So, if I haven’t already mentioned, I have been taking a course in Shapeshifting, through Cherry Hill Seminary.
It’s been an interesting few weeks to say the least.
I am preparing for the final project next week
and I decided to get some help from Mr. Tea:
:
His pants are full of mugwort, and he’s now relaxing in my teacup.
We will see how this goes.
This is where the magic happens.
Wish me luck!
~~~
Hail Loki, Shapeshifter ❤
I walked to the grocery store today, to pick up something for dinner.
It had begun to rain shortly before I left, so I was unusually prepared for once, and I brought my umbrella.
So there I was walking under my umbrella, listening to my iPod, and thinking about what sort of meat that I should buy for dinner…
And next thing I know, I do believe that I came extremely close to being struck by lightning.
I was listening to Marilyn Manson’s cover of ‘Personal Jesus’* on my iPod —
and right at that final chorus of Reach out and touch faith
–I saw a bright flash and I felt a brief electric shock that made my hand go numb.
I dropped my umbrella, frightened, and looked up as I heard the after-rumble.
Right then, Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’ began to play on my iPod.
All right-y then.
Hail Loki ❤
Hail Thor!
and
Hail the Gods and ancestors!
~~~
*’Personal Jesus’ is a song that I have long associated with Loki.
‘Immigrant Song’ is a song about Vikings – and thus, I’ve found it an easy association with the Norse Gods.
❤
Here are some of my favorite images of Loki.
This is Loki and Alberich by bluefooted on DeviantART.
I really love that only the orange spectrum is used here, and I love the sweet youthfulness of His face.
~~~~
Here is the most amazing piece from Sceithailm
There is so much that I love about this piece:
His elegant horns,
the luscious flush of His skin,
the gnarled shadow-trees
that effortlessly bleed into fur and drapery
… and those sorely pink knees of His.
It makes me wonder what kind of shamanic magic He has been working here.
There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground…(indeed!)
~~~
This one is a book-cover, drawn by Piotr Cielinski, for a Polish series of novels that was titled The Liar.
I just like that smile, the good luck charms (as if Himself needed such things), and the runes on both weapon and its silencer.
Hell, I just like the concept of Himself as some deranged yet fun-loving Amish mercenary.
What’s not to love?
~~~
And lastly, in a similar vein, here’s one of my most recent favorites:
This is Loki from another DA artist – Red_Szajn – titled aptly Surprise, motherf_cker!
from that same Jakub Cwiek series, Klamca (The Liar).
I do wish that this sketch was available for purchase.
I’d hang this in my bathroom, or some similarly random area, just for fun.
Why?
( Because I believe that it would seem that Loki is exactly the sort of entity that would approve of such surprises — also referred to His version of a ‘good idea’ –exactly at that moment when one is either unsuspecting, alone, or both — and therefore, a captive audience.)
I mean, how would I know?
I’m just sayin’.
~~~
Hail Loki, Fair of Face ❤
Y’know, this would have been a better post for yesterday — since yesterday was the 5th and all – but, ah well, I saw this article posted again today.
As if to remind me.
So, here we are.
And yes, I do believe that the writer of this article is correct.
I’d seen this life-changing statement that answered the endless plea that I had made to the Universe regarding What I Should Do several months ago – yes, I had seen the article before, you know – but I wasn’t ready to see any of my relationships in this statement of just 5 words:
Only stay where you’re valued.
Yes. That’s it. Simple yet powerful, if you think about it.
There were no complex quizzes, no lists of questions that I should be asking myself when I thought about ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ or any of the other fence-sitting navel-gazing sort of circular musing that I am famous for engaging in at 4 AM while lying awake with insomnia.
This article asks one to consider just one very vital aspect of any relationship – especially personal relationships – and that is to think about the concept of value.
Not ‘Are you needed?‘
Not ‘Are you happy?‘
Not ‘Are you paid attention to?’
or even
‘Am I loved?’
Or any of the other variations on the theme of that last one that a worried brain who questions the status of their relationship can come to at 4 AM.
Why?
Because, if you follow along the premise as presented in the article, if you are valued in a relationship, and you value those who are in a relationship with you*, then all those other questions answer themselves.
(*Psst: hey, even if the relationship is with yourself, *this statement still works*. Kinda sneaky ton of bricks, isn’t it?)
Seriously.
Go read it.
~~~
And with that, on the sixth day, I say,
Hail, Loki.
Thank You for the reminder, my Sweetest Friend ❤
“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
~~~
I had a strange dream about a crazy, angry zombie-like woman living in my house (which was like a dormitory with many rooms).
She was in a specific room.
And in the strange dream-logic, I remembered that I had met her once before.
I realized that I was afraid of her, and she knew it.
She seemed to feed on that fear of mine, and she relentlessly pursued me. (She carried a large machete-like weapon).
I tried to avoid her….
….but the rituals of my avoidance of her were so ridiculously time-consuming.
I hadn’t time for anything else. I was losing so much time every day.
I felt so much shame. I felt so much embarrassment.
I just wanted it to be over.
