Asatru Folk Assembly - 1⧸1⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 130 - Gróttasöngr

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:02:30.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:03:00.000 Hello, and welcome to the first edition of Victory Never Sleeps of 2025.

00:03:18.040 As you are listening to us now, the AusTrue Folk Assembly is now officially 30 years old.

00:03:27.260 um we are going to be celebrating that throughout the year we are starting off with

00:03:37.140 wonderful momentum going into the new year sounds like everybody had a very exciting

00:03:43.700 and uh meaningful yuletide which is great uh yeah i'm excited to be here and enjoying

00:03:52.520 the evening of the first day of 2025 with all of you fine people and with my good friend

00:04:00.100 and colleague witness fawn over here with fresh dew from my from my son he's starting

00:04:09.180 to take up the tutelage of becoming or at least learning how to uh barber so quite proud

00:04:22.140 you should be that's awesome

00:04:24.140 so we

00:04:30.240 are at first

00:04:32.020 thank you everybody who joined us

00:04:34.300 on our

00:04:34.960 epic four

00:04:38.120 part tackling

00:04:39.840 of the very

00:04:42.040 long and very interesting

00:04:43.900 AO saga

00:04:45.160 it was a lot of fun to go back through that

00:04:47.780 it's something that I know I have not personally

00:04:50.020 been through in a very long time

00:04:52.100 So it was great to kind of re-experience that with a little bit more seasoned view and in front of some people that may have not.

00:05:05.000 So that was awesome.

00:05:06.980 We're going back to our work on the Eddas today.

00:05:13.580 So, Swan, what do folks need to know tonight about this? This particular piece is not

00:05:28.280 always included and not always found. I think it is more obscure than what we're,

00:05:36.800 i don't know in some of the big name fair that we're used to what should people know um going

00:05:44.600 into tonight's uh broda songer well i would say one i mean this is actually a part of a

00:06:00.560 uh it's the smaller part of a larger series of poems and some people might be familiar with it

00:06:08.000 with um the the ballad of swift day or sweep dog uh sweep dog is smaller and um sweep dog of course

00:06:22.320 is a hero um who we kind of compared earlier uh when we were talking about the heroes of um

00:06:34.560 the holy freya um and and kind of in comparison with like other and um

00:06:41.840 like the learning of um this kind of like relationship with the earthly um some folks

00:06:55.440 have taken it to believe that sweep dog is um an ascendant some folks think that um

00:07:03.520 it is just another name for the same god or that there is a processes here of ascendancy

00:07:13.080 into which eventually leads to other and then other of course being the husband of the holy

00:07:21.160 freya um and so there's a lesson about union here but this is the first poem that's going

00:07:30.380 in the series of Sveepdog's poems.

00:07:35.060 Sveepdog, of course, means swift day.

00:07:37.940 Are you sure we're talking about the same thing here, Svon?

00:07:41.020 Yeah, Groa's...

00:07:43.380 Groza's songer.

00:07:49.480 I think you're too previous to me at Groa's songer.

00:07:53.380 I was looking at Groa's gold there.

00:07:58.980 Yeah.

00:07:59.620 yeah we covered we covered both of those uh swift dogs model uh before we started on ale saga yeah

00:08:08.940 i see and now i'm i'm you're back in november swan i know i'm jumping back um thanksgiving

00:08:15.300 okay so um i mean as far as this poem is concerned uh you know the translations of it

00:08:27.580 most likely came from Simondr, Simondr the Learned, who was also along with Snorri Stutlusson

00:08:39.020 part of the compiling of these stories. And it's, again, not included, as you mentioned, because

00:08:47.040 of the fact that it was kind of added in later and was not in all of the manuscripts of the

00:08:56.020 entire body of the adas which uh was known as the the codex regius um so because it wasn't

00:09:05.180 um added in into every manuscript it again becomes one of those like shadow um

00:09:14.420 poems that some people know about some people don't know about that's what i think's honestly

00:09:21.960 kind of cool about us going through you know a pretty thorough um examination of all of them

00:09:30.520 even the ones that are less in your face relevant um i mean there's certain things that you would

00:09:38.680 you know anybody who is new to also true you just insist they have to know this probably isn't one

00:09:45.080 of those but these little we talk about this a lot when you first get involved

00:09:52.600 there's the sense that there's this endless stack of of literature that you're going to read to get

00:09:57.640 these primary sources but you burn through that faster than you might think you know and certainly

00:10:04.120 there's infinite amounts of exploring different translations or trying to rework the the original

00:10:11.240 text or you can go down a lot of rabbit holes that keep you going for a long time but these

00:10:16.120 little these little morsels are often missed and are really kind of interesting to i don't know

00:10:24.600 see if they spark something in you see if they add an angle or a piece that you are missing

00:10:31.160 or haven't you know thought of in a particular way and to further i don't know

00:10:36.920 shape the lens that you approach our religion thorn and we think that's kind of cool go ahead

00:10:46.980 well and there's this is kind of a unique one i i know that people have that have been

00:10:51.160 kind of listening to vns might have heard us kind of compare the adas and snorri stutlason and

00:10:59.220 and Simon Durr's um collection and the the codifying in poetic form the stories of Iceland

00:11:08.960 um and then we compare it to say like the guest of the norm who was written by um saxo grammaticus

00:11:17.360 and we've talked about how you know um Snorri was a believer in the cultural importance of

00:11:26.460 icelandic poetry he was deeply an icelandic nationalist um and he fought to make sure that

00:11:34.460 these these compositions remained in the property of the icelanders versus the you know the the

00:11:41.740 norwegians and the danes um but one of the interesting things about this story is is that

00:11:48.300 we kind of do see a little bit of a crossover and what i mean by that is generally there's this

00:11:53.180 divide when we talk about them but snorty mentions and makes point of of kind of kings of old um

00:12:04.140 and so the commonality would have been known by scholars um of their time but it just it

00:12:11.020 it kind of lends to the descendancy of kings that come from before and it also you know kind

00:12:19.020 of speaks of the mythical origins in which ultimately the icelanders are from scandinavia

00:12:26.460 so they would have known and embellished and went on too with with the um the descendancy

00:12:33.340 of of these these kind of tribal peoples and it's like it's kind of like when tacitus mentions

00:12:40.940 the origins of the Germanic people coming from the Ingveons and from the Erminons.

00:12:50.300 And it's actually missing my head right now.

00:12:57.500 But these origins, these kind of original clans are mentioned as well.

00:13:04.980 and then they're kind of they go into kings who you know may have been real or may have been

00:13:12.020 legendary and i i just find it interesting this is the one poem that kind of

00:13:18.900 links and speaks in the same territory of each other um versus i think saxo you hemorrhized the

00:13:26.740 gods um you know so massively that it just reads as these kind of uh feuds between warriors and

00:13:37.780 then with snorty his writings are clearly uh you know still retelling the stories but in poetic

00:13:47.540 form with the intent of you know shedding light on on uh our ancestors views and ultimately his

00:13:55.540 ancestors views of the gods um so i don't know i find that interesting um but yeah it's a smaller

00:14:06.820 one so there is that as well there is um i mean we never know exactly how long our episodes are

00:14:17.140 going to go i want to thank everybody who is joining us this evening um please feel free as

00:14:24.260 always to ask any and all questions you might have whether it's about the text at hand or about

00:14:30.340 anything else you may be curious about um we'll make sure all of those get answered if they're

00:14:37.620 not directly about the text we may push them till the text is done may not kind of depends

00:14:43.940 on where we're at and where it goes and uh we've reserved the right for it to

00:14:49.140 go down whatever whatever rabbit trail it might go down um because i think there's value in that

00:14:58.500 this isn't just about working our way through a bit of text but it's also about the relevant

00:15:05.860 points and things that that text might bring up um but yeah so a couple of couple of few things

00:15:15.300 to kind of mention we always go through well i say always in our work on the eddas we well actually

00:15:23.940 and quite a bit of means fun reading that a little bit different sources but we're reading quite a

00:15:28.340 bit out of bellows translation on all of our stuff so far this one is a deviation from that bellows

00:15:35.940 didn't translate this piece so this is actually benjamin for who did this one but yes it's still

00:15:42.820 going to be on that belowspout.org site if you want to follow along or wherever else you find

00:15:49.780 it you may have a cool translation that we aren't reading from and that may add something or put a

00:15:56.420 little bit different angle to it um while you're figuring that out i want to acknowledge a few

00:16:03.700 things gw farnsworth again starts out our program with five coffees it's 25 donation

00:16:12.820 Thank you so much for that. You are so consistent in your generosity, and we greatly appreciate it.

00:16:23.160 And it looks like GW Farnsworth also donated $100 to pay off New York's off.

00:16:30.340 So thank you very much for that. That goes a long way.

00:16:35.080 And while we are on that topic, I mentioned this.

00:16:40.260 I don't know if everybody believed me, but hopefully you do.

00:16:44.820 The smaller this number gets, the faster it's going to disappear.

00:16:51.100 I mean, the faster the rate at which it's going to disappear,

00:16:54.760 obviously it'll disappear sooner, the smaller it gets.

00:16:57.360 But you know what I'm saying.

00:16:58.980 We pick up a momentum as we get towards the finish line on this.

00:17:01.940 And I really like your guys' help in pushing that momentum forward

00:17:05.380 and getting us over that line.

00:17:06.780 um currently 75 is super small but 0.2 as i recall percent paid off on the hof which is outstanding

00:17:17.140 it is

00:17:17.640 it is by far the most expensive hof that we've had thus far uh it was still a great deal there's

00:17:27.920 nothing you know no buyer's remorse on that but it's just something that we haven't

00:17:33.480 there's not a one for one on how fast we've paid off other Hoffs versus how fast to pay this one

00:17:40.200 off because it is so much more expensive because Florida and properties it's nice we've got five

00:17:46.680 acres with it it's a really nice Hoff and it's in a wonderful location but it's cool to think that in

00:17:53.820 you know two and a half years thereabouts not quite we're already over 75 percent of the way

00:18:04.280 of paying it off and i have no doubt that we'll get that paid off within the calendar year 2025

00:18:10.260 no problem i would like to see if we can get that paid off by mid-summer and i think we can if we

00:18:15.800 push hard. Current amount still owed on that, $60,000. Now, after that most recent donation,

00:18:23.560 $60,670. So, that's awesome. It brings us super close. And it means if every member of the

00:18:32.400 Ouse True Folk Assembly donated $80 today, Hoff's paid off, no problem. And we're all knocked out

00:18:40.800 before the year really gets its feet on the ground starting.

00:18:45.160 I don't really expect that, but I wanted to put it out there

00:18:48.560 because that's kind of what it looks like when we break it down in those terms.

00:18:52.740 You guys have been and continue to be super generous.

00:18:55.260 I just want to give you an idea of where we're at with that.

00:18:59.760 That said, we have another generous donation from Alzi Coleman Miller IV.

00:19:06.260 bought us

00:19:08.200 four coffees, so

00:19:14.620 $20.

00:19:16.100 What? Oh, no, that's the four. I'm sorry.

00:19:18.400 My brain brought us 10

00:19:20.560 coffees, which is awesome, which is $50.

00:19:23.160 Thank you so much for that.

00:19:24.920 We greatly appreciate your generosity.

00:19:26.820 And along with that comes the message.

00:19:29.200 Hail the gods, starting

00:19:30.760 the year strong physically

00:19:32.840 and spiritually.

00:19:34.300 I'm very hopeful for the future of our people, completely unrelated to recent events.

00:19:40.380 I can feel the spiritual power of our kin waking up and preparing for the coming trials.

00:19:48.080 Come what may, I am proud of my heritage, and I hope to make the gods and my ancestors proud.

00:19:56.440 Well, showing this generosity is a good start on that.

00:19:59.860 Thank you so much, and we really appreciate it.

00:20:03.860 i think that's all we i guess need to know on the top of the program i think i should also plug

00:20:13.960 upcoming um charming of the plot yeah charming of the plow in february at new york's hoff that is

00:20:23.600 the spotlight event for new york's hoff new york's office in white springs florida it's the one i

00:20:29.880 just rambled on about us paying off. It's awesome for all the reasons I said it's awesome.

00:20:36.020 It's also got a gator in one of its ponds there, which is cool. It's got beautiful live oaks with

00:20:42.660 hanging Spanish moss, which is awesome. February is a wonderful time of the year to be there. It's

00:20:50.020 not grossly hot. It's just really nice weather and beautiful. And we've got a lot of fine people

00:20:56.000 are making it there i know we've got people from throughout north in your top district i think

00:21:01.120 we've got a big contingent from arkansas planning to be there as well this year a lot of people are

00:21:08.160 going to be there for the first time i am looking forward to seeing all of you there who can get

00:21:13.040 there if you are interested please reach out to your local folk builder or myself or anybody in

00:21:20.160 the afa leadership we can get you all set up we'd love to see you guys there

00:21:26.000 And I think with that, Svon, whenever you are ready, I think we are ready to start with our text.

00:21:32.060 yeah i'd made mention of the of of the kings of old and that kind of overlap between the two this

00:21:39.980 one really is focusing in on king frothy and uh grati is a mill and this is just kind of an

00:21:49.420 interesting poem in the sense that there are two um female jotnar or uh sometimes they're referred

00:22:01.280 to as like as the of the reeseer the reesee um the the elemental powers in the middle

00:22:10.080 um and they are enslaved and they are asked to grind the stone and the stone will produce

00:22:17.760 whatever you wish um but again it's so big that no one can turn it and so these risar

00:22:25.520 are women are um you know brought in to um turn the stone so it again it's an interesting one

00:22:36.800 simply because this is kind of the the personification of the rizir in uh direct

00:22:44.800 connection to mortal kings and things of that nature uh it has a lot of arian mythos in it

00:22:53.040 and again the millstone has um you know a lot of uh connectivity but it was a later edition of

00:23:02.480 arian mythos i you know i i feel because of the the technology of grinding grain um some people

00:23:10.240 have even suggested this may have come from somewhere else and was kind of adopted into

00:23:16.160 germanic lore but um i i don't know where because i don't see any stories or none to my knowledge

00:23:23.360 that kind of you know fit similarly um and i do know that it was used later on um to make like a

00:23:33.920 scathing uh poem against um capitalism during the beginning of the industrial age with factory

00:23:42.800 workers so that's interesting too and um because again you know these these people were getting

00:23:50.560 fat and rich off of you know their fellow countrymen working in abysmal conditions

00:23:57.200 so it was also used then in sweden as a kind of paralleling to this but again these these

00:24:07.200 resir these jotnar women are slaves and the mill is grotty um let me see i have to go back to the

00:24:19.360 beginning all right um and it with it with good length of an intro

00:24:28.160 um uh skilleded was a son of odin from whom the skilledings are descended now it's a

00:24:43.840 before we go even further the scoldings too are a um it would be like similar to say the arthurian

00:24:53.880 court, in the sense that this ruling power, this kingdomed land, these people and the

00:25:05.000 descendants of who they are, are not quite, you know, pinpointed, especially considering

00:25:15.480 when we know the history of the Danes from Beowulf and the mentions of them moving into

00:25:22.880 peninsula and removing other uh smaller kingdoms um or smaller you know tribes and um

00:25:33.680 you know so the the skjoldings are descended from lord odin but

00:25:40.400 where exactly the rulership you know was is kind of hard to pinpoint but the descendancy is always

00:25:47.120 kind of laid in the past you know we we're descended or that place was once ruled by the skildons um

00:25:57.760 so skilder was the son of odin from whom the skildons are descended

00:26:03.120 he had his residence in and ruled the land that is now called danemark or denmark which

00:26:10.080 was then called Scotland. Skelder's son was Fridleivr who ruled the land after him. Fridleivr's son

00:26:22.700 was Froði. King Froði succeeded to the kingdom of Denmark at the time when the emperor Augustus

00:26:34.240 had proclaimed peace all over the world at that time christ was born and as frothy was the most

00:26:43.500 powerful king in the north the peace was attributed to him and called frothy's peace

00:26:49.900 so here we see a linking and this again happens when they try to say that the gods are from

00:26:57.480 turkey or what have you is they're trying to align the peace of the north to the birth of

00:27:07.400 of christ um but it's just kind of thrown in there uh you know the real peace is because

00:27:14.080 christ was born um but that time was called fro these peace because it wasn't because of road and

00:27:20.660 And, you know, I just interestingly enough, but at this time, wherever the Danish tongue was spoken, no man injured another, though he might have before him his father's killer or his brother's killer loose or bound.

00:27:42.340 And at that time, there was also no thievery or robbers, so that a gold ring would lie long, unmolested, on Yalangarhith.

00:27:53.280 um now this is an interesting point too we have in our history these great moments of peace and

00:28:06.740 it's worth noting that frothi um the fruitful one um and his father fridley peaceful life

00:28:14.640 um these connections to their names and and holy fray the the lord um and just in general the the

00:28:27.320 the vanic cycles in which our ancestors have been um people have noted that they would

00:28:34.460 carry a wane or a wagon around and there would be these like prolonged moments of peace

00:28:41.720 So this idea would not be so foreign in the heads of our ancestors, though it would be kind of, you know, shocking to say like an entire land came under this period of peace.

00:28:54.520 but the idea of the peaceful king um and his presence making it so that you know no arms

00:29:03.960 were raised against each other um that there was no you know all of the wealth that was gained was

00:29:12.400 kept and um i just you know very very interesting and i wonder too if perhaps looking at this

00:29:20.980 if we are kind of seeing a remnants of or a retelling or a kind of hinting back to

00:29:28.840 these moments of the wane of the fruitful lord or of any of the vanir all going all the way back

00:29:36.480 to tacitus and uh nerthus um and the laying down of arms that this is kind of starting off

00:29:45.920 lending back to this. But ultimately, the story tells about the coming end of that piece.

00:29:54.640 So, when on a visit to King Fjolnir in Sweden, he bought two female slaves whose names were Fenia

00:30:05.600 and Mennia, both of great strength and stature. At this time, two millstones were found in Denmark.

00:30:17.220 They were so large that no one could drag them. These stones possessed the property

00:30:24.000 of grinding whatever the grinder asked for. The quern or the mill was called grotti.

