Some of us assume that an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence might regard humanity as primitive in the sense that many people still believe in a Prime Mover, in a creator God in the same way we might look askance at older civilizations or more ‘primitive’ cultures which believed in a pantheon of gods, in a specific mythology, in animism or in sympathetic magic.

And yet, these more ancient belief systems still manifest in modern technological cultures, sometimes out in the open, and sometimes in disguised form. Our belief may not have changed all that much. The evolution of the God concept transcends and yet includes these more ancient belief systems, as Ken Wilber might say. Hindu civilization is quite modern, yet still retains an active polytheism as a central cultural characteristic.

There are elements of sympathetic magic in the theory of quantum entanglement, which Einstein described as ‘spooky action at a distance.’ Entanglement holds that when two previously associated particles are split, what occurs to one happens to the other instantaneously without regard to time, and without regard to the distance between them or the supposed universal brake on the speed of light.

Some cultures still hew to a belief in sympathetic magic, the idea that once two objects are associated with one another, they’re forever linked. This concept is often expressed through the notion that an object and its owner are connected even if the owner later parts ways with the object. Clairvoyants sometimes claim they can tell us something about an individual by handling an object previously associated with that person. What about anecdotal evidence which shows precognitive connections between closely associated individuals and even animals and their human owners?

Do proponents of the theory of quantum entanglement still believe, on a subconscious level, in sympathetic magic, which assumes that what happens to one related object affects what happens to the other? Or have those who believe in sympathetic magic had it right along? Our old beliefs stay with us, but what evolves, our understanding of reality, transcends and yet includes the old understanding, so that quantum entanglement contains elements of, and in some ways re-expresses, ancient principles of sympathetic magic.

We believe we’ve come far in casting off old ideas, yet have we? Can we really claim sophistication in our understanding of the universe and how objects relate to one another? Perhaps ancient ideas are sometimes prescient. These notions grasp the cosmos on an intuitive scale which, though admitting of no scientific merit, contain a nuance and express an elegance which withstands the rigors of the history of ideas. They survive.  And maybe many new ideas are really old, or at least they contain elements of ancient concepts which modern theorists might be embarrassed to admit.

© 2025 by Michael C. Just