Asatru Folk Assembly - 1⧸11⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 27 - Bragi

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

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00:02:30.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:03:00.000 all right there he is welcome again to another exciting edition of victory never sleeps

00:03:20.520 um we have witten swan with us again to talk about the next in our list of gods of our folk

00:03:30.660 tonight we're going to be talking about bragi um before then i figure top of the show stuff to go

00:03:39.020 over i am i'm ridiculously excited uh i'm flying out tomorrow night and then

00:03:50.060 this Friday evening and spending the day Saturday at Sigerheim. This will be my first time actually

00:03:57.580 putting boots on the ground there. And I'm so excited to be there and to see it and to share

00:04:04.240 that with so many of our members that decided to come out for it. It's going to be a really nice

00:04:10.040 weekend. We're going to get a real firm idea of that property line and we're going to start

00:04:16.540 dreaming and planning where we want uh our hoff to go the hoff that's going at siggerheim is

00:04:23.900 tiershoff i'm gonna figure out where that fits and kind of plan some tetris with some buildings and

00:04:30.300 planning where we want our great hall and figuring out where that's going to fit and how that's going

00:04:34.700 to look and i don't know there's just so many things we've been uh excited about and dreaming

00:04:39.980 about it'll be great to to get out there and and get a good feel for the place so i'm excited for

00:04:45.900 that. Also coming up, if you guys can do it, in White Springs, Florida at Njordshof. At the

00:04:55.080 beginning of next month, we are having Njordshof's first national event that's going to be Charming

00:05:02.020 of the Plow, and we're pretty excited about that. If you haven't gotten a chance to see it, Njordshof

00:05:07.920 is our newest hof, and the folks down there have put a lot of love into it. They've got an exciting

00:05:15.520 event planned and it's just it's going to be fantastic and that's an awesome time of year to

00:05:22.100 go down to florida it's not miserably hot and humid in february it should be really nice

00:05:27.860 so i'm looking forward to that uh also that's going to be the first time in years that i've

00:05:33.160 gotten my wife and my daughter out to to these events outside of our area so that'll be really

00:05:38.720 great to to show her off and florida is her her home turf so it'll be nice to uh to get her there

00:05:46.480 and get my daughter to meet her grandmother and and spend some time there um as as a little factoid

00:05:54.000 white springs was the town that uh mandy did her her very first afa moot she was ever at

00:06:01.280 was hosted by our law speaker and it was hosted in white springs um yeah if you know people that

00:06:10.400 want to i don't know that you think would benefit or you think would enjoy this program please make

00:06:16.240 sure they know that on fridays these episodes get uploaded and onto spotify and can be listened to

00:06:23.440 as a podcast um you can always go back and check out uh this video on our youtube channel after

00:06:30.560 the fact and folks that want to tune in live we are live on odyssey entropy twitter youtube and vk

00:06:39.120 so a lot of different ways for people to find us um yeah without further ado

00:06:49.280 oh i should mention if you're on the entropy you can leave us tips or you can participate

00:06:54.800 in the super chat if you send us something will your question or comment will get right

00:06:59.440 to the front of the line. And yes, Fawn, folks that are coming in or that are unfamiliar,

00:07:09.440 what should they know about Bragi? I mean, first and foremost, he's listed as

00:07:20.080 one of the 12 gods of our faith um and is

00:07:28.160 at at surface most people say he's the god of poetry uh and this would of course cause some

00:07:35.760 confusion because it oftentimes odin is referred to as the god of poetry as well but if you know

00:07:41.920 about bragi and his extension of of being the son of odin it's pretty clear to see those connections

00:07:51.440 there um he's mentioned quite a lot and there's a lot of controversy around him uh in relation to

00:08:00.080 uh poets of the age and i i i think if we if nobody actually asks it though i am anticipating it

00:08:08.080 um we'll cover that as well but i i would say on the surface level he's often referred to as the

00:08:14.240 god of poetry but for i think us as a folk we really need to consider him to be um

00:08:23.520 more than that he is the god of um sound i would say structured sound uh again there is uh

00:08:32.480 uh mythological language in the stories to understand him being the son of Odin and what

00:08:39.120 that might mean if anyone's familiar with the runes and things of that nature but he's structured

00:08:43.360 sound the god of math I would even say mathematics in correlation to music or uh as I think that our

00:08:51.420 ancestors saw them as being inseparable and saw music more in relation to um oh excuse me that's

00:08:58.720 my grandfather clock going off um more in correlation to um

00:09:07.680 mathematics and things like that i'm sorry is that yeah um

00:09:15.280 that are mathematics and music were correlated together but also he's got a poetry metered

00:09:23.120 poetry and i would say they're a proxy prayer as well so there's things about bragi that are very

00:09:29.840 limited in the lore but i think over in the in since the revival of uh faith towards the gods

00:09:37.680 there's been a lot expounded on about him that i think is very important to note so i would say

00:09:45.600 definitely the god of music poetry and the creation of art and more and and we can go into more of

00:09:55.360 that i guess later but surface level anybody coming in i would definitely say expression

00:10:01.040 of art expression of music expression of the beauty of sound and mathematics bragi is

00:10:06.480 he's our God. He's our God of that. And has a huge place within our culture now,

00:10:19.140 possibly even more so than in the elder times.

00:10:25.520 All right. Well, I think a great place to start. And I don't think we've done this

00:10:30.340 enough on this series. And I want to start from here on out. And if anybody has questions,

00:10:35.680 we're happy to go back over other gods who've already spoken and do this as well but could you

00:10:41.280 break down the linguistics with like the etymology of bragi the etymology of the names of our our

00:10:48.560 gods and of of any of the characters in our in our mythos are pregnant with meaning and so

00:10:57.840 by understanding those names we get i don't know i think we start from a much better perspective

00:11:03.440 understanding these gods. Well, and I think it's important that when most people hear the names of

00:11:11.300 the gods, there are names of the gods that seem to correlate. I think all of them kind of go

00:11:17.860 further back, whether it's, you know, you know, Germanic to Proto-Germanic to eventually even to

00:11:24.500 the, uh, uh, Indo-European languages. Um, but there are some that we, we see more correlation

00:11:31.980 to, um, early on and would, would be, I guess we would consider them older. And then there

00:11:39.440 are the subsequent children of, and that would be, I guess, time-wise as well, seen as the

00:11:44.560 children of, um, but Bragi is an interesting one. Um, in particular, there's three things

00:11:51.940 i've always kind of looked into and it there's some confusion so brager b-r-a-g-r in old

00:12:02.060 norse is a poem or a song braga is like the first um the first born or the first uh cut

00:12:14.700 or the first uh good thing that is given off kind of like um if we were you know who gets

00:12:20.040 the first cut off of a piece of meat, or it's the first offering in a way. And so that has

00:12:28.600 caused a lot of confusion. Also too, there is another meaning for braga to mean a glinting

00:12:34.660 or a shimmering of light. And so that has caused a great amount of confusion.

00:12:41.900 I think that context was more important in relation to those. And so eliminating the flash

00:12:49.680 the glint of light from the old norse i think we would look mainly at the two the first cut

00:12:57.120 or the first given or the first gift or the highest and renowned gift and then also to the

00:13:02.720 poem and how those two meanings even though they may not have been related in the elder times i

00:13:09.760 think um that's the beauty of our mythological language is sometimes putting some things

00:13:16.320 together have created a correlated magic that i think the gods knew was going to happen um and

00:13:24.560 that is in particular with uh the poem and the use of uh what we call the braga fool the um the uh

00:13:34.320 what it's used now and today in modern and in the revival of austro and what it was to our ancestors

00:13:40.400 back then the correlation might not have been that high but it has become or it has birthed itself

00:13:48.240 well in our culture to become synonymous even though it might not have been by our ancestors

00:13:53.760 so i would say brager is a poem or song um it means to be wise in meter

00:14:01.440 to be wise in speech clever in speech and to stir the hearts of men

00:14:10.400 You know, in my looking into it, as far as the etymology, certainly we come up with no idea what that sound was.

00:14:23.640 Oh, was that more of the jets flying over your house, Vaughn?

00:14:29.580 All right.

00:14:30.680 Yep, the jets are out tonight.

00:14:31.920 so anyways as i was saying when i was looking into it certainly uh the reference to poetry

00:14:39.600 and i think that's solid but the other one um swan i don't know if this is because of your of

00:14:46.720 your strong roots in icelandic or not when i was looking it up it i was getting first and foremost

00:14:55.440 not so much in the sense of an offering but in the sense of like best of highest ranking of

00:15:02.880 stuff and it sounds like that probably comes from a similar root but there was one um one

00:15:09.840 word related to kingship that had a braga prefix as yeah made him first amongst the nobles or

00:15:20.720 something yeah i especially in relation to the royalty because i think it also relates to the

00:15:27.760 firstborn son who might take up the kingship so therefore it was like the first uh to receive as

00:15:35.040 well as the like the first that is given and the first to receive i think was kind of used

00:15:42.080 uh i have no idea if linguistically in the way way back like you know perhaps not even

00:15:50.400 in the in the old norse but in the indo-european i don't know if oftentimes when some of these

00:15:57.440 things sound very similar they'll have a similar root and they will split to mean different things

00:16:02.400 down the line i mentioned that last week about the word guest and host originally being one word

00:16:08.560 in the indo-european and it's splitting over time and uh it'd be cool if that was the case here

00:16:15.680 scholars don't i'm not making a statement that it is for sure but i think both of those do do

00:16:22.560 honor and add dignity to our understanding of bragi so i think that the combination of those is

00:16:29.760 i don't know a fortuitous and nice coincidence if it is or uh working of weird perhaps

00:16:36.000 one thing that you have brought up a few times now in discussing bragi and this certainly correlates

00:16:46.200 in ways with uh with his father the importance of the importance of speech the importance of language

00:16:55.740 um and i have some but i don't know do you have any thoughts that you want to share with folks

00:17:01.820 about the magical potency of verbal expression?

00:17:11.620 Yeah, I would liken speech and the power of speech as it is the power,

00:17:21.440 I think, that Braggie in his domain,

00:17:24.320 but poetry and song are kind of like a disciplined speech.

00:17:29.120 so you have uh you have someone who is a natural born or may have the inspiration maybe they

00:17:36.800 weren't natural born but suddenly it dropped into them um and their expression becomes something

00:17:43.000 that emanates power that that changes people's minds changes people's hearts does all kinds of

00:17:48.620 things um so i think that when we talk about bragi being the god of poetry it's kind of like saying

00:17:54.220 that's disciplined speech. And, uh, in context to the time, you know, the disciplined speech had a

00:18:01.720 very high ranking power in our ancestral time. And I would say even up until the, uh, you know,

00:18:09.320 maybe even the fifties, uh, and then, then poetry kind of started to disseminate down out of our

00:18:17.200 culture into different forms. But yeah, speech itself is powerful. We know this. It survives

00:18:25.580 in pop culture with every grand speech before the charge or whatever that might be. And it may seem

00:18:31.720 cliche now if we put it in that context, but that's actually just reflecting of how important

00:18:36.800 speech is and how the expression of a moment before passing through a threshold. Or we still

00:18:45.040 do it, speeches at graduations and other things. These things are seen as deeply important and

00:18:50.960 they need to transfer some grand message. Oftentimes, if they don't, they're seen as,

00:18:56.880 well, that was kind of, but when it hits home, when someone speaks about something of great

00:19:03.000 importance, it strikes true to the heart, drives people to tears and even to ecstatic levels of

00:19:10.140 laughter and just elation usually is I think the best form that you can see most often or people

00:19:18.580 can identify with when they hear a speech and they're just absolutely elated by what is being

00:19:23.340 said. By the end, they're almost floating. Yeah, so poetics and song are the disciplined forms of

00:19:33.060 root which is speech and speech i think is the most important aspect especially when you think

00:19:41.060 about pulling back from speech and from poet uh poetics into speaking uh whether it's oritating

00:19:49.460 to a crowd or uh you know to uh an assembled folk or even to your comrades in arms and things like

00:19:56.340 that you go back even further and what that does is it's a culmination of sound specifically

00:20:03.620 attested to a moment in weird that's if you think of it that way it suddenly has

00:20:11.540 a different context a different way of thinking about it all of this combination all of these

00:20:15.780 people gathered all of uh whatever it might be at before this moment there is a a song a poem

00:20:24.580 uh speech sounds being correlated together to inspire to pass through that threshold um

00:20:32.740 almost like a key to a lock and um then once that threshold is passed and moved through

00:20:38.660 all things begin from there so i think that's a really uh mystical and powerful thing that we

00:20:43.940 should think about when we talk about speech we talk about the usage of speech i know that a lot

00:20:49.220 lot of us uh here recently have at the behest of uh winton turnage have been talking about

00:20:55.760 noticing our speech and and holding uh correlation to it matter of fact i i actually

00:21:03.160 um proclamated on the boar's head for yule um that i would clean up my speech and stop using

00:21:11.700 any sort of like unknowable speech profanities if you will um and so i think it's very important

00:21:20.740 that understanding where the rubber meets the road about speech and about uh the power of speech is

00:21:28.900 in the domain of bragi you know i'd like to add this and after this we can get into some of the

00:21:35.700 questions but speaking speaking or singing is in and of itself a profoundly magical act

00:21:50.260 if you think about it and you can you can there are other ways to enact this

00:21:57.700 but on a very fundamental level speaking

00:22:01.140 i'm sorry i'm a little bit out of order trying to think of this in my head how to present it but

00:22:07.780 magic operative magic magic that that you're intending to do into the world

00:22:15.840 specifically male oriented magic is the idea of um

00:22:23.260 working your will of willful like having your will penetrate reality and make change

00:22:35.020 and the first step in doing that so often is taking a concept or an idea that's in your head

00:22:42.160 and having the courage or the willpower to speak it out loud and you know some of you you know

00:22:51.240 certainly I run into this. Some of you may run into this as well, where you can have some really

00:22:56.580 cool plans that sound great in your head, but there's a fear and an apprehension of saying

00:23:01.400 them out loud. Because once you say them out loud, it's out there and it's real and you have to deal

00:23:06.160 with the consequence of it. If you express your intention to do something, you can, eh, one of

00:23:11.580 these days in your head all day long. But when you speak it, especially with like, that's why it took

00:23:17.520 me as long as I did to bring up Sigurheim. That's an intimidating in its scope thing.

00:23:26.380 And I wanted to make very sure we were ready to commit to it because I don't want to be that guy

00:23:30.380 that says something and then doesn't follow through and back words with action. So there's

00:23:37.080 something magical about speaking that intent because it takes something internal and it makes

00:23:42.880 it external it puts it out there it puts it on the field it lays it out on the table it makes it

00:23:50.320 now it's a real thing now it now it exists now people can have comment on it or can

00:23:56.080 you know think one way or another of it you commit to things and we see this in the culture

00:24:03.040 of our ancestors specifically in hall culture and i think hall culture is where you see a lot of

00:24:09.360 braggy's gravitas because those speeches made at stumble or over the feast to where you're

00:24:18.080 standing up and you're saying something and there's weight to what you say you're making

00:24:22.560 an oath or an agreement with your lord or with one of your fellow warriors you're calling somebody

00:24:28.080 out and making an accusation somebody said something that you're going to call um in respect 0.95

00:24:35.280 to to spawn's oath i'm going to try to clean it up too that you're going to call um bull excrement

00:24:42.880 on and say that's not that's not the way it is that's not you know that's not true well then you

00:24:48.240 have to back that up and that's a real thing those words especially spoken in a ritual context

00:24:55.840 are profoundly meaningful and it's one of the reasons that um that poets and and musicians

00:25:04.880 and scalds and singers were so important in the hall it's not just that they provided entertainment

00:25:11.120 which they certainly did but their songs and their tales

00:25:18.640 was profoundly magical in a world that didn't have movies that didn't have tv that didn't

00:25:23.840 have that other media them painting a picture for you with their words

00:25:30.160 was transcendent um them being able to make a melody with their words that could make warriors

00:25:41.800 weep is powerful to be able to do that and to move people on a fundamental core level

00:25:49.600 with your speech is tremendously powerful and you see that when you talk about magic one of the the

00:25:58.000 root words of of you know magical incantations is the chant is the speaking you do that when you

00:26:06.900 do when we do rune galder that's why rune galder is so important there's one level of the runes

00:26:12.040 where you're writing them but the intonation the sound that you're making um there's a lot of

00:26:20.500 hippy dippy sounding things out there about vibrations but there is a lot to that and i

00:26:29.060 always like to start off the rituals that i do with rune galder because i think that

00:26:35.300 because literally it harmonizes those of us in the circle figuratively it gets us all in the same

00:26:42.820 pace all focused on the same thing but it unites us together we adjust our inflection and how long

00:26:49.540 we carry a note and our tone to where it blends with those around us and it it structures the

00:26:55.780 communal aspect of our worship in a way that i don't think others do quite as well so that's

00:27:02.180 speaking not just is it artful not just is it you know technically valuable and does it sound pretty

00:27:10.580 but it's it's metaphysically valuable as well um and as fawn said there's so many times in

00:27:18.820 our history and our lore in our popular understanding where and i forget there's a

00:27:24.500 there's a term for it but where you know the the war leader would go out in front of the war band

00:27:29.780 and make a speech to motivate and to incite the troops we see that you know up until this very

00:27:37.220 day and we'll see that into the future to motivate men to go into battle to do great things um so the

00:27:44.820 the power of speech is, I think you, you can't overestimate how important that power of speech

00:27:54.060 is. And Bragi being such an exemplar of that is very profound to me. It's, uh, well, one thing

00:28:06.740 we've mentioned it before. Like we, we don't prep for these, these, uh, episodes. We kind of just

00:28:12.720 go on this like back and forth and kind of uh rolling forward on the subject uh it's just it

00:28:20.440 is very strange possibly even weird that um you had mentioned this about the manifestation of

00:28:26.480 destiny within the speech uh as i was doing some of the research about the braga full and again we

00:28:34.000 can go more into the what it might actually physically be there is one thing and it was

00:28:37.860 something that you just said that really like ping clicked off in my head and it was uh it's

00:28:42.900 from the yinglinga saga in which um king ingyald stood up he grasped the bullhorn and this may be

00:28:51.700 that the the braga fool was poured into the bullhorn or the the meat horn and he makes a solemn 0.93

00:29:00.340 vow to enlarge his domain by one half towards all four corners of the world or else he will die 1.00

00:29:08.860 and then he stands up and he he turns his body into the four directions into the north into the

00:29:16.420 east into the south and into the west holding the horn up and then he drains it so like when you

00:29:22.280 started saying that about the manifestation of action and i was just reading that and we don't

00:29:27.380 talk before these things that was just right well it it makes me

00:29:37.380 and and that's the thing saying that out loud making that toast 0.97

00:29:42.340 you're the burden for you to follow through is extremely heavy um at sigger bloat in uh july 1.00

00:29:51.860 I went out and, you know, I kind of, it wasn't ill thought out, but I got very much moved in 0.99

00:29:59.300 the moment at Sigur Bloat at Odenshof. And, you know, as a final toast with the horn before

00:30:07.680 we made our offering, I swore over it on behalf of the AFA that by that time in the coming year,

00:30:16.560 by july 2023 we will i talked about our victories and things we've accomplished together

00:30:23.040 and i swore before the gods that we will make them prouder we will accomplish more we will be

00:30:29.280 more victorious one year from today than we are today and i swore that over the horn in the circle

00:30:36.400 in front of the gods and as soon as i did i was very impressed with the weight of and you can

00:30:44.400 you can ask fawn i immediately went to the wit and i said hey guys help help me come through on this

00:30:49.200 one because yeah because i mean those things and and and i'll say this one way to strategize that

00:30:58.160 is to just never over promise never put too much out there and you can call it safe but

00:31:04.800 our gods favor the hero and to do that you have to step out of your comfort zone and you have to

00:31:11.040 you have to take some risks with the things you achieve and then you have to back it up with your

00:31:17.640 last ounce of blood sweat and tears that you have to make it good and when you do we're all made

00:31:26.020 better for it somebody makes an oath like I'll brush my teeth tonight yay we score a point because

00:31:31.520 I did it that's not the point you oath to do big things it's not worth speaking or acknowledging

00:31:39.120 if you're othing to do something mundane that anyone could do. The hero stands up and makes

00:31:45.020 an oath to do something heroic. And that, as much as anything else, spurs men on to help him

00:31:54.120 accomplish that thing. That's why speaking is so, and I know I said I'd get to the questions and I

00:32:00.520 will here in a second, but I think this is very relevant to our practice of Ausitru that you guys,

00:32:06.860 you know many of you even who are new may have been familiar with our our two big rituals are

00:32:12.400 bloat and sumble. Sumble is is all about what we're talking about here and it's

00:32:18.140 the third round of sumble is a round that folks it's the appropriate time to make oaths

00:32:29.160 but I'm a big stickler and in the AFA we're big sticklers on getting those oaths okayed so you

00:32:36.660 run it by somebody before you before you speak it because in that ritual context we're all sharing

00:32:45.740 in that and so if you make a promise that you we have no confidence you can keep we don't want to

00:32:53.380 by continuing to drink with you assent to that and bear responsibility for it in the inverse

00:32:59.580 if we do back you we do have faith in your carrying through on your oath then we're all

00:33:05.480 made better by witnessing it and you know helping you get there if that is accomplished we all

00:33:10.840 benefit from being in your presence when that oath was made so we take it very very seriously

00:33:15.960 and it's one of the reasons there's many reasons we would take symbol very seriously but specifically

00:33:24.840 what you say over the horn matters and we have um a special person in a position there

00:33:34.440 to call you out if you speak poorly over the horn and to negate what you said to correct

00:33:39.240 your behavior to eject you if necessary to preserve that we're saying the right things

00:33:44.600 over the horn and so that's that's fundamental it's even referenced to that that bragi is the

00:33:53.640 thuler of the gods that he's the um the word itself is kind of tossed around because it kind of

00:34:02.120 bad mittens between old english and old norse but thular or or uh in old in old english or anglo

00:34:08.840 saxon i i believe it's still pronounced the same except it doesn't have the rn so it's just thula

00:34:14.920 but there's a y so it may be thila i'm not 100 sure on that so the y is the same that's ensemble

00:34:21.560 though so i think it makes that you sound the thular or thulla yeah the the idea of the of the

00:34:30.840 the uh the warden of speech that's really what it is he's he's guarding over the sanctity of the

00:34:38.040 moment and anybody who treads up close to uh kind of um breaking that sanctity has to deal with the

00:34:46.600 thular and the thular is uh the wise man who sits and and just like you said he's that's a sacred

00:34:54.120 moment i think that that is one thing for sure that bragi and i think culturally in our faith

00:35:01.480 is one of his presiding things in our culture is the the ceremony the ritual of sambal

00:35:12.840 absolutely um had something else but thought has escaped me i might interject i reserve the right

00:35:18.920 to interject at a at a later time but start with some of y'all's questions tonight

00:35:25.080 uh tim says i think we can all agree the celtic gods are cousins to our pantheon besides the

00:35:32.520 obvious the harp could you compare and contrast the dagda and bragi for us thanks i'd like to

00:35:40.520 stipulate i don't think a lot of us i i think that we can say the celts are cousins to the germanics

00:35:46.200 But I think the relationship between our gods is much closer than it being cousins.

00:35:54.800 I think they're different understandings of the same divine forces.

00:35:59.500 Svon, what do you have to say about the relationship between the Dagda and Bragi?

00:36:05.780 Well, I would also, just to extend a little bit on what you said, like when we look at the tripartite of our faith,

00:36:12.740 If we look at the tripartite of the of the Gaulish people or the Gaulish pantheon, the Hellenic pantheon, the Slavic pantheon, we see these tripartites, the Etruscans all the way down even to the Luwians and the Hittites.

00:36:26.620 And even by extension to the Vedics, all the way across. So yes, absolutely. I think we're even more than cousins that there is an overlap or an overlay, or an understanding that culturally or linguistically, the names might be different, but the gods themselves may not.

