And he maketh all that is black white and all that is white red, for water whiteneth and fire enlighteneth. For he shineth through the tincturing soul like a ruby in colour, which it hath ac-quired by virtue of the fire, wherefore fire is called the Dyer. The light is described as a ruby, a synonym for the lapis.1!? Senior interprets the ruby as the "'tincturing soul" (anima tin-108 Documentation in von Franz, ''Passio Perpetuae," pp. 464ff. 110 In Alphidius also the lapis is described as a resplendent and transparent light (Codex Ashmole 1420, fol. 11). In other texts it is a "secret light," and the "Rosarium" says that it "comes with light and is born with light." Cf. Turba, Sermo LXII: "This is the red sulphur that emits light in the darkness and it is the red jacinth . . . and the conquering lion." * In "Abu'l Qasim al-'Iraqi" (Holm-yard, pp. 421f.) the lapis is called "dog, eagle, harmless lion, fiery poison, light, son of the fire, Satan." 111 Cf. "On the Nature of the Psyche," pp. 192ff., and the parallels given there. 112 Jung, "A Study in the Process of Individuation," p. 331, n. 127: "The carbuncle is a synonym for the lapis. 'The king bright as a carbuncle' (Lilius, an old source in the "Ros. phil.," Art. aurif., 1593, IL, p. 329). 'A ray . . . in the earth, shining in 304 IX. THE FOURTH PARABLE: OF THE PHILOSOPHIG FAITH... gens),""8 which is hidden in the water. From the soul come the colours. Psychologically the red of the ruby denotes feeling, emotion, passion.
— Marie-Louise von Franz
Red is not decoration. The alchemists gave it a function: fire dyes, water whitens, and what survives the sequence carries both — a ruby, they said, a thing that holds light inside density rather than scattering it. When Senior names this the tincturing soul hidden in the water, he is describing a psychic movement that has nothing to do with ascent. The soul does not rise to acquire its color; it is worked on, heated, saturated until the color issues from it. Feeling, von Franz says plainly — emotion, passion. Not spirit. Not clarity. The ruby is not transparent.
This is where the alchemical imagination cuts against the dominant reflex, the one that reaches for light and wants it to mean elevation. The lapis here is "son of the fire" and also "Satan," "fiery poison," "conquering lion" — the text refuses to let the luminosity be clean. What shines in the darkness is red sulphur, not white. The light the soul emits after the fire is not the light of escape; it is the light of what has been thoroughly stained. Feeling is the tincture, not the obstacle to whatever lies beyond feeling. The passage is not pointing toward something purer than passion. It is saying that passion, fully cooked, is the stone.
Marie-Louise von Franz·Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy·1966