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 myths of
the first man Adam, and the first woman Eve or Adama.

Throughout the ages, this force, or creative agency has been symbolized
in various ways, many of which have been noted in the foregoing pages.
We have observed that notwithstanding the fact that the supremacy of
the male had been established, the sacred Yoni and the lotus were
still reverenced as symbols of the most exalted God. Finally, when the
masculine energy began to be worshipped as the more important agency
in reproduction, the female, although still necessary to complete the
god-idea, was veiled.

Among the sect known as Lingaites, those who adored the male creative
power, Man, Phallus, and Creator in religious symbolism signified one
and the same thing in the minds of the people. Each represented a Tree
of Life, the beginning and end of all things.

Tree-worship was condemned by the councils of Tours, Nantes, and
Auxerre, and in the XIth century it was forbidden in England by the laws
of Canute, but these edicts seem to