paradises, gardens, groves, woods, with trees and shrubs of all kinds, fruits and seeds, also plants, flowers, herbs and grasses, thus all things of the vegetable kingdom; and animals, birds, and fishes of all kinds, thus all things of the animal kingdom appear there. Man, there, is an angel and a spirit. This is premised that it may be known that the universe of the spiritual world is altogether similar to the universe of the natural world; only that things there are not fixed and stationary, like those in the natural world, because in the spiritual world nothing is natural, but everything is spiritual.
That the universe of that world resembles a man in image, may be clearly seen from the fact that all the things just mentioned appear to the life, and exist about an angel and about angelic societies, as produced or created from them; they remain about them, and do not go away. That they are as things produced or created from them, is evident from the fact that when an angel goes away, or a society departs to another place, they no longer appear; also, that when other angels come in their place, the face of all things about them changes; the paradises change as to trees and fruits, the gardens as to flowers and seeds, the fields as to herbs and grasses; and the kinds of animals and birds like-wise change. Such things exist and so change because all these exist according to the affections and derivative thoughts of the angels; for they are correspondences. And as things which correspond make one with him to whom they correspond, therefore they are a representative image of him. The image does not indeed appear when all these are seen in their forms, but only when they are seen in their uses. It has been given me to see, that the angels, when their eyes have been opened by the Lord, and they have beheld these things from the correspondence of uses, have acknowledged and seen themselves in them.
Now, as the things that exist about the angels according to their affections and thoughts resemble a kind of universe, in the fact that there are earths, vegetables and animals, and these form a representative image of an angel, it is clear whence it was that the ancients called man a microcosm. (D. L. W. n. 319-323.)
Creation began from the highest or inmost, because from the Divine, and went forth to the ultimates or extremes and then first subsisted. The ultimate of the creation is the natural universe; and in it the terraqueous globe and all things thereon. When these were completed man was created, and into him were gathered all things of Divine order, from the first to the last. In his inmost parts were gathered those things which are in the first [degrees] of that order, and in his ultimates those which are in the last. So that man was made Divine order in form. (L. J. n. 9.)
