The Sad Plight of Santa Claus

The Mispent Youth of Santa Claus

 

The Sad Plight of Santa Claus

Dec. 23, 2017

Unfortunately for the children the hero of the season, an elderly gentleman who commonly is known as “Santa Claus,” is having no end of trouble with the notorious ICE police. For one thing, although his original documents seem to have gotten lost during one of Earth’s chronic wars, the evidence seems to indicate that he was born somewhere in Iran.

       Another cause for friction with the authorities has to do with his former position, before he assumed his present name. Santa Claus is, as most people know, a foreshortened form of Saint Nicholas. However in his youth and indeed, until he was quite well along in years, he went by the name of Mithra, or Mithras in the Greco-Roman world. He worked for a couple of centuries as the God of the Roman Empire, until the Christians conquered. After Jesus became the Pantocrator there were no openings for any other Gods, so Mithras found himself compelled to take up a trade.

       Back in his younger and more energetic days, he also gained quite a reputation as a bullfighter. Statues of him may be found all through Southern Europe and Anatolia, wearing a cape and his trademark santa-claus hat, and often very little else. He has a sword in his hand and the bull which he has just killed is usually seen lying at his feet.

       The story that he had to bring gifts to the children each year to make up for the children he killed when he was a God is probably religious propaganda. There is really no evidence to indicate that living human children were ever sacrificed to Mithras. Nevertheless, his devotees did put up a long and brutal struggle against the rising influence of the new God whom the Greco-Romans called Jesus.

Meanwhile, Back in Iran

On the other hand, the Magi who brought gifts that enabled the hejira of the Holy Family were probably in their own way devotees of Mithra. The reason I say “in their own way” is that these Three Magi were learned adherents of the faith of Zarathustra.

       Archaeologists have never found a statue of Mithra killing the bull in Persia, and most likely never will. All of the carvings, mosaics, or other impressions of Mithra’s Tauroctony have been found in connection with works that were constructed by the Romans.

       It is something of a mystery, how Mithras became the God of the Empire. The Persian Zoroastrians had venerated Mithra as the embodiment of their sacred covenant; the presence of Mitra as the God of Light in the Vedas demonstrates that this figure was around long before the advent of Zardosht. But the Greeks and Romans were always at war with the Persians.

       According to late Zoroastrian sources, Alexander and his armies attempted to exterminate the religion. Since Alexander did not rule Persia long enough to have attempted such a task if he had desired to, it is likely that his name covers for the total effect of a successive line of Selucid rulers who all did their best to repress the Native religion.

      Despite the best efforts of rulers like Antiochus IV and his military thugs, the faith of Zardosht not only survived but became the foundation of the Parthian kingdom which drove out the former Greek overlords. Beyond that, even in Anatolia, where the Greeks continued to rule, kings demonstrated their fascination with the Persophile cult by adopting the name ‘Mithradates.’ Nevertheless, modern scholars question whether the Roman worship of Mithras had anything in common with the Mithra of the Persians, aside from the name.

New Age when the New Age Was Pisces

The most likely explanation for Roman Mithraism is that it was the New Age religion of its time. Foiled in their effort to eradicate the Ethical Religion of Zarathustra, the Greek Kings and their Roman successors did everything they could to appropriate its power. Their opinion that Mithra was the primary culture-hero of the Persians may well have derived from the role of Mithra as the Lord of Covenants and Contracts. Once the Greeks found it necessary to negotiate once again with an ethnically Persian power, they would observe how Mithra was invoked whenever the Persians signed a peace treaty.

       As a personification of the Zoroastrian covenant, Mithra bound the followers of Zarathustra together in a relationship of holy love. This aspect of the Persian deity seems to have been lost on the imperialistic Romans, who seem to have preferred to develop a personal relationship with a God who could take them to high places. It is indeed curious how this need for an unconquerable Divine Ego emerged from a culture which, in its Republican phase, had served Gods who had exerted themselves to preserve and defend the Roman community.

       This shift from community values to a faith in an Unconquered Ego which symbolized itself as Sol Invictus, is probably the key to appreciating the difference between Mithra in his original Zoroastrian context, and the “New Age” cult of Mithra which became the State Religion of The Empire at a critical stage in its history.

       It could be that this shift was the harbinger of a trend towards self-reliance, individualism, and capitalistic social organization that would be the hallmark of the Western societies 1500 years later. But reliance on an ethic of the ego, however adapted to the mentality of the military, was a weakness which kept Mithraeism from being able to either compete or co-exist with the new faith in the Infant whom the gifts of the Three Zoroastrians had saved from Herod’s bloody dynastic purge.

