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[devouredbyflame]

Welcome to my Blog!

I am Owl Lokadis. I am a 29-year-old mystic and devotional polytheist who has been in this work for quite a few years and has had some interesting experiences under my belt. I am particularly inclined to post about my theories and religious knowledge that I have gathered over the amount of time that I have been in this religion as well as the amount of time I have been invested in Loki.

I do not work under any specific tradition besides the one I am attempting to bring to life.

I am Loki’s priestess and wife. I don’t actually equate my marriage to Him as similar to most people I have met much less had any sort of idea what marriage to a God actually entailed. I have been His priestess for 6 going on 7 years to date. I have been married to Him for almost exactly a year though I believed I was married to Him for 5 years prior to that per my original statement about not knowing what being a godspouse entailed.

The work I do here is entirely for and around Loki. There are some things I cannot share and some I am explicitly told when I can share them and what to say. It is my experience that Loki is explicitly invested in bringing humans toward the Divine by whatever means necessary and so, what I write about here is exactly that: we have strayed very far from what the original intention of spirituality was and our Westernized perception has inhibited our unique relationship to the Divine.

We have become deeply ingrained and suffocated by the Western culture’s need to accept that the Gods are too far from humans to ever be considered as friends, partners, and lifelong companions. This is a new invention brought about by Christian ideas - and Western Christian ideas at that.

I have been working to assist bring about change in this way so a lot of the things you see here will likely be about my experiences, knowledge, working theories, and accounts of the Divine so that I can assist in bringing more people closer to the Gods, as well.

I am working on a book at the moment. The working title is “Drawing Near the Divine” which will be a guidebook about what it means to be in union with the Gods. I will hopefully be finished my first transcript by the end of this month and will be searching for beta readers as well.

You can find more information about the work I do as well as full length versions of some of my posts on my website where I separate out my resources by topic.

[devouredbyflame]

Being so afraid of being wrong that you can’t move is actually the worst thing you could do for your practice.

You aren’t imposing on anyone.

You aren’t insulting the Gods. Arguably, you don’t actually know what would be considered insulting unless you’ve actually asked Them.

You’re not going to be beaten up and told you are the worst devotee ever.

You aren’t going to be told by any Deity you are morally imbalanced or impure.

The only thing the Gods are actually concerned with is the ability to get you to listen to Them which means peeling away layers and layers of trauma, biases, and patterns that take you away from Them. They would not forcibly remove you from Their attentions just because you wanted to try something new or do something that no one else is doing.

The ultimate goal of any Divine relationship for either side should always be to draw nearer to Them, not be pushed away because your discernment is inaccurate while you are learning.

[devouredbyflame]

The thing with modern polytheists these days is that we are so hellbent on recreating something that has no weight on the world today, has no meaning to today’s society, that we forget what we’re actually here for which is seeking a connection that is greater than ourselves. If we could drop that, we might actually get somewhere.

In fact, most pagan resources go off of societal frameworks that don’t work because of how heavily influenced they are by Western ideas of what constitutes a connection with a Deity. We think we know what we’re looking at when it’s really just more versions of Christianity.

Why do you think Christians have such a hard time listening for the voice of their Deity? They’ve twisted the very foundation of religion so far outside of where it should be heading to suit their own desires, feelings, moral values, and philosophies that they lost sight of the influence of whatever Divine being was indicating their direction in the first place. So instead, you get power imbalances, politics, indoctrination, and extremism that has no place in what people are attempting to do which is meet with the Divine. And all of us are capable of having a connection to the Divine. All of us.

If Jesus came here tomorrow, they would be so far out of reach of him to even recognize him. The same is true for the Deities pagans worship.

The only way to progress past this point is to involve the Divine into your practice. Allow Them to teach you Their ways and expectations. Allow yourself to fail and figure it out. If the Gods want to make Themselves available to you, They will. There is no amount of feelings of inadequacy or inability that would deter Their effectiveness in reaching humans.

We just have to allow Them Their own space to make it happen. And we haven’t.

If Deities came to speak with humans face-to-face, most modern polytheists would be wrong.

If called down, Deities would actually be capable of making our lives easier when it comes to working with Them and listening for Their voices. The reason why it’s so hard for people to listen for the Gods is because people don’t necessarily know how important it is to develop their own personal relationship with the Divine.

We are so, so worried about being wrong and we look to other people to tell us which way we go. But there are very few experienced practitioners, even fewer effective teachers (if any at this point) and it is the blind leading the blind.

In all of my years of working with Loki, every single time I had a problem with discernment, it was always due to other people telling me I’m wrong or that their opinion was more important than my intuition. And I believed them because they seemed more knowledgeable. My beliefs I held strongly to in the beginning of my devotion to Him were always bent down by other people thinking they know more than me even though years later, they turned out to be truer than the thoughts I had after I was in a community.

You can call it beginner’s luck, but after years of seeking community, His voice became quieter and quieter. It was when I left pagan groups that I became explicitly aware of what He actually wanted from me. Confirmations started happening, the energy became denser, and things just magically started to work out that never did before and I could hear His voice speak to me in ways I didn’t think were possible prior to this reawakening.

