My scholarly knowledge about #Loki is sadly limited. Most of what I remember about them comes from popular summaries of Norse mythology. Anyone who's better educated on Norse spirituality can correct me here, but my general sense is that Loki in stories tends to change over time from a more light-hearted trickster, helping the Aesir hoodwink their rivals, to a more calculating and cruel figure whose crowning outrage was orchestrating the death of Odin's and Frigg's beloved son, Baldur. Blamed for the murder, Loki is caught and imprisoned, Prometheus-like, for eternity with a snake dripping venom into their eyes.

When I first learned this story about Baldur I accepted the surface reading that #Loki had committed some horrible crime, and deserved what they got for killing the beautiful, luminous Baldur. Even now I feel an echo of the same wave of longing, of "Joy", that C. S. Lewis described feeling upon encountering these lines of Longfellow's poetry (https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2014/11/26/baldar/):

I heard a voice that cried,
Balder the beautiful
Is dead, is dead——

Lewis's experiences of "Joy" led him to become a Christian, while my own led me to become a chaos witch...possibly because I now don't think Loki's to blame for Baldur?

The trouble began for Baldur when he had a dream (or more than one, I don't know the source material) that he interpreted as foretelling his death. This saddened him and _alarmed_ his mother Frigg to the point that she went through the entire world *making every single entity she found* PROMISE that they would not cause Baldur's death. And I mean everything_--people, animals, plants, inanimate materials...heck, she probably extracted promises from mercury and lead and arsenic not to poison her wonderful son. The entire world was to be Baldur's safe space, because Baldur was so wonderful he deserved complete safety...right?

But just think about the implications of this. This is a world in which animals, plants, objects, _everything_ has a soul, a soul able to be reasoned with and to make agreements with the gods. So imagine being something like, say, a sword with a soul. Your purpose as a sword is to be sharp, and to be a weapon. And now a fiercely protective goddess is telling you, "You will *forget* your purpose, if ever you should meet my son; if you do what you were made to do, I will visit unimaginable punishment on you. Yes or no?" Not that this violation of purpose matters to Frigg, extorting perfect safety for her son from all the world.

No, not quite all the world. Frigg neglected to extort a promise of safety from mistletoe. There's some speculation, it seems, about why the myth decided that mistletoe was the exception--but anyway, Frigg's stated reason was that she couldn't imagine harmless, wimpy little mistletoe ever being a potential danger to her son. She'd tried to wall her son off from all danger but her lofty disdain of "harmless" mistletoe left a gap in her wall that #Loki would eventually drive a truck through. But Loki didn't act, not yet, not until the Aesir's culminating act of arrogance and heedlessness.

For the other gods decided that Frigg's astonishing act of coercion was a _great_ opportunity for some harmless fun. They started hurling objects at Baldur, knowing that because everything (almost) in the world had promised not to hurt Frigg's golden boy, they could chuck rocks and knives and arrows at Baldur all day and nothing would happen. "Oh, you're a sword, huh? Sharpest in the world, eh? Could cut *anyone's* head off in a blow? Well, joke's on you, because I'm about to do--THIS!"

Needless to say this final piece of egotism finally got to #Loki, and they decided they would show just how flimsy Frigg's "safety" was.

So #Loki found the one guy who wasn't tossing pointy things at Baldur as a "joke"--not because Höðr thought that it was a poor joke to throw projectiles at his brother (even though it was) but because he was blind and couldn't enjoy the joke as much. Well, Loki gave him what he wanted, in the form of a mistletoe spear and a helpful guiding hand, and Baldur went down. (One suspects that Höðr was secretly pleased; his prettier brother probably got the lion's share of his mother's love, and one doubts that Frigg would have made _anything_ promise not to hurt Höðr.)

But Frigg wasn't done, oh no! The Aesir had tempted Fate's--practically danced on Fate's chest--and lost the gamble; rightfully Baldur needed to pay the cost like everyone. But Frigg wasn't done. She appealed to Hel, the goddess of the underworld (and #Loki's daughter, by the by), to release her son. Hel reasonably demanded proof of Frigg that Baldur really was SO wonderful and glowy that he deserved exemption from the rules that govern even the gods:

"If all things in the world, alive or dead, weep for him, then he will be allowed to return...If anyone speaks against him or refuses to cry, then he will remain with Hel."

