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The Golden Bough

J >> James George Frazer >> The Golden Bough



This etext was produced by David Reed





The Golden Bough
A Study in Magic and Religion

by Sir James George Frazer




CONTENTS
Preface
Subject Index
Chapter 1. The King of the Wood
1. Diana and Virbius
2. Artemis and Hippolytus
3. Recapitulation
Chapter 2. Priestly Kings
Chapter 3. Sympathetic Magic
1. The Principles of Magic
2. Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic
3. Contagious Magic
4. The Magicians Progress
Chapter 4. Magic and Religion
Chapter 5. The Magical Control of the Weather
1. The Public Magician
2. The Magical Control of Rain
3. The Magical Control of the Sun
4. The Magical Control of the Wind
Chapter 6. Magicians as Kings
Chapter 7. Incarnate Human Gods
Chapter 8. Departmental Kings of Nature
Chapter 9. The Worship of Trees
1. Tree-spirits
2. Beneficent Powers of Tree-Spirits
Chapter 10. Relics of Tree Worship in Modern Europe
Chapter 11. The Influence of the Sexes on Vegetation
Chapter 12. The Sacred Marriage
1. Diana as a Goddess of Fertility
2. The Marriage of the Gods
Chapter 13. The Kings of Rome and Alba
1. Numa and Egeria
2. The King as Jupiter
Chapter 14. Succession to the Kingdom in Ancient Latium
Chapter 15. The Worship of the Oak
Chapter 16. Dianus and Diana
Chapter 17. The Burden of Royalty
1. Royal and Priestly Taboos
2. Divorce of the Spiritual from the Temporal Power
Chapter 18. The Perils of the Soul
1. The Soul as a Mannikin
2. Absence and Recall of the Soul
3. The Soul as a Shadow and a Reflection
Chapter 19. Tabooed Acts
1. Taboos on Intercourse with Strangers
2. Taboos on Eating and Drinking
3. Taboos on Showing the Face
4. Taboos on Quitting the House
5. Taboos on Leaving Food over
Chapter 20. Tabooed Persons
1. Chiefs and Kings tabooed
2. Mourners tabooed
3. Women tabooed at Menstruation and Childbirth
4. Warriors tabooed
5. Manslayers tabooed
6. Hunters and Fishers tabooed
Chapter 21. Tabooed Things
1. The Meaning of Taboo
2. Iron tabooed
3. Sharp Weapons tabooed
4. Blood tabooed
5. The Head tabooed
6. Hair tabooed
7. Ceremonies at Hair-cutting
8. Disposal of Cut Hair and Nails
9. Spittle tabooed
10. Foods tabooed
11. Knots and Rings tabooed
Chapter 22. Tabooed Words
1. Personal Names tabooed
2. Names of Relations tabooed
3. Names of the Dead tabooed
4. Names of Kings and other Sacred Persons tabooed
5. Names of Gods tabooed
Chapter 23. Our Debt to the Savage
Chapter 24. The Killing of the Divine King
1. The Mortality of the Gods
2. Kings killed when their Strength fails
3. Kings killed at the End of a Fixed Term
Chapter 25. Temporary Kings
Chapter 26. Sacrifice of the Kings Son
Chapter 27. Succession to the Soul
Chapter 28. The Killing of the Tree-Spirit
1. The Whitsuntide Mummers
2. Burying the Carnival
3. Carrying out Death
4. Bringing in Summer
5. Battle of Summer and Winter
6. Death and Resurrection of Kostrubonko
7. Death and Revival of Vegetation
8. Analogous Rites in India
9. The Magic Spring
Chapter 29. The Myth of Adonis
Chapter 30. Adonis in Syria
Chapter 31. Adonis in Cyprus
Chapter 32. The Ritual of Adonis
Chapter 33. The Gardens of Adonis
Chapter 34. The Myth and Ritual of Attis
Chapter 35. Attis as a God of Vegetation
Chapter 36. Human Representatives of Attis
Chapter 37. Oriental Religions in the West
Chapter 38. The Myth of Osiris
Chapter 39. The Ritual of Osiris
1. The Popular Rites
2. The Official Rites
