I have this idea in my head that I am a consistent devotional practitioner, that I have a strong pattern of practice in my life. Sometimes this is true but over the years I have to honestly recognize that my practice habits are not me falling short of some ideal; my practice habits are simply my habits – no qualification or footnotes necessary.

Accepting Things As They Are is a difficult but very, very important spiritual skill. Over and over I’m confronted with the fact that various ideals and mental constructs are not real – at least, not in the sense that they reflect Things As They Are. These ideals are constructed one at thought at a time by me. They are real in the sense that they have an impact on my inner life and on the way I try to make sense of the world, but they are not constructs built out of actual experience. Instead, these imagined realities are just distorted reflections and prevent me from engaging with the facts as they unfold.

The fact is that I have practice cycles. These cycles are continuous, ongoing; they unfold one into the next and they form a pattern that is itself unbroken but that is not a simple linear ray tossing me into a predictable and eternal future.

I think most people are probably like this.

I do think that daily devotional practice is possibly the best thing you can do to make your practice deeper and more rich. I spent almost two years doing daily practice and though others would no doubt hold up their own unbroken record of a decade of daily practice and laugh at so small a period, I’m actually kind of amazed I was able to sustain that. It was an amazing time and yes, it came at a sacrifice and yes, I’d recommend it to anyone. In fact, I keep trying to recommend it to myself.

I have not been able to sustain a long stretch of daily practice since that time.

Part of it is me. Much of it is me, no doubt. I know that I lack strength of discipline and that I’m easily distracted. In fact, I actively talk myself out of daily practice. I have very hard arguments with myself about *not* doing my practice. This takes place virtually ever day of long streaks of practice.

Meditators and martial artists will tell you that this is an entirely natural phase of growth. Anyone who has spent any time on the cushion or with the beads will tell you that yes, you will come up with a million and one ways to avoid doing your practice for the day. This is something that happens to devotional practitioners as well, especially those of us trying very hard to adopt a daily practice.

There is no trick to consistent practice. Consistency is only achieved by doing. Again: There is no trick to consistent practice. Consistency is only achieved by doing.

That said, I have found a few strategies that keep my mind pointed in the right direction.

Space management: If my house is messy, I don’t do my work. If the floor in front of the altars is cluttered, I don’t approach. I get very distracted by the general chaos of a messy house. Even though I have always striven to keep my altars very clean (and after about 12 years I did finally get quite good at it!) but this kind of attention and discipline has to extend to the space surrounding the altar. The altar does not exist in isolation. It is a condensation of the space around it just as it is a magnification of the Power it houses. Therefore, space tending is altar tending writ large.

Time management: This is possibly even more complicated than space management. My devotional timetable has to be managed in terms of daily hours and seasonal tides. There are times of the day that I feel most prepared for worship (evening, usually) and so I listen to my internal clock when it tells me it’s time for worship; this usually happens around 9pm. Since I know that I have a kind of internal clock that calls my attention to my desire for worship, I know that the rest of my day can be structured to take place before that time.

Seasonal time management is a little harder. I don’t necessarily observe the full moons, though there are a few in the year that I do pay attention to, such as the Lunar New Year and the autumnal full moons of Ashvin and Kartik. Solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter days are powerful for magical reasons though they aren’t of special religious significance for the most part. For instance, I had planned to start my seeds on Feb. 2 but didn’t get around to the task; I’ll be starting them today to participate in the energy of the Lunar New Year, instead. It’s religious in the sense that my plant allies are a distinct part of my spiritual landscape and it’s magical in the sense that these allies are associated with very particular types of work (that I’ll hopefully be resuming soon! Oh I hope).

Planning, though – planning is hard. Planning my activities to coincide with these amazing shifting tides is hard. Maintaining a festival calendar is a challenge I’ve never taken on. Aside from Ambubachi Mela in summer and Durga Puja, Kali Puja, and Lakshmi Puja in the fall I don’t really observe festivals or holy days at home. (That’s a lie; there’s 2 – 3 weeks from mid-October to mid-November that’s pretty much a constant party for the Dead in one way or another but I’ve been doing that for so long I barely remember that it is, in fact, a marathon observance of holy days.)

