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How I Owed Three Beers and a Shot of Rum to a Goddess

How I Owed Three Beers and a Shot of Rum to a Goddess

Well, okay then. You may be wondering about the title on how I lost three beers and a shot of rum to a goddess. No, I didn’t lose a bet, but it sounds like I did. Actually, I won in the grand scheme of things, but the cost of three twelve ounce curls is sort of amusing.

Let me explain.

Hunting Season and Its Insanity

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

Well, this year we got tags for some of our favorite critters, including antelope or pronghorn. If you’ve ever hunted pronghorn, you know that prayers of desperation can accompany the hunt given how wily and fast those beasts are. Hence three beers and a shot of rum.

For those who have never hunted them, understand that pronghorn are the second fastest land animals on the planet–right behind the infamous cheetah. If you google their speed, you’ll see that American antelope can run up to 61 miles per hour. That’s fucking fast. And they have ways to make sure their off your dinner menu.

Skadi and Beer

So, many of you know that Skadi is my other main go-to god, or in her case, goddess. She’s not as easygoing as Tyr is — at least, not to me. We started our antelope hunt, and sure as shit, she told me she wanted beer if we wanted a successful hunt. Craft beer. Not something beyond ridiculous, but something cool.

Okay, I agreed. We got our first pronghorn. Yay!

Forgotten Promises

Image by jessica45 from Pixabay

Now, I don’t make casual promises, but my memory isn’t always the best. Yeah, I forgot to buy the beer. Mea culpa. I don’t go into town often, and I don’t drink beer. So neither are simple to get where I live. Add that I have a spouse who generally doesn’t drink either. In other words, I do not have much alcohol to offer at home. Hey, I buy cheap, blended red wine for cooking, okay?

So, I come home from going into town to get groceries and I hear the goddess tapping her foot.

Skadi: “Where’s the beer?”

Me: “Uh…”

Skadi: “Seriously?”

A Disaster in the Making

So, our next hunts were a bit of a disaster. We got on antelope three more times and for various reasons, they spooked, the shot was off, or some other problem. It got bad. Really bad.

So, in desperation, I took out a shot of rum from the rum I use to make fruitcake and asked Skadi if she would accept the rum.

She agreed. So, I offered her the rum.

The Next Day…

The next day was the beginning of deer season. My spouse woke me up and told me a buck was on our property. I went out there, and after losing the buck for a bit, found him behind me. I shot and he landed in a place where we could get to him. My spouse, incidently, was late to work helping me dress out the buck.

Our deer hunting went stupidly fast and within three days, we had filled all our deer tags.

“Remember the beer,” Skadi said.

Three Beers and a Shot of Rum

Image by David Greenwood-Haigh from Pixabay

Now, I ended up in the supermarket in the nearby town, looking over the craft beer in the beer section. Luckily craft beers are a thing around here. So, I looked at them, bewildered, until I saw a winter ale with an obvious reference to snow. The goddess said, “yeah, that one!”

It’s an IPA, which if I recall my brewing, makes it more bitter with hops than regular brews. Perfect.

So, Skadi got the shot of rum already and tomorrow she gets three beers. Yeah, I’m hoping for more successful hunts coming up.

…As long as I remember the beer.

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Do You Really Think a God Like Kali Would Care?

Do You Really Think a God Like Kali Would Care?

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

I was reading how this beer with Kali’s image on the can has offended Rajan Zed, an American and president of the Universal Society of Hinduism. Basically, he considers putting a pretty cool image of Kali on a beer can to trivialize the goddess. Okay, maybe that’s so. But honestly, assuming Kali was paying attention to our silly little lives at all, I’d think she’d probably be amused, if anything. Let me explain.

The Gods are Way Above Us, or a Colony of Ants

Image by cp17 from Pixabay

If you believe in the gods, chances are you believe that they are very powerful entities. Why else wouldn’t they be, if they were gods? Someone on Reddit likened our relationship to the gods as ants to humans. They proceeded with a fairly amusing anecdote about ants drawing a containment circle around a person and demanding that the human give them sugar, or kill another ant, or whatever. Now, if that were to happen to you, would you be angry, annoyed, amused, or simply ignore them? If you found the whole idea of ants containing a human with crystals ludicrous, think what the gods might think if we humans were to try that. Yep. That’s the message you need to keep in your head for the time being.

With this idea in mind, let’s take the whole ant/human thing one step further. Now let’s say the ant colony now has a sugar water drink and they put your photo on it. Or maybe an ant artist’s rendition of you. Of course, you’d look like an ant, but damn, they swear it is your likeness. Are you offended? They swear it’s the best sugar water available. Or maybe you might think it’s pretty damn funny that ants have created you in their image, and named a drink after you.

Now Let’s Look at the Gods

While I don’t believe that our relationship with our gods is quite as extreme as ants to humans, you can see the point. With the exception of Yahweh, most gods go about doing their godly things with as much consideration to us as we do with ants. If the gods take any notice in what we’re doing, it’s because we’re doing something to get their attention. But trivial stuff? They probably don’t even bother.

That’s why I found Christianity to be stupid. What kind of god gives a shit about whether you attended church on Sundays? Or if you had sex before marriage? Or if you swore using his name?

Humanizing a God

Too often, I think pagans–and even us Heathens–tend to bring the gods down to our level. It’s a natural tendency, given that we really don’t know the god’s true form. Chances are that our gods’ forms are so beyond being human, we couldn’t conceive of, much less relate to, them.

I’m reminded of the Greek story about Zeus and Semele, the mother of Dionysus. Zeus loved Semele so much that he promised her anything swearing by the River Styx. Hera, Zeus’s wife, who is insanely jealous, told Semele to ask to see Zeus in all his glory as a god. This, of course, would kill her. But he made an oath he couldn’t back out of, and so she died. But Zeus rescued his son, Dionysus, whom Semele was pregnant with, and sewn him into his thigh to finish gestating.

Are We Ants to Our Gods?

You may be wondering if I think we really are like ants to our gods. Probably not, but we are certainly less evolved than they are. Perhaps they look at us more like favorite species, or–and I’m hesitant to use the word–pets.

Our gods basically keep out of our lives unless they choose to interact with us. In recent times, it has been my experience that they have been calling to us again. Possibly because Christianity is waning, and they see an opportunity to communicate to us their desires and intentions. Although I have only a cursory knowledge of the Hindu pantheon, I’d argue that Kali probably isn’t too worried about her image on a beer can. Just like our gods aren’t overly wrapped up about Marvel and Thor.

My TL;DR point is that the gods have much more important things to do than getting wrapped up over their mug on a beer can.

Except maybe Yahweh. He’s an asshat.

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