Chapter 40. The Nature of Osiris
1. Osiris a Corn-god
2. Osiris a Tree-spirit
3. Osiris a God of Fertility
4. Osiris a God of the Dead
Chapter 41. Isis
Chapter 42. Osiris and the Sun
Chapter 43. Dionysus
Chapter 44. Demeter and Persephone
Chapter 45. Corn-Mother and Corn-Maiden in N. Europe
Chapter 46. Corn-Mother in Many Lands
1. The Corn-mother in America
2. The Rice-mother in the East Indies
3. The Spirit of the Corn embodied in Human Beings
4. The Double Personification of the Corn as Mother and Daughter
Chapter 47. Lityerses
1. Songs of the Corn Reapers
2. Killing the Corn-spirit
3. Human Sacrifices for the Crops
4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives
Chapter 48. The Corn-Spirit as an Animal
1. Animal Embodiments of the Corn-spirit
2. The Corn-spirit as a Wolf or a Dog
3. The Corn-spirit as a Cock
4. The Corn-spirit as a Hare
5. The Corn-spirit as a Cat
6. The Corn-spirit as a Goat
7. The Corn-spirit as a Bull, Cow, or Ox
8. The Corn-spirit as a Horse or Mare
9. The Corn-spirit as a Pig (Boar or Sow)
10. On the Animal Embodiments of the Corn-spirit
Chapter 49. Ancient Deities of Vegetation as Animals
1. Dionysus, the Goat and the Bull
2. Demeter, the Pig and the Horse
3. Attis, Adonis, and the Pig
4. Osiris, the Pig and the Bull
5. Virbius and the Horse
Chapter 50. Eating the God
1. The Sacrament of First-Fruits
2. Eating the God among the Aztecs
3. Many Manii at Aricia
Chapter 51. Homeopathic Magic of a Flesh Diet
Chapter 52. Killing the Divine Animal
1. Killing the Sacred Buzzard
2. Killing the Sacred Ram
3. Killing the Sacred Serpent
4. Killing the Sacred Turtles
5. Killing the Sacred Bear
Chapter 53. The Propitiation of Wild Animals By Hunters
Chapter 54. Types of Animal Sacrament
1. The Egyptian and the Aino Types of Sacrament
2. Processions with Sacred Animals
Chapter 55. The Transference of Evil
1. The Transference to Inanimate Objects
2. The Transference to Animals
3. TheTransference to Men
4. TheTransference of Evil in Europe
Chapter 56. The Public Expulsion of Evils
1. The Omnipresence of Demons
2. The Occasional Expulsion of Evils
3. The Periodic Expulsion of Evils
Chapter 57. Public Scapegoats
1. The Expulsion of Embodied Evils
2. The Occasional Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle
3. The Periodic Expulsion of Evils in a Material Vehicle
4. On Scapegoats in General
Chapter 58. Human Scapegoats in Classical Antiquity
1. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Rome
2. The Human Scapegoat in Ancient Greece
3. The Roman Saturnalia
Chapter 59. Killing the God in Mexico
Chapter 60. Between Heaven and Earth
1. Not to touch the Earth
2. Not to see the Sun
3. The Seclusion of Girls at Puberty
4. Reasons for the Seclusion of Girls at Puberty
Chapter 61. The Myth of Balder
Chapter 62. 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 Halloween Fires
7. The Midwinter Fires
8. The Need-fire
Chapter 63. 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
Chapter 64. The Burning of Human Beings in the Fires
1. The Burning of Effigies in the Fires
2. The Burning of Men and Animals in the Fires
Chapter 65. Balder and the Mistletoe
Chapter 66. The External Soul in Folk-Tales
Chapter 67. The External Soul in Folk-Custom
1. The External Soul in Inanimate Things
2. The External Soul in Plants
3. The External Soul in Animals
4. The Ritual of Death and Resurrection
Chapter 68. The Golden Bough
Chapter 69. Farewell to Nemi

The Golden Bough
Sir James George Frazer

Preface.