Lifestyle management: This has to do with how I spend my energy and what I prioritize. I suffer from chronic volunteerism. I have the habit of always stepping up and taking on tasks. As my health needs got more complicated and more time-consuming to manage, I had to take hard looks at *why* exactly I was so compelled to take on these tasks. The realizations that arose from this introspection were not flattering but they were helpful. I’m now less likely to volunteer for things – though I still offer to help with a frequency that needs curtailed.

The other part, priorities, is a tendency that has emerged from the very beginning of my spiritual efforts. It wasn’t a super obvious thing at first – just a tendency towards study and practice when I could have been doing other things – and later it shaped things like socialization. Over and over again my spiritual life was prioritized over things that other people choose to prioritize. (This isn’t to say that either prioritized choice is better, sounder, or more noble than the other. I sometimes envy the convenience of others’ lives and i have no doubt that they sometimes envy my life’s apparent simplicity.)

The thing is, it doesn’t take much to shift priorities on a day to day basis. It’s very simple and no real sacrifice to *not* check my email for the 12th time and to instead go pray. So even as I’ve gotten pretty good at the broad strokes and grand gestures of lifestyle management, the little choices remain challenging. And so it goes.

I started writing this small book almost a year ago. Getting it formatted and printed took almost five months. Last night I was handed the proof and today it’s being printed and bound.

I wanted to write a book about Loki worship that didn’t depend on a reconstructed context. No doubt some people would be rather horrified at the idea, but these are the kind of people horrified about Loki worship in the first place. What no one has thought to mention is that you don’t have to be Heathen to worship Loki. Your ability to set up an altar, say a prayer, and share an offering has very little to do with your religious identity – simply on your willingness to accept Loki on His own terms. This book aims to help you do just that.

A special bonus section of information on getting to know Loki’s feminine aspect is included. Curious about how to get to know Her? There’s a short rite of contact, too.

Worshiping Loki: A Short Introduction is now available for just $8 (+$2 shipping in US; international shoppers should message me first about shipping costs). To make this book as affordable and as accessible as possible, it will also be available in Kindle and .epub formats (price to be determined). If you happen to be at PantheaCon and want to get a paperback copy, I’ll have some available.

I’m very happy to announce that this book will also be available as an .mp3 audio book. I invested in some sound equipment and applied my skills as a performer and amateur multimedia artist to producing and engineering this project. If the audio book is well-received, I hope to partner with other pagan authors to make additional titles available in this format. Increasing the accessibility of pagan, polytheist, and devotional material is very important to me and it’s a great honor to help make this happen. I’ll make another update when this version is available.

Thank you everyone for your support of this project over the past several months. The people who bought hand bound copies helped urge this project into being and I’m very grateful. The people who cheered me on behind the scenes kept me pointed in the right direction when I struggled to keep this project moving forward. There are individuals who I won’t mention by name that were key in making this possible. Thank you all.

I know many people are anxiously awaiting news on the release of Worshiping Loki. Truth be told, I was waiting around for news, too. A hitch in communication delayed a final approval by a couple weeks and I was left in the dark wondering what was happening. Things have been worked out and, if everything goes as planned, I’ll be holding a sample copy of the printed book sometime tomorrow. Again, if things go as planned, I’ll have around half the original print run produced by Wednesday, which means I can take a bunch to PantheaCon with me. The rest will be listed on Etsy for easy sale there. I’ll certainly keep you updated.

It’s too simplistic to say that things involving Loki will get messy and complicated and chaotic. That’s not exactly how it works; He’s not like a five pound weight that directly and obviously affects any scale He’s placed on. The Powers add tendencies, patterns, flavors to situations. People seek to magically shape circumstances with the help of the tendencies, patterns, and flavors of things like herbs, crystals, colors, and moon phase but the rosemary and the full moon phase do not cause a spell’s success. These energies, directed by the witch, influence tendencies that are unfolding. The Powers similarly influence tendencies. In Loki’s case, tendencies are affected through the addition of destabilizing factors.

People sometimes wonder aloud how it’s possible to live in close proximity to the Powers and still have a stable, functioning life. I wondered that too for a long time. While it’s probably not a great idea to look at another person’s life and declare it more functional or stable than one’s own, I remember how terrible it was to always feel destabilized and a breath away from disaster. Crawling out of that was very, very hard and I’m not sure there was any one strategy that worked. Even now as I have the privilege and luxury of enjoying a measure of stability I’m often petrified by the awareness of how precarious everything about my life actually is.

