Pagan Christmas (31 page)

14. Fly agaric mushrooms are known for stimulating auditory hallucinations. Such acoustic manifestations and changes can be interpreted as messages from distant worlds. Or maybe these are not hallucinations at all, but instead are extraordinary perceptions of reality?

15. St. Veit, Latin Svantovitus, also known as Santevit, Svantjevit, or Svantjewit.

16. “On June 15, St. Veit rides on his blind horse through the woods of the old world and lets mushrooms grow. Their strange forms and unreal colors (some are even fluorescent) and the fact that some of them are poisonous, are considered sure signs that this must be the devil’s semen” (Frond and Lee, 1979).

17. These woods were cut down at a frightening pace. A map of the Roman Empire as it was in the fourth century shows the Black Forest and the Vosges as one whole area of woods. The picture of a primeval forest on a plate in the Lorenzhof in the openair museum Vogtsbauernhof in Gutarch depicts a threatening, “horrible wilderness,” which is the way the Black Forest was seen for a very long time (Schilli 1968, 69).

18. This is why they served in Cairo as shop amulets (Seligmann 1996, 35).

19. In Der Simplizianische Wundergeschichts-Calender auf das Jahr 1795, from Riemerschmidt 1962, 17.

20. In early modern times, the walnut was incorporated as an ingredient in love potions and was considered a special aphrodisiac. In ancient medicine systems, the walnut was seen as a visual representation of the brain and was therefore believed to be a brain tonic.

21. “The grain comes from the dead!” (Hippocrates, Vict. 4, 92; VI 658 L).

Miracle Blossoms for the Winter Solstice

1. The stinking hellebore (Helleborus foetidus) is also called “wild Christ root,” as is bitter vetch (Lathyrus linifolius) (von Chamisso 1987, 24, 99).

2. Otto Brunfels seems to be describing the green hellebore (Helleborus viridis L., also known as wild Christmas rose), which has green flowers.

3. Helleborus niger is used today in homeopathic potencies (D3, D4, D12, D30, D200) for emotional disorders, psychosis, manic conditions, mental confusion, brain trauma, and unhappy love, as well as delayed menstruation.

4. As in this case, lyrics for popular melodies were often written much later than the music.

5. Cultivated rose varieties have been known in Germany since medieval times. One of the oldest garden varieties is the cabbage rose, Rosa x centifolia, whose species name comes from the root word for hundred. This “hundred petals rose” might be the result of a cross between the apothecary’s rose (R. gallica x officinalis) and the wild species known as dog rose (R. canina).

6. Perhaps the best known “living fossil” of the plant kingdom is Ginkgo biloba, which dates back to the geological times before flowering plants came into existence. Flowering plants started developing in the Cretaceous period. They experienced an evolutionary explosion when dinosaurs, cuttlefish, and ammonites were dying out.

7. Not to be confused with the Jericho tomato or gray solanum (Solanum incanum L.), whose narcotic fruits were sometimes identified as the apples of Sodom! Rose of Jericho is also a common name for Asteriscus pygmaeus Coss. et Kral. (Asteraceae), another desert plant.

8. Fatima was born around 610 CE and died in 632 CE. Thus, according to historic sources, she was only 22 years old at the time of her death.

9. This name should not be confused with Euphorbia milii (commonly known as Christ’s thorn or crown of thorns), a plant from Madagascar!

10. Pascua, a word for Christmas, originally meant Easter. This word is also the root of Passover and Pentecost.

11. This milky latex contains diterpenes and esters. They produce symptoms of poisoning, such as “shaking, vomiting, diarrhea, sleepiness, drowsiness” (Roth
et al.
1994, 344).

12. As in Mexico, Nepali women make a tea from poinsettia sepals to stimulate milk flow (Manandhar 2002, 228). In Nepali folk medicine, the latex is used to treat boils and sores. Up to the present day in Mexico, women practice a folk magic involving poinsettia to prevent a venereal disease named after the plant: cuitlaxochitl or cuitlasuchil (“bastard flower” or “dung flower” in Aztec). It is believed that a woman can ward off this disease by stepping over poinsettia flowers or the “high leaves of the plant.”

13. In Byzantine art, the image of the mother of God giving the breast to the baby Jesus is called panajia glaktotrophoúsa, meaning “the one who nourishes with milk.”

14. The sacred red color of the tika with which Hindu women decorate their foreheads originally came from natural vermilion pigment. Now the color comes from a synthetic substitute.

