While in New York before the holidays, Aron gave me his old copy of the Golden Bough. There are plenty of free copies online as well, since it’s a huge classic. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s one of those seminal texts in the anthropological study of (comparative) religion. Written in 1922, it definitely shows. There are certainly good things in it, but overall, it’s pretty slow-going - even with me being pretty familiar with the subject matter, etc.
So far my biggest problem with it is his basic attitude. He just seems to be constantly against everything, and having this old-fashioned view where everybody is a “savage” and religious & spiritual beliefs and rituals are basically “superstitions.” None of which I particularly agree with, but whatever. It’s still one of the classics, so what are you gonna do? Gotta familiarize yourself with some of that stuff at some point.
Aron also gave me a copy of a book called “Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil, and Creativity,” which seems like a cool topic, although I haven’t really cracked it open yet. And my older sister also gave me a book called The Chalice and the Blade which seems to be some kind of feminist view of the history of religion. Sometimes that stuff’s really interesting, and sometimes it’s a bit too contrarian for my tastes. We’ll see how it goes though.
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