Ancient kingship and the lion
In the ancient Near East the lion was consistently used as an emblem of royal power, especially the power to kill and protect. Assyrian and Babylonian palace reliefs show the king hunting lions as a demonstration that he can conquer the most dangerous animal in his realm. The lion represents raw, untamed force; the king demonstrates he has dominion over it and can turn that force into order.
Babylon’s Ishtar Gate was decorated with striding lions in glazed brick. The lion was associated with the goddess Ishtar (Inanna), but the use on city walls and processional ways also declares that the city’s divine and royal power is leonine: aggressive, protective, and dominant over enemies.
In Egypt, lion and lioness imagery is saturated with royal meaning. Sekhmet, the lioness goddess, is a solar war deity, “the Eye of Ra,” embodying the destructive but also protective power of the sun. Pharaoh is “the son of Ra,” and lion imagery (including lion thrones and lion-shaped beds) encodes his solar, warlike kingship.
Across the Eastern Mediterranean the lion becomes a regular throne-guardian: sphinxes and lions flank seats and doorways, indicating that the person or space within is royal or sacred.
In Greece, the Nemean lion myth encodes a similar idea. Heracles proves his heroic, semi-divine status by killing the invulnerable lion and wearing its skin. Only a hero of quasi-royal stature can do this. Later kings and heroes, in art, adopt leonine or lion-cloak attributes as visual shorthand for might and legitimacy.
Later, in Iran, the “lion and sun” symbol fuses the lion as royal animal with the solar disk, becoming a state emblem from at least the Safavid period onward, explicitly linked to kingship, protection, and the ruler as the earthly image of the sun’s power.
Biblical and Christian royal lion
In the Hebrew Bible, the tribe of Judah is associated with the lion: “Judah is a lion’s whelp” (Genesis 49). Later, the messianic expectation is focused on Judah’s line, and the phrase “Lion of Judah” emerges as a title of the Davidic king and then of the Messiah.
In the New Testament, Revelation 5:5 applies this title to Christ: “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered.” This explicitly links lion-royalty, victory, and cosmic kingship.
Medieval Christian monarchies then echo this: if Christ is the lion-king of heaven, earthly kings are his images, so lions appear in royal seals, banners, and coats of arms.
In medieval and early modern heraldry, the lion becomes the dominant royal charge: England, Scotland, the Low Countries, various German principalities, Bohemia, and others all use lions rampart, passant, or couchant as symbols of courage, nobility, sovereignty, and legitimate rule.
Leo, the Sun, and astrotheurgy
Astrologically, the lion is Leo, a fixed fire sign ruled by the Sun.
Leo is associated with rulership, the heart, courage, radiance, and dramatic, central presence.
Leo is one of the four fixed signs (with Taurus, Scorpio, Aquarius).
The Sun rules Leo. The Sun is the “king” of the seven classical planets, associated with gold, the heart, the center, and images of thrones, crowns, and victorious rulers.
In medical and occult astrology, Leo rules the heart and spine. This makes the lion a natural symbol for the “backbone” and “heart” of the kingdom or the psyche: the central axis around which all else organizes.
In ceremonial magic and astrotheurgy, solar operations aim at embodying this solar-lion quality: integrity, constancy, luminous authority. The typical pattern:
– Planet: Sun
– Sign: Leo
– Metal: gold
– Color: golden, red-gold
– Divine names and angelic intelligences: used to align the magician with the solar “king” function
– Image: a crowned king or lion, enthroned or victorious
From a theurgic perspective, “becoming leonine” is not about aggression; it is about harmonizing the personal center with the noetic Sun, the intelligible source of light. The lion is a glyph of successful alignment with that center.
Lions in alchemy: green lion and red lion
Alchemy takes this solar–royal substrate and codes it into a pair of key lions: the Green Lion and the Red Lion.
- The Green Lion
The Green Lion is a symbol for the raw, vital, yet still unrefined power in the prima materia. In many emblems it devours the Sun. This represents a corrosive, mercurial or vitriolic solvent (often linked to “vitriol”) that dissolves gold in order to extract its tincture. The “green lion devouring the sun” therefore visualizes: living nature (green, raw, instinctual) consuming fixed solar gold so that its inner light can be liberated and circulated in the Work.
Symbolically, the Green Lion is:
– Instinctual life-force and passion
– The unredeemed will, powerful but blind
– The “royal” potential still in wild form
The dragon/untamed kingly power that must be worked on rather than suppressed.
- The Red Lion
The Red Lion is a symbol for perfected sulphur, the completed tincture, or the Philosopher’s Stone itself in its active, fiery, kingly aspect. Some alchemical sources and summaries explicitly identify the Red Lion with the Stone: the fixed, incorruptible, solarized core capable of transmuting other metals into gold.
So within alchemy there is a clear royal arc:
Green Lion (raw royal force) → operations of dissolution, purification, conjunction → Red Lion (crowned, fixed, solar king; the Stone)
Because gold is the “king of metals” and the Sun is the “king of heavens,” the lion naturally becomes a central emblem for both. When alchemists depict a lion crowned, flaming, or standing upon a globe, they are saying “Here is the royal, solar, perfected principle.”
There is also a Christic layer. Early modern alchemists sometimes equate the Red Lion with the resurrected Christ, or at least with the Christ-principle as inner stone, using phrases like “Lion of Judah” in alchemical commentary. The completed Stone is then both royal and salvific.
Leontocephalic figures and time
In the Mithraic mysteries, a lion-headed, often winged figure (sometimes called Aion or Zurvan in modern scholarship) appears wrapped in a serpent and holding keys or a staff. Interpretations vary, but major lines see this figure as:
– Time and eternity (Aion)
– The cosmic binding and loosening power
– A chthonic yet cosmic lord over cycles and fate
This leontocephalic god is not “kingship” in a political sense, but it shows how the lion is used at a higher register: the lion-head marks supreme, terrifying, sovereign control over time and cosmic order.
For astrotheurgy, this figure is useful: it links leonine symbolism with the mastery of time, cycles, and necessity—another dimension of “royal” power as you define it in the Great Work.
Lions are apex predators in regions where early civilizations arose. They are large, powerful, and visually distinctive. A human ruler gains obvious symbolic capital by associating with the creature that no ordinary person can master.
Gender and pride structure - The male lion’s mane creates a natural “crown” effect. The social structure of a pride—with a dominant male, fertile females, and young—provided an accessible natural analogy for king, court, and subjects.
Solar resonance - The color of the lion, its association with open plains and heat, and its daily activity align easily with solar qualities. As soon as the Sun is conceptualized as the king of the heavens, the lion becomes a natural emblem or vehicle of that solar kingship. This then gets codified in astrology and, later, hermetic and alchemical systems.
– The symbol of the soul’s royal nature: the “prince” or “king in exile” in bestial form.
– The sign of the Sun and Leo in the astrotheurgic structure: heart, spine, central axis, sovereignty.
the lion then marks each stage where royalty is present but in different states: asleep, exiled, wild, wounded, initiated, transmuted, enthroned.