Asatru Folk Assembly - 12⧸27⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 77 - Charming of the Plow

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

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

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 We'll be right back.

00:02:00.000 We'll be right back.

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00:03:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

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00:04:30.000 Thank you.

00:05:00.000 All right, guys, welcome to the final Victory Never Sleeps of 2023.

00:05:11.760 Don't want to start off on a downer, but I do want to take the time to remember those we've lost over this last year.

00:05:19.720 so uh allison malillo mitch loveless my mom daniel franklin michael vaughn alan wittenberg

00:05:32.280 and camden musser folk remember and we miss you guys hail the fallen

00:05:38.920 with that i hope everybody is having a great yule so far this year we

00:05:47.800 lucked out. We got two Victory Never Sleeps episodes during Yule, so that's exciting.

00:06:01.100 Trying to think of any business here at the top of the show. As always, we're being broadcast

00:06:08.960 on live, on YouTube, Entropy, VK, Twitter, Odyssey, and Rumble, and Twitch. So you guys

00:06:30.180 can check us out there. Anybody who is on one of those platforms, I know that we're interacting

00:06:35.040 with with the youtube very often but you're welcome to ask live questions on any of those

00:06:40.240 platforms and we would be very glad to answer those and and do that um anybody who wants to

00:06:48.080 participate in the super chat thing get your question up front or just throw any donations

00:06:54.560 at us we appreciate those they always go to uh to good causes but if you'd like to do that if

00:07:01.760 if you're interested the description on how to do those things is in the

00:07:07.340 description of this video. So we appreciate that.

00:07:10.940 We're always very thankful. And that being said,

00:07:15.020 I haven't gotten a lot of attention on the entropy lately and,

00:07:17.660 and we have some questions on that, but when we started the show today,

00:07:20.640 we started off with a $10 donation from Ludwig Carl

00:07:25.580 on, on over on entropy says no question,

00:07:29.320 just wishing both of you, your families, and the AFA a happy Yule.

00:07:33.400 Well, I appreciate that, Ludwig Carl.

00:07:35.360 I hope that you are having a very happy Yule yourself.

00:07:43.200 So, I lied to you guys.

00:07:46.120 Last time we had Sfawn on, I talked about,

00:07:48.940 ah, next week I may have something exciting for you.

00:07:51.360 It was a week off.

00:07:52.460 Yes.

00:07:53.640 So, still got it done during Yule.

00:07:57.640 um and by got it done i mean spawn took time out of yule with his family to go and make it happen

00:08:06.340 and finalize some stuff so without further ado uh we have a little little video here that we would

00:08:14.240 like to show you about something we've been a project we've been working on for a while now

00:08:18.260 so nick if you would roll that footage for us please

00:08:22.560 There are two people, more than anything else, who are responsible for the amazing things

00:08:37.120 that we have in our lives today.

00:08:42.020 Steve and Sheila McNeilin built this.

00:08:46.840 They built it with blood, sweat, and tears. They built it with years of thankless work, laying foundations, and setting in motion a dream that in many ways was far off to achieving.

00:09:10.180 But the work, the love, the devotion, the pioneering spirit to see what could be and to take that initiative to go out, to put in the work, to stand alone, to build it is something we will always be so very, very grateful for.

00:09:31.340 Our founder, Stephen McNallan, is responsible through his personal relationship with the All-Father Odin for bringing Ausatru back into our world.

00:09:51.660 He is the foundation that modern Ausatru is built upon.

00:09:55.920 and his wife, Sheila, to build our AFA, to build our community, to build our family.

00:10:06.240 She has put in, she has put in all of herself and continues to this very day

00:10:13.640 and will for all foreseeable future.

00:10:16.300 She cares about this so deeply and so much that so much of Ausitra writ large is a result of Steve's inspiration and his dedication.

00:10:33.300 So much of our AFA family as a group, as a church, has been built on the heart of Sheila

00:10:42.680 McNallan and the love that she has for our gods and our folk and to see this happen.

00:10:49.280 And we could never possibly do enough to honor them, but we're going to try anyways.

00:10:58.960 and uh i've always wanted to see statues erected of these amazing people and what better time

00:11:12.200 than when we we found our home the home of victory sigurheim so we wanted to put that

00:11:20.120 into place and make that happen. And I'm proud to present these statues to Steve and Sheila

00:11:31.020 McNallan as a Yule gift from all of us who have been so very inspired by the work they've

00:11:41.600 done and who are so very, very appreciative from the bottom of our hearts.

00:11:45.720 Good folk, I have the great honor and privilege to present to you today a gift to the McNallans, this yule at Sigurheim, in honor of them, in dedication by decree of Ausheri Argoni, Matt Flavel.

00:12:05.500 There was a very special picture that was taken of the McNallans in a field, and it was taken around the time of the foundation of the Ask True Folk Assembly.

00:12:20.500 That picture has always been very inspirational to me and I think in one frame it captured the very essence of what we do.

00:12:34.500 We present to you these statues and dedication as a gift for you both for so much. Without you two, none of us would be here.

00:12:54.000 None of these great and momentous moments of the Hoffs and the attainment of Sigurdheim,

00:13:03.340 none of this would have happened without you.

00:13:06.140 So from the bottom of my heart and all the folk gathered here that have helped to make this happen,

00:13:12.020 and from us here with Matt Flavel and his genius of getting this done

00:13:19.740 and having it made tangible, from an idea to reality, for you, hail, to leta legion, happy yule, for you, and to all the folk, let us rejoice in our victories, and these are just one of many, many that we have gained, and many that are to come, so, to you, and to all the folk, have a happy yule,

00:13:48.740 Hale, McNallis.

00:13:52.440 Steve reaching, reaching up towards the gods, arms outstretched in the Algees pose,

00:14:00.860 facing north with his mouth open, chanting into existence this that we know as Ausitre.

00:14:13.180 and with his devoted wife Sheila to his side, holding the horn, making things sacred, making

00:14:24.600 things special, looking up with devotion and dedication, and that's what's brought us here

00:14:34.660 today, and that's what we sought to try to recapture in bronze.

00:14:43.180 I suppose all that can be said is thank you, and now you are deeply and forever appreciated

00:14:56.660 by your folk.

00:14:58.280 Hail the McNallans.

00:15:01.220 Hail the McNallans.

00:15:03.100 Hail the McNallans.

00:15:06.180 Hail the McNallans.

00:15:09.420 Hail Steve and Sheila McNallan.

00:15:11.520 Hail the McNallens!

00:15:15.520 Hail the McNallens! Thank you for all that you have known for us!

00:15:19.520 Hail Steve and Sheila McNallens!

00:15:23.520 Hail the McNallens!

00:15:27.520 Hail the McNallens! Thank you for everything you've done!

00:15:31.520 Hail Steve and Sheila McNallens!

00:15:35.520 Hail the McNallens! 0.98

00:15:39.520 Hail the McNeilins!

00:15:43.520 I said so often ensemble.

00:15:47.520 Hail the McNeilins!

00:15:51.520 Hail the guys! 1.00

00:15:53.520 Hail the folks!

00:15:55.520 Hail the F.A.

00:15:57.520 Hail the F.A.

00:15:59.520 Hail victory!

00:16:01.520 Hail victory!

00:16:03.520 Hail victory!

00:16:09.520 so uh special thanks to uh folk builder lydia phelps for putting that video together

00:16:31.440 as always she did an outstanding job um and swan thank you for taking time out of

00:16:40.800 you with your family to go down there and make that happen i think it

00:16:47.040 it's really special that it happened the time that it did i think it's a perfect way to

00:16:52.480 to close out the year, close out Yule, and to start what will be, we are just now about

00:17:02.440 to begin our 30th year of the Ask True Folk Assembly.

00:17:09.000 So yeah, I think that turned out really nice.

00:17:13.080 It was really important for us to, for that to be one of the first things that we did

00:17:22.380 at Sigurheim so that we build what's to become the home of the AFA, the home of Victory Sigurheim, 0.99

00:17:31.420 to literally build it around the McNallids. So yeah, there you go. I'm amazed that that's 0.95

00:17:40.540 been able to stay secret because I think we've been working on it since May. Yeah, May I

00:17:48.140 I think. So glad that was able to work out well.

00:17:54.380 And I talked to the McNallans right before this broadcast and

00:17:58.160 I know it's much appreciated. Thank you for everybody who helped out with this and

00:18:05.500 very happy with how that turned out.

00:18:12.060 Yeah, it was good. I didn't know if I was going to be starting the podcast for this

00:18:18.080 much feels. Getting all the feels up front. Right out the gate. I'm less sloppy with the

00:18:27.440 feels on beer one than on beer fives. I know. Yeah. Get it out now because later on. We'll

00:18:36.660 messy later on so good so with that video it was really well done she did an awesome job with that

00:18:48.580 and i knew she would she is she's magic at that um so we're happy to talk about anything folks

00:18:56.820 would like we are still celebrating yule we've still got you know a few days left on that

00:19:02.500 we're only a little over halfway yule it seems like we've been in yule for a while but we're

00:19:06.580 just a little bit over halfway point on it um having to talk about that kind of stuff

00:19:12.340 having to talk about anything you guys would like and the theme of tonight's program was around

00:19:19.300 we're going uh svan and i have been going through our calendar of holy days to kind of explain why

00:19:26.580 we have the holy days that we have how we celebrate those what they're all about we're

00:19:32.020 continuing in that series today um with february's celebration which is charming of the plow

00:19:40.740 so we will talk about that for a little bit but keep in mind conversation you can go wherever

00:19:46.420 you want it to tonight um that's just kind of the topic we're going to present here so

00:19:51.220 So Svahn, if you could, if there were a, someone tuning in that's never heard of it before,

00:20:01.060 has no idea, could you lay them the foundations and tell them about the Alcatruz celebration

00:20:07.900 of the Charming of the Plow?

00:20:11.020 Yeah, absolutely.

00:20:12.260 Trumming the Plow is one of our sacred holy tides that really starts to turn towards spring.

00:20:21.620 So this would be, in essence, the last celebration before we turn our tidings towards the other half of the year or the sun tiding of the year.

00:20:35.100 And that's our working towards mid-summer.

00:20:37.740 And then from there, we'll fall again.

00:20:39.480 So our calendar works in two poles. We have the mid-summer pole and the mid-winter pole, which we're in right now.

00:20:49.480 Charming of the Plow is an interesting holy tide.

00:20:52.760 I think in the beginning, when Ausatru was starting to reemerge and organize itself, it didn't just want to pull from the Norse.

00:21:01.880 even though there was a heavy influence of nordic um you know holy tides clearly with like with

00:21:10.000 it was something that was known by all of us and also true that you you you have this european

00:21:19.900 faith it's not just a nordic faith and it's in all of these germanic or teutonic aryan groups

00:21:27.000 Whether we're talking about the Germans or the Frigians or the Anglo-Saxons or the Danes or even the Eastern Prussian, Polish and Central and even Northern Italy and far west into France, the Franks, our religion has been everywhere.

00:21:42.960 And so they wanted to pull from a lot of these other traditions.

00:21:47.300 And you see that first really showing up in Charming of the Plough.

00:21:54.340 Now, charming in the plow is a relatively modern term for the bloat that has inspired this holy tide.

00:22:09.360 And the bloat comes from England, actually.

00:22:13.860 And using the word acre, meaning land or field or plot, it's called acre bot, was actually what it was called.

00:22:21.140 It was A-E-C-E-R-B-O-T, Acrebot. You can look it up. It was from a manuscript in which there was only a very small prayer left over. And again, this is one of those things where we don't have that immediate passing off.

00:22:40.300 We've had to research and look and find things because there are tattered pieces of our past.

00:22:47.580 You know, perhaps the Norse did hold something similar, but it wasn't written down or something perhaps survived in, you know, the Alps or in Germany or what have you.

00:22:59.940 But here in America, as Ossetree was forming, they looked at this actual written piece of work and realized, oh, this is a great time to do this holy tide at the beginning of the year.

00:23:12.240 And they kind of angled it for the majority of America.

00:23:16.740 Now, when you're talking about charming the plow and breaking the ground, say, in Minnesota in February, it's still pretty rough.

00:23:25.820 But down here in the south, absolutely.

00:23:28.260 but the biggest point of the of the ceremony is it's threefold it's one it's the priming of

00:23:35.320 the masculine light the power of frey getting ready to make contact with the earth and this

00:23:44.620 goes through with lord frere preparing this retinue of the light elves and everything's

00:23:50.160 getting kind of ready to go into this moment of spring once the once the gates of dellings hall

00:23:57.200 open up and Ostara brings all of this in the light, all of the power that comes into the

00:24:04.300 frozen earth to get melted. And then there is a, there is a, an absolute impregnation of life

00:24:11.840 that's brought about. And this is kind of the preparedness of it. And there's also a gifting

00:24:18.060 to the earth, a sense of laying our own personal seeds, whatever they might be. They might be

00:24:24.840 perhaps summer tiding inclinations or proclamations. They might be goals in which

00:24:34.080 we wish to see grow into fruition. A lot of times there are bread or biscuits or things like that

00:24:42.100 that are placed in the ground inside a furrow that's cut with a plow. Now, the original acre

00:24:50.500 bought did not speak of a plow. It actually spoke of just cutting or spading into the earth and

00:24:56.380 placing biscuits and giving a prayer to the earth for the fruition of the fields. But that has

00:25:02.780 morphed over time because we are a living religion. We're not reenacting. And so over time,

00:25:09.740 I have seen this holiday take a lot of different forms. Again, like I said, on the metaphysical,

00:25:15.180 We're preparing for the natural events, the light coming down and placing in the invigorating

00:25:22.380 seed of life into the earth. And then we're also seeing the fruition of the fields, but we're also

00:25:28.220 seeing a preparation for the summertime as far as general craft. So a lot of times people will bring

00:25:34.780 things from their work in order to be blessed. And this is more of a living part of the

00:25:42.780 ceremonies somehow in some way it started and the gothar um were obliged to bless people would show

00:25:51.020 up sometimes with um perhaps an implement or a symbol of their work and ask the gothar to

00:25:58.220 bless these items so that they could have good luck and good fruition um for the next coming

00:26:03.980 summer tiding um and you know whether that's money or the expansion of of uh clientele

00:26:11.420 or just advancement in our work or just refocusing in our industriousness the charming of the plow

00:26:18.620 has a lot of different dynamics to it that i think is really beautiful even though it seems to be

00:26:24.140 one of the more i would say timing of the year makes it a harder um holiday like right after

00:26:31.900 yule yule is a big celebration we have the photo bloke which is a chance for us to all get together

00:26:38.060 and and just have fun and then charming the plow is like the first holiday where we start

00:26:43.420 okay we got to start focusing on what's to come uh the the the rest period of the

00:26:48.940 deep tidying of the winter is over and we need to start focusing on what we're going to start doing

00:26:53.260 for this summer so we can attain so we can gain and so we can just conquer whatever

00:26:58.780 plans we have coming for the next year and that's a charming of the plow in a nutshell

00:27:08.060 There you go. There you have it.

00:27:16.860 That's the, so here's the thing. We can go into a lot of detail on a lot of specific things,

00:27:25.360 but fundamentally, I think there's a tendency to overthink. I think there's a tendency to

00:27:32.800 try to justify or try to backfill with stuff when it's kind of not necessary. You know,

00:27:43.980 Thor bloat, we're having a fun celebration in the middle of winter, and we're going to honor Thor,

00:27:49.080 charming of the plow. We are starting the work year, as it were. We've got our

00:27:57.000 you will notice this in this series into a lot of different

00:28:04.340 pieces as part of a process as part of a cycle

00:28:09.760 um it's again because of the world that our ancestors

00:28:15.840 bequeathed to us

00:28:21.200 you're stalled out on my end is everybody else hearing me

00:28:27.000 okay now we're now we're back i looks like it's having a little bit of uh streams having a little

00:28:36.760 bit of struggles here but i hope that we're following what i'm saying you guys can hear it

00:28:40.680 what i was going to say is our years broken up into

00:28:46.040 the process that is displayed very often through the agricultural cycle and that

00:28:57.000 And it certainly is obviously applicable if you are involved in agriculture, but it has a deeper meaning that I think transcends that to any of the plans or the good work that we put ourselves towards.

00:29:12.800 what's exhibited by charming of the plow is that time of preparation we've done our celebration

00:29:21.160 we've done our you know waiting and getting through the the slog of the the roughest time

00:29:27.720 of the winter and now we are at charming the plow we are preparing the tools of our industry

00:29:37.400 is what i like to say when we do the tool blessing be that a plow to break the soil or

00:29:44.680 you know a tool for whatever work that you were engaged in i've done blessings for laptops

00:29:52.360 for people who do it work i've blessed i've blessed hands and gloves for people who are

00:29:59.560 professional fighters i've blessed um you know tools of of carpentry and of uh you know construction

00:30:10.280 um i've blessed tools for artists but whatever we're doing we're we're preparing to assert our

00:30:19.640 will into the world and one of the key images of the charming of the plow is cutting that first

00:30:27.400 furrow is the idea of our iron will breaking the hard earth breaking through resistance and

00:30:38.640 literally implanting our will into the world by by will to power by force of will and of

00:30:48.160 determination to see see things happen breaking through that soil and penetrating the earth or

00:30:56.280 penetrating the world around us with the seeds of what we wish to grow and develop and achieve

00:31:03.800 during this year. And that's kind of the bigger theme around Charming of the Plow. And that's

00:31:09.640 why the plow is still such a powerful piece of imagery for this celebration. I can't think of

00:31:18.180 something you know better or more illustrative of that the idea of breaking through and inserting

00:31:27.060 our will inserting the seeds of our intentions into an unyielding world um but as fawn mentioned

00:31:37.300 you know in minnesota it may seem agriculturally odd to charm the plow in uh in february growing up

00:31:45.700 in Alaska, that was certainly the case. It seemed a little bit odd when we'd, you know, we still had

00:31:50.700 several feet of snow, but the principle is sound. We're starting that year of productivity, and we'll

00:31:57.220 see that all the way through, and you'll be able to follow it through. Svaun and I go through these

00:32:01.960 different ceremonies that we celebrate at our holy days. One thing I did see over in the side

00:32:09.020 that I wanted to address, somebody was commenting on the lack of putting out the previews for

00:32:15.260 upcoming episodes and wondering if we're out of ideas not the case so much as i mentioned not at

00:32:23.420 all well so much as i mentioned last time on or two weeks ago last time we had spawn on as a guest

00:32:30.940 the exact deliver the statues everything worked out weird worked its way in a beautiful beautiful

00:32:40.220 way everything happened exactly as it was supposed to we did not know that at the time and there were

00:32:46.460 a number of different little moving parts and things to see when that would happen and i knew

00:32:52.620 spawn would be down there for a portion of it we had to work out when he was available how the

00:32:57.420 transit was going to work how easy or difficult the installation process was going to be so a lot

00:33:02.780 of things were up in the air that's why we kept it kind of loose um but we do have the next several

00:33:08.380 planned up now that we've gotten to the other side of that that was taking a lot of the focus

00:33:12.780 and we'll get those up i i like to have that planned up for about four episodes in advance

00:33:19.180 so we'll get those we'll get those up and set up tomorrow uh nick's been chomping at the bit for

00:33:24.780 him too it's on me but i'll have those set up for you guys tomorrow uh is there any more thoughts

00:33:32.660 on charming of the plow that you want to put out there for folks oh oh pause one second so we got

00:33:38.740 during all of this we got a 20 donation from the phelps family you guys are awesome you guys have

00:33:45.780 helped us so much um up to and including that uh that donation and lydia's amazing video that she

