00:08:46.840They 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.
00:09:10.180But 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.
00:09:31.340Our founder, Stephen McNallan, is responsible through his personal relationship with the All-Father Odin for bringing Ausatru back into our world.
00:09:51.660He is the foundation that modern Ausatru is built upon.
00:09:55.920and his wife, Sheila, to build our AFA, to build our community, to build our family.
00:10:06.240She has put in, she has put in all of herself and continues to this very day
00:10:16.300She 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.
00:10:33.300So much of our AFA family as a group, as a church, has been built on the heart of Sheila
00:10:42.680McNallan and the love that she has for our gods and our folk and to see this happen.
00:10:49.280And we could never possibly do enough to honor them, but we're going to try anyways.
00:10:58.960and uh i've always wanted to see statues erected of these amazing people and what better time
00:11:12.200than when we we found our home the home of victory sigurheim so we wanted to put that
00:11:20.120into place and make that happen. And I'm proud to present these statues to Steve and Sheila
00:11:31.020McNallan as a Yule gift from all of us who have been so very inspired by the work they've
00:11:41.600done and who are so very, very appreciative from the bottom of our hearts.
00:11:45.720Good 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.
00:12:05.500There 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.
00:12:20.500That picture has always been very inspirational to me and I think in one frame it captured the very essence of what we do.
00:12:34.500We 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.
00:12:54.000None of these great and momentous moments of the Hoffs and the attainment of Sigurdheim,
00:13:03.340none of this would have happened without you.
00:13:06.140So from the bottom of my heart and all the folk gathered here that have helped to make this happen,
00:13:12.020and from us here with Matt Flavel and his genius of getting this done
00:13:19.740and 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,
00:20:12.260Trumming the Plow is one of our sacred holy tides that really starts to turn towards spring.
00:20:21.620So 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.
00:20:35.100And that's our working towards mid-summer.
00:20:37.740And then from there, we'll fall again.
00:20:39.480So our calendar works in two poles. We have the mid-summer pole and the mid-winter pole, which we're in right now.
00:20:49.480Charming of the Plow is an interesting holy tide.
00:20:52.760I think in the beginning, when Ausatru was starting to reemerge and organize itself, it didn't just want to pull from the Norse.
00:21:01.880even though there was a heavy influence of nordic um you know holy tides clearly with like with
00:21:10.000it was something that was known by all of us and also true that you you you have this european
00:21:19.900faith it's not just a nordic faith and it's in all of these germanic or teutonic aryan groups
00:21:27.000Whether 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.
00:21:42.960And so they wanted to pull from a lot of these other traditions.
00:21:47.300And you see that first really showing up in Charming of the Plough.
00:21:54.340Now, charming in the plow is a relatively modern term for the bloat that has inspired this holy tide.
00:22:09.360And the bloat comes from England, actually.
00:22:13.860And using the word acre, meaning land or field or plot, it's called acre bot, was actually what it was called.
00:22:21.140It 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.
00:22:40.300We've had to research and look and find things because there are tattered pieces of our past.
00:22:47.580You 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.
00:22:59.940But 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.
00:23:12.240And they kind of angled it for the majority of America.
00:23:16.740Now, when you're talking about charming the plow and breaking the ground, say, in Minnesota in February, it's still pretty rough.
00:23:25.820But down here in the south, absolutely.
00:23:28.260but the biggest point of the of the ceremony is it's threefold it's one it's the priming of
00:23:35.320the masculine light the power of frey getting ready to make contact with the earth and this
00:23:44.620goes through with lord frere preparing this retinue of the light elves and everything's
00:23:50.160getting kind of ready to go into this moment of spring once the once the gates of dellings hall
00:23:57.200open up and Ostara brings all of this in the light, all of the power that comes into the
00:24:04.300frozen earth to get melted. And then there is a, there is a, an absolute impregnation of life
00:24:11.840that's brought about. And this is kind of the preparedness of it. And there's also a gifting
00:24:18.060to the earth, a sense of laying our own personal seeds, whatever they might be. They might be
00:24:24.840perhaps summer tiding inclinations or proclamations. They might be goals in which
00:24:34.080we wish to see grow into fruition. A lot of times there are bread or biscuits or things like that
00:24:42.100that are placed in the ground inside a furrow that's cut with a plow. Now, the original acre
00:24:50.500bought did not speak of a plow. It actually spoke of just cutting or spading into the earth and
00:24:56.380placing biscuits and giving a prayer to the earth for the fruition of the fields. But that has
00:25:02.780morphed over time because we are a living religion. We're not reenacting. And so over time,
00:25:09.740I have seen this holiday take a lot of different forms. Again, like I said, on the metaphysical,
00:25:15.180We're preparing for the natural events, the light coming down and placing in the invigorating
00:25:22.380seed of life into the earth. And then we're also seeing the fruition of the fields, but we're also
00:25:28.220seeing a preparation for the summertime as far as general craft. So a lot of times people will bring
00:25:34.780things from their work in order to be blessed. And this is more of a living part of the
00:25:42.780ceremonies somehow in some way it started and the gothar um were obliged to bless people would show
00:25:51.020up sometimes with um perhaps an implement or a symbol of their work and ask the gothar to
00:25:58.220bless these items so that they could have good luck and good fruition um for the next coming
00:26:03.980summer tiding um and you know whether that's money or the expansion of of uh clientele
00:26:11.420or just advancement in our work or just refocusing in our industriousness the charming of the plow
00:26:18.620has a lot of different dynamics to it that i think is really beautiful even though it seems to be
00:26:24.140one of the more i would say timing of the year makes it a harder um holiday like right after
00:26:31.900yule yule is a big celebration we have the photo bloke which is a chance for us to all get together
00:26:38.060and and just have fun and then charming the plow is like the first holiday where we start
00:26:43.420okay we got to start focusing on what's to come uh the the the rest period of the
00:26:48.940deep tidying of the winter is over and we need to start focusing on what we're going to start doing
00:26:53.260for this summer so we can attain so we can gain and so we can just conquer whatever
00:26:58.780plans we have coming for the next year and that's a charming of the plow in a nutshell
00:28:21.200you're stalled out on my end is everybody else hearing me
00:28:27.000okay now we're now we're back i looks like it's having a little bit of uh streams having a little
00:28:36.760bit of struggles here but i hope that we're following what i'm saying you guys can hear it
00:28:40.680what i was going to say is our years broken up into
00:28:46.040the process that is displayed very often through the agricultural cycle and that
00:28:57.000And 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.
00:29:12.800what's exhibited by charming of the plow is that time of preparation we've done our celebration
00:29:21.160we've done our you know waiting and getting through the the slog of the the roughest time
00:29:27.720of the winter and now we are at charming the plow we are preparing the tools of our industry
00:29:37.400is what i like to say when we do the tool blessing be that a plow to break the soil or
00:29:44.680you know a tool for whatever work that you were engaged in i've done blessings for laptops
00:29:52.360for people who do it work i've blessed i've blessed hands and gloves for people who are
00:29:59.560professional fighters i've blessed um you know tools of of carpentry and of uh you know construction
00:30:10.280um i've blessed tools for artists but whatever we're doing we're we're preparing to assert our
00:30:19.640will into the world and one of the key images of the charming of the plow is cutting that first
00:30:27.400furrow is the idea of our iron will breaking the hard earth breaking through resistance and
00:30:38.640literally implanting our will into the world by by will to power by force of will and of
00:30:48.160determination to see see things happen breaking through that soil and penetrating the earth or
00:30:56.280penetrating the world around us with the seeds of what we wish to grow and develop and achieve
00:31:03.800during this year. And that's kind of the bigger theme around Charming of the Plow. And that's
00:31:09.640why the plow is still such a powerful piece of imagery for this celebration. I can't think of
00:31:18.180something you know better or more illustrative of that the idea of breaking through and inserting
00:31:27.060our will inserting the seeds of our intentions into an unyielding world um but as fawn mentioned
00:31:37.300you know in minnesota it may seem agriculturally odd to charm the plow in uh in february growing up
00:31:45.700in Alaska, that was certainly the case. It seemed a little bit odd when we'd, you know, we still had
00:31:50.700several feet of snow, but the principle is sound. We're starting that year of productivity, and we'll
00:31:57.220see that all the way through, and you'll be able to follow it through. Svaun and I go through these
00:32:01.960different ceremonies that we celebrate at our holy days. One thing I did see over in the side
00:32:09.020that I wanted to address, somebody was commenting on the lack of putting out the previews for
00:32:15.260upcoming episodes and wondering if we're out of ideas not the case so much as i mentioned not at
00:32:23.420all well so much as i mentioned last time on or two weeks ago last time we had spawn on as a guest
00:32:30.940the exact deliver the statues everything worked out weird worked its way in a beautiful beautiful
00:32:40.220way everything happened exactly as it was supposed to we did not know that at the time and there were
00:32:46.460a number of different little moving parts and things to see when that would happen and i knew
00:32:52.620spawn would be down there for a portion of it we had to work out when he was available how the
00:32:57.420transit was going to work how easy or difficult the installation process was going to be so a lot
00:33:02.780of things were up in the air that's why we kept it kind of loose um but we do have the next several
00:33:08.380planned up now that we've gotten to the other side of that that was taking a lot of the focus
00:33:12.780and we'll get those up i i like to have that planned up for about four episodes in advance
00:33:19.180so we'll get those we'll get those up and set up tomorrow uh nick's been chomping at the bit for
00:33:24.780him too it's on me but i'll have those set up for you guys tomorrow uh is there any more thoughts
00:33:32.660on charming of the plow that you want to put out there for folks oh oh pause one second so we got
00:33:38.740during all of this we got a 20 donation from the phelps family you guys are awesome you guys have
00:33:45.780helped us so much um up to and including that uh that donation and lydia's amazing video that she
00:33:55.540made for us um but yeah twenty dollars from the phelps family hail the mcnellens and hail the afa
00:34:02.980and uh hail the hail all right so that said svan do you have any more uh notes you want
00:34:10.020to impart about charming of the plow yes i i misspoke there is mention of a plow but there's
00:34:16.260not mention mention of the usage of a plow to dig the furrow there's actually a couple of things one
00:34:22.820is this is very much like loaf mass and i wanted to bring that up because of the connection a lot
00:34:28.180of our holy tides are seen as kind of like bridges to other parts of the year and one thing worth
00:34:34.660noting is that um charming of the plow is absolutely a bridge to uh frayfaxi or loaf mass
00:34:44.020um we use the word frayfaxi and uh or the title um but the reason why i brought up loaf masses uh
00:34:50.900there's mention of the fact that they used to cut sod, like mats or pullings of the fields,
00:34:59.660and they would bless them with a specific, you know, anointment of honey and of, you know,
00:35:08.540sacred herbs. And later on, it became still a thing that even after Christianity, they would
00:35:15.360bring these plots to the church to be blessed. But it's also, you know, it's kind of interesting
00:35:21.260to note that because it's the same with loaf mass. With loaf mass or frayfaxi, the celebration of the
00:35:27.860last bits of the fields being kind of effigied into a John barley corn, there's the separation
00:35:37.100of that which is going to be used for alcohol and that which is going to be used for bread,
00:35:41.080and the consumption of bread and alcohol at the end as a celebration of all the hard work that
00:35:47.920was done by the producers of the society, there was this grand kind of festival. And so it was
00:35:55.920kind of understood that the charming of the plow or acre bot, as they had called it in the times
00:36:02.460before um was a time to get ready for a arcing season or tiding that ultimately culminated to
00:36:12.200this and we have these happen multiple multiple throughout the year so our holy tides kind of
00:36:17.460link to other holy tides and ultimately midsummer to midwinter or to yule and um it's it's worth
00:36:25.980noting that the there's also another thing that was said they talked about angeli in tacitus
00:36:32.260giving great uh amounts of um sacrifice to the earth as as the the mother and so one thing i
00:36:40.380wanted to note was that um in the prayer and this is so rare because it was it was written down
00:36:44.980after um uh christianization was that the chant was uh marked as that the the practitioners or
00:36:55.480the people of that were working the field would stand facing the east and they would turn three
00:37:00.420times clockwise around the field um oftentimes holding up that that that plot of earth or the
00:37:08.460the cakes and so there's another kind of reference to the reasoning of why when we do hammer
00:37:13.600hallowings we we face the directions this is kind of a sense of surrounding and always kind of going
00:37:19.400clockwise in the in the route of the sun and uh then from there they would place these into the
00:37:28.320ground. And they would say, Ersa, Ersa, Ersa, a yorden modr, the earth and mother. And it was,
00:37:35.080again, a chanting hail towards asking the earth to receive the seeds of both light,
00:37:42.300of will, of power to manifest into the ever-receiving, ever-waiting earth that was
00:37:49.460finally starting to thaw out. And we see this, even though this is particularly Anglo in its
00:37:56.260focus, we see this again in the stories of Lord Frey and his bride Gerðr and Gerðr being the
00:38:05.200frozen earth. There's great mentions of her arm being white like ice and being cold and rigid
00:38:12.940and that the story itself is allegoric for the light and the warmth slowly eroding away
00:38:21.900the rejection of the cold earth which was such an important thing um for our ancestors especially
00:38:29.440the agrarian members of our society generally we had a tripartite style society and for the
00:38:35.800producers and those who were greatly dedicated to lord fray which are lord freya or to nerf this
00:38:42.960or to nyorder um there was a desperation of getting things started because the sooner you
00:38:51.120got started, the more you could produce, the more you could produce, the less likelihood people
00:38:56.060were to starve or to die or not have the nutritional value they needed in order to defend the nation
00:39:02.600and keep everything going. And that's why very typically the God that we honor during this time
00:39:10.380with bloat is Lord Frayer. And the reason for that certainly harkens to the bit of lore that
00:39:18.940that Svon just shared with you, but in a very basic biological way,
00:39:27.380I think those things come into play. And it's one of those,
00:39:34.660it's unfortunate because the world and the time that we live in,
00:39:39.720there's a certain amount of awkwardness in describing the very obvious biological
00:39:45.240components of that. But, you know, one of the key identifiers and key aspects of Lord Frayer
00:39:56.940is the erect phallus and the manly potency that he possesses, the idea of quite literally
00:40:06.860penetrating something that is fertile and implanting seed within it to grow and to have
00:40:13.940new life and new generation is very much at the heart of this and many of our, of many of our
00:40:20.980celebrations. And I think that, you know, without being vulgar, that the biology of that is really
00:40:28.880important to, I don't know, it's important tool to visualize that helps make this, this matter,
00:40:36.080because so many of these principles that are laid down apply across a great many
00:40:45.360you know planes of existing and planes of doing there's something that is a just a western
00:40:50.880magical truth as above so below these things kind of transcend and there's layers to them
00:40:56.800so there's a biological layer if you're a herdsman if you're a family producing your children
00:41:04.160um we can literally see this is how we are successful passing through the generations
00:41:10.000there's this when it comes to agriculture there's also this when it comes to any plan
00:41:14.960coming to fruition any business venture there's that stage where you're planning and then you are
00:41:22.080putting your will out there uh swan and i've spoken about this but one of the
00:41:26.480key components of magical happening. And I've said this about a lot of things. Again,
00:41:34.580it's something that has multiple layers. The greatest distance is from your couch to the door.
