The Secret Doctrine by H.
P.
Blavatsky -- Vol.
1 [[Vol.
1, Page]] 379 LOTUS AND LILY.
§ VIII.
THE LOTUS, AS A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL.
T HERE are no ancient symbols, without a deep and philosophical meaning attached to them; their importance and significance increasing with their antiquity.
Such is the L OTUS.
It is the flower sacred to nature and her Gods, and represents the abstract and the Concrete Universes, standing as the emblem of the productive powers of both spiritual and physical nature.
It was held sacred from the remotest antiquity by the Aryan Hindus, the Egyptians, and the Buddhists after them; revered in China and Japan, and adopted as a Christian emblem by the Greek and Latin Churches, who made of it a messenger as the Christians do now, who replace it with the water lily.* It had, and still has, its mystic meaning which is identical with every nation on the earth.
We refer the reader to Sir William Jones.** With the Hindus, the lotus is the emblem of the productive power of nature, through the agency of fire and water (spirit and matter).
"Eternal!" says a verse in the Bhagavad Gita, "I see Brahm the creator enthroned in thee above the lotus!"; and Sir W.
Jones shows, as noted in the Stanzas, that the seeds of the lotus contain, even before they germinate, perfectly-formed leaves, the miniature shapes of what one day, as perfected plants, they will become.
The lotus, in India, is the symbol of prolific earth, and what is more, of Mount Meru.
The four angels or genii of the four quarters of Heaven (the Maharajahs, see Stanzas ) stand each on a lotus.
The lotus is the two-fold type of the Divine and human hermaphrodite, being of dual sex, so to say.
The spirit of Fire (or Heat), which stirs up, fructifies, and develops into concrete form everything (from its ideal prototype), which is born of WATER or primordial Earth, evolved Brahma -- with the Hindus.
The lotus flower, represented as growing out of Vishnu's navel -- that God resting on the waters of space and his Serpent of Infinity -- is the most graphic allegory ever made: the Universe evolving from the central Sun, the POINT, the ever-concealed germ.
Lakshmi, who is the [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * In the Christian religion Gabriel, the Archangel, holding in his hand a spray of water lilies, appears to the Virgin Mary in every picture of the Annunciation.
This spray typifying fire and water, or the idea of creation and generation, symbolizes precisely the same idea as the lotus in the hand of the Bodhisat who announces to Maha-Maya, Gautama's mother, the birth of the world's Saviour, Buddha.
Thus also, Osiris and Horus were represented by the Egyptians constantly in association with the lotus-flower, the two being Sun-gods or Fire (the Holy Ghost being still typified by "tongues of fire"), (Acts).
** See Sir William Jones' "Dissertations Relating to Asia." [[Vol.
1, Page]] 380 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
female aspect of Vishnu,* and who is also called Padma , the lotus, is likewise shown floating at "Creation," on a lotus flower, and during the "churning of the ocean" of space, springing from the "sea of milk," like Venus from the froth.
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Then seated on a lotus Beauty's bright goddess, peerless Sri, arose Out of the waves .
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" sings an English Orientalist and poet (Sir Monier Williams).
The underlying idea in this symbol is very beautiful, and it shows, furthermore, its identical parentage in all the religious systems.
Whether in the lotus or water-lily shape it signifies one and the same philosophical idea -- namely, the emanation of the objective from the subjective, divine Ideation passing from the abstract into the concrete or visible form.
For, as soon as D ARKNESS -- or rather that which is "darkness" for ignorance -- has disappeared in its own realm of eternal Light, leaving behind itself only its divine manifested Ideation, the creative Logoi have their understanding opened, and they see in the ideal world (hitherto concealed in the divine thought) the archetypal forms of all, and proceed to copy and build or fashion upon these models forms evanescent and transcendent.
At this stage of action, the Demiurge** is not yet the Architect.
Born in the twilight of action, he has yet to first perceive the plan, to realise the ideal forms which lie buried in the bosom of Eternal Ideation, as the future lotus-leaves, the immaculate petals, are concealed within the seed of that plant.
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In chapter lxxxi.
of the Ritual ( Book of the Dead ), called "Transformation into the Lotus," a head emerging from this flower, the god exclaims: "I am the pure lotus, emerging from the Luminous one.
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I carry the messages of Horus.
I am the pure lotus which comes from the Solar Fields.
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." The lotus-idea may be traced even in the Elohistic chapter, the 1st of Genesis , as stated in Isis.
[[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Lakshmi is Venus -- Aphrodite, and, like the latter, she sprang from the froth of the ocean with a lotus in her hand.
In the Ramayana she is called Padma.
