The Golden Bough (Penguin Modern Classics)

Disappointed in this Dead Dodo Vintage edition. No table on contents available from the sidebar. Only the cover. Thus either a lot of bookmarking or a straight through read. Formatting is fine. Better to get the SMK Books edition (2015).

Very poor quality book. The print is very small, the page margins are small, and the print is single spaced. Very difficult if not impossible to read. In addition, the paper quality is very poor. Very disappointed.

While not explicitly a "review," the following essay explains how reading Frazier's The Golden Bough altered the course of my life:

The Mythology and Birth of The Cynningwydd The Cynningwydd: The King of the Wood

There is, if you will, a mythology to the composition of my novel, that could if one were so inclined lead to the supposition that in the spring of 1977 I was visited by some form of the White Goddess and directed by her to read the first chapter of Frazier's The Golden Bough, from which all else grew. She appeared to me in the form of a middle aged female professor whom I did not know, and yet who engaged me in a conversation that led to her asking if I had read this chapter, and to my proceeding directly to the college library and doing so. I do not recall ever conversing with this woman again. Ever since I had read and loved The Once and Future King by T.H. White as a teenager, and noted that despite the word "Future" in the title, there was in effect no story of Arthur's future contained in that novel, I had dreamed of writing a novel based upon his return. I was also completing my thesis, The History and Development of the Novel, and had just concluded reading, in the order they were written, the first 50 or so greatest novels ever written. As I read them I kept thinking, I see how they do this; I can do this. So the timing was ripe for me to begin trying to execute my dream and now, having discovered Frazier's work, I suddenly had the inspiration I needed: Arthur must become Frazier's King of the Wood!
Chapter One of The Golden Bough is entitled "The King of the Wood" and is further divided into sub-sections, two of which are "Diana and Virbius" and "Artemis and Hippolytus." For Frazier, the entirety of The Golden Bough (which by its third edition [1906--15] comprised twelve volumes) is an exploration of the meaning of the myth of the King of the Wood: His "Preface" begins, "The primary aim of this book is to explain the remarkable rule which regulated the succession to the priesthood of Diana at Aricia." (ix) Later, in Chapter One, he states:

"The object of this book is. . . to offer a fairly probable explanation of the priesthood at Nemi" (5). Finally, we find this in "Recapitulation":
We can now perhaps understand why the ancients identified Hippolytus, the consort of Artemis, with Virbius....[and] that Diana of the Wood herself had a male companion Virbius by name, who was to her what Adonis was to Venus...and lastly, that this mythical Virbius was represented in modern times by a line of priest known as Kings of the Wood, who regularly perished by the swords of their successors, and whose lives were in a manner bound up with a certain tree in the grove, because so long as that tree was uninjured they were safe from attack."

So, to recapitulate for myself: Is it not remarkable that a brief conversation with a woman, whom I did not know and never really saw again, led me, just at the time that I was trying to come up with an adventure for a reincarnated Arthur, to the myth not only of The King of the Wood, but also that of Artemis and Hippolytus? Not only did I know within days that my young hero would begin his adventures by having to defeat the King of the Wood, but I also had the seeds for my own linking of Hippolytus to Arthur, of the destined Prince of Athens who is tragically cut down before he can ever become King to the King of England who was raised in obscurity and secrecy, not knowing he was of royal blood, and never dreamed he would become the Greatest King England has ever known. In effect, when Arthur is about the same age as Hippolytus was when he died, Arthur pulls the sword from the stone and is suddenly thrust into a state of being King. Put another way, Hippolytus' unfulfilled soul's destiny, to be a great King of Athens--shortly to become the center of the civilized world--is fulfilled in Arthur's rule of Camelot--which he will make the center of the civilized world. Much of the opening sections of The Cynningwydd was now in motion.
I also have an addendum that may interest lovers of The Golden Bough. Frazier's book begins, immortally, with the words:

"Who does not know Turner's picture of the Golden Bough? The scene, suffused with the golden glow of imagination in which the divine mind of Turner steeped and transfigured even the fairest natural landscape, is a dream-like vision of the little woodland lake of Nemi--"Diana's Mirror," as it was called by the ancients."

Well, I have a curious answer for that question! A lovely flight attendant whom I was dating a few years later (K.T.) knew of my fascination with Frazier's book and found a copy that included the picture discussed. Below it were the words "Tate Gallery, London." Later, finding herself in London and free for a few hours, she went to the Tate and inquired about seeing the picture. She was told it was in storage but arrangements could be made for her to view it by appointment in a week or two. K.T. replied that she was only in London for the day, in fact for a few more hours. Now I should add that not only was K.T. a particularly lovely woman, but she also possessed a sweet mid-western wholesomeness that could have inspired adoration in a stone. Immediately, some young British gentleman stepped forward and volunteered to take her to the basement and show her the painting. Once there, at first, no paintings were evident at all--merely a series of vertical panels along one wall. Grasping one of these, the gentleman pulled upon one of them and it slid outwards, revealing the painting mounted along one side! Now all of this was twenty or thirty years ago, but unless the Tate has rearranged its displays, the answer to Frazier's question, Who does not know Turner's picture of the Golden Bough, is, if one rephrases to "who has not seen..." is RELATIVELY NO ONE!

This is one of the abridged editions mentioned below.

This is not a "review" of the classic "Golden Bough." This is a review of several hardback editions available to the collector which are complimentary to each other's content and pagination. The purchaser may wish to take care in selecting which edition of the Golden Bough they consider for purchase. Several hardbound editions exist.

The most common edition is the 2-volume abridged 4th edition,this is the edition supervised by Graves widow; it is woefully incomplete. It is to the 3rd Edition that most collectors will want to turn. The 3rd edition has twelve volumes, and a 1-volume afterward, which, when assembled look rather like a set of encyclopedias. There have been twelve reliable and interchangable printings from 1911 to 1990 which may allow the collector the opportunity to assemble a complete set of mis-matching volumes, as I have done, spending less than $240 to assemble the entire series, or averaging less than $20.00 a volume. The original publishers to look for are MacMillan & Co. and St. Martin's Press. One cannot vouch for the print accuracy of the plethora of "On Demand" editions, I avoid them after a couple bad experiences with other titles.

The numbering on these volumes is sometimes confusing-- The on-line seller's lists always get them wrong, so you may want to do a general search for "Frazer" "Golden Bough Part" and compare the listing to the contents below (as printed on the dust jacket back of the 1990 edition):
The 13 books are divided into 9 parts:
Part I Vols. 1 & 2, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings
Part II Taboo and The Perils of the Soul
Part III The Dying God
Part IV Adonis, Attis Osiris Vols. 1 & 2
Part V Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild Vols. 1&2
Part VI The Scapegoat
Part VII Balder the Beautiful: The Fire Festivals of Europe and
The Doctrine of the External Soul
Part VIII Bibliography and General Index
Part IX Aftermath: A Supplement to "The Golden Bough."

These books ought to be required reading to any student of religion, history, sociology, and occult sciences.

This is not a "review" of the classic "Golden Bough." This is a review of several hardback editions available to the collector which are complimentary to each other's content and pagination. The purchaser may wish to take care in selecting which edition of the Golden Bough they consider for purchase. Several hardbound editions exist.

The most common edition is the 2-volume abridged 4th edition,this is the edition supervised by Graves widow; it is woefully incomplete. It is to the 3rd Edition that most collectors will want to turn. The 3rd edition has twelve volumes, and a 1-volume afterward, which, when assembled look rather like a set of encyclopedias. There have been twelve reliable and interchangable printings from 1911 to 1990 which may allow the collector the opportunity to assemble a complete set of mis-matching volumes, as I have done, spending less than $240 to assemble the entire series, or averaging less than $20.00 a volume. The original publishers to look for are MacMillan & Co. and St. Martin's Press. One cannot vouch for the print accuracy of the plethora of "On Demand" editions, I avoid them after a couple bad experiences with other titles.

The numbering on these volumes is sometimes confusing-- The on-line seller's lists always get them wrong, so you may want to do a general search for "Frazer" "Golden Bough Part" and compare the listing to the contents below (as printed on the dust jacket back of the 1990 edition):
The 13 books are divided into 9 parts:
Part I Vols. 1 & 2, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings
Part II Taboo and The Perils of the Soul
Part III The Dying God
Part IV Adonis, Attis Osiris Vols. 1 & 2
Part V Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild Vols. 1&2
Part VI The Scapegoat
Part VII Balder the Beautiful: The Fire Festivals of Europe and
The Doctrine of the External Soul
Part VIII Bibliography and General Index
Part IX Aftermath: A Supplement to "The Golden Bough."

