00:13:35.020uh sure so the backstory i guess y'all saragothy texted me at 4 p.m maybe and said
00:13:47.800you want to do vns tonight and i said sure what's the subject and he took a long time getting back
00:13:52.340to me uh and said commitment truth and loyalty or something along those lines so uh setting us up
00:14:02.840But it's, in all seriousness, it's about living Al-Satru, basically.
00:14:07.960It's, as the episode is titled, I believe, living true, living with troth, living with loyalty to your folk, to the Aesir, and to yourself, really.0.81
00:14:20.520Following the ten noble virtues and being a shining beacon of our faith and of our people.
00:14:26.900And in a way, you know, when you wear the hammer, you are representing our gods to an extent.
00:14:34.180And so it's living in accordance with that, living how you should when you practice this faith.
00:14:40.200So there's a lot of places we can go with that, and I'm sure we will.
00:14:44.920But what I really want to hammer down on this one is living true with, what did I say, I had something in the title of this, anybody looking at it, but basically talking about loyalty and commitment and the various things that, I think trough loyalty commitment is what I had.
00:15:11.480And that value of either of those things writ large, that bigger loyalty, fidelity is one of our noble virtues.
00:15:27.900I think the different words that are synonyms for that quality apply to, we tend to compartmentalize this to different pieces of our lives.
00:15:39.280but the principle and the value extends beyond all of that and it's a way of being it's a way
00:15:47.280of defining oneself um so the word outs are true it breaks down and it means you know true to the
00:15:57.140icier and you'll get a lot of people that say it means belief in the icier and it does and it's
00:16:05.540come to mean in modern Icelandic, like religious, like a specifically a religious belief or
00:16:10.440religious conviction. But it goes back to the same root concept of, you know, your belief in something
00:16:22.340is you're having faith in it. Having faith in it means you have trust in it. Your belief in its
00:16:28.860in its truth isn't about verification or not it's about trustworthiness it's about reliance
00:16:38.100it's about fidelity and it goes back to our concepts of your word being your bond and
00:16:45.860making a pledge so it means you know your your pledged loyalty or your devotion to something
00:16:52.100um it is in a lot of root words and root concepts when we talk about marriages
00:17:00.120also when we talk about you know different um military or national oathing
00:17:08.100um any of that oathing process goes back to these concepts and a couple of things that i wanted to
00:17:18.640set up, and we'll answer any and all questions tonight, and we'll take it into, you know, more
00:17:22.540specific things, and that's really going to be some meat and potatoes of the show. If you guys
00:17:27.840have some good questions, we can apply it in a lot of different situations. Getting out what it is,
00:17:34.780I think we all know, but this is kind of the point of the program, and I ran into this recently with
00:17:40.720people that, you know, you learn that it's always good to refresh these concepts, because I think
00:17:47.380that all too often we see ausitru in the light of history or um and i don't say this
00:17:57.540disparagingly but in like this fantasy world where it's dragons and chain mail and swords
00:18:06.820and stuff and i don't think we often enough think about it in your day-to-day existence
00:18:13.300in interacting with your family and interacting with your employers
00:18:16.820in interacting with people that you're involved with in a number of different dealings in your life
00:18:26.180your loyalty to the gods your loyalty to those around you your adherence to your word
00:18:35.300and the oaths that you make those are things that a lot of people have trouble
00:18:44.900applying in their real life and i think that our brain is a
00:18:51.700our brain is a very elastic thing and it is never more so than when we find ourselves wanting to
00:18:59.380justify bad behavior. We are capable of seemingly infinite mental gymnastics to come up with a
00:19:08.680reason that, no, but in this case, this is the exception. Or no, no, I get you, I get you, but
00:19:14.420this is different, this is different. And I think we can say that about literally any situation that
00:19:21.980comes up to try to make ourselves feel better. So that's one of the reasons I wanted to talk
00:19:26.800about it because it's so fundamental to our worldview, to our value system, but also just to
00:19:31.920what is also true. It's being loyal and having trough with the ISEA.
00:19:41.920So that is kind of a setup and we'll take it to a number of different scenarios here,
00:19:49.720but I want to see what people are, what we've got going on or what people are
00:19:54.520asking, or if anything is moving us a direction.
00:20:04.600And we will get to some of the questions that are a little bit less directly related.
00:20:09.220We're happy to answer any of you guys' questions tonight.
00:20:11.780So, one thing that is, Trent, what, how would you express what it means to demonstrate your trough to the ISEAR?
00:20:34.960uh attending afa events is one and if you can't for whatever reason you make sure to honor the
00:20:46.360ice here in bloat uh you can have a little family stumble if need be you can simply give them
00:20:54.080offerings and speak to them uh another one a big one that i like to stress is wearing your hammer
00:21:01.120outside your shirt you know unless it's some kind of workplace safety hazard um if people
00:21:07.600ask you what it is you tell them if they ask what you were doing for christmas you can do as
00:21:14.160witness fawn suggested and say oh for yule my family did this it's being open and up front and
00:21:21.360proud of your loyalty to the ice here and also i think it is learning to use verbiage that
00:21:30.340a lot of us are learning not to use verbiage that a lot of us use when we're first starting out
00:21:35.260so uh when i first became alsatru i described myself as a norse pagan and that made me cringe
00:21:43.000a little just saying that so uh but i did that because that felt accessible i was kind of
00:21:49.680describing our faith on other people's terms and that is a mistake in my opinion uh if you do that
00:21:58.520I get why you're doing it, but I would encourage you to call it Ausatru, and then you can explain what it is from there, but that is part of it, because Norse pagan is, it doesn't fully encapsulate what all Ausatru is, whereas Ausatru does.
00:22:17.240it is loyalty to the I seer. So, and to summarize, I guess it's using correct and respectful and
00:22:25.420pious vocabulary and verbiage. It's wearing your hammer proudly. It's being also true openly.
00:22:32.960If somebody asks why you're taking a weekend off, let's say February 21st, the 23rd and go into
00:22:40.540Florida, don't, you know, don't just say, well, I'm going to see family as true as that may be.
00:22:46.000say, I'm going to a church event, or you could say, I'm going to the Alistair Folk Assembly's
00:22:51.420Charm of the Plow event at Muertzhof. You know, you can be as specific as you like, but at least
00:22:56.260tell them it is a religious function. So a couple of things. First, you can keep going,
00:23:05.140and I'm sure you would, but there's a couple of things that you mentioned that I think are
00:23:10.260really important to hit on. And it's something to realize about this episode and what we're
00:23:17.160trying to cover today. Loyalty is good. I think if we said that, everybody would be like, yay,
00:23:23.760loyalty. And we all understand that as a vagary. Certainly it is. We all know that that's something
00:23:31.000we're supposed to say is good. But putting flesh on that and making that real is something that
00:23:39.740is hard for folks and for a variety of reasons. It's hard for some people because they are
00:23:44.860cowardly by nature, but it's hard for other people because sometimes, like in a number of
00:23:50.000things Trent just said, sometimes it's just awkward or you're not used to it or you're not
00:23:55.880in the habit of it or it's easier to just, you know, you don't want to have a 15-minute
00:24:01.680conversation with this guy that asks you questions, so you just give him something
00:24:06.240and go about your business one thing that i want to stress loyalty is not merely the absence of
00:24:15.280disloyalty and i think a lot of people sometimes make that mistake they see it as a passive trade
00:24:23.520that's like well i got trends back if anything bad happens and that's the extent of loyalty
00:24:30.960loyalty isn't just responding to the call if something emergency happens it's an active
00:24:42.300promotion of another person's best interest it is a bonding of yourself and your
00:24:52.800things that you value and place value upon extending to the success of someone or something else
00:25:03.040you attach yourself to someone or something in a way to where you rise and fall with that thing
00:25:13.960and they rise and fall with you part of our trough to the iser is us representing them in midgard
00:26:01.320don't just feel okay wearing your hammer if you look around and you see crosses make sure they
00:26:06.840see your hammer if people are talking about what they are doing during their holidays and
00:26:13.160And Jamal's talking about Kwanzaa and, you know, Shmooley's talking about Hanukkah and whatever's over there talking about Christmas and whatever.
00:26:24.600Don't just keep your head down and nod and, you know, sip some eggnog.
00:26:29.920Talk about you will be proud of what you're doing.
00:26:33.800I mentioned this, I think, on the last broadcast, but there's people that.
00:26:37.820i can imagine in particular families that's going to be really offensive
00:26:47.600or in certain scenarios certain places for the vast majority of us in the united states in our
00:26:55.260day-to-day life with co-workers or people at the gym or at the store or at wherever you're going
00:27:00.760to find them it's at your worst normal outcome is they're just gonna find it odd a lot of people
00:27:13.820will find it interesting and be mildly curious other people will just make note of oh you don't
00:27:21.540celebrate christmas oh no but you see well so you don't do and you can get in the whole conversation
00:27:28.520of what that is, it opens doors, it opens a conversation, but at the bare minimum, it lets
00:27:33.480people know this is a thing, and I think all too often, something else about loyalty is it's
00:27:43.300advancing the cause in the long term with, I want to say with cost to yourself, but not
00:27:58.280always, but with the potential of cost to yourself. A big part of loyalty is you being
00:28:09.260awkward and dealing with something awkward so that it's not awkward when your children deal with it
00:28:16.300um you being uncomfortable in something that's unknown but you want to stand true and loyal to
00:28:23.900the gods then the next guy that comes through your place of business will have it a lot easier
00:28:30.700when the boss asks them something about alsatru or something about the afa
00:28:35.820you being willing to stand proudly for what you do sets a precedent and it sets a tone for those
00:28:43.860that come to follow you and it blazes a trail for them and that's part of your loyalty to both to
00:28:49.440the icer and to the austral folk assembly your proud membership of the austral folk assembly
00:28:56.520is a demonstration of your troth to the icer if you're like secret austral but you disavow and
00:29:05.280you quit the AFA because you get scared because somebody looked at you funny in the work parking
00:29:09.700lot. That's pretend. That's not loyalty. But people will tell themselves whatever they want
00:29:19.860to, to feel better about it or to thump their chest. But that's not what it's about. Another
00:29:27.160thing I wanted to mention about loyalty before I move on to some different pieces of it is
00:29:32.120let's go ahead and see where the conversation takes us
00:30:31.280Hail the AFA. Also, Aussie said, hail the gods, hail the folk, hail the AFA.
