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74-513: Sir James George Frazer used the concept of the sacred king in his study The Golden Bough (1890–1915), the title of which refers to the myth of the Rex Nemorensis . Frazer gives numerous examples, cited below, and was an inspiration for the myth and ritual school . However, "the myth and ritual , or myth-ritualist, theory" is disputed; many scholars now believe that myth and ritual share common paradigms , but not that one developed from

148-465: A cottage industry of amateurs looking for " pagan survivals" in such things as traditional fairs , maypoles , and folk arts like morris dancing . It was widely influential in literature , being alluded to by D. H. Lawrence , James Joyce , Ezra Pound , and in T. S. Eliot 's The Waste Land , among other works. Robert Graves used Frazer's work in The Greek Myths and made it one of

222-577: 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 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

296-591: A public lectureship in social anthropology at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Glasgow and Liverpool was established in his honour in 1921. He was, if not blind, then severely visually impaired from 1930 on. He and his wife, Lilly, died in Cambridge , England, within a few hours of each other. He died on 7 May 1941. They are buried at the St Giles aka Ascension Parish Burial Ground in Cambridge. Frazer

370-590: 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

444-475: A book of children's stories, The Leaves from the Golden Bough . His sister Isabella Katherine Frazer married the mathematician John Steggall . The study of myth and religion became his areas of expertise. Except for visits to Italy and Greece , Frazer was not widely travelled. His prime sources of data were ancient histories and questionnaires mailed to missionaries and imperial officials all over

518-413: 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

592-460: A chameleon's mouth so that the nicotine poisons it and the creature dies, writhing while turning colours. Variations of the tale are found in other parts of Africa. The Akamba say the messengers are the chameleon and the thrush while the Ashanti say they are the goat and the sheep. The Bura people of northern Nigeria say that, at first, neither death nor disease existed but, one day,

666-485: A flock of birds flying away from his ashes. In some variants, Quetzalcoatl sails away on 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 ,

740-405: A man became ill and died. The people sent a worm to ask the sky deity, Hyel, what they should do with him. The worm was told that the people should hang the corpse in the fork of a tree and throw mush at it until it came back to life. But a malicious lizard, Agadzagadza , hurried ahead of the worm and told the people to dig a grave, wrap the corpse in cloth, and bury it. The people did this. When

814-471: 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

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888-558: A revival in Early Modern Europe and became chemistry . On the other hand, Frazer displayed a deep anxiety about the potential of widespread belief in magic to empower the masses, indicating fears of and biases against lower-class people in his thought. Frazer collected stories from throughout the British Empire and devised four general classifications into which many of them could be grouped: This type of story

962-499: A supplemental thirteenth volume added in 1936. He published a single-volume abridged version, largely compiled by his wife Lady Frazer, in 1922, with some controversial material on Christianity excluded from the text. The work's influence extended well beyond the conventional bounds of academia, inspiring the new work of psychologists and psychiatrists. Sigmund Freud , the founder of psychoanalysis , cited Totemism and Exogamy frequently in his own Totem and Taboo : Resemblances Between

1036-484: 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 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

1110-593: Is common in Africa. Two messages are carried from the supreme being to mankind: one of eternal life and one of death. The messenger carrying the tidings of eternal life is delayed, and so the message of death is received first by mankind. The Bantu people of Southern Africa, such as the Zulu , tell that Unkulunkulu , the Old Old One, sent a message that men should not die, giving it to the chameleon . The chameleon

1184-478: Is commonly interpreted as an atheist in light of his criticism of Christianity and especially Roman Catholicism in The Golden Bough . However, his later writings and unpublished materials suggest an ambivalent relationship with Neoplatonism and Hermeticism . In 1896 Frazer married Elizabeth "Lilly" Grove , a writer whose father was from Alsace . She would later adapt Frazer's Golden Bough as

1258-493: Is conspicuous in this as he was a figure of Egyptian mythology). The sacred king, the human embodiment of the dying and reviving vegetation god, was supposed to have originally been an individual chosen to rule for a time, but whose fate was to suffer as a sacrifice , to be offered back to the earth so that a new king could rule for a time in his stead. Especially in Europe during Frazer's early twentieth century heyday, it launched

1332-460: Is his six-volume commentary on the Greek traveller Pausanias ' description of Greece in the mid-2nd century AD. Since his time, archaeological excavations have added enormously to the knowledge of ancient Greece, but scholars still find much of value in his detailed historical and topographical discussions of different sites, and his eyewitness accounts of Greece at the end of the 19th century. Among