These books ought to be required reading to any student of religion, history, sociology, and occult sciences.

This is not a "review" of the classic "Golden Bough." This is a review of several hardback editions available to the collector which are complimentary to each other's content and pagination. The purchaser may wish to take care in selecting which edition of the Golden Bough they consider for purchase. Several hardbound editions exist.

The most common edition is the 2-volume abridged 4th edition,this is the edition supervised by Graves widow; it is woefully incomplete. It is to the 3rd Edition that most collectors will want to turn. The 3rd edition has twelve volumes, and a 1-volume afterward, which, when assembled look rather like a set of encyclopedias. There have been twelve reliable and interchangable printings from 1911 to 1990 which may allow the collector the opportunity to assemble a complete set of mis-matching volumes, as I have done, spending less than $240 to assemble the entire series, or averaging less than $20.00 a volume. The original publishers to look for are MacMillan & Co. and St. Martin's Press. One cannot vouch for the print accuracy of the plethora of "On Demand" editions, I avoid them after a couple bad experiences with other titles.

The numbering on these volumes is sometimes confusing-- The on-line seller's lists always get them wrong, so you may want to do a general search for "Frazer" "Golden Bough Part" and compare the listing to the contents below (as printed on the dust jacket back of the 1990 edition):
The 13 books are divided into 9 parts:
Part I Vols. 1 & 2, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings
Part II Taboo and The Perils of the Soul
Part III The Dying God
Part IV Adonis, Attis Osiris Vols. 1 & 2
Part V Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild Vols. 1&2
Part VI The Scapegoat
Part VII Balder the Beautiful: The Fire Festivals of Europe and
The Doctrine of the External Soul
Part VIII Bibliography and General Index
Part IX Aftermath: A Supplement to "The Golden Bough."

These books ought to be required reading to any student of religion, history, sociology, and occult sciences.

While it has often been suggested in many Archaeological contexts, this book describes the only known fully explicated proto-theory of how magic may have evolved into religion. That is to say, it explains how Frazer's very complicated theory may have once served as the mythical outer shell, which when loaded with theological content, becomes either a vehicle for, or an actual proto-religion.

No one should be surprised that the author's basic thesis is that there is something intrinsic about human nature and human consciousness that makes magical rituals (and the beliefs they contain that also sustain them): self-generating, self-justifying and self-replicating. It is an almost inexplicable trans-generational even trans-epochal process that may be continuous, discrete, possess long gaps, evolve in places that have no possible connections with other humans, but a process that still occurs over vast stretches of time -- stretches of time that go well beyond the beliefs used to justify the magical content that was used to generate them in the first place.

I had read many independent references that pointed to the Christian myths of the resurrection, Easter, Christmas, the virgin birth, god as messiah and savior, baptism, wine as sacrament, holding Sundays as sacred, blood as wine, and the cross as a religious symbol -- all as having been pilfered from the Egyptian myths of the gods of Osiris. In particular there is a well-documented book by Payam Nabarz, called "The Mysteries of Mithras" that carefully and convincingly sets forth this thesis, as well as many others about how pagan beliefs eventually morphed into proto-religion, and how those proto-religions also shaped Christianity. (see my the store review of that book.)

Let us face a rather obvious but important fact: magic began as poorly devised and poorly researched science -- science without even a semblance of the "scientific method" -- if you will. Proof was not nearly as important as authority, so magic might properly be called "the first proto-science," a science based mostly on the secrets of authority. Clearly none of this was innocent. And although the author does not get into this directly, at some point, religious authorities understood the immense power to control people with their magic/proto-science. That is why they institutionalized it.

Oddly, the origin of ritual, according to Frazer, was magic rather than religion? And even odder, magic began as just the opposite of belief in a supernatural beings. But since magic did not involve human beings, spirits were introduced to explain the working of the magic and too control those who were designated as believers. And gods just became the most powerful of all the spirits available to explain the existing magic. It helped too that the gods too became part of both the rituals and the magic.

So what Frazer has done beautifully is tied together: rituals, magic, gods, and ritualistic myths into one tidy theoretical package that, at least in principle, explains the human context of all known religions. Plus, he gives literally hundreds of examples of rituals, myths and magic that will convince the reader that, even though first written in 1879, and sometimes difficult to decipher, even controversial throughout its last official printing in 1922, this is still pretty serious and heady stuff. In fact, it is the examples that account for the books length of almost 900 pages and that convinced me that this author is on to something.

I wanted to give this book a much more serious review, but since what I have said so far has already taken up so much space, and I see that other reviewers have covered that territory very well indeed, I want to finish this review by describing how it fits in with the work of the late Julius Jaynes' in his book entitled "The development of Consciousness in the Breakup of the Bicameral mind." That book incidentally is in my "Hall of fame" of books.

Jaynes, at the time the book was written, was a noted Princeton Professor and Archeologist, who attempted to resolve a rather baffling archaeological conundrum: How is it that religion developed at roughly the same time across the globe when there was no way for distant cultures to communicate with each other, or to share ideas?

He answered this question through a theory explicated in his book. It is one that not only does not contradict Frazer's theory here, but in important ways supports it. Jaynes' theoretical answer to the conundrum is that: the architecture of the human brain must have structures that are "selected for magical thinking" and since consciousness emerged with the breakup of the bicameral mind, and this evolutionary change in brain architecture took place at the same time across the globe, then it must be a fact that the architecture of the human brain somehow has been selected for religious, magical, or superstitious thinking; and that they all evolved at the same time. QED.

I will not jive you, this was a long, difficult, arduous read, but very rewarding in the end. So I admonish the reader to hold out to the bitter end -- even if it takes months to read it like it took me. Five stars.

This is not a "review" of the classic "Golden Bough." This is a review of several hardback editions available to the collector which are complimentary to each other's content and pagination. The purchaser may wish to take care in selecting which edition of the Golden Bough they consider for purchase. Several hardbound editions exist.

The most common edition is the 2-volume abridged 4th edition,this is the edition supervised by Graves widow; it is woefully incomplete. It is to the 3rd Edition that most collectors will want to turn. The 3rd edition has twelve volumes, and a 1-volume afterward, which, when assembled look rather like a set of encyclopedias. There have been twelve reliable and interchangable printings from 1911 to 1990 which may allow the collector the opportunity to assemble a complete set of mis-matching volumes, as I have done, spending less than $240 to assemble the entire series, or averaging less than $20.00 a volume. The original publishers to look for are MacMillan & Co. and St. Martin's Press. One cannot vouch for the print accuracy of the plethora of "On Demand" editions, I avoid them after a couple bad experiences with other titles.

The numbering on these volumes is sometimes confusing-- The on-line seller's lists always get them wrong, so you may want to do a general search for "Frazer" "Golden Bough Part" and compare the listing to the contents below (as printed on the dust jacket back of the 1990 edition):
The 13 books are divided into 9 parts:
Part I Vols. 1 & 2, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings
Part II Taboo and The Perils of the Soul
Part III The Dying God
Part IV Adonis, Attis Osiris Vols. 1 & 2
Part V Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild Vols. 1&2
Part VI The Scapegoat
Part VII Balder the Beautiful: The Fire Festivals of Europe and
The Doctrine of the External Soul
Part VIII Bibliography and General Index
Part IX Aftermath: A Supplement to "The Golden Bough."

These books ought to be required reading to any student of religion, history, sociology, and occult sciences.

This is not a "review" of the classic "Golden Bough." This is a review of several hardback editions available to the collector which are complimentary to each other's content and pagination. The purchaser may wish to take care in selecting which edition of the Golden Bough they consider for purchase. Several hardbound editions exist.

The most common edition is the 2-volume abridged 4th edition,this is the edition supervised by Graves widow; it is woefully incomplete. It is to the 3rd Edition that most collectors will want to turn. The 3rd edition has twelve volumes, and a 1-volume afterward, which, when assembled look rather like a set of encyclopedias. There have been twelve reliable and interchangable printings from 1911 to 1990 which may allow the collector the opportunity to assemble a complete set of mis-matching volumes, as I have done, spending less than $240 to assemble the entire series, or averaging less than $20.00 a volume. The original publishers to look for are MacMillan & Co. and St. Martin's Press. One cannot vouch for the print accuracy of the plethora of "On Demand" editions, I avoid them after a couple bad experiences with other titles.

