00:04:00.000hello everyone and welcome to another edition of victory never sleeps as some of you guys
00:04:14.160probably noticed by the intro um graphic and for folks listening later as a podcast
00:04:21.600we'd like to acknowledge the passing of a member of our AFA family passing that happened far too
00:04:32.200young young man named Cam named Cam Musser passed away on over this last weekend and
00:04:44.400And 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.
00:05:04.940um but yeah it's very sad thing and uh we will we will remember him and make sure he's not forgotten
00:05:15.080about um tonight Clinton Svon and I are going to discuss the feast of the Einherjar um
00:05:28.400i talked to swan a little bit earlier and we're waiting for him to to join us on the program but
00:13:55.260It's good to see them. I started off just by giving them a rundown of what Feast of the Iron
00:14:03.320Year Yard is as far as a holiday in the AFA calendar. I'm not sure if you heard what I said
00:14:17.040or not on it, but if you want to jump in and talk about it a little bit of how it's observed,
00:14:22.680I'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.
00:32:04.560Absolutely. 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.
00:32:23.240And 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.
00:32:37.060Some 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.
00:32:50.740A 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.
00:33:10.280So 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.
00:33:25.640and that's in relation to heriar so first and foremost ain meaning one the singular the one or
00:33:35.600the the one that is um present the one that is standing alone uh it's different than the word
00:33:42.860like val which means to be chosen or singularly chosen uh ain just means the one that stands
00:33:48.560alone. Heriot has two meanings. One is, uh, on the basic sense, it means to raid or a raider,
00:33:56.060um, the act of raiding. Um, but, and that, or excuse me, let me go with that in the English
00:34:04.720sense. What I was saying about how it has connections to English is in the use of the word
00:34:10.120hairy if um if wolves were nipping at the heels of a bison it could be said in english that they are
00:34:20.600they are harrying the bison they're they're kind of attacking and creating assault and oftentimes
00:34:27.400it means assault from maybe all different directions or it's quick and swift and brutal um
00:34:33.720And 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.
00:34:47.560But 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.
00:35:05.100So 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.
00:35:28.440the Ein Hur Yahr are ascended by the choice of the choosing father, the Val father. And he sends
00:35:38.160the carriers of the chosen. It's often, it really is kind of sad that a vowel is often translated
00:35:45.620as slain. It's not slain, it's chosen. And that's one thing that I see consistently happening over
00:35:54.000and over and over again. Valhall is the hall of the chosen. Valfather is the choosing father.
00:36:00.000The Valkyrie are the carriers of the chosen. And the Einherjar are the ones chosen. So ascendancy
00:36:07.820is in the names, but it oftentimes, they always equate it to slain. It's the hall of the slain.
00:36:12.900He's the father of the slain. And they're the carrier of the slain without any consideration
00:36:19.860that in essence they're robbing dominion from lord olin in in their word not in it's clearly
00:36:27.300not in their deed and and and not i mean nobody's gonna stop that but what it is is that it's
00:36:32.660diminishing the understanding of what is happening a lot of people kind of get into that um instead
00:36:41.320of observing they kind of cram uh the dominion of the gods into a framework that they can that
00:36:47.660they like or want or need to understand and then they lose all context and meaning um so the vowel
00:36:55.700father sends the the choosers of the slain to take the one who has risen above and that's where it
00:37:04.340gets kind of interesting in relation to our holiday is the person rising above because they
00:37:11.300are chosen or is the person rising above no to be noticed to be chosen to be worthy of the choosing
00:37:21.000and that's the great miss like the mystery of it is the answer is yes he he is rising up
00:37:30.200in the occasion to be worthy of being chosen will he be chosen that's not up to that's not up to him
00:37:38.180is certainly not up to us. It's, it's up to Lord Odin, but the idea is that relinquishing the self
00:37:44.900and there's lots of concepts, uh, in, in books, um, about, especially like there's, um, um,
00:37:52.840you know, myths and myths and legends of, of pagan Europe. Um, there's the road to hell. There
00:37:58.960is, um, by, um, Davidson, there is, uh, the masks of Odin by the, uh, Theosophical Society.
00:38:07.200they've all kind of had their own take on the idea of what exactly it takes for an einherjar to be
00:38:13.860chosen um whether it's you know relinquishing of the self whether it's rising up to the immediacy
00:38:20.200of the of any occasion um and then at that point there's a convergence point and it's like you rise
00:38:28.140up and then after that if you're chosen you're chosen then you rise up so i think that that's
00:38:36.080why it's really important for us to emphasize the living nature of the religion and reliving nature
00:38:41.220of the of the holiday and the dominion of the gods versus perhaps a parameter like slain
00:38:49.740that i think oftentimes gets thrown about and and often deeply misconstrued
00:38:55.600the one who rises above that's sorry i can't give that short answer no that's
00:39:05.940no that's good and that's you know that's one of the things that we
00:39:10.980like that we get from you is a is a complete answer if these were one word answer shows um
00:39:20.740they'd be uh we could keep it within an hour the fact that they're not is
00:39:24.260because we're talking about deep concepts that are more mature and more nuanced than that um
00:39:35.940kind of a point that i'd like to make is
00:39:41.940when we and and we all do this to one degree or another but this is
00:39:45.700this goes along with the theme that i spoke of earlier of re-examining the why
00:39:54.100you guys may have heard me talk about this on the program before but
00:39:57.700But our lore, the vast majority of our lore, comes to us from an early medieval source
00:40:15.380that is painting the early medieval version of Viking history in the way it portrays our
00:40:25.800gods and our lore and our supernatural uh supernatural um metaphysical reality um
00:40:37.080and it does that with the imagery that speaks to the audience it was written for
00:40:43.880and i think because that's the time frame that things were recorded in and stories were told in
00:40:49.800we all conceptualize things through a through a viking lens a lot of the time
00:40:59.320it's important to realize that these truths that our lore teaches us
00:41:09.640are truths that were equally true in the most ancient
00:41:14.840context that far predates the viking age these things were true when we were wandering germanic
00:41:25.480tribesmen these things were true when we were constructing stone circles and neolithic things
00:41:35.560these things were true in the old stone age these things were true when our people first
00:41:43.080got that divine breath of life and goodly hue and spirit in them.
