#jg frazer

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The Myth of Balder

“A deity whose life might in a sense be said to be neither in heaven nor on earth but between the two, was the Norse Balder [i.e., Baldr], the good and beautiful god, the son of the great god Odin, and himself the wisest, mildest, best beloved of all the immortals. The story of his death, as it is told in the younger or prose Edda, runs thus.

An 1844 statue of Baldr tending towards Grecian rather than Norse artistic conventions, sculpted in Carrara marble by Bengt Erland Fogelberg (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden).

(Source: Bengt Erland Fogelberg, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

"Once on a time Balder dreamed heavy dreams which seemed to forebode his death. Thereupon the gods held a council and resolved to make him secure against every danger. So the goddess Frigg took an oath from fire and water, iron and all metals, stones and earth, from trees, sicknesses and poisons, and from all four-footed beasts, birds, and creeping things, that they would not hurt Balder. When this was done Balder was deemed invulnerable; so the gods amused themselves by setting him in their midst, while some shot at him, others hewed at him, and others threw stones at him. But whatever they did, nothing could hurt him; and at this they were all glad.

Frigg Approaches in Anger by Arthur Rackham, for The Rhinegold & the Valkyrie (1910).

(Source: Arthur Rackham, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

“Only Loki, the mischief-maker, was displeased, and he went in the guise of an old woman to Frigg, who told him that the weapons of the gods could not wound Balder, since she had made them all swear not to hurt him. Then Loki asked, ‘Have all things sworn to spare Balder?’ She answered, ‘East of Walhalla [i.e., Valhalla] grows a plant called mistletoe; it seemed to me too young to swear.’ So Loki went and pulled the mistletoe and took it to the assembly of the gods. 

An illustration of Loki before the Children of the Rhine, by Arthur Rackham, for The Rhinegold & the Valkyrie (1910).

(Source: Arthur Rackham, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

“There he found the blind god Hother [i.e., Höðr] standing at the outside of the circle. Loki asked him, ‘Why do you not shoot at Balder?’ Hother answered, ‘Because I do not see where he stands; besides I have no weapon.’ Then said Loki, ‘Do like the rest and shew Balder honour, as they all do. I will shew you where he stands, and do you shoot at him with this twig.’  Hother took the mistletoe and threw it at Balder, as Loki directed him.

Loki gives Höðr sensuous encouragement in an illustration found in an 1893 Swedish translation of the Poetic Edda by Fredrik Sander.

(Source: Fredrik Sander, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

"The mistletoe struck Balder and pierced him through and through, and he fell down dead. And that was the greatest misfortune that ever befell gods and men. For a while the gods stood speechless, then they lifted up their voices and wept bitterly.

The Death of Baldr (1817), by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg.

(Source: Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

"They took Balder's body and brought it to the sea-shore. There stood Balder's ship; it was called Ringhorn, and was the hugest of all ships. The gods wished to launch the ship and to burn Balder's body on it, but the ship would not stir. So they sent for a giantess called Hyrrockin [i.e., Hyrrokkin]. She came riding on a wolf and gave the ship such a push that fire flashed from the rollers and all the earth shook. Then Balder's body was taken and placed on the funeral pile upon his ship. When his wife Nanna saw that, her heart burst for sorrow and she died. So she was laid on the funeral pile with her husband, and fire was put to it. Balder's horse, too, with all its trappings, was burned on the pile.” [1]

—J. G. Frazer, Balder the Beautiful, part 1 (The Golden Bough, vol. X, 1913, pp. 101-102)

The Funeral Pyre of Baldr (1898), by Louis Moe.

