Lotus

The flower always looks so clean and pure against the background of the dirty pond.

Because of this the lotus flower has come to be associated with purity and beauty in the religions of Buddhism and Hinduism respectively; the ancient Egyptians scholars observed that in the night-time the lotus closed its flowers and sank into the water, and came up with a different association with the flower related to rebirth and the Sun; in actual fact the Lotus slowly emerges from a pond over a three day period and then blooms in the morning until mid-afternoon.

It can therefore be assumed that the lotus flower meaning is different between cultures, though in fact they share many similarities.

I would like to explain how some of these associations came about, and I will therefore split up this article into three main sections, based upon the three main groups, that is to say that of the ancient Egyptians, the Buddhists, and Hinduism.