By
Skeletal Grace
Dead Rebel Of The Week
~ Loki - God of Rebellion~
Can a God be a Dead Rebel? Sure, why the hell not? If the religious worship of said mythological creature is extinct, then the God himself is in effect dead too, right? No? Well, that’s just too damn bad. As much as it’s breaking my heart that you disagree with me, I will still write about Loki - the most kick ass of all divine beings throughout religious history.
First you have to understand the background and picture the setting…
Norse mythology, or “asatro” as it is called in its beautiful original language, is pretty much a rock’n’roll version of your typical (insert any religion here) Heaven and Hell story. Replace the angels with scruffy looking Vikings and replace the demons with thick headed Giants.
The concept of afterlife, according to Norse mythology, goes something like this: You fight bravely on the battle field. Someone whacks you over the head with a blunt object and you die. A valkyrie (means “Chooser of the Slain” - a chick with wings and a wicked helmet) swoops down from the sky to pick up your body and off you go to Valhalla. What is Valhalla, you ask with shining eyes, eager to learn? Picture a huge crazy ass gentleman’s club for the criminally insane where you drink yourself retarded, eat endless trays of meat, bash your neighbor’s head in with your club, dance a jig on the tables, and fuck valkyries all night long. It’s the party to end all parties. Andy Warhol and David Lee Roth pray at the gates of Valhalla.
Now, if you, due to some sad circumstance, are not a brave warrior in your earth bound life, but instead are, say, a woman - you will never come close to the brutal wonders of Valhalla. Do you know where you go instead when you die, pitifully, in your sleep? That’s right… to a place called “Hel”. Rings a bell? And you thought that was a Christian invention. The Hel in Norse mythology isn’t so bad though; it’s just a bit of a drag and nothing fun ever happens there. Whereas the classic "hell" is the absence of God, this Hel is more the absence of fun. Too bad, so sad.
Asgard is the world in which Valhalla is situated. Asgard is populated by a bunch of Aesir Gods. They are an elite clique of uber-holy Vikings with super powers, kinda like the Justice League of Scandinavia or Biker Week in Heaven, if you like. They can make themselves invisible; they can fly; they’re stronger than a thousand men; and they can out-eat, out-fuck and out-drink anybody. They are at constant war with the Giants of Jotunheim. That’s what they do. A God’s gotta do what a God’s gotta do.
Asgard is, of course, ruled by the father of all Gods, Odin, the God of War, Death and Magic. He’s a grouchy bastard with only one eye. He sacrificed the other eye to gain the wisdom of all and everything. He’s got two ravens, Hugin and Munin, perched on his shoulders, whispering the tidings of the world in his ears. He’s got an eight legged flying horse, Sleipner, faster than than lightning He has a mighty spear that always hits its target, no matter how far, and he has tons of other shit that would make Batman cream his friggin’ speedos. You don’t fuck with Odin. He’s one bad ass motherfucker of a God.
Odin has three God-like sons. First and foremost is Thor. He’s the God of Thunder and Protector of the World. That is pretty cool, right? Not some damn 12-armed candy-ass Elephant Gandhi God or a lame Virgin Mary. No, the God of fucking Thunder. Thor is also pretty grouchy, perhaps even more so than his dad. He’s got a big ass hammer, Mjolner, that returns to his hand like a Mad Max boomerang after he throws it at his enemies. His job description reads as follows: make thunder, slay pesky giants that roam into God territory, kill giants that look at him funny, and annihilate any giant that should come into his line of sight. In short, he’s got a thing for dead Giants. When he kills giants, his mighty blows crack the skies and generate thunder and lightning. You would be wise not to fuck around with this guy either.
The second son is Balder. He’s the pretty boy in the family. Did you ever see Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast”? Remember the flashy hunter, full of bold arrogance and himself, who wanted to get into Belle’s pants,? That’s Balder. He is the Golden Child, the joy of his parents and the heart throb of all the serving wenches in Valhalla. The most adored of all Aesir Gods. Even Freyja, the Goddess of Love and Sex, wants to fuck the shit out of him. I always figured he was gay though, because he never took her up on it.
Odin’s third son is Tyr, another God of War, whose claim to fame is having his arm bitten off by a doomsday wolf. (Beats getting your finger bitten off by a spaniel by a light-year or two.) Nobody cares about him.
Into this happy nuclear family comes our main man, Loki.
Loki is descended from sinister Giants and not really a God at all in the beginning. As it so happened, he became Odin’s blood-brother and soon enough Loki was a constant guest in Asgard and the life of any crazy party in Valhalla. He is a shrewd shape-shifting being, with a sharp dislike for all things dull and boring. The Gods drew heavily upon his intelligence and his sly cunningness anytime they needed to out-maneuver the filthy giants, and Loki was always happy to comply. Unofficially he became the God of Mischief, Malice and Motherfuckery. Officially he was named the God of Fire. Whatever… He is the one and only God of Rebellion.
Soon after he made himself comfortable among the Gods, he started fucking up their lives. He loved that shit. Wherever there was trouble you would find the shadow of Loki just disappearing around the corner. Whenever times got really screwed up you would hear the faint echo of his cackling laughter in the distance. Since the Gods liked that he helped them out in times of need, they had to put up with his subtle rebellions, chalking them up to his Giant heritage. Plus, he was Odin’s blood brother after all. That is like a get-out-of-jail-free card for life in Asgard.
