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. There’s this guy 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. It’s like that for Loki. That’s how the cookie crumbles – unless Loki’s shoving it into his mouth.
I spent hours and even days pondering what was going on, trying to reconcile, to not be a bitch. That only worked a little. Between all the forces pressing against me, I found myself pushed into defending my territory. And that meant getting arrogant when I should never have.
There are two types of shaman: horizontal and vertical. I know this from a brief conversation with Dr. Terryl Janik, who dropped information that put me on the path to learning the dark side of shamanism that no one talks about. It’s a sordid path filled with assault and victims covered in blood. It’s a tale covering the sick symptom of an imbalance. The yin and the yang, as it were.
This is Loki’s art. He is wise in læ, and he says so himself almost bitterly in Lokasenna. Which ultimately led me to… taking a look at Læveteinn, the locked away weapon waiting for Ragnarok. When I finally understood what I had found, I had to walk away from the paper and process carefully. I realized for the bigger work this comes from, that one little word and the mistranslation made all the difference. I had found the thing I’d been hoping to find – backup for my working hypothesis.
I’ll add another human observation. Families have traditions. Thanksgiving, Christmas—every household has its own way within a shared frame. It’s nonsense to imagine álfablót was so alien to human habit that every farm did it identically. The sources themselves imply the opposite: secrecy, household control, variation.
From reclaimed church bricks to spirited soul-retrievals with Loki and Thor—how I raised a humble, living vé in my own backyard.
Or should I say… the Nine Herb Galdr. For shits and giggles, I looked into the Nine Herb Charm after hearing about it on Youtube. I found some English translations, but something – maybe my friend spirit or something – said the translations lacked. And what the hell. I’ve been reading Middle English sort of […]
I am up way before dawn because I couldn’t sleep, and then I found out it was Lion’s Gate. So with cigarette in one hand and ashtray in another I did my ritual, calling a full manifestation down, hearing a subtle “and stand among the stars” with each direction to the point I finally obeyed […]
I walked into the hall of the grotto to see feathers flip upward. I heard them as they went, and looked at a man weighed down with sorrow. He asked me to “turn back time”, bent so I could see his weathered face, and I… patted his cheek because he was so sad and tried […]