Some movies from our childhood fail to live up to the size of their memory, but rarely, we rediscover an old movie we always knew was ugly and find it still ugly but also shocking or revelatory.Santa Claus: The Movieis one such secretly subtextual movie. The first act is sort of incredible, with ‘80s movie magic, including matte paintings of the North Pole, massive sets for the castle-like home of the elves, and reindeer puppets that still hold up to today’s effects. Acts two and three turn into a story about one of the elves who runs away, and it becomesDudley Moore: The Movie.
Santa Claus
WatchingSanta Claus: The Movieas an adult, you see a different movie. This movie is all about psychedelics, and it is not just the stuff on the surface – they feed the reindeer a green hay that looks a lot like cannabis and is peppered with glittery magic dust that makes them fly, and the runaway elf played by Moore markets the fairy dust to children with the world’s first candy edibles, 25 years before the real-world industry brought to life every ’80s urban legend about drugs being handed out on Halloween that look like candy.
The heavy material in 1985’sSanta Clausmovie is the portrayal of thejourney that Mr. and Mrs. Claus takein the opening act. This movie was broadcasting a story of what psychonauts have reported experiencing through DMT and salvia divinorum. This children’s film has all along been communicating a secret message about the nature of reality, time, and death.
Why a Santa Movie?
Many of themotifs of Santa Claus come from Finnish Yule traditions, including the consumption of the red and white mushrooms called amanita muscaria. These mushrooms appear in old Christmas art, often including elves or gnomes. The mushroom’s color was adapted to Santa’s clothing by artists as the character evolved in the 1800s and early 1900s. The tradition of presents beneath the tree is symbolic of the mushrooms that grow under trees (they have a symbiotic relationship with the trees and connect to their roots). Santa’s use of reindeer is owed to Finland. The Sami tribes in Finland domesticate and ride on the backs of reindeer or use them to pull sleighs. Reindeer are also fond of consuming the amanita mushrooms.
The amanita is a potentially toxic mushroom for humans if not properly prepared or if over-consumed. The effects are associated with a type of hallucinogen called entheogen. The term is Greek in origin and means, (to unlock) the theos within, which means to recognize one’s divinity as part of God. Entheogens, like amanita and salvia divinorum, are used in religious ceremonies for the intent of communing with supernatural beings in higher dimensions.
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A Journey to Another Dimension
Santa Claus: The Moviebegins with Mr. and Mrs. Claus (David Huddleston and Judy Cornwell) in an unspecified past century, traveling in snow between homes on Christmas night, giving out wood-carved toys that Mr. Claus has fashioned. The couple’s sleigh is pulled by their two reindeer, Donner and Blitzen. The snow storm intensifies, the Clauses become lost, and the reindeer are exhausted and too cold to continue. Donner and Blitzen lie down and die, and Mr. and Mrs. Claus huddle together in the white-out storm and freeze to death in their sleigh. We know the ‘80s fantasy movies were all about the nightmare fuel with their headless witches and swamps of sadness, but come on. This has to be the darkest thing anychildren’s ‘80s fantasy movieever did. They killed Santa and Mrs. Claus in the first ten minutes.
The snow stops falling, and the night lights up from the light of a massive North Star. The Clauses and their reindeer wake up in the next dimension. The forest in which they were lost is gone. The landscape resembles the Arctic, and the sky is cloudless and lit with colorful stars. There is no mistaking what has occurred. They did not wander too far north – they have traveled to the other side, to another plane.
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The Machine Elves
Through the snow, dozens of elves march forward to greet the Clauses, carrying candles. The elves were expecting the Clauses.Dudley Moore, who plays Patch, is the first to speak and says, “They’re here.” Another elf, Dooley (John Barrard), says, “We’ve been expecting you… for a long, long time.” When Mr. Claus asks where they are, Dooley tells him they are home. The Clauses are confused. Mrs. Claus says that their home is far from this place, but Dooley tells them, “Not anymore. This is your home now.” We have never been kidnapped by cheerful elves, but Dooley’s choice of words would not alleviate our concerns that we are dead.
These are Terence McKenna’s machine elves, or clockwork elves/gnomes. Reports of dwarf-like entities date back to studies of DMT users in the 1950s. People who have used DMT describe alarmingly consistent experiences. These machine elves, Lego people, or gnomes are exuberant about the arrival of the person on DMT, they claim to already know the users, and most alarming to the users, these entities commonly tell them, “It’s been so long since you came,” which frightens people because they have no memory of ever being in this other dimension with these fairy people.
The Sleigh Runway is a Fractal Portal
When the elves are showing the Clauses around their workshop and home, the last place they show them is a great hall where all the toys are stored on the walls, to the left and right. This is also the runway for the sleigh. The toys are painted in bright colors – yellow, red, green, and blue. The hall stretches seemingly forever and ends with a bright light at the end of the tunnel. The toys lining the walls have repeating shapes and create what is called a fractal.
A fractal is a pattern that repeats in the micro and macro, like the pattern of the neurons in your brain and the dark matter that connects the galactic clusters in the universe. Users of entheogens like salvia have reported breaking out of reality and seeing a fractal that is similar to fractal zoom videos you might find online. The fractal is known by many names: Ezekiel’s wheels, the wheel of life, the book of life, the Rolodex, and more.
