Asatru Folk Assembly - 11⧸15⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 71 - Feast of the Einherjar

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

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00:02:00.000 Thank you.

00:02:30.000 Thank you.

00:03:00.000 You

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00:04:00.000 hello everyone and welcome to another edition of victory never sleeps as some of you guys

00:04:14.160 probably noticed by the intro um graphic and for folks listening later as a podcast

00:04:21.600 we'd like to acknowledge the passing of a member of our AFA family passing that happened far too

00:04:32.200 young young man named Cam named Cam Musser passed away on over this last weekend and

00:04:44.400 And yeah, it's always sad when we lose one of our friends and one of our family, and his passing affected a lot of, I'd say a lot of us in the AFA, you know, folks that certainly were closer to him than I was.

00:05:04.940 um but yeah it's very sad thing and uh we will we will remember him and make sure he's not forgotten

00:05:15.080 about um tonight Clinton Svon and I are going to discuss the feast of the Einherjar um

00:05:28.400 i talked to swan a little bit earlier and we're waiting for him to to join us on the program but

00:05:35.880 i wanted to talk

00:05:39.020 i guess i wanted to hit this from two different angles i wanted to discuss

00:05:45.960 the einherjar as a concept but then separate but related to i want to talk about the feast

00:05:56.000 the iron here you are as one of our our holy observances and our uh holy tide for the month of

00:06:04.400 november um up first before we get to that we had a spectacular event this last weekend in south

00:06:20.080 dakota um gothy nathan erlandson and uh folk builder ashley mcstocker hosted a feast of the

00:06:32.080 iron hair yard at a at a camp there much like we used to do all of our gatherings at one point

00:06:40.720 and it was very nice weekend it was a great time to get to

00:06:44.560 fellowship with some of our our afa family to get to talk to folks to share stories but it was also

00:06:52.960 a really powerful symbol and um a couple of really really special rituals especially uh

00:07:03.600 gothi nate's einherjar bloat on on saturday night it was beautiful it was on a on a lake

00:07:12.800 with you know beautiful kind of white cliff sides on either side of the the beach that we were on

00:07:20.880 and um past couple last year and this year featured a uh sending a boat a light out into the

00:07:31.200 water and watching that burn and sink and it was really special um the feeling there was great i

00:07:38.880 And I was really glad to be able to take a part, to be a part of that.

00:07:47.380 So I talked to Svon just a few minutes before we got on the broadcast.

00:07:51.760 I know he is expecting to be here, so I'm not, we'll get to him when he does.

00:08:00.660 I wanted to hold off for just a little bit so that we can talk about the main meat of the program when he makes it in.

00:08:08.880 I'm trying to think of what else off the top of my head. So this is the last of the big national

00:08:16.580 events for a little while, at least as far as we have had planned out now. I think the next thing

00:08:23.260 I'm planning to go far out of my area to attend is going to be Charming of the Plow at New York's

00:08:32.060 off the second annual charming of the plow at new york's off in february and that'll be really uh

00:08:40.300 really fun really great event that's a beautiful time of the year to be in florida where it's not

00:08:45.580 not yet oppressively hot but it's it's nice and it's beautiful and it'll be a good time

00:08:51.180 I'm looking forward to that.

00:08:59.460 Yeah, I think that's where we're at.

00:09:00.940 I also want to give a special thanks to Witten Brandy Callahan for last week's presentation on the first third of Beowulf.

00:09:11.340 Brandy does a great job with that.

00:09:13.880 And, you know, having her actually read the sections of the poem on the broadcast, I thought was really good.

00:09:20.300 and i appreciate her stepping in and being able to host that i'm glad i was able to make uh most

00:09:26.060 of or part of it and contribute what what little i did but that's certainly brandy's show and she

00:09:31.160 will be back next week to do part two and then if everything flows according to plan two weeks

00:09:38.760 following to conclude with the third portion of that

00:09:41.860 All right, guys.

00:09:51.340 Well, I'm going to.

00:09:58.140 Oh, OK, so I should note this as well.

00:10:00.340 As you can tell, we're back on our little bit older, more traditional platform here.

00:10:05.000 We want to get back to some of the fun bells and whistles for the donations.

00:10:09.140 but that's going to have to wait until we do a little bit more back-end testing

00:10:13.700 so that this time when we roll it out,

00:10:16.220 we should have far less of the problems we were experiencing earlier.

00:10:20.700 So that should return next week.

00:10:24.320 In the meantime, we are being broadcast live on Odyssey,

00:10:32.600 on uh entropy on twitter on rumble on youtube and on dk so we welcome oh and twitch we welcome

00:10:47.240 everybody who is on those platforms listening to us if you if you would like to get your questions

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00:11:11.720 so we appreciate that and then the little the gadget where you can

00:11:15.720 do the buying us coffees and stuff that's also an option i believe the link for that is in

00:11:24.840 in the description of the program so

00:11:31.880 And yeah, sorry guys, I'm fiddling around with it a little bit.

00:11:38.140 Hoping Svan will pop on, but in case he doesn't, we will get started without him.

00:11:47.100 To lay a little bit of foundation, Feast of the Einherjar is not one of the ancient holy days of our folk.

00:12:07.960 um historically i'm trying to think of i think maybe the first time it was celebrated was during

00:12:14.880 the house to free assembly days back in the 1980s could have been in the late 70s but i'm not sure

00:12:21.100 and it is on veterans day um it's on november 11th every year and

00:12:30.460 it doesn't

00:12:34.240 to understand it it doesn't have to be any more confusing or more complex than that there are

00:12:44.220 certainly complexities to it and things that we want to make sure are part of it it's extremely

00:12:49.700 significant but it is a time to celebrate those who those who served in

00:12:58.140 it could be extended to other types of combat but those who served in their nation's military

00:13:09.560 those of our fault who made that sacrifice or took up that challenge to put themselves at risk

00:13:18.020 and to go into into battle or into potential battle and put their lives on the line in that

00:13:25.260 And we want to celebrate those folks and acknowledge that and have a day to remember and to honor that.

00:13:35.680 So that is the point of Feast of the Iron Hair Yard as a holy observance in our answer.

00:13:51.500 Spawn has joined us.

00:13:53.200 This is good.

00:13:55.260 It's good to see them. I started off just by giving them a rundown of what Feast of the Iron

00:14:03.320 Year Yard is as far as a holiday in the AFA calendar. I'm not sure if you heard what I said

00:14:17.040 or not on it, but if you want to jump in and talk about it a little bit of how it's observed,

00:14:22.680 I'll go ahead and just finish off with this. Typically, like most of our holidays, and this is for anyone who hasn't been to Vindelhoff or celebrated the holiday.

00:14:34.220 It is typically a celebratory meal.

00:14:43.740 It's a bloat or if not a typical bloat to a god or a goddess, which it often is.

00:14:52.660 Sometimes it is a bloat of communion with ancestors or heroes as well. 0.86

00:14:59.380 And then often capped with a sambal.

00:15:04.220 which is our drinking ritual where we raise our glasses, raise a horn, and toast to honor gods, ancestors, and heroes.

00:15:19.280 So that's Feast of the Einherjar in its most simple terms.

00:15:24.520 One thing we also like to do is set up an ancestors' table to celebrate the Einherjar.

00:15:30.400 and when i talk about ancestors in that context especially for feast of the iron her yard it

00:15:35.440 doesn't need to be you know someone you're related to it could be a member of our folk that you

00:15:41.360 served with or that you knew that was a friend of yours who served or somebody that you especially

00:15:47.600 want to take that time to honor due to their their martial service um that was the real quick and 0.80

00:15:55.680 dirty version swan is there stuff you'd like to add to that yeah i think that it's uh it's

00:16:01.840 important for people to um conceptualize that there is personal devotions that are done uh at

00:16:10.960 home and then there's community devotional acts and and that's really what bloat is about is

00:16:17.760 bloat is is about us getting together and doing so you know i i've noticed a lot of people talking

00:16:24.240 about uh personal prayer uh perhaps if you are alone and that this this type of ceremony can be

00:16:31.920 done um at home in commemoration to um the warrior spirit those that are serving currently and those

00:16:40.960 that have served in in hopes of um uh you know uh ascension or at least sacrifice and um the uh

00:16:52.720 but the the the step beyond that is when you get into um community based and so then you'll

00:17:02.080 generally see it happen in stages where so let's say for instance if you're at a hof or

00:17:07.200 you're at your home and you have a large group of people um you know you conduct bloat and um

00:17:15.440 at your harrow and then sometimes that's set aside and then the sacred uh table space is made

00:17:24.660 and then the cooking and uh might be finished up and then the table is set and everyone feasts and

00:17:31.500 and and so to i i just wanted to kind of emphasize more like what you had said but with the details

00:17:38.340 of how so people can kind of see like it doesn't have to be um you know uh in a in a ab or an alien

00:17:47.300 sense outside of the mind where we're uh you know bloat straight to sitting down the table's already

00:17:55.300 set these this is a process and when it comes into community sense that's kind of how it happens

00:18:00.580 um you know gothar lead uh bloat or you know the head of a kindred or the head of the household

00:18:06.980 will lead the um lead the bloat and then after the bloat is commenced or is uh finished and uh

00:18:13.220 the gift is placed perhaps the the hlout bowl is placed at the the designated um table spot

00:18:19.700 and uh plates are done i've seen people put actual food on the plates and fill the drinks

00:18:25.620 i've also seen other people do it where like in the military they have a tendency to flip

00:18:30.420 the plates upside down put the cup upside down and it's more about a commemoration

00:18:36.260 but this is a not always a holiday built around the idea of honoring those that have passed in

00:18:41.540 battle it's it's uh it's a living as well this is honoring warriors and honoring people so there

00:18:48.980 might be you know your friends your children out there on the edges of things you know being

00:18:56.660 warriors a lot of people i think get caught up on it being overly built around the idea of strictly

00:19:04.660 the dead um and that's not quite the case that's more for winter nights and then we move you know

00:19:12.180 from there um other than that i would say the i don't i i'm sorry that i missed the beginning i

00:19:20.100 had a little bit of a crisis here and i was trying to get things um set up and um

00:19:27.940 did you cover two about the einherjar no i saved that for a little bit later because i knew that

00:19:33.620 was something you were going to want to weigh in on a little bit more okay yeah yeah i um

00:19:40.740 i think that uh going back out in just the idea of our calendar system a lot of people get uh

00:19:49.140 bent out of shape um for instance if they don't understand like oh well you know it was remarked

00:19:56.900 that the alvar were were celebrated at this time of the year and the dcr at this time of the year

00:20:02.900 and you know one's in in what would be october in the gregorian calendar and the other would be

00:20:07.460 in february or around that time frame in the gregorian calendar based off of these two accounts

00:20:12.500 in two separate places without realizing the ousa true folk assembly has looked at the broad and

00:20:20.260 you know pan germanic um strata and has said okay well alvar dsir on winter nights to condense down

00:20:31.620 in there and place them together uh because that fits our community and our culture so much

00:20:37.940 you know more uh fruitfully and then with the coming of the feast of the einherjar which is

00:20:45.460 our celebration of of you know warriors veterans and those who have passed um

00:20:54.500 you know it's it these these things have kind of come up and we've talked about this before that

00:20:59.780 things that are new don't lose authenticity um it's just that whether or not you're you know

00:21:06.660 you're desperately trying to reconstruct certain things based off the way things are written

00:21:11.460 but again you know that was that time i'm sure that even you know those ceremonies were

00:21:18.820 probably chosen because the communities fit well with the time that they were they were

00:21:25.460 practicing in you know there it wasn't strictly oh we're going to do alvar around this time and

00:21:32.340 deser around this time because you know either no reason but obviously there's environmental

00:21:39.940 factors there's culling of herds and harvesting of you know certain animals and fish and there's

00:21:46.740 work periods and things that all came into consideration that we don't necessarily have

00:21:50.100 to contend with now but now we have new things to contend with and we want to exemplify our piety

00:21:58.980 within the framework of the of the community and the culture and the society that we're living in

00:22:03.380 so those things really kind of um show in this holiday um and i think that's okay i think it's

00:22:10.740 good and i think it's a sign of a really a living religion as opposed to perhaps um you know

00:22:17.060 frameworking things based off of a you know a section of lore um and are you know i mean at

00:22:24.820 this point we can even consider that our founding you know uh of how's true all the way back to the

00:22:30.660 70s this is kind of where it all bubbled up so i mean how far back does it need to go before it's

00:22:38.820 you know considered authentic

00:22:41.140 yeah that's a it's a place a lot of people end up getting lost i think is authentic doesn't mean

00:22:53.460 ancient um now tradition and uh

00:23:04.180 repetitions in amount of time it's been practiced does add to authenticity certainly

00:23:10.580 um but all of those things even our most ancient uh ancient rituals and observances

00:23:16.100 they all had a day one they all had a first time that they happened and if they're authentic now

00:23:22.100 they were authentic then um one of the other things to consider is just you know the state of

00:23:29.220 of where we are with the tremendous growth in hoffs

00:23:35.860 we've had an explosion of good fortune of getting Hoffs and we have Alcetru now in

00:23:44.620 so many places that you didn't just a few years ago all that said and done we have four of them

00:23:54.260 now we're gonna have more to come but that still makes them quite a distance for a lot of people

00:24:00.180 even the people who live near those Hoffs because of the current setup, we don't have activity there

00:24:07.100 every single week. If we did, then we might could spread out observances in a little bit different

00:24:13.740 way. As it is now, it's a doable thing for most people. We, inside baseball on it, we kind of draw

00:24:21.760 a two and a half, three hour circle around each of the places we're going to have a Hoff to see

00:24:28.760 who reasonably could commute to that once a month for a celebration, for a day-long celebration.

00:24:35.720 And that said, once a month is an amount that we can accomplish, that's doable,

00:24:44.840 that gets the traditional celebrations that we know of, and then more modern ones that we think

00:24:52.360 are very important to observe as a folk ritually to fit those in to make the calendar work to where

00:24:59.480 we have one uh one observance per month at the hof at a minimum and people are certainly welcome

00:25:05.560 to do more than that we have various work days and different things that go on at the hofs and

00:25:10.200 other times depending on their circumstance and the interest and people available but

00:25:17.480 yeah i just wanted to put that out there to be a little bit of understanding of why we do some

00:25:21.320 of the things that the way that we do um i also think that and this goes with anything

00:25:31.400 but i think it's relevant because we want to start this series on our holidays so we

00:25:35.320 all understand them a little bit better um with any tradition that we do and being a folk faith

00:25:45.000 and all of us being lovers of history tradition is is cool for its own sake but we do ourselves

00:25:53.640 a disservice and ultimately i think we do our gods and our folk a disservice if we don't

00:25:58.760 continually re-examine why we do the things that we do um not in a contentious way but you know

00:26:08.120 why what is the purpose here what are we trying to accomplish with this and then have we done

00:26:13.240 a good job accomplishing it is there a way we could do it better is there a way you know that

00:26:22.440 it could be improved upon is there a way that we could make it closer reach the uh lofty goals

00:26:30.040 that we have for these things and i think that's worth doing all the time and i'm very committed

00:26:36.120 to that leading the afa to not get stuck in the way we do certain things because that's the way

00:26:42.920 way we do them and we've got to always done them that way tradition is very important but it should

00:26:49.460 be adaptable to circumstance and should be adaptable to better serve our folk and our gods

00:26:56.740 because the ultimate goal isn't aping and repeating something that we've seen before

00:27:04.280 the goal is accomplishing fresh and anew each of these times the uh the mission that we set out to

00:27:11.000 accomplish i think too there's a great need to displace the functionality of things people um

00:27:21.160 get caught up in like arbitrary details um you know if or they or perhaps they don't even think

00:27:28.600 about them uh you know if at the early onset of like australia's foundational time through the

00:27:36.040 80s and 90s you know there were groups of people celebrating sigur bloat but there were also groups

00:27:41.800 of people celebrating austera and sigur bloat was mentioned as being celebrated around the same time

00:27:47.560 that austra would be or has survived in our culture and um so you had a lot of people kind

00:27:54.680 of tug of warring as to what they would exactly do i feel like some people were celebrating uh

00:27:59.720 sigurbloat perhaps in like rebellion against easter if you will um i don't know that that's

00:28:06.600 certainly not a good place to come from but um that i'm not saying that's everyone's motivation

00:28:12.680 but when we shifted sigurbloat to around the time of what would be like the l thing or you know the

00:28:19.400 late summer um uh gathering time the time in which we could commemorate our victories instead of uh

00:28:27.640 praying for victory we've already accomplished them now we want to commemorate them but what

00:28:33.320 you said it best there what time is there not a good time to hail the gods for victory

00:28:40.120 in the future and talk about our victorious accomplishments i think that should be

00:28:44.920 you know at any time it doesn't have to be based on a season that's one of those

00:28:49.960 bloats that really doesn't whereas austra clearly does um uh so i think people get caught up in the

00:28:58.680 details of these things and they they don't understand or they're desperate to like i have

00:29:03.400 a separate calendar but i use it in congruence with the gregorian i'm not trying to it's it's

00:29:10.200 based more on like jumping from uh like month to month via the moons but it works with ultimately

00:29:18.840 yule at the end of the year and so and then it cycles back around again i think that if you do

00:29:24.200 it in congruence and not in a sense of like trying to uh break the mold and and do something that's

00:29:31.400 so i don't know edgy or different or um you know it's it's about finding your it's that middle path

00:29:41.240 of attaining the traditions of your people that are living today honoring the traditions and

00:29:47.400 working with the knowledge we have of our ancestors of of the past and then like you said continually

00:29:55.000 refining to make sure that we're accommodating or at least remaining relevant because the worst

00:30:03.320 thing is is that when people stop asking why we do things they end up doing things in

00:30:10.200 almost robotic sense or it's it's uh it loses its it ceases to be living

00:30:17.400 and the why is the most important thing you know the what changes with circumstance

00:30:27.740 but the why the purpose ought not and can be expressed in a lot of different ways so that's

00:30:37.700 that's modern feasts of the iron here you are in short um

00:30:49.180 and i don't i'm trying to think if there's

00:30:54.460 points of confusion that i've seen that people have with it or

00:30:59.920 uh anything that way and i think the biggest points of clarity are

00:31:08.560 yes it's about veterans and no it's well yes it's about people who have served but it's not

00:31:19.000 just about those who have fallen it's also about those who've made it home

00:31:23.660 and it's not confined to that and then a general

00:31:30.060 a lot of general ideas about the concept of the einherjar themselves so i wanted to

00:31:37.740 talk about that a little bit tonight as well it's not directly about the celebration but it

00:31:43.660 It puts a little bit of framework to it and understanding on the term.