00:30:38.260Appreciate you guys. Thank you so much. Appreciate all of you guys that have been so generous to us.
00:30:45.960Looking over in the side. So we're going to front load with a number of loyalty things here. I know
00:30:54.160we have a couple of questions that are sort of unrelated, but we will absolutely go where the
00:30:59.080conversation takes us once, I don't know, once I get done ranting about loyalty. But
00:31:05.280so I've talked about your AFA membership, and you're proudly
00:31:13.980not hiding who you are and displaying the things that you believe in. But I think something that's
00:31:22.780fundamental to that that i wanted to bring up is that in order for you to be loyal to something
00:31:30.460you have to actually believe in it and i think that i've seen a change within my lifetime here
00:31:38.620in the united states and we have an international audience and an audience that's certainly
00:31:43.340nationwide in the united states and i think it works different regionally but you know i've been
00:31:49.500to uh i was talking to some of our swedish members when i was in sweden a few years back
00:31:56.620and scandinavia and much of europe has been largely secular uh for
00:32:07.900four generations now or so since you know
00:32:11.500i don't know like 1920s or so you have a big movement away from religiosity in europe
00:32:21.420you didn't have that in the united states until relatively recently um
00:32:27.820i'm i was born in 1981 and when i was coming up and i was in alaska so in the south it was
00:32:33.580much more than this but certainly when i where i was you know about half the kids were church going
00:32:39.260kids you had a number of the other half that wasn't that would still go to church on uh on
00:32:46.060like holidays and were you know in some way religious but you had about half that were regular
00:32:54.460practitioners of their faith and you know typically where i was it was some kind of a
00:33:00.380protestant christianity but that was you know at least once a week if not more that was what they
00:33:06.860did it was a big part of their life it was a big part of part of things i don't think we have the
00:33:12.060same demographic that finds the out the the afa now we get a lot of people that don't have any
00:33:21.340connection with practicing religion so it doesn't come as easily to them the idea of piety of
00:33:30.380belief in divinities and i don't say this to say that they're doing anything dishonestly i don't
00:33:36.140think it's that at all i just think it takes a while for that to get ingrained in their habits
00:33:41.420and the way they conceive the world um have you noticed that trent uh yeah for sure so uh
00:33:53.020you mentioned you were born in 1981 i was born in 2009 just kidding 1997 and uh you know here in
00:34:00.140in georgia yeah okay whatever um ruined my whole train of thought anyway i'm in georgia which is
00:34:12.620the bible belt uh my granny east that many of you have heard me hail at stumble was an old school
00:34:18.040southern baptist i remember she wouldn't let me watch pokemon because she thought it was devil
00:34:22.080worship somehow for example that's how religious the this whole area was until maybe uh maybe
00:34:29.96015 years ago, 20 or so, everybody pretty much here went to church. They didn't all like it.
00:34:36.620They weren't all super devout, of course, but they all went to church. And even still, there's
00:34:42.220many people here consider themselves like a proud Christian, and it's not a big part of
00:34:49.100their personality like Alcetru is for myself or the Altera Gothi or many of you. But it was still
00:34:55.860a thing they at least claimed proudly uh and now it's shifting even here it's shifting more
00:35:02.900you know away from that but it's certainly not as bad as it probably is in california or
00:35:10.180or sweden as you mentioned it uh that and i was talking to a new swedish member about this kind
00:35:19.180the other day he um he sort of described it as a worship of materialism almost like loyalty
00:35:27.420doesn't need to exist in this materialistic worldview because you have objects you have
00:35:36.420things you have a nice tv or whatever and the tv will tell you what to think and so you don't need
00:35:41.680to have loyalty to anything because it's all right there for you you know it
00:35:46.600like i said lost my train of thought i don't remember where exactly i was going with it
00:35:53.380but it's this materialism we're moving towards essentially is what's a big part of what's
00:36:00.420killing the idea of loyalty to something something more uh sacred rather than profane
00:36:07.540we're kind of attaching ourselves more to the the mundane rather than the cosmic
00:36:11.800Heck, something that I've noticed about people of faith, and I think that people on our side tend to, I don't know, we get nasty with the Christians over certain things, and sometimes I don't think those are often necessarily fair.
00:36:32.060A lot of people think that Christians behave piously because of a fear of punishment, fear of hell, fear of damnation.1.00
00:36:43.400I think that there was a time that that was true.
00:36:48.280I don't, and I'm sure this depends on the individual and on their church and their particular doctrine as it revolves around those things.
00:36:58.920But what I have seen much more often is genuine people that believe that their God is aware of their behavior, of their actions, of what they're doing, and they're embarrassed if they do something that their God would disapprove of and look down on.
00:37:23.760they feel guilty they feel bad they feel you know they don't want to let their god down because they
00:37:30.400are genuinely pious and i think that piety is misplaced but i i certainly have a respect for
00:37:38.640the thought process and for the genuineness of that expression of that existence
00:37:45.200I feel that Ausatruar would be much better served if we internalized a similar wanting to make our gods proud of us and considering what they think of, you know, decisions we make and actions we take.
00:38:06.980And I know all of that should go without saying, but I've asked this to people.
00:38:12.460They'll give me some excuse about something that sounds kind of weak.
00:38:45.280And I think that's the case with a lot of people.
00:38:50.560I think a lot of us want to believe in the gods.
00:38:56.080I think a lot of us claim to believe in the gods and do conceptually.
00:39:01.220But I think far too few of us genuinely think about it in very real terms, and not out of a sense of fear of punishment, but of you want your gods to be proud of you.
00:39:21.540and you want them to, you know, place value in your manhood or not.
00:39:37.940Loyalty is a virtue that goes back to the very birth of our folk
00:39:43.260and in all branches of our faith is one of the most celebrated core aspects of manhood.
00:39:51.540which, you know, virtue is a reference to.
00:40:00.200It's a core quality of what defines your value as a man.
00:40:10.700And so that brings me to a couple of different ways to think of loyalty.
00:40:14.800Loyalty to our gods is certainly extremely important and paramount.
00:40:20.040And obviously, you know, a heavy focus of a religious show like this, but loyalty to, you know, loyalty to your comrades, loyalty to people you've made an oath to, loyalty to, you know, depends on the context in a modern sense.
00:40:42.600One thing I think we all kind of see as self-evident. Society still has institutions that require oaths. Most of the time, those oaths tend to be lip service, unless you want to use it as a chest-thumping thing when you're doing something edgy.
00:41:02.540uh i've seen a lot of people that i mean we've all seen a lot of politicians no matter where
00:41:09.400you find yourself politically that take oaths to do certain things and those oaths don't mean
00:41:17.720anything those oaths are literally like the stuff they give you on a phone contract that's 14 pages
00:41:22.860long or whatever that you don't look at you just click the yes box i've seen that a lot with
00:41:28.940military oaths. I've seen that with any of those governing oaths. You see that with most
00:41:39.420oaths that people take nowadays. That's why we have such a struggle to re-infuse value
00:41:48.660into the oathing process. Something I wanted to, and I want to extend this also to one of
00:41:57.620most common oaths that i think most people experience in their life and that's that's
00:42:02.580wedding vows um because loyalty has a lot to do with that too and not just in terms of
00:42:11.780sexual fidelity it has a lot more than just that certainly that's involved in it
00:42:18.020it. But being a supportive spouse that is advocating for the best interest of your
00:42:27.600partner is hugely important. It's a fundamental aspect of the loyalty that's sworn between
00:42:36.440husband and wife, but it's something that is very often disregarded. We just focus solely on
00:42:42.760are you flirting with other dudes or are you sleeping with other dudes but it's not
00:42:48.860man do you have my back do you support me on things in public do you make sure I look good
00:42:55.040in public am I making sure you look good if you have something that's important to you am I making
00:42:59.820sure I show up and you know make you look like a million bucks are you doing that for me those
00:43:07.720things are extremely important part of that relationship. And I think that sometimes we
00:43:13.460don't think about loyalty in broad terms. We start thinking about it in very finite,
00:43:19.500very specific terms that are more legalistic. One of the things that's really important about
00:43:27.980oaths in our society isn't just the letter of the oath. It's the point of it. It's the
00:43:39.740concept. It's the spirit of it. It's not... There are other groups of people that are
00:43:49.860very, very big on finite minutiae and finding loopholes and whatever else, it's not the
00:44:00.920point of loyalty in an out-of-true context.
