This article is dedicated to the memory of noted scholar, Egyptologist, and esteemed member of The Danish Egyptological Society, Dr. Lise Manniche, who passed away on September 12, 2022, at 79. Her books “Sacred Luxuries - Fragrance, Aromatherapy, & Cosmetics in Ancient Egypt” and “An Ancient Egyptian Herbal” were primary resources and inspiration for this essay and my work at Wandering Stars.

‘Seshen’

The Egyptian Blue Lotus

by Shane Clayton

© Copyright 2023/2024 Wandering Stars Publishing

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The Egyptians called their hieroglyph pictured above Seshen – symbolic of the flower of a waterlily indigenous to the Nile River commonly called the “Egyptian blue lotus,” Nymphaea caerulea. For over three millennia the essential role of this fragrant flower in the Egyptian religion was its intimate association with the rising sun, creation, and rebirth. The lifting blue lotus flower was seen as a perfect metaphor for these due to the way the bud arises from the depths of the dark water, lifting and opening at the surface in the morning to reveal a bright yellow center likened to the sun, wreathed in sky-blue petals while releasing its lovely scent, before sinking back below in the late afternoon. The repeat of this pattern makes it easy to understand why the Egyptians chose it to symbolize birth, life, death, and rebirth, as it followed the same pattern as the rising and setting sun.

Emitting a sensual fragrance long renowned for its property of attraction, enhancing lovemaking, and reducing anxiety, blue lotus is famous for its use in the devotions of both the ancient Egyptian and East Indian Hindu/Vedic religious traditions. While its calming and soothing psychotropic effects are becoming more well-known today, it is worth noting here that a compound isolated from Nymphaea caerulea called apomorphine (no relation to the opioid morphine) has recently been approved by the FDA as an alternative to Viagra or Cialis! Apomorphine is also approved for controlling tremors in Parkinson’s disease, verifying the ancient anecdotal narratives with a serious nod to their two respective sacred sciences. More on this will follow.

In Ayurveda, the scent of blue lotus essential oil is believed to encourage deep breathing. When combined with the effects of relaxation from inhaling the fragrance, it is said to increase feelings of tranquility and is therefore frequently used in conjunction with meditation. In India, the blue lotus fragrance is associated with the Crown Chakra Sahasrara Padma – the “Thousand Petaled Lotus” representing spiritual enlightenment, thus serving as an olfactory connection between the mystical and the mundane, the spiritual and the physical, much as was the case for the ancient Egyptians. In India, this chakra was also often associated with a related water plant with very similar properties, the white or pink sacred lotus Nelumbo nucifera – the true lotus famously venerated by Buddhists. I will detail their differing psychotropic properties after first discussing the fascinating botanical identification of Nelumbo nucifera and Nymphaea caerulea.

Again, the long-celebrated Egyptian blue lotus isn’t a lotus botanically - it’s a water lily! Originating from the longest river in the world - the mighty Nile that cuts through the Sahara Desert of Northeast Africa, the flower is copiously attested to in writings and imagery since the early Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt. Again, they called it Seshen - sšn, depicted as the single hieroglyph of a lifting lotus flower pictured above.

Etymologically, Seshen is the Egyptian root of the Greek noun σοῦς - sous, meaning "upward motion", inferring both the growth of the plant from the murky river bottom and its blossoming coinciding with the “rebirth” of the rising sun in the dawn sky - which the flower mimics so beautifully in color and form. The wafting of its sweet fragrance upward represented an offering to the sun god Ra, an offering repeated daily in the temple sanctuaries and copiously depicted on their walls. It is from sous that the noun σοῦσον (souson) meaning "lily" is derived, so it seems that the Greeks knew darn well that the plant was a waterlily. Even so, the waterlily family (Nymphaeaceae) is botanically separate from the lily family (Liliaceae).