00:41:40.560The greatest distance for an idea or a thought, what takes it out of the realm of
00:41:44.600an idea is when you speak it into existence and then it's into the world. You've put it out there
00:41:53.580as it were. That saying has a very direct meaning. Once you've said it, then you can't
00:41:59.680take it back. You've put your intention out into the world. So much of the idea of breaking that
00:42:05.580soil, of breaking the ice as it were, is putting that intention out into the world. You're done
00:42:12.680planning. You're done thinking about it. Now you're making your intentions known on what you
00:42:17.300want to accomplish. You're planting that seed that you're hoping will grow into. Fruit that we can
00:42:22.520harvest and celebrate, you know, when, when the year turns to the appropriate time. And that's,
00:42:28.440that's the deeper meaning of what we want to embody and, and celebrate, uh, at, at Charming
00:42:35.280of the Plow. Um, with that, we'll get to some of y'all's questions. We've got kind of a clunky
00:42:47.860question getting to me scheme here. We're working on different stuff, but it does mean I got to look
00:42:52.820over at my phone. So that's why there's a little bit of a pause and me looking, looking off screen
00:42:57.020for a sec. Uh, be more heathen asks question for you guys. Work is interfering with really enjoying
00:43:05.780this Yule to its fullest. Just wanted to know you guys' opinion as far as enjoying it as much
00:43:12.800as possible with work making it not, um, not hectic, taking away from the Yule piece and
00:43:22.220enjoyment. Svon, do you have thoughts on that? Yeah. Um, I, I've been doing the, the 12 nights,
00:43:30.220uh, Yule, um, for many, many years now. Uh, tonight is Odin's night and, um, I, I still
00:43:39.600work throughout yule i definitely take off um whatever time is allotted for the hof
00:43:47.600and then the night of which is day zero and day one on the iron mark i i take off from work and
00:43:53.920then after that i pretty much hold bloat and celebrate at night so go to work do as i normally
00:44:01.040do and then arrive home and hold a small bloat with the family and that could be about the amount
00:44:08.560of it. And I'm talking bare bones, especially if we're doing a lot of traveling, if there's a lot
00:44:13.320of family coming in, everything, it depends on the situation. Sometimes no family's coming in
00:44:19.960and we're not really doing a lot. So we might start a little early and add some more things
00:44:25.360to it as we go. Maybe go to the range on Uller's night and then come home and clean our weapons
00:44:34.900and kind of go over certain things just things like that um but generally i hold them at night
00:44:40.400and i've never really conflicted i think my my clients have asked you know hey are you going
00:44:46.020to be open or are you shutting down for 12 nights or 12 days and i'll tell them no no i'm going to
00:44:51.720be open and i'm going to go through and then i'll do everything i need to when i get home um you
00:44:57.060know unless you're working like the three to nine shift is i think would be a little rough especially
00:45:02.080with if you've got kids and things like that but you know at the end of the day quite literally you
00:45:07.640can fit a little bit of time in even it's something even if it's something as simple
00:45:12.600as giving a small gift whether it you know it could be uh something you made or brewed or um
00:45:18.080you know just sitting down and having a moment to pray to the gods and uh give thanks for that
00:45:25.700time of the year um outside of that you know it's really just depends on you how how big you want to
00:45:31.360make it, but I do not stop my work throughout the entirety of Yule.
00:45:37.500You know, one of the special things about Yule in particular is that there's 12 days of it.
00:45:46.580You know, there's a big window that it's, so if you're working a lot during it, chances
00:46:00.420are you have some time off during those 12 days.
00:46:05.020Getting to do that, maybe you have to pile a lot of your, how you observe you onto one
00:46:10.560of those days that you have off or that you have with your family.
00:46:13.220if your hours are such that you can enjoy doing those in the evenings i know that's something a
00:46:19.860lot of people do if you can take off certainly 12 days is not necessary to take off work and i think
00:46:27.100that's can be very burdensome to people um but taking the time to attend your your yule celebration
00:59:15.880And 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.
00:59:30.320And sometimes Njörð, Lord Njörðr, has dominion over the wind and the breezes and the rain and the fruitfulness and things.
00:59:42.900And 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.
01:00:00.220The 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.
01:00:12.900And there they interact with the well, and the well is the exemplification of order that descends down into the material.
01:00:23.500So rain and good weather and light doesn't only have to be associated strictly with sunnah.
01:00:31.620there is light with balder there's light with fair and it's not that they're just kind of
01:00:37.000categorized into these little uh troughs of of um certain things and you know it's again it's
01:00:44.380it's done with odin odin is seen as the lord of battle and the and the reaper of souls of the
01:00:49.440chosen but he's also seen as the giver of gifts and the and the the bountiful uh you know giver
01:00:54.860of prosperity. So our, our, our gods have a great amount of power that manifest as they interact
01:01:04.960through the well, or sometimes quite literally. Um, and there are lots of cases and that's a
01:01:10.940whole nother subject about avatars and other examples of these things. But when we talk about
01:01:16.280Lord Frey, we ask him to give his dominion, his power in the beneficialness of light and of
01:01:26.720warmth and the preparing of the fruitful season of all of the planting. I often give gift to Lord
01:01:38.100Frey for my flocks. I have egg laying chickens and their health is important. I've had
01:01:45.800a couple of years in the past where thankfully I've only had maybe one or two to suffer from
01:01:50.860some sort of illness and, and, uh, had to kind of take care of that. But for the general sense,
01:01:56.680my, my, uh, my livestock for lack of a better order, I'm not proclaiming that I'm some sort
01:02:03.320of great farmer, um, has been, you know, blessed and fruitful and we have lots of eggs and,
01:02:10.060and lots of giving, um, you know, animals and things like that. So really when we,
01:02:14.700Whenever 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.
01:02:31.720We 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.
01:02:43.860So 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.
01:02:53.960In the stories, he prepares the light elves.
01:02:56.540He lives amongst the light elves, which is the skein of light between heaven and the middle world.
01:03:03.220And so he's always kind of ready, always ready and there for the time to descend and bring that warmth and bring that light.
01:04:30.160But 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.
01:04:48.520Yeah, I think that's an important thing to consistently reemphasize.
01:05:00.160I think that it's very natural for all of us when we initially come home to Ausatru to see things that way.
01:05:09.160Odin equals wisdom and magic. Thor equals might and the storm.
01:05:18.240Frere equals fecundity of herds and of growing things.
01:05:25.240your there equals you know water stuff i think that we all have a tendency to do that because
01:05:32.960we like to compartmentalize we like to make things very simple but it's much beyond that each of our
01:05:39.740gods is a god each of our gods is beneficial for you to pray to if you're on a boat if you're on
01:05:48.680a plane, if you're going to battle, if you're trying to deliver of your herd, if you're
01:05:56.280trying to deliver your child, each of our gods is a god and is godlike in their power
01:21:23.340I think it's in the spirit of the question.
01:21:25.920The point is the intention, and I don't think it is an issue of the gods hearing us or not.
01:21:32.960you know trying to math that out to where they are to here in whatever location we find ourselves
01:21:40.540in the earth and like what decibel and where do you need to face and how does your voice need to
01:21:46.120resonate that's not the point you communicate to our gods through prayer
01:21:51.760i think that if you are participating okay so and these are a couple of notes that i think come with
01:22:02.440this. If you are participating as a group, it is impolite for you to have prayer silently if it is
01:22:09.500a shared experience. And some people do this meaningfully. They'll go to Sambul and they'll
01:22:16.200have like, you know my heart, you know what I'm saying, hail whatever. Or, you know, I don't mean
01:22:23.720to be flip, hail the frayer. That's impolite because the rest of us are toasting in a scent
01:22:30.180and we need to know what you're saying so that we can put our intention behind what you're saying
01:22:36.720and endorse it. So if you're sharing something that way, then certainly it needs to be audible
01:22:42.240so those who are participating with you can choose to be part of it or not, can choose to put their
01:22:49.960energy into it. If you're leading a ritual and you're speaking on behalf of others, then yeah,
01:22:54.960you need to speak out loud so we're open-handed, so we're on the table, so that people know what
01:22:59.620you're saying so that when you are representing them before our gods they trust what you're saying
01:23:04.980and they can put their their focus their might behind it but there's you know at my altar i
01:23:14.540think i usually pray um audibly but there's many times that i've prayed uh silently
01:23:24.060usually it's audible if it's a bigger conversation i say conversation that
01:23:33.280maybe puts more to it but if if i have more to say but if it's a simple
01:23:40.240very often a simple giving of thanks is something that i do silently when i give prayer for just
01:23:48.580for thanks and for appreciation um but mouthing the words speaking them audibly
01:23:59.500going through the non-verbal communication of it projects that out into the world into the gods
01:24:07.540i don't think you can just think it you need to make your thought into an action
01:24:15.800And as long as that's accomplished, the voice doesn't matter.
