Asatru Folk Assembly - 11⧸20⧸24 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 124 - Goði East

00:00:00.000 Transcribed by ESO, translated by —

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

00:01:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 Thank you.

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

00:03:00.000 Good evening, everybody.

00:03:11.040 Welcome to Victory Never Sleeps, the official podcast of the Alistair Folk Assembly.

00:03:15.080 The Alistair Gauthier is running fashionably late, as he likes to do.

00:03:22.740 Top of the show stuff.

00:03:25.160 Let me see, what does he usually say?

00:03:26.620 um we are streaming on youtube x twitter whatever you prefer to call it oh look at that odyssey

00:03:35.800 twitch rumble vk links are in the description thanks for that nick um things going on

00:03:46.600 we have mjordshoff 70 something percent of the way paid off uh if you would like to

00:03:54.960 help us finish paying it off so we can

00:03:57.160 continue in the search for Phrasehoff.

00:04:01.040 You can donate to that on

00:04:03.080 the Roomstone website.

00:04:06.940 Roomstone.org slash donate.

00:04:10.380 Last I heard,

00:04:11.500 it was something like, if every member

00:04:13.340 paid $98

00:04:14.900 right now, your talk would be

00:04:17.320 paid off, and we'd be able to take that next

00:04:19.420 step.

00:04:23.180 We have a

00:04:24.340 folks services fundraiser

00:04:26.660 going for our

00:04:28.440 Hoff Steward at Njortz Hoff, my friend

00:04:30.260 Alexander Casto.

00:04:32.840 He's done so much for

00:04:34.460 us. It would be great if we

00:04:36.500 could donate some money and help him out.

00:04:39.520 Hello, sir.

00:04:40.920 Hello.

00:04:45.000 Thank you, Nick, for setting me up

00:04:46.480 on the appropriate side.

00:04:50.920 Appreciate you covering for

00:04:52.420 the first part of the show.

00:04:54.340 sorry, I was running a couple of minutes behind this evening. Welcome. Tonight we are

00:05:03.800 going to talk about, you know, we're going to kind of casually talk about a variety of things.

00:05:11.580 We're looking forward to answering y'all's questions and kind of, I don't know, having a

00:05:17.620 having a bit of a freestyle night this evening um as go through trent was just showing you we're

00:05:27.040 doing doing great on the nordshoff fundraiser you guys have been extremely generous and it's

00:05:33.780 very much appreciated um we are we are getting closer and uh i imagine that the closer that we

00:05:43.980 get from here on out, we're going to really see an acceleration, and I'm very hopeful for that,

00:05:48.680 and I know you guys are going to come through on it. Right now, I don't know if Trent gave you

00:05:57.360 kind of the breakdown, but if every AFA member donated $98, we would have that. We would have

00:06:02.900 it today. That's the first step in getting Frazehoff, and I know that's something that the

00:06:09.640 folks in uh the northeast i don't know if it really counts i don't know what those folks

00:06:17.080 consider themselves the folks in ohio and pennsylvania are very excited about it as well

00:06:22.080 are people close by there um and i think we're all excited for fray to get his off i think they

00:06:31.200 or maybe just outsiders would call it the rust belt that's a it's not an appealing name

00:06:38.620 yeah we didn't make it up but it do all right guys well thank you for that um

00:06:49.660 so it's a bit of a a potpourri deal tonight but oh uh first and just noticing it so i'm not sure

00:07:03.720 Yeah, 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.

00:07:17.320 um so

00:07:23.260 go the east and i talked a little bit earlier today about some

00:07:28.640 you know ideas for things that i don't need to be discussed need to be gone back over i know

00:07:35.580 there's a lot of things and a lot of themes on this program that we hit at different times

00:07:41.440 from different angles.

00:07:46.080 So among those things,

00:07:49.080 what most on your mind

00:07:53.240 would you like to address

00:07:54.380 the VNS audience about tonight, Trent?

00:08:00.460 Something I think about a lot

00:08:02.380 and any of our Gothar students

00:08:05.820 or boat builders who have been around

00:08:07.940 long enough to hear me lecture them

00:08:10.040 uh we'll you know we'll agree is um the gifts given to us by odin billy and vey uh

00:08:20.180 odin gave us on which is the breath of life and a part of our soul complex uh billy gave us

00:08:26.840 older which is uh consciousness willpower essentially our mind and vey gave us a law

00:08:35.180 which is our body, our goodly color, goodly hue.

00:08:38.620 Something that, like I said, I lecture a lot about is because these three gifts were the first gifts given to us by the Isir.

00:08:48.220 They are the most important of those gifts in a way.

00:08:53.620 It's the building blocks of who we are, body, mind, and spirit, you know, if you want to oversimplify it.

00:09:01.420 and so it's really important and the afa has already been encouraging this pretty much i just

00:09:09.140 found a fancy semi-esoteric way to put it but it's really important to sharpen those three gifts and

00:09:15.660 hone those and we would be remiss as folk if we didn't do our very best every single day

00:09:24.300 to use those gifts the best of our ability to make them better and to serve our folk with them

00:09:29.060 So, for example, building the law, the body, you know, you can exercise, you can eat right, drink enough water, et cetera.

00:09:40.640 Building 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.

00:09:50.600 building the on

00:09:52.940 the soul is

00:09:53.960 less clearly

00:09:56.780 defined maybe but

00:09:58.240 be Alcitru, help us do Alcitru

00:10:01.040 join us

00:10:01.820 at Hoffs at monthly and

00:10:04.860 national events

00:10:05.760 that's what I got off the

00:10:08.880 top of my noggin I'm sure I can think of other

00:10:10.860 stuff if need be

00:10:11.800 no that's fine so I think what

00:10:15.040 I think what's kind of

00:10:20.360 important on that a little bit is to

00:10:25.920 when we mention those things,

00:10:30.620 can you give people a little bit of the lore background on how those came about and a little

00:10:39.200 background on what those things are? People may not be familiar with those terms.

00:10:42.540 yes so uh at the creation of what we know as the cosmos uh odin and his brothers villian vey had

00:10:52.820 slain uh ymir the primordial first giant uh and they fashioned much of the cosmos not all of it

00:11:02.860 much of it at least midgard and what we see in the cosmos out of the remains of his body

00:11:08.840 uh after doing that they you know they wandered around midgard a bit and they were walking along

00:11:14.960 a beach and they found two pieces of drip wood one made of ash one made of elm and they imbued

00:11:23.160 each god imbued each piece of drip wood with that gift so uh they gave them or gave us i suppose

00:11:33.220 our ancestors uh color and you know our bodies essentially is what is kind of implied there

00:11:40.020 the word is law and the my favorite translation of that is goodly hue some good color right

00:11:46.380 uh villi he gave us older i don't recall the exact translation of it but it's something like

00:11:56.300 mind consciousness awareness um and so you can pretty easily tie that to intellect

00:12:04.240 and of course odin gave us the breath of life he gave us on which we breath of life is probably

00:12:11.640 the best translation as far as that one goes um and so in that one instance odin and his brothers

00:12:20.720 they gave us life and they gave us that divine spark that make us who we are and more of the

00:12:27.860 ice here have come along later in our folk story and give us more gifts you know such as heimdall

00:12:32.600 giving us the runes and teaching us how to how to live essentially but uh with that piece of ash

00:12:40.060 and elm that became uh oscar and embla um that first spark of the divine was given to us

00:12:49.900 made us who we are.

00:13:05.100 Yeah, so those, I don't know.

00:13:08.540 Sorry, guys, there was a couple of other things going on

00:13:11.560 simultaneous, but the gifts of the divine,

00:13:15.700 I think one of the things that's really important

00:13:17.620 is the appreciation that there's multiple parts to our being that make us more than

00:13:31.580 vegetative, more than bestial, more than that. It's not just that we have life,

00:13:42.100 But not only do we have life, we have consciousness.

00:13:46.160 So, Oether is like ecstatic frenzy, inspiration.

00:14:02.360 It's the root of Allfather Othen's name.

00:14:06.740 it's he's the master of of frenzy of ecstatic

00:14:11.900 fury and like

00:14:15.700 it often gets translated as divine madness and i think that

00:14:23.280 i think that paints it in a really particular light and i think that it's also noteworthy

00:14:32.280 that he's the master of it. So he's not overcome by some kind of crazed frenzy. He's able to channel

00:14:42.560 that frenzy towards will and towards purpose. And it's really important. But that inspiration to

00:14:48.720 do more, to be more, to move forward, to accomplish, to build, is something that's

00:14:54.420 very unique to us, and it is a precious gift from our gods. Owned is like the animating spirit,

00:15:04.340 the breath of life. That, that, you know, as we, as science advances, we understand more and more

00:15:19.420 about how to recreate a lot of natural things in the world,

00:15:22.860 but what is still confounding to scientists

00:15:26.320 and what still is a religious and a spiritual concern

00:15:33.960 that even the atheists don't really have a good science explanation for

00:15:43.240 is that which makes us alive.

00:15:45.720 You can rebuild a lot of biology, but imbuing cells with consciousness and life, that's a very different thing.

00:16:01.500 And 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.

00:16:29.680 And 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.

00:16:50.660 We 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.

00:17:13.820 And it's a gift.

00:17:14.980 We talk on here an awful lot about the gift cycle, but, and I think that Witten Erickson kind of points this out most prominently.

00:17:25.640 Yes, it's absolutely a gift cycle, but we start out, the gift cycle isn't initiated by us.

00:17:33.640 It was initiated by our gods when they gave us these things.

00:17:38.680 So we start out in that process, not by reestablishing it, but by doing our part.

00:17:44.680 the gods have given us gifts we are blessed we're blessed in a lot of ways being thankful for that

00:17:51.400 and aware of it if you internalize that and you spend some time meditating on that and thinking

00:18:01.800 on it i think it really changes how you approach the world around you how you approach yourself

00:18:07.400 and how you approach life and what you do with it i think very often and everybody comes to this

00:18:14.520 from different angles. We live in a society that is so, so very secular today. And, you know,

00:18:24.880 Europe has secularized a lot quicker and a lot earlier than the United States has.

00:18:32.400 But over my lifetime, the religious population in the United States has drastically dwindled.

00:18:39.820 And 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.

00:18:52.920 It's just those are cultural touchstones.

00:18:56.840 So 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.

00:19:09.160 They'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.

00:19:30.700 And everybody starts somewhere.

00:19:31.860 I'm not trying to be critical.

00:19:33.100 but also true is

00:19:36.160 you know even in the

00:19:38.360 the less pious

00:19:42.100 circles they will define also true

00:19:44.360 as a belief in the gods

00:19:45.660 as gods

00:19:47.740 we know that it means more than that

00:19:50.040 it doesn't just mean believing in them but it means

00:19:52.020 loyalty to them but you

00:19:54.060 can't have that loyalty to them

00:19:56.020 in a real way unless you

00:19:57.980 believe in them and part

00:20:00.100 of believing in them is

00:20:01.880 internalizing within yourself and your thought process that they exist

00:20:07.780 that they watch and judge us and that they have given us special gifts and that we want them to

00:20:14.580 be proud of us when they look on and they see us and those are really easy things to say and

00:20:20.260 they're very common sense i think everybody knows these things academically but there's a difference

00:20:26.100 between knowing and feeling these things so you know i think

00:20:35.940 i think that goes into that interplay of of those gifts that we were given um but i also think it's um

00:20:46.820 yeah it's how we utilize that sometimes we're only making use of of law or of

00:20:53.220 owned. We're not really utilizing other. We're not engaging in the ecstatic fury that drives us

00:21:05.840 and moves us forward to create, to do, to accomplish, to be victorious for our folk

00:21:12.560 and for our gods. A lot of the time we're living on a level that doesn't quite reach up towards

00:21:22.520 I don't know, towards our potential because I don't think oftentimes you need a certain amount

00:21:30.220 of perspective to step away and see that. If you are focused solely on your day-to-day and you

00:21:36.220 don't stop and look at the situation with a little bit of perspective, it's very easy to

00:21:42.540 be in a constant cycle of existence and not of, you know, not of ascension towards something better.

00:21:52.520 Um, but yeah, what do we got? We got somebody who mentioned something in the questions over here.

00:22:00.860 Croatian war master, uh, interesting topic might be the remnants of Ausatru in Sweden after

00:22:08.660 Christianization. That's interesting. Did you have some of those that you wanted to discuss

00:22:15.780 or that you were aware of that you wanted to talk about.

00:22:21.420 I think, I don't know.

00:22:24.980 So Trent, do you have any familiarity

00:22:27.440 with Scandinavian holdover traditions

00:22:30.400 that outlived the official Christianization?

00:22:37.600 Nothing in particular, but it's important to note

00:22:40.600 that in the time of the late Viking Age

00:22:45.140 And 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.

00:23:04.540 You 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.

00:23:14.260 But 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.