00:33:55.540 made for us um but yeah twenty dollars from the phelps family hail the mcnellens and hail the afa

00:34:02.980 and uh hail the hail all right so that said svan do you have any more uh notes you want

00:34:10.020 to impart about charming of the plow yes i i misspoke there is mention of a plow but there's

00:34:16.260 not mention mention of the usage of a plow to dig the furrow there's actually a couple of things one

00:34:22.820 is this is very much like loaf mass and i wanted to bring that up because of the connection a lot

00:34:28.180 of our holy tides are seen as kind of like bridges to other parts of the year and one thing worth

00:34:34.660 noting is that um charming of the plow is absolutely a bridge to uh frayfaxi or loaf mass

00:34:44.020 um we use the word frayfaxi and uh or the title um but the reason why i brought up loaf masses uh

00:34:50.900 there's mention of the fact that they used to cut sod, like mats or pullings of the fields,

00:34:59.660 and they would bless them with a specific, you know, anointment of honey and of, you know,

00:35:08.540 sacred herbs. And later on, it became still a thing that even after Christianity, they would

00:35:15.360 bring these plots to the church to be blessed. But it's also, you know, it's kind of interesting

00:35:21.260 to note that because it's the same with loaf mass. With loaf mass or frayfaxi, the celebration of the

00:35:27.860 last bits of the fields being kind of effigied into a John barley corn, there's the separation

00:35:37.100 of that which is going to be used for alcohol and that which is going to be used for bread,

00:35:41.080 and the consumption of bread and alcohol at the end as a celebration of all the hard work that

00:35:47.920 was done by the producers of the society, there was this grand kind of festival. And so it was

00:35:55.920 kind of understood that the charming of the plow or acre bot, as they had called it in the times

00:36:02.460 before um was a time to get ready for a arcing season or tiding that ultimately culminated to

00:36:12.200 this and we have these happen multiple multiple throughout the year so our holy tides kind of

00:36:17.460 link to other holy tides and ultimately midsummer to midwinter or to yule and um it's it's worth

00:36:25.980 noting that the there's also another thing that was said they talked about angeli in tacitus

00:36:32.260 giving great uh amounts of um sacrifice to the earth as as the the mother and so one thing i

00:36:40.380 wanted to note was that um in the prayer and this is so rare because it was it was written down

00:36:44.980 after um uh christianization was that the chant was uh marked as that the the practitioners or

00:36:55.480 the people of that were working the field would stand facing the east and they would turn three

00:37:00.420 times clockwise around the field um oftentimes holding up that that that plot of earth or the

00:37:08.460 the cakes and so there's another kind of reference to the reasoning of why when we do hammer

00:37:13.600 hallowings we we face the directions this is kind of a sense of surrounding and always kind of going

00:37:19.400 clockwise in the in the route of the sun and uh then from there they would place these into the

00:37:28.320 ground. And they would say, Ersa, Ersa, Ersa, a yorden modr, the earth and mother. And it was,

00:37:35.080 again, a chanting hail towards asking the earth to receive the seeds of both light,

00:37:42.300 of will, of power to manifest into the ever-receiving, ever-waiting earth that was

00:37:49.460 finally starting to thaw out. And we see this, even though this is particularly Anglo in its 0.68

00:37:56.260 focus, we see this again in the stories of Lord Frey and his bride Gerðr and Gerðr being the

00:38:05.200 frozen earth. There's great mentions of her arm being white like ice and being cold and rigid

00:38:12.940 and that the story itself is allegoric for the light and the warmth slowly eroding away

00:38:21.900 the rejection of the cold earth which was such an important thing um for our ancestors especially

00:38:29.440 the agrarian members of our society generally we had a tripartite style society and for the

00:38:35.800 producers and those who were greatly dedicated to lord fray which are lord freya or to nerf this

00:38:42.960 or to nyorder um there was a desperation of getting things started because the sooner you

00:38:51.120 got started, the more you could produce, the more you could produce, the less likelihood people

00:38:56.060 were to starve or to die or not have the nutritional value they needed in order to defend the nation

00:39:02.600 and keep everything going. And that's why very typically the God that we honor during this time

00:39:10.380 with bloat is Lord Frayer. And the reason for that certainly harkens to the bit of lore that

00:39:18.940 that Svon just shared with you, but in a very basic biological way,

00:39:27.380 I think those things come into play. And it's one of those,

00:39:34.660 it's unfortunate because the world and the time that we live in,

00:39:39.720 there's a certain amount of awkwardness in describing the very obvious biological

00:39:45.240 components of that. But, you know, one of the key identifiers and key aspects of Lord Frayer

00:39:56.940 is the erect phallus and the manly potency that he possesses, the idea of quite literally

00:40:06.860 penetrating something that is fertile and implanting seed within it to grow and to have

00:40:13.940 new life and new generation is very much at the heart of this and many of our, of many of our

00:40:20.980 celebrations. And I think that, you know, without being vulgar, that the biology of that is really

00:40:28.880 important to, I don't know, it's important tool to visualize that helps make this, this matter,

00:40:36.080 because so many of these principles that are laid down apply across a great many

00:40:45.360 you know planes of existing and planes of doing there's something that is a just a western

00:40:50.880 magical truth as above so below these things kind of transcend and there's layers to them

00:40:56.800 so there's a biological layer if you're a herdsman if you're a family producing your children

00:41:04.160 um we can literally see this is how we are successful passing through the generations

00:41:10.000 there's this when it comes to agriculture there's also this when it comes to any plan

00:41:14.960 coming to fruition any business venture there's that stage where you're planning and then you are

00:41:22.080 putting your will out there uh swan and i've spoken about this but one of the

00:41:26.480 key components of magical happening. And I've said this about a lot of things. Again,

00:41:34.580 it's something that has multiple layers. The greatest distance is from your couch to the door.

00:41:40.560 The greatest distance for an idea or a thought, what takes it out of the realm of

00:41:44.600 an idea is when you speak it into existence and then it's into the world. You've put it out there

00:41:53.580 as it were. That saying has a very direct meaning. Once you've said it, then you can't

00:41:59.680 take it back. You've put your intention out into the world. So much of the idea of breaking that

00:42:05.580 soil, of breaking the ice as it were, is putting that intention out into the world. You're done

00:42:12.680 planning. You're done thinking about it. Now you're making your intentions known on what you

00:42:17.300 want to accomplish. You're planting that seed that you're hoping will grow into. Fruit that we can

00:42:22.520 harvest and celebrate, you know, when, when the year turns to the appropriate time. And that's,

00:42:28.440 that's the deeper meaning of what we want to embody and, and celebrate, uh, at, at Charming

00:42:35.280 of the Plow. Um, with that, we'll get to some of y'all's questions. We've got kind of a clunky

00:42:47.860 question getting to me scheme here. We're working on different stuff, but it does mean I got to look

00:42:52.820 over at my phone. So that's why there's a little bit of a pause and me looking, looking off screen

00:42:57.020 for a sec. Uh, be more heathen asks question for you guys. Work is interfering with really enjoying

00:43:05.780 this Yule to its fullest. Just wanted to know you guys' opinion as far as enjoying it as much

00:43:12.800 as possible with work making it not, um, not hectic, taking away from the Yule piece and

00:43:22.220 enjoyment. Svon, do you have thoughts on that? Yeah. Um, I, I've been doing the, the 12 nights,

00:43:30.220 uh, Yule, um, for many, many years now. Uh, tonight is Odin's night and, um, I, I still

00:43:39.600 work throughout yule i definitely take off um whatever time is allotted for the hof

00:43:47.600 and then the night of which is day zero and day one on the iron mark i i take off from work and

00:43:53.920 then after that i pretty much hold bloat and celebrate at night so go to work do as i normally

00:44:01.040 do and then arrive home and hold a small bloat with the family and that could be about the amount

00:44:08.560 of it. And I'm talking bare bones, especially if we're doing a lot of traveling, if there's a lot

00:44:13.320 of family coming in, everything, it depends on the situation. Sometimes no family's coming in

00:44:19.960 and we're not really doing a lot. So we might start a little early and add some more things

00:44:25.360 to it as we go. Maybe go to the range on Uller's night and then come home and clean our weapons

00:44:34.900 and kind of go over certain things just things like that um but generally i hold them at night

00:44:40.400 and i've never really conflicted i think my my clients have asked you know hey are you going

00:44:46.020 to be open or are you shutting down for 12 nights or 12 days and i'll tell them no no i'm going to

00:44:51.720 be open and i'm going to go through and then i'll do everything i need to when i get home um you

00:44:57.060 know unless you're working like the three to nine shift is i think would be a little rough especially

00:45:02.080 with if you've got kids and things like that but you know at the end of the day quite literally you

00:45:07.640 can fit a little bit of time in even it's something even if it's something as simple

00:45:12.600 as giving a small gift whether it you know it could be uh something you made or brewed or um

00:45:18.080 you know just sitting down and having a moment to pray to the gods and uh give thanks for that

00:45:25.700 time of the year um outside of that you know it's really just depends on you how how big you want to

00:45:31.360 make it, but I do not stop my work throughout the entirety of Yule.

00:45:37.500 You know, one of the special things about Yule in particular is that there's 12 days of it.

00:45:46.580 You know, there's a big window that it's, so if you're working a lot during it, chances

00:46:00.420 are you have some time off during those 12 days.

00:46:05.020 Getting to do that, maybe you have to pile a lot of your, how you observe you onto one

00:46:10.560 of those days that you have off or that you have with your family.

00:46:13.220 if your hours are such that you can enjoy doing those in the evenings i know that's something a

00:46:19.860 lot of people do if you can take off certainly 12 days is not necessary to take off work and i think

00:46:27.100 that's can be very burdensome to people um but taking the time to attend your your yule celebration

00:46:36.500 at your Hoff is really important.

00:46:40.940 But that's one of the things you find,

00:46:42.920 you find ways to get in where you can.

00:46:45.960 And one of the other things is to,

00:46:49.380 you know, keep stuff festive.

00:46:52.340 And it's different if you have a family

00:46:53.880 or if you're single or what your situation is at work,

00:46:57.020 how much you're able to express your religion at work,

00:47:03.520 maybe a place where it's very inviting of it

00:47:06.200 and you celebrate in the break room with stuff

00:47:09.280 and you bring in some cookies

00:47:10.520 and you get, you know, part of what's going on.

00:47:14.080 But find a little ways to just be conscious of it

00:47:16.740 and be happy and remind yourself to celebrate.

00:47:19.680 It's one of the things these days when we get,

00:47:22.200 it depends.

00:47:22.900 And I mentioned this earlier,

00:47:24.460 Yule is an amazing time of year.

00:47:26.760 But for a lot of people who are struggling,

00:47:29.560 it also shines a light on their depression

00:47:33.760 or things they might be struggling with.

00:47:36.200 so something to keep in mind is reminding yourself to celebrate as silly as that may sound

00:47:46.040 um but being there and having stuff that's a constant reminder of hey it's you we should be

00:47:54.440 happy and celebrate this because sometimes i think we forget that and having 12 days of being

00:47:58.940 reminded hey this is something to celebrate and to be excited about is it's something even you

00:48:05.560 know, even if you're by yourself celebrating, take time to spend a few minutes at your altar each

00:48:10.460 night saying something positive, you know, celebrating. If you feel alone, celebrate with

00:48:17.220 the gods and your ancestors. But don't wallow in it. Celebrate with your friends. If you're

00:48:25.520 struggling, don't go drown your sorrows. If you're in a mood to celebrate, go out to the bar,

00:48:31.480 go to a restaurant go do something be around people but reminding yourself to make the effort

00:48:37.160 to celebrate pays off and nobody ever regrets that after they do it it's hard to get yourself

00:48:43.880 motivated sometimes if you're wore out if you're working hard if you're depressed if you're whatever

00:48:48.600 you are and you're feeling mopey no go through the motions put on some put on something nice

00:48:54.200 go out celebrate and you will you will be thankful that you did 0.62

00:48:58.600 um next up how were the pig heads so i this year i was excited i cooked up my two two pig heads

00:49:13.160 if i had it all do over again probably one was probably plenty it was really fun to do

00:49:20.800 It was an exciting process. It was cool to see that my daughter did not get traumatized by it.

00:49:29.740 I was a little bit worried about that. I think she was very curious and very aware of the piggy heads.

00:49:40.880 They were really fatty, so I couldn't eat a whole lot of them. I saved a lot of them,

00:49:45.300 cheeks and whatnot to cook with our black eyed peas and collard greens. We're going to cook up

00:49:52.520 on New Year's. The skin is awesome. The skin by itself is awesome. It shocked me at how fast

00:50:03.780 the sheer amount of pork fat became very disgusting. So that was interesting and fun as

00:50:10.960 well but yeah cooking them up was fun it was exciting um however we did it cooked them great

00:50:17.040 and the skin shocked me with just how crispy and awesome it was um so that was really cool

00:50:23.680 and it was a fun experience to do and swan does not know how his were because he does his on 12th

00:50:31.680 night correct yes i do mine on the 12th night um i mean again i think just like what you were

00:50:39.680 talking about we do our faith in the best ways that we can based on when people are coming over

00:50:46.080 and what is available i don't think that there's kind of like some sort of ritual book that we

00:50:51.040 follow it's more of a culture that we have and that culture can be um dynamic based off of what

00:50:59.200 what's going on in our in our lives i'm actually going to get the pig's head tomorrow and i did

00:51:04.800 say one, one was all you needed. You didn't need to do two, but, but I mean, again, if

00:51:10.440 you, if this is your first time doing it, sometimes having two, um, you can help if

00:51:16.460 you have a travesty in cooking, but yeah, there's, there is a lot of fat involved in

00:51:21.460 the, um, in the, the face area, if you will. So, you know, I have a general sense of eating

00:51:29.460 a lot of the the skin like a chitterling um on the outside um the ears i usually give to my

00:51:36.180 my pup and um i skin the jowls down and eat the jowls and the tongue and then everything else i

00:51:44.660 do i use for for cooking as far as uh soups and stews and adding that that really good healthy

00:51:52.020 fat but you don't get a chance to eat much of it as it's it's a lot and uh you can fry it

00:51:58.340 cook it in strips and fry it but or um if you're using it like when you want to sweat some some

00:52:04.740 onions or shallots you can use slivers of the of the fat to render and and really create a good

00:52:11.460 uh base and then you could pull that fat out and you know if you're making a marinara sauce

00:52:16.100 or something of that nature it really does add a lot of um silkiness to it but i'm buying mine

00:52:23.060 tomorrow excellent um yeah we had a couple pull out at the last minute but i still two two would 0.97

00:52:30.100 have been too much but i didn't know what size pigs they were going to give me you know pigs

00:52:34.100 come in different uh in different sizes was one price per pig head so i think we did all right

00:52:40.660 that way um but yeah did you do any um uh now normally people would say oaths but i know

00:52:52.100 oaths for us are very very important so an oath on a pig's head outside of a ritual uh situation

00:52:59.860 is not always the best but we kind of do like new year's resolutions if you will did you do any of

00:53:05.780 those no and i think that's an awesome thing to do over it but we did not um i was i was busy

00:53:11.860 hustling trying to make that i also um somebody mentioned on here a number of weeks ago when we

00:53:16.980 did our yule episode about glog uh so i made some of that as opposed to just regular mulled wine i

00:53:24.180 tried that it's ingredient intensive i think i'll probably just stick with regular mulled wine because

00:53:29.140 i don't think the difference is that much but it was interesting it had the cardamom was an

00:53:35.060 interesting flavor in there i think that was good i don't mind you know doing some more of that i

00:53:39.620 had uh but you you added raisins and almonds and all kind of stuff to it that i i don't know if it

00:53:46.580 really added much to it snuck a lot of alcohol into a relatively yeah it was but it was surprising

00:53:56.900 the recipe called for you know an entire bottle of bourbon an entire bottle of rum

00:54:04.660 um didn't seem like it was that much it really didn't you know we drank most all of it with the

00:54:10.260 people that were here and you know nobody was was excessively celebratory um so yeah i think it

00:54:20.980 think it worked out we also you know made a ham and whatever because you know one of my family

00:54:26.500 traditions is on uh on christmas eve growing up we would eat ham sandwiches so kind of decided to do

00:54:34.820 that this year too and it was fun it's just i don't know where that came from but it's something

00:54:39.780 that I used to do at my grandparents' house growing up.

00:54:45.560 Our next question, from Katie, speaking of Charming,

00:54:50.820 how can one get tickets to join the festivities?

00:54:54.160 Why is it being held at the Bestest Hoff?

00:54:56.900 For those of you who might not know,

00:54:59.560 Charming of the Plow is the feature event for Njord's Hoff.

00:55:06.400 so um i will be going down there for that uh anybody who is able to that's in white springs

00:55:13.700 florida and it's going to be awesome um february is you know it's the best time to visit florida

00:55:21.700 it's really nice um it's just outside of the little bit of cold that they actually get but

00:55:29.660 it's still not hot and gross like in the summer it's a it's a really good time to go visit that

00:55:35.800 off and uh yeah i look forward to seeing everybody who can make it there uh nick do we have a link

00:55:41.800 up yet for people who want to purchase tickets and attend that event

00:55:52.120 it seems we do thank you nick um anybody who is listening to us

00:55:58.440 on spotify later down the road and can't see the link or anything that way

00:56:02.680 um yeah check it out at runestone.org you can purchase tickets there and that

00:56:10.120 charming of the plow we will celebrate charming of the plow at every one of our hoffs but the

00:56:15.740 national event for the charming of the plow is the featured celebration at new york's hall

00:56:20.680 and that's your if you can only attend your top once in the course of the year that is the one

00:56:26.440 you want to shoot for. As for why is it there, I really do think it's the weather situation,

00:56:36.480 as I recall being part of those conversations. It was fitting it in where we didn't have

00:56:41.300 the previous Hoffs. Those of you that don't know, New York's Hoff is our fourth Hoff.

00:56:47.140 So that means there are three other Hoffs in front of them that have already chosen what

00:56:52.740 their event is. So we had to figure out what was left over to choose from. And then from that, 0.86

00:57:01.140 what was going to be the best opportunity for that Hoff. At each of our Hoffs, we celebrate

00:57:07.740 all of our Holy Days. It's just a matter of picking which one's going to be the feature event

00:57:12.800 for for each of us um we got next

00:57:19.440 from gothi trent east i'll hear you gothi and witten spawn can you explain why we give bloat

00:57:30.640 to in the fray specifically um yeah i think that i already have uh spawn did you have anything

00:57:39.140 else to add on why we celebrate Lord Frayer at Charming of the Plow?

00:57:47.840 Specifically at Charming of the Plow? I thought it was just in general. I was like, okay.

00:57:52.320 No, I mean, I think we get it in general. I think it was specific to Charming of the Plow.

00:57:58.940 I think there's a unique thing that people have a misconception about

00:58:04.160 uh our faith or perhaps just uh polytheistic framework in general i think that a lot of

00:58:13.160 people get confused with the ideas like oh uh you know so and so is the god of rain so and so is the

00:58:20.520 god of sewing and so and so is the god of lunchables and it just keeps going into absurdity

00:58:25.840 to like these finite things but we view our gods as extremely god-like powerful beings i mean there

00:58:34.560 we call them gods for a reason we use that word house as well um with the express purpose of

00:58:43.680 understanding that we see that our gods interact with the middle world in many different ways and

00:58:49.840 And so their will can manifest much like a pallet.

00:58:54.200 When Ymir and the slaying of Ymir and the shaping of the world takes place, 0.86

00:58:59.720 this means that the gods have dominion over the material.

00:59:05.260 And this isn't just, you might find some people who just strictly place this upon Lord Odin.

