History I / Religion, Myth, and Ritual
Practice question · Put in order

Order the steps of Frazer’s imitative-magic logic, as an analyst would reconstruct it.

Hints
  1. The logic runs from resemblance to identification to effect.
  2. Acting on the likeness is taken to act on the original.
Show the answer
  1. Select a target to affect
  2. Craft a likeness of the target
  3. Act on the likeness
  4. Expect the act to transfer to the target by resemblance
Why

The syllogism of similarity: what is done to the image is done to the original. Wrong as physics, coherent as symbolic logic, which is why it recurs everywhere from effigies to voodoo-doll keyrings.

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