The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion

“If we analyse the principles of thought on which magic is based, they will probably be found to resolve themselves into two: first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and, second, that things that have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after physical contact has been severed.”

Here, Frazer outlines the two forms of sympathetic magic: homeopathic and contagious magic. The former assumes that magical influence can be exerted through objects with which the object of the spell was once in contact, while the latter is based on the principle that events can be produced by enacting or replicating them. This introduces the theme of The Evolution of Belief in Magic to Science.

“Both branches of magic, […] assume that things act on each other at a distance through a secret sympathy, the impulse being transmitted from one to the other by means of what we may consider as a kind of invisible ether, not unlike that which is postulated by modern science for a precisely similar purpose, namely, to explain how things can physically affect each other through a space which appears to be empty.”

Here, Frazer discusses the shared features of homeopathic and contagious magic to link them to the same principles that underly scientific inquiry. Throughout the text, Frazer repeatedly suggests that modern science has more in common with magic than with religion.

“While religious systems differ not only in different countries but in the same country in different ages, the system of Sympathetic Magic remains everywhere and at all times substantially alike in its principles and practice.”

While religions differ from culture to culture, Frazer argues that sympathetic magic is very similar in its forms, and its study, therefore, reveals basic universal truths about the human subconscious. As an example of his Eurocentrism, Frazer compares the culture of non-European countries to that of Europe during earlier ages. He associates ancient popular European customs with the rituals performed by non-European tribes, arguing that both represent the same basic principles. He suggests, as elsewhere, that primitive magical thinking has withstood time better than other, more evolved, modes of thought. That which Frazer terms “savagery” can always be located outside of European culture.

“Strange […] as may seem to us the idea of a god incarnate in human form, it has nothing very startling for early men, who sees in a man-god or a god-man only a higher degree of the same supernatural powers which he arrogates in perfect good faith to himself. Nor does he draw any very sharp distinction between a god and a powerful sorcerer.”

Frazer here presents one of the central tents of his thesis: that the idea of a god incarnate in man, one of the central tents of Christianity, has ancient origins. This highlights the theme of Christianity and Its Prehistory. He suggests that the idea is a relic of magical thinking, perhaps dating back to the so-called Age of Religion, at which point there was no distinction between a supernatural deity and a human sorcerer.

“In the religious history of the Aryan race in Europe the worship of trees has played an important part. […] For at the dawn of history Europe was covered with immense primaeval forests, in which the scattered clearings must have appeared like islets in an ocean of green.”

Accounting for the widespread practice of tree worship in Europe, Frazer points back to the vast primaeval forests which once covered the continent. The importance of trees is underlined throughout Frazer’s text. Sacrificial kings are often embodiments of tree spirits, and trees can be bedecked as May poles or serve as gallows in hangings or crucifixions. The animist sacred tree is implicitly presented as an ancestor of the Christian crucifix.

“Exogamy is the rule which obliges a man to marry a woman from a different clan to his own; beena marriage is the rule that he must leave the home of his birth and live with his wife’s people; and female kinship or mother-kin is the system of tracing relationship and transmitting the family name through women instead of through men.”

Frazer is here seeking to explain why male gods, such as Osiris and Attis, seem so much weaker than their female counterparts in these death and resurrection narratives. He explains the phenomenon by suggesting that the cultures under consideration were governed by a matrilineal rule of succession, known as “mother-kin.”

“[O]ur resemblances to the savage are still far more numerous than our differences from him; and what we have in common with him, and deliberately retain as true and useful, we owe to our savage forefathers who slowly acquired by experience and transmitted to us by inheritance those seemingly fundamental ideas which we are apt to regard as original and intuitive.”

Frazer again underlines the fine line separating modern European culture from ancient, non-Christian peoples, to whom he refers as “savages.” He preaches caution against overestimating the differences between contemporary society and the past, urging humility and a recognition of our common origins. At the same time, his language contains the Eurocentric bias that was common in the late 19th century among Western anthropologists toward the people of colonized nations.

“By slaying him his worshippers could, in the first place, make sure of catching his soul as it escaped and transferring it to a suitable successor and, in the second place, by putting him to death before his natural force was abated, they would secure that the world would not fall into decay with the decay of the man-god.”

Frazer here details why divine kings might have been put to death in the prime of life. Firstly, ceremonially killing the man god meant that the worshippers could be sure of capturing his immaterial and immortal soul and transferring it to a suitable replacement vehicle. In the second, since it was believed that the soul decayed and sickened with the body, killing the god at a young age meant that the soul passed on without being in any way compromised or diminished.

