00:04:54.340sorry, I was running a couple of minutes behind this evening. Welcome. Tonight we are
00:05:03.800going to talk about, you know, we're going to kind of casually talk about a variety of things.
00:05:11.580We're looking forward to answering y'all's questions and kind of, I don't know, having a
00:05:17.620having a bit of a freestyle night this evening um as go through trent was just showing you we're
00:05:27.040doing doing great on the nordshoff fundraiser you guys have been extremely generous and it's
00:05:33.780very much appreciated um we are we are getting closer and uh i imagine that the closer that we
00:05:43.980get from here on out, we're going to really see an acceleration, and I'm very hopeful for that,
00:05:48.680and I know you guys are going to come through on it. Right now, I don't know if Trent gave you
00:05:57.360kind of the breakdown, but if every AFA member donated $98, we would have that. We would have
00:06:02.900it today. That's the first step in getting Frazehoff, and I know that's something that the
00:06:09.640folks in uh the northeast i don't know if it really counts i don't know what those folks
00:06:17.080consider themselves the folks in ohio and pennsylvania are very excited about it as well
00:06:22.080are people close by there um and i think we're all excited for fray to get his off i think they
00:06:31.200or maybe just outsiders would call it the rust belt that's a it's not an appealing name
00:06:38.620yeah we didn't make it up but it do all right guys well thank you for that um
00:06:49.660so it's a bit of a a potpourri deal tonight but oh uh first and just noticing it so i'm not sure
00:07:03.720Yeah, just came through. GW Farnsworth. Always a very generous donor to the program. We appreciate you so much. Bought us the five coffees. That's a $25 donation. Thank you so much for that.
00:08:10.040uh we'll you know we'll agree is um the gifts given to us by odin billy and vey uh
00:08:20.180odin gave us on which is the breath of life and a part of our soul complex uh billy gave us
00:08:26.840older which is uh consciousness willpower essentially our mind and vey gave us a law
00:08:35.180which is our body, our goodly color, goodly hue.
00:08:38.620Something that, like I said, I lecture a lot about is because these three gifts were the first gifts given to us by the Isir.
00:08:48.220They are the most important of those gifts in a way.
00:08:53.620It's the building blocks of who we are, body, mind, and spirit, you know, if you want to oversimplify it.
00:09:01.420and so it's really important and the afa has already been encouraging this pretty much i just
00:09:09.140found a fancy semi-esoteric way to put it but it's really important to sharpen those three gifts and
00:09:15.660hone those and we would be remiss as folk if we didn't do our very best every single day
00:09:24.300to use those gifts the best of our ability to make them better and to serve our folk with them
00:09:29.060So, for example, building the law, the body, you know, you can exercise, you can eat right, drink enough water, et cetera.
00:09:40.640Building the other, the mind, the consciousness, you can read, you can learn, you can study, you can learn a language, you can join us learning Icelandic.
00:15:45.720You can rebuild a lot of biology, but imbuing cells with consciousness and life, that's a very different thing.
00:16:01.500And then you have love. It's like. Like a healthy blood flow in a. Like the animating of your limbs and the. The thing that that makes you. I don't know, living in a physical sense. It's like a physical life, a mental life and a spiritual life.
00:16:29.680And I think all of those things are gifts from the gods. All of those things are something that we need to, I don't know, actualize and focus on. But more than that, and especially prevalent, you know, this month and this time of year in the United States, time of thankfulness.
00:16:50.660We need to be aware and thankful of the gifts that our gods have given us and our life, our consciousness, our existence as beings with that divine spark within us with that breath of life is extremely special and precious.
00:17:14.980We talk on here an awful lot about the gift cycle, but, and I think that Witten Erickson kind of points this out most prominently.
00:17:25.640Yes, it's absolutely a gift cycle, but we start out, the gift cycle isn't initiated by us.
00:17:33.640It was initiated by our gods when they gave us these things.
00:17:38.680So we start out in that process, not by reestablishing it, but by doing our part.
00:17:44.680the gods have given us gifts we are blessed we're blessed in a lot of ways being thankful for that
00:17:51.400and aware of it if you internalize that and you spend some time meditating on that and thinking
00:18:01.800on it i think it really changes how you approach the world around you how you approach yourself
00:18:07.400and how you approach life and what you do with it i think very often and everybody comes to this
00:18:14.520from different angles. We live in a society that is so, so very secular today. And, you know,
00:18:24.880Europe has secularized a lot quicker and a lot earlier than the United States has.
00:18:32.400But over my lifetime, the religious population in the United States has drastically dwindled.
00:18:39.820And I think a lot of the default setting for people is atheism or a cultural Christianity that really doesn't come with any any application or any piety to it.
00:18:52.920It's just those are cultural touchstones.
00:18:56.840So I think a lot of our people and this is a relatively new phenomenon, but I think a lot of our people have trouble developing piety or internalizing that in their life.
00:19:09.160They'll come to Alcetru with kind of pseudo-atheistic ideas about archetypes and like thought forms and things that they want to rationalize the gods as.
00:22:30.400that outlived the official Christianization?
00:22:37.600Nothing in particular, but it's important to note
00:22:40.600that in the time of the late Viking Age
00:22:45.140And probably even the early 1100s, maybe up to that point, that just because Olaf Trigvason had, you know, forcibly converted kings and nobility, it didn't mean that the rural people had converted.
00:23:04.540You know, a lot of times and a lot of this is demonstrated more in places like England or Germany than in Scandinavia, as far as I'm aware.
00:23:14.260But a lot of times the regular the peasantry, the farming class of areas would still they would pray to Thor for rain or they would pray to Ingby Frey for good crops and things like that, even though they still went to Christian church and they did their Catholic whatever.
00:23:30.580uh so while i don't have any specific examples in scandinavia it's it's pretty safe to assume
00:23:39.080that uh the practice did not fully die uh for quite a while and of course now it's been
00:23:46.260reforged and we have a folk builder in sweden now so you know it the transition was never as
00:23:55.320as cut and dry and as clear as the history would make it seem
00:24:00.040yeah sweden so much of sweden is i don't know rural and always and was longer than a lot of
00:24:14.640the rest of western europe and you know norway and denmark that there was
00:24:20.980you know pockets of unconverted folks for a lot longer um nick just sent over the additional
00:26:10.780it's hard to tell on a lot of the festivals,
00:26:14.220a lot of celebrations and a lot of the aesthetics
00:26:16.520where Christianity ends or where paganism ends
00:26:21.880and Christianity begins because there's quite a bit of overlap.
00:26:25.600Um, cults of saints for one are, you know, on the face of it, idolatry and verboten by any, you know, any fair understanding of biblical Christianity.
00:26:41.340But they, the cult of heroes is such a longstanding tradition amongst European peoples that they couldn't do away with it.
00:26:51.080So they had to, you know, put it into a Christian context.
