The Golden Bough

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Title: The Golden Bough A study of magic and religion

Author: Sir James George Frazer

Release Date: January, 2003 [EBook #3623] [This file was last updated on March 23, 2003]

Edition: 11

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII, with some ISO-8859-1 characters

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLDEN BOUGH ***

This etext was produced by David Reed

The Golden Bough: a study of magic and religion

by Sir James George Frazer

CONTENTS

Preface

Subject Index

The King of the Wood 1. Diana and Virbius 2. Artemis and Hippolytus 3. Recapitulation

Priestly Kings

Sympathetic Magic 1. The Principles of Magic 2. Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic 3. Contagious Magic 4. The Magician's Progress

Magic and Religion

The Magical Control of the Weather 1. The Public Magician 2. The Magical Control of Rain 3. The Magical Control of the Sun 4. The Magical Control of the Wind

Magicians as Kings

Incarnate Human Gods

Departmental Kings of Nature

The Worship of Trees 1. Tree-spirits 2. Beneficent Powers of Tree-Spirits

Relics of Tree Worship in Modern Europe

The Influence of the Sexes on Vegetation

The Sacred Marriage 1. Diana as a Goddess of Fertility 2. The Marriage of the Gods

The Kings of Rome and Alba 1. Numa and Egeria 2. The King as Jupiter

Succession to the Kingdom in Ancient Latium

The Worship of the Oak

Dianus and Diana

The Burden of Royalty 1. Royal and Priestly Taboos 2. Divorce of the Spiritual from the Temporal Power

The Perils of the Soul 1. The Soul as a Mannikin 2. Absence and Recall of the Soul 3. The Soul as a Shadow and a Reflection

Tabooed Acts 1. Taboos on Intercourse with Strangers 2. Taboos on Eating and Drinking 3. Taboos on Showing the Face 4. Taboos on Quitting the House 5. Taboos on Leaving Food over

Tabooed Persons 1. Chiefs and Kings tabooed 2. Mourners tabooed 3. Women tabooed at Menstruation and Childbirth 4. Warriors tabooed 5. Manslayers tabooed 6. Hunters and Fishers tabooed

Tabooed Things 1. The Meaning of Taboo 2. Iron tabooed 3. Sharp Weapons tabooed 4. Blood tabooed 5. The Head tabooed 6. Hair tabooed 7. Ceremonies at Hair-cutting 8. Disposal of Cut Hair and Nails 9. Spittle tabooed 10. Foods tabooed 11. Knots and Rings tabooed

Tabooed Words 1. Personal Names tabooed 2. Names of Relations tabooed 3. Names of the Dead tabooed 4. Names of Kings and other Sacred Persons tabooed 5. Names of Gods tabooed

Our Debt to the Savage

The Killing of the Divine King 1. The Mortality of the Gods 2. Kings killed when their Strength fails 3. Kings killed at the End of a Fixed Term

Temporary Kings

Sacrifice of the Kings Son

Succession to the Soul

The Killing of the Tree-Spirit 1. The Whitsuntide Mummers 2. Burying the Carnival 3. Carrying out Death 4. Bringing in Summer 5. Battle of Summer and Winter 6. Death and Resurrection of Kostrubonko 7. Death and Revival of Vegetation 8. Analogous Rites in India 9. The Magic Spring

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 1. The Popular Rites 2. The Official Rites

The Nature of Osiris 1. Osiris a Corn-god 2. Osiris a Tree-spirit 3. Osiris a God of Fertility 4. Osiris a God of the Dead

Isis

Osiris and the Sun

Dionysus

Demeter and Persephone

Corn-Mother and Corn-Maiden in N. Europe

Corn-Mother in Many Lands 1. The Corn-mother in America 2. The Rice-mother in the East Indies 3. The Spirit of the Corn embodied in Human Beings 4. The Double Personification of the Corn as Mother and Daughter

Lityerses 1. Songs of the Corn Reapers 2. Killing the Corn-spirit 3. Human Sacrifices for the Crops 4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives

The Corn-Spirit as an Animal 1. Animal Embodiments of the Corn-spirit 2. The Corn-spirit as a Wolf or a Dog 3. The Corn-spirit as a Cock 4. The Corn-spirit as a Hare 5. The Corn-spirit as a Cat 6. The Corn-spirit as a Goat 7. The Corn-spirit as a Bull, Cow, or Ox 8. The Corn-spirit as a Horse or Mare 9. The Corn-spirit as a Pig (Boar or Sow) 10. On the Animal Embodiments of the Corn-spirit

Ancient Deities of Vegetation as Animals 1. Dionysus, the Goat and the Bull 2. Demeter, the Pig and the Horse 3. Attis, Adonis, and the Pig 4. Osiris, the Pig and the Bull 5. Virbius and the Horse

Eating the God 1. The Sacrament of First-Fruits 2. Eating the God among the Aztecs 3. Many Manii at Aricia

