At first glance, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland appears to be a children’s fantasy, but its structure suggests something far more deliberate…

If you know your Rosicrucian history — or have studied anything of the Wars of the Roses — Alice in Wonderland reads less like a children’s story and more like a Rosicrucian manifesto.

 In this blog, we’ll explore the many hidden themes woven into both Lewis Carroll’s original texts and Tim Burton’s 2010 adaptation, tracing their intersections with esoteric initiation, Tudor symbolism, and it’s alchemical labyrinths.

Checkmate: From Pawn, To Queen

In Through the Looking-Glass (1871), Lewis Carroll structures the entire narrative around a chessboard — not as a literal match, but as a “game of the story” where each scene represents a deliberate move toward Alice’s transformation from pawn to queen.

At the book’s start, he even includes a diagram called “The Game of Chess” outlining her exact “moves.” Alice begins on the second square and must cross seven ranks before reaching the eighth, where she earns her crown. Every encounter, riddle, and trial reflects a deliberate step within this initiatory game. Along the way, she encounters characters who correspond to key “squares” on the board — from Tweedledee and Tweedledum, to Humpty Dumpty, to the White Queen, and finally the Lion and the Unicorn on the seventh rank, just before her symbolic crowning.

The structure of Alice’s journey — crossing seven ranks before reaching her crown — reflects a recurring motif in Western mysticism, mirroring the seven stages of alchemy and the ascent toward spiritual sovereignty found across initiatory traditions.

The Oraculum and the Slaying of the Jabberwocky

Tim Burton’s 2010 Alice in Wonderland adaptation amplifies this hidden architecture, even without the explicit chessboard. The Oraculum scroll functions as Alice’s map, each threshold marking a deeper stage of transformation — rejecting her arranged marriage, entering Underland, retrieving the Vorpal Sword, and finally slaying the Jabberwocky.

At its center is the “true Alice” slaying the Red Queen’s dragon-like champion. This is incredibly symbolic to any War of the Roses / Rosicrucian historian.

As I’ve discussed in previous posts, Frances Yates explores the intricate ties between monarchy, mysticism, and hidden orders in her seminal work The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972).  When viewed through this lens, the symbolism deepens: the rival crowns of the Red Queen and White Queen mirror the historic conflict between Lancaster and York, while the dragon-slaying prophecy echoes the Chivalric orders that were directly tied to Arthurian Legends and Grail mysteries.

If we consider that many royals involved in the Wars of the Roses were closely connected to elite chivalric societies — particularly the Order of the Garter in England and the Order of the Golden Fleece in Burgundy — Burton’s imagery takes on a layered resonance.

The motif of dragon-slaying recurs throughout European chivalric traditions, Arthurian legends, and alchemical texts, carrying layers of symbolic meaning.

In alchemy, the dragon is said to guard the Philosopher’s Stone. To obtain it, the dragon must be “slain,” but many texts note it must also be reconciled through the mirror — a confrontation with the self rather than mere destruction. Carroll mirrors this symbolism directly in Through the Looking-Glass (1871), where Alice begins her journey by literally stepping through a mirror into an inverted world. Burton replaces the physical mirror with the rabbit hole, but the theme remains intact: before Alice can claim her “crown,” she must face the dragon — not only as a beast to defeat, but as a reflection of fear, identity, and transformation.

The War of the Roses in Wonderland—“Painting the Roses Red”

In both Lewis Carroll’s original texts and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010), the rivalry between the Red Queen and the White Queen mirrors the historic conflict of the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), when the rival houses of Lancaster and York fought for the English crown— represented by a Red and a White rose. Carroll uses this tension subtly, weaving it into imagery and language, while Burton makes it visually explicit: the Red Queen and White Queen represent two opposing factions, two claims to sovereignty, and two visions of power.

This duality also echoes alchemical symbolism, where texts from the 16th and 17th centuries depict Red and White Queens representing opposing feminine principles — fixed matter versus volatile essence, body versus spirit — whose reconciliation leads to transformation.

One of the clearest references comes in the “painting the roses red” motif. In Carroll’s book, Alice stumbles upon gardeners frantically painting white roses crimson to appease the Red Queen:

“The Queen, she likes them red… If she saw white instead… someone will lose his head!”

This moment carries layered meaning. On the surface, it’s comedic chaos; beneath it, it speaks to rewriting history and bloodlines.

The white roses represent York; the red, Lancaster. To “paint the roses red” is to mask one lineage beneath another, forcing allegiance to a narrative of victory rather than truth.

Shakespeare captures this tension centuries earlier in Henry VI, Part I during the famous Temple Garden scene, where Yorkist and Lancastrian nobles publicly declare their allegiances by plucking roses:

“Prick not your finger as you pluck it off, lest bleeding you do paint the white rose red.”

This scene — set in London’s historic Temple Garden — marks the symbolic birth of the Wars of the Roses. Choosing a rose in Shakespeare’s play is choosing a side in a civil war, but the line warns of a deeper irony: spilling Yorkist blood would strengthen Lancaster’s claim, foreshadowing how conflict stains and blurs dynastic legitimacy.