00:36:46.840 Um, but that's a, that's a whole thing. And I'm just referencing that to, um, to, to, uh, T. Dumas. Um, I think that, I mean, yes, Dagda has the harp, the, uh, the harp, I believe it's called Un Lathe. I'm going to butcher that. Um, but I'm just kind of going off the top of my head.

00:37:08.680 So, um, and that it says that it can inspire men and control them, I think is what it was.

00:37:15.980 Um, the, uh, beyond that, I mean, dog that carries a lot of one, we know that it's far

00:37:28.320 Western isles.

00:37:30.040 Um, there has been a lot of evolution of the gods as far as, uh, after conversion, there

00:37:36.300 was a lot of things that were going on as far as the way they were placed he's been referenced as

00:37:39.740 a warrior a father-like figure he's uh even referenced as a druid one thing i would say is

00:37:46.020 um a lot of people kind of correlate him i think more to to ovin um but again that's speculative

00:37:53.800 because there are other connections that he has uh in in relation to like agriculture and things

00:38:00.040 of that nature um i have a limited understanding of of the uh gaulish path and druidism but i do

00:38:07.600 know that there was a class of druid or a i guess like a sect perhaps that was dedicated to the art

00:38:16.080 of being a bard and what that might entail as both being a singer of prayerful songs to the gods

00:38:23.260 uh singing the correct songs that had been passed down and that they eventually evolved into what

00:38:29.600 would be like the courtly bard uh or the courtly scald um of later later times so that again the

00:38:36.840 druidic connection to dogda and to poetics and and bards themselves may have some some connectivity

00:38:44.500 there uh if we were to look at it as possibly that dog has been you hemorrhized down into more

00:38:51.180 of a humanistic form by the time he's actually written about um you know and then you would see

00:38:57.640 uh the the harp as being an extension of him perhaps this is a uh cultural poetic language

00:39:06.120 uh instead of speaking of bragi as the god speaking of bragi's dominion as being an extension

00:39:12.120 of dagda um that that correlative sense is what i'm saying is a lot of times in other cultures

00:39:18.120 especially after um christianization i would say even the gods some of the gods themselves are

00:39:25.000 placed into uh items whether they're swords or goblets or shields or helmets or harps and so

00:39:32.920 where in our family tree of arianism we would see this god as named such because we might not have

00:39:40.480 had the same effect um as far as christianization goes but in other branches of our of for our arian

00:39:48.460 brothers and their in their religions they may have actually been broken down into even extensions

00:39:55.580 by hand in the form of items um so in that case i would see if there is a correlation between

00:40:05.260 say odin and dagda and then there would be a correlation between bragi and the harp

00:40:10.540 itself um and again you can't read it one for one because the stories especially after they

00:40:17.740 they've been involved but you can kind of see broad stroke mythological points in which we

00:40:24.060 see the gods manifesting even in the stories depending on how much they've been affected

00:40:30.940 or changed or worked around um and they don't always manifest in a physical name or even a

00:40:37.340 physical featured or as a as a human but more so as a force so in my my view of that i i would think

00:40:46.940 that um dogda has older connotations i'm not identifying him strictly to odin i'm just saying

00:40:54.380 that others have but if this was the case to compare with i would say the harp and this then

00:41:01.740 opens up a whole new thing when you go to look at some of these stories and you see a sword or a

00:41:09.180 shield or a hearth or a special boot or a special saddle these things might have more meanings

00:41:17.980 they just may have been changed because of the environment that that our cousins if you will um

00:41:24.860 were in and so the gods and their dominions have often been changed in order to make them more

00:41:31.180 palatable or less you know punishable however it may may be but i would say that the understanding

00:41:38.220 the power of speech and then the uh discipline of creating speech into song and into meter that's

00:41:47.180 the connection i would i would immediately hone in on with dogma and i want to throw this out

00:41:52.860 there as well and sometimes i make really silly mundane analogies because i think it it displays

00:42:03.980 a concept i don't ever say them that way to minimize something very important but

00:42:10.220 sometimes whittling it down to something very simple and very basic

00:42:15.900 illustrates a point in a way that's really clear that you can then

00:42:19.500 expand back out to the grandeur that we're talking about but

00:42:25.260 different groups of our people form different relationships with the gods over time

00:42:33.980 Um, by the time of the Viking Age in Norway and then in Iceland, I think that that branch of our folk had a very specialized relationship with our gods. I think the relationship of the Kimbri of 500 years previous was probably also very different.

00:42:58.700 I think the relationship of of the Anglo-Saxons that weren't out writing all the time that were settled in doing pasture lands probably had a very different relationship and understanding with each of our gods as well.

00:43:11.800 And I think we see that further in these different cultural contexts.

00:43:16.100 And I think that, you know, the silly analogy is, you know, your friends from different parts of your life know you differently.

00:43:24.620 your parents know you in a very different way than your friends know you your friends know you

00:43:30.300 in a different way than your wife knows you um your co-workers know you in a different way than

00:43:36.920 you know people who've known you in another very specialized experience and you know you may have

00:43:44.060 a nickname in one of those circles and they may not recognize it in a different circle because

00:43:48.340 they don't know you in that way or that that part of you hasn't been the predominant thing they've

00:43:52.980 been exposed to. So I think that that's at play too in how different Aryan peoples, you know,

00:43:59.680 both in the names they use for their gods and in the attributes that they highlight for different

00:44:04.960 gods. Next question from Travis. I'll hear your Gothi and Witten. What two books would you suggest

00:44:13.420 I direct new folk new to our lore and faith? Hail Victory. Svan, what two books do you advise that

00:44:22.120 he should tell brand new people to uh make sure to check out um i mean also true a native

00:44:32.940 european spirituality by stephen mcnalen would be i think number one that pops into my head

00:44:38.540 um i know too that the uh revised version the um by edward thorson's uh the uh is it the i don't

00:44:49.840 the revised version i still have the old one the book of troth um it's kind of interesting that

00:44:56.880 was one of the first books that i ever read that he wrote uh that inspired me to become asitru um

00:45:03.120 or to at least kind of fully acknowledge where a lot of these feelings and and ideas and and

00:45:07.920 dreams and things that i was having it suddenly pulled it out of the the mist or out of the out

00:45:14.080 of the muck so that was uh definitely an interesting um book for me uh in the early 90s when that came

00:45:24.720 out um but again that's i i guess a broad overlay and have have we moved into some more uh

00:45:38.240 specific nuances since then i i don't know i i guess that would be my first two that's

00:45:42.880 just the first two that came to my head so uh i have some beyond that but they might be a little

00:45:51.440 bit more outside of the league of of um a beginner and that's why i'm hesitant to to say those

00:46:00.400 yeah the question's a deeper one than folks may think because what's you know the best books are

00:46:08.080 not necessarily the books that you would give somebody who's brand new you'd give someone who's

00:46:14.080 brand new books that will you know that are easy to digest or that would introduce them to things

00:46:22.320 in a in a way that's that's engaging and uh accessible to somebody who doesn't necessarily

00:46:29.680 have the background so that's really interesting um certainly the two books that's fawn mentioned

00:46:38.080 But I'm trying to think otherwise, as far as a brand new, a brand new person.

00:46:51.440 It's tempting to mention the Eddas because that's where we draw so much of our lore from.

00:46:58.760 But they're very confusing if you don't have a good foundation before you, before you understand them.

00:47:04.580 Certainly not all of them, but many parts of them are.

00:47:13.540 OK, so. I suggest the Eddas with an asterisk.

00:47:20.020 I think the Eddas should be read one poem at a time and then go read a different book, then read another poem, then read a different book, then read another poem and read a different book.

00:47:32.340 The Etta's aren't something that, especially for a new person, I think are best read together.

00:47:39.320 They're a compilation of things that are independent and to be digested by themselves.

00:47:46.420 And if you try to read the Etta's cover to cover, like maybe you would a Bible that's written in a very chronological fashion, it just doesn't lend itself to that.

00:47:55.800 so I would suggest the Eddas but with with the exception that I said certainly the two books

00:48:02.920 that Swan said also I think Beowulf I think reading Beowulf and it would be really cool

00:48:11.740 to and there's a number of editions that have this that have the old English paired like on

00:48:18.320 one page and then the modern english on another page reading beowulf isn't good on our high

00:48:26.640 lore and our high mythology because it's written down with a with a christian overlay

00:48:33.180 but the hall culture and the warrior ethos of the people in it and the way they interact

00:48:40.740 together as a group is essential to how our people conceived of society and conceived of

00:48:47.800 of the inner the relationship with each other and i think that beowulf is very applicable in

00:48:53.880 principles to our interaction with each other today and i think beowulf is a very valuable

00:48:59.320 one that is overlooked more often than it should be so that's going to be my suggestions

00:49:04.680 can i do a slight addendum to that too is i i would say for well for storytelling and the idea

00:49:13.000 again what in in correlation to tonight and if you're having an issue finding readable um

00:49:21.240 correlations to to the uh to the adas and to the poems um the northern pathway by douglas rossman

00:49:30.120 i think is a really good one as well and it's if you read it it it has the the interesting thing

00:49:36.680 is if you read it alongside the poems you'll begin to notice that he focuses on very key points

00:49:43.640 that i think have almost that's almost like a road map where you can if you see him keying in

00:49:50.040 on this point but leaving some things out there seems to be a correlative sense to um

00:49:56.040 that something massively powerful is happening uh and it might be very very um hard to see

00:50:07.080 in references to perhaps you know if a jotun stands on his shield it's mentioned there that

00:50:13.480 has correlations to i think deeper meaning things that can help you look into it but the best part

00:50:21.000 about it is you could just turn around and read the book to your children and they get a better

00:50:25.620 understanding of the stories of the gods without getting mired in a lot of the poetics or a lot of

00:50:32.340 the problems with you know linguistics and things like that it's very easy to read um and very very

00:50:39.860 fun for the kids so i would say that to the northern pathway when you're reading the eddas

00:50:46.820 read any kind of liner notes read any kind of supplemental materials and you know other people

00:50:53.700 may tell you not to do this but they're wrong um keep your phone or your computer handy and every

00:51:01.780 time they're using something that you've never heard of before google it go down the google

00:51:06.260 rabbit hole if it takes you a week to read one of the poems in the eddas but you and okay so this

00:51:14.500 takes us back to the beginning of the show and what i talked about etymology is so important

00:51:19.620 there's all these names and strange terms in the eddas and i know i felt this way you may very well

00:51:27.220 feel that it you might as well just skip over something or just you'll look it up later or

00:51:32.020 whatever else especially starting fresh if i could go back in time and start fresh i would absolutely

00:51:39.460 do this myself take your time and read it stanza by stanza and every time you're unfamiliar with

00:51:46.820 something look it up you will learn so much and i think honestly that's a great idea for a new

00:51:52.980 person to get so okay one of the books that i always recommend is the culture of the two times

00:51:59.620 and there's a reason i didn't recommend it for brand new people that book ties together so many

00:52:07.060 of the other sources that you would read into a very clear and concise way but in all of the

00:52:13.780 points and all of the references you wouldn't understand unless you've read that other lore

00:52:20.100 if you went through the eddas and every time there was a word you didn't understand or a name

00:52:24.900 you'd never heard before you looked up the etymology and then you looked up like what

00:52:29.140 that means culturally if you just and i hate to recommend wikipedia because they do us personally

00:52:36.580 a very bad disservice but for these kind of things for points of history or linguistics or

00:52:42.820 or whatever they're a very good jumping off point and uh if you did that on every word you were

00:52:48.420 unfamiliar with and took your time and went down those rabbit holes in the ways that interested

00:52:53.540 you or the questions that those brought up i think you would find yourself much better prepared and

00:53:00.180 with a much better foundation as you move through things like i i would strongly recommend that if

00:53:06.980 If I had it all to do over again, that's what I would have started doing as well.

00:53:12.040 Our next question.

00:53:17.240 Is there a possibility for people to actually live at the new location, Sigurheim?

00:53:23.220 I would truly like to be in an actual community of other like-minded individuals,

00:53:30.040 more so than having to travel far occasionally.

00:53:33.920 traditionally. I would need to relocate to truly be able to be a part of the community.

00:53:41.120 And I am at a point in my life where it's a real possibility. Would it be possible?

00:53:47.340 It is not only possible, that's the point. That's why we got the acreage that we got

00:53:55.600 so that we could have several people living on site. And this is this is the vision too.

00:54:03.120 I mean, if every member of the AFA could not live there,

00:54:06.380 we don't have enough land.

00:54:07.560 But if every member wanted to,

00:54:10.020 we would do our very best to buy up adjacent plots

00:54:12.700 and make that happen over time.

00:54:14.960 We plan to do that.

00:54:16.860 In the meantime,

00:54:18.680 if everybody who wanted to move to the same county,

00:54:23.360 amazing,

00:54:24.880 moved within the same couple of towns close by,

00:54:28.140 even better.

00:54:29.600 And folks that actually want to move on to Sigerheim itself, yes, that is the dream, that is the idea, that is what we've planned for.

00:54:39.760 your statement about community could not be more true and that's why we're doing this

00:54:46.960 is for folks to live in a also true community with people who share their values

00:54:54.160 who share their faith and who can work together to make our dreams come true together

00:55:00.560 that's the vision that is the beauty that's what we want and if you're interested in being a part

00:55:05.680 of that please reach out on the side talk to your folk builder they can get you set up on figuring

00:55:11.440 it out and uh yes we are actively that's that is the plan that is that is the dream and it sounds

00:55:19.200 like you are on board with with what we want to see on that and be worthy of it too like again

00:55:31.200 make sure you you the mantle of it the dream the dream is real it's now a realization that

00:55:39.040 is incumbent upon every one of us that are is involved in the dream that you have manifested

00:55:43.840 that we bring goodliness to it so that's that's a point that i should make too um

00:55:51.180 with intentional communities in the past one of the problems is when you open the doors and say

00:55:59.260 come on down you know whoever can do it let's go there people who have been successful and have

00:56:06.540 productive roles in their community and roots in their communities that have been successful

00:56:13.420 with a job that they've been very a career that they've been very successful with

00:56:17.660 those kind of people it's very difficult for them to pick up and move there's a lot of marginal

00:56:22.620 people there's some people that just find themselves at that right window in their life that

00:56:26.860 it's the right time for them there's other people that are willing to make whatever sacrifices to

00:56:32.220 go there and to make that happen and then there's lots of people that don't have anything else going

00:56:36.940 on and you know my couch is as good as their parents couch and those are the people that we

00:56:43.260 want to kind of steer away from those people can come visit absolutely but the people that we want

00:56:48.620 to live there are going to be folks that are going to be expected to contribute and make sure that

00:56:54.940 they're doing their part for the afa for sigerheim for tiershoff that will be there and for making

00:57:02.220 all those things work and that means a special level of dedication financially to the afa

00:57:08.540 it means a special level level of dedication in all of your other resources as far as helping

00:57:13.740 out with other people that need help we envision a place where we can help you know watch each

00:57:19.580 other's kids help homeschool each other's kids help share in some meals and some things help take care

00:57:27.740 of each other and that needs to happen there another thing that needs to happen there is 1.00

00:57:32.220 people live at siggerheim they need to be they need to be the best they don't need to start out

00:57:37.580 the best to get there they just need to be willing to become the best to make that place shine

00:57:43.420 because siggerheim needs to be the example for everybody else so one of the hardest things and

00:57:49.100 of the things that I know is a struggle is everybody who lives at Sigurheim is going to

00:57:55.960 need to get along with each other all the time. Doesn't mean everybody's going to be your best

00:58:00.580 friend, but we will not abide strife at Sigurheim. If you got a problem, let's get over it. Let's

00:58:07.340 solve it. Let's move forward because we're not going to have people living at Sigurheim with

00:58:12.600 grudges against each other or with any kind of bitterness. We're going to jump on that real quick

00:58:16.700 because it's absolutely a first stead. So we want people there and the people that go there,

00:58:23.000 we want to fully experience the beauty of that place by being in harmony with each other and

00:58:29.940 being committed to each other and Sigurheim's success. Next question from Joshua, as a brand

00:58:40.860 new member this is extremely uh that is extremely attracted to the morals ethics and values

00:58:49.260 of the outsider beliefs one who has been previously disappointed of other faiths can you enforce my

00:58:58.860 instinct um yes so it's fun what do you what do you have to say to reassure this fellow that

00:59:06.700 that we live our morals and values

00:59:11.660 and that they're genuinely important to us?

00:59:16.200 Well, I think a common misconception

00:59:19.600 is that we don't have a moral structure.

00:59:23.600 One, I think we have three places

00:59:26.440 in which our moral structure defines us.

00:59:30.620 And oftentimes all three are interplaying

00:59:32.320 all at the same time.

00:59:33.640 We have the heavenly moral

00:59:35.320 in which the gods meet together in heaven, look down into us and see our deeds, and they can

00:59:45.180 turn on and turn off blessings to us based upon whether or not we are worthy. So we seek to be

00:59:51.680 worthy before our gods. In the middle world, we have a moral duty and obligation to our people,

00:59:58.460 to the land or the governance in which we abide to our people. And so we have, again,

01:00:04.580 our peers and i would say uh the grand governance of uh of ourselves as an obligation to make sure

01:00:12.740 that we follow so that the morals there and then we have the underworld or i you know the underworld

01:00:18.900 is kind of a thing that would be i would say like beyond the veil or uh beyond the the place within

01:00:24.900 time when when things sink down below the time is cut off that that moral obligation is to our

01:00:32.580 ancestors and so we look to them as well as an obligation to not fall back or to break our troth

01:00:41.780 with them uh to to keep our our um ourselves and our our focus towards them in corrective action

01:00:51.540 in uh so we have these three sources in which we can kind of move about

01:00:55.940 in in looking at our moral structure and that's a lot so when we look at uh cosmic order and

01:01:04.180 natural law and the way that we see our things like again in the heavenly and in the material

01:01:09.060 i think that's the primary focus but we can't forget that our one of our biggest obligations

01:01:13.780 to moral correctness is to make sure that we do not offend the ancestors because they too

01:01:18.900 have an ability to, I think, affect things. That's first and foremost. Our morals are

01:01:28.440 faith-based. We have faith in the gods, we have faith in our folk, and we have faith in our

01:01:33.320 ancestors, and so we are obligated then to follow in a moral structure that is correct and right

01:01:38.860 and of the best way. That's the problem. Not everyone can quite agree on what is the best

01:01:44.800 way, but we gather together in group for that reason, because we believe in each other that

01:01:51.700 this is the best way. And so the hardest thing I think that a lot of people find is when they come

01:01:58.320 to Ausatru, they're looking for maybe some sort of edict or things like that. And there are quite

01:02:04.100 a few, you know, looking at the nine noble virtues, looking at the six-fold goals of society,

01:02:10.760 um looking at the uh comparative uh like thews and or um tenants in which like you know

01:02:19.660 also true believes this is good and that this is bad these are great these are wonderful ways of

01:02:25.800 kind of giving you a roadmap as to where you're expected to be um especially in relation to the

01:02:32.480 middle world but you know again the gods they they meet out our doom now as we do things so

01:02:40.260 one of the first and foremost things is just entering into your head what do the gods think

01:02:45.440 of me now how i'm acting how i'm doing what i'm doing and actually considering that the gods are

01:02:52.300 actually watching you now a lot i think a lot of people don't really contextualize that very much

01:02:59.160 Some of them may see them as archetypal or that they're going to be judged in the afterlife. And so that is what it is. No, the gods are watching you now. So what does that mean to you?

01:03:14.760 What do you have to do to step up, to clean up, to begin fixing your speech, fixing your deeds?

01:03:23.440 That sense of moralism is what I would call dynamic moralism, is that you're taking an account of your area around you and placing upon you duties in order to make yourself better.

01:03:39.900 because you know what it is to be moral within your own heart.

01:03:45.260 And I think the gods know you know that.

01:03:47.000 So they leave it upon you to start to look around,

01:03:50.920 to ask your fellow folk and to read and to study the gods

01:03:55.580 and kind of utilize that structure of understanding.

01:04:01.500 And again, it gets odd when if you're reading the Adas like a Bible, you are going to be led down the wrong way of thinking because understanding that the Adas do have large amounts of components, that they are structured around the society of our ancestors.

01:04:27.940 Understanding that is good, and then reading that is good, but also understanding what would have, say, perhaps moralistic or even entertainment value in the poem towards our ancestors, it may be slightly different now.

01:04:42.580 The gods don't exist because of the Adas. The Adas exist because of the gods. But that's of that contextual time. We are now revitalizing our relationship with the gods. They have been there. We have finally showed up again. And now we're trying to make ourselves even more worthy. And that means setting up that moral structure.

01:05:07.540 Oftentimes, yes, it can be helped by your gothar, by your folk, your kinsmen around you,

01:05:12.500 but it also comes from you, and it also comes from seeking guidance from the gods and seeking

01:05:17.840 guidance from your ancestors. Keeping it real. So one of the things

01:05:26.120 that I think is very important, and Svan mentioned this, but I want to reiterate,

01:05:32.700 is the idea of realism. Our founder, Steve McAllen, made the statement that realism is

01:05:42.380 better than dogma. And I think dogma is really important. I'm much more a pro-dogma guy than

01:05:48.500 some folks. But the idea of realism, I don't think realism and dogma are mutually exclusive.

01:05:55.240 but realism your beliefs don't matter what you do with your beliefs matters

01:06:04.980 it's important that we understand ausitru is most often incorrectly translated to mean

01:06:15.260 belief in the aesir it doesn't mean belief in the aesir at all it means troth with the aesir

01:06:23.100 It means loyalty. It means remaining true to the Aesir.

01:06:27.520 And that's very different.

01:06:29.820 You can believe in many things and then act contrary to that.

01:06:34.720 Your actions define you.

01:06:37.540 And as Svon said, we're accountable to the gods.

01:06:40.680 The gods judge us.

01:06:42.660 We are not saved by faith.

01:06:44.580 We are saved by works, by what we do.

01:06:48.100 our ancestors they look at us and they judge us are we worthy of them are they proud of us

01:06:57.160 are they ashamed of us um that matters and if all of that is too metaphysical

01:07:07.280 one of the biggest parts of alsatru is the community and your reputation

01:07:12.760 Now, as I've said, your reputation transcends this existence, is seen by the gods, known by the gods, and known by the dead.

01:07:20.740 But it's also known by the people next to you and by your community.

01:07:24.560 We don't believe in not judging people.

01:07:26.880 We judge people constantly.

01:07:29.120 And I hope people judge me constantly.

01:07:31.520 I hope that they are kind in their judgment. And I hope that we give each other the appropriate

01:07:41.140 amount of slack and amount of grace that none of us are perfect, but we should all be trying to be

01:07:47.400 perfect. And whether we're putting forth that effort or not, people stumble. But the way you

01:07:53.620 fix stumbling isn't by apologizing to the gods and trusting they're just going to automatically

01:07:59.500 forgive you. One of the cores of our belief is that you fix what you break. If you, you know,

01:08:08.760 you can't wash away sin. If you do something bad, that exists. Your only way out is by outdoing it

01:08:16.980 with a mountain of good things that it outweighs it on scales, is redeeming your reputation and

01:08:24.580 getting the people around you who see you to look at you different. And that's a long, arduous

01:08:30.600 task. But that's precisely why it has merit. The things that are hardest are the things that count.

01:08:38.860 Like I mentioned about oaths. If you oath to brush your teeth like, yay. No. If you oath to be a hero

01:08:46.080 and you follow through, then we'll sing your songs. We'll name a day of remembrance after you.

01:08:52.580 we will celebrate you after you're gone that's what counts those what you do with this life you

01:08:59.780 have on midgard what you do and i think in the world of what we do that's where morals play out

01:09:08.820 and that's where we judge things and i think that is why ethics in this faith are particularly

01:09:17.460 important. And I hope that was what you're looking for. But as a new member, I just want to say this

01:09:24.200 to any new member, any old member, anybody thinking about being a member, please feel free to reach

01:09:29.320 out to me and I will do my best to get back to you as the very best I can and try to answer

01:09:33.520 anything that I can or direct you to the right guy that can. So please know that door is always

01:09:38.900 open. Got a question or a statement or something over here in the side from Kelly. Kelly, thank you

01:09:46.080 so much this comes with a donation of 25 it is much appreciated we appreciate all of the tips

01:09:53.760 and donations we get on here those go to right now they go to paying off njordshoff and sigerheim

01:10:01.120 and getting us prepped for our next projects uh kelly says i understand our relationship with our

01:10:07.680 ancestors but what is our relationship to our adult children that have died uh spawn do you

01:10:15.600 Do you have insight on that?

