Williamsburg Regional Library

The golden bough, a study in magic and religion, by Sir James George Frazer

eng

index present

non fiction

The golden bough

16580724

by Sir James George Frazer

a study in magic and religion

Before Joseph Campbell became the world's most famous practitioner of comparative mythology, there was Sir James George Frazer. The Golden Bough was originally published in two volumes in 1890, but Frazer became so enamored of his topic that over the next few decades he expanded the work sixfold, then in 1922 cut it all down to a single thick edition suitable for mass distribution. The thesis on the origins of magic and religion that it elaborates "will be long and laborious," Frazer warns readers, "but may possess something of the charm of a voyage of discovery, in which we shall visit many strange lands, with strange foreign peoples, and still stranger customs." Chief among those customs--at least as the book is remembered in the popular imagination--is the sacrificial killing of god-kings to ensure bountiful harvests, which Frazer traces through several cultures, including in his elaborations the myths of Adonis, Osiris, and Balder. While highly influential in its day, The Golden Bough has come under harsh critical scrutiny in subsequent decades, with many of its descriptions of regional folklore and legends deemed less than reliable. Furthermore, much of its tone is rooted in a philosophy of social Darwinism--sheer cultural imperialism, really--that finds its most explicit form in Frazer's rhetorical question: "If in the most backward state of human society now known to us we find magic thus conspicuously present and religion conspicuously absent, may we not reasonably conjecture that the civilised races of the world have also at some period of their history passed through a similar intellectual phase?" (The truly civilized races, he goes on to say later, though not particularly loudly, are the ones whose minds evolve beyond religious belief to embrace the rational structures of scientific thought.) Frazer was much too genteel to state plainly that "primitive" races believe in magic because they are too stupid and backwards to know any better; instead he remarks that "a savage hardly conceives the distinction commonly drawn by more advanced peoples between the natural and the supernatural." And he certainly was not about to make explicit the logical extension of his theories--"that Christian legend, dogma, and ritual" (to quote Robert Graves's summation of Frazer in The White Goddess) "are the refinement of a great body of primitive and barbarous beliefs." Whatever modern readers have come to think of the book, however, its historical significance and the eloquence with which Frazer attempts to develop what one might call a unifying theory of anthropology cannot be denied. --Ron Hogan

The King of the wood -- Priestly kings -- Sympathetic magic -- Magic and religion -- The Magical control of the weather -- Magicians as kings -- Incarnate human gods -- Departmental Kings of nature -- The Worship of trees -- Relics of tree-worship in modern Europe -- The Influence of the sexes on vegetation -- The Sacred marriage -- The Kings of Rome and Alba -- The Succession to the kingdom in ancient Latium -- The Worship of the oak -- Dianus and Diana -- The Burden of royalty -- The Perils of the soul -- Tabooed acts -- Tabooed persons -- Tabooed things -- Tabooed words -- Our Debt to the savage -- The Killing of the divine king -- Temporary kings -- Sacrifice of the king's son -- Succession to the soul -- The Killing of the tree-spirit -- The Myth of Adonis -- Adonis in Syria -- Adonis in Cyprus -- The Ritual of Adonis -- The Gardens of Adonis -- The Myth and ritual of Attis -- Attis as a god of vegetation -- Human representatives of Attis -- Oriental religions in the west -- The Myth of Osiris -- The Ritual of Osiris -- The nature of Osiris -- Isis -- Osiris and the sun -- Dionysus -- Demeter and Persephone -- The Corn-mother and the corn-maiden in northern Europe -- The Corn-mother in many lands -- Lityserses -- The Corn-spirit as an animal -- Ancient deities of vegetation as animals -- Eating the god -- Homeopathic magic of a flesh diet -- Killing the divine animal -- The Propitiation of wild animals by hunters -- Types of animal sacrament --The Transference of evil -- The Public expulsion of evils -- Public scapegoats -- Human scapegoats in classical antiquity -- Killing the god in Mexico -- Between heaven and earth -- The myth of Balder -- The Fire-festivals of Europe -- The interpretation of the fire-festivals -- The Burning of human beings in the fires -- Balder and the mistletoe -- The Eternal soul in folk-tales -- The Eternal soul in folk-custom -- The Golden Bough -- Farewell to Nemi

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