A ring around a rose,
A pocket full of flowers.
Ashes! Ashes!
We’re all falling!

There’s something about this folk song that has always intrigued me. Its origins remain a mystery, with one ancient interpretation linking it to the Great Plague of the 17th century.

There’s no conclusive evidence that the song is connected to the bubonic plague, but I don’t think that matters much. If the symbolism points to something deeper that helps us understand difficult truths, all the better.

In the plague interpretation, the “rose” refers to the color of the rash caused by the disease, while the “pocket of flowers” was what people carried to ward off the “stench” and keep themselves safe. The “ashes” refer to cremated bodies, and “we’re all falling” symbolizes mass death everywhere.

Needless to say, the Great Plague is long gone. COVID-19 has claimed the lives of many of our loved ones, yet it has had very different characteristics from previous pandemics. We might need new children’s songs to capture our experiences with mandatory vaccinations, the harsh isolation of endless TV series, and the eerie eerie atmosphere of airports and city streets.

However, there is one context where I feel this song still resonates: the description of a narcissist. So let’s re imagine this classic and see if we can extract a new meaning from it that serves us in the 21st century.

Round about The Goal

There’s something unsettling about associating “Roundabout Rosie” with mass death when it’s also a children’s game.

In the playground, children hold hands and sing the lyrics as they spin in a circle, ending with them collapsing at the final line. The game evokes a sense of joy, a celebration of the cycle of life, where each round ends with “death” before the inevitable rebirth. In this context, the meaning is calculatingly beautiful: death is not the end.

Related : The Lost Child In A Narcissistic Family

But we might also interpret this rhyme as a cautionary tale about narcissists. Instead of death not being the end, what if death is the ultimate goal of the narcissist?

With this in mind, let’s analyze the song’s lyrics as follows:

A loop around the rose: The word “rose” comes from the French word “rosier,” meaning rose bush. This bush produces beautiful flowers, but it also has thorns on its stems. We can see the narcissist’s victim as someone who bears wounds (thorns) and offers something of value to the narcissist (flowers). These flowers represent vitality, optimism, and energy. They represent life, which the narcissist seeks to transform into a source of narcissistic gratification. As a result, the narcissist moves in metaphorical circles, or “loops,” around their victim (the rose), trying to ensnare them in their narcissistic world.

A bouquet of flowers: Bouquets of flowers are what the narcissist offers their victim to disarm them. This represents the narcissist’s attention, flattery, and charm during the glorification phase. They shower the victim with exaggerated, sentimental phrases, much like a lovesick admirer.

Ashes! Ashes!: After the glorification phase, the belittling phase begins. The narcissist unleashes their repressed traumas on the victim through abuse, deriving narcissistic gratification and reducing the victim’s inner life to ashes.

We all fall!: This line is clear in its meaning. “Falling” refers to the victim’s life sliding into depression, poverty, and collapse.

But we must consider the word “all” in the last line. Doesn’t it suggest that both the victim and the narcissist suffer a fall? Isn’t the narcissist always the victor?

A Burned Relationship

Narcissistic relationships are ritualistic. The cycle of glorification, belittlement, and abandonment repeats itself endlessly, much like a game of “ring of roses” on a playground. When the narcissist and their victim “collapse” after being abandoned, the narcissist begins gathering new “flowers”—that is, vanity—and seeks a new “rose” (a victim) to circle.

In cases where the relationship lasts for decades or a lifetime, the belittling phase continues indefinitely, as the narcissist’s partner gradually withers away, reduced to spiritual and emotional ashes. Even if the narcissist remains physically present in your life, they will always abandon you emotionally, leaving the relationship in a perpetual state of decay and monotonous routine.

However, the result is always the same: a desolate emptiness.

However, the result is always the same: a desolate emptiness. Eternal Return

Rituals play a crucial role in human life, even if we are unaware of their true purpose.