I was tired.
But once I had resolved to find her and face her, she was very difficult to find.
I kept returning to the room where she was, but she was not there.
~~~~
K and I had an interesting conversation, within in the dream, about how she could be found, and about what must be done when one does.
It was hir belief that you must take her weapon from her by force; meanwhile, I was adamant that I might convince her to put it down/give it up.
Was this a battle between Force vs. Reason?
But then, another spoke to me: She will not be convinced; she is too angry. She will not listen to reason. You must find another way.
~~~~
And that made me think of that Louise Bogan poem, titled [maybe not-so-ironically]
The Dream:
O God, in the dream the terrible horse began
To paw at the air, and make for me with his blows,
Fear kept for thirty-five years poured through his mane,
And retribution equally old, or nearly, breathed through his nose.
Coward complete, I lay and wept on the ground
When some strong creature appeared, and leapt for the rein.
Another woman, as I lay half in a swound
Leapt in the air, and clutched at the leather and chain.
Give him, she said, something of yours as a charm.
Throw him, she said, some poor thing you alone claim.
No, no, I cried, he hates me; he is out for harm,
And whether I yield or not, it is all the same.
But, like a lion in a legend, when I flung the glove
Pulled from my sweating, my cold right hand;
The terrible beast, that no one may understand,
Came to my side, and put down his head in love.
~~~~
Suddenly, I had an idea.
In the very room where this crazy, angry zombie-like woman lived, there was a door that opened to the outdoors…to sky, grass, trees…to the outside.
It was a Dutch half-door, of inlaid exotic wood, laid in an interesting pattern of X’s and W’s.
The top-half of the door was open, but the bottom half remained closed, perhaps locked.
It hadn’t a doorknob that could be worked from the inside, but in studying the area where a doorknob would be from the out-side, there seemed to be an elaborate puzzle of turning latches that hid tumblers that slid smoothly into the door-frame.
Suddenly it occurred to me that if this woman were anything like the way I am when I am angry — no, blindly enraged — a latch like this would prove too complex a situation to ever hope to overcome.
Her mind would just be too clouded. Had she given up?
How frustrated she must feel, I thought, to never have been able to open this door.
~
~
~
Suddenly, I realized that that was the answer.
And so, I resolved and I focused and I opened it
for her
for me
and
I left
it
open.
~~~
Hail Loki, Opener of the Way!
❤
You won’t belong.
You don’t belong.
This concept – of ‘belong’ – especially that of ‘not belonging’ — has been coming up recently for me in my latest shadow work.
What is most disconcerting to me is that some of the meaning of ‘belong’ seems primarily connected to my surname(s).
Legally, I’ve gone by two separate surnames in my life. It is as you would expect: I had a maiden name (M____), which I gave up in 1993, when I took on my (present) married name (D_____).
In May 2013, I reached the exact halfway point of the situation: I realized that I had had each surname for 21 years each. As well, that had meant that I had known my husband for exactly half of my life.
And due to some recent upheavals and changes, I am faced with considering this: somehow, it doesn’t feel right for me to continue to ‘be a D_____’ (because of divorce), but I feel reluctant to return to ‘being a M_____’, because, well…because I never felt like I belonged as a M_____, either.
~~~~~
As far back as I remember, there was a feeling of not belonging, of otherness. Even though, at the surface of reason, my uneasy feelings seemed foolish: I know that my parents and siblings were my biological relations; I could plainly see them in my own facial features, behaviors, etc.
There was no other explanation. Was there?
I can remember arguing the point with my parents. For a while, I even thought it typical — what kid hasn’t secretly wished for that tantalizing possibility in a fit of dramatic anger – who hasn’t wished that hir parents weren’t really hir parents?
(Or maybe I was just simply what I was … a strange, sad child trying to make sense of strange, sad events.)
But still, there was that feeling that I could not place…just below the surface, a deep sense of unshakable unease, the stuff of fairy tales pulling at the edges of my consciousness.
You won’t belong.
You don’t belong.
So when the SITD came along and asked me to come with hir, I had dared hope, or perhaps thought, once or twice, that it might be because I was being taken back to where I belonged/whom I belonged with.
And that concept – of being taken elsewhere — seemed equally terrifying and tantalizing to me.
~~~
The words you don’t belong / you won’t belong could also have these connotations:
Just the sound of it – you don’t belong here –
whispered in the night
whether I said it:
I don’t want to belong here [be long here]’
or the SITD said it:
‘Don’t worry. You don’t belong here
[because you belong with Me.]’
Or
‘You won’t be long here, but don’t worry…’
[because I am coming back to you.]
Either way, it’s stuff to think about.
~~~~
Hail to Himself, Shadow in the Dark ❤
Today is a simple post.
It is about a few particular songs that have haunted me this past year — mostly through random television and radio commercials, and various ironic instances of radio pandoramancy.
The first instance featured Kelly Clarkson’s Breakaway:
My husband and I were attending a three-day weekend fetish event that was held at a pretty swank hotel, and I awakened early one morning to the chorus of this song playing loudly — as the theme to a travel commercial.