00:59:12.360 And that's not correct.

00:59:14.340 That's not the right way to do that.

00:59:15.880 And we see that our ancestors give many accounts to the idea of sometimes Thor has dominion over the rains and the wind of the middle world.

00:59:30.320 And sometimes Njörð, Lord Njörðr, has dominion over the wind and the breezes and the rain and the fruitfulness and things.

00:59:41.160 And so does Lord Frey.

00:59:42.900 And again, this is a reiteration of the fact that our gods, we use mythic story to explain this kind of interaction, and we could possibly frame it in different ways if we wanted to do like a metaphysical kind of conceptualization of it.

01:00:00.220 The biggest thing is we know that the gods gather at the well of earth, which is in heaven, and they interact with the world below them, which again, the gods being in the upper is very, very important.

01:00:12.900 And there they interact with the well, and the well is the exemplification of order that descends down into the material.

01:00:23.500 So rain and good weather and light doesn't only have to be associated strictly with sunnah.

01:00:31.620 there is light with balder there's light with fair and it's not that they're just kind of

01:00:37.000 categorized into these little uh troughs of of um certain things and you know it's again it's

01:00:44.380 it's done with odin odin is seen as the lord of battle and the and the reaper of souls of the

01:00:49.440 chosen but he's also seen as the giver of gifts and the and the the bountiful uh you know giver

01:00:54.860 of prosperity. So our, our, our gods have a great amount of power that manifest as they interact

01:01:04.960 through the well, or sometimes quite literally. Um, and there are lots of cases and that's a

01:01:10.940 whole nother subject about avatars and other examples of these things. But when we talk about

01:01:16.280 Lord Frey, we ask him to give his dominion, his power in the beneficialness of light and of

01:01:26.720 warmth and the preparing of the fruitful season of all of the planting. I often give gift to Lord

01:01:38.100 Frey for my flocks. I have egg laying chickens and their health is important. I've had

01:01:45.800 a couple of years in the past where thankfully I've only had maybe one or two to suffer from

01:01:50.860 some sort of illness and, and, uh, had to kind of take care of that. But for the general sense,

01:01:56.680 my, my, uh, my livestock for lack of a better order, I'm not proclaiming that I'm some sort

01:02:03.320 of great farmer, um, has been, you know, blessed and fruitful and we have lots of eggs and,

01:02:10.060 and lots of giving, um, you know, animals and things like that. So really when we,

01:02:14.700 Whenever we're praying to any house or our senior, any God or goddess in our faith, we are asking for them to implement their dominion into our lives, whether it's guiding us with wisdom or opening up avenues.

01:02:31.720 We were ignorant of or that we that we could see the blessings of the gods come in many different forms and we don't typecast the gods into singularities.

01:02:43.860 So when we think of Lord Frey and the light that's coming down to melt the earth, we're asking for his dominion of fruitfulness and the preparing.

01:02:53.960 In the stories, he prepares the light elves.

01:02:56.540 He lives amongst the light elves, which is the skein of light between heaven and the middle world.

01:03:03.220 And so he's always kind of ready, always ready and there for the time to descend and bring that warmth and bring that light.

01:03:09.940 And so he implements that dominion.

01:03:13.860 some would argue, perhaps physically, coming into the world. And that kind of, again, plays in the

01:03:20.400 story language of our bloats, where at Freyfaxi, we see Lord Frey in a story. We're not saying he's

01:03:30.120 doing this, but we allegorically talk about Frey now saying goodbye to his beloved and returning

01:03:38.720 back to his kingdom without his horse while he you know returns slowly uh back to the land of

01:03:45.540 the light elves with his retinue of alvar and that what's left is of course the horse and the

01:03:50.400 horse is a symbol of that last little bit of of his dominion um but this applies i think to all

01:03:56.460 the gods and i i think it's a great question but specifically to charming of the plow that's why

01:04:02.120 But to all the gods and goddesses, that's ultimately what we're – why the mechanics of what we're doing.

01:04:09.760 The gods are not slated into typecasted little things.

01:04:14.680 I think that was a Christian habit of trying to typecast the divinities of their ancestors.

01:04:25.040 Oh, they prayed to this god for rain. 0.93

01:04:28.360 They prayed to this god for war.

01:04:30.160 But we clearly see that the gods kind of expand through all things, and that really takes place through the well of Urb and how they gather to counsel around that well to disseminate the power into the middle world that's below them.

01:04:48.520 Yeah, I think that's an important thing to consistently reemphasize.

01:05:00.160 I think that it's very natural for all of us when we initially come home to Ausatru to see things that way.

01:05:09.160 Odin equals wisdom and magic. Thor equals might and the storm.

01:05:18.240 Frere equals fecundity of herds and of growing things.

01:05:25.240 your there equals you know water stuff i think that we all have a tendency to do that because

01:05:32.960 we like to compartmentalize we like to make things very simple but it's much beyond that each of our

01:05:39.740 gods is a god each of our gods is beneficial for you to pray to if you're on a boat if you're on

01:05:48.680 a plane, if you're going to battle, if you're trying to deliver of your herd, if you're

01:05:56.280 trying to deliver your child, each of our gods is a god and is godlike in their power

01:06:03.260 and their scope.

01:06:04.000 Now, we have things that are more typically thought of as, I guess, specialties of the

01:06:12.620 gods, ways that our ancestors have typically built relationships and their understanding

01:06:19.460 of our gods. But each of our gods has godlike powers, and it's appropriate to call on them

01:06:31.880 based on your need, but also based on your relationship with them. I think that we are

01:06:39.500 However, the in-gathering of the folk is something that Founder MacNallan has talked about in the early days of our faith.

01:06:53.760 and reintegrating our faith

01:07:00.820 into our people that are spread across the globe

01:07:03.860 is different than when we encounter it

01:07:07.460 in ancient sources.

01:07:10.820 Different places had more powerful connections

01:07:14.920 with particular gods or particular goddesses

01:07:17.920 that they would call upon for their needs

01:07:21.820 based on their relationship more than just based on the natural function

01:07:30.680 that we associate with one of those gods, if that makes sense.

01:07:35.440 And the most often seen is, you know, the god associated with kingship

01:07:41.900 in most places was Odin, but in Sweden, the god associated with kingship

01:07:47.540 was Lord Freyr, and you would see the royal line descended from him. It reflects that different

01:07:55.380 relationship these tribes of our ancestors developed with particular gods for particular

01:08:00.580 reasons. And in different locations, the natural world functionality of these gods would take a

01:08:09.720 different form based on geography. So just keep that in mind. There's a lot of right answers to

01:08:16.720 what god to pray to for certain things um and we our gods have a much deeper dimension dimensionality

01:08:25.520 than your equals water our gods are much more than that um let me see what we've got next in the line

01:08:46.720 from the wolf throne when partaking in the gift cycle do you think it's mandatory to ask for

01:09:01.160 something or is it acceptable to give an offering and give thanks without asking for anything in

01:09:06.680 return also is it mandatory to speak out loud when you pray or can the gods hear you if you

01:09:13.700 pray inside your head. So first, no, it's never required for you to ask of something. And I think

01:09:30.780 that it's really, it is a fundamental importance to understanding our faith based upon relationships.

01:09:43.700 and i appreciate the question i think it's a good question and it's a question that people

01:09:50.060 have and have asked so that's i'm not attacking the question at all but

01:09:54.440 is it okay to speak to your grandparents and just say thank you without asking for stuff

01:10:02.900 of course it is is it okay to speak to anybody that you love and care about and just

01:10:09.400 thank them without asking them for stuff yes because our primary relationship to our gods

01:10:17.480 is as you know exalted kin as the you know the arc kin of our tribe

01:10:25.220 it's in relationships the gods look favorably upon us we're we are their children we're their

01:10:34.160 followers they are our gods it's a it's a loving relationship it's not a transactional um

01:10:43.840 business relationship like certain desert tribes would engage in with their with their deities or

01:10:51.760 anyone else for that matter it's not a um it's not transactional and it's not legalistic

01:10:59.040 though there are legal elements to our faith and there are transactional elements to our faith

01:11:05.980 it's primarily about relationship building and interacting through relationship in that sense

01:11:12.560 it's always okay to say thank you um that said another way of thinking of this and and i think

01:11:20.800 that witten cliff erickson has pointed this out probably most prominently amongst our go far

01:11:25.940 the gift cycle has always the gods started it so

01:11:33.880 our existing having the luck the skill the you know quite literally having the the breath of life

01:11:46.740 the goodly hue the the wit having all of those things in the elements of our soul we start out

01:11:53.660 owing the gods in terms of the gift cycle. So they paid that forward. They've blessed us

01:12:01.040 tremendously. And if all we do for the rest of time is show appreciation for that, that's a

01:12:08.440 reasonable thing to do. Now, yes, we do often ask for things and we often try to give and share in

01:12:14.820 return but it's not about that and you're just like the gifting cycle between

01:12:28.820 between your family

01:12:32.420 you don't give your friends and family stuff in order to force them to give you stuff

01:12:39.220 that's wrongheaded and that's not noble in how you deal with people that takes away the point

01:12:47.700 of generosity you give because you find people or things worthy to give to and yes as part of that

01:12:57.500 it's not noble of them to also give you things but there's a healthy gift giving that's done

01:13:05.580 families, then there's a transactional gifting that's done at the store. The store gifts you

01:13:12.340 a loaf of bread and you gift them $5. It's not really the gift cycle at that point. It's just

01:13:19.160 economics. And that's not what our relationship with our gods is. So I beat it to death, but no,

01:13:27.760 you can absolutely always just give thanks. And that's one of the reasons that in the AFA,

01:13:33.440 we celebrate thanksgiving as a religious celebration it is what we do we celebrate it

01:13:38.880 people in the past get grumpy but it's not that kind of a holiday i think that anyone giving

01:13:46.260 thanks to their gods for the blessings in their lives is always a good and appropriate thing to

01:13:54.080 do and something that we should all do more often um as the second part well okay i want to remember

01:14:01.620 the second part of your question but it's fun as far as the gift cycle and is it okay to just say

01:14:08.100 thank you or do we have to ask for stuff you have anything that you'd like to add on that

01:14:13.620 uh no i think you you you really touched on that really well i i the only thing i would say is i've

01:14:18.980 often called that mindset it's like the horns on the helmet uh there's this old thought that kind

01:14:26.340 of correlates that are perhaps the if you're thinking about the nordic ancestors specifically

01:14:32.020 and and there was a lot of rain and muddy faces and shoulder pelts and great amounts of um dreariness

01:14:39.460 and the idea was i will not speak to to my gods unless they give me something in return and it

01:14:45.860 kind of this conan-esque um dichotomy uh um has been kind of romanticized so it's it is a

01:14:56.100 romanticized wave and and just like many other uh waves that we have had in relation including

01:15:01.460 horns on helmets and stuff you can find good and bad in some of that um but the idea is that

01:15:09.460 our ancestors have been witnessed and things were written down of them showing thankfulness for

01:15:17.540 seasons that have passed but they also show like charming of the plow seasons to come and that

01:15:26.180 there is nothing being received by the folk but instead they're asking for the blessing

01:15:32.660 of the gods perhaps once again or they're they're on the cusp of something and so i would say that

01:15:40.500 a lot of times um that it becomes so gray that it's it's really irrelevant the idea of giving

01:15:48.100 to the gods i think is right it is good it is it reflects greatly about your soul if you see the

01:15:56.660 gods as kind of shmarmy barbarian uh cromlings that uh you know will give you a broad sword if

01:16:05.220 you give them then that kind of reflects about the way you see divinity in the way you see things but

01:16:10.900 we see our gods as powerful and beautiful as great and as mighty and encompassing and so that

01:16:18.180 that really does take a dynamic that is not perhaps i would say is so cliche as the horns

01:16:26.500 on the helmet um so yeah give uh give unto the gods with thanks and and happiness and also the

01:16:35.140 you know fulfilling the duty of the trough that you you now carry that your ancestors once carried

01:16:42.180 and so there's a goodness in that that first part don't ever don't always think you can't ask and

01:16:49.380 don't always think that you have to receive something in order to give thanks to the gods

01:16:55.940 well and also

01:16:59.700 be self-aware and don't be arrogant they're gods and you're a people 0.95

01:17:05.380 and i mean so i do that on here sometimes and it's not it's not to be silly

01:17:15.880 dumbing things down to its most basic components sometimes paints things

01:17:21.660 with the broadest contrast to help you see it um

01:17:26.500 just as i've talked about the relationship between king and retainer the king's gifts

01:17:33.800 are much bigger than you can afford with, you know, your portion of your harvest.

01:17:42.520 A king can gift you horses and gilded mail and great stuff,

01:17:47.120 and you can be like, cool, I'll be there in the shield wall, and I'll do my part.

01:17:51.260 You giving proportionally to your position matters.

01:17:55.260 It's not an equal exchange.

01:17:57.840 Equality is a lie.

01:17:58.920 If you are trying to exchange with the gods and the gods bless you with the breath of life, how many bottles of meat is that worth?

01:18:13.960 And just running out that economy, the gods really don't, from the folk as a whole, for all of us to give them worship, sure.

01:18:25.760 but as far as your individual relationship with them is your like portion of food that

01:18:35.960 you're offering or you're you know pouring out some meat is that really

01:18:42.380 how much breath of life does that buy you and when looked at it that way it almost seems silly

01:18:50.940 that contemplated in that terms because it is it's like you giving gifts to your children

01:18:57.580 and your small children giving you something that's got some crayon on a piece of paper that

01:19:05.260 they tell you looks like you and the dog and maybe it does maybe it doesn't but you can't tell the

01:19:10.060 difference the thought that went into it is beautiful and it builds that relationship and

01:19:15.740 special, but it doesn't equate to something you went and spend, you know, money. You can't,

01:19:22.840 you can't nickel and dime that, nor should you. That's not the point. The point is the exchange.

01:19:28.900 The point is, I love you. I'm giving you something from my heart. Thank you. You appreciate me and

01:19:35.400 are giving me something of a blessing. Thank you. And that's what it's got to be about.

01:19:40.060 um the other piece and again i really appreciate the questions because i think a lot of the time

01:19:52.740 folks on here ask questions that many people have but are self-conscious and don't want to ask or

01:20:02.120 don't want to be judged for you know their questions seeming silly or whatever their thought

01:20:06.420 is i'm glad that these questions are getting asked so you know do you have to pray out loud

01:20:13.700 or can the gods hear you if you pray silently as so many things with our gods

01:20:24.820 i think the mechanism is above our reality and i think that the best we can do which is

01:20:35.540 you know obvious and not wrong at all is try to equate it to the things that we do know

01:20:47.060 and i've said this and i think this applies when we do ritual too

01:20:51.860 some people when you're doing ritual they think that the gods are hard of hearing

01:20:59.220 they think that our gods because they're very old or whatever the case you need to

01:21:05.540 Scream at the top of your lungs every hail that you make.

01:21:11.980 Others of us find that really obnoxious sometimes, as do people's neighbors, depending on your circumstance. 0.97

01:21:21.620 I'm not even being silly.

01:21:23.340 I think it's in the spirit of the question.

01:21:25.920 The point is the intention, and I don't think it is an issue of the gods hearing us or not.

01:21:32.960 you know trying to math that out to where they are to here in whatever location we find ourselves

01:21:40.540 in the earth and like what decibel and where do you need to face and how does your voice need to

01:21:46.120 resonate that's not the point you communicate to our gods through prayer

01:21:51.760 i think that if you are participating okay so and these are a couple of notes that i think come with

01:22:02.440 this. If you are participating as a group, it is impolite for you to have prayer silently if it is

01:22:09.500 a shared experience. And some people do this meaningfully. They'll go to Sambul and they'll

01:22:16.200 have like, you know my heart, you know what I'm saying, hail whatever. Or, you know, I don't mean

01:22:23.720 to be flip, hail the frayer. That's impolite because the rest of us are toasting in a scent

01:22:30.180 and we need to know what you're saying so that we can put our intention behind what you're saying

01:22:36.720 and endorse it. So if you're sharing something that way, then certainly it needs to be audible

01:22:42.240 so those who are participating with you can choose to be part of it or not, can choose to put their

01:22:49.960 energy into it. If you're leading a ritual and you're speaking on behalf of others, then yeah,

01:22:54.960 you need to speak out loud so we're open-handed, so we're on the table, so that people know what

01:22:59.620 you're saying so that when you are representing them before our gods they trust what you're saying

01:23:04.980 and they can put their their focus their might behind it but there's you know at my altar i

01:23:14.540 think i usually pray um audibly but there's many times that i've prayed uh silently

01:23:24.060 usually it's audible if it's a bigger conversation i say conversation that

01:23:33.280 maybe puts more to it but if if i have more to say but if it's a simple

01:23:40.240 very often a simple giving of thanks is something that i do silently when i give prayer for just

01:23:48.580 for thanks and for appreciation um but mouthing the words speaking them audibly

01:23:59.500 going through the non-verbal communication of it projects that out into the world into the gods

01:24:07.540 i don't think you can just think it you need to make your thought into an action

01:24:15.800 And as long as that's accomplished, the voice doesn't matter.

01:24:21.380 And that's the other thing I was going to say.

01:24:24.440 I know a lot of people, and in very early stages of Al-Satru, of modern Al-Satru, people, you know, there's a big emphasis on ancient languages or, you know, what language that you pray in.

01:24:39.980 Or your ancestors, for that matter.

01:24:41.940 But when you pray to your ancestors, if you pray to one of your really distant, well, I say in my case, one of my very distant ancestors, my ancestors have lived in North America in what has become the United States for hundreds of years, almost all of them.

01:24:59.760 But, you know, let's say you have ancestors from the old country in Europe somewhere where English isn't the language.

01:25:07.920 You know, can your ancestor from the 1400s in Germany understand what you're saying in modern English?

01:25:16.720 Yeah, because I think it's beyond that.

01:25:19.280 And I think that the means of communication is beyond that.

01:25:21.920 I don't think they're, it's not about you having the right volume and them cupping their ear and them trying to interpret your, you know, no, I think that we communicate in spirit, we communicate in a way that transcends that.

01:25:37.140 But the only way that we know to conceive of communication is through written, verbal, through gesturing and nonverbal.

01:25:48.120 But I don't think it works quite like that.

01:25:50.440 And I don't think that's something we ought to be worried about.

01:25:54.160 I think it's all about that intention.

01:25:56.220 But what I do think is the important little point there, you can't just think it.

