Word.ws English Dictionary

sympathetic magic

sympathetic magic noun: a type of magic based on imitation or correspondence; magic in which items of the same form are connected over distance.

Noun

sympathetic magic (uncountable)

  1. A type of magic based on imitation or correspondence; magic in which items of the same form are connected over distance.
    • The witch who carried out the baking technique used this form of sympathetic magic to arouse desire in correspondence with the flaming heat of the oven.1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 53
    • By what is called “sympathetic magic” by witchcraft historians, she is said to have been able to “kill her victims from a distance”.1965, Attila Zohar, Kings Cross Black Magic, Sydney: Horwitz Publications, page 91

Synonyms of sympathetic magic

Questions about sympathetic magic

What does sympathetic magic mean?
Sympathetic magic means a type of magic based on imitation or correspondence; magic in which items of the same form are connected over distance.
What part of speech is sympathetic magic?
Sympathetic magic is a noun.

Words near sympathetic magic in the dictionary

  1. sympathetic detonation
  2. sympathetic detonations
  3. sympathetic hyperactivity
  4. sympathetic ink
  5. sympathetic inks
  6. sympathetic magic
  7. sympathetic nervous system
  8. sympathetic nervous systems
  9. sympathetic powder
  10. sympathetic powders
  11. sympathetic string

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sympathetic 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.

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