THE PRIMARY aim of this book is to explain the remarkable rule which
regulated the succession to the priesthood of Diana at Aricia. When I first
set myself to solve the problem more than thirty years ago, I thought that the
solution could be propounded very briefly, but I soon found that to render it
probable or even intelligible it was necessary to discuss certain more general
questions, some of which had hardly been broached before. In successive
editions the discussion of these and kindred topics has occupied more and more
space, the enquiry has branched out in more and more directions, until the two
volumes of the original work have expanded into twelve. Meantime a wish has
often been expressed that the book should be issued in a more compendious
form. This abridgment is an attempt to meet the wish and thereby to bring the
work within the range of a wider circle of readers. While the bulk of the book
has been greatly reduced, I have endeavoured to retain its leading principles,
together with an amount of evidence sufficient to illustrate them clearly. The
language of the original has also for the most part been preserved, though
here and there the exposition has been somewhat condensed. In order to keep as
much of the text as possible I have sacrificed all the notes, and with them
all exact references to my authorities. Readers who desire to ascertain the
source of any particular statement must therefore consult the larger work,
which is fully documented and provided with a complete bibliography.

In the abridgment I have neither added new matter nor altered the views
expressed in the last edition; for the evidence which has come to my knowledge
in the meantime has on the whole served either to confirm my former
conclusions or to furnish fresh illustrations of old principles. Thus, for
example, on the crucial question of the practice of putting kings to death
either at the end of a fixed period or whenever their health and strength
began to fail, the body of evidence which points to the wide prevalence of
such a custom has been considerably augmented in the interval. A striking
instance of a limited monarchy of this sort is furnished by the powerful
mediaeval kingdom of the Khazars in Southern Russia, where the kings were
liable to be put to death either on the expiry of a set term or whenever
some public calamity, such as drought, dearth, or defeat in war, seemed to
indicate a failure of their natural powers. The evidence for the systematic
killing of the Khazar kings, drawn from the accounts of old Arab travellers,
has been collected by me elsewhere. 1 Africa, again, has supplied several
fresh examples of a similar practice of regicide. Among them the most
notable perhaps is the custom formerly observed in Bunyoro of choosing every
year from a particular clan a mock king, who was supposed to incarnate the
late king, cohabited with his widows at his temple-tomb, and after reigning
for a week was strangled. 2 The custom presents a close parallel to the
ancient Babylonian festival of the Sacaea, at which a mock king was dressed
in the royal robes, allowed to enjoy the real king's concubines, and after
reigning for five days was stripped, scourged, and put to death. That festival
in its turn has lately received fresh light from certain Assyrian inscriptions, 3
which seem to confirm the interpretation which I formerly gave of the
festival as a New Year celebration and the parent of the Jewish festival of
Purim. 4 Other recently discovered parallels to the priestly kings of Aricia
are African priests and kings who used to be put to death at the end of seven
or of two years, after being liable in the interval to be attacked and killed by
a strong man, who thereupon succeeded to the priesthood or the kingdom. 5

With these and other instances of like customs before us it is no longer
possible to regard the rule of succession to the priesthood of Diana at Aricia
as exceptional; it clearly exemplifies a widespread institution, of which the
most numerous and the most similar cases have thus far been found in Africa.
How far the facts point to an early influence of Africa on Italy, or even to
the existence of an African population in Southern Europe, I do not presume to
say. The pre-historic historic relations between the two continents are still
obscure and still under investigation.

