Sympathetic Magic - Tumblr Posts

I don’t know who needs to hear this but

Do NOT cast spells for positive effects that involve:

Burning a picture of yourself*

Burning a piece of paper that anywhere contains your name*

Burning a piece of hair or other taglock*

*Unless you really know what you’re doing

I don’t know how sigil culture got people to think that burning anything = sending it off for spirits, but NO. Across pretty much every magical practice, burning involving a person = destruction. Burning as a means of generically sending things off is mainly used for offerings.

On a similar vein, do not cast spells for positive effects that involve taking a human figure and ripping up, burning, submerging in soil or water, or doing anything else to that figure that would maim or kill a real human. (unless you really know what you’re doing)

Remember the Law of Similarity. Destruction of an image = destruction of the thing itself.

What Is Magic

Now, I haven’t made a What Is Magic post yet, and I always like discussing the philosophical background of this kind of thing. So I’m making one now, but I’m going to say something important. This is how I see magic, so it may be very different from other people.

1. The Basic Concepts

I have ideas about how magic works, and although they may not line up with other people’s, I think it’s important I put them to paper. Sometimes seeing theory like this can help people understand magic better or assist in their paths or craft.

In the end I believe magic can be thought of as a combination of the workings of four different things: Will, intent, energy, and sympathy.

These four aspects of magic put together form the basis of most magic I know of, in a way even talking to spirits could be seen as having all of these components to them. I’ll be describing each part of it in this post.

2. Will

Will is the base component all of magic, nothing works if you don’t have the will to make it work. Some things take a little will, some things take a lot of will, some things will take less and less will to make it work. For example bilocation becomes a simple matter when you’ve done it enough, and drawing elements becomes easier and easier over time.

In a ritual it’d be the power you imbue each component with, and in energy work it’d be the force with which you pull the energy you need to you.

So in my opinion, will is the force behind any form of magic. It’s the magic inside you, the drive that keeps curiosity on track, the drive that brought you to magic to start with, and it’s in more parts of your life than just magic.

Will pushes power into what you’re doing, it’s the electricity which gives life to a carefully programmed machine.

3. Intent

Intent is the shape you give to magic, in a ritual it’d be the words you say to give the ritual meaning, in knot magic it’s what you ask the knots to do, it’d be energy work it’d be the codes you give to elements and emotions when making constructs, and the meaning behind every oracle or tarot card.

Intent works best when the intent and the element or sigil line up, which involves the sympathy component of magic, so I’ll cover how they interact later on in this post.

Intent is probably the most important part of any magic, without intent a sigil is just a drawing, a knot is just a knot, and a bone is just a bone. The will would be there, but without intent there’s nothing to direct it, it’s like trying to make tea without any ingredients. All you’d have is a cup of hot water.

Intent creates the path through which willpower can flow, giving shape and purpose to what you’re creating.

4. Energy

Energy is something I count as different to willpower, mainly because although it can be seen to work in a similar way, it has even more uses and works on a slightly different plane.

Energy is the force which moves your magic and allows your magic to continue running. If you’ve cursed someone or performed a binding on someone, energy continues the effect after you’ve completed the spell. Energy is what’s around you at all times, you can be a natural producer of some elements of energy, like I produce chaos and air, making them easiest to call on for me.

If you’re performing a ritual using resources, there’s a chance you’ve used things charged with or made to represent different energies. Such as moon water, crystals, herbs, you get the idea.

Energy continues the effects of magic after you’ve completed the initial work, and sometimes assists in creating or affecting the world around you.

5. Sympathy

I call this component sympathy, because that’s the basis of the word for sympathetic magic. The idea of sympathetic magic is that the energy of something can be mirrored by something else, for example a voodoo poppet is sympathetic magic, because it’s mirroring the energy of a person so that they can be affected by the witch using it.

Sympathy is the shape of a sigil, the crystals corresponding to different elements in a ritual, the physical form of the tarot card, and the taglock you use when trying to help another witch. Sympathy works together with every single other aspect of magic. It’s the method by which people can move energy vast distances, and it’s the visualisation used in bilocation. It’s the most abstract concept I’ve ever theorised in magic, and it’s what I spend a lot of time trying to isolate and work with.

Sympathy is the translator of magic, the connection between everything. It works to allow you to interpret as well as, in a way, speak the art form known as magic.

6. Working Together

Will and Intent These two work in unison and are often hard to seperate, when you put your will into magic, using intent at the same time is natural. If I wanted to bind someone then I’d put the will to bind in with the intent, I don’t really know how to do it any other way.

Will and Energy These components work together by being the driving force that keeps magic going. Will causes the magic to work during the initial actions, energy takes it on after the initial setup is done. Take a ritual, you use willpower during the ritual but afterwards the energy takes it over.

Intent and Energy Energy in some ways can be used to shape intent, for example in energy work you often use certain elements with certain intents because those elements already have a similar intent. Chaos will want to cause chaos, air will want freedom, earth will want to be grounded. Intent and energy work hand in hand to shape the world around you.

Sympathy Sympathy works with practically every component of magic. There’s sympathy working together with energy when you use objects to correspond to elements. Sympathy working with intent when you use music. Sympathy working with willpower when you fortify yourself with tea and emotional strength.

Artist Credits: 1. Spirit of the Forest (Tumblr) 2. Dan Dos Santos (Harry Dresden Sketches) 3. James Firnhaber 4. Julian Bauer 5. Loish.net 6. Jenny Yu