Carroll never names the location of the Queen’s garden, but the imagery resonates strongly with Shakespeare’s Temple Garden — both spaces symbolize political identity, bloodlines, and contested crowns. In Burton’s 2010 film, this connection deepens:

	•	The Red Queen’s obsession with control and appearances echoes Tudor propaganda, which reshaped Yorkist history after Henry VII’s victory at Bosworth in 1485.

	•	The White Queen, by contrast, represents an idealized, restrained sovereignty — a visual embodiment of York’s “lost crown.”

	•	Burton reinforces this dynastic theme through heraldic imagery, Gothic castles, and courtly settings that evoke late-medieval England.

Within Wonderland, as in history, crowns are contested, loyalty is perilous, and appearance masks reality. Choosing the wrong rose — or the wrong queen — can cost one’s head.

Ultimately, Alice sides with the White Queen in Burton’s adaptation, aligning herself with restraint, balance, and a claim to rightful sovereignty. In doing so, she rejects the Red Queen’s chaos and tyranny, completing the symbolic parallel to York’s “lost crown” within the Wars of the Roses narrative.

But to understand the Red Queen’s role fully, we must step into the next section — where Wonderland’s most infamous line, “Off with their heads!”, opens a deeper dialogue about Tudor power, propaganda, and the psychology of fear.

“Off With Their Heads” — A Tudor Family Tradition

The Red Queen’s infamous cry — “Off with their heads!” — isn’t just Wonderland absurdity. Clearly, Wonderland’s Red Queen feels like a nod to the original Red Queen — Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII and grandmother of Henry VIII. And Henry VIII? Well… let’s just say he inherited her crown and her love of beheading.

Historically, Margaret Beaufort was one of the most formidable political strategists of the 15th century. As the matriarch of the House of Lancaster, she orchestrated her son Henry Tudor’s victory over King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, ending the Wars of the Roses and establishing the Tudor dynasty.

Her role in securing the throne — often through backroom negotiations, arranged marriages, and relentless maneuvering — earned her the title of the “Red Queen” among historians.

Richard III’s defeat symbolized the fall of the House of York and the rise of Lancastrian dominance, but it came at a cost: Tudor propaganda actively rewrote Yorkist history, erasing rival claims and reshaping the royal narrative.

Carroll’s imagery of painting the roses red mirrors this very act — concealing Yorkist lineage beneath a Lancastrian victory, replacing white with red to mask the truth.

In Burton’s 2010 film, the Red Queen (Iracebeth) embodies this dynamic even more intensely. Her exaggerated head, paranoia, and obsession with obedience visually amplify her inflated sense of authority. Every “off with their heads” becomes a reminder that her power depends on spectacle — a threat rather than action, mirroring Tudor-style propaganda politics where fear sustains control.

But Alice, instead of “losing her head” in submission, undergoes a figurative decapitation: she lets go of societal expectations, rejects her arranged marriage, and ultimately redefines sovereignty on her own terms by siding with the White Queen. (York would be proud. Lancaster? Not so much.)

The Lion, the Unicorn, and the Secrets Carroll Hid in Plain Sight

Interestingly, in Through the Looking-Glass, Alice’s path to queendom passes through the Lion and the Unicorn — characters fighting over the crown on the seventh rank of Carroll’s symbolic chessboard.

In British heraldry, these figures appear on the Royal Coat of Arms, historically tied to the Order of the Garter and dynastic legitimacy.

Figures like Edward IV, his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later Richard III), and George, Duke of Clarence were all knighted into the Order of the Garter, linking Yorkist sovereignty to this emblem of dynastic legitimacy.

The Tudors claimed the Order too, but often for political theater. After defeating Richard III at Bosworth in 1485, Henry VII used the Garter to cement Tudor authority, appointing loyalists and marrying Elizabeth of York to stage a symbolic “union” of the roses. Henry VIII expanded its spectacle, turning Windsor’s Garter ceremonies into grand displays of power — wielding pageantry and the axe with equal skill. By Elizabeth I’s reign, the Garter had evolved into propaganda, casting the Tudors as heirs to Arthurian destiny.

Historian Frances Yates, in The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972), even links the Order to Rosicrucian symbolism and early Stuart mysticism, framing it as a bridge between dynastic power and hidden knowledge.

Now here’s where things get deeply Rosicrucian — the symbolism is hard to ignore:

In the third Rosicrucian Manifesto: The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosycross (1616), the lion and the unicorn appear as powerful alchemical symbols, representing the union of opposites — an essential stage on the path toward spiritual transformation.

In a central scene, Christian Rosycross witnesses the taming of a wild unicorn by a lion, symbolizing the reconciliation of dual forces—the Lion representing potent untamed masculinity, and the Unicorn representing femininity, purity, and chastity. Often tamed by a Virgin.

In this text— the Unicorn bows to the Lion representing reconciliation and harmony of these opposites.

Carroll takes this same imagery but twists it into satire. In Through the Looking-Glass, Alice encounters the Lion and the Unicorn battling endlessly for the crown on the seventh rank — the final threshold before her own coronation. Carroll even quotes the old English nursery rhyme:

“The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown;

The Lion beat the Unicorn all around the town.”