Botanical Identification:

There is some debate, but most horticulturists still identify the Egyptian blue lotus plant as either Nymphaea caerulea or a variety of Nymphaea nouchali that botanists have long called ‘variety - caerulea’. Of course, ‘caerulea’ means “blue”, or more strictly speaking, shades of sky-blue ranging between very pale blue and azure, and indeed that is what is depicted in Egyptian art, and is what we see with living blue “lotus” flowers today. However, it appears that recent studies contradict the latter identification.

For those of you who may require it for your research, I’ll save you the effort with a succinct botanical summary from Wikipedia that I’ve paraphrased a bit for clarity:

“Nymphaea nouchali is itself a taxonomically challenging species, with a wide distribution that spans Australia, southern Asia, and across Africa as far south as the Western Cape. Its flowers have several color forms (with red cultivars generally called N. stellata), the species having a long history of cultivation. In Africa, following the 1989 FTEA publication, five different varieties were recognized, with the var. ‘caerulea’, being the most widespread.”

“In 2012 there was a phylogenetic study where N. caerulea was more related to N. gracilis, an endemic of northern Mexico, than it was to N. nouchali. The evolutionary tree was a consensus of ITS2. According to this study, N. caerulea should not be considered as a variety of N. nouchali. When genomes from the water lily genus (Nymphaea) were published in the journal Nature in 2020, N. caerulea was cited under that name, not as N. nouchali var. caerulea.”

Endemic to northern Mexico? Fascinating! Especially considering the controversial presence of Mesoamerican Acacia farnesiana flowers and perfumed oil in New Kingdom tombs, along with two other New World species - cocaine and nicotine, discovered in some of the same NK mummies; but that is a digression/controversy best saved for elsewhere. And so, we still call the plant the Egyptian blue lotus - even though it is a water lily - and will regard it botanically as Nymphaea caerulea.

It should be finally noted that the true lotus, the white or pink Indian Sacred Lotus mentioned earlier, Nelumbo nucifera, is all too often confused with water lilies of the Nymphaea genera, especially N. caerulea, and the two seem to have become interchangeable throughout India. The sacred lotus is in another family altogether (Nelumbonaceae) with a long history of veneration in India and the Far East. However, several Hindu traditions have become quite fond of the multi-petaled pink/red/violet waterlily cultivar called Nymphaea caerulea ‘stellata’ for cut flowers, regarding it as representing the Crown Chakra Sahasrara.

Buddhists tend to stick with the Sacred Lotus Nelumbo nucifera for their meditations, going so far as developing flowering varieties with literally thousands of petals for the florist trade. Several Far East nations even prize the rhizomes for food. While it contains the compounds nuciferine, responsible for trance-like states, and relaxing aporphine, the Indian sacred lotus has none of the aphrodisiac/calming apomorphine found in the Nile waterlily N. caerulea.

Both plants emit lovely, though quite distinct fragrances, and their aquatic growth and blooming patterns are also the same. I find it fascinating that the ancient Egyptian and Indian civilizations shared spiritual symbolism for the water plants and their flowers in their respective and separate cultures. This seems to have added to the confusion or conflation of the two different plants when global trade was booming during the Bronze Age that continues to the present day when we call this waterlily a lotus.

Psychotropic Properties:

Since this is the most popularly misunderstood aspect of Nymphaea caerulea, it is perhaps best to dispense with the half-truths and misinformation from the outset. Besides not technically being a lotus, neither is it in any way truly psychedelic as is all-too-often claimed. No part of the plant contains psychedelic compounds; that is, those capable of inducing colorful hallucinations of vivid visual patterns and extremely heightened conscious awareness, such as the tryptamines DMT, Psilocybin, and LSD. If you partake of blue lotus expecting these effects, you will be disappointed.

The yellow male parts of the flower, particularly the stamens, contain the blue lotus’ psychotropic compounds apomorphine and nuciferine, which, unlike classic psychedelics, have calming and sleep-inducing properties - similar in some ways to opium or Cannabis. These effects suggest that N. caerulea might have been enjoyed by the “lotus eaters” or “Lotophagi” of Homer's Odyssey. Most scholars assume the Indian lotus is meant - it can be trance-inducing - but after all, Egypt is far closer to Greece than India. To anyone considering vaping blue lotus oil or ingesting the extracts themselves, I can only suggest that you please click and read the two links given above for apomorphine and nuciferine first. Together these two compounds can be rather unpredictable with some unpleasant side effects in higher doses.

Essential or absolute oils from the fresh flowers, whether Egyptian blue waterlily or white/pink Indian lotus, are far too perfume-y for oral ingestion or vaping, and should rather be inhaled as fragrance through the nose - the best methods being via an essential oil diffusor or from a blotter paper. Oral dosing is best accomplished with ethanol extracts from the dried yellow flower centers, which have lost their distasteful perfume fragrance. Blue lotus is legal in the United States, with flower extracts, resins, dried flowers, oils, powders, and electronic vaporizing refill liquids readily available online. These natural botanical products are usually sold and labeled as naturopathic herbal sedatives or aphrodisiacs even though none are approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) for human consumption. However, this hasn’t stopped the increasing popularity of the Egyptian blue lotus for ingestion, simply because it works and has no notable side effects.

Here we must point out the latest eye-opening pharmacological discovery mentioned earlier concerning the active ingredient apomorphine, which has only recently been released by the FDA as a natural pharmaceutical alternative to Viagra in treating erectile dysfunction or impotence. From a National Library of Medicine article:

“A committee of specialists at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recommended that the administration proceed with the approval of a new oral formulation of the drug apomorphine (Uprima) to treat impotence. Doctors predict that it will compete strongly with the highly popular drug sildenafil (Viagra). Placed under the tongue, the drug encourages erections by stimulating the release of dopamine, which mediates the cerebral role in triggering erections. Although the formulation is new, its active ingredient, apomorphine, has been used for various disorders for many years.”

Clearly - for many, many years! It should be noted that the preferred pharmaceutical delivery method is sub-lingual, indicating that ingestion is not the ideal method of dosing; rather, it is best accomplished through the epithelial cells lining the mouth and nasal cavities. This adds credence to the hypothesis that the active ingredients can be dosed on a molecular level via fragrance since they are found in the scent-producing central parts of the flower.

That being said, three of the more positive psychological effects of ingesting or inhaling apomorphine and nuciferine would have been considered quite useful in Egyptian religious worship where the priest or pharaoh communed directly with their imposing Neteru or divinities:

1) relief of anxiety and the calming of nerves,

2) inhibition of conditioned avoidance response,

3) the induction of trance-like states or hypnagogia - an entirely different form of “hallucination” from what psychedelics usually present, and

4) sexual arousal and desire.

These same effects are responsible for the burgeoning popularity of dried blue lotus flowers being infused in hot water or alcohol for a relaxing, anxiety-diminishing, and even sleep-inducing low-dosage beverage.

The active ingredients are not water-soluble, however, and so are not as effectively released as tea; rather, they are ethanol-soluble and more easily dissolved in an alcohol beverage such as wine, or in an ethanol tincture, made from the dried yellow centers of the flower, especially the stamens. As mentioned above, dried flowers and stamens of N. caerulea are readily available through various online sources, and wine infusion is a historically proven way of easily obtaining, preparing, and ingesting blue lotus at home. Anecdotal advice is about three grams of dried flower centers per normal glass of wine - 15 grams per 750 ml bottle, infused for a few weeks. According to the FDA, with its approved sub-lingual dosing method, the best administration is swishing the wine infusion in your mouth for a few minutes before swallowing. Interested in trying it for yourself? Dried whole Nymphaea caerulea blooms are available in the Wandering Stars Sacred Scents Store. What has not been a subject of research is the most obvious delivery method depicted in the amazing tomb and temple art: through the olfactory - the nose. Both Lise Manniche’s research and my own preliminary personal experiments certainly suggest this is the case, but olfactory dosing remains to be clinically studied.

