bloodteethandflame

A life in threes

Category: Dionysus

Sunshine Blogger Award

sunshine-award

Thanks Amber who nominated me for this award!

Here are the questions from Amber:

  • What drew you to blogging?

I have been keeping a journal – in notebook form – since I was 8 years old. (As a matter of fact, I still do write in my notebook journal nearly every day.)

In 2002, I began blogging at LiveJournal and the now-defunct OpenDiary in an attempt to keep in touch with friends that I’d made in various online (and offline) Pagan and kink communities.

  • How did you meet Loki?

This is a difficult question to answer, as it depends on how one would define ‘meeting’ Loki.

I’ve known of Loki since I was a kid, mostly due to the combination of my interests in reading world mythology, cultural lore, fairy tales and comic books.

As well, as I’ve written before, I had an imaginary/invisible friend as a child who ‘left’ me around age 9 or so.  Then I started writing – keeping a daily journal/diary, as well as writing short stories that featured several characters.  Then, around age 12, I also started drawing in an attempt to illustrate some of these stories, and there was a particular man whose face I drew a lot.

It isn’t a far stretch for me to admit that that man had been my childhood ‘invisible friend.’

But I didn’t think of my invisible friend again, until the spring of 2008, when my younger son became severely ill, and was in and out of the hospital for several months. Though my son was hardly ever alone (besides that my husband and I took turns staying overnights with him throughout each hospital stay), my 5-year-old son told me in April 2008 that a tall, friendly man would come to visit him in the hospital, and that once, the man brought his wife and two sons.  The first time that my son described this man – how he looked, what clothes he wore, even the way that he talked – I could not help but admit that this man seemed a lot like the ‘invisible friend’ that I’d had until age 9.  But I didn’t think that it could be possible. (I am still not certain if these were dreams my son had had or if these visits were brief waking-visions, but after the third visitation, my son informed me that this man had told him to tell me that of course (he) knows me because (he) was my friend a long time ago. O.o)

And I still didn’t want to admit that that could have been Loki.

That is, until mid-2011, when Loki began to visit my dreams, and actually identified Himself as such.

~~~

So, take of the above ^ as you will.

You could say that I met Loki when I was a young child.

Or you could say that I didn’t really know it was Him until 2008.

Or you could say that I didn’t want to admit that it was Him until He insisted on (re) introducing Himself to me in 2011.

 

  • How long have you been with Loki?

(See above.)

Since I was a kid, but I wasn’t really pushed to put it all together until 2011.

And even then, I didn’t officially dedicate an altar to Him until April 2012.

So what is that 3 years -4 years – officially?

Or should I say what He would likely say:  Forever, Heathir 

 

  • Do you interact with other gods than Loki? Who?

In 1997, I began to identify myself as a Celtic Pagan.  I had been studying the Celtic pantheon for a long time before, and I decided to dedicate a lot of my practice/devotion to the Morrighan, believing Her to be my patron Goddess.

But for some reason, things began to change around 2010 or so.  I had begun working on writing a book about the Morrighan, simply because I’d been studying Her in lore for years and there wasn’t a lot of discussion of Her at that time.  And though I couldn’t figure out why, the more that I attempted to gather information on the Morrighan, the more disconnected from Her I felt.

So, in February 2012 I received a divination that pointed me in the direction of Freyja, rather than the Morrighan.

For this reason, I have always had a permanent altar for Freyja ever since.  (Not surprisingly, both Loki and Freyja have interacted with me in an extension of that same sovereignty work that I’d attempted to do with the Morrighan years before.)

As well, before officially dedicating to Loki in 2014, I had had interactions with Dionysus, Baphomet, and Cernunnos. (Dionysus still shows up once in a while, but I’ve never maintained a permanent space for Him.)

I also offer to Freyr and Odin at times, and I maintain an altar for Hela.

  • Your favourite way to relax and unwind?

I have no set favorite way to unwind.

I like to walk in the woods.

I meditate.

I write.

I draw.

I like to crochet and do embroidery, as well.

  • Name one place you’ve never been but would love to visit.

Iceland.

  • What kind of music do you like?

I love all sorts of music. I can and do enjoy listening to all different genres of music.  I don’t have a favorite genre, but in terms of radio stations, you’ll find me listening to alternative rock, such as what would be found on DC 101 when I’m in the car.

  • What kind of books do you like?

Like music, I don’t have a favorite kind of book.  I’ve been reading a lot of mythology and cultural history lately, but I like a well-written suspenseful story no matter what the genre.  I also love reading anthologies of short fiction and poetry.

  • What’s your favourite song, and why?

As I’ve said above re:music, I don’t favor any particular genre of music, so I could not ever hope to choose a definitive ‘favorite song.’

But I can tell you that I have had Chris Cornell’s ‘Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart’ as an earworm for over a week now.  When I’m not humming that song, lately, it has been either Cold War Kids’ ‘First’ or Coleman Hell’s ‘Two Heads.’

  • Cats or dogs?

While I have no problem with cats – I suppose that I like them well enough as I have three of them living with me right now – I consider myself slightly more of a ‘dog’ person.

  • Tea or coffee?

Both.  I used to drink tea exclusively, but when I started to suffer from kidney stones, my doctor suggested that I should switch to drinking coffee instead.  So I drink 1 or 2 cups of coffee a day as a replacement for all that tea that I used to drink, but I still enjoy a good cup of hot spiced chai once in a while, or a tall glass of sweet iced tea.

Spread the word, they said.

Well, some folks are.

The other day, I was thinking about this duty to evangelize that a lot of Christians have got going….and this default assumption that their evangelical Christian behavior is welcome anywhere that they are.

And it got me to thinking about my own religious beliefs and how I am sometimes reluctant to ‘come out of the closet’ as it were, because I personally live in a community dominated by Christians – namely Baptists and Jehovah Witnesses.

I’ve always chalked it up to the fact that I am living in that state in the South which is not the South but still has a lot of Southern conservative Christian attitudes, namely Florida.

(But even so, I will admit that even before I was publicly identifying myself as Norse non-reconstructionist polytheist, or as  a Celtic-flavored Pagan, I still grew up surrounded by people who often made the assumption that I must believe in a God and of course, that God had to be the Abrahamic God that they and their parents believed in — despite the fact that my parents styled themselves as agnostics — because I grew up celebrating Christmas and Easter.)

So, in that sense, I hardly think that I am the first person to point out that when you tell many people that you’re spiritual, they assume by default that you must be some form of Christian.

