Monthly Archives: December 2016

Santa is the King of the Gods

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Santa Claus, a.k.a. Saint Nicholas, is a fraud foisted on us pagans during the Christianization of Germanic and Nordic Europe. There, I said it.

Saint Nicholas, who lived in the late 3rd and early 4th century, belonged to a wealthy family, and is most famous for saving three poor, young sisters from a probable life of probable prostitution, by giving them money for their dowries, and thereby getting them married off. Why a man getting paid off to marry a women doesn’t make the man a hooker beats the hell out of me. But that is neither here nor there. The main point is that Nicholas gave away presents. His birthday is celebrated on January 6th. He was a skinny bugger, apparently, may or may not have had a beard, and certainly didn’t have much hair. His daddy, another priest (This was before the whole priests couldn’t get married, couldn’t have sex, silliness came about), gave him a tonsure when he ordained his little Nicky into the priesthood. A tonsure is the weird, partly shaved head sort of haircut they were into back then.

Old Saint Nick didn’t have diddly to do with December 25th, which was when the old pagan world celebrated the winter solstice. Why they did so on the 25th is a bit of a mystery, since they jolly well knew the solstice oscillates between the 20th and the 23rd. It was probably because the latest sunrise of the year is a couple of days after the actual solstice and, in the winter, you really want that sun to start coming up earlier and earlier. Making it a fixed date made it easier to know when you had to get all your solstice shopping done by, too.

Now, what happened on the solstice, and who did what that most closely resembles what our Santa Claus, taking into consideration that Santa first started showing up in Germanic and Nordic Europe?

The solstice is when Odin, the king of the gods, rode the midwinter sky on his eight footed horse, Sleipnir, distributing gifts to all his people. Odin, Woden, Wotan, also known as Julnir, he who is lord of the yuletide. Odin, with long white hair and long white beard, stout of figure. Odin, the leader of the Wild Hunt, the hunt that most often occurred at midwinter, hunting the souls of the departed, accompanied by his Valkyries.

The good children of Odin got presents, the bad got the Wild Hunt.

Odin was also the lord of Alfheim, the home of the elves, and those elves were not little guys who want to be dentists. They were fierce warriors, they were.

The pieces fall into place. This is what Christianity has left us with. No more Roman Saturnalia at the winter solstice, with its orgies and feasts. No more Wild Hunts with Valkyries. No king of the gods. Just a jolly fat man in a silly red suit.

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:

An audio version of this quasi theory may be found here:

A Squatcher’s Mantra

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I have been asked by the Right Reverend Jeffrey Kelley, and several other members of the Squatcher’s Lounge, to devise a mantra for those searching for the elusive beast, that a repetition of which would help to calm them in their frequent mental typhoons over all things Squatchy.

A small subcommittee of the Lounge has insisted that I be their guru, presumably due to my long, white hair and beard. It must be the hair and beard since there is no other rational reason that I am aware of.

What, exactly, does the word mantra mean? Mantra is a Sanskrit word, dating back to well before 1000 BCE. It is derived from the Sanskrit word manas, which means to think, and also means mind as such. The English word man is derived from the same root. The second syllable, tra, means tool. Mantra therefore means tool to think by. In practice, a mantra is used to focus the mind and enable it to focus on the object of the mantra. More broadly, as the great Tantric scholar Sir John Woodroffe wrote, “Mantra in its most basal sense is the World viewed as—and in its aspect of—sound.” Explaining that statement would be an essay in itself, and not really amenable to a quasification by me.

The mantra most familiar to many of us is the Sanskrit word om. If you have been to any typical yoga class, and the class ended by sitting in the lotus posture for a few minutes, trying to calm down after sticking your feet behind your head, or done the downward facing dog, while the teacher walks behind you, obviously looking at everybody’s butt, you probably ended the meditation by chanting om.

Although a mantra is usually in Sanskrit, typically a few words that are chanted repeatedly, the basic idea is the same as repeating “Hail Mary’s”, or “Our Father’s”, is to Catholics. It quiets your mind so that you may become receptive to higher forces.

Applying the concept of mantra to finding Bigfoot seems more than a bit woo to me, but here goes.

I constructed a seven word mantra that, once you learn it, can easily be expanded to encompass more verses. I made it seven words long because, as everyone knows, seven is a lucky number. The first three words mean “come by here”, and are from the African American creole language of the South Carolina coastal islands. The meaning of the next two will be obvious, as will be the way it is chanted.

The mantra should be repeated loudly, for as long as you are out hunting our forest friends. A silent mental repetition should be used if the presence of bears or cougars is suspected. Wolves would suspect you of being a lost pack member and call back in response, so you’d be safe from them.

I shall now reveal to you the mantra. Listen with devotion and an open heart. Feel free to join in, once you have it memorized.

Kum ba ya, my Squatch, kum ba ya.

Kum ba ya, my Squatch, kum ba ya.

Kum ba ya, my Squatch, kum ba ya.

Oh Squatch, kum ba ya.

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:

 

 

The Wild Hunt

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Back in 1987, or maybe 1988, between Christmas and New Year’s day, my wife and I were driving back from her sister’s house in DeKalb, Illinois. It was around midnight and near blizzard conditions. No snow had been predicted, but hell, it’s the Midwest near Chicago, and around here we say, “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.”

The roads were nearly empty except for us, and a few other fools, and it was all farmland with few houses. The housing development boom hadn’t gotten west of the Fox river yet, and being Illinois, the terrain was mainly flat, so the wind could pick up some speed. We were heading east with the wind behind us, gusting from a few miles an hour to a sudden thirty or forty miles an hour and then to nothing, just as fast.

As we neared a road we had to go north on, the wind picked up and the snow went blasting heavily past the car. I asked the wife,”Anything feel weird to you?” She said it felt really eerie out, as though something was riding in the wind. That was exactly what I sensed. As I made the left turn onto the northbound road, a huge gust nearly shoved the car into the ditch. I drove a few hundred feet north and pulled off to the side, wanting to wait a bit to see if things would lighten up a bit, weirdness-wise.

The wind increased to a steady gale. We both saw what looked like human forms, forming and disappearing in the blasting snow overhead.

Sounds like hunter’s horns and dogs baying seemed to issue from the wind. Tingling sensations ran up and down our spines, probably our hairs trying to stand on end.

A few minutes passed. The whole shebang, wind, snow, and all, headed off to the east. I pulled back onto the road and drove us home.

What was all this shenanigans? I think it was the Wild Hunt.

The Wild Hunt is a European folk myth. Versions of it are found from the British Isles through the whole of Europe into the Slavic countries.

Jacob Grimm thought the myth was a remnant of pre-Christian Europe. The hunt, led by a god and a goddess, either visited “the land at some holy tide, bringing welfare and blessing, accepting gifts and offerings of the people” or they float “unseen through the air, perceptible in cloudy shapes, in the roar and howl of the winds, carrying on war, hunting or the game of ninepins, the chief employments of ancient heroes…”

The leader of the hunt varies from country to country. In Wales it is Gwynn ap Nudd, king of the Tylwyth Teg, the Fair Folk, the Fairies. In the Germanic and Nordic countries it is Odin, under his various names. The point of the hunt is usually variations on a theme. That theme is death. They have come to hunt the souls of the dead and bring them to judgement.

What were they doing there that night back in the late 80’s? Were they hunting my wife and me, or someone else? My wife and I survived, obviously, and there were no new wars, calamities, or even news of anybody dying in the storm.

I think the answer is quite simple. It was late night, the Holiday season, and these buggers were just out for a joyride.

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast: