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Duskypearls -> RE: The Obligatory Santa Thread (12/1/2012 9:35:30 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: cordeliasub
At a church I once went to a lady pointed out that when you rearrange the letters, Santa spells Satan....
So apparently Santa is the devil and wants to suck out your brains and make you his ho ho ho
(gotta love fundies)
And I've heard that Santa and his red suit with white trim alludes to "tripping" on red amanita mushrooms, and that reindeer actually love eating amanitas.
The idea that Amanita muscaria led to the modern story of Santa Claus and his reindeer is based on the fact that the mushroom is hallucinogenic, that it is red with white spots, that it is associated with pine trees, that Laplanders and reindeer like to get “high” on it, and that Siberian shamans used it for recreational and religious purposes: “The ancient Shamans of Siberia would go to the houses of the people in the community on the winter solstice and bring to them the Amanita muscaria mushroom…it was their tradition. The Shaman, dressing in the colors of the mushroom (red with white trim) and carrying a huge bag full of mushrooms that he had picked and dried during the previous season (enough for the entire community), would go door to door and give to the community the mushroom experience. If the main doors to the houses were snowed over (which they often were during the winter time), the Shaman would enter the houses through the secondary entrance, which just happens to be the smoke-hole in the roof or the chimney. And because these Amanita muscaria mushrooms are often dried before ceremonial consumption (allowing the shaman to consume more), traditions of drying the mushrooms also came about. Even to this day, it is a common practice for people to stack their mushrooms in socks and hang them over the fireplace overnight to dry them out” (source).
“The Shaman, Amanita muscaria mushrooms, pine trees, reindeer, Saint Nicholas, Santa's bag of goodies, the fireplace entrance and exit, Santa's colors, the mysterious gifts under the tree, and stocking stuffers are all neatly interconnected and they are all indigenous to Siberia, Russia and the Shamanic traditions that originated there” (Ibid.). “The ethnobotanist Jonathan Ott has suggested that the idea of Santa Claus and tradition of hanging stockings over the fireplace is based centrally upon the fly agaric mushroom itself. With its generally red and white color scheme, he argues that Santa Claus's suit is related to the mushroom. He also draws parallels with flying reindeer: reindeer had been reported to consume the mushroom and prance around in an intoxicated manner afterwards” (Wikipedia: Ibid.).
http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/events/department-news/968/is-santa-the-personification-of-a-psychedelic-mushroom/
[image]local://upfiles/1266908/12D50C4350124BD69FC30C252FBC5064.jpg[/image]
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