~~~~

But aside of all that, I’m getting pretty cranky about some of the people in my neighborhood.

Mostly because there is a woman in my neighborhood who keeps tacking these little cardboard signs everywhere:

annoyinglittlesigns

…and I mean everywhere.

Walking my dog the day before yesterday, I found at least a half dozen of them during the first 1/2 mile of my walk.  Two of them were taped above the walk signal button.  Three were tacked and/or stapled into tree trunks that were at least 100 yards from the road-edge.  And one – the above one – had been affixed to an electrical pole that held a public cable line repeater.

Walking today, there were at least eight more tacked, taped or stapled unto various things, often at eye-level.

One little sign had been twist-tied into the branches of a decorative hedge.

And it got me to thinking that someone was going quite out of their way to spread these blurbs of God.

I suspect that this is why small towns often put up those ‘Post No Bills‘ signs in downtown areas.

But no one seems to care — except for maybe me – because I watched several workers for the home association (whose job seems to be come out every other Thursday or so to clean up the litter along the sidewalks, and remove other things that don’t belong like the handmade cardboard signs of past garage sales and whatnot) – and I watched each of them stop as if to read these little signs, and then each walked away without removing it.

So, since the homeowner’s association seems to approve of these little signs – I mean, their job is to remove things like that all under the auspices of removing ‘litter’  and I distinctly witnessed each of them leaving these signs alone- I decided that I would turn each of these signs over and write my only little spiritual blurbs on them.

So far, I’ve re-purposed two with stanzas from the Hávamálone with a short passage from the Vedas, two with verses from Thelema doctrine that came through the Ape of Thoth randomizer, and one with a portion of the Homeric hymn 26 to Dionysus.

Now let’s see if those signs stay up.

 

 

 

 

The God Phone, and the Devil in the details.

This past Saturday, I went to a local craftsperson/artisan event that was being held downtown from where I live.

Part of the reason for the event was to inspire folks to begin their holiday shopping locally, and I was happy to see that a lot of the shops along the main street were open and busy as a result of this event.

I also discovered a few (new to me) local stores that I realized that I hadn’t even known existed so close to my home.

