Question: Do you have any suggestions for others just starting to learn about Loki? 

The best suggestion I can give to anyone interested in learning about a particular deity is to advise them to read the myths and try to see the story through that vantage point. So, in this case, a person would read the myths and view Loki as the main character, no matter how minor his role, and try and discern the potential motives behind his actions.

Trying to figure out the why behind a god’s actions in the myths is a great first step to really start to understand what kind of god you’re dealing with. Loki is constantly solving problems in the myths, which indicates he’s a quick and innovative thinker. He also really understands other people’s motivations, which allows his cunning to really shine through.

When you’re reading the myths, try to ignore the biases of authors who paint the gods in a particular light. If someone calls a god evil or spiteful, decide for yourself through examining the myths via the lens of that god’s character if that is actually justified or not. Most of the time, bias in myth is not justified – it’s just that the person who wrote the retelling of the myth let their bias sink in. Most myth writers aren’t versed in deep mythical interpretation; they retell the myths because they enjoy the stories and do not necessarily understand or appreciate the deeper religious implications.

Once you are comfortable with the myths and have examined a few of them through Loki’s eyes (as close as humans can get, of course), then decide if you think he’s a god that you want to approach. If the answer to that question is yes, then approach him with an offering and give him a libation and tell him that you are interested in learning more from him and experiencing what he is like firsthand.

If you really want to butter him up and get him interested in seeing what you have to offer, I’d suggest an offering of something chocolate (cinnamon raisin chocolate bread to be precise) and some fireball whiskey. In my experience, those are two things he pretty much never turns down, and if you show up with both, he is more than likely going to show up just to receive the offerings.

One of the most common mistakes I see people make is that they approach a god before they have done any research into them – by research, I mean reading the myths in the manner I have described – and then get upset when that god doesn’t show up or ends up not giving them what they have asked to receive. That is really a dual mistake – it’s not a good idea to approach a god you don’t know and be like, “Hey, could you give me this really important thing?” It’s the equivalent of going up to a stranger on the street and being like, “Hey, can you give me five grand?” It’s that level of rude.

The first time you approach a god, it should be more like going to a new neighbor’s house where you bring a housewarming gift and get to know the person in the first conversation. Subsequent offerings are like going to the neighbor’s house with cookies on every visit, so that they know you enjoy their company but also want to provide them with something that allows them to enjoy your company. That’s how a reciprocal relationship is forged, and that is how you build up a good relationship with the gods – offerings at every visit. Asking the gods for more than just conversation and experience comes way later, after you have established a relationship.

There is also a bit of truth to the idea that the less you ask for, the more you receive when you do actually need to ask for help. I make it a point not to ask Loki for much help, and I do that mostly out of respect and partially because I know that not asking him for help with everyday stuff makes it more likely for him to be willing to help with the really big stuff – like the intercession he was willing to make with the Morrigan that I mentioned yesterday.

I highly suggest solving as many problems you can on your own or with ancestral or wight help before ever turning to the divine. Not because the gods won’t want to help but because the gods are the only ones that can help when a situation spirals out of control.

That said, there are many ways to approach learning about a god. You can read articles and books that discuss them in a more scholastic way if that is your inclination. You can read the myths. You can talk to other people who work with the god you’re curious about and learn more about the types of people who are generally drawn to work with that god. The best way, in my experience, however, is to read the myths and then approach the deity with offerings when you’re ready.

After all, polytheistic religions are living religions. Our gods are very much alive, approachable, and present. The best way to get to know a god is to get to know them directly. Our religions are based on reciprocal relationships, so when we talk to the gods, they listen, and they talk to us so that we may listen. We give offerings so they may give us all good things, so that we, in turn, can give to them again. It is a neverending cycle of exchange, and that makes honoring the gods a beautiful experience.

Question: Do you have any unusual or interesting UPG with Loki? 

I like this question because I have so many choices for stories to share. Like I said in my last post, most of the information we have about Loki today comes from personal gnosis. He is a god very close to humanity, so he tends to be around more than the other gods, in my experience.

Many of the unusual experiences I have had with Loki have come from times where he has horsed one of my friends. That friend is trained to handle divine possession, and, at least in my local circle, he seems to be the person that Loki prefers to horse. I have a working theory that it is because my friend emits a vibrational signal that is closer to the wavelength that Loki operates on than the rest of us.

