00:05:03.420Working on the payoff of Frazehoff, we are getting closer all the time.
00:05:10.420We are at 34.3% paid off, which is fantastic.
00:05:15.100We have 82,118 remaining. If every single member were able to donate $112 today, that would be entirely paid off, just to get kind of an idea of the scope of it.
00:05:36.220guys have been extraordinarily generous much appreciated you guys are awesome if you want to
00:05:43.020runestone.org donate and you can help us contribute to paying that off
00:05:51.820speaking of generosity gw farnsworth as always started us out with a 50 donation half towards
00:05:59.100this program and half towards folk services we appreciate you so much you really do set
00:06:04.860the example of generosity for our folk which is really amazing and like i said very much appreciated
00:06:11.740um top of the show flavel family note we are very excited we will be moving to tennessee
00:06:22.300at the end of this month so that's awesome stay tuned to you know see that or any you know
00:06:32.860any adjustments that might need to be made please send us feedback or share feedback with us
00:06:39.340if you want as far as do we like the time slot of when victory never sleeps is currently or do we
00:06:45.660have a bunch of audience that wants to participate and listen live that ends up missing it it's
00:06:51.500opportunity for a reshuffle or not so that's something that we are kind of discussing a little
00:06:56.620bit um i think that's what i've got for the top of the show the idea of tonight's show is kind of
00:07:08.780far ranging there's some things that will coalesce around but we welcome
00:07:13.820you know questions from the audience as always if you have questions please just ask them in
00:07:19.820the chat or you can send them now or in the future to vns runestone.org and we'd be happy
00:07:25.980to answer them when we as soon as the next available opportunity from when we get them
00:07:32.460we have a couple folks already sent some in for tonight
00:07:37.900yeah concept tonight is what did alsatru look like when it was officially suppressed and no longer
00:07:48.060a socially acceptable or legally viable option for the vast majority of our ancestors
00:07:56.640the uh the call of our folk soul and the trough to the isere was on simmer and there were a number
00:08:04.360of people and there's a number of echoes through it during that time as well as some standout
00:08:10.140practitioners um so kind of discussing what that looked like in the period between the official
00:08:19.020conversions and between uh the romantic period are what we're discussing tonight um
00:08:27.820I wondered if we want to get all the tips, we've got some questions already at the top
00:08:52.820might be a bit random all right first question why as white people does society and school systems
00:09:07.700teach us to feel bad for being white as kids used to say they hate us because they ain't us
00:09:17.220I really do think that there is, I mean, we could discuss that question for the entirety of the show and beyond, but I think there's some common themes that we're all aware of.
00:09:31.000forces of chaos out there take many forms. There has been a conscious effort by subversive elements
00:09:42.860in society that are chaotic and that are anti-white, anti-tradition, to tear down
00:09:49.360Western civilization and rebuild it in a universalist, communist, you can apply different0.53
00:09:57.880political names to it depending on the decade but we still see the continuation of that the forces
00:10:04.920of you know progressive anti-tradition want to destabilize that which has created tradition
00:10:16.280and upheld tradition in the west that is the heterosexual white man so there has been a
00:10:24.500conscious push in the school system and in political elements of society to
00:10:32.540make us the bad guy and make everyone who's not us somehow oppressed or the good guy.
00:10:40.340And we've seen that for a very long time. The idea is to
00:10:44.420destabilize civilization and rebuild something in a way that benefits chaotic and destructive
00:10:57.060elements instead of traditional um traditional western elements that have literally built
00:11:03.800civilization and we see that a lot they hit us especially in the school system because as
00:11:10.540everyone knows for good or for ill, your opportunity to make the most lasting impact is on young
00:11:16.580impressionable minds. And so they take full opportunity of that to advance their goals and
00:11:24.700their efforts. And I really do think it's not merely a political thing. It's absolutely a
00:11:29.260spiritual struggle that we are under. And it's one that a lot of our folk thankfully are waking
00:11:35.880up to though uh chris do you have anything to add on that um just on the on the individual end i
00:11:44.760think i think ignorance is part of it i think it's a chain of ignorance it's a chain of people not
00:11:52.200knowing how they are supposed to behave as white people and what that means for them to do and
00:12:01.480And so when they are presented with the alternative, the communism, then they sort of roll with0.51
00:12:10.840that instead of taking the time to stop and think, well, wait, no, this is wrong.
00:12:16.720At the opposite end from the big picture, the small picture, I think a lot of it comes
00:12:22.000I think a lot of it comes down to people unfortunately not knowing any better.1.00
00:12:26.760And I also think it comes down to a lot of useful idiots.0.99
00:12:29.300and i mean that in you know i mean that in all the senses of the word um if you create0.99
00:12:41.120i don't know if you create and you propagate through the means of communication in society
00:12:51.020and you virtue signal hard enough that one group of people is the bad guy and is evil and is what's
00:12:59.900wrong with everything all the time and you push that message enough you develop a momentum of its
00:13:07.340own amongst people who are largely historically ignorant and genuinely have no idea and i think
00:13:15.660that because the media and the means of communication has been monopolized for a very
00:13:20.860long time by people who are in that camp by people that want to destabilize and demonize
00:13:28.860specifically heterosexual white men but white people in general and western civilization
00:13:35.740it's very easy for a lot of you know not evil intention but just people who don't know any
00:13:41.900better to accept that as truth and continue the momentum so while we're just kind of forced go
00:13:50.300ahead just to say while we're just kind of musing on this i think that a lot of white people these
00:13:54.860days also do not feel consequences for being white either good or bad so just as an example if you
00:14:04.220were like a ziti or a druze or some one of these ethnic minorities in the middle east
00:14:10.620if you counter signal your own existence the results of that are a lot different than if you
00:14:17.340are someone living in i'm just pulling one out of a hat south dakota counter signaling your own
00:14:23.340existence and your people's civilization the the consequences are not nearly as dire in that case
00:14:32.860um so again we could literally talk about that topic all day every day for a very very long
00:14:38.940time and many people do what is the title of speckinger in the afa it is literally the old
00:14:47.820norse equivalent of witten which is the current title and it means the exact same thing in an afa
00:14:53.900context and it means virtually the exact same thing in a historical context i have been trying
00:15:00.460um i've been trying steadily for a couple of years now to unify our um to unify our language
00:15:10.720in how we talk about spiritual things it is always completely appropriate to use common
00:15:17.220modern english to describe the things we do that is fine nobody's trying to force anyone to learn
00:15:22.700old norse or force you to do something outside of your comfort zone but one thing that is important
00:15:29.200in our maturing as a faith, as a church, and moving forward in the best unified way.
00:15:39.660And again, our gods are gods of order and are in opposition to force of the chaos.
00:15:44.260So for a while, because the rediscovering and reforging of Ausatru involved
00:15:52.120And learning from diverse regions and diverse tribes over diverse centuries, we get mixes of Gothic, of Icelandic, of German, of Swedish, of Norwegian, of Anglo-Saxon language, and mix and match throughout our use of terms.
00:16:19.220And in some cases, like weird and urd, they genuinely cause a certain amount of confusion because we're using different languages and different words that literally mean the same thing to describe different nuance.
00:16:35.740And specifically, it's just incongruent.
00:16:39.260So you can use regular English for anything you want.
00:16:42.160Nobody's going to scold anybody for calling it the Witten.
00:16:46.000but um speckinger is the same title it means wise man or sage and was applied to um advisors
00:16:55.840or counselors to norwegian kings and in that way it's very similar to the witten in a anglo-saxon
00:17:04.400kingship model to where literally the wise men which is what that word means to advise that king
00:17:12.080were it's the exact equivalent um so yeah that i hope that clears up any confusion there and
00:17:19.920i was trying not to bombard everybody with everything all at once a couple years ago
00:17:23.840so that's why wait until the first of the year to start using it we do have a lot of varying
00:17:31.120people who pay attention though because i've there's been like 20 people that have asked
00:17:35.760and we didn't even and we just rolled that name out there under the radar
00:17:39.840good well i'm really i'm it is it's good that people are noticing and good that people are
00:17:46.560paying attention and we welcome any and all questions on this kind of stuff so thank you for
00:17:51.360asking kayla if somebody had to do community service as part of some sort of criminal sentence
00:17:58.640or prerequisite for a degree could it be completed by working at the hof could it be done in person
00:18:09.840Yes. Yes. In all of those cases, if they weren't folk, I think the circumstance might matter. But is it legally acceptable? Absolutely. Just as it would be working in any other church related community service.
00:18:27.260We have had people who have needed to do that for punitive reasons, but also we've had scout troops needing to do that for community service merit badge qualifications.
00:18:41.840People have had to do that for various school projects.
00:18:44.960There's been a variety of people that have needed to find something to log hours for community service.
00:18:51.280and specifically with our food pantries.
00:18:54.700That's been something that a number of people have done over the years.
00:19:01.980Can you think of any direct interventions by our gods within living memory?
00:19:14.200The hand on your shoulder and Founder McDowell getting turned invisible.
00:19:18.600Well, so I was going to say it depends on how direct.
00:19:23.820I mean, in a lot of ways, there are a lot of things that many of us see and experience as direct interventions.
00:19:30.360But I think the three very obvious ones that come to mind, but it's not exhaustive, are when Sveinbjorn Vientinsson and his associates went to get Alstertru officially recognized as a religion in Iceland.
00:19:54.360You know, Iceland is not known to have thunderstorms, but Asathor has always been particularly revered in Iceland.
00:20:09.680And originally they weren't taken serious and the government was disinclined to grant them recognition.
00:20:16.860And when they went to visit the governing authority to make that happen, as soon as they're kind of like, no, we're not doing this, a massive thunderstorm hit Iceland and knocked out power to a substantial portion of the island, if not the entirety of it.
00:20:38.200And that caused the legislators to immediately rethink and give them the appropriate recognition.
00:20:48.720And so I think that was a very standout one.
00:20:52.980Our founder, Steve McNallan, and he's told the story on the show, but I think he certainly tells it better.
00:21:02.840but he did a lot of um reporting from war zones uh in the late 80s and very early 90s and that
00:21:12.660was a time of significant political upheaval in specifically in africa and he was he found
00:21:22.260himself in a strange spot where a revolution occurred like while he's in the air and he finds
00:21:28.800he doesn't have the right papers to travel to the country he was going to and previously
00:21:34.960um there had been people who were summarily taken off the the landing area and executed for such an
00:21:42.320infraction so when the you know the party that was in power and you know their their uh military
00:21:51.600guards at the at the airfield were lining people up and they you know they all had their aks and
00:21:56.240and we're getting people in line and checking everybody's papers, Steve didn't have the right
00:22:01.920papers. And he was, you know, in a very, very real danger of losing his life. And he went through
00:22:12.120line. And the way he describes it is the, the guard that was checking papers was very meticulous
00:22:21.360checking every single person's papers and giving them a thorough examination as they went through
00:22:27.920and he you know checked the guy in front of steve thoroughly looked him in the eye
00:22:32.800made sure his papers matched waved him through and then as if he looked right through steve and
00:22:39.040steve wasn't even there went to the person behind steve and went through the same process
00:22:45.200when steve you know realized that the guy had moved past steve he kind of cautiously moved
00:22:50.560forward and went about his business and no more was said of it and uh i don't know if steve was
00:22:58.000turned invisible or if the guard was blinded or mesmerized in some way or exactly the mechanics
00:23:07.040but the guy whose job it was to remove steve and shoot him was oblivious to steve's existence and
00:23:15.520you know in front of him you know as clear as the nose you know nose on your face so
00:23:20.960that was a very important one that sparing of steve that day allowed this to take root and
00:23:28.240happen and you're still celebrating the fruits of it and then in a personal way um
00:23:37.520one year after i had started leading the astro folk assembly it was a very
00:23:43.280difficult year of uh challenges and one that it was a year of testing
00:23:54.400was at uh ostara of 2016 ostara in the south uh at a camp i believe in georgia and
00:24:10.080there's a change and again i'm going to misstate this in a scientific way and it's not intended
00:24:18.020to be scientific there's a change in the air pressure or something sometimes when things are
00:24:26.000spiritually dense sometimes you just feel a presence sometimes you just feel
00:24:32.180something's different there's something in the air and this was a particularly
00:24:38.220special time and one that I think was ripe with that kind of feeling um and I was as I was going
00:24:47.340to bless the horn and stand up to do a high sumble that evening I was particularly feeling
00:24:54.340the gravity of the moment and the gravity of the responsibility and as I got up to uh to bless the
00:25:02.160horn and begin stumble someone put a hand on my shoulder and it was just a really really nice
00:25:10.680thing to do you know it was the perfect thing I needed at the moment that filled me with reassurance
00:25:17.200and appreciation and it was like the most loving and perfect nice thing at the time and so I turned
00:25:24.860around to you know give kind of a nod of thanks to to whoever had done it I assumed it was you know
00:25:29.880maybe Alan or, you know, another one of our leaders, there was no one behind me, there was
00:25:35.120no one within arm's reach. But it wasn't as if a hand was on my shoulder, a hand was on my
00:25:41.220shoulder. And I believe very much that was, you know, the hand of the Allfather. And I think0.90
00:25:49.460that's, you know, in my life, the most specific, like direct, was the question,
00:25:55.700um direct intervention that i that i felt i hope that touches on it i
00:26:02.080yeah i think that gets to the meat of the question just to throw some context on the
00:26:09.580the story about the all-father placing the hidden helm upon the herald's brow um he had been serving
00:26:17.260in the armed forces in germany up until this time and then he decided to take what is called a
00:26:23.300european out which is basically where the military gives you like a plane ticket back to the u.s and
00:26:30.180you can just use it wherever right so you just party around europe end up wherever get on the
00:26:36.100plane go back home and he decides to uh go to africa um to have some some in to interact with
00:26:45.220some interesting people down there and after that he was going to come home and dedicate himself
00:26:51.300to the cause of asa true so in in the sense of this would not be here had this not happened
00:26:59.780there's a lot there's more gravitas there this would literally not be here had this
00:27:04.740not happened this was like the and then he goes home and does this moment right
00:27:10.340yeah um yeah and our our situation our world would look really different and this broadcast
00:27:21.460would not be happening so um does the afa believe there's anything to fear in death
00:27:28.740slash the afterlife or is it something to be looked forward to on some level yes
00:27:36.180yes to all but with a couple of you know a couple of clarifications
00:27:51.380i think there is always a gravity when you get to find out a verdict
00:27:58.980and i don't think that you are you know necessarily judged at the time of death i
00:28:07.040think you're being judged right now and perpetually by both your ancestors and the isere
00:28:13.820i think you find out what that looks like when it's time for you to have you know a warm reception
00:28:23.260a frosty reception or no reception at all on the other side of the veil i think for the vast
00:28:30.060majority of us there's much to look forward to a reunion with with loved ones um a special
00:28:40.720increase in knowledge and you know of understanding things that you didn't in in the course of your
00:28:51.220life but i think that's as variable as it is to you know to those of us here for people who have
00:28:59.140been found worthy and are amazing people and have lived amazing lives then you know celebration is
00:29:06.100an order um and the the lore speaks of celebration after the death of heroes uh but for people that
00:29:15.780have been getting by with being dishonorable and uh being ignoble i think their their fate and
00:29:27.700you know being judged receiving the judgment of their ancestors and the gods
00:29:33.220it's probably something to be worried about in a time of unpleasantness i think for a select
00:29:38.740few that are just inherently villainous it's you know i think it's something to be feared
00:29:44.820I think it's probably also something to look forward to. So the misery of their existence is
00:29:49.080done. But again, it's, there's not a simple answer to that, because our, our existence is not simple.
