While highly influential in its day, The Golden Bough has come under harsh critical scrutiny in subsequent decades, with many of its descriptions of regional folklore and legends deemed less than reliable. The thesis on the origins of magic and religion that it elaborates 'will be long and laborious,' Frazer warns readers, 'but may possess something of the charm of a voyage of discovery, in which we shall visit many strange lands, with strange foreign peoples, and still stranger customs.' Chief among those customs-at least as the book is remembered in the popular imagination-is the sacrificial killing of god-kings to ensure bountiful harvests, which Frazer traces through several cultures, including in his elaborations the myths of Adonis, Osiris, and Balder. The Golden Bough was originally published in two volumes in 1890, but Frazer became so enamored of his topic that over the next few decades he expanded the work sixfold, then in 1922 cut it all down to a single thick edition suitable for mass distribution. Production notes: This ebook of The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion was published by Global Grey in 2019.Before Joseph Campbell became the world's most famous practitioner of comparative mythology, there was Sir James George Frazer. This book has 1,012 pages in the PDF version, and was originally published in 1890. Part of the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World set. Specifically, that man progresses from magic through religious belief to scientific thought.

Its thesis is that old religions were fertility cults that revolved around the worship of, and periodic sacrifice of, a sacred king. It attempts to define the shared elements of religious belief to scientific thought, discussing fertility rites, human sacrifice, the dying god, the scapegoat and many other symbols and practices which have influenced the 20th century. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion. The Golden Bough James George Frazerįolklore and Mythology Spirituality and MysticismĪvailable to download for free in PDF, epub, and Kindle ebook formats. Buy the entire collection (over 2,400 ebooks) for only £15.

The Golden Bough by James George Frazer