Rating: 
Summary: ...And then there's Mr. Frazer
Review: If you are the type of person whose spirit gravitates to the simple (not simplistic, but simple)answers to some of the most complex and seemingly unrelated questions, and those answers desired consist of the type philosphers, poets and artists/scientists have been looking for (with varied success) for millenia, then you just might enjoy this book. Camile Paglia's SEXUAL PERSONAE, heavily indebted to this and the major works of Freud by her own proud admission, is what led me to this pretty staggering work for its time. It is relatively easy to make someone's brain hurt with a lot of scholar talk, where one is saying nothing; this book is great because it is *sensational*, in the truest sense of the word. This is one of the first of the many books about religion and the history of man that put my stomach up in knots, as it simultaneously gave me the power to look beyond the fabrication of ancient Greek philosophical society and Judeo-Christian heritage as the summit of man's knowledge. (Not that that was ever a problem for me consciously, but unconsciously I doubt anyone without reading a book like this has moved beyond it.) This is one of the books that made a new approach to the understanding of man and a paradigm shift as to how we have mentally, emotionally and spiritually developed not only possible, but inevitable. What could keep this monument from receiving five stars will be fairly obvious to any reader: the prejudices of his time. It is actually hard to look at what he says objectively in that context; before him I doubt anyone put two and two together to come up with what he did during a time when his racism and trivialization of non-Euopean peoples, and for more than the past fifty plus years after him, anyone who has read his work has had that tempered by the embarrasing revalations of Nietsche and Freud. That, along with the egocentrism of Victorian Europe that he projects onto ancient and prehistoric man, serves to keep the book from being perfect (and are sometimes annoying), but do not serve to really take away its importance and incredible effect. If you are a Joseph Cambell fan, you will be powerfully challenged by this book. Frazer was not attempting to come up with the same conclusions for myth and ritual that Campbell, though influenced by him, was. But you will love it, and respect it highly because of it. In a way, where Campbell seems to say "this is what it all means," Frazer says "this is what it all IS," letting the wonder of unexpected knowledge allow you to come to your own conclusions. This book will start you on a great spiritual journey if you never read anything of its kind before, and this edition is a very good one to have.
Rating: 
Summary: A literary monument, but. . .
Review: Imagine a professor who lectured, promising to reveal to you the true meaning of the Super Bowl. He tells you that the two competing teams represent the battling cosmic forces of Summer and Winter. The fact that the rite is enacted in January is surely significant; in the dead of winter, it follows the Winter Solstice. The fact that the game is played on a Sunday is mere Christian veneer over ancient truths. The various young women who accompany the teams, and who parade around half-naked in January and lead cheers are symbols of the fertility of the coming spring. Obviously, the Super Bowl is a relic of an ancient rite, and hides relics of ancient beliefs which only a professor of comparative religion can reveal. If you find this account of the true meaning of the Super Bowl convincing, you may also find Frazer's thesis also appealing. What it takes is a studied rejection of the explanations various people have of their own customs. Just about any annual custom, or one that involves fire, or vegetation, can be pressed into the system with a little creative re-interpretation. There are parts of this book --- the parts that deal with taboos, or with sympathetic magic in general --- that still remain convincing. The large thesis, though, is more important as a literary monument than as anthropology. It did influence literally hundreds of writers great and small, from T. S. Eliot and James Joyce on down. Students of these writers need to know this book. They need not be convinced by it.
Rating: 
Summary: excellent references to magic practices all around the world
Review: It is an amazing book for people like me and you and the writer is also absolutely fascinating in his analysis of mankind.
Rating:
Summary: Killing The God
Review: It takes some patience to read through all the examples that James Frazer gives to prove his points about religions, but it reaps its rewards. Sometimes I wish he would have summarized more briefly when going over examples in different lands, such as when tribes were killing the fertility god during the harvest, especially when the rituals were very similar to one another. But he thoroughly proves his point anyway. Of course, the scientific, objective study of religion tends to turn you into an atheist. I've noticed a lot of skeptical books about religion are linked to this one. If you read the book, you may come to the conclusion that Christ was just a representive of god sacrificed for the benefit of humanity, just like all the other representatives of god that were sacrificed to have good crops. Abundant life replaces an abundant harvest in this case. Frazer doesn't talk much about biblical "myths" much and not at all about Christ, but one can draw inferences from his work about certain passages in the Bible such as eating the body and blood of Christ during communion. Apparently, sacrificing and eating the body and blood of a representative of a god is an old pagan practice that the Biblical story has much in common with. Or the death and resurrection of a god is old pagan belief that Bible has much in common with as well. The sacrificing an offering for the sins of the people was also practiced long before Christ sacrificed himself for sins. One gets the impression that religion is just superstition in which primitive people tried to control an unpredictable environment with certain rituals to ensure a good harvest or to get rid of disease. One could say that Christ as God sacrificed himself once and for all in such a way that people would understand what he was doing; he sacrificed himself using their cultural understanding of religion. Such an explanation would help keep your faith, if you wanted to keep it. But I can see why objective, scientific, rational, non-mystical types would love this book because it shows that "thank god" the best minds don't believe in old superstitions about god anymore, such as human sacrifice for better crops. James Frazer is not exactly a cultural relativist so he has no problem with calling certain societies savage or primitive and his own society civilized and more advanced, although he admits its primitive past. I am agreement with his assumptions, so that labelling didn't bother me most of the time. This is an easily read scholarly work that is really long and presents examples of our primitive past before the scientific method was developed and saved us all from irrational thinking. I can see why people of like mind to Frazer's would shudder at thought of a revival of religion, to them religion is just irrational superstition. I found particularly interesting Frazer's coverage of kings who were treated as gods on earth and how restrictive their lives were. If people thought they could no longer deliver good health and crops to the people, or if they thought he was past his prime, or if he refused to obey certain rules and rituals, they would kill their useless god and get another.
