Loki

One of the most fractious fault lines in the US Neo-Heathen community (not so much elsewhere), is that of those that offer to Loki and those that don't.

I fall very firmly in the 'Noki' camp.

When Loki is brought up in discussion, I've noticed that one of more of the following usually occurs:

*The Loki fans jump in and say how much they love him and how he's 'misunderstood'.
*'Noki' folks like myself jump in and say how much they think he's a pile of shit, often with jingoistic responses like 'May Loki be bound' or something equally as ridiculous.
*The Loki Fans claim to be persecuted and that the 'Noki' people are obviously struggling to shrug off their Judeo-Christian upbringings or have fallen prey to tainted lore.
*Things get really nasty and fraught.

Now it's all well and good and, quite frankly, a time-honoured neo-Heathen tradition to accuse those that don't agree with you of being 'Christians' or somehow less Heathen than yourself, as is screaming intolerance. But it's not very productive and quite frankly there's intolerance going on on both sides of the spectrum here.

Yes, you heard me, the Loki fans are being intolerant with their accusations that 'Noki' folks like myself are somehow hoodwinked by lore or somehow less Heathen.

So just for the record, why is it that I feel the way I do about Loki?

Firstly, if you're going to dispute how the lore portrays Loki, don't then refer to lore references in which Loki is Odin's blood brother or friend to Thor. That smacks of confirmation bias to me i.e you only believe the bits that you personally like. Just as the argument can be made that Loki turning evil is a product of Christian influence, the argument could also be made that Loki's 'good' (although self serving and to get himself out of trouble) actions, were also the product of Christian influence, after all, Satan was a fallen angel.

Secondly, if you look at social structure and law in Medieval Iceland, from the POV of a medieval Icelander, there would have been very little about Loki to recommend him and for the gods to keep him in their community. He's not kin (allegedly he's a blood brother to Odin but if you're going to dispute Ragnarok, you should definitely be disputing anything from the Lokasenna, especially with how late it was written), he merely cleans up his own messes to save his skin and although the gods do get something out of that, it could be considered a form of weregild.

Thirdly, there's no record of Loki existing anywhere outside of Scandinavia and any earlier than the conversion period. As someone that focuses on AS/Continental Germanic Heathenry, he simply doesn't feature.

***UPG Alert***

Thirdly, and the most importantly to me, it feels *wrong* with a capital W. Not in a 'I've been told not to do it.' kind of way, but in the kind of way that when I think of Loki, I think of darkness, of dank, spikey 'unhaelu'. He *feels* like the epitome of a gateway to what we don't need in our world, that which sucks out and perverts what is holy. People that say that they call upon Loki when they hit rock bottom confuse me. To me, that's like a person turning to whiskey to make their problems go away. It might feel good at the time, but eventually it's going to come with its own measure of trouble and it wouldn't just affect you. It would affect everyone around you. And believe me, I've been rock bottom a few times. I know that place. The only way out of it is to decide to change, slowly and steadily pick yourself up, brush yourself down and begin the climb up again. There are no quick fixes, there's no waving a wand. Just a slow and steady climb out, and if you haven't been too much of a dick on your way down, family and friends to help you.

Forthly, in 2007 I had about four months when I couldn't sleep properly at night. I would lie in bed trying to sleep but always end up in this awful half trance/half sleep kind of state. Every. single. night I would dream of Loki and other beings that are often collectively referred to now as 'Rokkr' and in those dreams, these beings had gained too much control in the world and the world was paying the price. I know they were just dreams, but they still left an impression.

And that's another thing. When we offer to or call to these beings that have been long dormant, we should show more care. Paganism and Heathenry have, to some extent, become 'All You Can Eat Deity/Otherworldly Buffets', but sometimes, surely it's better to let some things lay dormant? Especially when they are things that were never offered to back in the pre-Christian period? Why is it that we think we somehow know better than they did? Because that's what it boils down to. We, who have been separated from those days by over a thousand years, who think we're so clever with our iWhatevers and cars and better understanding of science.

It's one of the best jokes ever.

