The Legend of the Blue Lotus

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Higher Ethics and Devotion Series · 11 pages

First published in Le Lotus Bleu, Paris, Vol. I (2), 7 April 1890, pages 73–85, translated from the original French by Boris de Zirkoff in Blavatsky Collected Writings XII pages 177–86. A head-note warns against confusing it with “The Idyll of the White Lotus,” held in the Black versus White Magic series. The running head gives the theme: compassion is the spirit of truth.

The piece is an editorial explaining a title, and it begins from the principle that the title of a journal or book must have its reason for being — especially a theosophical one, which is supposed to express the objective in view and symbolise the contents. Since allegory is called the very soul of Oriental philosophy, Blavatsky says it would be regrettable for anyone to see in the name Blue Lotus merely an aquatic plant, the Nymphæa cærulea; a reader of that type, she adds, would get nothing from the table of contents either. The rest introduces the symbology of the lotus in general and the blue lotus in particular. The plant has been considered a symbol of the universe from time immemorial in Egypt as in India: there is hardly a monument in the Valley of the Nile or a papyrus on which it does not have a place of honour, and it appears everywhere from the capitals of Egyptian columns to the thrones and coiffures of the god-kings. From this it became an indispensable attribute of every creative god and goddess — the goddess being, in the philosophy, the feminine aspect of a god androgynous at first and male later. The exposition then turns to Padma-yoni, the bosom of the lotus, and to what proceeds from it.

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