Asatru Folk Assembly - 11⧸23⧸22 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 20 - Honor

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

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

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00:03:00.000 hello everybody and welcome once again to another exciting episode of victory never sleeps

00:03:19.360 we're going to continue our series on the nine no nine noble virtues um with our 10th noble

00:03:28.080 virtue victory following it up at the end this week we are on the virtue of honor and uh

00:03:36.640 obviously a very good choice but a choice chosen by his peers we have folk builder adam hudak

00:03:43.840 with us this evening i believe it's adam's first time on victory never sleeps well adam welcome

00:03:50.480 thanks for having me we're glad to have you um yeah excited excited to have you on um

00:03:58.080 trying to think if there's any top of the program things we should hit before we get into it

00:04:03.120 uh and i suppose there is first and foremost um we are broadcasting simultaneously on odyssey

00:04:12.800 twitter uh youtube and entropy right now if you want to join us on entropy you can throw us

00:04:21.040 donations that are always much much appreciated or you also can participate in super chat if we

00:04:26.960 we get backlogged with a whole bunch of questions, you will jump to the front of the line. And once

00:04:31.460 again, we really appreciate any and all donations from you guys. On the donation front, to let you

00:04:40.160 guys know, we are still doing very good on our Njordshof payoff, which is going to get us in a

00:04:48.840 spot to where we can get Frazehof. And also on our Sigerheim purchase, getting very close to that.

00:04:56.960 um we have raised now just over 15 and a half percent of the down payment that we want which

00:05:05.680 is a lot of money getting raised uh we appreciate you guys generosity very much um and i got a

00:05:12.560 question about this over the past couple weeks i wanted to wanted to get um

00:05:18.080 want to clear up any misunderstanding about it. I think that some people were, I don't know if

00:05:27.080 worried is the right word, but thought that the movement on Sigerheim was going to postpone or

00:05:33.740 in some way slow down the development of Frazehoff. That's not the case and deliberately so. It's one

00:05:39.540 of the things on the back end we wanted to make really sure about. Tiershoff is going to go at

00:05:45.060 Sigerheim. But Tiershoff is going to occur at the regular pace of us acquiring Hoffs.

00:05:52.820 The funding for Frazehoff is completely on track and completely budgeted separately

00:05:58.120 from the Sigerheim purchase. So nothing about Sigerheim is going to negatively affect Frazehoff.

00:06:04.980 We're doing very well and we're able to do those two things simultaneous and still be budgeted

00:06:10.120 well just so you guys know in case there's any uh any confusion um to start off tonight

00:06:19.720 adam could you tell folks who you are and a little bit about yourself

00:06:24.600 and your uh journey to alsatru into the afa sure so uh i live in uh pennsylvania i've uh

00:06:33.640 I've grew up there all my life. I have five children. I've been with my wife for almost 18 years now. I joined the AFA in 2018. I was searching for something more, and I certainly found it.

00:06:54.140 So it's, as always, very good to be here.

00:06:58.720 And I've been full building since 2020, I believe.

00:07:05.000 Excellent.

00:07:07.300 To start off tonight, the virtue we want to discuss this evening is honor.

00:07:14.460 Could you tell us a little bit about what honor means to you and how you would define honor?

00:07:22.120 For me, I mean, the simple definition is to be held in high esteem, to fulfill obligations.

00:07:31.300 But for me, it's a lot like a code of conduct. It's a way of living.

00:07:36.820 It can't be bought. It's something that's earned through action.

00:07:41.920 And it kind of encompasses many different virtues, if you will, and the top pyramid, in a way, being bestowed with honor or having honor or being an honorable person.

00:07:59.220 So, yeah, I would say a code of conduct or a way of living is what defines it for me mostly.

00:08:07.000 uh sarah asked a question and donated ten or five dollars to us thank you very much sarah we

00:08:16.880 appreciate it she said adam tell us a bit about your journey that brought you to the afa and i

00:08:21.660 know i kind of just asked that but is there any thing you could add that maybe you know of the

00:08:26.740 other things you could have done why the afa specifically or how did you find the afa well

00:08:33.460 Well, most of my, I guess, teenage years and into young adulthood, I certainly chased a lot

00:08:45.160 of things that never made me happy. I always felt a hole inside. And by the time I was about 30 years

00:08:54.900 old, I was like, man, there's got to be something more to life, right? So then I started searching,

00:08:59.680 I started looking and I found the AFA when I'll never forget when I first read it.

00:09:09.040 I said, wow, that sounds exactly like what I'm looking for.

00:09:12.720 And I filled out that application on the old website.

00:09:17.960 And, you know, I never look back.

00:09:20.560 It's it's something that I it's changed, not just my life, but my my my children, my my my family and beyond that.

00:09:33.080 So it's something that. Yeah, I stay loyal to the AFA always.

00:09:40.060 Because of those things.

00:09:41.080 all right so i wanted to i wanted to say a couple of things about honor

00:09:51.560 up front because it's a word that has evolved in our lexicon over time and i don't

00:09:59.960 i guess there's there's two main

00:10:04.040 different uses of honor and i i think that both of them are valid and good but i know that one

00:10:11.060 we're very familiar with and that's the idea of your personal code your personal

00:10:17.460 you know dignity of how you how you handle things yourself and your personal um

00:10:26.020 your personal pursuit of of right and wrong on your own code but the the original meaning of

00:10:33.700 honor and the meaning that was was most relevant to our ancestors and these two do go together

00:10:39.780 certainly was the idea of fame or renown and again because of that personal code because of

00:10:47.620 the dignity and the nobleness of your actions and your behavior but the concept of honor was

00:10:53.300 had much bigger social ramifications because it was the reputation earned through you know through

00:11:01.300 good deeds or through uh prowess in in battle or prowess in legal matters or prowess in whatever

00:11:08.740 you do but the the esteem and the fame that honor did gave you it gave you a certain amount of

00:11:17.060 currency socially when you traveled when you went from place to place when you uh interacted with

00:11:22.260 people your uh your reputation preceded you and people would have something to gauge by and and

00:11:30.420 know you and on top of that it was something that uh others associated with you could use

00:11:35.300 you know hey i i know adam adam can vouch for me oh adam okay in that case in that case you

00:11:42.640 must be all right um it was something you could use as a uh as a signpost to know how to treat

00:11:50.140 certain people so it was it was a very much about dignity and reputation now those things

00:11:56.220 certainly come from all of the things that we in a modern sense think of as honor but its social

00:12:02.340 currency was huge to our ancestors and i first really that solidified in my head when i read

00:12:08.820 uh wilhelm grombeck's culture of the tutons but i think it's something that is really important

00:12:14.500 for us to consider um nowadays i've got a couple of questions over here on the side um king of

00:12:23.940 cheese appreciate you being here asks first question how are you both doing tonight how

00:12:29.540 are you doing adam very well very well and the day off i always have wednesdays off

00:12:37.700 and uh obviously we have off tomorrow as well so it's uh two days off in a row it's rare for me

00:12:45.460 so doing well good deal and uh my answer is always boring because i'm always doing good

00:12:53.060 when i'm on here i look forward to it all week i'm getting to talk to one of my friends getting

00:12:58.260 to talk to you know over the over live stream here several of my friends and I I just love

00:13:04.260 doing it also I'm pretty excited uh with Thanksgiving coming up tomorrow um got plans

00:13:11.020 with the family so you know everything everything is good in mat land Tim asks an interesting

00:13:18.040 question Adam as someone in leadership that exemplifies honor we all know you uh your

00:13:25.760 many strengths what would you say is your greatest weakness well number one would be my wife and uh

00:13:36.640 also poppy seed bread believe it or not i love poppy seed bread um and i don't think i'm going

00:13:44.080 to give it up this lifetime so if you if you see a guy struggling with eating too much poppy seed

00:13:50.880 that'll be me the next time as well so yeah poppy poppy is probably up there all right um

00:14:04.320 so this isn't specified who it's for so i think we'll both take a swing at it this is from cody

00:14:09.840 uh i'll let you go first adam how do you think the folk could live more honorably

00:14:15.440 Well, I think what it's, I mean, obviously, we turn to the past with what we're doing in Asitru.

00:14:26.860 We pull from the past and are trying to, obviously, we can't make the past

00:14:32.980 today because it belongs to the past, but we draw from it and bring that wisdom forward.

00:14:40.660 So we can always pull from myth, from the gods, from the heroes and and use that today to the best of our ability.

00:14:53.740 You know, it's kind of a complex answer, but it's one of the it's it's the reason that we are doing these this series on the noble virtues.

00:15:10.660 We, as a folk, have relegated a lot of these important values to, that's something other people do, or that's something our ancestors did, or that's something we would do if only.

00:15:30.500 And I think it's extremely important for our folk to conceptualize these virtues as real things for them to enact in their life in the context that they live in, not in some superficial view of the past, not in a woulda, coulda, shoulda way, but in a real way.

