How We Met…
I’ve always said that when you perform spiritual work with your friends, you end up working with your friends’ Gods, and in some cases, get adopted by them. This is how my practice first became eclectic, and how I met Loki.
Before Fall of 2009, I was a deep devotee of Bast and I wanted nothing to do with the Norse pantheon. My roots in Paganism had started about nine years before that in ceremonial magic, and my current Egyptian paradigm went right along with it. Then Loki came along and all of that changed in the blink of an eye. I’d never dared to work with Him before. In my earlier days, I was foolish enough to think that older and wiser always went hand in hand, and others portrayed Him to me as this caustic, merciless God who rode into your life on a white horse and left it burning in ruins in His wake. Before that autumn, I’d only dared to call on Him once, at a particularly chaotic time in my life. I knew that April 1st was considered His day, so I snuck back to the house altar with a gigantic cup of coffee and a prayer that was only slightly more eloquent than “Here’s some coffee. Please leave me alone. Thanks!” Obviously, this was very ineffective or I wouldn’t be writing this essay.
I met Loki “in the flesh” when a friend asked to have her patron invoked. There was this instant connection between us, and I felt drawn to him, like shrapnel being ripped across a table by a strong magnet. I shook it off and put it aside. The Norse pantheon was Tim’s thing, and when I worked with them, I worked with Thor and Sif, and that was about it. This event, funny enough, became a catalyst for our group of friends to begin our own weekly spirituality study. We met every Sunday, and since several individuals in our group were mediums, or “horses”, inevitably, one or more of the Gods that we worked with would often ask to be let through to speak with someone who needed their advice. Loki became a familiar presence at these gatherings. I laughed at his jokes, jested back and forth with Him, and shrugged off His advances. I enjoyed His company, I offered Him coffee, but I always kept both Him and the possibility of any real relationship at arm’s length, until the following February. You might say that was the beginning of the end of my life as I knew it.
The next year, at a large, Pagan gathering called Convocation, we were with our same menagerie that met on Sunday. A friend’s fiancé had gone through a meditation and come out really worse-for-wear on the other side. When his priest failed to help him calm down and center, we invited him to our room to do some work with grounding and shielding. This particular person was engaged to a woman who was a devotee of Loki, who had prompted the meeting that first introduced Him into my life. While we were talking with him, Loki volunteered to come through a vessel and help him. He revealed Himself mostly as The Trickster in those days, because that was what we needed at the time. So, before we got down to work, He took a moment to play off the room, tease a few people, and much to my chagrin, spent a good chunk of time directly focused on me. I forget exactly what all was said, but I do remember somewhere in the conversation Him saying, “…because we have this rapport between us, sweetheart, and we need to do something about that.” I made the decision that night to stop ignoring that “draw”. Once our friend was feeling better, and everyone had departed for the night, I ask my fiancée to horse Him again, so we could talk alone. I was curious. There was no more ignoring that draw: I was hooked, and frankly, I was frightened by the devotion that I felt for Him early on. For a long time, we walked that elaborate dance: I would push forward, He would wait for me to meet Him, He would step forward, and I would run screaming in the opposite direction. Before Loki, I had never experienced such a devoted and loving relationship with a God, and I, honestly, wasn’t sure how to react. There were many days when I felt like Kirsty in Hellraiser curled up in the corner screaming “You’re not real!” It’s taken me a long time to reconcile that, and more than one experience that my critical little nerd brain can’t analyze away. Regardless, my life began to change for the positive in that moment. Loki is the deity with whom I have had the closest relationship, but He was also the first to lock me in a cage with my demons and wait for me to stare them down.
Trial By Fire…
Loki has brought me screaming to my knees and risen me to heights that I could even conceive of, let alone see, from where I’d been previously standing. He has at the same time been the most patient and demanding, the most loving and cruel, the most powerful and gentle God that I’ve ever worked with.
When Loki first found me, I was a broken, lost girl, despite the fact that I was twenty-four. I was two years out of a horrible relationship where I experienced rape along with physical and emotional abuse. My own mother had passed away not too long ago, and my relationship with the remainder of my biological family was strained. My family had a long history of abusive relationships, and in some cases drug abuse. I trusted no one and I revealed nothing personal. Anyone who even made even the hint at emotional intimacy watched me devolve from a gregarious, loving person to a caustic monster in 0.5 seconds. I lived life half alive behind a wall of masks and facades, keeping myself busy enough to not have to confront what hid in the shadows. I convinced everyone around me that I was okay, no, not only okay, getting better. Nothing could be further from the truth. I was frozen in the past I’d run from. Every lover was my abuser, every friendship transitory. With Loki around, this melted quickly.
