Authors: Christian Rätsch
Christmas tobacco label: “Mrs. Jack Frost” is not only a fat cigar, but is also dressed like a royal fly agaric mushroom female; notice her helping spirits bringing her winter greens in the form of a holly twig.
Baccy is, of course, not normal tobacco, but “strong tobacco”—often containing hemp (Cannabis). Etymologically, baccy means “bad-smelling tobacco.” In Germany, beginning around 1700, baccy was described by the word knaster. This is an abbreviation for kanastertobac or knastertobak, words originally used to indicate a high-quality blend of tobacco sold in cane baskets. Knaster is believed to be derived from the Greek word kánna—meaning “cane”—which in turn goes back to the noun kánastron, “a basket made from cane.” (The Greek kanna is also the root word for kannabion, “hemp!”). By way of the Spanish canasto and the Dutch knaster, it came into the German language (according to the German dictionary, Duden).
The German word knaster describes a sound with a dark tone; knister, in contrast, is a noise with a light tone. For example, the sound of a fire is described as knistert, the sound of tobacco as knastert. Of course, true tobacco makes no noise when one smokes it. But when the pipe is fed with Cannabis flowers containing seeds, then the exploding hemp seeds make little popping sounds: hemp knastert!
The comfy Father Christmas with his long pipe. (Woodcut by Thomas Nast, circa 1865)
A useful definition of strong tobacco can be found in the Encyclopedia of All Folk Medicine of 1843, one of the most important home medical reference books of the nineteenth century:
Unscrupulous manufacturers adulterate the smoking tobacco blend by adding to the mix Ledum palustre (wild rosemary), henbane, thorn apple—even opium—in order to make the tobacco stronger and more intoxicating. For people who have not developed resistance to it through frequent use, it causes nausea, vomiting, dizziness, intoxication,
etc.
(Most 1843, 586).
Krischan has smoked a strong tobacco and has hallucinations. (Wilhelm Busch, Krischan mit der Piepe, 1864)
The name “smoke weed” (rauchkraut) was applied to erdrauch, “earthsmoke” (Fumaria officinalis, also called savior weed) as well as common juniper (Juniperus communis). Both belonged to the family of “weed” that farmers loved to put in their Sunday pipes (carved from juniper wood), blended with a mixture of coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara, so named because it looks like a horse’s hoof) and dried veronica (Veronica spp.).
Baccy Ingredients
It is the lovely veronica that brings to us the greetings of our god. Just look into its beautiful eye: it carries the color of fidelity. There is nothing false in it.
ZIMMERER 1896, 237
Farmer’s tobacco (Nicotiana rustica comes from the New World. When it was introduced to Europe, it was considered a kind of henbane (“Hyoscyamus Peruvianus”) and was smoked in the baccy pipe. Farmer’s tobacco is not used as commercial smoking tobacco, but it does contain a high concentration of nicotine: usually 6 percent to 9 percent, though sometimes as much as 16 percent or even 18 percent. It has been called “bad tobacco” because of its status as a weed that could very well cause intoxication.
Veronica (Veronica officinalis) is a strong yet subtly stimulating folk medicine, and is therefore known by many vivid names: basic salvation, grindheil, grossbatengel, little heaven flower, men’s fidelity, salvation of all damages, snake weed, speedwell, thunderbesom, thunder flower, world salvation, and others.
Strong Tobacco
“In the age of witchcraft the use of hemp was very popular in Europe. And the aphrodisiac effect of the substances that were in the hemp plant was very well known. Hans Ulrich Megerle, better known as Abraham of Santa Clara (1644–1709) preached against the ‘farmers that fill themselves up on hemp like the Turks on opium.’ After the introduction of coffee and tobacco in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, hemp lost its former significance and became a ‘poor person’s weed.’ As a drug of pleasure and ingredient for tobacco, it was of almost no value anymore. Yet, as late as 1925, hemp-tobacco blends were still sold everywhere in Europe, and a pipe with tobacco and hemp was called Sunday pipe in Gotthelf’s* times” (Lussi 1996, 134).
*Translator’s note: This is the pseudonym of Albert Bitzius (1797–1854), Swiss pastor and Swiss-German writer.
In England, this plant has names specifically related to the ethnobotany of Christmas: European mistletoe, mistletoe, and golden bough (not to be confused with true mistletoe, Viscum album). It is also called Sylvester flower (Arends 1935, 263). The dried herb contains a volatile oil and flavonoids.
