hell yeah! Santa Claus can also be the gateway drug into animism. i've never heard any credible accounting—from a material-reductivist perspective—of exactly *how* the motifs of entheogenic shamanism became so perfectly encapsulated in the Coca-Cola-capitalist version of Santa Claus. (elves, too. elves, fairies and sprites are woodland spirits traditionally associated with mischief, altered states, time dilation, etc. they're frequently (almost stereotypically) pictured resting on or playing under amanita muscara mushrooms, even by artists who have no idea of the entheogenic implications. and, somehow, elves became Santa's helpers.) from a materialist POV, there's no clear line of transmission from indigenous shamanism to the arch-mascot of secular consumerism. it requires a bunch of vague hand-waving about "inspiration," even though nobody knows how, when, or why the "inspiration" took place. but it only takes a couple of metaphysical adjustments to get there from an animist perspective: Santa Claus is an archetypal figure that is some kind of real—independent of the various cultural interfaces that humans have invented for it—that is insinuating itself into our reality, through the psychic germination we mistake as human-driven "inspiration." you can get there via Carl Jung too, but that's still only a hop-skip-jump from animism anyway. and if you want something straight-up metal, there's always Sam Kriss' interpretation: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/the-black-mountain.
hell yeah! Santa Claus can also be the gateway drug into animism. i've never heard any credible accounting—from a material-reductivist perspective—of exactly *how* the motifs of entheogenic shamanism became so perfectly encapsulated in the Coca-Cola-capitalist version of Santa Claus. (elves, too. elves, fairies and sprites are woodland spirits traditionally associated with mischief, altered states, time dilation, etc. they're frequently (almost stereotypically) pictured resting on or playing under amanita muscara mushrooms, even by artists who have no idea of the entheogenic implications. and, somehow, elves became Santa's helpers.) from a materialist POV, there's no clear line of transmission from indigenous shamanism to the arch-mascot of secular consumerism. it requires a bunch of vague hand-waving about "inspiration," even though nobody knows how, when, or why the "inspiration" took place. but it only takes a couple of metaphysical adjustments to get there from an animist perspective: Santa Claus is an archetypal figure that is some kind of real—independent of the various cultural interfaces that humans have invented for it—that is insinuating itself into our reality, through the psychic germination we mistake as human-driven "inspiration." you can get there via Carl Jung too, but that's still only a hop-skip-jump from animism anyway. and if you want something straight-up metal, there's always Sam Kriss' interpretation: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/the-black-mountain.
Merry Christmas!