The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion
by James Frazer.
Why exactly so many savages have made it a rule to refrain from women in time of war, [1] we cannot say for certain, but we may conjecture that their motive was a superstitious fear lest, on the principles of sympathetic magic, close contact with women should infect them with feminine weakness and cowardice. Similarly some savages imagine that contact with a woman in childbed enervates warriors and enfeebles their weapons.
…
1. For more evidence of the practice of continence by warriors, see R. Taylor, Te Ika A Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants, 2 р. 189; Е. Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, ii. 85 sq.
First edition, 2 vols., published 1890
Third Edition, 12 volumes published 1906-1915
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The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings (Part 1)
Preface to third edition
ix
Even if it should appear that this ancient Italian priest must after all be struck out from the long roll of
men who have masqueraded as gods, the single omission would…
x
I desire to repeat warning which I have given in the text. While I have shewn reason to think that in many communities sacred kings have been developed out of magicians, I am far from supposing that this has been universally true.
Preface to second edition (Sept 1900)
xviii
I have seen no reason to withdraw the explanation of the priesthood of Aricia which forms the central theme of my book. On the contrary, the probability of that explanation appears to me to be greatly strengthened by some important evidence which has come to light since my theory was put forward. Readers of the first edition may remember that I explained the priest of Aricia-the King of the Wood-as an embodiment of a tree-spirit, and inferred from a variety of considerations that at an earlier period
one of these priests had probably been slain every year in his character of an incarnate deity.
xx
..recognising a fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle between magic and religion. More than that, I believe that in the evolution of thought, magic, as representing a lower intellectual stratum, has probably everywhere preceded religion. I do not claim any originality for this latter view. It has been already plainly suggested, if not definitely formulated, by Professor Н. Oldenberg …
xxv
..it may become a powerful instrument to expedite progress if it lays bare certain weak spots in the foundations on which modern society is built-if it shews that much which we are wont to regard as solid rests on the sands of superstition rather than on the rock of nature.
Taboo – The Perils of the Soul
Preface to Volume 3
vi
The old view that the principles of right and wrong are immutable and eternal is no longer tenable. The moral world is as little exempt as the physical world from the law of ceaseless change, of perpetual flux.
Page 164
Why exactly so many savages have made it a rule to refrain from women in time of war,1 we cannot say for certain, but we may conjecture that their motive was a superstitious fear lest, on the principles of sympathetic magic, close contact with women should infect them with feminine weakness and cowardice. Similarly some savages imagine that contact with a woman in childbed enervates warriors and enfeebles their weapons.
…
I For more evidence of the practice of continence by warriors, see R. Taylor, Te Ika A Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants,2 р. 189; Е. Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, ii. 85 sq. ;
etc., etc.
Page 196
This practice of observing strict chastity as a condition of success in hunting and fishing is very common among rude races ; and the instances of it which have been cited render it probable that the rule is always based on a superstition rather than on a consideration of the temporary weakness which a breach of the custom may entail on the hunter or fisherman.
In general it appears to be supposed that the evil effect of incontinence is not so much that it weakens him, as that, for some reason or other, it offends the animals, who in consequence will not suffer themselves to be caught.
Page 214
In this gradual passage of a rude philosophy into an elementary religion the place occupied by confession as a moral purgative is particularly interesting. I can hardly agree with Dr. Boas that among these Esquimaux [Eskimos] the confession of sins was in its origin no more than a means of warning others against the dangerous contagion of the sinner; in other words, that its saving efficacy consisted merely in preventing the innocent from suffering with the guilty, and that it had no healing virtue, no purifying influence, for the evil-doer himself.
It seems more probable that originally the violation of taboo, in other words, the sin, was conceived as something almost physical, a sort of morbid substance lurking in the sinner’s body, from which it could be expelled by confession if as by a sort of spiritual purge or emetic.