00:26:55.100you see that quite a bit i think a lot of the local folk festivals the the pagan elements are
00:27:00.620very very obvious but i think some of them are a little bit less so one of the things that's always
00:27:06.300been really interesting to me and this isn't so much in sweden you see most of these in norway
00:27:12.060but it's hard to tell where all they were because they were wooden structures but the
00:27:17.260the stave churches stavkirka are archaeologically like they're really interesting in the
00:27:31.180mixture of art on them the mixture of design they carried over a lot of
00:27:36.220also true elements and even stories and things from the eddas in their artwork
00:27:41.500even though they were built as christian structures so um most people think and i
00:27:47.500or i say most people a lot of people think and i'm certainly one of those that the
00:27:54.220the stave church is kind of the link between the height of the evolution of alsa true hoffs and the
00:28:03.820first you know the first implementation of of christian houses of worship in the north
00:28:11.580and i think so there are really i think they give us an interesting view into what you know
00:28:19.420what our hoffs would have been like in you know 50 years before we start seeing the uh the stave
00:28:27.340churches so i think that's an interesting thing certainly we see that architecturally and in
00:28:31.980design with all of the different gripping beast motifs and like dragon imagery and a lot of those
00:28:42.180things. But you also see use, you see this transition with use of runes. So you see runes
00:28:54.320from the Austro period, but you also start seeing those runes take on Christian themes and
00:29:01.840Christian motifs to where you're using these inherently pagan magical sigils as a writing
00:29:10.180script for, you know, Bible stories or, you know, adorned with crucifixes and things that way. You0.86
00:29:17.640see that crossover on like early medieval rune stones a lot too. You see that specifically in
00:29:24.620Sweden. Really prominently, you see that in Uppsala. And I don't mean in old Uppsala,
00:29:36.980but in the modern city of Uppsala near their, I think they've got a cathedral there. You see a
00:29:43.800lot of rune stones there that are overtly Christian, but done in a very ausitrue way.
00:29:54.620And, okay, so another thing that he mentioned is some of the holdovers from the Alistair
00:30:01.820period are the Battle of Lena, Odin appears to King Erik to bring victory.
00:30:11.940You see that, and you see elements of that into, as you point out, into medieval times.
00:30:20.060what you also see is the along the fringes invocations of also true themes and also true
00:30:29.740gods along with christian saints and jesus with charms and like low magic things and you see that
00:30:41.240for a long period of time in western europe and some of it's more overt than others there's a lot
00:30:48.180of theories about various folklore and its relationship to the old religion, but, and
00:30:57.380it's kind of a, I don't know, it's kind of a thing that I think we're familiar with is
00:31:05.180the, you know, the person who finds themselves sick and they're just reaching out for any
00:31:11.960They're like, I need a healing charm. So I'll pray Jesus and Muhammad and and Buddha and and whatever random other gods they put in there, just hoping that, you know, if they throw it out there enough, somebody is going to listen.
00:31:26.400It sounds silly, but desperate people do those things. And people who are in isolated rural populations and aren't very well educated don't necessarily get the difference.
00:31:39.040It was relatively late to where the Bible or Christian scripture was in a form that the average person could read and could, you know, really think about.
00:31:54.880So their Christian instruction was marginal at best, depending on the missionaries that were talking to them or, you know, what they were able to figure out.
00:32:05.680So a lot of the times they didn't get it. They would add, we see this in a lot of places. There was a, you know, people would have an altar to Jesus along with their altars to Odin and other things. You see that in Anglo-Saxon England during the transition period there as well.
00:32:24.540you see in iceland very famously hammers you know they'll have like a dude whose hammer mold
00:32:31.380is on the same mold that his crucifix mold is because you've got you've got that crossover
00:32:37.740of things and they weren't by the average guy living out in the woods they weren't necessarily
00:32:44.240mutually exclusive because they didn't know any better um the very sharp distinction
00:32:50.460came the more that official church infrastructure got out into the the rural populations and that
00:33:01.480took much much longer like you're talking here about the things you reference in 1177 and 1208
00:33:07.920respectively those i don't know what official date sweden counts their christianization but i think
00:33:16.300both of those are about 100 years past that date so it hung around there for quite quite a bit
00:33:33.900all right alongside a similar theme we have a new member uh amber welcome amber we're glad
00:33:40.300that you're here glad to see you're on here uh she asked why do people call balder the
00:33:45.820norse jesus is it because he comes back after ragnarok or is there something in the lore that
00:33:51.500indicates balder has some similar teachings or aspects as jesus trent what say you uh no balder
00:33:59.580does not have similar teachings to jesus uh that came about because when the christianization was
00:34:08.380happening and these monks were going all over um northern europe specifically in western europe
00:34:13.980they would go to the germanic and celtic lands in particular and um you know the war band was
00:34:21.260such a central part of germanic and celtic society especially germanic and so these priests um these
00:34:30.940missionaries would come and they would say oh hey jesus jesus was a warrior too yeah he led his own
00:34:36.300war band you guys have to work you guys love war bands right and so jesus was depicted to the anglo
00:34:43.100saxon specifically as a driton or dricton a leader of a war band and
00:34:52.140so they kind of connected that to balder because we have evidence that an earlier source material
00:34:58.620that's kind of lost to us now that balder was um besides being bright and shining and loved by all
00:35:04.860he was a war god he was bold in battle and joyous and generous and all these things and uh jesus
00:35:12.780was said to be generous obviously and joyous etc etc and so when they added that you know jesus was
00:35:20.700a warband leader it tied him a little closer to balder i suppose and so our ancestors the plan
00:35:27.340at least was for our ancestors to go oh this jesus guy sounds just like lord balder you know
00:35:33.180so that's that's pretty much how we got there um they're both depicted as white guys with long
00:35:40.060blonde brown hair so there's that too i guess but that's pretty much it it's just a result of
00:35:46.940the christianization they had to connect jesus to our faith that was the best way and it goes
00:35:55.420back to the earlier topic just how we um the catholics have hero worship essentially when
00:36:00.460they venerate these saints uh we have our you know each of our uh heiliger mother you know
00:36:06.940queen cigarette or ale scholar grimson that's those are saints essentially so
00:36:14.860that's part of it another part of it is
00:36:21.500and this is along a similar thing that trent mentioned but
00:36:29.020one of the ways to that missionaries used to convert to christianity is likening
00:36:36.940you know you had to liken it to something these people knew and had a familiarity with you can't
00:36:42.180talk to them about you know ancient jewish desert stuff that imagery doesn't make sense to people
00:36:49.320who've never left you know their small little alpine valley or wherever they find themselves
00:36:56.120so you use things they do know and there's a point of the point of similarity does you mentioned
00:37:02.100about coming back after Ragnarok, and that's part of it. The idea that the best and brightest
00:37:10.240of the Iser is slain, dies, and is reborn. They use that to liken to Jesus and to transition0.96
00:37:22.060to Jesus. And it's a funny thing because the concept of God's doing that, that very thing,
00:37:31.860triumphing over death in that way is is not a not a jesus thing jesus is kind of one of the latest
00:37:39.140in a long line of that you see a lot of that in egyptian or you see that in egyptian mythology
00:37:44.500you see it in a number of other places it's so at the time i think that was utilized as a way
00:37:55.140of explaining jesus but i think we have two different phenomenon so you have ancient
00:38:00.180I say ancient, you have early medieval missionaries that make that connection.
