The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion

by James George Frazer

We seem to move on a thin crust which may at any moment be rent by the subterranean forces slumbering below. From time to time a hollow murmur underground or a sudden spirt of flame into the air tells of what is going on beneath our feet. Now and then the polite world is startled by a paragraph in a newspaper which tells how in Scotland an image has been found stuck full of pins for the purpose of killing an obnoxious laird or minister, how a woman has been slowly roasted to death as a witch in Ireland, or how a girl has been murdered and chopped up in Russia to make those candles of human tallow by whose light thieves hope to pursue their midnight trade unseen.

LX. Between Heaven and Earth

1. Not to touch the Earth

What was the Golden Bough? and why had each candidate for the Arician priesthood to pluck it before he could slay the priest?

so long as he lived thereafter he might not stand on the earth with his bare feet.

2. Not to see the Sun

THE SECOND rule to be here noted is that the sun may not shine upon the divine person.

3. The Seclusion of Girls at Puberty

NOW it is remarkable that the foregoing two rules—not to touch the ground and not to see the sun—are observed either separately or conjointly by girls at puberty in many parts of the world.

4. Reasons for the Seclusion of Girls at Puberty

He fears it at all times but especially on its first appearance;

LXI. The Myth of Balder

A DEITY whose life might in a sense be said to be neither in heaven nor on earth but between the two, was the Norse Balder,

Whatever may be thought of an historical kernel underlying a mythical husk in the legend of Balder, the details of the story suggest that it belongs to that class of myths which have been dramatised an ritual, or, to put it otherwise, which have been performed as magical ceremonies for the sake of producing those natural effects which they describe in figurative language.

Now the main incidents in the tale are two—first, the pulling of the mistletoe, and second, the death and burning of the god; and both of them may perhaps be found to have had their counterparts in yearly rites observed, whether separately or conjointly, by people in various parts of Europe.

LXII. 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 Hallowe’en Fires

7. The Midwinter Fires

8. The Need-fire

ritual of fire at irregular intervals in seasons of distress and calamity, above all when their cattle were attacked by epidemic disease.

LXIII. 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

THUS far we have considered what may be said for the theory that at the European fire-festivals the fire is kindled as a charm to ensure an abundant supply of sunshine for man and beast, for corn and fruits. It remains to consider what may be said against this theory and in favour of the view that in these rites fire is employed not as a creative but as a cleansing agent, which purifies men, animals, and plants by burning up and consuming the noxious elements, whether material or spiritual, which menace all living things with disease and death.

LXIV. The Burning of Human Beings in the Fires

LXVIII. The Golden Bough

In a former chapter we saw that primitive man seeks to preserve the life of his human divinities by keeping them poised between earth and heaven, as the place where they are least likely to be assailed by the dangers that encompass the life of man on earth.

It is therefore not surprising that the foam of the river should be the totem of a clan in India.

The view that the mistletoe was not merely the instrument of Balder’s death, but that it contained his life,

It is not a new opinion that the Golden Bough was the mistletoe. True, Virgil does not identify but only compares it with mistletoe.

Hence if that tree was the oak, the King of the Wood must have been a personification of the oakspirit.

Thus in the acuter minds magic is gradually superseded by religion,

In short, religion, regarded as an explanation of nature, is displaced by science.

In the last analysis magic, religion, and science are nothing but theories of thought; and as science has supplanted its predecessors, so it may hereafter be itself superseded by some more perfect hypothesis, perhaps by some totally different way of looking at the phenomena—of registering the shadows on the screen—of which we in this generation can form no idea.

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,