00:44:04.160Loyalty in an out-of-true context is a full-throated, open-hearted acceptance of something open-handed
00:44:16.000I mean, it's different if it's a compelled oath by your enemies and you're trying to find a way to get out of it because they're going to shoot you if you don't take an oath.
00:44:33.640Our nobility is what has defined our race.
00:44:38.120To be worthy of that, you enter into something without deviousness in your soul.
00:44:44.180You enter into something open handed. It's something when a variety of different kind of folk in the Mediterranean, I was told this once by some Danish friends of ours.
00:44:59.120there's a thing and i forget the word in danish but it translated into like blue eyedness
00:45:08.240like people in the mediterranean at different tourist locations would laugh
00:45:13.840at scandinavian tourists blue eyedness meaning that they were gullible you could lie to them0.54
00:45:20.700and they would believe you because it's so unconscionable to them that you would try to
00:45:27.620cheat them or swindle them or lie to them when you're having an exchange it's just not in them
00:45:33.680to be devious and they mean it as an insult but i find it as you know kind of a beautiful thing
00:45:40.320about our folk you know no don't be stupid keep your head on a swivel and look out especially
00:45:45.580when you're you know on the road traveling away from your folk but that genuineness and
00:45:53.960And adhering to your oath wholeheartedly and because it's something you committed to doing as opposed to just trying to nitpick the exactitude of when you can get out is a real fundamental difference between being a noble person and being somebody who's grimy and beneath the dignity of our folk.
00:46:20.080and i wanted to you know i'm throwing a lot of things out there we'll see if there's questions
00:46:25.580or comments on it if there are we'll get to them if not we'll go wherever it goes but i think some
00:46:30.080of this is worth worth saying and worth mentioning and the other thing that i wanted to say to it
00:46:57.100Yeah, so the point of the oath, the point of any oath,
00:47:10.000is a commitment to do something even when you don't want to you don't need oaths if everything
00:47:24.260is you know rainbows and unicorns all the time that's not the point something that we you know
00:47:33.800have certainly dealt with in our time in the Astro Folk Assembly
00:47:39.140is people who, you know, are super into thumping their chest1.00
00:47:43.860and pretending they're warriors and they take these oaths
00:47:46.860and then the second they don't like something,
00:47:49.100the second they're grumpy at somebody else in the AFA,
00:47:51.840then all of a sudden they want to be released from their oath.
00:47:55.760No, the whole reason you took an oath is so we could count on you
00:47:59.920when times were tough so we could count on you when there were people that you got mad at when
00:48:07.640you're in your feelings or when we're in our feelings or when whatever the point of the oath
00:48:13.200is you push through those things because you gave your word and you made a commitment and that's
00:48:19.760what when we find our folk being successful and winning you also find people that are true to
00:48:29.420their word and that stand by their oaths and that's a defining characteristic when our folk
00:48:35.760are faltering when we find failure when we find disillusion and down you know downturning of our
00:48:44.500fortunes you can look around and you can almost always see a direct correlation to people not
00:48:50.500being true to their word not honoring their commitments not living up to their oaths not
00:48:56.480living true. So you don't need oaths for the good times. You celebrate oaths in the good times,
00:49:03.100but the point of the oath is so you stand strong even in strife and in turmoil and when things
00:49:09.520have a cost. Another thing I want to mention too, I know I said I'd move on to something else and
00:49:13.540move on a second, but one huge aspect of oath, loyalty, commitment, and troth is that it comes
00:49:26.020at a cost. It means nothing if it costs you zero. It's so easy to promise. So I'm going
00:49:35.680to get on something else here in a second, but it's so easy to commit to all kinds of
00:49:42.300things when there's no cost, when it's not real, when there's no conflict in front of
00:49:46.580you that's not the point the point of oaths and they're rich in warrior aristocracy and
00:50:00.620in life or death situation is so that you know when there is a cost this person is willing to
00:50:09.180pay that cost or risk that cost to fulfill their end of the bargain that agreement is what makes
00:50:18.460you willing to do the same when that breaks down and is one-sided it's really unfortunate
00:50:24.940bad things happen but it's very easy to take oaths when there's no consequence
00:50:31.020and it's very easy seemingly for our folk in this day and age to abandon oaths the second
00:50:39.420there's a consequence in their place of business in their relationship in their family in
00:50:47.900dealing with other people that displayed microaggressions towards them um very small
00:50:56.700things but that's the whole point is to stand against consequence against threat of violence
00:51:09.540against threat of threat of any kind but threat up until you know violence and death our people
00:51:17.620took oaths to stand in the shield wall and not break to stand and defend you know their comrades
00:51:24.580or their king or their chief or whatever against consequence those bonds those fuse that were
00:51:33.620were woven together through oathing is what kept the line steady and kept people safe
00:51:40.620it's very easy when one person breaks their oath breaks their loyalty and runs
00:51:46.440all people do the same i'd like to kind of close this you know my rant off with
00:51:54.200Um, we all like to get, I don't know, interested, entertained, or maybe even, you know, edified in a different way about the portion in Tacitus where he talks about Bogstonka.0.88
00:52:10.380And I think that we're familiar because it is interesting in this day and age with some of the mental illness going around to note that Tacitus mentioned the tribes would, they would bog stomp homosexuals.
00:52:29.140But there was two groups of people that they would stomp into the bog as homosexuals and it was shirkers or cowards who ran in the face of the enemy.
00:52:40.380the reason they did it wasn't a cruelty.0.95
00:52:45.060There was other ways to execute people.
00:52:50.060The idea was they wanted to stomp them into the bog0.99
00:52:53.700so that they disappeared from the sight of the folk
00:53:40.320I want to go over to the side and see what folks are saying, thinking, or doing, if we
00:53:44.980have any oath stuff, or if they just want us to talk about other things.
00:54:01.720So while you look at the questions, I wanted to mention that blue eyedness thing. Tacitus mentions that in Germania, actually. He doesn't call it that, of course. But there's a section where he goes into how the Germans or Germanic peoples, they didn't even realize that usury was a thing.
00:54:24.400they always gave their their kin the benefit of the doubt and uh it's just really cool that that
00:54:32.240nobility and that good-naturedness and you know tassus was also sort of
00:54:38.400painting us with this kind of noble savage look like oh they're so silly for not being
00:54:44.420suspicious of each other thing but even back then we were known for being so good-natured and
00:54:53.520and joyous in a way and trusting maybe to a fault but it it made for a high trust society and a lot
00:55:02.580of a lot of frith we conceive of the world through empathy at the most fundamental level we
00:55:11.000look to other living things and we project a bit of how we see the world onto them because it's
00:55:19.480the only way we really know how to how to feel that out without further getting to know them
00:55:24.780or their communication so our first instinct is to assume that this other person we're dealing
00:55:30.980with must be like us in some way you know man if i if someone did this to me it'd make me really
00:55:38.880sad so i'm not going to do that to them and it sounds childish but it is it's childish in its
00:55:44.640simplicity. It's how, as children, we learn. It's been really cool. Those of you who are parents
00:55:52.000know this. Those of you who aren't think that you know this, but you will know it in a whole
00:55:56.700different way when you are. It's cool to watch Aubrey grow up and learn these things. Just
00:56:05.260learn how she interacts with our cats and then how she interacts with other kids or how she
00:56:12.740interacts with me or her mom, watching her learn social interactions and what to pick up on and
00:56:21.000how to notice these things, it's instructive because I think on our basic level, that's how
00:56:28.360we start. Now, by the time we're my age, you know, by the time we're any of our age that are probably
00:56:35.200up at this hour watching this, we've got plenty of preconceptions, some good, some bad. We've got
00:56:42.420a lot of learned experience that we factor in. We notice commonalities between certain
00:56:48.020kinds of people and certain kinds of situations, and we learn to look out for certain things.
00:56:55.300But the fundamental, it's nice to, the idea of striving for, at least amongst our folk in our
00:57:02.220inning guard, that it doesn't occur to us that people would be dealing dishonestly with us or
00:57:09.320would be cheating us or acting against us because why would they there this is my brother this is
00:57:14.920my sister this is someone within our our family writ large within you know within our folk within
00:57:22.460our inner yard that's a beautiful thing and it's something we should really strive for and you know
00:57:28.340I don't I'm not advising anybody to be blind to treachery but it's a really nice goal to get back
00:57:38.480to a place where treachery is so uncommon amongst our people that it is genuinely surprising.
00:57:46.380So a couple of things and one question, obviously standing up for something and supporting it,
00:57:55.060donating, being a member is a form of loyalty and commitment, but how is that elevated and
00:58:00.160advanced through activity and involvement? If putting your name to something and your dollar
00:58:05.200is important. Where does your time, presence, and work fit in?
00:58:18.000Well, that's kind of something I wanted to touch on if I was just sort of giving the floor
00:58:21.880in general to rant, is yeah, there is a difference between simply being a supporter of something or
00:58:31.880saying, yeah, I've got your back. And then actually having that person's back and actually
00:58:36.820doing those things. Uh, and to kind of tie it into oaths, maybe this is relevant, or maybe I'm just
00:58:45.040talking either way. It's, it's a good program, right? Um, our folk builders in Gothar, maybe the
00:58:53.380Witten, I'm not sure. At least the folk builders in Gothar take oaths, uh, for that, those stations.