This was about a month after I’d come back from going through the Choronzon Ritual at Convo. Those of you who were there, know Khabbalic lore, or have read Peter Carroll, are already wincing. For those of you who evade those categories, I’ll explain: in Khabbalic lore, Malkuth (the material plane) is separated from the three Supernals (the three aspects of God) by the Abyss, which is the home of the demon Choronzon. Chorozon’s job is dissolve all the bitterness, pain, and everything you carried in this life so that you can move on without tether and restriction to be ready to approach God. Normally this is conducted after death, but we took the trip a little early. The meat of the ritual was fairly simple, composing of a guided meditation, but this ritual was extremely powerful and one of the very few cases of astral travel where my body experienced intense and lasting physical pain. I could have purged a good number, if not all, of the defense mechanisms I’d set in place from my abusive history in that ritual. But I didn’t. I kept my distance, mistrust, and my simultaneous fears of being hurt or alone. I recognized these things as necessary to survive. Who cared if I kept hold of them, healthy or not? It wasn’t a conscious decision, but one that I made, nonetheless.
When we came together for our weekly meeting about a month later, Loki made an appearance. He called me up in front of the group and called me out on having kept hold of all of those poisonous traits that I didn’t need. I’d told Him that I wanted to be rid of those old mindsets, and I’d completely spit on a perfect opportunity to do so.
“You lied to the Gods,” he told me. “You especially lied to me, and worse, you lied to yourself.”
Then He slapped me across the face.
In that instant, every nagging feeling or thought attached to my abusive ex came rushing to the surface. I remembered in that second, in a rush, what it was like to be belittled, choked, restrained, held down… everything I had tried so hard not to focus on, as if forgetting it would make it go away.
I was so shocked and overwhelmed in the moment that I wanted to do nothing more than burst into tears and scream at Him. How could He do that to me? But I refused to burst into tears at a slap with Him standing in front of me (as if He wouldn’t be around for the breakdown afterward). I steeled myself, and met his gaze stone-cold and listened to what He had to say until He left. Tim, my fiancé, had been hosting Him, and when he found out what Loki had done, to say that he was pissed was about five shades too happy for Tim’s reaction. I distinctly remember something about “never letting that fucker” back in his body. This, of course, turned out not to be the case. Loki and I spoke and recognized any anger that I had from that moment. I understood why He had done it. I really needed to let these things go. My inability to trust was destroying my current relationship and my life. I looked in the mirror and saw only an unhappy girl being judged by the standards of what everyone else thought she should be. Too many of the voices doing the judging were not my own, and if I needed a hard slap to the face to realize those things, then so be it.
The trials didn’t stop there, but I have no desire to run you through every painful ordeal that Loki has subjected me to. Many of them are extremely personal, and for those that I must illuminate, I’d rather do so beside the joy this relationship has brought me.
Nothing and Everything: Becoming the Priestess of the Fire God
As the work Loki and I engaged in gained momentum, so did our relationship. With the Egyptian gods, I received messages when I directly asked a question or meditated to Them. With Loki, I got a running commentary on my life. My brain was filled with idle dialogue, spiritual epiphanies, and random jokes. I was likely to just burst out laughing during a car-ride or while walking around in a store. I got my share of odd looks, but didn’t care. At the same time that I enjoyed our dialogue, the frequency at which they occurred disturbed me. Why did He care so much? Why was it worth His time to involve Himself in my personal life and issues? Why did I matter? He would give me a range of responses, from simple answers to hard truths. As easy as He could brighten my day and draw me from the darkest of moods into giggling fits, He could bring me to tears with a single statement. Sometimes, he would give me simple answers to my paranoia, simply saying “Because I love you” and sometimes He would throw the obvious in my face asking me questions such as “You just can’t accept unconditional love, can you?” And I couldn’t. There had to be a reason, some sort of equivalent exchange, and I felt that for everything He laid at my feet, that I could in no way possibly give back what I felt I “owed” Him. What I really didn’t understand was that He knew that, and didn’t expect me to. It boggled my mind.
