Macrocosm and Microcosm

Tradition indicates that "What is Big is like What is Small" and "What is Above is like What is Below" and viceversa. This concept expresses the principle of the "correspondence" and the "equivalence" between macrocosm and microcosm or the levels of the existence (the symbology of the Cross).

The traditional Roman Religion shows many examples of this principle. The couple pater-mater familias symbolically corresponds to the Divine couple Jupiter-Juno materializing the male-female polarities characterizing the Universe. (Please note that this double polarity male-female characterizes each single person: each of us, being a small universe, contains both the male and the female polarity).

Similarly, Vesta and her Sacred Fire is the sacralization of the family as private body (micro) as well as the relation at the base of the State as public body (macro). Of course the symbology of the correspondence shows even more complex implications as in the case of the double spiral, the Cosmic Egg, the Pine Cone, the symbology of the Temple, the symbology of the house, the symbology of the Cavern. We have also the example of the Black Stone symbolizing the "Cosmos from which everything is created, the Origin, the Beginning". The Black Stone thus represents the beginning of the Sacred Path (Via Sacra) for the real knowledge of the Exterior World; similarly the Black Stone is the beginning for the knowledge of the Inner World. In this way we can understand why a Black Stone (lapis niger) has been placed in Rome at the beginning of the Via sacra as symbol of this correspondence between these two dimensions and Worlds..

At a first stage, we may say that the architecture, structure and dynamics of the Universe can be found somehow impressed in any manifestation of the Reality. Anything, even the smallest, shows the outline and pattern of the Universe. This condition can be found both at material (body) and at spiritual level (mind-soul). This means that when we undertake the Via to the awakeness and awareness we can start to find inside us the same elements useful to understand the Universe, the Nature, the reality around us. This is the deeper and real meaning of the oracle "Know Thyself".

"Know Thyself" means undertaking the Via Sacra to the knowledge of the Universe, the Nature. Plants, animals, the human body are parts and representation of the whole Universe: every being can show planet, numerical, metal, chromatic correspondences. There is only One Nature.

This is the reason why our body is a "small Universe"  as well as our spirit is part of the Universal Spirit in an esoterical meaning. Who is not "self-aware" is not capable to really understand the Nature: for this reason a man or a woman in this condition are like to be in a status of sleep, mental immobility, inertia.

The Traditional Roman Religion, being a Via, provides us with tools to understand the sense and meaning of the analogies and correspondences to re-construct the relations between macro and micro dimensions, the affinity among natures.