As above, so below. Ever since human beings first looked up at the sky, they have sought more than stars. They have searched for traces of themselves in the heavens. They saw their own lives reflected in the changing seasons, beginnings and endings in the birth and disappearance of stars, and the meaning of their existence in the order of the cosmos. Perhaps, in trying to understand the universe, they were also trying to discover their place within it. The concepts of microcosm and macrocosm emerged from this search. The microcosm is the small universe; the macrocosm, the greater one. Human beings were understood as miniature worlds carrying traces of a larger whole. The order of the body, the conflicts of the soul, and the opposing forces of the mind were interpreted alongside the patterns observed in the world beyond. One of the best known expressions of this understanding appears in the Hermetic tradition: “As above, so below.” The idea points to something broader than the cla...
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