The very first paragraph of James George’s Frazer’s famous work The Golden Bough, published in 1890, begins with a description of a painting bearing the same name [pictured above], which depicts an episode from Book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid, quoting Frazer:

Who does not know Turner's picture of the Golden Bough? The scene, suffused with the golden glow of imagination in which the divine mind of Turner steeped and transfigured even the fairest natural landscape, is a dream-like vision of the little woodland lake of Nemi, "Diana's Mirror," as it was called by the ancients. No one who has seen that calm water, lapped in a green hollow of the Alban hills, can ever forget it. The two characteristic Italian villages which slumber on its banks, and the equally Italian palazzo whose terraced gardens descend steeply to the lake, hardly break the stillness and even the solitariness of the scene. Dian herself might still linger by this lonely shore, still haunt these woodlands wild.

—James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, King of the Wood i

The serene lake, where the temple of Diana was built, only some sixteen miles south-east of the temple of her father Jupiter Optimus Maximus in Rome, is quite a sight like Frazer describes. Today on the lake’s shores there’s a museum of the Roman navy and a Papal villa overlooking the waters, though like Frazer says, one must wonder if the spirit of the godly Diana, now perhaps only a forest sprite, doesn’t still dwell in the wood.

Perhaps it is the very same sense of brooding, of an antiquated yet still felt presence, which sparked Frazer’s intrigue and sent him on his search for a genealogy of religion, to describe not only how religion evolves and adapts to the various changes in the human society it is practiced in, but also of the common threads between the variegated [usually polytheistic] faiths, and the in-depth examinations of the origins of specific rituals. Of these threads he writes substantially, the work divided into four books titled:

BOOK I: The King of the Wood
Largely an introduction into the book, concepts such as magic, taboo and ritual are thoroughly explained and their psychological and social root examined.
BOOK II: Killing the God
Detailing the various traditions of dying-and-rising gods and specific accounts of deities which belong to this category, e.g. Dionysus, Osiris, Adonis.
BOOK III: The Scapegoat
Accounts of rituals of transferring evil or sin onto other objects, animals, and the like.
BOOK IV: The Golden Bough
Examines the afterlife itself and the possibility of moving between worlds.

Funnily enough the fourth book itself has a chapter titled The Golden Bough, so by the end you will be reading The Golden Bough, Book IV: The Golden Bough, Chapter 6: The Golden Bough.

Frazer tackled religion specifically through its purpose as an explanation for the workings of reality and man’s fundamental understanding of it. Religion, in its variegated forms, being the result of the confrontation between the I and the Other. Before the modern Scientific Method, or Francis Bacon’s inductive reasoning, or Aristotle’s deductive method, long prior to all of these mankind was guided by the simple and seemingly obvious, unarticulated but ingrained principles of magic, most significantly, the two laws of Sympathetic Magic, those being Homoeopathic Magic (the Law of Similarity) and Contagious Magic (the Law of Contact) respectively.

In brief, the Law of Similarity states that something can be affected without direct contact, on the basis of an action being performed on something that is similar in appearance or nature to the thing that one desires to bring a certain effect on. The Law of Contact meanwhile assumes that objects which have been severed from something can still bring an effect on the object that they were originally connected to, this is the principle behind voodoo. Citing one example of each:

Homoeopathic Magic; Law of Similarity

Thus among the Warramunga the headman of the white cockatoo totem seeks to multiply white cockatoos by holding an effigy of the bird and mimicking its harsh cry. Among the Arunta the men of the witchetty grub totem perform ceremonies for multiplying the grub which the other members of the tribe use as food. One of the ceremonies is a pantomime representing the fully developed insect in the act of emerging from the chyrsalis. A long and narrow structure of branches is set up to imitate the chrysalis case of the grub. Then they shuffle out of it in a squatting posture, and as they do they sing of the insect emerging from the chrysalis. This is supposed to multiply the number of grubs.

—James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, Magic and Religion, ii

Contagious Magic; Law of Contact

Among the Australian tribes it was a common practice to knock out one or more of a boy’s front teeth at those ceremonies of initiation to which every male member had to submit before he could enjoy the rights and privileges of a full-grown man. The reason of the practice is obscure; all that concerns us here is the belief that a sympathetic relation continued to exist between the lad and his teeth after the latter had been extracted from his gums. Thus among some of the tribes about the River Darling, in New South Wales, the extracted tooth was placed under the bark of a tree near a river or a water-hole; if the bark grew over the tooth, or if the tooth fell into the water, all was well; but if it were exposed and the ants ran over it, the natives believed that the boy would suffer from a disease of the mouth.