Magi on a Civilizing Mission

       This triumph of ego over community values may very likely have been the result of the reliance, by the wealthy men who controlled public affairs, on slaves – not only for menial labor but also for the fulfilment of their more intimate desires. There is nevertheless, reason to believe that in the earlier Hellenistic phases of co-optation, Mithraesm had not been entirely disconnected from the influence of its parent religion.

       The Three Magi whose gifts enabled the hejira of the holy family were very likely on a civilizing mission similar to that of Vivakenanda and the other East Indian teachers who introduced the perennial philosophy to the conquering British.

       Nevertheless in the long run, the fact that the priests of Mithras depended on a class of egotistic and ambitious Romans for their economic base determined that the cult of Mithras in the Empire would take a different course than in Persia, where the Zoroastrian priests found themselves responsible for maintaining sufficient cohesion and goodwill among the believers that a kingdom of Zoroastrian Pathans (Parthians) could not only liberate Iran from the Greeks, but could continue to sustain itself in the face of repeated assaults by ambitious Romans like Crassus.

image of Mithra & Associated Godlings: from Wikipedia, Louvre Museum [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]

Amelia and The White Whale

Amelia & The

White Whale

Photo from Wikipedia Commons

Apr. 7, 2006

Grandmother has been down there, under the Pacific Ocean for too long. She was last seen taking off in her Lockheed Electra from the colonial era airport in Lae, New Guinea. It was 10:00 in the morning in the South Pacific, but midnight at the Greenwich Meridian.

Over the Blue Pacific

“My children, let me tell you a story,” smiles Grandmother, with a mischievous gleam in her eye. "We have all dreamed of being Amelia Earhart, having our own airplanes, flying into France and sending regards by telegraph to our husbands. We have all wanted to feel we had only the sky for a limit. But then look at the woman who carried our dreams, and see where that dream led her.

“We're flying across the Pacific, looking down to the south on the Australian coral reef. Unfortunately, these savage reefs demarcate the end of friendly territory. To the north and east lie the Philippines; well on the way to North America lie the Hawaiian Isles. Ahead lie the Solomon Islands, under the Japanese flag¹¹.

“It was at this point, the world lost track of Mrs. Amelia Earhart Putnam. During the star-dying time, just before dawn July 2, the Coast Guard Cutter Itasca picked up her radio signals. There were apparently, problems in the radio and navigational equipment. It appears that she was transmitting, but that she was unable to receive with sufficient clarity to distinguish words from static. And so, at about 10:00 AM local time on July 2, 1937, if she had crossed the International Date Line, and July 3 if she had not, Amelia Earhart disappeared from history, flew into the World of Uncertainty, and entered the Domain of Mythology.

“Forever, my children, shall strange tales be told. Amelia Earhart was carrying the dreams of all the women of the world – so perhaps it would have been anticlimactic if her round the world tour had ended successfully with a safe landing in California.

“Although her navigator was using directional finding radio, Amelia loved to navigate by the stars. As she and Fred Noonan flew across the broad Pacific through the afternoon and into the night, she may have noticed that the constellations had become marvelous and strange.

Radio signals believed to have come from her airplane were reported for 4 or 5 days. Some of these signals were identified as coming from Gardner Island in the Phoenix Archipeligo. But even after the most expensive search and rescue operation that had been launched to date, involving the United States navy, the private efforts of her wealthy husband, and even two Japanese warships, no trace of either Ms. Earhart or her navigator were ever discovered.

The Quantum World of Frational Probability

“Like the peace the world longed for but could not keep, she simply disappeared from space-time. But it wasn’t as though she stopped existing. Amelia Earhart had entered the realm of mythology, and was subsequently seen in at least 100 different places.

One Amelia Earhart had been an American spy with a personal commission from FDR. She had been captured by the Japanese, and forced to broadcast propaganda over the radio as Tokyo Rose. Another Amelia Earhart had refused to cooperate – certain inhabitants on the Marshall Islands saw a Japanese platoon shoot her. It’s possible that more than one Amelia Earhart died in this way – but the general opinion of the authorities seems to be that these testimonials really amount to cargo cult rituals, and that their private intent is to convince Grandma to bless the particular island with gifts of American money.”

Grandmother smiles at us with a particular gleam in her eye, which makes it apparent that she enjoys the incense and the roast pigs that are offered to her by Melanesian islanders who are participating in cargo cult rituals.

“In any case,” Grandmother continues at length, “after the Japanese signed their treaty of unconditional surrender on the Battleship Missouri, George Putnam and several other investigators conducted an extensive examination of Japanese military documents, but no mention was ever found of either a spy or a prisoner who might have been Ms. Earhart.²

“It’s also possible that she and Fred Noonan may have survived for as long as 2 or 3 years on Gardner Island. There are curious implements that have been discovered on an island that was then uninhabited. The only theory that hasn’t yet been aired is that she and Fred were captured and hauled off into Deep Space by the Grey Aliens – but I suspect a detailed explanation on how that happened shall soon be posted on the Internet.