01:24:21.380And that's the other thing I was going to say.
01:24:24.440I 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.
01:24:41.940But 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.
01:24:59.760But, you know, let's say you have ancestors from the old country in Europe somewhere where English isn't the language.
01:25:07.920You know, can your ancestor from the 1400s in Germany understand what you're saying in modern English?
01:25:16.720Yeah, because I think it's beyond that.
01:25:19.280And I think that the means of communication is beyond that.
01:25:21.920I 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.
01:25:37.140But the only way that we know to conceive of communication is through written, verbal, through gesturing and nonverbal.
01:25:48.120But I don't think it works quite like that.
01:25:50.440And I don't think that's something we ought to be worried about.
01:25:54.160I think it's all about that intention.
01:25:56.220But what I do think is the important little point there, you can't just think it.
01:26:00.580you have to go through the point of at least saying it in your head, at least putting it
01:26:08.560together as something that you are projecting instead of something that's, you know, we have
01:26:12.700fleeting thoughts all the time that don't count. It counts when you speak it into existence,
01:26:18.280and that's why vocalizing it has a value. But moving your mouth to the words without adding
01:26:26.740volume the volume or the breath that you put into it isn't the point the point is taking it from
01:26:33.460the realm of man i think i should say thank you to is a big deal for those of you listening tomorrow
01:26:43.300on spotify uh i just silently made my face make the thank you face without actually making the
01:26:50.900noise it's probably confusing uh spawn what say you on that uh yeah no you uh you hit everything
01:26:58.660there towards the end was one of the things that i was going to emphasize on and then you started
01:27:03.060to hit it and i was like dang it i was hoping that it would kind of get glossed over but it is
01:27:09.220it is absolutely correct when you're talking about that manifestation of deed versus thought i think
01:27:15.700that the i i believe that the gods and i and i don't mean to over speak but perhaps in in the
01:27:23.620just in the way that i i view things is that i believe that the gods are in the upper realm
01:27:31.940the place in which time and reality and law and order descend from them in this kind of great
01:27:39.620weaving of weird or earth, that which is coming into being from that well. And as it descends
01:27:47.980down, the gods see us in the skein of all things, just like the Nornir do. And that story talks
01:27:57.300about that. And in that skeining, in that ability to see all things and kind of integrate into all
01:28:02.480things, it's not about an omnipotence per se, as it is an ability to kind of read all of that which
01:28:10.380is woven together is now skeined flat. So instead of like trying to read the individual thread of a
01:28:16.580rope, it's now like a fabric. And I think that has a great mythological truth in the sense that the
01:28:23.240way that gods kind of see us is perhaps in the skein of all things. And so our thoughts, our
01:28:30.660our intentions some of the the things that we battle with uh for so good thoughts and bad
01:28:36.740thoughts and and what have you the gods do have the ability to but we are but one thread in the
01:28:44.340great skein of things and so oftentimes i think uh we we talk about the gods witnessing us as
01:28:51.380groups as a tribe as a as a people as a nation um and that has a tendency i think to have more of a
01:28:58.980of a visual value in the skein of things if you will um so i do believe that the gods
01:29:06.900can understand your and see or feel your your thoughts but there is something unique about this
01:29:14.020when we talk about the gods interacting with the middle world they do it through the well this kind
01:29:19.700of uh threshold of the liquid of the well itself in heaven and we are in essence enacting that
01:29:31.300when we do bloat when we speak over the horn or at sumble when we are talking over that liquid
01:29:38.420we are placing our prayers into reality finalizing it because again the the flippant thoughts that
01:29:47.300you might have might not always come to fruition but once it's said once it is out and so i don't
01:29:52.340know if that's necessary for the gods because i would never speak that way but the idea is that
01:29:58.820is it necessary for us is it a cultural manifestation of of the way that we do things
01:30:05.380perhaps you know we can internalize prayer but those prayers eventually formulate
01:30:12.020formulate themselves into a physical spoken word um or a whisper or what have you over a horn or
01:30:21.060or over gifts or as smoke is being held aloft i would always recommend at some point that your
01:30:28.100intention is at least broached perhaps with a simple word or multiple words or a a vocalized
01:30:37.060prayer, but it's not to dominionize the idea that praying internally towards the gods somehow loses
01:30:44.880that. It's just that, that, that final step, as I'll say a year ago, he said, the manifestation
01:30:49.480of deed is so important. The gods are filled with all of their power and intentions and will,
01:30:56.880but it's when they place themselves through the skein of the well and into the middle world
01:31:01.720that things begin to happen. It's kind of very much the same way for us. We're filled with all
01:31:06.480this potential and ideas and beliefs and feelings, but it becomes a manifest when we start to
01:31:12.220physically enact those thoughts. And that's a great filter for us to get rid of thoughts that
01:31:18.200are perhaps useless or, um, or that we're still working through and ideas. And eventually we
01:31:25.840hone ourselves in the correct path and align ourselves with the weird or with the earth of
01:31:34.260the gods so i i don't think it's necessary but it is because of our culture and because of the way
01:31:42.900we kind of view things in acting um but that's a great question seems so simple but man wolf throne
01:31:51.380that was a good one random side note at sigerheim one of the cool things is the acoustics
01:32:05.060so i'm always concerned because we've got neighbors we're in the middle and we've got
01:32:09.860a big spread of land but there's houses on either side we're in a holler down there so
01:32:15.700the ridge right across the road when you if you feel the need to yell to the gods
01:32:22.820they hear you at siggerheim as do all your neighbors and their animals everybody else
01:32:30.980it's got a really cool echo and cool resonance but it just came to mind because it was one of those
01:32:35.460hey we're having we're pretty late tonight when we're doing some well maybe you don't
01:32:38.900need to scream at the top of your lungs um that's oh go ahead another thought
01:32:51.780when you were speaking about uh the speaking of prayer around in a group one thing that's
01:32:58.020worth noting is that you'll find a lot of people there's two ways in which we give kind of
01:33:03.220thankfulness to the gods is sometimes we speak about the gods to our folk how they have helped
01:33:09.540us enriched us or or or something of that nature another is that we do speak directly in prayer
01:33:16.580often sometimes out loud to the gods during a a ceremony a bloat or a symbol and it's worth noting
01:33:24.980too, that it's kind of, I would say that you should try both. I find out that there's some
01:33:32.440people that strictly speak to the gods at this moment. This is like a shining moment. All of
01:33:37.800the will of us, of the folk gathering together in this auspicious time, it's a time to send
01:33:43.680faith and all of that to the gods. So I would say that it's worth considering perhaps during
01:33:51.180bloat that you speak to the gods and not to the folk but during sumble speaking of praise to the
01:33:58.980gods about the gods to your folk is i think more of a dynamic understanding of that those two kind
01:34:05.140of interactions because i do see a lot of people during bloat where they'll they'll start to hold
01:34:09.200the horn and um and then they'll start talking to the folk and it's like we're the gods the gods
01:34:16.640are here now like let's do focus focus upwards um and i find that sometimes people just end up kind
01:34:24.240of talking to their their folk about it and that's not bad it's just that i think there is a different
01:34:29.840intention between the two ceremonies and they're they're separate for a reason a bloat is not a
01:34:35.840assemble, and assemble is not a bloat. So. There you have it. Next question is for you, Svon,
01:34:50.760from Gothi Bodhi. Witten Svon, can you speak on Lord Freyr in relation to his father,
01:34:58.940our most glorious Lord of the sea, Nyurðr? What does the Lord say about their relationship
01:35:05.100to each other oh well i think the biggest thing is that it's re-emphasized over and over again
01:35:13.720that nyorder is the uh the price or the the um hostaging if you will of the end of the war between
01:35:24.320the gods with when um cosmic order and natural law come into alignment there is this kind of
01:35:31.540bountifulness coming from the Vanir or the Vanna as they give unto the gods of the sky and the
01:35:40.060upper world, and they are of the earth and of the water. And that's very telling, I think. It is
01:35:47.040about peace. It is about prosperity. And it always states that Lord Frey and Freyja are begot
01:35:54.180by Nyarther. And there's a lot of stipulation. I think Snorty did not have a lot of lore in
01:36:04.140pertaining, so he kind of glosses and or slightly places in filling in order to kind of
01:36:13.120lyrically make the poems sound correct, but without divulging information because
01:36:19.360there's no ignorance to the situation if there is no uh perhaps you know wrongness in it um
01:36:26.000but it's re-emphasized over and over and over again um in the heimskringla it is this is where
01:36:36.120again snorty stutlason wrote this about the kings of sweden and he wrote about the gods
01:36:42.700you hemorrized as humans completely and in this he talks about how lord njord is the king of the
01:36:51.920swedes and then he dies and lord fray or frodi as they're called the fruitful one is is the the
01:36:59.840word that he uses um takes over and has the same power of implementing over the rain and the light
01:37:07.780and the and the breeze like the good weather um so when we we see this over and over and over again
01:37:17.100um that there's this relation during yule it is specifically said that both nyurther and frey
01:37:25.540are hailed over a horn at sambal along with lord odin but those two particularly together again
01:37:34.500because of the emphasis of not just plant and animal bounty, but bounty in general, monetary,
01:37:42.620fehu wealth, the idea of the power of that wealth coming about, whether it's the bounty of what you
01:37:48.340physically do or what you can attain through your will. And so there is always a consistent
01:37:54.440placement of peace and prosperity. And I would often call that to be both, like New Arthur is
01:38:01.320peace and lord fray is prosperity i i do that just to simplify things but at the at the um hoff uh
01:38:10.360in florida north soft there is specifically a picture of lord north reaching over a cauldron
01:38:17.240um to the asa in in a sense of peace and the idea again is the cauldron being the receptacle of
01:38:25.400classier the first um storyteller um the uh the relationship between them though it again is it's
01:38:35.880not hugely emphasized after that it's simply said that they're begot and they share much of the same
01:38:42.360dominion over powers in the middle uh in the world that we live in um outside of that i'm
01:38:49.560trying to think of something particularly unique um there was one thing that i was thinking about
01:38:55.240but i i kind of have to look for it because it's in relation to uh ailskala grimson and his um
01:39:06.600his belief or it's in a poem i wanted to uh to bring that up i saw that here but i
01:39:19.680But yes, I mean, there is a ton of lore worth noting.
01:39:23.680It'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.
01:39:44.040with his daughter and they recede back um again this i i don't i don't know if this is
01:39:52.820um story worth and perhaps uh adding in for lyric or for lyrical um consistency in the poem
01:40:01.340um and i've thought about this a lot but i i don't know honestly what that relation may have
01:40:08.620but the three that always seem to be coinciding together is that it is
01:40:12.240Njordur, Lord Frey, and Lady, or Freya, Lord Frey, Lord Ing, or Frey Ing, and the Lady Freya
01:40:23.380are kind of always in coalescence together. And they're often referred to as the most beloved
01:40:32.400of the Alps, the most glorious or coveted. And there's a lot of understanding that I think
01:40:40.400after the alignment between the the the natural order or natural law and cosmic order there's an
01:40:48.240understanding that the vonir are not separate they're not there's no like the vana true i think
01:40:55.600was like a thing in the 90s that was kind of laughable um uh i guess in an attempt to try to
01:41:01.920get away from the patriarchy of the aesir um uh or what have you but the idea is that they are one
01:41:10.400and they are united and it's referred to quite often. I would have to go in a little bit more to
01:41:16.720try to see intrinsically their their connections to each other outside of again in the Guildfaginning
01:41:23.760it's always mentioned that that Lord Nyorth begot Lord Frey and Freyja and that they are given in
01:41:31.120exchange in that unification and again it's worth noting one of his uh symbols um is a boat which i
01:41:42.240always found really interesting to think about uh the gift that was given to him at the same time
01:41:47.440that mjolnir is given to thor is the boat skidh blavnir and it is again an emphasis of the boat
01:41:56.640And Njordh is referred to as Lord of the Chariots, Lord of the Wagons, I think is what it is translated to.