01:10:18.940 Adult children that have died.

01:10:21.300 Well, so I think what the confusion that is coming, and this is totally normal, is to think of ancestors as to being, you know, pre the line.

01:10:30.080 And that's why it's the greatest tragedy for anyone to have to, you know, lay to rest or to light the fires upon, you know, the ones, the vessel of the souls of their children.

01:10:43.200 um that's that's terrible um but they are i guess the ancestors they are ancestors they are uh it's

01:10:54.600 more or less the honored um lineage and in understanding that it doesn't necessarily

01:11:04.920 have to be chronological and i i it's it deeply saddens me to say that but it is the truth is is

01:11:12.300 that it does happen sometimes and when they are reunited with that with the folk soul with with

01:11:20.780 the the others beyond the others that are in the place beyond time um you know they they are

01:11:30.540 accepted they are received but they also then turn around and can see upon you and so they would be

01:11:38.220 classified as ancestral or ancestral even though it's not necessarily that they're you're they're

01:11:45.980 sourced from you or sourced from a parent um but they join the ranks and they are not alone

01:11:54.300 with the ancestors of the past just as we all will one day be so it's okay

01:12:00.860 to understand that and it doesn't necessarily denote a chronological uh title it's more of a

01:12:09.080 title of they are now standing with the ones that came before us and we too will one day stand with

01:12:16.060 those who came before us thus making us ancestors or elders or of the elders or with the elders

01:12:23.640 uh it could be seen as as many of those things but we when we do pass we are not alone and we

01:12:29.440 do go there. And I think that as long as our deeds, I think that there are many grievous

01:12:38.140 deeds that may keep the ancestors from allowing us into that space beyond time where they

01:12:43.680 are, where we stand shoulder and shoulder to them. There are some deeds I think that

01:12:48.360 definitely bar entry. For instance, like kinslaying. But there are many other things

01:12:59.220 I think in which the ancestors understand, again, that we are not perfect, but we try to strive to

01:13:07.020 not be barred from that place. That we strive to do great deeds because we don't want to be

01:13:14.620 held at the gate. We don't want to be stopped. And we want to be able to reunite with the core,

01:13:20.860 with the central of us. And so, you know, praying to the ancestors for the passage of folks

01:13:27.920 and to asking them please to accept them.

01:13:31.380 Please hope in their understanding of things that they do accept.

01:13:37.460 And if they have done great deeds, then there's usually no doubt.

01:13:41.140 And I would say speak highly of them in every way you can.

01:13:44.200 That's the one thing you should be doing right now while you're living

01:13:46.320 is to make sure that when you do join shoulder to shoulder

01:13:49.440 with those who came before us,

01:13:51.240 there are people here speaking your praises even after you're gone.

01:13:54.780 um there's a chance there of exulsion after you know even after by deed so act in accordance

01:14:04.440 I'm not saying do it only to be spoken highly of I'm saying do things so that when you are gone

01:14:11.600 those are the things that people remember those are the things that are high and full of uh good

01:14:17.760 deed that help the community that help your folk to help your family that's the thing so speak of

01:14:24.600 them often remember them often um and act accordingly because we all too will one day

01:14:31.560 stand shoulder to shoulder with those who came before us unless the gods see it fit otherwise

01:14:40.920 um kelly i'm assuming that by you asking that question that that is something you've experienced

01:14:46.680 if that's the case i am very very sorry to hear that um anybody out there who's lost a child

01:14:53.720 i'm very very sorry to hear that that's not the natural order of things and i i refuse to begin

01:15:01.640 to imagine how hard that must be just the concept if i'm like watching a movie or something now that

01:15:07.400 i'm a father and it involves a child anywhere anyone i can even kind of put my daughter in

01:15:14.520 their place and that happens i have to deliberately not go down that thought path because that's

01:15:21.800 beyond the pale of of toleration so um yeah that's that's terrible spawn's absolutely right

01:15:31.000 we've just gotten used to saying the term ancestors so we apply that the term should really be

01:15:36.360 you know dead kinfolk um barring some really really horrible thing that's up to judgment

01:15:44.120 you know your your child whether they pass before you or after you will go to their ancestors

01:15:54.840 they're being your child you'll go to the same ancestors you guys will be with your ancestors

01:16:01.440 together um and that that's the the bond of that kinship and exactly how that plays out

01:16:09.000 beyond the veil i don't think any of us will know perfectly until we get there

01:16:12.980 But you asked about the obligation. It's the same. You want those who are yours to be proud of you.

01:16:22.880 You want your friends, alive or dead, to be proud of you. And you want your enemies, alive or dead,

01:16:32.540 to gnash their teeth in envy or hide in fear because you're so amazing. You want your reputation

01:16:42.000 to have an impact positively on your team and negatively on the other team and that's what it

01:16:48.720 comes down to and what's important and i'm glad that's fun brought this up because this is something

01:16:52.800 that we believe in the afa we believe in the idea of posthumous ascension your scoring of cool points

01:17:00.320 does not end at the moment of your death it ends at the moment where you're forgotten

01:17:04.800 and you know given the long expanse of time most people there comes a point where people

01:17:13.640 stop remembering your name that's unfortunate but up until that point or even after that point

01:17:20.520 if they rediscover stories about you the idea that your fame spreads and gains gravitas the

01:17:27.200 idea that those you've known in life pass beyond the veil and speak to the the others who have

01:17:34.280 passed about, you know, their great kinsmen or their friend or this person they knew who did

01:17:39.820 this amazing thing for them. Singing your praises after you pass elevates your status in the

01:17:46.100 afterlife. And that's why it's so important when we're doing Sumble, not just to mention my dad,

01:17:54.520 Hale, but mention their name, speak their name aloud, and have the room full of people recite

01:18:03.300 their name back with you in exaltation where the gods and the ancestors here that's that's

01:18:10.260 essential and it's powerful okay i mean as a thought experiment could you could you imagine

01:18:18.100 if you'd been dead for you know for example um my grandfather died in 1995. so

01:18:27.060 So now I have to sit and math, but it's a long time ago.

01:18:34.220 So, you know, 20, 27 years ago or so.

01:18:39.660 It's a long time to sit in silence.

01:18:43.340 Can you imagine if nobody's spoken your name in that long?

01:18:46.480 Having a room full of people thunderously assemble, hail your name because your grandchild spoke favorably of you

01:18:55.880 and told a story for people to remember you by and know something that you did i believe that

01:19:01.160 our ancestors hear those things and look on and i i have to believe that they're deeply touched

01:19:08.360 so that's why that's really important i know we kind of these questions lead to to these long

01:19:15.400 winded especially with me and spawn these long-winded things and i hope that they're

01:19:21.480 valuable to you guys we think that they are we wouldn't do it but uh no thank you for the

01:19:26.920 question and thank you for your donation we appreciate it a lot um antonio hi matt uh how's

01:19:34.280 your day going my day is going fantastic and i'm it's especially fantastic because i'm super excited

01:19:40.040 to go out to sigerheim and i fly out tomorrow night so i'm full of excitement and energy on that

01:19:45.880 my question is since braggy is the god of poetry how can i do some poetry for my girlfriend

01:19:52.840 to make her feel special do you have any advice

01:19:59.240 i wish i did i wish i was that guy that had cool advice to give you on composing love poems to your

01:20:04.600 girlfriend no that's a really cool idea yes that is something that even our ancestors you know

01:20:12.600 that's one of the most time-honored uses of poetry i'm all for you with your poetry game

01:20:20.040 i just don't particularly have any any pointers on uh on love poetry in specific other than

01:20:29.560 this is not a pointer i just want to congratulate you i think that's great that that's something

01:20:33.400 that you do in this day and age and women have enjoyed that as long as there have been women so

01:20:39.800 So I hope that you find great success with that.

01:20:42.620 Swan, do you have any love poetry advice for our friend Antonio?

01:20:47.260 Sonnets.

01:20:48.260 Women love sonnets. 1.00

01:20:49.440 No, that's a joke. 0.93

01:20:54.040 Yeah, if you're – remember, it's about discipline.

01:20:58.680 Oh, go ahead.

01:20:59.560 Not the haiku.

01:21:01.480 Not the – yeah.

01:21:02.440 Too short. 1.00

01:21:03.220 I don't like haikus.

01:21:04.360 I'm going to advise against the haiku.

01:21:05.780 i i think haikus are interesting if you again it's like a minimalism discipline speech but

01:21:15.280 that's not the case i think that right now the biggest thing i would say is you speak truthfully

01:21:20.780 i know in the hava mall we speak about the hearts of women being on spin on the spinning wheel but

01:21:26.520 we also know that men will say many great things in order to get what they want so the idea the

01:21:31.660 first step would be to build the poem on truth. I think that's the best start of it. And I don't

01:21:40.440 know, find some sort of form of, maybe look into meter, maybe look into the measure of different

01:21:47.560 types of poems that have established. I could say, you know, you should really knock her out 0.99

01:21:51.820 with some Nordic four-knee this log. She'll love it. And, you know, alliterative rhyming. 1.00

01:21:57.400 and we we use that for prayer a lot but uh as far as the best i i wouldn't know i would say

01:22:04.740 you know maybe find an emulation of style that you like um maybe as a sense of like giving

01:22:11.080 homage to someone a poem a poet of the past and um kind of utilize their poetry as a as a

01:22:19.280 baseline if you're not a well-versed poet and uh use that as a kind of thing but use your words

01:22:25.800 make them truthful and cross your fingers all right so i have i have a serious suggestion that

01:22:33.080 i i thought of during this and i think it goes with spawn's truth thing but it it amplifies it

01:22:41.640 find a meter that you can do at at a variable pace to where you can have intonation in your voice

01:22:53.160 be able to do it to where you can deliver it in a way to where your emotion is reading through

01:23:03.720 in your voice and i know that lends itself really well to song but all song is is poetry to music

01:23:12.600 you could do your poem lyrically but even if you're just reciting it do it in a way to where

01:23:18.840 your tone conveys the emotion you want to get across i i would strongly strongly suggest that

01:23:26.920 and i'd suggest making sure you're making eye contact when you're making when you're intoning

01:23:32.680 powerful emotions into your poetry and i think that's going to be really important random word

01:23:39.320 on poetry um comic relief for a second is egil saga if you guys have not read it you should it's

01:23:48.200 awesome uh a little uh scala grumson is a amazing poet in a lot of different ways and he

01:23:59.480 does ridiculous anti-social things and then he busts a verse

01:24:05.480 um he breaks out of prison with poetry he got drunk and vomited in a guy's face and then he spake a 0.94

01:24:13.960 verse like yeah you went for that one where he was basically throwing it at

01:24:23.300 this guy I went for the wall where he like almost gets his head cut off and

01:24:27.440 escapes with poetry and he's got many uses for the bone so this is poetry is a

01:24:35.100 magic that can be used in many occasions but circling around back to Antonio

01:24:41.180 certainly romancing a lady that you care about is one of the most time honored and

01:24:49.820 cool things that poetry can do and so i salute you in wanting to do that

01:24:55.500 um ali asks if singing is an elevation of speech would you then say that singing a spell or

01:25:04.060 intention would give it more power i generally do spell work or cleansing in song what are your

01:25:12.060 thoughts swan absolutely um most most uh forms even when we talk about galder in in multiple uh

01:25:21.740 times that that word doesn't necessarily just denote to a singular sound we we have it as an

01:25:28.540 understanding to be a primordial sound but it could also build up to the idea of a song the

01:25:34.780 idea of a verse um i think that our ancestors did this uh very well uh when they were scything the

01:25:41.420 fields they would sing songs songs oftentimes in prayers to the earth in order for a a fruitful

01:25:48.220 harvest next year and a thankful for this year uh while cleaning the house there's you know um

01:25:54.700 there's a lot of ways that you can apply this 100 i think if you look at singing as

01:26:02.700 yeah you are correct the elevation of through the discipline and the and the structuring of it um

01:26:09.660 i uh i knew of a a practitioner of um i guess like more magical means in in in uh

01:26:18.620 ausiturism and the singing was a was a was a hallmark i think of her um practice but um

01:26:28.380 i understood it i think from the outside a lot of people might not understand it

01:26:32.860 um and so reserving it for the proper moments i think timing is a big thing as well

01:26:38.700 so considering the timing of it and uh if you have the talent for it not everybody has the talent

01:26:45.340 to sing but there's different types of ways to sing and you can also speak meter of poems uh

01:26:51.740 you can look at like marching songs and things like that they they don't necessarily always hold

01:26:56.460 a a long song like melody they're more maybe cadence dropped and and more chopped to stepping

01:27:03.580 or to whatever's going on um this is a you know ancient form of of prayer again um and i would

01:27:11.580 love to see the day in which house a true um has more i think even a modern evolution of music

01:27:21.180 that comes out of it and in an expression at at our hafs or uh you know even down to lullabies

01:27:28.140 that moms will sing to their children spawn and i have talked about that a lot so far as i said

01:27:36.300 earlier doesn't have a lot of merit because it's been a lot of talk and it hasn't been a lot of

01:27:40.460 action but we we've spoken a lot about wanting to infuse more more song and uh more music

01:27:49.020 into also true but to answer your question ally absolutely um

01:27:56.460 that's you know it comes in chanting but that is a way of singing that's that's literally

01:28:02.380 the meaning of incantation that is fundamental to spell craft and spell work um if you read in the

01:28:10.700 have them all um it's it's odin's rune songs and he knows you know i know a song that will do this

01:28:16.860 i know a song that will do that song is on in the lore song is often interchangeable with spell

01:28:25.500 you can use the one word for the other and they mean the same thing they're so closely related

01:28:29.740 it. You sing things into existence. 1000% and hats off to you. I'm really glad that

01:28:39.820 you do that. Poetry when you're doing spell work is any of that enhances it be it melodic

01:28:52.180 or not um i know that the poetic aspect of it um just because when these things are

01:29:01.760 transmitted they're they're done with a certain degree of secrecy or whatever um lady that

01:29:08.460 taught me about those kind of things made that very clear and made sure that i did that

01:29:15.380 when i was learning these things was making sure i was composing a verse that was individual

01:29:22.000 to me in any of the any bindings or any of the things that you do so i think that's really

01:29:28.080 important and i'm glad that you do that i think it speaks well of you um again there's something

01:29:34.240 on my head i was going to say but maybe i will think of it for a minute go ahead it's fun i did

01:29:39.280 have one thing too that you might want to incorporate since the question was asked but um

01:29:44.000 i'm trying to think of something that might give a little bit more out so that she can take that

01:29:50.400 home and and maybe apply it one thing is and i was wondering if we were ever going to get or even

01:29:56.400 bring it up one of the things that a great way of verse structure that people can do for prayers

01:30:02.400 songs and what have you uh you know rhyming at the end is is doable uh a.l skala grimson he

01:30:10.240 actually that was one of the coolest poems in his story is he did it in traditional alliterative

01:30:15.120 rhyme and ending rhyme so like he was mixing two styles together at that time that weren't often

01:30:21.840 done so that was kind of like you know like the turbo poem coming at you um but uh one thing to

01:30:29.200 bear in mind is if you look at at uh thinking of meter as one of the basic forms of meter

01:30:36.000 is if you have a if you have uh two sentences and you split the first sentence with a comma

01:30:42.160 and in those two sections of the first sentence having an alliterative sound that is the same

01:30:49.700 so whether it's the s sound uh whether it's the um now certain things like sh is it's its own

01:30:57.780 sound according to like the old style of speaking in alliterative uh forms uh an s and an sh are

01:31:05.440 not the same but vowels are considered the same so if you're using a word to emphasize in that

01:31:13.680 first half of the first sentence and in the second half of that first sentence and it's a vowel they

01:31:19.280 can be vowel sounds but it means that the second sentence has to start with that sound and so the

01:31:27.360 only time and that's how our ancestors knew exactly what word was being alliteratively

01:31:33.760 rhymed to was because the second sentence started with that sound a little confusing but that's one

01:31:40.800 way you can incorporate perhaps some traditional elements of metered poetry from our ancestors

01:31:48.160 into your modern songs or prayers

01:31:52.960 all right uh travis asks somewhat on the topic of braggy and poetry

01:32:00.320 alzharia gilthy and witten what are your favorite genres of music svan what are your favorite genres

01:32:07.840 of music uh folk americana newgrass i guess i don't know where which one to actually say but

01:32:15.520 that's kind of lumped into as one um i i would say folk americana newgrass is um my utmost favorite

01:32:23.760 now i've been listening to a lot of um uh up and coming and even older uh like old bluegrass and

01:32:33.040 and really new stuff coming around i really enjoy a lot of these styles in which they are speaking

01:32:38.800 songs almost like poems and they're speaking from i find it a lot especially in the tradition

01:32:45.200 of the scotch irish and the old like english style singing the songs are always based off of um

01:32:52.400 um interesting ways of of seeing things when they tell the story there's a group called um

01:33:00.640 uh steel drivers the steel drivers and they have a song about a tree that's speaking of the woes

01:33:06.640 that happened around it during the civil war and seeing so many uh i believe this song is called um

01:33:13.840 sticks that make thunder and it's talking about how the tree doesn't understand what's happening

01:33:18.720 as he sees uh one group colored in the in the color of the night sky and the other of a gray

01:33:24.400 morning and they meet on the hill and they have sticks that make thunder and so many lay still

01:33:30.480 after and so it's lamenting this loss it's it's such a beautiful ballad about it um so i really

01:33:38.160 i'm super attracted to those kind of songs and i really find them to be um you know meaningful i

01:33:44.560 can i can really kind of just delve into them and step away of things like that so that that would

01:33:50.160 be my favorite genre of music i'm not that guy i you know people ask what you listen to and it

01:33:58.160 always sounds like a cop out like a little bit of everything but i really do listen to a wide

01:34:03.760 variety of things depending upon my mood now those kind of folk and bluegrass things are certainly

01:34:11.440 the things that's fond and i talk about when we talk about the music we'd like to see one of the

01:34:16.160 things that we dream on is making some of that happen at siggerheim is making some of this music

01:34:24.160 come to life when we can be together as a group more often and have some of those things happen

01:34:30.240 and you've heard me time and again on here say i want some house of true bluegrass

01:34:34.160 blue bluegrass is awesome bluegrass with good vocals is so much better than bluegrass with

01:34:42.620 terrible vocals which is very common and then bluegrass with good vocals that's not about

01:34:50.300 jesus is that's hard to come by um all those things are awesome but you know what when i'm

01:34:57.500 just trying to feel it i like to listen to some journey and some heart and i'll tell you this i

01:35:02.000 like to you know i'll listen to the 70s heart but the 90s or the 80s heart with like the super

01:35:09.760 extreme vocals that's that's the stuff i love that's powerful and i realize it's probably not

01:35:15.760 the most popular comment but i'm gonna keep it real that's what i listen to that's what i would

01:35:20.080 request um if i had a few more of these that's what i might sing there you go um sarah asked

01:35:28.640 could you speak a little on the runes that were carved on Bragi's tongue? Svan, tell us about those

01:35:34.640 runes. There is, to my knowledge, there is no specific mentioning of the exact runes.

01:35:45.040 Matter of fact, I have this in my notes here. I was compiling a couple of things. Let me see

01:35:50.400 see if i can find it real quick if i can't then then we'll move on but the um the attestment to

01:35:58.760 the runes being on his tongue are spoken of um but not specifically and it is in a uh i want to

01:36:07.980 the uh the actual piece dang it i knew this actually i anticipated this and then i moved

01:36:16.400 on in my notes and gotta go back um let me see where was that uh so and i don't want to you know

01:36:31.040 to leave uh you know space in this but the the usage of the specific runes i think it's more

01:36:36.960 important to understand what the mouth meant in relation to the runes or more importantly in

01:36:43.480 relation to Bragi's father as the source and the power, the conduit to which the gods receive

01:36:52.320 the runic power is through the sacrifice of Odin or Odin. His sacrifice and his ability to place

01:37:00.880 himself into the center nexus of heaven and look down into the well and seeing it by that fact,

01:37:08.760 the other wells all the way down and the nexus of the roots we suddenly he's completely and wholly

01:37:15.160 at one with with all of creation um and seeing the building blocks of it through the form of sound

01:37:22.520 in his sun it is the mouth the focal point in which the expression of those those powers come

01:37:30.120 to be and that's why a lot of times i denote uh bragi to mathematics as well as music and the

01:37:37.880 the idea of speech and sound in tempo and in numeric value.

01:37:46.360 Perhaps even to understand the spaces between the sounds

01:37:50.000 is a better way I could explain it.

01:37:53.000 Tempo is, of course, yeah, it's creating gaps within the sound.

01:37:58.520 And I think that the runic message or the idea of the power,

01:38:03.580 the building blocks and the foundations of the creation of the universe

01:38:07.160 that oh that odin sees he retains he's now focused forward through his son and his speech and so

01:38:17.800 looking outside of like picturing bragi as some you know a poet and the at the stage of the hall

01:38:24.840 speaking to the iron jar we can see him that way for sure but looking at it in a more

01:38:30.600 meta like i guess even hyper metaphysical aspect of understanding that uh the the process that

01:38:39.720 brought about um bragi and his creation is also him being now the focal point in which the runes

01:38:51.560 kind of process into heaven and by by heaven through the well into the middle world

01:38:58.680 in a lot of ways i think that he's um much like you would think of like a center tent post where um

01:39:06.760 under a big tent everything kind of descends down from that would be kind of like the laws of sound

01:39:14.120 and mathematics spreading from a heavenly plane into the material plane um i think he's the

01:39:20.920 like more or less like the result of the runic power in heaven being um disseminated down into

01:39:33.760 the material world through bragi if we're talking really big you know hyper metaphysics of the gods

01:39:41.980 i i've always associated that bragi is that threshold in which that power that was received

01:39:47.400 by his father is focused and then spreads down and into the uh well and by that well into the

01:39:57.760 middle world because that's that's a huge component to understanding the cosmology of of the the of

01:40:05.780 the heavens the well in heaven is that connection point to the middle the material and so the gods

01:40:13.740 enact a lot of their will, or whether it's passive or directive, they do through that well.

