Word.ws English Dictionary

image magic

image magic noun: the use of visual or plastic representations of people, spirits etc., for magical purposes.

Noun

image magic (uncountable)

  1. (historical) The use of visual or plastic representations of people, spirits etc., for magical purposes.
    • The most common maleficent technique was the use of image-magic, by making a model in wax or clay of the proposed victim and then sticking pins or bristles in the part which was to be afflicted.1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 492
    • According to Michael Taussig, Frazer (in the vein of Edward Tylor before him) implies in his extensive treatment of image magic that the images are copies that represent their intended victim.2008, Derek Collins, Magic in the Ancient Greek World, page 18

Questions about image magic

What does image magic mean?
Image magic means the use of visual or plastic representations of people, spirits etc., for magical purposes.
What part of speech is image magic?
Image magic is a noun.

Words near image magic in the dictionary

  1. image films
  2. image histogram
  3. image histograms
  4. image macro
  5. image macros
  6. image magic
  7. image map
  8. image maps
  9. image matting
  10. image processing
  11. image rectification

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: image magic (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “image magic.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/image_magic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.