This is
Lilith the antithesis of the mothering aspect of the Empress, for, according to Hebrew legend, she is a night demon who kills new born baby boys. There was also a 'lilith' character in Bram Stokers' Dracula, Lucy who murdered children. I think she became the White Lady.
According to
The Alphabet of Ben-Sira (Alphabetum Siracidis, Othijoth ben Sira) Lilith was the first wife of Adam. She, like Adam was created out of the earth but she refused Adams' sexual advances unless he admitted that they were born as equals. Adam refused, he sustained his argument that he was superior to Lilith thus she fled.
God sent three angels (Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof) after her and they caught up with her in the sea where she made a rather strange pact:
"'Leave me!' she said. 'I was created only to cause sickness to infants. If the infant is male, I have dominion over him for eight days after his birth, and if female, for twenty days.'
"When the angels heard Lilith's words, they insisted she go back. But she swore to them by the name of the living and eternal God: 'Whenever I see you or your names or your forms in an amulet, I will have no power over that infant.' She also agreed to have one hundred of her children die every day. Accordingly, every day one hundred demons perish, and for the same reason, we write the angels names on the amulets of young children. When Lilith sees their names, she remembers her oath, and the child recovers."
The Lilith myth was perpetuated in the 17th century Lexicon Talmudicum of Johannes Buxtorf and in the late 19th century, the Scottish Christian author George MacDonald incorporated the story of Lilith as Adam's first wife and predator of Eve's children into a mythopoeic fantasy novel in the Romantic style.
'Power of Three' has to do with Alchemy. The Egyptian god Thoth or the Greek Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice Blessed or Thrice Great) are the progenitors of the
Emerald Tablets describing the mysteries of Alchemy. The alchemy of three is demonstrated by its power of multiplicity. For example, in understanding the numbers - One gave rise to Two (1+1=2) and Two gave Rise to Three (2+1=3) and Three gave rise to all numbers (3+1=4, 3+2=5, 3+3=6, 3+4=7, 3+5=8 3+6=9). Thus in addition to being a number of good fortune, Three is also the number of multiplicity and alchemy among other things.
Many believe the Triquetrais an ancient symbol of the female trinity, because it is composed of three interlaced yonic Vesica Pisces (a.k.a. PiscisSLatin for "Vessel of the Fish") and is the most basic and important construction in Sacred Geometry, which is the architecture of the universe.
A Vesica is formed when the circumference of two identical circles each pass through the center of the other in effect creating a portal. 'The Triquetra' represents the 'Power of Three' or the threefold nature of existence i.e. body, mind and spirit; life, death and rebirth; past, present and future; beginning, middle and end; Sun, Moon and Earth; and the threefold co-creative process described as thought, word, and deed.
The Lilith myth also corresponds with that of the 'devouring mother', seen within many culture's mythologies and explored by Jung in Psychological aspects of the Mother Archetype. He says: "On the negative side the mother archetype may connote anything secret, hidden, dark; the abyss, the world of the dead, anything that devours, seduces, and poisons, that is terrifying and inescapable like fate."
Eric Neumann, in The Origins and History of Consciousness describes her thusly: "Thus the Great Mother is uroboric: terrible and devouring, beneficent and creative; a helper, but also alluring and destructive; a maddening enchantress, yet a bringer of wisdom; bestial and divine, voluptuous harlot and inviolable virgin, immemorially old and eternally young.."
Persuing this path then, of the devouring mother, it's not long before we stumble across the Vagina Dentata myth which this Empress, emerging from her symbolic coffin ready to feed, perpetuates. Fear of castration, fear of the devouring female et al.