EP 72 — The Golden Bough

The tale of The Golden Bough startled people in 1890 when mythologist Sir James George Fraser claimed human sacrifice was practiced in the heart of the Roman Empire. In this episode, we take our time machine back to 15 AD to see for ourselves!

Transcript

Podcast 72: The Golden Bough 

Welcome to Garner’s Greek Mythology. In this episode, with the help of a 19th-century mythologist, we dig into the story of the golden bough and how it was used by Aeneas, a hero of the Trojan War, and later by the Romans in their worship of Diana, who was the rebranded Greek goddess Artemis.

We’ll base our exploration on one of the most influential and controversial works of comparative mythology: Sir James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough, first published in 1890. 

His work is controversial not just for the usual battles between mythology, religion and science, but because it involves human sacrifice to a goddess, a practice that continued even after Jesus walked the earth.

We won’t cover Fraser’s entire masterpiece, as it comprises many volumes. Instead, we’ll focus on his haunting tale of the King of the Wood. 

For those of you who don’t know, the wood was a sacred grove by Lake Nemi in present-day Italy, and the golden bough was part of a special tree there.

Now, the king’s duties were to serve the goddess Diana in order to keep the harvests coming. This isn’t strange in and of itself— the Greek goddess Demeter was first worshiped for her gifts of agriculture to humankind, except that in this case, the King of the Wood lasted no more than a year. His reign became increasingly crazed and always ended in violent succession.

Whoever was king knew what to expect. He knew that he was one of many kings. He knew that his reign would be short and that he would spend his days afraid to sleep and on constant guard for his life.

On the plus side, he knew he would be Diana’s consort and rule the magical grove that housed her temple.

Today, we’ll give our study a broad scope. We’ll also explore how early societies often appointed new kings yearly, echoing the death of winter and the rebirth of spring. 

In doing so, we unearth the roots of myth, ritual and the human spirit.

Well, there’s no better way to start than to see for ourselves. So, let’s dust off our time machine and travel back to visit the early Romans. 

What year shall we dial into our instrument panel? Let’s try AD 15, about 2000 years ago.

Strap on your seat belts. With luck, in a few moments, we’ll step into the sacred grove of the King of the Wood.

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Luckily, our time machine works flawlessly. We watch the years counting backward on the glowing display. 1910, 1750, 1425, 800, 300, 125, 15. There, we’ve arrived. It’s midday, and the sun’s out. 

As we step out of the machine, we see a still, mirror-like lake nestled in the Alban Hills south of Rome – “Diana’s Mirror,” the ancients called it.

On its northern shore stands a vast, sacred grove. Inside it is a sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, goddess of the wild, fertility, the hunt, and childbirth.  

With great stealth, we enter the grove. After five minutes of walking, we spot a special tree. The tree has a low, golden bough. And around it prowls a grim, armed figure.

His sword is drawn, his eyes are narrowed. Instinctively, we know that this haunted man is Rex Nemorensis, the “King of the Wood.” 

Frazer describes him as a murderer, king, priest and victim. This is because he gains his title by slaying his predecessor. He then serves as priest of Diana’s temple and soon falls victim to a stronger or craftier replacement.

Frazer opens The Golden Bough with this quote from the English writer Thomas Macaulay:

“The still glassy lake that sleeps

Beneath Aricia’s trees—

Those trees, in whose dim shadow

The ghastly priest doth reign,

The priest who slew the slayer,

And shall himself be slain.” 

Frazer then goes on to describe the dramatic setting, which we confirm with our own eyes:

“In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. 

“In his hand, he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. 

“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. A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him, he retained office till he was himself slain by a stronger or a craftier man. 

“The post which he held by this precarious tenure carried with it the title of king; but surely no crowned head ever lay uneasier, or was visited by more evil dreams, than his ...” 

“Within the sanctuary at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no branch might be broken.

“Success in the attempt entitled the intruder to fight the priest in single combat, and if he slew him, he reigned in his stead with the title of King of the Wood. 

