The Golden Bough. Magic and Religion from Ritual Feasts to Reincarnation

In 1890, James George Frazer forever changed anthropology by creating a fundamental study of the rituals and beliefs of all ages. What is needed to exorcise evil forces? How did Europeans celebrate the festival of fire? How did sacrifices differ... across cultures? How has the human attitude towards death and the beyond changed? Drawing on extensive ethnographic and historical material, the second part of Frazer's book introduces the reader to the most unusual manifestations of primitive magic, animism and totemism, beliefs in an afterlife, religious cults, folklore, and customs of different peoples. «Ultimately, both magic, religion, and science are merely ways of theoretical thinking, and just as science has displaced its predecessors, in the future another, more perfect hypothesis may replace it. Perhaps this will be a radically different perspective on things, of which our generation can have not the slightest idea. The progress of knowledge is an endless advance towards a goal that forever eludes. And it is hardly worth complaining that this search has no end». (James George Frazer)