(Source: Louis Moe, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

[1] Frazer’s footnote: “Die Edda, übersetzt von K. Simrock 8[th ed.] (Stuttgart, 1882), pp. 286-288 [6th ed. linked to here]. Compare pp. 8, 34, 264. Balder's story is told in a professedly historical form by the old Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus in his third book [Saxo Grammaticus, Historia Danica, ed. P. E. Müller (Copenhagen, 1839-1858), lib. iii. vol. i. pp. 110 sqq.; The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus, translated by Oliver Elton (London, 1894), pp. 83-93.]. See below, p. 103. In English the story is told at length by Professor (Sir) John Rhys, Celtic Heathendom (London and Edinburgh, 1888), pp. 529 sqq. It is elaborately discussed by Professor F. Kauffmann in a learned monograph, Balder, Mythus und Sage (Strasburg, 1902).”

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The Cow-Born Dionysus

¶“A feature in the mythical character of Dionysus, which at first sight appears inconsistent with his nature as a deity of vegetation, is that he was often conceived and represented in animal shape, especially in the form, or at least with the horns, of a bull. Thus he is spoken of as ‘cow-born,’ ‘bull,’ ‘bull-shaped,’ "bull-faced,’ ‘bull-browed,’ ‘bull-horned,’ ‘horn-bearing,’ ‘two-horned,’ ‘horned.’ He was believed to appear, at least occasionally, as a bull. His images were often, as at Cyzicus, made in bull shape, or with bull horns; and he was painted with horns. Types of the horned Dionysus are found amongst the surviving monuments of antiquity. 

Black-figure Dionysus on a bull, in Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines, vol. I, pt. 1 (1873, p. 619).

(Source: C. Daremberg & E. Saglio, Public Domain, Internet Archive)

¶"On one statuette he appears clad in a bull's hide, the head, horns, and hoofs hanging down behind.

Dionysus wearing the hide of a bull, in Welcker’s Alte Denkmäler, vol. V (1849, p. 506).

(Source: Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker, Public Domain, Internet Archive)

¶"Again, he is represented as a child with clusters of grapes round his brow, and a calf’s head, with sprouting horns, attached to the back of his head. 

Infant Dionysus adorned with calf’s head, in Archäologische Zeitung, vol. IX, pl. XXXIII (1851, see p. 135 of PDF).

(Source: Eduard Gerhard, Public Domain, Google Books.)

¶"On a red-figured vase the god is portrayed as a calf-headed child seated on a woman's lap.

Theriomorphic Infant Dionysus, in Gazette Archéologique, vol. V (1879, pl. III, p. 283).

(Source: A. Levy, Public Domain, Internet Archive)

¶"The people of Cynaetha in north-western Arcadia held a festival of Dionysus in winter, when men, who had greased their bodies with oil for the occasion, used to pick out a bull from the herd and carry it to the sanctuary of the god. Dionysus was supposed to inspire their choice of the particular bull, which probably represented the deity himself; for at his festivals he was believed to appear in bull form. The women of Elis hailed him as a bull, and prayed him to come with his bull's foot. They sang, ‘Come hither, Dionysus, to thy holy temple by the sea; come with the Graces to thy temple, rushing with thy bull's foot, O goodly bull, O goodly bull !’ The Bacchanals [i.e., Bacchantes] of Thrace wore horns in imitation of their god. According to the myth, it was in the shape of a bull that he was torn to pieces by the Titans; and the Cretans, when they acted the sufferings and death of Dionysus, tore a live bull to pieces with their teeth. Indeed, the rending and devouring of live bulls and calves appear to have been a regular feature of the Dionysiac rites. When we consider the practice of portraying the god as a bull or with some of the features of the animal, the belief that he appeared in bull form to his worshippers at the sacred rites, and the legend that in bull form he had been torn in pieces, we cannot doubt that in rending and devouring a live bull at his festival the worshippers of Dionysus believed themselves to be killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood.”

—J. G. Frazer, Spirits of the Corn & of the Wild, part 1 (The Golden Bough, vol. VII, 1912, p. 16-17)

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Tree-Worship in Finland

"Near Kuopio, in Finland, there was a famous grove of ancient moss-grown firs, where the people offered sacrifices and practised superstitious customs down to about 1650, when a sturdy veteran of the Thirty Years' War dared to cut it down at the bidding of the pastor. Sacred groves now hardly exist in Finland, but sacred trees to which offerings are brought are still not very uncommon. On some firs the skulls of bears are nailed, apparently that the hunter may have good luck in the chase."