00:23:30.580 uh so while i don't have any specific examples in scandinavia it's it's pretty safe to assume

00:23:39.080 that uh the practice did not fully die uh for quite a while and of course now it's been

00:23:46.260 reforged and we have a folk builder in sweden now so you know it the transition was never as

00:23:55.320 as cut and dry and as clear as the history would make it seem

00:24:00.040 yeah sweden so much of sweden is i don't know rural and always and was longer than a lot of

00:24:14.640 the rest of western europe and you know norway and denmark that there was

00:24:20.980 you know pockets of unconverted folks for a lot longer um nick just sent over the additional

00:24:30.740 kind of things that were mentioned um

00:24:33.240 in 1177 which is well after you know the official conversion there's still pagans mentioned in the

00:24:43.100 east of Sweden. I know that like of European paganism, generally, you had some holdovers of

00:24:52.240 it in Baltic nations until last century. And now you see a big resurgence over there in a little

00:25:02.720 bit different ways. But the biggest thing, and we've talked about this on the show a lot, is the

00:25:14.800 amalgamation of Ausitru with Christianity when Christianity came into Europe. And it's why

00:25:24.160 European Christianity has such a very, very different look, feel, and practice to Christianity

00:25:32.560 at the same time in other parts of the world.

00:25:36.240 Like Coptic Christianity is very different

00:25:38.560 than Western European Christianity

00:25:42.760 or Judean Christianity is very different.

00:25:47.500 You see a little bit of flip around

00:25:50.240 when the Crusades happen,

00:25:51.580 you have some cross-pollinization,

00:25:53.280 but Christianity in Europe

00:25:54.480 takes on a whole lot of the bigger themes

00:26:00.680 of Ausatru and paganism in so many of its ways.

00:26:05.300 So it made, especially farther north,

00:26:10.780 it's hard to tell on a lot of the festivals,

00:26:14.220 a lot of celebrations and a lot of the aesthetics

00:26:16.520 where Christianity ends or where paganism ends

00:26:21.880 and Christianity begins because there's quite a bit of overlap.

00:26:25.600 Um, 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.

00:26:41.340 But they, the cult of heroes is such a longstanding tradition amongst European peoples that they couldn't do away with it.

00:26:51.080 So they had to, you know, put it into a Christian context.

00:26:55.100 you see that quite a bit i think a lot of the local folk festivals the the pagan elements are

00:27:00.620 very very obvious but i think some of them are a little bit less so one of the things that's always

00:27:06.300 been really interesting to me and this isn't so much in sweden you see most of these in norway

00:27:12.060 but it's hard to tell where all they were because they were wooden structures but the

00:27:17.260 the stave churches stavkirka are archaeologically like they're really interesting in the

00:27:31.180 mixture of art on them the mixture of design they carried over a lot of

00:27:36.220 also true elements and even stories and things from the eddas in their artwork

00:27:41.500 even though they were built as christian structures so um most people think and i

00:27:47.500 or i say most people a lot of people think and i'm certainly one of those that the

00:27:54.220 the stave church is kind of the link between the height of the evolution of alsa true hoffs and the

00:28:03.820 first you know the first implementation of of christian houses of worship in the north

00:28:11.580 and i think so there are really i think they give us an interesting view into what you know

00:28:19.420 what our hoffs would have been like in you know 50 years before we start seeing the uh the stave

00:28:27.340 churches so i think that's an interesting thing certainly we see that architecturally and in

00:28:31.980 design with all of the different gripping beast motifs and like dragon imagery and a lot of those

00:28:42.180 things. But you also see use, you see this transition with use of runes. So you see runes

00:28:54.320 from the Austro period, but you also start seeing those runes take on Christian themes and

00:29:01.840 Christian motifs to where you're using these inherently pagan magical sigils as a writing

00:29:10.180 script for, you know, Bible stories or, you know, adorned with crucifixes and things that way. You 0.86

00:29:17.640 see that crossover on like early medieval rune stones a lot too. You see that specifically in

00:29:24.620 Sweden. Really prominently, you see that in Uppsala. And I don't mean in old Uppsala,

00:29:36.980 but in the modern city of Uppsala near their, I think they've got a cathedral there. You see a

00:29:43.800 lot of rune stones there that are overtly Christian, but done in a very ausitrue way.

00:29:54.620 And, okay, so another thing that he mentioned is some of the holdovers from the Alistair

00:30:01.820 period are the Battle of Lena, Odin appears to King Erik to bring victory.

00:30:11.940 You see that, and you see elements of that into, as you point out, into medieval times.

00:30:20.060 what you also see is the along the fringes invocations of also true themes and also true

00:30:29.740 gods along with christian saints and jesus with charms and like low magic things and you see that

00:30:41.240 for a long period of time in western europe and some of it's more overt than others there's a lot

00:30:48.180 of theories about various folklore and its relationship to the old religion, but, and

00:30:57.380 it's kind of a, I don't know, it's kind of a thing that I think we're familiar with is

00:31:05.180 the, you know, the person who finds themselves sick and they're just reaching out for any

00:31:11.380 kind of help.

00:31:11.960 They'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.

00:31:26.400 It 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.

00:31:39.040 It 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.

00:31:54.880 So 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.

00:32:05.680 So 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.

00:32:24.540 you see in iceland very famously hammers you know they'll have like a dude whose hammer mold

00:32:31.380 is on the same mold that his crucifix mold is because you've got you've got that crossover

00:32:37.740 of things and they weren't by the average guy living out in the woods they weren't necessarily

00:32:44.240 mutually exclusive because they didn't know any better um the very sharp distinction

00:32:50.460 came the more that official church infrastructure got out into the the rural populations and that

00:33:01.480 took much much longer like you're talking here about the things you reference in 1177 and 1208

00:33:07.920 respectively those i don't know what official date sweden counts their christianization but i think

00:33:16.300 both of those are about 100 years past that date so it hung around there for quite quite a bit

00:33:27.340 so along kind of a similar theme

00:33:33.900 all right alongside a similar theme we have a new member uh amber welcome amber we're glad

00:33:40.300 that you're here glad to see you're on here uh she asked why do people call balder the

00:33:45.820 norse jesus is it because he comes back after ragnarok or is there something in the lore that

00:33:51.500 indicates balder has some similar teachings or aspects as jesus trent what say you uh no balder

00:33:59.580 does not have similar teachings to jesus uh that came about because when the christianization was

00:34:08.380 happening and these monks were going all over um northern europe specifically in western europe

00:34:13.980 they would go to the germanic and celtic lands in particular and um you know the war band was

00:34:21.260 such a central part of germanic and celtic society especially germanic and so these priests um these

00:34:30.940 missionaries would come and they would say oh hey jesus jesus was a warrior too yeah he led his own

00:34:36.300 war band you guys have to work you guys love war bands right and so jesus was depicted to the anglo

00:34:43.100 saxon specifically as a driton or dricton a leader of a war band and

00:34:52.140 so they kind of connected that to balder because we have evidence that an earlier source material

00:34:58.620 that's kind of lost to us now that balder was um besides being bright and shining and loved by all

00:35:04.860 he was a war god he was bold in battle and joyous and generous and all these things and uh jesus

00:35:12.780 was said to be generous obviously and joyous etc etc and so when they added that you know jesus was

00:35:20.700 a warband leader it tied him a little closer to balder i suppose and so our ancestors the plan

00:35:27.340 at least was for our ancestors to go oh this jesus guy sounds just like lord balder you know

00:35:33.180 so that's that's pretty much how we got there um they're both depicted as white guys with long

00:35:40.060 blonde brown hair so there's that too i guess but that's pretty much it it's just a result of

00:35:46.940 the christianization they had to connect jesus to our faith that was the best way and it goes

00:35:55.420 back to the earlier topic just how we um the catholics have hero worship essentially when

00:36:00.460 they venerate these saints uh we have our you know each of our uh heiliger mother you know

00:36:06.940 queen cigarette or ale scholar grimson that's those are saints essentially so

00:36:14.860 that's part of it another part of it is

00:36:21.500 and this is along a similar thing that trent mentioned but

00:36:29.020 one of the ways to that missionaries used to convert to christianity is likening

00:36:36.940 you know you had to liken it to something these people knew and had a familiarity with you can't

00:36:42.180 talk to them about you know ancient jewish desert stuff that imagery doesn't make sense to people

00:36:49.320 who've never left you know their small little alpine valley or wherever they find themselves

00:36:56.120 so you use things they do know and there's a point of the point of similarity does you mentioned

00:37:02.100 about coming back after Ragnarok, and that's part of it. The idea that the best and brightest

00:37:10.240 of the Iser is slain, dies, and is reborn. They use that to liken to Jesus and to transition 0.96

00:37:22.060 to Jesus. And it's a funny thing because the concept of God's doing that, that very thing,

00:37:31.860 triumphing over death in that way is is not a not a jesus thing jesus is kind of one of the latest

00:37:39.140 in a long line of that you see a lot of that in egyptian or you see that in egyptian mythology

00:37:44.500 you see it in a number of other places it's so at the time i think that was utilized as a way

00:37:55.140 of explaining jesus but i think we have two different phenomenon so you have ancient

00:38:00.180 I say ancient, you have early medieval missionaries that make that connection.

00:38:09.660 But what you also have is modern, you know, late 20th century Alcetur that like to make that comparison as well. 0.70

00:38:19.340 There 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

00:38:37.860 And I think that's lazy and I think it's just convenient.

00:38:40.960 it i think they see they see that certainly early scholars see that as a as a point of commonality

00:38:50.480 and it's easy if that's your touchstone if your familiarity is with bible stories

00:38:55.760 and with christianity to see any similarity in any other thing you study as oh it must be that

00:39:02.960 and people have always done that our brains are wired to pick up on patterns and so

00:39:14.320 it's very tempting if you all right this is another theme on this show that we talk about a

00:39:21.740 lot is the difference between how a religious person processes information versus a scholar

00:39:29.520 looking outside at some strange practice of a foreign people or an ancient people.

00:39:36.420 But often we don't talk about it from this angle.

00:39:40.560 We talk about how a scholar writing about the tales of our ancestors

00:39:48.300 and about Al-Satru religion and the Aesir

00:39:51.980 doesn't start off with a belief that these are actual gods

00:39:57.260 and this is an actual faith.

00:39:59.100 they treat it as you know strange superstitions by primitive people and so i i juxtapose it as

00:40:08.860 the atheist academic to the religious ausitur but that's not the whole story what else we have

00:40:15.680 especially by the early um scholars that were examining our ancestral faith they didn't come

00:40:24.600 from a place of atheism. They came from a place of belief in Christianity. If you believe your

00:40:32.160 Bible story, then when you process anyone else's superstitions and religions, when you see something

00:40:40.700 that has a point of similarity, I know what that is. That's just these strange people's 1.00

00:40:45.900 interpretation of Jesus. That's these strange people's interpretation of Noah's flood. You see

00:40:51.280 everything through your Christian lens. And that, I think, overplayed a lot of early scholars

00:40:57.980 analysis of things because they didn't have the other points of reference. Their point of

00:41:04.400 reference was what they believed to be true, that their God created everything and that their

00:41:11.320 timeline for all of these things is recorded in their Bible and that all of the peoples of the

00:41:17.200 earth are descendants of adam and eve and noah and they put it in that context if that is the case

00:41:26.240 then clearly all of these other people are just confused about their religion and any of their

00:41:32.880 stories that sound similar are truths that have been able to somehow make it through their confused

00:41:41.040 you know their confused perceptions so i think that overplays it a lot

00:41:48.080 the other thing we had especially of people who practice house the true in the late 20th century

00:41:55.200 you have a big movement of trying to break with christianity so there was like this

00:42:01.360 zealousness of going through anything in our lore that you found similar similar to

00:42:07.520 anything that christians do and having to excise it or whatever because at that point

00:42:14.240 we weren't conceiving a vows to true as an independent faith

00:42:18.080 we were conceiving a vows to true as the anti-christianity

00:42:23.760 and again i and this is why i say we earlier in the show i kind of talked about everybody

00:42:28.080 comes from a different place i'm not speaking disparagingly about about anybody we start

00:42:32.960 where we start the ideas that we advance and move forward i think that the process of that hard break

00:42:39.520 with christianity was was necessary but as we've matured as a faith and as we've matured as

00:42:46.000 individuals we've come to realize that also true doesn't have anything to do with christianity it

00:42:54.640 is an independent its own thing that stands on its own merits not in the ways that it either

00:43:01.600 you know compares or contrasts with another foreign faith and i think that's you know much

00:43:09.340 more authentic way of understanding that you'll find similarities between jesus and a number of

00:43:17.680 different gods of different pagan traditions i think there's a case to be made that jesus might

00:43:24.000 be a a reflection of that as some of those are older than christianity but i think it's also

00:43:32.560 true that that's a common theme in various people's mythos and that's not necessarily connected

00:43:41.280 sometimes things just happen in parallel and we when it is politically advantageous to us it's

00:43:48.880 It's very easy to jump on similarities and exploit similarities, sometimes maliciously and sometimes with the best of intention.

00:43:57.360 But I think that our brain likes to pick up those patterns and see that.

00:44:03.940 We have a suggestion from the Appalachian Highlander. 0.52

00:44:08.680 Goethe East should bring back the bow tie.

00:44:13.060 I thought about it, but no, I didn't really go with the suspenders.

