Asatru Folk Assembly - 2⧸15⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 32 - Perseverance

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

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

00:03:00.000 hello and thank you all for joining us tonight um tonight we are talking about our ninth of our

00:03:22.800 original nine noble virtues the virtue of perseverance and for that we have making

00:03:29.200 his second appearance on victory never sleeps good friend of mine folk builder jason gallagher

00:03:34.800 welcome jason it's good to have you on tonight good to be back thank you i'm honored thank you

00:03:40.160 um before we start off i apologize guys i missed you last week um since last we talked

00:03:48.880 uh my family and i first family trip we've been on in a very long time went down to florida for

00:03:54.560 charming the cloud and york's off event was great there's some really good things but

00:04:00.640 prior to the event we thought it would be a good idea to stop and get some lunch at a uh

00:04:06.720 sushi and asian slash soul food buffet in rural florida and in retrospect it was poor choice

00:04:16.640 i caught some kind of stomach bug and it it took me down hard on that saturday and it kind of

00:04:21.520 worked its way through the house and i think we were finishing up the last of it last week so uh

00:04:25.600 brandy filled in for me and i appreciate that um business at the top of the show uh please

00:04:35.040 join us on any of the platforms that we are on we are on uh right now we are on twitter youtube

00:04:44.320 entropy um odyssey and vk running live uh we also have replay um replay videos at any time

00:04:56.320 on rumble and bit shoot and every friday this is released as a podcast on spotify

00:05:03.440 if you guys want to join us tonight on entropy um it's really kind of a cool platform but it's not

00:05:09.360 use nearly as not uh you did it's not used nearly as much as i feel like it ought to be it's kind

00:05:16.720 of cool it's also the place you can go if you want to give us any uh any tips or if you guys

00:05:21.360 want to participate in any kind of super chat um if you do that we'll uh get your get your question

00:05:26.960 answered directly and you can skip the line also you know we we appreciate any kind of contributions

00:05:32.800 and then go towards the projects that the afa is currently doing uh speaking on those projects a

00:05:39.760 little bit right now we are focused on on two big things we are focused on sigerheim that we are

00:05:49.680 trying to get our first uh first people moved out to and get started on doing some projects at

00:05:56.480 we got a big mortgage on that we're looking to pay off before we we take on any more debt for it

00:06:01.920 so the link to donate for that if you're interested is up now and also uh we're trying to

00:06:08.880 establish phrasehoff that's our hoff that's going to be in eastern ohio we're very excited about it

00:06:17.600 we've got a couple of things we got to do before we can make moves on that um first off we've got

00:06:23.680 to pay off and york's off and we're getting really making a lot of progress on that i think we're at

00:06:28.720 uh 41 point something as far as the payoff so far and we haven't figured out to where

00:06:40.400 check here yeah i think 41.41 i think we had it figured out to where

00:06:48.560 if every member of the afa were to donate 147 dollars today we would be able to pay that all

00:06:54.960 the way off free and clear and start figuring out on phrase off but i appreciate everybody who's been

00:07:00.960 generous you guys are awesome the other point of business i want to get to before we get started

00:07:05.040 here is i want to encourage everybody who would like to who's able to whether you're geographically

00:07:11.440 close or not to come out to our ostara celebration uh nick will throw up the dates for those it's

00:07:17.440 It's coming up beginning of next month at Thorshoff, and that's in Linden, North Carolina.

00:07:24.460 Those guys always host an amazing event.

00:07:27.280 Thorshoff is always a very, very special one to me.

00:07:29.460 That was the first Hoff that was done under my administration and put a lot into that place.

00:07:38.340 They put a lot of love into that, to making it amazing.

00:07:42.480 It's a beautiful spot on beautiful property with some of our very, very best people.

00:07:46.840 I look forward to seeing you guys all there if you're able to. That being said, so I guess before we kick it off, perseverance isn't a complicated word.

00:08:04.840 word. As far as looking it up and etymologically, it basically means to persist in a task or to

00:08:12.900 persist in an endeavor through adversity or through times of difficulty. And it sounds very,

00:08:21.140 very simple, but it is one of the major keys to accomplishing anything worthwhile. And it's great

00:08:28.760 we have jason on he was you know acclaimed by his peers as the the guy that most exemplifies this

00:08:36.680 and jason's been around for a long time put in a lot of years investing in building something and

00:08:42.200 making something work and uh that's that's the reason we have a hoff in in minnesota so welcome

00:08:48.760 jason can you tell us a little bit about what perseverance means to you as it relates to your

00:08:54.440 afa experience perseverance to me means overcoming an obstacle like like in my case i i live with

00:09:02.920 really severe chronic pain and it's very difficult for me to get out of the house sometimes so

00:09:08.520 for me to keep pushing forward to never give it up i mean i could easily just grab some cheetos

00:09:14.200 go sit in the basement grab my laptop and just be done with it right but instead i chose to

00:09:19.960 to push past all that and it's not easy by any means it's difficult but perseverance is getting

00:09:26.360 through all the the bad things the difficulties that are in your way and moving forward and

00:09:33.000 accomplishing things no matter what you it may look like it'll never happen like i can remember

00:09:37.880 years ago thinking that i would never even get out to odin's hop when we only had that one hop

00:09:42.600 you know i thought i'm never going to get out of the house probably with my condition and

00:09:45.720 and been there three times, and then I was able to build great things

00:09:49.780 in Minnesota with all our folk and all the different things.

00:09:53.340 So, in theory, when you're sitting there, it looks like it's impossible,

00:09:58.080 but you don't know until you try, and it takes a lot of mental energy

00:10:02.960 for me to push past that, too.

00:10:05.500 I mean, pain is bad physically, but it's a mental game, too, basically.

00:10:11.060 You know, that's one thing that stands out when I first met you

00:10:14.400 at odenshoff and you were being recommended for full building you you weren't even sure if you'd

00:10:20.480 be able to get out of the house by the end of that year um your your future as far as your health went

00:10:27.440 was was very uncertain and i know that that's been a huge thing to overcome and that was you know what

00:10:35.200 six and a half years ago now yeah seven yep yeah and you're uh still going strong and

00:10:42.000 making great things happen there um but see that's the thing so you've you know you've certainly

00:10:49.280 persevered a lot when it comes to you know your own health and and overcoming those challenges but

00:10:57.360 beyond just that you know you've you've ridden all the the waves of enthusiasm and slacking

00:11:04.240 and ups and downs and membership turnover and everything in your region and it you know it's

00:11:10.240 been pretty steady lately but that wasn't always the case there's been some pretty pretty big highs

00:11:14.640 and some lows there and you've you've weathered the storm and uh and seen it through and that's

00:11:20.720 that's really something admirable to everybody um could you give just so folks understand could

00:11:27.680 you give people a little bit of perspective of how uh your it's gonna say minnesota but it's

00:11:37.920 really a little bit broader than that how uh i guess current northern baldershoff district has

00:11:44.800 gone in your time as as a folk builder from then until now well like you said it started out you

00:11:53.120 know i joined the afa in march of 2011 so 12 years almost 12 years i'm gonna can i have a badge and

00:12:00.320 wear that and have a shirt i'll have melissa make a shirt but there you go anyways um when i first

00:12:05.280 came on there was only like three or four members of minnesota and they were scattered and nobody

00:12:12.080 wanted to talk to anybody really to get together there wasn't a folk builder there was when i first

00:12:17.120 came on and then she left for personal reasons and then it would still be like another year or

00:12:22.080 two before we got the north dakota folk builder i'm not mentioning any names but that was in the

00:12:27.200 past we had somebody in a group there and she had came on and he had asked me the first question he

00:12:33.680 asked me was what is um asitru like over in your neck of the woods you want to know what it was

00:12:38.800 like and i explained we had a uni kindred and there just wasn't much going on so as time went

00:12:44.240 on i i worked with him a little bit and then we had the very first fall fest right after you took

00:12:49.440 over you know in 2016 we had that first fall fest and that's really when minnesota started to take

00:12:56.320 off you know i'd only been at folk building for about a month and i met you and mandy for the

00:13:00.480 first time and we um started getting a base so to speak that's about a month or two after that i um

00:13:08.960 got together with some people we formed the northern blood kindred and then we started

00:13:12.880 doing the events at my house or whatever which was um winter nights and at that time it was still

00:13:18.480 small and as time went on you know we would do more and more events you know two three events

00:13:22.640 a month and it just kept snowballing as other areas people see that there are events going on

00:13:27.040 and they want to come out and before you know it we have all these people and you know

00:13:33.040 the rest is history really i mean well we got a um super chat question coming in from sarah for

00:13:40.800 ten dollars thank you so much sarah we appreciate it uh jason can you share with us where your

00:13:47.120 amazing level of awesomeness comes from you always go above and beyond for our folk like this last

00:13:53.120 weekend you did a very special thing for a young man's birthday that was pretty great and uniquely

00:13:58.000 you um it's the people i'm surrounded by i have the greatest people ever around me i won't be

00:14:06.080 able to accomplish anything without the people the support i mean i couldn't tell you how many times

00:14:11.840 that i've needed the support where i've had a rough day or i was feeling discouraged i have

00:14:17.520 people around me all the time people that are watching out for me and whatever and yeah um our

00:14:23.840 our folk builder our newest apprentice folk builder down in missouri jordan how do you

00:14:29.200 pronounce last name is it welch welch sorry i apologize i i heard nick saying i had earlier and

00:14:34.960 i heard it was different than what i thought it was but um she um had a son that was turning four

00:14:40.480 and she asked if somebody in the balder top district would be willing to put on a spiderman

00:14:45.200 costume and you know of course i i'm gonna jump around to do that of course i am you know so she

00:14:53.280 asked me to do that and i i the the smile on his face just is amazing to for me to be able to do

00:15:00.320 that that was such a treat that was that was a neat i'm i might have to turn that into a new

00:15:04.960 thing i have to run around the hospitals for cancer patients i don't know start running around

00:15:09.680 the hops that that really was it was an amazing thing and i'm glad that i was able to be part of

00:15:15.760 his day his special day that's awesome um yeah our our afa family is pretty great the fact that

00:15:28.080 it distance is often a challenge and it's still a a thing for for us to overcome and it's getting

00:15:35.840 better every day. We have a lot more people closer together. But the fact that, you know,

00:15:41.400 the person you mentioned, she's down in Missouri. And the fact that you've got AFA family around the

00:15:50.200 country that, you know, gets involved in a little kid's fourth birthday party is really kind of a

00:15:55.180 cool thing. And it's great to hear that so many people have supported you. That's one of the keys

00:16:00.680 to perseverance as a virtue it is made so much easier when you have a support system of people

00:16:08.760 that help um help buoy you through the times that are that are frustrating i know that was always

00:16:16.360 the case with me before i was the ulcerer goethe and you know before i was folk builder coordinator

00:16:21.320 or anything else i was a folk builder in alaska and it was really you know we'd have some really

00:16:26.760 good times we'd have a lot of a lot of dead times a lot of times for it seemed like nobody local he

00:16:32.040 was very interested or things just weren't happening in my area and what was always such a um

00:16:41.080 such a cool thing to help with that perseverance was our our old uh the voice which was the

00:16:48.840 newsletter that predated our current runestone and you could see around the country and

00:16:56.760 We had some members in Denmark at the time, but not a lot of international activity.

00:17:01.500 But around the country, you could see all these other people and what they were doing.

00:17:05.200 You could share in their success.

00:17:06.960 So even if it was kind of a famine in your area, as far as Ausatru stuff, you could see

00:17:13.380 other people succeed and you could be, you know, you could float through on being happy

00:17:20.080 for them and waiting until things happened in your area too.

00:17:23.280 And that always really helped me.

00:17:25.060 And I've always tried to encourage our folk builders to do that.

00:17:27.620 And we're so lucky we have so many pictures these days, but it's so encouraging all the time to see every weekend the amazing stuff we got going on.

00:17:36.020 So even if it's not happening in your specific spot, you know, that month, you're able to share in the in the celebration and the zeal of people across the country and around the world at this point.

00:17:47.460 So that's really cool.

