Balder the Beautiful, Volume I A Study in Magic and Religion: the Golden Bough, Part VII

The Beautiful, Vol. I., by Sir
James George Frazer

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Title: Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. A Study In Magic And Religion:
The Golden Bough,

Part VII., The
Fire-Festivals Of Europe And The Doctrine Of The External Soul
Author: Sir James George Frazer
Release Date: May 4, 2004 [EBook #12261]
Language: English
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A STUDY IN MAGIC AND RELIGION
THIRD EDITION


PART VII
BALDER THE BEAUTIFUL
VOL. I
BALDER THE BEAUTIFUL
THE FIRE-FESTIVALS OF EUROPE AND THE DOCTRINE OF
THE EXTERNAL SOUL
J.G. FRAZER, D.C.L., LL.D., Litt.D.
FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE PROFESSOR OF
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
LIVERPOOL.
IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I
1913

PREFACE
In this concluding part of The Golden Bough I have discussed the
problem which gives its title to the whole work. If I am right, the

Golden Bough over which the King of the Wood, Diana's priest at
Aricia, kept watch and ward was no other than a branch of mistletoe
growing on an oak within the sacred grove; and as the plucking of the
bough was a necessary prelude to the slaughter of the priest, I have
been led to institute a parallel between the King of the Wood at Nemi
and the Norse god Balder, who was worshipped in a sacred grove
beside the beautiful Sogne fiord of Norway and was said to have
perished by a stroke of mistletoe, which alone of all things on earth or
in heaven could wound him. On the theory here suggested both Balder
and the King of the Wood personified in a sense the sacred oak of our
Aryan forefathers, and both had deposited their lives or souls for safety
in the parasite which sometimes, though rarely, is found growing on an
oak and by the very rarity of its appearance excites the wonder and
stimulates the devotion of ignorant men. Though I am now less than
ever disposed to lay weight on the analogy between the Italian priest
and the Norse god, I have allowed it to stand because it furnishes me
with a pretext for discussing not only the general question of the
external soul in popular superstition, but also the fire-festivals of
Europe, since fire played a part both in the myth of Balder and in the
ritual of the Arician grove. Thus Balder the Beautiful in my hands is
little more than a stalking-horse to carry two heavy pack-loads of facts.
And what is true of Balder applies equally to the priest of Nemi himself,
the nominal hero of the long tragedy of human folly and suffering
which has unrolled itself before the readers of these volumes, and on
which the curtain is now about to fall. He, too, for all the quaint garb he
wears and the gravity with which he stalks across the stage, is merely a
puppet, and it is time to unmask him before laying him up in the box.
To drop metaphor, while nominally investigating a particular problem
of ancient mythology, I have really been discussing questions of more
general interest which concern the gradual evolution of human thought
from savagery to civilization. The enquiry is beset with difficulties of
many kinds, for the record of man's mental development is even more
imperfect than the record of his physical development, and it is harder
to read, not only by reason of the incomparably more subtle and
complex nature of the subject, but because the reader's eyes are apt to
be dimmed by thick mists of passion and prejudice, which cloud in a

far less degree the fields of comparative anatomy and geology. My
contribution to the history of the human mind consists of little more
than a rough and purely provisional classification of facts gathered
almost entirely from printed sources. If there is one general conclusion
which seems to emerge from the mass of particulars, I venture to think
that it is the essential similarity in the working of the less developed
human mind among all races, which corresponds to the essential
similarity in their bodily frame revealed by comparative anatomy. But
while this general mental similarity may, I believe, be taken as
established, we must always be on our guard against tracing to it a
multitude of particular resemblances which may be and often are