Lead is the metal of Saturn, and this pairing is as apt as gold and the Sun at the other end of the scale. Lead is heavy, dull, soft and grey, the densest of the common ancient metals and the lowest in the alchemical hierarchy, and Saturn is the slowest, coldest and most distant of the classical planets, the god of time, limitation, old age and death.
The alchemists gave lead and Saturn the same symbol and treated lead as the base metal par excellence, the leaden, fallen starting point of the Great Work, the prima materia to be perfected, so that the transmutation of lead into gold expressed the whole arc from base to perfect, mortal to immortal. Its heaviness made it the physical emblem of gravity, depression and the melancholic temperament ruled by Saturn. Lead is genuinely toxic, and its long use in pipes, pigments and cosmetics did real historical harm, a shadow fitting to the Saturnine metal. Its symbolism is of weight, endings, limitation and the raw material awaiting transformation.