My dedication is the day after tomorrow., and there are still preparations to be made. The ritual, the altar, and the offerings are not all ready. I suppose it won't be a completely formal pre-written ceremony, since Loki does not seem to mind things done at the moment, and would rather hear words from one's heart during something so important than words from a pre-written script. He has taught me that making things up as you go along is healthy in some occasions, so even if I have an outline, I rather do as I feel I should at the moment of the dedication.
Fortunately, this tuesday is a holiday where I live, which gives me the whole day off. I find that very important for days where I do more elaborate ritual, as I suppose deity dedications can be classified. After that I will have the heart to call myself Lokean, or Rökkatruar. Until this day I have only told people 'pagan' or rarely 'Northern Tradition Pagan' with little explanations. I do work with Aesir Gods, but not as much as with the Rökkr, so I suppose those would be the correct titles.
29.4.12
21.4.12
Signs.
Sometimes, if you ask for a sign or confirmation from a deity, you have to really pay attention to things to notice them. Loki, on the other hand, has been throwing some things right in my face so I can't ignore them if I want to. I don't know if that happened to anyone else who honors Him.
The main point of this entry is my official dedication to Him, which is planned to this May 1st. I'm not one of those who has direct communication to Him, or at least not yet, and so I asked for Him to give me some kind of sign that the date was right. Just like that, my dreams started getting clearer and He was there, as well as Hel. And last night, I attempted to talk to my mother about Urnes Snakes - to which she told me it's not only the symbol of Loki, but our family crest. Being that my family is completely christian, I find it funny, even though it's meant just for infinity as the crest.
If that wasn't a sign, it was just a very funny coincidence. Particularly the way she said it.
The main point of this entry is my official dedication to Him, which is planned to this May 1st. I'm not one of those who has direct communication to Him, or at least not yet, and so I asked for Him to give me some kind of sign that the date was right. Just like that, my dreams started getting clearer and He was there, as well as Hel. And last night, I attempted to talk to my mother about Urnes Snakes - to which she told me it's not only the symbol of Loki, but our family crest. Being that my family is completely christian, I find it funny, even though it's meant just for infinity as the crest.
If that wasn't a sign, it was just a very funny coincidence. Particularly the way she said it.
19.4.12
About the author.
It's been four years of study, one year of active practice, and a collective rollercoaster ride. This is a small recollection of my path as pagan.
When I was a child, at seven or eight years of age, I had just gone through my intensively christian phase. My mother was taking me to church three to four days a week, we prayed before meals, we prayed after meals, before bed, after waking up, before travelling, during travel, and when we arrived safely - you get the picture. It was about that time that I started questioning things, and by some coincidence we started studying polytheism in school that very year.
I decided the Gods we studied were just as worthy as the christian God of being adored, so why did he and his followers call them 'false' and 'evil'? Reading about them, they were not that. They just weren't christian-fashioned, if that would be the term. I didn't understand why people had abandoned them and everyone was either christian, or muslim, or jewish - not that there's anything wrong with those faiths.
One or two years later, along came the internet. I studied more. I didn't fall face-first into the pagan community and it was love at first sight or anything like that. I found out not every person on the planet was necessarily Abrahamic - some native people still maintained their faiths! Oh, and there were atheists, and something called agnostic that I didn't understand well until I read more about it.
Through all of this, I was still lost. I wasn't an atheist, but I couldn't exactly tell people I'm a polytheist if very few people in the world would even take me seriously. To me, those people still didn't exist, or if they did they surpressed it and hid behind a christian or atheist label to be more accepted. But surely there had to be something.
Fast-forward to me at twelve years of age, where I met a very nice girl who had recently started her studies in Wicca. She taught me about her God and Goddess, and about magic, and that was my first step into researching. At first I thought Wicca itself would be right, but that wasn't so. Then came the eclectic pagans, the pagans-of-a-specific-pantheon, the Dianics and the reconstructionists, the Christopagans, and all the others.
From there on I was mostly a Hellenic-based pagan, though that also wasn't quite right. But since I had started studying polytheism, the greeks were my main focus, and I wasn't sure how I would take the change. And what would I change to?
So I stayed like that, until last year. Around the end of the year, I started finding more information on the Norse Gods, and all through summer we had thunderstorms every thursday. That's just to say signs started popping up everywhere, not that thunderstorms were my one and only push into the new path. It was close to the new year when I made my decision, mainly because I had been working with a rather possessive Goddess and She didn't have any trouble in letting me go. My tug-war had been between my fear of change and the Gods that called to me.
Months of intensive research and adapting to change, and here I am, ready to start writing about this.
When I was a child, at seven or eight years of age, I had just gone through my intensively christian phase. My mother was taking me to church three to four days a week, we prayed before meals, we prayed after meals, before bed, after waking up, before travelling, during travel, and when we arrived safely - you get the picture. It was about that time that I started questioning things, and by some coincidence we started studying polytheism in school that very year.
I decided the Gods we studied were just as worthy as the christian God of being adored, so why did he and his followers call them 'false' and 'evil'? Reading about them, they were not that. They just weren't christian-fashioned, if that would be the term. I didn't understand why people had abandoned them and everyone was either christian, or muslim, or jewish - not that there's anything wrong with those faiths.
One or two years later, along came the internet. I studied more. I didn't fall face-first into the pagan community and it was love at first sight or anything like that. I found out not every person on the planet was necessarily Abrahamic - some native people still maintained their faiths! Oh, and there were atheists, and something called agnostic that I didn't understand well until I read more about it.
Through all of this, I was still lost. I wasn't an atheist, but I couldn't exactly tell people I'm a polytheist if very few people in the world would even take me seriously. To me, those people still didn't exist, or if they did they surpressed it and hid behind a christian or atheist label to be more accepted. But surely there had to be something.
Fast-forward to me at twelve years of age, where I met a very nice girl who had recently started her studies in Wicca. She taught me about her God and Goddess, and about magic, and that was my first step into researching. At first I thought Wicca itself would be right, but that wasn't so. Then came the eclectic pagans, the pagans-of-a-specific-pantheon, the Dianics and the reconstructionists, the Christopagans, and all the others.
From there on I was mostly a Hellenic-based pagan, though that also wasn't quite right. But since I had started studying polytheism, the greeks were my main focus, and I wasn't sure how I would take the change. And what would I change to?
So I stayed like that, until last year. Around the end of the year, I started finding more information on the Norse Gods, and all through summer we had thunderstorms every thursday. That's just to say signs started popping up everywhere, not that thunderstorms were my one and only push into the new path. It was close to the new year when I made my decision, mainly because I had been working with a rather possessive Goddess and She didn't have any trouble in letting me go. My tug-war had been between my fear of change and the Gods that called to me.
Months of intensive research and adapting to change, and here I am, ready to start writing about this.
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