A pleasing symbol, which has played a conspicuous part in many religions, is the Egyptian lotus, or “lily of the Nile.” It is an aquatic plant, with white, roseate or blue flowers, which float upon the water, and send up from their centre long stamens. In Egypt it grows with the rising of the Nile, and as its appearance was coincident with that important event, it came to take prominence in the worship of Isis and Osiris as the symbol of fertility. Their mystical marriage took place in its blossom. In the technical language of the priests, however, it bore a profounder meaning, that of the supremacy of reason above matter, the contrast being between the beautiful flower and the muddy water which bears it.[214-1] In India the lotus bears other and manifold meanings. It is a symbol of the sacred river Ganges, and of the morally pure. No prayer in the world has ever been more frequently repeated than this: “Om! the jewel in the lotus. Amen” (_om mani padme hum_). Many millions of times, every hour, for centuries, has this been iterated by the Buddhists of Thibet and the countries north of it. What it means, they can only explain by fantastic and mystical guesses. Probably it refers to the legendary birth of their chief saint, Avalokitesvara, who is said to have been born of a lotus flower. But some say it is a piece of symbolism not strange to its meaning in Egypt,[214-2] and borrowed by Buddhism from the Siva worship. In the symbolic language of this sect the lotus is the symbol of the vagina, while the phallus is called “the jewel.” With this interpretation the Buddhist prayer would refer to the reproductive act; but it is illustrative of the necessity of attributing wholly diverse meanings to the same symbol, that the Buddhists neither now nor at any past time attached any such signification to the expression, and it would be most discrepant with their doctrines to do so.[214-3] Another symbol has frequently been open to this duplicate interpretation, that is, the upright pillar. The Egyptian obelisk, the pillars of “Irmin” or of “Roland,” set up now of wood, now of stone by the ancient Germans, the “red-painted great warpole” of the American Indians, the May-pole of Old England, the spire of sacred edifices, the staff planted on the grave, the terminus of the Roman landholders, all these objects have been interpreted to be symbols of life, or the life-force. As they were often of wood, the trunk of a tree for instance, they have often been called by titles equivalent to the “tree of life,” and are thus connected with the nigh innumerable myths which relate to some mystic tree as the source of life. The ash Ygdrasyl of the Edda, the oak of Dordona and of the Druid, the modern Christmas tree, the sacred banyan, the holy groves, illustrate but faintly the prevalence of tree worship. Even so late as the time of Canute, it had to be forbidden in England by royal edict.