Asatru Folk Assembly - 10⧸12⧸22 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 14 - Gythia Edition

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

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00:02:30.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:03:00.000 hello folk and welcome to our weekly as a true folk assembly podcast victory never sleeps

00:03:16.520 i am witten brandy callahan and i will be hosting for our i'll share our go the matthew

00:03:22.740 Lavelle, who is currently in route to our National Winter Nights this weekend. When he asked me who

00:03:30.680 I would like to interview this weekend, I could not pass up the opportunity to bring in the 1.00

00:03:38.640 Githias of the AFA. These are some of my very best friends. These are the women that I look up to

00:03:45.220 and I rely on the most. And it's a great opportunity for all of us to be in one place at one time.

00:03:52.740 So I would like to welcome all of our Githias, Githia Anna Plourd, Githia Sheila MacNallan, and Githia Katie Erickson.

00:04:01.680 So I just want to go ahead and introduce these ladies a little bit, and I'm going to start with Githia Anna Plourd.

00:04:09.780 Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

00:04:13.300 Sure.

00:04:15.500 I was born and raised in Minnesota. 0.93

00:04:17.880 i discovered also true after many many years of just being an atheist

00:04:24.140 um i slowly came to the realization that there had to be something more than you know fedoras

00:04:33.620 and snarkiness um so i started looking into you know my family history where did we come from

00:04:41.480 And I discovered this whole world of we have gods, we have goddesses, we have heroes, you know, we have our own legends.

00:04:49.220 And it made so much more sense to me than, you know, some foreign god in a land that looked nothing like the lands of my ancestors.

00:05:00.540 um so i spent the next few years then as kind of a solo practitioner you know having blood with a

00:05:09.720 few other people every now and again but mostly just being on my own and then around you know

00:05:16.600 2016 i discovered i'd heard of the afa for quite some time but then i actually made the move to

00:05:24.260 join the afa the first fall fest was my first event and i was made to feel so welcome um

00:05:33.540 i you know i have friends that i still talk to from that event and i just came away so happy

00:05:40.340 that i'd found i'd found home and over the next few years i started doing book studies with that

00:05:49.060 group um the folk builder there jason gallagher he's always he's always been in my corner he's

00:05:56.580 always i'm like hey let's do this or he'd always support whatever whatever idea i came up with

00:06:02.980 and so i started doing doing all the bloats up or a lot of the blood stuff there and then he

00:06:08.420 started peer pressuring me into applying for the gothar program and by peer pressuring i mean

00:06:14.900 every single week did you apply it did you apply it come on deadline's coming up you better apply

00:06:24.420 and so i went through that i did that at the same time as i did a nursing program which i

00:06:30.980 don't recommend doing that um because you will lose your mind but in 2019 i was ordained

00:06:38.420 saw Baldershof finally be opened, saw that become a reality for us. And then in 2021,

00:06:50.040 I got married to Jason Plourd, and we moved down to Florida. And we helped open up Mjordshof,

00:06:57.680 which is the fourth Hof, fourth Hof of the Astru Folk Assembly. Happy to be here.

00:07:05.180 and we are glad to have you here you're actually one of the very first people that i ever met in

00:07:13.940 the afa and i still have um pictures of you and i together when i hair like this long

00:07:20.060 so we've known each other yeah we've known each other a long time and i don't think we've ever

00:07:26.220 missed an event where we haven't been together until you move to florida so

00:07:30.440 long time with Anna. Come down and visit. I should. I will soon.

00:07:38.980 Next up, we have the lady who really doesn't need an introduction, but we're going to let 1.00

00:07:43.700 her introduce herself anyway. The official frith weaver of the As True Folk Assembly,

00:07:49.800 Githia Sheila McNallan. Ah, thank you very much. Yeah, so in thinking about my beginnings,

00:07:58.100 I would have to say it was ancestral.

00:08:00.840 I always knew about my ancestors back,

00:08:04.060 yes, day or two back.

00:08:05.900 Brandy and I were discussing memories

00:08:09.340 and the things that the people

00:08:10.620 who were there for us when we were young.

00:08:12.960 And she describes her very close relationships

00:08:15.140 with her grandmothers and great grandmothers.

00:08:18.960 And I also had some of that,

00:08:21.580 it wasn't that warmth that Brandy,

00:08:24.440 that the unconditional love that was poured on her.

00:08:28.100 but i did get a glimpse of some of the stories i saw the pictures on the wall

00:08:32.980 and for me my parents both sides my family my mother and my father both have very very irish

00:08:40.020 roots um even though there's some english some went to massachusetts in the late 1600s you know

00:08:47.940 i've got that i've got that in there too and i'm very tied in with those people but um one of my

00:08:53.380 grandmother's told me one time she said well you know where are the o'neils of the castle

00:08:59.300 and i'm not sure which family line she was talking about that was of course the o'neils of ireland

00:09:04.980 and at that point gee we've got a castle someplace i was sure i was destined to live in the castle

00:09:10.100 um and it wasn't until um much later going to ireland spending time there um really resonating

00:09:18.340 with the ancient nature of the place the um the deep spirituality i felt there um but um

00:09:27.220 also in doing dna later um and looking at the haplogroup the male haplogroup that my brother

00:09:34.100 has which is rm222 and that goes back to u o'neil you know so there we go um it was very very true

00:09:41.860 but i was raised catholic um catholicism did not answer what i needed i was orphaned as a child

00:09:50.260 my father died suddenly when i was i just turned five and my mother went back to work as a nurse

00:09:56.340 and then became afflicted with cancer that she dealt with for several years and none of us knew

00:10:02.740 that this was terminal you know even the week before she died i was told well she's going to

00:10:07.380 stay in the hospital but i'll just visit the hospital for the next 50 years you know kind of

00:10:11.140 thing but um so you know going to church praying to god all those things really did nothing for me

00:10:19.540 i was i was terrified by the nuns um i found latin confusing and all those things

00:10:27.460 and but i always had this spiritual nature and i always had this connection with ancestors

00:10:32.660 and it was much later that I kind of started delving into the Celtic stuff a little bit,

00:10:38.260 obviously, and I still resonate. This is my time of year. There's no doubt. October

00:10:45.380 really feels right to me. But it was many years later that I happened to meet Stephen McNallan

00:10:52.660 and embarked on a journey of discovering Vikings, for one thing, which were really not in my

00:10:59.940 ancestry at all as i said it was mainly irish and english and german on my grandfather's side

00:11:05.620 but um but that's kind of where we were this is back in the early 90s and that is my introduction

00:11:12.580 to aussitrew was calling it quote a viking religion and so to me i it just it was fine

00:11:19.460 for others it wasn't really mine but then of course over the time i just really came back to

00:11:25.620 me oh my gosh vikings were everywhere they settled those cities in ireland and um you know they were 0.88

00:11:34.020 all over but besides we're talking germanic tribes and the germanic tribes are our people

00:11:39.140 and they were all over europe and um it all of course fell into place for me at that point i said

00:11:46.740 of course i can embrace this this is just these are my people these are my ancestors my ancestors

00:11:51.700 did this and i've never never gone back to anything else i can't imagine doing anything

00:11:58.820 other than following also true in our way and it's been an absolute pleasure to have been on

00:12:06.020 the very beginning of the austria folk assembly because that's where i was um not the two pre the

00:12:13.860 those incarnations that happened first, but that was where I was.

00:12:20.020 And it was really at my encouragement that Steve went ahead and said, we're going to

00:12:25.980 try another membership organization, we're going to do this. 0.64

00:12:29.760 And my thing is, I want to start having moot, we didn't call them moots then, I want to 0.86

00:12:34.860 start having, well, we always called them gatherings. 0.88

00:12:37.900 And I said, let's have the folk over, we're going to do a folk gathering.

00:12:41.140 that point when we were trying to come up with a name it was well we can't do ouster free assembly

00:12:47.060 again and i said well why not folk it's what we always talk about it's our folk we love our folk

00:12:51.940 and so it became now through folk assembly that was my contribution so and here we are today

00:12:58.260 and no minor contribution githia mcnelly it was no minor contribution so what uh

00:13:05.380 What folks don't realize is just how much Sheila has done ever since the beginning.

00:13:11.700 Sheila has always been one half of that driving force that has created this amazing church that

00:13:18.020 we are all a part of now. So thank you, Githya. You're very welcome. Thank you, Brad.

00:13:24.900 And next we have Githya Katie Erickson. Katie, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

00:13:29.940 hi everyone um i was born and raised catholic um my mother still thinks she's going to hell because

00:13:42.740 i am no longer catholic and so that means she failed in her job as a mother to raise me properly

00:13:49.940 or something i'm not really sure but christian guilt um when i was 12 i discovered that something

00:13:59.220 other than christianity existed um and after taking a very long and meandering path mostly

00:14:06.740 by myself for many years i found um a it's not really also true it's called theodism but they

00:14:15.940 worship our gods uh just in a different manner i found that and i was a theodish for many years

00:14:21.940 before finding the afa um and finding the afa was the best thing that's ever happened to me i

00:14:28.820 I met my husband through the AFA.

00:14:32.480 He asked me to marry him at winter nights

00:14:35.120 in the Poconos several years ago.

00:14:38.180 I couldn't remember exactly when at this point.

00:14:41.660 During Sambal, in fact.

00:14:44.800 I think I've said this,

00:14:45.940 I think I said it the last time I was on this call.

00:14:48.240 I still have no idea what he said to me when he proposed

00:14:50.880 because everybody in Sambal was, it was cacophonous.

00:14:55.020 But I joined the AFA in 2016.

00:14:58.820 uh and joined the godhar program in 2017 was ordained in 2018 uh with our fellow

00:15:10.020 all three of you actually think we were all in the class together actually

00:15:14.580 not you brandy you're in a different class but um

00:15:20.260 that's where i have been i've it's pretty simple this is what happened in the past doesn't really

00:15:27.860 matter because this is where we are now and it's the best place to be so that's me true statement

00:15:35.140 sierra asks how long have each of you been githias in the afa so i think we kind of

00:15:41.700 answered that a little bit um i was ordained in 2021 at the um dedication of baldersov

00:15:52.660 anna what about you

00:15:53.540 um i was ordained at fall fest in 2019 so three years wow it's been three years in three years

00:16:08.660 wow okay miss not long no miss sheila how about you you know i wish i had my certificate right

00:16:18.260 here um i'm going to say i know it was not a huge crowd it was a beautiful nighttime ceremony

00:16:24.740 in our ritual circle and i want to say it was 2020 probably you will at 2020

00:16:31.540 and that's my guess but regardless it's very special things have happened to me

00:16:36.900 and the highlights of my life regardless of the dates yes katie

00:16:42.020 uh if anna was ordained in 2019 then i was wrong when i said 2018 because i was ordained at winter

00:16:51.840 nights like three weeks later after anna was ordained i don't know why i remember that because

00:16:58.520 i just i do i think i was just excited about it for all of us so yeah i'm the thing that i could

00:17:06.040 have been 2019. I'll check that out. I think you were. Yeah. I'm flying. Tony King of Cheese

00:17:16.040 asks us, for when the chat questions start getting answered, Githias, how are you all

00:17:21.440 doing tonight? How is everybody doing tonight? Okay, I'm going to start. I'm doing really

00:17:32.640 well. It was a very, very busy day getting ready for this. We have winter nights coming up. Three

00:17:37.860 day event at Odin's Hof, starting with the food pantry where Steve and I go out and get all the

00:17:43.820 food tomorrow, load it in our cars, and are gone for half the day. But I've also had some wonderful

00:17:50.200 news today. My son called me and said that he is going to be a father at age 43. I'm very happy

00:17:59.840 about it has a lovely lady who is the mother of his child and it was it's a very much a blessing

00:18:06.560 in my family um did not expect this to happen so shared the news a while ago with my brother

00:18:12.240 my sister we're all thrilled yeah we have a very small family so when these things happen

00:18:17.760 it's pretty remarkable so that's been a very good day for that congratulations sheila thank you

00:18:23.920 you. Anna, how are you doing? I'm doing great. I'm gearing up for our first winter nights at

00:18:31.100 New York's Hof. Every first is going to be just the first time at each new Hof. So now it's like,

00:18:41.100 this is the first time that we're going to do this in this new spot of ours. That's also the

00:18:46.840 same day as our food pantry. So that's, I believe, going to be at 10 to 1130 and then bloat

00:18:53.680 it's going to be after that but we're we're all just excited and we're getting

00:19:00.280 you know ready for you know each new event each new chapter that we're writing over there

00:19:07.120 well katie i know how you're doing you're busy

00:19:12.820 yes i uh i'm operating on about two hours of sleep in the last 48 hours and i'm overcoming a cold

00:19:21.920 But I am super excited because Winter Nights 11 is this weekend in Ohio.

00:19:30.620 My husband and I run the event, and I'm looking forward to seeing everybody there.

00:19:38.880 It's both the most stressful thing I do every year and also the thing I most enjoy doing every year

00:19:47.160 because uh winter nights and the desire bloat are kind of have a special place in my heart but

00:19:54.520 so that that excitement is definitely superseding any of the stress and discomfort i might be

00:20:00.680 feeling otherwise you said this is winter nights 11. it is 11 years we've been having this event

00:20:09.960 unfortunately it's our first year not doing it at uh the camp we used to go to uh they stopped

00:20:17.640 being a they became a not for not not for profit camp in order to overcome covid um so they no

00:20:28.120 longer take outside groups which is very sad because we had a very good relationship with

00:20:32.360 that camp but we're moving onwards and upwards and our new location for this year will it'll

00:20:39.640 will be pretty awesome. Trent asks, good evening, Githias. Thank you for all, for everything that

00:20:48.860 y'all do. A question for each of you. What is your favorite part of being a Githia?

00:20:56.540 Hmm. There's a lot of my favorite parts of being a Githia. There's a lot of hard work, but there's

00:21:04.880 also a lot of joy and a lot of beauty in being a Gythea. I think one of my favorite parts of

00:21:18.000 being a Gythea is doing a Wayfarer's Bloat. That bloat brings me a lot of joy. When I do Wayfarer's

00:21:26.920 bloat, I tend to do my Wayfarer's bloat to Frigga. And I focus on not only sending my folk off 0.99

00:21:36.440 for a safe journey, but to a happy and healthy home when they get there. And I think that's

00:21:42.740 really important. So I always try to put that as part of the bloat. One thing I always have people

00:21:50.620 do as well is to look around the circle and remember the frit that they that they shared

00:21:56.800 at that event or at that moot or whatever it is that we're leaving from and to look across the

00:22:03.620 circle and to look to their left and to the right and look at the faces of their folk and remember

00:22:10.680 that in good times and in bad times these people will be here for you they can you can lean on them

00:22:17.640 they're your church they're your family they're your folk and no matter what happens in life

00:22:24.320 you'll be able to rely on the people standing there with you so

00:22:27.800 i think that's my favorite part of being a kithia anna what do you think

00:22:32.720 there is a lot that i love about being a kithia like you said there's a lot of it that's very hard

00:22:40.480 um my favorite part is watching is watching people actually come home and knowing that

00:22:49.720 they're home i know a lot of people have come to this faith from a place of isolation where you

00:22:56.580 may not have felt like you had anything that was yours you didn't have a place spiritually that

00:23:01.740 was yours like you were kind of renting somebody else's somebody else's faith or somebody else's

00:23:09.400 path to watch somebody come in and look around maybe at an event and hang out and start talking

00:23:18.200 to the other the other people there and realize i'm home this is mine i can't get kicked out of

00:23:26.840 my home that is so amazing and i love it

00:23:31.400 sheila well she kind of said it all i would have to say the same thing

00:23:43.080 to great extent being there at the door to welcome people home um i've loved our slogans

00:23:48.760 that we've always had from going back into the 90s the way the ancestors calling us home it's

00:23:54.760 about roots it's about connections it's about coming home i've always wanted it to be that

00:23:59.800 for our people and um i do everything i can to encourage them to come and then make them feel

00:24:07.080 like oh my gosh how did i ever live without this you know and a lot of people feel that way they

00:24:13.000 truly um have that bonding that sense of purpose the sense of connection that they never had

00:24:20.200 anywhere else especially in this time i think that we we really offer something very very unique

00:24:26.120 through our church and i want to make most of it and it's like i'm desperately reaching out to

00:24:32.680 people just saying whoa please come by you're going to be quite amazed by what you find on

00:24:38.360 the other hand the people who come are the people i always say who should be there sometimes the

00:24:43.320 people we expect to come don't come another thing that i think is very important about being a give

00:24:48.360 you is um that balance of male female and our gods and our goddesses and i love to explore the

00:24:58.680 the attributes of our goddesses to some extent for our women so that they um feel that they

00:25:04.440 definitely have deities to connect with and that is sometimes lost because we've always

00:25:10.200 well very much on on our um our male entities on male entities a male um gods and the gods rather

00:25:18.920 than goddesses sometimes so that's very important um and winter nights my goodness it is it is you

00:25:26.920 know having experienced some katie's rituals and enjoying my own so much and i feel that is a time

00:25:33.800 for us truly to connect um with ancestors and i think we do and i love that ability for us i always

00:25:41.560 have told people around me you are never alone my husband speaks to that you're never alone you

00:25:46.200 always have your ancestors with you and of course our gods as well but you know everybody who's not

00:25:52.760 even found out secure you have your ancestors you're never alone so those are the some of the

00:25:57.320 things that that i i kind of promote those ideas and again it's about well-being trying to make

00:26:05.080 people feel healthy and happy and cared for this is katie your favorite part of that it's hard to

00:26:18.600 sum it up in in a short and concise statement because there are many things um and i think

00:26:25.960 this applies to everybody in our godhar who everybody who is a godhar uh performing baby

00:26:33.960 namings and weddings are amazing um being able to perform a ritual for our folk and help them connect

00:26:40.120 to their to their gods that's amazing uh but i think one of my most favorite parts about being

00:26:46.360 is helping our female membership connect to the female divine uh to our female gods to our desir

00:26:57.480 uh even to each other because um asatru has been uh not the most friendly place for women in the

00:27:07.560 past um just i mean it is like sheila said earlier you look at it as the or many people

00:27:16.860 look at it as being the viking religion because that's how for many many years it was portrayed

00:27:22.940 and when i first found theotism which i mentioned earlier it was very male oriented and very much a

00:27:31.260 like a drinking club for dudes and the chicks just kind of happen to be there sometimes so to

00:27:37.620 see so many women finding Asatru and connecting to our gods and goddesses and connecting to each

00:27:46.680 other on a deeper much more potent level is really it's very rewarding to me to be able to

00:27:54.440 be uh help facilitate that in any way um because it's it's hard to be a woman it's hard to be a

00:28:03.840 woman with children it's hard to be a woman who doesn't have children um i'm not saying it's not

00:28:10.620 hard to be a man but it's you know each each thing has its own negative side or its own problems or

00:28:19.300 its own complications and uh being able to help our women bond and find the community that helps

00:28:29.500 them through their troubles and through their loneliness and through all of the things that go

00:28:35.400 on in their lives at the different stages of their lives is really that's probably one of my favorite

00:28:40.060 part. I think another one of my favorite parts is working so closely with the other women in 0.99

00:28:50.960 leadership and the bonds that you build. I know the four of us have built a very long-lasting,

00:28:59.260 dedicated, and strong friendship just from working together, spending so much time together,

00:29:04.620 talking to each other on the phone, calling each other for advice. So this is where I've met

00:29:12.660 my best friends. So I really do appreciate all of our leadership, especially our female

00:29:19.540 leadership. We always say that there's so many more women in the AFA today. And the same goes

00:29:28.100 for our women leadership as well we have a lot of beautiful women strong women um in folk builder

00:29:35.540 positions also as githias and it's a real honor to work with those women so i'm going to take a

00:29:42.500 minute and i'm going to just give a couple shout outs and i'm going to invite our githias to do

00:29:48.660 the same and we might do a few more shout outs throughout the podcast here but one person i

00:29:56.020 definitely want to say thank you to is folk builder Sarah Ault in Wisconsin. She is a powerhouse of

00:30:04.660 leadership. She is a strong woman and a wise woman and we definitely appreciate all that she's done.

00:30:12.980 She throws so much of herself into everything that she does from maintaining the Baldershof

00:30:20.260 website, to helping with the folklore study, to the Baldershof ladies study, just to building

00:30:28.020 breadth amongst, you know, the community in Baldershof and the AFA itself. So if you really

00:30:34.860 are interested in what it's like to be a woman in the AFA, Sarah is very, very involved and she

00:30:40.800 could definitely, definitely point you in the right direction. And yep, her email is down there. So

00:30:46.440 reach out to Sarah if you're in the Wisconsin area or surrounding area. I'm sure she'd love

00:30:50.800 to talk to you. So Anna, you got anybody? In New York South District. So when I got down here,

00:31:02.120 I was the new kid. We have a great group of women down here that immediately made me feel like I 1.00

00:31:10.500 was home like i wasn't some stranger just showing up um so we have she's she's not an official 0.94

00:31:23.380 member of leadership but um pam mccloskey has just been everybody's cheerleader down here 0.93

00:31:31.140 she has been like everybody's den mother down here she has run that kitchen at new york's half 0.95

00:31:38.340 we have we have like the best meals coming out of that kitchen and she she just does so much for all

00:31:49.060 of us awesome i'm so happy that we've met sheila you got anybody in mind yeah so uh odenshof is a

00:32:04.260 very old building it was built in 1938 and we got it in 19 2015 and it was it was showing its age

00:32:13.940 but we've had to do some repairs such as the roof and a new eight thousand dollars stove and things

00:32:20.180 like that that meant that we had to delay doing other repairs like our floor our beautiful um

00:32:26.580 clear-grained red fur floor that we have is very, very worn and got damaged when we had a lot of

00:32:34.540 leaking from our roof. So it's been a real concern for me, you know, the fundraising,

00:32:40.820 how are we going to raise the money? We have a very expensive tax bill, not tax, insurance bill.

00:32:45.820 We had to get our insurance to the state of California because we're in a fire zone.

