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The Purpose of Magickal Correspondences
The idea of correspondences within magical and mystical traditions has always fascinated me. But I’ve never seen a really solid explanation of what the purpose of getting involved in such things really is. Yesterday though I found the best explanation I’ve seen so far.
It comes from an article by Benjamin Rowe on Hermetic.com. Let me also include the preceding paragraph, because I think it sheds a lot of light on the correspondences part as well:
To put the event in context, there are two main thrusts to the magickal/cabalistic approach to initiation. First, through invocations, astral explorations, meditation, etc., it seeks to open up the hidden portions of the mind (both sub- and superconscious), to bring their activity under conscious direction, and to make use of them to explore and perceive the corresponding aspects of the universe at large. The scope and control exercised by the individual is constantly increased, and the various parts brought into a state of tight coordination.
At the same time, the cabalistic side of the work seeks to bring about an ever-increasing synthesis in the _contents_ of the mind. Through the use of correspondences, the chaos of raw experience is gradually reduced. Ideas and experiences get organized into hierarchies, each level abstracting something from the lower ones, so that ever-greater numbers of events become instances of ever-simpler ideas. Eventually things coordinate into an elegant system of archetypes, energies, and relationships.
That’s a pretty interesting explanation, I think (even if it is a little psychologically-oriented). Does anybody else have a solid explanation of what purpose correspondences serve in mystical and magickal study?
February 3rd, 2006 at 3:23 pm
I made a comment a couple days ago that I think has a good argument for correspondances. There is nothing you know that is from nature. Objects of experience are filtered through the incredibly low-bandwidth senses.
I do believe in (g)nowledge that is not grounded in sensory information, but it doesn’t “feel” the same at all.
February 3rd, 2006 at 4:09 pm
Hey Tim, great topic. Like you, I’ve always puzzled over the usefulness of magickal correspondences. They just seem so completely arbitrary - grounded in nothing more than superstition and sloppy thinking. The same criticism applies to astrology, numerology, gematria, and other systems of “correspondences” with a dubious relationship to reality.
So, let’s assume, as the author of the quoted essay explains, that a system of correspondences can be used to structure the contents of the mind. So what? I’d argue that, unless this system corresponds to reality (those things outside your head), you’re better off without the system. You’ll probably be a whole lot more productive using the one you grew up with, which, despite whatever imperfections it might exhibit, seems to allow people to navigate their way through the world and more-or-less get things done.
I’ve even heard some people advocating the creation of a personal system of correspondences. To what end? What if, in crafting my personal system, I declare the following correspondences:
red - fire - vitality - movement
green - vegatation - peace - stasis
Regardless of how well-ordered my mind might be, imagine the unhealthy result the next time I try to apply these correspondences to crossing a traffic intersection.
We already have systems of correspondences, cognitive models if you will, that allow us to operate on reality: structure our sense perceptions, predict the result of our actions, make sense of other people, etc. The measure of usefulness for these models is how well they correspond to the external world. I’m afraid that an arbitrary system of magickal correspondences will leave us wanting in this regard.
There is also the danger that such persistent interiority, without due regard to that annoying thing called reality (i.e. reality check), will literally drive the practitioner stark raving bonkers as they begin to deduce all manner of terrible and suggestive relationships between otherwise innocuous pairings of events.
Just the other day, however, I read a passage from Von Franz’s Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales that attempted to explain why the ancient Chinese were so preoccupied with chronicalling their history is such a manner that correspondences between events were made apparent. It’s not that they literally believed some causal relationship existed between the events, but rather they were fascinated by what types of phenomena generally occurred together - what, in our modern scientific tongue, would be called correlation. But, as most of us have probably heard, correlation does not imply causation - the old “post hoc ergo prompter hoc” fallacy. Without insight into the causes of events, and a system of “correspondences” that encodes this information, we don’t seem to be much better off than the man who refuses to changes his underwear because he survived a car accident the first day he wore them.
February 3rd, 2006 at 4:25 pm
That’s a great reference with Von Franz. I have another quote of hers paired up with one from Robert Anton Wilson about the Kabbalah over here. She writes:
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/04/18/raw-kabbalah/
I think you raise a really useful point also about what connection mystical correspondences ought to have with “real life” so to speak - and also that we already have systems of correspondence built into our culture.
In one sense, I wonder if the purpose of such things is simply to allow you to re-wire connections in your mind outside of accepted reality/cultural meaning. The idea being that if you can do that, you begin to realize how malleable meaning really is, and once you realize that, you begin to realize that reality itself is also malleable.
But then, that’s just guesswork on my part from my own experiences. I’d like to hear from people who have undertaken correspondence-work based on an initiatory tradition and what they think!
