I’ve mentioned this a few places – for around a year I’ve been working on an article for a forthcoming issue of Witches & Pagans on modern polytheism. Well, the article finally got done and now the issue is preparing for release. It will be for sale in stores in June though you can pre-order it now and get it in your mailbox. You can also get electronic editions for just a few dollars once the paper version is released.

The article was a challenging bit of writing in lots of ways, not the least because I’m thoroughly saturated in academic material and unless I’m writing ad copy I’m writing some pretty high-level stuff; this means that I had to bring down my tone to a more general level. This was a very needful challenge and I feel like I made good progress through the editing process. The result is an article very different from the first one I wrote; I’m not sure I would have written the final article had it not been for the input I received from the editor. Simply writing something that I would have never written otherwise is an interesting experience – or rather, it’s not one that I’ve had since college I suppose.

In a way, the polytheism article is not the way I would necessarily talk about these subjects in another venue. I don’t mean that the article is inauthentic, just different. It’s an ambivalent experience, to be sure. That said, I feel like I got across my basic points: that religious relationships are real; these relationships are based in the actual experiences of practitioners; that diversity can be regarded as a fundamental feature of a polytheist worldview; and that fundamentalism is a threat to this diversity.

So hopefully it doesn’t suck. It’d be cool if you bought a copy.

 

The new video of the virtual temple to Loki Herself is live.

This months’ video is a few minutes shorter than last month’s; I’m still experimenting with the temple design and recording and pretty much everything. And yes, clearly I need a tripod.

You can always email virtualtempleproject at gmail dot com to add a name or petition to the monthly prayer roll. This is a small piece of paper presented at the temple altar when it is prepared for recording. The document is then respectfully disposed of; no one but me sees its contents.

Loki’s virtual temple is part of the Virtual Temple Project, an effort to make polytheist and pagan worship spaces available with the help of video technology. These recordings can be used to facilitate personal prayer, worship, meditation, contemplation, spell work, and other activities. Participation in the Virtual Temple Project is open to anyone who wishes to design a space for public viewing, record it, and share it online. You can share one video or several. If you are passionate about making worship spaces available to the members of our greater religious communities, this is a great way to get involved.

If you would like to support the activities of Loki’s virtual temple, or the promotion of the Virtual Temple Project in general, click the donate button on the right. You can make a one-time or recurring donation of any amount or sponsor candles, incense, flowers, or beverage offerings for Loki’s monthly temple videos. Sponsors will receive a portion of the items offered to use in personal ritual or devotional activities.

If you’ve been put off by the steep international shipping costs associated with Worshiping Loki, I have good news! A trip to the post office this morning to mail out my first international order of the book revealed that shipping is much less than I expected. Shipping a single copy of the book to Canada is just $2.75! I expect that the price will be similar for many other countries but I don’t know for certain. I can say with some certainty that the cost won’t be more than $13 – yikes.

That $13.50 shipping quote came from what it cost to send handbound copies of Worshiping Loki to Canada, UK, Norway, Germany, and other countries. For whatever reason – weight or the classification of the package – that was the cost; I assumed it’d be the same for the standard edition of the book. Happily I was wrong.

So if you’re in Canada, you won’t need to pay any more than US customers for first class shipping. (This may or may not come with tracking; I wasn’t given a copy of the paperwork I filled out so that might be an extra charge. I’ll look into it.) If you’re in Europe, the price will probably be comparable. I can’t give exact quotes for shipping to other countries but I can do some research if there’s any questions.

Don’t forget – printer’s error editions are available at half price – just $4!

The language of ideological fundamentalism is all but invariably the language of militarism. Not just the language of conflict, extinction, or violence – but the language of organized action, the need for strong group identity and response, and coordination of action, thought, and ideological propagation. The language of combat is applied so frequently to ideological struggles that it becomes a cliche; worse, it becomes the only natural way to discuss these concerns.

