“You aren’t going to share that post are you?” she asked from over my shoulder.
“I was thinking that I might,” I replied. “It seems like something fun to share during the holidays.”
“But you haven’t been able to corroborate it all,” she informed me briskly.
“I have been able to confirm that reindeer, or what we call carabao in the west, love eating amanita muscaria, and that when they do, they dance around like they are flying reindeer. I have been able to confirm that the Lapland shamans have been enjoying the same mushrooms for centuries. I suppose the whole, “Is this the origin of Santa?” part will have to remain speculation.”
“Who wrote the article again?”
“Thom Hartmann,” I replied. “He also includes a fun little video where he interviews his expert, Dr. H. Stephen Larsen about the whole topic.”
“So, I can’t talk you out of posting it?”
“Not when I’m nearly done and ready to post it.”
“So what’s holding you up?”
“I can’t decide where to pick up Hartman’s article,” I complained.
“Oh, just pick it up from where he spends Christmas eve in the Franconian Forest.”
So that’s what I did:
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…
