The Mystical Rose
Mary, alchemy and bees
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Now on to today's topic - The Mystical Rose
If you follow me on social media (Instagram @janblencowe and Facebook JanBlencoweCreativeDepthCoach), you know I've shared a little about bumping into an esoteric phrase back in December that captured my attention.
On March 1st, on social media, I posted this...
I recently encountered an interesting esoteric phrase that sparked an entire art journal without knowing what the term meant. I love when this happens because it is creative depth work at its most potent. Archetypal images, colors, and patterns have taken me deep and conveyed a certain kind of knowledge that can't be articulated with words but must be known by the soul alone. Now that this initiation into the mystery has been completed through art making, I can pass through the next gate and explore the meaning and history of this phrase, fully prepared to receive its message.
Many of you asked what the phrase was. So today, we will explore that phrase and what I discovered.
Dat rosa mel apibus.
It means "the rose provides the bees with honey." It comes from an engraving taken from the alchemical work Summum Bonum by Robert Fludd (1629). The rose, a symbol of the Soul (and Mary), blooms upon the cross, represented by the stem and the leaves. The bees remind us that the inner journey requires intense, personal work. You can see part of that engraving in the art journal image above and the engraving in its entirety below.
I want to pause here and point out that the "cross" spoken of may be the Christian cross, given that Western Alchemy, like the entire body of the Western hermetic tradition, has always been firmly seated within Western European Christian culture. Still, the cross in the engraving is a cross with equal-length segments identical to the astrological symbol for the planet earth, and nothing in an alchemical illustration is there by accident. This gives us something to ponder since it is likely meant to be both.
I must also point out that bee symbolism linked to the goddess is found in the sacred texts, temples, and artifacts of multiple cultures dating back to the Neolithic Period.
Melissa is a name that means "honeybee" (and we see that as mel (honey) in our Latin alchemical phrase, Dat rosa mel apibus.). Melissa was also a title for the priestesses that served at the temples of Demeter and Artemis of Ephesus.
The equidistant cross and the bee are clues to the meaning of this esoteric phrase and the engraving.
When I first came upon this image and phrase, I was working on my annual winter solstice art journal. I looked up the English translation, discovered the rose, bees, and honey connection, and immediately remembered that it was told in the middle ages that those dedicated to Our Lady who spent many hours reciting the Rosary would often experience the sweetness of honey in their mouths as they prayed. How extraordinary.
Creative depth work (meaning deep inner, psychological, and spiritual work done through the creative process) opens doors in particular ways. It uses potent archetypal imagery, the image communicating the information and energy of the archetype, which we can never encounter directly.
Rather than diving headlong into a massive research project about this esoteric phrase, I allowed it to lead me in my work with images. So I created a little book to hold what I was discovering.
Without any scholarly insight into this concept, here's what I discovered through the creative process and the images I juxtaposed in my art journal.
I experienced Mary as mystical and cosmic. I remembered that she is sometimes called a "rose without thorns." It occurred to me that our usual portrayal of Mary amplifies the most loving, nurturing, and gentle traits. She is not the fierceness of destruction that is also part of the feminine, as we see in Kali or The Morrigan. Yet neither is she weak. On the contrary, she is compassionate and steadfast in the face of great suffering. Immovable, she stands with those she loves amidst the most tremendous pain. In this way, she towers above the fickleness and inconstancy we often find within ourselves.
But what of the symbols of rose and bee and honey? What do they mean?
In these, I found Mary closely tied to the earth. Her spiritual function is perfectly expressed in the workings of the rose and the bees.
I've grown roses of wide varieties for decades and garden specifically for bees, so I have plenty of practical experience with both.
This phrase Dat Rosa Mel Apibus has a deep history connected to alchemy, Rosicrusianism, and hermeticism. But, while it delves deep and overflows with esoteric meaning, like most parables, it hangs profound insight on a common, simple, and earthy framework. Like the lilies of the field, and the kernel of wheat that falls to the ground to produce a harvest, the rose gives honey to the bees is a paradox of hidden meaning and obvious fact.
However, it would be a mistake with any parable to skip over the obviousness of the vehicle and go directly to the more profound insight. Every mystical saying and spiritual parable chooses its everyday language carefully, and embedded within that commonplace image is yet another layer of meaning to be gleaned by the seeker.
If Mary is the Rose in this mystical phrase, what do we learn about Mary? First, the rose is, according to fossil evidence, 35 million years old. In nature, the genus Rosa has some 150 species. So, human beings have always known the rose in some form.
In the realm of the archetypes, the Rose is the Feminine or the goddess. Mary, as we know and experience her today within the framework of Christianity, is one of the many species of rose. She is one of many divine feminine avatars. She is ancient as real roses are, and like the botanical rose, she has always been known to us.
She has always been known to us.