If He wanted to say something to me in “Norse-speak”, as I have fondly termed Old German, it would often come into my head as the closest word that I was familiar with. Somewhere in the midst of all this settling, the word ‘goetia’ kept coming into conversation. Confused as to what exactly Loki had to do with a series of demons from Solomonic magic, I posed to the question to my fiancée, who had educated himself far better in the pages of Norse lore. Albeit, in a round-about fashion.
“So, I’ve been reading a few of the myths, and I read about these volvas that Odin spoke to,” I said to him while walking through downtown East Lansing. “It’s the closest analogy I’ve found for a priestess, though I could only imagine the series of jokes that would ensue if I called myself Loki’s volva.”
He laughed.
“Actually, there is a word for priestess: it’s gythia.”
Something in the back of my brain clicked and my blood froze in 80 degree weather. That was what He had been saying, and it scared the hell out of me. To me, the idea of being someone’s priestess was significantly different that just working with them. I believe you can work with a myriad of deities, but priesthood is more of a one-on-one show. Of course, this could just be because Loki’s loud and demanding and doesn’t leave much room for anyone else. (And I say that with much love.) Regardless, this suggested something much more personal than the relationship we already had going, and that made me nervous.
I asked Him if that was what He wanted: for me to be His priestess.
“Maybe,” he told me, giving half-cocked self-assured smile.
I sighed.
“What will you want from me?”
“Your love and devotion.”
“You want that now, what will change?”
“A lot… and nothing.”
“Specifically.”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“Then I need time to think.” And that was fine.
In the meantime, I ran to my other sources. While I now worked far more often with Loki, I’d always felt safe around Thor. It’s funny to say that I find a God of Lightning, one of the most destructive and unpredictable forces on the planet safer than my own God, but it was true. His energy was warmer, more comforting, and Thor was a more straight-forward kind of God. He put what he wanted directly on the table with an iron fist. Loki… liked to keep possibilities open. I think, perhaps, that’s why so many Heathens feel so uncomfortable with working with the Jotun, even outside of the conflict depicted in the lore. (After all, Skadi is Jotun, and so is the mother of Thor, Frigga, and Thrud.) The Aesir seem to love you just for your humanity, and for your desire to better yourself and your fellow man. The Jotun are more utilitarian: What can you do, how well can you do it, and, frankly, why are you worth their time? I think Tim summarizes their outlook quite beautifully: “I liken the Jotun to the mafia: Once you’re in, you’re in, and if anyone fucks with you, they ALL come after you. But if you’re not, watch your ass.” For all I was working more with the Jotunar, I still loved Thor. He had worked with me through a lot of self-defense practice, and I still had promised Him a beer as a “Thank you”. So, I asked my fiancée to host Him so I could deliver said offering “in-person” with the secret intention of questioning him. Thor was both appreciative and amused.
I asked Him outright what I should expect. He laughed.
“You’re not serving me. What I would expect from you as my priestess would be very different from what Loki will be expecting from you as His. But, in all honesty, I really can’t tell you.”
That’s something that I’ve noticed across the board: Jotun or not, the Gods seem to keep each others’ secrets, with the exception of Loki and Odin, who foil each other regularly.
To be honest, I don’t think the suggestion that I become His gythia was ever a question. Did I have a choice? Certainly. But I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t have liked where my life had gone had I said ‘No’. And that was exactly what did change: nothing and everything, all at the same time.
