Culture

Column: The Lokean Community – What We Really Look Like

By |

Pagan Perspectives

Today’s column is a guest submission by Ky Greene, a Lokean and co-founder of Loki’s Wyrdlings and Loki University. She has been Pagan for 18 years, a practicing Polytheist for 9 years, and she offers free spiritual consultation about developing reciprocal relationships with the gods. The Wild Hunt is always open for submissions for our weekend section. Please send queries or completed submissions to eric@wildhunt.org. When some Heathens think of Loki, they conjure up an image of an evil, Satan-like deity who gave birth to monsters and heralds the coming of Ragnarok, the end of days.

Culture

Column: Freyfaxi

By |

Pagan Perspectives

Today’s offering is by columnist Luke Babb. Luke is a storyteller and eclectic polytheist who primarily works with the Norse and Hellenic pantheons. They live in Chicago with their wife and a small jungle of houseplants, where they are studying magic and community building – sometimes even on purpose. The Wild Hunt always welcomes submissions for its weekend section. Please send queries or complete pieces to eric@wildhunt.org.

Living

Column: Utiseta

By |

Pagan Perspectives

Most places in Iceland pipe their hot water up from springs deep below the ground, the water still smelling strongly of sulfur. It isn’t until almost a week into my trip that I realize sulfur interacts with the metal of my wedding ring. I send my wife a picture. “What a souvenir,” she says. “I don’t think it’ll last.

Paganism

Column: Doing the Gods’ Work – a Conversation with Ben Waggoner

By |

Pagan Perspectives

Back in 2013 and 2014, when I was getting ready to start gathering sources for my masters’ thesis in Old Norse Religion, I realized something: while the vast majority of medieval Norse-Icelandic sagas were readily accessible in Old Icelandic, quite a few of them were hard to get a hold of in translation. Sure, I could have soldiered on, armed with only my trusty Old Icelandic-English dictionary and go through every single saga in the original language, but it would have taken such a long time that, had I done so, I’d probably still be at it today. What I needed were more general editions and translations, with enough notes and index-entries to quickly find relevant information. When it came to the more popular sagas, such as the so-called “family-sagas” (Íslendingasögur), I had little problem finding good versions. In my excessive exhaustiveness, however, I found a severe lack of material related to the more obscure sagas.

Living

Column: Triptych

By |

Pagan Perspectives

[Today’s column comes to us from Luke Babb. Luke Babb is a storyteller and eclectic polytheist who primarily works with the Norse and Hellenic pantheons. They live in Chicago with their wife and a small jungle of houseplants, where they are studying magic and community building – sometimes even on purpose.]

The old man likes to corner me. I worked for a while in high end kitchen retail – the sort of small business that can only exist in big cities, where the wealthy come to buy designer pots and “give back to the community.” One of those stores that really wants customers to access those ancestral memories of the general store they saw on Anne of Green Gables as a kid. Playing into that hometown feel, once a year this store participates in a neighborhood street festival and sells something that is only available on that weekend – apple pies.