But the thing is – everyone’s life is pretty precarious. We are all a single car accident away from debilitating injury – of ourselves or someone we love. As a junior in college I fell on sidewalk hard enough to permanently damage my knee; that’s why you see me walking with a cane sometimes. I just fell. Illness, disability, loss, poverty, and death are always a breath away. Skipping successfully from one moment to another is not guaranteed. As the investment commercials helpfully remind us, past performance is not an indicator of future success.

Given the fundamental uncertainty about the future, I decided to toss my lot in with Loki because why the hell not? If there are no guarantees in life, no promises that can be counted on, no material safety net that will protect against any threat, and no way to prepare for the dangers of life why shouldn’t I let myself enjoy the things I actually want? Acknowledging that I wanted Him – in worship, proximity, affection, and sacrifice – helped me clarify my priorities. If all health, all jobs, all affection, and even all divine grace are fleeting and uncertain I could see no reason to delay present satisfaction.

Currently, my strategy for achieving and maintaining some measure of success is to have very modest needs and desires. Simple living (or simplified living, at the very least) has been good. I’ve known people who set very high standards for their personal success and had very clear ideas about what success looked like and how to achieve it. Those people were never very happy. Scaling back expectations can be a healthy thing and it’s something I often engage in. See, there are things I’d like to change in my life, there are forms of success I long for if only because these would allow me greater freedom to do the things I want to do. But living in that future someday is to invite profound dissatisfaction with Things As They Are. I don’t want that. I don’t want to feel dissatisfied with my cozy apartment, my minimal jobs, or my simple means.

But anyway – Worshiping Loki will soon be available. It’s a small book and producing even a small book reminds me of just how hard authors actually work, especially those of us who oversee all aspects of production ourselves. Having done this one, I’m even more confident of being able to do it again.

I have shop updates to make and I have other projects on my table waiting for focused attention. As I make progress with these I’ll announce them. For now, just know that very exciting things are happening and I can’t wait to share them with you.

Remember the fancy handbound books I was offering a while back? That book, Worshiping Loki, is a simple introduction to honoring Loki inside a general polytheist context. I’ve been working hard for the past several months getting this manuscript ready for general distribution and I’m happy to report that I should have the paper copies in my hands in just a couple weeks.

This is not a traditional publication venture so there’s no ISBN or distribution through Amazon or Lulu. I’m handling everything myself in order to deliver a good quality book at a low price. Since this is a very small book (it’s subtitled “A Short Introduction” for a reason) it just makes sense to do it this way.

While privately printing and distributing this book has numerous advantages, the up-front costs are steep. I’ll have to sell half of my original print run just to cover production costs and the faster I can do that, the better.

As soon as I’m confident that the paper copies are going to look the way I want them, I’ll set up a pre-sale so that a whole bunch of copies can be sent out before I leave for California. This will be the fastest way to get your hands on a copy; I’ll also have copies for sale at PCon if you’re going to be there.

I can’t quote a price quite yet *but* I’m doing my very best to keep the price of the book + US shipping at around $10. I’ll also be doing some kind of promotion once the pre-sale starts, probably a drawing for a handmade Loki devotional or a signed copy of Heartroad or something like that.

But wait! There’s more!

In addition to the inexpensive paper copies of the book I’ll also be doing an audio book release of Worshiping Loki. Finally, finally something for people who prefer to listen to their books. This mp3 album will contain an unabridged recording of Worshiping Loki as well as the additional material on Loki’s feminine aspect.

I’m not yet sure what the cost of the audio book will be. I’m only now finally getting my recording equipment put together and I’m letting my voice recover from the three week cold-pneumonia thing I had. I would like to have the audio book version ready around the same time as the paper edition but we’ll see how my recording sessions go. I’m teaching two classes this weekend in addition to working so I don’t have loads of time to dedicate to this project; hopefully only a few takes will be necessary to get the bulk of the content recorded. But at any rate, I’m thinking the audio book will be something like $4 – $7; it depends a lot on what kind of fees are involved.

