Sympatheia

Sympatheia, 'fellow-feeling', is the doctrine — developed by the Stoics and deepened by Plotinus — that the cosmos is a single living organism, all of whose parts are bound together so intimately that they act upon one another at a distance, like the strings of a lyre that sound in answer to one another.

Held together by the World-Soul, the universe is a web of hidden affinities between things that share a nature. This is how Plotinus explained the working of magic — not by the command of demons but by the natural pull of like upon like — and so cosmic sympathy became the philosophical foundation of natural magic, astrology, and the whole doctrine of correspondence.