01:42:07.480And 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.
01:42:27.660So, 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.
01:42:41.860So. All right. This one is for the both of us.
01:42:51.100Matt 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?
01:43:01.660Because we're awesome. Yeah, it's a flex.
01:43:05.300You know what? I really believe that it is, though.
01:43:11.860one of the this may seem meandering but there's there's a thing here
01:43:20.540so there's eastern religiosity generally in an ethnic sense or at least in an ethnic
01:43:34.660interpretation and there's um you know abrahamic middle eastern uh approach to religion and i think
01:43:44.660that those things are are important to keep in mind while we compare those with native european
01:43:53.380religion. One of the things that has always been very appealing about Ausitru, as opposed to
01:44:07.740Eastern religions and Abrahamic faiths, is I think what Steve McNallan once called the
01:44:20.060life is good principle. Life is good. We aren't, our focus in existence is living well, is living
01:44:36.640heroically, is building a reputation for ourselves in this life. It's not about storing up treasures
01:44:47.180in heaven as it is for Abrahamic faiths. It's not about liberating ourselves from
01:44:54.220the cycle of karma, from the suffering that Eastern faiths place such a heavy emphasis on.
01:45:06.160Celebration, enjoyment, pleasure, feasting isn't bad in our faith, and it never has been.
01:45:14.760indulging in the the joys and pleasures of physical existence are good life is good the world
01:45:25.080is good we don't have this sense that life is suffering or that the world is sinful and you
01:45:33.000know the dominion of satan no we believe very much that we're living in the here and now
01:45:40.520Now, there's more later, and we'll take that when it comes.
01:45:44.540But right here, right now, you know, one of the biggest themes in Christianity is that you are saved.
01:45:53.920First, that you are saved, that life is inherently sin and bad, and that you need saving from it.
01:46:02.880And secondly, that you receive that saving or that salvation through faith and not through works that none should boast.
01:46:14.540Well, in Ausitru, perhaps you're not saved by works, but you are exalted by works and not by faith.
01:47:32.680And, you know, we're going to laugh in the face of adversity.
01:47:39.000Exemplified, you know, so poetically by Ragnar's death song.
01:47:44.100We'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.
01:47:55.380And I think that is a really important fundamental. What say you, Svon?
01:48:01.940Yeah, I was just laughing that we were kind of both going into that realm of the flex. I think
01:48:08.500that's one of the things that's truly unique between the West and the East of thought is that
01:48:16.660in the west the um the feast culture which is prevalent i would say like beyond the orient
01:48:25.620when we're talking about like say polynesia um they have it as well in a way because i think
01:48:31.660it'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
01:48:38.380the cold it's there's so much to it in which we uh take upon us these hard times and then
01:48:46.460from the bounty that we and our works we we celebrate and so when you find i think when
01:48:53.380you find a culture that um has that balance is where it's truly a reflex but if we're talking
01:49:01.880about our ancestors they're not considering per se perhaps people outside of the outer guard
01:49:05.980On the inner guard, it's also a combination of things.
01:49:09.480One, it's an ability to show your earned might, if you will.
01:49:20.080And it's a chance for you to spread that goodwill down to perhaps people that don't have enough to feast.
01:49:29.720And 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.
01:49:59.580or you perhaps you know you sell in order to gain things but this is a chance for that wealth to be
01:50:04.700shared throughout the strata of all of the culture as well so it's not just a flex it's also a sharing
01:50:11.800of wealth and and kind of establishing um that network of relationships but you know the two go
01:50:19.460together if you're hosting a feast you're flexing about how successful and how great you are
01:50:26.880But your method of flex is through generosity.
01:50:32.040Your 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.
01:50:52.780So, like, your flex about how great you are is how well you can take care of the people who depend on you.
01:51:01.000And, 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.
01:51:13.680So much of what we do is cyclical, but by doing it right and doing it well, it's not just a linear circle.
01:51:26.220It's a spiral upward, or if we do it poorly, a spiral downward.
01:51:31.860But we gain momentum and we gain abundance through giving in that way.
01:51:37.320If 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.
01:51:52.460It'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.
01:52:07.320And 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.
01:52:22.240It lashes out and it just sits in a cave and is grumpy for hundreds of years.
01:52:27.940um that's juxtaposed to the king that gives out you know a team of horses bedecked in gold and
01:52:37.140you know armor and as much gold as you can carry and you you lay out your gifts upon your retainers
01:52:43.860that circulation of wealth is what keeps everything vital and happy and refreshed
01:52:49.460um it's what keeps the tree the world tree yggdrasil vibrant green hoarding your resources
01:52:59.960it's what makes everything dry up and it creates scarcity and it creates you know gold isn't
01:53:07.400valuable for gold's sake it's valuable for your ability to to buy with it or to live with it or
01:53:13.740to do cool stuff with it or to benefit other people with it or to benefit yourself with it
01:53:18.860But just to sit on it and look how shiny it is, you miss the value that's inherent to it.
01:53:25.960And that's fundamental to our folk and to our faith.
01:54:12.420typically they're based on on a reciprocal arrangement to where both parties have
01:54:22.340obligations of what they're contributing in that oath and
01:54:28.540if unilaterally you're trying to withdraw from that oath it's very different than if
01:54:36.640the other party in the oath isn't contributing for a significant amount of time that which
01:54:43.900they've promised to contribute the oath is based upon the maintenance of both ends of that being
01:54:53.720met and it all depends on the particulars of the oath that you make but typically
01:54:58.920For example, in a marriage oath, there's implied things that are in play there, and implied over the course of time.
01:55:16.240It's not like the first time the balance shifts and becomes uneven and the oath is no more good.
01:55:22.200But 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.
01:55:36.200If that becomes completely one sided for long periods of time, the oath has been violated long before a divorce happens.
01:55:48.620The divorce is a legal and official acknowledgement of the disillusion of the oath.
01:55:57.660But in in practice, the oath has been broken long before, unfortunately.
01:56:03.680And that I don't throw that out there as license, because, again, we all go through ups and downs.
01:56:09.580And I think that's always been the case with our folk.
01:56:12.080Look, there are times, you know, a relationship is never, ever, ever, ever 50-50.
01:56:21.460It is always some unfair balance of one party giving more of something than the other party.
01:56:30.920Ideally, that ebbs and flows over the course of life and how we go through things.
01:56:36.020And there's times where the husband is down on his luck and hard and maybe the wife is providing more or giving more.
01:56:40.940and there's times where the wife is is not in a good season of her life and the husband is doing
01:56:47.060more for the family and doing more for his wife and that's natural and that's part of that
01:56:52.620but there's a difference between that and completely shutting that off from your partner
01:56:58.600and i think that you know i'll just go back like i said the the breaking of the oath is when
01:57:10.020intentionally or knowingly and without changing it, one party decides to stop doing that which
01:57:18.920they oath to do. That creates the break in the agreement. The divorce is a last step in
01:57:27.860officially finalizing and recognizing the severing of the oath. But the oath begins to break when
01:57:35.800one party, you know, intentionally chooses to stop providing that which they promise
01:57:43.360to provide and continues that for a time, but the details matter tremendously. What
01:57:50.720are your thoughts on that, Svon? Well, I mean, what you said has kind of been covered.
01:58:00.780I don't know if you're getting an echo. I'm sorry. I'm getting a little bit of an echo.
01:58:05.800Okay, 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.
01:58:21.580And 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.
01:58:35.800And 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.
01:58:50.680But it should be done publicly. It should be done before an adjudicator.
01:58:57.880I think this is also very much culturally a part of our ancestors meeting together and dissolving these things.
01:59:05.000it's it's mentioned quite often in the elthing uh in iceland reasons for divorce um
01:59:13.160my favorite one is uh remember reading about um that women could divorce their husbands
01:59:19.320in iceland because if they were wearing like infeminate clothing the deep feed the deep
01:59:26.280or or that they did not have enough money to make brew like to make beer or ale or mead
01:59:35.000And 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.
01:59:47.780but it has still a lot of the applicableness of it that transcends that, which is that there are
01:59:55.500reasons in which perhaps the oath between a man and a woman or between anyone really, as far as
02:00:01.320perhaps if you make an oath of loyalty or something to a kinsman, and then those things
02:00:06.720change, and then you have to renegotiate that oath, or perhaps based on other oaths that you've
02:00:12.800held. Um, I think this was part of our, our culture and we have a tendency to romanticize
02:00:18.260it again, putting horns on the helmet again. Um, a big thing to understand though, is that
02:00:24.420it's not okay to just like dissolve an oath or break from an oath without stating your
02:00:32.940reasons why, without being upfront about it. I mean, if you pack up your stuff in the middle
02:00:37.580of the night and slink out the back window, you're breaking an oath. It's not good. It's
02:00:45.480cowardly. It's terrible. But if you go forth and you actually have the gumption to stand in front
02:00:50.720of perhaps an adjudicator and to state your reasons with your significant other or the other
02:00:57.900holder of the oath and openly discuss or speak of the reasonings behind things, whether or not
02:01:05.480the opinion of it all of who did what and why and how the true important thing is that now
02:01:12.280it is being openly brought to a close and it's not being broken you're not slinking away you're
02:01:20.500not grabbing all your toys because you got a skinned knee and you're going home and not hanging
02:01:25.880out with your friend anymore and and you just kind of huff off that that to me is the saddest
02:01:31.960part of one of those kinds of situations, because instead of, uh, it's, it's not even
02:01:37.240cowardice is foolishness. You just think that you can walk away from things that you,
02:01:41.300you oath yourself into. And that's, that's really not good. Instead, you should have the bravery,
02:01:48.040the merit and the self-worth to go through the process of ending an oath with an adjudicator
02:01:56.200oftentimes because sometimes both parties are not, if they were left to their own devices,
02:02:02.740would not allow it to end. And that's why we honor Lord Forseti in his dominion is that he
02:02:11.620has given us the power and the wherewithal to understand the way oaths work and the way our
02:02:17.200society works. We're not savage. We're not just completely uncivilized in the way that we do
02:02:24.980things. And so that process of, again, bringing oaths to rest, to leaving or settling an oath in
02:02:34.480order to possibly renegotiate or to dissolve and walk away from. And sometimes, you know,
02:02:39.780you could take an oath, but the, the, the oath you're taking to say that person, and I'm speaking
02:02:45.400now more of a strata of like, perhaps up and down, um, uh, to, uh, to a nation, to a King, to
02:02:52.260a president or, or whatever, uh, sometimes there is a, uh, a fulfillment of your duties are not
02:02:59.320being met. And so you, you can be let go. And oftentimes I think it's, it's done publicly,
02:03:06.540not often to, to humiliate you, but to allow you to speak your piece and bring it to rest and say,
02:03:12.920you know, I understand I haven't been able to do this. And I I'm thankful that you allow me to
02:03:17.620speak and let everyone know that I understand this and that I could dissolve my oath publicly.
