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408 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Born in the Twilight of Action, he has yet to first perceive the Plan, to
realize the Ideal Forms, which lie buried in the Bosom of Eternal Ideation,
just as the future lotus-leaves, the immaculate petals, are concealed
within the seed of that plant.
In Esoteric Philosophy the Demiurge, or Logos, regarded as the
Creator, is simply an abstract term, an idea, like the word "army."
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,
seized the idea perfectl}^ w^lien he said that Brahma does 7iot 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.
In a chapter of the Book of the Dead, called "Transformation into
the Lotus," the God, figured as a head emerging from this flower,
exclaims
I am the pure Lotus, emerging from the Luminous Ones. ... I carry the
messages of Horus.
I am the pure Lotus which comes from the Solar Fields.*
The lotus-idea may be traced even in the Elohistic first chapter of
Genesis, as stated in Isis Unveiled. It is to 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 . . . the
fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself." f In all
the primitive religions, the Creative God is the "Son of the Father,"
that is to say, his Thought made visible; and before the Christian era,
from the Trimurti of the Hindus down to the three Kabalistic Heads of
the scriptures, as explained by the Jews, the Triune Godhead of each
nation was fully defined and substantiated, in its allegories.
Such is the cosmic and ideal significance of this great symbol with
the Eastern peoples. But when applied to practical and exoteric worship,
which had also its esoteric symbology, the Lotus, in time, became
the carrier and container of a more terrestrial idea. No dogmatic
religion has ever escaped having the sexual element in it; and to this
day it soils the moral beauty of the root idea of symbology. The
As
* Ch. Ixxxi. t i. II.