[citation needed], Among the most influential elements of the third edition of The Golden Bough is Frazer's theory of cultural evolution and the place Frazer assigns religion and magic in that theory. Science seemingly was superior to any religious ideas of the past (Strenski, 141). . [31], Because of this, Bantu people, such as the Ngoni, punish lizards and chameleons. But Frazer rarely researched his own data. 146–147. Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, Address to Sir James George Frazer on the occasion of the foundation, in his honour, of the Frazer Lectureship in Social Anthropology in the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow and Liverpool (1920), « L’anthropologue qui meurt et ressuscite : vie et œuvre de James George Frazer », BEROSE - International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Trinity College Chapel: Sir James George Frazer, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_George_Frazer&oldid=984104003, Fellows of the Royal Society (Statute 12), Honorary Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Articles with unsourced statements from March 2019, Wikipedia articles needing factual verification from February 2019, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2012, Wikipedia articles with CANTIC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 18 October 2020, at 06:02. Remembering the maverick physicist who pioneered an “anthropic” approach to cosmology. Chidester (2014), pp. Many or even most of them might be little more than festivities, no strings attached. His distinction between magic and religion (magic as an attempt to control events by technical acts based upon faulty reasoning, religion as an appeal for help to spiritual beings) has been basically assumed in much anthropological writing since his time. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. This may seem strange for a couple of reasons. [31], According to historian Timothy Larsen, Frazer used scientific terminology and analogies to describe ritual practices, and conflated magic and science together, such as describing the "magic wand of science". [40], When Frazer's Australian colleague Walter Baldwin Spencer requested to use native terminology to describe Aboriginal Australian cultures, arguing that doing so would be more accurate, since the Christian terms were loaded with Christian connotations that would be completely foreign to members of the cultures he was describing, Frazer insisted that he should use Judeo-Christian terms instead, telling him that using native terms would be off-putting and would seem pedantic. THE GOLDEN BOUGH p. 2a James Frazer p. 2b THE GOLDEN BOUGH A STUDY OF MAGIC AND RELIGION BY SIR JAMES GEORGE FRAZER CONTENTS Preface Subject Index Chapter 1. As I will expand upon later, Frazer says that religion implies that nature is elastic, with the all mighty able to “to deflect, for our benefit, the current of events from the channel in which they would otherwise flow” (Frazer, p. 54a). Two messages are carried from the supreme being to mankind: one of eternal life and one of death. The eldest of four children, Frazer was raised in a devout Presbyterian household. However, it was his shortened single volume version of 1922 that reached the widest audience, also way outside the academic world. x–xi, 5, 8; and Chapter 6. [Frazer 1890, vol. He takes a lot for granted about the lack of intellectual capacities in those not "civilized." In this scheme, religion was marked off as an outmoded way of thinking. Frazer believed that science would eventually replace religion entirely and it is easy to see how he would come to that conclusion by looking at the technological advancements during his time. The symbolic cycle of life, death and rebirth which Frazer divined behind myths of many peoples captivated a generation of artists and poets. [29], Frazer collected stories from throughout the British Empire and devised four general classifications into which many of them could be grouped:[30][31], This type of story is common in Africa. They were both buried in St Giles's cemetery, Cambridge. If he had eaten the latter, then mankind would have shed their skins like crabs and so lived eternally. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (retitled The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion in its second edition) is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by the Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer. So, it would not occupy itself elaborately without the hope of some gain, some trick by which to change fate. If it were, the customs of the monotheistic societies would not rank any higher. Although Frazer treated religion carefully and with a high degree of dispassion, he nonetheless had his critics. His wife produced a French translation of his book The Golden Bough in 1923, and in 1924 Frazer was made a member of the Order of Merit for his contributions to ‘the cause of science’. It would be so much easier to follow his chain of thought if he were to describe the significance of the fear of death - not the dead - in the cults, rituals, and mythologies of religions. [8] He was, if not blind, then severely visually impaired from 1930 on. Frazer's theory of cultural evolution was not absolute and could reverse, but sought to broadly describe three (or possibly, four) spheres through which cultures were thought to pass over time. [31], Animals which shed their skin, such as snakes and lizards, appeared to be immortal to primitive people. During his lifetime he saw the development of the hearing aid, incandescent light, the electric streetcar, the long distance telephone, the gas powered car, the first Kodak box camera, and the X-Ray. [40] He routinely uses the specifically Christian theological terms "born again", "new birth", "baptism", "christening", "sacrament", and "unclean" in reference to non-Christian cultures. It is even more bluntly presented in a book of his from 1933, a revealing year in this context, where he declares: Existing savages are doubtless highly developed physically, intellectually and morally, by comparison with their ancestors in the remote past, but by comparison with the civilized nations of the present time they may fairly be described as primitive in a relative sense. At the same time, Frazer was aware that both magic and religion could persist or return.

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