The classic work on the meaning of myths and legends.

It's important to note that the abridged version of this book, aside from being abridged, omits Frazer's most groundbreaking and controversial (at the time) thesis, regarding Christianity's relationship to the rest of humankind's myriad religions. ( )

This is an impressive collection of global customs that is tainted by the author’s racism, and ignorance. Sometimes they brush with brilliance but the reader must come with enough updated knowledge to get anything of value out if this book. ( )

So far, while it does a lot of mythological name-dropping, and the very thin veil of a theme seems accurate, I'm tempted to say that this book is a real mess. Goddesses with mixed up attributes, bald-faced assumptions about ancient societies, and rampant misspellings almost turn me off. And yet, I have stamina. I have fortitude. I shall endure another escaped slave trying to murder me so he can break off the branch of my sacred tree and so take my place.

Some random, albeit unfortunate, quotes:

"And they were forced to lay upon some erections."

"And she was given the gift of a cock."


Seriously enough, I've been very impressed by the work. Ok, so on my ebook reader, it only runs up to a little under 1500 pages, and there are at least a dozen accounts as proof of each point. I cannot, in good faith, find fault with much of his conclusions. I was astonished to realize how many assumptions I had held about Osiris were completely balderdash. At least I've been put to rights about the real reason he was worshiped. Hint: it wasn't because they never found his penis.

Overall, the main themes are drilled into our skulls so thoroughly that there's no way we could ever forget them, even if we tried. The best and the worst that I can say for this work is that it is very thorough. I can honestly say I've heard discussions of the many themes, as I'm sure most of us have; fertility deities, all manifestations thereof.

What I was most astonished to feel, after reading this work, was a great sadness. I look back at all of the thousands of cultures that have independently worshiped the same principles over time and see how they were systematically wiped out as "poppycock", and I wonder about the now-lost depth of understanding that is now lost to time and chronos... and I wonder if Uranus ever did find his penis. ( )

This is a great and fascinating work, steeped in detail and careful scholarship, and very well-written.

The pity is that the underlying assumption of the work, that the customs it details are evidence of a primitive, pan-European, primitive culture was not in fact well founded. There is evidence enough that many of Frazier's pagan survivals were in fact developments of the high middle ages, perhaps immemorial but not antique.

It's still a wonderful and compelling book, as long as one keeps in mind that the patterns it documents are more widely spread in time, and less primitive, than Frazier thought. ( )

This book was fascinating. It talks about rituals and ideas that came from superstitious beliefs, and how those beliefs evolved over time. I don't know if this is the full version of the book, since I heard that this version is abridged, but it is already pretty long, so I don't know what they cut out to make it shorter. ( )

I recall reading this book quite a few years ago, when I was a new Wiccan. I recall thinking that it had rehashed just enough mythology to be annoying, but not especially revealing, so I did not take notes on it. I suppose I shall have to read it again.

I recall reading this book quite a few years ago, when I was a new Wiccan. I recall thinking that it had rehashed just enough mythology to be annoying, but not especially revealing, so I did not take notes on it. I suppose I shall have to read it again.

Thank you for the abridged edition, Sir James. Even the abridgment contains a confounding amount of information and examples. Like any attempt to shoehorn a large portion of human behavior into one theory, the book has its problems. While a classic of its time it is no longer considered authoritative in the field. I wouldn't consider it a "must read" but it certainly illustrates the amazing complexity of magical and religious customs around the world. ( )

I loved my journey with this book. It is a fascinating tale of ancient rites carried out by primitive minds. The only draw back of the book is the bland repetitive examples of the same charm and idea, but this book still gets my five stars. ( )

Remarkable in scope, arrogant and close to fascistic in its adoration of social hierarchy, still, a guide for the ages on the meaning of rites, rituals and folklore. ( )

Reading the unabridged version was probably a mistake. The subject interests me, but I found this one hard to get through. It doesn't help that I had already read more moder books on the same subject and already knew most of it is widely discredited. In the end, I couldn't get through this. I suppose I will start over at some point in time, with the abridged version. ( )

