Someone once explained to me the conditions whereby a normally-white-flowered hawthorn would produce rosy blooms in certain springs – the biochemical changes reflecting something or other I can't now remember. I'm wondering if the same thing is true of the periwinkle. Any scientists reading this – I'd love to know?
Vinca minor, like its cultivated sister vinca major, contains alkaloids or active ingredients from which is extracted a pharmaceutical cancer drug (the same goes for the yew tree).
It is also, like all five-petalled flowers, dedicated to life itself, and more specifically to the life-force in the form of the Great Goddess, in her various incarnations from Brighid to Mary to Venus. The rose is another common five-petalled flower; the apple, too, makes five-petalled blossom, and an apple cut in half across its waistline will exhibit a very beautiful five-pointed star. We could say that, esoterically, Eve was offering Adam the feminine principle – it's a path to wholeness. (We know what the traditional Christian church has made of all that.)
Culpeper in his C17th herbal says 'Venus owns this herb' (and it's associated too with the ability to heal 'women's conditions').
As it happens, in sacred geometry Venus and our planet have a particular relationship: 'Venus draws a beautiful fivefold rosette around us every eight years', says Scott Olsen in The Golden Section. 'Eight years on Earth is also thirteen Venusian years, the Fibonacci numbers 13:8:5 here appearing to connect space and time.'
So there you are. One small flower, one big symbol. When the rain lets up, I'll try and take a photo to post.
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