Rating:
Summary: Magic, religion, and Science
Review: James G. Frazer wrote an excellent book on the origins of magic called the Golden Bough.
The book describes a possible scientific model of how magic without dieties evolves into religion and myth. The basic theory that Frazer tries to prove is that there is something about human nature that preserves magical rituals over ans beyond the beliefs used to justify the magical ritual. According to him, the beliefs and myths that justify the ritual are completely replaceable, with the names of the gods, heroes, and even the fundamental storylines changing completely over the course of time. The rituals themselves are often generated by a fundamental belief in two types of belief that are hardwired into the human brain: sympathetic magic and contagious magic. He finds evidence for this in the myths and religious practices of people all over the world which according to him are not separated by any sharp boundary. The rationals and excuses people give to a ritual turns into myths and religion, not the other way around.
He gives thousands of examples of examples of rituals and the stories that he thinks started as excuses for rituals. An important example of a ritual is human sacrifice in its various forms. He follows the mythology of many cultures and shows how the mythology behind the ritual has changes with time, and how the ritual retains its main form even when the person is replaced by animals or animals are replaced with people. However, he gives lots of other examples. For example, he discusses food taboos (such as kosher laws), the songs children sing (step on a crack, break your mother's back) in terms of sympathetic magic.
The book is more descriptive than explanatory, having hundreds of examples for every ritual. The examples are fascinating. The theory is interesting, and perhaps has alot of truth in it. The model presented has been shown to be very plausible for specific archeological and historical events, such as the Mystery religion of Eleuisis, in ancient Greece.
He presents a purely secular, perhaps even atheistic, model that resembles the theory of evolution for ideas instead of organisms. The theory has similarities to the theory of meme evolution, presented decades later by biologist Richard Dawins. Frazer is very eloquent while being scientific, so that it can be read as either a technical monograph or a type of epic myth itself. I highly recommend the book.
Frazer's book has some major weaknesses in it, even though this reviewer still recommends it for its strengths. There was no bibliography, at least in the copy that I read. He comes out with these amazing stories about ritual which made the reviewer eager to explore in greater detail. With no references, there was no way to do explore further. The model he presents may not really apply to all the myths and rituals described. He overemphasizes human sacrifice, making it seem sometimes that it is a universal ritual when it is not. Some his myth associated rituals probably have a solid historical foundation that has nothing to do with ritual. Sometimes, the connection between fact and theory is not compelling and may not convince many readers. Many other reviewers consider Frazer's model as discredited, although this reviewer does not. This reviewer recommends reading it with a spoonful of salt ready.
The most important weakness is lack of organization. Often, Frazer goes into a long list of rituals and other examples without connecting it to the original theory. Some sectionss like fact dumps in places. However, lots of what he says makes sense after rereading the book more than once.
Some readers may be offended by his cultural bias. Contrary to what other reviewers have said, Frazer shows no bias toward the monotheistic religions, and puts Baldur on the same level as Jesus. In fact, a creationist can correctly complain that it has an atheistic bias. Frazer's theory is a solidly unreligious, and unmagical as a theory can get. Frazer emphasizes that religion eventually develops a morality and aesthetic around it, and that eventually the more inhumane aspects of religion go away leaving something very beautiful. Yet, his compiments toward primitive people being very smart sometimes appear condescending. He shows complete disbelief in magic and magical ways of thing, even while acknowledging that they will never go away. The psychologist Jung thought that Frazer's theory was too brutal to be accepted as an accurate theory of human nature. However, the brutality described by Frazer is not encouraged by the book and rituals of great beauty and morality are also described. Some particular types of human sacrifice described are so ugly, they mask all the nice rituals described. More nice, uplifting rituals would have been helpful. They are out there, Frazer ignored them.
The reviewer highly recommends this book. The reviewer also thinks that Frazer's theory has been discredited prematurely, and should be reexamined with new scientific and analytical tools that have been developed since Frazer's time.
