PAGAN CHRISTMAS The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide book excerpts (2006)

An excellent book and and examination of the sacred botany and the pagan origins and rituals of Christmas. It analyzes the symbolism of the many plants associated with Christmas and reveals the shamanic rituals that are at the heart of the Christmas celebration.

The author Mr. Christian Rätsch, Ph.D. (1957 – 2022), was a world-renowned anthropologist and ethnopharmacologist who specialized in the shamanic uses of plants for spiritual as well as medicinal purposes. 

The day on which many commemorate the birth of Christ has its origins in pagan rituals that center on tree worship, agriculture, magic, and social exchange. But Christmas is no ordinary folk observance. It is an evolving feast that over the centuries has absorbed elements from cultures all over the world--practices that give plants and plant spirits pride of place. In fact, the symbolic use of plants at Christmas effectively transforms the modern-day living room into a place of shamanic ritual.

Christian Rätsch and Claudia Müller-Ebeling show how the ancient meaning of the botanical elements of Christmas provides a unique view of the religion that existed in Europe before the introduction of Christianity. The fir tree was originally revered as the sacred World Tree in northern Europe. When the church was unable to drive the tree cult out of people’s consciousness, it incorporated the fir tree by dedicating it to the Christ child. Father Christmas in his red-and-white suit, who flies through the sky in a sleigh drawn by reindeer, has his mythological roots in the shamanic reindeer-herding tribes of arctic Europe and Siberia. These northern shamans used the hallucinogenic fly agaric mushroom, which is red and white, to make their soul flights to the other world. Apples, which figure heavily in Christmas baking, are symbols of the sun god Apollo, so they find a natural place at winter solstice celebrations of the return of the sun. In fact, the authors contend that the emphasis of Christmas on green plants and the promise of the return of life in the dead of winter is just an adaptation of the pagan winter solstice celebration.

Here are some excerpts from the book :

# Damiana plant at the end of the 1960s, the plant gained a reputation as a legal high like marijuana or tobacco. Today, it is the basis of a commercial baccy (herbal smoking) mixture. Baccy stands for "strong tobacco".

# “Hemp and opium are among the Old World smoking substances that originally had nothing to do with tobacco. ... We find that among the different peoples an amazing number of plants and parts of plants are smoked. . . . When we hear that the leaves of coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) were smoked like tobacco, this could just as well refer to any one or another of many such smoking substances. ... It still seems that the custom of smoking things like that were only local; and thus, the old smoking substances vanished with the appearance of the more palatable and more pleasant tobacco—with two exceptions: hemp and opium” (Hartwich 1911, 26). 

# In the area of Limburg (Netherlands), prehistoric pipes are occasionally unearthed. They are called "feenpipes" and were once considered smoking tools for giants, fairies, elves, and earth sprites. 

# Baccy Claus has tobacco use in common with shamans, healers, and medicine people of all times and all worldviews. These shamans handed down to us shaman pipes, peace pipes, and baccy pipes of all kinds. 

# In the 19th century, hemp (Cannabis), thorn apple (Datura), henbane (Hyoscyamus Niger), and belladonna (Atropa belladonna) were all considered smoking weeds because of their distinctive psychoactive effects. 

In the 18th century, Alexandrian tobacco (or Smyrna powder) consisted of real tobacco blended with hemp and hashish (Cannabis spp.), opium (Papaver somniferum), mace, and cloves. 

# In England, witches’ broomsticks were traditionally made out of hemp (Cannabis spp.).

# In the 19th century at Christmastime, Christmas herbs were added to baccy blends to give aroma to the smoke: anise, benzoin, cassia flower, cardamom, cinnamon, cascarilla (sweet wood bark), cloves, coriander, gum mastic, iris roots (orris), lemon rind, rose blossoms, star anise, storax, and valerian.

# Mushrooms are neither plants nor animals; they are in a category of their own called fungi. Some knowledge is needed to distinguish the poisonous from the edible; even biologists are wary of mushrooms, as are the majority of collectors. 

Whoever loses this fear and gains knowledge of mushrooms can find treasure in the kingdom of fungi, including delicious meals, healing remedies, and kindling to light fires, as well as coloring and fermenting agents. For example, without yeast, a kind of fungus, there would be no alcohol to drink.

Thank you for Reading !!