Crossroads Rituals
Johnston (1991) describes two main types of rituals related to crossroads: protective and exploitative rituals. Based on my own experience and practice, I interpret protective rituals as attempts to create stability within an unstable situation, strengthen my resilience, and remain grounded within a liminal state without collapsing under its pressure. My focus there is on understanding, exploration, orientation, and inner stability in order to manage uncertainty and vulnerability. Exploitative rituals, as I understand them, are more about actively using uncertainty in order to influence direction or create change, where the focus lies on action and consequences. I do not see these as entirely separate categories, but rather as a spectrum with partially overlapping functions. The protective builds capacity: the exploitative makes use of the capacity that has been built. In my own practice, this becomes especially visible because, beyond increasing my resilience (protection) in difficult situations, I also seek to strengthen my agency and problem-solving abilities.
In my view, Loki is not primarily associated with protective and stabilizing rituals in the sense of “help me through this safely.” However, I do see strong parallels between Loki and resilience, endurance, and persistence, and in that indirect sense I can relate him to protective rituals. Protection, then, becomes something Loki helps me develop within myself rather than something he directly represents. In that respect, he is more directly connected to exploitative rituals, since he is the one who creates movement and change; he opens situations and forces choices into being.
I view crossroads as liminal because there is no predetermined direction there: several paths are possible, and the crossing itself fully belongs to none of them. The roads themselves represent structure, while the crossroads become a dissolution of structure. They are a point of transition rather than a destination, which entails uncertainty, vulnerability, the responsibility of choosing – and also possibility. In everyday life, this can manifest both as decision paralysis and as motivation.
From this perspective on crossroads, the connection to Loki becomes clear. Loki fully belongs to no single position but moves between states. Like the crossroads themselves, he represents in-between states without fixed identity, both open and unstable. He is both the catalyst that opens possibilities and the risk inherent in choosing without guarantees regarding what awaits. If crossroads are understood as the place, then Loki may be understood as the force within the transition itself.
I arrived at this conclusion through reading the course literature, although the literature alone did not fully help me grasp these concepts. It was only when I began relating them to my own experiences – such as making decisions and standing within uncertainty – that the concepts surrounding crossroads became clearer to me. Another thing that helped me arrive at this conclusion was the way the concept of a “spiritual guide” is often presented – as someone who shows the way, provides answers, and leads one correctly. However, I have also encountered a more nuanced perspective emphasizing that no one can walk the path for you; you must walk it yourself. This helps me understand Loki’s role in relation to crossroads. He does not reveal a clear path or provide straightforward answers but is instead the one who creates the choice and challenges you to choose for yourself.
This resonates with my own practice because I have realized that I work with protective magic and practice more than I initially thought, since I focus heavily on resilience and orientation. Previously, I had likely been influenced by a popular and widespread image of protective magic as receiving help to avoid or escape uncertainty, but through these reflections and my connection of them to Loki, I now understand it equally as the work of building resilience and learning how to remain present within uncertainty. My practice is not about avoiding uncertainty, but about receiving help in relating to it.
I find exploitative practice more difficult to relate to. When I chose this assignment to reflect upon, I initially thought it would be inspiring and relatively lighthearted, but while considering the role exploitative practice plays in my life, I entered a much deeper line of thought. Namely, that I react very strongly on a bodily level to standing at the crossroads – that is, to existing within the liminal state itself. Liminal states do not necessarily have to be overwhelming, but in these reflections I am specifically focusing on situations in which liminality genuinely challenges my ability to orient myself. It is easy to theorize about how powerful liminal states are, but actually encountering them in everyday life can feel overwhelming and anxiety-inducing for me. Even though I know that Loki also represents the uncomfortable, unstable, and uncertain, I struggle to simply embrace it when I encounter it physically and emotionally. In those moments, I do not truly possess the capacity to engage in exploitative practice to the extent that I might wish to. Rather than seeing this as a limitation, I have therefore begun to understand it as a matter of capacity and timing. Exploitative practice presupposes a certain ability to remain within uncertainty without becoming overwhelmed, and that is something I am still in the process of developing. For me, it therefore becomes clear that protective and exploitative practice are not opposites, but rather that protective practice forms a necessary foundation that makes approaching the exploitative possible in the first place.
In relation to Loki, this means that my practice is not about throwing myself into liminality without grounding, but rather about gradually building the capacity to encounter it without losing myself. Loki thus becomes not a figure demanding that I fully embrace chaos, but one who reveals the tension between stability and change and challenges me to move within that tension in a way that is sustainable for me. In this sense, my relationship to crossroads is not about fully exploiting them, but about learning to stand within them – and, with time, perhaps also learning how to use them.
Sources
Johnston, S.I. (1991) ‘Crossroads’, pp. 217–224. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20187554.