Understanding Loki’s Family

In the Eddic stories, Loki and his family are antagonistic forces who bring the downfall of the gods in an event known as Ragnarök. For this reason, many Heathens aren’t sure what to do with Loki and his family. Should we venerate or admonish them, include or exclude them as part of the pantheon, love them or fear them as divine powers?

This conundrum vanishes the moment we remember the myths aren’t stories about good and evil. The gods and giants of Norse mythology are anthropomorphic representations of natural forces, and their stories are meant to illustrate the ways these forces operate in the world around us.

Of these tales, the arc of events that lead to Ragnarök remain the most important, and so do the figures that play instrumental roles in them—namely, Loki and his family. While the Norse myths teach us about the relationships of natural forces, Ragnarök is specifically meant to teach us about the relationships between the forces of the human mind. It illustrates how those relationships can turn sour, what happens when they do, and why it’s important to prevent this from happening.

This isn’t obvious from reading the myths. Snorri’s Prose Edda is blinded in a way that makes Norse mythology look similar to Christian mythology, and likewise presents the Norse gods in a similar light as Roman gods. It’s my belief that Snorri made a deliberate choice to never state what might have been obvious to his Scandinavian contemporaries: That Loki, his family, the Aesir, and the giants personify phenomena we actively feel and interact with on a moment-to-moment basis, because many of them represent aspects of our own cognition.

We will now dive into the hidden natures of Loki and his family. It’s my hope that by the time you’ve finished reading this article, these figures will not only feel less enigmatic to you, but far more intuitive.

The Adult Mind

Why start with the Allfather when this is an article about Loki and his family? Because Odin is the main catalyst for Ragnarök. He’s ultimately the one who caused everything to happen as it did, and you’ll understand why in a moment.

Focus your attention now on the part of you that reasons, deliberates, and thinks logically. If you’re in a neutral state of mind, this will be easy. These faculties correlate to the forebrain, the area of the brain Odin roughly represents. This “Adult Mind” is the one we normally leads our lives through, but it’s also the mind that’s prone to making judgement-errors, simply because it assumes it always knows what’s best. We see the dynamics of the Adult Mind play out in the figure of Odin. The self-serving way Odin chooses to solve problems are what set him and the Aesir down the path of doom.

The Child Mind

Now, focus your attention on the part of you that chooses dessert before dinner, stays up late when you know you’ll regret it, and buys things “as a treat.” This is the part of you that gets distracted when bored and looks for opportunities to play and have fun.

This is Loki, who personifies the inner child. As the Child Mind, Loki is defined by curiosity, creativity, humor, mischief, pranks, the joy of the senses, and emotional decision-making.

The Child Mind roughly correlates to the midbrain and the structure known as the limbic system. The midbrain doesn’t make decisions based on logic or reasoning, but rather based on one single instinct; to seek “pleasure / reward / gratification” and to avoid “pain / punishment / failure.” Pleasure and pain are the bedmates of the midbrain the same way Sigyn and Angrboda are the bedmates of Loki. Even their names suggest as much—we will address that in a moment.

Now, recall that Loki and Odin are blood-brothers. This blood-bond is a metaphorical representation of the forebrain and midbrain’s relationship: Odin leads while Loki influences in the background. But whether Loki’s influence is constructive or destructive all depends on Odin’s treatment of him and his family. If we give the Inner Child jobs it loves doing and reward it with the things that delight it, it becomes a powerful force for motivation and will. But if we threaten and punish the inner child the way Odin and the Aesir threaten and punish Loki in the myths, then that inner child turns against us, becoming a source of turmoil.

Reward, achievement, gratification; Pleasure

Take a moment to remember a time you felt success. It could be a time you accomplished something you were proud of, a moment when someone was proud of you, or an instance when you or your team won. Heck, it could even just be a time you threw something in the trashcan from a long distance and it made it. This joyous feeling is Loki’s wife, Sigyn. She personifies the intense sense of gratification we feel whenever we successfully “did the thing” or “got the thing.”

The myths don’t tell us much about Sigyn. Her name means “friend of victory,” indicating her true nature, but in the Eddic stories she’s depicted in dire straights: When Odin binds Loki beneath the earth, the Aesir set a snake above Loki so venom drips upon him. Sigyn’s task is to hold a bowl above her bound husband’s head to catch the venom, but Loki writhes in pain whenever she leaves his side to empty it.

This is a metaphor for something cognitive: If we the bind the midbrain (inner child) and leave it to writhe under the pain of our own scorn, then the only “rewards” our midbrain chases after are temporary fixes to soothe its own suffering. It can’t chase after greater or grander experiences. Given how this is the final event that brings about Ragnarök, we can interpret it as the largest warning sign.

Sorrow, grief, anguish, loss; Pain

Remember a time you felt punished. This could have been a literal punishment, such as a time-out, or something that felt punitive, such as being fired, losing a pet, receiving bad news, or being left out. Think about how it felt, and feel that emotion inside you now.

This is Angrboda. Her name means “sorrow,” and she’s a giantess who personifies “pain” on the pain-pleasure spectrum. She is Loki’s other partner, one who accompanies him just as much as Sigyn does.

In the Eddic stories, Angrboda and Loki have three kids together: Hel, Jormungandr, and Fenrir. The myths don’t mention what drives Loki into the arms of sorrow, but it’s enough to give rise to the emotions that their children represent: Depression, anxiety, and rage.