The numbering on these volumes is sometimes confusing-- The on-line seller's lists always get them wrong, so you may want to do a general search for "Frazer" "Golden Bough Part" and compare the listing to the contents below (as printed on the dust jacket back of the 1990 edition):
The 13 books are divided into 9 parts:
Part I Vols. 1 & 2, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings
Part II Taboo and The Perils of the Soul
Part III The Dying God
Part IV Adonis, Attis Osiris Vols. 1 & 2
Part V Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild Vols. 1&2
Part VI The Scapegoat
Part VII Balder the Beautiful: The Fire Festivals of Europe and
The Doctrine of the External Soul
Part VIII Bibliography and General Index
Part IX Aftermath: A Supplement to "The Golden Bough."

These books ought to be required reading to any student of religion, history, sociology, and occult sciences.

This is not a "review" of the classic "Golden Bough." This is a review of several hardback editions available to the collector which are complimentary to each other's content and pagination. The purchaser may wish to take care in selecting which edition of the Golden Bough they consider for purchase. Several hardbound editions exist.

The most common edition is the 2-volume abridged 4th edition,this is the edition supervised by Graves widow; it is woefully incomplete. It is to the 3rd Edition that most collectors will want to turn. The 3rd edition has twelve volumes, and a 1-volume afterward, which, when assembled look rather like a set of encyclopedias. There have been twelve reliable and interchangable printings from 1911 to 1990 which may allow the collector the opportunity to assemble a complete set of mis-matching volumes, as I have done, spending less than $240 to assemble the entire series, or averaging less than $20.00 a volume. The original publishers to look for are MacMillan & Co. and St. Martin's Press. One cannot vouch for the print accuracy of the plethora of "On Demand" editions, I avoid them after a couple bad experiences with other titles.

The numbering on these volumes is sometimes confusing-- The on-line seller's lists always get them wrong, so you may want to do a general search for "Frazer" "Golden Bough Part" and compare the listing to the contents below (as printed on the dust jacket back of the 1990 edition):
The 13 books are divided into 9 parts:
Part I Vols. 1 & 2, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings
Part II Taboo and The Perils of the Soul
Part III The Dying God
Part IV Adonis, Attis Osiris Vols. 1 & 2
Part V Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild Vols. 1&2
Part VI The Scapegoat
Part VII Balder the Beautiful: The Fire Festivals of Europe and
The Doctrine of the External Soul
Part VIII Bibliography and General Index
Part IX Aftermath: A Supplement to "The Golden Bough."

These books ought to be required reading to any student of religion, history, sociology, and occult sciences.

This appears to be a very handsome edition, however as far as I can tell it is based solely on Frazer's original 1922 abridgement (the unabridged runs to twelve(!) volumes). The original has come under heavy critical fire almost since it was issued, starting with the Scottish polymath and acid-penned skeptic Andrew Hale, and not just for its British dead-white-European-male-supremacist overtones (Hale, in spite of his presumably Scottish brogue, was as snootily British as they came, was well familiar with the entire 12-volume set, and contrary to the promotional copy above, found the archaeological & anthropological support wanting - as have many scholars who followed).

Frazer's combination of literary and imaginative genius is certainly seductive - I know I was when I first read TGB some 20 years ago - and for those wishing to be seduced this will doubtlessly make a fine read; but those wanting an un-fogged look at the history of ritual, myth, and religion will want to read the Gaster edition of 1959, and available in several printings up almost to the present (usually referred to as "The New Golden Bough" which will streamline your search). Not only does Gaster separate fact from fancy, he is an excellent guide through the material - I didn't realize until I read the Gaster how difficult it had been to navigate the thickets of Frazer's thinking.

Don't misunderstand: The Golden Bough is one of the grand and great products of the human mind (and imagination), and I can't believe that anyone is really educated until they've read it (after reading that first abridgement I felt a sort of spiritual frisson; after reading the Gaster I felt like I'd been a credulous bumpkin). But it is also a product of late-19th century romanticism. Read the Gaster and you will have a ringside seat with an unimpeded view, not only to the making of myth but to the history of ideas.

This is not a "review" of the classic "Golden Bough." This is a review of several hardback editions available to the collector which are complimentary to each other's content and pagination. The purchaser may wish to take care in selecting which edition of the Golden Bough they consider for purchase. Several hardbound editions exist.

The most common edition is the 2-volume abridged 4th edition,this is the edition supervised by Graves widow; it is woefully incomplete. It is to the 3rd Edition that most collectors will want to turn. The 3rd edition has twelve volumes, and a 1-volume afterward, which, when assembled look rather like a set of encyclopedias. There have been twelve reliable and interchangable printings from 1911 to 1990 which may allow the collector the opportunity to assemble a complete set of mis-matching volumes, as I have done, spending less than $240 to assemble the entire series, or averaging less than $20.00 a volume. The original publishers to look for are MacMillan & Co. and St. Martin's Press. One cannot vouch for the print accuracy of the plethora of "On Demand" editions, I avoid them after a couple bad experiences with other titles.

The numbering on these volumes is sometimes confusing-- The on-line seller's lists always get them wrong, so you may want to do a general search for "Frazer" "Golden Bough Part" and compare the listing to the contents below (as printed on the dust jacket back of the 1990 edition):
The 13 books are divided into 9 parts:
Part I Vols. 1 & 2, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings
Part II Taboo and The Perils of the Soul
Part III The Dying God
Part IV Adonis, Attis Osiris Vols. 1 & 2
Part V Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild Vols. 1&2
Part VI The Scapegoat
Part VII Balder the Beautiful: The Fire Festivals of Europe and
The Doctrine of the External Soul
Part VIII Bibliography and General Index
Part IX Aftermath: A Supplement to "The Golden Bough."

These books ought to be required reading to any student of religion, history, sociology, and occult sciences.

This is not a "review" of the classic "Golden Bough." This is a review of several hardback editions available to the collector which are complimentary to each other's content and pagination. The purchaser may wish to take care in selecting which edition of the Golden Bough they consider for purchase. Several hardbound editions exist.

The most common edition is the 2-volume abridged 4th edition,this is the edition supervised by Graves widow; it is woefully incomplete. It is to the 3rd Edition that most collectors will want to turn. The 3rd edition has twelve volumes, and a 1-volume afterward, which, when assembled look rather like a set of encyclopedias. There have been twelve reliable and interchangable printings from 1911 to 1990 which may allow the collector the opportunity to assemble a complete set of mis-matching volumes, as I have done, spending less than $240 to assemble the entire series, or averaging less than $20.00 a volume. The original publishers to look for are MacMillan & Co. and St. Martin's Press. One cannot vouch for the print accuracy of the plethora of "On Demand" editions, I avoid them after a couple bad experiences with other titles.

The numbering on these volumes is sometimes confusing-- The on-line seller's lists always get them wrong, so you may want to do a general search for "Frazer" "Golden Bough Part" and compare the listing to the contents below (as printed on the dust jacket back of the 1990 edition):
The 13 books are divided into 9 parts:
Part I Vols. 1 & 2, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings
Part II Taboo and The Perils of the Soul
Part III The Dying God
Part IV Adonis, Attis Osiris Vols. 1 & 2
Part V Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild Vols. 1&2
Part VI The Scapegoat
Part VII Balder the Beautiful: The Fire Festivals of Europe and
The Doctrine of the External Soul
Part VIII Bibliography and General Index
Part IX Aftermath: A Supplement to "The Golden Bough."

These books ought to be required reading to any student of religion, history, sociology, and occult sciences.

This is not a "review" of the classic "Golden Bough." This is a review of several hardback editions available to the collector which are complimentary to each other's content and pagination. The purchaser may wish to take care in selecting which edition of the Golden Bough they consider for purchase. Several hardbound editions exist.

The most common edition is the 2-volume abridged 4th edition,this is the edition supervised by Graves widow; it is woefully incomplete. It is to the 3rd Edition that most collectors will want to turn. The 3rd edition has twelve volumes, and a 1-volume afterward, which, when assembled look rather like a set of encyclopedias. There have been twelve reliable and interchangable printings from 1911 to 1990 which may allow the collector the opportunity to assemble a complete set of mis-matching volumes, as I have done, spending less than $240 to assemble the entire series, or averaging less than $20.00 a volume. The original publishers to look for are MacMillan & Co. and St. Martin's Press. One cannot vouch for the print accuracy of the plethora of "On Demand" editions, I avoid them after a couple bad experiences with other titles.