—J.G. Frazer, The Magic Art & the Evolution of Kings, part 2 (The Golden Bough, vol. II, 1911, p. 11)

Fir trees in Finland, c. 1902 from All the Russias, by Henry Norman.

(Source: Internet Archive Book Images, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons)

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Dionysus of the Tree

“While the vine with its clusters was the most characteristic manifestation of Dionysus, he was also a god of trees in general. Thus we are told that almost all the Greeks sacrificed to ‘Dionysus of the tree.’ In Boeotia one of his titles was ‘Dionysus in the tree.’ His image was often merely an upright post, without arms, but draped in a mantle, with a bearded mask to represent the head, and with leafy boughs projecting from the head or body to shew the nature of the deity….

Dionysus in Boeotia, from Daremberg & Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines, vol. I, pt. 1 (1873, p. 626).

(Source: Charles Daremberg & Edmond Saglio, Public Domain, Internet Archive)

“At Magnesia on the Maeander an image of Dionysus is said to have been found in a plane-tree, which had been broken by the wind. He was the patron of cultivated trees; prayers were offered to him that he would make the trees grow; and he was especially honoured by husbandmen, chiefly fruit-growers, who set up an image of him, in the shape of a natural tree-stump, in their orchards. He was said to have discovered all tree-fruits, amongst which apples and figs are particularly mentioned; and he was referred to as ‘well-fruited,’ ‘he of the green fruit,’ and ‘making the fruit to grow.’ One of his titles was ‘teeming’ or ‘bursting’ (as of sap or blossoms); and there was a Flowery Dionysus in Attica and at Patrae in Achaia. The Athenians sacrificed to him for the prosperity of the fruits of the land. Amongst the trees particularly sacred to him, in addition to the vine, was the pine-tree. The Delphic oracle commanded the Corinthians to worship a particular pine-tree ‘equally with the god,’ so they made two images of Dionysus out of it, with red faces and gilt bodies. In art a wand, tipped with a pine-cone, is commonly carried by the god or his worshippers. 

A thyrsus-wielding maenad dangles temptation before a satyr (while trodding on his snake) in the Roman-era Mosaic of the Seasons from Palermo (now found in the Museo archeologico regionale di Palermo). 

(Source: Giovanni Dall'Orto, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons)

“Again, the ivy and the fig-tree were especially associated with him. In the Attic township of Acharnae there was a Dionysus Ivy; at Lacedaemon there was a Fig Dionysus; and in Naxos, where figs were called meilicha, there was a Dionysus Meilichios, the face of whose image was made of fig-wood.”

—J. G. Frazer, Spirits of the Corn & of the Wild, part 1 (The Golden Bough, vol. VII, 1912, p. 2)

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Sex in Service of the Goddess

“In Cyprus it appears that before marriage all women were formerly obliged by custom to prostitute themselves to strangers at the sanctuary of the goddess... Similar customs prevailed in many parts of Western Asia. Whatever its motive, the practice was clearly regarded, not as an orgy of lust, but as a solemn religious duty performed in the service of that great Mother Goddess of Western Asia whose name varied, while her type remained constant, from place to place....

Sanctuary of Aphrodite at Paphos (now Kouklia, Cyprus).

(Source: Nikodem Nijaki, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

“...at Babylon every woman, whether rich or poor, had once in her life to submit to the embraces of a stranger at the temple of Mylitta, that is, of Ishtar or Astarte, and to dedicate to the goddess the wages earned by this sanctified harlotry. The sacred precinct was crowded with women waiting to observe the custom. Some of them had to wait there for years. 

An engraving of the goddess Mylitta, by Daniël met de Penningen (1690).

(Source: Rijksmuseum, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

“At Heliopolis or Baalbec in Syria [i.e., Lebanon], famous for the imposing grandeur of its ruined temples, the custom of the country required that every maiden should prostitute herself to a stranger at the temple of Astarte, and matrons as well as maids testified their devotion to the goddess in the same manner. The emperor Constantine abolished the custom, destroyed the temple, and built a church in its stead.

