The Green Lion occupies a pivotal position in the depth-psychological engagement with alchemy, functioning simultaneously as prima materia, arcane solvent, and psychic symbol of raw, untransformed instinctual energy. Within the corpus, the term draws its weight primarily from Jung’s sustained exegesis in Mysterium Coniunctionis and Alchemical Studies, where it is identified as the ore from which philosophical mercury is extracted — terra, the unclean body, the desert place, the foundation of all nature. Jung reads it as a manifestation of Mercurius duplex, oscillating between green and red, and as the passionate emotionality that precedes conscious integration of unconscious contents. Edinger extends this reading clinically, glossing the act of drinking the Green Lion’s blood as the assimilation of bestial affect — a charged moment in the analytic encounter. Hillman brings a distinctly post-Jungian inflection: in his alchemical psychology the Green Lion emblematizes sulfuric vitality fused with Venus, the ardent green of the heart’s desire that must be sublimed rather than suppressed. Abraham’s lexicographic work anchors the symbol in textual tradition, tracing its synonyms — assafoetida, white smoke, stinking water — across Ripley, Dunstan, Maier, and Khunrath. A key tension in the corpus concerns the Green Lion’s ambivalence: it is both the corrupting dissolvent that devours the sun and the ‘means of conjoining the tinctures,’ holding destruction and mediation in the same image.
According to most alchemical texts, the green lion is the ore from which philosophical mercury is extracted and is also known as terra (earth), the unclean body, or Latona
Abraham establishes the Green Lion’s canonical alchemical identity as prima materia, the crude ore from which mercury is distilled, synonymous with earth, the unclean body, and Latona across the major textual authorities.
, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998thesis
The lion thus signifies the arcane substance, described as terra, the body or unclean body… Maier cites from Ripley’s ‘Tractatus duodecim portarum’ the remark that the green lion is a ‘means of conjoining the tinctures between sun and moon.’
Jung identifies the Green Lion with the arcane substance as terra and unclean body while simultaneously noting, through Maier and Ripley, its paradoxical mediating function as conjunctive agent between solar and lunar tinctures.
, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955thesis
two crucial spirits or mercuries are said to be extracted from the green lion ore. The first mercury is white and opaque and is called virgin’s milk. The second is red, and is known as the blood of the green lion.
Abraham details the two-fold extraction from the Green Lion ore — white virgin’s milk and red blood — as the essential dual mercuries operative in the alchemical opus.
, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998thesis
Alchemical psychology considered the black and red sulfurs, and the green lion, in desperate need of subliming. One well-known method cuts off the green lion’s paws, depriving it of its reach into the world. Yet it stays alive as a succus vitae in the heart, for ‘green is the color of the heart and of the vitality of the heart’
Hillman recasts the Green Lion as the sulfuric vitality of the heart that must be sublimed but never extinguished, its green force remaining as living sap within the cardiac center even after the opus contra naturam whitens it.
, The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, 1992thesis
One of the manifestations of Mercurius in the alchemical process of transformation is the lion, now green and now red. Khunrath calls this transformation ‘luring the lion out of Saturn’s mountain cave.’
Jung positions the Green Lion as a primary manifestation of Mercurius in transformation, linked to Saturn’s domain and retrieved through the Khunrathian operation of drawing the volatile spirit from its chthonic enclosure.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967thesis
To drink the green lion’s blood, then, would mean to assimi[late]… emotionality in the sense of uncontrollable affects is essentially bestial, for which reason people in this state can be approached only with the circumspection proper to the jungle
Edinger reads drinking the Green Lion’s blood as the clinical task of assimilating bestial, uncontrollable affect, translating the alchemical image into a direct prescription for analytic work with primitive emotionality.
, The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey Through C.G. Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1995thesis
Khunrath equates Venus with the green lion. Since Sulphur is to Sol as Leo is to Rex, we can see why Khunrath regards Venus as the anima vegetativa of sulphur.
Jung relays Khunrath’s identification of Venus with the Green Lion, embedding the term within a sulfur–Sol–Rex chain that aligns feminine Eros with the chthonic, vegetative animating principle of the opus.
, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955supporting
As Sal Veneris, green and red lion (= Venus), Khunrath, Hyl. Chaos, pp. 91, 104. The substance of Mercurius consists of Venus… Since his mother Venus is the matrix corrupta, Mercurius as her son is the puer leprosus
Jung traces through Khunrath and Mylius the Green Lion’s identity as Sal Veneris, grounding its corruption and potential regeneration in the maternal Venus matrix from which Mercurius-as-leprous-son proceeds.
, Alchemical Studies, 1967supporting
One of the manifestations of Mercurius in the alchemical process of transformation is the lion, now green and now red. Khunrath calls this transformation ‘luring the lion out of Saturn’s mountain cave.’
An early Jungian note reiterates the Green-and-Red Lion as a Mercurial manifestation bound to Saturn’s chthonic mountain, establishing the Saturn–Mercurius–Lion nexus across the collected works.
, Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907supporting
The eclipse of the sun described in The Hunting of the Greene Lyon is represented by the image of the lion devouring the sun. The lion ‘soone can overtake the sunne, / And suddenly wyll hym devoure’
Abraham links the Green Lion to the solar eclipse motif in the English alchemical poem, where the lion’s devouring of the sun figures the dissolution of Sol that initiates the nigredo.
, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998supporting
Meanwhile she of the Peacocks Flesh did Eate / And Dranke the Greene-Lyons Blood with that fine Meate, / Which Mercur[ius prepared]
Edinger cites the Ripley verse that pairs consumption of peacock’s flesh with drinking the Green Lion’s blood, situating the image within the mercurial regimen of transformation that follows the cauda pavonis stage.
, The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey Through C.G. Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1995supporting
The Hunting of the Green Lyon (in TCB) (1652) (by Abraham Andrewes): bed; eclipse; green lion
Abraham’s index entry confirms that the seventeenth-century poem The Hunting of the Green Lyon is a primary literary source associating the term with eclipse, dissolution, and the alchemical bed of conjunction.
, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998aside
See also ‘white fume’ in green lion. coagulate see solve et coagula. coal a symbol for the blackness of the nigredo
A cross-reference node in Abraham’s dictionary confirms the Green Lion entry as the locus for the ‘white fume’ symbolism, linking it to the solve et coagula process and the nigredo sequence.
, A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998aside