The Ideas

Correspondences

Before it was a poster slogan, correspondence was a working theory of nature: the cosmos as one living, ensouled whole whose levels answer each other: star to stone, heaven to body, world to soul.

Where does the idea of correspondences come from? The evidence, dated

Hermetic correspondences grow out of the ancient idea of cosmic sympathy, taught by the Stoic school (founded about 300 BCE) and taken up by Plotinus and the Greek Hermetica; the tables, the doctrine and the “law” are later. The table gives each key fact, the evidence for it and its status.

Checked on 2 November 2026, each source at the link in the table or in the list of sources below.

What do the Hermetic texts say about correspondences?

The Greek Hermetica, written in Roman Egypt around 100-300 CE, turn the idea into a hierarchy of images: in the Corpus Hermeticum the cosmos is a second god made in God’s image, and the human being is made in the image of the cosmos (CH VIII.2 and 5). The background is Stoic sympatheia (cosmic interconnection) fused with the astrological doctrine that celestial configurations map onto terrestrial events. The technical Hermetica then operationalise it: astro-botanical and astro-medical treatises assign plants and stones to decans and planets for talismanic medicine, in layers Fowden traces back to Ptolemaic astrological literature. And the Asclepius shows the theory at its boldest: Egypt is called an image of heaven (ch. 24), and temple statues draw down and house divine presences through plants, stones and spices, hymns and music (ch. 23-24, 37-38). The most famous compression of the idea, “as above, so below”, belongs to the later Emerald Tablet tradition, not the Greek corpus. Its oldest known version is Arabic, in a book attributed to Balinas (pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana). A medieval handbook shows the idea at work: the Picatrix, a compendium of astral magic from al-Andalus, opens its third book with what belongs to each planet among plants, animals and metals (Book III, ch. 1).

Are tables of correspondences ancient?

No. The elaborate “tables of correspondence” circulating online (gem to planet to angel to Hebrew letter) are Renaissance and modern constructions. Before them came Ficino’s De vita (1489), whose third book follows Plotinus in teaching how to draw the favour of the heavens with suitably prepared things. The tables themselves descend from Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia (1533), whose second book sets out “scales” for the numbers one to ten and twelve, from the Golden Dawn, and from Crowley’s 777 (1909), printed with the running title Table of correspondences. The Golden Dawn’s own teaching, with its Qabalah, tarot and astrology, went into print in Regardie’s four volumes of 1937-1940. Claiming any specific table as “ancient Egyptian Hermeticism” is almost always false in detail.

What is Swedenborg’s doctrine of correspondences?

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) made correspondence the key to his theology: in Heaven and Hell (Latin, 1758) he writes that the whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world, every particular included (§89), gives two chapters to the subject (§§87-115) and refers the reader to his Arcana Coelestia (1749-1756), on Genesis and Exodus. He presents this, as the Latin title says, ex auditis et visis, from things heard and seen, and claims that for the ancients the knowledge of correspondences was the chief of all knowledge (§87). Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) took the word up in poetry: in his sonnet “Correspondances” (Les Fleurs du mal, 1857) “Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent”, and in an essay on Victor Hugo he credits Swedenborg with teaching that everything, in the spiritual as in the natural world, is “correspondant”.

Is the “law of correspondence” ancient?

No. “Law of correspondence” is the wording of the 1908 Kybalion, a book published in Chicago under the name “Three Initiates”: its second principle, the Principle of Correspondence, is summed up as “As above, so below; as below, so above” and called “an Universal Law” (ch. II), and three times the book names it the Law of Correspondence (ch. V and VII). The book presents the axiom as old and Hermetic; the ancient sources on this page speak instead of sympathy, from Cicero’s report of the Stoics (44 BCE) to Plotinus. What is older than the book is the idea itself, the above-and-below formula discussed above and Swedenborg’s correspondences (1758).

Is “correspondences” an ancient term?

No: “correspondences” as a formal category is modern. Antoine Faivre (1934-2021) made it the first of the four intrinsic components of Western esotericism, six in all, in a definition set out in English in Access to Western Esotericism (1994). Useful shorthand, but anachronistic if projected wholesale onto antiquity, where the idea lived inside astrology, medicine and cult rather than as a named doctrine.