02:03:22.260and, and walk away from this. So everyone knows I'm not an oath breaker and that I'm willing to
02:03:26.980stand before everyone and kind of, you know, take my, my responsibility. And that I think is a huge
02:03:33.320thing. So applying these ideas to the oath of marriage is just as important. And I mean,
02:03:41.020obviously it's not the best way we want to go. We want things to work out. We want the family
02:03:46.180to be strong. We want all of those pro-extending of the family, pro-strengthening of the tribe
02:03:57.300and strengthening of the frith. But sometimes it doesn't always work out, especially modern
02:04:02.120things like today could be everything from if your significant other suddenly develops a terrible
02:04:08.700drug addiction and you're trying to help them and there's no chance in helping them
02:04:13.080and it's starting to affect everything in your life uh we would be amiss to say that you have
02:04:18.000to suffer for the wrongdoings and the and the illegitimacy of perhaps a person's deeds when
02:04:25.840you can dissolve that oath and and then try to help them get better maybe things will change in
02:04:30.940the future but we we allow that sense because i think practicality and truth and and the resolve
02:04:37.820of common sense is so uh prevalent in our faith as opposed that is extremely important um
02:04:47.260to hear the horns on helmet or the romanticized version of every single oath being until the death
02:04:55.020and you know better to die than to break your oath and i get that i get the principle of your
02:05:02.940oath is binding and that's the point and the point is consequence if you have an oath it's
02:05:09.420incumbent upon you to try to fix it before you seek out of it to try to maintain the balance
02:05:18.220before it's severed but at no point in our for our ancestors or for us in modern times is the idea of
02:05:30.060the oath that one per one party of the oath should spend the rest of their existence miserable
02:05:38.380because the circumstances that were fundamental to the original oath taking have changed um
02:05:47.020the big one of the big things about an oath is that it's not just immediately abandoned um
02:05:53.900the oath imp impels you to work it out and to try to find an honorable finishing of the oath
02:06:09.720and that's why coming before the gothar coming before your peers having it adjudicated in some
02:06:15.380way is important that's one of the reasons that the afa doesn't believe in performing
02:06:20.880non-legally binding marriages because it's not something you just cast off and throw away
02:06:27.120without consequence. No, there needs to be a process. There needs to be a process of trying
02:06:34.360to resolve it. And if it is completely unresolvable, then a process for honorably
02:06:41.260having it settled and move on to something different. But it is really important to realize
02:06:48.820the equation is never meant for one person to bear the entire burden of the oath and to live
02:06:59.080in misery because the person that they oath with doesn't fulfill their end or fundamentally changes
02:07:05.940the deal. That's not real. That's not realistic. That never has been since the dawn of time and
02:12:20.66022, 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.
02:12:48.820I've seen them come and go and come and go and come and go and come and go over and over and over again.
02:16:00.560and this goes towards the first point,
02:16:02.780But if I think having attainable goals that you can accomplish and then move on to new
02:16:21.200and evolved goals is really important.
02:16:25.680And I think that's something in any of these other groups, be they also true or not.
02:16:30.860And so some of the groups that I've seen come and go are political.
02:16:34.440Many 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.
02:16:54.580and that's problematic because the less authentic whatever you're a part of is the less ingrained it
02:17:03.620is in your soul in your family and in your life the more disposable it is that when you find the
02:17:09.740next shiny thing that you want to move to i would also say one of the most toxic terrible things
02:17:18.660that I've seen and I see this, this is something that our people do to each other constantly
02:17:25.040up to, including today. And it's really, really sad. We are our own worst enemies and we engage
02:17:33.260in purity spiral. And I think that people hear that like, oh yeah, purity spiral. And then they
02:17:39.300move on to the next thought, but we all have a tendency to do that. If our focus is always
02:17:45.460fighting inward on the guy that has 95% of things in common with me and 5% that we disagree
02:17:53.460on, we will whittle ourselves down continually into insignificance and nothingness and eventually
02:18:01.780complete disillusion. And I speak out against it, try to fight it every way I know how.
02:18:09.360a lot of our people are just stuck there and it may take time for them to grow up
02:18:15.960may take years for them to gain wisdom and listen to those of us who've seen this happen but
02:18:24.220when you have somebody that's literally 95 in agreement with you but you choose to focus on
02:18:34.400the 5% that separates you, that is a surefire recipe towards the insignificance of failure.
02:18:42.320And we've seen it happen a million times. We see it happen a million more. Best we can do,
02:18:49.280and what we are doing, is carving out a place for ourselves to build that golden age in the husk of
02:18:55.840what's around us. And we're doing that. We're building towards permanence. And if all the
02:19:04.060purity spirallers would stop and people would grow up and get on the team, we'd accomplish
02:19:10.000more faster and better. But we'll accomplish regardless. And we are. And we can see that
02:19:17.460with our Hoffs. We can see with Sigerheim. It's certainly a testament to that, that we have,
02:19:23.020You know, while other people out in the world are tearing statues down, we're erecting statues.
02:19:35.560But absolutely, you've got to build what you want based around a positive identity.
02:19:43.660So this is another thing about specific to Ausatru.
02:19:46.540However, 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.
02:20:03.160Their point in existence is to oppose another faith.
02:20:07.300they have at their outset laid out the game accepting the terms that this other faith
02:20:19.560is the dominant faith and any move they do is going to be a reaction to that other faith
02:20:26.640and it denies them an identity of themselves and a path forward to grow and to evolve
02:20:32.300All they can do is counter-move something else that they don't like or that they disagree with.
02:20:40.040One of the biggest evolutions of modern ausitry was when we evolved past the phase of,
02:20:46.620look, Ma, we're not Christian, to, okay, what does it mean to be loyal to the Iser?
02:20:53.340and to define ourselves solely in terms of our relationship to our gods or a lack of that relationship.
02:21:04.200When we've taken the world on our own terms, that's where we've laid foundations for the future.
02:21:11.180I mentioned earlier, we're about ready to start the 30th year of the Auschwitz-Folk Assembly.
02:21:17.840In the history of the world, 30 years sounds insignificant.
02:21:21.400it but all of us that have been around for a while know that in the circles that we
02:21:28.360often find ourselves in three decades in three solid decades is that is quite an achievement
02:21:39.320and one of the other things that is a massive intangible to that but that has allowed us to
02:21:45.880achieve what we have and is propelling us to achieve more is being being allied with
02:21:55.640and on the right side of the gods the favor of our gods behaving in a way doing things in a way
02:22:06.200building in a way that is pleasing to them is the best thing you can do in order to be successful
02:22:16.040and have longevity and doesn't mean that we always get it right certainly we don't
02:22:22.760but it does mean that our intention is to try to do the right thing
02:22:26.200and i hope and i believe that we have been pleasing to our gods and i hope that we
02:22:36.980continue to do so i'll do everything in my power to ensure that we do um
02:22:42.940but that focus on the gods and focus on something eternal as opposed to on something fleeting and
02:22:51.640situational, sets you up for generational success as well, I think. But I've kind of beat this one
02:22:59.840to death. Svon, what are your thoughts on this? It's another one of those cliche points that we
02:23:09.220can say. You know, we all have heard it before that culture is downstream from spirituality,
02:23:17.720that there is a greater call of the soul of the people that then begets down the mentality and
02:23:26.640the physicality of the people. And we are working on battles on all those fronts as individuals
02:23:33.880and as groups. But it's worth noting that I think when we talk about perhaps the desire of action
02:23:44.300and all of these things. I understand that. I think that it's a deeply intrinsic part of our
02:23:50.600folk. It's an intrinsic part of our menfolk, whether they are of the ethnic faith of our
02:23:57.980people or if they're of another faith, foreign faith, they are still folk. And I think that
02:24:04.900that manifests in a lot of ways for many people. So telling young folks like, hey, your spiritualism
02:24:14.220is so important often again is lost on them because they're youthful and they're unwise
02:24:20.940and as we grow wiser and we grow older we learn and and this seems to be a repeated
02:24:28.220kind of cycle within itself um you know it's we haven't quite reached a point in which
02:24:34.380the youth of our folk are actually looking at the wisdom of their elders their clergy
02:24:45.020their um the leaders of their of their people in a way they haven't quite made that connection yet
02:24:52.940and so a lot of times there's everything from ignorance or ignoring to straight out scoffing
02:25:00.300um and then you know over time that as you you see these things happen um you can only but say
02:25:08.700you know i've seen this happen before it's not i told you so it's i've seen this happen before i'm
02:25:14.220saying what i'm saying because i have seen it time and time again and so i think that there is a
02:25:21.980massive importance that we look at our people building something for themselves within themselves
02:25:30.300as an individual and as a community and that is more important than shaking your fists at things
02:25:37.580um you know there there is a a great amount of when we talk about people who who claim that
02:25:43.980they're oppressed all the time and then it's like okay well how are you oppressed uh as opposed from
02:25:49.580other people and sometimes they they fall short on a lot of things unless they try to shift the
02:25:54.780window um we on the other hand are saying like okay if we have a problem we need to fix it within
02:26:02.300ourselves and amongst ourselves and we should try to do that consistently and over time we know we're
02:26:07.980not going to get it overnight not everything's going to be perfect and and shiny right out the
02:26:12.300gate this is a generational thing that's going to take a lot of time and um i think that some
02:26:18.620of these movements or these ideas of whether it's political activation or um you know doing things
02:26:26.620uh you know in in activism just in general and i think you know people think about activism
02:26:33.180as like there's political activism and then there's just activism which is community building
02:26:38.300and um you should greatly consider the spiritual activism as a huge component to who you are as a
02:26:45.500person another thing that i also really hit on that really kind of i wanted to bring up too was
02:26:50.940that the purity purity spiraling effect is always about fragmentation i think that a lot of people
02:26:58.140that denote purity spiraling or like that try to create it that utilize it as catalyst oftentimes
02:27:04.940are trying to break things down into their own personal pools in which they can be like the king
02:27:10.940fish and and that has a big problem as well our people have always suffered from this the romans
02:27:18.460knew that the germanic people could be scattered if they were if they were not united and the best
02:27:23.180way to do that was to you know get the purity spiral against each other or to break you know
02:27:29.980certain things or accept certain things and so on and so forth and so there was this absolute lack of
02:32:12.640Or do you want to be the coolest guy in the room?
02:32:17.640guy in the room. Those things are often mutually exclusive. And I've seen this a lot. One of
02:32:31.580the things, and I'll speak for myself in this. I know it sounds self-serving because of where
02:32:37.140I'm sitting, but it was a path that led me here. I wasn't always sitting in a big chair.
02:32:47.640When I first got involved in Anousetru and was looking at what to do, everybody's trying
02:32:54.900to break off in their own little thing. Everybody knows some way to do it better because the
02:33:01.160people who are out there doing it before us, they're doing something wrong. So I know better.
02:33:05.200I'll start my new thing. And for the long time at Anousetru, that's all we were doing. We were
02:33:10.360starting again at year one every year because somebody new comes along with some new, you
02:33:16.820You 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.
02:33:29.760And what it occurred to me as a truth at the time, and this was, you know, and this was a situation on a face.
02:33:39.900There 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.
02:33:50.900Has anyone here heard of the Heathen Folk Revival?
02:33:54.880Say that rhetorically because I assume probably not because it didn't go anywhere.
02:34:00.940because it was three dudes wanting to be the king of stuff rather than getting involved in something
02:34:07.200that already has progress towards a goal, whether than being part of a movement that's taking us
02:34:13.920somewhere. Everyone wants to start their own thing because the truth is most people would
02:34:21.780much rather be edgelords and virtue signal and be the king of their
02:34:33.380group of five fat guys in camp chairs arguing over the big piece of chicken
02:34:37.780of the rotisserie chicken i knew you were gonna use this yeah but it's a thing i use it because
02:34:44.020it is a real example you have theodism that their theodism was based seriously around which of the
02:34:55.140fat dudes in camp chairs could claim to be the king of the fat dudes in camp chairs and there's
02:35:02.180like five of them and they're arguing over their kingdom of rotisserie chicken and like two or two
02:35:09.060leader mountain dews and if that's what's important to you that you're yokozuna of the
02:35:19.460five fat guys and you get the best chicken piece do that but that doesn't build anything for the
02:35:27.220future it occurred to me very early on when i wanted to be a folk builder from alaska that
02:35:32.740An 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.
