From my earliest years, I was attracted to roses and their perfume: I would breathe them in and remain for a long time just looking at them… Until, one day, I was smelling a rose whose perfume was so powerful and intoxicating that I left my body. I felt myself flying through space, where I discovered a world of light, beauty, inspiration and joy. From that time, I did all I could to repeat that experience.

Those who are driven by a powerful desire, spontaneously  and instinctively find the methods they need to achieve that goal. So it was that I felt that roses could help me in my meditation exercises. I have no idea what distant past, what knowledge buried deep inside me, gave me this conviction. When I was preparing to meditate, I chose a rose whose freshness, shape, colour and perfume would carry me the furthest and the highest. I considered it a heaven-sent living being which was sacrificing itself to show me the path, and I asked it to teach me how to obtain all the qualities it represented in the spiritual world.

Roses are beautiful on earth, but how much more beautiful they are on high, in the invisible world! For this being, which takes form down here, in reality lives in the subtle regions. The contemplation of a rose, the intoxication I felt from its scent, tore me away from the physical world. I then passed through the etheric plane, trying not to linger there, and continued without stopping through the astral and mental planes. And finally I arrived at the causal plane, where I found the rose, the true rose, which is formed by the beings of Venus called the Elohim, dwellers in the seventh sephirah, Netzach, on the cabbalistic Tree of Life.

Venus, Aphrodite

The Greek Goddess Aphrodite is associated with Venus

The rose is a gift that Venus gave to the earth. You will say, ‘How can roses come from the planet Venus? The atmospheric conditions there render all life quite impossible!’ I know that, but in Initiatic Science the planets are not just the physical material bodies that astronomy studies.
In Initiatic Science planets are thoroughfares, intermediaries between cosmic currents and the earth
. Through the intermediary of the planets, the earth receives currents, influences, of which God himself is the source. That is why, since time immemorial, qualities and virtues have been associated to the planets. All the planets are reservoirs of currents which travel through space and, according to their nature, condense on earth in different containers.

Roses are the containers for the Venusian currents, the currents of love. When we draw close to them, we receive this love. Love is incarnate in roses; why neglect such a gift?…

To be continued…

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov
 A Living Book, Autobiographical Reflections Vol. 1, Chapter 6