One last word on THE GOLDEN BOUGH

From: Michael Cule <mikec_at_room3b.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 23:43:17 +0000

It strikes me that Sir James George Frazer, working away in his study, comparing and contrasting reports from correspondents around the world and delving into his own deep stores of Classical learning in an attempt to make sense of the confusing practices and beliefs of peoples whom he has never met is the perfect type of the God Learner.

It's clear from THE GOLDEN BOUGH that he has An Agenda of his own: he believes in the 19th Century Liberal ideal of Human Progress and the Enlightening Power of Reason. He believes that humans are gradually emerging from a more primitive state. He stops short of drawing too plainly obvious parallels between primitive magic and the 'more advanced' religion that he and his fellow Europeans mostly believe in but lets them hover, ghostly, beneath the surface of what he's writing.

And can't you just see his counterpart in Jrustela sometime in the second Age, beavering away on his magnum opus, an ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GLORANTHAN RELIGIOUS PRACTICES, quite clear in his own mind as to the Reality Of Things and what people who he will never meet were Really Up To. ("Poor deluded pagans that they are.... Ah, is that the letter from the Dragon Pass Mission I've been expecting? Excellent, excellent! Yes, I will have another cup of tea my dear and then I must get back to work. I've got the chapter on Hunschen wedding rituals to complete today....")

• -- Michael Cule

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