Christmas Greens

1. Phoradendron spp. (Viscaceae), especially Phoradendron leucarpum (common leafy mistletoe), are used as Christmas mistletoe in the United States. The American Indians associate the plant with magic.

2. Beginning in the sixteenth century, in the Alsatian region, church law forbid the custom of placing fir branches and sprigs of mistletoe on the walls at Christmastime.

3. Firs and oaks were counted among the world trees by the ancients.

4. The words thunder and thor are also onomatopoeic in English.

5. The famous Hessian Donaroak suffered the same fate as other sacred trees and groves of the ancient Germanic people. After an order from Pope Gregor, St. Bonifacius allowed them to be felled in 723 CE.

6. See Becker, Hans and Helga Schmoll, Mistel: Arzneipflanze, Brauchtum, Kunstmotiv im Jugendstil [Mistletoe: Medicinal Plant, Customs, and Art Motifs in Art Deco] (Stuttgart: Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft 1986).

7. In the thirteenth century, Snorri Sturluson of Iceland composed the so-called Younger Edda and thus transcribed the last few remaining Nordic god legends, adding an overlay of Christianity. Many of the older Poetic Edda verses are believed to date back to the ninth century CE.

8. In England, witches’ broomsticks were traditionally made out of hemp (Cannabis spp.).

9. The name Ilex comes from an unknown old Mediterranean language!

10. This thorny appearance is reflected in the Latin name, Aquifoliaceae, which means “spiky leaves.”

11. Translator’s note: The Extern Stones are natural limestone formations that have played an important role in cultic worship. Some are as tall as 125 feet (38 meters) and bear large, possibly man-made, carvings. Some people think these represent not only the stars and constellations, but also the original gods of the German pantheon.

12. Chthonic means of or related to the underworld.

The Aromas of Christmas: A Shower of Pheromones

1. Before experimenting it would be a good idea to familiarize yourself with the properties and safety guidelines for the various essential oils. Some are toxic and can have strong effects even when inhaled.

2. You can buy “naturally pure charcoal” that is hand-pressed from herbs and wood and contains no saltpeter. These are difficult to light and burn very gradually.

3. From the Middle High German quech (alive, evergreen) and ter or der (tree).

4. “Coals of juniper wood were often found in the burial sites of ancient Germans, because it was part of the sacred wood with which the dead were burnt” (von Perger 1864, 350).

5. “W.[otan] appears in the Old English nine herb blessing as a healing sorcerer” (Simek 1984, 466).

6. Taken from the Anglo-Saxon nine herb blessing as quoted in Seligmann 1996, 28f.

Christmas Intoxications and Other Delights

1. In the southern Tirol, hemp is called “witches’ herb”: “When you hang some hemp herb underneath the roof, no witch can do anything. This is a very good herb” (Behr 1995, 43).

2. Spanish fly (Lytta vesicatoria) is not really a fly, but a beetle that contains a dangerous substance, cantharidin. It causes a strong reaction in the urinary tract and because of that is used as an aphrodisiac. However, the effective dosage is near lethal, so one should not experiment with it.

3. Even Carl Linnaeus, the great Swedish scientist and father of modern taxonomy, seems to have taken this into consideration when he named this tropical plant Theobroma cacao. Theobroma means “divine food.”

4. Cocoa spices in old Europe included allspice, ambergris, anise, cardamom, chili, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, jasmine blossoms, poppy seeds, musk, mace, nutmeg, orange blossoms, pepper, Peru balsam, pineapple, saffron, and vanilla. All of these typical Christmas spices are also considered aphrodisiacs or love substances (Rätsch and Müller-Ebeling, 2003). Even Spanish fly (Lytta vesicatoria) has been mixed into cocoa!

5. In the Aztec “flower language,” the word xochicacahuatl (flower chocolate) was a metaphor for good life and sensual pleasures (Coe and Coe 1997, 125).

6. The Dominican Diego de Durán (1537–1588) was born in Spain and grew up in Mexico. He wrote an extensive chronicle of ancient Mexico, especially on the Aztec culture (Coe and Coe 1997, 124).

7. According to the oldest literature, mugwort was used to bring on late menstruation and abortion.

8. This might be the reason for its Norwegian folk name “hut root.”

9. A “man who gives everything away” is often called a “Christmas goose” (Bornemann 1974).

10. “Goose fat is supposed to have a sexually stimulating effect” (Hiller 1989, 85).

