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On Loki: Analyzing the Mythology

25 Tuesday Jan 2011

Posted by dreamsofdjinn in Uncategorized

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Loki, mythology, UPG

When I first began researching Loki in the Fall of 2009, I was disappointed at the lack of information I could find, and moreso in the bias presented in what information was out there. There are surprisingly few accounts of personal interaction with Loki in Heathen writing, and even within the Pagan community. For any one article I found recounting a personal experience with Loki, I found ten based solely on fear and prejudice, claiming that Loki was not a God and should not be worshiped, or that His energy was inherently deceitful and should not be sought under any circumstances, with little or no sources cited to support their views. I’ve even seen personal accounts go as far as to say that cats bearing his name have tried to kill their owners by knocking electrical devices into their bathwater. (To this, I have to add a little bit of snark: If you leave your blow dryer, curling iron, and/or toaster on the side of your bathtub, and your cat, an arm-flail, or gravity drops it into your bathwater with you in it, besides being a tragic accident, that is not Loki’s responsibility. That, folks, is natural selection. Do not blame a God, blame Darwin.)
So, in light of that, I am making two pieces regarding both my research and my own experiences with Loki both as an offering to Him, and as a resource to anyone who may be on the same search I was and is struggling to find information on Him or those who work at His side.

Challenging Misconception One: Loki is not a God

This is an argument that you will hear in many circles, despite the fact that Loki speaks of being the blood-brother to Odin (a process generally consisting of two individuals opening a purposeful wound upon the hand or some other surface, and mixing blood to create a spiritual bond and connection) in the Lokasenna and is often counted among the ranks of the Aesir in various myths. The main defenses for this argument include the fact that no shrines have been found dedicated to Loki, nor have there been any historical records of cults centered around his worship. Similarly, no landmarks bear his name, with perhaps the exception of the designation of the star Sirius as “Lokabrenna” or “Loki’s Torch” in the Juttish/Cimbrian Islands. (de Vries 226) Still, to name a celestial body after a mythological character, with no mythological explanation, such as that of Thiassi’s eyes, still denotes cultural significance in reference to that character.
What truly baffles me about this is that Loki is not isolated among the accepted Asa Gods when it comes to a lack of recovered shrines. For example, Heimdall and Hoenir similarly have no historical reference of a shrine, temple, cult, or sacrifice (de Vries 204). It would seem rash to assume that they were never worshiped or venerated. Keep in mind, as well, that many Norse monuments and shrines were constructed of wood, and were not as impervious to the test of time as the stone temples and statues of Greece and Egypt. Unfortunately, this made them much easier to destroy, such as Olaf’s account of smashing a wooden effigy of Thor in the Heimskringla, when Christianity swept Europe. Unfortunately, unlike the Pagan cultures in say, Egypt or Greece, the Norse traditions were handed down orally, and we truly have no account of their culture written by anyone other than Christian monks who were free to insert Christian lore as they saw fit, as Snorri has been accused of in many sources. Egypt had over two thousand Gods and Goddesses within its religious practice (Bard 734). We have found neither shrines nor temples to even half of these, yet they are recounted in religious texts, such as the Papyrus of Ani as being Gods. We would have no record of these beings whatsoever if these manuscripts had not survived, or we would be puzzling through ambiguous names mentioned within tombs and on monument walls, much as we are weeding through the identity of Loki.
Outside of shrines, the only true evidence to be found is left in lore. Perhaps one of the best examples of this is found in the Loka Tattur , in which Loki rescues the son of a peasant family. The father bets his son as collateral in a challenge with a giant (a chess game in H.A. Guerber’s Myths of the Norsemen). When the father loses, he cannot stomach the idea of the giant taking his only child, and systematically calls upon Odin, Hoenir, and Loki to save his child. The three gods individually steal the child away and engage the boy in a wild, shape-shifting game of hide-and-go seek. It is only Loki that finally manages to outwit the giant by asking his family to build a boathouse with a special iron fixture over the door, into which the giant runs and knock himself out cold.
This myth is significant in the fact that Loki is called right along with, and in the same fashion as Odin and Hoenir, indicating that this family would have placed the same divine significance on Loki as they placed on the two deities called before him. As in many of Loki’s other myths, He is called in desperation and as a last resort after everything else has failed.
While many scholars have categorized Loki as a “demon”, goblin, vaettir (spirit), or one of the alfar, I believe this story sets him apart from those spirits. In no other place in Norse Myth are the vaettir, alfar, druegar or other such non-ancestral spirits called in such a manner to help man, nor are they summoned beside such powerful and well-known names such as Odin and Hoenir. If Loki were a spirit befriended by and bound to Odin, Loki would have been set to assist instead of or alongside Odin, not called upon specifically and separately. On this note, I also have a problem with classifying anything in Norse culture as “demonic”. There is no context for the idea of demons in Norse culture, especially not in the Judeo-Christian sense of a being working explicitly to do evil, often in answer to some greater, more malicious higher power. I find that to describe a character by a term out of their cultural context is to describe them completely incorrectly. The closest reference that I could even find it Norse lore is Angrvaettir, which has been loosely translated as “angry spirit” and this is never used in any myth to describe Loki. Furthermore, if the Norse themselves had any such notion of Him, He would certainly not be called upon to rescue a child.
Another argument that Loki must be an angrvaettir or some type of “demon” is that He is referred to as “evil” and “evil-doer” within various verses of lore. (Hymiskvitha verse 38, Grueber) I have heard heathens argue that such as phrase would never be used to consistently describe a deity. However, Odin has a name (Bolverk) that literally means evil-doer. (Lemming, Fee 18) One may argue that Odin experiences this title in only one tale, while Loki is called evil in a variety of sources. However, if we explore the context in which these are used, you find that Loki is more commonly placed in a position of needing to break either himself or the Gods out of dire situations, where Odin only encounters this once: in his journey to Jotunheim to retrieve the Mead of Inspiration.

