Balder the Beautiful, Volume I. A Study in Magic and Religion: the Golden Bough, Part VII., The Fire-Festivals of Europe and the Doctrine of the External Soul

A STUDY IN MAGIC AND RELIGION

_THIRD EDITION_

PART VII

BALDER THE BEAUTIFUL

VOL. I

BALDER
THE BEAUTIFUL

THE FIRE-FESTIVALS OF EUROPE
AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE EXTERNAL SOUL

J.G. FRAZER, D.C.L., LL.D., Litt.D.

FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL.

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I

1913




PREFACE


In this concluding part of _The Golden Bough_ I have discussed the
problem which gives its title to the whole work. If I am right, the
Golden Bough over which the King of the Wood, Diana's priest at Aricia,
kept watch and ward was no other than a branch of mistletoe growing on
an oak within the sacred grove; and as the plucking of the bough was a
necessary prelude to the slaughter of the priest, I have been led to
institute a parallel between the King of the Wood at Nemi and the Norse
god Balder, who was worshipped in a sacred grove beside the beautiful
Sogne fiord of Norway and was said to have perished by a stroke of
mistletoe, which alone of all things on earth or in heaven could wound
him. On the theory here suggested both Balder and the King of the Wood
personified in a sense the sacred oak of our Aryan forefathers, and both
had deposited their lives or souls for safety in the parasite which
sometimes, though rarely, is found growing on an oak and by the very
rarity of its appearance excites the wonder and stimulates the devotion
of ignorant men. Though I am now less than ever disposed to lay weight
on the analogy between the Italian priest and the Norse god, I have
allowed it to stand because it furnishes me with a pretext for
discussing not only the general question of the external soul in popular
superstition, but also the fire-festivals of Europe, since fire played a
part both in the myth of Balder and in the ritual of the Arician grove.
Thus Balder the Beautiful in my hands is little more than a
stalking-horse to carry two heavy pack-loads of facts. And what is true
of Balder applies equally to the priest of Nemi himself, the nominal
hero of the long tragedy of human folly and suffering which has unrolled
itself before the readers of these volumes, and on which the curtain is
now about to fall. He, too, for all the quaint garb he wears and the
gravity with which he stalks across the stage, is merely a puppet, and
it is time to unmask him before laying him up in the box.

To drop metaphor, while nominally investigating a particular problem of
ancient mythology, I have really been discussing questions of more
general interest which concern the gradual evolution of human thought
from savagery to civilization. The enquiry is beset with difficulties of
many kinds, for the record of man's mental development is even more
imperfect than the record of his physical development, and it is harder
to read, not only by reason of the incomparably more subtle and complex
nature of the subject, but because the reader's eyes are apt to be
dimmed by thick mists of passion and prejudice, which cloud in a far
less degree the fields of comparative anatomy and geology. My
contribution to the history of the human mind consists of little more
than a rough and purely provisional classification of facts gathered
almost entirely from printed sources. If there is one general conclusion
which seems to emerge from the mass of particulars, I venture to think
that it is the essential similarity in the working of the less developed
human mind among all races, which corresponds to the essential
similarity in their bodily frame revealed by comparative anatomy. But
while this general mental similarity may, I believe, be taken as
established, we must always be on our guard against tracing to it a
multitude of particular resemblances which may be and often are due to
simple diffusion, since nothing is more certain than that the various
races of men have borrowed from each other many of their arts and
crafts, their ideas, customs, and institutions. To sift out the elements
of culture which a race has independently evolved and to distinguish
them accurately from those which it has derived from other races is a
task of extreme difficulty and delicacy, which promises to occupy
students of man for a long time to come; indeed so complex are the facts
and so imperfect in most cases is the historical record that it may be
doubted whether in regard to many of the lower races we shall ever
arrive at more than probable conjectures.

Since the last edition of _The Golden Bough_ was published some thirteen
years ago, I have seen reason to change my views on several matters
discussed in this concluding part of the work, and though I have called
attention to these changes in the text, it may be well for the sake of
clearness to recapitulate them here.

In the first place, the arguments of Dr. Edward Westermarck have
satisfied me that the solar theory of the European fire-festivals, which
I accepted from W.