sympathetic magic

American  

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.

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sympathetic magic British  

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

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Etymology

Origin of sympathetic magic

First recorded in 1900–05

Example Sentences

The notion of sympathetic magic – that you can touch an object and receive its power – is key to understanding the sheelas, Freitag believes.

From The Guardian • Mar. 8, 2021

Even so simple a symbolic gesture as touching one’s heart after hand-washing, she added, can be seen as a form of sympathetic magic.

From New York Times • Apr. 14, 2020

Revenge or redemption or some form of sympathetic magic in which we roll back the clock and none of the bad stuff happened and we are all OK again?

From Salon • Jan. 1, 2020

A believer in sympathetic magic, Mills gathers dog-eared objects and forgotten rituals to summon a world of mixtapes and Judy Blume and Three Mile Island and skateboarders who grab their boards behind their front leg.

From The New Yorker • Jan. 1, 2017

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?

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton