Mystical Lotus

"The Lotus is a flower that grows in the mud. The thicker and deeper the mud, the more beautiful the lotus blooms. The thought is expressed in the Buddhist chant: nam myoho renge kyo."

—Buddha

Lotuses are a type of water flower belonging to the genus Nelumbo, although water lilies of the genus Nymphaea are also called by this name. Lotuses play an important role in a number of Asian cultures, chiefly Indian and Chinese traditions, where they are associated with purity, beauty, and transcendence. Typically, lotus symbolism focuses on how the plant grows from filthy lake-bottom mud, but rises above the slime of its birth and reaches into the air unstained. This serves as a metaphor for how even the basest condition may birth enlightenment and spiritual perfection, and how these may lead anyone to transcend the nature of their origins and achieve a higher state of being.

Consequently, lotuses and lotus symbols are commonly associated with mysticism, paths of spiritual improvement, and transcendent beings. Most commonly, magical, monastic, or otherwise mystical groups and traditions use lotuses as symbols or name themselves after the flower. In some cases, however, the lotus itself is given magical properties. Due to this symbolism's roots in Asian religious thought, Western works that use it also tend to tie it to Asian settings, characters, and Fantasy Counterpart Cultures.

Subtrope of Flower Motifs. Lotus Position is named after this motif. Usually not related to Lotus-Eater Machine, which is named an unrelated incident from Classical Mythology. For a trope with similar cultural connotations, see Mystical Jade.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Naruto: The Demonic Statue of the Outer Path sits on a gigantic lotus flower, which fits the Buddhist motif around the Rinnegan.

Films — Animation

• Ne Zha:
  • The Celestial Pearl and Demon Pill are initially kept within a magical container shaped like a lotus made out of pearl.
  • The world inside the painting mainly consists of large chunks of landscape held aloft on giant lotus leaves.
  • Towards the end, Ne Zhao destroys the mass of ice threatening to crush the town by enveloping it in a giant, lotus-shaped fireball.
• Sita Sings the Blues: Parodied when Shurpanakha praises Sita's beauty. She does so solely through lotus metaphors, which start out poetic but quickly turn extremely awkward and contrived.
  Shurpanakha: Dear Brother Ravana, have you seen Rama's wife Sita? She is the most beautiful woman in the world. Her skin is fair like the lotus blossom. Her eyes are like lotus pools. Her hands are like, uh... lotuses. Her breasts are like big, round, firm, juicy lotuses!

Films — Live-Action

• What's Love Got to Do with It (1993): The film opens with a Buddist quote about the lotus flower. Tying in as symbolism with Tina Turner and her eventual conversion to Buddhism for survival.

Literature

• City of Thieves (1983): Lotus flowers are one of three magical ingredients used to create a paste that can destroy even the strongest of demons, alongside hag's hair and black pearls, where a concoction from combining the three materials can cause even the Great Demon Prince, Zanbar Bone, to wither and dissolve into nothingness. Later on turns out to be two — the black pearls are actually useless.
• Conan the Barbarian: There are many different colors of lotus, each with their own effects and useful in mysticism, magic, alchemy, or chemistry. The black lotus shows up the most often and seems the most versatile, able to induce dreams and visions (even of things the dreamer should have no way of knowing), can be refined into deadly poison, and a line in "Hour of the Dragon" hints it may be useful for sorcerers to recover Mana. The golden lotus can be brewed into a wine that functions like a Healing Potion, the gray lotus can induce berserker frenzy.

Live-Action TV

• The White Lotus: Parodied. The titular hotel portrays itself as a peaceful New Age-influenced retreat in Hawaii. The irony of the "white" part is that it's nothing more than a luxurious playground for its wealthy clients, none of whom end up significantly improved (and, in some cases, instead become worsened or corrupted) by their stay.

Manhua

• Feng Shen Ji: Demonstrated by Zhen Chen, whose overall status as the most enlightened of the Gods involves him heavily using lotus petals in his fights, which include dissolving attacks into lotus petals and reflecting damage onto his enemies.

Music

• Christina Aguilera's album Lotus centers around the flower as a symbolism of "rebirth" following her divorce.

Myths & Religion

• This trope is actually a common theme in eastern religions and mysticism:
  • In Hinduism, the lotus is the symbol of what is divine, enlightened, or immortal in humanity, and also symbolizes divine perfection, often being shown with many deities, such as Brahma, Saraswati, Lakshmi, and Kubera, who usually sit on a stylized lotus throne.
  • The lotus also symbolizes the realization of inner mystic potential, and in Tantric and Yogic traditions it symbolizes the potential of an individual to harness the flow of supernatural energy moving through the chakras.
  • In Buddhism, the lotus represents purity of the body, speech, and mind, free of material attachment and physical desire. This alludes to the legend of Buddhism's founder, Gautama Buddha, whose first steps after achieving enlightenment made lotus flowers appear everywhere he stepped.
  • In Jainism, the founders of Jainism are portrayed seated or standing on lotus thrones.
• Ancient Egyptians believed the lotus to be a supreme plant for its fragrant transformative scent while living its alternating existence below and above the water surface. It also was used by Egyptian mystics as an edible medium that they believed would induce altered states of consciousness and make contact with other realms of existence.

