The Hunt for the Green Lion

A Novel of the Cathars and the Transmutation of the Soul

By: Theodore Nottingham

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The Hunt for the Green Lion is a sweeping historical novel and contemplative guide in one volume. Set in twelfth-century Languedoc, it follows Emilia, Justin, Brother Pons, and Esclarmonde through love, siege, and choice as the Cathar South confronts a crusade from the North. Threaded through the drama is Evelyn Underhill’s key: the “Green Lion”—our raw, indomitable human nature—must be transmuted, not destroyed. When ferocity meets Love, gold appears.
Across caves and courts, market squares and mountain strongholds, the story reveals who the bons omes e bonas femnas were: a people who refused oaths and killing, blessed in the mother tongue, honored women as spiritual equals, and kept bread before argument. Mary Magdalene’s Provençal legacy and the Divine Feminine move quietly beneath the action, offering a lens of fidelity, witness, and courageous mercy.
An in-depth Addendum, “Fire and Light: A Cathar Companion,” with a substantial Glossary, names the practices the novel lives—watchfulness from the Philokalia, self-remembering from the Fourth Way, simple vows, the consolamentum of presence—and bridges them to modern seekers. The result is a path that is both ancient and usable: attention over display, mercy over fear, strength at rest in light. For readers of soulful history and living spirituality, this book invites one brave step: to hunt the Green Lion until power becomes love.