01:40:22.720 And it descends down into the middle world because the divine is up. And so I've often seen his,

01:40:32.340 the meaning of the carving of the runes as being a focusing of the gift that his father

01:40:37.620 sacrifice himself to attain so that's what i've always correlated it with and the um

01:40:44.740 like i said to my knowledge there's no reference specifically of like individual runes correct me

01:40:52.020 if i'm wrong i know this is like one of those things where it's like oh look i'm just looking

01:41:00.660 for where i noted it down yeah i'm i'm scrambling to see if there's specific runes mentioned and i

01:41:12.980 don't think at least by their runic name there is um i cannot find it

01:41:33.220 i mean it's so i know that in the cedrifamol there's a list of stuff that once the loon

01:41:47.620 the runes were learned uh by the all-father he was supposed to write them on things

01:41:53.460 and he wrote them on all these different things

01:41:57.300 and bragging is mentioned there yeah most of the things are

01:42:03.220 not as personal as that they're of forces of nature they're like on the claws of

01:42:11.140 wolves and the paws of bears and on a horse's hoofs and on these like very elemental things

01:42:20.340 but also specifically upon the tongue of bragi um and i think that you know certainly that is

01:42:29.940 the most literal of the speaking magic thing that we've talked about today um but yeah and i think

01:42:38.980 that throughout the you know we'll probably be dipping here and swans looking down at something

01:42:43.060 we'll probably be dipping into little little bits on the side here and there to see if we can find

01:42:47.380 them because you know sometimes your questions make us want to go back and re-examine or re-look

01:42:52.100 at stuff that we might already you know have forgotten or have have bypassed sponge you find

01:42:58.180 something i saw that finger go up well yeah they're the so that that noting of like when you

01:43:03.540 said the primordial forces there's a couple of things like it goes from i would say extremely

01:43:08.340 lofty to then primordial and then it speaks of bragi's tongue and how they were also removed

01:43:15.380 and given out or and that's what i that's what i was referring to in the middle world because

01:43:20.260 it specifically mentions that some were given to the vanir and the vanir do source themselves in

01:43:25.460 the middle world with uh the same as with the primordial forces of jotunheim uh so this that

01:43:32.580 that's kind of what i was mentioning about the idea of focaling the runes and pressing them and

01:43:36.980 disseminating them out and they um the the the runes are shaved off and mixed with mead and sent

01:43:44.500 abroad uh the elves have some the vanner have some the men have some and that's uh you know

01:43:51.860 in mention of that and that's the one i was talking about because i don't think they specifically

01:43:55.220 mentioned specific runes and that causes a lot of issues people um you know argue that the the

01:44:02.660 rune lots that that tacitus is speaking of don't mention or the excuse me he calls them the lots

01:44:08.820 aren't the runes or that the runes might have had different uses and so on and so forth it causes a

01:44:13.380 lot of things but here we clearly see uh the referencing to runes and magic and their their

01:44:20.900 connection with birth runes and ale runes and healing runes and death runes so we begin to see

01:44:27.260 that you know there is a correlative connection between especially the magic speaking of songs

01:44:33.840 and then uh willful manifestation of desired effects so that's interesting in and of itself

01:44:40.600 but i again hyper metaphysical i've always taken it to be like raggi's mouth is the focal point in

01:44:47.080 the gift from his father is then focused forward into the material world and then is disseminated

01:44:53.960 from there going into the the place of natural sourcing natural law going into the primordial

01:45:00.440 chaos realm and even into our realm the material the middle world so

01:45:09.720 i'm going to look more into that and see if there's any specifics because i

01:45:12.760 I, yeah.

01:45:14.520 Spawn, what is the etymology of Ymir? 0.94

01:45:17.340 Of Mimir? 0.75

01:45:18.740 Ymir.

01:45:20.220 Ymir.

01:45:21.180 Ymir.

01:45:21.820 Yes, Ymir, the, well, most, right off the bat would be to say, you know, of the roarer,

01:45:30.480 of the sound that is created.

01:45:34.380 The way that it's spoken of, they make mention that perhaps, wait, you just sprung this on

01:45:40.900 me.

01:45:41.040 no honestly you already gave me what i want right that was the sound bite i was after i'll take any

01:45:48.300 more as a bonus but i was trying to point about the the heredity and the flowing of sound right

01:45:55.780 throughout our mythos sound has to do with manifestation and creation

01:46:06.520 um when talking about runes and i don't know if this is the rune upon bragi's tongue

01:46:11.880 but so much of the ansu's rune is about the estuary the mouth the opening up of of things

01:46:19.400 um and specifically again to tie in with the runes when when odin wins the runes by piercing

01:46:29.640 himself with the spear and hanging from the tree he doesn't just kind of pick them up in silence

01:46:35.240 and go about his business he picks them up roaring roaring he picks them up that guttural

01:46:45.400 releasing of sound releasing of energy in that form is so essential to the magic of our folk

01:46:57.320 and you know as this is what i was going to say like disney princesses and like disney witches

01:47:02.040 like to sing when they make spells um really and truly that's from our folklore you know the

01:47:09.800 the spinning of this you know stirring the cauldron and toil and trouble and all that and then

01:47:17.160 those kind of incantations over spell work is essential and speech craft poetry

01:47:25.240 song is in was inseparable with magic for our ancestors and it's only recently it's become

01:47:33.520 more mundane than that um something just another and i don't really know where this connects but

01:47:39.600 just throwing out there another use of the word song song and poem were also interchangeable

01:47:45.840 there was a time to where with music or without music didn't matter and when you read medieval

01:47:52.800 literature the song of roland isn't a musical piece it's an epic poem but the term song and

01:48:02.000 poem were synonymous and i think that they did have a verse structure in a in a more musical

01:48:08.160 form in the way they were presented um but yeah that's very important uh i got another question

01:48:14.800 what is your favorite translation of the poetic eddas i'm really not that guy honestly i like what

01:48:20.960 i like to do and there's a website that does this and i can't ever remember it um but there's a

01:48:26.400 website that does it and always comes up when i google it but i like looking at different ones

01:48:31.760 together and comparing them because i think there's benefits to each and i think by trying

01:48:38.560 to compare them with one another you pick up the things that carry through and then you pick up the

01:48:43.600 nuances but i couldn't tell you i have a real favorite version what's yours it's fun in relation

01:48:49.920 to poetry uh again hollander the hollander translation um isn't the best as translatable

01:48:57.360 one to the other it's it's yeah i think um a more i guess scholastic kind of well that's you know

01:49:05.920 no that's terrible i'm not talking about it from scholastics i'm talking about it from poetry

01:49:10.240 hollander's version has a great sense of meter in relation to english because a lot of that gets

01:49:17.040 lost when you direct translate and so i think the best thing about it is that it holds a sense of

01:49:25.520 keeping to that tradition that this is still poetry this is spoken in meter it shouldn't be

01:49:31.040 lost even though it's translated into another language and i think that it does well to that

01:49:35.600 i enjoy that and it's it's it's helped me structure some of my prayers i think it's helped me structure

01:49:42.000 some of the prayers that i do on a regular basis through at bloats whether it's uh you know speaking

01:49:48.160 to the land whites or um speaking to the ancestors speaking to the gods in like introductory forms

01:49:53.760 i've fashioned them around the same kind of speech meter that i learned from the hollander translation

01:50:01.200 all right so bruce asks matt and svan is there any specific have them all stanza that has stood

01:50:11.580 out to you more than others what are some that that you find yourself returning to offense fun

01:50:18.840 um the uh uh receiving of a gift um again the numbers but uh i've never met a man so proud

01:50:30.260 that he could not uh receive a gift nor a man so poor that he did not ask for what he rightly

01:50:35.780 deserved that to me has always been a deeply powerful one that i i i fall back on often it's

01:50:45.220 just it just so profoundly hit me uh about the idea that um no no matter how high no matter how

01:50:53.620 noble or not excuse me that's not the correct word no matter how high or in reference this like

01:50:58.500 how well off you still must act noble and then no matter how lowly you are you still must have

01:51:06.020 the dignity within your soul to ask for what is uh deserving of your work or deserving of your

01:51:12.500 deeds or deserving of your of your time uh it shows a sense of i think our the structure of

01:51:20.900 our society as having that all men give unto themselves the part that they should fulfill the

01:51:27.860 most within society and that they always have obligation whether it's the obligation to them

01:51:34.260 to to the uh structure above and also obligation to the structure below and no matter where we are

01:51:40.820 it's it's about hierarchy i think it's about fitting in and it's about understanding so well

01:51:47.700 but yet it's such a noble verse that helps me i don't know like i it struck me as so grand

01:51:57.860 i never met a man so rich that he he could not uh accept a gift and never met a man so poor that he

01:52:02.820 could not ask for what he rightly deserved now that is a very very broad translation of it but

01:52:09.460 that's the way it's always stuck in my head so that verse in particular and then i will go and

01:52:15.140 actually find the number if i can so i am awful at memorization like i'm not that guy uh friend of

01:52:24.420 mind bodie is amazing at that he can word for word just rattle you off pieces of lore

01:52:31.860 once he gets a bit of it he's like aha and then he can just go i'm not that guy um

01:52:39.700 one that i find a couple that i find myself returning too often

01:52:43.780 because they give me perspective when i see other people do things that i find vexatious um

01:52:54.660 the one and so mandy's my go-to on this too if i ask mandy does my have them all researched

01:52:59.380 i'm like mandy where's that one quote that's you know this about that and she can pull it

01:53:04.500 up instantly she's really good with that but the one about um you know always be a friend

01:53:10.020 to your friend's friend but to his enemies never loyalty is only worth it if it's selective

01:53:18.820 of course i'm loyal i'm loyal to everybody well then you're loyal to nobody

01:53:23.220 um loyalty is about picking and choosing and taking a side and it's never it's not neutrality

01:53:30.340 isn't noble picking a side and standing nobly by it to victory or uh to to defeat that's noble and

01:53:40.740 so that one stands out to me and i go back to a lot and the one about uh cowardice and uh

01:53:50.340 how you know you can you can try to hide from death all you want but death's going to find

01:53:57.060 you one way or another um but you know your your life is better if it's lived being courageous

01:54:04.740 than if you're a coward that tries to hide and death comes finding your bed um

01:54:10.980 so those ones stand out to me because they i don't know they give me solace in in things

01:54:17.940 and they strengthen my resolve on things and i find those to be be beneficial um travis

01:54:25.380 what grade level is the astro academy at will all grades be covered in time and what are the

01:54:31.300 requirements to enroll our children i'm really glad you asked that one of the things that i've

01:54:35.700 talked to dean stam go through rob stam who's the dean of our astro academy is ways to publicize

01:54:44.260 this better and get stuff out there more um one of the one of the victories that started after my

01:54:54.420 oath and will hopefully be achieved by the end of my there's every reason to be achieved by the end

01:55:00.340 of my oath is we will have passed the first class of afa students through our kindergarten portion

01:55:09.460 of our austro academy course we're you know we're over halfway through the school year and we've

01:55:14.820 retained all of the kids we started with and we've built a good relationship with them and their

01:55:20.580 families and as uh from what i'm being told they're doing very well and the families are doing very

01:55:26.180 well with it um 2022-23 school year is just kindergarten because it was our first one and

01:55:35.140 that's as far as we would be able to make it um in the fall so our commitment

01:55:42.420 i'm stumbling over my speech a lot now because i am trying to think about it make sure that i'm

01:55:46.980 clear i know a lot goes on in my head so by this fall our commitment is to have first grade ready

01:55:54.180 so that our kindergartners go into first grade that will always be the case as this class of

01:55:59.540 kindergarteners progresses and i think i did the math and it's class of 36. so we will at the very

01:56:07.060 least have the next grade ready for each of these students by the time they get there that's a

01:56:12.020 promise now bonus grades are what we want to do and what i think that we can do dean stam has

01:56:19.380 promised me not only first but first and second by this fall so you know we're trying to hurry

01:56:27.060 up and get there we know we have a lot of kids that could benefit from it and a lot of parents

01:56:30.980 that could benefit from from having their kids in that environment and we want to get that up to the

01:56:35.860 grade level of your child as fast as we possibly can as that stands now in the fall if you're

01:56:42.020 looking to get your child registered we'll be registering kindergarten through second grade

01:56:49.220 but we're very excited about that that is one of the i mean that's something we've dreamed about

01:56:54.020 and wanted for a very long time i think it is so crucial it was crucial 10 years ago when we

01:57:02.020 thought about doing it it's so much more so in the last 10 years so we're very very proud and

01:57:08.900 we have a great team of a lot of people putting in a lot of work on that

01:57:12.580 and rob is definitely leading that charge and we're super proud of him

01:57:15.860 um just to fall back to the last question stanza 39 was mine but again we got to remember too some

01:57:26.120 of the numbers changed because of translations but uh the the way it was written here and i

01:57:31.120 would just wanted to bring it up was uh i have never found a man so bountiful or hospitable

01:57:37.560 that he refused a present nor of his property so liberal that he scorned recompense that's that

01:57:44.880 translation. So Svon, I'm going to go and take the lead on this first question here. Could you

01:57:50.380 find the two of mine so we can read those and not my butchering of them for the good folks

01:57:57.740 that listen to this broadcast? In the meantime, gentlemen, great stream. Will Sigurheim be an

01:58:06.540 off-grid community with food production, garden, animals, etc.? No point not to be in the current

01:58:13.640 times hail um i'm not sure if that's a juxtaposition or a following through with

01:58:21.240 with what's being said there but to answer it no it's not going to be an off-grid situation um

01:58:29.960 we don't have the space for as much of that as somebody who took that seriously as us

01:58:36.600 you know the community existing off-grid would be and we we have no desire to shun the modern

01:58:42.680 convenience of things that allow us to do different stuff with our time i know that a lot of our folk

01:58:48.440 think that they're they're about that slapping the hogs at four in the morning life but i'm not that

01:58:55.560 guy um and i think a lot of us don't don't live that way but what would be really nice is if we

01:59:02.040 could do some hobby farming maybe some of us could have some animals and learn that skill

01:59:07.480 maybe some of us could have a garden i've often thought it'd be really cool to have

01:59:11.000 some fruit trees i think fruit trees would be awesome i've never had that in my life so i

01:59:15.640 think that'd be neat i would love for us to have a community garden and we could even figure out

01:59:20.040 maybe a community small you know group of animals to deal with the more we can do that i think it's

01:59:26.520 very cool and i think it's a really important skill to have but i don't think it's necessarily

01:59:31.720 an industry that we all need to do and so many of us have just other things we're doing with our

01:59:36.920 lives then you know being a farmer is a full-time job and it's a hard job and i think we we may

01:59:42.760 think that it's easier than it than it is but the way that things have gone to where we don't have

01:59:49.080 to live like that anymore and we're able to do so many other things has freed us up to to live a lot

01:59:55.000 of other dreams but i would like to have the availability if we found ourselves in a spot

02:00:00.360 to know how to do those things and i think some hobby farming things on a scale to where people

02:00:05.640 enjoy doing it would be a really nice way to supplement the other things we have going

02:00:16.040 i found them uh 16 and and uh 43. excellent could you read them for the good folks

02:00:21.320 yeah cowardly man thinks he will ever live if war here warfare he avoids but old age will give him

02:00:27.160 no peace those spears may spare him that's 16. again yeah that was speaking of of cowardice and

02:00:34.200 avoiding things in in order to uh stave off but you get no recompense in the end either way so act

02:00:42.680 now uh and then 43 to a friend to a friend a man should be a friend to him and to his friend

02:00:52.600 but to his foe no man shall be the friends to be so of no friend's foe should you make allegiances

02:01:02.120 with loyalty is is across the board absolutely um can you speak a little on the relationship

02:01:14.680 between bragi and iduna the interplay on their roles in the aesir and how they complement each

02:01:23.240 other spawn can you break that down for us i was anticipating this question real slam dunk you got

02:01:32.840 it um i again we've already made some um mentions towards bragi's primordial sense the focusing of

02:01:41.160 power the focusing and um i guess it would be disseminating of of the runic or like the primordial

02:01:49.320 sounds uh and the foundations of the universe but i think also too it's worth noting that

02:01:56.200 uh both of them are kind of again focal points two great primordial powers when we talk about

02:02:06.520 uh for uh for people that might not know even even uh is or edena as she's often referred to

02:02:13.560 in just in like common english ethana is um the goddess of the the source and power of the eternal

02:02:22.920 the eternal amongst the gods uh she is the uh conduit of which i think life and time are

02:02:32.520 continually renewed or recycled to be brought up brought forth again thus making the gods

02:02:38.840 outside of time but in a different way as opposed to the lower world but again she is the conduit

02:02:48.220 and the focal point of that divine power and so in a way both of them are um i would i would say

02:02:56.580 the what's the convert the convergence point in which these these powers come in and then they

02:03:04.560 cross and are uh in a different form uh with one being the immortality of the gods the rejuvenation

02:03:12.800 of them so the tapping into a primordial sense of the foundations of sound and and cosmic creation

02:03:21.280 uh seem to converge with both of them i don't think that they are unified simply as

02:03:28.640 uh just happenstance like that's what snorty wanted to do i think that there is a deep meaning

02:03:34.000 into an understanding of uh i would even say the convergence of sound and light if if we're really

02:03:40.480 going deep even uh and the um the ambrosia of the gods the um the the the light as their their

02:03:51.520 countenance of renewal mixed with the foundational sounds of the universe converge at the gods and

02:03:59.360 then also then transform in a different way at that convergence point and that that takes place

02:04:06.640 in two ways one the actions of the gods and the way that they interact with our world so that again

02:04:12.480 after that convergence point the gods are one of the direct results of that and then i think also

02:04:18.640 to the foundational sounds of the universe being played in the material world are again past that

02:04:25.280 convergence point so i would say and a lot of people you know they focus on the golden apples

02:04:32.400 um again there's been a lot of stuff about uh like debate about that about the apples and their

02:04:38.480 their um the fact that the apples weren't always um strictly native to europe in the sense that

02:04:44.720 obviously we moved westward so the the importance of apples has always been with us but it was not

02:04:50.480 always physically with us the apple species in europe when our ancestors were moving westward

02:04:56.960 uh was a like a crab apple it wasn't very good there were more um central asian

02:05:04.080 apples but by that time it was already established what that meant that fruit that that giving of

02:05:11.120 power is um again fertile and then the goldenness again reiterating to light

02:05:20.640 so light and sound convergence is where i go on that one so i got a story of something that happened

02:05:28.960 and i i feel like this is a a very small boon uh from from lord fray but i i can understand if

02:05:37.840 people who hear this don't don't necessarily buy into it this is not a point of it's not

02:05:43.840 like a statement of afa faith but i'm telling you a story i was in denmark um

02:05:50.960 steve mcnalen his wife uh brad and his girlfriend and myself were in denmark on an afa trip in 2014.

02:06:01.200 and I had I think it's what they refer to as a birch allergy but that's really misleading

02:06:12.620 my understanding was it meant a certain family of fruits which is crazy I love fruits but I had

02:06:22.360 this thing where I would eat certain berries or peaches or apples or nectarines or apricots

02:06:29.620 Apricots are my favorite fruit. And this would happen when I eat them. I couldn't eat apples and anything of that apple family. I could eat some, but if I ate more than just a little bit, my throat would start to close up. I'd have trouble breathing. I have tightness in my chest and a strange tingly thing. And it just, it wasn't good.

02:06:50.240 but um so at the event that we were at in denmark the the culmination of things was this bloat we

02:07:02.140 did on top of froborg which was phrase mountain in denmark now don't let the word mountain fool

02:07:09.160 you denmark is a very very flat place so this was a hill but we circumambulated up this hill

02:07:17.080 along the path right when you get to the top there was this um i think grove is not the

02:07:22.360 appropriate word but there was a cluster of these crab apple trees and you know i couldn't not take

02:07:28.520 the opportunity so i i ate one of these crab apples i didn't have a reaction to it anyways

02:07:35.880 cool whatever i went on with the bloat came back to the states did whatever and then i started

02:07:41.080 trying things out i promise you that this is the case coincidence or no since that time

02:07:49.080 i have no allergy to to apples or anything of that family so

02:07:56.040 take it for what you will but that happened you never told me about this there you go every every

02:08:01.960 podcast there's something it's got layers right dang we have to talk about that more i want to

02:08:09.400 know more about the actual absolutely there's lots of cool stories from that trip that was a once in

02:08:14.520 a lifetime thing um lars and soren and justina if you guys are listening which i don't know if you

02:08:26.520 guys are thank you guys you guys made us have an amazing amazing trip um those are folks that we've

02:08:32.120 lost touch with in denmark that made that trip a absolutely amazing amazing once in a lifetime thing

02:08:41.160 and i'm so thankful i got to be a part of that hail to them and you will hear more stories from

02:08:47.720 it on this podcast i'm sure because it just so many really special things happen um

02:08:57.000 so to a question that i i skipped over when i was talking about the austro academy i i told

02:09:01.560 you a lot about the grades but the the last part of it there was a couple of questions in it

02:09:05.720 last part was what uh the requirements were so literally the requirements um be an afa member

02:09:15.320 not the child we don't accept membership until someone's legally an adult but their family needs

02:09:20.360 to be an afa member one of their parents hopefully both of their parents and other than that um it's

02:09:28.680 free it may not stay that way if we get further on and we need we find a need for stuff for curriculum

02:09:36.360 i don't know if that'll be the case i want to keep it free as long as i can

02:09:40.120 and we've had people who've been very generous in donating towards it so yeah there's there's

02:09:45.960 not a cost obligation we want to raise our children in a safe environment that's going

02:09:53.160 going to teach them the things that we think are valuable and meaningful for their life

02:09:59.860 and if you're out there and you can't for any number of reasons you have to put your child

02:10:07.660 in public school we understand that and shoot if you're in a spot that's got you know a really

02:10:13.140 positive school board and everything's good and it's what you want to do with your kids cool

02:10:18.400 We're not coming at you on that. But most of us, and I say this, my mom was a teacher. She spent 30 years teaching first grade in the Anchorage School District. And school's not the same now as it was then. And it's really important that our kids have a refuge from the woke liberal indoctrination that's going on in public schools.

02:10:45.040 And we're really proud that we're doing the best we can to provide that for our kids and for your kids.

02:10:51.100 And if you've got older kids, we're going to try as hard as we can to get our curriculum to catch up with them.

02:10:57.440 I want to reassure people this has been a huge priority in that program to make sure that.

02:11:04.600 So we have somebody and it's it's their job.

02:11:08.400 Folk Builder Mason Johnson's wife, Rachel, she's the one that does this.

02:11:13.180 this is like her her job in that and she does a lot of things in it but one of her big focuses

02:11:20.220 is to make sure that our curriculum and our processes are compliant with the state rules

02:11:25.660 where your child is so as we're doing this we have kids from i forget the number but rob told

02:11:32.460 me a lot of different states and we're making sure that our standards meet the toughest standards of

02:11:40.460 all of those states and all the different areas it's important to us that we know how to walk you

02:11:46.780 through the process of implementing our program but also of making sure it's completely above

02:11:53.980 board and meets the requirements and legitimate in your state we will hold your hand through

02:11:59.340 that whole process because i know that that's one of the things that's scary we want to take

02:12:05.100 the scary out of it and we're learning all the lessons every class that goes through we learn

02:12:09.820 lessons that we can use for the benefit of classes to come so please do know that

02:12:16.620 the question that's up on the screen is how does one go about starting a kindred

02:12:21.980 so an afa kindred it's real simple and it should be done with a with seriousness absolutely but the

02:12:30.140 idea of the afa kindred and this is really important to me but come to find out this is

02:12:36.300 always the idea of afa kindred it's back from the eyes of true free assembly i read the afa kindred

02:12:41.900 handbook from like 86 or something and it describes kindreds in the same way we see them today the afa

02:12:48.700 kindred is the local congregation of afa members so a kindred needs to be made up of three or more

02:12:57.340 afa members those members need to be on board and building their kindred around the house of true

02:13:07.020 folk assembly the afa loyalty is essential in making that kindred function for the long term

02:13:14.060 and we want that kindred to be a living representation of the afa in their area

02:13:20.620 and other than that if that's something you want to do and you have those things met

02:13:25.260 now the idea is don't find three people across the surface of the earth the point of these kindreds

02:13:30.620 is that they're local to the area that you're in and they can form a tighter bond

02:13:35.020 in that area and that's what we'd really love to see so if you have um you know a total of three

02:13:41.660 or more afa members in your area and you want to form a kindred you want to reach out to jason

02:13:46.700 gallagher he is an awesome awesome guy very good friend of mine he's been a guest on the program

02:13:52.860 before and he is our kindred coordinator and you know he also is is he runs his kindred northern

02:13:59.740 blood kindred he's very passionate about our afa kindreds and he would love to talk you through

02:14:05.580 that process and get you set up we also have a six-month probationary period so that you guys

02:14:11.980 are solidified and there's you know some permanence to it because we live in a world where there's so

02:14:17.900 much transiency maybe things seem like a really good idea today you find out three or four months

02:14:23.420 down the road it doesn't quite work out so we do have that that uh probationary period

02:14:27.740 but yeah contact jason if you're interested

02:14:32.380 so gothe young asks can you both speak to what it means to be a gothi and speak to the spiritual

02:14:40.860 authority that comes with it? And why do titles matter? Svan, take it away.