“Eternal Return” is a concept proposed by the historian Mercia Elia de to explain the meaning behind the ritualistic behaviors of religious people throughout history. Elia de argues that by reenacting specific behaviors in a particular order, one can return to a “mythical age”—that is, one can travel back in time to an event that fundamentally shaped one’s existence.

Eliad describes linear time as “worldly,” while “sacred” time is cyclical, where an event is endlessly reenacted. “Worldly” time can seem meaningless, as if one lives in a state of perpetual boredom where “nothing happens.” Sacred time, on the other hand, revolves around a specific moment in which something extraordinary occurred.

If we were to lose our connection to such “supernatural” or “sacred” events, life would once again lose its meaning, and we would revert to the absurd expanse of linear time, where seconds pass without anything changing. Sacred time offers a much-needed “break” from linear time, bringing with it a radical transformation with a power that transcends our familiar world. Ritual is our way of revisiting these pivotal events, which could have brought total destruction or led us toward transcendence and growth.

Reason To Return

Ritual takes us back to a state of chaos, to a time when our world arose from a state of flux. In such instances, something unexpected and transcendent occurred. The Big Bang. The death of Christ. The end of World War II.

By commemorating an anniversary or repeating certain rituals that mimic an event, humans seek to extract the spiritual value of that event. Perhaps all of life originated as a “ritual repetition” of the Big Bang?

The death and resurrection of Christ symbolize the universal human experience of suffering and its power to bring about the annihilation of the ego. Yet, a new spiritual birth follows, heralding a psychological “resurrection.” The symbol of Christ on the cross empowers us to “choose our cross” by accepting inevitable suffering with fortitude, whatever form it may take.

Commemorating the end of World War II can help us embrace the beauty of living in a new world built upon the ruins of the old. It can also remind us of the value of self-sacrifice for a cause higher than ourselves.

So, what does all this mean when considering the narcissistic rituals of glorifying, belittling, and then abandoning others? What do they derive from these repetitions? And, more importantly, what event are they reenacting?

Let Me Show You My World

The narcissist’s game of “Ring Around the Rose” isn’t about a rose bush, but about an emotional relationship. In this game, the victim plays a double role, representing both the rose bush and the other “child” who circles it with the narcissist.

The relationship only comes alive through mutual emotional investment. But the narcissist doesn’t invest emotionally in the relationship, only in the game itself. Therefore, the victim remains alone in the relationship. This is why they are the rose bush—the only one “alive.” At the same time, the victim is forced to engage with the narcissist’s fantasy world, drawn in by the fragrance of its bouquets. What the target doesn’t know is that they are being led by the hand into a ritualistic reenactment of the narcissist’s origin—the narcissist’s fundamental relationship, the one that made them who they are.

In childhood, the narcissist’s parent was like a rosebush. Usually, it was the mother, but it could also be the father, or both. The narcissist, full of energy, would circle around their parent, holding a bouquet of flowers to please them. This was the typical relationship between a child and their parents. The birth of the narcissist’s child transforms them into an independent human being; a bouquet of flowers separate from the rosebush. This bouquet of flowers continues to circle the “rosebush” throughout childhood, until the inevitable separation and independence arrive, when the child becomes their own rosebush—a process the narcissist never completes.

Instead, something tragic happens. The narcissist is reduced to “ashes,” “fallen,” sinking deeper and deeper into death. The rosebush they believed to be the source of life was not what it initially seemed.

Related : Engaging Narcissists in Couples Counseling

It takes time for the developing, imaginative mind of a child to grasp reality. A child circles around their parents, seeking love, attention, and care. The narcissist, however, receives little warmth, or even appreciation, from their parents. The parent looked like a rosebush, but it was lifeless. Their faces never lit up when the narcissist entered the room; instead, they remained anxious or indifferent. Rather than overflowing with joy at the arrival of their child, the parent remained depressed, angry, or critical.

Months and years passed for the narcissist, who grew increasingly frustrated and ashamed by his parents’ constant rejection. He continued to circle around them, growing more desperate, clinging to the rosebush, before suddenly colliding with the harsh reality: the rosebush had withered. It had never truly lived.

