Entry tags:

cake or wank, food, religion, taking shit too seriously, whipping cream is hard!

A Loki wank
NOTE: This should go without saying, but it doesn't, so: this is not intended to disparage anyone's spiritual practice. My own is so eccentric that I am hardly in any position to denigrate anyone else's! This is about the wanky squabble amongst certain Heathens who took it upon themselves to offer unsolicited advice to other Heathens about the One True Way [TM] to worship the Norse god Loki.

So on September 4th, a Lokean - a Pagan who reveres the Norse god Loki, not a Tom Hiddleston groupie - called w00lopt posted a photo of a dessert to zir tumblr with the caption:

Afternoon offering to Loki. Sponge cake, fresh strawberries and whipped cream.

necroticdoom, who has unsurprisingly deleted or renamed zir tumblr since this, replied:

um……what? Strawberry shortcake as an offering? to Loki??? WHAT? needless to say that is absolutely ridiculous in a myriad of ways. *bangs head*

Response was swift.

Tegidsystem:

Not everybody is a reconstructionist, and even for those who are, the lore doesn’t actually give much in the way of prescriptive offerings. Sorry, but I fail to see the problem here, beyond a disrespectful attitude and uninvited commentary towards somebody else’s belief system. -Isto

necroticdoom explained that stuff from the grocery store is UNWOOOOOOORTHY of Loki:

in what way shape or form, is a dessert a fit offering? Once you have the worldview down, then you can offer things of substance. Something you picked up at the supermarket? perhaps not- MAYBE if it was part of a feast, or grown locally, but pretty sure that shortbread and whipped cream came straight from the grocery store. What value does that hold? What sacrifice is that? Monetary? Highly unlikely. It is not disrespectful, its an objective view from someone within the heathen community- if someone posts something on tumblr, a public forum, then it is open to public discretion and comment. And AS a heathen, it would be within heathen worldview to value such perspectives, it helps people grow. This isnt about being recon or not, its about honoring and worshiping in a worthy manner. WORTH, the old word from which WORSHIP comes from. Please explain the worth in strawberry shortcake from the supermarket and its relation to Loki.

cunningsilverlinguist explained that if you're on a tight budget or if you have health conditions that prevent you from eating something you bought in order to sacrifice it to your god, that counts as a sacrifice. Then cunningsilverlinguist reiterates that it's not necroticdoom's place to judge.

w00lopt replied with admirable restraint:

I totally respect your right to voice your opinions and I hope you feel better now that you have done so. But, did it ever occur to you that you know nothing of my financial situation, what it took for me to put this together? The sacrifices that when into this?

You see it as something that is not worthy of Loki - that’s your opinion. What matters to me is what Loki thinks of the efforts that I make, and as far as I can tell, it was well received. It may not be made from scratch with home-grown fruit, but I gave the best I had to offer, I believe that the intent and the thought put into the offering matters more about where the ingredients came from.

I hope you feel better now that you’ve had your rant and opportunity to attack my beliefs and ways of practicing without knowing anything about me or my situation at all.

A brief debate over how Lokeans can tell from the photo if the dessert is homemade (and therefore, perhaps, a fit sacrifice to Loki, unlike that crummy storebought stuff) ensues.

lokisquarrel asks:

Wait… so offerings can’t be something we bought at the store? Does that include the ingredients? Do I have to grind my own flour or churn my own butter? Does every offering of mead/whiskey/etc have to be brewed by the one giving it for it to be valid? And what about other items. Does every candle or incense burned have to be hand dipped and formed by the ritualist? Every essential oil distilled by hand, every altar cloth woven from personally harvested fibers, every ritual blade hand forged, every drinking horn taken from a personally raised bull?

Spiritswhispering makes a comment which ze later changed on zir own tumblr, but because of how tumblr comments work the original version is preserved in other threads:

My thoughts… just because I KNOW you all want to know what I think, is that if you’re sacrificing something it’s the intent of the worshipper.