00:38:09.660But what you also have is modern, you know, late 20th century Alcetur that like to make that comparison as well.0.70
00:38:19.340There is a, there's like an academic fetishism to, if you find anything in the Lord that's similar to something that Christians do, then it must be some kind of Christian distortion of our traditions.0.82
00:38:37.860And I think that's lazy and I think it's just convenient.
00:38:40.960it i think they see they see that certainly early scholars see that as a as a point of commonality
00:38:50.480and it's easy if that's your touchstone if your familiarity is with bible stories
00:38:55.760and with christianity to see any similarity in any other thing you study as oh it must be that
00:39:02.960and people have always done that our brains are wired to pick up on patterns and so
00:39:14.320it's very tempting if you all right this is another theme on this show that we talk about a
00:39:21.740lot is the difference between how a religious person processes information versus a scholar
00:39:29.520looking outside at some strange practice of a foreign people or an ancient people.
00:39:36.420But often we don't talk about it from this angle.
00:39:40.560We talk about how a scholar writing about the tales of our ancestors
00:39:48.300and about Al-Satru religion and the Aesir
00:39:51.980doesn't start off with a belief that these are actual gods
00:45:27.260another couple of questions going on but i one thing you wanted to talk about tonight was the
00:45:33.100concept of forward facing Ausatru versus backward facing or other set that paradigm up for folks
00:45:48.100that may not know what you're talking about. Okay. So we use the term a lot in the AFA and AFA
00:45:55.800leadership, especially because we want to make sure all of our leaders are on the right track
00:46:01.120And it's forward facing Alcetru. And it's very broad. It is what it sounds like. We're facing forward towards the future, towards, you know, now and the future, rather than looking back to a really specific era of our past, like the Viking Age or the Migration Age or any of those other cool time periods.
00:46:24.740um and it's so broad because it it encompasses a lot of things like uh y'all here and i are both
00:46:34.040dressed nicely wearing ties we're not wearing you know colorful tunics as neat as those are
00:46:40.280they're not that's not really how western civilization uh people dress when they want
00:46:47.580to look you know their their best nowadays if it were you can bet we would be wearing tunics right
00:46:54.040now for example um other things we don't we don't do bloat or stumble in every exact little precise
00:47:07.440step that you would find in some you know thousand year old icelandic manuscript like
00:47:13.320maybe the nornis society does we we do things
00:47:17.380we do things um the way that have worked for the afa for uh stephen mcnellen all the way down to us
00:47:27.220because it's the thing to do that as far as we can tell pleases the icer and brings glory to
00:47:34.560the icer we don't do things to recreate an era that's long gone um
00:47:41.680and i mean you can come up with countless examples of uh backward facing
00:47:49.140alsatru if you want to call it that um the larping type stuff the anything universalists
00:47:57.060do anything these academic types usually do any of that stuff is uh frankly it's it's wrong and
00:48:06.420it's not the correct way to do Ausatru. What the AFA is doing is correct because we're doing Ausatru
00:48:14.260now, not a thousand years ago. We're doing it for our folk that exist now.
00:48:21.540So, I mean, certainly I agree with all that. I've said time and again, and I think it's
00:48:31.900important to realize we're not our ancestors so okay a lot of us hearken back to the viking age
00:48:46.600as like that's how we conceptualize Alcetru in a lot of ways and that's fair that's because
00:48:58.640that's where our lore comes to us from. That's when it was recorded and displayed in the way
00:49:04.580it was. That's when the linguistics we have flourish at their height. It's kind of the
00:49:09.960height of what we have written down about Ausatru. So yeah, we do that. In thinking about
00:49:18.000that, there's a difference between showing respect for our ancestors or honoring a period
00:49:24.200of time or a thing and playing dress up and i think it becomes a subtle thing and there i'm not
00:49:33.560suggesting there's never a time and a place for anything but what you found and what also true
00:49:41.320grappled with early on i mentioned you know we have a lot of phases that modern house true's
00:49:46.040gone through to really come into our own and one of those was a
00:49:54.280like a a recreation phase of trying to
00:50:02.760copy the vikings and copy how vikings did things and i think that the how is much less important
00:50:12.520than the why um it's important to note and this is that's another thing about sincere belief
00:51:55.900They didn't try to harken back to something just because it was old.
00:51:59.840So I think that when we think about ritual structure and anything else,
00:52:08.680it's fascinating from a historical standpoint
00:52:11.400to want to know what ancient peoples did and how they worshipped.
00:52:17.620But the how so often has everything to do with
00:52:21.160And the conditions of the time you're doing it, the why is what I think is most instructive and informative.
00:52:31.320I don't think that it makes any sense to assume or even to want for Alcetruar, you know, 200 years from now to do things the way that Trent and I do them now.
00:52:45.840we would hope they would advance things to something that's relevant that makes sense
00:52:50.720in the clothes and with the materials and the things that make sense in that day and in that age
00:53:06.960we're all over the place tonight so forgive me if i stumble over my words a little bit
00:53:11.360trying to find the right way to communicate it um if your heart's in the right place and you
00:53:20.160it brings you closer to feeling i don't know feeling connected to the gods to dress up in a
00:53:28.000tunic and do viking stuff okay um that's that's between you and the gods and if it makes you feel
00:53:37.600better and you feel like that connection is is better for you i'm not going to say it's
00:53:42.240it's not wrong or bad or in impious but one of
00:53:50.240truth is one of our really important virtues it's one of our noble virtues and one of the
00:53:56.400things that's so important about it is it's a fundamental virtue that other things are built
00:54:00.400off of one of the things when you were having okay
00:54:09.200our relationship to the isir is very much a relationship in the same
00:54:16.560in a lot of the same ways that we build relationships with anyone an an actual friendship0.95
00:54:25.520And more than that, an actual relationship with a loved one or with a family member or with someone very close to you, the more important the relationship, the more open and honest it is in the best scenario and in the best version of it.
00:54:45.660when we engage in ritual practice, being honest and being our authentic self when we're talking
00:54:56.940to our gods and we're presenting ourselves before our gods is extremely important in building that
00:55:03.660relationship in the right way. If you approach them in a way that's fake or that's LARPy,
00:55:10.420that doesn't make that connection in the same way.
00:57:23.780if they don't have it already, but they want to have it.
00:57:26.640What I always tell people is to try, to do bloat, to make offerings, and to do it with an open mind and an open heart.
00:57:39.100You're not open if you're pretending to be somebody that you're not.
00:57:47.340It's easy to get caught up in the lore and the imagery to think you need to be a Viking warrior for this to be a thing.
00:57:56.640That's a small portion of the history of our folk.
00:58:00.700And it's a small segment of society that was, you know, in a long ship going, raiding, wielding an axe and a shield.