01:26:00.580 you have to go through the point of at least saying it in your head, at least putting it

01:26:08.560 together as something that you are projecting instead of something that's, you know, we have

01:26:12.700 fleeting thoughts all the time that don't count. It counts when you speak it into existence,

01:26:18.280 and that's why vocalizing it has a value. But moving your mouth to the words without adding

01:26:26.740 volume the volume or the breath that you put into it isn't the point the point is taking it from

01:26:33.460 the realm of man i think i should say thank you to is a big deal for those of you listening tomorrow

01:26:43.300 on spotify uh i just silently made my face make the thank you face without actually making the

01:26:50.900 noise it's probably confusing uh spawn what say you on that uh yeah no you uh you hit everything

01:26:58.660 there towards the end was one of the things that i was going to emphasize on and then you started

01:27:03.060 to hit it and i was like dang it i was hoping that it would kind of get glossed over but it is

01:27:09.220 it is absolutely correct when you're talking about that manifestation of deed versus thought i think

01:27:15.700 that the i i believe that the gods and i and i don't mean to over speak but perhaps in in the

01:27:23.620 just in the way that i i view things is that i believe that the gods are in the upper realm

01:27:31.940 the place in which time and reality and law and order descend from them in this kind of great

01:27:39.620 weaving of weird or earth, that which is coming into being from that well. And as it descends

01:27:47.980 down, the gods see us in the skein of all things, just like the Nornir do. And that story talks 0.99

01:27:57.300 about that. And in that skeining, in that ability to see all things and kind of integrate into all

01:28:02.480 things, it's not about an omnipotence per se, as it is an ability to kind of read all of that which

01:28:10.380 is woven together is now skeined flat. So instead of like trying to read the individual thread of a

01:28:16.580 rope, it's now like a fabric. And I think that has a great mythological truth in the sense that the

01:28:23.240 way that gods kind of see us is perhaps in the skein of all things. And so our thoughts, our

01:28:30.660 our intentions some of the the things that we battle with uh for so good thoughts and bad

01:28:36.740 thoughts and and what have you the gods do have the ability to but we are but one thread in the

01:28:44.340 great skein of things and so oftentimes i think uh we we talk about the gods witnessing us as

01:28:51.380 groups as a tribe as a as a people as a nation um and that has a tendency i think to have more of a

01:28:58.980 of a visual value in the skein of things if you will um so i do believe that the gods

01:29:06.900 can understand your and see or feel your your thoughts but there is something unique about this

01:29:14.020 when we talk about the gods interacting with the middle world they do it through the well this kind

01:29:19.700 of uh threshold of the liquid of the well itself in heaven and we are in essence enacting that

01:29:31.300 when we do bloat when we speak over the horn or at sumble when we are talking over that liquid

01:29:38.420 we are placing our prayers into reality finalizing it because again the the flippant thoughts that

01:29:47.300 you might have might not always come to fruition but once it's said once it is out and so i don't

01:29:52.340 know if that's necessary for the gods because i would never speak that way but the idea is that

01:29:58.820 is it necessary for us is it a cultural manifestation of of the way that we do things

01:30:05.380 perhaps you know we can internalize prayer but those prayers eventually formulate

01:30:12.020 formulate themselves into a physical spoken word um or a whisper or what have you over a horn or

01:30:21.060 or over gifts or as smoke is being held aloft i would always recommend at some point that your

01:30:28.100 intention is at least broached perhaps with a simple word or multiple words or a a vocalized

01:30:37.060 prayer, but it's not to dominionize the idea that praying internally towards the gods somehow loses

01:30:44.880 that. It's just that, that, that final step, as I'll say a year ago, he said, the manifestation

01:30:49.480 of deed is so important. The gods are filled with all of their power and intentions and will,

01:30:56.880 but it's when they place themselves through the skein of the well and into the middle world

01:31:01.720 that things begin to happen. It's kind of very much the same way for us. We're filled with all

01:31:06.480 this potential and ideas and beliefs and feelings, but it becomes a manifest when we start to

01:31:12.220 physically enact those thoughts. And that's a great filter for us to get rid of thoughts that

01:31:18.200 are perhaps useless or, um, or that we're still working through and ideas. And eventually we

01:31:25.840 hone ourselves in the correct path and align ourselves with the weird or with the earth of

01:31:34.260 the gods so i i don't think it's necessary but it is because of our culture and because of the way

01:31:42.900 we kind of view things in acting um but that's a great question seems so simple but man wolf throne

01:31:51.380 that was a good one random side note at sigerheim one of the cool things is the acoustics

01:32:05.060 so i'm always concerned because we've got neighbors we're in the middle and we've got

01:32:09.860 a big spread of land but there's houses on either side we're in a holler down there so

01:32:15.700 the ridge right across the road when you if you feel the need to yell to the gods

01:32:22.820 they hear you at siggerheim as do all your neighbors and their animals everybody else

01:32:30.980 it's got a really cool echo and cool resonance but it just came to mind because it was one of those

01:32:35.460 hey we're having we're pretty late tonight when we're doing some well maybe you don't

01:32:38.900 need to scream at the top of your lungs um that's oh go ahead another thought

01:32:51.780 when you were speaking about uh the speaking of prayer around in a group one thing that's

01:32:58.020 worth noting is that you'll find a lot of people there's two ways in which we give kind of

01:33:03.220 thankfulness to the gods is sometimes we speak about the gods to our folk how they have helped

01:33:09.540 us enriched us or or or something of that nature another is that we do speak directly in prayer

01:33:16.580 often sometimes out loud to the gods during a a ceremony a bloat or a symbol and it's worth noting

01:33:24.980 too, that it's kind of, I would say that you should try both. I find out that there's some

01:33:32.440 people that strictly speak to the gods at this moment. This is like a shining moment. All of

01:33:37.800 the will of us, of the folk gathering together in this auspicious time, it's a time to send

01:33:43.680 faith and all of that to the gods. So I would say that it's worth considering perhaps during

01:33:51.180 bloat that you speak to the gods and not to the folk but during sumble speaking of praise to the

01:33:58.980 gods about the gods to your folk is i think more of a dynamic understanding of that those two kind

01:34:05.140 of interactions because i do see a lot of people during bloat where they'll they'll start to hold

01:34:09.200 the horn and um and then they'll start talking to the folk and it's like we're the gods the gods

01:34:16.640 are here now like let's do focus focus upwards um and i find that sometimes people just end up kind

01:34:24.240 of talking to their their folk about it and that's not bad it's just that i think there is a different

01:34:29.840 intention between the two ceremonies and they're they're separate for a reason a bloat is not a

01:34:35.840 assemble, and assemble is not a bloat. So. There you have it. Next question is for you, Svon,

01:34:50.760 from Gothi Bodhi. Witten Svon, can you speak on Lord Freyr in relation to his father,

01:34:58.940 our most glorious Lord of the sea, Nyurðr? What does the Lord say about their relationship

01:35:05.100 to each other oh well i think the biggest thing is that it's re-emphasized over and over again

01:35:13.720 that nyorder is the uh the price or the the um hostaging if you will of the end of the war between

01:35:24.320 the gods with when um cosmic order and natural law come into alignment there is this kind of

01:35:31.540 bountifulness coming from the Vanir or the Vanna as they give unto the gods of the sky and the

01:35:40.060 upper world, and they are of the earth and of the water. And that's very telling, I think. It is

01:35:47.040 about peace. It is about prosperity. And it always states that Lord Frey and Freyja are begot

01:35:54.180 by Nyarther. And there's a lot of stipulation. I think Snorty did not have a lot of lore in

01:36:04.140 pertaining, so he kind of glosses and or slightly places in filling in order to kind of

01:36:13.120 lyrically make the poems sound correct, but without divulging information because

01:36:19.360 there's no ignorance to the situation if there is no uh perhaps you know wrongness in it um

01:36:26.000 but it's re-emphasized over and over and over again um in the heimskringla it is this is where

01:36:36.120 again snorty stutlason wrote this about the kings of sweden and he wrote about the gods

01:36:42.700 you hemorrized as humans completely and in this he talks about how lord njord is the king of the

01:36:51.920 swedes and then he dies and lord fray or frodi as they're called the fruitful one is is the the

01:36:59.840 word that he uses um takes over and has the same power of implementing over the rain and the light

01:37:07.780 and the and the breeze like the good weather um so when we we see this over and over and over again

01:37:17.100 um that there's this relation during yule it is specifically said that both nyurther and frey

01:37:25.540 are hailed over a horn at sambal along with lord odin but those two particularly together again

01:37:34.500 because of the emphasis of not just plant and animal bounty, but bounty in general, monetary,

01:37:42.620 fehu wealth, the idea of the power of that wealth coming about, whether it's the bounty of what you

01:37:48.340 physically do or what you can attain through your will. And so there is always a consistent

01:37:54.440 placement of peace and prosperity. And I would often call that to be both, like New Arthur is

01:38:01.320 peace and lord fray is prosperity i i do that just to simplify things but at the at the um hoff uh

01:38:10.360 in florida north soft there is specifically a picture of lord north reaching over a cauldron

01:38:17.240 um to the asa in in a sense of peace and the idea again is the cauldron being the receptacle of

01:38:25.400 classier the first um storyteller um the uh the relationship between them though it again is it's

01:38:35.880 not hugely emphasized after that it's simply said that they're begot and they share much of the same

01:38:42.360 dominion over powers in the middle uh in the world that we live in um outside of that i'm

01:38:49.560 trying to think of something particularly unique um there was one thing that i was thinking about

01:38:55.240 but i i kind of have to look for it because it's in relation to uh ailskala grimson and his um

01:39:06.600 his belief or it's in a poem i wanted to uh to bring that up i saw that here but i

01:39:14.040 I can't find it now.

01:39:19.680 But yes, I mean, there is a ton of lore worth noting.

01:39:23.680 It's also noted that Lord Frey in the prophecy of the Volva, in the Volasbau, she speaks of the death of Lord Frey in the clash with Surtur, but that Lord Njordh descends back to the land of the Vanir.

01:39:44.040 with his daughter and they recede back um again this i i don't i don't know if this is

01:39:52.820 um story worth and perhaps uh adding in for lyric or for lyrical um consistency in the poem

01:40:01.340 um and i've thought about this a lot but i i don't know honestly what that relation may have

01:40:08.620 but the three that always seem to be coinciding together is that it is

01:40:12.240 Njordur, Lord Frey, and Lady, or Freya, Lord Frey, Lord Ing, or Frey Ing, and the Lady Freya

01:40:23.380 are kind of always in coalescence together. And they're often referred to as the most beloved

01:40:32.400 of the Alps, the most glorious or coveted. And there's a lot of understanding that I think

01:40:40.400 after the alignment between the the the natural order or natural law and cosmic order there's an

01:40:48.240 understanding that the vonir are not separate they're not there's no like the vana true i think

01:40:55.600 was like a thing in the 90s that was kind of laughable um uh i guess in an attempt to try to

01:41:01.920 get away from the patriarchy of the aesir um uh or what have you but the idea is that they are one

01:41:10.400 and they are united and it's referred to quite often. I would have to go in a little bit more to

01:41:16.720 try to see intrinsically their their connections to each other outside of again in the Guildfaginning

01:41:23.760 it's always mentioned that that Lord Nyorth begot Lord Frey and Freyja and that they are given in

01:41:31.120 exchange in that unification and again it's worth noting one of his uh symbols um is a boat which i

01:41:42.240 always found really interesting to think about uh the gift that was given to him at the same time

01:41:47.440 that mjolnir is given to thor is the boat skidh blavnir and it is again an emphasis of the boat

01:41:56.640 And Njordh is referred to as Lord of the Chariots, Lord of the Wagons, I think is what it is translated to.

01:42:07.480 And so at Njortsov, you'll see, I made a slight nod to that with a young, a childlike effigy of Frey standing on a wane or a wagon, if you will.

01:42:27.660 So, again, making a slight Easter egg nod to the usage of the wane in relation to prayer with Lord, with Njord, with Frey, with Freya, and with Nerthus.

01:42:41.860 So. All right. This one is for the both of us.

01:42:51.100 Matt and Svon, why do you think drinking and feasting culture is and always has been so prevalent in Western cultures and not so much in other cultures?

01:43:01.660 Because we're awesome. Yeah, it's a flex.

01:43:05.300 You know what? I really believe that it is, though.

01:43:11.860 one of the this may seem meandering but there's there's a thing here

01:43:20.540 so there's eastern religiosity generally in an ethnic sense or at least in an ethnic

01:43:34.660 interpretation and there's um you know abrahamic middle eastern uh approach to religion and i think

01:43:44.660 that those things are are important to keep in mind while we compare those with native european

01:43:53.380 religion. One of the things that has always been very appealing about Ausitru, as opposed to

01:44:07.740 Eastern religions and Abrahamic faiths, is I think what Steve McNallan once called the

01:44:20.060 life is good principle. Life is good. We aren't, our focus in existence is living well, is living

01:44:36.640 heroically, is building a reputation for ourselves in this life. It's not about storing up treasures

01:44:47.180 in heaven as it is for Abrahamic faiths. It's not about liberating ourselves from

01:44:54.220 the cycle of karma, from the suffering that Eastern faiths place such a heavy emphasis on.

01:45:06.160 Celebration, enjoyment, pleasure, feasting isn't bad in our faith, and it never has been.

01:45:14.760 indulging in the the joys and pleasures of physical existence are good life is good the world

01:45:25.080 is good we don't have this sense that life is suffering or that the world is sinful and you

01:45:33.000 know the dominion of satan no we believe very much that we're living in the here and now

01:45:40.520 Now, there's more later, and we'll take that when it comes.

01:45:44.540 But right here, right now, you know, one of the biggest themes in Christianity is that you are saved.

01:45:53.920 First, that you are saved, that life is inherently sin and bad, and that you need saving from it.

01:46:02.880 And secondly, that you receive that saving or that salvation through faith and not through works that none should boast.

01:46:14.540 Well, in Ausitru, perhaps you're not saved by works, but you are exalted by works and not by faith.

01:46:23.360 It's not what you believe.

01:46:24.960 It's what you do because we are our deeds.

01:46:27.800 building reputation and doing well and winning and being a winner are such a fundamental theme

01:46:37.740 to our faith and always have been whereas suffering blessed are the meek blessed are the

01:46:47.480 the long suffering basically blessed are the losers that's not what we we celebrate and that's

01:46:55.820 not what our folk have ever celebrated. And that's one of the things that defines Aryan people 1.00

01:47:03.980 is, as you mentioned, the feasting and the drinking culture, the celebration. Some of the

01:47:10.280 times we find our biggest points of celebration are when times are tough, are when times are lean,

01:47:17.600 are when we're, you know, eating off of the scarce stores that we have for the winter,

01:47:25.420 But we're like, you know what?

01:47:26.940 We're going to have a good time while we're here.

01:47:28.860 We're going to celebrate.

01:47:29.860 We're going to rejoice.

01:47:30.700 We're going to raise a horn.

01:47:32.680 And, you know, we're going to laugh in the face of adversity.

01:47:39.000 Exemplified, you know, so poetically by Ragnar's death song.

01:47:44.100 We're going to, to the very ends of our existence, through the roughest times, to celebrate and to have a heart of joy and to embrace life.

01:47:55.380 And I think that is a really important fundamental. What say you, Svon?

01:48:01.940 Yeah, I was just laughing that we were kind of both going into that realm of the flex. I think

01:48:08.500 that's one of the things that's truly unique between the West and the East of thought is that

01:48:16.660 in the west the um the feast culture which is prevalent i would say like beyond the orient

01:48:25.620 when we're talking about like say polynesia um they have it as well in a way because i think

01:48:31.660 it's a hardship for them it's the ocean i think for us it's the it's the weather it's the it's

01:48:38.380 the cold it's there's so much to it in which we uh take upon us these hard times and then

01:48:46.460 from the bounty that we and our works we we celebrate and so when you find i think when

01:48:53.380 you find a culture that um has that balance is where it's truly a reflex but if we're talking

01:49:01.880 about our ancestors they're not considering per se perhaps people outside of the outer guard

01:49:05.980 On the inner guard, it's also a combination of things.

01:49:09.480 One, it's an ability to show your earned might, if you will.

01:49:20.080 And it's a chance for you to spread that goodwill down to perhaps people that don't have enough to feast.

01:49:29.720 And so inviting those folks to your place, and I'm not saying that's necessarily now, and I don't think that's really a thing now, but I would definitely say in the elder times, the idea is if you were in Iceland and you worked on just fishing, and then you get invited to a bloat, and that bloat has lamb, this might be one of the only times you get a chance to eat lamb simply because of where you're at in your life or what you do.

01:49:59.580 or you perhaps you know you sell in order to gain things but this is a chance for that wealth to be

01:50:04.700 shared throughout the strata of all of the culture as well so it's not just a flex it's also a sharing

01:50:11.800 of wealth and and kind of establishing um that network of relationships but you know the two go

01:50:19.460 together if you're hosting a feast you're flexing about how successful and how great you are

01:50:26.880 But your method of flex is through generosity.

01:50:32.040 Your method, and this is a commonality amongst our folk, your flex as a great lord or a great king is your ability to give lavishly to your retainers and to entertain lavishly and to provide abundantly for those under your charge.

01:50:52.780 So, like, your flex about how great you are is how well you can take care of the people who depend on you.

01:51:01.000 And, I mean, I think that's one of the themes that I've seen over on the side and we'll get to when we talk about time, but time not being linear, being cyclical.

01:51:12.540 That's two-dimensional.

01:51:13.680 So much of what we do is cyclical, but by doing it right and doing it well, it's not just a linear circle.

01:51:26.220 It's a spiral upward, or if we do it poorly, a spiral downward.

01:51:31.860 But we gain momentum and we gain abundance through giving in that way.

01:51:37.320 If we share abundance with those who are our folk that are of lesser means that are, you know, dependent upon us, that sharing keeps on giving and keeps on spiraling.

01:51:52.460 It's also one of the themes and one of the profound meanings of Fehu is it's not just wealth, but it's the circulation of that wealth. 0.69

01:52:07.320 And the antithesis of that is the dragon that sits upon its treasure hoard greedily and reptilian and obsessed lest one piece of its gold goes missing.

01:52:22.240 It lashes out and it just sits in a cave and is grumpy for hundreds of years.

01:52:27.940 um that's juxtaposed to the king that gives out you know a team of horses bedecked in gold and

01:52:37.140 you know armor and as much gold as you can carry and you you lay out your gifts upon your retainers

01:52:43.860 that circulation of wealth is what keeps everything vital and happy and refreshed

01:52:49.460 um it's what keeps the tree the world tree yggdrasil vibrant green hoarding your resources

01:52:59.960 it's what makes everything dry up and it creates scarcity and it creates you know gold isn't

01:53:07.400 valuable for gold's sake it's valuable for your ability to to buy with it or to live with it or

01:53:13.740 to do cool stuff with it or to benefit other people with it or to benefit yourself with it

01:53:18.860 But just to sit on it and look how shiny it is, you miss the value that's inherent to it.

01:53:25.960 And that's fundamental to our folk and to our faith.

01:53:35.020 Don't be stingy.

01:53:39.400 That said, and fittingly, Sarah gave us $10.

01:53:44.540 Thank you, Sarah.

01:53:45.160 We appreciate it.

01:53:45.960 when you are married before the gods and folk

01:53:49.740 then decide to divorce

01:53:51.940 is that considered

01:53:53.380 oath breaking

01:53:54.340 it depends

01:53:59.440 one thing

01:54:02.860 I want Svon to speak on this too

01:54:08.320 but

01:54:08.700 oaths are based on

01:54:12.420 typically they're based on on a reciprocal arrangement to where both parties have

01:54:22.340 obligations of what they're contributing in that oath and

01:54:28.540 if unilaterally you're trying to withdraw from that oath it's very different than if

01:54:36.640 the other party in the oath isn't contributing for a significant amount of time that which

01:54:43.900 they've promised to contribute the oath is based upon the maintenance of both ends of that being

01:54:53.720 met and it all depends on the particulars of the oath that you make but typically

01:54:58.920 For example, in a marriage oath, there's implied things that are in play there, and implied over the course of time.

01:55:16.240 It's not like the first time the balance shifts and becomes uneven and the oath is no more good.

01:55:22.200 But the concept is a husband providing certain things for his wife and a wife providing certain things for her husband and that to be a mutually beneficial, healthy relationship.

01:55:36.200 If that becomes completely one sided for long periods of time, the oath has been violated long before a divorce happens.

01:55:48.620 The divorce is a legal and official acknowledgement of the disillusion of the oath.

01:55:57.660 But in in practice, the oath has been broken long before, unfortunately.

01:56:03.680 And that I don't throw that out there as license, because, again, we all go through ups and downs.

