The Hidden History of Santa Revealed!
May all your dreams and good work be realized as our sun’s eternal energy returns to full life in our part of Earth this coming New Year…
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, a connection to some of the most ancient of all known northern European shamanic traditions. Like people living in the north for millennia, we continue to embrace them with regional, national, and religious tweaks.
It occurs during the week of the shortest day and longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere, when ancient holy men and women lit “yule logs” to push back the darkness and implore the gods or nature to bring back the light of summer.
As Henry Bourne wrote in 1725:
“For as both December and January were called Guili or Yule, upon Account of the Sun’s Returning, and the Increase of the Days; so, I am apt to believe, the Log has had the Name of the Yule-Log, from its being burnt as an Emblem of the returning Sun, and the Increase of its Light and Heat.”
When Louise and I lived in Stadtsteinach, Germany, Herr Mueller led us up a mountainside deep into the Franconian forest on Christmas eve in 1986 where our community had covered a pine tree with candles: we sang carols and he read aloud several bible verses. He later told me that in ancient times the shamans would set the tallest tree afire to re-ignite the sun and bring back longer days.
For millennia across the European arctic circle around the North Pole, from Scandinavia through Siberia, indigenous shamans sought out red-and-white mushrooms (amanita muscaria) and dried them in socks hanging from their fireplaces.
The mushrooms contain a powerful psychedelic, Muscimol, but are also laced with compounds poisonous to humans. Reindeer, however, love to eat these mushrooms and, when they do, they behave oddly, as if their names were Dancer and Prancer.
Their reindeer livers metabolize and thus neutralize the compounds that poison humans, but leave the psychedelic Muscimol largely untouched. Thus, reindeer urine on fresh snow is powerfully psychedelic.
Arctic shamans, around this time of the year, would leave batches of dried amanita mushrooms out in the snow for the hungry reindeer, who consider them a delicacy. The shamans would then follow the reindeer as they danced and played (high on the ’shrooms), gathering the fresh yellow snow to make into a holiday grog.
This was also the time of the year that the father of the gods in Norse religion, the long-white-bearded Odin, would ride his eight-legged horse Sleipnir (pronounced “sleigh-near”), bringing good people small gifts made by “Odin’s men” in Asgard, his arctic retreat. The story seems to have morphed as it traveled out of Norway and Sweden from men to elves, and from eight legs to eight reindeer.
Odin controlled the powers of Thunder and Lightning, “Donner” and “Blitzen” in today’s Germanic and Scandinavian languages.
There’s also a goddess connection to this holiday, reindeer, and the Santa story, as Judith Shaw documents here.
The reindeer’s favorite food, the amanita mushrooms, look like the clothing shamans (and Santa!) wore, red with white trim and white spots. They’re rotund: you could call them “chubby.” Thus, Santa represents the mushrooms in arctic cultural lore.
Amanitas grow under pine trees because their mycorrhizae or fungal filaments that extend underground transport minerals from the soil into the roots of the pine trees, who return the favor by transporting carbohydrates from year-round photosynthesis in their needles back down through their roots into the mycorrhizae to nourish the mushrooms.
Amanitas are only found under pine and spruce trees because of this symbiotic relationship that keeps them both healthy. And to this day pine and spruce are pretty much the only trees we use to decorate our homes this time of year.
While Christmas Eve was the darkest of times in the northern hemisphere, it also held the greatest promise for an entire new year to come.
Indigenous European and Siberian Shamans and their communities would light their pine trees with candles, put a light symbolizing the north star (identifying the axis around which our world revolves) atop their trees, and consume their reindeer’s-yellow-snow drinks on these darkest nights.
Intoxicated — or allowed to enter the spiritual realms — by the amanita psychedelic from the reindeer urine, these ancient shamans used the powers of spirit and nature to fly into the sky to visit the spirit world and resurrect the longer and warmer days for their people, bringing back the “gifts” of spiritual illumination, healing, and the renewal of life.
Several of our modern religions, including Judaism and Christianity, hold this survival and renewal of light and life at the core of their winter solstice holy days.
During these short, dark days and long nights let’s remember this ancient knowledge that illumination always follows darkness, and that with love and compassion we will re-light our nations and lives.
Merry Christmas and warmest regards for whatever holidays you and yours may celebrate (or not) during this holy and transformational season.
May all your dreams and good works be realized as our sun’s eternal energy returns to full life in our part of Earth this coming New Year…
What an utterly delightful read this morning! Long live the Fungi! ❤️🍄 Wishing everyone Merriness all around, and a magnificent 2023 for our beleaguered planet. Thanks again Thom!
My two cents.
About 10,000 years ago agricultural communities developed, some believe in the fertile crescent
Farming requires the warmth of the sun, but to the eyes of the ancients the sun was a god (Egyptians called it Ra), and this life giving god had a tendency to wax and wane, to rise and fall, and tease the farmer each year that it was going to disappear forever, because after the Autumnal Equinox, the sun started to rise later and setsooner each day, until on Dec 21st (at the solsitice), it stopped its descent into the grave of the underworld, and for three days it hung motionless in it’s grave, and finally on the third day it arose from the grave, and on Dec 25th assembled crowd would gather, and you could hear ringing out alleluia (praise ye Ia), or Hallelujah. The Greek world celeberated this arsing from the grave as the Dionysia, the Romans as the Bacchanaliua (Greek Dionysos which means son of god, Roman Bachus)
Given that the Bacchanalia celeberated the resureection of the son, logically the church of Romeshould have chosen it as the passion, but they were ignorant and allergic to science, and needed something to supplant the Bacchanalia so chose the nativity of their IHSus.
IHSus, iota eta sigma in Greek, the eta (H) is both a consonant and a vowel,depending on it’s placement.
At the beginning of a word it is harsh, much like the Franco English “J”, in the middle of a word it is soft, like an “E” hence Iulius is pronounced Julius. Transliterated into Latin, the signet of Dionysos (son of god or son Zeus) IHS became Ies, to which the masculine "us" was added hence Iesus or Jesus And that is how the Hebrew Yahooshua or Joshua9which means savior)became Jesus, and the son of Zeus became the son of god, and how Christians celebrate the birth of the son of Zeus on Dec 25h.
Edit added: The Chi Rho (papal seal) was actually the signet of Astarte (aka Asherah, Istar, Astar) the fierce warrior and fertility goddess. This is the symbol that Constantine had painted on the shields of his army at the battle of the Milivian bridge, where he defeated the Eastern Roman Emperor
An employment of psychological warfare that terrified the opposing army. It does not represent the CH in Christ, as we are told. Why would they incorporate the CH into the Papal signet?
The Greeks had no word for messiah, which is what Christ is suppose to mean, but they had a word for rubbing with oil, christos, which was close enough for the purpose of "anointing with oil" which is what a Jewish messiah or holy man would be.. anointed with oil. See also Crisco.