From the very earliest times, planetary symbolism derived from supposed parallels between the celestial and the terrestrial or human order, whereby a special relationship existed between the movement of the stars and human fate. The thinking upon which this belief was based premissed a twofold operation: in the first place that the relationship between the planets was of the same nature as that subsisting between human beings or within each individual, and in the second that the phenomena observed in the movement of the planets impinged directly upon human behaviour.
Each planet exerted some influence upon life on Earth and each was endowed with some power over its human inhabitants. To the seven planets corresponded seven Heavens, seven days of the week, seven bearings in space, seven states or operations of the spirit, seven moral and theological virtues, seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, seven metals, seven stages in the Great Work and so on. Planetary symbolism is virtually inexhaustible and is the sign of a belief in the symbiosis of Heaven and Earth animated by the ceaseless interaction of the three levels of the cosmos.
A characteristic of the Kabbalah is its search for correspondences between all parts of the universe and every human tradition. It correlated the spheres (called planets in the original sense of the term), the angels, their cosmic functions, spatial bearings and the operations of the spirit. Christian tradition has not followed this angelic and functional astrology.