1406-478: 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

1480-404: Is that the creator in the sky would lower gifts to mankind on a rope and, one day, a stone was offered to the first couple. They refused the gift as they did not know what to do with it, so the creator took it back and lowered a banana. The couple ate this with relish, but the creator told them that they would live as the banana, perishing after having children rather than remaining everlasting like

1554-658: The cultus in the Hittite city of Nerik, J. D. Hawkins remarked approvingly in 1973, "The whole work is very methodical and sticks closely to the fully quoted documentary evidence in a way that would have been unfamiliar to the late Sir James Frazer." More recently, The Golden Bough has been criticised for what are widely perceived as imperialist , anti-Catholic , classist and racist elements, including Frazer's assumptions that European peasants, Aboriginal Australians and Africans represented fossilised, earlier stages of cultural evolution. Another important work by Frazer

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1628-534: 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

1702-527: 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

1776-519: 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

1850-502: The Year-King has not been borne out by field studies. Yet The Golden Bough , his study of ancient cults, rites, and myths, including their parallels in early Christianity, continued for many decades to be studied by modern mythographers for its detailed information. The first edition, in two volumes, was published in 1890; and a second, in three volumes, in 1900. The third edition was finished in 1915 and ran to twelve volumes, with

1924-546: 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

1998-421: 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

2072-737: The "magic wand of science". Larsen criticizes Frazer for baldly characterized magical rituals as "infallible" without clarifying that this is merely what believers in the rituals thought. Larsen has said that Frazer's vivid descriptions of magical practices were written with the intention to repel readers, but, instead, these descriptions more often allured them. Larsen also criticizes Frazer for applying western European Christian ideas, theology, and terminology to non-Christian cultures. This distorts those cultures to make them appear more Christian. Frazer routinely described non-Christian religious figures by equating them with Christian ones. Frazer applied Christian terms to functionaries , for instance calling

2146-641: The Christian doctrine of reconciliation . When Spencer, who had studied the aboriginals firsthand, objected that the ideas were not remotely similar, Frazer insisted that they were exactly equivalent. Based on these exchanges, Larsen concludes that Frazer's deliberate use of Judeo-Christian terminology in the place of native terminology was not to make native cultures seem less strange, but rather to make Christianity seem more strange and barbaric. Life-death-rebirth deity A dying-and-rising god , life–death–rebirth deity , or resurrection deity

2220-404: The Christian terms were loaded with Christian connotations that would be completely foreign to members of the cultures he was describing, Frazer insisted that he should use Abrahamic terms instead, telling him that using native terms would be off-putting and would seem pedantic. A year later, Frazer excoriated Spencer for refusing to equate the non-estrangement of Aboriginal Australian totems with

2294-467: The Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics . The symbolic cycle of life, death and rebirth which Frazer divined behind myths of many peoples captivated a generation of artists and poets. Perhaps the most notable product of this fascination is T. S. Eliot 's poem The Waste Land (1922). Frazer's pioneering work has been criticised by late-20th-century scholars. For instance, in the 1980s

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2368-432: 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

2442-466: 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

2516-641: The burden of leadership and the ultimate responsibility of personal sacrifice, including Sword at Sunset , The Mark of the Horse Lord , and Sun Horse, Moon Horse . In addition to its appearance in her novel Lammas Night noted above, Katherine Kurtz also uses the idea of sacred kingship in her novel The Quest for Saint Camber . General "English school" "Scandinavian school" Sir James George Frazer Sir James George Frazer OM FRS FRSE FBA ( / ˈ f r eɪ z ər / ; 1 January 1854 – 7 May 1941)

2590-515: 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

2664-473: 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

2738-665: 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

2812-497: The divine, the sacral king was credited with special wisdom (e.g. Solomon or Gilgamesh ) or vision (e.g. via oneiromancy ). Study of the concept was introduced by Sir James George Frazer in his influential book The Golden Bough (1890–1915); sacral kingship plays a role in Romanticism and Esotericism (e.g. Julius Evola ) and some currents of Neopaganism ( Theodism ). The school of Pan-Babylonianism derived much of

2886-468: 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

2960-976: The elders of the Njamus of East Africa "equivalent to the Levites of Israel" and the Grand Lama of Lhasa "the Buddhist Pope ... the man-god who bore his people's sorrows, the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep". He routinely uses the specifically Christian theological terms " born again ", "new birth", " baptism ", " christening ", " sacrament ", and "unclean" in reference to non-Christian cultures. When Frazer's Australian colleague Walter Baldwin Spencer requested to use native terminology to describe Aboriginal Australian cultures, arguing that doing so would be more accurate, since