01:56:09.580 And I think that's always been the case with our folk.

01:56:12.080 Look, there are times, you know, a relationship is never, ever, ever, ever 50-50.

01:56:19.340 Equality doesn't exist.

01:56:21.460 It is always some unfair balance of one party giving more of something than the other party.

01:56:30.920 Ideally, that ebbs and flows over the course of life and how we go through things.

01:56:36.020 And there's times where the husband is down on his luck and hard and maybe the wife is providing more or giving more.

01:56:40.940 and there's times where the wife is is not in a good season of her life and the husband is doing

01:56:47.060 more for the family and doing more for his wife and that's natural and that's part of that

01:56:52.620 but there's a difference between that and completely shutting that off from your partner

01:56:58.600 and i think that you know i'll just go back like i said the the breaking of the oath is when

01:57:10.020 intentionally or knowingly and without changing it, one party decides to stop doing that which

01:57:18.920 they oath to do. That creates the break in the agreement. The divorce is a last step in

01:57:27.860 officially finalizing and recognizing the severing of the oath. But the oath begins to break when

01:57:35.800 one party, you know, intentionally chooses to stop providing that which they promise

01:57:43.360 to provide and continues that for a time, but the details matter tremendously. What

01:57:50.720 are your thoughts on that, Svon? Well, I mean, what you said has kind of been covered.

01:58:00.780 I don't know if you're getting an echo. I'm sorry. I'm getting a little bit of an echo.

01:58:05.800 Okay, I think it's gone there. I think one of the biggest things that you hit on was about the grayness of when exactly the oath was starting to erode.

01:58:21.580 And the breaking part, I think, is worth noting that a lot of our folk get into the idea that an oath is something that is made and can never be renegotiated based on the evolution of a situation.

01:58:35.800 And I think that that is a fatalistic view that oathing is about clarity of those things and then renegotiation, perhaps changing or dissolving of an oath.

01:58:50.680 But it should be done publicly. It should be done before an adjudicator.

01:58:57.880 I think this is also very much culturally a part of our ancestors meeting together and dissolving these things.

01:59:05.000 it's it's mentioned quite often in the elthing uh in iceland reasons for divorce um

01:59:13.160 my favorite one is uh remember reading about um that women could divorce their husbands

01:59:19.320 in iceland because if they were wearing like infeminate clothing the deep feed the deep

01:59:26.280 or or that they did not have enough money to make brew like to make beer or ale or mead

01:59:35.000 And again, these are just snapshots of the cultural time, and I think it's important to note that we are of a different time and we are of a different culture and a different society.

01:59:47.780 but it has still a lot of the applicableness of it that transcends that, which is that there are

01:59:55.500 reasons in which perhaps the oath between a man and a woman or between anyone really, as far as

02:00:01.320 perhaps if you make an oath of loyalty or something to a kinsman, and then those things

02:00:06.720 change, and then you have to renegotiate that oath, or perhaps based on other oaths that you've

02:00:12.800 held. Um, I think this was part of our, our culture and we have a tendency to romanticize

02:00:18.260 it again, putting horns on the helmet again. Um, a big thing to understand though, is that

02:00:24.420 it's not okay to just like dissolve an oath or break from an oath without stating your

02:00:32.940 reasons why, without being upfront about it. I mean, if you pack up your stuff in the middle

02:00:37.580 of the night and slink out the back window, you're breaking an oath. It's not good. It's

02:00:45.480 cowardly. It's terrible. But if you go forth and you actually have the gumption to stand in front

02:00:50.720 of perhaps an adjudicator and to state your reasons with your significant other or the other

02:00:57.900 holder of the oath and openly discuss or speak of the reasonings behind things, whether or not

02:01:05.480 the opinion of it all of who did what and why and how the true important thing is that now

02:01:12.280 it is being openly brought to a close and it's not being broken you're not slinking away you're

02:01:20.500 not grabbing all your toys because you got a skinned knee and you're going home and not hanging

02:01:25.880 out with your friend anymore and and you just kind of huff off that that to me is the saddest

02:01:31.960 part of one of those kinds of situations, because instead of, uh, it's, it's not even

02:01:37.240 cowardice is foolishness. You just think that you can walk away from things that you,

02:01:41.300 you oath yourself into. And that's, that's really not good. Instead, you should have the bravery,

02:01:48.040 the merit and the self-worth to go through the process of ending an oath with an adjudicator

02:01:56.200 oftentimes because sometimes both parties are not, if they were left to their own devices,

02:02:02.740 would not allow it to end. And that's why we honor Lord Forseti in his dominion is that he

02:02:11.620 has given us the power and the wherewithal to understand the way oaths work and the way our

02:02:17.200 society works. We're not savage. We're not just completely uncivilized in the way that we do

02:02:24.980 things. And so that process of, again, bringing oaths to rest, to leaving or settling an oath in

02:02:34.480 order to possibly renegotiate or to dissolve and walk away from. And sometimes, you know,

02:02:39.780 you could take an oath, but the, the, the oath you're taking to say that person, and I'm speaking

02:02:45.400 now more of a strata of like, perhaps up and down, um, uh, to, uh, to a nation, to a King, to

02:02:52.260 a president or, or whatever, uh, sometimes there is a, uh, a fulfillment of your duties are not

02:02:59.320 being met. And so you, you can be let go. And oftentimes I think it's, it's done publicly,

02:03:06.540 not often to, to humiliate you, but to allow you to speak your piece and bring it to rest and say,

02:03:12.920 you know, I understand I haven't been able to do this. And I I'm thankful that you allow me to

02:03:17.620 speak and let everyone know that I understand this and that I could dissolve my oath publicly.

02:03:22.260 and, and walk away from this. So everyone knows I'm not an oath breaker and that I'm willing to

02:03:26.980 stand before everyone and kind of, you know, take my, my responsibility. And that I think is a huge

02:03:33.320 thing. So applying these ideas to the oath of marriage is just as important. And I mean,

02:03:41.020 obviously it's not the best way we want to go. We want things to work out. We want the family

02:03:46.180 to be strong. We want all of those pro-extending of the family, pro-strengthening of the tribe

02:03:57.300 and strengthening of the frith. But sometimes it doesn't always work out, especially modern

02:04:02.120 things like today could be everything from if your significant other suddenly develops a terrible

02:04:08.700 drug addiction and you're trying to help them and there's no chance in helping them

02:04:13.080 and it's starting to affect everything in your life uh we would be amiss to say that you have

02:04:18.000 to suffer for the wrongdoings and the and the illegitimacy of perhaps a person's deeds when

02:04:25.840 you can dissolve that oath and and then try to help them get better maybe things will change in

02:04:30.940 the future but we we allow that sense because i think practicality and truth and and the resolve

02:04:37.820 of common sense is so uh prevalent in our faith as opposed that is extremely important um

02:04:47.260 to hear the horns on helmet or the romanticized version of every single oath being until the death

02:04:55.020 and you know better to die than to break your oath and i get that i get the principle of your

02:05:02.940 oath is binding and that's the point and the point is consequence if you have an oath it's

02:05:09.420 incumbent upon you to try to fix it before you seek out of it to try to maintain the balance

02:05:18.220 before it's severed but at no point in our for our ancestors or for us in modern times is the idea of

02:05:30.060 the oath that one per one party of the oath should spend the rest of their existence miserable

02:05:38.380 because the circumstances that were fundamental to the original oath taking have changed um

02:05:47.020 the big one of the big things about an oath is that it's not just immediately abandoned um

02:05:53.900 the oath imp impels you to work it out and to try to find an honorable finishing of the oath

02:06:09.720 and that's why coming before the gothar coming before your peers having it adjudicated in some 0.86

02:06:15.380 way is important that's one of the reasons that the afa doesn't believe in performing

02:06:20.880 non-legally binding marriages because it's not something you just cast off and throw away

02:06:27.120 without consequence. No, there needs to be a process. There needs to be a process of trying 0.51

02:06:34.360 to resolve it. And if it is completely unresolvable, then a process for honorably

02:06:41.260 having it settled and move on to something different. But it is really important to realize

02:06:48.820 the equation is never meant for one person to bear the entire burden of the oath and to live

02:06:59.080 in misery because the person that they oath with doesn't fulfill their end or fundamentally changes

02:07:05.940 the deal. That's not real. That's not realistic. That never has been since the dawn of time and

02:07:14.800 and continues to not be to this day.

02:07:28.260 So this one is just for you, Svon.

02:07:32.140 Could you elaborate a little bit on individuality

02:07:34.920 and why it is important to be yourself

02:07:37.480 when practicing Ausitru?

02:07:39.000 Well, I think that in relation to Yule, individuality is about a chance to reassess your year that

02:07:50.760 has passed and the projection of what you will be in the year to come.

02:07:55.420 What the individual is in relation to the folk, your tinsel strength, the merit of your

02:08:05.300 being is so highly important um and it oftentimes i think yule is a great time to reflect and to look

02:08:13.460 at oneself and to look at where you stand and what you can offer or perhaps what you've detracted from

02:08:20.180 um and it's an honest look and it doesn't necessarily have to be i mean you're not

02:08:23.940 thrashing or flogging yourself in this sense but it's like this year i you know i did a lot of this

02:08:30.260 but i i really wish i could have done this perhaps i maybe the reasons why and you know

02:08:35.620 really looking at yourself i think it's a great meditative state when we talk about ourselves as

02:08:42.180 not moving uh maybe physically or you know figuratively but sitting still and looking at

02:08:49.460 ourselves and what worth and merit we have upon ourselves doing this and i think a lot of people

02:08:55.540 if they have too much hubris they don't ever do this and that again in many cultures of the of

02:09:04.700 aryan faiths whether it's the hellenics or the gauls or the germanics or teutonic and the slavs

02:09:10.640 it's always about that sense that's a that's a doomful thing to to have that sense of no no sense

02:09:16.680 of improvement uh but i think it's also important for people that if they do it too much another

02:09:23.180 thing is to not go into as as hero says which is perfect navel gazing and just kind of overly

02:09:33.020 introverting their thoughts into themselves and and then that becomes excusatory oh i'm

02:09:37.900 not doing stuff because i'm busy working on myself and so you don't want to fall into that trap

02:09:43.340 either you want to try to find the the best applicable point between what you can do as an

02:09:49.660 individual and really the big thing i would say is what you can control not blowing yourself out

02:09:56.700 of the idea of um you know problems and situations outside of your capabilities focus on what you

02:10:04.620 have in your hands focus on what you can attain and work with that that will actually broaden

02:10:10.060 the horizon far more than the speculation of it if you will and um yeah it's just i think it's

02:10:16.700 really about especially in relation to yule is about opening yourself up to the this the skeins

02:10:23.420 of earth the skeins of weird that will lead you down paths that you might not have even

02:10:29.500 conceptualized i certainly have had quite a few this year where just ended up things worked out

02:10:35.660 the way they did and it was a beautiful thing and i had some experiences that i don't think

02:10:40.060 i would have ever had if i overly analyzed the situation and said look i can't do this because

02:10:46.700 xyz number or or things of that nature so you know uh kind of opening yourself to the moment

02:10:53.260 is important and not letting yourself kind of get drawn out in the in the things you can't control

02:11:02.700 all right

02:11:03.180 So, next question. With the recent collapse of the NJP, can you talk about what goes into

02:11:18.240 building a successful pro-white organization that will last the test of time? 0.56

02:11:23.580 The NJP. I'm thinking military non-judicial punishment. 0.83

02:11:37.020 I think the National Justice Party.

02:11:40.820 Oh, oh, oh, okay. Yeah. Sorry. I didn't, sorry. I went to another, another area.

02:11:50.660 I don't think of myself as old,

02:12:00.660 but in my 42 years, I've seen some things.

02:12:10.100 Shoot, in my time since I came home to Asatru,

02:12:17.940 it's been about 22 years.

02:12:20.660 22, 23-ish years. Thinking about it, I have seen lots and lots and lots of different groups that are involved in circles that I'm in or in adjacent circles that are, you know, I think would qualify in what you mentioned as pro-white groups.

02:12:48.820 I've seen them come and go and come and go and come and go and come and go over and over and over again.

02:13:01.260 There are.

02:13:06.340 So there's some fundamentals.

02:13:08.200 if you want anything that lasts and stands the test of time it has to be about okay first it

02:13:22.800 has to be about something positive something that you want to achieve or to see or to accomplish or

02:13:29.400 to embrace, not about something that you are against. If your group exists to oppose something,

02:13:40.620 then the second that thing is done and gone and the moment passes or the focus changes to

02:13:47.920 something else, then the fundamental that bonded everyone together is no longer there and it falls

02:13:52.900 part. So not, so it has to be positive thinking. It has to be focused on positive values, positive

02:14:01.000 goals, things that you're trying to do, not things that you're standing in opposition to. It has to

02:14:06.200 be defined by its own merits and not by a lack of merit of something else. Secondly,

02:14:14.040 and we say politics but i don't even think that's fair politics at least is supposed to imply

02:14:25.860 governance and being elected to positions and doing things and some kind of actual influence

02:14:35.220 and i haven't seen a lot of that groups that we call political are about getting together and

02:14:42.940 complaining about stuff, or maybe wearing skull masks and going someplace and loudly complaining

02:14:49.720 about stuff. But I haven't seen a lot of actual political things happen because of them. But I

02:14:56.360 would also say this, and I've said it many times on here. Politics are temporary. They're based

02:15:05.600 upon circumstance they're based upon where you're located uh responses to specific stresses within

02:15:15.280 your governing structure over the course of time in the course of society politics change in a

02:15:24.320 myriad ways values belief religion is timeless because it those values shape themselves

02:15:34.240 in relation to the circumstance,

02:15:37.520 but the value remains eternal.

02:15:41.640 It may be expressed differently in different situations.

02:15:49.580 So, see, that's a big part of it too.

02:15:56.400 The other thing is,

02:16:00.560 and this goes towards the first point,

02:16:02.780 But if I think having attainable goals that you can accomplish and then move on to new

02:16:21.200 and evolved goals is really important.

02:16:25.680 And I think that's something in any of these other groups, be they also true or not.

02:16:30.860 And so some of the groups that I've seen come and go are political.

02:16:34.440 Many of them that I've seen are nominally Ausitru, but they're Ausitru, but based on fads of social justice or based on Viking LARP or based on other nonsense.

02:16:54.580 and that's problematic because the less authentic whatever you're a part of is the less ingrained it

02:17:03.620 is in your soul in your family and in your life the more disposable it is that when you find the

02:17:09.740 next shiny thing that you want to move to i would also say one of the most toxic terrible things

02:17:18.660 that I've seen and I see this, this is something that our people do to each other constantly

02:17:25.040 up to, including today. And it's really, really sad. We are our own worst enemies and we engage

02:17:33.260 in purity spiral. And I think that people hear that like, oh yeah, purity spiral. And then they

02:17:39.300 move on to the next thought, but we all have a tendency to do that. If our focus is always

02:17:45.460 fighting inward on the guy that has 95% of things in common with me and 5% that we disagree

02:17:53.460 on, we will whittle ourselves down continually into insignificance and nothingness and eventually

02:18:01.780 complete disillusion. And I speak out against it, try to fight it every way I know how.

02:18:09.360 a lot of our people are just stuck there and it may take time for them to grow up

02:18:15.960 may take years for them to gain wisdom and listen to those of us who've seen this happen but

02:18:24.220 when you have somebody that's literally 95 in agreement with you but you choose to focus on

02:18:34.400 the 5% that separates you, that is a surefire recipe towards the insignificance of failure.

02:18:42.320 And we've seen it happen a million times. We see it happen a million more. Best we can do,

02:18:49.280 and what we are doing, is carving out a place for ourselves to build that golden age in the husk of

02:18:55.840 what's around us. And we're doing that. We're building towards permanence. And if all the

02:19:04.060 purity spirallers would stop and people would grow up and get on the team, we'd accomplish

02:19:10.000 more faster and better. But we'll accomplish regardless. And we are. And we can see that

02:19:17.460 with our Hoffs. We can see with Sigerheim. It's certainly a testament to that, that we have,

02:19:23.020 You know, while other people out in the world are tearing statues down, we're erecting statues.

02:19:35.560 But absolutely, you've got to build what you want based around a positive identity.

02:19:43.660 So this is another thing about specific to Ausatru.

02:19:46.540 However, when Alcetru groups have been based around their definition of Alcetru is how not Christian they are, they don't have anything positively to rally behind.

02:20:03.160 Their point in existence is to oppose another faith.

02:20:07.300 they have at their outset laid out the game accepting the terms that this other faith

02:20:19.560 is the dominant faith and any move they do is going to be a reaction to that other faith

02:20:26.640 and it denies them an identity of themselves and a path forward to grow and to evolve

02:20:32.300 All they can do is counter-move something else that they don't like or that they disagree with.

02:20:40.040 One of the biggest evolutions of modern ausitry was when we evolved past the phase of, 0.59

02:20:46.620 look, Ma, we're not Christian, to, okay, what does it mean to be loyal to the Iser?

02:20:53.340 and to define ourselves solely in terms of our relationship to our gods or a lack of that relationship.

02:21:04.200 When we've taken the world on our own terms, that's where we've laid foundations for the future. 0.90

02:21:11.180 I mentioned earlier, we're about ready to start the 30th year of the Auschwitz-Folk Assembly. 0.78

02:21:17.840 In the history of the world, 30 years sounds insignificant.

02:21:21.400 it but all of us that have been around for a while know that in the circles that we

02:21:28.360 often find ourselves in three decades in three solid decades is that is quite an achievement

02:21:39.320 and one of the other things that is a massive intangible to that but that has allowed us to

02:21:45.880 achieve what we have and is propelling us to achieve more is being being allied with

02:21:55.640 and on the right side of the gods the favor of our gods behaving in a way doing things in a way

02:22:06.200 building in a way that is pleasing to them is the best thing you can do in order to be successful

02:22:16.040 and have longevity and doesn't mean that we always get it right certainly we don't

02:22:22.760 but it does mean that our intention is to try to do the right thing

02:22:26.200 and i hope and i believe that we have been pleasing to our gods and i hope that we

02:22:36.980 continue to do so i'll do everything in my power to ensure that we do um

02:22:42.940 but that focus on the gods and focus on something eternal as opposed to on something fleeting and

02:22:51.640 situational, sets you up for generational success as well, I think. But I've kind of beat this one

02:22:59.840 to death. Svon, what are your thoughts on this? It's another one of those cliche points that we

02:23:09.220 can say. You know, we all have heard it before that culture is downstream from spirituality,

02:23:17.720 that there is a greater call of the soul of the people that then begets down the mentality and

02:23:26.640 the physicality of the people. And we are working on battles on all those fronts as individuals

02:23:33.880 and as groups. But it's worth noting that I think when we talk about perhaps the desire of action

02:23:44.300 and all of these things. I understand that. I think that it's a deeply intrinsic part of our

02:23:50.600 folk. It's an intrinsic part of our menfolk, whether they are of the ethnic faith of our

02:23:57.980 people or if they're of another faith, foreign faith, they are still folk. And I think that

02:24:04.900 that manifests in a lot of ways for many people. So telling young folks like, hey, your spiritualism

02:24:14.220 is so important often again is lost on them because they're youthful and they're unwise

02:24:20.940 and as we grow wiser and we grow older we learn and and this seems to be a repeated

02:24:28.220 kind of cycle within itself um you know it's we haven't quite reached a point in which

02:24:34.380 the youth of our folk are actually looking at the wisdom of their elders their clergy

02:24:45.020 their um the leaders of their of their people in a way they haven't quite made that connection yet

02:24:52.940 and so a lot of times there's everything from ignorance or ignoring to straight out scoffing

02:25:00.300 um and then you know over time that as you you see these things happen um you can only but say

02:25:08.700 you know i've seen this happen before it's not i told you so it's i've seen this happen before i'm

02:25:14.220 saying what i'm saying because i have seen it time and time again and so i think that there is a

02:25:21.980 massive importance that we look at our people building something for themselves within themselves

02:25:30.300 as an individual and as a community and that is more important than shaking your fists at things

02:25:37.580 um you know there there is a a great amount of when we talk about people who who claim that

02:25:43.980 they're oppressed all the time and then it's like okay well how are you oppressed uh as opposed from

02:25:49.580 other people and sometimes they they fall short on a lot of things unless they try to shift the

02:25:54.780 window um we on the other hand are saying like okay if we have a problem we need to fix it within

02:26:02.300 ourselves and amongst ourselves and we should try to do that consistently and over time we know we're

02:26:07.980 not going to get it overnight not everything's going to be perfect and and shiny right out the

02:26:12.300 gate this is a generational thing that's going to take a lot of time and um i think that some

02:26:18.620 of these movements or these ideas of whether it's political activation or um you know doing things

02:26:26.620 uh you know in in activism just in general and i think you know people think about activism

02:26:33.180 as like there's political activism and then there's just activism which is community building

02:26:38.300 and um you should greatly consider the spiritual activism as a huge component to who you are as a

02:26:45.500 person another thing that i also really hit on that really kind of i wanted to bring up too was

02:26:50.940 that the purity purity spiraling effect is always about fragmentation i think that a lot of people

02:26:58.140 that denote purity spiraling or like that try to create it that utilize it as catalyst oftentimes

02:27:04.940 are trying to break things down into their own personal pools in which they can be like the king

02:27:10.940 fish and and that has a big problem as well our people have always suffered from this the romans

02:27:18.460 knew that the germanic people could be scattered if they were if they were not united and the best

02:27:23.180 way to do that was to you know get the purity spiral against each other or to break you know

02:27:29.980 certain things or accept certain things and so on and so forth and so there was this absolute lack of

02:27:35.020 of unification under one banner.