00:32:49.680 and it just has a huge price tag ready Odensoff and we want it to look really beautiful when

00:32:57.640 people come so a person who really stepped in recently and it just every time I turn around

00:33:04.340 there's a new project and that is Ashley Stockton. Ashley who is who's just started the Odensoff

00:33:10.500 restoration project and you may know that she has one of Christine Dumas's beautiful scarves that

00:33:17.120 she um put up as a virtual raffle for this month and afa members from all over started buying

00:33:24.640 tickets buying raffle tickets for us and i think to date we've made like eight hundred dollars

00:33:29.840 on the scarf and we now have um um stan is that how you say his name justin penner who is donating

00:33:39.360 one of his gorgeous horns and so we're going to be doing this and you know that's ashley

00:33:44.240 she's thinking how can we how can we make this place shine as it and you know it's odin's

00:33:50.000 health of all things we need to give it the best we can and she's always got a project going while

00:33:56.960 working while raising her child and working sometimes double shifts as a cna just whatever

00:34:02.960 she's out there sleeping in her car just to make sure she can do her afa work and all that so i'm

00:34:09.200 very impressed by her level of dedication just not quitting i wish i had her energy i wish i

00:34:14.400 had her youth that i can tap into it because she's wonderful katie who would you like to

00:34:21.760 send a shout out to from the thorsoff district jessica lambert uh jessica lambert is amazing

00:34:28.880 she's one of the warmest kindest friendliest people i have ever met uh she doesn't really

00:34:37.520 care who you are she'll just walk right up to you and give you a hug and you feel like you've known

00:34:44.160 her forever um my husband used to do the runestone almost entirely by himself and when he said he

00:34:51.120 needed help jessica stepped up and she took over and made it a lot easier for us because my husband

00:34:58.160 for at least a week every month i wouldn't see him he'd be out in his office working for

00:35:03.600 hours and hours. I have to sneeze. It's not happening. Sorry. False alarm. She has been

00:35:14.840 extremely kind to me. She has been extremely kind to many of our folk, and she's become one of my

00:35:21.640 very best friends. So I think Jessica Lambert's a rock star. Awesome. We have another question

00:35:29.580 from tony king of cheese and this one is for githia sheila specifically what does it mean

00:35:36.300 to be a frith weaver um obviously we all come with our own um our own perceptions our own opinions

00:35:53.420 and sometimes there are issues that that come up because people are very much themselves they can't

00:36:02.680 quite see the uh the viewpoint of someone else obviously to be a frith weaver is one who can

00:36:09.680 bring together um people who have who are not of like mind and um try to do that but to me

00:36:17.600 Frith weaving is always that really positive, for me anyway.

00:36:22.320 I am building, I'm weaving frith when I'm out in my community doing food pantries.

00:36:27.060 That is something I do.

00:36:28.400 I work very, very hard at it.

00:36:30.100 I also am president of another nonprofit in town, which uses up one whole weekend every month.

00:36:36.560 And why do I do it?

00:36:37.440 Because I want everybody to know who we are, that we are not just to be trusted,

00:36:45.060 but we're to be um valued and and um you know we're friends we're there we're community we're

00:36:55.740 neighbors to you and that is coming out more and more i'm just i've had the very very christian in

00:37:03.060 our town i can't tell you how many churches we have in this little tiny town of brownsville

00:37:07.080 but so far it's all going really well so for me personally i don't have very much where um

00:37:15.620 i'm dealing with interpersonal relations relations i would certainly tell people

00:37:20.180 you know let's obviously step back try to understand somebody else's viewpoint

00:37:24.660 and find a common ground that would always be my thing i'm all

00:37:31.060 so not confrontational and anybody will tell you that i avoid personally um things where um where

00:37:38.020 i have to be really assertive i'm just not that's not my way you know i'm kind of mother hen i'm

00:37:42.820 grandma i'll give you the cookies and i that's my caring thing and i think if anything it's that

00:37:49.140 kind of soothing nature of me that makes people relax around me and i try to make everybody feel

00:37:54.740 valued when i meet them when i'm in their presence um i work at that i and i won't say it's work it's

00:38:01.540 pleasure absolute pleasure but i think breath weaving for for us right now in this world a lot

00:38:06.260 of it is building our reputation in the larger world and we do that by just being really good

00:38:13.780 people living by our values we are our deeds and we show that for our good work

00:38:21.540 thank you ma'am cody reynard asked to all the githias how has becoming a githia enriched your

00:38:29.780 life and bring you closer to the asa anna you want to start us off on that one sure

00:38:45.380 it has made me

00:38:50.740 it's made me more aware of person of who i am um

00:38:56.420 Um, it's made, it's made me understand that this is not just a solo project.

00:39:08.140 Um, it's made me more aware of the folk that absolutely do need this and why it's necessary.

00:39:17.240 Um, it's made me a lot more social.

00:39:21.520 I didn't used to be very social at all beforehand.

00:39:23.700 um and i'm sorry what was the second part of the question how it's uh brought you closer to the asa

00:39:40.660 it's brought me closer to the asa just just by knowing that

00:39:45.940 you know these are these are our gods um each one of us should have that connection

00:39:56.960 and especially for those of us that are gothar sometimes we need to show others how it's done

00:40:05.720 so every day i'm you know striving to you know reach out to my gods every day just a little bit

00:40:13.800 just so I can, you know, help others find what I have found.

00:40:23.600 Thank you. Sheila, how about you?

00:40:30.960 It's been a true honor to be able to do ceremonies with the folk. I had not really done very much

00:40:38.600 that in the past we actually started the horn blessing obviously long before i became gidea

00:40:45.560 we did that at mid-summer probably 2010 and um it just caught on and we realized that we women

00:40:54.840 have this wonderful um magical presence that and and ability to to bless the horn and

00:41:02.920 energize it with the feminine qualities that we have and that which has been passed on from

00:41:08.280 our ancestors so i love doing that with our women to remind them how deep our our ancestral line is

00:41:17.800 and that those women are still with us and we have that and also of course preparing it for bloat

00:41:25.640 um but doing um you know weddings the i have a baby naming coming right up and just the thrill

00:41:34.840 of that being able to do that to present that little being in front of the folk into the gods

00:41:40.680 is an amazing experience and i take i take this all very seriously i actually did a memorial service

00:41:47.800 with a lady whose brother died unfortunately from an overdose she was very very close to him

00:41:55.200 but um and it took a while before we could actually do the service and i went with her to

00:42:02.040 the mortuary and this was a man who had not been involved and it was it was a struggle it was a

00:42:08.260 experience and boy did i call on you know the the holy powers to be there to help guide him where

00:42:15.140 needed to go and to be there for the family during that really tough time because she was so broken

00:42:20.580 up by it and that was one of my first experiences um doing a funerary type ritual but um yeah being

00:42:31.460 in bloat and you know leading and galder and carrying the horn and all those things i love

00:42:36.900 working with matt because the two of us work together at odin soft and he is often the one

00:42:42.180 doing the odin bloat and then often ask me to assist and also participate and um i love the

00:42:50.500 flow that we get between us we're communicating and we're bringing all this amazing energy and

00:42:57.780 blessings to the folks when we're doing ritual and those are just highlights for me it's just

00:43:03.380 such a pleasure to do that katie

00:43:12.500 so

00:43:16.260 i had to remember what the question was i'm sorry um

00:43:21.860 it was no i got it i was just collecting myself there there you go um

00:43:27.700 Um, as an individual person practicing our faith, you learn about the gods in a very personal way.

00:43:40.880 But when you become somebody who is spiritually responsible for helping our folk connect to the gods, you learn about the gods in an entirely new sort of way.

00:43:52.080 um because you're looking at them not from your own personal perspective but from the perspective

00:44:00.780 of how do I help my folk know them um so for me being a givia has

00:44:09.960 it's kind of the same answer for both parts of that question it's it's been very rewarding for

00:44:19.860 me um helping our folk to connect um but it's also been rewarding for me because by helping

00:44:30.720 our folk connect i have learned a lot about myself and a lot about the gods from a perspective

00:44:37.540 that i wouldn't have had otherwise if that makes any sense it does it does so i guess

00:44:48.000 for me, how it's enriched my life. I guess every part of it enriches my life to some extent,

00:44:58.580 whether it's counseling folk that need it, whether it's being that conduit at bloat between the folk

00:45:05.960 and the gods. One of my favorite things about bloat is when we accept the gifts of our people

00:45:14.740 and give the gifts of our people to the gods. And when I walk that horn around and I look that

00:45:22.140 person in the eyes and I can see their emotions and I can see what they're doing as they put

00:45:29.980 their hand over that horn and they're putting their gifts into the horn, you can feel the horn

00:45:36.840 become heavy with the gifts of the folk. You can feel how much dedication, how much respect,

00:45:44.760 how much love, how much worship is put into that horn. And when you're receiving the gifts of the

00:45:51.820 gods to give to your folk, it's the same thing. You know, when you lift that bully or you lift

00:45:57.620 that horn and you can feel the gifts and the blessings of the gods enter that meat through

00:46:03.940 the horn and being able to give that to our folk you can literally feel the difference in the weight

00:46:11.780 you can feel a difference in you know the emotion and the power in the circle um between the two so

00:46:21.020 I guess that's something one of my favorite parts about it is just being that conduit and being

00:46:26.880 privileged and honored to be the person holding that horn and feeling the weight of the gifts of

00:46:33.400 both our folk and our gods. So I guess that's one thing I like about that.

00:46:40.140 Sarah asks, with Ashtrew being a male-dominated thing in the past, it's wonderful to see women

00:46:46.300 in important roles. Have any of you ever been called a feminist since you've taken on your

00:46:53.480 positions? No, I have not. Any of you been called a feminist? I've been disliked by feminists. I'm

00:47:02.500 not sure if that counts, but nope, I haven't been called one. I've been called a lot of other

00:47:08.440 things, but I have not been called a feminist. I have not been called a feminist. I think I

00:47:19.320 made a news reporter a little bit unhappy with me. This is right after the initial town hall

00:47:29.680 meeting for Baldershof, where we had a room full of people that weren't living in Murdoch

00:47:40.960 that were very mad at us for being in Murdoch. And after all that was over, I was approached

00:47:48.560 by somebody from the, what's it called? West Central Tribune or something like that. It's

00:47:54.720 their local the local wilmer uh newspaper but he was asking a lot of questions about

00:48:01.840 well how far can a woman actually get now so true and you know what's your actual role

00:48:09.560 and i just i answered honestly like we can we can be priestesses we can i didn't know this at the

00:48:18.860 time but we can you know sit as witten he didn't like any of my answers because 1.00

00:48:28.220 i was not telling him what he wanted to be here um i've made feminists mad at me 1.00

00:48:35.820 on the other hand though it's like well how can you be in such a male dominated 1.00

00:48:40.780 male dominated religion it's like but it doesn't have to be male dominated

00:48:46.060 why don't you come on over and see what we're about and that never goes over well

00:48:50.680 they get mad about that too well no i've i've never been called a feminist unless

00:48:56.340 unless all these people are saying this behind our backs

00:48:59.260 i don't think so i don't think so i know one thing that people really talk about with um

00:49:09.900 ask me a lot is, you know, don't you feel oppressed? Do I? No, I don't. I don't feel

00:49:19.020 oppressed. Um, you know, I'm, I'm a Witten member. I am a priestess of Boulder. I am a

00:49:27.840 Ythia of the Hesitri Folk Assembly. 0.59

00:49:31.740 No.

00:49:32.260 I mean, just because I wear a dress to church does not mean that I'm oppressed.

00:49:42.740 So I know that they said, well, every time you see you, you're all dressed in dresses.

00:49:46.980 Well, yes, because we like to look nice.

00:49:50.780 And I like to look nice in a dress.

00:49:53.020 But just because I wear a dress to church does not mean I'm oppressed.

00:49:56.200 Does anybody else have anything to add on that?

00:50:01.200 I was going to say, it's really quite the opposite of being called feminist.

00:50:05.200 I've been told that I'm being kept down by the patriarchy, that I'm just, I don't know any better. 0.98

00:50:17.200 I'm letting the men control things.

00:50:20.200 Like, I've used this particular analogy before. I don't think it's an analogy, but whatever. People either assume that you're a super liberal feminist person or you're a 1950s housewife who, like, has no life outside of taking care of your husband.

00:50:43.940 and we're neither of those things we are just completely normal healthy individual women who

00:50:50.180 are living our lives uh to the i'd like to think to the very fullest and i don't know how

00:50:56.180 how just because there are more men in a faith means that it is a male faith i mean like i know

00:51:03.760 we've talked about it there have always been more men oh it was a very male religion i get why

00:51:09.500 people get that impression but people refuse to acknowledge the fact that our ancestors were very

00:51:17.820 cognizant of the duality and the partnership between male and female and you can see it in

00:51:24.880 all the lore and you can see it in this just everything if you look at it you could pick and

00:51:31.360 choose as much as you like but if you're really looking you see that there's a partnership yes

00:51:37.700 there are different roles for our men than there are for our women it doesn't mean they're less

00:51:44.960 important so yeah no definitely not feminists yeah I'd like to have a comment here yeah for

00:51:54.720 years um there was this story that was being told by the left about um how we we don't like women

00:52:02.600 that's also true the way we practice it is misogynist it's all anti-women from the get-go

00:52:08.800 my husband even back in the 70s i think when he began um doing also true he had the saying and i

00:52:15.200 don't believe it was his own but the saying was a religion without a goddess is halfway to atheism

00:52:21.280 and it was always the goddesses once he really got into and understood the balance in the pantheon 0.67

00:52:26.680 the male and female um and that is so true our problem is that we don't have women coming here

00:52:34.520 to find our amazing men in fact it came up today in a conversation that i had with uh our good

00:52:41.000 friends pilgrim and katie and ashley ashley and i were down talking with them and katie was talking

00:52:46.120 about well women always knew that if they wanted to find a man go up to alaska because the ratio

00:52:51.560 was like 20 women to 80 men and i think well that sounds like us a bit and what can we do about that 0.82

00:52:56.840 we've always said we've got this uh the women just don't even hear about health secure the way the

00:53:02.600 men do men are much more social when it comes to all this kind of thing so any women who are

00:53:07.720 listening who are at all interested in finding communities that respect you and encourage you to

00:53:17.240 participate and bond with other women and find that made possible and have children and be

00:53:23.400 supported by a community that will love your children and provide homeschooling for them,

00:53:30.200 if that's what you wish. I mean, we really have developed so much for families. And so there's

00:53:35.480 much more for women now than ever before. And women should not just stand along the sidelines 1.00

00:53:43.000 anymore please come forth and join on your own because i think you're going to be amazed with

00:53:47.640 what's waiting for you but um we've always had a place for women it's just there's never been very

00:53:53.640 many women we've had some great women in the past i mean i can say patricia hall and i know that katie

00:53:58.680 knows exactly who i'm talking about very very amazing powerful woman and um wonderful leader

00:54:05.960 for us women and we've had women like that in the past and we we've always acknowledged our women 0.51

00:54:11.400 women have always been respected that's the one thing you're never going to find at least through

00:54:18.780 leadership and who knows about members way off wherever but we truly respect all people in our

00:54:25.920 church women are always respected treated well and um that's just that's the way we do it that

00:54:34.100 those are our values they're the best values that we could possibly have and we always show it when

00:54:38.420 together and that's what our coach does can i just add we're lucky that none of our children

00:54:45.540 in the future will have the same problems because we have so many children right now

00:54:50.180 there are so many little boys and so many little girls we just had two twins uh two boy twins two

00:54:57.140 boy twin i guess that's what twins means it means two but we just had two little boys and a little

00:55:01.700 girl in my kindred alone born within a month and a half of each other uh i know that our our under

00:55:07.620 ash and oak kindred in ohio has like three two babies were just born and another one's on the

00:55:15.040 way three babies i'm sorry three babies were just born and another one's on the way like

00:55:19.000 and they're all girls so we got a lot of little girls being born into the afa right now and uh

00:55:24.520 none of them are going to have the same problem as trying to find a dude

00:55:27.580 or those little boys aren't going to have as many we're probably going to have it's probably a role 1.00

00:55:32.880 reversal the girls are going to have a hard time finding the good ostrich boys at this rate 0.99

00:55:36.800 speaking about awesome women i'm gonna plug somebody else so i want to give a shout out to

00:55:48.900 folk builder ashley mcstocker folk builder ashley mcstocker is our mick rock star and what i mean

00:55:57.960 by that is ashley has done so much for boulder soft and for the folk at boulder soft she

00:56:05.480 runs our food pantry. She's created really amazing relationships with the people that donate to us.

00:56:15.760 We hand out bags and bags of food and pounds and pounds of choice cut meats. And she, you know,

00:56:24.360 headed up the school supply drive that they did where they were handing out backpacks

00:56:30.260 to little kids with school supplies in it.

00:56:33.460 She's absolutely amazing.

00:56:35.820 She's also one of the key people

00:56:38.760 that help take care of Baldur's Hof,

00:56:41.000 make sure that everything runs the way it's supposed to run.

00:56:44.060 She's one of our mentors for our apprentices.

00:56:48.620 She's absolutely amazing.

00:56:50.340 So I just want to say a shout out

00:56:51.900 to folk builder Ashlyn McStocker

00:56:53.560 because you are our McRockstar

00:56:55.640 and we appreciate you very much.

00:56:57.020 Anna do you got somebody that you want to shout out to

00:57:01.900 um yes our new apprentice folk builder or one of our apprentice folk builders

00:57:12.680 um Tracy Adler she has absolutely hit the ground running um

00:57:19.000 like right around the time that Njortsov happened you know she started she was coming to these

00:57:25.920 events and she has absolutely taken this by the horns she does moots at least once a month if not

00:57:32.720 twice um she has been you know she's great at the counseling aspect of dealing with their folks she

00:57:42.320 is you know she she's never too busy for a phone call um she's just put herself out there i know

00:57:49.520 she has a very busy job schedule as well. And she's just been a great example of female leadership. 0.98

00:58:00.480 Sheila. Oh, well, this is a good time to talk about Crystal Podbreger, who has been a

00:58:14.360 no-spoke builder for a few years now. She is the person who keeps us well-fed, plans

00:58:22.260 up all of our meals, and, you know, pays attention to budget and all these things, but she makes

00:58:27.920 sure that everybody gets what they need. And she often stresses ethnic issues, so she will

00:58:34.100 have certain meals that are notable for paprika, for one thing. She loves paprika, so we get

00:58:40.900 lot of paprika at midsummer we did um yeah she's very very dedicated to doing that um

00:58:48.980 she also was the person who really helped spearhead the uh the uh painting of of odin's off this

00:58:56.500 summer um we happen to have a young fellow who's a painting contractor and he saw the condition yes

00:59:02.660 it had been painted but not primed and prepared last time it was painted and he said we've got

00:59:07.620 to we've got to fix that so he got right in there and with the help of several other afa members

00:59:12.980 and and crystal her husband victor um spent numerous weekends up at um odenshoff and through

00:59:21.220 may and june before mid-summer to get the whole the whole thing totally scraped boards replaced

00:59:28.580 things called amazing amount of work and as crystal said she went through weeks and weeks and weeks

00:59:35.060 driving to odin's off and not having any any time off so she's taken some very necessary time off

00:59:40.980 the last couple months since midsummer and she's going to be back on saturday giving us some

00:59:47.780 wonderful hearty i forget what it is we're doing like shepherd's pie and that's going to be the

00:59:52.740 main course which can be perfect for the winter night we look forward to that awesome her cooking

00:59:59.460 is delicious if you have not had her cooking please go to odin's hot because it's amazing 0.97

01:00:05.860 she's amazing katie you want to give a shout out to somebody yes so there is a woman in the afa who

01:00:17.860 i don't think that her official title is good enough uh she behind the scenes does

01:00:24.580 more work than most people even begin to realize um she is our folk services person mandy flavel

01:00:34.900 mrs alshar godi she mandy is amazing and mandy works her butt off and she never gets

01:00:45.780 the praise she deserves for all of the work she does because she's not in the front and center

01:00:50.980 of things she's not attached to you know titles for this or that she runs the baby blanket program

01:00:59.780 for the uh for the new babies in the afa which i think is amazing to have a a a blanket that is

01:01:07.840 handmade by somebody in the folk uh for your new baby it's like a i've got two children i have two

01:01:14.800 afa blankets and those blankets are as far as i'm concerned they're heirlooms those are blankets that

01:01:19.560 kids will have forever and hopefully will pass on to their children one day because they're just

01:01:24.280 kind of awesome but also there's there's a certain type of energy in those blankets and

01:01:28.840 mandy's the reason why we have that program uh when you see um family and families in need who

01:01:37.240 uh are on rough times and you see them advertised uh please help these folk mandy's the one who

01:01:44.040 make sure that all that information gets out there and that

01:01:47.680 she does so much. And I think Mandy

01:01:51.880 aside from being a really kind of spectacular human being

01:01:56.080 I think she needs to be recognized for being

01:02:00.220 as awesome as she is because I don't think it happens enough. 0.99

01:02:03.060 Hail Mandy!

01:02:07.720 Indeed.

01:02:08.640 all right michelle has a question for you sheila will you and steve be at winter nights this year

01:02:18.660 this weekend no no saturday is his birthday for one thing he had his 55th high school reunion

01:02:28.380 that was also this weekend and he found out about it when we were in texas last month at the funeral

01:02:33.900 of his brother um and a lady came up and said steve i haven't seen you since high school you're

01:02:39.420 going to come out for the 50th fifth reunion and he was really hoping to but i had to say no steve

01:02:46.300 we're going to be a winter night that wasn't soft that's what we're doing this year we often when

01:02:51.980 it was in pennsylvania you know we would go out there and then we'd shift our winter nights to a

01:02:57.660 week later but i have to say that trying to travel do air travel the last two years has been

01:03:05.340 frustrating and frightening and and everything else you know at times you just don't know what's

01:03:09.820 going to happen and so we're kind of doing less than we did before but um i know we're going to

01:03:15.660 be um out to all the hoffs hopefully in the next year we'll make it out to everyone and i we always

01:03:22.380 look forward to meeting people there it's going to be a fantastic winter night i'm sure um wish

01:03:28.620 i could see ohio and maybe wilson there but anyway no we're going to be doing all right again our big

01:03:34.060 winter nights out at odenshoff and for me it's i prefer it over yule yule is sometimes everybody's

01:03:40.220 favorite but to me that's pandemonium when you do you know 80 people in that one room for one

01:03:44.940 day and you're giving presents out to kids and they're making gingerbread cottages with frosting

01:03:49.980 and candy no thank you um it's hard to relax with that one boy i love winter nights we're gonna have

01:03:56.860 a wonderful one it's gonna be beautiful weather 85 in the day and 55 at night so we're gonna steve

01:04:02.540 and i are camping actually at a winter night but thank you for asking we will try to make it out

01:04:07.180 to winter nights next year there is an event that you're gonna be out here shortly though sheila

01:04:13.980 right right yeah so that one that was a good lead-in and you're gonna be there too i found

01:04:20.460 that i will be there yeah yeah well a lot of people know that my husband steve um started

01:04:26.860 his career in the military he did rotc in college and really wanted to have an a career in the army

01:04:34.700 didn't work out that way he got frustrated after the first four years of it but he did go back in

01:04:40.140 for the national guard for quite a long time but um because of that i mean he he still has

01:04:46.220 so much respect for the soldier you know that's really what it's about as brandy would know too

01:04:51.500 she's the former military and it's a very big honor because um um nathan erlinson and melissa

01:05:00.860 mills i believe are the two who have been organizing this particular event feast van harrier it is it

01:05:07.180 It is honoring the warriors that go to Valhall with Odin, the unharrier, the chosen.

01:05:14.700 And you could say, well, they're chosen by Freya and they're chosen by Odin.