Fundamentalism is an ideological stance characterized by several features. In no particular order you’ll see:

• Golden Age conceptions (including the narrative of a fall from grace or a decline of circumstance continuing to the present day); this sometimes manifests in Highest Ideal thinking – that if we just work hard enough and find enough right-minded people we can finally achieve this elevated state
• The assertion of the need for a strong core of believers to resist the on-going decline and/or to finally achieve the Highest Ideal
• The highly articular desire for subscribers (and a sometimes less-articulate corollary of the need to identify and cast out those who do not subscribe to the gold ideological standard set by the philosophizing mouthpieces of the group)
• Proclamations of disaster should the goals of resistance, ideological promulgation, and identification of dissent not be met

Sometimes – but not always – you’ll find fundamentalists referring to a certain structured set of ideas, often contained in a particular book. This sometimes leads to the assumption that fundamentalism is more or less a religious phenomenon; after all, religions are based on books, right? Well, no. Some religions have books. Some religions even have lots of books. Some religions have no books. Some religions have books bur adherents disagree on how much authority the information contained in the books actually hold.

One good example of non-religious fundamentalism is evidenced by people who espouse a particular sort of racism. The narrative goes that once upon a time all the “races” lived separately in different places doing different things and achieving whatever heights their inherent abilities allowed them to. Certain unnaturally-minded people caused a blurring of the boundaries that kept these different groups apart (perhaps because a member of a lesser group saw the riches of a greater group and desired those). Races mingled and became degenerate as a result. As a result, no one is able to reach their highest potential since they are distracted by cultural pressures to be “politically correct” and to “value human diversity” instead of becoming awakened to the beauty of an unsullied singular type. This is a beauty to take pride in and to celebrate and promote; if these efforts are not made, all this mingling and blurring will continue and eventually various types will cease to exist at all.

Sometimes this narrative has religious features, sometimes it has scientific ones (“scientific”) but neither gloss is required to create a narrative that makes logical sense to someone who has already subscribed to the basic tenant of ideological fundamentalism: that things as they are now are not things as they should be. Plus this narrative has the sort of direct cause and effect we humans prefer in our storytelling, it’s got a clear conflict, a call to action, and outcomes that are at once vague and easy to imagine. Perhaps most importantly, this narrative – and the narrative of fundamentalism in general – *includes the listener as the hero of the story by placing them squarely in the climatic narrative present*. You’ll notice that the conflict/call to action/outcome chain of events outlined above leaves out a climax. That’s because the present is the climax. The present is the climax of this narrative, the moment when the outcome is decided, and the story needs you – yes, YOU – to help bring about the best possible outcome.

Fundamentalism works because its speaks to us on a very personal, very sensual level. We are needed. We personally, individually are needed to protect something grand and beautiful. We can help. We can make a difference. We can participate in knowledge that others don’t have or have refused to listen to. This is a grand, heroic, enticing, and very sweet drama to participate in. All we have to do is carry this story to others and help them discover their own heroic potential. All we have to do is use this story as the backdrop to our decisions and priorities. Then things in our life will start to make sense and the bad, illogical, painful, chaotic, and disappointing things will have a context instead of being random or simply unfortunate circumstances. Fundamentalism promises adherents that they may not have created the shitty situations in which they find themselves but they are powerful enough to smash circumstances entirely and remake the world in a more perfect form.

This is all powerful stuff. It’s powerful, attractive, and it possess innate self-replication. Once you know what fundamentalism looks like you’ll start to see the many ways it’s employed. You’ll see its tendrils in political arenas, business and corporate settings, religious communities, educational centers, and pretty much anywhere people gather with a few shared ideas in common.

Fundamentalism is common because it’s simple, direct, easy to learn, easy to teach, and because it provides pretty much every answer to pretty much every question you might ever think to ask.

Of course, some forms of fundamentalism are relatively benign. Yes, it can create a really shitty corporate culture and it can make a group of eco-minded folks look really scary from the outside but in many cases the dangers are limited to the group itself; the members will suffer but people outside the group probably won’t. Best case  scenario the group dissolves into back-stabbing and infighting as one member after another is determined to lack the missionary zeal required by the charismatic center. As more and more people fail to live up to the Highest Ideal of that particular fundamentalist narrative, the group will shrink as members are cast out.

Fundamentalism becomes a problem for the greater community when the language of violence, aggression, and specifically of militarism and combat are employed (thus bringing us back to the start of this post). When phrases like “holy struggle” or “sacred warfare” or “the war of the gods” are used you’re going to find people who pose real dangers to others and to the greater world we are all part of. Sure, some are keyboard jockies but others are not. Some are literally, personally, and violently committed to the story they’ve decided they are part of.

