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One day I was doing normal house stuff and my Honir ring broke. 

First, some background. As longtime readers of this blog might remember, my actual godspouse wedding rings that I received during my 2 marriage ceremonies exist on the spiritual level, not in the physical realm, but I had 3 rings dedicated to my 3 god-husbands, and 1 of them was the one I accidentally used in my 3rd marriage ceremony which I didn't realize I had done until afterwards.

Hi. My Name is: Loki.

The store-clerk's name tag takes me aback. Seriously?

What's going on here? Is this a joke? Some sort of sly pop-culture reference that I'm not getting?

A nickname? No one would name their son Loki, surely: I mean, what with the Hollywood franchise and all. Right?

Right?

It doesn't help that I find him kind of attractive. Tall, whipcord lean, big beak nose, long hair in a messy bun.

Just my type.

Also, he smiles a lot. I really like guys that smile.

So you're Loki, I think about saying, as I hand him my money. I've read about you in the Elder Edda.

In the recent Loki series on TV, Marvel-Loki says "I can rewrite the story." He's talking about controlling time, alternate timelines and universes, and time travel. Comics fans are now calling him God of Stories, a title he had in the comics. 

Asa-Loki never held that title, but was certainly a driver of stories, being central to the plot of many myths. He makes change happen.

Lodhur is the original third brother in the trinity Odhinn / Honir / Lodhur. This triple god form appears in the Lore in two major places: when the brothers sculpt the world out of the slain giant Ymir, and when the brothers sculpt humans out of driftwood trees. Both of these are major acts of creation described as sculpting life from a dead form. 

When the Lore relates stories about Odin and his brothers going on adventures together, the name of the third brother becomes Loki. It is clear that Lodhur and Loki are the same god. But they are very different aspects of the same god. 

I have a few more religious experiences to relate and I've collected them here because they are each a bit too short to post by themselves.  I've posted so many experiences here on Gnosis Diary, and I keep thinking I'm done surely, but then I have another one! lol. 

In the summer of 2022 I got to do 2 things I'd been wanting to do for a while: 1. have a "book tour stop" where I speak and promote my book, and I did that at Occulture Faire Las Vegas, and 2. go to a science fiction convention just to enjoy it rather than as a panelist, so I could have the kind of fun I used to have when I was younger and hadn't started having all my time scheduled to speak when I went to an sf con. I mainly wanted to enjoy the costuming and the music and filking (that means an sf themed bardic circle) and I got to do that too. 

A quote from Dane Willerslev on humor in Yukaghir hunting rituals has been circulating on the net. It got me thinking about how our Asatru gods might view silly human fan activity related to the Marvel versions of themselves as similar humor.

When the first few Marvel movies featuring Thor, Loki, etc. came out there was a big debate about them within Asatru communities. One of the subjects of that debate was whether the Marvel versions were full fledged new versions of the gods, created by and for our modern culture, in the same way that Odhinn differs from Woden while still being essentially the same god. People were examining the depiction of the gods in the movies but largely ignoring the massive presence and activity of the fans, which I thought was a mistake. It's the humans watching that make a play either a form of sacred theater or just a play, even if it's the same play.

The essential action related to the first Thor movie was not the movie itself, it was millions of children raising toy Thor's hammers and yelling "Hail Thor!" When that first movie came out in theaters, Thor blessed my local area with a lot of rain. There was similarly an unusually large amount of rain every time a new movie with Thor in it came out. Clearly he approves of more people hailing him, even if they don't really know much about the real him.

So, when a new Marvel show was about to come out, although not in theaters and not with Thor in it, I wondered what would happen. Would there be more rain?

Rain is precious where I live, in the Mojave Desert south of Las Vegas, Nevada. 2020 was an exceptionally dry year even for the Vegas valley. For the past several years I've been growing wheat which I turn into Northern Lights Goddesses Brew. I plant in December and harvest in June, usually. It's usually a really reliable crop, easy to grow, but this year I had a total crop failure. It was just too dry. I was hoping for a good wet monsoon season this summer, and not just for my garden. The water that comes out of the tap in my house comes from Lake Mead, which depends on the Colorado River, but city storm runoff refills it too. Lake Mead was way down. Lake Mead also provides a lot of the power in this area, via hydroelectric generation from Hoover Dam. Water in the lake literally keeps the lights on in Las Vegas.

So, there has been a lot of precious rain every time America honored Thor with a movie. How would he respond this time? Fan activity online has strongly associated Lokigator with Throg, the frog version of Thor. Frogs are associated with water and rain. At this point the main character of the Loki series is very connected to the Thor character in the minds of fans, as anyone watching online fan activity could tell. (Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD.) When the episode featuring many variants of Loki from different timelines appeared, fans responded with art and stories depicting the childhood and early history of each of the variants, mostly featuring Thor, although some featured Odin and Frigga.

A big fan favorite with the art and stories and jokes was Lokigator. I too found Lokigator delightful. I like Lokigator because he is just so random. Loki meets all the Lokis, some are younger, some older, one is a woman, one is an alligator. It's like a little piece of actual chaos. Very Loki.

I participated in the Lokigator fan activity by inventing a dance motion I call the Lokigator Chomp. I posted a short video of it on my social media (Facebook, Twitter, and MeWe.) Immediately after I recorded the video, within seconds of turning off the camera, it started to rain.

So of course I raised a toast. "Hail Thor! Thank you for the beautiful rain."

Image: Lokigator fan art I made to illustrate this blog post