00:44:18.880 Like I thought it would.

00:44:20.640 So I've spared you all the bow ties and I did wear one last weekend for my

00:44:25.820 Odin bloat at Njord's Hoff.

00:44:27.720 So you gotta, 0.91

00:44:29.180 you gotta come to a Hoff,

00:44:30.420 see me in person.

00:44:31.240 If you want the bow tie,

00:44:32.320 sorry.

00:44:33.620 Will you also provide bean pies?

00:44:38.820 That reference might be before my time.

00:44:43.820 Perhaps,

00:44:44.900 perhaps.

00:44:48.880 I think Nick is suggesting perhaps you bust out a cravat I think a cravat would be an interesting

00:45:03.040 look maybe a bolo tie sometime I think that's got a regional appeal I don't know if that appeals to

00:45:15.580 broader audience um so

00:45:23.580 got another

00:45:27.260 another couple of questions going on but i one thing you wanted to talk about tonight was the

00:45:33.100 concept of forward facing Ausatru versus backward facing or other set that paradigm up for folks

00:45:48.100 that may not know what you're talking about. Okay. So we use the term a lot in the AFA and AFA

00:45:55.800 leadership, especially because we want to make sure all of our leaders are on the right track

00:46:01.120 And 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.

00:46:24.740 um and it's so broad because it it encompasses a lot of things like uh y'all here and i are both

00:46:34.040 dressed nicely wearing ties we're not wearing you know colorful tunics as neat as those are

00:46:40.280 they're not that's not really how western civilization uh people dress when they want

00:46:47.580 to look you know their their best nowadays if it were you can bet we would be wearing tunics right

00:46:54.040 now for example um other things we don't we don't do bloat or stumble in every exact little precise

00:47:07.440 step that you would find in some you know thousand year old icelandic manuscript like

00:47:13.320 maybe the nornis society does we we do things

00:47:17.380 we do things um the way that have worked for the afa for uh stephen mcnellen all the way down to us

00:47:27.220 because it's the thing to do that as far as we can tell pleases the icer and brings glory to

00:47:34.560 the icer we don't do things to recreate an era that's long gone um

00:47:41.680 and i mean you can come up with countless examples of uh backward facing

00:47:49.140 alsatru if you want to call it that um the larping type stuff the anything universalists

00:47:57.060 do anything these academic types usually do any of that stuff is uh frankly it's it's wrong and

00:48:06.420 it's not the correct way to do Ausatru. What the AFA is doing is correct because we're doing Ausatru

00:48:14.260 now, not a thousand years ago. We're doing it for our folk that exist now.

00:48:21.540 So, I mean, certainly I agree with all that. I've said time and again, and I think it's

00:48:31.900 important to realize we're not our ancestors so okay a lot of us hearken back to the viking age

00:48:46.600 as like that's how we conceptualize Alcetru in a lot of ways and that's fair that's because

00:48:58.640 that's where our lore comes to us from. That's when it was recorded and displayed in the way

00:49:04.580 it was. That's when the linguistics we have flourish at their height. It's kind of the

00:49:09.960 height of what we have written down about Ausatru. So yeah, we do that. In thinking about

00:49:18.000 that, there's a difference between showing respect for our ancestors or honoring a period

00:49:24.200 of time or a thing and playing dress up and i think it becomes a subtle thing and there i'm not

00:49:33.560 suggesting there's never a time and a place for anything but what you found and what also true

00:49:41.320 grappled with early on i mentioned you know we have a lot of phases that modern house true's

00:49:46.040 gone through to really come into our own and one of those was a

00:49:54.280 like a a recreation phase of trying to

00:50:02.760 copy the vikings and copy how vikings did things and i think that the how is much less important

00:50:12.520 than the why um it's important to note and this is that's another thing about sincere belief

00:50:23.640 our gods are real and they exist

00:50:29.480 why would they want us to pretend that we were vikings why would they want us to do

00:50:36.920 silly old-timey things that aren't relevant now another thing to think about on it

00:50:46.520 these same gods have existed since the dawn of our of our folk these are gods that we believe

00:50:54.120 made us as a people and have been with us since the earliest time that our people existed

00:51:00.520 why do they stop and only exist during you know a 300 year period of history that we call the viking

00:51:09.880 age in any any real logic tells you they don't you know the vikings we have no reason to believe

00:51:18.280 that viking gothar dressed up like cavemen to practice aussitry um that just doesn't make sense

00:51:27.800 when they practiced ausitru they showed up with their best clothes for a formal event

00:51:34.360 they showed up with the modern in modern modern of the time buildings with modern of the time

00:51:42.600 weapons with modern of the time you know they came there on boats that were state of the art

00:51:49.080 in clothing and armor that was state of the art in grooming standards that were

00:51:53.720 or state-of-the-art to the time.

00:51:55.900 They didn't try to harken back to something just because it was old.

00:51:59.840 So I think that when we think about ritual structure and anything else,

00:52:08.680 it's fascinating from a historical standpoint

00:52:11.400 to want to know what ancient peoples did and how they worshipped.

00:52:17.620 But the how so often has everything to do with

00:52:21.160 And the conditions of the time you're doing it, the why is what I think is most instructive and informative.

00:52:31.320 I 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.

00:52:45.840 we would hope they would advance things to something that's relevant that makes sense

00:52:50.720 in the clothes and with the materials and the things that make sense in that day and in that age

00:53:00.320 when we one of the most

00:53:06.960 we're all over the place tonight so forgive me if i stumble over my words a little bit

00:53:11.360 trying to find the right way to communicate it um if your heart's in the right place and you

00:53:20.160 it brings you closer to feeling i don't know feeling connected to the gods to dress up in a

00:53:28.000 tunic and do viking stuff okay um that's that's between you and the gods and if it makes you feel

00:53:37.600 better and you feel like that connection is is better for you i'm not going to say it's

00:53:42.240 it's not wrong or bad or in impious but one of

00:53:50.240 truth is one of our really important virtues it's one of our noble virtues and one of the

00:53:56.400 things that's so important about it is it's a fundamental virtue that other things are built

00:54:00.400 off of one of the things when you were having okay

00:54:09.200 our relationship to the isir is very much a relationship in the same

00:54:16.560 in a lot of the same ways that we build relationships with anyone an an actual friendship 0.95

00:54:25.520 And 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.

00:54:45.660 when we engage in ritual practice, being honest and being our authentic self when we're talking

00:54:56.940 to our gods and we're presenting ourselves before our gods is extremely important in building that

00:55:03.660 relationship in the right way. If you approach them in a way that's fake or that's LARPy,

00:55:10.420 that doesn't make that connection in the same way.

00:55:14.580 First, we know dealing with someone,

00:55:16.580 if you're trying to make a friendship

00:55:18.100 and they only want to talk to you in HR,

00:55:21.300 new speak, inauthentic PC voice,

00:55:24.900 it's not a real friendship.

00:55:26.920 That's a work acquaintance maybe,

00:55:28.820 but you don't build that relationship.

00:55:31.860 You don't build an emotional bond.

00:55:33.760 You don't build a friendship

00:55:34.960 that you have fight to the death loyalty for that person.

00:55:38.500 when you get that is when you get people who will tell you about themselves

00:55:44.260 will tell you about who they really are what they really think who will present themselves in an

00:55:50.120 honest in an honest way and we need to do that in ritual first just because you can tell and

00:55:59.340 if somebody's not coming at you honestly you keep them at arm's length we we know that's not the

00:56:03.820 right way to build a sincere relationship with anyone secondly you can't fully put

00:56:11.660 your energy into a ritual if you're being inauthentic if it's an act and i've seen this

00:56:20.300 it's if you're if you haven't experienced it if you haven't been in rituals with different people

00:56:29.580 or you haven't, maybe you haven't been in an astral ritual at all.

00:56:33.920 This may not have the context for you, but I've seen a lot of people do bloat

00:56:38.500 that it's, they're putting on a performance.

00:56:44.540 If you're out there putting on a show and putting on a performance,

00:56:48.520 that's not likely to make that connection with the gods.

00:56:53.580 It's not likely to facilitate that exchange of energy

00:56:56.640 or to continue that gift cycle in a real and powerful way.

00:57:02.580 The more you are genuinely speaking to the gods

00:57:07.300 and connecting the gods with the folk

00:57:11.560 through honest, pouring out your heart in the ritual,

00:57:16.700 that's when the real connections get made.

00:57:19.720 I've talked on here a lot about,

00:57:21.920 people ask how to develop a faith

00:57:23.780 if they don't have it already, but they want to have it.

00:57:26.640 What 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.

00:57:39.100 You're not open if you're pretending to be somebody that you're not.

00:57:47.340 It'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.

00:57:56.640 That's a small portion of the history of our folk.

00:58:00.700 And it's a small segment of society that was, you know, in a long ship going, raiding, wielding an axe and a shield.

00:58:11.140 Our 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.

00:58:22.840 and, you know, the guy who went out fishing and the guy who went out hunting

00:58:28.000 and the guy who raised goats and cattle to feed their family,

00:58:35.280 the guy who was chopping down wood to build things to keep his people warm.

00:58:41.800 Our gods weren't just the gods of a very select male warrior class

00:58:50.100 that existed for 300 years no they're the gods of all of our race since the dawn of time

00:58:58.260 and it's just as appropriate for us today in the lives that we live to build a relationship

00:59:06.980 with our gods as it is for you know a viking warrior in 850. and so that's it's really

00:59:14.740 important to conceptualize our gods in modern terms and our modern lives with modern people

00:59:22.140 because that's what makes this a real faith this isn't a hobby or you know some other silliness

00:59:29.280 and i know we have to shake off some of that a lot of our early roots you had people forging

00:59:35.240 Alcitru at the same time that came out of you know the society of creative anachronism and other

00:59:40.840 like literal larpy recreation hobby groups that's not wrong a lot of those people developed a sincere

00:59:48.760 faith in our gods due to their love of history and their love of you know values and and things

00:59:56.360 that mattered to our ancestors it's an okay place to start so much what i was talking about tonight

01:00:01.080 has been we all start in a lot of different spots it's not where we start it's how we how

01:00:06.440 how we develop and how we evolve.

01:00:08.320 And modern Ausitru is very much evolved to face forward.

01:00:12.980 But it's more than just that.

01:00:14.480 So Trent talked about that in a not Viking warp sense.

01:00:21.680 But what's more than that,

01:00:23.320 and we also see this as a current in modern times,

01:00:29.260 forward-facing Ausitru isn't the absence

01:00:33.320 of backwards-facing Ausitru.

01:00:35.780 It'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.

01:00:48.560 And that means building things.

01:00:51.020 That means practicing Alcetru and building Alcetru in a way to where we leave something for those who come behind us.

01:00:59.580 And that implies a lot of different things.

01:01:05.140 it implies making responsible choices to where it's not just about having a you know a drunken

01:01:10.580 viking themed party it's about building a serious religion that has a foundation and a future it's

01:01:18.100 about building institutions it's about taking what we do seriously it's about proactively

01:01:25.220 being responsible to where we raise our children in our faith and don't i've heard too many people

01:01:33.700 in my time claim to be also true but then well i'll let my children decide on their religion when

01:01:42.580 they're old enough that's an abdication of your responsibility as a parent it's your job to

01:01:47.940 instruct your children in the values and the things that you sincerely believe and think

01:01:51.860 that are important but what a lot of people don't realize is to be forward-facing in your

01:01:57.620 your Ausitru practice, uh-oh, Trent's making faces. To be forward-facing in your Ausitru

01:02:05.500 practice has consequence to it. To be forward-facing in your Ausitru practice means to have the

01:02:16.960 courage to be Ausitru, to live Ausitru, to raise your children Ausitru, and to don't

01:02:25.900 just hide it in your house but do that publicly and build this into something

01:02:32.780 that has a reputation of fame and a hymenia to it those of us in the afa are working really hard

01:02:40.780 to do that but if we keep it to ourselves and it's something we just do at our house in private

01:02:49.580 and we don't talk about it and it's you know you keep it a secret that's cool for you maybe

01:02:55.900 maybe if you're super lucky maybe it's cool for one of your kids but it doesn't bring our folk

01:03:03.340 home it doesn't elevate ausitru to something worthy of our gods and this goes back to the

01:03:08.140 beginning of tonight's conversation if you genuinely believe in our gods and they've blessed

01:03:13.340 us with the other, with the furious inspiration to build and to do and to accomplish.

01:03:25.560 Missing the mark if you're not actively doing this in a way to build something for our children

01:03:30.600 and our children's children.

01:03:32.500 And that's, you know, those two things together really factor into what we mean when we talk

01:03:37.200 about modern or forward-facing house of truth.

01:03:41.300 I'm not super long-winded.

01:03:43.340 but freya i saw over on the side about birth of your child congratulations that's fantastic

01:03:51.680 i'm excited to hear that um what do we got trent you're making some faces what's going on

01:03:58.460 uh that was because google chrome informed me that there was a time limit i didn't know that

01:04:03.960 was a thing and so i was trying to figure out how to get that off the screen but my camera was still

01:04:08.020 on so you could see every face I was making

01:04:10.140 in my boomer

01:04:12.040 rage towards the computer.

