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Loki Worldbreaker: The Bound God and Overcoming Limitations

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Loki, as the bound god, is a symbolic representation of the way that the primal nature of all beings is contained and constrained by an imposed social order. The binding of Loki is never fully explained in the lore. While suggestions exist that the binding originated from his suspected role in Baldr’s death (Saxo’s version of the Baldr myth is void of Loki’s presence entirely), these suggestions are, at best, speculation if not outright conjecture.

Another mythos that contains a story about a bound god is the Greek one, in which Prometheus is confined for his audacity in stealing fire from the gods and thwarting Zeus’s plan to destroy humanity. Many scholars have compared Prometheus and Loki, so it is probable that a story of a similar vein underpins the binding Loki endures.

Because so many of the old stories have been lost, it is important to understand that both the concept of Loki being bound as punishment for his role in Baldr’s death and the concept of Loki being bound for reasons similar to those for which Prometheus was bound are speculation, at best.

Still, the image of Loki as a bound god does provide a lens through which to view the god as a god who overcomes limitations. Allegorically, the binding of Loki – no matter the reason for its occurrence – demonstrates an almost desperate need to halt the forward motion of chaotic change. The lore prophecy states that Loki will be the one to instigate Ragnarok after he slips his chains, so the binding serves the purpose of keeping the world from disintegrating.

However, the world cannot stay in-tact forever, and, eventually, Loki slips his bonds. Every time this happens, Ragnarok occurs, and the world is destroyed and subsequently recreated. The cycle of creation-destruction-creation (a.k.a life-death-rebirth) persists in mythologies across the globe, and it has only been since the introduction of Abrahamic doctrine that the cycle has changed from life-death-rebirth to life-death-afterlife.

Loki comes in as the god that overcomes limitations when he slips the bindings the other gods have forged for him to fulfill the role he was always meant to play. In this, he demonstrates that all beings cannot escape the limitation of their own nature – no matter how hard we try to run from ourselves, we cannot escape the truth of our own person.

He shows us where the limits truly lay – inside ourselves – and where they don’t…everywhere else. Loki’s actions often upset the social order. Sometimes, these ways displease the other gods. When Loki steals Sif’s hair, the other gods are displeased, and Loki has to make amends, which he does with an incredible degree of resourcefulness. He relies on his own skillset – his silver tongue – to con the dwarves into making a beautiful gold wig – and makes amends with the other gods so flawlessly that they are awed by the wig rather than concerned with the mischief he originally wrought when he cut Sif’s hair.

In the myths, Loki is either getting himself in trouble and finding clever ways to fix the problems he creates, or he is helping the other gods fix problems. In either case, he is always portrayed as the one who finds the solution to the original problem – whether he is directly responsible for the problem or not is of no concern.

A lot of people get stuck on this point when they try to understand Loki for the first time. They read the myths, and all they see is Loki causing mischief. They contend that Loki solving the problem afterwards doesn’t matter because Loki’s presence is the very reason the problem occurred.

That line of reasoning lends itself to an inability to appreciate that Loki’s resourcefulness and problem-solving are central to his character. Whether Loki’s presence creates the problem isn’t the point – he is the one who has the strategic cleverness that allows him to find solutions that the other gods overlook.

Loki’s ability to overcome limitations allows him to assist the other gods in ways that end up benefiting them to an extreme degree. Unlike many of the others, Loki has no problem defying social norms when necessary to get a problem solved. When Thor loses his hammer, Loki is the one who suggests that Thor dress as Freyja to win it back from Thrym. Thor is, as convention dictates, uncomfortable at the suggestion but listens to Loki’s advice. Loki’s advice proves sound, as Thor soon reclaims Mjolnir.

Actually, speaking of Mjolnir, Thor would not have such a magnificent weapon if it weren’t for Loki’s cunning in his dealing with the dwarves. Odin would lack Draupnir and Gungnir, Freyr would lack Skithblathnir, and Sif her golden wig – to name a few of the gifts that Loki negotiated with the dwarves to claim for the gods. In his negotiations with the dwarves, he overcomes the limitation of the dwarves’ reluctance to craft these items.

Mostly, when it comes to limitations, Loki is the god of overcoming the limitations that others present. He is a force against conformity, though it is doubtful he would support nonconformity simply for the sake of nonconformity. When Loki breaks from the social order of the Aesir, he does so in ways that work in the favor of the gods.

