Golden Bough: The Roots of Religion and Folklore

An "uncensored" abridged version, full of speculation about Christ. Sure to get the evangelicals lighting their torches, to storm this Castle of Prometheus.

Although it is trendy to slam The Golden Bough for its author's assumptions, nothing can take away the magnitude of the scholarship or the impact of the text. It was the first time any work of religious anthropology had made any sort of cultural impact, and its signifigance to artists of the Jazz Age and later decades is tantamount. Picasso's work is filled with images from The Golden Bough, and all of Hemingway's obsession with bulls and bullfights is explained by reading Frazer. The work itself is an exhaustive reference for thousands of relgious ceremonies around the world, and their interrelated symbolism and meaning. Flying directly in the face of the historical philosophies of parallel, isolated cultural development in vogue in the 19th century, the book shows that human spiritual belief orbits around the same ideas, needs and urges across the planet and through the ages. The symbolism of worship in Iron Age Norway is the same as Middle Ages Mirconesia, with all the interconnectedness this implies. It is very easy to work around the author's 19th century cultural assumptions and glean the information. Reading The Golden Bough, along with Joseph Campbell, will give a very good baseline for any historical religious study. Frazer's work also dovetails beautifully with Jung's study of archetypal symbols. The combination of the two wil go a long way towards sorting out the symbolism in any 20th Century literature.

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.