Asatru Folk Assembly - 11⧸2⧸22 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 17 - Þórr

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

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00:01:30.000 Thank you.

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00:02:30.000 We'll be right back.

00:03:00.000 hello all and welcome

00:03:30.000 we have another uh exciting episode for you tonight uh we're getting a lot of a lot of very

00:03:36.400 positive feedback when we have witness fawn on here he brings a wealth of of knowledge

00:03:43.840 and wisdom to the table when he comes on here and talks with us

00:03:47.200 and once again it's a pleasure to have him with us tonight as we discuss also thor um

00:03:53.440 um so trying to think if there's any top of the top of the broadcast things we should bring up

00:04:01.300 before we start uh I suppose there is a couple so tonight we are for the first time being broadcast

00:04:08.920 on a couple new platforms simultaneously we've got our producer Nick working on that for us we

00:04:16.240 i believe on odyssey i know we're on odyssey twitter entropy um and we're on one other that

00:04:26.360 is escaping me that that i'm sure nick will throw up it's okay it's my first time tonight

00:04:30.960 and i only found out about 10 minutes ago we were on this platform tonight so it's going to be good

00:04:34.840 um yeah he's he's putting up the links and now uh if you guys want to participate in super chat

00:04:44.440 or you guys want to throw us some tips oh there we go the other one's vk that we're on tonight

00:04:49.320 um so if you want to throw us some tips please go ahead and get on entropy and you can do that

00:04:53.960 those are always very much appreciated um i suppose i will start out with this uh

00:05:02.120 a shameless plug for some dollars up top because we're making serious advancements on getting

00:05:09.000 Sigerheim. We are ready to make a purchase and make that happen. I've already asked a lot of

00:05:16.720 folks to contribute on helping out. And in just a couple of days, we've already raised about 7%

00:05:24.460 of our down payment that we need to get. So, you know, I mentioned this figure before,

00:05:30.100 but if every member of the AFA were to donate $41, we'd have that down payment in hand.

00:05:39.000 Things are looking good, but we do need your guys' help.

00:05:41.460 So, as always, your generosity is much appreciated.

00:05:46.020 With that, and I suppose without further ado,

00:05:49.000 Wynton Svan, would you like to give us a brief,

00:05:54.160 I don't know, a brief rundown on what folks that might be a little bit less familiar than others

00:06:02.800 need to know about Thor and his place in our Holy Pantheon?

00:06:09.000 Yeah. Well, first off, I think too, I got comments now on my screen. I don't think that was, people realized that wasn't huge on my end. So now I can actually see some of the comments and see some of the people coming in. And I just wanted to say hi to everybody. It's really awesome to see everybody saying hello to everyone and getting to see people's names and link to the questions and stuff like that. So it's really, really nice to see.

00:06:34.020 um yeah this this uh and i i think the folks at home don't realize that like our our show is really

00:06:45.160 organic naturally based we don't really have a a sit down or anything like this it's kind of like

00:06:53.880 a brief hey we're doing this you're ready we're ready and then we just go and it's kind of uh

00:07:00.500 organic that way. So I think it's really fun, uh, in that regards. Um, so when we're talking about

00:07:08.780 Thor, one of the most poignant things that I would say is the clarity in which Thor

00:07:17.780 relates to humanity is one of the most beneficial, powerful, wonderful things about Thor.

00:07:26.940 that anybody that's coming into the faith can immediately attest to

00:07:32.680 or can immediately start to have a feeling towards.

00:07:35.520 There's a reason why Mjolnir is our symbol.

00:07:39.520 It has a strong and poignant anchoring.

00:07:44.380 There's a reason why it's on every symbol on every sign at the Hoff.

00:07:50.300 I think that's really important that we always continue to bring about the base of our faith around he who is the most clarified of the tripartite.

00:08:04.660 He is the striker. In every European, proto-Indo-European, Aryan tradition of branches, the striker is clear, clean, and bold, bright, shining, strong.

00:08:20.800 There's no mincing words about him.

00:08:23.260 I think that the only mystery behind the striker is that a lot of people have a tendency to confuse him, especially in the stories.

00:08:32.180 Now, bear in mind, I'm not talking about Thor in any sort of, like, I'm not trying to be unpious.

00:08:40.120 What I'm really going for is the stories are stories of how our ancestors and how the ancient stories were related, and they have changed over time.

00:08:50.820 So when we see certain things of, like, the late Nordic period, we can see Thor in relation to the way our ancestors saw him.

00:08:58.080 Um, but Thor is not in stasis in the Adas. He's not in stasis in the stories. He's a very dynamic, uh, God or what I would call the catalytic God. He's the God that really breaks through thresholds. He's the God that once he gets involved, everything starts rolling. He ruptures the barriers. He breaks things down so that everything can flow again.

00:09:24.700 And so if you're dealing with a lot of personal issues in your life, I think garnering from the stories, looking at him in that lens when you're reading the stories can kind of inspire you to also become a catalystic switch in your own life that you can cut through, break through barriers.

00:09:46.280 And the only way you can do that and the only way you can really kind of go against the tide of flow of Weird or of Orlok is to do drastic action.

00:09:56.780 So he, in a way, represents, I think, divine will.

00:10:01.360 He is the will of the gods.

00:10:03.700 And in a way, like us, our soul is going in through the tide of Weird and through Orlok.

00:10:12.900 What you have to do in order to break the cycle to really start anew is to willfully project yourself into something.

00:10:23.520 Throw yourself in wholeheartedly, wholeheadedly, with all your might, and stand up in a moment, even sometimes against yourself, and you can then begin to grow.

00:10:37.560 And if you are blessed by him, he will allow that path to be seen.

00:10:44.520 You'll make it.

00:10:45.460 You'll have to make it.

00:10:46.420 He's not going to make it for you.

00:10:48.880 But once you do see that path, you know at that time the strength that he's with you, that he is pushing forward with you.

00:10:58.620 And he wants to see you succeed.

00:11:02.500 And I think that's one of the biggest powers that comes from him.

00:11:06.260 So if you're a new beginner and you've come back to the faith of your people and you want to really start to tackle the divine because I often tell people like the first thing that they should do is really start to understand about giving bloat to your ancestors, giving bloodings to your ancestors and to the land spirits because those are directly around you and connected to you.

00:11:27.440 But when you really start to wrap your head around how the gods play in the world, and we might have preconceived notions from other religions or just the lack of clarity on things, sometimes the best start is to kick literally everything right straight down the middle.

00:11:46.900 Go straight for the throat. And Thor, Donner, Thuneraz, he is the catalyst that breaks that, that makes the gateway. And so I would say like in learning to pray, it's about asking him to bear witness to the moment and then throwing yourself in completely and wholeheartedly.

00:12:13.580 um and i know that's it's kind of a weird thing i'm not i'm not coming from a lore angle

00:12:18.920 uh lore is good lore is fine and it's wonderful and it has lots of value and i would even say

00:12:24.560 eternal seeds that were planted by the gods themselves for us to find again and to work

00:12:32.040 through but when we're talking about real tangible faith thor is one of the closest

00:12:37.440 gods that you can physically see when he shows up in storm when he's there you can feel him in the

00:12:46.320 air as the air literally ionizes you can feel him there and it it doesn't take it isn't very hard

00:12:55.000 for a person who's new to suddenly just cross over that threshold wow i'm dealing with a real

00:13:03.100 willful being that's not biological in the way that i know it but he's here and i know he's here

00:13:11.040 i can feel him that that has a tendency to throw people off and i i and in a sometimes in a good

00:13:17.980 way again catalyst throws them off changes things up and then all of a sudden they grow

00:13:23.160 so if you're new to the faith uh the first house that i would recommend you um give gift to

00:13:32.540 give worthship to, give piety to, and give exchange to, would be Thor. 100%.

00:13:41.900 Thor is known as the friend of man and as the protector of Midgard. And I think in that sense,

00:13:50.100 he really is one of the the most approachable as far as if you're starting out to uh

00:14:00.220 build that kind of to start building that gift cycle and start building that relationship with

00:14:07.560 um in the lore uh when his eyes flash he can be terrifying and you know a frightful thing

00:14:19.920 to behold, but also, you know, he's a God that has a joviality about him, a sense of humor and

00:14:28.260 known, like I said, as the as the friend of man in that way. And I find that that's a lot of

00:14:35.200 people's first interaction or first approach to Ausatru is through a better understanding of

00:14:41.460 Thor. And that was the case, you know, certainly when I got involved in Ausatru, I think that

00:14:47.120 building relationship with Thor was the first also that I was able to build that with and grow

00:14:59.220 from there. So I certainly think that's the case. A lot of stuff about Thor tonight. Again,

00:15:06.500 so many of, especially the first gods that we're going to go through in this cycle are

00:15:12.400 are gods that people are generally familiar with, but we're very happy in the course of the

00:15:18.560 broadcast to discuss, you know, smaller elements or more obscure things or interesting questions.

00:15:26.500 We'll kind of take the conversation wherever you guys want to take it. I'm going to go ahead and

00:15:30.940 start hitting some of our questions here, but... I wanted to piggyback on something you just said

00:15:37.320 though i during i do a little prep and and start researching try to gather some things

00:15:44.320 and one of the things that are uh was the um the heighty of thor uh dupe dupe huger

00:15:53.400 huger is how it said dupe huger and it means deep souled or deep minded like

00:16:01.920 not necessarily it's about being quick-witted it's more about having ancient wisdom wisdom that

00:16:10.260 is applicable in a way that is sometimes subtle like it's it's uh the understanding of like when

00:16:18.460 you see someone who's very large very big you look at them and you automatically face value

00:16:23.240 their strength but what you don't account for sometimes is how how deep-minded they are how

00:16:29.680 applicable wisdom they have, and that can make them extremely a formidable force. And I think

00:16:36.960 that that height detour towards Thor really applies, is that the idea that he is filled

00:16:44.640 with deep wisdom and applicable wisdom. So I wanted to share that because I found that one

00:16:51.720 was kind of a off and I hadn't run into it in a long time so so you know I want us to get to your

00:16:59.960 experiences with the mural but we're going to hold on that just a second because I see one of the

00:17:04.520 questions in the queue is about that so let's start hitting a couple of these

00:17:08.600 Finn asks do you think when lightning strikes something specific that could be an act of Thor

00:17:14.440 What do you think, Svon?

00:17:19.860 So I would say first and foremost, I have usually taken it that way, yes.

00:17:28.320 So I'll say that first.

00:17:30.080 But that actually could be an argument or a debate.

00:17:35.140 In some sense, our ancestors knew that when the strikers strike things, it was a furious moment.

00:17:42.040 And so they did not necessarily always see the strikes that he was, you know, lamenting upon the forces of chaos in the sky as just being purposeful, but more like a thrashing out so that things could happen, fires could be started.

00:18:02.400 And this is always seen in a lot of the lore stories, you know, when they when like when Ruska and Thjalfi, when they first get taken into service by Thor, the idea that he's extremely hot tempered and his eyes are glaring and his beard is bristled.

00:18:21.720 And so there's always a sense of fury that's tempered by a cooling down and a love for the folk.

00:18:30.140 So I think that this in the stories is really talking about the nature of and the power of lightning or the power of storm in the idea that our ancestors always viewed the striker as you didn't want to stand in his way or be anywhere really around him when he was raging because there was no control.

00:18:51.720 And so with that, there is the argument to say that our ancestors saw and understood that when things were going crazy, it wasn't a personal vindictive slight against you.

00:19:05.300 It was, you know, considerable all the way around.

00:19:08.600 It's the same as when he gains the whetstone under his helm.

00:19:12.640 Um, as he strikes, uh, Thrym, he hits the, the, um, the whetstone, um, and it, it goes under, it constantly agitates him, even to the point where, uh, Arendelle's wife, he tells her, you know, I brought him home, she leaves, and thus leaving the whetstone in his head.

00:19:34.460 And so there's this constant state of agitation. And so I think that, again, is another emphasis on how, depending on the fury of the situation, it may not be willfully done.

00:19:50.240 However, like what I said is I do believe that it can be willfully done.

00:19:55.760 I think that perhaps there is a sense of control in it as well because I've seen some sometimes I'm actually probably the only person I've ever known that has a friend that's been struck by lightning three times.

00:20:09.060 He's not he's not even out.

00:20:11.660 He's I met him in the Marine Corps and I don't know if he's his name is JJ.

00:20:18.240 I'll just say JJ.

00:20:19.400 And he lives up in up in Montana. And he's been I actually was there for one time when he was struck on a on a rifle range in Hawaii.

00:20:28.040 Terrifying stuff, especially considering that there's not a lot of thunderstorms in Hawaii.

00:20:34.560 So I've I've often wondered this as well. Could it be done personally? Could it be done willfully?

00:20:40.760 Could it be done with intention? And I think I'm not going to say that gods can't do anything.

00:20:46.080 so my go is yes it can be willful and yes it can be purposeful but also too it can also be

00:20:55.560 random it could be furious it could be an emanation of power that isn't necessarily

00:21:01.140 linked to a purpose and i think that's also important for us to understand because the gods

00:21:07.800 do act in the world and there is weird from it and i think that when they when thor looses himself

00:21:15.620 from heaven into the middle world, it's known that what's going to happen is going to cause

00:21:23.000 Orla. So that's my answer on that one. It's kind of a political answer, a yes and a no,

00:21:29.700 but I don't want to say that they can't do anything because I don't know. I couldn't be

00:21:36.020 that mouthpiece, but I do feel that I've seen instances where it seems purposeful. And then

00:21:42.360 And I've seen instances and reading from the lore where it seems to be that our ancestors knew in the wisdom that just don't be around because it's going to get bad.

00:21:55.540 You know, you mentioned that was kind of a political answer or whatever.

00:22:00.540 The answers to a lot of these questions aren't clean because life's not.

00:22:05.100 There's so many variables in reality. And I think that we'd be doing a disservice if we were to pretend that, you know, there's only one right answer to any of these questions.

00:22:20.580 There's so much overlap and there's so much depth to our faith.

00:22:23.940 And I think that's one of the rich things about it that add value and truth to it is that we're honest in that.

00:22:31.980 um our gods and their interplay with nature is fascinating and i think we

00:22:40.860 i think we need a deeper understanding of our gods than just thor equals lightning and thunder

00:22:48.640 um odin equals ravens like i've said on the on the odin and ravens thing yes odin chooses ravens

00:22:57.420 to communicate signs to people often ravens also exist and do raven stuff completely unrelated to

00:23:04.380 the alpha um lightning and weather patterns and weather stuff happens right um that stuff happens

00:23:15.020 regardless of thor willing it to because it's natural and it happens but certainly like swan

00:23:22.540 said for if he wants to can direct lightning to hit something i think there's plenty of times that

00:23:29.580 that has happened in the course of of the history of our fault um but every lightning strike isn't

00:23:36.220 isn't a directed you know a directed wrath of thor but some are um and that's that's the the

00:23:47.100 gray area that people aren't comfortable with but it's true and it's real being able to determine

00:23:52.700 those things is an art in and of itself to be able to interpret when something is a meaningful

00:23:59.100 synchronicity and when it's just natural stuff happening and is it meaningful just because

00:24:07.820 it speaks to you in a particular way or is it meaning you know is it meaningful from within

00:24:13.900 to without or is it meaningful from without to within and i think that sometimes it's both of

00:24:18.860 those things sometimes it's neither sometimes it's one or the other um but yeah certainly could it be

00:24:25.420 absolutely i'd never rule out that possibility i think that the idea of thor and the storm

00:24:32.060 thor and thunder thor and lightning we need we need to not forget there there is a literal

00:24:38.060 relationship, but there's also a figurative and an illustrative relationship. The power and the

00:24:47.480 directed might of the storm, that rumbling of thunder and that shockingly powerful crack of

00:24:56.700 lightning, that strike that tears down and destroys and is one of the most powerful things

00:25:01.740 in nature, that shows us the might that is Thor, the directed rage and wrath of that very powerful

00:25:12.100 one of our gods. And that imagery is very important. And I think that the actual interaction

00:25:19.460 with the phenomenon is important as well. But it's not an exact equation. Thor equals thunder

00:25:28.440 enlightening is a poor understanding of a very deep and a very, very profound God. And I think

00:25:39.480 that if we simplify him just to that, we miss some of the point. I did want to state too openly that

00:25:47.800 I, from here in the whetstone, not three, that's, that is the, the theft of the hammer. I wanted to,

00:25:57.320 you know bring that up and say they're the list of his opponents is long and so a lot of times

00:26:03.640 we can very well i you know get the stories confused and so i just wanted to clarify it was

00:26:09.320 from near that when he you know fought him he struck the whetstone while he was standing on

00:26:15.640 the shield and that piece got in there i i think it's yeah it is important to understand that

00:26:21.880 When we were talking about mythos being coiled up, we were talking about how the gods represent themselves in multi-facets of existence.

00:26:33.660 So Thor, or at least a fraction of his might, or a piece of him, or a willful part, or perhaps simply just the presence itself, can manifest in storm.

00:26:48.780 is part of storm but is not always simply just thor in the in the clouds or in the cloud um i

00:27:00.080 think that that would be more of a i would say like a mythological and a more of a um i would

00:27:07.440 even say to a point where when we see our children you know they they really correlate with the direct

00:27:12.460 notion that Thor is in the cloud. But they might not realize that it's more or less a reflection

00:27:19.600 of the power of the god in his material place. And he has many places. So when he's interacting

00:27:29.640 with the material world, it's often through the manifestation of storms. And again, the question

00:27:34.140 is, what purpose do storms have? And really what storms have is about bringing equilibrium of

00:27:42.140 of uh you know pressure up and down um there there's a too much of a tipping point something's

00:27:49.240 going too far up or too low down into the area and it needs to be re-equalized and oftentimes

00:27:56.620 what happens is that equalization process is is is beckoned with a storm so you know understanding

00:28:07.140 that the gods have placed in the physical world to to be able to do things but they also have a

00:28:13.460 an essence or a power that pervades in the physical world and it may be acting on its

00:28:19.140 own or as an extension of the god not necessarily with his will behind it i think is important and

00:28:27.760 i really think that the gods do this through through the well of earth but you know uh getting

00:28:34.380 into the concept of Thor not being in every storm is a part where people are a little apprehensive

00:28:44.660 and where they want everything to have meaning, much like the Etruscans. They felt like everything

00:28:52.560 was absolutely done with purpose. And I think that the Romans talked about the Etruscans

00:28:59.480 you know and the difference between them is that the the romans seem to have a concept that

00:29:04.400 the will the will of the gods could be interplayed on the rolling of time whereas the etruscans felt

00:29:12.180 like every single thing was intimately connected to the gods and um you know i i i don't know

00:29:20.540 to what if there's folly in that i mean i think there there is in the sense that

00:29:25.120 will take everything in understanding being so a drastic omen but like you said ravens do

00:29:32.780 things sometimes that aren't very you know delightful or like something that you would

00:29:39.840 think that oh then sending you a message when you you know see them ripping apart trash or

00:29:45.320 trying to survive and live so i was gonna say growing up in alaska where the ravens are

00:29:50.740 are very prominent. In the wintertime, you can't drive by a McDonald's without

00:29:56.780 a murder of ravens hanging out at the dumpster, eating whatever they find in there. That's not

00:30:05.420 necessarily them communicating from the all-father. That's them being hungry and

00:30:09.640 scavenging because they're scavengers. The storm is very often a chaotic force and a force of

00:30:18.620 destruction to our ancestors. We're seeing the interplay between natural forces that are

00:30:23.280 associated with the Jotunar versus their association with the gods is also a very fine

00:30:29.900 line as well. But I'll tell you this, and for anybody that, you know, thinks I'm maybe being

00:30:36.520 too cynical, every time I hear thunder, I feel it in my soul and I say a little prayer of hail to

00:30:44.840 to thor um so i mean it's don't don't lose that wonder just be critical in your thinking

00:30:54.040 if everything is a divine miracle of the gods communicating something to you then the real

00:30:59.960 ones get lost in the static if everything's at volume 10 then there's no such thing as an

00:31:06.360 exclamation so some things have to be mundane in order for certain things to be sacred if

00:31:12.920 everything's sacred, then nothing's sacred. Yeah. And I think our ancestors, the Teutonic

00:31:18.760 mindset is to meet everything with a sense of measure, try to measure it, merit it, give it

00:31:28.740 some pause. Don't, I mean, it's even talked about in the Halvamal about not making these kind of

00:31:33.520 like rash decisions on things. Trying to gain the scope of awareness is important. And again,

00:31:40.420 you you hit the nail on the head there is if everything is a message from the gods then how can

00:31:46.100 you divvy out that from the din if you will well uh corey gene donated 50 to us thank you so much

00:31:58.080 that is much appreciated thank you it's frayer skull very good stream i'm glad that you're

00:32:05.340 enjoying it i hope the rest of you guys are and thank you so much for your donation we really

00:32:09.260 appreciate it um also another donation five dollars from rowdy dude hail the icer hail the

00:32:17.340 afa happy to see spawn back again and enjoying the discussion on thor thank you so much we're very

00:32:23.820 glad you're enjoying it um yeah it's going to be good tonight our next question comes from real

00:32:30.300 gamer i saw a picture of an afa church and one of the flags caught my eye it was the flag of the

00:32:38.060 northwest imperative does the afa have any relation to the nf if so that is wonderful to hear um so

00:32:48.300 no that's i mean that's an obvious inspiration for some of our flags specifically for folks

00:32:53.740 in the northwest uh the afa certainly has no overt connection to the northwest imperative

00:33:00.700 or to the northwest front or to any of that but i think that the idea certainly is inspirational

00:33:07.820 to a lot of our folk and a lot of our members. And the folks that happen to be living in the

00:33:12.480 Pacific Northwest have obviously, that's meaningful to them. And they've chosen to

00:33:16.820 incorporate it in, I think, four of our kindred flags so far. So obviously, that connection

00:33:25.640 resonates with folks. And I think that's, you know, as deep as any actual connection to that

00:33:33.640 movement goes. Maybe some of the individuals involved have a little bit more, I'm not certain.

00:33:41.700 Katla asks, why do you think our ancestors chose to wear the Mjolnir rather than a symbol of the

00:33:48.800 Allfather? What are your thoughts on that, Svon? I just saw that Katla. Sorry, there's a song in

00:33:57.540 Iceland from the Raven song, Katlarenabnassinn, and so I saw it and I was like, whoa. That is a

00:34:04.860 great question. I think that first and foremost, it's understood that Thor is the culmination of

00:34:14.260 two polaric forces. When we talk about the gods of order and we talk about the

00:34:20.320 the Aesir or the Asas as a whole.

00:34:23.100 We see them as heavenly, filled with light, with fire, with air, with dominion,

00:34:33.160 and with the idea of cosmic order, the creation of something that's different

00:34:37.940 and with the intention of building it within antagonistic forces to continue on beyond layers.

00:34:44.880 So we see this overarching cosmic order.

00:34:48.700 But what we also know is that from the gods, we also see natural law be brought under yoke, or, well, in reality, there was an exchange. There had to be a fight, and that fight was costly. But once those alignments were made, natural law and cosmic order joined forces to build the center.

00:35:10.120 And I think that there is no other Asa that really exemplifies that union than the son of Rothen and Yorth, of the sky, of the wind, and of the earth, and of the water.

00:35:28.720 These two forces come together, and I think that that wasn't lost on our ancestors.

00:35:33.980 Thor is the culmination of those deep, powerful parts coming together in alignment, and there is a literal union, and from that union there is sprung the power of the divine that is coming from natural law and the earth and coming from cosmic order and the sky, and it exemplifies in Thor.

00:36:00.040 So Thor is the conduit. He is the catalyst. I've talked a lot about the thrones of power in which the gods, it seems culturally Aryan groups have different thrones or different premises of thrones in which the gods seat themselves for them.

00:36:17.760 But one of the things that really talks about the catalystic throne is that the conduit between the heavenly and the material.

00:36:28.280 You don't see the striker as a chthonic figure.

00:36:32.480 You never see the striker as some sort of figure that delves into the underworld or deals with the dead.

00:36:39.180 In essence, he is always moving from the middle out and checking the edges.

00:36:47.560 He's riding the edges of the middle world, and he's up above riding the edges of heaven.

00:36:54.220 And so he's this conduit between the living man, the living soul of mankind and folk and the gods themselves, and he moves in between those.

00:37:06.360 So I don't think there's any loss in that.

00:37:09.520 If we look at striker comparativenesses, like when you look at the Hellenics and they talk about Hercules, Hercules is seen as half mortal, half godly.

00:37:21.620 And for us, that comparison is not ever really made mortal.

00:37:27.380 In essence, the natural law and the cosmic order are the sense of what is here in the material and what is also above, and he's in between that.

00:37:37.020 So we never really take him into the material world. And that seems to be done even post-Christianity. But the striker being a representation of the gods themselves, the defense of the gods, things hinge on his ability to move from heaven into earth and his correlation of keeping the forces of chaos at bay in this world.

00:38:04.780 and allowing us to keep stasis.

00:38:09.300 I talk about that a little bit when we were referring to ice ages

00:38:13.720 and we were talking about how we saw weather patterns

00:38:17.380 and the ups and downs, extremes ups and extreme downs of our weather patterns

00:38:23.800 up until about the first and second ice age,

00:38:26.500 and then all of a sudden it equalizes out.

00:38:29.420 And I think that if we were to look at kind of a sense of when Thor

00:38:33.860 really starts to calibrate the earth is right around there.

00:38:38.460 And we noticed that even though we think our weather is erratic and constantly

00:38:42.300 changing, it's dreadfully still comparative to before then.

00:38:47.880 So I think that our ancestors saw Thor as a warder and a protector and a

00:38:56.200 conduit between the earth and heaven.

00:38:58.940 So when they had the hammer coming out, I think it was probably already established beforehand with Bronze Age axes or axe-style amulets and things.

00:39:12.120 But when there was an actual outside force coming in via Rome or, you know, in the Middle East and Christianity itself, the antagonistic nature of that religion culturally attacking, the hammer became an equivalency to the cross.

00:39:31.600 And it was known where you stood.

00:39:33.680 Lines were being drawn.

00:39:34.620 and um you know we have molds where it shows were crosses and hammers were being made often by the

00:39:42.240 same people um and that you know i guess telling in the opportunistic nature of them of the time

00:39:48.900 but um you know we have this clear distinction between the people that follow the old way the

00:39:56.120 foreign said and the other and and that are true to the alza and then there are those who are not

00:40:02.540 who are turning against their ancestors are turning against their people who are backing

00:40:07.300 with the, with the side of, of then the, you know, the money of, of the Frankish Roman

00:40:12.680 church. So I think that that's the, one of the reasons why they, they, they chose the hammer

00:40:18.940 as a symbol of it, because it means standing up against antagonism. It means courage. It means

00:40:26.080 moving forward, not backing down. And I think that the hammer exemplifies that and exemplified

00:40:31.780 that for our ancestors as well. Because that's really when the hammer became, truly took off.

00:40:38.120 I think it was there before, but it really took off once we, our ancestors realized there was a

00:40:43.900 force coming in that was going to destabilize things and really start to affect the very soul

00:40:50.380 of the people. You know, I think at this point, anything that we, that we say is speculation on

00:40:56.640 why our ancestors chose a specific thing but there's a lot of things to keep in mind

00:41:03.200 um because you specifically asked why mjolnir as opposed to something more symbolic of of odin um

00:41:12.560 everything's font said uh certainly as an amulet of protection thor is the defender of of midgard

00:41:21.200 he's the friend of man he goes out into into the other and battles the giants of chaos to protect

00:41:29.680 and keep us keep us safe and protected he's the very emblem of that protection against outside

00:41:37.680 chaotic forces uh oppressing on the the inning guard um so i think that that stands out as

00:41:45.920 probably the best reason for it but as specific as a reason um you know perhaps rather than a symbol

00:41:54.560 of the all father um swan talked about these thrones or these seats that the gods find themselves

00:42:02.560 in and the lore that comes down to us we tend to look at it as a as an ordered hierarchy but

00:42:10.640 But the apex of that hierarchy has fluctuated over time.

