At a glance
- Also called
- yellowing alchemy, xanthosis, yellow stage of alchemy
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Albedo, Rubedo, Nigredo, Magnum Opus
Citrinitas, the yellowing, is the third of the four colour stages of the alchemical work, standing between the white of albedo and the red of rubedo.
A lineage map for books and systems; it avoids presenting symbolic traditions as literal fact.
Understand the chapter you are in.
Your life’s turning points, measured from your birth.
Walk through Alex’s whole example first
Prefer to explore first?
The Road of AgesThe turning points of your whole life, from your own chart
Walk my road
What does citrinitas mean?
Citrinitas is the Latin name for the yellowing of the matter in the vessel. In the oldest four-colour scheme the work ran black, white, yellow, red, and the yellow marked the moment the washed white matter began to take the tint of gold. Writers compared it to dawn: the moonlit white giving way to the first light of the sun.
Most later Latin authors left it out and counted three colours only, so it is the least described of the stages. Readers who follow Carl Jung sometimes restore it as the point where insight gained in the white stage starts to be lived in daylight, before the fullness of the red.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Alchemy.
What sets Citrinitas apart
Citrinitas is the only one of the four colours that the tradition itself let go. Black, white and red each kept a rich stock of emblems, while the yellow survives mostly as a name and a comparison with sunrise. That thinness is its distinguishing mark: a writer who includes it is following the older Greek count, and a writer who omits it is following the later Latin one. Its restoration in modern books owes more to Jung's remark on the change than to any old treatise.
- Latin: citrinitas, from citrinus, the colour of a citron or lemon
- Greek name: xanthosis, the yellowing
- Place in the order: third of four: after the white, before the red
- Dropped: from about the fifteenth or sixteenth century in most Latin texts
- Usual image: dawn, or the sun rising after a night lit by the moon
Often mistaken for something else: Albedo is the white of reflected, lunar light; citrinitas is the first yellow of the sun's own light, and rubedo is that light at full strength.
The story behind Citrinitas
Greek alchemists of Roman Egypt named four stages by colour: melanosis, leukosis, xanthosis and iosis. Latin translators rendered xanthosis as citrinitas, from citrinus, lemon-coloured. Jung observed in Psychology and Alchemy (1944) that around the fifteenth or sixteenth century the four were reduced to three and the yellow fell away, a change he connected with the pull of the number three in Christian thought.
Why Citrinitas matters
Citrinitas explains why some books list three stages of the work and others four, and it names the stretch between seeing clearly and acting fully.
How to read Citrinitas
Readers bring it in when a change has passed its quiet, reflective phase and is beginning to show in ordinary daytime life.
Citrinitas in practice: an example
Someone who has come through a hard season and understood it might call the slow return of appetite and plans their citrinitas: light, though not yet warmth.
Where readings of Citrinitas go wrong
The sources say little about it, so most modern descriptions are interpretation and should be offered as such.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- citrinitas alchemy, yellowing alchemy, xanthosis, yellow stage of alchemy
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
See Citrinitas in your personal almanac
A definition tells you what it is; your own birth chart tells you what it means for you. The Oracle casts your real chart and answers for your love, your work, and your year ahead, in conversation. It opens with the 7-day Oracle trial.
Speak with the OracleRelated terms
More in Mystical Systems
- Fleur-de-lis
- Index Librorum Prohibitorum
- Metatron's Cube
- Platonic Solids
- Scottish Rite
- Temurah
- Wheel of Fortune
- Astrolatry
From the reference page to your own chart
Every word here
is in your own chart.
- Your life’s turning points, measured from your birth
- A practical next step to consider
- It opens with 7 days free: the AI Oracle on thirty hidden arts, and your daily horoscope
$0 today, then $19/month after 7 days. Cancel anytime.
Common questions
What does citrinitas mean?
It is Latin for yellowness. In alchemy it names the stage in which the white matter turns yellow on its way to red, the third step of the older four-colour scheme.
Why is citrinitas often left out?
From about the fifteenth or sixteenth century most Latin authors counted only black, white and red. Jung noted the change; the texts themselves do not explain it, and the yellow was simply folded into the passage from white to red.
What comes before and after citrinitas?
Albedo, the whitening, comes before it and rubedo, the reddening, follows. Nigredo, the blackening, opens the whole sequence.
