Homeopathic medicine is a good example of both the law of contagion and the law of similarity. For example, mixing snake skin into water, and then diluting it 99.9999% (or even completely removing the substance) is supposed to function as an antidote for most kinds of poisons. I think of it as “magical entanglement”.
That’s a great example. It’s rather similar to the way some branches of Christianity treat “holy water”—if you add ‘normal’ water to ‘holy’ water, it becomes more holy water.
As long as the water is neutral, or at least not as unholy or profane as the holy water was blessed or sacred, the blessing transfers without being conserved.
Oddly, this property is actually implemented in the game known as NetHack. If you have one flask of holy / unholy water, you can turn any number of flasks of normal water to sacred / profane by dipping them into the blessed / cursed flask.
Homeopathic medicine is a good example of both the law of contagion and the law of similarity. For example, mixing snake skin into water, and then diluting it 99.9999% (or even completely removing the substance) is supposed to function as an antidote for most kinds of poisons. I think of it as “magical entanglement”.
That’s a great example. It’s rather similar to the way some branches of Christianity treat “holy water”—if you add ‘normal’ water to ‘holy’ water, it becomes more holy water.
As long as the water is neutral, or at least not as unholy or profane as the holy water was blessed or sacred, the blessing transfers without being conserved.
Oddly, this property is actually implemented in the game known as NetHack. If you have one flask of holy / unholy water, you can turn any number of flasks of normal water to sacred / profane by dipping them into the blessed / cursed flask.