01:04:15.820 I feel that rage viscerally.

01:04:18.740 Yeah.

01:04:19.880 What can you do?

01:04:24.180 So,

01:04:25.900 Brandy asks, go to the East.

01:04:28.500 You and your lovely wife are both 0.98

01:04:29.940 house of truth. How has this

01:04:32.060 strengthened both your faith and

01:04:33.980 your marriage?

01:04:38.020 Well, 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.

01:04:53.440 they're the same thing. To give an example, I suppose, if I were, so I've been house true long

01:05:06.740 enough that I've, before I met my wife, I dated a few girls in my college and stuff that kind of

01:05:13.740 knew I was house true, but it wasn't their thing because I'm in the Bible belt. And if I were going

01:05:18.380 to do bloat or something. I had to be like, Hey, I'm going to go do my weird pagan stuff. You know,

01:05:23.620 just don't bother me. Um, but with Madison, so for example, uh, Witten Young had a medical

01:05:32.180 emergency about a year and a half ago and, uh, weren't sure if he was going to make it for a

01:05:36.720 minute. And so I just immediately told Madison, like, Hey, I have to go do a bloat to Frigga 0.87

01:05:41.180 right now. And, you know, she knew what that was and it wasn't a strange thing to her. It was like, 0.98

01:05:47.720 okay, cool. Yes, you should go do it. You know? Um, so that's helped, uh, having that kind of

01:05:54.840 familiarity and ease of just being able to live really. Uh, I, I, I just can't imagine what it

01:06:06.260 would be like to not be in this position as kind of insensitive as that may sound. Uh,

01:06:13.360 yeah it just and because i got her into also true too i kind of got to watch her sort of

01:06:22.360 experience things that i experienced when i was 18 or 19 uh you know sort of feeling the presence

01:06:29.220 of the icier for the first time or kind of seeing an answered prayer that's been a really big thing

01:06:35.920 for us uh and i won't bother any everybody's long stories and details in that regard unless

01:06:42.220 specifically asked i guess but it it's just been a really great experience and it just makes so

01:06:49.260 much sense you know our ancestors when they married they were pretty much always the same

01:06:55.260 faith and i no offense to anybody that is not in my very blessed position but i highly recommend it

01:07:03.740 And it's, it really is the best way to live.

01:07:08.820 Um, yeah, I, so, and some of this is generational.

01:07:17.420 If we're doing our job right, every generation that goes by, there should be more and more

01:07:23.960 of us who are able to build our marriages and our families within the Aus True Folk

01:07:31.360 assembly um and i understand a lot of a lot of folks already find themselves you know married

01:07:39.840 and with a family when they come home to house of true and and maybe their their spouse isn't

01:07:45.440 on board at that time and i get that and you know nobody's out here asking you to you know break up

01:07:52.400 your family or anything else but i do think it's fair to acknowledge that it's the best situation 1.00

01:07:59.040 It's the optimal situation for you to find somebody within the Oust-A-True Folk Assembly to build a family with. 0.89

01:08:08.380 And Trent and I can both say this from experience. 1.00

01:08:10.420 I've, you know, I, yeah, Mandy is the first person I've ever been with that was also Oust-A-True.

01:08:23.100 And, you know, it wasn't like she was a plus one that came to Oust-A-True.

01:08:27.660 she was technically an AFA member before I was. So there wasn't, and it's one of those things you

01:08:40.100 may not notice or you may not see until you see the difference or the contrast. But as somebody

01:08:46.680 who, you know, was in a lot of, you know, I say a lot of, who was in a number of relationships

01:08:51.120 before, you know, my, before I found Mandy, um, the difference is huge.

01:08:59.120 The more you can bring your life into harmony, bring all the pieces of your life into a harmonious

01:09:08.400 whole, that's how things are supposed to be.

01:09:11.840 Our whole concept of sacrality, of holiness, is just that.

01:09:19.100 It is being whole.

01:09:21.120 Not being broken apart, not being separated, but being a fully functioning, integrated whole.

01:09:29.400 In 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.

01:09:48.020 We 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.

01:09:58.900 They're a different person at, you know, whatever hobby thing that they do.

01:10:03.860 They'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.

01:10:10.940 the more of that you can tidy up and bring into harmony the better your life is and i say that

01:10:19.000 through experience the more i've been able to you know at first when i first started out i didn't

01:10:27.700 realize other people practiced house of truth that didn't last long i found the afa and i and i found

01:10:33.640 that relatively quickly but i thought i was the only person doing this and i felt really isolated

01:10:39.080 And it wasn't something I could tell people about because it's this, you know, odd, crazy thing.

01:10:44.380 And they're just going to think I'm, you know, a lunatic or whatever.

01:10:46.920 So I didn't.

01:10:49.080 And, you know, early on, it made a big difference when I was also true with my friends.

01:10:57.400 And, yes, some people laughed at me or whatever.

01:10:59.240 But 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.

01:11:07.560 And 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.

01:11:19.780 My mother got it, though, or at least got that it was something that I did.

01:11:24.740 And it was it was neat.

01:11:26.160 There was a couple of times that she was able to, you know, quasi participate like she stood with me and bloat before.

01:11:34.120 um not really being all in but you know she got that it was very serious to me the more she was

01:11:42.140 around me as I practiced it and as part of my life not having to be two different people around

01:11:47.520 my mother and around you know my normal life that was huge uh I was always open about it in

01:11:55.320 other relationships I was in but it's not like they were participating in it with me and that

01:12:00.100 made it, you know, less good. It's been awesome that, you know, my wife and I are both Alcetru and

01:12:07.700 we're raising our daughter in DAFA. And this is such a massive part of our life and who we are.

01:12:14.440 It's where all of our, our very best friends are, are Alcetru. People that are family to us are

01:12:21.420 Alcetru and we've built our life around it. It makes everything so much better. And unless you've

01:12:27.700 experienced it. There's no way for me to sell you on it or to convince you of just how big of a deal

01:12:34.080 it is, but it is the biggest deal. But yeah, and I remember the moment that, and this was a really

01:12:42.560 cool thing too. And I've always, you know, worn my hammer out. I've been asked to at work, every

01:12:46.680 place I've worked. I've been very open about that because it's important. And that took a weight off

01:12:52.040 my shoulders as well um but when my because i mentioned my father my stepmother you know thought

01:12:59.720 this didn't really take it that seriously but i invited them to my wedding and when we got what

01:13:08.200 we got married at odin's off them coming out and being there because they spent the whole weekend

01:13:15.240 with us at Odin's Hoth. Them seeing the Hoth, being in the Hoth, being around

01:13:22.840 Ausitura all weekend, it clicked for them. Like, no, this is real. Wow. This that my son's doing,

01:13:30.700 this is a real thing. This is a very serious thing. And this is important. And they've looked

01:13:35.540 at it very differently ever since. And that was a real big moment for me too. So live,

01:13:41.220 live holistically incorporate the gods into every part of your life and your life will be much

01:13:48.560 better for it i promise that um what else we got going on

01:13:54.940 uh brandy asks gothi and i'll say you're gothi other than the lore have there been any music

01:14:06.280 books or poetry that have inspired you spiritually trent uh pop out answer not really that i can

01:14:15.320 think of no i've been i saw that question come up in the queue and i've been thinking about this

01:14:19.480 whole time and i i really can't know the stories um and the have them all and all that are enough

01:14:26.840 for me and then i and then things that have happened in the afa every bloat i go through

01:14:31.400 every sumble i attend every vns episode i listen to or participate in every one of those influences

01:14:38.440 me but um or inspires me spiritually but no not really i don't really do the listening to

01:14:45.260 alsatru like viking music i don't don't really read poetry or books i'm not that interesting

01:14:52.680 in that regard i guess so uh no uh and no mandy megadeth has not inspired me spiritually that's

01:15:00.020 just good music. You're half right on that last statement. It is not inspirational, but it's also

01:15:09.560 not good. Yeah, it's a weak sauce answer. There's got to be books and films and things that you've

01:15:25.920 had in your life that has inspired you spiritually that are not specifically our lore um during this

01:15:32.800 broadcast let me yeah i some of yost turner's writings on uh it was his

01:15:44.720 true it doesn't that doesn't count yost is also true well yeah no not gonna inspire me

01:15:52.480 in regards to

01:15:54.920 I'm not going to read

01:15:58.520 a comic book

01:16:00.940 or something and be like,

01:16:02.860 oh, inspiration.

01:16:05.360 It's not going to happen.

01:16:09.320 All right.

01:16:10.160 So

01:16:10.600 I will give more deeply

01:16:13.980 of myself to this answer.

01:16:16.160 there's lots of stuff and it's hard to tell because I find a lot of things inspirational

01:16:29.060 trying to think of things that I've read and consumed that are particularly inspirational

01:16:39.740 outside of AlsaTrue related stuff and

01:16:44.100 I mean shoot there's quite a bit and it's not

01:16:50.540 it's hard when you get to be my age and you start like trying to go back over what was

01:17:05.880 influential and what wasn't because so many things have an influence that you don't necessarily

01:17:12.660 perceive at the time but do a lot to shape where you're at and

01:17:18.900 how your thoughts develop um I think the uh

01:17:27.520 Robert E. Howard short stories were important. They're inspirational. They're, again, it's kind

01:17:36.980 of, it's kind of like Trent's, you know, disparaging analogy about comic books,

01:17:43.080 but realistically it's fantastical short stories, but they're cool and they're inspirational and

01:17:51.300 they're exciting. And they're about, you know, living life in a, in a visceral way. They're

01:17:57.440 about, you know, being heroic and these bigger than life tales of doing stuff. And that's always

01:18:06.340 been inspirational to me. Shoot. When I was a little kid and just putting this out there and

01:18:10.840 it may be silly, but I'm going to be honest, stuff that really informed who I was and developed a lot

01:18:16.540 of inspiration for me as a kid are you know larger than life 80s action hero things like

01:18:24.380 professional wrestling and Hulk Hogan influenced me as a kid because I was super patriotic and I 0.89

01:18:31.920 was super you know the big muscly dude setting everything right and going and uh whooping up 0.82

01:18:38.920 on the bad guys it was really inspirational to me as a as a young as a as a boy who would one

01:18:45.340 day become a man to think about those things um you know anything that sylvester salone ever did

01:18:51.640 it's funny because the camera angles would make him look really huge and stuff and he's

01:18:56.440 you know fairly tiny in real life but those bigger action heroes and it's kind of unfortunate

01:19:04.360 the way that arnold schwarzenegger has evolved but at the time you know he was really inspirational

01:19:10.360 to me in a lot of ways too. Seeing male figures that were heroic, strong, masculine white men

01:19:19.740 out there doing heroic man stuff raised a lot of us in the 80s to value masculinity and those

01:19:30.320 kind of things. That stuff inspired me a lot in some different ways. So I was lame in high school

01:19:42.080 and in junior high and whatever. It's like I was consuming these things, but my life was completely

01:19:47.840 incongruent with them. And there came a point, and it was right that winter between 1999 and 2000,

01:19:56.060 where I decided, you know what, shoot, I look up to all these things, yet my life has nothing to do

01:20:02.120 with any of these things. I'm going to make an effort and I'm going to try to be more like the

01:20:09.140 things that inspired me instead of just sitting back and being inspired by them. And so that got

01:20:15.580 me to start going to the gym, to start lifting weights, to start eating and trying to grow and

01:20:20.620 get bigger and stronger and do physical things. And that was a huge part of my life. Unless I've

01:20:28.800 been sick or out of town, I go to the gym every single day since January of 2000. And I mean,

01:20:39.420 I'm sure that I've racked up a couple months worth of rest days over the last 24 years. But

01:20:46.200 But 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.

01:21:09.580 Because like I was saying, I would idolize these big, larger than life people.

01:21:13.840 And I'd never, you know, I'd never done anything.

01:21:17.040 I'd never been that guy. 0.92

01:21:20.720 It was always this like lame, nerdy dude.

01:21:22.700 And I'll always remember it ended up being at the same bar that one day I would bounce at.

01:21:26.740 But I remember the moment because I was used to, before I started working out, when I was lame,

01:21:33.500 I was used to people bumping into me and then getting mad at me like it was my fault.

01:21:37.840 especially people that didn't look like the rest of us so I remember that would happen frequently

01:21:47.600 we were was at the bar and had a beer whatever and so this guy

01:21:51.280 a black gentleman he bumped into me and he turned around to like give me a piece of his mind

01:21:59.080 and then he looked at me he's like because he started out he's like what the and he turned

01:22:04.280 around. He's like, no, my bad. I'm sorry, man. Can I buy you a drink? And that moment was meant

01:22:10.980 something to me because it was such a different interaction than I'd ever had. And it was because

01:22:15.640 I'd been going to the gym and putting on some size and it affects how you carry yourself and

01:22:21.320 how you do everything. And very shortly after that, I was like, man, you know, I, I talk all

01:22:27.340 this warrior ethos stuff. I've never been in a fight. I'm, you know, I don't know what to do.

