The whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world; not only
generally, but in detail. Whatever comes forth in the natural world
from the spiritual, is therefore called correspondent. The world of
nature comes forth and subsists from the spiritual world, just as an
effect does from its efficient cause.
--_Heaven and Hell, n._ 89
What is Divine presents itself in the world in what corresponds. The
Word is therefore written wholly in correspondence. Therefore the
Lord, too, speaking as He did from the Divine, spoke in
correspondence.
--_True Christian Religion, n._ 201
"And behold a ladder set on the earth, and its head reaching to
heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.
And behold Jehovah standing above it." The ladder set between earth
and heaven, or between the lowest and the highest, signifies
communication. In the original tongue the term ladder is derived from
an expression which signifies a path or way, and a path or way is
predicated of truth. By a ladder, therefore, one extremity of which is
set on the earth, while the other reaches to heaven, is signified the
communication of truth which is in the lowest place with truth which
is in the highest, indeed with inmost good and truth, such as are in
heaven, and from which heaven itself is an ascent as it were from what
is lowest, and afterward when the order is inverted, a descent, and is
the order of man's regeneration. The arcanum which lies concealed in
the internal sense of these words is, that all goods and truths
descend from the Lord, and ascend to Him, for man is so created that
the Divine things of the Lord may descend through him even to the
ultimates of nature, and from the ultimates of nature may ascend to
Him; so that man might be a medium uniting the Divine with the world
of nature, and uniting the world of nature with the Divine, that thus,
through man, as through the uniting medium, the very ultimate of
nature might live from the Divine, which would be the case had man
lived according to Divine order.
--_Arcana Coelestia, nn._ 3699-3702