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Dec 3, 2009
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Dictionary of Phrase and Fable—M

Microcosm

(Greek, little world.) So man is called by Paracelsus. The ancients considered the world as a living being; the sun and moon being its two eyes, the earth its body, the ether its intellect, and the sky its wings. When man was looked on as the world in miniature, it was thought that the movements of the world and of man corresponded, and if one could be ascertained, the other could be easily inferred; hence arose the system of astrology, which professed to interpret the events of a man's life by the corresponding movements, etc., of the stars. (See Diapason.)

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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