All I could think was that the chorus of the song somehow jibed with the concept of ‘breaking away’ from the mundane world, since the chorus of —
I’ll spread my wings and I’ll learn how to fly
I’ll do what it takes til’ I touch the sky
And I’ll make a wish
Take a chance
Make a change
And breakaway —
was set against a backdrop various highlights sponsored by the local tourist board – from pristine shores edged by serene blue ocean, to majestic blue-white mountains rising from lush carpets of evergreen trees, to the sophisticated glow and bustle of the theatre and shopping district of the capital city , all peopled by smiling faces of travelers enjoying themselves in the lovely state of ____, but I just noticed the tune of a song that I’d never heard before.
And the words of that chorus rang in my head:
make a wish
Take a chance
Make a change
And
break
away
and I looked blearily at the clock.
4:30AM.
I fished the remote out from beneath the pillow upon which my husband was sleeping soundly, and after several irritably clumsy attempts at jabbing random buttons in the dim light, I was finally able to mute the volume.
My husband never even stirred.
Then, I rolled over, and tried desperately to go back to sleep.
But sleep would not come.
I had that fucking song as an earworm for the rest of that event.
And I saw/heard that commercial at least six times in the next two days, though it was always when I was alone, and always when I was resolutely trying not to think about it being a specific nudge toward the inevitable.
Make a change
And break away….
(I ended up JFGI once I reached home, and was able to dislodge the earworm somewhat, but it shall forever remain a definitively Lokean earworm from that day forward, for the very reason for the awful realizations that I came to during that weekend…and what fresh hell of a twist came into my life not even two weeks later.)
~~~~
Cut to a few months later, there was Sara Bareilles’ ‘Brave’….
This song was used as a theme in a Microsoft Windows commercial…or maybe it was even for a cellphone that featured some sort of Microsoft technology.
I seem to remember arguing with V about our increasingly lack of connection, and our seeming inability to communicate as of late…and yet here was this fucking commercial suddenly blaring in the background, advertising some new aspect of communication technology.
Either way, the first time that I noticed the lyrics:
Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
I was actually in half-hearing the commercial, and the irony of that moment so unsettled me that I stopped me in mid-sentence.
My husband didn’t even notice.
I’d wager that he thought that my sudden silence had meant that he’d won the argument.
And, like the previous song, I hadn’t actually come across the opportunity to hear the whole song, until I was sitting in a Wendy’s having lunch one day, almost a month later. ( I had to JFGI’d the above video, because I’d caught the tail-end of the song, because it ended just as I was sitting down to eat. Only then, did I realize, with increasing dismay, what a spectacularly Lokean sneaky ton of bricks message that song was in its entirety.)
And would it surprise you that the song that immediately followed Brave was Jesse McCartney’s Beautiful Soul?
(Such an irrepressible flirt He is.)
~~~~
Hail Loki, Lord of Pandoramancy!
So, July being the Month for Loki, I realize that I’m a little late to His party, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t anything to post about it.
As a matter of fact, I just returned from a sort of ‘mini-break’ from the Two Week Long Chain of Events That May Very Well Be the Most Excruciating Personal Changes to Ever Happen in My Life(tm).
And since my Sweetest Friend is very well known for having a penchant for nudging His folks towards making excruciating (and often necessary) personal changes, it seems rather fitting that I would end June 2014 with some well-placed explosions to my comfort zones.
(Besides, it beats what happened last July 2nd.)
My mini-break involved visiting the ocean with H., thanks to the generosity of a very dear friend.
So, I spent a few days at a beautiful little beach house on an island, far from home, hanging with H and her kid.
We went swimming in the ocean in the day, and swimming in the pool at night.
We looked for parking, bought souvenirs, had some intriguing conversations, and ate some delicious food — including really fresh seafood, and the best key lime pie that I have ever tasted in my life thusfar.
There were also maple bacon doughnuts, salted caramel doughnuts, and sriracha peanut doughnuts, all courtesy of a delightful local bakery that makes them fresh, right in front of you.
~~~~
All in all, it was a welcome break from nearly a month of navigating personal emotional landmines, and making some of the most difficult decisions of my life.
And while there is still a lot of work to come, I am not alone.
I began my painful journey among friends a little less than a month ago, and I don’t know how I could have navigated any of it thusfar without their support, friendship, and love.
I am thankful for them, especially H.
~~~~~
And, of course, I am thankful for Himself.
Hail and Thank You, my Sweetest Friend!
(Note: Because this is copyrighted material, it was difficult to find a quality video that hadn’t been muted by the copyright holders, much less a version that contains that delicious low chuckle that opens this song — which has always been my favorite part of this song.
But, if you listen really closely, you can hear a bit of it on this one.)
❤
~~~
I know that this might not be a song about love; maybe it’s a song about hope, or perhaps regret.
The chorus is what struck me, however:
I belong with you, you belong with me
you’re my sweetheart
I belong with you, you belong with me
you’re my sweet
~~~
I’ll take that.
bloodteethandflame 