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I'm intrigued as to what, say, Thor, or Odin, or Loki's attitude is to the racists that claim to worship them.
I'm not sure that it's that profitable to consider deities such as Thor, Odin, Loki and so on as individual personalities in exactly the same way as you or I could be considered individual personalities. On level they appear to be, they seem to prefer being treat as such, and you can get the most from the interaction by behaving as if this were the case. However, on another level, what you are actually dealing with could perhaps be described as a "field of mystery" - a particular pattern of ideas related to an area of nature or human experience. The specific individual personalities of the Gods could be considered as different cultural or ancestral lenses on perceiving and interacting with these fields of mystery, and the nature of those personalities have been shaped over time by cultural and environmental circumstances of the people who have historically interacted with them. So I don't think it is exactly as if you are just dealing with "some guy" who could be expected to have consistent opinions on a given subject at all times.
Also, as I wrote upthread: "The medium of our interactions with the Spirits has the nature of a mirror - and we will tend to find much of ourselves reflected back at us as we approach the mysteries." The nature of a deity partakes to some extent of the head that bears it. This sort of work is always, always going to involve almost as much of what you are bringing to the table as it involves interacting with what you find there waiting for you.
The African Diaspora traditions have the concept of "roads" of a deity, where you have your main overarching personality that could be described as, say, Erzulie - and within that concept are a multitude of different "roads" or personalities that reflect different aspects and possibilities within that "field of mystery". So in Vodou, you have Erzulie Freda, Erzulie La Sirene, Erzulie Dantor, Erzulie Ze Rouge, Erzulie La Flambeau and so on - each road of the Goddess expressive of a different mode of negotiating femininity. They are all "Erzulie" in different ways, and each is a very different personality who will interact with you very differently in various circumstances.
Additionally, each individual is thought to "inherit" their own specific versions of the Spirits from their ancestors, which could again be very different in tone and personality from the inherited ancestral Spirits of others, whilst maintaining certain core characteristics common to that field of mystery. On one level, "Erzulie" is a name given to the tropes and possibilities of femininity that have been subconsciously passed down to you by your parents; "Ogun" is a name for certain aspects of masculinity, with specific emphasis on survival and managing conflict, that you've inherited from your ancestors; and so on. But in spirit work, these complexes of ideas or "fields of mystery" behave as human-type personalities, prefer to be treat as such, and the best results are obtained by interacting as if this were the case. Your human-type relationship with these personalities is directly reflective of the relationship that you have with the complex of ideas they represent.
I would suspect that similar ideas probably apply to the nature of the Gods of the Northern tradition to some extent. So you're looking at something a lot more complex than a simplistic narrative where, say, Odin is an actual guy in another dimension somewhere who needs to shave and has all of these different relationships with various practitioners - some of whom may be racist, some of them who may be "progressive" as you put it - and who needs to negotiate this conflict of interests in the way that you or I might.
But also, I guess the much shorter answer is that a lot of your folkish practitioners don't actually interact directly with their Gods in the way that Mordant and other spirit workers do. For a large percentage of them, it's not really about that at all, so much as its about defining a sense of identity for themselves - and in many cases, a sense of identity which confirms and gives some kind of validation to their prejudices. |
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