00:15:53.420 how you deal with your family how you deal with yourself in your as an employer or as an employee

00:15:59.660 how you deal with yourself with your friends in your community

00:16:06.300 in utilizing our virtues and living those virtues in a real way is extremely important and so many

00:16:14.540 of us have a disconnect between what we think those are and they aren't honor for example

00:16:20.940 it's very easy to conceive of it in a in a battlefield sense or in an you know ancient

00:16:27.500 warrior sense or as a knight and you know winning honor at tournaments and things that way it's

00:16:36.540 more seldom that we consider honor in the integrity of how we are as an employee how

00:16:42.540 how we are when no one's looking, how we deal with our families, how we deal with people we

00:16:51.060 run into in society, the fame that we build for ourselves to where people know our name because

00:16:57.400 of our good deeds. That's a big one, especially this has gotten much, much worse since the

00:17:04.720 reactions to COVID-19. But we were already on a path to where people having real life

00:17:11.600 reputation and real life social interaction was getting less and less we run into folks that are

00:17:18.960 very comfortable being anonymous and no one wants fame or attention and building a name quite

00:17:27.040 literally building a name for yourself was one of the biggest deals for our ancestors

00:17:33.760 one of the biggest deals for all of our ancestors up until very very recently but we live in a place

00:17:40.000 now where everyone wants to keep their head down and and be as secretive as as possible

00:17:45.280 and that said that's part of the abuse that's been heaped upon our folk and the uh battered

00:17:51.520 people's mindset that we have now and i think by people taking courage putting their name

00:17:57.680 behind things and building strong reputation for themselves that would be a huge huge advantage in

00:18:04.160 building honor amongst our folk um that was a good question cody thank you

00:18:12.880 so king of cheese asks i've heard honor being a kind of currency akin to favors how accurate

00:18:20.240 do you two think this is well i mentioned just a few minutes ago about how honor absolutely

00:18:26.560 is a currency in the sense that it's reputation but i don't think it's something that um

00:18:32.240 um you necessarily have to spend as long as it maintains its value it's a certain amount of

00:18:42.740 surety that people are willing to risk on you judging by past performance and if you justify

00:18:49.400 that by performing well in the present I don't think it's diminished or spent but in the turn

00:18:56.060 the sense of favors um very much so and i and i've used this a lot i've used this in my career as a

00:19:03.660 bouncer but i also have used it quite a bit in in the afa in settling disputes with people if the

00:19:11.100 people that i deal with uh for example when i was when i was bouncing i had a team of guys and

00:19:16.460 there's a lot of younger guys or newer guys or whatever i had earned a reputation amongst the

00:19:21.740 customers are treating people fairly of standing up and being counted in any kind of a physical

00:19:27.980 altercation that happened of dealing honorable with people so over the time if there was a

00:19:35.740 conflict and my guys were about to get in a in a spot that was over their head i could go to you

00:19:41.900 know one of the hostile customers and say hey i need you to do me a favor just go home have a good

00:19:47.500 night please favor to me please do that and some very irate samoan guys that were looking to to

00:19:54.780 really beat on some of our bouncers that had uh irritated them in some way would would calm down

00:20:02.940 would shake my hand give me a hug and just leave out of respect and i appreciate that you know in

00:20:08.300 the afa and as a gothi i've had to do a lot of counseling and we've got a lot of very passionate

00:20:15.580 people and a lot of folks that get into a lot of interpersonal conflict from time to time.

00:20:21.840 That's going to happen when you have people that are emotionally invested in what we're doing.

00:20:27.160 But I've also used, you know, taking them aside and saying, hey, as a favor to me,

00:20:32.200 could you just trust me on this and let this slide? And people are willing to do that because of

00:20:39.360 reputation or the honor that that they have assigned to me, the honor that they feel that I

00:20:45.400 have. And I found that to be really useful. Adam, do you have any similar situations or what are

00:20:51.500 your thoughts on on honor as a currency? I think you kind of covered it. I think when when people

00:20:58.020 respect you based off what they see in you, how you live your daily life, the things you do and

00:21:06.360 whatnot, they obviously listen. It's not something that can always be talked about. It's what people

00:21:12.360 see in you. So obviously that can be used in that type of situation. Yeah, I can see that.

00:21:22.820 You know, that's,

00:21:25.000 it's interesting because honor is,

00:21:36.360 I suppose it can be manipulated, but in the long run, honor is something that is proven out over

00:21:44.680 time. And there's a, I'm trying to think of the best way to put this, and I'm not on my game with

00:21:50.660 some of my wording tonight. I'm trying to think of the best way of this.

00:21:56.400 When someone has, you can have assigned authority because you have a certain position

00:22:01.560 or you're in a certain position, and that's good and that counts, but there's a difference between

00:22:10.860 that and somebody who's got the same or even less of an official rank in something, but has a

00:22:17.860 tremendous amount of honor and respect of the people that they work with, the value of what

00:22:24.160 they say. Now, if you get both of these in the same spot, that's how it should work,

00:22:29.080 But you notice the one is much more powerful than the other.

00:22:35.400 So much can be gained regardless of rank or position.

00:22:39.500 If you are a person who your your fellows put a lot of trust in that trust is part of honor.

00:22:48.520 But if they more than trust you, but they respect you and they think that you have a certain expertise, you have a value that they just want to do right.

00:22:57.780 by you it helps so much in any position of leadership um be it official or unofficial

00:23:05.780 to have that amount of respect and people being willing to to trust to trust you enough to follow

00:23:12.500 you um and i think that that's an essential quality for people in in any sort of a leadership

00:23:19.780 position. Sean has a question. I support the AFA, and I'd like to come home, but I fear what may

00:23:28.700 happen in my career. The ADL has the AFA listed as a hate group. How do I avoid losing my job?

00:23:36.940 I've got a lot of thoughts on this, but go ahead and take this one first, Adam.

00:23:41.380 Sure. Well, I mean, obviously, I understand that there's certain jobs, especially in today,

00:23:47.200 that, you know, probably would not like hearing that someone was in the AFA, right?

00:23:55.360 But I can only speak from my own experience.

00:23:58.780 I've been at the same job for a long time, and they all know,

00:24:03.980 they eventually found out what I do, right?

00:24:06.660 And what the management all, from what I understand, decided was,

00:24:12.580 well, you know what?

00:24:13.680 Adam's a good person.

00:24:15.160 He is honorable.

00:24:16.460 He does the right thing. He works hard. He's never given us any problems. So why would we even pursue this? And that's my experience. And I think also it's been many other people's experience within the AFA. So, yeah, that's the best advice I can give on that.

00:24:38.920 So it's it's interesting that you asked this question, and I think it's very relevant to what we're discussing, especially when we're talking about honor in terms of reputation.

00:24:51.040 um and no one can make you any promises on this i wish that i could tell you i wish i could tell

00:25:01.120 every afa member that there was some you know some magical something you would do that would

00:25:06.560 remove you from any sort of consequence and and i can't um you may very well have a job to where

00:25:13.360 or the people there want to persecute you for your faith.

00:25:18.900 That can happen.

00:25:21.440 Now, there are legal remedies if you have the deep pockets to afford filing suits on that.

00:25:29.800 But at the end of the day, the AFA is a legitimate religion.

00:25:32.980 We're recognized as one.

00:25:34.740 Now, the government recognition doesn't make it legitimate or illegitimate.

00:25:39.800 but as far as for employment purposes we have a government um 501c3 tax id we're an official

00:25:48.680 religion we have a right in the united states and i have to assume that you're in the united states

00:25:54.120 that's not necessarily a fair assumption so i can't speak to this if you're in another country

00:25:59.000 but in the united states you have a right to practice your faith however you choose as long

00:26:03.880 as the practice of it isn't breaking any any laws and we're not we never have um the adl

00:26:13.240 isn't a any kind of an official organization they're they're a private group and

00:26:20.600 them labeling the afa as a hate group is quite literally just name calling um and unfortunately

00:26:28.200 i i can't wave a magic wand and make them not call us names but uh it doesn't make it so

00:26:36.200 reputation is so important and what we found is the common denominator when people have been doxed

00:26:43.160 and it's not the vast majority of our members by any means it's a very small amount of membership

00:26:48.680 that's actually been subject to doxing and of those the vast majority have been members of

00:26:54.840 leadership whose name is on the website who are who have chosen to be literally the face of the

00:26:59.960 afa but most of those have done just fine and the reason being because they've built a reputation

00:27:07.640 for themselves if your employer knows you first knows you as a person knows who you are and has

00:27:17.240 interacted with you, it's going to cause them to question what other people they don't know

00:27:24.800 say you are because of a group that they know nothing about. It's going to make them much more

00:27:30.240 open to, hey, you know, I know Sean. Sean's a great guy. Sean's always treated me well. Sean's

00:27:35.240 always interacted with his coworkers great. It's probably all right. Another thing I'd say is be

00:27:42.740 who you are up front and then you don't have to worry about it catching you behind if your

00:27:48.580 afa affiliation or your practice of aussitru is some big secret and is completely incongruent

00:27:54.260 with who you are at work then yeah if they find out some secret that's completely contrary to

00:28:00.260 everything else that they've known about you then that's going to cause a certain amount of shock

00:28:05.780 value so building a reputation where you're a straightforward person and they know who you are

00:28:11.460 and what you stand for that has helped every single member of leadership that i can think of

00:28:19.700 when this has happened over just over just this issue

00:28:24.260 and the other thing is you don't have to tell all these people you're in the afa

00:28:29.860 um that's up to you we don't divulge membership information to any outside source

00:28:35.620 and we would not do that without some kind of a subpoena or something we we're not going to

00:28:41.060 do that your privacy is important to us um but at some point you know it does take a little bit of

00:28:48.500 courage uh it takes a little bit of courage to put yourself out there and to tell folks what you

00:28:58.500 stand for and to stand behind it and it's only courage because there is a possibility of of of

00:29:04.740 of cost to it. But I still think you should do it. I think it's important. I think it's important

00:29:13.680 for all of us. And it's important for those who come behind you. And it says something about

00:29:18.300 yourself. And doing that is a step in building your honor. And yeah, so I'd really encourage

00:29:25.820 you to do that. I'll say this, my wife was was doxxed, again, because she's my wife. And she

00:29:32.480 was doxxed in uh she works for the government and her boss is you know a homosexual and her boss

00:29:44.800 above that is a very liberal person and there's a lot of a lot of liberality in that and those

00:29:52.240 people treated her great they let her know that somebody was after her just so she'd know they

00:29:57.840 reassured her hey the only reason we're even mentioning this to you is so you know that

00:30:01.440 somebody was after you looks like they're trying to get us to fire you for expressing your faith

00:30:06.200 and that's not what we do here and they've been great to her ever since so it's not it's not a

00:30:12.960 death sentence and it's not a death sentence for your career so uh take heart have a little bit

00:30:18.680 of courage and we would all be here to support you and and have your back the best we could

00:30:23.460 um we got 20 donation i think i think this one's for you adam it is from aaron aaron hudak says

00:30:34.460 i love you love you too

00:30:37.340 um oh and uh yeah i suppose we answered this too i forgot there was a tail end of the question

00:30:47.920 have others dealt with this others have dealt with it and others have dealt with it very very

00:30:52.720 successfully uh laszlo asks matt do we have any members in hungary no at present we don't but i

00:31:03.120 would absolutely love to have some members in hungary if you are in hungary please join if you

00:31:09.120 know hungarians who want to be who are interested in being members please have them join the thing

00:31:15.280 is um it takes that first person anywhere you know there is always that first person in any

00:31:24.000 place we have membership and i know that when people come in they want to come to something

00:31:28.320 that's already built and established and there's a functioning group but the only way that happens

00:31:33.680 is for that first member to join and stick around and then the second and then the third and next

00:31:40.080 thing you know we've got a thriving group there but it takes those pioneers to make it happen

