The Gates of Ganzir

From Heka to Hoodoo

Introduction

Sympathetic Magic is perhaps the best recognised aspect of magic in the world today. Typically one may think of the practices of New Orleans Hoodooism with its poppets and mojos, or of a lonely bachelorette anxiously and desperately trying to attract Mr Right using the kind of ready made 'spell kits' available at most online magical shops. Although such simplistic thoughts on the nature of Sympathetic Magic are not entirely inaccurate, the aim of this talk is to look beyond those conceptions, and take a deeper look into the magical history of the 'sympathetic' traditions of imposing one's Will upon the Objective Universe.

Sir James George Frazer states in The Golden Bough that the principles of Sympathetic, or imitative, magic include the 'law of similarity' and the 'law of contact' or 'contagion'.

The Law of Similarity is based on the idiom 'like produces like', or that an effect resembles its cause. For instance, if something should befall a constructed image of someone, then something of similarity will happen to that person. This is the basis for the use of the famous Voodoo dolls of Hoodoo. If someone sticks a pin into the head of the doll, the person of whom it is a likeness will be expected to experience a simultaneous pain to their head, or suffer some kind of mental distraction.

The Law of Contagion is based on the idea that things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance. There is a permanent spiritual relationship between an individual and any part of his or her body such as hair, nails, teeth, or a missing body part that remains even after the physical contact has been severed. Because of this, many of the Grimoires from the Middle-Ages warn against allowing nail clippings, locks of hair, or old articles of clothing to fall into the hands of your enemies for fear of the harm your enemies could bring against you by damaging them. The idea of the law of contagion is also represented in the world of Quantum Physics, in the form of Bell's Theorem which states,

'Any two particles that have once been in contact will continue to act as though they are informationally connected regardless of their separation in space and time'.

The idea of memetic contagion states memes, the building blocks of thought structure, can be transferred by the law of contagion. This can be as straightforward as simply reading a book, with the ideas presented within it altering the substance and structure of your thought processes in some way. However, on a more magical level I have been playing with the idea that such contagion can be transferred by merely exposing the physical manifestation of a work or object to one's essence. For instance, by fully contemplating, or meditating on, the form of a book, painting, or object that has had some symbolic effect upon you whilst in physical contact with it, you can transfer that symbolic effect into your own essence and utilise that symbolism to charge yourself with those symbolic qualities. If you're lucky enough to own a genuine item that has been touched by its originator, e.g. a signed book, or one of Elvis' shirts, or an original piece of art there are obviously added advantages, as the physical element of contagion becomes involved. This is obviously highly subjective to the personal user, but a very simplistic and general example known to the masses would be kissing the Blarney Stone. As well as utilising the law of contagion, such methodology is also party to the law of mimicry, with its 'like creates like' effect.

Aside from the principles of mimicry and contagion, the laws of Sympathetic Magic also state that man is a miniature reproduction of the universe, that he is the microcosm to the universe's macrocosm. The changes conducted in or by the Subjective Universe, (the Microcosm), have reflective physical results in the Objective Universe (the Macrocosm).

Heka

The practice of Sympathetic Magic goes back beyond the memory of modern man. Ancient cave paintings depicting successful hunts point to a primitive mimicry akin to the law of similarity, as do ancient ritual dancing ceremonies featuring the main dancer donning the skin and horns of an animal whilst the other participants act out the stalking and killing of the "sacrifice". Cannibalism is another ancient form of Sympathetic Magic, as by eating their enemies ancient tribesmen would absorb their strengths and powers. The Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation is a variant form of this symbolic ritual cannibalism, whereby man absorbs the perceived quality of his Saviour by eating his flesh.

The Ancient Egyptians widely used analogies and symbolism consistent with the sympathetic principle of like affecting like. The most obvious examples are to be found in the use of magical figurines and execration rituals.