Homeopathic Magic of a Flesh Diet

Killing the Divine Animal 1. Killing the Sacred Buzzard 2. Killing the Sacred Ram 3. Killing the Sacred Serpent 4. Killing the Sacred Turtles 5. Killing the Sacred Bear

The Propitiation of Wild Animals By Hunters

Types of Animal Sacrament 1. The Egyptian and the Aino Types of Sacrament 2. Processions with Sacred Animals

The Transference of Evil 1. The Transference to Inanimate Objects 2. The Transference to Animals 3. The Transference to Men 4. The Transference of Evil in Europe

The Public Expulsion of Evils 1. The Omnipresence of Demons 2. The Occasional Expulsion of Evils 3. The Periodic Expulsion of Evils

Public Scapegoats 1. The Expulsion of Embodied Evils 2. The Occasional Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle 3. The Periodic Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle 4. On Scapegoats in General

Human Scapegoats in Classical Antiquity 1. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Rome 2. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Greece 3. The Roman Saturnalia

Killing the God in Mexico

Between Heaven and Earth 1. Not to touch the Earth 2. Not to see the Sun 3. The Seclusion of Girls at Puberty 4. Reasons for the Seclusion of Girls at Puberty

The Myth of Balder

The Fire-Festivals of Europe 1. The Fire-festivals in general 2. The Lenten Fires 3. The Easter Fires 4. The Beltane Fires 5. The Midsummer Fires 6. The Halloween Fires 7. The Midwinter Fires 8. The Need-fire

The Interpretation of the Fire-Festivals 1. On the Fire-festivals in general 2. The Solar Theory of the Fire-festivals 3. The Purificatory Theory of the Fire-festivals

The Burning of Human Beings in the Fires 1. The Burning of Effigies in the Fires 2. The Burning of Men and Animals in the Fires

Balder and the Mistletoe

The External Soul in Folk-Tales

The External Soul in Folk-Custom 1. The External Soul in Inanimate Things 2. The External Soul in Plants 3. The External Soul in Animals 4. The Ritual of Death and Resurrection

The Golden Bough

Farewell to Nemi

Preface

THE PRIMARY aim of this book is to explain the remarkable rule which regulated the succession to the priesthood of Diana at Aricia. When I first set myself to solve the problem more than thirty years ago, I thought that the solution could be propounded very briefly, but I soon found that to render it probable or even intelligible it was necessary to discuss certain more general questions, some of which had hardly been broached before. In successive editions the discussion of these and kindred topics has occupied more and more space, the enquiry has branched out in more and more directions, until the two volumes of the original work have expanded into twelve. Meantime a wish has often been expressed that the book should be issued in a more compendious form. This abridgment is an attempt to meet the wish and thereby to bring the work within the range of a wider circle of readers. While the bulk of the book has been greatly reduced, I have endeavoured to retain its leading principles, together with an amount of evidence sufficient to illustrate them clearly. The language of the original has also for the most part been preserved, though here and there the exposition has been somewhat condensed. In order to keep as much of the text as possible I have sacrificed all the notes, and with them all exact references to my authorities. Readers who desire to ascertain the source of any particular statement must therefore consult the larger work, which is fully documented and provided with a complete bibliography.

In the abridgment I have neither added new matter nor altered the views expressed in the last edition; for the evidence which has come to my knowledge in the meantime has on the whole served either to confirm my former conclusions or to furnish fresh illustrations of old principles. Thus, for example, on the crucial question of the practice of putting kings to death either at the end of a fixed period or whenever their health and strength began to fail, the body of evidence which points to the wide prevalence of such a custom has been considerably augmented in the interval. A striking instance of a limited monarchy of this sort is furnished by the powerful mediaeval kingdom of the Khazars in Southern Russia, where the kings were liable to be put to death either on the expiry of a set term or whenever some public calamity, such as drought, dearth, or defeat in war, seemed to indicate a failure of their natural powers. The evidence for the systematic killing of the Khazar kings, drawn from the accounts of old Arab travellers, has been collected by me elsewhere.[1] Africa, again, has supplied several fresh examples of a similar practice of regicide. Among them the most notable perhaps is the custom formerly observed in Bunyoro of choosing every year from a particular clan a mock king, who was supposed to incarnate the late king, cohabited with his widows at his temple-tomb, and after reigning for a week was strangled.[2] The custom presents a close parallel to the ancient Babylonian festival of the Sacaea, at which a mock king was dressed in the royal robes, allowed to enjoy the real king's concubines, and after reigning for five days was stripped, scourged, and put to death. That festival in its turn has lately received fresh light from certain Assyrian inscriptions,[3] which seem to confirm the interpretation which I formerly gave of the festival as a New Year celebration and the parent of the Jewish festival of Purim.[4] Other recently discovered parallels to the priestly kings of Aricia are African priests and kings who used to be put to death at the end of seven or of two years, after being liable in the interval to be attacked and killed by a strong man, who thereupon succeeded to the priesthood or the kingdom.[5]