all in it had to be sold to pay debts. Only 25% of what she owed was paid.

Anyhow, there was mention of all of her art throughout her life, but I had not noticed, as commented in the article, that she had roses and lilies in so many of her Tarot cards. The article says:

Her writings indicate that, for her, ritual and symbolism derived their power to illuminate from teh senses, emotion and the imagination, not from the mind...Waite placed mos tof th eemphasis on the Major Arcana, allowing Pamela more freedom in devising the Minor Arcana. The fact that few of the cards resemble Pamela's previous works would indicate that she chose at least several of the images of the Minor Arcana.....The designs in the Rider-Waite Tarot deck exemplify what Smith sought to express in all her paintings an drawings --mysticism, ritual, imagination, fantasy and a deep experience of the emotions felt, but not always understood, in everyday life....Throughout the cards, the colors of blue, yellow, orange-red grey and green predominate. EAch card carries Smith's monogram as found on all her paintings an ddrawings, a composite o fher three initials reading from top to bottom "PCS."

Later M. Irwin MacDonald is quoted as saying:

The key that unlocks this world to Pamela Colman Smith is music. She sees music, rather than hears it, and she expresses, --as perfectly as she can and with the literal directness of a child, ---exactly what she sees...Yet, by a strange contradiction, it is the music of Debussy that reveals the most glowing, vivid pictures in the collection....

Pamela Colman Smith is so naturally a mystic that she has but little intellectual interest in mysticism. From childhood she has had the gift of the "second sight"......

As re the roses and lilies, the article mentions that they appear in many of her pictures (as do the pomegranites). No mention of any direct validation as to why these symbols. Given the fact, however, that she was a member of the Golden Dawn with all that that entails belief-wise. The article suggests that Waite pursued a more spiritua. Rosicrutian-Christian order, that may have led to her later conversion to Catholicism. Although, she was dedicated to activities in the Catholic Church she was heard to say much later in her life that Catholocism was "such fun."

So, now when I see the roses and lilies, somehow they seem more symbolic, as a reflect on meaning, of perhaps some Christian/Catholic elements....the rose with its thorns (Death)
and the Lily of Easter --Resurrection.

Certainly wider interpretations are there for the individual reader. That is the beauty of reflection on the cards. But I wanted to share bits of what I read. The article is filled with pictures of much of her artwork. Worth reading. Also found out, it is Colman without the "e," and Rider was the publisher. I'm such a beginner!
Now I know where all three of the names orginate and feel I probably should be calling it by the acronym of RWS, so that all involved in its creation are credited.

t2
 

rainstarhorizon

roses and lillies

Roses(red) and lillies (white)that I put together initially from my grandmother telling me were:Always red roses for ardour and courage and white for purity of motive. A Hungarian-Irish Celt,she also managed to be a Christian.She said the rose was the born Christ and the lily the subcarnate Christ.As in the alchemical tradition she said they both contain tinctures of the gold.Anotherwords we can look not only at physical exemplars but also Spirit.If we look at the actual shape of the flowers as embracing space and reacting in it-the rose has manifest and the lily still holds secrets.This is taken directly from the commonly used image of a blooming rose-open and showing it's heart vs
the lily which appears almost to simple-with it's long throat still hiding its secret...hence symbolism of life hidden from life or beyond death.Roughly these correspond to the solar energies-gold with a red tincture and lunar- white with a gold tincture.
I agree with the as above,so below interpretations also the rosicrusion where I feel they are setting out the open rose above the mystically pregnant lily.GM also told me that basically every name could be made to fit as either a red or a white....
 

tmgrl2

I like your post, rainstarhorizon! The alchemical allusion to red and to white with hints of the Gold...

Also the openness of the rose and the lily suggestion birth or rebirth.

terri