Magical Figurines

The earliest recorded instance of the Egyptian use of the magical figure is to be found in the Westcar Papyrus, which features a IIIrd Dynasty official named Aba-aner who constructs a wax effigy of a crocodile to kill the soldier with whom is wife is having an affair. The crocodile is thrown into the water where the soldier bathes, whereby it turns into a real crocodile and drags the philanderer to the bottom of the riverbed.

In the plot to usurp Ramesses III at about 1200BC, Hui the overseer of the Royal cattle thought to aid the designs of the plotters with a little magic, including the construction of wax figurines whereby the people whom they represented would become paralysed and helpless. Wax was often used in such malignant causes as it is a substance which is malleable under heat and pressure, and it is so believed that its use in making figures was indicative of working harm (or at least manipulation) and not good to man.

According to the romanticised writings of Pseudo-Callisthenes, Nectanebo II, the last native Egyptian Pharaoh used sympathetic magic to defend his country from outside enemies.

Whenever he was threatened with invasion by sea or by land he succeeded in destroying the power of his enemies, and in driving them from his coasts or frontiers; and this he did by the following means. If the enemy came against him by sea, instead of sending out his sailors to fight them, he retired into a certain chamber, and having brought forth a bowl which he kept for the purpose, he filled it with water, and then, having made wax figures of the ships and men of the enemy, and also of his own men and ships, he set them upon the water in the bowl, his men on one side, and those of the enemy on the other.

He then came out, and having put on the cloak of an Egyptian prophet and taken an ebony rod in his hand, he returned into the chamber, and uttering words of power he invoked the gods who help men to work magic, and the winds, and the subterranean demons, which straightway came to his aid. By their means the figures of the men in wax sprang into life and began to fight, and the ships of wax began to move about likewise; but the figures which represented his own men vanquished those which represented the enemy, and as the figures of the ships and men of the hostile fleet sank through the water to the bottom of the bowl, even so did the real ships and men sink through the waters to the bottom of the sea.

In this way he succeeded in maintaining his power, and he continued to occupy his kingdom in peace for a considerable period.

The Egyptian use of the figurine goes beyond mere manipulation of mortal and human enemies to one's own favour. They were also used in funerary rites in the case of the ushebtiu, which were small figures of stone, wood, or pottery which were placed in the tombs of their dead, and would provide the deceased with servants and attendants to work for him in the nether world, and to fight for him against the many enemies he would there have to combat.

The Book of Overthrowing Apep reveals that magical figures were also used as part of the daily ritual at the Temple of Amon-Ra. Spells were used which would have effects such as diverting a coming rainstorm, by burning a wax representation of Apep on a fire made of khesau grass, and mixing the remains with excrement, placing onto yet another fire, and then spitting on the remains several times per hour until the storm is prevented. A variation of this ritual represented the overthrowing of one's personal (or national) enemies by carving their names into the effigy which would be bound with black rope, burnt, spat upon, trampled by the left foot, stabbed with a spear or sword, mixed with urine, and then pressed into yet another fire.

Execration Rituals

The rituals I just mentioned are good examples of execration rituals, which were those rituals performed on the populous of execration texts. Execration texts are texts listing places, groups of people, or individuals that were considered dangerous, hostile or evil. These were written on statues of prisoners, or on jars, which would then be broken and buried as part of the ritual destruction. Such ritual also involved piercing figurines with needles or knives, spitting on them, and burning them. An example of an execration text was found near a fortress in Nubia, written on a skull. It is possible that by writing the execration text on his skull the Egyptians wanted to magically transfer the fate of that individual to his entire group. Some pharaohs asserted their dominance over their enemies by symbolically trampling on them by having their foes' pictures painted on the soles of their sandals. This is a tradition that has lived on in a fashion in the Middle East today, if you think of the Iraqis taking off their shoes to strike Saddam Hussein's statue with the soles when Baghdad was taken, or of Gaddaffi rather hilariously conducting his talks with Tony Blair whilst pointing the sole of his sandal at him the whole time.