People sometimes laugh when I tell them that there are people in this world, in this country, that literally – literally – believe that I am ending the world. Then they see that I’m serious and get a little nervous. It’s a strange position to be in, believe me.

Saying that we must fight to preserve our religious heritage, our religious way of life, our spiritual beliefs and practices and communities from people who would wipe it out is perhaps understandable. After all, we have seen holy places destroyed and their protectors killed – it’s only natural to talk about our response to these incidents with the language of warfare and coordinated attack – right?

No, it isn’t. We have other options. We have other metaphoric allusions at our disposal.

Could we perhaps talk about the preservation and promotion of polytheism in terms of ecology? Could we talk about the value of a diverse cultural ecology, the resilience of a cultural habitat that contains many different actors and forces? Could we talk about food nets of resources and ideas? Could we talk about problems of monoculture and the greater strength of diverse populations?

Can ecology give us a vocabulary that affirms the distinction of each actor? Can we see that each actor is of a discrete type – though hybrids occur! – and possesses distinct needs that the environment must fulfill? Can the inherent dignity and value of each actor be affirmed *while at the same time* providing additional nurturance to those populations that suffer from imbalanced forces?

Nature contains conflict; nature contains violence. Nature does not contain militarism; that’s a somewhat different thing. (Though one could say that militarism arises from humanity and humanity is part of nature, I’d suggest that militarism is simply one option among many that arise from humanity and that our nature affords us the luxury of developing nuanced responses.) None of this is to say that we need a kinder, gentler way of talking about the needs of our religious communities. Conflict is inevitable; conflict is a part of our environment and is one of the actions manifested by the actors present in this environment. Sometimes our needs will clash. Rather, I’m trying to reach for a vocabulary, a dictionary of metaphor if you will, that does not rely on the vocabulary of militarism – a vocabulary that is characteristic of fundamentalism.

Changing the way we talk about the health of our communities, our past, our present, and our future changes our attitudes about all of the same. Changing our vocabulary also allows us to more clearly identify the fundamentalist promoters in our midst. We will then be individually and collectively more able to make choices about our responses to these narratives.

Devotion, as it is applied to pagan and particularly to polytheist religious engagement, is characterized as intensely loving, passionate, and may have the features of romantic love. Devotional practice – the expression of these feelings in behaviors, actions, decisions, thoughts, and problem solving within a distinctly religious context – is characterized as similarly passionate; after all, devotional practice rises out of these intense sentiments, right?

No.

Not necessarily.

Some of the discussion surrounding the boundaries that delineate devotional practice and devotional engagement from other types of polytheist religious practice erroneously assume that action follows sentiment, that one’s religious inclinations and behaviors arise from emotions that are already present within the worshiper.

This model of emotion preceding action is, perhaps, cultural; certainly this model is based in the way we culturally imagine the experience of love. That feeling, that spark, leaps up inside the body without us asking it to; something within us responds and quickens without us even having decided that we would feel anything – that’s love, right?

No.

Not necessarily.

If you talk with people who have been in long-term relationships you will eventually hear them say that being in love is a choice as much as anything else. Sometimes love is a decision much more than it is a sentiment. It is something you do as opposed to something you (only) feel. At times, love is not something you feel at all but a series of actions and choices carried out because what you feel in the moment – or don’t – is actually of lesser importance. So it is with religious love.

Bhakti-sadhana – devotional practice – is something you do. It’s something you wake up every day making the decision to do. It is a series of choices made day after day and sometimes hour to hour because what you feel in the moment – or don’t – is less important than the doing itself.

We engage in devotional practice not because we are in love but because we wish to be.

We chose devotional engagement because it promises rich emotional rewards – rewards that are physically tangible through the vehicle of the body. The gods become lively in us because we feel them.

It is a practice. It is a discipline. It is a study – of the tradition, of the gods, of the self – in order to gain mastery over the circumstances that are most optimal for experiencing loving sentiment towards the gods. We don’t (necessarily) persist in our practice because we love the gods, but because we hope to someday be.