That being said, however, what the hell does strawberry shortcake have to do with Loki? Is he a fan of strawberries or desserts in lore? Does he specifically like fruits and spongy cake? Generally you want to keep it to their most favorite things.

Cream colored ponies come to mind much quicker than crisp apple strudel… just saying.

Actually, IMO apple strudel makes more mythological sense than strawberry shortcake; strawberries aren't indigenous to Europe and the Norse wouldn't have known them. Unless Leif Erickson brought a few back.

EDIT: Did a bit more research - this actually took a lot of digging - and learned that a similar berry is indigenous to Europe, though the strawberry we all know and love today is from the Americas and was only brought to Europe in the 17th century or thereabouts. /EDIT

A couple of people explain that everybody knows that Loki, like all trickster gods, loves sweets. eupheme-butterfly confirms this: "Hermes seems to get a kick out of Werther’s Originals and Butterscotch Life Savers. I maintain that it’s because they look like coins."

ulf-machado assures us that it's the intent of the worshiper that really matters in sacrifice, and then gives us a list of things Loki is especially fond of: pepper, pepper candies with chocolate dip [?], whiskey, cognac, kidneys, "And this sponge cake is perfect to Him. it’s notorious He loved this dessert."

rootandrock confides:

This one time? Himself wanted animal crackers. Witchfather, lord of beasts and the sabbat, wanted Animal Crackers. BAD. It wasn’t “Please get me some the next time you’re buying treats” it was “GO INTO TOWN AND BUY ME THE LARGEST BAG OF ANIMAL CRACKERS THEY HAVE.”
“But, Witchfather… Animal Crackers?” I asked, incredulous.
“DO YOU HAVE ANY CONCEPT OF HOW DELICIOUS THEY ARE?” He answered.
“Well, I mean… I suppose…”
“AND SANDWITCH FUCKING BUTTER BETWEEN THEM.”

…. good point, My Half-Beast-Lord… good point indeed.

achangingalter brings Pop-Tarts into it, which will please any fans of the Thor movie.

wyrdwolf informs us that "Loki says he really only likes the whipped cream. TruePG, bros." Well, I guess that settles that.

I don't know spiritscraft, but I suspect she is joking:

I am a goddess, and I very much appreciate strawberry shortcake offerings. Particularly from Burgerville. But none of this angel food cake, I demand and accept only shortcake biscuits with my strawberry shortcake. Loki’s tastes are clearly less refined, but what can you say? He likes what he likes.

rebootthememe says that her Loki likes Gala apples and white cheddar cheese but will not accept orange cheese. Well, yeah, even trickster gods have standards.

the-call-of-fenrir decrees:

Also, completely seconding what the others have said-no one has any right to decide offerings aren’t appropriate when the GOD HIMSELF said He would like that very thing.

Since I am not a Lokean, I will take the-call-of-fenrir's word for it that Loki has announced that he likes sweets.

salfarro follows up the discussion of Loki's sweet tooth by chiming in:

Actually what I’d like to add here is I hate people appropriating well established deities and giving them cute, cuddly, friendly, whatever attributes they never have. Reading these internet mythologies is like the worst self insertion wish fulfilment fanfic. Gag me. Just make up your own gods. Its not like a natural evolution of a belief system, its just fluff carnage.

gwenbasil calms everything down by invoking sexism:

You know what IS a traditional from-written-text-lore offering to Loki?

THE CRUST ON TOP OF OATMEAL WHEN THE OATMEAL BURNS.
A USELESS PIECE OF THREAD WITH A KNOT IN IT.

So you can just shut right the hell up with your play-viking saber rattling there. I smell someone disdaining a choice and a practice because it is associated with women and domesticity.

She later follows this up:

...Loki in the Christian era (as his traditions survive in folklore and superstition) is a very intimate, domestic figure. He is associated with the home and the hearth, and small everyday troubles (burnt food, knotted thread) are his clamor for attention.

THIS SEEMS TO ME to be basically identical to how modern polytheists who revere Loki experience him. Right in your face, knotting your headphones cord in your bag. It is one of those situations where people tear something down because it is feminine (and therefore Unserious) while ignoring the fact that Loki’s canonical, historical traditions are in fact feminine and unserious - a rhyme invoking Loki threatens him with a stabbing in the ass from his mother’s sewing needle.