00:30:32.980 was the name of the man who gave it to king frothy frothy set the two slaves to work at the

00:30:45.040 and commanded them to grind gold peace and prosperity to lord frothy but he allowed them

00:30:55.300 not a moment's rest nor even sleep longer than a while uh that longer than while the

00:31:03.300 cuckoo is silent or a song might be sung it is said that they then sang the song called

00:31:16.420 and ceased not before they had ground an army up against lord frothy so that in the night a

00:31:24.340 sea king named mising came and slew lord frothy and carried off great booty such was the end of

00:31:34.420 frothy's peace missing took grotti together with fenia and menia and ordered them to grind salt

00:31:42.180 we ordered them to grind more and they ground only a little while before the ship sank in fentolin

00:31:48.980 firth so we kind of see this there is the the the meta mixed with uh historical uh placement

00:32:01.940 and we see i mean clearly these two slave girls aren't you know fully mentioned yet as being of

00:32:08.340 the the reese or of the yacht and blood um but the the millstone itself i think is more allegoric to

00:32:18.980 other things, these things of creation, if you will. But they're kind of contexted in a historical

00:32:29.280 background. And ultimately, you know, the millstones that are ground together will produce

00:32:39.380 in fate, in almost like, again, creating weird or creating oarlong that manifests into reality.

00:32:50.760 Very, very powerful indeed.

00:32:56.120 So verse one.

00:33:00.900 Now are come to the king's house two prescient damsels, Fenia and Menia.

00:33:07.940 They are with Frovi, Freid Liverson, the powerful maidens, enthralled and held.

00:33:16.540 So they are slaves now.

00:33:19.580 To the mill they both were led, and the grey stone to set a going ordered.

00:33:26.940 He to both forbade rest and solace before he heard the maiden's voice.

00:33:31.660 they made resound the clattering cairn the the the mill house with their arms swung the light

00:33:41.220 stones the maidens he commanded yet more to grind they sung and swung the whirling stones

00:33:48.240 until fro these thralls nearly all slept then said many to the meal to us come now

00:33:59.080 this part here is interesting just because of how short that stanza is cut um so there was you know

00:34:08.880 clearly some some pieces lost there and in five riches were riches we grind for fro thee all

00:34:16.980 happiness we grind wealth and abundance and gladness mill on riches may he sit on down may

00:34:23.940 he sleep to joy may he wake then tis well ground so the song and the spell and the grinding stones

00:34:36.420 kind of create and manifest what is being brought about um so yes yeah you know sleeping on down

00:34:48.660 feathers and uh waking up to peace uh six here shall not one another harm evil machinates nor

00:35:01.300 occasion death nor yet strike with the biting sword although a brother slayer he find bound

00:35:09.540 so even if you found your brother's slayer bound up no swords will strike it is it is a time of

00:35:19.220 of laying down of peace and remember again the context in the beginning too where this is kind

00:35:23.900 of no no no christ is born that's why this is really um the you know this age of peace um

00:35:32.100 and it would be quite shocking i think to our ancestors to think about not being able to

00:35:39.680 smoke one of your kinslayers um or kinsman slayer uh so in seven he had not yet said

00:35:48.000 one word before sleep ye not longer than than the gawks round the house or then while one song i

00:35:56.360 sing thou was not throw thee for thyself overwise or a friend of men when thralls thou boddest or

00:36:07.640 strength thou chosest them and for their looks and for their looks but of their race didst not

00:36:15.560 inquire. Stout was Hrongnir and his father, yet was Thiazi stronger than they. Evi and Orni,

00:36:27.060 our relations are, brothers of the mountain giants from whom we are born. So they reveal now

00:36:34.820 that they are of the line of the Jotnar. And the idea of the mountains in connection to the Jotnar

00:36:43.380 are really emphasized here not that they aren't in other stories the jotin the word itself too

00:36:52.420 meaning kind of ancient the ancient ones and the the size of a mountain is what ultimately translated

00:36:59.700 when the word giant came about but we clearly see that being a giant or being uh large in stature

00:37:12.500 doesn't always equate to what the the yotnar are and that they were kind of seen as much to

00:37:21.700 our ancestors the way the gods might have been seen or at least while they were in the middle

00:37:25.780 world if they took the shape of the middle they resembled us but perhaps larger than life bigger

00:37:34.820 but not overly so to the point where they were the size of mountains um but they are of this

00:37:42.180 stock and um you know it doesn't go too much into the the how did they uh become of sweden

00:37:52.340 but i think this is the trajectory that starts to send our the beings of our stories eventually

00:37:59.620 become placed into fantasy to where elves are not alvar but tiny little land whites that kind

00:38:09.460 of live and jump around and the trolls are are um you know happy-go-lucky uh little you know

00:38:18.180 uh stone spirits and the jotuns and the giants are are you know like like sleeping mountains

00:38:25.540 or giant boulders this was the trajectory i think that christianity eventually brought everything

00:38:32.020 to so a lot of times when we talk about things people still have in their mind okay a giant is

00:38:38.660 you know big giant giant trolls are you know stone creatures or uh even further to say like

00:38:46.660 a naked little baby with a tuft of hair um or what have you and that you know they definitely

00:38:54.100 were not seen that way at that time um but whenever it's referred to as mountain giants

00:39:04.820 that's another thing that's worth noting is that these are the kin of emir so there are there are

00:39:10.340 three types of jotens in the basic sense there is the rhyme or crim thurser the rim yachtens of

00:39:20.740 niflheim the land of of primordial matter the beginning there's the sons of muspel and muspelheim

00:39:28.660 And then there is the mountain Jotnar, who are really the descendants of Ymir and of the middle world.

00:39:41.920 And in 10, they say here, Grotti had not come from the gray fell, nor yet the hard stone from the earth, nor so had ground the giant maid, if her race had ought of her own.

00:39:58.660 So the origins of the stones

00:40:03.220 Come before

00:40:04.180 And

00:40:05.500 You know

00:40:08.640 The connection between the maidens and the stones

00:40:11.200 Was the inevitable connection

00:40:13.180 Between

00:40:13.720 Those who

00:40:15.820 Were

00:40:17.380 Who had the stones of ancient days

00:40:19.560 And these two slave women

00:40:22.300 Who are now

00:40:23.100 You know

00:40:23.660 It's revealed that they're not just women

00:40:27.180 so before we flip the page which we're about to i just want to acknowledge and thank

00:40:34.940 uh angela for her 25 donation we appreciate that a lot

00:40:42.060 yeah so thank you um thank you yeah and another thing i'm just looking over in the chat room

00:40:49.260 um croatian croatian war master it's good to have you here sorry to hear that you missed

00:40:56.140 the last few episodes live but you should definitely go check them out and i want to

00:41:02.540 throw this plug i'm sure you know that you can go check them out and hopefully you already have

00:41:06.380 if not they're pretty cool they're very long episodes but it was really good and it was really

00:41:11.340 it was a really fun time uh certainly for us it was but if you want to check these things out

00:41:17.260 you can always watch this video you know at your leisure anytime after we're done here i don't know

00:41:25.420 if you can start watching now and go back to the beginning i'm not sure how that mechanic works but

00:41:29.900 i know that you can as soon as we're done yeah see so literally anytime after 6 p.m on wednesdays

00:41:39.340 you're good to start watching and uh you can see it here or on any of the other platforms we have

00:41:46.380 as a video but you can also get it um as a podcast and it's on all the popular podcast

00:41:53.260 places it's on apple spotify iheart radio amazon music wherever you get your podcasts so

00:42:02.860 if you haven't you're not here with us right now hopefully you are with us

00:42:10.860 in your own time at your own leisure whenever you'd like to and you can go back and watch

00:42:15.100 old episodes also um as always with all of these things like share subscribe tell people you guys

00:42:25.980 helping out with word of mouth is huge um word of mouth is our biggest thing i say this a lot i say

00:42:33.260 it on this program i also say it to members of afa leadership our biggest hurdle to bringing

00:42:40.620 our folk home is that so many of our folk don't know we exist i have zero doubt that there are

00:42:51.260 i don't know easily tens of thousands of people that would love to be part of the

00:42:55.740 as true folk assembly if they just knew we existed trouble is they don't so the more we

00:43:01.820 get the word out the more you guys share this with friends family people you know that

00:43:06.140 you know if they if they are also true we would love to have them watch the show and see what

00:43:13.380 they think if they're interested in becoming also true or in those kind of things again we'd love

00:43:20.560 to have them if they're not they're just curious we'd love to have them if you watch this and it's

00:43:25.020 entertaining to you and you just enjoy it cool we'd love anybody and everybody to come watch

00:43:29.660 this show if they would like to. But on top of that, if you like the show and you like what

00:43:36.920 we're presenting and you are a heterosexual white person that wants to return to your ancestral

00:43:42.460 gods, you should start off 2025 by joining the House True Folk Assembly. We've got 30 years in

00:43:48.860 the books. We are looking at a very bright future and you can be part of that and you can help us

00:43:54.320 make that happen we would love to we would love to have you so if that's something you're thinking

00:44:00.100 about at runestone.org join and uh let's make it happen but yeah just want to throw that plug in

00:44:09.000 there before we move on to uh what stanza 11 yeah and i was gonna say too i saw that uh croatian

00:44:17.080 Warmaster had made mention of the archaic kind of usage of English. And here's another thing is

00:44:25.920 Thorpe. One of the reasons why I like Thorpe is because he ironically doesn't use that a lot.

00:44:33.440 He does use it, but it's not as much as say like bellows. So some of our earlier videos,

00:44:39.600 if you really want to hear um those translations in which they use a lot of um you know like more

00:44:48.240 archaic english for poetic kind of flair bellows does that this translation of thorpe he does use

00:44:56.080 it a little bit but his his translations are i think far more straightforward he he kind of does

00:45:02.960 more of an equal one for one he's not trying to keep and uphold the poetics and that's why this

00:45:11.360 poem kind of reads almost matter-of-factly um but yeah so i mean interesting in that sense as well

00:45:21.840 thorpe's translations i find um if you're looking to get kind of a one for one go there if you're

00:45:28.400 looking for poetics look at bellows and hollander as they really try to stick to the intended purpose

00:45:36.480 that um these are poems these are songs um

00:45:46.080 so now we start to get into the mystical in 11. um and again to the the usage of the number nine

00:45:53.200 being of course very important in our faith um in 11 nine winters we playmates were we were of

00:46:05.040 um the same birth that we were children or we were of the family um strong and nurtured beneath

00:46:14.960 the earth we maidens stood at mighty works ourselves ourselves we moved the fast rock

00:46:22.960 from its place so again the connection between the middle world and the jotens are is super clear here

00:46:34.880 there is the you know some folks that are trying to move the cosmology around and

00:46:41.040 And the middle world is where the Vanir and the Jotnar are kind of interconnected in the middle world and along with the Svartalvar.

00:46:52.800 And so we see this kind of conjoining and our ancestors saw it this way, is that the moving of the plates, whether it was the Jotun who becomes a goddess, Gryður, or the Jotuns themselves or the Svartalf.

00:47:10.040 These movements in Earth and on Earth with the rock and the mountains and earthquakes and, you know, all of these these phenomenas are sourced from the spiritual might and power of these beings and how they interact.

00:47:28.280 And they they are of the middle world. They, you know, they don't exist, say, like in the underworld or in the heavenly realm.

00:47:36.540 um and uh you know i think it is very very clear here the way our ancestors saw the cosmology of

00:47:44.700 the world um we rolled the stone over the giant's house so that the earth thereby shrank trembling

00:47:56.280 So hurled we the whirling rock that men could take it.

00:48:02.200 But afterwards, in Sweden, we prescient two among people went, chased the bear and shattered the shields and went against a gray sarked horse.

00:48:17.840 So a couple of things there is the kenning of the giant's house, of course, over the mountains.

00:48:24.340 um and that here they they went against a uh another um army or they went against men um and

00:48:39.720 brought the stones so the stones are of or from their people um but then ended up getting mixed

00:48:52.200 up about within the kingdom of sweden or svidio the um the svidereiki the the the the kingdom

00:49:01.880 or the people of the swedes um and they kind of get involved with

00:49:09.120 the genealogy and history there aided one prince another overthrew afforded the good

00:49:19.580 guthorn help quiet i sat not yet ere we warriors felled thus we went on all those winters so that

00:49:29.240 in conflicts we were known there we carved with our sharp spears blood from wounds and reddened

00:49:37.100 brands so these two jotun maidens are eating in the rise of kings taking kings out um slaying men

00:49:51.980 um it's it just very very interesting in the in the concept of it these these uh spiritual

00:50:00.300 beings kind of interplaying so intimately with humanity and causing the rise and fall of you know

00:50:08.540 chieftains uh in 16 now we are uh now are we come to a king's house unpitied both and enthralled

00:50:21.980 them held gravel gnaws our feet and above tis cold a foe's host we draw sad tis at fro these

00:50:34.060 hands must rest the stone shall stand still for me i have my portion ground two hands will not

00:50:42.940 rest be given until fro thee thinks enough is ground so again the lament here is is we we have

00:50:51.980 uh slaughtered warriors we have risen uh kingdoms and chieftains and taken them down

00:51:00.620 and now here we are slaves in throw these milled house um

00:51:11.260 18 hands shall hold falchions hard um swords and i you know the interesting usage of the

00:51:21.340 the word falchion instead of sword um hands shall hold falchions hard the weapons slaughter gory

00:51:29.980 wake thou fro thee wake thou fro thee if thou wilt listen to our songs and sagas old

00:51:38.620 fire i see burning east in the burr in the burrow tidings of war are rife

00:51:46.620 that should be a token a host or an army will forthwith hither come and the town

00:51:54.620 burn over the king thou wilt not hold the throne of leather rings of red gold or mighty millstone

00:52:03.980 let us ply the winch girl yet more rapidly are we not grown up in deadly slaughter

00:52:10.940 so are we are we not more befit to continue our our works as you know the the crushing of of

00:52:20.740 kingdoms and the raising of kingdoms um instead of being these slaves and so they start to mill

00:52:27.920 an army as they're speaking it it they're foretelling the coming of the army or creating it

00:52:36.080 um and by 21 uh my father's daughter has stoutly ground because the fate of many men she saw

00:52:47.360 huge fragments from the millstone into the into the orna floor let us grind on let us grind on

00:52:57.620 Irsa's son, Halfdan's kinsman, will avenge Frodi. He will, of her, be called son and brother. We know that. The maiden's ground their might applied. The damsels were in Jotun mood, or Jotun strength is the Jotun movie.

00:53:18.940 They're in this frenzy of their race or their people

00:53:25.780 The axes trembled, the stone fell from above

00:53:30.380 The ponderous rock was in shivers split

00:53:33.600 But the mountain giants' maidens said

00:53:36.960 Froði, we have ground together

00:53:39.060 But we have ground, together we cease

00:53:42.500 The maidens have stood at the grinding long

00:53:46.500 and that is the entirety of the poem there you have it yeah it like i said it was it is a short

00:53:59.720 one but it does bring into a lot of precepts about i think this really does show more an

00:54:06.980 evolution of how the elder faith was being converted the the

00:54:18.100 the gods become mortals the jotuns become you know players in uh the rise and fall of kingdoms

00:54:28.260 um and even though this there were seeds that were already there uh long before christianity came

00:54:35.220 they spoke of of uh being descended from the gods but now we start to see

00:54:42.420 not just the descendancy of the gods but now we see the jotun are playing

00:54:47.220 in on this and slowly over generation over and generation the the mythos of these cosmic powers

00:54:58.580 become mortal they become kind of interplayed they become part of just perhaps natural phenomena or

00:55:11.300 kind of reduced in idea to more common things

00:55:18.980 and i think that this is one of those that kind of really shows or lends to that

00:55:23.300 all right well so we have a few questions that have lined up here um and honestly i think this is a

00:55:38.100 i think this is a nice one to go into after the last four of them being like six hour episodes i

00:55:46.260 don't think this is all that terrible to uh to have a shorter one tonight but um first one comes

00:55:55.140 from the owl of omens i did the 12 nights mule from the spreadsheet this year and it was awesome

00:56:02.420 i want to learn the obtuse calendar people are mentioning uh what's it called and how can i

00:56:09.300 learn it yeah this is this is a swan thing so swan can tell you about his uh

00:56:18.580 special time keeping device uh well no i i um one i'm i'm glad that people are doing the 12 nights

00:56:26.980 of yule i know that like a long time ago uh so true was kind of like we have mother's night

00:56:32.100 and we have 12th night then that's it it's like a ghost territory between the two and i i was

00:56:38.820 really bad this year i got ill in the beginning of yule so it kind of really threw me off um

00:56:47.700 i still had a good yule but it was just not where i wanted it to be um and i know that kind of

00:56:55.780 elsewhere i don't know nick if where you were throwing that up at but some of the uh the

00:57:01.780 writings of of yule i think i wrote up something a long time ago um yep they're all up on the

00:57:10.660 runestone.org blog yours and katie's write-ups plus um all the links to uh

00:57:20.020 founder mcnowlin's videos right a lot of yule posts in the blog yeah i'm really really um

00:57:27.860 glad that you know folks are picking up and learning and kind of substancing out from the

00:57:36.080 traditions that were kind of picked up um I think that the obtuse calendar that he's talking about

00:57:43.020 is um so back in the 90s I think a lot of folks were looking at timekeeping and calendars and

00:57:51.240 since this and yule being the turning of the year um and the usage of calendars i wouldn't actually

00:57:58.240 even call it a calendar i i think i i would more likely call it a day counter um it's a way to count

00:58:05.000 days with the moons it's like a solar lunar day counter um that kind of gets you more connected

00:58:14.320 to perhaps bloats in relation to the moon and that and the seasons itself but um that's the

00:58:21.600 we call it the iron mark because uh when i first made one it was on wood with an iron nail so the

00:58:29.040 iron nail moved um to mark the days or count the days and um i i would have to kind of get that out

00:58:39.680 um kind of as in an explanation i know i have like downloadable stuff and i that um um trent's uh go

00:58:49.220 the east's wife madison um made a really awesome printout one compared to my kind of janky um

00:58:58.000 excel block version um but the the key factor i think that's really important if people are

00:59:05.800 interested in timekeeping is uh mother's night is day zero and the the the 12 nights of yule are

00:59:12.600 the first 12 days of the of the calendar or the the day counter so um it really does incorporate

00:59:20.480 our beliefs and our system um in relation to so yeah and then you know the the idea the difference