—James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, Magic and Religion, iii

Animism and the Magician

Although I cite only one example of each law, most examples given by Frazer in that chapter came from Australian aborigines, although there were also examples of the customs of European farmers and ancient Hellenes which displayed this law of connection. However Australia still remains a quite useful insight into mankind’s early superstitious beliefs in a simpler and undiluted by self-examination manner.

Frazer argues that the ancestor of all religions is essentially a magical animism. Man initially conceives of himself as having significance within this animistic world, by virtue of magic being able to exert power over incidental events within nature or to procure a desired result, usually through ritual procedure that falls under either the principles of homoeopathic or contagious magic. This is the essence of the magical man.

It is the magician who knows the proper ritual or incantation to bring about rain or sunlight, to alleviate sickness or to curse someone with it.

Given animism at this level is primitive and undeveloped, with deities to whom is allotted a specific function of nature or some attribute of the human condition not yet appearing, by virtue of, according to Frazer, there not yet being a metaphysical necessity for such beings because primitive man assumes that it is he who can bring about the rain or curses through these principles of magic, this being the mathematic of the whole world, and more or less every man in many tribe is at the very least an initiate in magic.

The transition to polytheism occurs when eventually, no matter how many centuries it takes to realize, the primitive man becomes cognizant of the fact that nature is outside of his sphere of influence. There have been instances of the desired result coming about after the proper procedure is conducted, yet just as many of it coming completely sporadically, polytheism is the realization that man himself has no direct power within this metaphysical framework, henceforth what he thought himself to have power over now is the domain of specific deities or spirits.

There is generally no great difference between the animism of an African, an Australian aboriginal or that of a Polynesian. No two spirits will share a name between these vast stretches of land and sea, and no two rituals will be identical, but all will be firmly grounded in some principle of sympathetic magic. Thus man, still yet too primitive for cities or agriculture, yet no longer a mere beast, will grasp at his first attempts to dominate the rest of nature through his intellect, not by something as simple as tools or ambushes, but through constructing the first world-picture, in which, by knowing, all things are subservient.

The true essence of the animistic world-picture is that of having power within this world governed by sympathetic magic. To know of something is fundamentally to wield power over it. Writing on numbers, Spengler said:

The origin of numbers resembles that of the myth. Primitive man
elevates indefinable nature-impressions (the “alien,” in our terminology) into deities, numina, at the same time capturing and impounding them by a name which limits them. So also numbers are something that marks off and captures nature-impressions, and it is by means of names and numbers that the human understanding obtains power over the world.

—Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West Vol. 1, Meaning of Numbers, ii

Thus language, often times used as the primary feature of distinguishing between man and beast, finds its intimate connection with religion, and naming with power.

“Science” following Religion

In his thesis however Frazer implies that science may be a viable replacement of religion, a natural succession not unlike polytheism following animism, or monotheism following polytheism in his system. We now know well that cold and sterile science can never satiate the spiritual hunger of man, for even the basest experience a spiritual aching, a spiritual aching consisting either of a desire of submission or of the actualization of divine will or purpose. For the common man requires an extremely simple understanding of the world to not be met with fear and confusion. He does not need to know history to be sure of where he comes from or what he is, he only needs to know that there is a history. Neither does he need to know how rain falls, how thunder appears or why deserts form or why the sun shines, he need only know that this is explainable and there are people who know the answer to these queries. For modern man, awareness of the existence of truths and explanations is an apt substitution for any desire to search for those on his own. Were nobody in fact to know the cause or operations of nature, so long as common man thought his superiors to know the answer, he is secure in his confidence and trust of the world.