The numbering on these volumes is sometimes confusing-- The on-line seller's lists always get them wrong, so you may want to do a general search for "Frazer" "Golden Bough Part" and compare the listing to the contents below (as printed on the dust jacket back of the 1990 edition):
The 13 books are divided into 9 parts:
Part I Vols. 1 & 2, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings
Part II Taboo and The Perils of the Soul
Part III The Dying God
Part IV Adonis, Attis Osiris Vols. 1 & 2
Part V Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild Vols. 1&2
Part VI The Scapegoat
Part VII Balder the Beautiful: The Fire Festivals of Europe and
The Doctrine of the External Soul
Part VIII Bibliography and General Index
Part IX Aftermath: A Supplement to "The Golden Bough."

These books ought to be required reading to any student of religion, history, sociology, and occult sciences.

This is not a "review" of the classic "Golden Bough." This is a review of several hardback editions available to the collector which are complimentary to each other's content and pagination. The purchaser may wish to take care in selecting which edition of the Golden Bough they consider for purchase. Several hardbound editions exist.

The most common edition is the 2-volume abridged 4th edition,this is the edition supervised by Graves widow; it is woefully incomplete. It is to the 3rd Edition that most collectors will want to turn. The 3rd edition has twelve volumes, and a 1-volume afterward, which, when assembled look rather like a set of encyclopedias. There have been twelve reliable and interchangable printings from 1911 to 1990 which may allow the collector the opportunity to assemble a complete set of mis-matching volumes, as I have done, spending less than $240 to assemble the entire series, or averaging less than $20.00 a volume. The original publishers to look for are MacMillan & Co. and St. Martin's Press. One cannot vouch for the print accuracy of the plethora of "On Demand" editions, I avoid them after a couple bad experiences with other titles.

The numbering on these volumes is sometimes confusing-- The on-line seller's lists always get them wrong, so you may want to do a general search for "Frazer" "Golden Bough Part" and compare the listing to the contents below (as printed on the dust jacket back of the 1990 edition):
The 13 books are divided into 9 parts:
Part I Vols. 1 & 2, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings
Part II Taboo and The Perils of the Soul
Part III The Dying God
Part IV Adonis, Attis Osiris Vols. 1 & 2
Part V Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild Vols. 1&2
Part VI The Scapegoat
Part VII Balder the Beautiful: The Fire Festivals of Europe and
The Doctrine of the External Soul
Part VIII Bibliography and General Index
Part IX Aftermath: A Supplement to "The Golden Bough."

These books ought to be required reading to any student of religion, history, sociology, and occult sciences.

This is not a "review" of the classic "Golden Bough." This is a review of several hardback editions available to the collector which are complimentary to each other's content and pagination. The purchaser may wish to take care in selecting which edition of the Golden Bough they consider for purchase. Several hardbound editions exist.

The most common edition is the 2-volume abridged 4th edition,this is the edition supervised by Graves widow; it is woefully incomplete. It is to the 3rd Edition that most collectors will want to turn. The 3rd edition has twelve volumes, and a 1-volume afterward, which, when assembled look rather like a set of encyclopedias. There have been twelve reliable and interchangable printings from 1911 to 1990 which may allow the collector the opportunity to assemble a complete set of mis-matching volumes, as I have done, spending less than $240 to assemble the entire series, or averaging less than $20.00 a volume. The original publishers to look for are MacMillan & Co. and St. Martin's Press. One cannot vouch for the print accuracy of the plethora of "On Demand" editions, I avoid them after a couple bad experiences with other titles.

The numbering on these volumes is sometimes confusing-- The on-line seller's lists always get them wrong, so you may want to do a general search for "Frazer" "Golden Bough Part" and compare the listing to the contents below (as printed on the dust jacket back of the 1990 edition):
The 13 books are divided into 9 parts:
Part I Vols. 1 & 2, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings
Part II Taboo and The Perils of the Soul
Part III The Dying God
Part IV Adonis, Attis Osiris Vols. 1 & 2
Part V Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild Vols. 1&2
Part VI The Scapegoat
Part VII Balder the Beautiful: The Fire Festivals of Europe and
The Doctrine of the External Soul
Part VIII Bibliography and General Index
Part IX Aftermath: A Supplement to "The Golden Bough."

These books ought to be required reading to any student of religion, history, sociology, and occult sciences.

This is not a "review" of the classic "Golden Bough." This is a review of several hardback editions available to the collector which are complimentary to each other's content and pagination. The purchaser may wish to take care in selecting which edition of the Golden Bough they consider for purchase. Several hardbound editions exist.

The most common edition is the 2-volume abridged 4th edition,this is the edition supervised by Graves widow; it is woefully incomplete. It is to the 3rd Edition that most collectors will want to turn. The 3rd edition has twelve volumes, and a 1-volume afterward, which, when assembled look rather like a set of encyclopedias. There have been twelve reliable and interchangable printings from 1911 to 1990 which may allow the collector the opportunity to assemble a complete set of mis-matching volumes, as I have done, spending less than $240 to assemble the entire series, or averaging less than $20.00 a volume. The original publishers to look for are MacMillan & Co. and St. Martin's Press. One cannot vouch for the print accuracy of the plethora of "On Demand" editions, I avoid them after a couple bad experiences with other titles.

The numbering on these volumes is sometimes confusing-- The on-line seller's lists always get them wrong, so you may want to do a general search for "Frazer" "Golden Bough Part" and compare the listing to the contents below (as printed on the dust jacket back of the 1990 edition):
The 13 books are divided into 9 parts:
Part I Vols. 1 & 2, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings
Part II Taboo and The Perils of the Soul
Part III The Dying God
Part IV Adonis, Attis Osiris Vols. 1 & 2
Part V Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild Vols. 1&2
Part VI The Scapegoat
Part VII Balder the Beautiful: The Fire Festivals of Europe and
The Doctrine of the External Soul
Part VIII Bibliography and General Index
Part IX Aftermath: A Supplement to "The Golden Bough."

These books ought to be required reading to any student of religion, history, sociology, and occult sciences.

This is not a "review" of the classic "Golden Bough." This is a review of several hardback editions available to the collector which are complimentary to each other's content and pagination. The purchaser may wish to take care in selecting which edition of the Golden Bough they consider for purchase. Several hardbound editions exist.

The most common edition is the 2-volume abridged 4th edition,this is the edition supervised by Graves widow; it is woefully incomplete. It is to the 3rd Edition that most collectors will want to turn. The 3rd edition has twelve volumes, and a 1-volume afterward, which, when assembled look rather like a set of encyclopedias. There have been twelve reliable and interchangable printings from 1911 to 1990 which may allow the collector the opportunity to assemble a complete set of mis-matching volumes, as I have done, spending less than $240 to assemble the entire series, or averaging less than $20.00 a volume. The original publishers to look for are MacMillan & Co. and St. Martin's Press. One cannot vouch for the print accuracy of the plethora of "On Demand" editions, I avoid them after a couple bad experiences with other titles.

The numbering on these volumes is sometimes confusing-- The on-line seller's lists always get them wrong, so you may want to do a general search for "Frazer" "Golden Bough Part" and compare the listing to the contents below (as printed on the dust jacket back of the 1990 edition):
The 13 books are divided into 9 parts:
Part I Vols. 1 & 2, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings
Part II Taboo and The Perils of the Soul
Part III The Dying God
Part IV Adonis, Attis Osiris Vols. 1 & 2
Part V Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild Vols. 1&2
Part VI The Scapegoat
Part VII Balder the Beautiful: The Fire Festivals of Europe and
The Doctrine of the External Soul
Part VIII Bibliography and General Index
Part IX Aftermath: A Supplement to "The Golden Bough."

These books ought to be required reading to any student of religion, history, sociology, and occult sciences.

This work is a project to read. Fortunately, for those who have difficulty reading encyclopedias, this edition is an abridgement. Still, it is a chore to cut through the innumerable examples and the mind-boggling detail used to drive home points. The author indicates that he has removed all the footnotes and references that are available in the multi-volume edition. He leaves only scattered allusions to sources, one of note being the folklorist Wilhelm Mannhardt. In addition to those chroniclers of antiquity, like Plutarch and Herodotus, there are sources such as the Jesuit Jose de Acosta who traveled extensively to Latin America during the sixteenth century. It appears as if he has drawn quite liberally from the anecdotes of colonialists, especially concerning the Far East and Africa.

