While looking for something completely unrelated about the use of knot-tieing in magic, I came across some yoga thing with an intro paragraph that really blew my mind:

“There’s a story that when the cockroach sees another insect trying to attack it, it becomes so mortified with fright that the image of that insect freezes in its mind. Due to the intense ideation of the form of its enemy, the enemy actually sees the cockroach as one of its own kind. In other words, the vibration emanating from the cockroach’s mind influences its enemy’s mind into thinking that it is a member of its own species. Thus the cockroach is saved from death, since the insect will not attack one of its own kind. “