00:41:52.520So that image, as was told to our Neolithic ancestors, was probably, the picture that was
00:42:02.760painted for them was probably in very different shades with very different points of reference
00:42:10.680and very different imagery the truth remains the same and i think that's very important
00:42:19.000for us to realize that and to not get hyper literal on all the points of lore um early on
00:42:29.720you know very seriously people want to have lore discussions as if it's a narrative in a in a
00:42:41.960fiction book to where you can talk about the elements of it in a matter-of-fact debate
00:42:50.360somebody seriously when i first got started was asking me
00:42:53.240taken for a given that thor is as strong as he is and as large as he is
00:42:59.900about his caloric consumption in the course of a day to be able to do those things or to be able
00:43:06.460to you know like man if he could eat you know x number of oxen at this giant's feast wow in order
00:43:12.980to do that and to digest his metabolism would have been you know like this and that and he
00:43:17.380have had to have you know be this large or have this big of a stomach capacity and and that all
00:43:23.940misses the point tremendously so when we think of the iron hair yard we
00:43:36.900it is a beautiful image to picture a magnificent great hall with gilded
00:43:59.980and sitting there with you know your comrades
00:44:04.780and going out on the field and fighting with sword and shield
00:44:08.280and then you know celebrating at the end of the day to do it
00:44:12.860all over again the imagery is beautiful we all do that and if you ask swan or i to draw a picture
00:44:18.540of it right now it's exactly what we would draw we all get that but the bigger truth is
00:44:26.140much more along the lines of our gods welcoming
00:44:32.860our souls the condensed part of our soul that ascends into something greater than we were
00:44:42.140into a state of existence to where we get to commune with them more directly
00:44:48.860that sharing of our meals of story of drink of meals that's been so essential to our human
00:44:58.140culture even to this day in building bonds of of familiarity of family of friendship of relationship
00:45:07.100up that is expressed by the idea of feasting in the halls of our gods you know we're not
00:45:18.940just sitting there eating delicious pork and drinking mead um the experience is much is likely
00:45:28.600much more um much less tied to the physical things that we're all so accustomed to in this existence
00:45:39.000there's nothing wrong with that but what gets wrong with it is when you have that image in
00:45:44.020your head and fight tooth and nail to make sure the guidance next to you's image matches your
00:45:49.160image when we're arguing over the uh insignificancies of the message so the truth of the
00:45:58.920iron yard the fact that our gods choose mortals who are of worth that have
00:46:07.480surpassed the mundane existence of of humanity to be something more and then have welcomed them to a
00:46:19.840place closer to our gods themselves a place in a more favored and more personal relationship
00:46:28.460with our gods that is an extremely special thing and that's that's the bones of of that truth
00:46:37.820and i think that's what what's being celebrated now the i being shown in a battlefield context
00:46:44.960and i think that in the history of humanity the battlefield has always been the most
00:46:51.140poetic example of that and something about the life or death adrenal nature of that situation
00:47:02.400allows for ascension in a way that isn't quite as dramatic in other in other aspects
00:47:12.520but there's something that's been remarked on time and again of people overcoming human limitation
00:47:24.140to have battlefield bravery for whatever that might be maybe they're overcome with the berserker gang
00:47:32.680and they're in an altered state dealing out death to their foes
00:47:37.660um maybe they're just that gung-ho for the cause that they're out there for
00:47:43.580um maybe their personal warrior prowess is such that they
00:47:51.040prove it in that ultimate proving ground maybe it's out of you know protection of the men next
00:48:00.740to them, any number of things, but there's circumstances, and we see this with Medal
00:48:09.460of Honor recipients, we see it with Iron Cross recipients, we see it with
00:48:13.700what's the French medal from World War I that the guys got?
00:48:27.240decorations that exemplify people that have become something different in crisis that has made them
00:48:37.480something more and something to be celebrated and revered and that's that's the concept that
00:48:44.360illustrates the einherjar so i think that's really important that said
00:48:51.480face of the iron here is not just about celebrating those people it's an evolution
00:48:58.840of Veterans Day which is an evolution of European peoples celebrating a time of remembrance for
00:49:10.200the fallen and for soldiers in the ones right and the ones currently standing on the wall
00:49:18.600yes yeah so that is that's what it is and it doesn't it can be built upon and made much more
00:49:27.560special but at its fundamentals those are the things that are fundamental to know about it
00:49:32.840um from where i'm sitting not sure if we have any questions related to it in the queue yet i haven't
00:49:41.480seen a lot of questions that are directly related to the topic but you know how this goes that all
00:49:47.720it goes where you guys take us well and i i do have some some things that uh i want to bring up
00:49:54.600to please in relation to the mystery of the einherjar um one of the things that's worth noting
00:50:01.240is even in the in the time of germania's or in tacitus's germania you know he speaks about how
00:50:09.720the, um, the Germanic people give sacrifice to, um, and I, I know if, if anybody's familiar with
00:50:18.980it, um, he used, he Romanizes, I'm not going to do that for right now, just for sake of
00:50:24.720conversation. We're just going to cut right into, um, that, you know, that we, that, that our folk
00:50:31.440gave sacrifice to, to, um, Tyr or, you know, Tehu, um, Tyr and Thor and Odin. They gave stately
00:50:45.040sacrifice to Tyr and, and Thor, and then they gave a great amount of sacrifice, um, to, to Odin.
00:50:54.800And I think that, that, that explains a great amount, even though it doesn't say very much.
00:51:00.540it's first and foremost stately the word kind of meaning tribal nation-based um victory seen from
00:51:09.800the warrior aspect of Thor or the warrior aspect of Tyr is about the individual's strength in
00:51:16.980unison together conquering and and maintaining the borders of the nation it's it's about victory for
00:51:24.300the people, the living people. I think Woven is also that, but more in the sense that the individual
00:51:33.100warriors wanted to be ascendant. They wanted to rise up. They wanted to do that. And this was
00:51:43.160one of those moments where they could relinquish those things, laying down their life for defense
00:51:49.560of the folk and you know attaining great fame and the idea was is if they weren't um slain or if
00:51:56.600they weren't uh you know taken down the the possibility for glory in the living sense was
00:52:04.680there and the other thing was is that they kind of played on uh again the choosing itself is if
00:52:13.480you know that you're gonna like there's no chance that you can know that you're being chosen because
00:52:19.400that kind of stifles the possibility of is your genuine is your greatness is your relinquishing
00:52:26.000of the self and the rising up to the situation truly authentic and that's why it's so important
00:52:32.760that odin is known as the chooser of the slain or the chooser of the of the ascendant or the
00:52:40.300chooser of he's the one that adjudicates the ascendancy and that's why i think there was a
00:52:45.460great amount of sacrifices placed to him was that they wanted to exemplify in piety that they were
00:52:55.480willing and able and ready to rise up to those occasions. And they understood that that might
00:53:01.040not be the, you know, that might not be their, their understanding is not a guarantee. It's,
00:53:07.100it's on Odin's side. And so good graces is, is a, you know, that's in the relationship with us
00:53:14.300and the gods, there is a sense of being in good graces and good honoring. I certainly wouldn't
00:53:19.280say they're trying to placate or bargain as more as it is just an open representation of I'm ready
00:53:26.380and I am so ready. I wish you to know this. And so in the giving act, they're explaining
00:53:32.760that they're ready. And I think that that's a really important distinction to understand and
00:53:38.940why that might have been written the way it was written. Because I think that Thor and Tyr are
00:53:44.760deeply connected to warrior ethos and culture, but it's about the nation, the surviving nation,
00:53:52.340the borders, the substantiation of what you gain in victory or what you have to maintain.
00:53:58.600And Odin is that, but is also the psycho pump, the desire to be ascendant, to be chosen.
00:54:07.460And I think that plays a lot in the saga of Eil Skala Grimson.
00:54:13.200You 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.
