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| Was "Santa" originally a Siberian/Scandinavian shaman distributing magic mushrooms? |
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| Reindeer-drawn sleigh in pagan Scandinavia, the Norwegian Lapland (visitnorway.com) |
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| Budai (Elysia in Wonderland) |
No, it is because scholarly research has shown us the true origins of the Santa Claus.
The indigenous Scandinavians, the Sami, and their shaman ways tied to reindeer and magic mushrooms: Introducing Santa
No, it is a Scandinavian/Siberian tale of something that really happened and happens -- a custom, a ritual, something to look forward to in the cold of winter. Across Siberia and
Norwegian-Swedish-Finnish Lapland, among the indigenous peoples,
the blond Sami and brunette (pre-Buddhist) Mongolians, the local shaman gathered the
entheogen mushrooms.
- (Many Buddhists are Russians, and many more are Mongolian-Siberians, Central Asians, and inhabitants of Europe's only indigenously Buddhist country, Kalmykia).
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| Amanita mushrooms on pine needle floor |
The red and white gifts from Mother Nature sprung up under and around pine trees. Big gifts come in small packages. Each family got its share, delivered by reindeer-drawn sleigh to hut houses with prominent chimneys burning away. The shaman came in the front door, made his moist distribution, which were in dire need of drying to preserve and maximize their effectiveness. (A chemical conversion process takes place through heating, drying, or boiling).
- Why pine trees? Is it because they are evergreen and therefore a symbol of fertility? Partly as birthrates nine months down the road show, but mainly because these fly agaric mushrooms (Amanita muscaria) have a symbiotic relationship with the roots of pine trees. Not much can grow in the bed of dropped needles, a chemical plant strategy to enhance the success of their species by more or less sterilizing adjacent ground and minimizing competition.
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| Mushrooms communicate very well. |
The driest and warmest place to accomplish this was above an open fire, in the hearth, in convenient stockings that that hung their. Stocking stuffers, to the delight of Kris Kringles and toadstool-loving gnomes and sprinkling-fairies and mischievous elves who haunted residents with their poltergeist activities. These elementals really went to work, activities which became visible to those consuming the Forest's offerings. No one knew better than the reindeer themselves, with perhaps the exception of old jolly (delirious) Saint
Shaman. They "fly" in two senses, high as the sky thanks to licking the snow and trotting, prancing, bounding as they pull.
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| Jolly Budai or Hotei with his sack and candy (Dbonyun/flickr.com) |
- Eventually the legend of an obese saintly man carrying a big sack of gifts to give out drifted Far(ther) East from Siberia to China and made it to Buddhist Asia. In addition to Scandinavian shaman "Santa" in his white and red furs, there is Chinese shraman "Santa" in his patchwork saffron robes: Budai (Hotei) Bodhisattva, the "fat, happy Laughing Buddha" as he is almost universally regarded. He was actually a historical figure, a jolly and rotund Buddhist monk who went about carrying a sack of treats to give to children.
Another Mushroom Link If we were to say that Saint Issa (of "Jesus Christ" fame) was a mushroom, we would be scorned and ridiculed -- charged with hooliganism and inciting religious hatred like
our Russian colleagues. But it is not we who say such a strange thing.
It is preeminent, banned-by-the-Vatican scholar
John M. Allegro (
johnallegro.org) -- author of
The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, familiar with many texts in Christian languages (Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English) -- who figured it out.
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| The would-be Satan or Santa? |
He was such a towering figure in Christian theology that he could not be dismissed. So his work, originally titled "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: A Study of the Nature and Origins of Christianity Within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East," was banned.
What does Allegro mean when claiming that the sacred sage Jesus (a
former Buddhist monk according to the BBC),
son-of-god (Sanskrit
devaputra, anyone reborn among celestial
devas, son-of-man, anyone reborn in our
manusya loka,
Human Plane, as the offspring-of-humans), Jewish revolutionary (renegade rabbi), and presumptive Vajrayana "
Maitreya" (
Messiah, the new
Mithra), was a "mushroom"?
Was he the Nazarene Leader of the Essenes or "Jesus Christ," whose name is actually a title meaning "
Yahshua the Redeemer"?
