“When my mind was cleansed of impurities,

Like a mirror of its dust and dirt,

I recognized the Self in me:

When I saw Him dwelling in me,

I realized that He was the Everything

And I was nothing.”

 --Lalla Ded

Lokifest is an online conference. It runs over the course of a week. I hosted the Bardic Circle. 

On Monday the opening ritual was really nice and I think that of all the opening rituals for a pagan or heathen gathering I've attended, this one was the closest to my personal practice.

I was a little distracted by a technical glitch during the singing and drumming part-- the computer fuzzed out the drum and muted it, resulting in seeing the drumstick hitting the drum and not hearing anything while I could hear the singing fine. But that only distracted me for a couple of seconds and then I managed to ignore it. The first day of the conference had a lot of technical glitches, including during my presentation, and also when I tried to join the after-hours socializing on discord. But we all laughed it off. Just a bit of chaos floating around. 

I listened to a great presentation on Lodhur. Lodhur is one of the three creator gods in heathen mythology, Odhinn / Honir / Lodhur, who are sometimes called Odhinn / Vili / Ve. Many people consider Lodhur to be Loki. I also consider them to be the same god but in a different enough aspect that I honor Lodhur and Loki with separate toasts during my morning coffee toasting. 

“Safe shielded in His arms, no storm my soul can fear;

Complete abandonment my only law shall be.

To sleep upon His Heart, with His blest Face so near,-

Oh, this is heaven for me!”

 -- St. Therese of Lisieux

I hosted the Bardic Circle, a participation event for poets and songwriters to present their poetry to the group. It's not a magical circle. It's a circle because if it were in person we'd be gathered around a bonfire. We'd all be in a circle so everyone could warm up by the fire. In my intro to the event, I encouraged the participants to imagine they were all gathered around a bonfire. And they could imagine we were all passing around a beverage too. This was the last scheduled event of the opening day and took place at night.

I had several technical difficulties, and at one point had my eyes really close to my phone screen trying to see a control and of course the phone screen was showing me my own video stream lol. I got a giggle fit and started laughing, "It's my eyeballs! It's my eyeballs!"  Silly laughter is all part of the fun at Lokifest.  

Fortunately I had a co-host who was able to do the technical part of the hosting duties that I was unable to do, including seeing who was doing the "hand raise" function. I had been unable to sign in both on my phone and my desktop, which I had done just fine when I tested the feature earlir in the day, so I couldn't see whose turn it was. But it all worked out fine because my co-host took over that part of the hosting. 

"I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity    
Came down and settled over me."

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay 

Bhakti poetry is a tradition in which the a poet writes to their god as lover. This tradition is alive and well and was on full display at the Bardic Circle. There were many excellent poems and a couple of songs. The final poem was a prayer to Loki, which was awesome and full of meaning. It was an excellent conclusion to the Bardic Circle, and as my co-host said, also an excellent way to end Lokifest for the day. 

"Lord, you are my lover,
My longing,
My flowing stream,
My sun,
And I am your reflection."

-- Mechthild of Magdeburg  

 I listened to a lot of great presentations over the week, including ones on gender, asexuality, and technomagic. I appreciate that the presenter on technomagic made it clear that genAI is not a self aware being, and also how much power and water resources genAI uses. 

When I listened to the presentation on fighting white supremacy, I was surprised that it was about converting supremacists, not about keeping them out. I had had the fighting white supremacy presentation on my personal schedule as "punching Nazis." 

I popped into the discord a couple of times but only posted a cat pic. The caption was repeated by the Loki Repeater, which did not repeat every single thing posted so I don't know why it repeated that one. 

Lokifest was great and I hope other conferences go online as well. Those couple of years when everything was online was a blossoming of access and connection. It's great that some like Lokifest are still available, but I'd really like to see more. 

This organization also does the magazine Loki's Torch, so I hope to see some of the poets who shared in the Bardic Circle sharing their work in the magazine as well.