The dog, one of the most familiar of all domestic animals, serves in alchemy as a figure for the mercurial principle in its western, cold, moist, dissolving aspect. In classical and medieval culture, the dog was associated with loyalty, guardianship, and the underworld (Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hades). The Corascene dog and Armenian bitch appear frequently in alchemical texts as code names for the two principles whose violent coupling initiates the work. The dog's faithfulness and its capacity for fierce combat made it an apt image for the mercurial substance that both dissolves and binds.

In the alchemical tradition, the dog (or bitch) represents philosophical argent vive, the cold, moist, dissolving feminine principle that must be united with philosophical sulphur (the male, hot, dry principle) at the first chemical wedding. Abraham explains that the copulation of dog and bitch is equivalent to the cannibalistic copulation of the wingless and winged dragons or lions: the wingless dragon (dog), symbolizing sulphur, has the power to coagulate or fix the volatile spirit, while the winged dragon (bitch) has the power to dissolve fixed matter. Their violent union produces the mercurial water. Flamel describes the dog and bitch biting each other cruelly, killing one another, and being stewed in their own venom, which after their death changes them into living and permanent water.

Maier adapts this imagery in Emblem XLVII, where he replaces the conventional dog-and-bitch pairing with a wolf and dog. The motto reads: "The wolf, coming from the East, and the Dog, coming from the West, have bitten each other." The engraved plate shows the two animals locked in ferocious combat, muzzles wide open. The discourse explains that the two Stones are given freely, everywhere, to all, at all times: the wolf (sulphur) comes from the East and the dog (mercury) from the West. When they meet, they bite each other with such fury that the dog gains the first victory on account of its size, half-killing the wolf; but the wolf regains its forces and kills the dog, though at the expense of all its own strength, so that it also dies. This mutual destruction produces the unified Stone.

De Jong traces the wolf-and-dog combat to Avicenna and the Consilium Conjugii, noting that Maier chose the wolf and dog rather than the more conventional dog and bitch to represent the first primitive union of sulphur and argent vive. She identifies the East-West opposition as carrying cosmological meaning rooted in sun-cult traditions: the world was understood to have originated from East to West, just as the sun dawns in the East and sets in the West. The wolf is sulphur (choleric, furious, from the Orient), and the dog is mercury (soft, mouldable, from the Occident). De Jong connects this emblem to the broader pattern of contrasts that Maier depicts throughout the Atalanta Fugiens: lion and lioness in Emblem XVI, cock and hen in Emblem XXX, and the wingless and winged bird in Emblem VII.

The dog of Emblem XLVII participates in Maier's recurring theme of productive combat. The reader sees two animals destroying each other and must understand that their mutual annihilation is not waste but generation. The dog from the West, loyal and strong, meets the wolf from the East, savage and choleric, and their fight to the death enacts the first conjunction of mercury and sulphur. Maier's visual puzzle asks the reader to see past the violence to the chemical truth: dissolution and coagulation require the destruction of both starting materials, from which a new, perfected substance emerges.

Meanings Across Registers

De Jong shows that alchemical terms operate simultaneously across material, medical, spiritual, and cosmological dimensions.

Alchemical

The Khorasan dog and Armenian bitch of the Turba and the Rosarium, whose biting union (often paired with the wolf) figures the controlled hostility of two mercurial principles fixing each other in the vessel.

Medical

The faithful, fierce vigilance of innate heat guarding the body's threshold; the watchdog principle that recognizes corruption and bites it off before infection spreads.

Spiritual

The threshold-guardian of the inner work; the loyal but biting capacity of self-discipline that defends the contemplative space against the wolf of dispersion.

Cosmological

Anubis at the underworld gate; the Sirius-dog whose heliacal rising marks seasonal thresholds and whose celestial counterpart guards the boundary between worlds.