Quote - There are a million different ways to hook it up, of course, but this is the setup with which I've experimented today. Don't forget to enable raytracing in your render options.

There must be more to it than just these settings.  I applied this to my lightsaber and it just  went black even though the ambiant color is bright red. 

You used a color image instead of just assigning a color so does that make a diffeence?  Are there any other settings elsewhere I am suposed to have activated?