Lil Miss Abnormal

Maybe it's the darker nights, or the howling gails that echo down our chimney. Maybe it's the weather or cold. Maybe it's none of those things, maybe it's all of them. Whatever it is though, for whate ver reason, at this time of year, my thoughts always tend to run off into more 'esoteric' directions. Scary experiences that I haven't thought of for years come to mind, snippets of stories about family members passing, pieces of folklore and traditions all float around in this noggin of mine to produce this winter ridiculousness. I'm also possibly reading way too many posts on cracked.com....

Maybe some if this is normal, I don't know. Normal and I have been in an abnormal relationship for some time now.

This week has been surreal, like something out of a movie. You know the kind...awkward situations during festivities, then crime (not me) and family scandal, followed by a present I really wished we'd never got and aren't quite sure how to dispose of.

It almost makes you think the creepy memories you have from being a kid are normal in comparison.

My mother always said I should write those stories down, make them into some kind of horror book. Make some money.

And to add to this, the UPG/MUS also comes thick and fast at this time of the year. Not only that but this time I have the hugest urge to talk about it somewhere. But where? A lot of those that would are pretty crazy (says me...'Lil Miss Abnormal' over here...) and I've learned to be guarded about this over the years with everyone else.

It's probably going to come spewing out in some.embarassing webpost at some point that I'll look back on during some Yule in the future and repeatedly berate myself with the words ' What the FUCK was I thinking posting *that*!'

A Woman's Honour

So I've been trying to figure out how to make this kind of a blog post for a while. To say it's not an easy one would be an understatement.

However, over the past week or so, I've come across this phenomena twice.

Ladies pulling down ladies.

Now if your brain instantly flashed to two scantily dressed women, wrestling in a mud pit, you wouldn't be alone. I went to festivals a lot when I was younger and that was a popular entertainment.

But in all seriousness, I think it's a problem and while I normally don't really care what folks outside of my inner-yard do, I think women in Heathenry face enough crap that it really doesn't make sense for us to pull each other down, not if we want better for our daughters.

As I've mentioned before, women are treated differently in Heathenry. At best, we face social censure more often than guys do for our opinions, in some communities we are questioned/hassled about our breeding choices (as if our uteruses are anyone's business but our own and our parters), we may find ourselves excluded from any serious lore conversation and at the very worst, we're exploited sexually. But this is very much a 'mileage may vary' kind of deal. If you are a woman that's reading this blog, you may or may not have experienced any of this. We all have different communities with different histories. BUT, I will say that I have heard of all of the above happening to women in various American communities and all within the last 5 or so years.

And of course, this is not acceptable.

However adding to these issues are the issues that women create for women, to tear them down (and presumably attain some kind of status for doing so). During the course of the past week, I've heard of and/or dealt with one Heathen woman that has repeatedly made sexual advances towards the husbands and boyfriends of other Heathen women and another who basically wanted to point out how she wasn't fat but her sister was, on a group that her sister wasn't on. She even posted photos.

Both, to put it mildly, are shitty behaviours and they're really not the extent of it either. I once heard a workshop on Ravencast about gossip and how gossip was used to exert social control by women. Now that's all well and good, but seeing as we modern women live in a society in which we have more rights than our forebears did. And therefore don't NEED to rely on gossip and shaming our menfolk in order to get any amount of social control - or at least we shouldn't. My point is, shouldn't we be aiming a little higher? Instead of gossiping, or inciting others to do our dirty work, shouldn't we be taking control ourselves and going out and dealing with those that we have issues with directly? Surely that is what *should* be socially acceptable?

We often hear talk of honour within the context of men, but what of a woman's honour?

What *is* woman's honour? Is it, or should it be any different from that of a man and if it isn't, shouldn't we be judged the same as a man for doing as honour requires?

We need to talk about these topics, we need to decide how we'd deal with a lack of honour shown by women in our local communities and most importantly, we need to make sure that we stand together when one of us is treated differently because of gender. Be it when speaking out or trying to act with honour...whatever that may be.

I look forward to reading any thoughts and feelings on this.

Let's Push Things Forward

During the course of this past weekend, we've had the pleasure of having Heathen friends over on both nights. After coming from living in Germany, where our nearest Heathen was almost 2 hours away and very busy with grad school, this is a complete (dare I say it?) luxury. To be able to talk about subjects that we are passionate about, with people that also get it is just incredible and not something that my husband or I would ever take for granted.