The Foreword compares Frazer and Golden Bough in its impact to such revolutionary thinkers of the 19th Century as Darwin, Marx, and Freud. This seminal work of anthropology and comparative religion first published in 1890 was in fact a great influence on Freud and Jung as well as T.S. Eliot and Yeats and the modern Neopagan movement. Frazer's influence on Joseph Campbell is obvious--he's the original. Frazer tries to argue for the monomyth--the idea that religion and myth can be reduced to a few universal principles and symbols such as sacrifice, scapegoats, the soul and totem and taboo. Taking an ancient Roman custom involving the "King of the Wood" at Nemi as his launching pad, Frazer examined myths and folktales from every part of the world and drew connections to explain, as the subtitle on the cover of my copy put it, "the roots of religion and folklore." His argument seems to be that the origins of religion can be found in a crude science, an attempt to influence the world through sympathetic magic. Although he never attacked Christianity directly in this original edition, I could see how the idea of Jesus as entirely myth could come out of this book. Frazer's examination of vegetation deities, cycles of sowing and reaping and kingly sacrifice and his examination of the myths of Ishtar and Thammuz, Isis and Osiris, Aphrodite and Adonis and spring fertility rites is certainly suggestive.

I often found this book tedious, primarily because of Frazer's exhaustive examples--and the edition I read is the original two-volume work--before he, as the Foreword put it, "overburdened the book with volumes of illustrative examples which tended to hide the thread of his argument." (Twelve volumes in fact.) In his pile-on it reminded me of my recent read of the original edition of Darwin's Origin of Species. This was a time when science wasn't yet so technical and specialized as to be unduly esoteric to the layman. So as with Darwin, I think Frazer was aiming his book at both his scientific brethren as well as the layman--thus the exhaustive examples in an effort to prove his theories. However, unlike the case with Darwin, I believe Frazer's examples do more to hide--nay, bury--his argument rather than illustrate it, even in this original more compact edition. More and more I found myself skimming. There is an abridged edition from the author, but my understanding from reviews is that it excised a lot of the more controversial and interesting parts found in the expanded versions, such as a chapter on "The Crucifixion of Christ." Also as with Darwin, who didn't at the time have the advantages of our advances in genetics and geology, I suspect much of the anthropology in Golden Bough is outdated. Especially given that unlike Darwin, who famously conducted many observations in the field and experiments of his own, Frazer seemed to entirely rely on second-hand accounts, mostly by travelers and missionaries. Nor do I entirely buy Frazer's contention that modern peasant customs and folklore represented a continuity with a pagan past.

Some may be put off by Frazer's characterization of peoples as "rude" and "savages." To his credit though, Frazer doesn't exempt Europe or Britain in his examples of primitive rituals and superstitions. Given that and the context of the times, I don't as some reviewers do see this book as essentially racist. Frazer notes, "when all is said and done our resemblances to the savage are still far more numerous than our differences from him." This book reminded me, of all things, of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. That novel is famous as a denunciation of colonialism. But one of the things I took away from Achebe's book was that the Christian missionaries gained adherents because they freed their converts from frightening and oppressive superstitions that propagated slavery, infanticide and human sacrifice. As much as I can see the ugly side of the history of modern monotheistic creeds such as Christianity, I think we forget that much of the legacy of polytheistic pagan beliefs isn't as pretty as many of its New Age adherents would have it. This book--for all I suspected the accuracy of many details--was a salutary reminder of that with its tales of scapegoating, sacrifices and taboos. Ironically, Frazer's successors, such as Joseph Campbell, have formed a new myth of the "noble savage," of a pagan and pre-historic past as egalitarian and in harmony with nature. We seem to have few fans of civilization and reason these days. It's ironic that a book that tried to explain the spiritual scientifically might have contributed to that. Ultimately I'm glad I read it, and I'm keeping it on my shelves, at least for now, as a rather thorough reference book of beliefs and rites across cultures and ages--or at least as far as was known over a century ago. ( )

This book is a classic in freethought literature, giving a detailed (and I do mean detailed) analysis of the various early relgions and how they evolved into the pagan gods. The author started out to give an explanation of one particular, limited phenomenon, the temple of Diana, and ranged far and wide. Although very little of the book deals with Christianity, it is very easy to begin to see patterns in the religious traditions he discusses that became part of Judeo-Christian tradition. ( )

Frazer has probably had as much influence on 20th century literature as Freud. As one of the most influential anthropological tomes ever written, I thought this book would hold some interest, even though its thesis (like psychoanalysis) is discredited. Oh, am I ever sorry. The contents are jumbled lists of beliefs and practices of various societies, seemingly cherry-picked to support the centrality of the dying-and-arising god myth in religious practices. (On the positive side, it certainly applies to Christianity.)