00:31:54.760 First, Svon, could you break down the etymology of the word Einherjar for folks?

00:32:04.040 Absolutely.

00:32:04.560 Absolutely. It gets very confusing because English has a substantial history in the word, even though perhaps modern English speakers might not realize it, especially because the word is not utilized often.

00:32:23.240 And then there's other things, too, understanding that in a lot of the Old Norse poetics, there was sometimes double meaning or that it had kind of like a mundane meaning and a spiritual meaning.

00:32:37.060 Some things were even completely changed in their names or that it was just understood that it had two separate meanings coming back to the same.

00:32:50.740 A perfect example of that is, for instance, most people might not know, or maybe they do, like raven in Old Norse is hrafna. In modern Icelandic, it's hrafna with a P. But in poetics, it's a krummi. Krummi is a raven as well.

00:33:10.280 So there could be two separate words for the same thing and it was just culturally understood. One was used in poetics and the other one was used as kind of a more mundane. In this case, the meanings are separate, but the word is the same.

00:33:25.640 and that's in relation to heriar so first and foremost ain meaning one the singular the one or

00:33:35.600 the the one that is um present the one that is standing alone uh it's different than the word

00:33:42.860 like val which means to be chosen or singularly chosen uh ain just means the one that stands

00:33:48.560 alone. Heriot has two meanings. One is, uh, on the basic sense, it means to raid or a raider,

00:33:56.060 um, the act of raiding. Um, but, and that, or excuse me, let me go with that in the English

00:34:04.720 sense. What I was saying about how it has connections to English is in the use of the word

00:34:10.120 hairy if um if wolves were nipping at the heels of a bison it could be said in english that they are

00:34:20.600 they are harrying the bison they're they're kind of attacking and creating assault and oftentimes

00:34:27.400 it means assault from maybe all different directions or it's quick and swift and brutal um 0.89

00:34:33.720 And it has that connotation, or I've even seen it when they were referring to the Vikings, that the Vikings harried the coast of England. And it's not often used anymore.

00:34:47.560 But it also has another meaning. And that meaning is about elevation, about ascendancy. It's about lifting. Different than like, say, flying aloft, as it is more about rising up.

00:35:05.100 So the singular ones that rise up or rise above, it's assumed rised above because they rise up. But the title is honorific of ascendancy by being chosen. And so the vowel father, vowel meaning to choose or to be chosen, it's the verb as well.

00:35:28.440 the Ein Hur Yahr are ascended by the choice of the choosing father, the Val father. And he sends

00:35:38.160 the carriers of the chosen. It's often, it really is kind of sad that a vowel is often translated

00:35:45.620 as slain. It's not slain, it's chosen. And that's one thing that I see consistently happening over

00:35:54.000 and over and over again. Valhall is the hall of the chosen. Valfather is the choosing father.

00:36:00.000 The Valkyrie are the carriers of the chosen. And the Einherjar are the ones chosen. So ascendancy

00:36:07.820 is in the names, but it oftentimes, they always equate it to slain. It's the hall of the slain.

00:36:12.900 He's the father of the slain. And they're the carrier of the slain without any consideration

00:36:19.860 that in essence they're robbing dominion from lord olin in in their word not in it's clearly

00:36:27.300 not in their deed and and and not i mean nobody's gonna stop that but what it is is that it's

00:36:32.660 diminishing the understanding of what is happening a lot of people kind of get into that um instead

00:36:41.320 of observing they kind of cram uh the dominion of the gods into a framework that they can that

00:36:47.660 they like or want or need to understand and then they lose all context and meaning um so the vowel

00:36:55.700 father sends the the choosers of the slain to take the one who has risen above and that's where it

00:37:04.340 gets kind of interesting in relation to our holiday is the person rising above because they

00:37:11.300 are chosen or is the person rising above no to be noticed to be chosen to be worthy of the choosing

00:37:21.000 and that's the great miss like the mystery of it is the answer is yes he he is rising up

00:37:30.200 in the occasion to be worthy of being chosen will he be chosen that's not up to that's not up to him

00:37:38.180 is certainly not up to us. It's, it's up to Lord Odin, but the idea is that relinquishing the self

00:37:44.900 and there's lots of concepts, uh, in, in books, um, about, especially like there's, um, um,

00:37:52.840 you know, myths and myths and legends of, of pagan Europe. Um, there's the road to hell. There

00:37:58.960 is, um, by, um, Davidson, there is, uh, the masks of Odin by the, uh, Theosophical Society.

00:38:07.200 they've all kind of had their own take on the idea of what exactly it takes for an einherjar to be

00:38:13.860 chosen um whether it's you know relinquishing of the self whether it's rising up to the immediacy

00:38:20.200 of the of any occasion um and then at that point there's a convergence point and it's like you rise

00:38:28.140 up and then after that if you're chosen you're chosen then you rise up so i think that that's

00:38:36.080 why it's really important for us to emphasize the living nature of the religion and reliving nature

00:38:41.220 of the of the holiday and the dominion of the gods versus perhaps a parameter like slain

00:38:49.740 that i think oftentimes gets thrown about and and often deeply misconstrued

00:38:55.600 the one who rises above that's sorry i can't give that short answer no that's

00:39:05.940 no that's good and that's you know that's one of the things that we

00:39:10.980 like that we get from you is a is a complete answer if these were one word answer shows um

00:39:20.740 they'd be uh we could keep it within an hour the fact that they're not is

00:39:24.260 because we're talking about deep concepts that are more mature and more nuanced than that um

00:39:35.940 kind of a point that i'd like to make is

00:39:41.940 when we and and we all do this to one degree or another but this is

00:39:45.700 this goes along with the theme that i spoke of earlier of re-examining the why

00:39:54.100 you guys may have heard me talk about this on the program before but

00:39:57.700 But our lore, the vast majority of our lore, comes to us from an early medieval source

00:40:15.380 that is painting the early medieval version of Viking history in the way it portrays our

00:40:25.800 gods and our lore and our supernatural uh supernatural um metaphysical reality um

00:40:37.080 and it does that with the imagery that speaks to the audience it was written for

00:40:43.880 and i think because that's the time frame that things were recorded in and stories were told in

00:40:49.800 we all conceptualize things through a through a viking lens a lot of the time

00:40:59.320 it's important to realize that these truths that our lore teaches us

00:41:09.640 are truths that were equally true in the most ancient

00:41:14.840 context that far predates the viking age these things were true when we were wandering germanic

00:41:25.480 tribesmen these things were true when we were constructing stone circles and neolithic things

00:41:35.560 these things were true in the old stone age these things were true when our people first

00:41:43.080 got that divine breath of life and goodly hue and spirit in them.

00:41:52.520 So that image, as was told to our Neolithic ancestors, was probably, the picture that was

00:42:02.760 painted for them was probably in very different shades with very different points of reference

00:42:10.680 and very different imagery the truth remains the same and i think that's very important

00:42:19.000 for us to realize that and to not get hyper literal on all the points of lore um early on

00:42:29.720 you know very seriously people want to have lore discussions as if it's a narrative in a in a

00:42:41.960 fiction book to where you can talk about the elements of it in a matter-of-fact debate

00:42:50.360 somebody seriously when i first got started was asking me

00:42:53.240 taken for a given that thor is as strong as he is and as large as he is

00:42:59.900 about his caloric consumption in the course of a day to be able to do those things or to be able

00:43:06.460 to you know like man if he could eat you know x number of oxen at this giant's feast wow in order

00:43:12.980 to do that and to digest his metabolism would have been you know like this and that and he

00:43:17.380 have had to have you know be this large or have this big of a stomach capacity and and that all

00:43:23.940 misses the point tremendously so when we think of the iron hair yard we

00:43:36.900 it is a beautiful image to picture a magnificent great hall with gilded

00:43:43.940 rafters and doors and

00:43:46.900 swine feasts laid out before you and

00:43:52.660 you know beautiful maidens

00:43:56.520 handing you mead horns full of mead

00:43:59.980 and sitting there with you know your comrades

00:44:04.780 and going out on the field and fighting with sword and shield

00:44:08.280 and then you know celebrating at the end of the day to do it

00:44:12.860 all over again the imagery is beautiful we all do that and if you ask swan or i to draw a picture

00:44:18.540 of it right now it's exactly what we would draw we all get that but the bigger truth is

00:44:26.140 much more along the lines of our gods welcoming

00:44:32.860 our souls the condensed part of our soul that ascends into something greater than we were

00:44:42.140 into a state of existence to where we get to commune with them more directly

00:44:48.860 that sharing of our meals of story of drink of meals that's been so essential to our human

00:44:58.140 culture even to this day in building bonds of of familiarity of family of friendship of relationship

00:45:07.100 up that is expressed by the idea of feasting in the halls of our gods you know we're not

00:45:18.940 just sitting there eating delicious pork and drinking mead um the experience is much is likely

00:45:28.600 much more um much less tied to the physical things that we're all so accustomed to in this existence

00:45:39.000 there's nothing wrong with that but what gets wrong with it is when you have that image in

00:45:44.020 your head and fight tooth and nail to make sure the guidance next to you's image matches your

00:45:49.160 image when we're arguing over the uh insignificancies of the message so the truth of the

00:45:58.920 iron yard the fact that our gods choose mortals who are of worth that have

00:46:07.480 surpassed the mundane existence of of humanity to be something more and then have welcomed them to a

00:46:19.840 place closer to our gods themselves a place in a more favored and more personal relationship

00:46:28.460 with our gods that is an extremely special thing and that's that's the bones of of that truth

00:46:37.820 and i think that's what what's being celebrated now the i being shown in a battlefield context

00:46:44.960 and i think that in the history of humanity the battlefield has always been the most

00:46:51.140 poetic example of that and something about the life or death adrenal nature of that situation

00:47:02.400 allows for ascension in a way that isn't quite as dramatic in other in other aspects

00:47:12.520 but there's something that's been remarked on time and again of people overcoming human limitation

00:47:24.140 to have battlefield bravery for whatever that might be maybe they're overcome with the berserker gang

00:47:32.680 and they're in an altered state dealing out death to their foes

00:47:37.660 um maybe they're just that gung-ho for the cause that they're out there for

00:47:43.580 um maybe their personal warrior prowess is such that they

00:47:51.040 prove it in that ultimate proving ground maybe it's out of you know protection of the men next

00:48:00.740 to them, any number of things, but there's circumstances, and we see this with Medal

00:48:09.460 of Honor recipients, we see it with Iron Cross recipients, we see it with

00:48:13.700 what's the French medal from World War I that the guys got?

00:48:27.240 decorations that exemplify people that have become something different in crisis that has made them

00:48:37.480 something more and something to be celebrated and revered and that's that's the concept that

00:48:44.360 illustrates the einherjar so i think that's really important that said

00:48:51.480 face of the iron here is not just about celebrating those people it's an evolution

00:48:58.840 of Veterans Day which is an evolution of European peoples celebrating a time of remembrance for

00:49:10.200 the fallen and for soldiers in the ones right and the ones currently standing on the wall

00:49:18.600 yes yeah so that is that's what it is and it doesn't it can be built upon and made much more

00:49:27.560 special but at its fundamentals those are the things that are fundamental to know about it

00:49:32.840 um from where i'm sitting not sure if we have any questions related to it in the queue yet i haven't

00:49:41.480 seen a lot of questions that are directly related to the topic but you know how this goes that all

00:49:47.720 it goes where you guys take us well and i i do have some some things that uh i want to bring up

00:49:54.600 to please in relation to the mystery of the einherjar um one of the things that's worth noting

00:50:01.240 is even in the in the time of germania's or in tacitus's germania you know he speaks about how

00:50:09.720 the, um, the Germanic people give sacrifice to, um, and I, I know if, if anybody's familiar with

00:50:18.980 it, um, he used, he Romanizes, I'm not going to do that for right now, just for sake of

00:50:24.720 conversation. We're just going to cut right into, um, that, you know, that we, that, that our folk

00:50:31.440 gave sacrifice to, to, um, Tyr or, you know, Tehu, um, Tyr and Thor and Odin. They gave stately

00:50:45.040 sacrifice to Tyr and, and Thor, and then they gave a great amount of sacrifice, um, to, to Odin.

00:50:54.800 And I think that, that, that explains a great amount, even though it doesn't say very much.

00:51:00.540 it's first and foremost stately the word kind of meaning tribal nation-based um victory seen from

00:51:09.800 the warrior aspect of Thor or the warrior aspect of Tyr is about the individual's strength in

00:51:16.980 unison together conquering and and maintaining the borders of the nation it's it's about victory for

00:51:24.300 the people, the living people. I think Woven is also that, but more in the sense that the individual

00:51:33.100 warriors wanted to be ascendant. They wanted to rise up. They wanted to do that. And this was

00:51:43.160 one of those moments where they could relinquish those things, laying down their life for defense

00:51:49.560 of the folk and you know attaining great fame and the idea was is if they weren't um slain or if

00:51:56.600 they weren't uh you know taken down the the possibility for glory in the living sense was

00:52:04.680 there and the other thing was is that they kind of played on uh again the choosing itself is if

00:52:13.480 you know that you're gonna like there's no chance that you can know that you're being chosen because

00:52:19.400 that kind of stifles the possibility of is your genuine is your greatness is your relinquishing

00:52:26.000 of the self and the rising up to the situation truly authentic and that's why it's so important

00:52:32.760 that odin is known as the chooser of the slain or the chooser of the of the ascendant or the

00:52:40.300 chooser of he's the one that adjudicates the ascendancy and that's why i think there was a

00:52:45.460 great amount of sacrifices placed to him was that they wanted to exemplify in piety that they were

00:52:55.480 willing and able and ready to rise up to those occasions. And they understood that that might

00:53:01.040 not be the, you know, that might not be their, their understanding is not a guarantee. It's,

00:53:07.100 it's on Odin's side. And so good graces is, is a, you know, that's in the relationship with us

00:53:14.300 and the gods, there is a sense of being in good graces and good honoring. I certainly wouldn't

00:53:19.280 say they're trying to placate or bargain as more as it is just an open representation of I'm ready

00:53:26.380 and I am so ready. I wish you to know this. And so in the giving act, they're explaining

00:53:32.760 that they're ready. And I think that that's a really important distinction to understand and

00:53:38.940 why that might have been written the way it was written. Because I think that Thor and Tyr are

00:53:44.760 deeply connected to warrior ethos and culture, but it's about the nation, the surviving nation,

00:53:52.340 the borders, the substantiation of what you gain in victory or what you have to maintain.

00:53:58.600 And Odin is that, but is also the psycho pump, the desire to be ascendant, to be chosen.

00:54:07.460 And I think that plays a lot in the saga of Eil Skala Grimson.

00:54:13.200 You know, every moment he made, I mean, he was a walking exemplar, a paragon of Odin in many ways, especially in relation to the culture at the time.

00:54:28.620 And I don't think he shied away from the ocean.

00:54:33.020 I don't think he shied away from battle.

00:54:36.180 I don't think he shied away from very, very tough moments in his life and always placed himself up, but he died of old age.

00:54:45.240 And I think that because people get that whole, oh, slain, slain, I have no doubts in my personal belief that Eil is, it's, I would hope that he's there.

00:55:00.880 But again, Odin is the one that chooses.

00:55:03.880 and it's again when does he choose because i think a lot of people get into the ideas like

00:55:08.020 it has to be in battle that's when he chooses and that i think owen i mean we have examples

00:55:14.060 of it culturally in which our ancestors did not see it that way when they when they spoke of um

00:55:21.980 uh halk on the good who's a christian and spoke of him uh you know rising up into the halls of

00:55:31.520 of Valhall because he chose to follow the way of his ancestors in his funerary rites or of,

00:55:39.640 you know, Eric, the blood acts and, and his commemoration into, um, a lot of people,

00:55:46.000 he had a lot of enemies, even A.L. Sculler Grimson was his enemy, but he did bloody the

00:55:51.280 benches and he did fight, you know, he never stepped away from his warrior ethos. Um,

00:56:00.360 Um, you know, and it's debated as to whether or not he died in battle. I, I believe he did, but

00:56:05.320 there's people that are going kind of back and forth on that, that he might've been assassinated,

00:56:08.900 but even ale skull of Grimson's sons, he talks about his son. One, one, uh, was, was, uh, lost

00:56:15.820 to illness and the other two to drowning. And he spoke of hoping that they were also ascendant and

00:56:23.020 chosen so i i think that it's really important that we get away from uh you know my battle

00:56:31.100 my slain um the kind of idea that you know that's i know how owen works and owen's gonna choose me

00:56:39.420 if i die in battle and that's the only way and that's like one no you don't get to say that and

00:56:45.900 two uh there's lots of examples that it's not always the case but the ethos of a warrior is

00:56:51.740 built around the idea of stepping up to that and it like uh in avola's metaphysics of war he talks

00:56:59.740 at great length of the i the idea and concept of reward by relinquishing the self and stepping up to

00:57:08.060 being a holy warrior and so that's what i would propose too is in modern sense in this day and

00:57:15.900 age can we see ourselves as enacting ourselves in a holy sense um that we are we are stepping up to

00:57:26.140 guide our folk to defend our families um to bring the gods to the folk and you know even i i i've

00:57:34.860 heard so many people over the many years saying like that they're they're weary because of whether

00:57:42.460 it's like, I guess, internet, um, resistance or internet, uh, boogeyman or, or whatever

00:57:52.120 it might be, or straight out, even physical, they're, they're weary of stepping forward

00:57:57.040 and doing things.

00:57:58.260 And, and if you're really going down that road of, of standing up, that doesn't, that's

00:58:05.660 not a battlefield.

00:58:06.520 It's in your life.

00:58:07.580 You have to stand up in your life and step forward and be courageous.