00:29:57.680But no, I don't think it is inherently something that ought to inspire fear.
00:30:01.820But I think we have fear about it, all of us, because uncertainty breeds fear.
00:30:06.600uh just to say real quick the the fate of the particularly villainous is something
00:30:14.540you know there is something to be said about be a good person because the fate of
00:30:20.540people who are really bad people is not not good you know um you should you should behave
00:30:28.900lest bad things happen to you in the afterlife i think that would be something to be said about
00:30:34.720if you had to fear something in the afterlife you know not being being so ignoble i wouldn't
00:30:41.860want that to happen and as you know the most scary thing i think in the afterlife is
00:30:47.860we don't know exactly how everything works or exactly the amount of wisdom
00:30:55.900that exists there in the form of our ancestors or whatever else but
00:31:00.760the the mystery and your ability to hide things i think isn't present there i think if you have
00:31:09.880been escaping justice and escaping consequence for being a bad person i think things that you
00:31:20.400can hide or you know con the people around you in life i don't think you have that same ability to
00:31:29.000to lie to yourself to lie to your ancestors and to lie to the spiritual powers beyond the veil
00:31:41.220I think those people are able to those beings are able to perceive beyond your ability to
00:31:49.060con them or bamboozle them so people who've lived dishonestly I think have something in
00:31:53.760particular to feel, because fear, rather, because truth, I think, is attainable there in a different
00:32:01.180way than it is here on this side. As I'll tell you, Goethe, which stanza of the Habamal do you
00:32:16.680think is the most important? All right. So these are the questions that you don't ask me if you
00:32:28.680want a quick answer or if you want to not have a bunch of dead air. Because when asked absolutes,
00:32:37.260I have a hard time. Like if this were something simple and not waiting, Matt,
00:32:41.300what is the best breakfast cereal? I think the answer you're supposed to give is you just come
00:32:46.220with one you like and throw it out but i would sit there and like analyze the pros and cons of like
00:32:53.980you know frosted city corn based cereal versus a you know versus a rice based one and you could go
00:33:02.540through forever weighing them there's some one of the things that i think is particularly
00:33:08.460useful and beautiful about the have them all is it has wisdom for
00:33:15.820the priority of what is the most important verse has everything to do with your circumstance
00:33:23.080and the season in your life that you find it there are verses that are going to mean a lot
00:33:30.220as a young man who's setting out on his own going to mean a different thing as a father
00:33:34.900gonna mean a different thing as um you know somebody who is on the receiving end of something
00:33:44.260if you're a woman and you're interacting with men verses are going to be more important to you than
00:33:49.180others if you're a man interacting with women they there's so much there to so what's the
00:33:54.660ultimate one that's the most important i don't think i could i don't think i could give you the
00:34:00.900honest answer on that one that is one of my favorites. And again, I'd have to go and find
00:34:07.740the, uh, the stanza, but man, now that I'm, now that I'm saying that I'm even going back
00:34:18.180and forth on my head of like, but it, but is it the most important? Which one is, which
00:34:23.320one isn't tons of them are I think that I don't want to butcher it and normally if I would have
00:34:39.200pre-read the question I couldn't have thrown it to Chris because he couldn't answer as I was
00:34:43.280Terry Goethy. So the pressure's all on me. The one about loyalty and about
00:34:48.700not being, not making deals with and not being a friend to your friend's enemies.
00:35:01.740Loyalty is an easy thing for us to talk about, but it's something that I've seen
00:35:06.660particularly lacking in our folk, if we're honest with ourselves. And I've seen
00:35:13.260a lot of our people that get it in the term of a slogan, don't apply it or contemplate it in the
00:35:22.820terms of their real life. So I'd have to find the number and I will as soon as I throw it back to
00:35:28.120Chris, I will find you the exact quote and the exact number. But the idea of, you know, be loyal
00:35:33.900to your friends and and give gifts to your friends but don't ever be on the side of your friend's
00:35:39.260enemy we are part of connected relationships and loyalty is more than just being nice to
00:35:46.140the person across from you it's also aligning your alliances in life with theirs to be loyal
00:35:55.980it's not to aid the enemies of your friends because that is disloyal and a lot of our again
00:36:04.240a lot of our folk um have trouble internalizing that so i think that one's particularly valuable
00:36:10.340for our day and age um just because chris is there a favorite one that you have or one you
00:36:16.900think is particularly important for our folk at this time um the two that came to my mind
00:36:25.200immediately as i frantically tried to break deer in the headlights there for when this got past to
00:36:31.560me was um the one about man being the joy of man about not squirreling yourself away and being
00:36:40.880alone i think that's really important these days i think it's really important to keep in mind that
00:36:46.880there's a lot of forces out there knowingly unknowingly inherently and intentionally
00:36:53.220nefariously, perhaps not as intentionally nefariously, trying to drive people into
00:37:00.000being these hyper atomized individuals with no connections to anyone. Loyalty
00:37:07.140doesn't matter in the slightest if you have no one and if no one has you. And
00:37:13.200the other one that came to mind was 127, the one about separating good from evil.
00:37:19.140I think that's something important to keep in mind um yeah I also just to comment on loyalty
00:37:27.820real quick I think there's also something to be said about the fact that the nine one of the nine
00:37:31.120noble virtues is fidelity it's not just about saying you're on the team it's actually about
00:37:38.360doing the thing when it comes time to it's about uh
00:37:43.540it's about being true to the person or whatever your fidelity is to it's about
00:37:52.700living true to them it's not just about saying yeah i like this i like that i don't like this
00:37:58.940i don't like that it's about when the chips are down you actually do the thing when you are
00:38:06.040required to you know put your money where your mouth is or shut up you actually put your money
00:38:12.100where your mouth is that is something that's very important in this day and age i think
00:38:19.020yeah the verse i was thinking of was stanza 43 um man shall always be a friend to friends
00:38:27.140and to the friend of a friend but never a friend to a friend's enemies
00:38:31.060um what what ways can we learn more about also true other than reading books i'm not a big fan
00:38:45.220of reading and i want to learn more so i appreciate that because that's honest
00:38:51.140one of the other things i've noticed about our people we live in the age of the virtue signal
00:38:57.840And it's easy to see it when, you know, woke us virtue signal, but our team virtue signals a lot to every one of us is the greatest athlete.
00:39:08.540We only eat the healthiest food and we read all the time and most studious.
00:39:13.680And, you know, there's a lot of people that, you know, maybe reading is not their thing or maybe it's hard for them to find time in their day to do it.
00:39:20.300so you know what actually chris take that i've got my answer is twofold but i want chris to take a
00:39:30.140shot at it first yeah so this program is a good one to learn a lot about asatru on because very
00:39:41.740often when people ask about learning about asatru they're given these like huge weighty tomes
00:39:49.580like lady with a mead cup lady with a mead cup is great but there's
00:39:57.180asa asa true the religion deriving from the eternal principles of the gods and then there's
00:40:03.900anthropological trivia about the the cheruski circa 50 bc which is fun and all but it's not
00:40:16.420asatru and given these weighty tomes you have to do a lot of sorting to figure out does any of this
00:40:23.100does this matter is this was this worth thinking about given that it might actually be completely
00:40:29.500useless to know this at least if you're trying to live in accordance with divine will so i think
00:40:36.040programs like this which are directly aimed at you know talking about asatru today are very important
00:40:44.520And as far as listening, consuming things like the poetic edigos, there is readings of these things on the internet that you can listen to.
00:40:55.920If you work a job where you can listen to podcasts, for example, you can get through a lot of material by listening to it read to you.
00:41:06.280I don't know if the Eddas are on YouTube, but I know, for example, a lot of the works of Plato have been read and uploaded to YouTube and you can listen to a platonic dialogue, which is actually what you're supposed to have done.
00:41:20.000So certainly the episodes of Victory Never Sleeps where the Altair Goethe and Speckinger Svon Harrell read through the poetic edda, I mean, that is how, in oral tradition, these poems is meant to be consumed.
00:41:33.740You're meant to hear it, you know, declaimed to you by a poet.
00:41:37.700so i think that is a very good way to do to learn this material if you have to go in
00:41:47.140you know reading these texts yourself as it were i think i think in the future we'll be getting a
00:41:54.180lot more material on youtube for educating people on this stuff so well i was gonna say reading is
00:42:02.980awesome. I love to read. But our ancestors who practice this faith. I want to say it.
00:42:19.140In the, you know, the Ark Ausitru period didn't read it. It was transmitted orally. In fact,
00:42:29.780you know the etta translates into something akin to like your grandmother's tales you would learn
00:42:37.960this from your elders or from the gothar and they would teach these things as they became relevant
00:42:43.980they would tell stories as those stories had a place in a in a time and they would set context
00:42:51.260shameless plug but yes you can listen to this program and hopefully this is a
00:42:58.080so i if i didn't think this is a good way for you to learn about austro i wouldn't be doing it
00:43:04.320so it is genuine i hope that you guys feel that way um that is the aim of the program and i do
00:43:11.040think it's really valuable resource not only to get like fed stuff about also true but also to
00:43:19.120relate to other people that may be in a similar place you are that may have questions that you've
00:43:24.980you know had or that have occurred to you that you haven't been able to ask and you can see those
00:43:29.860questions get answered um to real people and in a way that hopefully relates to you and you can
00:43:36.740find useful you know ideally if you listen to all the shows you'd find many of the same questions
00:43:41.940answered in different ways for a different person in a different situation um i think also though
00:43:48.340So doing Ausatru is a good way to learn about Ausatru.
00:43:53.700Going to your Hoff, going to a group of AFA members who are doing bloat and doing Ausatru,
00:44:04.860you can learn a lot and you learn in a participatory and authentic way
00:44:13.360by building that relationship with the iser and i think in a subtle way
00:44:19.280do those things but then apply that knowledge to things you do on your own when you make offerings
00:44:27.800at your altar and when you find ways to incorporate asa true in your daily life
00:44:33.960but i think that participation and listening to actual practitioners of asa true
00:44:40.240and the priests of our faith, the Gothar, I think that's a very good way and is the most
00:44:47.700quote-unquote traditional way to learn about Alcetree.
00:44:52.140Take this time to say Nick in Ohio donated $10 each to Sigurheim and to Frazehoff. Thank you so
00:44:59.420much, Nick in Ohio. We appreciate you. And Gilbert, also a stalwart of our amazing donors. We
00:45:08.480appreciate you so much he donated 150 towards beautifying thorshoff so thank you for that gilbert
00:45:16.720um so these are the ones i saw we're gonna get more stuff as we go on but i do want to get into
00:45:23.360the uh the main meat of where we're at tonight i also want to mention two more donations as well
00:45:29.120you missed i didn't i was getting to them then let me finish my sentence so i'm literally looking
00:45:36.080at them right now. And I was going to mention them before we got into the stuff as I was scrolling
00:45:39.840down. Leroy in Michigan donated $20 towards Frazehoff. Thank you, Leroy. We appreciate you.
00:45:46.220And Steve bought us two coffees. Thank you for buying us the coffees. That I believe is a $10
00:45:52.160donation. So thank you for that. We appreciate it. And if you are in Michigan, you should get
00:45:57.060in contact with me at csavage at runestone.org. Nick can throw that up on the screen. I would
00:46:05.020love to hear from any Michiganders who are in the audience. That's what you guys call yourselves?
00:46:11.980Michiganders? Yeah. First time encountering that term. Yeah, Lincoln gave it to us.
00:46:21.180Not a fan. Not as a good name. Not as a good name. All right, Chris. So
00:46:32.420So we are covering here the understanding, engagement with, conceptualization practice of Asatru between the period that we refer to as the end of the conversion and the romantic period.
00:46:51.760So this is a kind of period in between a getting rid of this stuff and then a subsequent finding out about it again.
00:47:02.740So a brief history of Scandinavia, actually brief, real quick regarding religion here.
00:47:09.940So 950 in Norway, Hakan the Good allows Christian evangelists in, 960 in Denmark, Harold Bluetooth apostatizes to get the Holy Roman Empire's backing, 995 in Sweden, Olof Skötung, Skötung, excuse me, he does the same in 1000 in Iceland, the All Thing declares Christianity to be the state religion.
00:47:33.240we'll come back to that one because that one's important in 1087 king blotsvain of sweden is
00:47:39.480murdered in gottland the gutter lagen declares bloat illegal due to uh falling under the dominion
00:47:46.280of the swedish legal codes in 1238 burger yarrow leads the second swedish crusade into finland
00:47:53.240And in 1484, one of our heroes, Rogvald Odens Karl, dies.
00:48:10.280Now, that sounds very depressing because it's a list of bad things happening.
00:48:13.820But you'll also notice that there's about 600-plus years of engagement with Asatru as something that is bad0.90
00:48:22.840and to get rid of. And it's not really talked about much. At least these days it isn't. So
00:48:28.740when Christianity came into Northern Europe, its relationship with the punishment of the0.77
00:48:36.820practice of Asatru was that of instructing each node in the feudal hierarchy to enforce0.90
00:48:46.000christianity upon the node below it so in catholicism um yahweh gives supreme authority
00:48:54.480to the pope the pope gives it to the king the king gives it to his dukes the dukes give it to
00:49:00.280the counts the counts give it to the barons the barons give it to the yeomen the yeomen give it
00:49:04.800to the uh serfs and each one of these nodes in the pyramid has to enforce things on the ones
00:49:13.400bloat, right? There's no central law enforcement outside of the king is physically here and will
00:49:20.940send a goon to hogtie you. So this resulted in a sort of trickling down of the intensity and
00:49:32.460fervor of the enforcement of these laws and ideologies. And this results in Asatru and
00:49:37.720related material moving into the domains of folklore and magic as we would call them today
00:49:45.880um so first we're going to talk about two individuals who continued to practice asatru
00:49:53.400even after it became um literally illegal to do so punishable by death in fact
00:49:59.080So the first is Raghvald Odinskarl. That name, Odinskarl, is almost certainly not his surname. He would have had a patronymic at the time anyways, and Odinskarl literally means Odin's man. He's Odin's guy, you know.
