Golden Bough

Frazer was so fascinated by this image of the kingship of the priest of Nemi that he started looking around for parallels to it, and the result was the whole Golden Bough.

Edinger identifies the priest of Nemi's perpetual mortal vigilance as the generative nucleus from which Frazer's entire comparative mythology radiated, framing the Golden Bough as psychologically motivated inquiry into the killing of kings.

Edinger, Edward F., The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey Through C.G. Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1995thesis

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Frazer, The Golden Bough, Ch. XXVIII.

Neumann cites Frazer's Golden Bough directly in support of his analysis of Egyptian fish symbolism and sacred sexuality, deploying it as primary ethnographic evidence within the depth-psychological account of the Great Mother archetype.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019supporting

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FRAZER, JAMES G. The Golden Bough. London, 1911-15. 12 vols. (Part I: The Magic Art, vols. 1 and 2. Part IV: Adonis, Attis, Osiris, vols. 5, 6.)

Jung's bibliography positions The Golden Bough alongside core comparative-religion and alchemical texts, establishing it as a standard reference authority within his depth-psychological scholarship.

Jung, C. G., Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907supporting

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This basic pattern is symbolized most simply in the world-wide mythological and fairytale motif of the aging, sick and dying king, who is superseded by a new successor, both child-like and creative.

Von Franz articulates the archetypal pattern — the supersession of the dying king — that Frazer's Golden Bough systematized, treating it as evidence of a universal unconscious structure rather than merely an anthropological datum.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, 1975supporting

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He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary.

Edinger quotes Frazer's description of the Nemi kingship at length to establish the mythological precedent of institutionalized sacred violence that the depth-psychological tradition inherits from The Golden Bough.

Edinger, Edward F., The Mysterium Lectures: A Journey Through C.G. Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1995thesis

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golden: Age, 167; apple of the Hesperides, 307; flower, see flower; germ, 240; man, 64; oil, 227; star, fig. A4; temple, fig. A1o; tincture, 208; tree, see tree; trident, 334

This index entry clusters alchemical and mythological uses of the adjective 'golden,' situating 'golden bough' cognates — golden tree, golden flower — within the symbolic lexicon Jung inherits partly from Frazer's comparative framework.

Jung, C. G., Collected Works Volume 3: The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, 1907aside

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