Excuse my ignorance what does a black and white rosary stand for ? To explain better I mean an entire rosary of black beads with little white flowery hearts on them, the flowers I can only describe as portuguese art like below View attachment 3349
My guess is it is just a decorative bead used. At home we have wooden,plastic,pearl,onyx beads some carved some crowned beads.
I make rosaries and can concur with what Mac said - it's a decorative rosary, used in the ordinary way. I assume it has the standard 59 beads. There are some rosaries with specifically coloured beads - a red and white one (the beads are solid colour) - for the Divine Mercy and Poland, also I have found one that has decades of different colours, to mark the different continents of the world. Rosaries which have a different number or arrangement of beads are called chaplets. I've just been asked to make a Holy Spirit chaplet.
Thank you both, I had read somewhere that black was for mourning and white purity so was just checking, The reason I asked was due to a dream recently,, my mother in law who passed away came to me with the rosary described she was slightly unwilling to give it to me, she wanted her daughter to have them but because she was unable to give them to her she wanted me to have them, as she gave them to me she said Fr Thomas Medjugore 1996, she passed away in 1996 herself so I am just trying to discern the dream.. God Bless John..
Black and white can also symbolize the Dominican order. I remember reading a story about St. Rose of Lima during her discernment process who saw a black and white dog cross her path and knew that she should become a Dominican. Are you discerning whether to join a Third Order?
Would it refer to a a set of Holy Souls Rosary Beads, which have beads that fade from black to white. http://www.cenacle.co.uk/holy-souls-rosary-beads.html
