The Cambridge Ritualists were a recognised group of classical scholars , mostly in Cambridge , England, including Jane Ellen Harrison , F.M. Cornford , Gilbert Murray (actually from the University of Oxford ), A. B. Cook , George Thomson , and others. They earned this title because of their shared interest in ritual , specifically their attempts to explain myth and early forms of classical drama as originating in ritual , mainly the ritual seasonal killings of eniautos daimon , or the Year-King . They are also sometimes referred to as the myth and ritual school , or as the Classical Anthropologists .
58-399: Inspired by The Golden Bough , Gilbert Murray in 1913 proclaimed the killing of the year spirit as the "orthodox view of the origins of tragedy. The year Daimon waxes proud and is slain by his enemy, who becomes thereby a murderer, and must in turn perish". A decade later, however, the excessively rigid application of Frazer's thesis to Greek tragedy had already begun to be challenged; and by
116-471: A dying and reviving god , a solar deity who underwent a mystic marriage to a goddess of the Earth, died at the harvest and was reincarnated in the spring. Frazer claims that this legend of rebirth was central to almost all of the world's mythologies. Frazer wrote in a preface to the third edition of The Golden Bough that while he had never studied Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , his friend James Ward, and
174-436: A "disproportionate" influence "on so many [20th-century] creative writers", Frazer's ideas played "a much smaller part" in the history of academic social anthropology. Lienhardt himself dismissed Frazer's interpretations of primitive religion as "little more than plausible constructs of [Frazer's] own Victorian rationalism", while Ludwig Wittgenstein , in his Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough (published in 1967), wrote: "Frazer
232-590: A "dying-and-rising god" has a longer history, it was significantly advocated by Frazer's Golden Bough (1906–1914). At first received very favourably, the idea was attacked by Roland de Vaux in 1933, and was the subject of controversial debate over the following decades. One of the leading scholars in the deconstruction of Frazer's "dying-and-rising god" category was Jonathan Z. Smith , whose 1969 dissertation discusses Frazer's Golden Bough , and who in Mircea Eliade 's 1987 Encyclopedia of religion wrote
290-413: A case of parallelomania which exaggerates the importance of trifling resemblances, long abandoned by mainstream scholars. Against this view, Mettinger (2001) affirms that many of the gods of the mystery religions do indeed die, descend to the underworld, are lamented and retrieved by a woman and restored to life. However, Mettinger also disincludes Christianity from this influence. Though the concept of
348-499: A degree which is often quite startling, whenever the evidence did not fit he simply altered the evidence!" René Girard , a French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science , "grudgingly" praised Frazer for recognising kingly sacrifice as "a key primitive ritual", but described his interpretation of the ritual as "a grave injustice to ethnology." Girard's criticisms against The Golden Bough were numerous, particularly concerning Frazer's assertion that Christianity
406-447: A deteriorated state and Izanagi will not bring her back, and she pursues Izanagi, but he manages to escape. Some traditions tie the cycle of life and death brought about by the seasons to deities which themselves undergo a cycle of death and rebirth. In effect, these gods take the form of a vegetation deity . Examples include Ishtar and Persephone , who die every year. The annual death of Ishtar when she goes underground represents
464-471: A more detailed account of his views specifically on the question of parallels to Christianity in Drudgery Divine (1990). Smith's 1987 article was widely received, and during the 1990s, scholarly consensus seemed to shift towards his rejection of the concept as oversimplified, although it continued to be invoked by scholars writing about ancient Near Eastern mythology. Beginning with an overview of
522-425: A superstitious belief in magicians, through a superstitious belief in priests and gods, to enlightened belief in scientists—had little or no relevance to the conduct of life in an Andamanese camp or a Melanesian village, and the whole, supposedly scientific, basis of Frazer's anthropology was seen as a misapplication of Darwin's theory of biological evolution to human history and psychology. Edmund Leach , "one of
580-402: Is a great science, worthy of as much devotion as any of her elder and more exact studies and I became bound to the service of Frazerian anthropology." However, by the 1920s, Frazer's ideas already "began to belong to the past": according to Godfrey Lienhardt: The central theme (or, as he thought, theory) of The Golden Bough —that all mankind had evolved intellectually and psychologically from
638-733: Is a primitive attempt to explain the world of nature, though considering it only one among a number of valid explanations of mythology. Campbell later described Frazer's work as "monumental". The anthropologist Weston La Barre described Frazer as "the last of the scholastics " in The Human Animal (1955). The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein 's commentaries on The Golden Bough have been compiled as Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough , edited by Rush Rhees, originally published in 1967 (the English edition followed in 1979). Robert Ackerman, in his The Myth and Ritual School: J. G. Frazer and
