Classical Correspondences
“Correspondences are just things people made up.” various tumblr blogs
Working with a local witch community, one thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of witches coming from very (sometimes very very) Christian background haven’t really been exposed to “Classical” education in the sense of Greek, Roman and Medieval history and thought, except for a sort of biblical overview.
This is the Bible belt and often the question isn’t - “Well, you’ve read Greek mythology, right?” but “were you permitted to read Greek mythology?” Which has left a big gap in the foundational understanding of where some of our witchcraft and broader magical work comes from, including those correspondence lists you see everywhere.
In broad terms, the Egyptians influenced the Greeks who influenced the Romans who influenced the early Christian church and most of medieval Europe. This gives a sort of historical and geographical foundation for our Classical Correspondences. And a lot of other things but right now, let’s just look at correspondences.
The periods above give us a long history of men (and sometimes women, but honestly, this was mostly an old boys club) looking at the universe and saying “how does all this fit together?”
In an attempt to answer that question, they started looking at connections between things to try to understand them. Why does valerian smell that way? Why does camomile also make you feel relaxed? Are these two related somehow? Can we find a way to organize them?
Isn’t that what botany does? At least for plants?
Yes. And we can see that because both these plants fall under the influence of Jupiter they are kingly, helpful, and aromatic, imparting a feeling of relaxation and expansion.
Umm, Tea, it doesn’t say that in my botany textbook.
You have the wrong textbook. You need Culpepers Complete Herbal which is the culmination of all the plant knowledge you’ll every need. Says so in the title - Complete. And it was published during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, so you know it’s up to date. Queen Elizabeth the First. A time of great scientific progress. (its free on Project Gutenberg) Though of course Culpeper worked from reliable sources like Aristotle. And Pliny the Elder, who wanted to categorize everything. (Pliny is probably best known on Tumblr for that elephant religion post that makes it’s way around now and then. Pliny is not a reliable source for elephant religion or, well, other topics. But I digress.)
Let’s break things down a bit. By Jupiter we mean the planet Jupiter, not the god. (Though Jupiter does fall under Jupiter). The Romans categorized according to the seven ruling planets - Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn - with additional influence from the four Greek elements - earth, air , fire, water as well as the astrological signs. They assigned properties to each of these that fit with their view of that planet/element/sign. Jupiter is kingly, along with other properties.
You take everything - plants, metals, gem stones, colors, parts of the body, emotions - and you figure out which ruling planet they fall under and you have a system of correspondences based on the planetary properties. (Venus for love, Mars for courage and strength, Mercury for speed and communication, etc.)
Tea - you’re missing a couple of planets and the sun and moon aren’t planets.
These are the 7 classical planets or the 7 wandering stars. These were the seven things that could be seen with the naked eye and didn’t follow the fixed pattern of the stars. From the Greek word meaning “to wander”. We are standing on earth so obviously it’s not wandering around the sky. (We have correspondences for Uranus, Neptune and Pluto that were added later)
Got it. So they developed a system of correspondences using the classical planets and used it for witchcraft?
Of course not. From the Romans onward, witchcraft was generally illegal. (Greece disapproved but the laws were a bit different.) So no one would have developed an expansive system of correspondences for witchcraft and made it public.
These were scientific. And for medicine. And, well, for occult practices that were definitely not witchcraft! (Look up high magic vs low magic but basically, it was an economic difference and being poor was bad.)
The important part was - this was science. It had rules. It had structure. They didn’t just randomly assign meanings to plants. They developed an entire system of classification and examined each plant to decide where it fit under that system. Sometimes plants could fall under multiple planets. Sometimes different parts of a plant fell under a different influence. And when used in medicine, what ruling influences the patient fell under could affect the treatment.
I don’t want to use them.
It’s hard to avoid them. They come into witchcraft through Western Ceremonial Magic but also through pure practicality. See, some of them work remarkably well, possibly because of the medical aspect of things. In medicine there had to a be a probability of success because if everyone died, no one would use them.
And from a witchcraft perspective - a lot of them make sense to the way we work. Plants with hallucinatory properties are often classified as Lunar and fall under the Moon. Spicy and hot plants fall under Mars. Pretty, sweet smelling flowers fall under Venus. These are already connections most of us have.
It’s also culturally an open system. Remember, it was considered science and medicine in its day. Anyone can reference and use planetary correspondences in their work.
I think personal correspondences would be stronger.
Possibly, over time and for the person involved. Personal and cultural correspondences build up a resonance in the cultural or with the person, but that resonance may not transfer well to others. Planetary correspondences have had a long time to develop that resonance and are broadly used, so that resonance is considered to transfer well to the working of others. They are simply a good base for publicly shared work.
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