00:50:17.020So on 1484 is October 27th, he confessed in custody to having stolen from four separate churches, one of them actually twice, and that he had served Odin, that's an important term that we'll look at, for seven years.
00:50:37.260He had an accomplice by the name of Joan Land. For this crime, Rogvald was put to death. He confessed in custody to the worship of Odin, and he did not, as far as we're told, recant, so he was fed to the flames.
00:50:54.180So Joan Land actually has a bit more going on for him in terms of sheer attestations because no one vouched for him to defend his honor or his Christian piety.
00:51:08.180So on 1485, March 14th, he asked to be an executioner instead.
00:51:16.700um executioners were either people who had committed crimes worthy of putting them to death
00:51:22.760or they were um typically also uh knackers knackers a knacker is someone who connects
00:51:30.880collects night soil that's human feces and urine to be spread on fields as uh manure
00:51:38.180so just a quick digression here um ireland's most famous executioner was actually a woman0.79
00:51:45.860by the name of um white betty so she had gone through a uh a period of madness that resulted
00:51:54.740in her murdering her own son but she didn't know it was him it's absolutely fairy tale but
00:52:01.220her gaelic name was uh i pronounce i probably i apologize to any gales listening her name was
00:52:10.020um she murdered her adult son in a fit of madness and so she was sentenced to the gallows1.00
00:52:14.820for it. And on that same day, there were to be hanged 25 other men, sheep and cattle rustlers,
00:52:22.040several white boys, as they were called, aka Nabuchayi Labana, or Queen Shia Ulta's children.0.74
00:52:31.600Queen Shia Ulta is the demigoddess who gave birth to Ossian, who's like Irish Homer, basically.0.58
00:52:38.300So these guys were a terrorist organization who were opposing the colonization of Ireland by the0.94
00:52:44.420english and the destruction of common grazing lands and uh on the days she was set to hang
00:52:50.780betty's hangman fell ill and so they're they're like oh but we can't hang any of them we'll have
00:52:57.960to put off the execution and betty yells out oh i'll do it if you make me the executioner
00:53:03.380and so they let her become the executioner and she proceeded to hang all 25 of the white boys
00:53:08.540and lived like another 60 years hanging people this did not happen to joan we are told at least
00:53:16.480we're not confirmed about his fate um uh he asked for this but it was we're not told if it was given
00:53:25.980to him so the epithet for ragwald there odin's carl so he's actually written as being odin's carl
00:53:36.700twice in the the source text and in the margin there's actually a very interesting um little
00:53:44.140scribble of it's it's odin's ragval like odin's ragwald right or ragwald um ragwald is a
00:53:52.940dialectical variant of wagenwald which means power of the rulers um it's it this dialectical
00:53:59.580variant is actually attested elsewhere by the way so academics try to hand wave away the name
00:54:06.620But it literally says Odin's Karl, and it's written the correct way.
00:54:16.220So it's a part of the genitive compound. It means Odin's Karl, the Karl of Odin, right?
00:54:24.140The specific words used to describe his loyalty to the Allfather is tianthodnom, which means loyalty to Odin, not the Pope.
00:54:34.140at this time in scandinavia there's a lot of concern wrapped up regarding religion over are
00:54:40.780you loyal to odin who spoiler is the devil but not satan the fallen angel um or are you loyal to
00:54:49.740the pope so we're told that so not really a flag on the play but a point of
00:54:56.940of, I think it's worth putting here. The argument is made that the word Ausatru means belief in the
00:55:07.980Aesir, and it does. I always say, and the AFA asserts that Ausatru means loyalty to the Aesir,
00:55:16.240and it does when you follow the etymology the belief in is like the fidelity of the trust
00:55:26.300that's exchanged literally in fidelity if you trace it back through its origins and that's
00:55:33.780the thing that i want to say is belief as it's come down to us in english means different things
00:55:40.680it's a mental concept fidelity to doesn't mean the same thing it means loyalty it means you are
00:55:51.880odin's man or odin's carl and so it's important as we look at this the question isn't belief in
00:56:01.560odin or belief in christ here the authorities believe in odin it's whether you are loyal to
00:56:09.320odin or not because they believe that odin exists as a demon as the demon depending on how you want
00:56:17.400to parse that in medieval understanding but there is a real fear of him as a spiritual force
00:56:25.400and the question isn't one of belief it's a question of loyalty quite literally uh rakvald
00:56:32.040is also true and also true he was true enough to go to the fire because of this he would have been
00:56:44.120given the chance to actually repent and accept jesus as his lord and savior and blah blah blah
00:56:49.880blah the fact that we're not told about that indicates he he went to the fire for this he went
00:56:55.080he you know committed theft in the service of his god and died for it and he wasn't just a guy they
00:57:04.200accused of witchcraft or a guy they accused of being in league with you know their northern
00:57:11.360devil odin like that's his name that's his like title that he goes by that's how he's known
00:57:17.720as a person is through his allegiance to the Allfather. And so the text goes on and what they
00:57:26.380end up doing is they end up asking a lot of people, I'm not going to count them all, it's like
00:57:33.16012 of them, if they would defend Joan Land or Rogbald, and none of them would. Now, defend in
00:57:40.480this case means basically saying like, yeah, he's my buddy, don't kill him. It's a very, compared to
00:57:46.800modern jurisprudence this is actually an incredibly crappy uh you know criminal investigation given
00:57:52.560that there was actual theft occurring but the fact that none of them would stand up for this
00:57:57.640guy is telling because none of them wanted to get involved with you know the the guy who is known to
00:58:03.980worship and steal for odin right this this phrase that is used um tienth odin means to serve odin
00:58:14.780So again, it's not, strictly speaking, that he's disagreeing with Christian, he's not, it's not that he's not holding Christian doctrines in his head, it's that he's doing stuff for, with Odin, right?
00:58:30.780this term comes up in um other sources too so the the poetic edda actually has a text um
00:58:39.820which details i mean the goddess freya more or less tells a guy serving odin gets you rich
00:58:50.680that's an extreme oversimplification but she's not telling him it makes him poor right
00:58:56.340but much later after the uh writing down of olavus petri circa 1530 um he says that he
00:59:06.980that people that he knew by name still served odin tiana odin served odin to attain wealth
00:59:16.820in 1693 petr rudbeck says that in smaland that those who wished to acquire wealth invited odin
00:59:24.820into their home as a guest on the ninth thursday he would arrive drawn in a massive ensemble of
00:59:32.020black clad fiery-eyed riders pulling a midnight colored carriage with midnight colored steeds
00:59:40.340flanked by two large black dogs this is actually really interesting because this is like this is
00:59:45.140so odin but it's a later it's an actually 1693 that's an early modern description of the all
00:59:52.500Allfather, right? This is not a Viking description of the Allfather. But this here, those who
00:59:59.800wish to acquire wealth ultimately end up serving him, right? This is important because this
01:00:06.800is an attestation to a guy who is, while we might today, if we're being honest, necessarily
01:00:12.640quibble about the orthodoxy or orthopraxy of his beliefs, he is serving Odin. He is put
01:00:18.400to death for it he chose to serve odin to the degree that it would kill him right like he was
01:00:24.540true to an os it's also interesting that this continues on for so long again remember like
01:00:33.940995 in sweden olaf skutknum comes along and you know christianity 1693 that's like 700 years later
01:00:45.340This idea of serving Odin for wealth appears.
01:00:49.180Now, there's another interesting bit here.
01:00:51.200On the 9th Thursday, Petr Rudbeck talks about.
01:00:55.960So let's move on to our second hero, another man.
01:02:00.360So the second hero we have to talk about is Eric Claussen.
01:02:04.760So on 1492's June 13th, a servant, Tienkre, modern Swedish Tienare, I think that's pronounced, of Hans Persons confessed in custody that he had renounced God and all of his holy company, partaking in nine trips on nine Thursday evenings, going withershins, that means counterclockwise, in a cemetery, he gave himself to Odin for money.
01:02:34.760um Thursday is associated with Odin a few times else so just to kind of digress wait a minute why
01:02:45.360is he doing it on Thursday why isn't it Wednesday so the I talked about this on the Oera Linda book
01:02:51.120episode the days of the week are ultimately associated with this idea of them being
01:02:55.900ruled by a god or goddess um in around 100 AD the Anglo-Saxons decide to adopt a
01:03:04.500local variant of the roman week and so wednesday is 10 mercurri um mercurius excuse me um thursday
01:03:17.240is 10 joey right so wednesday is the day of mercury thursday is the day of jupiter and
01:03:24.840there's some disagreement in like historical disagreement this isn't me and the altar really
01:03:31.480disagreeing or something here this is people a thousand years ago disagreeing how do you
01:03:36.180translate classic uh greco-roman and you know scandinavian stuff back and forth how do you say
01:03:44.940that this god is that god or that god it's not clear it's really messy and there's disagreement
01:03:49.700as to whether to attach odin or thor to jupiter things so like thursday becomes
01:03:56.020ds joey becomes four's day but there is also association of odin with thursday
01:04:04.300independent seemingly of the days of the week necessarily it's not entirely clear why but this
01:04:11.200idea of do something on thursday odin that that does show up a number of times so
01:04:18.620um as i was saying this this man eric clausen made nine trips on nine thursday evenings going
01:04:27.460withershim's withershim's in a cemetery he gave himself to odin for money giving oneself to odin
01:04:33.620to enter the service of odin right um it's used as a threat a few times in the sagas because it
01:04:40.480means to kill someone but it also i mean he's entering into the service of odin here's this
01:04:46.240again, for money, right? What Eric Claussen actually did that got him in trouble was he had
01:04:51.240stolen money from he had stolen money from his master and conveyed it to his tenants. And this
01:04:56.420is interesting because he had tenants. This means that Eric was a landowner. He was a lesser land
01:05:02.660owner because he had a master of some kind. Go on, sir. Oh, no, I was just saying the graphic is not
01:05:08.040readable by me, at least. The dark on dark makes it. No, I know what we're posting. I'm just saying
01:05:15.820for people who are watching this at a later time.
01:14:31.240But what would happen is you would not be brought before the civil magistrates and the sheriff and the mayor.0.71
01:14:36.600You would be brought before a Christian priest.0.80
01:14:38.880That priest would then go to the inquisitors.
01:14:41.680The inquisitors would then come to you, and they would then interrogate you about the orthodoxy of your Christian belief.
01:14:47.040And they would pass judgment upon you to the civil magistrates and the sheriff and the mayor.
01:14:51.260And then they would enact the sentence.
01:14:53.520There would be no secular trial in what we now refer to as a criminal court.
01:14:57.860heresy is a religious crime ultimately prosecuted by the catholic church
01:15:04.300heathenry is a a secular crime prosecuted in a criminal court without recourse or reference to
01:15:14.600christian priests right this is amply attested it continues after lutheranism becomes the state
01:15:21.420religion in scandinavia they just swap out the catholic church for the lutheran church right
01:15:25.660So why do I bring this up? In the 1800s and 1900s in Germany, there was this attempt by academics to use Christianity as an attempt to unearth some kind of original lost native European Christianity.
01:15:41.540So one of the best examples of this is Alfred Rosenberg, the guy who wrote Myth of the 20th Century.
01:15:51.560He has this bizarre obsession with, people call him Meister because I can't remember his actual first name, but Meister Eckhart's musings.
01:16:00.500And Meister Eckhart was this Christian thinker in the medieval era who was a heretic and blah, blah, blah.
01:16:05.580And Rosenberg, amongst others, is like trying to chart this long, glorious, hidden history, uniting the Bogomils and the Cathars and every other random little Christian heretical sect into this like traditional positive Christian sect that was like, they're all long.0.68
01:16:25.060We can just unearth it and return to it.0.97
01:20:09.840So, one of the people that Botolf was in contact with was the bishop that performed the weekly sacrament of the Eucharist that Botolf partook in every weekend.
01:20:22.840So, Botolf committed a Christological error in 1303 and was rebuked for it.
01:20:28.840We're told of him committing another error in 1310, after he finished penance and tried to regain standing in the Christian community.
01:20:35.340Before he was allowed to receive communion, he was interrogated, like, in front of other parishioners.
01:20:41.840Like, he was in line to go up and get the host wafer, and the priest is like,
01:20:52.840So the priest interrogates him on the nature of the Eucharist,
01:20:56.840And Botolf professes his loyalty to Jesus and said that if the host is really the body of Jesus, then surely Jesus would be outraged at Christians eating it.
01:21:09.920For you see, just as a man would be outraged at someone eating his loved ones, surely Jesus must be infuriated at the idea of people eating his body.