00:31:45.440 and we're looking for those and we would love to have those come our way

00:31:50.560 sarah says you are amazingly active within the afa plus your family plus work how do you balance it

00:31:58.240 all adam uh i mean i know this is on honor tonight but i i would just say be disciplined

00:32:07.120 um time management um being able to balance um knowing when you're you're putting too much in

00:32:16.440 one area or not enough in the other um and it really just comes down to balance uh i'm i'm

00:32:22.640 lucky because i have a i i have a very good wife who um you know is is there and helps out with

00:32:30.740 other things so i can you know focus on you know my job and and obviously afa stuff and i also have

00:32:38.260 a job where i'm able to step away sometimes and do what i need to but i don't know i mean i guess

00:32:47.880 the big thing is will you know is putting our will into it and making it happen no matter what

00:32:55.260 you know, this is what, you know, we set out to do and we have to complete it. So that's,

00:33:02.320 that's just kind of my thinking when it comes to things like this. So I will, will, will is what

00:33:09.640 makes it happen. All right. So we've got another question here and maybe you know something about

00:33:17.360 this, Adam, this is the second time it's came up and I am going to look into it. So I understand

00:33:22.980 it better the next time it comes around. Question. Have you heard of Tula Productions'

00:33:31.340 Stephan Tim and his idea that Loki has used the black cube cult, Saturnian controlled cults,

00:33:42.160 Abrahamic religion? Do you think it's a good metaphor to say Loki used the black cube to

00:33:48.560 separate us from our supernatural protectors gods i have no idea what that is about and i will look

00:33:59.520 into it so i hopefully by next broadcast have a little bit more of an idea of what that is

00:34:04.560 adam are you familiar with that at all no i apologize i'm not sure yeah i'm sorry about that

00:34:12.480 um ryan i promise i will i will try to be a little bit more familiar with that subject by

00:34:18.480 next week i know that we've been asked that one time before uh so i will try to figure out something

00:34:23.520 about that before we uh before we convene again um ali asks on the flip side of this conversation

00:34:32.400 how should dishonor be dealt with both both in the folk and family but also in the world at large

00:34:40.400 That's awesome, Ali. Thank you. People, I've wanted people to go there on some of these.

00:34:46.900 And this is kind of the first time that's happened. I think that's a great question.

00:34:51.120 What are your thoughts on this, Adam?

00:34:54.160 Well, I mean, if we think of long ago, you know, they probably would have been shunned and and not allowed back into society and whatnot.

00:35:05.320 and obviously the stories we hear but um obviously that's something that we can't do today uh i i

00:35:14.680 would i would say people all make mistakes and they have to work their way back through

00:35:21.480 right action and things like that um i'm not immune to making mistakes i i still think wrong

00:35:28.200 sometimes i i i say things that i i wish i didn't you know but the idea is working your way back so

00:35:37.320 but i i guess it depends on what it is as well um certain things in my eyes

00:35:44.120 uh can't can't you can't come back from so i guess it just depends

00:35:51.240 you know as a as a note to this

00:35:52.920 this is another thing that in today's society we're often very uncomfortable with

00:36:00.960 it's not comfortable to call out or to recognize

00:36:06.760 negative things but in order for honor to have meaning and be worth something

00:36:15.940 there needs to dishonor exists that word has to have a meaning also

00:36:21.740 If not, then you can't compare the two. Same thing with our previous virtues. Truth that we spoke about last time. If there's truth, then we also need to consider that there's untruth or there's lies, there's dishonesty.

00:36:41.060 and on our first one uh courage if courage exists so does cowardice and it's very easy to point to

00:36:53.960 people and say that guy's courageous or to point to ourselves and say man we did something courageous

00:37:00.800 but man it's hard to point yourself and said wow you did something cowardly or to someone who

00:37:07.940 is a friend of ours and honestly give them the feedback that they're behaving in a cowardly way

00:37:13.780 or what's worse if they do that so often that they're defined by cowardice that they are a

00:37:19.520 coward and the same thing is here with uh with honor and dishonor everybody is going to do

00:37:25.340 dishonorable things from time to time and fall short of the reputation they ought to do and and

00:37:32.020 all do that so there's there's little violations but when your habitual dishonorable behavior

00:37:41.700 makes you dishonorable that's a that's a bigger thing and as adam said context is everything and

00:37:47.860 there's certain dishonorable behavior that we can we can fix and correct and uh you know make right

00:37:55.060 what we've damaged and overcome and then there's some uh sometimes you burn the bridge and there's

00:38:00.900 no way back depending on um as far as dishonor amongst the world at large that we don't have

00:38:15.140 social control over we should disapprove of it we should not uh not celebrate it when we have

00:38:24.820 opportunities to, I guess, show any support, we should deny support to things in out there in

00:38:34.840 the world that are dishonorable to us. And the best we can do is show that in external ways in

00:38:41.860 how we speak in things that we consume. Again, it all depends on the situation so much,

00:38:55.160 but there's less that we can do when the dishonor is in the world at large. The closer it is to home,

00:39:00.320 the more we actually have a say in it. Dishonor amongst our folk, again, we should give it the

00:39:06.760 cold shoulder and not celebrate it. And this, this may not make sense. But we all and women

00:39:15.820 have a bigger role in this, I'd say than men do. But we all have a very important role in

00:39:21.560 reward, rewarding or not rewarding behavior. As a group, as a community, as an AFA family,

00:39:33.420 we celebrate people who do great things we all pick people that we extend uh warmth and

00:39:43.800 celebration to but we also pick people that we withhold those things from if somebody makes a

00:39:50.560 comment over in the side chat that's a good comment four or five people jump on and say

00:39:55.920 hey right on absolutely i agree 100 if somebody says something that's you know bad

00:40:03.200 then at best they should get no comment at worst they should get people telling them

00:40:09.240 that they took offense to it or it was inappropriate um so we it may seem subtle

00:40:16.840 but depending on the level of dishonorable behavior we choose how much of a light to

00:40:23.120 shine on those people or how much of those people to keep hidden that was one of the

00:40:28.720 interesting things to our ancestors when we read Tacitus is cowards and homosexuals were

00:40:38.080 were stomped into the bog and that wasn't out of particular hatred what it it was out of

00:40:47.440 embarrassment those things they wanted to be out of sight to where they literally disappeared from

00:40:54.100 view because they found the behavior so abhorrent to their sense of honor um

00:41:02.260 so likewise we can choose things to not shine any light on because we don't want people to see

00:41:08.900 that level of dishonor because it's offensive and then we can shine a bright light on honor

00:41:14.500 and great behavior if people are violate certain lines then absolutely we can um expel them from

00:41:21.780 our community and we do um and we can try to keep those people away from our folk and our family

00:41:28.820 but you also mentioned your personal family so that's much harder when you have relatives

00:41:36.260 that are dishonorable because strife amongst kin was always the greatest um curse amongst our

00:41:45.540 ancestors because there's no way to fix it. You're sharing a group Hemenya as a family

00:41:51.220 and any way that you would act against a member of your family who deserves acting against

00:41:56.880 only takes away from your collected Hemenya. There's no fixing it. When your family steals

00:42:04.080 from you, there's nothing you can do to make it right. It just hurts. When your family dishonors

00:42:10.720 you. There's nothing you can do to avenge it. Your family is damaged and there's nothing you

00:42:17.780 can do but suffer the damage. So one thing I would say within family, if these are adult

00:42:25.820 persons, you can certainly separate from them or increase distance. You can increase distance from

00:42:31.700 members of your family that consistently behave dishonorably. And I think that the duration and

00:42:37.740 the increase of that distance is proportional to what dishonorable behavior and how often they

00:42:44.880 continue to live dishonor. But it's a very complex thing. And I think we'll all have different

00:42:49.600 answers to it. The most I could say is we choose what to shine a light on and to celebrate and

00:42:56.060 what to ignore or what to shun and be disgusted by. Be disgusted by dishonor and celebrate and

00:43:07.620 champion those who are honorable. I think I kind of beat that one into the ground.

00:43:15.020 Adam, what are you reading lately, asked Daniel.

00:43:19.320 I've been reviewing Meister von List's book, again, Area Religion of the Germanic Folk. I've

00:43:27.480 probably read it 10 times now, if not more. And I always learn something every time I pick through

00:43:35.160 it so that's that's kind of what i've been picking through i don't i don't particularly read as much

00:43:40.360 as i used to um but uh yeah i have plenty of books that i've not picked through yet so

00:43:50.040 hard it's hard to find the time but uh von list works are definitely you know it's not like a

00:43:56.520 casual read it's something you've gotta gotta spend a lot of time thinking on um nick asks

00:44:03.640 how do you stay honorable in the world outside of the afa community especially with people who

00:44:10.280 do not show you respect adam what are your thoughts on that well we obviously

00:44:24.120 it's it's a it's kind of a tough one um

00:44:26.440 do we really care for this is how i view it do i care about what most people in in today's world

00:44:36.740 are doing or what they think or what they say to me when i don't hold them in a higher state

00:44:45.120 anyways you know what i mean so for me if if someone says something to me stupid i i kind of

00:44:52.840 let it go because I don't respect them. I don't, you know, agree with the way they live or

00:45:01.440 whatever they do. So that's one way to deal with it. Who cares, right? And keep moving,

00:45:09.260 build your own thing within the AFA and whatnot. That's all.

00:45:16.140 You know, there's kind of two parts to that question. You know, how do you stay honorable

00:45:22.260 in the world outside the AFA community, but that's one question. But how do you do it with

00:45:29.420 people who don't show you respect? Live your virtues, live your values, live your faith,

00:45:37.500 no matter what you do, first and foremost. People will see that. So often in the world around us,

00:45:44.320 conflict that we have interpersonally how you deal with it isn't so much a matter of your opponent

00:45:53.440 but it's a matter of all of the all of the eyes that are on you because they will see

00:45:59.680 your behavior and they can see your character or not you if someone is going to mistreat you and

00:46:08.880 and not show you respect, that person doesn't deserve anything from you. Do the best that you

00:46:19.220 can to accomplish your goals regardless of that person. And you're right, it doesn't matter what

00:46:24.560 that person thinks. But it does matter what all the people watching think. And so that's important.