00:17:48.280 Um, you know, there's more perseverance stuff I want to talk to, but I'd like to get to

00:17:57.820 a couple of first questions we have here. Um, so a little bit, you touched on this earlier,

00:18:06.400 Jason, but Nick asks, how's Fallfest slash Freyfaxi been built up and grown to what it is

00:18:14.900 in minnesota so can you talk a little bit about how how that events i guess evolved over the years

00:18:23.700 yeah i um i i think it's um really especially with the hop now you know being able to do it at

00:18:31.140 the hop it's um changed a lot more family oriented i mean we we always did have some a lot of kids

00:18:37.700 and families but it seems to be more towards that when we left that that camp model you know before

00:18:43.540 we were at state parks and we were at group camps and stuff and i i think it's it has more of a

00:18:48.980 holy feeling when we're at a hop and stuff and i it's grown quite a bit last year of course this

00:18:55.460 last um fall fest was kind of low numbers a lot of people canceled they were sick and different

00:19:00.020 things but our other fall fests before that they were usually growing the numbers i mean

00:19:04.500 i think the first one at ballershop that was like i counted like 84 with kids i think i think it was

00:19:10.020 like 84 was with 12 kids whatever so that was that was pretty big but yeah we've um i think the the

00:19:18.740 people have changed quite a bit too i mean we still have a few of the the base people that were

00:19:23.300 there from the very beginning you know from like 100 and people that come out but there's a lot of

00:19:27.860 more people that are coming from different areas now and i'm sure the hop has something to do with

00:19:32.100 that like last year i know we have people from different states a lot more from some of the

00:19:37.460 neighboring states than we would before you know in the past i think a lot of it was

00:19:41.380 you know our our minnesota our north dakota and then you know we had other people come from like

00:19:45.940 california and different things and some other places but it seemed to be more our clustered

00:19:51.700 area or whatever our core group and now i think it's it's changed up quite a bit and whatever

00:19:56.980 since since what it was or whatever it's in a different part of the state now too of course

00:20:01.460 you know before it was way up north up north as they say in minnesota you know it's straight west

00:20:08.020 or whatever so i i think i think that's i mean what have you noticed since oh it

00:20:18.340 so it's funny because whenever we talk about this kind of thing we talk about

00:20:23.300 how great things are now compared to what they used to be as if what they used to be was you

00:20:29.380 know sucked it was great the first fall fest was amazing and i loved every bit of it it's cool to

00:20:34.500 see how it's changed and it's gotten so much better but it's you know it's always been been

00:20:41.220 really special i remember our first event up there and you know in we had never done anything in that

00:20:47.540 part of part of the country what first we barely had members up there and uh hosting a big event

00:20:54.260 like that was something that you know out again there was a there was a time um when i first

00:20:59.220 joined it was just just um midsummer in uh in california and then in 20

00:21:13.700 2011 i think oh you could be wrong on my number we did uh winter nights over in

00:21:19.700 in uh in pennsylvania but those were like the only national gatherings we'd done so fall fest was a

00:21:26.980 was a real big deal to do something in that part of the country as a national event like that

00:21:31.460 i remember the first one we were at was at an old lady like an old lady sewing retreat house

00:21:38.740 you know set up for old ladies to do arts and crafts and like beating and and sewing and stuff

00:21:44.180 which is cool don't get me wrong but it was kind of a you know an interesting thing and pluses and 0.99

00:21:49.300 minuses with that because it was just a really strangely built uh big house with a whole bunch

00:21:55.620 of beds scattered through it it meant that we got a lot of closeness a lot of time to just

00:22:00.180 hang out with each other and really feel feel connected that way and that was really cool

00:22:05.780 um we got to watch how that's gone and we've done it at uh at state parks there that have

00:22:10.500 been really nice but bringing it home to uh to baldersoff has been such a huge evolution of it

00:22:17.380 and uh yeah there's been tons of ups and downs and membership turn uh turnover and

00:22:26.820 folks that left for one reason or another and a lot of those folks that have come back for

00:22:30.900 for one reason or another and figured out whatever was going on in their life so

00:22:35.220 it's it's been a really a really neat things thing to watch one thing i think is

00:22:40.900 is really something that I've learned in my time in the AFA is the haters and the folks that want

00:22:51.540 to complain about stuff, they tend to fade away. They come in, they'll go strong, they'll make a

00:22:58.000 lot of noise, and they just kind of disappear. Persevering through those things where a lot of

00:23:04.040 people would change course or, you know, back down or, or lose heart persevering through those

00:23:11.320 things. Slow and steady wins the race. It really, really does stay in the course through adversity

00:23:17.000 has always worked very, very well for us. And, uh, you know, we see that a lot with the,

00:23:23.140 the whole Baldur's off saga. There was, you know, the left got ahold of it and through

00:23:29.680 lies and media manipulation really made it sound like something ugly and terrible, but us staying

00:23:36.660 the course and being who we are, it's really won over the whole community there. It's turned

00:23:42.740 something that was very negatively disposed to something to where folks love us there. And it

00:23:48.400 was really cool to watch that over the years. King of Cheese, Matt, Jason, it's great to see

00:23:58.700 you both on how are y'all doing tonight how are you doing tonight jason doing awesome doing it

00:24:03.880 awesome because i'm back on the show with my folk yeah it's always the same answer for me tony i'm

00:24:12.120 doing really good um looking forward to these i really wanted to do it last week but uh family

00:24:19.220 was sick and we had to deal with that um so i'm excited to be back because it you know i took a

00:24:23.720 week off. So it's, it's great to be back and talking with you guys this evening.

00:24:30.240 Sarah asks, Hey, Jason, what is that cool metal you are wearing?

00:24:39.920 This is my 2017 folk builder of the year award. And I would wear this every day too,

00:24:48.440 if I couldn't, maybe, maybe I'll find a way to do that. This is pretty awesome. Like I said,

00:24:51.780 last time i um haven't won a lot of medals really and and this is one of the most important medals

00:24:56.900 anyways that i've worn in service of my folk i i never expected to be a folk builder it was

00:25:05.140 something that just kind of came out of nowhere so this is pretty awesome for me this is one of

00:25:10.580 those things that you never expected to do and it was meant to be i guess you know well you know

00:25:16.580 that's how it happens a lot. Another thing I've seen over the course of being involved in the

00:25:26.440 AFA is the people that you see from the outset that maybe are naturally the best inclined to

00:25:33.920 do something. If their heart's not in it, those people tend to fade away and often underwhelm.

00:25:42.940 And sometimes the folks that find something to be a struggle or not naturally inclined to feel like they're, you know, the best fit for it, but they they go out, swing for the fences and are all heart.

00:25:54.180 Those are the people that have built this and made it so very, very successful.

00:25:57.980 And, you know, I felt that way myself at times to where I think there's a lot of people that might be, you know, inherently better at some of the things that I have to do as, as I was here, you're, you know, wired better for it on paper, but man, I love it with my whole heart and I try my very best every day.

00:26:20.580 And I think that carries a lot. And I know, you know, going through everything that you've gone through, you've killed it since day one.

00:26:30.840 When you started folk building, you came in so strong and that's kept up.

00:26:38.320 You know, it's kept up to win you the medal there, but it's kept up ever since, too.

00:26:42.100 um i can't i can think of very very few people in the afa who are you know in your realm as far as

00:26:50.260 dedication to this that we do and it's really appreciated and everybody can see it but uh it

00:26:54.720 as i recall that year it wasn't even a challenge like you you so far outpaced your colleagues with

00:27:00.860 just how much heart you threw at this that it was you know you would have been robbed if we

00:27:05.640 giving it to anybody else well i'm very honored this is this is awesome and we like i said people

00:27:12.520 were so hungry it's like when are we going to do this next event what are we going to do this

00:27:16.920 that hey you want to do this you want to do that i mean we just couldn't i mean that's some something

00:27:22.600 when you come in somewhere where there's something missing and you fill that void and everyone just

00:27:27.400 comes if they want to be part of it so very lucky so uncle krampus asks jason how much

00:27:35.560 has your dedication to our folk motivated you to overcome your personal obstacles?

00:27:43.880 A lot, actually. There are things that, like I said, that I never thought I would end up doing.

00:27:50.560 You know, sometimes the pain is so bad, I thought I would have just gave up many times and just

00:27:56.120 laid down, so to speak. And the folk are what drive me. The folk is what gets me out of bed.

00:28:02.800 There are times when I'm hurt so bad that I think about them and the motivation that it gives me and whatever.

00:28:10.860 So without them, I really think I probably would have, I don't know, gave up, gave up.

00:28:16.200 But there was a time before I have two implants for pain.

00:28:21.780 I have a fentanyl and I have a neural stimulator.

00:28:24.480 And before that, I was pretty much bedridden.

00:28:27.680 I didn't think I was ever going to go any further.

00:28:29.820 So it's like you build on top of things.

00:28:32.080 You know, I got those and I was able to go a little further.

00:28:35.020 I was able to get some other medicine and push me a little further to get going and to have that drive with the support and all that.

00:28:41.600 That was what keeps me going, so to speak.

00:28:45.820 I mean, it's just one thing after another.

00:28:47.780 And last year, I had some major done.

00:28:51.340 It's been a year as of yesterday.

00:28:53.520 I had all my teeth pulled.

00:28:54.980 I had this thing going on.

00:28:56.000 I had that pulled.

00:28:57.520 So that was another thing where initially I thought, what am I going to do?

00:29:01.520 Go and hide?

00:29:02.260 I'm not going to go run around like this, you know.

00:29:04.000 But here I am.

00:29:05.880 And so you tell me I can't run around and do events and whatever.

00:29:09.900 I mean, I have slowed down a little bit.

00:29:11.660 But that's why I talk a little funny.

00:29:13.480 But I'm still going.

00:29:15.620 I'm still moving.

00:29:16.440 I can't keep me down. 0.92

00:29:18.840 Well, and you're from Minnesota is another reason you talk a little funny.

00:29:22.620 Well, that might be that, too.

00:29:24.360 I mean, we do go up north and we do palm the crowdies. 0.99

00:29:27.520 Crap. That's something else that's really cool about the AFA, and I'm really lucky I get to 0.96

00:29:36.180 experience is going to all these different parts of the country and around the world for different

00:29:40.520 AFA events. You get to hear so many different, you know, local accents and stuff, and it's really

00:29:45.280 cool. I've really been able to see a lot and experience a lot here in the AFA, and it's

00:29:51.240 it's really neat uh we have a question from jamie uh i have a question are there any afm

00:29:57.960 uh austro true folk members in other countries like sweden germany australia and even russia

00:30:05.320 so yeah we have members in 14 different countries right now so we've got really

00:30:15.080 it's a really good representation internationally that's not necessarily the case i would love to

00:30:19.640 have have more international members um we've got folks in canada united kingdom

00:30:28.840 we've got folks in france we actually have a folk builder in france we have folk in italy

00:30:38.760 the netherlands denmark norway sweden we have a folk builder in sweden also and he's

00:30:46.680 right up he's pretty far up north in sweden right up close to the finnish border

00:30:52.200 we got folks in south africa and we have a folk builder in south africa

00:30:57.880 we've got people in australia and new zealand as well so we do have quite a few international

00:31:05.080 people and we're always looking for ways to shore that up and help support people in you know our

00:31:12.440 widespread international afa community because those people are very often spread further apart

00:31:17.240 than we'd like so we'd love to see some of that cluster up and get get some real good activity in

00:31:21.320 some of those places i actually did uh you mentioned russia i did a interview with some

00:31:29.320 russian folks that we encountered on vk that are uh also sure are practicing in the in the moscow

00:31:35.640 area and i'm looking forward to when that comes out and communicating with those guys a little

00:31:39.880 bit more but they sounded great and they were very encouraged and very excited by all the things we

00:31:44.760 have going on over here daniel young asks how much has humor uh humor played a role in your ability

00:31:56.120 to push through difficult times your sense of humor is top-notch jason uh humor is everything

00:32:03.160 actually yeah like i i always say you know the old um laughter is the best medicine there is

00:32:13.560 you know joking around and stuff and when i heard a lot when i'm by myself

00:32:18.200 if i turn on something funny and cracks me up it's it's amazing how laughing kind of

00:32:23.320 turns into like medicine and stuff so um when we do events and around the people especially at

00:32:28.680 at Baldur's Hop we're all a bunch of smart asses like here in Minnesota that's all we do is run

00:32:33.260 around I used to live in a town in Minnesota it was called Lee Sewer and I swear that whole town 0.89

00:32:38.720 was full of smart asses and I felt like I was going to work I was get paid to hang out with

00:32:44.680 my friends because it was so much fun and that that's that's what it's like we're always joking 0.59

00:32:48.940 around we're always having a good time and just um people in general around the area are great

00:32:55.160 to it in the community like when we do the food drive and different things a lot of the locals

00:32:59.560 have a good sense of humors too i don't know i think it's that good scandinavian you know i i

00:33:04.280 think you have to do that and there's just a lot of stuff to laugh at too so i mean

00:33:13.480 well i was thinking you know yes absolutely anybody that knows you is just

00:33:19.160 very much appreciate your sense of humor um you're a lot of fun you always have been and and it's

00:33:27.960 i'm sure that it helps get you through rough times but it it absolutely just keeps keeps

00:33:33.240 the morale so high for the folks in your orbit there um one our last question i should have

00:33:39.240 mentioned uh when he asked about the international membership we've actually had uh members of afa

00:33:46.360 leadership go to two different international gatherings of our afa members and that was

00:33:56.120 that was really cool i've been very fortunate i was able to be on both of those trips one time

00:34:00.120 was in i believe 2014 in denmark and then we also had an event in 20 i want to say 2018

00:34:11.240 in uh in sweden and both of those were amazing we got to meet uh meet some of our members in

00:34:17.000 different parts of the world it was really really special both those times but yeah we absolutely do

00:34:22.040 have a lot of international stuff going on and we hope to have more um

00:34:29.320 heathen hammer are there multiple hoffs within a given district or is it mainly one per district

00:34:35.720 um the districts are built around the hoffs so we're that's why they you know our districts

00:34:42.200 are named after our hoffs right now there's one per district you know i'm very excited and one

00:34:48.760 of these days we'll have you know so many hoffs everywhere that we might have multiple hoffs in

00:34:53.880 a district and maybe one flagship hoff for the district it depends on how that all gets broken up

00:35:00.440 but at present we have odenshoff district which one hoff and that takes care of at present

00:35:12.280 someone will look here and you know reading off all of the states would be tedious but basically

00:35:17.160 the entire west coast uh with alaska um hawaii australia and new zealand and you know any of

00:35:26.600 the folks sometimes we have people who are stationed in japan they're also part of um

00:35:31.400 odenshoff district and it goes over to like the line is montana wyoming colorado and new mexico

00:35:40.680 so that whole chunk of the united states is all odenshoff thor's hof is a little bit different

00:35:49.480 it's um all of europe at present uh runs down everything down the east coast of the united

00:35:57.960 states through the carolinas over through tennessee kentucky um indiana and michigan

00:36:07.000 and kind of cuts out that that chunk there is all thorshoff and again that's just got the one hoff

00:36:12.920 baldur's hoff is that middle section everything north uh kansas missouri illinois and up there um

00:36:24.040 also including oh also including that central portion of canada and uh again that just has

00:36:33.880 baldur's off mostly what we're talking about tonight that's baldur's hoff that's in wilmer

