Sympathetic magic



Sympathetic magic is a specific magical belief that similar objects affect each other. (This concept is often phrased as "like affects like," as in homeopathy.) Anthropologically speaking, this is apparently one of the most common and most primitive forms of magical belief, found in communities and cultures all over the world.

Background
An easily understandable example of sympathetic magic is the Haitian tradition of the voodoo doll, more properly known as a "poppet" or "puppet". The magician (termed houngan, in this case) will prepare an image of the target and will do various things to the image, in the hopes/belief that this will cause similar things to happen to the image (for example, "causing pain" to the voodoo doll, for example, by sticking pins into it, should cause equivalent pain to the target. However, while this is the most commonly known form due to popular culture, most sympathetic magic in voodoo is directed toward healing, not harm). Although most often associated with Haitian voodoo cults, this form of magic has been documented all over the world. In The Golden Bough, Frazier suggests that:

Similarly, drawing pictures of desired events may be believed to cause those events to come about. Such an explanation has been suggested for the many cave paintings that depict successful hunts.

Other usages
In alternative medicine, sympathetic magic is often presented under the guise of the doctrine of signatures, the idea that everything is "marked" in some way with a signature or guide to its intended use. For example, a plant with an arrow-shaped leaf might be a good treatment for arrow wounds. No, really. Plants with yellow sap would be jaundice treatments, and plants and animals with long lives could be used to extend human life. More formally, the plant Hepatica acutiloba (liverwort) has leaves that look somewhat like a human liver, and is therefore believed by some herbalists to have a beneficial effect on liver complaints. Sympathetic magic is also used in traditional Chinese medicine, e.g., the fruit of birthwort (Aristolochica kaempferi) resembles the human lung and has been used for pulmonary diseases. As a side note, these sorts of things might be expected if the natural world were the creation of a divine intelligence, and the fact that this sort of thing rarely works is consistent with a world where life has developed instead through natural selection.

A variant of sympathetic magic is the demands made by certain prosperity gospel televangelists, such as Kenneth Copeland and the appropriately named Creflo Dollar, that their followers should send in “seed” (i.e. money) which will then “grow” and/or “attract” (more) money/success to or result in supernatural healing of the follower. These appeals also involve magical thinking, as the “seed” is supposed to be an indication or physical manifestation of the follower’s belief and it is this belief that will ultimately lead to the granting of divine favour.

Scientific investigation has produced no support for the idea that sympathetic magic applies to the natural world. Nevertheless, the tendency to believe in sympathetic magic has been used to good effect in artificial environments. The Graphical User Interface (GUI), in which a user manipulates a symbolic representation of an underlying structure, resulting in changes to that structure, can be considered a form of artificial sympathetic magic. Few people understand computer software, and even fewer also understand computer hardware, so the workings of a computer might as well be considered magical. Under Clarke's Third Law, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Even seasoned professionals use the term "fancy magic" to describe mysterious aspects of a system, although another word with the same first letter is usually substituted for "fancy". As most ancient and isolated peoples have expressed, the forces of magic can be capricious, arbitrary, mendacious, and cruel. People who use modern software also find this true.