00:58:11.140Our gods are just as much the gods of the mothers and the farmers and, you know, the guy that the wheelwright that built the wheels for the carts.
00:58:22.840and, you know, the guy who went out fishing and the guy who went out hunting
00:58:28.000and the guy who raised goats and cattle to feed their family,
00:58:35.280the guy who was chopping down wood to build things to keep his people warm.
00:58:41.800Our gods weren't just the gods of a very select male warrior class
00:58:50.100that existed for 300 years no they're the gods of all of our race since the dawn of time
00:58:58.260and it's just as appropriate for us today in the lives that we live to build a relationship
00:59:06.980with our gods as it is for you know a viking warrior in 850. and so that's it's really
00:59:14.740important to conceptualize our gods in modern terms and our modern lives with modern people
00:59:22.140because that's what makes this a real faith this isn't a hobby or you know some other silliness
00:59:29.280and i know we have to shake off some of that a lot of our early roots you had people forging
00:59:35.240Alcitru at the same time that came out of you know the society of creative anachronism and other
00:59:40.840like literal larpy recreation hobby groups that's not wrong a lot of those people developed a sincere
00:59:48.760faith in our gods due to their love of history and their love of you know values and and things
00:59:56.360that mattered to our ancestors it's an okay place to start so much what i was talking about tonight
01:00:01.080has been we all start in a lot of different spots it's not where we start it's how we how
01:00:35.780It's an active focus on building a future for Alcetru, a future to where our children and our grandchildren and their grandchildren practice our faith.
01:04:38.020Well, it kind of synergizes things to borrow a term from somebody on BNS, I'm sure it I don't have to have, you know, my married life, my also true life.
01:04:53.440they're the same thing. To give an example, I suppose, if I were, so I've been house true long
01:05:06.740enough that I've, before I met my wife, I dated a few girls in my college and stuff that kind of
01:05:13.740knew I was house true, but it wasn't their thing because I'm in the Bible belt. And if I were going
01:05:18.380to do bloat or something. I had to be like, Hey, I'm going to go do my weird pagan stuff. You know,
01:05:23.620just don't bother me. Um, but with Madison, so for example, uh, Witten Young had a medical
01:05:32.180emergency about a year and a half ago and, uh, weren't sure if he was going to make it for a
01:05:36.720minute. And so I just immediately told Madison, like, Hey, I have to go do a bloat to Frigga0.87
01:05:41.180right now. And, you know, she knew what that was and it wasn't a strange thing to her. It was like,0.98
01:05:47.720okay, cool. Yes, you should go do it. You know? Um, so that's helped, uh, having that kind of
01:05:54.840familiarity and ease of just being able to live really. Uh, I, I, I just can't imagine what it
01:06:06.260would be like to not be in this position as kind of insensitive as that may sound. Uh,
01:06:13.360yeah it just and because i got her into also true too i kind of got to watch her sort of
01:06:22.360experience things that i experienced when i was 18 or 19 uh you know sort of feeling the presence
01:06:29.220of the icier for the first time or kind of seeing an answered prayer that's been a really big thing
01:06:35.920for us uh and i won't bother any everybody's long stories and details in that regard unless
01:06:42.220specifically asked i guess but it it's just been a really great experience and it just makes so
01:06:49.260much sense you know our ancestors when they married they were pretty much always the same
01:06:55.260faith and i no offense to anybody that is not in my very blessed position but i highly recommend it
01:07:03.740And it's, it really is the best way to live.
01:07:08.820Um, yeah, I, so, and some of this is generational.
01:07:17.420If we're doing our job right, every generation that goes by, there should be more and more
01:07:23.960of us who are able to build our marriages and our families within the Aus True Folk
01:07:31.360assembly um and i understand a lot of a lot of folks already find themselves you know married
01:07:39.840and with a family when they come home to house of true and and maybe their their spouse isn't
01:07:45.440on board at that time and i get that and you know nobody's out here asking you to you know break up
01:07:52.400your family or anything else but i do think it's fair to acknowledge that it's the best situation1.00
01:07:59.040It's the optimal situation for you to find somebody within the Oust-A-True Folk Assembly to build a family with.0.89
01:08:08.380And Trent and I can both say this from experience.1.00
01:08:10.420I've, you know, I, yeah, Mandy is the first person I've ever been with that was also Oust-A-True.
01:08:23.100And, you know, it wasn't like she was a plus one that came to Oust-A-True.
01:08:27.660she was technically an AFA member before I was. So there wasn't, and it's one of those things you
01:08:40.100may not notice or you may not see until you see the difference or the contrast. But as somebody
01:08:46.680who, you know, was in a lot of, you know, I say a lot of, who was in a number of relationships
01:08:51.120before, you know, my, before I found Mandy, um, the difference is huge.
01:08:59.120The more you can bring your life into harmony, bring all the pieces of your life into a harmonious
01:09:08.400whole, that's how things are supposed to be.
01:09:11.840Our whole concept of sacrality, of holiness, is just that.
01:09:21.120Not being broken apart, not being separated, but being a fully functioning, integrated whole.
01:09:29.400In the modern world, especially in the West today, we have a lot of separation within ourselves that is very, very far from optimal and very far from what we want.
01:09:48.020We have people that are one person at work and they're one person at their family gatherings with, you know, their parents or their grandparents or their aunts and uncles and whoever else.
01:09:58.900They're a different person at, you know, whatever hobby thing that they do.
01:10:03.860They're a different person when they're at home and a husband and father and perhaps a different person still when they're practicing Ausitru.
01:10:10.940the more of that you can tidy up and bring into harmony the better your life is and i say that
01:10:19.000through experience the more i've been able to you know at first when i first started out i didn't
01:10:27.700realize other people practiced house of truth that didn't last long i found the afa and i and i found
01:10:33.640that relatively quickly but i thought i was the only person doing this and i felt really isolated
01:10:39.080And it wasn't something I could tell people about because it's this, you know, odd, crazy thing.
01:10:44.380And they're just going to think I'm, you know, a lunatic or whatever.
01:10:49.080And, you know, early on, it made a big difference when I was also true with my friends.
01:10:57.400And, yes, some people laughed at me or whatever.
01:10:59.240But over time, when they saw a positive effect it had in my life and who I was, and they begin to respect it because I respected it.
01:11:07.560And when I was able to be open with my family about it, you know, I think my dad and my stepmom just thought it was some whatever silly hobby I was doing.
01:11:19.780My mother got it, though, or at least got that it was something that I did.