Devotional practice is not ritual magic, it’s not philosophic inquiry, it’s not selfless service or activism (although I believe it ought to contain all these things and much more). Some of these engagements, such as ritual magic, are expected to have very direct and particular results in accordance with what is done. Others, such as philosophic inquiry, are not engaged in with the expectation that it will ever be finished; finishing the inquiry would be, I imagine, to fail at the task of questioning all assumptions. Devotional practice relies quite fundamentally, though not explicitly, on an acceptance of the reality of (or at least the possibility of) divine grace – that the gods can choose the time, place, manner, and nature of engagement with us. Grace is, to poorly summarize my teachers, presence freely given. We can ask and beg and desire sacred presence as much as we may – but we cannot compel the time, place, manner, or nature of sacred presence. That’s for the gods to decide. We can, however, make ourselves slightly more likely to stumble across such an experience. We can make ourselves more sensitive to the experience when it is granted.

Crafting ourselves into the sort of being slightly more likely to experience sacred presence is not easy. We have to improve many aspects of ourselves and jettison any number of bad tendencies and habits. This means rigorous self-evaluation *and* not getting subsumed by pathological self-loathing in the process (I speak from experience). Refining our capacity to sense and savor sacred presence is also not easy. We have to develop a lifestyle conducive to such sensitivity and recognize what dulls the same. This means choosing practices that seem boring or illogical to others, to developing a set of rules and guidelines that help you make choices in a variety of circumstances (again, personal experience speaks).

Religious people generally want to experience sacred presence. It’s why we go to temples, seek out other believers, set up altars, and celebrate holy days. Some people do these things and are satisfied. Some people have goals and priorities that the desire for sacred presence does not conflict with. This doesn’t mean that they value or treasure or love the experience of sacred presence any less than someone for whom many goals and priorities are a conflict. Religious engagement looks different – not because it *is* different but because people simply want different things and have different expectations and assumptions regarding how that engagement fits into their life. Devotional engagement looks different depending on who’s doing it – not because it *is* different but because people simply want different things and have different expectations and assumptions regarding how this particular sort of engagement fits into their life. This doesn’t mean that it’s somehow not devotional. It is. It just looks a little different.

Of course, for one reason or another someone may choose not to identify as a devotionalist. I, for instance, do not identify as any sort of religious philosopher even though I’ve made an in-depth study of certain subjects for two decades; I am a student of religious philosophy because I’m a devotionalist. My  practice would be even more ignorant than it already is if I didn’t bother studying. (Besides, if one is going to fall in love with the divine, doesn’t it make sense to know as much about the Beloved as possible?) I’ve met any number of people who identify as magicians – but who have a distinctly devotional streak that they encountered through their magical practice and that they express through their magical practice. Often, labels come down not so much to any particular definition or even to degree of sentiment and affection, but to which paradigm one feels most comfortable moving about in.

Saying that devotional polytheists are somehow more intense, more emotive, more sentimental than non-devotional polytheists is misunderstanding what devotion and devotional engagement actually is. The nature of one’s religious emotionality or the way it is expressed does not in itself place one inside or outside the devotional category. One’s choice of paradigm does.

Devotion is based on the belief that relational paradigms are real, possible, and accessible. Since the second assertion of polytheism might be that any given individual might seek, experience, desire, or reject relation with our many real gods, I personally feel that the term “relationial polytheism” is a bit redundant. That said, I must loudly admit my own bias as a devotionalist. It is very hard for me to step out of my relational paradigm; I see everything as a series of relationships. It is entirely possible that devotional polytheism can become a subset of relational polytheism – a subset that deals particularly with connections between humans and the Powers – alongside the sort of polytheism that compels people to serve each other, to serve the earth, to champion the cause of justice, and other ends that rise out of a fundamental awareness of our individual relationship to all things. Once again we reach a very special and very authentic truth: This sort of service- or activism-oriented polytheism is not restricted to those who already know all there is to know about how the individual relates to the world (and vice versa); this polytheism is open to anyone who wishes to see these relationships more clearly and to know them more intimately.

Devotion is for everyone. For the lovers, and those who wish to be; for the loving, and those who wish to be; for the loved, and those who wish to be. To whatever degree, in whatever way, for however long – for everyone.

The body’s involvement in religious endeavors can be an enormously complicated thing. Each of our traditions have particular attitudes regarding the fact of the body and the experience of embodiment; even if these attitudes are not very explicitly spelled out, they are present and shape collective, individual, and private conceptions of the body, its fact, and its experience.

