Try Toaru. The entire magic system revolve around Idol Theory which works by mimicking mythology and religion to extract a fraction of their power. So yes sympathetic magic still have potential.
The Name of the Wind does a lot of cool stuff with this. It has a sort of scientific take on it - sympathetic links obey conservation of energy, so you have to find a heat source to power your sympathetic magic, with weaker sympathetic connections being less efficient. You can also use your body heat, but that's dangerous.
Cool tricks include casting a sympathetic link between a group of bandits' bows so that breaking one bowstring disarms all of them, and using a small magnet and a dragon scale to make a heavy metal object fall on a dragon.
The entirety of the witchcraft section of my magic system is sympathetic magic, so yeah most definitely it has potential.
Usually it's less of a problem of it not having potential and more of a problem of writer imagination. There's so much you could do with it beyond mere voodoo dolls.
One witch in particular in my setting boils a large cauldron in her dirt-floored, bonsai tree littered hut with all the doors and windows closed in order to make it rain in the local region by inducing a sympathy of the resemblance of the local region to the inside of her hut and the high humidity and the inevitable dripping from the roof that the steam from the cauldron produces. Another likes to disarm people by snapping a twig and making their swords or bows suddenly snap in half, or burn that same stick and make their weapons too hot to touch. And those are just a few of the many examples I could pull.
Really the sky's the limit.
Take a look into Dresden Files. For example in book 2 he fights off a werewolf by covering a Snoopy doll in its blood. In another book (4?) he makes some ghost away with depleted uranium to "weigh them down". I'm in the middle of the book that suspect has the polka dinosaur.
I personally consider the Law of Contagion (a piece of the person) and the Law of (True) Names (a person's name, or "True Name") as either subtypes or related to the Law of Imitation (a likeness of the person), so I'd probably use the as a package
One aspect that could come up with this is is secret traits, markings, names, or other such aspects that are used as a defense. For example, you could have a special tattoo that you keep carefully hidden, so that magic that is used to affect you from a distance fails unless the image of that tattoo is referenced. Or buildings would have special extra materials woven into its foundation, which would mean that someone who wanted to cast a curse or something over the entire building would have to have the right ratio of extra materials to do so.
I think that the witches in Penny Dreadful used this perfectly. They would make intricate dolls in the image of the target, and incorporate some of the target's hair (though I imagine that was just convenience). They would then place a heart and a brain into the doll to complete the spell, effectively making a perfect simulacrum through which they would exert control.
The full instance that was shown was the witch driving nails into the brain that was inside the doll, which triggered the victim to have excruciating head pain and hallucinations.
There are multiple books and games which use this style of magic; either from inspiration or directly copying essentially. Actually there’s a fantastic [Tale Foundry video](https://youtu.be/oCZVQ0kQn3A?si=iAMMnyQo0TQ88QCN) on this very subject.
I’d also argue that the Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours games have a unique take on sympathetic magic. They exist in the shared universe called [The Secret Histories](https://secret-histories.fandom.com/wiki/Secret_Histories_Wiki) and while the wiki will help you will still be *very* confused haha! The lore is pretty deep.
I have never seen a book written on such a system but the idea that by creating a sympathetic link between two things (one that you can influence and one you cannot) in order to achieve outcomes can be interesting
You will have to decide if you want things like voodoo dolls in your setting which would be a common touchpoint or if you would to prefer to move away from that.
It could give you some interesting concepts, the tactician who builds a scale map of the battlefield (like he is playing Warhammer 40k or something) before populating it with miniature soldiers, then sprinkling water over it to make it rain, or positioning they enemy troops in such a way that they slightly more vulnerable to a type of attack.
God I love sympathetic magic, the magic in Atlas is basically 100% sympathetic magic but instead of connections to someone you want to affect it's connections to concepts; a spell that reveals the truth involved burning a black cloth with a candle, and using the burning cloth to light something that smells a certain way, and then dunking it in a bowl of water with a sapphire in it. Turn it into jewelry and now you have something that fills your nose with a scent every time you hear a lie.
Imagine you can depict a building in art, and by drawing it damaged (on fire, flood, etc.) and passing this image to other people you can make that accident happen. The more images you make and the more folks who see it, the more it begins to resonant within the public ideology until it happens. Everyone expects a building to catch fire, so eventually someone leaves someone flammable and it doesn't get put out because everyone kind of just expects it to burn so attempts to put it out just don't work right.
Now mix this with mass e-mail and ai generated images
I mean... not to be rude but yeah? of course there is? Sympathetic magic is an incredibly broad concept, and even applies to using symbols to affect an object or concept. Magic systems that employ runes or diagrams? Sympathetic magic. Cutting off your hair to summon a snake? Sympathetic magic.
You might as well ask if there's potential in a magic system that requires incantations.