And damned if Frigg doesn't make the rounds of the Earth _again_, demanding that all things, even inanimate rocks and metals, weep for her glorious son Baldur. Now here, I admit, I feel compelled to cut into Loki's story with an observation of my own: Loki's pushing me in the direction of sarcasm about the "golden boy" but Baldur really _must_ have been something, if Frigg was able to secure this second round of promises so readily. When @kel wrote xer first version of this tale on Twitter, xe got an interesting response from someone who was more inclined to Baldur's side in the matter.

My friend's view was that Baldur's loss was a reminder that even the most beautiful and kindly of people are not immune from cruelty and destruction. She found Kel's Loki-influenced perspective on the tale fascinating, but she definitely felt that Loki was wrong to cause Baldur's death even indirectly. And it reminds me that...I've received some hints that I can't JUST be a Lokean. I can't separate Loki from their milieu and honor them without at least _acknowledging_ the Aesir...at least, that's a hint I got during meditation some nights ago. I haven't fully digested the information yet. But I digress...

In any case Frigg _almost_ succeeds in getting all the world to weep for Baldur...but one giant-woman, Þökk, refuses.

"Þökk will weep dry tears; let Hel keep her own."

It is thought that Þökk was perhaps actually #Loki in disguise, throwing a last wrench into Frigg's failed attempt to compel the Universe to keep her son in eternal safety. Yet again, surely it is absolutely _unhinged_ to DEMAND that all the world's entities weep for one person, however universally beloved. Heck, I'm not sure I'd do it; I've never met Baldur and it's rather a blind leap of faith to accept that he was really all that awesome. I weep dry tears.

Anyway, for the crime of embarrassing Frigg and punishing the Aesir for trying to cheat death, #Loki gets to be tortured for the rest of existence. In a way...the torture is real: Loki's name has been mud for a while now, cursed not merely with being linked forever in the eyes of the public to that dark-haired Marvel impostor, but with the reputation of being violent, chaotic, "mad, bad, and dangerous to know". I've had people (like my ex-lover K.) suggest to me that Loki was rather a curious choice of trickster god for me to make. Nicer tricksters like #Coyote and the even nicer #Otter seem favored, rather.

But I never really could accept too nice a god, ever. That partly was why we were drawn into classical paganism back in the late '90s when @mono was ploughing through Latin and Greek classes: Mono's severe passions were moved by stories of the madness that afflicted priestesses of Apollo, and one of our first genuine spiritual experiences came at the Cave of the Cumaean Sibyl, whose inspiration by the god is described in hair-raising detail as something like a demonic possession. Apollo heals; Apollo kills. Apollo brings knowledge; Apollo destroys reason. No truly powerful deity is safe.

And so it is when I decided that I needed the influence of a trickster in my life. It's possible that #Coyote had been trying to catch my eye at about the same time that #Loki successfully got my attention; you may remember my recounting, in the story of meeting Loki, how coyotes were curiously present in my life at the time. But leaving aside the question of cultural affinity (which is not strong, for Coyote) there's the more salient fact that Coyote's more of a jokester while #Loki is the genuine article, a trickster who can do some real fucking damage if they want. That was always going to mean more to me.

Heck, even the lesser trickster figures that I've adopted into my personal pantheon are dangerous. Pinkie Pie is a figure of fun but she's also Pinkamena Diane Pie, about whose murderous side fanfic writers have written disturbingly apt stories; Sans from #Undertale tells bad jokes and he's also utterly ruthless in trying to destroy Frisk if it turns out that the player has turned Frisk into a killer. Therefore Pinkie Pie and Sans are credible tricksters to me I'm proud to honor in my small way.

Well, I think that about exhausts what I intended to say about #Loki when I promised them this morning that I'd do them a solid. Hopefully I'll learn more and have more fun (HAH) experiences with them that I can tell you all about.

Also, honestly, if there's anyone here who's into the Aesir and Frigg especially, and wants to come at me and my retelling of the story of Baldur from the opposite side...I'd seriously love to hear it. I feel strongly that I need constant correction and balancing in my spiritual journey.