Very well, this science has accomplished, it has demystified much of the world of everyday phenomena (while failing to this day to answer many fundamental questions of biology or those posed most often by meta-physicians, for that will never be science’s domain). For lower minds deities were always directly identified with their areas of power. There is a physical being, sitting atop a throne on a holy mount, holding thunder in his hand or shooting down ailment with his bow. Just the same in Hinduism, to the lowly laborer or merchant, he ought to worship idols and fulfill his worldly duties. He will believe that Ganesh or Varuna reside in an idol, while the educated and lofty Brahmin will know that all there is is Brahman itself, his thought ever focused on the abstract cosmic principle, while his inferiors pour milk or honey onto an idol of Adi Shankara. The Vedantic Brahmin has far more in common with the mystical Sufi adherent to Ibn’ Arabi’s Wahdat al-Wujud or Meister Eckhart with his Gottheit, but he practices the same faith as the idol-worshiper of his village, not that of Eckhart or Ibn’ Arabi, yet the religiosity of the most accomplished theologians is substantially different from that of the masses. For the lower man, the fact of there being no anthropomorphic deity in the sky is a substantial blow. Creationism too is believed and then laughed at by the very same stock of men, he will conceive that he has unveiled a great veil, yet 1600 years prior to Christian scorn at Darwin’s thesis and seemingly anti-Biblical doctrine, Origen of Alexandria already states Genesis to be allegory.

Any attempted anthropology of religion which neglects the urges of the passions, of the desire to submit before the Almighty or to earnestly love and dedicate one’s whole Being to the serving of a savior or spreading the word of a prophet out of genuine love, is doomed to failure. This is fundamental to the human condition. Science, unequipped as it is to answer the fundamental questions of metaphysics, can satiate the simplest questions of the common man, yet it cannot provide him with the solidarity of ritual, nor ardent service of a higher will, or the bonds of community. For the higher men it fails to answer the most significant questions of existence, for the lower it fails to provide any meaningful substitute to religion. Disaster strikes when these fundamental needs are exploited, when some other article than faith attempts to garner this yearning which has its place in religion alone. When secular political systems imbue in themselves the fervor of faith, calamity arises. The fervor of faith is unalterable, and directed toward its most common substitute, the service of state, it often results in disaster.

The Future of Faith

Faith is a curious thing to speculate about, attempting to predict the actions of existing religious bodies or churches is one thing, guessing at what forms any particular religion of the future will take or how it will emerge is another. Buddhism came about in an environment of philosophical fervor, chancing to find longevity and remain a strong creed to this day, now a world-faith and not, as its contemporaries are now relegated to, abstract philosophical systems understood by few and practiced by even fewer. It is not unlike if Pythagoreanism or Stoicism remained ardent faiths to this day with their own rituals and monastic orders. The comparison of Buddhism and Stoicism being particularly apt, to be the de-facto systems of the Mauryas and Rome respectively.

There inevitably in religious discourse comes about the subject of the personalities who inspire devotion and instill the fervor of faith, be it in an explicitly religious form as Christ’s or Muhammad’s, or a more worldly form as of the cases of Napoleon or Alexander, both are largely lacking in this age. At the very least judging by their actual successes and what their followings accomplished.

Speaking of Muhammad, Carlyle said:

A poor shepherd people, roaming unnoticed in its deserts since the creation of the world: a Hero-Prophet was sent down to them with a word they could believe: see the unnoticed becomes the world-notable, the small has grown world-great; within one century afterwards, Arabia is at Grenada on this hand, at Delhi on that;... These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one century,—is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what seemed black unnoticeable sand; but lo, the sand proves explosive powder, blazes heaven high from Delhi to Grenada! I said, the Great Man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and they too would flame.

—Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History

The fervor of faith is inseparable from the person of its great founder, of the man who inaugurates it. What praise the Buddha is lauded with, to be seen as greater than life to the extent that his followers regarded him as superior to both man and deity [deva]! And who aspired to elevate all the adherents of his great doctrine to the very same state. Kings and princes knelt before him and asked for his counsel, and now he stands depicted in many of the world’s greatest statues. Little to say there is of Christ, he being regarded as God himself. The multitudes abound in their faith on a single man, who is destined to work his purpose, and until he completes it, he is invincible.

I feel myself driven towards an end that I do not know. As soon as I shall have reached it, as soon as I shall become unnecessary, an atom will suffice to shatter me. Till then, not all the forces of mankind can do anything against me.

—Napoleon Bonaparte at the beginning of the Russian campaign

There is precious little difference between men the likes of Alexander and Napoleon or the Buddha and Pythagoras. Temporal and spiritual conquest (which is conquest by virtue of knowledge, which is power) are fundamentally both conquest, the lines between them being blurred even more so with figures such as Muhammad; prophet, warrior, statesman.