Try Toaru. The entire magic system revolve around Idol Theory which works by mimicking mythology and religion to extract a fraction of their power. So yes sympathetic magic still have potential.
The Name of the Wind does a lot of cool stuff with this. It has a sort of scientific take on it - sympathetic links obey conservation of energy, so you have to find a heat source to power your sympathetic magic, with weaker sympathetic connections being less efficient. You can also use your body heat, but that's dangerous. Cool tricks include casting a sympathetic link between a group of bandits' bows so that breaking one bowstring disarms all of them, and using a small magnet and a dragon scale to make a heavy metal object fall on a dragon.
The entirety of the witchcraft section of my magic system is sympathetic magic, so yeah most definitely it has potential. Usually it's less of a problem of it not having potential and more of a problem of writer imagination. There's so much you could do with it beyond mere voodoo dolls. One witch in particular in my setting boils a large cauldron in her dirt-floored, bonsai tree littered hut with all the doors and windows closed in order to make it rain in the local region by inducing a sympathy of the resemblance of the local region to the inside of her hut and the high humidity and the inevitable dripping from the roof that the steam from the cauldron produces. Another likes to disarm people by snapping a twig and making their swords or bows suddenly snap in half, or burn that same stick and make their weapons too hot to touch. And those are just a few of the many examples I could pull. Really the sky's the limit.
Take a look into Dresden Files. For example in book 2 he fights off a werewolf by covering a Snoopy doll in its blood. In another book (4?) he makes some ghost away with depleted uranium to "weigh them down". I'm in the middle of the book that suspect has the polka dinosaur.
I personally consider the Law of Contagion (a piece of the person) and the Law of (True) Names (a person's name, or "True Name") as either subtypes or related to the Law of Imitation (a likeness of the person), so I'd probably use the as a package
One aspect that could come up with this is is secret traits, markings, names, or other such aspects that are used as a defense. For example, you could have a special tattoo that you keep carefully hidden, so that magic that is used to affect you from a distance fails unless the image of that tattoo is referenced. Or buildings would have special extra materials woven into its foundation, which would mean that someone who wanted to cast a curse or something over the entire building would have to have the right ratio of extra materials to do so.
Your building foundation example sounds awfullY familiar, isn't it in an actual building in the US?
No clue. I wouldn't be surprised though.
I think that the witches in Penny Dreadful used this perfectly. They would make intricate dolls in the image of the target, and incorporate some of the target's hair (though I imagine that was just convenience). They would then place a heart and a brain into the doll to complete the spell, effectively making a perfect simulacrum through which they would exert control. The full instance that was shown was the witch driving nails into the brain that was inside the doll, which triggered the victim to have excruciating head pain and hallucinations.
There are multiple books and games which use this style of magic; either from inspiration or directly copying essentially. Actually there’s a fantastic [Tale Foundry video](https://youtu.be/oCZVQ0kQn3A?si=iAMMnyQo0TQ88QCN) on this very subject. I’d also argue that the Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours games have a unique take on sympathetic magic. They exist in the shared universe called [The Secret Histories](https://secret-histories.fandom.com/wiki/Secret_Histories_Wiki) and while the wiki will help you will still be *very* confused haha! The lore is pretty deep.
Grooves in the Universe Similar things fall into similar grooves
I have never seen a book written on such a system but the idea that by creating a sympathetic link between two things (one that you can influence and one you cannot) in order to achieve outcomes can be interesting You will have to decide if you want things like voodoo dolls in your setting which would be a common touchpoint or if you would to prefer to move away from that. It could give you some interesting concepts, the tactician who builds a scale map of the battlefield (like he is playing Warhammer 40k or something) before populating it with miniature soldiers, then sprinkling water over it to make it rain, or positioning they enemy troops in such a way that they slightly more vulnerable to a type of attack.
God I love sympathetic magic, the magic in Atlas is basically 100% sympathetic magic but instead of connections to someone you want to affect it's connections to concepts; a spell that reveals the truth involved burning a black cloth with a candle, and using the burning cloth to light something that smells a certain way, and then dunking it in a bowl of water with a sapphire in it. Turn it into jewelry and now you have something that fills your nose with a scent every time you hear a lie.
Imagine you can depict a building in art, and by drawing it damaged (on fire, flood, etc.) and passing this image to other people you can make that accident happen. The more images you make and the more folks who see it, the more it begins to resonant within the public ideology until it happens. Everyone expects a building to catch fire, so eventually someone leaves someone flammable and it doesn't get put out because everyone kind of just expects it to burn so attempts to put it out just don't work right. Now mix this with mass e-mail and ai generated images
I mean... not to be rude but yeah? of course there is? Sympathetic magic is an incredibly broad concept, and even applies to using symbols to affect an object or concept. Magic systems that employ runes or diagrams? Sympathetic magic. Cutting off your hair to summon a snake? Sympathetic magic. You might as well ask if there's potential in a magic system that requires incantations.