The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion

The golden bough is the text’s central image, connecting all its lines of inquiry into the cultural and religious practices of different cultures over time. Based on the episode from The Aeneid, the golden bough is the branch Aeneas picked from the sacred grove at Nemi to protect him on his journey to the Underworld. The priests of Diana at Nemi also used the golden bough as a symbol of their desire to challenge the King of the Wood for his title. The context ended when one participant died in combat, and if the challenger succeeded, he became the next King of the Wood. The text notes that Aeneas’s story parallels the Greek myth of Orpheus, who had to carry a willow bough with him into the Underworld when he sought his wife, Eurydice.

The text suggests that the golden bough was mistletoe, an evergreen parasite growing on the deciduous oak tree, a plant associated with the gods Zeus and Jupiter because of its resistance to lightning. Mistletoe, according to the text, represented an externalized version of the soul of the tree-god. Mistletoe was also used to kill the beloved and almost invincible Norse god, Balder.

Homeopathic or imitative magic is based on the principle that like produces like. Practitioners of this kind of magic believe that they can influence the future by mimicking or re-enacting the events that they desire. The text contrasts this with contagious magic, which relies on contact between objects or people to influence one another.

The system of mother-kin means that property, titles, and inheritance pass through the female line. The text suggests that the prevalence of this system explains why, in god and goddess pairings, such as Aphrodite and Adonis, Isis and Osiris, Cybele and Attis, that the goddess is the more powerful member of the partnership, outliving and assisting in the resurrection of the sacrificial male. The Golden Bough emphasizes that the predominance of mother-kin did not mean that women were politically or religiously dominant and takes pains to underline that there was no “gynaecocracy” (39), or rule by women.

A scapegoat is an object, animal, person, or divinity upon which the sins and troubles of the larger community are laid to cleanse that community. The text argues that the sacrificial deities of vegetation and fertility sometimes doubled as scapegoats, with the result that sacrificial rituals were marked by apparently contradictory emotions of joy and heartbreak, reverence and revulsion. Human scapegoats were often temporarily venerated and treated as royalty before being sacrificed to ensure social and agricultural renewal.

For Frazer, sympathetic magic encompasses both contagious and homeopathic magic. Broadly, it is the principle that one thing or event can affect and be used to control another due to the existence of a sympathetic connection between them. This discussion introduces the theme of The Evolution of Belief in Magic to Science, as the text systematically highlights the ways in which science comes to better represent the relationship between cause and effect.

A taboo is a subject so powerful that it is dangerous and sacred. Individuals, objects, actions, and words can be taboo and, as a result, are avoided or only approached through a multitude of restrictions and conventions. Taboos are culturally determined and related to the idea of sympathetic magic. Taboo individuals in ancient cultures, such as royalty, pregnant women, and menstruating girls, are often protected from exposure to sunlight and placed on elevated surfaces in order to keep their feet from touching the earth.