00:42:16.140 You find in the temple at Uppsala with Odin, Thor, and Frey, you find Thor in the central position, in the position of prominence.

00:42:27.920 it's as things ebb and flow the relationships between different groups of people and our gods

00:42:36.960 they place different emphasis on gods that have a more special interaction with them

00:42:43.320 and so I think that could have factors obvious and what I would go with is certainly

00:42:48.420 that talisman of protection and the more that the Christians would wear a crucifix it became

00:42:55.360 you know it just became part a symbol of the times to wear an amulet of thor as the you know

00:43:03.000 this compared to that and i think it's the same today when people ask well what if i don't want

00:43:07.960 to wear a mjolnir what if i want to wear a symbol of random other one of our gods that they have a

00:43:14.140 more personal relationship with nobody knows what that means and it doesn't have the immediate

00:43:19.780 recognition of that's Mjolnir, that person is also true. And I think that worked the same

00:43:27.260 then as it does now. Another really important thing about the use of Mjolnir, not just as an

00:43:33.200 amulet, but ritually, was they would use these hammers oftentimes to bless weddings or to

00:43:39.800 sanctify things. The idea that Mjolnir can be used as a tool of sanctification is very special in

00:43:47.640 and of itself as a symbol of holiness. And I think that's why it's a fitting symbol for our faith

00:43:52.720 in general. They would use this at weddings to ensure fertility. They'd use it in different

00:43:57.520 rites to sanctify. Thor would use it to resurrect his goats after he got done eating them the night

00:44:05.800 before. It being a magical tool of sanctification is also very significant. It's why when

00:44:13.180 Argothar in a strange place that's not holy ground and want to sanctify ritual spot. It's

00:44:21.880 done in the sign of the hammer. It's done with perhaps a ritual Mjolnir to sanctify and to set

00:44:29.360 it apart. We have a question from Don that comes along with a $20 donation. Thank you so much,

00:44:35.800 Don. We appreciate it. Hail Elshary Agothi and Witten Svan. Fantastic insight. I also hail

00:44:43.060 Thor, every time I hear thunder, it just comes out of me. Svan, would you let us in on some of

00:44:48.580 the secrets you've hidden in Thor's mural? Yeah, then they wouldn't be secrets. No, no.

00:44:58.620 There's a lot of little, there's a lot of little Easter eggs in there. And in reality,

00:45:04.240 they came about kind of as the evolution of the mural. I mean, are we going to go into the,

00:45:10.640 I was wondering whether you want to go into the murals because I mean I know there's questions

00:45:13.680 coming in and this is kind of uh separate here because we also have another question coming up

00:45:21.120 in the line about your experiences painting the mural so separate your content questions

00:45:29.280 from your experience of painting it questions if you would okay yeah uh well the inception

00:45:37.520 of the mural really did come about through uh it was a reaction there were things going on

00:45:46.800 and it led to specifics of the mural uh and and the way it was going to be presented one of the

00:45:55.360 first things was um uh coming to to the hof to be uh i like to joke and say the the emir body

00:46:06.560 It wasn't quite shaped to what we were going to bring, but it was there, and we walked in, and we saw this alcove, and immediately just struck me as, you know, that's where he needs to be.

00:46:22.440 That's where he wants to stand over his house.

00:46:26.180 And at the time, to be completely honest, I didn't know where we were going to go with this.

00:46:29.740 I didn't know what type of godsteads we were going to be working with.

00:46:33.660 I didn't know if we were going to do statuary.

00:46:36.560 I didn't know if we were going to do a painting, if we were going to do other sort of imagery and things like that.

00:46:41.340 God pulls and there was all sorts of stuff on the on the list.

00:46:45.540 But when I walked in there and I saw that archway, I just really knew if this is the way it's going to evolve.

00:46:53.420 He needs to be there because that is where he wants to be.

00:46:59.680 And I say that very lightly.

00:47:01.280 I'm not saying – I just had an overwhelming feeling of that moment where I was just like this is – everything just fills into this spot.

00:47:12.560 And I could see an image there in my mind of what I would want.

00:47:18.480 It was just the correlation of other things that needed to be – to evolve from it.

00:47:23.180 So naturally, I wanted to show a combination of things.

00:47:31.780 Really, I wanted to show upper, lower.

00:47:35.600 I wanted to show force, will, power, and dynamicism, attacking kind of an otherworldly alienism.

00:47:44.260 And then I wanted to also bring in the elements of cowardice in which when the string is being cut from Jormungandr, this moment, it could be read as like – if people read the story and thought of this as like a moment of failure, really the failure and onus falls on cowardice.

00:48:07.820 And so the events that were going on around that time were really pervading about action and about standing up for your beliefs and about attainment.

00:48:23.260 This was the first Hoff outside of Odin's Hoff that was going to breach the threshold.

00:48:28.900 It was on the other side.

00:48:30.420 Let me interrupt for just a sec because I think this is background that's going to be useful to the rest of the story.

00:48:36.020 i'm going to throw up the other question as well and we can combine these two with just telling

00:48:40.900 the whole tale of the mural so the next question is from filthy heathen swan could you talk a bit

00:48:46.980 about your experience painting the thor's hof mural so about all of these things and to set

00:48:52.820 them to the backdrop um so many of these things are so big that it's hard when we get a really

00:49:05.460 specific question to winnow it down to what's what's relating to it and what's not because

00:49:11.700 everything links to everything else so excuse me if i take a pause on that sometimes so i was talking

00:49:16.580 to in some kind of a context it was talking to uh sheila mcdalen uh a little while back

00:49:24.820 and she mentioned that uh you know her and steve weren't weren't exactly sure where this all would

00:49:30.660 go and how this would all develop um it was such a long struggle to get our first hoff that um you

00:49:39.860 know nobody really knew what that was going to be like if that's the only hoff we're going to have

00:49:43.620 and everything's just going to be about that or you know nobody knew for sure there was going to

00:49:49.220 be other hoffs or that that's the way we were going to go or what we were going to do um when

00:49:53.940 i when i became i was harry gothi it was very important to me to build temples to to each of

00:50:00.420 these these gods of ours and uh that was a really important thing for me um odin's hof it was

00:50:09.940 originally called uh new grange hall and it was kind of a generic hof to to the icer and a assembly

00:50:17.620 hall for for the afa and at that time again we didn't know that we were going to have all these

00:50:22.500 other Hoffs when we had to change the name of of the Hoff and I dedicated that Hoff and this was

00:50:31.380 we we had to do the name change of the Hoff after I uh became Alsheriagothi and at that point it was

00:50:36.500 very important with that opportunity to me to dedicate that Hoff specifically to Odin and to

00:50:43.220 make that the first of many Hoffs this was a um when we talk about titling our Hoffs

00:50:48.980 Thor's Hoff is Thor's Hoff, the second Hoff of the Ausatru Folk Assembly, because we knew that we were going to continue this process.

00:50:58.980 Even before that, when we made the sign for Odin's Hoff, it's Odin's Hoff, the first Hoff of the Ausatru Folk Assembly, putting it out there that we plan to have many more Hoffs.

00:51:11.980 And actually the idea of putting that title at the bottom, the subtitle, the first half of the Austro-Folk Assembly, was our law speaker, Alan Turnage's idea.

00:51:24.540 But yeah, when we got, so before this, we would always have an event, and this event has become the Thorshof event, but we would have Ostara in the South.

00:51:35.180 It was a national event a number of years previous to this.

00:51:38.180 and we'd go to this and every time the people um people in first anyone who was at the event

00:51:47.740 but very specifically folks who were in our in the carolinas would ask you know how do we how do we

00:51:54.720 get a hoff over on the east coast how do we get a hoff near us and we talked about that and man

00:52:01.140 they they're like man we really one day what what can we do we'll do anything to get a hoff near us

00:52:05.620 This is the most important thing.

00:52:06.860 How do we get a Hoff?

00:52:07.880 And they were so excited about it.

00:52:09.840 And eventually, you know, when we were making this decision and we found the location of, you know, well, okay, when we were scouting the location for Thors Hoff and we decided on looking in the south, we looked at our membership base and where we had leadership.

00:52:31.820 And we had a very, um, very active membership at that time in the Carolinas and a couple

00:52:36.780 of hindrids who were, were very active and man, they, they wanted this Hoff so bad.

00:52:43.040 And they talked such a big game about how much we need to do this.

00:52:46.760 We need to make this happen.

00:52:47.820 And I think everybody is very comfortable with dreams.

00:52:51.960 As long as those dreams are out of reach, it's fun to talk about them when there's,

00:52:57.460 when there's no consequence and there's literally no skin in the game.

00:53:00.480 it's a it's a fun idea so they put this out there and they asked me to get them off and okay cool

00:53:08.800 so uh the leader of one of these kindreds and a folk builder at the time and somebody who was

00:53:16.320 in our uh gothar program at the time you know this this hof was going to be in in his state

00:53:23.680 and close to him and whatever and i asked you know before we even got it like hey

00:53:28.160 hey, I want to make sure that you guys have this and this is something you're going to do and

00:53:33.120 you're going to be able to take care of and you're comfortable with this. Reality is different than

00:53:36.940 theory. So are you good? Oh yeah, absolutely. I'm good. A hundred percent. I'm behind it. A hundred

00:53:43.140 percent. This will be great. Okay. And then again, are you sure? Nope. I'm sure a hundred percent go

00:53:51.120 forward. We'll do it. So we got in contract, got the money down, got ready to get it. And

00:53:57.520 And once reality hit, once reality hit like that lightning bolt of Thor, all of a sudden, fear overtook people in the area.

00:54:11.140 And this gentleman, within, I think, a succession of three or four days, quit the Gothar program, quit being a folk builder, and quit the AFA in general, along with his whole kindred.

00:54:27.040 because they were terrified of the attention that Thorshoff would bring to them. And he told me like,

00:54:33.740 you know, hey, I don't know about this. This is right down the road from where I work and

00:54:37.520 where I live. And what are we going to do? And this was after he gave his word on several occasions,

00:54:45.260 but reality is much harder when there's consequence, when there's weight. So we

00:54:52.400 basically had to rebuild um the entire state of north carolina and much of the state of south

00:54:57.600 carolina most of thorshoff was saved and taken care of and nursed there for the that beginning

00:55:06.320 period by people from um people from virginia which is quite a ways away if you're driving

00:55:12.800 south carolina stuff happened some of our south carolina folks but uh north carolina and it's come

00:55:19.520 back quite a bit we're more successful there now than we ever have been but this initial group

00:55:24.720 they let fear overtake them and the thor's fishing trip where he tries to to pull in the

00:55:34.080 wool the world serpent it's all fun and games until all of a sudden that serpent bites

00:55:41.600 and then the giant that was with him was overtaken by fear and you know thor has

00:55:48.000 victory in his grasp he's got jormungandr on the line and pulling him in and the terror of the

00:55:55.120 reality of that was too much and that giant cut the line and couldn't handle it um and i think

00:56:02.400 this piggybacks really well on our discussion we had last week about courage um talking about

00:56:10.480 a theoretical that's distant in the future that you're not facing is very very easy

00:56:14.960 but staring jormungandr in the face on the other end of this hook reality is is terrifying and

00:56:26.740 that's when you see who's who has that courage within themselves and who just talks a big game

00:56:34.700 and it's a it's a it's a tragic thing and it's a beautiful thing depending on which way it cuts

00:56:42.520 and it often cuts both ways and it cuts differently on on people that you would expect much out of

00:56:49.300 let you down on it and people who you expect little out of blow you away with their character

00:56:55.400 so uh those thoughts were a lot of the things permeating um the ether at that time another

00:57:01.900 thing to consider is and Svan was was bringing this up a little bit and I'm not trying to take

00:57:06.560 the the air out of your story Svan I apologize no this is great I just think this is good background

00:57:12.280 um this was setting the tone odenshoff was our first hoff but as far as a mural

00:57:19.400 and really making the hoff focused on the worship of a god this was that big first step

00:57:29.160 and it was scary because i tell you what i didn't know what kind of art spawn could do i saw some

00:57:33.480 sketches but i didn't know so we're gonna let this guy throw some paint on it see what happens

00:57:40.440 um get the primer ready i was okay so we didn't know how to do and secondly i was obnoxious and

00:57:49.080 like bugging him he kept sending me pictures of every stage of the process i'm really fortunate

00:57:54.360 in that every time we do a mural i harass spawn and he sends me all these different stages of

00:57:59.720 watching it develop and i that's one of the most special things as i'll hear your gothic perk i

00:58:05.320 suppose it's really neat watching those come come together but spawn out did himself on it and i'll

00:58:13.240 leave it with this and then it's then it's fun's turn i promise um i

00:58:23.560 so i went out there for the dedication and

00:58:30.040 again i saw this mural develop i saw pictures of it before anybody else did

00:58:35.320 When you walk into that vey, there's not good enough words to describe the power of that first sight of Thor and how it hits you.

00:58:50.180 And it hits you different than any of these other murals.

00:58:54.400 And it literally blows you away.

00:58:58.540 But I had that experience.

00:59:00.900 it was also very special at the first ostara that was hosted there which is their their national

00:59:06.500 showcase event um steve and sheila mcnalen were there and steve was blown away by it as well i

00:59:15.140 was with them when they walked in for the first time and uh you know swan said there's all kind

00:59:21.540 of different ideas about what we could have done or where it would have gone it's hard now after

00:59:26.740 the fact to imagine it going any other way because it was so perfect and so powerful and so uh with

00:59:34.500 that you can go back to your story i apologize for no no again the the folk watching this don't know

00:59:43.460 that like we don't prep for this so you know how what level we're gonna take it but you just brought

00:59:48.820 it in to very real point and i you know i'm i can kind of glance around these things but you just

00:59:55.940 kind of dropped it right into the ring what you were talking about is about how you this has become

01:00:02.420 a very intimate subject with a lot of history behind it and you brought it into focus there

01:00:09.140 when i walked into thorsoff with the intention of doing the murals because this was where we

01:00:14.660 were going to go with it all of what that was here ago they just said was in play um i there

01:00:22.260 there was only two people that were kind of on the ground doing work initially

01:00:26.020 for the Hoff. All of, all of the groundwork, all of the real estate,

01:00:30.840 everything that was going on initially started out with two people and it was

01:00:36.960 me and the leader of that kindred.

01:00:41.220 And so words were spoken to me as well in front of the Hoff actually that we

01:00:47.840 were going to do this. It was time.

01:00:49.520 We had talked about this for many, many, many years before the Hoff was even a reality.

01:00:56.080 We were talking about, man, it would just be great if we had a Hoff on the East Coast.

01:01:02.420 Oh, it would be great if it was in Virginia or North Carolina right in our backyard so that we could really get this done.

01:01:09.260 When it became a reality, you know, when it's time to do real stuff, sometimes you find out who's really there and who isn't.

01:01:19.520 and um you know he left everybody's a gangster until it's time to do gangster stuff right

01:01:25.140 well and it it came on a Sunday night I think because I didn't find out till Tuesday

01:01:31.120 uh which perhaps has some importance there too but I didn't find out till a till a Tuesday that

01:01:37.080 that he had left and um so suddenly I was held by I was by myself holding the bag if you will

01:01:44.920 and um that was a real strong moment and instead of oh well he's out you know i can't do this by

01:01:54.920 myself there's just no way that this is going to happen um and then at the same time we're having

01:02:00.100 these conversations and you're asking me well why should we even do it there now because we have this

01:02:05.160 kind of deficit and i i was like please i think that the that the virginia folk and the south

01:02:10.960 Carolina. There's people around. We can float this. And I remember you saying, this is a huge

01:02:17.640 risk. Like there's nothing there. You're coming from a distance away. Are you willing to drive

01:02:24.400 that to do that? Are you willing to put time in to do that? And I was pleading, yes, yes, we can't,

01:02:31.820 if this is the case, if this is what we've got. And again, there's a fortuitous story about the

01:02:36.840 nature of us attaining the building in and of itself and prayers to thor i felt at this point

01:02:42.540 if thor had sanctioned this to happen it it was it was incumbent upon me to do anything i could

01:02:49.420 to convince you and to convince everybody that this was worth the the challenge and so i did not

01:02:55.900 step out i did not back away i went headlong in and you had faith in me to to do that i remember

01:03:04.940 you saying like this okay we're gonna do this but you gotta you know you gotta make this happen

01:03:10.140 and it it was a a whirlwind of action and movement to get the building and do everything that we were

01:03:18.420 doing and then of course there were people that were kind of coming around and all of that stuff

01:03:22.920 but that really was lost in the din of what we were what we were going to start doing and one

01:03:27.340 of the first things that we started doing was the mural and the mural became the point of godstead

01:03:33.620 This was, we wanted, it was such a focal point that we wanted to do it.

01:03:38.340 And because of all of this stuff that me and the Al-Syrugrithi had been talking about, when I went in there, you know, Hrim Skrida, Hrim Skrida is the story of Thor's fishing trip.

01:03:51.220 And I wanted to do the point where it really kind of emphasized was when Thor starts to row out further and the fear in that story starts to build and it culminates with the cutting of the rope.

01:04:06.560 That became the story that we needed to put up there.

01:04:11.140 I was originally just thinking of doing just an image, a godstead of Thor.

01:04:17.680 But we added the element with Jormungandr and Rheim because of the notion of courage and fear.

01:04:26.500 And it was almost as if it was all happening with purpose and that Thor was involved in that.

01:04:38.000 I believe that in a way that I can't explain without sounding kind of kooky, but I really felt like we were in a mythos of our development as a church because there were so many factors going on.

01:04:51.380 So the choice of Rimsby does the fishing trip where he cuts the line became the focal point.

01:05:02.480 And then from there, the idea was how to position it, how to do it, and what color schemes, what were we going to do?

01:05:11.220 You know, the art of the AFA is not art of, you know, like it doesn't look like a black metal album.

01:05:17.800 that that was not something that and i think the alceurgo and i were talking about that like we

01:05:23.020 want colors brightness life happiness we want to see the boldness of colors that our ancestors wore

01:05:31.080 when they went to the elthing or or or you know when you go to nordic uh towns now and you see

01:05:36.480 the houses are brightly colored and and all of that stuff that that um that spirit that can't

01:05:43.000 be broken not even by the land it's just happy and filled with life and so we started to form

01:05:49.680 we had the story that we wanted to do and we had kind of an idea of the dimensions of what we were

01:05:55.560 going to do and then we started talking about coloring and things like that and then there

01:05:59.960 was this moment where the al-sphere ago the kind of was like all right get get to getting it and

01:06:06.080 uh i i had never painted a mural before so like i've i've only done mediums of very small pictures

01:06:13.080 so the first thing we started doing i just had the notion or the idea of putting up painter's tape

01:06:18.840 and basically doing the whole um uh image on with painter's tape and pencil to get an idea of

01:06:27.940 scope to make sure that things didn't look too uh odd or out of place and when i was sending

01:06:35.780 these tape pictures i i know it's like it just looks like scraps of tape all over the place and

01:06:42.180 uh sketches and and little scratches all over the wall um and you know and i knew the scope of it

01:06:50.360 wasn't going to be caught but i was here ago he was working with me he was telling me what he

01:06:54.760 wanted he wanted to see some of the elements of this he wanted to see the size he wanted to have

01:06:59.340 gravitas and power and that's where the development of the sonnenrod over the head really started

01:07:04.400 to formulate and so through this back and forth via calls and texts and I think you know because

01:07:12.140 I can't be on the phone while I'm doing it there's these moments where I think like how about this

01:07:16.980 and I'd show a picture and he no the eyes are they got to look like this and I'm like okay I'll try

01:07:24.780 it so I you know I go in and I do it how about this nah and then we would angle it and I mean

01:07:30.100 thankfully, you didn't really, it was very constructive criticism. It was never about

01:07:37.360 just tweaking it out of, I think, strictly just a desire of something you wanted. You had

01:07:43.320 constructive points of where you wanted the eyes to look, the emanation of light, the positioning

01:07:48.940 of the body. There was real good constructive criticisms that kind of built out. And once we

01:07:54.660 got that foundation going, then it just took off. You know, guys, this is a side point.

01:08:03.720 Svon and I are able to do this on a lot of different things. And I think we complement

01:08:08.260 each other very well in certain ways. I've got, I can see things in my head. I have

01:08:15.980 a lot of thoughts about art but I can't make art like I can I know what I want but I can't make

01:08:25.780 that manifest and Svan has an amazing ability to be able to manifest these things into the into

01:08:32.160 the physical and make them beautiful and it was really cool to be able to be some part of that

01:08:38.300 process and I never want to overburden it not let the artist put it all out there because the gods

01:08:45.760 are working through swan in a very special way um but yeah it's it's we were big on on working with

01:08:52.800 the metallics in the picture the metallics were one of those big things he and i spoke about

01:08:58.560 and then that uh that that black sun halo uh that now adorns all of our all of our gods

01:09:06.400 and will when we do arts of our heroes as well uh but red for the heroes and gold for for the the

01:09:13.040 the Aesir. It was really special to be part of that while this was developing. And I remember

01:09:21.460 that all so clearly. It really takes me back. I appreciate you telling the story about this one.

01:09:26.340 Yeah, that time. And again, Aesirah Gauthier was not hitting backseat driver level stuff. He was

01:09:36.200 He was basically giving honest criticisms about the way it would be more dynamic to do something, or perhaps it would be better if we did it this way.

01:09:46.980 And I would try it, and then we'd sit back, we'd take a picture of it, we'd look at things, and then, yep, no, that's it.

01:09:53.380 That's hitting it right there.

01:09:54.480 And then so it started to develop, and once we got the groundwork going, there was this time where I really couldn't be on the phone.

01:10:00.680 And it was it was I was doing the mural over a series of weekends because I was working and then I would come down around Thursday and I would stay till Saturday night.

01:10:10.100 And so when it really got pitched, it was kind of like our communication was at the beginning and then a little bit at the end.

01:10:16.620 And then we would kind of adjust. I would, you know, like take down kind of mental notes of what you were saying.

01:10:22.120 And then when I came back the next week, I would hit those notes and then send a picture and say, how about now?

01:10:27.740 What is, what are you thinking about this? And so there was an intimate kind of conversation

01:10:31.940 between us because we were hitting the first threshold of, of imagery of the AFA. And to me,

01:10:38.420 I was challenged with the task of it, but it was you that were, you were talking about an age of

01:10:45.340 art. You were looking at something bigger than even I could understand was that you like, you

01:10:51.360 were kind of like, like Svan, think about this. Like there's going to be a time when people are

01:10:55.880 going to look back at this time and your hands are going to be involved in an age of like

01:11:01.820 depiction of the gods and no pressure so it kind of like oh but it helped it helped me it helped

01:11:13.800 hone me and it really did help me keep clarification during that time because of everything that was

01:11:18.480 going on on the outside like i said people were dropping out middle of the weekend in the middle

01:11:23.360 of the night and just kind of slinking back out of this I'm not touching this and you know I've

01:11:27.680 got my family to worry about and I have a family I have a job I have a lot to lose

01:11:33.460 and I I kept going forward and the only thing I really super focused on was the threshold of

01:11:42.300 creating the mural um so there's like a lot of different things in the mural that I would say

01:11:49.820 To get back to the question about Easter eggs or about hidden meanings, really, the colors are kind of symbolic.

01:11:59.060 They have intention and meaning.

01:12:01.200 Also, too, because we're pulling from a Nordic myth, we were talking about, like, the appearance of Thor and correlation to tangible historical context.

01:12:17.920 but more so than just the material so like there's little things like uh even though the wool wraps

01:12:25.380 around his legs have tiny little um like golden aglets or golden hooks that that were used on

01:12:33.560 actual wool wraps of the legs during amongst the anglo-saxons and the nordic period so we i was

01:12:40.160 trying to pay attention to some of the detail there uh the other thing i really wanted to um

01:12:45.460 every every mural has a seed that correlates to another hoth because like the else higher ago they

01:12:54.360 said this was the beginning this was the second hoth there was going to be more so one of the

01:12:59.760 things i really wanted to place in was greedable i wanted to place in the iron rod in his belt

01:13:06.460 because grida is the mother of vidar or vidar and so that little nod there even though it's kind of

01:13:16.000 hard to connect the dots i wanted it to be there on purpose because it was

01:13:23.180 you know we're coming down the line we're going to open a temple to vidar

01:13:27.400 and i wanted that correlation to be there and so every hof kind of has a little nod or a lean

01:13:35.920 to one or the other um oh you know a lot of people don't realize that like i got a chance to go to

01:13:43.200 to othenshof after bouldershof so in boulders there's a nod to othenshof because i was going

01:13:48.960 there next and so everyone kind of correlates to one ahead of it um or a one to proceed so

01:13:57.680 So Greedaval, the runes on Greedaval, the runes on his belt, this was before the Folk Futhark.

01:14:07.320 Now, I wanted to bring this up because I've heard rumors, little birds telling me things that people are under the misconception that we somehow, like, created a new Futhark.

01:14:18.180 No, that is – I'm insulted that they would think we would be that hubris.

01:14:24.560 No, the idea – I think it comes from their ignorance in the fact that they haven't developed art yet.

01:14:32.740 A lot of the criticisms that are coming at us are coming from people that don't have established art or have the medium in which they're going to have large-scale artwork being presented to the folk in representation of the gods and what kind of respect level that has.

01:14:48.880 They don't have that, so they start shooting in the dark and saying, oh, they're making up this crap.

01:14:53.200 They're making up these runes.

01:14:54.560 No. In actuality, the Folk Futhark was not even in process during Thor's mural, but what happened was I was starting to write things down to give context.

01:15:05.700 I wanted Greedival to be on his belt, but if there was an iron rod with nothing on it, then the people wouldn't understand what that was unless they looked into the story, but I could give it right then and there, and then they would be like, oh, and then they'd go back and look it up.

01:15:19.880 but i wanted to do it in runic so if we're going to do it in runic how do we do it in runic and

01:15:26.680 what i was here go the and i sat down and we talked about it and we thought okay how about

01:15:34.500 we use all the futharks that have already been in existence every cell like all of them and

01:15:41.480 and and and pull some from each one to create a futhark that we will use for artistic expression

01:15:50.440 The idea is that we want to pass on lore, but some people are familiar with the elder.

01:15:56.500 Some people are familiar with the younger.

01:15:58.360 Some people are familiar with the Anglo-Saxon Frigian.

01:16:00.840 Others are, you know, with the Armanin.

01:16:02.900 Suddenly we realize there's people that have different, you know, understandings of the runes.

01:16:08.000 So let's pull a little bit from each one.

01:16:10.160 That will encourage them to study cross and see the symbols in different ways.

01:16:15.360 and also allow us to convey a message in our artwork so that folk, years from now, can read it

01:16:24.740 and understand it without having some sort of confusion based on rules from other futharks.

01:16:30.640 So we basically just created a linguistical medium in order to better describe what's going on in the artwork.

01:16:40.100 We weren't trying to create a new magical system.

01:16:42.500 We weren't trying to create some sort of, you know, AFA super rune Futhark that we're going to use.

01:16:52.940 It was like when I found out about this criticism and it kind of like hurt my head at what level that would be levied at us or levied at me.

01:17:03.260 No, it was about art. It's about expressing the spiritual.