Falling in Love with a God
Many people balk at the idea of any having extremely close relationship to their deities, whether that be in the case of a parent-child or, worse, a romantic relationship. However, this is neither as foreign or fringe as many practitioners might think. Looking for example, at the practice of maryaj lwa in Voodoo, where practitioners marry lwa and set aside one night a week to sleep and be exclusively with that deity. There’s also the story of the Trojan War where Cassandra is driven insane because she refuses to marry Apollo. Of course, any historical link to that story is sketchy, but cultures rarely, if ever, write about events occurring within their own people for which there is no cultural precedent. There is also Meerabai, who declared herself a devout mortal wife of Krishna. Many Christian nuns consider themselves literally “brides of Christ”. In Celtic lore, men who had aspirations to ascend to a throne or a place of power usually curried favor with The Morrigan to do so, generally by engaging in a series of oaths and sexual acts with Her, which is why one of the names of Maeve was “The Kingmaker”. To which, someone might ask, what does any of this have to do with Norse deities or practice? Cultures bleed into one another as people travel and experience each other. This is why we see Celtic knotwork in Norse artwork, why Isis became venerated as an all-encompassing mother in Egyptian and Greek cultures, and why you have deities like Erzulie Freya and Erzulie Brigid in Voodoo spirituality. The divisions between cultures and religions has blurred heavily over time. Despite this, many traditions and practitioners caution against mixing paradigms in your practice. And in some cases, they’re right, certain things just don’t work. I work with both Ganesh and Loki. Ganesh certainly isn’t interested in a blot and Loki isn’t interested in being honored in puja. However, Loki does not speak to me in Old German and Ganesh does not talk to me in Sanskrit or Hindi, and I’ve found that if two deities have an affinity for a practitioner, they have no problem coming together to accomplish a common goal. Similarly, the aforementioned religions all have something in common: they facilitate a culture in which spirituality is a focus of daily life. It is only in these last few decades that we have “learned” that God, in any form, is excluded from our homes, our lineage, and our bedrooms. People have been taught that they were unworthy to receive divinity, and I think that this is perhaps one of the greatest injustices that has been done to modern spirituality. Hell, even in Norse lore, Odin and Skadi begot entire lines of kings, and in another tale, Rig (i.e. Odin or Heimdall, depending on who you ask) wandered Midgard sowing the seed of the Aesir in mortal lines. Even if these women passed namelessly into history, they still existed. Unless I missed something in basic physiology, conception is not a one-man job. It is not surprising to me that as more forms of spirituality “revive” in large numbers and become, again, part of our daily lives and thoughts, that we are seeing a rise in the amount of mortals identifying as “god-children” or “god-wives”. People are listening again. After all, how can you have a relationship with a child that won’t call, or a wife/husband that won’t speak with you?
The most notable difference was that Loki became a harder taskmaster when I became His priestess. He broke me down over and over again to build a stronger woman where I had once stood. Anything that He saw as an issue in my life, he attacked relentlessly, and those first six months were a test of something I had never had before: faith. He tested my compulsive, hoarding behavior with money, my fear of intimacy, my self-esteem. Loki ran me to the breaking point and over the edge, without hesitation, and nothing improved until I reach the point where I threw up my hands in the air and let go of it, giving it up to Him and finally listening to what He told me to. I had lingering abandonment issues from earlier ordeals in my younger life that were a peach to confront at this point as well. I’m stubborn. I didn’t want to face down these demons. It hurt even to look at them, to think about them: where they had come from, reliving those experiences. He made me see that the woman staring back at Him was a shattered visage of what I could be, that I was living half alive. I didn’t want to see it, and I fought Him all the way.
“You’re going to get sick of me,” I told Him when I reached those breaking points. “You’re going to get tired of my bullshit, and you’re going to leave.”
“I’ll always be here,” He told me, His voice quieting to that whisper He only takes on when He’s serious: intimate and engulfing. “As long as you keep trying, I’ll always be here.”
I used to laugh privately at the irony that fate had brought Tim and I together: An Odin’s son and Loki’s priestess. I’d stopped believing in coincidences. Loki spoke through them.
Not too long into this relationship, I had felt like I was truly losing touch with reality, like all the dialogue going in my head was just that: in my head, and I was losing that last hold on sanity.
“I can be your lover, I can be your priestess,” I told Him. “But, if you want this, please give me some indication that this is real.”
And then, things actually began to happen.
I would get lost in cities I was unfamiliar with and get directions home. I was told to go speak with a Heathen practitioner at Paganfest about what was happening with Loki, and the name ‘Beithor’ got stuck in my head, and when I went to say ‘Balder’, Beithor slipped out instead. Tim chuckled, thinking that I had gotten my Olympian Spirits and Norse Deities confused. The Heathen laughed and said, “Actually, that’s an ancient Slavic name for Balder.” I’ve never found anything to corroborate this, but a lot of information I’ve found reading texts on Norse myth is not available on the internet, and Steve was much more of a history buff that I can ever aspire to be, so I trust him. I would panic about not having enough money to pay my bills, be told ‘I’ll take care of it’, and random scholarships in amounts from $300-$3000 would drop into my account on various occasions. These are just a few of the things that have happened. Funnily enough, these “answers” to that request just made me feel crazier, and it took a long time for me to have faith in my experiences and be broken of that.