Tabletop Games

• Exalted:
  • The progressive stages of the setting's martial arts are referred to in-universe through lotus imagery. The system of martial arts is collectively referred to as the Perfected Lotus of Understanding, with each tier of arts representing a part of the plant. Mundane martial arts are the mud in which the lotus grows; they are not part of it, but it would not exist without them. Terrestrial martial arts form the root of the lotus, transcending the mud of their origin but still connected to it and more mundane than what follows. The more obviously supernatural Celestial martial arts are the bulb and stem, leaving mortality behind and reaching towards the heavens. Sidereal martial arts the bloom, abstracted and beautified beyond all their preceding steps. All stages of this system, in this mode of thought, depend upon one another like the parts of the plant do. Without the mud and roots, the perfected higher parts wouldn't exist; without the bloom, the lower parts would never lead to any more worthwhile state.
  • The headquarters of the Bureau of Destiny in Heaven are referred to as the Most Perfect Lotus of Heavenly Design.
• Magic: The Gathering:
  • Lotuses have been used as Mana-generating artifacts since the days of Black Lotus, which can generates a one-time burst of three points of any one color of mana. It is considered to be the strongest card in the game — certainly the most expensive, with a record-setting copy retailing for $500,000 or thereabouts. (It's not just that it's extremely rare, with less than 11,000 copies in existence; it's also that "three mana, for free" is the same as "Play any one card three turns early," a level of Sequence Breaking that can win games.) Later cards, such as Gilded Lotus, Lotus Bloom, Lotus Petal, Nyx Lotus, Lotus Blossom, Jeweled Lotus, Timeless Lotus and Lotus Cobra, perform a similar role with varying limitations and conditions.
  • Wetland Sambar's flavor text describes how initiates of the Jeskai Monks of Tarkir are, as a test of calm and compassion, required to approach a wild deer while holding a lotus. If the deer eats the bloom from their hand, they move to the next stage of their training.
• Pathfinder:
  • Leshys are small humanoids created by growing a plant through a specific ritual and calling a spirit to inhabit it, with different kinds being produced from different base plants. Lotus leshys are the most monastic and contemplative of their kind, spending most of their time meditating in lotus form while watching over isolated ponds but eagerly engaging visitors in discussions on philosophy, enlightenment and theology.
  • The empyreal lord Korada, a figure associated with martial arts, enlightenment and forgiveness, makes frequent use of lotus imagery. His official art depicts him meditating atop a lotus blossom, his sacred symbol consists of two figures kneeling before a lotus, and his realm is called the Dream Lotus.

Video Games

• Battle Realms: The Lotus Clan is the most magically specialized faction in the game. Its units are all afflicted with some sort of corruption until they transform into a Warlock, at which point they violently expunge this corruption away. This symbolizes the flower's tendency to bloom in the mud, and how it seems so clean despite living in such a filthy place.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: The Great Fairies create a mystical lotus blossom whose petals they blow into Link whenever they bless him with an upgrade such as increased magic or increases to his wallet, bomb bag, and quiver's max capacity.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: The Ancient Cistern, a temple based around Buddhism with a prominent idol resembling the Buddha in the center of its main chamber containing the Sacred Flame of Farore, has both actual lotus plants in its waters and lotus artwork on its walls and ceiling.
• Within the Mortal Kombat franchise, the White Lotus Society is an sect founded by the thunder god Raiden, dedicated to finding and training talented martial artists to compete in Mortal Kombat on behalf of Earthrealm, and thus keep Outworld from conquering Earthrealm.
• Overwatch has Lifeweaver, a Support hero who provides various buffs and utility — healing buds, Floating Platforms, shields to grab and rescue allies out of danger, etc. — overwhelmingly featuring lotuses as his motif. While his "biolight" generation powers are explicitly technological in nature, in practice they resemble magic spells, with Lifeweaver himself designed like a futuristic fantasy druid with a deliberate air of mysticism and spirituality.
• Shin Megami Tensei V: The pocket dimension where you battle Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, is filled with giant lotus blossoms floating on the water.
• Slay the Spire: The Violet Lotus is a boss artifact for the Watcher that increases her energy when she exits her "Calm" stance, with the flavor text implying that it grew on the surface of a pool of mystical energy.
• Touhou Project: The immortal Buddhist youkai magician/monk Byakuren's Hijiri's strongest spell cards have her summon a massive energy lotus blossom that sprouts smaller ones to fire bullets out of, with the spell card background also resembling a lotus flower. Her given name can also be translated as "White Lotus".

Web Comics

• Problem Sleuth: When one of the imaginary versions of Pickle Inspector ascended to godhood (it Makes Just as Much Sense in Context) to become Godhead Pickle Inspector, he is depicted as having his upper body (now with four arms) emerge from the center of a giant lily flower.

Western Animation

• Amphibia: When Anne gains her Super Mode in the second season finale, her hair takes on a lotus shape; in Season 3, she starts wearing a T-shirt with a lotus-shaped flame emblem. The arcs of her saiyan-like Battle Aura also eventually begin to resemble lotus petals
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • The White Lotus is a secret society composed of old martial arts masters, many of whom are some of the best benders in the series. They are devoted to maintaining peace, and many are close to achieving enlightenment, with Iroh having apparently done so.
  • The Legend of Korra: The Red Lotus is something of an Evil Counterpart to the White Lotus, being a group of anarchist terrorists who wish to destroy all nations. The most prominent members are all extremely proficient in bending and use either a rare or unique style. Zaheer, the leader, is highly spiritual and reads airbender teachings. Following P'li's death, he loses all earthly attachments, enabling him to truly fly.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: He Xiangu, one of the Eight Immortals of Ancient China, used a lotus pod—her personal symbol—to defeat and banish Tso Lan, the Demon Sorcerer of the Moon. When Shendu releases Tso Lan from his imprisonment, the Chan Clan uses another lotus for the resealing spell. Later, it's revealed that traces of Tso Lan's chi lingered in the original lotus pod, and anyone who touches it will inadvertently absorb the energy and start manifesting his powers.
• Xiaolin Showdown: A Shen Gong Wu called the Lotus Twister is a lotus-shaped wand that grants the user shapeshifting abilities.

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