In Guillaume de Lorris' The Romance of the Rose, much of the text is devoted to expositions of contemporary scientific knowledge. This exposition exhibits itself in a number of manners and covers a variety of subjects, both exoteric and esoteric. Most commonly, this demonstration of contemporary knowledge manifests itself in the form of miniature catalogs of trees, spices, etc., as is demonstrated fairly exhaustively in section five from line 40 to line 64. Alternatively, this takes the form of treatises, as does the Art of Love in section nine (lines 55 to 197) or the treatise on optics following the tale of Narcissus in section six (lines 79 to 101). The esoteric teachings of the text are also present, but tend to be less examined.
Of particular interest to the interpreter of the esoteric message beneath the surface of The Romance of the Rose is the treatise on optics in section six, as well as the tale of Narcissus itself and the portion of section five that is in reference to this segment of the tale, viz. lines 117 to 121. Under certain interpretations of certain of the symbols within the text, a cosmology, or symbolic view of the universe, reveals itself. Each of the most important elements of this vision ought to be studied independently for the revelation of this fact.
The first element, as detailed in The Romance of the Rose, is the stone around the fountain, found in section five. The description serves as a brief prefix to the tale of Narcissus and reads as follows:
Nature with cunning craftsmanship had set
The fountain that was underneath the tree
Within a marble verge, and on the stone
About the border, in small letters carved:
"Here t'was that Fair Narcissus wept himself to death."
(lines 117 to 121)
This serves, within the context of The Romance of the Rose, to provide Narcissus a tangible memorial. In Ovid's Metamorphoses this memorial is present, but it takes a different form. In book three, Ovid describes period immediately the end of Narcissus' life as follows:
They had prepared the pyre, the bier, the torches;
but nowhere could they find Narcissus' body:
where it had been, they found instead a flower,
its yellow center circled by white petals.
In both cases, a female symbol has replaced the body of Narcissus beside the pool, but where Ovid placed a living flower, Lorris has placed a stone with writing upon it. This stone correlates to earth, the female aspect of static femininity, but instead of correlating with this material world is taking the role of the way in which this world provides a portal to the next by delivering the message of what the Lover is to look for in the fountain. The description reminds one of Wolfram von Eschenbach's description of the graal. Found in book nine of Parzival, his description reads thus:
[The Templars] live from a Stone whose essence is most pure. If you have never heard of it, I shall name it for you here. It is called "Lapsit exillis".... This Stone is also called "The Gral"....As to those who are appointed to the Gral, hear how they are made known. Under the top edge of the Stone an Inscription announces the name and lineage of the one summoned to make the glad journey. Whether it concern girls or boys, there is no need to erase their names, for as soon as a name has been read it vanishes from sight!
This is not the only instance wherein the graal was known to bear an inscription in the course of Parzival. When the graal was originally given to the Templars, it bore the instructions of their order. These instructions, too, disappeared after being read. The graal as described in Parzival eventually gave way to the concept of the grail as a chalice, with correlates to the feminine element of water, and in this light it is especially interesting to see Lorris' stone beside his fountain. Von Eschenbach's text was written roughly between ten and seventy five years before Lorris, and the concept as the grail as chalice had yet to take wide effect, but this juxtaposition of symbols may point to an intermediary point in the symbol's evolution. The graal itself, though, points back to an earlier tradition, and it is unsure whether it was a chalice or a stone, as Parzival is the earliest extant text on the subject. If one accepts the theory of Graham Hancock in The Sign and the Seal, however, the graal correlates further back to the Ark of the Covenant, and the writing on the stone is by the finger of God Himself. As such, the garden of Lorris would be taken to correlate to the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem, implying that the light of Jewish mysticism, particularly the Zoharistic tradition popular in the south of France as well as in Toledo, Spain, where von Eschenbach claimed the inspiration for his graal originated, is the way to see the true meaning in this text. In this light, then, attention must be turned to the fountain.
The fountain of Guillaume de Lorris is, except for the most superficial facets, very different from the fountain of Ovid's Metamorphoses. In book three, Ovid clearly denotes a static pool in his description, which reads as follows:
There was a pool whose waters, silverlike,
were gleaming, bright. Its borders had no slime.
