In the midst of George Orwell’s essay, “Notes on Nationalism,” he makes a reference to sympathetic magic: “Nationalist thought often gives the impression of being tinged by belief in sympathetic magic – a belief which probably comes out in the widespread custom of burning political enemies in effigy, or using pictures of them as targets in shooting galleries.”
I’d never thought of it that way, but I don’t spend much time thinking about magic. I’m familiar with such pop-cultural references to things like voodoo dolls but never thought much about them, either (until zombies began popping up in Miami.)
Intrigued, I turned to that infallible source for occult knowledge, Wikipedia. According to this unimpeachable source (I have no reason to disbelieve this particular entry), the term “sympathetic magic” was coined about a century ago by anthropologist George James Frazer, who described two types – one that acts by similarity and one that acts by contact or “contagion.”
The similarity rule is known to anyone who’s read stories of sharks being killed for their fins, rhinoceroses for their horns or mandrake roots being harvested for their shape. The animal parts are surreptitiously sold as aphrodisiacs, because, you know, anything that continuously stands up straight… well, you get the picture. Beet soup was thought to cure blood ailments because it looks like blood. Much to the detriment of endangered species, this sort of sympathetic magic is still much in evidence today. Perhaps if Pfizer shaped Viagra pills a bit differently, some of our majestic fauna could catch a break.
This is also where the effigies and targets come in. I was sad to read, a few weeks ago, that some jackass was selling targets with Trayvon Martin’s image, to racists who apparently would like to shoot unarmed teens, if only by proxy.
Then there’s contact or contagion magic, the kind where a piece of someone’s clothes or a snip of hair is needed for a voodoo doll or a love charm. Most people in the developed world don’t believe in such things, but why else would people pay outrageous prices for a guitar once played by Eric Clapton? How could the Hard Rock Café chain spring up across the globe with boring sameness, displaying clothes and other implements once worn or used by the gods of rock and roll? Why bid for a baseball signed by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig? Why did Elvis give away all those scarves? Why does the Dalai Lama?
We don’t believe in this magic, the way the benighted consumers of rhinoceros horn do, or do we? What part of our psyche, deep down, still wants to connect to magic? Why do we touch wood, when we wish to avoid an unpleasant outcome? Sympathetic magic, similarity subspecies. I’ve seen people do it all my life, but it was only a few years ago I learned that the source of this practice (should I say superstition?) comes from the belief that because Jesus was crucified on a cross of wood, touching wood invokes Jesus’s protection from harm. I try not to smirk when my atheist friends do it.
The Wikipedia page on magic links to an entry on quantum entanglement and here’s where my head really began to spin. This pertains to quantum physics, our contemporary magic. Arthur Clarke famously said any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, but this isn’t technology, it’s about essential forces binding the universe.
Quantum entanglement occurs when two particles interact physically and then become separated; the two will then possess the same characteristics until they are measured. So, were the old witches and wizards onto something so subtle mechanized society has lost touch with it until we rediscovered it as science or are quantum physicists reverting to echoes from the collective unconscious to describe the ineffable essence of the universe?
Either way, we may be done with magic, but magic may not be done with us.
The Persistence of Magic
In the midst of George Orwell’s essay, “Notes on Nationalism,” he makes a reference to sympathetic magic: “Nationalist thought often gives the impression of being tinged by belief in sympathetic magic – a belief which probably comes out in the widespread custom of burning political enemies in effigy, or using pictures of them as targets in shooting galleries.”
I’d never thought of it that way, but I don’t spend much time thinking about magic. I’m familiar with such pop-cultural references to things like voodoo dolls but never thought much about them, either (until zombies began popping up in Miami.)
Intrigued, I turned to that infallible source for occult knowledge, Wikipedia. According to this unimpeachable source (I have no reason to disbelieve this particular entry), the term “sympathetic magic” was coined about a century ago by anthropologist George James Frazer, who described two types – one that acts by similarity and one that acts by contact or “contagion.”
The similarity rule is known to anyone who’s read stories of sharks being killed for their fins, rhinoceroses for their horns or mandrake roots being harvested for their shape. The animal parts are surreptitiously sold as aphrodisiacs, because, you know, anything that continuously stands up straight… well, you get the picture. Beet soup was thought to cure blood ailments because it looks like blood. Much to the detriment of endangered species, this sort of sympathetic magic is still much in evidence today. Perhaps if Pfizer shaped Viagra pills a bit differently, some of our majestic fauna could catch a break.
This is also where the effigies and targets come in. I was sad to read, a few weeks ago, that some jackass was selling targets with Trayvon Martin’s image, to racists who apparently would like to shoot unarmed teens, if only by proxy.
Then there’s contact or contagion magic, the kind where a piece of someone’s clothes or a snip of hair is needed for a voodoo doll or a love charm. Most people in the developed world don’t believe in such things, but why else would people pay outrageous prices for a guitar once played by Eric Clapton? How could the Hard Rock Café chain spring up across the globe with boring sameness, displaying clothes and other implements once worn or used by the gods of rock and roll? Why bid for a baseball signed by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig? Why did Elvis give away all those scarves? Why does the Dalai Lama?
We don’t believe in this magic, the way the benighted consumers of rhinoceros horn do, or do we? What part of our psyche, deep down, still wants to connect to magic? Why do we touch wood, when we wish to avoid an unpleasant outcome? Sympathetic magic, similarity subspecies. I’ve seen people do it all my life, but it was only a few years ago I learned that the source of this practice (should I say superstition?) comes from the belief that because Jesus was crucified on a cross of wood, touching wood invokes Jesus’s protection from harm. I try not to smirk when my atheist friends do it.
The Wikipedia page on magic links to an entry on quantum entanglement and here’s where my head really began to spin. This pertains to quantum physics, our contemporary magic. Arthur Clarke famously said any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, but this isn’t technology, it’s about essential forces binding the universe.
Quantum entanglement occurs when two particles interact physically and then become separated; the two will then possess the same characteristics until they are measured. So, were the old witches and wizards onto something so subtle mechanized society has lost touch with it until we rediscovered it as science or are quantum physicists reverting to echoes from the collective unconscious to describe the ineffable essence of the universe?
Either way, we may be done with magic, but magic may not be done with us.
© Mark Floegel, 2012