Rose (symbolism)

Red Roses

Roses have been long used as symbols in a number of societies. Roses are ancient symbols of love and beauty. "Rose" means pink or red in a variety of languages (such as the Romance languages and Greek).

The Classical Era

The rose was sacred to a number of goddesses including Isis, whose rose appears in the late classical allegorical novel The Golden Ass as "the sweet Rose of reason and virtue" that saves the hero from his bewitched life in the form of a donkey.[1] The ancient Greeks and Romans identified the rose with the goddess of love, Aphrodite (Greek name) and Venus (Roman name).

In Rome a wild rose would be placed on the door of a room where secret or confidential matters were discussed. The phrase sub rosa, or "under the rose", means to keep a secret — derived from this ancient Roman practice.

Islam and Sufism

The cultivation of geometrical gardens, in which the rose has often held pride of place, has a long history in Iran and surrounding lands.[2][3] In the lyric ghazal, it is the beauty of the rose that provokes the longing song of the nightingale[4] - an image prominent, for example, in the poems of Hafez.[5]

In turn, the imagery of lover and beloved became a type of the Sufi mystic's quest for divine love, so that Ibn Arabi, for example, aligns the rose with the beloved's blushing cheek on the one hand and, on the other, with the divine names and attributes.[6]

Other well-known examples of rose symbolism in Sufism include;

The rose is the emblem of Islamabad Capital Territory in Pakistan

In Christianity

Selling roses on St George's Day in Catalonia

Medieval Christians identified the five petals of the rose with the five wounds of Christ. Roses also later came to be associated with the Virgin Mary. The red rose was eventually adopted as a symbol of the blood of the Christian martyrs. A bouquet of red roses, often used to show love, is used as a Valentine's Day gift in many countries. On St George's Day in Catalonia people offer dark red roses as gifts, especially between lovers. The Virolai, a hymn to the Virgin of Montserrat, one of the black Madonnas of Europe, begins with the words: "Rosa d’abril, Morena de la serra..." (April rose, dusky lady of the mountain chain...). Therefore this virgin is sometimes known as “Rosa d’abril”. The red rose is thus widely accepted as an unofficial symbol of Catalonia.[7]

Roses are occasionally the basis of design for rose windows comprising five or ten segments (the five petals and five sepals of a rose) or multiples thereof, though most Gothic rose windows are much more elaborate.

The Rose of England

The Tudor rose.

The rose is the national flower of England.[8] The usage dates from the reign of Henry VII who introduced the Tudor rose, combining a red rose, representing the House of Lancaster, and a white rose, representing the House of York, as a symbol of unity after the English civil wars of the 15th century which, long after, came to be called the Wars of the Roses. The rose thus appears in the histories of William Shakespeare and in the Child Ballads. It has been the symbol of England Rugby, and of the Rugby Football Union, since 1871.[8]

In North America

Rose-picking in the Rose Valley near the town of Kazanlak in Bulgaria, 1870s; engraving by Austro-Hungarian traveller Felix Philipp Kanitz

In 1986 it was named the floral emblem of the United States,[9] and it is the provincial flower of Alberta (the wild rose) in Canada. It is the state flower of four US states: Iowa and North Dakota (R. arkansana), Georgia (R. laevigata), and New York[10] (Rosa generally). Portland, Oregon counts "City of Roses" among its nicknames, and holds an annual Rose Festival, as does Pasadena, California, holding the Tournament of Roses Parade since 1890 in conjunction with the Rose Bowl since 1902. In April 2011, the United States government space program agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration celebrated the Hubble Space Telescope's 21st anniversary by releasing an image of spiral galaxies positioned in a rose-like shape.[11]

Socialism

A red rose (often held in a hand) is a symbol of socialism or, more notably, social democracy: it is used as a symbol by German, British, Irish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Brazilian, Dutch, Bulgarian, Korean, and other European labour, socialist or social democratic parties, mostly adopted in the period after World War II.[12]

In the world today

The rose is used as a symbol of love and compassion in many countries (e.g. USA, England, Spain, France, Italy). The meaning ascribed to the rose depends on context; general examples include the romantic love of roses given on Valentine's Day, as part of courtship or for an anniversary; filial love in the case of mother's day; compassion in the case of a funeral.

Other

The White Rose was a World War II non violent resistance group in Germany.

Gallery

Wikimedia Commons has media related to roses as symbols.

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://www.jnanam.net/golden-ass/
  2. ↑ http://lj.uwpress.org/content/4/1/23.short
  3. ↑ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1478-1913.1941.tb00950.x/abstract
  4. ↑ Diba, Layla S. (2001). "Gol o bolbol". In Yarshater, Ehsan. Encyclopædia Iranica 11. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 52–57. Retrieved 15 November 2013.
  5. ↑ Julian Baldick in History of Persian Literature - Google Books;
  6. ↑ Ibn Arabi, The Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, Trans. R.A.Nicholson, Theosophical Publishing House 1911/1978, p 130, 145
  7. ↑ "Escolania de Montserrat - El Virolai".
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Symbols of England Retrieved 13 April 2011
  9. ↑ "National Flower of the United States". Retrieved 2008-02-04.
  10. ↑ "New York State Flower". Retrieved 2007-10-01.
  11. ↑ "NASA's Hubble Celebrates 21st Anniversary with 'Rose' of Galaxies", NASA, April 20, 2011, retrieved January 1, 2014
  12. ↑ Tament Library: About Our Logo, New York University