When Loki is bound, he is no longer able to control his own abilities. By my own understanding (i.e. upg), he is one of the oldest deities of the Norse pantheon. He is the embodiment of change and, eventually, he loses the ability to control that side of himself. The binding the other gods force on him only hold him back for so long, as nothing can stave off change permanently. Once he breaks those bindings, Ragnarok occurs, and the world begins again.

 

Note: Many Lokeans shy away from Loki’s Worldbreaker aspect, claiming that the story of Ragnarok was Christianized and not an original part of Norse mythology. The collected evidence doesn’t support that theory, and it is far more likely that the Ragnarok story is a different version of a well-established creation-destruction-recreation (life-death-rebirth) of the world demonstrated in a multitude of other mythologies. Refusing to engage in these conversations makes it far easier for Heathens to view Loki as a Nordic Satan rather than develop a fuller understanding of Loki’s character. This is, therefore, my attempt to address a question often ignored by other Lokeans (and, as always, this is my interpretation and my interpretation alone).

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Loki’s Courage

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Most of the time, when Pagans/Heathens discuss Loki, they end up calling Him a coward or accuse Him from running away from a fight. The lore doesn’t support that, but it does show Loki’s cunning. Gnosis also fails to support the idea of a cowardly Loki.

In the aftermath of the Aesir-Vanir war, when the wall around Asgard had to be rebuilt, it was Loki who lured the horse away from the wall to prevent the giant from completing the wall and claiming Freyja as his bride.

Loki could have chosen a different approach. He could have killed the horse or lamed it, but instead He chose to assume the form of a mare and lead the horse away through temptation. Granted, considering the way Loki thinks, He may not have even considered laming the horse or killing it, as He doesn’t naturally go out of his way to injure or harm other living beings.

Instead, Loki assumed the shape of a mare and ended up mating with the horse and giving birth to Sleipnir, Odin’s 8-legged horse. It’s easy to see Loki working as a catalyst here because there is no greater catalyst than the womb. To put that in perspective – a woman can house an infant in her womb for nine months, but that woman will not be able to control, in full, the person that child becomes after it is born.

When Loki kidnaps Idun because the giant Thjazi traps him on a rocky island, Loki agrees. Some people view this as desperation, as a “Loki will do anything to save His own skin,” type of scenario. While that may be true to a point, Loki also bears very strong grudges against those who wrong Him or force Him into corners.

The way I’ve always viewed Loki’s kidnapping of Idun is as the fulfillment of His word – He agrees to Thjazi’s request. But after Loki is free of the island, He does what He needs to do in order to get Idun back and also manages to kill the giant in the process – the debt is paid and Loki gets His revenge.

While Loki is often seen as a God lacking honor, He is, perhaps, one of the most honorable (despite being the most mischievous). He never breaks His oaths, and He always admits to the actions He takes and He always sets things right again. A lot of Loki’s mistakes end up being to the benefit of the other Gods, as some of the most powerful tools the Gods possess wouldn’t be within Their possession without Loki. Those tools include Sleipnir, Gungnir, Draupnir, Skidbladnir, and Mjollnir, amongst others.

Where Loki’s courage is seen most clearly is perhaps in the way He acts as a catalyst for Balder’s death. It would be easy to see Loki as the villain here because Balder is the God of the Sun and is a peaceful deity. This story is the #1 reason that Loki is often painted as the Norse “devil,” even though that is far from the role He actually plays.

I’ve seen multiple interpretations of the story of Balder’s death, and it’s not a subject Loki seems to be willing to talk too much about. There is no real animosity between Loki and Balder, but there is a lot of sorrow in Loki regarding that incident.

The only stories I’ve seen that could perhaps explain the sorrow I sense from Loki about Balder’s death include the interpretation that shows Loki acting to kill Balder in order to keep Him safe from the other Gods who are constantly throwing weapons at Him as a source of entertainment (in short, Loki acts to put Balder out of His misery). The other interpretation I’ve seen is Loki acting to kill Balder because Balder has a dangerous duality that, if unleashed, could destroy the world and bring about Ragnarok.