00:36:37.720 minnesota um and then our newest hoff district mjords hoff district and that's everything

00:36:46.760 uh texas oklahoma all the deep south kansas pretty much everything uh in the deep south

00:36:57.560 except for the carolinas and then down into our south american and our south african folk

00:37:03.560 so right now we've got the four hoffs and the four hoff districts but that will change as soon as we

00:37:11.320 uh get phrasehoff that i was talking about earlier in the broadcast we will be splitting most of

00:37:17.720 that's going to come out of the uh northern portion of the thorshoff district so we'll

00:37:23.800 look forward to you know shifting that around and in getting that a little bit more centralized

00:37:31.320 around those hoffs when we have that next one um cliff asks jason what does the kid so jason's

00:37:39.640 kindred coordinator for the anyway jason what does the kindred coordinator do and how have

00:37:45.240 afa kindred changed through the years that you have done that job um well a lot of the

00:37:54.680 stuff that i do as a kindred coordinator um besides i'm working with the kindred we already

00:38:00.920 have is setting up new probationary kindreds working with people that are interested and

00:38:06.040 getting them set up helping them come up with the name and um i have the art lady that helps me to

00:38:11.960 afa art lady madison east she's my my secret source that helps me out and um we we help them

00:38:19.960 get established and work with them so they understand what it's all about and whatever

00:38:23.880 what's expected of the program and i also um help um coordinate with events and stuff and

00:38:30.440 different things and there's a lot more that goes on too um and they they've changed quite a bit i

00:38:36.520 mean the number of kindreds that we've had since i came on i came on that yule time 2018 there was

00:38:42.840 a couple other people before me that ran the program but um i i think um we've always stayed

00:38:48.120 probably the the low to mid um 20s or whatever and kindreds and i've seen a lot a lot more

00:38:56.840 change in the quality i think you know um a while back matt and cliff you guys when we came up with

00:39:04.600 the idea to put in a six-month probationary period instead of just um bringing people on we were

00:39:10.680 having some issues um some bad ones came on or certain things came on and whatever so by by

00:39:17.240 having this probationary period we're able to work with them more and they understand so they don't

00:39:22.600 just come on and well i thought it was this or that you know a lot less problems and whatever

00:39:26.840 but trying to push more of the family type thing and that's one thing that i've always tried to

00:39:33.400 push is more than just it's a group of guys or people hanging out just once a month or whatever

00:39:39.800 it's actually like a family unit that get together and they are representatives of the afa that

00:39:46.360 form events and different things and get together with other members and stuff so

00:39:50.120 So I think that's very important that we have those local groups because, like you said, it seems like every weekend down there, there's an event going on.

00:39:58.840 And when you look at those things that you post, a lot of times those are individual kindreds that are hosting those stuff.

00:40:04.660 So they're the workhorse of the AFA, as I say, besides, you know, the other leadership we have.

00:40:10.740 You know, we have the Pope Builders and the Goathar and the Wittnor, but these guys are non-leadership and they represent us and do different things.

00:40:18.680 So I'm very honored to be part of this, helping out.

00:40:26.420 So a couple of things, just as kind of a note, I was just looking at it.

00:40:33.560 Now, this isn't 100% yet.

00:40:35.320 I'm trying to get all our people to be 100% at it, and it's getting a lot better.

00:40:39.160 But I always ask our folk builders or whoever's hosting an event for the AFA to always have pictures of it,

00:40:47.420 always post those pictures because they're so encouraging and just this year so far and we're

00:40:54.300 you know halfway through february i just looked at our little picture album of of events that

00:41:00.300 have happened in the afa and we're at 58 and we're only you know month and a half in and that's again

00:41:07.340 not everybody that's just what the people who've you know had the presence of mind to take and

00:41:11.580 share their pictures so that's really encouraging that's you know not only is that more than one

00:41:17.180 per weekend that's more than one per day on uh you know on average and yet clusters on the weekends

00:41:23.900 but there's really a tremendous amount of activity and it's it's really special to be able to watch

00:41:28.620 that other thing that jason mentioned that i think is important is that idea of that probationary

00:41:35.420 period in the in the turnover and stuff that works and stuff that doesn't i'm not i'm not

00:41:41.260 going to claim we're at perfection on this yet but i think we're getting a lot better at it

00:41:45.260 But we have this, when people join the AFA, very often they join so very excited and so

00:41:53.780 very enthused.

00:41:55.300 And we want to find the right balance of them knowing what they're getting into before they

00:42:01.100 take on important commitments, but also to where they can jump right in and get involved

00:42:07.000 and feel like they're accomplishing and they're doing stuff while they're still zealous and

00:42:12.060 on fire for our faith and excited about the AFA and getting on board. We don't ever want that

00:42:17.000 initial enthusiasm to dim. We want to keep that momentum high. So it's kind of a balance on

00:42:24.440 figuring that out. And I think that as far as forming kindreds goes, that six-month process

00:42:31.040 has really been helpful for that. Sarah asks from, oh, she's sharing the question that we're

00:42:41.980 getting from VK, what should the folk do to take back the 14th of February from the corrupt

00:42:50.000 Valentine's Day and rather valleys bloat son of Odin? So that's interesting. It's something that

00:42:58.380 we've been talking about. I was going to say a lot lately, and I wouldn't say so much. We had

00:43:05.960 a couple of questions about that a couple of weeks ago with February coming up. And internally,

00:43:10.740 when we're discussing the god valley um this this came up early on in alsatru there was

00:43:20.340 a tendency for some folks to conflate valley's day with valentine's day as a way of celebrating

00:43:29.700 there's nothing there's nothing to that there's no connection between valley and valentine's day

00:43:35.620 in you know in our lore in our history um other than in modern a in modern altitude history some

00:43:43.320 folks back you know in the in the 70s and the 80s were kind of doing that and i there's never a wrong

00:43:51.520 time to give bloat to one of our gods and if it makes you happy to bloat to valley on the 14th

00:43:58.460 of february please by all means um honor and bloat to valley any and all times you want he

00:44:04.040 deserves our worship and that's great but i don't really think that's not a case of of christians

00:44:12.180 taking something of ours and in perverting it um there's just not the same connection there

00:44:18.300 uh i know a lot of people have issues with the commercialization of valentine's day and various

00:44:25.080 things but i really don't see that as a as a hard issue that we need to fight on i don't think it's

00:44:30.640 a it's a holiday that's ever certainly in in the modern era had any sort of of a religious context

00:44:37.960 to it so i really don't think it's hurting a lot of stuff what i do think is hurting if we're not

00:44:44.440 careful is overlaying valentine's day imagery on odin's son valley and taking away from his

00:44:54.040 identity by kind of forcing him into a spot there because there's VAL involved in both names. I

00:45:04.040 think that's really as far as it goes. And what I think is kind of the most overthinking it,

00:45:11.100 but a possible impiety in doing that is there are Greco-Roman deities or semi-deities involved

00:45:20.320 in that imagery with Cupid and things. And I wouldn't want to take away from that by

00:45:27.680 overlaying value in a way that I don't think is valid. I think that's probably more of a

00:45:33.920 wordy answer than was asked, but that is our thoughts on that.

00:45:40.160 We have another question. What are your thoughts on the toxic train derailment in Eastern Ohio a

00:45:46.720 days ago are you concerned about long-term health implications for the region and thus the location

00:45:54.160 of the and then the question cuts off so i'm assuming that's uh in reference to the the new

00:46:03.360 hof in reference to um phrasehoff i gotta admit i'll just put it out there i'm not super aware

00:46:11.040 of that incident. I tend to be one to not react to those things as much as some of our folks in

00:46:23.420 our circles do. I think people probably be okay. And, you know, I think that any, you know, toxic

00:46:31.740 environmental tragedy is bad, but I don't think there's anything that would affect our plans as

00:46:38.180 far as establishing Frazehoff in that portion of that state. Jason, are you aware of this toxic

00:46:45.640 train derailment? Yes, I did hear about it, but I have no real opinion on it or nothing. But yeah,

00:46:51.860 I did catch it on the news. Yeah, no, I got to admit I'm a little bit ignorant on it. So if it 0.94

00:46:58.620 is a bigger deal than I am aware of, I will definitely look into it. But as of right now,

00:47:02.660 have no no great concerns and uh but that may be because i you know i've heard about it in passing

00:47:08.500 and not in detail um based bearded bastard i'm wondering matt and jason i'm not a folk builder

00:47:18.740 and direct people to the websites etc i do find myself having to dispel the misconceptions

00:47:26.100 my question is this um

00:47:33.540 so nick producer nick can you help me with this a little bit because when he gets to my question

00:47:37.780 is this that's where it cuts off and i i can't see the man's question to be able to answer him

00:47:44.740 um and i apologize we will get that up as soon as nick's able to go back and

00:47:49.540 find the rest of your question i apologize on that technical difficulties um

00:47:56.900 um does another question in the meantime um does the afa work with other pro-european groups

00:48:06.980 not just pagans we need unity across the board have you ever heard of edward dutton um

00:48:18.260 if i have the name is not ringing a bell with me and i apologize if this is some kind of a

00:48:24.500 brain fart moment and uh but yeah the name is not standing out to me do we work with other pro-european

00:48:30.260 groups it depends on when and for what and what the particulars are the the details are very

00:48:37.940 important uh in those things um so for example we're willing to work with other charitable

00:48:46.820 groups who are helping folks in South Africa that's been important to us and because we don't

00:48:52.460 direct hands on doing a lot of that work in South Africa. Other groups that are providing resources

00:48:58.640 for displaced whites in South Africa, we do work with those folks and donate towards food and

00:49:04.660 housing projects for our displaced people in South Africa. We're certainly open to working with,

00:49:12.740 you know, groups whose goals and ideas align with ours. Again, it would have to depend on what the

00:49:21.500 specific purpose is. I do agree that standing together with like-minded people is very important.

00:49:28.620 It's just not something I can say across the board without a specific example.

00:49:34.440 Every pro-European group is not the same. So devil's in the details on that.

00:49:42.520 Daniel asks, Jason, what have you been listening to lately?

00:49:46.360 last night skeleton witch you know skeleton witch yeah yes um some uh old school death

00:49:58.880 metal that you are probably familiar with some cookie monster thanks a lot matt now when i

00:50:05.020 listen to like obituary that's that's all i hear now i i have to get really start tuning that out

00:50:12.240 whatever but that and some napalm death last night once a while some merciful fade of course king

00:50:20.880 diamond some of these bands it's hard for me to tell whether you're just making it up or not with

00:50:27.520 some of these extreme names of the uh obscure metal that you like to listen to supplication

00:50:33.520 all right we have a uh another question for you jason what is your favorite pizza place

00:50:45.660 and why is it rocco's rocco's of winona minnesota so um my family my mom is from winona i was born

00:50:55.300 in winona minnesota winona for people who are not from this area is um a really beautiful place on

00:51:02.840 the southeastern part of the state on the mississippi river it's um surrounded by bluffs it's

00:51:07.400 just beautiful and there's a pizza place down there there's a couple actually it's been around

00:51:12.840 probably um since my mom was was a teenager in the 60s and stuff and um shane duffy hit who made

00:51:21.000 that question there his own grandpa had taken him there back in the day so when shane and his wife

00:51:25.880 jackie who's our newest one of our newest prince of smoke builders when they come up here they they

00:51:30.600 go there and eat and whatever and i actually haven't been able to make it down to visit my

00:51:36.200 family in probably three years now and the first thing i would do when i was going down there over

00:51:41.000 the years when my godson was just a little guy he would always say to my cousin i know what jason's

00:51:45.720 having for supper tonight rocco's that was the first thing that i would it's one of the better

00:51:51.480 pizzas it's a thin crust which we like we don't like know that chicago stuff around here at least

00:51:56.760 i don't it seems like all my minnesota friends like that really thick stuff i like the thing

00:52:01.640 crust and whatever and so yeah thanks a lot shane because now now i got the munchies now i think i'm

00:52:07.160 gonna have to drive on down to winona afterwards and i was gonna say break in but i probably shouldn't

00:52:13.080 talk about that on that that's probably a good thing i would do that in my dreams in my dreams

00:52:19.720 i'll be thinking about that owners and operators of brocco's fine pizza establishment i promise 0.93

00:52:26.280 nobody associated with the astro folk assembly will break into your establishment or steal your 0.99

00:52:30.200 pizza or pizza supplies my my family right now they're rolling their eyes they're not watching

00:52:35.800 this but they're like thanks a lot thanks for naming us i didn't you're lucky

00:52:42.280 yeah that's kind of cool uh jason jason is always

00:52:48.120 like the driving force of any kind of afa hospitality in the twin cities area and every

00:52:54.520 time i fly in for an event or doing something at the hof jason always picks me up and gives me a

00:52:59.880 place to stay and drives me out to the hof and it's always cool driving through that portion

00:53:04.840 of minnesota with them and hearing hearing stories about his family and he's got roots

00:53:09.080 that run pretty deep there our blood runs deep my blood runs deep here it's not just a cool fancy

00:53:16.040 saying kids so um hello matt would you be interested in having the hoffs gilded with gold

00:53:26.280 leaves um yes absolutely um that sounds extremely interesting i have no idea the practicality of that

00:53:34.600 or what all's involved but i you know i really like the metallics i like gold imagery especially

00:53:40.920 when we're venerating our gods i think it's uh it's beautiful and regal and speaks a lot so

00:53:48.360 yeah gold leaf is amazing um but i have no idea the amount of expense that goes into gold leafing

00:53:54.040 large surfaces all right based bearded bastard um believe this is the the redo of your question

00:54:06.680 i'm wondering matt and jason i'm not a folk builder and direct people to the websites etc

00:54:11.960 i do find myself having to dispel um the misconceptions my question is this