01:05:17.880 And the idea is that we honor the men who die in battle.

01:05:23.160 And it's a very, very powerful time of year, particularly for men.

01:05:27.720 And I've been asked to actually do a Freya Blitz.

01:05:30.300 So we're going out on the Wednesday before it.

01:05:33.180 We're going out, I think, September 9th and coming home the 13th.

01:05:37.180 And it's going to be down at Hevener Rune Stone away at the south end of Oklahoma.

01:05:42.000 We've been there.

01:05:42.620 It's a gorgeous place.

01:05:43.540 Very kind of a magical little glade where the Rune Stone is.

01:05:49.600 Really interesting limestone walls like you guys get in the Midwest and all that.

01:05:55.200 And I think it's going to be very, very wonderful.

01:05:57.540 My husband Steve is going to do an ode and load.

01:06:00.220 And there's going to be a wedding afterwards.

01:06:03.460 and there's going to be a really cool Einherjer bloat that's going to be actually done on a river

01:06:10.780 or some water, a waterway right there. So even though, you know, you think male, there's going

01:06:16.060 to be a lot of wonderful women there and we're going to make sure that the women have plenty

01:06:20.140 of time to be by ourselves and share our experiences, get to know each other from

01:06:24.820 wherever we come from, but do try to come to that one. And I'm not sure quite how people

01:06:29.780 register. Do you know, Mandy, how that's done? Yes, we've got a link down there on the bottom.

01:06:35.020 If you go to the runestone.org store under the events, you're going to find the Feast of the

01:06:39.300 Einherjar. You'll be able to get your tickets there. And if you guys have any questions,

01:06:44.640 reach out to Folk Builder Melissa Mills and Folk Builder Nathan Erlinson or Folk Builder

01:06:50.080 Ashley McStalker, and then get you all the information. And it is also not too late to go

01:06:57.240 to winter nights so make sure if you haven't already and you want to go down to runestone.org

01:07:05.160 at the store hit the events and register for winter nights it's going to be a beautiful event

01:07:10.100 winter nights 11 in ohio so if you have any questions feel free to reach out to get the

01:07:16.660 katie erickson and i'm sure she will try to answer them to the best of her ability while she is

01:07:21.860 frantically probably trying to tie the last few pieces of this event together so reach out to her

01:07:27.780 with any questions also um there's um who else uh you could get a hold of witten clippard erickson

01:07:35.820 i'm sure if katie's busy or possibly who else katie who else could they contact if you and

01:07:42.040 clipper uh christine dumas timmy dumas just lambert pretty much all of the amazing folk

01:07:48.440 builders we have in ohio or in pennsylvania jess keller who i'm going to steal brandy's thunder

01:07:55.480 and i'm going to um give jess keller a shout out we had a good conversation the other day 0.94

01:08:02.300 and jess keller is pretty amazing she holds so many different moots all the time for our folk

01:08:09.040 and she doesn't get discouraged when people don't come because we have moots that not everybody

01:08:14.100 makes it too she just keeps throwing them out there and uh she has a great deal of knowledge

01:08:19.700 and dedication and she's pretty cool we like jess keller awesome well i'm gonna i'm gonna see

01:08:26.980 your jessica keller and i'm gonna raise you a jessie schaefer i'm gonna talk about her for that

01:08:33.220 so jessie schaefer is the lady macgyver of bouldershoff she constantly comes prepared

01:08:39.620 with band-aid snacks and the occasional chainsaw when you need to cut down a tree she is absolutely

01:08:45.620 amazing i cannot say enough good things about her she is an amazing friend she's an amazing woman

01:08:53.220 she's an amazing mother and i absolutely adore her i have never seen anyone work as hard as

01:08:59.860 that woman so i'm gonna give a shout out to jesse schaefer how about you sheila are you

01:09:05.380 going to raise the ante here who you got oh yeah um this last week i had the pleasure of uh going

01:09:13.220 down to yuba city which is the county seat of yuba county where brown phil is and where

01:09:20.020 and that is because sierra chapman one of our younger folk builders a young mother with a little

01:09:27.060 feisty wonderful little two-year-old that keeps her very very busy and holding down a full-time 0.90

01:09:31.860 job she does folk building best she can you know with the time she has and one thing she took on

01:09:38.420 was the project of an adopt a highway i know they've been very successful in wisconsin well

01:09:43.460 she saw it through did all the applications made all the phone calls and i went in there with her

01:09:49.940 and here she had these two highway department guys um from the state that she was talking with

01:09:57.060 and she just handled it beautifully she knew every question to ask i had all the paperwork all planned

01:10:03.700 out knew where she was going to take all the equipment and we had the pleasure of going out

01:10:09.540 and seeing the two signs that span the that at either end of our like a four mile stretch on

01:10:16.100 highway 20 if anybody knows this part of california um the uber river runs through it so we have a

01:10:21.780 huge bridge that spans the yuba river it's down in the kind of gravel bar areas so it goes from

01:10:27.380 um a place called stacy ann lane um over over on uh yuba county crosses over into nevada county

01:10:36.340 and ends at timbuktu and sure enough there's really a timbuktu in california it was an old

01:10:41.140 gold rush town it has about three houses and uh so we're going to go out in the nice thing in

01:10:46.820 california guys we if we do this and we do it once a month collect the bags and do it safely they're

01:10:53.140 really concerned about that that we understand our safety rules we will get 250 dollars for our

01:10:58.980 clock you know talk about some money to be very well used at odin's office so i want to thank um

01:11:08.180 sierra for that because it was not my idea i never would have come up with it but she did

01:11:12.660 and she needs to be commended for seeing that through to the end and it's gonna be fun going

01:11:18.020 out and doing those and having lunch and you know being doers again like we all want to do

01:11:24.020 and build our reputation yes what about you miss anna you got anybody left to shout out

01:11:30.580 to over there in york's half district i think you're muted though

01:11:35.220 okay we have a brand new folk builder we have fawn she has she has been all over the place the last

01:11:48.260 few weeks i'm actually not sure where she is right now she's she's been driving to i think texas i

01:11:55.160 know she's been driving to florida um oklahoma just to meet up with folk just to say hi just

01:12:03.560 to have that full time. So I'm so excited to work with her. And I'm so excited to see what she is,

01:12:09.960 you know, going to, like what she's going to do in the next few months and years.

01:12:14.940 She has a lot of potential, and I just cannot wait. And I'm so excited.

01:12:20.180 Awesome. Welcome to the team there, Fawn. We have a 10 Canadian dollar, I believe it is,

01:12:27.280 donation from Lawrence Forbes and says, just popping in to say good evening, ladies. I'm

01:12:32.960 enjoying the stream thanks for all you do for our folk and bless your hearts all right well thank

01:12:39.620 you very much we appreciate that if any of you do want to make a donation or you do just want to

01:12:45.840 get your question to the top of the line because you know the four of us are going to run down as

01:12:50.500 many rabbit holes as possible tonight before we get to all the questions i promise we'll try to

01:12:55.080 get to them all but if you want to get your question up at the top head over to entropy

01:13:01.040 and you can give us a donation there. Everything is appreciated. We thank you very much.

01:13:07.500 All right. And back to our questions here. Sarah asks, can each of you talk about your

01:13:15.580 relationship with the Desir? Would you say that as women, we take our place among them when we die? 0.97

01:13:22.440 Sheila, do you want to start us off with that? Oh, I would definitely say we do. I look forward

01:13:28.000 to that i i'm so glad that we are really comfortable with the idea of an afterlife

01:13:34.080 so many people are afraid of dying afraid that there's nothing on the other side and i have no

01:13:38.880 doubt that i hope to meet my dc on the other side and be with my ancestors i actually had

01:13:49.680 a nephew who passed away it was really it was very very tragic he was shot in a hunting accident at

01:13:55.280 age 12 and i had to tell my my sister who was his grandmother you know i really said for me

01:14:03.760 and this is me because you know i got my personal gnosis thing i'm kind of a touchy-feely kind of

01:14:11.360 a person but i just felt that when he passed over that there was no doubt that he was going to be

01:14:18.000 greeted by his ancestors that a grandmother was there with a plate of cookies for him

01:14:24.320 and i felt good with that and i think it helped my sister because i know we continue on and um

01:14:31.040 there's our soul those soul components keep going and they weave back through our family lines and

01:14:37.040 they come back and they touch us in those amazing ways i actually have i have some really incredible

01:14:42.800 stories but at one point i had been to ireland it was 1993 i made this trip on my own to kind of

01:14:51.600 dig deep into my roots and find my ancestors what i did find was that it was it certainly was not

01:14:58.080 the christian the catholic churches where i found things i couldn't find the records but i went to

01:15:02.480 the stone circles and i went to the wells and i had wonderful experiences there i came home

01:15:10.960 and i received a gift i received a gift as i was writing about my my grandmother my great grandmother

01:15:16.640 um and uh i was describing how at christmas time when i was a little girl growing up in the 1950s

01:15:26.800 you know a dollar would buy you a whole bag of goodies for your relatives and in my case it was

01:15:32.300 always red nail polish and red lipstick for my grandmother and my godmother and for my great

01:15:36.940 grandmother it was always a hairnet a hairnet could be with sequins or glitter on it whatever

01:15:42.840 whatever was pretty you know you'd buy that if you were a seven-year-old and that's what i did

01:15:46.520 for my grandmother every year she got a hairnet well as i had done this trip to ireland and digging

01:15:52.760 very very i mean just touching on so many levels my own personal past there and i was writing these

01:15:59.720 stories about going to that house and being there at holiday time and the damask and the fancy

01:16:05.880 glasses and all these things i went out and saw something on my dryer out on my porch and went

01:16:14.120 back and forth a few times it was like august it was warm and i was putting laundry on the line

01:16:19.240 came back i finally picked up this envelope and i looked at it and i didn't recognize it

01:16:24.440 was shiny was your typical uh thin shiny uh waxy kind of brown envelope like you might have a

01:16:31.960 greeting card in and um i opened it up and actually on the outside it said alberts and it said marine

01:16:41.240 if you know marine county california i said kenfield san and selma samerthel and i thought

01:16:45.960 whoa this is really strange and i opened it up and inside was a beautiful like lithograph beautiful

01:16:55.000 tinted envelope with a lady with waft hair brown hair and bright blue eyes just the type of thing 0.78

01:17:02.760 that you would have seen in like the 1930s 1920s 1930s that kind of wavy hair you know

01:17:09.560 and it said real human hairnet across it and the thing is this had never been open it was clear

01:17:18.360 it was absolutely brand new and on the back it had a little sticker and it said i think it said 10

01:17:23.640 cents or 19 cents and i opened it up very very carefully because it was this color it was a

01:17:29.720 color picture on the front of this lady opened it up and took out this tissue paper and sure enough

01:17:35.320 i unwrapped it and in it was a hairnet and it was the color of a light brown and i'm sure that was

01:17:41.880 the color of my great grandmother's when she was young and that was a gift that came to me and i've

01:17:48.200 not had many things but i believe the miracles i know that as a christian i talked with my husband

01:17:53.240 about this last week i always thought that saints were the only ones that have miracles no that was

01:17:57.080 a miracle and it happened to me i need to find it someplace here in my home i used to when i was a

01:18:02.840 teacher i picked that to school and shared that actually with whoa guys you don't know what what

01:18:09.640 it's all about i mean none of us do there are a lot of mysteries out there but it was a true gift

01:18:14.680 nobody had ever seen it was actually that albert's was a store that was around before i was even

01:18:21.000 born my sister said you remember albert oh no you don't it became macy's when you were a little girl

01:18:25.400 i mean this was really old it was absolutely pristine and uh over time over the next 10 years

01:18:33.640 and i'd take it out and wrap it and show people it just became old you know as i was as i was

01:18:38.120 folding it you could see it was starting to discolor and fray and all this and i can't wait

01:18:43.880 to find it i will share it with you folks i wrote in the room stone so i did not write many articles

01:18:48.760 in the early rainstones i wrote about uller was one of mine and i wrote an article called the hair

01:18:54.680 net um and spelled h-e-i-r because it was you know given to me as an heir to my my great grandmother

01:19:03.240 so i love it she was there with me and i realized that she's a a lady i have not recognized as much

01:19:12.120 as i should i mean to me here we go what is important assembles and and honoring those who

01:19:18.840 have passed and um you know we all kind of dig through our line of of relatives who to remember

01:19:25.160 what we learned but this lady was definitely reached out to me and i appreciate that

01:19:29.800 so that's my story and yes the ds are very important and this is a great time of year

01:19:34.760 i'm going to give a plug for winter nights at odin socks um it's not too late to make your

01:19:40.600 plans to come starts friday night um ashley is doing dinner and we're going to do pocas

01:19:46.680 and she wants to do octoberfest dancing so so that's what is the focus she says we're

01:19:52.440 wear your dirndl and your lederhosen and we start with that and then saturday and my husband steve

01:19:59.480 is going to end with uh odin lot at about 8 30 that night for those who've not seen steve doing

01:20:05.160 node and bloat is quite different from matt's is very very powerful of course they both do it they're

01:20:10.520 very very different techniques to use and the next day is talks and as i said the baby naming

01:20:19.000 and lots of kids things and again octoberfest games that ashley is coming up with some really

01:20:24.200 fun traditional type thing and then feasting and uh evening desir bloat with the song that i learned

01:20:33.560 from katie which we love and we're going to have the women play a very very key role in this whole

01:20:38.600 thing as the men enter the circle it's my favorite time of year surely and uh and with the summer and

01:20:46.520 the next day we're doing a community fair for the yeah for brownsville we call it um the harvest

01:20:52.840 fest and all the people who come to the food pantry on saturday are going to be invited back

01:20:57.800 to come and partake of quote halloween stuff have a free lunch no hot dogs and chips and a cupcake

01:21:04.920 and enjoy the uh the uh hospitality of odin's hawk and we who are seeing a thing so very evil

01:21:12.680 well of course they're not they know that we have a lot of support in our community

01:21:17.400 so um yeah it's a very full weekend and we want people to come out for it because

01:21:23.160 you couldn't ask for better weather this is this is perfect so yeah write to ashley write to me

01:21:29.960 and let us know you're coming because crystal's buying the food for saturday you need to know

01:21:34.280 get her head down in fact talk about kids right now we have 34 people 34 adults coming

01:21:40.760 to winter night we have 25 children and a lot our little tiny tots so just let you know what's

01:21:48.280 happening out here in california with our growing families

01:21:55.160 that's awesome sheila thank you your kids are about to outnumber those adults here pretty quick

01:22:00.680 yeah they are

01:22:03.720 katie how about how about you can you talk about your relationship with the desire

01:22:11.080 so contrary to a lot of what i've said since i've been on here

01:22:14.520 when i before i found the afa and before i became the gidea i didn't really have that strong of a

01:22:26.040 connection to the female aspect of things um i was drawn to freya at the time because of her

01:22:34.400 connection to magic and to uh in some in some ways war but i not really the whole let's go

01:22:43.500 stabby stabby um as it is the this the woman who is strong and can stand up for herself because i

01:22:50.700 was always a very very shy very shy person so you know a strong confident woman appealed to me and

01:22:58.940 i didn't really have that in my life a lot so i was drawn to freya for that but despite being drawn

01:23:04.700 to Freya, I had very little connection to the female aspect of things. Being shy and lacking

01:23:15.560 confidence, it's hard to connect to something when you feel disconnected from it, which I guess

01:23:23.160 by definition, but when I became a Gidea, or I should say when I became a Gidea student,

01:23:30.280 i had the very great luck and honor of being mentored by uh patricia hall patricia hall is

01:23:39.140 a extremely wonderful extremely powerful saver practicer and just an all-around awesome human

01:23:46.360 being and she was the woman who was in charge of the desirble at our national winter nights

01:23:53.700 before i came around and i became her student and like within three months i was told i'm doing

01:23:59.900 dis-ear bloat. I'm doing

01:24:01.840 the dis-ear bloat. 0.96

01:24:03.940 And that 0.98

01:24:04.680 was intimidating as hell.

01:24:08.440 Not because I was scared about

01:24:09.900 performing ritual for so many people

01:24:11.940 because I had done that before.

01:24:15.060 But because

01:24:16.180 I was trying to

01:24:17.500 fill in Patricia Hall's shoes.

01:24:20.400 Not that I was, I wasn't

01:24:22.000 filling in for her. I was

01:24:23.520 learning from her. And

01:24:25.900 she just kind of threw me under the bus.

01:24:28.160 Right? But 0.80

01:24:29.460 I was told in like mid-August that in mid-October I was holding a ritual for the Desir for

01:24:37.580 our one of at the time biggest national events that we had. Midsummer in California was the

01:24:47.160 only one that was bigger and things have changed a lot since then but uh I kind of got a crash

01:24:52.980 course in in the desir um i had to i had to learn and connect and figure out what that meant to be

01:25:04.420 before i could figure out how to make that connection for our folk and uh ever since the

01:25:11.060 desir has had a very very special place in my heart uh winter nights the desire bloat that's

01:25:17.380 like my baby because that's how i got started if it wasn't for patricia hall and that desire bloat

01:25:25.940 i don't know how long it would have taken me to find that connection to the female aspect of

01:25:31.140 our faith uh not as i like to think as genuinely deeply as i have now i mean i'd have gotten there

01:25:38.420 probably but um our desire are our ancient mothers i always say ancient mothers but something you have

01:25:45.300 to understand is that our desir are all of the females that are in our line way way back to the

01:25:50.580 beginning of time if you had a however many times removed aunt who didn't have children she's still

01:25:57.860 a member of her this year because she's a female in your family who helped shape the world that

01:26:03.220 you live in right now in your family life maybe she was your however many removed grandmother or

01:26:12.100 grandfather's best friend or their their caretaker you don't know who that woman was or how she was

01:26:20.260 connected to you and so it's all of the women all of those women who who share in your lineage who

01:26:27.460 have shaped the families for generations and generations that lead to you all of those women

01:26:36.180 are important and we're never going to remember half of their names we're never we're lucky if

01:26:41.140 we know like five or six generations back for most of us i know i don't know that many generations

01:26:48.900 back in my family um but it doesn't mean you can't be connected to them you're to see are

01:26:54.420 literally in your blood they're with you all the time um and this is something i say often

01:27:00.980 to our women in particular but it applies across the board when when you need help with something

01:27:05.940 our gods are there but our desir are closer um and they're certainly more invested in our lives

01:27:12.420 because the gods are looking at a much bigger picture and our desir and our alphar too who

01:27:17.220 are our male ancestors but specifically our desir they are invested in us they lived so that we could

01:27:25.860 live they live on in us they care they want us to succeed they want us to do great things they want

01:27:35.060 us to be proud strong european people because that's what we need to be in order to make sure

01:27:43.380 that our children have a future and that's what it's all about so you can't have the past without

01:27:49.700 the future you can't have the future without the past rgc are extremely extremely important so are

01:27:55.940 our alfar but they were not specific to this question um and i absolutely do believe uh

01:28:03.220 Sheila brought it up when she was talking earlier.

01:28:07.620 One of the things I say to people who are dealing with loss and grief is you try to take comfort in knowing that the person who has passed away isn't going into nothingness.

01:28:23.400 they're not going to be alone somewhere lonely they're going into a hall full of

01:28:31.080 women men and women alfar dsir all of this family for till the beginning of time they're here

01:28:37.560 waiting for you with their open arms and i like to think of the women being in the front of the line

01:28:42.200 because our women are by nature more nurturing so of course they're standing there with their 0.92

01:28:46.680 arms wide open ready to give that person a huge huge huge hug and to welcome them home to their 1.00

01:28:52.280 hall um and when we die we will become one of those women in that hall waiting for our our

01:29:00.520 descendants to join us hopefully after very long and fulfilling lives that's what i got

01:29:11.960 you are muted miss brandy oh thank you anna can you tell us about your relationship with the

01:29:17.640 this year yes um i my family um it's my family has usually been very female-led and by that i mean

01:29:33.560 as far as you know the protection and the going out and getting food and shelter that's that's

01:29:40.040 been the men's job but as far as keeping the culture alive you know keeping traditions alive 0.91

01:29:48.280 that's always been the role of the women in my family um

01:29:55.880 so i've been very fortunate to have that connection to my mother and to my grandmother and you know

01:30:02.520 through them i have you know it's partially through them kind of inadvertently because

01:30:11.880 they're both very staunch lutherans but it's through them through learning about

01:30:16.680 my own heritage that i found out so true um

01:30:23.240 my grandmother in particular um and you can call this upg or whatever you'd like to call it but

01:30:29.880 she does still she does still visit she's been gone since 2014 but she will still come and hang

01:30:40.120 around when i lived in wilmer minnesota she would i could tell that she had been in that apartment

01:30:47.560 she brought this um apple cinnamon smell with her and it's the smell of like those old apple

01:30:55.800 cinnamon spice candles i don't think they make them anymore but it definitely was a smell that

01:31:03.560 permeated the apartment at times um same with this place down in florida you know she is still there

01:31:13.320 so your your desir your female ancestors those are definitely if you don't know who to talk to

01:31:20.680 when you first get on this path i mean you can always talk to the gods but i would really

01:31:25.880 recommend that you start to make those connections with your desire with you know the female ancestors

01:31:32.760 um it's like katie said they are definitely the ones that have a vested interest in you

01:31:38.920 just like your grandmother did you know when she was still alive um

01:31:43.960 they're the ones that want to know how you are and if you ate today

01:31:47.560 and they're also the ones that if they are if they are still alive that you can start to ask

01:31:54.920 those questions like you know who is who are we like what is who are the people in our family

01:32:01.700 like what did we do because and i regret not doing this but your you know your living ancestors right

01:32:11.520 now they have so much to tell you and i don't think that we ask them enough questions um like

01:32:19.760 why do we have this tradition or you know what did we used to do for this start asking and start

01:32:27.040 writing it down um years ago and i'm gonna go off on a little bit of a tangent um

01:32:36.240 when we always had christmas at my grandmother's house

01:32:41.640 there would be this straw decoration in the middle of the table and i had no idea what it was

01:32:48.180 it was always just the thing that was there so years later um when i was doing bloats

01:32:57.060 up in bloomington with um jason gallagher and the northern blood kindred

01:33:02.300 lo and behold we have the same thing we have

01:33:09.100 the yule block

01:33:13.180 i didn't i had no idea why this was always on my grandmother's table

01:33:20.380 but there you go

01:33:32.300 That's awesome, Anna. Thank you.

01:33:36.300 Daniel says, Heather asks,

01:33:40.300 where do you draw your inspiration from for your DC or blow Katie?

01:33:44.300 So much detail goes into it.

