You can watch the video at Youtube or catch it below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9cOtddwyeQ

I’ve tried and failed to make this video several times. I’m very close to the material and tend to go on wandering paths, so I’ll be reading from my notes to stay on topic. This is a subject that genuinely needs to be addressed, and I want to make the point clearly and concisely so you don’t fall out of your chair from boredom.

I saw a short on YouTube recently, once again pushing a particular narrative, and I knew I had to respond. This is a rebuttal to a statement I’ve seen across our communities: that when the gods call you, they can be incredibly harsh, even abusive, and that this is simply their way. There’s an old saying: you will either come back from the gods changed, or you won’t come back at all.

In many modern spiritual communities, this is a prevalent and unchallenged belief, and it comes from an older truth. But when that older belief was active, there was also a support system for people having shamanistic awakenings. A newly awakening shaman is basically an infant in the astral realm, and predators come hungry. We don’t have that support system today. Instead, I see a lot of focus on “join my Patreon, give me money, buy my book.” It has become very materialistic and has lost a lot of that heart.

This belief that the gods are inherently harsh—that any suffering is a necessary trial for your growth or a lesson—does hold some value. Spiritual growth is not always comfortable, and true divine beings can test our mettle. But we no longer have the community framework to support that test, and it has created a dangerous blind spot in our modern thinking. It fails to account for the existence of predatory spiritual entities that are not the gods, and sometimes they will pretend to be. A poor, innocent soul who has never experienced this before isn’t going to know any better. They’re going to be fooled, just like I was.

These parasites use this belief as the perfect cover to inflict harm while the community looks the other way.

I’m not here to argue that the gods are soft. Whatever quality they saw in you, they don’t want that to go away; that is what makes you valuable to them. I’m here to state that we have forgotten how to tell the difference between the forge of a god and the jaws of a predator. We’re so busy saying, “This harshness is the gods forging you,” that we are ignoring that your legs have been broken off and a predator is eating your entrails while you’re still alive.

During my own awakening journey, I experienced firsthand how this belief system was systematically used to control, isolate, and harm me. Some of it was not the gods testing me; it was predators. I had an entity pretending to be Frigg—who I’ve since named Sorrow—and another pretending to be Tyr. I was waking up under astral pressure, and things went to hell in a handbasket.

Here are the specific ways this belief was used as a weapon against me:

1. It was used to isolate me. One person I spoke to, a shamanic healer, told me to stay out of the astral plane. It was presented as protection, but all it really did was discourage me from growing, prevent me from seeing the truth of my situation, and stop me from developing the skills to fight back. Crucially, it was said in the same tone as asking a girl who was assaulted, “Well, what were you wearing?”

2. It was used to violate my boundaries. Through this journey, I became a spirit spouse to Loki. When I found out, my personal boundaries and consent were dismissed by people I spoke to because, “It’s Loki.” I felt incredibly violated. The idea that the gods get to stomp on you, and that our own sovereignty as beings who also hold divine light doesn’t matter, is fundamentally wrong. I was either told I wasn’t really his spouse and was putting on airs, or I was shamed with, “How dare you want to be you? You should be grateful for the divine attention.” The belief that “the gods know best” was used to override my natural right to say no.

3. It was used to justify abuse. Every act of cruelty, every moment of torment I endured, was framed as a necessary lesson. This was justified as being “for my own good,” as if the gods were urging me to get stronger. But I can track when it was something that made me stronger versus when it was just me getting chewed on by predators. The feeling was completely different. One was “I’m mad at you, but we’re going to get over it,” and the other was despair and being urged toward self-harm. This belief conditioned me to accept suffering as a divine favor when I really needed to recognize it as a predatory attack.

4. It was used to gaslight me. I was told that the gods could not be impersonated. Therefore, either I was wrong and my experiences weren’t real, or it must be the gods and I should just accept the horrible things that were happening. Any inconsistency in an entity’s behavior or an “off” feeling I had was explained away as me misunderstanding the gods’ complex nature. This removed my most important tool of discernment: my own intuition.

I’m pretty sure my little video isn’t going to fix the world, but maybe it’ll help one person. Let me give you some things I noticed so that if you are dealing with real entities, you’ll be able to tell them apart.

We must learn to distinguish between a true divine trial and a predatory attack. They feel profoundly different. When Loki and I first got married and he started pushing at me, I was frustrated and infuriated, but I felt strong enough and confident enough to push back. We went back and forth, and I wonder if he was having fun. He probably was. But with the predators, there was a whole lot of gnashing of teeth, crying, telling them to stop, despair. One is a forge where you are being made into something; the other is a slaughterhouse.

Pay attention to the details and the energy.

• A true divine trial is empowering and respects your agency. The energy feels clean and authentic. You’ll feel safe enough to push back and say, “No, me strong Hulk!”
• A predatory attack is draining, diminishing, and violates your consent. The energy is parasitic, chaotic, and fundamentally off. Your whole world falls apart.

After the fact, I realized I could have told them apart by the details. For example, the real Tyr was a source of strength. The hijacked Tyr started wearing a Flintstone Grand Poobah hat. The real Frigg was gracious and queenly. The hijacked Frigg (“Sorrow”) became childish, petty, and shallow.

There were at least three Lokis. The true one was a friendly jumping spider, fun to be around. The vampire, when he turned into a spider, was always a venomous, dangerous-looking kind that I don’t like. There was always a sign. They would emulate the signature, but something in me could discern the danger, and I would perceive it as just a little bit off. You have to learn to watch for what is off.

Finally, this dangerous belief in divine harshness is actively reinforced by the community, creating a culture that enables predators and blames victims. The demand for reverence, the dismissal from “experts” who call you a whackadoo, and the content creators who frame any desire for a compassionate relationship as “foo-foo” or weak all create a no-win situation.

This is a horrible, borderline victim-blaming attitude that directs people away from being strong and having their own sovereign power—the very thing that might have attracted the gods in the first place. It pushes them into a place of shame, of being lesser, and of accepting abuse as the right and proper way to live a spiritual life.

Yes, the gods can be harsh. And yes, you will either come back from them changed, or you won’t come back at all. But how many of those people who didn’t come back failed to make it simply because it wasn’t the gods eating them alive in the first place?

So, where does that leave me? I used to say I was an atheist, but now… I’m just confused. If you’d like to join the Heathen Church of Confusion, hang around, and we’ll all be confused together. That’s it for now. Bye.