Hermetic Principles
Correspondence
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Origin 1908
Correspondence is the second Hermetic Principle of The Kybalion. Its axiom, 'As above, so below; as below, so above', echoes the Emerald Tablet of Hermes and asserts a harmony and agreement between the several planes of being, the physical, the mental, and the spiritual. The same laws and patterns repeat at every scale, so that the microcosm mirrors the macrocosm and the known reveals the unknown. This principle is a working key for lifting the veil between the planes: by reasoning from what is seen to what is unseen, the student infers the nature of higher realities from their reflections in the lower.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period1908 1Tradition: The Kybalion (New Thought) Place of Origin Attributed Author / CompilerAtkinson's Yogi Publication Society issued the book 1 Attributed Author / CompilerGenerally attributed to William Walker Atkinson (1862-1932) 1 Attributed Author / CompilerPublished anonymously in 1908 as 'Three Initiates' 1 Origin of the NameNamed for Hermes Trismegistus; scheme absent from ancient Hermetica 2 Origin of the NameNot in the Corpus Hermeticum or the Asclepius 2 Origin of the NameThe name asserts a descent from antiquity; it does not record one 2 Attestation
Attested MeaningThe Kybalion states its second principle as: As above, so below; as below, so above. It holds that the same laws and structure operate across every plane of being, material, mental and spiritual, so that the pattern of one plane can be read from the pattern of another. 1 Learn More
The Hermetic Principle of Correspondence
The Principle of Correspondence is the second of the seven Hermetic Principles, summed up in the axiom: "As above, so below; as below, so above." It holds that the same patterns repeat across every level of reality, so that the greater may be read in the lesser and the lesser in the greater.
A modern statement, an old name
These seven principles should be dated with care. They were set out in The Kybalion, published in Chicago in 1908 under the pseudonym "Three Initiates," a work generally attributed to the New Thought writer William Walker Atkinson. Although it invokes the name of Hermes Trismegistus and calls itself a Hermetic teaching, the seven-principle scheme is a product of the early twentieth-century New Thought movement, not of the ancient Hermetic writings such as the Corpus Hermeticum.
The principle is described here as part of that documented modern esoteric tradition, which has been widely influential in later occult and self-help literature.
Correspondence and the Line It Came From
As above, so below is older than The Kybalion and better attested than anything else in it. The line descends from the Emerald Tablet, a short Hermetic text that survives first in Arabic, embedded in early compilations of secrets of creation, and reaches Latin Europe by the twelfth century. Its opening states, in the usual rendering, that what is below is like that which is above. The Kybalion tightens this into a slogan and supplies the reverse direction, so that the reading runs both ways.
This is the load-bearing principle for a reference work like this one. Every table of correspondences the atlas holds, planet to metal, letter to path, colour to sephirah, rests on the assumption that a pattern found at one level of the world can be read off another. Nothing in the sources argues for that assumption. They take it as given and get on with the tabulating.
Two cautions belong with it. Correspondence is a rule for reading rather than a rule for inferring: a shared attribution between two things is a claim somebody made, not evidence that they behave alike. And the tables disagree with each other, sometimes flatly, which is why this atlas records the tradition a correspondence belongs to instead of presenting any one system as the correspondence. A principle that licenses reading across levels does not license collapsing the traditions that do the reading.
Sources The Kybalion: The Definitive EditionPhilip Deslippe (ed.) with Tabula Smaragdina: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der hermetischen LiteraturJulius Ruska
Cross-Tradition Connections
Attested In
The Principle of Correspondence is stated and expounded in The Kybalion, published in Chicago in 1908. The seven principles are not found as a numbered set in any earlier text.
Attributed To
Why this is disputed. The Kybalion was published anonymously in 1908 under the byline Three Initiates, presenting itself as a distillation of ancient Hermetic wisdom transmitted outside ordinary authorship. Philip Deslippe's critical edition identifies William Walker Atkinson, the New Thought writer and publisher behind the book's own Yogi Publication Society, as its actual author on stylistic and documentary grounds, the leading scholarly position today. Parts of the New Thought and Hermetic tradition continue to present the principle of Correspondence, that what is below corresponds to what is above, as anonymous or timeless rather than as Atkinson's own early twentieth century formulation.
Originates in Language
Sources
1. The Kybalion: The Definitive Edition
Philip Deslippe (ed.), TarcherPerigee, 2011Authorship (W. W. Atkinson), 1908 Chicago publication, and New Thought origin of the seven-principle scheme; text of the axioms
1. The Kybalion: The Definitive Edition
Philip Deslippe (ed.), TarcherPerigee, 2011Chapter III, The Seven Hermetic PrinciplesQuote, Chapter III, The Seven Hermetic Principles
As above, so below; as below, so above.
2. Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius
Brian P. Copenhaver, Cambridge University Press, 1992The ancient Corpus Hermeticum, distinct from the modern seven-principle schemeView the Source Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture
Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Cambridge University Press, 2012The modern construction and reception of a "Hermetic" tradition
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