3034-609: 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

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3108-578: The ensuing conflicts often included death. These examples include Baldr in Norse mythology and 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

3182-582: The foundations of his own personal mythology in The White Goddess , and in the fictional Seven Days in New Crete he depicted a future in which the institution of a sacrificial sacred king is revived. Margaret Murray , the principal theorist of witchcraft as a "pagan survival," used Frazer's work to propose the thesis that many kings of England who died as kings, most notably William Rufus , were secret pagans and witches , whose deaths were

3256-538: 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 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

3330-482: The globe. Frazer's interest in social anthropology was aroused by reading E. B. Tylor 's Primitive Culture (1871) and was also encouraged by his friend, the biblical scholar William Robertson Smith , who was comparing elements of the Old Testament with early Hebrew folklore. Frazer was the first scholar to describe in detail the relations between myths and rituals . His vision of the annual sacrifice of

3404-517: 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

3478-411: The grand trajectory of human thought." He thus ultimately proposed – and attempted to further – a narrative of secularization and one of the first social-scientific expressions of a disenchantment narrative. At the same time, Frazer was aware that both magic and religion could persist or return. He noted that magic sometimes returned so as to become science, such as when alchemy underwent

3552-519: The idea that man should or might return from death in a similar way. Stories that associate the moon with the origin of death are found especially around the Pacific region. In Fiji , it is said that the moon suggested that mankind should return as he did. But the rat god, Ra Kalavo , would not permit this, insisting that men should die like rats. In Australia, the Wotjobaluk aborigines say that

3626-432: 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

3700-514: The land of gloom, to retrieve her, but she has already changed to 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

3774-461: The latter, then mankind would have shed their skins like crabs and so lived eternally. The banana plant bears its fruit on a stalk which dies after bearing. This gave people such as the Nias islanders the idea that they had inherited this short-lived property of the banana rather than the immortality of the crab. The natives of Poso also based their myth on this property of the banana. Their story

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3848-400: The modern Catholic Pope takes the role of the " Vicar of Christ ". Kings are styled as shepherds from earliest times, e.g., the term applied to Sumerian princes such as Lugalbanda in the 3rd millennium BCE. The image of the shepherd combines the themes of leadership and the responsibility to supply food and protection, as well as superiority. As the mediator between the people and

3922-488: The moon used to revive the dead until an old man said that this should stop. The Cham have it that the goddess of good luck used to revive the dead, but the sky-god sent her to the moon so she could not do this any more. Animals which shed their skin , such as snakes and lizards , appeared to be immortal to primitive people. This led to stories in which mankind lost the ability to do this. For example, in Vietnam , it

3996-658: The most influential elements of the third edition of The Golden Bough is Frazer's theory of cultural evolution and the place Frazer assigns religion and magic in that theory. Frazer's theory of cultural evolution was not absolute and could reverse, but sought to broadly describe three (or possibly, four) spheres through which cultures were thought to pass over time. Frazer believed that, over time, culture passed through three stages, moving from magic, to religion, to science. Frazer's classification notably diverged from earlier anthropological descriptions of cultural evolution, including that of Auguste Comte , because he thought magic

4070-447: 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 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

4144-413: The other. According to Frazer, the notion has prehistoric roots and occurs worldwide, on Java as in sub-Saharan Africa , with shaman -kings credited with rainmaking and assuring fertility and good fortune. The king might also be designated to suffer and atone for his people, meaning that the sacral king could be the pre-ordained victim in a human sacrifice , either killed at the end of his term in

4218-626: The position, or sacrificed in a time of crisis (e.g. the Blót of Domalde ). The Ashanti flogged a newly selected king ( Ashantehene ) before enthroning him. From the Bronze Age in the Near East , the enthronement and anointment of a monarch is a central religious ritual, reflected in the titles " Messiah " or " Christ ", which became separated from worldly kingship. Thus Sargon of Akkad described himself as "deputy of Ishtar ", just as

4292-534: The re-enactment of the human sacrifice that stood at the centre of Frazer's myth. This idea used by fantasy writer Katherine Kurtz in her novel Lammas Night . Monarchies carried sacral kingship into the Middle Ages , encouraging the idea of kings installed by the Grace of God . See: Many of Rosemary Sutcliff 's novels are recognized as being directly influenced by Frazer, depicting individuals accepting