“In course of time the slow advance of knowledge, which has dispelled so many cherished illusions, convinced at least the more thoughtful portion of mankind that the alternations of summer and winter, of spring and autumn, were not merely the result of their own magical rites, but that some deeper cause, some mightier power, was at work behind the shifting scenes of nature. They now pictured to themselves the growth and decay of vegetation, the birth and death of living creatures, as effects of the waxing and waning strength of divine beings, of gods and goddesses, who were born and died, who married and begot children, on the pattern of human life. Thus the old magical theory of the seasons was displaced, or rather supplemented, by a religious theory.”

Frazer here imagines the transition from magical to religious thinking. During the Age of Magic, societies believe that their sorcerers are able to actively bring about the changes of season on which their survival depends. The dawn of religion comes when humanity realizes that the force of nature operates independently from human agency. These invisible forces are imaginatively humanized into gods and goddesses. However, religion initially “supplements” magic rather than displacing it. Magical rituals endure, although they are now believed to aid and propitiate the god in charge of phenomena rather than to influence events directly. Frazer’s tendency to speculate and generalize about the thought processes of ancient peoples from vastly different places and times has been a source of controversy.

“Greek and Roman society was built on the conception of the subordination of the individual to the community, of the citizen to the state; […] All this was changed by the spread of Oriental religions which inculcated the communion of the soul with God and its eternal salvation as the only objects worth living for, […]. The inevitable result of this selfish and immoral doctrine was to withdraw the devotee more and more from the public service, to concentrate his thoughts on his own spiritual emotions, and to breed in him a contempt for the present life which he regarded merely as the probation for a better and an eternal.”

Frazer is here referring to what, in his mind, are the disastrous effects of the growing influence of Eastern religions on Roman and Hellenistic civilizations. He suggests that the rise of asceticism and the ideal of the contemplative life, focusing not on this life but on the next, gradually undermined the civic-minded social fabric of Rome and broke apart the body public. This decline persisted, in Frazer’s opinion, until the beginning of the early modern period. Frazer’s comparison of Christianity to the Persian cult of Mithra in the section, which follows this passage, suggests that his attitude towards the rising influence of Christianity in the same period was ambivalent, at best.

“Taken altogether, the coincidences of the Christian with the heathen festivals are too close and too numerous to be accidental. They mark the compromise which the Church in the hour of its triumph was compelled to make with its vanquished yet still dangerous rivals. The inflexible Protestantism of the primitive missionaries, with their fiery denunciation of heathendom, had been exchanged for the supple policy, the easy tolerance.”

Frazer argues that the rising Christian church added a number of ancient festivals to its calendar and embraced the related customs in order both to appease local communities and to harness pre-existent devotional energies. This highlights the theme of Christianity and Its Prehistory in the text. He notes that his more pragmatic and tolerant approach contrasted to the “fiery” and “too rigid principles” of the earliest Christians.

“We have now concluded our enquiry into the nature and worship of the three Oriental deities Adonis, Attis, and Osiris. […] All three apparently embodied the powers of fertility in general and of vegetation in particular. All three were believed to have died and risen again from the dead; and the divine death and resurrection of all three were dramatically represented at annual festivals, which their worshippers celebrated with alternate transports of sorrow and joy, of weeping and exultation.”

Here Frazer concludes his comparative study of Attis, Adonis, and Osiris. He suggests that all three are embodiments of the powers of fertility and vegetation and their death and resurrection were celebrated annually in rituals founded on principles of sympathetic magic. This links them to the theme of The Necessity of Sacrifice for Renewal in the text.

“At all events, it is always the god rather than the goddess who comes to a sad end, and whose death is annually mourned. […] Now the superiority thus assigned to the goddess over the god is most naturally explained as the result of a social system in which maternity counted for more than paternity, descent being traced and property handed down through women rather than through men […].”

Reflecting on the apparently superior power of the female partners in the various god-goddess couples described in the text, Frazer introduced the concepts of “mother-kin” and “father-kin.” He suggests that, in the societies that produced these rituals, inheritance and titles were passed down through the maternal family. This system differs from the patriarchal structure of Greek and Roman religion and Western society in general. This aspect of ancient belief is not transmitted to Christianity.

“If women ever created gods, they would be more likely to give them masculine than feminine features. In point of fact, the great religious ideals which have permanently impressed themselves on the world seem always to have been a product of the male imagination. Men make gods and women worship them.”

Having introduced the important theme of “mother-kin,” Frazer hastens to specify that this concept did not imply any kind of political matriarchy or theological gynaecocracy. While acknowledging the importance of motherhood and matrilineage, Frazer emphatically sustains patriarchal views, reversing the power dynamic between men and women that he described in examples of mythical god-goddess couples.

“On the whole, then, it appears highly probable that as a consequence of a certain natural division of labour between the sexes men have contributed more than men towards the greatest advance in economic history, namely, the transition from a nomadic to a settled life, from a natural to an artificial basis of subsistence.”

Still concerned with the powers and relationships between gods and goddesses, Frazer suggests that the prevalence of powerful nature goddesses reflects the fact that women were probably responsible for discovering agriculture. He refers to this as “the greatest advance in economic history.”

