Mistletoe is one of my favorite Lokean symbols. An oddball in the arms of an oak. It’s a medicine, it’s a menace. It’s a protector, it’s a parasite. 🔗It’s a keystone species, it’s a killer and in my personal correspondences it also represents:
- The change of seasons/the disappearance of the Sun during Winter. I use mistletoe striking Baldr to describe the Winter Solstice in the same way an eclipse is a wolf eating the Moon or Sun.
- A memento mori. (Latin for “remember [that you have] to die”) Mistletoe is a reminder of mortality, of the inevitability of death that even the Gods cannot escape.
The cowardly man thinks he’ll live forever,
if he keeps away from fighting;
but old age won’t grant him a truce
even if spears spare him.
-Hávamál 16, Larrington
- Slippery slopes of helicopter parenting and revenge. Odin consumed with preventing Ragnarök, Frigg’s fear overshadowing one son to protect another, Baldr’s overconfident gambling in a game no one really wins.
- Flourishing at a different pace and on a different cycle than expected by those around you. Mistletoe provides food and shelter to many overlooked animals during harsh winter conditions.
- Tending to what gives and takes my energy. Mistletoe needs to get all or most of its sustenance from its host. It enriches the ecosystems its fate is entangled with, especially with regular tending.
- Transverberation, the feeling of being pierced through during a religious ecstasy. 💘
- Household protection against witchcraft meant to harm.
- The spread of ideas and inspiration that…stick. 😉
- There’s old Christian lore about mistletoe being punished after it was used to make the cross Jesus Christ was crucified on that’s overlapped with old Norse lore about mistletoe killing Baldr. I relate to the mistletoe in both of these stories for how many times I’ve been told both as a Catholic and as a Lokean I was endangering the faith or offending God(s). It’s become a symbol to me of the sharpness required sometimes for surviving while Queer in this world.
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