No shepherds, no she-goats, no other herds
of cattle heading for the hills disturbed
that pool; its surface never had been stirred
by fallen branch, wild animal, or bird.
Fed by its waters, rich grass ringed its edge,
and hedges served to shield it from the sun.
Much care is seen here to demonstrate that the pool was static, yet clean. Unless the pool was stagnant, the line about the slime (which Joseph Addison translates into "rising mud") would be superfluous. This is in sharp contrast to the fountain of Guillaume de Lorris, which was "Where flowed a spring beneath a spreading pine" (section five, line 113). It is also repeatedly referred to as a spring, rather than the pool of Ovid. This clearly correlates better with the Medieval alchemical concept of water as active femininity or spirituality, in contrast to the static earth. This probably refers to the sephiroth of Binah, the mother and creative force, which correlates to water and love. To enter Binah is to reach the sphere wherein understanding is achieved, and the point here may be to contrast Narcissus, a pagan who only saw the surface, with the Lover, who penetrated the waters of Binah. This would explain why Narcissus saw only his own face while the Lover saw the crystals in much the same contrast used by James in his epistle, where he states:
Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it -- he will be blessed in what he does.
(James 1:23-25)
This passage was particularly popular in sermons at the time, and may have influenced the way in which Guillaume de Lorris chose to represent his pool. Thus, the Lover, having penetrated the waters of understanding, laid eyes upon the crystals which Narcissus failed to perceive.
What, then, were these crystals? The crystals were described in section six of The Romance of the Rose as follows:
Two crystal stones within the fountain depths
Attentively I noted. You will say
'Twas marvelous when I shall tell you why:
Whene'er the searching sun lets fall its rays
Into the fountain, and its depths they reach,
Then in the crystal stones do there appear
More than a hundred hues; for they become
Yellow and red and blue. So wonderful
Are they that by their power is all the place --
Flowers and trees, whate'er the garden holds --
Transfigured, as it seems. It is like this:
Just as a mirror will reflect each thing
That near is placed, and one therein can see
Both form and color without variance,
So do these crystals undistorted show
The garden's each detail to everyone
Who looks into the waters of the spring.
For, from whichever side one chance to look,
He sees one half of the garden; if he turn
And from the other gaze, he sees the rest.
So there is nothing in the place so small
Or so enclosed and hid but that it shows
As if portrayed upon the crystal stones.
(lines 79 to 101)
Initially, it appears that an error has been made in the description of the crystals, in that every detail may be seen by gazing into the crystals, as "there is nothing in the place so small / Or so enclosed and hid" that the crystals do not reveal it. It would seem, however, that this may be an invitation to an allegorical interpretation. Indeed, the passage has been described as such, most frequently as C.S. Lewis proposed: by imagining the crystals to be the eyes of the object of love. This, however, while providing an interesting allegory, fails to account for the apparent deviation, which may be reconciled only by assuming that the entire garden either can be seen from the fountain, contrary to logic, or can be seen through the fountain. Here it is beneficial to refer once again to the Cabalistic tradition of the Jews, from which the concept of the fountain as Binah previously had been assumed. In the Cabala, there exist only two sephiroth beyond Binah, viz. Chokmah (or Hokmah) and Kether. These sephiroth are considered to be the final crystallizations of the godhead before reaching the Ain Soph, which no man may perceive without dying. Again in the Cabalistic tradition, it is assumed that one may perceive the entire universe through contemplation and advance through the sephiroth, and, in this cipher, the fountain would be indicating that the Lover was capable of penetrating Binah, or the waters of understanding, and perceiving Chokmah and Kether, or the highest aspects of God. This interpretation would account for the perception that the entire garden, even the most obscure and hidden locations, could be seen through a study of the fountain and its contained crystals.
This interpretation of the symbolism in The Romance of the Rose accounts for many of the obscurities of the Narcissus segment. This indicates that a cosmology, or view of the universe, is concealed esoterically within the poem, alongside the more exoteric and obvious examples of knowledge displayed, and helps to clarify a particularly cloudy portion of the tale.