There are so many interpretations of Balder’s death that it’s hard to know which one is the most accurate, and, like I said, Loki doesn’t seem to be too keen on sharing. I do, however, get the sense that there’s a lot more to that story than the lore portrays.

Now, you might be wondering how exactly Loki can be seen as courageous, but Loki is one of the most courageous of all the Gods – I won’t say most courageous, as that title belongs to Tyr (for good reason). But Loki is definitely high on that scale.

The reason I say that is because Loki always admits when He’s done something wrong or when He’s played a prank (I’m not sure Loki considers any of His actions “wrong”). He always owns up. That’s a type of courage that we can all learn from.

What I see most frequently in the world around me is that people are afraid to be wrong. People are afraid to make mistakes, or, when those mistakes are made, they are afraid to own their mistakes. But if we live our lives in the fear of making mistakes, then we stop truly living. Life is all about embracing our fear of doing things wrong, but doing them anyway.

I’ll never forget when I first learned to play the viola, my orchestra director explained to my class that the top mistake string musicians make is to try to hide their mistakes. He told us that if we made mistakes, to make them proudly and loudly, as if the mistake was an intentional sound. That’s the type of courage Loki has, and that’s the type of courage we all need.

Of all the Gods, it is perhaps Loki, in all of His facets, that is the closest to humanity. Loki is, in my experience, the easiest God to connect to, and I think that has a lot to do with how human He can seem. It is, often, far too easy to forget that He is, in fact, a God, and thus worthy of respect and admiration.

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Loki: Catalyst and Fire God

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I’ve found that the best way to comprehend Loki is to view him as the catalyst for change. He creates major upsets in people’s lives, leading them down new paths. And since few people adapt well to change, Loki’s reputation suffers. But every change that happens in someone’s life is for the better. Every change. No matter how negative or horrible it seems at first, all changes are beneficial ones. It’s learning to see the beneficial side of change that is hard for a large majority of people.

As for me, change is less something to be feared and more something to be sought. Perhaps it’s because I have an incredible amount of fire in my astrological chart (yes, I do believe in astrology), and fire is a catalyst for change in itself. And that may be why Loki is so often associated with fire, despite there being no “lore” to support the idea.

But think about fire – fire is comforting and terrifying, depending on the situation. On a cold winter’s night, curling up next to the fire to get warm is beneficial. Fire provides us with the means to stay alive during the hard frosts. But in a dry season, when a brush fire escalates quickly into a wildfire, fire is terrifying. In that situation, fire destroys life. So fire is both a creative force and destructive force, and it is one of the most intense elements (out of earth, air, fire, and water) that we face.

Earth, air, and water – all of these can be terrifyingly destructive as well, but we don’t immediately associate destruction with any of them. Most of us immediately view earth as nurturing and life-giving, and we often forget that mudslides, earthquakes, and cave-ins can cause an incredible amount of destruction. Air we view as life-giving – after all, we need oxygen to live. So we don’t immediately rush to think of the tornadoes or hurricanes that use air for incredible destruction. And then water, of course, we view as life-giving before destructive, because, like air, we can’t live without water. But floods, typhoons, and tsunamis are some of the most destructive storms we can face.

Yet it is fire that we always turn to as destructive first and beneficial second. Because fire is vibrantly alive with the force of life – the red-orange of the flame both bewitches us and terrifies us, so we often forget that it is fire that is the source of passion. When we say we have a flame inside us, or a spark of divinity, or anything else referring to light, we are talking about fire. But fire still terrifies us  – after all, the sun is the biggest fire we face.

How often have we been warned about sunspots and solar flares and terrified into thinking that the sun is close to burning out? The sun, though we don’t think about it as much as the ancients did, is the center of our world. We need the light of the sun to live because without the light of the sun, nothing can grow. And if nothing can grow, then nothing can produce the air we need to breathe – to stay alive. There is a reason that sun gods were the central gods of most ancient faiths – the people then knew how vital the sun was to their existence. Today, we have all but forgotten this truth.

Fire, however, is often more constructive than it is destructive. Even if we don’t think of that being true immediately, it’s easy to see the creative force of fire when we examine it more closely. The most obvious example is that the sun generates the heat needed to warm the ground to a point that life becomes possible. Fire is an initiative element – it gets things started. But it becomes a catalyst as soon as the earth takes over because the earth does all the hard work of actually growing the plants – the earth pulls the heat of the fire into the ground and spreads it around so that plants can grow. And fire is a destroyer – when the sun stops providing the heat necessary for growth during the winter months, the earth cannot conduct the heat into the plants anymore, and so they wither.

