Green Lion

Andrewes, Abraham. "[Hunting] of the Greene Lion." In Lives of the alchemystical philosophers, ed. Francis Barrett, 300-301., 1814. 

Some hundreds of alchemical illustrations. Many of the headings below are subdivided (e g. Emerald Tablet consistes of sub-headings for The Emerald Tablet Original Emerald Tablet as a Monument to Mankind Materia Prima Lapidis cover of The Emerald Tablet First Matter of Heaven and Earth The Green Lion As Above, So Below The Ouroboros Powers of the Sun and Moon)... 

Riley, Judith Merkle. In pursuit of the Green Lion. In Best of romance. Topics Entertainment. 

Seek your Mercury in a similar metal. Then when you know how to extract the metal from its body by purification, the destruction of the first Mars, and reverberation, without the use of any corrosive (the method of doing which I have indicated in my third Key) — you must dissolve that Mercury in its own blood out of which it was made before it became fixed (as indicated in the sixth Key) and you have then nourished and dissolved the true lion with the blood of the green lion. For the fixed blood of the Red... 

Lion has been made out of the volatile blood of the Green Lion hence, they are of one nature, and the unfixed blood again renders that which is volatile fixed, and the fixed blood in its turn fixes that which is volatile, as it was before its solution. Then foster it in gentle heat, until the whole of the mercury is dissolved, and you obtain the second ferment (by nourishing the fixed sulphur with that which is not fixed), as all Sages unite with me in testifying. Afterwards this becomes, by sublimation with spirit of wine, of a blood-red colour, and is called potable gold. 

Alchemical literature is almost always so cryptic, and contains so much obscure symbolism, that it borders on the unintelligible. For example, mercury was ordinarily not referred to by its common name. Instead it might be called doorkeeper, our balm, our honey, oil, May-dew, mother egg, green lion, bird of Hermes, or any of a large number of other names. Birds flying to heaven might represent distil-... 

Poisson, Theories, 103 besides cage and prison, other names for alchemists cookers included henhouse, philosophical egg, sepulchre, sphere, and green lion. ... 

The two lions represent the beginning and end of the work. Sometimes the green lion is interchangeable with a toad, a device used by Sir George Ripley in his Vision. 

WATER — Arsenical Water. The Green Lion of the Philosophers. 

VITRUM — Glass, Sieve, Riddle for Distillation, Grave, Churchyard, because the Stone lies hidden therein, and is driven up and down also a Prison, because the Bride and Bridegroom are shut in there by force. Therefore it is called the Old Green Lion, because he uses violence. 

Mercury, as the spirit, is the Hfe-force, the Universal Soul in all things. It is passive, feminine, cold and watery, the eternal feminine, the Prima Materia—first matter, the matrix, the mother of all things. Unrefined, Mercury is symbolised by the dragon, the serpent, the Green Lion, and the white woman who, when exalted, becomes the White Queen or the White Lion, the unicorn, or the Moon called Luna and Diana, the virgin divinity in Nature. 

The green Lion is the fixed, dry, fiery Nature-Fire, that rests in the centre of the Salt of our Compositi like in a prison until it is liberated of the volatile red Sulphur, and with the same ascends towards heaven. 

As soon as the Eagle has flown, the body or the green Lion remains behind with the enclosed Soul the Lion s blood or Gold lustre. 

The animalistic Soul (the green Lion) must naturally be dissolved into its Atoms, (Prima Materia), before she is capable of fusing her purer essence forever with the immortal Spirit. 

Above a 16th-centuiy engraving of the green lion devouring the sun. In the comphcated alchemical symbolism, this can be translated as meaning that aqua regia (royal water)—a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids—dissolved gold, represented by the sun. 

Then put all these cold liquors, thus filled, into a fit glass vessel and set it in Balneo Mariae to evaporate in a temperate heat which done, our sericon will be coagulated into a green gum called our Green Lion which gum dry well, yet beware thou burn not his flowers, nor destroy his greenness. 

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