(And yes, now that I have some audio equipment I’ll be bending my skills to other audio productions. I’ll be doing an audio release of Heartroad at some point in addition to all the other writing I’m doing. I’m also hoping to partner with a few other pagan/polytheist writers to produce audio books of any publications they  hold the rights to. If you’re interested in this sort of work let me know and we can talk.)

Whew! I’ll keep you updated on these projects as they move forward.

Vision boards are a popular way of making resolutions and setting intentions for the New Year and many magically-minded folks I know make them or participate in making them in groups. I’ve never enjoyed making vision boards very much. They smack too much of the kind of self-centered prosperity-mindedness that infected our greater pagan and magical communities not too long ago. I had to dubious honor of sitting in on conversations when these ideas were introduced to complete newbies. Yes, setting intentions are key to magic but so is cultivating a strong sense of personal ethics and responsibility. None of that is ever covered in conventional thought-powered prosperity manifestation nonsense and so I tend to be a bit cautious about engaging in anything that hints at pulling from the wrong well of power.

I also don’t have any magazines laying around just waiting for me to cut up. I also have loads of other projects waiting for my attention. I’m not inclined to make a brand new mess on top of approximately three other messes just to create a thing that I’m going to tack on my wall between the much-loved “I ❤ Mormon Pussy” photograph and my Morbid Anatomy Museum calendar.

Maybe I’m disinclined towards vision boards also because my magical training has largely been to let go of intentions rather than continuing to feed them. Forgetting a working and letting it, you know, work is fundamental to several magical paradigms. At the very least, it doesn’t make good magical sense to me to continue doing one spell over and over again if I’m not getting results.

Another big reason why I don’t do vision boards is because there’s not very much that I actually want. Over the years my actual bone-deep desires have gotten fewer and fewer. When I’m in the living presence of the wish-granting goddess what do I ask for? The same thing that Swami Vivekenanda asked for, the same thing that caused Sri Ramakrishna to call his would-be disciple hopeless.

Such a desire cannot be put on a vision board.

Of course, there’s other things. I ask – beg – for the means to meet my material needs. That list of things is numbered close to my heart – a safe place to live for me and those I’m responsible for;the nourishing food I need to stay well; the medicine I need to stay healthy and active; enough money to meet my obligations, to live quietly, and to share with others. Past that, what do I need?

I’m sure some people who say that I have no ambition, no drive for greater things. Am I really content with a very quiet life? Don’t I want anything better for myself? Am I really content with settling for the very minimum of what life has to offer? And the answer is – yes, I am content. I’m content because the things that I want to achieve and experience can’t be accomplished by doing anything except more or less what I’m already doing.

My ambitions include refining my personal practice of devotion, service, worship, and love. I want to dive deeply into knowledge and experience and bring up treasures from a mental ocean that will enrich the lives of polytheist worshipers today and tomorrow.

I want to become a better person – which to me means being more honest, more charitable, more compassionate, more responsible, and more kind.

I want to increase and magnify the things I share with others.

I want to pursue my art and writing and creative endeavors with passion and success.

I want to provide the care and love that I’ve committed to.

None of these desires require me doing a whole hell of a lot different than I already am. That’s pretty remarkable, when you think about it. I don’t require more than a modest apartment and a reasonable paycheck and a really good pharmacy to accomplish these things. Aside from the paycheck part, I’m actually doing pretty well – but perhaps the Gods have blessed me with low expectations.

****

I’ve spent nearly three weeks in bed with a massive cold/flu which took a detour into pneumonia country. I’m recovering slowly. I have an Etsy update that has been waiting since mid-December. I found a stash of beautiful teacups with perfect, lovely sprigs of mistletoe painting on the inside. They’re Christmas themed cups but if Loki has been a gift-bringer then these might be perfect for you.

The cup and saucer sets will be sold for $12. I haven’t determined shipping cost but they should probably be around $4.50. I’ve got three sets, one of which is fairly yellowed; it’ll be marked less.

I also found a small stack of Loki devotionals that I’ll be offering at a discount. These were from the very first batch I made and there are two small typos (specifically an instance of swapped letters and a missing space). If you’ve had your eye on the Loki devotional books but haven’t been able to afford the $30 price point, these might be perfect for you.

