Rose Petals Aren’t Just For Love
Rose petals are a popular ingredient for love related blessings and beauty DIY’s. When I was first starting out I tried to stay away from them because I didn’t want to get annoyed looks or rolled eyes when I went into shops asking for rose petals. Now that I’m older I’ve learned to respect the power that comes with roses.
Like so many things in this world the rose is a duality symbol that means essentially the same thing in all cultures and religions. The rose is a symbol of love, life, regeneration and death. Many flowers share these symbols but none so much as the rose with its beautiful petals, strong connotations of love and its thorns. This flower can also be seen as a symbol of conformity in society by its striving to grow into a beautiful flower forced to remove its thorns for acceptance and desire. The rose is almost always sold and given with the flower heads unopened, thus becoming a symbol for a beauty that is never able to fully open up and express itself.
When I was very young I had no idea that the flowers outside my grandmother’s farm house were roses. They were always in full bloom and fully open when I saw them. The roses that I knew of were crimson red, closed and given to women by their husbands and boyfriends and Valentines Day. But roses and their petals are much more than that.
The whole flower is used in workings, the flowers, petals and leaves are all a part of practical magic. The rose is feminine in nature and represents the Fire and Water Elements making it a dual purpose ingredient. It is also linked to the planets Mars and Venus. The rose has the powers of healing, love, divination, luck, protection, and enhancing your intuition.
My favorite archetypes associated with the rose are Demeter and Aurora. Other are Adonis, Cupid, Eros, Harpocrates, Hathor, Hulda, and Isis. You can obviously use the rose for workings and blessings involving love in its various forms. But here are some little known uses of the rose that you’ll want to consider…
- Sleeping with rose will protect your dreams.
- Drinking rosebud tea before bed will induce prophetic dreams.
- Rose petals and rose hips are used in healing spells and balms.
- Next time you have a headache, soak a cloth in rose water and lay across your temples to relieve the pain.
- Rose petals sprinkled around the outside of your home is said to calm stress and reduce domestic upheavals.