“According to the public opinion of the ancients, the fateful branch was that Golden Bough which, at the Sibyl’s bidding, Aeneas plucked before his perilous journey to the world of the dead.” 

Frazer mentions a man named Aeneas. Let’s pause a minute to discuss this key figure. Aeneas was a brave warrior and one of Troy’s defenders during the Greek siege. 

In other words, he fought against the Greeks and is a secondary but important figure in Homer’s Iliad. Significantly, the Romans regarded him as the founder of their race.

In this tale, Aeneas seeks advice from the spirit of his deceased father, Anchises. Before doing so, he visits the Sibyl—or seer—at Cumae. 

She can foretell the future and steer men away from the wrong path.

When Aeneas explains his mission to her, the Sibyl tells him that no living person can safely enter the realm of the dead without a special offering.

For Aeneas, the unique offering must be a golden bough plucked from a sacred tree in a dark forest. 

This unique bough is sacred to Persephone, queen of the Underworld. Aeneas, aided by his mother, Venus (the rebranded Greek Aphrodite), finds the tree. 

The bough is described as gleaming with golden leaves. He plucks it and presents it to Persephone at the gates of the Underworld. 

Accordingly, she grants him safe passage, allowing him to cross into Hades, meet his father, and receive a prophecy about the future glory of Rome, which Aeneas’s descendants will found.

This is why Frazer mentions Aeneas. The legend of a golden bough begins with his quest. Now, in awe, we stand before the same tree.

*****

In the late 19th century, Frazer’s book created a sensation when he argued that a sacred grove had existed in Italy during Roman times and that a tree with a golden bough had grown in it.

Was this the sacred tree that Venus had shown Aeneas? Had Aeneas wandered into this same grove before descending to see his dead father? That was Frazer’s claim.

Increasing the drama, Frazer placed a king in the grove and made him guardian of the temple to Diana.

There was yet another twist to Frazer’s claims. He states that the King of the Wood was Diana’s consort, writing,

“It is natural, therefore, to conjecture that … the mortal King of the Wood had for his queen the woodland Diana herself.

“Diana of the Wood herself had a male companion, Virbius by name, who was to her what Adonis was to Venus, or Attis to Cybele; and, lastly, that this mythical Virbius was represented in historical times by a line of priests known as Kings of the Wood…”

Frazer links this to the idea that Diana, as a goddess of fertility and childbirth, “needed a male partner.” 

He suggests the sacred tree itself may have embodied the goddess, so the priest-king not only guarded, but ritually “embraced it as his wife.”

In Frazer’s usage, “consort” refers to a divine or ritual sexual/spiritual union — a sacred marriage. In this context, the king is the human embodiment of a male fertility deity.

He is symbolically married to the goddess, whose life force is tied to the grove and the sacred tree.

This union ensures fertility of the land, crops, animals and people — mirroring other dying-and-rising god pairings like Adonis and Aphrodite or Attis and Cybele.

Their’s is not necessarily a literal everyday marriage, but a mythic and magical one: the king’s vigor sustains the goddess’s fertility, and his annual sacrificial death renews the cycle.

Frazer treats this as part of a broader pattern of sympathetic magic and priestly kingship, where the ruler’s life is bound to nature’s cycles.

We’ll discuss this idea in more detail in a few minutes.

*****

In yet another twist, Frazer emphasizes the king’s brief reign. How brief was it? Potentially, very.

Any intruder who managed to cut off the golden bough could challenge the king in mortal combat. If the usurper won, he became the new King of the Wood.

As in many mysteries, one question leads to another. Frazer asks why the myth is tied to violence and vigilance.

Fraser’s quest to answer that question leads him across cultures, centuries, and continents. He reflects on the barbarity of the custom, writing:

“This strange rule has no parallel in classical antiquity, and cannot be explained from it. To find an explanation, we must go further afield. 

“No one will probably deny that such a custom savors of a barbarous age and, surviving into imperial times, stands out in striking isolation from the polished Italian society of the day, like a primeval rock rising from a smooth-shaven lawn.” 