00:58:14.100 It's not for everyone, but the idea is, again, if you're willing to do it, that's the most important point.

00:58:21.580 Stand up, guide your folk, despite what hardships, what arrows may be flying at you.

00:58:28.480 And do it smiling, too.

00:58:31.100 That's the spirit of Einherjar.

00:58:37.580 Two really important things I want to reiterate.

00:58:46.380 And some things are just going to harken back to this theme of re-examining why we think things we think and why we do things we do.

00:58:53.940 people the well actually crowd wants to

00:59:00.980 argue over a couple of passages in ancient text to

00:59:10.280 say exactly well odin gets this many and freya gets this many and and odin only chooses these

00:59:18.240 guys and well why why do you think that well because snorri says okay who decides who gets

00:59:27.740 to go to odin's hall odin or snorri and that's one of the things um snorri wasn't in a position

00:59:43.740 of authority to make the call he was in a position of scholarship to record the oral tradition of

00:59:51.660 his folk that he had um svan and i are gothar and we are in a position to come closer to interpreting

01:00:04.460 the call and we are still very very cautious before we're going to tell you what a god thinks

01:00:15.660 on an issue um because it's it's odin who does the choosing it's lady freya that does the choosing

01:00:27.340 and they can have whatever criteria to welcome guests in their hall they would like to

01:00:34.460 that's really important to take a step back

01:00:39.880 and to have the piety and reflection

01:00:42.080 to realize that and to acknowledge that

01:00:47.040 because it's really important.

01:00:49.480 The other thing is the idea of any kind of transcendence

01:00:53.580 is coupled with the concept of heroism, being a hero.

01:00:59.460 everyone's not heroes or it's not heroic if we're all heroes then none of us are heroes

01:01:10.260 the hero stands out the einherjar is the individual of the herjar the herjar being the

01:01:22.920 the warband or the army the iron hair yards the the individual either separated from

01:01:30.280 standing out from or chosen and plucked out of um the hero is one who transcends

01:01:39.240 and the uncomfortable truth is that comes through being courageous

01:01:46.920 we can't honor courage without acknowledging cowardice because if you don't acknowledge

01:01:58.160 cowardice it doesn't give context to the courage um there are many people who

01:02:05.820 shrink out of fear who run out of fear who allow fear to dominate their lives

01:02:13.140 that is the most common response to one degree or another it's those who either are fearless

01:02:23.220 and and we we couch this too and say oh well everybody's afraid but it's about overcoming

01:02:28.960 the fear yes certainly that is a part of it is overcoming fear but you know what i i hold out

01:02:36.660 for the possibility that there are some among us that have no fear because they are that far above

01:02:42.380 it and unaffected by it and they are just built of that strong of stuff and i celebrate those people

01:02:52.860 but for most of our heroes they are afraid of things and

01:03:01.180 do the right thing in spite of those fears and overcome those fears and don't allow those fears

01:03:07.340 to hold them back from being exceptional and from being heroic. And so that's very important

01:03:16.040 for us to internalize. And it's, you know, what better opportunity to do that than at

01:03:22.680 Feast of the Ainur Yah. For some people, a family that might, that might have at a loss

01:03:32.460 of what to do perhaps there because again a lot of people conceptualize it just strictly by being

01:03:37.900 in the military or or something like that one of the things that i i i would suggest to do is say

01:03:45.100 for instance if you have young children between the ages of 8 and 15 one very um interesting thing

01:03:51.660 that you could do is have them in commemoration look into the history of someone who did great

01:03:59.420 deeds it especially in relation to the warrior ethos so you know it not even saying that they

01:04:08.540 have to necessarily pass away from the situation but that they rose up to that situation and um

01:04:15.740 you know have have your children look into and maybe even write and then during bloat or during

01:04:21.420 the dinner stand up and speak about this person to the others to educate to teach them if you're

01:04:29.180 looking for a chance to kind of engage this ceremony this holiday this this uh act of of

01:04:37.740 like both feasting and bloat that is a great way to do it is to uh you know before you you hold

01:04:45.500 bloat and before you hold the dinner have them look into certain people maybe have them find

01:04:50.220 someone that they want to speak about and every year they could speak about someone

01:04:53.100 new and kind of go into the, the story of their life. You know, it could be from any point in

01:05:04.140 history and any, any one of our, our folk nations and societies that have, that have come about,

01:05:08.340 it could be our heroes as well, just re-emphasized, you know, or great Kings and

01:05:16.240 leaders, it would be a great chance for families and folk to look back and really exonerate

01:05:25.700 people who stood up and re-emphasized that there has to be that dichotomy of heroism

01:05:33.320 and cowardice. And if you can't call a coward, if you can't frame a coward, then you can't

01:05:41.300 frame a hero. So the, the, the one, one of the best ways to do that is in the positive light

01:05:46.800 is to frame the hero, show who the hero is and let your children speak about them. Let them see who

01:05:52.900 that is, guide them in that sense. I think that's one of the, one of the, uh, you know, most

01:05:59.080 applicable ways to build upon the ceremony, whether you're holding bloat and you're giving

01:06:05.420 a horn over to the Einherjar. Um, and then, you know, you sit down and have a feast and each of

01:06:11.360 your children or even yourself stand up and, and speak. Um, or, or, you know, I've seen people do

01:06:18.460 it where they write things down in a little like paragraph and they speak about certain things,

01:06:23.340 uh, that a person has, has done. Um, I think it's really, really good. And there's no shortage

01:06:31.880 of great men and heroes some who have died some who may have died later on after all of their

01:06:38.480 exploits and adventures um but they continuously stood up and exemplified that warrior ethos

01:06:44.860 over and over and over again before that faded time came whichever way it came and you know and

01:06:53.080 and we toast and hope that they were chosen by the choosing father and that they get to enter in

01:06:59.260 with the rest of all of those,

01:07:01.280 that's the throng of mighty spirits

01:07:03.300 that reside within the Hall of Odin.

01:07:12.640 Looking over on the side chat a little bit,

01:07:14.720 we're about to get to our questions here in a second. 0.99

01:07:20.700 We've got one of our members' moms 1.00

01:07:22.620 watching the show tonight. 0.99

01:07:24.600 Hi, welcome.

01:07:25.560 We're glad you're here.

01:07:29.260 and there's some talk about um

01:07:36.700 there are folks that do heroic things but are not themselves heroes and i think there's

01:07:43.100 certainly levels of that i think something else that we would do well to remember is

01:07:59.260 For you to be defined by something, that needs to be your defining characteristic or something that speaks to who you are in a profound way.

01:08:12.420 Every one of us has told a lie at some point in our lives that does not make us liars per se.

01:08:22.300 If we frequently lie, if we are known for lying, if we have built the reputation as one who lies all the time or lies often, then you become that.

01:08:34.960 Every one of us has chosen not to do something for sake of fear.

01:08:39.580 That doesn't mean we are all cowards.

01:08:42.600 A moment of cowardice that's a small c cowardice is one thing.

01:08:50.720 a moment of cowardice with great consequence can define your whole existence just like you know a

01:08:58.520 moment of heroism doesn't make you a hero for all time usually if it's at a crucial moment at a

01:09:05.720 crucial point in time that makes all the difference in a scenario then it can and those things are

01:09:13.460 you know some art rather than a science on determining what what makes those things

01:09:19.820 to start off

01:09:25.520 with

01:09:29.120 a question from folk builder

01:09:34.260 Christian Penner

01:09:35.900 Witten Svahn

01:09:38.440 as a fellow veteran

01:09:39.820 what does the Feast of the Einar Yahr mean

01:09:42.060 to you?

01:09:47.920 It has

01:09:49.320 a couple of layers. One, I think first and foremost is the warrior ethos.

01:09:56.860 The warrior ethos is something that is outside of being a, as a professional warrior.

01:10:05.500 I was at a time, I am no longer now a professional warrior. I do other things, but the warrior

01:10:13.420 ethos is something that i think can reside in the soul of an individual before or again like

01:10:22.700 as i was earlier ago they just said the the culmination or the weird or the or log of all of

01:10:28.700 your um your uh activities brought together coalesced together um can be laid out before

01:10:40.700 you before that moment or perhaps even after um and so warrior ethos i think is the foremost

01:10:48.620 i give thanks to to lord odin and to the iron here yard as being exemplars of the warrior ethos and i

01:10:58.780 i have kind of a internalized moment of i hope i pray that the fabric of my soul allows me

01:11:08.620 to step up if that if any moment was to ever be crucial that i would have that fabric inside

01:11:19.100 and maintain that course so that warrior ethos i know it sounds very intangible

01:11:24.700 but that is a huge uh pondering point for me um outside of that i think it's also a time

01:11:32.700 to give honor to those who have passed in greatness i often you know look towards medal

01:11:41.100 of honor recipients and other awarded uh warriors throughout and try to talk about

01:11:47.900 them the other thing i really like to do is to do that for the children to give them that

01:11:53.980 horizontal understanding that framework and so i think it plays out a lot in our ceremonies in the

01:12:00.220 the way of, well, we sacrifice a boat. A boat burning is generally the way that the Feast of

01:12:08.780 the Ein Hur Yahr, in almost all of the cultural senses that I've ever seen it expressed in large

01:12:14.380 groups, is that our folk get together and they build a boat, sometimes out of wood or some

01:12:19.920 some, uh, flammable, um, material. And they placed within the boat, um, letters or commemorations.

01:12:29.520 Uh, I've seen people like print out stories of the honored dead, um, and, and speak about them.

01:12:38.760 Um, and then place that into the boat. Um, and, and sometimes it, the way our faith works is

01:12:45.820 because it's organic it can happen over time um one of our members shared a beautiful story of

01:12:55.100 back in the in the late 60s they were wearing these in 70s they were wearing these bracelets

01:13:00.220 in remembrance to um folks that were uh that had um went over or had disappeared in during the

01:13:08.300 the Vietnam War. And later on, he was a young punk kid, he said, and he got rid of it because

01:13:17.100 he wasn't, you know, aware of things as he is now, as he is, you know, he's an older and wiser

01:13:24.700 man. And then he went and he, but he remembered that name. He remembered that name. He looked it

01:13:29.220 up decades later and found out that that that uh man that he was commemorating when he was a child

01:13:39.620 came from the town or like 30 minutes away from thorsoff and he was blown away with it

01:13:46.580 like he looked him up he found him and he realized that if he knew where that guy had lived

01:13:54.900 before he went over into the war he would have known the future location of where

01:13:59.220 Thor's Hoff would be or it just it just blew his mind that it was so he was from North Carolina and

01:14:08.080 he was 30 minutes away from the Hoff and it it really meant something to him so when he commemorated

01:14:14.260 him during the bloat it it had a lot of layers and I think that for some people it's hard to

01:14:20.320 grasp layers some people do have um you know ancestors that have fallen in battle or they've

01:14:26.400 had people that have given up service. Maybe they're still alive. Maybe they've passed away

01:14:31.500 of older age, but they were in great conflicts or great times of crucial importance. But some

01:14:39.180 people don't have that. And so a great way to do that is to commemorate and speak to others

01:14:45.500 publicly about the glories of other folks. And I find that to be very helpful for me because

01:14:51.900 that was where i didn't want to internalize this holiday only in myself only about my experiences

01:15:00.020 only about my understandings of things or or what have you i wanted to understand this holiday both

01:15:08.800 in sharing and expanding the idea of it to my community but also to my children and to

01:15:17.160 the younger generation. And that's truly, I think where this, this holiday shines is in

01:15:24.400 giving context and framework in bravery and heroism and, and what it means to sacrifice

01:15:31.820 and be willing to step up. And, you know, when you're given that fork in the road between

01:15:37.440 easy and, and the hard way, and you, you choose the hard way because that's the time to stand up

01:15:43.480 and do it and um that is that is the encapsulation of this holiday and i i think that also from a

01:15:52.680 metaphysical or i would say perhaps just from a a greater understanding i truly do believe

01:15:59.880 that the power of these souls are rising up in ascendancy that odin is choosing them

01:16:05.080 and he brings them into himself in a way the hall is is the soul of the of of of the divine it is

01:16:11.880 the emblem emblematic system in which the the divine ones the gods they bring us into them

01:16:20.360 in a way and they are in bolt they're emboldened they're strengthened they're empowered by us

01:16:26.520 and in that that system they are gaining might gaining strength for the culmination

01:16:36.440 of of ragnarok the time of order and chaos coming to full full um you know point of contention and

01:16:45.240 i think that that power that soul power from us is a process that cultivates because their

01:16:53.000 understanding of of time is extremely different than our understanding of time

01:16:58.440 and i think that this sacred process happens generation after generation after generation

01:17:04.600 after generation and um you know we're it is the one of the greatest gifts we can give to the gods

01:17:12.980 is our might our strength and the pure soul the idea of the soul that is um willing to relinquish

01:17:21.820 all in order to save i think or to extend or to preserve is the soul that um is shining

01:17:32.200 I'm not saying that will get chosen. I'm saying is that, you know, it is certainly the one that

01:17:39.400 I think would exemplify our culture, our society, our religion in the context of hoping to be

01:17:48.400 chosen. That's what it would mean to rise up. So the holiday is an integral celebration of

01:17:58.140 of the soul process one of the soul processes in which our our our souls ascend in in the purest

01:18:06.200 form by being chosen i also would um like to bring up too what you said earlier in our stories and in

01:18:14.620 the poems there is a great sense of what i would call the caveat of the absurd and i think it was

01:18:22.260 extremely popular in the poetry at at the time our ancestors were as when they were writing it down

01:18:30.020 and the the the centuries before they were they were written and compiled um the caveat of the

01:18:38.340 absurd is kind of like when when odin says you know i'll bet my head but do you know what what

01:18:45.380 odin whispered in balder's ear it's the everything's hinged on a singular thing that can be

01:18:52.260 unknowable only by by odin uh it's very much the same as like uh you know uh loki

01:19:02.100 bedding his head but not his neck it's the caveat of the absurd and um when we talk about the the

01:19:11.940 idea of um you know it's it's when freya gets the first chosen one of the biggest parts of that

01:19:19.460 story is is that lady freya is making a caveat of the absurd i want to be able to choose the first

01:19:28.980 because the way it's being laid about is why would lord ovin relinquish that power

01:19:35.460 you know just to start a war between two brothers i mean this is this is kind of a

01:19:39.540 possible historical event that we might not know about um and again that when our ancestors were

01:19:44.820 sitting down and listening to this story the idea of it is that's a jaw-dropping moment

01:19:50.420 of a caveat of the absurd is being laid out right there so when lady freya says to lord

01:19:57.220 odin well i want first chosen of this of the battles and everyone's jaw drops wait a minute

01:20:06.900 well and then yes do it that it's such a a bombastically powerful story tool of the

01:20:16.900 understanding of what she was doing was laying down something that i don't think that in the

01:20:22.900 story it was like she wasn't even expecting a yes because it's again there's a consistent

01:20:29.860 caveat of the absurd these big hurdles laid out and then the gods jump it or they take it or they

01:20:36.900 snatch it away at the last minute and there's no way that you would expect the answer to be the

01:20:41.620 the answer that it is and then it happens and so i think that it's you know that that story

01:20:48.420 greatly emphasizes um why uh lord odin is the is the victory father the father of battle uh

01:20:58.260 but he is the lord of conflict and war and it's really exemplified in that story and so when lady

01:21:09.820 Freya does that I think it's worth remembering not to read it like a bible verse but to understand

01:21:15.900 that everyone in that room during the time that the poem was being recited or the story was being

01:21:20.280 told because they were stories before poems everyone would have been oh and then the uh

01:21:28.760 the greatness of the story um carries on because there's emotion behind our stories and there's a

01:21:35.240 uh greater religious truths that are deeper than that but we we have a tendency to forget

01:21:41.000 that our stories were um given to us by the gods but have been turned and changed for various

01:21:49.160 reasons with intent of uh inspiring and in you know building up the power of the mind elevating

01:21:59.800 the soul and getting the blood pumping when you hear the story or to or comfort to gain comfort

01:22:05.000 from the stories and hear the traditions of our folk and and and the stories of the gods being

01:22:10.120 spoken um so you know i i when you brought that up uh i was here ago the i was i just wanted to

01:22:17.640 cover that as well is that understanding that i think that that placement right there was not

01:22:23.800 some perhaps some sort of power move or something it was a caveat of the absurd that we see

01:22:30.040 continuously in the stories that the gods place before themselves before each other before

01:22:35.080 jotnar and before uh you know and continuously create a precipice that is either you know

01:22:44.200 hurtled or crumbled down and it's it's um you know it's an interesting part of that i think that we

01:22:51.960 we hyper fixate on uh folk vong as um singularly uh it's it's you know freya gets hers

01:23:03.640 all that gets hers and i think it's like no i think that the way that they work is

01:23:07.400 entirely upon themselves but it's worth noting that we have we have stories that explain an

01:23:15.080 understanding of this and there is a reason why lady freya is considered one of or even referenced

01:23:22.280 as being a leader of the valkyries the valkyria um and i think that that has a um a part to play

01:23:29.480 in the choosing part as well all right so our next question good evening for the hosts how

01:23:41.480 are y'all's evenings going um mine's going pretty good um yeah back here i'm looking at the past

01:23:53.560 this weekend to see if i can make it over to odin's off with uh snow that's supposed to be

01:23:58.920 coming in through the sierras over friday night into saturday morning so we'll see about that i

01:24:06.360 have an amazing uh each time it's feast of the iron yard in south dakota so i'm doing

01:24:13.400 i am doing pretty good talking to uh talking to one of my best friends and talking to my

01:24:20.840 afa family and drinking some lagunitas maximus colossal ipa um i'm doing all right how are you

01:24:30.920 doing it's fine i'm doing great i love that i love that question um little little uh stressful on the

01:24:37.880 onset here of course uh kind of coming in late from work um and then getting things set up but

01:24:45.400 we're we're here the the the waves are level and the horizon is visible um very very busy time of

01:24:54.680 year though definitely um lots of birthdays and going around and traveling to sigerheim was was

01:25:02.680 amazing so still um still you know had lots of stuff on the list to be done and all in trajectory

01:25:12.440 and winding down to Yule.

