ABSTRACT
Perhaps the first thing that strikes the reader of Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough is Wittgenstein’s insistence that Frazer is wrong-crucially wrongin holding that magical beliefs and practices have the character of mistakes. This contention is certainly uppermost in Frazer’s thoughts, as can be seen by considering his account of the nature of homoeopathic magic. The practice of magic is grounded in the ritualist’s acceptance of a law, the Law of Similarity, which states simply that “like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause” (Frazer 1922:11). On the principles of homoeopathic magic, a magician wishing to harm his enemy may fashion a small model of that person and then proceed to damage the model by running a needle through it, or by burning it, or by breaking it into pieces. As an example of such a practice, Frazer describes a Malay charm, in which one makes
a corpse of wax from an empty bees’ comb and of the length of a foot-step; then pierce the eye of the image, and your enemy is blind; pierce the stomach, and he is sick; pierce the head, and his head aches; pierce the breast, and his breast will suffer.
