law of correspondence

English

Etymology

Originally after the works of Emanuel Swedenborg. See correspondence.

Proper noun

the law of correspondence

1. (theology, hermeticism) The principle that any material thing or circumstance is the effect or reflection of a spiritual or celestial counterpart, and vice versa.
   • 1839, Theophilus Parsons, Sunday Lessons for the Instruction of Children of the New Church in Schools or at Home, pages 103–4:

     And we look about us, and see what kind of things the law of correspondence has filled the world with. For we know that the things of this world are such as they are, that they may correspond with the things of our souls.

   • 1885, Benjamin Fiske Barrett, Heaven Revealed: Being a Popular Representation of Swedenborg’s Disclosures About Heaven […], 4th edition, page 243:

     In the light of these disclosures we see that all the splendid habitations and magnificent palaces of heaven are but pictorial representations, under the law of correspondence, of the ruling loves of the angels.

   • 1997, William W. Quinn, Jr., The Only Tradition, →ISBN, page 215:

     Corroborating the theosophic law of correspondence, Duby declares that the first aspect of the “system,” was a “coherence between heaven and earth, two parts of one homogeneous world, built to a single plan and hence reciprocally related.”

   • [2012, Samuel Morris Brown, In Heaven as It Is on Earth: Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death, →ISBN, page 11:

     At almost every turn the heavenly world informed, illuminated, and affected the earthly world and vice versa, what some term the metaphysical law of correspondence.]

See also

• Not to be confused with correspondence principle.