02:35:56.740like it just was something was going somewhere. And the other thing was a constant fight over
02:36:03.240position. So you can rule your kingdom of nothingness and be part of something that moves
02:36:15.640forward. Um, I didn't even know they made it that far. So kudos to Morris Taylor over in the chat
02:36:23.160room that says the heathen folk revival actually had youtube videos 12 years ago that is further
02:36:29.400than i thought that they made it um but yeah um it was much more important to me at the time to
02:36:42.440be part of something that was going to be here for my children and my grandchildren and at that point
02:36:49.080the afa was you know again it was the longest running also true organization in existence
02:36:55.240and at that point it was 10 years old 11 years old
02:37:03.940earlier than that when i actually started wanting to be sort of involved but when i became
02:37:11.840you know all the way involved it was like 10 years old
02:37:14.480um but that's the farthest we've made it because the crab in the bucket man anybody tries to
02:37:22.040succeed and you've got to pull them back down because you've got to be the crab that's the
02:37:27.780highest up in the bucket don't worry about all the crabs getting out of the bucket no you've
02:37:33.120got to be the highest crab in the bucket so we got to pull everybody else down
02:37:36.840um but being part of that life all the way through when i was just a folk builder from
02:37:46.020alaska because i was part of something it's part of something we were building we had a dream of
02:37:51.460what we're trying to accomplish and you know here i am however many years later um
02:38:01.360my daughter played a hoff with a hoff with other afa kids and to grow up in a world she'll never
02:38:15.400know a world that doesn't have hoffs to our gods that's something we did together because we stood
02:38:22.020the test of time together because people stuck around stuck it out and prioritized the future
02:38:29.420over their present and we're not arguing over rotisserie chicken we're sitting at four hoffs
02:38:37.400to our gods raising statues to our founder and his wife at land that um eventually numerous
02:38:48.180are going to live on that we're going to build a hoff to lord tyron that we're going to build
02:38:53.940a great haul for the afa on um so this is a long-winded answer to your one question
02:39:03.940but you have to be committed towards a future that you're genuinely going to commit your life
02:39:08.660towards if it's just about being an edgelord or looking cool then you go from fad to fad to fad
02:39:15.220jumping from lily pad to lily pad and you don't build anything if you're committed to what you're
02:39:22.500leaving for your children and your grandchildren you're in much better positioned to uh build
02:39:29.860something lasting and i think we've about beat that topic to death but it's really really important
02:39:36.420and that's why i think it was important to spend some time on
02:39:41.220uh the next one is just for you swan what dead germanic languages do you know i remember you
02:39:48.500mentioned gothic before also do you know anglo-saxon uh well the key in that phrase is do you know
02:39:57.380uh the the the threshold of of what that might mean conversationally none and i i'll be the first to
02:40:06.100admit it i think that in pronunciation and study of language i know a smattering of the three majors
02:40:13.220which would be Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and Gothic language, the Gothic tongue.
02:40:23.140And mainly it's a point of research in which trying to find the coalescence between those.
02:40:31.480I'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.
02:40:47.440I'm not super familiar or like Phrygian into Dutch.
02:40:53.060Again, 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.
02:40:59.860And 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.
02:41:12.100And 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.
02:41:29.960And 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.
02:41:59.960of um and their ability to kind of bring these languages back to life and to speak them um or to
02:42:05.780be able to read like the book of matthew in in gothic um is amazing to me but i've gotten to a
02:42:11.640point where i can in combination with perhaps books and maybe like side notes of linguistic
02:42:20.560translations i can start putting things together and connecting them to other things without being
02:42:25.320prompted um so i mean i and and it surprises a lot of people too i'm a big proponent for um
02:42:34.600uh modern english as our as as a a viable mode in which we we speak to the gods but there's a
02:42:42.280there is a power and an understanding of perhaps utilizing old norse as an ecclesiastical language
02:42:49.480it's very important i think for our gothar to understand things and concepts and how to
02:42:54.760reference and and and to to present to the folk um you know tangible and proper translations um
02:43:05.320because i have seen people just kind of translate
02:43:09.240really really well in certain areas and then other ones are just kind of glossing and glancing
02:43:12.760um but you know i i i do like the idea of us also speaking to the gods in our language as it has
02:43:23.700evolved um and i i talk about that a lot i was even talking about that this weekend um just the
02:43:29.440anglization of of uh lady freak to frigga and things like that um i just i find language super
02:43:37.480interesting and the means in which we communicate ideas and um and and spiritual concepts um it's
02:43:44.680just a the problem is we got to be careful about um people that might seek to translate with the
02:43:51.160intention of guiding uh towards perhaps an um an intended goal instead of kind of you know laying
02:43:59.720concepts before people in order for them to kind of receive them and and mull them over and try to
02:44:05.080understand them and become better for them the other thing i would say is that we need to get
02:44:10.200away from the purity spiraling if you will um we can't say austera we have to say eostra and i'm
02:44:18.680i am and i i think else here ago they can attest to it i have i did that too when i first came
02:44:25.480into the austro folk assembly i was kind of doing that and so that is a deep reflection upon myself
02:44:31.560as well um where you know and and and you know speaking about yule as as uh yayola from the
02:44:39.640anglo-saxon and you know oh we got it we should use a g instead of a y and it's like but people
02:44:45.080don't know these things and and and it really isn't that important as a as opposed to more or
02:44:51.800less getting people to celebrate yule together it's far more important than harping over whether
02:44:57.720not 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
02:45:07.080think the driving force within our spiritual um goals and and and teachings to the folk about
02:45:15.400what we're trying to do and what they should try to do at their homes and teaching their children
02:45:20.840making the gods a welcome power in our lives is first and then understanding and ruminating on
02:45:32.200the relationship that our ancestors had with the gods is probably second or maybe even third because
02:45:37.080i would say you know the other is to align with your community and get with the cultural practice
02:45:42.440of the community and understanding like you know stop trying to pick and purity spiral things apart
02:45:48.760why are you not practicing alvar bloat and these are bloats in february in iceland during the 11th
02:45:55.400century why are you guys you know i why are you guys doing this like you know it's it's it's
02:46:03.080comical now then it's kind of like the the turkey or the chicken leg um analogy which
02:46:09.720does kind of fit and i would say just to speak to that too a little bit is that you know finding
02:46:16.280and utilizing language to build that relationship with the gods is most important and it's the same
02:46:23.340way as it's constantly looking better as towards a better uh horizon than you know focusing on this
02:46:29.580is good enough for us now that the the the um the backyard is good and then perhaps somebody's like
02:46:36.460well i'm gonna build a shed and that's gonna be a hoff to the gods and and we're we are doing
02:46:42.400small incremental steps but we're never settling for those it's always about kind of broader
02:46:48.720horizons bigger how we the gods deserve more what are we gonna do to get bigger better because
02:46:55.600victory never sleeps exactly it all loops down to that it yeah it really does um and i'm gonna
02:47:05.280i know this was a question asked as fawn but get my two cents anyway um
02:47:14.320language is awesome and it's a really good tool to understand
02:47:22.720how our ancestors saw something how they saw the world how they related to their gods
02:47:28.880um and if you're studying language etymology is more important to me than definition because
02:47:39.260definition takes on silly nonsense of the day etymology traces language towards its roots and
02:47:48.180explains the course of how a word came to mean what it means and what its base root is and it's
02:47:55.440really important. But all of that is a tool. I will guarantee you this. Loki is much more educated
02:48:07.000on our gods than Svan or myself. Surtr knows much more about the cosmos than either Svan nor I.
02:48:19.900my point isn't to be smarter than the forces of chaos
02:48:29.660my point is to be better and more noble and more in favor of the iser of whom i stand loyal to
02:48:40.480winning the favor of the gods is the key if education and learning language helps you do
02:48:50.420that better helps you build a stronger and a better relationship with your gods then absolutely
02:48:56.800it is fantastic you can know all kind of stuff and if you don't put it into practice and it
02:49:04.440doesn't bring you closer. It's for not. That's what's really important to keep in mind. And
02:49:13.520the thing is, when you purity spiral on stuff like that, it becomes silly. Oh, well, you
02:49:18.760need to pronounce it in Old Saxon. Well, screw that. I'm better than you. I can do it in
02:49:24.220Old Norse. Well, uh-uh, guess what? I can do it in Gothic. Well, you know, what kind
02:49:30.320of grunts did the cavemen make when they were celebrating Yule? What's the appropriate grunt
02:49:38.600armpit fart noise pattern that says Yule? It's silly at that point. What's a much better thing
02:49:49.560is to understand what it meant to our ancestors at different points in time, and then to add to
02:49:56.380the tapestry of our folk by expressing what it means to you. Part of Victory Never Sleeps is
02:50:05.320we're not resting on the laurels of our Viking ancestors. No, just as they carried the torch
02:50:11.820forward from our Celtic ancestors and from our Neolithic ancestors, we're carrying the torch
02:50:17.460forward for them. And, you know, one day we'll have people, you know, on Alpha Centauri somewhere
02:50:25.540going over minutiae of how I expressed things on Victory Never Sleeps or how Svan responded.
02:50:36.740But that's how we move this forward. And if we're not moving it forward, we're not worthy of our
02:50:42.140ancestors so that's really really important but no linguistics is awesome and it adds so much to
02:50:49.340it and it's one of the cool things that spawn's able to bring to the table is a different
02:50:53.820perspective on that um and to add to the depth of of our understanding of our sources of lore
02:51:02.220um next question did ragnarok already happen or should we be prepping for it
02:59:50.300though it is possible in a rare and exceptional circumstance
02:59:55.020for a person to fully reincarnate that is not what typically happens
03:00:03.180what typically happens is that pieces of our soul complex can be bequeathed to those who come after
03:00:12.800us but the the us-ness of our soul goes on to our ancestors or perhaps if we've earned
03:00:22.220the favor of the gods ascends to something greater but pieces of your luck of your hymenia
03:00:29.880those things can be passed down through a family line can be enhanced and drawn towards a person
03:00:40.580if you name one of your one of your children after a kinsman of yours who had some some
03:00:47.500greatness to them. Doing that is, is a request beyond the veil to have some of that luck,
03:00:56.020some of that person's glory reflected in that, in that child. So there we go. Yay, Nick.
03:01:07.700There are pieces and Svan can do, so here we go, Svan. I will just kick that over to you. Yes,
03:01:13.780the AFA does have a stance on reincarnation. No, typically you don't a hundred percent
03:01:18.740reincarnate. It's more like pieces of your luck can reincarnate. But what you said is very valid.
03:01:26.380If you're trying to talk to your grandfather at your altar, your grandfather can't simultaneously
03:01:33.440be your daughter. Your grandfather needs to exist somewhere as your grandfather to engage in that
03:01:40.360cycle with you all for that and i use that particular example because i named my daughter
03:01:45.800aubry after my grandfather it's fine can you break down your soul complex with the chalice
03:01:52.600diagram for us please yeah we talk about the essence of the leak or the body of course that
03:02:01.640goes away when we when we uh pass from this world and go beyond the veil so the idea again
03:02:08.360is that if the concepts of the soul and the portions of the soul that are bequeathed to the
03:02:15.140bloodline in a very particular cycle, which is important as to why the cycle exists,
03:02:23.060you know, there's not an old body that's, you know, it's a new body. And that therein lies
03:02:29.340the kind of the predication for everything else is that the soul or the identity of the soul and
03:02:36.400that which is goes to oftentimes what we refer to as the folk soul but it's the the greater
03:02:43.760kind of accumulation of all that soul might and we know that our ancestors talked often about the
03:02:50.180of our lines being kind of given or passed down or attained upon birth and that there are there
03:02:57.140are parts of um our folk soul that are passed on so when we pass away the the body and the ego
03:03:06.980kind of fall down into the chalice the the the uh the memories and the thoughts fall into that
03:03:14.500that reservoir of what is the soul the soul and so all of these things that make us as an
03:03:21.780individual living in the middle world right now fall into the soul and perhaps there's there's
03:03:29.140residue of the hammer that exists in the world if we have great might and great power it can exude
03:03:36.420itself into the world sometimes we see this in manifestations of imagery of of of the souls
03:03:42.660enacting during times of great turmoil a great strife or great um might and power um you know
03:03:50.740to see uh the great kings exuding themselves uh on on the the stones in which they were anointed
03:03:58.900uh and and bequeathed their power has just as much a value that part of that is those
03:04:03.940reflections of those pieces that fall into the sowl and we have the the the woad self which can
03:04:11.700also exude itself through long um generations our actions our deeds but it ultimately falls
03:04:19.780back down into the south and there the south is connected with the hamingya the hamingya that we
03:04:24.900built in our life and the hamingya that we were also given from the generations before
03:04:30.340and all of this is kind of fueled in vehicle to by the philkya the philkya is that primordial
03:04:39.620connection to the folk soul while we are living and thus returns us back to it and
03:04:47.220And as I was here ago, he spoke about the bequeathment of fragments.