01:17:07.460 It's about things that were going on at the time being expressed through the painting in order to encourage the folk to learn a lesson from it.

01:17:16.420 And one of the big things is about fear along the edge of the boat.

01:17:21.240 You know, it's clearly stating there that Hamer is is struck with fear while Thor is the lord of action.

01:17:29.860 He's moving forward. He's about to crush.

01:17:32.400 He's going to take all of the power of earth and heaven and place it right that in the middle of that which constrains the middle earth.

01:17:42.160 And it gets cut because him is a coward.

01:17:46.040 That was what I was trying to convey.

01:17:47.920 And I couldn't just do it with just pictures.

01:17:50.060 I wanted to add words and things.

01:17:52.280 So the folk food art was actually developed at the end of that.

01:17:56.460 So there's pieces of it that aren't in the folk food art.

01:17:59.780 and i'm deliberating right now whether or not to go back and adjust i have adjusted some things

01:18:04.640 but i don't want to do it i'm approaching the godstead with a sense of reverence i don't want

01:18:10.420 to just oh you know we're going to erase this and do this it's more or less like okay i'm i'm going

01:18:16.300 to refocus on how i got to plan this out because runes have sizes and i don't want to overshoot

01:18:22.300 or undershoot and create gaps and kind of mess with the completion of it.

01:18:28.660 So we still have to edit some stuff with the Folk Futhark,

01:18:32.620 but after Thor's off, the Folk Futhark was in place.

01:18:37.120 And it was all about being able to convey messages through art.

01:18:41.860 So I wanted to bury that kind of rumor or, I don't know,

01:18:47.440 wind that seems to catch people's tongues.

01:18:52.300 We, you know, utilizing that, the other thing that I have never done a mural before Thor's

01:18:59.740 Hoff. So a funny little thing is my usage of, I have done, I used to do tattoos and I have done

01:19:09.740 tattoo work. And usually you're, you're dealing with a single piece, strong borders, not a lot

01:19:15.180 of space. Background was a big thing for me and natural background and utilizing clouds and

01:19:21.440 mountains and waves i had no experience in whatsoever so i did a lot of studying a lot i

01:19:31.520 i you know i went looked in art books i looked at because i live on the beach at the beach and i

01:19:37.940 looked at waves and in paintings i've even i even went to i went to bob ross at one point because i

01:19:45.920 couldn't quite make the waves look 3d or like they were actually curling forward and i remember

01:19:53.520 typing in uh waves on stormy ocean bob ross and like looking at his technique and then trying it

01:20:01.780 and i was fully assuming there's no way i'm going to be able to replicate this this is bob ross we're

01:20:06.160 talking about here and i felt like i got i got in a good spot so that's some of the stuff the

01:20:12.860 coloring the choice of the story the usage of the folk futhark or runes in general to create

01:20:18.320 uh an extension of um or uh to expound on the meaning of things and then also to the

01:20:26.700 establishment of the son and rod around the head the uh establishment of mjolnir and the runes

01:20:31.200 upon his belt so you know and and and making sure that we have you know iron glove and iron grip in

01:20:38.400 there and things because those were also gifts given to thor from grida to hold breathable or

01:20:46.320 excuse me no it's uh the gifts from the uh the dwarves to hold mjolnir and so i wanted to add

01:20:51.760 this kind of idea of evolution of the toolage of thor because we see amongst no other god and this

01:20:59.580 kind of correlates back to that question about um why a symbol of thor the hammer is because we see

01:21:06.040 this evolution in Thor with imagery towards him that directly correlate to the time in which we

01:21:13.040 are in. We see our ancestors and we see the Pan-Aryanism of the club. And then the club kind

01:21:19.640 of evolves into the axe or the bronze axe or the hammer axe. And then we see by the time of the

01:21:26.540 late Nordic period, which, you know, the last vestige of our faith, the evolution of Mjolnir

01:21:36.620 became a hammer. And, you know, understanding that the gods evolved with us. So that was another

01:21:45.120 big point I wanted to show with Greedval being in the belt. And there's some symbology there.

01:21:51.260 But I mean, I think we can talk about that a little bit later as far as some of the intention there.

01:21:57.540 But I just wanted to say that was some of the things that we were trying to really get out there.

01:22:02.020 And it was under when I went in there, there was a ton of stuff going on around us that inspired a lot of this.

01:22:09.300 That was very long winded. Sorry.

01:22:11.920 No, no. And inside baseball, these are organic.

01:22:17.660 but that's the one thing i sent svan earlier today like be prepared to talk about the mural

01:22:22.140 because i knew that was going to be a big deal because it's such a special

01:22:26.940 beautiful tribute that we've done and that svan has done for us at thor it's uh

01:22:34.940 it really is worthy of myth and legend and it's spectacular and it's it's

01:22:40.140 a really important thing to talk about um

01:22:43.420 So I had something I was going to say, but it slipped my mind.

01:22:49.240 Hopefully I will think of it later and be able to say something then.

01:22:54.820 We have a $10 donation from Tyler Bethea.

01:22:59.140 Thank you so much, Tyler.

01:23:00.680 We appreciate you.

01:23:01.980 He says, great to see you two gentlemen tonight.

01:23:04.620 Hail the AFA.

01:23:06.520 We appreciate it.

01:23:07.100 Hail Tyler Bethea.

01:23:08.280 There we go.

01:23:08.920 And, uh, hey, Bob Ross.

01:23:12.300 We appreciate that.

01:23:13.180 Bob Ross, I think he's underrated as an artist, but the stuff he's able to do on a canvas is

01:23:19.520 really magical. And I'm glad that was able to help you with the waves. I either didn't know

01:23:24.460 that or didn't recall that. Yeah, I never even told you that. And that's another point that I

01:23:29.040 wanted to bring up to the focus that we don't pre-script this. Sometimes I think you're learning

01:23:35.500 stuff that i haven't really talked about as we're doing these podcasts no i'm i i'm i'm a bob ross

01:23:43.260 fan not so much here but a fan of his art absolutely uh shay says why is the 11th virtue

01:23:51.660 made apparent by gothe's fawn equals stamina uh undefined they are sorry i when there's characters

01:23:59.900 on here in entropy it says undefined my fault uh thank you both for continuing to deliver this

01:24:05.660 excellent uh content well i'm glad that you like it uh swan certainly has the stamina but the 11th

01:24:13.980 virtue is no there's no 11th virtue i think he is just making a funny about your stamina

01:24:22.620 yes i didn't understand the context of the question when it came up at first i was like

01:24:26.060 what's going on so that's the other thing because we've been talking so much this question came in

01:24:30.300 like an hour ago or something oh i think you just came on so yeah i think we're like an hour and a

01:24:36.720 half behind on these questions almost but that's good that means we got a lot of content and people

01:24:40.900 tune in to hear what you got to say svan they're uh very very impressed with you as am i as are we

01:24:47.340 all uh bruce says matt and svan can you tell us your favorite stories about thor svan what

01:24:55.980 is your favorite story about Thor? Oh, I mean, the theft of Thor's hammer, I think, has been

01:25:07.780 one of my favorites, mainly because of its contestment in, I guess, in times. And when I

01:25:15.520 was doing a lot of storytelling early on, after I'd come back from the Marine Corps, I had done

01:25:21.620 some storytelling local library here in Virginia. And, you know, I got a chance to tell the stories

01:25:29.360 of the gods, you know, just to young kids and really got a chance to kind of hone some of my

01:25:36.680 storytelling skills there. And that story really does seem to balance out a perfect amount of

01:25:44.180 comedy. There isn't a lot of necessity for lore to understand what's going on, but at the same

01:25:50.920 time it builds the the the dichotomy between uh you know the the the kinslayer at a time in in the

01:26:01.720 in the evolution of arc of the stories where he and thor are kind of counter pollating each other

01:26:07.960 around a central mission or a central idea and also it really does show uh some connections

01:26:16.840 culturally, like with the blessing of the hammer on the lap, showing that myths and our stories

01:26:24.560 are like ropes. They have a lot of different tendrils that wrap around to express certain

01:26:30.140 things. There's some levity in it, and I think that's something that a lot of people don't,

01:26:35.520 they lose, like how you had mentioned with Odin about glad time. There is a levity that we have

01:26:40.680 with our gods that I don't think should go into, um, like a sense of, uh, unpiety or, or just where

01:26:48.940 it's a bashedly kind of rude, but there are some of the stories that I see have survived and have

01:26:54.320 a lot of levity and happiness with the, with the gods. But then at the end, Thor is Thor and he's

01:27:02.680 terrifying he's scary and i think that the the children um realize that that that thor doesn't

01:27:11.220 take too kindly to his hammer being stolen that this conduit this this central force of power

01:27:18.960 being stolen from the gods places them in great danger and thor takes it upon himself to retrieve

01:27:27.160 it and he has to go through all kinds of terrible stuff to get there but he does it because he needs

01:27:34.960 to reconnect to it immediately because of the imminent threat that is placed so i i would say

01:27:40.140 that the of thor's hammer is one of my favorite stories um and it really does i think it's my

01:27:48.020 favorite because it garners such a a great uh range of emotions and reactions from from the

01:27:53.820 children when I talk about it and I say the story and I said it just talked uh did a reciting of it

01:27:59.700 at uh winter nights for for the for the kids and a lot of the adults that after the uh auction came

01:28:05.520 out some of them were coming out and they got they caught that story or at least half of it and

01:28:09.800 seemed to really like it as well so that's my favorite you know I don't I don't know if it's

01:28:15.040 my favorite but it's the one that strikes me when I saw the question I really like the story in the

01:28:19.400 Alvismal, where Thor has this very clever exchange with a dwarf that's trying to get the hand of his

01:28:30.580 daughter. And it's a really good, first, if anybody hasn't read it, they should. It's neat,

01:28:38.640 it's informative. But it also shows a dimensionality to Thor that I think a lot of people

01:28:44.600 who like to compartmentalize our gods

01:28:47.780 don't get.

01:28:49.820 Thor, big, strong, not smart

01:28:51.720 box. And that's

01:28:53.480 a disrespect. Thor is a

01:28:55.620 god. Yes, he is

01:28:57.360 amongst gods. He is the

01:28:59.600 strongest. But

01:29:01.600 he's a god nonetheless.

01:29:03.800 Because,

01:29:05.280 and I've, you know, as a side note

01:29:07.520 and a little bit of a tangent here,

01:29:10.480 life's not fair.

01:29:12.960 People,

01:29:14.400 like to equalize as if we're some kind of video game character or something that you've got a

01:29:20.960 certain number of points to distribute and if somebody's really strong then they have to be

01:29:26.080 dumb or they have to be slow or if somebody's really smart then they can't no our gods are

01:29:32.240 the best of all things um the the least smart god is much wiser and much smarter than the

01:29:41.040 smartest man that's ever existed um and it's really i don't know i think it's special to see

01:29:50.160 thor you know exercise that uh that cunning in that way and so i really like the alva small

01:29:58.000 yeah that's that deep-minded wisdom that and again too you know when we talk about uh when

01:30:04.960 we talk about odin being the god of skulls one of the interesting things about alva small is that

01:30:10.560 it is a poem to help skalds learn the haiti and and some of the the the different names that they

01:30:18.320 could utilize in poetry but it's used through the medium of thor not not odin so it's it's a very

01:30:25.120 interesting thing that kind of it really does shine that's a great story as well and i think

01:30:31.040 that one of the first stained glass um window pieces that we are going to do is going to be

01:30:36.480 thor standing in front of alvis while the sun is coming up his impending doom on the horizon

01:30:44.720 i think that's a great idea um frayer i've heard thor also being a god of gravity and mjolnir is

01:30:52.800 not his weapon but from what the lord tells us different as thor being protector of our ancestors

01:30:59.760 what is your opinion on his powers it's fun go ahead and take a swing at that okay um yes

01:31:08.560 to both of them again when i when i see uh when we talk about the idea of placing our gods into

01:31:16.640 boxes or or perhaps setting up a throne for them to sit in for our for our people if as long as

01:31:23.920 it's done with reverence the idea that this is how we culturally see the gods or we can again

01:31:29.920 move that tripartite and and see thor at the high seat for the functions that we need from him is

01:31:38.120 is good and important but when we start talking about the multiplicity of powers i would say yes

01:31:44.180 to all i mean in in regards to when we talk about thor like let's say if we were to talk about thor

01:31:52.900 in a metaphysical sense or metaphysics or or in a i guess um yeah metaphysics so we're looking at

01:32:00.840 metaphysics and we're talking about the power of thor and his symbology and i think that since the

01:32:06.240 gods have told these stories to our folk there was a point in which somehow some way there was a

01:32:13.180 bridge between the gods and man and man received these stories there are hidden truths in them

01:32:18.680 that are even beyond the scope of understanding at the time that they were even being spoken

01:32:23.100 so when we talk about Thor and Mjolnir Mjolnir being the catalystic switch being the point of

01:32:31.080 connection seeing the hands the the gloves the the right and the left the polaric powers that

01:32:37.700 need to be placed on the hands in order to hold the switch to see the girdle of power placed

01:32:44.000 around the waist, to see the iron rod placed within that girdle is all kind of just a gentle

01:32:51.400 nod to that power that I think on a metaphysical and even very, very pliable physical level

01:32:58.500 is understanding that Thor is of the earth and the sky. And we know now scientifically

01:33:04.940 there are powers that are between those that we can't see. And one of them in particular

01:33:10.540 is magnetism and so we understanding earth power understanding something that

01:33:16.680 was barely understood uh or or was even just being gleaned at but then scientifically we can

01:33:24.580 look at these things and see them very very carefully and all of a sudden it makes perfect

01:33:29.360 application with the symbology that was already in place so seeing thor in connection to magnetism

01:33:37.240 in connection to uh electricity uh in connection to the electron of the atom yes i see it and i

01:33:46.020 think that's when we start to really stop seeing the gods as just simply literature characters and

01:33:52.820 start seeing them as bigger more powerful things the scope of understanding what how far divinity

01:33:59.980 reaches and how powerful they are then we go back and look at the symbology and we're like oh

01:34:05.840 we start to see like a hidden picture going on we approach the gods from a different place than

01:34:14.980 they approach us and i think it's worth worth noting um we start out and when i say we i mean

01:34:23.980 i mean our race is as as people start out as children who are ignorant of all the things

01:34:31.920 around them and over history uh we as a people have learned all these different things

01:34:38.320 but some of this is included in the in the idea when i use when i say you can't out science truth

01:34:45.040 truth exists and science brings us closer to understanding those truths in a way or to

01:34:52.640 quantifying them or to getting like how stuff exists but the gods aren't beholden to stone age

01:35:00.320 science as science evolves i think it's no surprise that we find more and more really

01:35:06.800 interesting correlations between our ancestral lore and and our gods um our gods interact with

01:35:15.280 us with a full knowledge of science at least science is as we understand it in uh in the

01:35:21.600 physical world and so them communicating and showing truth to our ancestors in these in these

01:35:30.400 ways it's nice as we get closer and closer to a more full understanding of science and how things

01:35:37.440 work that it builds even even stronger or more bonds to understanding these images of our gods

01:35:46.720 and how they showed themselves to our ancestors and that's kind of a beautiful thing and it's always

01:35:53.760 it's always important and i know that the nature of how we do anything as humans is uh on um

01:36:02.800 i don't know empathy i don't know if empathy is the right word but we

01:36:07.600 we see everything from our lens and from the the depth of our experience but it's important to

01:36:14.160 know that we're approaching the gods from you know an infantile place and our gods are approaching

01:36:22.560 they're reaching down to us from the realm of the gods and so realizing that power that wisdom

01:36:32.400 differential and how that plays in i think is a fascinating way of of just contemplating our

01:36:38.480 faith we all got we all got time that we do some navel gazing and just contemplating on these

01:36:42.880 things. And as long as it doesn't get in the way of actual accomplishment or actual relationships,

01:36:47.200 I think it's, it's something we all do. And it's, it's a special way. And if done right,

01:36:52.120 it brings us closer to a better relationship with our gods. So Nick suggested I plug entropy again.

01:36:59.960 So I shall, if you guys want to get on entropy, you can donate to us, which we appreciate anyway,

01:37:06.120 or if you want to monetize one of your questions to throw at the top line, we'll get to it.

01:37:10.280 As you can tell, we're a long way behind on the questions. We've got like 18 in line here.

01:37:15.860 We will get to all of them. As you can see from two weeks ago where we did a five hour broadcast,

01:37:23.060 we will we'll make sure we get to all your questions. But if you do want to

01:37:26.660 move those to the front of the line, hop over on entropy. And if you just want to want to throw us

01:37:33.200 a few dollars here or there, we also appreciate that. Again, that money is going to go to the

01:37:39.140 AFA and it's going to go to things like Sigerheim that we're currently trying hard to raise funds

01:37:44.240 on. Next question's up. I feel as if I need to repent for sins slash actions I've taken that

01:37:53.080 were wrong, but it also feels wrong to grovel and beg to the gods like I would Christ. How do I

01:37:59.800 square this circle? I've got strong feelings on that, so I want to jump in first on it.

01:38:09.140 There is a vast difference between apologizing and taking responsibility for wrongs you've done and earnestly trying to correct them and groveling or begging.

01:38:25.480 And I think that, unfortunately, our people don't, sometimes we get lost in the nuance of it.

01:38:33.200 So if you've done wrong, apologizing for it, and if you need forgiveness because you have personally wronged someone, asking for their forgiveness isn't wrong.

01:38:46.540 That's not weak. It's not bad. It's not humiliating. It's not Christian.

01:38:51.880 What makes it Christian is if you don't then try to fix what you broke.

01:38:57.160 The biggest thing that separates our faith versus Christianity when it comes to sin and when it comes to righting a wrong, in Christianity, any sin isn't something against a person.

01:39:22.840 It's a sin against their God. And the way you square it with their God is through literal death, either yours in the Jewish sense or Christ's symbolically for you, because the payment for sin is death in that faith.

01:39:39.840 um ours doesn't work that way you can sin against our gods but you can also sin against your your

01:39:48.480 your fellows if you do something wrong to somebody by all means apologize any of our people out there

01:39:55.960 and especially our men this is very hard for some of them be man enough to apologize when you're

01:40:02.880 wrong and to try to rectify things you broke we are all wrong from time to time and we all break

01:40:09.280 things. But one of the first, I'd say the first step in repairing frith is accepting responsibility

01:40:19.260 that, hey, I'm wrong. I'm really sorry. Let me try to fix this and make it right. There's some

01:40:25.940 things you can't make right. But our ancestors have a long process of shield and other things

01:40:31.600 where you make an attempt to make whole what you've taken apart of or what you've broken.

01:40:38.380 And that's, I think, the biggest difference. If you've done something wrong towards our gods or towards another person, by all means, say, hey, I take responsibility. I was wrong. I'm sorry. And here, fix it. That's the biggest key.

01:40:58.560 It's only Christ-like if you don't fix it, if you expect forgiveness for nothing.

01:41:04.520 It's also true if you apologize and you repair what you broke.

01:41:12.840 And for an example on that, because I think a lot of people it's esoteric, like, you know, if I back into your car, me paying for it to get fixed or me doing the body work to fix it would be fixing what you broke.

01:41:26.700 and that's absolutely the case. But like damaging somebody's reputation.

01:41:33.300 If I call you out in public and accuse you of something that you didn't do or call you

01:41:37.680 something that's unwarranted, a way of fixing that is to also apologize in public amongst

01:41:43.460 those same people and to do the best I can to restore the damage to your reputation that I did

01:41:49.360 to your reputation, trying to pay back in kind what you feel you've taken. So much of our concept

01:41:56.440 of justice is the idea of taking value from something and that value needing to be replaced

01:42:03.980 either through vengeance or through the other party voluntarily trying to fix what they broke.

01:42:11.380 And I think that's the biggest key. I think that's the way to square that circle.

01:42:15.480 And, you know, I jumped in front there because it's something that's on my mind and that I think

01:42:19.680 about and I wanted to say, but Svahn, do you have anything to add on that?

01:42:23.120 Yeah, I would just, I would really piggyback on that in the sense that, you know, I've had folk in our church who came out initially, you know, they felt they had something, they felt some way about me or they had something that I had said had kind of taken them wrong.

01:42:48.740 And they told me up front, no, I don't agree with you on this.

01:42:52.620 And I think that, you know, I think you're flawed in this logic or whatever.

01:42:58.820 And it's not about the context of whether I was flawed or not.

01:43:02.720 They openly said it.

01:43:04.280 And then later on, they came back and apologized because they realized that maybe the angle that they were coming at didn't allow them to see what I was trying to say.

01:43:14.220 And they came forth and they said, hey, I'm sorry that I said that to you.

01:43:17.220 You know what?

01:43:18.740 I see a little bit now more about what you were saying, and I hope that you understand that I made a mistake and I'm sorry.

01:43:27.180 And I was blown away by the bravery, the responsibility, the consideration even so far after the fact that it was still in their mind and that they took that time to tell me.

01:43:43.100 and it wasn't I don't think I wasn't being asked for forgiveness per se as they were taking

01:43:48.880 responsibility for something they had said and I think that when we talk about human relations

01:43:54.380 about righting wrongs about recalibrating oaths that may have changed we get into this fatalistic

01:44:01.420 view where we can't change things but we can because things are constantly evolving and I

01:44:07.680 think with the gods too is the same way on a spiritual level you know what you consider as

01:44:13.560 a grievance and so for you to air those out to the gods it's not about you uh building that on

01:44:21.860 a caveat that somehow the gods are withholding something from you and until you supplicate to

01:44:28.400 them you're not going to receive the boon of them in essence the difference is you're taking

01:44:34.400 responsibility and you want to fix it. You want to do what is right. You want to stop. You want

01:44:40.220 to immediately affect your will, change your weird, change your orlock, move in a direction.

01:44:48.260 And you know that you have to take on the duty of fixing things. And the gods see that. And I

01:44:55.060 think that's the more important thing, that the gods view your actions towards moving to improve

01:45:00.520 and letting those grievances stop with you.

01:45:04.980 You've learned from them.

01:45:06.220 If you don't learn from them, you continue to do them again.

01:45:08.540 And you keep asking the gods to bear witness to your mistakes, but you don't fix them.

01:45:16.500 The greatest travesty of that is you're building this repetition of committing wrongs

01:45:23.740 and then asking or recognizing you're committing them and then doing them again.

01:45:27.940 That's the insult.

01:45:28.920 And so let it stop with you. But there's no no wrong in in airing that out, even if, you know, saying it formulaically out of yourself, what your problems are to the gods.

01:45:42.900 you know there's another thing to be said about it um again unlike in uh in judaism it's not

01:45:51.960 a one and done thing it's not perfect or not perfect but you put layers in your wealth the

01:45:58.800 well of your of your hymenia and by screwing up or doing bad things you put

01:46:06.760 a certain amount of badness in there. By trying to rectify it, you neutralize that. You counterbalance

01:46:16.420 it with the good that you put in there. And the idea is to have the best, you know, the best

01:46:22.260 content of that well, of the aggregate of all those layers. And none of us have a perfect

01:46:29.580 hymenia but you repair it by fixing things you broke and by doing good acts to counteract bad

01:46:40.220 acts and that's a way that you can tangibly increase your hymenia and you can increase the

01:46:47.480 orlog of your descendants with what you hand to them and doing that is really contingent upon

01:46:55.200 righting the wrongs. So, if you're able, right those wrongs as best you can.

01:47:03.540 Varyag, what's the significance of saying Red Thor? Obviously, there's his hair,

01:47:11.320 but it's seemingly contrasted with the White Christ, and I'd like to know why.

01:47:16.540 Svan, could you explain that for him? Yeah, I would definitely say that this

01:47:22.500 late nordic period and and the correlation with color first and foremost understanding culturally

01:47:27.940 that red meant vitality it meant life it meant power it meant strength and um it meant blood it

01:47:36.820 meant heat it meant uh will and there was so much power in the color red in the essence of of giving

01:47:46.580 bloat and um how it sanctifies space and the cost of sacrifice and much of that stuff when we look

01:47:54.660 at the the real dynamic part is when we look at the white christ part um understanding first that

01:48:00.160 you know a whit uh was not the color white a whit was you know the was the the the spiritual

01:48:07.760 beings of the of the land around you uh also to like it was kind of a an impromptu word for like

01:48:14.380 your soul, you are a white as well, or a wit. And then the word kvit had some double meanings

01:48:22.480 there. One, on the good side of it, it could correlate in color to innocence. It could

01:48:28.520 correlate in color to cleanliness, or the idea of shiningness. You know, when we talk about the

01:48:36.460 asenya having, you know, white and shining arms, where the idea is that they're not sullied

01:48:42.940 by um things this was a beauty aspect especially that had cultural context at the time that the

01:48:49.180 stories were being told so white doesn't immediately out the gate have a negative context

01:48:55.160 but there's also another side to the color white being applied in this regard and i think that it

01:49:02.860 comes from the people who are also true during the conversion times and it this survives like

01:49:08.720 in some of our language like when we say somebody's lily livered and we're talking about like a white

01:49:14.440 underbelly or a part that that doesn't get tested it's uh so this part of of the color white i think

01:49:22.740 was an application to the idea that it was soft it was um taking away from the mythological power

01:49:34.680 and might of heroism, and that was seen by our ancestors, that they were seeing this kind of

01:49:41.560 idea of martyrdom without physical resistance, without proclamation, without attendance to deed,

01:49:53.080 and without the idea of gathering and pulling forth and making a merited stand.

01:49:59.000 And, you know, they would see the Kvit Christ as being untested and kind of lacking dynamic might, if you will.

01:50:15.180 And I think that that's where that correlation was to show redness to might and power and strength and blood and already tested to the untested and meekness and the death of heroism that I think was a contentious point amongst our ancestors during the conversion time.

01:50:33.740 is that they understood that the hero was at risk, that the soul and the might of the doer was at risk.

01:50:45.380 the ecclesiastical, the monk, the cloistered monk, you know, removing himself from his folk

01:50:57.420 and going into ancient Texan lore, never seeing the sun, you know, going and the only stains that

01:51:05.960 you'll ever experience are ink blots on your hands and never really lose or understand the

01:51:12.000 splattering of blood in the real world being

01:51:14.220 applicated and tested. You just

01:51:16.220 get this kind of cloistered

01:51:18.060 ecclesiastical bookworm

01:51:20.060 and this is being foisted

01:51:22.260 into our culture

01:51:24.200 when all the

01:51:26.240 menfolk are being told, no, you

01:51:28.100 got to go out there. You have to do it. You have to

01:51:30.040 attain. You can't sleep in.

