Symbols - What does heaven look like
Flower
Flowers may be symbolic of chakras and some may thus represent the crown chakra, in which case they may represent an enlightened being. The stem of the flower is representative of the spine and the flower head may be the opened crown chakra. The symbolism is apt as flowers are a thing of beauty, as are enlightened beings!
If you give flowers you are symbolically [in this context] wishing the person receives the gift of enlightenment, and once the chakras are fully opened they may indeed receive the gift of elightenment.
All flowers take on this generic meaning, but individual flowers then have their own symbolism.
Some example flowers
Some links to example flowers is provided below. Please note that this list is not complete you need to go to the symbol section if the flower is not here.

Colours of flowers
The colour of the flower has significance. Colour symbolism is not universal and is usually culture specific, but to give an example, white often means purity, gold might be the alchemical gold, blue can mean a high achiever spiritually.
J E Cirlot – A Dictionary of Symbols
By its very nature it is symbolic of transitoriness, of … beauty. Lan Ts’ai-ho is generally depicted clad in blue and carrying a basket of flowers. It is said he was given to singing of the brevity of life and the ephemeral nature of pleasures. The Greeks and Romans all wore crowns of flowers. And they threw flowers over … their graves not so much as an offering more as an analogy.
Blue in flowers symbolises the almost unattainable, the extremely difficult to achieve. It is the colour of very advanced spirituality, of the ‘mystic centre’ and the search for this centre.
Orange and yellow flowers are symbolically associated with the SUN and hence the functions of the SUN- notably wisdom, whilst red and orange are the colours of MARS – courage, bravery, but also passion and anger.

Gold and yellow are not the same symbolically.
A Dictionary of Symbols – J E Cirlot
The golden flower is a famous parallel in Chinese mysticism, a non existent flower which is also spoken of in alchemy; in the Epistola ad Hermannum Arch. Coloniensem (theatr. Chem 1622) it is given the name of 'the sapphire blue flower of the Hermaphrodite'.
Hermaphrodite means Androgyny.
Flowers and the sexual techniques
If the sexual techniques are being used to achieve spiritual experience, the 'flower' can mean the clitoris or the vagina. This is where the term being 'deflowered' comes from - losing ones virginity. The Golden flower in this case is simply the achievement of enlightenment via making love and its equivalents.
Observations
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- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 04 - 5 In the wood
- Anacreon - Eros
- Ancient Egyptian - On the symbolism of the acacia
- Ashoka
- Attar, Fariduddin - The angels have bowed down to you and drowned
- Babylon - The Ishtar Gate 01
- Babylon - The Ishtar Gate 02
- Babylon - The Ishtar Gate 03
- Barker, Cicely Mary - The Coltsfoot Fairy
- Barker, Cicely Mary - The Daisy Fairy
- Barker, Cicely Mary - The Harebell Fairy
- Barker, Cicely Mary - The Michaelmas Daisy Fairy
- Barker, Cicely Mary - The Winter Aconite Fairy
- Barker, Cicely Mary - Where are the fairies, Where can we find them
- Baudelaire, Charles - Les Fleurs du Mal - Above ponds, above valleys Mountains, woods, clouds, seas
- Baudelaire, Charles - Les Fleurs du Mal - My youth was a dark storm
- Baudelaire, Charles - L’ennui
- Bax, Clifford - The Meaning of Man - Ah what though the Tree whose rise and fall
- Beuys, Joseph - Flower nymph
- Blithe spirit - The Kiss
- Braveheart - Flying on pencils
- Burne-Jones, Edward - Phyllis & Demophoon
- Cameron, Norman - Lying in fever, while tornado weather
- Chagall - green man
- Coehlo, Paulo - Manuscript found in Accra - Flowers in the field
- Coleridge, David Hartley - The insect birds that suck nectareous juice
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor - Notebooks
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor - The Picture
- Crowley, Aleister - Book of Lies - Dust Devils
- Delville, Jean - Eleusis
- Delville, Jean - Prometheus
- Deng Ming-Dao - Each day
- Dickinson, Emily - Because the bee may blameless hum For Thee a bee do I become
- Dickinson, Emily - There is another sky Ever serene and fair
- Dickinson, Emily - To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee
- Dowson, Ernest - Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae
- Dowson, Ernest - The Garden of Shadow
- Flamel, Nicolas - Chymische Wercke - Hamburg edition 1681
- Flamel, Nicolas - Uraltes chymisches Werk A Eleazar 1760
- Flamel, Nicolas - Uraltes chymisches Werk A Eleazer 1760 3rd illustr.
