A cognitive account of manipulative sympathetic magic

Frazer's theory of sympathetic magic has been extremely influential in both anthropology and comparative religion, yet the manipulative aspect has not been adequately theorized. In this paper, I formalize sympathetic magical action and offer a naturalistic explanation of manipulative sympathetic magic by attributing it to a combination of environmental regularities (i.e., things that are similar and/or physically proximate tend to co-vary) and human causal cognition (i.e., the tendency to mistake correlation as causation), and supply ample ethnographic and historical evidence for my arguments. In doing so I also specify the variables involved and re-classify sympathetic magic into four distinct types for analytic convenience.

Automated summary

This paper formalizes the concept of sympathetic magical action, explaining its manipulative aspect through a combination of environmental regularities and human causal cognition. The author provides ample ethnographic and historical evidence to support their arguments, and re-classifies sympathetic magic into four distinct types for analytical convenience.