February 3rd, 2006 at 5:25 pm
Good point about correspondences demonstrating the malleability of reality. And just to clarify, the paragraph in my comment about Von Franz was mostly my personal thoughts. If memory serves, she made much the same point as in your quote above. I just tacked on a bit of analysis. I wouldn’t want to falsely attribute my own prejudices to her, or rather, have her get the credit for my own ideas, as the case may be.
I’d also like to hear the opinion of other people.
February 3rd, 2006 at 9:48 pm
Joel Biroco’s Kaos 14 goes into “juxtapositional magic”–Biroco suggests that the qabbalah is sort of a set of training wheels to get to the juxtapositional/improvisationa level: “Look at the way that centipede is crawling! it’s a sigil!” Remember how you used to build little shrines to that boy or girl you liked? You’ve been doing it all along…
February 5th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
Correspondences are a means to get one to pay attention/notice things…
February 5th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
The use of magical correspondences? I’ve never been an avid fan of Kabbala, simply because that seems a few steps too removed from reality for my use. I think the use of correlating seemingly unrelated objects, events, and such, allows one to engage in magical thinking a bit more than usual. Which is generally quite useful if you’re trying to work some mojo into the world. Does this mean that it helps one to memorize lists and charts of red-fire-Will-sandalwood-iron? I don’t find that useful. Generally, the world itself can tell you what you’re looking for. You just have to keep your eyes open. Reality will show you what corresponds to what, not some book. A bit of earth, a twig, some tossed-out papers and red ribbon might be all the physical effects you need to create change. You make a metaphor of your desire out of pictures, trash, string, plastic, signs, cast-off-words, and abandoned shoes. It’s writing a poem on the world with found objects.
The advantage of learing some system of correspondence is that it can prepare you for the more free-form, seat-of-the-pants business of asking reality for what you need. Ultimately, the point is not some relentless interiority. Because your life will reveal what connects with what. You have to point your perceptions outside of your head to see that. The thing I have to stress is that this process can’t be short-changed. You can’t just ‘declare’ what relates to what, and expect the world to do anything other than snort derisively at you. This isn’t something that happens in a few hours over tea, writing down what seems right. This is about watching how the world turns for a long, long while. It takes time. But it can be a very powerful thing, when done properly.
February 5th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
The use of magical correspondences? I’ve never been an avid fan of Kabbala, simply because that seems a few steps too removed from reality for my use. I think the use of correlating seemingly unrelated objects, events, and such, allows one to engage in magical thinking a bit more than usual. Which is generally quite useful if you’re trying to work some mojo into the world. Does this mean that it helps one to memorize lists and charts of red-fire-Will-sandalwood-iron? I don’t find that useful. Generally, the world itself can tell you what you’re looking for. You just have to keep your eyes open. Reality will show you what corresponds to what, not some book. A bit of earth, a twig, some tossed-out papers and red ribbon might be all the physical effects you need to create change. You make a metaphor of your desire out of pictures, trash, string, plastic, signs, cast-off-words, and abandoned shoes. It’s writing a poem on the world with found objects.
The advantage of learing some system of correspondence is that it can prepare you for the more free-form, seat-of-the-pants business of asking reality for what you need. Ultimately, the point is not some relentless interiority. Because your life will reveal what connects with what. You have to point your perceptions outside of your head to see that. The thing I have to stress is that this process can’t be short-changed. You can’t just ‘declare’ what relates to what, and expect the world to do anything other than snort derisively at you. This isn’t something that happens in a few hours over tea, writing down what seems right. This is about watching how the world turns for a long, long while. It takes time. But it can be a very powerful thing, when done properly.
February 6th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
The purpose of Correspondences are to give the mind something concrete to focus its energies. Many people working magick need physical items to associate with in order to work their magick, i.e.: herbs, candles, moon phase, etc. There are just as many who are beyond that and only need their mind to work the magick. Neither is less or more than the other, just a different way of accomplishing the same end.
February 6th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
Aleister Crowley’s account, here and elsewhere, resembles what Dumaya said plus something that might result from conditioning:
And he certainly knew about conditioning. But he mentons other possible results of Kabbalah as well. For example, he says that angels(?) may use your own studies in the Kabbalah as a way to communicate with you. If he couldn’t reconcile an angel’s number with its appearance, he would reject the revelation. But a manifestation showed him “qabalistic truths” he had sought without success, that would lead him to take an interest. Likewise, when one of the “Enochian angels” named a certain word as “the word of the aeon”, he first took this as a mistake, since he’d already accepted confirmation of a different word. But when he wrote it down in Hebrew, he saw that it could equal the other word’s number (418) with no gross fudging. He therefore says, carefully, “this proves the Angel to have been an Intelligence not of the Seer’s conscious mind.”