00:54:28.620And I don't think he shied away from the ocean.
00:54:33.020I don't think he shied away from battle.
00:54:36.180I 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.
00:54:45.240And 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.
00:55:00.880But again, Odin is the one that chooses.
00:55:03.880and it's again when does he choose because i think a lot of people get into the ideas like
00:55:08.020it has to be in battle that's when he chooses and that i think owen i mean we have examples
00:55:14.060of it culturally in which our ancestors did not see it that way when they when they spoke of um
00:55:21.980uh halk on the good who's a christian and spoke of him uh you know rising up into the halls of
00:55:31.520of Valhall because he chose to follow the way of his ancestors in his funerary rites or of,
00:55:39.640you know, Eric, the blood acts and, and his commemoration into, um, a lot of people,
00:55:46.000he had a lot of enemies, even A.L. Sculler Grimson was his enemy, but he did bloody the
00:55:51.280benches and he did fight, you know, he never stepped away from his warrior ethos. Um,
00:56:00.360Um, you know, and it's debated as to whether or not he died in battle. I, I believe he did, but
00:56:05.320there's people that are going kind of back and forth on that, that he might've been assassinated,
00:56:08.900but even ale skull of Grimson's sons, he talks about his son. One, one, uh, was, was, uh, lost
00:56:15.820to illness and the other two to drowning. And he spoke of hoping that they were also ascendant and
00:56:23.020chosen so i i think that it's really important that we get away from uh you know my battle
00:56:31.100my slain um the kind of idea that you know that's i know how owen works and owen's gonna choose me
00:56:39.420if i die in battle and that's the only way and that's like one no you don't get to say that and
00:56:45.900two uh there's lots of examples that it's not always the case but the ethos of a warrior is
00:56:51.740built around the idea of stepping up to that and it like uh in avola's metaphysics of war he talks
00:56:59.740at great length of the i the idea and concept of reward by relinquishing the self and stepping up to
00:57:08.060being a holy warrior and so that's what i would propose too is in modern sense in this day and
00:57:15.900age can we see ourselves as enacting ourselves in a holy sense um that we are we are stepping up to
00:57:26.140guide our folk to defend our families um to bring the gods to the folk and you know even i i i've
00:57:34.860heard so many people over the many years saying like that they're they're weary because of whether
00:57:42.460it's like, I guess, internet, um, resistance or internet, uh, boogeyman or, or whatever
00:57:52.120it might be, or straight out, even physical, they're, they're weary of stepping forward
01:07:36.700there are folks that do heroic things but are not themselves heroes and i think there's
01:07:43.100certainly levels of that i think something else that we would do well to remember is
01:07:59.260For 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.
01:08:12.420Every one of us has told a lie at some point in our lives that does not make us liars per se.
01:08:22.300If 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.
01:08:34.960Every one of us has chosen not to do something for sake of fear.
01:25:38.620So the second half of the same question,
01:25:41.580also has there ever been a time when you felt insane swan have you ever felt insane no um
01:25:54.360uh yes a couple of ways i could take that is um i think coming back from the military
01:26:09.040There 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.
01:26:29.020I think that I was unaware of a lot of things and I was kind of thrashing in a miasma.
01:26:36.700I was in, in some sort of torpid sleep that, and my body was just going back and forth. But
01:26:43.900for some reason, I wasn't actually aware of what was going on around me.
01:26:47.900And then slowly over the span of about a decade, um, you know, I think, I think clarity came about,
01:26:57.540came about in a lot of different ways um i think you know letting go of
01:27:03.940some of the things i was using to medicate my my issues from the military i think i was i was
01:27:11.460drinking too much i was searching uh and and finding myself in the company of of people that
01:27:19.620didn't have my my best interests in heart or perhaps my my interests were coalesced with
01:27:24.980theirs but those weren't the right interests i think i was really absolutely searching for
01:27:29.140so i felt insane for almost i mean small amounts or like i would say like peaks and valleys
01:27:35.860throughout a decade of kind of ultimately coming home and not having the home or coming to the
01:27:44.980realization of things without and not understanding how i didn't have this realization from the
01:27:50.900beginning and and coming to contention with that within myself and eventually it it smoothed itself
01:27:59.060out there you know i i met my my wife i you know the children i think you know coming into the afa
01:28:06.580and being oriented towards her uh goals and and then realizing uh just speaking to a friend of
01:28:13.060mind this morning about how we went from also true that was kind of a internal and perhaps even
01:28:22.020in a negative sense or maybe in a cynical sense i'm saying that it was like a
01:28:27.940uh exercise of edginess or or just being different and expressing oneself and
01:28:35.540groups of people getting together and kind of feeling like yeah you know we're we're doing
01:28:39.780this together and then it shifted to no we're doing this for the gods we want the gods to
01:28:47.220notice us we want the gods to see our deeds we want our and suddenly it shifted it was like
01:28:52.500almost like everything was in a shell and then it just broke out and went beaming across and
01:29:00.260night and day difference between what was going on and what we were doing and and what i was doing
01:29:06.660and why i was motivated to do what i was doing and um so yeah it was a long and kind of uh
01:29:18.260jarring displacement from where i am today and i think that i i still have bouts now and then where
01:29:26.900i begin to to question myself but i think that that's normal i think that
01:29:31.460if you're not constantly questioning yourself and you're not asking like
01:29:34.820like, am I doing this right? Am I doing this correctly? Am I, am I insane right now? Or,
01:29:41.280you know, you're constantly kind of tweaking yourself. That's, that's normal. But I used
01:29:46.760to be afraid of it. I used to deny it. I used to try to do other things to relinquish away from it.
01:29:52.260Now I look at it as it's, it's more, uh, constructive criticism of the self,
01:29:59.680as opposed to I'm wrong. I'm doing something terrible. I'm thinking the wrong way. I'm not,
01:30:06.180or I don't understand why I'm thinking this way. Now it's, it's, um, it's about figuring it out.
01:30:13.400Why am I thinking this way? Should I, should I look at things this way or that way? And so you
01:30:18.100kind of end up harnessing it. And I think a lot of people nowadays feel insane because
01:30:21.860they haven't quite figured out. Um, and they, they end up trying to self-medicate with alcohol or,
01:30:28.380or, um, they get extremely obsessed about strange things or, and what that really is
01:30:35.580just bubbling up is that they haven't come to, uh, an understanding of and settling themselves
01:30:42.020and purifying themselves out and, and realizing that, you know, there are good things that need
01:30:47.000to be done. There are good people that need to be met. There are, you know, good moments that
01:30:51.940we have to achieve and um and that's worth doing and getting there any way shape and form with
01:31:02.840those intentions in mind are the best way to do it and getting rid of the things that stop you
01:31:08.820from that if there are things that you're doing that are impeding you from these realizations
01:31:14.160those are the things probably driving you crazy those are the things that are making your your
01:31:18.980I guess sanity, porous, if you will, in my opinion.
01:31:31.540It's a strange question because I don't think...