00:58:58.540and it's in my opinion it's not sticking to the oath if all you do is not mess up to be sticking
00:59:09.180to that oath you have to do the things you're going to say you're going to do the folk builders
00:59:14.300are uh tasked with for example being a beacon to guide the folk home you have to actively be
00:59:20.720folk building and doing things that assist with folk building to be following that oath uh the
00:59:26.320gothar uh i'm gonna be honest i don't remember the phrase i was going to use for the gothar oath as
00:59:33.920well as i did the folk builder oath but it's similar we guide the folk we have to actively
00:59:39.740be engaged in doing gothar things and helping run the afa and helping the folk builders run the afa
00:59:48.340and assisting the ulterior gothi and the witten taking directives etc if we're just you know
00:59:54.660wearing the the cool rhido ring and putting on a stole occasionally that's that alone is not
01:00:04.140sticking to the oath and it's it that should be kind of an answer to the question i guess is
01:00:12.960just saying you support something and you know not disavowing that thing or doing anything
01:00:21.620offensive to that thing isn't it's not the same as having skin in the game when you actually put
01:00:29.620effort and time blood sweat and tears into something you're giving of yourself to that
01:00:35.240thing that's that's a lot more it's a lot heavier it it means more not that we don't appreciate the
01:00:42.740people who support us you know with donations and and uh you know getting in twitter arguments on
01:00:49.540our behalf or whatever but the people who are here that are doing things that show up to the
01:00:55.060hof that help with work days of the hof that the you know all of our awesome folk builders and go
01:01:00.900thar they're they're going to be appreciated a little bit more because they're here they're
01:01:06.500right here now doing things for us and for the icr most importantly so that's the difference
01:01:14.020so i'm going to touch on two things that you said in there that i think are
01:01:19.540worth, you know, really worth noting is
01:01:23.120it's about doing active stuff. Well, I guess two things came to mind in what you're saying.
01:01:34.680It's not just not betraying the gods or not betraying the AFA or not betraying
01:01:40.500whoever you're oath to. It's also, you know, actively living up to the oath, actively doing
01:01:47.120your part um you know there's stuff that trent said about contributing to the afa as far as
01:01:54.000being an active participant being involved coming out to things helping out lending a hand
01:02:00.080all of those things are a big part of displaying your loyalty to the icer and to the afa
01:02:05.760are greatly appreciative of it everyone who's donated tonight that is an expression of trough
01:02:11.440to the afa and the icer and it's very much appreciated what i think and again i think
01:02:18.640that when people say this it is meant in the very best way from the very best place
01:02:25.200and i appreciate and i appreciate it a thought just came to me and i appreciate it
01:02:34.480but this is part of working with our mindset and being
01:02:41.440got a sneeze that's trying to come that just won't anyways part of changing our mindset
01:02:47.580is the idea of supporting uh being support supportive supporting the afa with whatever
01:02:54.420there's a lot of people that well you know i'm really far away and i can't go to anything and
01:03:00.800so i don't want to be a member and i'm not going to contribute and i'm not going to participate
01:03:04.740but but i support you guys all the way no you you literally don't you literally don't support
01:03:11.420us at all you wish us well and that's really nice but words have meaning and i think it's important to
01:03:22.140think about what that means and be intentional in what we say and this factors in with the
01:03:26.460oaths that we take and the things that we do commit to do we mean that or is it just something
01:03:31.980nice to say if you really mean it then you need to act like it if you don't mean it then don't say
01:03:38.140it find something else but i think this is part of taking ourselves seriously that has often
01:03:46.140been degraded just like the oaths i mentioned that people treat like they're the user agreements
01:03:50.700on stuff that are 65 pages long and you don't read them we've gotten that way with those two
01:03:57.260and i want to i want to move away from that the other thing is part of your trough to the icer
01:04:08.140is actively raising your children to be Ausatru.
01:04:14.220This has gotten so much better than it was at one point in time.1.00
01:04:18.280But there was a period of time where I think there was a lot of families that were mixed religion.0.81
01:04:24.140You know, the husband at the time, more often than not, it was the husband who was Ausatru and the wife was something else.
01:04:33.700be that some kind of Christian, some kind of Wiccan, some kind of, you know, maybe an atheist.
01:04:42.160But one of the biggest jobs we have as parents is raising our children,
01:04:50.180teaching them the things that we believe to be true and right.
01:04:53.980And, you know, it's become politically incorrect or inappropriate for us to try to instill our values into our children.
01:05:07.800But that's one of our most fundamental jobs as parents is to, you know, you should.
01:05:17.720It's funny because we've developed a whole lexicon of making words mean different things.
01:05:23.020we've got words that we've discovered me or we've turned into bad words and words that we haven't
01:05:29.180you know indoctrinate is bad now but it didn't used to be um you should be trying to quote unquote
01:05:37.340force your values on your children that's your job as a parent own that they shouldn't be your
01:05:45.100values if you don't wholeheartedly believe them to be right and if you wholeheartedly believe them
01:05:50.300to be right you should want your children to learn them and and make those a fundamental
01:05:55.500part of who they are that's our job but that's part of that loyalty and it's also one of those
01:06:01.020things that you know again in the mixed marriage situation that i mentioned before that generation0.99
01:06:07.740so we would have a generation of people announce the truth that would well you know glad no religion
01:06:12.380was forced on me when i was a kid i'll you know let my kids decide when they're old enough
01:06:16.620well i hope your children make the right choice when they're old enough but by doing that you've
01:06:23.500abdicated your fundamental responsibility as a parent and i think that's damaging to our kids
01:06:31.820and uh i'm glad that that's not the way that we see it uh nearly as much anymore in the afa of
01:06:39.740people i've spoken to so another thing was not wanting to do the right thing because
01:06:47.580you don't want to get in an argument with your spouse i think we all
01:06:55.020and i you know ladies i'm sure you probably have some version of this or some way this intersects
01:07:02.060you but gentlemen we all know that sometimes man it's just easier to just not and if they're gonna
01:07:09.020you know nag at us or we're gonna have to deal with some argument we don't want to deal with
01:07:13.740that's just whatever do whatever you want i think everybody feels that impulse from time to time
01:07:23.100but no if it's important enough if it's something you believe in if it's part of your core values
01:07:28.060and it involves your loyalty to our gods or to anything for that matter loyalty is something
01:07:34.780worth having a rough evening over it's worth you know going through the struggle to make sure
01:07:44.780you and your family live true to our gods um but i wanted to make sure to mention that i
01:07:50.860think it's going to feed into our next question here ah you touched on this a bit last week or
01:07:57.180the week before about the age old talk about family first i'm using the air quotes but the
01:08:02.380camera's not wide enough to pick them up and someone running away from something when we
01:08:07.500when the going gets tough but i was wondering if you could expand on that some more
01:08:11.580i had some thoughts and i figured you could bounce off that in my mind
01:08:16.540uh it would be that also true family and folk are not distinct things
01:08:23.660uh i'll add self to that i would say there's no real strata there when someone says
01:08:28.860something silly like family first. So a lot of people, you know what, I will expand on all those
01:08:38.060things. Trent, I don't know if you heard previous episodes or whatever, but just based on that
01:08:45.960commentary or question, what are your thoughts? I don't recall that part of a previous episode,
01:08:52.040I certainly listen to it. As far as, you know, saying family first, there's that comes with caveats, you know, I mean, not to sound cheesy, but I wholeheartedly mean this.
01:09:07.900actually more to that question in comment by the way keep reading okay there's a second part
01:09:14.460or anything uh of that thought stuff we hear all the time that's backwards or rather in an imbalance
01:09:24.460um yeah there's lots of the thoughts so yeah there's like four lines of this
01:09:29.900answer that first part first we'll get to the we'll get to the other chunks here in a second
01:09:33.980all right so uh i mean it wholeheartedly when i say the afa is my family it has been um
01:09:42.220some of you may be aware about six years ago some uh obese bisexual domestic terrorists in atlanta0.51
01:09:51.820um said mean words about me and so a lot of my blood family sided with the mentally ill obese0.87
01:09:59.820blue haired domestic terrorists rather than me but the afa you know naturally sided with me
01:10:07.420rather than against me and so yeah family first usually but you know if um my sister
01:10:19.660you know were to say you can't be also true anymore it's a bad example for my son you know
01:10:26.140You know, my nephew, I would have to say, well, you know, I'm not going to do that.
01:10:32.020Sorry. Right. It's so, yeah, the family first thing is there's certainly a lot of truth to it, but there has to be exceptions.
01:10:39.820There has to be limits. That's all I got on that first chunk of that question.
01:10:46.040I guess you're going to read the rest of it. I can go to more detail. I'll read the rest of it in a second.
01:10:50.560I want to I want to I want to contextualize the family first thing.
01:10:56.140because I'm no part of the AFA doesn't think family is super important. Of course we do.
01:11:07.220But I reject the false dichotomy of that. We live in a age where our folk is deeply,
01:11:15.080deeply suffering of soul sickness. So we're thrust in these strange and unnatural choices
01:11:23.480that people make but i think people you know family extends you mentioned if you know i think
01:11:33.300you said your sister tried to get you to not be afa because they didn't want what it would do to
01:11:40.100your son or her nephew in that example your son is just as much your family as your sister is
01:11:48.680So I don't think that's a family first struggle there.
01:11:52.760I think, unfortunately, that strife amongst kinsmen, which is one of the biggest curses and worst things amongst our folk.
01:12:00.800Ideally, your family extends to your ancestors and your descendants, and not just those that are, you know, being jerks to you in the here and now.
01:12:09.300But also, if the narrow view of family first is, well, I can't do anything that would hurt my ability to provide or my ability to raise my family or whatever, we would never have men in the world do anything that moves the needle on any of the things that are very important in our history.