01:51:32.100 You got to wake up early. You got to get out there

01:51:33.980 and take

01:51:36.200 your destiny and join your

01:51:38.020 folk. Join your men. Stand together

01:51:40.200 against odds test yourself that that dichotomy was being played out at that time the red was action

01:51:48.680 the white was stasis if you will untested stasis yeah i think i think the red for warrior virtues

01:52:01.240 and might and the white being symbolic of of peace and of pacifism and of weakness

01:52:08.520 in that context i think that's what it was about um so kurt asks one question one question why have

01:52:20.520 i heard a number of times if it's not afa also true it's not also true i am folkish and have been

01:52:28.680 all my life i have a lot of brothers and sisters that are members of the afa and i'm not well so

01:52:36.520 i want to step up and i want to own that and i want to address that the best i can

01:52:41.080 and this isn't meant offensively it's just being frank and i think it is what it is

01:52:48.840 i think for very long time there is an endless cycle of everybody doing their own thing

01:52:59.960 and nobody wanting to have hierarchy or any kind of orthodoxy on their practice

01:53:05.400 and just everybody do whatever you want. Do as you will. That's the whole of the law. And I think

01:53:11.220 a lot of people in also true circles, we're doing that for a very long time. And the truth of it

01:53:20.900 that I believe in many cases, and anything I'm going to say here isn't 100% for every single

01:53:26.620 practitioner, obviously. But I think the tendency to reject authority hasn't been because of some

01:53:33.940 religious purpose deep down it's been because people don't want anybody to tell them what to do

01:53:40.580 they want to do whatever they want and be able to justify it however they want as opposed to being

01:53:45.780 held to a standard by something external from themselves and now we've seen that a lot you know

01:53:52.100 there's a lot of people that instead of being part of the afa that's moving our faith forward

01:53:57.700 they want to stay by themselves or in their small backyard kindred

01:54:02.660 and then they can be the king of the five fat dudes in camp chairs arguing over the big piece

01:54:08.820 of chicken instead of just being a member of the afa where we're actually moving also true forward

01:54:18.980 when the statement that if it's not afa it's not also true

01:54:22.660 I don't apply that to anybody over 70. There's people that were practicing Ausatru before the

01:54:30.920 modern version of the AFA that was established in 1995, and I don't take anything away from those

01:54:38.040 people. But for all the folks now that just don't want to join the AFA, very seldom is it

01:54:43.740 from a sincere religious difference. It's because they just want to be these rugged individuals.

01:54:50.220 And the thing is, and I hate that I even have to think this way, but in the world that we live in today, we couch things in qualifying statements in order to seem super humble with it.

01:55:05.780 And it's going to be real.

01:55:06.840 We've established, first, Steve McNallan is the man that established Alcetru in its modern, continuous context.

01:55:15.760 There were people before him that started and there were starts and stops.

01:55:20.220 There was people like Alexander Rudd Mills that started something and then it stopped and died out, or Meister von List that started something that was kind of a proto-Ausitru, and then it died out and lost momentum.

01:55:37.380 But our founder, Steve McNallan, in 1968, started what we call modern Ausitru.

01:55:46.120 There was a couple people independent of him that started at a similar time, and I am aware of that, and I respect that.

01:55:53.620 But everything we do today is because of the relationship that he started in 68 with the All-Father and the way that it's developed since then.

01:56:04.900 That relationship, even his enemies admit that that relationship existed, exists, and has moved out so true to where it is today.

01:56:15.320 Um, we've been the steady thing in also true. First, Steve was that steady thing and he made

01:56:25.820 his way through life as a man with starts and stops, but settling down to the house of true

01:56:31.160 folk assembly in 1995. We've been here. We've been here consistently and we've been moving

01:56:38.180 forward steadily and consistently for almost here in about two months. We will have been doing this

01:56:44.440 for 28 years. And I say we, that's long before I joined the AFA, but we in a collective AsaTru

01:56:51.240 Folk Assembly sense. Everybody wants to make this about them and everybody wants to quit

01:56:59.340 and reinvent the wheel and build their own AsaTru and their own image. And these starts and stops

01:57:05.560 have really limited us as a folk. The AFA has been the torchbearer of the ISEER, the standard

01:57:13.820 bearer this entire time since like i mentioned since 1995 always moving forward and continuing

01:57:21.420 that gift cycle with our gods building those relationships we are the only people that on the

01:57:28.700 level of legitimate houses of worship have established four temples to various iser

01:57:37.740 we've built temples we've established temples to our gods we've continued moving this forward

01:57:44.460 we have a decades long almost three decades long gift cycle relationship with our gods

01:57:51.980 built upon a almost 53 year um almost 54 year relationship that steve has built with y'all father

01:58:07.740 There's a time where you have to draw a line in the sand and say, this is this and that is that. And we're at that time where the AFA is the voice of also true in the world. Are we perfect? No, not at all. But are we getting closer to perfection every year? Yes.

01:58:24.920 Are we doing our very best to serve the Aesir? Yes. Are we the one organization that's been around for reasonable amounts of time that stays loyal to the Aesir? Yes.

01:58:40.280 And I believe with all my heart that we have the authority to speak with their backing and to build Ausitru with their approval.

01:58:52.220 our gods have poured out their blessings with that understanding. And I would never want to

01:59:02.400 to presume anything, anything that we're not do. And so I feel very caught. I want to be cautious

01:59:09.400 saying that. But I believe very strongly, this is also true. We are doing it, we are building it.

01:59:16.280 and other people. And don't get me wrong, it's not completely impossible for you to build some

01:59:24.220 sort of relationship with the ICR that doesn't involve the AFA. Of course it is.

01:59:29.500 But this is the right way to go as far as the religion of Al-Satru. I'm sure there are

01:59:37.580 individuals out there that have a relationship with our gods, but this is the way to do it right.

01:59:43.380 And I speak that confidently because only unified in the AFA are we moving our faith forward to where we have something for our children, where we have something for their children, and where we're building this for our future.

01:59:59.520 Outside of that, it's just not there.

02:00:02.040 And anybody that fence sits at this point is wasting energy that could be put towards us all moving forward.

02:00:12.080 And everything else on the side is a distraction. And I don't mean any offense by that. I'm just speaking completely honestly with something that I truly believe.

02:00:23.220 Svon, do you have any thoughts on that?

02:00:27.020 Yeah, I would say troth.

02:00:30.180 The idea of your troth, of your faith, of your devotion to the gods is not necessarily in question.

02:00:36.840 The biggest important thing is understanding that when you look at our church,

02:00:46.520 when you look at our folk, when you look at our people, when you look at the AFA,

02:00:49.780 we have an inner guard.

02:00:51.580 no one should be surprised at that concept at all that that's ridiculous to say that

02:01:01.340 as the organization as as this gift cycle has been carried through decades that there is an

02:01:08.180 inner guard that these folk have and if they stand on the parapets of their inner guard

02:01:13.800 and they stand on the wall and they say you can have trough out there or you can have trough in

02:01:18.920 here there's no wrong or should be no perceived kind of sense of like uh you know those people

02:01:25.080 are crazy no that's our inner guard we defend it we project it forward we can we carry it for what

02:01:31.720 we have been for doing for so long that it's kind of preposterous to say that so what what that what

02:01:38.440 is being said is you have trough out there in the wilds or you have trough in the inner guard with us

02:01:43.960 And we just leave that, I think, in the open sense that you should consider bringing your trough into the inner guard with us, that we are moving forward, that there's a central point now.

02:01:58.840 There's a center that's starting to grow and emanate.

02:02:04.780 And the people that are defending it, the people that are putting in the time, people that are devoting their lives to it are going to proudly say our inner guard is right.

02:02:16.480 Our inner guard is good.

02:02:17.960 Our inner guard is the way for our people.

02:02:20.180 And I don't think anybody in the outer guard of that should see that as preposterous.

02:02:25.100 And there are people that I think are friendly to us. And I think there's people that, you know, don't take that as a personal offense. Perhaps they're still working out things in their lives. But then when they do come in, they notice there's no grievance. There's no hatred. There's people that have left or people that have encountered the AFA and say, ah, and they go off and they do things.

02:02:52.360 And then they come back and they're like, oh, maybe I was wrong.

02:02:55.660 And it's like, no, stop.

02:02:57.820 You're here now.

02:02:58.940 You're inside the guard.

02:03:00.680 Let's move forward.

02:03:02.020 What do you have?

02:03:02.880 What do you know?

02:03:03.860 What do you possess?

02:03:04.940 Where does your trough lie?

02:03:06.760 Let's expound on that.

02:03:08.360 Add to the edge.

02:03:10.600 Add to the growth of our inner guard.

02:03:14.120 And I don't think that a lot of people realize that they have a lot of that

02:03:16.560 contention because they don't pass through that threshold.

02:03:18.380 And when they do pass through that threshold, they're absolutely surprised at, you know, oh, I said this, right? I felt a certain way. And we're like, okay, yeah, that was in the past. Now you're here. You're here with us. Let's build a relationship inside the inner guard where it's protected. And we can work at it. We can focus on it. We could see what you bring in. And we can add more to it as we grow and create more foundation.

02:03:43.080 you know something else to be said um and this is just real brand integrity is a thing

02:03:52.600 as a faith also true has to mean something when everybody has their own little backyard version

02:04:01.720 of what also true is to them we lose cohesion and we lose legitimacy when we're unified

02:04:09.640 And when people want to know what is also true, this is what also true is that makes us effective.

02:04:17.280 And it's not just about us that brings honor and dignity and reputation to our gods.

02:04:26.120 When our gods have followers that want to go out and, you know, just do their own thing and not be a productive part of community and not be part of anything that doesn't move that forward.

02:04:38.680 That doesn't build for our gods. That may help you for the way you want to live your life at the moment. That's not building a future for our children, for our race, and for our gods. We do that together, unified, under the banner of the trihorns.

02:04:55.620 we are the ones who have succeeded we're the ones who exist with with success after all of the trying

02:05:04.180 phases of of ostrich in the early days and those folks with 10 people here and five people there

02:05:12.940 if we all came together we would be so much more effective in worship and bringing dignity to our

02:05:20.060 gods and bringing legitimacy to our faith. Reputation means everything. Admit everything

02:05:25.860 to our ancestors. Whether we admit it or not, it means everything to us and our success or failure.

02:05:32.080 We succeed better together. And you mentioned that you are not a member of the AFA.

02:05:37.940 And you don't have to answer this here, but I wonder, my question is why? If there are theological

02:05:44.080 differences, I would encourage you to talk to your go-fi in your area and let's figure those out.

02:05:50.060 um if you don't meet our membership standards that's a different issue

02:05:55.600 um and if none of those things are holding you back then we'd love to have you be part of what

02:06:02.540 we're doing and part of moving us forward um there's no we're not infallible we're not perfect

02:06:08.660 um but we're trying to be perfect we're trying to move closer to perfection

02:06:14.780 and uh and i feel like we're making progress towards that uh it's a it's a generations long

02:06:21.720 uh forever long process but i think we're getting closer to our goal and we'd love to have you and

02:06:28.680 everybody else of our folk to be part of moving us towards that goal we need you we need all you guys

02:06:35.740 um got another question from ali what would you recommend to separate the real thor from the pop

02:06:47.200 heathen thor it seems like the uni version is half ossa and half marvel spawn what are your

02:06:54.320 what are your thoughts on that oh yeah this is a this is a an interesting subject in and of itself

02:07:00.900 Because when we deal with a lot of people in our families or at work or things like that, and we talk about it, if they see a Thor's hammer and they're like, what is that about?

02:07:11.280 And then you go and they immediately kind of gravitate into this pop culture sense of, you know, a comic book-y kind of thing or a movie kind of thing or what have you.

02:07:23.940 I, the gods are kind of correlating to what we just talked about.

02:07:32.100 The gods are being remembered in ways that we don't control.

02:07:38.260 Like the, the, the gods are being talked about in references.

02:07:42.240 They're being utilized as, as plot hooks, as comic booky kind of things.

02:07:46.860 They're even being utilized politically in different ways.

02:07:50.160 They're being made caricatures of, they're being, you know,

02:07:53.500 twisted far away from even the central source of our cultural representation of our gods from our

02:08:00.120 people and they're just trousing them off into different directions and all kinds of things

02:08:04.520 so one of the big things too about unifying is that we in our unity can control the the the

02:08:14.420 cultural aspects of the way our ancestors and us currently now see the gods and we can start to

02:08:21.640 kind of, uh, oppose, fight against that, stand up against the way it's just being utilized by

02:08:28.420 people who don't even believe in the gods. And so that's one thing I think unity and, and, and

02:08:33.760 organizing together as one helps to deflate and D and to fight against a lot of that because it

02:08:41.260 gives us an opportunity to talk about the gods. It gives us an opportunity for us to express to

02:08:45.740 people who might ask that, Oh, you know, I know you're, you're thinking of like Thor from the

02:08:50.260 comic books. And those were invented by a couple of guys in the 50s and 60s that were looking for

02:08:55.340 a character to go into the expression of their stories that they wanted to tell to sell books

02:09:03.560 that they would gain passive income from young kids in America. And so once you kind of explain

02:09:11.100 that and say, but no, this is further back, this goes all the way back. It's not even just a Viking

02:09:15.820 religion where when you start dealing with people that maybe only have any correlation of the gods

02:09:20.560 through like the history channel or something of that nature and we say no it goes further back

02:09:25.520 than that it's so much broader and it has so much interconnectedness it's not like the goths or the

02:09:32.640 guttons you know they worshiped uh you know uh this god and then and the germans worshiped this

02:09:39.480 god and the nords worshiped this god and they have different names and they're all different gods no

02:09:44.440 those are all Odin. Those are all Votan or Vodanas or Godan. You know, the interconnectivity

02:09:52.080 of our people is reattained by the expression of our faith. So knowing that, knowing that

02:10:00.020 history does help kind of counter that, I know it's such a kind of a reused thing. But, you know,

02:10:07.540 when, when I meet people that don't even realize that Thursday is in correlation to Thor and how

02:10:14.880 that's in their everyday life, they see it every day. They don't even have any thought about it,

02:10:19.580 but they suddenly begin to realize, wow, that, that goes way back. And, and it, you know,

02:10:25.940 when you start looking at other Aryan branches and we see the striker, we see the catalystic

02:10:31.180 throne. We see it being filled by the God that is the striker. We realize the ancientness power

02:10:40.380 of our people and how it's not just some comic book character. I would say the biggest way is to

02:10:49.140 kind of help people understand that the mundane comic book-y stuff was something invented recently

02:10:57.220 and it it was used to to gain passive income from kids in the form of a comic book that's

02:11:05.040 not what we're about and our gods are much older than that um that perhaps though i guess the one

02:11:12.080 benefit is that these these creators saw heroism in the history of our gods and decided to try to

02:11:19.680 capitalize on that and i would say focus on no the true heroism of that of the god is what they

02:11:26.500 were drawn to, but it goes farther back than that. And it's, you know, understanding the

02:11:31.860 linguistics of Thor, understanding his name, why he's called Donner amongst the Germans,

02:11:41.000 or Thunor, or Thuner, or Thuneras, or Thor, or Thor amongst the Icelanders now, and Thor amongst

02:11:50.180 the Swedes. Showing and mapping out a little bit of that and letting them know this is way,

02:11:56.500 beyond that. And again, you know, these stories that they tell, whether they're bridging on a

02:12:04.860 sense of unpiousness and things, that's something that can be brought up as well. No, the vast

02:12:11.180 difference is that we know the ancientness of the gods. We know their correlation with our people.

02:12:16.180 They've been with us forever. And yet they were taken and they've been, you know, capitalized on,

02:12:24.020 They've been twisted. They've been utilized to do different things. This happens to a lot of people. And we have an understanding that that's not right. It's not right for us to do it to other people. It's not right for them to do it to us.

02:12:38.680 So garnering a sense of respect for the sanctity of spiritualism and rejecting it being pulled or dragged into modernism and being utilized for, you know, creating comic books, things of that nature.

02:12:57.200 I think that's one of the big things we can really kind of hit on to show that this isn't where we're at.

02:13:03.140 We're not in this comic book realm.

02:13:05.300 That wasn't us.

02:13:06.500 I think the big difference is piety versus impiety I don't think that these other people

02:13:20.260 believe in Thor if you're trying to illustrate the differences or explain the actual personality

02:13:29.200 of Thor to completely uninitiated people that have no idea then certainly everything that Svan

02:13:35.920 just said. But you mentioned that the uni version of Thor is X. Unis don't really believe in Thor.

02:13:47.040 They don't really believe in our gods. They are also characterized by endemic mental illness.

02:13:55.720 That is the situation there. Now, yes, there's, I'm sure there's some unis out there that actually

02:14:02.820 believe in our gods, but as a general rule, they don't. And they don't approach, they may think

02:14:09.480 that they do, but they don't approach the gods as if they believe that these gods exist. If they

02:14:15.920 did, they would be so much more cautious in the way they behave. They would be so much more

02:14:20.840 respectful in the way that they behave. And they don't. I don't believe that the unis by and large

02:14:27.380 believe in our gods and then the second thing the mental illness these people are literally crazy

02:14:33.940 and it's it's very easy for us to be angry at them or to laugh at them because of their various

02:14:42.660 eccentricities um at the end of the day these are very unhealthy people they live very unhealthy

02:14:51.940 lives they have very unhealthy family relationships and there's a lot of damage there so

02:14:59.940 i mean i think that their ideas about our gods are a projection of that mental illness

02:15:08.980 and they're not done in a very sincere way and i don't know if that really

02:15:13.780 helps the question but i think it contextualizes the question a little bit

02:15:17.700 um shay asks do you see an evolution of thor by way of wits versus brawn in the alvis ball

02:15:27.560 uh no i don't i see an evolution of our folk our ancient folks understanding of thor

02:15:34.260 that's what i see and that's the other thing to think about no our gods do not change and evolve

02:15:39.720 with us we come to a different relationship our relationship with our gods changes and evolves

02:15:47.240 with us. And I think that that's kind of a fundamental difference that way.

02:15:54.880 Our quest is to move closer to them. And this is really important about how we practice things in

02:16:03.060 Ausitru. Our goal is to become closer to our gods. And with the previous question, not to drag the

02:16:12.760 God's down to make them less, to bring them closer to us. It's our job to reach up and seek a better

02:16:20.280 understanding and an increased closeness to them. And I think that's kind of at key there.

02:16:28.200 Finn Wraith asked, could feeding the ravens be something the Allfather would be happy for us to

02:16:33.220 do? Sure. Feeding birds is a nice thing. And I'm not to trivialize the question. Feeding birds is a

02:16:40.860 nice thing to do. I think that our gods want us to do nice things. Being kind to animals is a

02:16:49.940 specifically white trait. I'm sure there's other races of people that do nice things to animals

02:16:54.840 here and there, but it was really interesting. I listened to an old episode of Red Ice many years

02:16:59.820 ago, and there was a Dravidian Indian man on there talking about how, you know, his people

02:17:07.120 are so fascinated by how white people go out of their way to treat animals with kindness,

02:17:12.960 because it's not something that you find everywhere. So I think that's also a nice thing.

02:17:18.860 The other thing is, if you're doing it as the raven being a symbol of Odin and as an act of

02:17:24.940 devotion, doing something nice and then doing it in the name of or as a devotion to one of our gods,

02:17:31.340 that's always a great thing to do i think that's fantastic and in a in a little bit more metaphysical

02:17:40.940 sense i think that very often the animals that occupy a special place there's a correlation

02:17:49.180 between them and the in the spirits that reside there and i think the animals are functionaries

02:17:55.420 very often of other unseen powers um i think that's you know we all know that when we take

02:18:03.020 our offerings outside and we put them in the yard the gods don't manifest and eat the food that we

02:18:08.300 live for them that we leave for them rather um scavengers and other animals do but i think

02:18:13.660 that's part of how that process works of transmitting what what we offer into uh

02:18:21.260 into that spiritual realm is through the medium of of animals so yeah i think that that's probably a

02:18:26.620 very you know that's a great idea if that's something you want to do it's fine did you have

02:18:31.340 thoughts on it yeah just to say um you know doing something nice it you know placing that out into

02:18:38.220 the ecosystem of things again of course considering or building the your understanding of wisdom you

02:18:44.780 know i remember as a kid feeding you know ducks bread and then over time you know people talked

02:18:49.020 about how it might be not good for them and things like that and so things change so our understanding

02:18:53.820 of things so when you introduce something into the ecosystem take care in in doing that with wisdom

02:19:02.220 make sure look around uh read i read a book called the mind of the raven and it was a it was strictly

02:19:08.940 a zoological book about the intelligence of ravens and the intelligence of of the corvax um you know

02:19:16.220 birds and their their ways of recognizing face and all of that that's all super interesting

02:19:21.180 stuff that i think on a material level interjects us into the ecosystem what you're also talking

02:19:26.300 about though is the moment you make it a religious thing you're also kind of interjecting a gift into

02:19:31.980 a spiritual ecosystem and i think that's what i was here ago that he was talking about like when

02:19:36.780 we lay out the offering the offering is the soul of the offering is is already been given up um

02:19:43.900 And then sometimes, you know, whether it's, you know, you see like we pour out mead into certain places like a horg outside or a tree outside, we'll see ants or we'll see bugs like kind of attracted to the mead and all that stuff.

02:19:57.060 But where the placement of understanding the physical injection into an ecosystem has value for you to understand that you're also kind of now making it an injection into the spiritual ecosystem.

02:20:11.680 When you talk about the direct connection of giving a gift to these birds in a kind of correlation to Oven, then you've expounded on one movement of doing a good thing and added another layer to it.

02:20:27.060 So do that, again, with reverence, with knowledge, with the ability to study all of these things.

02:20:32.300 That's all part of the devotional act is not just, you know, tossing something out and saying mail loaded.

02:20:38.980 No, instead, you're taking the moment to read up on the species of bird in your area, you know,

02:20:47.880 and to make sure that you're not hurting them and that you are then adding a spiritual component and saying, you know,

02:20:54.860 I'm doing this and this transference to Odin has correlation to me and I want to do it well.

02:21:02.220 So you take that whole thing and it just could seem as such a simple kind of mundane act,

02:21:07.340 but you can make it extremely effectively spiritual, both inward and outward,

02:21:13.120 as you do that gift transfer between the inner spiritual ecosystem of your soul

02:21:20.120 and the external spiritual ecosystem of the world around you.

02:21:23.460 Svahn, go ahead and take this one. Sarah asks, can you talk a little on Thor's children

02:21:30.660 and what we know about them?

02:21:32.940 Okay. So when we talk about the interesting part, first and foremost, would be, let's

02:21:44.380 tackle Thrudr or Thrudha or Thrudh, the daughter of Thor, Sif and Thor. Now, the Old Norse word

02:21:56.540 Sif means like siblinghood or familyhood, the idea of your kin. There are connections too that

02:22:06.720 you know, that we see in the allegoric significance of Sif losing her hair, and some people have

02:22:14.560 placed that into the idea of the harvesting of wheat, and, you know, then correlating that with

02:22:18.980 a thunderhead over the wheat, ripening the wheat as a good sign of fertility of that. So through

02:22:26.620 the, or through the scene as strength, you know, she comes from Sif and Thor respectively. And I

02:22:36.880 have met many Alcetur and that talk about this correlation between the thunder and the land,

02:22:44.280 the land that is owned by the farmer, and that the fields and the groves that fed the family,

02:22:51.740 this correlation held deep connections um in the the conduit you know like interactions between

02:23:01.780 like sif in a physical sense in in in the world and thor in a physical sense in the world amongst

02:23:07.620 the storms so a lot of um idea of through being um the utilization of the fruits of the land

02:23:16.240 The idea of the desire and the will to extend the bounty of the land in a physical way, I think is one correlation to through that I've always held very deep value into is when you take the wheat and you take the vegetation from the land and you seek to extend its bounty through fermentation, through food preparation,

02:23:44.480 through the maintenance of, you know, making sure that it lasts through the winter, that you get the

02:23:54.000 full bounty of it. There is a sense there when we're talking about taking wheat and turning it

02:23:58.800 into ale or taking the food and brining it and extending it. I think that strength, the extension

02:24:07.080 of the fruitfulness of the land, I think, is culturally significant of thruth. I think it's

02:24:14.520 a dynamic of power that extends from Thor through thruth as a will to actively and intelligently

02:24:23.820 prepare for the cold, prepare for the winter, and extend with strength, with will, the extra bounty

02:24:31.420 of the land, not to just let it, you know, eat it while you got it, and then whatever's left over

02:24:36.300 just dies out no there's there's a willful strength to make it last to uh keep the the

02:24:43.060 fermentation of of the ale and the and the uh you know the cabbage or the vegetables these things

02:24:49.560 it's it sounds mundane but in reality it is a deeply spiritual thing when we try to take the

02:24:56.300 fruitfulness that we've prayed to the gods to for for to sprout up from the land and then to take

02:25:02.920 those gifts and to take extra care of them so that they can feed your family, that they can

02:25:07.940 improve your health and make you stronger and more vitality. There's a lot of power, I think,

02:25:15.060 in Thrudh and Sifa and Thor in that dynamicism that they have. Now, when we talk about Magni

02:25:23.020 and Modi, Magni and Modi do not come from Sif. So in placement, if we were to look at like how

02:25:32.020 Nori tries to oftentimes make a chronological sense of things.

02:25:37.600 It is mentioned that Thor is in relation with Jarnsaksa, iron knife, or the iron knife, the Jotunus or the earth Jotun that is.

02:25:51.800 And again, we've talked about how Jotuns in their correlation of when they take on an allegiance to the Asa and let go of their allegiance to the Jotuns, are they still Jotuns?

02:26:04.860 Um, when we see about Magni and Modi and iron, uh, iron knife, we see a couple of correlations.

02:26:13.540 One immediately iron to the earth and the idea of the formulation of metal and, and, and creating, um, power through metallurgy.

02:26:23.640 So some folks I've, I've talked to and, and I'm still engaging in some of these ideas as a, as I evolve and pray and try to figure out things.

02:26:32.060 that the correlation could be between the manifesting of will through metal and through

02:26:37.880 the earth. And so there is that. But it's worth noting that Heimdall is mentioned as being the

02:26:45.560 mother of the nine waves. And one of those waves, if they're representations of, say, a river,

02:26:51.780 there is the correlation of a possibility of Jarnsaxa being a river. Now, I'm still in the

02:26:58.560 process of looking into all of that. And I don't want to say absolutely one way or another. It's

02:27:03.840 an evolutionary process of it. But basically, Magni and Modi, strength and might, or strength

02:27:14.040 and ferocity, come from the earth and the connection between Thor and the metal of the

02:27:22.780 earth or the the the not the seed of iron the seed and the and the vein under the ground that

02:27:30.020 doesn't produce vegetation produces metal produces a solid matter that's very very different than say

02:27:37.240 like a vegetative cycle matter so i think magni and modhi have correlation in there to uh strength

02:27:45.060 of iron or strength of metallurgy and and then the might and the fury that that can kind of

02:27:50.720 correlate from the attainment and the knowledge of that technology and the idea of what you know

02:27:56.560 creating i think especially at the time as we were shifting from iron to steel and adding carbon a

02:28:03.520 lot of this um the allegoric sense of evolution is kind of played out in their names uh and again

02:28:11.840 it's it's more or less our understanding of them as we grow technologically suddenly their names

02:28:17.600 have a whole new kind of concept and meaning.

02:28:21.680 The last thing I would bring up, too, is in the Edas,

02:28:28.700 Ullr is mentioned as the stepson of Thor through Sif,

02:28:33.160 and there is no mention of Ullr's father, or, you know, it's just not mentioned.

02:28:40.400 Perhaps it was known, perhaps it was lost,

02:28:42.540 perhaps by the time that Snorri was collecting the stories

02:28:45.100 and turning them into verse or collecting verse and, uh, organizing them, uh, that knowledge was

02:28:52.580 lost. So there is, some people also say maybe Snorty was trying to find connectivity. I'm not

02:28:58.840 here to, to go in down that rabbit hole and burn that time here on our podcast, but it is mentioned

02:29:06.460 that he is the stepson of Sif and that he is the god of the hunt, and it has great prominence,

02:29:16.140 especially in the late Nordic period, especially if you glint a little bit at what Saxo was saying,

02:29:21.100 and Saxo Grammaticus is not, as a person in what he was doing, I don't think he was reverent

02:29:26.000 towards the gods, but he does seem to hint towards things before him that may have been placed in the

02:29:32.300 cycles of time, Ullr being correlated to hunting and being correlated to skiing and being correlated

02:29:38.540 to, again, might and power of a weapon, the Holmgong, the duel between folk, two men fighting

02:29:47.560 each other, and the idea of the shield and the weapon holding to strength in that moment of

02:29:54.220 conflict. It's worth noting, again, that he's somewhat connected to Thor in that regards.