01:25:15.220 The iron mark is getting closer and closer to the bottom

01:25:19.540 and ready to hit right there.

01:25:23.860 It's only a couple more weeks before we hit the 20th.

01:25:28.260 And we're on Mother's Night and the calendar restarts

01:25:32.280 and another year under the belt.

01:25:38.620 So the second half of the same question,

01:25:41.580 also has there ever been a time when you felt insane swan have you ever felt insane no um

01:25:54.360 uh yes a couple of ways i could take that is um i think coming back from the military

01:26:09.040 There was a moment where I think I was greatly shaky. My foundation was absolutely jarred. I think I was attempting to make sense of things that I didn't understand.

01:26:29.020 I think that I was unaware of a lot of things and I was kind of thrashing in a miasma.

01:26:36.700 I was in, in some sort of torpid sleep that, and my body was just going back and forth. But

01:26:43.900 for some reason, I wasn't actually aware of what was going on around me.

01:26:47.900 And then slowly over the span of about a decade, um, you know, I think, I think clarity came about,

01:26:57.540 came about in a lot of different ways um i think you know letting go of

01:27:03.940 some of the things i was using to medicate my my issues from the military i think i was i was

01:27:11.460 drinking too much i was searching uh and and finding myself in the company of of people that

01:27:19.620 didn't have my my best interests in heart or perhaps my my interests were coalesced with

01:27:24.980 theirs but those weren't the right interests i think i was really absolutely searching for

01:27:29.140 so i felt insane for almost i mean small amounts or like i would say like peaks and valleys

01:27:35.860 throughout a decade of kind of ultimately coming home and not having the home or coming to the

01:27:44.980 realization of things without and not understanding how i didn't have this realization from the

01:27:50.900 beginning and and coming to contention with that within myself and eventually it it smoothed itself

01:27:59.060 out there you know i i met my my wife i you know the children i think you know coming into the afa

01:28:06.580 and being oriented towards her uh goals and and then realizing uh just speaking to a friend of

01:28:13.060 mind this morning about how we went from also true that was kind of a internal and perhaps even

01:28:22.020 in a negative sense or maybe in a cynical sense i'm saying that it was like a

01:28:27.940 uh exercise of edginess or or just being different and expressing oneself and

01:28:35.540 groups of people getting together and kind of feeling like yeah you know we're we're doing

01:28:39.780 this together and then it shifted to no we're doing this for the gods we want the gods to

01:28:47.220 notice us we want the gods to see our deeds we want our and suddenly it shifted it was like

01:28:52.500 almost like everything was in a shell and then it just broke out and went beaming across and

01:29:00.260 night and day difference between what was going on and what we were doing and and what i was doing

01:29:06.660 and why i was motivated to do what i was doing and um so yeah it was a long and kind of uh

01:29:18.260 jarring displacement from where i am today and i think that i i still have bouts now and then where

01:29:26.900 i begin to to question myself but i think that that's normal i think that

01:29:31.460 if you're not constantly questioning yourself and you're not asking like

01:29:34.820 like, am I doing this right? Am I doing this correctly? Am I, am I insane right now? Or,

01:29:41.280 you know, you're constantly kind of tweaking yourself. That's, that's normal. But I used

01:29:46.760 to be afraid of it. I used to deny it. I used to try to do other things to relinquish away from it.

01:29:52.260 Now I look at it as it's, it's more, uh, constructive criticism of the self,

01:29:59.680 as opposed to I'm wrong. I'm doing something terrible. I'm thinking the wrong way. I'm not,

01:30:06.180 or I don't understand why I'm thinking this way. Now it's, it's, um, it's about figuring it out.

01:30:13.400 Why am I thinking this way? Should I, should I look at things this way or that way? And so you

01:30:18.100 kind of end up harnessing it. And I think a lot of people nowadays feel insane because

01:30:21.860 they haven't quite figured out. Um, and they, they end up trying to self-medicate with alcohol or,

01:30:28.380 or, um, they get extremely obsessed about strange things or, and what that really is

01:30:35.580 just bubbling up is that they haven't come to, uh, an understanding of and settling themselves

01:30:42.020 and purifying themselves out and, and realizing that, you know, there are good things that need

01:30:47.000 to be done. There are good people that need to be met. There are, you know, good moments that

01:30:51.940 we have to achieve and um and that's worth doing and getting there any way shape and form with

01:31:02.840 those intentions in mind are the best way to do it and getting rid of the things that stop you

01:31:08.820 from that if there are things that you're doing that are impeding you from these realizations

01:31:14.160 those are the things probably driving you crazy those are the things that are making your your

01:31:18.980 I guess sanity, porous, if you will, in my opinion.

01:31:31.540 It's a strange question because I don't think...

01:31:34.260 so the definition of insane or at least the etymology of insane because i think that's

01:31:49.220 better than definitions definitions have political undertones and nonsense to them

01:31:57.300 um but it's from the latin and it means not sound or not healthy

01:32:06.020 and but it's obviously applied in a a mental health sense and i think that you know any of us

01:32:18.260 who are adults you know that have been around for long enough have had periods where

01:32:26.340 didn't feel like we were mentally healthy um but i think when we use the term insane it

01:32:34.500 has an element of scariness and danger that you know i'm having a rough time doesn't um

01:32:45.540 and i think that you know some of that's

01:32:47.060 it's become very stigmatized and scary to admit to mental health problems

01:32:57.060 because you feel like people wouldn't trust you or well if they broke once maybe you'll break

01:33:04.520 again you know when's the next you know mental defect coming in that's that's concerning and i

01:33:12.060 think that's really unfortunate there's so much stigma and mental health but it's also

01:33:16.800 understandable you know if somebody's acting irrationally and dangerously so it certainly

01:33:25.900 makes me have pause to trust them with certain responsibilities or so i get that um but it's

01:33:36.040 hard because when reflecting on oneself it's you know hey matt have you ever been insane well no

01:33:44.960 of course not well matt have you ever had any mental health things have you ever had times

01:33:51.520 where you didn't feel like you were all right mentally or where you were going through something

01:33:54.680 you didn't understand or where you weren't perceiving reality in a in a rational way or

01:34:02.160 a way that you know was was healthy or appropriate that's right well no but i'm trying to give

01:34:09.280 because again on here and please consider this if you're the guy asking the question

01:34:15.280 i want to answer the specific person's question but i also want to answer the question broadly

01:34:21.360 for those who are listening that didn't get a chance to ask maybe they're listening later

01:34:25.120 or maybe you know they didn't think to step up and ask um

01:34:32.160 Yeah. Yeah, there have been times where my responses, you know, periods of my life where my responses weren't the rationally appropriate ones or my thought process wasn't.

01:34:49.220 I think that probably the most examples of those intrusive thoughts about things, like if there's something that you're stressing about or trying to think of ways that it.

01:35:09.620 the one thing because I was getting again it was a new experience I was a new father

01:35:17.420 and I was really stressed out because you got a baby that's keeping you up all night

01:35:25.120 and adding all kind of crazy baby nonsense to your life and whatever else so

01:35:34.040 So I play with my camera here. I'm still dealing with this robot camera, figuring it out.

01:35:47.660 There was a thing. So most of you have probably not been in my house, but there's a

01:35:53.740 like balcony area hallway thing at the top of my stairs that overlaps the entryway.

01:36:02.340 and it's plenty wide where there's not a concern but i had this overriding like intrusive thought

01:36:09.300 loop thing that wouldn't get out of my head about worrying about i'd be carrying aubrey and

01:36:16.020 something would happen and maybe i would drop her over the edge so i was like hyper

01:36:19.940 concerned about that for a period of time and it wasn't like a scary insane thing but it was like

01:36:26.100 no i couldn't stop obsessing about it for a period it was it was odd um

01:36:32.260 i've had times in my life too especially when i was younger um

01:36:40.180 especially with uh relationship things when i was first you know first

01:36:47.620 i don't know a couple of different times when i was dating somebody and i couldn't

01:36:51.140 i don't like being out of control of stuff and so when there's things or actions to where i'm stuck

01:37:00.980 with no ability to affect them i just have to worry about the outcome of them that i've become

01:37:10.740 you know mentally unwell about especially when i was when i was younger and

01:37:17.140 and felt completely at the whims of other people

01:37:22.140 and wasn't able to affect certain situations.

01:37:24.820 You know, if I'm waiting on somebody,

01:37:26.460 so waiting on a girl to call me,

01:37:28.320 I'm like, why?

01:37:29.400 I thought everything went good.

01:37:30.960 She said she was going to call me.

01:37:32.320 She's not answering the phone.

01:37:33.460 What's going on?

01:37:34.760 You know, those kinds of things where I'll sit

01:37:36.520 and I'll stress about things

01:37:40.220 and in a less, you know, non-healthy way.

01:37:45.880 I mean, I still stress about those things a lot now. I don't like being stuck to where I know there's things that need to happen, but I'm in no position to affect their happening.

01:37:56.820 That's one of the most difficult things for me to reconcile now.

01:38:02.020 but you know i don't think there's a lot of times i would certainly that i wouldn't consider myself

01:38:08.020 insane but i don't think i've had periods of concerning mental like poor mental health

01:38:21.540 but it's a it's a hard question to answer and i'm

01:38:27.460 it's important to me to always give you guys the truth on here so i'm not trying to like shy away

01:38:31.380 from self-reflection or or whatever there's definitely times to where like i'll get over

01:38:37.700 stimulated that's something that'll happen a lot i'll get over stimulated by stuff to where

01:38:43.460 i can't focus i can't maintain like one of okay so a little bit of inside inside the afa stuff

01:38:53.540 i am not naturally a note taker or a like list schedule maker on things

01:39:01.380 But I find that with the AFA, I have lots of tasks, lots of goals, lots of things coming at me from different places, from the folk builders, from the Gothar, from members of the Witten, from individual members who are going through stuff that I'm counseling through.

01:39:22.500 There's lots of different things, and I'm – man, there's some things in my life that I'm lazy with, but AFA stuff's not one of them.

01:39:35.900 I really try to give as much of myself to this as I can, and I want to get everything right.

01:39:44.620 and so i'll find myself frantically trying to do a hundred things when my brain has a capacity to

01:39:57.420 hold 20 things at one time so stuff's getting missed or dropped and i'm that's a thing that

01:40:05.340 that's kind of a often a stressor with me and especially the trouble focusing

01:40:10.620 with Aubrey. She just so happened to walk in the room, but kids are insistent and they make noise

01:40:18.500 and they don't necessarily understand when you just need a moment to think on stuff.

01:40:24.380 So that's tricky sometimes. But yeah, I think that's the best I've got to answer the question.

01:40:34.400 Our next question from Finn Wraith. Are there places in the military where people

01:40:47.920 practice Ausatru like they might practice Christianity?

01:40:52.360 so it's fun um as someone who's served what what do you have to answer that question i'm

01:41:07.240 again this is a member or this is a guy from finland asking a question

01:41:13.800 well i think one thing at the time that i was in i had to claim no preference on my

01:41:19.400 dog tags um in relation to it they didn't have any official services um i was pretty

01:41:30.200 adamant on and and bear in mind there was i i wow uh now in context to everything

01:41:39.320 um i had a power of attorney and a will and the power of attorney and will um would then turn into

01:41:45.800 what they would do with my body and i was i was very very adamant with um i didn't want any uh

01:41:51.720 you know christian or jewish or muslim services held over over my remains um and that was about

01:41:58.360 the extent of all i could do there was no place to go um at the time i was stationed so i was

01:42:05.800 stationed in hawaii which made it even worse in the sense that i was so far away from the mainland of

01:42:12.120 of of my uh nation and um and then uh then 9 11 happened and i pretty much just never saw the

01:42:22.560 island again but and we were constantly on the move but um so a lot of things that were done

01:42:28.300 were done just simply by my own volition um i couldn't set up a harrow in a lot of the places

01:42:35.620 i was at whether i was in a ship or um you know whether i was on a small base um you know in

01:42:42.660 mindanao or east timor or iraq or all of these places so a lot of times it was done you know

01:42:50.900 at the moment bare bone canteen cups and and all of that um so yeah there's absolutely no

01:42:59.940 There's no real finite structure for Ausatru within the military. I would love to live in a nation where Ausatru was, could be, you know, the religion where everything was substantiated around it.

01:43:17.300 Um, but the, uh, the other thing I noticed is that they try to make leagues, the chaplain

01:43:25.420 would, uh, uh, Christian chaplain, I don't know of what denomination would try to make

01:43:29.500 inroads with certain, uh, say like satellite faiths in the sense I would say is, um, people

01:43:38.260 that would come to the bases and say that they wanted to talk to people of a particular

01:43:44.340 faith or whatever they might have. And it was pretty extensive. I think the only person that

01:43:50.300 like, or only, only faith that wasn't really there was like Scientology, but everything else was

01:43:56.400 there surprisingly. So I even see like Baha'is and Sikhs and so on and so forth. And, and generally

01:44:06.300 and unfortunately, Ausatru gets lumped in with neo-paganism. And neo-paganism is generally,

01:44:14.880 you know, heralded by people who do not see ethnic faiths as ethnic faiths. They don't see

01:44:26.100 the religion of the Gauls or the Germanics or whatever branches of Aryan peoples as being

01:44:33.380 ethnic faiths these are just uh to them i don't i don't know what they would consider hobby faiths

01:44:39.460 or something available to anyone or you know if you're just feeling particularly edgy at hot topic

01:44:45.700 and you want to um be cool and and and have people clutch their pearls come on down um they were kind

01:44:54.020 of like of that so i really didn't find a lot of stock in it um as far as the military goes no

01:45:00.820 places in particular um so you know i did i searched for others and again being way far away

01:45:09.460 in hawaii um and then to being actively moving all the time in my unit um you know even if there was

01:45:17.940 somebody who was um they weren't in my company like they they might they could have been in

01:45:23.940 the next like a lima company or something of that nature and i would never know and half the time i

01:45:31.380 you know we were on rotating schedules so we weren't even around when those people were around

01:45:36.100 so constantly moving and i think things have gotten better but again the moment you consider

01:45:41.780 this an ethnic faith and your ethnicity has this skin tone with it um you have a general uh sense

01:45:48.980 that they're not going to be conducive with you so um again i you know i always tell folks if

01:45:56.580 they're out there moving around and they're in the military and um they want to practice the faith of

01:46:02.260 their people reach out to a folk builder and go out and and meet people but beyond that you're

01:46:08.900 not going to find anything institutionally within the the government that's going to or within the

01:46:14.740 military that's going to accommodate you but that's okay i mean we we have rustic beginnings

01:46:20.900 in ausa true where people have you know honored the gods solely by themselves and we

01:46:28.180 want to coalesce the community but for many many years i did things by myself and um this was even

01:46:33.780 before the internet was really a thing there were internet cafes but the internet was slow and it

01:46:38.740 was depending on if you were on a list and so on and so forth so nowadays we've got lots of

01:46:46.100 avenues to contact with people and connect with people and get things going we have this

01:46:50.340 you know you can go to youtube now that was not a thing when i get back in the uh

01:46:55.540 at 99 2000 that was not at all a thing but no it continues they do have now you can get a

01:47:04.340 mjolnir as a symbol of our faith and i think that is a correct symbol of our faith um it's uh

01:47:11.380 recognized easily and so you can now claim also true on your dog tags and you can if you are

01:47:18.020 buried in a government um funeral like arlington or um actually before i say arlington i know that

01:47:26.820 there are certain cemeteries and i won't specifically name one or over the other that

01:47:32.500 allow you to have a mjolnir on your um yours your headstone so there is that um but now you have

01:47:42.660 hoffs that you can you can get you know buried by by your people and and and be cared caretaked over

01:47:49.700 by gothar of your people so things have changed since i was there yeah my uh

01:47:57.060 any of my interaction with it has been you know from the outside looking in um

01:48:07.380 but i was at a uh i was at a funeral of early on when that first became a thing

01:48:17.700 of a guy uh clark willan weber who was a veteran and he got military you have a certain i'm not

01:48:28.420 the right words on this but they'll give you a headstone even if you're not on an installation

01:48:35.860 um for where wherever you are buried so this guy was buried on a or his uh ashes were interned on

01:48:43.220 a private um cemetery but he had a you know proper you know military um grave marker and

01:48:53.780 it had had the mjolnir on it um and then in 2020 i was tremendously honored um

01:49:06.260 um if you guys anyways a young a young marine um died in a training accident uh lance corporal

01:49:18.900 chase sweetwood and his family had reached out and asked if i perform i love you baby good night

01:49:27.780 anyways so they asked if i would perform uh his funeral and i actually did that um

01:49:36.260 uh down on the installation in uh in san diego that was really interesting and i was very very

01:49:45.540 honored to be able to do that and it was extra you know strange and uh kind of a privilege because

01:49:54.180 that was during all of the covet hysteria to where

01:49:58.340 there was distancing things and mask things and

01:50:05.980 but we made that all work and it was yeah that was a tremendous honor for me to be able to be

01:50:13.340 there for him and his family but that was you know on an installation recognized there's the

01:50:19.680 color guard and stuff so um yeah that's my only interaction with that

01:50:27.520 and that that's a good testament to where it's it's come i mean that would have been amazing

01:50:32.940 if i was in the military and and something like that could have happened for me um so that's a

01:50:40.920 huge i'm glad that you did not have the occasion to have that no i guess yeah but it would be i

01:50:47.560 mean that's amazing that you could do that and and there's just they have an infrastructure

01:50:52.060 of the chaplains um they don't like necessarily have imams or uh rabbis in the military

01:51:01.660 uh or other you know clergy what they generally have is the chaplain corps and they are generally

01:51:08.000 christian but they open up avenues for um other faiths to meet and congregate and they'll have

01:51:16.420 clergy come in and now they have us as well and you know that's cool that's that's amazing

01:51:26.180 so for a lighter question what color are your power tools mine are turquoise

01:51:34.580 spawn what color are your power tools turquoise wait i'm immediately trying to think is that like

01:51:39.860 old ryobis because i remember them being turquoise and and i got um i got i got frankenstein stuff

01:51:49.300 ryobi milwaukee the wall so you know red and red and what's the dark black or gray

01:51:57.700 uh yellow and black and and the new ryobi color is like uh snot green and and black

01:52:06.820 so i i lose some of my man points on this one that's why i try to build them up um for my for

01:52:13.940 my pink uh fruity drinks with the umbrellas in it and for situations like this um the color of

01:52:20.420 my power tools is the color of the power tools somebody hands me uh i will use other people's

01:52:27.380 power tools but uh do not have many power tools of my own because i am not handy um

01:52:36.820 Yeah. And I got like leftovers from, I used to fabricate a long, long time ago. I don't anymore. I am a barber and I do not like to live that life anymore, but, uh, of, of getting, breathing that kind of crappy dust. And so I have like, just beat up and kind of.

