Green and red lions · Lexicon

From the book

Candida Phoenix Philosophica

Anonymous · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordThe lions are colour-bearing images in a maxim about making red blood from green blood.
In the CandidaThey follow a discussion of purple, green and red in Bier’s water and vitriol, without identifying ordinary vitriol as the universal subject.
TranslationThe English preserves the lions and blood instead of silently decoding them as chemical species.
A place to readRead p. 120, then pp. 151–154, where ordinary vitriol’s suitability is explicitly denied.

Meaning

The lion image is compact and should be interpreted through its immediate setting. The author has discussed a greenish mineral water, wine, an emerging purple colour and the possibility of a red arising from green itself. The maxim names the blood of the green and red lions. It does not separately define two materials, list their preparations or claim that every historical green-lion image elsewhere means the same thing.

Use in the book

At p. 120 the author offers his judgment about Bier’s water becoming purple when poured into wine (II.120.1). Wine’s inward essential colour is said to be red; the water has already been specified toward green, as the emerald made from it is taken to show. Mixing two distinct colours yields a third rather than leaving either unchanged. The explanation belongs to the author’s interpretation of the reported episode, not to a modern verified theory of colour chemistry.

He then adds that a beautiful red can arise from green itself, as may be seen in vitriol. Hence the maxim: from the blood of the green lion must be made the blood of the red lion. The “hence” makes the colour transition the closest supported interpretive link. Blood may express a material’s active or extracted condition, but the local text does not spell out a complete technical definition for either blood.¹⁰¹

The extended vitriol discussion later guards against a literal shortcut. Philosophers can call vitriol Sulphur, yet neither ordinary vitriol nor antimony serves the intended purpose (II.151.1). Ordinary Roman or Hungarian vitriol is particular, however excellent its virtues, and cannot supply the universal tincture (II.152.1–II.154.1). Thus the example of colour change in vitriol is not a disguised withdrawal of that exclusion.

The general account of names at p. 150 explains why this restraint matters. Mineral names may indicate the subject’s abundance of mineral nature, its raw or purified condition, concealment from the ignorant, or changes of form and colour (II.150.2). The lions belong naturally with the last possibility, but the author does not explicitly assign each named lion to a complete stage chart. Reading them as indicators is better supported than pretending their chemistry has been disclosed.

Places to read

Part II · II.120.1The single local lion maxim and the discussion of Bier’s water, wine and vitriol.
Part II · II.150.2; II.151.1; II.152.1; II.154.12 3 4The reasons for philosophical names and the rejection of ordinary vitriol as the subject.

Translation

The translation keeps “blood,” “green lion” and “red lion” because the author’s image is itself part of what readers need to interpret. Replacing the lions with named modern chemicals would insert a solution the book has not provided. The attested German forms are inflected; the headword uses ordinary English nominative expressions.

Connections

Colours gives the broader treatment of signs and the danger of inference from appearance. Vitriol preserves the distinction between a useful comparison and an approved starting substance. Hermetic names explains why a vivid material image can carry a technical relation while withholding literal identification.

Cautions

No universal decoding of lions across alchemical literature follows from this occurrence. Nor does the local green-to-red relation establish that the complete work has only these two colours. The author elsewhere discusses three or four principal colours and fixed redness under different argumentative conditions. Those passages should complement, rather than be forced into, this short maxim.

grünen Löwen

grünen Löwen — green lion; inflected phrase. II.120.1.

rothen Löwen

rothen Löwen — red lion; inflected phrase. II.120.1.

Blut

Blut — blood. II.120.1.

Source note

The lion maxim is introduced by Unde, “hence,” at II.120.1, immediately after the vitriol comparison. No separate author is supplied there. The local argumentative connection is firmer evidence than an invented precise source attribution.