Voodoo Dolls

You cannot have a discussion of Voodoo without the mention of Voodoo dolls which is perhaps the most recogonizeable emeblem and symbol of Voodoo today. It appears in near every movie that deals with the subject of voodoo and witchcraft, though it is also perhaps one of the most widely misunderstood aspects of Voodoo as well and one of the key factors that lead to the stigma against Voodoo.

The Voodoo doll uses a form of magick which is known as sympathetic magick, sympathtic magick practices date all the back to ancient Summeria, though the use of the doll is just one form of this type of magick. Sympathic magick is a form of magick in which one uses either themselves or an object to represent another person, and so whatever happens to that object will happen to its intended target.

The idea behind the Voodoo doll as many of us may already know is to form a doll which is meant to represent a particuarly person, though controry to common beleif the doll does not have to look like the target persae, it need only be crafted in the gender of the choosen target and have something of the target attached to it. It could be a photograph of the target, or it could be a bit of thier clothing, hair, nail clippings etc...
The doll can be made either out of wax, clay, or cloth.

Now where the misunderstanding comes in, is that the Voodoo is near always portrayed as an object of evil used to harm or even cause death to another person, now it is true that Voodoo like other forms of traiditional Paganism and Witchcraft practice an Eye for an Eye, but that is not the explicit of the doll.

Voodoo dolls are used widely in healing arts as well as in love spells, and assorted other purposes that do not have to do with causing death and destruction to another person.