from Meditations on the Tarot: Out the Mystic Degenerating to the creative and into the aesthetic

Just as contemporary technological science is the direct continuation of ceremonial magic, contemporary profane art is merely a continuation of gnosis and magic which have lost sight of mysticism and become separated from it. Because art seeks to reveal and applies itself to do this in a magical manner.

The ancient mysteries were only sacred art — being in the background conscious of mysticism and gnosis. But after forgetting this background or, so to say, after this background receded too far into the background, there remained a gnosis (or a "revelationism") deprived at root of mystical discipline and experience. In this way "creative art" originated, and the mysteries became theatre, revelationary mantras became verses, hymns became songs, and revelationary pantomimic movements became dances, whilst cosmic myths gave way to belles lettres.

Art, being separated from the living organism of the unity of the Tetragrammaton, is necessarily removed from gnosis as well as from sacred magic —from which it springs and to which it owes its substance and the sap of its life. The pure revelation of gnosis has become more and more a game of the imagination and the power of magic has degenerated more and more into aesthetics.

from The Empress