Now we find ourselves in circumstances not unlike the Rome of Caesar’s day. America the analogue of Rome, yet it is not the Caesar who we look to in this article, but the Christ. For all of the fame of Augustus, and the significance of the Roman Imperium, it is the birth of a religious figure that overshadows even the significance of the mightiest temporal rulers, and it is philosophers whose names endure for the longest with clarity that rings in the ears. Now do the cities of the West resemble the state of Classical antiquity 2000 years ago. WORLD-CITIES, the answer to Rome and Alexandria being New York, Washington, London, Berlin - cities lacking in any social solidarity, where there was history and culture, that is subsumed by commercialism and cosmopolitanism.

Writing on Christian proselytism and the success of Christianity in Rome, James C. Russell wrote:

Christianity tends to flourish in heterogeneous societies in which there exist high levels of anomie, or social destabilization. Since the relationship of social structure to ideological structure and religious expression will play a significant role in this inquiry, a brief discussion of fundamental concepts is presented here. Thomas O'Dea has summarized Emile Durkheim's concept of anomie as that state of social disorganization in which established social and cultural forms break down. He [Durkheim] spoke of two aspects of this breakdown. There is loss of solidarity; old groups in which individuals find security and response tend to break down. There is also loss of consensus; felt agreement (often only semiconscious) upon values and norms which provided direction and meaning for life tend to break down.

—James C. Russell, The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity

Faiths as Christianity and Buddhism prosper (in terms of early conversions) in these exact circumstances of anomie, whereupon social consensus is lost and all men are made either enemies or rendered apathetic to one another. Islam too can be said to be born in similar circumstances, however not of the urban anomie and apathy of the world-cities of Rome, Varanasi, or Pataliputra, but in confusion, if we are to take the Islamic sources at face value, the utter disorganization and chaos of faiths, idols of multitudes of gods from different corners of the world and Christian crosses in the very same temples, then that too eventually becomes ripe soul for a unitary system, which works to be a perfectly complete system, which wields an answer to all the vital-most questions.

Now perhaps we find ourselves in a soil not unlike that of pre-Islamic Arabia, in tandem of course with the world megalopolis. Confusion, anomaly, and apathy all abounding together. We are of course characterized more by atheism or outright indifference towards matters of spirit, but the indifference isn’t a hatred of spirit itself, but hatred of the available surface-representations that we are familiarized with. Familiarity breeds contempt.

On a final note, to quote Spengler at length, in his view for Western Civilization there remains one great task, one great undertaking before all our potential is to finalize its ultimate actualization, and this task will be of a philosophical nature.

Herein, then, I see the last great task of Western philosophy, the only one which still remains in store for the aged wisdom of the Faustian Culture, the preordained issue, it seems, of our centuries of spiritual evolution. No Culture is at liberty to choose the path and conduct of its thought, but here for the first time a Culture can foresee the way that destiny has chosen for it. Before my eyes there seems to emerge, as a vision, a hitherto unimagined mode of superlative historical research that is truly Western, necessarily alien to the Classical and to every other soul but outs—a comprehensive Physiognomic of all existence, a morphology of becoming for all humanity that drives onward to the highest and last ideas; a duty of penetrating the world-feeling not only of our proper soul but of all souls whatsoever that have contained grand possibilities and have expressed them in the field of actuality as grand Cultures. This philosophic view—to which we and we alone are entitled in virtue of our analytical mathematic, our contrapunctual music and our perspective painting—in that its scope far transcends who can feel the whole sensible and apprehensible environment dissolve into a deep infinity of mysterious relationships. So Dante felt, and so Goethe felt. To bring up the web of world-happening, a millennium of organic culture-history as an entity and person, and to grasp the conditions of its inmost spirituality—such is the aim.

—Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West Vol. 1, Destiny and Causality, xii

Should our civilization continue its current course, then it is not unlikely that a new figure the likes of Christ will come about, or rather a new creed, a new great faith stands to germinate in precisely this age of atheism and apathy, it seems salvationism is best suited for environments such as these, but should our world conditions of abundance cease and we come upon a world that is faced to stare down the brute facts of nature, what sort of faith will man look forwards to then?