For instance, Heathens tend to have positive attitudes about the body, since it the site of physical pleasure, social enjoyment, education, and family. One’s physical presence at an event feeds the strength of community and allows for the flow of hospitality. However, attitudes about the body are rarely so straightforward. While affirming the value of physical pleasure and sexual enjoyment, some Heathens regard various sexual activities between consenting adults as immoral, icky, or less-than-ideal. The shape of bodies may be used to determine one’s character as “frithy” or not. The strength, flexibility, poise, and control of a body may be prioritized in the selection of event sites. The body’s fact and the embodied experience remain complicated even in traditions where both these things are ostensibly glossed as positive things. Addressing the way(s) that spiritual endeavor and religious experience intersect with the body’s fact and embodied experience is an essential part of engaging with our tradition. This has implications for many in our pagan and polytheist communities – ritualists, leaders, community builders, event planners, social media coordinators, writers, event-goers, teachers, students, etc. – and it has very particular implications for devotional practitioners.

Where does religion live? Where is it found? Can you point to it? One might point to a church or other physical site as the locus for religion. If a wall was torn down, does religion suddenly lack a wall? Does religion leak out or spill onto the ground now that its container is lost? If a grove is bulldozed, is religion restricted to memory? Has religion disappeared along with the familiar form of the grove?

How do you know religion when you see it? What color does it have? Is it brighter in the morning or afternoon? Does it change color like deciduous leaves? Does it cycle in shape like the moon? ?

Religion is given form, character, and expression by human bodies. Religion cannot be demonstrated without bodies and their agency. Religion cannot be located without a human presence. Religion is an emergent property from the fact of bodies, not the other way around.

Spirits and other non-physical entities may be *part* of religion and of religious tradition, but polytheist and animistic traditions affirm that these beings have their fact in a non-physical state. They are not dependent on our perception, naming, understanding, engagement, or embodiment for their reality. However, because religion is – so far as I’ve ever seen demonstrated – a matter of humans doing human things for human reasons with human bodies typically with the aid, for the benefit, and for the worship of non-physical beings. That is, even though religion typically involves non-physical beings, religion is not found in them since religion as we know it can only be expressed, considered, and done by physical bodies and specifically human bodies.

Is religion found in the gods? I would argue no, since if it was religion could not be present unless the gods were. Although one could argue that like religion, the gods have no “place” to speak of (“Where is the physical world? Where is the spiritual world? How far apart are they? Where are their borders?”), it would seem entirely possible to do religion without the particular presence of the gods. Ideally, religion happens together with the presence of the gods – but one may experience the presence of the gods without any religious paradigm or context and one might perform religious actions without the gods seeming present. They may coincide but they are not the same. Religion does not flow from the gods, and neither do the gods proceed from religion.

(Of course, there are any number of faith traditions that state quite explicitly that the god(s) taught humanity how to worship and gave highly direct and personalized instruction regarding how religion ought to be handled. None of what I’m saying here should be regarded as contrary to such teachings. At most, I’m hoping to open up the nature of religious engagement (specifically devotional) and the matter of embodiment with regards to traditions that do not have particular teachings regarding the transmission of religious principles from the god(s) to human beings. Heathenry, for instance, might credit the gods with the lively and articulate nature of humanity, but nowhere have I seen it suggested that the gods gave us religion or taught us how to worship as such.)

Situating religion as an emergent property of the fact of bodies and the experience of embodiment means that everything we individually and collectively have been, are, will be, and have the potential to be and do are part of our religion. We do not leave our individual history behind when entering ritual. We carry around trauma, success, misery, injury, joy, anxiety, and any number other sensations and experiences in our bodies. Because religion too is part of our bodies, faith and spiritual endeavor can be part of addressing injury – and it can be the cause of injury. What we experience is real. Even our astral or spiritual perceptions are filtered through physical neurons, and the memory of these experiences are stored in grey matter. Our physical reality participates in our non-physical existence (and, I believe, vice versa).

Since trauma, anxiety, fear, and all kinds of other psychological and emotional baggage lives in our bodies and is part of our embodied experience, these things are brought to a devotional practice. Like religion more generally, devotional practice becomes evident – becomes real – only in the presence of human bodies. However, devotional relationship, the experience of transcendent emotions, and sacred communion is not fed by us alone even if we cannot precisely identify these things without the fact of the body. That is, lacking the perceptive faculties made possible by the physical fact, where does the experience of devotion lie? Where can transcendent emotion be found? (A number of traditions answer these questions with the idea of a non-physical self independent but connected to the embodied physical self, containing its own perceptive faculties that are not dependent on brains or nerves or biochemistry.)

