OT The historic roots of Santa Claus

[samba - <sambacomet@hotmail.com>]

     Going back a bit farther,people across the northern zones used to feed  the psycho-active Amanita Muscaria mushrooms to reindeer,and then either drink the piss or eat the meat. This was a way of moderating the toxins as the ratio of toxin to psychedelic varies  somewhat unpredictably .This amanita of course is bright rd with white spots. To this day there are shamans in Siberia,where the word origintaes who dress in red and white to mimic the mushroom. Mircea Eliade's book  "Shamanism,Archaic  Techniiques of Ecstacy" 1951,the first scholarly study on the subject, says that the traditional definitio f a Shaman is smeone wh can INtentionally go to the other world and bring something back ,usually for healing.
 The two most common metaphors for making this journey are climbing up,and back down the World Tree,and going out the  the Smokehole,or chimney,and coming back with the gifts from the Spirit World.
   Bonus factoid; the words Fungus and Bongo,(ngoma,and it's cognates in bantu languages means drum dance party,religious ritual ,even goddes in some variants.) have the same  linguistic root,which has something to do with inducing ecstasy. I get this from Gordon Wassons book Soma.