Customer Reviews

The Illustrated Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion

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Frazer's weighty, scholarly, 12 volume work about the beginnings of magic and religion is one of those works that have left a huge, huge, huge, and also really big footprint in our understandings of anthropology, psychology, history, Jungian studies, Freudian studies, film, visual art, and religion. I like to think of the Victorian/Edwardian Frazer as an Ur Joseph Campbell.

But how many lay readers are going to dig into his 12 volumes?

Thus, a brilliant idea. Editor Robert Temple gives us a severely edited, glossy-papered Frazer with a strong focus on the concept of sympathetic magic. And the pictures. They travel in ways that Frazer's prose wants to travel. The images range from archeological artifacts to 19th century oils, to contemporary photographs, to woodcuts. They are rich, multi-faceted, beautiful. They fill me with awe and make my mind jump about.

Frazer's weighty, scholarly, 12 volume work about the beginnings of magic and religion is one of those works that have left a huge, huge, huge, and also really big footprint in our understandings of anthropology, psychology, history, Jungian studies, Freudian studies, film, visual art, and religion. I like to think of the Victorian/Edwardian Frazer as an Ur Joseph Campbell.

But how many lay readers are going to dig into his 12 volumes?

Thus, a brilliant idea. Editor Robert Temple gives us a severely edited, glossy-papered Frazer with a strong focus on the concept of sympathetic magic. And the pictures. They travel in ways that Frazer's prose wants to travel. The images range from archeological artifacts to 19th century oils, to contemporary photographs, to woodcuts. They are rich, multi-faceted, beautiful. They fill me with awe and make my mind jump about.

The Illustrated Golden Bough; A study in magic and religon, was a well written book that I would reccomend to those with a bit of time on their hands. It was thorough in it's information, but lacked a spicy sense of humor that would keep the reader glued to the pages. For those of you that are interested in history, this is a must read. It includes stuff from before Christianity and way into the witch doctors. I loved how it wrote about magic, without judging it. Over all, it was a little dry, but very informative.

This book is a seminal work because it had a crucial influence on four important works of the twentieth century: T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius.

Sir James George Frazer's book written in 1922 was a groundbreaking work on ancient religion, paganism, and roots of early Christianity. Frazer does an in-depth examination of 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.

Frazer spent his life writing fifteen volumes of history of myth and religion. This book sums up his theory of magic and its connections to paganism, as well as fusing ideas from Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual To Romance and Gnostic texts that serve as a link to early Christianity's influence from ancient nature cults. His chapter titles say much about where his work goes and why it is so influential on iconic twentieth century works. The King of the Wood explains the original nature of the task imposed upon the hero, it undoubtedly influenced both Campbell's and Coppola's works. The Myths of Adonis, Attis, and Osiris looks to establish a chain of descent connecting early Aryan and Babylonian ritual with classic, Medieval and modern forms of nature worship. Our Debt to the Savage explains the role of the Medicine Man or doctor in fertility ritual. The Killing of the Devine King analyzes how this title is prevalent in so many of humankind's legends, and was a definite influence on Coppola's Colonel Kurtz character. Sacrifice of the King's Son regarded as an object of awe certainly influenced The Da Vinci Code.

Frazer's book is interesting and fun to read. I especially became interested in it from the movie Apocalypse Now. There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave. Weston's book is one of three on the nightstand. The other two are Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which the film is based on. The other book is Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual To Romance. Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla were trying to tell their audience need to read these three books!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.

Given the limited time I had to read the book, I skipped passages that looked to me as rubbing in the major team. I am not sure that the author's aim was to rub anything in; in fact, I am sure it was not. It only looked so from my personal perspective. As far as I can judge, the purpose of the author was to unearth as many instances of pre-religion rituals as he could find out about. He achieved his goal most brilliantly and honestly. Evidence to his honesty is the fact that originally these were 12 tomes, mostly due to references to sources. Removal of the references allowed for compression to one tome.

So, what did I learn from the book?

From the very start, people desired to control nature in order to gain better control over their lives - for prosperity and happiness.

However, knowledge about nature was too skimpy for that goal to be achieved. People observed the sequences of natural events, and assumed that in every sequential pair of events the former is the cause of the latter. We know now that that does not have to be true, and the sequence itself heavily depends on what the observer sees as sequential events.

Based on this more often than not erroneous causal relationship, people established a wide variety of rituals to influence natural events. When after the ritual the desired event did happen people repeated the ritual every time they desired the event. When after the ritual the desired event failed to happen people dropped the ritual or blamed the failure on less than perfect performance of the ritual.

These futile attempts to control nature lasted for many centuries. In order to dramatize the ritual people included in it sacrifices of other people, often the most beloved members of their families or the most valuable people of the community. Those rituals look to us as senseless murder. Even when there was no murder, people assumed that Nature, in order to comply, demands sacrifices in shape of self-denial of pleasure and infliction of pain and injury. People ended up being more than enslaved in a web of rituals. I say "more", because the slave master was the Man himself.

One could see as logical, if people were gradually gaining more factual knowledge about nature, by developing scientific methods and logic, and would replace the futile rituals with activities more similar to the ones we use now to utilize natural phenomena in our favour. Were that the course of Man's mental development, the whole phenomenon of religion could have been skipped.

However, that was not the course.

Frustrated by the inconsistency of the rituals' outcomes, people gave up and started delegating decisions to different gods. Instead of trying to control Nature by rituals, they started to worship gods to get favors from them. Eventually people united those many gods into one God. Then God's sons came along, each worshipped by different populations.

For many centuries religion diverted Man from collecting and systematizing factual knowledge about Nature, and by doing so mightily slowed down human progress toward a more rewarding life.

I can only guess what initiated Man's return to study of Nature. My guess is - the written word. The written word allowed for wider exchange of observations and thought between people removed from each other in space and time, and thereby allowed for the creation of a critical mass of thought that is strong enough to move the knowledge of Nature forward.

This book describes the beginnings of the torturous path of Man in quest to control Nature.

This was a very good experience. The book arrived in excellent condition. The only criticism is that it did not come in hardcover as requested.