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#1732772901742696-478: Is judged, since death and resurrection are more central to Christianity than many other faiths. Dag Øistein Endsjø , a scholar of religion, points out how a number of those often defined as dying-and-rising-deities, such as a number of figures in ancient Greek religion , actually died as ordinary mortals, only to become gods of various stature after they were resurrected from the dead. Not dying as gods, they thus defy
754-535: Is much more savage than most of his 'savages' [since] his explanations of [their] observances are much cruder than the sense of the observances themselves." R.G. Collingwood shared Wittgenstein's criticism. Initially, the book's influence on the emerging discipline of anthropology was pervasive. Polish anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski said of The Golden Bough : "No sooner had I read this great work than I became immersed in it and enslaved by it. I realized then that anthropology, as presented by Sir James Frazer,
812-586: The Athenian ritual of growing and withering herb gardens at the Adonis festival, in his book The Gardens of Adonis Marcel Detienne suggests that rather than being a stand-in for crops in general (and therefore the cycle of death and rebirth), these herbs (and Adonis) were part of a complex of associations in the Greek mind that centered on spices. These associations included seduction, trickery, gourmandizing, and
870-599: The Lamb of God as a relic of a pagan religion. For the third edition, Frazer placed his analysis of the Crucifixion in a speculative appendix, while discussion of Christianity was excluded from the single-volume abridged edition. Frazer himself accepted that his theories were speculative and that the associations he made were circumstantial and usually based only on resemblance. He wrote: "Books like mine, merely speculation, will be superseded sooner or later (the sooner
928-527: The Osiris myth festival and follow the ritual of his death and the scattering of his body to restart the vegetation cycle as a rebirth "experience the permanence and continuity of life which outlasts all changes of form". Jung wrote that Osiris provided the key example of the rebirth process in that initially only the Pharaohs "had an Osiris" but later other Egyptians nobles acquired it and eventually it led in
986-519: The Underworld to see her sister Ereshkigal . While there, she is "struck down" and turns into a corpse. For three days and three nights, Inanna is dead, until she is resurrected with the help of her father, Enki , who sends the two galla to bring her back. The galla serve Inanna food and water and bring her back to life. The category "dying-and-rising-god" was debated throughout the 20th century, and most modern scholars questioned its ubiquity in
1044-546: The collective unconscious through which the rising god becomes the greater personality in the Jungian self . In Jung's view, a biblical story such as the resurrection of Jesus (which he saw as a case of dying and rising) may be true or not, but that has no relevance to the psychological analysis of the process, and its impact. The analysis of Osiris permeates the later religious psychology of Carl Jung more than any other element. In 1950 Jung wrote that those who partake in
1102-421: The "Dying and rising gods" entry, where he dismisses the category as "largely a misnomer based on imaginative reconstructions and exceedingly late or highly ambiguous texts", suggesting a more detailed categorisation into "dying gods" and "disappearing gods", arguing that before Christianity, the two categories were distinct and gods who "died" did not return, and those who returned never truly "died". Smith gave
1160-450: The "doom of the gods". By contrast, most variations of Quetzalcoatl's story (first written down in the 16th century) have Quetzalcoatl tricked by Tezcatlipoca to over-drink and then burn himself to death out of remorse for his own shameful deeds. Quetzalcoatl does not resurrect and come back to life as himself, but some versions of his story have a flock of birds flying away from his ashes. In some variants, Quetzalcoatl sails away on
1218-552: The Cambridge Ritualists (1991), sets Frazer in the broader context of the history of ideas . The myth and ritual school includes scholars Jane Harrison , Gilbert Murray , F. M. Cornford , and A.B. Cook , who were connecting the new discipline of myth theory and anthropology with traditional literary classics at the end of the 19th century, influencing Modernist literature . The Golden Bough influenced Sigmund Freud 's work Totem and Taboo (1913), as well as
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#17327729017421276-644: 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. Frazer attempted to define
1334-526: The ancient Near East . The traditions influenced by them include the Greco-Roman mythology . The concept of a dying-and-rising god was first proposed in comparative mythology by James Frazer 's seminal The Golden Bough (1890). Frazer associated the motif with fertility rites surrounding the yearly cycle of vegetation. Frazer cited the examples of Osiris , Tammuz , Adonis and Attis , Zagreus , Dionysus , and Jesus . Frazer's interpretation of