01:52:53.840 Exposure trimmers are technically power tools.

01:52:57.240 Oh, yes. In that case, cold steel and black. That's, that's what I prefer.

01:53:05.020 and your curlers or whatever that hood is you put over the ladies heads that gives them i don't i 1.00

01:53:12.080 can't cut women's hair i don't do any no ladies in the shop i mean they can come and visit with

01:53:17.100 their men folk but i'm not cutting any i i cut my wife's hair once and it was probably the worst

01:53:23.940 experience for both of us ever cautionary tale all right oh yeah that's all right sorry i've read

01:53:37.620 that yeah so next question my mother asks what are the holidays and can you list them for someone

01:53:46.260 who is unfamiliar so you know as i indicated earlier in the show there's one for each month

01:53:52.580 We also, in addition to that, have Days of Remembrance, and those are on the calendar.

01:53:59.980 If you ask me to list those in order, I would embarrass myself a little bit by not getting them.

01:54:05.440 But the holidays are Thorobloat in January, Charming of the Plow in February, Ostara in March, Hexenacht in April.

01:54:22.580 May Day in May, Midsummer in June, Sigur Bloat in July, Freyfaxi in August, Winter Finding in September, Winter Nights in October, Feast of the Einherjar in November, and Yule in December.

01:54:45.920 i can already uh hear them now like

01:54:50.280 screeching about the months

01:54:53.840 i think it's worth noting that the evolution of our holidays as far as numbers and things like

01:55:03.740 that and the calendar we use the gregorian calendar so it works well to have a month

01:55:09.560 and a holiday if anybody's ever curious about those um they're on the afa website runestone.org

01:55:16.760 you can find that there or any of your folk builders would be really happy to break that down

01:55:23.640 for you and we're going to be doing this very series of shows about our holidays in that order

01:55:32.180 So in 22 weeks from now, because we're doing the first show today, you shall have the order of these shows to go by.

01:55:44.000 Tune in.

01:55:45.300 Tune in.

01:55:50.880 Next, where is the Feast of the Einherjar 2024 going to be at?

01:55:55.840 So important to note, there's a Feast of the Einherjar celebration at each of our four Hoffs.

01:56:04.300 There is also one at Sigurheim.

01:56:08.560 Many kindreds will be celebrating ones as well.

01:56:11.740 So if you can't make the, you know, the big AFA event Feast of the Einherjar, which isn't a longstanding event, we've done it three times.

01:56:22.940 We'll see what next year brings.

01:56:24.680 we don't have a plan for 2024 at this current juncture so we'll see where we're at with that

01:56:30.520 and we'll keep you guys updated but don't any of the things that we celebrate nationally

01:56:38.920 are celebrated locally at each of these hops there's occasionally a one-off like lc fest

01:56:44.280 in wisconsin that has been done the past couple of years that one's kind of a unique unique occasion

01:56:55.400 but any of the other ones are they coincide with events of each of the hoffs and again

01:57:01.400 local folk builders are typically doing something for those celebrations anyway if you're not uh

01:57:07.000 if you're not close to off adam also uh responded to uh at the bottom there

01:57:14.120 oh well thank you Adam's mom I appreciate that well and it's it's it's really good too she said

01:57:28.020 she knew some of them uh you know a lot of folks um in Ausatru or even if they're they have family

01:57:34.800 members who are Ausatru uh and their family members might have only had or understood perhaps

01:57:41.260 maybe larger holidays midsummer yule yule is the big one i think that most everyone hits and it

01:57:47.020 because it coalesces with uh you know other family members who might celebrate christmas

01:57:53.420 but um you know generally there was like four holidays and then there there was kind of a

01:58:00.300 agreements and disagreements on eight and now the codified of 12 works out perfectly because of the

01:58:07.100 substantial power of that number and the fact that we're moving towards 12 hoffs and that there is

01:58:13.020 12 months in our calendar and it all works out well for us to get together and and see each

01:58:17.820 other and i remember back in the day when there was like maybe only four or two holidays and if

01:58:23.180 you missed one you had to wait for forever to get to hang out with your folk again uh or perhaps

01:58:31.180 even find out where there might be something now it's every month and if it's not the national

01:58:36.060 event there's a temple or there might be a kindred nearby or there might be a moot you know there's

01:58:41.340 always something going on it's just a matter of whether or not you can find it absolutely and it's

01:58:50.700 these are nice problems to have for uh reading some of the stuff in the chat ages ages relative

01:58:57.420 you know it's funny because i've reached i recently got to this point in my life where

01:59:04.700 if you're under 30 you're a kid like that's the thing the difference between you know 15 and 25 i

01:59:15.580 don't know those kids um but also to where i start reflecting on things in in decades and periods of

01:59:26.700 time uh svan and i and svan longer than i have uh have been involved in ausitru when

01:59:38.060 it was at a a much earlier more more primitive time than it is today and we did not have all the

01:59:44.540 the luxuries that folks take for granted today and in some ways it makes you know

01:59:52.140 know, us who've been around a little bit longer, you know, gnash our teeth that you guys don't

01:59:59.340 know how good you have it and where we came from or whatever. But in other ways, that's

02:00:03.060 a really nice problem to have that we have accomplished so many really special things

02:00:10.220 and have so many beautiful things in our lives that people just coming into it now don't

02:00:16.460 conceive of a world where that wasn't the case. Like it's just common sense. Of course

02:00:21.640 you guys have hoffs like why why wouldn't you have hoffs um till 2015 that wasn't a thing you know

02:00:32.140 from 1000 to 2015 that wasn't a thing i'm looking at the comments too it's like there is i prefer

02:00:42.840 the southern spectrum of age there's there's youngins there's old enough but not old enough

02:00:49.080 to know better, old enough to know better, and then pawpaws and memaws. It's like, that's the

02:00:55.160 spectrum right there. So if your mom is old enough to be a grandma, then she deserves the respect of

02:01:02.580 that, of that station. And everyone, anyone, anyone younger than her is a young'un, is a young man.

02:01:09.520 So, next question, this one is from Bodhi, Witten Svan, what about Haryon, meaning Lord 0.99

02:01:34.240 of hosts as a title for odin would that not make the einherjar the singular chosen ones belonging

02:01:43.680 to a slash the host yeah the the the host the hair hair uh h-e-r it's it still survives in

02:01:53.920 german too but yeah absolutely it's the army so it's like the general of the army or the the host

02:02:00.080 of the army the the leader the the the pinnacle or or or central focus um i would even argue that it

02:02:08.080 could be like correlated to general of the army if you will and the host is kind of poetic language

02:02:16.720 for the the body of the army uh what they what they represent the soul might of the of the

02:02:24.080 totality and i think i mentioned that earlier is just my view of of the einherjar in specifics to

02:02:32.800 lord odin and the hall of the chosen is that they are a throng they're they are a body um and in

02:02:41.200 you know in the stories we they talk about this often uh in grimness um lord odin makes it pretty

02:02:50.320 clear who he is but he does it slowly to kind of just show the impending doom um that's coming and

02:02:59.200 he speaks of not only the residents within but the residents without uh he's you know he speaks of

02:03:05.920 the river there's there's 11 holy rivers in heaven and one of them is called sund the strong river

02:03:11.840 the strong flowing or perhaps the heavy river but i you know i think it more likely strong and he

02:03:19.200 speaks of that there's this gate valgrind that only you know he knows how to get through and

02:03:24.080 in the river and around the river or in essence because it surrounds valhall it's patrolled by

02:03:30.000 the um the nation of the wolf and i think that he's referring to um again i the the it's making

02:03:38.560 point of of the uh the berserker or the the the kind of the wild warriors that there's this

02:03:47.520 these throng of like patrolling uh warriors of the children of the wolf like in the outskirts

02:03:56.640 around thund and in thund and they're called the vintners fisker the fish of the of uh the children

02:04:04.480 of the wolf or the nation of the wolf and um but then inside you know there's just so much

02:04:10.240 a regaling of the stories uh you know there's the the swine and the the mead that comes out of the

02:04:18.160 the goats um ever giving um fountains if you will uh of of of the teats of the of the of the the

02:04:27.680 goat and there's golden shields and pillars of spears and um there's a heart or a deer that

02:04:34.240 stands on the top and his uh the dew from yggdrasil is dripping down into valhall and all the way down

02:04:40.640 to the to the land away from time there's so much really good imagery there but it's pretty clear

02:04:46.800 yeah the host is that the army it is the the culmination soul might of all those who have been

02:04:52.800 chosen so watching the uh watching the chat

02:05:00.080 that there's two um two things that i want to kind of point out one is one is whimsical and one is

02:05:13.760 serious um the first one

02:05:18.160 something about you know i'm i'm his parents age or whatever i realized that i

02:05:30.860 i am in a unique position to where uh mandy and i have close personal friends that are

02:05:42.760 in their 70s and that are in their 20s. And we interact with them interchangeably and often

02:05:51.780 enough that I don't stop and recalibrate sometimes. So, you know, I've run into this

02:06:02.080 with some folk builders. One's actually a Goethe now that, you know, they'll, my parents this,

02:06:10.040 my parents that they'll start talking about their parents so i'm immediately picturing someone my

02:06:14.680 parents age i'm picturing someone in their in their early 70s like no their parents are my age

02:06:21.320 so i'm i'm treating their parents like they're from my parents generation as opposed to them

02:06:28.040 being my contemporaries and like you know my peer and it's it's strange in that way you know it's

02:06:36.840 it's interesting how you adjust to things or how age just kind of happens

02:06:44.280 you know you wake up one day and you realize oh i'm an adult now i'm supposed to be doing adult

02:06:48.040 things and then but then it you retroactively look back and you're like

02:06:57.160 oh wow so my dad like i knew my dad when he was my age you know i'm my dad had me late

02:07:03.560 enough in life that you know i've i know what my dad was like in his 30s and 40s like i i was there

02:07:12.600 and then i put myself in those shoes like man i wonder if he was as goofy you know in his brain

02:07:18.440 as i as i am or have the same like silly kid thoughts like wait i'm supposed to be doing

02:07:23.800 adult stuff what was my dad doing at this stage in his life and it was it's kind of interesting

02:07:29.160 the one that's a little bit more serious and i think it's worth worth talking about um

02:07:36.920 because one of the other comments is people

02:07:41.320 often these days you have a lot of young people that don't mature

02:07:44.840 nearly as fast as people used to don't have the same responsibilities early on are coddled

02:07:51.880 by society and various things in different ways,

02:07:58.740 but we also have people that due to the ravages

02:08:03.120 and degeneracy of modern society

02:08:07.580 are unfortunately forced by circumstance

02:08:10.980 to be old beyond their years

02:08:12.640 and to experience responsibility

02:08:15.920 and all too often trauma

02:08:18.420 that many adults haven't accumulated

02:08:22.640 in the entirety of their life

02:08:24.160 that they accumulate before they're out of childhood.

02:08:29.480 So we talked about heroes and circumstance

02:08:33.740 and courage and overcoming things.

02:08:36.360 I think it's very, very important

02:08:38.440 that we take time to reflect,

02:08:42.240 and this goes back to the kind of central theme tonight

02:08:45.080 of rethinking, you know, always rechecking in on why we think what we think, why we do what we do.

02:08:54.620 One of the biggest, I don't think this is done in terms of importance, but maybe frequency

02:09:04.560 or time spent probably the biggest thing that many of our goats are myself certainly included

02:09:16.180 and I don't know if you feel the same way about this one is doing counseling and when doing that

02:09:23.120 sometimes you've got to recalibrate between the people that you talk to because

02:09:28.120 everyone determines severity based on their life experience

02:09:36.280 um people who have lived a very rough life

02:09:43.680 it's if you're if you're counseling somebody that's experienced experienced a lifetime of

02:09:53.900 heart-wrenching things occurring to them

02:09:58.640 it's easy to get in one headspace but then when you're talking to somebody else who's had a

02:10:06.000 very um very easy go of it and they experience something that is

02:10:11.920 significant to them in that moment that's the biggest trauma they've ever experienced and

02:10:21.760 very easy to come from well this person over here has been through so much stuff and they've lived

02:10:27.040 through it and they you know hey buck up i don't care that your dog died to them to a child to a

02:10:33.200 young person maybe that's the biggest trauma they've ever had to deal with you know wouldn't

02:10:39.280 wouldn't that be nice re-understanding that trauma is relative it's very important to that person

02:10:50.560 and maybe it's not as important to the next person as a whole different life context

02:10:55.680 same with and not bestowing the label of hero on people that don't actually

02:11:03.520 earn the title of hero but when thinking about courage someone who is habitually courageous

02:11:12.640 and known for feats of daring do their standard of what's going to be something for that's brave

02:11:19.760 for them is very different than someone that's maybe been sheltered their whole life and has not

02:11:25.840 had a lot of challenges they've overcome for them to do something that seems very minor

02:11:32.480 may be very courageous for them so

02:11:39.760 when evaluating folks it's important to keep that in mind and make sure that we factor in

02:11:47.440 the subjective of their circumstance i think it's very easy for us to take our life experience and

02:11:54.240 then project it upon the person that we're that we're judging and i'm all for judging people

02:12:00.560 but you got to judge them fairly and you got to judge them based on them not based on you

02:12:05.920 and so that's a really interesting challenge to affect the way you see those circumstances

02:12:13.680 i hope that made sense i think it was probably a little bit airier than than i meant it to be but

02:12:20.160 i just thought it's relevant to the conversation yeah i think that's you you hit it perspective of

02:12:27.360 trauma or perspective of counseling that trauma is really important and i don't know if we

02:12:34.000 vocalize it enough even amongst ourselves as amongst the gothar and amongst you know just

02:12:39.360 hearing it is is good because i think we we need to understand that yeah it isn't based on us it's

02:12:46.800 based on others we have that moral framework to to kind of expect things from them but not

02:12:55.840 um based upon our experiences based on the moral framework

02:13:09.360 sorry i was just catching up on the chat it was lively there for a second so i want to see if

02:13:17.620 there's anything uh particularly relevant on that also next question uh again from finn wraith and

02:13:25.640 this is for you spawn when you were in the military did you try preaching or at least

02:13:31.320 telling your fellow soldiers about alsatru and seeing if they were interested in oh finn's using

02:13:37.280 the using christian words people are going to be upset

02:13:42.640 no uh before spawn says what he's going to say i just want to put out a caveat

02:13:48.640 there is nothing wrong with preaching or proselytizing or doing that there's nothing

02:13:56.320 wrong with being a fisher of men if you describe it that way i'll point at you and laugh at you

02:14:02.080 but the concept the concept isn't bad it's how anything is successful is people advertise for

02:14:12.240 it if people don't know it's there they can't come home to it we need to get out of that mind space

02:14:19.920 because it's really important and our our race as a whole would be doing much better

02:14:26.640 if more people did some preaching and proselytizing about our native faith.

02:14:32.940 How's it true?

02:14:34.180 Go ahead, Svon.

02:14:35.440 Absolutely.

02:14:36.480 And I 100% agree that telling folks, being a beacon of light for them to come home,

02:14:42.740 to have the ethnic faith of their soul and their blood and their people is important.

02:14:49.800 But I'll be honest, at the time I was in the military,

02:14:53.620 one, I wasn't fully aware of the importance of that.

02:14:56.640 so um i mean it's it's kind of uh i'm not it's i'm reluctant to say it simply

02:15:04.200 just because it's not i'm not proud of it but i guess you know becoming aware of things

02:15:11.440 is a process of being ignorant at some point that's how you measure your awareness

02:15:16.520 and i was ignorant of those things back then i i think too i think the the faith for me

02:15:23.160 was more of an internalized warrior ethos mixed with orthopraxy. I was praying and giving

02:15:34.360 gift and bloat to the gods, but I was doing it entirely on myself. I looked for others who may

02:15:41.440 have decided to do the same, but I did not see it in a communal sense. But I think that also

02:15:49.680 kind of coalesces with the time in my life. I was not a, I was a young man and I wasn't in a

02:15:54.320 communal sense. I was in a tribal sense. Um, I joined the Marine Corps to be part of a, a tribe,

02:16:00.940 if you will. Um, and to test myself and prove myself. So at that time, I think it was really,

02:16:06.840 really internally facing as far as, uh, the development of my faith and my practice.

02:16:14.060 If I ran into anybody, which I didn't because I was so far out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, or, of course, global events took over and things like that.

02:16:28.300 But I was never afraid, nor was I ever – I would never shy away.

02:16:33.940 i i think that i explained when i held a bloat on the euphrates river in iraq and um i had one uh

02:16:45.220 one two guys like that were i was in charge of i was responsible for one was folk and one was

02:16:51.220 non-folk and um they were good guys they were really really good but they were really young

02:16:57.140 and they pretty much like like ducklings i had to constantly keep them around because whenever

02:17:03.140 if we were called for something we would have to all react together and so being out in the field

02:17:09.380 and stuff and i i would you know if i if you're going off to you know uh pray and give give blow

02:17:16.980 these two young kids didn't they wanted to know like what are you doing so i explained it to them

02:17:21.860 explained everything to them i think that um for the most part they just respected it uh when we

02:17:28.500 lost people we would generally um there would be a chaplain and also a psychiatrist that would come

02:17:36.660 out to uh analyze us and this was um a point of entertainment slash inquisitiveness from our 0.84

02:17:47.780 translator who was he was a kurd so i'm assuming he was the kurds uh have a lot of communist

02:17:55.220 tendencies from i guess the soviets and so they have a tendency to be not very uh i don't think

02:18:01.140 they have a religious motivation so he was interested in what i was doing and why there

02:18:08.980 was a chaplain there when someone you know passed away or why there was this other person and he

02:18:13.540 asked if this person was a priest and i'm like no he's a he's a head doctor and um you know he just

02:18:18.740 thought that that was kind of odd um but he also noticed i you know during services i paid respects

02:18:26.660 but i i wasn't um particularly involved in say christian services i wasn't taking a knee

02:18:34.420 to yahweh or anything like that i refused to do that but i i commemorated my fallen brothers um

02:18:41.940 and then we had our own ceremonies to do that but yeah it was um as far as

02:18:48.740 preaching i think the only time i've ever was um someone asked if they could read

02:18:55.440 the halvamal which is a a great um poem and or text in our faith and uh they thought it was

02:19:05.780 super interesting and they wanted to read it but we were reading a lot of things simply out of

02:19:10.780 we were in the middle of nowhere so we were constantly consuming um literature for the

02:19:17.700 sake of it. I read some books that I would have never read if I wasn't out in the middle of

02:19:24.140 nowhere. But yeah, that beyond that, not much. It was afterwards when I really started gearing

02:19:32.540 towards joining community when I got back home.

