Month for Loki, Day 7: One Meaningful Offering

by beanalreasa

 

Recently, I was having a conversation with another Lokean, and we were talking about the importance of making offerings.

Though it was not my intent to put undue pressure on anyone to make elaborate offerings -as time, finances, and other factors can make that difficult – I wanted to stress the importance of making an offering.

It can be of utmost importance to make an offering…as the following passage from author Jenny Blain’s book, Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic  illustrates this point quite well:

“The process of initiation, by spirits or deities, not people, can be quite terrifying.  The experience of the seeress Rauðhildr is a case in point. This is how it appears in my field notes, written after she had told me the story in a coffee shop in Berkeley, California.

She made the journey to visit the Maurnir, who (according to her and Diana [Paxson]) are female giants. The Maurnir dwell in a cave, and she went there, naively she says because she thought it would be interesting.  She was attempting to journey to all the denizens of the Nine Worlds.

They were there, and they saw her and asked why she was there.  The Maurnir have much wisdom, and she asked (again naively, she says) if they would teach her if she could learn from them, share in their wisdom.  They said no, they couldn’t teach her, but if she wished she could become part of their wisdom. She agreed that this would be a good thing.

So they ate her.

They threw aside the bones, as they ate. Her bones were lying on the cavern floor when Loki appeared and started dancing and singing, calling to the goddesses and gods to put her back together, which they eventually did.  So Loki was dancing a shaman dance.  When she came together again, she thanked him and asked him why he’d done this. He said ‘once, you gave me a drink.’ (as an offering in ritual).”

 

You might notice the key in that passage is “He said ‘once, you gave me a drink.”

Once.

As you may have realized, one meaningful offering to Loki can make all the difference.

Indeed.

~~~

  • Jenny Blain, Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic: Ecstasy and Neo-Shamanism in Northern European Paganism, Routledge, New York, NY, 2002, p.22-3.