01:12:37.720no men would ever go to war over anything unless somebody's breaking into your house
01:12:43.480because if you overextend that dichotomy well you know i gotta stay here and raise my kids i gotta
01:12:49.480stay here and take care of my wife that would eliminate most anybody doing anything that
01:12:56.520involves exploring or doing anything that has an element of risk or an element of adventure to it
01:13:04.520but when we look at things that way we don't look at the at the benefit to our families
01:13:10.120when we do certain things that are for the bigger causes in the world they benefit our family in
01:13:17.560less direct ways that are just as important my argument here is without a true your who you are0.78
01:13:26.360Your family, your friendships, your life, and your relationship to the Aesir should all be congruent and syncretic and work together and be in harmony.
01:13:42.840If you ever have to choose between the gods and your family, that causes the problem.
01:13:54.780You should see where the problem is at that point because they should all work together.
01:14:00.800Being a champion for our gods and for our AFA and our folk should benefit your family and does in countless ways.
01:14:12.560It benefits and strengthens your family's hymenia.
01:14:15.200It wins favor from our gods towards not just you, but those associated with you.
01:14:20.780One of the biggest things about building reputation, and this is one of the other, like our topic tonight is literally endless because it's the root of so many things.
01:14:31.720Reputation is largely based on your ability to be loyal or not be loyal.
01:14:37.660That's a fundamental to most reputation things.
01:14:41.100There's a skill reputation, but the character reputation, you being a person who's true to their word, you being somebody who's trustworthy, that meant everything.
01:14:51.520If you win fame for standing up and being loyal to our folk and our gods, the gods will bless you and your family for that.
01:15:01.740And it's not as easy to see or to add into a checkbook, but it's real and it's fundamental and it's touched my family in very, very many ways.
01:15:11.100So that's a thing that should never be. That's never a real thing. And if you feel like it is, it's not. You're just not really looking at it through the right lens.
01:15:23.220There's things situationally, obviously, like, oh, man, I need to go to the Hoff and do something. Oh, my child broke their arm. I need to take them to the hospital.
01:15:32.260clearly one's an emergency and one's not like there's common sense but to throw that out and
01:15:39.380to to hide behind that as an excuse is is ignoble most times now we live in a messed up world and
01:15:46.140there may be something to where competing values are pitted against each other but
01:15:51.820we should strive to live lives where that imbalance is not possible um so more parts of the question
01:17:19.040uh jail doxing losing family friends societal shunning any of that or none of that maybe
01:17:26.980nothing bad happens but really should we can we call ourselves also true if we wouldn't be willing
01:17:33.460to be that hero and make that leap and be that loyal even through such a sacrifice
01:17:39.860trip uh i would argue uh and i am an authority on alicea true to an extent so i would say no
01:17:50.300you can't call yourself alicea true if you're not willing to make that sacrifice uh and speaking
01:17:55.240from experience i have been doxxed i have lost family i have lost uh hell my old excuse my
01:18:00.920language my uh oldest friends just left the afa because they got like bored of it i guess uh and
01:18:07.320And so, you know, it's I'm not going to be like, well, you know, my friends got tired of this, so I'm going to be tired of it, too, and go hang out with them and not be out of true anymore.
01:18:21.200No, you can't be out of true and be willing to give it up for mundane hardships.
01:18:27.020uh, like the old Harry Goethe said, you know, standing by your faith and the I seer doesn't
01:18:32.480always, you know, build up your savings account, uh, if ever, but it's, it's not about that. It's
01:18:40.680more than that. It kind of goes back to how I was speaking with that Swedish member about
01:18:44.840materialism, replacing faith. Uh, what's more important, you know, obviously you need to put
01:18:51.580food on the table and whatnot but i i don't know i think part of it you know like the last episode
01:18:59.640of this i was on we kind of talked about like tv shows and stuff we watched where we looked up
01:19:07.180the characters because they were manly and loyal and whatnot and i don't know i guess just everything
01:19:13.680all the media i've consumed growing up the heroes were always loyal and steadfast and
01:19:20.840strong even to their deaths because they believed in whatever the show was about right
01:19:27.260so i've always wanted to be that kind of guy and unfortunately or fortunately i guess from
01:19:33.860your outlook we do live in uh it's called the wolf age right we live in this age of cowardice
01:19:41.120largely people are cowardly people can be lazy and it gives us this opportunity to truly be
01:19:49.180Alcatru by simply being Alcatru and remaining Alcatru, keeping that loyalty to the Aesir in
01:19:57.680the face of real hardship, of course, or even silly, fake child's play hardship. It gives us0.56
01:20:07.160the chance to be those heroes that we read about to a lesser extent. Nobody's going to force a
01:20:13.560snake down my throat with a hot poker like uh round the strong of course but i get to i get
01:20:19.860the opportunity every day to wear my hammer and my go thaw ring and my arm ring and all that and
01:20:27.960be openly also true and remain also true so i think if you don't do those things
01:20:35.640you need to reevaluate what you're doing or what you're not doing and then call yourself
01:20:42.380house is true i think a couple of decades earlier rob the strong didn't think anybody would do that
01:20:48.220either um and and that is super easy to say it is very hard to give your life for alsa true
01:21:04.300i get that a lot of these things are hard but a lot of them are very real and they build upon one
01:21:09.260It's not an unreasonable expectation for our gods to want someone who worships them to be willing to be proud of being Alcitru in the face of their family wagging fingers at them and, you know, criticizing them for breaking with Christianity.
01:21:33.940that doesn't seem like too high of a price to pay but you'd be surprised how many people shrink from
01:21:40.600that um your boss asking you uncomfortable questions shouldn't be enough to make you
01:21:50.100give up a sincerely held belief if we look at other people of faith in the world
01:21:55.700and and i i mentioned this earlier i think a lot of people don't come to this from a religious
01:22:01.040background so they don't know how to be pious or they don't know how what that looks like because
01:22:06.720they haven't seen that in their life it's not something that has ever been real to them in their
01:22:12.240lived experience but it's something that they want to be and that's that's great i everybody
01:22:20.240starts somewhere one of the things is looking at how other people of faith how seriously they take
01:22:26.240it um and you don't need to look to christianity or to other things that do and to their credit
01:22:33.040have their own martyrs that are willing to you know suffer abuse and death and very bad things
01:22:43.440to still stay loyal to their to their god we have many of those heroes ourselves that were persecuted
01:22:51.120unto death for their faith in Ausatru.
01:23:20.180Nobody wants to sign up to be the one to take all these hits.
01:23:25.840But you should be loyal enough to risk that if the other option is denying your gods and turning your back on them.0.98
01:23:36.800You should be willing to take that risk to say, no, I'm proud of the Isir.0.92
01:23:42.220I'm proud of the Austro-Folk assembly.0.99
01:23:44.300You know, this is who I am and consequences be damned.
01:23:50.180And you'd be surprised how many people do and turn out just fine.
01:23:55.840And by doing so, build a reputation as people of character and build the hymenia and the strength and the reputation of the Austro-Folk Assembly and of Austro-Trump.
01:24:08.300So, yeah, there's a lot of people that don't turn and run that turn out just fine.
01:24:13.000If you do it just right, you get added to the AFA's Wikipedia page. Fun fact.
01:24:20.180there you go there you have it um from the face of hate himself
01:24:27.840ah all right so what else we got here we got a number of questions we're going to pop back
01:24:35.680to the beginning and kind of bounce around a little bit here mix it up as it were uh sierra
01:24:41.360says i'll tell you go the and go the east how will each of you honor around the strong on his
01:24:47.900Remembrance Day tomorrow. Thank you for reminding everybody of that. If anybody is unaware, tomorrow
01:24:54.480is Roud the Strong's Day of Remembrance. We referenced him. Oh, I read it wrong. My fault.
01:25:04.800I'm sorry, Sarah. I hope Sierra, wherever she is, will be honoring Roud the Strong.
01:25:10.300um trent i think you wrote our article on route that we have on the website can you tell folks
01:25:20.540a little bit about him about his situation and then you know anything special you will be doing
01:25:26.320in his honor tomorrow yes so route the strong was a norwegian uh it says he was a
01:25:36.760I think they say like sacrificial priest or something is how it was worded.
01:25:53.040Blow priest blow gothi something, but he was a gothi.
01:25:57.220He was a, a warrior and he was a seafarer in,
01:26:01.760I think it was the turn of the century between the 10th and 11th century.
01:26:06.580So end of the 900s, start of the thousands, 10 hundreds, whatever you want to call it.
01:26:11.820And he, like many Alcetruer of the time, ran afoul of Olaf Trigvason, who is a recurring villain in our Days of Remembrance stories from that time period.
01:26:25.040He found out that Raoul was still Alcetru and that his men were still Alcetru.0.61
01:26:30.900And so, you know, he tried just speaking to Raoul about it through emissaries, I assume, messengers and whatnot, saying, you know, hey, you need to become Christian.
01:26:43.860You know, if you do, I'll be your best friend.
01:26:46.680You'll trade with Charlemagne and or his empire and all that make all these riches or whatever.
01:26:55.040And Raoul the Strong did not do that, of course.
01:26:58.140He just kind of ignored him, I assume.
