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Wellsprings
cosmology

Cosmic Sympathy

συμπάθεια

Pluck one thread of the universe and the whole web trembles: the cosmos is a single living body, every part feeling every other.

The Stoics taught that the universe is not a heap of separate things but one vast living organism, held together and made continuous by pneuma, a fiery breath that pervades all matter. Because every part is bound to every other, an event in one place can register in another, however distant — which is why the Stoics could defend divination and astrology as rational rather than superstitious. Centuries later Plotinus took up the same word, sympatheia, to explain how the sympathetic bonds of a living cosmos make prayer, magic, and astral influence intelligible. Marcus Aurelius distilled the idea into a maxim still quoted today: all things are interwoven, and the bond is sacred.

Where this idea shows up

7 Greek sources·1 Jewish-canon citation

Where to read it