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A Lokean Type of Courage

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One of the biggest groups of people who tend to find themselves interacting with Loki are those who have been abused in some way. The ones who have lost themselves and need to be guided back – who need to learn who they are again. Loki teaches us that it’s okay to not be okay. He teaches us that it’s okay to be wounded and feel the wound so that it can heal properly.

Until Loki came into my life, I had pushed the abuse that I dealt with growing up to the back of my mind. Learned to suppress it, to minimize it, to rationalize it into being less bad than it actually was. To some extent, I still do that. Because there’s the fear that follows me around that people are going to think less of me if they understand what I went through. That they are going to think me weak because I didn’t stop it, that they won’t understand that I couldn’t stop it.

It’s easy to tell people that I grew up in an alcoholic home and let them draw their own conclusions from there. It’s harder to explain the stark terror that I felt when my mother started drinking. The more alcohol consumed, the more violent and unreasonable she became. She would yell terrible things at me, telling me that no one would ever love me, that I was the reason she drank, that I could do nothing right. And I took that all to heart.

Because when my mother started drinking, I was eight years old. Up until that point, my mother had been the most incredible, doting mother that a child could ask for. She taught me how to read. She waited with me in the freezing cold for the bus to school. She made me snacks for when I got home from school. There was no one in the world that I loved more.

And then, like someone had flipped a switch, she became someone I didn’t know. Someone who terrified me because I couldn’t understand where my mother had gone. My life became a pursuit of escaping the terror she inflicted in me. I wanted to be anywhere but near her. Because I took what she said about her drinking being my fault to heart – I believed that I had caused the change.

So I did everything I could to be the perfect child. I performed well academically. I did my chores without complaining. I wanted my mother to be proud of me because I had this idea in my head that if I just did enough well enough that I could fix her. And I wanted to fix her because I missed the woman who had spent hours teaching me to read. Who had cared enough about me to stand beside me in the winter to make sure I got to school okay.

Occasionally, there would be flashes. Moments of sobriety where I would see her. In those moments, she taught me how to keep from being bullied. She taught me how to spot potential threats and how to guard against them. She also taught me how to deal with my empathic gift. And I loved her during those moments because that was the woman who I recognized as my mother. There was her, and then there was the woman she became when she drank.

She became domineering – everything was micromanaged. I had to fetch her drinks and fix them perfectly – eight ice cubes in each glass of water. I had to bring her glasses full of vodka. To this day, I cannot stomach the smell of pure vodka. If it’s in a mixed drink, I can always taste it. I told one of my ex-boyfriends this. He didn’t believe me, made a drink without telling me what he put in it, and I took one sip and handed it back to him. There was less than a thimbleful of vodka in the glass. The reason I can always taste it – the first time I ever tasted vodka, my mother forced it down my throat. I was twelve years old.

When I didn’t do something to her satisfaction, her favorite method of discipline was to use the handle of a broom as a cane. Compliance is pretty much guaranteed when you know that disobedience results in that level of pain. Because of that threat, as well as the continuous emotional abuse she threw at me, I lived in perpetual fear. I learned how to keep my head down and my mouth shut. I didn’t want to risk her ire – it was a matter of survival.

I constantly felt pulled in two directions – I loved her and I hated her. I wanted her to die, I wanted her to be better. She was in and out of the hospital up until I turned fifteen, when she passed away. With her death, my entire world fell apart. I blamed myself because I had occasionally wished for it to happen. I was tormented by guilt, feeling responsible for her death as well as feeling guilty for feeling relieved because she was gone. My beloved tormenter was gone forever.

What I didn’t realize until years later was that she had left me with incredible emotional scars. I couldn’t trust people properly – I went into relationships expecting them to fail. I was defensive, scared that people could see the me underneath – the broken, flawed me. The one who felt like she was falling apart. I pushed people away in a twisted effort to test their ability to handle my brokenness. No matter how successful I was at what I did, no matter what accomplishments I laid claim to, I always felt hollow. Empty. Because being successful meant nothing to me if I wasn’t the most successful. My mother succeeded in turning me into a perfectionist, incapable of appreciating my own success without feeling inferior for not being the best. And I hated it because I knew that other people would be happy doing the things I’d done. They would appreciate them. And all I had was this bitterness towards not being the best, about failing to win the best and most impressive awards.

To say that I don’t still contend with these feelings today would be dishonest. I still struggle with maladaptive perfectionism. I still struggle with the double-bind thinking that was dumped on me by my alcoholic mother. And I still sometimes feel that I will never be good enough. Not for myself, not for other people. But now, rather than have them define my life, they are just the bad days. The ones that fall in-between the mostly good ones.

Because Loki, when he came into my life, he made me face my past. He made me own up to myself. He forced me to stop minimizing the damage that had been done because wounds left untreated tend to fester. Facing my past wasn’t an easy thing to do. Learning to trust wasn’t an easy thing to do, especially because I had to learn to trust the world again. I learned to distrust it as soon as my mother started drinking. Started being afraid that everything I saw and felt wasn’t real, that there was an illusion separating truth from fiction because in no real world would my mother become what she became. I stopped trusting myself.

