(16) I. The Principle of Correspondence The Principle of Correspondence manifests in a certain correspondence or analogy or agreement between manifestations of the various planes of activity in the Cosmos. It is indicated by the old Hermetic aphorism: "As above, so below; as below, so above," and by the Arcane axiom: "Ex Uno disce Omnes," or "From One know All." The Rosicrucians, and other ancient occultists, hold that the laws governing the nature and activity of the amoeba, likewise govern the nature and activity of man and beings higher than man. What is true of matter is true of energy and of mind. The occultists make a practical application of this universal principle, in the direction of studying the unknown by means of the known, with the knowledge that the same laws govern each. Thus, just as the solar system may be known by means of studying the atoms and molecules, so may the higher planes of being be studied by an examination of the lower planes in manifestation before us.

(18) A writer has said of this Cosmic Principle: "There is always a correspondence between the laws and phenomena of the various planes of life and being. The grasping of this truth gives one the means of solving many a dark paradox, many a hidden secret of Nature. There are planes beyond our knowing, but when we apply the Principle of Correspondence to them we are able to understand much that otherwise would be unknowable to us. This principle is of universal application and manifestation, on the various planes of the material, mental and spiritual universe—it is an universal law. The ancient Hermetists considered this principle as one of the most important mental instruments by which man was able to pry aside the obstructions which hid from view the Unknown. Its use even tore aside the Veil of Isis to the extent that a glimpse of the face of the goddess might be caught. Just as a knowledge of the principles of Geometry enables a man to measure distant suns and their movements, while seated in an observatory, so a knowledge of the Principle of Correspondence enables man to reason intelligently from the Known to the Unknown. Studying the moneron, he understands the archangel.

(26) Finally, the student is once more bidden to fall back upon the symbol of Infinite Space, in this consideration of the Infinite Unmanifest, whenever he finds it difficult, or almost impossible, to conceive of the truth of the statements contained in the First Aphorism as concerned with the Eternal Parent in the state of the Infinite Unmanifest, in the Cosmic Night. The symbol will be found perfectly adequate in order to permit one to "think of the Infinite Un-manifest," although, of course, it is impossible to paint a mental picture of either symbol or the reality which it represents.

(14) On the nature of the Intellectual-Principle we get light from its manifestations; they show that it demands such diversity as is compatible with its being a monad. Take what principle you will, that of plant or animal: if this principle were a pure unity and not a specifically varied thing, it could not so serve as principle; its product would be Matter, the principle not having taken all those forms necessary if Matter is to be permeated and utterly transformed. A face is not one mass; there are nose and eyes; and the nose is not a unity but has the differences which make it a nose; as bare unity it would be mere mass.

There is infinity in Intellectual-Principle since, of its very nature, it is a multiple unity, not with the unity of a house but with that of a Reason-Principle, multiple in itself: in the one Intellectual design it includes within itself, as it were in outline, all the outlines, all the patterns. All is within it, all the powers and intellections; the division is not determined by a boundary but goes ever inward; this content is held as the living universe holds the natural forms of the living creatures in it from the greatest to the least, down even to the minutest powers where there is a halt at the individual form. The discrimination is not of items huddled within a sort of unity; this is what is known as the Universal Sympathy, not of course the sympathy known here which is a copy and prevails amongst things in separation; that authentic Sympathy consists in all being a unity and never discriminate.

(36) The Universe is immensely varied, the container of all the Reason-Principles and of infinite and diverse efficacies. In man, we are told, the eye has its power, and the bones have their varied powers, and so with each separate part of hand and of foot; and there is no member or organ without its own definite function, some separate power of its own- a diversity of which we can have no notion unless our studies take that direction. What is true of man must be true of the universe, and much more, since all this order is but a representation of the higher: it must contain an untellably wonderful variety of powers, with which, of course, the bodies moving through the heavens will be most richly endowed.

We cannot think of the universe as a soulless habitation, however vast and varied, a thing of materials easily told off, kind by kind- wood and stone and whatever else there be, all blending into a kosmos: it must be alert throughout, every member living by its own life, nothing that can have existence failing to exist within it.