Of course, Jesus of Nazareth may have been a good Middle Eastern man and troublemaker (or an exiled dynastic Egyptian trying to gather up an army to attack
the Pharaoh), but he only lived on in legend as the "greatest person who ever lived" (Jesus Christ
superstar) because clever esoteric Essene/Jewish cultists embodied the lore of magic mushrooms in the name of this obscure figure.
He returned to Nazareth or Jerusalem, Palestine (or Ethiopia, or Egypt) from 18 "lost years" in
Kashmir, India. (
See scholar
Holger Kersten). He was preaching something new, which the mushroom cult adopted as a cover story. Christianity grew to greatness not as the religion of this godman-
sadhu-guru, as we are we taught in the West, but as the amalgamation of Euro Pagan Greco-Roman
syncretism -- appropriating (borrowing) everything but calling it by new names to fit its take-over-the-world theology.
- Why do so many people claim Jesus/Y'shua as their own -- Jews, Greeks, imperial Holy Romans, Egyptians (Coptics), Tibetan Buddhists (who consider him a tulku, rimpoche, or even as Maitreya Buddha), Persians (who see him as Mithra), and so on and so on? It is because Christianity misappropriated parts of Jesus' life story to fabricate the greatest story every sold/told. It worked. Catholicism/Christianity can claim about three billion adherents, at least nominally, twice the number of Buddhists (when China's billion Buddhists, formerly counted as "atheists" in officially-communist China, are classified correctly in census records).
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| Scandinavian shaman fairyland |
The
Essenes -- mystic-monastic Jews, forerunners of the
Gnostics, with a monasticism for spiritual striving that was
new to the Near East/West (rather than the traditional rabbinical/priestly family integration) -- would have been lost to history. But the message that we are all "
GOD," that we are of a divine nature (i.e., have the potential to become
devas and
brahmas when we are reborn again as
spiritus, "light beings," subtle matter of the Fine Material Sphere), that an
entheogen like magic mushrooms draws out and makes evident, was too good to lose.
Allegro figured out and published
how Jesus came to be conflated with magic mushroom lore, but that he was, of that Allegro was absolutely convinced.
What motivated Budai/Hotei Bodhisattva to gain weight, distribute treats, and be so happy, that we do not know.
Wandering Buddhist monks, called
shramans, are like that.
More importantly, what will
Wisdom Quarterly staff be doing for Christmas, the Pagan holiday of gift giving and merriment? Eating traditional
Chinese food, rubbing Budai's belly for luck, reading our fortunes in the folds of inedible cookies, visiting family and friends to collect and distribute gifts just as Buddhist
Lisa Simpson would have us do (any maybe this year there will finally be a wrapped pony under the plastic tree), and Xmas Eve meditation at
Against the Stream.
(ML) A Very Pagan Xmas: The True Origins of Christmas
Everything we "know" about Christmas we don't. Iranian Mithra has more to do with it than Israeli Jesus. Every common holiday misconception is cracked wide open. The producers who unmasked Halloween now unwrap Christmas. This is a must see for seekers of truth. It recounts Biblical tales. But was Dec. 25th Jesus' birthday? Why do we decorate a pine tree, put lights up, teach children to believe in St. Nicholas, or Santa and his magical reindeer? Paganism. Christendom adopted popular customs; it did not invent them. This will be the Season for Reason when the real story of Christmas is known. For once our eyes are open, Christmas may never close them again.
The Sami or LappLapp means a "patch of cloth" for mending. Thus, the name suggests that the Sami are wearing patched garments [just as India's "shamans," the
Buddhist shramanas, or "
wandering ascetics" (some say
bhikkhu/ni originally meant "one who picks up or makes use of discarded rags for clothing") wear patched robes], a derogatory term and one that needs to be replaced. The word "Laplander" is also problematic since that could mean any person who lives within this region, even non-natives. Finally, there's a part of the Sami population who always have lived outside the region of "Lapland" such as the Sami of Sweden, Jemtland, and Härjedalen. (Editor: One Sami word that made it into several major languages is
tundra, which speaks volumes about this part of the world).
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