The Lion
The lion is power without apology. It appears in Archetype Matrix entries on its own and, now and then, on the attack.
What Jung wrote
Jung met the lion most often in alchemy. In Psychology and Alchemy and Mysterium Coniunctionis he follows the alchemists’ green and red lions, sometimes pictured devouring the sun. He read them as images of raw desire and passion, a fierce energy to be faced and transformed rather than killed.
In Symbols of Transformation the lion also belongs to the sun and to the heat of high summer, the season of Leo. Fire, strength and appetite gather around it. Whether that energy burns or warms depends, in Jung’s reading, on what the conscious mind does with it.
- C. G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Collected Works, Vol. 12
- C. G. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, Collected Works, Vol. 14
- C. G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation, Collected Works, Vol. 5
What the world is logging
Logged with the mood
- Calm36%
- Tired21%
- Excited14%
- Anxious14%
- Angry14%
Where it is logged most
- Türkiye3
- Germany2
- Russia2
- Chile2
- Zimbabwe2
Most common moon phase
Last Quarter (4 entries)
Often logged together with
Spider (2) · Shadow (2) · God (2) · Fight (2)
Counted from anonymous Archetype Matrix entries. Updated October 8, 2026.
What we don’t do
We won’t tell you what your lion means. Jung himself distrusted fixed dream dictionaries and held that a symbol can only be read in the life of the person who dreams it. Archetype Matrix only counts: who logged the same image, where, and in what mood.
Other symbols
ForestSnakeOceanBoatAlienOld WomanShadowDogWolfWaterEagleMirrorFishHorseGoldOld Man