Whether the explanation which I have offered of the institution is correct
or not must be left to the future to determine. I shall always be ready to
abandon it if a better can be suggested. Meantime in committing the book in
its new form to the judgment of the public I desire to guard against a
misapprehension of its scope which appears to be still rife, though I have
sought to correct it before now. If in the present work I have dwelt at some
length on the worship of trees, it is not, I trust, because I exaggerate its
importance in the history of religion, still less because I would deduce from
it a whole system of mythology; it is simply because I could not ignore the
subject in attempting to explain the significance of a priest who bore the
title of King of the Wood, and one of whose titles to office was the plucking
of a boughthe Golden Boughfrom a tree in the sacred grove. But I am so far
from regarding the reverence for trees as of supreme importance for the
evolution of religion that I consider it to have been altogether subordinate
to other factors, and in particular to the fear of the human dead, which, on
the whole, I believe to have been probably the most powerful force in the
making of primitive religion. I hope that after this explicit disclaimer I
shall no longer be taxed with embracing a system of mythology which I look
upon not merely as false but as preposterous and absurd. But I am too familiar
with the hydra of error to expect that by lopping off one of the monster's
heads I can prevent another, or even the same, from sprouting again. I can
only trust to the candour and intelligence of my readers to rectify this
serious misconception of my views by a comparison with my own express
declaration.

J. G. FRAZER.
1 BRICK COURT, TEMPLE, LONDON, June 1922.

Note 1. J. G. Frazer, The Killing of the Khazar Kings, Folk-lore,
xxviii. (1917), pp. 382-407.

Note 2. Rev. J. Roscoe, The Soul of Central Africa (London, 1922), p.
200. Compare J. G. Frazer, The Mackie Ethnological Expedition to Central
Africa, Man, xx. (1920), p. 181.

Note 3. H. Zimmern, Zum babylonischen Neujahrsfest (Leipzig, 1918).
Compare A. H. Sayce, in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, July 1921, pp.
440-442.

Note 4. The Golden Bough, Part VI. The Scapegoat, pp. 354 sqq., 412
sqq.

Note 5. P. Amaury Talbot in Journal of the African Society, July 1916,
pp. 309 sq.; id., in Folk-lore, xxvi. (1916), pp. 79 sq.; H. R. Palmer,
in Journal of the African Society, July 1912, pp. 403, 407 sq.

Chapter 1. The King of the Wood.

1. Diana and Virbius

WHO does not know Turner's picture of the Golden Bough? The scene, suffused
with the golden glow of imagination in which the divine mind of Turner steeped
and transfigured even the fairest natural landscape, is a dream-like vision of
the little woodland lake of Nemi Diana's Mirror, as it was called by the
ancients. No one who has seen that calm water, lapped in a green hollow of the
Alban hills, can ever forget it. The two characteristic Italian villages which
slumber on its banks, and the equally Italian palace whose terraced gardens
descend steeply to the lake, hardly break the stillness and even the
solitariness of the scene. Diana herself might still linger by this lonely
shore, still haunt these woodlands wild.

In antiquity this sylvan landscape was the scene of a strange and
recurring tragedy. On the northern shore of the lake, right under the
precipitous cliffs on which the modern village of Nemi is perched, stood the
sacred grove and sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, or Diana of the Wood. The lake
and the grove were sometimes known as the lake and grove of Aricia. But the
town of Aricia (the modern La Riccia) was situated about three miles off, at
the foot of the Alban Mount, and separated by a steep descent from the lake,
which lies in a small crater-like hollow on the mountain side. In this sacred
grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and
probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand
he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every
instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a
murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and
hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A
candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the
priest, and having slain him, he retained office till he was himself slain by
a stronger or a craftier.

