The Golden Bough: Taboo and the Perils of the Soul. The Burden of Royalty

The Golden Bough: Taboo and the Perils of the Soul. The Burden of Royalty
Author: James George Frazer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 444
Release: 1911
Genre: Magic
ISBN:

Frazer's series which attempted to define the shared elements of religious belief and scientific thought, discussing fertility rites, human sacrifice, the dying god, the scapegoat, and many other symbols and practices whose influences had extended into 20th-century culture. His thesis is that old religions were fertility cults that revolved around the worship and periodic sacrifice of a sacred king. Frazer proposed that mankind progresses from magic through religious belief to scientific thought.

The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Complete)

The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Complete)
Author: Sir James George Frazer
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
Total Pages: 6687
Release: 1957-01-01
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1465538461

For some time I have been preparing a general work on primitive superstition and religion. Among the problems which had attracted my attention was the hitherto unexplained rule of the Arician priesthood; and last spring it happened that in the course of my reading I came across some facts which, combined with others I had noted before, suggested an explanation of the rule in question. As the explanation, if correct, promised to throw light on some obscure features of primitive religion, I resolved to develop it fully, and, detaching it from my general work, to issue it as a separate study. This book is the result. Now that the theory, which necessarily presented itself to me at first in outline, has been worked out in detail, I cannot but feel that in some places I may have pushed it too far. If this should prove to have been the case, I will readily acknowledge and retract my error as soon as it is brought home to me. Meantime my essay may serve its purpose as a first attempt to solve a difficult problem, and to bring a variety of scattered facts into some sort of order and system. A justification is perhaps needed of the length at which I have dwelt upon the popular festivals observed by European peasants in spring, at midsummer, and at harvest. It can hardly be too often repeated, since it is not yet generally recognised, that in spite of their fragmentary character the popular superstitions and customs of the peasantry are by far the fullest and most trustworthy evidence we possess as to the primitive religion of the Aryans. Indeed the primitive Aryan, in all that regards his mental fibre and texture, is not extinct. He is amongst us to this day. The great intellectual and moral forces which have revolutionised the educated world have scarcely affected the peasant. In his inmost beliefs he is what his forefathers were in the days when forest trees still grew and squirrels played on the ground where Rome and London now stand.

Bulletin

Bulletin
Author: Nottingham (England). Public Libraries
Publisher:
Total Pages: 470
Release: 1913
Genre:
ISBN:

The Golden Bough

The Golden Bough
Author: James George Frazer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 431
Release: 2012-04-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108047521

Frazer's innovative and controversial 1890 examination of classical religion, and of the place of human sacrifice in cultures worldwide.