Panoramic shot of a Baalbek temple complex in modern-day Lebanon.

(Source: © Guillaume Piolle / CC BY 3.0 / Wikimedia)

“In Phoenician temples women prostituted themselves for hire in the service of religion, believing that by this conduct they propitiated the goddess and won her favour. ‘It was a law of the Amorites, that she who was about to marry should sit in fornication seven days by the gate.’ 

An Amorite penitent.

(Source: Dosseman, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

“At Byblus the people shaved their heads in the annual mourning for Adonis. Women who refused to sacrifice their hair had to give themselves up to strangers on a certain day of the festival, and the money which they thus earned was devoted to the goddess….

A Roman-era Astarte statuette from Byblos.

(Source: taller romano, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

“We are told that in Lydia all girls were obliged to prostitute themselves in order to earn a dowry; but we may suspect that the real motive of the custom was devotion rather than economy. The suspicion is confirmed by a Greek inscription found at Tralles in Lydia, which proves that the practice of religious prostitution survived in that country as late as the second century of our era. It records of a certain woman, Aurelia Aemilia by name, not only that she herself served the god in the capacity of a harlot at his express command, but that her mother and other female ancestors had done the same before her; and the publicity of the record, engraved on a marble column which supported a votive offering, shows that no stain attached to such a life and such a parentage. 

Greek inscription found in Tralles, Lydia (part of modern-day Republic of Türkiye), telling of Aurelia Aemilia's life as a hierodule.

(Source: W. M. Ramsay, "Unedited Inscriptions of Asia Minor," Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, vii. [1883] p. 276.)

“In Armenia the noblest families dedicated their daughters to the service of the goddess Anaitis in her temple at Acilisena, where the damsels acted as prostitutes for a long time before they were given in marriage. Nobody scrupled to take one of these girls to wife when her period of service was over. 

Modern-day depiction of the goddess Anahit (Anaitis), sculpted by Hagop Ishkanian (1964).

(Source: Hagop Ishkanian, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

“Again, the goddess Ma was served by a multitude of sacred harlots at Comana in Pontus, and crowds of men and women flocked to her sanctuary from the neighbouring cities and country to attend the biennial festivals or to pay their vows to the goddess."

A dedication to the goddess Ma, imprinted by one of the faithful, c. 1st cent. BCE.

(Source: National Museum in Warsaw, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

—J. G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, part 1 (The Golden Bough, vol. V, 1914, pp. 36-39)

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Another Taboo among the Aztecs

“The Aztecs regarded pulque or the wine of the country as bad, on account of the wild deeds which men did under its influence. But these wild deeds were believed to be the acts, not of the drunken man, but of the wine-god by whom he was possessed and inspired; and so seriously was this theory of inspiration held that if any one spoke ill of or insulted a tipsy man, he was liable to be punished for disrespect to the wine-god incarnate in his votary."

—J. G. Frazer, Taboo & the Perils of the Soul (The Golden Bough, vol. III, 1914, p. 249)

Ometochtli, one of the gods associated with the imbibing of pulque.

(Source: Another Believer, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

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Brigit the Fire-Goddess

"In our own country [i.e., the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland] perpetual fires were maintained in the temple of a goddess whom the Romans identified with Minerva, but whose native Celtic name seems to have been Brigit. Like Minerva, Brigit was a goddess of poetry and wisdom, and she had two sisters also called Brigit, who presided over leechcraft and smithcraft respectively. This appears to be only another way of saying that Brigit was the patroness of bards, physicians, and smiths.