01:31:34.260so the definition of insane or at least the etymology of insane because i think that's
01:31:49.220better than definitions definitions have political undertones and nonsense to them
01:31:57.300um but it's from the latin and it means not sound or not healthy
01:32:06.020and but it's obviously applied in a a mental health sense and i think that you know any of us
01:32:18.260who are adults you know that have been around for long enough have had periods where
01:32:26.340didn't feel like we were mentally healthy um but i think when we use the term insane it
01:32:34.500has an element of scariness and danger that you know i'm having a rough time doesn't um
01:32:45.540and i think that you know some of that's
01:32:47.060it's become very stigmatized and scary to admit to mental health problems
01:32:57.060because you feel like people wouldn't trust you or well if they broke once maybe you'll break
01:33:04.520again you know when's the next you know mental defect coming in that's that's concerning and i
01:33:12.060think that's really unfortunate there's so much stigma and mental health but it's also
01:33:16.800understandable you know if somebody's acting irrationally and dangerously so it certainly
01:33:25.900makes me have pause to trust them with certain responsibilities or so i get that um but it's
01:33:36.040hard because when reflecting on oneself it's you know hey matt have you ever been insane well no
01:33:44.960of course not well matt have you ever had any mental health things have you ever had times
01:33:51.520where you didn't feel like you were all right mentally or where you were going through something
01:33:54.680you didn't understand or where you weren't perceiving reality in a in a rational way or
01:34:02.160a way that you know was was healthy or appropriate that's right well no but i'm trying to give
01:34:09.280because again on here and please consider this if you're the guy asking the question
01:34:15.280i want to answer the specific person's question but i also want to answer the question broadly
01:34:21.360for those who are listening that didn't get a chance to ask maybe they're listening later
01:34:25.120or maybe you know they didn't think to step up and ask um
01:34:32.160Yeah. 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.
01:34:49.220I 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.
01:35:09.620the one thing because I was getting again it was a new experience I was a new father
01:35:17.420and I was really stressed out because you got a baby that's keeping you up all night
01:35:25.120and adding all kind of crazy baby nonsense to your life and whatever else so
01:35:34.040So I play with my camera here. I'm still dealing with this robot camera, figuring it out.
01:35:47.660There was a thing. So most of you have probably not been in my house, but there's a
01:35:53.740like balcony area hallway thing at the top of my stairs that overlaps the entryway.
01:36:02.340and it's plenty wide where there's not a concern but i had this overriding like intrusive thought
01:36:09.300loop thing that wouldn't get out of my head about worrying about i'd be carrying aubrey and
01:36:16.020something would happen and maybe i would drop her over the edge so i was like hyper
01:36:19.940concerned about that for a period of time and it wasn't like a scary insane thing but it was like
01:36:26.100no i couldn't stop obsessing about it for a period it was it was odd um
01:36:32.260i've had times in my life too especially when i was younger um
01:36:40.180especially with uh relationship things when i was first you know first
01:36:47.620i don't know a couple of different times when i was dating somebody and i couldn't
01:36:51.140i don't like being out of control of stuff and so when there's things or actions to where i'm stuck
01:37:00.980with no ability to affect them i just have to worry about the outcome of them that i've become
01:37:10.740you know mentally unwell about especially when i was when i was younger and
01:37:17.140and felt completely at the whims of other people
01:37:22.140and wasn't able to affect certain situations.
01:37:40.220and in a less, you know, non-healthy way.
01:37:45.880I 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.
01:37:56.820That's one of the most difficult things for me to reconcile now.
01:38:02.020but you know i don't think there's a lot of times i would certainly that i wouldn't consider myself
01:38:08.020insane but i don't think i've had periods of concerning mental like poor mental health
01:38:21.540but it's a it's a hard question to answer and i'm
01:38:27.460it's important to me to always give you guys the truth on here so i'm not trying to like shy away
01:38:31.380from self-reflection or or whatever there's definitely times to where like i'll get over
01:38:37.700stimulated that's something that'll happen a lot i'll get over stimulated by stuff to where
01:38:43.460i can't focus i can't maintain like one of okay so a little bit of inside inside the afa stuff
01:38:53.540i am not naturally a note taker or a like list schedule maker on things
01:39:01.380But 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.
01:39:22.500There'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.
01:39:35.900I really try to give as much of myself to this as I can, and I want to get everything right.
01:39:44.620and so i'll find myself frantically trying to do a hundred things when my brain has a capacity to
01:39:57.420hold 20 things at one time so stuff's getting missed or dropped and i'm that's a thing that
01:40:05.340that's kind of a often a stressor with me and especially the trouble focusing
01:40:10.620with Aubrey. She just so happened to walk in the room, but kids are insistent and they make noise
01:40:18.500and they don't necessarily understand when you just need a moment to think on stuff.
01:40:24.380So that's tricky sometimes. But yeah, I think that's the best I've got to answer the question.
01:40:34.400Our next question from Finn Wraith. Are there places in the military where people
01:40:47.920practice Ausatru like they might practice Christianity?
01:40:52.360so it's fun um as someone who's served what what do you have to answer that question i'm
01:41:07.240again this is a member or this is a guy from finland asking a question
01:41:13.800well i think one thing at the time that i was in i had to claim no preference on my
01:41:19.400dog tags um in relation to it they didn't have any official services um i was pretty
01:41:30.200adamant on and and bear in mind there was i i wow uh now in context to everything
01:41:39.320um i had a power of attorney and a will and the power of attorney and will um would then turn into
01:41:45.800what they would do with my body and i was i was very very adamant with um i didn't want any uh
01:41:51.720you know christian or jewish or muslim services held over over my remains um and that was about
01:41:58.360the extent of all i could do there was no place to go um at the time i was stationed so i was
01:42:05.800stationed in hawaii which made it even worse in the sense that i was so far away from the mainland of
01:42:12.120of of my uh nation and um and then uh then 9 11 happened and i pretty much just never saw the
01:42:22.560island again but and we were constantly on the move but um so a lot of things that were done
01:42:28.300were done just simply by my own volition um i couldn't set up a harrow in a lot of the places
01:42:35.620i was at whether i was in a ship or um you know whether i was on a small base um you know in
01:42:42.660mindanao or east timor or iraq or all of these places so a lot of times it was done you know
01:42:50.900at the moment bare bone canteen cups and and all of that um so yeah there's absolutely no
01:42:59.940There'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.