…
This view of the matter is again confirmed by the observation that these same Akikuyu resort to another physical mode of expelling sin from a sinner, and that is by the employment of a scapegoat, which by them, as by the Jews and many other people, has been employed as a vehicle for carting away moral rubbish and dumping it somewhere
Page 217
Thus at an early stage of culture the confession of sins wears the aspect of a bodily rather than of a moral and spiritual purgation; it is a magical rather than a religious rite, and as such it resembles the ceremonies of washing, scouring, fumigation, and so forth, which in like manner are applied by many primitive peoples to the purification of what we should regard as moral guilt, but what they consider rather as a corporeal pollution or infection, which can be removed by the physical agencies of fire, water,
fasts, purgatives, abrasion, scarification, and so forth.
Adonis, Attis, Osiris (Part 1)
Page 36
In Cyprus it appears that before marriage all women were formerly obliged by custom to prostitute themselves to strangers at the sanctuary of the goddess, whether she went by the name of Aphrodite, Astarte, or what not. Similarr customs prevailed in many parts of Western Asia.
What-ever its motive, the practice was clearly regarded, not as an orgy of lust, but as a solemn religious duty performed in the service of that great Mother Goddess of Western Asia whose name varied, while her type remained constant, from place to place. Thus at Babylon every woman, whether rich or poor, had once in her life to submit to the embraces of a stranger at the temple of Mylitta, that is, of Ishtar or
Astarte, and to dedicate to the goddess the wages earned by this sanctified harlotry. The sacred precinct was crowded with women waiting to observe the custom. Some of them had to wait there for years.1 At Heliopolis or Baalbec in Syria, famous for the imposing grandeur of its ruined temples, the custom of the country required that every maiden should prostitute herself to a stranger at the temple
of Astarte, and matrons as well as maids testified their devotion to the goddess in the same manner.
The emperor Constantine abolished the custom, destroyed the temple, and built a church in its stead.
Adonis, Attis, Osiris (Part 2)
Page 264
Like many peoples of Western Asia in antiquity, the Pelew Islanders systematically prostitute their unmarried girls for hire. Hence, just as in Lydia and Cyprus of old, the damsels are a source of income to their family, and women wait impatiently for the time when their young daughters will be able to help the household by their earnings. Indeed the mother regularly anticipates the time by depriving the girl of her virginity with her own hands.4
Hence the theory that the prostitution of unmarried girls is’a device to destroy their virginity without risk to their husbands is just as inapplicable to the Pelew Islanders as we have seen it to be to the peoples of Western Asia in antiquity. When a Pelew girl has thus been prepared for her vocation by her mother, she sells her favours to all the men of her village who can pay for them and who do not belong to her own exogamous clan; but she never grants her favours to the same man twice. Accordingly in every village of the Pelew Islands it may be taken as certain that the men and women know each other carnally, except that members of the same clan are debarred from each other by the rule of exogamy.5
Thus a well-marked form of sexual communism, limited only by the exogamous prohibitions which attach to the clans, prevails among these people. Nor is this communism restricted to the inhabitants of the same village, for the girls of each village are regularly sent away to serve as prostitutes (armengols) in another village. There they live with the men of one of the many clubs or associations (kaldebekels) in the clubhouse (blay), attending to the house, consorting freely with the men, and receiving pay for their services.
A girl leading this life in the clubhouse of another village is well treated by the men: a wrong done to her is a wrong done to the whole club; and in her own village her value is increased, not diminished, …
Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild (Part 2)
Page 260
On this theory the conceptions, whether gross or refined, whether repulsive or beautiful, which savages and perhaps civilised men have formed of the state of the departed, would seem to be no more than elaborate hypotheses constructed to account for appearances in dreams; these towering structures, for all their radiant or gloomy grandeur, for all the massy strength and solidity with which they present themselves to the imagination of many, may turn out on inspection to be mere visionary castles built of clouds and vapour, which a breath of reason suffices to melt into air.
Page 261
In short, we conclude that the theory of dreams appears to be hardly enough by itself to account for the widespread belief in the immortality of men and animals; ; dreams have probably done much to confirm that belief, but would they suffice to originate it ? We may reasonably doubt it.
Balder the Beautiful (Part 1)
Preface
x
The attribution of weather-making powers to kings or priests is very common in primitive society, and is indeed one of the principal levers by which such personages raise themselves to a position of superiority above their fellows.