Quotes: Primitive Beliefs (8)

Primitive belief 299 "…we may safely infer that a custom of allowing a king to kill his son, as a substitute or vicarious substitute for himself, would be in no way exceptional or surprising." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Primitive belief 337 "The attitude of the primitive towards immortality and after-life has been admirably summarized by Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man (New York 1953), 111, in the dictum: If anything is…in need of proof, it is not the fact of immortality, but the fact of death." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Primitive belief 349 "…the death of Adonis is not the natural decay of vegetation in general under the summer heat or the winter cold; it is the violent destruction of the corn by man, who cuts it down in the field, stamps it to pieces on the threshing-floor, and grinds it to powder in the mill." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Primitive belief 350 " And just as the husbandman must propitiate the spirit of the corn which he consumes, so also the herdsman must appease the spirit of the grass and leaves which his cattle munch." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Primitive belief 389 389 " In the resurrection of Osiris the Egyptians saw the pledge of a life everlasting for themselves beyond the grave…believed that every man would live eternal in the other world if only his surviving friends did for his body what the gods had done for the body of Osiris." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.