00:54:19.160 am i doing this the right way um i don't know because i don't know the way that you are doing

00:54:25.080 it if the way that you're doing it's sending people to the website that's that's always a

00:54:29.800 good option um some other thoughts on it and i was looking at your comments a little bit

00:54:37.880 uh earlier and i can't follow the chat and be attentive to the conversation as well as i'd like

00:54:43.480 to but uh you mentioned over on the side that you're in in alberta um i don't know i don't know

00:54:51.320 how that plays into this answer or not um the website's really good and i think the websites

00:54:57.720 are nice. They show pictures. They give an idea of what we're doing. I think that's a great thing

00:55:03.940 to do. I think directing them to our videos on YouTube are also a really good option because it

00:55:14.120 puts not only faces and pictures. It gathers all those pictures in one place. The slideshows and

00:55:21.020 stuff do that really well in a digestible way for these people to see. They can see it on

00:55:27.340 people's face what kind of folks we are but also if you get some of the ones where uh there's video

00:55:33.100 um certainly anything of victory never sleeps but a lot of questions that they may have get

00:55:39.020 addressed on this program and they can also hear they can also hear my voice and the voice of other

00:55:46.060 afa leaders and get uh i don't know get a feel for who we are as people and not just you know

00:55:53.900 what critics might say online um again there's many right ways and many wrong ways to do that

00:56:03.180 i'm you know very appreciative that you are trying to dispel misconceptions i think that

00:56:10.460 one of the best ways you do that you also mentioned in the side that you are a member

00:56:14.860 by being a member who is a good example of a friendly successful good looking has their life

00:56:23.020 together individual and associating that with their afa membership i think that does a lot to

00:56:29.100 dispel misconceptions as well um it's harder to maintain hateful rhetoric that you hear on the

00:56:37.180 internet when you're putting that with a face of somebody who you're looking at and you're speaking

00:56:42.060 to if these people know you and they know you to be a good person and an honorable person and a

00:56:46.780 kind-hearted person it's much more difficult it's not impossible but it's much more difficult for them

00:56:54.140 to pair that with some of the things that our detractors who've never met us say about us

00:57:03.580 so that's what i'd encourage on that but um you do have to remember that

00:57:08.780 there's no no such thing as perfect on it um you know there's there's misconceptions that

00:57:15.260 people are very invested in trying to make about us and there's some people who are willing to

00:57:19.820 listen and there's some people that aren't and so there's there's nothing no such thing as perfect

00:57:24.700 on it and we appreciate anything that you do that that is impactful and does uh clear things up for

00:57:30.060 folks and always encourage if people have questions they can get on here any week and ask us you know

00:57:37.660 ask me to my face as literally as as we can in the technological age get on here and ask whatever

00:57:44.140 you'd like. I promise, you know, I can't promise that everybody's going to like my answers, but I

00:57:47.880 promise I'll give you an honest answer and I give you my best. So please do encourage folks with

00:57:54.060 questions to come on here and ask. Finn Wraith, good to see you again, Finn. Do you think asking

00:58:04.980 the gods for help in our people's struggles will help? For example, in my country, there is an

00:58:10.860 election coming up, which will play a role. Okay, which will play a role. And if we stay

00:58:20.900 homogenous or turn diverse, um, short answer is yes, the, you know, the nebulous part is

00:58:31.660 to what degree. Yes, you are better off asking the gods for help than not asking them for help.

00:58:42.780 You're better still finding practical ways to help make those things a reality as opposed to

00:58:52.040 just waiting in the basement for the gods to do it for you. And when I say that, I don't mean

00:58:57.380 anything extreme per se, but being involved, being active, talking to other people, voting. Again,

00:59:04.900 I don't believe that votes always count. We watched an election that I think was

00:59:09.300 handled very dishonestly in my country this last presidential election. A great many of us

00:59:17.340 feel that that was very illegitimate. But going out and voting is not hurting anything,

00:59:23.740 and it does help sometimes. There's no solution that's a for sure, but doing productive things

00:59:31.940 to try to help it does move the needle one way or another. Being involved, being involved in

00:59:37.460 your community, encouraging people with like-minded thoughts to make those known and to convince

00:59:44.460 others and to be active in things. I think those things all help. But as long as you're putting

00:59:51.340 forth your effort, asking for the help of our gods, I think is something that, you know,

00:59:57.560 certainly something appropriate for us to do. I think it's something that all people do when

01:00:02.760 they're devout and there's problems that are bigger than themselves that they need help with.

01:00:09.080 And I don't see anything wrong with approaching the gods for that if it's a genuine thing that

01:00:13.440 you believe in and that's weighty and important. It's silly to ask the gods to help your sports

01:00:20.480 team win an athletic event or something, perhaps. But to ask them to help things that affect the

01:00:27.960 lives and the destiny of your country or your culture, I think those are very appropriate

01:00:33.900 things to ask the gods for help with. I know it's something that I do. I know it's something that a

01:00:39.480 great many of our members and our Gothar do. So yeah, I think that's a very appropriate thing to do.

01:00:50.880 jamie hi guys i have another question what would be the best way to approach

01:00:56.800 non-afa people and persuade them to become members

01:01:02.080 so jason what's what's your thoughts on that what would you say to jamie as far as the best way to

01:01:05.920 approach non-afa folks and convince them to join um kind of piggyback on what you said about um

01:01:14.240 show them the the youtube channel and then show them the videos like the slideshows of the events

01:01:20.800 like like fall fest for us would be a thing that i would show people show them the family show them

01:01:26.640 the people gathering have them go to the website explain different things to them you know

01:01:34.400 to tell them what we're all about but i think looking at the videos and different things that

01:01:39.280 that always catches people a lot more than talking about it i think that's a good thing

01:01:47.280 you know and

01:01:50.400 this is the thing and i did kind of cover it on one of those last questions but it's worth

01:01:54.080 reiterating i think that the pictures of our people getting together at events is really

01:01:59.760 putting our best foot forward we have happy smiling people celebrating our gods and our folk

01:02:07.040 we have families all of those pictures have pregnant ladies and little kids and you know

01:02:14.160 happy white people enjoying life and that's that's what we love to see then i think that's

01:02:21.520 that's what we're proud of and what's great to show people um something i'd also encourage is you

01:02:26.720 know posting slideshows of events that occur at our hoffs because that shows people that we have

01:02:32.640 something tangible, something real. And that's significant, especially for people that don't have

01:02:39.620 that faith in the gods initially. The difference between real and not real, there's a huge

01:02:46.380 difference between internet groups that talk a lot and folks that actually get together and

01:02:51.200 practice Ausatru. Our pictures in our YouTube content shows us doing Ausatru. It shows us

01:02:59.260 living our values. And that's great. You know, show them any of the stuff with our food

01:03:05.060 distributions. It shows that we're great people. And it always shows us doing that at our Hoffs.

01:03:10.560 Showing that we have Hoffs is a measure of success that people see and take it very real.

01:03:16.040 It was a big deal with my, my dad and my stepmom. The first time they went to Odenshof,

01:03:20.720 they went there for my wife and my wedding. And you could see on their face when it changed that

01:03:27.980 this wasn't some oddball thing that their son was doing, all of a sudden it was real and it was

01:03:34.420 serious and it was important and it had a value in their mind because they're able to reach out

01:03:39.900 and touch and lean against this wall that's physical, that this is something the AFA owns

01:03:46.140 and does. This is an actual temple to one of their gods. And for folks, again, for folks out there

01:03:53.500 that aren't particularly religious one way or another, the difference between real and not real

01:03:58.000 makes a huge impact. Also, one of the best things ever is to be that example and then attribute

01:04:07.220 that to your participation in NASA True and get people to associate you being a good person or

01:04:14.480 being a successful person with us and with our church and what we do. That's always a huge thing

01:04:21.260 as well. And, you know, another thing, once you know these people a little bit, if they're people

01:04:26.720 you've been working on for a while and you're familiar with them, invite them to come with you

01:04:30.820 to an AFA event sometimes. I think them actually being there and being a part of it is a big thing

01:04:38.320 to get them involved as well. Don Ricardo, would you please share some of your personal

01:04:45.260 as true practices slash devotionals hail air uh thor vicki um yeah jason what can you share

01:04:56.940 with some folks kind of what personal absolute practices you you're involved in i i don't do

01:05:06.140 a lot as much as i probably should actually you know i the majority of stuff we do when we have

01:05:11.420 our local kindred group here and stuff but i i talk to the gods throughout the day in different

01:05:17.580 things or whatever um one of the things that that keeps me motivated like when i'm really hurting

01:05:24.380 bad like at an event or something is i do this i've been doing this for years is i look up at

01:05:28.860 the sky and i say still worth it it will always be worth it and that and there were times where

01:05:34.540 i could barely even say i'm hurting somebody you know and and that that that connection keeps me

01:05:40.220 going and there will be times where uh i will we'll have little conversations or different

01:05:45.900 things or maybe do a quick little dedication for a god or something but for the most part

01:05:51.020 i don't do quite a bit actually i don't do as much as i probably should so i'd like to

01:05:57.660 probably get more doing more with my altar and stuff i have an altar in my bedroom here

01:06:02.540 i should probably start doing daily stuff with that so but yeah it's about what i do

01:06:10.220 um okay so we got another question from antonio it's good to see you on here again antonio

01:06:22.300 uh matt or jason which god is best to pray for the students in michigan state university

01:06:29.340 that happened on february 14th um

01:06:37.020 so

01:06:40.220 any and all um honestly i don't think there's a bad choice uh of our gods to pray to about those

01:06:53.820 things and it depends on what exactly you're praying for i think there's you know gods and

01:06:58.960 goddesses that are um you know maybe more strongly associated with certain things

01:07:06.580 But at the end of the day, they're all divine beings and they're all, you know, the ones that we worship are all worthy of that worship and capable of sharing kindness and compassion and comfort and courage and health to folks in all kind of bad situations.

01:07:27.860 So I don't think there's a perfect answer on who's best to pray to for those folks.

01:07:36.580 a lot of that, I think, comes down to which of our gods you feel the closest to and you feel

01:07:44.440 responds best to your prayers. Yeah. And that's something that is different about a polytheistic

01:07:54.880 faith from monotheism. That's a challenge for people. And they, you know, it's odd because

01:08:01.440 it's not what most of us are raised in so thinking of those things as if you know we're very quick to

01:08:08.560 put our gods in boxes you know thor for storms odin for wisdom tear for big picture justice

01:08:18.000 for seti for legal issues and that's all fine and good but each of those gods can do all of those

01:08:25.440 things to one degree or another um but what we would find very often with our ancestors is

01:08:32.400 certain classes of people or certain regions of people would have their gods that they would go to

01:08:38.320 for the same thing that a different class of person in a different region would go to a

01:08:43.520 different god for all within our pantheon all within the isir but um you know royalty would

01:08:49.600 go to odin for these things perhaps and maybe the farmers in the you know would go to thor for these

01:08:56.720 things maybe you know the swedes would go to fray with these things whereas the anglo-saxons would

01:09:03.200 go to odin um there's a lot of diversity there jason do you have a idea of who you think the

01:09:11.280 best guy to pray for um for those students in michigan state would be what you said all of them

01:09:19.280 than the short answer well you know it it's the short answer and it may seem like

01:09:25.600 an easy cop-out answer but it's the right answer yeah um it's it's absolutely the right answer and

01:09:38.000 yeah we were talking about that a little bit earlier when the guy asked the question about

01:09:42.640 doing bloat to valley on valentine's day it's always a good day to do bloat to any of our gods

01:09:49.040 And last thing we would want to do, you know, as members of the AFA or certainly myself as a priest of the Eysir, is to say that it's ever a bad time to give worship to one of our gods.

01:10:02.820 We want to see more of that and not less.

01:10:04.660 And I think that, you know, I also offer this out there.

01:10:08.880 um i think it is extra special to pray to our gods that get less attention to the others

01:10:21.440 so i think that we're well served sometimes going outside of our comfort zone

01:10:26.800 and praying to gods that are a bit more obscure that don't have the same popularity in modern

01:10:32.320 culture that uh you know that the big ones like odin and thor have praying to to vidar

01:10:38.720 or to valley or to ullur on some of these things i think that's got to be very special for them

01:10:45.040 because much fewer people reach out to them so i i would encourage that as well

01:10:52.000 um we've got a question from obsidian skull does the afa use

01:11:03.600 uh scurth gold uh carved god totems um and what do you think about them so

01:11:14.880 yes and no in some of the pictures and i i don't have them handy and nick is super quick on the

01:11:19.760 draw on this but i think it's a little bit more of a challenge to find we do have some god poles

01:11:25.920 up at odin's off there's one that's relatively new that's a freya god pole but in our ritual

01:11:34.720 circle we have we have three we have an odin one a thor one and a fray one and uh they're

01:11:41.680 I say very old. No, and they're not very old, but AFA-wise they are. They certainly predate

01:11:50.020 my membership, and they were carved by an AFA Gothi Thordren Aden, and those are special,

01:11:58.720 and we've moved those from a number of different places. We used to have those with us when we

01:12:03.400 would uh set up our vey at uh camp norga which is a temporary camp we would rent out and use

01:12:11.640 for the first midsummers that i used to go to and now they're they're permanently installed

01:12:16.920 in the vey at odenshof um i like those just fine if those are something that people feel connected

01:12:25.800 to and have been imbued with with their worship and with power and and you know our gods have been

01:12:31.640 addressed through them, then absolutely. And they're sacred and wonderful. If that's something

01:12:38.120 that you feel you're good at, and it's meaningful for you to carve, and you think that's a way to

01:12:44.620 honor our gods, then by all means, that effort is appreciated. And I think it's amazing.

