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Well, it’s that special time of year again. When Christians, Capitalists, And Holy Mushroom Conspiracy Theorist ramp up their propaganda, asking us to buy into their agenda.

The capitalist agenda seems straightforward enough: the best way to celebrate this time of year and not be shamed as a Grinch or Scrooge is buy, Buy, BUY more shit for people. For Christians, it’s maybe a strong overlap but a little less about money and little more about Jesus. The holy mushroom conspiracy theorists, however, their agenda is a bit more distorted but has, according to this week’s guest, an ongoing theme to convince you of something that has no actual historical evidence.

That ‘thing’ at this time of year has already hit your newsfeed, can you guess? That’s right: Santa Claus Is a Mushroom Shaman!

The red and white amanita and the red and white outfit. The flying reindeer and the Siberian reindeer herding shamans eating the Amanita and drinking that sweet, sweet hallucinogenic reindeer piss. Oh, yes, the legend of Santa Clause is real and it’s all about the holy mushrooms, the Amanita muscaria. Not only is Santa really a shaman, but Jesus is indeed a mushroom, and all of Christain is a crypto mushroom fertility cult surrounding the amanita! But, actually, according to today’s guest, despite how fervently people seem to believe these ideas are correct, they are nothing more than sloppy thinking, confirmation bias, and circular reasoning. They are false, apparently.

Santa is not a mushroom shaman, Jesus was not a mushroom, and Christianity is not hiding a giant secret inside the biblical texts about the true hallucinogen at the root the religion being an amanita muscaria. But, therein lies a whole different set of questions: What is the actual history of Santa Claus? Who was Jesus? What drugs were Christians actually taking? (cause they were getting HIGH and spoke openly about it). What is the real history of Christmas, the nativity, and the holy mushroom?

Those questions are addressed in passionate form by Tom Hatsis, writer and psychedelic historian. He is the author of The Witches’ Ointment: The Secret History of Psychedelic Magic; Psychedelic Mystery Traditions: Spirit Plants, Magical Practices, Ecstatic States, and Microdosing Magic: A Psychedelic Spellbook. He also appears on the GaiamTV shows Psychedelica and Open Minds with Regina Meredith, and has several articles published in Psychedelic Press U.K.

Hatsis believes that in the psychedelic renaissance we must separate the modern lore from authentic history, a task he takes up by dismantling the tired and inept “holy mushroom hypothesis” in articles, videos, books, and this podcast, with a particular focus on Santa Claus, Christian Drug Taking, Jesus, and the real history of Christmas.

{EDIT: from Tom Hatsis’ Facebook post, Sept 21 2018 –

Something I would like to clarify here:

In the beginning of this interview, I mistakenly say that there is no such thing as a Siberian “shaman reindeer herder.” This is not true, as such a person does exist (I say as much in my video on flying reindeer). What I meant was that in none of those small cultures that might have a shaman reindeer herder among their ranks do they make any association between the shaman and Santa Claus, a character that still hasn’t penetrated into Siberian culture. I note this because I have come to realize that while mushroom conspiracy theorists say the darnedest things *all the time*, I am not allowed to make the slightest error in their eyes without them pouncing (despite the fact that they have no clue what they are talking about in the first place). Happy Solstice!]

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Episode Breakdown

Why Santa Claus was not a mushroom shaman

The holy mushroom conspiracy

The origin of red and white of Santa’s outfit

The history of old holiday card with elves and mushrooms

St Nick had shamanic powers, but Santa and st nix aren’t the same historical entity

The origins of the holy mushroom conspiracy

The historical roots of Christmas

What were people getting high on during historical Christmas?

Drug use in early Christianity was open and condoned

The different psychedelic Christian cults and how they used their sacraments

How we got from free-range psychedelic Christianity to the narrow-minded abstinent Christianity of today

Christian appropriation of pagan traditions and paul’s invention of a psychedelic eucharist

Did Jesus get high?

How Christianity conquered so many traditional cultures

What made Jesus any different from all the other Hebraic radicals alive at the time

Pauline Jesus vs Gnostic Jesus

How the Nativity got associated with Christmas and why those aren’t mushrooms in old Christian art

Relevent Links

This is Tom Hatsis’ newest book and the one I spoke so highly of in the interview. His other books include The Witches’ Ointment: The Secret History of Psychedelic Magic and Microdosing Magic: A Psychedelic Spellbook.

This is Tom’s blog where you will find all sorts of great articles and essays on psychedelic history. A couple of specific places to start might be The Christian Radish Cult, where he discussed the origins of the Christmas tree, and The Holy Mushroom, an in-depth debunking of the holy mushroom hypothesis

Follow Tom Hatsis on Social Media!

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