01:22:32.760 I don't not comfortable with conflict, not comfortable with these things.

01:22:36.160 So I found the roughest place in town.

01:22:39.140 And I'm like, cool, I'm going to bounce here and I'm going to figure it out.

01:22:41.800 I'm going to jump in the deep end and we'll see what's up.

01:22:44.080 And yeah, it taught me so much about myself.

01:22:47.140 All of that was inspired by, you know, those kind of silly 1980s action movies and 1980s WWF wrestling.

01:22:59.400 But yeah, those are goofy things, but they inspired me a lot.

01:23:02.760 honestly music inspires me a lot too and in a really different way and i can't really

01:23:09.720 it's not like it all moves me to do other stuff but it touches me i'm that guy that like tears up

01:23:16.680 really really easy when i'm listening to music or watching something um

01:23:23.960 but it is spiritually inspirational because it is transcendent it makes me experience

01:23:32.760 an emotion or a feeling in a really different and visceral way that i wouldn't have otherwise

01:23:38.760 and i'm happy that i get to do that i'm not sure if anybody else has that i don't really know how

01:23:44.200 to put it into words because it's not like i can think of this one song that changed my life or

01:23:49.000 something but there are so okay so silly personal note and i did this last month

01:23:57.560 i am not capable of listening to the garth brooks song cowboy bill without crying like a baby

01:24:10.200 and it's silly because it's not like it's silly i genuinely cannot listen to that song without

01:24:18.800 weeping because that song moved me at a time that it just hit me right it was inspirational

01:24:24.320 books wise I want to say a lot like a lot of fiction but I've never really been one that

01:24:30.940 reads a lot of fiction a lot of history things inspire me it's hard to say the book inspired me

01:24:36.980 because it's the history it's the historical person or event that inspires me but I wouldn't

01:24:41.620 know about it if I hadn't read the books um shoot too many too many to count but I've always

01:24:51.080 one of the things that was really inspirational and still is and uh you guys are probably all

01:24:56.920 familiar with his man in the arena quote from that speech that he gave but president theodore

01:25:02.740 roosevelt i read this three-part series on his life and it was really it's really cool and i'm

01:25:10.300 trying to think of man i've got it over on my shelf but i'm trying to think of who wrote it um

01:25:14.780 absolutely amazing because i went in knowing nothing about uh about president roosevelt

01:25:22.340 the the good one of the two um and it

01:25:28.100 i just blew my mind this guy's life was amazing he the most adventurous life you could imagine

01:25:36.800 of somebody at that station it was just really really profound to me and that one hit me out

01:25:41.880 nowhere because again i went in with no expectation not really knowing what i was getting into i think

01:25:46.040 i read it on some off-handed advice by my dad not about the book itself but about you know stuff to

01:25:54.680 read and something about teddy roosevelt like looked for biographies and this one really it

01:26:01.560 was extremely inspirational and i would encourage everybody to read it and i will try to figure out

01:26:06.920 the author uh here by the end of the broadcast for you but that was really inspirational

01:26:11.720 So I got that.

01:26:19.340 So the question does say what inspired you spiritually,

01:26:23.300 which is why my answer was bad.

01:26:25.480 But if we're going to talk about things that inspired us in general,

01:26:28.140 I'll list a few since you listed your embarrassing thing with the Garth Brooks

01:26:33.240 song.

01:26:35.480 We have similar enough backstories being like nerdy guys that tried to escape

01:26:40.140 being nerdy guys that some of this is going to sound repetitive um tried um

01:26:49.260 tried in my case maybe i'm still working on it

01:26:53.420 so walker texas ranger was the first thing i recall watching where i was like oh man this

01:26:59.260 guy beating up random people asking him a question the wrong way this is the epitome of cool so that

01:27:05.820 that was kind of my first taste of wanting to be like a manly man. Uh,

01:27:09.880 then I got really into dragon ball Z. I still enjoy dragon ball Z. Uh,

01:27:14.980 I was playing one of the video games with my little brother just yesterday.

01:27:19.780 Um, so yeah, if anybody's a dragon ball Z fan,

01:27:22.860 you want to nerd out with me about that, we can do that. Um, books, uh,

01:27:28.200 the Lord of the Rings as you know, common as that one probably is.

01:27:32.020 I always liked Aragorn, you know, he was kind of,

01:27:34.800 this man on a mission he didn't let anything stand in the way of that or stop that he had his

01:27:42.060 his vision of what needed to happen he had his duty and in the books it that was even more

01:27:47.880 pronounced uh in the movies when he's looking in the palantir and sort of speaking to sauron he's

01:27:56.900 like uh afraid of sauron almost but in the books he uh he can tell that sauron fears him and fears

01:28:05.300 his becoming king and it's really really powerful moment he leads you know uh his people no matter

01:28:14.340 the cost to himself uh yeah it's really powerful stuff as far as music that inspires me generally

01:28:22.180 just various thrash metal bands. I squatted 370 pounds for the first time a couple weeks

01:28:30.700 ago, and I wish I could tell you the exact song. It was almost certainly some Pantera

01:28:37.240 song from the late 90s that I had blasting at a probably dangerous volume while I put

01:28:43.740 my knees and lower back in, in danger. Uh, so yeah, um, that's all I got in that regard.

01:28:56.600 No worries. So I'm looking over at the chat room a little bit because I have,

01:28:59.800 I don't know, rambled on some of these questions. So I'm trying to catch up with where we're at.

01:29:07.440 There's a theme going on that I want to set the story straight on. Um,

01:29:11.740 um,

01:29:13.740 there is a difference between being aware of politics and talking about politics and being

01:29:22.380 politically active and just being obnoxious complaining about stuff

01:29:29.880 there's nothing wrong with taking an involvement in politics I think that it's a misnomer when

01:29:38.880 people talk about being political and it almost always equals being obnoxious

01:29:48.600 either by consistently wallowing in self-pity or by always bringing up everything negative

01:29:59.160 or by going out and you know dressing up threateningly and scaring old people

01:30:06.120 What 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.

01:30:21.940 when politics politics if politics just equals

01:30:28.180 like black pill purity spiraling then yeah it's really pointless and it's kind of

01:30:35.640 soul crushing so we slap it down a lot because it's distracting you can engage in politics in

01:30:43.480 a way that's uplifting and that's hopeful and that's doing something positive and i think that's

01:30:49.200 a really good thing to do. No part of our faith encourages one to remove themselves from

01:30:55.820 the current events of their time or not to be aware of them and interact with them in a way

01:31:03.060 that's constructive. The reason that we try to move away from that is because in our circles,

01:31:11.780 certainly in the ones that I'm familiar with, it's never ending, and it's obnoxious,

01:31:20.040 and it's always the same stuff, and we all get it, and it's just pointless, and

01:31:27.000 more than pointless, it sucks people into a doom spiral, and that's not what we're doing.

01:31:37.260 So a lot of the bigger socio-political things that we see in the world that we don't like,

01:31:43.940 many of our audience all get it on the same team. We get the same basic things. We don't

01:31:49.140 like the same basic things. But instead of all the things we don't like, on this show,

01:31:54.640 we want to talk about all the things that we do like. And what's more, more than talk about them,

01:32:00.240 We 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.

01:32:12.740 And the bigger geopolitical things out there, most of us are not in a position to do much to make any difference.

01:32:18.880 But 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.

01:32:32.960 Trent and I are extremely fortunate and extremely blessed that we are in a position to impact the Ask True Folk Assembly. 0.96

01:32:42.140 Is it the millions of people that make up, you know, the white race of people? 0.99

01:32:48.880 No, 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.

01:33:03.220 yeah globally that's a pretty small number but compared to most average people who

01:33:13.540 are disconnected who don't have a community to take part in who don't have a way to express

01:33:22.100 the hopes and dreams they have for the world sometimes those people only get to affect their

01:33:29.020 maybe their close friends, maybe their family, maybe five people, maybe 10 people. So it's a

01:33:35.640 huge blessing for us that we can affect, you know, hundreds, possibly thousands of people.

01:33:42.040 And we want the people who are here in listening to Victory Never Sleeps, or, you know, if they're

01:33:48.900 here right now watching Victory Never Sleeps, to join us and be part of what we're doing. We're at

01:33:54.940 a stage in the development of modern Ausitrude where there's a lot of things we can do and

01:33:59.780 a lot of things we can accomplish, and a lot of ways we can make life better for us, for

01:34:06.340 our friends, for people we care about, for our children, for our grandchildren. There's

01:34:11.220 so much that we can do if we're working together towards it. And if we over-focus on bigger

01:34:17.500 black pill doom spiral politics we squander opportunity to just put that down for a minute

01:34:27.160 and focus on making something better or doing something positive and there's a lot of opportunity

01:34:32.060 for that in the afa there's a lot of opportunity for us to help build our dreams and that's where

01:34:38.660 we want to put a lot of our focus but don't there's nothing wrong with being politically aware

01:34:43.060 or seeing things politically or being politically active don't please don't ever get that message

01:34:47.540 from us because that's not it's not a thing sometimes when we have an overabundance of

01:34:56.180 obnoxious politics from folks it's easy for people to want to counterbalance like no we don't talk

01:35:02.020 about politics that's dumb that's not true and it's not fair it but it's easy to see why some

01:35:08.420 folks do that sometimes but please don't think that's a verboten thing it's just not the point 0.84

01:35:13.060 of what we're doing we're doing something religious the the percentage of religious

01:35:19.620 talk versus political talk is is what we're really trying to get at and politics you know

01:35:24.500 nobody likes to hear complaints what they want to hear is solutions you know it's it's so easy to

01:35:32.500 complain about all the things we don't like but it's also pointless but when we talk about things

01:35:36.340 we do like their stuff we can do together i forget who mentioned in the chat room a while

01:35:40.500 back and i apologize about how they never met another australian person you should fix that

01:35:47.620 i don't know where you're located um if you are in the united states we've got tons of people all

01:35:55.300 over and we would love to get you connected and fix that for you if you are in europe we've got

01:36:00.820 members there as well we have members in 14 countries right now so if you're not a member

01:36:07.300 of the astro focus and we would love you to join if you haven't met another outsider let's fix that

01:36:12.740 regardless and uh it's a it's a whole different thing when you're able to experience this in a

01:36:18.820 community even if that community is just a few other people it makes a lot of difference so

01:36:22.820 we'd love to help you change that if it's something you're interested in um and on the political

01:36:27.860 question. So the question was, I hate to bring up politics, but do you guys think Ragnarok

01:36:31.540 has come? Are we waiting to hear the galler horn? Trent, what do you say?

01:36:39.840 No. So you can look back at any period in history and you can pretty much be sure that

01:36:48.620 a good chunk of the population thought Ragnarok was on its way. Christians constantly think 1.00

01:36:54.220 that the end times are upon us um muslims jews buddhists uh any any faith that you know you do 1.00

01:37:03.040 enough of this doom spiraling like the ulterior ghost you mentioned you're going to think that 1.00

01:37:07.180 the end of the world is near surely things can't get worse right and not to well doom spiral things

01:37:13.540 can always get worse things are actually really good right now in a lot of ways uh witten young

01:37:19.440 and i did an episode on this concept kind of a while back about uh the idea of uh building gimli

01:37:25.900 so uh for those that don't know only is the name of the the golden home that rises out of the water

01:37:34.740 after ragnarok where uh the gods will reside and rebuild everything after the destruction of the

01:37:41.500 cosmos and the afa is is that in a sense not literally of course but we're building that

01:37:50.520 right now so no ragnarok is uh is not happening as far as i can tell um i i get i get the um

01:38:02.980 wanting to think that though i went through that same you know kind of period when i first got into

01:38:08.940 house true because that was 2015 and like you know gay marriage got legalized like right after

01:38:16.040 that and a whole bunch of other funny political stuff started happening and i was like oh yeah

01:38:20.680 ragnarok's definitely coming and you know now it's been 10 years and my life is categorically

01:38:27.260 better in every sense since this now it's hard to feel like ragnarok is is here

01:38:31.580 yeah i

01:38:34.580 sorry i'm choking on one of these little tiny oranges that i was wolfing down um

01:38:42.320 what trent said i think that everything is a this is a little bit bigger of a topic but

01:38:56.540 it'll start here and evolve um

01:38:59.120 um we see the world through our own lens

01:39:08.840 and as a gothi we deal with this in counseling a lot

01:39:15.680 so you're everybody's got their own baseline based on their experiences how they react to

01:39:25.220 trauma or things in their life so you may have a call from a veteran that's struggling with ptsd

01:39:38.260 issues that watched lots of his buddies die in really horrific ways and really saw some stuff

01:39:46.900 stuff and their baseline may be they're accustomed to a lot of trauma and you have to counsel them

01:39:57.160 and help them based on their life and not based on someone else's that same day you may talk to

01:40:06.460 someone and they lost a family pet that died of old age and that may have been the most traumatic

01:40:14.740 they've ever experienced in their whole life. You can't compare those two things

01:40:21.880 because you're doing, you know, you're doing folks a disservice. We all experience trauma

01:40:26.860 based on what we've seen. So it's really tempting when we see things that are drastically askew

01:40:35.160 from our values happen in the world and be like, man, this must be the end. This is terrible.