00:46:30.380 One of the biggest things that dishonorable people or negative toxic people in general like to do

00:46:36.580 is they like to bring you down as well they like to set traps for you intentionally or unintentionally

00:46:44.000 to get you to act out and to get you to act poorly avoid those traps stay above it and

00:46:51.960 stay focused on your goals we have a and this goes directly hand in hand with honor

00:46:59.700 In a society that shared common belief, common values, we would often get in duels over honor, or we would get in our ancestors who practiced Holmgang to redress grievances over honor.

00:47:17.180 And in a society that was built around the warrior and martial prowess, in that context, that had tremendous value.

00:47:26.400 Honor in your social currency in today's day and age is very different. There's not the social

00:47:34.920 value on violence that there once was. You don't regain honor by acting out violently in the

00:47:44.260 workplace. If somebody offends you, it just doesn't work that way. You lose honor. You

00:47:50.040 literally lose reputation so don't act out of emotion act towards winning what is going to

00:47:59.400 help you win your situation if you can't get this person to treat you with respect

00:48:06.600 what other benefits can you gain from how you deal with the situation or how can you lose the least

00:48:14.120 And like I said, all of that has to do with the people around you. If this is in the workplace

00:48:20.480 with your employer, with your job, with your future, with what you're trying to do,

00:48:25.000 this person wants to derail you. Negative people want to cause you to act up and cause you to lose

00:48:32.740 your job or cause you to get written up or cause you not to have the things that you have that

00:48:38.060 wish they did avoid those traps but same thing you know at the grocery store or anything else

00:48:44.780 people will try to goad you into being dishonorable with them stay above that invisibly

00:48:53.340 stay above that to the people who are watching use every interaction even if it's with somebody

00:49:00.460 who treats you disrespectfully as an opportunity to showcase your honor to the third parties that

00:49:07.660 are watching find ways to build your honor even upon interactions with people who are dishonorable

00:49:15.820 that's the key if you can do that um tim says adam you once said we need to keep the

00:49:23.820 myth of the afa alive could you talk about that for a minute yeah sure um i

00:49:32.940 I, so I'm, I'm, I'm very much into myth. I, I, I think it tells a lot of truth. And when I think

00:49:40.880 of, so when, when I began folk building and I started looking at applications, um, the,

00:49:48.820 the question reason for joining was always, I want to see a better world. I want to see a better

00:49:55.520 world for my children um my my wife my kids whatever my people um and it dawned on me

00:50:03.040 what the afa really is it's yes it's a church but it's more than that it's a myth it's it's

00:50:11.580 asgard uh hyperborea in a way things like that and the beautiful thing about it is

00:50:18.200 we are all living in it right now.

00:50:24.780 It's being reborn.

00:50:26.700 The circle has continued.

00:50:29.020 And it's so important for us to keep that alive

00:50:32.620 for those without that are coming in

00:50:35.780 by continuing to build what we're doing here,

00:50:39.140 obviously bettering ourselves,

00:50:42.800 changing the world and whatnot.

00:50:45.260 So that's what the AFA is to me. It's a myth. It's a legend. It is Asgard right here, right now.

00:50:56.900 I think that's a really important and a really special way to look at it.

00:51:02.420 Um, and I think that so often, and I've said this before too, I think so often people don't realize that they're living history within their lifetimes.

00:51:16.260 It's only, you know, it's only generations later that people look back and, you know, man, those guys back in the good old days, this is what they used to do.

00:51:25.540 Or man, back in the golden age of vows to true, this is how we did things.

00:51:29.260 um we're living through history we are building something great and beautiful for our gods

00:51:37.760 for our folk and for our children and uh it's important to savor that in the moment

00:51:46.040 so that we can give it our best so that when it comes out at the other end

00:51:52.200 we made it worthwhile. You know, we only have a limited amount of time in Midgard to make these

00:51:59.640 things happen. And we are writing history, each of us, every single day. And we're at a time where

00:52:08.180 we have such an impact on the future and the legend of the AFA. We can do so many amazing

00:52:14.080 things together, maximizing that, building that legend. That's really a beautiful thing,

00:52:22.780 and it's a beautiful way to look at it, I think. Brendan asks, how can myself and pagan brothers

00:52:31.400 I served with get involved with overseas military contracting work to protect our vulnerable folk

00:52:38.520 in Africa and around the world. We would love to help out. I really wish I was the right guy

00:52:47.600 for you to ask that question to. Unfortunately, I really don't know. I don't have any contacts

00:52:53.540 in that world and I don't have any expertise in that world. So I've got nothing to do to help you

00:53:00.500 on that. Although I do think that's noble and a great thing that you want to do. And I'm hoping

00:53:05.320 maybe through the chat on the side somebody who does know more about it will have uh have some

00:53:10.600 connection for you there adam do you have any any uh connection or advice as far as that goes

00:53:16.520 kind of the same as you on that one matt i wish i could help but i i don't have a good answer

00:53:22.680 yeah sorry about that i i appreciate your your willingness and your desire to do that i just

00:53:28.440 don't have a way to help you right now with uh with anybody i have any contact with um

00:53:35.320 King of Cheese asked, where is Sigurheim slated to be found in?

00:53:41.960 I forgot which state you said, but I know it's east of me.

00:53:47.260 Sigurheim will be in Tennessee.

00:53:52.520 I want to get more specific on that as the situation develops, but hopefully we'll have something fairly soon to tell you about that.

00:54:00.560 this brings up something that I wanted to talk about before we

00:54:06.240 get in the weeds on some of these questions while it came to mind

00:54:10.640 tomorrow is Thanksgiving and tomorrow's Thanksgiving for our American folk I imagine

00:54:20.500 some of you are joining us from other places where it's not a national holiday

00:54:24.480 And it's been very important to me that as the AFA, we recognize and that we celebrate Thanksgiving.

00:54:33.480 And a couple of years ago, I got some pretty significant pushback on it from specifically from some Brazilian members at the time that have since left us.

00:54:45.480 us. And they were concerned that the idea of Thanksgiving was was just a Protestant Christian

00:54:53.960 one. And they didn't see how it could connect to our gods. And I think that's wrongheaded.

00:55:00.600 I what I love about Thanksgiving in the United States

00:55:05.880 is that it it really is something that we all can participate in.

00:55:11.480 And taking a moment for us to acknowledge all of the things we have in life that we are thankful for and to approach whatever deities we worship in Thanksgiving is something that's really beautiful and something I'm very proud that we do in the United States.

00:55:37.080 And it's something I want all of our members globally to do.

00:55:41.480 And Thanksgiving, as it is in the U.S., has been practiced by everyone of every different faith in this country.

00:55:50.640 And it's a very special thing.

00:55:56.060 And I think it's beautiful to set a specific day aside to give thanks for what we have.

00:56:02.320 In Ausatru, we have a long tradition where people, I guess, have been uncomfortable with religiosity or with worship or with prayer even.

00:56:16.960 Us being thankful for all of the blessings that our gods have given us is a special thing.

00:56:23.460 And in the AFA, perhaps more than anywhere else, we have experienced the blessings of our gods in such a huge way.

00:56:32.900 We have gotten so many wonderful gifts from them.

00:56:37.600 I encourage all of us to take time tomorrow with our families, with our friends, and to celebrate that and to be thankful and to take stock of the wonderful things that we have.

00:56:50.300 and our gods, our folk, our families

00:56:54.500 that have helped us along the way to make that happen

00:56:58.000 because we are truly, truly blessed

00:57:01.520 and it's only right, it's only noble,

00:57:03.760 it's only honorable for us to profusely give thanks

00:57:08.880 for all the great things we have.

00:57:11.060 And so I wanted to encourage everybody,

00:57:12.780 don't feel like Thanksgiving isn't relevant to Oustatru

00:57:16.260 or isn't something you can practice as an Oustatruer.

00:57:19.580 That's you couldn't be further from the truth. Celebrate Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is an

00:57:25.500 opportunity if you have family members who aren't also true to show them that you are a spiritual

00:57:30.740 person and that you do give thanks to your gods. That in and of itself, you tomorrow at a toast

00:57:38.040 or whatever your family tradition is, acknowledging your gods and your thankfulness to them.

00:57:44.040 that's an important testament in and of itself that can help bring people home to us of truth,

00:57:50.620 that can help them understand that this is a real faith for you,

00:57:55.600 and that can help, I'd say, a lot of our families out there to see that in practice.

00:58:02.280 Tyler just donated $10 and said, Happy Thanksgiving.

00:58:05.780 Well, Happy Thanksgiving to you too, Tyler.

00:58:07.660 I appreciate the donation.

00:58:10.440 Adam, do you have any thoughts about Thanksgiving?

00:58:14.040 Yeah, well, I mean, just this week, my, you know, and we can say that it shouldn't be something practiced, blah, blah, blah.

00:58:23.180 But my my my middle daughter came home with this piece of paper that she wrote in school of all the things she was thankful for.

00:58:31.620 Right. And a couple of things that she said about my wife and myself.

00:58:37.980 And that was that was kind of the basis of it.

00:58:40.960 You can't buy that. That was very special to me. So I don't really care if Thanksgiving or not. Thanksgiving did that in a way. And then we get to spend time with our family, our folk. What can be more ossitary than that on getting together and eating together and whatnot?

00:59:09.220 not. So I don't see a problem with it myself either. All right. So we've got another question

00:59:19.220 from Cody. Our virtues have a lot of overlap. What other virtues do you feel feed into honor?

00:59:28.900 What are your thoughts, Adam? Well, I kind of mentioned it a little bit in the beginning.

00:59:35.220 I think honor is kind of like the pinnacle in a way.

00:59:40.580 You have to do many things to get that.

00:59:43.940 You have to be disciplined.

00:59:45.400 You have to have courage.

00:59:46.720 You have to tell the truth.

00:59:48.320 You have to do right always, right thinking, right action, being good to your wife, your children, whatever the case may be.

01:00:00.640 All of that stuff combines and you get honor.

01:00:03.920 Can I say that one is more important now, but that's just my take on what honor is.

01:00:11.000 It's a culmination of many different things.

01:00:15.360 Yeah, it's interesting because any in-depth discussion about any of these virtues necessarily involves many of the others in a virtue matrix

01:00:29.260 that ultimately equates to honor and reputation.

01:00:38.700 There's a couple of, I mean, all of them.

01:00:41.760 That's the answer to any of these questions.

01:00:45.020 All of them.

01:00:46.820 Our virtues work together and synergize

01:00:50.460 to make us noble people.