00:59:31.620 between like uh 12 moons and 13 moons a lot of people don't know that they hear stuff about oh

00:59:38.080 they have 13 moons or they're thinking about the anglo-saxon calendar which is again extremely hard

00:59:44.380 to play there is not a bay there's not a day there's a spawn on the iron mark

00:59:50.840 i just want to make and i'm i joke i joke one of the things i joke about i'm not i'm not hip to

00:59:57.560 iron mark haven't gotten into it or whatever it's a neat thing to do but do keep in mind it's not

01:00:02.840 like an afa thing this isn't a piece of you know afa official stuff it's not heretical but it's

01:00:09.720 not something that you know the majority of the afa i think even really knows about but it is

01:00:16.040 something like spawn mentioned it's depends on what you want to do with it but there's a period

01:00:26.360 of time and you may have heard this in a number of places our ancestors reckoned time in a different

01:00:33.240 way than we do at present and you know western society has developed a certain way and it is

01:00:42.120 what it is and you look at the calendar it's cool for it to make sense but there's a lot of people

01:00:46.040 that uh you know get a closer uh closer feel for maybe how our ancestors reckoned time

01:00:52.760 there was a number of things like this and this is kind of an ingenious you know way to encapsulate

01:01:00.440 that uh that's fun was doing but you may also encounter and i haven't seen this in a long time

01:01:06.840 but like the austral alliance used to do this maybe they still do is the whole runic year thing

01:01:14.120 a lot of people have a lot of different ways that they want to

01:01:16.760 figure out time and i think that has a tendency to confuse people so that's why the afa

01:01:25.400 officially keeps to the the gregorian calendar that

01:01:29.400 you know everybody else uses because it's a lot less confusing but there's a number of these

01:01:33.400 that are kind of interesting and i know swan is really excited about the iron mark and a lot of

01:01:37.640 people that he's come up with and practiced with in his part of the world you know enjoy this and

01:01:45.400 thing it's pretty cool thing yeah it was kind of like born out of a need i know a lot of folks were

01:01:51.000 talking about uh there was a time where you like the germanic time reckoning the anglo-saxon time

01:01:57.480 reckoning uh there was even books that were coming out from certain groups like uh the the rien or

01:02:03.640 what are they reenactment or uh reconstructions the reconstructionists were coming you know they

01:02:10.280 were talking about how the anglo-saxons kept time and and they were kind of moving about with this

01:02:16.120 but um they were focusing on a lunar calendar and they were and it is very very confusing there's a

01:02:23.080 lot of stuff to it and they're um you know the idea of being able to see the first sliver of the

01:02:31.000 of the moons showing as being the first day counter and all that stuff but i think that it

01:02:36.920 started out as like a need and the biggest thing too was looking at runic calendars the iron mark

01:02:42.680 is just a runic calendar without the rooms it was um the the idea was to create something that gave

01:02:50.680 people an ability to kind of count days and and build them around holy tides in our religion

01:02:58.680 um and kind of see oh the moon and our holy tides and all of these things are lining up

01:03:04.680 um and then to you know utilizing a lot of the the uh like i know that early house the true even

01:03:11.480 the australia folk assembly had names like frost moon and um uh you know different things like that

01:03:19.480 well the the iron mark i got a chance to kind of put in modern house of true folk assembly holy

01:03:28.120 tides so like austera month is the same as the holy tide like the the holy tide always takes place

01:03:36.520 in that month so um which was different in some of the older alsatru like kind of days of reckoning

01:03:43.560 or calendars i think they were doing like lenting month or something from the german kind of farming

01:03:50.440 calendars but yeah it's just it's a day counter um and it's kind of an interesting project for

01:03:55.800 anyone i i know that yeah like in my neck of the woods here a lot of the folks that

01:03:59.880 are connected to me all have iron marks and we just kind of tally days and do the moon

01:04:07.400 reckoning on the um third day of yule and things like that so it's it depends on if you want to

01:04:14.680 take it there i think the biggest thing is the austral folk assembly doesn't and shouldn't be

01:04:20.520 alien it's so important that and again this comes from a need from before i joined the

01:04:27.880 ostrich folks assembly and a lot of people were again wanting to do time reckoning but

01:04:32.840 some of those people like many things want to do things because they're different edgy alternative

01:04:41.720 and i think that it's important that we also not try to go down that road for that reason

01:04:48.360 um but instead maybe perhaps in an interest of um history or really what i prefer is because

01:04:58.440 it's a great way to calculate days of the year without um technology that was kind of

01:05:05.480 my whole take on it was it's a great survival day counter um but outside of that i mean we

01:05:13.800 don't want to be foreign we don't want to be alien we don't want to have you know uh our own calendar

01:05:20.640 that that to the point where it's like we we become uh foreigners amongst our own folk in a

01:05:31.460 lot of ways and i think that's an important thing that we you know uh just like with the

01:05:35.200 reconstructionists that i was talking about earlier and it's like you get to a point where

01:05:39.340 if you start honoring the gods and you're dressing up like you're at a ren fair or at a historical

01:05:44.860 um you know gathering or what have you you start to separate from the reality of we are a religion

01:05:56.220 we believe the gods are real and and are a part of our lives even when we're not dressed up like

01:06:02.380 you know vikings or shoulder pelts or whatever anybody's doing and so there's a huge

01:06:08.060 need i think for these things to remain obscure or or obtuse i can't remember what he said but um

01:06:18.540 to remain as kind of a more in the pet project field than it is in the uh definitive sense the

01:06:27.340 gregorian calendar everyone uses it you could even speak to someone who lives in china and use the

01:06:32.940 the Gregorian calendar, they're going to understand, you know, what you're, what you're

01:06:38.000 doing, you know, um, BC, um, and AD and all that stuff. You know, I'm still a proponent

01:06:45.760 of the usage of that. I, I'm not a big common era before common era, none of that stuff.

01:06:51.600 I mean, the, the, the construction of that calendar is not simply Christianity, but a

01:06:57.560 layering of of you know a civilization's attempt to keep time reckoning um but yeah so anybody

01:07:08.520 that's interested in that stuff like reach out to me or send me an email um i'll fill you in

01:07:16.040 on some of that stuff or just if you're willing to go down that rabbit hole look up runic calendars

01:07:21.300 they're really really interesting i the time reckoning of our ancestors in the late nordic

01:07:26.540 period when christianity when these poems were being um you know written down uh the usage of

01:07:33.420 runic calendars was still being used and i just find that infinitely fascinating so

01:07:42.860 excellent um from gothe east i'll tell you go the end witness fun what are some of your goals for

01:07:52.460 for 2025.

01:07:55.260 Svon, what goals do you have for 2025 personally

01:07:59.020 and what AFA goals do you have for 2025?

01:08:02.240 Not sure which way he wanted to go, but we're going to do both.

01:08:06.240 We give value to our listeners.

01:08:11.220 Wow.

01:08:12.160 Yeah, and I know with all of this stuff going on,

01:08:14.440 I haven't really given it like a huge ton of thought.

01:08:17.000 But I think organizationally, I would like to try to organize folks in Virginia.

01:08:28.120 I think I would like to try to find someone who is willing and wanting to volunteer folk building in Virginia and kind of working with them to get my state back up and running.

01:08:40.480 i would really love for anyone that's in virginia listening to this that might

01:08:47.020 you know want to step up and start organizing some moots and and meetups and gatherings um

01:08:53.180 to to get that going again um simply because i think it's again with my focus going down to

01:09:01.840 north carolina to the hoff um the momentum i would like to pick up the momentum again

01:09:08.540 up here in virginia uh personally uh yeah i mean i kind of have the basic ones like i want to get

01:09:18.380 stronger i want to get you know uh in better shape i think that's a constant uh it's just

01:09:26.860 um and i think i have the strength part kind of going in a good direction but i want to look

01:09:32.380 i want to get to a more aesthetic level where i want to be um outside of that i mean

01:09:38.540 um I can't really think of anything uh because everything's been so well like everything has

01:09:48.000 been so well in with my kids and my wife and our businesses and our our properties and what have

01:09:56.140 you uh I'm I'm I'm very thankful so I I think I just want to maybe get better sleep and get

01:10:06.000 more fit.

01:10:10.620 That's kind of a lame answer.

01:10:13.180 Ah.

01:10:15.400 Truth is a virtue.

01:10:16.560 If it's an honest answer, then that counts.

01:10:24.220 I overthink questions.

01:10:25.800 I'm one of those people, if you're like, Matt, watch

01:10:27.560 top five movies.

01:10:30.060 I'll spend an hour

01:10:31.080 critically examining my choices

01:10:34.080 is to maybe that's six it's kind of on the bubble i i'm that guy so trying not to do that um

01:10:46.080 afa goals in 2025 as i mentioned earlier and it it's not sexy but paying paying off

01:10:56.800 your top is huge that's a loan that the afa is no longer responsible for

01:11:04.640 and that moves us on to the next steps towards getting lord frayer a hoff which we are very

01:11:12.000 committed to doing and you know obviously it's been far too long and uh you know he has gone

01:11:20.880 far too long without hoffs um but it's something that we've wanted for him and for our members in

01:11:28.880 the area for a very long time so i want to move closer to that and i'm not making guarantees on

01:11:35.120 getting that or even you know what that process looks like because there's a couple other goals

01:11:39.680 we've got to get to to get there but the first and foremost one is making good on the debt

01:11:44.480 we have for his father's off and uh we look like we're well on the way to doing that i also

01:11:52.240 definitely in 2025 i want to get some people actually moved to to jackson county

01:11:59.760 tennessee to move sigerheim forward that's the plan i would like to do it um

01:12:06.480 um I am all in I'm absolutely gonna do it some people besides Nick some people besides Nick and

01:12:15.360 so that's so we're so rudely interrupted but our producer Nick like the moment that was

01:12:25.920 officially announced that that was going to be a thing we are getting land they're going to build

01:12:30.300 tears off there and going to build our capital there and coalesce a community in that county

01:12:35.700 there uh nick packed up what he had made the necessary adjustments to his life and went down

01:12:43.980 there uh went down there on faith and has been down there for years making this happen for us

01:12:49.320 and tending those grounds and establishing that beachhead there for us so we are very very

01:12:56.280 thankful we need to get some more people down there to do that i'm gonna get there as soon as

01:13:01.520 i can if i was single i'd be down there right now but i did promise my wife that we were gonna wait

01:13:07.040 till there was you know at least another family down there she's already picked up her life and

01:13:12.640 moved for me with the afa once and i'm very thankful for that and i want to make sure

01:13:19.680 i want to make sure a couple of things before i get down there but i'm planning on it we're

01:13:23.120 moving towards it we're absolutely ready and we're waiting on a couple of other families that

01:13:27.760 we got lined up that are going to do it with us but i want to get some people moved into that

01:13:32.000 county in 2025 and i think that can absolutely happen if we put our minds together there's a

01:13:49.920 number of kind of nebulous things that i want to work on this year there's a lot of

01:13:53.520 of internally a lot of focus things i want to do on trying to get some

01:13:59.400 get some growth in particular areas i want to continue the idea of getting our membership

01:14:06.180 growth specifically around our existent hoffs and in a couple of key locations to

01:14:12.220 prep us for future hoffs a lot of that's internal stuff that again is not necessarily

01:14:17.920 fun to make a poster about but it does get us to where we're going so there's a lot of

01:14:22.420 internal work we're doing on that. We have a really exciting group of Gothar students

01:14:28.580 that are starting today their journey towards ordination as Gothar of the Astro Folk Assembly,

01:14:37.980 and I'm very excited about that. We've got kind of a very revamped program that we're

01:14:43.840 very excited about right now. We're working through on it. As far as personal stuff, so the

01:14:57.020 other thing that I'm curious the shape it's going to take, we're going to be putting in a lot of

01:15:02.820 work this year on AFA history stuff. We're already hard at work at that, but I want that to take a

01:15:08.020 bit more solid form this year and working on it as far as personal things

01:15:18.980 again the fun thing is to have these huge benchmark like i will accomplish this thing by this date

01:15:24.260 that's awesome if i had a bunch of those i would i want to really focus and continue and i've been

01:15:29.140 doing it a lot this year but i feel like i'm making good progress on my linguistic studies

01:15:35.300 in icelandic and old norse to continue to tighten that up does not come natural for me so it takes

01:15:42.260 a lot but i feel like i'm making really good progress and i have in the past little bit um

01:15:49.540 other personal goals um i have been

01:15:55.940 so i got my black belt in danzanru uh jujitsu this last year and i've been working a lot in the dojo

01:16:05.300 with teaching stuff in this year i'd like to be able to teach some more classes and work on my

01:16:11.300 ability to instruct and teach different folks a lot of the time i am you know i just got my

01:16:19.140 black belt so i'm you know the juniorist of the black belts on the mat uh this year i'd like to

01:16:25.860 like to work on really shoring up my ability to teach to other folks it may not make sense those

01:16:32.260 you practice the martial arts would realize what i'm saying though it's different learning how to

01:16:38.820 teach somebody else with different level of strength different size different shape different

01:16:45.620 capabilities how to do some things and learning that makes you learn the arts in a little bit

01:16:50.500 different way sweetheart but that's what i've got for right now um what's our next deal here uh

01:17:03.380 so next question have you guys heard the saying lefty pagans use coming out of the broom closet

01:17:13.540 uh more like can't come out of mom's basement uh when they decide to no longer want to keep

01:17:19.220 their paganism secret and start coming out to their friends and family that they're pagan

01:17:23.860 very fitting for those types it's as if they feel ashamed of their own religion

01:17:31.620 i mean they seem very comfortable coming out of other closets

01:17:40.260 yeah it's cringy and those people are gross but truth is one of our virtues

01:17:46.580 a lot of people listening to this podcast right now that have the same problem

01:17:52.660 and i think we need to take a long hard look at that if we're laughing at you know these lefty

01:17:58.900 adorners of couches and

01:18:04.180 proud buster outers of

01:18:11.700 deviant closets um

01:18:15.700 we need to take a long hard look at those among us who are not comfortable being open with friends

01:18:23.280 family co-workers acquaintances about our faith and i think that sometimes it becomes reflexive

01:18:33.240 you know sometimes it's out of genuine cowardice and those people need to fix themselves

01:18:37.460 sometimes it's out of uh so much to explain it's not worth it i don't want to get into it so you

01:18:46.620 don't but every time that you don't that is a missed opportunity for our gods for our faith

01:18:54.100 for the advancement of what we're doing and we're all guilty of that shoot i'm guilty of that and

01:19:00.440 that's something that i'd like to get better at there's plenty of opportunity and we let them

01:19:04.560 pass by often unintentionally just because we're in a hurry or it just doesn't seem it's not the

01:19:09.800 time and place I'll talk about it later there's a big difference between like being obnoxious and

01:19:17.120 harassing people with it we've all seen that you know we've certainly seen that with other faiths

01:19:24.360 there's a big difference between that and

01:19:26.640 joyously being proud of something that you care about and sharing that and

01:19:33.540 And, you know, there's plenty of times that it's completely appropriate to share your faith and be really open with who you are and what you believe in.

01:19:43.060 And I think all too often we don't take advantage of those and we really should.

01:19:46.880 So that's something for us all to keep in mind in 2025 is to, you know, if you're scared of it, then, you know, man up, stand up for what you believe in, take a stand for the gods.

01:19:59.180 And if you're lazy or you're too busy or whatever your other problem is, be aware of it and consciously try to work towards it.

01:20:08.180 Like I said earlier in the broadcast, the reason so many of our folk have not come home is, honestly, to many of them, it just doesn't occur to them that it's a thing.

01:20:19.180 When I found the AFA, the AFA had been around for, I don't know, five or six years in its current form.

01:20:31.640 Modern Ausitru had been practiced for decades longer than that, and I had no idea.

01:20:37.280 I thought it was the only, you know, oddball that was even trying to do something like this,

01:20:41.840 and it was, you know, just some crazy thing that I was doing, but it was important and it needed to,

01:20:47.140 And then lo and behold, the Astro Folk Assembly has been doing that and putting in the work.

01:20:52.500 And there's, I mean, there are literally millions of us that have no idea this exists.

01:20:59.600 And we'd love to show it to them and we'd love to bring them home.

01:21:02.960 So that's how we do that.

01:21:05.800 Swan, do you have any comments about coming out of the broom closet?

