Sympathetic Magic

From WandaVision to Agatha All Along to Vision Quest, one word runs through this family’s shows, and that word is healing. In reality they meet a pain they cannot bear and a question nobody can answer, so they use sympathetic magic to build a space where pain can be handled (Wanda’s sitcom in Westview, Billy’s Witches’ Road, and Vision’s house in the mind), and they allow reality to stand still.

Sympathetic magic moves a person’s pain and misfortune onto a doll or a sorcerer. It is the necessary path of both the conservation of natural power and the self-circulation of a society. A society makes pain, so it has to absorb pain, or it needs another society to absorb the pain it produces. Sometimes that transfer becomes a sacrifice. Wanda sacrifices the residents of Westview, Billy sacrifices the witches, and Vision sacrifices the other AIs.