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Microcosm–macrocosm analogy

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"Macrocosm" redirects here. For Star Trek episode, see Macrocosm (Star Trek: Voyager). For album, see Macrocosm (album).
Robert Fludd's illustration of man as the microcosm within the universal macrocosm. Fludd states that "Man is a whole world of its own, called microcosm for it displays a miniature pattern of all the parts of the universe. Thus the head is related to the Empyreal, the chest to the ethereal heaven and the belly to the elementary substance."[1]
By looking down, I see up. Part of a pair of illustrations in Tycho Brahe's Astronomiæ instauratæ Mechanica depicting his understanding of the connection between macrocosm and microcosm.[citation needed]
By looking up, I see down.

Macrocosm and microcosm refers to a vision of cosmos where the part (microcosm) reflects the whole (macrocosm) and vice versa. It is a feature "present in all esoteric schools of thinking", according to scholar Pierre A. Riffard.[2] It underlies practices such as astrology, alchemy and sacred geometry.[3]

See also

References

  1. ^ Robert Fludd in Utriusque Cosmic Historia, II; quoted by Pierre A. Riffard in Dictionnaire de l’ésotérisme, Paris: Payot, 1983, 34.
  2. ^ Pierre A. Riffard, Dictionnaire de l’ésotérisme, Paris: Payot, 1983, 34.
  3. ^ Antoine Faivre, Access to Western esotericism, State University of New York Press, 1994, 10-11.
  1. Republic, Plato, trans. By B. Jowett M.A., Vintage Books, NY. § 435, pg 151

Bibliography

  • Theories of Macrocosms and Microcosms in the History of Philosophy, G. P. Conger, NY, 1922, which includes a survey of critical discussions up to 1922.
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