Day Ten: Patrons

What should I say here? I am going to talk about Loki, my fulltrui, and about the Gods of my Hedgecraft. I feel I should mention both although, as I've stated before, the Gods of my Hedgecraft can hardly be called "patrons".

He and She are Gods I consider "Primal", part of the very earth and sky, part of the rain and forest and beating sun. They are good things and bad, but most of all, They are the boundary between life and death and the very drive of all things to live. They are Passion, in all its forms. They are the desperate need to survive: lust, and hunger, and fear. The edge of the knife.

I've known Them for a long time, but my understanding of Them has grown and developed a great deal over time. For the longest time I was bogged down in other people's impressions about deities who may in fact be quite different to Them... and I worshipped Them for years with a very shallow understanding of Them. That's changed as I started to get a better idea out of what I wanted in a personal witchcraft tradition, a better understanding of ecstatic ritual and a more clear idea of how I understand the world.

They're not patrons.... the word doesn't work with Them. But, I think if I were ever to consider myself "priesthood" - and I'm always unsure about that - it would be of these two Deities.

.......
And then there's Loki. He Who Is Always a Question, Trickster, the Cause Of And Solution To All of Life's Problems. He didn't come into my life in a blaze of fire, or announce his arrival with an explosion or something large falling down. He insinuated himself into my life slowly, so that I didn't really realise what was happening. I remained wary of him for a long time but still unutterably fond of him... I'd read stories of him as a child and though now they're lost in the fog of my memory, part of him stuck with me. This story was one I read, and forgot, and remembered again. I got a choice, too, in whether to be his or not. I'm not sure what the choice means... whether it means I can't complain later on, or whether to be truly screwed over you have to enter into it willingly. But for what it's worth I do trust him. I am not wary of him anymore; I am aware of him.

What shall I say of him. He has taught me many things, such as when to laugh, and when to play, and not to take the opinions of others to heart. He has taught me to leap and be brave, to take chances, and to do what makes me happy. There was also a curious instance in which Oðinn took an interest in me and gave me a Lesson, and Loki turned up halfway through rather vexed. They had a Conversation, to which I was not privy, but I suspect he was ascertaining whether Oðinn was not making plans for me that interfered with his own.

The thing about Loki is.... he's so.... It's like he looks at things with different eyes to everyone else. I think Oðinn "gets" him, and a couple of the others, but it's like the way he sees things he's looking at it from twelve perspectives at once and makes decisions that seem bizarre or nonsensical because he's working with a hidden aim, or no aim at all, or an aim that will become apparent to him later. He's incredibly perspicacious and his reasons are his own and are hidden and obscure, and I think sometimes he makes a decision on the spur of the moment based on who-knows-what. If the world's a stage and everyone players, Loki reads from a different script entirely. Possibly the same one, but one with all these notations made by the playwrite: little changes and stuff that don't appear on anyone else's script. He is a Cosmic Fool, the one who makes the gods look at themselves. He is a culture-bringer, and a breaker of stagnation. And he gets shit for it. But without him the gods would be living in a wall-less Asgard without wonderful weapons, and people would be dull little creatures.

I made him an oath once that I thought of as a "bargain", "I do this if you'll do that". But he considered it an oath, and it was, I just didn't think of it that way. So he gets a kiss from me, every day. I don't pretend to understand him or his reasons for doing essentially anything. I just count myself lucky to have him in my life, particularly in a way that, at present, doesn't hurt.

One thing is clearer than most, and that is that he is very fond of his family.