Sometimes when you are reading through material something grabs your attention and makes you think. For me, a good example of this occurred when I was putting together the material for A Collection of Magical Secrets. The piece was a charm to make a thief give back a stolen item. The instigators of this are ants, as a named wax figure of the suspect (you need to have some idea of who committed the theft) is placed in an anthill. Here the principles of sympathetic magic come into action, as the suspect is troubled by the feeling of ants crawling over their skin until they return the stolen item. As with many such charms from the eighteenth century, it does require a blessed item (wax), suggesting that the person using the charm needed to speak nicely to their local priest! Here is the charm from A Collection of Magical Secrets:
In Order To Make A Thief
Give Back The Stolen Item
You need to take some blessed wax and with it, fashion a figurine or a statue of the person suspected of the theft. And write the name of this person on its forehead and then place this figurine into an anthill, while saying these words:
“In the name of Jesus Christ, thou art just, Oh Lord and thy judgment is just. Bestow thy virtue on this my ritual and be blessed, praised and glorified throughout all the Ages. So Mote It Be.”
As soon as you have done this, it is assured, that the thief will never have any rest nor repose and will be forced to return the item he has taken without fail.
David Rankine 
A German folk belief states that a bottle of wine buried in an anthill will bestow super-strength on its imbiber. That’s a superhero back story for someone…
There’s also an interesting charm in The Long-Lost Friend to cure wasting diseases by boiling an egg in one’s urine and leaving it on an anthill.