32 International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 10, 2019
Homeopathy As a Form of Practical Magic
Jonathan Simmons
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
Abstract
Homeopathy is generally thought of as a form of
complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)
developed in the late 1700s. Although
homeopathic medicine is little more than a
placebo from a scientific perspective, advocates
of the treatments have nonetheless influenced
medical practice, research, and public health. In
this article, I examine homeopathy and its
significance as a form of practical magic and
part of the occulture or “cultic milieu,” which
refers to a spectrum of mainstream beliefs and
practices that herald an ongoing reenchantment
process (Partridge, 2016). By focusing on
homeopathy's status as a health practice,
scholars have failed to take its more esoteric
roots seriously. This contribution is important
because, though medicine and science have both
advanced rapidly since the era of miracles and
magical cures, many consumers turn to
homeopathy instead of conventional treatments
to both imbue the everyday with spiritual
meaning and solve concrete problems left
unaddressed by conventional medicine.
Keywords: homeopathy magic occulture
religion health
In November 2009, the United Kingdom’s
House of Commons Science and Technology
Committee recommended that the National
Health Service (NHS) stop funding homeopathy,
a form of complementary and alternative
medicine (CAM House of Commons, 2010, p.
34). In 2017, despite concerns about limiting
consumers choice, the NHS decided to stop
funding homeopathic remedies, meaning that
homeopathic remedies would no longer be
available by prescription. Homeopathy is a
popular but controversial form of health
treatment with magico-religious undertones. In
what follows, I argue that we should not
understand practices such as homeopathy merely
as pseudoscience. Rather, homeopathy is an
example of a complex magical system that has
been become “scientificized” and ubiquitous
(Granholm &Asprem, 2014, p. 15). Many
scientific and medical professionals see modern
medicine as a secular and scientific activity, and
the NHS’s decision to stop funding homeopathy
was in part driven by this rationalistic worldview
(given the NHS’s desire to prioritize treatments
with robust evidence of clinical effectiveness).
Nevertheless, the NHS, like many other health
care systems, is facing significant challenges in
its attempts to secularize healing (Harrington,
2005). For example, the British Homeopathic
Association (BHA) brought a legal challenge
against the NHS’ decision to stop paying the
cost of homeopathic remedies (Donnelly, 2018).
More broadly, alternative medicines continue to
present an attractive worldview to consumers,
one that reflects “premodern conceptions of
health and the body” (Robertson, 2014, p. 19).
Although advocates for CAM embrace what
might be called a magico-religious approach to
health, many practitioners of these alternative
treatments seek out scientific credentialism and
also acceptance within the same scientific and
medical communities that decry the harms of
pseudoscience and quack medicine. More
importantly, health consumers often see the
presence of homeopathic remedies on pharmacy
shelves as an indication of the treatment’s
legitimacy, and they may not distinguish
between evidence-based medicine and its less
well-grounded alternatives.
Further complicating matters, celebrities have
substantial influence on the public’s health-
related behaviors. Consider that Steve Jobs
(1955–2011), the late founder and CEO of
Apple, apparently turned to CAMs such as
homeopathy for his relatively mild form of
cancer (Greenlee &Ernst, 2012). One need not
look far for many similar cases. Consider, for
example, actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s advocacy
of homeopathy, which she describes as “the first
line of defense” against ailments in “most

International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol.10, 2019 33
countries” outside the US (Praderio, 2017, para.
3). Cutting across traditional boundaries, both
the Jobs and Paltrow examples illustrate the
current fascination with CAM, while also
pointing to a worrying trend of celebrity
influence whereby celebrity’s health decisions
guide the public through their offers of medical
advice or health endorsements (Hoffman et al.,
2017).
Celebrity influence aside, some health services
implicitly validate treatments such as
homeopathy. For example, Health Canada
legitimizes naturopaths as health professionals,
and naturopaths often prescribe homeopathic
remedies (Caulfield &Rachul, 2011). This
blending of some aspects of science while
maintaining a connection with premodern
approaches to healing sets the stage for this
article, in which I present a possible mechanism
for understanding the current fascination with
treatments that are, from an evidence-based
perspective, either ineffective or dangerous.
In a recent IJCS article about a group (Gentle
Wind) based in Maine, Kayla Swanson argues
that quasi-religions allow scholars to focus on
groups that exist at the intersection between
religious and secular. Borrowing from Arthur L.
Greil and Thomas Robbins (1994), quasi-
religions are groups that “either do not see
themselves, or are not seen by others, as
unambiguously religious” (Swanson, 2018, p.
8). In this article, however, I take a different
approach from Swanson while also
acknowledging the importance of considering
the liminal space between the religious and the
secular. I argue that, from a secular perspective,
some forms of CAM are forms of practical
magic, which I define as a set of practices used
to influence or protect the body by calling upon
the assistance of supernatural forces. Although
this definition of practical magic may entertain
any number of contemporary treatments, I add
another element that is relevant to this article.
Instead of occupying a middle position between
the religious and the secular, practical magic is a
blending of the two.
My narrow definition of practical magic borrows
from Adrian Chadwick’s analysis of Iron Age
and Romano-British settlements. Although there
may be little to connect modern and Iron Age
beliefs about magic, Chadwick offers a useful
definition of practical magic as a spectrum of
practices and beliefs reflective of implicit social
structures (Chadwick, 2015, p. 38). More
typically, scholarly discussion of practical magic
focuses on anthropological descriptions of
various people’s pragmatic engagement with
their environment, such as casting a spell for a
safe sea voyage. Consequently, Edvard Hviding
describes practical magic not only as a “false
technical act” but also a “true social act” which
gets at part of the discourse regarding magic’s
role in various cultures. My main focus of
Hviding’s comments here, however, is on how
this false technical act constitutes “bad science”
while also satisfying health consumers’ need for
exceeding natural constraints, or their
ambivalence toward distinguishing between
scientific and medical cures (Hviding 1996,
p. 174).
In addition to conceptualizing homeopathy as a
form of practical magic, it is worth thinking of
CAM as part of what Christopher Partridge has
described as the “occulture,” which refers to a
broad collection of occult and esoteric beliefs
and practices that include human potential
spiritualities, healing, shamanism, alternative
science, and so on (Partridge, 2016). Partridge
argues that, rather than being limited to
subcultural practices (e.g., secret and
underground practices), the esoteric has now
come into the mainstream. In some cases, this
mainstreaming involves seeking out and
achieving a scientific veneer. Significantly,
modern practical magic should be distinguished
from premodern magical practices, which may
have served to provide a cognitive structure
regarding the large domain beyond perception.
By contrast, practical magic sits alongside a
scientific worldview that has increasingly
pushed the mystery back.
This article is organized as follows: In the first
section, I describe homeopathy, highlighting
some current tensions in our analysis of CAM.
In the second section, I describe practical magic
in more detail. In the third section, I analyze
homeopathy’s religious roots. Finally, I apply
the concept of practical magic to homeopathy
and conclude with a discussion of the