Misconception Two: Loki is the murder of Baldr, and Hodr was innocently caught in Loki’s trick.
When Baldr is murdered in Aegir’s Hall, Odin sends his night-old son Vali to avenge Baldr’s death. However, when Odin discovers that Loki had a hand in His son’s death, He chooses to imprison Loki rather than order Him slain. This had never made sense to me, at least not until I read Saxo’s rendition of the tale.
In Saxo’s narrative of Baldr and Hodr, Nanna (Baldr’s wife in many other tales) is the foster sister of Hodr and he is in love with her. Baldr sees Nanna in the bath and similarly falls in love with her. Hodr is warned by “forest maidens” about Baldr’s intentions and promptly proposes to her. Hodr is encouraged by Nanna’s father to fetch a magical sword and armlet, as the sword is the only thing that can kill Baldr. From here we follow a back-and-forth battle of these two figures over Nanna. Hodr first defeats Baldr and a host of Gods, and then is Himself defeated by Baldr later in the tale, only to conquer again and eventually mortally wound Baldr with the magical blade (Saxo Grammaticus 63) Loki is nowhere present in Saxo’s tale.
To borrow a great point from Anna Rooth, the renditions of Baldr’s demise found in the Gylfaginning and the Voluspa are very close parallels to several other myths, including the demise of Atys as accounted in Heredotos and the accidental slaying of Fergus by the blind poet Ailill in Irish myth. In the death of Atys, Atys, son of the Lydian king Croesus, has a dream that he will be killed by a lance. Croesus orders all lances and spears to be confiscated and banned throughout the land to protect his son’s life. When a giant boar begins to ravage the countryside, Croesus sends a man of his household, Adrestus, to slay it, and eventually succumbs to Atys’ pleading that he accompany Adrestus on the hunt, as boars certainly have no spears. When the two have the boar surrounded, Adrestus takes aim at the boar and misses, inadvertently slaying Atys. I find the most striking prose in the comparison between this myth and Baldr’s death to be Croesus’ reply to Adrestus when he begs the king to sacrifice him over Atys’ body: “And it is not you who are to blame for this misfortune that has overtaken me. But the blame must lie with some deity, who knew from the first what was to happen (Herodotos, stanza 45)”. Also very similar to the Baldr myth, Ailill, jealous of Fergus’ interloping with his wife, Maeve, convinces the blind warrior-poet Lugaid that the splashing he hears in the water is actually a buck and a doe frolicking. Knowing Lugaid is not one to miss, Ailill hands the poet a spear and turns him in Fergus’ direction, causing the Lugaid to unwittingly slay his own foster-brother.
Most modern renditions of this tale stem from Snorri, who unabashedly added other areas mythology and locations into his work, such as suggesting that Odin originally came from Troy (Lindow 116). Whether or not we can make the leap that Snorri stole the framework of his rendition of Baldr’s death from the mythos of surrounding cultures is uncertain, though it is noteworthy that the same concept is repeated in several other cultures. Over time, it is extremely likely, if not fully accepted, that Christian influence seeped into Norse myth (de Vries 179-185, 282-288, Grueber 248) especially as Christian conversion gained momentum in the late tenth century. If Snorri had sought to make a further connection between Loki and the Christian Satan, he may have taken this opportunity to do so, as Loki is only briefly mentioned in this myth, and, within the plot, seems rather out of place.
It’s possible that if Loki was involved in Balder’s death, and informed Hodr of the only possible weapon with which to murder Balder, He did this as a back-handed way to help preserve His blood brother’s lineage after Ragnarok. It’s well-known that Odin and most, if not all, of his sons die in the Ragnarok. Loki spends several stanzas of the Lokasenna chiding Gods and their servants alike for their poor skill or absence at battle. Certainly, it would have been perceived as cowardice if Balder had watched the Twilight of the Gods pass and not battled, and likely died, at the side of the Asa Gods. This makes even more sense coupled with the fact that many scholars speculate that what Odin whispered into the Balder’s ear prior to sending his body out to sea was “Resurrection”. (Guerber 28) The obvious question is ‘Why would Loki do this?’ Since this is speculation around the lore, it’s truly hard to say. Perhaps this was truly just retaliation for Odin’s reactionary mistreatment of Loki’s own children. (Especially the tossing of Hel into Niffleheim/Helheim at a very young age and the tossing of Jormangund into the sea.) However, Odin has asked Loki to perform several “questionable” acts in the lore to suit Odin’s own ends: such as the theft of Brisingamen to gain Freyja’s aid in inciting and controlling the war between two clans. Even if Odin didn’t outright ask Loki to somehow aid in sending his son to Helheim, which is questionable, Odin may have made mention of his anxiety from the revelations of Ragnarok. Loki may have taken it into His own hands to “do something about it”, and that certainly may have been colored by any resentment He bore for Odin’s treatment of His own family. If there was reasoning behind Balder’s death and need to remain in Helheim until Ragnarok, this lends more reason why Loki, in his guise as Thok, does not cry, because it would completely unravel the purpose behind the work. Regardless, the fact that Balder is the only one of Odin’s line to survive Ragnarok and ascends to His father’s place after the destruction lends curiosity to the whether or not Balder’s death was just a tragic accident or a reluctant, morbid plot between the King of the Aesir and His close companion.

