The Microcosm and Macrocosm
The human being is a small universe reflecting the greater cosmos.
Through the principle of correspondence, humans are understood as microcosms reflecting the macrocosm. Every aspect of the universe has its correspondence within us. By knowing ourselves, we come to know the cosmos; by understanding the cosmos, we understand ourselves.
Man is a little world—a microcosm inside the great universe.
The microcosm-macrocosm relationship is central to astrological and alchemical practice.
Ancient Sources
Written about in
- What Hermeticism says about the pattern in things
If correspondence holds, a person is a small model of the cosmos and self-knowledge becomes a way of studying it. The library attributes the phrase about man as a little world to Democritus, so the idea is older than the Hermetic texts.