02:14:49.660 Ah, well, I mean, the, to be a godly in this day and age, especially of the Ossetra Folk Assembly,

02:14:59.020 I mean, I'm not aware, I think some people maybe proclaim the title in other areas and groups, but

02:15:06.780 in with us there is initiatory practice in which you have to work your way through um and and these

02:15:15.660 might manifest in different ways whether it's a the ability to counsel during times of emergency

02:15:20.940 or times of great distress um the ability to um mediate between uh warring not worry scary

02:15:30.540 warring arguing parties or or um warring parties is a bit much um there might be grievances between

02:15:37.980 folk within the community and being able to to mitigate some sort of peace between them

02:15:44.780 sometimes it doesn't work sometimes it does again but you're still willing to step up for that um

02:15:51.340 especially if both parties have uh tangible uh goals towards achieving that um

02:15:57.820 There are other things, I think, in particular, discussing relationships with the gods, discussing seasonal relationships and tidings, knowing when the tidings are, following them in accordance to our traditions, the way that we have done it, and the way we continue to.

02:16:17.900 and um that doesn't mean that we don't evolve we do have orthopraxy that uh is you know we are a

02:16:25.240 a religion of deeds but we maintain those traditions and uh see the evolutions of things

02:16:31.460 in accordance to the way they need to be um and i think we we are stewards of that and i think that

02:16:37.620 you know in a one sense we're receptive to people's um questions and and needs but at this

02:16:46.040 on a projecting sense, we're also very much like priests on the ground. We are the boots on the

02:16:52.180 ground. We are the ones pulling things in directions in our local community to get things

02:16:59.060 going, to make things happen, to build foundation on, to inspire people to unite or to build

02:17:07.140 allegiances with each other, to build the community around, whether it's a kindred or a

02:17:12.200 hoff or wherever the go the or give you is um you know that there's that that dynamic of both being

02:17:20.360 receptive to problems and being dynamically moving forward on things that we need to do

02:17:26.600 so we end up being kind of like uh some of us are attached like two hoffs but even before then you

02:17:33.640 You know, it was we were like, I wouldn't say migratory, but we were we were on the path of fate, on the path of weird, enacting in both alignment with the church and the gods and trying to be that convergence point since we.

02:17:55.720 But yes, that's what I would say about it.

02:18:03.640 So my friend Gauthier Young asked us a bunch of big questions in a in a sequence, and I hope I don't miss something here because it's a it's a big topic.

02:18:15.160 a legitimate gothi is a bridge between the gods and the folk to the gods he represents our church

02:18:30.380 and our folk to us he represents the gods he serves during ritual as a a literal bridge of

02:18:40.000 energy to pass from us to our gods and the gods to us. That is the ceremonial purpose of Agothi.

02:18:52.480 Agothi in the modern sense is a leader. Agothi in the AFA is a manager of their district,

02:19:02.280 a keeper of their hof that's in their district, a listening ear and a counselor to everyone

02:19:12.700 in their district or outside of their district that needs their help. Our Gothar, and it's

02:19:20.520 Daniel Young that asked this question. He's one of our busiest when it comes to counseling.

02:19:27.540 Folks will never see it, and that's because it's not something people brag on, but I'm going to

02:19:31.620 drag on them for them we've got gothar that spend hours and hours every single week talking people

02:19:42.960 through what's often some of the very worst times in their lives so providing that spiritual need

02:19:51.960 is very important and a lot of people so it's another one of the ones I get lost on because I

02:20:00.300 know where to start at this um so many people when they join the afa or they first discover

02:20:08.060 alsatru say okay cool i joined i'm about this i love it how do i become a gothi

02:20:15.260 and there's nothing wrong with that that enthusiasm honestly is beautiful to see

02:20:20.620 but there's so much more to it than anybody sees coming through so right now as it stands you have

02:20:26.780 to be a folk builder first and put in kind of the not sexy part of the job with the database

02:20:33.340 and the management of the members and the this and the that and the social media

02:20:38.620 to put in the work and then after you've done that become a gothi um because a gothi is not

02:20:47.100 just a master of ceremonies it's not just a guy that stands out there in the middle of ritual

02:20:51.820 and performs that's a part of what we do and it's a really fun part of what we do

02:20:57.260 and outside of just being fun it's a very important part of what we do

02:21:03.740 but leading our church and leading our development is an essential part of what we do counseling our

02:21:13.420 membership and sometimes each other is so important to what we do and this is going to

02:21:22.060 bring me to the other big point here in just a second but these folks

02:21:31.260 brandy mentioned this about our donations we don't bring sacrifices from our flocks and from

02:21:40.060 our fields anymore that's not what most of us do that's not reflecting most of our lives

02:21:45.420 we donate in terms of cash but cash isn't about currency cash is a reflection of hours

02:21:57.740 it's a reflection of time that you've spent engaged in something that's time you're spending

02:22:03.500 away from your family away from your hopes and dreams now some of us are very lucky and and

02:22:10.060 we're doing what we love but most people are working a job for a paycheck and so time away 0.64

02:22:18.140 from your family is is so important well afa gothar spend a lot of time away from their families

02:22:26.460 tending to the spiritual needs of of us of all of us and nobody thinks about it but you know i i get

02:22:36.220 that i've been that guy that i am that guy that gets a call during dinner and gets a call when

02:22:41.900 you're out doing something with your family and gets a call when you're you're at a special

02:22:46.060 occasion and depending you know depending on the situation sometimes you got to drop what you're

02:22:51.740 doing and talk to somebody who is going through something really hard in their life

02:22:56.460 We've we've had go through that are literally saving lives through their counseling, and it's a it's a huge thing.

02:23:06.460 Our lineage is important.

02:23:17.460 bit about the AFA Gothar and our lineage. So all of our ordinations of our Gothar trace

02:23:29.120 themselves back to Steve McNally. Steve is the founder of Modern Alcitru. There have

02:23:35.080 been a number of other people that have had stops and starts at being involved in this

02:23:39.460 that we do. The really, the noteworthy luminaries of that, we try to celebrate with days of

02:23:46.520 remembrance. But as far as making this making this that we're doing today happen, Steve founded that

02:23:55.400 and it was all founded upon a relationship he built with Odin in 1968. And that sounds

02:24:05.360 presumptuous. And I don't mean it that way. One of the biggest testaments of the validity of it

02:24:14.000 Is Steve's enemies even agree to this, that the All-Father worked through Steve to accomplish something that Odin wanted to accomplish?

02:24:27.000 Just the very idea that the God of Aryan consciousness would select Steve and work in any sort of partnership with him to do something. 0.51

02:24:40.000 do something. The fact that one of our gods felt that, you know, the chief of our gods felt the 0.71

02:24:48.820 need to work with Steve McNallan to do something. That's, I mean, that is a profoundly weighty thing

02:25:00.140 to say, and even a heavier thing to carry. So friends and foe alike acknowledge that Odin worked

02:25:11.100 through and with Steve. And in the in the 1980s, and he did a lot of things before then, but in the

02:25:19.180 80s he he in a limited number but he ordained some gothar um and all of us trace our ordinations

02:25:30.780 back to that in one form or fashion

02:25:37.340 steve literally had a connection or it has a connection with the all father and through

02:25:45.980 that connection he bestowed an ordination upon the people he ordained

02:25:53.180 fast forward a long time in 2012

02:25:58.380 steve ordained me as a priest of the isir and it was at uh it was a midsummer in alta california at

02:26:09.020 camp norga um and i i had to go through the gothar program the course of study that we have um

02:26:19.980 and to graduate from and i had to perform uh i performed a thor bloat

02:26:30.300 and you know i've over the years and hopefully this is the case with everybody i'm doing something

02:26:36.300 wrong if my bloats haven't gotten better so over the years i've done better bloats but i've never

02:26:43.180 done a bloat that exhausted me more and the exhaustion comes from literally being that bridge

02:26:51.980 that i spoke of when gods are using you as a conduit to share their energy with the folk

02:27:02.540 if you do that right it will wear you down because all of that energy is coursing through you and i

02:27:11.300 don't mean that to sound you know out there and i i dislike that i have to even qualify it but

02:27:19.840 so many of us have known lunatics that say crazy things but that's a very real thing

02:27:26.740 I had to go afterwards and take a nap. It knocked me out. But at the end of that,

02:27:33.000 I stood there and I took my oath from Steve McNallan and he bestowed ordination on me.

02:27:42.940 And I remember looking him in the eye as I swore my oath.

02:27:46.060 and

02:27:49.640 like I threw in some like always and some emphasis words in there to see and his light his eyes lit

02:28:04.360 up and mine did too and we had a really it's a really profound moment and I'll always remember

02:28:09.500 it and at that moment something special happened i wasn't just matt anymore i was matt plus all of

02:28:21.260 these people who'd come before me that had that relationship with our gods and that responsibility

02:28:29.900 our gods placed that responsibility on steve and then steve shared that with me

02:28:35.980 me and uh when somebody becomes ordained they don't become perfect or infallible

02:28:48.300 we're all still struggling and trying and there's people who've been ordained that have that have

02:28:52.780 lost it or that have moved away and and and not proved uh up to up to that challenge

02:28:59.980 but while that ordination is there we have a stamp of approval from the icr saying hey

02:29:05.980 this guy's okay to represent us. We acknowledge that this guy represents us. Even saying that

02:29:14.240 out loud now, I don't ever want to be presumptuous or take anything for granted. But I believe

02:29:19.180 that. And it's foundational to the AFA. That was 2012. And fast forward a few years

02:29:27.760 uh when steve stepped back from being the alice harry gothi and it became um became my time to be

02:29:37.840 alice harry gothi it all really started at ostara and behind the scenes when other people didn't

02:29:50.800 necessarily know what was going on that's when i knew that the torch was being passed and that i

02:29:56.240 i was in charge of setting things up and running things and then it was made official at midsummer

02:30:01.840 of 2016. so i can't express to you guys how huge of a weight it was to all of a sudden be

02:30:10.800 responsible for this and to know that it's on me to either carry on in that tradition and make this

02:30:22.160 succeed or to screw up and do something stupid and it all crumble and 0.89

02:30:30.160 i wouldn't trade it for anything in the world it is the biggest blessing i can imagine 0.95

02:30:37.920 but i spent a year there carrying that weight and just hoping every day that i was up to it

02:30:44.960 hoping every day that I could do good enough to not lose what we had and to hopefully make the

02:30:54.100 gods proud and move us forward. And it's been a year really hard in that. And we had our Ostara

02:31:01.420 event at Ostara in the South. That year, it was held in Georgia, in northern Georgia.

02:31:10.000 I remember really close to, relatively close to Stone Mountain because we went and saw Stone

02:31:14.020 mountain afterwards and it was it was the best of star we ever had it to that point it was really

02:31:21.720 cool uh folk builder jason plurred set that one up and it was fantastic

02:31:25.880 i'd spent a year under the pressure trying to see if i was worthy and try to stand up and

02:31:34.120 i was getting ready and that evening we were going to do something and i'd gone and i actually

02:31:41.280 gone to spawn you guys may not know but spawn is an amazing barber and so a number of us did this

02:31:48.540 but i was the last guy to do it that evening i'm like hey spawn you know skin me up on the sides

02:31:54.020 get me looking get me looking fresh for for what i'm about to do and uh you know he gave me a

02:32:00.500 haircut and i don't think i was very good company because i was really in my head because i was

02:32:04.900 about to do this that we were going to do and i went back out to the to the fire pit

02:32:09.080 and i got ready to do the sumble at the beginning of the sumble i stand up sometimes i do it seated

02:32:15.860 but i um speak words over the horn and i have an incantation i do over the horn to

02:32:23.360 prepare it and imbue it with the sacrality for us to do some as i stood up with the horn i was

02:32:31.280 really i was really feeling it you know again all that stress has been on me for a year and i'm just

02:32:37.520 hoping just hoping that i'm doing the right thing and i'm hoping i'm doing good enough

02:32:43.440 and i get up and i feel this hand somebody puts a hand on my shoulder you know a reassuring

02:32:49.360 slap the hand on the shoulder and you know shake it and you know just kind of you know that feeling

02:32:55.440 where somebody puts a hand on their shoulder and just gives a little emphasis and you know hey

02:33:00.240 you're doing good and i really appreciated that there was a number of people there i thought it

02:33:06.080 was alan um and you know that was a really really nice thing and it really reassured me at a time

02:33:14.240 where i needed that and i appreciated it and so before i started speaking i turned around to to

02:33:19.520 thank whoever done it and i turned around and there was no one anywhere near me and when i say

02:33:28.160 someone put a hand on my shoulder i don't mean there was something similar or i thought i felt

02:33:33.920 or no i felt a hand on my shoulder so viscerally that no i turned around and was going to say thank

02:33:41.040 you to the person that did it but it wasn't a flesh and blood person that did it i believe

02:33:47.440 with all my heart the all father put his hand on my shoulder and from that moment i think that he

02:33:53.680 trusted me with something really special and that specialness is what is transferred

02:34:01.760 when i ordain any of our gothar in the asa um that connects them to all the gothar who've come

02:34:13.680 before them and it connects them with the responsibility and the authority

02:34:19.680 that the icer gave to steve and gave to me

02:34:22.560 and you can't fake that that means something that's a 54 year relationship with steve

02:34:33.760 it's a 28 and counting just turned 28 uh the turning of the year of the afa and our gift

02:34:46.740 cycle with the gods it's built upon a relationship we have with the gods and you can't fake that you

02:34:56.900 can't make that fresh and it matters hey you a daughter came to see me um but yeah that's

02:35:07.780 that's why it's important it's not just a thing um

02:35:10.900 um and the gravity of that is immense the responsibility is immense but the authority

02:35:21.220 is real and that's why it's very important that people show respect to our girlfriend because

02:35:26.260 they're not just some guy with a stole they're a person who literally is carrying the weight

02:35:34.180 and the responsibility of connecting our gods and our folk they're a person who is carrying

02:35:40.540 torch that was handed to steve that was handed to me that will be handed to gothar for generations

02:35:48.620 to come and on a on a very practical level on a metaphysical level they tap into all of that

02:35:57.740 on a practical level our gothar discuss all of these things the more gothar we have and the more

02:36:04.380 we learn from the ones that come before us the bigger the wealth of knowledge we have to draw on

02:36:11.660 when we're helping people when we're counseling and we're doing ritual we carry all that with us

02:36:17.740 and it's uh i hope that comes through when you guys encounter us i hope it comes through when

02:36:27.260 we give counseling and when we give ritual but it absolutely matters um

02:36:34.380 Yeah, and I know that was a really long – that was a Spahn answer.

02:36:39.660 So I hope that was meaningful.

02:36:44.840 I appreciate you guys listening to me on it.

02:36:46.920 Next question is, is Helheim and the Halls of Our Ancestors the same place?

02:36:52.080 Spahn, go ahead and take that one for me if you would.

02:36:56.360 A short answer, I would say no.

02:36:59.220 long answer just like you said um uh hold on to yourself in your mind the idea what is him and

02:37:11.480 bjork to heaven that is to what hellheim is to what so uh that that question is very important

02:37:22.860 i think that i've often referred to hellheim or hell guard as the time or the place beyond time

02:37:30.300 uh and i think that's spoken of in the idea of the coldness of the stillness of the darkness

02:37:37.340 there's not a lot of movement there's no cyclical movement there's no

02:37:40.940 correlative movement going on there it's uh things aren't moving and manifesting um

02:37:46.860 um so again these are all poetics towards the idea of being removed from time it is the filtration

02:37:55.260 system it is the the uh the point in which you are uh the threshold that which you are allowed

02:38:02.060 through uh we know that him and bjork is the threshold into ausgard we know that from him

02:38:10.620 bjorg uh heimdall can see all of heaven and all of the worlds and so you know that threshold that

02:38:19.820 guidance place now i'm not saying it's entirely the same i'm just trying to give an equivalency

02:38:25.020 of understanding when we pass through the mortal coil and move down and through and ultimately to

02:38:33.100 reside in the halls of our ancestors the receiving place or the place that we stand sometimes we call

02:38:38.940 it beyond the veil there's lots of different names that we have for it it is that which is beyond

02:38:44.700 where we are together with them hellheim hellguard first and foremost i think is that threshold point

02:38:51.820 but it is often referred to as the as the source of calamity what resides there is disease and

02:38:57.740 famine now we have to understand too that snorty had a lot of influence from christianity and

02:39:04.700 christianity pulled again some influence from us we know that hell or hell guard or hell heim

02:39:12.620 was known amongst the anglo-saxons was known amongst even the goths as which they

02:39:17.500 they uh the words like to shroud or in shroud into the darkness were correlated to that but

02:39:25.260 again we constantly have to refer back to the adis because that is one of the clearest points

02:39:30.540 but it's still varied there when we would um um ah the valkyrie in her mentioning of her dying and

02:39:40.300 going down and seeing hellguard she has an account please forgive me i will find that name uh with

02:39:46.300 hermoth and and balder and all and again with even uh with odin himself going to the outskirts

02:39:54.060 around that threshold we see constant poetic reaffirmations the crossing over rivers

02:40:01.900 the crossing over bridges the threshold of mauve good where she then in enforces the judgment

02:40:08.860 of whether you can proceed through or you have to step down and away uh and when you do you have to

02:40:15.340 pass through the threshold of those rivers and those rivers are not good girl and sleeve are

02:40:20.540 terrible of affrontments a kind of a um some people would view them i i you could say like

02:40:26.460 oh well snowy's a christian and to pass through those those uh terrible rivers is like a punishment

02:40:31.740 of hell but it's also seen i think as a uh the equivalency of a cleansing in which those rivers

02:40:41.020 are removing forcefully and painfully the a lot of the unbearments of your soul so that when you

02:40:48.300 reach to the other side when you reach to that to that beach uh what's left there is the um

02:40:55.020 the primordial soul that is again to be it has its fate there so that's that's that convergence

02:41:01.100 point but when you do get to pass through you pass through the realm of death what death is

02:41:07.660 death is and and how it's referred to poetically when we talk about hell's road or that they were

02:41:13.180 wearing hell's cloaks then we we see this constantly and even in the sagas mentioned

02:41:18.940 about how hell and death are almost quite synonymous so is death the final resting place

02:41:25.420 is kind of what you're asking and to my to that my answer is no i do have one point though i believe

02:41:33.820 that the route beyond is the final destination of the souls or where the souls reside and i think

02:41:44.320 that is a reason why nidhogg is seen or is described as trying to tear that root is because

02:41:52.040 it breaks the connection cycle of the souls of mankind that can return up and to be ascended

02:42:00.440 by the gods even post and also the dripping dew of the soul matter that can go into the well and

02:42:08.360 then return into the middle world that cycle being broken is detrimental to the gods and that's why

02:42:13.100 he seeks to destroy it so i would say the root now when you look at the root and the well

02:42:18.340 there yelmer there yelmer is again constituted heavily with christian iconography from snorri

02:42:25.460 where he talks about it being a desolate place but there seems to be some confusion as to whether

02:42:30.260 not it's the beach or the well and there's a much more heavy emphasis i think on the beach

02:42:36.180 and so with all of these varying kind of conclusions of things and again when we talk about death

02:42:42.100 the absolute conclusion of anyone resides in those who walk those roads whether they're gods

02:42:48.500 or dead men and dead men don't often come back to say so um not often but the um

02:42:57.300 um the idea is that that was that that threshold of of hellheim is a place that resides in between

02:43:06.020 or without time and that is a place that we pass through and that we go to a focal nexus point that

02:43:14.340 is deeply connected to the upper realm that root is drawing up but it is just as important to

02:43:22.060 that when a when a god dies he resides there in that place between time because

02:43:28.320 again that is a divine threshold and his passing through it is because he's not

02:43:36.220 a mortal is that he is immortal that he moves from one place to another between

02:43:44.080 but not fully completing the cycle it will happen at a designated time so the

02:43:50.320 souls our souls trickling through the threshold of hellheim and then back up the route or in and

02:43:56.800 i'm not saying that it's a continuous cycle one for one what i'm saying is is that the focal point

02:44:01.120 of the soul um of the folk soul i would say the halls of the ancestors um is kind of seen as an

02:44:10.320 extension of hellheim that hellheim is a um a place in which we pass through and that what we see as

02:44:18.080 the halls or the beyond the veil or the place in which they reside is the taproot the third tap

02:44:24.560 root to yggdrasil itself and we take that into the story as a root of a tree but what we're

02:44:32.000 what could that mean is the the focal point the receptacle point of a gigantic nexus of

02:44:40.080 of primordial creation and power and order in creating a cyclical movement that's where we are

02:44:48.800 and to what level some come back perhaps or are ascended that's a question for the gods and i

02:44:55.920 think when we see our uh maybe our ascended mothers and fathers as alfar and dsir we see

02:45:02.400 those that have ascended and have dripped through the dew and fell into the well and we see them as

02:45:08.800 in a place between us and the gods that's that ascendancy but we also know that some reside

02:45:16.760 amongst the gods and that they are brought there by the gods for various reasons or with the

02:45:23.400 dynamicism of of odin sometimes you don't even get to take the the road you get snatched up

02:45:30.460 and carried at his behest so we see death and the soul as being very dynamic once it leaves

02:45:38.460 the material world but hellheim and hell herself what what she is is the threshold the the

02:45:50.460 passing through point the the i would say like what would it be called like a um

02:45:55.660 almost like the uh the the scanning edge of a mirror where you pass through and it it requires

02:46:02.380 you to it break off pieces of your soul and what what ultimately i think spurns that decisioning on

02:46:11.580 is the ancestors acceptance of you or the rejection of you and that is based upon your

02:46:17.340 collective deeds that have been witnessed by the gods as you were living but when you come down

02:46:23.900 it is your the the part of your soul that has to retell that story that story that you hold

02:46:29.580 is going to be added in with the ancestors and they may say no they may reject it or rebuke it

02:46:37.820 so you must live your life in accordance to to make sure that your story is one well worth adding

02:46:44.460 to that root said that that that nexus to place beyond the realm of death

02:46:50.620 so kade asks off topic question i'm new to the spiritual side of austin true but i was wondering

02:47:01.120 if you had any way to deal with co-parenting with someone who absolutely is against our views

02:47:08.460 um so kade i have to assume by that question that you find yourself

02:47:14.760 in that spot, and I'm really sorry to hear that. We'll absolutely answer your question,

02:47:22.560 but I want to preface this. That's a terrible spot to be in, and if you can, we find Alistair

02:47:33.400 True at all different points in our life, but if you are a young person who has not yet found a

02:47:39.600 marriage partner, it's really important that you choose a marriage partner from within the ranks

02:47:47.340 of, of usitry. Um, especially raising a child agreement on the fundamentals of what's really

02:47:57.160 important at the core of your existence at the core of life is, I can't say how important that is.

02:48:08.000 Um, you know, I've, I've been in, in many relationships or I've been in several relationships

02:48:15.700 since I've been also true. And I tell you what, I'm, I'm, it's so much different being with my

02:48:26.700 wife because I met her through the AFA. I met her through also true. She was also true independently

02:48:33.660 before I ever met her. And so we have those fundamentals very much in common and something

02:48:41.400 to build our household, our family upon. But that's not what you ask. And I appreciate your

02:48:48.020 question. It's not my suggestion that everybody, you know, you find out you need to divorce your

02:48:54.360 life for your husband. That's not what I'm saying. This kind of is built upon what I tell everybody

02:49:08.580 the best way to spread fame about house true is live it in your life. Be successful, be a good

02:49:17.680 person and attribute that to your house of true faith.

02:49:32.840 I'll say this, and please take it for what it's worth.

02:49:35.760 Our gods are not as thirsty as Jesus.

02:49:39.300 Like, you don't need to attribute everything 24-7 to how great our gods are.