01:21:10.260 it well one thing i would say um is in that just thinking about the way they word that

01:21:20.580 um it automatically puts them in kind of juxtaposition to uh some sort of framework

01:21:28.820 uh society or uh i i the way that they view society so now uh they're coming out against

01:21:36.900 the norm and we just spoke and i just said you know the the idea is that um ausitru is

01:21:46.020 innate in the folk and so we are not contrarian we are not um alien and that i've noticed and kind

01:21:56.420 of what also coinciding with what's being talked about now is like this time of year for me i have

01:22:01.460 a ton of christian um clients and they're asking me you know how's how's your christmas going

01:22:09.140 and i'm telling them uh my yule is going great i celebrate yule and um it's 12 days long and i i've

01:22:17.060 just been having a chance to kind of express to people and when i explain things to them about it

01:22:24.260 they feel not like a oh that's so strange instead they're like no wow okay like the mistletoe

01:22:31.460 over the the threshold of the door and uh the burning of the yule log and yuletide and um

01:22:39.460 just again getting together and you know holding the light and and all of that stuff they they

01:22:45.540 don't feel that it's um strange or alien um they they they see it in the in in the verbiage y'all

01:22:56.580 right down to the christmas tree and the decorations of the trees so i feel like

01:23:02.260 explaining asa through to fellow folk people does not garner a lot of the um

01:23:11.940 i don't know the contrarian edginess that perhaps these people might be getting out of uh

01:23:18.180 you know i i dance naked to the egyptian gods that stuff is the equivalent of

01:23:26.820 at the bus station put tapping your foot strange under the bathroom stall that's a strange

01:23:36.260 i guess dog whistle to signal that they're into degenerate stuff

01:23:42.660 when those people want to be edgy about talking about their

01:23:49.220 lefty stuff that they want to associate with paganism

01:23:54.260 um but a big um that speaks well of you spawn that you don't get the uh

01:24:04.020 the secret gay like mating call who's on first like rituals to try to signal to other people

01:24:12.100 that that's what you're what you're into um yeah i didn't even know that was a thing

01:24:16.820 just just beware um yeah now i need to think back has anybody i haven't okay i have encountered

01:24:29.140 folks that misread that sign language because they didn't know it was a thing and they had

01:24:36.340 some of that behavior thrust upon them pun intended in not great ways um yeah no so i

01:24:45.140 i don't want to go too far down that but yeah i had to the opportunity was there i had to i'm sorry

01:24:50.660 but yeah the equivalency of that shock value i was gonna say it's a virtue signal of being

01:24:56.340 shocking and being odd and signaling to other people that are socially non-traditional like

01:25:05.940 hey come over here where the into the dark corners of the world and that's not what we're trying to

01:25:12.100 do um there's a huge huge difference between

01:25:25.220 it's all in how you say things if you are proud of this and that shows

01:25:31.300 that's and again nothing is 100 but that's genuinely in my experience very well received

01:25:37.220 and then there's experience i've heard from everybody else that i know and that's one of

01:25:42.740 the benefits of being in my position and doing this for a long time i get a really broad cross

01:25:49.060 section of our folk that i get to hear their experiences you know all different ages all

01:25:54.980 different backgrounds you know work experience life experience uh all different you know many

01:26:02.660 different nations all different states the united states just a lot of different things

01:26:08.260 no if people ask like yule what what's that you mean y'all don't like jesus oh no yeah no we

01:26:15.620 celebrate yule that's we're out my family's also true and we're really excited because we got the

01:26:20.740 12 days of yule coming up and oh wow you know what's that about well you know if you look

01:26:26.820 around all this christmas stuff that is so cool that originally comes from europe gods that we had

01:26:34.340 before christianity came to europe and that and it leads to something if you're excited about it

01:26:40.260 very often they may or may not be super interested but it's never a negative thing but um well i

01:26:47.540 it's it's just something that me and my family do and you're acting if you act like you're doing

01:26:53.300 something wrong people are going to assume you're doing something wrong if you're proud and excited

01:26:59.300 about something that you're doing that's contagious and all too often we let our body language or

01:27:08.740 whatever internal hesitancy we have sabotage our opportunity to speak to people about

01:27:16.020 something that we care about so um and also i just want to clarify wolf throne that wasn't uh

01:27:23.300 My answer to the question wasn't aimed at you. I don't suppose that you are uncomfortable talking about your faith, but I wanted to say to the audience or anybody else out there that might not be. And again, there's a lot of reasons. Some people are genuinely too afraid to, but there's other people that just don't, don't know how to it.

01:27:40.100 You know, oftentimes with this, you think there's got to be a lot of back explanation and like, all right, hold on, let me.

01:27:48.820 And it's this big chore. Don't make it that way. It doesn't have to be and it shouldn't be.

01:27:55.160 And we all could do, you know, I say we all, maybe not you, maybe there's some out there that are awesome with it.

01:27:59.820 Myself and many others could do better at taking those opportunities and seizing those when they come about.

01:28:11.060 so what else we got here

01:28:19.860 oh i should have mentioned this i didn't take the opportunity uh pretend this is back when

01:28:23.940 we were talking about swan's uh iron mark um calendar if you don't have a gregorian calendar

01:28:32.660 for 2025 you should take advantage and get yourself the amsa is 2025 calendar we got a few

01:28:41.380 left folks so get yours while the getting is good um nick posted the link you can get them at the

01:28:47.140 store at runestone.org uh they're beautiful uh go to east lovely wife madison put a lot of work

01:28:55.220 into making those pretty for us they're neat it's nice to have calendar it's nice to be able to look

01:29:00.420 at something see what day it is and it goes to a good cause so i'd encourage you to go and get

01:29:05.060 yours today um oh so back to the text and croatian war master i should have asked this while we were

01:29:13.940 still reading the text i'm sorry it took a little bit but is this the irsa from the saga of prolifer

01:29:21.380 cracky uh yeah i don't think so i um i'm almost positive that is not the case because irsa in

01:29:32.660 rolf cracky's saga um is uh her lineage is explained and unless the character itself is

01:29:46.340 kind of used in two separate stories but if we're talking about them being the same person then i

01:29:54.820 don't think that's the case i don't think that that is but she is a semi-legendary uh figure

01:30:05.460 in the stories so she could be utilized in both but if you're going off of her off crockies

01:30:12.740 then no this is not the same one because the i i forgot the lineage um and also you know the

01:30:21.220 in relation to half dane um and who avenges um the king's slayer yeah yeah it's like again it's

01:30:32.020 i don't think it's the same or meant to be the same one but perhaps seen as separate but i guess

01:30:38.980 Yes, it could be character wise, but not like historically based on the evidence of both stories and the events that they give.

01:30:51.340 All right.

01:30:54.360 So speaking of lefties, I had a universalist heathen argue with me that Alcetru cannot be a tribal slash ethnic faith because it has a broken lineage.

01:31:07.600 in their mind in in their mind also true is a dead religion and therefore can be practiced by anyone

01:31:14.860 today without a true authority what would you say to this argument i told them that also true has a

01:31:21.940 55-year lineage through steven mcnellen and the astro folk assembly um so

01:31:28.720 i mean first those people are wrong and confused and there's a couple of i guess stand out

01:31:40.840 points of confusion involved in that um and you can tell them now we have a 56 year tradition

01:31:50.140 through Steve McNally um the argument doesn't make sense it only makes sense if your religion

01:32:07.480 is based on a savior like your connection to like the the broken chain idea of the lineage

01:32:18.180 i understand that that is the big point or one of the major points of contention in different

01:32:26.260 branches of islam is what is the authentic islam because it has to come through the you know

01:32:34.100 rightful heir to uh to muhammad and i like that makes sense in their you know how they conceive

01:32:42.740 their faith um christianity is about the connection to christ but it's a universalist faith so that's

01:32:56.820 really different um hello so

01:33:04.020 yeah this this idea about lineage is silly why would one think that a tribal or ethnic faith would

01:33:19.780 if the lineage is broken that makes sense like i i again i can't follow the logic you're

01:33:27.940 that's silly and that's just haters that want to be critical of something and i'm curious what

01:33:36.640 their alternative that they want to uh suggest that people spend their time doing is also true

01:33:44.360 is about our connection to the gods of our folk and as long as our folk exist our gods exist and

01:33:51.340 And it's okay. And our gods are our gods. Our gods exist as our gods. Our gods exist independently, but they are ours by virtue of us being the people that they created with, have been with, shaped, structured, and have watched over.

01:34:12.220 because our ancestors broke faith with them doesn't like make them disappear or

01:34:20.280 whatever that that logically doesn't follow and it certainly doesn't logically follow that

01:34:26.720 random unconnected groups of people can at will you know like it's up for grabs to them

01:34:35.180 because there's not a steady line of practice that connects us with with the archaic period

01:34:41.660 of alsatru that's some kind of an artificial i i don't know who the scholar of religion

01:34:49.420 that decreed that is a law of any religion that that's how it works like somebody just made that

01:34:55.980 up there's certainly no tenant in alsatru that says it has to be directly um through

01:35:03.500 the lineage of a certain gothic line and if that line's broken it can't be reforged that doesn't

01:35:11.660 like there's that is a very bold assertion that has no

01:35:18.680 no precedent no tradition no place within our faith and it and it really never has and it kind

01:35:26.500 of defies defies logic and and i think that it's trying to impose that's really cool ups hey i'm

01:35:35.620 show push them on so it's it's something that i yeah that's something that's been sorry my daughter

01:35:45.940 distracted me a little bit but it's overlaying an artificial pair like a foreign paradigm

01:35:52.340 on our faith that's really not

01:35:54.260 that's not how alstra true works now lineage is important and a lineage of practice is important

01:36:05.620 as you point out in your question it is very meaningful that we have the 56 year old lineage

01:36:14.020 of the time in which steve made that first connection with the all-father

01:36:20.140 and that's brought us where we are that's extremely important and our gothar trace their

01:36:27.980 lineage back to that point and that's something we take a lot of pride in is extremely important

01:36:34.220 but as long as our people exist if you found yourself you know cryogenically frozen and

01:36:43.100 thawed out in some distant time or some distant place to where there was no one else practicing

01:36:48.780 house a truth it is still just as relevant to you just as accessible to you and just as much

01:36:55.880 your birthright to re-engage with that connection or not and that's one of the beautiful things

01:37:04.860 about ethnic faiths it is inherent in your blood it's inherent in the very makeup of your being

01:37:11.960 that that is your birthright, that is your odal faith that you can reconnect with.

01:37:20.720 Our gods have never abandoned us.

01:37:23.720 Our ancestors abandoned them, unfortunately.

01:37:27.300 But we are very blessed that we have reforged that connection

01:37:32.200 and are carrying it through in this day and age.

01:37:35.500 And rando scholars or practitioners of other faiths

01:37:40.960 don't get to dictate to us the terms of our relationship

01:37:44.640 with the Iser or its validity.

01:37:47.800 That's for the Iser, first and foremost,

01:37:50.880 and secondly, for us that actually practice this faith

01:37:53.760 to work out and to build, to establish, and to nurture.

01:37:59.260 Do you have any thoughts on that, Swan?

01:38:01.280 Yeah, Aub actually beat me to it.

01:38:03.300 I was gonna say, I mean, this is kind of a redundant remark,

01:38:08.180 But if you bring out the sacred cows to these kind of people and ask them, is the broken lineage of red people or yellow people or brown people up for grabs the moment that it's broken by whatever conceptualization?

01:38:34.620 And Alm brought it up, you know, when you try to bring up the Native Americans, I mean, first of all, I would argue that the Native American traditions are very broken, and they have been.

01:38:44.080 um it would be very akin to the idea that if there was a perhaps a group of Native Americans

01:38:52.820 who tried to like create an organized religious order um that encompassed the traditions of all

01:39:04.000 the Native people of the Americas or let's say just the North Americas to keep it more realistic

01:39:10.120 but their argument would then be that no uh anybody should be able to practice in this

01:39:17.480 religion and if these native americans say no it's just for native americans um you know

01:39:24.280 that they're wrong but they won't ever say that because again those are their sacred cows

01:39:29.000 it only applies to europeans but the the parallel is very similar we have

01:39:34.120 have Ausatru was not named Ausatru, but was practiced by the majority of Europe, I would

01:39:42.480 argue, the potato part of Europe. And it had various forms and, you know, survives in the

01:39:51.200 days of our weeks here in English, all the way up to into Scandinavia and through Germany and

01:39:57.680 and uh even around the baltic seas so we have all these different groups of people unorganized and

01:40:05.280 then their traditions exist but are then put into cultural context there so they're stopped being

01:40:12.880 religious because of christianity but they're kept in the culture in dances in um ceremonies

01:40:21.680 in holy tides and then it re-emerges back up becomes organized and it's it is for the people

01:40:29.440 of europe the same could be said about the natives there's all these different groups of people

01:40:34.320 perhaps they have some interlinking i'm not a scholar on native american lore but they're

01:40:42.480 scattered they're not organized they get suppressed because of christianity but it still

01:40:49.120 survives in dances and ceremonies and so on and then they organize and create a native american

01:40:56.960 church they would never dare say oh the lineage was broken it's open to everyone because again

01:41:06.080 that's cultural appropriation according to their their uh you know post-modern marxist dictums um

01:41:15.120 so you know that's kind of a ridiculous one and i always kind of bring that up

01:41:20.800 would you say the same about like the native american faith and generally they say oh they

01:41:26.960 didn't have one singular faith i mean neither did europeans but even within the people that honored

01:41:32.720 the gods the icier there were differences in the way that they did it um so i think that that that

01:41:41.280 idea of broken lineage if we're talking about it say not from a a messiahic way that like you were

01:41:48.160 saying i was here ago but let's just say from a cultural way um then that makes it even easier

01:41:53.040 to apply it to other peoples that they would never dare say and that kind of again gets them

01:41:59.600 into the a follow-up comment is that when you try to bring it up to native americans

01:42:07.520 And they're like, no, no, no, this is different because of this broken lineage argument.

01:42:14.200 And I think that there probably was one Native American faith at some point, or at least a root faith that they're related to, just like there was one European faith at one point.

01:42:27.540 There was a point of origin, and then there's a point of diversion where it takes many different forms as people migrate and time goes on.

01:42:34.980 But it's the argument, the argument's just silly if you really believe in the gods.

01:42:46.400 what i most often hear that from and i think it comes from a number of different quarters

01:42:53.720 but sometimes it comes from circles of people that politically are you know aligned with many

01:43:01.500 of us in a lot of ways but they don't really have faith so they want to pick one that's cool like

01:43:07.520 what faith should white people have well let's see let's look at the cards here like wow russian

01:43:12.820 orthodox looks cool they've got like dripping gold stuff that looks cool they they're super trad

01:43:18.500 not catholicism that would be awesome but no they're super woke now so let's find this and

01:43:24.500 it's this let's choose one because it looks cool or because we like the imagery or whatever

01:43:33.780 but when you're evaluating your gods they're they're real or they're not and if they are real

01:43:40.660 and they are sentient beings that are aware of of things what would prevent you from

01:43:50.580 re-establishing your connection with them and reforging something that's broken um yeah that

01:43:59.500 their theories don't matter i guess that it it's always interesting to wonder

01:44:07.840 you know how to win an argument with them but

01:44:10.920 the I don't the longer that I do this the less I care about that because it's not about

01:44:24.700 argumentation we have a wonderful relationship with our gods we receive their blessings

01:44:31.780 constantly. We make offerings to them all of the time. The truth of Ausatru and its efficacy and

01:44:46.200 its approval by the Aesir is manifest in every aspect of my life and the life of my family and

01:44:54.140 the life of my friends. What some internet nerd tells me you can and can't do with religion

01:45:01.680 doesn't matter because i'm

01:45:07.840 living my life in the light of the icer and engulfed in decades worth of actual practice of

01:45:17.360 aussitry so i mean they're wrong yes you can look at the afa we're currently doing it

01:45:27.200 And I'm curious what the folks that make that suggestion, I'm curious about their religious practice and the effects that they feel of it in their life and the lives of their family.

01:45:39.960 And I can't speak to that. Maybe it's awesome. I think a lot of the time it's not.

01:45:49.220 A couple more questions here.

01:45:51.980 hmm matt and svan i have often heard white nationalists refer to our people

01:46:00.420 as the christian race are you worried that if white people take back control over our countries

01:46:07.380 that there will be a big emphasis on christianity and that also true and pre-christian european

01:46:13.160 religions will become oppressed as it was in medieval times while i want our people to win

01:46:18.840 this is often something that I worry about. What are your thoughts on the matter? Svon,

01:46:24.300 what are your thoughts? Well, the Christian race, I think one of the things I've been noticing,

01:46:31.820 perhaps just talking to people debating on things is the clear sense that there's this rejection

01:46:40.600 that Christianity is, oh, it's not a Judaic religion. It's not a Hebrew religion. It's not

01:46:46.520 an Israelite religion, even though that that's all talked about in the Bible, um, is that,

01:46:52.160 you know, these people rejected the covenant and these people accepted it. Um, though these people

01:47:00.640 that accepted this new covenant are, you know, just a lot of different people, um, that makes

01:47:07.860 us the new inheritors, the new chosen ones. Um, and so again, there's all of this kind of,

01:47:14.120 postulating that I see, whether it's, you know, black people saying they're the real Jews and

01:47:21.820 the real Israelites and the real chosen ones and the real inheritors of Yahweh, or it's just

01:47:27.400 Christians in general that are Europeans saying that as well. It comes down to, yeah, they're

01:47:33.760 trying to, they're attempting, because it's not true, but they're attempting to make that parallel

01:47:40.220 between us as a people and their religion and that those two are the same they're the same and you

01:47:46.880 can't think of it any other way um and it's again it's just an attempt because the reality is so

01:47:53.340 different and anyone who reads it who looks into it who understands it any european who

01:48:00.560 doesn't just take guidance from you know the the cathedral or the priest or or wherever they they

01:48:08.860 go and they just they look around and see christianity as a reflection of europeanism

01:48:14.620 you know if they don't ex if they don't look any deeper that's what they're going to believe

01:48:19.980 um and that's really what they want but for those that do look into it it becomes a point where

01:48:26.060 wait a minute you know these are these people from this place there's no separation of it um i had

01:48:33.340 this conversation over yule uh one of my um one of my clients i had said you know that the word hell

01:48:42.140 and the word heaven don't exist in the bible and he's like i've read like a bunch of different

01:48:46.460 translations it's in the bible and i was like no those are germanic words and they didn't exist in

01:48:53.100 like the bible until it was translated into germanic languages and he had no idea that heaven

01:49:02.220 was a germanic word and i was like you know is if you look deeper into these things you will find

01:49:10.540 the foreignness of this religion becomes more and more apparent the deeper and and and further back

01:49:17.020 you go and then just the concepts that are so blatantly non-european one of them being the

01:49:24.300 messiah like ideology the idea of a messiah um so you know that yeah they're they're i think

01:49:34.300 their attempt is there and i think that if they they could have some success i don't agree and

01:49:39.980 i think i laugh but again there are a lot of folks out there who don't look deeper into things don't

01:49:48.060 you know they just take it at face value so these people are again trying to forge that

01:49:53.420 uh the the christian race the new chosen the new chosen knights of yahweh um and i've seen

01:50:03.020 it just kind of popping up but ultimately you know it comes down to like say for instance here in

01:50:11.580 america uh whether protestant or catholic the general consensus is that freedom of religion

01:50:18.540 is a is a portent tenant that was laid down by the forefathers of america and a lot of them kind of

01:50:26.460 relent to that um because ultimately to say contrary would make them very much like a lot

01:50:32.940 of the people they don't like oh the muslims are coming here and they want to make sharia law

01:50:38.780 because they don't respect our constitution um and so in order for them to conceptualize like

01:50:45.820 that if the christian race had political power would it allow the freedom of other religions

01:50:56.620 on top of that too you know there's that deep visceral disconnect with the idea that you know

01:51:02.700 looking around and seeing um they're very very pro-european they're pro whatever country they're

01:51:09.100 from and they look back and they see their ancestors doing things and not worshiping

01:51:14.860 jesus and not doing christian things and they they have this moment where either they go oh they were

01:51:20.380 fooled or they end up even hating their own they they if you i i'm a believer that if you dig deep

01:51:28.140 enough you can find where christianity actually creates a schism in racial identity amongst

01:51:34.300 europeans and and and they bury it deep but if you dig deep enough and you kind of expose it

01:51:40.540 eventually they get to the point where again they your your race your ethnicity none of that matters

01:51:48.300 and um and you know when you break them to that point they suddenly kind of have that jarring

01:51:53.740 disconnect um you know and then they're left kind of back in the loop and then they have to kind of

01:51:59.740 cover it up again and feel better about themselves over time um no i think ultimately the the better

01:52:07.820 Another way to think of it is with the rise of the and the reclamation of identity. If Christians could understand that identity and our ancestral religion are unified, perhaps they could find a place of connection.

