The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion

Chapter 2 briefly examines the figure of the priest-as-king or king-as-priest, finding multiple analogies in the sacrificial kings in Rome and in the Greek magistrates known as kings of Athens. These roles existed following the abolition of the Greek monarchy but were also found in Asia Minor, Madagascar, and Central America. The king-priest is a powerful leader often thought of as a god, able to mediate between the human and the divine and influence natural phenomena, such as crops and rainfall.

This much longer chapter is divided into four sections and explores the relationship between magic, science, and religion. Frazer suggests that religion consists in, firstly, a theoretical component, a belief in powers superior to humanity. Secondly, there is a practical component, or a desire to propitiate those powers. The passage from the theoretical to the practical components of religion constitutes the difference between a religion and a theology and assumes that the laws of nature are flexible, which contrasts the belief in nature’s laws being absolute that exists in both magic and science.

Magic is based on two main principles: the law of similarity and the law of contagion. The law of similarity suggests that a magician may replicate that which he imitates, or that like creates like. The law of contagion suggests that magic performed on a given object will affect all those with which the object was at one point in contact. Magic in general, for Frazer, is a “false science” (26) because it misunderstands the relationship between humans and nature. Both homeopathic and contagious magic can be grouped under the heading of “sympathetic magic,” which means that “things act on each other at a distance through a secret sympathy” (27). Sympathetic magic shares the idea with science that “things can physically affect each other through a space which appears to be empty” (27).

In the second section, Frazer considers homeopathic magic from an international perspective. He distinguishes between charms (positive precepts) and taboos (negative precepts). In the third section, Frazer provides examples whereby body parts such as teeth or hair could be used to curse individuals through contagious magic.

In the fourth and final section of the chapter, Frazer considers the relation of magic to science and religion. He concludes that science and magic operate by association, but science is based on true and tested associations, whereas magic is based on false ones. The relationship between magic and religion is somewhat more complex. While science and magic both rest on the idea that the world is governed by preordained and immovable principles, religion implies an “elasticity or variability of nature” (47) that can be acted upon by a superhuman power. Religion therefore assumes that natural forces are both conscious and personal because they can be adapted to an individual’s needs through the direct actions of the gods.

While theoretically the priest should intercede with supernatural powers to influence the natural world, a sorcerer’s enchantments would have a direct influence on the elements. Frazer charts how the world has gradually passed from a magical to a religious age as the efficacy of magic was rationally disproved. He illustrates how religion and magic and the priest and the sorcerer can and have been confused. He suggests that a common strain of sympathetic magic has survived and can be traced across cultures and historical periods.

In this chapter, Frazer explores the figure of the god incarnate in human form. He suggests this idea will have been more familiar and widespread in the earlier, magical age when the gap between human and supernatural powers seemed far narrower and that the “idea of a man-god” belongs “essentially to that earlier period of religious history in which gods and men are still viewed as beings of much the same order” (61). In early civilizations, there is little distinction between a man-god and a particularly powerful sorcerer.

The section distinguishes between the temporary incarnation of gods—through inspiration or possession of a human being who nonetheless maintains a distinct identity—and permanent incarnation, whereby the human subject becomes indistinguishable from the deity.

Frazer next considers the Buddhist belief transmigration of the Buddha spirit. He concludes the chapter suggesting that, over time, the figure of the magician or medicine man was absorbed into that of the king, whose role was, in turn, later subdivided between the temporal king and spiritual priest.

Whereas the sacrificial kings of Rome and the magistrate-kings of Athens may have been the last in a line of political kings, the priests at Nemi are what Frazer terms as “departmental kings,” or kings of a specific aspect of nature.

Frazer opens this chapter, which is divided into two sections, by observing that tree-worship cults were common in ancient European culture. He provides examples from the Celtic druids, Ancient Germans, Ancient Greeks, Romans, and Finnish-Ugrian tribes. The custom derives from a tendency to see the vegetable world as animate and sensible: Societies progress from animism to polytheism when they cease to see the trees as embodiments of spirits or deities and consider them a temporary home for these spiritual beings.

The second section discusses May trees and May poles in Europe. The May tree is brought into the village and often carried from door to door as a means of transporting the power of the tree-spirit into the village. The May tree is replaced and sometimes burned periodically, a ritual of fertility, death, and renewal. When it takes the form of a fixed, permanent May pole, its decorations of spring leaves, flowers, and herbs are nonetheless renewed annually.

The final sections discusses “anthropomorphic representations of the tree spirit” (92), which abounded among the early Europeans. These figures may be male, female, or a heterosexual couple, and are often designated as kings or queens. Many Maying rituals incorporate a symbolic marriage, mimicking the union of male and female elements in plants.