If we analyse the principles of thought on which magic is based(iMagi-nation), they will probably be found to resolve themselves into two: first, that like produces like, or that an affect resembles its cause; and, second, the things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed 🧵
The former principal may be called a Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it 🪞
The second he infers that whenever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his body or not.
Charms based on the Law of Similarity maybe called Homeopathic or Imitative Magic. Charms based on the Law of Contact or Contagion may be called Contagious magic 🪄
Homeopathic is founded on the association of ideas by similarity: contagious magic is founded on the association of ideas by contact.
Both branches of magic, the homoeopathic and a contagious, may conveniently be comprehended under the general name of Sympathetic Magic, since both assume that things act on each other are at a distance through a secret Symphony, the impulse being transmitted from one to the other by means of what we conceived as a kind of invisible either(astral realm).
Namely to explain how things can physically affect each through a space which appears to be empty ⭕️
The Golden Bough – The study of Magic in Religion 🕉