But unlike The Chymical Wedding, there is no reconciliation here. The battle remains unresolved. And in pure Wonderland absurdity, this struggle for the crown is interrupted by the White King offering everyone plum cake — a surreal disruption where a moment of supposed spiritual or political gravity dissolves into nonsense.

Where Christian Rosycross witnesses opposites harmonized, Alice watches chaos unfold.

To reach sovereignty, she must first pass through a realm where integration hasn’t happened yet — confronting duality, paradox, and the absurd before ascending to the eighth square to “become queen.”

Mad Hatter’s Rosicrucian Riddle “M”

One of Burton’s most cryptic additions to Alice in Wonderland (2010) comes when the Red Queen interrogates the Mad Hatter, demanding to know where the “real” Alice is — the one prophesied to slay the Jabberwocky. Instead of answering directly, the Hatter distracts her with an odd line:

“I’ve been considering things that begin with the letter M.”

At the heart of Alice in Wonderland lies a quiet obsession with losing your head.

This theme surfaces subtly in Burton’s film during the Mad Hatter’s cryptic line about “M” — murder, malice, mayhem, and, perhaps most importantly, madness.

The letter hangs in the air like a riddle, a reminder that to survive Wonderland, Alice must step beyond reason.

That idea returns in the now-iconic exchange:

“Have I gone mad?”

“I’m afraid so… but let me tell you a secret: all the best people are.”

Here, madness becomes liberation. To “lose your mind” is not destruction but transcendence.

This ties directly into Rosicrucian philosophy, which teaches:

“The height of knowledge is to know nothing.”

In other words, enlightenment begins where certainty collapses. Carroll mirrors this in Alice’s journey: to claim the crown — sovereignty over herself — she must first endure dissolution, confusion, and paradox.

The Book M and the Hidden Knowledge:

Rosicrucian texts also reference the legendary Book M, or “Liber Mundi”— said to have been transcribed into Latin by Christian Rosenkreuz after receiving secret teachings from magi in Damcar, Morocco.

The Book contained advanced knowledge — physics, mathematics, and spiritual mysteries — a manual for decoding reality itself.

Burton never mentions it directly, but his M riddle echoes the same symbolic gesture: Alice has crossed into the realm of hidden knowledge, where names, letters, and symbols carry initiatory meaning.

Steiner, Rosicrucianism, and the Letter “M”:

In his Rosicrucian lectures, Rudolf Steiner described letters as archetypal symbols carrying layers of meaning. The letter M is especially significant:

M = Mother / Matter / Matrix → the descent of spirit into material form, where consciousness takes shape.

M = Mirror / Mysteries → the “mirror of the soul,” where the initiate confronts illusion (maya) and learns to see beyond appearances.

M = Middle Path → the reconciliation point between opposites, where integration occurs — the Rosicrucian “heart center.”

Through this lens, the Mad Hatter’s “M” becomes more than a distraction — it’s an initiation breadcrumb. Alice, by stepping “through the looking-glass,” has entered the Mysteries: a realm where reflection, inversion, and paradox shape transformation.

Alice enters Underland: The unconscious realm of dreams

Perhaps Wonderland was never madness at all — perhaps it was initiation. Alice doesn’t simply fall into chaos; she steps through the mirror, crossing into a liminal space where identity dissolves, opposites collide, and hidden laws shape transformation. The Mad Hatter’s riddle, the Lion and the Unicorn, the endless battles of crowns and chaos — none of it is nonsense. Each marks a stage on a carefully coded initiatory path.

In Burton’s vision, Underland is the unconscious — the realm of dreams where reason loosens its grip and meaning reveals itself through paradox. Carroll hints at this directly in Through the Looking-Glass: “Life, what is it but a dream?” This dream-realm collapses the boundaries between waking and sleeping, sanity and madness, self and shadow.

Through a Rosicrucian lens, the entire journey echoes the process of initiation described in the old manifestos: the crossing of thresholds, the confrontation of opposites, and the reconciliation of chaos into higher understanding. Even the Tudor and heraldic symbols — the painted roses, the rival queens, the Lion and the Unicorn — function like fragments of a hidden code, weaving politics and mysticism into the same tapestry.

Alchemy says the same: the initiate must face the Mercurial Dragon, endure dissolution, and integrate opposing forces before transformation can occur. For Alice, “losing her head” is not defeat — it is the necessary step before claiming sovereignty over the self.

In the end, Carroll leaves us with the suggestion that Wonderland was never a place at all — it is the journey through the unconscious, where madness, mystery, and meaning converge, and where, if one reads closely enough, history, symbolism, and initiation meet beneath the surface.

As every initiate must learn, to cross the mirror, one must first lose the mind.

The Red & White Roses: The hidden motif behind ‘Painting the Roses Red’

The Unicorn & The Lion: The Order of the Garter & it’s Rosicrucian symbolism

The Slaying of the Dragon: In Wonderland, Alchemy, & Medieval England

Through the Looking Glass: The Rosicrucian Alice in Wonderland