Dear Lokean friends,

You know I love you and you deserve all the space you need in the Heathen community.

But listen

Not everything is about Loki.

What I mean is, sometimes when Heathens are discussing other deities sometimes it’s not a good time to chime in about Loki. Sometimes people want to talk about other deities (like say, the goddesses, especially the ones who don’t get a lot of attention).

This doesn’t mean that you’re never allowed to talk about Loki or that I think my more henotheistic/monolatrous Lokeans are wrong, but I would appreciate a bit more, how do I put this? A bit more awareness.

This is related but I would also appreciate it if I could talk about other deities without you turning it into a funny line about Loki. For instance, one time I said “this statue of Freyja is pretty” and someone said “Loki is pretty”. Listen friends, there is a time and a place for random Loki related humor, and sometimes these quips....aren’t appreciated?

This is just a note about the term “folkish”.

I mean, is anyone going to mistake a Sowilo rune with a cute sun face and maybe a phrase beneath it like “The sun shines on everyone.” for a white nationalist symbol?

Hey just a heads up for Heathens and Norse polytheist types but Pagan Studio Yarinka is being pretty open about being white supremacist scum.

Some Heathens: No homo, no blacks, women can join but only if they’re ~sexy shieldmaidens~

I eventually unfriended him because he wouldn’t condemn folkishness.

“I know people who are folkish,” he’d say. “They’re good people!”

This is just one example of how “soft” racism is acceptable in Heathenry. Some Heathens focus on how “folkish Heathens and universalist Heathens are both wrong!” and conveniently ignore how one is just racism in the guise of “celebrating our heritage”.

Some Heathens who are vocally against neonazis still make racist “jokes” about black men, or talk about how they don’t want “weird” people (read: queer folks, feminists, people who are too “radical” politically) in their “respectable” religion.

Somebody says this every time I post something like this so I’m going to post this in caps for emphasis: THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT PART OF FRINGE GROUPS! THEY ARE THE FACE OF MAINSTREAM HEATHENRY! They’re writing the books and running the community spaces and telling people about what “real Heathenry” is (no seriously they run a website called Real Heathenry) and is not.

People have complained that I talk about this too much but you don’t understand that these issues are so deeply entrenched in our traditions, and it’s not just the people who scream 1488.