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The White Rose

A painting of the White Rose by Dante with him being led by his mother Eva into seeing it for the first time.

The White Rose is the true home of all the blessed that is with God in the Empyrean. It is described as heaven of pure light beyond time and space.

Overview[]

The son of Sparda Dante is said to be one of the very few beings in creation to ever enter the White Rose despite being half-demon. Although according to him, he stated that just being far away from the White Rose made him feel that his demonic side had completely vanished due to the pure intensity of blessings within the White Rose.

Description[]

When the pure soul sees the Rose itself it appears systematically arranged in an immense white rose: like a hologram, a three-dimensional image, the rose is formed from a ray of light reflected off the outer surface of the Primum Mobile. The queen of this white rose is the Virgin Mary, traditionally represented as a rose herself. This celestial rose recalls large rose windows of Gothic cathedrals, many of which are dedicated to Mary. The image of the rose, often red, is also used to represent Jesus Christ or, in other contexts, earthly love.

The white rose is symmetrically structured according to various criteria, including belief, age, and gender. One half of the rose, already full, holds those who, according to Christian tradition, believed in Christ to come; the other half, with only a few seats still unoccupied, contains those who believed in Christ already come. Two gendered rows mark this division of the rose in two halves. In the row below Mary appear women of the Hebrew Bible (Eve, Rachel, Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, Ruth, and unnamed others).

Opposite to Mary is John the Baptist along with a row of men containing Francis, Benedict, Augustine, and other Christian fathers. Mary is flanked by Adam the father of man and Moses on one side, and Peter, first pope, and John the Evangelist on the other. John the Baptist is flanked by Lucy on one side and Anna, the mother of Mary, on the other. While only adults are seated in the upper section of the rose, below a certain line the rose contains souls of blessed children, their precise location based not on their own merits, since they lacked the power of free will, but on predestination. As physical laws do not apply in the Empyrean, one's ability to see these figures is not diminished by distance.

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