Back to Canada

[Photo By: KPA]

This was at the last vestiges of my trip from Franciscan University's The Power of Beauty conference. I'm getting into Canada. We're at customs. It is probably around 7 or 8pm, on Sunday, October 26. I've been on the road for about twelve hours.

I took this shot from my seat in the Greyhound bus. The Maple Leaf and the Crescent.

It was strangely appropriate.

We have to reclaim the beautiful crescent moon. I have reclaimed it!
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Posted By: Kidist P.Asrat
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The Lilac Rose

I have put a lilac rose as a prominent logo for this site. I like the color lilac, and that was the initial incentive to use that color (one has to start somewhere). As I looked around for the symbolic meanings of the color, here are some that I found:

Lilac roses stand for grace, gentility, elegance and refinement. It is the rose of sweet thoughts, adds enchantment and indicates majesty.

So, along with humility (gentility), the color has grandeur (majesty and refinement), and a certain magic (enchantment).

This is what I thought when I started the site: to make it an ambitious site. We'll see what happens!

But, as I write about beauty, and as I research about beauty, it is certainly true that every single aspect of our lives can be (and ideally, should be) touched by beauty: from doing simple house-hold chores to praising God.

Now the rose. Much of the rose's symbolism is intertwined with its color. But, one site compiled descriptions from other sources and described the rose's symbolism without resorting too much to its colors:

[The rose] is at once a symbol of purity and a symbol of passion; heavenly perfection and earthly passion; virginity and fertility; death and life. The rose is the flower of the goddess Venus but also the blood of Adonis and of Christ. It is a symbol of transmutation - that of taking food from the earth and transmuting it into the beautiful fragrant rose. The rose garden is a symbol of Paradise. It is the place of the mystic marriage. In ancient Rome, roses were grown in the funerary gardens to symbolize resurrection. The thorns have represented suffering and sacrifice as well as the sins of the Fall from Paradise.

The rose has also been used as a sign of silence and secrecy. The word sub rosa "under the rose" referring to the demand for discretion whenever a rose was hung from the ceiling at a meeting. In the Mysteries roses were sacred to Isis. It is also the flower of her son Harpocrates or younger Horus, the god of silence.

In Christian art, the white rose is a symbol of purity, the gold or yellow rose a symbol of impossible perfection and papal benediction, and the red rose a symbol for martyrdom. The rose is a frequent symbol for the Virgin Mary, who is called a "rose without thorns" since she was free of original sin. This may refer to St. Ambrose's legend that the rose grew, without thorns, in the Garden of Eden. After the Fall, it became an earthly plant, and the thorns appeared as a reminder of man's sins and fall from grace. The scent and beauty remained as a poignant reminder of the lost perfection of Paradise.

The five petals of the wild rose are equated with the five joys of Mary and the five letters in her name Maria. The Christmas rose, a hardy white flower with five petals that blooms at Christmas when the rest of the garden is dormant, is a symbol of the Nativity and the coming of the Messiah. The Rose of Jericho, or Rose of the Virgin, also known as the Resurrection plant, is supposed to have sprung up wherever the Holy Family stopped during the Flight into Egypt. It is said to have blossomed at the Nativity, closed at the Crucifixion, and reopened at Easter.

On the rosary, the Joyful Mysteries, those relating to the happy events in Mary's life, were white roses; those relating to her suffering, the Sorrowful Mysteries, were red; and the Glorious Mysteries, the triumphant events, were symbolized by the yellow or golden rose. The rosary can be considered a symbolic wreath of red, white, and yellow roses.

Wreaths of roses crowning angels, saints, or the redeemed in Heaven are symbolic of their heavenly joy.

Of course, there is the symbolism of flowers in general:

John Ingram writes in Flora Symbolica; or, the Language and Sentiment of Flowers [available online]:

Shakespeare tells as that "fairies use flowers for their charactery," and so, he might have added, do mortals, for the language of flowers is almost as ancient and universal a one as that of speech.

As I find more meanings, I will add them to the list.

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

Roses and Civilizations

Rosa abyssinica (Abyssinian Rose)

A reader sent me the above photo of the Rosa abyssinica as a suggestion to replace the "purple rose" motif I have on the banner of this site.

The Rosa abyssinica is a type of a shrub rose. Here is what John Lindley writes about it:

This is one of the few roses indigenous to Africa. It was first noticed as a distinct species by Mr. Brown, in his Appendix to the Travels in Abyssinia of Mr. Salt, who discovered it. It can be confounded with nothing except R. sempervirens, from which it differs in the following particulars: its leaflets are shorter, with a little stalk, broader towards the point than at the base; the petioles are exceedingly rough with unequal glands and setae; the peduncle and calyx are covered over with a thick down; and the prickles are exceedingly numerous and strong.
Source:
John Lindley
Rosarum Monographia
or The Botanical History of Roses [pdf file]
London, James Ridgeway, 169, Picadilly
1820

Rosa abyssinica
Illustration: John Lindley.
From: Rosarum Monographia, or A Botanical History of Roses. 1820
Author John Lindley


On The Geographical Distribution of Rosa Abyssinica (rosaccae)
Kazimierz Browicz and Jerzy Zielinski, 1991
Fragmenta Floristica et Geobotanica 36(1): 51-55
Distribution Map for Rosa Abyssinica
R Br. ex. Lindl
[pdf file]

Here is more on the Victorian botanist, gardener and orchidologist John Lindley.

I agree with the reader that the Rosa abyssinica is a lovely shrub rose, to which I would instinctively be attracted. But it never occurred to me to use it as a motif for this website.

The Ethiopians (and specifically, the Amhara) were the most westward-looking of the Africans. Their emperors repeatedly sent them out to search for more, to improve their Christianity, to bring back art and culture from the outside world, and to show their (lonely) presence in this northern African region. This continued right down to the last emperor: Haile Selassie.

But, my site is not about my Abyssinianness. In a discussion about my non-Western background, I recently said that Jesus himself was an outsider, who was bringing Truth to the whole world.

That is the least that can be expected of me, and of us. And, as a native of the West, and a defender of Western Civilization, this is what I have set out to do.

I was fascinated with a shrub rose - the Dog Rose (or the Rosa canina) - for a while. One of the explanations for the word "dog" is from the Anglo Saxon word "dag" which means "dagger." A fighting rose!


Dog Rose

I later incorporated this rose into a design with a dove.


Dog Rose and Dove
Repeat Pattern Design
Kidist P. Asrat
ca. 2008

I chose the lilac-colored rose for this website because I like the color. Then as I searched for rose color meanings, I found many different kinds of associations scattered throughout the web: love, mystical love, regality, majestic glory, enchantment, wonder, sophistication, caution. And the list continues, unlike any of the other rose colors which have short, limited associations. This suits this website fine, where the beauty of the rose, complete with its thorns, symbolizes the Beauty we're trying to capture, with its infinite associations.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat