Sympathetic Magic – Part II

The idea behind the Law of Contact is that we imbue things with our personal energy or essence. The longer we handle an item, the greater the amount of energy is stored in it, and the longer the energy remains. Part of the thrill of seeing objects in museums is the thought that they once belonged to famous (or infamous) people. What if Edgar Allan Poe’s walking stick still contains some vestige of that author’s genius? Someone in Baltimore, who is suffering from writer’s block, might consider a trip to the Poe Museum to find out. “Warehouse 13” is a television series that takes this idea and runs with it, creating a secret government warehouse somewhere in South Dakota that contains everything from Mahatma Gandhi’s Dhoti, which has been imbued with the ability to emanate pure peace, to an amphora from Pompeii that has been possessed with the destructive power of a volcanic eruption.

Psychics who are adept at reading these kinds of energies report that when people interact with objects, little tendrils of their energy reach out to envelop what they’re touching. When they willingly put the objects down, the energy tendrils let go as well. When the objects are taken before the people are ready, the energy tendrils will stretch like elastic before eventually releasing. Perhaps that is one of several reasons why it is so annoying when others grab pens from our desks.

Children tend to put a lot of their essence into objects they manipulate. Theosophists who study children have noted that it also takes longer for them to withdraw the energy tendrils. This, among other things, sheds some light onto why sharing is so difficult for children of a certain age, and why forced sharing is a problematic approach. When a child has put a certain amount of her/his essence into an object, like a favorite toy, it is almost as if it has been imbued with a piece of the child’s soul.

Hair and nails are the most intimate of personal objects, and would naturally carry the greatest concentrated amount of energy. A locket containing the hair of a loved one is a powerful form of connection, as well as a symbol of trust. After all, when you give someone a lock of your hair, you are not only giving that person part of yourself, you are trusting that s/he will not use it against you.