Why do correspondences matter for Hermeticism?

Correspondence is the connective tissue of the whole tradition mapped in the Atlas: it is why astrology, alchemy and talismanic medicine could all call themselves Hermetic. One claim, that the levels of reality answer each other, underwrites them all.

Fair questions

What are correspondences in Hermeticism?

The claim that the levels of reality (stars, earth, body, soul) answer one another. In the Hermetica (Roman Egypt, c. 100-300 CE) the cosmos is an image of God and the human being an image of the cosmos (CH VIII), on a background of Stoic sympathy. 'Correspondences' as a named category of esotericism is modern: it is the first component in Antoine Faivre's definition of Western esotericism, set out in English in 1994.

What is the law of correspondence?

It is the second of the seven principles in The Kybalion, a book published in Chicago in 1908 under the name 'Three Initiates': 'As above, so below; as below, so above.' The book calls it the Principle of Correspondence and, three times, the Law of Correspondence (ch. V and VII). The idea is far older (Stoic sympathy, Plotinus, the Hermetica), but the 'law' is a formulation of 1908, not of an ancient text.

What is the doctrine of correspondences?

It is Emanuel Swedenborg's teaching that the whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world, in every particular (Heaven and Hell, Latin 1758, §89), worked out at length in his Arcana Coelestia (1749-1756). Baudelaire took the word up in his sonnet 'Correspondances' (1857) and, in an essay on Victor Hugo, credited the teaching to Swedenborg.

Are tables of correspondences ancient?

No. Systematic tables descend from Agrippa's De occulta philosophia (1533), whose second book sets out 'scales' for the numbers one to ten and twelve, then the Golden Dawn and Crowley's 777 (1909). Ancient sources assign plants and stones to decans and planets, but the tidy modern tables are Renaissance-to-modern constructions.

Is correspondence the same as 'as above, so below'?

That phrase is one later compression of the idea, from the Emerald Tablet tradition; the Kybalion (1908) made it the motto of its Principle of Correspondence. The underlying claim, that the world's levels mirror and answer one another, is older and broader than the slogan.

Sources & further reading

• Copenhaver, Hermetica (1992): CH VIII; Ascl. 23-24, 37-38.
• Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes (1986), ch. 1-2: the technical Hermetica.
• Pingree (ed.), Picatrix: The Latin Version (Warburg Institute, 1986): Book III, ch. 1, p. 91, free PDF at Warburg Library Commons.
• Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), publisher’s page.
• Cicero, De divinatione II.33-34 (44 BCE), Latin text, The Latin Library.
• Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers VII.140, tr. R. D. Hicks (1925), Wikisource.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Stoicism” and “Plotinus” (2024).
• Plotinus, Enneads IV.4.32 and 40, tr. Stephen MacKenna, Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
• G.R.S. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes (1906), vol. II: CH VIII, pp. 124-127; Asclepius (“The Perfect Sermon”) 24 and 37-38, pp. 351, 381-384, Internet Archive.
• Augustine, City of God VIII.23, tr. Marcus Dods, New Advent.
• Marsilio Ficino, De vita libri tres (Florence: Antonio Miscomini, 3 December 1489), University of Liège copy (DONum); Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze copy, Internet Archive.
• Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, De occulta philosophia libri tres ([Cologne?], 1533), book II, ch. 4-14, U.S. National Library of Medicine copy, Internet Archive; English translation (London, 1651), ed. Joseph H. Peterson, Esoteric Archives.
• Emanuel Swedenborg, De coelo et ejus mirabilibus, et de inferno, ex auditis et visis (1758), Internet Archive; Heaven and Hell, tr. John C. Ager (1905), §§87-115, Wikisource.
• Charles Baudelaire, “Correspondances”, Les Fleurs du mal (Paris: Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, 1857), p. 19, Wikisource; essay on Victor Hugo, L’Art romantique, Wikisource.
• Three Initiates, The Kybalion (Chicago: Yogi Publication Society, 1908), ch. II, V, VII and VIII, Wikisource.
• 777 vel Prolegomena symbolica ad systemam sceptico-mysticae viae explicandae (London: Walter Scott Publishing Co., 1909), running title “Table of correspondences”, Library of Congress record, via Open Library.