#sympathetic magic

I'm not getting into ethics here: this is a baneful spell. We are taking something that someone may hold dear to themselves. I'm not going to tell you the target has to deserve it. I'm not telling you things will come back at you threefold. Your own UPG tells you your own limits on baneful workings.

Fire safety is going to be a must here. This is a lot of fire, and you will need something to put out said fire at a moment's notice. Keep a damp cloth, a fire extinguisher, or a second tray at arm's length to smother the spell.

Ingredients:

Two Candles: Black for your target, and a color for you. This color should match the intention of what you're hoping to gain from your target: peace, creativity, abundance, prospects, joy, you name it.

Oils: At the very least, you'll need a neutral oil to dress your candle (olive, coconut), but you can also use something like a road opening oil, money oil, happiness oil, etc. You can even dress your neutral oil with essential oils (do your research to make sure they aren't toxic when burnt. Seriously. Some of these are bad for you.)

Herbs/Powders: For my target's candle, I used some baneful "herbs": Crushed red pepper, black pepper, and licorice root. Bitey, harsh, aggressive, and even some domination from the licorice. This is just what I had on hand. Rue, wormwood, and willow bark may also serve you well. Your candle should be dressed with herbs that match the intention that you're wishing to pull.

Twine: We'll be creating a line between our target and ourselves, letting their flame flow to us. Your twine should be safe to burn, no plastic or polyester.

A Heat/Fire Safe Tray: Deadass just a baking sheet works. Unless you're regularly doing candle spells, don't go out and buy an altar plate.

Optionals: Crystals, salt, herbs, dried fruits, anything to add to your tray to add to the spell. This will work without any of these, but amplifying and enhancing can only help.

An Incantation: Create your own incantation of your intention. There are a lot of different schools of thought on this, but it definitely doesn't have to rhyme, and many recommend you speak of what you want as if it has already happened. Be specific.

Assembly:

Cleanse Everything: This is a given.

Dress your candles: Draw a sigil of your choice, then, using your chosen oil, anoint the candle, and finally, dress the candle with your herbs and powders.

Tie the twine: Between the candles, tie the twine like you would a cord-cutting spell, with the main difference being that the cord on the target's candle needs to sit higher than on yours. Their side of the twine has to light first. You can choose to view the twine as a link between you and the target (burning it also severs your link), or you can choose to have the line merely be the vessel.

Dress your board: Add your candles, melting the bottoms and sticking them down if you need them to be more stable. Add any of your optional items.

The Ritual:

Prepare your spirit and your space: I'm a ceremonial magician, so I'd perform a banishing ritual and open a circle. Do you need to center? Cleanse? You know your practice.

Light the target's candle: With intention, light the candle. This is a good time to begin your incantation, focusing on what your target is losing.

Light your candle: Continue your incantation, focusing on what you gain. See point 4 for why, but consider if you want to use the target's candle to light yours. (Melted wax is hot, btw)

Feed your spell: Focus your energy and intention into the spell as it burns, especially as the twine catches and carries your candle. We want the other person's energy/peace/happiness/whatever to feed into us, so getting their flame to burn into our candle for as long as we can is the goal. I'm not telling you to literally manipulate the placement of the candles (though that's exactly what I did), I'm telling you to do what you need to feed your candle best, burning the target out as quickly as possible. (Sympathetic magic, my beloved).

Aftercare: You need to do what you need to do to take care of your spiritual self after a baneful working.

Disclaimers:

Make sure you're taking something you actually want. For example, I'm not sure I'd want to steal the passion from a MAGAt and put it into me, as it's incredibly icky passion. Without going into specifics, I used this spell as a direct 1:1. For example, say someone was really motivated in a job search, and I needed a job, I'd take their motivated energy to put into my own job search.

✦ Three Spell Models (and the Spirits They Stir)

Not all spells are made up of the same grammar. But most fall into one (or more) of three major models. Think of them as magical programming paradigms. Pick your language, pick your results.

✧ Sympathetic Magic: The Echo Model

“Like affects like.” You make an image to move the original. You shape a symbol to cast its shadow onto the real. Reality as a mirror, and your ritual is the smudge on the glass.

✥ Poppets & Name-Magic In ancient Egypt, enemy figurines were bound, broken, and buried or thrown into fire. These weren’t just representations, they were the person, in ritual logic. In the Greek magical papyri (c. 100 BCE–400 CE), wax dolls were stabbed or nailed while invoking chthonic deities like Hecate or Ereshkigal.

Mimetic resonance = the thing is the thing.

⚛︎ Scientific metaphor: Mirror neurons, representational systems, associative learning Your brain responds to symbols as if they’re real. Those neurons fire whether you move your hand or watch someone else move theirs. That red candle dressed with cinnamon oil for courage? Yeah, Your nervous system registering that heat, boldness, action. The ritual builds embodied feedback. Even if no external change happens yet, your perception and behavior have already shifted.

Also: simulation theory says rehearsing something symbolically gets your body and mind to do it better in reality. You’re not just imagining it. You’re installing a patch.

✧ Contagious Magic: The Thread Model

“Things once in contact remain connected.” Aka: I have your hair, and now I own your soul. You don’t need the person. You just need what once touched them. Nail clippings. Clothing. Soil. Spit. You get the idea.

✥ African Nkisi Nkondi Fetishes Note: Kongo spiritual technologies like nkisi nkondi are part of a living, sacred system. Referencing them here is for understanding, not for reproduction. In Kongo traditions, spirits are invoked into minkisi (containers holding materials linked to people or events, like hair, fluid, dirt). Driving a nail into a nkondi wasn’t just “curse stuff.” It was a legally binding magical contract. The spirit wasn’t just symbolic. It was in the thing. Likewise, Irish folk magic loved burying enemy clothing under running streams. Very “see you in court, but make it mossy.”