02:49:44.320 so you can do a lot for your child teaching them lessons

02:49:50.720 and when your spouse asks where it comes from after there's been this great positive change

02:49:58.540 in what your child's doing you can tell them that it's rooted in ossitry um and i don't say that in

02:50:06.820 any way of dishonesty i'm just saying you don't always have to rub the religion in your spouse's

02:50:12.860 faith or face but does your spouse see the things that you're teaching your child as good

02:50:20.700 or as bad keep the faith

02:50:26.140 as a separate issue for a time and see how that works but again the answer is never going to be

02:50:34.060 the same to any couple because different people have different reasons that they might oppose what

02:50:38.620 we're doing one might completely agree with our ethics but be an atheist and not believe in the

02:50:47.660 in the metaphysical side of what we do and that's one scenario another person could completely be

02:50:54.540 super woke and not agree with any of our politics and any of our ethics and any of our worldview

02:51:00.700 but like the gods just fine or what they think the gods are about just fine

02:51:06.540 That's an entirely different struggle. So it would be very different depending on that audience.

02:51:12.620 If it's just a matter of not having faith in the metaphysics, then focus on the positives that

02:51:20.100 having faith and that our principles bring to your life and to improve the life of your child

02:51:26.720 and worry about the deeper metaphysics down the road. That's the most I'd suggest without

02:51:32.900 out knowing more about your scenario but I'm really sorry that you face that that's a big

02:51:37.520 challenge and I wish you the best with it spawn do you have any advice for Cade or folks in his

02:51:45.620 situation uh again with context not really there you know I guess I would I would say identify the

02:51:54.320 source of that whether it's um again maybe it's moralistic or maybe they don't believe maybe

02:52:00.500 atheistic uh maybe they uh are super religious in a in a universal monotheistic religion from

02:52:09.220 the middle east and they have like fear of damnation or fear of original sin uh fear of

02:52:14.760 going to like the judaic afterlife of sheol and not getting into um you know where yahweh is and

02:52:22.820 things of that nature um and and identifying that and understanding that will help you

02:52:28.660 again, mitigate where you're coming at with this. If you hold bloat for yourself and your child

02:52:35.960 holds bloat with you and they have a deep visceral fear of not making it into the Judaic

02:52:42.140 afterlife by them participating, you could have issues there. So like knowing when to hold bloat

02:52:48.800 and things or where or taking in those considerations, that causes a lot of issues

02:52:55.440 in the house and a lot of familial uh dissecting between the the the mother and the father and

02:53:04.320 that's hugely important for the child and so having that unified front i think it's first

02:53:10.960 best to identify what problem they have and try to find a mediated middle and then work from there

02:53:17.840 because time does change things if they start to see the way you act the way you uh live your life

02:53:23.840 um those things might change and they can change i think people can become aware of certain ideas

02:53:30.720 that they have as being at the moment and then later on down the line they change it

02:53:36.400 but there's other things to remember the gothar are here with you because this again is a con

02:53:41.440 this is a question of heavy context so it could be politics it could be um orthopraxy they just

02:53:50.160 don't like the fact that you drink from a horn or i the context and i'm not trying to make light of

02:53:56.000 it is rely on your gothar whether it's you know if you're speaking to a go the or give you um or

02:54:02.880 both and you get a chance to kind of talk about this situation you can rely on them and they can

02:54:08.160 start to give you baby steps to help hopefully heal this situation because again this spiritual um

02:54:15.040 um amicability is a huge thing i've seen people with different religions that love each other

02:54:22.960 very much and it's not a big component in say one of the their lives they do get along and

02:54:29.920 they do move forward but that is extremely rare um for the most part it's it's a unity thing and um

02:54:39.920 i think ultimately too it could be just identifying that they have some sort of

02:54:43.440 preconceived notions and if they come out or they come to a temple they come to the hof

02:54:48.480 and they get to meet people i that has happened numerous times in which a one um spouse comes to

02:54:54.960 the hof and they they realize how just we've got how regular people we are we have children

02:55:02.640 where we have music playing we've got food and and we're uh you know we go in we we do blow

02:55:08.560 sometimes they just sit off to the side and watch but now they understand what we're doing they get 0.70

02:55:14.000 to speak to a gothar and and ask him why did you do that why did you do this and they can tell them

02:55:19.440 you know this is we're giving gifts we're we're holding libation and we're holding communion with 0.51

02:55:23.920 the gods they begin to slowly from that tensing release and at least they can then build towards

02:55:33.360 at least being you know amicable with you there's lots of different avenues to this that's a hard

02:55:38.000 question without context but at the same time too i don't i understand not airing everything and it

02:55:43.200 might not even be you it could be someone you know and i know some members in the afa that do have

02:55:48.080 that situation in their life and it's hard um so he added a little bit of context on the side

02:55:58.080 and i want to address this really briefly and move on to the next thing but it's i it's worth

02:56:03.120 addressing um he said she is pro-choice and pro-homosexuality and i appreciate you giving

02:56:11.440 us a little bit of con of context to work on um i've said this before the afa doesn't take a

02:56:23.600 100 black and white stance on abortion in the sense that there's health reasons there's reasons

02:56:32.480 that it may be the better of two really bad options but what we don't and what we'll never

02:56:40.000 support is the joyous and enthusiastic embracing of infanticide and i think that

02:56:51.200 you know maybe in the 70s or 80s or 90s this is a lot more well there's a lot more nuance to it

02:56:57.440 But, you know, we as a society all agree that killing babies is bad.

02:57:02.920 Now, maybe if there was a horrible deformity or if it was the result of incest or rape or some various things, then it might be the best of two really bad alternatives.

02:57:18.100 But we all kind of agreed killing babies is bad because it is. 0.97

02:57:22.940 we live in very strange times to where some very mentally ill people now celebrate killing babies 0.97

02:57:35.140 because that sticks it to the patriarchy or sticks it to the daddy they have issues with 0.95

02:57:44.980 or whatever the problem is but that's evil and i'm not afraid to say that's evil um celebrating

02:57:55.780 killing babies is bad that doesn't sound like it should be a bold moral stance it sounds like

02:58:02.900 it's common sense for any for any mammal but um where the the woman in your life is 0.94

02:58:11.700 is maybe a really strange place. I don't know y'all's age, but stuff's really odd right now.

02:58:20.160 Fortunately, I don't think that the abortion issue is necessarily super important to your

02:58:25.760 child unless your child is at the very end of their childhood. You know, the 15 through 18

02:58:31.360 range, that might be a very serious thing. The homosexuality issue, I would caution you a little 1.00

02:58:37.220 bit more stringently on a lot of women don't take a live and let live ideology on it and they don't 0.76

02:58:48.180 really see where a person's sexual preference would negatively affect you know your child 1.00

02:59:00.900 um and i think that many of us know the the reasons why that would be um all of the macro

02:59:09.380 discussion about how embracing that is eroding a lot of our morals and a lot of society that's

02:59:18.500 a bigger question that doesn't need to be addressed right now by you please be very 0.96

02:59:26.260 cautious about homosexuals that are around your child whether your child is male or female 0.99

02:59:35.140 the reason that we take is first we believe that homosexuality is a mental illness 0.98

02:59:44.180 but secondly when one suffers that particular mental illness 0.73

02:59:48.420 There is certainly not 100% of the time, but a very significant percent of the time

02:59:58.080 that carries over into other sexual mental illness that very often involves the abuse

03:00:06.980 of a child. And for whatever reason, for whatever motivates it, I would just urge you to please

03:00:14.160 don't let homosexuals around your child unattended. Please be vigilant against that as best you can 1.00

03:00:22.660 in your situation. That unfortunately is a terrible thing that however that mental illness 0.86

03:00:31.720 manifests itself, it results in the victimization of children far too often. And please do your

03:00:39.800 best to avoid that for for you and your family um travis asks asking on behalf of the shy

03:00:48.920 why are we here what is our purpose appreciate travis coming with the with the simple questions

03:00:55.760 to answer uh perhaps the biggest questions of of of humanity is why are we here and what is our

03:01:04.660 purpose. I don't think that given the entire rest of the

03:01:11.540 evening, all of tomorrow, that me and Svan could exhaustively

03:01:15.160 answer that question for you. But in simple terms, what I would

03:01:20.060 give you on that question is to a couple of things to make our

03:01:31.000 gods and our ancestors proud of us to create a better hymenia and a better orlog for the children

03:01:41.640 that we bring into the world and for our grandchildren than we came into the world with

03:01:47.960 to elevate our family to a status and a position better than we started in and to build

03:01:56.200 build a world closer to how it should be to the best of our ability.

03:02:04.680 Within those constructs, to achieve victory and to be a winner,

03:02:14.080 I think that the best of intentions don't matter if they're not put into implementation.

03:02:19.700 And that's not always judged by whether you have ultimate success or not, but it absolutely is judged by how much, how hard you try and the things that you do.

03:02:31.840 And if you find victory, victory is our 10th noble virtue.

03:02:37.860 Things are about winning. Don't let people trick you and think it's not about whether you win or lose. It's how you play the game.

03:02:44.520 Yeah, it's how you play the game, but it's also whether you win or you lose.

03:02:49.700 In real life, there's consequences. Victory brings a set of very positive consequences.

03:02:57.580 Defeat brings a set of very negative consequences. Be a winner. Make your gods and your ancestors

03:03:04.480 proud of you and leave something better for your children and your grandchildren.

03:03:10.900 We could, again, talk all day, but that's the best I've got on it in a really general way.

03:03:16.620 Svon, what do you have to add?

03:03:19.700 piggybacking off of your um the achievement of victory and and how that to say that some people

03:03:25.700 might not understand what that means in in a sense of also true so i will just kind of take that and

03:03:31.940 then context it into a barrel and shoot it out when when odin villianve breathe in the soul power

03:03:43.860 of that which is the vessel of humanity with the vessel of the folk they they split that power

03:03:52.180 that power comes from odin but why you're asking why why did odin speak that spell why did odin

03:04:00.740 sing that song why did he the three split that power into the vessel that would become the folk

03:04:07.940 and thus start things, is because soul might. And so your attainment of victory is actually

03:04:17.240 a building of soul might. And you won't always get it right. And in actuality, your individual

03:04:23.060 soul is part of a bigger soul might. And when he sees a might in the soul, where is it taken?

03:04:31.220 handpicked, taken to heaven. And then also there is this cycle that continues in which

03:04:39.140 there can be a process of building that soul might. So his breath, his song becomes the spell

03:04:47.360 that he knows some of it will fall away, some of it will wither and die, but others of them will

03:04:52.680 become honed in victory and in attainment through deeds. And that soul might is going to join the

03:04:59.960 soul might of others. And soon it will be a mega wave or bomb of soul might that will be brought

03:05:08.820 into heaven for the final moments in which all things unite. There needs to be a moment in which

03:05:15.160 that the soul might that is honed in order and in deed and in victory will then rise up in tide

03:05:23.220 against the forces of chaos and necrosis and dissemination and all of those things. And if

03:05:29.540 that soul might isn't reached, then it might win. So it needs to be reached. Your purpose

03:05:36.840 is that you carry within you the spell of Odin and testing your might, gaining your victory,

03:05:44.520 building the luck and the Haminya of your individual soul and the souls of your ancestors,

03:05:49.420 then will in turn help the gods maintain the balance when all things collide.

03:05:55.760 and that's how you see it whether it's in the cyclical sense or whether

03:06:00.540 olden himself plucks you out and puts you into the hall that awaits for that moment

03:06:07.940 and this this happens to all of us this the the men women our ability our souls are all

03:06:15.520 part of the process of this filtration and this build-up of might and of power that will

03:06:22.240 eventually come back to the gods come back to ovin and be utilized to maintain the balance against

03:06:29.520 the forces that are seeking to disseminate and tear down creation you know i'll add this on

03:06:39.520 the picture that spawn just made for us so it's about victory it's about making the gods and

03:06:44.960 ancestors proud of you but in a bigger odinic sense it's about structuring order from chaos 0.98

03:06:57.200 in your life if you are able to bring this world closer in the spheres that you operate in

03:07:05.520 towards order and towards right action

03:07:07.920 that is your goal that's what you need to find victory in or use victory for

03:07:16.760 and away from the destruction of chaos um

03:07:22.100 so simply your your job is not to tear down your job is to build up yes in some circumstances you

03:07:32.480 have to tear down in order to build up but if you just tear down and you stop there

03:07:37.900 doesn't count what counts is the build-up you know you weed the garden but you're not

03:07:43.980 a gardener if you just pick weeds all day you're a gardener if you grow stuff um see i'll i'll say that

03:07:55.660 i know i knew that the moment he that that spell was spoken

03:07:59.500 that breath was given he knew it that's why you're here

03:08:02.780 absolutely so we have a question uh why obsidian skull has a question question why there's more use

03:08:14.780 of the elder futhark instead of the younger futhark in the afa which is more in line with

03:08:20.780 the historical time used in aussitrew um yes obsidian a couple of things first of all

03:08:28.700 we don't believe that also true is confined to a historical time um it's just as legitimate and

03:08:38.540 just as relevant for us to practice also true today as it was for them in the viking age as

03:08:45.500 it was for them in the neolithic period as it was in our most ancient ancestors before the

03:08:51.740 the the glaciers in the ice age um our relation to the gods takes different forms in different

03:08:59.660 times one of the reasons that the elder futhark is used um more than the younger a couple of things

03:09:11.100 it is thought to be more more metaphysical whereas the younger is more adapted to writing and

03:09:21.740 we use our runes for various different purposes for magical practices and for intoning the very

03:09:29.780 mysteries of the universe the elder futhark is very clear in that and when you read the

03:09:35.840 rune poems the ones in the elder futhark are most often carried over in the other traditions as well

03:09:43.400 and retain their meaning whereas the reason for the um movement from the elder futhark

03:09:53.720 to the younger was to accommodate different linguistic sounds

03:09:59.160 so as a form of writing if we were trying to write things yes if we were trying to write them

03:10:05.800 in old norse or in icelandic or perhaps even in any of the modern um uh scandinavian languages

03:10:14.600 younger futhark would be a good way to do that conversely if we were trying to write right now

03:10:21.320 in the best runic script for writing english the anglo-saxon futhark would be a much better option

03:10:27.880 but honestly most of us know the elder futhark it's simple it's complete within itself we're

03:10:37.900 most familiar with it it lends itself very well to galder and to magical and esoteric practice

03:10:46.900 and in our tradition it's what was chosen to glom onto uh reading about the development of

03:10:55.960 runic understanding in the modern age uh the the the seminal work on modern rune work was uh

03:11:08.120 futhark by edward thorson and he originally had wrote that in uh using the arminen runes

03:11:19.400 because at the time he was writing it in the 70s and the 80s

03:11:23.720 the arminen runes were the runes we had the best access to and the most complete understanding of

03:11:31.240 it in the united states i'm sure that that people in different parts of the world that

03:11:35.400 was a different case um but for for a guy at university of texas that was what we had the

03:11:41.160 most access for but over time he discovered the elder futhark and he learned more and he learned

03:11:47.640 into it and he studied it and it's the basics that these other runic systems are based off of

03:11:55.720 so they may add things here and there but they still contain the basic truths of the elder futhark

03:12:04.120 he then took those elder runes and spent most of his time in runic writing

03:12:09.240 discussing those and adding and fleshing out our understanding of those runes so those are

03:12:14.760 the runes that we've spent you know 40 45 years studying and learning and understanding more of

03:12:23.800 um but we're certainly open to people using whatever of the the futharks and the room rose

03:12:29.640 that resonate with them and they'd like to all of those are part of our heritage and we celebrate

03:12:35.240 them but the reason the elder futhark is used more often is just because of the vast increased

03:12:40.520 familiarity we have with it for one the fact that it lends itself very well to galder work

03:12:47.240 for two and for any other form of communication communication only works if if i send a message

03:12:56.120 and you can receive it most of us understand the elder futhark and can understand what's being done

03:13:02.840 in it when you branch outside of that then perhaps the person you're communicating with

03:13:08.520 doesn't get the message you're trying to convey so i think that's why we focus as much on the

03:13:13.960 elder food ark as we do those are just my thoughts you have thoughts on this one actually nothing

03:13:21.480 nothing outside of what you said i just to emphasize again what you about the timing of

03:13:26.840 the question with the term house of true in time but i would say the elder food ark we know is the

03:13:33.080 oldest that we in especially in correspondence with gothic language when the missionary um

03:13:39.880 ufilos amongst the goths made his uh runic kind of language he used the gothic runes and those

03:13:48.680 correspond with the central germanic runes of the elder futhark it's actually highly repeated we have

03:13:56.360 lots of artifacts with the elder futhark on it um the the um ordering may be like different in

03:14:05.320 certain spots but we know that the elder futhark was the core because it correlated with the gothic

03:14:12.680 as a confirmation point and then the anglo-saxon was built and expounded on from that whereas

03:14:20.600 for reasons unknown that it was whittled down in the nordic uh sphere however we do have plenty

03:14:29.640 of stones in which the elder and the younger were utilized at the same time so again the reason for

03:14:35.240 that we don't really know but in the time of ausitru there was elder futhar conscriptions

03:14:41.480 they were just dying out and then the younger kind of became uh more famous and i would say

03:14:48.120 probably out of use of the fact that they were being carved into stone and they were a little

03:14:51.880 bit easier to structure um but yeah that's outside of everything that's the only thing

03:14:57.640 i would say you hit the nail right on the head all right so kade asks another question

03:15:05.560 said thoughts on jackson crawford and his translations um thoughts on jackson crawford

03:15:14.040 I don't think Jackson Crawford has a lot of character and a lot of code. I also think that it's less desirable, if not inappropriate, to take our translations of holy texts from someone who is not a practitioner of our faith.

03:15:36.660 because I think it's very relevant in his conclusions and it has to factor into his

03:15:44.780 translations. If you have, you know, six of one, half a dozen of the other on a translation,

03:15:53.800 what are you going to default to? If you default to a spiritual interpretation,

03:15:59.220 it's different than if you default to a scholastic interpretation. And I think that

03:16:06.300 when dealing with spiritual text, you're best served with a practitioner of that faith to

03:16:13.060 translate them. That said, his translations, he's a smart guy. I don't dispute his scholarship.

03:16:22.880 But again, like his have them all, he writes this cowboy have them all, and he puts it in

03:16:30.500 folksy Americana like way of expressing the have them all which again I'm not against and I don't

03:16:37.100 think it's wrong most of the time but you translate something very differently as a

03:16:44.240 scholastic than you do as a spiritual practitioner Jackson Crawford is not also true and Jackson

03:16:52.640 Crawford is woke, and if you're woke, it's hard for me to have a lot of respect for some

03:17:01.480 of the nuance of the conclusions that you come to.

03:17:09.640 I know that Jackson Crawford has taken a very negative stance towards practitioners

03:17:15.880 of Ausatru generally and practitioners of folkish Ausatru like the Ausatru folk assembly

03:17:22.440 specifically. So, you know, I'll be friends of my friend's friends, but if he's an enemy

03:17:28.420 of my friends or us, I'm not going to be his friend. Svon, what are your thoughts on Dr.

03:17:34.900 Crawford and his translations? I knew when I first started getting familiar with him,

03:17:42.980 as far as his videos were going a lot of his translations um interesting and and i i found

03:17:49.460 some of his pronunciation stuff to be very helpful um i think to a lot of people that were trying to

03:17:55.300 learn and he was spot on with some stuff but yeah then as with all things you know when we were just

03:18:02.260 when it was just that i had no issue with it but it evolved or i think that perhaps people in in

03:18:10.260 whatever that the internet community felt the need to pry open the box uh i don't know if he

03:18:16.900 did it voluntarily but once the box is open i can't know and just accept now like it's

03:18:25.380 you see the underbelly now you know do you continue on or not um yeah and when he when

03:18:32.020 he kind of spoke out about the idea of faith towards the gods as being kind of ridiculous

03:18:37.540 and had his views on that that was the that was the thing i saw that kind of was like all right

03:18:44.100 i mean i don't know where the uh the scholastic scholars of elder times and i mean like in

03:18:51.300 germany or you know in sweden and uh in iceland and in america these you know lots of people have

03:18:58.980 been scholastically translating the uh the stories and um i don't know where they spiritually stood

03:19:05.860 um but i also like that's the thing is i didn't know and you could also tell that some of the

03:19:13.140 you you kind of gravitate towards the ones that have a lot more of a kind of enticement

03:19:17.300 to the gods when they read the stories when they were younger it inspired them to learn

03:19:23.700 the old norse to speak the language to to read it and try to understand it because they were just in

03:19:29.640 this fervent field for it as opposed to it being more like a manual or um you know like the spirit

03:19:37.360 of it was kind of lost in some people i think it was lost in him and i think it was lost once he

03:19:41.780 was kind of brought under the microscope to explain to justify what he thinks about and

03:19:48.520 what he chose to say kind of like that kind of just turned me off from it um i unfortunately

03:19:56.660 like or or fortunately i did not hear any of his views or thoughts about us in specifics so i i

03:20:04.980 take your word for it and but i i've fallen away from it the moment he even talked about religion

03:20:11.040 as being kind of a falsity and seeing polytheism and seeing the gods as just being these kind of

03:20:17.160 he only sees the the adas as the componental stories as if he was reading a a linguistic

03:20:25.760 comic book. And, you know, that to me is not, he doesn't, he can't see beyond that. I know too

03:20:34.520 much. So translation wise, I can't argue with him on a lot of things, but purpose wise, very much

03:20:42.100 so. I have an argument against it. All right. So next question. How is it that both Odin and Jesus

03:20:53.040 were said to have been hung on a tree, pierced by a spear, and sacrificed to themselves.

03:21:00.200 Svon, what are your thoughts on that?

03:21:04.240 Well, wow.

03:21:08.400 I don't know about a tree in relation to the Roman crucifix,

03:21:16.020 but the similarities are clearly there.

03:21:19.300 When we see this, we can compare a lot to other religions across the board that kind of meet in that point in the Middle East.

03:21:31.280 You can see a lot of, I would say, like Iranian mythos, Persian mythos going through that area.

03:21:41.420 You see a lot of Egyptian mythos going through that area.