Meanwhile, we have evidence from Egyptian temple carvings and wine jars called “situla” that blue lotus was indeed infused in sacramental wine offerings (see photo below), with its medicinal internal use in both beer and wine being attested to in the Ebers and Chester-Beatty medical papyri as well.

History:

Blue lotus symbolism was one of the most prominent features of ancient Egyptian religious expression in the art of nearly every tomb and temple complex, as well as their artifacts, for over 3,000 years. In these depictions, the plant is always associated with rebirth and the breath of spiritual life in the tombs of the dead, or in the sanctuaries where the Egyptian gods themselves “lived.” The first historical appearances of it are found in the oldest religious writings on earth, the “Pyramid Texts,” inscribed in the 4,382-year-old tomb of 6th Dynasty pharaoh Unas, and reciprocated by his heirs Teti, Pepi I Merenre, Pepi II, and Queen Neith in their respective pyramid tombs at Saqqara.

In these ancient texts, the primordial blue lotus was often represented as the Egyptian god or divinity called Nefertem or Nefertum, meaning both “Atum is Perfected” and “Beauty Coming into Being.” It is from Nefertum’s blue lotus that the Sun, Ra, is born - magically bursting forth into existence with its boundless creative energy and life force, reborn every morning in the East from the cosmic womb of Nut, the goddess of the starry realm of the Duat. The deceased too was believed to reborn like Ra after navigating the afterlife realm of the Duat. This was understood to be accomplished through mummification using fragrant anointing oils, where the mummy is likened to a statue of a god form. While Anubis is the one who does the anointing, the magical life-giving properties of the oils themselves are under the auspices of Nefertum. (See The Seven Sacred Oils of Ancient Egypt.)

From the spells for crossing the Akhet or Horizon inscribed on the walls of the tomb of Unas:

“APPEARING AS NEFERTEM

249 RECITATION. O you two combatants, please tell the noble one, of whatever identity, I am that lotus that rises clean from the earth.

I am received by the one who made my seat: I am the one at the great controlling power’s nose

I have come from the Isle of Flame, having put Ma’at in it in place of disorder.

I am the one to whom belongs the linen that the uraei guard during the night of the great flood that comes from the great goddess.

I appear as Nefertem, as the lotus at the Sun’s nose when he emerges from the Akhet every day, at the sight of whom the gods become clean.”

- from The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Second Edition, by James P. Allen

Nefertum would later become the Egyptian god not only of the blue lotus but of all of nature’s beautiful scents and perfumes, most especially the Seven Sacred Oils, as well as frankincense and myrrh and the special temple incense called Kepu or Kyphi. Nefertum, being related to primordial creation and rebirth, was believed to bestow spiritual life called “Ankh” through the breath via his exquisite botanical fragrances, that is, through the nose - or more technically the olfactory sense.

The familiar symbol for Ankh, 𓋹, was also written out as a sequence of three hieroglyphic consonants, Ꜥ-n-ḫ, and in addition to “life”, this spelling was used when the meaning was, literally or metaphorically, a "floral bouquet". Here we see the direct inferred connection between blue lotus fragrance and the presentation of the Ankh to the nose of the recipient. Interestingly, this spelling also denoted the word for "mirror". The Egyptians loved homonyms – for example, we see Ankh-shaped mirrors in the tomb caches. Thus, they viewed earthly life as a reflection of the divine or spiritual life - Ankh.