I’m not saying we should be without community, but community resources need to be rewritten to accommodate the fact that us in the West know very little about working with the Gods. We used to. But we have no context for it anymore within society.

We can try to reconstruct a dead culture because you feel like yours is lacking but unless you’re actually receiving direct correspondence with the Divine, you will likely be unlucky in finding Their truest nature.

[devouredbyflame]

If Deities came to speak with humans face-to-face, most modern polytheists would be wrong.

If called down, Deities would actually be capable of making our lives easier when it comes to working with Them and listening for Their voices. The reason why it’s so hard for people to listen for the Gods is because people don’t necessarily know how important it is to develop their own personal relationship with the Divine.

We are so, so worried about being wrong and we look to other people to tell us which way we go. But there are very few experienced practitioners, even fewer effective teachers (if any at this point) and it is the blind leading the blind.

In all of my years of working with Loki, every single time I had a problem with discernment, it was always due to other people telling me I’m wrong or that their opinion was more important than my intuition. And I believed them because they seemed more knowledgeable. My beliefs I held strongly to in the beginning of my devotion to Him were always bent down by other people thinking they know more than me even though years later, they turned out to be truer than the thoughts I had after I was in a community.

You can call it beginner’s luck, but after years of seeking community, His voice became quieter and quieter. It was when I left pagan groups that I became explicitly aware of what He actually wanted from me. Confirmations started happening, the energy became denser, and things just magically started to work out that never did before and I could hear His voice speak to me in ways I didn’t think were possible prior to this reawakening.

I’m not saying we should be without community, but community resources need to be rewritten to accommodate the fact that us in the West know very little about working with the Gods. We used to. But we have no context for it anymore within society.

We can try to reconstruct a dead culture because you feel like yours is lacking but unless you’re actually receiving direct correspondence with the Divine, you will likely be unlucky in finding Their truest nature.

[devouredbyflame]

Loki’s Faces

I get that this is mostly considered “UPG” however, I didn’t really create all of this inside of my own head so it’s not personal. It is observed behavior from Loki during my years of time working closely with Him and in relation to others.

I don’t think any resource ever has done Him any justice and I think it’s the best practice to just not assume anything people write about Him here or otherwise is factual or evidence of His character.

Loki is controversial - but only because you cannot place Him under one single signifier. He is accessible but not because He is interested in being everyone’s friend - in fact, I’ve never really known Him to tolerate just anyone and He actively doesn’t.

The standards He has for those - humans as well as Gods - who He allows to see His true face are high.

Those who are just around for show tend to not see the entirety of who He is and instead see what He isn’t. He wears different masks for different reasons and not because He is them - they are apart of Him, but they do not define Him.

Most people will likely never see the fullest extent of Loki if only because they can’t or don’t want to. So much mixed information goes around in His community because people don’t often see who He is beneath all of the grandiosity and playfulness.

Otherwise, He is extremely private and keeps to Himself most of the time. You’ll find He doesn’t share information about Him to just anyone. He also doesn’t go out of His way to show just Himself to people, either.

It’s intentional that not everyone gets to see His truest form or nature. It would be like showing everyone your hand in poker. When all of the cards are thrown, you have the power to be defeated. Loki uses His secrecy to His advantage and tends to only show people what they want to see because it’s easier than giving them the benefit to having any sort of power over His moves in the game.

The point of this is to say most people don’t really know Loki. When I say “most” I’m not talking about only a select group of people do know Him, I mean mostly, people don’t know that He isn’t obvious about His most truthful intentions, personality, and otherwise unless He chooses to be.

I’ve been led down false paths by Him that lead to dead ends for years. I’ve been told false things that I really only told myself were true that He let me believe because it suited what He wanted from me.

I stayed in groups I thought were good for me because I thought that’s what He wanted for me. I stayed with people because I thought He wanted me to stay with them because He wanted me to power through difficult things.

In reality, Loki is an extremely discerning and opinionated Deity and would sooner have told me what He really wanted for me had it not also developed who I am as an individual and given me the power of discerning Him from my own false narrative and belief about Him. He has let me fail and believe false things about Him and others so I can get to the truth of the nature of my relationship with Him and also the truth of the people around me.

Loki is a trickster. Not because He lies or tells people false things, or because He’s full of jokes and games or leads them into chaos but He let’s them believe things that are false to show otherwise. He shows people some of who He is if it suits the way He intends on it going. He doesn’t show anyone the cards in His hand unless He knows it’ll be kept secret and hidden or if it suits His intention.

The best thing you can possibly do with Loki is to allow Him to show you Himself. Allow yourself to be part of the game and allow yourself to be shown the truth. You’re going to fail in front of Him and it will probably be miserable, but that’s part of the strategy. You’re also going to be proven wrong many times.

He will let you go in circles until He can convince you what He wants you to do. He will let you believe things about Him or others even when it hurts your feelings. He won’t try to convince you unless you’re willing to listen and give it the benefit of the doubt.

If things haven’t changed for you, if you keep having the same issue again and again, it’s probably because there’s more to it than whatever you think He is trying to say.

People who don’t like Loki or get uncomfortable by Him only tend to do so because they don’t like what they see in themselves because of Him. They don’t actually know who He is. And they likely won’t.

Trust is a reward for the failure. Trust in Him and trust in yourself because it is not handed to you willingly. If you can’t listen to your inner guidance, you’ll never really know the truth anyway and you’ll never fully listen, either. The reward is always greater than the cost in the end. Loki is generous to those who wander and those who are willing to get lost along the way.

[devouredbyflame]

Loki’s Faces

I get that this is mostly considered “UPG” however, I didn’t really create all of this inside of my own head so it’s not personal. It is observed behavior from Loki during my years of time working closely with Him and in relation to others.

I don’t think any resource ever has done Him any justice and I think it’s the best practice to just not assume anything people write about Him here or otherwise is factual or evidence of His character.

Loki is controversial - but only because you cannot place Him under one single signifier. He is accessible but not because He is interested in being everyone’s friend - in fact, I’ve never really known Him to tolerate just anyone and He actively doesn’t.

The standards He has for those - humans as well as Gods - who He allows to see His true face are high.

Those who are just around for show tend to not see the entirety of who He is and instead see what He isn’t. He wears different masks for different reasons and not because He is them - they are apart of Him, but they do not define Him.

Most people will likely never see the fullest extent of Loki if only because they can’t or don’t want to. So much mixed information goes around in His community because people don’t often see who He is beneath all of the grandiosity and playfulness.

Otherwise, He is extremely private and keeps to Himself most of the time. You’ll find He doesn’t share information about Him to just anyone. He also doesn’t go out of His way to show just Himself to people, either.

It’s intentional that not everyone gets to see His truest form or nature. It would be like showing everyone your hand in poker. When all of the cards are thrown, you have the power to be defeated. Loki uses His secrecy to His advantage and tends to only show people what they want to see because it’s easier than giving them the benefit to having any sort of power over His moves in the game.

The point of this is to say most people don’t really know Loki. When I say “most” I’m not talking about only a select group of people do know Him, I mean mostly, people don’t know that He isn’t obvious about His most truthful intentions, personality, and otherwise unless He chooses to be.

I’ve been led down false paths by Him that lead to dead ends for years. I’ve been told false things that I really only told myself were true that He let me believe because it suited what He wanted from me.

I stayed in groups I thought were good for me because I thought that’s what He wanted for me. I stayed with people because I thought He wanted me to stay with them because He wanted me to power through difficult things.

In reality, Loki is an extremely discerning and opinionated Deity and would sooner have told me what He really wanted for me had it not also developed who I am as an individual and given me the power of discerning Him from my own false narrative and belief about Him. He has let me fail and believe false things about Him and others so I can get to the truth of the nature of my relationship with Him and also the truth of the people around me.

Loki is a trickster. Not because He lies or tells people false things, or because He’s full of jokes and games or leads them into chaos but He let’s them believe things that are false to show otherwise. He shows people some of who He is if it suits the way He intends on it going. He doesn’t show anyone the cards in His hand unless He knows it’ll be kept secret and hidden or if it suits His intention.

The best thing you can possibly do with Loki is to allow Him to show you Himself. Allow yourself to be part of the game and allow yourself to be shown the truth. You’re going to fail in front of Him and it will probably be miserable, but that’s part of the strategy. You’re also going to be proven wrong many times.

He will let you go in circles until He can convince you what He wants you to do. He will let you believe things about Him or others even when it hurts your feelings. He won’t try to convince you unless you’re willing to listen and give it the benefit of the doubt.

If things haven’t changed for you, if you keep having the same issue again and again, it’s probably because there’s more to it than whatever you think He is trying to say.

People who don’t like Loki or get uncomfortable by Him only tend to do so because they don’t like what they see in themselves because of Him. They don’t actually know who He is. And they likely won’t.

Trust is a reward for the failure. Trust in Him and trust in yourself because it is not handed to you willingly. If you can’t listen to your inner guidance, you’ll never really know the truth anyway and you’ll never fully listen, either. The reward is always greater than the cost in the end. Loki is generous to those who wander and those who are willing to get lost along the way.

[devouredbyflame]

The Gods are Not Their Stories

Storytelling is a great part of how the Gods come to life today. But They are not unique nor beholden to Their stories. The stories that were told were because of the Gods who came before Their stories. The humans back then knew the Gods enough to speak of Them with as much familiarity as one would a friend, lover, or companion.

Today, we are only just scratching the surface of who the Gods are today and there’s so much more to know should we believe that the Gods are capable of telling Their own stories should They choose to. We can keep retracing our steps back towards the original source but we will only find more confusion unless we ask the Gods Themselves Their own opinion about what They are doing and how They need to express Themselves better.

Talking to humans is just the start of this and “UPG” then becomes more important than just personal experience if this is how we get to know who They are in more depth and gravity than any of our stories combined have to say.

