Let us consider Comeniusʼ thesis that a part resembles its whole. The renaissance mind believed the world to have a fractal structure: wholes are mirrored and scaled down in their parts, and parts reflect the wholes. Take the human body, for example. It is a microcosm, a condensed image of the whole cosmos. The twelve signs of the Zodiac beginning with the Ram and ending with Pisces shape the human body from the head down to the heels. A drawing by Girolamo Cardano from 1658 depicts the twelve signs also assigned to the head alone. The head is a complete man folded up into a sphere. All the principles shaping the body repeat themselves once more in the head. Is this a productive way of thinking? (Cardano 1658) The upper part of the skull is the very head of the head where the mental faculties are centered. The middle part of the face corresponds to the chest (for instance, the nose facilitates breathing). And the lower part is connected with the belly (the mouth with digestion). The jaws are the limbs of the head: the upper jaw represents the hands, the lower one the legs. They are the executive organs with big muscles enabling the head to grasp objects. The number of fingers on the limbs corresponds approximately to the teeth. The joint of the jaws is actually the hip joint. The eyes are the kidneys; the mouth matches the sexual organs. The azygous thyroid gland is mirrored by the pituitary gland, the didymous adrenals by the lacrimal glands, and the sex glands by the salivary glands. The Chinese developed acupuncture and also pondered the human body as a fractal. The whole body scaled down is mirrored in acupuncture microsystems – on the head, on the ear, on the soles of the feet. Indeed, the acupuncture microsystem of the head corresponds with all that mentioned above: the reflex points of the head are on the forehead, the points of the torso are around the nose, and the limb points are on the jaws. The hands are on the cheek bones, the legs on the lower jaw. Chinese culture and western astrology arrived at the same result independent of each other (Růžička 1999, 35). Is this speculation only? Today we are learning that these organs are also often akin histologically or linked functionally. The pituitary controls the thyroid gland; kidney diseases are correlated to eye diseases. The lacrimal glands not only adjoin the eyes like the adrenal glands adjoin the kidneys as regards their position, but they also communicate with each other and secrete the same stress hormones. The salivary glands not only end in the mouth in a similar manner to the sex glands in the genitals, but they also produce sex hormones and manifest sexual dimorphism in animals. The concept that the head is a miniaturized man breaks the contemporary theoretical framework about the origin of man. Modern theory refuses to look at the body plan as a platonic idea that should repeat itself elsewhere on a smaller scale. It regards the body as a mosaic of organs – each one of them arose for a different specific purpose. Such theory must therefore close its eyes to the aforementioned affinities as if they did not exist. Why do the lacrimal glands concern themselves with the kidneys if their purpose is nothing more than to moisten the eyes? Spirituality Studies 1 (1) Spring 2015 63 (27)
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