Correspondence

The doctrine of correspondence holds that the great world (the macrocosm) and the human being (the microcosm) mirror one another, and that every level of reality answers to every other — so that, in the words of the Emerald Tablet, 'that which is above is as that which is below'. Each earthly thing has its heavenly archetype, each metal its planet, each part of the body its sign.

This vision of a universe woven of resemblances — underwritten by the sympathy binding a living cosmos — is the working principle of astrology, alchemy, and magic alike: knowing the correspondences, one can read the heavens in earthly things and act upon the one through the other.