Sympathetic magic

It was my first day in my General knowledge in art class in my visual art studio at my second year of high school. Our Art teacher, Mr. Justice, walked the class into an introduction of what Art is and how art came about and who did Art begin with. This class actually opened my mind about art from just being a common drawing of pencil lead on a surface of paper. After taking this class I looked at art from a different perspective and then my interest and love began to grow more for it. For the introduction of Art, we learnt that Art evolved from the age of the prehistoric or the cave man. The cave men used stones, animal blood, and other natural materials to make phenomenal art forms against their cave walls. But those art forms that are still seen on these walls today were not made by the cave men for beauty but were used for the purpose of a ritual known as the Sympathetic magic which is also known as the imitative magic. This kind of ritual which is based on the metaphysical belief that like affects like. It is normally known to be an offensive ritual. It also the basis forms of divination and can be compared to the ritual which is known today as voodoo. For instance, a line can be drawn to represent the life of a particular person that the ritual is aimed at. It could be drawn on any surface together with an image representation of the person or the victim. The line is drawn to show how long the person will live. The longer the line, the longer the person lives. Of the line is short, then the persons life is cut short also. We learned that the cave men used this same kind of ritual to help them hunt animals for food and shelter and also protect themselves from predators. They perform this magic by drawing the image of the animal and then omit some features of the animal. The animal could be sketched without eyes, which affects the actual animal’s eyesight and therefore wouldn’t be able to se it’s attackers. In other cases, some animals are drawn with a hole through their body, a missing leg, nose, ear, or any part of the animal’s defensive system to make the animal defenseless. After this class, I then saw that Art can also be magic.