Editing The Golden Bough (section)

==Summary==
Frazer attempted to define 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.<ref name="auto">{{cite book|editor=Hamel, Frazer |title= The Golden Bough|location= London|publisher= Wordsworth|date= 1993}}</ref> His [[thesis]] is that the most ancient religions were [[Fertility rite|fertility]] cults that revolved around the [[worship]] and periodic [[sacrifice]] of a [[sacred king]] in accordance with the cycle of the seasons. Frazer proposed that mankind's understanding of the natural world progresses from [[Magic and religion|magic]] through [[religious belief]] to scientific thought.<ref name="auto"/>

[[Image:(Barcelona) The Golden Bough - Joseph Mallord William Turner - Tate Britain.jpg|thumb|[[J. M. W. Turner]]'s 1834 painting of the Golden Bough incident in the ''[[Aeneid]]'']]
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 (painting)|''The Golden Bough'']]. Frazer mistakenly states that the painting depicts the lake at [[Nemi]], though it is actually [[Lake Avernus]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Frazer |first=J. G. |editor-last=Fraser |editor-first=R. |title=The Golden Bough: A New Abridgement |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=2009 |isbn=9780199538829 |page=809}}</ref> The lake of Nemi, also known as "[[Diana (mythology)|Diana]]'s Mirror", was a place where religious ceremonies and the "fulfillment of vows" of priests and kings were held.<ref>{{cite book|author=Frazer, Sir James|title= The Golden Bough|location= London|publisher= Wordsworth|date= 1993}}</ref>

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 a [[Life-death-rebirth deity|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 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 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).<ref>{{cite book |author=Frazer, James George |title=The Golden Bough. A Study in Magic and Religion. Part 1: The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings. Vol. 1 |publisher=The Macmillan Press |location=London |year=1976 |pages=ix, 423 |isbn=0-333-01282-8}}</ref>