Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
Asiatic and Egyptian minds. In its circular stamina it shows two equilateral triangIes
placed acrosa each other, which Sanskritists call the shristi-chakra, also sixteen petals
called the shoodāsa; and this, it is held is a Revelation from the deity as to the proper
age for the representative woman or prakriti, in the Sakti ceremonies. These triangles,
with apex upwards and downwards, are the chapel or magic diagram which the pious
are told to ponder over, for it has many significations and possesses numerous spells;
and hence we see it venerated in all early ages, and still as an important article of Freemasonry.
The spells go by the name of the devi-chakrams, or goddesses of cirdes,
no doubt having a solar significatlon. This will be made clearer when I treat of
Hindooism. The Padma and Kāmālata or Granter-of-desire, or “Consummator-ofour-wishes,”
are all terms applied to the lotus. It is the symbol of Venus or Lakshmi,
or of her incarnation—Kriahna’a wife, Rādha, who is commonly a nude Venus or
Sakti. It is also called “love’s creeper,” the throne and ark of the gods, and the
water-born one. One author writes, that from far Tibet to Ceylon, and over every
Eastern land and islet, the holy Padma is only a little less sacred than the Queen of
Heaven—Juno (IOni) herself. It is as mysterious as the Yoni—is, like it, the flower
of concealment, of night and of silence and that mysteriousness of generation and reproduction;
it is described as a sort of incomprehensible dualism which veils the
Fig 13.—THE LOTUS OR NELUMBIUM SPECIOSUM—ACRED BEAN OF EGYPT AND JAPAN
Almighty One and his mysteries from our finite minds. Linnæus tells us it is the
Nelumbo, but R. Payne Knight is clearer when he writes to this effect. The flowers of