Paradise as a living garden, and the living garden as a female body runs through all religious symbolism. Ancient Rome knew the rose as the flower of Venus, and things spoken “under the rose” were part of Venus’s sexual mysteries. Aphrodite was represented by a Rose-Mary plant, rosmarina, the Dew of the Sea. Medieval myths of Lady Briar Rose pictured the Virgin as a rose in the midst of a thorn bush.

As described in the Song of Solomon 5:2, dew was a poetic synonym for semen, and in the Song of Solomon 4:12, the “enclosed garden” is the virgin bride whose fountain of life-giving fluid is not yet opened. Alchemical literature is filled with mythological symbolism, the rose being the Flower of the Alchemists, who appeared to be seeking the Mother (mater) sleeping in the material matter of the world, having been separated from the God whose other half she was.

-- Walker, Barbara G., The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1983. Pages 19-21, 768-769, 866-868.