01:43:17.300Um, but the, uh, the other thing I noticed is that they try to make leagues, the chaplain
01:43:25.420would, uh, uh, Christian chaplain, I don't know of what denomination would try to make
01:43:29.500inroads with certain, uh, say like satellite faiths in the sense I would say is, um, people
01:43:38.260that would come to the bases and say that they wanted to talk to people of a particular
01:43:44.340faith or whatever they might have. And it was pretty extensive. I think the only person that
01:43:50.300like, or only, only faith that wasn't really there was like Scientology, but everything else was
01:43:56.400there surprisingly. So I even see like Baha'is and Sikhs and so on and so forth. And, and generally
01:44:06.300and unfortunately, Ausatru gets lumped in with neo-paganism. And neo-paganism is generally,
01:44:14.880you know, heralded by people who do not see ethnic faiths as ethnic faiths. They don't see
01:44:26.100the religion of the Gauls or the Germanics or whatever branches of Aryan peoples as being
01:44:33.380ethnic faiths these are just uh to them i don't i don't know what they would consider hobby faiths
01:44:39.460or something available to anyone or you know if you're just feeling particularly edgy at hot topic
01:44:45.700and you want to um be cool and and and have people clutch their pearls come on down um they were kind
01:44:54.020of like of that so i really didn't find a lot of stock in it um as far as the military goes no
01:45:00.820places in particular um so you know i did i searched for others and again being way far away
01:45:09.460in hawaii um and then to being actively moving all the time in my unit um you know even if there was
01:45:17.940somebody who was um they weren't in my company like they they might they could have been in
01:45:23.940the next like a lima company or something of that nature and i would never know and half the time i
01:45:31.380you know we were on rotating schedules so we weren't even around when those people were around
01:45:36.100so constantly moving and i think things have gotten better but again the moment you consider
01:45:41.780this an ethnic faith and your ethnicity has this skin tone with it um you have a general uh sense
01:45:48.980that they're not going to be conducive with you so um again i you know i always tell folks if
01:45:56.580they're out there moving around and they're in the military and um they want to practice the faith of
01:46:02.260their people reach out to a folk builder and go out and and meet people but beyond that you're
01:46:08.900not going to find anything institutionally within the the government that's going to or within the
01:46:14.740military that's going to accommodate you but that's okay i mean we we have rustic beginnings
01:46:20.900in ausa true where people have you know honored the gods solely by themselves and we
01:46:28.180want to coalesce the community but for many many years i did things by myself and um this was even
01:46:33.780before the internet was really a thing there were internet cafes but the internet was slow and it
01:46:38.740was depending on if you were on a list and so on and so forth so nowadays we've got lots of
01:46:46.100avenues to contact with people and connect with people and get things going we have this
01:46:50.340you know you can go to youtube now that was not a thing when i get back in the uh
01:46:55.540at 99 2000 that was not at all a thing but no it continues they do have now you can get a
01:47:04.340mjolnir as a symbol of our faith and i think that is a correct symbol of our faith um it's uh
01:47:11.380recognized easily and so you can now claim also true on your dog tags and you can if you are
01:47:18.020buried in a government um funeral like arlington or um actually before i say arlington i know that
01:47:26.820there are certain cemeteries and i won't specifically name one or over the other that
01:47:32.500allow you to have a mjolnir on your um yours your headstone so there is that um but now you have
01:47:42.660hoffs that you can you can get you know buried by by your people and and and be cared caretaked over
01:47:49.700by gothar of your people so things have changed since i was there yeah my uh
01:47:57.060any of my interaction with it has been you know from the outside looking in um
01:48:07.380but i was at a uh i was at a funeral of early on when that first became a thing
01:48:17.700of a guy uh clark willan weber who was a veteran and he got military you have a certain i'm not
01:48:28.420the right words on this but they'll give you a headstone even if you're not on an installation
01:48:35.860um for where wherever you are buried so this guy was buried on a or his uh ashes were interned on
01:48:43.220a private um cemetery but he had a you know proper you know military um grave marker and
01:48:53.780it had had the mjolnir on it um and then in 2020 i was tremendously honored um
01:49:06.260um if you guys anyways a young a young marine um died in a training accident uh lance corporal
01:49:18.900chase sweetwood and his family had reached out and asked if i perform i love you baby good night
01:49:27.780anyways so they asked if i would perform uh his funeral and i actually did that um
01:49:36.260uh down on the installation in uh in san diego that was really interesting and i was very very
01:49:45.540honored to be able to do that and it was extra you know strange and uh kind of a privilege because
01:49:54.180that was during all of the covet hysteria to where
01:49:58.340there was distancing things and mask things and
01:50:05.980but we made that all work and it was yeah that was a tremendous honor for me to be able to be
01:50:13.340there for him and his family but that was you know on an installation recognized there's the
01:50:19.680color guard and stuff so um yeah that's my only interaction with that
01:50:27.520and that that's a good testament to where it's it's come i mean that would have been amazing
01:50:32.940if i was in the military and and something like that could have happened for me um so that's a
01:50:40.920huge i'm glad that you did not have the occasion to have that no i guess yeah but it would be i
01:50:47.560mean that's amazing that you could do that and and there's just they have an infrastructure
01:50:52.060of the chaplains um they don't like necessarily have imams or uh rabbis in the military
01:51:01.660uh or other you know clergy what they generally have is the chaplain corps and they are generally
01:51:08.000christian but they open up avenues for um other faiths to meet and congregate and they'll have
01:51:16.420clergy come in and now they have us as well and you know that's cool that's that's amazing
01:51:26.180so for a lighter question what color are your power tools mine are turquoise
01:51:34.580spawn what color are your power tools turquoise wait i'm immediately trying to think is that like
01:51:39.860old ryobis because i remember them being turquoise and and i got um i got i got frankenstein stuff
01:51:49.300ryobi milwaukee the wall so you know red and red and what's the dark black or gray
01:51:57.700uh yellow and black and and the new ryobi color is like uh snot green and and black
01:52:06.820so i i lose some of my man points on this one that's why i try to build them up um for my for
01:52:13.940my pink uh fruity drinks with the umbrellas in it and for situations like this um the color of
01:52:20.420my power tools is the color of the power tools somebody hands me uh i will use other people's
01:52:27.380power tools but uh do not have many power tools of my own because i am not handy um
01:52:36.820Yeah. 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.
01:52:53.840Exposure trimmers are technically power tools.
01:52:57.240Oh, yes. In that case, cold steel and black. That's, that's what I prefer.
01:53:05.020and your curlers or whatever that hood is you put over the ladies heads that gives them i don't i
01:53:12.080can't cut women's hair i don't do any no ladies in the shop i mean they can come and visit with
01:53:17.100their men folk but i'm not cutting any i i cut my wife's hair once and it was probably the worst
01:53:23.940experience for both of us ever cautionary tale all right oh yeah that's all right sorry i've read
01:53:37.620that yeah so next question my mother asks what are the holidays and can you list them for someone
01:53:46.260who is unfamiliar so you know as i indicated earlier in the show there's one for each month
01:53:52.580We also, in addition to that, have Days of Remembrance, and those are on the calendar.
01:53:59.980If you ask me to list those in order, I would embarrass myself a little bit by not getting them.
01:54:05.440But the holidays are Thorobloat in January, Charming of the Plow in February, Ostara in March, Hexenacht in April.
01:54:22.580May 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.
02:14:36.480And I 100% agree that telling folks, being a beacon of light for them to come home,
02:14:42.740to have the ethnic faith of their soul and their blood and their people is important.
02:14:49.800But I'll be honest, at the time I was in the military,
02:14:53.620one, I wasn't fully aware of the importance of that.
