“For ages the army of spirits, once so near, has been receding farther and farther from us, banished by the magic wand of science from hearth and home, from ruined cell and ivied tower, from haunted glade and lonely mere, from the riven murky cloud that belches forth lightning, and from those fairer clouds that pillow the silvery moon or fret with flakes of burning red the golden eve.”

— James Frazer , book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 56, The Public Expulsion of Evils.

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James Frazer 50

Scottish social anthropologist 1854–1941

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