01:33:48.300 So

01:33:52.300 a lot of my inspiration really is as cheesy as it

01:33:56.300 sounds. I just, it just

01:34:00.300 just comes to me. So if you've never been to one of Matt's Oden bloats, you are missing out in

01:34:11.740 many, many ways. Matt does the most amazing Oden bloat. And before you think, where the heck is

01:34:18.620 this coming from? I can't do a Matt bloat. Nobody can do an Al-Shiar Godhi bloat the way the Al-Shiar

01:34:27.360 Godhe does it we can try but we just we can't because Matt just has his own way 1.00

01:34:34.740 of doing it and we try to emulate it sometimes because holy cow that was the

01:34:39.900 most amazing book I've ever been to how do I do it like that and the answer I

01:34:45.340 always have for our Godhe students is you can't you have to find your own way

01:34:50.460 of doing book you have to find the way that works for you in the way that you

01:34:54.820 connect the gods the best and the way you help others connect to the gods the

01:34:59.220 best because that's our main job is as Golar is to to create that bridge

01:35:05.260 between the gods and our folk during during bloat and so the best I can say

01:35:12.160 really is that the way I do bloat I believe in creating an environment in

01:35:20.000 which you're invoking some sort of feeling in people. And that is done by connecting to our

01:35:27.340 gods and helping our folk connect to our gods. But I like to use a lot of our senses to do that.

01:35:35.980 I like to use visuals. I like to use smells, lighting incense or having a lot of flowers.

01:35:42.300 I like to do it with auditory sounds. So I include a lot of song and things like that.

01:35:49.000 i like to have like i said i said already the visuals a lot of times i ask um a woman or two

01:35:56.920 or four however many to help me do bloat for two reasons one because for the people who are not

01:36:03.880 participating they see a representation of her desire and that woman who is acting as the desire

01:36:12.120 is the embodiment of them and being able to see that trigger something in people's brains and

01:36:19.800 in their in their minds which helps to connect to the holy um i lost my train of thought um

01:36:32.760 yeah so my a lot of my inspiration comes just uh like when i when we were doing ritual at

01:36:40.920 netimus uh which is the place we used to do um i'm sorry one of somebody downstairs turned the

01:36:47.400 music on really really loud so if you can hear it i apologize i my husband has not put our children

01:36:52.760 to sleep yet so it's been noisy this whole time anyway i knew that camp like the back of my hand

01:37:01.800 i had been going there for well over 10 15 years um not just with the afa but through other groups

01:37:07.880 as well. I knew it really well. So I didn't need to be there in order to find inspiration. I could

01:37:15.100 sit and I could close my eyes and I could think about the camp and I could think about the people

01:37:20.400 and I could think about what I was going to be there. And it's like lightning striking. I just

01:37:26.200 get the idea. And I was actually having kind of a mental block about doing ritual at our new place

01:37:33.540 because I've never been there. I don't know what it looks like. I don't know what the energy in the

01:37:37.540 place feels like i don't know anything about it and it's really hard for me because i i need the

01:37:43.340 visual as much as i like to give the visual as a way to stimulate things and uh i was very lucky

01:37:49.540 that my husband and i got to go down there and visit the the location we're having winter nights

01:37:54.140 a couple weeks weekends ago um and like literally i just um my husband was talking to uh mr cold

01:38:02.400 distill whose property it is we're having our event and well not his property but um

01:38:09.680 through him we found the property and I just kind of wandered off on my own and all of a sudden I

01:38:17.260 had an aha moment and it was like okay this is what I'm going to do for ritual now so I this

01:38:23.580 was a really long tangent to just say it just kind of happens I don't really have a better answer

01:38:28.320 than that except for apparently i did because i talked for like five minutes so yeah okay if i

01:38:35.520 could just step in and just add something that ties in with katie and her ritual and the idea

01:38:42.800 of how we connect with the deezer she did a song and someone i'm going to keep doing because it's

01:38:47.440 the one i just resonates with me so well and it goes we are the watchers we are your protectors

01:38:55.520 we are your mothers our voices call you home and we're gonna do that i'm getting goosebumps just

01:39:02.720 singing it because that is that's the decent they're protecting us they're watching over us

01:39:07.600 and her words were so perfect when she put that together and uh we're gonna have all of our women

01:39:13.920 the idea of women veiling themselves you know to go behind the veil and be that to represent

01:39:20.720 that who is on the other side you know i really want to do that katie just have amazing you know

01:39:28.080 you could say theatrical but it's not everything has a reason behind it and the symbolism is very

01:39:33.120 powerful thank you and also thank you because i had forgotten about that song that was the first

01:39:39.600 one i wrote and there's been like two or three ones after that so i forgot about that one and

01:39:44.240 i'm glad you reminded me because i like that one you know i forgot about it

01:39:51.440 sarah asks githya anna could you speak on your experience with the armen and runes

01:39:57.120 the history of them and what attracted you to them sure um i i got familiar with the armen and runes

01:40:09.680 during my gothark hey during my gothark training um when i was asked to write the one of the

01:40:20.480 little monthly blurbs about guido von list and this man had at a very young age decided to

01:40:29.860 dedicate his life to his folk he wrote poetry he wrote little essays he did he did everything that

01:40:38.560 think that he could to bring the gods back to his people because at that time there wasn't really a

01:40:49.360 lot going on there was like some small some small fringe groups but he what he did with his you know

01:40:56.480 more mainstream work was to you know bring these gods back to the people of europe and

01:41:04.000 And, and I mean, that alone is fantastic. But then, you know, years down the road while he

01:41:11.460 was recovering from cataract surgery, which even in this day and age, by the way, is not a fun

01:41:18.120 surgery to deal with. If you can, if you want to go ahead and YouTube what a cataract surgery

01:41:27.760 involves um if you're not squeamish but it's still it's kind of a it's not fun so i can only imagine

01:41:36.480 what it was like about a hundred years ago so while his eyes were bandaged up because

01:41:43.360 again it's not a particularly polite surgery um you're gonna have some recovery time even now

01:41:51.840 but back then he was blind for just under a year so while he was blind these runes

01:42:00.960 they kind of trickled down to him

01:42:05.840 and what drew me to them was they hadn't really been getting a lot of play they hadn't been

01:42:14.480 getting a lot of use which and they were you know kind of the newer they're the newer rune row um

01:42:26.080 so what called me to them was one i felt

01:42:31.840 i felt much more confident with these um they're they're newer yes they maybe don't have the

01:42:42.160 history that the other rune rows do have but i felt so much more connected to these since they're

01:42:50.800 so much more closer in time you know than the rest of them and you know the more i read and

01:42:58.400 more the more i meditated on them they every one of them seems to have the

01:43:04.960 underneath all the other concepts and meanings this idea of moving forward

01:43:12.160 Which is what I would love to see our people do more of is like we need to keep moving forward.

01:43:17.240 We need to keep growing. We need to keep. We need to keep our heads up and not focused in some distant past.

01:43:33.820 That's awesome, Anna.

01:43:34.920 Yeah. And for those of you that don't follow Githia Anna Plourd on social media, you need to.

01:43:44.040 She does amazing rune pulls on a regular basis. And we keep teasing her that we're either going

01:43:51.220 to make a 365 desk calendar of all of her rune pulls because they're ridiculously inspirational.

01:43:59.520 the photography is beautiful

01:44:01.560 so we appreciate you for that

01:44:03.880 ma'am for keeping us motivated

01:44:05.240 every one of those

01:44:08.060 is fresh and hot, every photo is new

01:44:10.260 follow her

01:44:13.380 follow her on Instagram

01:44:14.580 wow

01:44:15.480 alright

01:44:18.360 we had a

01:44:21.340 question from Sarah

01:44:22.980 for each of you, which god or goddess do you feel

01:44:25.520 connected to the most?

01:44:26.840 I feel connected to all of them, but starting out, I've always been very, very

01:44:34.120 drawn to Saga. Saga has always been special in my heart. I have always tried to come up with

01:44:42.900 super special gifts, something different for her, something I think that she would enjoy.

01:44:48.940 She's always been a lot to me. She's always been the epitome of what I wanted to be as a woman.

01:44:55.520 I wanted to be the friend.

01:44:58.340 I wanted to be the person you could trust with your stories and your secrets.

01:45:02.060 I wanted to be the person that remembered everything so no one would ever be forgotten.

01:45:06.940 So I was always very, very drawn to her.

01:45:10.760 But since working on Baldershof, being ordained as the Gythea over at Baldershof,

01:45:18.480 my relationship with Balder and Nana has grown exponentially.

01:45:24.840 When you walk into that hof, you can literally feel the presence of Balder.

01:45:29.680 All the ladies here have walked into that hof.

01:45:32.940 They can tell you it's literally a presence as soon as you walk into that sanctuary. 1.00

01:45:38.000 So definitely Balder, Nana.

01:45:40.980 But earlier in my path, I was very devoted to Saga.

01:45:45.020 Anna, how about you?

01:45:47.660 I think early on in my path, I was very, very connected to Freya.

01:45:51.860 um just as you know a lot of a lot of my early years were done alone and either literally being

01:46:03.300 alone or kind of feeling alone so i felt like i was you know kind of this woman still searching

01:46:08.660 for something but you know still standing upright you know still being her own person

01:46:14.340 but there was always that kind of searching there um later on i have found myself working a lot with

01:46:22.720 air um part of that is you know seeing all the folk you know that are you know reaching out

01:46:32.520 for some sort of healing um when i was like when i was a kid in the lutheran church we would have

01:46:39.620 this thing every sunday called like the prayer chain or the prayer circle where they're the

01:46:46.580 reverend the pastor would list off a whole bunch of names of people that were going through something

01:46:51.780 medical or physical or spirit something like that um i found that with within the afa we have

01:47:01.380 something very similar and i think that's amazing because our people should be able to reach out

01:47:07.940 you know reach out to not only their priests and priestesses but to their gods for that healing

01:47:14.020 um it's also um has a lot to do with my profession um i have kind of a little miniature

01:47:27.380 air it's not quite an altar but it's something i bring to work with me

01:47:31.300 it's just you know some some herbs some rocks I keep it in a little wooden box in my car

01:47:37.460 that just kind of travels with me as I go you know to work

01:47:41.260 and then I've also I've also tried to make it a point to do at least once or twice a month

01:47:49.040 an air ritual and I know some of you have seen the photos of it where I just take an apple

01:47:55.400 and then for everybody i know that is in need of healing i will push a little clove bud into the

01:48:03.020 apple and then afterwards i'll put the apple outside or to the lake nearby but that's that's

01:48:11.480 definitely my favorite right now miss katie

01:48:15.720 um so i know i mentioned it earlier when i was younger when i was first finding

01:48:24.880 also true it was freya um i think freya is sort of the goddess that a lot of young women and young

01:48:32.640 young women choose to identify with um she's young she represents everything that women

01:48:40.400 want to be in a lot of ways she's desirable to men she's strong and independent um and by

01:48:48.480 independent i don't mean like i can do it all by myself independent i just mean she can take 1.00

01:48:53.440 care of herself and uh we grew up in a society where our women are expected to take care of

01:49:01.880 themselves but ridiculed for it at the same time uh but uh but anyway she's you know and she's

01:49:10.780 accessible it's easy to find information about Freya um but I can say honestly that

01:49:18.460 i don't have a specific god or goddess that i feel more connected to than any other

01:49:25.380 um it it it varies greatly depending on where i am in my life or what's going on in my life

01:49:32.400 um as as dumb as this probably is going to say when my cat died i found freya and that was my

01:49:40.600 first introduction to the norse gods as a whole because before that i i was kind of eclectic i 0.71

01:49:46.020 guess um but it was my first cat and i loved my cat and he died rather unexpectedly and somehow

01:49:55.420 or another i found comfort in freya because she has cats and for whatever reason you find your

01:50:01.620 god or goddess of choice it doesn't matter the point is you found them right so uh she she was

01:50:07.760 good for me she she she held she helped me through things at that time as a a mother of two young

01:50:15.880 children and when I was pregnant obviously Frigga became much more relevant in my life because she

01:50:24.520 is the mother she is the goddess of pregnancy and children and hearth and home and I also I mean

01:50:35.480 we're getting ready in a little while to start with the process of trying to find ourselves a

01:50:42.920 Frereshoff and in all likelihood it's going to be very close to where I am and so I find myself

01:50:51.640 and I've always had a fondness for Freres but now I find myself looking into Freres and

01:50:58.200 and thinking about him and getting to know him a lot better because

01:51:02.920 there's this possibility that he's going to be a much bigger aspect in my life moving forward.

01:51:10.840 um I've I've felt very close to air on occasion um Miss Patricia Hall before she sort of quietly

01:51:20.160 stepped out because she had her her own thing she needed to take care of and she's you know 0.94

01:51:26.020 she's an elderly woman and she had been doing her job for a very long time and was ready for a break

01:51:32.280 but before she did she ran what is now airs blessings she called it something a little bit

01:51:39.040 different those like blessings of air I think but uh um she sort of that sort of fell into my lap

01:51:48.800 when she needed her space and so the whole concept of airs blessings is if you have something that

01:51:57.100 you need help with um mental emotional physical trauma or just just you need a an energy pick me

01:52:07.540 up because you're having a hard time you could you could send us a message at heirs blessings

01:52:13.200 at runestone.org or you can reach out to one of our giddies or to most of our folk builders and

01:52:20.760 say hey i would really like some help and the ladies who are in the heirs blessings group will

01:52:26.420 get your name and they'll be told that you would like some energy and most of them all of them

01:52:31.760 we'll do a small ritual to send you energy. And, uh, um, so because I kind of got put in charge of

01:52:39.980 that in a way, uh, air became very important to me. And I started to learn more about her and

01:52:47.720 connect with her in a lot of ways. Um, yeah, it's what's going on in your life. Where are you in

01:52:56.060 your life it's that's you find ways to connect your gods through the life that you're living

01:53:01.960 in the circumstances that are happening and i think it's healthy very very healthy to have that

01:53:07.480 sort of mindset um limiting limiting yourself to a single god or goddesses is um

01:53:14.940 you're doing yourself a disservice because it's it's it's preventing you from building a better

01:53:23.220 relationship with all of our with all of our our acr so thank you ma'am miss sheila

01:53:35.220 um probably a lot of you know that my husband steve is very much an odin's man um

01:53:43.940 from the earliest days until probably an hour ago whatever he's doing downstairs is

01:53:49.380 probably some kind of connection with Odin so it was probably no mystery that I would

01:53:56.100 associate myself with Frigga but it also has been my role in the AFA has been to plan the events

01:54:02.820 to welcome people to make sure they have what they need to communicate I've always been back in

01:54:09.140 the old days when Steve and I were the head of the AFA up until 2016 you know I did most of the

01:54:17.380 communication and i love doing that it's just the kind of person i am so that felt very very natural

01:54:24.180 always has i've almost at times uh in more recent years kind of stepped out of that and i'll tell

01:54:29.940 you a couple of circumstances um when we were doing secret bloat we did secret bloat in um august

01:54:38.260 was it august 9th july um and that was um bloke for victory with with odin and i decided that

01:54:48.180 if at all possible it's also nice to do a uh a bloat to a goddess so um i we actually have a

01:54:56.980 phrase circle that had never been used really ritually before that we have a goddess pole

01:55:02.020 for freya and it is far away from our regular ritual area so even with a very hot day and late

01:55:09.080 morning it was blazing hot we went out there and did bloat to freya and the reason i did it was

01:55:15.380 because of freya not in her typical um voluptuous powerful all that you know all those wonderful

01:55:23.680 things that we know of fertility and those things but it was more of that we are at a time when we

01:55:31.760 need to use our wits we need to use our intelligence and all these things to help us through these very

01:55:38.400 challenging times and secret bloke being for victory you know how which goddess can really

01:55:43.680 push us towards victory and i thought well freya is the goddess in her in that very strong nature

01:55:50.160 of freya as um a woman who keeps up with the gods who has the mysteries who who shares information

01:55:58.720 with odin learns and teaches you know both of them together and that kind of thing and so we

01:56:04.720 actually did bloat to fran and i think was really powerful when we did that i heard some good things

01:56:09.680 afterwards um also um thorgrin um and last last year um thorgan is one of our older um godar um

01:56:21.520 he's been a godi for a long time and he's suddenly retired but he still comes out to

01:56:26.400 and he does all of our free bloats because he's a phrase man that last last summer i know we did

01:56:32.320 a full bloat during the summertime and of course along with that was teeth and i i wanted to point

01:56:38.320 out because i think again how can we women relate to some of the goddesses and i pointed out talk

01:56:46.480 about a complex family tree that she has and so many people in the modern world are dealing with

01:56:53.440 in-laws step families um you know step children all these complicated relationships and you know

01:57:04.840 she deals with that too I mean first of all who's her husband hmm what would it be like to be waiting

01:57:10.720 for Thor when he comes in after fighting giants um whether you know it's totally successful or not

01:57:18.140 What kind of a personality does it take to do that?

01:57:20.840 What's it like knowing that Odin is your father-in-law?

01:57:30.480 You know, you've got all these relationships with all the gods and goddesses.

01:57:34.500 You're kind of in the middle of it all.

01:57:36.100 And I think there must be, again, Frith Weaver and Peacekeeping that's probably Seath is known for.

01:57:41.320 So I think she's a really good role model for some of our women.

01:57:45.180 and that again is something i've kind of felt on my own also charming of the plow we have often i

01:57:52.060 i invoke the goddess gethon and use her as that strong force of a female force to break through

01:58:00.860 the ice and and create new from from the frozen ground and all that um so i i do like to work with

01:58:10.140 multiple goddesses i don't do very much with with the gods though i have to admit

01:58:14.860 i certainly respect them all but um yeah odin obviously forget and then as i said

01:58:21.100 freya and the other one so that's kind of how i how i have dealt with the nature of the gods

01:58:27.580 Thank you, ma'am. We have a question from Kevin Collin. Is baby naming literally what it sounds

01:58:40.360 like in the after days of birth you choose or have chosen a name for your baby? Anna,

01:58:47.740 do you want to go ahead and take that? Can you tell us what a baby naming is?

01:58:51.560 sure a baby naming is you're introducing your child to the folk and you're introducing the

01:59:01.680 child to the gods um traditionally it's you know held nine days after the birth of your child

01:59:09.200 um that doesn't always happen um sometimes we just wait for the nine days to you know at the

01:59:16.640 very least release the name but you know ideally um it is the first time that the child's name is

01:59:27.000 spoken out loud um and when that name is spoken um with that we have that attached the child is

01:59:38.280 now attached to us it's now attached to our folk he or she is part of us part of our collective

01:59:45.940 weird and that's that's the day that the child starts building that along with us

01:59:54.340 thank you ma'am that i appreciate that very much

01:59:58.340 and the next question we have is someone new to as a true where is the best place to start with 0.93

02:00:04.980 the afa that comes from your dress miss sheila could you answer that for us what would be the

02:00:12.420 best place to start with the afa uh well obviously go to our website we've got the main one we have

02:00:22.740 the four auxiliary auxiliary ones um thorshoff.com waldershoff.org and they're going to have

02:00:33.940 different materials on each one of those on those websites you're going to find a folk builder

02:00:40.420 and there might be one that is near you but you're not required to only go to the one that's near you

02:00:45.460 you can reach out to any folk builders and ask questions i also tell people check youtube we

02:00:52.100 have a tremendously powerful youtube channel now with all these victory never sleeps plus matt up

02:00:58.820 until now has been doing a monthly live stream where he will answer questions for usually well

02:01:04.180 over an hour from anybody who asks them and it's always done with great i mean he's so direct and

02:01:12.420 confident and he just instills that in me whenever i want i always love those so there's a lot of

02:01:18.340 material there um go through our website go through the old newsletters that we have that will teach

02:01:24.820 you a lot about the afa watch the recent uh compilations that matt is putting together of

02:01:31.460 our quarterly events because you'll just see second by second go by with these flashes of

02:01:39.460 brilliantly happy faces in all types of settings all around the country and actually all around

02:01:46.420 the world because we do get them from other countries too some of these pictures matt puts

02:01:50.580 those together with music they're really fun if you want to share this is what the afa really looks

02:01:55.460 like bring in your your parents to watch it and convince them that no we're really really good

02:02:01.460 people you know they're going to see that i do that and then of course there is a book let me

02:02:06.020 grab a copy and this book this book is available on the afa website house of true a native european

02:02:18.500 religion by stephen mcnell and um it is very much about his journey but also goes through kind of

02:02:30.100 basic philosophy that was a foundation for the else through folk assembly uh when he

02:02:37.220 began his journey and that which is still stayed intact um the the matt um arles harrier govi and

02:02:45.380 the witten have are still maintaining those same standards that were established as a focus church

02:02:52.900 honoring our ancestors and um and our gods and everything but it uh has a lot of just

02:03:01.220 wonderful deep philosophy to it but it's an easy read and it reads like his lectures so

02:03:06.500 there are also a lot of his lectures on youtube as well but um reach out to your folk builders or

02:03:12.660 your godhar and any of us go these giddy us would be happy to correspond with you if you're really

02:03:19.620 serious you know we'll give you a phone call and talk you through any of your questions and we're

02:03:24.900 always happy to do that so my synopsis yes definitely reach out to the folk builders in

02:03:32.740 your area and i think with that mention i'm going to give my last shout out for the night

02:03:38.180 and that is going to be to folk builder Melissa Mills. Melissa is amazing. Melissa does a folklore 0.91

02:03:49.000 study every week. She is the driving force behind the AFA store, constantly coming up with new

02:03:58.300 products. She is constantly making me stuff for Baldur's Hoff because she's awesome and because

02:04:03.560 i'm demanding and annoying but she always does it for me anyway um she's a good friend she's

02:04:10.040 hard working she puts together some of the most amazing events um she's just she's amazing and i

02:04:16.200 can't thank her enough so shout out to folk builder melissa mills and i hope all of these

02:04:21.640 shout outs that we're doing tonight shows you that not only are there women in the afa

02:04:26.760 we are not oppressed as proof by the multiple lady leadership we have demonstrated tonight

02:04:32.360 here on the podcast miss sheila who do you have left in your district um i have rachel johnson

02:04:40.600 who's up in the seattle area with her husband um folk builder mason johnson and uh happened to

02:04:49.080 have come across rachel several years ago she's another one of those who met her husband in the

02:04:55.240 afa and she was a single lady at that point obviously she was single but never been married

02:05:01.000 well no she had but still she had no children he has two children who were quite young at the time

02:05:06.440 she came in as a wonderful stepmom and she's been homeschooling them ever since she took over as

02:05:13.320 as their stepmom and it's done a wonderful job wonderful kids very active in the community that

02:05:20.600 if you happen to look at the odin's hawk um page our calendar you'll see that they have things

02:05:26.360 locked out throughout the week that they're doing with their kindred they have a very active kindred

02:05:31.880 but she's also one of these people who is anxious to share her successes with her homeschooling so

02:05:38.760 she's active on our homeschooling group and all the sharing lots of uh articles she finds and

02:05:45.480 recommendations and um telling us all about how to go about some of these things that she has learned

02:05:51.640 And she's very, very beneficial to our whole Odenshoff district, but it's nice, really nice having her experience with our Astru Academy now that we've actually launched it.