01:00:53.160 And honor is kind of the currency

01:00:57.420 or the expression of that of the sum of that whole. But something that I want to

01:01:04.220 mention that's a different facet of honor that I don't think we take into account.

01:01:11.900 There is a practical element to it. So I'm going to say self-reliance

01:01:20.620 and industriousness are also factors that that go into honor that are our virtues.

01:01:27.420 For you to be honored. So some of the other uses of the word honor. It's also something that can be bestowed upon you by a community. You can receive an honor. You can be honored. Like tonight we honor so and so, or I'm going to bestow the honor of this medal to some matter of fact, Adam got the Folk Builder Excellence Award. And that was an honor that was bestowed on him because of his content and because of his reputation.

01:01:57.420 those things are very often merited it's not just that you're a good guy but it's that you're useful

01:02:08.400 and that you offer something valuable to the people you surround yourself with to your family

01:02:13.340 or to your community that you are capable of doing things to contribute and in whatever way that might

01:02:20.120 be but that your industry adds to the group instead of is a is a drain from the group a group is better

01:02:26.740 with you in it that was also a really important facet of honor to our ancestors as it is today

01:02:33.460 and this came um this is part of a conversation that i was having at feast of the iron here

01:02:39.220 yard with some gentlemen and i've had it before but we value people

01:02:48.340 in our common speech we often say so and so is a good guy

01:02:53.700 guy he's a good guy and we don't really mean that in what way is he good very often we call someone

01:03:01.620 a good guy because they're not confrontational they're easy to get along with and they're they're

01:03:08.980 not offensive the lack of offending doesn't make someone good um one thing and i forget and it's

01:03:16.660 been said many different ways and some more eloquent than this but um unless a man is capable

01:03:24.420 of being offensive and being confrontational him choosing not to is a is a safety mechanism for him

01:03:32.500 not a not a courtesy to you if there's somebody that is capable of of causing offense and

01:03:39.860 destroying his foes and that person chooses to be extra nice to people

01:03:45.540 then that's a virtue that's a nice thing if there's somebody who is naturally completely

01:03:51.140 beta and a weakling and they don't make a lot of waves that's not a courtesy they're extending to

01:03:57.620 you they're they're not capable of acting otherwise that's a that's a self-defense technique um

01:04:06.020 being a good guy isn't about just not offending people being a good guy is about adding something

01:04:11.860 the world we're all made better for your presence we're made better by knowing you in some way

01:04:17.780 and i think that that's a really key component of honor we need to think about

01:04:22.820 do you contribute more than you take away when you're in a group

01:04:26.340 do you add do people want you because you bring value to the situation

01:04:33.380 um so sierra asks uh matt for your monthly dinners you make different ethnic european foods

01:04:41.620 what is snert um often i do make different ethnic european foods and uh we're having snert on

01:04:49.060 saturday how about a couple things on saturday so uh those of you who are within traveling distance

01:04:56.020 of reno nevada that want to come to my uh dinner we are having salted caramel white russians to

01:05:02.260 start then we are going to have snert and we're going to finish off with a banana pudding cake

01:05:08.340 with nilla wafers pretty excited about all of these things it's going to be a potluck so those

01:05:13.780 coming are going to bring other delicious things i specifically told them on the poster to bring

01:05:18.900 stuff that was not nasty so let's hope that they heeded that advice snurt is a phrysian or dutch

01:05:28.820 dish and it's basically a split pea and uh various kinds of bacon and ham and things uh soup uh

01:05:39.380 soups cup probably not the right word for it because the consistency the rule with snert is

01:05:44.180 you know that it's ready when you can stick your uh your wooden stirring spoon in it and

01:05:49.060 it stands straight up and won't fall over so it's a very thick split pea

01:05:53.380 and ham and bacon and pork and carrots and various other things and it's delicious

01:06:02.820 it's hearty and it's a really good thing to have during the winter um i found it

01:06:07.860 uh so one of the other ethnic european dishes that i like to make is bananas and sauerkraut

01:06:18.740 and it sounds odd. I'll give you that, but it is also a Frisian dish, and it's basically a cottage

01:06:27.560 pie, but with layers of banana and sauerkraut, and the sweet and the sour go together and make

01:06:33.420 this magical goo in there that's wonderful. I know that didn't make it sound much better,

01:06:38.840 but i promise you it is but both of these i discovered

01:06:47.240 i am i i'm not uh not eloquent this evening and i'm not not sure why maybe need more sleep last

01:06:53.640 night but these things came about my first um forays into ausitru i was in alaska and there

01:07:01.080 wasn't a lot of other folks there wasn't a lot of afa activity there so it started by me having

01:07:07.160 people over to my house and having dinners. The very first one that we celebrated was

01:07:13.000 for the Remembrance Day for King Radbod of Frisia. And we thought it would be fun to look up

01:07:21.640 different Dutch recipes and make these different things. And there's two really different ones

01:07:30.000 that we tried out. Snert was one of them. And the other one was the sauerkraut and the bananas.

01:07:34.320 So it comes from that tradition of having people over to my house and trying different things.

01:07:39.540 And we kept what worked good, and we decided not to keep the stuff that didn't turn out so well.

01:07:45.940 So that's my little snurt speech.

01:07:50.880 $20 from Stephen Mundy in the name of honor.

01:07:54.300 Thank you, Stephen.

01:07:55.120 We appreciate it.

01:07:56.040 I appreciate your donations.

01:07:58.380 Thank you so much to everybody who's donated to us on Entropy Tonight.

01:08:01.760 It's much, much appreciated.

01:08:04.320 Um, Christine asks, uh, Adam, can you share with us your eunuch road, uh, runic yoga journey?

01:08:15.860 Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, I like many people started out in Asatru and trying to, uh,

01:08:27.780 understand the lore and and things like that and obviously in that when it comes to runes

01:08:34.900 you know we're talking about botan so um i i followed edrid thorson's work for a little while

01:08:42.980 and uh then i got into um yost turner's uh work for with like kundalini yoga and then ironically

01:08:55.300 i kind of put the two and two together and started doing runia of them and for me i i think

01:09:05.460 it's helped me a lot in so many different ways um and especially understanding and knowing the

01:09:12.340 runes more so um i've made it very much a part of my life i uh i'm very devoted to

01:09:19.940 keeping that as a center in my life just like the afa is our center um in my daily life i have my

01:09:29.780 spiritual center if you will and everything radiates radiates out from there my day starts

01:09:36.720 with that and then i might exercise or read or whatever go to work um so it's it's very much a

01:09:46.920 of my life and uh i i did it today you know so um that will continue uh more will be revealed and uh

01:09:58.440 what i what i really like about it as well is there's not a lot of things left behind

01:10:05.000 for you to read about and it says do this and you will get this or uh you know imagine this

01:10:13.320 it's all they the the meisters back then kind of just said do this for x amount of minutes

01:10:20.520 you'll get results that's it so it's upon you to go out and do it um and that's been a great help

01:10:26.360 for me to um in my in my journey just doing it uh we can read all the time we can but we'll never

01:10:35.800 gain anything unless we're actually doing it happening so i mean it it is life right

01:10:43.560 it goes along with uh rune yoga or any other practice as well

01:10:50.520 yeah did you uh did you try to do yos kriya yoga routine initially yeah i did do it for a while um

01:11:01.000 Um, there was some, some things with like, obviously vegetarianism and stuff like that,

01:11:07.740 which I did do for a while.

01:11:10.260 Um, but I always ended up in a, it caught up to me.

01:11:16.040 I couldn't, you know, keep up physically with it.

01:11:19.380 I'm not saying that people can't do it.

01:11:21.040 Maybe I did it wrong, you know, but I have tried it a couple of times and it just didn't

01:11:25.500 work for me in that, in that regard.

01:11:27.620 And I just felt that runes spoke to me more so than some of that.

01:11:36.740 But I understand that the end result is the same in many ways.

01:11:41.640 There's many different paths for the same thing.

01:11:44.880 So it's not, if that works for some people, great.

01:11:48.180 For me, it was more the runic path.

01:11:50.500 That's all.

01:11:52.040 Fair enough.

01:11:53.200 Yeah, I took issue with the, I think he called it the frugative diet with fruit and nuts.

01:12:00.020 Fruit and nuts are great, but I couldn't make that work.

01:12:05.360 Hello.

01:12:10.840 So, Lawrence asks, with a donation of 10 Canadian dollars.

01:12:19.300 Thank you so much, Lawrence.

01:12:21.020 Hi, gents.

01:12:21.660 i had a chance to exercise honor recently the restaurant gal i mentioned last week

01:12:29.040 gave me the full marxist lecture including uh afa our supremacist etc it did hurt a little

01:12:38.020 but i'm emotionally tough and did not confront her i primarily see her as a victim of the white guilt

01:12:45.680 phenomenon so somebody's getting squirrely so her mom's gonna take her um that's good to hear i'm

01:12:55.680 glad that you glad that you held your own on that i know that it it's got to be uncomfortable and

01:13:03.040 and i'm sorry that didn't work out um but yeah i think that rather than you know reacting poorly

01:13:12.720 realizing that that comes from the the soul sickness our people suffer with uh being fed

01:13:20.240 this white guilt thing since uh i'm not sure how old this woman is but most of us since childhood

01:13:27.680 it has a real damaging effect and it creates a creates a self-loathing that sometimes people

01:13:33.840 aware are aware of and sometimes they're not but uh i'm glad you behaved honorably in that situation

01:13:40.960 Tracy asks, Dear Adam, do you eat Thanksgiving dinner? And if so, what is your favorite side

01:13:49.180 dish? That's a tough one. I, I, you know what? I really like, uh, the sweet potatoes with like

01:14:03.320 the, uh, sweet, like my mommy, I don't even know what it's called, but that that's probably one

01:14:09.440 of my favorites. I like sweet potatoes. For whatever reason, as a kid, I didn't. And I was

01:14:17.440 wrong. I was wrong. Sweet potatoes are amazing. I don't know why as a kid, it just wasn't something

01:14:23.140 I enjoyed. Daniel says, Adam, you are known for your stoic nature. Is that something you've

01:14:31.820 studied, or is it just natural to you? I've always been interested in self-mastery, hence

01:14:43.480 runes, Odin, you know, whatnot. So that's just something, you know, and once again, I'm not 100%

01:14:51.960 there. I can fail, and, you know, I'm not all the way there yet, but I'd say that's more what it is.

