I've made the comment a few times since Durga is being abandoned, but it is becoming more and more obvious this season that our deity is really Loki, the Trickster. So, what leads me to pick Loki as our new deity?  Jump with me and find out.

via upload.wikimedia.org

Loki shown eating a Texans fan's heart.

Going back just to last year, we had Demeco Ryans out for the season with an injury that is taking well into this year for recovery.  We also had Connor Barwin's freak, painful looking injury.  Maybe we were 1-2 wins better without those? Hard to say, but they may have been a blessing in disguise.

This year, wow. Arian Foster injures and re-injures his hamstring.  Andre Johnson is out for multiple weeks with hamstring problems.  Mary O'Williams and James Casey suffer pectoral injuries in the same game, with O'Williams out for the season.  Danieal Manning out for multiple weeks with a broken leg.  We have had less severe injuries to various members of the O-line, we had Antonio Smith go down (but thankfully not severe). I think Brooks Reed had a minor injury.  Schaub has had some minor injuries all year.  Yet all season long the team has risen up.  And we have light at the end of the tunnel.  AJ coming back Real Soon Now, we will not be the Manningless-Texans for very many more weeks.  Arian is back in top form now.  Then, Monday afternoon happens.

What can you say? The current Leinart is an unknown. He hasn't really done anything in a Texans uniform in the regular season yet.  He handed the ball off a few times late Sunday when we were trying to run out the clock.  I don't believe I saw a single pass thrown.  So, we get one of the top receivers in the league back, and we don't know if the QB can throw to him effectively.  I try to remain optimistic, but there have to be doubts.

So, who is Loki?  Loki is a Norse god (or Giant, in some tellings). He is the father of Hel (goddess of Helheim, and is the source of the English word Hell), the wolf Fenrir (who kills Odin during Ragnarök), and the world serpent Jörmungandr (which figures into the end of the world).  Are you sensing a theme here?

One of the texts that gives the modern world most of what we know about Norse mythology, the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, describes Loki as:

Loke is fair and beautiful of face, but evil in disposition, and very fickle-minded. He surpasses other men in the craft of cunning, and cheats in all things. He has often brought the asas into great trouble, and often helped them out again, with his cunning contrivances. His wife hight Sygin, and their sone, Nare, or Narfe.

Perhaps Loki's greatest work of treachery was his role in the killing of Baldur, a son of Odin.  One of the Norse goddesses, Frigg "exacted an oath from fire, water, iron and all kinds of metal, stones, earth, trees, sicknesses, beasts and birds and creeping things, that they should not hurt Baldr." It is a story similar Achilles, wherein the hero is protected from all things, save one.  For Achilles, it was his heel.  Baldr had a slightly different weakness. Loki did not like that Baldr was protected in this way, so he disguised himself as a woman and went to Frigg to find out if Baldr had any weaknesses.  It turns out that mistletoe was excluded from Frigg's oath, and so Loke contrived to Hodr, Baldr's brother, kill him with an arrow made from mistletoe. 

Given everything we as Texans fans have endured through the years, and the odd injuries this year, Loke does seem to be watching out for the Texans.