01:40:40.700 but i mean imagine your whole village is dying of the black plague and two-thirds of the people 0.97

01:40:50.720 you know are dead that weren't a month ago that seems more apocalyptic than gay marriage 0.98

01:41:00.260 um when you have you know when the mongols come over the hill and are building skull pyramids 0.95

01:41:12.040 it seems more apocalyptic everybody experiences things in a really different way i mean 0.98

01:41:19.420 if you're in pompeii and the vesuvius erupts that seems like this must be the end of time

01:41:28.600 And for you, it probably is for at least your existence in Midgard.

01:41:34.200 So it's really, we all see that through our lens.

01:41:37.980 The idea of Ragnarok, very realistically, our myth cycle exists in mythic time.

01:41:46.240 It has happened. It is happening. It will happen again.

01:41:49.120 It 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.

01:42:00.720 And that's a hard thing to internalize, but these things happen.

01:42:09.860 Reshuffling of the deck happens.

01:42:13.300 Cycles of great things and then calamity happen.

01:42:19.120 And 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.

01:42:38.200 So, and this is kind of, this is where I'm saying this branches off into a lot of things.

01:42:44.960 Trent 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.

01:43:01.320 The end was going to happen within their life.

01:43:04.340 And then it didn't.

01:43:05.360 and then you know well the next generation will surely he'll be back this time and the world will

01:43:11.340 come to an end and we'll reset okay well maybe not well maybe we'll wait a hundred years a hundred's

01:43:16.620 a really convenient number cool when that happens that's the end and they would do this constantly

01:43:24.440 and a whole bunch of them did it um it was a really big theme around the first you know the

01:43:31.140 first millennium. So the year 1000, that was going to be it. Everything's going to get reset.

01:43:37.180 You know, surely this is the end of time. This is the last thing. We'll see all of this stuff.

01:43:41.460 And then it didn't happen. But we see in modern times, different sects. We see a lot of

01:43:48.060 smaller religious communities, what would be called cults, that are based on like, no,

01:43:55.200 the end is now and then it's not um i was i was um i wouldn't say i was raised to jehovah's witness

01:44:02.560 but i was jehovah's witness for a time when i was just out of high school and that was the thing

01:44:07.760 like it was an active an active push to like hey guys the end is coming like any day now so

01:44:17.120 don't like they were telling people not to buy new cars because you wouldn't get the full life

01:44:26.220 of your vehicle it's not a sound investment you've got other things to spend your money on because

01:44:30.380 no jesus is coming back like now um they would encourage people not to go to college people that

01:44:37.780 right now would be you know in their 40s and 50s don't get an education don't pursue a career don't

01:44:45.180 do any of these things because no, the second coming is right around the corner. You need to

01:44:50.080 spend your time preaching the gospel. And then it didn't. And you have a lot of people that have

01:44:57.880 wasted so much time banking on an apocalypse rather than putting that energy towards building

01:45:07.500 a life that they had. Excuse me. You see it different in maybe circles that some of the

01:45:14.540 you are more familiar with or whatever you see it with preppers and not everybody who practices you

01:45:22.460 know self-sufficiency is in this category i'm not saying that at all but there have been a lot of

01:45:27.740 people that get carried away and invest their entire life's fortune in making some kind of a

01:45:34.860 bunker or a bomb shelter and stalking it and being obsessed with preparing for disasters that just

01:45:42.140 don't happen and i've seen that my entire life with people talking about how you know it's all

01:45:48.620 over just few you know any day now everything's gonna come crashing down any day now the economy's

01:45:54.140 gonna collapse now america's you know america's gonna fall any day now literally heard that for

01:46:01.500 you know 30 years or more what what happens is yes one day somebody's gonna be right

01:46:12.140 but every other time they're going to be wrong and it's a really easy it's a

01:46:22.100 it's a form of escapism to focus on that and put all your eggs in that basket

01:46:30.500 especially when there's not an imminent you know threat of that happening anytime soon

01:46:37.280 There's so many opportunities that pass you by if you're always focused on fantasies of a reset.

01:46:45.480 And we've seen that a lot in our time.

01:46:47.120 I think all of us go on those kind of mental exercises.

01:46:51.660 You know, there was all of society's had a common obsession with like zombie apocalypse the last 20 years.

01:47:00.140 Like that's just around the corner.

01:47:01.480 Some disease, some something.

01:47:02.820 society is going to collapse into this zombie you know mad max land boat with zombies and

01:47:10.480 again i think that we all see an appeal in like everything needs a reset and i get that i get a

01:47:19.660 lot of that thought process but it's pointless to long for something that doesn't exist instead of

01:47:30.780 trying to build what you can with what you have. It's very easy if you're always waiting on

01:47:40.860 something external to reshuffle everything for you. You're going to be greatly unsatisfied.

01:47:48.520 Your life will be a lot better if you spend the time and the resources that you have making

01:47:53.000 things better in a tangible way that you, your family, your friends can experience and enjoy.

01:47:58.060 One 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.

01:48:23.080 build the world we want accomplish the things that we want to see accomplished

01:48:26.880 that's a big part of this

01:48:29.140 anyways

01:48:34.100 was tearshoff chosen to be at sigerheim out of a special reverence or did it just line up

01:48:45.340 in the order with the establishment of new hoffs

01:48:48.380 both

01:48:50.720 thanks for that trent yes both um

01:49:00.240 yeah it it lined up right but i think that was

01:49:05.600 i think that was one of those synchronicities that we talk about that's the working of earth

01:49:12.380 um it lined up in a really really beautiful and a really special way and i think that's

01:49:20.720 I 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.

01:49:39.620 that's our next half in the sequence we could just do that at siggerheim but that wasn't the

01:49:45.940 plan and that was never what we wanted to do uh tiershoff came up in the right ordering of things

01:49:54.180 and uh i think it's really auspicious that that's where that's going to be located i'm very excited

01:49:58.820 about it um trent what are some good ways to begin connecting with the gods

01:50:06.420 honestly just um take something to uh give them as a gift and just go speak to them um

01:50:16.040 the first the first like bloat i i guess you could call it prayer really is more appropriate

01:50:24.340 term that i did and i'll get back stories to fill time and kind of so you guys can understand where

01:50:29.000 my head was at at the time was um uh in boot camp so i was army infantry 11 bravo uh i was doing

01:50:37.980 something called one station unit training so i did regular soldier training and then infantry

01:50:43.480 school all in one go it was from like april to august of 2016 and uh there's this one last

01:50:52.820 final ruck march you do in infantry school or at least you used to and uh

01:50:58.320 it was not it was something like eight miles but they you know weighed our rucks down extra we

01:51:08.940 had just gotten done with a long field training exercise hadn't showered in like a couple weeks

01:51:13.940 you know and everybody stinks and everything sucks and it's the georgia heaps it was at fort

01:51:19.700 benning in the middle of august and so i i hadn't really spoken to the icier by myself at that point 0.64

01:51:29.620 i'd been to a few um a few rituals because i'd been to a star on the south just before that but

01:51:35.480 my first time interacting solo with the icier was um my rucksack was falling off of the frame on the

01:51:44.140 top so it was it was gonna like destroy my lower back to make this uh to make this ruck march

01:51:51.560 complete and i weighed about 120 pounds at the time i was like the third smallest guy in the

01:51:56.380 whole company and so what i did was uh i poured one of those little mre drink mixes for like

01:52:04.040 purple kool-aid or whatever into my cans and i spoke to thor and i asked him to give me the

01:52:12.260 strength you know give this scrawny kid the strength to make it to uh honor hill and be

01:52:18.480 awarded the title of infantryman and uh one of those cool synchronicities right after i did that

01:52:26.240 and i poured it on the ground uh the lightning struck and there was thunder and everybody groaned

01:52:31.420 because it was about to start raining uh and i did make it through that ruck march and everybody

01:52:37.100 thought i was a crazy person for doing that with a really crappy ruck that was falling off its own

01:52:42.140 frame uh all that to say um just praying to the icr if you have need to or just speaking to them

01:52:52.460 letting them know that you see that you're loyal to them and that you acknowledge them and that

01:52:59.180 you love them and that you honor them and it sounds it might sound silly at first but a big

01:53:04.700 part of Alcestru and any faith really is sort of suspending this modern cynicism that we have

01:53:12.200 nowadays and opening your heart as Christian as that sounds keeping an open heart and open mind

01:53:18.500 and just giving it a try really and that's what we always tell people to do when uh you know

01:53:25.100 they're thinking about Alcestru and they're thinking about coming to a Hoff or they're

01:53:28.100 thinking about coming to event just give it a try and come into it openly and you'll be sold

01:53:35.240 yeah absolutely um people overthink this a lot and

01:53:44.560 sometimes it's because of a lack of familiarity other times it's because of an abundance of piety

01:53:51.200 like you just don't want to get it wrong you don't want to do something incorrectly or offensive and

01:53:55.200 And that's certainly appreciated.

01:53:58.640 But people look at religious practice sometimes as a very complex set of ritual structure to do anything.

01:54:15.060 And I don't believe that that's how it is in Ausatru.

01:54:18.820 it's very fundamental to who we are and it's very much about relationships and

01:54:29.620 building um building connections between building relationships between

01:54:40.360 conscious entities and I'm trying to think of the word that it's hard because I don't think

01:54:47.740 language encompasses it well but you learn how to build relationships from when you're first born

01:54:54.700 into the world you learn that before you have language you learn it that predates all these

01:55:01.100 different things how to communicate with things and build bonds with things you build that with

01:55:09.500 your parents you build relationships with every person that you come into contact with more or

01:55:16.060 less to one degree or another but we learn those very basic things and the more heartfelt

01:55:24.940 and unencumbered by complications you make it the better you are as a place to start now there's all

01:55:34.940 kind of extra that you can do to enhance it or to do ritual there's a lot of things you can do and

01:55:42.300 we're happy to talk about those but fundamentally

01:55:48.220 there is a point where you are not reaching out to the gods and then there is a point where you are

01:55:55.340 all of the study and pondering and you can be an expert on the lore and an expert on ancient

01:56:04.700 ausitru practice and fluent in old norse and you can you can be an expert on the gods and have

01:56:13.900 never once made an offering to them or never once said a prayer to them um that's not ausitru you

01:56:23.500 can also be ignorant to all of those things but realize they're the god of they're the gods of

01:56:29.740 your blood and your bone and you want to have a relationship with them you can know none of our

01:56:38.620 and not be an expert on any of those things and say hey odin i was listening to victory never

01:56:46.060 sleeps don't know what i'm doing but i i'm here and i want to come home to also true

01:56:52.220 here's you know here's a shot here's a stick of incense here's you know uh some tobacco whatever

01:57:00.100 you do for your offering there's a lot of right ways to do it but the point is to do it and it

01:57:07.740 can start really simply um i've talked about this a lot when i first came home to ouster true i

01:57:12.000 wasn't you know i didn't wait until i had read all of the lore and done all of the things no it

01:57:19.980 It was Fancy Feast, Nick, but it was a shot of Goldschlager.

01:57:23.800 So 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.

01:57:46.180 I'm listening.

01:57:47.340 I want to come home.

01:57:48.620 i want to i want to know you better and i'd make an offering and i'd meditate and i'd open myself

01:57:55.100 and and hope that i would build that connection i felt it changed my life and i did that for a

01:58:01.420 period of time and one of the offerings that and this sounds so stupid but it it's what i did i

01:58:07.180 didn't know any better but i knew that freya had cats that pulled her chariot and that she liked

01:58:13.980 gold so i poured a shot of goldschlager and i got some fancy feast for her cats with the little

01:58:24.140 shrimping and that was my offering and it's something if you're doing it right and you're

01:58:30.220 doing it heartfelt the piety's there and you're reaching out these are your gods

01:58:36.140 and it's right for you to reach out even if you're not an expert

01:58:39.020 sometimes from a very very simple offering a really important relationship and connections

01:58:48.340 built um you know uh all father odin talks in the have them all about you know with a

01:58:55.840 half a loaf and and half a cup of a friend was made um something just as simple as you know

01:59:05.160 And pouring out a little beer and saying a prayer can go a long way to opening that door.

01:59:15.860 So, yeah, that's what I would say.

01:59:24.980 Brandy asks, we have a lot of talented folk in our midst.

01:59:28.300 Can artistic endeavors such as art, carving, or music be a form of devotion to the Isir?

01:59:35.160 Let's say you, Trent.

01:59:37.120 Yeah, absolutely.

01:59:38.160 That's a pretty common form of devotion to the Aesir lately,

01:59:42.820 and I'm really, really glad it is.

01:59:44.900 It's really cool to see that kind of bloom,

01:59:47.860 and that has been a big part of forward-facing Alcatruz.

01:59:53.220 It is, you know, we don't –

01:59:58.860 the Aesir don't always need to be portrayed as Vikings or whatever.

