Magic and Religion

It is necessary to get the death of the Sacæan victim into touch with Easter. The Sacæa, when he died, had been in June-July, in vol. ii., in Mr. Frazer's first edition, before...

We have not, meanwhile, even any testimony to show that, in any time, in any place, any human victim was ever slain, let alone a king (and a king annually), as Tammuz. We have o...

Merely that in 416 A.D. some Jews in Syria, being heated with wine after 'certain sports,' began to deride Christianity, and, for that purpose, bound a Christian child to the cr...

Some say the Deil's deid, The Deil's deid, the Deil's deid, Some say the Deil's deid, And buried in Kirkcaldy: Some say he's risen again, Risen again, risen again, Some say he's...

Though I have tried to argue against Mr. Frazer's theory of the cause of the 'sacrifice' of the mock Sacæan king, I am not prepared to offer a dogmatic counter-theory. The Sacæa...

Yet to demand the aid of remote ancestral spirits by prayer is religion. In fact Mr. Frazer had said of the powerful beings of the Southern Australians 'it does not seem that th...

For these reasons, apparently, Statius calls the Arician grove 'profugis regibus aptum,' a sanctuary of exiled princes, Orestes and Hippolytus.[18] From Suetonius we learn that...

Whether Lagarde's view be correct or not, this part of the evidence is far too sandy a foundation for a theory about a matter of solemn importance. The Jews could not borrow the...

From Rome we turn to Greece. Cronos, in Greece, answered, more or less, to Saturn in Rome, though how much of the resemblance is due to Roman varnishing with Greek myth I need n...

Secondly, my guess is thought to disregard Mr. Frazer's many other analogies from folklore. Which analogies? Where else do we find a priestly fugitive slave, who held his sacred...

Mr. Gason, an excellent witness, says that the Dieri think some souls turn into old trees or rocks, or 'as breath ascend to the heavens,' to 'Purriewillpanina.' The Dieri believ...

Now, in his essay of 1892, Mr. Tylor never, I think, alludes to his own evidence of 1873, or even of 1891, in favour of a Red Indian creator, evidence earlier than the Jesuits (...

Recent years have brought rich additions to the materials for the study of early religion, ritual, magic, and myth. In proportion to the abundance of information has been the gr...

Mr. Frazer perhaps will say 'these Babylonian kings were polygamous, and had large families of sons.' But think of the situation! When the king comes to providing a son as a sub...

An opinion is not necessarily erroneous because it is obsolete, nor a view wrong because 'it is generally abandoned.' I am here supporting the 'generally abandoned' hypothesis t...

Well, the Sacæa was such a period of licence. Each household was then ruled by a slave, the Zoganes, as Athenæus quotes Berosus. The royal household was not an exception. Now to...

But the chief cause of indifference is the character of our evidence. We can find anything we want to find people say--not only 'the man in the street' but the learned say--amon...

I am not arguing that these phrases are more than the pigeon-French of the savage flock, or that the ideas expressed did not later become implanted in their minds. But Mr. Tylor...

We are presently to see that Mr. Frazer gives facts which contradict his own statement. But first I must cite all that he says about Australian religion. 'In the south-eastern p...

To myself, then, Zulu religion, now almost exclusively ancestor-worship, does seem to contain a broken and almost obliterated element of belief in a high unworshipped god, presi...

My next case occurs among a civilised race, the Japanese, and is vouched for by Mr. Lafcadio Hearn, an American writer, whose book I have not at hand, and by Colonel Andrew Hagg...

Another curious point needs to be considered by the advocates of the theory of borrowing. Mr. Hartland offers some deserved censures on Mr. Manning's terminology in his report o...

Meaningless in Europe, what meaning have these designs in Australia? Though certainty is impossible, I take it that they were first purely decorative, before the mythical and sy...

About 2 P.M. we went to the oven and there found the _tohunga_ (a Raiatea man) getting matters ready, and I told him that, as my feet were naturally tender, the stones should be...

Australian blacks: alleged endeavour to delay the course of the sun, 3; religious ideas unborrowed, 44; attention to the dead, 49; Christian Deity identified by them with their...

SACÆ (Oriental tribe), 118, 119, 143, 194 Sacæa (Persian festival), date, origin, rites, theories, details, analogies, 77, 79, 80, 81, 106, 114, 117, 118, 119, 122, 123, 124, 12...