01:16:44.100I mean shoot there's quite a bit and it's not
01:16:50.540it's hard when you get to be my age and you start like trying to go back over what was
01:17:05.880influential and what wasn't because so many things have an influence that you don't necessarily
01:17:12.660perceive at the time but do a lot to shape where you're at and
01:17:18.900how your thoughts develop um I think the uh
01:17:27.520Robert E. Howard short stories were important. They're inspirational. They're, again, it's kind
01:17:36.980of, it's kind of like Trent's, you know, disparaging analogy about comic books,
01:17:43.080but realistically it's fantastical short stories, but they're cool and they're inspirational and
01:17:51.300they're exciting. And they're about, you know, living life in a, in a visceral way. They're
01:17:57.440about, you know, being heroic and these bigger than life tales of doing stuff. And that's always
01:18:06.340been inspirational to me. Shoot. When I was a little kid and just putting this out there and
01:18:10.840it may be silly, but I'm going to be honest, stuff that really informed who I was and developed a lot
01:18:16.540of inspiration for me as a kid are you know larger than life 80s action hero things like
01:18:24.380professional wrestling and Hulk Hogan influenced me as a kid because I was super patriotic and I0.89
01:18:31.920was super you know the big muscly dude setting everything right and going and uh whooping up0.82
01:18:38.920on the bad guys it was really inspirational to me as a as a young as a as a boy who would one
01:18:45.340day become a man to think about those things um you know anything that sylvester salone ever did
01:18:51.640it's funny because the camera angles would make him look really huge and stuff and he's
01:18:56.440you know fairly tiny in real life but those bigger action heroes and it's kind of unfortunate
01:19:04.360the way that arnold schwarzenegger has evolved but at the time you know he was really inspirational
01:19:10.360to me in a lot of ways too. Seeing male figures that were heroic, strong, masculine white men
01:19:19.740out there doing heroic man stuff raised a lot of us in the 80s to value masculinity and those
01:19:30.320kind of things. That stuff inspired me a lot in some different ways. So I was lame in high school
01:19:42.080and in junior high and whatever. It's like I was consuming these things, but my life was completely
01:19:47.840incongruent with them. And there came a point, and it was right that winter between 1999 and 2000,
01:19:56.060where I decided, you know what, shoot, I look up to all these things, yet my life has nothing to do
01:20:02.120with any of these things. I'm going to make an effort and I'm going to try to be more like the
01:20:09.140things that inspired me instead of just sitting back and being inspired by them. And so that got
01:20:15.580me to start going to the gym, to start lifting weights, to start eating and trying to grow and
01:20:20.620get bigger and stronger and do physical things. And that was a huge part of my life. Unless I've
01:20:28.800been sick or out of town, I go to the gym every single day since January of 2000. And I mean,
01:20:39.420I'm sure that I've racked up a couple months worth of rest days over the last 24 years. But
01:20:46.200But again, all of those were forced. And it's such a big part of who I am and what I do. And the same kind of things led me to bouncing. I talk about my bouncer stories on here as if they're some huge thing. In the course of life, maybe not, but in the course of my personal development, they really were.
01:21:09.580Because like I was saying, I would idolize these big, larger than life people.
01:21:13.840And I'd never, you know, I'd never done anything.
01:29:13.740there is a difference between being aware of politics and talking about politics and being
01:29:22.380politically active and just being obnoxious complaining about stuff
01:29:29.880there's nothing wrong with taking an involvement in politics I think that it's a misnomer when
01:29:38.880people talk about being political and it almost always equals being obnoxious
01:29:48.600either by consistently wallowing in self-pity or by always bringing up everything negative
01:29:59.160or by going out and you know dressing up threateningly and scaring old people
01:30:06.120What I don't hear about when people talk about politics a lot is running for office, or working in a campaign, or pushing for some kind of positive development in their community.
01:30:21.940when politics politics if politics just equals
01:30:28.180like black pill purity spiraling then yeah it's really pointless and it's kind of
01:30:35.640soul crushing so we slap it down a lot because it's distracting you can engage in politics in
01:30:43.480a way that's uplifting and that's hopeful and that's doing something positive and i think that's
01:30:49.200a really good thing to do. No part of our faith encourages one to remove themselves from
01:30:55.820the current events of their time or not to be aware of them and interact with them in a way
01:31:03.060that's constructive. The reason that we try to move away from that is because in our circles,
01:31:11.780certainly in the ones that I'm familiar with, it's never ending, and it's obnoxious,
01:31:20.040and it's always the same stuff, and we all get it, and it's just pointless, and
01:31:27.000more than pointless, it sucks people into a doom spiral, and that's not what we're doing.
01:31:37.260So a lot of the bigger socio-political things that we see in the world that we don't like,
01:31:43.940many of our audience all get it on the same team. We get the same basic things. We don't
01:31:49.140like the same basic things. But instead of all the things we don't like, on this show,
01:31:54.640we want to talk about all the things that we do like. And what's more, more than talk about them,
01:32:00.240We want to find ways within our spheres of influence, within our power, within our ability to experience those, to make those happen, to be part of those.
01:32:12.740And the bigger geopolitical things out there, most of us are not in a position to do much to make any difference.
01:32:18.880But if we focus on the things that are close at hand that we can do, we've got a lot of opportunity to make a lot of things better for quite a few people.
01:32:32.960Trent and I are extremely fortunate and extremely blessed that we are in a position to impact the Ask True Folk Assembly.0.96
01:32:42.140Is it the millions of people that make up, you know, the white race of people?0.99
01:32:48.880No, not right now. But it's hundreds of people. If we talk about those that follow us, that go in and out of our circles, that are aware of and affected by what we do, it's thousands of people.
01:33:03.220yeah globally that's a pretty small number but compared to most average people who
01:33:13.540are disconnected who don't have a community to take part in who don't have a way to express
01:33:22.100the hopes and dreams they have for the world sometimes those people only get to affect their
01:33:29.020maybe their close friends, maybe their family, maybe five people, maybe 10 people. So it's a
01:33:35.640huge blessing for us that we can affect, you know, hundreds, possibly thousands of people.
01:33:42.040And we want the people who are here in listening to Victory Never Sleeps, or, you know, if they're
01:33:48.900here right now watching Victory Never Sleeps, to join us and be part of what we're doing. We're at
01:33:54.940a stage in the development of modern Ausitrude where there's a lot of things we can do and
01:33:59.780a lot of things we can accomplish, and a lot of ways we can make life better for us, for
01:34:06.340our friends, for people we care about, for our children, for our grandchildren. There's
01:34:11.220so much that we can do if we're working together towards it. And if we over-focus on bigger
01:34:17.500black pill doom spiral politics we squander opportunity to just put that down for a minute
01:34:27.160and focus on making something better or doing something positive and there's a lot of opportunity
01:34:32.060for that in the afa there's a lot of opportunity for us to help build our dreams and that's where
01:34:38.660we want to put a lot of our focus but don't there's nothing wrong with being politically aware
01:34:43.060or seeing things politically or being politically active don't please don't ever get that message
01:34:47.540from us because that's not it's not a thing sometimes when we have an overabundance of
01:34:56.180obnoxious politics from folks it's easy for people to want to counterbalance like no we don't talk
01:35:02.020about politics that's dumb that's not true and it's not fair it but it's easy to see why some
01:35:08.420folks do that sometimes but please don't think that's a verboten thing it's just not the point
01:35:13.060of what we're doing we're doing something religious the the percentage of religious
01:35:19.620talk versus political talk is is what we're really trying to get at and politics you know
01:35:24.500nobody likes to hear complaints what they want to hear is solutions you know it's it's so easy to
01:35:32.500complain about all the things we don't like but it's also pointless but when we talk about things
01:35:36.340we do like their stuff we can do together i forget who mentioned in the chat room a while
01:35:40.500back and i apologize about how they never met another australian person you should fix that
01:35:47.620i don't know where you're located um if you are in the united states we've got tons of people all
01:35:55.300over and we would love to get you connected and fix that for you if you are in europe we've got
01:36:00.820members there as well we have members in 14 countries right now so if you're not a member
01:36:07.300of the astro focus and we would love you to join if you haven't met another outsider let's fix that
01:36:12.740regardless and uh it's a it's a whole different thing when you're able to experience this in a
01:36:18.820community even if that community is just a few other people it makes a lot of difference so
01:36:22.820we'd love to help you change that if it's something you're interested in um and on the political
01:36:27.860question. So the question was, I hate to bring up politics, but do you guys think Ragnarok
01:36:31.540has come? Are we waiting to hear the galler horn? Trent, what do you say?