Death seeped into the narcissist’s veins, and he felt as if he were turning to ash. They lost their psychic balance, seized by panic as they plummeted into the abyss.

“Hey,” came the voice of death. “Look there.”

The narcissist paused momentarily in his downward spiral and peered out, seeing the vast world of his imagination. Suddenly, he felt life return to him.

“I’ll make you a deal,” said Death, pushing his false self forward. “Take this man’s hand, go together to the world of fantasy, and you will live.”

Stunned, but realizing he had no choice, the child agreed, and with his false self, embarked on the path of narcissism, walking toward the world of fantasy without looking back. His father may have remained physically present in his life, but the psychological connection between him and the narcissist was severed forever.

The Pledge

The narcissist lives a “worldly” life filled with perpetual despair. Instead of separating from the rosebush that gave birth to him to become an independent tree, he turned to ash. To survive, he made a pledge with death, choosing to live in a world of fantasy.

This is the story of the narcissist’s origin, the primal event that created him. At that moment, the narcissist “died” and was reborn with a false persona.

Behind his grandeur lies a void that envelops the narcissist. His life has no meaning, except for the period before he discovered his “dead” father. From birth until the moment the narcissistic child “abandons” his father, he bestows upon him an aura of perfection. During that time, the child overflowed with life and hope. His life had meaning.

By repeating this stage of perfection with a new lover, the narcissist returns to life. But these rituals must end in death, just as they did in the beginning. This horrific reality is repeated again and again, driven by the narcissist’s pledge with death. A future brimming with hope gradually fades, revealing the bitter reality behind this illusion. All the narcissist’s emerging relationships are mere imaginary projections, gradually dissolving into death, just as the original relationship did.

Behind these repetitive rituals, the narcissist clings to the only meaning they have ever felt in their life. They desperately search for a time when they felt truly alive, a time through which they can survive in the present moment. This is the vow they have made to themselves, a vow they have bound themselves to forever.

This is why everything the narcissist touches turns to ash. Every relationship. Every investment. Every home. Every job. Every success. Even when things are going well, when they are objectively alive, the narcissist sabotages and destroys them with their recklessness. And this recklessness feeds on death itself.

Behind every glittering fantasy in the narcissist’s imagination, death lurks as a constant presence, filling their heart with a heavy weight and indifference. And in this emptiness lies a raging anger, seeking to reduce all life to ashes. The narcissist’s linear trajectory began at the moment of their conception and birth, and ended the moment they realized their father wasn’t truly alive—the moment of their abandonment. Everything after that became mundane, devoid of meaning.

Thus, the narcissist established a new religion with its own rituals, making themselves its center. The narcissist became a god; death disguised as a bouquet of flowers. By inviting strangers into their “church,” allowing them to stand at the altar of the rosebush, the narcissist revived their sacred origin, revealing their founding myth to their victim. Hand in hand, the narcissist and their victim circled the rosebush before grasping the inevitable truth: just as the narcissist’s original father died, so too did the narcissist, at their core, die.

And so, both the narcissist and their victim fell, and the relationship ended either in abandonment or in a state of perpetual decay.

The Myth Of Hope

In my opinion, the narcissist’s “core myth” shouldn’t remain an endless cycle of death. Awareness is a crucial first step. Once they grasp reality, the narcissist might explore the covenant they made with death. This is where their spiritual journey begins.

While there are no easy answers, I wonder if new myths can be formed in this context. Buddhists believe that cyclical “sacred” time is also worldly time. Many rituals aim to reenact the creation myth, from which life flourished. In the case of the narcissist, however, the outcome is always death. Buddhists believe that the sacred transcends the “mythical age” and all ages. This sacredness emerges when we completely transcend time.

Whether we are victims or narcissists, the least we can do is seek out new and impactful experiences in the present moment, while being careful not to slip back into the destructive cycle of narcissistic relationships. During our recovery journey, we might also try to emulate children on the playground, seeing death not as the end, but as an opportunity to embark on a new life.