Baccy Claus brings the presents: pre-rolled Christmas cigarettes. (Christmas card from the magazine Hanfblatt, 1999)
In the nineteenth century at Christmastime, Christmas herbs were added to baccy blends to give aroma to the smoke: anise, benzoin, cassia flower, cardamom, cinnamon, cascarilla (sweet wood bark), cloves, coriander, gum mastic, iris roots (orris), lemon rind, rose blossoms, star anise, storax, and valerian. In the nineteenth century there was a brand-named tobacco, The Three Magi, that contained baccy ingredients. It was called “preacher baccy” and “hell baccy,” and gave smoking products a Christian dualism, just right for the upside-down world of the raw nights! Even today, smoking tobaccos are blended with Christmas spices: vanilla, cocoa, and so on. The Indonesian kretek cigarettes are famous; they contain a big portion of cloves.
Many other medicinal and food herbs also served as smoking or baccy weeds. In the folk vernacular these were sometimes called “wild tobacco” or “tobacco flowers”: arnica (Arnica montana), burdock (Arctium lappa), belladonna (Atropa belladonna), broadleaf or bitter dock (Rumex obtusifolius), clematis (Clematis recta), coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara), corn flower (Centaurea cyanus), henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), male fern (Dryopteris filixmas), mullein (Verbascum spp.), lavender (Lavandula spp.), lily-of-thevalley (Convallaria majalis), sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum), and yellow sweet clover (Melilotus officinalis).12
Dried leaves of coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) are an important baccy ingredient. (Woodcut from Brunfels, 1532)
Hazelwort or European wild ginger (Asarum europaeum) contains asarone, a hallucinogenic substance. Hazelwort is among the traditional European incense and baccy substances. (Woodcut from Brunfels, 1532)
The dried leaves of beetroot (Beta vulgaris) were used as ersatz tobacco and a baccy ingredient. The German name for beetroot, mangold, means “fair.” The plant was used—especially by men—as a stimulant. (Prahn 1922, 151)
The winter-resistant leaves of the forest blackberry (Rubus fruticosus L., Rosaceae) are a basic ingredient of old baccy mixtures. (Hamburg, February 2003)
The flowers of the female hemp plant (Cannabis spp.) produce a baccy commonly known as marijuana or “grass.” In earlier times, hemp seeds (“bird food”) were cooked in a Christmas mush. In the last years of the twentieth century, many elderly people could still recall how they or their parents sometimes smoked a pipe of “strong tobacco” containing hemp after church, in the morning at a pub, comfortably at home, or on a bench in the garden.
Baccy Recipes
The following recipes are mentioned as cultural and historical curiosities and are not intended to suggest actual use. Farmer recipes almost never provide exact quantities, so the dosage of active ingredients can be a problem. Of course, the use of illegal substances as ingredients can also present a problem. Please take into consideration that only Baccy Claus himself is above the law!
Farmer Baccy
Equal parts veronica (Veronica officinalis), coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara), blackberry leaf (Rubus fruticosus), hemp (weed, marijuana, hashish, Cannabis spp.), and tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum or N. rustica)
Stimulant Baccy
Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) or belladonna (Atropa belladonna), baccy weed or hemp (Cannabis spp.), dried fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria), and tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum or N. rustica)
Alexandrian Baccy
Tobacco leaves (Nicotiana tabacum or N. rustica), hemp leaves (Cannabis spp.), hashish (Cannabis spp.), opium poppy latex (Papaver somniferum), mace (Myristica fragrans, the seed coat of the nutmeg), cloves (Syzygium aromaticum)
Medicinal Baccy (after a recipe from Berlin from the year 1816)
5 parts hemp leaves (Cannabis sativa), 1 part thorn apple seeds (Datura spp.)
Christmas Baccy
Leaves of arnica (Arnica montana), veronica (Veronica spp.), coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara), sorrel (Rumex acetosa)
Herbal Baccy
Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum [syn. Asperula odorata]), yarrow (Achillea spp.), great goose grass leaf (Galium aparine), bilberry leaf (Vaccinium myrtillus)
A hemp-smoking snowman in the Christmas forest. (Postcard: PsykoMan snowman, © Psykoman 2000)
Waiting for the Snowman! (Christmas cigar box label)
St. Peter with his key to heaven, in the garb of Father Christmas, smokes his baccy pipe. With it, he spreads “the perfume of the heavens.” (Envelope of an exhibition of the Museum in Altona, Hamburg; Hinrichsen 1994)
Other baccy plants included hawkweed (Hieracium spp.), yarrow (Achillea spp.), mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), hazelwort (Asarum europaeum), Roman chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile), as well as leaves of the walnut tree (Juglans spp.), wild rosemary (Ledum palustre), potato (Solanum tuberosum), lime or linden tree (Tilia spp.), stone clover (Trifolium arvense), witches’ weed, bilberry, or huckleberry (Vaccinium spp.), rose (Rosa spp.), wild cherry (Prunus serotina), sunflower (Helianthus spp.), beech (Fagus spp.), hawthorn (Crataegus spp.), blackberry (Rubus fruticosus), sage (Salvia officinalis), elder (Sambucus spp.), and rhubarb (Rheum spp.). In the older literature, walnut tree roots, potato roots, and the leaves of the common beet (Beta vulgaris) were also listed as baccy ingredients.