01:21:20.460um so botolf's naive theology here is uh kicking open a massive hornet's nest that has been0.75
01:21:31.840happening since the eucharist was invented and will no doubt continue until the last eucharist
01:21:38.160is consumed um so botolf then gets dragged before the inquisition and uh ultimately ends up dying
01:21:48.000because of that statement there so this guy went to church every weekend and he argued with a priest
01:21:57.360about the nature of a christian ritual and what jesus wants christians to do and he willingly
01:22:04.200came to a church to to you know receive mass this guy is a heretic you know who's not present
01:26:36.320to the flames notice that the level of concern over arguing with like um i'm trying to grab his
01:26:45.320name with like uh with archbishop jacob urlinson he was argued with we're not told about anyone
01:26:52.880arguing with eric and ragwald like okay are you going to convert nope okay well we're going to
01:26:59.100kill you there was no concern about their beliefs at all and when there is concern about people's
01:27:04.980beliefs it shows up like the beguine community in badstina concerns over their orthodoxy orthodoxy
01:27:13.960they're correct in it the correctness of their beliefs the beliefs of ragwald and eric never
01:27:19.480come up no now frankly i you know you might almost they might not have even been asked beyond do you
01:27:25.600serve odin right because again these are two fundally fundamentally different crimes in
01:27:33.680medieval Scandinavian jurisprudence right now I just want to comment down
01:27:37.820here real quick um in medieval Scandinavia there is this the devil
01:27:46.580refers to oh devils refers to the Aesir right and people in southern Europe or
01:27:57.740you know they served the devil and that that is referring to like the worship of
01:28:03.320satan the fallen angel in northern europe specifically medieval scandinavia it has a
01:28:08.120very different context and i mean when people say the devil they just clearly mean odin in some of
01:28:13.960these contexts or they're trying to merge these two figures together because remember here
01:28:20.040the devil is actually a like mythological construct done by christians throughout history
01:28:27.400it's not like there's a guy whose name is the devil in the bible there's a bunch of characters
01:28:33.800that show up and then christian theologians say these guys are all this one entity and here's his
01:28:40.360backstory right um devil actually comes from greek diabolos from i'm sorry latin diabolos
01:28:49.960from uh greek diabolos which means um the slanderer the accuser this gets into stuff
01:28:56.680regarding judaism and the like which isn't too important here but this this word is extremely
01:29:04.120flexible and just kind of means bad guy i mean from the perspective of a medieval scandinavian
01:29:10.680christian odin is the bad guy the the villain looming large in the background right do you want
01:29:17.800to go right into the golderbucker here sir or do you want to let's take a let's take a recess for
01:29:24.680a second um and get to some of the questions as they line up because i think some of them will um
01:29:34.040some of them will get us back into or i guess will be good prerequisites
01:29:40.520and the other thing that i want to note as just something to ponder that i think is important
01:29:47.800it's interesting to conceive of or construct the like
01:29:54.840what does one do when and this is a situation that honestly
01:30:03.600I think many of the early participants in modern house tree found themselves in
01:30:10.980How do you practice Ausatru when you have a revelation and you know the truth of the Iser, but there's not a church, there's not a structure to inform your practice?
01:30:35.720And what we have access to now is a tremendous wealth of data.
01:30:40.400but these people don't these people can't just go read about the lore the lore is not available
01:30:49.520to these people outside of a select learned few in monasteries in icelander or in iceland or like
01:30:59.520you know there is a very select few places that you could learn any of the lore
01:31:05.840you don't have you know the great gothar of your folk to go to you can't go to a hof and learn these
01:31:13.200things so i guess a a thought that i want everybody to have is cool so what do you do and you
01:31:25.920cherish the things that you do know and that you do have and you have to reach out personally
01:31:32.720and rebuild those connections between you and the gods in the best way that you know how and it's
01:31:41.600going to look different in different places at different times and it's going to have a wide
01:31:46.800arc of correctness or not but the fact that you can reach out in a time of complete and total
01:31:54.560isolation from the ancestral faith without a functioning priesthood or you know existent
01:32:06.360religious body and you can reconnect with the iser you can claim your birthright as also true
01:32:15.480and you can go from there and you can enter into a relationship with the all father i think that's
01:32:23.020worth appreciating for a moment because it's very challenging for these people. And as you can see,
01:32:30.660their choice to do so has a, you know, potential consequence of very unpleasant death.
01:32:41.700So it's kind of an example to all of us of loyalty and of steadfastness, literally under the flames of
01:32:48.840execution and that you can be also true without the endless study of ancient tomes
01:33:04.920or you know those things you can practice by reaching out to the gods and building a relationship
01:33:14.600that way and i think that's important for all of our folk to know and to take to heart
01:33:21.080is that even in the darkest you know the darkest times with the least access to information
01:33:27.440in isolation your gods are with you if you reach out to them your gods hear you if you call out to
01:33:35.780them you are not as long as you know your blood courses through your veins these are your gods
01:33:45.840and they're there for you to reconnect with and i think that's an important message for all of us
01:33:53.740um so just real quick here um talk about eric claus and rag bald odin's carl not knowing
01:34:01.580anything, metaphorically speaking. That continued for a very long time. Let's remember here that it
01:34:07.960was in the Ostertur Free Assembly that publishers were thinking of just not making poetic or just
01:34:14.720not making eddas anymore. We just won't sell this book. So the Ostertur Free Assembly started like
01:34:21.020a letter writing campaign to keep these in publication because of the, I mean, we would
01:34:27.060call it like spiritual and religious importance, but you know, like the importance to Western
01:34:30.780civilization of this text like no you can't stop printing this thing you have like a duty to do
01:34:37.020this the asatru free assembly had to do a letter writing campaign you know what you would do in
01:34:43.620those days if you wanted to go get one of these books because very often you could go to the
01:34:48.260library and you could check them out which means you could read it in the library you couldn't
01:34:52.260necessarily take it home you would then make photocopies of every page and pay for the photocopies
01:34:59.480and take this huge stack of paper home because you had to like go search a physical book
01:35:06.020you couldn't just google things or ask chat gpt or control plus f you had to like read books and
01:35:14.160trawl through massive amounts of information and with some people they might never have heard of
01:35:22.020any of this before in in the in this modern period when we think about people doing things
01:35:30.340we sometimes in the past we sometimes like ah was that the right did he is that ah
01:35:36.660remember there was a time when knowing that there was two eddas
01:35:44.100there were two eddas was hyper specialized knowledge known only by a select few knowing
01:35:53.140that there were eddas period oh there's there's books that talk about what the vikings believed
01:35:57.640like from that period wow that's novel that was beyond most people there were also 10 000 years
01:36:06.880plus there were thousands and thousands of years where there were no eddas and our folk were still
01:36:12.160also true yeah it was oral only for such a large portion of our folks existence the other thing
01:36:20.520that i want to say and again some of these things get out of our tonight's specific time bracket
01:36:27.580but you know maybe we'll do a show on you know the romantic era until steve at some point but
01:36:37.180But when people in the 1800s or the early 1900s have some hokey ideas, it is not only do I think it's important, but I think it is incumbent upon us as noble Aryan people to judge them fairly.
01:36:58.520they're trying to rediscover something that is buried and lost in the best way that they have
01:37:05.480access to they don't have the wealth of information that we have they don't have the collected works
01:37:13.160of scholars from around the world over you know periods of time with archaeological
01:37:19.000discoveries that were still buried beneath the earth at the time um
01:37:23.480it's very hindsight is always 2020 and it's very easy to you know look at how silly some things
01:37:34.920were at a different time in a different place but it's also worth considering with a certain amount
01:37:41.720of self you know self-reflection that our children our children's children may very well discover
01:37:50.760different things that we don't have they may discover you know ancient manuscripts somewhere
01:37:58.640that add to our corpus of lore they may discover archaeological finds that you know make some
01:38:05.000things that you know that we do look less than the idea is at the time doing your very best
01:38:14.980to be true to the I see-er the best way you know it.
01:38:19.960That is infinitely more value than infinitely sitting on the fence,
01:38:25.120hoping for that perfect moment where once you know everything
01:38:28.600and you know 100%, then you'll be asked to true.
01:48:32.740some things rely on your personal magical efficacy
01:48:40.500your skill or inherent ability as somebody who is either gifted or well practiced at
01:48:50.080those kind of arts. And other things involve a more
01:48:57.120working within the ordered framework of interacting with the Aesir, interacting with
01:49:08.460those who've passed beyond the veil, or interacting with other spiritual forces
01:49:15.060beyond the mundane and I think that there's not a clean distinction between those things
01:49:24.520and you can have both of those things present in the same magical action
01:49:31.500you guys may notice that we don't talk a lot about magical things in the AFA in general
01:49:41.200and it's not because we don't believe in them it's not because of any shade towards them
01:49:46.480it's because there's a lot of basement wizards that have zero magical efficacy
01:49:52.560that have made the whole thing seem ridiculous and because we believe in them so much
01:50:00.880and we value the real expression of that in such a high regard that we don't want to cheapen it by0.96
01:50:10.320getting in the muck and the mire with charlatans and delusional hot topic basement wizards
01:50:20.280so and getting to what's everyday magic i think that there is a lot of things that go into
01:50:34.920what that looks like. Some of that looks like
01:50:43.680runic galldher for meditation. Some of it is in intentional runic galldher towards a goal.
01:50:55.220Some of it is rune pulling and stuff to have a focus spiritually for your day or for something
01:51:03.800you're going through it also extends to some people that will try to use um
01:51:11.000runic divination to as they ponder you know important questions or decisions in their life0.99
01:51:19.080i think there's a variety of different techniques that ladies use magically for a variety of things
01:51:27.560around the house intending children intending animals intending food preparation you can
01:51:34.920incorporate spiritual practice be it clerical or wizardry in whatever you're doing in a lot
01:51:45.640of different ways i know a number of people who are craftsmen that do things to where they will
01:51:51.960incorporate runes in their craft or in something they do i also know people who prepare food that
01:51:59.240carve runic things into you know a piece of cheese before they melt it or into the butter before they
01:52:04.760throw it into the pan with an intention either with a galder or an invocation of their own
01:52:11.720magical potency to the thing that they're doing or with a prayer and i think that that often happens
01:52:19.160I think that prayer and work to attune yourself with the Aesir and to develop the skill of being able to listen and to recognize when forces beyond the veil are interacting with you in a meaningful way is also a potent everyday practice that would be quote unquote magical.
01:52:43.360but again that's a subject that's very the details matter and there's a lot of different
01:52:50.820right ways to characterize it and I wouldn't want to go too far afield on that do you have
01:52:55.900anything to add to that Chris um I'm trying to find the question here so I can make sure I'm
01:53:03.940not giving a dumb answer here so you took that at a high level I kind of took that at a little
01:53:11.260simpler of you know having a life that is in alignment with you know cosmic order and natural
01:53:21.940law of knowing how to move forwards with myself and you know myself as the head of my family
01:53:32.020of being part of a family of a church that is you know doing things as we should
01:53:43.200of doing things in such a manner that produces good results just kind of almost without having
01:53:52.880to try in a certain sense not to say we don't you know like things work and it's not a shock that
01:54:01.080they do. I think even simpler than things like rune magic or
01:54:07.720prayer or anything like that, aligning yourself with divine
01:54:11.940will, and then experiencing all the joys that come with that is
01:54:16.620a very simple, basic everyday magic, if I may say so.
01:54:20.520Well, so that's a point that I think is worth making here. And
01:54:30.180again this isn't for those of us who've done this for a while and once we I don't know hopefully
01:54:39.180through the course of years gain wisdom it's easy to look back and scoff at or or whatever
01:54:44.540and I'm not doing that we all start in different places there's a lot of people that want to jump
01:55:18.340and i think there's a good reason behind them the other thing is you know
01:55:24.120there's a number of people that you've seen come through also true that have
01:55:28.260that talk a lot about their magical efficacy
01:55:34.740and about one organization of of you know ask true wizards or something i've heard from one
01:55:44.140their long-time practitioners and members you know man we get get a room full of these these
01:55:51.340exalted something to the effect of we got a room full of all of these exalted runemaguses
01:55:56.220and not one of them can conjure themselves up a girlfriend
01:56:02.300it says something your life should demonstrate the efficacy of your magical potency
01:56:11.020And the vast majority of people that I know that claim to be these high-functioning wizards are perpetually broke and unsuccessful and unhappy, and their life does not demonstrate that they have efficacy in the things that they say or do.
01:56:36.920I'll say this. Paul Wagner of the Wolves of Vinland.
01:56:49.380I think that of people that I am aware of and have talked to might be the most effective left hand path wizard that I'm aware of.
01:57:02.940and i hear good things about his brother matthias as well in terms of magical practice
01:57:09.680because their life demonstrates that the things they try to achieve are the things that they want
01:57:19.340they have efficacy in achieving i'll also say this he made a really cool grimoire and this will
01:57:27.980bring us back to the text here he made us or not back to the text i'm used to doing the shows with
01:57:33.900swan this will bring us back to the topic that we're we're on this evening and back to uh chris's
01:57:38.720lesson for us paul did this really cool grimoire like 10 years ago and it's you know it's got a
01:57:49.480particular gothic dark uh imagery to it but it's almost like a kind of a graphic novel-y artwork
01:58:01.000on it and it talks about among other things sigil magic in a really digestible way i don't even know
01:58:09.680if you can still get a hold of it again i'm not saying that their religious teaching is in line
01:58:16.020with the Aus-True Folk Assembly or anything,
01:58:17.920but this was a really good take on magic practice
02:00:54.100They are prepping us, us generally, and the masculine in specific, to go out into the world and to do and to achieve.
02:01:07.380Whereas D sub bloat during Veteran Niter is a bloat honoring our female ancestors that are watching on and that are caring for us from beyond the veil.0.87
02:01:22.420and so they're different in that way and Chris has returned to us yeah take us back into your
02:01:31.420your lecture for us if you would sure so we use this term Galder today to refer to
02:01:42.820chanting the or simplicity names of the runes and there's a degree of musicality to it there's a
02:01:51.100degree of intonation to it but it is this very specific thing in the older the elder ostrich
02:01:58.780period galder is this sort of more generic term to refer to regular speech acts so it's a prayer
02:02:09.280it's um the words of a magic spell so on and so forth it's a lot more general than how we use it
02:02:19.340today so the the faith of our forefathers ends up becoming increasingly sidelined as it is literally
02:02:30.300punishable by death in medieval scandinavia and it increasingly enters this peripheral territory
02:02:39.260and anything that enters peripheral territory enters this you know it attracts
02:02:44.220peripheral people and that can be good and that can be bad and so a lot of the knowledge that
02:02:53.000gets written down is stuff to do with magic there's this odin guy how can i use that for
02:03:02.560my advantage there's this thor fella what can he give me that's how people kind of look at
02:03:10.500this sort of stuff. There's ancestral wisdom. How can I use it to prevent witches from stealing
02:03:17.120my butter? Stuff like that. Utilitarian and regular. What we would refer to nowadays as a
02:03:26.880magic spell. So, Galdraboks, I'm just going to call them Galdraboks rather than trying to use
02:03:34.280the the norse or icelandic plurals because they there's a bunch of terms for these are
02:03:41.560medieval scandinavian magical grimoires i'll explain what a grimoire is in a minute
02:03:49.320so there are multiple of these but there is one specific one that is referred to as
02:03:56.200the Galdrebok, right? Galdrebok means Book of Galdr, right? So most of these have names that are
02:04:08.520absolutely terrible to say out loud, like Galdrakver LBS14388VO. That's one specific book.
02:04:18.120Another is Islenskärthjózsóger og aftilliný, one specific book.
02:04:25.200Then there's The Galdröbock. There is a book by Stephen Flowers, by Dr. Stephen Flowers,
02:04:32.160Idrin Thorsen, on The Galdröbock, which has become authoritative in magical circles.