02:27:39.660 The whole story of Herman of the Cherusky

02:27:44.420 is kind of a warning to that.

02:27:46.660 So I think that a lot of people,

02:27:48.680 when you should look at the wisdom and the idea

02:27:52.800 of how a group, a spiritual group,

02:27:56.620 that's looking at the common sense pathways,

02:27:59.700 that's looking at the broad framework to work in,

02:28:04.280 they're achieving goals and doing things, but they're not trying to hyper-focus on one singular

02:28:11.480 thing. And I see it all the time, especially around this time with Yule. And there's a lot

02:28:16.860 of like, oh, you're celebrating Yule in December. It's supposed to be in January, according to the

02:28:22.040 way our ancestors did it. And I'm like, you're hyper-focusing on like the Anglo-Saxons and

02:28:28.380 their lunar calendar. And you're not looking at what we're doing right now. You would rather kind

02:28:33.200 of raise your nose up to all of this stuff going on in order to manifest some nugget that you think

02:28:42.640 is like super important and all the while your ancestors are just going like why like stop so

02:28:49.200 you know the the overall point of of purity spiraling can sometimes lead to the fragmentation

02:28:56.920 and fragmentation leads to being easily controlled people that build big and and join under banner

02:29:04.600 and get together but have the room to do things to uh make their own congregations around in the

02:29:12.680 area but everyone is in the same page pulling onto the same pushing up the same hill you'll find that

02:29:19.500 that kind of activism has a longer standing point and then you learn from each other the mistakes and

02:29:26.160 the and the victories of each other spread and that's what allows the whole of the group to

02:29:31.200 attain traction in a lot of things and and you try to tell people this you try to show people this

02:29:37.900 and it doesn't matter how much you do or say you're still gonna you know hold on to like

02:29:43.900 the minutia of one tiny thing and um i would say to anybody who's out there there's wisdom in all

02:29:50.380 people there's in a lot of um uh circles and things like that or there's at least a table that

02:29:56.060 you can glean wisdom from at everyone that you sit down but you should look at the overall and

02:30:02.060 see where that wisdom is coming from that is if you see these kind of activist groups popping up

02:30:08.620 and up and down and down and they're falling apart for various reasons whether it's internal

02:30:13.820 struggles purity spiraling a woman like i've seen oh i've seen the the relationship dynamic destroy

02:30:23.300 people before that were trying to do something that had nothing to do with relationships but

02:30:29.060 yet here they are that kind of stuff is it's like gang mentality it's it's a street gang

02:30:37.160 um you know kind of pack dog mentality you need to step away from that and realize big

02:30:44.720 the idea of generation culture folk as a as a people a tribe a nation of of thought that can

02:30:54.040 move forward and we need to do it now because you don't want to do it later when it's you know

02:30:58.700 far past it's it's it's uh it's usefulness no the best time to plant trees is always 20 years ago

02:31:07.880 right that's a that's a metaphorical thing but it's also like a real gardening thing

02:31:14.480 like the best time to plant those stuff those things is generations ago second best time is

02:31:25.380 right now. I want to acknowledge Yeager Kuningaz for the $10 donation. Hail the gods,

02:31:36.360 hail the folk, hail the AFA. Thank you. We appreciate your 10 bucks. I'd also like to say

02:31:41.240 this. So a couple of things as far as longevity and your fault, you opened up a can here and

02:31:52.920 And we're just gonna keep going on all these things

02:31:55.940 because it's really important to what we do.

02:32:04.780 Do you want to accomplish something?

02:32:09.040 Do you want to build something?

02:32:12.640 Or do you want to be the coolest guy in the room?

02:32:17.640 guy in the room. Those things are often mutually exclusive. And I've seen this a lot. One of

02:32:31.580 the things, and I'll speak for myself in this. I know it sounds self-serving because of where

02:32:37.140 I'm sitting, but it was a path that led me here. I wasn't always sitting in a big chair.

02:32:47.640 When I first got involved in Anousetru and was looking at what to do, everybody's trying

02:32:54.900 to break off in their own little thing. Everybody knows some way to do it better because the

02:33:01.160 people who are out there doing it before us, they're doing something wrong. So I know better.

02:33:05.200 I'll start my new thing. And for the long time at Anousetru, that's all we were doing. We were

02:33:10.360 starting again at year one every year because somebody new comes along with some new, you

02:33:16.820 You know, like Sivan was saying, oh, you see, actually, these one tribe of our people celebrated Yule in January, so you're doing it wrong.

02:33:25.840 And we still see that today.

02:33:29.760 And what it occurred to me as a truth at the time, and this was, you know, and this was a situation on a face. 0.80

02:33:39.900 There was a group of people that I was involved with because I knew one of the guys when I first got involved in Alistair True called the Heathen Folk Revival.

02:33:50.900 Has anyone here heard of the Heathen Folk Revival?

02:33:54.880 Say that rhetorically because I assume probably not because it didn't go anywhere.

02:34:00.940 because it was three dudes wanting to be the king of stuff rather than getting involved in something

02:34:07.200 that already has progress towards a goal, whether than being part of a movement that's taking us

02:34:13.920 somewhere. Everyone wants to start their own thing because the truth is most people would

02:34:21.780 much rather be edgelords and virtue signal and be the king of their

02:34:33.380 group of five fat guys in camp chairs arguing over the big piece of chicken

02:34:37.780 of the rotisserie chicken i knew you were gonna use this yeah but it's a thing i use it because

02:34:44.020 it is a real example you have theodism that their theodism was based seriously around which of the

02:34:55.140 fat dudes in camp chairs could claim to be the king of the fat dudes in camp chairs and there's

02:35:02.180 like five of them and they're arguing over their kingdom of rotisserie chicken and like two or two

02:35:09.060 leader mountain dews and if that's what's important to you that you're yokozuna of the

02:35:19.460 five fat guys and you get the best chicken piece do that but that doesn't build anything for the

02:35:27.220 future it occurred to me very early on when i wanted to be a folk builder from alaska that

02:35:32.740 An AFA folk builder for the backwater that was Alaska is better than the high exalted grand lord of the microstate that is the, you know, whatever basement theode of five fat dudes.

02:35:56.740 like it just was something was going somewhere. And the other thing was a constant fight over

02:36:03.240 position. So you can rule your kingdom of nothingness and be part of something that moves

02:36:15.640 forward. Um, I didn't even know they made it that far. So kudos to Morris Taylor over in the chat

02:36:23.160 room that says the heathen folk revival actually had youtube videos 12 years ago that is further

02:36:29.400 than i thought that they made it um but yeah um it was much more important to me at the time to

02:36:42.440 be part of something that was going to be here for my children and my grandchildren and at that point

02:36:49.080 the afa was you know again it was the longest running also true organization in existence

02:36:55.240 and at that point it was 10 years old 11 years old

02:37:03.940 earlier than that when i actually started wanting to be sort of involved but when i became

02:37:11.840 you know all the way involved it was like 10 years old

02:37:14.480 um but that's the farthest we've made it because the crab in the bucket man anybody tries to

02:37:22.040 succeed and you've got to pull them back down because you've got to be the crab that's the

02:37:27.780 highest up in the bucket don't worry about all the crabs getting out of the bucket no you've

02:37:33.120 got to be the highest crab in the bucket so we got to pull everybody else down

02:37:36.840 um but being part of that life all the way through when i was just a folk builder from

02:37:46.020 alaska because i was part of something it's part of something we were building we had a dream of

02:37:51.460 what we're trying to accomplish and you know here i am however many years later um

02:38:01.360 my daughter played a hoff with a hoff with other afa kids and to grow up in a world she'll never

02:38:15.400 know a world that doesn't have hoffs to our gods that's something we did together because we stood 0.95

02:38:22.020 the test of time together because people stuck around stuck it out and prioritized the future

02:38:29.420 over their present and we're not arguing over rotisserie chicken we're sitting at four hoffs

02:38:37.400 to our gods raising statues to our founder and his wife at land that um eventually numerous

02:38:48.180 are going to live on that we're going to build a hoff to lord tyron that we're going to build

02:38:53.940 a great haul for the afa on um so this is a long-winded answer to your one question

02:39:03.940 but you have to be committed towards a future that you're genuinely going to commit your life

02:39:08.660 towards if it's just about being an edgelord or looking cool then you go from fad to fad to fad

02:39:15.220 jumping from lily pad to lily pad and you don't build anything if you're committed to what you're

02:39:22.500 leaving for your children and your grandchildren you're in much better positioned to uh build

02:39:29.860 something lasting and i think we've about beat that topic to death but it's really really important

02:39:36.420 and that's why i think it was important to spend some time on

02:39:41.220 uh the next one is just for you swan what dead germanic languages do you know i remember you

02:39:48.500 mentioned gothic before also do you know anglo-saxon uh well the key in that phrase is do you know

02:39:57.380 uh the the the threshold of of what that might mean conversationally none and i i'll be the first to

02:40:06.100 admit it i think that in pronunciation and study of language i know a smattering of the three majors

02:40:13.220 which would be Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and Gothic language, the Gothic tongue.

02:40:23.140 And mainly it's a point of research in which trying to find the coalescence between those.

02:40:31.480 I'm not too familiar with, say, like the evolution of German specifically, like, you know, like low and high and, you know, more of the proto-central Germanic languages.

02:40:47.440 I'm not super familiar or like Phrygian into Dutch.

02:40:53.060 Again, a little bit, but the three major ones that I really try to stick to is the high north, the high west and the high east.

02:40:59.860 And I'm really trying to utilize that more for an understanding of, like, you know, the meaning of Yule and how it's, you know, that's one word that really kind of hits all three of those.

02:41:12.100 And in that triangle kind of shows the expansiveness of that, of the language and the interconnectedness between our religion, what makes our religion an ethnic religion is because it spans and it's, you know, maybe variantly different, but it unifies us all very, very much.

02:41:29.960 And that's mainly through language. But so I would say, just to be honest, like, none to a level in which I have seen a lot of other people, like Liera Neda, Ailed English, or Jackson Crawford, or some of the other people on YouTube that are very specifically like in these, these kind of like polygot speakers, who I'm just super envious of. 1.00

02:41:59.960 of um and their ability to kind of bring these languages back to life and to speak them um or to 0.99

02:42:05.780 be able to read like the book of matthew in in gothic um is amazing to me but i've gotten to a

02:42:11.640 point where i can in combination with perhaps books and maybe like side notes of linguistic

02:42:20.560 translations i can start putting things together and connecting them to other things without being

02:42:25.320 prompted um so i mean i and and it surprises a lot of people too i'm a big proponent for um

02:42:34.600 uh modern english as our as as a a viable mode in which we we speak to the gods but there's a

02:42:42.280 there is a power and an understanding of perhaps utilizing old norse as an ecclesiastical language

02:42:49.480 it's very important i think for our gothar to understand things and concepts and how to

02:42:54.760 reference and and and to to present to the folk um you know tangible and proper translations um

02:43:05.320 because i have seen people just kind of translate

02:43:09.240 really really well in certain areas and then other ones are just kind of glossing and glancing

02:43:12.760 um but you know i i i do like the idea of us also speaking to the gods in our language as it has

02:43:23.700 evolved um and i i talk about that a lot i was even talking about that this weekend um just the

02:43:29.440 anglization of of uh lady freak to frigga and things like that um i just i find language super

02:43:37.480 interesting and the means in which we communicate ideas and um and and spiritual concepts um it's

02:43:44.680 just a the problem is we got to be careful about um people that might seek to translate with the

02:43:51.160 intention of guiding uh towards perhaps an um an intended goal instead of kind of you know laying

02:43:59.720 concepts before people in order for them to kind of receive them and and mull them over and try to

02:44:05.080 understand them and become better for them the other thing i would say is that we need to get

02:44:10.200 away from the purity spiraling if you will um we can't say austera we have to say eostra and i'm

02:44:18.680 i am and i i think else here ago they can attest to it i have i did that too when i first came

02:44:25.480 into the austro folk assembly i was kind of doing that and so that is a deep reflection upon myself

02:44:31.560 as well um where you know and and and you know speaking about yule as as uh yayola from the

02:44:39.640 anglo-saxon and you know oh we got it we should use a g instead of a y and it's like but people

02:44:45.080 don't know these things and and and it really isn't that important as a as opposed to more or

02:44:51.800 less getting people to celebrate yule together it's far more important than harping over whether

02:44:57.720 not we use a g or a y um so language is is is a huge pet project of mine but it is by no means i

02:45:07.080 think the driving force within our spiritual um goals and and and teachings to the folk about

02:45:15.400 what we're trying to do and what they should try to do at their homes and teaching their children

02:45:20.840 making the gods a welcome power in our lives is first and then understanding and ruminating on

02:45:32.200 the relationship that our ancestors had with the gods is probably second or maybe even third because

02:45:37.080 i would say you know the other is to align with your community and get with the cultural practice

02:45:42.440 of the community and understanding like you know stop trying to pick and purity spiral things apart

02:45:48.760 why are you not practicing alvar bloat and these are bloats in february in iceland during the 11th

02:45:55.400 century why are you guys you know i why are you guys doing this like you know it's it's it's

02:46:03.080 comical now then it's kind of like the the turkey or the chicken leg um analogy which

02:46:09.720 does kind of fit and i would say just to speak to that too a little bit is that you know finding

02:46:16.280 and utilizing language to build that relationship with the gods is most important and it's the same

02:46:23.340 way as it's constantly looking better as towards a better uh horizon than you know focusing on this

02:46:29.580 is good enough for us now that the the the um the backyard is good and then perhaps somebody's like

02:46:36.460 well i'm gonna build a shed and that's gonna be a hoff to the gods and and we're we are doing

02:46:42.400 small incremental steps but we're never settling for those it's always about kind of broader

02:46:48.720 horizons bigger how we the gods deserve more what are we gonna do to get bigger better because

02:46:55.600 victory never sleeps exactly it all loops down to that it yeah it really does um and i'm gonna

02:47:05.280 i know this was a question asked as fawn but get my two cents anyway um

02:47:14.320 language is awesome and it's a really good tool to understand

02:47:22.720 how our ancestors saw something how they saw the world how they related to their gods

02:47:28.880 um and if you're studying language etymology is more important to me than definition because

02:47:39.260 definition takes on silly nonsense of the day etymology traces language towards its roots and

02:47:48.180 explains the course of how a word came to mean what it means and what its base root is and it's

02:47:55.440 really important. But all of that is a tool. I will guarantee you this. Loki is much more educated

02:48:07.000 on our gods than Svan or myself. Surtr knows much more about the cosmos than either Svan nor I.

02:48:19.900 my point isn't to be smarter than the forces of chaos

02:48:29.660 my point is to be better and more noble and more in favor of the iser of whom i stand loyal to

02:48:40.480 winning the favor of the gods is the key if education and learning language helps you do

02:48:50.420 that better helps you build a stronger and a better relationship with your gods then absolutely

02:48:56.800 it is fantastic you can know all kind of stuff and if you don't put it into practice and it

02:49:04.440 doesn't bring you closer. It's for not. That's what's really important to keep in mind. And

02:49:13.520 the thing is, when you purity spiral on stuff like that, it becomes silly. Oh, well, you 0.87

02:49:18.760 need to pronounce it in Old Saxon. Well, screw that. I'm better than you. I can do it in

02:49:24.220 Old Norse. Well, uh-uh, guess what? I can do it in Gothic. Well, you know, what kind

02:49:30.320 of grunts did the cavemen make when they were celebrating Yule? What's the appropriate grunt 0.97

02:49:38.600 armpit fart noise pattern that says Yule? It's silly at that point. What's a much better thing 0.87

02:49:49.560 is to understand what it meant to our ancestors at different points in time, and then to add to

02:49:56.380 the tapestry of our folk by expressing what it means to you. Part of Victory Never Sleeps is

02:50:05.320 we're not resting on the laurels of our Viking ancestors. No, just as they carried the torch

02:50:11.820 forward from our Celtic ancestors and from our Neolithic ancestors, we're carrying the torch

02:50:17.460 forward for them. And, you know, one day we'll have people, you know, on Alpha Centauri somewhere

02:50:25.540 going over minutiae of how I expressed things on Victory Never Sleeps or how Svan responded.

02:50:36.740 But that's how we move this forward. And if we're not moving it forward, we're not worthy of our

02:50:42.140 ancestors so that's really really important but no linguistics is awesome and it adds so much to

02:50:49.340 it and it's one of the cool things that spawn's able to bring to the table is a different

02:50:53.820 perspective on that um and to add to the depth of of our understanding of our sources of lore

02:51:02.220 um next question did ragnarok already happen or should we be prepping for it

02:51:12.580 Yes and yes.

02:51:15.400 So as we've said on this program before, but it's hard to wrap our heads around.

02:51:22.560 This is much like when I talked about prayer earlier.

02:51:26.980 We can't use the English language to express how the gods process information or receive our prayers.

02:51:36.180 So we resort to what we are familiar with to do our best to approximate it.

02:51:42.140 But it's not perfect.

02:51:46.760 Our gods and our lore exist in mythic time.

02:51:52.560 Meaning the chronological events of our lore have happened, are happening, and will happen simultaneously.

02:52:07.280 them. And that's hard for us to wrap our heads around. It took me a long time to wrap my head

02:52:16.520 around it as well. For example, Balder. Is Balder a baby on the lap of Frigg? Is he the shining

02:52:32.860 best youth of the gods? Is he currently slain and being entertained by hell

02:52:40.220 in the underworld? Or is he returned in glory and in splendor, welcoming in the golden age?

