Yesterday I decided to look up the other blogs rocking this whole Month for Loki thing and came across this survey about pagan piety over on Twilight and Fire. (If you are so inclined, please fill it out. It asks some interesting questions that might make you think about things that have never occurred to you.)
As far as I can tell there was a bit of a blowup out here in Pagan Blog Land about Pop Culture Pagans and the validity of their practices. I am a total rubbernecker so of course I wanted to look it up. Also, I had never heard the term Pop Culture Pagan before so I pretty much had to check this out.
Now, I am not planning to speak on the whole blow up because frankly, I don't care. I am mostly interested in getting my personal wonderings out there.
I mentioned in my first post that I have been bitching about something in regards to Loki for years.
The bitching has been mainly about the Marvel version of Loki and the way it makes the rest of the world see not only US (his followers) but Him as well.
When my husband found out that I talked to Loki he bought me an action figure from the comic book series as a bit of a joke and suggested that I put it on my altar. I was mildly insulted but took it for the joke it was. That action figure didn't make the cross country move with us a few years later and a small part of me regrets that because now that there is a room for Him on my altar, I do not have the gift any longer.
Anyway... back to my bitching.
I have been lucky in the fact that despite my flat refusal to deal with Him for a long time, He stuck around.
I took that for granted and even let his constant presence in my life give me a bit of superiority. I can admit that I took a bit of joy at the idea that I was somehow better because He had chosen me as a child and not as an adult.
Looking back at it, I would like to take this moment to say that I was a raging bag of assholes and that my behavior was unacceptable. To anyone I made a rude comment to and/or about, I am very sorry. I had no right. Who the fuck am I to decide who is or is not good enough for Him? He's grown. He can handle His own shit.
My biggest source of butt hurt and bitching in the past few years has been based mostly around the Marvel movies involving Loki. We've all seen them. We all know how He is portrayed and we all know how fucking hot Tom Hiddleston looks in that outfit.
It is easy to dismiss the baby Lokean's who have found their way to Him via MarveLoki. It's even easier to pretend that their relationship with Him isn't real. I know because I have been a total shit about it for a few years now. I stopped being as vocal about their interest in Him back in December (2012)...
You see, in my household we celebrate Chanukah, Yule, Winter Solstice and Giftmas. Why? Because we can.
For Giftmas/Yule this past year my husband got me a few books about Loki. One of them had Tom Hiddlestons face on it and included the "time" spent in New Mexico (the events from the movie Thor) as part of His pastimes. I was bothered by the fact that it was included at all because those events never actually took place. I snarked at my husband, and anyone else who would listen, about how you can't just ADD things to the Edda's! You can't just create your own stories and add them as gospel to religious texts.
It was after one of my tirades that I got this sentence whispered in my ear:
Who are you to say what is and isn't real?
Now, follow along because this might go a bit off topic, but I swear, I have a point...
I am a HUGE Harry Potter nerd. I have a tattoo of the deathly hallows on my left wrist, and plan to get more. I make at least one HP reference a day (usually more). I read and write HP fan fiction and have made more than one fiber art project related to the series. My little sister (also a big HP nerd) and I used to talk about the characters so much when the books were still coming out that our mother and older sister thought that they were real people. My mother actually asked us when she would be able to meet those Weasley kids we talked so much about.
When the last book came out I cried for days. When the final movie was released I held my little sisters hand in the theater and watched as the people my mother and older sister had thought were real fought the bad guy and saved the day. I cried at the death of a beloved character and clutched my sisters hand in an attempt to comfort her as she dealt with her own grief. To this day, if you mentioned Fred Weasley to either of us, we get choked up. Whenever people make comments (and they totally do - the jerks) about Harry Potter just being a story we always come back with this wonderful line that Severus Snape said in the last book.
It's real for us.
I just shared the story about my Harry Potter addiction because that four word phrase was what I heard directly after Loki whispered in my ear asking me who I thought I was.
As pagans, we are given a bit of freedom in how we associate with the divine. UPG runs rampant through our communities (even if some people wont admit it). The idea that our gods can only be worshiped in a certain way is ludicrous. There are as many different ways to worship the divine as there are people on this planet.
If Loki wants to put on a British actors face and make hearts melt with a wicked smile, who the hell are we to stop him? If He (or any of the other gods) wants to whisper into the ears of writers, artists, singers, and video game creators who the hell are we to say anything?
In American Gods, a book by Neil Gaiman, the Old Gods of mythology go to battle with the New American Gods (media, celebrity, technology, and drugs to name a few). The Old Gods that are mentioned are from all over the planet. Some of them (Odin, Loki, Thoth, and Anubis) are gods we recognize. Others are lesser known.
It it my opinion that those gods mentioned above made an appearance in the book for a reason. Perhaps they felt it was time that more people stood up and paid attention. Perhaps Loki felt it was time for people to take a closer look at him and he decided that the best way to do that was by getting His name out there via a popular movie franchise.
As far as I can tell, He doesn't seem to mind the attention. Your relationship with Loki isn't invalidated because Suzy Creamcheese in bumblefuck Ohio has a fangirl crush on MarveLoki and decided to worship the shit out of him. On that same vein, my desire to hump Idris Elba on Thanksgiving Day in Macy's window has no bearing on my Heimdallr worshiping friends relationship with his god.
Alright, that's all I got... Hail Loki!
(The art is Look at me.animation by jen-and-kris btw)
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