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Posted by on in Paths Blogs

Long time readers of my blog remember me writing about my 2 weddings during the year I was writing Some Say Fire, my unpublishable monstrosity based on heathen mythology. The 2 weddings both took place in that liminal space between sleep and waking, the first one to Loki / Lodhur and the second one to Odin and Honir. Neither time did I actually make wedding vows except to say "Yes, I want that." Neither time did I plan or expect them to happen. Both had been on a 28th of the month and I considered that my month-a-versary. Well, now I have an actual anniversary, and I didn't plan it that way lol. The gods know I sometimes just have random thoughts in my head and they've pretty much just ignored most of them over the years, but they didn't ignore it this time.

By the way, since this blog is Gnosis Diary and I was asked to write it to show what it feels like to do heathenry, I try to write about gnosis here at least occasionally, among my other topics. So anyway, on to the rest of my story.

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Priest, nun, daughter: Relationships Between Gods and Humans

People sometimes ask, Why would a god want a human godspouse? Or, why would a god be a human's patron?

Sometimes I think we're the cats of the gods. Asking why a god would want a relationship with a human is like asking why humans adopt cats and bring them into our homes. Because we love them, of course. Why do we love them? Love or do not, there is no why.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Erin Lale
    Erin Lale says #
    You're welcome, and thank you for commenting! Glad to know someone got something from my writing.
  • Dragon Dancer
    Dragon Dancer says #
    "Or, why would a god be a human's patron? Sometimes I think we're the cats of the gods. Asking why a god would want a relationship

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Crafting a Valknut for Odin

Coming up on the one year anniversary as a Bride of Odin on June 28th, 2015, I asked Odin what he wanted for our anniversary, and he said he wanted something to represent him in my "shrine." I clarified with him what he meant by shrine, and he meant the glass display cases on the wall where I had recently starting putting spiritual souvenirs. So I made a Valknut. I made two, in fact, one for the monthly anniversary which is every 28th of the month, on May 28th, and one for the one-year anniversary on June 28th.

I made the first valknut from silk ribbon on a silk hoop. I made the template for it on the 27th and made the art object itself on May 28th. The paper template helped me put the points of the triangles in the right places. It was interesting making a val-“knut” (knot) as a fiber craft, with the lines of the triangles crossing over and under each other like a real knot.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
My 2 Weddings, Part 4: Odin and Honir

June 28, 2014 was exactly my 2 month Lokiversary, although I was so deep in my writing I didn't realize it.

I made the mistake of following the suggestion of another human being about a meditation on Loki and Sigyn. When I I went into that half awake, half asleep state of hypnogogia, I accidentally connected to the gods through someone else's filter. At the time, I wasn't aware of the idea that each person connects with their own personal aspect of a god. Later, when I read "My Odin and Other People's Odins" on Beth Wodanis's blog, it helped me understand what went wrong that night.

I ended up in a vision I was not meant to have, in a place I was not meant to go, dealing with some version of the gods who were not my own. Due to what I heard, I became terrified that Sigyn was going to make Loki leave all his human brides, including me. 

I was not just afraid of losing my god-husband, I was afraid of losing my mind. I knew that the process of writing Some Say Fire was healing me of those last vestiges of old hurt that I had thought would never heal. I knew that I had to complete the process to be fully healed, and I needed to continue to hand my problems over to Loki as my higher power to do it. My mind was under renovation and if this process just stopped in the middle I wouldn't be 98% healed like I was before it started, I'd be living in a torn-down ruin of a mind with the walls ripped open and the flooring ripped out. And I was not just afraid of losing my mind, but afraid of losing it AGAIN. Afraid of going back to how I'd been before therapy in my 20s. 

I started crying, and I couldn't stop. I bawled so hard I started to wheeze and have an asthma attack. Other-Loki was oblivious. Other-Sigyn told me to get out. I did what she wanted. I brainscrubbed by doing the Freya meditation that I hardly ever did anymore because it fills my whole body with Freya's light and no other god could be with me when I did it. I deliberately broke our connection because that's what they wanted me to do.

