The Golden Bough
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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Buy of the Kindle edition includes wireless manner of language.Amazon.com Review
Before Joseph Campbell became the world’s most legendary 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 weird lands, with weird foreign peoples, and still weirder customs.” Chief among persons customs–at least as the book is remembered in the well loved imagination–is the sacrificial killing of god-kings to ensure unstinted 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 judge in magic because they are too stupid and backwards to know any better; as a replacement for he remarks that “a savage hardly conceives the honor 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 fantastic body of primitive and barbarous beliefs.” Whatever modern readers have come to reflect of the book, but, its past significance and the eloquence with which Frazer attempts to renovate what one might call a unifying theory of anthropology cannot be denied. –Ron Hogan
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This is NOT the foundation of modern anthropology. The reader from Oregon is absolutely right. It was considered a fantastic work but is no longer held in such esteem. The thought that societies progressed from magic to religion is outdated. As Mary Douglas said, Frazer led comparative religion into a blind alley. Read something written in the last century if you want a real anthropological veiw.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
A classic, Frazer’s “Golden Bough” has been read by a few generations of scholars. But, Frazer’s nearly mythology standing as one of the first mythologists in Very ancient History has led to an over-evaluation of some of his work, in my opinion. Written in ramble manner only confuses the reader and weakens Frazer’s arguements so that one may find it hard to argue with point passages. By the end, it seems that Frazer has gotten lost in his “search for Ur” and forgotten that his assumptions are having no effect until proven by text, records, and logic.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
Finally, a book of magical study that does not occupy ritual circles. I also appreciated the in-depth past account, though some of it was a small silly. For instance, one part mentioned that women involved in bulb gathering were not to gather bulbs during their unclean period lest there be a bulb shortage.
Really, compared to Green Magic, this is at least real, so I ought to a least give this a positive rating. It does tell decent history on the development of magic, and in the history itself it tells brief customs and also some examples of magic itself. Besides, one of the people rating Green Magic tried to get people not to vote for me.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
OK, so you want to get the best total look at what once was out
there. This is where you start to study: The Moon, The Planet
Mother, the Grail, pick a card, any card. This is as close as you can get to a name that spent his whole life, gathering together the “Primary Source” tales that make up the very base or start of what we reflect we once were. Out of Fraser’s work came a lot of “Digging” and additional looking, but no one ever got reasonably so much into the 12 to 14 volumes….YES that’s right! St. Martin’s Press, in the ancient Flat Iron Building in New York, should still have a few sets. Get the perfect set. And an OED and a excellent link (DSL, ISDN) on the WEB to an ISP that is not going to go up in “Smoke” and “Insider Profit Building”. Get this, and then follow your own best inner self, to where EVER it takes you, it’s where only you can go anyway, but you be there: “…and know it, as if for the first time…” as T.S. Elliot used to say.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
It is an incredible book for people like me and you and the writer is also absolutely fascinating in his analysis of mankind.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5