1392-432: The anxieties of childbirth. From his point of view, Adonis's death is only one datum among the many that must be used to analyze the festival, the myth, and the god. A main criticism charges the group of analogies with reductionism , in that it subsumes a range of disparate myths under a single category and ignores important distinctions. Detienne argues that it risks making Christianity the standard by which all religion
1450-577: The better for the sake of truth) by better induction based on fuller knowledge." In 1922, at the inauguration of the Frazer Lectureship in Anthropology , he said: "It is my earnest wish that the lectureship should be used solely for the disinterested pursuit of truth, and not for the dissemination and propagation of any theories or opinions of mine." Godfrey Lienhardt notes that even during Frazer's lifetime, social anthropologists "had for
1508-466: The biblical references to Herod the Great were based on the myth of "Herrut" the evil hydra serpent. However, the existence of Herod the Great is well established independently of Christian sources. The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung argued that archetypal processes such as death and resurrection were part of the "trans-personal symbolism" of the collective unconscious , and could be utilized in
1566-408: The category has been critically discussed in 20th-century scholarship, to the conclusion that many examples from the world's mythologies included under "dying and rising" should only be considered "dying" but not "rising", and that the genuine dying-and-rising god is a characteristic feature of ancient Near Eastern mythologies and the derived mystery cults of late antiquity . " Death or departure of
1624-515: The concept of soul for all individuals in Christianity. Jung believed that Christianity itself derived its significance from the archetypal relationship between Osiris and Horus versus God the Father and Jesus, his son. However, Jung also postulated that the rebirth applied to Osiris (the father), and not Horus, the son. The general applicability of the death and resurrection of Osiris to
1682-587: The controversy generated by the work, and its critical reception amongst other scholars, The Golden Bough inspired much of the creative literature of the period. The poet Robert Graves adapted Frazer's concept of the dying king sacrificed for the good of the kingdom to the romantic idea of the poet's suffering for the sake of his Muse-Goddess, as reflected in his book on poetry, rituals, and myths, The White Goddess (1948). William Butler Yeats refers to Frazer's thesis in his poem " Sailing to Byzantium ". The horror writer H. P. Lovecraft 's understanding of religion
1740-605: The cycle of the seasons. Frazer proposed that mankind's understanding of the natural world progresses from magic through religious belief to scientific thought. Frazer's thesis was developed in relation to an incident in Virgil 's Aeneid , in which Aeneas and the Sibyl present the golden bough taken from a sacred grove to the gatekeeper of Hades to gain admission. The incident was illustrated by J. M. W. Turner 's 1834 painting The Golden Bough . Frazer mistakenly states that
1798-473: The definition of "dying-and-rising-gods". Tryggve Mettinger supports the category of dying and rising gods, and stated in 2001 that there was a scholarly consensus that the category is inappropriate. As of 2009, the Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion summarizes the current scholarly consensus as ambiguous, with some scholars rejecting Frazer's "broad universalist category" preferring to emphasize
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1856-665: The differences between the various traditions, but others continue to view the category as applicable. In the 2010s, Paola Corrente conducted an extensive survey of the status of the dying and rising god category. Though she agrees that much of Frazer's specific evidence was faulty, she argues that the category as a whole is valid, though she suggests modifications to the specific criteria. Corrente specifically focuses her attention on several Near Eastern and Mesopotamian gods as examples which she argues have been largely ignored, both by Frazer (who would not have had access to most relevant texts) and his more recent critics. These examples include
1914-468: The dying-and-rising-god analogy has been criticized, on the grounds that it derived from the harvesting rituals that related the rising and receding waters of the Nile river and the farming cycle. The cutting down of barley and wheat was related to the death of Osiris, and the sprouting of shoots was thought to be based on the power of Osiris to resurrect the farmland. In general rebirth analogies based on
1972-609: The end of the 19th century, in their The Golden Bough and Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion , Frazer and Harrison argued that all myths are echoes of rituals, and that all rituals have as their primordial purpose the manipulation of natural phenomena. Early in the 20th century, Gerald Massey argued that there are similarities between the Egyptian dying-and-rising god myths and Jesus, but Massey's factual errors often render his works mistaken. For example, Massey stated that