The thing that should have lit warning lights in the heads of the dimwitted Gods is that whenever Lokie did help the Gods out he still managed to somehow make fools out of them. For instance, when the evil Giant Trym stole Thor’s hammer and would only release it in exchange for Freyja’s hand in marriage, it was Loki who came up with the idea to dress up Thor himself in a bridal dress and take him to the Giants to wed the bastard who had stolen his hammer. Thus, Thor got close enough to steal Mjolner back and kill them all. Picture Grizzly Adams in an ice princess outfit. It all worked out well, but Thor couldn’t show his face in that part of the world ever after. That was just the way Loki worked; even when he was getting the Gods out of tricky situations, nobody ever realized he himself had created those tricky situations to begin with.
A chaos magnet like Loki couldn’t really be expected to spawn any normal happy children. His first wife gave birth to Hel (the Goddess of Death), Jormangand (the Midgard Serpent – a mean fucking snake) and Fenris (a giant wolf). Wouldn’t you just fucking love to be a fly on the wall during their Sunday dinners? These creatures were soon prophesized to be the ultimate doom of the Aesir Gods at the final battle with the Giants, the main event that went under the name “Ragnarok”. Armageddon has nothing on Ragnarok, trust me. Who would you rather see duking it out? A bunch of faggy angels pillow fighting scrawny demons or drunken Viking Gods battling furious giants? Me too. Anyway… The Gods decided to get rid of these horrid creatures, but not before Fenris the Wolf bit off Tyr’s arm as they chained him to a rock. They threw the serpent into the ocean where he grew until he was big enough to wrap himself around the whole world, bound to awaken on the Last Day. Little Miss Hel was cast down into the netherworld, Niflheim, where she was put in charge of all the rest of the dead, the unfortunate ones who never made it to Valhalla. People like you.
Loki got kinda pissed off when he heard about what had happened to his kids. Netherworlds, chains and the bottom of the ocean are not exactly things you want for your children. There went the plans for college he had for all of them out the window. Damn! He decided it was time to bring these God-bastards to their knees. It so happened that at this time Balder, the Golden God of Fags, had been having vivid dreams of his own mortal death. Actual death is no small thing for a God, and something perceived as most unlikely, unless certain conditions were met. Like being killed by a mighty giant or a fellow God. Balder’s mother, Frigg, Odin’s wife, worried so much about her son’s potential death that she made every living and dead thing in the world swear to her that they would never harm her poor son. They all swore; plants, metals, animals, elements and everything else known to the Gods. None of them would harm a hair on Mr. Gay Asgard’s head. Balder was now safe.
The Gods, being a rowdy bunch, tried this out by hurling everything they had at Balder, who took the onslaught like a man, laughing as arrows and swords bounced off him without hurting him, giggling as raging fires left him unscathed. Much celebration ensued and a party was thrown in the honor of Balder’s newly achieved invincibility and immortality. Loki figured there had to be a way to get to this damn kid, so disguised as a woman he approached Balder’s mother, asking her if indeed ALL things on earth had sworn to protect her son? She said that the mistletoe had been too young to make a promise, but what harm could such a measly plant do anyway? Yeah, really now? What harm indeed?
Giddy with excitement, Loki picked a twig of mistletoe and went back to the party. There he found Hoder, the blind-as-a-fucking-bat God, sulking in the corner. “Why are you sulking, Hoder?” Loki asked like honey. Hoder answered that he was so very sad that he couldn’t join in on all the happy reindeer games, shooting shit at Balder with all the other happy little Gods. “I can’t friggin’ see him, man” he wailed. “Don’t worry, old sock,” said Loki, “I will guide your hand! Put this twig on your bow string and aim over there, no… there. Good boy. Now, SHOOT!”
Said and done. Hoder let the mistletoe twig fly, and it pierced happy ole’ Balder’s heart, killing him instantly. Much wailing ensued and Balder’s mother went down to Hel to plead with Loki’s daughter for her son’s release. Hel said that if Frigg could make every living thing in the world shed a tear for Balder, she would release him back to the Gods. Frigg got all excited about this news since that would be easy enough! Everybody LOVED Balder. He was the most adored thing walking. She walked around the world, asking every living thing to cry for her son, and they all did. Everybody but an old gnarly Giantess by the name of Thokk, that is. She just looked at Frigg and said, “What are you, nuts? I cry for no man.” And so Balder had to stay in Hel for all eternity, missed by all. Who was the Giantess Thokk? Loki in disguise, of course. Duh.
Now it was the Gods’ turn to get all riled up. Loki fled and transformed himself into a salmon and took refuge in a river, but the Gods caught up with him and started dragging the river with one of Loki’s own inventions - the fishnet. Soon enough they caught him by his tail as he tried to jump over the net. This is why to this day salmon have a tapered tail. (See, it’s like Religion and Nature class all rolled into one at the Grace Academy of Life and Death and Everything Else. That will be $50, thank you very much.)
No mercy was to be found this time and Loki was bound with another son’s intestines to the bedrock, and then a particularly nasty poisonous snake was placed above him, dripping venom into his eyes every so often. The Gods took their leave of him, knowing that they would still have to face him in the Final Battle, Ragnarok.
Loke’s second wife, Sigyn, stands vigilantly by his side to this day, holding up a bowl to catch the venom as it drips. Every once in a while she has to empty the bowl, and during those seconds the poison drips from the snake into Loke’s eyes and he shakes the rock in pain. Thus we suffer earthquakes.
On the final day, Ragnarok, Loki will break free from his chains and gather up all the giants on a ship made of dead men’s nails, Naglfar, and he will set sail for Asgard together with his vicious offspring – the dysfunctional family of pissed off snakes, beasts and death. I have a feeling he will win too. (I have Giants 10, Gods 0 - with Tyr as the first casualty.)
Rebellion starts at home, against authority and conservative ideas. It doesn’t hurt if you get to have a little fun while doing it either. For making religion fun, and for putting some goddamn rock’n’roll in Armageddon, Loki deserves to be a Dead Rebel of the Week.
