When1: 1890
When2: 1922
Who: James George Frazer [Frazer, James George]
What: anthropologist
Where: Scotland
works\ Golden Bough [1890 to 1915, abridged 1922]; Totemism and Exogamy [1910]; Folklore in the Old Testament [1918]
Detail: He lived 1854 to 1941 and studied myths and comparative religions.
Primitive people first believe in magic through similarity and in magic through contact. Magician has social power and is often tribal chief. Later, people replace magic with spirits and so have animistic religion, in which they pray to or propitiate beings. Kings arise, who are priests, have priests, or are gods themselves. Rituals and social behaviors follow from beliefs.
Primitive thought links to magic. Magic can involve homeopathy, contagion, sympathetic magic, taboos, sorcery, charms, voodoo dolls, and envoutement. Magic can involve showing gods what people want.
Primitive thought involved customs and institutions. Sacred marriages and orgiastic festivals encouraged fecundity, fertility, and more crops. The saturnalia festival was period of anarchy each year, held in Rome and elsewhere. Ceremonies for fertility, solar year, harvest, and king's death used fire, because the king represented the people, not like a priest or magician.
Primitive thought involved souls. Bodies also have souls, which can leave body and return, through body openings. Shadows and reflections can be souls. Souls can occupy portraits. Death is not real, because soul is separate.
Science later replaces religion.
Social Sciences>Sociology>History>Anthropology
6-Sociology-History-Anthropology
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Date Modified: 2022.0224