When Odin (our Adult Mind) first encounters these three emotions, he makes the choice to proverbially “burry them under the rug” rather than handle them properly while they were still small: He banishes Hel to the underworld, throws Jormungandr into the sea, and binds Fenrir in the ironwood. These three forces eventually grow to proportions beyond Odin’s control and end up consuming his reality.

Depression

Depression is a hollow emotion; deep, dreary, numbing, and gravely persistent. When you’re dealing with this emotion, the world looks gray, food has no taste, and you experience no sense of warmth. You feel as though you’re half-dead, half-alive.

Though Hel today is regarded as a death deity and psychopomp, the Eddic stories depict her and her hall as a metaphor for depression; she’s a gloomy person with a gloomy abode. Her hall is a place many people go to but not a place where anyone wishes to stay. In the myths, it becomes full of the miserable dead who eventually break free from the underworld and destroy the world of the gods. The same thing happens to us when we try to hide depression behind a mask of happiness: Eventually, it breaks free and consumes us.

Anxiety

I want you to now reach down deep inside of you and draw out the feeling of nervousness. If needed, think about something that makes you anxious or brings you a sense of dread. This feeling is Jormungandr, the World Serpent that gnaws at its own tail.

Like Sigyn, Jormungandr’s role in Norse cosmology isn’t immediately obvious. In the Eddic stories, Odin throws him into the sea, and there Jorm grows to an immense size by feeding on the creatures swimming in the depths. He becomes so huge that he encircles the world and bites the end of his own tail (which is something snakes only do when they’re extremely stressed or confused). When Jormungandr finally releases his tail, the force shakes everything free. This is a metaphor for when we finally “snap” and everything pent-up inside of us comes out at once.

The myths describe Jormungandr as Thor’s arch-nemesis. While Thor personifies our feelings of strength and courage, Jormungandr represents the forces that sap these feelings from us; nervousness, worry, and anxiety. We’re unable to muster enough courage to overcome anxiety when it grows large enough. Thor slays Jormungandr during Ragnarök, but not before the serpent fatally poisons him.

In a more general sense, Jormungandr represents the nervous system and how becomes fraught and ragged if we ignore its needs for too long. This happens when we push ourselves too hard, skimp on sleep, don’t eat enough, and never pause to check in with our bodies. Like reptiles, sometimes the thing we need the most is a pool to cool ourselves in and a warm rock to lay on.

Rage

Take a moment to think about something that makes you angry; really feel this anger in your body. This feeling is Fenrir, the wolf inside us all. When our anger isn’t raised or cultivated correctly, it becomes one of the most self-destructive emotions we have.

Naturally, Fenrir’s binding by the Aesir is a cautionary tale about how not to handle anger. The “threads of impossible things” that our Adult Minds use to hold our rage in check end up being what turns the wolf (the amygdala, in the midbrain) against us. Whenever we snap, that wolf breaks free and consumes all our rational thinking and reasoning, the same way Fenrir consumes Odin during Ragnarök.

Anger isn’t a demon that sits inside of us. It’s a reflex of our inborn sense of justice. After all, it’s Tyr (our sense of what’s fair and right) who initially feeds Fenrir. If Tyr had continued to be the one to feed him, Fenrir would have become a powerful, reliable, and well-trained ally for the Aesir. But since the Aesir bound him out of fear and left him, he was instead fed by Angrboda (sorrow). Because of this, Fenrir learned to be a destructive force motivated by hatred and separation, rather than productive force motivated by love and connection.

If Fenrir had been given the right environments to roam in—spaces that would have been appropriate for his fundamental nature—things wouldn’t have turned out so badly for the Aesir, and especially for Odin. The lesson of Fenrir’s binding is to train the wolf properly, not to keep him caged.

Delights

If Loki represents the Child Mind, then his children with Sigyn represent the things that our inner child loves.

As we grow up, many of us unfortunately get into the habit of judging ourselves for the things our Child Mind adores. The Adult Mind learns to punish the Child Mind by directly attacking the things it loves. We launch harsh criticisms against those beloved things and fiercely admonish people who openly enjoy them. This is represented by Odin’s ultimate punishment for Loki; he turns Loki’s son Váli into a wolf who rips apart his brother Narfi. The Aesir then bind Loki with Narfi’s entrails.

Not only is this visual extremely gruesome, but so is the phenomena it represents: We tear apart the things we love just to bind our inner child with the remains. It’s another nail in the coffin that brings us closer to our own personal Ragnarök.

The story of Ragnarök is the story of how the mind as a system ends up turning against itself. In the broader sense, it’s a story of factors that contributes to the collapse of a society. If our cognition is compromised, then our way of living will also be compromised, and this will be a wound we’ll end up inflicting upon our children as well.

Clearly, we aren’t supposed to emulate the choices the Aesir make in the myths, but rather learn from their mistakes. These are just stories, after all, and they don’t represent a literal history of what the gods said and did. The gods are cast as actors in these myths in order to demonstrate important lessons and give us important wisdom to prevent Ragnarök in our own lives.

To vilify Loki and his family is to vilify the hidden processes of our brains, which work behind the scenes of our awareness with the singular goal of keeping us alive and well. I’m not sure if the Norse knew about brain-structures the same way we know them today, but the fact they might have possessed a great deal of knowledge about cognition doesn’t surprise me, especially given who their head god was.