The lotus was the sacred plant of the Brahminical rites of India, and was considered as the symbol of their elemental trinity,—­earth, water, and air,—­because, as an aquatic plant, it derived its nutriment from all of these elements combined, its roots being planted in the earth, its stem rising through the water, and its leaves exposed to the air.[192] The Egyptians, who borrowed a large portion of their religious rites from the East, adopted the lotus, which was also indigenous to their country, as a mystical plant, and made it the symbol of their initiation, or the birth into celestial light.  Hence, as Champollion observes, they often on their monuments represented the god Phre, or the sun, as borne within the expanded calyx of the lotus.  The lotus bears a flower similar to that of the poppy, while its large, tongue-shaped leaves float upon the surface of the water.  As the Egyptians had remarked that the plant expands when the sun rises, and closes when it sets, they adopted it as a symbol of the sun; and as that luminary was the principal object of the popular worship, the lotus became in all their sacred rites a consecrated and mystical plant.

The Egyptians also selected the erica[193] or heath, as a sacred plant.  The origin of the consecration of this plant presents us with a singular coincidence, that will be peculiarly interesting to the masonic student.  We are informed that there was a legend in the mysteries of Osiris, which related, that Isis, when in search of the body of her murdered husband, discovered it interred at the brow of a hill, near which an erica, or heath plant, grew; and hence, after the recovery of the body and the resurrection of the god, when she established the mysteries to commemorate her loss and her recovery, she adopted the erica, as a sacred plant,[194] in memory of its having pointed out the spot where the mangled remains of Osiris were concealed.[195]

The mistletoe was the sacred plant of Druidism.  Its consecrated character was derived from a legend of the Scandinavian mythology, and which is thus related in the Edda, or sacred books.  The god Balder, the son of Odin, having dreamed that he was in some great danger of life, his mother, Friga, exacted an oath from all the creatures of the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms, that they would do no harm to her son.  The mistletoe, contemptible from its size and weakness, was alone neglected, and of it no oath of immunity was demanded.  Lok, the evil genius, or god of Darkness, becoming acquainted with this fact, placed an arrow made of mistletoe in the hands of Holder, the blind brother of Balder, on a certain day, when the gods were throwing missiles at him in sport, and wondering at their inability to do him injury with any arms with which they could attack him.  But, being shot with the mistletoe arrow, it inflicted a fatal wound, and Balder died.