And self-trust is the first step in self-knowledge. How can you know yourself if you can’t trust yourself to distinguish reality from illusion, truth from deceit? I still struggle to trust myself. I may always struggle with that, but that’s okay. I’ve learned that it’s okay not to be perfect. That it’s okay to have wounds, as long as you are actively seeking to close them (festering wounds do no one any good), and I have learned that there’s a strength in me that few people can match because I had to go through hell to get to where I am today.

So when I say that the biggest group of people who are drawn to Loki’s path are those who have been abused, please understand that I say this with the understanding of someone who has gone through hell and come out the other side. You can’t come out unscathed – you come out scarred and battle-hardened. Lokeans are some of the fiercest people, some of the hardiest warriors, on the face of the planet because we’ve all lived through our share of wars.

When other people point to Loki and make claims that he isn’t a god, that he’s a Norse devil, or that he only finds purchase among the weirdest and fluffiest of people, it infuriates me. Because I’m not a fluffy person – no one who goes through what I’ve been through comes out of it and becomes the happy-go-lucky rainbows-and-unicorns kind of person that “fluffy” implies – and none of the Lokeans I know are very fluffy either. Scared, yes. Vulnerable, sometimes. But being willing and able to admit to fear and vulnerability isn’t a weakness – it’s one of the greatest strengths that we possess because being honest about fear? There’s no greater courage.

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An Eclectic Type of Courage

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Like anyone who walks an eclectic path, I have my own worries and anxieties to contend with. But the greatest fear I deal with is the fear of never finding a place where I fit or a place that fits me. Being eclectic is terrifying because it means that you are constantly rejecting what other people are telling you, discarding certain things that others insist are true because you realize that those things aren’t true for you. It means you are constantly picking things up that others are rejecting as false, realizing that what others see as false sometimes rings true for you. Walking an eclectic path becomes an art of pulling truths from many different paths and discarding some and retaining others until you have created a mosaic of truth for yourself.

As you look at other paths, however, you can’t help asking yourself if you’re doing the right thing. Can’t help wondering if it’s somehow wrong or unnatural to pull from so many different traditions. Can’t help thinking that maybe other people are right about sticking to one tradition. That maybe there is one path better than another. That voice is always there. Maybe that voice comes from growing up in a culture that is largely influenced by monotheistic faiths, or maybe it is an intrinsic human quality. Whether culture-derived or inherently human, all of us wonder occasionally if what we are doing is right.

And, if you’re like me, you often find yourself wondering if you’ll ever be able to find a place where other people will truly accept you as you are. You wonder if you’ll ever find a place where you feel safe. Where no one is going to single you out as the one exception to the norm. And, for me, it doesn’t just happen in my spiritual life. I’ve been singled out for a lot of things in my life. Some of them good, all of them awkward. Because every time someone singles me out for something, whether it’s done with good intentions or ill ones, I am made aware, yet again, of how different I am from the people around me.

There’s a type of despair that comes with that. An exasperation for people who are blinded by their own abilities to recognize and celebrate difference. But that exasperation is one born from fear. Fear that the people around me are right. Fear that maybe there is no place for me here. No place for me to forge my own path. Fear that I may have to cave and follow someone else’s rules just for a chance at companionship.

There are many people out there, of many different faiths, who reject eclecticism out of hand, and, so, reject anyone who follows an eclectic path. Many faiths, many traditions teach that religion isn’t something you can scrapbook together, that there are defining concepts of a particular spiritual path that absolutely cannot be laid to the side in favor of another concept. And most people who follow those faiths are entirely agreeable with the major concepts of those paths. But some of us – some of us aren’t.

Some of us attend the rituals of our chosen path with trepidation, wondering if the people we are chanting with would accept us if they knew that we didn’t agree with everything. In the case of other eclectic heathens, wondering what the group will do if it comes out that we honor Loki. That one little discrepancy among a group can get a person thrown out of it. People who are supposed to be kin turn on each other because the paths look a little different. Perhaps it doesn’t always happen that way – in fact, it probably rarely does. But that doesn’t diminish the fear. The terror of being found out.

And it doesn’t diminish the truth that we have, yet again, found something that makes us different. Something that keeps us separate. Because even as we crave companionship and kinship with those that walk similar paths to ours, we understand, as eclectics, one of the hardest truths of all. That the only person who can walk a spiritual path, even when following the teachings and guidance of others, is the person themselves. We are all solitaries when it comes to our pursuit of truth. It’s just that, as eclectics, we tend to spend more time walking the solitary road than our friends who walk the more well-worn paths.

That doesn’t, however, diminish the fear of walking a path completely of our own making. As an eclectic, the decisions made about the spiritual path you walk are completely your own. Being able to look at multiple concepts presented as spiritual truths, all of them conflicting, and say “This one is right for me,” requires an extreme amount of trust in yourself, the world around you, and the presence of the divine in your life. To walk an eclectic path requires some of the greatest courage to be found, as an eclectic must, every day, look into the abyss of the unknown and decide what route to take.

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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.