02:30:02.300 by being a foster child. So understanding the way that context might be in Scandinavia,

02:30:11.380 the idea of people did have, you know, like women would, their husbands would die,

02:30:17.080 they would have children, and then they would join in marriage and matrimony with a husband,

02:30:24.060 and that husband may have children already as well. And so the strength and the siblinghood,

02:30:30.020 again connection to Sif and the idea of the family the extended family the fostering of children

02:30:35.500 I think does play out a lot in in that descriptor that Snorri uses is he's I think lending to the

02:30:44.800 idea of the strength in fostering the strength in having um extensions of yourself in correlation to

02:30:51.680 uh the earth and the fruits that you're given so the children of Thor have always to me

02:30:57.260 have represented an extension of willful might.

02:31:01.900 And Ullr would be already his own,

02:31:06.320 but it is fostered into that might as well by Thor.

02:31:12.720 And it makes Thrudheim,

02:31:15.400 it makes the godheads of Thrudheim stronger.

02:31:19.960 And there's no bitterness or a sense of strangeness there.

02:31:25.100 And in essence, it's talking, I think, about real social issues that were present, especially in the late Nordic period with the losses of husbands because of wars or just going out to the sea and never coming back or pledging allegiance in places and then receiving a grievous injury and not being able to make the trip home.

02:31:42.480 And then what happens to the family and the unification of this of siblinghood is all kind of playing out in those familial correlations in the AIDAs.

02:31:54.200 So from a spiritual sense, I see them as an extension of might of Thor, much like as we would look at the Valkyria as an extension of will from Odin.

02:32:06.140 We see the children of Thor doing that.

02:32:08.880 But also they are kind of like a god seed because after Ragnarok, it is Magni and Modi who take up the weapons of their father.

02:32:22.380 And again, this correlating to Greedewald and to Mjolnir and how Greedewald was a weapon before Mjolnir and that there's two weapons that are set aside and there are two children that are mentioned as taking up the position of their father.

02:32:37.480 That is a very interesting correlation, I think, that is worth, you know, looking into and kind of trying to get a new understanding of the way how that might work.

02:32:47.540 And so I hope that covers, you know, everything we talk about Magni and Modi and Thrudr and Ullr, and we see how their connections to Thor bring them into the house of strength, the home of strength, and what Thor represents overarching for each one of those gods in a symbolic sense to us as humans.

02:33:10.440 That would be my answer there.

02:33:12.320 I hope that helps or makes some clarity.

02:33:16.060 Well, there you have it.

02:33:17.540 Varyag, there can be a difference between a broad message and an individual revelation, though. No. So everything can be representative of a higher cosmic order, but individual revelation is distinct.

02:33:34.540 I think I follow what you're saying. And yeah, absolutely.

02:33:45.180 And again, maybe I'm missing some some finer points in what you're trying to ask, but I guess.

02:33:55.560 Guess what I'd say when it comes to metaphysical things, the gods interact with us as a group in a certain way.

02:34:03.260 And that's why I think there's so much power in AFA rituals, because, I mean, sometimes at a big event, we'll have 150 people all worshiping one of our gods in that ritual space and all putting their might into that.

02:34:23.040 And I think that gods interact with us in that way very differently than they do with us in the quiet of our own dreams or our own altar work or whatever we may do.

02:34:37.020 I don't think that our gods necessarily have some deep revelatory interaction with everybody, but they're gods.

02:34:46.680 They can do what they want, and I don't preclude that they do interact with many of our people directly.

02:34:53.040 i think they choose people for specific reasons or due to specific merit or maybe just because they

02:35:01.200 have a particular fondness for that person or that family i think that very often revelation

02:35:06.880 comes from ancestors and heroes that maybe you have a connection with um but yeah i think the

02:35:14.640 tone and the intention behind intentional or individual revelation certainly tends to be

02:35:21.920 different than in a group context that's the best i can do trying to i don't know trying to

02:35:29.440 understand your question if i didn't get it right please go ahead and ask again

02:35:33.600 swan what are your thoughts on that question the way it was asked um i would say just the the idea

02:35:40.080 is that is there a disconnect between the personal and the group is there a disconnect between an

02:35:49.280 individual and the theod the folk the people the nation the inner guard if you will if you have

02:35:57.700 there's nothing stating in uh our outlook of the world that an individual's troth or individual

02:36:08.180 faith or revelations that they have amongst the gods or with the gods or working with the gods

02:36:14.280 or giving devotion to the gods is, that's your personal stuff.

02:36:20.500 What the only difference is, is why is there a disconnect

02:36:24.220 to saying that those personal works with the gods

02:36:28.860 will somehow cut off the moment you enter into the nation

02:36:33.520 or into the inner guard, into the whole of the people.

02:36:38.860 In actuality, and I think a lot of people, again,

02:36:41.480 We have this instinctual thing of like rabid individualism and that somehow it's going to be affronted or knocked down because I step into the group and say and have these things.

02:36:55.300 In reality, I think the inner guard exists and the outer guard exists for a function of its own.

02:37:01.420 The moment you become inner guard, your revelations and personal insights could very well lead to great movement forward.

02:37:09.540 I don't see why there's a disconnect that to join with the folk and to join with the whole somehow lessens or that it's perceived that the whole is going to look at your personal works with the gods as being lesser.

02:37:27.460 You know, every single one of us, whether we're Godar or whether we're, you know, individual practitioners or leaders of kindreds or just somebody who's very spiritually aware amongst a close-knit family or group of people, all of those people can help in moving us forward.

02:37:47.940 We organize because it best correlates the logistics of the way we're doing things.

02:37:53.760 We organize because we create hierarchy in order, because we emulate the gods in creating order.

02:37:59.760 But the idea is that the whole does not somehow immediately negate the individual.

02:38:06.300 But instead, the difference is when you're outer guard, you're just yourself.

02:38:10.420 When you're inner guard, you're adding to the whole or have the ability to add to the whole.

02:38:16.000 So, Varyag, I saw a little bit more of what you're saying over on the side, and I might could add a little bit of context here.

02:38:23.760 yeah, it's hard to put words, and again, it's hard to put words around certain metaphysical

02:38:34.160 contexts, but I get what you're saying. Ravens, for example, use the example of ravens. Animal sign

02:38:43.620 could be meaningful for large groups of people, but it also could just be a personal thing to you,

02:38:50.520 And that's why, I mean, some of the message comes from within on a certain connection you're trying to make.

02:38:57.220 And I don't think that's just your imagination.

02:39:00.900 I think that is in itself a metaphysical message from the divine realms, maybe from your ancestors, maybe from the gods.

02:39:10.920 But if you see a raven at a particular time to where it's meaningful to you because of a question you've been wrestling with or something in your life, and at that point it harkens back to something and awakens something in you in your understanding of Odin or in him communicating something to you, I think that's absolutely a valid thing.

02:39:37.100 I think it may not always be a valid thing, but certainly sometimes I think it's a valid thing.

02:39:44.620 And that's not necessarily, you know, meant for everyone.

02:39:52.840 You know, I had an experience one time.

02:39:55.520 And we talked so we talked earlier about the cowardly exodus of a bunch of people that had signed on to be the backbone of Thorshoff to make it work and people having to step in and take that over.

02:40:13.000 Well, we had a really similar situation happen with Baldershoff as well.

02:40:18.060 And during that time, a person who was actually a member of our Witten and a very close friend of mine made a quick fear based exodus from us and broke that relationship.

02:40:33.260 And I was I was in a really you know, it hit me really hard that evening and I was off by myself.

02:40:39.980 And in my own life, stags have been meaningful to me at different times.

02:40:49.560 And I was, you know, it knocked me flat there for a second.

02:40:53.700 It really hurt.

02:40:54.460 And I was, you know, very hopeful that we could pull it together.

02:40:58.020 There was so much writing when this person and his kindred in the success of Baldershoff

02:41:04.600 or the ability to make that work.

02:41:07.380 There was so much work that needed to be done on it.

02:41:09.500 it was there's all these things in my head anyways i was at a at a low point to where i

02:41:19.340 i'm trying to think the best way to put it but i was just at a low point

02:41:22.780 and i was very inspired by at that moment in the middle of a downtown i a stag with antlers uh

02:41:31.820 crossed the road in front of where i was at this was late at night and certainly unusual for me

02:41:38.220 but it was it was powerful. And I thought it was very meaningful. And I believe it was very

02:41:42.460 meaningful to this day. And I don't think it was meaningful in the sense of you're the head of the

02:41:47.900 AFA. This is a message for the AFA. I think this is just a message for Matt. And and I believe that

02:41:55.260 I believe that strongly. So absolutely, those things happen. That's the thing.

02:41:58.780 um i wanted to i wanted to make a point too so um uh varyag what we're what we're also talking

02:42:08.200 about too is in a very interesting um concept and it's it's very i'll say this in the context

02:42:15.240 that's right it's very weird because i was reading on this very subject on an unrelated thing about

02:42:22.780 this podcast i was looking at some i was studying uh tripartites and aryan branches and one of the

02:42:28.100 things that came up that was significant to me is just being interesting, but now it's having

02:42:32.840 a very, very poignant thing, is when I was looking at the early Etruscans, and this before their

02:42:41.540 correlation with Rome and the Romans on the peninsula, and one of the things that came up

02:42:49.420 was the title Imminent Polytheism, because we do talk about hard polytheism when we see the gods

02:42:56.120 as whole, individual, willful beings.

02:43:03.460 And then some people look at, I would guess,

02:43:05.440 would be kind of like archetypal or hypostasis

02:43:08.820 in which the gods are kind of just, you know,

02:43:12.340 like trails connected to each other

02:43:14.780 and that they could ultimately be led back

02:43:17.160 to some sort of figure,

02:43:19.060 whether it's a masculine figure and a feminine figure.

02:43:21.720 You know, like we've talked about like the difference

02:43:24.520 between hard polytheism and polytheism that boils the individual gods down into a lord and a lady

02:43:31.680 or just one to the other. And we're not going to go into that right now. But one of the things

02:43:39.320 that I wanted to bring up was when we talk about imminent polytheism, it was actually written down

02:43:45.120 by Seneca the Younger. And he talked about it in relation to the Etruscans. And I just think it's

02:43:50.560 really interesting that, you know, all visible phenomena to the Etruscans was considered to be

02:43:57.420 manifestations of divine power and will. And that power was embodied in the deities who acted

02:44:03.580 continually on the world and could not, and could be, but could be dissuaded or persuaded by mortal

02:44:10.500 men in their activities within the physical world. And he says, Seneca the Younger says,

02:44:17.840 Whereas we believe that lightning is to be released as the result of the collision of the formulation of storms, they, talking about the Etruscans, believe that the clouds collide so as to release lightning, for they are attributed to the deity that is releasing the lightning.

02:44:35.700 And they talk about the lightning holders amongst the Etruscans, that there were multiple gods that wielded lightning.

02:44:42.980 For as they attribute all to deity, they are led to believe not that things have meaning insofar as that they occur, but rather that they occur because they must have meaning.

02:44:54.620 And so one of the things I would really recommend you look into is imminent polytheism.

02:45:00.160 That's just good insight.

02:45:03.140 I'm looking into it, too.

02:45:04.680 Let's do it together.

02:45:05.700 Like, I want to hear you come back on the podcast and, you know, ask questions more about it, or maybe some insights that you got, and we can go from there.

02:45:14.480 But that's something I wanted to lay out there.

02:45:16.320 Imminent polytheism.

02:45:18.560 All right.

02:45:19.220 Our next question from Ali.

02:45:21.360 Can you speak on Thor's trials in Utgard and the themes we can glean from them?

02:45:27.960 I'm going to let you go ahead and take this, Spawn.

02:45:30.200 Okay.

02:45:30.560 So, a couple of things happen, and first and foremost, when you talk about the trials of Thor, there are, of course, other trials going on that involve other characters in the story, obviously, Thialfi and Loki.

02:45:44.940 A Roskva does not seem to have placement in the trials. So it's worth just noting that, of course, Thielfi goes against thought or of memory or of the wit of thinking.

02:46:01.820 And remember, poetically, our ancestors applied different titles. So like there's three or four different names for a raven, whether you're talking about the physical animal, the poetic animal, things like that.

02:46:14.360 So when we we see Thealfi racing against Huey, we see, you know, this this the race between like, I guess, poetic wit is possibly playing out or in actuality, even just memory itself or collective memory.

02:46:32.100 Perhaps some people have postulized that our memories can – since our memories go to the east, which is the symbolic direction of the Jotuns, there are four worlds connected to the middle, and that being Leosafheim and Svartalfheim, and then we see Wanneheim and Jotunheim.

02:46:54.960 And in the East, the memory, the memory well is there. And so we see the root structure of the network of power that is Yggdrasil. It's seen as a network of power and that root tap goes into the East, into the primordial.

02:47:11.020 So if we were looking at Utgard-Loki as kind of a differentiation into the east, into the more primordial building blocks of the material world, we could see that perhaps the actions and therefore the thoughts and memories that relate from the middle, from Middle Earth or the Middle Guard, is extending out eastward, that it has a place because we see Jotunheim as the primordial.

02:47:41.020 um, building material of the middle world, this, this, uh, correlation of the interaction between

02:47:48.640 the things of the past, things of the eternal things that were deeply primordial leftover or,

02:47:56.400 or, uh, breached from Inir when he was slain and the flood, the primordial ocean,

02:48:03.000 uh, which holds great ancient secrets and even animals now that were longer before than even

02:48:09.020 the dinosaurs like you know sharks and things like that um we see this this essence of the

02:48:14.380 primordial being associated to mountains to the land and in specific the direction that our

02:48:20.280 ancestors chose to correlate that to was into the east um and this may have contextual sense amongst

02:48:27.140 the norwegians as you know living on the west coast of norway and seeing the mountains in the

02:48:31.740 east, but it was a symbolic direction. And so when Thor goes into the east, he goes into the

02:48:41.760 land of the primordial creation, into the land of the things that were around since before man.

02:48:49.540 And he goes in and he correlates himself against things that are older than the middle guard itself.

02:49:02.620 And so his tests are unique in that regards.

02:49:08.340 so we see this constraint or understanding that his trials are placed around what he does in

02:49:18.260 Jotunheim connects to Middlegard and that's a very interesting thing again I'm talking about

02:49:23.920 the east being primordial source it is connected to the Middlegard our time our memories and also

02:49:32.740 two things that happen in Jotunheim, especially the ones that are actually moved by Thor, happen

02:49:38.820 in the middle guard. When he drinks from the horn, he lowers the sea. When he lifts up Jormungandr,

02:49:46.060 he's shifting that which encapsulates the middle guard. When he fights against time,

02:49:53.060 he's fighting against the constant draw of time. And again, it's worth noting that the Nornir

02:49:59.440 come from the East, they are, again, the building blocks of the primordial material world

02:50:06.640 come from Jotunheim. And so when Thor goes into Jotunheim and he tests himself against

02:50:14.620 those things in Jotunheim that are greater representations, and of course he finds that

02:50:20.940 out in the end um or is it the whole story is deeply connected to showing how the catalystic

02:50:29.080 god can come down from heaven into the middle realm move into the primordial uh collection

02:50:37.420 the the the things that make the the spirit of the world that was the world was fashioned from

02:50:43.440 and go against forces in that world that are older than the world itself

02:50:50.040 or somehow contain that world, he then shows his might.

02:50:56.500 He shows his deep connection between the upper and the middle

02:51:01.180 by stepping into the primordial and wrestling, quite literally, time itself,

02:51:08.500 moving the binding agent, the constricting agent, the holding agent of the middle world

02:51:17.540 by lifting Jormungandr in the form of a cat, and also to when he drinks from the horn.

02:51:24.820 And so each of these trials have context when we talk about drinking games and things like that.

02:51:30.780 It has context to the people that the poem is being recited to.

02:51:34.800 uh the correlation between drinking and thor is very very clear in the stories but it also applies

02:51:42.700 i i noticed in some of the comments um somebody had brought up about um uh ukko um ukko amongst

02:51:51.520 the samai clearly the samai or the uh the loplaunder uh folk had you know there was

02:51:58.100 transference there or you know i i don't know to what degree most people believe that there was a

02:52:04.160 and accepting of Thor, or that Thor was already amongst them, just in their own version.

02:52:11.660 But he went by other names, too, amongst the Seme, other than Ukko.

02:52:15.540 He also went under Horagallus and also Toraturos.

02:52:22.020 And there are direct correlations to some of the rituals.

02:52:28.000 the consumption of alcohol in the amount that is consumed was seen as a correlation to the might

02:52:37.540 of the God, that perhaps the people were a conduit and that their consumption of the bounty,

02:52:46.080 the extended bounty of ale that had been produced, somehow correlated back into a gift giving of

02:52:53.720 strength and this this is just by accounts so the fullness of of this ritual i'm not

02:53:00.860 super familiar with but it's worth noting that the context of the drinking game would have

02:53:07.660 palpable um the entertainment value slash spiritual understanding slash cultural understanding

02:53:17.380 of the idea of what he's doing and then to the lifting of the cat again it's tongue-in-cheek

02:53:24.640 with the ideas like when you pick up a cat and their stomach kind of stretches

02:53:28.180 they're they're making that joke oh it's just simply as lifting a cat up and then suddenly

02:53:32.400 it's not and then it expands out to the the constrictive force of the equilibrium of the

02:53:39.000 planet uh that the uh some have correlated to the equator or or to the currents of the ocean

02:53:44.680 And so thus, literally, the constraint of flow of the primordial ocean around the middle guard is being shifted. So the water is being dropped, it's being moved, and then time itself is being wrestled against, and it only brings him to one knee.

02:54:07.920 And then, of course, Utgard-Loki says, you know, if I had known the power you possessed, I would have never let you in here.

02:54:16.660 And, of course, again, there's that tongue-in-cheek thing in which basically there's this kind of like long list of trials that are, you know, demeaning or, you know, it's – but then they turn out they're not demeaning at all.

02:54:28.780 They're actually extremely huge, and suddenly Thor and Loki and Thealfi and Roskva suddenly come to a new realization, one, of how deep and how residual the primordial realm is, but also how much he could then affect it in that world, and it would affect the middle world.

02:54:51.760 So that, I think, is the power of that story in relation to like metaphysical concepts and the power of Thor in relation to the very material plane that we live on.

02:55:07.620 Landon asks, is it a must to wear Thor's hammer in Ossetru?

02:55:13.180 Yes.

02:55:14.260 So let me let me qualify the yes.

02:55:16.740 You do what you want, but if your intention is to wear something that symbolically represents

02:55:23.220 as a true, then yes, it is what it is.

02:55:28.260 Everybody that, and I meant this earlier, the more we spread out on everything, the

02:55:35.540 The less. Words escape me tonight a little bit. I apologize.

02:55:44.520 The less goes behind the force of that point.

02:55:47.740 If we're all behind the tip of that sphere, then it has power behind it and has a meaning.

02:55:54.260 Branding matters. The cross equals Christianity.

02:55:58.040 If you are any person in the entire world and you see a cross, that equals Jesus.

02:56:05.540 and you get that and everybody understands it star of david equals judaism

02:56:11.780 thor's hammer equals also true and it needs to because if it doesn't then we lose all that

02:56:19.460 containment if you go somewhere wearing a thor's hammer and this has happened i mean this is an

02:56:25.300 amazing thing that's happened in the time that i've been involved in also true uh there was a

02:56:29.860 time that you know nobody would recognize a hammer is that a broken cross is that an anchor

02:56:36.820 no anymore i get comments very regularly at the gas station at the store at wherever

02:56:44.180 you know hey nice hammer they understand that it's a hammer they understand it's thor's hammer

02:56:49.620 and they understand it means that i'm also true if you have a bore most people don't know that

02:56:58.900 that means that you worship Freya. If you have, you know, a falcon or something, most of that people

02:57:06.420 don't realize that's a reference to Freya. Or, you know, any of the other symbols of our gods,

02:57:12.340 wear them as well, wear them in addition. But if the point is, and the point for our ancestors

02:57:18.500 certainly was, to identify themselves as true to the Aesir, then yes, the Hammer of Thor is what

02:57:25.460 identified that to everyone outside and inside. Hey, he's one of us, or hey, he's on the other

02:57:31.880 team. So in that sense, I do think it's essential if that's what you're trying to do with your

02:57:37.840 jewelry. If you just want to wear a pendant for you personally, because you feel devoted to a

02:57:44.240 certain God, and it's between you and that God, then by all means, wear whatever you think is

02:57:48.800 appropriate that way, please. But the one doesn't restrict the other. You feel you could go out

02:57:54.520 and be the also true mr t if you want and you can have all the bling you need i'm not even joking

02:58:00.520 with it i mean it 100 serious you go hard but the hammer itself is going to mean something

02:58:06.360 to the people you encounter whereas the other symbols aren't um vorgoth donate all right this

02:58:14.360 is our first donation we've gotten from odyssey i am not very familiar with odyssey or how it works

02:58:20.920 we get donations there in cryptocurrency uh vorgoth donated five libri credits on odyssey

02:58:31.240 no idea how much that is i'm gonna assume it's it's a fortune and i appreciate it uh on a very

02:58:37.080 serious note vorgoth thank you very much i'm glad that you guys over at odyssey are listening to us

02:58:41.320 this is the first time we've been there so i'm excited to to reach a different audience there

02:58:47.320 uh charles asks when it comes to hoff locations what made each building stand out

02:58:58.520 um svan what as far as our hoffs go and you've been to all four what made each of them you know

02:59:08.280 what's the standout feature feeling thing about that location of the building to you

02:59:17.320 Uh, wow. Um, I mean, one thing that I clearly came across that I don't think we were intending

02:59:26.740 to plan, uh, that seems to, again, become a thing. Uh, we weren't, we weren't really even

02:59:35.780 trying to do this, but all the entryways, the main entryways face North. Um, and, uh, the North has

02:59:42.980 significance within our culture. And so I always find it amazing to see the North Star

02:59:48.800 right above the Hoffs. Flag on the plane, Odin's Hoff entryway faces south.

02:59:58.040 Yes, but when you look at the entryway, are you facing the entryway?

03:00:02.720 That's what I mean. All of our temples, when you face the entryway, when you walk into,

03:00:10.700 yeah i should have clarified that what the direction when you walk into they're they're

03:00:15.020 northbound they're always northbound and i don't think we that was

03:00:21.260 no odentow is backward with that oh it faces the north so when you walk out no no no when

03:00:28.140 you walk into the building the building is you are looking south when you approach the doors

03:00:34.860 so you're coming from the north you're coming from the north to the south oh

03:00:39.900 Okay, well, then Baldershof, Thorshof, and Njortzhof, when you're coming from the south going northward, I don't know.

03:00:51.520 That was something that I had noticed.

03:00:53.920 I thought for some reason Odenshof was also the same in that regards.

03:00:58.400 But, again, that wasn't by any means a reason for our choosing the Hofs.

03:01:02.760 that correlation was just kind of noticed when going to the Hoff, seeing the North Star above

03:01:08.340 the door. To be fair, I went to Odense Hoff in midsummer and was up there during the day at the

03:01:14.500 height of the sun. So there wasn't a lot of nighttime coming in and out. I would say for

03:01:24.020 one perfect example, other than the fact that like with Thor's Hoff, I was trying to build a place

03:01:32.300 in a vacuum that the North Carolina people had kind of dissipated. And so we were trying to

03:01:38.020 build something there. The other thing was, is upon praying to Thor, and I always find this

03:01:43.420 very strange, I was praying to Thor for the success of the Hoff to be found in Minnesota,

03:01:50.480 because we weren't fully formulated on the East Coast. But after that, that bloat, and after that

03:01:58.720 prayer all of a sudden the east coast and north carolina immediately fell into place everything

03:02:06.800 it was like a it was like driving through intersections and all of a sudden every light

03:02:12.260 turned green and it was one threshold after another that needed to be done was getting was

03:02:18.080 getting done um so i've always kind of taken that that as being significant especially for thors

03:02:24.240 is that the prices became very eligible. The people that I was dealing with as far as real

03:02:32.060 estate and all of that stuff, very, very accommodating. Everybody involved, the whole

03:02:38.100 thing, it just suddenly opened up and immediately just planted itself. And so when I thought

03:02:44.660 Thorshoff was going to be in Minnesota and we were going to look at the third half in the East

03:02:48.940 coast, suddenly the East coast became a thing right in front of me at very, very quick notice

03:02:56.820 right after that kind of moment. And I wasn't intending in the prayer to direct towards us here.

03:03:03.680 It was towards Minnesota. And, um, but it ended up being us and, and it ended up being me. And

03:03:11.340 again, I wasn't the only person at the time during that prayer that was being involved in this whole

03:03:14.820 situation. And we hadn't even really locked down a location yet. Um, so, I mean, synchronicity wise,

03:03:22.060 I think that that's important, but I mean, I think there's also tangible stuff. Populous,

03:03:27.420 the amount of members, um, that were, that are in an area. And I think that, I mean,

03:03:32.820 you would definitely better cover that, but, um, accommodating the folk.

03:03:37.580 what are you i mean on your thoughts on that one as far as like the consideration when we look at

03:03:46.100 the membership map we look at you know these things that are hugely important and the activity

03:03:51.740 of the folk builders and the kindreds in the area and things like that so this is an aside

03:03:56.420 but uh charles i will get back to your question here in a second um

03:04:00.700 Um, it's, it's literally weird, the interplay of things that come together when we make

03:04:13.300 a decision on the location.

03:04:16.880 It's about price.

03:04:19.680 It's about the land where it is, if it's inside a town, if it's not.