At the same time, Odin was breaking Tim of his attachment to the provider role. Odin had made it very clear that Tim was not getting a “real job” and that this was the time he needed to focus on college and spiritual work. This was very hard for him, coming out of a staunch Catholic family, where the man brings home the bacon and provides for the needs of his family. I’ve always been very independent both by nature and necessity, and have served this role in our relationship for a long time. This wasn’t a revelation that bothered me, though it drove Tim insane. Surprisingly enough, Loki took up that role in my life wherever I needed help. If I needed something, all I had to do was ask and it appeared: money, some obscure problem taken care of, you name it.
I felt my relationship with Loki shifting. He filled all the roles I needed or wanted that Tim didn’t fill. Tim couldn’t relate to many of my traumatic life experiences, Loki could. We spoke of what it was like to be abused by a parent. (In my UPG, or unverified personal gnosis, one detail that does not corroborate with any others that I’ve heard was that Farbauti as the “cruel striker” was not limited to his dominion over lightning.) We spoke of loss, of grief. I found a resonance in Loki that allowed me to be truly intimate with Him. In my day-to-day life, I fought with pangs of whirling doubt, but in His arms, there was a perfect calm to that storm and understood what it was to be content, loved, completed.
I shared many of Loki’s experiences. When Tim went through his nine-day isolation and meditation, it was I who had to care for him, just as Loki cared for Odin when He hung on Yggdrasil. During that time, Tim reeked of death and I could feel and see the wound festering in his side. It was painful to watch, and I could barely stand to be around him. It repulsed me and broke my heart at the same time, just as it had Loki’s. He was my only consolation through all of that, when I was the only one who could feed and clean up after my fiancé, and I can promise you it was as much an ordeal for me as it was for him. I had to watch him suffer in silence, and not be able to do anything about it.
One night when I was laying in bed, I found myself moved to stretch with my legs together and arms crossed above my head, and I experienced the entirety of Loki’s binding. I felt his grief first-hand at Narvi’s death. I heard Sigyn’s screams. I struggled until the tissue burned my wrists. I felt the poison splash on my face when Sigyn moved the bowl, burning and searing like high molar acid. I would have sworn it burned the flesh from my skull, had I not relived the agony when the bowl, again, filled. I felt the rage and pain that broke His bonds, and eventually the world. I was with Him right up to the point where Heimdall’s axe cleaved his head from his shoulders, and into the silence that followed. It was intense and powerful, and we held each other in silent understanding in the lull that followed when it all was done.
That was His last test of me before we hit a real breaking point in our relationship: to see if I’d go through all of that and not back away from it.
In the months preceding this, I’d struggled intensely with our relationship. I knew I was in love with a God. The realization snuck up on me as I was lying in His arms one night. Loki and I had had a sexual relationship, almost from the beginning. This wasn’t abnormal to me, I’d shared sexual energy with deities and spirits before, and I didn’t equate it to romance. I’d read sources talking about how Loki sexually pursued many of his followers, so I figured it was a perk that came with the job of being His priestess and didn’t much question it. That sounds so horrible to say that now, but He is a God, and I’m a mortal, and what could He possibly get out of having a deeper, romantic connection to me? But, I remember laying there, and Him whispering to me “I love you” and I said it back, and knew the instant the words left my mouth, that I didn’t just mean that in the sense that He was my deity and I was devoted to Him anymore. I meant those words in the deepest sense: that I was my happiest while in His company, that I craved the intimacy of His touch, and not just in a sexual manner. There was something about Him that produced a stillness in me that I hadn’t experienced in a very long time. It put me in awe, and the realization of that terrified me. After all, I’d read the Greek myths, and this never ends well. Despite the fact that He wasn’t Greek, He had two divine wives and several mortal ones. What did I have to add? It wasn’t even the devaluing of myself that made me run, but the realization that I loved Him deeper than I loved my fiancé. He was, after all, my God, but I still felt horrible over that realization, and I was terrified to acknowledge it. I knew He had asked at least one of His mortal wives to be with Him, and exclusively with Him. I knew that if He asked me to walk away from Tim and Damaru, that I would do it. I would fight and complain about it, but in the end, I belonged with Loki, and I already knew that.
