In Julius Evola’s book Introduction to Magic Volume 2, he gives his interpretation of effigy magic. Here we discuss two closely related articles: the magic of effigies and the magic of Creation.
Effigy Magic
In effigy magic, one desires to act on a person, makes a statuette representing the person, or obtains something that belongs to him or her, draws certain signs on it and makes some invocations, and attempts to affect the person. The possibility of such a practice is based off of three laws: 1. Law of the power of the imagination. When an image is focused upon it tends to actualize. To optimize results, one must a. focus on one idea alone and this idea must be saturated with emotion b. one must neutralize the rational faculties. 2. law of transference of projection. Since an image has nothing corporeal about it, it is free from the spatial conditions essential to bodies. To optimize results, one must a. know how to objectivize the idea, releasing it from one’s own I. b. know the method of transmitting this state into the mind of another person. 3. Law of sympathy. When the mind takes the form of another mind, it can act on it through sympathy. Finished with the anatomy of effigy magic, it is time to move on to the physiology. The items work by adding a physical connection to the procedure through the law of sympathy. A material action will activate the will and complete the realization. Thus, we see that Haitian vodou, which is regarded by some to be a mere superstition, is more aligned with high magic than initially thought.1
Man participates in the higher magical form of creating. You will obtain knowledge of this act when you know thinking as something concrete, material, corporeal, and alive- not subject to all the laws of space. Know that every spiritual action causes a corresponding material reaction. Concentration is creating an energy flow that giving form top the thought force that comes from the depths of your body. It is an “entity” i.e. a being with a life of its own, a force of its own, that can act in space outside you. Suppose a magus wants a person to kill or kill himself: he forms the image of a violent action and in the fire of concentration that lasts for months saturates it with a force and develops around it a current of energy. He takes a suitable object, say as dagger, and binds his energy to it and delivers a thought impulse and this instantaneously discharges causing the chosen person to be possessed by the impulse to perform, that motion. You can induce an emotion on the soul of an entity by saturating an object with passion. There are cases in which meditation on an object causes peoples teeth to emanate light rays. By exalting these powers to a maximum, you can even obtain t6he supreme form of creation- the creation of a god.2
Analysis
In the standard interpretation of vodou, there are many supra-individual forces that underlie the cosmos. By performing a material action on an object, these forces will interact and cause an effect to occur. These forces are in the physical world and can cause effects in the world. This is regarded by Evola to be how lower forms of magic work, in its different lower grades of existence all the way down to mere superstitions.
Even though Evola recommends putting vodou on high magical basis, I believe voodoo can still work under lower forms of magic. The understanding is that there are many subtle forces that underlie the cosmos and by performing a material action on an object, these forces can interact in unusual ways. This interpretation makes sense considering we do not exactly know how many of these forces there are and what kinds, and these forces may very well transcend rational explications as to how they operate. Thus, such extreme cases may occur such as bumping the doll into a doorknob and causing the individual to do the same. Evola does not disregard lower forms of magic. He regards his own species of magic- high magic- to be resembling initiatory knowledge the most, but Evola is accommodating of lower forms of magic and certainly does not disregard them. For example, Evola mentions in the magic of effigies a power under which a person would be under the influence of supra-individual forces, and that he may choose thew day and hour in which the forces with his goal are dominant coddling the object, wrapping it up, and having it ready for the opportune moment. In the same article Evola mentions hierarchies of invisible forces.3 Also, Evolas alludes to lower forms of magic in his article on the magic of creation
Idealism Studies 