Magic
The third Arcanum, the Empress, is that of sacred magic. Now, there are three kinds of magic: magic where the magician is the instrument of divine power—this is sacred magic; magic where the magician himself is the source of the magical operation—this is personal magic; lastly, magic where the magician is the instrument of elemental forces or other unconscious forces—this is sorcery. The teaching of the third Arcanum—in view of the context of the Card and its place between the second and fourth Arcana—refers to sacred or divine magic.
All magic, including sorcery, is the putting into practice of this: that the subtle rules the dense—force, matter; consciousness, force; and the superconscious or divine, consciousness. It is this latter rulership that the Empress symbolises.
Warning: He who attempts this without being guided by an authentic master—which is almost certainly impossible in the Occident—will find himself in a situation quite analogous to that of a child whom one allows to play with all the drugs filling a pharmacy, or to walk with a lighted taper into a firework factory. (Arthur Avalon, La puissance du serpent; trsl. J. Herbert, Lyons, 1959, Intro.)
"Magic is something primeval, heroic, unsentimental, something violent, aristocratic, bodily-concrete, which resists every abstraction, universalism, and moralization. Magic is the plunder of the demonically imbued man." – Ernst Schertel, Magic: History, Theory, Practice