Frazer emphasizes that the king who slew the slayer shall himself be slain. Unimaginably, the king knows his fate, yet goes on serving in his kingship, becoming more ragged and crazed by the day.

*****

This cyclical violence wasn’t mere anarchy. It was a system rooted in sympathetic magic – the belief that the king’s vigor ensured the land’s fertility. 

A weak or aging king risked bringing on famine, drought, or barrenness. Better to kill him, the ancients thought, while he was still strong and transfer his divine power to a successor. The bloody ritual persisted into Roman times. 

The sacrificial king mirrors countless primitive myths: Osiris in Egypt, Adonis in the Near East, Attis in Phrygia and even anticipates Christ’s end, which the Christian church calls the perfect sacrifice. 

At Lake Nemi, the king’s death fertilizes the earth, like a seed planted in winter soil that bursts forth in spring.   

I provide far more detail about this practice in my final book of The Naxos Quartet, titled All That Lasts. In it, the goddess Timessa travels back 40,000 years and witnesses the ritualistic killing of a similar king.

This is a story you won’t want to miss. In my novel, the king, a young man, dies abruptly after having his pick of women for precisely a year. 

*****

Frazer saw the Nemi ritual as a survival of prehistoric magic: the belief that by acting out nature’s drama – death in winter, rebirth in spring – humans could make it happen, or at least, influence nature.

The golden bough itself, like mistletoe, was a symbol of life persisting through winter’s death. Why mistletoe?

Mistletoe symbolizes undying life primarily because it remains green and vibrant in the depths of winter, when most other plants—especially its deciduous host trees—appear dead or leafless. 

In Frazer’s The Golden Bough, he observes that mistletoe is the concentrated “life” or soul of the host tree. 

While the tree “dies” each winter, the mistletoe stays alive — suggesting it holds the tree’s vital essence safe until spring. 

Frazer links this directly to the Druids, the Celts who revered mistletoe on oaks as an emblem of fertility and renewal, ceremonially cutting it with a golden sickle in winter.

In short, mistletoe embodies eternal life and is central to the themes of seasonal change that primitive man closely followed.

*****

Now, back to our sacrificial kings. In very early societies, appointing or sacrificing a new king yearly – or at fixed short terms – was surprisingly common.

Examples abound: In parts of Africa, kings reigned for set periods before ritual death. 

Among the Khazars, rulers faced execution at the first signs of weakness. 

Babylonian festivals like the Sacaea featured mock kings who reigned briefly before dying. 

In Europe, folk customs such as “Burying the Carnival,” Whitsuntide mummers and the battle of Summer and Winter reenact the killing of the old year to bring in the new.   

Today, much of the West lives in a post-industrial or information age. But in early agriculturally based societies, these practices resonated deeply. 

The logic was impeccable: The sun “dies” in winter and is “reborn” at the solstice or equinox. The king, as embodiment of the sun, has to follow suit. 

A strong young king brings bountiful crops; an old one risks blight. By slaying a king at peak strength, the community transfers vitality to a successor and to the fields.  

This practice reflects “sympathetic magic”, that is, like produces like. Act out the death and rebirth of the year-long king, and nature obeys, or at least hopefully, follows in sympathy.

*****

Frazer’s work is vast and sometimes speculative, but its influence is enormous. We see it reflected in anthropology, literature, psychology and modern paganism. 

He shows how seemingly bizarre customs reveal universal human patterns: our drive to control the uncontrollable through ritual, our awe at nature’s cycles, and our willingness to sacrifice for renewal.  

His core insight endures: many ancient religions were centered on fertility cults, in which the death of a sacred king ensured the continuation of life.  

In our modern world of climate anxiety and seasonal disconnection, the King of the Wood still whispers: vitality must be renewed, sometimes at great cost.

Now, as visitors from another time, we quietly leave the sacred grove, careful not to snap twigs or be seen. 

Our time machine awaits. Board quickly. We cannot risk an encounter with the king who guards the tree with the golden bough.

*****

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