Spoiler alert: he plays with it. He isn’t it.

My paper, That Læ-ing Loki, stopped being a paper 30,000 words ago. It’s large, and it’s in charge, and Loki is floating in a corner laughing at me while munching a muffin top. This is my life now.

Like everything else in my life, the paper-turned-book has caused friction with other people. Some of it is that I need to keep my mouth shut and let people just tell me all of the things researching this paper has taught me was wrong. Some of it is that I get excited about the material and want to share, and the material tells them they’re wrong. At least one person exhibited serious signs of jealousy, although I’m not sure why.

I originally was putting the paper up for the public as it evolved, but some developments convinced me that I shouldn’t do that. Just as I’d done with my comics. People steal. People don’t give credit. People are assholes. So when my new definition of the Old Norse word læ began to show up in databases that just a few months before held the old Victorian definitions (deceit, treachery, yadda yadda) but I wasn’t given credit? I began to get a little worried. I’m working very hard on this book, and the scope of what I’m writing spans far far past the actual meaning of one little word. Also, the updated definitions in other people’s online dictionaries is outdated. I have since brushed it up when I came across new findings.

I’m seeking a publisher that can provide an advance that will catch up my mortgage and save my parent’s farm from tax issues. It’s actually not much that I need, but with this new quest in my life I had to take the living document down from academia.edu. What’s housed here is so out of date you won’t get much out of it, I’m afraid. I’ll probably fix that post eventually. But in the meantime, I think I possibly can give you a scalding spoiler.

Listen to me very carefully, my fellow Loki lovers. Loki is not the goddamn fucking fire. The only flames about him you should worry about are the ones from your unrequited lust, but he’s not the fire. He’s not the hearth heat, either. The texts actually tell us what he is at least twice. Neither time does it say he’s the fire.

The one guy who is the fire is Loge, who is not Loki. There’s this humongous hulking text, the Flateyjarbók, that tells something Snorri doesn’t. Snorri tells us Loge is fire. The Flateyjarbók (Flat Book) is more specific. Loge rules fire. Loge is also the brother or Ægir, husband of Ran and ruler of the deep sea, and Kári, ruler of wind. And together they can beat up Captain Planet.

That is who the fire is. The texts tell us. Snorri gets it a little wrong, but he also tells us. Loki being associated with fire is mostly a Victorian fantasy pushed forward by people like Olrik and cemented into our folk memory by a fucking opera that confused Loki with Loge. Loki lost an eating contest against Loge because Loge is fire, wild and raging and out of control if he so wishes. He’s the ruler of that element, after all. Loki is not the ridiculous house gnome of fire tied down to a hearth, and that’s why he was beaten by Loge. Loki is not the heat that rises above the hearth, and thus his name is Loptr (although that part makes better sense). You can have a fucking blót without Loki’s presence because he’s not the fire. I’d be careful with the rest of his kin, though.

Sure he’s the bound god, and I haven’t started digging into that yet. I have theories and vague feelings about the matter. I haven’t made up my mind. But being bound in the peculiar fashion he was broken into doesn’t make him the hearth fire. In my opinion, it makes him something else, something more tragic. You mock his pain, people. You mock his pain.

Which brings me to the headache of finding research material with my limited resources. Some of the things published out there are by people who are clearly fantasizing or putting their own brand of neo-pagan-fluff into their spiritual practice and calling it canon. They take your money with their lies, and you don’t even know any better. I swear the biggest insult to this is those people hang with the same crowd that told me my legitimate shamanic experiences were me “writing fiction.” Roar! There is no Red Loki, Green Loki, Blue Loki, etc. as if he were the Buddhist Tara. Although Loki created problems at times and solves problems at other times, he’s not a chaos god. The Norse didn’t pocket their gods into pegholes that way, and part of the confusion about Loki and the other gods is how everyone keeps trying to do that. This is a Victorian habit. Bad, dobbies! Even the experts have weighed in on this habit, almost begging us not to do it. Stop it. You’re fucking up.

I’ve been slowly building into a kettle whistle over this when a prominent member of the heathen community – someone who helped put heathenry back on the map – abruptly ended a phone call because we don’t agree on Loki’s nature. That smarts, y’all, that a little logic and polite disagreement kills a conversation. I put my phone on it’s stand and drove a few miles just missing my friend Leslie, missing her like crazy because even when she and I didn’t agree there was always a conversation to be had. Good conversations, too. Y’all aren’t allowed to do that to me, dammit!

Because I’ll tell you another very important secret. You can see him as fire, smoke, or a block of cheese but it’s not going to actually change what he is. Only he gets to do that. I’ve got a teacher in my life who keeps trying to make me more Western than I really am. He hasn’t succeeded, for all he chooses to view me that way. That’s how the cookie crumbles – unless Loki’s shoving it into his mouth.

The biggest reason why I find this so important is, well, because: hasn’t Loki been misaligned enough for one age? Do you know how many preachers over the ages starting with Snorri actually put him down into ye olde dictionaries as “treacherous” and literally Satan? Dozens! And for that matter, I don’t think Snorri started it. I came across some evidence tonight that suggests Snorri was operating under a misconception, and knowing the history of the church versus the gods as I do, well. I think we know who started the smear campaign. They also smeared Thor, you know, although with Odin they kind of… brushed him off in the background with hot gloves and a hazmat suit.

Also, please y’all. Please. If Loki comes to you the way people are reporting, you genuinely need to vet this. I’m crying this from experience. The Loki I’ve been reading and tracking is *nothing* like what people are reporting in their personal gnosis events. That’s a big. Big. BIG red flag.

But mostly I just needed to say to you guys: your personal spiritual practice is going to be your own. You’re going to adopt things from places that works for you. But if you base everything off of a lie or someone’s fantasy play, your world is bound to fall apart. Trust me when I tell you this: that’s a pain you do not want. Stay clean, y’all.

And so I wish you hale.