02:14:56.640so um i mean it's it's kind of uh i'm not it's i'm reluctant to say it simply
02:15:04.200just because it's not i'm not proud of it but i guess you know becoming aware of things
02:15:11.440is a process of being ignorant at some point that's how you measure your awareness
02:15:16.520and i was ignorant of those things back then i i think too i think the the faith for me
02:15:23.160was more of an internalized warrior ethos mixed with orthopraxy. I was praying and giving
02:15:34.360gift and bloat to the gods, but I was doing it entirely on myself. I looked for others who may
02:15:41.440have decided to do the same, but I did not see it in a communal sense. But I think that also
02:15:49.680kind of coalesces with the time in my life. I was not a, I was a young man and I wasn't in a
02:15:54.320communal sense. I was in a tribal sense. Um, I joined the Marine Corps to be part of a, a tribe,
02:16:00.940if you will. Um, and to test myself and prove myself. So at that time, I think it was really,
02:16:06.840really internally facing as far as, uh, the development of my faith and my practice.
02:16:14.060If 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.
02:16:28.300But I was never afraid, nor was I ever – I would never shy away.
02:16:33.940i i think that i explained when i held a bloat on the euphrates river in iraq and um i had one uh
02:16:45.220one two guys like that were i was in charge of i was responsible for one was folk and one was
02:16:51.220non-folk and um they were good guys they were really really good but they were really young
02:16:57.140and they pretty much like like ducklings i had to constantly keep them around because whenever
02:17:03.140if we were called for something we would have to all react together and so being out in the field
02:17:09.380and stuff and i i would you know if i if you're going off to you know uh pray and give give blow
02:17:16.980these two young kids didn't they wanted to know like what are you doing so i explained it to them
02:17:21.860explained everything to them i think that um for the most part they just respected it uh when we
02:17:28.500lost people we would generally um there would be a chaplain and also a psychiatrist that would come
02:17:36.660out to uh analyze us and this was um a point of entertainment slash inquisitiveness from our
02:17:47.780translator who was he was a kurd so i'm assuming he was the kurds uh have a lot of communist
02:17:55.220tendencies from i guess the soviets and so they have a tendency to be not very uh i don't think
02:18:01.140they have a religious motivation so he was interested in what i was doing and why there
02:18:08.980was a chaplain there when someone you know passed away or why there was this other person and he
02:18:13.540asked 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
02:18:18.740thought that that was kind of odd um but he also noticed i you know during services i paid respects
02:18:26.660but i i wasn't um particularly involved in say christian services i wasn't taking a knee
02:18:34.420to yahweh or anything like that i refused to do that but i i commemorated my fallen brothers um
02:18:41.940and then we had our own ceremonies to do that but yeah it was um as far as
02:18:48.740preaching i think the only time i've ever was um someone asked if they could read
02:18:55.440the halvamal which is a a great um poem and or text in our faith and uh they thought it was
02:19:05.780super interesting and they wanted to read it but we were reading a lot of things simply out of
02:19:10.780we were in the middle of nowhere so we were constantly consuming um literature for the
02:19:17.700sake of it. I read some books that I would have never read if I wasn't out in the middle of
02:19:24.140nowhere. But yeah, that beyond that, not much. It was afterwards when I really started gearing
02:19:32.540towards joining community when I got back home.
02:19:43.620So next question, what highlights do you foresee for the AFA in 2024?
02:39:04.120It'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?
02:39:19.080We 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.
02:39:39.680And it's like, there's nothing stating that we can't think that big.
02:39:45.520Could 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.
02:39:58.060So I'm really, really proud of both of those.
02:41:12.920It'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.
02:41:38.280But not in just general terms, but with benchmarks and with concrete things to achieve and build from.
02:41:50.860Keeping the focus on positivity as opposed.
02:41:56.100And 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.
02:42:12.540It takes constant effort, diligence, and persistence to stay above that and to keep an upward trajectory.
02:42:26.100If we just stop, then the course of nature is to cycle into destruction.
02:42:36.760Keeping 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.
02:50:56.900Reach 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.
02:51:12.160about better ways to do that, things to learn from it, things to do, things to not do.
02:51:20.680But do is the key word. It's the most important part is that you are doing this and making it
02:51:27.700real. That said, as Nick kind of confirmed to me on the side here, do House of Truth stuff
03:07:40.380As 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.
03:08:08.600And 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.
03:08:24.460And 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.
03:08:38.600I can't read things from Scandinavia written at that time because our people, you know, the Germanic folk didn't write at that time.
03:08:50.160um but there were absolutely and it is obvious that there were priests there was a structure
03:09:05.100there was buildings there was groves there was hoffs there were sacrifices there were
03:09:12.740celebration, the way that you have nice things is by people
03:09:19.340contributing proportionally to those nice things. In our
03:09:27.260research, we find, you know, references to Hofftoller being
03:09:33.380a tax that was levied to support Hoffs and Gotham. When I first
03:09:42.500came, I'll tell you, I looked around to see how other religions funded things, how they were
03:09:50.520able to accomplish things they accomplished. The secret is contribution. In industrialized
03:10:01.060society, contribution equals dollars. That's just real. It's our way of exchanging value
03:10:10.860you between things, and it's how we are able to have nice things. For a long time, when I first
03:10:18.420started, and this is kind of meandering, but okay. When I first was, you know, earlier in my experience
03:10:26.380with the AFA, when a member was suffering a hard time, people wanted to gather cans of food and
03:10:35.120somehow ship those to them or ah well i have a extra jacket i could send for their kid
03:10:43.600there's a lot of things that you can do but it becomes exponentially expensive and difficult
03:10:50.000and impractical when it's stuff when it's money when it's fluid when it's fehu you can
03:10:59.120send that and then they can get exactly what they need
03:11:02.560um watching our ability to help each other by like oh well we could have some cans of food at
03:11:09.740the hoff or we could do a fundraiser we could donate spendable money to folk services or to
03:11:16.820a specific folk services campaign we've been able to very significantly help a lot of families and
03:11:24.140a lot of people in the afa have come on hard times and needed stuff and that's been a really noble
03:11:30.500thing um so anyway so i was looking at uh funding and how it works and i know that i'm not gonna
03:11:40.740the the hoftoller is absolutely the same thing as the tithe other than tithe means 10th and we're
03:11:47.140asking for one percent minimum i will take 10 if you are willing to donate that that is tremendous
03:11:56.740and it would be very much appreciated if every afa member gave 10 we would
03:12:05.940roughly just based on numbers that i'm aware of if everybody in the afa gave 10
03:12:10.740of their income we would be able to do
03:12:16.740probably 25 times what we're able to do currently which is tremendous if you think about it
03:12:23.940that's a hundred hoffs we've got four we'd have a hundred if everybody's given ten percent
03:12:30.260not saying everybody needs to do that what i do ask what we are trying to do we've been
03:12:34.420working on this slowly think since i believe 2020 but it could have been started in 2019
03:12:41.620is the hoftoller which is um setting up to where one percent a minimum of one percent i know people
03:12:50.660who do 10 i know more people that do five i know some that do two percent three percent
03:12:57.460but at least one percent of your income towards the afa there's ways to set it up in the united
03:13:07.220states through your employer to where that comes out i believe pre-tax and is advantageous i mean