03:04:29.720 proximity to clusters of members usually we try to look at like a three hour commute radius um

03:04:39.640 it how it affects you know how many what leaders we have where we need them um

03:04:47.800 so many different factors and it's it's hard like on uh you know many of our ha so odin's

03:04:54.120 hoff was an obvious choice because that's where our main core of membership at that time was

03:05:01.000 and because at the time um that was a project being run that was the only hoff and our leader

03:05:08.040 at the time steve mcnalen lived there or lived very close to there so it was a it was kind of

03:05:13.240 a no-brainer that's where that first hoff needed to go as far as the second hoff we could choose

03:05:19.720 from a lot of different places for the third half we could have chosen many different places

03:05:25.640 but for the fourth half for njords off it was very important that it wasn't a mountainous place

03:05:32.840 and that it was very close you know as close as we could get to the water in a perfect world it

03:05:37.960 would have been great to have it you know on the beach but realistically to at least get it in a

03:05:44.040 state to where there was water nearby that was very important you know there's some of our gods

03:05:49.400 like uller we want in a place that has you know snow and winter it would be very strange to have

03:05:55.800 uller's hof in the tropics hopefully one day uller has many hofs and one of them i

03:06:01.400 hope is in a tropical location that's fantastic but for the first one that would be very um

03:06:08.680 you know that wouldn't be as auspicious as we'd like so that that all goes into it but at the end

03:06:14.440 end of the day, the gods and the Nornir have their hand to play in it as well. And sometimes

03:06:27.480 magical things happen. And I feel very strongly that each of the Hoffs that we've gotten so far

03:06:34.660 is the exact one we need in the exact place that we need. But back to your question, Charles,

03:06:39.460 you ask kind of what was a what was this kind of a standout of each of the of each of the

03:06:45.220 Hoffs and I guess what in a way what still is um Odin's Hoff it's really interesting if you look

03:06:55.160 at it on a uh like a satellite view it doesn't seem like it's in the middle of nowhere it's got

03:07:02.880 you know it's got buildings all around it and people live all around it but it's in this little

03:07:07.200 uh tiny mountain town and the way it is with all the the big california trees all the redwoods and

03:07:16.040 the and beautiful trees there it feels like you're in the middle of nowhere you feel it it's

03:07:21.820 it's such a cool feeling like you're camping feeling like you're in the middle of nowhere

03:07:28.220 feeling there um the building is neat it's set up like a hall um in that way it's got you know

03:07:38.760 a big main room that we all get in and it's really special that way and it really does

03:07:46.340 feel like you're like you're out in the middle of nowhere even though you're very close to things

03:07:50.980 all around you um thorshoff is really special because uh for i mean for a number of reasons

03:07:59.620 it's a nice it's a much older building oldenshoff is from um i believe 1930

03:08:09.460 for whatever reason i'm having a brain farting 32 or 38 but from the 1930s uh

03:08:16.100 is is much older and trying to figure out exactly where it is or it like when it was built and spawn

03:08:28.100 may know this is a little bit tricky for me i know there's been um religious use on that site

03:08:34.100 for a very long time the current half as we have it is i believe in the mid 1870s it's much older

03:08:42.500 at least the main building there is um one of the cool things about it is it's got this bell tower

03:08:49.140 and we have a you know functioning bell tower there that's really really special but something

03:08:53.780 else about it and this was originally all part of one property and it was split off with our

03:08:59.540 our purchase of it but it's right across the street from a really well-maintained um graveyard

03:09:06.260 and that's special there's all that energy there from the people who are laid to rest there and

03:09:11.620 that's really special and it's it's got the honor of of having you know at least one uh confederate

03:09:17.380 soldier that's buried there in that graveyard and it's taken really well care uh it's really

03:09:23.220 well taken care of by the community and we discovered at uh at thor's hof that we want

03:09:31.620 the original the first of the graves of people who were interred there was actually by the hof

03:09:38.020 itself so it's still ours and on our property of uh mr phillip bethea and um so having that

03:09:46.100 presence of somebody who's been been buried there for since the first years of the of the 1900s

03:09:55.460 is another really special thing about that place we've done our best to honor him and

03:10:00.660 we've got him a new stone and and got him taken care of but that's kind of a stand out of thor's

03:10:06.740 Hoff of Balders Hoff stand out of the building was that place was a dump when we got it. It was

03:10:13.860 so just not taken care of and neglected and some crackheads had moved in there and it was

03:10:20.900 in a terrible state when we got it. And the beauty that our people have put in it to make it worthy

03:10:28.120 of Balders is a testament to their faith and to their piety. It's beautiful now. The cool thing

03:10:36.340 about that, and you'll only really notice it if you see it at night, but when it's got these

03:10:43.460 beautiful stained glass windows all around it. And so when everything's dark outside and you're

03:10:49.420 standing outside looking in, you see the light from our people inside, you know, worshiping and

03:10:54.420 doing whatever we're doing, coming out through that front door and coming out through those

03:10:59.000 windows. And it's really beautiful to behold. And I don't know about that neighborhood, about

03:11:06.660 that community. It's right across the street from these huge grain silos. But the way the trees are

03:11:11.480 there, you never really see them or notice that they're there. It's also on a main drag at Baldur's

03:11:18.500 Hof. And people pretty steadily are filing by, having nice things to say or waving or showing

03:11:25.660 support. And that's a really neat thing there too. I've been to Njordshof less than the other

03:11:31.980 hoffs. So I've only been to Njordshof once so far. It's, and this isn't so much about the building,

03:11:41.660 but about the lot. It's a really neat lot. And I think we have a total of five acres there.

03:11:49.100 it's a really it's really cool they've got beautiful live oaks there and one particularly

03:11:55.640 that you see as you drive into the parking lot um it's just beautiful i love the trees down there

03:12:02.580 there's so much character character to them these trees are often very ancient i'm not sure the age

03:12:08.080 of that tree it's just a really beautiful thing to pull in and to see there and it's also got two

03:12:13.700 really very nice ponds. And I think especially for a Hoffton Yort, it's nice to have some water

03:12:20.060 there. Last time, last time I check and I ask people all the time, as far as we know, there

03:12:24.920 are no gators in those ponds. Unfortunately, I think it'd be kind of cool, but they're really,

03:12:30.980 they're really neat ponds there. So I think those are the standouts to me. Here we got our message

03:12:36.720 from King of Cheese. I finally made it. I'm a wizard. I arrive exactly what I mean to.

03:12:43.420 Matt Svahn, how are you two? Svahn, how are you doing?

03:12:47.800 I'm doing great.

03:12:49.740 Tony, I am doing great too. I know I give you the same answer all the time, but I hope

03:12:53.500 I always do. I don't want to have the time where I tell you I'm miserable. No, I'm doing

03:12:58.160 really good. We're three hours in and there's tons of questions left. So it's a long night,

03:13:03.800 but it's always great to talk to Svon and it's great to interact with all these folks.

03:13:08.620 It's really cool that this week we're on two different platforms. So we're getting this out

03:13:13.060 there to folks that maybe haven't been able to see it or interact with it before, which is cool.

03:13:18.480 I'm having a great night. Things are going great in general. We're making good progress

03:13:24.400 on sigerheim life is good tony life is good uh nick my question is does alsa true practice have

03:13:36.480 any overlap with the myths or history associated with the people of the lost city of atlantis

03:13:44.400 what are your thoughts in regards that's fun oh uh

03:13:54.400 To my recollection, this is a good question because this sideswiped me. A lost island. And in correlation to its mentioning amongst the Greeks, especially with the seafaring folk like our ancestors were,

03:14:21.800 I can't think off the top of my head if there's any lore correlation to a mentioning of the island or the land of Atlantis or the mentioning of it amongst the Greeks.

03:14:42.740 And really, you know, I can't even think of people that may have even thought about some correlations to it in other ways.

03:14:52.720 I mean, like, I know that there's mention, of course, too, that there's possibly a mythical island or an island that is the origination of the Kinslayer's mother, Laufey, being a leafy island.

03:15:09.580 But I can't say that there's any correlation between those two, and I don't have any, you know, knowledge that there is a correlation.

03:15:18.960 But as far as, you know, based on the faith and its correlation to Atlantis specifically as a place, I don't really – nothing off the top of my head.

03:15:33.940 I don't know.

03:15:35.540 That's something to write down.

03:15:37.700 so i i know there's esoteric ideas about

03:15:45.820 ages of the races of men that were dominant on the earth and that those esoteric circles come into

03:15:57.980 play um like there's an overlap between astrotru in some ways but in any kind of a fleshed out in

03:16:07.400 serious way? I don't think so. I think that our knowledge of that level of prehistory is just so

03:16:15.860 incomplete that it's hard to know that. I've always found it fascinating and interesting.

03:16:24.000 There's one theory. Okay. So the standard understanding is that

03:16:28.460 our historical development as people has been linear from, you know, primitive cavemen people

03:16:36.140 to the level of technology we have now. But I'm also aware that there's theories that

03:16:44.680 we were once much more advanced beings and we went through periods of catastrophe and dropped

03:16:53.680 and rose and dropped and rose with our knowledge. It's hard to say. When you get in that level of

03:17:00.120 antiquity it's so far back that it's very hard to have consistent understanding of that

03:17:07.640 so the short answer and this isn't meant as a dodge this is first i don't know secondly

03:17:15.240 it's so far back that i think that those correlations to also true are not obvious

03:17:21.800 But what is worth noting is if we came from higher beings or if we evolved from more primitive beings, either way, our gods are the gods of our race since we were people.

03:17:38.480 And that is the case in either or both of those directions, however, it plays out.

03:17:43.580 So our gods, if Atlantis were real and if it were populated by Aryans, then we are worshiping the same gods that the Atlanteans did.

03:17:56.340 They are the gods of our race as far back as as our race exists.

03:18:04.160 Steve asked, Matt, you selling that tie totally ties your goat status to or takes your goat status to a new level.

03:18:12.820 Well, I'm glad you like the tie. I'm not marketing these. Perhaps I should. I don't know if the good people at, can you find a tag?

03:18:24.340 Alexander Julian's Colors. Want my services in that regard, but here I am. Let me know.

03:18:35.660 Landon, when starting to learn runes, what would be the best recommendation?

03:18:42.820 If you're just starting out, I always, always, always recommend The Runes Workbook by Leon D.

03:18:50.440 Wilde. I think it's fantastic. I think it's a really, really good introduction.

03:18:57.760 Yeah, I can't say enough good about it. I really like that as a as a very introductory book. After

03:19:03.220 that, I would recommend pretty much any of Edred Thorson's rune books. Svan, what say you on a good

03:19:10.400 place to start if you're starting fresh on runes? Uh, I, I would say, uh, if you're starting out on

03:19:19.920 runes from a book standpoint, rune lore by Edward Thorson, in the sense that it, it places you in

03:19:25.160 the spectrum of understanding how the runes have influenced different, uh, epics of time. Uh, he,

03:19:30.880 you know, he goes all the way back to the Calverstone and the Vestanabrekte, and then he moves

03:19:35.560 on into the Renaissance periods and how, you know, the Futharks that were correlated in Germany,

03:19:42.680 you know, some of them were medieval heraldric marks and extended from there all the way,

03:19:49.700 you know, into where he talks about in the Anglo and Frisian and its correlations there to the

03:19:56.520 Isles, as well as the evolution of the younger Futharks. So it really just paints a great

03:20:01.580 picture of understanding how all of this all of the runic lore throughout the ages has affected

03:20:10.020 things um as far as i i would say like a great site to um uh look at uh that for starting out

03:20:22.760 and getting a ton of information would probably be uh sunny ways runic uh sunnyways.com i think

03:20:28.920 what it's called it's a very old um website that um just phenomenal information they have you know

03:20:36.840 like an eight is a to z encyclopedia of the etymology of uh you know every jotun and and god

03:20:46.600 in the adas to all of the different aspects of like how to determine negatives amongst runic

03:20:53.720 studies whether it's like placement on uh during a cast or whether it's about a an angular system

03:21:00.920 in involving uh their you know like a a petrogram or a pictogram in which they have you know spokes

03:21:08.360 and in each spoke correlates to another spoke uh that's some concepts that i think are really cool

03:21:13.880 for for people to kind of break away from the idea of like an upside down rune is a negative rune

03:21:19.640 and a right side up rune is a positive rune uh there's a lot of information out there and so

03:21:24.120 when you're looking for something to kind of tie yourself down um that website is awesome too to

03:21:30.440 kind of really hit um you know some basic stuff to get the idea of what casting is and why you cast

03:21:39.320 um you know how there are the the the um mentions of it by tacitus versus you know the the modern

03:21:48.040 practitioners and how some of them pull singular uh a triplicate uh and then some even expound even

03:21:54.200 more uh into other groups but the way that that website works is it doesn't necessarily say um

03:22:01.080 one way or the other it just kind of lays it all out for people to like absorb take take pieces of

03:22:06.200 it but it also talks about denizens of the spiritual world and the gods and some of the

03:22:12.200 forces that they encounter and talks about some of them as well so it's it's really good

03:22:16.440 um broad beginners starting point

03:22:25.160 there you go i think i would urge learn about the runes before you attempt to use them on things um

03:22:37.000 yeah i think getting a i think people are too cavalier with their

03:22:41.720 magical practice learn what you're doing be humble when you're doing it and keep in mind that very

03:22:52.280 often the way runes become useful especially in a casting sense is they're a lens for you to see

03:23:01.320 questions or see things through so there can be messages from the outside that influence the runes

03:23:11.720 but there's also messages from the inside that are organized or clarified by your interpretations

03:23:21.440 of the runes. Both of those things are valid, and both of those things go in in a good rune pool.

03:23:28.700 So keep that in mind, and yeah, like I'd say, get a solid foundation before you play around

03:23:34.140 than too much i would think um varieg what are your thoughts on the hellion the story version

03:23:44.780 of the christian gospels written for the saxons missionaries trying to sneak in the new faith

03:23:50.540 or our ancestors nordicizing their new religion what are your thoughts swan i actually um

03:23:57.820 Um, uh, I don't have a lot of experience on this.

03:24:02.500 I don't, um, yeah, I don't have a lot of experience on this, uh, story.

03:24:13.080 Um, I mean, maybe I've read pieces of it and I just didn't realize where it was coming from.

03:24:20.400 uh i'm trying to think exactly whereabouts uh highland is it spelled highland or highland

03:24:31.440 it's spelled h-e-l-i-a-n-d

03:24:35.200 h-e-l

03:24:38.620 let me take a look yeah this is um helion

03:24:49.540 uh yes i don't have i don't have a lot of information on this one i haven't really

03:24:59.840 delved into it um again uh i did i did a stint where i was studying anglo-saxon lore and studying

03:25:07.100 anglo-saxon language um and you know looking into like dior and beowulf um and and the stories of

03:25:15.960 Wayland, I have looked into, but I have not looked into this.

03:25:20.700 Dropped something in that I'm going to look into, but to be honest, not a ton on this for me.

03:25:33.740 Yes to both of your questions.

03:25:36.480 Yes, intentionally on the first, and I think less so on the second, but you know what?

03:25:42.400 Scratch that.

03:25:43.020 Yes on both.

03:25:45.960 And we see this a lot in European Christianity is so very, very different than other Christianity.

03:26:02.220 and that x factor is our folk soul to sell Christianity and convert people in northern

03:26:12.820 and western Europe and eastern Europe um it was so incompatible with our faith and the warrior

03:26:24.360 ethos of the time that struggling to get points across you really the missionaries very much

03:26:34.360 needed to reframe it in a context that was familiar and made our made our ancestors

03:26:41.560 understand something about it and the character of jesus the character of the apostles the entire

03:26:47.420 context of the scriptures are displayed so very differently in that dark ages Europe and

03:26:56.920 some of it probably started out honestly trying to explain things in a way that these

03:27:04.420 these uh Germanic peoples understood um but a lot of it was knowing full well that they wouldn't

03:27:14.280 except the meek uh jewish faith of the desert that just wouldn't be appealing to them

03:27:21.640 so they had to liken it to or or flex it to try to fit the the you know the square peg into the

03:27:29.960 round hole in europe and it took a lot of mental gymnastics and we see that with so

03:27:35.240 many different things you can read a little bit about it in the uh

03:27:38.760 the germanization of early christian medieval christianity um but again the title basically

03:27:50.600 says it all on that book there was such a process of retelling christian lore in a germanic context

03:28:00.040 because like i said it was so very very foreign to those concepts that our ancestors held so dear

03:28:06.520 so it was labor to do both of those things it was absolutely an effort by missionaries to make

03:28:11.400 christianity pal palatable to our ancestors but it was also um inadvertently a way of nordicizing

03:28:20.520 and preserving our values within the new christian context it was both of those things

03:28:28.760 in a little bit of an interplay back or forth and you see that with it with a number of things

03:28:33.480 around that time period. Yeah, the context of what I have actually, this was brought about

03:28:41.320 in that book, The Germanization of Medieval Christianity, about the usage of the word

03:28:46.160 driton in correlation to Christ and his apostles being thanes. That was about the brief overlap

03:28:54.400 of what I had gotten from that. I hadn't actually looked at the entirety of the piece or read it,

03:28:59.060 But I do remember reading about the concept of why they would use those words to kind of, again, facilitate their religion.

03:29:07.180 And to bear in mind that it's kind of interesting, like Uphilas amongst the Gutens, when he wrote the book Matthew in Gutiskerazda, and he didn't necessarily do this with the Goths like the authors.

03:29:30.160 And, again, I haven't looked into it. This is going to be an interesting rabbit hole for me to run down, and I'm anticipating it, because they're talking about the authorship and the exact author of who this is and during the time that – and I'm very familiar with Widokind and his fight against the Saxon upheavals with Charlemagne or with Karl.

03:29:54.860 um but they do mention yeah that that uh that yeshua is a driton and that his apostles are

03:30:04.860 things and the correlations between how that you get from point a to point b i don't know

03:30:11.820 how else they could have gotten that message across unless they wrapped it in a sense of

03:30:18.800 heroism and that's what i i would say really important from that time frame is a lot of

03:30:25.120 people talk about you know all the christians um when we talk about them in passivity and then we

03:30:30.740 talk about the the the root of christianity amongst the germanic people having anti-heroism which i

03:30:36.740 mentioned just recently uh early in the podcast about the anti-heroism and the law the loss of

03:30:42.320 the hero but then you'll you know get kind of a snarky rebuttal well they converted you know by

03:30:47.500 force and by warriorship. Well, it's because those people that were converting to

03:30:51.320 Christianity at the time, they were not exemplifying any of the deep doctrine that was

03:30:58.160 really already established amongst the church in Rome and in Greece. The church and the

03:31:05.240 founding church in Greece would not be able to do that in Germany or in Anglo-Saxon or even in

03:31:16.220 the nordic lands uh the the the the predecessing church that saul had started they wouldn't have

03:31:23.180 the ability to convert um the land what ended up really happening was is these men who had been

03:31:30.040 raised in uh teutonic heroism convert for many different reasons marriage money land titles

03:31:39.520 ownership with connection or the ability to bring everyone under one centralized organization and

03:31:46.860 government they were still very much pagan or heathen or grown up in the age of heroism and

03:31:56.280 did not exemplify a lot of that stuff if you took the founder church members at the temple or the

03:32:02.520 council of the nicae and dropped them into germany and said go ahead convert the saxons

03:32:06.920 That would have been a very interesting and probably short story.

03:32:12.440 But instead, the conversion was led by people that had turned against their ancestors, had turned against the gods, but were still very much encompassed and embroiled in the heroic essence.

03:32:24.260 And a lot of that interplay between, you know, the accepting of Christianity as an organizational force and the heroism of the Germanic spirit became a problem for Christians later on during those rifts.

03:32:41.380 When we see the knights and Renaissance times in which the Germanicism of the knights starts bubbling up and causing issues of where they try to then correlate reasoning as to why a heroic soul needs to be placed, that part was not relented.

03:33:01.360 But over time and generations and in eventuality, the core of what is being taught in Christianity came to surface.

03:33:09.060 And I still see many modern Christians today say, oh, well, you know, they were warriors then and they converted then and they were slaying their enemies and being righteous warriors for God is like those men were like generationally just converted and were still very much of the warrior hero mythos that they had grown up in, that their culture, their society had grown up in.

03:33:32.440 And the changing of Jesus to a Driton shows that it's clear as day, because if they had done anything else, it probably would not have been accepted.

03:33:44.960 All right. Bob asks, do you guys believe in things like evolution?

03:33:50.980 Not sure what other things of similarity you're talking about.

03:33:56.020 As far as evolution goes, certain aspects of it, certainly.

03:33:59.640 I mean, it's very obvious that species develop over time and that over generation traits and things come to the fore based on selective breeding and evolutionary concepts.

03:34:13.720 um if i think that everything is is evolving from amoebas i don't know if i think that you know

03:34:24.280 humans evolve from monkeys that evolve from you know some kind of mice creatures i don't know

03:34:31.260 some of those are are leaps that i don't have a really strong opinion on but one thing that i

03:34:37.260 think is interesting in regards to altitude and evolution is that in our lore, it doesn't talk

03:34:46.480 about our gods fashioning us whole. It talks about them finding something that is existent

03:34:55.140 and then imbuing that existent thing with life, with blood, with spirit, with breath,

03:35:05.000 with goodly hue with the things that make us people so there's a point where in our laura

03:35:14.120 talks about our gods finding something and bestowing peoplehood upon that something and i

03:35:22.920 think that's very interesting when you talk about evolution i don't think that's a solid point of

03:35:28.680 dogma because again i'm not i'm not certain the evolutionary process of the human race at that

03:35:35.320 point um but the idea that that we were once something lower and that the gods bestowed

03:35:43.320 arian manhood upon us to become who we are i think that is a fundamental in our faith

03:35:49.640 what are your thoughts fun yeah definitely i i guess the the term would certainly be more like

03:35:56.200 i guess in a scientific sense intelligent design i know that that that uh nomenclature in in

03:36:04.280 relation to this topic has been dropped so i'm just utilizing utilizing that because of the

03:36:09.400 nature of the conversation but yes intelligent design and and the thing that a lot of people

03:36:14.680 that when they're christian or when they come from a christian background or they come from a

03:36:18.680 a religious background that has a written doctrine that is um you know either proclaimed to be an

03:36:25.480 absolute truth or uh whether or not it's just theosophically seen it's it's its evolution is

03:36:31.320 is very man-made uh one of the things about mythological language is that it's perennially

03:36:37.160 perenni perennial perennially truthful and it applies itself in multiple cases

03:36:45.800 mythological or metanarrative language does not confine itself to finite interpretation

03:36:54.360 that if it goes against or something like that is considered like a deviation from an absolute truth

03:37:02.220 or something of that nature.

03:37:04.800 We know that.

03:37:05.740 But in our stories, and these stories go far back even before we were writing them down,

03:37:11.780 we talk about first and foremost the creation of the first ask and ambla

03:37:18.120 and the fact that they are trees that are unrooted and unfaded,

03:37:21.700 and these words have meaning.

03:37:24.360 These meanings paint a kind of picture that allow us to, again, as we evolve in time, we begin to evolve our understanding of the gods.

03:37:35.400 So understanding that when those words of unrooted and unfated kind of come about from a material as they are pulled from the shore or pulled from the waters and shaped and then given gifts.

03:37:47.960 And then on top of that, there's another story, too, again, when Heimdall comes down and the folk that he meets are great-grandmother and great-grandfather are their names.

03:37:59.120 And so we know right now we're talking about a mythological language and what could that mean, a generation.

03:38:06.500 Some people say, because it does structurally correlate to a hierarchy during the late Nordic period of like Thralls, Carls, and Jarls, but it's interesting enough to look at the names and see that these names have a time placement, and they are correlated with each other from great-grandmother and great-grandfather to grandfather and grandmother and to father and to mother.

03:38:31.040 So we see this every time this generation accepts the divinity into their home, and they're being painted as two individuals, but we see this correlated in our stories all the time.

03:38:43.980 ask and embla leaf and leaf thrasser you know their their names are allegoric for a bigger

03:38:51.660 thing than just simply a an individual so we see this evolution as great-grandmother and great

03:38:58.200 grandfather accept the divinity of the gods of the isir into their home they become better and then

03:39:05.920 when he returns again there is a new generation and he asks to come in they they bring him into

03:39:12.140 their home and they evolve again so this this is showing an evolution of of humanity getting better

03:39:20.780 by inherently accepting the divinity into their into their lives their their awareness of the

03:39:26.960 gods becomes greater their trough becomes greater and thus they advance forward and some some have

03:39:33.260 really talked about too like when we we talk about the creation myth and we talk about

03:39:36.960 The manner of beasts that protrude or exude out of Emir before the slaying of Emir and the flooding, again, our flood myth or our flood story or our flood metanarrative, talks about the manner of beasts protruding out of Emir.

03:39:54.160 And if we were to talk about Ymir as being this proto-Earth, then, you know, people have speculated this is a correlation to speaking of epochs of time, of the creation of these beasts.

03:40:06.460 Are they dinosaurs?

03:40:07.940 Are we talking about these ancient periods?

03:40:10.920 Do they have viability?

03:40:12.380 Well, no one in the stories, I mean, the gods don't correlate the story to say, oh, well, at this time, at this time, or the Earth is this old.

03:40:18.940 And no, we know that the times that are spoken about in metanarratives could be of great expanse.

03:40:26.640 So is the idea in the story, when they talk about Ymir's body being producing these ancient beasts,

03:40:36.800 is that the gods have told our ancestors in these stories that there was a time in which the great beast produced from Ymir once roamed this primordial state?

03:40:48.160 And that the gods came down, struck the primordial state and transformed it into the state that would allow the folk to exist.

03:40:57.980 That's very interesting, but you can't put dates and you can't put times to the stories.

03:41:02.740 So they speak of more of like an overarching truth that I think have application to the idea of intelligent evolutionary design and or thresholds that we move through.

03:41:15.000 so we've got a series of questions from jason uh as men do you maintain a working relationship

03:41:22.860 with any of our goddesses um yes absolutely and i think that defining it as a working relationship

03:41:29.960 isn't how i would choose to define it um i don't think that we're colleagues with with the gods

03:41:36.720 in that sense we have a worship relationship with our goddesses in the same way that we do with our

03:41:42.960 gods um engaging in the gift cycle and interacting with them i think that the difference is our

03:41:51.840 goddesses are less of an exemplar of things that we try to be and more of a divine feminine that we

03:42:04.960 try to you know ask to enter our life or to help us into a certain way or to help our families

03:42:12.960 The relationship is slightly different because we don't necessarily want to emulate our goddesses in the same way that we would, in some ways, want to emulate our gods, if that makes any sense.

03:42:28.060 What are your thoughts on it, Svon?

03:42:30.180 Yeah, like what you're saying is from a masculine standpoint, the emulation of the asa, the aus, the masculine, is easy for us.

03:42:39.360 And I think from the feminine standpoint, it's easy for our women folk to seek to emulate the Asenir, you know, for their reasons.

03:42:50.600 But when we talk about the masculine and the feminine, we talk about the willful manifestation or the projection of will by masculine force.

03:42:59.700 And we talk about the cohesive abilities of the asenior and the way that they kind of hold up the power that reservoirs to the masculine.

03:43:13.740 And we see this with, you know, with Idun and her holding of the apples and that correlation of power source that then helps drive the gods forward, in particular, the willful manifestation of the masculine gods.

03:43:28.000 But we also see deep correlation with the way they work laterally within our society.

03:43:34.360 The mystification of the natural cycles of the natural law and cycles that happen of life, death, rebirthing, and the ancestral worship when we talk about the desir.

03:43:49.860 And we talk about these cycles that we can't escape from as men and women.

03:43:58.560 And as a folk, we are deeply connected to that feminine aspect of understanding the cycles that they have dominion and power over.

03:44:06.620 So when we look at the Asenior in a sense of whether we're talking about Frigga and the mystery of motherhood, that power, I think, can be very much respected.

03:44:20.340 I pray to Frigga quite often and hold a trothful relationship that I hope she acknowledges and appreciates or feels that I'm giving proper, pious devotion to her.

03:44:35.300 And I don't think that there's anything wrong or some sort of a pent up thing where you can't do that if you're a man.

03:44:41.080 That's ridiculous. We clearly see that there are connections between like Otter and his devotion to Freya.

03:44:49.680 We see this in the in the sagas as well, that there is devotion to the Asenior as well as to the gods for various reasons, whatever they may be from the individual worshiper.

03:45:00.980 But when we talk about like when we get together and we like the difference between saying manifestation of the gods, but yet when we get together and we we talk about the ailment of like a child amongst our folk, we pray to air.

03:45:17.400 We call upon Er and give gifts to her, asking that she give us the insight, give us the way to heal, to bring wholeness to a sick child within our folk or a sick member who's fallen to ailments and things of that nature.

03:45:36.460 So we do pray to the Asenor for things. I also think that like I have a deep religious connection to Hlyn, the goddess of the maiden of Fensal or the goddess of protection.

03:45:52.960 I oftentimes have correlated her, when I look at what we would call pan-Aryanism, I look at Hlyn as in correlation to Minerva or to Athena, and that correlation there of the idea of placing wisdom and protection, understanding thresholds and boundaries, that all has merit and power.

03:46:18.180 I think also, too, when we talk about the Ausenia Gevion, we were recently discussing Gevion in correlation to land.

03:46:28.860 And I feel that even though, like, say, in American history, Americans as a Christian nation may not realize that they're manifesting the gods of the people, but they do without them knowing it.

03:46:43.480 And I think we see that in the idea of the maiden of the manifest destiny or Columbia or Columbina.

03:46:51.260 We see her as a manifestation of the land.