11. As spices for the goose roast, the Medieval Cookbook suggests salt, pepper, fennel seed, cumin powder, lemon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon (Ehlert 1990). Juniper berries were included in the stuffing, recalling another relationship to Wotan; in the vernacular, juniper is called Wotan’s rod, Martin’s rod, and life rod.

12. Rosemary is also a medieval spice for wild venison pâté.

13. Belgian prostitutes carry boars’ teeth as a lucky charm.

14. For example, Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. G. Wells, Thomas Edison, Jules Massenet, Charles Grounod, and the fathers of cinema, the Lumière brothers.

Christmas Spices and Christmas Baking

1. The German word for vanilla (Vanille) comes from vagina (von Paczensky and Dünnebier 1999, 300).

2. Most of the exotic spices of the Old World were known in ancient Europe and described by Dioscorides and Pliny. Spices were traded over long distances, as were incense substances (Schivelbusch 1983). Many of our familiar Christmas spices were already in use in the ancient Roman kitchen (Thüry and Walter 1999).

3. Venushandel, or “Venus trading,” is an old German vernacular term for sexual intercourse.

The Rebirth of the Sun

1. In the cold, dark north, the sun barely clears the horizon on the winter solstice. This has a big impact on the people living there, and is one of the reasons many struggle with winter depression.

2. Luke 1:78, quoted in Forstner 1986, 97.

3. Translator’s note: Original lyrics in English.

4. Today a Cypriot city, Salamis.

5. As a merciless judge of time who reigned over those with melancholy temperaments, the old representation of Saturn had some negative characteristics as well.

6. The Roman Fabriae (bean feasts) took place in June. In celebration of the summer solstice, the people offered fresh beans to the gods.

New Year’s Eve: The Wild Feast of Sylvester

1. The Adonis rose (Adonis vernalis) is also called by the folk names Bohemian hellebore (Schoen 1963, 51), spring Adonis, pheasant’s eye (Ahrends 1935, 55), and devil’s eye.

2. Even though the anemone seems to have been established as the flower described here, it is also possible that it is the poppy.

Happy New Year

1. The German toast, prosit, is Latin (the third person singular, present tense, conjunctive, active form of prodesse) and means: “to be good for something, to be handy.” This toast has been in use since the beginning of the eighteenth century. The Germanized Latin came from university student vernacular.

2. “The Stone Age magician used this dramatic effect as much as the theatre directors of past centuries” (Müller-Ebeling
et al.
1998, 20).

3. “In Irish folk medicine, the yellow golden spore powder was heated and the smoke was wafted into inflamed eyes” (Storl 2000b, 243).

4. In Freiburg im Breisgau, a town that goes back to the founding of the Alemannic dukes from Zaehringen, there is a monument that memorializes “black Berthold.”

5. “Laurel will protect everything born of the earth from being struck by lightening” (Pliny the Elder II, 146).

6. “We may not seek the principle of such great (magical) operations outside of us; there is a spirit living in us that can well do whatever unbelievable and wonderful things mathematics, magicians, alchemists, and necromancers are capable of doing,” writes Agrippa von Nettesheim (von Nettesheim, XXIX, 14th century).

7. “Magic taught for the purposes of making poison,” according to Johannes Praetorius (1630– 1680) (Praetorius 1688, 50).

The Night of Befana, the Christmas Witch

1. First staged under the direction of Richard Strauss on December 23, 1893.

2. Until the reform of the calendar in 1582, this time was counted as December 13 through December 25. December 13 was dedicated to the goddess of light, identified with the Christian St. Lucia. Today in Sweden, where there is no sunlight at this time of the year, Lucia brides wearing crowns of candles still play an important role during the Christmas season (December 12 through the night of January 6) (Vossen 1985, 59).

3. An exotic (but also purely erotic) interpretation: When Perchta is the birth lock, which is the hymen, the Perchten key is the penis. The Perchten run, then, is a symbolic intercourse.

4. The plants with a question mark in parenthesis—(?)—are at this time not fully understood.

Three Kings Day: The End of the Christmas Season

1. Its time of creation was dated by biblical scholars from the eighth decade of the first century CE.

2. The Golden Legend, a medieval book about the lives of the saints written by Jacobus de Voragine around 1260 CE.

3. It is possible that the “gold” brought by the three magi was not the shining metal, but Mecca balm from Commiphora opobalsamum, a plant for which the Arabic word is written much like the Arabic word for gold, dhb (Sellar and Watt 1997, 32). “The balm is of royal nature” (Hildegard von Bingen, Physica I, 177).