03:13:15.460it can just be done through your paycheck and things and you don't know you don't miss it and
03:13:21.620we really appreciate it there's a magic that comes with numbers if everyone donated a little
03:13:30.100bit of something that they didn't even notice that they weren't even going to miss if every afa
03:13:34.820member did that it would equal a huge result we have this exponential multiplying factor if
03:13:42.420everybody just gave a little so that has been tremendously important the folks that have
03:13:48.260stepped up and donated on hoff toller i think that's why we've seen the rapid increase in
03:13:53.620hoffs that we've seen in that exact same time period um but yeah that's how that's set up but
03:13:59.620there's infinite ways to do it if you're your own you know if you're a private contractor you run
03:14:08.100your own business you're an entrepreneur or whatever there are ways to set it up you can
03:14:13.060do it one lump sum a year you can do it quarterly you can do it weekly you can do it daily if you
03:14:18.740want to but figuring that out is a massive key to us being able to move forward and accomplish
03:14:27.380the dreams that we set out to do that if everybody at the afa got on the hoftoller the one percent
03:14:34.180hoff toller um tomorrow there's no question we'd have new york soft paid off we probably have it
03:14:41.700paid off first half of uh 2024 um so anybody wanting to do that their folk builder is happy
03:14:50.660to set them up with that again there's lots of ways to do it doesn't have to be done through
03:14:54.820an employer that's just a really convenient way in the united states you can do it by check you
03:15:01.460can do it through your bank card you can do it through a wire transfer you can hand your folk
03:15:08.260builder cash you can do it through cryptocurrency you the thing is it's flexible and and it's a
03:15:16.580trust thing and there's ways to to do that in a way that works for everybody the answer is always
03:15:22.660yes on how to make that work um so it's important to keep in mind and it's uh it's super helpful
03:15:31.140we still have this stigma and i'm trying to just shake it off but we're all uncomfortable
03:15:35.140talking about money i'm uncomfortable talking about it but it's how we're able to have nice
03:15:40.580things and it's how we're able to honor the gods in a way that's worthy of them
03:15:48.740there's no shame in success there's no shame in money there's no shame in
03:15:55.940talking about resources if we're using those resources to lift up our folk to glorify our
03:16:06.260gods to support things that we all find value from um it's a really important thing and I think it's
03:16:14.120something that people need to be more comfortable talking about I appreciate everyone listening's
03:16:20.660generosity, not just in, be they have, you know, if they're doing membership dues or if they're
03:16:27.780doing Hofftoller. And that's the thing. When I came in, it was a dues-based organization.
03:16:35.300Sometimes you get in these, well, what do I get for my dues? It's not what this is about.
03:16:42.400we are a church. It's not about paying for a good or a service. It's about giving of yourself
03:16:52.860and of your wealth to our gods, to our church, and to making the religion of Alcetra move forward.
03:17:02.380Everything you donate to the AFA is an offering to the gods. It's an act of piety.
03:17:08.560um and honestly i'm very impressed and proud we do a really good job with the small amount that
03:17:20.660the relatively small amount that we bring in we're able to do amazing things with
03:17:26.920so that's that's a key to making that spectacular in the future one of the other points of hoff
03:17:35.040that i think is really important percentages are infinitely fair if you are literally homeless and
03:17:41.760you panhandle like one percent of that is one percent if you make ten dollars a month
03:17:54.08010 cents goes to the afa that's doable that's absolutely doable but if you're you know one
03:18:02.880of the one percent and you make you know a million dollars a year or that probably doesn't even
03:18:08.160qualify for the one percent but if you make that then it's a huge boon for the afa and everybody
03:18:15.040in in between it sorts itself out um but it's definitely something to think about it's something
03:18:21.680i want to encourage everybody to do i don't like being the guy that talks about it it looks you
03:18:29.520You know, it's not a good look. I know it doesn't sound good to the audience, but it's truth.
03:18:35.960Truth is one of our virtues, and it's something I want to see us elevate Ausitru to the level that our gods deserve
03:18:48.180and to something worthy of our folk, our ancestors, and our mighty gods.
03:18:53.860We're doing our very best to do that. We appreciate everybody's generosity.
03:18:57.260i only brought that up because lydia told me to so i will throw her under the bus for that
03:19:05.560you know um nick brings up a great point too uh that the the you know we drive i drive
03:19:14.300four hours to and from um he was talking about you know there's a lot of things going on you know we
03:19:21.160we we pay for gas for ourselves uh the the church doesn't we we pay for the gas to drive down there
03:19:28.420to drive back to help out um we give in a lot of different ways but also like you know i and i just
03:19:34.900we lead from the front i remember you giving like giving plasma at one point for for a half
03:19:42.400yep like your prof i and it just blows my mind that people think that we're that we don't do
03:19:49.100that or that we're not devoting hours and money into and blood, very, very tangible blood to get
03:19:58.620the Hoffs out there. And it's coming from us, from leadership. I give 10% of my annual. And so
03:20:05.160I think a lot of people get in their head that we're just like soaking up this money or I don't
03:20:12.220know what what people are thinking um no we're putting in two we're all in um you know taking
03:20:22.020my children and my wife uh to and from in great distances and things like that gladly gladly do
03:20:29.580it and just um so i i think that people get a misconception that somehow they're they're putting
03:20:39.600money in whether it's one percent or ten percent or whatever and we're not doing anything i mean
03:20:46.000there's you know the the accusation of that is terrible and sad and infuriating really um just
03:20:55.680how much money and time and having people think that we're getting this money from nefarious uh
03:21:03.760i don't know what i remember you joking about somebody saying that we they thought here are
03:21:08.80010 ways that the afa is allegedly funded and this is so this goes to my point about
03:21:17.520no it's mentally it's emotionally damaged white people it's not the lizard people
03:21:29.120our people especially people who are traditionally minded
03:21:33.680are so used to losing and so used to being completely incapable of accomplishing things
03:21:47.120we have a sizable portion of people that seriously believe that we are being funded
03:21:55.700by the federal government as some kind of secret honeypot op um that i'm in the employ of the fbi
03:22:05.140somehow and that like which is funny and nonsense in general
03:22:12.580especially where i'm sitting and especially looking at the afa's bank account um
03:22:18.020um that's this trying to rattle change or and sometimes the same people say this interchangeably
03:22:28.280so I'm not sure where they fall on this or that we are a front for Mexican drug cartels
03:23:54.600But we have been blessed enough to find
03:23:57.940enough of our folk who are willing to do that and stay doing that over the long haul
03:24:06.800that we are able to accomplish a few things here and there they're amazing things and i'm thankful
03:24:15.920for them but we should set our sights high our people built civilization we should be able to
03:24:27.440do this and do it really well and um for a very small amount of people in the grand scheme of
03:24:37.200things we peaked above a thousand this year once for like a month that's in the history
03:24:45.600of the afa we have had over a thousand members one time for one month and we've been able to
03:24:54.400get four hoffs we've been able to get segerheim we are well on our way to accomplishing much more
03:25:05.120we have been very blessed by the hard work the blood sweat and tears of some generous folks
03:25:11.600the kindness of amazing gods and the dedication of some very hard-working
03:25:18.880uh gothar and folk builders um and i'm very thankful for that so
03:25:24.800i want a white tiger and like gold plated me too uh 45s nor ak
03:25:34.760how come my nine doesn't have gold plating on it okay so we're going to start doing all of our
03:25:42.300bloats in Spanish for no reason. El jefe supreme. Is everybody okay with wearing sombreros?