03:46:54.300 We see it in some of the artwork, especially during like World War I, where you see Columbia and you defend her.

03:47:00.180 And she is the personification of the nation as a people in the natural law realm of the mothers that produce the children and the menfolk protect the land.

03:47:16.640 And that artwork is specifically targeting men saying, look at her divine power.

03:47:22.860 Look at her as she is your sister, she is your mother, she is your wife, she is your daughter.

03:47:27.740 Are you willing to defend her?

03:47:30.180 We see Gavion in correlation to that, and she's manifesting even in a secular sense or in a philosophical sense.

03:47:38.240 And so our correlation as men can very well manifest and have willful meaning and devotion towards the Ausinia in many different ways.

03:47:50.240 any man who sat out, you know, like sat off onto the side and saw his children being born,

03:47:58.200 seeing his wife going through this tumultuous time. And, you know, I've, I've seen it firsthand.

03:48:04.400 We had a home birth. We had three midwives, very, very strangely enough, as we got to know them,

03:48:11.760 there were three of them. And there was an older woman and a young middle-aged woman and a very

03:48:15.620 young woman who was doing everything on the laptop and suddenly i'm looking around at this moment

03:48:20.900 and i'm like wow the reflection of meta to material that was going on at that time and um

03:48:30.420 seeing my my wife go through this uh the the trial and ordeal of bringing forth a child into the world

03:48:37.300 her being the threshold and the gateway and seeing the culmination of that i saw the asania there

03:48:44.260 I saw them. I felt their presence. I felt their power. I prayed to them in hopes of the benefit

03:48:50.760 of my folk, the benefit of my wife, the benefit of the health of my children. I've prayed to them

03:48:57.040 to bring love and kinship amongst people that had discord amongst them. I've prayed to the

03:49:05.080 goddesses to show them that there's a way that we need to lay our grievances down first emotionally

03:49:12.380 And then prayed to Forseti to find a more tangible, lawful way of bringing those people together.

03:49:19.340 So I did those in combination.

03:49:22.280 Or to Snotra, in relation to whenever I'm the thial at Sambal, I say a silent prayer to Snotra,

03:49:31.960 praying that she's there so that everyone that is enacting at Sambal acts in accordance with the cultural laws

03:49:40.360 because that's what she's the goddess.

03:49:42.380 of like the the governance or the governess of moral correctness within a cultural setting

03:49:52.220 especially at sumble so i say a silent prayer to her saying i hope everyone here abides by your

03:49:58.140 wisdom and doesn't step out of line or doesn't get too deep into their horns or says things

03:50:03.580 greatly and with good meaning but with wholesome meaning so yeah i think that the um the goddesses

03:50:10.060 do have a huge play but whereas we see the the the ouse as projecting forward and moving forward

03:50:16.140 and upward we see the as connective between those projections going forward they're the thing that

03:50:24.620 holds the nation together they're the thing that holds the family together and the and the the

03:50:29.660 family as like the sif the siblings that's the feminine power it's the it's the weaving between

03:50:36.860 the supportive strands, the ouse being the pillars and their weaving in between holding

03:50:43.460 everything together. No, absolutely. And I think that, I don't know, my, my interaction with the,

03:50:53.880 with the goddesses is more so when I deal with family things, when I think about my wife and

03:51:03.140 my mother who's um i don't know if you guys know this my mother is going through a very long road

03:51:09.700 of dementia and health stuff and it is what it is but the the prayers to the goddesses are more so

03:51:20.420 in considering that and especially now as the father of a daughter it's very important to me

03:51:25.620 uh easy question for also from jason's fun uh witness fun what are your favorite bands

03:51:33.320 oh oh wow okay that's that's cool that's random but cool uh i have like two um kind of genres that

03:51:45.040 i really listen to is like a folk americana i really like um mountain style music that may be

03:51:50.520 influenced by like uh celtic or um anglo-saxon folk songs that have kind of correlated into the

03:51:58.460 south and into the appalachias or into southern culture so um like i'm not a big fan of say would

03:52:05.040 say like modern country but i love um bluegrass newgrass and folk americana and southern gothic

03:52:12.360 some of the more darker, chthonic songs about death and loss and struggle. I really like that

03:52:21.440 genre of music when they're using mandolins and banjos and, you know, a stand-up bass,

03:52:28.860 and it's just like a group of women singing or, you know, a group of men or a lone woman or a lone

03:52:34.960 man's uh singing i really find um that to be wonderful so like that genre uh i would say like

03:52:42.960 like bands like um devil makes three or um uh you know nickel creek um i'm trying to think of

03:52:53.440 uh horse feathers these bands are you know probably not very well known it's kind of weird

03:52:58.560 you're like you've exposed me on some of my weirder uh off the beaten path music interests

03:53:04.960 I do like, uh, metal, but I, as I've grown older, I find myself only really listening to metal when

03:53:11.440 I'm, or, or, um, uh, hard rock or specifically, like I used to listen to a lot of like Nordic

03:53:18.680 metal, uh, you know, Bathory was a huge part of my teenage years growing up. Um, and, and, um,

03:53:26.260 so some of the doom metal groups and things like that, but I find myself listening to them in the

03:53:31.740 him for motivation. And, um, I do, I listen to like Amon Amarov, uh, Tear. Um, I also do listen

03:53:39.400 to, uh, some of the, uh, other, you know, bands that kind of formulate, I don't like a lot of the,

03:53:47.420 I would say the aesthetics of the way they're selling themselves. Some of them are a little too,

03:53:52.180 they look like cavemen groups, but I, I, again, I like some of the context of when we're talking

03:53:58.560 about like um uh ward runa with aurora when she was doing a set with them and they were up on

03:54:06.340 stage and they were singing together and there was some nordic stuff uh there was a band that

03:54:11.400 was around for a long time called vowel raven and they really did like a modern they all their old

03:54:16.400 all their songs were old folk songs from iceland the pharaoh islands in norway or i mean uh denmark

03:54:21.760 so they had like really old folk songs but they were doing them in a modern context

03:54:25.680 really really cool stuff but i mainly listen to a lot of the more nordic uh metal genre while i'm

03:54:33.940 working out because it motivates me it gets me to going but on a general sense or even at my

03:54:39.920 at my shop i have a tendency to listen more towards like bands like the builders and the

03:54:45.060 butchers and um you know uh dead south and some of the more southern gothic americana

03:54:52.480 bands. I like them too. So, and of course, oh, of course too, I, we have a local station here

03:55:00.860 that is a, that plays classical music. I am a big fan of classical music. Um, and I have a tendency

03:55:06.300 to almost, um, uh, like as a complete ritual in the morning, I will come down and put on,

03:55:15.060 there's a station on youtube called halidon h-a-l-i-d-o-n halidon he uh i assume it's he

03:55:23.540 because of the comments um but he's been sick and coming in and out he does great classical music

03:55:29.220 uh montages so he'll switch through and in the bottom right he'll say exactly what piece it's

03:55:34.820 from who's playing and he does them in like classical music for autumn classical music for

03:55:41.220 winter classical music for spring so he does seasonals he does uh for you know for rainy days

03:55:48.020 or for sunny days he does great compilations of classical music and if you're got your eye on the

03:55:53.940 screen you get to see the title and you become more familiarized with classical pieces so i

03:55:59.300 like that too but i usually do that in the morning as i'm slowly coming out of slumber

03:56:03.780 um also from jason witness fawn what is your advice for a guy who wants to form an afa kindred

03:56:13.260 um i mean first and foremost uh if you're starting without anyone around you the the best thing to do

03:56:25.020 is, you know, as becoming a, become a member of the AFA and start by, you don't have to be an

03:56:36.940 apprentice folk builder. You don't have to be a folk builder to hold moots. You can start by

03:56:41.020 holding moots. You can go out on whether it's like Facebook or some sort of social media,

03:56:46.820 place yourself out there, say, Hey, I'm holding a moot. I want to start a kindred. Now specifying

03:56:53.540 certain things. Obviously, when you say you're going to go out and start a kindred, a folkish

03:56:59.620 kindred might be a good nomenclature if you're not officially a folk builder. Or you could just

03:57:04.140 simply say, I want to start an AFA kindred. For all folk nearby that want to meet, let's meet at

03:57:10.000 this restaurant. Let's meet at this bar. Let's meet at this pub. Let's go have a hike moot.

03:57:14.940 And you have to be prepared that it may be a while because not everybody's always going to

03:57:21.280 be able to see what you're doing. And so it took a long while for me to start up. When I had

03:57:28.260 started up a kindred, you know, it took a long time to gather people. There's a lot of times

03:57:33.080 it was just me and maybe one friend or two friends of mine who were there. And then as the word

03:57:38.660 spread or as I kind of engaged people on social media today, you know, I'm in Virginia and, you

03:57:44.640 know, I want to start a kindred. If you're looking to honor the gods and get together, let's get

03:57:49.920 together um i'm a member of the afa if you want to come out let's do this and slowly over time

03:57:56.800 people started showing up and it started to build and then it built across the state

03:58:02.320 um of virginia for a long while um but you know or or starting with your family if you know

03:58:09.760 if you have you know brothers sisters uh your cousins you know nephews it's harder when you

03:58:16.000 when you go up in the with your elders oftentimes they're already preset but you might find um your

03:58:22.400 cousin or your your you know your nephew or somebody who's also interested in the gods and

03:58:28.240 then you two get together and start holding regular bloats based on the wheel of the year

03:58:35.520 you know just start off by you know once a month holding a bloat and following the wheel of the

03:58:40.480 the year is great because it gives you a chance to weird yourself to the cycle of the world and

03:58:46.040 cycle to the gods and so you follow that wheel and you start holding your bloats once a month and

03:58:51.240 maybe they talk to somebody and they come down and then once you start to amass people uh talk

03:58:59.500 to them about joining the afa because the biggest thing is is becoming an afa recognized kindred

03:59:04.760 requires that you all have trough to the AFA.

03:59:10.120 So very carefully and clearly to make this stated is if you're a member of a kindred

03:59:15.820 and you're a member of the AFA, that doesn't mean that your kindred is an AFA kindred.

03:59:20.000 It's when they pass through the threshold of all of them being members

03:59:23.720 and being cleared, being checked, passing security,

03:59:30.680 and being brought into the inner guard and going through the application process,

03:59:36.400 once they all become members, you can put in a bid to be recognized amongst the kindred organizers

03:59:43.020 as being an AFA kindred.

03:59:46.280 And then once you do that, all your members are AFA members.

03:59:49.980 Everyone is loyal to the inner guard.

03:59:53.160 You can make a bid to be recognized.

03:59:56.800 And then, you know, it's a matter of who are you, where you're from,

04:00:00.200 what is your your standard what is your colors and then once that gets sent through that standard

04:00:07.120 is made it is passed through the kinfolk that you have built in your area and that flag gets

04:00:12.960 raised at one of or at all of the temples and then your flag will your banner will be there

04:00:18.080 as a representation so that all the folks at the temples know they're these folk out there

04:00:23.600 you know this is the support this is where it's all coming from and you know that builds that

04:00:29.140 relationship between the Hoffs and the kinfolk out building the religion, building, making the

04:00:37.060 home accessible for people to come back to. So. So Daniel asks, Matt Svahn, something that is

04:00:45.640 often overlooked is that Thor despises oath breakers. Can you speak on that aspect of his

04:00:52.480 personality. It's fine. Go for it. Yeah. Seldom does Thuy Thor sit where oaths are broken. That

04:01:01.180 comes from the Volusbao. And it's briefly kind of lending in that poem. They're talking about

04:01:10.460 the rebuilding of the walls of heaven. Understanding heaven as a multiplicity,

04:01:17.620 The plane of heaven has multiple levels.

04:01:20.820 Obviously, seeing heaven, when we talk about the gods building their garther on Ithavol, on the plane of good deeds, on the plane of industriousness, on the shining expanse in which they build their will, is beyond Him and Bjorg, beyond the heavens, heavens mountains.

04:01:41.760 And so, you know, when we see the gods in heaven, you know, looking into the well at the base, the correlation, the nexus of true might and power and life in heaven emanating from the tree at the base, there is the well.

04:02:01.540 And Thor is part of the council in which they look upon the deeds and the souls of mankind in the living moment.

04:02:12.780 They're not Chthonic.

04:02:14.160 They're looking at from heaven, seeing this.

04:02:17.780 So when Ausgard was destroyed during the first battle between the gods of cosmic order and natural law, the walls were sundered.

04:02:26.340 The field was trodden deeply by the Vana as they had made a great struggle against the Asa.

04:02:34.520 And so that part when they talk about Thor seldom sitting where oaths are broken is in reference to the rebuilding of the walls where the Jotun tries to proclaim that they had actually broken their oath towards him.

04:02:54.200 And his price, which was the sun and the moon and Freyja, steep price, you know, he levels this argument against the gods that they've broken an oath and Thor does him in for the insult of it.

04:03:08.560 So that's that reference there. But it's also worth noting that because one of the names of Thor, Ve-ur, the strength of the Ve, strength of the temple, the hallower of the temple, his power of oafing and his power of making things hallowed or dominating or having dominion in hallowed space is often seen in correlation with the

04:03:38.560 holding oaths within the hollowed space. Whether we're talking about a hof or a harrow or a horg

04:03:47.440 or a grove where these sacred words are to be spoken, he suffers not the breaking of oaths that

04:03:58.920 are taken in sacred space. So he is seen as definitely a catalystic force of meeting out

04:04:10.100 doom for those who break oaths in their living life. And so he has that power. He has that

04:04:17.720 correlation. And I think he, along with many of the other gods, do preside over the taking of

04:04:25.560 oaths. And we could see each one having a slightly different correlation to the act of

04:04:32.600 oathing. But I would definitely say it's that Thor doesn't suffer the breaking of oaths in

04:04:39.380 hallowed space, specifically. And of course, the most hallowed of spaces is Ausgard in heaven.

04:04:47.060 So he, you know, seldom does he sit when these oaths are broken. So yes, I think,

04:04:54.060 You know, along with some Ausenir and with Forseti or with Tir, we talk about, you know, the taking of oaths within the temples, taking oaths at the Ulthing, taking oaths through marriage or through legalities.

04:05:13.360 These hollowed places are always also connected to the dominion of Asathor, and so it's a slight in regards to that.

04:05:24.300 And we know, you know, upon death, you know, when we are marked as an oath breaker, marked as the gods see the oath breaking being done, this is one of a huge slight that can be presented to deny admittance to the halls of the ancestors, to the residing souls of the folk soul.

04:05:49.800 You could be denied and receive, you know, the naustron, the beach, where the souls of those who are denied from the whole of the souls, the ability to be, you know, brought back through the bloodlines is cut off to them.

04:06:06.960 And so, you know, breaking sacred oaths is, you know, is not good.

04:06:13.600 However, I did want to bring up that one of the things that we talk about, the fatalism of oath and oath-breaking, is also understanding that oaths can evolve based on situations.

04:06:26.620 So when you find yourself in a situation where you have an oath with someone and things are evolving or changing, it is completely within understanding and right that both parties, one or the other, could call a meeting or a moot to the holders of the oath to then recalibrate the oath based off of perhaps if somebody was to pass away.

04:06:49.660 or if something was you needed to step out because you were no longer able to uphold your end of the

04:06:56.640 oath, not because you're a bad person, but because something has happened to where you are no longer

04:07:02.160 fit to fulfill the needs of the oath. And you bring this up to the oath taker or other oath

04:07:10.300 takers and say, I'm no longer able to fulfill my oath. I need to step down from this. That's

04:07:16.340 understandable. That's acceptable. That's not breaking an oath. Breaking an oath is when

04:07:20.900 there's blatant disregard and a complete severance or actions, really deep actions that go in counter

04:07:28.020 to the loyalty, to the station of the oath, and it's just blatantly spit upon.

04:07:38.640 That's when we're talking about grievous things. So there's absolutely a necessity that any oath

04:07:45.060 taker, especially looking at Thor as that dominance of power and his hallowed sacredness,

04:07:52.560 it's incumbent upon you to bring everyone together, renegotiate the oath, fix something,

04:08:00.580 realign certain things. You can tend oaths. They can evolve and change. Please don't think that,

04:08:06.300 you know, the environment around the oath has changed, so now you're doomed forever.

04:08:12.440 that is not always the case but seek your gothar seek a wise counsel to find out the best way to

04:08:21.000 negotiate those things i think is is very important um but yes that's uh i believe my

04:08:26.200 correlation thor on on the othing there you have it um jason asks uh witness fawn what is your

04:08:35.240 working relationship with our Lord Thor? Um, I mean, being, being, um, a godly at his,

04:08:47.440 at his temple is, is huge. Um, the, the, I think before the Hoff, my relationship with him was

04:08:59.980 in prayer and in devotion to seek bravery, to seek courage, to seek action. I've always kind

04:09:06.420 of incorporated those things and asked for any insight or welcomed any sense of ability to test

04:09:12.800 and trial myself. Or I always thought to myself, if I was in these situations, and I have been in

04:09:18.860 the past, would I make Thor proud? Would I make the gods proud? But since we're talking about

04:09:26.820 Thor? Would I make him proud? What in my deeds am I doing that would make him notice me and be

04:09:34.060 pleased upon seeing what I'm doing? That's a big correlation. And I think that giving devotion and

04:09:41.020 giving might and building luck between us is more a devotional act of giving reverence and

04:09:50.820 understanding huge amounts of might. But after Thorshoff, our relationship became, I think for

04:09:57.640 me, very, very, um, tangible. It was no longer in the, the precept of just my deeds. Please look

04:10:07.120 upon me as wellness. It was like, first it was creating the Godstead and making sure that that

04:10:11.500 godstead was deeply i was putting a lot of emotion into it and um there is a story about that

04:10:21.440 speaking about the murals um there was a moment during the construction of the godstead in which

04:10:28.580 um i heard some strange noises coming from outside i didn't exactly know what they were

04:10:35.360 there is an oak tree directly outside of Thorshof, and its branches and bows were moving and making

04:10:42.380 this kind of hissing noise of the wind blowing through leaves, and I noticed it as I was up.

04:10:47.580 Perhaps I was listening to music, and the music stopped, and then suddenly I heard it,

04:10:51.860 but I came down from the ladder, and I walked forward, and I was just kind of looking to see

04:10:57.780 what was going on outside, and I opened up the doors, and I could see this storm brewing on the

04:11:04.100 horizon. And as I was, as I opened the door, I see the storm and all of a sudden I feel this

04:11:10.700 gust of wind hit me. And I felt that this moment was a moment of, um, I needed to step to the side

04:11:21.580 and all I could say was, I hope you find approval in it. I hope I'm doing justice to this. I don't

04:11:29.080 know what the repercussions would be if it, if I'm not doing well, and I don't necessarily want

04:11:34.480 to entertain that idea, but this is what I'm doing. This is what I have. This is what I'm

04:11:38.080 trying to create. This is the seat I'm trying to bring to you. I hope you like it. And then I just

04:11:44.060 stepped off to the side. I actually took a picture of it, um, of the storm and of the wind and of

04:11:49.520 everything. And eventually the, the pressure equalized, the wind died down and a slight

04:11:56.440 gentle rain came over the temple um at you know and and the and the surrounding fields across the

04:12:04.380 street and the cemetery it was just a gentle rain and i i felt okay i'll take that for what it is

04:12:10.860 i'm going to step back in and continue working because i'm not here to waste time i've only got

04:12:15.820 a certain amount of time while i'm here so let's get back to work and and then i just kind of went

04:12:21.340 back and started working fervently on it. So suddenly there was a very tangible relationship

04:12:27.580 there that I felt in that moment. And I, it upped the notch a little bit and said,

04:12:35.020 now you're, now you're, you're doing works in direct representation of me.

04:12:41.940 Let that, you know, dot, dot, dot, just let that hang. And so I was just like, understood. And

04:12:49.820 And it has affected me from that moment on to when I think about the things that I'm doing in life, when I get irritated, upset, the arguing of my kids, and I get upset, and I'm like, what are you guys doing?

04:13:06.840 there's always something in the back of my head that's saying like are you utilizing this moment

04:13:11.220 to be honorable are you utilizing this moment to be good are you utilizing this moment to be

04:13:16.520 a proper representation of the gods and of of thor that that looms over my head and so i

04:13:24.520 i don't always hit the mark but i'm always thinking about it my actions what i'm doing

04:13:30.880 am i being good before the gods if they are to look at me through that well or look at me from

04:13:39.660 the sky are they seeing something that they're happy with i don't know and i continue to try

04:13:46.320 and that's all that that that that's the tangible relationship that definitely

04:13:50.240 changed right at that moment when that door was open at thorshoff during um the creation of that

04:13:56.980 mural all right cody asks thor's a god that shows up all over europe under very similar names

04:14:06.180 are there any religions that mention a thor-like figure that people may not immediately recognize

04:14:13.060 what are your thoughts swan oh absolutely uh first and foremost i would say look look to our cousins

04:14:20.900 If you're looking at the Slavs or you're looking at the Gauls who lived in the Gallic empires, the Gaelic-speaking folk, look no further than Tyrannus and Perum.

04:14:33.800 Um, if you're looking at the, the, the, the semi Laplunders of the North, great, great North, uh, you know, they have Uco or, um, um, uh, I'm going to say it wrong, but Terra, Terra Taurus, um, the, the, all the striker and the catalystic throne always has very similar, um, traits that show up is, is the

04:15:03.620 movement from heaven to earth, from the edges. There is always an implement of striking, a

04:15:08.900 singular implement that can rupture the thresholds of chaos and bring back order and equilibrium.

04:15:17.920 And so, yeah, I would immediately point out to Perun and to Tyrannus as correlations.

04:15:28.300 All right. So Jason also asks, what do you gentlemen believe? Why do you gentlemen believe Thor became the most famous of God's memorial men? I think this goes back to the idea of why Thor's hammer was chosen as the symbol of Ossetcher.

04:15:47.140 thor well and i think it goes back to our answer to the red thor versus white christ question

04:15:55.460 um so thor thor is the protector of of mankind and of midgard and i think that

04:16:08.060 the idea of protection was a big part of it i also think that he's very easily accessible

04:16:13.680 He's a God of the warrior. He's a God of of striking the object that's in front of you until it breaks or relents.

04:16:24.400 His stories are stories of adventure and excitement in battle.

04:16:29.000 And I think that that excites the hearts of of all men that that read his stories and hear of his fame.

04:16:37.200 And I think in a very, very tangible way that everyone from warlords all the way down to the most common everyday man understands that a bully pops off and you pop him in the mouth is something that our people since the dawn of time can understand and get behind.

04:17:03.420 The idea of protection of family, the idea of physically righting wrongs is inherently hardwired into men's souls.

04:17:12.960 And I think that's why Thor is so easily, you know, became so popular and his stories became so popular.

04:17:21.520 And I think that also, as we mentioned at the top of the program, he's a very approachable God as opposed to some of our others.

04:17:28.260 He's one that our people draw a very immediate connection to.

04:17:33.420 I did want to bring up to Finn Wraith, you're absolutely correct, and I apologize.

04:17:40.040 I did make a mistake.

04:17:41.440 The Finns, it's Ukos, and to the Semi, it is Toro Turos or Horagallus,

04:17:50.780 the striker amongst the Semi is Horagallus, and amongst the Finns is Ukko.

04:17:56.660 I wanted to make that was clarified, and I'm very, very happy that he corrected me on that.

04:18:02.100 spawn did not mean to offend your ancestors he apologizes um jason also asks uh how do you feel

04:18:10.740 about praying to the gods without an offering can you talk with the gods without one well certainly

04:18:20.260 i i've always said this and i continue to say this you interact with our gods like you interact with

04:18:25.940 with the basis of our relationship with our gods is very similar in concept to our relationship

04:18:37.820 with any other living being. The gift cycle is important and giving of yourself and receiving

04:18:45.700 gifts is a big part of it, but our gods are not contractual in that sense. Certainly you can

04:18:55.880 reach out to our gods and send them a message, speak to them, and they hear you as one of their

04:19:02.700 children. It's, it's very misunderstood to feel that it's always contractual. It's not. The gift

04:19:12.620 cycle is a cycle of goodwill and a cycle of loyalty. It's not like, ah, well, you gave me

04:19:21.420 two incense sticks therefore i'll listen for 3.5 minutes but it's going to be another incense

04:19:28.780 stick and a you know a sip of whiskey for me to that's silly and our gods don't do that

04:19:37.420 so they're your gods and you can reach out to them at any time you'd like yes it is customary

04:19:42.620 and it is appropriate to when you're doing altar work to offer something but um no you can

04:19:50.940 absolutely speak to our gods without without having an offering at hand um varieg on the

04:19:59.100 organizational question a lot of times in open heathen circles you run into people claiming

04:20:05.420 uh fantastical spiritual experiences uh what is the basis on which we can say you're wrong

04:20:15.580 uh to be impious um

04:20:23.420 i think that it's wrong-headed to think that everything boils down to argumentation

04:20:30.380 i think at some point first why are you in open heathen circles um i have

04:20:37.260 one of the reasons that we make such a firm stand or of it's afa or it's not aussitrue

04:20:47.820 is those open heathen circles typically don't go anywhere they're just a point of

04:20:54.300 needless argumentation that doesn't manifest itself in real world accomplishment or in real

04:21:01.740 world relationship building with the gods. The rightness or wrongness of our worship isn't

04:21:11.160 proven by debate. It's proven by relationship with the gods and the boons that that gives one

04:21:18.540 in their life and in their practice. If that guy wants to claim that he has some personal

04:21:25.320 experience with the god that's irreverent, I don't think that we just accept that, but I think the

04:21:31.620 proof is in the fact that that guy lives in mom's basement and is a loser. And when we talk about

04:21:39.080 relationships with the gods, it manifests in temples and families and success and progress.

04:21:46.100 You can very often see the realness, the truth of the falsity in people's claims based upon,

04:21:53.140 you know, how that shows up in their lives. But at the end of the day, you get nothing out of

04:21:59.700 arguing aspect and i'm making an assumption here that's not fair but what i'm saying you get a lot

04:22:05.860 at all very often the arguing on the internet is completely pointless and it's done with people

04:22:13.860 that don't really exist in the real world and certainly not in the way they portray themselves

04:22:20.100 so i would encourage you know not spending your time in open heathen open heathen circles and

04:22:26.900 instead spending your time interacting with afa members actually building a quality life

04:22:32.500 for yourself worshiping with the gods um the argument the points of argumentation

04:22:39.940 also true is not a debate society it's a religion built towards worshiping our gods and

04:22:48.660 whether or not you can win an argument with an internet troll is not not the be all and end all

04:22:55.300 of that. Jason asks, Witten Svahn, what did it take for you to become Witten? I'll hear you go

04:23:03.100 through Flavel. What did it take for you to become? I'll share your Goethe. Go ahead, Svahn.

04:23:10.860 That's a great question. I was, I was really focusing on the question before, but

04:23:18.460 um what uh that i guess would be would that not be in your hands as to how i mean a little bit

04:23:31.020 yeah it is a little bit in the sense of how i became a wit and really does depend on

04:23:36.220 a merited usefulness uh that that i think the elsewhere has has seen and a level of responsibility

04:23:43.980 that he desires and there's there there are these things involved um i mean i can't speak for the

04:23:50.540 else here but uh you know going becoming go uh gothar is the threshold in which you actually

04:23:59.740 pass through i think where you start to be um where you really start to refine your yourself

04:24:05.260 and become a servant of the folk and work in within the church um and and start to have to

04:24:10.940 to contend certain things like counselings, whether it's drugs, drug addiction or suicide

04:24:15.560 or, and not saying that these happen, but that you have to be ready for them.

