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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in rose

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

Buy Dog Rose (Rosa Canina) 50+ seeds online :: Seeds :: HobbySeeds Store

Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,

Far-off, most secret, and inviolate Rose.


(William Butler Yeats, "The Secret Rose")

 

In order to understand what I'm about to tell you, you need to know that the Witches' Goddess is known among witches, somewhat cryptically, as “the Rose.”

(If you can't see why that would be, then what kind of a witch are you?)

Hence the phrase sub rosa, “under the rose,” meaning confidentially.

When someone tells you something “under the rose,” it's not to be shared with outsiders. When told this, by listening, you thereby accede, as if you had sworn an oath.

The Craft is hedged about with roses. (I mean here, of course, the original rose, the rose of five petals.) The pentagram, of course, is known as the “witch's rose.”

Some things are of the Rose, not meant for others' ears. You may be told “This is under the Rose.” In season, a rose in bloom may be held up silently, and laid upon the table. A rose may be drawn with the finger in the air, or over the lips. All these forms are binding.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
The magic of rosehips

Rosehips

 

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Secret Star

They say that in the old days there were many signs by which our people would recognize one another.

This is the story of one of them.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Rose in Winter

It's the Eve of Russian Christmas. Perfumed with incense, the church is dark, lit only by candlelight.

I stand with the other worshipers, savoring the chewy Slavonic chant. For me, it is Midwinter's Eve all over again: we gather together in cavernous darkness, awaiting the Momentous.

After the service, we file forward. Wielding, with practiced deftness, a delicate little paintbrush, the priest anoints us, one by one.

As the bristles brush my brow, my nostrils fill with the ghostly fragrance of roses. In the heart of Midwinter, the voluptuous scent of Midsummer.

I think of Her who is called Rosa Mundi, Rose of the World, Mother of Witches.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Winter Peach

Don't get me wrong: I love apples.

But when's the last time that you bit into an apple and had juice run down your forearm and drip from your elbow?

A good pear is truly a full-body experience.

Pears. I just ate my first one of the season. OMGs.

The Witch Goddess's sacred flower is, of course, the Rose, but the Rose family is a large one. Apples are roses. So are pears. Cut one with the stem. Like an apple, it will show forth the Flower of Life. And cut across the stem, behold: the Fivefold Star of Rebirth.

We've been eating pears for a long time: since, apparently, the Neolithic, if not before. They ate them in the Lake Villages of Stone Age Switzerland. They're mentioned in Linear B inscriptions from Mycenaean Greece. The name pear comes ultimately from Latin, which got it from Greek, which got it from the Phoenicians (p'ri = “fruit”).

And every pear's a little goddess. Hold one in your hand. It's like one of those big-hipped Mamas that the ancestors made to make the garden grow. It irks me when people say that a situation has gone “pear-shaped” to mean that it's gone wrong. Is the implication really that perfection = round? Round things roll away and break. Low centers of gravity mean stability.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Tyger
    Tyger says #
    I'm currently visiting family in Switzerland. More and better pear varieties than in the Southern US where I live. I am in pear h
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    I've long been struck by the absence--that annoying partridge aside--of pears in mythology/the Received Tradition. As my friend V
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I clipped a recipe from the newspaper for apple kielbasa bake. The last three times I've made it I used pears instead of apples.
  • Kile Martz
    Kile Martz says #
    Unlike the proliferation of commercial apple varieties here in the US, you will find few varieties of pears at your local grocer.

Posted by on in Paths Blogs

Planning a ritual, I was thinking about what sort of drink to offer to specific gods, and listening inwardly to see if my plans were acceptable. Freya said she wanted rose.

I had gotten into the habit of smelling the pink rose in the front yard for Freya. It's an antique breed with a wonderful scent. I clarified: Did she want more of that? Yes, that rose. To cut the flowers and bring them inside? No. To eat.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Erin Lale
    Erin Lale says #
    After I posted this, I received an ad for the opening of a new grocery story in my town. I just went to it and they have the Fenti
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I remember seeing a recipe for candied violets. I think the same thing can be done with rose petals.

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Wayward Daughter

Dion Fortune was wrong.

Not all goddesses are one goddess.

There's Earth, Mother of all Life. She and her family—Sun, Thunder, Fire, the Winds, the plants, the animals—live out our lives together. Her story—our story—is what we call the Wheel of the Year.

And then there's the Moon.

Moon is the wayward daughter, the child who goes off and has a life of her own.

She has her own cycles, but they're not synched with those of everyone else. She has her own changes, powerful and independent. She's still Earth's daughter, part of the great family of the gods, and part of the life of that family, but very much on her own terms.

There in her sky (L. M. Boston) she wheels, independent of Earth's cycles, wandering the horizon in her Great Cycle as she will: ours but always her own.

That's why we worship her.

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Recent comment in this post - Show all comments
  • Anna
    Anna says #
    Thanks for this story. It will stay with me.

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