What is a
Correspondence System?

All magic is underpinned by a system. Ceremonial magic puts a strong focus on learning a system, deliberately and obsessively, to power later magics. Some examples of magical systems include:

  • The four elements (or five elements)
  • Casting a circle with towers and gatekeepers
  • Using the runes, ogham, Hebrew alphabet, or hieroglyphs
  • Travelling the Tree of Life
  • Recreating the sacred marriage through symbolism of the sacred meeting of genders
  • Yin and yang
  • The Nine Worlds
  • The zodiac or constellations

All of these are magical tools, associated with particular techniques, for interacting with the otherworldly and making stuff happen.

What Are They For?

Here’s a definition from Alan Richardson in The Magician’s Tables that I like:

Correspondences have never been a science: they represent humankind’s intitive, empathetic way of linking with sources of divine energies and consciousness

Peter Carroll in Liber Null describes these systems as Psychocosms or Maps of the Mind; and in keeping with the tenets of chaos magic, states that

It is possible to use almost anything from the archetypes of the collective unconsciousness to the elemental qualities of alchemy

For example, Magic the Gathering elements, Pokemon types, Underground stations or positions on the Magic Roundabout.

When describing the Tarot as a kind of “library” or “book”, Aleister Crowley rather charmingly describes each Tarot Trump like so

Consider the analogy of a debutante at her coming-out ball. She is introduced to seventy-eight grown people. Assuming her to be a particularly intelligent girl, with a very high social education, she may know all about the position and general characteristics of these people. This, however, will not imply real knowledge of any one of them; she will have no means of saying how any one will react to her. At most, she can know only a few facts from which deductions may be made. It is unlikely, for example, that the V.C. will hide in a cellar if somebody thinks that there is a burglar in the house. It is improbable that the Bishop will indulge in the more blatant types of blasphemy.

For the magician who is just starting out, a correspondence system is like a set of initial introductions to start you out with a network before you are ready to build your own.

Jennett Silver’s comprehensive and reassuring website for Pagan learners has an excellent page on the purpose of the 4 Elements, which breaks the concept down and includes:

One theory of circle casting is that we’re creating an entirely new bubble of creation between the worlds and times that we normally live in. Like all people in a new place, we need to orient ourselves to what we’re doing.

Choosing the Right System

Correspondence systems typically imply something about the wider world. They are not just a toolbox, but a kind of map. For example, everything being made of Wood, Metal, Water, Fire or Earth. In the Tree of Life, everything descending from the first emanation in the act of creation from the infinite towards the wordly. In one four elements blessing I know, the joining of elements in turn recreates the first steps of creation.

Then, when we in magic draw the Tree of Life into ourselves or set the four quarters as the four elements or place a knife into a chalice, we are asserting our power over the elements of creation and of power. We’re putting it all at our fingertips.

Summary

Here are some of the purposes I know of for using a correspondence system or psychocosm:

  • Correspondences can act as a kind of Memory Palace, an imaginary landscape you can travel
  • They can be a way of employing symbolism, choosing objects which will put us into the right states of mind to connect to particular divines
  • Or for performing sympathetic magic, identifying what things link to others on a cosmic level
  • It can teach us a symbolic language that we can recognise in dreams, visions, and lore
  • It can teach us the deeper meanings of things, by studying how they are connected together, for greater mystic insight
  • Or a filing cabinet for interconnected ideas, ways to learn off lists of gods and perfumes quickly.
  • For technical magic, they can be a way of saying “all the things of the universe, are here for me to use”, rather like getting all the ingredients and tools out when you’re about to bake a cake, easy to identify, access and use