Fear, anxiety, and trauma – and desire, satiation, and joy – are real. They have a site in the body’s presence. Devotional engagement too has a site in the body’s presence and is exhibited through manipulating objects, taking in education, and crafting a lifestyle conducive to increasingly honed engagement. We therefore bring all these emotions to our practice and things can get messy very quickly.

Many people – myself included – are familiar with just how terrible a devotional practice riddled by anxiety can be. There have been many times when I couldn’t do very much because I was worried about whether I was accepted and loved. I couldn’t accept assurances of these things because my feelings of anxiety were more real; in other words, I had more confidence in the embodied reality of my anxiety than in anything else I was experiencing through my body’s senses and faculties.

Embodiment gets hard when you’re trying to juggle two (and more!) sets of input like that. I couldn’t just wish away that anxiety and fear; it was a part of me and so it got hauled to the altar along with everything else I am. Treating them as unreal or irrelevant was not helpful. Failing to acknowledge the impact these feelings had on my devotional practice meant I was holding back from deepening my devotional engagement and failing to resolve issues that prevented me from a connection uncolored by assumption.

Embodiment is not easy for anyone I think. I’ve certainly had more challenges with it than I feel are really necessary. These challenges have had the benefit of demonstrating just how profoundly devotional engagement is influenced by the experience of embodiment and all that resultant traumas and anxieties that get carried around. Regardless of whether I want to bring them to my practice, they are there. Even though fear and anxiety can’t be left behind as if they were stray LEGO pieces, they can be acknowledged with strength and honesty.

The gods have seen it all. They have already indicated that they have no fear of our damage or darkness, the places we can’t see and don’t want to look. It takes immense bravery to open up those closets and hidden rooms but the gods are already willing to live in this house. We just have to show them full welcome.

Any sentence that begins with “The gods want – ” should be immediately followed with a personal pronoun.

Sentences written this way make sense. “The gods want me to – ” is pretty easy to understand. Which gods? The ones personally relevant. What do they want? Something that one is personally involved with or potentially could be. To wit:

The gods want me to clean the altars.
The gods want me to try a new artistic medium.
The gods want me to work on that poetry anthology.
The gods want me to finish that degree.
The gods want me to explore different religious communities.
The gods want me to bake them some cookies.

Sentences that begin with “The gods want -” and are followed with collective pronouns, other-than-personal pronouns, or statements that don’t further clarify the precise group being spoken to don’t make sense. For instance:

The gods want us to take action.
The gods want us to do something about this problem.
The gods want them to go away.
The gods want you to pay more attention.
The gods want reclaimed wood flooring.
The gods want improved infrastructure.
The gods want something better.

We  – and by we I mean me and possibly you, too – scoff at preachers who claim that their god wants them to buy a jet, or build a mansion, or get that second divorce. We regard with disdain religious leaders who say their god wants everyone to pray for sinners, to protest marriage equality, to hold back access to health care. We might even feel a little superior that our gods happen to want more enlightened, compassionate things – just like us.

Oh, wait….

When someone says that “the gods” want enhanced cohesion in community, more cooperative efforts in our group worship, improved communication among the greater body of believers, a dissolving of boundaries, a clarification of boundaries, community building fit to last the ages, infrastructure able to provide for believers for generations, etc. etc. etc. I have a lot of questions, not the most important of which are “Which gods exactly? What gods have expressed a desire for these things? Have you polled all of Them? Are you sure you have?”

I ask these questions not just to be contrary – although that might be a small part of my motivation, because I can be an incorrigible asshole – but because there are a GREAT MANY gods and I have difficulty believing that someone has gotten their collective opinion on any given topic.

If we (we meaning me and possibly you, too) are talking about what makes polytheist faith traditions distinct from each other, and from non-polytheist faith traditions, and if we’re actively seeking to clarify the words and phrases we use to describe our religious experiences, expressions, goals, and desires, then we cannot afford to be lazy about Who we choose to implicate in our wanting.