In Egyptian art, the Ankh symbol appears in the hands of the Neteru, pharaoh, or priest, and was often held to the pharaoh’s nose - representing both elemental air and the breath of spiritual life. We also see chains of Ankhs and Was scepter symbols depicted representing a form of baptismal cleansing lustral water, usually poured over the pharaoh by the Neteru, an allusion to the primordial waters of Nu, from whence the lotus as Nefertum springs. And so, copious offerings of Nefertum’s fresh-cut “floral bouquets” of intensely fragrant blue lotus, along with incense and scented anointing oils, were of paramount importance in temple ritual, filling the sanctuaries and chapels with scents that were regarded as the sacred life-breath of the Neteru - the gods and goddesses - or more correctly “divinities”.

In the magical papyri, offerings of fragrant anointing oils were called “Ta-n-Akh”, meaning “offering to the Akh” or magically effective spirit, and all of these were under the aegis of the god Nefertum. Their deployment in the sanctuaries was believed to activate the Akh in the statues. When used by the god of embalming, Anubis or Anpu, they were said to “Akh-ify” the deceased, as in Unas’ Pyramid Texts.

In this way, we can see the relationship between the Ankh and the effective spirit, the Akh - with Nefertum’s lotus fragrance being the paramount representation of the divine breath of spiritual life. Correspondingly, the etymology of our English word “spirit” has its airy root in Latin: from spiritus ‘breath, spirit’, and spirare ‘breathe’, having a basic meaning of 'air in motion', or 'breath' as necessary to life. The Greeks called it Pnuema - πνεῦμα‎‎, and the Egyptians called it Ankh. We can now see how the birth of a child, and their very first breath of life, was tied in with the concept of Nefertum and rebirth of the deceased as a spirit or Akh. But there is more…

The Scent of Love - The Erotic Metaphor of Sacred Fragrance

The blue lotus of Nefertum, representing as it did primordial creation and engendering of life, the rebirth of Ra as the sun each morning, and the rebirth of the deceased as an Akh, had distinctly reproductive connotations for the ancient Egyptians. Since the resurrection of the dead was viewed as a form of spiritual birth, that would necessarily include all the preliminaries of union and conception, in a sexual sense, viewed metaphorically or otherwise. Here we must take note of the important role and long history of scents and perfumes with sensual attraction.

As noted by Lise Manniche in her Sacred Luxuries, the Egyptians enjoyed homonyms and their suggestive connotations, and the same goes for their word for scent - “seti”, which also means “to engender”, “to shoot”, and “to pour”. The underlying current of these apparently sexual metaphors shows the undeniable olfactory influence of scent in preparing the mood for the union of the sexes as the necessary prelude to a conception and birth - likewise for spiritual rebirth, in this case, the union of the deceased with the divine, and of the Ba of the deceased with their Ka, to become “justified like Osiris” reborn/transfigured as an Akh.

This relationship of divine scent with resurrection and birth is further cemented in Seti I’s temple at Abydos, with the dual adjacent chapels in the Nefertum/Sokar complex, the southern of these two featuring Nefertum in the photo above. On the other side of the wall from Nefertum in the Sokar chapel is depicted the revivification of Osiris and the magical conception of Horus after having intercourse with Isis as her Ba bird spirit, the kestrel or kite, shown in the fascinating bas-relief carving below. It certainly ties in with the recently rediscovered aphrodisiac effects of the blue lotus, the god of which is depicted directly on the other side of this wall.

It should come as no surprise then, that the primary depictions of Seshen offerings in the temple at Abydos are to the ithyphallic Min persona of Amun Ra, the resurrected Osiris, and his magically conceived child Horus. The ancient Egyptian religious traditions emphasized the engendering role of the blue lotus - in the birth and rebirth of Ra, the creation of the Neteru and humanity, and all life forms. These were easily transferred to more earthly human concerns (and vice versa): affairs of the heart, romance, erotic seduction and arousal, and ultimately childbearing, exemplified by its association with both male virility and feminine beauty.