Greco-Roman Magic

Egyptian magical thinking had a significant influence on Europe. For example, Thoth, god of wisdom and learning, was identified with the Greek Hermes Trismegistus. In the Græco-Roman period wax figures were used in the performance of magical ceremonies of every kind. A Greek spell to obtain the love of a woman sees the magician construct two waxen figures; one in the form of Ares, and the other in the form of a woman. The female figure is to be in the posture of kneeling with her hands tied behind her, and the male figure is to stand over her with his sword at her throat. On the limbs of the female figure a large number of the names of demons are to be written, and when this has been done, the lover must take thirteen bronze needles, and stick them in her limbs, saying as he does so, "I pierce ... that she may think of me." The lover must next write certain words of power on a leaden plate, which must be tied to the wax figures with a string containing three hundred and sixty-five knots, and both figure and plate are to be buried in the grave of someone who has died young or who has been slain by violence. He must then recite a long incantation to the infernal gods, and if all these things be done in a proper manner the lover will obtain the woman's affections. Plato makes reference to people being frightened by the implication of wax dolls being fixed at the meeting points of three roads, their parents' tombs, or on their doors, as this was a way of relating to someone that they had been cursed.

Theocritus also reveals to us some evidence of the magical use of wax figures in Pharmakeutria (Witchcraft) where Simaetha, spinning her wheel and addressing the Lynx says, "Even as I melt this wax, with the god to aid, so speedily may he by love be molten!" She also keeps a fringe from her lover's cloak, representing the law of contagion, which she shreds and throws it into the fire.

The 'curse tablets,' tabellae defixionum, are another important source for our knowledge of Hellenistic magic. As far as cursing was concerned, it was considered more effective to write the victim's name on a thin sheet of lead with magical formulas or symbols and to bury this tablet in or near a fresh tomb, a place of execution, or a battlefield, to give the lingering spirits of the dead power over the victim. Sometimes the curse tablets were transfixed by a nail or were thrown into wells, springs, or rivers.

The same type of magic was practiced throughout the Roman Empire. A victim of theft might seek the god's vengeance or double the likelihood of divine help by transferring ownership of his stolen property to the god who would then want to retrieve the item for his own. This was done by means of curse tablets which were pieces of lead or pewter rolled or folded and thrown into the spring, or nailed near the place of crime. Inscribing on his piece of lead the victim would call on a favoured god to right the wrong, by bringing the criminal to justice and retrieving the lost article. Typically the aggrieved would make a statement such as:

'Lord Neptune, I give you the man who has stolen the solidus and six argentioli of Muconius. So I give the names who took them away, whether male or female, whether boy or girl. So I give you, Niskus, and to Neptune the life, health, blood of him who has been privy to that taking-away. The mind which stole this and which has been privy to it, may you take it away. The thief who stole this, may you consume his blood and take it away, Lord Neptune'

Upon learning their names had been inscribed, the thieves were often frightened enough to purchase the curse tablets to secure release from the curse. One hundred and thirty such tablets have been retrieved from the Sacred Spring at Aquae Sulis.

Romano-Celtic Period

The use of the Ema tablets in Shintoism shows a reflection of this tablet tradition. In medieval Japan, wealthy people would donate horses to shrines, especially when making a significant request of the kami of the shrine. For smaller requests, giving a picture of a horse became customary. This tradition evolved to the visitor leaving a picture tablet specific to a certain desire, and then writing their wish on it, before hanging it at the shrine. If the wish comes true, the person would then hang another ema at the shrine in gratitude.

In the British Isles, the Greco-Roman use of the tablet was combined with the traditional beliefs in the power of springs to bring about harm to enemies. In Religion of the Ancient Celts, J.A. MacCulloch describes how a curse was inscribed on a leaden tablet, and with accompaniment of a curse was thrown into the waters, and would cause death to the target. He also gives a relatively modern account of how this tradition also survived in Wales.