- Frost, Robert - It took that pause to make him realise
- Frost, Robert - Nature's first green is gold
- Frost, Robert - Never tell me that not one star of all
- Frost, Robert - The house had gone to bring again
- Frost, Robert - When I was just as far as I could walk from here today
- Gardner, Ingrid - Up through the planets
- Gaudi - Professional work - 04 The Sagrada Família
- Gentling the Bull – 08 Both Bull and Man forgotten
- Gentling the Bull – 09 Return to the Origin, back to the Source
- Goryeo sijo - Anonymous 01
- Hafez of Shiraz - Thirty Poems - At dawn I came into the garden
- Hafez of Shiraz - Thirty Poems - Here is a flower that lifts up a cup
- Hawker, Robert Stephen - Behold those winged images, Bound for their evening bowers
- Healer H - Babies everywhere
- Healer H - The lights upon them is what keeps them connected
- Heine, Heinrich - A dream of fearful mystery
- Heine, Heinrich - The North Sea - Thalatta
- Henley, William Ernest - from Echoes
- Herbert, George - Peace
- Herbert, George - The Flower
- Hobson, Dr Allan - The effects of a stroke 03 - A monkey mama is floating in the air in front of him
- Hodler, Ferdinand - What are flowers saying 1893
- Holderlin, Johann - From in lovely blue
- Homer - The Odyssey - The Garden of Alcinous
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - Fields and meadows
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - Nymphs and the Songlines
- Hypnerotomachia Poliphili - Sacred Grove
- Ibn El-Arabi - The Tarjuman al-Ashwaq - She said, 'I wonder at a lover'
- Ikkyu - My love's dark place is fragrant like a narcissus
- Ikkyu - Stamen
- Isole Madre
- Kahuna - The symbolic use of Lianas and Vines
- Kakuzo, Okakura - The Book of Tea – The Tea Room
- Keats, John - Ode to a Nightingale
- Khan, Hazrat Inayat – The Art of Being and Becoming - Thorns and flowers
- Khusrau, Amir - Ghazal 1850: bakhtam az khvab dar amad chu tu ba man khufti
- Kipling, Rudyard - Just So stories - Before the High and Far-Off Times
- Klee, Paul - This Flower wishes to fade
- Klimt - Garden with Roosters
- Klimt - Lady with Fan
- Klimt - landscapes various
- Li Po - Abandon
- Li Po - Drinking with a gentleman of leisure in the mountains
- Lu Tsu - Sowing the seed and reaping the return
- Lyrics from the Chinese - The Dew is heavy on the Grass
- Magritte, Rene - The Friend of War
- Maier, Michael - The Secrets of Alchemy - The Tincture and Gold
- Mary, Mary quite contrary
- Mayan - Hummingbird symbolism
- Measles
- Mircea Eliade - Warramunga tribe and the Tree of life
- Monet - Water lilies [and Rumi]
- Moreau - Apollo and the nine muses 1856
- Moreau - The young man and death 1865
- Morrells, Luce and flying on a magic carpet
- Mucha, Alphonse
- Mucha, Alphonse - Dance
- Mucha, Alphonse - Maud Adams as Joan of Arc
- Mudang spiritual experiences – The sufferings and initiation of the paksu Chang Myung-hoon
- Neruda, Pablo - Every day you play with the light of the universe
- Neruda, Pablo - The heavens unfastened and open
- Nerval, Gerard de - Artemis
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from On the Ascension
- Omar Khayyam - The Rubaiyat - Dreaming when Dawn's left hand was in the sky
- Omar Khayyam - The Rubaiyat - The flower that once has blown for ever dies
- O’Keeffe, Georgia - Horns and flower
- O’Keeffe, Georgia - Light iris
- O’Keeffe, Georgia - Oriental Poppies 1928
