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.