Quite a few people in my local community are trained to handle divine possession, as we live in one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world. The ancient status of those mountains translates directly into how active the spirit world is here, and it is dangerous for those who are sensitive to spirits to go around untrained in this area. As an example of this, a new woman moved into my neighborhood recently, and it is not an accident that when the two of us met, I learned that she had a decent amount of spiritual strength but no training to keep her safe from spirits. Her apartment was mired in miasma, and an entity came through an unlocked mirror and tried to attack me while I was there. This type of occurrence is incredibly common in this area, so the experienced practitioners here tend to make it a habit to teach those with the strength to be attractive to malignant spirits how to defend themselves against them.

That was a bit of a tangent, but I want to emphasize the fact that I live in an area where encountering and dealing with spirits, the gods included, is just a normal part of life. In the Pagan groups in this area, most people have had direct experience with the gods and many of them are trained in divine possession techniques. That is directly related to how active the spirit world is here, due to the age of the mountain range. It is unusual to find many experienced practitioners in one area, as we tend to be spread thinly across the country and the globe. We are all aware of how strange it is, and we have all often remarked on how weird it is that this area tends to draw experienced spiritworkers almost magnetically towards it.

My experience living here is one of the reasons I so strongly advocate for stronger discernment; I’ve seen first-hand what happens when it isn’t utilized, and the results are often negative and far-reaching in their impact. Entering into rituals unprepared for the consequences can also have far-reaching implications, and that’s where this particular UPG with Loki starts. That said, it also involves the Morrigan.

One of the Pagans here, a Kemetic practitioner who also works with Loki (who blames me for Loki coming into his life) attended a ritual to the Morrigan that John Beckett facilitated during his visit two years ago. The ritual itself was pretty intense, and it was particularly intense for the aforementioned practitioner who, after the ritual was done and Beckett was back in Texas, found himself practically stalked by the Morrigan.

He came to me for help because while he had wanted to honor the Morrigan, she was stalking him to the point that it was causing physical and energetic pain. The friend I mentioned before who acts as Loki’s horse more easily than others was present for this conversation. The three of us discussed what we wanted to do, and we ended up deciding that calling on Loki to directly communicate with the Morrigan, since he is a god that has many connections to other pantheons, would be the best course of action. After all, who better to reason with a god than another god?

The Morrigan’s presence was very clearly felt by everyone in the room, and we determined that the best way for this particular discussion to happen was to ask Loki for his willingness to horse someone and confront her more directly. There was an exchange of goods for services rendered at some point (parts of the memory are hazy, which is normal when dealing with the gods when they horse someone), and Loki was suddenly very present in the room alongside the Morrigan, though in a way that was a bit more physical than usual.

From what I can remember of what Loki told us of the conversation with the Morrigan, he did his best to explain to her that getting consent from a follower was better than forcing it, but she seemed fairly determined to not take no for an answer. From what I can remember, Loki did what he could to try and help, but the Morrigan refused to be persuaded. Gods can be as stubborn, if not more so, than people, and the Morrigan absolutely refused to budge in her pursuit of this particular practitioner (At this point, the two of them have forged a slightly more healthy relationship but it will probably always be tainted in some ways by the fact that it was built originally off of coercion).

That was an experience that told me a lot about Loki and how he views consent. He was willing to intercede with a god from an entirely different pantheon to try to convince them that it was better to obtain consent from a potential follower than to coerce them into service. Some people might point out that we had to ask him for help rather than automatically receive it, but that makes perfect sense. After all, we were asking him to step directly into the path of another god who was hell-bent on getting what she wanted. That’s a rather volatile situation to ask anyone to step into, and we definitely gave Loki a plethora of offerings in return for his willingness to put himself in a potentially dangerous situation.

That experience also belied everything that I’ve ever heard anyone say about Loki being a coward who refuses to fight or put himself in danger, who prefers to run away from problems rather than solve them. This is an ironic view, considering the myths and how often Loki puts himself in danger; it’s a pretty regular occurrence, actually. There’s nothing cowardly about him, and if he does step down, it is out of respect for the person on the other side rather than out of fear.

I’ve learned a lot about Loki through experiences like this one, and I’m aware of how amazing it is to be able to have experiences like this. I didn’t start physically encountered gods until about three years ago, and what really helped facilitate that was to eliminate from my head the ideas engendered by Protestant society. I learned to suspend my disbelief when it comes to how gods can appear to us and accept that they can, and do, walk around occasionally in human bodies. That made it a lot easier to discern when a person was actually being horsed by a god and when they were just parroting. Physically experiencing the presence of a god is not an experience that is easily forgotten.

Question: What is something you wish you knew about Loki but don’t currently? 

