The Spiritual Meaning of the Rose

The rose, like the divine feminine, has been demoted from being powerful and sacred to being seen as something trite, incompetently soft, and passive. The rose, like the feminine, has had to suffer the disrespect of its true nature, including the infantilization, invalidation, and trivialization of the best parts of what it is.

The rose has been with me since I was born. I come from a culture that incorporates roses in everyday rituals, special occasions, and cooking. I couldn’t imagine a world without roses. There is a part of me that thinks that the rose upholds the entire world on its spiral blooms.

To work with the powerful energy of the rose, you need only smell it, taste it, touch it, or gaze at it. It’s a tactile flower that invites your interaction. I invite you to gaze intermittently at the center of a rose while you explore the spiritual meaning of this plant.

Bringing Heaven to Earth and Grounding Our Spiritual Energy

What the rose declares more than anything else is that heaven needs to be a place on earth. The rose doesn’t shy away from displaying its own beauty, nor does it pretend that it doesn’t need its thorns. The rose teaches us the beauty of polarity and therefore wholeness; that balance of an unfurling bloom with serrated leaves and a thorned, hardy stem shows us the balance we need to strike within ourselves to bring heaven to earth.

The rose is one of the oldest cultivated flowers in the world, sharing a very close bond with humans. As it has such a grounded, ancient relationship with humans, the energy of the rose is not so lofty as to remain unreachable and ethereal. Instead, the rose represents immanence; the divine qualities so desired “somewhere out there” already exist within everything. The rose doesn’t seek to get anywhere or be in a higher dimension. The rose loves the earth as it is and wants to spread its beauty across the land.

This makes the rose a wonderful ally for times when you find yourself indulging in spiritual escapism; this sacred plant can help you ground yourself deeply. In this way the rose is an empath’s best friend.

Opening Up to Ecstatic Strength

If the rose was a tarot card, it would be the Strength card. If the rose was a part of the body, it would be the backbone.

Many of us hold the idea that strength can only come from the school of hard knocks—“Trauma is a teacher.” “Coal becomes a diamond under pressure.” “No pain, no gain.” The list of adages goes on. Unfortunately, this type of strength, while useful in certain situations, drains our reserves, lowers our immunity, and causes us to collapse.

The rose offers another kind of strength: the strength of a cosmic kind of lover. Rose infuses your energy with a stubborn insistence to be the beauty of life, see the beauty of life, and enjoy life thoroughly. This kind of strength gives you energy and vitality. And in this way, rose helps you walk upright and gives you strength to face the world. If the rose was represented by a style of enlightenment, it would be an ecstatic form of enlightenment, like that of Bhakti yoga or Sufism.

A lot of people have lost their edge and their shine. They no longer sparkle. There’s a dullness that envelops them when they’re chronically overwhelmed, overstimulated, and stressed. They understandably shut themselves down to protect their psyche.

The fragrance of the rose is the antidote to this energetic and sensual dullness experienced by a lot of humans today. Rose opens us back up, allowing real life to slip in through the cracks and touch your heart.

The rose is an ally for when you want to find what you love. Then it helps you let yourself love what you love. Finally, it invites you to not be ashamed about that which you love. Rose says it is safe for you to love what you love. Rose asks that you trust this love—follow it one step at a time. Let it lead you into the spiral bloom of life.

Restoring Our Divine Sensuality and the Sacred Pause

In the process of living our lives we come across an archetypal conundrum: the question of how much (if any) of our divinity do we compromise, for what reasons, and at what cost. This is when we confront the prostitute archetype. Sometimes we end up giving away too much and too often. We inevitably feel violated by the world.

The rose is a master of finding and elevating the sacred in the mundane. It elevates everything it touches to the level of divine sensuality. The rose goes straight to all the places where we feel dirty and robbed by the world.

In contrast, the world is fueled by pushing, striving, persevering, and struggling. Naturally, we miss out on so much goodness when we try to be as productive as possible. Part of that goodness is our own intuition. Sometimes we can’t even hear ourselves think. The rose helps you achieve a sacred pause. It helps you go quiet and really listen. This is where the phrase “stop and smell the roses” becomes less of a cheesy saying and more of a necessary life skill.

Fueled by the skill of the quiet pause, you begin to see the sacred thread in everything. At some point you’ll find the thread that connects you to the cosmic web. You begin to see yourself as sacred and whole.

Final Thoughts on the Spiritual Meaning of the Rose

The rose is an ally to those who love too much, give too much, and are accused of being too much. It replaces an insatiable, desperate hunger with a quiet reveling in the sacred.

And so the rose has spoken! Much love to you on your rose journey.

Explore ways to work with rose as an herbal aphrodisiac.