Saturday, January 21, 2017

Saturday, January 7, 2017

The lotus tree

9- lotus
While the lotus flower is certainly a real thing, the lotus tree has been appearing in various mythologies for a long time. And considering it has passed through multiple cultures, the stories about the tree vary wildly. The Greeks had perhaps one of the strangest versions. In the Greek myth, there's a young goddess named Lotus, and she ends up turning into a tree to protect herself from the unwanted sexual advances of another a god named Priapus. 

The fruit from the lotus tree also appears in Homeric legends when Odysseus and his men happen upon the land of the Lotus Eaters. When these men ate the fruit from the tree, it was so good that it made them forget everything that was important to them in life. This myth led to the creation of the term "Lotus Eater" to describe people who live a decadent lifestyle, but otherwise have vapid and meaningless lives. 

The lotus name itself has a lot of significance in many religious beliefs, and has been mentioned in conjunction with God as well. Some myths claim that there is a lotus tree at the right hand of God in heaven. Additionally, some myths attribute symbolic importance to the idea of the tree and the presence of the divine—essentially, the symbol of God above a lotus shows how the divine can overcome the material world. 

http://listverse.com/2014/03/24/10-amazing-legends-of-mythological-trees/?utm_source=more&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=direct




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