But I doubted constantly His feelings for me, and He preyed on that, seeing how far it would go. He would be all jokes and surface humor, with a sparse affectionate word thrown in here or there. He would ask Tim to horse Him, show up wanting to fool around, and I would go along with it. No more than a few moments after we were done, He would leave and be silent for hours afterward. Other times, He would speak only of love and devotion, and have intimate, insightful conversations with me for hours. I felt like a yo-yo being thrown violently back and forth, and I would never know, from day-to-day, which length of the string I was on.
“He’s just using you,” I would tell myself alone in the dark. “You’re just a fun plaything when He gets bored. You love Him and you actually think He loves you back? You stupid little bitch…” I was harsh with myself in those times. I felt used and manipulated.
I wrote a lot off in this period. I began to rationalize everything. It was incredibly convenient that Loki had come into my life and fixed a lot of the problems that Tim and I had gone around. Even though I still spoke with Him, even though I still acknowledged certain elements of that relationship, I began to tell myself I was just working with a construct, and Tim was just taking a different persona, because it was easier to deal with these sensitive topics when he wasn’t “himself”. No matter how much this pissed Loki off, despite all the conversations we’d had exclusively in my mind, and despite the fact that Loki (while invoked) could address or continue those same conversations that I hadn’t told Tim about, it was the only comfort I had when He would switch from telling me that He loved me, to vanishing after sex and being silent for hours.
“He wants you to set boundaries,” Tim told me one day. This just made me even more frustrated and angry. Occasionally, Tim was privy to information Loki wouldn’t give me, because it would interfere with what He was trying to teach me. It was one of the agreements He and Tim had for Tim allowing Loki to use his body, much to my chagrin.
“How the fuck do you set boundaries on a God?!” I spat. I knew Tim had been equally upset by what Loki was doing, at least as much as Damaru, and perhaps even more so because his body was often the vessel for such interaction.
“You know, He’s afraid that He’s going to push you too far and you’ll stop working with Him.”
I was silent for a moment, the thought hadn’t even occurred to me. I know that this had happened to Him with quite a few devotees. Everyone loves to have fun with the Trickster, but spend fifteen minutes backed against the wall by the Breaker of Worlds and the party’s over. I got that latter aspect of Him more often than I would like to admit.
This was a period where I ran through everything I could find from Elizabeth Vongvisith and Tracy Nichols, two Loki’s wives who had written about their experiences, because I desperately needed someone to relate to, to find some other sign that someone else had gone through something similar, and that I hadn’t lost my mind. The only other place I found solace for this dichotomy was in the DC Universe. I’ve always related Loki, in His Breaker of World guise especially, to Joker and I had begun to feel a lot like Harley Quinn. The hard back-and-forth of their intimacy and abuse reflected how I felt about my God. (I’ll flash my nerd card here, and say that Harley is much more of an appropriate psychotic companion in the comics, and that that relationship gets a lot more depth there.) But, as I’d just stated, Harley is an abuse victim, in all accounts, and that was not what I wanted from Loki, or anyone at this point. I was ready to draw that line.
I think the final catalyst was about a week after Tim’s ordeal on Yggsdrasil when Loki performed another one of his bedtime disappearing acts and I finally lost my composure. Tim came back to see me broodily staring at the ceiling with moisture welling in my eyes and wanted to know what happened. I didn’t want to talk. I knew talking about it would make me cry, and I already felt like enough of an idiot. Like I’ve said, I weigh my UPG against whether or not the experience was making my life better. Loki had brought me so far, enlightened me, and changed my life so much that I desperately wanted this to be real. But this wasn’t making my life better. I hurt. I was miserable, and I couldn’t stomach this anymore. I confessed the dual nature I was facing with my God, how much it hurt me, and how used I felt.
“I’m done,” he said, throwing up his hands. “I’ve tried to be patient while He put you through whatever, but this is bullshit. I’m done.”
“No,” I said. “I at least need to resolve this.”
When I spoke with Him, He was actually nervous. Loki confessed, afterward, that He was all but certain that I was going to tell Him that I wanted Him out of my life, and any relationship or agreements we had were over. That wasn’t what I wanted, but I was about to that breaking point.