2030-641: The feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl in Aztec mythology to the Japanese Izanami . The methods of death vary. In Germanic mythology, for example, Baldr (whose account was likely first written down in the 12th century), is inadvertently killed by his blind brother Höðr who is tricked into shooting a mistletoe -tipped arrow at him. Baldr's body is then set aflame on a ship as it sails out to sea. Baldr does not come back to life because not all living creatures shed tears for him, and his death then leads to
2088-517: The goddess Inanna in Sumerian texts and Ba'al in Ugaritic texts, whose myths, Corrente argues, offer concrete examples of death and resurrection. Corrente also utilizes the example of Dionysus, whose connection to the category is more complicated, but has still been largely ignored or mischaracterized by other scholars including Frazer himself in her view. In the webcomic Homestuck , players of
2146-517: The gods " is motif A192 in Stith Thompson 's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1932), and "resurrection of gods" is motif A193. The motif of a dying deity appears within the mythology of diverse cultures – perhaps because attributes of deities were derived from everyday experiences, and the ensuing conflicts often included death. These examples include Baldr in Norse mythology and
2204-568: The group, particularly on Harrison, were Darwin , James Frazer , Marx , Nietzsche and Freud . This England -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . The Golden Bough 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
2262-432: The lack of growth, and her return represents the rebirth of the farming cycle. Most scholars hold that although the gods suggested in this motif die, they do not generally return in terms of rising as the same deity, although scholars such as Mettinger contend that in some cases they do. The term "dying god" is associated with the works of James Frazer , Jane Ellen Harrison , and their fellow Cambridge Ritualists . At
2320-595: The mediation of a powerful supernatural being or beings to whom man appeals for help and protection." Frazer included an extract from Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1832). The Golden Bough scandalized the British public when first published, as it included the Christian story of the resurrection of Jesus in its comparative study. Critics thought this treatment invited an agnostic reading of
2378-473: The most impatient critics of Frazer's overblown prose and literary embellishment of his sources for dramatic effect", scathingly criticized what he saw as the artistic license exercised by Frazer in The Golden Bough : "Frazer used his ethnographic evidence, which he culled from here, there and everywhere, to illustrate propositions which he had arrived at in advance by a priori reasoning, but, to
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2436-471: The most part distanced themselves from his theories and opinions", and that the lasting influence of The Golden Bough and Frazer's wider body of work "has been in the literary rather than the academic world." Robert Ackerman writes that, for British social anthropologists, Frazer is still "an embarrassment" for being "the most famous of them all" even as the field now rejects most of his ideas. While The Golden Bough achieved wide "popular appeal" and exerted
2494-462: The ocean never to return. Hawaiian deities can die and depart the world in a number of ways. Some gods who were killed on Lanai by Lanikuala departed for the skies. In contrast, Kaili leaves the world by canoe and is never seen again. The Japanese god Izanami dies giving birth to the child Kagu-tsuchi (incarnation of fire) or Ho-Musubi (causer of fire) and Izanagi goes to Yomi , the land of gloom, to retrieve her, but she has already changed to
2552-400: The one-volume abridgement of The Golden Bough is "bland" and should be "avoided like the plague." Life-death-rebirth deity A dying-and-rising god , life–death–rebirth deity , or resurrection deity is a religious motif in which a god or goddess dies and is resurrected . Examples of gods who die and later return to life are most often cited from the religions of
2610-414: The painting depicts the lake at Nemi , though it is actually Lake Avernus . The lake of Nemi, also known as " Diana 's Mirror", was a place where religious ceremonies and the "fulfillment of vows" of priests and kings were held. Frazer based his thesis on the pre-Roman priest-king Rex Nemorensis , a priest of Diana at Lake Nemi, who was ritually murdered by his successor. The king was the incarnation of
2668-481: The philosopher J. M. E. McTaggart , had both suggested to him that Hegel had anticipated his view of "the nature and historical relations of magic and religion". Frazer saw the resemblance as being that "we both hold that in the mental evolution of humanity an age of magic preceded an age of religion, and that the characteristic difference between magic and religion is that, whereas magic aims at controlling nature directly, religion aims at controlling it indirectly through