01:36:39.840No. So you can look back at any period in history and you can pretty much be sure that
01:36:48.620a good chunk of the population thought Ragnarok was on its way. Christians constantly think1.00
01:36:54.220that the end times are upon us um muslims jews buddhists uh any any faith that you know you do1.00
01:37:03.040enough of this doom spiraling like the ulterior ghost you mentioned you're going to think that1.00
01:37:07.180the end of the world is near surely things can't get worse right and not to well doom spiral things
01:37:13.540can always get worse things are actually really good right now in a lot of ways uh witten young
01:37:19.440and i did an episode on this concept kind of a while back about uh the idea of uh building gimli
01:37:25.900so uh for those that don't know only is the name of the the golden home that rises out of the water
01:37:34.740after ragnarok where uh the gods will reside and rebuild everything after the destruction of the
01:37:41.500cosmos and the afa is is that in a sense not literally of course but we're building that
01:37:50.520right now so no ragnarok is uh is not happening as far as i can tell um i i get i get the um
01:38:02.980wanting to think that though i went through that same you know kind of period when i first got into
01:38:08.940house true because that was 2015 and like you know gay marriage got legalized like right after
01:38:16.040that and a whole bunch of other funny political stuff started happening and i was like oh yeah
01:38:20.680ragnarok's definitely coming and you know now it's been 10 years and my life is categorically
01:38:27.260better in every sense since this now it's hard to feel like ragnarok is is here
01:38:59.120um we see the world through our own lens
01:39:08.840and as a gothi we deal with this in counseling a lot
01:39:15.680so you're everybody's got their own baseline based on their experiences how they react to
01:39:25.220trauma or things in their life so you may have a call from a veteran that's struggling with ptsd
01:39:38.260issues that watched lots of his buddies die in really horrific ways and really saw some stuff
01:39:46.900stuff and their baseline may be they're accustomed to a lot of trauma and you have to counsel them
01:39:57.160and help them based on their life and not based on someone else's that same day you may talk to
01:40:06.460someone and they lost a family pet that died of old age and that may have been the most traumatic
01:40:14.740they've ever experienced in their whole life. You can't compare those two things
01:40:21.880because you're doing, you know, you're doing folks a disservice. We all experience trauma
01:40:26.860based on what we've seen. So it's really tempting when we see things that are drastically askew
01:40:35.160from our values happen in the world and be like, man, this must be the end. This is terrible.
01:40:40.700but i mean imagine your whole village is dying of the black plague and two-thirds of the people0.97
01:40:50.720you know are dead that weren't a month ago that seems more apocalyptic than gay marriage0.92
01:41:00.260um when you have you know when the mongols come over the hill and are building skull pyramids0.95
01:41:12.040it seems more apocalyptic everybody experiences things in a really different way i mean0.98
01:41:19.420if you're in pompeii and the vesuvius erupts that seems like this must be the end of time
01:41:28.600And for you, it probably is for at least your existence in Midgard.
01:41:34.200So it's really, we all see that through our lens.
01:41:37.980The idea of Ragnarok, very realistically, our myth cycle exists in mythic time.
01:41:46.240It has happened. It is happening. It will happen again.
01:41:49.120It exists simultaneously in a state of occurrence, of being post, you know, something in the past and it being something to prepare for in the future.
01:42:00.720And that's a hard thing to internalize, but these things happen.
01:42:13.300Cycles of great things and then calamity happen.
01:42:19.120And we adjust to them. We're in this for the long game. I don't think any of us are going to see, you know, some kind of the end of everything where everything gets reset. And to even think that we are, is wasteful.
01:42:38.200So, and this is kind of, this is where I'm saying this branches off into a lot of things.
01:42:44.960Trent mentioned the, you know, Christians have always, you know, they're, I'm sure we've mentioned this before, but the original 12 apostles, they're, they thought, no, Jesus is going to be back in their lifetime.
01:43:01.320The end was going to happen within their life.
01:47:02.820society is going to collapse into this zombie you know mad max land boat with zombies and
01:47:10.480again i think that we all see an appeal in like everything needs a reset and i get that i get a
01:47:19.660lot of that thought process but it's pointless to long for something that doesn't exist instead of
01:47:30.780trying to build what you can with what you have. It's very easy if you're always waiting on
01:47:40.860something external to reshuffle everything for you. You're going to be greatly unsatisfied.
01:47:48.520Your life will be a lot better if you spend the time and the resources that you have making
01:47:53.000things better in a tangible way that you, your family, your friends can experience and enjoy.
01:47:58.060One of the hallmarks about Ausatru that's always been the case, we're life embracing religion. We're not waiting for Jesus to come fix everything. We're not trying to escape the wheel of karma. No, we're trying to engage in the struggles of our life with a heroic mindset and heroic posture and achieve victory in our life.
01:48:23.080build the world we want accomplish the things that we want to see accomplished
01:49:00.240yeah it it lined up right but i think that was
01:49:05.600i think that was one of those synchronicities that we talk about that's the working of earth
01:49:12.380um it lined up in a really really beautiful and a really special way and i think that's
01:49:20.720I think that's why it ends up the way that it does, and I think it's really cool how that worked out, but yeah, that's going to absolutely go in the normal sequence of events, and it didn't have to, so we could have decided to do Frazehoff there.
