I realize things have been all Loki, all the time around here for a while. The grand book project took a lot of time and much of that effort got shared here eventually. Even as all that has been going on (and I may talk about the rest of it at some point), my spiritual life has been growing and changing on many fronts. In the last six months or so a few people have talked to me about Santa Muerte, Saint Death. I’m sometimes a bit of an evangelist for the Saint because, well, that’s what happens. When she makes her power known in your life suddenly you have a taste for her that no one and nothing else will entirely satisfy. You become a believer, and that’s the exchange that occurs when she grants you a miracle.

This isn’t the sort of exchange most people imagine making when they petition a Power for intervention or aid. Even though on the one hand we resist thinking of the Powers as vending machines where aid is exchanged for various offerings, the concept of fair exchange is a value many polytheists hold dear. Ideally, fair exchange happens within the context of a relationship that includes intangible features such as trust. Such an exchange might be a prelude to a more complex relationship or an exchange might be a feature of the relationship that keeps the spiritual-emotional character of the bond healthy and active. (That is, I might approach a new Power with simple offerings of candles and incense in order to cultivate the first stages of a relationship with them; however, as the relationship developes in time and complexity, offerings and gifts would continue to form an important part of our interaction.)

The Saint is like this, too but she’s also a little different. What she desires from us is not so much candles or tequila or incense or candy or cigarettes (though she likes all these things and much else besides). She, perhaps more than any other Power I’ve ever encountered, is most pleased through memetic reproduction. She desires the proliferation of her idea. This is accomplished first by faith in her and in her power; this is why those who venerate her are called “believers”. (At least, this is what the believers I know call themselves but this might be a regional appellation.) As more and more people come to believe in the Saint, her image, her name, and the very idea of her spreads exponentially.

To participate in her belief is to participate in an ever-expanding global neural network. Many of the Norse polytheists and Heathen-types I know joke about our gods being like viruses; they do tend to spread as the human members of this larger community interact with one another. (Does this mean you’ll get a dose of the Loki virus hanging out with me? Possibly. I’ve seen it happen too, too many times to think otherwise but Loki also chooses who to leap to. I’d come with a warning label but I’m not terribly interested in warning people; it’d be more like a label forewarning celebration – but anyway.)

The Saint works in a very similar way – most Powers probably do, to some extent or another – but she is memetically potent to a rather exceptional degree. She travels, hopping from mind to mind, from one awareness to another, and has used the material astral known as the Internet to become a global Power in more than symbolic terms. She is highly material even as she leads us to transcendent ideas.

I can’t tell you who she is because I don’t actually know. She’s not a goddess exactly – even though researchers, believers, and even some non-believers connect her with ancient goddesses from places that are now Mexico – but I have a hard time believing she’s absolutely entirely definitely not a goddess, either. (Personally, I tend to grant her lower-case pronouns which is my individual way of distinguishing between divine and non-divine Powers but in this entry it has been a distinct struggle.)  I have no real way of telling you what the difference is except that her presence doesn’t tick the same flavor, the same quality, the same reactions in me that are characteristic of divinities of any variety I’ve so far encountered. This is not an analytical category that is at all meaningful to anyone else.

I call her a Rogue Power. She seems to exist without a category, without a greater variety of which she is a part of. She has no pantheon (except perhaps for those other Rouge Powers we call “folk saints” like Saint Doctor Baby who are alike primarily by being like nothing and no one else). She certainly has a cultural context but that context is expanding and morphing even as I write this. Every interaction I’ve ever had with her suggests that she is part of everyone’s context – at least potentially, and certainly some more than others.

She is not a Power of the bourgeoisie. She is not a Power of the powerful. From her very earliest days she has been petitioned by people who had no other access to power (magic being a tool of those who had no other tools). This is why historically she was a love doctor par excellence; women whose well-being depended on staying in a stable relationship prayed to her for success in love. She is still a love doctor but is also known as a patron of queer people, sex workers, anyone working at night, anyone working in dangerous conditions, and anyone for whom magic and divine intervention are the only safeguards against disaster. Transsexuals are among her most fervent believers.

What I ask her for most is a quiet life. This is more or less what most people ask for: a quiet life and a good death. (Why might one pray for a good death? Because a bad death involves fear, pain, torment, abuse, loneliness, and abandonment. Our prayers acknowledge the fact of mortality while asking for an easy transition into the life beyond.)

I’ve been a believer in the Saint for many years. I’ve found her to be a compassionate(ish) figure that responds immediately to any petition. Any. Curses, healing, curse breaking, employment, legal victory, safety, financial success – anything. At times her presence is immensely healing and comforting; at others her energy has a distinct razor’s edge to it that warns you of your mounting debt. Gratitude should be forthcoming.

I have faith in Santa Muerte. I have faith in no one else, not like this. I love Loki, I love the Mother, I love many Powers with a depth that staggers me but an unshakable bedrock faith like this has been won only by her. I don’t know why. I don’t know how.

**

She is easy to petition. A plain white novena candle is a great place to start. Write her name on it; draw her picture if you’re feeling artistic. Fresh flowers, a glass of water, a fresh bun or pastry, and a handful of hard candy will certainly get her attention; tequila, cigarettes, cigarillos, or a joint will grab even more of her focus.

Greet her; praise her. Tell her what you want. Tell her why you want it and what you will do as a result of getting what you want. (I’ve found that her willingness to help is sweetened by describing how I will help others as a result of her aid.) Thank her and let the candle burn for a while. You can keep it lit for several days if you’re able or just when you’re praying or wish to celebrate her. I usually have her candle lit on the weekends; Friday is my day for lighting a candle to the Virgin, so Santa Muerte gets her candle lit then, too. Sunday is my particular day for the Saint just because I’m likely to be home all day and can leave the candle lit for many hours at a stretch.

Finally, expect miracles and express gratitude. That’s all there is to believing in the Saint.

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.