4366-569: The religion described in the Hebrew Bible from cults of sacral kingship in ancient Babylonia . The so-called British and Scandinavian cult-historical schools maintained that the king personified a god and stood at the center of the national or tribal religion. The English "myth and ritual school" concentrated on anthropology and folklore, while the Scandinavian "Uppsala school" emphasized Semitological study. A sacred king, according to

4440-478: The sacred king represented the spirit of vegetation, a divine John Barleycorn . He came into being in the spring, reigned during the summer, and ritually died at harvest time, only to be reborn at the winter solstice to wax and rule again. The spirit of vegetation was therefore a " dying and reviving god ". Osiris , Dionysus , Attis and many other familiar figures from Greek mythology and classical antiquity were re-interpreted in this mold (Osiris in particular

4514-486: The social anthropologist Edmund Leach wrote a series of critical articles, one of which was featured as the lead in Anthropology Today , vol. 1 (1985). Leach criticised The Golden Bough for the breadth of comparisons drawn from widely separated cultures, but often based his comments on the abridged edition, which omits the supportive archaeological details. In a positive review of a book narrowly focused on

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4588-624: The stone. Frazer married in 1896 and his new wife perceived that Frazer's reputation was not equal to his abilities. Lilly Frazer had the pushiness that he lacked, and she became his manager and publicist guarding access to his office. He did not care too much for prizes but she valued them. She was particularly involved in publishing his work, where she arranged translation to French, and to children, where she adapted his stories. According to historian Timothy Larsen , Frazer used scientific terminology and analogies to describe ritual practices, and conflated magic and science together, such as describing

4662-493: The systematic interpretation of mythology developed by Frazer in The Golden Bough (published 1890), was a king who represented a solar deity in a periodically re-enacted fertility rite . Frazer seized upon the notion of a substitute king and made him the keystone of his theory of a universal, pan- European , and indeed worldwide fertility myth, in which a consort for the Goddess was annually replaced. According to Frazer,

4736-492: 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

4810-452: 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

4884-552: 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

4958-401: 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

5032-577: The worm arrived and said that they should dig up the corpse, place it in a tree, and throw mush at it, they were too lazy to do this, and so death remained on Earth. This Bura story has the common mythic motif of a vital message which is diverted by a trickster . In Togoland , the messengers were the dog and the frog, and, as in the Bura version, the messengers go first from mankind to God to get answers to their questions. The moon regularly seems to disappear and then return. This gave primitive peoples

5106-672: Was a Scottish social anthropologist and folklorist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion . Frazer was born on 1 January 1854 in Glasgow , Scotland, the son of Katherine Brown and Daniel F. Frazer, a chemist. He attended school at Springfield Academy and Larchfield Academy in Helensburgh . He studied at the University of Glasgow and Trinity College, Cambridge , where he graduated with honours in classics (his dissertation

5180-761: Was both initially separate from religion and invariably preceded religion. He also defined magic separately from belief in the supernatural and superstition, presenting an ultimately ambivalent view of its place in culture. Frazer believed that magic and science were similar because both shared an emphasis on experimentation and practicality; his emphasis on this relationship is so broad that almost any disproven scientific hypothesis technically constitutes magic under his system. In contrast to both magic and science, Frazer defined religion in terms of belief in personal, supernatural forces and attempts to appease them. As historian of religion Jason Josephson-Storm describes Frazer's views, Frazer saw religion as "a momentary aberration in

5254-474: Was published years later as The Growth of Plato 's Ideal Theory ) and remained a Classics Fellow all his life. From Trinity, he went on to study law at the Middle Temple , but never practised. Four times elected to Trinity's Title Alpha Fellowship, he was associated with the college for most of his life, except for the year 1907–1908, spent at the University of Liverpool . He was knighted in 1914, and

5328-571: Was said that the Jade Emperor sent word from heaven to mankind that, when they became old, they should shed their skins while the serpents would die and be buried. But some snakes overheard the command and threatened to bite the messenger unless he switched the message, so that man would die while snakes would be eternally renewed. For the natives of the island of Nias , the story was that the messenger who completed their creation failed to fast and ate bananas rather than crabs. If he had eaten

5402-538: Was slow and dawdled, taking time to eat and sleep. Unkulunkulu meanwhile had changed his mind and gave a message of death to the lizard who travelled quickly and so overtook the chameleon. The message of death was delivered first and so, when the chameleon arrived with its message of life, mankind would not hear it and so is fated to die. Because of this, Bantu people, such as the Ngoni , punish lizards and chameleons. For example, children may be allowed to put tobacco into

5476-465: 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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