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Libra Esoterica

The Golden Bough

In Twelve Volumes

Also known as The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion; The golden bough; a study in comparative religion

by James George Frazer & Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh

  • First published:
  • 19th century
  • Languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Italian
  • Content type: FictionPrimary source

"The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion" by James George Frazer is a comparative study first published in 1890. Frazer explores mythology and religion across cultures, examining fertility rites, human sacrifice, dying gods, and sacred kingship. His controversial thesis traces humanity's intellectual evolution from magic through religion to science, centered on ancient fertility cults and seasonal rituals. Drawing from the priest-kings of Lake Nemi to global mythologies, this sweeping work scandalized Victorian Britain and profoundly influenced twentieth-century literature and thought. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Provenance

Why this book is in the catalog

Included because retained bibliographic metadata links this work to Alchemy and Hermeticism and Ritual magic and grimoires.

  • Ritual magic and grimoires

    Controlled discovery queries from internet-archive, openlibrary-historical, project-gutenberg, and wikisource matched “Magic” and “magic”. Retained metadata contains “Magic” in the alternative title, “Magic” in the description, “Magic” in the subject metadata, and 3 additional metadata match(es).

    • Magic· via Internet Archive
    • Magic· via Open Library
    • magic· via Project Gutenberg
    • Magic· via English Wikisource
    • Magic· in alternative title
    • Magic· in description
  • Alchemy and Hermeticism

    Controlled discovery queries from national-library-of-scotland matched “alchemy”. Retained metadata contains “Alchemy” in the subject metadata.

    • alchemy· via National Library of Scotland
    • Alchemy· in subject

Membership records how this book met the catalog’s discovery criteria — relevance to a tradition, not a judgment of the book’s claims.

Read & download

Free, public copies reported by our sources. Links open the source directly.

Buy or borrow

Links to ISBN 002095560X; other editions may be cheaper. WorldCat shows libraries near you that hold a copy.

Editions

Open Library reports 374 editions; 7 cataloged here.

The golden bough : a study in magic and religion

HathiTrust catalog record

1913Public view

a study in comparative religion

Internet Archive institutional pre-1900 scan

1890-01-01T00:00:00ZLondon : MacmillanEnglishPublic digitized item

a study in comparative religion

Internet Archive institutional pre-1900 scan

1890-01-01T00:00:00ZLondon ; New York : Macmillan and CoEnglishPublic digitized item

Subjects

60 subject headings

Identifiers & provenance

How this record was assembled, and the authority identifiers it carries.

Identifiers

Project Gutenberg
Wikisource
  • 7800
National Library of Scotland
  • 99116516455704341

Cataloging notes

  • Contributing institution: Cornell University Library
  • Contributing institution: Princeton Theological Seminary Library
  • Contributing institution: Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh
  • Digitization sponsor: Jisc and Wellcome Library
  • Digitization sponsor: MSN
  • Discovery required Internet Archive search metadata to report a PDF format; the exact direct-file URL is added only after the item's file listing confirms an unrestricted PDF filename.
  • Internet Archive institutional collection: americana
  • Internet Archive institutional collection: europeanlibraries; medicalheritagelibrary
  • Open Library reports 374 editions; this snapshot catalogs one representative edition and preserves work-level ISBN, date, and publisher aggregates.
  • Original print publication date and source edition are absent from Project Gutenberg metadata.
  • Scanner: Kirtas APT 2400
  • Scanner: scribe4.nj.archive.org
  • Scanner: scribe9.nj.archive.org
  • Source-reported rights: <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/" rel="ugc nofollow">This work is available under the Creative Commons, Public Domain Mark</a>
  • Source-reported rights: This work is available under the Creative Commons, Public Domain Mark
  • Wikidata edition/translation work relation followed for author, date, language, subject, and identifier enrichment.
  • Wikidata instance type: literary work; version, edition or translation
  • Wikidata item description: 1922 abridged one volume edition of the work by J. G. Frazer
Catalog id
openlibrary-work:OL1159648W
Edition coverage
Multi source partial
Retrieved