01:12:50.080 I think there's other ways to do that. And I think that in this day and age, as the AFA,

01:12:58.160 we have other things that we do. We spend time on creating hoffs. And then once we have the hoffs,

01:13:06.520 and some of this is just a skill set. If we have really amazing wood carvers,

01:13:11.300 I'm sure we could do some really great carved statuary that would be amazing.

01:13:16.640 You know, if we had folks that were sculptors, I'm sure there's a lot of really amazing carvings

01:13:22.420 we can do what we do have is um some folks that are that are brilliant uh painters and that are

01:13:30.740 able to put that devotion into um the murals that we have at our hafs so i think that representing

01:13:38.500 the gods on a on a flat wall of one of our hafs is what we have the people to put their devotion

01:13:47.300 into that are good at it and that works really well for us they're able to capture a lot of

01:13:52.500 detail work that they want on that kind of a space and make beautiful things but no i have

01:13:58.660 no problem with the wooden god pole thing it's just very far outside of my expertise

01:14:04.340 we don't have people who've stepped forward that are particularly good at that and i think it's

01:14:10.020 because those are confined to poles you have so much more space to paint something beautiful and

01:14:16.100 to get a lot more of the detail working again if you're an amazing artist you'd probably do that

01:14:21.140 on a poll too in my mind i see that displayed much more in the kind of murals that we have

01:14:27.940 but i think both are really cool things um sarah has an odyssey question i appreciate us getting

01:14:41.460 questions from these other platforms sometimes i wonder how many folks are listening to us over

01:14:46.100 there and it's nice to get those questions um jason do you listen to necro goblin con goblin con

01:15:02.020 i can honestly say i don't even think i've ever heard of that

01:15:06.100 i'm gonna be googling that afterwards i'm gonna be looking into that

01:15:10.260 you got to that sounds right up your alley that that it's got the necro part in it so i mean the

01:15:16.500 the criteria for good death metal like when me and my buddy back in the 90s when we go at record

01:15:21.780 stores we would look at the the name it had to have like a death name you know and it also the

01:15:28.180 the record label if it was nuclear blast or earache but yeah those were the criteria you

01:15:32.660 know if it was circus of power yeah i know you probably don't want to be there but it was like

01:15:36.340 immolation yeah they're darn right yeah so yeah there you have it well jason's gonna do some

01:15:42.820 research and get back to you on his thoughts on necro goblin i'm gonna be looking that up yes yes

01:15:50.820 all right uh next question have either of you read uh maria philhog's blade honer novels

01:16:00.020 i have not um i don't read a lot of fiction that's just not something that i read i don't

01:16:09.220 read a lot of novels i read a lot more um a lot more history and biography kind of stuff

01:16:17.280 jason have you read uh those novels i have not no i've not heard of them sorry about that i've

01:16:26.280 certainly heard of the author, but I've never read those novels. Monk asks, if I feel I need

01:16:34.620 spiritual protection, I call on Thor, since he is the protector of Midgard.

01:16:43.280 It's his wheelhouse, is it not? So, Monk, I'm going to go back to my other question. I think

01:16:50.920 that all of those gods are good gods to call on for protection. But I think that Thor historically

01:16:58.060 is the one that the most people have called on for protection. I think that he is still

01:17:03.560 overwhelmingly the one that most people call on protection for protection. And honestly,

01:17:08.600 when I need to call on one of the gods for protection, also Thor is my go-to for that as

01:17:13.700 well. But everybody, I want you guys to hear me. I think that there are a lot of good choices for

01:17:18.720 that depending but um the champion of asgard is always uh always an amazing choice for protection

01:17:31.040 what are your thoughts jason i agree i am usually thor was the one that i

01:17:37.920 usually think of for protection that i call upon and because of the hammer and stuff but i

01:17:44.800 i do think all the gods are good to call on too or it would be another one that i have called on

01:17:50.240 for that too but usually thor you know there's a number of people that call on heimdall as well

01:17:57.360 for protection um especially what at some of our wayfarers bloats um for him keeping an eye out

01:18:04.720 and watching your back and being able to see threats at a distance and that's uh that's

01:18:10.800 something that that i know a lot of folks call on or that's someone that i know a lot of folks call

01:18:15.280 on uh finn are there modern day rune stones that are made today just like the vikings did um

01:18:30.000 so i'm going to go out on a limb and say yes in over the surface of this wide world i guarantee

01:18:36.000 you that there probably are as far as stuff that i know of

01:18:47.200 there are some things that i think are similar um and i ran into that in

01:18:55.120 denmark so i didn't see as much runestone carving when i was in sweden i did see some in

01:19:06.000 I think I saw some in old Uppsala, and I think that a lot of those were medieval runestones

01:19:15.820 that were carved after the Ossetru period, and they were like Christian runestones, but a couple

01:19:22.920 were older. In Denmark, I saw a lot of very, you know, ancient Ossetru runestones, but they

01:19:32.740 uh their organization slash like you've got to be affiliated with this over there to get

01:19:42.740 the tax money to go to it your your national religious tax or whatever so they've got a

01:19:48.340 loose affiliation over there of foreign say there and they did a stone over there that i went and

01:19:55.540 saw that was a rune stone in a lot of ways it was very much traditional like a traditional viking

01:20:01.540 era runestone but it also had some metal work on it that uh that was more modern um they also took

01:20:08.980 us to a really special park and i wish i could figure out the name of this place i would love to

01:20:14.580 find it again on google earth and and look at it it was amazing runestone park that we went to

01:20:23.860 and it had uh it had some very ancient runestones but it also had like a world war one

01:20:30.980 era runestone there as well that was much more modern and that looks very much like it was done

01:20:38.900 in in an original viking style um but that was really special i think you know i've also seen

01:20:47.540 runic stones that as opposed to being done in rooms are done in like roman alphabet

01:20:52.580 um but no that one in that runestone park i i'm gonna have to start hitting the books and

01:20:57.700 trying to figure that out where that place was because it was it was amazing it was one of the

01:21:01.860 coolest places that uh i've ever had the privilege of being part of a blowdad but yeah there are some

01:21:07.620 but i think they're very few and far between stone is a very hard material obviously it's a very hard

01:21:12.820 material stone is a material that's very very difficult to do a lot of that artwork in

01:21:17.860 um cliff asks jason were you also true before you found the afa and if so what was that like

01:21:28.300 um yes and no um i wasn't practicing i um i i became um awesome true i i say in 2011 when i

01:21:40.760 joined the afa but about five years before that i had come across the ruins and actually that

01:21:46.920 that book that you talk about matt all the time the runes workbook that's when i've actually got

01:21:51.600 the same one from 2005 that i had but back in the day i um i had a friend that thought i'd be good

01:21:57.740 at like divination and certain things because i don't like got empathic quality so he um led me

01:22:02.800 to um um borders bookstore and at the time they they had that the the real bloom book of ruins

01:22:10.780 the the cookie cutter i still have them actually but i got into that and as i was doing that i

01:22:16.100 I would do rune readings on people at parties and different things.

01:22:19.220 And as I was doing that, I was starting to connect to the stories of the gods.

01:22:23.600 And as I was doing that, I was getting closer and closer to the gods.

01:22:27.920 And I was starting to feel this pull and whatever.

01:22:30.780 But I had some baggage in the back of my head.

01:22:33.860 And I talk about how the phone's ringing down the hallway, and that's the gods call.

01:22:38.300 But I just couldn't get down there and answer it. 1.00

01:22:40.580 It took me five years to get past the Christian stuff in my head.

01:22:44.440 So I guess I was Ositru, but I wasn't actually practicing.

01:22:49.980 So I kind of came to it via that way.

01:22:52.640 So I don't know if I would have quite found Ositru if I hadn't come across the runes that way and whatever.

01:22:59.800 Because then I was on Facebook and I was friended by somebody who called himself a heathen.

01:23:06.340 And I didn't realize that was the actual religion.

01:23:08.360 You know, I didn't know that people that we practice that or whatever.

01:23:11.320 So after that, then I found out about the AFA and whatever, and I joined in all this history.

01:23:18.280 Got an interesting question from Bruce.

01:23:22.080 Hey, Matt and Jason, can you guys talk about what kinds of things you keep on your altar and the significance of those things?

01:23:33.200 Jason, go ahead and tell us a little bit about, you know, the kind of things over the years that you've had on your altar and why you have them there.

01:23:41.320 Oh, well, of course, I have quite a few God statues, some that I have bought, a couple that were gifted to me that somebody had made for me.

01:23:52.780 I have a big hammer. I kind of have my altar over here. I don't want to move the camera.

01:23:57.880 But I have a horn bowl that was made out from a horn, and they pounded it out and formed it into a bowl.

01:24:05.060 And that was from the Kensington Runestone Museum.

01:24:07.060 So I have that. And I also I keep a few items on my on my altar.

01:24:11.820 Like right now, I I have the Baldur's Hop candle that Melissa had brought for all of us that we bought at Yule.

01:24:19.280 And there is a home white type candle that Brandy did a ritual with, went in Callahan at Yule.

01:24:26.100 And we brought him home, put on our altar.

01:24:28.580 And I also have a sterling acorn that Brandy had gifted to me a few years back when she became old and she gave it to a bunch of other leadership.

01:24:38.580 I have a couple of things like that.

01:24:40.280 And I also have a rune that Githya poured, brought back from when she went to Sweden years ago to that, I forget the name of that big rock that people climb up and they look over the fjord at.

01:24:57.300 and she took a piece of that and brought it home and painted a rune on it it was which is pretty

01:25:02.020 cool so that sits on my altar and a couple other things like that but that's pretty much it what i

01:25:08.340 have on there oh i think i'm doing dead space here okay so i'm gonna go like this then since

01:25:23.860 i've done in right here real quick here okay so this is the the the candles that we were talking

01:25:33.060 about here i don't know if you can see here and this is a horn that gofi stam made for me years

01:25:41.060 ago this sits on my altar and this was a balder god statue that i had carved from the balder top

01:25:49.620 god pole that um goki stam did recently back in july so i took that from there and this is a tier

01:25:57.300 one that an old member had made for me he's no longer with us i wish he would come back actually

01:26:03.540 so he carved this from years ago it's pretty awesome got that and this is the horn bull i was

01:26:09.620 telling you about so i got that and my big old white oak hammer the same way is like five tons

01:26:19.060 pretty pretty heavy here so i have that then i have a couple of statues here i got this odin one

01:26:27.620 that from dead is for two from the ukraine i had him make that back in 2015 and the air one right

01:26:34.420 there air was the first one i had made and um this is the rune i was telling you about that

01:26:42.100 that anna had made for me that's pretty cool so i got that sitting on there and i also

01:26:51.220 well if you can see with my big big fingers there there's the acorn

01:26:58.660 here's the other candle here that we brought back

01:27:03.940 and the balder one up close that's pretty cool so i got that and then i have like a couple other

01:27:10.420 things that are on the bottom part of my altar here like this this was gifted to me from bruce

01:27:17.140 here on our folk builder put a spoke builder up in duluth and give you anna there we go painted

01:27:25.940 that painting for me so i got that oops sorry put that right in my face there so that that's a bunch

01:27:32.660 of things here and um our folk builder michael sespas my cousin here he um gifted me this odin

01:27:40.420 kind of walking stick here his staff is pretty cool that sits there by my altar

01:27:47.020 and the the altar itself i kind of made with with firewood years ago i took like like some

01:27:55.620 wood here and some birch and put it up put um some other wood on top of there and whatever

01:28:02.660 made a little makeshift one so it fits in my bedroom pretty good and whatever so

01:28:07.000 all righty so sir i'm supposed to keep you talking so tell me about some of the symbolism

01:28:30.120 behind uh your kindred flag i guess uh which one the first one or the old one or the new one

01:28:39.560 i'll go i'll go with the new one and then i i if i needed to keep talking i'll talk about the

01:28:45.720 original because the original has a lot of meaning to it too but um basically we got our our slogan

01:28:53.000 on there our blood runs deep i thought that was important and we got um the the trihorn

01:28:59.960 since we're a afa affiliated kindred i thought that was important that we had it on there but

01:29:04.600 the original one here over here this is the one that we created one of the phony members she's

01:29:09.880 no longer with us she helped draw it up and what we have on there is we we have the state of

01:29:15.240 minnesota and we have a sign in red kind of behind it and we um what i thought was really important

01:29:21.800 was to have our name written in ruins i i thought that would look really good and plus it has

01:29:26.760 like four othellas on there so okay well i'm gonna cook bablin now so awesome thank you jason for

01:29:32.600 covering that sorry guys i had something i had to take care of real quick uh as far as altar stuff

01:29:38.920 my altar now is a little bit different um than it's been over the years uh

01:29:45.880 I used to kind of have everything in one spot. And so my, my God's altar and my ancestor altar

01:29:55.460 were like just one big, massive altar. Now in the house that we've got, I've talked about this on

01:30:01.040 the show a number of times, but I've got that picture wall that kind of goes up in my entryway

01:30:06.620 and I had to move my altar into my office. Used to be it was, I don't know if this will even make

01:30:13.660 sense there's a four year at the bottom of my stairs and my stairs kind of you know up against

01:30:19.820 the wall hit a square angle and make a nice little enclave in there that i would have the altar at

01:30:25.980 and then i've got my pictures of my ancestors going up the up the stairs and so those pictures

01:30:31.040 stayed there and that's where i go to talk to and commune with my ancestors but i had to move the

01:30:36.540 altar because having a having a a young child around sometimes they like to play with stuff

01:30:42.960 on the altar and chaos ensues so had to move that in here in a little bit more secure location stuff

01:30:49.760 that i you know again like i said i'd have uh pictures of my ancestors which was was neat and

01:30:57.440 i'm looking across over now i have a set of runes on my altar that i carved when i first got involved

01:31:03.760 and also true i'd say i carved them

01:31:11.440 i'm trying to remember pretty early on maybe 2002 2003 um but i carved those myself out of a

01:31:20.240 crab apple tree branch from my my grandparents backyard and i carved those and i blooded them

01:31:29.280 with my own blood and i've used those throughout the years and they're special to me i have those

01:31:34.080 on my altar i have statues of and this is just you know what what i've got right now there but

01:31:44.000 i've got statues of thor of odin of fray and of tear right now i have various candles um

01:31:52.720 I have an incense burner where I'm burning some resin incense as opposed to the sticks and the cones.