Brigit, goddess of Menez-hom, Celto-Roman art (1st century CE)

(Source: Museum of Brittany, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Now, at Kildare in Ireland the nuns of St. Brigit tended a perpetual holy fire down to the suppression of the monasteries under Henry VIII.; and we can hardly doubt that in doing so they merely kept up, under a Christian name, an ancient pagan worship of Brigit in her character of a fire-goddess or patroness of smiths. The nuns were nineteen in number. Each of them had the care of the fire for a single night in turn; and on the twentieth evening the last nun, having heaped wood on the fire, used to say, 'Brigit, take charge of your own fire; for this night belongs to you.' She then went away, and next morning they always found the fire still burning and the usual quantity of fuel consumed. Like the Vestal fire at Rome in the old days, the fire of St. Brigit burned within a circular enclosure made of stakes and brushwood, and no male might set foot inside the fence. The nuns were allowed to fan the fire or blow it up with bellows, but they might not blow on it with their breath....

Study for St. Bride (c. 1917), by John Duncan.

(Source: John Duncan, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

The custom of maintaining a perpetual fire was not peculiar to Kildare, but seems to have been common in Ireland, for the native records shew that such fires were kept up in several monasteries, in each of which a small church or oratory was set apart for the purpose. This was done, for example, at the monasteries of Seirkieran, Kilmainham, and Inishmurray. We may conjecture that these holy fires were merely survivals of the perpetual fires which in pagan times had burned in honour of Brigit. The view that Brigit was a fire-goddess is confirmed by the observation that in the Christian calendar her festival falls the day before Candlemas, and the customs observed at that season by Celtic peasantry seem to prove that she was a goddess of the crops as well as of fire. If that was so, it is another reason for comparing her to Vesta, whose priestesses performed ceremonies to fertilise both the earth and the cattle. Further, there are some grounds for connecting Brigit, like Vesta, with the oak; for at Kildare her Christian namesake, St. Brigit, otherwise known as St. Bride or St. Bridget, built her church under an oak-tree, which existed till the tenth century, and gave its name to the spot, for Kildare is Cilldara, 'the church of the oak-tree.' The 'church of the oak' may well have displaced a temple or sanctuary of the oak, where in Druidical days the holy fire was fed, like the Vestal fire at Rome, with the wood of the sacred tree."

—J. G. Frazer, The Magic Art & the Evolution of Kings, part 2 (The Golden Bough, vol. II, 1911, pp. 240-242).

The Coming of Bride (1917), by John Duncan.

(Source: John Duncan (1866-1945), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

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The Mass of St. Sécaire

“...Gascon peasants believe that to revenge themselves on their enemies bad men will sometimes induce a priest to say a mass called the Mass of Saint Sécaire. Very few priests know this mass, and three-fourths of those who do know it would not say it for love or money. None but wicked priests dare to perform the gruesome ceremony, and you may be quite sure that they will have a very heavy account to render for it at the last day. No curate or bishop, not even the archbishop of Audi, can pardon them; that right belongs to the pope of Rome alone. The Mass of Saint Sécaire may be said only in a ruined or deserted church, where owls mope and hoot, where bats flit in the gloaming, where gypsies lodge of nights, and where toads squat under the desecrated altar. Thither the bad priest comes by night with his light o' love, and at the first stroke of eleven he begins to mumble the mass backwards, and ends just as the clocks are knelling the midnight hour. His leman [i.e., mistress] acts as clerk. The host he blesses is black and has three points; he consecrates no wine, but instead he drinks the water of a well into which the body of an unbaptized infant has been flung. He makes the sign of the cross, but it is on the ground and with his left foot. And many other things he does which no good Christian could look upon without being struck blind and deaf and dumb for the rest of his life. But the man for whom the mass is said withers away little by little, and nobody can say what is the matter with him; even the doctors can make nothing of it. They do not know that he is slowly dying of the Mass of Saint Sécaire” (232-233).

—J. G. Frazer, The Magic Art & the Evolution of Kings, part 1 (The Golden Bough, vol. I, 1911, pp. 232-233).

1895 illustration by Henry de Malvost depicting a Black Mass, here being performed in the 17th century by the infamous La Voisin (left) and the Abbé Étienne Guibourg (center) for Madame de Montespan (lying on table), who was the mistress of King Louis XIV.