And here we have the solution of the problem, "How an ensouled living form can include the soulless": for this account allows grades of living within the whole, grades to some of which we deny life only because they are not perceptibly self-moved: in the truth, all of these have a hidden life; and the thing whose life is patent to sense is made up of things which do not live to sense, but, none the less, confer upon their resultant total wonderful powers towards living. Man would never have reached to his actual height if the powers by which he acts were the completely soulless elements of his being; similarly the All could not have its huge life unless its every member had a life of its own; this however does not necessarily imply a deliberate intention; the All has no need of intention to bring about its acts: it is older than intention, and therefore its powers have many servitors.

(19) Here, as elsewhere, the student is directed to think of the Infinite Unmanifest by means of its symbol of Infinite Space, whenever he wishes to test any of the statements of the First Aphorism.

(17) After discovering the operation of certain principles in one thing we may safely reason by analogy based upon the assumption that these principles exist in other things on a higher plane, and thus discover the nature of the unknown " x ." Thus the occultist reasons that there is Law and Order manifest on every plane of being; that there is a Principle of Vibration manifest on every plane of being; that there is a Principle of Rhythm manifest on every plane of being; that there is a Principle of Cycles manifest on every plane of being; that there is a Principle of Polarity manifest on every plane of being; that there is a Principle of Sex manifest on every plane of being. And the further that human investigation is pushed into the Unknown, the greater is the proof of the existence of these Cosmic Principles reasoned out by the ancient occultists upon the fundamental basis of the Principle of Correspondence.

(27) Edgar Allen Poe has well said of the thought and concept of "The Infinite," and similar efforts of the human mind to think of the unthinkable: "This merest of words, and some other expressions of which the equivalents exist in nearly all languages, is by no means the expression of an idea, but of an effort of one. It stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception. Man needed a term by which to point out the direction of this effort—the cloud behind which lay, forever invisible, the object of this attempt. A word, in fine, was demanded by means of which one human being might put himself in relation at once with another human being and with a certain tendency of the human intellect. Out of this arose this term, which is thus the representative but of the thought of a thought . * * The fact is that, upon the enunciation of any one of that class of terms to which this belongs,—the class representing thoughts of thought , he who has a right to say that he thinks at all feels himself called upon not to entertain a conception, but simply to direct his mental vision toward some given point in the intellectual firmament where lies a nebula never to be solved. To solve it, indeed, he makes no effort, for with a rapid instinct he comprehends, not only the impossibility, but as regards all human purposes, the inessentiality of its solution. He sees at once how it lies out of the brain of man, and even how , if not exactly why , it lies out of it." In the Secret Doctrine of the Rosicrucians, therefore, there is no attempt made to define the Essence of the Eternal Parent—in fact, it is held, in the spirit of Spinoza's celebrated aphorism, that "To define The Infinite is to deny The Infinite." In refusing to ascribe the finite qualities, properties, and attributes of Personality to the Eternal Parent, the Rosicrucians do not mean to imply that The Infinite Reality is below the plane of Personality, but rather that it is so immeasurably above that plane, and so infinitely transcends all Personality, that it is childish to think or speak of it in the terms of Personality.

(9) What, then, is the content- inevitably separated by our minds- of this one Intellectual-Principle? For there is no resource but to represent the items in accessible form just as we study the various articles constituting one science.

This universe is a living thing capable of including every form of life; but its Being and its modes are derived from elsewhere; that source is traced back to the Intellectual-Principle: it follows that the all-embracing archetype is in the Intellectual-Principle, which, therefore, must be an intellectual Kosmos, that indicated by Plato in the phrase "The living existent."

Given the Reason-Principle of a certain living thing and the Matter to harbour this seed-principle, the living thing must come into being: in the same way once there exists- an intellective Nature, all powerful, and with nothing to check it- since nothing intervenes between it and that which is of a nature to receive it- inevitably the higher imprints form and the lower accepts, it. The recipient holds the Idea in division, here man, there sun, while in the giver all remains in unity.