02:52:51.080 Depending on where you're at and how you want to relate to him and your understanding and

02:52:56.040 your relationship, in your circumstance, he is any of those things, or he is all of those things.

02:53:05.240 And that's a lot, and it doesn't make linear sense in the way that we're used to,

02:53:13.420 but it's true nonetheless. One thing that we've seen through our lore is, yes,

02:53:19.620 we should always be preparing for Ragnarok.

02:53:25.940 Not in the sense of it being finality.

02:53:28.380 We spoke earlier about how time happens in cycles.

02:53:31.600 But when looked at three-dimensionally,

02:53:33.760 hopefully it happens in spirals.

02:53:35.720 And each time it comes around,

02:53:37.200 we're better and better and better prepared for it.

02:53:40.980 But we should always be preparing

02:53:42.800 so that we maintain a state of readiness.

02:53:46.440 The Havemall talks about this.

02:53:49.620 that said we may never see the need for the readiness sometimes the more readiness you have

02:54:01.460 the more cataclysm passes you by because it can't take you um and this you know i and i don't mean

02:54:10.340 any of that silly but the better prepared we are the more often we don't actually have to fight

02:54:17.220 battles that would come our way because we're so well prepared that the enemy doesn't want to test

02:54:22.980 us one of the things i found when i was bouncing and i know one of these stories goes back to matt's

02:54:29.220 bouncing glory days i do that a lot but i learned so much from it um when i started and i was ill

02:54:39.940 prepared and i didn't know what i was doing and i didn't know how to fight and i didn't know what

02:54:45.300 i was capable of and i was scared of things i fought a lot as i matured and perfected my skills

02:54:54.980 and grew in confidence and knew how to handle situations i had to fight less and less because

02:55:01.140 i was prepared and people saw in my face and read in all the non-verbals that if they wanted to take

02:55:10.180 ticket there that I was ready. And so they just chose not to. And I think that's one of the best

02:55:16.460 things in staving off, you know, cycles of Ragnarok is through preparedness and through being

02:55:23.280 in a martial mindset where we're ready if battles come our way. I'll say this on prepping too,

02:55:32.900 though play in the odds there's a lot of people that have wasted their life

02:55:41.140 building bunkers instead of building relationships with their families

02:55:46.280 and the the great zombie apocalypse never happened in their lifetime

02:55:52.360 but they could have been good dads and it could have been good husbands i could have been good

02:55:58.080 grandpas, but instead they were obsessing over something that never really happened in their

02:56:05.840 lifetime. So I think that anything we do to prepare for the future should be of benefit in

02:56:13.500 the here and now as well. There's something really good to be said for planning for the future,

02:56:20.580 but plan for success don't plan for failure all the time

02:56:25.480 one of the big things about um Sigerheim and I meant to talk about this a little bit when we

02:56:32.960 had the question about what should a pro-white organization do to have longevity and to not just

02:56:40.740 fade away. Building things that are that are intended for the future, having dreams. One of

02:56:50.520 the things with Sigurheim, we want to get as many of our people that we can to come out and live

02:56:57.720 around us. Now, AFA leadership, a number of us are going to live on site. But the dream of Sigurheim

02:57:04.360 is that that's the the the nucleus but the rest is to get more people to come to jackson county

02:57:11.480 tennessee once you get more people there what's special about it is things keep going just the

02:57:21.560 way they are awesome we'll have more of our people around to share with to benefit from

02:57:28.120 to celebrate to build the world we want to see from if things get worse

02:57:34.360 Well, great, we're prepared to take care of each other, and we can lean on each other for strength.

02:57:40.140 If things get drastically better, awesome, we're in the best position to maximize that.

02:57:46.320 So it's something that wins in all scenarios.

02:57:48.760 The more we can concentrate on our preparation, basing it upon things that are beneficial today and tomorrow,

02:57:57.960 that positions us best to take the hits of the future.

02:58:04.360 so don't focus on doom porn as far as your preparation make sure you maintain a state

02:58:14.340 of readiness all the time and build and grow from there as opposed to planning on terrible

02:58:21.920 things happening to you because that that creates a spiral of

02:58:26.700 I don't know focus on negativity that I don't think is what that will well served with

02:58:34.180 What do you have to say about this, Svon?

02:58:39.940 I mean, I think you hit it quite well.

02:58:46.560 I don't know.

02:58:47.160 I don't really have anything more to add to that.

02:58:49.640 No, I keep – tonight I've been taking a bunch of the questions first,

02:58:53.580 and I will try to adjust that a little bit.

02:58:56.760 That's not fair.

02:58:57.320 No, you're – numerous times have I been like, I got a point.

02:59:01.840 Oh, he's hitting it now.

02:59:02.660 never mind. Does the AFA have an official stance on reincarnation? If there is reincarnation,

02:59:17.180 can slash how could you speak to an ancestor that is currently alive unbeknownst to us now?

02:59:24.800 So you raise a really good question. And that's something that occurred to me a lot when I first

02:59:32.220 got involved in ausiture i don't know if we still have any of swan's soul illustrations handy

02:59:43.660 our souls have multiple parts

02:59:50.300 though it is possible in a rare and exceptional circumstance

02:59:55.020 for a person to fully reincarnate that is not what typically happens

03:00:03.180 what typically happens is that pieces of our soul complex can be bequeathed to those who come after

03:00:12.800 us but the the us-ness of our soul goes on to our ancestors or perhaps if we've earned

03:00:22.220 the favor of the gods ascends to something greater but pieces of your luck of your hymenia

03:00:29.880 those things can be passed down through a family line can be enhanced and drawn towards a person

03:00:40.580 if you name one of your one of your children after a kinsman of yours who had some some

03:00:47.500 greatness to them. Doing that is, is a request beyond the veil to have some of that luck,

03:00:56.020 some of that person's glory reflected in that, in that child. So there we go. Yay, Nick.

03:01:07.700 There are pieces and Svan can do, so here we go, Svan. I will just kick that over to you. Yes,

03:01:13.780 the AFA does have a stance on reincarnation. No, typically you don't a hundred percent

03:01:18.740 reincarnate. It's more like pieces of your luck can reincarnate. But what you said is very valid.

03:01:26.380 If you're trying to talk to your grandfather at your altar, your grandfather can't simultaneously

03:01:33.440 be your daughter. Your grandfather needs to exist somewhere as your grandfather to engage in that

03:01:40.360 cycle with you all for that and i use that particular example because i named my daughter

03:01:45.800 aubry after my grandfather it's fine can you break down your soul complex with the chalice

03:01:52.600 diagram for us please yeah we talk about the essence of the leak or the body of course that

03:02:01.640 goes away when we when we uh pass from this world and go beyond the veil so the idea again

03:02:08.360 is that if the concepts of the soul and the portions of the soul that are bequeathed to the

03:02:15.140 bloodline in a very particular cycle, which is important as to why the cycle exists,

03:02:23.060 you know, there's not an old body that's, you know, it's a new body. And that therein lies

03:02:29.340 the kind of the predication for everything else is that the soul or the identity of the soul and

03:02:36.400 that which is goes to oftentimes what we refer to as the folk soul but it's the the greater

03:02:43.760 kind of accumulation of all that soul might and we know that our ancestors talked often about the

03:02:50.180 of our lines being kind of given or passed down or attained upon birth and that there are there

03:02:57.140 are parts of um our folk soul that are passed on so when we pass away the the body and the ego

03:03:06.980 kind of fall down into the chalice the the the uh the memories and the thoughts fall into that

03:03:14.500 that reservoir of what is the soul the soul and so all of these things that make us as an

03:03:21.780 individual living in the middle world right now fall into the soul and perhaps there's there's

03:03:29.140 residue of the hammer that exists in the world if we have great might and great power it can exude

03:03:36.420 itself into the world sometimes we see this in manifestations of imagery of of of the souls

03:03:42.660 enacting during times of great turmoil a great strife or great um might and power um you know

03:03:50.740 to see uh the great kings exuding themselves uh on on the the stones in which they were anointed

03:03:58.900 uh and and bequeathed their power has just as much a value that part of that is those

03:04:03.940 reflections of those pieces that fall into the sowl and we have the the the woad self which can

03:04:11.700 also exude itself through long um generations our actions our deeds but it ultimately falls 0.65

03:04:19.780 back down into the south and there the south is connected with the hamingya the hamingya that we

03:04:24.900 built in our life and the hamingya that we were also given from the generations before 0.92

03:04:30.340 and all of this is kind of fueled in vehicle to by the philkya the philkya is that primordial

03:04:39.620 connection to the folk soul while we are living and thus returns us back to it and

03:04:47.220 And as I was here ago, he spoke about the bequeathment of fragments.

03:04:53.040 Now, the details of this is not really known.

03:04:56.160 I would think it would be kind of disingenuous to say, oh, yes, we know that the ancestors bequeath this and that.

03:05:04.080 That's not exactly the reason why things are beyond the veil is because they're obfuscated from from perhaps a mortal understanding in clarity.

03:05:14.080 But we do know this, that once we pass through and enter into the point of the folk soul, there is a way in which our ancestors can, again, see us through a threshold of water, a wellspring, if you will, and there is a root there.

03:05:32.020 And that root, the symbology, the meaning of the root, and why there's a root in the lower world, drawing back up into the realm of the gods, is important. The circulatory system of the cosmos is Yggdrasil, and it's very important.

03:05:48.120 I think a lot of people get caught up in the idea that it has to be this pillar and a foundation and they try to move the roots around without taking into consideration the point of the circulatory system and what all of those levels mean.

03:06:02.580 So when we talk about ascension and that lifting up, there could be a lifting from here in the middle and there can be a lifting in the beyond, beyond the veil, our ancestors being exalted, or that they can then lift up things that benefit their bloodline to be disseminated back into the middle world in our descendants.

03:06:27.340 And so those things, again, manifest in in Hamina, they manifest in might, power, luck, all of these things. And sometimes memory, sometimes thought, they continue to exude on and it becomes kind of like a boon that if you have the ability, if you build a relationship with your ancestors beyond the veil, and you work with them and honor them in great amounts,

03:06:55.140 then it is a way in which they can bequeath upon you benefits to help you preside forward.

03:07:02.780 And I think that's why Ausatru kind of came back in a wave, in an essence.

03:07:09.720 There was clearly, Founder MacNallan was caught the wind that blew through Yggdrasil,

03:07:16.040 as it's often referred to, in which these kind of this moment that our ancestors sent up

03:07:22.740 and started to lay the foundation of the of the folk feeling that desire to come back

03:07:30.780 overwhelmingly so and it was across the board so the idea of a one-for-one reincarnation is

03:07:39.280 not necessarily something that we look at it's not like you pass and then you pop back out as

03:07:44.800 a child or a grandchild, but that you reservoir yourself with the great collective of the soul

03:07:53.700 of your folk, whether it's your bloodline, but also the greater folk. And we don't quite,

03:08:00.140 you know, a lot of people speculate as exactly what that conglomeration could be. But we do know

03:08:07.780 that the ancestors that we work with then do have the ability to place upon or elevate themselves

03:08:15.240 up sometimes through great deeds or through um uh honoring why those living in the in the middle

03:08:21.440 world these these deeds are kind of exalted and and spoken of and the gods then place these this

03:08:28.600 soul might in the form of an alvar or a d seer because a lot of people don't conceptualize like

03:08:35.380 I'm praying to my ancestors, but I'm praying to the desir. Are they the same? Yes. Are they in

03:08:42.100 the same place? No. One is clearly seen as kind of presiding over, and that's a result of that

03:08:49.680 exaltation. Or that the soul might is then brought up to the gods, and the gods really

03:08:55.260 kind of have that determination. I don't think that the gods, you know, descend down into the

03:09:02.800 underworld and weigh your, your heart, uh, with a feather and, you know, listen to your Philkel

03:09:07.660 like a lawyer. And, um, you know, that determines whether or not you get the strand or whether you

03:09:12.620 go to your ancestors, um, as more is that the gods are kind of adjudicating what comes into

03:09:21.000 the middle as, as everything is playing out the skein of weird, the skein of earth. Our ancestors

03:09:27.120 are vested in the acceptance of you and you bringing in more than what you left with and

03:09:35.000 that cycle is about empowering them with your deeds with your nobility and you should be concerned

03:09:40.880 about the gods witnessing you now and marking you with the sense of being witnessed as they're

03:09:47.600 they're meeting out that doom in the well that is in heaven and mark you for greatness witness

03:09:52.720 your deeds but you also want your ancestors to see that you are making them proud you're giving them

03:09:59.200 great honors and when you return to them you bring more and that you're not spurned by them and left

03:10:06.560 be you know a kind of an outlaw or an out guard of your own folk soul so that's hugely important

03:10:13.520 in in that whole relation of the circulatory um movements of the of soul and soul power

03:10:20.320 And why our meta language, our stories, talk about that upper world, that middle world, and that lower world, and why it's so important that the roots are placed where they are placed and why those wells are placed where they are placed.

03:10:33.940 So I hope that's the best explanation or at least give some grounding in the correct perhaps way to mull over the ideas of a lot of the stuff in the lore and the way that our ancestors do talk about things in relation to death.

03:10:51.500 and and and the returning of the soul is components of the soul because we are multiple pieces and

03:10:59.340 some of them are made here and stay here in particularly like the leak the body um and and

03:11:06.940 sometimes our hammer uh pieces of it remain here but there are other things that pass through and

03:11:13.260 on um and ultimately the ek is what stays in the folk soul and that is the grandfather or

03:11:21.260 grandmother that you are speaking to at the harrow when you give um you know a gift and and um

03:11:30.540 you know oblige your loyalty and troth to your ancestors at the harrow that's what you're

03:11:35.260 speaking to is their ek and their hamina and their all overall their might um you know and 0.99

03:11:43.420 whether they attained their woe's self in the living that can predecess down and exalt up again

03:11:50.380 if you will um lou nickerson gave us 20 bucks thanks lou we appreciate you

03:11:57.740 hail the gods hail the folk hail the afa um to address something there's a little bit of uh

03:12:05.260 Talking about Sigurheim and Tennessee geography going on over in the chat.

03:12:11.100 So here's the thing.

03:12:12.700 Jackson County is a very sparsely populated county.

03:12:16.340 It's also a tiny county.

03:12:18.900 Getting people in Jackson County is very significant.

03:12:22.920 If you live anywhere in Jackson County, you're within a 30-minute drive of the Hoth.

03:12:28.940 30-minute drive is nothing, and it puts you in that village that we are building.

03:12:37.580 But yeah, as other people are mentioning out there, the closest thing to the closest city

03:12:44.460 is Cookville. Cookville is awesome. It's got anything you can want. It's a big enough city,

03:12:49.500 got tons of stuff. And as it stands right now, it's about 35, 40 minutes away from

03:12:54.620 sigerheim that's not bad that's not a bad drive it's not a bad commute that's really not a bad

03:12:59.580 situation so uh you know that's that's where i'm looking at going to the gym when i move out there

03:13:06.220 so that's that's going to be a daily back and forth it is what it is but it gets us

03:13:11.340 out to where we can build a community and there's a lot of a lot of stuff there and i i see that

03:13:17.020 uh morris over on the side is looking for places to live and stuff to do there's tons of stuff

03:13:24.620 there if you look and if you stretch it out a little bit further there's a lot more but

03:13:28.940 just keep in mind that the counties out there are very very small

03:13:37.020 all right uh what else we got tonight

03:13:39.820 um question from brody why is odin known as the yule father

03:13:49.960 spawn why is odin known as the yule father okay this is an interesting question and i uh this

03:13:59.060 yule in particular has has uh given me um especially in the podcast itself too this is

03:14:05.520 one of those things I was definitely looking into. Um, one thing is, is when we look at the

03:14:11.080 etymology of the word your, um, and what its possibilities is to what it could mean in relation

03:14:18.300 to, uh, the turning of something, um, that is a, it's a speculation. We don't quite fully know. We

03:14:26.940 can etymologically follow back to a certain point. And then after that, it becomes, um, speculative.

03:14:32.820 um i've heard a lot of interesting um theories on it one thing that i i wanted to kind of

03:14:41.040 hit right out of the gate is that you might hear people say oh well that that word isn't actually

03:14:45.860 a germanic word i find this a lot when i discuss this with um people you know social media and one

03:14:53.060 of the things i've been noticing is this trend towards oh everything that's pagan is actually

03:14:56.960 really christian and one of the ones in this argument that kind of popped up that really was

03:15:01.800 like oh that's a that's that's a cute kind of opinion is that it comes from the greek word um

03:15:08.360 uh yuli yuli ebus yuli it's the the the derivative of the word jubilee and it comes from the greeks

03:15:18.760 but the the the weight of that is very low because we see this kind of cross-cultural usage of the

03:15:28.960 word with other meanings outside of simply a celebration. It has great connections to

03:15:38.520 the essence of turning or the ability to turn. And that is where we see its usage having an

03:15:46.620 interesting sense, much like when we speak of the Nornir, the Nornir as witches, the word

03:15:52.780 which means ultimately to twist or to turn the idea of turning threads or turning fate so you'll

03:16:01.420 also has this connotation and it's worth noting that one of the poetic words for the gods as a

03:16:08.860 whole was yolnar the idea of all of the gods having the ability to turn which again re-emphasizes

03:16:17.500 what I've been pointing at with the idea of the gods being able to meet out the doom or the boon

03:16:24.920 of men, is that when they gather at the wellspring in heaven, they are twisting and enacting their

03:16:33.720 will in the world by both great things and minute things. And that, I think, is something that was

03:16:40.640 understood by our ancestors. So the Yolnar in that usage would be the beings with the ability to

03:16:48.380 turn things and to shape and spin. The specific name Yolnir, you'll hear most people say it's a

03:17:01.980 title of Odin, and it is. It is absolutely utilized as a title of Odin, but I wanted to

03:17:07.020 bring up that Yolnar is also a title for the gods themselves. And I think that that is where it

03:17:14.040 originates from, is because the connection to Lord Odin in relation to the turning time of the year

03:17:22.460 is such a huge importance, and especially amongst the predecessors that gave us the most,

03:17:27.700 which is the Angles and the Saxons. They had great emphasis and understanding, and that

03:17:34.520 that emphasis manifests predominantly in the wild hunt and the idea that uh lord ovin is somehow

03:17:43.880 kind of breaking the skein of the the the water the separation between the upper world and the

03:17:50.360 middle world that that that um strength or i guess the tinsel strength of water i forgot what it's

03:17:57.720 called when it's the threshold of water and its ability to maintain its buoyancy or be broken

03:18:04.520 is that he's breaking that. That's what the wild hunt ultimately is. And that manifests again in

03:18:11.720 the hunting of the boar that we get from the Anglo-Saxons. So there's a great emphasis on him

03:18:17.040 kind of interceding between the worlds at this time and having a manifestation

03:18:24.040 within the middle world that makes him so prevalent at this time of year. And so it would

03:18:30.940 be natural to say that the the the one of the yulnar is is the the yul father the is yul near

03:18:39.560 he is the one in manifested twisting around at this time and then he does return we speak about

03:18:47.460 that return we speak about that return as it's being well tonight is is odin's night and this

03:18:53.240 is the the time in which the wild hunt comes to a rest and he returns through the threshold and

03:18:59.160 back into the upper world and he has done his turning time um of of pulling and twisting fate

03:19:05.720 and moving things around and sometimes that turning and twisting can take in the form of of

03:19:11.400 kind of like um what we would say is a great power that a might of doom so it has a tendance towards

03:19:19.240 things being drastically shifted so much so that it kind of has a scary sense to it and we have

03:19:24.680 that all the time with with uh lord olden as being eager or the the terrible or the awesome one

03:19:32.200 uh because of this ability this power this manifestation that makes him so unique so i think

03:19:38.280 that the time is a turning time and that the gods are seen as as their might in their ability to turn

03:19:47.320 but specifically with Lord Odin and his ability to turn things around this time is so important

03:19:55.500 that they all kind of link together with a sense of meaning behind these words.