In the nineteenth century, hemp (Cannabis), thorn apple (Datura stramonium, also called smoke apple, raw apple, witches’ weed, witches’ cumin, and jimsonweed), henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), and belladonna (Atropa belladonna) were all considered smoking weeds because of their distinctive psychoactive effects. Cannabis (hemp, also called raw hemp and smoke hemp) was not only a baccy ingredient, but was also used in the smoking mixture known as Alexandrian. In the eighteenth century, Alexandrian tobacco (or Smyrna powder) consisted of real tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) blended with hemp and hashish (Cannabis spp.), opium (Papaver somniferum), mace, and cloves.
The baccy smoker can find everything he or she needs in the woods and the meadows. A basic recipe for baccy mixtures is three equal parts of coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara), veronica (Veronica officinalis), and blackberry (Rubus fruticosus). One can, of course, also add some “weed” (Cannabis) and homegrown tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum or N. rustica).
Today, baccy is commercially available again in the form of herbal mixtures for rolling one’s own herbal cigarettes. These traditional mixtures contain coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara), speedwell (Veronica spp.), mint (Mentha spp.), and other historical European baccy herbs. Very often they are based on damiana (Turnera diffusa), the Mexican herb of St. Nicholas.
Smoking can be considered a sort of incense burning. Some modern baccy factories market their products as “herbal mixtures to purify the air in the room.” Smoking concentrates and delivers pharmacologically active compounds to the body more effectively than incense, though, because it brings active ingredients into more direct contact with sensitive mucous membranes. Incense burning provides its own aromatherapy and neuropsychological effects. However, smoking is more efficient when one’s goal is to effect an immediate change in state of mind or consciousness by inhaling bioactive ingredients.
A gingerbread man, with his baccy pipe and fir greens, in a red and white St. Nicholas boot—a modern throwback to “St. Baccy Claus.” (Christmas sticker, 1998)
Father Christmas: An Anthropomorphic Fly Agaric Mushroom?
Perceptive people have associated St. Nicholas with the fly agaric mushroom that, in former times, was eaten during the winter solstice in northern Europe—and which made it possible to fly through other worlds.
NAUWALD 2002, 37F
Among the many aspects of the modern Christmas ritual that have their origin in pagan customs is the figure of Santa Claus or Father Christmas himself. At close inspection, the red-and-white dressed Father Christmas can be seen as another version of Wotan or a secret shaman. As we shall see, even his flight through the sky in his reindeer sleigh has shamanic origins. But most astonishingly, he might even be seen as an anthropomorphic fly agaric mushroom! A scandalous claim? Perhaps. But first, let us look more closely at his connection with the shamanic fly agaric mushroom.
Old Nordic Shamanism was associated closely with Odin (Wotan) and resembled the shamanism of the Lapps and the ancient Finnish peoples. In many mythologies, storm and thunderstorm gods are associated with the fly agaric mushroom, perhaps because the thunder and lightning of the outer world can be triggered by the agaric mushroom flight through the inner world.
The Germanic thunder and fertility god, Donar or Thor, drives his goat cart through the air. He causes thunder and lightning when he throws his hammer in the clouds. Then thunder stones (belemnite fossils) begin falling and hitting the earth. Where they inseminate the ground, mushrooms grow, especially fly agarics.
A modern fly agaric female shaman wishes us good luck. (Postcard circa 2001; illustration by Hans-Christian Sanladerer)
The Fly Agaric Mushroom (Amanita muscaria)
The characteristic red mushroom with its white dots is the Nordic shamanic drug par excellence. Most shamans of the Northern Hemisphere ate it ritually. Its shamanic use can be traced to the Lapps, the Siberian nomadic peoples (for example, the Samojeden, Ostjaken, Tungusen, and Jakuten), and the North American Indians.
A red and white mushroom goblin. (Garden decoration, Germany, 1998)
The “Soul Flight” of Father Christmas
“According to many researchers, the wonderful voyage of Father Christmas in his reindeer sleigh through the midwinter night sky is another surprising remnant of the shamanic flight of the soul that has been retained over the years in Anglo-Saxon countries. It was said that this image comes from the shamanism of reindeer-breeding tribes of arctic Europe and Siberia. These people experienced their soul flight with the help of the hallucinogenic fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria), which has a characteristic red and white hood—the same colors that we find in the clothing of Father Christmas!” (Dévereux 2000, 131f).