01:32:01.740 I'm trying some loose resin incense, and I like that a lot.

01:32:05.900 I've got a little candle set up with a little nondescript metal guy with an axe piece of flat kind of junk art,

01:32:20.960 but it's not junky it's just kind of uh anyways you know what i mean and i've got that there i

01:32:25.920 picked it up one time it's got he's holding a um i guess he's holding a basin for a candle and i

01:32:32.720 light a candle in there and that's to symbolize just lighting candle candle for my ancestors

01:32:39.440 along with that i've got a big brass offering bowl that's really ornate from pakistan and

01:32:47.920 my grandfather went through there when he was in the army um he was stationed there he had some

01:32:52.240 kind of a trip through there he had to do back in i believe the 50s and uh it was a real big

01:32:58.720 deal for him and he got a number of items from there but this was you know this was a piece that

01:33:03.680 he got that he really liked is this really really ornate brass bowl and so i use that as an offering

01:33:08.560 bowl um yeah that's what i've got on my altar right now and over the years that changes um

01:33:16.000 Um, I still have in my closet, there's stuff I have other places. It's still very important to me, but, um, I've picked up special rocks from places that I've been. So I have a little piece of that on the altar with me. I have, uh, a stone that I picked up from the Tute Bergerwald in Germany that I sometimes keep on my altar to have a little piece of, of fatherland with me on there. Um, things like that. That's kind of what I got on my altar.

01:33:46.000 Um, Cliff asks, hey, Matt, some of our states like Ohio and California or Florida have a lot of folk builders. How many is too many? There is no such thing as too many folk builders. We can find something for everybody to do.

01:34:06.040 Um, I will say that the more folk builders we get in an area, the more challenging it is for them to find their individual niche to where they're contributing at a high level, because, you know, you're only going to host so many events in a very small geographical area.

01:34:22.680 But, you know, we always, we love having a lot of folk builders. And when you have a lot of folk builders, there is a lot you can do.

01:34:31.760 yeah it just gives us a lot of utility we got people that

01:34:37.460 our numbers are growing the AFA is bigger now than it's ever been and we're doing great but

01:34:43.900 we've got a long long long way to go and I think that you know we're not anytime soon going to

01:34:50.440 reach a number to where all of the you know heterosexual conservatively minded white people

01:34:56.100 in a given state in the United States are also true.

01:35:01.300 Our numbers, we're at a point where too many folk builders is not a problem.

01:35:06.780 Every different folk builder is going to, they're going to interact with people a little bit

01:35:11.080 different.

01:35:11.440 They're going to appeal to a different group of folks, to a different age, a different

01:35:16.140 profession, a different, you know, just a different in-group of people that they interact

01:35:21.920 with well.

01:35:23.160 And when we get all that together, that's how we build a whole community.

01:35:27.080 And that's been a huge asset.

01:35:30.720 We kind of opened the door to everybody who wants to be a folk builder to be able to get them in a spot where they can give that a try if it's something they want to do.

01:35:39.380 And that was actually Cliff's idea.

01:35:41.780 And that was probably two years into that now or so.

01:35:44.400 And it's yielded amazing results.

01:35:46.820 and this last year alone we grew by 20 percent and thanks in huge part to our just you know

01:35:54.180 abundance of folk builders that are out there working hard for us every day so there's no such

01:35:58.580 thing as too many folk builders in an area um nick asks what are your thoughts on white folk

01:36:05.620 beating the native americans to america um you know i just question hey jason is that something

01:36:11.860 you've you know spent a lot of your attention on or you have thoughts on the original inhabitants

01:36:18.820 of the americas i've looked into it a little bit here there i i don't have a big opinion on that

01:36:26.580 i'm i'm the type of guy that i'm like solid evidence and proof and different things and

01:36:32.340 if i don't see a certain thing i or whatever i don't know i i i have to see concrete things

01:36:37.620 sometimes a lot of times so a lot of times i don't give something too much thought unless i

01:36:42.740 it jumps out at me more but i i have thought about different things whatever

01:36:48.180 civilizations have come before so that's fascinating i just never know what to do with

01:36:55.540 it it's it's super interesting but it's also very uh very frustrating because it's hard to

01:37:03.860 to have anything to grasp onto in those things now i've seen lots and lots of evidence to where

01:37:10.820 i believe that there was very ancient uh white people that made it to the americas there's a lot

01:37:17.540 of reasons that i believe that but knowing the specifics of it are are so tricky i see somebody

01:37:24.420 over on the side mentioning about skeletons that have been hidden by the smithsonian which is

01:37:29.620 absolutely a real thing hiding skeletons which skeletons how many were there what do we need to

01:37:37.220 know about the skeletons unfortunately because they've been hidden we don't know the answers

01:37:41.060 to those questions in a way that it just leaves so much open um obviously and this this with a

01:37:47.780 lot of stuff this isn't just in our circles um i've been listening to so somebody asked earlier

01:37:53.940 what what i was listening to and i didn't answer we kind of kept it on jason and the black metal but

01:37:58.580 But I listen to audio books, and I've been listening to some Graham Hancock stuff lately, and it's fascinating.

01:38:04.720 Again, I don't have any huge conclusions on it other than that there's a mainstream orthodox view of archaeology and view of history, and people are not at all open to fair scientific inquiry into that and into changing that.

01:38:22.940 so unfortunately um in the world that we live in a lot of the quote-unquote authorities

01:38:31.820 have burned me so bad that i don't trust them on things so it's it's hard i you know it's

01:38:39.820 i don't like to be the guy that is contrary to an idea but then doesn't have an alternative to

01:38:46.200 back it up with and that's what you find with a lot of these things i can't tell you exactly what

01:38:50.780 did happen but i can tell you what didn't happen there were absolutely white people in the americas

01:38:56.860 before uh what are termed native americans were here and during in different capacities

01:39:05.740 and there's amazing and fascinating archaeology to prove a lot of that one of the things

01:39:11.900 and again i don't make any bold claims on it other than you know there's way too much smoke for there

01:39:17.660 not to be fire there but um something was really interesting um when i'd mentioned that i took a

01:39:24.540 trip to denmark and uh directly following that like a month later i went to winter nights in

01:39:32.620 pennsylvania but before i went to pennsylvania we visited a friend in moundsville west virginia

01:39:39.260 and so we'd just been in denmark and we'd been in these these dolman burial chamber mounds

01:39:45.740 and we've looked at runic rock carvings and then we go to this place moundsville and it's named

01:39:51.260 that because of all these this you know quote unquote native american mound culture there

01:39:56.860 that is remarkably dissimilar to any other native american stuff and there's carvings

01:40:04.700 that don't look like any native american stuff that baffles the people there looked very very

01:40:11.660 similar to what we've just seen in denmark as far as the mound burials and as far as the uh

01:40:17.980 almost runic script to the writing that again looked nothing like uh native american carving

01:40:23.740 but looked a lot like um rune stone and stone age european carving and so it's really interesting

01:40:31.980 again i don't know the exact conclusion on that but it was fascinating it was really cool to be

01:40:36.380 able to see those things so close together and see the similarities um

01:40:43.260 yeah so i don't know where to go with that other than i know that it's a thing and i

01:40:46.060 find it fascinating and i love learning about it uh from nick what are your thoughts on the

01:40:53.740 american room stones and their veracity kensington havener and the like um what are your thoughts

01:41:01.420 on those jason i know you've seen uh uh kensington have you seen the havener room

01:41:05.740 zone do you have any thoughts on those two rooms i haven't seen the havener um the kensington i've

01:41:11.740 actually done a lot of looking into studying like even before i was asked to like i said back in

01:41:16.860 2005 i my my mom actually married a guy from kensington and they got married in an old church

01:41:22.460 there he grew up on a farm there but um i personally i i don't think i i think i think it was a

01:41:29.100 reproduction in the 1800s from the different things i've seen the writing they used and the

01:41:34.620 different things the soil samples that they had they've recently had some new tests done on the

01:41:40.380 roots that were around the actual stone different things like that i i think i don't i don't think

01:41:45.420 it was ola that did it but i think it was somebody because around that time too there was a viking

01:41:50.860 revival you know they had the world's fair they had the big viking thing so there's a lot of

01:41:55.260 scandinavian people here this is just my own personal opinion i know a lot of people disagree

01:41:59.020 with me on that but the different things that i have seen in whatever that is just my opinion the

01:42:03.820 havener i i don't have any thoughts on that i i don't really know a lot on it i kind of google

01:42:10.060 it a little bit but i i seem to know a lot more about the one up here because it's in my neck of

01:42:14.940 the woods about the others so i've uh you know i've i've been fortunate enough to see both the

01:42:23.980 kensington and the havener runestone the havener runestone i just saw for the first time uh this

01:42:29.500 this last november um i think they're awesome uh i i think some of it's missed like i don't

01:42:39.820 i don't believe that either of those two rune stones is necessarily

01:42:47.900 you know viking age um i think the haverner one is a little bit more compelling for being

01:42:55.260 something very ancient but either way i think it's fascinating at some point before the modern era

01:43:04.300 well i say modern era but before you know the 1900s we have people that know how to carve

01:43:12.700 runes in these stones and that's you know that wasn't super common knowledge for everybody

01:43:19.500 it's really amazing and cool to me if somebody in the 1800s did carve these runestones that would

01:43:27.980 be fantastic um the fact that we have people that knew enough about runes and carving runestones

01:43:34.140 to do that at that time in the americas is is really a neat thing um if we have them there

01:43:40.540 from a much earlier period even cooler but i think that they're they're both fascinating and

01:43:47.500 wonderful things um it's kind of interesting the uh the kensington one and the more medieval script

01:43:55.900 that it was as opposed to like viking age rune stones which is which is also kind of fascinating

01:44:01.660 to me because there was somebody with this corpus of knowledge to do that and if you're you know

01:44:07.100 in the 1800s in minnesota and you know 12th century swedish rune script that's that's still

01:44:14.060 really interesting and really fascinating to me so i think they're amazing pieces to go see and

01:44:19.420 and just dream and think on i agree uh jason do you uh you do some pretty cool woodworking

01:44:28.620 are you currently creating anything yes i'm working on a couple things right now um

01:44:36.300 just um i usually do some mold near carvings that i make necklaces for people whatever i'm

01:44:43.180 working on a couple of them i'm working on uh ear missile um project right now i've been kind

01:44:48.060 of just playing around with that design and i got a couple of things i'm working on for some

01:44:52.860 donation things whatever but yep trying trying to keep up on stuff i have them good days and

01:44:58.460 bad days i'm when i'm hurt real bad the mojo doesn't flow as much so there's times where

01:45:03.260 i don't go out in the garage to work but then there's other times where it doesn't stop

01:45:07.020 because the creativity so but it keeps me busy

01:45:17.660 yeah very similarly cliff asks um do you still carve mjolnir pendants and are they for sale

01:45:25.500 somewhere i do and um no i do not sell them i i just gift them i make them for people if

01:45:33.820 people are interested reach out to me i love making them for the folk so there's somebody

01:45:39.100 that doesn't live around here normally i i originally started making them for the kids

01:45:43.340 in our group for yule 2017 and then it turned into i started making them for members around here and

01:45:49.020 then for anybody who wanted them so yeah if anyone wants them just let me know i i'd rather just get

01:45:53.740 them that's my my contribution um

01:46:03.180 Okay, so this is a question from Jamie. I wondered, is there a festival or some sort

01:46:17.040 dedicated to the AFA? So try to understand the question. And I think that Jamie is outside of

01:46:26.880 the United States, I believe. So I'm not, I think something's a little bit lost in the,

01:46:31.340 in translation per se so there's tons of afa events that happen

01:46:39.420 there are several what we would call national gatherings that i think might be what you're

01:46:43.820 asking about festivals in the united states and those are uh

01:46:51.580 so our longest standing one was midsummer in the sierras and that's in northern california and for

01:46:57.820 For a long time, that was at various camps there, and now that is hosted by Odenshof, and that's in June, and that's our biggest gathering, and people from around the country go to that.

01:47:10.660 Because we now have something of that magnitude at each of our hoffs, people from far away tend to go less to them, so they become more big regional festivals or regional gatherings than national ones.