The author shines a harsh light on primitive man and antiquity. Long ago and still apparent in the darker recesses of the world, humans had an exaggerated sense of their own powers to influence the course of events. So, if a magician concocted a potion and threw it up into the air, it would stimulate the sky to rain or, he could cause harm to his enemies by sticking pins into a likeness. Those who were thoughtful and could conceive of a larger picture beyond mere habit and custom realized that humankind was actually quite powerless and that much larger forces, -they conceived them as animated powers - were behind the scenes shaping events. According to the author, that realization was the beginning of religion, when humankind came to the belief and mindset that beings greater than himself controlled events. At that point, the magician was replaced by the priest. The priest was then tasked with the rites and rituals needed to aid or to win favor with the deities. But the priest still did not have a clear conception of how nature worked, taking the myths built on magic as literal truth.

Starting from the mythic enactment at Nemi, from which the book draws its title, the author cites numerous (to say the least) examples that lead to an explanation of how the myth of the Dead and Resurrected God was conceived in the ancient world and how it was applied in diverse cultures. Starting with the magic used by primitive planters and evolving through early civilizations of the Near East, there grew myths concerning gods - Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis - who shared the same characteristics but were in different localities. They manifested as the life force of the growing season that dies with the season's end only to reappear again in a rebirth that renews the cycle. The same kind of myths derived from the same magical practices can also be found in remote points of the globe. When the Spanish came to the New World, they found strong correlations with their own religion.

The book concludes with the author's conjecture that the golden bough, mentioned by Virgil in the Aeneid, is actually mistletoe. The true meanings of all the elements involved in the mythic enactment at Nemi - the mistletoe, the oak tree, lightening, the murder of the King of the Wood - seem ultimately to be obscure. The author, however, offers an elaborate theory that features a Norse myth concerning the god Baldur, and the idea that mistletoe is the external soul of the sacred oak tree, and when the mistletoe is plucked successfully, the oak tree dies and somehow the murder and succession of the guardian King of the Wood occurs.

The point of view maintained in the book reflects the rationalism of the nineteenth century that was diametrically opposed to the idea of the noble savage. It proceeds to highlight beyond much doubt that primitive humans were at the mercy of superstition and the power of suggestion, and that only ignorance is keeping them from advancing on the evolutionary scale - the progression from magic to religion and then to science. One thing that the author appears to assume (and in this respect he was the product of his times) concerns the role of the observer vis-a-vis nature. He assumes that the observer does not have any relevance concerning the state of nature or any influence over the course of events. In the twentieth century a different theory on the role of the observer was to be offered, starting about the time when the author was at work with this book, with Einstein and the idea of relativity.

This is not a "review" of the classic "Golden Bough." This is a review of several hardback editions available to the collector which are complimentary to each other's content and pagination. The purchaser may wish to take care in selecting which edition of the Golden Bough they consider for purchase. Several hardbound editions exist.

The most common edition is the 2-volume abridged 4th edition,this is the edition supervised by Graves widow; it is woefully incomplete. It is to the 3rd Edition that most collectors will want to turn. The 3rd edition has twelve volumes, and a 1-volume afterward, which, when assembled look rather like a set of encyclopedias. There have been twelve reliable and interchangable printings from 1911 to 1990 which may allow the collector the opportunity to assemble a complete set of mis-matching volumes, as I have done, spending less than $240 to assemble the entire series, or averaging less than $20.00 a volume. The original publishers to look for are MacMillan & Co. and St. Martin's Press. One cannot vouch for the print accuracy of the plethora of "On Demand" editions, I avoid them after a couple bad experiences with other titles.

The numbering on these volumes is sometimes confusing-- The on-line seller's lists always get them wrong, so you may want to do a general search for "Frazer" "Golden Bough Part" and compare the listing to the contents below (as printed on the dust jacket back of the 1990 edition):
The 13 books are divided into 9 parts:
Part I Vols. 1 & 2, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings
Part II Taboo and The Perils of the Soul
Part III The Dying God
Part IV Adonis, Attis Osiris Vols. 1 & 2
Part V Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild Vols. 1&2
Part VI The Scapegoat
Part VII Balder the Beautiful: The Fire Festivals of Europe and
The Doctrine of the External Soul
Part VIII Bibliography and General Index
Part IX Aftermath: A Supplement to "The Golden Bough."

These books ought to be required reading to any student of religion, history, sociology, and occult sciences.

Frazer's "The Golden Bough" was in like twelve fat volumes; then he made this abridged edition. The abridged edition is without references. The volumes version has all the references and of course 'more.'

Some have found some secret ideas that Jesus Christ is just a sungod. He has twelve followers who are personifications of the twelve constellations of the zodiacal constellations. That's just a beginning. Generally, the evidence for the sungod religion analogy for Jesus Christ is little to a bit late - like centuries later literature; many of the so called Christian fathers mention things to the effect. Recently, Acharya, or Murdock as she calls herself in her "Christ in Egypt" book gives much B.C. dated evidences for the sungod mythology; this certainly establishes that even if Jesus Christ was real, he's just "Johnny come lately." But, there's one book that gives evidences for the sungod religion before even this recent effort - the Golden Bough.

It wasn't Frazer's intent to find a sungod analogy evidence predating the supposed life of Jesus Christ. His effort was to show mankind's evolution from mythology to science; from ignorance to the beginnings of knowledge. He hoped to show that mythology was early science. I think he largely succeeds. I'd like to note that Jacob Bronowski points out the analogy between mythology and mathematics is property of analogy. Mythology is poetry; poetry is similie/metaphor, or analogy. Mathematics is abstraction; abstractions are analogies. But, one thing I find in my exploration and effort to find this link from the past to mathematical knowledge is that I don't think numbers for instance were ever evolved from any mythology. Mythology was certainly the science of its day, but mathematics was a clean break from mere 'analogy.' How mathematics achieved rigorous constructive ability of concepts and hence predictive ability is a bit much to tell right here. The fact of the human trait of analogy is important in itself, and Frazer traces as best as will probably ever be possible again(you couldn't right this book today! The sources are just too hard to find) the mythologies of the past.

Frazer of course gets into this from a rather indirect means - that of the Golden Bough stories; stories of kings, priests who were sacrificed when their predictions didn't work. What he finds is a story of mankinds effort to learn nature through mythology and magic(pre-science) and fertility gods(evidence of sungod worship).

_The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion_, originally published in 1922 and republished here by Collier Books, is an abridged one volume edition of the classic study of Sir James George Frazer on magic and religion. Sir J. G. Frazer (1854 - 1941) was a Scottish social anthropologist whose works have proven to be classics in the fields of comparative religion and mythology. _The Golden Bough_ is perhaps his most famous work detailing the magical practices from a wide variety of ancient and primitive cultures. The extensive research undertaken to complete this volume makes the study worthy to be read alone, in that it reveals much of the folklore from around the globe which has been important to providing understanding of primitive religious and magical practices. _The Golden Bough_ maintains that magic developed into primitive religion which eventually developed into modern science in an evolutionary perspective on the history of comparative religions. Further, this work offers a study of the various beliefs of "primitive" peoples maintaining that the ancient religions were fertility cults that revolved around the worship and sacrifice of the priest-king. Frazer maintains that this gave rise to the "dying gods" motif in which the king is sacrificed and then returns to life found throughout the world's religious traditions. In particular, Frazer points to the pre-Roman priest-king at the fane of Nemi who was ritually murdered by his successor. This book gained attention because it included Christianity within its comparative study and thus scandalized its reading public. Further, Frazer has been criticized for maintaining a rationalist bias and for denigrating the beliefs and folklore of allegedly "primitive" cultures and peoples. Nevertheless, despite this bias, Frazer's study has proven extremely important in that it collects an enormous amount of information and his "dying gods" thesis remains influential. Indeed, the plethora of "dying gods" throughout ancient cultures may be seen as an important precursor to the Christian faith. Frazer also provides an excellent study of magic, in which he distinguishes between homeopathic magic (based on the Law of Similarity) and contagious magic (based on the Law of Contact) under the heading of sympathetic magic (based on the Law of Sympathy). Frazer further divides magic into theoretical magic (or magic as a pseudo-science) and practical magic (or magic as a pseudo-art) noting the difference between positive magic or sorcery and negative magic or taboo under practical magic. However, Frazer ultimately will compare magic to science and will champion science and an evolutionary viewpoint of science in relationship to the supposed progression from magic to religion to science. The term "the Golden Bough" refers to both Turner's picture of the "Golden Bough" and the mistletoe seen in the life of Balder. This book has been enormously influential not only in the study of comparative religion but also was very popular amongst certain Twentieth century writers and poets who frequently quoted from and made use of it. While Frazer's thesis may be fundamentally flawed, it nevertheless offers an astounding collection of information and folklore as well as an interesting understanding of the myth of the "dying god".