I’m sure this essay will continue to grow and reshape as I learn or feel the need to add new information, but these are my views on and rebuttals of some of the biggest “criticism” of Loki. It would appear that He often served as a more intentional and conscious “Cat’s Paw” for the Aesir, especially Odin, which likely lends to the common view of Loki as a God of chaos. This is a notion, from this view of the lore, that I can agree with, that parallels something that He once told me in my own personal experience: “My altar is laid on the foundation of crisis.” He is certainly a God of chaos, at least in the mindset of being a “God of last resorts”, which is something that is depicted in His lore over and over again. Though, the most common view of Him is as a God of fire. This is something that I agree with from my own personal interactions, even if it is not clearly present in the lore. Any connections to Loki and the hearth fire are very loose, as is defining whether or not He and Lothur on the same entity. Also, while the connection between the Loki’s creation of the net, transformation into a salmon, and the Fire Fish Runes of Finland (which define how to make and drag a net) is present, it’s still somewhat of a leap. (Rooth 159) I can definitely see where both viewpoints emerge, and I find both equally valid. In several cases, Loki is the last handle the Aesir retain on hope when everything else has fallen apart, whether or not the current crisis is by His own doing. Even in the cases when Loki is the cause of panic and mayhem, He always brings something better than the trouble he caused: Skadi, from his ordeal with Thiazi; Draupnir, Gullinbursti, and Mjollnir from His penance for cutting Sif’s hair. He’s certainly turned my life upside down many times, sometimes for his own devices, but, regardless, I have always left his tests, jokes, and ordeals a better person than I was before.
This, I believe, is why so many people fear Him and are hesitant to work with Him: He turns your life upside down to force you to make yourself better. What creates chaos in your existence, and why are you so attached to it? Is it worth that pain? He throws you into the change that you need to move forward, and not everyone can contend with that. Loki truly does try His people by fire, and it’s a hard road that some people will never allow themselves to walk. I can accept the hesitancy, the unwillingness, but I do feel a sense of sadness and even resentment that the aversion from Loki may discourage Pagans from coming to Him. Just mentioning His name in a group of pagans will evoke reactions from love to fear to disgust to outright hatred. So many practitioners I’ve spoken with want nothing to do with Him, or even his followers, because they’re heard “stories”. And many of these people can’t even tell you what the “stories” are about, in any acute detail, but damnit, they’ve heard them. While it’s truly a great injustice, I know that those who need the Fire God tend to find their way to His altar, and He’ll be waiting. Personally, I’m honored to be tempered in Loki’s fire, and happy to endure that heat over and over again.