Rating:
Summary: The Whole Story, with all the BARK on IT
Review: OK, so you want to get the best total look at what once was out
there. This is where you start to study: The Moon, The Earth
Mother, the Grail, pick a card, any card. This is as close as you can get to someone that spent his whole life, gathering together the "Primary Source" stories that make up the very base or start of what we think we once were. Out of Fraser's work came a lot of "Digging" and additional looking, but no one ever got quite so much into the 12 to 14 volumes....YES that's right! St. Martin's Press, in the old Flat Iron Building in New York, should still have a few sets. Get the complete set. And an OED and a good link (DSL, ISDN) on the WEB to an ISP that is not going to go up in "Smoke" and "Insider Profit Making". Get this, and then follow your own best inner self, to where EVER it takes you, it's where only you can go anyway, but you be there: "...and know it, as if for the first time..." as T.S. Elliot used to say.
Rating:
Summary: Get it!
Review: Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941) was a Scottish anthropologist; and this book, originally published in 1890, as the two volume, "The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religions", his best known work. A short example of his writing style follows: "On Midsummer Eve people in Sweden
"make divining-rods of mistletoe or of four different
"kinds of wood, one of which must be mistletoe. The
"treasure-seeker places the rod on the ground after sundown,
"and when it rests directly over treasure, the rod
"begins to move as if it were alive...."
(pp 367, with reference notes at the bottom of the page.) This particular edition is the only unabridged, and illustrated re-printing of the classic, and while some modern scholars refute some of his conclusions, it is a Must Have for any student of folk-lore and magick.
Rating:
Summary: Golden Bough is essential reading for any thinking person
Review: The Golden Bough is a classic in the truest sense of the word. Well-written, compendious in its scholarship, profound in its influence, shocking in its implications, Frazer has penned one of mankind's great unread books. With the works of Darwin and Hubble, Frazer's hefty tome quietly demolishes traditional notions of the world and our place within it. His introductory study of magic in primitive societies, many sadly vanished in the intervening century, is fascinating reading for anyone interested in Wicca, the New Age, or the Occult. Frazer's scope then expands voluminously, to include such topics as totemism, divine kingship, tree worship, and, most significantly, dying and reviving gods. Without ever mentioning Jesus specifically, Frazer places him squarely in the midst of a long procession of resurrected Middle Eastern gods that include Osiris, Tammuz, Dionysus, and Attis, demonstrating amply that the Christ myth is a fairly typical example of the primitive religio! us beliefs characteristic of that locale and period. While hardly a quick read (Frazer's dignified style does require some self-acclimatization after the passage of nine undignified decades), The Golden Bough rewards both the careful sequential reading and the occasional random foray. Frazer's many thousands of examples of odd and provocative customs remain fascinating even as scholarly interpretation of their significance evolves. All in all, a book of which no genuine intellectual, and certainly no born-again Christian, can afford to be ignorant.
Rating:
Summary: One of a handful of essential readings
Review: The Golden Bough is a remarkable and inspiring book. Although some of the evidence presented is outdated, it remains a seminal work for its rigorous scientific approach, as well as for the depth and insight the author puts in his analysis. Frazer uses the wealth of material presented in the book to reveal some of the deepest - and sometimes disquieting - aspects of the human character. This is essential reading for all who want to explore human nature and the tyes existing between present day civilisation and the world of our ancestors. Even today, the book retains the originality and freshness of approach that have contributed to make it a classic ever since its first publication.
Rating: 
Summary: Inspiring, but not trustworthy
Review: The Golden Bough is indeed a seminal work of early anthropology/folklore studies. However it's no longer held in high esteem in these fields, and for good reason. The major problem with Frazer is his source use. He took citations grossly out of context and made no effort to determine how reliable they were.
Moreoever he took myth literally, assuming that it was a distorted memory of actual events. If Pagan myths involved kings dying, then once upon a time Pagans must really have sacrificed their kings. By this 'logic', Christianity used to involve ritual cannibalism, since during the Eucharist believers eat the blood and body of Christ. The holiday information is extremely poor, too. Like many 19th century folklorists, Frazer assumed that any "pagan-looking" customs were indeed pre-Christian. He did *no* research in the history of the holidays, and as a result the Golden Bough contains grievous amounts of misinformation. (I say this as a medievalist who's done significant amounts of research myself.) For example, Frazer was responsible for the tenacious myth that Halloween is a Christianized version of the Celtic Samhain, introduced by the Celtic Church. If you check early Irish martyrologies, you'll find that the Celtic Church actually celebrated All Saints in April, not on Samhain. The October 31st date came from England and/or Germany, not the Celtic Church, making the connection between Samhain and Halloween somewhat obscure. Frazer assumes that Christmas trees are an ancient Pagan custom, when any historical research would reveal that the earliest mention of this custom comes from 16th century Germany. The Golden Bough has had a tremendous impact on Neo-Paganism and many of the theories are inspiring. For that, for its poetry, I give it credit. But it's not a reliable work on Pagan history -- I'd give Ronald Hutton's _Stations of the Sun_ a much, *much* higher grade for that.
|