The book includes the following contents:

"The King of the Wood" - mentioning Diana and Verbius as well as Artemis and Hyppolytus,
"Priestly Kings",
"Sympathetic Magic" - mentioning the principles of magic, the types of magic, and the magician's progress,
"Magic and Religion",
"The Magical Control of the Weather" - mentioning the public magician and magical control of the rain, sun, and wind,
"Magicians as Kings",
"Incarnate Human Gods",
"Departmental Kings of Nature",
"The Worship of Trees" - mentioning tree-spirits,
"Relics of Tree Worship in Modern Europe",
"The Influences of the Sexes on Vegetation",
"The Sacred Marriage" - mentioning Diana,
"The Kings of Rome and Alba" - mentioning Numa and Egeria and Jupiter,
"The Succession to the Kingdom in Ancient Latium",
"The Worship of the Oak",
"The Burden of the Royalty" - mentioning priestly taboos,
"The Perils of the Soul" - mentioning the soul as a manikin,
"Tabooed Acts",
"Tabooed Persons",
"Tabooed Things",
"Tabooed Words",
"Our Debt to the Savage",
"The Killing of the Divine King",
"Temporary Kings",
"The Killing of the King's Son",
"Succession of the Soul",
"The Killing of the Tree-Spirit" - mentioning the "death",
"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",
"Lyterses" - mentioning human sacrifice for the crops,
"The Corn-Spirit as an Animal",
"Ancient Dieties of Vegetation as Animals",
"Eating the God" - mentioning the "first-fruits" and the practice of eating the god amongst the Aztecs,
"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 Evil",
"Public Scapegoats",
"Human Scapegoats in Classical Antiquity",
"Killing the God in Mexico",
"Between Heaven and Earth" - mentioning taboos concerning puberty,
"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 External Soul in Folk-Tales",
"The External Soul in Folk-Custom",
"The Golden Bough",
"Farewell to Nemi".

In sum, this book represents a great anthropological classic that reveals much about the folk practices and customs of our ancient forebears. It is highly important as a work in comparative religion and maintains a central place amongst the most famous studies of the Twentieth Century. It is also greatly enjoyable to read and includes an enormous amount of material of interest concerning a wide range of ancient folk belief.

Frazer's weighty, scholarly, 12 volume work about the beginnings of magic and religion is one of those works that have left a huge, huge, huge, and also really big footprint in our understandings of anthropology, psychology, history, Jungian studies, Freudian studies, film, visual art, and religion. I like to think of the Victorian/Edwardian Frazer as an Ur Joseph Campbell.

But how many lay readers are going to dig into his 12 volumes?

Thus, a brilliant idea. Editor Robert Temple gives us a severely edited, glossy-papered Frazer with a strong focus on the concept of sympathetic magic. And the pictures. They travel in ways that Frazer's prose wants to travel. The images range from archeological artifacts to 19th century oils, to contemporary photographs, to woodcuts. They are rich, multi-faceted, beautiful. They fill me with awe and make my mind jump about.

It takes some patience to read through all the examples that James Frazer gives to prove his points about religions, but it reaps its rewards. Sometimes I wish he would have summarized more briefly when going over examples in different lands, such as when tribes were killing the fertility god during the harvest, especially when the rituals were very similar to one another. But he thoroughly proves his point anyway.
Of course, the scientific, objective study of religion tends to turn you into an atheist. I've noticed a lot of skeptical books about religion are linked to this one. If you read the book, you may come to the conclusion that Christ was just a representive of god sacrificed for the benefit of humanity, just like all the other representatives of god that were sacrificed to have good crops. Abundant life replaces an abundant harvest in this case.
Frazer doesn't talk much about biblical "myths" much and not at all about Christ, but one can draw inferences from his work about certain passages in the Bible such as eating the body and blood of Christ during communion. Apparently, sacrificing and eating the body and blood of a representative of a god is an old pagan practice that the Biblical story has much in common with. Or the death and resurrection of a god is old pagan belief that Bible has much in common with as well. The sacrificing an offering for the sins of the people was also practiced long before Christ sacrificed himself for sins. One gets the impression that religion is just superstition in which primitive people tried to control an unpredictable environment with certain rituals to ensure a good harvest or to get rid of disease.
One could say that Christ as God sacrificed himself once and for all in such a way that people would understand what he was doing; he sacrificed himself using their cultural understanding of religion. Such an explanation would help keep your faith, if you wanted to keep it. But I can see why objective, scientific, rational, non-mystical types would love this book because it shows that "thank god" the best minds don't believe in old superstitions about god anymore, such as human sacrifice for better crops.
James Frazer is not exactly a cultural relativist so he has no problem with calling certain societies savage or primitive and his own society civilized and more advanced, although he admits its primitive past. I am agreement with his assumptions, so that labelling didn't bother me most of the time.
This is an easily read scholarly work that is really long and presents examples of our primitive past before the scientific method was developed and saved us all from irrational thinking. I can see why people of like mind to Frazer's would shudder at thought of a revival of religion, to them religion is just irrational superstition.
I found particularly interesting Frazer's coverage of kings who were treated as gods on earth and how restrictive their lives were. If people thought they could no longer deliver good health and crops to the people, or if they thought he was past his prime, or if he refused to obey certain rules and rituals, they would kill their useless god and get another.

Frazer's weighty, scholarly, 12 volume work about the beginnings of magic and religion is one of those works that have left a huge, huge, huge, and also really big footprint in our understandings of anthropology, psychology, history, Jungian studies, Freudian studies, film, visual art, and religion. I like to think of the Victorian/Edwardian Frazer as an Ur Joseph Campbell.

But how many lay readers are going to dig into his 12 volumes?

Thus, a brilliant idea. Editor Robert Temple gives us a severely edited, glossy-papered Frazer with a strong focus on the concept of sympathetic magic. And the pictures. They travel in ways that Frazer's prose wants to travel. The images range from archeological artifacts to 19th century oils, to contemporary photographs, to woodcuts. They are rich, multi-faceted, beautiful. They fill me with awe and make my mind jump about.

This book is veritable attic full of folklore and ritual. But, like an attic, it is sometimes dusty and overstuffed. First published in 1922 and hardly out of print since, the author states it began as a study of a curious practice in a grove near Nemi, Italy in classical times of the killing of a local divine wood king/priest by his successor. His studies lead him to research one thing after another, which eventually became a multi-volume treatise on many of the ritual and folk practices of the world, especially in regards to gods of trees, vegetation and grain, and other resurrection myths.

At times it is a difficult read as the author does not have the current sense of treating other cultures as different, rather than "lesser", than ours, but despite repeated references to "savages" he presents practices and customs rather fairly and non-judgementally. It's only fault lies in it's length, perhaps, though this may be attributed to modern short attention spans, though it does seem to provide so many examples of a practice that I often thought five examples would have sufficed where he used twenty or more.

A curious thing, when I read this any shred of belief I might have had left in the Christ mythos was shattered with the detailed descriptions of other gods of resurrection. Undoubtedly without meaning to, Frazer presents such a clear picture of the rites and myths concerning Adonis, Attis, Osiris, among others, that you realize how little of the Christ myth (if anything) is original. This, of course, is not to disparage Christian believers, as my gods come as much out of myth as theirs, and so it is just as valid, but even when one has been a pagan as long as I have, there still remains some shred, I think, of a person that wonders if the original religion of our childhood might not be valid.

In any case, this is a long and interesting read. I originally picked it up after encountering numerous references in other pagan texts over the years to "Frazer's theory of the Divine King", etc., and finally wanted to read the work for myself. I don't regret it, and I don't think you will either, if you approach this book with patience when you have some time to devote to it.