02:06:04.500 Here's a real mom who's doing it and can tell us all how to make it work.

02:06:10.280 Speaking of the Astru Academy, I think Nick should pop that link up really quick because it definitely belongs right after Apprentice Folk Builder Rachel Johnson because she does so much work.

02:06:21.640 as a true academy.org all of the team have worked really really hard coming up with all of the

02:06:30.200 curriculums and the platforms and the support of the parents and interactions it's absolutely

02:06:36.520 amazing so special thank you to the as a true academy team also to go the rob stam who is the

02:06:43.400 dean of the as a true academy and truly made this a reality so we cannot thank him enough if you

02:06:50.120 are a parent that wants to homeschool um definitely check out as a true academy.org

02:06:57.560 all right and with that uh miss katie i believe you've got a couple left in your district we want

02:07:02.280 to give a shout out to one of them works with the as true academy as well right indeed heather young

02:07:09.400 heather young is down in south carolina um she is one of the driving forces behind everything

02:07:15.640 that happens in and at Thor's Hof. When the Hof was first purchased her and her husband would drive

02:07:23.320 and sometimes she would do it by herself because her husband would be working and she would go to

02:07:28.120 the Hof and she would spend hours by herself or with her daughter sanding down the terrible paint

02:07:34.520 on the in the vestibule at in the Hof in the right before the sanctuary. She was

02:07:41.080 sanding walls painting walls cleaning her butt off i mean she just works her butt off she's a 1.00

02:07:48.760 powerhouse when it comes to getting things done at thor's off and as a folk builder i don't know

02:07:55.640 any person who could say that they've met heather and she is one of the most immediately warm and

02:08:02.920 welcoming welcoming people in the world like she's wonderful i love her pieces and it doesn't

02:08:10.760 matter if i forget to respond to her messages for weeks on end she'll still be like how you doing

02:08:18.680 if she doesn't care that i forget to respond to her messages she just reminds me constantly that

02:08:24.280 she's there and she's thinking of me and um i think she does this with a lot of people she's a

02:08:30.040 an amazing frith weaver uh and an amazing person and she's pretty cool and last but not least we

02:08:38.760 we have, absolutely not least, we have Christine Dumas. A lot of you know who Christine Dumas is.

02:08:44.960 Christine Dumas is a kick-ass folk, um, I'm sorry, pardon my language. She is a kick-butt folk 0.99

02:08:52.080 builder. She works incredibly hard. She has a almost two-year-old son and a brand new daughter. 0.99

02:08:59.860 I think she's, what, four, five, six weeks, seven weeks, somewhere in that range. Pardon me for not

02:09:07.160 remembering I think I mentioned earlier we have like a ton of babies being born right now I think 0.89

02:09:12.780 we're up to like 38 babies already this year um she just had a baby and she's she didn't take 0.95

02:09:23.240 I think she took like two days in the hospital and then she was suddenly just there working again 0.99

02:09:28.700 like I don't know how she does it because I've got two kids I barely have time to breathe so

02:09:35.140 um Christine really is amazing she is yes she is Christine is one of the driving forces behind

02:09:45.660 the new uh women's chat that we've been having uh once a month and our first one was just last

02:09:52.120 Sunday um so that is being headed up by um Githia Katie Githia Anna um apprentice folk builder

02:09:59.880 christine dumas and folk builder sarah alt and myself so definitely keep an eye out on me we

02:10:07.240 for information on when that's going to be held we're going to get all these ladies together

02:10:11.880 once a month and just have a chat about topics that are specific to women and as true 0.95

02:10:17.160 speaking of social media we have got social media all over the place we have got our youtube channel

02:10:24.360 we have got twitter if uh nick wants to pop twitter up there for us or any of our other

02:10:29.640 social media groups you can follow us on yep twitter right there um we are on instagram

02:10:37.000 we are on me we we have if you are not on me we yet and you are in the attitude folk assembly

02:10:43.160 you are missing out because that's where your people are we are everywhere we're also streaming

02:10:49.320 live on twitter because nick figured out how to do that so if you're watching us live on twitter

02:10:53.480 give us a shout out. We appreciate you being here. But definitely check us out on all of the social

02:10:58.640 media. Check out the websites. There'll be links all above the websites with all of the different

02:11:04.080 social medias that the Assertitude Focus is on. So if Nick can pop those websites up one more time,

02:11:10.460 on those websites, you are going to find all the information in the events calendars about

02:11:15.260 everything that's going on in your district. You can also find the news article areas where we have

02:11:23.100 all kinds of events that we've done, pictures.

02:11:27.720 Sarah Alt does the Baldershoff one.

02:11:29.420 She does a constant post in remembrance of Elsie Christensen,

02:11:34.380 sharing her wisdom, as well as wisdom of the Alshira Godhi.

02:11:38.040 All kinds of stuff going on on those websites.

02:11:40.780 So definitely take a look.

02:11:42.040 You're going to find things from readings of lore

02:11:45.120 to interesting memes that we've made to the last moot that we had

02:11:48.740 to videos of our last events.

02:11:51.240 so definitely check out those websites they are amazing and thank you to all everyone who's worked

02:11:57.320 so hard on all of those all right sarah has a question for githia anna githia anna you are

02:12:07.480 known for your awesome baking skills is following the recipe sometimes a connection to your ancestors

02:12:13.720 and do you see it similar to a ritual i do um when i'm especially when i'm baking for my folk um

02:12:26.120 as i'm stirring the dough i'm you know putting i'm putting in my you know my energy my hopes for

02:12:33.880 them um i have a very nice electric mixer that i've never used because the vast majority of

02:12:42.840 my baking is done for my folk so to use an electric mixer that's just going to take away

02:12:49.080 what i can infuse that the cookie dough or the cake batter or the bread with

02:12:54.920 um and baking you know baking is something that

02:13:01.080 that's that's been like the woman's job in my family it's kind of like the spiritual

02:13:07.960 inheritance. It's like your baking was kind of, it was like your pride and joy. It was how you

02:13:18.820 showed love. It was how you showed somebody that you cared about them. Is that fresh plate of bread

02:13:25.140 or cookies or whatever when somebody came over? There you go. Like, did you eat yet? I hope so.

02:13:34.440 Here, eat some more.

02:13:37.960 food is absolutely a huge part of what we do. Um, I get asked that a lot, you know, why,

02:13:44.320 why is it that every time you guys have an event, all these pictures, you are always eating

02:13:50.180 because we're always the whole time we're there. We have the most amazing feasts and the most

02:13:56.560 amazing cooks, um, food and drink and sitting around a table and sharing with your folk is

02:14:04.820 one of the most important things that we do. I'm actually going to take this time to interrupt the

02:14:10.320 questions and have Miss Anna explain to us what FICA is and whether or not they're going to have

02:14:16.520 FICA at New York's Hof because we have it at Baldur's Hof. Is it going to migrate south? That's

02:14:21.320 my question. It is. I'm going to call it FICA, y'all. FICA is a point usually in mid-morning

02:14:31.580 where everyone stops what they're doing. It doesn't matter. Everybody stops, puts down

02:14:37.200 whatever they're working on. The point of it is to not do any work. It is to sit down, have a cup

02:14:43.540 of coffee, have some tea, have like a little bit of coffee cake, a cookie, a rusk, a scone,

02:14:48.980 whatever you've got. And it's to sit down and connect and chat with the people around you.

02:14:54.780 Preferably not chatting on, chatting about like work stuff or something like that, but genuinely

02:15:00.020 talk with the people around you like how are you like how are you feeling today

02:15:05.600 and you know genuine connection questions

02:15:09.520 yes this is a ritual at Baldur's Hop that happens at 10 a.m and everybody including the people in

02:15:18.560 the kitchen will stop what they're doing and sit down and talk to their folk and enjoy enjoy the

02:15:24.820 moment because an event is not always work. So even if you're stuck in the kitchen, you're going

02:15:30.760 to have fika. Tony writes, not a question. Brandy, you leading bloat during Freyfaxia gym's place

02:15:41.480 was something else in the best ways. Helped make all of this really real for me. I'm never going

02:15:47.600 to forget it. I appreciate that, Tony. That's one of the, it's one of the best things about being

02:15:53.460 a gothi or a gethia one of the very best things is when it becomes real for that person when

02:15:59.800 you're walking around that circle and you can see the tears in their eyes or you can you know see

02:16:04.680 their heart beating in their neck because of the energy that they're feeling um or you hear their

02:16:10.220 voices echo either through the hall or outside i mean it's when it becomes real for someone it

02:16:15.800 means a lot for us because that's really that's really what we're here for to be that conduit

02:16:20.640 between you and the gods. You know, it's the rituals are great. Ceremonies are great. I love

02:16:25.680 doing weddings. My very first, um, my very first ceremony was actually a wedding and I'll never

02:16:32.680 forget it. And it was beautiful. Um, but that beauty is also in something as a simple bloat

02:16:38.700 or symbol as well. Glenn asks, what is Anna drinking? Uh, tonight I'm drinking Pedialyte.

02:16:50.640 and fancy ginger ale in a little tiny can. It's delicious. And pickle juice.

02:17:05.140 Quite the collection. Stay hydrated.

02:17:14.300 Gauthier Lane asks, Githias, with the diesel blow coming up,

02:17:17.960 what Desire do you connect with the most and why? Um, I'm going to start with that one. Um,

02:17:25.020 the Desire that I connect with the most is probably my maternal grandmother, Bonnie.

02:17:33.880 She was amazing. She passed away in 1997. Um, she's not gone. So when she passed away and we

02:17:46.100 returned back back home after the funeral um it was a really traumatic time for my family

02:17:53.620 and we were at home in bed sleeping everybody was asleep it was late at night and i remember

02:18:01.060 i was in that place halfway between dream and reality and i felt my bed move like somebody

02:18:07.380 was sitting on it and i opened my eyes i looked at the clock and i looked up and my grandmother

02:18:13.140 was sitting on my bed and i know that i was not fully awake but i know i wasn't fully asleep

02:18:21.060 either and she told me that she just came to say goodbye and to let me know that she's never that

02:18:30.820 far away. My grandmother was one of the biggest influences in my entire life. She was strong

02:18:41.940 and loud and opinionated and just amazing. Amazing. Her and my grandfather passed away

02:18:51.980 at the same time. And my, my grandfather actually, or I'm sorry, my stepdad actually had a sighting

02:18:58.860 of my grandfather around the same time standing in my mom and stepdad's bedroom and he and it

02:19:06.460 was just a matter of we're just coming to check in and say goodbye so they were both there that

02:19:11.820 night to different people but she is definitely the the desire that i go to for everything i talk

02:19:18.780 to her every day which is not unusual because i used to talk to her almost every day anyway even

02:19:24.540 when we lived when i was a teenager we moved so we ended up being you know a few hundred miles apart 0.92

02:19:30.780 but she used to get so she used to defend me because my mom would get really really mad at

02:19:35.500 me because this is back in the day before cell phones were a really popular thing i know i'm

02:19:39.820 going to age myself it's okay it's fine but i used to call my grandmother long distance

02:19:45.900 just to hear her voice and for things like a chocolate chip cookie recipe that i would make

02:19:52.540 her give me step-by-step instructions and wait until i wrote them down just to hear her voice 1.00

02:19:57.420 and my mom would be livid about the long distance phone bill

02:20:02.540 she's never really gone i don't think our ancestors are ever gone

02:20:07.020 they're just a thought a prayer an offering away so yeah that's mine anna what do you got ma'am

02:20:16.380 um i've got a woman that i've hailed often at symbol and that would be my grandmother may

02:20:23.720 moberg who um she was she absolutely held the family together um everything that happened in

02:20:33.700 that family she had okayed it um she was always the one making sure that her grandkids were okay

02:20:41.800 um you know according to her i i had never eaten enough even though she maybe she probably just saw

02:20:50.540 me put down an entire plate of dessert i had never eaten enough um like i said before she

02:20:57.080 had passed away in 2014 she still hangs around me um she's hung around through several moves

02:21:05.460 we've had a few conversations um especially both in good times and in bad um i was you know having

02:21:15.420 a little bit of a hard time and she just kind of showed up kind of in the back of my head saying

02:21:24.580 you know it's going to be okay you're just gonna have to be smart about this and it was exactly

02:21:30.880 what i needed to hear she's also shown up you know during times of celebration or times where

02:21:38.080 i was feeling great like uh after moving to wilmer that was actually a town that she had

02:21:46.080 lived in as a much younger woman but she would she would show up at the apartment

02:21:51.680 i could just kind of feel her in the apartment and

02:21:55.440 And, you know, the day of my wedding, again, kind of one of those little back of your head.

02:22:06.580 You're not sure if you heard it or not, but you're pretty sure that you heard it.

02:22:11.100 I heard, you know, this one, this one's okay.

02:22:13.360 I like this one.

02:22:15.420 She was very judgy, so that meant a lot.

02:22:19.740 And even now, I can still feel her down here in Florida.

02:22:25.440 so that that would be mine grandma may she also taught me how to make lofsa so

02:22:32.500 that is a talent and we thank her for that teaching

02:22:37.780 sheila which do you see what's closest to you um mine is my mother my mother who i really never

02:22:51.040 got to know very well. As I mentioned earlier, she had cancer from about the time I was probably

02:22:57.740 eight years old until she died when I was 12. And she was also working and trying to

02:23:05.900 support a family of three. So we had time together because I had older siblings, but

02:23:13.800 it still wasn't really intimate time and we never did goodbyes. That was just not a time

02:23:18.340 you did that and people were not really prepared for the loss um that comes with with someone's

02:23:24.580 passing and certainly that was the case in in my life so i have i have um never really made

02:23:33.380 deep connections with my mom and um winter nights is a time to do that um i've looked at the picture

02:23:41.060 that i'm going to take out there at odin's hof which is what we do by the way if you happen to be

02:23:47.300 celebrating winter nights this year um definitely put out um a beautiful set of table or something

02:23:55.620 for for the dc um i know that katie erickson always does a beautiful job at any of her

02:24:03.620 winter nights with um lace and teacups and things like that or any flowers uh honor them that way

02:24:13.060 but i will definitely i always do i speak to my mother because i don't have the blessings that

02:24:18.900 other women here have talked about of really sensing their mother i or grandmother i really

02:24:24.180 have not had that and um doesn't mean that it's impossible and won't happen it also doesn't mean

02:24:30.420 that she's not there and um that she's not listening i think she is i was going to say

02:24:35.780 something earlier about the importance of parents to be reminding their own children um about the

02:24:43.540 ancestors the ancestors are there for us when i was teaching eighth grade math one time i think

02:24:49.540 it was math maybe it was language arts we were getting to the end of the year testing

02:24:55.380 and the kids were kind of apprehensive about about taking the test and i said you know

02:25:01.620 So you really aren't alone, you have somebody perhaps standing by you, somebody from the

02:25:09.120 other side, who wants to see you succeed and will give you the confidence that you can

02:25:13.900 do so.

02:25:15.060 Just know that you're not alone.

02:25:17.240 And I think I'm saying to parents right now, if you have kids who are like 9 to 18, you

02:25:24.000 know, you've got those kids in the teens, and they're feeling like they don't really

02:25:27.840 know themselves very well anymore or their friends and they don't know who to talk to remind them

02:25:34.400 that their ancestors are there their ancestors are looking over them and again protecting them

02:25:39.360 just like and like uh katie's song protecting them watching over us so i just want to remind

02:25:46.640 her about that sorry about that but anyway yes of course i always remember my grandmothers

02:25:52.880 but my mom my mom is she she's the one that i reach out to every time by the way i also want

02:25:59.840 to say one more thing about uh winter nights that my husband wrote a poem many years ago i think it

02:26:06.400 was 1993 called october women there's a video of him uh reciting it but um he also does a tradition

02:26:14.720 every year and i love it because it's based on red ray bradbury's um talking about the october

02:26:22.000 women and steve always refers that to freya and the dc and it's a beautiful poem so i encourage

02:26:29.280 you to read that on your own you can find it if you don't have it i will send you a copy

02:26:34.720 because it's one of our traditions it's like you have yule traditions for us

02:26:38.480 winter nights is always speed reading october women

02:26:45.840 katie who do you most connect with of your dc

02:26:52.960 Sorry, pressing buttons is difficult.

02:26:56.960 Sorry.

02:27:01.280 Typically, I would say my maternal grandmother, her name was Mary Alice.

02:27:05.280 I actually named my daughter after her.

02:27:08.480 Alice, we were choosing only Germanic names, so it's still named after my grandmother.

02:27:14.720 We just kind of used half the name instead of the full name.

02:27:17.360 Anyway, she was a very strong woman who just, I mean, she was just, she was just your average lady.

02:27:30.460 I mean, as average as any mother who raises a family is.

02:27:37.280 But weirdly enough, and this came up because I've recently gotten into quilting.

02:27:42.820 I've always liked the idea of doing quilts and then uh Mandy has her baby quilt project going

02:27:49.300 and I can't crochet to save my life um and I certainly can't knit a lot of it is because I

02:27:54.200 have carpal tunnel from doing wood carving and uh the thingies are just too hard to use but I

02:28:00.380 finally decided to start quilting and um to make baby blankets uh which unfortunately I haven't

02:28:08.460 actually made one from andy yet because i had two kindred members who got pregnant now two cousins

02:28:15.340 who are having baby showers this weekend and next weekend and so i've been busy like a little

02:28:21.580 sewing bee um making these quilts for these these people because i think

02:28:29.580 finding um so my my paternal grandmother i didn't really get a chance to know her very well

02:28:36.060 um we just weren't we weren't really very close but one thing she did do is she she made this

02:28:43.460 quilt for my mom and it's just like a we're very irish uh so it's like green and white with little

02:28:51.880 shamrock sewn on it or embroidered in it and uh and some of the shamrocks she embroidered the

02:28:58.740 names of some of our family members so it's got her my grandfather it's got my mom and my dad and

02:29:03.380 my siblings um and that was it but she basically gave us this kind of family tree quilt and I

02:29:10.180 rediscovered it um my mom had given it to me and because I I wanted it and uh because you know

02:29:21.800 it's it's something from my grandmother an actual physical thing I have from a grandmother that I

02:29:25.860 wasn't very close to and I refound it earlier when we were looking for extra blankets and stuff to

02:29:33.020 bring to winter nights for people who might be camping out in case they get cold or whatever

02:29:37.600 and I hadn't seen it in years since I was a teenager and it was weird to me to remember to

02:29:44.780 just she made that quilt and uh there was this weird kind of thing I can't think of the word or

02:29:53.660 like I've been making these quilts and my grandmother used to make quilts and I kind of

02:30:01.640 knew that in the back of my head, but it wasn't really present, but I had been thinking about my

02:30:07.300 grandmother a little bit, and then I found this quilt of hers right before we're getting to go,

02:30:12.320 getting ready to go to winter nights, and I just, I don't know, it was a, it was a strange little,

02:30:18.820 I won't call it a coincidence, because I don't think it's a coincidence, I just forget the actual

02:30:22.640 word um yeah i've been thinking about her a lot lately um but when we are in sumble

02:30:32.480 and this is going to be one of my little off on a tangent thingies um

02:30:39.360 one of the things that i i did is i i didn't write the lyrics to the song i had somebody

02:30:47.280 else write them because I'm not really um because I did I just did I couldn't think of words but I

02:30:53.460 could think of a tune so somebody else wrote the words for me and I made the tune and I created

02:30:57.820 what I call our to see your song and I sang it I've sung it at every symbol we've done at a event

02:31:05.220 since last winter nights and um the reason why that's important to me is because I you almost

02:31:13.140 never hear me call on either of my two grandmothers in Seoul at a national event. I almost always

02:31:21.600 choose to honor my desir as a whole. When we do small family symbols with my son, he asks for

02:31:28.440 them sometimes, I will speak to them. When we do small kindred symbols, I will raise the horn to

02:31:36.640 them. But when we're doing a national event, I feel like there's so much more energy. And so by

02:31:43.840 hailing all of my this year, I can give them all a little bit of that energy and that recognition

02:31:49.860 that they don't get regularly because they don't have names for me, if that makes any sense. So

02:31:56.760 I think it's important to honor all of them. But right now, to make that very long thing short,

02:32:02.360 my my paternal grandmother um christina that's who i've been thinking about

02:32:11.640 daddy's old thank you another question for you katie githia katie is there any news on phrasehoff

02:32:22.440 oh wouldn't that be grand um the news is kind of the same it has it is the last time

02:32:29.240 our Asher Godi was asked. When we have Njordshof paid off, we will begin our active

02:32:39.320 search for Frereshof, but we will not be doing that until Njordshof is paid off. And one of the

02:32:44.440 biggest reasons why it's important to us to not move forward on a hof until the previous one is

02:32:49.000 paid off is because then we don't have to worry. There is no issue once we own the hof and it's

02:32:55.000 ours we don't have to worry about we just don't have to worry about it anymore it's ours taxes

02:33:01.240 and upkeep are the only things we have to worry about no we don't with taxes because they're

02:33:05.320 churches and churches are uh tax exempt so um yeah no when we when we have new york's half paid off

02:33:12.360 and have it 100 in our position in possession then we will move forward so uh feel free to make those

02:33:19.720 donations to that uh that um thingy you see on the bottom of the page i'm sorry um yes

02:33:31.800 do that also check out segerheim donations that is a new dream that is becoming reality with the

02:33:41.640 help of the folks the dedication and generosity of the folk the generosity and the hard work of

02:33:47.560 the leadership this dream will finally come to pass all right and i got another question from

02:33:56.040 finn wreath should norse pagans serve in the military i asked because i skipped military

02:34:01.080 service in my country and now seriously wondering if i need to go back and serve

02:34:05.320 that is entirely up to you on a personal level whether or not you serve in the military

02:34:11.820 However, I will say that the As-True Folk Assembly has great respect for our veterans and those who are serving presently.

02:34:19.980 And we show them the utmost respect and courtesy because they deserve it.

02:34:25.820 Also, good time to also put up that link for the Feast of the Einherjar one more time,

02:34:33.180 because this shows us just how much we do appreciate those who serve in the military,

02:34:40.780 have served in the military, and especially those who have died in combat and given their all.

02:34:47.480 So Feast of the Iron Hair Yard, November 10th through 13th in Oklahoma.

02:34:51.020 Tickets at runestone.org slash events.

02:34:54.840 Also, our store is really, really awesome because of folk builder Melissa Mills comes up with amazing products.