'An excellent instance of a cursing-well is that of Fynnon Elian in Denbigh, which must once have had a guardian priestess, for in 1815 an old woman who had charge of it presided at the ceremony. She wrote the name of the victim in a book, receiving a gift at the same time. A pin was dropped into the well in the name of the victim, and through it and through knowledge of his name, the spirit of the well acted upon him to his hurt'.

Medieval Europe

In Europe's Middle Ages the use of Sympathetic Magic found great favour with those who interested themselves in the working of the black arts, or who wished to do their neighbour or enemy an injury. In Italy and England people made models of their enemies in wax and hung them up in the chimney, not too close to the fire, so that they might melt away slowly. Those people represented by such figures would gradually lose the power over their limbs, could not sleep, and slowly sickened and died. If pins and needles were stuck into the wax figures at stated times the sufferings of the living were made more agonizing, and their death much more painful. In Southern Italy this type of destructive sympathetic magic was common enough to have a regular name, Fattura della morte (deathmaker).

The following extract from Thomas Middleton's The Witch illustrates the use of wax in Sympathetic Magic in England during the Middle Ages.

Heccat:	Is the heart of wax
	Stuck full of magique needles?
Stadlin:	'Tis done Heccat.
Heccat:	And is the Farmer's picture, and his wives, Lay'd downe to th' fire yet?
Stadlin:	They are a roasting both too.
Heccat:	Good:
	Then their marrowes are a melting subtelly
	And three monthes sicknes sucks up life in 'em.

To me, the effigy of the Farmer and his wives burning on the fire, whilst the wax heart is stuffed with pins brings the Execration Rituals of Khemet directly to mind.

The clearest official account of the use of waxen images was given by the Pendle Witch 'Old Demdike' at the trial of the Lancashire Witches in 1612. She 'confessed' that:

The speediest way to take a man's life away by witchcraft is to make a picture [figurine] of clay, like unto the shape of the person whom they mean to kill, and dry it thoroughly. And when you would have them to be ill in any one place more than another, then take a thorn or pin and prick it in that part of the picture you would so have to be ill. And when you would have any part of the body to consume away, then take that part of the picture and burn it. And so thereupon by that means the body shall die. (Wonderful Discovery of Witches in the County of Lancaster, 1613)

Sympathetic medicine

I've largely concentrated on the destructive properties of sympathetic magic so far, yet it has also been commonly associated in times past with curative qualities. Amongst other things sympathetic magic provides us with many cures for common ailments such as warts. Some suggestions for doing so are as follows:

Fill a bag with stones representing the warts, and then throw the bag away.
Rub a snail on the wart, then impale the snail upon a white thorn. As the snail dries up and 'goes away' so will the wart.
Steal a piece of fresh raw beef and rub that upon the wart, then bury it where nobody sees, and as the meat perishes, so will the wart.

In these examples secrecy is of the essence of the act, if anyone is told or knows what is done, except the person performing, the result will be nothing. The common themes in such healing feature contact with the afflicted part followed by the natural or forced disposal of the contact object. Thus the healing process displayed in these examples is still, by definition an act of elimination.

In various parts of South Wales, there are certain holy wells, each having a separate reputation of its own for specific diseases (for instance St Teilo's and Whooping Cough). The subject hangs a piece of rag which has been rubbed over the afflicted body part, upon some special tree or bush near the well, in the belief that the rag absorbs the ailment, and that the sufferer will be cured. The tree being in constant proximity to the sacred well provides a permanent contact between the subject (via the rag), and the magical water, until the affliction has passed. Here the healing process is one of positive contact.