02:19:43.620 So next question, what highlights do you foresee for the AFA in 2024?

02:19:52.340 This phrase off a possibility.

02:19:56.520 So I'm fairly guarded on these things because I've, all right, backstory things.

02:20:18.620 a lot of things when i got involved in i was true in like 2001 ish

02:20:28.380 from that point until i became ulterior guilty in 2016

02:20:36.300 i learned from a lot of things and

02:20:42.380 a lot of folks talked really really big about a lot of things

02:20:48.620 No shortage of dreaming, no shortage of boasting.

02:20:54.400 A sickening shortage of follow through.

02:21:02.500 So, and that wasn't just my experience going back and reading the old rune stones and talking to old timers and things that way.

02:21:13.460 That's been the case for since 70s.

02:21:18.620 Some of that is fair enough.

02:21:21.940 Some of that is people not realizing how difficult things were going to be

02:21:26.400 and just being overly optimistic.

02:21:28.820 And being optimistic, that's wonderful to a degree.

02:21:34.580 But what a lot of folks would do would be announcing that this is going to happen

02:21:41.400 or that's going to happen and that it never did.

02:21:48.620 I'm real big on announcing what's going to happen, but then not following through.

02:21:53.760 So I'm overly cautious because I don't want to ever be that guy.

02:22:00.080 I don't want to be that guy that makes promises I don't keep or implies promises that I don't keep.

02:22:08.600 But you're asking about speculation, and I think that's appropriate.

02:22:12.000 And I think setting benchmarks and setting plans is a really good thing to do.

02:22:17.860 So that said, I'm just explaining why I'm being so cautious in my optimism on these things.

02:22:25.540 First, you get the last question first, phrase off.

02:22:29.920 Is it possible?

02:22:32.320 Absolutely.

02:22:33.560 It is infinitely possible.

02:22:36.780 Is it probable?

02:22:39.500 No.

02:22:41.460 Do I want to see it happen?

02:22:42.940 Absolutely, I do.

02:22:43.880 So I'll reiterate on here because you brought it up and Nick will find this link while I'm

02:22:50.140 flapping my gums here and post it up on the screen. But

02:22:54.820 there are things that need to be in place before Frazehoff happens.

02:23:03.280 First one, the money that we borrowed in order to establish Njordshoff

02:23:12.660 and if you want okay so nick just threw the thing on if you're listening on the side on

02:23:18.580 some kind of a vision or audio medium uh the njortzhoff fund is at runestone.org

02:23:26.560 backslash donate backslash or i guess it's not backslash it's a regular slash cool anyways

02:23:34.380 runestone.org slash donate slash and it's got all our donate stuff or there's if you just go

02:23:41.220 runzone.org there's an obvious donate break anyways that feeds into this the first thing

02:23:46.660 is we need to pay off new york's hoff um we new york's hoff was the most expensive hoff

02:23:57.220 that we've ever purchased for the afa it's just a

02:24:02.580 Odin's Hoff's initial purchase was before my time as Ozheria Gauthier, so trying to remember

02:24:17.680 the total all-in for it is tricky, but let's just say, and I think that I'm close,

02:24:24.120 that New York's Hoff is probably twice as expensive as any previous Hoff.

02:24:29.240 properties in Florida are more expensive. Everyone wants to be in Florida because they so

02:24:37.200 zealously preserved freedoms during the COVID hysteria. So a number of factors went into it.

02:24:48.660 Anyways, New York's office, $245,000.

02:24:57.980 As of now, and we got this for perspective, we purchased it in 2022, in August of 2022.

02:25:07.640 two. Right now we are. So Nick, can you throw up the thermometer on that? I believe we have

02:25:27.580 109,000 remaining that we owe on it. Out of that 245. So quite a bit has been paid on it so far.

02:25:44.000 Like, I don't know how to math fast enough to run a good percentage for you guys.

02:25:51.600 But let's assume, and Nick will correct me if I'm wrong with a thing here in a second, hopefully.

02:25:57.900 But either way, let's assume we owe 109 on this stuff.

02:26:06.320 If we can generate 100, for example, a guy who asked the question, Europa.

02:26:15.160 Not that you would do this, but if you did, we would be much appreciative.

02:26:18.840 and I'm sure that the Lord of the Seas would appreciate it.

02:26:23.300 If you wanted to give us $109,000 to pay off Njortzhoff today, 0.99

02:26:28.660 then that would knock that one out. 0.99

02:26:30.100 But that's going to take as long as it takes to pay that off.

02:26:36.440 Judging by progress last year, I believe Njortzhoff will certainly...

02:26:40.380 Okay, to answer the question, Njortzhoff will very likely be paid off within 2024.

02:26:47.460 for I think that's something that's very achievable we should absolutely be able to do and we're

02:26:53.820 going to try very hard to make that a reality um there we go and it's in little it's tiny for me

02:27:05.400 okay um I can't see it it's too small for me all right I think we've paid off 140 40 thousand how

02:27:16.680 do we owe it's just above 140 uh thousand on the uh oh wait yeah that's even smaller 142

02:27:27.320 and that's okay 142 so that means we owe

02:27:33.640 one let me get my spectacle yeah so we we owe somewhere in like 103. cool that just

02:27:39.960 shaved six thousand dollars off of what i just said excellent thank you nick for helping my old

02:27:46.280 eyes with with the new and improved graphic that's awesome i appreciate it so here you go

02:27:53.160 once we pay that off that's step one step two is that we need to have a recurring income number

02:28:04.120 that's great enough to support us an additionally fifth off and that's one of the things that we

02:28:11.080 budget out so where we can maintain regular operations but we also the afa general fund can

02:28:21.160 fund the monthly operation of each of our hoffs without it being burdensome or a stretch to where

02:28:29.960 if something you know if something happened if we needed to we still have the flex to handle

02:28:35.800 that responsibly so we have that budget in there we need to raise the amount that we're currently

02:28:43.960 getting by tell you exactly and rather than dollar figures i'm gonna give you a percent

02:28:51.720 because i think that's more useful for conceptualizing it

02:28:55.640 I need to raise that by about 6.2%. So our overall income needs to go up. Our average

02:29:06.680 monthly income needs to go up 6.2% for us to be ready to pull the trigger on phrase off.

02:29:15.640 once that is accomplished we need to find a property we need to get situated for a loan

02:29:26.160 be thinking about that now guys if you do want to contribute and if you're able or if you know

02:29:30.900 people who are because of who we are private lending through individuals who have

02:29:37.540 income they're willing to lend us at you know at reasonable market rate rates we're willing to do

02:29:48.180 that we need to take that from private lenders so getting that squared away is the next step

02:29:53.920 and finding that property could that happen in 2024 I would love it too if we get going hard

02:30:00.480 and if people are very generous we can absolutely make it happen it's not outside the realm of

02:30:06.140 possibility at all. But I would love to see that. I think that's ambitious. I'll sign on to I do

02:30:14.260 foresee us paying off Nortsoff at that time. And we'll push really hard to do that. Other milestones,

02:30:22.560 zones. I would really like to see the first two families living on Sigerheim in 2024.

02:30:36.280 Again, that's one of those that's kind of an unknown. If I were single, if it was just me by

02:30:43.600 myself, I would pack up and go live out there now. And I'd rough it until, you know, as long as I can

02:30:51.260 get to and from the gym and have internet service i'll be all right i have a family now

02:30:59.280 mandy has packed up her life to move with me and be on this journey with me already

02:31:05.220 um i'm not going to ask her to do that without some other people being involved so that she

02:31:13.240 goes to a place where she has community and people to be around also so that aubrey has 0.93

02:31:18.460 some folks to be around. So we're kind of waiting on a minimum of one other family to do that with

02:31:23.560 us. And there's a couple of folks, a couple of families that are thinking about it. Assuming

02:31:28.880 that they're ready, it would be very nice to do that within the next calendar year. No promises,

02:31:35.180 but it's what I would like to see. Other 2024 things may not sound spectacular, but it really

02:31:48.060 is in the long run i want to see what um additional curriculum we can add to the alice true academy

02:31:56.300 uh in this last year we added first second and third grade so we will have at least fourth grade

02:32:03.980 added by next year but i would really i'm curious to see if our folks over there can make that an

02:32:11.180 even even bigger leaps so we can serve more of of our full children in the 2024 school year

02:32:27.980 those are those are the big picture things that i i see as as

02:32:34.300 possibilities or points of progress that we can be at on that

02:32:37.660 it yeah i think that's that's where i'm at what i see in 2023

02:32:50.060 so i'll throw this one to you um

02:32:54.700 first spawn and i'll answer it second our next question is

02:33:00.060 what consistent duty of leadership are you two most proud that you are able to fulfill

02:33:07.660 uh you said to me first yeah um i think it's a it's a

02:33:21.820 toss-up but it's very hard for me to say which one is which but being able to

02:33:31.740 conference with the with the gothar i think is one of the best being able to connect with all

02:33:43.900 of the gothar in the afa at once in one place um you know reoccurring so and going over um theology

02:33:53.340 is probably one of the, as far as, you know, leadership goes, I think that is by far the

02:34:03.240 most. Secondary, of course, would be, I mean, Thorshoff is my baby. You know, just the desire

02:34:12.340 to achieve and to attain Thorshoff and build up the community in and around the mid-Atlantic.

02:34:23.340 um and it was it was built in a you know it's like new earth's off is uh is you know they got

02:34:32.260 a great community down there a lot of great people down there it's like it's it is taken off

02:34:37.380 and um i think every half has its own kind of story there's baldur's off was kind of immediately

02:34:43.980 you know uh coalesced on by the the the dark jackal forces that were that kind of just and

02:34:52.440 you know, people were, uh, abandoning ship or they were, you know, wondering about where we

02:34:57.940 were going to go with leadership and, and, and people stepped up and ultimately the, uh, freedom

02:35:04.560 of religion prevailed. So glorious there. I think for, um, for Thorshoff, it is about

02:35:12.600 make planning a flag or, or making a testament and a act of devotion, uh, not in the easy place

02:35:21.280 though but in the hard place um we had a great sense of community but it kind of

02:35:28.640 right before thorshoff was established um you know it it dissipated it fluctuated

02:35:37.440 and dissipated in a way and so thorshoff was really built with um people from from other states

02:35:45.760 like namely virginia and south carolina kind of um really wanting that success to happen

02:35:52.960 and uh and then north carolina the people in north carolina are you know slowly started coming back

02:35:59.120 and coming coming to events is seeing things or like they had no idea that we were there and then

02:36:04.320 all of a sudden we were there and um the communities started to grow so for me i think

02:36:10.160 the testament of seeing um families coming to north carolina bringing their children uh husband

02:36:19.360 and wives young young folk military guys um even people that were just passing through all over

02:36:28.480 have come to thorsoff um and that's a huge testament and and i'm very proud of that as well

02:36:34.960 because of how the fact that there it was kind of like setting the bar in or making an establishment

02:36:42.000 in a place and a time in which all of a sudden like the well dried up and um the conviction was

02:36:49.760 no we're gonna we're going to bring it all back we're gonna bring it back we're not giving up

02:36:54.080 we're not uh you know dropping out just because uh things are scarce and we had you know we have

02:36:59.840 have people who are dedicated traveling, you know, four hours, twice a month, uh, you know,

02:37:07.080 three times a month to get food to people that need food, to get, uh, things done at the Hoff.

02:37:14.940 Um, there's a lot going on there, um, that I'm, I'm extremely proud of as well, but also being

02:37:21.580 able to cover theology and, and getting, uh, and, and hearing some of the Gothar and their

02:37:27.120 perspective on things um because also true is a is a faith that is i'm gonna say it matt i'm gonna

02:37:35.600 say it is galvanizing there there uh it's it's it is a faith that now i think all over the united

02:37:45.120 states and in other in other countries we're we're starting to see things unified finally uh uh in

02:37:53.760 you know and in doing so we are getting multiple perspectives of our faith uh from the gothar as

02:38:02.720 they have practiced their faith just like me and and many others we started out kind of perhaps

02:38:09.920 alone or and then moving into kindreds and then from kindreds moving into uh clergy and so now

02:38:16.640 things are starting to get uh clarified and um you know serious not not just like you know how

02:38:24.400 what kind of what color candle are you gonna put on your altar brother it's not it's this is like

02:38:30.240 counseling like people are like having issues serious issues about perhaps their lives or

02:38:37.840 or loved ones, or a state, and stuff like that.

02:38:42.760 And they're seeking Gothar as legitimate sources of perhaps temperance

02:38:49.740 and understanding or guidance and wisdom.

02:38:52.360 It's big boy pants kind of stuff, not a lot of the kind of,

02:38:57.960 I guess, almost a cultish practice.

02:39:02.220 It's functioning out of true.

02:39:04.120 It's the idea of seeing, you know, buildings being bought. It's conceptualizing what can happen with funerary rites and graveyards and things like that. Could we even have our own college in the future?

02:39:19.080 We have a educational program now. Who's to say we can't have like, you know, here in Virginia, we have these Christian colleges and even on the billboards, it says, you know, forming, you know, Christian, Christian minds for, for the future of America.

02:39:39.680 And it's like, there's nothing stating that we can't think that big.

02:39:45.520 Could we have, you know, shaping Alcatru minds for America in the future, for our, you know, for our nation, for our people, whatever it is, big, big, big stuff.

02:39:58.060 So I'm really, really proud of both of those.

02:40:01.580 I can't say them separately, I guess.

02:40:09.680 So I'm thinking on it, consistent duty of leadership.

02:40:15.080 it's hard to narrow it down to one thing

02:40:32.840 because there's

02:40:34.180 there's no hard lines

02:40:40.080 between most of the things that I do

02:40:43.080 for AFA leadership

02:40:44.720 all of them kind of bleed

02:40:47.600 into each other to one degree or another

02:40:49.820 you're all over

02:40:51.600 all over the place

02:40:53.020 I am

02:40:57.560 one of the things that I am

02:41:05.920 proud of

02:41:07.300 doing

02:41:10.180 is

02:41:12.920 It's consistently keeping our folk directed towards positive goals of building the future that we want for our gods, for our children, for our faith.

02:41:38.280 But not in just general terms, but with benchmarks and with concrete things to achieve and build from.

02:41:50.860 Keeping the focus on positivity as opposed.

02:41:56.100 And this is such an important thing, and it's the nature of our people is the nature of existence is it trends towards entropy and chaos and destruction.

02:42:12.540 It takes constant effort, diligence, and persistence to stay above that and to keep an upward trajectory.

02:42:26.100 If we just stop, then the course of nature is to cycle into destruction.

02:42:36.760 Keeping that afloat, keeping the positive vision afloat, keeping our leadership focused with our eyes on the prize and various, you know, little P prizes on the way to the big P prize.

02:42:51.020 that's something that I

02:42:53.580 am proud of

02:42:55.920 doing so far

02:42:57.900 and I want to never

02:42:59.140 let up from doing that.

02:43:08.960 This isn't

02:43:09.880 consistent, this is situational

02:43:11.820 but it's really important to know

02:43:13.980 one of the

02:43:18.120 and I have said this a bunch on here

02:43:20.340 but I'll say it a bunch more.

02:43:35.600 As a gothi, when you are able to be a part of

02:43:41.160 facilitating the big realization of this,

02:43:49.700 of the reality of our gods and our faith

02:43:52.320 to someone.

02:43:55.540 That is one of the most amazing things

02:44:00.200 to be able to do as a good people.

02:44:08.360 Some people get into this because it's cool 0.55

02:44:11.360 and it's white people stuff

02:44:13.320 and it meshes with their worldview,

02:44:17.100 but they're not sincere about the the religious part

02:44:26.620 many more are sincere but they want to believe but they don't rock solid belief but they really want

02:44:35.340 to and they're waiting for that moment or they're you know trying to achieve that and that's where

02:44:40.940 they are but when you've had truly life-changing the spark happen in your eyes where all of a sudden

02:44:51.820 this is real and it's in front of you and there's not a question to its reality that moment you can

02:44:59.500 recognize and when you see that in someone else's eyes

02:45:06.220 as a result of a ritual that you officiated or that you performed

02:45:17.440 um because it's a complex interplay of things you can go out there and you can do the very

02:45:25.780 best imaginable by human powers and if the gods aren't participating in it you can't make the

02:45:36.660 magic happen um the gods can do it completely on their own but that's not how that often works

02:45:55.780 there's something in the in the mechanics of it when the gothi is the bridge between the divine

02:46:05.860 and our folk that facilitates that moment happening for people

02:46:13.060 and if you are able to get the attention of and the goodwill of our gods to the point to where

02:46:21.840 they reach out and touch one of our folk and their eyes are open, that is something that I

02:46:29.480 am supremely proud of being able to do from time to time. And the part of the question was consistent.

