Ecce ancilla Domini;
mihi fiat secundum verbum tuum.
Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord;
let it be to me according to your word.
(Luke i, 38)
Dear Unknown Friend,
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. Her crown, sceptre and shield (coat-of-arms) are the three instruments of the exercise of this power. The crowned head indicates the power of the Divine over consciousness, the right arm (according to the viewer of the Card), which bears a sceptre topped by a cross mounted on a globe of gold, represents the power of consciousness over force; and the left arm, which carries a shield bearing an eagle, signifies the power of energy over matter or the volatile over the gross.
The crown is the divine authorisation of magic. It is only magic crowned from above which is not usurpatory. The crown is that which renders it legitimate. The sceptre is magical power. It is by virtue of the sceptre that she is not impotent. The shield bearing the eagle shows the aim of magical power; it is its emblem and its motto, which reads: "Liberation in order to ascend". And the steady throne which belongs to magic in spiritual, psychic and natural life — thanks to divine authorisation or the crown, to the reality of her power or the sceptre, and to that which she has as her objective or the shield. This is the role of magic in the world.
Let us now consider in a more thorough way the crown, the sceptre, the shield or coat-of-arms and the throne of the Empress, understood as the divine legitimacy, the power, the objective and the role of magic.
The crown of the Empress differs primarily from the tiara of the High Priestess of the second Arcanum in that it has two levels instead of three. The dignity or function that it signifies or confers therefore has bearing upon two planes. Gnosis has a tiara because she has the task of carrying revelation through three planes as far as the "book" or tradition. Magic is crowned, since her task is the sublimation of Nature, as indicated by the shield or coat-of-arms with the eagle in flight, that the Empress holds instead of the book of the High Priestess.
Joséphin Péladan defined magic as "the art of sublimation of man"; no other formula is superior to his (cf. Comment on devient mage, Paris, 1892 p. 135). This is exactly the emblem — or aim — of magic, if one understands by "sublimation of man" that of human nature. Péladan had a very profound understanding of the emblem of magic: the shield with the eagle in flight. All his works bear witness to this. Together they represent a magnificent flight; they aim, as a whole and each taken individually, at the ideal of the sublimation of human nature. It is because Péladan bore the emblem of magic: the flying eagle, that this is so. Isn’t it to have the emblem of magic before one’s eyes that one is invited "to throw the eagles of one’s desires to the wind", because happiness "raised to the level of an ideal, freed from the negative aspects of oneself and of things...is the sole triumph of this world"? (J. Péladan, Traité des antinomies, Paris, 1901, p.112) . It is this same emblem — the shield with the eagle — that Papus had in mind, in actual fact, when he defined magic as:
The application of the strengthened human will to accelerate
the evolution of the living forces of Nature. (Papus, Traité methodique de magie pratique, Paris, 3rd edition, p.10)
He preceded this definition by another:
Magic is the science of love. (ibid., p.2)
For it is precisely "the accelerated evolution of the living forces of Nature" that the eagle of the shield of the Empress represents the means by which the aim of magic is attained.
Now, if the shield signifies the "what?" and the sceptre the "how?" of magic, the crown represents here the "by what right?"
Although magic has disappeared from the criminal codes of our time, the question of its legitimacy still persists as a moral, theological and also medical question. One asks oneself today, just as in the past, if it is morally legitimate to aspire — without talking of exercising — to an exceptional power conferring us with dominion over our fellow beings; one asks oneself if such an aspiration is not due, in the last analysis, to vaingloriousness, and if it is compatible with the role that all sincere and believing Christians reserve for divine grace, be it immediate or be it acting through the intermediary of guardian Angels and the saints of God? One asks oneself, lastly, if such an aspiration is not unwholesome and contrary to human nature, religion and metaphysics, given the limits to which one can go with impunity towards the Invisible.
All these doubts and objections are well-founded. It is therefore a matter not of refuting them, but of knowing whether there exists a magic which is free from these doubts and objections or, in other words, whether there exists a legitimate magic from a moral, religious and medical point of view.
As a point of departure, we shall take these words from the New Testament:
Now as Peter went here and there among them all, he came down also to the saints that lived at Lydda. There he found a man named Aeneas, who had been bedridden for eight years and was paralysed. And Peter said to him: Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you’ rise and make your bed. And immediately he rose. (Acts ix, 32-34)
Here is a spiritual act of healing whose legitimacy is beyond doubt: from a moral point of view, it is an act of pure charity; from a religious point of view, it is in the name of Jesus Christ and not the name of Peter himself that the healing is effected; from a medical point of view it is a perfect cure, without prejudice to physical or psychic health, that is denoted for the healer. That which establishes the indisputable legitimacy of the healing of Aeneas is, firstly, the aim of Peter’s deed: to restore movement to the person who had been unable to move; secondly, it is the means by which the healing was accomplished: the word based on the essence of Jesus Christ; thirdly, it is the source of the deed: "Jesus Christ heals you!"
These are the three elements of sacred magic which render it legitimate and in which it is easy to recognise the three insignias of the Empress — the crown, the sceptre and the emblem. For to give movement to the motionless is the liberating action represented by the eagle on the shield; to realise the healing solely through the spoken word is to put into play the sceptre surmounted by the cross; to accomplish it in the name of Jesus Christ is to have the head crowned by the divine.
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