To understand why fire is a catalyst, rather than a cause, you have to understand what catalyst means. In science, a catalyst is a substance that causes change without undergoing change itself. When it comes to life, a catalyst is a person or event that precedes a larger event – a herald, if you want to look at things in that light. And I’ve learned that catalysts always exist – you always have warnings ahead of time, if you know what to look for.

Here’s an example: About a week ago, I stopped at a gas station to get gas, and a woman approached me and told me that my back driver’s side tire looked low on air. It was a very odd thing for her to do, and when I examined my tires, there was no problem with the air in them. However, I kept the occurrence in my mind (I tend to keep such things in my mind, as I have learned they tend to be indicators of future events), and a couple of days ago, as I was coming home, I felt the tread on my car slip a little. I had my dad check my tires – sure enough, the back tire on the driver’s side was low – it had an astounding 10 lbs of pressure left in it.

In combination with that, I had an online friend who continuously insisted that I needed to stay away from orange shirts. I thought that was rather arbitrary, but her insistence on it was weird. Granted, I chose to ignore this advice, and, ironically enough, the day I felt my tire slip like that I was wearing an orange shirt. Coincidence is rarely ever coincidence, and if we listen to the world around us, we can see the patterns of events approaching us. We just have to be willing to open our minds.

Now, what does all of this have to do with Loki? Well, in a word, everything. Loki is change. Loki is fire. Loki is a catalyst. Of all the Gods, he is, perhaps, the most predictable – in that he will always act in an unpredictable way. Change is bound by the law of change. So getting upset with Loki when change happens in your life is the wrong way to approach change. Because Loki is also the God who is perhaps the most benevolent. He doesn’t go out of his way to cause disaster – it’s a natural consequence of who he is.

A lot of people like to point out that Loki is the one who caused Baldr’s death, but it is in that story that we see his catalytic nature most clearly. Loki does not kill Baldr. He does not make Hod throw the mistletoe at Baldr. Hod is the one who says he wishes he had something to throw at Baldr. Loki simply provides him with the tools to do what Hod has expressed a desire to do. Loki initiates Hod’s actions – he works as the catalyst. But Hod is the one who throws the mistletoe. Yes, Loki guides Hod’s throw – Hod is blind. But Loki does not force the throw. 

There is a world of difference between forcing and guiding someone’s actions – Loki did the latter, not the first, so the responsibility for Baldr’s death should be laid squarely on Hod. Yes, Loki went out and found the mistletoe. He provided the artillery. But saying that the person who provides the weapon is the person who shoots the weapon is equivalent to blaming the man who sells a shotgun to an 18-year old who takes the gun home and kills his father for the death of the 18-year old’s father. A catalyst is not a cause.

And that is why Loki is so misunderstood, because he is a catalyst – and catalysts often bear the brunt of the blame. The shotgun seller I mentioned may not deserve the blame for the death of the kid’s father, but there are plenty of people in this world who will lay the blame squarely at his feet, whether doing so is reasonable or not. And that is why Loki is often considered the scapegoat of the gods.

Some Lokeans play this up far too much, however, and turn Loki into a pathetic, sniveling, whining figure, and that is beyond disrespectful. Loki is powerful, cunning, clever, honest (seriously, try to find one instance in a story where he ACTUALLY lies), adaptable, and funny. He is always aware of his purpose – the catalyst – and he embraces his identity without fear. He takes the path of least resistance because that is how change works. Whatever can change will change – and little changes occur more rapidly than large changes, unless a large change is easier to initialize.

When people get over their fear of change, they will get over their fear of Loki. And that is a hard sell for most people, because it is a rare individual who can handle the chaotic whirlwind of change that happens when Loki is around. For me, I love change. Maybe, like I said, it’s because I have so much fire in my chart (7 fire, 4 water, 2 earth, 1 air) that I can handle the whirlwind that Loki is, or maybe it’s because I have ADHD (which means I cannot tolerate boredom). Either way, Loki is a huge part of my life, and I have never experienced any change that has not ended up being a change for the better, in the end.