02:00:04.560 they can be portrayed a bit more piously and stuff it but yeah to answer the question yes

02:00:12.620 um like what witness fawn does is the best example i think um the murals at all of our

02:00:18.520 hoffs and the reverence and piety that he puts into that those are those are a gift

02:00:25.420 to the icer and to us the folk and it helps us uh connect with the icer being able to look at them

02:00:33.720 The mural at Thor's Hof in particular, that was the first one he did, and still to this day is my favorite.

02:00:40.760 Think 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.

02:00:52.180 and when it's time to go up and hail Thor they get to look into Lord Thor's eyes you know as

02:00:58.800 they're portrayed at least and hail him and they get to feel that connection just a little bit

02:01:04.140 better because they can see him uh other good examples uh my wife does all of our pretty much

02:01:11.520 all of our AFA art that's not with and spawns murals actually and that stuff helps people a lot

02:01:19.960 We have a member in Tennessee, Rain Kinsler

02:01:24.200 She does lots of great art of our gods and goddesses 0.99

02:01:27.740 That sells at auctions and stuff

02:01:29.840 A lot of her art is hanging up at Njortzhoff right now

02:01:32.920 All these things are acts of devotion

02:01:35.420 They all bring glory to the Iseer

02:01:38.340 And they bring the folk closer to the Iseer

02:01:40.580 So they can give worship and honor to the Iseer

02:01:44.000 Yeah, absolutely

02:01:47.420 um so much of any offering has to do with intention um the end of the day there's no

02:01:59.540 shortage of mead and asgard they don't need the mead they need the gesture that's being made by

02:02:06.320 the offering of it um so putting your your devotion into any devotional act as an offering

02:02:15.300 to our gods you know being a member of the afa and contributing to our hafs and stuff that we're

02:02:21.940 doing that's an act of devotion to the gods volunteering to help out doing also true stuff is

02:02:30.180 that's an active devotion to our gods

02:02:34.740 making art that honors them be it music be it poetry be it sculpture or carving we have some

02:02:41.780 amazing um carvers uh painters uh i would imagine we have some amazing musicians now we do have

02:02:51.140 some amazing some really good musicians uh all of those things count it's giving of yourself

02:02:58.500 on something that means something to you putting that into something you're presenting before our

02:03:05.620 gods all of those things are acts of devotion and i think some of us need to you know recognize that

02:03:14.820 more or realize that i think a lot of people may and and this comes from a abundance of piety too

02:03:23.940 which is great but a lot of people may think they're not worthy or their offering's not good

02:03:29.700 enough or they need to wait until they have something really good to offer or they don't

02:03:35.540 want to you know man well my altar sucks when i have a really good altar then i'll go do don't

02:03:43.860 that's fine you can do all of that stuff later when you have those things in the meantime 0.73

02:03:49.860 offer what you do have the very act act of doing that means a lot um

02:04:00.420 i don't want to overextend but i think that a good fundamental when doing this

02:04:06.260 and this way over simplifies but those of you who've listened for a long time realize this i'm

02:04:12.100 i simplify these things down to cut out distraction and to get to the fundamentals

02:04:19.700 you can scale them up the gods are infinitely more than this but at the very least they are

02:04:27.940 the very best of people that's our if that's the only way we can know them and conceive them at

02:04:35.120 least they are that they're more than that and we all struggle to know how much more or to

02:04:42.080 know that more but at the very least the very best of people good and noble people appreciate

02:04:50.240 effort and thought and the energy you put into stuff

02:04:57.660 all of us realize that you know something valuable from somebody who's infinitely rich

02:05:09.380 that doesn't know you that doesn't really care but it's an easy enough thing for them to break

02:05:14.660 you off and give you something doesn't matter nearly as much as a humble offering from someone

02:05:20.820 who doesn't have a lot of means but that's given out of because they just really love you you know

02:05:27.140 if you've got a child that draws you a stick figure ridiculous piece of little kid art but

02:05:34.660 they made it for you because they love you and they give you a hug and give you this you know

02:05:40.100 hideous thing that they put on the paper that means so much more than something that may be

02:05:47.380 much more valuable but from somebody who it's not really heartfelt it's just kind of obligatory

02:05:53.460 and there wasn't that much put into it it's the love and the devotion that you put into the

02:05:57.780 offering that means so much and i think that in different cultures people are used to dealing with

02:06:10.180 deities that they conceive of as being very spiteful or very quick to be angry about everything

02:06:17.140 and if there's really prescribed way of doing offerings and then they get mad if you

02:06:24.900 don't do the right dance step that's not our faith and that's not indicative of the values

02:06:31.300 of our folk and the things that it means to be a noble aryan person but i think that that's clouded

02:06:38.580 our judgment on how to deal with the divine a lot so i think going back to those fundamentals

02:06:42.980 as a touchstone is very important okay so question how has the weave of weird played a role in your

02:07:03.460 lives and how do we best offer thanks for the threads which have brought us blessings

02:07:09.060 Trent. Um, weird has played a role in my life by, uh, I guess just bringing me here. You know,

02:07:18.620 uh, there's plenty of times in my life that I can think of, uh, where it, something would happen

02:07:27.080 and it just clicked. And I thought, okay, this is how this is supposed to go. Um, one example,

02:07:33.640 and probably the best example, I guess, is before I was like a super militant, obnoxious

02:07:39.860 atheist. And my buddy, still an AFA member to this day, actually Dalton Woodward, we

02:07:49.580 were in math class our senior year of high school, and he was telling me about this event

02:07:55.440 he had gone to, a Star on the South 2015. And just hearing about Stephen McNallan's

02:08:00.940 odin bloat um like flipped a switch in my brain and i was like i went from you know oh there is

02:08:07.700 no god everything sucks to okay this also true stuff is real and i need to make this my entire

02:08:14.140 life uh and i followed through with that clearly uh so uh moments like that i've had a lot of those

02:08:22.740 where it just, everything felt right, like it was happening, as it should.

02:08:30.340 As far as, this was the question, how we offer thanks for that.

02:08:37.720 Anytime I consult the runes, I pray to the Norns first.

02:08:44.180 And I start, I always start by thanking them for bringing me what they have

02:08:49.620 been putting me on the path that they've uh woven for me you know even even the bad times on that

02:08:56.420 path that made me who i am and gotten me to this you know great place i'm in now uh and so it that's

02:09:05.460 really what it is is you you thank them for it you can uh give them offerings just like you would

02:09:11.940 the ICR or your ancestors?

02:09:20.280 So it's, I appreciate the question.

02:09:28.420 It's hard to itemize because the more, the more that you live this faith and the more

02:09:37.300 that you bring it into your life um the more that you notice all of the different ways that um

02:09:54.820 that synchronicity and the connectivity of of earth and the weaving of that tapestry affects

02:10:04.020 your life and that's a big part of any um

02:10:16.100 it's part of a big part of our spirituality in general it's certainly a part of

02:10:20.260 the understanding of magical working and anything else is recognizing those synchronicities and

02:10:25.700 and making best use of them um the more i mentioned earlier the more that you bring

02:10:32.580 your life holistically in line with the gods and the more things start working right in a momentum

02:10:42.020 builds to where things start working in your favor and you start having experiencing the blessings

02:10:48.660 in in your day-to-day life i mean that i have been so deeply blessed in so so many ways they

02:10:58.580 are literally uncountable um the big ones obviously um being granted the the honor of

02:11:09.940 leading the afa is the ulceria gofi is an enormous blessing from the gods in a working of of earth

02:11:18.660 that has gone in in uh a tremendous blessing in my favor bringing my wife and i together

02:11:29.540 uh the the creation and growth of our daughter is a tremendous part of that the amazing

02:11:38.500 friendships that i've made through participating the astro folk assembly and those connections

02:11:45.780 that i've built are invaluable amazing experiences that i've had while participating in the afa

02:12:04.100 all of the good things in my life are a part of that weave and i can't draw individual threads

02:12:11.860 out as distinctly i'd be here all night but the blessings are extreme and a lot um i mentioned

02:12:20.100 you know ways to give offerings and give thanks but a big part of it is not just making offerings

02:12:28.180 every now and again that way but really internalizing those blessings and the fact

02:12:34.820 that you have been blessed and are experiencing those blessings from the iser being thankful

02:12:43.460 isn't a something that you do it's a state of being you express it through offerings and through

02:12:50.580 prayer and through stuff but it also is a matter of being aware of it being cognizant of it

02:12:57.140 acknowledging it in your life in your day-to-day and i think those day-to-day things are harder to

02:13:03.220 to adjust yourself to then on special occasions,

02:13:09.240 making a special offering, but both are really important.

02:13:17.840 What should newcomers know slash read slash understand

02:13:21.580 before attending a meetup, Trent?

02:13:25.620 That's a great question.

02:13:26.900 Pardon me, I wanted to say nothing show up.

02:13:29.640 Um, but so there was this, um, this big thing in Alcetru about 10 years ago where, uh, people

02:13:38.500 on the internet at least would call it the religion with homework.

02:13:41.700 And, uh, I thought that was really cool at the time.

02:13:45.060 Now I find it pretty obnoxious.

02:13:46.940 Um, but there's not, you don't have to be initiated into Alcetru.

02:13:54.940 It'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.

02:14:08.600 so in a way nothing that said it is good to read and study and learn as much as possible

02:14:16.180 it is good and it's fun frankly so i would encourage you to come to an afa event first

02:14:23.840 and then after when you're all excited because you just left your first afa event then go

02:14:28.520 read as much as you can

02:14:30.160 um yeah I would say um I don't think there's a lot of prep work you need to do before you

02:14:39.640 go to an event but I do think that going to a moot you need to it all depends on what you're going to

02:14:46.720 but I think you need to go in there with the right mindset um you go in there with an open

02:14:56.680 mind and an open heart and without a lot of preconceptions. I think it's very easy to build

02:15:02.480 up in your head how you think everything ought to be or how you think it should look and then

02:15:10.040 getting super judgmental of everybody doing things differently than you'd imagined in your head.

02:15:15.740 It's like they've, it's like you had an imaginary conversation with them that they signed up to meet

02:15:20.460 your expectations that they never participated in. Go with an open mind without expectation and just

02:15:27.260 trying to be there and be present and take it for what it is. And I think that's the best way to do

02:15:34.340 it. A lot of people, and this is cool. I'm glad that people have a really high expectation of the

02:15:39.660 AFA, but fundamentally at the end of the day, it's important to realize the AFA and our moots and

02:15:46.960 events it is a collection of people it's a collection of people that you know

02:15:58.400 i say this i don't i don't believe in equality and a lot of our leadership have put in a lot

02:16:03.120 put a lot of their time energy and years of their life in becoming experts in house of truth

02:16:09.040 so they're not people just like everybody else but in other ways they are they're people who

02:16:13.920 hold down jobs their husbands their wives their fathers their mothers they're all different ages

02:16:20.880 they're people in a lot of ways just like anyone else who decided to open up their home or hey you

02:16:27.600 know what i'm going to take the step of i'm going to host a moot down the down the road at the local

02:16:32.640 you know the local bar or the local park or the local restaurant or whatever they decided to do

02:16:37.920 do. So keep that in mind. At some of our bigger events, it's a little bit different, but go

02:16:46.100 there, accepting what you get and in the spirit of hospitality and with an open mind and an

02:16:52.340 open heart. And I think that's the best preparation you could have to do something.

02:16:55.700 Um, is, uh, Arts Gemeinschaft also true as well? Um, yes, I didn't get a lot of deep theology the

02:17:13.160 time that I met, um, some of their leadership, but a number of, um, their leaders and their families

02:17:20.620 met with myself, a few of our other leadership, and some of our members over in Sweden when we

02:17:29.200 went there back in 2018, I believe. And that was a really nice experience. Really good folks that

02:17:38.860 we met with, had some really nice time with them. There's a language barrier, but some of their

02:17:43.920 children spoke fluent English, so we were able to kind of talk back and forth. Yeah, they're

02:17:49.360 And 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.

02:18:10.940 But no, the folks that I've met and interacted with from that organization have been fantastic.

02:18:15.840 And yes, they are also true.

02:18:20.100 I guess that's a question for the AFA leaders.

02:18:22.860 What is the interpretation of hell?

02:18:25.440 Fenris and the world serpent are clearly evil, but how evil is hell?

02:18:30.320 Just half so.

02:18:33.260 So this is a contentious thing.

02:18:38.740 And I think a lot of people come with long-standing taboos against interaction with hell.

02:18:51.600 I have much less of that than other people do.

02:18:57.520 She's not one of the I-seer and not someone that we include in our worship.

02:19:03.800 but i don't think that she's bad or evil or aligned badly that way um but she is

02:19:19.400 outside of the the community of the gods she exists in a different place away from

02:19:28.140 the Aesir and with a much murkier kind of existence. And in that way, I think she's very

02:19:36.700 much different. I don't think that one ought to seek enmity with her or disrespect her in any way.

