[Main Blog Post] Thoughts on the "Way of the Rose"

[jprussell]

So far, I keep on with getting a blog post out for each week, if only barely. This week, my thoughts on the book The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary by Clark Strand and Perdita Finn. I found it helpful in thinking about my work on a "Heathen Rosary", and I think anyone who thinks the Rosary might be helpful or at least interesting, but is not all that Catholic, might find this book worth checking out.

Comments

[open_space]

Hey there Jeff, wondering how your Heather Rosary is going. Any ideas you would like to share?

Cheers!

[jprussell]

Thank you for the question!

The short answer is that it is ongoing, but maybe not with as much directness as I would hope. I'm trying to strike the right balance between "buckle down and get it done" and "don't force anything that isn't right", and I'm using prayer, meditation, and divination to work that balance out.

Prayer-wise, I've got the Mark of the Wells at the very start in stead of the Sign of the Cross, I've got the Tree "Creed" instead of the Apostle's Creed (which this makes me realize is not on my blog! I should fix that), and my steadholder All-Father Prayer and Hail Idun. Divination suggests that I need to work out new equivalents for the "All Father" and "Hail Idun", and I'm currently working on the "Hail Idun" in Germanish meter, but I haven't hit on anything I'm happy with.

As for the physical beads, I have a lovely Anglo-Saxon replica pendant with bird-of-prey heads on it that I associate with Freyja's falcon/hawk-hame to use in stead of a crucifix, I have a rough design for a "Tree of Life" carving to put in place of a medallion (where the circle of the regular beads starts and stops), along with some yew rounds to carve it into, and I have yew beads, jade spacers, and lapis lazuli beads to put between the groups of 9 prayer beads (these are the equivalent of the "Glory Be"/"Our Father" beads in a traditional rosary). The set up is Pendant, 3 prayer beads with spacers, the medallion, four groups of nine prayer beads with spacers, which means three lapis beads between them.

I'm not yet praying with the beads, as I feel like I need to get at least the "All Father" and "Hail Idun" right, but those are proving tricky.

If you've got any thoughts or words of encouragement, I'd very much welcome them! This project has already alternated multiple times between "divinely-inspired enthusiasm" and "listless spiritual dryness", so I'm trying to keep plugging away.

Cheers,
Jeff

[prayergardens]

Hi,

I wanted to thank you for your write up of the book. I got it and read it. I'm digesting it - there were pluses and minuses for me. BUT the reading did prompt me to get moving. I read JMG's book on prayer beads a while back and had been wanting to experiment with rosary bead making since it is a place of direct overlap between prayer and gardening for me. I currently have roses simmering away on the stove in my first attempt. I would be most interested if you find any specific plants that are helpful to your rosary project and would offer to make you some beads (or at least attempt to) since I'd like to try making beads out of other plants with religious significance once I get the rose method figured out.

[jprussell]

I'm glad you found it helpful and motivating! I agree, there are definitely pluses and minuses, but overall, I appreciated its attitude of "just do the work".

I have to confess, I had no idea you could make beads out of roses - how does that work? Is it the stems? Buds?

And thank you for the kind offer! So far, I've been "feeling it out" with the beads - the main beads are yew (or at least claim to be), which I chose because some folks associate the Germanish World Tree (Yggdrasil) with the yew, the spacer beads are a dark-ish green jade, chosen because it looks a bit like green apples, and between each "nonade" (nine-bead grouping, equivalent of a decade in a traditional rosary), I have blue lapis lazuli beads, chosen for a color reminiscent of deep wells. So, as you can see, so far I don't have a ton of plant-based beads, but maybe that's something I ought to reconsider.

Do you have any recommendations for learning more about plant-based beads besides wood?

Thanks,
Jeff

[prayergardens]

The petals only. Search DIY rosary beads and there are a ton of easy tutorials. However, most of them use a blender and after some Magic Mondays I was concerned about cutting with knife blades if that cut the energy so I deep-googled to find an old 'simmer for many days recipe' that's literally been on my backburner all this week. The traditional is medieval Catholic originally.

I haven't been down the tree path much but the Mary Gardens database has quite a few (Olive, Pine, etc) but interesting nothing about Yew/Taxus. I hope to extend the database to a comparative religions setup when I got it done so I could note interesting things like this, but I'm not there yet.

I haven't found much more about plant based beads yet beyond the rosary. I was going to start experimenting with a mashup of what I can grow and what is the ENM to see where it goes. I can't recall if JMG's book covers it and my copy is in storage (to be dug up soon). I wonder if beads could be made of tree leaves/evergreen needles. IDK! Historically, the branches were turned on lathes for beads. However, there is a modern Catholic tradition where funeral flowers or wedding flowers are mixed with a polymer or resin to make beads if the material is not enough or not suitable for the rose method. I haven't done more than bookmark some links so far.

One interesting historical note is that apparently when rosaries were the rage in England, there was a whole street outside of St.Pauls Cathedral, Paternoster Row, where there were bead making guilds that specialized in various material so the bone guild was different than the rose guild and such. Different religion for you but I think it would be very interesting to learn more about the technologies in use there.

[jprussell]

Wow, I had no idea about making beads from flower petals, thank you for sharing this!

From my own reading of Pagan Prayer Beads, there's a brief discussion about what kind of symbolism you might consider when choosing/crafting beads, but if I remember right, the default assumption is that you'll be buying beads, and very little (if any) space is given to the idea of crafting your own with Natural Magic-informed processes.

As a brief aside, I have a bracelet with beads for the Runes which I made out of "Holy Land Olive Wood" (a company sells Israeli olive wood for beads and other purposes for its symbolic significance). In my case, I wasn't exactly going for the Christian significance, but the Runes are traditionally supposed to be carved on fruit-bearing wood, I was a Classics major in college, and I've always appreciated Athena, who gifted the olive tree to the Athenians, and I figured any Judeo-Christian holy associations wouldn't be hurtful. Perhaps more important than all of these considerations, olive wood has stunningly lovely striations and is dense and hard, making for very good-looking and long-lasting features.

Lastly, that's fascinating to hear about the different bead guilds. Those kinds of specialist technologies are exactly the kind of thing I'd like to learn more about - and I'd be interested to hear about the "alternative" social/business/political organizations of folks involved as well (what made guilds work when they did? What changed that displaced them? What have we lost in following "progress"?)

Oh, lastly, I'd love to hear how your DIY rosary beads turn out.

Thanks,
Jeff

[prayergardens]

Olive wood is an excellent choice! I have considered getting a rosary made of wood b/c my only one is made of roses and too fragile for daily use.

When I was doing my deep dive, I found a few other links. This woman started a website https://paternoster-row.medievalscotland.org/ and I believe she published in an SCA journal. I tried tracking it down but hit a dead end but it makes sense that SCA would figure this out. I didn't know they published research but this will be a road I go down eventually. There's a deadlink on her about page. I believe I still have borrowing privileges at the university where I did graduate work and was going to look into this but, realistically, it will take me a while to get to it. If you go down the path - let me know!

My rose beads were a nice first try but a miss. Too lumpy. I was hoping the long boil method would break things down more since blenders are not historical. Turns out I need a more abrasive mortar and pestle as a first step pre-boil, since my little one was too smooth and couldn't break down dry petals. My best modern guess is one of those mexican guacamole mortars and I'll work on getting one of those next.

[jprussell]

Thanks very much for sharing this, that may be a good source to look into, and is one I also hadn't considered.

I'm sorry to hear your first try at the beads didn't turn out too well, but I look forward to hearing how future attempts go!