Although it is trendy to slam The Golden Bough for its author's assumptions, nothing can take away the magnitude of the scholarship or the impact of the text. It was the first time any work of religious anthropology had made any sort of cultural impact, and its signifigance to artists of the Jazz Age and later decades is tantamount. Picasso's work is filled with images from The Golden Bough, and all of Hemingway's obsession with bulls and bullfights is explained by reading Frazer.
The work itself is an exhaustive reference for thousands of relgious ceremonies around the world, and their interrelated symbolism and meaning. Flying directly in the face of the historical philosophies of parallel, isolated cultural development in vogue in the 19th century, the book shows that human spiritual belief orbits around the same ideas, needs and urges across the planet and through the ages. The symbolism of worship in Iron Age Norway is the same as Middle Ages Mirconesia, with all the interconnectedness this implies.
It is very easy to work around the author's 19th century cultural assumptions and glean the information. Reading The Golden Bough, along with Joseph Campbell, will give a very good baseline for any historical religious study. Frazer's work also dovetails beautifully with Jung's study of archetypal symbols. The combination of the two wil go a long way towards sorting out the symbolism in any 20th Century literature.

Frazer's work has come under scutiny mainly from people who would like to write off what is actually a complex analysis of archaic manifestations of what we today call religion. These critics write off Frazer's work because they don't like its tone of 'cultural imperialism' and other political catch-phrases. The reviews here are full of such DILETTANT critics.

Frazer lived before political correctness got in the way of free thinking. His analysis is straightforeward and honest and any kind of 'condescension' on Frazer's part is justified when refering only to the most nebulous, psychologically damaging and absurd practices of peoples still practicing magic.

Disliking Frazer's tone is not reason enough to dslike the overall work, as some reviwers feel free to do.

If religion and cultural anthropology are are your thing and if you're intelligent enough to comprehend the absurdity of any belief in a deity - this book is your 'bible'.

If you are the type of person whose spirit gravitates to the simple (not simplistic, but simple)answers to some of the most complex and seemingly unrelated questions, and those answers desired consist of the type philosphers, poets and artists/scientists have been looking for (with varied success) for millenia, then you just might enjoy this book. Camile Paglia's SEXUAL PERSONAE, heavily indebted to this and the major works of Freud by her own proud admission, is what led me to this pretty staggering work for its time. It is relatively easy to make someone's brain hurt with a lot of scholar talk, where one is saying nothing; this book is great because it is *sensational*, in the truest sense of the word. This is one of the first of the many books about religion and the history of man that put my stomach up in knots, as it simultaneously gave me the power to look beyond the fabrication of ancient Greek philosophical society and Judeo-Christian heritage as the summit of man's knowledge. (Not that that was ever a problem for me consciously, but unconsciously I doubt anyone without reading a book like this has moved beyond it.) This is one of the books that made a new approach to the understanding of man and a paradigm shift as to how we have mentally, emotionally and spiritually developed not only possible, but inevitable.
What could keep this monument from receiving five stars will be fairly obvious to any reader: the prejudices of his time. It is actually hard to look at what he says objectively in that context; before him I doubt anyone put two and two together to come up with what he did during a time when his racism and trivialization of non-Euopean peoples, and for more than the past fifty plus years after him, anyone who has read his work has had that tempered by the embarrasing revalations of Nietsche and Freud. That, along with the egocentrism of Victorian Europe that he projects onto ancient and prehistoric man, serves to keep the book from being perfect (and are sometimes annoying), but do not serve to really take away its importance and incredible effect.
If you are a Joseph Cambell fan, you will be powerfully challenged by this book. Frazer was not attempting to come up with the same conclusions for myth and ritual that Campbell, though influenced by him, was. But you will love it, and respect it highly because of it. In a way, where Campbell seems to say "this is what it all means," Frazer says "this is what it all IS," letting the wonder of unexpected knowledge allow you to come to your own conclusions. This book will start you on a great spiritual journey if you never read anything of its kind before, and this edition is a very good one to have.

Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941) was a Scottish anthropologist; and this book, originally published in 1890, as the two volume, "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religions", his best known work.
A short example of his writing style follows:
"On Midsummer Eve people in Sweden
"make divining-rods of mistletoe or of four different
"kinds of wood, one of which must be mistletoe. The
"treasure-seeker places the rod on the ground after sundown,
"and when it rests directly over treasure, the rod
"begins to move as if it were alive...."
(pp 367, with reference notes at the bottom of the page.)
This particular edition is the only unabridged, and illustrated re-printing of the classic, and while some modern scholars refute some of his conclusions, it is a Must Have for any student of folk-lore and magick.

Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941) was a Scottish anthropologist; and this book, originally published in 1890, as the two volume, "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religions", his best known work.
A short example of his writing style follows:
"On Midsummer Eve people in Sweden
"make divining-rods of mistletoe or of four different
"kinds of wood, one of which must be mistletoe. The
"treasure-seeker places the rod on the ground after sundown,
"and when it rests directly over treasure, the rod
"begins to move as if it were alive...."
(pp 367, with reference notes at the bottom of the page.)
This particular edition is the only unabridged, and illustrated re-printing of the classic, and while some modern scholars refute some of his conclusions, it is a Must Have for any student of folk-lore and magick.

James G. Frazer wrote an excellent book on the origins of magic and religion called the Golden Bough.

The book describes a possible scientific model of how magic without deities evolves into religion and myth with deities. The basic theory that Frazer tries to prove is that there is something about human nature that preserves magical rituals over eons beyond the beliefs used to justify the magical ritual.

According to him, the beliefs and myths that justify the ritual are completely replaceable. The names of the gods and heroes change often with no change in the ritual. Even the fundamental story lines changing completely over the course of time, leaving the ritual intact.

The origin of ritual is magic, not religion. According to Frazer, magic
is a belief in supernatural without any gods or God. According to Frazer,
magic is badly researched physics. Religion involves more personalities, meaning
deities. There is not sharp boundary between the two, so one shades into the
other. One can believe in magic without believing in any spirits. However,
spirits can be hypothesized to explain the magic. Spirits become deities, which
are more powerful spirits. The deity hypothesis is the origin of religion, according to Frazer.

The rituals themselves are often generated by a fundamental belief in two types of belief that are hardwired into the human brain: sympathetic magic and contagious magic. He finds evidence for this in the myths and religious practices of people all over the world which according to him are not separated by any sharp boundary. The rationals and excuses people give to a ritual turns into myths and religion, not the other way around.

He gives thousands of examples of examples of rituals and the stories that he thinks started as excuses for rituals. An important example of a ritual is human sacrifice in its various forms. He follows the mythology of many cultures and shows how the mythology behind the ritual has changes with time, and how the ritual retains its main form even when the person is replaced by animals or animals are replaced with people or people with spirits or spirits with deities. The rituals remain the same throughout these changes. He gives lots of examples of rituals that start from magic rather than religion. For example, he discusses food taboos (such as kosher laws), the songs children sing (step on a crack, break your mother's back) in terms of sympathetic magic.

The book is more descriptive than explanatory, having hundreds of examples for every ritual. The examples are fascinating. The theory is interesting, and perhaps has a lot of truth in it. The model presented has been shown to be very plausible for specific archeological and historical events, such as the Mystery religion of Eleuisis, in ancient Greece.

He presents a purely secular, perhaps even atheist, model that resembles the theory of evolution for ideas instead of organisms. The theory has similarities to the theory of meme evolution, presented decades later by biologist Richard Dawkins. Although mysticism is discussed, Frazier is not a mystic. Frazer is very eloquent while being scientific, so that it can be read as either a technical monograph or a type of epic myth itself. I highly recommend the book.

Frazer's book has some major weaknesses in it, even though this reviewer still recommends it for its strengths. There was no bibliography, at least in the copy that I read. He comes out with these amazing stories about ritual which made the reviewer eager to explore in greater detail. With no references, there was no way to do explore further. The model he presents may not really apply to all the myths and rituals described. He overemphasizes human sacrifice, making it seem sometimes that it is a universal ritual when it is not. Some his myth associated rituals probably have a solid historical foundation that has nothing to do with ritual. Sometimes, the connection between fact and theory is not compelling and may not convince many readers. Many other reviewers consider Frazer's model as discredited, although this reviewer does not. This reviewer recommends reading it with a spoonful of salt ready.

The most important weakness is lack of organization. Often, Frazer goes into a long list of rituals and other examples without connecting it to the original theory. Some sections like fact dumps in places. However, lots of what he says makes sense after rereading the book more than once.

Some readers may be offended by his cultural bias. Contrary to what other reviewers have said, Frazer shows no bias toward the monotheistic religions. He puts Baldur on the same level as Jesus. In fact, a Creationist can correctly complain that it has an atheist bias. Frazer's theory is solidly unreligious, and unmagical as a theory can get. Frazer emphasizes that religion eventually develops a morality and aesthetic around it, and that eventually the more inhumane aspects of religion go away leaving something very beautiful. Yet, his compliments toward primitive people being very smart sometimes appear condescending. He shows complete disbelief in magic and magical ways of thinking, even while acknowledging that they will never go away.