01:52:34.820 Because if they hurt the people that honor the ancestral faith, they are in turn attacking

01:52:41.760 themselves. But again, how far that goes, I think on a broad level, Christianity won't

01:52:49.920 do that if it adopts an understanding about identity. Certain groups, certain people,

01:52:58.120 and certainly anonymous crusader warrior christian you know neckbeards um will say otherwise oh we're

01:53:06.760 gonna purge the pagans we're gonna do this we're gonna do that i think that that's a lot of talk

01:53:13.800 overall i mean the point is is that if we can remind them that we are them in the truest form

01:53:24.200 um and that by attacking us they are in essence proclaiming themselves to be alien um and reminding

01:53:32.060 them of that they're trying to disillusion themselves they're saying no if i attack the

01:53:36.680 pagans i am not attacking myself i am not because i'm of the christian race it's like a new race

01:53:43.800 um but i don't know i don't believe that it would be so far as to that uh i know we look at poland

01:53:51.120 and hungary and even parts of ukraine where they were uh erecting um god poles and things and then

01:53:58.460 they were being cut down i understand that that's going to be a thing but i feel more in the west

01:54:05.380 as the identity there's enough of a platform of people who are non-religious but want their

01:54:14.360 national identity they want france back they want england back they want england to be english

01:54:19.560 et cetera et cetera you've got enough secular people enough christians and what we need more

01:54:26.260 of is that the ancestral folk religion folks the ausenture people kind of coming up and stepping

01:54:33.080 onto that platform and being present so that way we can all kind of move forward towards that goal

01:54:39.340 but i don't think it would it would turn around and and go towards eradication or so

01:54:46.380 no i don't worry about that as the short answer stop worrying about stuff

01:54:55.120 what all of the other things that you and everybody else this is not aimed at you there's

01:55:03.360 tons of us that get in the spot so i'm speaking to the audience here

01:55:07.420 all the other things that you're fussy about

01:55:11.700 man that's the least of my worries is that our folks start getting significant influence in

01:55:19.680 places and you know these we are so far from that being our reality that movement towards

01:55:29.300 that is awesome no i don't worry about that we take life as it comes but i don't think that's

01:55:35.240 real i mean that's not a real thing we're facing and as many you know most of the people that say

01:55:42.520 that are also the adorners of couches and they're not doing anything they haven't moved anything

01:55:47.560 forward they're sitting around fantasizing about something that doesn't exist isn't happening

01:55:53.160 but they're furiously typing it on their phone to virtue signal to their buddies that's not real

01:56:00.760 we're facing what is real and we are so far out of that being a real thing

01:56:06.560 there are so many steps between having white people controlled countries to where we need

01:56:16.280 to worry about them establishing theocratic rule that's christian

01:56:22.100 that's i think that's a waste of time to worry about that's not a real thing and as some of the

01:56:30.700 commenters said. Now, most white people are atheists, unfortunately. And honestly, most

01:56:37.360 people that say the stuff you're talking about are atheists too. Yes, our most, you know,

01:56:45.040 our colonial ancestors, they did not realize there was other options besides Jesus for

01:56:52.540 white people. They didn't have the access to information that all of us have today to

01:56:58.760 realize the complete absurdity of that statement they didn't understand a lot of those things

01:57:07.640 certainly not in the way that we do so i'm sure that many of them probably did conceive of

01:57:12.840 europeans as the christian race but they were wrong um any understanding i mean these are

01:57:23.320 it's the same people so i this was a thing in medieval people conceived of mixed-race people

01:57:32.680 as being literally like those people from the old star trek that there's a line down the center of

01:57:37.720 their body and half of it's black and half of it's white it's funny because they talk about in a

01:57:43.800 uh old edition of um Parzival um at the beginning there's a guy that you know was like half Moorish

01:57:55.440 and half European because they didn't know how to draw that they drew him literally has split

01:58:02.460 down the middle black and white they have no concept of the Jews being a Semitic race of

01:58:10.620 people and not you know it's just it that's a silly argument to all of a sudden put our blinders on

01:58:19.200 and and pretend we don't know things that we know to be true no the Christian race if there were a

01:58:25.320 Christian race would be the race of Christ which is Hebrew which is Semitic which is kind of the

01:58:34.680 point in their scriptures they talk about that he's of the house of David that's what makes

01:58:38.700 legitimately the king of the jews i'm not saying that spicy that that's what that is and and he

01:58:46.140 was very proud of that that's judaism is an ethnic religion of jewish people of hebrew people and

01:58:55.660 that that's fine that makes sense and that's you know that's that's great for them if that's you

01:59:03.580 know if that's what they decide on is the ethnic race of their or the ethnic religion of their

01:59:07.820 people then you know cool for them but that's there's no case to be made that white people have

01:59:14.380 claimed to christianity and i get that if you're like in the 1800s and you're an indian tribe and

01:59:22.460 the only people you've ever encountered that are christian are white people from europe sure that

01:59:28.220 makes sense but as some of the other commenters mentioned the biggest surge in christianity is

01:59:33.580 not amongst whites in in our lifetime it's amongst it's amongst africans and i i think there's

01:59:40.620 rivaling that it's amongst i believe literally like the nation of china of chinese people um

01:59:47.500 but it's certainly not on the rise amongst amongst white people the largest christian

01:59:52.060 church in the entire world is in south korea it has like a million congregants yeah so that's

01:59:59.900 that argument is silly in and of itself and the other thing and i want to go back to this

02:00:03.820 because this point's really really important so another comment on the side is that a bunch of

02:00:13.420 people are talking about folk first and like religion is a is a secondary thing two things

02:00:21.500 no that's wrong and as a priest no the gods first but secondly and more inclusively

02:00:27.660 It's a false dichotomy that's silly.

02:00:31.400 That's like when people get, you know, when people succumb to their cowardice about their faith.

02:00:39.800 Like, oh, I got to look out for my family first.

02:00:42.980 No, that's just something you're using to shield your cowardice.

02:00:46.400 the gods your family and your folk should all be in unison with one another working

02:00:57.260 in in harmony that's a synergy that is natural to all people of this world is their gods

02:01:03.800 their family and their folk those things aren't in conflict and shouldn't be if they are that

02:01:12.760 means somebody somewhere is doing something wrong. And it also comes back to, again, what

02:01:21.880 I said about the earlier question, these people don't really believe. You don't choose Christianity.

02:01:30.520 Jesus is the son of the only God, or he's not. If you, I guess you can choose to go

02:01:40.460 Go with Jesus or choose to not go with Jesus.

02:01:47.660 But your choice of religion isn't based on what you, if you are a person of faith, your

02:01:53.620 choice of religion isn't what you like or what you don't like.

02:01:57.720 It's based on truths or not truths, and it's based on religious experience.

02:02:03.140 I don't care what somebody says about, oh, but you have a broken lineage, so you can't

02:02:06.900 possibly worship us.

02:02:08.900 That's not what I felt when I'm worshiping my gods this Yule and they're giving me their blessings.

02:02:15.580 That's not my experience when I'm in the Hoffs of our gods and their presence is all around us, self-evident to the folk who are there worshiping them.

02:02:27.580 Their opinion is silly and it doesn't matter and it doesn't come from a place of faith and belief.

02:02:32.320 well Christianity that's that's that's white people stuff so we need to do that

02:02:39.700 that's not a sincere faith in Christ that's not a sincere um devotion to Jehovah that's

02:02:48.260 that's putting on an aesthetic that you like that's making a choice of something that's

02:02:56.360 bells and whistles, you know, appeal to your sense of style or your taste. That's not a statement of

02:03:04.100 religious truth. The Iser are the gods of our folk. They are the gods we ought to be worshiping.

02:03:11.880 And, you know, many of us, I would worship the Iser if there was nobody else doing it with me,

02:03:18.320 because I know that to be true. They have held up their end of the gift cycle abundantly to me and

02:03:24.560 my family. They are the gods of my blood and my bone, and I will always be devoted to them.

02:03:30.920 It's not a question of choice or of, I mean, I could choose to betray them, but I can't choose

02:03:36.860 to it be true or untrue. They are true. I can either act in accordance with that or, you know,

02:03:44.780 live in denial of that, but the truth remains true. So yeah, these endless political

02:03:52.500 talking in circles

02:03:55.540 and getting nowhere that

02:03:56.740 these folks do on their keyboards

02:03:59.480 they should focus on things

02:04:01.680 that actually matter and that actually

02:04:03.380 affect life and make it better

02:04:04.820 I don't see them do that

02:04:07.400 I see them

02:04:08.040 well actually instead of getting

02:04:11.520 out there getting in the arena and being

02:04:13.300 part of something that's

02:04:15.600 making things better

02:04:17.440 so

02:04:18.060 that's silly I don't worry about that at all

02:04:21.760 I think all of the steps to get where you're suggesting those people might take us, all of those move us in a really, really cool direction.

02:04:29.360 And there's a lot of stops between here and there to make sure that there is a place for us to practice our ancestral faith.

02:04:37.220 And I think that those same people would be much more successful in their endeavors if they align themselves with the true gods of their folk instead of, you know, Middle Eastern art.

02:04:51.760 um uh Finn Wraith says if you're into jiu-jitsu have you considered a sport like MMA um

02:05:07.840 no I'm old um to be legitimately competitive in that that's I mean I'm sure that there are

02:05:15.760 divisions for old people but i've got all kind of joint issues and other stuff and that's not

02:05:23.120 i'm not opposed to that i think that's cool i think people want to compete in that it's really

02:05:26.480 cool i've got a spot where a lot of got a lot of joint things going on but i really like to train

02:05:34.720 i really like to practice i don't think i'm at a point where i'm in my life where it makes sense

02:05:41.280 to try to pursue it as a sport but i think that's awesome i think that's great to see our people do

02:05:46.880 and there's a lot of um a lot of australia that are very active in mma and that are very successful

02:05:53.280 so i i think that's really cool thing if people want to do it absolutely um

02:06:03.520 all right with it being 2025 we're almost halfway through the 20s

02:06:08.320 uh has the afa grown a lot and changed during this decade plus do you think it will grow and change

02:06:15.920 more uh by the end of this decade and do you have any goals we talked about goals a little bit but

02:06:22.960 swan has the fa changed since 2020 and or i guess since 2019 and uh will it change

02:06:31.360 by 2030 what say you yes i i was lucky enough to be in the time when it really

02:06:42.480 you know the formulation between 2015 and 2020 was uh massive but i think that the changes that

02:06:53.200 that have taken place, say, since 2020 to now is, yeah, I think the infrastructure to project us

02:07:06.600 into the future to create substantial centers of worship for the gods and how those structurings

02:07:17.760 kind of come about it is is the the biggest um change because i think we are coming into form with

02:07:33.040 uh addressing the needs of of the the people that are at the hoffs near the hoffs and then also to

02:07:40.000 folks that are looking to have centers brought near them or you know like infrastructure is uh is a

02:07:53.440 ever-changing but formulating and kind of constantly being worked on thing um and i i

02:07:59.680 think that's the biggest um change and perhaps maybe from the outside a lot of folks might not

02:08:05.600 see it but you know with growth comes the need for support and that support takes you know organization

02:08:14.880 or it takes considerations or there's problems that need to be addressed or new problems or

02:08:20.480 or what have you and um i think for the most part this is the first five years in which

02:08:27.040 Ausatru has ever had these issues and needed them addressed in a very very very long time

02:08:37.600 um which makes that again even crazier so um yeah I think these first there are these last

02:08:46.780 five years that have just kind of passed uh or since 2020 at least has been that testament that

02:08:54.700 Ausatru is, you know, legitimately here and it is providing service. It is feeding people. It is giving place of worship to folks. There are people doing pilgrimages and, you know, going from site to site and things of that nature.

02:09:15.560 um that I don't think that was ever really in the framework for a lot of people in Ausatru

02:09:23.280 before that you know generally it was something that never really left

02:09:28.340 the backyard or perhaps the local area and now uh you know the the horizon is not just that it's

02:09:40.860 not limited to just that it's it's a lot of folks are coming back even vns that whole this whole

02:09:46.900 platform itself kind of has started it's it's been uh adapting in these last five years and growing

02:09:55.400 and you know getting more attention pulling more people getting the ability to spread the the word

02:10:02.080 that also true is you know here um has all kind of felt like it's just happened or it feels like

02:10:10.560 it's been forever but it really hasn't it's like i was you know like the last decade um

02:10:17.360 has just been on like turbo speed

02:10:20.020 so i yeah i think a lot has happened i think a lot of good things have happened in those

02:10:26.440 considerations towards structure and towards creating um network that can facilitate and

02:10:34.620 grow has been the main you know thing that i think is i've seen out of necessity too because of growth

02:10:46.540 yeah um certainly done a lot in the last five years it's

02:10:56.140 i mean i'm getting old so five years goes by a lot faster than one might imagine um victory

02:11:02.860 never sleeps is a huge thing that's happened in the last five years um also in the last five years

02:11:08.380 in the 2020s uh it started in 2020 with us getting both thor's hof and baldur's off that year

02:11:20.220 last five years we've gone from one half to having four hofs and that's huge um that that is massive

02:11:28.460 and it and we've seen a lot of of growth we've seen a real

02:11:35.740 solidifying of our leadership in a really positive direction there's a lot more

02:11:44.060 unity of purpose there's a lot more seriousness about

02:11:49.900 what we're doing we've seen a big growth in families and we we're experiencing that you know

02:11:58.060 last few years the last decade as well but of serious people that believe in our gods and not

02:12:05.400 just because i don't think political is the right word but not just like extremists that

02:12:13.320 found a place to be extreme, needlessly so. We have a lot more people that are pious,

02:12:20.680 that are successful in their lives, that are healthy family people that want to be part of

02:12:27.180 this. And that demographic has changed quite a bit in those 20 years in a positive direction.

02:12:34.380 a ton of stuff. And a lot of the stuff you see is with our personnel and with really solidifying

02:12:43.400 the best and the brightest people in a lot of our leadership spots. Of course, it's going to

02:12:51.060 change in the next five years and change. I don't know if it's really the right word. It's going to

02:12:55.280 continue to evolve and to purify and to, you know, embrace the inspiration of the Aesir as that's

02:13:03.740 revealed to us, and

02:13:06.760 yeah, it's hard to know exactly where that will take us, certainly in the next

02:13:11.900 five years.

02:13:15.760 I don't want to over-promise and under-deliver. In the next five years, I would be

02:13:19.760 very surprised if we didn't have Frazehoff.

02:13:24.280 I would be extremely surprised if that didn't happen in the next five years.

02:13:27.980 I would not be surprised if we did have both Frazehoff

02:13:32.220 and Tiershoff in the next five years. It's not a promise, but I do think that might be a likely

02:13:38.340 thing to occur. So yes, there'll be a lot of things, and I'm excited to see just what shape

02:13:44.240 those changes or that evolution will look like in that time. So Croatian War Master,

02:13:55.300 I'm going to throw out an uncomfortable question. What do you think of Ukrainians and their heroic

02:14:01.200 struggle. Many Alcetruer and Rodnavri fight for Ukraine. Band Molot is all veterans of UKR forces

02:14:14.860 who honor Votan in their songs and art, while those who attack them are literal communists,

02:14:23.140 pretend Christians and non-Aryans

02:14:26.220 from Chechnya, Korea, and Tajikistan.

02:14:31.420 And white Russians.

02:14:33.560 And ethnically white Russians.

02:14:35.080 Those people exist.

02:14:36.620 There is a motley crew of other things there.

02:14:39.600 There are also Russians

02:14:42.480 that are involved in that conflict

02:14:45.040 who practice Rodnavri

02:14:47.620 and who practice Alcetru

02:14:49.200 and who

02:14:50.960 probably have a lot in common um i will say this i am far too ignorant of the nitty-gritty details

02:15:03.640 of all of that conflict to you know make some grand decree for one side or another what i will

02:15:11.100 say is, I am sad that lots of our folk, and as you mentioned, lots of people who practice

02:15:22.720 our faith are dying in that conflict on both sides of it. I am sad that lots of Alcetru

02:15:36.520 mothers and you know mothers will not have husbands that come home and also true children

02:15:44.040 will not have fathers that get to raise them and that is sad um what i don't like and and

02:15:52.680 i'm speaking as an american over there it may be very very different here

02:15:57.080 here issues with Ukraine have been this strange political football for a long time no Ukrainians

02:16:07.880 were the bad guys and they were a bunch of evil racists and they were these terrible people that

02:16:12.980 you know the left was like ah the Ukrainians are horrible people and it was people who

02:16:19.460 politically aligned with a lot of us in in this conversation who were pro-Ukraine

02:16:25.160 and then something happened and all of a sudden nope 100 flip nope the russians are bad guys

02:16:31.320 ukrainians are wonderful freedom fighters they're all all good and now we need to support them by

02:16:36.520 the exact same lefties and cultural marxists over here that were telling us it was the exact opposite

02:16:44.280 you know 10 years ago and so i don't allow myself to be manipulated in that and to choose a side

02:16:54.920 based on what either the left wing of this country that lies to us constantly and is just

02:17:07.160 ridiculous in their lies. I can't trust that. I also can't trust what the Spurgs on their keyboard

02:17:14.680 want to try to drag me into either. So I'm not going to, I'm not going to denounce either side

02:17:22.040 in that or take a huge stance because quite frankly, the details really matter. And I've

02:17:28.200 heard a lot of different things. I don't know what's true and what's not true. But I know what

02:17:31.960 What is true is there's a lot of, again, a lot of husbands not getting to come home to their families.

02:17:39.160 A lot of fathers not getting to come home to raise their kids.