03:20:04.560 There is a later translations of the word yul meaning a feast or a celebration.

03:20:10.700 So it's not entirely, I see where people got the connection, but there are other meanings that are far precede the idea of a feast or a celebration.

03:20:24.060 And that I think the turning time became celebratory, and so therefore it was a time of celebration.

03:20:30.180 So the word became like in conjunction with feasting and celebration.

03:20:35.760 But looking back further, we can see that it has far more of an older meaning.

03:20:41.500 And I think it's expressly Germanic in the usage of the word.

03:20:47.140 And it's one of those link words that we perhaps share with other Arian branches like the Greeks or the Hellenics, the Greeks and the Romans.

03:20:54.780 But the meaning is very different in those two distinct branches.

03:21:00.580 And to say that one beget the other, I think, is a misnomer.

03:21:04.240 But I would say, too, that the first time that it was ever really presented to the Norse that the word Yule comes from Odin is actually kind of like a loop.

03:21:21.240 That was in, there is an incomplete book called The Organization of the Norwegian Kings, a summarization or an organization or a list.

03:21:32.820 And oftentimes it's referred to as Augrip, A-G-R-I-P, but that's just a shortened word for Augrip auf Norex Konungensogium, which means the organization of the Norwegian King's Saga or Sagas.

03:21:54.320 and it's mentioned in there that Yule comes from Odin and I think that that was you know done in

03:22:01.780 I can't remember when it was written I think the 12th century and that was kind of a looping back

03:22:06.600 into explaining where the the name Yule comes from in relation to you know the our ancestors

03:22:13.240 were kind of the conversion times were going through and they were utilizing their knowledge

03:22:18.420 based on nordic only but we can see it survives in in um the the gothic language it survives in

03:22:28.120 the anglo-saxon language and so they were probably mistaken in that it was just simply

03:22:34.440 contextualized in a norse sense so i think that's where it comes from but it does have merit it's

03:22:39.940 just that i think the the chronological importance of that is that it goes further back in our

03:22:45.680 language it's not entirely from the like the greeks i think it parallels linguistically with

03:22:51.360 the hellenics and the idea um but that causes a lot of confusion in in present day

03:23:00.640 all right uh michael cosgrove with a 20 donation thank you very much michael

03:23:06.720 uh thank you both for being available to us all including those who are just curious

03:23:13.360 um i'm glad that you feel that way we try every way we know how to be as available as possible to

03:23:20.720 all our folk um our position as gothar is extremely important to both swan and myself

03:23:29.280 and i want everybody to know everybody who hears this now who hears this later you can always reach

03:23:34.640 out to us that's what we're here for we'd love to hear from you and be able to help or answer

03:23:40.080 questions uh as we can so thank you for that yeah thank you um our next

03:23:51.360 question is for you svan as an icelander is the stereotype of nordics being cold stoic and

03:24:00.000 introverted true on the surface yes i think it is um i think that a lot of people

03:24:10.080 And it has manifested differently with modernism. But yes, Nords, from my observation of my family, even myself and other folks, even though I'm less so because I've been raised here and I have, you know, great, you know, inclinations towards like individual, you know, I guess freedoms or if you will, or the senses of governance and so on.

03:24:36.080 so on uh whereas i think nordic people nowadays are kind of listed more towards like governmental

03:24:41.520 thinking and and so on and so forth you generally find that nords are very distant at first and

03:24:48.160 sometimes you'll find out that they're very very lively and it could be and very hot and and um

03:24:54.160 emotionally driven about a lot of things but it's it's definitely buried under a social veneer of

03:25:01.280 composure which is important you can't kind of just fly off the cuff all the time and it's really

03:25:07.440 important in that in the the upper you know hemisphere if you will or in that area where

03:25:13.520 you you need to have that and that's manifested in modern modernity a lot of the passion has left

03:25:19.120 away from a lot of nordic people and they look at things very logically very um stoically uh 0.99

03:25:26.240 What I would argue is almost to a fault, and they don't cut out enough. And sometimes it happens, I think, that social lubricants, if you will, you know, drinking and carousing, have their benefit to allowing people to see some of their more inner, you know, joyousness or sometimes very hotly opinionated takes on things or so on and so forth. 0.99

03:25:53.380 But as Nords kind of go on, they kind of, oh, that's not very polite to do that anymore.

03:25:59.600 So we shouldn't do that so much.

03:26:01.740 And I'm not speaking about, I am painting in broad strokes.

03:26:05.540 So bear in mind, I'm not talking about, you know, every individual case.

03:26:09.220 It's just overall sense.

03:26:10.940 Yes, I think that is something that you see, but it is a surface.

03:26:16.320 There is a lot more underneath the Nordic folk that I have seen come out. 0.85

03:26:21.600 that's beautiful, can be very, very passionate or aggressive or just stalwart and just digging

03:26:30.440 the heels in on something. That happens a lot in the Nordic cultures.

03:26:40.360 All right. Have you ever had to deal with post-prism folks coming into the AFA who still

03:26:50.420 have that gangbang mentality um yes uh i think less over time but we've certainly had our fair

03:27:05.700 share of people coming to us from a variety of different backgrounds but certainly you know

03:27:15.300 there's a sizable number of our folk that are first exposed to Alistair when

03:27:20.040 they're incarcerated.

03:27:24.660 A lot of those guys have come out and been dirtbags.

03:27:30.740 A lot of those guys, you know,

03:27:33.160 some of those guys have come out and turned out to be great people that we've

03:27:38.940 built a lot of good things around. And it's, it's kind of a mixed bag.

03:27:42.140 I think that what is, I think the Alcitru that a lot of people learn in prison environments is a very early stage of modern Alcitru's development

03:28:10.180 that kind of got passed on by a certain element inside

03:28:14.020 without reflection of how our faith is currently practiced.

03:28:19.600 I think some of that is hand-me-down things

03:28:23.860 from old timers in there that have done a lot of time.

03:28:27.960 And I think it's developed its own personality

03:28:30.180 that probably has a lot of very useful elements

03:28:33.840 for that very specific circumstance.

03:28:36.120 But I also think that the biggest thing, okay, I think there's a better way of answering the question.

03:28:50.960 The biggest problem that I've noticed with people who have found Alcetru in prison or who spend a lot of time incarcerated, especially during their formative years, is that their view of the world and in turn their view of Alcetru is very, very small.

03:29:15.400 They are used to a world that has been very deliberately limited to them.

03:29:20.960 So, their view in general is very small.

03:29:31.000 And that becomes problematic when they're in a society where our view of ostrich is very big.

03:29:41.760 We have members in 14 different countries all across the United States.

03:29:50.960 We have this big, amazing, beautiful future that we're trying to build.

03:29:58.480 It is a big challenge to get people that have spent a lot of their life incarcerated to see those kind of possibilities and to see the world being bigger than their gang.

03:30:10.460 And it sounds condescending or whatever coming from our perspective.

03:30:16.280 Realistically, their gang is the thing that kept them alive, that kept them safe, that sustained their existence while they were incarcerated.

03:30:29.200 You know, I've, and this is the thing, you know, a lot of people are in there for good reason and made really bad life choices and should be in there.

03:30:39.200 A lot of them, you know, some of them, maybe that's not the case.

03:30:42.540 But either way, while you and I were out in the world developing social skills amongst girls, with jobs, with a variety of people at different points in their life and different life experiences, a lot of those guys spent their very formative years in a very, very specific environment and don't have those same points of commonality.

03:31:11.640 and don't have those same experiences socializing and interacting in the world that's neither you

03:31:19.120 know a feeling sorry for or not it's just a truth that we have to understand is true

03:31:25.660 in how we help those people to approach the next you know the next chapter of their life

03:31:34.520 um but yeah we've had people that their view of alsatru is a stage much earlier in our

03:31:47.220 development in the modern sense to where a lot of us have grown past um a stage that's very limited to

03:31:54.760 a kind of silly caricature of the viking age in a way that's not particularly healthy

03:32:09.640 so the challenge to keep the good things that were learned from wisdom and shared experience

03:32:18.360 while one was incarcerated and be able to marry those to the experiences shared with you from

03:32:25.760 people who haven't come from that background and have come from, you know, a much more socialized

03:32:34.780 and integrated background. Being able to merge the two and find a path of wisdom forward is a

03:32:42.140 challenge for a lot of people. And it's one that, you know, quite honestly, most people fail.

03:32:46.540 But it's one that myself and the other Gothar would really like to help people succeed at, and we try to.

03:32:54.040 And there's a number of people that have been able to find very meaningful success in the rest of their life from the Alistair that they first discovered when they were incarcerated.

03:33:06.180 Svon, what has your experience been that way?

03:33:08.280 um i think the recalibration after a life inside has a tendency to follow what i have just

03:33:18.820 observed as two paths there's the go hard and the get by there are those that come into the faith

03:33:25.740 and they go hard and it they learn it and it's very strong and it's very powerful and there's

03:33:31.520 a lot of knowledge because of the time spent reading books and having the ability to kind

03:33:36.720 of not be distracted by a lot of things um creates very strong minds and a lot of the the men and

03:33:44.520 women but i'd be amiss to say women let's just focus on the truth is seems to be more of a men

03:33:52.760 um that find out so true inside they are built with the uh a ferociousness of wanting to understand

03:34:00.900 lore and picking it apart but they also come out and they they are they go hard in the in in uh

03:34:08.820 outside they you know they believe big and again it can sometimes come off too as a caricature-ness

03:34:15.860 of like a viking faith and that does have a tendency to be that draw of generations on the

03:34:23.300 inside. I have witnessed some folks who go into the get by. They believe, but they want to not

03:34:31.860 be noticed. They don't want to ruffle feathers. They don't want to get involved, and they want

03:34:38.100 to just kind of do their own thing. They don't really even teach it to their kids unless the

03:34:43.460 kids are expressing some sort of interest, and they really don't want to kind of connect to the

03:34:47.860 the greater community as a whole,

03:34:51.220 because they fear that it just kind of threatens.

03:34:54.540 And I can understand that.

03:34:56.460 I mean, I'm not necessarily even

03:34:58.800 kind of waving my finger at it because, again,

03:35:01.620 a lot of folks don't want to go back in.

03:35:06.040 And they get a lot of things in their head

03:35:09.240 as to what might do that or cause that or what have you.

03:35:12.620 I think that there needs to be that kind of recalibration

03:35:16.280 and temperament towards being in a community,

03:35:21.120 understanding what it means to be in a community,

03:35:23.780 that you don't have to go hard all the time

03:35:26.320 or that you don't have to just not get noticed.

03:35:28.940 You can be a part of and build forward

03:35:32.660 and look at the horizon with hope,

03:35:35.880 teaching your children and being part of

03:35:38.360 and around people who weren't inside

03:35:41.480 and have done things and are doing things

03:35:44.180 that you are now with them and a part of them and that that's where you need to go in order to again

03:35:49.620 attain that that betterment for our people and so i think that's a really good thing that you point

03:35:55.940 out the thing that i've noticed that seems to be a um a determining factor in success or failure

03:36:05.780 there are people who are ex-cons and there's people who have done time in prison in the past

03:36:16.500 and i say that i mean obviously those two things mean the same thing but

03:36:22.040 the the subtle distinction is there are people who take on the mantle of being an ex-con and that

03:36:29.960 is their identity that's all their points of reference that's what they look to that's how

03:36:35.420 they see themselves so it's how they project to others they every story goes back to something

03:36:44.960 that happened inside or some prison thing everything they relate to goes back to that

03:36:50.300 or there's people that have done time and you may not know unless you know that person well

03:36:56.300 and you've had that conversation because they don't define themselves by their incarceration

03:37:02.720 They define themselves, you know, whatever they want to do with their lives, the way that they see themselves in their future, instead of that moment in their past that, you know, is, and understandably so, such a big part of how they see the world.

03:37:22.180 The other thing is courage, and it gets displayed really differently.

03:37:26.160 One thing that I've learned in my time at House of Truth is some, it is very, we all struggle with courage.

03:37:40.180 And it can look really different when that courage comes from, you know, a nerdy incel guy that has lived a lot of time in the house and hasn't had a lot of experience in the world.

03:37:58.440 Or when that same courage situation comes from a guy who's been locked up through most of his formative years.

03:38:04.880 there's a similar struggle that they have and it displays really different when they interact with

03:38:11.740 the community sometimes some of the most scared people that i've seen have been the ones that

03:38:20.120 would outwardly you know most of us would think they were the most you know hard ex-con dudes

03:38:26.940 that have seen all this stuff that are super hard they know that there's a difference in their

03:38:34.020 experience between that and the rest of us they know that they're the outsider coming in

03:38:40.980 to a situation they're unfamiliar with and very often they're really scared of that interaction

03:38:47.380 they're not used to interacting with families and with with older women with women that who are

03:38:54.420 their contemporaries with kids with with things and it's daunting and scary it's scary in the

03:39:03.620 same way it is to with you know incel kids who spend time at home it just displays really

03:39:09.540 different and it looks different but it's something that you know we all struggle to get

03:39:16.260 past and that we can help each other to get past but yeah certainly we've we've seen that and it's

03:39:23.620 one of the reasons that it's prison ministry has been important to me and i have done a little bit

03:39:32.020 of it and we look for ways to do more of it in a meaningful way is we would like to provide a

03:39:37.060 pathway for folks that want to build a better life once they get out to have people here to

03:39:44.740 to help with that pathway to help build that to help draw strength from and a community for them

03:39:51.220 to be a part of if they're committed to to building something better and um we're in that

03:39:57.860 process and it's slow going but we've made more progress uh lately i feel than we've ever had

03:40:02.820 before um our next question and this one's going to be primarily for you svan uh gentlemen enjoying

03:40:12.500 the stream what's the source for nisa slash tomta information can we set the record straight and get

03:40:20.980 some facts ps mcnellen statues are glorious in all caps and they absolutely are i'm glad you

03:40:30.100 appreciate that they're way better than i could have even imagined i'm i'm i am blown away by how

03:40:37.220 well they turned out so that's awesome uh they truly deserve the honor it's fun what is our

03:40:42.980 source information for the nisa slash tomta and uh set the record straight lay down some facts for

03:40:50.340 folks. Okay. Let's just talk about the usage of the word in relation to beings of the home and

03:41:03.680 the land. So the idea of a land vetir or land white, a spirit of the land. And this, you know,

03:41:13.880 kind of got a lot of popularity in the romanticization of nordic culture in the uh late

03:41:21.400 1800s and 1800s and a lot of uh accumulative folklore kind of became in print and that's where

03:41:30.120 a lot of this kind of the knowledge or the the imagery really came into being and this happened

03:41:35.480 a lot all over europe the idea of of say for instance um you know the christmas carol and

03:41:40.920 and the and the the ghosts of christmas and the first one having like a complete almost identical

03:41:47.560 overlay to father christmas amongst the the english and their their uh celebration of the

03:41:53.720 the yuletide character that is disseminating festivities or gifts or what have you um whereas

03:42:01.720 the usage of the word like say nisi or tomta could also apply to just a spirit of the house or the

03:42:09.880 land not necessarily in yule only and so the way that i kind of viewed it is if you're looking at

03:42:20.840 denmark and and the islands that's where the the use of the word um nisi kind of comes about and

03:42:29.720 because they kind of directly connect with norway the use of nisi would be more of like a western

03:42:35.720 usage and then an eastern nordic usage and i'm talking about they are sweden svidjod and finland

03:42:45.560 uh use the word tomta or tonto as a kind of meaning and it it could have kind of the same

03:42:54.040 connotations with the english word like brownie or um a bogey or a kind of a folklore essence of

03:43:02.440 like a goblin or a um i know that a lot of people i actually in a previous vns talked about the word

03:43:10.280 of the use of the name gnome actually coming from france and it's an alchemical term for a kind of

03:43:17.480 spirit of the material um but it the best way to to clarify it is the the nisi is western nordic

03:43:28.120 and the tonta is eastern nordic and they're both kind of names for spirits of the land um and they

03:43:37.320 often by the 18th century late 1800s and early 1900s they took on an image of of what we would

03:43:43.640 consider like a gnome in our culture kind of an older little man with with a red hat um and again

03:43:51.000 there's a lot to do with the red hat and the idea of um you know power of the mind um i know

03:43:57.880 know that edward thorson had uh in his earlier books proposed the idea that the color red upon

03:44:03.220 the head is a sign of um advanced perhaps knowledge or lore and that the usage of the color red in

03:44:10.720 relation to power and might um i don't know if that that has tangible connections or perhaps

03:44:17.880 there's things being connected but um you know the the usage of those words like in iceland

03:44:26.140 almost completely gone away. And, uh, the, the predominance of hoodlfolk, the hidden people

03:44:33.360 are oftentimes more utilized than even the word land or land white. Um, but it all boils down to

03:44:42.440 kind of spirits of the land. And that also causes more confusion when we use the word

03:44:47.860 alf or alvar or elf um and you know anglo-saxons had it in the name of like alfred to be counseled

03:44:56.380 by the elves um and so on the it it causes even more confusion as being a being connected to the

03:45:04.260 land that's not quite a human and not quite a god um and so that is where i think the yule character

03:45:12.920 lives and exists is in that middle realm and oftentimes is pointed towards an intent whether

03:45:22.360 that intent is treating the land well or treating your livestock well treating your home well uh or

03:45:29.320 respecting certain things or uh really like in the anglosphere it was about the spirit of giving if

03:45:37.040 you will so treating each other well so there's always kind of this connection between this

03:45:43.340 these spirits as being connected towards the wellness or the respectability of an either an

03:45:49.000 ideal or a location or uh the land around a specific location and that's like the really

03:45:56.860 broad definition of those but the yeah west east not even really used in iceland and um and then

03:46:04.480 And of course, you know, Central and Western, like in the Anglo spheres, you know, kind of gave way to different folklore names like like bogey or in German that, you know, they call them kobold, the kind of spirits that lived in the land and knocked, you know, Tommy knocker is another one that people might be familiar with in relation to like Appalachian folklore and the idea of the kobolds knocking in the in the walls of mines and caves.

03:46:34.480 and things of that nature so i hope that best explains it is a west and east

03:46:44.480 all right well that's going to bring our discussion for tonight to a close

03:46:51.120 uh svan has agreed to join us again next week as we are going to do both a reading

03:46:59.920 and an analysis of the edict poem the values bow and uh i'm looking forward to that i know we've

03:47:08.240 had requests for that and we're going to work through some of that material and uh swan is

03:47:13.360 the perfect guy to have one to do that with me one of my favorites um thank you guys so much

03:47:19.920 for joining us tonight i am happy to share everything that we've shared this evening

03:47:28.960 and I am looking forward to an amazing 2024 with you guys.

03:47:34.120 We've got spectacular things ahead.

03:47:38.760 And the way that we get there is not taking anything for granted,

03:47:45.040 not leaving anything on the table,

03:47:47.760 and remembering that victory never sleeps.

03:47:52.860 Hail the gods, hail the folk, hail the AFA.

03:47:58.960 Transcription by CastingWords

03:48:28.960 Transcription by CastingWords

03:48:58.960 Thank you.

03:49:28.960 Thank you.

03:49:58.960 We'll be right back.

03:50:28.960 Transcription by CastingWords

03:50:58.960 Amen.

Asatru Folk Assembly - December 28, 2023

12⧸27⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 77 - Charming of the Plow

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