Mushrooms

A symbol I find very weird for Christmas is the mushroom.  You can even get mushroom ornaments to hang on your tree.  Mushrooms are not just Christmas symbols.  They are in children’s stories and architecture.  The symbol of the mushroom is in some of the oldest pictures and architecture.  I even saw a nativity seen with mushrooms in it.  Time to show where this symbolism comes from.  

If you look up why mushrooms are used as a Christmas symbol, you will get something like it’s used as a symbol of luck.  German and European cultures seen it as a symbol of good luck.  It also honored the reverence of nature and the beauty of the forest.  They grow in the forest and are very hard to find, so it was like a finding a four-leaf clover that brings you good luck.  Because they were red and white they were used on Christmas trees.  That is the story for the masses.  Four-leaf clovers are not used in architecture or religions around the world, so this story falls flat.  

Many people have put together why Santa and his elves are shown with mushrooms.  They have discovered that the red and white Amanita mushroom is the source to all of these legends, but they just can’t take it a step further.  What they don’t realize is that some of the outfits  worn by Cardinals, Bishops and the Pope all have to do with these mushrooms.  See Michael Tsarion’s and John Allegro’s work for more on this.   The mushroom is in all religions and is used as the gateway to the divine for the leaders of these religions.  

With mushrooms being in all religions we need to go to the source.  All ancient civilization used mushrooms.  Priestesses, priests, oracles, shamans or anyone who was the head of spirituality used them.  Several philosophers through the ages have used them, but I want to know why they are so prominent in the western world.  To ancient Egypt we go for the answer.  

The ancient Egyptians loved mushrooms so much they were considered sons of the gods, plants of immortality, and even gifts from the god Osiris.  Here is are old buddy Osiris yet again.   Pharaohs proclaimed mushrooms could only be used by royalty.  Common people were not even allowed to touch them.  Throughout ancient Egypt they recorded the effects of psychedelic mushrooms in hieroglyphs and papyrus sheets.  Most were found within the temples.  To be fair they didn’t just use them for psychedelics.  They used them for medicinal and culinary purposes too.  

Most researchers say that this was not the Amanita mushroom, but I have shown in several posts how all European civilizations came out of Egypt and I have no doubt they traded these mushrooms with Rome, Greece and Egypt.  But let’s focus on how these mushrooms were found.   In the north, the mushroom is a favorite food of reindeer.  The shamans of the north would take the mushroom itself and drink the urine of the reindeer to get the psychedelic effects.  When these were brought back to Rome, Greece and Egypt, they took it a step further and drank their own urine after taking the mushrooms.  This is why you see cupids or cherubs peeing in a fountain in certain buildings.  

The reindeer eating the mushrooms is why they are used to pull Santa’s sleigh.  With Thor, Odin and King Arthur it was a chariot, but guess who else had a chariot pulled in the sky.  That is right, Osiris.  These chariots were the Big Dipper.  The Big Dipper circles the Polar star in a 24 hour period.  Depending on the legend or myth it was pulled by horses or reindeer.  This is why there are hieroglyphs of deer in Egypt that have everyone confused as to why.  To see how Egypt is connected to the north see Lemurian Magic, Tuatha De Danann, Leprechaun, and Patriarch Pharaohs.  

Happy Egyptmas.