The title of every magazine or book should have some meaning, and especially should this be the case with a Theosophical publication. A title is supposed to express the object in view, symbolising, as it were, the content of the paper. Since allegory is the soul of Eastern philosophy, it may be objected that nothing can be seen in the name "Le Lotus Bleu," save that of a water plant -- the Nymphea Cerulea or Nelumbo.

Furthermore a reader of this calibre would see but the blue colour of the list of contents of our journal.

To avoid a like misunderstanding, we shall attempt to initiate our readers into the general symbolism of the lotus and the particular symbolism of the Blue Lotus. This mysterious and sacred plant has been considered through the ages, both in Egypt and in India, as a symbol of the Universe. Not a monument in the valley of the Nile, not a papyrus, without this plant in an honoured place. On the capitals of the Egyptian pillars, on the thrones and even the head-dresses of the Divine Kings, the lotus is everywhere found as a symbol of the Universe. It inevitably became an indispensable attribute of every creative god, as of every creative goddess, the latter being, philosophically considered, only the feminine aspect of the god, at first androgynous, afterwards male.

It is from Padma-Yoni, "the bosom of the Lotus," from Absolute Space, or from the Universe outside time and space, that emanates the Cosmos, conditioned and limited by time and space. The Hiranya Garbha, "the egg" (or the womb) of gold, from which Brahma emerges, is often called the Heavenly Lotus. The God, Vishnu, -- the synthesis of the Trimurti or Hindu Trinity -- during the "nights of Brahma" floats asleep on the primordial waters, stretched on the blossom of a lotus. His Goddess, the lovely Lakshmi, rising from the bosom of the waters, like Venus-Aphrodite, has a white lotus beneath her feet. It was at the churning of the Ocean of Milk -- symbol of space and of the Milky Way -- by the Gods assembled together, that Lakshmi, Goddess of Beauty and Mother of Love (Kama) formed of the froth of the foaming waves, appeared before the astonished Gods, borne on a lotus, and holding another lotus in her hand.

Thus have arisen the two chief titles of Lakshmi; Padma the Lotus, and Kshirabdi-tanaya daughter of the Ocean of Milk. Gautama the Buddha has never been degraded to the level of a god, notwithstanding the fact that he was the first mortal within historical times fearless enough to interrogate that dumb Sphinx, which we call the Universe, and to wrest completely therefrom the secrets of Life and Death. Though he has never been deified, we repeat, yet he has nevertheless been recognised by generations in Asia as Lord of the Universe.

This is why the conqueror and master of the world of thought and philosophy is represented as seated on a lotus in full bloom, emblem of the Universe thought out by him. In India and Ceylon the lotus is generally of a golden hue; amongst the Buddhists of the North, it is blue.

But there exists in one part of the world a third kind of lotus -- the Zizyphus. He who eats of it forgets of his fatherland and those who are dear to him, so say the ancients. Let us not follow this example. Let us not forget our spiritual home, the cradle of the human race, and the birthplace of the Blue Lotus.

Let us then raise the veil of oblivion which covers one of the most ancient allegories -- a Vedic legend which, however, the Brahman chroniclers have preserved. Only as the chroniclers have recounted the legend each after his own manner, aided by variations* of his own, we have given the story here -- not according to the incomplete renderings and translations of these Eastern gentlemen but according to the popular version.

(* Cf. the history of Sunahsepha in the Bhagavata, IX, XVI, 35 and of the Ramayana, Bk. I. Cap. 60; Manu, X, 105; Koulouka Bhatta [the Historian]; Bahwruba and the Aitareya Brahmanas; Vishnu Purana, etc., etc.

Each book gives its own version.) Thus is it that the old bards of Rajasthan sing it, when they come and seat themselves in the verandah of the traveller's bungalow in the wet evenings of the rainy season. Let us leave then the Orientalists to their fantastic speculations. How does it concern us whether the father of the selfish and cowardly prince, who was the cause of the transformation of the white lotus into the blue lotus, be called Harischandra or Ambarisha? Names have nothing to do with the naive poetry of the legend, nor with its moral -- for there is a moral to be found if looked for well. We shall soon see that the chief episode in the story is curiously reminiscent of another legend -- that of the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac in the Bible. Is not this one more proof that the Secret Doctrine of the East may have good reason to maintain that the name of the Patriarch was neither a Chaldean or a Hebrew name, but rather an epithet and a Sanskrit surname, signifying abram, i.e., one is non-Brahman,* a debrahmanised Brahman, one who is degraded or who has lost his caste? After this how can we avoid suspecting that we may find, among the modern Jews, the Chaldeans of the time of the Rishi Agastya -- these makers of bricks whose persecution began from eight hundred to a thousand years ago, but who emigrated to Chaldea four thousand years before the Christian era -- when so many of the popular legends of Southern India resemble the Bible stories. Louis Jacolliot speaks in several of his twenty-one volumes on Brahmanical India of this matter, and for once he is right.

* The particle a in the Sanskrit word shews this clearly. Placed before a substantive this particle always means the negation or the opposite of the meaning of the expression that follows. Thus Sura (god) written a -Sura, becomes non-God, or the devil, Vidya is knowledge, and a-Vidya, ignorance or the opposite of knowledge, etc., etc.