Bibliography:

de Vries, Jan. The Problem of Loki. Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seuran kirjapainon o.y., 1933.
Rooth, Anna. Loki in Scandinavian Mythology. Lund, 1961.
Lindow, John. Norse mythology: a guide to the Gods, heroes, rituals, and beliefs. Oxford University Press, 2002.
Snorrason, Oddr, and Theodore Andersson. The Saga of Olaf Tryggvason. Cornell University Press, 2003.
Fee , Christopher, and David Leeming. Gods, Heroes & Kings: the Battle for Mythic Britain. Oxford University Press, USA, 2004.
Bard, Kathryn. Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. 1999.
Geurber, H.A. The Myths of the Norsemen. Digiread.com Publishing, 2009.
Macaulay, G. C. (English Translation) “Herodotus.” Sacred Texts. N.p., 1890. Web. 15 Jan 2011. .
Elton, Oliver. (English Translation) “Saxo Grammaticus.” The Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus. Sacred Texts, 1905. Web. 13 Jan 2011.

A Demon Named Fear: Breaking the Cycles of Abuse

20 Friday Aug 2010

Posted by dreamsofdjinn in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Loki, ordeals, recovery, UPG, water pathworking

[Dear reader, be forewarned, this post is a documentary of some very graphic personal experiences and how they’ve helped heal some old scars. These issues deal with both violence and sexuality, so if you are offended by detailed accounts of such topics, I suggest you skip this session.]

“I am not some lovely, dovey God. I am The Breaker of Worlds. I will shatter everything you are, only to build you back up again, all because I can.”

He stands over me: His posture tense and His face contorted. I know there is a part of Him that revels in the fear and panic in my eyes. I know He can see the whirlwind of emotions and memories that lurks beyond it. In an instant of harsh words and painful gestures, I’m back to those moments of being held down by a man on a different couch, or being held up against a wall by my throat until I yield significant boundaries for things that seemed more important at the time, like air. Yet, at the same time that I ride that crest of terror, I fall into the temptation of wanting to yield into this.

Just take it, something in me pleads. A part of me wants to yield to that release, to the possibility that in losing that control one last time, in this context, that I can finally let go of that fear. But it’s the fear that wins.

“Please, don’t do this to me,” I whisper, pushing Him away.

“Why?” He hisses, His face just inches from mine.

“Because I’m afraid of getting hurt,” I tell him, and slide away on the couch, faking some center of calm.

“Liar.”

“Because I’m afraid of becoming that person again.”
And that’s the honest truth. I’ve spend so much of my life since I rose out of that abyss judging everything – my weight, my appearance, the way I dress, to the very core of how I act and speak – against that… person I once was. The further I stay away from becoming her, the further I can stay away from ever experiencing that pain again.
That’s why I made that vow to Thor at the sumble – to learn how to defend myself. Certainly, it’s one less burden on his divine shoulders – the protector of the common person – to have to worry about me if I could hold my own. But that’s what I had silently said to Tim every time I let him correct my pose, or he taught me how to land a punch or a palm-strike: “Teach me how to kill him. Teach me how to never have that happen again. Teach me to never be that woman again.” That fear consumed so much of my life, even if I exercised it in the most positive ways possible.