Because really, I have a hard time believing that, say, Brighid wants the same thing as, say, Loki. Or that Artemis wants the same thing as Loki. Or that Susano-O wants to the same thing as Loki.

No really, just think about it.

How ridiculous is to claim that “the gods” want something? How ridiculous is it to claim that “the gods” want the same thing as you do?

If the Powers you love and honor have expressed a desire applicable to your life, your actions, your trajectory in life I have no room to say They don’t. I sincerely hope that the desires you follow Them in wanting don’t hurt anyone and if it does I might try to reason with you on a moral basis, but I have no ground to stand on when it comes to interpreting what *your* gods want for *you*.

If you have come to a place where *you* want something – be it improved community structures, more coherent theology, community service resources, or whatever – then that’s great. No, really. It totally is. I happen to want many of these things, too. I would encourage you (and myself!) not to mistake these personal desires and ambitions and visions for something that “the gods” want.

I would encourage this for many, many, *many* reasons,  not the least of which is Loki.

Because when we (meaning me and possibly you, too) are talking about the glowing divinity of the High Ones, about the fundamental benevolent nature of divinities, about the way They all want us to work together to create a stable community that will last the ages and provide structure and instruction and inspiration for generations to come – one question always comes to mind: What about Loki?

I love Loki. You might have noticed. I love Loki lots n lots. I might joke that what Loki wants begins with coffee and ends with a blow job but in my experience Loki wants lots of other things, too. Some of those things I’m not personally all that interested in. For instance, Loki has this interesting art project involving dead men’s toenails and the end of the world, to which I just say, “Ehhh – you do you.”

Although Loki’s aspects as worldbreaker and ship’s captain are not terribly prominent at this point in my life, I’d be stupid to ignore them. Anyone trying to make blanket statements on behalf of what “the gods” want would also be stupid to ignore them.

See, “the gods” includes Loki. “The gods” includes a Power often antithetical to structure, human and divine. So maybe you make statements about how “the gods except Loki” want lasting structure, hardwood flooring, etc. etc. but if you have one exception you’re going to have others. And when that happens you might as well just fess up to having your personal ambition in line with what a handful of divinities that you know personally also happen to want.

We CAN work together, our beloved Powers and us. We CAN want the same things. We CAN choose to align our efforts to the same end. Often, we should do these things – with the Powers closest to us.

It’s OK to have personal desires and ambitions. We should feel motivated to make improvements that benefit us personally and collectively, that further compassion and the alleviation of suffering and cooperative efforts that benefit the greatest number of beings. We can and should ask Powers to assist with these efforts – those Powers who we have spent time getting to know, who have a reputation for caring about these things, who have expressed similar desires. They can ask us for help with their goals, too. But clarity in wanting is important. It might even be essential.

Again: Clarity in wanting is important. It might even be essential. Sometimes my divination clients will ask me “What does Power X want?” Sometimes I can help, but as often as not that’s the wrong question to ask. A better question is “What do I want?”. Only then can a healthy ego-sense develop and vital personal strength and self-knowledge be cultivated.

It’s what Loki would want. 😉

 

I actively strive against ascribing a metanarrative to my spiritual life and religious endeavors, and I work very hard to avoid identifying Who I love with what I do. Of course, despite consistent efforts I cannot avoid looking for reasons and explanations and easily identifiable causes and effects regarding the patterns that emerge in my spiritual life. What did this thing happen to me? What purpose does this change serve? What is indicated by this possible trend? And of course, the personalities behind the attention I pay sometimes get tangled together with the actual embodied doing of practice. That is, it’s entirely easy to lose sight of, say, Loki when  you’re quite busy trying to make things very nice and very perfect and very welcoming for Loki. It’s a common pitfall among devotionalists. It’s a common pitfall among ritualists. It’s a common pitfall period. (“Why are you asking if I love you? Can’t you see everything I’m doing for you??”)

When I remember to, I remind myself that even the dharma is empty. To paraphrase, this means that meaning does not exist outside of its attribution by an observing mind. Meaning is imposed. Meaning is a disturbance in the field of perception. Checking the tendency to heap meaning and significance and indicative weight into the observation of my spiritual development helps me deal with Things As They Are, rather than Things As I Believe Them to Be.