02:04:40.020Unfortunately, there are some errors. Granted, it's from 1989, da-da-da-da-da.
02:04:45.880um so you can find a lot of these medieval scandinavian magical books if you want to do
02:04:56.440stuff involving that be careful where you're looking and what you're reading because some
02:05:03.500of the translations aren't as good as they should be there are errors in some there are misprints
02:05:08.320and some some texts were made using a translation that was made by someone who was translating a
02:05:17.840work with the translator not having seen the original text it gets really complicated because
02:05:22.960we're talking about multiple books so let's do some background here brief icelandic history
02:05:32.800somewhere around like 800 a fellow by the name of nadod discovers iceland in 868
02:05:40.280leaves to confirm the existence of iceland then in 874 leaves to settle iceland for settler
02:05:50.980then in 930 the all thingy is established in 1080 christianity becomes the state religion
02:05:57.660This is the bit where the law speaker sleeps on the mound.
02:06:02.700So, Iceland adopts Christianity as the state religion under internal duress between these two factions, the pro-independence faction and the pro-Norway faction.
02:06:15.140And when Christianity is adopted as a state religion, it's this sort of like, yeah, sure, we're Christian now.
02:06:24.020And the Gothar, the priest politicians of Iceland, are still technically, to some degree, like pagan priests, but the state religion is Christianity, so it's not really clear what this means.
02:06:39.800A period begins called the Friderold, which is basically like the friendship period.
02:06:50.140So, Iceland adopts this mindset of public Christian-private pagan.
02:06:58.860Because this essentially satiates the people in Norway,
02:07:03.300the pro-norway faction in iceland loses all power and an era of good feelings begins
02:07:11.540this results in a lot of icelanders being spread abroad entering into contact with people in
02:07:21.440scandinavia proper on the continent a lot of connections are made in 1118 a.d the frithereld
02:07:59.600openness, great learning coming into Iceland from the continent, but there's actually a lot of
02:08:07.400intellectual freedom in Iceland. You can think a lot of things in Iceland that you're not allowed
02:08:12.120to think elsewhere. Iceland opens up its mind, but not its soul, to the continent, right? And so
02:08:20.780writing and the importance of writing comes into Iceland, and people are like,
02:08:26.080what we we can talk about same under for the and story source and elsewhere it already has been
02:08:32.580done elsewhere in other episodes of this program so but but there are people who say oh my goodness
02:08:37.280oh my oh my gods we have to write this stuff down or it might be lost forever and they do so they do
02:08:42.760that with a lot of stuff just random stories a lot of these random stories are what we call
02:08:48.300the sagas. So 1262, Norwegian yoke. The Norwegian kingdom just formally absorbs
02:08:57.660Iceland because the Norwegian faction comes back. 1380, the Kalmar Union occurs. Denmark takes over.
02:09:06.1201528, Christian III of Denmark makes Lutheran the state religion of Denmark and Norway and by
02:09:11.920Association, Iceland. 1550, the last Catholic partisan is beheaded in
02:09:17.260Iceland. Officially, Iceland is now a Lutheran state. And until 1923, there are
02:09:23.620no... 1923 is when the first literate Catholic cleric sets foot in Iceland.
02:09:30.160There are a few monks at some points, but this is the first time a
02:09:33.400Catholic bishop that is literate shows up. 1944, the Germans conquered Denmark,
02:09:38.680freeing Iceland. So continental contact with Iceland was extremely free of
02:09:47.500Vatican oversight and there was a private pagan public Christian sort of
02:09:55.000culture and mindset. In part this is because as far as the Pope was
02:10:00.520concerned Scandinavia was the armpit of Europe and Iceland was the armpit of
02:10:05.140Scandinavia so this gives the Icelanders a tremendous degree of freedom to sort
02:10:12.940of absorb and accommodate Christianity on their own terms but there was never
02:10:20.500a literate Christian bishop there was never any real Christian clerical
02:10:24.600establishment in any real sense in Iceland so like celibacy was never
02:10:30.260required of icelandic clerics but marriage was forbidden so they just have like harems and get
02:10:37.600into like wacky polyamory shenanigans rather than like forcing people to not talk about thor
02:10:44.540so this is why there's so much lore in iceland it is the last place to you know outside of like
02:10:55.620the Baltics, right? It's the last place to be closed off by Christianity. And that leaves a
02:11:04.300lot of knowledge about a lot of things in Iceland. So a grimoire is a hand-copied book of magical
02:11:14.580spells. Grimoire, from the French, which is a dialectical variant of which comes from Old
02:11:23.680french which literally means bookist like now that dude can read that means he's cast in spells
02:11:33.520so this this means sorcerer a bookist a sorcerer this is from the latin gramaticus meaning related
02:11:40.880to grammar from greek gramaticos meaning literate so we have this chain of like literate related to
02:11:48.240grammar someone who can read a wizard the wizard's spell book right these are uh could you put up
02:11:57.840messy book.png nick could you answer gothi bode's question how do you spell that first uh
02:12:07.440i need to look where which word the french ones oh uh grimoire oh like all of them are just grimoire
02:12:16.080it's a joke dang it it's a joke oh wow that's french so there's two m's
02:12:25.360so these are terribly formatted books because paper is expensive ink is expensive most people
02:12:36.800are very bad at writing like they we in in public school today spent a lot of time figuring out how0.95
02:12:42.240to write people did not write often so their handwriting is crap they don't know how to write0.92
02:12:47.040in like a space-saving manner so they just make these these terrible books that are just full of
02:12:54.400very bad handwriting a grimoire is a node in a chain so this book here is some guy's collection
02:13:04.640of magic spells and he would meet up with other wizards he'd go to wizard con or whatever and
02:13:10.800they'd exchange spells and then he'd hastily scribble it down in his book and any magic spell
02:13:16.320some guy got his hands on he'd write down in his book and occasionally what they would do is they
02:13:21.360would be either you would give your book to someone else or you would exchange books or whatever and
02:13:26.960so you would either take spells from his book like copy them down or you would just combine the pages
02:13:34.960together and make a bigger book so these grimoires are all over europe they're not just in scandinavia
02:13:43.680they are handmade and they are chains of transmission but people are also making up
02:13:50.080their own spells right so if you take a given spell you can generally either source it to
02:13:56.480the first text when it appears or to a prior text right a spell is either novel or it probably came
02:14:05.760from someone else but if it comes from someone else it doesn't necessarily come from a book
02:14:10.480because it might have been transmitted orally right so as i said some of these have chains of
02:14:16.880owners like i've got this grimoire i added pages to it but the guy i got it from added pages to it
02:14:24.960he got it from another guy who added pages to it who got it from the original owner so some of these
02:14:31.680have dates that if you just like look at the book it's like oh yeah this book is from 1940
02:14:38.240but actually it's like 500 years old because some guy in 1500 wrote down on some quires of paper
02:14:47.520again um whether you take the stack of paper you fold it in half you
02:14:51.360bind it with with staples nowadays or glue but in the old days it was string so you have like a
02:14:58.480choir right and you have multiple choirs that make up a book so um the first choir would have been
02:15:06.640made in 1500 and then the second choir was made by another guy in 1600 and so on until the final
02:15:13.360academic who gets its hands on it is in 1940 so how to reference portions of this these texts is
02:15:21.920really difficult because it's like oh well this is a handmade copy of a book that someone else got
02:15:27.400so the handmade copy was made in like 1832 we don't necessarily know how old the original that
02:15:35.700he copied it from was let alone the information because if it's like a copy of a copy of a copy
02:15:40.960done within a year from a text that was written in like 1200 well if that copying was done in like
02:15:48.1601890 then technically it was made in 1890 but actually it's from really far long ago so
02:15:59.120authorship is really really hard to establish with these a lot of these books are just like
02:16:06.960yeah i found them in my grandma's attic did your grandma write it well no grandma was illiterate
02:16:13.840so then who wrote it who put it in the attic right in swedish these are called uh svarth
02:16:20.240constbooker or troldomsbooker in norwegian they're svarthaboker in icelandic they're
02:16:25.760gallerbacker so like black books they're sometimes called black wizardry sorcery the devil you get
02:16:32.400the idea so a third of witchcraft trials in iceland involve grimoire ownership um sigils
02:16:42.320or magical signs sometimes those are on things we're going to get into what a sigil and the like
02:16:47.760is in a minute here so again i have to stress these are multiple books there are multiple books
02:16:55.520that survive to us there's very little unity in them because every single one is some wizards
02:17:02.400personal spell book. Every one of them is unique. If you have some familiarity with Wicca, you might
02:17:08.940have heard of the Book of Shadows. Every single Wiccan is supposed to make their own Book of0.83
02:17:14.380Shadows. Theoretically, there's a lineage of these Books of Shadows, Book of Shadowses, whatever,0.99
02:17:21.680going back to Gerald Gardner's original Book of Shadows, which he copied from the New Forest
02:17:28.020coven witches whether that's actually true or not how that works out in reality that's that's
02:17:34.900not really the point theoretically there's this chain of each wiccan witches spellbook back to
02:17:42.260the original as they keep adding them and branching to them and adding to them and saying no this
02:17:47.140didn't work no this did this and not that it's very messy so a few things about these one
02:17:55.860medieval scandinavian magic is very concerned with symbols we'll show you some of these symbols
02:18:03.660in a little bit but it's very concerned with symbols these are extremely fluid what any
02:18:14.040given symbol means probably has multiple uses or definitions and what any given the symbol is the
02:18:21.260form like what it does is the content so for any given form there's multiple contents for
02:18:26.700any given content there's multiple forms uh we'll talk about this in a minute but i just
02:18:33.660as an example the nine helms of awe to be used 99 times there's a lot of things here
02:18:40.860yes these are some examples of symbols there's a lot of them some of them look really wacky so
02:18:47.260So there are actually references to the makers of some of these Galdarstaffers, such as there's like the Voldemar who made Varnarstaffer Voldemars, so Voldemars Varnarstaffer.
02:19:01.600There's many attestations of these. There's huge numbers of attestations of books of magic.
02:19:07.660Not a lot of them survive compared to the sheer number of attestation of them.
02:19:12.640Common themes that appear are empowerment by Thor, empowerment by Odin, the Helm of Awe.
02:19:22.640We'll talk about how it's pronounced later. The Helm of Awe.
02:19:27.640So another term you might hear about is leech book.
02:19:34.280Leech, leek book, magic meant for healing or the opposite of healing, which makes sense in context.
02:19:43.520So in really old Indo-European lore, snakes are the givers and takers of life and death.
02:19:51.740Like the snake can bite you and poison you, right?
02:19:54.600which means it also has like but it doesn't die from its own poison right because it lives
02:19:58.960so it's also got mad like healing in it this is why hermes's staff has snakes and blah blah blah
02:20:06.680anyways um why do books of medicine also have books have spells about killing because the two
02:20:14.040are intimately if you can heal you can kill and vice versa so these have increasing references
02:20:24.220to the icier the further you go back some of these sigils these symbols are given names that are
02:20:31.500actually heiti of the gods right so like there will be i'm just making this one up i didn't
02:20:37.180actually write a heidi down i'm sorry about that but like there will be a sigil that's called lord
02:20:41.660of the world like named after frere right and these are also wildly syncretic a thing about
02:20:52.620magic is that magicians don't care about the theory behind it they just want it to work they
02:20:59.660don't care what they have to do to cast magic missile if they cast magic missile they'll do
02:21:04.460whatever so you see throughout europe in in scandinavia particularly iceland it's important
02:21:12.100for it's why we care because there's the ice here involved but like you'll see like 15th century
02:21:17.260german magical spells that invoke like three of the olympians three christian saints the trinity
02:21:24.860three demons three separate names for satan like just random lists of whoever's listening help me
02:21:32.980out right um so like there's one magic spell in one of these galder box uh that invokes uh loki
02:21:42.420asking him to afflict someone with lethal flatulence i don't know if the intention was
02:21:48.160that they like inflate and blow up or they just like art themselves to death neither seem
02:21:54.620neither seem all that appealing like but you get the idea they're like okay i'm gonna you're gonna
02:22:02.580ask the bad guy to kill someone for you that's a little dangerous doesn't it when we're talking
02:22:10.200about magical spells here we're talking about things that are not immoral but amoral the
02:22:17.840concerns of the people writing these down are not how do i live as a good asatra they are very often
02:22:25.560in these galderbacher or galderbox how do i get thor to do something for me to help me out or
02:22:33.320replace thor with the archangel michael or king shlomo or alzabub or whoever okay so i want to
02:22:41.320make a point here this is kind of why this is here and we front loaded with the people that
02:22:47.560actually had some kind of loyalty to the ice here but what is important as a as a historical note
02:22:56.040So isn't the moral thrust of the magic, but the fact that during this time period, it's not as though belief in these other powers ceased and like, oh, that was foolish.0.70
02:23:17.360our ancestors were just silly and misguided now we worship you know the the the jewish god0.81
02:23:28.480no these people there was a significant portion or certainly substrata of society0.99
02:23:35.760that believe in the efficacy of these beings and thought that the spiritual plane had
02:23:44.560many different forces there and though they were kind of mercenary and who to call on and who not
02:23:52.500to and mentioning you know christian figures as well as you know also true gods and goddesses
02:23:58.980in the same breath they felt that the legitimacy was there was some kind of equivalency in
02:24:07.640legitimacy, which is important because it speaks to the mindset. When we look at history,
02:24:20.200the further we are removed from our own time and our own space, we have a tendency to shut off
02:24:27.340empathy or like, I don't mean that in emotional sense, but just like considering the reality of
02:24:34.100people really thought or like these are real people doing stuff we just look at dates that
02:24:41.220signify breaks in history as if they're you know as if in iceland at the the all thing and in 1000
02:24:50.420they just all of a sudden like okay as of today everyone in iceland forsakes the icer and we
02:24:58.100don't mention them again ever cool everybody's synchronized and it doesn't work that way these0.97
02:25:04.500traditions live in the folk memory for a very long time and our ancestors at no point are stupid
02:25:13.460and the further we look in history we tend to make um two-dimensional caricatures of people
02:25:21.060rather than consider that they're actual humans that have similar
02:25:24.820capacity for thought that you and I do. It's not like they went from, oh, we believe these things
02:25:32.640are very real in a very big part of our life. Oh, wow, now they're completely not. That makes no
02:25:37.560sense. No, there was a significant time where the belief in their existence didn't change.
02:25:47.280There was an allegiance shift, or there was an ability to practice publicly that wasn't there.
02:25:53.320But we have throughout this whole period, there is a substrata in belief of things beyond what they're told by the Catholic and the Lutheran Church.