However, we have to get past the point of holding onto tales that don’t mean anything to us anymore. We don’t know who They were back then to Their people because most of Their followers didn’t need to write it down in storybooks because the Gods didn’t need stories to get the humans to know Them. Their people knew Them as well as they knew each other and would make stories out of their direct correspondences and experiences that would happen as normally as a festival or feast.

It’s not worth trying to recover what is lost as it is gone. We cannot rewrite history and rewrite the stories already told, but what we can do is ask the Gods to help us build together the kinds of relationships we had with Their followers back when They worked with humans and get Them to tell us Their stories and what we need to know. Otherwise, we will only keep going in circles ourselves until we figure out what really needs to happen.

Our stories only hold a speck of what is the case with Them and were retold by Christians whose ancestors who kept the Gods were dead and long gone.

If you like my posts and others like it, check out my blog.

I am taking a hiatus from writing as I am currently working on a book and making some serious headway on it. You can find more information on my blog as well about where it’s going.

[devouredbyflame]

Deepening Relationships with the Divine

I see a lot of posts on Tumblr about how to go about having casual relationships, or showing your devotion subtly but never have I seen ways in which those who wish to move on from that realm of being would actually start having a dedicated practice. People don’t need to be subtle to worship the Gods - in fact, most practices aren’t blatant and don’t need to be blatant. It is understandable and often necessary to be in a closet but you can still have a very deep relationship with the Gods while it still being meaningful.

Here’s a list of things you can do to strengthen your devotion with the Gods as well as build and deepen your relationship.

Build a shrine dedicated to an individual Deity and take time to know Them by using it.

The idea that you need to have multiple Deities all the time and worship all of Them together is a very strange way of doing polytheism and it is a more powerful usage of space to have one singular Deity at a time rather than a mix together. People may feel less of a need to be so bent out of shape if they can’t afford offerings for an entire pantheon of Gods if they only have one household Deity and the rest are specific to other tasks or needs. I’m not saying you need to pick one above the rest, but I am saying that when you work with the Gods, it’s not about quantity of your relationships, it’s about quality and how long you actually spend together in a similar fashion.

Design your shrine to be simple.

You don’t need a bunch of things on your shrine and in fact, that won’t make it any more detectable to the Gods or show how dedicated you are as a polytheist. It is not about how much work you put into the shrine to make it more about the Gods you worship but it’s more along the line of what needs to happen when you go to the shrine, what actions you take while you’re there.

Hypothetically, all you need is a candle to light to show that you wish for a Deity’s presence, but to make it more usable and detectable to a Deity, it is recommended you also have an image, statue, or likeness of the Deity. You can also have a bowl or a glass to fill for your offerings. Do not make huge offerings if you are going to forget to empty them out. Only make the offerings that won’t rot should that be the case, and only do that if you know you’re going to throw it out, eat it, or dispose of it shortly after.

Make a plan to go to your shrine at least once a day if not several times a week.

The more time you spend at the shrine, the easier it will be for the Deity to realize your intent of showing interest. It isn’t because you’re more devoted, are special, or show any signs that you’re worth looking into, but rather, the concept is mostly around how much energy is built up gradually over time. Energy is only built up because of the amount of time you spend there and how much meaning is there. It is not some moral issue you should feel guilty about should it not happen.

The fact is, the Gods aren’t waiting around and checking off boxes above your head so when you fail They mark it against you for the rest of your time with Them. They are, however, flawed in the way that They only can go about recognizing the material world based off of the flow of energy and how much is stored that is unique to Them.

Having a journal at your shrine to write to Them in while a candle is lit is a perfect way of building a relationship. The act of writing is a perfect way to build energy.

Keeping a specific divination tool at the shrine for that single Deity to use and to build Their energy around is also extremely important. It has to be unique to Them while also being used and stored at the site where you are making the most attempts at being at your shrine.

It is important to keep the shrine contained in a way that makes sure that other energies cannot get in. So even if you are closeted or must keep it on the low, go to the craft store and get a photo storage box. You only need a few items in there to make it meaningful. Over time, the use of those items will become more and more sacred. You can take them in and out of the box - it doesn’t matter how it’s stored but as long as it is contained and out of reach of animals and other things that can be hazardous to them and also maintain the cleanliness of the shrine. If not a box, a closet, cabinet, or bookshelf that is high up are all good places to keep it.

If you’re going to keep the shrine out in an open space, make sure the environment around the area is kept free from dust, dirt, animal hair, organized and vacuumed around it. Dirt that is built up makes it harder for the Gods to reach you energetically - cleaning the room it is in is going to be required if you have it outside of a container. If you’re low on spoons or live in a place that is impossible, a box is perfect. As long as the items are kept tidy energetically, no harm would be done if you’re not super hellbent on keeping a very energetically and physically pristine home.

Most people don’t have the space to have a dedicated area that is solely meant to remain clean for the Gods it is dedicated to. If that’s you, don’t worry about having it out at all.

I realize I’ve spoken a lot about using a shrine in this post and that is really a very important thing when trying to build a better relationship with a Deity. It isn’t about who you are or what you’re doing, it’s about recognizing the importance of what the Deity needs to get to where you are first before going about creating a relationship. That’s all that matters for those starting out on the path looking for ways of transmuting their effort into a meaningful way instead of basing it off of appearances and looks.