That was my first insight. I struggle with that because I struggle to "know" Mary. This made my creative pursuit especially important because it felt like an invitation to get the know her in a unique way.
Second, I was able to use my own knowledge and experience with roses and bees to learn more about her.
When I first began to grow roses, I grew overwhelmingly beautiful English roses. These roses were developed by legendary English rosarian David Austin in Shropshire, UK. They are voluptuous, many-petaled, in heartbreakingly delicate colors with lilting fragrances and classic tea rose scents. I liken these to the delicately painted, pastel-robed, sweetly smiling contemporary statues of Mary that flooded our culture in the twentieth century.
But over the years, I moved away from the soft, sweet, and delicate roses and turned instead to the wilder, sprawling, five-petaled species rose. And that's when I noticed that the bees preferred wild roses. Why? It's really very simple. Species (or wild) roses have fewer petals. They open their petals and offer their pollen freely. They're not modest; they don't hide their most intimate secrets under layers and layers of delicate yet impenetrable petals.
And so it is with Mary. She freely, with wild abandon, graciousness, and abundance, offers spiritual knowledge and the hidden secrets of the Spirit to all of her bees. A more untamed Mary, less bound by the institutional church and more connected to the earth, to roses and bees, who offers to make accessible and knowable spiritual truth mirrors my gardening journey from proper English roses to wild roses.
Like five-petaled wild roses make collecting pollen easy for the bees, Mary, as an aspect of the divine feminine, makes it easy to gather what the soul needs. She is welcoming and inviting, preparing a place for our souls to land and gather what we need.
Of course, we, seekers of spiritual truth, are her bees. In the garden of spiritual knowledge, Mary is Queen, just as the rose is the queen of flowers.
Bees perform a complicated symbolic dance to communicate the location of an abundant food source to the other bees. This is the purpose of opaque alchemical texts, phrases, and illustrations. Like a symbolic dance encoded with hidden information, they help you find spiritual food.
Working in my art journal, with images, paints, and symbols, allowed me to distill meaning and find what I needed. As a seeker bee, I like to use all the tools available to me to create at a deeply symbolic and spiritual level.
In this instance, I took the opportunity to use AI to create images of Mary as Queen of the Roses and Mistress of the Bees. This gave me new pictures of Mary, a new vision that incorporated all the symbolism I found connected to her and Dat Rosa Mel Apibus, allowing me to document the inquiry and exploration of that mystical phrase.
Sweet as Honey
The honey, the reward for this work, has been sweet indeed. I've made progress in my ongoing journey of getting to know Mary. I now find her intimately connected to the garden, roses, and bees. I can see her presence on the earth and conceive of her as a spiritual being that delights in teaching us through nature. In this aspect, I can sense her as closer and more available while simultaneously understanding that she is a mystical rose with hidden mysteries that she shares freely with my soul.
Mary is becoming an ever more critical part of my spiritual life and understanding of what is real and good in the spiritual dimensions.
Remember, I noted earlier, "The bees remind us that the inner journey requires intense, personal work." And so it does.
When you come across something, a phrase, a picture, a poem, that instantly feels important, don't simply let it go and move on. Instead, notice, linger, and do something with it. These are often gifts that are sprinkled in your path. They are meant to entice you deeper into your own inner journey. So whether you write, paint, art journal, or do interpretive dance, use the creative process to explore the deeper spiritual meaning in things that catch your attention.
This is the way to fill your life with nourishment for your soul and experience the world's re-enchantment. Creative depth work offers ways to bridge the merely material and the realms beyond that are often hinted at within day-to-day experience.
If you have a story about Mary in your own life, please share it in the comments. It enriches us when we gift our stories and experiences to others.
Growing up in a largely Catholic town with Catholic and Protestant Grandparents, I had never really connected with the energy of Mother Mary. If you google, "Our Lady of the Rockies" you will see that we even have a giant steel statue of her perched on the ridge overlooking my hometown, Butte, Montana. In 2019 I traveled to southern France with a small group of artists whose medium was "SoulCollage®". Our express purpose was to follow the path of Mary Magdalene and the Black Madonna. This journey helped me to connect with three aspects of the Mary energy-not just the Virgin. I would propose that the Black Madonna brings in some of the Kali energy. That trip changed my connection to the stories, myths, and energies of this powerful trinity of the Feminine-Mary, Mary Magdalene, and the Black Madonna.
I have also been seeking Mary. I’ve been feeling very drawn to her. This reminded me of the soul collage that I made using a found image of Mary. I surrounded her image with ( die cut )roses from the 1940’s, Germany, that I found in a local antique shop. I had been saving them for what? It felt like I needed to use these around her image. Now I understand why. I call her Lady of the Roses. I don’t have a Catholic upbringing so I’m only vaguely familiar with the Holy Mother but I feel her quiet, gentle presence in my life.