01:15:01.820 um acting and doing what the the better self wants to do versus following the lower guy

01:15:13.580 and making a bad choice or being fearful in this situation or whatever the case may be

01:15:21.480 more self-mastery i think it's very important to me and i i feel that um when we change ourselves

01:15:29.000 And, you know, we've all heard it before. When we change ourselves, we change the world.

01:15:33.480 We begin to look at things differently. And it's because our perception has changed.

01:15:40.840 So, yeah. And then we see that things aren't as bad as we might think.

01:15:45.980 There's a lot of good skill. But nonetheless, I don't know if that answered the question.

01:15:59.000 Stoicism is interesting depending on how people take it because I think it can mean different

01:16:07.640 things to different people. Today so much is based on emotional reaction that I think having

01:16:17.880 the ability to step back and reflect and hold yourself with a certain amount of dignity is

01:16:22.620 really important. But something that I think this is kind of

01:16:29.180 your emotion shouldn't control you, but having the ability to be moved deeply or to have deep

01:16:41.500 emotion, I think is a really special thing. And it's one of the things I'm very thankful for about

01:16:47.980 myself um you know music or you know certain things certain moments specifically doing certain

01:17:00.300 rituals i become very overwhelmed with emotion um not to where i can't choose my own actions

01:17:09.420 but to where i will you know if anybody's seen me do a baby naming i weep every single time

01:17:15.020 i cry at weddings those kind of things i think are really valuable too to be able to be moved

01:17:20.780 on that deeper level so i would encourage people with the stoicism we always want to choose our

01:17:27.900 actions and not be forced into them but accepting and going with a deep emotional reaction isn't

01:17:36.780 isn't always a bad thing as long as you have the ability to make that choice

01:17:40.220 so a question from vk i heard about some pretty nifty yule cards how can i get me some nick might

01:17:51.940 can help with this nick can you advise on how folks can get the yule cards also any of our

01:17:58.280 folk builders want to put that information up in the side nope nick's on top of it

01:18:01.940 so there you go go to any of those uh websites and you have the ability to participate in the

01:18:08.860 AFA Yule Card Fundraiser and get some really beautiful cards.

01:18:20.740 Lucius Svartwolf asks, so I had a thought slash question. The Wiccan read is, and it harm none,

01:18:32.000 do what you will. Would the also true equivalent be, and it harm some, self-included, do what

01:18:41.100 thou must, since to be honorable and to keep one's word, one must fulfill one's oaths and

01:18:46.920 responsibilities, even if it demands a sacrifice of themselves or harm to others. What are your

01:18:54.260 thoughts on that, Adam? I'm trying to read it. You go ahead first, Matt. I kind of missed it. I

01:19:02.620 apologize. All right. Well, so yes, I don't, there's so much more to it than that. I don't

01:19:20.860 think Alistair True lends itself to a very simple phrase like that. But I think in comparison to

01:19:29.560 Wicca, certainly. Doing the right thing doesn't mean, and I said this a second ago, doing the

01:19:39.020 right thing doesn't mean doing the non-confrontational thing or, you know, doing the right thing

01:19:47.420 doesn't equal easy and it doesn't equal passive um there are occasions where one does need to

01:19:55.660 cause harm and where it's right to do so knowing and distinguishing when that's appropriate and

01:20:01.580 when it's not are uh you know that discernment is one of the the virtues of manhood and things that

01:20:10.220 that a man needs to have is the ability to to know those things and to reason those things

01:20:15.900 um so i think as a comparison between wicca and australia that's an apt point i just think there's

01:20:21.500 so much more to it i think wicca likes to boil itself down to things that look nice on a hallmark

01:20:28.300 card and our stuff is a little bit different um you have any thoughts on that adam

01:20:38.540 um yeah i i i think that it's important i don't i don't know a lot about wiccan stuff to be honest

01:20:48.960 but um i think it's important to fulfill your responsibilities not for yourself for others i

01:20:58.180 mean that's what we're doing right now in the afa every single one of us for the future so

01:21:06.460 that's my take on it. All right. Allie asks, how do you properly pronounce

01:21:16.560 I've heard as many versions as there are letters in the word. Can we get the final word on this,

01:21:25.200 please? Absolutely. And it works good if you separate it into those three words.

01:21:35.760 Alls, for everyone, every man's, all peoples.

01:21:41.300 Heriar, the warriors, the war band, all warriors, gothi, and that's a god, man, or priest.

01:21:51.220 So the priest for all of the warriors, alls, heriar, gothi.

01:21:58.480 And heriar in the same sense as the einheriar.

01:22:02.000 and yes a lot of people do not pronounce it correctly and i'm glad that you ask and i hope

01:22:10.360 that we will increase the correct pronunciation of the word um finn asks i heard the runes were

01:22:19.400 not used for uh meditation or for spiritual things like we do now do you agree or disagree

01:22:28.560 do you have any thoughts? Yes, I have thoughts. Adam, you want to take a swing at that first?

01:22:36.160 That they were not used for meditation.

01:22:40.820 I can't say what they were used for back then. Obviously, so little

01:22:46.000 survives of that time period. For me, the runes are used for self-transformation.

01:22:56.060 simple as that for myself today. And I would bet that back then they probably did the same thing

01:23:03.140 with them. This is my take on it. So I am not sure where you heard that the runes were not

01:23:11.640 used for meditation or spiritual things like we do now. I certainly disagree with that. I disagree

01:23:18.320 with that very strongly um if you look at our lore all of the stories about the runes are

01:23:27.360 literally that um the root the word rune itself means mystery um and this is kind of a i don't

01:23:37.200 know seems like maybe an out there concept the runes are not the lines on the carved end of the

01:23:43.360 thing those series of straight line pictures are symbols of the room but the rune is the mystery

01:23:52.960 that those pictures symbolize uh they're you know sigils if you will but the sigil

01:24:00.640 is symbolic of that mystery understanding the mysteries of the universe if that's not meditative

01:24:07.440 i don't know what is um certainly they were used for meditations we have examples of them being

01:24:15.760 used uh for for divination and for magical purposes um we have examples i know in egil's

01:24:24.720 saga on whalebone they were carved in to do magical things and our laura talks about carving

01:24:29.760 them on blades for victory. Odin talks about learning these spells through the runes in the

01:24:41.280 Runatal. So all of the evidence that we have was that they were absolutely used for magical things.

01:24:52.240 And even if we look at them in terms of writing, so much of the writing with runes

01:24:59.600 served a magical purpose um so often the runic writing was to invoke something or to put a curse

01:25:09.760 on something if you were to alter it on the rune stones you'd have carved in you know

01:25:15.200 various things may thor strike you if you alter this stone um or if you move this stone so

01:25:23.440 So using runes for magical purposes absolutely is something that our ancestors did.

01:25:30.460 And it's something that's well attested to.

01:25:36.000 So if you guys have any more questions, we've been going about an hour and a half now.

01:25:40.260 If you guys got more questions, please line them up for us.

01:25:43.840 We'd love to answer any questions you guys may have.

01:25:47.020 As for right now, I think we got one more in line to go after here.

01:25:51.800 So we'll get to that.

01:25:53.020 This one's from Green Leader. Not sure if this is coming to us here or from Twitter.

01:25:59.880 What's your vision for Sigerheim as an intentional community?

01:26:06.000 So I'm glad you asked that.

01:26:14.860 So I chose the name Sigerheim because it means the victory home, the home of victory.

01:26:23.020 And because the idea of an intentional Ausitru community in a physical place like that has been a dream of our folks since the rediscovery of Ausitru, I see this as a tremendous fulfillment of that dream and a big victory and a testament to the victories that we've won and the victories that we intend to win.

01:26:49.320 um but victory home i want it to be a home for our folk and for the afa i want us to have a spot

01:27:02.500 that you know the capital of the afa i want all the things that implies i want it to be

01:27:09.180 where the the operation of the afa is run from where i do these videos from where we host

01:27:18.580 national gatherings from, where we do all the administration of the AFA from, certainly.

01:27:25.940 But I also want it to be a place where people can go and be home. I want people to live

01:27:32.800 on site there and to build a vibrant village within Sigurheim. It is important to me that we,

01:27:43.040 you know that we have homes but that we also have guest facilities and bunkhouse facilities for

01:27:48.320 national events but also for folks that need a place to stay or if they come to an event and

01:27:53.520 want to spend the night have them have a spot if something goes wrong in their life as an extension

01:27:58.880 of folk services have them have a place that them and their family can go and can get fed

01:28:04.720 and have a roof over their head if they need that i also want a spot where

01:28:09.680 our elders. And one thing that has been a common occurrence, at least in the first

01:28:18.080 generation of Ausatru, is we have elders that didn't lead, you know, their life was often

01:28:26.960 focused on a lot of other things besides securing a favorable retirement situation.

01:28:32.120 So they find themselves old, sometimes estranged from their family or without family,

01:28:37.060 and without the resources to live in the way that we'd like to see them live.

01:28:42.940 So for our elderly folks to have a place they can come and live that we can take care of them,

01:28:49.680 again, we can't promise everybody luxury, but we can give them a place, a roof over their head,

01:28:55.180 we can make sure they've got access to meals, and we can make sure that they've got access to our

01:29:00.040 faith and their faith community, to our Hoff that we're going to have there, to our hall,

01:29:04.480 to participate in also true every day of their life and i think that's the best thing that we

01:29:10.160 can do for for our elders also for people who have various disabilities and can't necessarily

01:29:18.080 live on their own but don't need a full-time medical care because we can't provide full-time

01:29:22.880 medical care but if we have people that can't live independently instead of them having to be

01:29:28.480 someplace where their faith isn't celebrated and they don't have access to hoffs and to our afa

01:29:34.400 family we would like to wrap them in the love of our afa family and have them there with a place

01:29:40.480 to stay and stuff to eat and a way to participate now it's true every day of their life um as i

01:29:47.520 mentioned already we're gonna have a great hall there that we're gonna feast in and celebrate in

01:29:53.520 and uh get together in and enjoy each other's company and enjoy our community in we're also

01:29:59.680 going to and in that's going to be a um commercial quality like really nice kitchen to where we can

01:30:06.320 prepare meals for large groups of people um in a pantry to where we have you know the supplies

01:30:12.400 for those things to extend hospitality to folks we're also going to have a uh a hof there it's

01:30:20.320 going to be tiershoff and that will be you know at that point that will be the center of its own

01:30:27.280 hoff district that'll happen at the time but yeah that's my vision for it and how fast is it going

01:30:32.560 to happen i don't know we'll see um we'll see who actually wants to invest and build homes there

01:30:40.400 so i guess another question comes in what kind of housing it's very important to me that it looks

01:30:46.240 nice and that it's well taken care of. But I want people to have their dreams, too. We're not going

01:30:51.740 to have enough land to where people have massive acreage and massive yards. But whatever home they 0.52

01:30:57.140 would like to build, if they want to build a mansion and invest that in there, great, we'd love

01:31:01.000 that. If they want to build a tiny home, great, we'd love that. If they want to build a log home,

01:31:08.820 great. But we want real homes there and not some kind of hippie commune shanty town. That's not

01:31:15.360 what we're building. We're building a village of noble AFA members that want to exist as a

01:31:22.600 community, as a family, and build that for us, for our children, a place to raise our children in.

