Bygone Beliefs: Being a Series of Excursions in the Byways of ThoughtRedgrove, H. Stanley (Herbert Stanley)
Philosophy
Bygone Beliefs: Being a Series of Excursions in the Byways of Thought
Redgrove, H. Stanley (Herbert Stanley)
Alchemy; Magic; Superstition
The doctrine of emanations makes the universe one vast harmonious whole,
between whose various parts there is an exact analogy, correspondence,
or sympathetic relation. "Nature" (the productive principle), says
IAMBLICHOS (3rd-4th century), the Neo-Platonist, "in her peculiar way,
makes a likeness of invisible principles through symbols in visible
forms."(2) The belief that seemingly similar things sympathetically
affect one another, and that a similar relation holds good between
different things which have been intimately connected with one another
as parts within a whole, is a very ancient one. Most primitive peoples
are very careful to destroy all their nail-cuttings and hair-clippings,
since they believe that a witch gaining possession of these might work
them harm. For a similar reason they refuse to reveal their REAL names,
which they regard as part of themselves, and adopt nicknames for common
use. The belief that a witch can torment an enemy by making an image of
his person in clay or wax, correctly naming it, and mutilating it with
pins, or, in the case of a waxen image, melting it by fire, is a very
ancient one, and was held throughout and beyond the Middle Ages. The
Sympathetic Powder of Sir KENELM DIGBY we have already noticed, as well
as other instances of the belief in "sympathy," and examples of
similar superstitions might be multiplied almost indefinitely. Such are
generally grouped under the term "sympathetic magic"; but inasmuch as
all magical practices assume that by acting on part of a thing, or a
symbolic representation of it, one acts magically on the whole, or on
the thing symbolised, the expression may in its broadest sense be said
to involve the whole of magic.
(2) IAMBLICHOS: _Theurgia, or the Egyptian Mysteries_ (trans. by Dr
ALEX. WILDER, New York, 1911), p. 239.
The names of the Divine Being, angels and devils, the planets of the
solar system (including sun and moon) and the days of the week, birds
and beasts, colours, herbs, and precious stones--all, according to
old-time occult philosophy, are connected by the sympathetic relation
believed to run through all creation, the knowledge of which was
essential to the magician; as well, also, the chief portions of the
human body, for man, as we have seen, was believed to be a microcosm--a
universe in miniature. I have dealt with this matter and exhibited
some of the supposed correspondences in "The Belief in Talismans".
Some further particulars are shown in the annexed table, for which I
am mainly indebted to AGRIPPA. But, as in the case of the zodiacal gems
already dealt with, the old authorities by no means agree as to the
majority of the planetary correspondences.
TABLE OF OCCULT CORRESPONDENCES
Arch- Part of Precious
angel. Angel. Planet. Human Animal. Bird. stone.
Body.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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