Some Thoughts on Image Magic
I don't know any Ukrainian witches personally, but of two things we can be absolutely certain.
First, that there are witches in Ukraine. There are witches everywhere.
Second, that they're making very good use of all those little Putin dolls.
Here in the US we tend to speak of magical images as “Voodoo dolls,” but of course the Craft has its own traditional terminology for this very venerable magical technology. In the language of Witchcraft, we generally speak of mommets and poppets.
(Quick: Name a famous 60s Witches-and-Warlocks singing group.)
Though the terms sound similar, and (these days, at least) tend to be used synonymously, they have very different origins.
A poppet is a magical image, a puppet a plaything, but the historical relationship between the two is obvious. Both are diminutives, from the Norman French word poupette, a small child or doll (cp. modern French poupée, “doll”), ultimately (via “Vulgar” Latin) from the Latin pupa, “girl, doll.”
Interestingly—pins notwithstanding—witches (especially British ones) sometimes use “poppet” as a term of affection for a small child. Witches are strange people.
Mommet, on the other hand, has a rather more sinister history. Interestingly, the word derives from Muhammad, the name of the Muslim uber-prophet.
Islamophobia is nothing new in the West. (Considering the nasty history of Islam, and the endemic sibling-rivalry of the two big Abrahamic imperialist superpowers down the centuries, that's hardly surprising.) Medieval Christians and Muslims were wont to diss each other as pagans (remember paynim?), and to characterize one another as idolaters. So a mommet (or maumet) is an idol, an image, a false god. Maumetry meant “idolatry”.
Of course, these days witches mostly don't use mommets for worship.
If we had to make a distinction between mommets and poppets, one might suggest—counter-intuitively, one might think—that poppets are female magical images, mommets male ones.
As I'm sure I don't need to tell you, the Craft has its own warped sense of humor.
In Terry Pratchett's Witches Abroad, arch-witch Nanny Ogg meets up with Mrs. Gogol, the Voodoo lady. An interesting dialogue ensues.
