Muni's PlaySympathetic Magic
Notes from Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough.
The Law of Sympathy
The system of sympathetic magic is based on the assumption that things act on each other at a distance through a secret sympathy, the impulse being transmitted by a kind of invisible ether. It branches into two main laws:
- Homoeopathic (Imitative) Magic: Governed by the Law of Similarity, which states that “like produces like.” The magician assumes they can produce any desired effect simply by imitating it.
- Contagious Magic: Governed by the Law of Contact (or Contagion), which states that things once in contact continue to influence each other even after being separated.
graph TD SM["Sympathetic Magic (Law of Sympathy)"] SM --> HM["Homoeopathic Magic (Law of Similarity)"] SM --> CM["Contagious Magic (Law of Contact)"]
Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic
Perhaps the most familiar application of the principle that like produces like is the attempt which has been made by many peoples in many ages to injure or destroy an enemy by injuring or destroying an image of him, in the belief that, just as the image suffers, so does the man, and that when it perishes he must die.
The same principle of make-believe, so dear to children, has led other peoples to employ a simulation of birth as a form of adoption, and even as a mode of restoring a supposed dead person to life. If you pretend to give birth to a boy, or even to a great bearded man who has not a drop of your blood in his veins, then, in the eyes of primitive law and philosophy, that boy or man is really your son to all intents and purposes.
Another beneficent use of homoeopathic magic is to heal or prevent sickness. The ancient Hindoos performed an elaborate ceremony, based on homoeopathic magic, for the cure of jaundice. Its main drift was to banish the yellow colour to yellow creatures and yellow things, such as the sun, to which it properly belongs, and to procure for the patient a healthy red colour from a living, vigorous source, namely, a red bull.
The Jaundice Ceremony
A priest recited the following spell: “Up to the sun shall go thy heart-ache and thy jaundice: in the colour of the red bull do we envelop thee! We envelop thee in red tints, unto long life… Into the parrots, into the thrush, do we put thy jaundice…” While he uttered these words, the priest gave him water to sip mixed with the hair of a red bull; he poured water over the animal’s back and made the sick man drink it; he seated him on the skin of a red bull and tied a piece of the skin to him… He first daubed him from head to foot with a yellow porridge made of tumeric… set him on a bed, tied three yellow birds… to the foot of the bed; then pouring water over the patient, he washed off the yellow porridge… to the birds.
On the principle of homoeopathic magic, inanimate things, as well as plants and animals, may diffuse blessing or bane around them. Special magical virtues are attributed to particular stones based on their shape and colour. The ancients set great store on the magical qualities of precious stones; being used as amulets long before they were worn as mere ornaments.
The ancient books of the Hindoos lay down a rule that after sunset on his marriage night a man should sit silent with his wife till the stars begin to twinkle. When the pole-star appears, he should point it out to her, saying: “Firm art thou; I see thee, the firm one. Firm be thou with me, O thriving one!” The intention is to guard against the fickleness of fortune by the steadfast influence of the constant star.
Sometimes homoeopathic or imitative magic is called in to annul an evil omen by accomplishing it in mimicry. The effect is to circumvent destiny by substituting a mock calamity for a real one.
Sorcery vs. Taboo
Positive magic or sorcery says, “Do this in order that so and so may happen.” Negative magic or taboo says, “Do not do this, lest so and so should happen.” Both are supposed to be brought about in accordance with the laws of similarity and contact.
graph TD M["Magic"] M --> T["Theoretical (Magic as a pseudo-science)"] M --> P["Practical (Magic as a pseudo-art)"] P --> PS["Positive Magic or Sorcery"] P --> NM["Negative Magic or Taboo pole"]
If the supposed evil necessarily followed a breach of taboo, the taboo would not be a taboo but a precept of morality or common sense. It is not a taboo to say, “Do not put your hand in the fire”; it is a rule of common sense, because the forbidden action entails a real, not an imaginary evil. In short, those negative precepts which we call taboo are just as vain and futile as those positive precepts which we call sorcery. The two things are merely opposite sides or poles of one great disastrous fallacy, a mistaken conception of the association of ideas.
Contagious Magic
Contagious Magic proceeds upon the notion that things which have once been conjoined must remain ever afterwards, even when quite dissevered from each other, in such a sympathetic relation that whatever is done to the one must similarly affect the other.
Its physical basis is imagined as a material medium of some sort which, like the ether of modern physics, is assumed to unite distant objects and to convey impressions from one to the other.
- Severed Parts: The most familiar example is the magical sympathy between a man and any severed portion of his person, as his hair or nails. Whoever gets possession of these may work his will, at any distance, upon the person from whom they were cut.
- The Weapon and the Wound: A curious application is the relation believed to exist between a wounded man and the agent of the wound. Pliny tells us that if you have wounded a man and are sorry for it, you have only to spit on the hand that gave the wound, and the pain of the sufferer will be instantly alleviated. The blood on the weapon continues to feel with the blood in his body.
- Footprints: Magic may be wrought on a man through the impressions left by his body in sand or earth. It is a world-wide superstition that by injuring footprints you injure the feet that made them.
See also: Art is Magic, Thinking about Magic