And so, if we want to find Amelia Earhart today, we’ve got to realize that she is alive and well in the Land of Mythology.”

a=a

Encounter With John From

Which version of the Archetype do we want to pursue? The search for Amelia Earhart still continues; more and more money is poured into the quest for some genuine relic every year. These extensive searches produce just enough in the way of results to tease, but not enough to allow us to draw any solid conclusions.

The gentleman named John From is sitting in front of a tropical hut – brown skinned, nearly naked, and smoking a big cigar. He seems to be mildly amused by the folks who have come to dig for artifacts and bones.

“I cannot tell you what happened to her bones. Do you know where Moses is buried? If you want to get in touch with her spirit we can help you. But then – since you have obviously come here with money, if you want us to share the wisdom which is our wealth, you must share a little bit of your money with the people of the islands.”

As he speaks, a parade of women in grass skirts comes by, followed by men who are pounding on drums and a singer who chants in New Zealand English:

"Let us have done with the White Man's God --

(Harrum. Are we going to harmonize? Let's hear it.)

Hummm: Let us have done, have done with the White Man's God

For He is a mechanical insect

Flying in the sky just ten feet overhead:

Let us have done. Let us have done. And we

Are done with the Japanese and Korean and Taiwanese God-squads too.

̧  ̧

Where Have the Stars Hidden?

“Where then have the stars hidden?” asks John From. “And where shall we find the rose?"

Casual reflection #5.

When unleashed paranoias gird on the sword for mighty conquest -- where have the stars hidden? Gone with the Maid of the Sun and Moon, who cowers from the lust of a dragon. Red dragon or White, Communist or Right Wing -- he may take any name, so long as it serves his intention of burning the witch. We know him well, who've read the scroll that was smuggled from the concentration camp on Patmos.

He may be an angel of light -- or even your friendly neighborhood psychiatrist. No problem, so long as you swear to serve Oedipus Tyrannis, and his God of Scarcity.. But if you are one of those dreadful Presbyterians, tarring and feathering the torries, the friendly neighborhood psychiatrist can go you one better. It seems he's got the Lightning on his side.

Well, nowadays there's a nasty little African kid who’s got a choke-hold on the psychiatric profession. Says that his name is Chango, and that he's the owner of all of the lightning on earth. Says that when the psychiatrist's buddy, Mr. Neurosurgeon, used that lightning to burn peoples' brains, that he was acting in contempt of the Nuremberg Court. Says that he has heard the cry of the sunken Atlantaen women, from Buenos Aires all the way north to Montreal. They're all demanding that Mr. Psychiatrist take some courses on ethics from Madame Erzulae, the Haitian Venus.

So Mr. Psychiatrist finds himself taking a trip down to Haiti, where he shall see the Arawak spirits flying through the trees. He shall tremble to hear all these Arawak spirits cry out:

You need not keep shocking the Zombie! You burned out his briain already!

Then:

Mr. Psychiatrist looks on Madame Er­zulae, dressed only in a skirt of green palm leaves, with cowries round her neck and nut-brown breasts looking like sea animals sacred to the Gods. All of his good white-supremacist conditioning can't keep Mr. Neurosurgeon from lusting for this creature. But she just stands there, contemplates him with a scowl, lights up a fat cigar and blows smoke in his face, saying:

"I heard you calling me a witch-doctor, but you know something, Mr? I am going to call you Mr. Mountebank, cause I can see right through you. You just won't listen to what any other culture has to say, excepting your own."

As we have observed, Madame Erzulae has a black eye. And listen: now she is explaining to the good doctor just how she acquired that black eye:

"So many of my ladies have been lost in action. They have died for the sake of the struggle to bring just a little of the Motherland into existence here on earth. Most men have treated them basely, save for a few who were shot down when they joined my ladies in flying after those distant stars."

1 ¹

Miss Earhart and Fred Noonan had taken off from Miami, Fla. on June 1, 1937. On July 2, an SOS reached the Coast Guard Cutter Itaska, waiting off the coast of Howland Island. "On July 7, 1937, just five days after Amelia Earhart was scheduled to arrive at Howland Island, Japanese and Chinese troops exchanged fire at the Marco Polo Bridge southwest of Peking. A truce was attempted, but the encounter escalated into a Japanese counterattack. --p. 119, Loomis, Vincent V., Amelia Earhart, the Final Story. New York, Random House, 1985

2

  Wehave heard other stories. As rumor goes, a plane with her identification number was found at the end of the Melanesian Nightmare, and burned on orders given by the American high command. A grim enough reminder how the serene Pacific was politically divided. Perhaps indeed, she may have been caught up in the strange paranoias of men who dreamed only of conquest, and was taken for a spy simply because she refused to be the agent of anyone’s political program.