This is a question that is really difficult to answer because it is one of those meta-questions that brings into focus the reality that we simply cannot know what we do not know we have the opportunity to know.

That said, the answer that really comes to my mind for this question regarding Loki is that I would like to know more about his origins. There are scholarly speculations of course, like the ones that suggest he originated as a hearth spirit, but these are only half-baked educational guesses. The argument for his origins as a hearth spirit is a strong one, but there is no information about Loki’s background in Norse mythology that either confirms or denies the argument.

There is a shared gnosis among Lokeans that Loki is one of the oldest gods of the Norse pantheon, and that is echoed in the understanding that Lodur is one of Loki’s names – perhaps his oldest name. Even the correlation between Lodur and Loki is one based on shared gnosis, however, rather than mythological understanding or scholarly investigation. Much of the knowledge we have about Loki today comes directly from Loki himself, through lived experience.

That is a beautiful thing and also a terrifying thing. It means relying much more heavily on gnosis and personal experience – it also requires a much stronger use of discernment to ensure that the spirit you’re engaging is actually Loki and not something pretending to be Loki. There is an entire class of spirits that goes around impersonating other spirits, especially deities, in an attempt to co-opt offerings and worship for themselves and to malign and frighten the humans who misperceive them. That’s why discernment is such a critical part of any Pagan practice, especially when dealing with gods where gnosis is one of the few ways to really learn anything about them.

Question: How has your relationship with Loki changed over time? 

When Loki first came into my life, I was still at a stage where I was working with leftover baggage from growing up in a monotheistic culture. When he started communicating with me, he was among the first of the Norse gods (and other Pagan gods) to do so. I spent a few months thinking I was crazy because I couldn’t comprehend why a god had come to me, of all people. I was overwhelmed and conflicted, pleased that he was communicating with me but confused because I felt like I had done nothing to deserve his presence. It took me a while longer to come to the understanding that the gods show up when they want to; it has nothing to do with us being deserving or not – though it does help to be receptive to them showing up in the first place.

In many ways, the way my relationship with Loki has grown has echoed the growth of my own understanding and development of a polytheistic framework. He has coaxed me along that path so subtly that it wasn’t until I sat down to answer today’s question that I realized how true it is. He’s always been a gentle guide for me, except when I’ve asked him to push boundaries to facilitate healing, and, like I’ve said elsewhere, his kindness always astounds me.

As I grew into a firmer understanding of a polytheistic worldview and began developing my practice, my relationship with Loki went from friend to devotee, as I started giving him offerings. Over the years, I have gifted him with many things, though the ones that stand out to me as things he has enjoyed the most include orange chocolate (of any variety), cream soda mixed with Fireball whiskey, and a Rubix cube.

Alongside developing my own practice, I spent a lot of time researching Heathen communities online and browsing through forums. I also started this blog, partially as a record for myself but also for my writing to help others. I learned through the internet communities I found that Loki was regarded negatively, and I hated that – especially after reading the Eddas.

Even in my first read-through of the Poetic Edda, I saw that Loki was just painfully honest and incredibly adept at solving problems. Sure, some of those problems he caused, but that’s pretty standard – think of your own lives. I’m sure there are plenty of problems you’ve had to solve that you created. In the myths, it is fairly standard for Loki to be the one figuring out the solutions to the problems, no matter how dire. He also always acts for the benefit of the gods, and that includes his actions during Ragnorak. Understanding how that is beneficial to the gods requires understanding that the Norse didn’t see this world as the only one, but as one in a continuous chain of regenerating worlds. It’s a standard creation-death-regeneration cycle.

Anyway, I hated how people had fundamentally misunderstood Loki because it seemed to me that they had simply failed to apply logic to myth interpretation. I also hated how the people who were defending Loki always seemed to do it in a way that made it seem that Loki was incapable of fighting his own battles. They painted him as a weak god, and I have known him to be a lot of things but weak and cowardly are not traits I would ascribe to him. He can and will fight his own battles.

That said, I also started noticing that the Lokeans I came across in online communities were almost always speaking with one voice, forced into a corner because they did not want to give in to more vocal Heathens who kept telling them they were wrong for worshipping Loki.

It was around that time that Loki came to me and originally asked me if I was interested in a godspouse relationship with him. I was not, nor will I ever be. He is like a weird mixture of father/brother to me, so the idea of that type of relationship with him just disturbed me. Still, I took the offer and thought about it for a long time before I finally asked him if I could serve him as a priest instead. I would have been content to remain a devotee if he had said no, but he pretty eagerly accepted that arrangement.

