The lion is the most frequently invoked animal in the entire corpus of alchemical imagery, appearing in dozens of guises across centuries of Hermetic literature. In natural history and mythology, the lion signifies sovereignty, solar power, and indomitable strength. The lion's association with the sun is ancient: Egyptian, Greek, and medieval bestiaries all connect the lion to solar heat, royal authority, and the power to overcome death. In heraldry and in Scripture (the Lion of Judah, Samson's lion from whose mouth came sweetness), the lion carries connotations of both terrifying force and redemptive promise.

In alchemy, the lion takes multiple forms depending on the stage and substance it represents. Abraham distinguishes the red lion (fixed sulphur, the mature masculine principle) from the green lion (the raw ore, the prima materia, philosophical mercury in its earliest state). The wingless lion represents the fixed, solid, combustible sulphur identified with the Sun, while the winged lioness represents volatile Mercury identified with the Moon. The pairing of these two lions enacts the fundamental mercury-sulphur theory at the heart of alchemical philosophy: the volatile must be fixed, the fixed must be volatilized, and their indissoluble union produces the Philosophers' Stone.

Maier devotes Emblem XVI of the Atalanta Fugiens to the combat of the two lions. The plate depicts a winged lioness and a wingless lion locked in struggle. The discourse explains that two powerful lions, a male and a female, go about in a dark and horrible valley, keeping out of sight, and that whoever subdues these uncontrollable animals by wisdom and artifice will acquire extraordinary fame. The winged lioness lives near the mountain dedicated to Venus, in a deep valley; on the mountaintop lives the red lion, springing from the generation that killed Hercules. The adept must lead the red lion down into the valley and unite it with the winged lioness, after which they ascend together to the mountaintop in indestructible union. The lion motif also appears in the frontispiece, where Hippomenes and Atalanta, transformed into lions by Rhea after desecrating her temple, pull Cybele's chariot.

De Jong's commentary on Emblem XVI identifies the winged lioness as volatile Mercury synonymous with primeval water and the Moon, which must be united with the wingless lion representing combustible, solid Sulphur or the Sun. Their union leads to the Philosophers' Stone, in which sulphur has become incombustible and mercury has become solid, all volatility bound. De Jong traces this animal symbolism through Senior's Tabula Chimica, where winged denotes female and wingless denotes male, and notes that Maier pictures the union of contrasts in several emblems: as cock and hen in Emblem XXX, as wolf and dog in Emblem XLVII, and as wingless and winged bird in Emblem VII. The valley and mountaintop symbolize the circular course of the alchemical process, where heavy matter precipitates to the bottom of the vessel and thin vapours rise to the top.

The two lions of Emblem XVI offer Maier's reader a vivid lesson in contraries. The valley is dark and horrible; the mountaintop is radiant. The volatile flees upward; the fixed resists below. Only when wisdom and artifice bring them together does the alchemical work advance. Maier transforms an abstract chemical theorem about the conjunction of mercury and sulphur into a dramatic narrative of pursuit, combat, and union in a mythological landscape, inviting the reader to experience the mercury-sulphur theory not as a formula but as an adventure.

Meanings Across Registers

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

Alchemical

The fixed solar Sulphur in animal form: the red lion (perfected gold) and green lion (vitriolic solvent) of the iconographic tradition, marking opposite poles of the work.

Medical

The sanguine-choleric vigor in its noble form; the fierce vital heat that, properly governed, expresses itself as constitutional strength rather than febrile rage.

Spiritual

The royal spiritedness of the awakened ego; the sovereign self that has subdued lesser passions and bears its solar nature with dignity rather than violence.

Cosmological

The zodiacal Leo as the Sun's domicile; the celestial sign whose midsummer fire concentrates solar virtue at its peak terrestrial manifestation.