02:17:41.520 And that makes me sad.

02:17:42.860 And I wish that weren't the case.

02:17:46.600 Svon, you may have a little bit more knowledge on the situation.

02:17:51.160 What are your thoughts?

02:17:52.500 Well, and I agree.

02:17:55.640 And I'm really glad that you brought that up because we have seen such a flip.

02:18:00.220 uh it's such a testament to how certain political groups in america can be told one thing

02:18:07.300 and then within the span of a couple years get told another and they just clap like seals just

02:18:14.960 they're trained i mean i saw that with uh one minute zelinski is you know a puppet of trump

02:18:22.560 quid pro quo and then the next minute oh he's you know a savior and and and what have you i think

02:18:29.740 just by the context of the question i am pro-ukrainian and i have reasons those reasons

02:18:38.160 you stated are amongst them um you know even before 2015 i knew people who were going over

02:18:46.760 there um and kind of getting involved in the conflict with the uh separatists and what have

02:18:53.820 and you know that invasion and my wife's family is from there my wife lived there for um some time

02:19:04.200 teaching English so kind of have some skin in the game on that one uh my 103 year olds um

02:19:13.140 the grandmother great grandmother on my my wife's side who lives with us you know she's had her

02:19:19.620 her parents fled from ukraine and came here to america because of the the russian invasions

02:19:27.700 of the bolsheviks and um and so you know she's 103 now and seeing this kind of invasion again

02:19:38.020 um so on on the ground level i am i am very much pro-ukrainian and i'm speaking about that

02:19:47.220 from my personal not from position of uh of being in the church and i i think that azar

02:19:53.860 gothi is wise in the sense that there is so much misinformation but i kind of view it as like a

02:20:00.180 there's this invisible level down on the bottom i am pro-ukraine i don't think russia should be

02:20:08.020 invading there and and and you know i i realize a lot of the folks fighting there are of our faith

02:20:14.900 and they're attempting to um you know uh keep the nation um from being absorbed in this

02:20:26.180 uh eastern conglomerate um and then there's like yeah there's this this invisible line where all

02:20:32.180 of a sudden there's there's nato and there's the global west and there's russia and the global east

02:20:39.220 and you know the the allegiance between russia and china and um you know this kind of uh attempt

02:20:48.360 to polarize the the globe and it's all kind of being played out on the ground level here uh with

02:20:57.260 ukraine and that that bigger level stuff i'm not a huge fan of the global west nor am i a huge

02:21:08.980 fan of the up and coming um conglomerate east um and i'm speaking of if anybody's familiar with

02:21:17.300 like alexander dugan's you know fourth political position and the idea of this you know the

02:21:22.660 polarizing between the the east and the west in in many ways uh you know the west and what

02:21:30.340 we can see um and the critiques against it i can see those critiques very very easily um

02:21:37.460 um and you know the the the things that are offered by the east a lot of people are attracted

02:21:43.840 to you know strong faith strong morals and all of those things especially since you know it as

02:21:51.900 it's kind of laid out in that book the fourth political position he you know alexander dugan

02:21:57.240 says you know that the east must show all of the fallacies of the west and then panel themselves as

02:22:05.740 opposite of it so they become you know the the patriarchal moralistic traditionalist society

02:22:14.560 and the west is is you know um sexual devoncies and rainbows and that's very easy to do um however

02:22:25.960 that's not all of the west we can clearly see that the west is you know waking up from the miasma of

02:22:33.020 um you know the degeneracy and leftism is kind of i think losing a lot of itself in certain places

02:22:39.500 and people are starting to openly discuss topics that no one would ever talk about uh 10 years ago

02:22:48.700 so you know i i think that there's there's hope that the west can break out of it and i think

02:22:54.380 that the east and its conglomeration is presenting itself far more falsely than it actually is when

02:23:03.660 it comes to you know the the real economic power that they're trying to create versus this you know

02:23:10.220 oh you know the russians are orthodox and they're they're standing for you know god and family and

02:23:16.220 all of these things and people on the internet get caught up in that and um i understand i mean

02:23:22.460 they want to have what they see is wrong in the world around them but that's that kind of upper

02:23:28.780 level argument versus the lower level argument for me and the lower level argument is yeah on the

02:23:34.940 ground i've been you know paying attention to a lot of the combat footage um as i am a combat veteran

02:23:42.460 from three separate conflicts um and uh you know seeing that that kind of play the where the money

02:23:54.880 is going how money is being pushed around um you know the utilization of funding uh even to the

02:24:03.840 point where like uh like i guess canada was saying they were going to confiscate guns of their own

02:24:08.440 citizens and give them to the ukrainians like it is a wild time ukrainians need grandpa's shotgun

02:24:17.000 right it blows my mind and again squirrel guns gonna turn the tide right and well and the fact

02:24:24.280 that you would literally rob your own citizenry um you know of of their defense against tyranny

02:24:32.920 and give it to people who are also fighting against tyranny but you're not seeing the kind of

02:24:39.160 like insanity in that is is just blows my mind um but yeah so from a personal level i i am

02:24:49.560 uh deeply supportive of the ukrainians um and i you know have been paying attention to a lot

02:24:56.120 of the like nitty-gritty details but yeah when we get up into the upper echelons of

02:25:00.440 like geopolitical stuff that's where it gets even i think more convoluted confusing people are going

02:25:06.840 one way or another they're being told to go one way or another and it gets super like just very

02:25:14.440 very pulled and pushed in different directions and um i just i make a recommendation for anybody

02:25:22.120 that's interested in the topic to at least you know take a look at i'm not saying buy it but uh

02:25:28.360 uh, you know, perhaps look at the fourth political position. Um, you know, when, uh, Alexander

02:25:36.120 Dugin, his daughter was killed in a bombing in Russia. Um, that, I think that was kind of a

02:25:42.620 confirmation that someone out there takes this guy's views very seriously. Um, and I think the

02:25:48.920 Russian government does as well. And the, you know, the, some of the things that are outlined

02:25:53.460 there are happening very very scarily so um you know the the the president of russia going to

02:26:03.220 india and then to china and then back to you know his capital and then invading ukraine i don't think

02:26:10.020 that was accidental and if anybody's familiar with that book you know that significance of those two

02:26:16.820 countries um just kind of highlights like how this uh that that book has significance and i think it

02:26:26.420 would give people a lot of a far different and less media based less you know nato versus you

02:26:35.140 know warsaw pact kind of ideas i think there's a lot more going on in that and um i just you know

02:26:43.460 yeah i want them to have their independence i just don't necessarily want them to be sucked into

02:26:51.540 the global west yeah i don't know if that's really independence that's the yeah that's

02:26:56.740 yeah is that independent thing there's two yeah there's two sub-optimal things playing tug-of-war

02:27:05.700 with that nation of people and uh all of it i find really unfortunate and honestly unnecessary

02:27:15.540 um and and the more uh ukrainian nationalists that die uh works better for the again the tug

02:27:25.140 of war yeah greater sides and ultimately yeah we the the the people of ukraine lose

02:27:33.540 who's these valuable and, you know, strong souls and, you know,

02:27:41.080 who stands to gain from all of them, you know,

02:27:46.860 bleeding and dying for their country.

02:27:50.040 And so Croatian war master, no, that wasn't an inappropriate question.

02:27:54.980 We're not ducking any questions here.

02:27:56.920 Everybody's welcome to ask anything they want.

02:27:59.360 I don't think that was inappropriate at all.

02:28:01.120 I wish I had better answers for you.

02:28:03.540 And again, where you're at, you may have access to information that's very different than to what's presented to us here.

02:28:11.220 And even the information that we have access to, it's always hard to know what if it's accurate and what if it's not.

02:28:17.760 because um certainly in our country it has been made painfully clear that the sources of note as

02:28:27.120 of you you know all of our lifetimes are not even trying to not be openly

02:28:40.800 yeah i don't know if there's like a a nicer or less no they're just openly lying about stuff and

02:28:48.000 repeating lies because their pay masters tell them that they must and they most of them don't

02:28:54.800 know any better anyway they're just reading off teleprompter on it we don't have a lot of

02:28:59.120 investigative journalism represented in the mainstream here there's a lot of alternative

02:29:04.000 sources which is cool now but our mainstream journalism over here is not that anymore um

02:29:13.120 Um, so Ethan asks, and welcome back, by the way, he asked, what is the best way to teach

02:29:20.680 our children about Ausatru and the gods?

02:29:25.120 So I think you are asking for useful tidbits, and we'll get that.

02:29:29.980 But the simple answer is, by example, and by you yourself embodying being a good Ausatruar

02:29:38.000 and defining yourself by your troth to the Iser.

02:29:42.060 that takes a lot of different forms and i think there's a lot of right answers depending on your

02:29:49.140 kids i don't think there's one best way to do it in specific but in general

02:29:55.300 them participating in it with you them seeing you do it not taking like well let them decide

02:30:05.900 their religion when they're old enough no that's abdicating your responsibility as a father

02:30:10.900 raise them to worship our gods if they become adults and they choose to turn their back on the

02:30:15.700 isir that's on them but it's your job to raise them in this if this is what you believe is the

02:30:23.140 best course for them and what's right to do um but yeah example like they pick up once i and i and i

02:30:31.220 say this i don't know how old your children are and i don't claim i don't claim to be an expert

02:30:37.700 on parenting altogether i'm figuring it out the best i can as i go um you know i have one child

02:30:45.300 and she is four and a half and she is absolutely amazing but i am always surprised at how much stuff

02:30:51.940 she picks up on she can tell if stuff's serious or if it's not it's been a really cool and this

02:30:57.860 is not the question that you ask but i'm gonna share it anyway because it's really cool i

02:31:04.980 I one thing and I and this isn't aimed at anybody but it's a cool benefit that I have in my family

02:31:14.580 and I think that our gothar get to have in theirs when your children are accustomed to you leaving

02:31:21.660 bloat from the time they're little their interaction and bloat is really different

02:31:31.200 than kids that that's out of the norm i get real anybody who's been in one of my bloats

02:31:40.220 and it depends there's plenty of bloats that are soft spoken and solemn and you know

02:31:48.080 a little bit of a different tone a lot of my bloats get real loud very energetic

02:31:57.120 and very furious in a ecstatic way not in an angry way

02:32:03.760 but i get to yelling and i get really into it there's a lot of little kids that you know are

02:32:11.780 are concerned or not not accustomed to that it's neat that my daughter since she's a tiny little

02:32:18.560 baby she can tell the difference she knows that daddy's you know worshiping the gods and she

02:32:25.920 has never been strange about it no matter how like intense and you know into what i get on stuff

02:32:32.400 she's always been really cool with that you know a lot of people and again you're gonna make the

02:32:37.660 best choice with your kids some kids are squirrely don't bring a squirrely savage rabid child into

02:32:46.100 the bloat circle and have them disrupt everybody else that's not right that's not fair

02:32:51.300 but do if you're able and your kids are capable of the self-control of it

02:32:57.880 bring them into bloat you know it's easy to like no kids you guys go play the adults are

02:33:04.280 going to do bloat it's a lot less hassle but it's important for them to be part of that too

02:33:10.800 if they're able to do that in a in a way that's not disruptive to everybody you've got to show

02:33:16.940 them how they've got to see what it looks like see what it feels like one of the things with kids and

02:33:24.220 this is i have not talked with a i've not had the meaningful discourse with a small child about how

02:33:32.700 they felt during bloat but i am curious and i don't think i think at the ages where maybe this

02:33:40.780 is the most meaningful that i'm saying right now they may not have the words to tell me but

02:33:48.380 kids pick up on stuff that adults don't they feel energy they see things they perceive things

02:33:55.980 really differently give them that opportunity to experience our trough to the gods when they still

02:34:06.540 have that that awareness about them while they're still wired for that in a in a unique way that

02:34:15.020 children have that that we don't as we grow older that we often lose as we rely more and more on

02:34:21.660 speech and more and more on analytics there's there's something special there so yeah include

02:34:27.740 your children in ritual talk about the gods everything i said earlier about talking about

02:34:33.740 the gods with brandos out in the world i mean that tenfold with your children mention them

02:34:41.340 make them a part of your life make worshiping and honoring your ancestors part of your life

02:34:47.100 and something that's normal to them make this what's normal to them before you send them out

02:34:53.580 into the world, and they, one of the, and we're, you know, we're at the top of the year, so we're

02:35:07.180 talking about the future and the past and taking stock of things. One of the things that a lot of

02:35:13.700 our old timers regret is that in the initial stages of the rebirth of Ausitru, they didn't

02:35:22.300 include their children as much they were just figuring things out and it was a lot of guys

02:35:29.260 and a lot of the time their wives or you know the mothers of their children whatever that

02:35:36.140 current status of their relationship weren't involved children weren't involved and they

02:35:42.860 were you know the guys were self-conscious of what they were doing or were still developing

02:35:48.620 that sincere piety and that deep faith that a lot of the children of those who first

02:35:57.260 forged you know those initial forays building this

02:36:03.340 their children didn't get imbued with this in their childhood and they didn't have this as a

02:36:11.740 home base and a point of orientation as they went out into the world

02:36:16.620 And so a lot of them, you know, most of them didn't maintain this into their future.

02:36:21.560 And that's unfortunate.

02:36:23.340 We're in a time now where so many of our children are actively being raised with this.

02:36:28.680 I'm very excited for the future.

02:36:30.680 You mentioned, you know, stuff that I look forward to in the next five years of the AFA.

02:36:34.460 I mean, we got kids that will be adults in five years.

02:36:41.900 i look forward for them to be afa members on their own as young people that embody this and

02:36:49.340 that this is part of what they do and that this is their home base we owe that for our children and

02:36:56.860 i'd say children raised in a religious environment have these religious touchstones for the rest of

02:37:06.060 lives that are traditional to them even if they go through periods where they kind of fall away

02:37:12.620 or aren't as involved or focused on other things or whatever they look back on good memories they

02:37:18.220 had from yule or man i remember when we were at you know so and so uncle so and so's wedding or

02:37:25.420 i remember when you know i had all these good friends that i used to go to the hof with and

02:37:31.340 they remember those things and those are points of reference that they mark transitions and moments

02:37:37.500 of their lives within and that makes this something that they are more likely to raise

02:37:42.940 their children and that's what we're working so hard to to build so that's what i've got on it

02:37:48.780 it's fun who has two more children than i do and children of a more advanced age than i do he may

02:37:55.580 have a lot more to offer on this on what do you what do you got um i would as you were talking i

02:38:01.180 was trying to think the best way to kind of lay this out and i i 100 agree the the best thing you

02:38:08.140 can do is is give gift to the gods in bloat so i would say kind of expounding on what else here

02:38:19.020 ago they were saying go get the true log mouth look at the list of our holy gods explain to

02:38:29.100 your children why we believe in the multiplicity and not the singularity because they might need

02:38:36.700 to they might need to broach that subject is uh you know why do why do my friends only believe

02:38:41.660 in one god but we believe in many and you can just say look around you everything works in

02:38:46.460 multiplicity nothing is in singularity everything kind of uh depends on its within itself through

02:38:53.900 hierarchy and interchange so i know that's kind of you know big words but you can you can jump

02:39:00.540 that hurdle with your kids if that ever comes up but you get that list and you give bloat

02:39:08.860 let's say someone is ill and we're like we're going to pray and ask holy air

02:39:16.140 to heal this person it's not about whether or not like oh how many times has she been mentioned in

02:39:24.460 the sagas how many times has she been mentioned in the lore no that the the true log mal states

02:39:31.580 it it's all right there that's been condensed down focus on doing and building relationship

02:39:38.700 and as you build relationship with the gods your children will build that relationship with you

02:39:44.060 and it's it is all about that communion it is all about that moment of gift giving

02:39:49.100 into the bowl and giving over to the gods and so that you can invite them into your life

02:39:55.500 and your children will 100 join you in that see you do it join in you with you and then come to

02:40:05.980 understand you know we pray to the gods sometimes we pray to the gods or specific gods for specific

02:40:12.860 reasons but we gift to the gods because they are our gods they're the gods of our people

02:40:19.980 and i think that's really all it it needs to be had but if you if you needed like the set list

02:40:27.660 and i i bring that up because i think so many people are kind of left in this millstrom of

02:40:32.460 information and they don't know where to start and i think the best thing to do is to start where it

02:40:37.180 is clearly defined and then work your way from there um the other thing i would say and this is

02:40:43.100 just has been it's it's a a love of mine is storytelling and i think it's most important

02:40:52.060 that you read the stories of the gods um to your children i think that uh it's important that you

02:41:01.100 you don't read books that are kind of reiterating the poetics or the sagas in lore form, but

02:41:10.460 I have found, again, for me, one of the best, and here's the other thing, I don't always agree

02:41:19.160 with the way that the storytellers have compiled some of the stories back into story form.

