Lillies, Roses & Olives

[Bruce Michael]

Hello Friends,


The lily represents our pure soul back before the entrance of sin. The red rose symbolises our purity gained through experience and overcoming the lower nature. In the red rose the blood has been transformed from lower to a higher passion.

The mystery of the rose itself is that evil has been transformed literally within the plant itself by Christ. Goethe has an intuition of this when he called the rose the highest form of plant life.

The Masters explain:

"The beauty and the mystery which is the rose is that one god has entered into the plant, despite another: a malevolent force being countered by Christ Himself who has now made this flower His own - and, springing out from the thorns, redeeming its evility, it buds into an opening glory.

"Herein is the mystery of that plant – the struggle in the one body, when He ‘a-rose’ above that horny demon who entered the garden like a sullen and objectionable weed and whose body was to be later crowned King of the Garden.

Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Isaiah 55:13

Another plant connected with the spread of Christianity is the olive.

I was speaking to a nursery man about the olive trees he was selling at a market and he told me how the tree would grow amidst the desert winds and mountain snows. By the way, there have been in recent years thousands of olives planted in our local area, and there is an olive festival yearly. It is ruled by the Sun and brings those virtues with it.

It is a wonderful healing plant, the oil of which according to a doctor friend of mine, can break up kidney stones - a wine glass full taken daily. He also tells of a concoction made from the leaves which gives relief to rheumatism.

-Br.Bruce