01:31:29.380 I envision it being a spot that we can help other people with, through the Astro Academy,

01:31:35.760 to raise our children, to educate our children as a group, as a family there.

01:31:41.760 um the the sky is the limit the possibilities are truly truly endless but

01:31:48.740 reforming that sense of an organic real physical community is what I want to see develop and what

01:31:58.180 I want so badly for myself and my family to be a part of and so that's that's kind of the first

01:32:04.420 the first phase of visions that I have for Sigerheim.

01:32:09.880 And I think we've got a lot of great people

01:32:12.360 that have expressed interest

01:32:13.500 that are going to be involved in the project

01:32:15.700 when we get it going.

01:32:16.880 And I'm very excited about the future, though.

01:32:22.340 Looks like we have another couple of questions

01:32:24.780 that have come in.

01:32:29.140 Cody asks, Adam, can you tell us

01:32:31.940 about your experience folk building in Pennsylvania?

01:32:34.420 Any challenges? Any victories?

01:32:40.500 Well, I think there's always a little bit of challenges in any of it,

01:32:45.060 and obviously victories.

01:32:48.260 You know, when I started out, I was very lucky

01:32:51.540 because I had Witten Erickson and Katie Erickson pretty close to me.

01:32:56.780 I kind of got to watch them for a period of time.

01:33:00.420 and uh so i i when i when i became a folk builder it was pretty neat because they did the holy days

01:33:09.300 and i went and got to go do the cool stuff so like go big well not that holy days aren't cool

01:33:14.980 let me rephrase it i got to go do like the hikes and stuff like that so i had a lot of fun um

01:33:20.740 and uh you know eventually things started changing a little bit and i had to take over that

01:33:26.980 responsibility and i got to see how i i gained a lot more respect for uh the people that hosted

01:33:36.500 that every single month it's it is a lot of work um but most importantly for me it's it's just

01:33:44.580 and i and for anybody in leadership it's always about the folk um we do it for you guys

01:33:51.140 um and uh we know you need a place to come uh to have to to have awesome truth in today's age you

01:34:00.900 know what i mean so um it's really that simple but i uh i enjoy it probably my favorite thing to do

01:34:10.340 in folk building other than the big stuff that i just mentioned is to do the the applications

01:34:17.540 when a new person uh applies i i really enjoyed uh speaking to them i mean for some of them it's

01:34:25.540 the first time they ever spoke to anybody right and uh i remember when i called in you know and

01:34:33.060 i spent like three hours on the phone with the gentleman at that time um it was special so uh

01:34:40.420 It's one thing that I really enjoy doing very much.

01:34:49.240 Some of you might not know, but Adam, or I say that, why would you?

01:34:54.600 Most of you probably don't know.

01:34:56.660 Adam is on our internal security team that helps vet applications that come through and look at things on the back end.

01:35:05.620 And one of the reasons for that is that we trust that he's on an even keel and he's got a got a good, reasonable realness about him and how he can evaluate some of these people.

01:35:20.280 And he takes a little bit deeper dive if anything looks strange on an application.

01:35:24.340 So Adam's very involved in the application process in that way as well.

01:35:29.340 And we certainly appreciate him for that.

01:35:31.560 ah so christian pinner asks from me we i was harry goethe's favorite beer

01:35:40.320 so a couple things here you asked a specific question and i will give you a specific answer

01:35:47.460 i wanted to look it up because i think it was a limited edition that i haven't had in a long time

01:35:50.780 but i wish i could have again uh rogue voodoo's donut bacon maple ale that was my favorite beer

01:35:59.700 that I've ever had, and it's amazing. It's lighter than what I usually like in beers, though. I like

01:36:05.240 dark beers. I like any of the beers that are on nitro with the smooth creaminess. I love that.

01:36:13.820 I really like Doppelbox, but yeah, that's my beer choice. But you know what? I like the flavored

01:36:22.620 beers a lot. I'm that guy. I like me a fruity beer. I'm not going to lie. I enjoy all the

01:36:27.840 different pumpkin spice beers that, you know, were around last month. With beer or wine or cigars,

01:36:38.100 I don't taste the subtle things that people, you know, like to,

01:36:43.840 notes of hickory and hibiscus. I don't pick those things up. So it's got to be pretty flavor forward,

01:36:52.420 either on the front end or on the back end for me to taste it also uh russian river has this thing

01:36:58.100 ron mexico that describes it as having a coconutty finish it's also a light colored beer i don't know

01:37:06.020 whether you know it's an ipa or just what they usually do a lot of ipas that's really really

01:37:11.620 good and the coconut finish really comes through and that's all done just with the

01:37:15.780 breed of hops so that's really cool as well um bob guy asks one goes to an afa uh event

01:37:28.260 that is hours away from where they live can the afa have a place to stay for people like that

01:37:35.860 it all depends that's one of the interesting things yes we would love to have those kind

01:37:40.500 of accommodations um that's one of the things that are that's essential for us to have at sigerheim

01:37:47.380 people travel to sigerheim i want them to have a place to crash and spend the night so they don't

01:37:51.620 have to be in a rush so they can enjoy themselves and again we really appreciate people being

01:37:57.380 willing to travel all that way and it's great to have some place to stay often members will that

01:38:04.180 live closer to an event will offer space in their homes for people to stay but you can't count on

01:38:09.220 that uh anybody who's traveling to my house for the the snert dinner this weekend um they're

01:38:15.700 welcome to stay here we've got a really nice guest set up and uh beyond that we got couches

01:38:21.780 and floor space and we'll figure it out um odenshoff is in a spot where camping is is a

01:38:31.380 reasonable thing to do and where there is an option for people to camp or even we have people

01:38:35.940 that will roll out a sleeping bag in the hall. And that's a thing. That's not an option at

01:38:41.780 Baldershof or Thorshof at present or at Njortzhof. So we would love to have those accommodations,

01:38:48.720 but we don't have that regularly set up at a lot of our venues. So it really depends on where you

01:38:53.720 go. But we would love to see more of that. And there's been talk about, you know, buying other

01:38:58.360 properties in the towns to where we could have guest facilities for things like that. But we're

01:39:03.560 not there yet. Again, if you guys have more questions, throw them out. If not, there's

01:39:11.260 nothing wrong with an hour and a half program. Looks like we got one more question on here

01:39:15.780 lined up so far, though. And I think this is a very good question from Corey. How does

01:39:23.740 honor look different in men and women? Adam, what's your take on that?

01:39:29.700 Well, obviously, we are different, but when we think of a woman, obviously, what we think

01:39:47.060 of a traditional woman that does what she needs to for her family and whatnot, and then

01:39:56.420 there's the man that does the same thing on the other side. Honestly, as I'm saying, I don't

01:40:03.680 really think there's that much of a difference in many ways. The virtues probably go together

01:40:10.240 in the same way. Telling the truth, once again, doing the right thing and whatnot. So

01:40:21.080 i don't really see a difference now it could be wrong

01:40:25.780 so i think

01:40:32.760 ah it doesn't work well on this and it reflects my ring light but that's that beer that's good

01:40:39.740 anyways i think um

01:40:41.960 it's a good question i think that it's got the same components but i think that the ratio and

01:40:55.120 proportion of them look a bit different and i've uh usually when i've come to this it's been on

01:41:02.680 discussions about about ascension and what heroic like heroism ascension is as far as ascended

01:41:13.320 ancestors and with men ascension is about mastery it's about mastery of the self it's about mastery

01:41:23.020 of situation and of circumstance it's about mastery of of others it's about leadership

01:41:29.160 it's about those kind of things that lead towards ascension and whereas with women

01:41:35.560 the ascendancy of women is about devotion it's about devotion to folk devotion to family

01:41:44.060 devotion to husbands devotion to children devotion to all these things in society that

01:41:50.360 make literally hold everything together that devotion is what's so very very beautiful for

01:41:58.740 women. And I think that when we talk about honor and our virtues, it displays differently in the

01:42:07.600 sense that we need all of those things from both. But what really stands out by a particularly

01:42:14.600 honorable woman is so much her level of devotion. We often see that in domestic things, in

01:42:22.540 her role as a wife and as a mother and as a grandmother and as somebody who leads the other

01:42:30.240 women in the household and is devoted to family, that's very often what we think of when we think 0.74

01:42:40.020 of a particularly honorable woman. Whereas when we think of an honorable man, we think of things 1.00

01:42:44.500 are directed outward very often we think of acts of heroism or um you know battlefield prowess or

01:42:54.500 being a being a king or being you know a great leader in some endeavor we see that projected

01:43:02.820 out whereas the the woman's greatness and honor is so much projected inwards towards the family

01:43:09.380 in towards community and so i'd say that's how they display a little bit different but again

01:43:15.940 it's not an exact science and i think that the components are the same i think that

01:43:21.380 the ratios of each of them and as they interplay with each other is certainly different

01:43:27.460 um we have a monetized question from lawrence forbes with another 10 canadian dollars thank

01:43:32.500 you so much lawrence that beer talk has me looking forward to the weekend what about guinness matt

01:43:39.380 uh i'll have one of those when i'm a little run down it's more of a tonic than a beverage in my

01:43:46.600 opinion delicious even at room temperature like they do in ireland uh great stream this evening

01:43:53.740 much appreciated um yeah we appreciate you i'm glad that you're uh so frequently on these and

01:44:01.380 contributing and helping out lawrence i look forward to talking to you every week on here

01:44:05.280 Guinness is delicious and amazing and I don't know why or what the difference is but Guinness

01:44:12.180 in Ireland is different than Guinness over here and I'm not sure exactly why