03:25:58.880all right so silliness aside uh matt slash swan how do you feel about the term caucasian
03:26:15.840as a word that defines us as a swan what are your thoughts on uh caucasian i i don't use it i think
03:26:25.220it's a joke i think that uh i i'm not a big fan of using just like proto-indo-european i think
03:26:32.080it's just too mouthy it's it's it it loses it sterilizes it loses some of the the the point
03:26:39.420of it i think um there's there's a magic and a vitality um i don't know if i i common usage i
03:26:50.460just say folk uh that we are the folk that's what we call ourselves uh so many people all over the
03:26:56.080planet uh the inuits call themselves the real people and you know uh uh so on and so forth
03:27:02.740there's a lot of you know i don't get bent out of shape when other people name themselves certain
03:27:07.200things but when it comes from like it's it's nomenclature stuff you know there's caucasoid
03:27:12.940mongoloid negroid and all that and that's all like actual scientific and and uh you know
03:27:23.180descriptive language but it's still very sterile and i and i and i don't 100 um attest to it in
03:27:30.780the idea of if we're talking about locale and things like that um of of uh origination of the
03:27:39.500home dale of the folk uh where we uh you know where our where rig dawned us forward um but
03:27:51.660i just yeah i think it's just it's one of those things that's just a a kind of scientific scholarly
03:27:58.140term uh that's less mouthy than you know proto-indo-european that just to kind of throw it out
03:28:07.100there 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
03:28:17.600like here in the south it's it's something that i hear uh like black ladies say when they're trying
03:28:22.400to be like covert about things i've heard like i remember been passing just there's a lot of
03:28:29.480caucasians here um i guess i assume she was complaining that people were minding their own
03:28:35.600business or something I don't know um but the it's such a sterile kind of term I prefer folk
03:28:41.820and I I think white has tangibility in our in our country it is a box that we we check
03:28:50.100and um I don't think that it's a bad word and I think we should make it not a bad word um
03:28:56.400and uh I think there are people trying to but I prefer folk uh I think in usage over the most
03:29:05.080and i tried to tell my children there it's not about we don't name other people um we don't name
03:29:12.660other people things i don't my my kids and stuff they they refer to people as folk or not folk
03:29:20.140and it's the concept that's really simple it's like if you're there's two chinese people in a
03:29:25.680room and you walk in and then and then you leave they're going to refer to you as the not chinese
03:29:30.460person and that's probably the nicest thing like in in relation to unity between people i think
03:29:37.900there's there's folk and there's there's not folk they're not folk they're whatever they call
03:29:42.060themselves and i think that's one of the best ways to go about um kind of really establishing
03:29:48.540identity um and getting over the identity crisis of that white children are facing
03:29:54.460so i think that's brilliant because it reinforces you're us or you're not right you're not and
03:30:05.660that applies to any ethnicity it it's not white specific it's the word folk is us that's our word
03:30:15.020yeah it is but the but the but the concept of this is us and that's not us and it doesn't
03:30:22.860have to be disparaging it's just same different there's a big there's nothing disrespectful in
03:30:35.820that there's nothing wrong with that every group of people is entitled to that um
03:30:42.220um certainly every racial group of people but hey this is Boy Scouts you're not a boy therefore
03:30:53.920you're not in Boy Scouts isn't wrong there's hey we're you know
03:31:04.480all blind folks will have can I be part of the no you your eyes work get out of here
03:31:11.320like whatever the deal is having a group of people that's just you celebrating the things
03:31:16.680that you have in common is not wrong and it's something you can be proud of uh caucasian
03:31:26.280i don't like because it doesn't mean anything to a lot of people people don't really understand
03:31:33.160the etymology or the geography of it like caucasian i'm not asian what are you talking
03:31:40.200about like there a lot of people are genuinely confused by it i think its meaning has been lost
03:31:46.360to time and anthropology a little bit um but saw swan brought up the the oids i think that's always
03:31:58.200that if we're going to go that route that entertains me the most the most negroid mongoloid and
03:32:04.760caucasoid so i caucasoid i would i would rather take caucasoid than caucasian just like lizard
03:32:12.040people um mexican cartel as a you know as something to make a real big point about i
03:32:21.160like arian because it has a meaning that has a value attached to it we are the shining noble
03:32:29.240people that means something that has a value to it it's a self-identifier based on things that we
03:32:37.320value about ourself or that we hold as essential to our existence as a race of people
03:32:44.200um but i'm also not sensitive about stuff and i wish that other people weren't usually it's
03:32:49.880not those groups of people that are it's uh it's the woke um liberal white college crowd
03:32:57.320in the karens that are unfortunate i don't care i don't care if people are going to be disparaging
03:33:04.680with whatever racial epitaphs they want to say towards us as long as it's an even playing field
03:33:12.760you know i can laugh and joke and it all be good with everybody uh what's not okay is if
03:33:18.280we can be disparaged and other people can't that's not fair especially not in places that um
03:33:25.720that we've built and made possible um but just the commonality of you know i guess asians have not
03:33:37.240resorted to referring to themselves as yellow people but indians uh and native americans took
03:33:45.000a lot of pride in you know identifying themselves as red uh during that movement in in 60s and 70s
03:33:54.280that was a thing to talk about um blacks have taken like no we're not afro african american
03:34:00.920we're black that's fine and i'm i'm fine with being white it makes sense people understand what
03:34:07.000it means again some of our international audience it may be different in the country to where you
03:34:11.960live but in the united states it's common sense we understand everybody knows what it means and i
03:34:18.120And 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.
03:34:43.240um we see that sometimes with hispanics and using you know brown um so
03:34:53.240i mean i'm i'm comfortable i'm not sensitive about about any of those things i'm not even
03:34:58.280sensitive when it's rude like i say as long as we can all do the same thing that it's fine
03:35:03.320as long as we have the same rules on it uh but caucasian is just the i don't know the lamest the
03:35:10.840least flavorful the most awkward way of stating our race it sounds like you're being overly
03:35:19.480clinical and not authentic when you say it it doesn't it's not something anybody's ever
03:35:26.520you know just in passing like man we're caucasians nobody does that like that's not a colloquial
03:35:33.800thing that's something you say when you're trying to sound pc or educated or something that's it's
03:37:01.220We'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.
03:37:12.620And, 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.
03:37:20.560But it should be right around the start of the start of December.
03:37:24.920So, yeah, look forward to talking to you guys.