“And who did that to you?” He asks again, pressing closer until I feel His breathing against my chest and there’s no more distance between Him and myself, nor between myself and the couch. I’m caged here with Him and my own demons. And for a moment, they consume me. I’m lost in those flashes of pain where fingers are closed around my throat, where the body pressed against mine belongs to someone different and darker, and where words cut me deeper than blades could ever dream.

“Answer me!” He growls and I wince.

“David,” I spit his name.

There’s a silence between us and I can feel Loki staring into me, but I don’t turn to look at Him.

“Please, stop,” I ask again, as I feel His weight pressing against me, giving that threat He has yet to act upon.

“Are you going to just ask?”

I swallow hard.
“Get off of me,” I said, throwing enough of my weight against the body hosting Him to knock Him back and leap off the couch.

“What?” He snarls, instantly back in my face. The look in His eyes is still mad.

“Get. Off. Of. Me.” My voice is cold. Firm. Instantly, he melts.

“Congratulations. You’ve just set a boundary,” He says, looking into my eyes. “You’ve passed both mine and Angrboda’s test.”

I stare back at Him in the few moments of silence.

“I love you, but you’re both bastards,” I laugh.

“Come here,” He says, and holds me. I stand there a long while in His arms, stepping out of that old skin and back into myself. I revel in the separation.
“It was hard to put you through that.”

“I know.” If I had any doubt, the sudden change of his expression and body posture would have told me everything.

“That fear is still something that holds you back,” he tells me. “It gets in the way of your intimacy with everyone, even Tim.”
“Think about it.” He meets my gaze, and repeats my own words to me: “Why is he always smothering me?”

I hadn’t thought about the connection when they’d left my mouth.

“That is something you need to work through, but I want you to give that up willingly. And it doesn’t have to be tonight.”

I let out a long breath. He’s right, and this isn’t something I want looming over my head.

I stall for a while – grabbing a glass of water, meandering around the kitchen. He’s patient, and still waiting when I get back.

“What’s going to happen?” I ask, trying to prepare myself.

“I’m not going to tell you.”

“Do I get a safeword? Do I have a way to make you stop if it goes too far?”

“Not once I start.”

I take a long sip of my drink, wishing it was something a little harder than water.

“So,” I breathe. “How do we start?”

“Like this.”

Truth be told, He could have been much more aggressive. And He wasn’t. I appreciated that.

“I needed you to reason through this, not panic through it,” He told me later, and I had reasoned through it.
Struggling beneath Him, I felt my fingers reach for the soft hollows of eyesockets. I considered openings where a quick blow would have broken nasal bones. I stopped myself.
“I could see you running through the fight moves in your head,” He said. “I’m proud of you. I was worried for a moment that you were going to give up.”
There was some part of me that wanted to. Just as there is a part of Him that delights in taking that control, a part of me revels in yielding to Him. And that was perhaps the hardest part of the ordeal, separating Loki from David, and knowing that I had to react not to the God inhabiting my fiancée’s body, but to the man the deity was impersonating. I understand how hard it was for Him to do that. He really had no more desire to become David than I had to face him. But, He loved me enough to make that sacrifice, because I needed to overcome that. And I did overcome it. All three times that he came after me, I fought Him off, and when I did finally yield to Him, it was because I wanted to. Not because He forced me or overpowered me, which made the surrender all the sweeter. But I’ll spare you the details.

He gave me a very powerful gift that night – even beyond the confrontational therapy of reliving that experience. Loki gave me the chance to prove to myself that I couldn’t become that person again. I won’t give up that boundary out of fear or the desire for someone else’s happiness.

The Nicole from back then let herself be intimidated into giving up her body.
The Nicole typing here now would beat his ass.