Divination

Sympathetic practices also include the use of divinatory tools to express the law of similarity to reveal answers to certain questions. The divinatory object represents the question being asked, and the fate of that object was held to be symbolic of the answer. Examples of this can be seen in the practices of Scriers who would throw bread into the water of a sacred well and name everyone he could think of to identify a thief who had stolen his property. The name that the bread sank at the mention of was the supposed guilty party. This theme of sinking and floating in water could indicate whether a cure to illness was likely to occur depending on which side of the well an ill person's clothing sunk, whether fortune or misfortune awaited the inquirer, whether lovers would be faithful, and in cases of suspected infidelity in the hand of the birth of a child, the Celts of the European continent would place the newly-born child in a shield on the waters. If it floated the mother was innocent, if it sank it was allowed to drown, and the mother was put to death. The mediæval witch ordeal by water is clearly derived from such divination.

Hoodoo

Hoodoo (also known as New Orleans Voodoo) is comprised of elements of African, European, and Native American Folk Magic with Mojos, and Poppets (Voodoo Dolls) being the more commonly known sympathetic magical components of that system. The Mojo is used either as a personal protective charm, when filled with lucky and significant magical items, and kept on the owner's person, or it can be filled with unlucky, unpleasant items (including faeces mixed with the target's own nails or hair), and left somewhere in close proximity to the target, like under their pillow. Poppets can be used either to attract a lover to the user, or to cast pain, illness, or misfortune upon the enemy whom it represents. The ideas of the 'Voodoo Doll', and the power of the law of contagion in Hoodoo appears to have more in common with its European Folk Magic roots, than its African and Haitian Vodou influences. Figural candles like these are used by practitioners of occultism and hoodoo to obtain certain desires. Red devil candles are said to cause someone to burn with lust and are used in spells of sexual domination. Black devil candles are believed to drive unwanted associates away or cause harm to an enemy. Green devil candles are alleged to have the power to compel a debtor to repay money that is owed; they are also burned by folks who wish to have easy money without much labour.

Despite the phonetic similarity, Hoodoo and Voodoo are very different practices, with Hoodoo possibly etymologically deriving from the Spanish word for 'Jewish' Judio, which was used to describe the Cuban practitioners of Central African Msiki worship, or Palo, who refused to convert to Christianity. These were subsequently named Palo Judio, as opposed to those who converted, who were known as Palo Cristiano. Hoodoo became a term that would thus refer to African slaves who refused to renounce African customs and practice. It is not interchangeable with the Roman Catholic inspired Vodou of Haiti, though Haitian immigration may have had some influence on the practice of Hoodoo in the southern US (such as the mojo, which derives from the gris-gris bag).

Of all the African deities, one known as Ellegua, or Eshu in Africa, is clearly recognizable in Hoodoo: he is the 'dark man' or 'black man' or 'devil' one can meet at the crossroads. The crossroads is the most popular place to perform a specific hoodoo crossroads ritual to learn a skill such as learning to play a musical instrument. As this ritual is usually described, you bring the item you wish to master - your banjo, guitar, or fiddle, and wait at the crossroads on three or nine specified nights or mornings. On your successive visits you may witness the mysterious appearances of a series of animals. On your last visit, a 'big black man' will arrive. If you are not afraid and do not run away, he will ask to borrow the item you wish to learn. He will show you the proper way to use the item by using it himself. When he returns it to you, you will suddenly have the gift of greatness. As a trickster and opener of the way, Eshu is vaguely similar to Der Teufel of the Teutonic tradition.

Conclusion

From looking synoptically at the phenomena of Sympathetic Magic we see a vein of distinct similarity and simplicity in its practice through the ages. Its main use is as a method of instigating loss of something detrimental, or the gaining of something beneficial via the pandemic use of wax figures, lead tablets, and personal effects, which shows a robust magical tradition that transcends culture, time, and space. Sympathetic Magic is also highly versatile. It is portable, can be practiced as opportunity allows, and is easy to work into a GBM context as the The Destruction Ritual included in the Satanic Bible demonstrates. To me its simplicity and adaptability makes it one of the purest methods of magic. Its cross-cultural similarity of form, with its basic principles still largely intact, may reveal something of the primitive recognition of the Black Flame.