03:04:53.040Now, the details of this is not really known.
03:04:56.160I would think it would be kind of disingenuous to say, oh, yes, we know that the ancestors bequeath this and that.
03:05:04.080That's not exactly the reason why things are beyond the veil is because they're obfuscated from from perhaps a mortal understanding in clarity.
03:05:14.080But 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.
03:05:32.020And 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.
03:05:48.120I 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.
03:06:02.580So 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.
03:06:27.340And 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,
03:06:55.140then it is a way in which they can bequeath upon you benefits to help you preside forward.
03:07:02.780And I think that's why Ausatru kind of came back in a wave, in an essence.
03:07:09.720There was clearly, Founder MacNallan was caught the wind that blew through Yggdrasil,
03:07:16.040as it's often referred to, in which these kind of this moment that our ancestors sent up
03:07:22.740and started to lay the foundation of the of the folk feeling that desire to come back
03:07:30.780overwhelmingly so and it was across the board so the idea of a one-for-one reincarnation is
03:07:39.280not necessarily something that we look at it's not like you pass and then you pop back out as
03:07:44.800a child or a grandchild, but that you reservoir yourself with the great collective of the soul
03:07:53.700of your folk, whether it's your bloodline, but also the greater folk. And we don't quite,
03:08:00.140you know, a lot of people speculate as exactly what that conglomeration could be. But we do know
03:08:07.780that the ancestors that we work with then do have the ability to place upon or elevate themselves
03:08:15.240up sometimes through great deeds or through um uh honoring why those living in the in the middle
03:08:21.440world these these deeds are kind of exalted and and spoken of and the gods then place these this
03:08:28.600soul might in the form of an alvar or a d seer because a lot of people don't conceptualize like
03:08:35.380I'm praying to my ancestors, but I'm praying to the desir. Are they the same? Yes. Are they in
03:08:42.100the same place? No. One is clearly seen as kind of presiding over, and that's a result of that
03:08:49.680exaltation. Or that the soul might is then brought up to the gods, and the gods really
03:08:55.260kind of have that determination. I don't think that the gods, you know, descend down into the
03:09:02.800underworld and weigh your, your heart, uh, with a feather and, you know, listen to your Philkel
03:09:07.660like a lawyer. And, um, you know, that determines whether or not you get the strand or whether you
03:09:12.620go to your ancestors, um, as more is that the gods are kind of adjudicating what comes into
03:09:21.000the middle as, as everything is playing out the skein of weird, the skein of earth. Our ancestors
03:09:27.120are vested in the acceptance of you and you bringing in more than what you left with and
03:09:35.000that cycle is about empowering them with your deeds with your nobility and you should be concerned
03:09:40.880about the gods witnessing you now and marking you with the sense of being witnessed as they're
03:09:47.600they're meeting out that doom in the well that is in heaven and mark you for greatness witness
03:09:52.720your deeds but you also want your ancestors to see that you are making them proud you're giving them
03:09:59.200great honors and when you return to them you bring more and that you're not spurned by them and left
03:10:06.560be you know a kind of an outlaw or an out guard of your own folk soul so that's hugely important
03:10:13.520in in that whole relation of the circulatory um movements of the of soul and soul power
03:10:20.320And 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.
03:10:33.940So 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.
03:10:51.500and and and the returning of the soul is components of the soul because we are multiple pieces and
03:10:59.340some of them are made here and stay here in particularly like the leak the body um and and
03:11:06.940sometimes our hammer uh pieces of it remain here but there are other things that pass through and
03:11:13.260on um and ultimately the ek is what stays in the folk soul and that is the grandfather or
03:11:21.260grandmother that you are speaking to at the harrow when you give um you know a gift and and um
03:11:30.540you know oblige your loyalty and troth to your ancestors at the harrow that's what you're
03:11:35.260speaking to is their ek and their hamina and their all overall their might um you know and
03:11:43.420whether they attained their woe's self in the living that can predecess down and exalt up again
03:11:50.380if you will um lou nickerson gave us 20 bucks thanks lou we appreciate you
03:11:57.740hail the gods hail the folk hail the afa um to address something there's a little bit of uh
03:12:05.260Talking about Sigurheim and Tennessee geography going on over in the chat.
03:13:39.820um question from brody why is odin known as the yule father
03:13:49.960spawn why is odin known as the yule father okay this is an interesting question and i uh this
03:13:59.060yule in particular has has uh given me um especially in the podcast itself too this is
03:14:05.520one of those things I was definitely looking into. Um, one thing is, is when we look at the
03:14:11.080etymology of the word your, um, and what its possibilities is to what it could mean in relation
03:14:18.300to, uh, the turning of something, um, that is a, it's a speculation. We don't quite fully know. We
03:14:26.940can etymologically follow back to a certain point. And then after that, it becomes, um, speculative.
03:14:32.820um i've heard a lot of interesting um theories on it one thing that i i wanted to kind of
03:14:41.040hit right out of the gate is that you might hear people say oh well that that word isn't actually
03:14:45.860a germanic word i find this a lot when i discuss this with um people you know social media and one
03:14:53.060of the things i've been noticing is this trend towards oh everything that's pagan is actually
03:14:56.960really christian and one of the ones in this argument that kind of popped up that really was
03:15:01.800like oh that's a that's that's a cute kind of opinion is that it comes from the greek word um
03:15:08.360uh yuli yuli ebus yuli it's the the the derivative of the word jubilee and it comes from the greeks
03:15:18.760but the the the weight of that is very low because we see this kind of cross-cultural usage of the
03:15:28.960word with other meanings outside of simply a celebration. It has great connections to
03:15:38.520the essence of turning or the ability to turn. And that is where we see its usage having an
03:15:46.620interesting sense, much like when we speak of the Nornir, the Nornir as witches, the word
03:15:52.780which means ultimately to twist or to turn the idea of turning threads or turning fate so you'll
03:16:01.420also has this connotation and it's worth noting that one of the poetic words for the gods as a
03:16:08.860whole was yolnar the idea of all of the gods having the ability to turn which again re-emphasizes
03:16:17.500what I've been pointing at with the idea of the gods being able to meet out the doom or the boon
03:16:24.920of men, is that when they gather at the wellspring in heaven, they are twisting and enacting their
03:16:33.720will in the world by both great things and minute things. And that, I think, is something that was
03:16:40.640understood by our ancestors. So the Yolnar in that usage would be the beings with the ability to
03:16:48.380turn things and to shape and spin. The specific name Yolnir, you'll hear most people say it's a
03:17:01.980title of Odin, and it is. It is absolutely utilized as a title of Odin, but I wanted to
03:17:07.020bring up that Yolnar is also a title for the gods themselves. And I think that that is where it
03:17:14.040originates from, is because the connection to Lord Odin in relation to the turning time of the year
03:17:22.460is such a huge importance, and especially amongst the predecessors that gave us the most,
03:17:27.700which is the Angles and the Saxons. They had great emphasis and understanding, and that
03:17:34.520that emphasis manifests predominantly in the wild hunt and the idea that uh lord ovin is somehow
03:17:43.880kind of breaking the skein of the the the water the separation between the upper world and the
03:17:50.360middle world that that that um strength or i guess the tinsel strength of water i forgot what it's
03:17:57.720called when it's the threshold of water and its ability to maintain its buoyancy or be broken
03:18:04.520is that he's breaking that. That's what the wild hunt ultimately is. And that manifests again in
03:18:11.720the hunting of the boar that we get from the Anglo-Saxons. So there's a great emphasis on him
03:18:17.040kind of interceding between the worlds at this time and having a manifestation
03:18:24.040within the middle world that makes him so prevalent at this time of year. And so it would
03:18:30.940be natural to say that the the the one of the yulnar is is the the yul father the is yul near
03:18:39.560he is the one in manifested twisting around at this time and then he does return we speak about
03:18:47.460that return we speak about that return as it's being well tonight is is odin's night and this
03:18:53.240is the the time in which the wild hunt comes to a rest and he returns through the threshold and
03:18:59.160back into the upper world and he has done his turning time um of of pulling and twisting fate
03:19:05.720and moving things around and sometimes that turning and twisting can take in the form of of
03:19:11.400kind of like um what we would say is a great power that a might of doom so it has a tendance towards
03:19:19.240things being drastically shifted so much so that it kind of has a scary sense to it and we have
03:19:24.680that all the time with with uh lord olden as being eager or the the terrible or the awesome one
03:19:32.200uh because of this ability this power this manifestation that makes him so unique so i think
03:19:38.280that the time is a turning time and that the gods are seen as as their might in their ability to turn
03:19:47.320but specifically with Lord Odin and his ability to turn things around this time is so important
03:19:55.500that they all kind of link together with a sense of meaning behind these words.
03:20:04.560There is a later translations of the word yul meaning a feast or a celebration.
03:20:10.700So 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.
03:20:24.060And that I think the turning time became celebratory, and so therefore it was a time of celebration.
03:20:30.180So the word became like in conjunction with feasting and celebration.
03:20:35.760But looking back further, we can see that it has far more of an older meaning.
03:20:41.500And I think it's expressly Germanic in the usage of the word.
03:20:47.140And 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.
03:20:54.780But the meaning is very different in those two distinct branches.
03:21:00.580And to say that one beget the other, I think, is a misnomer.
03:21:04.240But 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.
03:21:21.240That was in, there is an incomplete book called The Organization of the Norwegian Kings, a summarization or an organization or a list.
03:21:32.820And 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.
03:21:54.320and it's mentioned in there that Yule comes from Odin and I think that that was you know done in
03:22:01.780I can't remember when it was written I think the 12th century and that was kind of a looping back
03:22:06.600into explaining where the the name Yule comes from in relation to you know the our ancestors
03:22:13.240were kind of the conversion times were going through and they were utilizing their knowledge
03:22:18.420based on nordic only but we can see it survives in in um the the gothic language it survives in
03:22:28.120the anglo-saxon language and so they were probably mistaken in that it was just simply
03:22:34.440contextualized in a norse sense so i think that's where it comes from but it does have merit it's
03:22:39.940just that i think the the chronological importance of that is that it goes further back in our
03:22:45.680language it's not entirely from the like the greeks i think it parallels linguistically with
03:22:51.360the hellenics and the idea um but that causes a lot of confusion in in present day
03:23:00.640all right uh michael cosgrove with a 20 donation thank you very much michael
03:23:06.720uh thank you both for being available to us all including those who are just curious
03:23:13.360um i'm glad that you feel that way we try every way we know how to be as available as possible to
03:23:20.720all our folk um our position as gothar is extremely important to both swan and myself
03:23:29.280and i want everybody to know everybody who hears this now who hears this later you can always reach
03:23:34.640out to us that's what we're here for we'd love to hear from you and be able to help or answer
03:23:40.080questions uh as we can so thank you for that yeah thank you um our next
03:23:51.360question is for you svan as an icelander is the stereotype of nordics being cold stoic and
03:24:00.000introverted true on the surface yes i think it is um i think that a lot of people
03:24:10.080And 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.