- O’Keeffe, Georgia - Poppies
- Peaches and orchids
- Poe, Edgar Allen - The Valley of Unrest
- Poe, Edgar Allen - To Helen
- Porphyry - The cave as the symbol of the perceptible cosmos
- Poussin - The Triumph of Neptune and birth of Venus
- Redon, Odilon - Mystic series 1
- Redon, Odilon - the Floating heads series
- Redon, Odilon - the Flower series
- Reid, Christopher - From Skull Garden
- Rilke, Rainer Maria - 07 Second Elegy
- Rilke, Rainer Maria - 21 Fifth elegy
- Rilke, Rainer Maria - 25 Fifth Elegy
- Rilke, Rainer Maria - 27 Sixth Elegy
- Rimbaud, Arthur - After the idea of the Flood had receded
- Rimbaud, Arthur - Come, let us climb into the heavens together
- Rimbaud, Arthur - Resting limbs worn out from Wandering
- Rimbaud, Arthur - There; the little dead girl, behind the rosebushes
- Rimbaud, Arthur - This idol, black eyed and blonde topped, without parents or playground
- Rolling Stones - Paint it Black
- Romance of the Rose - The Garden of Pleasure
- Rossetti, Dante Gabriel - The Daydream
- Rossetti, Dante Gabriel - Venus Verticordia
- Saadi - The Gulistan of Sa‘di – 09 from The Manners of Kings Solitude
- Samavedas – 01 Book 04 Chapter 01, DECADE I Indra and others
- Schwabe, Carlos - Lotte and Nude amongst Flowers
- Schwabe, Carlos - Ange desperance
- Schwabe, Carlos - La femme au luth
- Schwabe, Carlos - Les Champs-Elysées 1903
- Schwabe, Carlos - The Virgin of the Lilies 1899
- Sen no Rikyu - from 101 Zen stones
- Shaikh Muhammad Karim Khan Kirmani - Irshad al-‘awamm - Landscapes of the mind
- Shakespeare, William - They that have power to hurt, and will do none
- Shelley, Percy Bysshe - I pant for the music which is divine
- Sheridan - The flower
- Spectacular, Sacramental Meeting Ibogaine by Bjorn C.
- Spencer, Stanley - Symbolism 04 - Scarecrow Cookham 1934
- Spencer, Stanley - Symbolism 06 - Sunflower and Dog Worship 1937
- Spencer, Stanley - Symbolism 14 - Farms, gates and cows
- Spencer, Stanley - Symbolism 19 - The Lovers (The Dustman)
- Sylvie and Bruno - As there was only one cluster of hare-bells
- Taino - Carribean hummingbirds
- The Book of Family Traditions on the Art of War - The Quiescent Sword
- The Book of Taliesin - Kanu y Byt Mawr
- The Manuals of Taoist Sexual Practise – Ten Questions 10
- The Secret of the Golden Flower - 01 The Celestial Mind
- The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine - Key 01
- The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine - Key 05
- The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine - Key 11
- Thompson, Francis - Thou canst not stir a flower, without troubling of a star
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 02 - 1 The Garden of Live Flowers
- Through the Looking Glass - Ch 03 - 1 Looking glass insects
- Tirgereh - Prayer to the Celtic goddesses
- Tree, Isabella - Sliced Iguana – 01 Isabella tries peyote
- Tulsidas - Vinaya Patrika 19
- Vaughan, Henry - The World
- Verlaine, Paul - Aspiration
- Wang, Wen-Lu’s Embryonic Breathing method
- Waterhouse, John William - A Tale from the Decameron
- Waterhouse, John William - Dolce far Niente
- Waterhouse, John William - Ophelia
- Waterhouse, John William - Windflowers
- Watson, Sir William - A star look'd down from heaven and loved a flower
- Watson, Sir William - Epigram - Love, like a bird, hath perch'd upon a spray
- Yassawi - 25 HIKMET 128
- Zohar - III 107a – Rose of Sharon