** In Esoteric philosophy the Demiurge or Logos , regarded as the C REATOR, is simply an abstract term, an idea, like "army." As the latter is the all-embracing term for a body of active forces or working units -- soldiers -- so is the Demiurge the qualitative compound of a multitude of Creators or Builders.
Burnouf, the great Orientalist, has seized the idea perfectly when saying that Brahma does not create the earth, any more than the rest of the universe.
"Having evolved himself from the soul of the world, once separated from the first cause, he evaporates with, and emanates all nature out of himself.
He does not stand above it, but is mixed up with it; Brahma and the universe form one Being, each particle of which is in its essence Brahma himself, who proceeded out of himself." [[Vol.
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It is in this idea that we must look for the origin and explanation of the verse in the Jewish cosmogony, which reads: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth .
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the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself." In all the primitive religions, the "Son of the Father" is the creative God -- i.e.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The passage demonstrates that the lotus symbol carries 'identical parentage in all the religious systems' and that the seed contains the miniature form of the full plant, illustrating the as-above-so-below principle across scales and cultures.
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The entire passage is a comparative cosmogonic study of the lotus as the symbol of cosmic origin across Hindu, Egyptian, Buddhist, and Christian traditions, describing how the universe evolves from a central point/seed.
A secondary creator deity—often ignorant or malevolent—responsible for fashioning the material world, distinct from the supreme transcendent God.
The passage directly discusses the Demiurge: 'At this stage of action, the Demiurge is not yet the Architect,' and the footnote elaborates the Demiurge/Logos as 'the qualitative compound of a multitude of Creators or Builders.'
The doctrine that the divine is present within all things and the universe itself, pervading creation rather than remaining solely transcendent above it. Distinct from unity_of_being (the general claim that all existence is one substance, agnostic about whether that substance indwells its parts) and from kingdom_within (the divine present specifically IN THE INDIVIDUAL human, accessible without mediation) — divine_immanence is the general pervading-presence claim applied to all of creation, not a human-specific indwelling.
Burnouf's quoted statement that 'Brahma and the universe form one Being, each particle of which is in its essence Brahma himself, who proceeded out of himself' expresses the divine as pervading and identical with all of creation.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The passage explicitly describes 'the emanation of the objective from the subjective, divine Ideation passing from the abstract into the concrete or visible form,' with the lotus growing from Vishnu's navel as the universe unfolding from a central source.
The Hermetic doctrine that a masculine-feminine generative principle operates on every plane of being, not only the biological — present at all times as a structural feature of creation itself. Distinct from divine_marriage (a specific reunification event or symbol) and aeons (paired divine beings arranged in syzygies, not a universal structural claim).
The lotus is explicitly called 'the two-fold type of the Divine and human hermaphrodite, being of dual sex,' and the passage describes Fire (spirit) and Water (matter) as the complementary generative principles.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The passage frames the lotus as having a 'mystic meaning' and 'deep and philosophical meaning' that is esoteric, with the title 'The Secret Doctrine' signaling concealed wisdom accessible only to the initiated reader.
The doctrine that the cosmos unfolds as a structured descent of spirit into matter — a directional process traced stage by stage from an unconditioned principle down through successive planes to full materialization — complemented by its own eventual return ('evolution'). Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (the static structure of the resulting levels of the cascade) and cosmogony (a single originating event rather than an ongoing staged process) in naming the directional cosmic PROCESS of descent itself, paired with its own complementary ascent.
The passage describes a directional process of 'divine Ideation passing from the abstract into the concrete or visible form,' with the Demiurge perceiving ideal forms and proceeding to 'copy and build or fashion upon these models forms evanescent and transcendent.'
The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.
The passage references 'the creative Logoi have their understanding opened' and the footnote equates the Demiurge with the Logos as a mediating creative principle.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
The seeds of the lotus are described as containing 'perfectly-formed leaves, the miniature shapes of what one day, as perfected plants, they will become,' making the seed a microcosm of the full cosmic plant.
A vertical structure connecting cosmic levels — a tree, pillar, mountain, or ladder linking heaven, earth, and underworld around which the cosmos is organised. Yggdrasil binding the Nine Worlds in Norse cosmology, the Kalevala's Sampo as world-pillar, the Mayan ceiba, the Vedic Aśvattha, the shamanic central tree of Eliade's analyses. Cosmic-structural in character: distinct from sefirot_tree (a kabbalistic emanation diagram) and emanation_hierarchy (an ontological cascade); world_tree_axis is the cosmos's spine rather than the divine's outflow.
The lotus is identified as the symbol of Mount Meru, the cosmic axis connecting the four quarters of Heaven, with the four angels standing on lotuses at each quarter.