Gods don’t have eyes and do not see the way humans can. It is necessary that you build up energy as that is what They are and how humans and Deities can interact. Your devotional actions will likely be unseen unless you do them based on the idea that it is repeated, somewhere dedicated to that Deity, or building up a framework of a practice to continue daily.

Not because it’s a moral issue, not because you should feel obligated, but because the Divine are not omnipotent beings who know everything going on and can see everything. Otherwise, you’re not going to get very far in your devotional activities or rituals.

The usage of a dedicated space over time will make communicating with the Gods easier. Consider a shrine like a window in this world for the Gods to look into. The more you use it, the easier it will be for Them to have access to you and the easier it will be for you to hear Them. Yes, discernment is important and having a sensitivity is a great start, but it’s not the only thing that matters in communicating with your Gods.

If you are having issues listening for and hearing the Gods, the problem likely is not just you, it’s that They cannot reach you. The Gods are the most obvious beings on this realm. They are enormous. They take up a lot of space and energy. Those who have experienced Them know that it is not subtle and the more you make it easier for Them to access you, the easier it will be to have Their energy available in order for Them to talk back in a meaningful way and use what’s available in your life to communicate.

Their presence is about as subtle as an elephant sitting in your bedroom. It really isn’t that hard to detect Them once you get the hang of having Them in your specific area in this way. You’ll also know you’re not hallucinating because there is no other experience quite like it. You really won’t know what hit you.

That’s all for now. For more tips on building a shrine or finding more material on this topic, check out my blog.

[devouredbyflame]

I don’t usually reblog things but I had to for this one because the first question is something I’ve been thinking about as well when it comes to my work with the Gods.

It is my understanding that the myths were never truly the hard and fast truth and were never really meant to be the only format to tell the stories of the Gods. The Gods Themselves were consulted and once They stopped being consulted, humans took the stories and twisted them to meet their own narrative.

The Gods were known by humans because They were around them enough to know the cause and effect They had on the world around them. How They were around is not something we practice these days as often as the humans before Christianity because Christians taught that the answers about their God came from a book and that other humans had the answer about the book, not the God Himself.

This created a new normal in religion where it was demonic and pagan to consult the Divine Themselves in their religion because it was not beholden to the power dynamic they wanted to build around the religion where humans that were directly connected to God was more powerful. I mean, Protestants did try to take it into their own hands by saying that they didn’t need a priest to go through to be with their God and they can just do it themselves, but they lost the point when Calvinists became doctrine and fear-based and that just took hold of a lot of major religions in general because fear is an easy sell.

We as pagans tend to not ask the Gods a lot of things and only relate to Their myths because all we know from our religious background and affiliations is that texts know the answers sooner than the Gods Themselves who we are in contact with.

However, I am kind of in the process of writing about how we can go about doing this. It is a new understanding I’ve arrived on lately about why we don’t ask the Gods who They are and why we only go through other humans for answers. We don’t have a solid culture around bringing the Gods to us because we’re scared of being wrong and we’re scared that we’d be told we would pay for our sins, and if we aren’t scared of the Gods, we’re scared of other people taking advantage of us. However, I believe if we did start asking the Gods again to tell Their story, so many things would start to change about who They are in relationship to humans and why we don’t need to operate from a place of fear and shame.

Also, per your second question which I may as well answer here, the Deities in my experience have acknowledged other pantheons. They do normally even work together because They are not based in a single culture anymore unless you are working with a pantheon that has been an unbroken tradition like some African Diasporic religions, Hinduism and Shinto. But even then, the Gods do seem to know about other Deities and relate to Them because the cultures don’t exist in a vacuum anymore and technology gives humans the means to go about sharing ideas a lot easier than they did back then. The Gods likely always knew about each other, because why wouldn’t They? But in this day and age, the people who call out to Them can have Gods across pantheons because it doesn’t matter where they come from anymore.

This is probably more than you ever wanted to know, and I’m sorry for going on a long tangent but hopefully that gives you some sort of understanding.

I’ll also note that I’m not coming from any certain documented tradition and most of my understanding comes from my experiences as a whole and arrive at conclusions based on already existing evidence of the Gods’ natures and inclinations. When it comes to the pantheons that are most popular among neo-pagans I don’t adhere to any sort of doctrine based out of the texts we have because whatever practices we belong to don’t really have any meaning anymore and it would be in our best interest to ask the Gods more about what They want as a whole.

Can someone who does deity work answer me some questions? I tried doing deity work before but failed (well it was a long story) and there are just a few questions I've been DYING to ask.

1.Why don't the deities themselves answer controversial questions of their own mythology and explains how certain things happened?

2.Do deities from different religions acknowledge each others presence or maybe even know them? If so what do certain deities feel about others?

If someone can answer these questions I would REALLY appreciate it they have been on my mind forever😭

[devouredbyflame]

Divine Manifestation Through Storytelling

I want to start by saying this isn’t an argument that the Gods are only stories, but quite the opposite. I am wanting to relay the fact that we have been framing the Gods as only stories rather than unique beings with Their own influence on this world that we can get to know better without dogma or suppression upon our ideas through modern setbacks. 

