Usually not an animal but one face of a set of four. Count the other three before reading it alone.
Six works here carry a lion and in four of them it is not really a lion. It is one quarter of a group.
The group is the tetramorph, the four creatures of Ezekiel's vision that Christian writers attached to the evangelists. Waite says so plainly of the card of 1909: “The four living creatures of the Apocalypse and Ezekiel's vision, attributed to the evangelists in Christian symbolism, are grouped about an elliptic garland”. Once you know to count, the lion stops being a beast and becomes a position. It appears at the right of Hall's throne with a bull, a man and an eagle. It appears again as one of the four heads on the Cherub plate. On the Wheel it sits in a corner with a book.
The exception is the sheet after the figures attributed to Flamel, and it is the most interesting thing under this motif. The sixth chapter of the Apocalypse puts its riders on horses, black, red and white: “And there went out another horse that was red.” The painter has put them on lions of those three colours instead. Nobody in the archive explains the substitution, and the record says so rather than inventing a reason for it. What can be said is that the colours were kept and the animal was changed, which means the colours were carrying the meaning and the animal was not.
Contested
Hall's captions for the throne and the Cherub name neither the tetramorph nor the lion, so the identification of those two comes from counting the four heads on the plates rather than from a source. The lion substitution on the Flamel sheet is unexplained by anything the archive holds.
Sources
- Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, : Waite commissioned the 1909 designs and wrote the key to them, so his account is the closest thing the deck has to an author's statement.
- The Apocalypse of Saint John, Douay Rheims, Challoner revision, : Quoted from the Challoner revision, the English text the archive uses for the Apocalypse throughout.
- Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, : Hall's text and plate captions, 1928. Transcribed here, not yet read against a printed folio.
Where it appears
Across the archive · 8
Plates that carry the symbol, tagged by eye and not yet decoded: first where it is the central motif, then where it plays a secondary part. Each opens in the viewer; the key and the notes come with the entry.
Central motif · 4
Three Riders on Black, Red and White LionsAfter the figures of Abraham the Jew, from Nicolas Flamel, date not recordedthree armed riders on a black, a red and a white lion charge across the clouds under the sun and the moon; below them figures fall or lie on the ground and a beast crouches at the left; the Lion as the central motif, by eyeApocalypse 6:1, “And I saw that the Lamb had opened one of the seven seals: and I heard one of the four living creatures, as it were the voice of thunder, saying: Come and see.”
Oedipus and the SphinxGustave Moreau, 1864the winged lion-bodied sphinx clings to Oedipus; by eye; the sphinx is a woman's head on a winged lion's body
Hic leo, quas plumas non habet, alter habetMatthaus Merian, attributed, for Michael Maier, 1618the winged lion and the wingless lion together, one bearing down on the otherMichael Maier, 1618 “Hic leo, quas plumas non habet, alter habet.”
Tria sufficiunt ad magisterium, fumus albus, hoc est, aqua, leo viridis, id est, æs Hermetis, & aqua fœtidaMatthaus Merian, attributed, for Michael Maier, 1618the great maned lion standing crowned with leaves: the green lion the motto namesMichael Maier, 1618 “Tria sufficiunt ad magisterium, fumus albus, hoc est, aqua, leo viridis, id est, æs Hermetis, & aqua fœtida.”
Secondary motif · 4
The Ancient of the AncientsJ. Augustus Knapp, colour plate, 1928the Name in a triangle of light above the throne, hexagrams on the pillars; the Triangle and the Divine secondary, by eyeHall, 1928 “In the Zohar His robes are said to be white, but they are here shown as red to signify that the garments of Divinity partake of the nature of cosmic activity.”Central motif: the King and the Queen
The Cherub of EzekielArtist uncredited, colour plate, 1928a nude winged figure stands inside a flame-shaped aureole, a sword hilt-up at the waist, the heads of a bull and a lion behind his own, the wings rising above; the Angel and the Wing as the central motif, the Lion by eyeHall, 1928 “The prophet beheld four strange creatures, each having four heads, four wings, and brazen hoofs like those of a calf.”Central motif: the Angel and the Wing
Wheel of Fortune (X)Pamela Colman Smith, 1909a wheel lettered TARO and ROTA with alchemical signs, a sphinx with a sword seated on top, a serpent descending at the left and a jackal-headed figure rising at the right; the four living creatures with open books in the corners, on clouds; the Heavens as the central motif, the Angel, the Serpent and the Lion by eyeWaite, 1911 “Sometimes the sphinx is represented couchant on a pedestal above, which defrauds the symbolism by stultifying the essential idea of stability amidst movement.”Central motif: the Heavens
The World (XXI)Pamela Colman Smith, 1909a dancing figure wrapped in a purple sash, a wand in each hand, inside a green wreath bound with red ribbons; the four living creatures, a man, an eagle, a lion and a bull, in the corners; the Heavens as the central motif, the Angel and the Lion by eyeWaite, 1911 “She is in the act of dancing, and has a wand in either hand.”Central motif: the Heavens
On the same plate