02:19:47.200 And I do think there are a number of occasions involving interaction with the dead and relevant

02:19:56.160 to the dead where it is appropriate to to give her a certain amount of honor and make offerings

02:20:04.000 but we don't regularly include her in our worship the times that we see her in the lore though

02:20:12.800 it's worth noting that

02:20:14.400 the part of the afterlife that she's responsible for isn't about like tormenting or torturing or

02:20:26.540 doing bad things to you know bad people who die we see her um entertaining balder in his time

02:20:37.640 in her realm with with fanfare and with dignity and in a princely fashion we find her acting

02:20:45.080 respectfully and honorably and i think we owe it to creatures that we encounter that behave

02:20:53.880 honorably to treat them with honor and dignity so i don't see her as bad or malevolent but i also

02:21:01.800 see her as a force that has death associated with her and not someone that you want to invoke and

02:21:12.680 bring into non-death related things if that makes sense and that's kind of a vague answer uh what's

02:21:22.860 what's your experiences with this trent yeah um to continue my theme of borrowing phrases and

02:21:30.900 cool ways of saying things from people uh i remember crystal out in california uh once

02:21:37.860 supported it really well uh and to kind of preface this uh my views on hell are you know

02:21:45.060 the same as yours pretty much it's you know not evil say it's just not a guy seer um

02:21:53.220 um we were doing um breeding of the gods at one of the winter nights events and somebody hailed

02:22:04.360 hell in the circle and everybody found it pretty distasteful but not the same as hailing someone

02:22:11.520 like loki and i crystal and i were talking about it because i was kind of giving her a rundown of

02:22:17.580 the events you know and uh she said while she you know hell is not evil you wouldn't invite her

02:22:27.560 to a table that's full of you know healthy men women children and pregnant ladies hell does have

02:22:34.560 that association with death and while death is a part of the circle of life and all that and 0.76

02:22:39.880 you know i do have a certain respect for her treating balder the way she does and everything 0.56

02:22:46.060 I wouldn't call on her in a circle full of healthy folk. 0.99

02:22:52.620 So the times that I've been particularly moved from people have asked if it's appropriate,

02:22:57.860 I've seen that happen at funerals. And I think that's an appropriate time and place.

02:23:02.700 I've seen that with people whose loved ones have passed, them making an offering to ask that she

02:23:09.460 you know looks kindly upon their loved ones that are in her realm i think that's a nice thing to do

02:23:17.560 but again you want to

02:23:20.080 there is a details matter there's a time and a place for things an offering of respect or giving

02:23:32.260 a gift out of out of courtesy or respect on that is one thing inviting and invoking and bringing

02:23:43.060 that force into into your life and into other people's life is not

02:23:51.780 i don't think that's something that you want to do

02:23:55.300 and so it's a little bit it's a subtle difference but it's an important difference

02:23:59.220 um and then i have a question from albert goldsteinberg um

02:24:11.140 i've heard of christians being led into the afa while retaining their christian faith

02:24:17.700 so i've heard of that too the times that that's happened that wasn't known when they got let in

02:24:27.220 and when it was found out then they've been confronted it's not the right word but like hey

02:24:35.460 there's some kind of misunderstanding that's not what we do here and then they've you know

02:24:40.900 been separated from membership um no the afa we are we're a church and you cannot be

02:24:47.140 christian and also true at the same time um that's not ever been a common thing but

02:24:53.860 But we've had some folk builders in the past that didn't really get what we were doing.

02:24:58.180 They were just trying to beef up numbers.

02:24:59.500 So 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.

02:25:09.720 And times that we've noticed that, we've put a stop to that as quickly as possible.

02:25:15.240 We don't ever want people to join or be part of what we're doing under false pretenses.

02:25:22.660 that's never been an okay thing and so now we've made uh on our application process like you have

02:25:29.380 to like click a box that says no that you're actually also true um what is okay is you don't

02:25:39.860 it's hard to know when someone starts having a sincere faith and what we don't want

02:25:45.220 is people being dishonest. Nobody expects that you start at day one with this advanced,

02:25:53.260 deep faith in the Iser out of nowhere. Those things come over time. So you can join if you're 0.99

02:26:01.760 also true or if you want to be also true and you're sincerely trying to pursue that. But no,

02:26:08.640 if you're a committed Christian, that's the worst of both worlds. You're being disloyal to the Iser 1.00

02:26:13.580 and disloyal to the God that you still worship, and we don't want that amongst us. 1.00

02:26:19.240 Never have wanted that, don't want that, don't want that in the future.

02:26:34.440 I'll appreciate that.

02:26:37.260 Hamilwitz donated $10 to the AFA General Fund.

02:26:41.600 Thank you so much for it.

02:26:42.660 We appreciate it.

02:26:43.420 We appreciate all your guys' generous donations.

02:26:46.860 Go to East, we appreciate having you on this evening.

02:26:51.380 It's always nice to have you.

02:26:57.000 We just got another question pop up, so I was reading it real quick.

02:26:59.780 I'm sorry about that.

02:27:00.520 Anybody who's listening, that was an awkward pause.

02:27:10.140 Brandy asks, thanks for answering my art question.

02:27:13.100 if we create something with the intent of it being for the isir is there an appropriate

02:27:18.620 way to give it to them or is it better to just hang it on a wall that depends because intent is

02:27:27.500 is everything um both um very often if we have a really specific offering to the gods

02:27:45.120 like a lot of us um one thing that we do is kind of a tradition in the afa different

02:27:51.460 people do it a little bit differently we will make um so we just celebrated the feast of the

02:27:59.800 iron her yard and in doing so as a gift to the iron her yard as an offering symbolically we'll

02:28:07.000 make a ship and within that ship put offerings for the iron her yard or perhaps to all father Odin

02:28:16.840 sometimes we'll do that um by writing notes or writing a message writing a prayer writing

02:28:27.000 something heartfelt and put the note in there other people you know put a picture in or something

02:28:34.140 they made or something nice and then you offer it up into the fire symbolically sending it up

02:28:40.780 to the halls of the gods and i think that's a really good way to do an offering that's a one

02:28:44.780 and done between you and the god's offering but it's it's also a devotional act to make a piece

02:28:51.660 of art that honors one of our gods and goddesses for people to be inspired by um it is an extreme

02:28:59.660 act of devotion that witten uh witten's fawn paints the beautiful murals at our hafs those

02:29:09.980 inspire hundreds, thousands, perhaps of people to worship our gods and conceptualize them in a

02:29:18.780 certain way and bring them closer to an understanding of our gods and bring them

02:29:23.320 closer to our gods. I think that's a completely appropriate thing. I think giving an offering of

02:29:28.080 something you made to the Hoff is absolutely giving it to the gods. I think offering it 0.62

02:29:35.800 in the fire or whatever as an offering is a way to do that. But I also think making it

02:29:40.380 and keeping it around, using it ritually, and having it exist to inspire people is a gift to

02:29:47.600 the gods as well. It all depends on the intent that you do with the piece that you make.

02:29:51.920 So I don't think there's just one right answer to that.

02:29:56.880 What are your thoughts on it, Trent?

02:29:58.200 uh i mean pretty much what you said it depends on the intent if it if it were me and it was it

02:30:09.120 were for the gods specifically it was to give to the icer i would i would burn it that's my

02:30:15.540 favorite way of you know getting something to the icer um but you know it like with

02:30:23.860 wind spawns murals there is a lot to be said for it serving a purpose for the icier rather than

02:30:31.700 giving the physical thing to the icier it it all just depends um but yeah if you were going to

02:30:39.540 sacrifice it uh burning is a cool way uh depending on what it is you know our ancestors believed that

02:30:48.980 waterways or um sort of roads or uh thoroughfares to give things to the icier or to just be on the

02:30:58.020 veil in general and i don't recommend throwing random stuff into your local creek or anything

02:31:04.740 like that but you know if it's something appropriate that's a cool way to give some

02:31:10.740 moving to the ice as well i've hung things in trees as offerings i've buried things

02:31:20.580 burned things i've sunk things in in water there's a lot of different ways that way um

02:31:29.220 yeah it's it's all about the intent and the purpose that you're doing it but the intent

02:31:32.660 matters the art matters the effort that you put into it the purpose that you put into it

02:31:36.980 it makes a lot of difference so i think this is a really cool question okay first before we get to

02:31:43.380 it uh blaine bought us two coffees one for the all's harrier gofie and one for his big homie trent

02:31:51.060 so uh for uh for for my coffee thank you i appreciate it what say you big homie

02:31:59.700 uh yeah i appreciate it blaine's a good guy he um been friends for a while it's really cool

02:32:05.380 that he uh joined the afa and is getting to you know be a part of all this i'm excited for him to

02:32:12.280 kind of learn more and get involved he'll he's in the uh phraseoff area too so when we get that

02:32:18.460 founded hope to see him there at the dedication fantastic well we're glad to have you and i

02:32:24.220 appreciate the appreciate the donations um and then this one last question of the night

02:32:29.680 um but i think it's really important one and i'm glad it uh is building on stuff we've talked about

02:32:35.640 What if you're a Christian questioning?

02:32:37.880 What if you're a Christian questioning, wanting to learn more and are unsure? 0.71

02:32:42.500 So, okay, Trent, what do you say on that one? 0.99

02:32:46.380 We'll give you the first shot at it.

02:32:48.340 I say, yeah, if you are a Christian, consider yourself a Christian, but you're questioning,

02:32:59.160 you can't join the AFA.

02:33:00.160 Dave, what you can do is you can send me an email at teast at runestone.org.

02:33:05.080 That's the T in Trent.

02:33:07.260 And then my last name, East, pretty common word, at runestone.org.

02:33:11.360 And I will answer any and all questions you have about any and everything.

02:33:17.780 And we can hopefully get you to come home and join us here.

02:33:24.960 Yeah, I love numbers.

02:33:27.500 I love seeing the member number go up.

02:33:29.620 i love people joining but we don't want you know not trying to force anybody and it's not

02:33:36.980 ever something we want people to do for the wrong reasons or out of false pretenses

02:33:42.420 um if you've got sincere questions we'd love to have you at something as a guest and to you know

02:33:51.780 help answer any questions and help you um find the answers that you're looking for about your faith

02:33:58.580 uh email trent you can email me you can email any of our go thar and we'd all love to help um

02:34:08.020 and yeah we want we want you to make a decision knowingly and of your own free will on what you

02:34:14.900 believe and it's really important that you do that before you join um you you're welcome to attend

02:34:20.740 things as a guest and you know see and go through whatever process you need to go through to

02:34:28.820 get that straight in your head it's

02:34:35.060 though i don't approve of christianity i was a very devoted christian in the time that i was in that

02:34:41.700 faith um i respect people who are serious about their beliefs and their responsibilities

02:34:50.740 If 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.

02:34:59.900 If 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.

02:35:10.480 It may take you longer to join, but absolutely respect that.

02:35:15.360 And, yeah, we'd love to have you check it out and see,

02:35:20.360 and we'd be really happy to answer any questions you might have.

02:35:26.420 Yeah, with that, thank you so much for joining us on the program tonight, Trent.

02:35:30.800 It's always good to talk to you.

02:35:32.740 I appreciate you being here.

02:35:36.940 What?

02:35:37.960 There's more questions in the chat now.

02:35:40.680 There's one more question. 0.88

02:35:43.200 I don't suck at life has one. 0.91

02:35:45.360 And Bodie has one. 0.52

02:35:47.040 I answered both of I Don't Suck at Life's questions that you put into the chat,

02:35:52.200 and we can answer Bodie's.

02:35:54.480 Trent.

02:35:54.720 Never mind. 0.98

02:35:55.440 I'm a doofus. 0.98

02:35:56.560 I know. 0.85

02:35:57.640 So, Trent, what is – okay, so a bonus question.

02:36:00.780 Bonus question on the outro here.

02:36:03.480 Trent, in your opinion, who is the greatest Saxon king?

02:36:09.080 It'll always be Harold Godwinson. 0.97

02:36:10.900 And 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

02:36:22.020 A lot of people would say Alfred the Great, and that's a good answer. 0.99

02:36:25.780 But Harold Godwinson, just based on the short nine, ten months he reigned,

02:36:33.120 his uh the the energy he showed that he dedicated to being king of england

02:36:40.800 is the kind of energy that any any good leader needs to have uh that's part of why i respect our

02:36:49.080 witness so much and many other historical figures uh is this willingness this total

02:36:58.080 acceptance and dedication to the mission at hand um i mentioned aragorn from lord of the rings

02:37:04.900 earlier it's that so harold godwinson was you know named king at the very last minute and he

02:37:14.660 immediately knew that it was gonna excuse my language it was gonna piss off a lot of really

02:37:18.660 powerful men and you know he didn't shy away from that he said okay well you know here we go and uh

02:37:26.840 Of 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.

02:37:47.040 And 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.

02:37:58.640 And 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.

02:38:08.900 I think about that probably daily, that that sort of doom driven path of this is what needs to be done.

02:38:19.900 This is why I'm here. I'm going to do it. Come hell or high water.

02:38:23.920 So, yeah, Harold Godwinson all day, every day.

02:38:28.640 There 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.

02:38:58.640 We'll be right back.

02:39:28.640 Thank you.

02:39:58.640 Thank you.

02:40:28.640 Thank you.

02:40:58.640 Thank you.

02:41:28.640 We'll be right back.

Asatru Folk Assembly - November 21, 2024

11⧸20⧸24 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 124 - Goði East

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