The Gods work through people and create inspiration. This isn’t a new idea, but it is one that I feel that we are going about all wrong. We have been distanced from the Gods for quite a while in the way that a lot of the ways in which They are being represented are false and not true to who They are. If we are wanting to further this praxis, we will have to go about it differently and this is my proposal as to how that is accomplished. 

Read the rest of this post here:

[devouredbyflame]

Basics of Deity Communication - Part 2

How do I know whether my message is received? How do I know it’s Them responding?

No one can really know for sure whether or not you’re speaking to the Deity you think you are. There are certain ways, however, to know whether it is possible you are speaking to the right one or not but it takes an immense amount of trial and error. This is why experimentation is somewhat the most important way to get through this sort of discernment. It’s important to be open to being wrong no matter how hard it is and how many other people think it’s right while also holding onto the fact that you might also have been right while other people have told you otherwise. 

However, if a message has been received and it is appropriate to respond to, the Gods tend to respond in Their own time. Most answers to questions I’ve ever asked Loki have gotten back to me and most of the time He has guided me to the answer in some way or shape. Often, finding resources, listening to songs on shuffle, things popping into my mind at random are all the ways in which He has responded to my questions before I got close to Him in the way that hearing Him is not much of a problem anymore.

Read the rest of this post here:

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Basics of Deity Communication Part 1

This is my introduction to different forms of Deity communication. In this post, I am merely glossing over briefly the different kinds and levels of Divine communication you can have and what you can do to start opening up a conversation with your Deity of choice. 

Please bear in mind that I am not sticking to any specific tradition, this is merely from years of experience and trial and error. I also do not adhere to most historically based evidence though you will more than likely find that there is attestation of how this was conducted in other ways. 

Who can do this?

It does not require a special sort of person to communicate with the Divine. In fact, all people, beings, plants, animals, and so on have a connection to the Divine at differing points in their psyche. Humans are the most evolved species when it comes to this sort of thing, but every animal that has a brain can know whether or not they are being communicated with by different sources, especially the Divine. 

That being said, no person is incapable of opening a direct line of correspondence with a Deity and no person is exempt from bearing witness to the Divine in their life. The Divine is not omnipresent, but rather, each and every human carries a piece of the Divine within themselves. This is because our nature as humans aligns with the Divine in a very succinct way. No human will ever be without this piece of themselves and no human will ever fall short of having this piece within them. 

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Basics of Physical Manifestation

It is a little known fact that a Deity can actually become a tangible, noticeable thing within your presence. This has been a practice for several millennia and is still something that can be done within your home, as well as around your physical body and within your physical body.

The many different ways of manifesting the Divine is a practice that has been lost within the neo-pagan community and the occult tends to make it a thing that is a bit more in line with target practice – shooting an arrow and seeing if it lands anywhere and it may not be something you’re really wanting to do unless you anger someone you shouldn’t. However, it’s very real and it can become something of a joyful thing when you do it right.

A lot of people feel discouraged when they don’t seem to figure out how they can make sense of the Divine like others seem to. It seems like it’s impossible to communicate effectively for others and while it may be impossible given the situation you’re in, this is something that all humans are capable of doing and something that is important for those who wish to have a sort of relationship with the Divine which has this added benefit of two-way communication.

We often forget that there are both sides to this entire experience and the Divine need the same sort of environmental differences as humans do to make Themselves more obvious to Their devotees. It’s important that we stop entertaining the notion that only special people get to do this, and realize that it’s not about being chosen as much as it is the capability of recognizing patterns and information that is not obvious right away.

You can read the rest of this post and posts like it here:

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Why Loki Isn’t an April Fool

It’s April 1st once more and as is tradition, many people see April Fools’ Day as Loki’s holiday because of His trickster aspect and the fact that He is full of surprises and jokes. When I first became His devotee, I thought of it as Loki’s day off because people were already making a mess of themselves enough in this world for the day that He wouldn’t really need to be around. I also thought He was significantly less present on the day we thought would be His holiday and I thought maybe He just needed a vacation.

However, the longer I sat with the thought of Loki being a “fool” and being full of jokes, the more I realized that this is not really an apt description for Him.

People see the word “trickster” and equate Him with foolish pranks and jest. They diminish Him to a fool to make it easier for them to feel like they can control the narrative around who Loki is. It’s not just people who don’t want Loki around – though that’s usually who mostly does this – but it’s also followers of His that I often see floating around. People are afraid of what they don’t know and I think that’s why April Fools just seems to be so incredibly reductive.

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On Mediumship, Channeling and Possession

It is not a common topic for this to be discussed but I’ve touched on it very briefly in previous posts and so I want to speak about what this even looks like and how it happens with the Gods.

There seems to be a lot of fear around having the Gods approach you and maybe it’s not from the Gods Themselves rather than the humans who prey on those who are seeking to find answers and cannot come to their own understanding themselves. There is a way to do this in an ethical way and it is also possible to do so from an empowered standpoint. So in this short series I’m going to talk about why this work is important, what we can get from this work, how we can do so ethically, how we can get to the point that we can do this ethically, and then speak about logistics.