03:24:36.080so on uh whereas i think nordic people nowadays are kind of listed more towards like governmental
03:24:41.520thinking and and so on and so forth you generally find that nords are very distant at first and
03:24:48.160sometimes you'll find out that they're very very lively and it could be and very hot and and um
03:24:54.160emotionally driven about a lot of things but it's it's definitely buried under a social veneer of
03:25:01.280composure which is important you can't kind of just fly off the cuff all the time and it's really
03:25:07.440important in that in the the upper you know hemisphere if you will or in that area where
03:25:13.520you you need to have that and that's manifested in modern modernity a lot of the passion has left
03:25:19.120away from a lot of nordic people and they look at things very logically very um stoically uh
03:25:26.240What 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.
03:25:53.380But as Nords kind of go on, they kind of, oh, that's not very polite to do that anymore.
03:27:33.160some of those guys have come out and turned out to be great people that we've
03:27:38.940built a lot of good things around. And it's, it's kind of a mixed bag.
03:27:42.140I 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
03:28:10.180that kind of got passed on by a certain element inside
03:28:14.020without reflection of how our faith is currently practiced.
03:28:19.600I think some of that is hand-me-down things
03:28:23.860from old timers in there that have done a lot of time.
03:28:27.960And I think it's developed its own personality
03:28:30.180that probably has a lot of very useful elements
03:28:36.120But I also think that the biggest thing, okay, I think there's a better way of answering the question.
03:28:50.960The 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.
03:29:15.400They are used to a world that has been very deliberately limited to them.
03:29:20.960So, their view in general is very small.
03:29:31.000And that becomes problematic when they're in a society where our view of ostrich is very big.
03:29:41.760We have members in 14 different countries all across the United States.
03:29:50.960We have this big, amazing, beautiful future that we're trying to build.
03:29:58.480It 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.
03:30:10.460And it sounds condescending or whatever coming from our perspective.
03:30:16.280Realistically, their gang is the thing that kept them alive, that kept them safe, that sustained their existence while they were incarcerated.
03:30:29.200You 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.
03:30:39.200A lot of them, you know, some of them, maybe that's not the case.
03:30:42.540But 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.
03:31:11.640and don't have those same experiences socializing and interacting in the world that's neither you
03:31:19.120know a feeling sorry for or not it's just a truth that we have to understand is true
03:31:25.660in how we help those people to approach the next you know the next chapter of their life
03:31:34.520um but yeah we've had people that their view of alsatru is a stage much earlier in our
03:31:47.220development in the modern sense to where a lot of us have grown past um a stage that's very limited to
03:31:54.760a kind of silly caricature of the viking age in a way that's not particularly healthy
03:32:09.640so the challenge to keep the good things that were learned from wisdom and shared experience
03:32:18.360while one was incarcerated and be able to marry those to the experiences shared with you from
03:32:25.760people who haven't come from that background and have come from, you know, a much more socialized
03:32:34.780and integrated background. Being able to merge the two and find a path of wisdom forward is a
03:32:42.140challenge for a lot of people. And it's one that, you know, quite honestly, most people fail.
03:32:46.540But it's one that myself and the other Gothar would really like to help people succeed at, and we try to.
03:32:54.040And 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.
03:33:06.180Svon, what has your experience been that way?
03:33:08.280um i think the recalibration after a life inside has a tendency to follow what i have just
03:33:18.820observed as two paths there's the go hard and the get by there are those that come into the faith
03:33:25.740and they go hard and it they learn it and it's very strong and it's very powerful and there's
03:33:31.520a lot of knowledge because of the time spent reading books and having the ability to kind
03:33:36.720of not be distracted by a lot of things um creates very strong minds and a lot of the the men and
03:33:44.520women but i'd be amiss to say women let's just focus on the truth is seems to be more of a men
03:33:52.760um that find out so true inside they are built with the uh a ferociousness of wanting to understand
03:34:00.900lore and picking it apart but they also come out and they they are they go hard in the in in uh
03:34:08.820outside they you know they believe big and again it can sometimes come off too as a caricature-ness
03:34:15.860of like a viking faith and that does have a tendency to be that draw of generations on the
03:34:23.300inside. I have witnessed some folks who go into the get by. They believe, but they want to not
03:34:31.860be noticed. They don't want to ruffle feathers. They don't want to get involved, and they want
03:34:38.100to just kind of do their own thing. They don't really even teach it to their kids unless the
03:34:43.460kids are expressing some sort of interest, and they really don't want to kind of connect to the
03:35:41.480and have done things and are doing things
03:35:44.180that you are now with them and a part of them and that that's where you need to go in order to again
03:35:49.620attain that that betterment for our people and so i think that's a really good thing that you point
03:35:55.940out the thing that i've noticed that seems to be a um a determining factor in success or failure
03:36:05.780there are people who are ex-cons and there's people who have done time in prison in the past
03:36:16.500and i say that i mean obviously those two things mean the same thing but
03:36:22.040the the subtle distinction is there are people who take on the mantle of being an ex-con and that
03:36:29.960is their identity that's all their points of reference that's what they look to that's how
03:36:35.420they see themselves so it's how they project to others they every story goes back to something
03:36:44.960that happened inside or some prison thing everything they relate to goes back to that
03:36:50.300or there's people that have done time and you may not know unless you know that person well
03:36:56.300and you've had that conversation because they don't define themselves by their incarceration
03:37:02.720They 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.
03:37:22.180The other thing is courage, and it gets displayed really differently.
03:37:26.160One thing that I've learned in my time at House of Truth is some, it is very, we all struggle with courage.
03:37:40.180And 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.
03:37:58.440Or when that same courage situation comes from a guy who's been locked up through most of his formative years.
03:38:04.880there's a similar struggle that they have and it displays really different when they interact with
03:38:11.740the community sometimes some of the most scared people that i've seen have been the ones that
03:38:20.120would outwardly you know most of us would think they were the most you know hard ex-con dudes
03:38:26.940that have seen all this stuff that are super hard they know that there's a difference in their
03:38:34.020experience between that and the rest of us they know that they're the outsider coming in
03:38:40.980to a situation they're unfamiliar with and very often they're really scared of that interaction
03:38:47.380they're not used to interacting with families and with with older women with women that who are
03:38:54.420their contemporaries with kids with with things and it's daunting and scary it's scary in the
03:39:03.620same way it is to with you know incel kids who spend time at home it just displays really
03:39:09.540different and it looks different but it's something that you know we all struggle to get
03:39:16.260past and that we can help each other to get past but yeah certainly we've we've seen that and it's
03:39:23.620one of the reasons that it's prison ministry has been important to me and i have done a little bit
03:39:32.020of it and we look for ways to do more of it in a meaningful way is we would like to provide a
03:39:37.060pathway for folks that want to build a better life once they get out to have people here to
03:39:44.740to help with that pathway to help build that to help draw strength from and a community for them
03:39:51.220to be a part of if they're committed to to building something better and um we're in that
03:39:57.860process and it's slow going but we've made more progress uh lately i feel than we've ever had
03:40:02.820before um our next question and this one's going to be primarily for you svan uh gentlemen enjoying
03:40:12.500the stream what's the source for nisa slash tomta information can we set the record straight and get
03:40:20.980some facts ps mcnellen statues are glorious in all caps and they absolutely are i'm glad you
03:40:30.100appreciate that they're way better than i could have even imagined i'm i'm i am blown away by how
03:40:37.220well they turned out so that's awesome uh they truly deserve the honor it's fun what is our
03:40:42.980source information for the nisa slash tomta and uh set the record straight lay down some facts for
03:40:50.340folks. Okay. Let's just talk about the usage of the word in relation to beings of the home and
03:41:03.680the land. So the idea of a land vetir or land white, a spirit of the land. And this, you know,
03:41:13.880kind of got a lot of popularity in the romanticization of nordic culture in the uh late
03:41:21.4001800s and 1800s and a lot of uh accumulative folklore kind of became in print and that's where
03:41:30.120a lot of this kind of the knowledge or the the imagery really came into being and this happened
03:41:35.480a lot all over europe the idea of of say for instance um you know the christmas carol and
03:41:40.920and the and the the ghosts of christmas and the first one having like a complete almost identical
03:41:47.560overlay to father christmas amongst the the english and their their uh celebration of the
03:41:53.720the yuletide character that is disseminating festivities or gifts or what have you um whereas
03:42:01.720the usage of the word like say nisi or tomta could also apply to just a spirit of the house or the
03:42:09.880land not necessarily in yule only and so the way that i kind of viewed it is if you're looking at
03:42:20.840denmark and and the islands that's where the the use of the word um nisi kind of comes about and
03:42:29.720because they kind of directly connect with norway the use of nisi would be more of like a western
03:42:35.720usage and then an eastern nordic usage and i'm talking about they are sweden svidjod and finland
03:42:45.560uh use the word tomta or tonto as a kind of meaning and it it could have kind of the same
03:42:54.040connotations with the english word like brownie or um a bogey or a kind of a folklore essence of
03:43:02.440like a goblin or a um i know that a lot of people i actually in a previous vns talked about the word
03:43:10.280of the use of the name gnome actually coming from france and it's an alchemical term for a kind of
03:43:17.480spirit of the material um but it the best way to to clarify it is the the nisi is western nordic
03:43:28.120and the tonta is eastern nordic and they're both kind of names for spirits of the land um and they
03:43:37.320often by the 18th century late 1800s and early 1900s they took on an image of of what we would
03:43:43.640consider like a gnome in our culture kind of an older little man with with a red hat um and again
03:43:51.000there's a lot to do with the red hat and the idea of um you know power of the mind um i know
03:43:57.880know that edward thorson had uh in his earlier books proposed the idea that the color red upon
03:44:03.220the head is a sign of um advanced perhaps knowledge or lore and that the usage of the color red in
03:44:10.720relation to power and might um i don't know if that that has tangible connections or perhaps
03:44:17.880there's things being connected but um you know the the usage of those words like in iceland
03:44:26.140almost completely gone away. And, uh, the, the predominance of hoodlfolk, the hidden people
03:44:33.360are oftentimes more utilized than even the word land or land white. Um, but it all boils down to
03:44:42.440kind of spirits of the land. And that also causes more confusion when we use the word
03:44:47.860alf or alvar or elf um and you know anglo-saxons had it in the name of like alfred to be counseled
03:44:56.380by the elves um and so on the it it causes even more confusion as being a being connected to the
03:45:04.260land that's not quite a human and not quite a god um and so that is where i think the yule character
03:45:12.920lives and exists is in that middle realm and oftentimes is pointed towards an intent whether
03:45:22.360that intent is treating the land well or treating your livestock well treating your home well uh or
03:45:29.320respecting certain things or uh really like in the anglosphere it was about the spirit of giving if
03:45:37.040you will so treating each other well so there's always kind of this connection between this
03:45:43.340these spirits as being connected towards the wellness or the respectability of an either an
03:45:49.000ideal or a location or uh the land around a specific location and that's like the really
03:45:56.860broad definition of those but the yeah west east not even really used in iceland and um and then
03:46:04.480And 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.
03:46:34.480and things of that nature so i hope that best explains it is a west and east
03:46:44.480all right well that's going to bring our discussion for tonight to a close
03:46:51.120uh svan has agreed to join us again next week as we are going to do both a reading
03:46:59.920and an analysis of the edict poem the values bow and uh i'm looking forward to that i know we've
03:47:08.240had requests for that and we're going to work through some of that material and uh swan is
03:47:13.360the perfect guy to have one to do that with me one of my favorites um thank you guys so much
03:47:19.920for joining us tonight i am happy to share everything that we've shared this evening
03:47:28.960and I am looking forward to an amazing 2024 with you guys.