02:46:39.000 I can't claim any consistency. Does it happen every time? Certainly not. Sometimes I'll give

02:46:45.700 the best bloat ever. It'll be amazing. And one of those instances will happen. Sometimes I'll be

02:46:51.500 way off on my game or I'll feel like I am and I feel like I'm not doing anything special but I

02:46:57.600 was there at the right time at the right place and you know the gods were either impressed or

02:47:03.440 felt merciful to me or you know we're in a mood to all right good enough I guess and make it happen

02:47:14.020 but i am very very proud of of those moments and i've had several of them and i hope that i'm able

02:47:23.040 to facilitate many more um in my time and that's that's the stuff that i most proud of i had to

02:47:31.040 pick you said pick one but i picked two um

02:47:34.900 so we can make up anything about insanity path of svan uh robert we could we could just tell him

02:47:49.060 anything he won't know until he watches later i climbed the himalayan mountains and fought a yak

02:47:56.020 to learn about the havama i didn't hear about you battling a yak

02:48:04.900 It's misconstrued in actuality. I just, I made cheese from the yak and lived off of that in the mountains till I understood the mystery.

02:48:22.140 Just messing with you, Wolf.

02:48:23.660 so somebody wants to lash us to the wheel of samsara by keeping us on here for seven and a

02:48:41.360 half hours and i'm not going to do that so questions that come across as complete nonsense

02:48:47.620 sense. I'm going to start having some discretion on not asking questions that feel like they're

02:48:56.140 thrown in there for the purpose of furthering samsara. We're going to liberate ourselves.

02:49:02.800 I feel Robert's at the source of this. So don't be offended if I overlook your thing. And if I do,

02:49:12.560 and it's genuinely important, please do bring it up.

02:49:15.960 But I'm going to use some discretion.

02:49:17.240 So, one point to note that I think is good, and Nick reminds me on this, is...

02:49:32.240 So, Nick, you can clarify on this, but he has a call to action for YouTube Shorts.

02:49:40.340 um but then separately he says for people to get off the internet off the couch and start doing

02:49:47.660 house of truth things um to go do blue moots and bloats for the folk and such I'm wondering if Nick

02:49:55.400 wants those things recorded to make shorts out of which would be awesome either way I think it is

02:50:02.840 worth encouraging everyone to get out and do stuff I saw this earlier it's there is a point

02:50:19.160 to discussion and planning and theorizing and learning from and all of those things are

02:50:26.900 They are completely and totally unimportant and useless and worthless if they don't result in action.

02:50:36.900 Do Ausitru.

02:50:39.900 Honor your ancestors.

02:50:43.900 Celebrate our heroes.

02:50:46.900 Worship our gods.

02:50:48.900 Do that.

02:50:50.900 Make offerings.

02:50:52.900 Give prayers.

02:50:56.900 Reach out to the gods. Reach out to the folk. Do that. We can talk on here for forever, and I'm glad to do so, and I'm excited about doing it every week with you guys.

02:51:12.160 about better ways to do that, things to learn from it, things to do, things to not do.

02:51:20.680 But do is the key word. It's the most important part is that you are doing this and making it

02:51:27.700 real. That said, as Nick kind of confirmed to me on the side here, do House of Truth stuff

02:51:38.160 and make a little video about it

02:51:40.300 and encourage other people to do it too.

02:51:42.680 That's what I try to get our folk builders to do

02:51:45.620 with taking pictures of the things that they host,

02:51:48.620 pictures worth a thousand words,

02:51:51.240 maybe a video is worth 10,000.

02:51:54.080 That's kind of a cool idea

02:51:55.460 that we'll see if people want to do and get involved in.

02:52:03.200 I wanted to kind of cut in there.

02:52:05.440 if you're alone, let's say you're alone on this. I'm just contextualizing because it's really

02:52:11.880 bound by your imagination. But let's just say, hypothetically, if I was to be asked,

02:52:18.300 you know, like, oh, how would I even celebrate feast of the Einherjar? I don't have anybody

02:52:23.420 near me. So how do I feast to the Einherjar when there's no one around? I would give this as an

02:52:30.800 example, set out a time, set out a place, uh, most likely outside. I would say if you've got

02:52:37.920 like a fire pit or someplace like that, um, set that, make sure that place is clean. Make sure

02:52:43.500 that place is not, you know, especially if you're going to videotape, don't, don't like videotape

02:52:49.180 with like, with strange stuff in your yard. Or I don't know, just you have to, you have to,

02:52:55.700 if you're going to go into the medium of media, first off, remember, be professional

02:53:01.780 in, in what you do, be serious in what you do. Um, because you are, you know, a representative

02:53:09.420 at that moment of the entirety of, of your, your community and the gods in a way. And I wouldn't

02:53:16.680 want to be a bad rep for that. But media or no media aside, go to the internet, buy a wooden

02:53:28.480 model. So let's say you're not very crafty and you don't know how to build stuff. Find a wooden

02:53:36.200 ship and then go and research somebody. Let's just say you got like a medal of honor or some

02:53:44.360 particular war hero that you want to kind of exonerate, you want to, you want to read about,

02:53:50.340 you want to think about, um, you're doing the honor of honoring them. You're, you're, you want

02:53:56.100 to give them devotion, piety, um, even just, uh, appreciation. And you, you know, you can place

02:54:07.860 things in the boat and you get a horn and you get a bowl and you share, you know, maybe perhaps

02:54:16.460 speak or write about them and out loud before the gods. If you know how to, you know, hallow the

02:54:25.380 space you're at, that's a good point. But, you know, again, don't let that be the stop.

02:54:32.100 If you need to just go out there and ask the gods to be present and speak out loud,

02:54:36.220 speak of their names speak about them beyond the veil and and uh place it in the boat and then

02:54:42.920 light the small wooden ship on fire that that would that would fill so much of a cultural

02:54:50.080 testament of like what every a lot of the folk are doing that it would bring you into this like

02:54:56.640 when we make bread horses for furry faxy when we you know go around the maypole for mayday these

02:55:02.160 are things that we do that unite us together in our common imagery that we have so having that

02:55:09.840 boat there is kind of like the same as like having a yule tree during yule or a yule log or a yule

02:55:14.720 wreath or mistletoe these or or eggs during ostra um it's one of those things so you buy a little

02:55:21.280 boat you you speak well or speak out louder if you don't feel comfortable speaking out loud just

02:55:26.800 read them and say it in your head then place it in there drink place it in the bowl light the ship

02:55:34.880 on fire and then give thanks to them and pour it out and then go somewhere and and maybe perhaps

02:55:43.760 have a nice dinner and think about them think about the people that might be out there in the

02:55:49.040 fringes of society as far as like their military service and sacrifice and they don't get a chance

02:55:54.640 to eat or have a good meal or something i've definitely been there um and uh you know uh

02:56:01.600 ask ask the gods to watch over those those uh good good folk men that are out there kind of

02:56:08.480 wardening the edges of things and and then that be it that's your your feast of dying here you are

02:56:14.560 there's nothing you know it only gets better from there you shouldn't stop you i know a lot of people

02:56:21.920 ask like how or why um or they want like you know table placement and again i was making joke about

02:56:29.440 the colors of the candles but really what you what i would say any person really needs is

02:56:36.560 a vessel to hold the mead like a horn and a bowl to receive the mead as an offering and then a place

02:56:43.440 to solemnly place it somewhere and you know sometimes we say a little prayer we say like

02:56:50.960 from the earth to our hands to the gods from the gods to our hands to the earth we give this gift

02:56:55.760 thank you and that's it and you know again doing the ship or building your own ship act of devotion

02:57:02.400 if you're if you're crafty do that sometimes get the kids involved if you got kids have them make

02:57:07.520 a boat or you can make the boat and sometimes they make the shields along the side of the boat

02:57:13.040 again it's it's a commemoration to the to the ethos of the warrior the the boat becomes a

02:57:20.000 a symbol of the of the vessel between um you know the the the mortal life and

02:57:27.920 the attainment of the warriors heaven um and so yeah that would be my uh recommendation

02:57:36.720 for how to conduct

02:57:39.660 a Feast of the Ein-Hur-Yar

02:57:41.440 by yourself.

02:57:45.180 You know, that's right there.

02:57:48.260 That's all I got.

02:57:53.240 Not too shabby.

02:57:57.900 So,

02:57:58.820 and this is from Lydia.

02:58:03.280 Speaking of paying off

02:58:04.720 and yours off,

02:58:06.720 Can you speak about Hoftholler and the historic and current significance of it?

02:58:13.780 Go ahead, Swan, take it first.

02:58:15.560 You look like you had something that was...

02:58:17.020 Oh, no, I was going to say the other question, too, that I wanted to answer, actually.

02:58:23.580 The one before that from Wolfthrone, that was kind of...

02:58:27.020 It's funny because I had a conversation with a client about it,

02:58:30.440 and I wanted to give kind of an answer to that.

02:58:34.060 But let's...

02:58:35.800 We're skipping that.

02:58:36.720 And so, yes, Hoftholler.

02:58:40.880 Hoftholler is generally, when you think about Hofs,

02:58:46.960 Hofs as, there's a lot of speculation as to how Hofs worked.

02:58:51.760 We know that the sites were, some of them were outdoors,

02:58:55.220 some of them were indoors.

02:58:56.120 It clearly were indoor, even though a lot of,

02:58:59.260 they weren't finding a lot of them.

02:59:00.560 um, you know, the idea of, of, um, halls of worship to the gods in a place where

02:59:08.240 almost 75% of the year, you can't be outside, you know, without, without freezing to death

02:59:16.400 sometimes. Um, the, uh, the areas in which those places were sometimes fjords, there were sometimes

02:59:24.860 entire, um, regions that would gather together. And it was generally seen as

02:59:31.700 a, uh, if you gained bounty, um, if you went abroad, if you went overseas, if you went

02:59:40.220 raiding or you went trading or, or whatever, or gained money from, you know, joining in,

02:59:45.220 in military operations or whatever, if you had bounty and you came back, um, there wasn't

02:59:50.940 somebody you know like you would go to the hof and give them money and say you know this is for

02:59:59.340 um expenses this is for food and this is known because even um in uh oliver eggvir he was um

03:00:10.380 conducting um that they're not winter nights uh when um there was uh olaf trigverson the the

03:00:19.980 christian or well he was just using it to gain power um he you know ambushed all oliver eggvir

03:00:28.860 and the other gothar and they had gathered all of this money and food and things for the holidays 0.94

03:00:37.500 and he tried to force the gothar to convert they told him where he could properly stick it 0.87

03:00:44.220 um and then they died for the faith of their people in front of their people and then all

03:00:51.500 of those people were either scattered or uh arrested or um kind of just violently shoved

03:00:59.420 off and all of the stuff that they had amassed all the money and the food they had amassed

03:01:04.860 from for the year that they had gathered uh he took he stole it um

03:01:10.460 Um, and that's kind of like a, uh,

03:01:14.360 Hoftholler of the olden days was not always strictly monetary,

03:01:17.720 but it was still understood food. Uh, you know, uh,

03:01:23.420 parceling off things of, of meat, uh, of, you know, uh,

03:01:28.820 sacred liquid, uh, whether it was, you know,

03:01:31.400 meat and ale and cider for the hall, um, equipment and things,

03:01:35.560 all of that is part of that. But now it's,

03:01:39.640 you know, it's, it's the way to upkeep and press

03:01:42.660 Ausatru forward and get your, the, the faith of your folk

03:01:46.220 to grow and to live.

03:01:51.780 So, I mean, I guess that's the origin. And then, and now we

03:01:54.980 have, now it's, it's also a great way to keep us from, there's

03:01:58.580 corporations, speaking kind of of that, the, the earlier

03:02:02.780 question when he was asking about

03:02:05.500 um secret societies and strange aliens i don't think that there are strange aliens and secret

03:02:12.300 societies there are corporations there are bankers there are the media they're hollywood

03:02:18.380 they're these people are the real people that you should be concerned with and they try to make it

03:02:23.540 seem like there's all these other things out there so that you won't point the finger at the correct

03:02:27.640 people but there are corporations out there that are trying desperately to stop our our people

03:02:34.100 from having the ethnic

03:02:36.040 faith that they are entitled 0.83

03:02:38.160 to, and Hoftoller

03:02:39.840 100%

03:02:41.540 battles against that.

03:02:44.760 Because Svon is going to

03:02:46.320 name the lizard people.

03:02:52.480 I would like to say

03:02:53.860 Blackrock and

03:02:55.140 Goldman and Sachs, those are far more 1.00

03:02:57.920 scarier than lizard people. 1.00

03:03:00.400 Just saying.

03:03:01.420 So, to that Illuminati, lizard people, secret cabals of folks plotting our downfall.

03:03:15.480 and sometimes i think more often than that there are systems in place that are self-replicating

03:03:33.420 that trend in a certain direction and once they pick up enough steam

03:03:41.960 um they don't need to be consciously willed towards a direction they just kind of head

03:03:48.920 that way um there's there's a lot of that going on in society to where things trend in a certain

03:03:57.320 negative direction and they're kind of a self-sustaining system that no individual person

03:04:02.840 is being maniacal but the system's kind of built to head towards a particular outcome

03:04:12.840 and i'm not i'm not anti-doctor or anti-medicine but when

03:04:20.680 when you are making a decision and it's you know six one half a dozen of the other but wait

03:04:26.520 on one of them you get recurring customers and on another of them you don't

03:04:35.880 just the nature of things you're going to tend towards that

03:04:39.320 or if you prove you know but if uh providing a certain treatment or a certain medicine is

03:04:44.840 incentivized economically no you're not going to necessarily poison people with it but if it's fifth

03:04:52.440 you know you could go left you could go right it's kind of an equal up in the air well one way makes

03:04:58.520 a substantial incentive whereas the other doesn't things go that way sometimes i think

03:05:04.360 we got a number of um institutions and situations like that but on another level i'll say this

03:05:16.040 in my day-to-day life in my experience in the things i've been involved in

03:05:21.400 and very specifically in my experience with ossature

03:05:25.160 lizard people aren't holding us back

03:05:30.580 figurative lizard people aren't holding us back

03:05:35.480 what's holding us back

03:05:39.400 is self-centered 0.99

03:05:42.820 white people 1.00

03:05:45.580 and cowardly white people 1.00

03:05:48.880 and very very damaged 1.00

03:05:53.700 white people and i'm not even talking about the woke people they're not holding us back i'm 0.97

03:06:00.660 talking about people on the you know the right side of the aisle who constantly seek irrelevancy

03:06:12.100 and infighting until we're small insular groups of complete and total irrelevancy

03:06:21.860 our own people's inability to just get along and suck it up and be part of a team and invest over

03:06:29.420 the long term that is the thing that keeps us from success that is the top of the list and it

03:06:39.700 is so far beyond any other group of people be the human mammalian lizard or anything else

03:06:48.580 be they black brown yellow or blue um 0.83

03:06:59.460 the people that hold us back the most are our own people who are so damaged or so selfish

03:07:10.380 that they can't get on the team.

03:07:15.120 But we're going to succeed in spite of all that.

03:07:19.940 We would just succeed much faster

03:07:22.580 if those folks could get their stuff squared away.

03:07:26.160 But we're going to be here to help them

03:07:27.720 when they get it figured out.

03:07:29.060 If they decide they want to get on the team

03:07:32.760 and make some positive changes,

03:07:34.700 we're here to heal our people the best we can.

03:07:37.520 And we're doing that little by little.

03:07:39.460 And we're making it happen.

03:07:40.380 As far as Hoftholder goes, first, it is obvious in a number of our extended family that Aryan people had functioning temples and priesthoods and colleges of priests and things to advance Aryan religiosity.

03:08:08.600 And specifically, when it comes to Germanic and Nordic peoples, it is a little bit harder to historically document because wood rots, whereas stone doesn't.

03:08:24.460 And things that you write down, I can read Tacitus' Annals today. I can't read things from Germania of the same period written by Germans.

03:08:38.600 I can't read things from Scandinavia written at that time because our people, you know, the Germanic folk didn't write at that time.