These conversations have given me much food for thought over the past day or so, nothing truly groundbreaking as I was already of the same opinion when it came to these topics, but it's kind of like the same feeling that you get when going through a cupboard and finding something you haven't used or looked at for a while.

On the first night, we discussed reconstructionist Heathenry and how there shouldn't be this distinction made between reconstructionist Heathenry and mainstream. It should just be either Heathenry or not. Let's face it, there's a lot of stuff in mainstream Heathenry that really has no place but has been there for years and years and just regurgitated to the next generation regardless of veracity or usefulness to the wider community. Something that isn't well rooted can easily float off with the fairies and it's increasingly my personal opinion that it is the rootless nature of a lot of practices or concepts that are taken for granted within the Heathen community,that has contributed to a lot of the craziness and controversies that can be found as well. A lot of it comes from the era that a lot of the first modern Heathens started out in and while we must never forget that without these folks, we probably wouldn't be around and accord them their due respect for this, we mustn't be afraid to examine and be critical of the things that have been passed down from the earlier days either. That which doesn't change and adapt, dies. That which doesn't have strong roots, will eventually wither and if our communities are to thrive and grow, we need to have those strong roots and we need to also be able to adapt.

Herein lies the problem. We're still looking for those roots, we're still examining them and trying to figure it out. The actual historical concepts that we're discovering are receiving little to no dissemination to newbies and when the newbie becomes more experienced, it's hit or miss whether they're ready to consider any other viewpoints than the ones that they initially found in the 'Asatru 101' books. Ezines like Odroerir are starting to try and address this issue, but not all newbies know about it and some might find it inaccessible if they're really 'green'. We have no equivalent of the 'Asatru 101' book that gives concepts in easy-to-swallow chunks. This is an issue. Another multifaceted issue is the issue of communication between those that identify as being reconstructionist and those that don't. The 'reconstructionists' don't always express their disagreement with prevalent views in the best way, the 'non-reconstructionists' become very defensive, the whole thing turns nasty, repeats, and a needless fault-line occurs.

Now I'm not saying everyone should just jump and change, just that people should at least know what is accurate, try and adopt the worldview behind the actual concepts that existed and acknowledge that the practices they *want* to stick to have become their tradition (and there is nothing wrong with that). As my friend said on Saturday night, we need to push things forward. Unfortunately as long as the people trying to reconstruct worldview remain in the minority, we won't manage that. We'll just become a joke like some aspects of Wicca have. I want better for Heathenry. I want something cohesive and beautiful in its simple, rooted elegance. Not weighted down with dross and clunky concepts that don't work properly even within the paradigms that spawned them. As German friend of mine once said:

'I guess at the root of things we're following a heathen path because we receive strength from the cult and that's it what it's all about for me: religion is for the people,but ours isn't opium, but a strengthening medicine to help us live our lives in the best possible way. '

Is the prevalent Heathenry really doing that for us? I don't believe the 'clunk' strengthens. It confuses. When we're in a place where we believe that some deity has selected us to be Odin's special little snowflake and that he's talking to us and going as far as to tell us how to wear our hair, how he likes his cookies and which way to walk or where to park, then something has gone drastically wrong. We're in a place of weakness (and quite possibly mentally ill). When we're in a place where we let synchronicity run our lives, we're in a place of weakness and next to no good to our communities or ourselves. Hell, to use a less insane example, even when we're in a place where we believe that a deity really gives a shit about if we behave in daily life or not and is going to punish us in some otherworldly place for transgressions, we're weak. What is the point of doing something that weakens?

However there is a lot of resistance to calling this kind of thing out, and this leads me to the conversations on Sunday night. We are Heathens, we reserve (or should) reserve the right to call judgement on those that we come across or that come into our communities. Be it about silly, faux-viking names, behaviour, generally accepted concepts or someone that believes that they are so special, that a deity takes a personal interest in their life or has even wooed them in the romantic sense. One might cry for tolerance but these seemingly harmless affectations often hide a myriad of other problems.

Ironically, it's often those that cry for tolerance in those cases that are the least tolerant and ultimately the most venomous. In my opinion, it is those people, that tend to cry for tolerance, that tend to be the ones avoiding the 'you' statements, that tend to speak of how their feelings were 'hurt' by disagreements and that throw the word 'bully' around, that are the most manipulative and ultimately the most harmful to a community. To heap on the irony, they are using more passive aggressive bullying tactics in order to try and stifle opinions that they don't like. This kind of behaviour is yet more of the 'clunk' that Heathens need to call out for what it is in their communities and censure accordingly.

