[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

[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!