Home

Activities

Papers

Bulletin
Contact Us
Other Links


CORRESPONDENCE OF THE HUMAN BODY
Lectures by Hugo Lj. Odhner

PART ONE

Chapter Five

MAN, A MICROCOSM.

E. 9692:

        Man is born from his parents an image of the world... He is regenerated into an image of heaven.

T. 604 e:

        The spiritual region of the human mind is a heaven in the least effigy; and its natural region a world in least effigy.  Cp. A. 6057.

W. 251:

        The natural man ias to will and understanding is like a natural world.

W. 319:

        The ancients drew the doctrine of man as a Microcosm from the knowledge of Correspondences.  Modern knowledge is insufficient to support the idea of man as a microcosm.  Expl.  
               See references to A.C. in H.H. 59-67.

A 4523:

        Another reason for the ancient doctrine: The senses are formed in correspondence to the elements, etc. *  Descr. See D. 4053-6, **  3972.


    *  See A. 4523 below.
    **  D. 4066:  shows that the atmospheres are such as they are for the end that they should form the senses such as they are.  A. 6013.


J. 9, T. 67:

    (Read in class or at home).  All things in the universe, as to uses regarded, represent man in an image; which proves that God is Man (art.).
           Image of creation around the angels.

        NOTE:
        Swedenborg as a philosopher often stressed the fact that all the powers of the atmospheres and their degrees correspond with the organics of man.  This was not new, but had been universally taught by the medievals and ancients.  Parcelsus and other mystics enlarged on this idea.

A. 4523.

    "Any one who knows anything about the air and sound, may know that the ear is altogether formed to then nature of their modifications; thus that the ear as to its body and material corresponds to them.  And he who obtains anything of knowledge about ether and about light knows that the eye as to its body and material is formed in correspondence to their modifications.  And this even to the point that whatever arcana are hidden in the nature of air and sound these are inscribed on the organism of the ear, and whatever is arcane in the nature of the ether and of light, this is in the organism of the eye.  Consequently he who is experienced in anatomical and at the same time in physical things may know by inquiries that not only the sensory organs, but also the motor, as also all the viscera, as to their corporeal and material things, correspond to those things which are in the nature of the world, and thus that the whole body is an organ composed from all the most arcane things which are in the nature of the world, and according to their secret forces of acting, and marvelous mode of flowing.  Thence it is that man by the ancients was called a Little World or a Microcosm.

    "He who knows these things can also know that whatever is in the world and its nature does not exist from itself, but from what is prior to itself and this evento the First, from which the things that follow exist in order; and because they exist thence, they also subsist thence, for subsistence is perpetual existence."...  See also A 4524.


End of Chapter 5