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.