01:47:26.340 but we still do get people from all over that go to them. So I mentioned in June, we have

01:47:33.540 Midsummer at Odenshof. I was just, okay, so we have Ostara coming up here in just a couple of

01:47:42.320 weeks in Linden, North Carolina at Thorshof. And I'd encourage anybody that can make that or can

01:47:49.840 be a part of that and wants to see that to get in touch with their folk builder and get squared

01:47:54.240 away on that we'd love to meet you guys love to have folks out there and if you've already been

01:47:58.320 there we'd love to see you again uh baldershoff which we've talked about a lot tonight with jason

01:48:03.280 they host frayfaxi and that's in august and that's uh that's in linden or i'm sorry that's in murdoch

01:48:12.720 minnesota and then we have um for the first time this year we just had it it's where i was a couple

01:48:18.720 weeks ago we have charming of the plow at njordshoff and that's the njordshoff district

01:48:24.240 regional event but it gets people from all over and that's in uh that was in was this month that

01:48:34.240 was i'm sorry that was in february and it's um in the town of white springs florida and that's

01:48:42.880 in the northern part of florida there we also have winter nights in the poconos which well

01:48:50.000 it was originally winter nights in the poconos it was not hosted in poconos last year and

01:48:54.480 still determining exactly where in that part of country we're going to have winter nights this

01:48:58.320 year that's also a you know certainly a big regional but also a national gathering and

01:49:05.120 for a number of years now running we've had elsie fest devoted to the folk mother elsie christensen

01:49:10.800 and that goes on in wisconsin so yeah we have several of those gatherings or festivals and

01:49:17.440 that's what we've got and anybody who wants to make it to any of those afa member or not please

01:49:23.520 reach out to your local folk builder and we can see about meeting you at one of those events

01:49:28.720 antonio asks i know i asked uh the question like months ago but if anyone who is white

01:49:36.480 but has let's say 25 or less black ancestry are they still folk even though they are more

01:49:44.640 more white passing so

01:49:49.440 here's the thing um antonio i want to be really clear on it i don't want to be wishy-washy

01:49:56.800 our standard is and has always been and always will be you know do you look white do you act

01:50:04.000 white are you identifiable as white do you consider yourself white and importantly do

01:50:09.680 people when they see you consider you white um it's a losing battle when we start getting into

01:50:16.720 percentages there's people with you know a technical percentage that may be higher than

01:50:22.000 some that look completely white and there's some with a very small percentage of other that look

01:50:27.920 completely other and the big point on that isn't so much for the individual as it is for the group

01:50:39.040 what we celebrate as a folkish faith and as an ethnic faith is our commonality

01:50:45.440 and if you are obviously other that throws that all off we celebrate what makes us the same

01:50:53.840 and when you show up that makes you stand out as racially different than us that makes everyone

01:51:02.460 uncomfortable and it takes something that was homogenous and now it's not and that's what we 0.64

01:51:08.440 don't want at our religious observances and so that's the thing so there's no super clean answer

01:51:15.300 25 is an awful lot 25 is way too much but there is no exact percentage that's

01:51:23.820 perfect. It's, do you look at the guy and do you see a white person or not? Do the rest of us see 0.68

01:51:29.360 a white person or not? And further than that, somebody like, and you may not be familiar with

01:51:34.380 this, this is, you know, a United States political reference, but someone like Elizabeth Warren,

01:51:39.760 who is whiter than any of us on here, but she pretends that she is Native American and tells 0.98

01:51:47.860 everyone that. If you are completely 100% white, but at all of our events, you are telling everyone 0.60

01:51:54.120 that you're something else or something other, that's also not okay. So it's a little bit more

01:51:59.960 nuanced answer than I think some folks want, but it's the true answer and it's what's important

01:52:06.220 for the group. To those of us who have been solo practicing for years, what do y'all recommend

01:52:14.160 for new people joining um jason what do you recommend for brand new people joining that

01:52:21.180 are only used to uh solo practice up to this point come on to a hop come on to a hop or come

01:52:29.300 to well come to any event but by doing that you you get a taste of the group thing you'll realize

01:52:36.580 how how lonely it is being by yourself but that's the thing that that i you're yearning for for the

01:52:43.720 longest time was to find a group you know being brand new especially and not knowing much about

01:52:48.560 Austin True and being alone was very lonely so finding other like-minded people people that are

01:52:54.160 practicing already doing it of our you know be the way to go I think you know I don't know if

01:53:01.000 this is the situation you find yourself in or not um Matthew Gordon who asked the question um

01:53:06.880 But I would encourage everybody just get out there and do it.

01:53:13.020 Don't hesitate to get out there and get involved.

01:53:15.860 Exactly what Jason said.

01:53:17.160 If you're close enough that you can go to a Hoff and do it.

01:53:21.200 I mean, if it's a couple hours drive, it's well, well worth it.

01:53:25.540 Get out there and do stuff.

01:53:27.620 Get involved locally.

01:53:30.000 If you're in the middle of nowhere, at the very least,

01:53:33.420 get involved with talking people through social media or afa members with the intention of meeting

01:53:39.580 the people in real life and doing it the difference between solitary practice and being part of a

01:53:44.460 community is night and day um solitary practice is much much better than nothing please don't

01:53:51.820 get me wrong but it's not the same as doing it with a group and what i don't want people to do

01:53:58.860 is to be intimidated by that or to wonder you know everybody asks well what should i do as if

01:54:04.060 there's a right answer maybe you're going to show up and do it wrong or maybe you're going to show

01:54:08.620 up and not know something that everybody else knows good that's fine if you're showing up there

01:54:14.140 out of love of the gods and love of our folk show up and see and observe and see what goes on and

01:54:19.260 ask questions everyone we all love this so much um that's one of the reasons that whenever tony asks

01:54:27.260 how i'm doing when i'm when i'm here i'm doing amazing no matter what the rest of my day is like

01:54:33.980 getting on here and talking about house is true is something i love and i think you'll find that

01:54:38.060 with most of our members if you show up somewhere and you're brand new ask them questions talk to

01:54:42.940 them about stuff you can learn a ton of things but at the end of the day it's not about it's not

01:54:47.900 about study it's about participating in the worship of our gods with your folk and with your

01:54:53.900 community so getting together with other people whose hearts in the right place trying their best

01:54:58.940 to honor our gods and to celebrate with each other and with their families that's the right

01:55:05.660 thing to do no matter what you know or what you don't know that's doing it right is getting out

01:55:11.420 there and taking a swing and making a try at it and it'll only get better from there but yeah i

01:55:16.300 would encourage you don't wait jump in get involved and be part of something and share this that we

01:55:22.940 you know we're working so hard to build this so that we all can share it and be part of it

01:55:26.940 so please do that um

01:55:35.100 what advice can you give to new kindreds that are made of new believers jason this is a kind

01:55:41.420 of a kindred specific question what are your thoughts what advice can you give

01:55:45.100 new kindreds made out of you know brand new believers learn as much as you can

01:55:52.940 um reach out to your gothar or other other people too that are more experienced but that that that's

01:56:01.240 how how i kind of learned you know i i i learned better from watching people than trying to read

01:56:06.960 it and whatever but if you're you're a new kindred and you're um you're you're new to learning things

01:56:12.620 i i would um latch on to the the nearest gothar and learn everything you can ask as many questions

01:56:19.000 as you can learn as much as you can you know i yeah it's very similar to the individual

01:56:29.320 practitioner question that i just answered as far as just get involved go out there and do it um

01:56:37.080 you have any number of people that would love to give you guys advice if you have a new kindred

01:56:41.400 that you guys are all brand new but you know you want to be a kindred um i would and i always say

01:56:47.480 make your kindred revolve around the afa that gives you guys something external to be

01:56:55.400 to rally around and a way and a structure to do things that unites and guarantees that you're

01:57:03.080 moving in the same direction and when you do that i mean you do this as a member of the afa but when

01:57:08.040 your kindred is an afa kindred you benefit from the relationship that the afa has built with the gods

01:57:16.840 over the last, you know, we're in the 29th year of the AFA now. And that's built on a 54-year-long

01:57:26.060 relationship that our founder has built with Odin. Linking up to that and sharing in the

01:57:32.280 hymenia of that is good and makes your kindred stronger. But yeah, get involved. Do stuff.

01:57:41.000 Don't be afraid to participate in bloat and to worship because you're scared you're not doing it right.

01:57:48.100 If you're doing it from the right place out of piety and respect in your heart, chances are you're doing it just fine.

01:57:54.120 And if you have questions, any of our Gothar would love to help you any way we could.

01:57:58.660 Please reach out to our Gothar.

01:58:01.320 If it's generic, gothar at runestone.org.

01:58:05.080 And any of our Gothar would be happy to jump on and answer questions.

01:58:09.140 You can always reach out if you guys have questions to me personally, mattflavell at runestone.org.

01:58:14.920 I'd be very happy to help any way I could or direct you to the right person for you.

01:58:18.840 But I would encourage, again, don't wait.

01:58:22.160 Get out there and jump right in and be excited and carry on that momentum.

01:58:27.740 Daniel asks, are there any books that you'd recommend on the Hyperborean myth?

01:58:35.460 It's a good question.

01:58:39.140 there's lots of cool and interesting ones to one degree or another

01:58:42.900 there's very few that i can get super excited about all of the information one that i would say

01:58:49.060 is um an arctic home in the vetas by i believe baltilac i would recommend that um

01:59:01.540 yeah i suppose that's my go-to but there's a lot of information on that that just tends

01:59:06.420 to be very fragmentary and not all in uh in one book or three is not books that i've found um

01:59:16.260 and daniel there was that audio book that you recommended to me a couple of like last month

01:59:21.140 and the first half of that has a lot on on the hyperborean myth if you want to link

01:59:25.300 that up inside i forget the name of it already um

01:59:29.540 Um, Jennifer and Justin, what's your thoughts on white education and why they don't teach

01:59:41.740 kids white history, but demand they learn black history?

01:59:46.820 Um, so a couple of things.

01:59:55.220 First, I will, I will certainly answer your question, but I don't want to spend too much

01:59:59.280 time on it because i think we all get it and we all don't like it um no they there is

02:00:09.760 the reasons that they do those things are all in a in a spectrum that you know a bunch of

02:00:18.040 slightly different theories that are all in the same basic thing to beat white people down

02:00:25.960 and to artificially raise other groups of people that aren't quite up

02:00:32.280 one truth of if you want to make everybody to the same and i don't think they want to make

02:00:40.200 everybody the same at this point i think they want to get rid of or diminish us but if you

02:00:48.760 want to make equality happen two things you can get there one of two ways or a combination of both

02:00:57.400 you can make the underperforming people perform you can encourage those people to perform better

02:01:04.120 so they can bring themselves up to the rest of folks or you can take the high achieving people

02:01:10.440 and you can hurt them and diminish them and bring them down to the level to where everybody else is

02:01:18.760 And I think that's part of what's going on. And I think another part is there is a hatred of white people in the West and certainly in this country by the very loud forces of the media and Hollywood that have have gotten a momentum and a life of their own of trying to literally destroy or end whiteness, as they say.

02:01:48.760 and it's evil, and it's bad, and it's wrong, but take heart. That's why we're trying so hard,

02:01:55.960 and we're very lucky in this country that we're able to do homeschooling so readily available,

02:02:02.180 and so we've worked really, really hard to get the AFA Oustru Academy up and running,

02:02:09.320 and we're almost, you know, we're over halfway through our first year on that. Now, the first

02:02:15.080 year, it was just kindergartners because we're figuring it out. But I've been promised that at

02:02:18.780 the very least, we're going to have kindergarten, first and second grade curriculum already in this

02:02:25.020 fall. And we're going to continue at that kind of a pace until we have a full K through 12 curriculum

02:02:30.820 for our homeschooling program. Because, you know, that's essential. It's really easy to

02:02:39.560 see how terrible a lot of options are. But what's much more important is that we see what good

02:02:46.500 options are and that we take advantage of the good things that we have. And we've got a lot

02:02:51.500 of great people working really hard on that curriculum. Even our enemies, upon evaluating

02:02:56.080 our curriculum, begrudgingly say it's amazing curriculum. They just don't like us. So it's

02:03:02.540 fantastic we are so we are absolutely dedicated with each new student to make sure that our

02:03:10.700 program is compliant with all of the rules of the state that you're in and that's such a big thing

02:03:15.820 i know that parents are scared like man does this count man what if what if my my state's really

02:03:21.480 restrictive there's all these hoops we're there to hold your hand through that so that we can do

02:03:26.900 that together. That's a huge priority for us. And it's something that we learn with each new

02:03:34.000 student from each new state. We perfect our program to where it is completely legitimate

02:03:39.220 and meets all of the standards for the state that you're in. And we gear it towards the toughest

02:03:43.580 states so that it's, you know, more guaranteed to work for any state that you apply. And also,

02:03:50.400 we're trying to get it squared away for the Canadian provinces that are friendly to homeschooling.

02:03:54.820 So we're working very hard on that. And if you guys have children that are, you know, in kindergarten and you want to switch them over, please do that right now. You got to be AFA members to do it, but please do that.

02:04:09.200 Also, if come this fall, you have kids that are going to be kindergartners, first graders, or second graders, please get them involved.

02:04:19.020 I know as a new parent that it is terrifying what's out there, but I'm so excited that we have this program in place to where I can put my daughter when she's ready to go to school or when she's ready to be enrolled.

02:04:33.360 So know that that's there and that that's an option. 0.98

02:04:36.700 And, you know, I think that we can all see the terrible agenda that's that's out there in educating white children these days. 0.87

02:04:47.860 How many members does the AFA have now? And can you make a special announcement when we hit the one thousand mark? 0.95

02:04:55.600 I can and I will try to shut me up when we reach one thousand.

02:04:59.140 I will. I'm going to be obnoxious with just how excited and proud I am when we reach that.

02:05:03.840 because it's something we've you know we put so much time and effort into into building and it's

02:05:09.080 taken a long time and we're doing the very best we can uh so we're seeing the fruit of that and

02:05:14.600 we're getting really close so you ask how many we have as of right this second we have 987 members

02:05:23.280 um we try to do regular maintenance with our database to where we're not counting people

02:05:30.120 that aren't current, that aren't active. And we're trying really hard to keep that to be a very

02:05:35.660 honest number. And we prune that every day. So it slows the rate of getting the number up there,

02:05:42.820 but it's honest. And we know that when we hit it, we hit it. So we've got 987 right now. That means

02:05:47.820 we are 13 away from hitting that 1000 mark. And we will celebrate and be excited and announce it

02:05:53.280 all over the place as soon as we hit it, because I'm very proud of the hard work folks have done.

