Sympathetic Magic: Law of Similarity

The law of similarity is one of the two foundational principles through which anthropologist James George Frazer organized the practice of sympathetic magic in his monumental comparative study The Golden Bough (1890). The law holds that like produces like: an intended effect can be produced by imitating it, or by working with a representation that shares the essential qualities of the target. Burning a wax image of a person to cause fever, planting grain in a specific way to encourage the growth of crops, or drawing a picture of a desired outcome to draw it toward manifestation are all expressions of the law of similarity in practice.

The principle predates Frazer’s categorization by millennia. Paleolithic cave paintings have been interpreted by some scholars as sympathetic image magic intended to ensure successful hunts; ancient Egyptian execration figures were created to direct harmful intention at enemies through their representation; wax and clay images appear in the magical papyri of the Hellenistic world; and effigy magic in various forms appears across virtually every culture for which we have magical records.

History and origins

Frazer’s analysis in The Golden Bough brought the law of similarity into academic currency as a cross-cultural analytical category. His framework was evolutionary: he proposed that magic, operating through false ideas about causality, was the earliest stage of human intellectual development, giving way to religion (which acknowledged the unpredictability of the world and appealed to personal divine powers) and eventually to science (which correctly identified actual causal mechanisms). This evolutionary hierarchy has been largely abandoned by contemporary anthropology and history of religion, which no longer treats non-Western or pre-modern magical systems as failures of scientific reasoning.

What survives and remains useful from Frazer’s analysis is the descriptive identification of similarity and contagion as the two organizing principles of a great deal of global magical practice. These categories allow comparison across cultures and traditions without requiring the imposition of Frazer’s problematic evolutionary framework.

In Western magical philosophy, the law of similarity is a subset of the broader principle of correspondences, grounded philosophically in the Neoplatonic doctrine of sympatheia: that things sharing a quality share a participation in the same underlying principle, making action on one capable of affecting the other. This philosophical grounding allows the law of similarity to function not as an arbitrary folk belief but as the application of a coherent theory about the structure of reality.

In practice

The most direct application of the law of similarity is image magic in its various forms. Poppets, small figures made to represent a specific person or quality and then acted upon to affect the original, appear in traditions worldwide and across historical periods. The figure need not be realistic; what matters is the practitioner’s clear intention that the figure represents the specific target, an act of designation that establishes the sympathetic link.

Color magic operates by a related logic: a candle whose color corresponds to the intended outcome (green for prosperity, pink for love, red for vitality) is worked with because the color shares a quality with the intention. The color is not merely decorative but participates in the quality it represents.

Visualization and mental imagery use the law of similarity at the level of mind: holding a clear and detailed image of the desired outcome in consciousness, as though it were already real, engages the same principle of imitation at the interior rather than exterior level. Many practitioners find that combining physical representation with mental visualization intensifies the working, because both levels are engaged simultaneously.

Relationship to other principles

The law of similarity rarely operates in isolation. Most effective workings also engage the law of contagion (using an actual material link to the target, such as a photograph, hair, or personal object) and the principle of correspondences (selecting materials that resonate with the planetary or elemental quality of the intention). Understanding the law of similarity as one principle within a coherent theoretical framework, rather than as an isolated folk belief, allows the practitioner to design workings with greater intentionality and internal consistency.

The psychological dimension of the law deserves acknowledgment without dismissiveness. The law of similarity has real psychological power regardless of any metaphysical mechanism: working with a clear physical or mental representation of an intention provides a focus for concentration, a concrete form for the imagination, and a ritual action that commits the practitioner to the intention in a way that internal decision alone does not. Whether the law also operates through any mechanism beyond the psychological is a question each practitioner will answer through their own direct experience and reflection.

In myth and popular culture

The law of similarity as a magical principle appears in some of the earliest narrative mythologies. Ancient Egyptian execration ritual, in which clay or wax figures of enemies were inscribed with the name of the target and then broken, burned, or buried, is documented from the Middle Kingdom period (approximately 2055 to 1650 BCE) and represents a fully developed application of the similarity principle in state-level ritual practice. These execration figures were made to resemble the target through their inscription and deliberate designation, then destroyed to transfer harm through the link of resemblance.

Paleolithic cave paintings at Lascaux, Altamira, and other sites, dating from approximately 15,000 to 40,000 years ago, have been interpreted by researchers including David Lewis-Williams as serving ritual functions connected to the hunt; if correct, this would represent the law of similarity in operation at the very beginning of documented human symbolic activity. This interpretation is contested, but the connection between image and intended reality recurs in a remarkable range of early cultures.

In popular fiction, the law of similarity underlies the magic systems of many influential fantasy works. The wax effigy appears in countless horror films and ghost stories, in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, where “headology” often operates through sympathetic principles, and in the broader genre of occult thriller fiction. Voodoo dolls in particular have become such a recognizable pop culture image that they are frequently used as shorthand for any form of image magic, despite their limited role in actual Haitian Vodou practice.

Myths and facts

Several persistent misconceptions surround the law of similarity and its applications.

• A common belief holds that making a poppet of someone and harming it automatically harms the person. The law of similarity requires a strong intentional link between representation and subject, typically established through ritual designation and often reinforced by personal items; an effigy made without this intentional work and without the connection of contagion is unlikely to do anything in either direction.
• Many popular accounts describe the “voodoo doll” as a central instrument of Haitian Vodou practice. In actual Haitian Vodou, poppets are not a primary ritual tool; the cultural association between Vodou and effigy magic is largely a Western projection fueled by horror fiction and colonial misrepresentation rather than an accurate account of the tradition.
• The law of similarity is sometimes presented as Frazer’s unique theoretical contribution. Frazer named and systematized it, but the principle was discussed by Renaissance natural magicians including Cornelius Agrippa, and Neoplatonic philosophers had articulated the concept of sympatheia, the sympathetic connection between similar things, more than fifteen centuries before Frazer published The Golden Bough.
• Some practitioners assume that using the correct color candle or herbal correspondence is sufficient for a working to succeed. Correspondence and similarity provide the structural logic of a working; intent, concentration, and timing also contribute, and experienced practitioners generally treat correspondence as one element of a coherent ensemble rather than a guarantee in itself.
• Frazer’s evolutionary framework, in which magic is a primitive precursor to science, is sometimes still cited as current academic consensus. Contemporary anthropology and history of religion have rejected this hierarchy; magical thinking is understood as a distinct mode of relating to the world that exists alongside scientific thinking rather than as its failed ancestor.