Talk:Table of magical correspondences

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I object to the emphasis on "supernatural" in the opening paragraph. The first articulated theories of correspondence originate in classical idealism (with its distinct approach to reason) and modern ones often depend on ideas like resonance. Correspondence posits a natural world full of interlinking influences--metonymy and synechdoche, resonance, synchronicity, etc. are all related ideas. Many people who use this term think of it in naturalistic ways--albeit alternative naturalism--and would distinguish it from supernaturalism. This is especially true in earth-based nature religions that employ ideas of magical correspondence. Some are more or less mentalist, more or less phenomenalist in their approach to correspondence--depending on whether reality is situated in consciousness or matter.

Correspondence is also often understood to be acausal--as in the understanding that tarot cards or astrology "correspond" to events on earth rather than CAUSE events, and this idea refers to something more akin to the fabric of nature, which would understandably cause some holders of this view to object to the term: supernaturalist overlay.Thaddeus Slamp (talk) 05:40, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

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this is the most biased poser version of what a table of correspondences is that i have ever heard of . This is onje more great proof that wikipedia is run by mediocre evli people who want to keep the world as stupid as they are.

The truth is that a table of correspondences was never identified as having "supernatural" connections until after hollywood and christian fascisst added their two cents in.

A table of correspondences is based on real similarities which even science can appreciate. I will give you a simple example. Day is to night as summer is to winter. Both are cyles of light and dark due to the geometry in motion of our solar system. This creates a small fractal pattern which echoes as a lot of other fractal patterns do, getting their quantum fingerprints all over everything.

The "four elements" which this doublespeak derided 50 years ago is now a new science paradigm; The four "states of matter" INLUDING "Plasma" a state so new that they still haven't bothered to find a name for it that won't confuse the beejeezus out of doctors. There ARE connections, Some connections ar weak and some connections are strong. Some connections are symbolic. Most Tables of corrrespondence follow a specific mythic structure; theres actually a hidden mythical linguistics;

What people like you are so frightened to "SEE".

The endless echo of mirros laughing back at them; The superluminal quantum gravity holomorphic singularity that the universe is; which operates under strings of relationships that can be contrused graphically.

What about the periodic table of the elements fer Gwds sake?

Oh, no, thats not a "table of correspondence" (unless of course you count quantum numbers and valence shells.....er..uhh..)

What about Abrahm maslows hierarchy of needs, or the stemming fractal strucure of the brain hemispheres and their assorted functions?

Just because a system of information does not make sense to YOU Does not make it "Nonense." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.6.42.188 (talk) 17:30, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Is this article useful or accurate?

The title of the article is a blaring alarm bell. "Table of correspondences" is simply a plain English phrase, and could apply to any field of science or the arts in which one thing corresponds to another. See for example [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7]... need I go on? The phrase doesn't relate specifically to magic, and within the field of magic it's not a phrase that has special meaning; it's still just a "table" of "correspondences".

I don't see much point in the article even if the name were changed to, say, Table of magical correspondences, because all it really says, when it comes down to it, is that "in magic some things are seen as being related to other things". The fact that people have written about these relationships or even placed them in a tabular form hardly warrants an article. Why not create separate articles for Magical diagrams, Magical poetry, Magical instructions, Magical index, Magical narrative and all the other articles we could dream up relating to magical writing and publishing?

Most of this information properly belongs in a discussion of sympathetic magic, with a few details being relevant to numerology and Gnosticism. I therefore suggest this article be merged into Magic (paranormal), Numerology and Gnosticism (if those articles don't already cover it all), and then deleted. Fuzzypeg★ 00:05, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I may b misusing a wikipedia talk page, @ least slightly, and I'm not even sure I fully agree w/him,but I think Fuzzypeg is a tight arguer/that the above is 1 tight argument! Slarty1 (talk) 16:44, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

An important subject

The subject is an important one in many (western) modern magical systems. See for instance Liber 777 by Aleister Crowley, The Complete Magician's Tables by Stephen Skinner, books which contains hundreds of tables of magical correspondences. I do not believe that the page should be deleted, as it is a large subject. Also the subject of the article is relevant to more than sympathetic magic or numerology. The western systems of 'High Magic' (see for instance Golden Dawn) does not aim to use magic in order to manipulate the world, but to refine the inner self, and in these systems the tables are considered very important.

Numerology is really a simplified derivation of the western correspondence systems, which in turn relies heavily on Kabbalah (see for instance Gematria).

The article could be renamed to for instance 'Magical Correspondences'.

The book referenced as a source (Bill Whitcomb: The Magicians Companion) is a rather weak source in this context (and it is obvious that the article is based on that book). Skinners 'The Complete Magician's Tables' would be a much better source.

The history of correspondances goes back at least several hundred years. For instance, in the renaissance grimoires, spiritual entities may be associated with planetary spheres, which in turn may be associated with animals or incenses. The metal copper has since long been associated with the planet Venus, and thus with everything Venusian.

Errata: Tarot (in almost all modern decks) contains 78 cards, not 72. 'Goetica' should be 'Goetia'.

85.227.254.90 (talk) 10:07, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the history of magical correspondences goes back a long way, presumably to the very dawn of magic, since all human reason boils down to drawing correspondences between various things. Tables of correspondences in, say, chemistry, cooking and medicine also go back a long way, for the same reason. But how much can we really say about the concept of magical correspondences, other than that various magical thinkers came up with various magical ideas, objects, substances and things, and detailed their supposed correspondence in tables? We're certainly not going to make this article into a menagerie of tables, since these would all be better dealt with in articles on specific areas of magic, types of magic or approaches to magic.

I ask again, why is Magical correspondences a more important concept to have an article about than, say, Magical diagrams, Magical metaphors or Magical poetry?

I'd also like you to explain briefly what kind of information you would consider including.

I still believe that magic itself is the important subject, and these tables, like tables of contents, book-binding, choice of typeface and so on, are just obvious and elementary tools by which information on the subject of magic is conveyed. Yes, they arranged things in tables, yes they divided the text into paragraphs. Yes they included diagrams here and there, and sometimes even page numbers. All of these things are really incidental; what is important is the information conveyed.

If you can find some reliable source that discusses the history and origins of the table as a device for conveying magical information, that would help... Fuzzypeg★ 00:39, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I think ur a great arguer/ ur argument has merit, but wonder if ur aware how important tables of correspondences r and relatively unimportant magickal poetry, for instance, is to modern high magick/hermetic occultism; @ least until the birth of chaos magick. Both the golden dawn/Crowley base much of their systems on tables of correspondences. The following is just my opinion; but I think what modern magickians most admire about the GD is that they updated the tables of correspondences to include Indian thought, and Crowley updated the GD's developments to include Chinese thought. BTW, to the person to whom ur responding: I haven't read Skinners work, nor heard of it 'till now, but I doubt if I had read it I would change my opinion that Whitcomb's work, tho not perfect, it is 1 of 2 books that could help put Crowley's 777 to rest as a work of practical reference (rather than a sentimentally bought book). I think I've again slightly misused a talk pageSlarty1 (talk) 17:10, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Complete rewrite 7 June 2021

The article as it stood on 7 June 2021 did not use any inline citation, and the three sources listed at the bottom were all primary sources, rendering it a piece of original research. I therefore replaced it with a stub giving some basic but well-sourced info. The discussions above refer to the old article, of which nothing has been kept. ☿ (Apaugasma) talk|contribs 16:34, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Bibliography

Apaugasma: A "bibliography" is just an index/list of cited works; it doesn't imply anything grand or that especially many works are cited. It's just the conventional name for such a list of sources. Scyrme (talk) 02:06, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

@Scyrme: Well, it depends on whom you ask. A bibliography may either be a list of books for further study, or a list of works consulted by an author (an 'enumerative bibliography'), or (but this seems obscure) the systematic description of books as object. Many people would say that the first of the meanings given is the primary one: a bibliography is an exhaustive list of works about a particular subject intentionally prepared for researchers to find new sources. But actually, the list of works cited in a high-quality academic monograph often is already quite comprehensive on the subject of that monograph, and may even be a more efficient 'bibliography' (still in the primary sense) to consult. From there, it's just one step to call that list of cited works a 'bibliography', which often happens. Still, some publishers insist that authors call this a 'Reference list', 'Literature list', or the like, especially in academic journals (because the reference list of a paper is much less likely to be comprehensive enough to function as a 'bibliography' in the primary sense). I follow that convention of academic publishers here on Wikipedia: if I'm fairly sure that we've listed all major reference works on a subject, as well as most relevant primary and tertiary (encyclopedic) sources, I'm content to call it a 'bibliography' (e.g., in Hermetica, or in Jabir ibn Hayyan, two articles which I wrote here). Calling a pithy list of two or three sources a 'bibliography', on the other hand, I find slightly inappropriate.

In that context, I'd like you to take another look at how Microcosm–macrocosm analogy looked before you edited it yesterday: [8]. This article is barely more than a stub, and the reference list really is a random bunch of sources which could support the claims in the article: not quite a 'bibliography'. Still, I tried to organize the references so that it would first show a 'further reading' section including the references that readers of the wiki article actually might want to consult (that is essentially what a real 'bibliography' is for), leaving the others in an 'other sources cited' section. That was trying to bibliographically help the reader, without calling it a 'bibliography'. As the article is now, the reference list is called a bibliography, but actually doesn't at all help readers of the wiki article with finding appropriate sources for further research.

In general though, I think the best way is to not fuss too much about it. MOS:REFERENCES has purposely left the choice of reference heading names to editorial discretion, but that in part also means that every editor works with their own preferences. It's not always a good idea to completely change the style of the article without adding to its substance, because this tends to upset other editors without necessarily adding much value. In some cases (WP:ENGVAR and the like), it's even specifically stipulated that editors should not change the style of an article without gaining consensus at the talk page first (I'd especially recommend you take a look at MOS:STYLEVAR). I tend to work on style only when I'm also working on content, though of course almost all articles around here could use some stylistic updates. It's just always good to be a bit conservative when doing such work. Thanks! ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 03:12, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

• I don't agree that "bibliography" typically implies a comprehensive list of books for further study, and in cases like this I think it's clear to anyone that "bibliography" is simply referring to the "list of works consulted by an author(s)". My understanding is that the standard title for a "list of books for further study" on Wikipedia is "Further reading", with "Bibliography" being used for "full bibliographic citations to sources that were consulted in writing the article but that are not explicitly connected to any specific material in the article". However, you are right about the MOS, so I won't contest this further.

Regarding Microcosm–macrocosm analogy, I had honestly assumed the previous headings were a mistake. They seemed unclear to me, with bibliographic citations being listed under "Further reading" (which is usually for literature which is not cited but is instead suggested for further study, despite not having informed the article text itself). The use of "Other" suggested both sublists contained citations, so it wasn't clear to me why they were split up. Given both appeared to have informed the article, I thought the best solution would be to combine them as a "Bibliography". That was my thinking there. I maintain that the arrangement you set up there has these problems. We should move this over that talk page if want to argue otherwise. Scyrme (talk) 16:31, 20 September 2021 (UTC)