04:24:19.520 That, you know, you might have people who have some sort of problem that you might not

04:24:23.460 be ready for, or you've never encountered before.

04:24:25.460 And suddenly you're, you're working with a greater community, being ready, being willing,

04:24:31.520 giving insight, I think are, is important towards being given that responsibility.

04:24:39.320 but that's really you as far as what spawn did to to become a witten um listen to the last

04:24:49.880 it's getting late but listen to the last four and a half hours of show that we did and i think

04:24:54.680 it's self-evident um spawn's expertise that he brings to this um and his wisdom in regards to

04:25:03.940 our lore and our faith is is it speaks for itself um his applying that to what we do

04:25:14.660 recommends him very well to the position and i think ultimately one of the reasons that

04:25:19.380 comes off so well is that svan and i um are able to uh complement each other in in so many different

04:25:27.700 ways that the partnership working together with Svan amplifies things in a really productive

04:25:38.020 way that I feel is pleasing to our gods. Again, our strengths are so different that they work

04:25:48.920 very well with one another, and the interplay of the two leads to a really positive result,

04:25:54.800 advising myself and interacting with the other members of the witten to move us forward so i i

04:26:00.560 think it's very obvious why uh spawns where he's at or or how he got there his spiritual gravitas

04:26:07.520 is uh something for us all to see in here for literally the last four and a half hours um

04:26:15.040 as far as what it took for me to become all's harry gofi

04:26:19.760 there's a lot of ways to answer this question

04:26:25.980 um i would say it is an interplay between

04:26:33.460 relentless commitment between heart and between ambition and i think all of those things combined

04:26:44.380 And I've tried very hard to give all of myself to this and to make this 100 percent of my life.

04:26:57.760 And I say 100 percent, there's plenty of other distractions, but I've talked about this before.

04:27:03.980 I've tried hard to make everything in my life synergize with this.

04:27:07.780 um i'm sure there's countless ways that i could have done more that i could have done better

04:27:14.840 but it's truly something i think about every day is how i can devote myself more fully or how i can

04:27:25.180 do better for this for us for our gods for the afa for this and i think that um devotion to this

04:27:36.140 is what put me in the position that I'm in. I hope that's the case. I hope there's a certain

04:27:44.420 amount of divine approval in that process. I hope that I'm worthy of that. And that's what I'd have

04:27:52.300 to say. I think that is. So I know we're going through some of these questions kind of quick,

04:28:00.940 but varieg had a thing to follow up with what i was saying and i know that you're looking for an

04:28:07.020 objective theological metric to measure the truth or falseness of somebody's claim of a metaphysical

04:28:15.100 experience and i don't think the world works that way i don't think there's ever that

04:28:22.620 scientific rubric that you want the closest that i think you find to it is does it mesh with the

04:28:32.460 other things in this person's life if in fact the gods are regularly interacting with this dude that

04:28:43.420 is obese and just eating pizza rolls and sniffing underwear and playing video games

04:28:52.620 Why would that make any sense if this other person who's out here being successful and doing things and has a family and has victories in their life?

04:29:06.380 Then I think it makes it much easier to believe that the gods are, in fact, blessing and associating themselves with that person.

04:29:13.380 um blessings are real and are tangible and your success matters in that

04:29:24.860 um and i think it's a poor thought of our gods that they're regularly hanging out with some

04:29:34.140 loser in mom's basement like why would they do that they could hang out with any other you know

04:29:39.540 could spend their time interacting with any other person maybe if they were if that person told you

04:29:45.300 that that god had inspired them to make changes in their life on the other end of those changes

04:29:51.140 maybe you could say hey maybe that was the case maybe something like that happened

04:29:55.940 but i think the best that we can when we're feeling our way through that

04:29:59.460 through things that are so um intangible in a in a provable scientific way the best that you have

04:30:11.140 is judged by the character and success of the people telling you the story

04:30:16.740 and unfortunately i think that's as close as we can get to it

04:30:21.380 unless we're both there at the moment when it happens um varyag also asks another question

04:30:28.580 on theology how does the afa approach the perennial school while there seem to be

04:30:34.340 similarities it also seems that the gods of other peoples do things that nordics would find to pray

04:30:41.540 so perennialism reduces things too much but as we've already said in this broadcast and in many

04:30:52.260 others, there is Aryan syncretism because our gods are reflected and reveal themselves to the

04:31:00.420 different branches of our people in different ways and under different guises. But certainly

04:31:05.520 there is perennialism within the Aryan family. But there's not within other races of people.

04:31:14.700 We're clearly not the same. We've all seen those memes where, you know, you have these pictures of

04:31:20.520 two very distinct racial types. And it's very obvious we're very different creatures. We're

04:31:28.180 very different beings. And our reflection of divinity is going to be reflective of very

04:31:37.000 different divinities. So when it comes to the AFA's stance on perennialism, we believe

04:31:45.440 in Aryan syncretism as long as that's within the Aryan family. But we believe that there's

04:31:52.800 different divinity for different races of people. And we don't presume to define that for them.

04:32:00.540 That's for them to define their relationship to their gods. But we do believe that their gods and

04:32:06.480 our gods are inherently different, just like their people and our people are inherently different.

04:32:11.380 and maintaining that difference is fundamental to the afa's position and always has been

04:32:18.740 um ordo templi atlantis uh donated to libri on odyssey thank you very much we appreciate that

04:32:29.220 um i'm not an us true member yet but i but can i wear a thor's hammer necklace and if so where

04:32:38.100 Where can I buy one that supports also true also what material should dependant me made

04:32:43.440 of I see some online some online made of silver or brass um no if you first you can do whatever

04:32:55.900 you want secondly if you are if you're a white person then that hammer is your birthright

04:33:06.020 And you can absolutely wear that if the intention, it would be absolutely be appropriate for you to wear that if your intention is to honor our gods.

04:33:16.760 And that would be completely appropriate if that's your intention.

04:33:20.660 If so, where can you buy one?

04:33:22.440 Now, they're all over these days.

04:33:24.040 It used to not be that way, but they're very easy to find.

04:33:29.160 I'll ask Sivan here in a second if he has an idea of a good vendor for that.

04:33:33.280 Off the top of my head, I don't. I know some people who make them, but I'm not sure of a

04:33:38.820 website to direct you to on them. But as far as material, there's not really a wrong answer to

04:33:45.900 that. I've seen some that are beautiful that are made out of stone. I have one that I love that's

04:33:51.840 made out of mammoth ivory. The one I'm wearing right now is made out of silver. The one spawns

04:33:58.720 wearing is made out of wood um there's not really a wrong answer to that um i've seen people have

04:34:07.040 them out of gold or brass or pewter or uh i've had some that i have blacksmith you know wrought

04:34:14.560 iron ones i don't really think there's a wrong answer as far as material i'm sure that there is

04:34:20.720 a wrong answer but i think as long as you're respectful i don't think there's a bad choice

04:34:25.280 of material that way. Svahn, do you know where he can order a hammer that supports the right

04:34:32.160 kind of folks? Etsy, there are a couple of, you know, folkish crafters on Etsy. I would definitely

04:34:46.900 recommend looking there first. We also have some people who are of the faith. Like if you're

04:34:53.300 looking for some more like bronze or brass, you might find some people from Eastern Europe that

04:34:59.920 are of the Rodonovi faith, but they also make hammers as well as Svaurag axes or Perun axes,

04:35:12.060 excuse me. And I would recommend looking there first in specifics to an actual vendor. I don't

04:35:20.840 have one. I actually am wearing one of my kinsmen at the Hoff. He made this from the oak wood that's

04:35:29.400 right outside of Thor's Hoff. So this is a deeply meaningful Thor's hammer, especially being oak

04:35:36.480 and shaped from the tree that's right outside of the Temple of Thor. This is one of my most

04:35:42.960 prized possessions. Before this, I had a rod iron one. I ended up gifting that to my son

04:35:48.880 because I didn't want to, you know, to just be left undone.

04:35:53.840 So I passed it to him and bear this one on.

04:35:56.780 So I think material-wise, it depends on the situation.

04:36:02.580 But the symbology and that you're taking up the hammer as a sign of troth to the gods,

04:36:07.960 to the Asas, to the Aesir, that's important.

04:36:12.300 And I think that you doing that first and foremost is the first step,

04:36:17.420 the first threshold again what i spoke about in the beginning of the podcast with with thor is

04:36:23.100 once you pass through thresholds once you break the barrier all things open up and you might find

04:36:29.660 yourself changing you might find yourself uh you know i had a thor's hammer and then i i received

04:36:35.180 this as a gift and i thought it was so meaningful and special for the moment um that my my kinsman

04:36:41.660 bobby made it for me that i immediately passed on my iron one to my son and i put this one on

04:36:48.860 um it's it depends uh you know and then people have preferences people you know they they buy

04:36:55.820 some that are very big or very shiny and i i like to remind people that our ancestors did like to

04:37:01.740 wear a lot of shine our ancestors did wear gold they wore arm rings they wore neck rings they

04:37:07.420 They wore earrings, they had even golden-laden teeth.

04:37:11.740 There was a sense of wearing wealth upon the body.

04:37:15.640 So if you are wanting to get bold and have some bright colors and things like that, there's nothing wrong with that.

04:37:21.080 Some people do take a more muted approach to it for various reasons, like mine would, so there's not much to shine there.

04:37:30.040 but um you know you shouldn't really hold any preconceived notions that hold you back from

04:37:36.820 proclaiming your trough to the gods of your people and starting your path towards building

04:37:42.760 relationship with your ancestors and the gods do it so speaking of your kinsman bobby he asked

04:37:49.440 good evening gentlemen uh what are your favorite stories slash myths and why also what are your

04:37:56.060 favorite movies and why? Go, Svon. Oh, the movies one, that was, that was off, but yeah, Bobby,

04:38:03.960 hey, um, uh, so speaking, poof, he shows up, um, uh, I mean, poetically, like I said, I love,

04:38:15.300 I love Grimnismal, the Havamal, and the Velespao, I think, are three good ones that really,

04:38:23.420 I like the Valespao as a poetic because it basically, whereas like the Gilfaginning pulls from other poetic sources all throughout, the Valespao brings an abbreviated sense of the doom, and I say this in the sense that the gods, the purpose of the gods, the purpose of their motions forward from beginning to end are played out in the Valespao.

04:38:50.600 And it's a really great piece that covers everything from beginning to end all through the necessity of Odin trying to find out the measure and the doom of the gods and where we have to go from here.

04:39:07.100 I think that's under that pretense of him bringing the Vala up and forcing her to speak.

04:39:14.780 That has story elements that is just so cool that I really like.

04:39:25.100 Eil Skala Grimson's saga is a wild read.

04:39:30.080 if you ever get a chance to read that saga oh man that's that is a wild wild time and there's some

04:39:39.520 stuff online too like you there's actually some documentaries that were done paralleling the saga

04:39:44.940 so if you read the saga and then or like maybe hit wikipedia for like the cliff notes read the

04:39:50.840 look at the the documentaries on al skull grimason and then read the saga itself and you get the

04:39:56.980 context of his battling with erica blood axe and all that stuff that is really a cool story that's

04:40:04.600 just a wild ride filled with battles and the slaying of kings captured in storms and breaking

04:40:14.720 out of jail with poetry and then the loss of ale uh of his sons you know and the death of his

04:40:21.580 it's all over the place. It's got great highs and terrible lows. It's an emotional one. As far as

04:40:29.060 movies go, I don't even know if I have a favorite movie. I think that some of the one movie that

04:40:41.220 has beautiful framework and a great use of the actors not saying anything but saying a lot,

04:40:48.260 uh as i'm a big fan of of um like the art of like i guess transferring knowledge through body

04:40:54.880 language um i find that incredibly fascinating one movie that really sticks out to me is um

04:41:00.360 mel gibson's braveheart it's not historically accurate but there are scenes in there where

04:41:05.560 nobody says a word but so much is being said that it's it it shakes you with when you see

04:41:12.960 this level of interaction between these people um i find that incredibly fascinating as a movie

04:41:19.120 i it was revolutionary to me um coming from there so i would say like i really enjoy watching um

04:41:26.800 braveheart but again not for historical context but just for the beauty of the of the film itself

04:41:31.520 um outside of that the the only um favorite movie that i can i can uh regularly kind of come back to

04:41:43.140 as a child i was i was a huge fan of the clash of the titans and that's kind of a old school i mean

04:41:48.540 i i was a kid back then and that was a big movie um so it was even around when we were watching it

04:41:55.820 on beta at my friend's house that has a content i guess the epicness of that movie and just this

04:42:02.700 overarching story um of perseus just an awesome movie i can always kind of like watch it again

04:42:09.920 so so it's it's late in the evening and we're kind of wrapping stuff up so i'll keep it brief

04:42:17.500 but uh stories i really like beowulf um i like plenty of our myths and stories i think beowulf

04:42:25.660 we don't talk about as much as we maybe should um just atmospherically and the hall culture and

04:42:37.660 such that it speaks about is very important to what we do it's heroic beowulf's you know ripping

04:42:45.340 ripping monsters arms off it's it's it's a cool story regardless um his deal at the end where

04:42:55.260 as an old man he's fighting the dragon and he's you know his uh

04:43:02.300 all his his thanes have left him and ran and wig laugh is there holding his shield and with him

04:43:09.420 till the end fighting the dragon um that's so profound to me in so many ways and i really

04:43:18.380 think that's a beautiful testament to to courage and to loyalty to one's lord that

04:43:25.260 it's so very meaningful and beautiful to me uh so i really love that um movies you know

04:43:32.460 there is temptation here to like keep it super super historical or super relevant

04:43:41.340 to announce the true context but no movies that i like um tombstone is awesome i always

04:43:48.620 love tombstone rob robin hood prince of thieves was awesome um again it was kind of all over the place

04:43:59.180 I'm not saying it's the best thing ever on cinema,

04:44:02.080 but I thoroughly enjoy it every time it comes on.

04:44:06.620 The crazy witch lady that talks about,

04:44:09.240 I'm a painted man, he haunts my dreams.

04:44:13.220 She is terrifying as a child when you watch that movie,

04:44:16.420 I'll tell you what.

04:44:19.460 Really like that.

04:44:21.540 Braveheart, I used to like until I became aware of history

04:44:25.080 and I'm grossly offended by its misportrayal of history,

04:44:28.080 but it is beautifully done um and i'm very aware of its of its problems there

04:44:36.400 so a stupid one that's a terrible movie but i tell you what i will stop and watch it anytime

04:44:41.760 it comes on for some strange reason i'm not that guy i don't watch movies several times usually

04:44:47.040 but demolition man anytime demolition man is on for whatever reason i'm infinitely entertained and

04:44:54.480 transfixed to the screen there's no merit to it i can't justify that it just is um

04:45:03.120 i haven't seen that movie in a year i love i love all the rocky movies um the cheesier ones

04:45:11.120 are super cool because they're cheesy in some ways but some of them are really

04:45:15.040 profoundly directed and profoundly made but i i love those um

04:45:20.160 um Predator was awesome it was so perfect for what it was and the

04:45:26.820 just the dialogue between the different guys in that squad it was really really cool

04:45:34.500 um there was another one I was going to throw out there that was kind of

04:45:37.440 kind of odd but I think I think those are the ones I got for now

04:45:42.780 um Varyag asks a counter question about the conversion based on Svon's comment

04:45:49.120 Saying it's about titles and land, while maybe partially true, doesn't that have the effect of over-materializing a spiritual conflict?

04:45:58.640 I say this because I believe that our ancestors on both sides of the conflict really believed in what they fought for.

04:46:04.700 I'm going to let Svon go first on this, and I have some thoughts I'd like to add when we're done with that.

04:46:09.980 Go ahead, Svon.

04:46:10.620 Well, I would say further on, especially when we start to look at the conversion times, maybe post Charlemagne, sure, but the precepts in which I think a lot of our ancestors were gaining traction upon in the conversion times.

04:46:38.940 I mean, the clarity, if you're talking about someone who was raised amongst the Catholics, like Charlemagne was raised with the Franks, and they had already long converted and joined the power of Rome, but your average lord that lived in Teutonic lands or the lords that were in England, they were looking at marriages a lot.

04:46:59.540 We see it over and over again. Yes, you can marry my daughter, but you have to convert to Christianity and you have to build a church in your lands in order for this to happen.

04:47:10.180 There was a lot of that, the marital contracting involving spiritual stuff as well.

04:47:19.000 And I think also, too, there was a huge play in the idea of taxation, the idea of creating land baronies that pulled.

04:47:27.560 So there were people that I think were converting to this faith coming in that had a motive outside of the spiritualism because I don't think they fully understood the spiritualism that they were getting into.

04:47:40.900 It was presented to them, kind of obfuscating the drive and force when it was given to them.

04:47:49.780 It was presented in a more warrior-esque aspect or like with Uphilas and the way he was trying to convert the Goths.

04:47:57.380 And they were, you know, the Reichs, or the Rexes, they rejected it and they kicked him out.

04:48:03.460 Um, you know, the people that were converting didn't fully grasp, I think, a lot of the spiritual nuances of the church at the time. And, uh, I think that's exemplary in their, in their actions. I think a lot of their actions were based on things because they were utilizing technology, uh, warfare and oathing all based in pre-Christian like Europe.

04:48:31.620 They were utilizing rules and things that they understood in order to progress their power.

04:48:36.340 They just also tagged on this religion into it.

04:48:42.300 So I greatly doubt about the faith of the early conversion Germanics that were bringing the sword, especially like Olof Trigverson and things like that.

04:48:55.320 I really, I think that their faith may have been upplayed when it was written down and they were made into more, you know, saintly like figures.

04:49:05.320 But, you know, when you when you have these initial conversions that were going on in Europe by by lords that their entire families were, you know, Germanic, Germanic culture, Germanic everything and all the implementations that they use, the marriage contracts in and of themselves and the othing between families that was not utilized in a church sense from from a faith based point.

04:49:28.760 They were using very, very cultural tendencies, knowing that they could move this forward and start to bring people under the power of the church and the power of Rome.

04:49:42.820 And then maybe later on, perhaps, there was a faith turn in which they were, you know, yeah, we have to, you know, these people are, you know, they need to be converted because I wouldn't even say that they were necessarily saving souls.

04:49:58.760 Because that wasn't often mentioned as it was more or less they believed that this was the right way to go, and their ancestors were completely wrong, and they needed to make them right.

04:50:08.240 And then converting them and saving their souls was just an extra benefit.

04:50:12.360 And again, I think that plays a lot to motive of land and forfeiture of power, which was constantly being overplayed or overplayed over again throughout the history.

04:50:26.920 Just the religious component was kind of added in until later it was actually a tangible religious component.

04:50:34.160 Yeah, I agree with Svon 100% on this.

04:50:37.620 I think that at the time of the conversions, I truly, I don't think anybody in Northern Europe was converting because they love Jesus so much.

04:50:52.700 I think what is a legitimate religious reflection is I think a lot of these people were not very sincere in their in their house of true practice and in their faith to our gods.

04:51:06.200 I think that it became very economically advantageous to convert to Christianity, to interface with the rest of Mediterranean Europe, where all of the money and the power was.

04:51:18.700 And again, like Swan said, through marriage alliances and things that way, they got strong armed into doing it and they chose to because there was tremendous power and economic advantage.

04:51:30.160 Now, the people doing the conversion, I think it was a different story a little bit.

04:51:34.820 I think some of them had, you know, all of them had all kind of different motives.

04:51:38.680 But I think there's probably quite a few of the monks and priests that genuinely believed in their faith and believed that they were doing the right thing by forcing the rest of our ancestors to embrace Christ.

04:51:53.360 But I don't think the people who converted converted because it was such an awesome idea.

04:51:58.740 I think at best it was demonstrated to them that Christ brought victory to where our gods did not bring victory.

04:52:07.520 And so they chose to go with a victorious God over ones that they did not see as as powerful.

04:52:13.760 But again, I don't think that was as much as they felt one's right and one was wrong as they chose a winning team and went with a winning team.

04:52:24.460 Yeah, I don't I truly don't find a lot of honest conversion experience in northern Europe.

04:52:29.800 Now, once they're in it for a while, then, yes, they're proselytizing or they're crusading.

04:52:35.860 I mean, the Crusaders that went into Livonia and into Eastern Europe, I think they absolutely

04:52:43.040 believed they need to convert those pagans to Christianity because by that time they'd

04:52:47.720 become without Christians.

04:52:49.460 But their forefathers that initially sacrificed our faith for Christianity, I don't think

04:52:56.380 that was almost ever.

04:52:58.560 and certainly there's one guy somewhere where it was but i don't see any examples of that

04:53:05.680 actually being a sincere love of christ as much as a you know what's going to be beneficial to

04:53:14.000 them and their house and their dynasty um it's unfortunate but i really do think that's that's

04:53:21.200 the honesty of it and my study of history tells me that that's true i did want to say too like

04:53:26.960 Like it was in levels. It wasn't just all at once.

04:53:30.480 I think that, like, for instance, like Olaf Trigverson, when he was, you know, making his kingdom in the Nordic countries,

04:53:37.680 there probably was a deep belief system in the Anglo-Saxons by that time with Christianity.

04:53:45.300 And the reason why we know that is because, again, it went in waves.

04:53:48.020 It always went kind of materialistic to then spiritual.

04:53:51.360 So Olaf Trigverson is moving about in a more materialistic way.

04:53:54.900 he's still trying to utilize things about gaining marriage. But yet in Anglo-Saxon England by that

04:54:01.060 time, Christianity had kind of permeated in. And I remember reading about them comparing

04:54:08.180 Gog and Magog, if you're familiar with the harbingers of Armageddon in the Bible,

04:54:15.820 they were referring to the two nations, possibly like, I think it was Denmark and Sweden,

04:54:20.820 as being Gog and Magog, and that they were harbaging the end times in Anglo-Saxon Christianity.

04:54:27.580 By that time, when they're that familiar with the mythological structure of Judaism or the Bible or the Tanakh or whatever,

04:54:38.280 by the time that the Anglo-Saxons were making those connectivity points, yes, absolutely spiritual by then.

04:54:43.560 But Olaf Tryggvason at the same time probably wasn't spiritual and was doing material stuff

04:54:48.040 because there's no real kind of deep investment spiritually that he's doing this

04:54:52.440 it seems to be a lot more materially motivated all right guys um

04:54:58.500 i see two questions left we'll go ahead and hit those uh

04:55:04.060 if we google the nine worlds we see maps of asgard midgard and hell our realm midgard is

04:55:13.200 portrayed as a flat disk with an orb-like firmament surrounding it. We see this model

04:55:21.360 in many cultures. Does Ausatruth think NASA is lying to us with their sphere model of Earth

04:55:28.100 and heliocentrism? No, the AFA does not believe in flat Earth or that NASA is lying to us.

04:55:39.660 um i mean nasa may very well be lying to us but i don't think they're lying

04:55:44.540 the concept that the earth revolves around the sun and that the earth is spherical

04:55:50.140 um you know the greeks knew this many people knew this uh there was a time in europe to where

04:55:58.440 some people in certain circles were confused but people have known this for a very long time

04:56:04.660 No, the AFA doesn't entertain flat earthism.

04:56:10.060 The next question is, does Ausatru teach any type of internal alchemy practice, such as retention of sexual fluid, in order to transmute into higher forms of ether for spiritual purposes?

04:56:23.320 no but i do know um people who practice alsa true that also practice forms of that type of

04:56:34.040 internal alchemical process it's certainly not unheard of in practitioners of alsa true but i

04:56:41.360 don't believe that in any way it's an alsa true specific practice but i can think of several

04:56:46.620 people off the top of my head that through various forms of yoga practice and other things

04:56:52.140 do engage in that activity and feel that that does something for them.

04:56:57.320 But again, that's not a particularly outstreet thing or an AFA doctrine.

04:57:05.140 Cody says he's got one last quick question.

04:57:08.340 Will Svan be at the Feast of the Einherjahr?

04:57:10.460 Svan, are you coming to Oklahoma?

04:57:13.120 Oh, I was like, that's specific.

04:57:17.100 I do not believe so.

04:57:19.600 uh that wasn't we I was recently talking to Melissa um but that wasn't brought up and I do

04:57:28.300 know that whatever uh national or large group event that I go to I still have to make sure I

04:57:34.440 get back to Thorshof to also hold it for the folk there just like we did winter nights I had to run

04:57:40.660 back to Thorshof and conduct winter nights again um uh but no that wasn't talked about I I went a

04:57:49.160 couple years ago and I loved it. It was amazing. Um, but as far as going this year, I, that wasn't

04:57:55.700 even really kind of broached. And I, I was, I was making plans about Feast of the Einherjar at

04:58:01.640 Thor's Off. So. All right. Um, last question of the night. John the fifth regarding universalism

04:58:17.000 versus folkishism, could the two be reconciled by an allies of the AFA program, i.e. non-whites

04:58:25.720 who are sympathetic to us, something like Judaism and their Noahid servants?

04:58:38.360 No. So here's the thing. We're very happy to have support from other people that may not meet our

04:58:44.780 membership requirements i appreciate their well wishes and them supporting stuff that we do

04:58:50.860 if they're not us and they're something other they should seek their gods they should honor

04:58:58.180 their ancestors and their gods um and we don't want to distance them from that by trying to

04:59:05.480 make them like, I don't know, unfulfilled supporters of Alcetru, even though they can't

04:59:15.680 practice. That seems like a broad deal for those guys. And that's not something we want to do for

04:59:20.240 people who actually support us. If they're universalist because of other things that make

04:59:29.060 them not compatible with folkishism, and they support us, they should reconcile those things

04:59:35.940 and try to fix the things that are broken, if that would put them in a spot to where they could

04:59:42.560 one day be folkish. If they're just ideologically not folkish, but want to support the AFA, I think

04:59:49.620 that's a position that doesn't really exist in this day and age. I think it's a matter of ideology,

04:59:54.880 they just need to get their mind right and come onto the right team, if that's the case.

04:59:59.820 But no, I don't think we want to reconcile it that way.

05:00:03.760 I think we want to reconcile it by getting those people to get their mind right and start

05:00:09.860 flying the right way instead of being some kind of auxiliary group, if that makes sense.

05:00:17.560 But it is, it is once again, about five hours into it.

05:00:22.720 It's long and it is tiring.

05:00:24.580 i'm not gonna lie but these are always so good especially when we have uh spawn on he brings so

05:00:30.340 much to the program and i mean it every time the king of cheese asks me i love doing these i look

05:00:36.660 forward to them all week i'm always excited about wednesdays so thank you guys so much

05:00:42.420 for all of your questions all of your participation um uh the donations that we've gotten this evening

05:00:50.660 And a special thanks to Svahn.

05:00:53.220 We love having you on.

05:00:54.760 Thank you.

05:00:55.100 It's always great to talk to you and you bring so much to the program.

05:00:57.800 Thank you, Svahn.

05:00:58.920 Thank you.

05:01:00.760 All right, guys.

05:01:02.760 We will talk to you all next week.

05:01:05.060 Or I will talk to you guys next week.

05:01:06.660 We'll have Svahn on again in two weeks to discuss.

05:01:11.520 In two weeks, Svahn will be on discussing Balder with us.

05:01:15.100 And, yeah, thank you guys so much for sticking with us.

05:01:18.880 and yeah hail to all the everybody there there you go so hail the gods hail the folk

05:01:26.220 hail the afa and remember victory never sleeps

05:01:48.880 We'll be right back.

05:02:18.880 Thank you.

05:02:48.880 Thank you.

05:03:18.880 Thank you.

05:03:48.880 Thank you.

05:04:18.880 Thank you.

Asatru Folk Assembly - November 03, 2022

11⧸2⧸22 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 17 - Þórr

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