So much of my work with Loki has been breaking and establishing boundaries – the inhibitive blockages versus healthy barriers. Opening this one has been a bit of a floodgate. Crossing that line has caused me to reconsider aspects of my sexuality and the terms through which I address myself.
We’ve done more work since then, but I’ve rambled long enough, and that is material for another time.

For Bast’s Children: A New Doorway to a Another Road

20 Sunday Jun 2010

Posted by dreamsofdjinn in Spirit Work

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Bast, Hel, UPG, water pathworking

I’d passed the dead body of a cat on the side of Carpenter Road once before. Bast had asked me to stop, but I’d felt uncomfortable with just the idea of flipping the car around and picking up a dead animal from the side of the road. The idea crossed my mind more than once that someone might be looking for that cat, and the body on the roadside might be the answer to someone’s search.

Today, I couldn’t tell her no twice.

Tim and I were on our way back from his cousin Nate’s graduation party. The day was beautiful, the AC was on, and Blaqk Audio’s “Stiff Kittens” blared from the speakers. Tim was fiddling with his Odin mandala and focused completely into his own little world. I didn’t think anything of it. We both have this bad habit of slipping into trance state while on the road. I’d lost more than 10 exits along the highway that way more than once, and I, myself, had began to zone out to the flash of house, tree, tree, tree, house, tree passing us by at fifty miles per hour.
Then, I passed that familiar orange body along the side of the road.

Stop, a voice told me, both stern and urgent within my head.

I sighed to myself, releasing a sudden pang of sadness, and kept driving.

Stop. Go back.

I kept going.

Go. Back.

I sighed again, and turned down a winding side road and flipped the car around in the first U-shaped driveway.

“What are you doing?” Tim asked, unabsorbed from his trance by the sudden lurching of the vehicle.

“Turning around.” I gave the most obvious answer and turned left onto Carpenter.

Right about the time I passed the cat and pulled over onto the opposite side of the road, he must have gotten the idea. He got out of the car in unison with me. We both walked to the end of the vehicle, stared for a second at the corpse, and then I popped the trunk to search for the garbage bag I knew was lost somewhere in the dark recesses of my vehicle.

“I think it’s somewhere in the sidedoor,” Tim told me. He was right. I retrieved the bag from the bag seat and walked over to the body.

I’d waited at least a week since Bast had first asked me to remove her from the roadside. The body was now literally crawling with maggots.

“She’s putrid, honey. There’s nothing we can do,” Tim told me.

“I don’t want to just leave her,” I said. It was more than a desire. I couldn’t. Something in my conscience wasn’t going to let me. It was almost as though the spirit was asking me not to leave here there: unmarked, unmourned, just another piece of garbage rotting on the side of the road.

Eventually, we both resolved that leaving her there was just unacceptable. I scooped the bag underneath of her, lifted her up, and neatly flipped the bag inside out.

The stench of death was overbearing. Her body was warm and pliable – the in-process result of roadside heat and rotting flesh.

Tim insisted more than once that he could carry her, but having watched his reaction over the last few minutes, I was surprised that this evening’s dinner hadn’t worked itself out of his eyeballs by now in his efforts to retain his composure. I had her. I told him as much, and placed the cat into my trunk.

There was no place in our tiny apartment complex where we could bury her body. Local animals, or worse, local children would likely just dig her up. But we did have a beautiful little grove out at his parent’s house where we’d done many magical workings together. There, she would stay.

Tim dug a hole in a small mound against the fence while I gathered supplies. Having come unprepared, we made with what we had: a clove of garlic, fresh-picked sage and lavender, consecrated salt and lake-water, and lemongrass oil.
I took her out of the trunk while he dug. A few of the maggots had escaped from holes onto a box in the back.
At first, I held her away from me. Even through plastic, the smell was still powerful.

Cradle her in your arms. Hold her like I wasn’t able to. That voice said again, and I listened. I curled my arms beneath her and cradled the bagged body like a child. I could feel the movement in the bag and had to tell myself it was just the warmth of the cat’s body and the animal’s spirit.
I knew it was the insects, but between the crawling and the smell of death, even I couldn’t bear to think about that, and I pride myself on having a strong stomach.