The psychologist Jung thought that Frazer's theory was too brutal to be accepted as an accurate theory of human nature. However, the brutality described by Frazer is not encouraged by the book. Rituals of great beauty and morality are also described. Some particular types of human sacrifice described are so ugly, they mask all the nice rituals described. More nice, uplifting rituals would have been helpful. They are out there. Frazer ignored them.

The reviewer highly recommends this book. The reviewer also thinks that Frazer's theory has been discredited prematurely. It should be reexamined with new scientific and analytical tools that have been developed since Frazer's time.

Sir James Frazer covers a lot of mythological ground in his book, and was one of the first to offer good solid rational understanding encompassing myth and legend. One principal area of discussion is what Joseph Campbell calls the "Hero Cycle." Frazer goes to the root of the hero cycle by explaining where and how the cults began. In one example, Frazer describes a fight or challenge where the champion/husband/king is slain by the challenger. The formula requires the hero to defeat the queen's husband/knight/king before he can enter the goddess's chamber.

Clearly the test of the kingship relies on his ability to remain strong and worthy as the priestess's consort. This is fully expressed by Frazer in the kingship rites at Nemi:

"In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was of the sanctuary. A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him, he retained office till he was himself slain by a stronger or craftier. The post which he held by this precarious tenure carried with it the title of king; but surely no crowned head ever lay un-easier, or was visited by more evil dreams, than his. For year in, year out, in summer and winter, in fair weather and in foul, he had to keep his lonely watch, and whenever he snatched a troubled slumber it was at the peril of his life."
[Frazer 1959]

In this instance the king is both consort of the high priestess and a title of the temple priest. Clearly the test of the kingship relies on his ability to remain strong and worthy as the priestess's consort. Rather than a set term of office, the king maintains his power only as long as he is physically able.

The kingship became an expression of religious interpretation -- just as the king possessed certain attributes, so were these attributes easily recognizable by the indigenous population. In Celtic myth, the king or chieftain was the divine counterpart of the tribal god. These divine personages were regarded to such a degree that regional or local historical events were recorded as happening to the God or Goddess themselves. This tribal god was especially responsible for the fertility of the land and crops.

He was, as Robert Graves states, "...ruler of the Zodiac, president of festivals, founder of cities [and] healer of the sick..." [Graves, The White Goddess, 1966:133]. The concepts of regeneration of the crops, using magic and ruler of the Zodiac were methods for transferring human fear, aspiration and technology onto the royalty: the king shouldered responsibility for the environment and, through sacrifices, able to predict the seasons from the celestial spheres.

Frazer is brilliant at tying all the threads together into an understandable whole. Although he often labors a point, the results of his investigation cannot be overlooked. Again, this is especially true for the kingship rites. In another example he speaks to the roles of the Egypt temple priestess of Ammon who was also the consort of the god, and, "...usually she was no less than the Queen of Egypt herself..." but otherwise a virgin:

"For according to the Egyptians, their monarchs were actually begotten by the god Ammon, who assumed for the time being the form of the reigning king, and in that disguise had intercourse with the queen" [Frazer 1959:130].

In fact the king is said to assume the form of the god Ammon and, after the temple virgin mistakenly accepts the apparition as the real god, sleeps with him and conceives a new heir to the throne.

Frazer's book goes on to describe the ancient Neolithic mysteries of the Greek Kabeori. Again he gives good solid reasons for the mystery cults, stating that they were "Magical dramas designed to stimulate the growth of plants by the real or mock marriage of men and women who masquerade as spirits of vegetation..." [Frazer 1959:137]. Here, too, the mysteries of the Kabeori may have involved the ritualistic marriage and annual union between the temple priest and the temple priestess to insure the fertility of the land. Certainly any of the virgin birth stories resulting from the sacred marriage are fragments when the temple priestess would annually celebrate the fertility ritual with the temple priest.

If anyone needs to understand the secrets behind the origin of the mystery cults, the foundation myths of the Earth Goddess and the rites of kingship, then you should have this book.

This is a wonderful book on the origin of beliefs, culture and

classic ceremonies. For instance, the Native American Indians

regarded a person's name as a part of their personality.

In Bohemia, children carry a straw man out of the village to

cast out death. Aphrodite and Old Paphos constitute one of the

most celebrated shrines in the ancient world. In death and

resurrection, Egyptians celebrated life after death. At Lagos in

Guinea, young women were impaled by custom after spring equinox

in order to secure a good crop that year. Festivities were

prepared in order to coincide with the summer and winter solstices.

The work would be perfect for students of world culture,

fine arts, language and literature.

This is the 1922 abridged version. It is not only public domain, but is widely available online for free.
Plus the print appears faded and grey, instead of black, on my Kindle. No idea why.
But regardless, don't waste your dollar.

Now if you want a print version, this company might not be so bad. I don't know.

The premise of this book is really simple: Why did the custom exist of the Priest of the Sacred Grove at Nemi having to be slain by his successor, who first had to pluck the fabled Golden Bough? From this premise, Frazer sets off on a course through anthropology and mythology to trace the course of human thought that ultimately culminated in this seemingly unspectacular, if barbarous, custom. While the book is long and often tedious, it is also often fascinating and always fabulously rewarding for those interested in mythology, anthropology, or literature.

A classic, Frazer's "Golden Bough" has been read by a few generations of scholars. However, Frazer's almost mythology standing as one of the first mythologists in 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 difficult to argue with specific passages. By the end, it seems that Frazer has gotten lost in his "search for Ur" and forgotten that his assumptions are meaningless until proven by text, records, and logic.

The Golden Bough is a remarkable and inspiring book. Although some of the evidence presented is outdated, it remains a seminal work for its rigorous scientific approach, as well as for the depth and insight the author puts in his analysis. Frazer uses the wealth of material presented in the book to reveal some of the deepest - and sometimes disquieting - aspects of the human character. This is essential reading for all who want to explore human nature and the tyes existing between present day civilisation and the world of our ancestors. Even today, the book retains the originality and freshness of approach that have contributed to make it a classic ever since its first publication.

This is a useless listing - the exact same product, at the same weight and dimensions, from the same publisher (really just a print-on-demand shop) is available for $5 less on this very website at The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. And with consecutive ISBNs, no less. Looks like a clerical error to me, but still, if you're going to buy this, go to that page and do it.

A root text in cultural anthropology, but dated and clearly a case of 'armchair anthropology'. Nonetheless Frazier has archived zillions of myths from cultures around the world and there are great stories and rich material for any creative venture. The overall premise is forced, though it influenced many others and started a new discipline.

Sit back and let Frazier lead you through a compendium of European myths and Classical cultures. It's fascinating for a while, but it's one of the few books I've tried repeatedly to finish.

Why is anyone buying this particular edition? The one listed as a "Board Book" with ISBN 0020955707 is IDENTICAL in text and covers, it just has a different publisher name. And it's significantly cheaper, if purchased used.

Ever notice how odd it is that many conservatives talk endlessly about the evils of government but they spend their whole lives in and around government? That's vaguely the feeling I got reading this book. Frazer seems to feel no religious sentiment whatsoever. He seems to believe fear and helplessness are the rocks on which all religions are founded upon. Unlike many 20th Century thinkers, he has no fear that science will create a world that is dead. He sees little value in a religious minded world in which everything and everyone is alive--including plants and trees and the sky and the sun. He does not seem to wonder if possibly ancient and "rude" people got the facts wrong but the story right. And just maybe our more advanced, secularized, scientific world has the facts right but the story wrong. If Joseph Campbell is the Santa Clause of mythology, Frazer is the Scrooge.

Yet still interesting in parts. But I found myself skimming more and more. TOO MANY EXAMPLES. And too much imperialist Victorian smugness.

This is a ancient literature survey cast upon pseudoscience anthropology turned into a story about an unstated hypothesis which cannot be tested in any true sense. Yes, I am biased by my world view, but so is the author. The two world views are polar opposites. If your world view is that a creator God works through his creation (humankind) toward experiential and demonstrated good actions but under freewill then you will find this work enlighteningly amusing at best. You will see academia in the light of pompous self focused, self aggrandizing anti-god religionists attempting to replace God with self as the all-knowing. Reading this work with the idea of understanding that self-centered world view demonstrated by so many in academia is a worthwhile endeavor. For any other purpose, it is not worth your time.