02:35:01.460 we do have a new line of hoodies we have got the afa hoodie that afa lights the way odenshoff

02:35:07.620 thorshoff baldur's hoff and yordshoff hoodies and i do believe we have zip up and pull over

02:35:13.780 so definitely go to the store and check those out and i just want to count look one two three four

02:35:22.500 for those who've lost track that's four hoffs four hoffs four on our way to five

02:35:31.660 all right sarah asks githia brandy anything awesome coming up at balder's hoff yes and

02:35:40.140 always um food pantry is this weekend at balder's hoff um contact uh folk builder ashley minkstocker

02:35:47.280 if you want to help or donate to that. Also on the last Saturday of the month, which is going to be

02:35:54.060 the 29th, is going to be Winter Nights at Baldershof. I will be conducting the Desire Bloat

02:36:01.580 that night, and it'll be from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. is what the event's going to be. Our hosts for that

02:36:09.060 event are going to be folk builders jamie elaine sarah alt and jesse schaefer so they recently

02:36:17.380 just got oath together at fall fest and they are going to celebrate together by hosting winter

02:36:23.300 nights and i'm happy to let them cook because they are all amazing so those are the interesting

02:36:29.540 things that we've got going on over at balder's house and i think we've talked about odentopf's

02:36:36.020 winter nights got the three-day weekend coming up and Anna you talked about your winter nights

02:36:42.100 so speaking about Hoffs so Katie you can speak on Thorshoff you can speak for Thorshoff because

02:36:50.660 you're the you're the the lady of the hour in Thorshoff district so every Hoff has a different

02:36:56.500 personality every Hoff has something a little bit different you will find that as you travel

02:37:01.700 from district to district to district from the from the west coast to the east coast and back

02:37:06.400 again every district and every half has something special its own little personality so i just kind

02:37:12.960 of want to go around a little bit um and talk about logistics of a half because people are

02:37:19.520 always nervous the first time they come they're not sure what to do with below they're not sure

02:37:23.660 how that's going to work they're not sure what to do with symbol um so if we could just start out

02:37:30.820 uh get the anna if you could kind of just walk us through what happens about what happens at

02:37:36.980 on your top what is what how do you guys run your blow what's the logistics of that what 0.97

02:37:41.780 do the women play what kind of roles do the women play there um well first we have the women bless

02:37:56.340 the meat which is a fantastic afa tradition that i just love um and i it's for me when my first afa

02:38:07.620 event it's something that i felt very welcomed in with i wasn't just sitting on the sidelines while

02:38:15.300 the men do everything else it was it's something specifically for our women to do and it gives them

02:38:22.020 that that feeling of oh hey this is my faith too i'm actually doing something i'm doing something

02:38:29.860 important um and when i'm when i'm doing a bloat i like to pick i like to pick a woman that may be

02:38:43.460 a little bit new uh to help me out with with it um and it's usually either bringing the horn around

02:38:53.380 for the folk or bringing the horn from the gods around but i certainly like to give you know new

02:39:00.900 women an opportunity to have that experience and to see what to see that there is in fact a place

02:39:08.180 for them. And again, New York's Hof is a very new Hof, so we are still trying to work on that

02:39:16.680 culture. We're trying to build our own dynamic. All of us, all of the clergy there, we all have

02:39:24.360 our own experiences from literally all around the country. So we're still in that very early stage

02:39:34.520 of developing our own culture but i think we're off to a really great start

02:39:44.600 now sheila odin's hof is really the the first half of the as a true folk assembly and for

02:39:50.520 the longest time you know it was the half of the as a true folk assembly and it was almost

02:39:55.960 and still is i mean looking at your your pictures of your midsummer it still is kind of the place

02:40:02.120 to be in the summertime it's you know it draws a crowd could you tell us a little bit about what's

02:40:07.480 special about odin's hof and if there's anything in particular that the women play role in there 0.62

02:40:15.800 um yeah i would say that um one thing we're learning from the other hawks we're seeing

02:40:21.160 successes and traditions established there and now that we all have our own beautiful murals

02:40:29.560 that were um painted by witten on harrel ours is of course of odin and that was done

02:40:35.880 literally it was done a year ago it was done in october um we have a new tradition and um yes we

02:40:43.560 just the same way at the other hops we start with we start with a wake her bloat and excuse me what 0.89

02:40:49.160 am i saying a welcome to the gods um usually about 1 p.m on saturday and um the women start by by

02:40:57.640 blessing the horn and usually matt's the one who initiates that but i will probably leave the

02:41:04.840 welcome to the god's ritual which is going to be really fun especially the way matt does it

02:41:08.600 because it's kind of a flourish we love that but what we have now started doing

02:41:14.120 and this is not just women but this is for all of us it's made clear that as we leave that ritual

02:41:21.480 circle we go down to the hall the main building that we have and we enter in the side door and

02:41:30.760 i usually lead the way and i will go in and stand before the mural and put my arms up and algy's

02:41:37.640 position and say hello and and everybody is expected to do that and watch as everybody

02:41:43.400 else comes in it's a relatively new tradition we've only been doing it for but maybe four or

02:41:47.960 five months um because we only do monthly bloats just like other people but um it is definitely

02:41:55.000 something we're establishing and as expected our our half is very casual compared to the other half

02:42:02.680 you know is built on the old afa the afa that had grown over decades a lot of our

02:42:08.200 people's people our members were around for many many years we did camping uh events up at camp

02:42:15.080 norka um when we got this we were very fortunate to have enough land that we could actually

02:42:21.160 arrange for camping and our little town of brownsville is very remote we have one motel

02:42:26.520 in town and to get to another hotel it's a good 45 minute drive on mountain road at night that's

02:42:35.480 tough so having camping is really wonderful but also it can make for that casual atmosphere what

02:42:41.800 we're trying to do now is to get all the uh everybody understanding that bring a change of

02:42:47.640 clothes because we might do quote viking games during the day or octoberfest games but when it

02:42:52.520 comes to bloat please dress up and honor our god honor odin at his hawk i mean been stressing this

02:42:59.880 is the first half in a thousand years we need to show up most respect for open uh and the blessings

02:43:06.520 that we have as folks being able to even be there and uh so we're trying to all train

02:43:13.880 we're trying to work on that to build a mindset of true reverence for being there some people still

02:43:20.040 come kind of to socialize because that's the way it's been established but trying to make it a very

02:43:27.480 sacred place for everybody and remind them of that um we have a gorgeous ritual circle

02:43:34.280 um with a big black black it actually is a gravel and brick that we have the rays of the sun

02:43:40.360 the black sun with black gravel in between just simply beautiful so but we also don't have the

02:43:45.880 altar inside we have an altar toad and so that's where things like the baby naming are sometimes

02:43:52.440 it's going to be taking place and whatever other rituals we have but we always try to involve our

02:43:57.720 women of course and um we're growing we're growing and we're changing and building new traditions

02:44:05.080 and i think we all need to be ready to do that because it just makes us better

02:44:11.720 thank you ma'am

02:44:14.440 kithia katie can you tell us a little bit about thor's hof and what roles the women

02:44:19.560 play there and kind of what's special about that hof

02:44:22.040 So, I'd say I'm embarrassed to say this, but I'm not really embarrassed to say this. 0.96

02:44:29.720 I live many hours away from Thorshof and have never been able to be a dedicated attender

02:44:35.320 to those events. I've only been there for Ostara in the South and the dedication. So,

02:44:41.480 I know that Witten Svan Harul has a lot of really neat and unique things he does in his

02:44:49.400 Hoff that are different from things that are done in other Hoffs. They have their own

02:44:56.120 called a ritual. They have everybody, you know, stand and greet Thor when they walk in.

02:45:03.720 I think he actually started that at Thor's Hoff because that was where the first mural was painted.

02:45:11.080 And I know that they have their own meal blessing that they use. It's not their own,

02:45:16.840 it was written by Alan Turnage. None of these are particularly about the women because I have to

02:45:22.040 admit that I am not super familiar with there being specific female roles in Thor's Hoth. 0.79

02:45:28.200 That does not mean that they don't have them, it just means that I am not there for their small

02:45:32.360 events or their individual things. I live right now, I'm like 10 hours away, before that I was

02:45:40.120 six hours away, so it just wasn't something we were going to be doing. I do know that all of

02:45:46.120 the women bless the horn uh they bless the mead that's that's a across the board afa thing i think

02:45:54.040 every woman i know who has been to at least one afa event knows what it means when we say

02:46:00.200 ladies let's go bless the horn um i'm sorry i don't have a better answer than that but uh

02:46:07.960 i know they've got to have stuff because i know i'm sorry i don't have the answers for you but

02:46:16.120 I think you're just tired and drawn a blank.

02:46:20.780 So Witten Spahn Herald is actually the first person that decided that when we enter the hall, that we are going to greet the god that the hall is dedicated to.

02:46:30.880 That came from Witten Herald.

02:46:33.900 Also, they have a really beautiful ritual when they bless their maid.

02:46:37.200 All of the women actually go up to the altar of Thor, and the men galder while the women are blessing the maid. 0.73

02:46:44.720 and they gulder very, very, and they're, you haven't experienced a gulder until you

02:46:49.980 experience a Thorshoff gulder because those men got style. I'm just going to leave it there.

02:46:55.060 They're awesome. But the women bless the mead and then they, they return to the circle. And 0.97

02:47:01.020 when you're returning to the circle, you're returning to like this vibration of male voices,

02:47:05.540 welcoming, welcoming you back to ritual. And it's, it's absolutely beautiful. It really is.

02:47:11.400 Um, Baldershof has a few traditions, um, some that Anna and I started together.

02:47:19.440 Um, one of them was kulning.

02:47:21.780 Anna and I had talked, um, talked a long time about women finding their voice in Azzatru. 0.61

02:47:27.480 Um, and we were working on kulning with our women, which is, um, the old Swedish cattle

02:47:33.140 calls, um, kind of yipping and hooting and hollering into the mountains to call, call

02:47:37.960 the cattle home.

02:47:38.700 but we started experimenting with that in a modern and spiritual context and we started

02:47:44.900 colning we do bloat a little bit different we actually kick all of the men folk downstairs

02:47:50.680 they all go downstairs all of the women stay upstairs in the sanctuary and they bless them 0.72

02:47:56.300 they bless the mead when we're done blessing the mead we actually call our children and our men

02:48:02.320 upstairs to bloat, and we do that by calling wunyo. And that is something that Anna and I

02:48:09.280 started together there, and we still use wunyo. We also started opening up the doors and hollering

02:48:17.240 out into the abyss for all the folk to hear us to come home, to come home to the church.

02:48:24.020 we also have a candle that when you up when you come up to the doors to enter the sanctuary when

02:48:35.480 the women call you up to bloat there's a candle that you pass your hands over and then that you

02:48:41.540 actually use that as a cleansing moment to put your put yourself from the mundane to the spiritual

02:48:47.520 place. Put your head on right. Leave everything at the door that doesn't suit you. They wave their

02:48:55.700 hand over that candle, and that is always held by a woman. The doorway is always, the woman is 0.67

02:49:01.740 always there to greet you, and the woman is holding that sacred space, and she is your visual cue

02:49:06.040 and your reminder to put everything behind you when you enter into a sacred space.

02:49:11.280 we also have the folk flame thank you Nick for putting that up there the folk flame is the most

02:49:18.420 photographed item at Baldur's Hoff it's actually really interesting so we ran into the issue

02:49:24.520 unlike Odin's Hoff we can't have a big beautiful fire unfortunately and same with Thor's Hoff we

02:49:31.080 can't have that we don't have the space so we had to improvise and folk builder Jamie Elaine

02:49:36.220 found this amazing candle which is not a candle it's a it runs on isopropyl alcohol and we can

02:49:44.320 have a big beautiful smokeless safe flame and this is the folk flame and this what this flame

02:49:50.700 represents is the beauty the strength the passion and the fire of our folk soul and during bloat

02:49:58.180 we actually asked jb um to walk up and light that folk flame and then we all focus on the folk flame

02:50:06.200 and call our folk home and it is the beacon to call the folk back home to their gods

02:50:11.100 yeah so that's that's what we got at balder's half that and fika because fika's great 0.98

02:50:17.960 all righty 1.00

02:50:21.540 uh next question is good evening ladies i have heard it mentioned that women have magical 1.00

02:50:28.380 aspects and as true what is your definition of magic i'm going to give that one first to katie 1.00

02:50:35.660 yay um

02:50:40.620 there's sort of a stigma about using the word magic as a woman in any of the non-christian

02:50:52.280 circles or the the pagan circles or whatever and uh that that transfers over to ostrich and

02:50:59.640 it's a shame because magic is real um magic is energy whenever you feel an energy of a place or

02:51:11.880 whenever you feel an energy from a person or whenever you you know feel anything you're

02:51:19.960 feeling energy and by anything i mean obviously not feelings of emotional feelings whatever but

02:51:26.820 that's all magic. Women have an innate magic in them. We always refer to it as the woman's 1.00

02:51:37.300 intuition, right? We have magic in our blood. It's literally a part of how we're made. And

02:51:43.420 it's all about energy. Being able to recognize it is the first step. Being able to manipulate it is

02:51:50.340 the next step. When I say manipulate, I'm not talking about like using a magic wand or throwing

02:51:56.000 fireballs from your hands or whatever. It's a very subtle thing. It's being in a hall full of

02:52:08.080 anxious people and being able to calm somebody down with a calm word or a soft touch on their

02:52:15.420 shoulder. That's magic. That's frithful magic where you are literally, sometimes consciously

02:52:24.300 and sometimes not. Using an energy from yourself, transferring it to another person, it's calming

02:52:32.160 them down, making them feel less anxious. All women can do that inherently. Some women can do 1.00

02:52:42.180 it while being aware of doing it. And it's when you can be aware of manipulating that energy to 1.00

02:52:50.240 change something around you that it becomes real magic and not just the the inherent magic that all

02:52:57.380 women have thank you ma'am i think i'm going to give this next question to sheila from tony king

02:53:07.880 of cheese i've asked this question before but i'll reiterate for my own sake when we die do we go to

02:53:15.180 the gods or do we go to our ancestors or both we have to say we don't know do we none of us have

02:53:25.020 been there and come back um i'm sure well we do know that hell is a place of quiet and repose

02:53:34.760 and that may be where we go and stay for a while but again we talked about the ability to connect

02:53:43.080 with our spiritual uh ancestors on the other side with the essence of who they are that they welcome

02:53:50.840 us into the fold of uh because we are ancestors at that point ourselves right and in fact my

02:53:58.280 husband steve always talked about us as being ancestors in training um yeah i don't really know

02:54:04.680 um i i know some people feel that if you do a lot of work here in mcgarth spiritual work

02:54:13.640 things that help you transform and evolve that you will have more options and i think that is

02:54:19.320 what we we tend to think um some people might be happy to have that quiet repose and others

02:54:26.840 i will tell you my husband is one who's going to keep moving when he gets to the other side because

02:54:31.880 that his own way of living his life here in Midgarth and he's not going to stop doing that

02:54:39.000 so if there's any way of continuing to interact with God in the other world and we don't quite

02:54:46.520 know what it's going to be I think we have a certain amount of choice in it and also it will

02:54:51.240 be determined by how we've lived our lives well here so warning to everybody if you want to have

02:54:56.680 more choices on the other side um be a very good person follow the nine noble virtues live nobly

02:55:03.400 as our ulterior tells our ulterior gutti tells us be noble people

02:55:14.440 i'm going to add something real quick so obviously like like sheila said none of us have died and

02:55:20.280 come back but um if you ever get the chance to read the book the road to hell it's a really

02:55:26.680 really good really good book um that goes into detail about what our ancestors believed death

02:55:34.520 was um and one of the things that they explain in that book is how you know we are made up of our

02:55:40.520 soul complex is made of more than one part right our body is one part of our soul and one of the

02:55:47.000 reasons why our ancestors used to visit the how or the burial mound of their ancestors was because

02:55:52.920 they believed that when you buried the body in that place that literally became the home of their soul

02:56:01.080 they also believed that there was a tunnel or a a portal from the how to the halls of the

02:56:08.280 ancestors or to other places so that our our ancestor or our family member who passed away

02:56:14.760 wasn't stuck in that how they could go to the halls of their ancestors or wherever i don't

02:56:22.520 remember all of the exact details um at the moment because it's been a very long time since i've read

02:56:26.920 the book but but when you would go to visit that that that grave you were literally going to speak

02:56:35.560 to the soul of your ancestor or to that piece of their soul and they could come back from wherever

02:56:41.240 they were and be there and listen to you and commune with you it's one of the reasons why

02:56:47.800 grave sites have always been very important to us because they know like

02:56:54.040 our our ancestors graves and our family members graves are as holy and sacred a place as they

02:57:00.920 would be to native americans or to in other faiths like that because theoretically you

02:57:08.120 can literally communicate to your ancestor through the the resting place of that piece of their soul

02:57:16.520 so the fact that our ancestors believe this definitely leads us to believe or i mean i

02:57:23.320 firmly believe that there is more after death it's like sheila said we don't have any real way of

02:57:29.160 knowing what that is i will say that i don't believe that the majority of people will ever

02:57:34.760 go to the hall of a god that is a an honor i'm not saying that nobody will but it was an honor

02:57:41.800 that was reserved for very special circumstances uh in some circles you will hear people who will

02:57:48.760 talk about how they're going to valhalla because they are warriors but they're literally like

02:57:56.760 they're warriors because they are mentally ill and they are not killing themselves and because

02:58:03.640 they have not killed themselves even because they want to that makes them a warrior they are strong

02:58:09.000 they're battling on and so they get to go to valhalla um and i am not kidding i have heard

02:58:15.640 more than one person actually say that that is why they are going to valhalla because they are

02:58:21.000 depressed and they don't kill themselves so um yeah no i think most of us will not

02:58:29.000 be lucky enough to go to the hall of a god. If you want that honor, if you want to be chosen

02:58:37.040 by a god to go to their hall after your death, you have to achieve great things.

02:58:42.480 And it's something we should all strive for. So it works as a sort of,

02:58:51.240 it's a good thing to strive for because it'll, how can it not make you better than you are now?

02:58:59.000 And if we're as Ossetree people and as a strong and proud Aryan people, we should always, always be working to be our best selves. 0.85

02:59:08.200 None of us will ever be our best selves. 0.96

02:59:12.340 I mean, I could be wrong.

02:59:13.820 I don't believe there is ever.

02:59:17.700 I don't think there's ever really a best self.

02:59:20.780 There's only the striving for best self, if that makes any sense.

02:59:24.800 But if you're better today than you were yesterday, you're on the right track.

02:59:27.740 and uh if the war of a god's hall after death is good enough to to pull you forward and upward into

02:59:37.760 a a greater person than you are then it's a good thing to strive for but yeah we don't know what

02:59:44.780 comes after death but we know that our ancestors believed in certain things which makes you more

02:59:50.680 likely well we definitely know that you need to live by the nine noble virtues you need to live

02:59:57.400 an honorable life you need to we are our deeds right so as far as what happens to us when we die

03:00:05.560 pretty much you are going most people are going to go to hell that is a basic con that is just

03:00:12.720 how it is you know just like katie was talking you're not going to um die from your battle with

03:00:18.780 cancer and go to valhalla that's not how it works what you're going to do is you're probably going 0.99

03:00:22.480 to go to hell with the rest of your ancestors. Hell with one L is not a scary place. I mean, 0.99

03:00:28.360 not really. Your ancestors are there. That's where most of us were. That's where most of us

03:00:32.680 will go. If you have the ability to be a great hero and transcend into something stronger,

03:00:39.360 then you would be honored by going to the halls of your ancestors or, you know, transcending and

03:00:45.160 becoming something different, becoming something great, a great spirit that comes back and protects

03:00:50.440 the folk. But yeah, you're definitely not going to go to Valhalla unless you die in battle. And

03:00:55.260 even then, you know, you may not get chosen just because you die in battle. You may not get chosen

03:01:00.400 either. But yeah, the simple reality is most of us are going to go to hell and we're all going to

03:01:05.700 be there together as a folk. That's just the way it is. Transcendence is a thing and you need to

03:01:12.060 transcend to the next level and be absolutely amazing to earn that spot. That's the Brandyism

03:01:19.980 on that that's that's that's the short and simple version that's good hey brandy you know this might

03:01:26.620 be a good time to talk about our plans at the hof so to how we do interments so that people have a

03:01:33.340 place of resting place for them yes for their yeah yeah absolutely so um thor's hof already does have

03:01:41.660 one soul resting on that land um mr pathea i believe is how you say his last name

03:01:49.020 He is already on the property. Right now, we do have our

03:01:55.660 honored ancestors that are buried on the grounds of Odenshof, and Sheila can tell us a little bit

03:02:00.780 more about that. At Baldershof, we're working on setting up and getting what's called a columbarium,

03:02:10.060 and it's basically a marble stack where you could be intoured and sealed into that stack.

03:02:15.660 So we're currently working on the logistics of how to make that as absolutely beautiful as possible without taking up the entire yard because we don't have a lot of space to work with.

03:02:27.200 So we're going to try to get creative with that.

03:02:29.440 So that's something that we're working with right now.

03:02:32.000 If you do want to be interned at the Hoffs, make sure it's in your will.

03:02:36.620 If you need to, if you absolutely want to be remembered at the Hoff, put it in your will.

03:02:42.840 Get your will done.

03:02:44.160 i don't know if there we go nick is on it doyourownwill.com send your will in and let

03:02:52.460 us keep a copy of it for you it's not to be nosy it's not to get into your business it's to make

03:02:58.020 sure that what you want done with your remains if you want to be buried at a hof can be done

03:03:03.620 the last thing that you want to do is just tell somebody and then they end up giving you a burial

03:03:09.920 in a catholic church and putting you you know somewhere where you don't want to be so please

03:03:15.040 make sure that you do your do your will right down there is the address nick is going to leave that

03:03:21.520 up for just a little bit while sheila talks about odenshof cemetery so that our people can write

03:03:28.160 that down sheila you want to tell us about odenshof yes i'd be happy to so we happen to get a nice

03:03:37.040 um piece of property um when we bought odin's off there in brownfield it had been the old

03:03:42.720 grange hall that's how it's been used as i said since 1938 and had many many uses um has a very

03:03:49.520 large parking area big gravel parking area and there's one area to the west that was kind of

03:03:58.160 scrubby and it was outside some fencing we actually have the fence now so that our back

03:04:03.040 area that's very private people can't see us when we're out there having our meals or doing rituals

03:04:09.760 with this other area and it was decided that um we would set this aside for for a cemetery we

03:04:16.880 looked into it and there seemed to be no issues with us actually entering ashes that we couldn't

03:04:25.280 do an actual physical body of a person even somebody who was involved that's just not the way

03:04:32.160 it would work there you know it would take too many regulations obviously um and this is fairly

03:04:37.600 open it can be actually seen by the road you know to a certain extent easy anyway quite close the

03:04:43.440 road so um matt um with some help actually uh laid it out figured out i'm not sure how many

03:04:53.600 um places how many sections we have but they're each like three by eight feet

03:04:59.360 and we're offering that basically that could house a complete body though we're not doing

03:05:04.880 that we have two internments there already and the first one was done a few years ago and it

03:05:12.160 carries the ashes of um our very good friends as i said go the um thorgrin odin and his wife katie

03:05:20.400 their adult daughter passed away from sepsis it's been about 12 years ago maybe and

03:05:28.400 they always kept her ashes and matt gave them permission to do the first internment there and

03:05:33.920 we did that at midsummer i think was three years ago um and thorgan is very norwegian and so he

03:05:41.520 actually laid out stones in a um in a shape uh shape of a ship so it goes you know papers in

03:05:50.480 at either end katie is very much into flowers whether they be still for real and so she planted

03:05:56.160 lots of perennials in there and we did a beautiful um ceremony and i actually um

03:06:03.040 did the design for the headstone we have a friend who does headstones and so we put the the um the

03:06:10.640 algaes and the opposites um for the death room the life room um for birth and death dates and

03:06:17.040 it's very it's beautiful and we did a very nice ritual um for her ceremony for becca becca roth

03:06:24.000 when um we did midsummer the next one was um kind of an unfortunate situation where one of our

03:06:31.680 members was tragically killed and um at that point one of his very best friends met uh mark mcleod

03:06:40.960 who is the manager of odin's hops uh decided it was time to actually uh fence in the hop so he

03:06:49.280 arranged was able to get enough money i think a couple thousand dollars that we now have

03:06:54.000 wrought iron fencing with a nice beautiful little gate that goes in.