Here we get a sense of how the alternative meaning for Ankh as a “floral bouquet” represented both love and life - as well as a ‘mirror’ as a reflection of divine beauty. Just as it is today when giving flowers to a loved one, such offerings to the Neteru would have been viewed as an open declaration of love, signaling both intention and aspiration on the part of the one making the offering. Piling bouquets of fresh-cut lotus blooms upon an altar, or offering the flower to the nostrils of the beloved whether they be human or divine (or both), or wearing blue lotus garlands on the body, or inserted into perfumed unguent cones as they did, was for the Egyptians a universal expression of their earnest love, just as the rose flower is for contemporary society.

Filling the sanctuaries and funerary banquet halls with blue lotus bouquets and sacred scents was, therefore, an act of devotion (called Bhakti Yoga by the Hindus) and believed to be just as attractive to the divinities, the Neteru, as it was for humans; and no scent held a higher place than Nefertum’s own blue lotus in the sanctuaries of the Neteru. It was seconded perhaps only by the fragrance of Mandrake fruit - Reremet in the banquet paintings, with which Seshen has powerful synergistic properties. (Mandrake - Mandragora officianarum, is another hypnagogia-inducing plant featured in tomb paintings, shrines, and even one recipe, but that subject is reserved for another article.)

Nymphaea caerulea was prevalent up and down the 4,132-mile-long stretch of the great Nile River, its range comprising the whole of civilized Egypt, and so would have been readily available to anyone wishing to risk deadly crocodiles and hippos to collect it. We can safely assume that the olfactory sense of these ancient agrarian people was far more sensitive than ours, bombarded as we are now from every side with synthetic fragrances and pollution, so the scent of fresh blooming lotus wafting from the river in the morning must have seemed downright otherworldly to them, and well worth the effort and risk to collect. As mentioned before, just as the red rose has become for much of Western society today, the blue lotus flower was for generations the quintessential symbol of love in ancient Egypt - from beginning to end, for over 3,000 years. We might not be far off to suggest that given the dangers of collecting the flowers themselves, the importance of Seshen to Egyptian society was likely the first concerted impetus for the earliest florists and perfumery trades.

The instances of the ceremonial presentation of blue lotus and fragrant unguent to the Neteru divinities go back to the Old Kingdom, so we know that the rites of such offerings depicted on New Kingdom temple walls have very ancient roots that predate them by millennia. Consider if you will that the day-blooming species with the strongest scent, Nyphpaea caerulea, was always chosen for these offerings, rather than the equally common night-blooming white lotus Nymphaea lotus, which has little fragrance but contains the same psychotropic compounds. The priests clearly required the fragrance above all!

Not only did the blue lotus’ love-scent serve to attract the divine presence of the gods, but also, in some ways more importantly, the fragrance was said to pacify and calm them, a valuable side-effect in the case of some of the more martial ones such as Horus, Montu, or Sekhmet. Living, as they did, so intimately with the Nile River and all of its abundant plant and animal life, the ancient Egyptians would have been long aware of both the blue and the white lotus’ psychotropic properties. To attribute a calming effect via the fragrance alone is compelling evidence that the olfactory delivery of the active ingredients had been very likely experienced by them for generations.

In the fabulous bas-relief inscriptions at Seti I’s magnificent temple at Abydos, we see the pharaoh offering copious amounts of fresh-cut blue lotus bouquets to the Neteru such as in the photos above - most especially to Osiris and Horus. The hieroglyphs all attest to just how much the gods appreciate these offerings. Again from Lise Manniche in her Sacred Luxuries:

“The king offering lotus to a deity is a ceremony frequently depicted on the inner walls or columns of the temple. The deity is said to be ‘satisfied’ by the lotus flower and his/her heart ‘appeased’ by its scent. The god ‘enjoys the divinity’ of the scent. When the god sees the brilliance of the flower, his ‘eyes marvel’ and when he sniffs its scent, his ‘nostrils dilate’. The god in turn will acknowledge the offering by saying, ‘I receive your offering and sniff its scent. I cause you (the king) to be praised and loved by means of its scent.’

