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Animals & Totems

Lion

Mammals

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Origin 150 to 400 CE

Lions are the only social cats and the only ones with pronounced sexual dimorphism, and they lived across North Africa, the Balkans and Southwest Asia within historical memory, which is why they dominate the art of civilisations that no longer have them. Assyrian and Babylonian kings had themselves shown hunting lions, and the processional way of Babylon is lined with them. Sekhmet of Egypt is lion-headed, and the sphinx has a lion's body. Judah is a lion's whelp at Genesis 49:9. The lion is one of the four living creatures of Ezekiel and Revelation, assigned to Mark in the Western standard that descends from Victorinus and Jerome, though Irenaeus gave it to John. Narasimha is Vishnu's lion avatar.

Facts
Disputed
Contested or Appropriated Modern Use
The words spirit animal and totem are used in popular Western practice for a personal animal ally. Native scholars and communities object to both usages, on the ground that they take the vocabulary and the authority of particular Indigenous traditions and apply them to a generic and commercial practice. 3
Suzanne Owen's The Appropriation of Native American Spirituality (Continuum, 2008) documents the objection Indigenous communities in North America raise, ongoing and in the present tense, against the commercial "spirit animal" genre. Owen's study examines how the practice borrows specific Indigenous terms and claimed lineages, presenting them as licensing a service sold to outside customers, and sets that use against the communities' own accounts of what those terms and practices mean within their traditions. What is disputed, on Owen's reading, is not that people generally feel a kinship with animals, a widely attested feeling that belongs to no one tradition, but the specific commercial borrowing of Indigenous vocabulary and claimed authority. The atlas records the animal, records that the modern commercial practice exists, and records that this documented objection is made, without adjudicating between the parties.
Correspondences
Element Correspondence
Fire 1
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
The Physiologus opens with the lion and gives it three natures: it erases its tracks with its tail, it sleeps with its eyes open, and its cubs are born dead and receive breath on the third day. Each is read of Christ. The lion of this tradition is an allegory before it is an animal. 2Tradition: Physiologus and the medieval bestiaries
Identity
Creature Type
Mammals 1
Origins
Origin Period
150 to 400 CE 2Tradition: Physiologus and the medieval bestiaries
Origin Period
1980 to 2000 1Tradition: Modern Western esotericism
Learn More
The Lion in the Art of Empires

Lions occupied North Africa, Greece, Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Persia and northern India within recorded history. That range explains why the lion dominates the art of civilisations that no longer have any, and it means the imagery is drawn from a real and dangerous neighbour rather than from an exotic report.

Mesopotamia. Assyrian royal ideology made the lion hunt a demonstration of kingship, and the reliefs from Ashurbanipal's palace at Nineveh, now in the British Museum, are among the finest animal sculpture to survive from the ancient world, and among the most unsettling, since the lions are released from cages to be killed. The Ishtar Gate processional way at Babylon is lined with lions in glazed brick, the animal of the goddess Ishtar.

Egypt. Sekhmet, lion-headed, is the fierce aspect of the solar eye, a goddess of plague and of healing. Her festivals involved deliberate placation through drunkenness. The Great Sphinx has a lion's body, and lion-bodied guardians flank temple approaches throughout Egyptian architecture.

Israel. Genesis 49:9 makes Judah a lion's whelp, which is the origin of the Lion of Judah as a title and, through Ethiopian imperial usage, as a national emblem. Revelation 5:5 applies it to Christ.

India and beyond. Narasimha is the man-lion avatar of Vishnu. Durga rides a lion. The Ashokan lion capital at Sarnath is the state emblem of India. The Asiatic lion survived in Gujarat and remains there in the Gir forest, which is why Indian lion imagery is also drawn from a living animal.

China is the exception that proves the rule: guardian lions were adopted through Buddhist transmission, in a country with no lions, which is why they look so unlike lions.

Prides, Manes, and the Four Living Creatures

Lions are the only cats that live in permanent social groups. A pride is typically a group of related females with their young and a small coalition of males, and the females do the majority of the hunting while males defend territory against other coalitions. Takeovers by new males are usually followed by the killing of unrelated cubs, which brings females back into oestrus. This is well documented and it sits awkwardly with the lion's symbolic career as a figure of noble sovereignty.

The mane is the only pronounced sexual dimorphism among cats. Field research in the Serengeti has associated darker and fuller manes with higher testosterone, better condition and greater success in both female choice and male contests, though mane development also varies with climate, lions in hotter regions grow less of one, and the maneless males of Tsavo are a well-known case.

The lion is one of the four living creatures of Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 4. In the Western standard, which descends from Victorinus of Pettau through Jerome, the lion belongs to Mark, on the reasoning that his gospel opens with a voice crying in the wilderness. That assignment is not the original one: Irenaeus, around 180, gave the lion to John and the eagle to Mark, and Augustine gave the lion to Matthew. At least three patristic schemes competed and one won, which is worth knowing before quoting the familiar arrangement as though it were fixed from the beginning.

Astrology. Leo is a zodiac constellation catalogued by Ptolemy, associated with the sun in the classical planetary rulerships. The regulus star at its heart, the little king, was one of the four royal stars of Persian astronomy.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Attested in Region

Egypt, Regions

Sekhmet, the lion-headed, and the sphinx as a lion given a king's face.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Indian Subcontinent, Regions

Narasimha, Durga's mount, and the lion throne of the Buddha.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Mesopotamia, Regions

The lion hunt as a royal statement, and the lion as the animal of Ishtar.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
The Levant, Regions

The lion of Judah, and the lions of Daniel.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Disciplines That Use This

Animal Spirits, Disciplines

One of the animal spirits gathered under this discipline. Where a tradition restricts this material, the restriction is recorded on the tradition itself rather than repeated for each animal.

Source The Appropriation of Native American SpiritualitySuzanne Owen
Sources
1. Shamans and Religion: An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking
Alice Beck Kehoe, Waveland Press, 2000ch. on core shamanism and its commercial forms
2. Physiologus
Anonymous (Physiologus tradition), University of Texas Press, 1979introduction: date, place and transmissionView the Source
3. The Appropriation of Native American Spirituality
Suzanne Owen, Continuum, 2008ch. on the marketing of Native spirituality
Against Heresies (Adversus Haereses)
Irenaeus of LyonsThe four living creatures
Quote, The four living creatures
Irenaeus gives the lion to John, not to Mark; the familiar scheme is Victorinus by way of Jerome.
View the Source
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source
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