NAME: Loki, said by many to mean allure or
fire, but which comes from the ancient
Indo-European root LUK which meant "to
close," "lock", "lid," "end," to light," &
"lightning."
Or perhaps the Indo-European root LUK
comes from Loki, I don't know, I wasn't there. Other names are Loptur,
Loder, Loke, Lokkju, Lopti, and Loge (Richard Wagner,) as well as others
that translate as sly-one, sky traveler or sky walker (well the Force
WAS strong in him,) and shape changer.
SYMBOLS: 2 s****s parallel to each other, so
that the heads and tails of each are opposite, shedding their skin and
forming what looks like the letter S, which was found carved on large
rune stones in Urnes, A salmon, the number 3.
USUAL IMAGE: Slim male with red hair and, depending on the rock carving
in question, a curly mustache and sometimes with a pointed beard, as
well as scarred lips in some
depections from an incident with some
dwarfs.
AREA OF INFLUENCE / CONTROL: Trickster
God of the Norse, also said by some to be associated with fire, some
dispute this, but with a volcano named after him in Iceland who could
really disagree?
HOLY BOOKS: Loki is mentioned in more
than a dozen Eddas.
HOLY DAYS: Any that were are lost to time, however, recently (February
2008!) there has been suggestions of a "movement" being
started to convince people to call Saturday Lokisday due to the fact
that in English 4 of the days already have names based on Norse deities
with Saturday sticking out being named for the Roman god Saturn, as such
it is seen as appropriate that the end of the week should be named for a
Norse god who's name may have meant "end," and in 2 out of 3 myths was
named as the instigator of Ragnarok. So… lets say every Saturday....
eeerrr I mean Lokisday.
RELATIVES: Farbauti (father,) Laufey or Nal
(mother,) Byleist & Helbindi, (which means "One Who Blinds With Death,"
which is also one of the titles of Odin,) and in some
accounts Odin & Honir (brothers,) Glut (first wife,) Angrboda (second
wife,) Sigyn (third wife,) Esia & Einmyria, (daughters by Glut,)
Sleipnir Odin's 8 legged steed, (child he gave birth to while in the
form of a mare,) Fenrir, the Wolf, Jormungand, the Serpent, & Hel,
goddess of Niflheim, (children with Angrboda,) Narve or Nari & Vali*
(sons with Sigyn) * not to be confused with the other Vali who was the
assassin archer god.
SYNODEITIES: See "Tricksters" in the links
section, and while not all tricksters are alike by any means, it have to
do.
DETAILS: Loki I'm afraid doesn't get any
respect, a complex god who appeared in
dozens of Eddas, and skaldic poems which show him behaving in a vast
variety of ways, some diametrically opposed to other tales of the gods.
Yet he has been reduced in modern times to, as Benet's forth edition of
the Reader's Encyclopedia puts it, "In Scandinavian
mythology, the Satanic Aesir god of strife and evil" whom they go on to
say is noted only for "fathering 3 monsters", "being the foe of the good
gods," and "bringing about Ragnarok."
This however is not because Loki was evil, but because the narratives of
the deeds of the Norse Gods were not written down to become fixed until
the Christian era, and while the sagas were tales of beings capable of
nuance and depth, the fetish those recording them had for an utter black
& white worldview gave us the Loki as pronounced in Benet's
Encyclopedia.
Who then is the "real" Loki?
That is an impossible question to answer, or at least impossible to
answer and make
everyone happy, because during the
millennium or more that these deities were wor****ped from Arctic Circle
to Central
Europe, they changed from land to land,
people to people, and even from tribe to tribe.
Unlike the accepted tale of today of how Loki's treachery brought about
the death of Balder the Sun god, we find other versions where Loki does
not even appear, or where Balder, rather than being the perfect being,
is a thug, or even one where Loki does the deed, but not as an act of
evil but at the request of Odin because he knows that the only way for
Balder to return and create a new world after The End, is for him to be
sent to the only one of the 9 worlds that will not be destroyed during
Ragnarok, Niflheim, so that Loki's killing of Balder and punishment for
the deed is not an act of evil, but an act of self-sacrifice for the
greater good.
But things like that, and others such as him being both the oldest and
the youngest of the Norse Gods, was just not something that your average
medieval monk putting them down in Latin could wrap his tonsured head
around. For that matter nether can most of us and our need for white &
black hats.
The only constant that can be truly said about Loki is that there are no
constants about Loki other than change.
As a Trickster God, he is a line crosser, and a boundary breaker,
capable of doing things that seem good, evil or simply insane, but
always with a purpose.
That most people, then or now, can not
fathom what this purpose might be leads to so many taking the easy route
and just
labeling Loki, as they label so many
Tricksters, evil.
Terry McCombs
For images & Links go to:
http://community-2.webtv.net/TheObsidianMask/Loki/
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