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Have another cup of wassail and relax; its time for
Cousin Xan to help you bid a fine, feathered ‘How-do-you-do?’
to the magical Christmas season!
Christmas is a special time; a gilded melding of
old and new traditions. For instance…
NEW: Nowadays we englut our credit cards, begging
our master, the Vampire Debt, to escort us, bleak
and schmaltzy, into the new year.
In doing so, we (a.) falsely reflect the spirit of
giving, and (b.) slide into the fetid Muzak-induced
hypnosis that Church and State have crafted, holding
hands. Once we lull to spiritually null, we’re
easy to whip up, like eggs, and whisk into their homemade
fear/guilt/doubt mix — an omelet of puppet souls.
OLD: Happy Birthday, Lord and Savior! A whole day
to celebrate Goodness. Even though, really,
slicing up ‘time’ is man’s conceit,
and a ‘day’ of extracting/inventing one’s
‘higher self’ is a flick of snot at Gaia.
We also celebrate our blessings on Christmas, and
strain to see that half-full cup. Even though,
really, only some are half-full. Others brim over,
and some are shale dry, depending on, um, who the
fuck knows? Of course, God works in Mysterious Ways.
Phenomenally mysterious.
But screw that. Think of Santa! The flying reindeer.
The elves, the sleigh. The tree, its bulbs, its crowning
star. The presents. The festive red, white and green.
The strings of popcorn and cranberries. The Wassail
bowl. So sweet, my frown is turning upside down.
Do you know, boys and girls, how our Christmas traditions,
old and new, began? How they relate to Christian dogma?
No?
That’s because they DON’T. None of them,
NONE OF THEM, were calved from Christian history.
None. Correspondence to Jesus came after the fact.
Santa, reindeer, sleigh, tree etc…. these snuggly
Christmas traditions are all, in fact, paeans of devotion
and thanks to the profound, transforming, mystical
powers of the Amanita muscaria mushroom, a potent
psychedelic. Yes, you heard me.
Fruitcake, anyone?
The Bwanas of ChristCo, Inc. cobbled ‘Christmas’
together in the conglomerate’s early days, cut-and-pasting
from more ancient religions and mythologies.
In fact, the whole Church was cobbled together. “The
Virgin Birth, the incarnation of God, the sacrament,
Christmas, Easter, etc. have been adopted/stolen by
Christianity as its own” writes James Arthur,
entheobotanist, Tibetan Buddhist, and ordained (waaay
non-practicing) priest.
‘Christianity’ was invented with gain
in mind, just like “Desperate Housewives”,
or the Bush presidency. ChristCo was the brainchild
of founder and first CEO Emperor Constantine I of
Rome (ruled 306-337 A.D.) Constantine had ‘the
smarts,’ as my Grandpa Harry would say.
This Emperor, Arthur explains, “knew one of
the most basic tenets of government was the control
of its people” which “becomes much easier
and effective when that government is able to also
assume a ‘divine’ authority.” ChristCo
swiped concepts from “Egyptology, Mithraism,
Hinduism, Buddhism, The Torah and many others…
finally compiling their own plagiarized (and altered)
writings to create the new Catholic (one from all)
Bible.”
Illuminati, The Prequel!
With shocking synchronicity (cough), Constantine
also had a portentous dream. Christ commanded
him to put signs of the cross on his soldiers’
shields. This was the birth of Guerilla P.R.
The Amanita muscaria mushroom is that cute red one
with the white dots that you see in fairy tale illustrations,
a staple of enchanted worlds. They abound in Christmas
imagery. Elves carry them and sit upon them. Sprites
tie them with ribbons and hang them on doorknobs.
They’re little houses. They peek from Santa’s
sack. They line snowy paths. They’re squeaky
toys. They’re hats. They’re tree ornaments.
In Pre-Christian times, Man didn’t need no
stinkin’ agent to merge with God. No grifter
middlemen in goofy dresses. No one controlled your
access to the Divine, or put conditions on it. A Shaman
— a teacher — helped you navigate and
realize your path. He shared collective knowledge
so that each person was spared the drain of reinventing
the wheel.
But… independent thought leads to independent
action. God Forbid — literally. Does
this ring a bell? The friggin’ dots are so close
together, you don’t even have to connect them.
Santa Claus is, of course, St. Nicholas, the Christianized
Siberian Shaman, who may or may not have lived in
the fourth century. Before a mushroom ceremony, these
Shamans entered homes through a roof opening, their
fungi stuffed in a sack. Mushroom-gatherers wore ceremonial
red and white outfits.
St. Nick’s shtick also borrows from more ancient
gods, like Thor, Odin and Poseidon, some of whom flew
o’er the earth in chariots, notched down for
us drone bees to sleighs.
We put presents wrapped in red and white under the
Christmas Tree, but why? Amanita muscaria mushrooms
grow under pine trees. These were the original ‘presents;’
holiday colors honor this. Who knew? Bulbs replace
the tree’s earlier décor of apples, which
were ‘shroom symbolic.
Reindeer adored the mushrooms. They would chow down,
then prance about wildly in the God Flow, hence symbolic
‘flight.’ The strings of cranberries and
popcorn are stand-ins for the red-and-whites, strung
up to dry. The wassail bowl resembles a fully mature
Amanita, when its round top inverts and points skyward.
Some believe that the mushroom was the true Holy Grail.
All Christmas roads, you see, do not lead to Rome,
but to fungi.
When you’re with God, I hear, you flow with
All; not the Pope, or TBN. To paraphrase Erich Fromm:
In the twentieth century the problem was that God
is dead. In the twenty-first, the problem is that
man is dead.
Don’t load for bear, man, I’m just the
messenger.
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