PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com

A Tale of Thor?

The roads were slick that night. When my friend's car spun out and landed in the ditch, he knew he was in trouble.

The blizzard was getting worse. He was miles from anywhere. (This was B.C.: Before Cell.) The temperature was dropping fast, and the snow was piling up.

Help! thought my friend.

He hears the sound of an engine. Out of the swirling snow, a big red truck drives up, spins around, and stops.

The door opens. A big, red guy with a big, red beard gets out of the big, red truck. He doesn't say anything.

My friend didn't recognize him. This was strange. When you live in the country, you mostly know people.

The big, red guy still doesn't say anything. He chains the vehicles together, and gets back in his truck. He pulls my friend's car out of the snow-filled ditch.

He gets back out, unhooks the chain, and throws it in the back of the truck. Then he drives off into the snow.

He hasn't said a word the entire time.

When my friend gets home, he pours out an entire bottle of liquor in libation.

We've come a long way. There's more to do, but let's take a moment and look back at how well we've already done. We should be encouraged, because things we thought would be hard or impossible turned out to be doable and we did them. That means we can do other things. I'm not even talking about magic but of course if you want to do magic to save the Earth, of course do that too! It's almost like we're all superheroes, yes? Saving the world and all. Here's how I started thinking about this recently. 

Recently there has been quite a bit of rain at my house. We had an unusually wet winter and spring this year and it looks like we might have a wet summer too, which is very welcome here in the desert. Several different times in the same week, rain fell from what looked like a sunny sky, or from a cloud that looked wispy and not like a raincloud. I photographed the rain edge phenomenon and posted it on my social media. As usual, every time it rained, I lifted a toast to Thor, mostly with coffee. One time when it was raining, after I made my toast, I asked Thor if there was anything I should be doing. He said he wanted me to convey his message to humanity again, and I said I would relay his message again, and so, here it is once more: save the Earth, his mother, and especially avoid the GMO wheat and corn, for the sake of his wife Sif. 

You can't flip someone off when you're wearing mittens.

Welcome to Minnesota.

Go ahead, laugh at my unfashionable hand-gear: see if I care. When the temperature gets down below zero, no gloves will ever keep your hands as warm as a good, well-knit pair of mittens.

Think of them as symbols of community. In mittens, the fingers keep each other warm.

“Hey, if they're good enough for Thor, they're good enough for me.”

This has been my quip this Winter ever since I finally caved and started leaving my fingered gloves at home. Everyone around here gets the allusion, though it's not, strictly speaking, mythologically correct.

You know the story. Thor and some friends are heading for Etinhame one night when, looking for a place to camp, they discover an oddly-shaped cave with a wide mouth and one strange little room off to the side.

Turns out, it's a giant's cast-off mitten.

Consider the implications: up here, even the frost-giants wear mittens.

Hand-shoes, the ancestors called them 1500 years ago, back in the old Hwiccan hunting-runs. In Beowulf, one of the men torn apart by the troll Grendel is named—for reasons we can only guess at—Hand-shoe.

Not even mittens can ward off every scathe.

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to have flippers instead of hands, come to Minnesota and find out.

The voice to text fail inviting me to the new Thor movie called it Girls Sore. Before seeing the movie today, as I was having my morning coffee, which is my usual time to raise coffee toasts and listen internally for anything the gods might want to say, I was thinking about this movie. I was hoping it would be good of course, but also thinking about what I knew of the plot which from trailers and social media sounded is a little silly. I was also thinking about how much it has rained this summer, much needed and welcome rain just like when the other Thor movies came out in the theaters. When I raised a coffee toast to Thor I could hear him in my mind. (This is Gnosis Diary so yes, there is personal gnosis! )  It doesn't matter if it's silly. What matters is people are thinking about him. Some people might decide to learn more and find the real Thor. It's better if people come to Thor having to unlearn a few things than never come to him at all. 

SPOILER WARNING

One might think a grocery store parking lot an unlikely place for religious gnosis. Truly, one does not need to adventure into the mists of a primeval forest or climb to the peak of a mountain to experience the gods, for they are all around us all the time. Though I enjoy a nice hike, of course, the gods are there wherever I go. 

It was the day after the summer solstice. I had not done any big ritual on the solstice with my kindred. I had gotten up to try to view the Parade of Planets before dawn, which proved to be less than perfect viewing despite the clear night, since I live not quite 6 miles from the brightest place on Earth (the Las Vegas Strip.) That afternoon at tea my housemate and I clinked teacups as if they were drink glasses and toasted the beginning of summer, so we did have a ritual, even if it was brief and simple. 

There's a lively discussion going on across social media about the design of the new Thor character in the game God of War Ragnarok. Heathens and polytheists are making generally approving posts since the art follows descriptions in the Lore pretty closely. There are also a lot of negative comments from those who apparently expected a depiction close to the Marvel Chris Hemsworth Thor.

The Lore is what Asatruers and other Heathens call the body of literature we've collectively decided constitutes our religious cannon. Much of it is Norse Mythology and Icelandic Sagas and Eddas because that is what was written down, even though many American heathens are actually more Germanic than Scandinavian. In the Lore, Thor is described as having a red beard and carrying a war hammer with a short haft. One of his adventures in the Lore was a drinking contest in which he drank down the ocean so much he created the tides. This character looks like he could perform that notable feat.

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