We can gather from this that the scent of the lotus was taken to have an effect on the diety which could be interpreted as almost sedative or hypnotic and that the scent would cause nostrils to be quite literally dilated. If, at this late stage of Egyptian history, the flower was presented to the deity with the specific purpose of producing a psychic effect, it goes without saying that this same effect had been experienced by ordinary mortals for some considerable time beforehand. In view of the fact that people are representing sniffing lotus flowers as early as the time of the pyramid builders, we are faced with a practice that could well date back to the dawn of civilization.”

To reiterate, it is the yellow center portion of the Egyptian blue lotus flower that is responsible for the emission of fragrance and production of the two aforementioned calmative and hypnotic compounds, apomorphine and nuciferine, which are particularly soluble in ethanol alcohol, such as in wine. The same positive calming psychological effects that ingesting lotus wine or inhaling blue lotus fragrance might have afforded the priest or pharaoh when approaching their imposing and intimidating Neteru, appear to have been transferred to the gods in turn - a big help for convincing them to make their home in the statue and shrine.

For some of the gods, such as ithyphallic Amun-Min, the aphrodisiac effect through the dilation of both nostrils and blood vessels would have been a considerable boon. We can see, then, why these lotus-entwined wine jars were offered next to the altars along with the perfunctory blue lotus offerings to such intimidating divine representations as the martial Horus or the erect Sekhem scepter of Osiris, pictured earlier.

Sekhem literally means “power” in the Egyptian language and is the root of the name of one of the most fearsome and revered Egyptian goddesses, lion-headed Sekhmet. A little extra boost via alcohol infusion of the blue lotus did the magic trick to calm these powerful divinities. We also see that the fragrances of a few of the Seven Sacred Oils that were used for anointing statues of the gods in their sanctuaries are also described as pacifying or calming them in the Pyramid texts and Abydos inscriptions - and all were sacred to Nefertum.

Obviously, it wasn’t just about calming the Neteru, nor the priests or priestesses. It would appear that the Egyptians understood implicitly how the blue lotus was a metaphor for human sexual desire and love, and they mixed that with religious piety; that is, the fragrant offerings were acts of loving devotion, seeking union with their divinities in the temple sanctuaries, just as it was for attracting and finding human love. Most importantly, it was all about the sublimation of the unifying emotion of love, with the “Above being like the Below” described in the Hermetic discourses. The Greeks had terms for such rites (from Wikipedia):

“Theurgy, from θεουργία - theourgía, which describes the practice of ceremonial rituals, sometimes seen as magical in nature, performed with the intention of invoking the action or evoking the Presence of one or more deities. This was most especially done with the goal of achieving henosis (uniting with the divine) and perfecting oneself.”

“Heiros Gamos - hieros (ἱερός) meaning "holy" or "sacred" and gamos (γάμος) meaning marriage, or Hierogamy (ἱερὸς γάμος, ἱερογαμία "holy marriage"), … a sacred marriage that plays out between a god and a goddess, especially when enacted in a symbolic ritual where human participants represent the deities. This has much in common with the Tantric practices more familiar now in the West. In this way, we can better understand the deeper spiritual, psychological, and sexual connotations of Nefertum and the sacred Blue Lotus in Egyptian art and writings as a symbol of fertility and the continuity of life, and its use as a sacrament as well. Such is the Sacred Science of ancient Egypt!

It is here that I am compelled to quote from Lise Manniche’s fabulous Sacred Luxuries in the section entitled “Scent for Love and Rebirth”:

“Here we are in the world of ordinary people, like those depicted in the banquet scenes. They would have appreciated one of the most sensual poems of that time:

O my divine, my lotus flower!

I love to go and bathe before you.

I allow you to see my beauty

In a dress of the finest linen,

Drenched with fragrant unguent.

I go down to the water to be with you

And come up to you again with a red fish,

Looking splendid on my fingers.

I place it before you…

Come! Look at me!