I'm willing to accommodate the small-mindedness of older authors, but the constant denigration of "savages" just rubs me the wrong way. I suppose I'll use it as reference, but I'm certainly not going to read it through.

I'd be happier with a book *about* The Golden Bough. I think the only reason to buy it is as a required text. ( )

This a quite a long book, at 714 pages, and index etc. on top of that, and the text on each page is small, so it may take you a long time to read it. The book will mainly interest those who like to read about historical peoples, and their myths and beliefs and traditions. Those included are the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Europeans, Scandinavians, Orientals, and primitive tribes from all over the world too. The premise of the book is to explain a certain situation which existed in an grove in Italy near Lake Nemi, where a "King of The Wood" guarded the sacred tree, and was only replaced by one who could slay him. He believed that this tradition is most ancient, and so sets out on a tour de force of magic and religion throughout time and the world, in order to support his hypothesis. The book is written well, and can be enjoyable to read in places as the author makes poetic use of language and imagery in his descriptions. Reading this book will lead you across strange landscapes of fantastical thought, sanguine practises, and mysterious festivals bygone, and you will understand why these fanciful rituals evolved. I would recommend it to those who have an interest in these things, as you will be hard pushed to find a better coverage of so much stuff, but to many I imagine it would be found hard going. ( )

More ideas than you can shake a magic stick at!

This work scores a big fat zero for political correctness and it is occasionally infuriating because of its outmoded conclusions, but it reveals a wonderful picture of a lost age of superstition and simple humanity. The thing that struck me was the spectrum of beliefs that human beings are capable of. The ancient ideas that the author tells us of somehow make the rational world we live in today seem almost inhuman. The information is often anecdotal and unsupported, but it's a marvellous read. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in the original pool of raw ideas that Man lived by when he first looked about the world and tried to find some meaning, and how that may have led to religion, and ultimately reason. ( )

So this is the condensed version, only about a thousand pages, but still full of fascinating tidbits of folklore and culture, and some very incisive theorizing about human belief patterns and theories of culture to link it all together. Very much a product of its times, but if you can get past the (generally mild) period imperialism, the meat of the book is still good.

It's very obviously condensed, though, and therefore I find it best dipped into in small portions. I've no idea how the 12-volume version compares - even the one up in Preject Gutenberg is the condensed edition, as far as I can tell - but I'd like to put down the book's tendency to list a bunch of apparently unrelated facts, then a bald theory, then some more random facts, to the abridging process. Unfortunately it's a style that was picked up by a lot of less rigorous researchers into the liminal spaces (erikvondaniken *cough*), with unfortunate results.

But if you're at all interested in magic or folklore or myth or culture, this is a classic, the basis of a lot of fiction and all later theoretical work (even the works that have partially overturned it) and, for all my caveats, still suprisingly readable - a great bedtime book. ( )

A ground breaker when it was published 80+ years ago. Too bad many people still use it as a handbook for understanding ancient mythology and creating neoPaganism. It is a fascinating read, but more useful for understanding the mind-set of the time in which it was written. My copy date from around 1965. ( )

I pretty much memorized this book when I was a teen. It was about the same time I ran into Jung’s “archetypes and the collective unconscious”… a heady mix indeed! ( )

Comparison of similar stories in various mostly primative peoples and their relation to Religious Doctrines ( )

Nostalgia for bygone primitive days irks me. People in cold climates look the life of Western Samoans and sigh for simple ways. Looking with longing to hunt-gat days, people nowadays may think a man’s life was hunting, fishing, making and maintaining tools, fighting over territory against strangers. For 30 or so years, not a life hard to take…. In fact, hunter-gatherers were hemmed in by magic, taboos and superstitions that filled life with nonsense and fear. James Frazer’s classic "The Golden Bough" (1890) is still worth reading because it shows our endless, though often misguided and bizarre, ingenuity at attempting to explain how the world works.

Frazer includes amazing descriptions of religious rites and ceremonies and offers interpretations from the “savage�€? point of view. Frazer’s thesis is that there is a universal progression from magic to religion to science: Primitive people first attempt to understand, predict, and control nature through magic. When they realize they shouldn’t put all their eggs in the magic basket, they turn to rituals meant to appease supernatural forces. It's good reading though the state of knowledge has gone beyond Frazer.

Classic reference work, but take with large doses of salt. ( )

Would you like this in one volume, nine or twelve? This is the one volume and is a reasonable introduction to the ideas Frazer wanted to get across - not that I've read the 9 or 12 volume....

Two volumes in one.