⚛︎ Scientific metaphor: Quantum entanglement (metaphorically), systems theory, morphic resonance Is magical contagion “proven”? No. But systems theory says that once things are patterned together, they tend to stay linked. Rupert Sheldrake’s controversial-but-delicious theory of morphic resonance suggests similar.

Also: information fields. How trauma lives in a house. Not metaphorically. You feel it. The object holds the echo. And yes, quantum physics says entangled particles can influence each other at a distance. Is it the same? No. But does the metaphor slap? Also yes.

✧ Psychological Magic: The Mirror Model

“You are the spell.” You don’t need gods, tools, or a pentagram. The spell works because you shift, through ritual, symbol, breath, and choice. The psyche is the altar.

✥ Solomonic Magic & Grimoire Practice In early modern grimoires (Key of Solomon, Ars Goetia, etc.), ritual prep was intense: fasting, bathing, toolcraft, day-specific chants. Why? Because the magician had to be transformed. Not just to summon a spirit, but to become the kind of person who could.

Same logic shows up in Jungian ritual: the archetype isn’t “summoned,” it’s activated in you.

⚛︎ Scientific metaphor: Psychoneuroimmunology, neuroplasticity, cognitive behavioral theory (at least its not DBT) Science now confirms what witches have always known: Belief + ritual + sensory engagement = physiological change.

PNI shows psychological states change immune function. Placebos work if meaning is present. Ritual repetition literally rewires the brain. Neuroplasticity means that every time you cast a spell, you’re building new connections. Confidence, clarity, action... it’s all muscle memory for your will.

The spell is a language your nervous system understands. You're not just speaking to the universe. You're updating your own code.

✧ Ritual as Code

If this is starting to sound a little technical... yeah. It should.

A spell is not a vague hope. It’s a set of instructions. Like a line of code written in the symbolic grammar of culture, place, myth, and memory.

Intent = the payload

Symbol & ritual = the syntax

Timing, materials, motion = the compiler

You = both the operator and the instrument

✥ Icelandic Galdrastafir (Magical Staves) Note: Icelandic stave magic comes from a specific folkloric and historical context. Some symbols were Christianized or demonized, so study in depth. These sigils weren’t just for aesthetics. They required absolute precision. Carve them wrong, say the chant late, draw the line crooked? The spell failed. Not because “magic isn’t real,” but because the system didn’t execute. You didn’t speak the language fluently enough.

This is operational magic. And like code, it only runs if it’s written right.

Intent is the spark. Structure is the wick. No fire burns without both.

✧ The Models Are Metaphors; And That’s the Point

The three models (sympathetic, contagious, and psychological) provide interpretive frameworks that draw on contemporary scientific concepts as metaphorical tools. They are not claims that witchcraft is scientifically proven, nor are they efforts to rebrand occult practice as conventional science. Rather, they are ways to discuss how centuries‑old magical techniques might be understood in light of modern thought, while keeping the door open to possibilities that have yet to be confirmed or refuted.

Sympathetic, contagious, and psychological magic aren’t rival systems. They’re interpretive lenses. Ways of understanding how the spell is supposed to work. They echo modern science not to prove magic, but to create useful metaphors. Shared language for discussing things we still don’t fully understand.

Spells are not mechanical, but they are systemic. They’re not “scientific,” but they are structured. They are cultural. Neural. Mythic. Sensual.

So ask yourself:

What system is this spell operating in?

What model am I invoking, echo, thread, or mirror?

Is this ritual legible, to me, to the world, to the forces I’m addressing?

Because the world may “listen” to many languages, but the spell’s success depends on speaking the ones it recognizes.

✧ A Final Note on Cultural Responsibility

Some of the practices Ive referenced here (like nkisi work, name-magic, and certain ritual frameworks) come from living Indigenous and African diasporic traditions. These are held by communities with their own rules, responsibilities, and protections.

I’m very white. So I am sharing these examples for educational and contextual purposes, not to adopt them. Please don’t treat living traditions like an aesthetic moodboard.

If a practice isn’t from your culture or lineage:

→ Learn from those who carry it. → Don’t replicate closed or initiatory rituals. → Honor the communities who still live, protect, and practice within these systems.

✧ Respect is part of the work. ✧ Magic without ethics is just extraction. (Don’t be like the Brits.)

Part Ⅰ of Occult Mechanics 𝟷𝟶𝟷

✍︎ Further Reading & Source Materials:

Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough. (Sympathetic & contagious magic models)

Betz, Hans Dieter (ed). The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. (Ancient Mediterranean spell texts)

Janzen, John M. Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa. (Nkisi traditions)

Ólafur Davíðsson. Islenzkar Þjóðsögur og Æfintýri. (Icelandic stave magic)

Henningsen, Gustav. The Salazar Documents. (Basque witch trials)

King, Karen L. What Is Gnosticism? (Psychological/spiritual transformation models)

Jung, Carl. Man and His Symbols. (Psychological resonance in ritual)

Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja. The Magical Power of Words. (Speech and ritual efficacy)

Skinner, Stephen. Techniques of Solomonic Magic.

Sheldrake, Rupert. Morphic Resonance. (Contagion and form theory)

Pert, Candace. Molecules of Emotion. (Psychoneuroimmunology)

Doidge, Norman. The Brain That Changes Itself. (Neuroplasticity)

Benedetti, Fabrizio. Placebo Effects. (Mechanisms in health and ritual)