Let's push things forward.

Turtle Island

Leaving Europe was hard, really hard and there were several times on the flights over that I found myself hiding tears from my husband. Eventually, I took myself off to the bathroom and gave myself a stern talking to. As an Englishwoman, I have to keep something called 'stiff upper lip' and so this seemed to work.

I won't bore you with more about how much I love Europe and how much I'm going to miss it. That goes without saying. Instead I'll talk about what it's been like here so far on the huge chunk of land that lots of the Native Americans call Turtle Island.

To say it's strange and a mixed bag to be here should also go without saying. I feel rootless here, I have no ancestors buried here and there's so much I don't know about the land, the myths and hell, even basic stuff like the fact that over here, 'Entrees' on the menu means 'main course' and not 'appetisers'. Sure I've lived in places where I've had no bones in the land or cultural links before, but it was different because each time, the culture was obviously different as opposed to this deceptive feeling of similarity between American cultures and English (or indeed German).

On my second or third night here, my grandmother-in-law gave me a huge bag of knitting/crochet yarn, needles/hooks and pattern books. Some of these items came from my husband's mother, some from his grandmother and some from his great-grandmother.



This gift blew me away. There is so much history and so many stories with these knitting needles and crochet hooks. Tucked among the books are notes that the great grandmother made of all the people in her family she was going to make mittens for, their various sizes and colour preferences. This list is quite long. Other notes are dated and tell of growing children needing new mittens, mittens which she'd then knit up to keep her family warm in the frigid New England winters.




I can't crochet, but my husband's mother could and so I kind of feel pushed to learn. There is the most beautiful example of crochet I've ever seen, a fine lace doily that's already found its pair in my own grandmother's tablecloth which I've oathed to finish. Looking through these treasures, I felt a little less rootless and pulled out my grandmother's tablecloth, examining the stitches that my grandmother struggled to make until the arthritis and blindness stopped her.





These items are made with love, they're truly precious and in a weird way, I kind of feel a pressure from both my husband's female ancestors and my own to lovingly craft things for family, friends and my home. I think that would be the most perfect repayment for such a gift.

The next day, I started knitting a duckling to send to my niece. It's finished now and really very cute. I now have a baby whale on the go for another child.



This is one hell of an adjustment, but by the same measure, it's exciting. It's so pretty here and people have been very friendly so far. I'm now in a land where bears, moose and coyotes aren't just something that you see on films, they might be in your backyard! The house where we're staying at the moment is surrounded by trees, a little way up there are goats and chickens and then you have a wooded hill with the most amazing rocks on it, dumped by the slowly receding glaciers way back when. Some of them reminded me of the 'fairy rocks' from back home and being a tactile person, I ran my hands over them. At that moment, it got a little easier, I stopped feeling down about everything I'd left behind in Germany and England and decided that I want to learn about this land and thrive instead of being wary of the bears and moose and coyotes and whatever else there is that is strange to me. I want to discover this big nature.

And then probably poke it with a stick.

Just kidding :P.

London

There's something of the familiar here
'Homely' as we'd say where I'm from
It's a good word
Positive word
A word of bright fairy lights against a cold winter's night
Of warm homemade blankets against snow
Maybe it's the accent
The same as family dead and gone
The 'I'll love you and leave you's
and cups of 'Rosie Lee'
My Auntie Ada's voice superimposed on my own
I grew up in the North
But I had blood here
My dad's successor was shot at the tube station down the road
Family survived the blitz here
Lived here, grew here
Until the time came for them to go North
And then it was 'Never again, London!'
'Not even for a gold watch!'

Health and Holiness

A couple of weeks ago, I was at a Sumbel with a local group.

One custom of the group when passing the horn from one person to the other, was the spoken exchange of 'Trink Heil' (drink hale) and 'Sei Heil' (be hale).

Unfortuantely, most people have only ever heard the word 'Heil' in reference to the nazis. Everyone has seen the old footage of Hitler and thousands of jackbooted followers giving their salute and shouting 'Sieg Heil!', but that's not all there is to this word. In fact, that does a great disservice to this word and the sacrality represented in those four, little letters.

