|
WHAT ARE CORRESPONDENCES? WHY do we use them?
They are links that unite seemingly disparate realms. E.g. legs and lungs = fins and
gills, linking terrestrial and aquatic realms; brilliant Sun = glittering gold, linking celestial and mineral realms; earth/water/air/fire
= solid/liquid/gas/plasma = physical/emotional/mental/spiritual, linking elemental, material, and human realms.
They are
a window on the structure of the cosmos; a lens between the macrocosm ("as above") and microcosm ("so below"). By using correspondences
one can access, study, and manipulate the realm of Ideas, archetypes that determine the nature of reality (cf. laws of physics;
Aristotle's categories).
Unitive Ideas (archetypes) = Spirit "above";
Categorizing and collating systems (correspondences)
= Mind "mediating between";
Differentiated Things (reality) = Matter "below".
Divinatory systems are especially powerful
tools in finding and analyzing correspondences, e.g. numerology, astrology, Tarot, runes. What do they have in common?
Number
is important on a structural level (4 suits, 12 signs, 3 rune-rows)
Each component within them is distinct; no accidental
overlap
Each component is a glyph for an archetype -- more than words can convey
Based on arrangement of a limited
no. of glyphs -- ordering and re-ordering of same components. Like life itself -- "the more things change.."
Theory of
correspondences is based on analogical reasoning, which seeks similarities of pattern -- a "right-brain" approach (artistic,
poetic, holistic) -- rather than "left-brain" cause-and-effect reasoning which scientific materialism insists is alone valid.
Paradigm shift from one to the other occurred between end of Renaissance and beginning of Age of Enlightenment, and is linked
by some scholars with witch-burnings.
|
