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The two lions are prefigurations of the royal pair, hence they wear crowns. The illustrations show a furious battle between the wingless lion (red sulphur) and the winged lioness (white sulphur). The alchemical "green lion" devouring the sun relates to the experience of consciousness being overwhelmed by violent, frustrated desires (often masked by depression) (Fabricius 1976, p. The modern understanding of adolescence as a formative phase of extreme instability and fluidity explains the deep sea swell of the prima materia, or the unconscious, at the opening stage of the opus individuationis (Fabricius 1976, p. Johannes Fabricius: "The adolescent tries to come into emotional contact with the passions of his infancy and early childhood, in order for them to surrender their original The profoundest and most unique quality of adolescence lies in its capacity to move between regressive and progressive consciousness." This alternation of the adolescent psyche—reviving the Oedipus complex and repressing it, conjuring up the attachment to primary love and hate objects and disengaging from them—corresponds with the alchemists' experience of the ebb and flow of their prima materia. Usually the lion-form succeeds the dragon's death and eventual dismemberment (Fabricius 1976, p. He is the warm-blooded form of the devouring, predatory monster who first appears as the dragon. In alchemy the lion, the "royal" beast, is a synonym for Mercurius, or, to be more accurate, for a stage in his transformation. Jung and others have said these lions represent primitive, and often turbulent, psychological states in the human life cycle.īelow are selected comments from Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz, and Johannes Fabricius regarding medieval depictions of the alchemical lion, with illustrations from Fabricius's book Alchemy: The Medieval Alchemists and Their Royal Art. For example, at least one medieval alchemical text uses the lion to illustrate stages of transformation, and even depicts a lioness in a winged form. While not directly related to antlions, alchemy's symbolism of transformation—whether physical or spiritual—often incorporated animal imagery, and could be seen as an analogue to metamorphosis.