The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 1 of 2)

The Golden Bough

                     A Study in Comparative Religion

                                    By

                        James George Frazer, M.A.

                   Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge

                             In Two Volumes.

                                 Vol. I.

                           New York and London

                            MacMillan and Co.

                                   1894





CONTENTS


Dedication.
Preface.
Chapter I. The King Of The Wood.
   § 1.—The Arician Grove.
   § 2.—Primitive man and the supernatural.
   § 3.—Incarnate gods.
   § 4.—Tree-worship.
   § 5.—Tree-worship in antiquity.
Chapter II. The Perils Of The Soul.
   § 1.—Royal and priestly taboos.
   § 2.—The nature of the soul.
   § 3.—Royal and priestly taboos (continued).
Chapter III. Killing The God.
   § 1.—Killing the divine king.
   § 2.—Killing the tree-spirit.
   § 3.—Carrying out Death.
   § 4.—Adonis.
   § 5.—Attis.
   § 6.—Osiris.
   § 7.—Dionysus.
   § 8.—Demeter and Proserpine.
   § 9.—Lityerses.
Footnotes






                               [Cover Art]

[Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter
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                              [Frontispiece]





DEDICATION.


To My Friend

WILLIAM ROBERTSON SMITH

In Gratitude And Admiration





PREFACE.


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.

Hence every inquiry into the primitive religion of the Aryans should
either start from the superstitious beliefs and observances of the
peasantry, or should at least be constantly checked and controlled by
reference to them. Compared with the evidence afforded by living
tradition, the testimony of ancient books on the subject of early religion
is worth very little. For literature accelerates the advance of thought at
a rate which leaves the slow progress of opinion by word of mouth at an
immeasurable distance behind. Two or three generations of literature may
do more to change thought than two or three thousand years of traditional
life. But the mass of the people who do not read books remain unaffected
by the mental revolution wrought by literature; and so it has come about
that in Europe at the present day the superstitious beliefs and practices
which have been handed down by word of mouth are generally of a far more
archaic type than the religion depicted in the most ancient literature of
the Aryan race.

It is on these grounds that, in discussing the meaning and origin of an
ancient Italian priesthood, I have devoted so much attention to the
popular customs and superstitions of modern Europe. In this part of my
subject I have made great use of the works of the late W. Mannhardt,
without which, indeed, my book could scarcely have been written. Fully
recognising the truth of the principles which I have imperfectly stated,
Mannhardt set himself systematically to collect, compare, and explain the
living superstitions of the peasantry.