(I am not any stripe of Buddhist but certain currents of Buddhist philosophy have had a distinct impact on my life via various teachers and various experiences I’ve had. I find the stance of (certain) Buddhist philosophies to be exceptionally refreshing in their practicality and groundedness. I sometimes dip my toes into the water of learning more about these philosophies but then I get scared by the realness and have to run away for another couple years before trying again.)

All this said, there’s no question that finally letting the Virtual Temple Project loose in the world and sharing the first installment of Loki’s temple videos have had some meaningful effects. What is seen on these webpages and on these videos are just the packaging of some processes that were initiated a very long time ago. Seeing what I had the capacity to perform was surprising enough; finding my brain leaping forward to the next stage of the larger process that this project was part of was very surprising – even though it shouldn’t have been. Every time I learn something new – a new skill, a new set of facts, a new artistic medium – I mentally leap forward to play with ideas about application, evolution, and exploration. While this means that I’m never without some new project to play with, this is not necessarily a good trait; it means that I’m constantly trying to live in a future that doesn’t exist rather than engaging fully and honestly with what’s in front of me. It means that I create elaborate scenarios featuring an imagined future that is not in any way based in reality as it actually is.

This tendency to live ten minutes in the future has played havoc with my spiritual life, as you might imagine. I’ve spent a lot of time rushing forward into tragedies that aren’t necessarily indicated and wasted a lot of effort taking on tasks that, while real and valid and part of my purview and service, could also be handled by others. There is actually a difference between “This is part of your job” and “This is a job that you OR OTHERS could do”.

Despite leaping forward into all kinds of imagined futures and conjured scenarios, I’m actually incredibly hesitant to make major changes in my life, especially spiritually. This weekend I had a breakthrough regarding why this was. There are fears beneath fears – and fears beneath those fears – and identifying them as best I’m able is necessary in order to make as informed a decision as possible about my future and my present.

There are new and exciting things close ahead, and there are new and exciting things right now. Another video of Loki’s temple space will be made around the end of the month for release in early May. I have plans for two additional temple spaces that I’ll be working on, too. I hope to see other people filming worship spaces to share with the world. I have travel plans to finalize and presentation notes to polish. I have books I’m working on (slowly) and an awful lot of reading I’m working on (also slowly).

I’m also taking a step towards more formalized engagement in one of my traditions. This is a big development for me, even if the outward signs of this shift are but minimal. A sacrifice of certainty must be made. I won’t be able to imagine ten minutes into the future because even the current data is entirely unknown. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to heap all my assumptions, hopes, desires, and comforts into the transformative fire but I’m finally seeing some of my limiting fears for what they actually are.

My Mother comes in many forms and my love for Her encourages me to always tear down every obstacle obscuring my sight of Her. Risk and reward exist in equal measures on this path. For Her I keep holding the contradictions and ignoring the implausible appearances. My Lord’s bright form illuminates and reveals, scourges and burns. Gaining knowledge doesn’t come without shedding prior truths, and for a while I must stand empty of knowing and filled with only sensation.

I am happy – and nervous and exhausted and intimidated – to announce the launch of a new project that’s very dear to my heart. The Virtual Temple Project is a multimedia endeavor that brings polytheist and pagan worship spaces to people everywhere with the help of video technology. Even though the number of publicly accessible worship spaces are  growing, access is limited by many factors. However, we have beautiful and meaningful worship spaces inside our homes. We have the skills to create altars, shrines, and temples to our beloved gods. Designing a space specifically intended for public viewing and then recording it and sharing it online will make meaningful spiritual engagement accessible to anyone with an Internet-enabled device.

There were many, many motivating factors behind the development of this project but the needs of my fellow spoonies were perhaps first in my mind. Sometimes simply getting up and going to the altar is too much. I hope this project will bring the altars to you.

I want to encourage people to create worship spaces celebrating the Powers they love. Share a video of the worship space in action – light candles, burn incense, place offerings on the shrine – and share this activity so that everyone can participate in the beauty of your affection. Please read more about this project here.

My first contribution to this project is a virtual temple to Loki Herself – see above.

This is just the first in a series of Loki temple videos. I have some real ambitions for this particular virtual temple, including a prayer roll. More information about Loki’s virtual temple can be found here.

There’s so much I want to say about this project but for now I’ll let the video speak for itself. Let this offering inspire you to create worship spaces of your own celebrating the many, many Powers we love.