03:08:50.160 um but there were absolutely and it is obvious that there were priests there was a structure

03:09:05.100 there was buildings there was groves there was hoffs there were sacrifices there were

03:09:12.740 celebration, the way that you have nice things is by people

03:09:19.340 contributing proportionally to those nice things. In our

03:09:27.260 research, we find, you know, references to Hofftoller being

03:09:33.380 a tax that was levied to support Hoffs and Gotham. When I first

03:09:42.500 came, I'll tell you, I looked around to see how other religions funded things, how they were

03:09:50.520 able to accomplish things they accomplished. The secret is contribution. In industrialized

03:10:01.060 society, contribution equals dollars. That's just real. It's our way of exchanging value

03:10:10.860 you between things, and it's how we are able to have nice things. For a long time, when I first

03:10:18.420 started, and this is kind of meandering, but okay. When I first was, you know, earlier in my experience

03:10:26.380 with the AFA, when a member was suffering a hard time, people wanted to gather cans of food and

03:10:35.120 somehow ship those to them or ah well i have a extra jacket i could send for their kid

03:10:43.600 there's a lot of things that you can do but it becomes exponentially expensive and difficult

03:10:50.000 and impractical when it's stuff when it's money when it's fluid when it's fehu you can

03:10:59.120 send that and then they can get exactly what they need

03:11:02.560 um watching our ability to help each other by like oh well we could have some cans of food at

03:11:09.740 the hoff or we could do a fundraiser we could donate spendable money to folk services or to

03:11:16.820 a specific folk services campaign we've been able to very significantly help a lot of families and

03:11:24.140 a lot of people in the afa have come on hard times and needed stuff and that's been a really noble

03:11:30.500 thing um so anyway so i was looking at uh funding and how it works and i know that i'm not gonna

03:11:40.740 the the hoftoller is absolutely the same thing as the tithe other than tithe means 10th and we're

03:11:47.140 asking for one percent minimum i will take 10 if you are willing to donate that that is tremendous

03:11:56.740 and it would be very much appreciated if every afa member gave 10 we would

03:12:05.940 roughly just based on numbers that i'm aware of if everybody in the afa gave 10

03:12:10.740 of their income we would be able to do

03:12:16.740 probably 25 times what we're able to do currently which is tremendous if you think about it

03:12:23.940 that's a hundred hoffs we've got four we'd have a hundred if everybody's given ten percent

03:12:30.260 not saying everybody needs to do that what i do ask what we are trying to do we've been

03:12:34.420 working on this slowly think since i believe 2020 but it could have been started in 2019

03:12:41.620 is the hoftoller which is um setting up to where one percent a minimum of one percent i know people

03:12:50.660 who do 10 i know more people that do five i know some that do two percent three percent

03:12:57.460 but at least one percent of your income towards the afa there's ways to set it up in the united

03:13:07.220 states through your employer to where that comes out i believe pre-tax and is advantageous i mean

03:13:15.460 it can just be done through your paycheck and things and you don't know you don't miss it and

03:13:21.620 we really appreciate it there's a magic that comes with numbers if everyone donated a little

03:13:30.100 bit of something that they didn't even notice that they weren't even going to miss if every afa

03:13:34.820 member did that it would equal a huge result we have this exponential multiplying factor if

03:13:42.420 everybody just gave a little so that has been tremendously important the folks that have

03:13:48.260 stepped up and donated on hoff toller i think that's why we've seen the rapid increase in

03:13:53.620 hoffs that we've seen in that exact same time period um but yeah that's how that's set up but

03:13:59.620 there's infinite ways to do it if you're your own you know if you're a private contractor you run

03:14:08.100 your own business you're an entrepreneur or whatever there are ways to set it up you can

03:14:13.060 do it one lump sum a year you can do it quarterly you can do it weekly you can do it daily if you

03:14:18.740 want to but figuring that out is a massive key to us being able to move forward and accomplish

03:14:27.380 the dreams that we set out to do that if everybody at the afa got on the hoftoller the one percent

03:14:34.180 hoff toller um tomorrow there's no question we'd have new york soft paid off we probably have it

03:14:41.700 paid off first half of uh 2024 um so anybody wanting to do that their folk builder is happy

03:14:50.660 to set them up with that again there's lots of ways to do it doesn't have to be done through

03:14:54.820 an employer that's just a really convenient way in the united states you can do it by check you

03:15:01.460 can do it through your bank card you can do it through a wire transfer you can hand your folk

03:15:08.260 builder cash you can do it through cryptocurrency you the thing is it's flexible and and it's a

03:15:16.580 trust thing and there's ways to to do that in a way that works for everybody the answer is always

03:15:22.660 yes on how to make that work um so it's important to keep in mind and it's uh it's super helpful

03:15:31.140 we still have this stigma and i'm trying to just shake it off but we're all uncomfortable

03:15:35.140 talking about money i'm uncomfortable talking about it but it's how we're able to have nice

03:15:40.580 things and it's how we're able to honor the gods in a way that's worthy of them

03:15:48.740 there's no shame in success there's no shame in money there's no shame in

03:15:55.940 talking about resources if we're using those resources to lift up our folk to glorify our

03:16:06.260 gods to support things that we all find value from um it's a really important thing and I think it's

03:16:14.120 something that people need to be more comfortable talking about I appreciate everyone listening's

03:16:20.660 generosity, not just in, be they have, you know, if they're doing membership dues or if they're

03:16:27.780 doing Hofftoller. And that's the thing. When I came in, it was a dues-based organization.

03:16:35.300 Sometimes you get in these, well, what do I get for my dues? It's not what this is about.

03:16:42.400 we are a church. It's not about paying for a good or a service. It's about giving of yourself

03:16:52.860 and of your wealth to our gods, to our church, and to making the religion of Alcetra move forward.

03:17:02.380 Everything you donate to the AFA is an offering to the gods. It's an act of piety.

03:17:08.560 um and honestly i'm very impressed and proud we do a really good job with the small amount that

03:17:20.660 the relatively small amount that we bring in we're able to do amazing things with

03:17:26.920 so that's that's a key to making that spectacular in the future one of the other points of hoff

03:17:35.040 that i think is really important percentages are infinitely fair if you are literally homeless and

03:17:41.760 you panhandle like one percent of that is one percent if you make ten dollars a month

03:17:54.080 10 cents goes to the afa that's doable that's absolutely doable but if you're you know one

03:18:02.880 of the one percent and you make you know a million dollars a year or that probably doesn't even

03:18:08.160 qualify for the one percent but if you make that then it's a huge boon for the afa and everybody

03:18:15.040 in in between it sorts itself out um but it's definitely something to think about it's something

03:18:21.680 i want to encourage everybody to do i don't like being the guy that talks about it it looks you

03:18:29.520 You know, it's not a good look. I know it doesn't sound good to the audience, but it's truth.

03:18:35.960 Truth is one of our virtues, and it's something I want to see us elevate Ausitru to the level that our gods deserve

03:18:48.180 and to something worthy of our folk, our ancestors, and our mighty gods.

03:18:53.860 We're doing our very best to do that. We appreciate everybody's generosity.

03:18:57.260 i only brought that up because lydia told me to so i will throw her under the bus for that

03:19:05.560 you know um nick brings up a great point too uh that the the you know we drive i drive

03:19:14.300 four hours to and from um he was talking about you know there's a lot of things going on you know we

03:19:21.160 we we pay for gas for ourselves uh the the church doesn't we we pay for the gas to drive down there

03:19:28.420 to drive back to help out um we give in a lot of different ways but also like you know i and i just

03:19:34.900 we lead from the front i remember you giving like giving plasma at one point for for a half

03:19:42.400 yep like your prof i and it just blows my mind that people think that we're that we don't do

03:19:49.100 that or that we're not devoting hours and money into and blood, very, very tangible blood to get

03:19:58.620 the Hoffs out there. And it's coming from us, from leadership. I give 10% of my annual. And so

03:20:05.160 I think a lot of people get in their head that we're just like soaking up this money or I don't

03:20:12.220 know what what people are thinking um no we're putting in two we're all in um you know taking

03:20:22.020 my children and my wife uh to and from in great distances and things like that gladly gladly do

03:20:29.580 it and just um so i i think that people get a misconception that somehow they're they're putting

03:20:39.600 money in whether it's one percent or ten percent or whatever and we're not doing anything i mean

03:20:46.000 there's you know the the accusation of that is terrible and sad and infuriating really um just

03:20:55.680 how much money and time and having people think that we're getting this money from nefarious uh

03:21:03.760 i don't know what i remember you joking about somebody saying that we they thought here are

03:21:08.800 10 ways that the afa is allegedly funded and this is so this goes to my point about

03:21:17.520 no it's mentally it's emotionally damaged white people it's not the lizard people

03:21:29.120 our people especially people who are traditionally minded 0.91

03:21:33.680 are so used to losing and so used to being completely incapable of accomplishing things

03:21:47.120 we have a sizable portion of people that seriously believe that we are being funded

03:21:55.700 by the federal government as some kind of secret honeypot op um that i'm in the employ of the fbi

03:22:05.140 somehow and that like which is funny and nonsense in general

03:22:12.580 especially where i'm sitting and especially looking at the afa's bank account um

03:22:18.020 um that's this trying to rattle change or and sometimes the same people say this interchangeably

03:22:28.280 so I'm not sure where they fall on this or that we are a front for Mexican drug cartels

03:22:34.940 and we've got that cartel money

03:22:36.860 that's even more funny

03:22:42.820 in a lot of different ways i think the people accusing us of that and heckling us publicly

03:22:51.420 probably wouldn't if they genuinely believe that uh we're being funded by the the cartels and the

03:22:58.440 you know the the sicarios may come after them i think that's probably

03:23:03.120 self-evidently not true but um also uh we would have many many many more hoffs if that were the

03:23:12.360 case honestly the success story is we have a number of people that had the courage and the

03:23:20.720 perseverance to stand up and to wake up every day being part of this knowing that it's difficult

03:23:30.580 and that it's hard to blaze that trail

03:23:33.000 for our children and our children's children

03:23:35.560 to be able to follow and comfort

03:23:37.160 and putting in the hard work

03:23:41.660 and, you know, and many generous people.

03:23:45.760 It's very often the same people

03:23:48.140 who are generous time after time

03:23:50.560 after time after time

03:23:52.260 making these things work.

03:23:54.600 But we have been blessed enough to find

03:23:57.940 enough of our folk who are willing to do that and stay doing that over the long haul

03:24:06.800 that we are able to accomplish a few things here and there they're amazing things and i'm thankful

03:24:15.920 for them but we should set our sights high our people built civilization we should be able to

03:24:27.440 do this and do it really well and um for a very small amount of people in the grand scheme of

03:24:37.200 things we peaked above a thousand this year once for like a month that's in the history

03:24:45.600 of the afa we have had over a thousand members one time for one month and we've been able to

03:24:54.400 get four hoffs we've been able to get segerheim we are well on our way to accomplishing much more

03:25:05.120 we have been very blessed by the hard work the blood sweat and tears of some generous folks

03:25:11.600 the kindness of amazing gods and the dedication of some very hard-working

03:25:18.880 uh gothar and folk builders um and i'm very thankful for that so

03:25:24.800 i want a white tiger and like gold plated me too uh 45s nor ak

03:25:34.760 how come my nine doesn't have gold plating on it okay so we're going to start doing all of our

03:25:42.300 bloats in Spanish for no reason. El jefe supreme. Is everybody okay with wearing sombreros?

03:25:58.880 all right so silliness aside uh matt slash swan how do you feel about the term caucasian

03:26:15.840 as a word that defines us as a swan what are your thoughts on uh caucasian i i don't use it i think

03:26:25.220 it's a joke i think that uh i i'm not a big fan of using just like proto-indo-european i think

03:26:32.080 it's just too mouthy it's it's it it loses it sterilizes it loses some of the the the point

03:26:39.420 of it i think um there's there's a magic and a vitality um i don't know if i i common usage i

03:26:50.460 just say folk uh that we are the folk that's what we call ourselves uh so many people all over the

03:26:56.080 planet uh the inuits call themselves the real people and you know uh uh so on and so forth

03:27:02.740 there's a lot of you know i don't get bent out of shape when other people name themselves certain

03:27:07.200 things but when it comes from like it's it's nomenclature stuff you know there's caucasoid

03:27:12.940 mongoloid negroid and all that and that's all like actual scientific and and uh you know

03:27:23.180 descriptive language but it's still very sterile and i and i and i don't 100 um attest to it in 0.97

03:27:30.780 the idea of if we're talking about locale and things like that um of of uh origination of the

03:27:39.500 home dale of the folk uh where we uh you know where our where rig dawned us forward um but

03:27:51.660 i just yeah i think it's just it's one of those things that's just a a kind of scientific scholarly

03:27:58.140 term uh that's less mouthy than you know proto-indo-european that just to kind of throw it out

03:28:07.100 there um but it's it's it's it lacks the um what my people are so and i i think it's like something 0.89

03:28:17.600 like here in the south it's it's something that i hear uh like black ladies say when they're trying 0.62

03:28:22.400 to be like covert about things i've heard like i remember been passing just there's a lot of 1.00

03:28:29.480 caucasians here um i guess i assume she was complaining that people were minding their own 0.75

03:28:35.600 business or something I don't know um but the it's such a sterile kind of term I prefer folk 0.78

03:28:41.820 and I I think white has tangibility in our in our country it is a box that we we check

03:28:50.100 and um I don't think that it's a bad word and I think we should make it not a bad word um

03:28:56.400 and uh I think there are people trying to but I prefer folk uh I think in usage over the most

03:29:05.080 and i tried to tell my children there it's not about we don't name other people um we don't name

03:29:12.660 other people things i don't my my kids and stuff they they refer to people as folk or not folk

03:29:20.140 and it's the concept that's really simple it's like if you're there's two chinese people in a

03:29:25.680 room and you walk in and then and then you leave they're going to refer to you as the not chinese

03:29:30.460 person and that's probably the nicest thing like in in relation to unity between people i think

03:29:37.900 there's there's folk and there's there's not folk they're not folk they're whatever they call

03:29:42.060 themselves and i think that's one of the best ways to go about um kind of really establishing

03:29:48.540 identity um and getting over the identity crisis of that white children are facing

03:29:54.460 so i think that's brilliant because it reinforces you're us or you're not right you're not and

03:30:05.660 that applies to any ethnicity it it's not white specific it's the word folk is us that's our word

03:30:15.020 yeah it is but the but the but the concept of this is us and that's not us and it doesn't

03:30:22.860 have to be disparaging it's just same different there's a big there's nothing disrespectful in

03:30:35.820 that there's nothing wrong with that every group of people is entitled to that um

03:30:42.220 um certainly every racial group of people but hey this is Boy Scouts you're not a boy therefore

03:30:53.920 you're not in Boy Scouts isn't wrong there's hey we're you know 0.95

03:31:04.480 all blind folks will have can I be part of the no you your eyes work get out of here 0.98

03:31:11.320 like whatever the deal is having a group of people that's just you celebrating the things

03:31:16.680 that you have in common is not wrong and it's something you can be proud of uh caucasian

03:31:26.280 i don't like because it doesn't mean anything to a lot of people people don't really understand

03:31:33.160 the etymology or the geography of it like caucasian i'm not asian what are you talking

03:31:40.200 about like there a lot of people are genuinely confused by it i think its meaning has been lost

03:31:46.360 to time and anthropology a little bit um but saw swan brought up the the oids i think that's always

03:31:58.200 that if we're going to go that route that entertains me the most the most negroid mongoloid and 0.96

03:32:04.760 caucasoid so i caucasoid i would i would rather take caucasoid than caucasian just like lizard 0.99

03:32:12.040 people um mexican cartel as a you know as something to make a real big point about i

03:32:21.160 like arian because it has a meaning that has a value attached to it we are the shining noble

03:32:29.240 people that means something that has a value to it it's a self-identifier based on things that we

03:32:37.320 value about ourself or that we hold as essential to our existence as a race of people

03:32:44.200 um but i'm also not sensitive about stuff and i wish that other people weren't usually it's

03:32:49.880 not those groups of people that are it's uh it's the woke um liberal white college crowd

03:32:57.320 in the karens that are unfortunate i don't care i don't care if people are going to be disparaging

03:33:04.680 with whatever racial epitaphs they want to say towards us as long as it's an even playing field

03:33:12.760 you know i can laugh and joke and it all be good with everybody uh what's not okay is if

03:33:18.280 we can be disparaged and other people can't that's not fair especially not in places that um

03:33:25.720 that we've built and made possible um but just the commonality of you know i guess asians have not

03:33:37.240 resorted to referring to themselves as yellow people but indians uh and native americans took

03:33:45.000 a lot of pride in you know identifying themselves as red uh during that movement in in 60s and 70s

03:33:54.280 that was a thing to talk about um blacks have taken like no we're not afro african american

03:34:00.920 we're black that's fine and i'm i'm fine with being white it makes sense people understand what

03:34:07.000 it means again some of our international audience it may be different in the country to where you

03:34:11.960 live but in the united states it's common sense we understand everybody knows what it means and i

03:34:18.120 And I think that is a very apples to apples comparison to Blacks, who I would say is the other big ethnic group that is polarized in referring to themselves as a cohesive community of many sub-ethnicities, but of one big race.

03:34:43.240 um we see that sometimes with hispanics and using you know brown um so

03:34:53.240 i mean i'm i'm comfortable i'm not sensitive about about any of those things i'm not even

03:34:58.280 sensitive when it's rude like i say as long as we can all do the same thing that it's fine

03:35:03.320 as long as we have the same rules on it uh but caucasian is just the i don't know the lamest the

03:35:10.840 least flavorful the most awkward way of stating our race it sounds like you're being overly

03:35:19.480 clinical and not authentic when you say it it doesn't it's not something anybody's ever

03:35:26.520 you know just in passing like man we're caucasians nobody does that like that's not a colloquial

03:35:33.800 thing that's something you say when you're trying to sound pc or educated or something that's it's

03:35:39.480 It's not, it lacks authenticity.

03:35:50.740 Looking at a couple of things over in the chat is all in.

03:35:55.340 All right, guys, that is the last of our questions this evening.

03:35:59.780 I appreciate you all joining us tonight.

03:36:04.100 Swan, as always, we appreciate you sharing your wisdom with us this evening.

03:36:09.480 and teaching folks about the Feast of the Iron Hair Yard.

03:36:14.360 Thank you for having me.

03:36:16.240 Next week, Brandy is going to lead the discussion

03:36:21.240 in part two of her Beowulf series.

03:36:25.800 I will lead it more than I did last week,

03:36:28.480 but again, it's kind of Brandy's show.

03:36:30.240 This is something that she really specializes in

03:36:32.400 and does a really great job with.

03:36:34.200 So I look forward to that.

03:36:35.800 And then Svahn will be back two weeks from today, and we will talk about Yule.

03:36:44.020 Yule's going to be a big one.

03:36:45.180 We have to talk about the 12 days.

03:36:48.920 We've got Svahn's got a cool thing he does that involves pig faces.

03:36:53.720 We've got to talk about Steve McNallan's 12 days that he's got going on.

03:36:59.040 How they converge.

03:37:01.220 We've got how they work together, how we can, you know, some ideas, some ideas of ways to celebrate with your family and your home, some things that we've done traditionally.

03:37:12.620 And, you know, talk about Yule stuff, which is a lot of people's favorite time of the year and something fun to talk about and have a look at the calendar.

03:37:20.560 But it should be right around the start of the start of December.

03:37:24.920 So, yeah, look forward to talking to you guys. 0.97

03:37:29.040 Can't wait for that pig face. 0.98

03:37:30.620 I need to figure it out this year 0.99

03:37:34.400 I'm talking about it

03:37:35.340 I need to be calling butchers right now

03:37:37.180 I think you still have time

03:37:40.220 if you call them in two weeks

03:37:41.680 after you're inspired by the show that we do

03:37:43.840 but

03:37:45.000 yeah

03:37:46.900 it's been great talking to you guys tonight

03:37:49.000 I hope you guys have a good week

03:37:52.840 until I talk to you next

03:37:54.620 if I don't talk to you before then

03:37:56.220 until then

03:37:59.540 Hail the gods. Hail the folk. Hail the AFA. Remember, victory never sleeps.

03:38:07.200 Good night, guys.

03:38:29.540 .

03:38:59.540 To be continued...

03:39:29.540 Thank you.

03:39:59.540 Thank you.

03:40:29.540 Thank you.

03:40:59.540 Thank you.

03:41:29.540 Transcription by CastingWords

03:41:59.540 Amen.

Asatru Folk Assembly - November 16, 2023

11⧸15⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 71 - Feast of the Einherjar

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