The Loki of mythology is in fact himself feminine and unserious, and that knotted thread, froofy cakes, and accidentally burnt oatmeal are, with the proper mindset, perfectly acceptable and in fact excellent offerings.

(It smelled like another round of Girl Things Are Dumb to me, is what. And Girl Worship Is Dumb is an assertion I feel like I was put on the earth to challenge :P)

Arbitrarychicken tells us that many people attest to Loki's fondness for strawberries (if this does not work its way into Avengers fanfiction I will be very disappointed) and now knows what to do with useless pieces of string.

(I think I'm going to start sacrificing useless pieces of string to Loki too. Because of Reasons.)

A few people point out that what Loki does or does not want is something we mortals can only guess at anyway:

wickedtartan:

For real? I give him what I am eating. Cause he likes it when we share with him Who the fuck are you to tell someone what He wants? Are you Loki? No. So shut your mouth hole.

cleanlinens:

MY RELATIONSHIP WITH A DEITY CONSTRUCT THAT MAY OR MAY NOT EVEN REALLY EXIST IS MORE VALID THAN YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH A DEITY CONSTRUCT THAT MAY OR MAY NOT EVEN REALLY EXIST.

thegreenwolf:

Folks. Reality check. You’re arguing over whether a being we can’t even prove exists beyond our own subjective beliefs* would be pissed that someone got him a sugary treat from a grocery store. This is what I left Catholicism for?

*Don’t ask me how to empirically determine the existence of Loki. It probably involves uses of slide rules we mere mortals never considered.

cunningsilverlinguist sums it up sensibly:

That wasn’t really the issue that’s bugging everybody, unless I’m misapprehending the situation.

Here’s how I read it:

w00lopt posts pretty dessert offering. necroticdoom barges in and bawls out w00lopt, saying that w00lopt’s offering is inadequate and ridiculous. Everybody else in the Lokean tag bawls out necroticdoom for making such a blatantly disrespectful statement about somebody else’s beliefs and practice, points out how adhering to the lore also gets ridiculous results (oatmeal crust & knotted thread), and generally has a laugh about how common the UPG is that Loki likes sweets.

Only one person was actually arguing that Loki would be pissed off by it, and the problem everybody else had wasn’t whether or not Loki would be pissed, it was simply the fact that necroticdoom’s statements were so patently rude and out of place in their rudeness.

Naturally, mockery of the wankers followed. nicky ranted:

Is anyone else extraordinarily tired of hearing about the suitability of cake as an offering? Also, is anyone else embarrassed that a bunch of Pagans actually argued over cake?

Various people in the comments disagreed, saying that they had had a good laugh over the whole thing. arbitrarychicken rejoined us to say,

1) My gif folder now has a number of gifs that aren’t variations on rage, snark, or despair and 2) Cake is SRS BSNS.

I’ll never be tired of the fact that a lot of us (mostly previously never have conversed before) Lokeans actually got together as a community and had some fun. And cake was just an added bonus.

ulf-machado and cunningsilverlinguist created a satire of the Guy Fawkes song to commemorate the event. cunningsilverlinguist also wrote a spoof of Eddie Izzard's "Cake or death?" routine.

Besides, One does not simply sacrifice cake to Loki.

thebluemundane makes the most apt observation of the entire thread:

Loki sits back and watches the resulting arguments. And perhaps laughs.

TROLLOLOLOLOLOKI.

haemaholic agrees:

He’s probably chilling, laughing at everyone, and enjoying his fucking cake.

No doubt.

And meanwhile, w00lopt is apparently, I am happy to say, undeterred by the unsolicited criticism of zir observance and is back to posting pics of Sherlock and Avengers characters.


Source.

ETA: Since I posted this report, some of the tumblrs cited have been deleted or renamed. For those still interested, I've reblogged every relevant post I could still find on my own tumblr with the tag "cake".


(My macro.)