veneration, but among the modern Egyptians it is still worshipped
as symbolical of the Great First Cause. The lotus was the emblem
venerated in the solemn celebration of the Mysteries of Eleusis
in Greece and the Phiditia in Carthage.
In referring to the degree of homage paid to the lotus by the
ancients, Higgins says: "And we shall find in the sequel that it
still continues to receive the respect, if not the adoration, of
a great part of the Christian world, unconscious, perhaps, of the
original reason of their conduct." It is a significant fact that
in nearly all the sacred paintings of the Christians in the
galleries throughout Europe, especially those of the
Annunciation, a lily is always to be observed. In later ages as
the original significance of the lotus was lost, any lily came to
be substituted. Godfrey Higgins is sure that although the
priests of the Romish Church are at the present time ignorant of
the true meaning of the lotus, or lily, "it is, like many other
very odd things, probably understood at the Vatican, or the Crypt
of St. Peter's."[20]
[20] Anacalypsis, book vii., ch. xi.
Of the lotus of the Hindoos Nimrod says:
"The lotus is a well-known allegory, of which the expanse calyx
represents the ships of the gods floating on the surface of the
water, and the erect flower arising out of it, the mast thereof .
. . but as the ship was Isis or Magna Mater, the female
principle, and the mast in it the male deity, these parts of the
flower came to have certain other significations, which seem to
have been as well known at Samosata as at Benares."[21]
[21] Quoted in Anacalypsis.
In other words it was a phallic emblem and represented the
creative processes throughout Nature. Susa, the name of the
capital of the Cushites, or ancient Ethiopians, meant "the City
of Lilies." In India the lotus frequently appears among phallic
devices in place of the sacred Yoni. From the foregoing pages
the fact will be observed that the God of the ancients embodied
the two creative agencies throughout the universe, but as nothing
could exist without a mother, the great Om who was the
indivisible God and the Creator of the sun was the mother of
these two principles, while the Tree of Life was the original
life-giving energy upon the earth, represented in the creation
