The Scales of Creation
The orders of the world on one descending line: from the heavens and the stars through the land, the city and the person to the cell, the atom and what is not yet known.
The Scales of Creation sets the orders of the world on one line: from the heavens and the stars down through the land, the nation, the city, the family and the person, into the body, the cell, the molecule and the atom, and on to the unknowns at the bottom. It is the old idea of the macrocosm and the microcosm, as above, so below, drawn as one descending spiral.
How to read the spiral
Start at the top and follow the line down. Each loop is one step in scale, from the widest thing a person can see to the smallest thing anyone has named, and the colour moves through the spectrum as it goes. The last steps are dotted and marked with question marks: nobody knows where the ladder ends.
An old idea, drawn again
The world as a ladder of orders, each containing the next, runs from Plato’s Timaeus through the medieval chain of being to the hermetic saying, as above, so below. This plate draws it as a single continuous line, because the old writers insisted it was one creation, not many.
Related
Common questions
Why does it end in question marks?
Because every age has found something smaller than the last thing it named. The dotted steps are an honest way of saying the list is not finished.
Is this a scientific diagram?
It is a contemplative map of scale in the tradition of the chain of being, not a technical figure. The steps are ordered by size and containment, and the drawings are symbols.
