“For all its erudition and analysis, The Golden Bough has for more than a century helped cement the idea that magic is inappropriate, wrongheaded thought. Yet what separates magic from religion or science is not its methodology—Frazer himself notes that it ‘is therefore a truism, almost a tautology, to say that all magic is necessarily false and barren; for were it ever to become true and fruitful, it would no longer be magic but science’—it’s that ordinary people can do it, transforming their lives with the ambitious power of everyday thought.”
Written by anthropologist James G. Frazer in 1980, The Golden Bough is one of the most thorough investigations of “sympathetic magic” and provides an introduction to this investigation from Lapham’s Quarterly of views on magic and the people who have used it throughout history — from witches to Shakespeare and from Joan Didion to celebrity memorabilia enthusiasts.