The lotus, the fine linen dress drenched in unguent, revealing a beautiful body underneath - these are the elements we have already seen in the banquet scene, here united in a situation which is implicitly erotic. The girl cries out ‘My lotus!’, an affectionate nickname for her beloved which encompasses both her desire and her hopes for its fulfillment.”

It is worth noting here that the very same three psychological effects of Nymphaea caerulea mentioned earlier: 1) reduction of anxiety, 2) inhibition of avoidance response, and 3) the induction of trance-like states; would most certainly be considered desirable for so-called “love potions” (ancient roofies?), such as are documented in the Egyptian medical and magical papyri. This is most especially the case when coupled with the aforementioned FDA-approved aphrodisiac apomorphine in men. Follow this link to a fascinating article from the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine that spells it all out from the medical perspective: “Nymphaea cults in ancient Egypt and the New World: a lesson in empirical pharmacology”

While the psychotropic effects of the ingestion of these compounds through teas or alcohol infusion are fairly well documented clinically, the very likely probability of an olfactory gateway remains inadequately studied. Dried flowers no longer emit any fragrance or any other aerial molecules which might be inhaled, and coming by such copious amounts of fresh blooms as would be necessary is not really feasible for most folks nowadays, since the primary growers are in Thailand, Malaysia, India, and Sri Lanka - but oddly enough not Egypt itself.

The cut buds and flowers last only a day outside of being refrigerated, where they may keep for a week if you can manage to grow them yourself or have a ready source. Otherwise, the best way to sniff the truly intoxicating fragrance of pure Egyptian blue lotus today is via a high-quality 100% absolute essential oil, ideally steam-distilled from the golden centers of certified organic Nymphaea caerulea blooms, such as is offered here at Wandering Stars (of course).

I have found that just one drop of Blue Lotus Absolute in an essential oil diffusor will fill the room for quite some time and that a single drop on a kerchief or paper blotter will emit the divine fragrance for a few hours. Preliminary experiments do show a marked change in perception and a general state of relaxation is achieved by simply breathing in the scent deeply during meditation. You too can partake in this experiment simply by trying a 2 ml sample of Wandering Stars exclusive Blue Lotus Absolute, now available from our Sacred Scents Store!

Conclusion:

The importance of Nymphaea caerulea to the Egyptian religion and the worship of their deities, the Neteru, appears to have taken precedence over all of the other scents deployed in the temple, banquet, and tomb offerings; the living perfume of its fresh-cut flowers perennially serving as the spirit-lifting background fragrance for the others to be layered over in the sanctuary rituals. Not only does blue lotus fragrance have a proven power of sensual attraction as a perfume, but it also has clinically proven psychotropic and aphrodisiac effects when inhaled or ingested, synergizing with both the temple rituals and human sexuality.

Representing as it did life, love, and especially rebirth, this intoxicating fragrance, coupled with the magical erotic and reproductive symbolism, served as a powerful psychological catalyst for devotional communion and union with the Neteru in their temples and tombs throughout the 3,000-year history of the Dynastic Egyptian civilization. Again, what the red rose is to Western society today, Seshen was for over 140 generations of ancient Egyptians, and much more - it was the quintessential symbol of divine love and the spiritual breath of life.

All in all, the latest pharmacological research shows just how advanced ancient Egyptian medicine and their psychotropic-enhanced ceremonial worship were, and how very much like us they were in so many ways. This example should also serve as an inspiration for our ever-evolving Western societies to hearken back to the ancient wisdom secreted in their Sacred Sciences as we face our very uncertain future.

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Medical Disclaimer: Our expertise lies in incense making, fragrant essential oil blends, and skin/hair ointments. Information contained on these pages is to the best of our knowledge factual and presented solely for your edification and enjoyment. Wandering Stars cannot provide medical advice as we are not health professionals. Before ingesting anything that is not food, we strongly suggest seeking counsel from a licensed health practitioner.