Books › The Golden Bough
The Golden Bough
First published 1923 · 5614 pages
A sprawling, ornate descent into the dark, magical, and bloody roots of human belief.
What it feels like
Reading this monumental work feels like wandering through an endless, shadowy museum of human thought, guided by a deeply erudite, if distinctly Victorian, curator. The pace is decidedly meandering, taking the reader on sweeping detours across continents and centuries to connect disparate threads of magic, religion, and folklore. It is less a modern scientific text than a grand, literary tapestry of myth, steeped in an antiquarian mood that feels both esoteric and profound. The prose is ornate and expansive, demanding patience but rewarding it with hypnotic rhythms and striking imagery of ancient rituals and sacrificed kings. It will delight readers who love getting lost in comparative mythology, the origins of superstition, and the dark, cyclical nature of ancient human belief.
- Mood
- mythic
- esoteric
- antiquarian
- shadowy
- Tone
- authoritative
- academic
- sweeping
- Victorian
- detached
- Pace
- meandering
- Themes
- evolution of belief · ritual and sacrifice · the roots of magic · cyclical nature of life
- The writing
- Ornate, expansive, and highly literary, characterized by sweeping Victorian rhetoric and classical allusions.
- The arc
- Begins in a dense thicket of global folklore and slowly builds toward a grand, melancholic vision of human intellectual progress.
- Who it's for
- Lovers of comparative mythology, esoteric history, and the deep, dark roots of human ritual who enjoy dense, literary scholarship.
Content notes
- ritual sacrifice
- violence
- outdated cultural depictions
- death
About the book
Wikipedia - "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. The Golden Bough was first published in two volumes in 1890; in three volumes in 1900; and in twelve volumes in the third edition, published 1906–1915. It has also been published in several different one-volume abridgments. The work was for a wide literate audience raised on tales as told in such publications as Thomas Bulfinch's The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes (1855). The influence of The Golden Bough on contemporary European literature and thought has been substantial."
Description from Open Library.
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