01:26:59.680at some point uh they end up in a naval battle and so round the strong also had a reputation
01:27:09.420for being a wizard is the word used which is not something you see in a lot of alcatruce stuff
01:27:14.820but he was known as being a wizard because he was able to uh sail against the wind which is a bit
01:27:21.060more common now but at the time in that part of europe it was pretty unheard of and in this naval
01:27:27.060battle, he was able to take his extremely large ship and escape from Olaf Tryggvason and hide
01:27:34.940out for a bit. But eventually Olaf and his men found where he was hiding. They snuck in and
01:27:43.080captured him and his men. And Olaf gave him one last chance. He said, you know, we will be best
01:27:49.840friends. We'll be, you know, I'll give you all these fabulous cash and prizes if you just convert
01:27:55.400to worshiping this Jewish guy from a thousand years ago, and Raoul refused. He did not break0.85
01:28:05.940his loyalty to the Iser because he truly believed in them, and he was truly loyal to them.
01:28:11.160And so, as I referenced earlier, Olaf had a snake chase down Raoul's throat with a hot poker,
01:28:19.280And the snake, upon realizing it was inside of a guy, it chewed its way out through a side and killed Raoul slowly and, you know, gruesomely.
01:28:28.640And all of Raoul's men either died a similar death or converted at the point of a sword.
01:28:35.960As far as what I will be doing to remember him tomorrow, I will tell my Christian co-workers about him because they like these stories and I get to kind of plant those seeds.
01:28:52.920I'll tell it better than I did just now, though.
01:37:30.160And I think a lot of people in more esoteric practices think that's the way to ascension, and perhaps that does help you ascend in a way.
01:37:38.920But the ascension that we're talking about here is the gods recognizing you and pulling you up and allowing you to become more than you are and pulling you up closer to them.
01:37:50.020And I think you earn that when you get their favor, ultimately, and I think it's impious of me to have waited this long to mention this aspect of it.
01:37:58.400Fundamentally, I think what you do to earn ascension is that you earn the goodwill of the ISEER.
01:38:05.800It's a decision they make to pull you up or not, and they can make that on whatever criteria they choose.
01:38:13.880These are the things so far that have made the choices of who's been elevated self-evident to myself
01:38:21.540and have put them on the Ousitru Folk Assemblies calendar with their Days of Remembrance, though.
01:38:43.380So Rachel asks, question, how does the AFA view the priestly role of marriage counseling?
01:38:50.380Where do you draw wisdom to guide couples through difficulties?
01:38:56.360Trent, do you have anything that you'd like to say on that?
01:39:01.400Yeah, we view the priestly role of marriage counseling similar to how the Catholic Church does, I think.
01:39:10.800And I know a lot of people are not fond of hearing that we do something or anything similar to how the Christians do it.
01:39:17.140But Catholicism is is pretty darn pagan. So, you know, we take the good from it when we can, I guess.0.93
01:39:31.260As far as read the question again, really draw wisdom to guide couples through difficulties, frankly, through bad examples of a couple and through good examples of a couple.
01:39:43.860I was really fortunate to have joined the AFA when I was 18 and immediately, you know, I'd been a legal adult from three or four months and, you know, I go to an AFA event and I'm surrounded by all these great couples.
01:39:58.840I met Matt and Mandy there the first time, Steve and Sheila, Cliff, no, Katie wasn't around yet, never mind, but you get the picture, I had all these great couples around, and as a single young adult guy, I got to see like, okay, this is what a normal healthy relationship or marriage looks like, at least outside looking in, and I kind of, I was there for the various AFA dramas over the last 10 years in the media and stuff,
01:40:27.760And never once did I see Githya McNallan, you know, betray Steve.
01:40:33.700Never did I see Mandy betray the ulcerer Gauthier.
01:40:36.780I've never, you know, you get the point.
01:40:39.620So I know what a good marriage looks like.
01:40:41.940And, of course, now I'm blessed enough to be in a good marriage myself.
01:40:45.780And, you know, I'll see bad marriages or relationships just out in my mundane life, right?
01:40:52.400And so marriage counseling, if it's pre-marriage counseling, I would ask various questions about how their faith or whatnot affects their relationship with each other, things like that.
01:41:07.160But to answer the question, essentially, the wisdom I have for marriage counseling is I'll just gain through my own experience and seeing others in and outside of the AFA and how they interact with each other.
01:41:22.400Trenton, have you been, have you done any marriage counseling as a go-fi?
01:41:27.380A little bit, not too much, but yeah, a little bit.
01:41:33.120Yeah, we've got, so a couple of, first, before I get on a roll and so that I don't forget,
01:41:39.620Michael in Arizona donated $30 towards the Baldershof steeple. Thank you very much for that.
01:41:46.500It's going to be beautiful. It's going to be amazing. I know they got good plans for it,
01:41:49.900we really appreciate your contribution hail balder um with that said
01:41:57.900our go-thar often get assigned all right so a few different things that i think are
01:42:07.900useful for folks to know about our our priesthood and how some of the mechanics work
01:42:14.060and I saw a little bit of the side chat on this earlier Rachel thank you for asking the question
01:42:24.200this is a real question that puts meat on the bone and I think it's a very important one in this day
01:42:44.060our gothar certainly are spiritually connected to the ancient gothar um by unseen bonds that
01:42:51.500I don't think we fully can weigh or can measure but in a modern sense our gothar trace our gothic
01:43:01.040lineage back to um the agreement made the uh moment where the all-father chose Steve
01:43:12.560McNallan to reforge Alcetree and all of our gothar trace their ordination back to Steve in some
01:43:26.900they were ordained by someone Steve ordained or they were ordained by Steve himself except for
01:43:33.340um one of our gothar who passed this last year uh gothi Thorgrin Odin he was actually ordained
01:43:41.340by, at the time, the Ulsteri Gothi of the Austrofelligeth in Iceland, Jormundur Inge Hansen.
01:43:50.220And that was because at that point in the AFA's history, the AFA wasn't currently ordaining Gothar.
01:43:57.720So it was kind of a historical note on things.
01:44:00.880One of the things that comes with that, though, it comes with a spiritual authority from the Aesir and from the Allfather himself
01:44:10.340through that lineage and in a very practical way when it comes to counseling it comes with
01:44:19.020the collected wisdom of all of those gothar who have come before so
01:44:25.940i saw over on the side well you know some something to the effect of that our
01:44:33.260our lore contains you know all you need to to do the counseling
01:44:37.660our lord does a lot to help in a lot of different ways and i think that was certainly
01:44:45.360one of the tools that greatly informed the first steps toward counseling when that's all we had
01:44:51.760um and uh witten erickson and i will do a show on this at a later date whenever i can get him
01:45:01.080arranged but i want to do a show about how also true is a living faith as opposed to faiths that
01:45:06.520are locked in a time or a place and don't occur in a revelatory fashion in this day and age
01:45:13.640we have learned a lot through our counseling of couples of
01:45:18.520all kind all of the situations you can probably imagine
01:45:23.680and probably several that you can't certainly things that i didn't imagine until
01:45:28.760they blew my mind because you never would have thought you would have heard this so
01:45:34.900And I tell New Gothar that all the time. You can prepare for every eventuality in every situation you think of.
01:45:42.440Life will always throw you some kind of a curveball in the counseling process.
01:45:51.520And I'm beating around the bush, but I'm trying to kind of paint a picture and talk about some bigger things.
01:45:56.580I will get to the actual marital counseling.
01:45:58.760But what I want to pregame it with is the tools that we use for it are the collected experience of our go-thar.
01:46:05.980And I don't want to stop and do the math of how many years of counseling that is.
01:46:13.080But certainly in my time, and I was ordained in 2012, at mid-summer 2012, I've done a lot of counseling.
01:46:25.400I think that it's something that our folk don't see enough, and I really want to talk about it to give Argothar the credit that they've earned, because you see them when they come on this show and they'll talk about things, or when they do a ritual at a Hoff, or maybe they'll perform your wedding or your baby naming.
01:46:47.260What folks don't see is all of the blood, sweat, tears, heartbreak, and hours and hours of dealing with people who are very badly damaged often and who find themselves at some of the most tragic moments of their life needing support, needing people to lean on.
01:47:11.760And the wonderful men and women of our Goathe are, you know, gladly, and I'm so proud, like they jump in, like it's not in a silly way, but when we get a call, so if we have an emergency thing, and sometimes the, you know, what do I do?
01:47:33.940my wife just left me or what do i do you know my husband told me he wants a divorce that's an
01:47:38.500emergency just as much as anything else when we get word of that and we pass that out to the go
01:47:45.940thar as a whole because you never know what time that comes in or who's doing what where
01:47:49.860our go thar you know eagerly try to actively throw themselves at hey i will do it hey i'd be happy
01:48:00.780to help hey if you think i'm the guy for it i'm here you let me know i'm consistently impressed
01:48:08.380with how fast and eagerly they respond in a way that they want to help but all things being equal
01:48:14.140what we what the process looks like a little bit in in a perfect situation if both if both
01:48:21.740members of the couple are afa members what we like to do and this is in the case of
01:48:29.580look at the exact phrasing of the question because it makes a difference
01:48:36.300so marriage counseling so that could be anything it could be divorce counseling stuff it could be
01:48:42.860you know if they're having a particular problem or a source of contention in the marriage it could be
01:48:48.940sexual things it could be um any kind of kind of violence or it could be a lot of things
01:48:58.860So the best scenario is that we get Gothia or Agithia to individually counsel each person separately. And then we work together to bring, I want to describe this. I never thought I had to really present this in a way that everybody's going to understand.