I’ve been working for Loki as a priest for three years now, and the first part of the work that he asked me to do for him was to create an online community for his devotees to have a place to discuss him and their practice. That’s where Loki’s Wyrdlings came from, and it is why it persists to this day. The community is centered around Loki, so there is no one there who will be harassed and told that they can’t be a real Heathen if they worship Loki or that they aren’t welcome because one of their gods is unwelcome.

Other work has sprung from that bedrock, as Loki University was directly inspired by people in Loki’s Wyrdlings who wanted a place where they could go to learn more about Loki and being a Lokean without being dismissed out of hand. Loki’s Torch, which will be an annual publication featuring a diverse array of Lokean works, came from a handful of Wyrdlings who pulled together and worked to find a way to make the Lokean community more widely accessible.

The work that Loki has me do is very community-centric, but it has very little to do with facilitating rituals or acting as spiritual counsel. Those are roles I can play (and have, when necessary), but the work I do for Him is the work I do for the Lokean community as a whole. That is why I wrote the article in the Wild Hunt to counter absurd claims about the dangers of being around Lokeans made in Siegfried’s article that compared Loki to Trump. I wrote a post here on how ludicrous that comparison was, but the more important work was correcting assumptions about Lokeans, the people who honor Loki.

What I have really learned over the course of the relationship I’ve had with Loki is that he cares deeply about those who worship him. He seems to cherish each and every Lokean, no matter what their backstory is or how they perceive him. In many ways, I think he perceives us as children he needs to protect. Sometimes, that protection comes in the form of pushing off a branch to teach us to fly, but it always comes from a deep, resounding kindness.

So, really, the only way in which my relationship with Loki has changed over the years is that it has become one that is much more intertwined with my day-to-day life. I do more and more work for him, and he continues to be present in my life. To me, his presence is more than enough reason to do the work that I do for him. I have a deep-seated reverence for the divine, and I do the best I can to avoid the all too human trap of assigning human-born concepts of right and wrong to the gods I honor, and I am grateful to be able to count Loki as one of them.

Question: When is a time that Loki has refused to help?

This is a question that I find rather difficult to answer, as it is hard for me to think of a time when he has refused. There have been times when he has directed me to other people, other gods for the answers to the questions I hold or the training I need. Magically speaking, he sent me to Freyja to learn more about the depths of rune magic, as he told me I was better suited to learn what I needed to know from her than from him. To me, that isn’t a refusal to help – it’s just a different flavor of aid.

That said, I honestly try not to approach the gods with my problems unless I can truly justify to myself that I need the input of the gods to solve a problem I am faced with. I’m like that in person, too. I won’t ask for help for something unless I really, really need that help. The last time I asked someone for help in person was when I ended up going to a person’s place that was badly soaked in miasma. I didn’t realize it for a long time, so that miasma gradually ate away at my shields until an entity made its presence known. When that happened, I left and asked my roommate (who is a two-headed doctor) to help me cleanse the person’s apartment. She made a few different washes, and we smoked the apartment and warded it, leaving the washes behind for the apartment owner to use.

That particular day was rough for me, as I’d spent the majority of it walking between planes, which is one of the risks associated with the tradition I practice. There are days where I cannot become fully grounded in this plane because I need to do too much work on the astral. I wasn’t psychically prepared for difficult work in this plane on top of what I had already done, so I ended up in a psychic state that required I seek someone to help me help someone else.

The situation above is just an example to show where I have to be before I am willing to seek someone else’s help- and that’s just another person. I do the best I can to avoid taking my problems to the gods, as I know that they have their own lives and their own responsibilities without me adding to it.

Usually, when I communicate with the gods, it is more me listening to them and expressing the appreciation I have for who they are and what they do just by existing. I treasure my friendship with Loki, and I do the best I can not to call on him to help me with problems unless I absolutely cannot think of another way to sort out the problem on my own.

The times I do call on him I tend to limit to when I am giving him an offering or inviting him into a ritual space. I think the last time I called on him to help with a problem (aside from the one mentioned yesterday) is when the Morrigan was stalking a friend, and I asked him if he could step in and reason with her. That was an intense night.

I have never had Loki outright refuse to help me, but that is probably because I do the best I can to respect the fact that he is a god and I am not entitled to his presence. I don’t treat the gods like they are dispensers of aid when I need it; I treat them like they are individual entities with their own sovereignty that just happen to enjoy my company, as I enjoy theirs.