02:26:08.980And so that's kind of why this is relevant.
02:26:10.860It's not that these practitioners were devout, but it is about these people very much believed that the gods and many other spiritual forces existed and had spiritual potency.
02:26:26.520There was a potential for these forces to work in their favor.
02:26:30.020and academics are generally very bad at conceptualizing and dealing with that because
02:26:38.160academics today have to be so hyper focused on specifics so like academics can't in a certain
02:26:47.420sense afford to ask like well what what was going through ragball odin's carl's head what kind of
02:26:54.760society did he have to live in that could produce a guy like this in events like this they can't do
02:26:59.880that that has too many non-answers it's too inconclusive they focus on things that are
02:27:08.820grounded and provable and that leads to them over focusing on facts and figures like
02:27:16.700after a certain point people stop talking about odin clearly they must have forgotten about him
02:27:22.220well that means that you know like the people who are writing don't write about odin so if
02:27:28.980there's a shift in who's writing and what they're writing about that doesn't actually have anything
02:27:33.480to do with what's in people's heads right um digression but i want to go into something here
02:27:40.140with these grimoires these icelandic and scandinavian grimoires there is two magical
02:27:45.640traditions that we're going to deal with here there's medieval scandinavian viking age magic
02:27:52.220and then it goes into you know later medieval magic then there's the earlier classical greco
02:28:01.340roman egyptian magic that continues into medieval europe and then splices into that later um
02:28:12.540medieval scandinavian magic but there is an original core northern scandinavian magical
02:28:21.260tradition that we can separate from mediterranean influences right we can actually and this is
02:28:29.340another thing because academics generally don't care what people think like historical people
02:28:35.660they're really bad at separating things that are separatable by virtue of what people think about
02:28:45.020them right and we'll see what you'll see what i'm talking about in a bit here but understand that
02:28:49.180these these grimoires these medieval scanning and grimoires do have you know they do have
02:28:56.700mediterranean stuff they do have what some i i don't know if this is like proper to call it but
02:29:02.940what people usually call like christian magic in them many of them do and do ask jesus and satan
02:29:09.820to do things in many of these spells do right so here's an example of an extremely old little
02:29:15.820bit of magic in some of these um there's a sator square in futhark circa 1300s in sweden so the
02:29:24.780sator square is this two um you can flip it either way it says uh rotos rotas operas tenet
02:29:33.580reposator or it says satorra repo tenet opera rotas which um arepo is thought to be a personal
02:29:41.340a person's name like a given name like john or something so depending on which version you have
02:29:46.780again it's the same thing just rotated so it's in the other order it either says the farmer areppo
02:29:52.540works his wheels or the wheels guide the work of areppo the farmer right and so you have this bit
02:30:00.140of syncretism you have this extremely old greco-roman magical formula in an icelandic or
02:30:07.980Swedish grimoire in Futhark. So someone translated this thing to the Futhark. Now a thing you end up
02:30:16.380seeing a lot of regarding magic is that when some wizard gets it he de-territorializes it. He removes
02:30:22.780it from its original context and he re-territorializes it. He puts it in a new context.
02:30:28.080So the Sator Square as a thing means basically nothing because any given wizard can take it and
02:30:36.220do whatever the whatever they want with it there are so many interpretations of this thing that
02:30:43.980it's it's almost impossible to come up with the right one because there's just so many
02:30:47.980right and that's very important with these magical spells and with the symbols of them
02:30:53.020right all right so i'd like to make a note here um
02:30:55.980there there are certain things that are just real and exist and have power
02:31:11.440we occupy a shared space in midgard with other
02:31:17.440with other earth fauna that have other ways of doing things
02:31:23.480Some magic stuff works because it works and because there's a certain amount of shared efficacy in the shared world that we live in.
02:31:34.480in i don't you know clearly the austral folk assembly doesn't advocate for eclecticism
02:31:44.720but when you see it magically it's because people take techniques that
02:31:49.520work in different contexts and they're just very often out for effect and so you see
02:31:57.600you know whatever works calling upon whatever spirits seem to be powerful trying to invoke
02:32:05.040whatever technique works that you observe you know some italian satanist doing something has
02:32:12.880a power that can easily be coupled with an egyptian raw worshiper and whatever else
02:32:21.040And I mean, you see that obviously today in modern Wicca or whatever else.
02:32:26.640I think the efficacy in all of those cases is dubious.
02:32:31.160But what is common a lot of the time is you see a certain grouping of people that are either desperate or unscrupulous or whatever.
02:32:43.040What I will say, harmonizing what you do to where the practice is more uniform and to where you are, where all of the pieces synergize and work together is much, much, much more effective.
02:33:02.560it's one of the things in an overarching theme about focusness about
02:33:11.260our alignment with making things match and ordered when everything matches up and synchronizes
02:33:23.620it accelerates efficacy and propriety and that is felt in the subtle realms as well
02:33:33.220as in the more obvious and the more mundane so the more authentic and um
02:33:40.560synchronized a magical practice in my in things that i have seen known and experienced in my life
02:33:52.400the more potent and more effective it is but a lot of the time in the middle time period the
02:33:57.520medieval time period you have a lot of borrowing and it comes from a variety of different sources
02:34:05.840and oftentimes it gets borrowed several times over by the time it makes it to the far reaches
02:34:14.240of northern europe iceland is a is a backwater that you know like it is the last place that news
02:34:22.560reaches on the continent or anything else if you have magical stuff that goes on the silk road
02:34:28.800and is practiced in the orient then in the middle east then in greece and the balkans
02:34:36.160then in central i mean by the time it makes it to iceland it's been through
02:34:42.720many many hands and it's something to consider when you know wondering about this stuff um
02:34:52.880and just because there are exotic elements involved doesn't mean that we can't
02:35:00.720like notice the ones that aren't and recognize and and uh find value in them we can also
02:35:10.240separate out a lot of the eclecticism that I think eclecticism is the right word
02:35:18.960from renaissance and medieval magic practice if we're judicious in what we do
02:35:26.800carry on so a thing to keep in mind with these then is that there's another group of people
02:35:35.360or institution as it were that doesn't like these grimoires that's the catholic church
02:35:42.400catholic church thinks magic is bad catholic clerics they can perform magic you plebs off
02:35:51.520limits right so this creates the the fun sort of fun sort of effect of like a lot of magic is done
02:36:03.760by catholic christian clerics because they're the ones who are literate and have access to books
02:36:09.360but they're also like punishing each other for doing this thing that like all of them are doing
02:36:14.800right so legally these were marked for destruction so we have a lot of references to these things
02:36:25.680and we have a lot of them we have so many more references to them than we have the physical
02:36:30.960copies because they are supposed to be destroyed right so there is a distinction here that's worth
02:36:41.620noting that continental scandinavian galderbacher tend to cite the olympians and judeo-christian
02:36:48.280deities like mary or satan whereas the icelandic galderbocks they tend to cite the icier right
02:36:55.140so you can see in the magic there's more attestations of the isir the more asatru there
02:37:04.220is remaining in the area right so let's get into some of what's in these all right there are nine
02:37:12.680parts of the soul right the leak the hammer the other the on or the earned the huir the mini the
02:37:19.760saw the philgia and the minya the body the shape inspiration breath perception reflection the shade
02:37:28.040the magical extension and the collective luck so there's a lot of things there right what we see
02:37:36.020is there's a separation between body and mind shape from body there's inspiration animating
02:37:43.160force perception perception and reflection is how i have it in my notes here but it's like
02:37:49.140analysis and memory there's a kind of core part of you that continues on into the afterlife
02:37:57.200but then there's this magical extension of you and then there's causal potency
02:38:03.080so in the galder box there's an animating or vital principle there's a personal image
02:38:11.780there's a separable power entity which sends things or is sent to do things there's an
02:38:19.100essential core faculty of heart and mind of memory and reason as related but separate
02:38:26.440these features tend to be absent in syncretic spells or the eclectic spells so
02:38:35.020So, a spell that asks, I'm just making this up, Thor to do something is more likely to use an Asatru framework of, we call it the soul complex, but honestly we should probably just, it's probably more accurately to say it's the person complex.
02:38:51.060A spell that cites Mary and King Shlomo and 13 Jewish patriarchs, that is not going to have pagan concepts of the soul.
02:39:05.660It's going to have Christian concepts of the soul, right?
02:41:33.420magicians are constantly making stuff up.
02:41:37.180They're constantly making up new spells.
02:41:40.180They're constantly making up how to use them.
02:41:43.420They're constantly tinkering with them.
02:41:47.500Hang on, I've got to send Nick another picture
02:41:50.060because I just thought of a good one here to include.
02:41:53.200Magic is really messy and complicated, so we see attached mythology show up, and occasionally there are these claims that get made, like binding Odin to King Shlomo and the like, but remember, we're talking about multiple texts here,
02:42:18.560and generally when you see like redditors well actually on the internet they are combining
02:42:24.000multiple texts into like one singular thing as if there was just one singular idea of how any of
02:42:30.720this worked that's not correct to do so what are we actually talking about here what are we talking
02:42:40.000about when we talk about magic and sigil magic what are these symbols so we're going to talk about
02:42:45.840about two, really three, but one is from Northern Europe and one is from, two are from Southern
02:42:53.040Europe, some ideas of what magic actually is and what you're trying to do. In continental Europe,
02:43:00.740deriving from Mediterranean forms, there are two ideas. One, the summoning of diamonds. Diamond
02:43:08.940from daimonis is a greek word that basically means intermediary you are summoning an intermediary
02:43:17.620entity and using them to do things the other form of mediterranean magic is what's called what i'm
02:43:24.700going to call light guidance i'll explain what that means in a bit so uh yes the word the greek
02:43:33.900word daimonis is where we get demon from. Demon comes to us through Christian ideological blah
02:43:41.380bitty blah. Daimonis does not have negative implications in the Greek. Again, it just means
02:43:45.800intermediary. So the Neoplatonists posited that the gods live in heaven and they're so amazing
02:43:53.960and so cool that they cannot simply be bothered to come down and interact with us. So they have
02:43:59.920daimonis intermediaries and these are the things we technically interact with via religion in like1.00
02:44:06.400a lay sense so like when you perform a sacrifice it's the daimonis that gets the sacrifice it's
02:44:11.600not actually zeus right so these sorts of summings have a few symbol a few a few things going on in
02:44:20.560them they have a lot of preparation there's a circle there's a conjuration of a spirit
02:44:27.120there's an addressing to the spirit and instruction and there's a license to depart
02:44:33.120so what you're basically doing is you're setting up things you're summoning this entity
02:44:38.560you're telling it what to do you're telling it to go and then you're preventing it from
02:44:44.720getting back at you right the other kind of magic that that light guidance
02:44:51.120so Aristotle posited that there were uh 45 44 to 52 somewhere around that many gods who were the
02:45:01.320Olympians who are the planets and they because the gods are perfect their bodies were spheres
02:45:07.580and so they moved in circles because of course right their bodies were made out of quintessence
02:45:13.140the fifth element and as they'd spin they'd pull around the celestial spheres and the spheres moving
02:45:18.940behind the gods out of love for them would result in causality occurring right and this got
02:45:25.780interpreted by muslim thinkers as light so like the planet mars emits certain light how does
02:45:34.560astrology work well at certain times the light combinations hit like a child in the womb and
02:45:40.740this gives them certain characteristics it's an extremely oversimplification of how astrology works
02:45:46.900So what a wizard could do in this second form of Mediterranean magic is you could basically make a prism that harnesses the light, right?
02:45:56.900It harnesses the light, and then it makes something happen.
02:45:59.900In both of these forms of Mediterranean magic, we see preparation, we see assemblage of the magical apparatus, and then we see a deconstruction of the magical apparatus.
02:46:13.900Preparation is usually astrologically bound.
02:46:18.100People in the olden days cared a lot about what was going on in the sky.
02:46:49.900The alternative is the light apparatus, where the magician doesn't have to be in it, but the light from the planets goes into the apparatus.
02:46:58.900Again, I'm being a little overly simplistic because magic is really complicated, but you'll see why this simplification is justified in a minute.
02:47:09.260When they get to entities, these Mediterranean forms of magic are very concerned with binding, with controlling, with housing the entities that are called upon.
02:47:20.220The spirits are enslaved to a hostile magician's will.
02:47:23.860There's a lot of concern over correct shape, of correct technical procedure.
02:47:29.580Failure to follow the correct technical procedure and make the correct shapes produces disaster.
02:47:37.060So one I've read from the Greek Magical Pyre, these are really old magical spells from Greek people living in Egypt.
02:47:47.680And one of them has this complex ritual to summon Kronos, like Zeus's dad.
02:47:53.860the bad guy and you have to do the whole thing with your eyes shut because you summon chronos
02:48:01.140and then you'll hear like the clinking and the chinking of the chains that bind him in tartarus
02:48:06.560and you cannot open your eyes because if you do he will be set free and have total mastery and
02:48:13.760power over you that's actually really spooky like he's the bad guy you do not want to summon this
02:48:21.740guy and yet here you are and you're gonna what command him they're like go make a woman fall
02:48:27.480in love with you or something right um so again summation concern over correct shape
02:48:36.060assemblage of things astrology deconstruction of things so in these northern magical texts
02:48:43.620we see a lot of concern over symbols there's a total absence of astrology there's no concern
02:49:24.860Italian magical experimenters that Julius Evolo is part of.
02:49:36.820There is an article in there that I thought was really useful when I read it years ago
02:49:42.900called The Knowledge of the Symbol by Pietro Negri.
02:49:46.400and I got a lot out of that there's a lot of this book that I didn't get a lot out of
02:49:54.440but there are little pearls of things I did and that's one that I did find really interesting and
02:50:01.300useful and I think especially as we talk about sigils sigil magic and runes and bind runes as
02:50:11.180sigils is valuable to consult if anybody wants to dig deeper so i just wanted to put that out there
02:50:18.720so northern european magic scandinavian magic at the time we're talking about right 1400s 1500s
02:50:31.040total absence of astrology there's not a lot of concern regarding when you do this and again
02:50:38.300remember we're not talking about like do this on thursday we're talking about like now make sure
02:50:42.380that venus is in conjunction with pluto in the uranian sphere according to the lunar calculations
02:50:49.100it's really complicated right it's not simple when we talk about astrology in european magic
02:50:57.980the sigils are generally on things they're not on the floor for a working some of them are like
02:51:05.180carve this into your forehead um there's one that's like put this on the sole of your shoe
02:51:12.460for like wrestling there's one that helps a woman that makes like a woman fall in love with you
02:51:17.100that you're supposed to put in your pocket right these go on things they go on items0.99
02:51:23.180including your body right there's little preparation if any again compared to like
02:51:29.900drawing out a really complicated design on the floor and saying certain words
02:51:33.980these are relatively simple the entities invoked in scandinavian magic here are not controlled
02:51:43.500they sort of just help the magician they very rarely are actually asked to
02:51:48.060do something they very often are simply put asked to empower the magus the wizard the sorcerer
02:51:56.300there's zero protection or control of the entities involved there's no attempt at banishing there's
02:52:04.400no attempt at making them go away there's no attempt at protecting you from them Mediterranean
02:52:09.140magic is extremely concerned with preventing entities from screwing you over these symbols
02:52:16.040and magical traditions in northern Europe are oral in nature the magician memorizes a small
02:52:22.280set of basic concepts and words to make a language that is used to build complex structures.