02:41:25.000 um however it's not about that it's about the truth of the stories the mythos of the story

02:41:33.060 that draws your children that brings them to remembering that you know the heroes are heroes

02:41:40.460 and the villains are villains and there is courage in the face of you know uh cowardice

02:41:48.820 or what have you these things your kids will pick up on so you know i always recommend to people like

02:41:54.780 read read the stories my favorite of course is northern pathways um by douglas rossman

02:42:01.380 i read those that i think that is like the best i have ever found um you know i've read to my

02:42:11.420 children like there's uh the children of odin i think is the name of the book and i go through

02:42:16.540 it and i'm like oh all right oh i don't agree with that like or i kind of end up kind of cringing

02:42:22.620 sometimes that some of the stuff that's said in there or the way that the gods are kind of portrayed

02:42:29.180 um but northern pathways have always for me been one of the best ways i think the gods are portrayed

02:42:37.980 in story form from the poems and so reading to your children at night and um giving bloats

02:42:47.420 um regularly even if it's a matter of it's monday or it's tuesday or it's woden's day wednesday or

02:42:57.440 thursday or the day of the week and we're just going to hold the bloat because that's who we're

02:43:02.560 honoring um because of the day of the week that's fine too but you got to eventually move beyond

02:43:07.940 that i see a lot of people online are like happy thursday everybody um you know no like

02:43:15.880 again open up um give bloat to holy frigga and the maidens of fensalar give bloat to the

02:43:25.780 tripartite of of lord odin tyr and thor as the three um give holy you know uh communion to your

02:43:36.700 ancestors show them too that again we're in the the the the part of multiplicity to where

02:43:43.820 not only are we deeply interconnected to the gods but so are our ancestors

02:43:48.400 and that you know in death i think our ancestors realized this too so you know get them involved

02:43:57.140 in a way is what i do is get my ancestors involved perhaps in life they didn't realize

02:44:03.880 the the truth about the gods and they were deceived but that's okay they know now and

02:44:11.840 they will bless you trust me because i'm of that belief they do bless me because i involve them

02:44:20.240 in something they couldn't be involved in when they were alive because they were misinformed

02:44:26.480 so that connectivity between the gods your ancestors yourself your children all of that

02:44:31.760 involved and then to your land the land around you hold bloats bloat to the to the land um

02:44:38.640 Um, however you do it. And again, the bloat can be simple. Fine. Work on your, um,

02:44:46.940 the, I think the biggest thing is the, the way in which you would do it. I know if you go to

02:44:52.180 a national event and you attend a bloat, it will most likely look very different than what you do

02:44:57.960 at home. So formalize your home prayer with the understanding that's what it's for. It's for you

02:45:05.780 and your family and then you know as they grow older and they become more and more a part of the

02:45:12.020 afa and they come to a national event then they'll understand well this is kind of like how it is

02:45:18.100 done in you know big groups or at a half and they'll understand it'll be easier for to for

02:45:23.860 them to evolve and understand because they have a strong foundation at the harrow at home

02:45:28.900 yeah absolutely um all really good ideas there's a lot of right ways to do it but

02:45:38.160 and reach out to your uh go thought and ask the best way is yeah the best way is to get up and

02:45:47.500 try that's the thing i think that so much and rightly so i'm not critical please realize a lot

02:45:54.580 of these things that i'm saying so flip is like well of course get off your ads like go do

02:46:00.420 a lot of this isn't you know these are things that that i struggle with too and i say struggle

02:46:07.500 with like you get lost in your head overthinking something i mentioned that earlier when you asked

02:46:12.180 me if you know someone were to ask me my five favorite movies i'd sit here all day trying to

02:46:16.860 figure it out instead of telling you what the movies are when you want to think about what's

02:46:21.080 best way to teach your kids you can spend forever endlessly going over what may or may not be the

02:46:30.200 best way but you know most ways are better than not doing it at all and not trying so the biggest

02:46:37.320 thing is to actually make that effort and i think any sincere and earnest effort you do

02:46:45.160 is going to yield the results and help move you in the right direction and the other thing

02:46:51.080 But our gods and the ancestors have a hand in it as well.

02:46:55.220 I firmly believe that if you are participating in the gift cycle with our gods and you are doing the best that you can, then they'll help give a nudge to make some stuff work.

02:47:07.420 And I know that to be true in my own life.

02:47:09.600 I mean, the gods have helped me a great deal in a lot of things that I've done, and I'm very thankful for it.

02:47:15.720 and i think if you're sincerely sincerely trying to teach al-sitru to your children and open that

02:47:22.280 door and make that happen the iser will reach back the ancestors will reach back

02:47:30.280 they have a hand to play in it as well you have to facilitate it by putting in work

02:47:38.600 um so mary go ahead i was gonna say i see over here somebody said i'm spreading duganism online

02:47:45.720 And please, no, I'm just encouraging people to see different influencing factors.

02:47:53.740 Sorry.

02:47:54.840 I just saw Lou Katz said I'm spreading Duganism.

02:47:58.980 I'm like, no, I'm not a big fan of all that.

02:48:04.580 Anyways, sorry.

02:48:05.540 So Mary wants to know, she says, Matt and Svon,

02:48:09.700 would you care to comment on the reasons why our European

02:48:12.880 and North Atlantic Islander ancestors,

02:48:16.280 abandoned our gods and goddesses

02:48:18.380 and turned to a Middle Eastern alien cult.

02:48:22.680 Svan, what do you got to say about that?

02:48:26.640 Yeah, I think depending on where,

02:48:28.820 there's different reasons.

02:48:30.580 I mean, obviously Charlemagne and Central Europe

02:48:33.400 and the battle was hard fought.

02:48:35.940 You know, he slayed a lot of his fellow Germans

02:48:42.820 But again, I think, one, our ancestors didn't context themselves as much as they perhaps should have. The adoption of this foreign faith. Was Charlemagne doing the work of the Hebrews? I don't think so.

02:49:02.960 think he was thinking more along the lines of doing the will of rome in a way um but as it went

02:49:11.360 northward you know over time the the battling kind of settled down and once that happened

02:49:17.200 i think the name of the game was was uh usury i think the name of the game was um uh you know

02:49:27.120 marriage and you know you can't wed my daughter and build allegiances with my kingdom

02:49:34.240 unless you you know adopt this this uh faith from rome um because i really do think they context

02:49:42.800 it wasn't so foreign to them i think that's one of the biggest problems that our people have just

02:49:47.040 in general is they don't realize how foreign christianity is and so i always try to emphasize

02:49:53.360 to people like how middle eastern it is um because if they get that then suddenly it becomes so much

02:50:02.160 more apparent um but you know they they they they did it through marriage and through land leasing

02:50:12.320 and then you know it kind of had an upsurgence of violence again when it came to the north

02:50:18.000 um in scandinavia with like olaf tryggerson and all of that um i think that iceland was lucky

02:50:27.600 in that the the conversion wasn't violent um again they used uh they went under the cloak

02:50:35.280 you know clearly not a christian practice um in order to determine that it would be able

02:50:40.320 to kind of worm its way into society but what that ultimately did was stop it from

02:50:45.520 um being eradicated to the point where it could never come back again um i think that it's worth

02:50:55.280 remembering too that our lore that we are going over right now is super important but the the

02:51:02.080 belief of our ancestors was strong um and it is kind of like the the rhyme ice the edge of what

02:51:11.600 was once of a deep well, our lore. And because of that, it's allowed us to fill that basin back

02:51:21.080 in again and bring and have it resurge. But, you know, our ancestors being converted, I don't think

02:51:27.940 was from a lack of faith. I think it was a lack of perhaps worldliness or perhaps an understanding

02:51:34.500 of outside threats, things that they hadn't ever really dealt with, that a religion that was built

02:51:43.120 in the Silk Road, in the intersection of three continents that was, you know, in the armpit of

02:51:51.900 the Mediterranean and was a highly traversed area. They were used to some of those ideas and concepts

02:51:59.080 and kind of was built out of that and our ancestors weren't were not and i think that

02:52:06.120 the gods understood that this was gonna this was gonna be a lesson that we were gonna learn

02:52:10.760 i you know i don't think it was about the gods you know if if the gods were real then why they

02:52:17.560 let it happen i was like i i think that yeah the lesson the things that the gods have seen their

02:52:23.320 folk wit like go through um has never been about like oh when something good happens it's the gods

02:52:31.160 when it's bad it's they're punishing us or they're they're teaching us a lesson no i think again they

02:52:37.720 sit back and we have to learn these lessons and now we come back and we realize okay our faith

02:52:45.000 is intimately connected to our people and our languages and uh there are outside influences

02:52:51.640 that we should say we're no longer you know we're not going to just stand idly by and let this stuff

02:52:57.560 kind of roll into us um that our ancestors didn't really i think conceptualize that a lot

02:53:03.800 um in their day and age and again money power politics and the blade are all very

02:53:12.920 this waste of elements to the spread of the religion of love there are all of those things

02:53:21.580 and there's lots of different answers there's plenty of people who converted out of a genuine

02:53:26.960 religious experience or out of they wanted to embrace the teachings of christ absolutely

02:53:38.260 there are lots of people that it was politically advantageous to our ancestors weren't all these

02:53:48.800 amazing pious people of faith they were a broad cross-section of people some of them were

02:53:54.960 very faithful some of them were treacherous and you know of low quality some of them were heroes

02:54:02.740 some of them were cowards, some of them were, you know, noble, and some of them were ignoble.

02:54:12.460 But they're all self-interested to one degree or another. We are as sentient beings. That's what we

02:54:18.660 do. So there's a lot of things to entice them. Again, like Svon said, there's a lot of naivety

02:54:24.840 on their part to where they aren't worldwide. They don't realize that there's other groups

02:54:32.000 of people out there because they don't see them they don't you know what's presented to them is

02:54:38.320 you know king christ and his warrior things and that sounds a lot cooler than you know hebrews

02:54:46.560 and man dresses and sandals talking about blessed are the meek that's not how it was presented um

02:54:54.400 there's all the trade, political, marriage pressures, economic pressures,

02:55:03.340 and we will kill you if you don't convert to Christianity pressures.

02:55:09.040 But there's other stuff too, and this is, you know,

02:55:12.040 we do wrong if we don't learn the lessons of the past.

02:55:18.800 One of the things that made a huge difference is,

02:55:22.560 christianity functioned on the backs of an imperial roman structure that unified

02:55:31.800 the part of europe it worked through that unified a lot of europe in a structure with

02:55:40.520 strong organizations with strong centralized rule and that's powerful that also came from our folk

02:55:49.040 As much as we want to think it's something foreign, no, these are Aryan people.

02:55:54.640 These are our distant cousins that built the amazing structure that Rome was.

02:56:03.380 And that's what allowed a unified force of Christianity to prey upon the small-minded, petty clannishness of Northern and Western Europe.

02:56:14.520 our people couldn't stand against it because all of the nations of Europe unified under Christendom

02:56:23.100 would stand against them economically politically and militarily so you find one you know small

02:56:31.560 Anglo-Saxon kingdom of you know thousands and they're warring against the one next to them of

02:56:41.340 you know thousands and your hundreds of thousands of people behind you and your nation can put your

02:56:49.980 support behind the guy that you know converts the way you want him to wow i have the strength of

02:56:57.100 the holy roman empire behind me if i want to oppose my political foes that sounds awesome

02:57:03.020 because i'm not worried about the distant future i'm not worried about my trough to the gods i'm

02:57:07.900 I'm worried about this dude, you know, I'm worried about my cousin who I think is going to get a throne that I think I'm supposed to have.

02:57:14.420 And that's what I'm worried about, by whatever cost.

02:57:19.500 And that's a decision made time and time again.

02:57:23.480 You see that, you know, every time there's a group of our people that are heavily unified into a strong force.

02:57:30.240 and then they're opposing other people just looking out for their kindred,

02:57:37.280 just looking out for their clan, just looking out for their little valley

02:57:41.480 or whatever they're doing, that small-mindedness,

02:57:45.040 they're very easy to pick off one by one.

02:57:48.520 The truth of our history is that we are much, much stronger

02:57:53.800 when we stand together unified in purpose and unified in organization.

02:58:00.240 Al-Satru at the time, you know, we get criticized today.

02:58:04.120 No, Al-Satru never had a central church and it was always, you know, just individual families doing it the way they wanted to.

02:58:12.380 That's why it all came crumbling down, too.

02:58:15.460 And that's really unfortunate.

02:58:17.540 I absolutely believe that in an earlier time in our antiquity, it was much more unified.

02:58:22.900 But in the very, you know, in the dying days of our faith in Europe, that wasn't the case.

02:58:28.840 and we were much weaker because of it.

02:58:31.720 And we've suffered greatly because of it.

02:58:34.360 We have to learn those lessons

02:58:35.900 that unfortunately, you know,

02:58:39.080 brought the faith of our ancestors to ruin.

02:58:42.060 We have to learn those lessons.

02:58:46.300 But I think that's a, you know, that's the thing.

02:58:51.520 Any thoughts on Platonism and Ausitry?

02:58:55.360 I've recently felt the call of the gods,

02:58:57.880 But I have a long history of appreciating Platonic philosophy. Could they be compatible on a personal level?

02:59:07.580 So, I want to say something on this, and I think that Svon is going to respond to this in a deeper way than perhaps I can.

02:59:18.800 I am not in any way an expert on Platonism.

02:59:23.560 I know of it peripherally, I know of Plato in the abstract, I know little things here

02:59:35.680 and there, and I don't claim to be an expert.

02:59:40.680 But what, I think that if Plato is a, were a real and serious philosopher that's devoted to the pursuit of truth, then it shouldn't matter to you whether those things are compatible or not.

03:00:01.520 if our gods are real and you ought to have a relationship with them then you should do that

03:00:11.540 regardless of what a school of philosophy tells you it's backing that's the thing um philosophy

03:00:19.220 and science are all mechanisms to weigh and measure truth or to help provide a roadmap

03:00:29.780 to determining truth they aren't truth they're a step towards understanding it better or towards

03:00:39.300 you know trying to get to the things that are essential and important

03:00:46.580 the fundamental thing that is important is that truth and is those bigger things

03:00:52.100 if our gods exist and they're the gods of your folk and you feel compelled to build a relationship

03:00:57.700 with them then the writings of ancient greek philosophers should not matter at all to the

03:01:05.620 prevention of you doing that it's not a mental experiment it's a very real thing i don't think

03:01:11.620 you've ever contemplated you know would platonism allow me to call my grandma should i build a

03:01:20.020 friendship with my neighbor next door let me consult plato um your interaction and building

03:01:28.900 relationship with other people and i do mean to narrow it down to that simple of a thing because

03:01:34.740 i think it gets in the way when we make it more complicated if play if the teachings of plato

03:01:45.460 prevent you from building relationship with your gods then they're wrong and should be discarded

03:01:51.780 in that area of your life that is important it is real it exists

03:02:00.900 and if you make those experimentations and forays into that you try to build that relationship

03:02:07.940 you should try to make your philosophy conform to things that you know to be religiously true as

03:02:18.100 opposed to you know be concerned of whether they match or not truth should be the value that you're

03:02:25.460 seeking um so yeah i can't speak to that because i don't know all the tenets of platonism and

03:02:34.100 honestly my understanding is it's kind of nebulous anyway on exactly what counts and there's different

03:02:39.140 schools of it um but yeah you should worship the gods the rest is downhill from that and

03:02:47.380 you know look have have that as your starting point to then see whether

03:02:54.540 also true allows you to embrace platonism as opposed to the other way around um and swan

03:03:02.920 we'll take it for here and i'm going to go tuck my daughter in so i'll be right back yeah i was

03:03:07.720 gonna say kind of in the inverse sense of like the mirror imaging sense of that one to ask a priest

03:03:14.980 of the ice here i think the answer should be expected that you're gonna hear no honor the

03:03:21.940 gods everything goes downhill from there but let's look at it in the inverse sense i don't think that

03:03:27.500 the gods would view you exploring in wisdom the ideas of a philosophy, which I, you know,

03:03:41.100 and again, I'm not a Platonist in the sense that I could never claim myself to be one

03:03:46.780 because I just don't have that much of a tangible connection in it.

03:03:54.580 But let's just say the gods, I don't think, would say that by you exploring the understanding of them as the truth, as a truth, that they would say you can't do this.

03:04:13.800 You shouldn't do this.

03:04:15.540 So, like, the reverse between the two.

03:04:18.700 Alcerno is saying, if Platonism stands in your way of honoring the gods of your people, then it is wrong.

03:04:26.780 And I am also kind of inversely saying, I don't think that the gods would stop you from participating or practicing or inquiring in those philosophies and standing, like, in obstruction to that.

03:04:42.400 unless of course it was completely antithetical to the gods um or or again like another entire

03:04:52.720 religion especially a religion that says you can't honor the gods of your people so i don't

03:04:59.120 think that platonism is that i and i i do see a lot of connectivity and ideas in platonism that

03:05:08.400 could absolutely apply to perhaps a better understanding or maybe even for yourself a

03:05:16.400 personal better understanding of the gods the divine when we speak about you know that that

03:05:24.000 interconnectivity of the oneness that is yggdrasil and yggdrasil is that source it's that that that

03:05:32.800 one source that comes you know that kind of centers everything um i think that has a lot

03:05:39.920 of value in perhaps plato's like um theories of like the oneness or the uh what is it the

03:05:48.240 i forgot the name of it the forms um and again i'm going off of like college classes that i

03:05:57.520 you know attended um after the marines um i think that there's nothing of those two that

03:06:04.640 can conflict with each other i think it does really come from you and i was here is saying

03:06:11.920 that if if the blockage from one defeats the other um that should be corrected and i think too

03:06:21.120 that is correct and i but at the same time i think that again one kind of substantiates the search

03:06:28.560 for the truth and one is the truth so they wouldn't be conflicting with each other it's

03:06:35.280 just a matter again of you exploring that understanding i think that that that is what

03:06:43.280 lord othen you know i think beckons us to do is to explore the consciousness in which he gave us

03:06:51.120 to explore the understanding of our consciousness in relation to them,

03:06:57.220 the divine, our morals, and the way that we enact in the world.

03:07:03.100 Yeah, I just get no sense of conflict there whatsoever.

03:07:09.940 But again, if you ask a priest of the ice here what should be done,

03:07:15.740 the first thing that's coming is honor the gods of your folk.

03:07:19.700 honor the gods and go from there so and any any sincere philosophy is about a pursuit of truth

03:07:29.120 in some way um it's just like science i'm not anti-science science is awesome science should

03:07:35.680 be pursuing truth science can be wrong science is wrong often that's how science advances and

03:07:41.840 develops um sometimes it's just wrong wrong and other times it's it's incomplete and it doesn't

03:07:48.340 know that it's incomplete and that's kind of a study of how it advances and that's not a criticism

03:07:53.140 that's just that is truth is always complete and exists and are it's not beholden to whether or

03:08:02.520 not we get it or not um so anything we do to quantify to try to figure out truth to try to

03:08:11.000 pursues truth, logically has to be subservient to truth. So I'm

03:08:20.480 saying, the first step is devote yourself to that which is true,

03:08:24.620 which is our gods, and make your philosophy with that in mind. And

03:08:33.620 it's also, you know, something about Ausatru that that I really

03:08:37.340 believe, and we sincerely hold truth as a core value. I'm not scared of science or philosophy

03:08:47.800 or whatever else, like disproving our gods. No, our gods are true. I know that they are

03:08:54.140 true. So, whatever, I don't know, whatever other inquiries in that are great, and ideally

03:09:05.500 those things enhance our faith and enhance our relationship to the gods if they don't I think

03:09:11.960 we need to rethink those things because they shouldn't violate things that we know to be true

03:09:16.660 so and I say that and something else I want to want to caution because this was you know the

03:09:25.480 context in which this was said was this is a person who's new to the faith that is feeling

03:09:30.400 called towards it but is thinking about these things and we all we all do that i'm not no part

03:09:35.640 of me is being critical of your question or what you're going through mentally i'm just offering

03:09:40.100 you know sincere counsel on that um what else i'd say though is don't overthink them

03:09:49.140 if you are trying to build a relationship with the gods you need to be mentally in a spot where

03:09:59.040 you accept the gods on their terms and don't try to make them conform to your terms open yourself

03:10:06.300 to them like a child in a very simple way like we have all built relationships in our life

03:10:13.680 since the moment we're born perhaps since we're in utero between us and other living things

03:10:22.140 that doesn't require forethought and philosophy and science and all of these things.