03:21:43.720 these stories are kind of very heavily moved through that spot because it was an an intersection

03:21:50.200 of of the continents um and in doing so it made a a a huge um effect on that on that religion um

03:22:03.080 i would say like the subsect of judaism being judeo or christianity or the the belief in um

03:22:11.640 uh yeshua being the messiah um but it didn't really fully take form until after it left

03:22:21.720 so like to say about the crucifixion we know that a huge portents of the understanding that

03:22:29.240 christians have of the crucifixion and the mythos behind it first off it's built around a mortal

03:22:34.280 man and they greatly contested whether or not he was a sacrifice unto himself which is why i kind of

03:22:40.840 uh winced on that one is because there was a whole war fighting on whether or not um the rabbi was

03:22:47.760 the son of or the creation of yahweh um in early christianity um saul of tarsus who was a jew who

03:22:57.560 um attacked uh heretical jews that were that believed that jesus was the messiah or yeshua

03:23:05.580 um but the romans later ended up calling him jesus a lot of these things as and that's kind

03:23:11.260 of what i'm getting at is a lot of the the viewpoints turning back and looking at christianity

03:23:16.860 from now you will see didn't actually formulate there but formulated afterwards about 150 years

03:23:23.920 afterwards to 200 years where there was a lot of infighting and structural creation of christianity

03:23:29.420 that first off brings a lot of that comparison wasn't always there

03:23:37.400 okay sorry camera one camera two um the uh that wasn't always there but you can see it in other

03:23:47.920 forms of uh mythos that were going around in the area there when we see the story of

03:23:57.900 odin this is where things get truly interesting is because one we have a correlative sense that

03:24:05.580 this draws back to uh ancient uh spiritual practices of a people uh the arians before

03:24:14.220 they even move westward there is a correlative sense that there's a spiritual practice that is

03:24:20.540 based in its primordial sense it's still evolving and we understand that's evolving now but um

03:24:27.900 you know some people would like to say oh it's like it's hearkening back to shamanism

03:24:31.580 i don't like to use that word because i think i think it's misplaced i would say the spiritual

03:24:36.780 practices of our ancestors in different forms because we do different things as we move along

03:24:43.900 um in time so we see these uh accounts in relation to and i think that the emphasis

03:24:53.100 of the crucifixion and the spearing of uh the rabbi by the um the roman soldier um

03:25:02.460 again having a lot of correlations to that like once it helped them facilitate the conversion

03:25:09.580 and it didn't really take off in in the hellenics like again saul of tarsus his understanding of of

03:25:17.020 um you know he what he believed to be the messiah of his people um but was having a hard time

03:25:24.940 converting his people and so then whether you want to think of this as convenient or not

03:25:30.220 he has a vision and the vision says well don't worry about them go to other people not our people

03:25:35.980 and so there was a turning point in which he began to convert non-jewish or hebrew people

03:25:42.860 that were living in the hellenic states and so once he did that there's still not a huge emphasis

03:25:49.020 on those correlations between the sacrifice of oneself to oneself that happens 150 200 years

03:25:55.820 later but it really takes an emphasis during the time in which the the holy roman empire

03:26:03.020 was moving northward into the germanic and teutonic and gallic lands or remnants of the

03:26:09.020 the Gallic lands. Then that emphasis and correlation between those two became very, very poignant and

03:26:15.980 they aligned themselves. It's very much similar to the idea of like how the birth of Bacchus inside

03:26:23.640 a manger amongst the Hellenics was a thing before the Judaic Christians showed up and the birth of 0.54

03:26:32.900 the rabbi inside a manger became congruent with that at that time because they used that and they

03:26:40.260 they tried to create similarities in order to help with conversion um you know and they were

03:26:45.060 competing with a lot of different people at the time so in the hellenic states you know the um

03:26:50.900 judaic um you know by this time they're they're predominantly jewish predominantly hellenic 0.77

03:26:57.620 uh they're they're they're competing with the mithraists they're competing with the isis religion 0.67

03:27:03.060 that's in rome and all of these things so they they focused more on structure and they took more

03:27:09.520 from the mithra cult to establish themselves as a church but the crucifixion and those correlations

03:27:15.700 really became more important in germania when they were trying to do that and you can see that again

03:27:20.900 by the fact that like they were trying to erase uh oven or voten in amongst the germanic folk

03:27:28.500 because of those correlations they needed to get rid of one he he that that's too close to this 0.53

03:27:36.540 so we're going to switch it and then we're going to totally annihilate the other one because we 0.74

03:27:41.060 can't have correspondence so you know wednesday becomes midfalk amongst the germans and um all

03:27:46.500 these things but they couldn't do it they couldn't get rid of it uh even in there was a church um

03:27:51.540 in germany that got destroyed in the war there's a a famous crucifix uh and i think it was called

03:27:57.420 the church it like translates to like the atlantis church or the church of atlantis

03:28:02.840 and i don't think they're referring to the fabled land it was it was something else

03:28:08.540 um but in there they have a crucifix and they kind of have this um art deco very modernistic

03:28:16.020 looking like figure on there but the arms of the church's cross or crucifix are even and there's

03:28:22.340 there's these runes around the outer edge so even then up until world war ii and i'm i this this

03:28:29.220 this uh cathedral was built in the 1800s and so you have again this they could not snuff it out

03:28:36.180 um those correlations between each other i think have significance if you're a christian trying

03:28:41.460 to convince the germanic people that your savior your messiah your anointed one by yahweh

03:28:48.260 is very important because he's done just the same thing as voting has done and then once you make

03:28:55.620 that connection and and switcheroo then you've got to get rid of both in and emphasis on there

03:29:02.740 so i think that's a big correlation is it wasn't such a huge deal until it got amongst the germanics

03:29:07.380 especially the clarity of the story real sketchy um as far as uh the symbolic meaning behind it

03:29:16.920 again even to the point where the crucifix and uh some people you know whether it's like one

03:29:21.460 pull that with the hands above the head is it one out or is it a is it an x because of what the

03:29:27.620 romans were doing at the time you know there's a lot of uh movement in there um and i think it

03:29:33.180 became more clarified as they utilized the story to to create connectivity

03:29:41.820 so our next question central bank digital currency is rolling out soon

03:29:48.460 uh mr mcnalen had mentioned in a recent post how can we deal with it if it damages our fundraising

03:29:56.220 in any way so

03:30:06.620 we got to figure it out as those things come about it's there are so many variables

03:30:14.860 it's impossible to forecast the battle plan of how that works to where we deal with it if it

03:30:22.060 it somehow encumbers our fundraising.

03:30:28.340 We already accept digital currency

03:30:30.940 in the form of Bitcoin kind of things.

03:30:35.580 We already accept that and that works with us.

03:30:41.140 We'll continue fundraising the best that we can

03:30:43.740 until doors end up getting closed.

03:30:46.160 But what I do wanna guarantee you, and this has been,

03:30:48.860 So we've seen this in a way.

03:30:55.080 We were doing business with PayPal.

03:30:57.900 And PayPal one day decided they didn't want to do a business with us anymore.

03:31:02.140 But Witten Clifford Erickson and our tech guys had already figured out a backup that we had in the back.

03:31:10.320 We were using Stripe, another processing agency.

03:31:14.260 And so cool.

03:31:15.860 When that happened, we converted.

03:31:17.440 We moved everybody over to Stripe. A little bit of a pain in the butt. Not going to say it wasn't, but we came back stronger and we kept going. Eventually, Stripe ended up cutting us as well. So we moved to directly processing through our bank. 0.99

03:31:34.820 we make sure and our tech team makes sure that we always have a backup

03:31:41.040 and hopefully if we can we have a plan c as well just in case i can't say it won't affect us in

03:31:50.320 any way it very well may but we try to always make sure that we have at least two layers of

03:31:56.860 back up in place so we can transition to something else when that comes about.

03:32:04.720 I think it is ambitious to think that that comes out very soon and all of a sudden

03:32:10.480 they're going to roll out digital currency and we'll phase out everything and the whole world

03:32:15.640 changes in a year. We've been hearing people say that for a very long time. I'm not saying that

03:32:22.340 will never happen. But that happening this year is unlikely. That happening in any calendar year

03:32:28.580 in totality is very unlikely. But we want to be ready and we want to prepare the best we can.

03:32:36.300 And we have. And we do. Even if everything switched to a digital currency,

03:32:44.060 that would still come to us and we would still function just fine.

03:32:49.440 And if the digital currency then wanted to persecute us, that's an entirely different issue. As it stands now, we are a, you know, I don't know where you're asking the question from, but certainly here in the United States, we are a protected religious church. We are a 501c3. We are in complete compliance. We've never had any problem with the United States government, nor do we intend to.

03:33:15.960 we're completely appropriate to receive any kind of funds, be they digital or physical,

03:33:23.340 and we're going to keep functioning under that until there is a reason not to.

03:33:28.980 But I do want to assure you that we're always working on backup plans just in case.

03:33:34.280 And Cliff and those guys are doing a really good job at that.

03:33:39.540 Obsidian Skull asks, wasn't Sven Bjorn Bientensen the founder of Asitru?

03:33:45.620 i'm glad you asked that um no he was the founder of what they practice in iceland but as far as

03:33:53.620 the modern resurgence of aussitrew the astro free assemblies tax-exempt status actually came through

03:34:05.620 within a month or two of the assatur fegeleth i probably butchered that

03:34:15.700 um

03:34:18.740 but no technically if you count them as the same thing which i don't think uh bientensen didn't

03:34:26.980 express

03:34:27.620 a religious belief in the gods per se and much more of a

03:34:36.660 nature cult kind of thing but if we if we're calling them the same thing then no technically

03:34:42.900 steve mcnalen's was a few months previous but what is interesting is a number of people

03:34:49.380 the Intensen, McNallan, L.C. Christensen, and some folks in the Odenic Rite, all around the

03:34:58.160 same period of time, all rediscovered a version of our ancestral faith. 0.81

03:35:09.620 Bientensen, and I don't mean to cast negativity on him in person, the folks that have taken over

03:35:17.160 from him in the current group in iceland

03:35:22.680 they've said that they don't believe in our gods they don't believe in our faith they're not

03:35:27.800 also true they like cultural trappings of things that we do and basically the current church there

03:35:36.600 is a all-inclusive pot of not christianity and the way it works over there is there's

03:35:46.920 a tax that gets collected for religion by the state and that tax has to go to a religious pot

03:35:55.240 whatever that pot may be for a very long time the only pot it went to was lutheranism

03:36:02.280 but with the recognition of aussitrew there's another pot for it to go to so everybody that

03:36:08.440 says we don't want our money going to the lutherans it goes to aussitrew and so

03:36:14.200 So. They play dress up. They have said that they're there and I don't even know if they call him and I was here.

03:36:24.220 I'm not sure what they call their their leader of their organization, but he has said that he does not believe in the little literal existence of our gods.

03:36:35.940 He is intimated. It's not a religious thing. It's a spiritual, cultural thing.

03:36:41.660 and it's become a haven to perform gay weddings and degenerate rites that the Lutheran church 1.00

03:36:50.840 would not accept, you can go to the Yastatru place and do that. But those people, I would say, 1.00

03:37:02.700 emphatically are not religious. And I can't say that no one over there who practices with that

03:37:08.180 group has faith in our gods their leadership and their structure certainly doesn't so it's a little

03:37:14.900 bit of a different animal but it uh there's a lot of nuance there like i said i i mean no ill will

03:37:22.740 towards fenbjorn um from all accounts i've heard he sounded like he was a really good guy a really

03:37:29.940 nice guy a really well-meaning guy and i can't say what his faith was in our gods um

03:37:38.180 Yeah, I don't, I don't mean to insult that man at all. But the current organization is very, very different.

03:37:45.380 Svon, do you have any insight on that being a being a native Icelander?

03:37:50.400 Well, and I never got to meet Sven Björn Bjartason. I never met him, but I did meet his, his successor, Jörmann Geringi.

03:38:00.260 and again his focus of the religion was based around I guess environmental politics and

03:38:08.260 not that I'm against that I just didn't quite know where we were going to go with it once he

03:38:13.640 started explaining it. There is a sense of Icelandic natural preservation which is good

03:38:22.100 I think and then there is kind of more of a global aspect in which they

03:38:26.900 uh you know uh that's where it starts to kind of overflow into the idea that the west needs to do

03:38:32.420 these things and then from the west the the world or at least that's what they say but kind of stops

03:38:37.620 at the west um uh as far as the name ausa through goes you have to remember too it comes from norway

03:38:46.340 initially it wasn't in iceland so the the word itself too but it's again we're focusing on the

03:38:52.900 meaning also true means like truffle to the to the houses through the gods um so you know the

03:39:00.500 application of that again sven bjorn created the house through failure because i think that there

03:39:07.460 were people in iceland who wanted to return to their cultural origins and in many ways you have

03:39:14.900 a combination of people but most of them are like i would say there are many people in like

03:39:20.900 um i've attended some like native american powwows uh i wanted to learn i wanted to see what they

03:39:26.260 were doing i wanted to appreciate their folkways and i've talked to a lot of them and i was blown

03:39:31.700 away by how many were actually fundamental christians and i was like what like and so they

03:39:39.300 they were doing this as a cultural connective point but their faith and spirituality were

03:39:43.780 completely in another realm and we could go that's a whole other discussion but amongst the um

03:39:49.700 icelanders it was very much the same thing there but their their go-to wasn't fundamental

03:39:54.020 christianity it was like scientific atheism or scientific agnosticism and uh but but the cultural

03:40:01.140 tie helped them fulfill a hole in their in in themselves so there is a lot of that and it

03:40:08.900 gets even worse with uh hilmar um i never met him uh hilmar orn let me see his name

03:40:20.020 yeah hilmar orn hilmerson i never met him i know that he's come out to say a lot of things about

03:40:26.260 the state in which they believe and i know that they're making a temple up there but that temple

03:40:30.420 i think is uh much more like a pause flag on the play oh they what they call the temple started

03:40:39.700 oh is it planning to make a temple to my knowledge there's been no progress on that in about 15 years

03:40:48.420 really the last i heard was that it was kind of like a cultural center and it was going to be

03:40:54.900 modern modern art style which is gonna be a lot of things but show me the temple right

03:41:03.300 and so i mean again the context of those situate that situation to say alsatru is unavailable to

03:41:09.860 anyone outside of iceland is kind of the same argument when i see people say like odin is a

03:41:14.980 different god from woden amongst the english or votan amongst the germans totally different gods

03:41:22.020 it's like wait a minute are you crazy like no they were very deeply interconnected so saying

03:41:28.340 that also through is only exclusive um and again that's like saying that we can't call the the you

03:41:34.420 know like we we have to like we can't say the god's names because we don't speak icelandic i

03:41:40.500 mean we we formulated that and and even they themselves have evolutionized the names of the

03:41:45.300 gods and of the religion you know whether or not you ask somebody what's the old religion call and

03:41:50.340 they say foreign say that you know that's the old way uh but also true is a is a more modern word to

03:41:57.220 give a title that means and has correct meaning because foreign say there just means the old way

03:42:03.220 it's it can be it can mean anything uh but also true is very specific and i think that's good

03:42:09.620 and yes again when you spoke about how it all spread about some i've heard it referred to once

03:42:15.220 poetically as the breeze that blew uh around yggdrasil or through the roots of yggdrasil

03:42:22.980 um and it was this time and i think that it's important to know that our gods again when they

03:42:28.980 speak those spells what they know they're doing is they're going to fracture out a web of action

03:42:35.940 and what rises to the top is the victory is the ones worthy and the others will fall away that's

03:42:42.340 how they understand that even in the souls of men it does apply into the houses of the gods that

03:42:49.380 that's that spread gets painted across the souls of all of all the folk all over the world but

03:42:55.860 who's going to rise at the end well that's what the gods want to see because that's the way the

03:43:00.180 gods work because they know that's the purpose so bob guy asks and i saw this when it came across

03:43:09.620 this was in in reference to the uh remarks i made about homosexuals what if we have family members

03:43:16.660 who are gay um bob if you have family members who are gay or anyone else listening i'm sorry

03:43:24.580 to hear that that's very rough and and i mean this i don't say this glib and i am sorry if i 0.56

03:43:30.980 come off that way i'm sad that one of your family is going through a very serious mental illness

03:43:38.660 that's very unfortunate um it doesn't change anything that i said

03:43:46.500 right or wrong isn't determined by your relation to people who do a practice

03:43:53.540 theft is bad if i have a brother who's a thief i may still love my brother but

03:44:00.420 it doesn't make theft not bad as far as when it comes to watching children

03:44:07.940 You're going to do you. So I talked earlier about when our goals are ordained, we have this tremendous responsibility to do this, right?

03:44:23.940 And under that, our Gothar make choices. We together as Gothar and ultimately myself as Osheria Gothi make decisions on fundamental elements of our faith and our practice.

03:44:39.060 Those carry a tremendous amount of weight and we take them really, really seriously. 0.56

03:44:44.380 If you have children and you're wondering, you know, what to do as far as leaving them with homosexual members of your family as your parent or as their parent, that's that is your responsibility and your call to make hope that nothing bad happens to anybody's kids.

03:45:08.640 um no part of me is saying that every single homosexual will molest children that's just not 0.95

03:45:17.000 true but i do think it's an unacceptable risk to have my child alone with a homeless person

03:45:25.820 who's a homosexual be the male or female because something's very broken inside them

03:45:31.880 That causes them to react in a sexually exploitive way. And I don't want the damage that that presents to my child is too, too great for me to trust that. 0.84

03:45:46.920 it's your job to make that decision for your family. And I sincerely hope that the very best

03:45:58.060 thing happens for, you know, your children. And I understand that it's conflicting. You don't want

03:46:04.240 to alienate members of your family. You have a frith and a loyalty to your family members,

03:46:09.460 of course but you have the ultimate responsibility to protect your children you are their protector

03:46:17.300 when they can't protect themselves and i mean please make the best decision you can accordingly

03:46:28.900 that's the best i know to tell you on that i think it's important to you you're speaking from the

03:46:34.740 front in which you're saying to avoid these situations and i think a lot of people could

03:46:39.060 say gnash their teeth at you and say oh you're painting with broad strokes and you're doing this

03:46:43.860 and you're doing that and you can't be further from the truth or whatever but i will say i'll

03:46:47.780 step in and say i've seen it from the other side of the threshold twice both very personal times

03:46:55.700 in which there was an involvement of abuse that was predicated by a person with an immoral sexual

03:47:03.140 orientation as they call it so i have a little bit more of a vested dog in the fight on that

03:47:08.580 one and i would rather you take advice in the house here ago the and beat it at the curve

03:47:14.340 than be on my position and what are the chances if it's such a rare occasion and twice i've seen it

03:47:21.140 in deep like close proximities and i it's not fun i don't want to i don't want to talk about

03:47:27.460 that anymore but the idea again is that it's you know if it's such a rare occasion in it

03:47:33.300 random chance i've seen it twice so i would rather heed wisdom but also at the same time i would say

03:47:42.740 you have the obligation to be noble and so that obligation to your family does extend but

03:47:50.420 it doesn't also mean that you need to be foolish it doesn't also need mean that you can't have

03:47:56.180 a predicated position of saying i don't think this is morally correct there's nothing wrong 0.85

03:48:01.860 with saying that that's more noble to say that but at the same time you you should be aware of

03:48:08.020 everything and formulate the ideas that you are responsible for your children and there are some

03:48:14.180 situations that you wouldn't want them to be in you know in a vacuum i think that potential hurt 0.79

03:48:23.220 feelings from an adult homosexual in your family pales in comparison to the damage that your 0.71

03:48:35.220 vulnerable child being abused sexually by someone causes and i think that you know 0.70

03:48:42.980 it's an unfortunate situation you find yourself in you got to do the best with the cards you're dealt

03:48:47.620 and uh yeah i would i would think that an adult member of your family that's made adult choices

03:48:55.480 to live a lifestyle that is embracing of mental illness i think they're in a position where they

03:49:04.960 can take one for the team and just be a little bit offended if it means protecting your child

03:49:09.820 um and if they're kin then your child is their kin and they should want the best for your child

03:49:15.780 And I think that a lot of them deep down know that probably better off keeping their distance from that influence.

03:49:26.260 For Allie, low stakes.

03:49:29.080 OK, cool. So folk builder Allie Clausen is hosting an event. 1.00

03:49:34.340 One of the first times we've had anything big in Nebraska.

03:49:38.140 That's really kind of an uncharted territory.

03:49:40.260 I know that, you know, it's not a huge amount of population there.

03:49:43.920 It's a place that I don't think I've ever been. 0.70

03:49:46.580 They're having their Hexanocht slash May Day celebration on April the 14th through the 16th.

03:49:54.060 It sounds really cool.

03:49:56.260 It sounds like it's going to be an awesome event.

03:49:58.200 If you are anywhere close to the state of Nebraska, please think about going to that and helping them have the best event possible.

03:50:08.680 Yeah, I appreciate you plugging it.

03:50:10.520 It sounds like it's going to be a really cool event.

03:50:13.360 um i wish you guys the best with it and we've got some really good people

03:50:16.960 in that part of the country and it would be great for you guys to get together and get to know them

03:50:23.280 antonio

03:50:26.720 if someone is homosexual man or woman how can we protect our children without being disrespectful

03:50:32.720 towards the other individual is it shunned or is it a sin in also true also um yes 0.52

03:50:39.840 for okay first uh unfortunately in life very often you can't do the right things without

03:50:53.360 very often you can't make any choice in life without offending someone um 0.62

03:51:00.000 yes you are disrespect you're a homosexual member of your family may very well feel disrespected

03:51:07.520 But as I said just a minute ago, their feeling disrespected does not matter to me if the choice 0.99

03:51:18.740 is that or my child being sexually abused by an adult member of their family. And

03:51:26.080 most often, that's where we see that abuse happen is within the family, unfortunately.

03:51:32.680 it. It's a very toxic situation. And I'll say this, and any of you out here who are listening

03:51:39.160 to this program, if you're a homosexual, this isn't aimed to be disrespectful.

03:51:47.900 If you know homosexuals, this doesn't apply to, then, you know, factor that into your experience.

03:51:53.200 In my experience, every homosexual that I've had any, an interaction with enough to where they

03:52:00.780 would tell me these things or I would know them. Very, very often that has been because 0.99

03:52:07.980 they themselves were sexually abused as a child. Homosexuality tends to pass itself 0.97

03:52:16.340 from generation to generation through abuse of children, even by people that they themselves 0.99

03:52:23.760 been victimized. That's part of the mental illness. It's part of that cycle. And at the 0.58

03:52:31.840 risk of disrespecting homosexuals, I'm happy to do so if it protects my child from being victimized 1.00

03:52:39.360 from that. And I hope that I hope that we can all stop that cycle by by heating these things. 1.00

03:52:50.320 but as far as is it a sin and also true we don't look at the world in terms in those terms or use

03:53:01.940 that word often but yes by any linguistic understanding or any other understanding

03:53:08.360 it absolutely is it is not a behavior that is approved of by our gods not a behavior that is

03:53:16.020 approved of by our ancestors, not a behavior that is approved of by us. And it does make you

03:53:23.340 ineligible from joining the Ask True Folk Assembly, if you're a homosexual male, certainly.