So, why should the Gods speak through a human if the human is perfectly capable of hearing the Gods talk themselves?

This is something I struggled with answering myself in the first days of when I did this kind of work. Why would I need a direct message from my God if I can hear Him in general?

People are afraid of being wrong. Because they are so afraid of it, they get in this mindset of being okay with having to go through leaps and bounds and struggle to find their own meaning in their own way. This is good, of course, critical thinking is absolutely the most important quality in all of this. We must consider all angles when doing this stuff. However, there gets to a point in your own discerning that hearing things can become a problem.

It becomes a problem when you stop actually hearing the Gods and you develop a mindset where you guess their answer based on conversations you’ve had with other people who suggest things to you who are likely unfamiliar with how a Deity actually behaves. It gets to a point where the nuance becomes bartered for in the case of being wrong so you have evidence in other people that it’s actually true. Instead of talking to a being with feelings and opinions, it can dissolve into your own sort of thinking and opinions and manifest as an egregore due to the resounding nature of the echo chamber you’re in.

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On Divine Mysteries and the Art of Keeping Your Mouth Shut

One thing I learned the hard way is that the path that I’ve taken this far is not only a lonely one but it is a far-reaching one that spans over the course of millennia. That being said, it’s humbling and important knowing that I’ve been given the opportunity to know things that others may not have the chance at knowing and these things are to be shared explicitly by the Divine and not be humans.

The ethical considerations of this are also important. I believe the Gods talk to humans and not only are they capable of giving similar answers about Themselves to Their followers, but They also come down and educate Their people on who They are, as well. These things are mysteries that are given to us as a privilege and an opportunity to create rather than destroy the very fabric of our knowing by making it a TikTok or blog post.

It’s a thin line as far as I’m concerned. We live in an age where sharing the details of our lives is a common occurrence. We want to find those who know us and those who recognize each other through the internet. There’s days where I want to tell people all that I’ve learned and all that I’ve found the past couple of months and years. Unfortunately, though, that is not my place and I don’t think it’s any human’s place, either, to share the mysteries of the Gods. That’s how Christians started to destroy their religion and where a lot of people tend to get it wrong.

When humans take Divinity into their own hands, problems start to be created in regards to ethics. Talking to the Gods is something everyone should learn how to do in a proper manner, but not everyone is capable of keeping their experiences to themselves because they have trouble validating it on their own. People assert that they know the Gods because the people on Tiktok and Tumblr have a checklist for each category of Deities and the standards they need to make in order to be classified as Divinity and Divine interactions. The problem here is, we’ve completely removed the autonomy of the Gods by doing this and destroyed the trust that They have in humans by exposing Their own secrets.

You can read the rest of this post here:

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Problems like climate change, where solving them requires millions of people to collectively work at hundreds of different solutions at once, are black holes for internal peacefulness because they give you a type of frustration where you alternately become bitter towards yourself or everyone around you. "If only I could work harder to fix the problem!" makes you exhausted, so you must become angry at others: "If only they cared about the problem!"

People who are already working on fixing climate change need to convince more people to work on it. And a popular thing is to share writings that describe how doomed we all are if climate change is not fixed, how terrible everything will be because of climate change, and how quickly all the treasures of our world are being lost.

There is a particular understanding of human behavior that is being accepted here without thinking about it hard enough. Popular news media shows headlines with terrible prophecies, written that way in hopes of getting the attention of otherwise disinterested people, who will then be "motivated" to fix climate change.

The trouble is that fear is no good for motivating thoughtful, patient, steady commitment to solving a problem. Fear is made to cause an organism to avoid things that might harm it. It creates a brief and explosive pulse of action where the organism's energy pours out as it instinctively, thoughtlessly reacts to escape the danger as fast as possible.

It's silly to blame people for avoiding thinking about climate change. The point of an organism responding to stressors is to avoid them. Oftentimes, the only tool people are presented with is personal choices about what products to buy, which inevitably is horribly frustrating and stressful, since a person will frequently be coerced by their situation into buying a certain product, and even if they don't they see others doing it all the time.

Relentless exposure to imminent threats that cannot be escaped causes Trauma, which severely impacts a person's ability to be resilient to stressors.

I think there is definitely a type of trauma associated with being constantly aware of the destruction of the environment and feeling helpless to do anything about it, especially since we as humans have a deep need for contact with other living things and aspects of the natural world, such as trees, water, flowers, and animals—a need that is often totally denied and treated as merely a Want or a hobby meant only for certain people who enjoy particular activities, like Hiking or Gardening.

We need to expand our minds on how this disconnection can hurt a human being. Imagine if a child's need to be loved by their caregivers, a person's need to be loved by their friends and family, was treated as a desire for indulgence or luxury, or a certain use of free time!