01:49:22.420So to where each of the two individuals would get their own go-thee to talk to, to tell their side of the story, and to get individual advice advocating for their best interest and for them to come out as whole and as healthy in the process as they can.
01:49:49.380and doing that with each party and then coming together and trying to find ways to
01:49:57.280repair that family if that's possible. Not knowing what's going on or where people are at,
01:50:03.040that's not always the outcome. Whatever counseling we're doing, we can't force people to do things
01:50:10.180they don't want to do. But if we're involved in both sides and somebody is advocating for each
01:50:17.080person and they don't feel like they're being ganged up on or like everybody's on her side
01:50:22.580or everybody's on his side or whatever, we can work together as a united priesthood.
01:50:28.560Not everybody involved, certainly, but the two folks that are doing the counseling of
01:50:34.780the members of the couple and work towards that family ending up as healthy and as whole
01:50:44.060as they can be on whatever the other side of this process looks like. There are some things that are
01:50:51.020deal breakers and some people that no longer are going to be in that relationship. And we can't
01:50:56.380force them, but we can very much work with them on how that separation looks, on the best way to
01:51:04.020handle that that's going to be the least traumatic for everyone involved, for the family, for the
01:51:09.060children if there are children involved and what that looks like but more you know more hopefully
01:51:15.180we can work on them communicating with one another and we can work through
01:51:20.860getting that process resolved in a way that heals their family and that's always the goal that's
01:51:29.220always what we want I mean barring situations of horrendous abuse or particularly heinous things
01:51:37.080we want to heal the family and we want to we want to keep families together and we want to keep
01:51:43.240you know children in in whole and not broken homes as long as that's a safe option that's
01:51:50.140possible but working towards having realism when we go into it and working towards a realistic
01:51:56.380outcome that makes that that family as healthy optimally as we can get them is a big part
01:52:04.800one of the things you know uh it gets like what are what are the best teachings or so a next
01:52:13.100question from rachel is and what are the best teachings to use for mediation uh between members
01:52:19.180of the community i think it's a similar thing if not marriage counseling if there's two parties
01:52:25.940involved and they are both members of the austral folk assembly then we do a similar approach we
01:52:31.540want to go through to talk to each of those people and see where they're at and this one
01:52:38.020looking in terms of mediation i think is going to make the next thing i was going to say
01:52:43.540more tangible there's two things that have served me outside of of trusting in in the in
01:52:53.140And trusting in the Aesir and them blessing me with, you know, hopefully some momentum going in and some wisdom to deal with things.
01:53:05.200The things on my own that I think have been most beneficial counseling wise, either marital counseling, individual counseling, or in a case of mediation.0.99
01:53:18.220first you let the person express out loud what their problem is like what are you upset about
01:53:29.800tell me what's wrong and this a lot of the things I say on this program are very very simple
01:53:40.600and I think that the fundamentals are what's really important and you start from the simple
01:53:46.880and you go out some things are common sense but unfortunately we don't always think of them up front
01:53:54.720the act of saying something out loud first it gets it off your chest and it takes away the
01:54:02.080burden of it going unsaid and what happens if i don't say it swan and i have talked about that
01:54:08.000too where the root of magic is is speech that's the first thing that takes something from an
01:54:15.440internal thought and projects it into the world. That's the expression of putting your will out
01:54:20.940into the world. And there's a hesitancy and a fear of that because that invokes judgment. It invokes
01:54:27.880consequence. If you just keep it to yourself, then it's nothing. Once you say it out loud,
01:54:32.300then it's real. So getting someone to get it off their chest, to vocalize what makes them upset,
01:54:39.280what they're angry about, what they're hurt by, what is the problem,
01:54:43.920takes a certain amount of pressure off first.
01:54:49.060Secondly, you hear the words that you're saying,
01:54:55.240and often you realize how that sounds when you say it out loud.
01:54:59.900Oftentimes, what we've worked up in our head to be a very, very big deal,
01:55:04.900when you say it out loud it seems really petty and that's not because whoever said it is
01:55:14.100you know a small-minded person we all have a tendency when it roots around in our head it
01:55:20.520builds a momentum and we build things up to be bigger deals than they are we all do it myself
01:55:25.260included every one of us does that some do a greater degree than others certainly but saying
01:55:31.720it out loud you hear how it sounds that in and of itself is therapeutic and you can adjust
01:55:38.720according to it but you also see the reaction to the person you say it to and that helps
01:55:45.440we would never want people to feel foolish or to make people feel embarrassed
01:55:49.540but you do want to you see what you're saying and what that looks like in the light of day
01:55:57.960And that was the first part. The second part, which is very similar, is asking what victory looks like. And I'm sure Different Gothar put it a different way. And I don't mean this to, I don't know. It is what it is. You want to know what each side wants, and then you work back from there. And if you have to be silly to get there, it is.
01:56:27.960is never meant in a silly way it's meant you pick the extremes and then you work back from it
01:56:34.840you know hey could you be friends you know could you ever make up with so and so and you guys be
01:56:40.360friends again well never okay well what if they gave you a million dollars could you for a million
01:56:46.280dollars well yeah of course i could for a million dollars all right well they don't have a million
01:56:50.360dollars are not going to do that what about a hundred thousand dollars all right hundred thousand
01:56:56.440i can do cool well they're not going to do that either that's asking a lot but
01:57:02.360what if they said they're sorry and they bought you a whopper
01:57:07.880double whopper and we'll call it good it sounds dumb and maybe that was a dumb example for me to
01:57:14.840use but sometimes i've had it that way to where it becomes that lighthearted of a conversation
01:57:21.560because when they said something out loud they realized what they were angry about wasn't that
01:57:25.080big but you ask like hey what does it look like okay you're telling me that if they gave you
01:57:31.240something it would make it worthwhile i don't think that's just materialism we as a folk when
01:57:38.040our concept of doing wrong to someone is you're taking something from them and the first step
01:57:46.280is to fill the hole of what you took things have a value and you can express it with money or with
01:57:53.400whoppers or with sincere you know acts of somebody helping you out with something or if what they've
01:58:02.120have taken from you as reputation. Maybe in the same place that they said something that offended
01:58:08.160you, you have them issue a retraction and apologize in that same audience. Trying to figure out what
01:58:16.320they feel is broken is how you go about figuring out what can be done to heal that that's broken.
01:58:24.260A lot of time, just going through those steps of conversation, get both parties to a place where
01:58:31.640they want to come together and fix things when we do a mediation and both parties are involved
01:58:40.000to where we're not just talking to them separately when we come together one of the really important
01:58:45.220factors that i don't think should ever be omitted is asking the gods to be witness and to help in
01:58:52.720that process to invoke you know depending if there's if there's a personal god or goddess
01:58:58.280that's relevant in the situation or particularly special to the people involved in general i think
01:59:04.920for seti is a very good one to ask to to help come to a resolution but to put it in a divine context
01:59:15.320to have the mediation does a lot to affect the souls of the people who are doing the mediating
01:59:20.680to affect, or who are doing the two parties, as it were, and it sets a certain tone of
01:59:32.260taking it seriously, and that the gods are watching, and that tends to help people view
01:59:41.360things in the best, well, okay, I think that it helps them be aware that they need to be
01:59:48.680their best behavior before the gods and they need to treat each other the best they can
01:59:53.960another thing when it comes to mediation and i hope this isn't meandering i'm just trying to
02:00:00.040put on all the different things that have worked well for me in both marital counseling and mediations
02:11:19.360And they, I forget where they said they found this thing.
02:11:24.120They've got a really big representation of, I think they may have welded the internal spokes.
02:11:31.300But it's the same sun wheel that Trent's wearing.
02:11:34.760And they've got, I mean, I'd say it's six foot diameter or so, a really big representation of that, that they, you know, wrap in, I don't know, wrap in straw, I think, in light.
02:11:51.140And part of the ritual was putting things on there that we wanted to leave behind or to, you know, move past in the coming year.
02:12:02.300and it was a really beautiful ceremony
02:12:27.780so this is y'all's fault for listening to this program and participating in it one of the like
02:12:38.780listening taxes is that sometimes i go off on strange rabbit trails sometimes they're useful
02:12:44.640and entertaining other times maybe not so much we'll have to see one of the things that occurred
02:12:51.740to me earlier this year I don't know how many you get I assume that a lot of our audience is
02:12:59.120familiar with um the rune keyness and a lot of you know I was trying to really do a deep dive
02:13:07.580in the runes this year and I was you know I understand that there's a modern tradition of
02:13:14.240looking at it as if it is a torch I don't find a lot of evidence of that I don't find a lot of
02:13:21.320historicity of that until we get into like the Anglo-Saxon period I don't find that in deep
02:13:29.480room more of that being the case but what I do find is it being um a like a burning ulcer or a you
02:13:39.500a burning wound, like a burning internal
02:13:45.960ulcer. And that always just sounded kind of gross and odd and never connected with me for a long
02:13:54.200time. But I really thought about it a lot. And, you know, I feel it was revealed to me this year
02:14:00.120in a way that that is one of the ways that the ICR communicate with me.
02:14:06.280And I think that different people experience divinity in a lot of different ways, but one of the ways that I do is I get these just burning internal, literally fire in the belly, burning motivation that I have to accomplish things or these things need to be done or AFA needs to reach certain goals or do certain things.
02:14:34.460And if I don't express those or if I don't handle those in a productive way to where they progress and they move forward and there's something that happens, I burn myself up inside with this, like, I don't know, with this odinic fury that this thing needs to get done.
