An Alchemical Song of Songs, Not by Aquinas

Aurora Consurgens ("Rising Dawn") is a fifteenth-century alchemical treatise remarkable for expounding the Great Work through the imagery and language of the biblical Song of Songs and the Wisdom literature, presenting the alchemical union as a sacred marriage; some manuscripts carry a striking cycle of illuminations. It has been attributed to Thomas Aquinas, and there is a tradition connecting it to the mystical experiences of his final days and his deathbed commentary on the Song of Songs.

Modern scholarship treats the attribution with caution and generally speaks of "Pseudo-Aquinas": the ascription is doubtful, and the text is more likely by an unknown later author writing in his name or spirit. The work is best known today through the edition and commentary of the Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz (1966), prepared as a companion to C. G. Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis; von Franz argued, against the prevailing view, for a real connection to Aquinas, but her deeper interest, like Jung's, was in the text as evidence that the language of alchemy carries a psychology of the union of opposites.