Yes, yes, one person has a condition that makes it hard to walk up hills, another doesn't like the bright sunshine, another is allergic to the grass or fungal components of the outdoor world, but WE ARE PART OF THE FAMILY OF ALL LIFE ON EARTH and WE EXIST IN SYMBIOSIS WITH THE ENVIRONMENT WHICH TAKES CARE OF US. Who showed you what beauty was, who taught you to feel peace and relief inside you in the form of a caressing breeze and rustle of leaves, who gave you awe and wonder at seeing the stars or the mountains? Where does every delicious food come from but the soil teeming with creatures? Isn't the most perfectly sweet berry grown from a plant, nurtured by the soil and pollinated by the bugs? Don't you feel delight at seeing a springy carpet of moss, a little mushroom, or a tiny bird? Think of all that the trees give us. Whose breath do you breathe? Whose body frames your home?

The writings of Indigenous writers such as the book by Mary Siisip Genuisz I am reading right now show me that the other life forms are our family. They take care of us and provide for us, and they would miss us if our species disappeared. Isn't that a powerful, healing fact? I think everybody is so enthusiastic about the book Braiding Sweetgrass because it is a worldview that those of us coming from the dominant colonizer culture are straight up ravenous, starving to death for.

Maybe, I think to myself, humans can experience a kind of trauma from being deprived a relationship with their Earth, just as they would experience trauma from being deprived relationships with other humans.

I really believe that it hurts us to be surrounded by concrete instead of soil, to see a majestic tree cut down on a whim without any justice possible, to see wild animals mostly in the form of mangled corpses on the roadside, to have poison sprayed everywhere to kill the insects that life depends on, to hear traffic and lawn mowers and weed whackers instead of birds and flowing water.

We KNOW that this is physically bad for our health, the stifling, polluted, and stressful environments of a civilization that doesn't know the ways of the plants, but I think it's a kind of moral injury too, right? To see a beautiful field turned into a housing development of ugly, big, expensive houses—no thought given to the butterflies and sparrows and quail of the field? To see a big old tree cut down, a pond full of frogs obliterated and turned into a drainage ditch beside a gas station? They aren't just things, they are lives, and while expansion and profit and progress are "necessary," a nice old field of wildflowers or a pond full of frogs are a different kind of necessary. I remember feeling this as a child without words for it—the sheer cruelty of a world that is totally without reverence for the other creatures.

"They own the property, they can cut down the tree" "They bought the land, they can do what they want with it" <but it can also be wrong, and many people know this on some level, even though our culture doesn't provide us with the framework.

Fear could never give people the motivation to fix climate change. Constant fear of what will happen in the future forces a person to protect themselves from the relentless stress by shutting it out entirely or developing apathy.

A fear based argument for fixing climate change either causes a worldview of nature with no bond of kinship at all, based on the physical and practical dependence on Nature as a "resource," or forces people to experience their kinship with Nature only through grief.

Fear tells us that we want to live—it does not tell us WHY to live. If a person tries to live on fear alone, they will eventually find the desire to live burdensome and painful in itself. I see this emerging on a society wide scale in the USA, feeding on influences from the Christian evangelicalism that sees the Earth as something already sullied and worthless, to be thrown away like a dirty tissue, and on the looming monolith of nuclear winter that gave our parents recurring nightmares as children.

If you go to r/collapse on Reddit (don't do that) you will see a whole community of people who cope with the threat of climate change by fantasizing about it, imagining it as a collective punishment for all humanity and a cathartic release from the present painful situation.

We cannot learn to live without seeing the reason for living. We cannot save the Earth without loving it. We cannot heal nature without caring for it. In order to collectively take action against climate change, we must be moved by something other than fear—and that something is love. Not just love of the outdoors as an activity, but love of the Earth as something that loves us.

The dominant Western culture cannot borrow Indigenous land stewardship techniques as though they are just one climate resilience strategy, without being also willing to change its dreadfully impoverished way of viewing human relationships with Nature.

What right have we to think, "Huh, maybe those guys were on to something with the multi-level polyculture systems and controlled burns" while still thinking humans are nothing but a disease on the Earth, and that Earth would be happy to be rid of us? The sustainable ways of using the land practiced traditionally by cultures who have lived in relationship with their ecosystems for many generations work because humans can exist in mutualistic symbiosis with the life forms around them. We care for them. They care for us.

I know for a fact that plants seek relationships with us, and I was taught by them to see how interconnected everything really is, and how I was made to be a caretaker of my ecosystem. I was, a few years ago, just as I describe above. Too scared and pessimistic about the future of nature to bother loving it, and because of this, I could not realize my niche in the ecosystem. It felt for many years like I could do nothing—i believed in climate change, but I felt hopeless, so I put it out of my mind. But when I began to cultivate a love and reverence for the sad, scraggly, beaten-down fragments of Nature around me, everything changed. So much became possible.

I am still learning and exploring, trying to open my mind to ideas totally different than the ones I knew growing up, paying close attention to every plant and learning its ways. And it stuns me to think—some people write about climate change without this process.

The author of the book "The Uninhabitable Earth" (a scary book about how doomed the Earth is because of climate change) says in the beginning of the book that he is not very much of a nature lover. You fool, love is our most powerful evolutionary adaptation!