01:49:39.620that's our next half in the sequence we could just do that at siggerheim but that wasn't the
01:49:45.940plan and that was never what we wanted to do uh tiershoff came up in the right ordering of things
01:49:54.180and uh i think it's really auspicious that that's where that's going to be located i'm very excited
01:49:58.820about it um trent what are some good ways to begin connecting with the gods
01:50:06.420honestly just um take something to uh give them as a gift and just go speak to them um
01:50:16.040the first the first like bloat i i guess you could call it prayer really is more appropriate
01:50:24.340term that i did and i'll get back stories to fill time and kind of so you guys can understand where
01:50:29.000my head was at at the time was um uh in boot camp so i was army infantry 11 bravo uh i was doing
01:50:37.980something called one station unit training so i did regular soldier training and then infantry
01:50:43.480school all in one go it was from like april to august of 2016 and uh there's this one last
01:50:52.820final ruck march you do in infantry school or at least you used to and uh
01:50:58.320it was not it was something like eight miles but they you know weighed our rucks down extra we
01:51:08.940had just gotten done with a long field training exercise hadn't showered in like a couple weeks
01:51:13.940you know and everybody stinks and everything sucks and it's the georgia heaps it was at fort
01:51:19.700benning in the middle of august and so i i hadn't really spoken to the icier by myself at that point
01:51:29.620i'd been to a few um a few rituals because i'd been to a star on the south just before that but
01:51:35.480my first time interacting solo with the icier was um my rucksack was falling off of the frame on the
01:51:44.140top so it was it was gonna like destroy my lower back to make this uh to make this ruck march
01:51:51.560complete and i weighed about 120 pounds at the time i was like the third smallest guy in the
01:51:56.380whole company and so what i did was uh i poured one of those little mre drink mixes for like
01:52:04.040purple kool-aid or whatever into my cans and i spoke to thor and i asked him to give me the
01:52:12.260strength you know give this scrawny kid the strength to make it to uh honor hill and be
01:52:18.480awarded the title of infantryman and uh one of those cool synchronicities right after i did that
01:52:26.240and i poured it on the ground uh the lightning struck and there was thunder and everybody groaned
01:52:31.420because it was about to start raining uh and i did make it through that ruck march and everybody
01:52:37.100thought i was a crazy person for doing that with a really crappy ruck that was falling off its own
01:52:42.140frame uh all that to say um just praying to the icr if you have need to or just speaking to them
01:52:52.460letting them know that you see that you're loyal to them and that you acknowledge them and that
01:52:59.180you love them and that you honor them and it sounds it might sound silly at first but a big
01:53:04.700part of Alcestru and any faith really is sort of suspending this modern cynicism that we have
01:53:12.200nowadays and opening your heart as Christian as that sounds keeping an open heart and open mind
01:53:18.500and just giving it a try really and that's what we always tell people to do when uh you know
01:53:25.100they're thinking about Alcestru and they're thinking about coming to a Hoff or they're
01:53:28.100thinking about coming to event just give it a try and come into it openly and you'll be sold
01:53:35.240yeah absolutely um people overthink this a lot and
01:53:44.560sometimes it's because of a lack of familiarity other times it's because of an abundance of piety
01:53:51.200like you just don't want to get it wrong you don't want to do something incorrectly or offensive and
01:53:58.640But people look at religious practice sometimes as a very complex set of ritual structure to do anything.
01:54:15.060And I don't believe that that's how it is in Ausatru.
01:54:18.820it's very fundamental to who we are and it's very much about relationships and
01:54:29.620building um building connections between building relationships between
01:54:40.360conscious entities and I'm trying to think of the word that it's hard because I don't think
01:54:47.740language encompasses it well but you learn how to build relationships from when you're first born
01:54:54.700into the world you learn that before you have language you learn it that predates all these
01:55:01.100different things how to communicate with things and build bonds with things you build that with
01:55:09.500your parents you build relationships with every person that you come into contact with more or
01:55:16.060less to one degree or another but we learn those very basic things and the more heartfelt
01:55:24.940and unencumbered by complications you make it the better you are as a place to start now there's all
01:55:34.940kind of extra that you can do to enhance it or to do ritual there's a lot of things you can do and
01:55:42.300we're happy to talk about those but fundamentally
01:55:48.220there is a point where you are not reaching out to the gods and then there is a point where you are
01:55:55.340all of the study and pondering and you can be an expert on the lore and an expert on ancient
01:56:04.700ausitru practice and fluent in old norse and you can you can be an expert on the gods and have
01:56:13.900never once made an offering to them or never once said a prayer to them um that's not ausitru you
01:56:23.500can also be ignorant to all of those things but realize they're the god of they're the gods of
01:56:29.740your blood and your bone and you want to have a relationship with them you can know none of our
01:56:38.620and not be an expert on any of those things and say hey odin i was listening to victory never
01:56:46.060sleeps don't know what i'm doing but i i'm here and i want to come home to also true
01:56:52.220here's you know here's a shot here's a stick of incense here's you know uh some tobacco whatever
01:57:00.100you do for your offering there's a lot of right ways to do it but the point is to do it and it
01:57:07.740can start really simply um i've talked about this a lot when i first came home to ouster true i
01:57:12.000wasn't you know i didn't wait until i had read all of the lore and done all of the things no it
01:57:19.980It was Fancy Feast, Nick, but it was a shot of Goldschlager.
01:57:23.800So I had, I would spend, I think we did two weeks per God to where every day I would make an offering to one of our gods and, you know, just, hey, I'm here.
01:59:58.860the Aesir don't always need to be portrayed as Vikings or whatever.
02:00:04.560they can be portrayed a bit more piously and stuff it but yeah to answer the question yes
02:00:12.620um like what witness fawn does is the best example i think um the murals at all of our
02:00:18.520hoffs and the reverence and piety that he puts into that those are those are a gift
02:00:25.420to the icer and to us the folk and it helps us uh connect with the icer being able to look at them
02:00:33.720The mural at Thor's Hof in particular, that was the first one he did, and still to this day is my favorite.
02:00:40.760Think of all the children that have gone to the Hof, that Hof or any Hof, and they're still learning Alcestru, even though they're being raised and they're still learning it.
02:00:52.180and when it's time to go up and hail Thor they get to look into Lord Thor's eyes you know as
02:00:58.800they're portrayed at least and hail him and they get to feel that connection just a little bit
02:01:04.140better because they can see him uh other good examples uh my wife does all of our pretty much
02:01:11.520all of our AFA art that's not with and spawns murals actually and that stuff helps people a lot
02:01:19.960We have a member in Tennessee, Rain Kinsler
02:01:24.200She does lots of great art of our gods and goddesses
02:13:46.940Um, but there's not, you don't have to be initiated into Alcetru.
02:13:54.940It's your birthright. As Witten Erickson says, it, you know, if you are a heterosexual white man or woman or boy or girl, as the ulcerative always says it, you know, this is where you belong. This is your home.
02:14:08.600so in a way nothing that said it is good to read and study and learn as much as possible
02:14:16.180it is good and it's fun frankly so i would encourage you to come to an afa event first
02:14:23.840and then after when you're all excited because you just left your first afa event then go
02:14:30.160um yeah I would say um I don't think there's a lot of prep work you need to do before you
02:14:39.640go to an event but I do think that going to a moot you need to it all depends on what you're going to
02:14:46.720but I think you need to go in there with the right mindset um you go in there with an open
02:14:56.680mind and an open heart and without a lot of preconceptions. I think it's very easy to build
02:15:02.480up in your head how you think everything ought to be or how you think it should look and then
02:15:10.040getting super judgmental of everybody doing things differently than you'd imagined in your head.