03:53:31.340 And kind of a note on it, and I know different people will say different things. If they say

03:53:36.940 something different, they're wrong. Our ancestors viewed that, according to Tacitus, the same way

03:53:44.920 viewed cowardice other high crimes they would make an example out of the person so other people learned 1.00

03:53:52.840 don't do those things because it's bad but cowardice and homosexuality 0.87

03:53:59.960 they submerged those people into the bog that the stain of that was so disgusting that 1.00

03:54:07.960 they didn't want to see it they didn't want to speak about it they didn't want

03:54:11.480 anyone to see it because they were so ashamed of it and that's that's where we're at um 0.98

03:54:21.320 even in iceland the women would that was grounds for divorce if there was a speculation of of that 1.00

03:54:27.320 kind of uh activity that immoral activity then that was grounds for divorce they would leave

03:54:33.160 men because of that or vice versa by law something worth noting too

03:54:41.480 um Nick asked do you have an opinion about the theories surrounding ancient Arian origins

03:54:51.260 Atlantis evolution etc swan what are your thoughts on that I'm still

03:54:59.660 I'm I don't want to press forward without having a better understanding of certain things so I'm

03:55:07.040 of the mindset of origin in uh i would i would say in the central space of the the the grand

03:55:15.280 continent between the oriental asia and you know in russia and the west um to be of the north too

03:55:24.560 um i think that there is a possibility uh especially looking at some of the evidence

03:55:30.240 that we have about the second ice age and about um some of the stuff that even science is coming

03:55:35.680 out with that kind of corroborates with kind of timing in our our stories but um i'm still

03:55:42.960 i'm searching and i really like the subject and i really like to know more um as far as being a

03:55:49.600 hundred percent on one specific thing no not at all on my end i i i am still believing that we

03:55:55.280 are the central place and that we had spread from there but i am open to if we understand that there

03:56:01.600 are multiple um civilizations that perhaps were uh brought down and and about from catastrophic

03:56:10.720 events and things like that i mean some of the greatest writers and some writers that i'm fans

03:56:16.480 of have speculated that in their in their horror or in their fantasy or in their uh things like

03:56:22.560 that where they've speculated that based off of you know theories and ideas and then we find more

03:56:28.320 things uh you know from what's under mount shasta to the mound builders to uh the the the sinkhole

03:56:36.560 that's found in the sahara that has you know there's a lot of stuff coming out where people

03:56:41.040 are talking about these things and i find it infinitely fascinating and i want to know more

03:56:45.520 to try to kind of figure it out and see but i'm not pinpointed on one place yet

03:56:52.240 you know I'm the further back into prehistory we go the harder it is to have definitive conclusions

03:57:08.320 I tend to think that we have a polar origin I think that a lot of that is played out in

03:57:15.120 a number of arian mythic symbolism um one thing that was very informative on that was

03:57:23.680 arctic homeland in the vedas um by bal tilak and it talks about some ancient uh ancient arian

03:57:33.760 myths and how they relate to a polar origin and and i tend to think that's the case

03:57:42.240 especially because of the distribution of our folk and I don't think there's one very concise

03:57:49.860 migratory wave I think it's much more like our folk were pushed out by ice ages into different

03:57:56.940 uh northerly places and then down from there but those things are really fun to learn about I have

03:58:04.380 specific doctrine on atlantis um i will say this i think there is a lot more to our prehistory than

03:58:15.420 we understand at present and the more archaeology advances the more we discover little nuggets of

03:58:22.300 truth that are fascinating um but yeah i think those things are really interesting and the the

03:58:29.420 big paradox that's always been very hard to figure out is in our circles traditionally we

03:58:36.780 have those that view that we evolved from lesser beings and you know we were these cavemen we were

03:58:44.860 these primitives and then we became modern humans and advanced or we have people that think you know

03:58:51.580 we were these super advanced light beings that somehow took on terrestrial form and have devolved

03:58:57.500 from that that plane of of greatness and i think there's more to it i don't think it's one or the

03:59:05.020 other i think it's really it's just fascinating one of the things that fascinates me is the idea of

03:59:14.700 white people in america pre you know pre-columbus but certainly pre uh

03:59:21.740 leaf ericsson the idea of like the salutrians and things that way is really really interesting

03:59:27.820 i don't have a hard and fast answer on it but i do find it very fascinating

03:59:33.180 um next question is do we have any members of the afa in iceland

03:59:38.460 yet we do not have any members in iceland currently we have had a member in iceland

03:59:43.660 that didn't take enough root. The population there is relatively small and they didn't

03:59:54.120 maintain as a member by themselves. But I hope that we have some in the future. I'd love to see

03:59:59.640 that uh next is left brain hemisphere prison is real free this bond bondage from the chains that

04:00:13.800 bound us discuss how the brain works and its natural law functions sounds like a good question

04:00:22.120 for spawn nope what can you post it up because that was uh and also my questions stopped they

04:00:30.280 they kind of froze i can't press on anymore so or maybe read it again um sure and i don't know

04:00:39.560 if nick will go ahead and post this for us left brain hemisphere prison is real uh free this

04:00:47.560 bondage from the chains that bound us discuss how the brain works and its natural law functions

04:00:58.920 well uh so far as i know right now and again i'm not a neuroscientist or neurosurgeon um

04:01:08.520 um i think that there is a lot of study coming out that there isn't necessarily a um huge difference

04:01:19.140 in like activity between the left and the right lobes of the brain uh that's i think they're

04:01:24.940 coming on with uh understanding like core central points of the brain um the glandular connection

04:01:31.580 points of the brain and um like whether we're talking about like the uh the lower brain and

04:01:39.180 upper brain or forward think thinking as far as like interactions and ever since like understanding

04:01:45.100 about like lobotomies and things of that nature but if we're talking about the brain in a symbolic

04:01:49.980 sense because we do that often i think that humans do say like oh you know i'm left-brained because

04:01:57.260 i'm more artistic or i'm right-brained because i i see things more analytically uh i think that

04:02:01.980 we're speaking again uh in mythos or meta-narrative or mythological language which humans have a

04:02:08.860 tendency to do very easily and that's because of our brains like i think that um uh understanding

04:02:17.980 that there are higher elevations of our brain and lower elevations and then there can be

04:02:23.660 possibilities that both of those upper and lower functionings of the brains can go misaligned they

04:02:30.860 can they can suffer um problems they can also be opened up sometimes through trauma sometimes

04:02:38.380 through um uh high stress moments things like that i think that's an amazing subject to study on is

04:02:46.620 is seeing where a human's brain function because of perhaps a medical growth or the insertion and

04:02:55.200 exertion of a bullet in which they've had different things happen to them in which they

04:03:02.780 begin to understand things or maybe pick up languages faster or hear colors. And there's

04:03:08.760 fascinating things in the brain. I think that right now, historically, looking at the left

04:03:15.280 side brain right side brain is kind of conducive to politics just like uh how christians might look

04:03:20.880 at something being upside down as being evil uh there's again they're speaking in in colloquial

04:03:28.400 meta narratives um and i think that yeah when we find that kind of talk about the left brain right

04:03:36.560 brain in that spectrum of things it's it's quite funny because you you see a lot of um where

04:03:43.200 critical thinking is is removed a lot of times i think in and the irony of like being woke or being

04:03:52.400 aware is not it's it's quite kind of the opposite half the time especially that got that got put on

04:03:58.720 display for the last like two years on the media on the internet everywhere you could see people

04:04:04.720 just proclaiming the movements of grand enlightenment and and science and and you know

04:04:12.240 know they're they're and then they turned out kind of not right about anything and then it was like

04:04:17.300 well yeah we were just kind of told that was the case and we went along with it because it just

04:04:22.460 made us feel smart so you see a lot of that i think uh the biggest thing for us is to uh again

04:04:30.660 build our thought processes off of action and deed and then before you act and before you commit to

04:04:38.360 you think about what you're doing and you think about what you're saying and that will free you

04:04:43.320 from a lot of your mental prisons i think that people have when uh this day and age we we suffer

04:04:49.640 a lot from from solipsism and if uh just the the idea that the only thing that's real is our

04:04:56.300 thoughts and um it drives us into this place because we see a lot of things through the screen

04:05:02.480 we see a lot of things through the phone or hear it and it's all kind of uh separate and like

04:05:08.580 little astronauts that's how the solipsism kind of came about was the astronaut started

04:05:12.820 having problems connecting to reality um the best way to do that is through deed and critically

04:05:19.860 thinking before you commit to deed and to speech little things like that will help free you

04:05:25.320 that's about the best i can do to tackle that question else here

04:05:29.340 no you know i'm i'm not a neuroscientist i don't have that to add what i will add

04:05:37.820 that is unrelated but kind of fascinating um some of you may have heard me talk about this before but

04:05:46.700 my mom is going through the advanced stages of dementia and she had

04:05:55.340 it's a result of a series of strokes that she had but i went and this is a long time ago when her

04:06:05.000 mind was much better than it is currently but i went to get an mri a brain scan thing done with

04:06:14.680 her one time at this neurological clinic and it was fascinating to watch because they showed me

04:06:22.360 normal brain and they showed me hers and there's so much with memory and things that she'd just

04:06:29.400 lost and it was hard for me to you know and i don't know if anybody out there has dealt with

04:06:37.960 a family member a close family member that's been going through dementia but

04:06:42.760 it's a hard thing to do and it's it's hard for all the emotional reasons but it's also just

04:06:47.560 just damn frustrating. This person you got to deal with, and they're this huge pain in the butt over 0.95

04:06:53.580 these different strange things. And somebody you've known for your whole life is all of a sudden 0.91

04:06:58.160 drastically different. And there's all these things that it's very easy to get upset at. And

04:07:03.640 it's very, it's very taxing. It was really informative to watch the brain scan because I

04:07:10.600 got to see that there was a quarter of her brain that was black, that no electronic activity was

04:07:16.340 happening in and you can see in a real way that you can visually quantify like just how much of

04:07:22.900 that brain is not functioning and so i mean this is not really here than there it was really

04:07:29.060 interesting i don't know my thoughts on the hemispheres of the brain and any of those other

04:07:34.180 things but it was interesting to see a behavior associated with a chunk of the brain being turned

04:07:43.380 off so for whatever that's worth that was an interesting experience i had really quick and

04:07:51.940 i meant to say this earlier and get to it i apologize uh ten dollars ten canadian dollars

04:07:57.540 for our favorite canadian lawrence forbes thank you so much we appreciate you he says difficult

04:08:03.380 difficult topic but poignant and eloquently said uh i was harry goethe matt and whitman swan

04:08:11.380 and i think this is when we were talking about the homosexuality

04:08:14.740 right thank you lawrence i appreciate that a lot we always appreciate you i'm glad that you're

04:08:19.460 listening um how can a person regain honor after living dishonorably swan uh again we've reiterated

04:08:33.940 it but hey drastic action um severe recalibration of ethics and the way you move about in your world

04:08:42.740 uh even a removal of elements that you know source you continue to act that way whether it's um

04:08:49.620 substance abuse whether it's people perhaps you're surrounding yourself with people that

04:08:53.460 are continually it requires drastic action sometimes whether that means you need to move

04:08:58.740 away uh you need to drop things and leave uh you need or or you need to come back again i'm just

04:09:08.100 not painting it as one direction but drastic action in order to reclaim your honor it takes

04:09:15.540 a lot and there are certain bridges you might not be able to cross back over and i totally understand

04:09:20.420 that certain um members of your family may have wronged you too far or you have wronged them too

04:09:27.300 far you can ask in an attempt to make the amends they they have every right to say no but at that

04:09:34.900 point you also you should tend upon yourself to live a right life pray to your ancestors and ask

04:09:42.740 them to help you and guide you to that you have the desire to change and you want to come back

04:09:49.620 to living an honorable life and you ask the god's bare witness to this that you take forth the

04:09:54.580 action and say please watch me as i do this and and and then make yourself worthy of being watchable

04:10:02.820 um but it requires drastic action i think to to pull the reins off the track and that

04:10:10.500 really takes a lot of self introspection about what you're doing who you are

04:10:16.260 again because context and things like that um but we all find ourselves at these points and i you

04:10:21.700 know i have i look back at my life and see parts of my life where i was like i was not honorable

04:10:28.660 you know and i worked hard you once you identify that that is the first step to saying okay well

04:10:35.140 now i'm gonna re-correct things i'm gonna try to make things right again and it starts with yourself

04:10:41.700 and so you know um if you have problems with uh certain people separate yourself from them you

04:10:50.180 have problems with certain substances stop them immediately start working your way towards being

04:10:55.940 a better person and get out there and you know physically make your change um however that

04:11:02.580 manifests but it can be done you can rectify a um you know the wrongs of your of of your honor

04:11:11.220 and i think rebuild and surpass but then why stop keep going

04:11:20.260 yeah um

04:11:24.820 it's it's a difficult question to ask because it depends on what shape the dishonor took

04:11:31.940 the first and i've said this earlier is fix what you broke if your dishonorably behavior

04:11:37.860 has caused a measurable harm then rectify that harm to the best of your ability or counterbalance

04:11:47.300 that in some sort of compensation to the person that you've harmed if it takes its form in a

04:11:52.980 different way then as as fawn said you've got to outweigh it with good deeds um

04:12:00.100 you've created a debt with your honor that you need to not only because fulfilling that debt

04:12:08.800 doesn't make you good it just brings you sort of back to neutral with the memory that yeah this

04:12:17.700 guy's kind of on the level now but his reputation is crap because he's done bad things

04:12:23.080 do do so many great things that it outweighs the bad that you've done and that's the best 0.89

04:12:32.460 thing to do and sometimes that takes a lifetime depending on the uh the scope of the dishonor

04:12:38.380 but rebuilding your reputation through good action through right action is the only hope of

04:12:46.640 getting past a dishonor or of regaining and rebalancing things in an honorable way.

04:12:56.720 I'm watching and there's, you know, some argument about this. And I get that in

04:13:02.420 2023, there's confusion on things that there wouldn't have been just a few years ago.

04:13:09.480 We have a question. Where is it stated that the gods look down on homosexuality?

04:13:16.640 um as far as a scripture that says thou shalt not be a homosexual it's not the way that our

04:13:29.420 lore works there's plenty of evidence that it wasn't cool there's the passage from tacitus

04:13:37.860 that i mentioned there's numerous examples in the sagas about how ergi is bad well that only

04:13:45.000 means the bottom well yeah but so 50 of homosexuality is bad in a consensual agreement

04:13:54.440 if half of the people that are who are involved in that consensual agreement is bad it kind of

04:14:01.800 implies that at least 50 it means de facto the 50 of it is bad kind of implies that the rest is not

04:14:11.240 great too um but where you know where is it stated that the gods look down on homosexuality

04:14:19.000 on 11 11 23 i'll tell you go thief matt flavel says the gods look down on homosexuality it is 0.97

04:14:26.120 a predatory and dangerous mental illness this right here is where it says that you can also 0.94

04:14:33.240 look at the insults that in the adis that when they're leveled when there's when there is an 0.88

04:14:38.520 insult towards it's it takes the form of either incest it takes the form of like treachery takes

04:14:46.040 the form of like bending gender bending or transformal change like even it's seen as

04:14:55.640 alien and not right and that was in context to our ancestors they knew that when it was

04:15:01.160 mentioned that somebody had changed shape or changed their purpose it was seen as an odd

04:15:07.320 thing it was seen as something that wasn't quite right where is this gonna go and it culminated to

04:15:12.440 eventually metastasizing into a malicious state in which it was thrown at you know oh you you were

04:15:19.000 you know twisting your body into being something else or you were being this or you were being

04:15:24.140 that you were being incestuous those insults are leveled you can see that and they're insults for

04:15:29.040 a reason because they were seen at that time as being bad as being immoral and that having those

04:15:36.580 insults levied at you was bad so when the gods are doing it it like when the gods are receiving

04:15:43.040 those insults especially during the locus sana that's the point of that is that it it was clearly

04:15:49.880 seen as an insult and the fact that it wasn't met with violence or met with an egregious hand which

04:15:58.620 eventually it was was for the purpose of the that that rolling out of that that entire mythos but

04:16:06.300 again, the insults still stood. And so they weren't, you know, ever just laid about because

04:16:11.100 ha ha, or, you know, that's just the way it is. These insults were clear when they were thrown

04:16:17.900 at Odin, when they were thrown at Thor, when they were thrown at Bragi and at Frey and at Freyja.

04:16:24.800 There's a lot of these insults that lay down that it shows the premise of it is not good.

04:16:30.240 um i'm noticing continuous commentary on the side by by one individual um i think he

04:16:41.280 is misunderstanding what we do we're not building our faith on the writings of tacitus

04:16:48.960 that's one source that does tell us something about our ancestors he points out that we

04:16:53.760 you know build hops but tacitus said our people like to worship in the woods

04:16:57.600 tacitus said a lot of things tacitus is coming from rome that's very very civilized with lots

04:17:04.960 of advanced building materials that have been around for generations especially during the

04:17:11.280 time of tacitus he lived he got to see the transition of rome go as the you know as octavian

04:17:20.960 said from a city of brick to a city of marble he got to see those things be erected and our

04:17:27.440 ancestors in germany weren't at that stage yet they didn't have grand buildings at that point but

04:17:35.360 that's really beside the point um we build our faith on an ongoing interaction and relationship

04:17:43.120 with living and existing gods that interact with us we don't draw you know aha scriptures out of

04:17:51.760 out of some tone that's that's not what we do it's not the basis of our faith

04:17:57.840 and it's just not a realistic approach to life

04:18:01.440 um so that's i i think that you're confused in how we practice our faith and how we structure our

04:18:07.200 faith uh do you have any healing programs for dysphoria no as a um as a church we don't have

04:18:17.840 any special programs to

04:18:22.400 de-transition people or to get people right with their mental health towards their sexuality or

04:18:30.480 their gender um we would encourage anyone who experiences that type of mental illness to

04:18:38.720 get treatment as quickly as they can and unfortunately it's hard because it's become

04:18:43.840 a political issue instead of the mental health issue that has been up until very very recently

04:18:50.320 we would encourage people to get help with that one of the things that when people are are damaged

04:18:57.520 in that way it's not safe for us to have them around our children so we don't um but yeah i

04:19:06.400 i hope all of those people get uh get the help that they need and can come to a much better 0.85

04:19:12.640 position in their life the suicide rate of homosexuals and people who are confused about

04:19:21.680 their gender especially if they've taken steps to change their gender or the outward manifestations

04:19:30.000 of their gender i should say the suicide rate for that is shocking and devastating and

04:19:38.000 it's a sad legacy of the political climate that we're in that that's the case

04:19:42.640 um last question of the night how important is the use of old languages bearing in mind

04:19:50.980 that for example Odin can be translated

04:19:56.740 lit as the mind and Odin cannot be translated I don't understand the last part of the question

04:20:05.080 I'm sorry um Svon do you have a perspective on how important

04:20:10.780 the use of ancient language is?

04:20:16.340 Yes, absolutely.

04:20:19.060 Let me see.

04:20:22.560 Lit as the mind, and Odin can not be translated.

04:20:27.740 Oh, okay.

04:20:28.900 So I think I kind of get what's being said here.

04:20:34.760 What you're talking about is specifics to Odin and Odin

04:20:37.780 is the English, modern English, translation of the Nordic word, in which they wanted to write

04:20:50.300 it down so that it could be said by English speakers. Because if you're used to speaking

04:20:58.280 certain languages, your verbal sense might be different. Asking an American or a German to

04:21:06.500 roll their r's uh is very different than asking someone who's like a spaniard or um uh you know 0.74

04:21:14.500 even like a scotsman who speaks you know english but he might be able to you know learn and pick

04:21:20.660 up and roll ours uh much much easier um yes the the biggest thing is that we have translations

04:21:29.780 of like say how they like elder english spoke of the gods when we talk about thunor and woden

04:21:39.300 and things of that and we could see them in our days of our week but what we have is as christianity

04:21:45.700 was taking over from underneath and spreading through its machinations uh over a series of

04:21:53.780 many many many many years i mean we're talking a couple of centuries the last bastion of it was

04:22:00.020 in the nordic lands so when it was finally written down in the 12th century and in compiled um of

04:22:06.660 course english scholars are going to try to um correlate those so like for instance in in uh

04:22:14.900 english modern english we often denote gender by adding an a at the end so in iceland and in

04:22:21.780 old north you know the goddess freak became frigga the goddess idun became iduna or iduna

04:22:31.300 uh and again that was just that was our linguistic take on making the names of the gods more relatable

04:22:37.940 but again with the beauty of modern times we have the ability we have so much information

04:22:43.220 at at our fingertips that we can research and look and see how and map out how the uh names of the

04:22:50.180 gods have um morphed and translated some of them have dropped away the lombards used they called

04:22:56.660 um odin or odin or votan they called him godan with a g and then it's still debated of whether

04:23:03.860 or not that g is a hard g or a y sound so it could have been eodon you know there there's

04:23:09.780 lots of cool things that we can do to follow and see and and our ancestors did not have access to

04:23:16.260 this massive spectrum of knowledge about understanding the gods. I just think it's

04:23:22.120 really important that we learn. And I'm not saying that you have to learn an old language,

04:23:28.240 but it's really good to understand how our languages have morphed over time, the branches

04:23:34.720 of our languages. And it goes even further because it's extended to our lateral families,

04:23:43.300 you know understanding how the the letter p and the letter f changed in the word father

04:23:48.340 that's a very interesting cool thing to learn and then you begin to start to see more and more of

04:23:53.220 that and you know understanding the difference between pater and father and it's it's really

04:23:59.060 amazing language is such a very cool uh subject to study and i think again uh ovin and bragi are

04:24:10.020 deeply connected to the way language works i think odin is connected to the uh i think the overall

04:24:16.420 magic but also to the return or the exchange of information i think one of the bounties that

04:24:22.020 odin gave us in his breath was that we as a as a being can project ourselves into an unknown

04:24:29.380 future both place and state uh animals don't seem to be able to do that i think that's really really

04:24:35.380 interesting but also too about the power of language and how it's transformed uh and and

04:24:41.780 then of course innovation of language understanding that like the reason why the um thor would be

04:24:47.860 called like donor amongst the germans is because the th was removed for the printing press and the

04:24:53.860 d was placed in as a substitute because it was just easier for printing that's really cool to me

04:24:59.940 or the swedes how they call thor tor more with a t a t sound i thought that was very interesting too

04:25:07.060 so you know language and knowing language and just kind of getting an idea of the of the environment

04:25:14.260 is really i think worthwhile and it should be based maybe if you speak an english language

04:25:19.700 you want to learn anglo-saxon that's a cool thing to start there's lots of uh like free

04:25:25.780 apps that you have now like memorize and duolingo and um i don't know if babel is there yet but um

04:25:33.860 you know or understanding gothic um i i took the undertaking of understanding a little bit more

04:25:40.260 about gothic and that's all done through the translation of the book of matthew from the bible

04:25:44.500 because ufilos wrote it down and then utilized letters that were correlated to the elder food

04:25:50.580 ark so began to understand a lot so understanding that i do say this though when it comes to using

04:25:57.700 it in ritualistic use on a personal level if you understand well or you construct a prayer to the

04:26:04.820 gods and it's a testament to your study and you want to um act that devotion out by speaking in

04:26:11.460 that language to the gods uh that's cool and i think that's awesome and good but when you do

04:26:18.340 it with others and they don't understand what you're saying you can cause a draw where they

04:26:23.540 might not fully understand that part of the situation that's going on so bear that in mind

04:26:29.220 or if you do do that you can you know add translations to ceremony by giving them pieces

04:26:35.700 of paper so that they can read and see and then all of a sudden they hear the words you're saying

04:26:40.900 and reading them in their native language and they're going wow those are really similar like

04:26:44.660 i understood that part that again is is building parts of that i think that's a really uh wonderful

04:26:51.140 undertaking but it is not the it's it's it's almost like a hobby in the sense that when you

04:26:57.620 do come down to speak to the gods speak to them with earnest and with feeling and sometimes that

04:27:03.140 is best done in your native language but studying other languages and ancient languages yeah that's

04:27:08.580 that's a great undertaking nothing but benefit i think will come from it

04:27:13.940 you know everything that's fawn said i want to reiterate a couple of points though

04:27:18.740 uh use of old language is non-essential um and it should never be a hindrance

04:27:27.780 for yourself or for others to approach the gods the gods speak modern english

04:27:36.900 they speak whatever language they want to speak they're infinitely more powerful than us they

04:27:42.580 see into our souls they understand what we're communicating learning language is fascinating

04:27:51.620 and you can pick up so many cool things i like to try to spell the god's names

04:27:58.020 when the afa uses them in their old norse equivalent to the best of my ability because

04:28:04.180 i think that's respectful um i mentioned earlier in this broadcast tonight about how important

04:28:13.620 uh etymology is in understanding the character of our gods as expressed by their names

04:28:21.060 i think that understanding the language that our lore is written in be that old norse be that

04:28:27.780 icelandic be that middle german or old english or whatever that's again fascinating and it adds

04:28:35.860 so much depth to those stories to worship our gods and be also true you don't need any of that

04:28:43.140 you need to open your heart open your mind and interact with our gods and our folk

04:28:48.740 and participate in the gift cycle and you can start completely fresh with none of our lore

04:28:54.980 with no languages you can speak like nell some made up crazy language the gods understand you

04:29:04.340 what needs to never happen is for people to be snooty and use their

04:29:13.460 you know assumed scholastic prowess to flex on new people and make them feel uncomfortable 1.00

04:29:21.620 worshiping their gods a completely unlettered brand new person who is an arian a white-skinned 0.51

04:29:31.220 son of europa can approach our gods with nothing else but a sincere heart and that is much more 0.85

04:29:39.060 valuable as we've seen in this broadcast than someone like jackson crawford who is an expert

04:29:44.260 worded languages but doesn't have a relationship with our gods um so take that for what it's worth

04:29:53.380 thank you guys so much for all of the great questions tonight um even folks that may not

04:30:01.000 agree with me on on things tonight it was really important to have the discussion and I appreciate

04:30:06.040 you guys being civil and having that conversation uh thank you so much Fawn for being here with us

04:30:12.520 We look forward to you every two weeks. You add so much to the discussion.

04:30:17.180 We're honored to have you and I'm honored to be your friend.

04:30:20.080 Thank you very much. And I'm I'm happy to be here.

04:30:23.400 And again, it reaffirms every time we get together how fun and our conversations.

04:30:31.200 I'm going to see Svon here in a couple of days on Sigerheim and we'll have really cool stuff to share with you next time we talk.

04:30:40.060 I'll have cool stuff next week to talk about about Sigurheim.

04:30:43.420 And again, thank you guys very much.

04:30:45.540 Hail the gods.

04:30:46.740 Hail the folk.

04:30:47.680 Hail the AFA.

04:30:49.320 And please remember that victory never sleeps.

04:30:52.980 Till next time, guys.

04:31:10.060 Transcription by CastingWords

04:31:40.060 Thank you.

04:32:10.060 Thank you.

04:32:40.060 Thank you.

04:33:10.060 Thank you.

04:33:40.060 Thank you.

Asatru Folk Assembly - January 12, 2023

1⧸11⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 27 - Bragi

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