So, as I was browsing in an antique store that I’d never thought to explore, I came across so many battered (yet  overpriced) mundane items that filled me with childhood nostalgia.

One such item was a bulky black rotary telephone that reminded me of the one that sat on the side table in my Nana’s front hall in the early 70’s.

It looked just like the one that I had been warned by my Nana was a Very Important Thing that I must never play with.

It also made a very deep, jangling ring, and I remember being a bit terrified by the look of it and the sound of it when it rang.

I vaguely recall her explanations about how this telephone was a Very Important Thing for Hearing the Voices of Those Who Are Very Far Away, so I chuckle to think of it now, but I remember being entirely convinced in my young child-mind that only God would ever call my Nana on that phone.

And besides, how I understood it, it seemed to me that God was definitely a Someone Not to be trifled with, as well as Someone with a Voice, from Very Far Away.

~~~~

As I was mulling over that particular memory, and clumsily trying avoid disaster as I navigated the narrow spaces between the jumbled collections of antiques and the steady stream of my fellow-browsers, I found myself inevitably being jostled toward china cabinets that lined the farthest wall.  I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in looking at shelves of dusty, gilt-edged dishes and bric-a-brac, until something caught my eye:

NorseWindGodmatchsafe

At first glance, I’d assumed that this brass match-holder (to be mounted near a fireplace) was supposed to depict the face of the Devil or an imp – and I would still say so – but upon inspection of the tag, I saw something else written there.

While I tried several times to capture a good angle that would allow a view of both the face and the tag, I couldn’t get it all within the frame.

The tag reads:

LCH

Brass “Norse Wind God”

Match Holder

$65.00

Doing more research on this piece through the Internet/Google – I went to Amazon sold lists, various antique websites, Pinterest, and eBay – this piece is listed as depicting any of several Beings: the Devil, Pan, Dionysus/Bacchus, and the Green Man.

One seller on eBay refers to it as a ‘Fire-God/Imp Match-holder.’

Another seller on an antique website refers to this face as ‘Zeus’

I was very taken aback to see ‘Norse Wind God’ however…because I know Who I thought of when I read that on the tag.

Hm.

Syncretism, anyone?

(PS: Loki seemed left out of all that reaching for description of  ‘the possible Deity’ depicted on this antique match-safe — and I found that surprising, too.)

Earnestly occupied, and fascinated

From I09:

If time is a fluid concept, then I should really watch what I say from now on.

 

Gods, how I love language.

 

And I can so see some of my Gods being all over this sort of business. 😉

Brick to the head! Again.

Things are looking up.

Did you ever have one of those days?

I seem to be having one of those lives.

Oh, no, please do not misunderstand me.

I don’t think that that is entirely a bad thing, mind you.  I’m kinda sorta getting what I asked for…in the most roundabout way possible.

~~~~

Let me start from the end, and work backwards…

This song:

 

…which has these lyrics:

Come with me now
Come with me now
Whoa, come with me now
I’m gonna take you down
Whoa, come with me now
I’m gonna show you howWhoa, come with me now
I’m gonna take you down
Whoa, come with me now
I’m gonna show you how

Afraid to lose control
And caught up in this world
I’ve wasted time, I’ve wasted breath
I think I’ve thought myself to death

I was born without this fear
Now only this seems clear
I need to move, I need to fight
I need to lose myself tonight

Whoa, come with me now
I’m gonna take you down
Whoa, come with me now
I’m gonna show you how

I think with my heart and I move with my head
I open my mouth and it’s something I’ve read
I stood at this door before, I’m told
But a part of me knows that I’m growing too old

Confused what I thought with something I felt
Confuse what I feel with something that’s real
I tried to sell my soul last night
Funny, he wouldn’t even take a bite

Far away
I heard him say (Come with me now)
Don’t delay
I heard him say (Come with me now)

Far away
I heard him say (Come with me now)
Don’t delay
I heard him say (Come with me now)

Whoa, come with me now
I’m gonna take you down
Whoa, come with me now
I’m gonna show you how

Afraid to lose control
And caught up in this world
I’ve wasted time, I’ve wasted breath
I think I’ve thought myself to death

I was born without this fear
Now only this seems clear
I need to move, I need to fight
I need to lose myself tonight

Whoa, come with me now

Whoa, come with me now
I’m gonna take you down
Whoa, come with me now

~~~~~

 

 

This is not. And yet this is.