sympathetic magic

noun

1. magic predicated on the belief that one thing or event can affect another at a distance as a consequence of a sympathetic connection between them.

sympathetic magic

noun

1. a type of magic in which it is sought to produce a large-scale effect, often at a distance, by performing some small-scale ceremony resembling it, such as the pouring of water on an altar to induce rainfall

Word History and Origins

Origin of sympathetic magic¹

First recorded in 1900–05

Example Sentences

Until this point, sympathetic magic had been a term psychologists used to account for magical belief systems in traditional cultures, such as hunter-gatherer societies.

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Sympathetic magic features a handful of iron laws.

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In 1986, Rozin and two colleagues published a landmark paper called “Operation of the Laws of Sympathetic Magic in Disgust and Other Domains,” which argued that the emotion was a more complicated phenomenon than Darwin or the Hungarians or even Rozin himself had ventured.

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My one year of pre-med had provided scanty knowledge at best, but the others, who knew nothing at all of medicine and regarded the discipline per se as less a science than a kind of sympathetic magic, constantly solicited my opinion on their aches and pains as respectfully as savages consulting a witch doctor.

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Was it not a dangerous word, too closely connected to Hobbes and to dubious stories about sympathetic magic told by Digby—someone whom John Evelyn, another early member, could dismiss as an arrant mountebank?

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