This month I’ll be busy preparing for PantheaCon in February. I’ve got just a few weeks to finish my session notes and pack, etc. Next week I’ll be presenting my session at a local venue as a trial run of the material and to give folks in my area a taste of what PCon has to offer. I’m looking forward to this class.

I’ve got a FB event page for my PCon session. Check it out and share it if you like!

Speaking of PCon, as a presenter I have the opportunity to sell copies of any book I’ve written. I’ll have a few copies of Heartroad with me along with – I HOPE! – paperback copies of Worshiping Loki. I’ve been trying to contact the designer I was working with to find out if we are still on target for a first-week-of-February deadline. Once those copies are available I’ll have them for sale on Etsy. An ebook version will follow. I’ve also got a special project in the works for this book. More about this special project as things develop.

The last two months have been primarily focused on preparing my session for PatheaCon. Yes, I’ve happily had my most recent programming submission accepted and I look forward to presenting again. Last year I had serious reservations about presenting at PCon again, primarily because the expense associated with getting me there is difficult to manage. I also wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to present on. I’ve enjoyed doing my devotional ritual session but I wanted to do something new. But by the time proposals to present were opened up I had a new idea that I was quite on fire about.

The result of this effort is a session called Advancing Devotional Practice. It will be held at 9am on Monday morning. You can find more information about it here: https://www.facebook.com/events/211650729169389/

I’m very excited about doing this session. It’s been cooking in my mind for several years in one form of another, so getting the material out of my head at last is a big step towards the completion of the follow-up to Walking the Heartroad that I’ve been v.e.r.y. s.l.o.w.l.y. working on.

If you happen to be attending PantheaCon in San Jose, CA, this year I would love to have you drop by my session and say hi. It should be an interesting session, if only because I’m going to open up a little bit about my own practice and the challenges I’ve encountered along the way. The presentation is designed as a combination lecture and discussion, so I’m hoping other people will be willing to share a little bit about their practice, too.

(If you don’t happen to be attending PantheaCon, I’m hoping to make the material available sometime in March in an alternative form. Of course, this alternative release won’t include the amazing discussion that will certainly be part of the actual session but you’ll still get to have a taste of it. And of course, if you happen to be in the Salt Lake City area in mid-January, I’ll be doing a local trial run of the material.)

There are other things advancing, too. For the past five years or so I’ve been focusing much more intently on the development of a ritual worship practice. Ritual training is part of my background but my pursuits since I finished school have been more detail-oriented, more theoretical, more hands-on, and more focused on the achievement of a more refined expression of worship. To that end I’ve pursued education and guidance from ritual experts of various stripes and invested a considerable amount of time to improve my own work at home.

For many years I’ve made use of an astral temple to Loki that I created (found?). I know what it looks like – at least in part. It’s grown more concrete the longer I  use it. Not long ago I experienced a distinct superimposition of this temple and its vision on top of my physical worship space at home. This was not what I expected to happen but of course this was the next step in this work: the manifestation of an astral location in a physical one through the manipulation of physical objects specifically intended to channel astral markers. So this is the next step in my advancing practice of temple and icon worship.

The next stage of this on-going worship project is to develop a more precisely designed worship space in my home. It will still be primarily altar-based but the addition of particular elements and items will help establish the temple and reify its astral presence.

Part of this effort will involve the creation of a Loki icon as a dedicated spirit vessel, a “body” of sorts that will be more than just a visual representation and an enhanced version of the “window” that my icons have always acted as.

There are lots of layers to this work and lots of layers to my growing understanding of it. I don’t know how much I’ll feel like sharing over time but for now, it’s exciting to know what the next step is.

Blessed Yule to you all.

One of the good people who purchased a hand bound copy of Worshiping Loki let me know that their edition had a binding error. Some of the copy appears out of order because pages were arranged incorrectly. Although I see and handle these books at every stage of their construction, occasional errors are regrettably inevitable.

If you have a copy that has been bound incorrectly, please let me know. I’m sick in bed with a cold so I may be a little slow to respond but I’ll follow up with you as soon as possible.

As the mirror to my hand
the flowers to my hair
kohl to my eyes
tambul to my mouth
musk to my breast
necklace to my throat
ecstasy to my flesh
heart to my home
as a wing to my bird
water to fish
life to the living
so you to me.

But tell me,
Madhava beloved
who are you
who are you really?