Iatromagie Begriff, Merkmale, Motive, Systematik

Magie medieine or - to be more exaet - "iatromagie" as an applieation of magie to the medieal treatment of diseases, is defined as the "eonversion of a theory of world based on aeeordanees and sympathies into praetiee", here to the praetiee of healing. It is a very old way of solving the ineom­ prehensible by an alliance with invisible relations, forees and powers. This alliance is rooted in the magie view of life in which the relations among the phenomena are interpreted not so much by a eause and effeet way of thinking, but rather aeeording to similarities and dissimilarities, sympathy and antipathy. In order to be able to classify the manifold number of most ancient, former and reeent magie healing prodeeures, we propose a classi­ fieation in two parts: simile-magie on the one side, and singularity-magie on the other side. Assoeiated with simile-magie is, for example, the form of the morpho-analogy or the choiee of the remedy aeeording to its similarity to a eertain formal aspeet of the disease. Moreover, the ehromoanalogy, the dynamo-analogy, the ergo-analogy and so forth must also be reckoned as simile-magie. Under the eategory of the singularity-magie those magie remedies are listed, the motivation of whieh is to be sought in the uniqueness of the remedies, in their surprising qualities, or in their mysterious origin.