I explained how used and objectified I felt and asked Him why He’d been acting this way.
“I had to watch what happened with David, and I hated every moment of it. I watched every time he beat you… choked you… raped you,” He told me. “I needed to know that you could never go back there again. I needed you to recognize those cycles in a relationship, so that you would never accept that from anyone else ever again, even a God. And if I had to be your Satan, your adversary, to get you to see that, I was willing to do so, because I never want to watch that again.”
It hurt, just as much, that I had let Him do that, as that He had done it. I’d thought I was further than that, and once again, Loki proved me wrong. I’d let my emotions blind me enough to be used and objectified by another partner. He’d made his point.
I can’t remember what exactly was said from here on, only that I told Him I couldn’t do this anymore if He was going to use our relationship as a teaching tool. I would still be His priestess, but if He needed to do that, then any romantic aspect to our relationship was done. It hurt too much. And He swore to me, on his Troth, that He would never do that again. Of all the things that Loki is and has been, He is not an oath-breaker.
That’s something that Loki’s been very firm with me on: He wants a priestess who can stand beside him, not beneath Him. He needs a priestess who can hold her boundaries, even against a God. I’ll admit, that it’s a hard battle some days and a war on frustration: He’s my Deity, and I’ve had years of conditioning to be a people-pleaser. It’s a hard habit to break.
Rebound
It’s been a long road building back up from that, and being able to accept that I am so loved by a deity. I’ve had to push myself through a lot of doubt, and He’s, thankfully, been extremely patient with me. I’ve moved from someone who hid her pain in the darkness, as some demon in the shadows to never be released, to someone who can turn a very traumatic experience as a pivot upon which to relate and help people. I’ve gone from being a victim, to an advocate against domestic violence, reaching out into my community. I get random strangers who pour their hearts out to me, needing a sympathetic ear. I get phone calls at strange hours of the night and day. I’ve learned new energy healing techniques and been “sicced” on people to go and use them, with some incredible results. I’ve come to love the work I do alongside Him as His priestess. My life was set up for this. I’ve had hard experiences because it’s impossible to council others over certain life traumas if you’ve never experienced those traumas yourself. I think Loki was just waiting for the right time when I could be shoved through all this to become a force against the pain I have experienced.
As far as our romantic relationship, I’ve climbed mountains of doubt in believing that a God could have any interest in “little old me”. I’ve learned to not only believe, but know that I am beautiful, that I am worthwhile, and that I do have things to offer to this world. Loki has made my life better by leaps and bounds. I’ve wrestled for months thinking that I was insane, and this was all in my head. But, it’s very hard to believe that when different people, from different groups and locations are experiencing the same things you do, down to the same things the Deity has said or requested. It’s hard to believe all the coincidences and the “voices in my brain” are matching up so succinctly if there isn’t something going on. Beyond that, I think to all the times I’ve spent giggling over silly comments on car rides and in the middle of night, the joy I’ve felt lying in his arms, and the late-night dreams and wanderings through Jotunheim, I wouldn’t trade these experiences for the world. I’ve finally crossed a bridge to where I’m ready to share that part of myself and my spirituality with the world. I no longer want my relationship with Loki to be a secret that I hide in the shadows, and frankly, that’s been somewhat of a burr up His ass for a while.
Being able to read into practices such as the Maryaj Lwa and being able to talk to several other Loki’s wives has really helped me feel a little more “sane” throughout all this process. I have, formally, agreed to be His consort. (He asked me on my birthday in 2010. I was sitting with my fiancé, watching a movie and talking with Him and I mentioned something about engagement, in passing. He asked me if that would make me happy, I told Him it would, and was summarily dragged off to Asgard of all places.) We haven’t actually done any type of ceremony yet. I had some things I needed to work through first, and now I’m assembling all the things I want to honor Him “properly”, since we’re planning on doing something tangible and in the other worlds. (“Properly” being my own stipulation. What can I say? It’s the ceremonial magician in me. If I’m going to do something spiritually significant, it’s going to be a show.) It’s a display of love and devotion that I’m excited to make. While the universe was kind enough to give me Tim, and Loki was kind enough not to run him off, I was always supposed to be with Loki. I’ve just taken the (unnecessarily) long road to admitting that.