2726-408: The shared elements of religious belief and scientific thought, discussing fertility rites, human sacrifice , the dying god , the scapegoat , and many other symbols and practices whose influences had extended into 20th-century culture. His thesis is that the most ancient religions were fertility cults that revolved around the worship and periodic sacrifice of a sacred king in accordance with
2784-687: The sixties Robert Fagles could state that "The ritual origins of tragedy are totally in doubt, often hotly debated". Through their work in classical philology , they exerted profound influence not only on the Classics, but on literary critics, such as Stanley Edgar Hyman or Northrop Frye . Particularly affected by Émile Durkheim was F. M. Cornford , who used the French sociologist's notion of collective representations to analyze social forms of religious, artistic, philosophical, and scientific expression in classical Greece . Other significant influences on
2842-581: The song " Not to Touch the Earth " by the Doors were influenced by The Golden Bough , with the title and opening lines being taken from its table of contents. Francis Ford Coppola 's film Apocalypse Now shows the antagonist Kurtz with the book in his lair, and his death is depicted as a ritual sacrifice. The mythologist Joseph Campbell drew on The Golden Bough in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), in which he accepted Frazer's view that mythology
2900-492: The task of psychological integration. He also proposed that the myths of the pagan gods who symbolically died and resurrected foreshadowed Christ 's literal/physical death and resurrection. The overall view of Jung regarding religious themes and stories is that they are expressions of events occurring in the unconscious of the individuals – regardless of their historicity. From the symbolic perspective, Jung sees dying and rising gods as an archetypal process resonating with
2958-452: The universe-creating game Sburb can attain conditional immortality and extraordinary power by ascending to "god tier", a process that requires dying on a special sacrificial bed. God tier players can be killed normally, but will return anew so long as the game does not judge their deaths "heroic" or "just". In the video game Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War , Razgriz is a powerful fairy tale demon who first uses its power to "[rain] death upon
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#17327729017423016-552: The vegetation cycle are viewed as the weakest elements in the death-rebirth analogies. In Greek mythology , Dionysus , the son of Zeus , was a horned child who was torn to pieces by Titans who lured him with toys, then boiled and ate him. Zeus then destroyed the Titans by thunderbolt as a result of their action against Dionysus and from the ashes humans were formed. However, Dionysus' grandmother Rhea managed to put some of his pieces back together (principally from his heart that
3074-454: The work as "a model of intriguing specificity wed to speculative imagination." Paglia acknowledged that "many details in Frazer have been contradicted or superseded", but maintained that the work of Frazer's Cambridge school of classical anthropology "will remain inspirational for enterprising students seeking escape from today's sterile academic climate." Paglia has also commented, however, that
3132-419: The work of Freud's student Carl Jung . The critic Camille Paglia has identified The Golden Bough as one of the most important influences on her book Sexual Personae (1990). In Sexual Personae , Paglia described Frazer's "most brilliant perception" in The Golden Bough as his "analogy between Jesus and the dying gods", though she noted that it was "muted by prudence". In Salon , she has described
3190-401: The world's mythologies. By the end of the 20th century the scholarly consensus was that most of the gods Frazer listed as "dying-and-rising" only died and did not rise. Kurt Rudolph in 1986 argued that the oft-made connection between the mystery religions and the idea of dying and rising divinities is defective. Gerald O'Collins states that surface-level application of analogous symbolism is
3248-492: Was influenced by The Golden Bough , and Lovecraft mentions the book in his short story " The Call of Cthulhu ". T. S. Eliot acknowledged indebtedness to Frazer in his first note to his poem The Waste Land . William Carlos Williams refers to The Golden Bough in Book Two, part two, of Paterson . Frazer also influenced novelists James Joyce , Ernest Hemingway , William Gaddis and D. H. Lawrence . The lyrics of
3306-581: Was merely a perpetuation of primitive myth-ritualism and that the New Testament Gospels were "just further myths of the death and resurrection of the king who embodies the god of vegetation." Girard himself considered the Gospels to be "revelatory texts" rather than myths or the remains of "ignorant superstition", and rejected Frazer's idea that the death of Jesus was a sacrifice, "whatever definition we may give for that sacrifice." Despite
3364-465: Was spared) and brought him back to life. In other Orphic tales, Zagreus is depicted as the son of Hades and Persephone , and is the god of rebirth . Scholars such as Barry Powell have suggested Dionysus as an example of resurrection. The oldest known example of the "dying god rising myth" is the Sumerian myth of Inanna 's Descent to the Underworld. The Sumerian goddess Inanna travels to
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