Here is an
emblem and accompanying poem explaining how "day and night" are an emblem of the human microcosm (a small, representative system having analogies to a larger system in constitution, configuration, or development: [Middle English microcosme, man as a little world, from Old French, from Late Latin, ºcrocosmus, from Greek mikroskosmos: mikros, small+kosmos, world, order.] ). Notice how the Renaissance mind saw parallel structures everywhere, what the scholar E.M.W. Tillyard calls "correspondences" in terms of structure between different levels of life or existence.
Here is another depiction of "the human condition as a microcosm of day and night." Note that the depicted man's head is in the heavens. The Hebrew word above his head is actually the four letters signifying the unpronounceable name of God, and the tradition is that the translation of the words they stand for, the future tense of the verb "to be," is: "I will be what I will be." Anyhow, one can see that this image implies that humankind's mind is like God, but humankind's lower parts, well, they are caught up in the wicked darkness of night.
Click here to reach the
final page of this site, on which you will see more strange images that will show you how the Renaissance mind saw order in everything, and correspondences between all ranks of that order.