Isis Unveiled: chapter III (The mirror of the soul)

"These facts all go to show the identical parentage of this idea in the three religious systems, Hindu, Egyptian and Judaico-Christian. Wherever the mystic water-lily (lotus) is employed, it signifies the emanation of the objective from the concealed, or subjective - the eternal thought of the ever-invisible Deity passing from the abstract into the concrete [...]

Isis Unveiled: chapter III (The mirror of the soul)

""In the primordiate state of the creation", says Polier's Mythologie des Indous, "the rudimental universe, submerged in water, reposed in the bosom of the Eternal. Sprang from this chaos and darkness, Brahma, the architect of the world, poised on a lotus-leaf floated (moved?) upon the waters, unable to discern anything but water and darkness."   [...]