The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 1 of 2)

Lacking the idea of eternal duration primitive man naturally supposes the gods to be mortal like himself. The Greenlanders believed that a wind could kill their most powerful go...

“The still glassy lake that sleeps Beneath Aricia’s trees— Those trees in whose dim shadow The ghastly priest doth reign, The priest who slew the slayer, And shall himself be sl...

In the preceding chapter we saw that in early society the king or priest is often thought to be endowed with supernatural powers or to be an incarnation of a deity; in consequen...

For some time I have been preparing a general work on primitive superstition and religion. Among the problems which had attracted my attention was the hitherto unexplained rule...