The Rose Cross

Without specifically planning it, and all at once, I found myself reading three different books relating to the Rose Cross meditation.

Our study group took up reading The Rose Cross Meditation by Rudolf Steiner.  It is a meditation practiced by Rosicrucians which uses the symbols of the cross and a crown of seven roses.    I first heard about this meditation during my Waldorf teacher training, and though it sounded interesting and mysterious, I didn’t go very deeply into at the time.

Not long before this, I had recently read Sacred Sounds, a book about the healing power of Music and Story.  It related Music and Astrology in a way I had not seen before and I became very interested in learning more about the relationship between music and astrology.  One of the sources recommended by Andrews was Max Heindel, a Rosicrucian writer.   I was a little daunted to find that Heindel had many volumes of texts, most which averaged around 500 pages each.  I found I was swept right into it nonetheless and could not stop reading.  So, there I was, reading about the Rose Cross Meditation, from not one book, but TWO different books at the same time and the funniest part is, I had not really intended this topic in the first place. 

To my surprise, I finished the Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception in mere weeks and found Heindel’s book fascinating and enlightening. It covered many of the same foundational concepts from my Waldorf training but in my opinion,  more directly and clearly explained.

A third text I just began as part of my membership with a different study group by mail called GEMS.  The GEMS  acronym stands for Geographically-Engaged Members of the Society and is organized out of Los Angeles.  This group has undertaken a year-long study with the book, The Silent Stream, also dealing with Rosicrucianism.  No doubt I will be learning more about the Rose Cross in this third book, though again this was not directly of my choosing.  Perhaps when I complete the study I can elaborate something more specific.  Until then I can only share some preliminary impressions.

My first take with all of this is the purity and holiness of the plant world.  It made more clear to me the importance of a pure diet of plant foods.  It is not only what, but also how we prepare the foods that we consume that is important if we wish to keep our bodily vehicle in the best possible condition.

I also find I am putting  greater thought, time and interest into our garden, and in communing with the natural world as well as putting more thought and preparation into the food I eat.

As I write this during the month of May,  outside the steps of my front porch, the plant and animal world is exploding with life.   Roses and other flowers are verdantly blooming on the bushes, our cucumber plants are fat with fruits, and friends are bringing fresh picked berries to the first social gatherings we have been able to do in person since the start of Coronavirus quarantines back in March.   Our squashes are really coming along now and  even the lizards in our garden are busy communing.  A friend and I watched a male lizard parading his beautiful throat, fanning it out as he scurried back and forth across our porch in the broad light of the summery day, advertising himself.   He was quite amusing, flashy, dramatic, pausing with his flare.  Later that afternoon, when my friend had gone, I spotted him on the fence post again.  He had found himself a mate and was fully entwined with her,  looking very self-satisfied, bobbing his head up and down, still fanning out his orange throat.   I felt such joy for the abundance of nature in all these manifest forms and for these pictures of fertility.   It was a fitting image for the readings I had just done.

Last winter, we started a small garden bed in our backyard, my husband and I.  It is now bursting with life too.  Though we would both like to take credit for being the gardener as the fruits of it are evident, the truth is we did it together.

It is mentioned in the Rosicrucian Cosmo Conception that we shall overcome the need for the separate sexes in a far distant future, but in the intervening time,  we must work together on everything; whether as brothers and sisters, lovers, procreating mates, neighbors, fellow gardeners, or friends.   The importance of transforming selfish energy, wishes, wants and desires into something worthy and higher probably can’t be overstated.    Base desires could be simply the bodily comforts of a home, or the pleasure-seeking in the outer world.  Each human being undergoes emotional surges of fear, jealousy, aggression, pride, or self-aggrandizement, especially in an age where we are prone to things like hoarding toilet paper, and now we are swept into tides of racial strife.   In reality, though there is no “my,” or “mine,” only “ours.”  There is no shortage of these lower desires, really.  Our work is cut out for us here in this plane of existence, for each and every human being.

Ideas about the constitution of man’s physical and spiritual body, how the two sexes came to be, how humanity will continue to evolve, these are not usual, everyday things to think about, I realize.  But this seems a transitional time in history and with this transition into summer it also gives us a space to reflect more on who and what we really are and where we are going.

TWINS is the Gemini symbol for this month of June. In Tarot, the symbol is the LOVERS, male and female.  The symbol on the opposite end of Gemini is ARCHER/Sagittarius, or the Centaur who shoots his arrow far into the future.  (Think of the Spacex rocket -a giant human arrow) With Sagittarius one part is the animal and one part is human.  This represents the overcoming of a lower, animal nature to attain a higher more evolved state.  This is the 3rd House/9th House axis in astrology.  The Gemini-Sagittarius axis also relates to lower mind versus higher mind.  Gemini is the structure of facts and words, Sagittarius is whole language system and deeper meaning it conveys.

Our thoughts produce fruit just as a plant’s sexual organs produce fruit in this most abundant season of summer.    Thoughts and words create whole worlds.   Thoughts produce both material and immaterial things.    It is the other half of our generative function.   One part is physical, the other part is manifest but not yet physical, and so thinking is yet another act of fertility.

In addition to raising our children with care,  we can endeavor to do no harm to ourselves or others with our misdirected thoughts.  All of our thoughts bear fruit and wisely directed arrows of thoughts bear nourishing and long lasting fruit for an infinite amount of time, just as children carry our seeds into the future infinitely. 

Perhaps there has never been a time more important than right now in human history to take great care to weed the garden of our thoughts very carefully.  Whatever we put out into the future whether a garden of vegetables or a garden of thoughts, whatever we put out into the world will have very long lasting consequences.  As we see violence growing, as misinformation abounds, as our connectivity with technology grows exponentially,  we have our own work to do to transform the gardens of our minds.    

I may start by rewording many of my pronouns from “my” to “our” as often as I can and stay open to the wisdom from my fellow gardeners and continue to seek for the good because in truth there is little that can be said to be “mine.”  Everything is “ours.”