02:15:15.740It's like they've, it's like you had an imaginary conversation with them that they signed up to meet
02:15:20.460your expectations that they never participated in. Go with an open mind without expectation and just
02:15:27.260trying to be there and be present and take it for what it is. And I think that's the best way to do
02:15:34.340it. A lot of people, and this is cool. I'm glad that people have a really high expectation of the
02:15:39.660AFA, but fundamentally at the end of the day, it's important to realize the AFA and our moots and
02:15:46.960events it is a collection of people it's a collection of people that you know
02:15:58.400i say this i don't i don't believe in equality and a lot of our leadership have put in a lot
02:16:03.120put a lot of their time energy and years of their life in becoming experts in house of truth
02:16:09.040so they're not people just like everybody else but in other ways they are they're people who
02:16:13.920hold down jobs their husbands their wives their fathers their mothers they're all different ages
02:16:20.880they're people in a lot of ways just like anyone else who decided to open up their home or hey you
02:16:27.600know what i'm going to take the step of i'm going to host a moot down the down the road at the local
02:16:32.640you know the local bar or the local park or the local restaurant or whatever they decided to do
02:16:37.920do. So keep that in mind. At some of our bigger events, it's a little bit different, but go
02:16:46.100there, accepting what you get and in the spirit of hospitality and with an open mind and an
02:16:52.340open heart. And I think that's the best preparation you could have to do something.
02:16:55.700Um, is, uh, Arts Gemeinschaft also true as well? Um, yes, I didn't get a lot of deep theology the
02:17:13.160time that I met, um, some of their leadership, but a number of, um, their leaders and their families
02:17:20.620met with myself, a few of our other leadership, and some of our members over in Sweden when we
02:17:29.200went there back in 2018, I believe. And that was a really nice experience. Really good folks that
02:17:38.860we met with, had some really nice time with them. There's a language barrier, but some of their
02:17:43.920children spoke fluent English, so we were able to kind of talk back and forth. Yeah, they're
02:17:49.360And they're also true. And I know it's hard to get a real lay of the land on what that organization does and their current status. I know they've been through a number of different things in Germany, and Germany's a difficult place to be also true in this day and age.
02:18:10.940But no, the folks that I've met and interacted with from that organization have been fantastic.
02:23:20.080there is a details matter there's a time and a place for things an offering of respect or giving
02:23:32.260a gift out of out of courtesy or respect on that is one thing inviting and invoking and bringing
02:23:43.060that force into into your life and into other people's life is not
02:23:51.780i don't think that's something that you want to do
02:23:55.300and so it's a little bit it's a subtle difference but it's an important difference
02:23:59.220um and then i have a question from albert goldsteinberg um
02:24:11.140i've heard of christians being led into the afa while retaining their christian faith
02:24:17.700so i've heard of that too the times that that's happened that wasn't known when they got let in
02:24:27.220and when it was found out then they've been confronted it's not the right word but like hey
02:24:35.460there's some kind of misunderstanding that's not what we do here and then they've you know
02:24:40.900been separated from membership um no the afa we are we're a church and you cannot be
02:24:47.140christian and also true at the same time um that's not ever been a common thing but
02:24:53.860But we've had some folk builders in the past that didn't really get what we were doing.
02:24:58.180They were just trying to beef up numbers.
02:24:59.500So they got a lot of their friends that were generally ideologically aligned with us on some things to just join up without really embracing our religion.
02:25:09.720And times that we've noticed that, we've put a stop to that as quickly as possible.
02:25:15.240We don't ever want people to join or be part of what we're doing under false pretenses.
02:25:22.660that's never been an okay thing and so now we've made uh on our application process like you have
02:25:29.380to like click a box that says no that you're actually also true um what is okay is you don't
02:25:39.860it's hard to know when someone starts having a sincere faith and what we don't want
02:25:45.220is people being dishonest. Nobody expects that you start at day one with this advanced,
02:25:53.260deep faith in the Iser out of nowhere. Those things come over time. So you can join if you're0.99
02:26:01.760also true or if you want to be also true and you're sincerely trying to pursue that. But no,
02:26:08.640if you're a committed Christian, that's the worst of both worlds. You're being disloyal to the Iser1.00
02:26:13.580and disloyal to the God that you still worship, and we don't want that amongst us.1.00
02:26:19.240Never have wanted that, don't want that, don't want that in the future.
02:34:35.060though i don't approve of christianity i was a very devoted christian in the time that i was in that
02:34:41.700faith um i respect people who are serious about their beliefs and their responsibilities
02:34:50.740If your religion is something you can just kind of put on and cast off and it's no big deal to you, then that speaks to your character.
02:34:59.900If you're somebody to where it's serious and you need to do deep thought and deep contemplation to know whether it's right and make the right choice on it because it matters to you.
02:35:10.480It may take you longer to join, but absolutely respect that.
02:35:15.360And, yeah, we'd love to have you check it out and see,
02:35:20.360and we'd be really happy to answer any questions you might have.
02:35:26.420Yeah, with that, thank you so much for joining us on the program tonight, Trent.
02:36:10.900And a lot of people would say Pinda because he was Alcatru, but he didn't do enough to stem the tide of Christianity, in my opinion.1.00
02:36:22.020A lot of people would say Alfred the Great, and that's a good answer.0.99
02:36:25.780But Harold Godwinson, just based on the short nine, ten months he reigned,
02:36:33.120his uh the the energy he showed that he dedicated to being king of england
02:36:40.800is the kind of energy that any any good leader needs to have uh that's part of why i respect our
02:36:49.080witness so much and many other historical figures uh is this willingness this total
02:36:58.080acceptance and dedication to the mission at hand um i mentioned aragorn from lord of the rings
02:37:04.900earlier it's that so harold godwinson was you know named king at the very last minute and he
02:37:14.660immediately knew that it was gonna excuse my language it was gonna piss off a lot of really
02:37:18.660powerful men and you know he didn't shy away from that he said okay well you know here we go and uh
02:37:26.840Of course, England was invaded by Harold Hardrada and the Norwegians, and then, incidentally, my direct ancestor, William the Conqueror and the Normans, and Harold marched north to fight Harold Hardrada and his own brother, and he won that handily.
02:37:47.040And without giving his men any time to rest or to recover, he immediately, he stuck to the mission, went straight south and fought till his dying breath against William the Conqueror.
02:37:58.640And even though he lost in England, took a less than positive change that that's something that inspires me to go back to an earlier question.
02:38:08.900I think about that probably daily, that that sort of doom driven path of this is what needs to be done.
02:38:19.900This is why I'm here. I'm going to do it. Come hell or high water.
02:38:23.920So, yeah, Harold Godwinson all day, every day.
02:38:28.640There you have it. All right, guys. Well, thank you so much. I look forward to talking to you guys all again a week from now. Until then, remember, hail the Iseer, hail the folk, hail the AFA, and victory never sleeps.