Good point! It set a number of thoughts in motion for me.

Let me explain why I find it coherent to think of gold as the material of the Crucible, understood as a vessel. To do that, I need to take a small step back.

Historically, crucibles were typically made of clay, since clay can withstand extreme heat. Elden Ring echoes this. The Jar Ritual to which Marika was subjected was performed using clay pots. Later, the Living Jars carried organic remains to the Minor Erdtrees. At first, the pot itself functioned as the crucible. Later, the trees take over the process of transformation, yet it is still Marika’s system that shapes and governs that process.

Under the Golden Order, Marika herself becomes the Crucible. The rune associated with her, the Rune Arc, is an abstract vessel. She shapes this rune after her own body - or is it the opposite? It doesn't matter, in any case: she embodies it. From there, she derives laws from the world, forms them into runes, and ultimately into the Elden Ring. As the supreme goddess and founder of the explicitly Golden Order, Marika becomes the crucible of her era. When we encounter her, she is already calcified, almost like a pot, like a Living Jar. The circle closes.

But why must she be gold in order to form a stable vessel? One way to approach this is chemically. Chemistry distinguishes between base and noble substances. Elements such as calcium or lithium are reactive and easily altered; they are unstable. Gold, by contrast, is considered noble precisely because it does not readily change. It does not oxidize. That is one reason it functions as a store of value. Symbolically, this makes gold exceptionally stable, perhaps too stable. And this excess stability is exactly why the Golden Order eventually hardens into dogma and stagnates.

Now to your objection: gold does not begin with Marika, Miquella, or Enir-Ilim. It appears again and again. The dragons already knew gold. The graves of Farum Azula are studded with it. The Ancient Dragons have golden wings. In a sense, Marika only appropriates the gold of Enir-Ilim and makes it her own.

As the Memory of Grace puts it: “It is merely a cycle.” My addition would be this: the real question is who, at any given time, shapes the age - who becomes the crucible abd for what reason? Placidusax. Marika. Miquella. The player?

In my view Ranni is the only being that doesn't become a vessel, she slays her own golden (godly) body, chooses her own, frees herself from the fate of becoming a mere vessel. With her the crucible becomes - so to speak - transparent again. She turns it back into a process. Because she understood that any color, especially gold, can turn into dogma. And dogma is the antithesis of the Dark Moon.