Suns in alchemy

Suns can correspond to gold, citrinitas, generative masculine principles, imagery of "the king", or Apollo, the fiery spirit or sulfur,[1] the divine spark in man,[2] 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 (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,[4] and Johann Daniel Mylius’s Philosophia Reformata.