Category: General

I am gleefully busy!

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I finally graduated from college, so I suddenly have a lot of free time on my hands and basically dove right into intense, self-directed study.

Got a snazzy little study binder and everything.

Since I have one part of Ursula Dronke’s Edda translation (I will have to dig for the other two parts, one copy is in a library in Philly so I’ll see if I can access it) I’ve decided to use it as the jumping point for my research. Dronke’s notes are incredibly thorough in explaining the cultural and mythological context of the poems. It is, predictably, really dense, but it’s great for taking notes from and I feel like I’m gaining a lot of new understanding from doing this.

I’m also learning a little bit of Old Norse in the hopes that I can someday, with further study, read and interpret the poems directly. Failing that, since Old Norse has a very flexible word order, I’ll probably try my hand at really simplistic skaldic poetry or writing rituals in Old Norse.

Old Norse also makes me really glad I’ve taken Latin and German, because Old Norse is absurdly inflective.

Imagine how much it would suck to be a nonbinary Viking.

After I’m done working through the Eddas, I’ll be moving to the Sagas and similar books for cultural context, and studying the Rune poems and looking into magical practices like Seiðr and Galdr. I’m planning on getting ordained through The Ásatrú Community and want to make sure all my bases are covered for their direct ordination option, basically.

This has also involved grabbing as many academic commentaries on Norse mythology, and the culture and language, as I can get my little pixelated hands on. (Which has resulted in a reading list that’s nearly 300 items long. Why do I do these things to myself?)

I have also found some promising kindreds to look into and get involved in, which should also help me cover the community involvement requirement. (I’m not sure how that’s proven, and a signed spreadsheet feels outré, but I’d rather not lie about it anyway.)

This has kept me from maintaining the blog as much as I had hoped, especially considering my plan was to track my journey/progress, but there’s a few drafts ready to go that I might publish soon. Not saying “watch this space,” just that I’m not dead. Not even remotely! I feel more alive than I have in a while. Actually sleeping will do that for you.

Uh.

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So the subject of Loki’s snazzy little shoes came up in a Lokean FB group I’m in, and I went to go find the attestation for it, but then Google…

well that's not wrong

…I mean, that’s not exactly wrong. But I was looking for the Skáldskaparmál.

Talking to the Divine:

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Expectation: Lo! Gods hear my plea and take me in your favor, for I can think of no other recourse than to call upon you. I present to thee this wine and sacrificed flesh to sustain thee.

Reality: STOP FUCKING WITH MY BRAIN WORDS

Finding Asatru stuff be like

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SOMETHING RACIST

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MORE RACIST

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some Wiccan stuff

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ANCIENT WEBSITE FULL OF

DEAD LINKS

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OH LOOK SOME MORE RACISM

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Why is it so hard to find a kindred?

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I swear to spiderhorse there used to be so many kindreds, moots and blots within reasonable distance from wherever I was. It’s like that fake fact about spiders. I used to be spiders-god-damn-Georg, who lives in a cave and successfully locates 10,000 pubmoots a day.

My options are fewer than the average heathen because of the whole Loki thing (so the Troth goes right out the god damn window unless I’m desperate, and I’m getting there) but even still the number of kindreds you could find with a google search is virtually nihil now.

What the fuck.

There was an amusing discovery along the line, but it needs some background info. Basically, at pagan pride day a few years back I had a kindred leader recommended to me (through someone in The Troth, ironically) based on the fact that his kindred was pointedly Loki-friendly. We talked, I interviewed him on his stances regarding folkism and racism and he seemed less than ideal but tolerable.

I didn’t have a great feeling about this guy or the woman with him (especially her, god she was unsettling) but figured you just have to suck it up and settle for less if you want to get anywhere. Right?

Turns out this dude had plastered his facebook with fylfots.

it is the same damn thing

I was grossed out. I was pissed. He lied to me, pretty blatantly, and literally did something he claimed to have kicked people out of his kindred for. I also wasn’t ready to confront this dude so I decided to profusely apologize to my Jewish friends for the mishap and block the guy instead, vowing never to go near his fucking kindred.

I wasn’t thrilled when I found out they’d signed Declaration 127, and this is a good 90% of why I don’t put stock into kindreds who signed it. (And why I didn’t sign it.) There was clearly no vetting involved.

But I figured I’d check up on them out of morbid curiosity and have discovered that they renamed, are currently without a location and have gotten worse. Do you think I don’t know what “cultural marxism” is a dog whistle for?

So at least I was right in my suspicions, even if they came a little late.

So anyway. The search continues.

 

It’s a Rant~!

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So, I went to the Trans Health Conference.

The workshop on trans people in modern pagan culture was…not great. I heard the phrase “ever since the Burning Times” and had to leave about ten minutes later because it just got wiftier and more poorly researched from there.

Like, listen, I wanna talk about LGBT gods! That’s what drew me to Heathenry, the Norse gods are pretty damn Gay! I wanna talk about cis-centrism in Wicca from trainwrecks like Z. Budapest. I wanna talk about research that clarifies and helps navigate the existing frameworks with modern values and freedoms that allow us to fall out of the standard. I wanna talk about the evolution of liminally-gendered/gender-bending roles in pagan religion, like two-spirits and Volvas. I wanna talk about the cultural context of gender nonconformity and gender dysphoria that effected those religions. I’ll even settle for talking about Raven Kaldera, because even though I’m not a fan (no, anal fisting is NOT a shamanic experience), he’s at least *relevant*.

I’m also…just not down for ~queering~ paganism, especially when it is fluffy, toothless and poorly researched. Faith has been painful. It’s a good pain, the pain after running up a hill or moving house, but it’s painful. If, at this point, all that was available to me was tarot cards and crystals, my life would be hollow. If, when my dysphoria got bad again, I had not lit candles and cried on the floor in front of my altars, knowing Loki was well aware of trying reconcile manhood, inadequacy, rejection and the looming potentiality of childbirth that seems to haunt every single AFAB person ever, my life would be stagnant again…if it had even continued from that point.

The relationship I have with my gender, and with my faith, and with the overlap between the two, is wildly disparate from what I see reflected around me. The reconstructionist influence demands historical research and discernment. The gender issues demand spaces with modern values. It is difficult to find the middle ground as it is. It can, and should, be done better.