02:06:00.120 Um, what is, how long does the membership application process take usually from Willow?

02:06:15.060 Willow, I've seen your application go through.

02:06:16.780 We're, we're working on that right now.

02:06:19.020 It takes up to a week to get figured out before a person will get sent their initial invoice.

02:06:25.240 It can be done sooner than that.

02:06:27.900 the first step is we run you know background check stuff through security and make sure that

02:06:32.460 all looks good and then we have one of our folk builders reach out and have kind of an initial

02:06:37.500 just interview and make sure everybody's on the same page then we send out an invoice so um

02:06:45.660 your situation is in process we are very excited that you that you applied and

02:06:54.300 And yeah, we're still waiting on that initial deal, but at a maximum, that's going to take

02:07:01.660 one week.

02:07:06.080 All right.

02:07:08.680 It looks like our last question of the evening.

02:07:13.540 What is your opinion on the horrible display at the Grammys?

02:07:18.000 All right, Jason, do you got thoughts on the crazy, deviant, devil celebration at the Grammys?

02:07:29.520 The Sam Smith devil guy thing?

02:07:31.900 I believe that's what they're referring to, although I assume the whole thing was a travesty.

02:07:36.280 Yeah, I catch little things here and there.

02:07:39.700 Like when I go on my Google, I hear people pissing and moaning about whatever.

02:07:43.720 i think it's funny that people calling it evil and all this and that he was satanic and they were

02:07:50.360 trying to push the satanic agenda i didn't watch the performance so i i don't know what but it just

02:07:56.440 seemed like people were overreacting on i mean that was pretty messed up thing that he did at the

02:08:02.920 the display and whatever the show he did in my opinion that's just kind of he's trying to be

02:08:08.840 at edge lord or something but yeah i think people i can give them attention so

02:08:18.200 i

02:08:21.320 on one level i don't take it that seriously not because i don't think it's a real thing

02:08:27.560 but because i my expectations for

02:08:30.120 or the entertainment and Hollywood kind of circle

02:08:36.480 is so very low.

02:08:41.980 We are in a time where the social elite, cool crowd,

02:08:49.540 musicians in Hollywood go so far

02:08:53.740 that they're in an active competition with each other

02:08:58.180 to see how disgusting and how extreme 0.91

02:09:01.720 and how degenerate they can possibly be.

02:09:04.960 And I think that they get to a point

02:09:07.260 to where you run out of anything reasonable

02:09:10.260 and you've got to overtly do Satanism to try to be shocking

02:09:15.100 because you've lowered the bar on shocking so highly.

02:09:19.500 And it's almost comical,

02:09:22.300 except for you have kids looking up to these people

02:09:24.260 and watching it.

02:09:25.180 Um, you know, I don't watch any of those kinds of things anymore because I don't like this

02:09:30.700 cult of Hollywood and the actors.

02:09:33.220 I think at a different time and a different place in this country, it was probably pretty

02:09:36.820 cool back in the, you know, thirties through seventies.

02:09:40.000 It was probably a neat thing.

02:09:42.200 Um, but it's gotten so extremely politicized, far left and degenerate from any values that

02:09:47.980 I recognize that, you know, I, this is one of the things.

02:09:52.440 in our circles there was a there was a time and i think that we all go through this

02:10:01.900 in different periods where a bunch of us needed to wake up or be red-pilled as it were

02:10:08.960 and then there's such a thing as od and on the red pill you know if all day every day all of

02:10:18.280 your information stream is about how terrible the world is. It is depressing, and it literally

02:10:27.080 kills our people. The depression, and this is a thing that I'd like to speak on.

02:10:36.240 um the suicide rate of white males in this country is it's staggering all of the forces

02:10:50.640 out there that put so much effort into beating us down and hurting us psychologically it has a huge

02:10:59.700 effect and when all we see is a steady flow of just how terrible things are it can be crippling

02:11:09.300 and it cripples a lot of our people to the point where they don't see a point in continuing to

02:11:13.860 live they find themselves in a vulnerable spot they look on their news feed and all they see

02:11:18.820 is how terrible everything is and they make decisions that that are very permanent

02:11:25.540 solutions to very temporary problems. And that's really unfortunate. So I try to not focus on that

02:11:35.840 stuff. I know it's there. I don't want to remain ignorant to it. But I'm so disgusted by those

02:11:41.100 folks. I don't watch that junk. And I don't want that junk invading my life more than it has to. 1.00

02:11:46.960 I try really hard to focus on the positive things that we can do. And, you know, every new

02:11:52.260 new series of

02:11:55.060 grossness out of

02:12:00.460 out of Hollywood. I try

02:12:02.700 to avoid that as best I could.

02:12:08.360 Do you think in the future 1.00

02:12:10.680 whites in America and possibly

02:12:12.580 Western Europe will be treated like 0.92

02:12:14.520 the whites now are in South Africa 0.97

02:12:16.760 and if

02:12:18.740 they become the minority?

02:12:19.820 um what do you think on that jason

02:12:22.860 i don't know we we keep going the way we are society and all the other stuff

02:12:31.100 who knows it could it could happen i don't know i this world is falling apart there are things that

02:12:40.500 are happening that i never thought i would see in my lifetime or ever you know so who knows

02:12:44.980 kind of a messed up world yeah you know it really is i think that you know it goes on the last

02:12:52.640 questions but it's not wrong for you to ask the question i just the negativity is is difficult

02:12:58.360 because sometimes it's really hard to find a way out of that or a way to to address that so

02:13:03.720 there's absolutely that possibility. And I think for us to be vigilant now before it's got that

02:13:15.660 bad and to take all the steps we can to ensure that it doesn't get that bad is really important.

02:13:22.340 I think we have some very hardly ingrained constitutional freedoms that put us in a good

02:13:30.680 spot to maintain some things. I think we need to be vigilant in advocating for ourselves and for

02:13:38.860 our folk and not let it get to that point. But yes, that's always a danger that's out there.

02:13:44.240 And I think we should all be aware of it, not obsess over it, but be aware of it

02:13:50.120 and do what we can to buttress against that happening.

02:14:00.680 okay I I've been to prison before what do you mean by going through a background check

02:14:09.380 so the AFA um when we get an applicant we do a background we run a we run a background check

02:14:17.720 uh we have our application and it's got several questions on there um biggest things that we look

02:14:23.660 for on the background check is that this person is who they say they are and we have um you know

02:14:30.620 celebrating this. We've got members, we've got a lot of members that have had that experience in

02:14:35.680 their life to where they've been convicted and done some time in prison. And that doesn't

02:14:41.200 disqualify you from being an AFA member. But if on your application, you say, no, you've never

02:14:46.500 been convicted of a felony. And then we find out you have, well, then you've started out your

02:14:50.380 relationship with us lying. And that makes us, you know, leery. And when we look at what the

02:14:56.860 what the, what the crime was. Protecting our families is really important.

02:15:04.940 Sexual crimes we take very, very seriously to ensure that we have our families around people

02:15:11.220 that aren't likely to be predators to them. So we don't, we take a very stern stance on people

02:15:22.980 who apply that have a history of of any kind of child sexual abuse or any kind of uh for that

02:15:29.240 matter adult sex crimes abuse sex crimes we take very very seriously um domestic abuse crimes

02:15:36.740 mistreating elders things like that those things we take really seriously um but no you somebody

02:15:44.460 who's done time that doesn't automatically mean you can't join the afa a number of our best members

02:15:49.480 are folks that have had that in their past. But we do want to know that when people get in,

02:15:54.360 we want to know if there's a history of that, because people are trusting us to have their

02:15:58.480 families around. One of the most beautiful things to me about AFA events is that in this world,

02:16:06.280 it's, you know, those of us that are listening to it that are my age or older, and I'm 42 this year,

02:16:13.440 or I will be 42 this year. When I was a kid, we used to go play. We'd play outside. We'd play

02:16:21.540 with other kids, and the parents didn't have to be watching us 24-7, terrified something bad was

02:16:27.220 going to happen. It's not the world we live in anymore. It's so special to me that at AFA events,

02:16:33.420 parents trust their kids to play together and trust that other people are going to be looking

02:16:39.860 out for their kids and they feel safe with their families we have a responsibility to do our best

02:16:45.620 to not let in folks that are going to prey on our children and so that's very very important

02:16:50.420 and one thing we background check on pretty heavily but yeah that's that's what that is

02:16:55.140 um along with some other stuff trying to look at social media and stuff and make sure that

02:16:58.820 you are what you say you are and that you're not you know supporting a lot of stuff that's

02:17:02.740 that's contrary to our our values and if you are it prompts us to you know ask the question

02:17:07.620 because we all come from different places you know there's a great number of people that

02:17:11.300 fought really differently on things a year ago than they do today and maybe they've seen the

02:17:15.220 light and everything's different but it does help us know where to where and what to ask to uh to

02:17:21.220 make sure that folks are are right to be around us and be around our families um

02:17:27.540 um I asked this to your great compatriots in the last stream and they told what they

02:17:38.400 knew of what you have talked about these people but can you explain

02:17:42.840 can you explain the meaning of

02:17:52.800 okay this is really tricky Nick is the next line connected with that because I don't

02:18:00.280 I don't think I'm understanding the okay can I explain oh you're meeting okay it would help if

02:18:09.300 read english correctly that's completely my fault anyways so but can you explain your meeting of the

02:18:15.540 arts gear mineshaft um germanic community yes absolutely uh so our folk builder at the time

02:18:24.580 um anders he had uh reached out to some various europeans that were interested in the austria

02:18:33.780 folk assembly and what we were up to and that would be interested in meeting us for a celebration

02:18:38.980 over there so um a number of people i think

02:18:50.420 four gentlemen and three or four ladies from the artsgemeinschaft showed up

02:18:56.740 um and they were great they were really really nice folks to meet they taught us some cool folk

02:19:01.780 dancing uh a number of them didn't speak english but some of the younger ones the um

02:19:11.620 forget the name of his position but they're the guy that was their uh their leader his

02:19:16.500 his daughter was there and she spoke very good english so she was able to translate between us

02:19:20.340 really well um yeah it was just very nice we got over there for our main um one couple who

02:19:29.780 was from the Artsker Mineshaft spoke zero English at all an elderly couple they actually stayed with

02:19:35.780 us for days over there they didn't speak English they also didn't speak Swedish and our Swedes

02:19:41.060 didn't speak German and none of us America I as a hobbyist speak a little bit of German so I was so

02:19:48.420 excited when I could say kindergarten level German stuff and these people understood what I was saying

02:19:53.540 um but we had a very lovely time with them and they you know again the communication wasn't

02:19:58.340 there but the the folk was and you could feel that and they hung out with us for a few days before

02:20:02.740 the event um but yeah they came over there to a bloat and a ensemble that we did and it was very

02:20:09.860 very nice um can't say enough about them they were great people i'm really honored i got to meet them

02:20:15.940 uh following up and i assume with this because he's you know one of their big guys that

02:20:20.740 i did not know about until i went to this event was uh jürgen rieger uh you said did i ever meet

02:20:26.660 jorgen rieger i did not i believe he passed away before i was able to be there but uh the folks

02:20:32.420 at the arts community talked glowingly about him and he was a point of connection between

02:20:38.340 uh our folk in sweden and the arts community that they both knew that man in in their life

02:20:44.260 and uh and had great things to say about him and i think that their appreciation for jorgen rieger

02:20:50.100 is why that event happened and and we all got together so that was that was a nice

02:20:56.420 that was a nice event a nice thing um last question okay this may be the actual last

02:21:04.180 question although something comes up i will i will gladly answer it uh what musical instrument

02:21:09.540 is your favorite all right jason what what musical instrument is your favorite

02:21:14.900 um i would have to say the guitar the guitar i the drums too but then then um yeah top choice

02:21:27.420 but there's a lot of instruments that are cool like the car next that'd be cool you know there's

02:21:33.480 a there's a lot of cool stuff um i am not musically inclined as far as creating music i love listening

02:21:40.920 to music but i'm not musically talented i would have to say the violin is my favorite instrument

02:21:47.960 either you know as a classical violin or or as a fiddle i think it's amazing i a lot of respect

02:21:56.200 for people who play the violin i think it's beautiful i love the classical interpretation

02:22:00.280 i love the folk and celtic interpretation of it i love it in the bluegrass i really like violin

02:22:06.840 I played the viola for a little while in fifth grade.

02:22:10.460 There you have it.

02:22:13.360 That didn't go very far.

02:22:16.060 All right, guys.

02:22:17.180 Well, Jason, thank you so much for being a guest tonight,

02:22:19.700 and thank you for your amazing example of perseverance.

02:22:23.900 We all look up to you for it.

02:22:26.020 Thank you for having me.

02:22:27.360 Honored to be on again.

02:22:29.000 It was a great time.

02:22:29.620 Well, I'm sure we will have you on here more in the future.

02:22:32.640 And so I would. OK. I'm going to do my normal sign off thing, but as I sign off, I want us to take a moment,

02:22:53.340 to have a moment of silence for a member that passed away this last week and uh to dedicate

02:23:00.780 this show in memoriam to uh an afa member uh mitch loveless and uh as soon as i get done with

02:23:11.360 my little sign off we'll pop on a on a picture and uh take a moment of silence for that if you

02:23:17.860 guys would, please. So, hail the gods, hail the folk, hail the AFA. I'll see you guys next week.

02:23:24.300 Remember, victory never sleeps.

02:23:47.860 Thank you.

02:24:17.860 We'll be right back.

02:24:47.860 Thank you.

02:25:17.860 Thank you.

02:25:47.860 Thank you.

02:26:17.860 We'll be right back.

02:26:47.860 Thank you.

02:27:17.860 Amen.

Asatru Folk Assembly - February 16, 2023

2⧸15⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 32 - Perseverance

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