03:10:30.540 It requires genuine human connection between you and the other living thing that you are connecting with.

03:10:38.880 Yes, there are tons of ways to evolve it and make it more than that and elevate it,

03:10:43.520 and I'm not faulting any of that.

03:10:44.860 But the basic thing is genuinely opening your heart, giving of yourself, and being ready and attentive to receive when our gods reach back and build from there.

03:11:06.240 But don't overcomplicate it, because if you overthink it, you're not in an open place where you can receive that and feel that.

03:11:13.740 you're distracted by the clutter in your head or the the mental paradigms that you're trying to

03:11:20.380 force it to fit don't do that open yourself up be open and allow the gods to work

03:11:28.700 within your life and within your family within the world around you

03:11:32.700 see if that rings true to you and if you're doing it right i believe that it will

03:11:37.820 um and when i say if you're doing it right if you're doing it rightly rightly intentioned

03:11:44.660 and with a genuineness and an openness of heart then yeah those things absolutely will affect

03:11:51.240 you and will will bring you closer to to the gods and to our faith um next up

03:11:59.240 how big do you think the afa will be at the end of the century

03:12:04.580 When I am 119 years old, the Ask True Folk Assembly will, so realistically,

03:12:17.780 again truth is one of our virtues so I think it is very tempting for me to just shoot for the moon

03:12:35.080 because I think you want to shoot for the stars on it and then if you don't quite make it there

03:12:40.200 you make it a whole lot closer than if you don't so this is not our target this is my realistic

03:12:46.640 bet on where I think that we will be by the close of this century.

03:12:56.900 I want to say 25,000.

03:13:00.220 That is my guess.

03:13:01.920 I hope that I have way undershot the mark, but that is my guess.

03:13:07.460 Svon, we'll say you.

03:13:09.460 I would want to say, too, that we have 14 Hoffs.

03:13:16.640 um absolutely in dedication to the holy ice ice here the the 12 house and at least the two major

03:13:25.680 our senior um and and not just in the united states um but you know in in nations elsewhere

03:13:36.960 canada um you know europe south africa south america maybe you know who knows argentina

03:13:45.120 i mean just you know a recalling of our folk back to the gods beyond simply

03:13:56.640 you know just north america the united states i think that's that that by the end of the century

03:14:05.520 i think is something that he asked how big so give me a member number spawn oh a member number

03:14:13.600 i see i'm terrible at numbers no you're great at numbers you you if you say so

03:14:26.320 i have seen you crunch and put things and stretch numbers to get the maximum effect out of them um

03:14:35.200 where we can just like with money like we you know doing so much with so few or whatever it's

03:14:42.560 it's blown my mind in the last like eight years um no i think um

03:14:55.920 i don't know i i

03:14:59.360 i it's like what i hope to see exactly exactly what i would hope to see is at least

03:15:12.560 uh i would and i'm just being not as hopeful or i i don't know maybe because again you see

03:15:21.920 things in these numbers that i i really don't but i 15 000 total

03:15:30.880 honored trothful proclamating to the house of true folk assembly house of true

03:15:38.080 us like they are us and we are all under one banner um at least by the end but i think i'm

03:15:48.000 being a little too i don't know pessimistic maybe sometimes i don't know i'm i think we can

03:15:55.380 overthink that forever i think that yeah that's fine and i hope that the both of us are just

03:16:02.220 silly underestimating um but you know either of those things would be awesome to see

03:16:09.740 and uh i will say this bigger than we are today by a substantial amount i think that's a safe bet

03:16:19.260 um

03:16:22.620 and final question of the night if our myths are eternal truths can them and this is the

03:16:29.980 thing any question coming in after this we're saving until next show this might be meaty we'll

03:16:35.340 see how it goes um but i think it's a it's a really good question to end on tonight

03:16:43.420 if our myths are eternal truths can the myths that we've lost be re-revealed and then eventually

03:16:50.140 written down how are such truths revealed in the first place swan what are your what are your

03:16:57.420 thoughts on the matter yes i believe that the the ultimate truths uh that are in our stories because

03:17:09.740 before they were poems they were stories and i believe that our stories hold not only just

03:17:16.460 metaphysical truths but actual physical truths um and i brought them up on here before with the uh

03:17:23.980 the the relations of of why ayur and raun are in the cauldron of the ocean the primordial ocean

03:17:34.380 the blood of emir and why the gods are connected to those two jotun in specifics in relation to

03:17:43.500 maintaining order and hierarchy in the middle world or i've talked about the reason why the

03:17:50.700 the sun has two horses and the earth has two horses but the moon only has one and again out

03:17:58.300 of all of those three bodies the moon is the only one that doesn't spin on its own axis

03:18:03.180 so i'm talking about physical truths as law along with um metaphysical truths um

03:18:12.700 i think that these stories were passed down from the gods to us in particular i think the first

03:18:18.940 storytellers we we would look at heimdall and uh and and classier i i often hold bloat to classier

03:18:29.980 as the first progenitor the the first quite literally born of the mouth of the gods um

03:18:39.260 but you know as as we go i think our let's just say perfect example would be to look back

03:18:47.260 and when are we deviated from our faith to the gods but yet the truths of the god still showed

03:18:54.540 through in our in our art in our songs um the gods never went away they just manifested under

03:19:05.260 perhaps different names or titles i brought that up like about how the aus in your gavion

03:19:12.540 is the manifest destiny spirit or um or columbina or columbia or you know or or what have you um

03:19:23.660 these spirits of manifestation in western society um are our gods perhaps under different names and

03:19:31.580 these truths still expound on the same truth they're just not from the adas because you know

03:19:41.020 how how did these truths come to us before the aidas you know we we do have our stories but how

03:19:48.780 did how did our ancestors know the relationship to have with lord odin before the aidas were

03:19:56.540 written down in iceland and it's they did through relationship through living the religion through

03:20:04.300 interacting with the gods through accepting that they have a will and that that will interplays

03:20:12.780 into our world now um all of all of the stories we have of whether it's

03:20:20.140 sigurd the dragon slayer and the culmination of of you know attila the hun and and the migration

03:20:27.340 periods and all of these things kind of coalescing and formulating into a uh

03:20:35.500 a perennial truth by losing a lot of its distinct points and edges and becoming a perennial truth

03:20:46.460 that's how i think our mythos grows is that through organic inner relationship with the

03:20:54.140 The willfulness of the gods as they mete out the judgment and doom in Erdswell, in heaven, very important, in heaven at Erdswell, that their interaction, their willful inclination into our fate and the way that we do things, as this culminates and as we go, these stories will be told.

03:21:19.800 they will be retold and they will be told to our descendants and that's how they get built that's

03:21:26.520 how they're they're understood so you know I don't think it's a matter of like someone sitting down

03:21:34.120 and remaking a story or making up a story no these come from our interactions with the gods

03:21:40.560 and over time those details fall away to the perennial truth and those are the stories that

03:21:48.260 told to our descendants so who knows uh what could be in a century from now or you know 500

03:21:58.660 years from now our our religion will sure surely evolve and the things we're doing now

03:22:06.100 will have effect on them and you know of what level will that be history and what level of that

03:22:13.300 will be perennial mythos perennial truth coming through where the gods and our deeds are kind of

03:22:21.060 aligned into one thing that is spoken about with reverence and with an understanding about those

03:22:29.380 connections being made the the return if you will i i don't know i i think that i'm i kind of get all

03:22:38.340 flustered and lost in the in the concept of it but um

03:22:46.340 the gods and the stories that we have of the gods are in essence two separate things

03:22:55.460 the gods are the gods and they enact in our world through the well and into our fates and

03:23:02.820 the way we do things and the way we experience things and the way we interact with them and the

03:23:06.660 way they bless us and then the stories we have of the gods are again cumulative actions from the past

03:23:16.180 mixed with the will of the gods combined with a lot of the details kind of rounded out

03:23:22.580 so that the perennial truths show through that's why you have like atli you know in the story of

03:23:29.060 sigurd the dragon slayer is most likely attila the hun but at least position in that story

03:23:35.700 is different than the actual person because the truth the perennial truth of that story

03:23:41.940 needs to be played out needs to be understood by our dependency and and it goes you know on

03:23:49.220 and on to that like the first person that ever introduced me to the idea of those possibilities

03:23:54.180 is matt al sergo they said like what if there was a point in which our descendants can look back and

03:24:01.780 say oh during the re-emergence when the church was being formed and going into you know its stages

03:24:11.460 we look at one slice of it and our ancestors will be looking at the literary works or

03:24:19.620 the artwork or the uh physical attainment of hoffs and such those things can then turn into

03:24:32.020 the willful workings of the gods within the world and be spoken of about very differently

03:24:39.220 than how we perceive them today and that's how mythos works that's how it becomes so powerful

03:24:51.700 yeah so to the to the question can we

03:24:54.260 you know either re re-receive ancient knowledge or can we

03:25:08.820 acquire future knowledge as far as lore goes as far as

03:25:15.620 myths myths and communication from our gods in a real

03:25:19.300 you know in a real bona fide lore way absolutely

03:25:29.620 what that looks like how did that occur in the beginning

03:25:36.500 there's a beauty to the mystery of that that a little bit of the awe goes away when you realize

03:25:44.660 how sausage is made

03:25:49.300 it's still delicious and it's still a thing i think that we all and we get like this when we

03:25:57.940 look at ancient things and modern you know well actually use and and you know adorners of couches

03:26:04.860 like to criticize anything new is just made up stuff as if old things weren't at some point

03:26:15.400 like that's the thing is i always wonder about that well we'll run into it with with runes

03:26:22.060 the armin and runes are completely made up new age nonsense but all viking runes are awesome

03:26:29.800 well how come you know what at what point do you think or are you suggesting that you know

03:26:39.340 odin rode down on on slepnir and handed a guy a bag of carved pieces of wood and that's how the

03:26:47.180 runes came to our ancestors i'm not saying that didn't happen but i i don't know anybody is that

03:26:53.100 saying that that is what happened but we if you go far enough back in history you just kind of

03:27:00.300 write it off to like magic and whatever and you don't think about it critically

03:27:05.740 And as if that couldn't happen today, I think what likely happened in a lot of incidents is that elders in Gothar and Vitke and people who were trusted and well acclimated and attuned to perceive those things and to have relationships with our gods,

03:27:33.440 received inspiration and those inspirations played out and you know the people with discernment were

03:27:44.640 able to you know call bs on something if it wasn't true and people with discernment were

03:27:53.160 blessed with like oh no this this is absolutely true i i prayed on this and this is you know

03:27:59.680 turned out to be confirmed by by my experience and by my discernment and understanding whoa this

03:28:08.360 is true and it becomes codified over time and I think it happens little by little and over a long

03:28:13.640 period of time by the time we read our lore as written down you know in the 1200s by by Snorri

03:28:21.940 in by Simon Durf all of the characters look like Vikings and have Viking stuff and are described

03:28:31.420 in a Viking picture because that's the context of the folk they're talking to and that's what

03:28:36.400 they have access to many of the things they're describing occur you know in primordial mankind

03:28:46.360 pre-stone age like in the way way way back where they didn't have you know

03:28:55.480 uh bernies and and helms and and you know iron swords and and things

03:29:03.480 that's not the point that's the that's the set of paint they had to draw with

03:29:08.760 And so you draw with what you have.

03:29:14.360 As this gets explained to our, you know, distant descendants and you're, you know, 3025.

03:29:26.900 Maybe the lore as we are rediscovering it takes a more modern shape.

03:29:34.040 that tales are told in a more modern context.

03:29:38.560 But we rediscover and rebuild our understanding bit by bit.

03:29:45.160 And it comes through relationship with the gods

03:29:47.320 and through aligning ourselves as a church,

03:29:52.740 as a people, and as individuals

03:29:54.760 to be able to receive information from our gods,

03:29:59.540 to be able to get the that kind of gifting from the divine but modern lore does become

03:30:10.100 revealed to us now if you're talking about big lore like you know the sun being chased

03:30:16.180 by wolves and stuff the things that are completely outside of the direct interaction between human

03:30:25.300 beings, that

03:30:27.940 I think takes those shapes of some of the perennial things that Spahn's talking

03:30:33.220 about. If he's talking about the lore that involves interaction

03:30:37.460 with gods and men, that's a little bit different.

03:30:41.660 I think it's, you know,

03:30:45.000 we already see some of that.

03:30:55.300 Otham spoke to Stephen McNallan in 1968. He forged a relationship and a bond with Stephen McNallan, and through that partnership, this occurred and was born from. That occurred and that happened.

03:31:16.480 um when steve was in africa he was in congo at the time but there's a lot of political upheaval and

03:31:27.700 borders were changing things were happening he found himself with the wrong papers being examined

03:31:35.200 by angry african guards with ak-47s examining who these foreigners were and where their documents

03:31:43.740 were, and, you know, taking people off and blasting them if they didn't have the right

03:31:49.240 stuff, and Westerners were being killed regularly at the time, yet Odin turned him invisible

03:32:00.860 to those men, just passed right by, went to the guy in front of him, papers, looked at

03:32:08.440 papers okay looked right through steve went to the guy behind him and asked that guy for papers

03:32:15.960 and by that happening we have the house true folk assembly that was between the shutdown of

03:32:24.920 the free assembly and kind of steve's long walk in the world before returning re-galvanizing his

03:32:34.680 thoughts and his methods and how to do this and founding our house of true folk assembly

03:32:40.840 um he was preserved by the you know by the hand of the all father that happened

03:32:48.440 those things happened and as time goes on

03:32:54.360 what i say will sound a lot less fantastic and a lot more like lore and holy writ like of course

03:33:01.640 that happened in the heroic days of steve mcnalen um and those kind of things happen over time

03:33:09.560 it's we have a we have a modern skepticism about them and rightly so the world is full of nut jobs

03:33:17.480 that say all kind of crazy nonsense it's just not either it's poorly intentioned or we got a whole

03:33:22.680 bunch of people that are nuts or have a whole bunch of other psychological problems and make

03:33:27.880 stuff up and are delusional we also have people that are genuinely touched by the divine we also

03:33:33.560 have people that are heroes that will be celebrated in song and legend and that their lives will

03:33:42.040 become the lore of our great great grandchildren in a very one for one you know the steve's leo

03:33:50.760 will be part of their edit that they get you know and i think that's you know that i think

03:33:56.520 that's a very real thing but sometimes it takes we all do this and so i laughingly like ah these

03:34:04.680 you know well actually is with their celebrating things because they're ancient we all it's cool

03:34:09.880 if it's ancient it sounds awesome it meets all of our expectations of like uncovered

03:34:16.120 ancient tomes with you know it meets all of our indiana jones fantasies on stuff

03:34:20.680 but with every one of those things at some point that was yesterday at some point man did you see

03:34:31.920 that thing that happened yesterday we need to write that down we need to we need to tell folks

03:34:36.960 around the campfire next time about that that crazy thing that we saw that happened

03:34:41.320 and they're skeptical and it sounds whatever a century later no that's truth that has proven

03:34:49.560 to be true over the time, that has stood the test of time, and that has brought with it

03:34:57.160 the benefits of truth to the folk that continue to celebrate it and to enshrine it in the

03:35:03.540 Lord.

03:35:05.460 That's a really long and complex, I knew that one was probably going to be something that

03:35:09.920 took a while to answer, but it's a really important one, and I think it is a good one

03:35:14.020 for us to end the evening on.

03:35:28.160 All right.

03:35:39.160 So I want to leave with that.

03:35:43.580 There's a couple of things, a couple of cleanup things.

03:35:46.640 First, unsaying Alcatru, I just saw your post in there.

03:35:56.180 I have no idea who you are or your story or what you are going through.

03:36:03.200 If you would like, please email me at Matt Flabel, M-A-T-T-F-L-A-V-E-L.

03:36:13.820 at runestone.org and i would be really happy to to talk to you if you want to talk about

03:36:20.780 whatever's going on um and also wolf throne talked about what did he say up here

03:36:33.580 uh we're talking about what size the afa will be in a century he said the bigger you get the

03:36:38.140 faster new members will come in wolf are you not a member of the astro folk assembly

03:36:44.140 and if you're not a member of the astro folk assembly why not

03:36:51.660 we should figure out what that why is we should get you on the team

03:36:59.900 unsane house true says that he texted me years ago and that i never texted him back

03:37:09.100 Without knowing the specifics, I don't know what to say to that.

03:37:15.820 If you did, and that's how it happened, if I got your text, I can't imagine intentionally not texting you back.

03:37:25.660 Either way, I'm really sorry that was your experience.

03:37:29.200 And give me another try on it, please.

03:37:35.720 But yeah, I hope you guys all have a good night.

03:37:38.140 hope you guys have an amazing start to 2025 a lot of stuff i'm looking forward to reading with you

03:37:46.700 all sharing with you guys talking to you guys and interacting with you and hopefully seeing you guys

03:37:52.780 at events this next you know this current year that we're in and uh

03:38:00.540 if anybody's listening to this and you've thought about joining the afa now's the time start 2025

03:38:06.140 off right get on the team we got a lot of cool stuff to do together uh i'm excited to talk to

03:38:12.700 you guys next week on the next episode victory never sleeps until then hail the icier hail the

03:38:21.100 fault, hail the AFA, and remember victory never sleeps. Good night, everyone.

03:38:51.100 We'll be right back.

03:39:21.100 We'll be right back.

03:39:51.100 Thank you.

03:40:21.100 Thank you.

03:40:51.100 We'll be right back.

03:41:21.100 We'll be right back.

Asatru Folk Assembly - January 02, 2025

1⧸1⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 130 - Gróttasöngr

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