01:44:16.260 um I always enjoy Guinness I'm never going to turn one down I think that they are great but

01:44:24.540 the best Guinness I had was at the uh St. James Gate in Dublin facility and over there if anybody's

01:44:32.240 been there they've got this you know the guinness factory there but they're the big showcase building

01:44:37.860 is is like a pint glass where you can look out at the top over all of dublin and it's really a neat

01:44:44.140 experience and you can go and and see how it's processed and smell things at different stages

01:44:50.060 of processing it's really cool but at the top they top off your uh your your tour with this

01:44:56.140 pint of Guinness. And Guinness over there is just better. Don't know why, but it is. And it's

01:45:01.840 delicious. As much as people want to say whatever about dark beers, Guinness is, I've always found

01:45:08.620 it to be extremely refreshing for a beer. And that may seem odd to people that haven't had it,

01:45:14.720 but to me, I find Guinness extremely refreshing. Yeah, that's my Guinness thoughts. I always like

01:45:21.800 the advertising too where they have with the um they've got some really good posters for guinness

01:45:27.880 but one of the ones they have is guinness for strength so in that sense i think that a lot of

01:45:33.120 folks look at guinness as kind of a tonic in a way but no i i enjoy some guinness what about you

01:45:40.520 adam do you like guinness i'm not much of a beer drinker uh if i had to choose it would probably

01:45:47.560 just be yingling pa beer you know that that's yeah that's that's probably what i would drink

01:45:56.120 fair enough um king of cheese asks what do you think of the phrase when the legend becomes fact

01:46:04.360 print the legend should the truth of a thing always be repeated always or is mythologizing

01:46:11.560 fine in some circumstances. What do you think on that, Adam?

01:46:18.120 I'm having trouble. I can't see these questions.

01:46:25.560 No, no worries. So he's asking about a phrase, when the legend becomes fact,

01:46:32.280 print the legend. His question is, should the truth of a thing always be repeated always?

01:46:39.480 Or is mythologizing fine in some circumstances?

01:46:45.720 You go ahead first on that one, Matt, if you don't.

01:46:49.340 All right.

01:46:49.780 So I think that we start off on the wrong foot when we think that mythologizing equals dishonesty or untruth.

01:47:07.140 And I don't think that's the case.

01:47:08.760 I think mythology, when done right, teaches truth.

01:47:19.160 I think truth is really important. I think there are circumstances where you want to put your best foot forward.

01:47:26.820 And so you want to, like we talked about earlier in the program with honor and dishonor,

01:47:31.660 you want to shine a light on the things that are important that you want to highlight and that you want to celebrate and make sure people remember.

01:47:38.760 And it's not lying or wrong to not point out things that do the opposite.

01:47:48.760 So I think that when you talk about mythologizing certain situations, I think you put a disproportionate emphasis on the good things that you want to show by the example of the story you tell.

01:48:01.760 And you don't show all the flaws, all the weakness, all the bad parts. And I don't think that's dishonest. I think if you can be dishonest in the way you do that, or you can be honest about it.

01:48:15.120 I think accurately recording history is extremely important. But when we have like in schools of journalism today, and we see this come through all too often in literature as well, in books, in nonfiction books, is a need to tell both sides or a need to get a counterpoint or a need to get another side of the story.

01:48:39.000 I don't think you need that at all. I think if you're the author of something, you're telling the story. As long as you're being honest, you can tell it as subjectively as you want. You can tell it from your perspective and celebrate the things that you want to celebrate in your telling of the story.

01:48:57.500 Um, but I do think that what we should never do is lie about history or lie about a person from history. We owe people better than that. When we portray a historical event.

01:49:13.360 we have an obligation to give those people their due and when we choose to fundamentally

01:49:23.180 be dishonest or recreate their character to fit a narrative of the story we want to tell

01:49:29.080 we do an extreme dishonor to a real person who existed and did things and i think that's a

01:49:35.260 that's a terrible crime that people do uh what are your thoughts adam yeah i i i think there's

01:49:43.300 lesson in what happened before so changing it obviously you know myth like you said is truth

01:49:53.140 um it's eternal and it can be used again and again and again and uh we absolutely should

01:49:59.780 should not change it in any way and it should be truthful all right um

01:50:07.380 Shlomo Shekelstein asks, gentlemen, are you participating in a Frayers Feast this weekend?

01:50:19.400 Thank you.

01:50:22.860 Adam, are you participating in a Frayers Feast this weekend?

01:50:28.680 I am not, no.

01:50:30.480 Just a feast tomorrow with the family.

01:50:32.720 um yeah no uh i'm not either with a particular frayers feast i know that we have a frayers feast

01:50:40.660 uh the afa is putting on in idaho this weekend and i'm very excited about that i think we're

01:50:48.860 going to have a lot of great people up there unfortunately it's uh proximity to to thanksgiving

01:50:55.980 is something i'm not able to to make it up there for so uh but i'm really looking forward to it

01:51:02.120 one of our folk builders uh tyler heineland up there is uh hosting that and i think he's

01:51:08.680 going to do an amazing job it sounds really exciting if i was if i was a couple states

01:51:13.800 closer i'd i'd be up there absolutely for it but i know i'm uh celebrating thanksgiving tomorrow

01:51:19.400 with my family and then like i said i'm having a uh my monthly ulterior gothic dinner over here at

01:51:25.800 my house on uh on saturday um corey asks can you please talk about the importance of ritualistic

01:51:36.360 honoring of the acr and the ancestors that seems to be the core of the afa thanks

01:51:44.280 adam can you talk about the importance of that well it's it's kind of uh very much the basis of

01:51:51.080 of what we do i mean they're uh our ancestors are not only us in a sense but um you know we

01:52:01.480 we've learned much from them just like we learned from the gods um in in the stories and whatnot so

01:52:08.200 yeah we absolutely honor them through ritual and things like that um so i hope that

01:52:16.760 somewhat answers the question yeah so um your your question also talks about

01:52:24.760 ritualistically honoring them and i think that can be the same or that can be different

01:52:31.960 certainly honoring the aesir and honoring the ancestors is always something that we want to do

01:52:39.160 as also true or that's that's a given but doing it in a ritualistic way especially with a gathered

01:52:48.520 community is something special it's it's worth more than some of its parts at that point when

01:52:57.640 you enter a ritual space and participate together it's worth much more than you guys doing it

01:53:05.480 individually or any of us doing it individually. And I'm trying to think of the best way to

01:53:14.280 mention it. There's certainly something metaphysical there, but we're calling out

01:53:17.920 to the gods of our entire race of people. And doing that is so much more impactful when we do

01:53:27.020 it as a united family with all of our, all of our spiritual energy, all of our energy in general

01:53:34.420 aligned and in harmony. It's one of the reasons when that's the reason that when I start bloat,

01:53:43.000 I like to start off with rune galder is because it literally harmonizes all of us

01:53:48.940 and it gets us doing the same thing together. And like I said, it's worth the syncretic, the

01:53:55.600 syncretic nature of it makes it worth more than the sum of its part. It's built upon all of our

01:54:04.520 energy interacting together in a special way. If you could imagine it's, you know, in the sense of

01:54:11.400 say you're a great grandparent and you've got all these kids and they, you know, send you a message

01:54:19.160 says hi great grandpa we love you cool that's great but it's a bigger impact if they all get

01:54:26.280 together and have a family reunion to celebrate you it becomes a bigger deal um and i think that

01:54:33.960 that's important i think when we stand together the gods recognize that in a much bigger way than

01:54:41.400 when we all stand atomized, you know, sending up thoughts and honor to them. And I think the same

01:54:49.000 thing is the case with ancestors. Fame is so important. Speaking our ancestors' name, especially

01:54:55.560 as we do ensemble, and a whole room of people in chorus hailing that person, that's got to be

01:55:02.040 something very special to a person who's been dead for some time and doesn't often get spoken of.

01:55:08.200 to have an entire room of people hearing the story about you and and uh you know and inhaling

01:55:14.360 your name and raising a toast to you it's a special thing and uh again it's it's much more

01:55:21.400 significant than just one person on their own doing it um that's my thoughts on uh on that um

01:55:30.200 All right. So, Adam, do you have any parting words for folks, AFA members or not, about the importance of honor?

01:55:42.680 I would say, once again, pull from the past, from your heroes, and especially heroes.

01:55:52.480 I think heroes are great because they were like us, right?

01:56:00.060 Flesh and blood, all right?

01:56:01.600 We can relate to them a lot.

01:56:03.400 And we take from them and make it alive here.

01:56:07.100 But at the same time, when we act in an honorable way, we do the right thing, we follow virtue,

01:56:15.880 eventually what happens is we no longer need to look to anybody else we found our true self

01:56:25.680 we are now okay you know our inner voice we know who we are um and then perhaps one day

01:56:36.000 long from now people will look at us the same so that's the one thing i think we really need

01:56:41.780 to remember is that what we're doing today will be looked upon, good or bad. We have

01:56:50.900 that ability to make it that way, depending on our own actions. So yeah, thanks for having

01:57:00.640 me on and hail the AFA.

01:57:05.500 Well, Adam, thank you for, you know, this wasn't just a random kindness having you on

01:57:11.680 this was well earned by you building a reputation built on honor and uh you know i certainly agree

01:57:19.600 with all that i i agree that you should be here but it's important that your your colleagues and

01:57:27.280 the folks that you interact with and work with resoundingly thought you were the guy that needs

01:57:34.240 to be here to represent honor and i think that speaks volumes um folks out there i you know i

01:57:41.120 I think this piggybacks on what Adam said, but, you know, be aware we are living in history right now.

01:57:49.280 We are building history. We are participating in history.

01:57:54.360 We are doing things that our children and our children's children will talk about in days to come.

01:58:02.740 Be a hero. Be a hero for them to celebrate.

01:58:06.720 be a hero for them to raise toast to and talk about for generations to come.

01:58:12.380 Let's do that together.

01:58:14.740 Hail the gods.

01:58:15.760 Hail the folk.

01:58:16.920 Hail the AFA.

01:58:18.260 Remember, victory never sleeps.

01:58:36.720 Thank you.

01:59:06.720 Thank you.

01:59:36.720 Thank you.

02:00:06.720 Thank you.

02:00:36.720 Thank you.

02:01:06.720 Thank you.

Asatru Folk Assembly - November 24, 2022

11⧸23⧸22 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 20 - Honor

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