The Rose Cross Meditation

Steps

  1. Imagine a plant
    • how it has its roots in the soil
    • how it sends out leaves one after another
    • how it blossoms at length into flower.
  2. Imagine a human being alongside this plant.
  3. In your soul, compare and contrast the plant and the human being
    • Bring to life the thought that this human being has qualities and abilities that can be called more perfect than those of the plant.
      For instance, human beings are able to move around in response to their feelings and intentions, while plants are attached to the ground.
    • But also notice that although human beings are certainly more perfect than plants, they also have characteristics that we cannot perceive in plants, characteristics whose absence can actually make plants seem more perfect than humans.
      For instance, plants obey the pure laws of growth as they develop one leaf after another and open their flowers without passion to the chaste rays of the Sun. In contrast, human beings are filled with desires and passions which their actions obey, and certain errors result from these drives and passions.
    • Therefore, it’s possible to say that human beings have an advantage over plants with regard to a certain type of perfection, but that the price they have paid for this perfection is to allow urges, desires, and passions to enter their nature alongside the forces of the plants that seem so pure.
  4. Visualize the green sap flowing through the plant and imagine this as an expression of the pure, passionless laws of growth.
  5. Visualize the red blood flowing through human arteries and imagine it as an expression of urges, desires, and passions.
  6. Allow all this to arise in your soul as a vivid thought.
  7. Think about,
    • how human beings are capable of development
    • how they can use the higher soul faculties to cleanse and purify their urges and passions.
    • how this destroys a baser element in these urges and passions, which are then reborn on a higher level.
  8. Imagine the blood as the expression of these cleansed and purified urges and passions.
    For example, in the spirit you see a rose and say: In the red sap of the rose blossom I see the color of the plant’s green sap transformed into red, and the red rose, like the green leaf, obeys the pure, passionless laws of growth.Let the red of the rose symbolize the blood that is an expression of purified urges and passions. They have been stripped of their baser element and are now similar in purity to the forces that are active in the red rose.
  9. At the same time,
    Assimilate these thoughts with your intellect;
    Bring them to life in your feeling.
    For instance,
    • You can have a blissful sensation when you imagine the growing plant’s purity and absence of passion;
    • You can generate a feeling in yourself for the price human beings must pay for greater perfection by acquiring urges and desires. This can transform your earlier bliss into a serious feeling;
    • A feeling of liberating happiness can stir in you as you devote yourself to the thought of the red blood that can become the vehicle of inwardly pure experiences, just like the red sap of the rose blossom.It is important not to unfeelingly confront the thoughts that serve to build up a symbolic mental image such as this.

After having basked in these thoughts and feelings, transform them into this symbolic image:

  1. Imagine a black cross.
    Let this be the symbol of the baser element that has been eliminated from our urges and passions.
  2. Imagine seven radiant red roses arranged in a circle where the two beams of the cross intersect.
    Let these be the symbol of the blood that is an expression of cleansed, purified passions and urges.
  3. This symbolic image must now be called up before your mind’s eye in the way described earlier with regard to a memory image.
    A symbolic mental image such as this has the power to awaken your soul when you inwardly immerse yourself in it and devote yourself to it. Try to exclude all other mental images while you are immersed in this one. Allow only this symbol to linger before your mind’s eye in the spirit, and it must be as vivid as possible.

Steps

At the same time,

  • Allow the Rose Cross Image to linger vividly before you in the spirit.
  • Permit the feeling you had as a result of the preparatory thoughts to resonate.

Notes

  • Do not summon up all of the preparatory thoughts used to create the Rose Cross Image
  • In this way, the symbol becomes a token of this experience of feeling, and its effectiveness is due to the fact that the soul dwells on this experience.
  • The longer you can dwell on the Rose Cross Image without a different and disruptive image intervening, the more effective the whole process will be.
  • Outside of the time you set aside for actual meditation, it is a good idea to frequently repeat the process of building up the Rose Cross image through thoughts and feelings of the type described above, so that the feeling doesn’t fade away.
  • The more patience you have in renewing it, the more significant the Rose Cross image becomes for your soul.
  • It is not without significance that the Rose Cross image was not immediately proffered as a soul-awakening image but was first built up by means of specific ideas about plants and human beings, because the effectiveness of a symbol like this depends on its being put together in this way before it is used for meditation. If we imagine it without first having gone through this buildup in our own souls, the symbol remains cold and is much less effective than if it has received its soul-illuminating power through this preparation.