“Thus it happens that, while the fine flower of the religious consciousness in myth, ritual, and art is fleeting and evanescent, its simpler forms are comparatively stable and permanent, being rooted deep in those principles of common minds which bid fair to outlive the splendid but transient creations of genius.”

Frazer here argues that ancient rituals are more resistant to the passage of time than humanity’s modern achievements. He speculates that the ancient, magical rites and beliefs described in his text may outlast the greatest achievements of civilization and that belief in supernatural beings (ghosts, goblins, etc.) is compatible with Christianity because the belief systems have the same source.

“The notion that we can transfer our guilt and sufferings to some other being who will bear them for us is familiar to the savage mind. It arises from a very obvious confusion between the physical and the mental, between the material and the immaterial. Because it is possible to shift a load of wood, stones, or what-not, from our own back onto the back of another, the savage fancies that it is equally possible to shift the burden of his pains and sorrows to another, who will suffer them in his stead.”

Frazer here introduces the figure of the scapegoat, an individual, animal or object onto whom the local population’s sufferings are offloaded. Frazer again associates “primitive,” “magical” thinking with a tendency to conflate the workings of the physical world and the spiritual world. However, he is setting up his argument for the link between Christianity and Its Prehistory, as he will argue that this idea applies to Christ’s crucifixion.

“The use of the divinity as a scapegoat clears up the ambiguity which […] appears to hang around the European folk-custom of ‘carrying out Death.’ […] Death was not merely the dying god of vegetation, but also a public scapegoat, on whom were laid all the evils that had afflicted the people during the past year.”

Here Frazer suggests that the figures of the divine sacrificial king and the scapegoat came to be combined, with the dying king carrying away the sins and troubles of the local population. This combination is recognizable in the crucifixion narrative, where the divine Christ carries away the sins of the world.

“Now, of all these periods of license, the one which is best known and which in modern languages has given its name to the rest, is Saturnalia. This famous festival fell in December, the last month of the Roman year, and was popularly supposed to commemorate the merry reign of Saturn, the god of sowing and of husbandry, […].”

Frazer describes the Roman festival of Saturnalia, one of a number of agricultural festivals in which a special license was granted to the public, and everyday hierarchies were inverted. Saturnalia commemorated the temporary kingship of Saturn, who introduced agriculture and presided over the Golden Age. Saturn was a mythological rather than a historical person, and he was a beloved king because there were no social evils, such as labor, slavery, and private property, during his reign.

“To conclude this speculation I venture to urge in its favour that it seems to shed fresh light on some of the causes which contributes to the remarkably rapid diffusion of Christianity in Asia Minor […] The new faith had elements in it which appealed powerfully to the Asiatic mind […] We have seen that the conception of the dying and risen god was no new one in these regions.”

Frazer speculates that its similarity to Asian religions centering on the death and resurrection of a man-god was one of the reasons for the spread of Christianity that area of the world. The similarities between Christ and figures such as Attis and Osiris facilitated the spread of the new religion and, in Frazer’s mind, strengthens the argument that the sacrificial man-god was a common feature of all ancient cultures.

“The uncleanness, as it is called, of girls at puberty and the sanctity of holy men do not, to the primitive mind, differ materially from each other. They are only different manifestations of the same mysterious energy which, like energy in general, is in itself neither good nor bad, but becomes beneficent or maleficent according to its application.”

Frazer discusses the taboo customs surrounding pubescent girls and human divinities as being more similar than different. Both figures are at once seen as sacred and dangerous because they embody the power that is considered mysterious. Both classes of individual are impeded from both touching the ground and seeing the sun, which symbolically keeps them suspended between heaven and earth. This leads parallels the archetype of the hanged god and ultimately to the crucifixion.

“If the question is put, why do men desire to deposit their lives outside their bodies? The answer can only be that, like the giant in the fairy tale, they think it safer to do so than to carry it about with them, just as people deposit their money with a banker rather than carry it on their persons.”

Frazer here describes his reasoning for why people create totems, or animals and objects imbued with a person’s or a community’s spirit. He associates totemism with a desire to keep the soul safe since the body is vulnerable to attack. He suggests that the practice was particularly common in rite-of-passage ceremonies surrounding male puberty because of the potentially dangerous sexual energies awakened at that time.

“We may illustrate the course which thought has hitherto run by likening it to a web woven of three different threads -the black thread of magic, the red thread of religion, and the white thread of science, if under science we may include those simple truths, drawn from observation of nature, of which men in all ages have possessed a store.”

In this passage, Frazer considers how The Evolution of Belief in Magic to Science have coexisted and interacted across history, even though they have succeeded one from the other as dominant modes of thought. It is noteworthy that he sees magic and science as interweaving smoothly while religion is described in rather negative terms as a “dark crimson stain.”