02:14:55.860And I don't put that, I don't blame that on the All-Father, I blame that on me.0.93
02:15:00.080But I think that's one of the ways that the ICers speak to me.
02:15:05.220And I treasure that in a way, if that fire can lead to productive things happening.
02:15:11.760What it has a tendency to do is, I notice all of the things that I want to see fixed,
02:15:19.280things that I want to make different or want to see improved or want to see made better.
02:15:23.560and if I can't immediately because I don't have the skill set or I don't have the right manpower
02:15:31.540in place or it's just not the right time or there's not the right resources at the time or
02:15:36.600whatever to do it I'll get grumpy about the thing that we don't have or we're not doing instead of
02:15:43.920appreciating all the good things that we do have that we are doing because I'm always trying to
02:15:48.660move to that next step. And again, I think in the handled correctly, I think that's a really good
02:15:55.000thing, but it also has a tendency for me to get real grumpy about stuff if I'm not making the
02:16:01.120progress I want with the AFA in certain areas. So I've, so I have decided to try to not do that
02:16:11.180this year and take the time to focus more heavily on the things that that we do have that are doing
02:16:19.020well other than you know all of the ambitions that i have for us that i haven't been able to
02:16:25.900make happen for us yet so that's kind of my personal thing i resolved to do this year
02:19:48.940that's just the natural process of things those kind of things are fate and they happen cycles
02:19:57.500happen but they can have greater or lesser intensity they can there's a lot of variant
02:20:04.940there so there's currents within earth that lead things with directionality but there are
02:20:18.940there is a tremendous value and ground to be gained when people fight against that when it is
02:20:28.660headed in a bad direction um you know people have referred to that in a way as man against
02:20:38.620time I think that there is stuff to where there is a flow of things and you want to redirect that
02:20:46.780flow and that's part of the ability to so when our a theme in our lore and much western lore
02:20:57.500is this idea of being able to see your fate or know the future or have
02:21:07.980those kind of um what's the word i'm looking for um
02:21:13.500All right, the better word will come to me, but when you do rune readings, when you read entrails, when you read, you know, the movement of sacred flocks of, of, of birds or of, you know, herds of horses on, on how to interpret signs that show you glimpses into earth, into the future.
02:21:38.500or I mean into the well of fate and show you into the future and the idea is if you know that
02:21:49.420beforehand you can act differently than you normally would otherwise there's no point to it
02:21:55.240the very fact that that that's a thing goes against the concept that everything is is
02:22:02.980predetermined to happen a certain way because if it is there's no point in you
02:22:07.240trying to figure that out. What you want to figure out is where things are headed
02:22:12.940so that you can lean into that to enhance that, or so you can lean hard against it and try to
02:22:19.620shift it. Often the currents within earth are such that you can't completely divert the river
02:22:29.640in a different way, but you can absolutely affect it. And if not, there's no free will. And if
02:22:36.520there's no free will. You can't have heroism. Nothing's heroic. You're just acting as you
02:22:41.740normally would have because it's all predetermined for you. That's not the way of the hero, and it's
02:22:47.520not the way of our ancestors. And we see that in the very fact that Skold is named Skold and not,
02:38:29.560Yes, I think some of them are absolutely real.
02:38:32.680Yes, I think lots of them are just made-up nonsense that happened to coincidentally work out.
02:38:37.440What my other favorite one is, is the quatrains.
02:38:41.800If you make up something that's so completely ridiculously vague, you can apply it to any situation.
02:38:48.320Then you always win, like you're always right.
02:38:50.780then there will be snows from the north something warm from the south a wind will come from the east
02:39:01.640and then a great man will rise and you can use that for literally anything ever always um no
02:39:10.400there's a lot of charlatans and there's a lot of people that may even be well-intentioned that are
02:39:15.200lunatics or are just wrong but to follow up on the earlier fate question yes there is a tapestry
02:39:23.400of earth right now that one with enough second sight enough wisdom enough um magical gravitas
02:39:33.300could perceive into the future these things and see the the battle plan of the next however long
02:39:40.040but I also stand by what I said earlier that's subject to change because we're reshaping that
02:39:47.480every layer that we lay into the well of earth all of our actions all of our deeds we're weaving
02:39:53.760that tapestry as we speak but if everything stopped at this point and carried on exactly like
02:40:00.380the momentum was carrying it there is a destination that destination always changes
02:40:06.220But when you're talking about the current that everyone is headed towards, when I think that the meme the kids use these days is MPC, but there's a whole lot of people in this world that don't live introspective lives, that don't try to challenge the boundaries of their existence.
02:40:29.780they don't try to ascend and be more than they are the concept of being a hero is laughable
02:40:36.140or something we you know choose to use to deify disabled children instead of people
02:40:44.200who've acted with extreme virtue um there are so many of them and so much weight behind
02:40:53.240the momentum of things i think that there are very
02:41:00.120that is accessible to people to be able to prophesy or when i say prophesy um i think that
02:41:08.760involves rune readings or interpretations of signs or visions or dreams or other things all of that
02:41:16.600that goes into um uh man i cannot find that word it's bothering me it's tip of my tongue i'm
02:41:26.440um no better than this but anyways yes i think that's absolutely a thing because you can see
02:41:31.640those broad enough currents you can see into that tapestry i've mentioned before on the show one of
02:41:37.480And the key fundamentals of the idea of magic is being able to recognize the threads in that tapestry
02:41:51.260and being able to move with it or see that coming and act in accordance.
02:42:35.120So I say, yes, that is the answer is no. That's something that once we get that, we'll decide on that. I want to talk with the leadership in that area at the time with, you know, the go-thar there and determine who fits best in that spot.
02:42:55.140As far as I don't know, internally, and Witten and Githya Erickson, they will have a big say in that.
02:43:05.860I don't know if they have any internal discussions about kind of who they'd like or what they were thinking.
02:43:10.580So I'm not sure if there's a current front runner, but that has not been decided yet.
02:45:57.980So you're complaining you had to fill space.
02:46:00.520I gave you one of the meatier questions we had tonight.
02:46:02.660All right. Yes. And I'm trying to give you what comes to me again. This is the kind of thing I would. These are the kind of things that keep people up at night.
02:46:19.660But yeah, I mean, I think that something is very wrong with somebody who would find themselves at my age and wouldn't see things that they did when they were younger and wish they would have done them different.
02:46:39.640I think there's a million answers to that question.
02:46:42.400I'm trying to think of ones that stand out, and specifically ones about Alcetru that stand out.
02:46:51.260Um, we, we all go through, seemingly we all go through, a lot of us certainly do.
02:47:13.260i did go through phase when you're in your your late teens in your early 20s where you know
02:47:21.820everything and you know the right way to do everything and everybody should do things the
02:47:27.100way that you know all 20 years of your wisdom tell you that things should happen and there's a
02:47:36.620cockiness and a lack of understanding for elders and for why things are done the way
02:47:46.280they are that I think displays itself with, with an arrogance when we're young all too
02:47:53.460often. I think I had that a lot in my personal life as a kid. Like I was, I was a brat. I was
02:48:06.640an only child and I was, you know, I should have got a lot of whoopings that I did not get that
02:48:13.700would have served me well. As a young man getting involved in Ausitru, I had, you know, again,
02:51:14.700but it caused me to probably be more obnoxious than I should have been.
02:51:22.640I think it took me too long to understand.
02:51:28.040Like a lot of people to this day get involved in this,
02:51:31.500and I think it was a little bit easier to do in my day
02:51:34.320because there was more competition for it but thinking that there's this equality of things
02:51:41.840and like why can't we all just get along man at the time i thought it'd be so great how come
02:51:47.280the afa and the odenic right and the australians and you know if whatever good element of the troth
02:51:54.160and there was some at that time in in history how come they don't break how come we all just
02:51:59.040don't get together and you know all we can all work together all the time
02:52:04.320And I think that that's even people who think that now and think that about greater white positive groups and things and causes.
02:52:16.440I think all too often we think everybody's on the same team and working together.
02:52:21.100And I think that's motivated out of really beautiful sentiments.
02:52:26.060But it's not true and it's not the way the world works.
02:52:28.480When we see good things happen, it's because people come together under one tent, under one, not being pulled in a thousand different directions, but under one clear path of direction and leadership and focus.
02:52:42.600You do that by those groups of people combining if they really are on the same page and not by everybody, you know, being the king of their own backyard kingdom.
02:52:52.380And I think that that was a phase that I went through early on that I got, you know, disabused of pretty quick.
02:53:06.220Alcetra-wise, I don't know. I was really fortunate. I got connected with really good people. I found the right people at the right times in my life.
02:53:17.780any of the big betrayals or people that have really let me down in Alistair True
02:53:27.240weren't at the beginning. I can't look back to like my younger days when that was happening.
02:53:32.240I think that's, you know, been in the last decade or so. Most of that.
02:53:37.620So, yeah, I don't want to be arrogant, but I'm very happy with the experience I've had, and I've had people, I've had amazing people to guide me and help me and teach me as I came up, and I'm very fortunate for that.
02:55:48.400It's great to get to spend an evening with you.
02:55:53.140And remember, loyalty isn't just something you talk about or something that applies to a shield wall or fighting dragons or whatever in your head.
02:56:08.120Loyalty is a daily effort to live up to your commitments and to live up to your relationships and the bonds that you have with our gods and our folk and those you care about.
02:56:27.220More often than not, it's a matter of just standing up, having a little bit of backbone and speaking proudly about things that you believe in.