Sympathetic magic
Frazer's term for magic that rests on a link between things, either because they resemble each other or because they were once in contact.
Also: the doctrine of sympathy, magic by analogy
Frazer divided sympathetic magic into two laws, similarity and contagion, and argued that every magical act he had gathered followed one or both. The idea is that things act on each other at a distance through a hidden bond. A rite that works on a likeness, or on something taken from a person, is believed to reach the person or thing itself. Later scholars criticised his neat scheme and his assumption that such reasoning was a mistake of early peoples. Psychologists have since found that educated modern people also feel the pull of these ideas, for instance a reluctance to wear a murderer's sweater.