For the first time since Loki had come to me as Lodhur and filled me with the divine breath, I was having an asthma attack and I was by myself. I had come to trust Loki/Lodhur to always be there for me to fill me with breath. I was blossoming in my offline interactions with other people because I did not have to skip things held in smoking venues anymore. And now I couldn't breathe. And he wasn't there to help me.

I tried to wait it out. That works sometimes. It works if I got an attack because of exercise and I stop exercising and lie down and be quiet. I could feel the light of Freya in my heart, like I always could since I dedicated to her in 1989, but I couldn't hear her, or hear any of the gods. There was a terrible silence within.

I still couldn't breathe right and this had gone on for half an hour and it was starting to become a real medical emergency. I needed the divine breath. The divine breath is actually Odin's power. I knew that the only reason Loki was able to give me that breath is because he and Odin could call on each other's powers at will. So I called Odin. And I was filled with breath. I could breath, and my body relaxed. Odin put his arms around me, Odin's face looked down on me gently, Odin's voice comforted me, Odin's divine breath filled my lungs.

I had always suspected that I might come out of this process of writing this book as Odin-claimed. Looking back at having come to heathenism through rune magic, having been inspired with his poetry and learning bersarkrgangr, having once been ready to swear myself to him the day that Freya arrived and claimed me instead, having had that vision during runecasting that I would end up with Odin after my death, having become convinced that the being coming to me as Loki was sometimes really Odin, and that it was their combined form Lodhur that gave me breath, and that they were both separate and not separate, all this led up to this moment.

I saw particles of gold lifting from the ring Loki had put on my hand, rising like steam. "No, I still want that," I said. 

But it lifted away. Then it floated before my eyes and I saw two new metals join it. Over Loki's bright gold, he twisted on a wire of silver and fused it to the gold, for himself. Then another wire of something else, something not quite visible, became fused to it, and that was for Honir. Honir's wire was clear with a blue vein through it. I found myself with the revelation that Honir was a soul changer.

I said, “I want that ring back.”

The ring went back on my left ring finger. Changed. Married to all three of them now. To the triple Odin. Still a Bride of Loki, yes, but with the whole brother trio now. I could not just see it but feel it. I could feel the ring on my hand, feel the pulse in my finger like there was a physical ring on it.

I still can. 

 

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The first 5 days after I received Loki's ring were turbulent and sometimes dark. He was not the delighted and playful skinriding presence I had grown so used to. I was vaguely aware of him as a dark ball of anger somewhere distant from me. 
 
Some of my online relationships exploded, and I had to cut ties. But, some long time acquaintances suddenly grew closer and turned into friends. 
 
At first, I wondered if Loki's absence might be a test of faith. Then I realized that I was better off without the people he kicked out of my life. Old acquaintances suddenly, inexplicably contacted me to renew and deepen old relationships. I realized that Loki had been away arranging my life for my benefit. 
 
I would never have guessed in advance who Loki would kick out of my life, and who would grow closer. I suppose that's the reason he arranged this part of my life for me, because I didn't guess right all the time about who I should be friends with. All the people I fought against online in those few days claimed to be Lokeans. Only when I was trying to get them out of my online friends lists did I discover some of them were not who they seemed to be.
 
The biggest surprise was grower closer to a longtime acquaintance who avoided Loki. Despite that, we started sharing our personal gnosis with each other, and beta reading each other's writing. We evolved into friends as well as colleagues. One of the lessons to learn here is that when people on different paths respect that my path is my path, your path is your path, and we don't have to walk the same path to be friends, we can walk together on our different roads in friendship.
 
Image: fire in darkness, by Anupam Sunil, Creative Commons license, via Wikimedia Commons
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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
My 2 Weddings, part 1: Loki

On April 28, 2014, I was reading reading a novel in bed. My eyes closed and my Kindle slipped from my hand onto the pillow. Instead of drifting off to sleep, I drifted into hypnogogia, that dreamy state in which I am awake and aware but can't move and can see images as if I were dreaming.

Loki appeared, and I expressed anxiety that he and the other gods would stop talking to me when I was done writing the book they were inspiring me to write.

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the little mystic book that could

So...um, Beyond Reason, my book about my path as a godspouse of Loki, is selling well.

beyond_reason_no_1

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