'Heilen', the verb from which 'Heil' is derived in modern German is generally given the meaning of 'to cure', 'to heal', or is even found as 'das Heil', 'salvation'. 'Heil' can also be found in compound words such as 'Heilkunde'or 'medicine' and even 'Heilig' or 'holy. The word 'heil' can be traced back to Old High German (in which it can also mean 'safe'), after which there are two theorised proto-Germanic etymological origins of the word 'heil'.

1.
*Hailaz (parent to the OE word 'hāl' and the Frisian word ' hēl), meaning 'whole' and theoretically derived from the Proto-Indo European word *koylos, meaning 'healthy, intact, well-omened).

2.
*Hailan (parent to OE word 'hael' and ON word 'heill'), noun 'heil', meaning 'luck'.

If you look at the Anglo Saxon Magico-Medical charms, the focus is much more holistic than modern medicine tends to be. The focus is on whole-making, protecting, strengthening. A break in the 'scinn' (skin - sometimes referring to the physical skin but also potentially referring to an 'astral' skin similar to the ON concept of the 'hamr') could cause a person to lose 'hǽlu'. To lose 'hǽlu' invites sickness, which back then, was either conceived to be due to invasion from an outside force (such as 'flying venom' or 'elfshot'), something that subtracted from the 'wholeness' of the person (such as a supernatural creature that fed off them) or something that disturbed the balance of the body (also attributed to elves).

Of further interest in the Anglo Saxon worldview are words connected to 'hælu', such as:
hæle2 [] m (-þes/-þ, -as) man, hero [] m (-þes/-þ, -as) man, hero

So what kind of a picture can we build of the concept of health in (at least) Anglo Saxon Heathen culture (and possibly others)?

Hælu and its cognates were linked not only to 'health' and 'wholeness, but to 'safety', 'holy', 'luck' and 'salvation'.

What though, does this have to do with us as modern day Heathens?

In our modern day world, we often tend to think of physical health as being completely separate from anything remotely 'spiritual' (for want of a better word). We've all grown up in a culture that values this thing called the 'soul', often at the expense of the physical body. We grew up in a culture that is heavily based on a religion in which mortifying the flesh or putting it through hardship was considered an admirable spiritual endeavour. Something that is still practiced by Christian sects in various parts of the world. There's a disdain for the physical, it's considered worthless. Is it then really any wonder that so many of us have such little regard for our bodies?

We live in a culture in which most of the food we buy, barely passes for actually being food. Hot Pockets, microwave burritos, Hungry Man meals, frozen pizzas, Hamburger Helper and bread that is so pumped with fake nutrients and sugar, it should come with a health warning. What's even crazier is that this non-food that is sold as food, is actually cheaper than real food. For the first time in human history, the poorest people are actually the fattest!

On Heathen sites around the internet, I read a lot about people doing 'daily devotional practices', about them 'building a personal relationship with _(insert deity name here)_' and asking about things like 'growing spiritually'.

This is plug in and play spirituality.

It's time we started to look to the physical and get over this whole mentality of a spiritual/mundane dichotomy. As I've said in this blog before, Heathenry is world accepting. We are part of this world, our bodies are part of this world. There is no separation between our 'spirituality' and our physical bodies. If we really want to grow, we should not only endeavour to grow in our physical communities, but grow our bodies well too.

Now I'm not talking about weight here or having the perfect bodies or all Heathens looking like the Asgardians from the Thor comic. I'm talking health, strength and capability. Those should be our goals. Not only for ourselves but our communities as as we become stronger and increase our capabilities, we also increase our usefulness as members of our communities.

You want to do something Heathen? Educate yourself about exercise and nutrition. Cook nourishing food for your families and friends. Gift nourishing food to people in your community that you care for and who might not be eating enough of what they need (I'm thinking mostly of older people here). Strengthen your bodies. Respect your bodies. Recognise the worth in your body and love it for what you can do with it. Enjoy your bodies. Make yourselves whole.

Waes thu hael!


Sources:

Leechcraft - Stephen Pollington

Woerterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen:
Dritter Teil: Wortschatz der Germanischen Spracheinheit - Fick, Falk & Torp

http://home.comcast.net/~modean52/oeme_dictionaries.htm

Bosworth and Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: http://bosworth.ff.cuni.cz/051517