03:06:57.420 So you have to look at pictures of Odin's hawks.

03:07:00.540 And we did do a very nice ceremony with all of Adam's friends who were there

03:07:06.000 and the internment there.

03:07:07.840 It was right behind Becca's grave.

03:07:13.420 And oh, and the other thing is that if you don't know,

03:07:16.400 if you're not a genealogist, you might not know,

03:07:18.280 there's a website called findagrave.com.

03:07:21.340 they list all the cemeteries and volunteers go in and they actually take photos they'll take the

03:07:26.600 information off of the graves in cemeteries and odenshof cemetery is listed on find a grave so

03:07:33.240 you can actually go to findagrave.com put in brownsville and you will see the two graves

03:07:38.540 close-ups of this two graves and it is open to of course all of our members we do not charge

03:07:44.680 you know how much it costs to actually enter someone in a public cemetery or another church

03:07:50.080 cemetery um we ask that the family maintain that they put in the the original placement of the

03:07:57.680 ashes and we actually have them in a box we've got them watertight and everything so they're

03:08:02.880 well protected and um and then if the parents the family can maintain that grave site but we'll do

03:08:10.480 it regardless it's what we do and uh so we have the two and um it will be wonderful to see what

03:08:17.280 happens to the other sprays hall is obviously i mean north soft has plenty of land it'll be

03:08:22.400 interesting to see what they come up with do you have an area anna that has been determined to be

03:08:28.240 a good cemetery for your place we don't we don't yet so i i think that that is in the works

03:08:40.720 there is a lot of just wild area at um new york's off um

03:08:51.360 i think right now we can only walk around on about half of it without actually getting into

03:08:56.320 the woods so yeah um but it's definitely something that we're going to look into

03:09:03.760 and i know we have the space for it and it's something that i would obviously love to see

03:09:10.720 because it's uh seeing that that first um official burial at odenshof in what midsummer 2020 that was

03:09:25.360 that really just choked me up because again it's like now we have our folk now have a place of

03:09:33.360 their own and they have a final rescue place of their own we're not just borrowing somebody else's

03:09:38.320 cemetery or we're not just having to just throw the ashes just out somewhere we have a final

03:09:47.920 resting spot of our own and it's amazing to see that yeah so the burial of our people and the

03:09:58.960 respect the remains of our people are so important no one who is remembered is ever truly gone

03:10:08.320 So it is our intent and is the intent that they ask to Folk Assembly to make sure that when someone is interred at our house, that they do understand that it is a commitment to them.

03:10:19.580 Your family doesn't have to worry about whether or not you're going to be tended or remembered.

03:10:23.400 You will be.

03:10:26.160 This next question, I'm going to combine these two because they're kind of the same question.

03:10:30.240 And I'm going to give this one to Anna.

03:10:32.420 Tony King of Cheese asks, a question for you, Githias.

03:10:35.720 How would you suggest getting closer to the gods?

03:10:37.960 ritual or is there something more and nick asks how can a feller work on getting closer to the

03:10:44.680 aces specifically or a lady the ace i'm assuming the gods and the goddesses uh

03:10:51.560 get the applaud could you answer that for us um ritual is great it's not the only way it's not

03:11:00.100 what i would recommend actually for the first thing the first thing that you need to do is

03:11:04.980 acknowledge that your gods and goddesses are real you need to speak with them as they're real because

03:11:12.660 they are um it's not just an idea they're not just some archetype they are actual beings um

03:11:24.180 if you want if you want to start making that connection start talking to them as if they're

03:11:32.660 real because they are. And, you know, once you start doing that, you know, start reading about

03:11:40.980 them. Some of the information's a little bit hard to find, but do your best. Do your research. Do

03:11:46.980 your homework. Start finding ways to connect. You know, it can, it can be in ritual, but it can also

03:11:54.880 be just going through the woods and thanking them for that. It can be, you know, an activity

03:12:03.840 that you enjoy and keeping them in mind. Thank you, ma'am. This next one I'm going to give to

03:12:14.240 Githia McNallan because I think that she will be able to answer this very well. Growing up in

03:12:19.900 Christianity, women were seen in a much different way. What is something you want our menfolk to 0.99

03:12:25.840 know about women in Aztru? That's interesting. Certainly growing up in the Catholic Church,

03:12:36.680 there was no role at all for women except to be a nun. And gee, what kind of a life was that, 0.57

03:12:41.380 right um and i know it changed um i lived through um whatever vatican two and saw the big changes

03:12:49.940 of the the priest turning around facing everybody everything was in english and then they started

03:12:55.300 bringing all the lay people but um i think what's really special and also true is the way that all

03:13:03.060 of the women are involved in whatever level they want to participate they're encouraged to continue

03:13:12.660 learning on their own about the god to choose their own god i mean when we do stumble and talk

03:13:17.460 about a simple ritual everybody takes part you all honor everyone honors a god or goddess and

03:13:23.860 everybody honors an ancestor and then you thought that the third one we're all learning together

03:13:30.100 it's it's uh it's definitely community when we do that and um there is the women have every

03:13:39.940 potential for for learning as much as the men do um i really recommend that again when we talk about

03:13:47.300 the gods and goddesses that spawn harrel and matt and having their victory never sleeps

03:13:53.060 go into some really interesting things about all the layers of the gods we tend to look at them

03:13:58.100 superficially but um there's there's so much to be learned about our gods and goddesses

03:14:07.140 but our women are i think we all live we basically live australia we are also true that is one

03:14:14.100 definition we are asked to we live our lives totally by also true by our standards and knowing

03:14:20.020 that we are connected to our god that we're descended from them and through our descendants

03:14:25.300 through our physical lineal uh ancestors we have every right to be here and feel

03:14:32.660 powerful from that knowledge um we should all feel all women should feel empowered being an

03:14:39.300 because there are no barriers set up for us so i think the men need to know that

03:14:43.940 they've got great potential in the women about success thank you ma'am

03:14:50.580 all right can i add something yes ma'am go ahead um something i would like the men to know is that

03:15:00.980 we as women we are here to build with you we're not we're not trying to compete we

03:15:08.740 we want to build this together with you it's like you are our half our other half and we are yours

03:15:15.620 so we want to be here we want to be here with you perfectly said

03:15:23.460 daniel young asks can you explain the role of a horn bearer

03:15:30.740 katie could you take this one for us

03:15:33.700 so this is something i feel very strongly about too um when i was theodish and it comes

03:15:45.500 back to that a lot because that was my starting point and that would that built a very a very

03:15:51.420 specific foundation for me in a lot of the way i i have formed my world view um and the world view

03:15:58.700 being the way i view the world through our faith um and just about the only important role that

03:16:08.220 theodism had for women was that of the hornbearer um unfortunately i'm not going to be able to give

03:16:14.780 you an example from the Lord for a few minutes and I can't remember which one it was but there's one

03:16:21.580 story in particular it might have been Beowulf but don't don't quote me on that um where the

03:16:28.140 lady of the hall is the horn bearer and and it shows you in the story it shows you how she works 0.87

03:16:36.220 the room as a frith weaver she carries the horn and when a new person enters her hall it's her

03:16:43.980 job to greet that person and to offer them the hall, the horn, to offer them the hospitality of

03:16:48.980 their hall. And that creates a frithful bond right then and there. I am giving you the gift of my

03:16:55.580 mead and the gift of my hospitality. And when you drink that mead, you are accepting it. You are

03:17:01.500 agreeing that you are going to participate in the frith of that hall. And then you see like there

03:17:08.500 are two gentlemen in the hall at this feast day who are not on good terms with each other and

03:17:15.860 she is able to walk up to the two men and pacify it simply by being there because men are supposed 0.98

03:17:22.340 to behave better around women when there's a lady of the hall in front of you especially if she's 0.99

03:17:28.340 carrying a horn you behave better because it's it's a holy thing that horn the horn is that

03:17:36.020 our horn is our receptacle um for all of the things all of our gifts to the gods and it is

03:17:42.740 often the receptacle in which those gifts are returned so the woman who carries the horn is

03:17:49.540 extremely important because she is carrying the holy mead she's carrying that holy horn

03:17:58.180 and she is by her very nature and that is that of a frithweaver because we are all inherently

03:18:04.740 as women frith weavers um some of us are better at it than others um and by that i don't mean that

03:18:12.740 in a negative way i mean there are women out there who are like the antithesis of frith

03:18:16.740 who sow discord wherever they go those are not our women thankfully our women uh 0.99

03:18:24.580 have chosen to be above that kind of behavior but um a woman is a frith weaver by nature and 1.00

03:18:31.700 And when she's holding that horn, she uses her frith. 0.56

03:18:36.760 She's connected to that horn.

03:18:38.740 And one of the things that's really important about a woman who carries a horn,

03:18:42.180 particularly during sumble, and this is where it gets really important for me.

03:18:48.200 When a woman is carrying that horn, she is using her frith at all times.

03:18:53.440 When somebody is extremely upset while raising the horn to a family member who is deceased,

03:19:00.640 if they get really upset because they're feeling some kind of way about it she can reach out and

03:19:06.880 put a hand on that shoulder and sometimes that hand on that shoulder or just that light little

03:19:12.040 little touch is enough to let that person know I'm here for you uh I can help you um you're not

03:19:19.880 alone and sometimes that's all it's a you like I've done that before in some life with somebody

03:19:25.500 who got so upset they were just really sad their father had just passed away and it was just you

03:19:32.680 could tell he could barely talk he was so upset and I reached out and I put my hand on his arm

03:19:37.360 just just a casual little like it's okay I'm here you're not alone and we became really good friends

03:19:45.460 just from that little interaction because he I'd like to think he could feel it but he certainly

03:19:51.100 knew that it was like a genuine moment i guess um and but that's a form of magic or energy

03:19:59.620 manipulation or frith um there's also the concept of masculine energy versus feminine energy

03:20:06.800 masculine energy is a lot more um has a lot more friction to it men men are men are the

03:20:16.600 the doers they are the not that women don't do i'm i i always mess this part up when i'm explaining

03:20:24.100 it because i think it's the right word for it but men have a very different energy i i often say it's

03:20:29.260 a chaotic energy but i don't like calling that that because when we think of chaotic energies

03:20:34.620 and ostrichery we think of things that are a lot more negative than masculine energy

03:20:39.540 Men have a very penetrating energy, or women have a very receiving energy.

03:20:48.340 Men are very penetrating and very powerful and very forward motion and very strong and forward movement.

03:20:58.260 Right.

03:21:00.560 It's true, but it's also, it can be a little bit, their energy can be very over, not overbearing,

03:21:09.080 overbearing is not quite the right word but it can it can sort of take over a thing it's strong 0.73

03:21:14.520 and the woman who's carrying the horn her job is to make sure that when a man hands the horn back

03:21:20.040 because we always during our high symbols the woman carries the horn and the woman is always

03:21:25.560 touches that horn before the next person gets it and the reason why that happens is because

03:21:30.200 by holding that horn her frithful energy it doesn't erase what that man put into the horn

03:21:37.320 because that's not the point we're putting our energy into that horn because we want it there

03:21:41.080 but what it does is it sort of neutralizes it it takes that that like super uh frictive energy

03:21:50.440 and turns it into um not passive but you know it it it it just helps settle it down so that

03:21:59.000 the next person kind of like you're forming the nutrients and protons of that masculine energy

03:22:04.760 right yes uh but no she takes the horn that energy becomes it transforms into something else it goes

03:22:14.520 into the horn and when you give that horn to the next person it is now ready to receive that

03:22:20.760 person's energy and that person's wishes and that person's words so it kind of it doesn't

03:22:27.720 empty it it doesn't erase it it just alters it so that it's it's ready for the next person and 0.59

03:22:34.360 that's extremely important and it's a it can be a lot of hard work any woman on this call who has

03:22:39.240 ever carried the horn around a very uh energy filled stumble knows that it can be very draining

03:22:46.200 sometimes because you use a lot more energy carrying that horn around than you think you do

03:22:50.520 um it's one of the reasons why um we like to have our giddies do it whenever there we have them

03:22:59.060 because we literally have been trained to deal with that kind of thing um something i like to

03:23:06.800 do that i'm sort of low-key and also not low-key because i keep talking about it on all of these

03:23:11.340 calls i like to push is the idea that on the third round of stumble we don't choose a giddia

03:23:17.080 to carry the horn we use that to honor a woman who has um been really awesome in some way so

03:23:27.320 because the third round is the round where we toast the living we can we can we can toast

03:23:33.560 ourselves we can toast our folk but it's kind of a lighter more energetic and um round it's um

03:23:41.480 i like to choose a woman who's done something really awesome because um even though i just

03:23:46.360 said it's a lot of hard work to carry the horn it's also an incredible honor to be allowed to

03:23:50.920 carry that horn because uh you are literally becoming a a tool in the ritual of sambal and

03:23:58.440 sambal it absolutely is a ritual by itself it is an important ritual one of our most important

03:24:05.160 rituals so being allowed to be a tool or a a very important role in sambal is an honor um

03:24:12.520 just recently at the New York's Hoff dedication Miss Pam got to carry the

03:24:19.240 horn around third round and that's because every single person who in her

03:24:24.740 kindred who helped make the New York's Hoff dedication possible turned and

03:24:29.580 pointed to her and said her she gets it she earned it

03:24:33.940 unanimously across the board and she tried to deny it but I didn't let her

03:24:37.620 She was, you know, she tried to say she wasn't awesome, but we all know she is. 0.79

03:24:44.160 I've asked Heather Young to carry the horn before because she's worked her butt off to make Thorshoff successful.

03:24:55.540 Yeah, so the hornbearer is, it's very, it's a very important role.

03:25:00.540 And it's one of the most honored roles that a woman can have.

03:25:03.940 by no means the least role or the only role, though, like some other shoots of our faith

03:25:12.920 would make you think. Sorry, that was a really long answer, but I told you I was passionate

03:25:18.880 about it. That's all right. You were thorough. You did a good job. Sheila, Ashley wants to

03:25:29.260 let you know that she left her charger in your car today. All right. Josh asks, good evening,

03:25:40.540 Githia. Would there be anything you all respectively would like to see for or request

03:25:45.960 of your folk for the future immediate or not? I'm going to take this one. There are a few things that

03:25:54.220 I would like to see of our folk or request of our folk. Number one, be courageous and be strong.

03:26:07.020 Be brave for your gods. Be brave for your ancestors and be brave for your folk and for

03:26:14.780 your church. That would be my first request. My second request would be to be generous and strong.

03:26:24.220 being generous is being generous to your church is not just giving money to your church

03:26:33.940 when you donate ten dollars to Odinshof you're donating ten dollars to Odin when you donate

03:26:42.060 ten dollars to Thorshof you are donating ten dollars as a gift to Thor the same with Balder

03:26:48.000 the same with Njord a gift to the as a true folk assembly is indeed a gift to the gods themselves

03:26:53.780 We are not out here driving Porsches, buying $40 million homes.

03:26:59.300 We're buying Hoffs for our gods.

03:27:03.180 We are gifting our gods.

03:27:05.720 And obviously, our gods are gifting us in return.

03:27:09.600 This many times so far.

03:27:16.580 Go to the websites.

03:27:18.000 and also go to runestone.org and go into, I believe it is in the donation section and you

03:27:27.920 can donate to any of our Hoffs. You can donate to the Folk Services Fund. You can donate to the

03:27:35.080 South African Fund. I bet we've got a link for that on here as well. There we go. You can also

03:27:43.580 donate to Sigurheim. Sigurheim is a dream that will become a reality. You can also donate to

03:27:51.220 the As a True Academy. That is something that will always be amazing and build to the future

03:27:57.240 of your children. So when you ask what I would, what I would ask and request of my folk, be

03:28:02.920 courageous, be strong, and be generous. Ashley asks, what makes a great Githya?

03:28:13.580 we'll do a round table on that one how about anna first anna what makes a great githya

03:28:20.140 genuine love for your folk genuine faith in your gods and then the combination

03:28:28.060 having the faith in your folk that you can bring them to know the gods like you do

03:28:34.300 and patience and sometimes being willing to be really annoying with people

03:28:44.300 awesome sheila wow that was wonderful that was succinct and beautiful but also know your people

03:28:52.460 know who they are know what their needs are know what their pleasures are their joys

03:28:59.180 who's their family what are their challenges and uh you know be there for them no matter what

03:29:05.020 katie i pretty much have to reiterate what anna and sheila have already said

03:29:14.300 our folk are there's no point in being a giddia if you have no one to help there's no point in

03:29:22.320 being a giddia if you're sitting all by yourself in the woods it's great you're you're honoring

03:29:28.300 the gods and stuff but what's the point if you're not helping the your folk you need let's love them

03:29:36.860 know them and we should always be striving to do to help them and to help ourselves be better so

03:29:45.340 it's all about the folk you'll have i would say time and dedication

03:29:53.820 if you do not have the time you need to learn how to bend physics to make it

03:29:59.180 Being a Gidea is the most important thing that you will do.

03:30:03.700 If you ask me what I do, I won't tell you how I pay my bills.

03:30:07.760 I will tell you that I'm a Gidea of the Azitru Folk Assembly.

03:30:10.860 I am a priestess of Balder and I serve my folk and my church.

03:30:14.180 That is what I do.

03:30:16.620 Ask me how I pay my bills is an entirely different story.

03:30:20.140 What comes first is that I'm a Gidea of the Azitru Folk Assembly.

03:30:23.080 So if you can't find the time, you need to bend physics and make the time.

03:30:27.260 and have the dedication not only to the folk, but also to the gods.

03:30:33.840 We are the priests and priestesses of the Aesir, and we can never forget that.

03:30:40.000 That is our primary services to the gods, and then to our church and to our folk.

03:30:45.780 So dedication and time.

03:30:50.520 Sarah asks, Githya Brandy, could you talk about the folk mother and her memorial altar at Baldur's Hof?

03:30:56.040 Sure. So at Baldershof, we have a altar to Elsie Christensen. There is a beautiful picture of it

03:31:05.240 with all of its fall decor. We use this as a primary focal point for dedication at Baldershof.

03:31:14.960 It is to the left of Balders altar. To the right of Balders altar is our ancestor altar,

03:31:19.540 But this one is for Elsie. Elsie Christensen is kind of like our matron over there at Baldursoff.

03:31:29.160 We leave offerings for her at this altar. We actually have a dedication that we do at our longer events, our three-day events.

03:31:37.800 We'll have a dedication that we do to her on the first day of the event, honoring her, remembering her, and giving her gifts.

03:31:44.540 because remember no one who is spoken of ever leaves us so this is her way of still being here

03:31:50.460 elsie was a fantastic woman um please visit www.baldershoff.org and visit the news feed or

03:31:59.920 the blog post um sarah alt does an incredible dedication to elsie on a regular basis with

03:32:05.620 actual tidbits about her life information um repostings of her writings and her works

03:32:12.320 So definitely visit Baldershoff.org and take a look at the blog post. There's something all the time up there for the folk mother.

03:32:21.600 All right. Next question. Do we have any more questions? I think we might. 0.99

03:32:32.280 Just checking to see if I missed any. Ah, there's one.

03:32:36.080 uh dylan walters asks i'm new here and have not become a member yet to the thorshop district and

03:32:41.820 was wondering if anyone could share more information on as true folk i wear my mjolnir

03:32:46.960 every day and also have a yidrasil tatted on my back i mean he is looking for a good practice i

03:32:53.360 should be doing every day and is there a place close to indiana i could worship the gods at

03:32:58.220 and just all info you could tell me about the as a true folk assembly mr dylan walters i could

03:33:03.380 talk to you for another probably 24 to 48 hours straight about the as a true folk assembly so

03:33:08.700 that would be a very long conversation but what i will tell you is to go to runestone.org take a

03:33:14.120 look at the declaration of purpose the statement of ethics and the laws of the hall and make sure

03:33:19.360 that you would be in compliance with those and that you would support those as well if you can

03:33:24.860 support those you can support our church and contact uh you're in indiana reach out to folk

03:33:30.740 Builder, Zach Cato, or no, Katie, who we got over there?

03:33:35.880 Jonathan Rock.

03:33:37.240 Jonathan Rock.

03:33:38.380 Sorry, Jonathan.

03:33:39.400 You can harass me later. 0.63

03:33:41.760 Jonathan Rock, get a hold of him.

03:33:43.900 If we can pop up Jonathan's email address, it should be jrock at runestone.org, I believe.

