The pelican is a symbol both of Christ and the lapis.
In the Epistle of Barnabas Christ’s body is called the “vessel of the spirit.”
Honorius of Autun, Speculum de mysteriis ecclesiae: “For it is said that the pelican so loves her young that she puts them to death with her claws. But on the third day for grief she wounds herself, and letting the blood from her body drip upon the fledglings she raises them from the dead. The pelican signifies the Lord, who so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, whom on the third day he raised up, victor over death, and exalted above every name.”
In Tractatus aureus Hermetis an anonymous writer says: "For this vessel is the true philosophical Pelican, and there is no other to be sought for in all the world."
According to the teachings of gnostic Herakleon, the dying man should address the demiurgic powers thus: “I am a vessel more precious than the feminine being who made you. Whereas your mother knew not her own roots, I know of myself, and I know whence I have come, and I call upon the imperishable wisdom which is in the Father and is the Mother of your mother, which has no mother, but also has no male companion.”