The post which he held by this precarious tenure carried with it the title
of king; but surely no crowned head ever lay uneasier, or was visited by more
evil dreams, than his. For year in, year out, in summer and winter, in fair
weather and in foul, he had to keep his lonely watch, and whenever he snatched
a troubled slumber it was at the peril of his life. The least relaxation of
his vigilance, the smallest abatement of his strength of limb or skill of
fence, put him in jeopardy; grey hairs might seal his death-warrant. To gentle
and pious pilgrims at the shrine the sight of him might well seem to darken
the fair landscape, as when a cloud suddenly blots the sun on a bright day.
The dreamy blue of Italian skies, the dappled shade of summer woods, and the
sparkle of waves in the sun, can have accorded but ill with that stern and
sinister figure. Rather we picture to ourselves the scene as it may have been
witnessed by a belated wayfarer on one of those wild autumn nights when the
dead leaves are falling thick, and the winds seem to sing the dirge of the
dying year. It is a sombre picture, set to melancholy musicthe background of
forest showing black and jagged against a lowering and stormy sky, the sighing
of the wind in the branches, the rustle of the withered leaves under foot, the
lapping of the cold water on the shore, and in the foreground, pacing to and
fro, now in twilight and now in gloom, a dark figure with a glitter of steel
at the shoulder whenever the pale moon, riding clear of the cloud-rack, peers
down at him through the matted boughs.

The strange rule of this priesthood has no parallel in classical
antiquity, and cannot be explained from it. To find an explanation we must go
farther afield. No one will probably deny that such a custom savours of a
barbarous age, and, surviving into imperial times, stands out in striking
isolation from the polished Italian society of the day, like a primaeval rock
rising from a smooth-shaven lawn. It is the very rudeness and barbarity of the
custom which allow us a hope of explaining it. For recent researches into the
early history of man have revealed the essential similarity with which, under
many superficial differences, the human mind has elaborated its first crude
philosophy of life. Accordingly, if we can show that a barbarous custom, like
that of the priesthood of Nemi, has existed elsewhere; if we can detect the
motives which led to its institution; if we can prove that these motives have
operated widely, perhaps universally, in human society, producing in varied
circumstances a variety of institutions specifically different but generically
alike; if we can show, lastly, that these very motives, with some of their
derivative institutions, were actually at work in classical antiquity; then we
may fairly infer that at a remoter age the same motives gave birth to the
priesthood of Nemi. Such an inference, in default of direct evidence as to how
the priesthood did actually arise, can never amount to demonstration. But it
will be more or less probable according to the degree of completeness with
which it fulfils the conditions I have indicated. The object of this book is,
by meeting these conditions, to offer a fairly probable explanation of the
priesthood of Nemi.

I begin by setting forth the few facts and legends which have come down to
us on the subject. According to one story the worship of Diana at Nemi was
instituted by Orestes, who, after killing Thoas, King of the Tauric Chersonese
(the Crimea), fled with his sister to Italy, bringing with him the image of
the Tauric Diana hidden in a faggot of sticks. After his death his bones were
transported from Aricia to Rome and buried in front of the temple of Saturn,
on the Capitoline slope, beside the temple of Concord. The bloody ritual which
legend ascribed to the Tauric Diana is familiar to classical readers; it is
said that every stranger who landed on the shore was sacrificed on her altar.
But transported to Italy, the rite assumed a milder form. Within the sanctuary
at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no branch might be broken. Only a runaway
slave was allowed to break off, if he could, one of its boughs. Success in the
attempt entitled him to fight the priest in single combat, and if he slew him
he reigned in his stead with the title of King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis).
According to the public opinion of the ancients the fateful branch was that
Golden Bough which, at the Sibyl's bidding, Aeneas plucked before he essayed
the perilous journey to the world of the dead. The flight of the slave
represented, it was said, the flight of Orestes; his combat with the priest
was a reminiscence of the human sacrifices once offered to the Tauric Diana.
This rule of succession by the sword was observed down to imperial times; for
amongst his other freaks Caligula, thinking that the priest of Nemi had held
office too long, hired a more stalwart ruffian to slay him; and a Greek
traveller, who visited Italy in the age of the Antonines, remarks that down to
his time the priesthood was still the prize of victory in a single combat.