02:52:29.480There's little concern for correct shape grimoire to grimoire, magus to magus. The shape of a spell
02:52:41.360matters but there's not a correct shape in an objective sense and I'll explain why in a minute
02:52:47.420here um that's very important there's not a lot of concern with the shape generally it looks like
02:52:59.520there was some kind of internal spiritual empowerment that the magician was really using
02:53:04.400and the symbol is just a way of expressing that so this is sort of how rune magic works
02:53:14.700in in the older period where like the actual magic comes from the room the symbol or the the the
02:53:25.040transcendent meaning it doesn't come from like the little lines that are used to write with
02:53:30.820right so we see this idea present from an older period but it has i guess you could say evolved
02:53:39.140degraded either way right it's no longer an alphabet a symbolic alphabet it's instead just
02:53:45.780kind of a symbolic reference right and this is why the symbols don't matter they are used by
02:53:51.900the wizard to enact causal will but they're not really important the alter ego the and i could
02:54:01.740cast the same spell with different symbols the same effect and the symbols would have to look
02:54:08.440the same for me and for him but not for each other my symbol doesn't necessarily have to look
02:54:15.160like his symbol right that is different from how it works in the mediterranean we're like
02:54:20.840wizards argue over the correct symbol to use in scandinavia i mean whatever works for you bro
02:54:28.600right compare rune magic from the etic period right we have three basic techniques that are
02:54:41.700done here carve the runes and carve doesn't necessarily literally mean etch them but
02:54:47.120in most cases it actually does color them then speak some kind of incantation right
02:54:53.820so for example uh skirnir threatens to do this um eagles call the grim saga has a a very the the
02:55:04.480scene where he like makes the horn blow up like he carves runes onto the horn he like pricks his
02:55:10.480finger and uses blood i think right sir to to color the runes on the horn he definitely bloodies
02:55:18.140them i don't know if it's pricking his own finger the exact way of extraction but he does color them
02:55:24.940right yeah okay and then he speaks some kind of incantation and then in this case he carves
02:55:30.860runes that'll make the horn blow up if there's poison in it so what we see here is he has
02:55:37.020a symbolic language that he can use to enact causal will upon the world due to internal
02:55:43.340empowerment this is not what a medieval european like you know italian southern german wizard
02:55:51.820would do right the medieval european wizard was using knowledge of mechanisms of reality
02:56:00.700he wasn't working with a symbolic vocabulary so i want uh could you put up the the harley manuscript
02:56:08.540image that i just sent you nick uh i wish this was bigger so this shows you a number of these sigils
02:56:19.260this is from a byzantine manuscript notice how they're all in a circle right and if you like
02:56:27.340lean in or squint you can kind of see it here there's a few designs there's these compass
02:56:32.700rose kind of designs where there's like a central point and a bunch of stuff coming off it
02:56:36.540then there's the i i call them rod and scepter designs it's like a line with a circle and then
02:56:45.600another line right um then you can see a number of these that have these kind of like just odd
02:56:53.560designs there's a lot of uh stars this is mediterranean magic right here right notice how
02:57:02.260some of them have writing in them like they have letters like this one here has like e p backwards
02:57:08.380c t some kind of swiggle right um this page here comes up when we talk about the uh the helm of all
02:57:18.440and the the viking compass so could you put up the nine uh helms of all 99 times nick
02:57:25.940now here is magic from a gallerbock these are the nine helms of awe you're supposed to use
02:57:33.940them 99 times to achieve some effect i think this one is the one that makes your opponent scared
02:57:38.940um notice here how there's a lot of this little compass kind of design but there's other stuff
02:57:48.300too right this design framework of like a central point with stuff coming out is very common in the
02:57:55.480Gullabox. But then there's also other wacky ones, right? Notice that these are not the Futhark.
02:58:05.440These are not runes as we know them, right? There are some holdovers. There are a few
02:58:12.300Golderstaffer, which are called, like, named things that are also the names of runes. Like,
02:58:18.740one of them is named Hagal in one manuscript, like Hagalaz, right? These are individual works
02:58:26.160of art, basically, by individual magicians. They are not a unified theology. They're not a unified
02:58:30.900doctrine or dogma. They are chains of symbols. So some guy having a spell named Hagal doesn't
02:58:38.520mean that he personally knew anything about room magic, but he did hear or see a spell from someone
02:58:45.100who knew at minimum knew about the spell right now we should talk about the figure of king shlomo
02:58:53.500aka uh solomonos as he's called in greek shlomo is a generic figure of magical
02:59:00.140origination in medieval europe you can attach anything to shlomo to metaphorically and
02:59:05.340figuratively and literally baptize it any nonsense you want is okay as long as you say that shlomo0.74
02:59:12.460is involved summoning demons to kill your rival oh that's okay you learned it from shlomo because0.89
02:59:19.960shlomo is one of the jewish patriarchs and is therefore tucked into christianity and he was0.78
02:59:26.200like a master demon summoner in in the bible right that was like his gimmick right he was like this0.76
02:59:32.320rabbi wizard so you see attributions of just all sorts of random stuff to shlomo in european0.81
02:59:41.580magical texts and these are no these are not any different right shlomo fulfills for christianity
02:59:47.500a kind of role that odin does in being the kind of master of magic we're like yeah he knows a lot
02:59:55.100he didn't tell us everything that one time he told us stuff that's where i got this from okay
03:00:00.060that's legitimate that's a legitimate and acceptable way to introduce magic in this period
03:00:07.100right so any random thing can be attributed to it this is important because um in flowers
03:00:14.460the galdrabok he has sigil 11 as being solomon's in sigli um this has caused confusion amongst
03:00:24.220well actuallys on the internet so um i already talked about odin as the devil magic is a tool
03:00:33.600Magic in medieval Europe is not moral, per se, even though the Catholic Church tries really hard to make it moral.
03:00:40.820So, for example, there are stories about Semunder the Wise, Frode, Frode, Semunder Frode, you know, Semunder the Wise.
03:00:50.400But there's also the evil bishop Gottskalk Niklasen, the Cruel, who is a Christian bishop that, like, uses magic to abuse his parishioners and gain wealth and stuff.0.76
03:01:05.040Both of them learned magic from the Christian deity, Odin, and or the devil, right?0.71
03:01:12.640So magic at this time isn't really moralized per se, right?
03:01:20.400So, let's talk about the Galdrubach, which is the famous one and the one that Dr. Flowers wrote a book about. So, it's originally from the late 1500s. There were four scribes. So, one scribe wrote spells 1 through 10. The second one wrote spells 11 through 39. The third one did spells 40 through 44 in the 17th century.
03:01:44.460And that one in the 1600s actually contains many references to the Aesir.
03:01:49.780Then spells 45 through 47 were actually done in Denmark by the last author.
03:02:00.260There's eight spells that are effectively prayers to higher powers.
03:02:04.380You'll notice here, if you kill a cow as part of a lunar invocation
03:02:09.760of the sublunar, extra lunar, lunar, lunar, Venus in conjunction with Pluto working to Jupiter
03:02:17.020to get him to do something, how are you not just sacrificing to Jupiter and asking for him to do
03:02:24.780something in return? Past a certain point, you aren't. There is a degree to which prayer becomes
03:02:32.600a kind of prayer to polytheistic deities becomes a kind of acceptable medium or mechanism by being
03:02:42.580laundered into magic because the the classical world knew that there was an association between
03:02:49.360the gods and the planets when christianity came along the gods could be reduced to mere natural
03:02:55.720phenomena as the planets right therefore to a certain degree magic is acceptable this actually
03:03:04.020gets into a really nuanced christian discussion about christian astrology because it's like well
03:03:10.400if yahweh ordained the planets to do certain things that's not really off limits to look at
03:03:16.300them like if he didn't want you looking at the planets he wouldn't have put them there right
03:03:20.280um so back to the galderbach eight spells are effectively prayers to higher powers
03:03:26.86023 spells are essentially will extenders via symbols 33 and 35 like symbol a spell number
03:03:35.00033 spell number 35 45 use prayer and symbols and three spells use natural substances
03:03:40.920there is a very syncretic theology 21 invoke the icier or the devil nine are purely christian
03:03:50.140Eight are Judeo-Gnostic, and five are Asatru Christian Syncretic.
03:03:56.300Four of these actually come from the last two scribes, which is interesting because there's stuff in the later period.
03:04:04.700Some guy who was writing in this book, which had gotten passed from author to author in the 1600s, knew about the Isir.
03:04:14.000I mean, of course he did. We've been talking about that.
03:04:16.220But, like, this guy was writing about Odin in the 1600s.
03:04:20.140At minimum, this wizard knew Odin is a figure you can invoke to get to make things happen.
03:04:27.500So the last two scribes would have been Lutherans, presumably,
03:04:33.260so Osatru and Catholicism were both equally off-limits, which is interesting because
03:04:39.020Catholicism then enters that kind of periphery from the Lutheran perspective.
03:04:44.300However, there's a general Christianization of how the magic works over time in this text.
03:04:48.620so why are you actually casting these spells what what are the what are they involved what are what
03:04:54.980are they for 18 of them are for protection nine are for good fortune six are for discovering thieves
03:05:01.640um that's a very interesting concern at this time in scandinavia so a lot of runes uh runic
03:05:11.180inscriptions are like, Ragnar Herdersen owned this boot. This helmet belongs to Grugnolf.
03:05:20.740So there's a question of why does that happen, because that doesn't really happen all that
03:05:26.160much in Greece and Rome. Sometimes there's a spear. So sometimes on weapons, it's clearly
03:05:35.160the weapon's name. I can't remember what the Norse and Gothic is, but there are two separate
03:05:41.020spears from like the same period of time and they both have a name that means reckoner or tester
03:05:48.000get it because it's a spear like here's the test you either pass or fail and it's the same name
03:05:54.300but with a slight variation based on norse versus gothic right so some of this is just clear magic
03:06:02.660but there's also a theory that some of this is like labeling like how do like oh no my shoe was
03:06:08.660stolen i'll go to the authorities and tell them it's like how will they know whose shoe is the
03:06:13.420shoe well it has my name on it right so the the there's a theory that the concern with theft and
03:06:20.300like magically figuring out who the thief is particularly seeing who the thief is not just like
03:06:26.760asking thor and jacob and the devil to help you find your boot but like showing you who the thief
03:06:35.380was visually with the eye um there's a theory that this comes about because traditional methods
03:06:43.360of jurisprudence basically labeling everything had fallen apart because for one you weren't
03:06:49.380allowed to label things with runes and for two christian yes yes um thank you nick brownie us
03:06:57.100um and then the the norse one is like uh rainier or something like that and that distinction
03:07:05.240between like a rainier versus around the oz and anyways um so in absence of being able to label
03:07:14.320things and being able to go to a legal system that accepts yup it's labeled it's clearly his
03:07:20.980magic solves that purpose by filling in the gap right um invisibility is there's one invisibility
03:07:31.660spell in the galderbog and there's 10 magical attacks uh four of them are like mean you know
03:07:39.900so entities mentioned in this book ovin thor loki as a fiend who is bound by the gods frig
03:07:48.840balder and freya icier that icier that are mentioned there's no organization or formulas
03:07:55.520when they come up it's just lists the same is true with the non-obstature deities with the
03:07:59.660jewish patriarchs with angels it's just i know this many names maybe one of y'all will help me
03:08:05.400out interestingly valhalla does show up in one of these spells um so now we'll get into
03:08:14.140it's usually spelled uh is hjalmur but it's in old norse it's uh various hjalmur because
03:08:25.820the one with the ash the a and the e that's merged together is the modern icelandic name
03:08:30.440not the old norse name this is the helm of all so in fafnismal fafnir is said to wear the helm of
03:08:38.340all which might just be a reference to him being scary but then sigur there kills fafnir and like
03:08:46.300puts the helm of all on but maybe that's poetic language because um even kelda is said to have
03:08:54.540put on the helm the the hidden helm um when he casts a spell of invisibility and then goes out
03:09:01.800and plays magical pranks on i think it's trivisan um it doesn't matter so i would i this is something
03:09:09.640i i wish i had the time to do but it would be interesting to go through and see if there are
03:09:14.420any other like helm of x references in the literature if this is like an a regular figure
03:09:22.200of speech right do you know anything about that sir not really
03:09:35.320yeah not not not that i can add because it's like there's these two here and it's like okay
03:09:41.720that's almost a pattern but if it's just two it doesn't help at all you know um but
03:09:49.800this idea kind of goes dormant then if it doesn't show up you know the helm of all is not a big deal
03:09:58.120in the edits outside of this bit right no so i mean i want to
03:10:09.640to solidify the point about the symbol and like the form versus the content
03:10:19.800I'm trying to think of the best way to explain this that doesn't sound odd or whatever.
03:10:37.480When you have the squiggly snake line, that line doesn't make an S sound.
03:10:47.760That line's not an S. That line isn't a S noise. We have all collectively agreed that that symbol equals S. So in a way like runes, the rune isn't the straight lines that are connected that make a design.
03:11:12.720The rune is the mystery. Those lines that are stuck together are a touchstone for our mind to, oh, that mystery. They're a way to convey a greater concept with a symbol that we all understand what the symbol means so we can communicate it to others.
03:33:39.840it's ridiculous on the face of it but it is a very common um
03:33:49.680it's a very common silliness that occurs and it occurs at this point too it's like if you0.69
03:34:01.080spin around in a circle the right number of times and say the right magical you know
03:34:08.020So if you repeat the right magical formula, then somehow the great gods of anything are – or even, shoot, even demons and stuff are somehow compelled to do what you tell them to do.
03:34:27.160That's preposterous, and it's preposterous on the face of it.
