The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (1922)

Originally published as a 12 volume set in 1890, the Golden Bough is classic study in anthropology. It explores the origins of primitive magic and religion by comparing multiple cultures and practices. Frazer’s main idea is belief goes through three stages of evolution; primitive magic progresses to religion and finally ends with scientific belief. Although its scientific value has faded over time, its influence on sociology, psychology, anthropology, mythology, religion, folklore and literature has been substantial.

Frazer begins with a ritual held in a sacred grove dedicated to Diana in Nemi (central Italy). He is curious about several elements in the ritual which provide a launching pad for the rest of the book. The first book is concerned with magic and king-gods, while the second and third books dive into the world of ritual murder and resurrection. The third book includes the controversial chapter (Crucifixion of Christ) which was removed from the first abridged edition. In the last book, Frazer comes back to the ritual in Nemi and wraps things up.

There are a few things that make this book challenging. Even in its abridged form, the book is long and could have been cut further. The second issue is instead of adding commentary and opinions, Frazer strings myths, customs, and rituals one after the other. At times, this becomes overwhelming and leads to information overload. Another issue is accuracy and criticism. Frazer’s methodology doesn’t hold up to today’s standards and many of his original ideas have been discredited, so a discerning eye is needed while reading the book.

So why read it? In one of my archeology classes, a student asked why Mesopotamian religions are so similar to each other. The professors’ response was because we stand on the shoulders of the people who lived before us. As Frazer shows, there is no denying that the same rituals and symbols have been recycled throughout history. To my knowledge, there has never been a mosquito cult, but yet, cults of the snake, bull, and cow are numerous. Another reason to read the book is the impact it’s had on literature. Knowing the Golden Bough influenced on books, such as The Waste Land, can enrich the reading experience; in the worse case scenario, you'll sound smart. Then there are myths themselves. They can be fun and amusing to read however tragic. And finally, it doesn’t take long to see how irrational the human species can be; if you don’t believe me, read the chapter on Killing the God in Mexico. It's not pretty.

[Note: If one is interested in the similarities between paganism and Christianity a historically accurate book is The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. It approaches the subject from a different perspective and is much shorter.]

An acquired taste, but everyone has been impacted by this book one way or another.


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Reading the unabridged version was probably a mistake. The subject interests me, but I found this one hard to get through. It doesn't help that I had already read more moder books on the same subject and already knew most of it is widely discredited. In the end, I couldn't get through this. I suppose I will start over at some point in time, with the abridged version. ( )

The Foreword compares Frazer and Golden Bough in its impact to such revolutionary thinkers of the 19th Century as Darwin, Marx, and Freud. This seminal work of anthropology and comparative religion first published in 1890 was in fact a great influence on Freud and Jung as well as T.S. Eliot and Yeats and the modern Neopagan movement. Frazer's influence on Joseph Campbell is obvious--he's the original. Frazer tries to argue for the monomyth--the idea that religion and myth can be reduced to a few universal principles and symbols such as sacrifice, scapegoats, the soul and totem and taboo. Taking an ancient Roman custom involving the "King of the Wood" at Nemi as his launching pad, Frazer examined myths and folktales from every part of the world and drew connections to explain, as the subtitle on the cover of my copy put it, "the roots of religion and folklore." His argument seems to be that the origins of religion can be found in a crude science, an attempt to influence the world through sympathetic magic. Although he never attacked Christianity directly in this original edition, I could see how the idea of Jesus as entirely myth could come out of this book. Frazer's examination of vegetation deities, cycles of sowing and reaping and kingly sacrifice and his examination of the myths of Ishtar and Thammuz, Isis and Osiris, Aphrodite and Adonis and spring fertility rites is certainly suggestive.

I often found this book tedious, primarily because of Frazer's exhaustive examples--and the edition I read is the original two-volume work--before he, as the Foreword put it, "overburdened the book with volumes of illustrative examples which tended to hide the thread of his argument." (Twelve volumes in fact.) In his pile-on it reminded me of my recent read of the original edition of Darwin's Origin of Species. This was a time when science wasn't yet so technical and specialized as to be unduly esoteric to the layman. So as with Darwin, I think Frazer was aiming his book at both his scientific brethren as well as the layman--thus the exhaustive examples in an effort to prove his theories. However, unlike the case with Darwin, I believe Frazer's examples do more to hide--nay, bury--his argument rather than illustrate it, even in this original more compact edition. More and more I found myself skimming. There is an abridged edition from the author, but my understanding from reviews is that it excised a lot of the more controversial and interesting parts found in the expanded versions, such as a chapter on "The Crucifixion of Christ." Also as with Darwin, who didn't at the time have the advantages of our advances in genetics and geology, I suspect much of the anthropology in Golden Bough is outdated. Especially given that unlike Darwin, who famously conducted many observations in the field and experiments of his own, Frazer seemed to entirely rely on second-hand accounts, mostly by travelers and missionaries. Nor do I entirely buy Frazer's contention that modern peasant customs and folklore represented a continuity with a pagan past.

Some may be put off by Frazer's characterization of peoples as "rude" and "savages." To his credit though, Frazer doesn't exempt Europe or Britain in his examples of primitive rituals and superstitions. Given that and the context of the times, I don't as some reviewers do see this book as essentially racist. Frazer notes, "when all is said and done our resemblances to the savage are still far more numerous than our differences from him." This book reminded me, of all things, of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. That novel is famous as a denunciation of colonialism. But one of the things I took away from Achebe's book was that the Christian missionaries gained adherents because they freed their converts from frightening and oppressive superstitions that propagated slavery, infanticide and human sacrifice. As much as I can see the ugly side of the history of modern monotheistic creeds such as Christianity, I think we forget that much of the legacy of polytheistic pagan beliefs isn't as pretty as many of its New Age adherents would have it. This book--for all I suspected the accuracy of many details--was a salutary reminder of that with its tales of scapegoating, sacrifices and taboos. Ironically, Frazer's successors, such as Joseph Campbell, have formed a new myth of the "noble savage," of a pagan and pre-historic past as egalitarian and in harmony with nature. We seem to have few fans of civilization and reason these days. It's ironic that a book that tried to explain the spiritual scientifically might have contributed to that. Ultimately I'm glad I read it, and I'm keeping it on my shelves, at least for now, as a rather thorough reference book of beliefs and rites across cultures and ages--or at least as far as was known over a century ago. ( )

This book is a classic in freethought literature, giving a detailed (and I do mean detailed) analysis of the various early relgions and how they evolved into the pagan gods. The author started out to give an explanation of one particular, limited phenomenon, the temple of Diana, and ranged far and wide. Although very little of the book deals with Christianity, it is very easy to begin to see patterns in the religious traditions he discusses that became part of Judeo-Christian tradition. ( )

Magisterial, exhaustive, and once in a while beautiful, full English prose to make sense of it all.