03:33:50.740 Get a hold of him, and he will get you in touch with folk, talk to you a little bit, 0.76

03:33:56.020 let you know what you need to know, and he'll let you know about any moots or anything that 0.60

03:34:00.440 are going on as long as you are somebody that he feels can be safe and productive and worship the

03:34:07.480 gods. Can I add something? Yes, ma'am. As far as what you can do or how you can learn to worship,

03:34:17.680 I know that that question has already been answered in a couple different ways a couple

03:34:21.900 different times, but something that I think is really important that people forget to do is

03:34:25.440 finding small ways every day i talk i've talked about this before i talked about it when i was on

03:34:32.880 my first interview with matt but it was in relation to children and something i wasn't i

03:34:37.520 didn't really talk about was the fact that when i'm doing it with the children i'm also doing it

03:34:41.680 myself i see a stray cat in the woods we have one a little orange tabby that kind of runs around in

03:34:48.560 our wood line out in the back of our yard and occasionally leaves a dead mouse out in our

03:34:53.120 driveway whenever i see that cat um i just always assume it's a girl because it leaves the dead

03:34:59.040 animals and that's more of a female cat thing um i just it makes me think of freya and so i have a

03:35:07.600 occasional reference to freya out of the blue just that happens in my daily life i see two crows and

03:35:13.120 i know realistically it's not hug and munan for one they're crows not ravens but i digress uh

03:35:20.480 crows are always in pairs they mate for life and you almost never see just one crow you almost

03:35:29.000 always see two and if you only see one the other one's really close by but that doesn't matter i

03:35:32.820 see two crows and i think of odin and so every day every day i have a daily reminder to think of

03:35:39.080 odin um it's it's easy for me to think of frigga because i have children um or i see a fireplace

03:35:48.340 in a home on a movie. That's enough to make me think about Frigga because Frigga is the goddess

03:35:52.600 of the hearth and the home. It's little things like that, little associations that you need to

03:35:59.420 build up in your own head. And if you don't know much about our gods or you have questions, reach

03:36:04.260 out to our folk. Reach out to Jonathan Rock. Reach out to one of us here on this caller, to any of

03:36:09.500 our Godar, and ask questions. We don't mind answering them. In fact, we enjoy answering

03:36:16.540 questions. But find little ways every day that can make our faith every day. Have a little daily

03:36:29.620 ritual that you do every morning when you wake up. It can be something as simple as I'm lighting

03:36:34.100 a candle on an altar and saying good morning and hail the gods. I don't know. It's something as

03:36:43.000 simple as uh if you have like a an altar touch it every time you walk past it just a little

03:36:50.820 tap it when you go because it makes you a physical action that makes you aware of that altar in your

03:36:58.200 space it doesn't it doesn't have to be complicated you don't have to do big old bloats you don't have

03:37:02.580 to do you know say big long prayers or anything like that i mean it's good to do those things too

03:37:09.520 don't get me wrong, but it's find little things every day that you can do that make you think

03:37:15.700 about our gods, that make you think about our ancestors. And that makes it every day. And the

03:37:21.580 reason why I think that is so important, particularly with our parents, is if you teach

03:37:25.440 your children to make those little associations, they will grow up so immersed in our faith that

03:37:33.400 they have no reason not to be ositru and we want them to be so ositru that their children 0.97

03:37:41.360 when they have them are so much that that much further removed from like the christian faiths

03:37:50.200 that's that's a thing for me like i don't have an issue with christianity i just don't agree with it

03:37:56.600 um no anger there or anything but i don't want my kids to be there i want my kids to be as

03:38:02.180 unchristian as possible i want them to be asa true and if i can raise them to be 50 times more

03:38:09.440 asa true than i could ever be because i was raised christian and some of those things will never be

03:38:13.700 out of my thought process then they'll raise their children to be 50 more asa true and they'll raise

03:38:19.960 their children to be 50 more asa true and eventually however many generations from now

03:38:25.260 our children will be so asa true that there is nothing else they won't have that christian

03:38:31.240 guilt complex or any of that and that was really like that spiraled sorry for that rabbit hole

03:38:36.680 guys but really just find little ways every single day to make ositru and our gods and our ancestors

03:38:45.880 and our faith part of what you do you don't need to go big even katie find the rabbit holes that

03:38:53.260 i tend to find good job it's usually my job to jump down the rabbit hole but you did very well

03:38:59.660 with that. And I agree with you. I've never raised my children with the choice of if they could be

03:39:05.320 Christian or if they could be Buddhist or if they could be Asatru or if they could be Wiccan. They

03:39:09.780 didn't have a choice. They were raised Asatru. That's what they were raised in. I didn't give

03:39:14.840 them a choice of let them feel out what it is that they want to do. If they want to do that

03:39:19.820 later on in life, it'll break my heart, but they'll do it if they want to, I suppose. But

03:39:24.400 will it break my little heart yes it will because this means that much to me um but yeah i didn't i

03:39:31.440 didn't give them the option i don't give them the option to experiment with things this is how i'm

03:39:38.280 raising my children these are the this is the culture i wanted to raise my children in and

03:39:42.580 this is the values that i want to raise my children in and fortunately um my kids my kids came with me

03:39:50.540 to the AFA. My kids came with me in the AFA at a really good time in their lives where they were

03:39:58.160 old enough to understand what was going on, but they were also at an age and Anna can remember

03:40:04.460 they were little. Well, I shouldn't say they were little, but they were a lot littler than they are

03:40:08.940 now. But they had a chance to learn and grow and be influenced by a lot of the masculine role

03:40:17.160 models that they found in the AFA. My children, some of their favorite people in the AFA are the

03:40:24.020 last speaker, Alan Turnage, and the Osheri Argo, the Matthew Flavel. And each one of them is a

03:40:30.480 little bit different. You know, when we were doing construction on Baldur's Hoff, on that first fall

03:40:38.340 fest, when we had just gotten the Hoff, and we were literally tearing things down. And one of my

03:40:45.560 children looked at the Alshira Gauthier and said, hey, do you think you could judo kick this wall

03:40:51.200 in? And the Alshira Gauthier said, I don't know. Let me try. And he did. He kicked the whole wall

03:40:56.920 in. And my kids were amazed. And he has been one of their heroes ever since. And the law speaker,

03:41:02.560 Alan Turnage, introduced my children to Chick-fil-A. And he has been their hero ever since.

03:41:08.540 so my kids have been influenced by these strong masculine pious men in their life and i couldn't

03:41:16.400 be more grateful for it so yeah i wouldn't have given them i wouldn't have given them

03:41:23.340 a choice for anything else you know could i add something absolutely okay so something we

03:41:33.560 only established maybe 15 years ago but that for us is to bless all our meals and my when steve and

03:41:42.820 i sit down to a meal we don't start until we trade off you know each each meal one of us will do the

03:41:48.380 food blessing and we don't do the same one all the time we have a lot of the same verbiage but

03:41:54.720 it changes you know kind of the mood and what is ahead of us for the day but it's our way of

03:42:00.560 connecting with the many blessings we have in this world

03:42:04.660 to even be here in Midgarth to have another day

03:42:08.760 for the food that is before us,

03:42:10.720 to remember the ancestors and what they went through

03:42:14.380 to get us to this point and the meals that they had

03:42:17.340 and how this may or may not be similar to what they had.

03:42:20.800 And we also thank the animals

03:42:24.800 because we take that protein that we get

03:42:28.180 the animal that died um it carries us forward and we use that so we always thank the animals

03:42:33.780 if we have animals but we also do that at our hops and it is a tradition and the other thing

03:42:40.100 when it talks about something about the women at our hop uh one of the traditions we have is

03:42:47.060 when after a meal blessing which is done by a godi or givia um we always say and we do our

03:42:54.420 really hail the gods hail the folk hail the afa is how we always end which is wonderful it's very

03:42:59.780 dynamic um and then it's women and children eat first and the men always step back and all the

03:43:06.660 women and then would be maybe guests men who are might be new there and then you know the

03:43:13.220 the establishing leadership women or men doesn't matter our giddy is our our and also folk lady 0.96

03:43:20.340 folk builders always eat last and that's what we do we take care of our folks first and that's

03:43:25.460 the tradition in each of our hops too kind of comes from um my husband being in the military

03:43:31.860 and saying that the leaders there make sure that their men always eat first and that um the uh

03:43:39.060 the leader would eat last and if there's anything and believe me there have been a few times a man

03:43:44.500 hasn't had very much to eat and he'll tell you about it but so we always have to have plenty

03:43:49.940 and plenty on hand for mac he's got quite an appetite he's so much fun but um anyway that

03:43:55.700 also we always do a greeting to the day a lot of you know that we do that and it is something we do

03:44:01.380 renews our own relationships gets us ready for the day we honor our gods and goddesses if we do that

03:44:06.980 and makes us gives us healing hands to do our work so those are just some simple rituals that

03:44:13.060 anybody can build in especially if you have children do the food blessing give them the

03:44:17.620 responsibility of of thanking for the food that they have definitely quick rabbit hole yes you

03:44:28.260 were talking about alan my son never likes alan except for that he loves alan when my he's four

03:44:38.180 and up until about three months ago he went on like a year and a half long growling binge he

03:44:44.180 would not smile at people he would not talk to people if they looked at him if they talked at

03:44:49.540 him if he had any even thought in his head that they might come near him he'd growl at them

03:44:55.940 it was it was cute at first it didn't last it was really irritating actually and uh my son

03:45:02.180 every time alan tried to talk to him growing at him and then all of a sudden they were like best

03:45:08.660 buds like i don't know what happened that alan alan has always been really really good to my

03:45:14.100 kids and i appreciate it because i don't know he it's it's that was my funny story about alan

03:45:20.420 and he's alan's pretty cool i like that dude yeah everybody like alan is a great dancer i never knew

03:45:27.940 that the uh the last speaker could get down like that until we were over at uh at a fall

03:45:35.220 fest for baldur's hof and we we danced the night away it was a lot of fun there's pictures to prove

03:45:40.180 it it's all i did actually want to add one more thing but i got distracted by the alan thing and

03:45:48.100 this is really cute uh really quick i swear my children don't have a choice they are going to

03:45:53.140 to be also true we are trying not to teach them about anything else not because they don't have

03:45:58.420 the right to know but because there's no reason for them to know about things some things when

03:46:04.780 they're as young as they are my kids are four and two there's no reason for them to be confused with

03:46:09.180 information about Jesus Christ all of our family outside of us are Christians so it can be a little

03:46:15.640 complicated sometimes trying to let them know why our family is doing other things but something

03:46:21.480 that I think is really important is I want my children to love Asitru. I'm not trying to force

03:46:27.540 them to be Asitru because through anger or fear or anything like that, they don't need to be scared

03:46:33.540 that if they're not Asitru, they're going to be smited. I'll tell them I won't talk to them 0.92

03:46:38.260 anymore. I'll be lying and they know it, but I want them to love it. And it's really easy to teach

03:46:45.600 children to love Asitru because Thor's a really cool dude. Read them some of those stories. He's

03:46:51.380 this angry guy who eats goats and smashes yotans my four-year-old is all about killing things right

03:46:56.760 now so Thor is like the best thing in the world and um like he he he has insight into that stuff

03:47:04.900 that you wouldn't expect a four-year-old to have because he's never had the outside influences and

03:47:10.140 we were in the woods the other day and I'm not particularly fond of heights and we were on a

03:47:14.060 walk that went past a little cliff down to the river and I was like don't get too close and I'm

03:47:18.200 like i'm sorry i'm scared that doesn't mean you should be scared mommy just gets anxious and i

03:47:23.200 don't want you to like my anxiety about things to make you scared because i don't want him to

03:47:29.180 be scared of the things i'm scared of simply because i'm scared of them right it's a conversation

03:47:33.900 went a little differently because he's four and he just told you to me he's like it's okay mommy

03:47:37.860 i'm not scared thor is always next to me and he protects me what kind of child thinks to say that

03:47:44.480 about jesus christ none sorry most four-year-olds don't have a real grasp of christianity when

03:47:53.300 they're christian they just know they go to church and they come home and you know but when we teach

03:47:59.440 our kids to really love our our faith and to really love our gods because our gods are cool

03:48:05.300 that's easy to do they understand it they understand it better than i they probably under

03:48:12.940 when kids are little and they don't have those outside influences and they love it they understand

03:48:16.860 it better than we could ever hope that they would understand it so that's yeah i can but

03:48:23.420 and i don't have that much um parenting advice because um i don't have kids just yet but um

03:48:31.500 i think one thing that's gonna really help our children to love this faith is instilling them

03:48:40.460 the idea that this is inside of us already we're not having to go to some foreign source for it

03:48:47.820 it's already in here it is part of us it is we are born with this as part of our greater folk

03:48:55.180 soul and we are born into this huge connected web of folk true story yeah

03:49:07.020 let's see we do have a couple questions left we have a green leader asks what's the best way to

03:49:15.100 bring more women into the afa well so far tonight we have shown you four githias

03:49:21.820 14 full builders and apprentice full builders right 14 of them and that is just leadership

03:49:30.500 like i said we've never had more women in the afa than we do now we've never had more kids in the

03:49:35.600 AFA than we do now. We've never had more lady leadership than we have now. And it's just a 0.82

03:49:42.400 matter of, if you have a woman in your life that is, that honors the gods, that honors the Aesir.

03:49:52.880 If you can bring her to one of our events, one of the moots, and honestly let her know that we are

03:49:59.980 okay. All right. We are not going to be a bro show. We are not going to be a drinking social 0.97

03:50:06.580 party. We are not going to take our clothes off and dance naked under the moon. We are

03:50:12.820 child friendly. We are family friendly. We are your parents friendly. We are a good group of

03:50:19.420 people doing great and amazing things. And most of us are normal people. Some of us are extra

03:50:27.240 awesome like myself and the ladies on the call but most of us are perfectly normal

03:50:32.680 but bring you bring her out bring out your sister bring out your mother

03:50:36.120 bring out your friend from work they won't regret it they're gonna see that we're perfectly safe

03:50:42.760 that we honor our gods our ancestors and our folk and that we're just good people to be around so

03:50:50.120 that's my advice on how to bring women to the afa does anybody else have any advice on that 0.87

03:50:54.120 yes don't act like other types of dudes and this goes for the ladies too our ladies are feminine

03:51:08.520 ladies our men are masculine men portray that dress well at our events so when we take pictures

03:51:16.200 and we share them with people they see well-looking feminine women and well-looking masculine men

03:51:25.720 um we take pictures we take a lot of pictures and if when people look at those pictures they see

03:51:32.600 this goes for women and as much as i don't like to admit this women are going to look at those 0.79

03:51:37.080 pictures and judge what they see if they see a bunch of people standing around in old t-shirts

03:51:43.240 and jeans and you know looking unkempt and drinking beer right from the can which isn't a

03:51:50.040 bad thing but it's like if it looks like a drinking party we're not going to want it most of us are

03:51:56.120 not going to want to hang out we're not going to come to your church thinking we're going to find 1.00

03:51:59.480 what we need to feel spiritually fulfilled but when you look at women look at pictures of good 0.80

03:52:05.840 looking dudes and good looking chicks all hanging out and smiling with lots of little kids running

03:52:10.540 around women are going to be attracted to that so dress accordingly act accordingly and this

03:52:17.260 was across the board it's not just men it's for women too and uh that is one of the best

03:52:22.380 things we can do to attract more women in my opinion right

03:52:30.460 jason you've got a couple questions here so i'm gonna try to answer them all in rapid fire

03:52:36.300 It says, Brandy, love you in Baldur's Hof. Is there a gathering on the 29th? Yes. Winter

03:52:43.420 Nights is going to be on the 29th from 10 to 6. Also, you ask, I'm really nervous about my first

03:52:49.940 gathering event in my life. Can I get some inspiration on that subject? Again, we are

03:52:56.540 perfectly normal, happy people. We are family friendly. We are very hospitable. Baldur's Hof

03:53:03.100 has a reputation for being very hospitable, having great food and plenty of it and holding

03:53:09.200 powerful bloats and the conversation will be great. So don't be nervous about anything. If

03:53:13.820 you are nervous when you go into something like bloat or stumble, just follow the person in front

03:53:18.380 of you. When we do bloats, we tend to walk you through the bloat so you know everything that's

03:53:23.780 going on. So don't be nervous about that. And how do I convince my family that it's okay to

03:53:31.520 attend Baldur's Hof for spiritual events. Show them pictures of the events. Have them watch the

03:53:36.440 podcast. Have them watch anything that's on our YouTube channel. We have tons and tons of videos

03:53:41.760 showing pictures of normal people having a good time worshiping their gods and sharing frith.

03:53:47.660 And there's all kinds of videos. I would pull up the YouTube channel and show them the YouTube

03:53:52.100 videos or show them one of the podcasts with the leadership. And do you have any insight in finding

03:53:58.020 a female who's single and as a true well i would recommend starting in the afa we do have a few

03:54:05.300 single ladies in the afa um you just got to look for them and be worthy of them so a young man

03:54:14.180 looking for a young woman and vice versa a young woman looking for a young man um make sure that

03:54:19.780 you are the best version of yourself make sure that you are emotionally spiritually physically

03:54:28.020 financially, um, mentally prepared to have a partner. So a lot of the people in the AFA are

03:54:37.300 very, very family oriented. We are very traditional minded. Um, and we are looking for our better

03:54:44.120 halves. And when we say better halves, I mean for life. So make sure that you are your best version

03:54:50.400 of yourself in order to attract that into your life. That's the best recommendation I have for

03:54:55.220 that does any of the other ladies have any recommendations for jason about how to find 0.61

03:55:00.580 a single lady who's as true you know i do anna anna was about to say something so i'll let her 1.00

03:55:10.020 go first um i also have a recommendation for a family bring them to a hof

03:55:17.540 um i brought you know my parents were at baldur's hof for my wedding and they're like oh well this

03:55:26.660 this isn't okay this is like they're like oh all these people are nice looking and are nice and

03:55:36.180 i know my husband's parents

03:55:39.780 i i swear we almost had his mom about to join alan alan had almost charmed her into joining

03:55:48.100 there's maybe one more dinner date with alan and would have been there alan's smooth though

03:55:55.160 yeah he he is he's real smooth um as far as women because i i mean i did meet my husband in the afa

03:56:06.920 just keep working on yourself you know find ways to work on yourself

03:56:16.000 make connections along that building yourself line like get involved in the physical fitness

03:56:25.900 group get involved in the spiritual excellence group start up conversations with people

03:56:30.320 you will be amazed

03:56:33.500 you're gonna have to put yourself out there but yep it's worth it you're gonna have to be those

03:56:42.980 things that i asked of you before you need to be courageous you need to be strong and you need to

03:56:46.820 be generous so you need to be courageous of spirit strong in body and generous of heart

03:56:52.580 if you want to find a true as a true woman in the afa sheila do you have any recommendations

03:56:58.300 on that for young folk looking for people? I would say that when you attend an event,

03:57:05.620 make sure that especially the women get to see you, that they can evaluate you, be there,

03:57:11.080 be one of the first people to volunteer to set up chairs or to pick up the garbage or anything else

03:57:17.720 that needs to be done. That will make a lot of points. Don't just sail into an event and then

03:57:24.820 leave as as you know time to do dishes that is one of the worst things you can do be a person who

03:57:31.380 who gives value to the community and you will have people um putting you at the top of the list

03:57:37.700 if there's anybody that they feel that would be a good match for you but yes as men you're going

03:57:43.380 to find fewer women but be that better man you know that's certainly one thing also um

03:57:49.940 try to bring um other relatives other friends around um and we all need to do that more so that

03:57:56.900 we have a bigger group of people who experience us even if they decide not to join

03:58:02.820 because they have something else going on they've experienced us they know you know we we

03:58:09.300 are the people we say we are we have we live by our values and that we're a worthy community to

03:58:16.260 join and help us build our reputation definitely i know i said i had to add something

03:58:31.060 i'll go quickly i'll try to go quickly so when you said you were nervous about going to event

03:58:35.700 an event don't be i am really not a super

03:58:40.500 outgoing person and you'll hear people say this and it's it it's never untrue walking into one

03:58:50.780 of our Hoffs or you'll never feel more at home than when you walk into one of our Hoffs we say

03:58:58.280 all the time it felt like I was coming home you really do feel like you're coming home because

03:59:02.760 our people are friendly and because our hoffs have a wonderful energy and like you know it works

03:59:11.160 because you walk in and it just works it just fits it feels like you've you finally found

03:59:16.300 something you didn't even know you were looking for all this time um so don't be scared take the

03:59:22.280 leap because it'll be so worth it for you to just come to an event i also want to um say as far as

03:59:30.140 finding women goes, don't be pushy. Don't, when there's a single good-looking woman and she's the 0.99

03:59:40.300 only one in the group, don't pounce on her because you will scare her away so fast. It happens all

03:59:47.960 the time. I don't know how to say it better than that. Be patient. I met my husband through the

03:59:55.020 AFA. My family is an AFA family and I had pretty much given up on the idea of finding an ostrich

04:00:04.860 dude. I kind of just figured I'd have a Christian husband because that's how it would work and we'd 0.91

04:00:09.220 have to figure out how to raise our children in both. And I was very lucky because I wasn't 1.00

04:00:13.200 willing to settle. And if you're not willing to settle, if you're willing to wait until you find

04:00:17.500 the person who works. It is worth it. Be patient. Don't settle, but also just don't rush it. Be

04:00:27.200 patient. It's so important and don't pounce. That's all. That's very sound advice and probably

04:00:36.720 the most sound advice is don't pounce. That's excellent. Thank you. So before we go for this

04:00:45.060 evening. I want to wish Steve McNallan and I know all the other ladies here want to wish Steve

04:00:50.860 McNallan, our founding father of Azitru and the Azitru Folk Assembly, we would like to wish you

04:00:57.140 the happiest birthday. Thank you for all of your years of dedication and service to your gods and

04:01:02.840 to your folk and to your church. We hope it is beautiful and we hope that you enjoy your day.

04:01:08.320 so happy birthday to steve mcnallen on october 15th i would like everyone who can get on me

04:01:16.160 we if you are in those me we groups and go into that odenshof message board raise a horn to steve

04:01:22.480 on his birthday and send him a message please i bet he would appreciate it happy birthday steve

04:01:30.160 happy birthday steve thank you and thank you for all you have done thank you

04:01:38.320 So one more plug for Winter Nights.

04:01:40.420 The clock is ticking, but it's not too late.

04:01:43.520 Winter Nights 11 in Ohio, October 14th through the 16th.

04:01:47.560 You can still get your tickets.

04:01:49.440 Contact Katie.

04:01:50.360 Contact Cliff.

04:01:51.560 They might be busy.

04:01:52.720 Contact anybody in Ohio.

04:01:54.360 Any of you, Tim, Christine, Adam.

04:01:59.380 Contact Adam.

04:02:00.660 Contact anybody.

04:02:01.920 We'll get you in touch with the people that you need to if it's short notice and people are busy.

04:02:05.700 It is not too late, even though the clock is ticking.

04:02:08.320 so be there or be square be there be square all the cool kids are going to be there

04:02:15.440 except for me and sheila and anna

04:02:22.000 we'll be there in spirit send lots of pictures katie

04:02:27.040 yes well that is all i think that's all the questions we got thank you ladies so much for

04:02:32.400 coming on for spending literally four hours with me on a call just chatting

04:02:40.640 that's crazy it's really not we do this

04:02:46.320 it's talk about something scary this is so much easier yeah this is so much easier

04:02:53.280 i appreciate all of you ladies spending so much time with us and answering all the questions to

04:02:57.200 for your folk so have a great have a great week catch um victory never sleeps next week same time

04:03:05.760 same place again everybody who is anybody is going to be on that podcast all right so until next time

04:03:14.080 next wednesday hail the gods hail the folk hail the afa and remember victory never sleeps good

04:03:21.680 Good night, everybody.

04:03:23.140 Good night.

04:03:51.680 Thank you.

04:04:21.680 Thank you.

04:04:51.680 Thank you.

04:05:21.680 Thank you.

04:05:51.680 Transcription by CastingWords

04:06:21.680 Thank you.

Asatru Folk Assembly - October 13, 2022

10⧸12⧸22 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 14 - Gythia Edition

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