Suns in alchemy

In alchemical and Hermetic traditions, suns () are used to symbolize a variety of concepts, much like the Sun in astrology. Suns can correspond to gold, citrinitas, generative masculine principles, imagery of "the king", or Apollo, the fiery spirit or sulfur, the divine spark in man, nobility, or incorruptibility. Recurring images of specific solar motifs can be found in the form of a "dark" or "black sun", or a green lion devouring the Sun.

Sol niger

Sol niger (black sun) can refer to the first stage of the alchemical magnum opus, the nigredo (blackness). In a text ascribed to Marsilio Ficino three suns are described: black, white, and red, corresponding to the three most used alchemical color stages. Of the sol niger he writes:

The body must be dissolved in the subtlest middle air: The body is also dissolved by its own heat and humidity; where the soul, the middle nature holds the principality in the colour of blackness all in the glass: which blackness of Nature the ancient Philosophers called the crows head, or the black sun.

The black sun is used to illuminate the dissolution of the body, a blackening of matter, or putrefaction in Splendor Solis, and Johann Daniel Mylius’s Philosophia Reformata.

See also

• Alchemical symbol
• Classical planets in Western alchemy
• Solar symbol

References

1. Alchemical symbol
2. Outline of alchemy
3. Magnum opus (alchemy)
4. Alchemy
5. Cleopatra the Alchemist
6. Emerald Tablet
7. Alchemy in art and entertainment
8. Paracelsianism
9. List of alchemical substances
10. Philosopher's stone
11. Ouroboros
12. Chrysopoeia
13. Alchemy in the medieval Islamic world
14. Mary the Jewess
15. Guido di Montanor
16. Alchemy of Souls
17. Paracelsus
18. Alembic
19. Andreas Libavius
20. Congelation