The Story So Far… October 7, 2008

Five years ago I became aware that someone – Someone, rather – was paying attention to me.

Did this frighten me? No. Was I concerned for my own sanity? Yes. Did I question the validity of my suspicions? Oh, yes.

In time I figured out Who it was, and the answer was a surprise. It wasn’t an invisible friend, figment of my imagination, pesky fire elemental, local wight or dead human. It was a deity. It was Loki. I can’t tell you at which precise point I knew this for a fact, but it only happened after much reflection and self-examination to ascertain that I was not, in fact, delusional.

After I acknowledged and named the Presence in my life, He began to speak to me. Not in a mighty voice from above, accompanied by a burning bush (or burning anything) and not to utter proclamations concerning deep, dire secrets, or to reassure me that I was His especial chosen, or anything spectacular like that. Mostly, He wanted candy. And to see me naked. A lot. And to my amusement and bewilderment, nothing, it seemed, was beneath His notice. He acted like a stranger who comes in off the street and is found sitting comfortably in your living room, feet on the coffee table, drinking your beer and eating your chips, when you come home tired from work. Instead of trying to throw Him out, however, I merely shrugged and joined Him on the couch, as it were. I might be flaky, easily bored  and easily distracted, but even I recognize inevitability when I see it in the form of a tall, red-haired interloper in eyeliner and a pair of tight leather pants.

Even so, this took some adjustment. I had been a Neo-Pagan for about 17 years before that, and my experience of the Divine was that the gods, if They even existed, were immanent yet distant, and wholly unconcerned with the minutiae of mortal everyday life. It was not always so, I discovered. Loki ingratiated Himself into my life so smoothly that in a relatively short time, I forgot what it felt like to have my awareness (and my bathroom) all to myself. He spoke to me unexpectedly, His words sizzling into my mind with a crackling intensity that was and is sharply distinct from my own meandering thoughts. It was very clear to me where He began and I ended, since He would say things, funny or pointed or sometimes cruelly accurate, that I would never have dared even to whisper to myself.

I like hearing the lay of your thoughts, Loki once said when I questioned Him as to why He preferred to hang around at the edges of my mind, eavesdropping on everything I was thinking. I didn’t know whether to feel violated or flattered. I chose the latter.

And after a few weeks of this, feeling His flame-like presence all around me day in and day out, I fell in love with Loki. I had read the Poetic Edda and Loki’s myths and had started looking into the pantheon of other deities who are worshiped in Asatru – and even some, like Loki’s wives Angrboda and Sigyn, who generally aren’t. I already knew that He was viewed less than charitably by a good number of people, and seemed unwelcome among many. That made no difference to me. The Loki I knew then and now is a trickster, a thief and a liar, a sorcerer, and the catalyst for both rollicking, bawdy humor and the terrifying end of the world, but to me He has ever been a friend, a lover and a source of both radiant joy and sweet pain. I defy anyone who encounters Loki as I have encountered Him to avoid falling in love, even just a little.

Our “courtship” went on for some time as I explored Northern religion and began to understand that while my experience wasn’t exactly commonplace, neither was it singular. I found others like me – those who heard the voices of the gods, whose lives are turned over to Them, and who were subsequently forced to make drastic changes in their living arrangements, religious views and the ways in which they perceive themselves. Most of these were people I met online. I was quite isolated and without a large social network where I lived and no one whose experience was remotely similar was at hand for me to commiserate with. Looking back, I can see how it made things especially difficult. But Loki wouldn’t go away. And contrary to what I had been told, my life did not fall into ruin and chaos because I associated with Him, even though some hard things were asked of me, such as leaving my job, coming out to my conservative family about my religious activities and making a long cross-country journey to visit a shaman I barely knew. Loki’s presence made my life better, not worse.

As hubris-filled as this probably sounds, on a regular basis Loki told me He loved me, and tried very hard to encourage me to have better self-esteem, to stand up for myself, and to rely on my own good judgment. He did not terrify me (often) as the Breaker of Worlds, nor did He even bedevil me much as the Trickster. Mostly, Loki showed me love and affection at a time when I had given up all hope of ever being deserving of those things. And I loved Him more and more. He became the most important Person in my life, the center of my heart. He still is.

A year or so after showing up, Loki asked me to become His consort. This was an entirely new notion to me, but then I thought of Catholic nuns who become the “brides of Christ,” and of the priestess who was called a wife of Frey in the primary sources, and it didn’t seem so strange. I was nervous at first, but Loki didn’t have to work very hard to win me over, so I finally agreed. We exchanged our marriage-oaths without fanfare, in the presence of no one else. Later there was an actual wedding, but that is a long and strange tale in and of itself, and for another time.

However, as happy as I am to be a wife of Loki, there have been difficult times. I had to come to grips with the considerable emotional baggage I still carried around from my childhood and adolescence, and some traumatic experiences that had happened in the years before Loki found me. Also, I learned the actual nature of our relationship, past and present, and it shook me considerably, since it altered everything I thought I knew about myself and my reasons for being incarnate in Midgard at this time. At other times, loneliness, desperation and poor signal clarity led me to some bad choices, some of which had long-term consequences.

And while learning to love Loki was very easy, learning to love myself – not just for His sake, but for my own – has proven to be the hardest thing of all. If there is one thing that belonging to Loki has taught me, it’s that real power – the kind that is dependent only on one’s own will and self-assurance, the kind that cannot be taken away by another no matter how badly you’re treated – cannot happen if you don’t respect yourself as an individual first. Someone had to point out to me – fairly recently, as a matter of fact – that if I do not take care of myself, I spit on Loki’s love and whatever value He places on me. While I am comfortable with the idea of being Loki’s property and doing as I’m told, even I must acknowledge that self-abnegation and pointless self-abasement are contrary to the spirited, joyous lust for life that runs through the Northern faiths, whether they are reconstruction-oriented or not.

Through the past few years Loki and His daughter Hela (who is my other fulltrui, or patron) and the other gods whom I revere have guided me onto a life path which is strikingly different from anything I might have envisioned for myself. I don’t mind that. Whether that’s because I’m just a passive underachiever or because I knew before it was expressly pointed out to me that I owe a lifetime of service to Them, I’m not certain. But I can say with full confidence that although I’m unsure of where I will be in a year, much less five or ten years, feeling my way along in the dark as I do, I’m much happier being a Lokean nun than I would have been as an archaeologist or a paralegal or a fantasy novel writer or even a cook, all of which I considered as career choices, and which I would’ve been reasonably good at.

There is a good deal I’m leaving out here, but this is enough back story, I think, for people to understand where I’ve been. I’m not really sure where I’m headed, but that’s part of the reason I’m keeping this public blog in the first place. And I do realize that all this talk of hearing voices in my head (and doing what They tell me to do) makes me sound like a schizophrenic or at least an attention whore, but I also know there’s no way I can convince everyone who reads this of my sanity or sincerity with my earnestly written blog posts. But this is an honest account of my spiritual life, and if anybody’s being jerked around or lied to here, it’s me. That’s a chance, however unlikely, which I’m willing to take.

* * *

Not all the posts here are going to be so touchy-feely. I’m planning to write about ethics, daily devotional practice and the wearing of special clothing in the near future.