@kara_dreamer a couple years ago I had a dream about the Marvel universe Loki, which ended up turning into a 60k-word fanfic (which I really need to get back to work on), and meanwhile my muse took on the aspect of Marvel-Loki. I call hir "Loki-in-my-head," because hie's assured me repeatedly that hie's not a god--but Loki would do that, wouldn't hie? :P

@kara_dreamer amusingly enough, I'm also dedicated to Thoth (though I call him Djwty), though I'm not actively practicing religion, magic, or spirituality as such--just kind of doing my own thing, with occasional guidance. ;)

@green heh, I'm in roughly the same boat, although I'm steering myself in the direction of a greater degree of explicit practice. I feel that organization does me good, and should enable to me to derive more motivation and determination for my daily life than an irregular, noncommittal engagement with spirituality.

@kara_dreamer I used to be much more active, then went through a mostly-dormant period for several years. I'm trying to build myself up into more spiritual/magical activity/awareness, but doing it gradually and consciously, rather than diving in the deep end (again).

@green *nods* good point. I completely bounced off neo-paganism back in 2000-2001 partly because I was trying to take everything I was exposed to at face value, as equally important, and got bogged down very quickly. Now I'm being a lot more choosy about what practices I adopt. They have to mean something to me first, not just be something I got out of a book.

@green indeed! I've not quite liked the Marvel Loki from the little taste I've gotten from that rather silly "Thor" film, but now I'm remembering that some acquaintance or other told me that they looked to a particular Marvel comic story-line as a reference to their own headcanonical Loki. And indeed it seems rather fitting indeed that everybody's Loki is different... :p

@kara_dreamer hee, yeah. hie's a shapeshifter/illusionist/trickster, canonically genderfluid (both father *and* mother), and generally not interested in being tethered to any particular portfolio. Loki does what Loki wants, dammit. XD

@green indeed it's not even really possible to pin down Loki to a particular _symbol_, the way many other deities have well-defined symbols attached to them. I've gathered that contemporary "#Lokean" practice (such as I've grasped it) has used a number of different symbols for convenience.

@kara_dreamer their goals are not ours, and they are not interested in our well-being in any sense in which we would understand, at least in general. that said, sometimes I find such an interest, but I am hesitant to ascribe motivations to most

@Eve Well said. in fact, as I tend to understand "the gods" as entities and how they interact with human minds, "well-being" is something they literally can't promise. They haven't that sort of power, working chiefly in the realm of thought; they can't literally part the waves for us, although they can if they're unscrupulous enough pretend that they have that sort of power.

@kara_dreamer i tend to filter much of these things through Japanese views of yokai, on which (to the best of my understanding) they are entities that behave in mysterious ways for mysterious reasons. I am fond of the story of "nurikabe" which appears, or used to appear, or appeared once, to a traveler on a dark road in the mountains; he was walking and, suddenly, there was a wall in the middle of the road, which couldn't be passed. he slept there, and on waking in the light of dawn, there was no wall and no barrier and he passed on. what was the goal of this action? nothing that is clear to us, but it is clear to the actor

@Eve Oh! I am fascinated by what little I know of the _yokai_, although my sole exposure to them is through children's TV *chuckles*--they are frequent minor villains in various Super Sentai series, most notable "Kakuranger", in which we're even given a narrator who explains just who all these yokai are. Indeed one of the _nurikabe_ shows up in "Kakuranger" although it's given the aspect of a maze that the traveller enters but can't leave.

And you could construct even _positive_ reasons this might happen! Perhaps the traveller would have gone to their death if they hadn't been blocked.

@kara_dreamer actually the optimal children's/manga/anime source here is Shigeru Mizuki (gegege no kitaro), who really understands these things, or did while he was still here. he is an example of someone who had many experiences and manages to convey them in a really clear way.

yes I can easily imagine positive reasons! and some yokai aim at the positive, some don't, and some (even those) are simply alien ...

@kara_dreamer I believe this kind of thing is different than what one finds with gods of the sort I think you are discussing, which are intimately related to humans in a way that things like the nurikabe are not. still though with gods I think their motivations are quite hard for us to fathom, in part because both we are limited. I do wonder if the converse is also true, as some seem to believe: that gods are also limited in some respects. This is something thats not clear to me and it's also not clear whetherwe would be in a position to notice it if it was true, given the difference in size between the two sides.

@kara_dreamer
I don't know if you've read either the prose or poetic vetas, but considering your enjoyment of Neil Gaiman his recent book on Norse Myth is a pretty serviceable and readable reference point.

@Irick yeah, I definitely need to add that to the reading queue