I laid her on the ground until we finished the grave. I blessed the soil with the water and oil, and slid her out of the bag and into the earth. Tim had already sang blessings over her grave, and we gave a short prayer, sending her back to the Mother and the Earth from which she had came, and thanked her for the joy she had given in this world and would bring onto the next. I sprinkled the body with water and oil, and we covered her in dirt. Tim used his shovel. I used my hands. I placed the flowers by her grave and sprinkled the packed Earth with water and oil again.

We would have given her a bit of a longer, more detailed ceremony had it not been so late in the day. Twilight rapidly became night and we were both covered in mosquito bites.

I would still like to go back and plant catnip on her grave and burn a stick of incense for her.

We drove home with the windows open. The smell of death had permeated my vehicle. Despite that, there was something both spiritually and emotionally fulfilling in that for the both of us. He thanked me for stopping and insisting that we take care of her. I thanked him for helping me and for digging the grave. He thanked me for handling the body. I laughed.

Once we were home, with all but washed my car with febreeze and then ran into the bathroom for a quick shower. We left smelling minty-fresh from plastering each other in toothpaste to cure the itching of mosquito bites. (Which is, by the way, a handy trick if you happen to run out of hydrocortisone lotion)

The cat’s spirit was grateful for what we did. That was obvious in the feel of the burial and the encounters that Tim and I had once we arrived home.
She’s fully capable of moving on now, but chose to stay with us for a little while longer. She brushed up against Tim’s leg while he was at the computer and scared him half to death.
While I was sitting here working on my daily rune images, I caught a flash in my mind’s eye of a pair of golden eyes staring up at me, and that long-haired orange body sprawled across my table. I sucked in a deep breath and reached out to touch her. I closed my eyes and I could feel the rub of a cat’s face against my head. I could feel her fur – thick and soft between my fingers. I could feel the heat of her skin, and the tensing of her muscles as she moved. She was such a beautiful cat.
It was such an emotional encounter for me. It still is. I burst into tears. I took away more in that moment than just petting an animal. It was taking a moment to feel what the cat had felt, to feel what she had inspired in others.
The forefront of what rushed to me had been a sadness, a loneliness of having been there: forgotten. But behind that was a rush of joy and happiness. Of what it had been like to live her life, and of what it had been like to have held her, touched her. In that moment, she was every cat that I’d ever held, every feline that had curled up into my lap on a cold winter’s day and kept me company. It was very overwhelming, and very beautiful.

You never really have an appreciation for life until you’ve experienced death and experience, even at a glimpse, what comes after. This night really had a revelation for me in that.
I’ve helped spirits cross over before. I’ve worked with the dead and comforted them. I’ve helped the souls of other animals killed on the roadside move beyond before. Tim and I helped the spirit of a young man who was shot and killed in the park just down the street from where I lived in Lansing move past his hurt, rage, and fear and move on. But nothing had ever reached back to me like this.

It still moves me down to the core of my being.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I relate to the myriads of deities that have called to me. Sometimes, my work and relations seem so scattered and overwhelming. I think this is just part of really putting that all together.

I’m going to start carrying around garbage bags and gloves in the trunk of my car now. I’ve passed too many hawks on the side of I-96, felt the same compulsion, and ignored it. I’m not going to let the sacred animals of my gods rot on the edge of the pavement and not honor them.

I’ve never been one to actively work with the dead. That’s always been Tim’s shindig, and I’ve been happy to let him be in it. But, I think I’m starting to move that way. Hella asked me to come speak with her during a meditation, and I’ve drawn Ansuz in helheim during Yggdrasil rune spreads more than once. It’s time to stop delaying this and start working with that.

I have a feeling that’s what I’m going to be doing with the Gulf. Maybe that’s why I feel so desperate, so lost that dozens of volunteer apps have gone unanswered and that there’s nothing much I can do. I have a feeling there are a lot of lost spirits trapped in the miasma down there that might need help finding their way out of that oil slick – even after their bodies have washed ashore or fallen to the seabed below.

May Aegir hold them in his arms until I can pick up that task.

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Bast community divination doubt faith God grief Hel Loki Loss mythology ordeals Possession recovery Runes Sigyn Snark spirituality spirit work Suffering UPG water pathworking

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