03:34:32.300and you can see this with just to interrupt real quick though not to necessarily defend
03:34:40.220mediterranean magic here i don't have a stake in the fight it's like okay you're gonna try and boss
03:34:47.560satan around yeah it makes sense to take to it makes sense to wear protection for that dance
03:34:53.020it makes sense to care about like a banishing ritual after you've invoked the devil but then
03:34:59.820one of like the fart spell the fart the spell asking loki to kill someone with someone with
03:35:04.840farting it's like are you sure you want to open that box up like you sure you want him knowing
03:35:10.660where you live no so here's and it's again one of the reasons i said what i said earlier on and i
03:35:17.800know that the material on this is much larger than that about our heroes at the beginning of the show
03:35:24.640so i don't want people to get this misunderstood
03:35:27.540magic isn't good or bad magic is a tool you can there are good applications of magical things
03:35:39.240there are grossly impious and improper applications of magical things
03:35:44.820this is to mention also true currents that continue to stay alive and keep
03:35:59.520ancestral knowledge amongst the folk during the time of of darkness more than it is a celebration
03:36:08.700that any of these particular vitkar are you know virtuous aussitru are but there are people that
03:36:19.260practice aussitru in little pockets little places by themselves betwixt them and the gods as you
03:36:28.460know as we spoke about you know rack involved and uh and eric um
03:36:37.260those so this isn't like an endorsement of all of those things but it does bring
03:36:43.500something into context that i think is important um
03:36:51.020it's one of those things somebody who is favorite of the gods and has a powerful reputation
03:37:28.300okay i meant to say this earlier on too i apologize i'm just going to put a pin here
03:37:34.080because it's something i meant to say earlier
03:37:35.500all the hot topic wizards want to immediately jump in and start being a being a wizard
03:37:43.040magic and things that would go into the you know magic category of house of true are
03:37:53.920i've likened it to frosting on a cake but i think it's even beyond that it's like sprinkles
03:38:02.240on the frosting on a cake if you you have to first have a really good cake
03:38:09.920you're eating cake you're not eating frosting unless you're a fatty um
03:38:18.700The thing is, the cake is the thing. You need to have the foundation of a solid religious practice and a meaningful efficacy in all of the realms in order for you to be effective in your attempts to manipulate subtle energies or affect the world around you in a magical context.
03:38:47.080people like to use it as a shortcut and I don't think that it is at all
03:38:50.860and I'm not saying this is some great wizard or something
03:39:13.800things that are beyond most of our beyond all of our under our full understanding
03:39:22.120and that only a very few get a glimpse at in a meaningful way
03:39:29.320chris mission is a second ago about um you know doing special wardings to prevent
03:39:35.320bad stuff from happening to you summoning and evoking and attempting to contact
03:39:47.400malevolent forces is a really bad idea and it opens yourself to bringing in negative things
03:39:56.840that you don't like and that's not to think that you can just like sit around and like
03:40:02.360wish for cert to enter your body and possess you and do stuff he may very well have better things
03:40:10.680to do because he is the cosmic giant of destructive fire and whatever and you're the
03:40:18.440hot topic wizard but in reality if you had the slightest thing to bring that attention
03:40:24.840you open yourself to bad stuff but in in the inverse and i'll say this and this is just
03:40:33.140random stuff thrown in it may not seem like it goes here but i think that it does
03:40:37.340in early modern house to true there was a very heavy um emphasis on doing wardings and banishings
03:40:47.200and, like, hammer hallowings of space in a defensive way
03:40:54.340to, like, banish evil spirits or not let bad juju in.
03:41:05.220I respect where people are coming from,
03:41:08.020and I'm not trying to say that's illegitimate.
03:41:10.800what i think is important is having a confidence in your spiritual efficacy
03:41:21.320and projecting that across the realms i think that the more we treat spiritual forces as other
03:41:30.820the less connected we are and the less effective we are spiritually in our own lives and in
03:41:39.380interaction with things beyond the veil or with subtle forces in the world around us i think when we
03:41:53.300develop reputation and spiritual and moral rectitude in our own lives
03:42:02.820we are better equipped to work in harmony with
03:42:10.820well-aligned spiritual forces be they ghosts the spirits of heroes the spirits of ancestors
03:42:22.200land veteer or if we were you know somehow to get the the attention or favor of one of our our gods
03:42:32.820I think we are in the best position and best suited if we are healthy, if we are mentally, spiritually, and physically healthy, and if we have reputation and might that speaks well of us in all the realms.
03:42:47.340There are things and forces that observe us, and, you know, we talk about the philia.
03:42:56.780There are spiritual forces that also follow us and have attachment to us in the subtle realm or the realm beyond the veil or whatever we want to call it, be it our desir, be it the philia, be it other things that take an interest in our well-being.
03:43:17.340reputation matters reputation matters in this world and reputation matters in the next world
03:43:25.440and the better you are able to build reputation for yourself the more other forces in the world
03:43:33.700and the universe respond to your attempts to work through them or with them in some way
03:43:41.540Again, I feel almost embarrassed every time I open my mouth on this because it flows out like gobbledygook. There's an intention, but it all sounds so, and I've admitted this before.
03:43:57.000There's discomfort on talking about some of these things because I don't want to sound ridiculous, but.
03:44:04.540It would be disrespectful not to admit to the truth of some of these things being legitimate, and I wouldn't want to do that.
03:44:15.840Just to say here, we like Ragbald Odenskarl and Eric Klawison, simply put, because they died for Asatru, not because they stole from Christians.
03:44:27.000Right? The magic is an interesting, in the case of these two men, it's almost a kind of like trivia. Whatever they were using magic for, they chose to die rather than be disloyal to their gods.
03:44:43.660And it's important to restate, and you mentioned it at the time, but it's important to restate, with those two heroes in specific, they had the option.
03:44:54.180um the church at the time that was a thing converting the pagans is like the number one
03:45:03.300job of a christian evangelist so you know if they want to repent and forsake uh odin in order to
03:45:13.620spare their life that's yeah that's always on the table that's a thing and
03:45:20.260it's very meaningful that they didn't um we have people around us all the time
03:45:31.000that pretend to be something not ausitru not an afa member not whatever their deal is
03:45:40.880they will do that to save their job to save their marriage to win a child custody thing
03:45:49.420that they think it reflects strangely on them for to not lose friends to not be uncomfortable
03:45:57.580at thanksgiving to all of these things and i'm not joking
03:46:04.380they're very willing to renounce their faith for
03:46:11.500fairly minimal comfort these two men when their life is in the balance refuse to renounce
03:46:19.340their allegiance to the Allfather. And that's, you know, I can't imagine a larger testimony to
03:46:26.980their commitment to that loyalty. So let's, let's get to the end of the lecture here.
03:58:21.280our gods didn't spring into existence once old norse was invented or once aryan peoples migrated
03:58:32.140into scandinavia that doesn't bear out logically our gods were the gods of our race since the very
03:58:40.980dawn of our race and our uniqueness as a people they crafted us they crafted our souls
03:58:48.620the gods that we worship were the gods of our folk in the very beginning and that takes us to
03:58:56.640this Proto-Indo-European time it also means that the gods and the conceptions we have of Arian
03:59:06.580divinity are all they go back to a common source and that I mean that is inherently a valid way to
03:59:24.520do this so there's a bunch of different right ways we could have done things
03:59:32.440we could you know instead of using old norse we could do everything in german or you know medieval
03:59:38.440high german or uh we could do it in gothic we could do it in anglo-saxon there's a number of
03:59:50.200right ways to do this that could have happened another right way that could have happened
03:59:57.000is for us to try to do everything in a um reconstructed proto-injo-european nomenclature
04:00:09.080that would have been just fine and i don't um fault the validity of that i don't you know
04:00:14.840that is not bad because it's bad here are the reasons that i think what we are currently doing
04:00:21.360is better because we're midstream of doing it this way and this way is shown that it is blessed
04:00:28.560by the iser that is a huge one but even if it weren't proto-indo-european reconstruction isn't
04:00:38.400we don't have proto-indo-european sources we theorize based on commonalities amongst
04:00:50.960other better attested developments amongst aryan peoples to trace back
04:00:58.120what we assume a root religion would have looked like and i don't think that's wrong or invalid
04:01:05.020but we have access to in the most complete and the best and the best attested way
04:01:15.600Aryan religiosity as was practiced in Old Norse in a period in Scandinavia where we have literature
04:01:26.200that is the most complete most connected version of the authentic faith of our ancestors that we
04:01:37.680have and as i mentioned earlier when stuff synchronizes and all the pieces fit together
04:01:44.300cleanly it makes everything function with a exponentially potent power
04:01:50.980practicing this in the old norse nomenclature with so much almost all of our lore being written
04:02:02.080in that conception in that worldview in that cohesive nomenclature is the best and most
04:02:13.100useful route towards getting to those our shared gods it is also and i think this is very meaningful
04:02:26.080there was many opportunities for things to be successful the thing that was successful is the
04:02:33.560all father awakening the soul of our founder steve mcnallan under the name odin under the practice
04:02:44.760of ausitru in the nomenclature of the sagas and the eddas that is what took root that is what has
04:02:55.400thrived that's what is existent in a way that is moving forward and that is currently bringing
04:03:03.160worship and glory to the Aesir, to the shared gods of the Indo-European Aryan people. That's
04:03:11.780what's working. If our troth is to the Aesir, if our loyalty is to those Proto-Indo-European gods,0.96
04:03:22.620this is the thing that is bringing them temples. This is the thing that is bringing our folk home1.00
04:03:30.580to their worship. This is the thing that is working, and all Aryan peoples should get behind1.00
04:03:38.000this to glorify our gods and to bring our folk back into trough with them. But yes, as a concept,0.91
04:03:48.400no, I don't think that, you know, reconstruction of proto-Indo-European belief is wrong in any way.
04:03:54.340I think reconstruction and re-understanding of what that looked like can inform and help, you know, add richness and add dimension to our practice.
04:04:09.280Nick mentioned a book in the chat, The Wheel and Donkey, Deep Ancestors.
04:04:17.420And I think Deep Ancestors touches on a lot of those.
04:04:20.500I know it's been, you know, treated in a number of different books and different papers and such.
04:04:27.440Deep Ancestors, I think, is one that was that I read that really struck a chord with me that talks about those common roots that tie our peoples together in, you know, Aryan or Proto and European conceptualization and language.
04:07:13.640And I mean, the same thing gets said about today versus the old Norse period.
04:07:19.380And the thing is, you pick something and go with it.
04:07:22.380And this is what we've picked and what we're going with and what's taken us in a way that's successful and has brought everything together in a meaningful whole that all connects.
04:07:33.600but fundamentally and i think this is important to
04:07:36.400make a note of and i think it's especially relevant on today's episode
04:30:45.340I think there's something that happens embodied in, you know, the mystery of Nauthees to where that adds an authenticity to the energy you are putting into a magical circumstance.
04:31:02.960I think magic might be best used when you don't have anything else to do.
04:31:08.600And if you've gone the distance you can go, you pray and you use magic and you hope for the best.
04:31:14.580Again, I don't think the gods are great on wanting to necessarily answer prayer outside of you making the efforts.
04:31:26.780And I think that involves magic, but I think it also involves just general piety.
04:31:33.020I think that there are times that the gods are well disposed to want to answer calls for help.
04:31:41.900if you are doing your part to make things happen but again you know as nick says you know you do
04:31:51.460magic about good fortune go get a job so yeah if you are trying to do something magical to
04:31:57.740bring good fortune your way you should also be putting in applications and trying to do what
04:32:06.140you can do and then you should be baking the cake and then if you want to add some frosting to it
04:32:13.460okay um you know somebody put kind of in the comments I don't know how I don't know how0.98
04:32:20.480intentional it is or how not but it's a valid point it's like fat people are bad hot topic
04:32:25.940wizards I think something about that too if you're in bad shape go to the gym do the work
04:32:36.140if you need help cool but be doing the work in order to get it and i think a truth in that
04:32:44.940comment is also build your foundation to where it is solid before you try to work on the little
04:32:51.340fine tuning of of mysticism i've said before to some of the basement wizards i'm like cool
04:32:58.300how about i stand at one end of the football field you stand at the other
04:33:01.660and I start coming at you and you start casting spells
04:33:05.360and you see what happens first, you know, who's going to win?
04:33:10.240Am I going to get to you and beat you down?
04:33:12.740Or is your magic missile going to hit before I get there?
04:33:18.780And it's funny because when put in a practical real-world scenario,
04:33:23.920it doesn't work like these people suggest that it does.
04:33:29.320and the people that suggest that it does it doesn't a kind of a thing to put out there on
04:33:37.300magic people conceive that you're going to cast a spell and you're going to shoot out the hadoukens
04:33:43.840when you do the do the right little semicircle on the on the the directional pad0.99
04:33:49.640magic isn't about like shooting fireballs and like calling down lightning strikes and whatever
04:33:57.660very, very often is about very subtle things that others might not perceive, but that the person
04:34:05.400practitioners, you know, the practitioner of subtle arts will notice and can, you know,
04:34:12.380nudge something. It's not about altering the fundamentals of reality that we all understand
04:34:19.440And in a big, jarring, ridiculous way that challenges belief, it's about recognizing synchronicity and harnessing synchronicity towards a willed end.
04:34:32.560And in reality, that doesn't look like it does in a movie or something fantastical.
04:34:41.480But we've kind of it. I like this episode a lot. I like the information Chris presented.
04:34:47.300but I also really like we're talking about a topic in depth that we don't often spend a lot
04:34:56.420of time on. And I hope that our audience appreciates the subtleties of it. Again,
04:35:02.200it's not the majority of stuff we talk about, but it is important and it is relevant. And I think
04:35:08.480that there's a segment of our audience that wishes that we addressed it a little bit more.
04:35:14.520I'm glad we got an opportunity tonight. Chris, thank you for joining us. We appreciate you.
04:35:19.720Your episodes are always awesome. You prepare and do your research and you are able to,
04:35:25.800in relatively short notice, develop a mastery of a topic to present to us, which is awesome.
04:35:34.280And so thank you for being on tonight. It's a pleasure as always, sir.
04:35:39.960all right well been a good show uh as he alluded to earlier next week speckinger's fawn and i will
04:35:50.520be on to talk about and begin our study of snorries etta we will talk about the introduction
04:35:59.380and we will begin the gilf beginning so we're very excited about that and we're excited to
04:36:06.400have you guys with us. Until then, hail the Iser, hail the folk, hail the AFA. Remember, victory never sleeps.