Of the worship of Diana at Nemi some leading features can still be made
out. From the votive offerings which have been found on the site, it appears
that she was conceived of especially as a huntress, and further as blessing
men and women with offspring, and granting expectant mothers an easy delivery.
Again, fire seems to have played a foremost part in her ritual. For during her
annual festival, held on the thirteenth of August, at the hottest time of the
year, her grove shone with a multitude of torches, whose ruddy glare was
reflected by the lake; and throughout the length and breadth of Italy the day
was kept with holy rites at every domestic hearth. Bronze statuettes found in
her precinct represent the goddess herself holding a torch in her raised right
hand; and women whose prayers had been heard by her came crowned with wreaths
and bearing lighted torches to the sanctuary in fulfilment of their vows. Some
one unknown dedicated a perpetually burning lamp in a little shrine at Nemi
for the safety of the Emperor Claudius and his family. The terra-cotta lamps
which have been discovered in the grove may perhaps have served a like purpose
for humbler persons. If so, the analogy of the custom to the Catholic practice
of dedicating holy candles in churches would be obvious. Further, the title of
Vesta borne by Diana at Nemi points clearly to the maintenance of a perpetual
holy fire in her sanctuary. A large circular basement at the north-east corner
of the temple, raised on three steps and bearing traces of a mosaic pavement,
probably supported a round temple of Diana in her character of Vesta, like the
round temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum. Here the sacred fire would seem to
have been tended by Vestal Virgins, for the head of a Vestal in terra-cotta
was found on the spot, and the worship of a perpetual fire, cared for by holy
maidens, appears to have been common in Latium from the earliest to the latest
times. Further, at the annual festival of the goddess, hunting dogs were
crowned and wild beasts were not molested; young people went through a
purificatory ceremony in her honour; wine was brought forth, and the feast
consisted of a kid cakes served piping hot on plates of leaves, and apples
still hanging in clusters on the boughs.

But Diana did not reign alone in her grove at Nemi. Two lesser divinities
shared her forest sanctuary. One was Egeria, the nymph of the clear water
which, bubbling from the basaltic rocks, used to fall in graceful cascades
into the lake at the place called Le Mole, because here were established the
mills of the modern village of Nemi. The purling of the stream as it ran over
the pebbles is mentioned by Ovid, who tells us that he had often drunk of its
water. Women with child used to sacrifice to Egeria, because she was believed,
like Diana, to be able to grant them an easy delivery. Tradition ran that the
nymph had been the wife or mistress of the wise king Numa, that he had
consorted with her in the secrecy of the sacred grove, and that the laws which
he gave the Romans had been inspired by communion with her divinity. Plutarch
compares the legend with other tales of the loves of goddesses for mortal men,
such as the love of Cybele and the Moon for the fair youths Attis and
Endymion. According to some, the trysting-place of the lovers was not in the
woods of Nemi but in a grove outside the dripping Porta Capena at Rome, where
another sacred spring of Egeria gushed from a dark cavern. Every day the Roman
Vestals fetched water from this spring to wash the temple of Vesta, carrying
it in earthenware pitchers on their heads. In Juvenal's time the natural rock
had been encased in marble, and the hallowed spot was profaned by gangs of
poor Jews, who were suffered to squat, like gypsies, in the grove. We may
suppose that the spring which fell into the lake of Nemi was the true original
Egeria, and that when the first settlers moved down from the Alban hills to
the banks of the Tiber they brought the nymph with them and found a new home
for her in a grove outside the gates. The remains of baths which have been
discovered within the sacred precinct, together with many terra-cotta models
of various parts of the human body, suggest that the waters of Egeria were
used to heal the sick, who may have signified their hopes or testified their
gratitude by dedicating likenesses of the diseased members to the goddess, in
accordance with a custom which is still observed in many parts of Europe. To
this day it would seem that the spring retains medicinal virtues.

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