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.
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. The ancient
Greeks and Romans identified the rose with the goddess of love, Aphrodite and
Venus. 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. In the lyric ghazal,
it is the beauty of the rose that provokes the longing song of the
nightingale - an image prominent, for example, in the poems of Hafez.
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. Other well-known examples of rose
symbolism in Sufism include; The Sufi master Jilani is known as "the
Rose of Baghdad" and his order, the Qadiriyya, uses the rose as its symbol.
Two prominent books aligned with Sufism are The Rose Garden by Saadi and Mahmud
Shabistari's The Rose Garden of Secrets. The rose is the emblem of Islamabad
Capital Territory in Pakistan In Christianity
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...". Therefore, this virgin is sometimes
known as “Rosa d’abril”. The red rose is thus widely accepted as an unofficial
symbol of Catalonia. Roses are occasionally the basis of
design for rose windows comprising five or ten segments or multiples thereof,
though most Gothic rose windows are much more elaborate.
The Rose of England The rose is the national flower of
England. 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. In North America
In 1986 it was named the floral emblem of the United States, and it is the
provincial flower of Alberta in Canada. It is the state flower of four US
states: Iowa and North Dakota, Georgia, and New York. 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.
Socialism A red rose 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. In the world today
The rose is used as a symbol of love and compassion in many countries. 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 See also
Plant symbolism Language of flowers
References