Asatru Folk Assembly - 2⧸21⧸24 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 85 - Hávamál, Part 3

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

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

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

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 Thank you.

00:02:30.000 Thank you.

00:03:00.000 Thank you.

00:03:30.000 oh welcome everybody to another exciting edition of victory never sleeps

00:03:37.980 sorry for a little bit of lag up front my uh yeah that's all me um anyways

00:03:43.960 hope y'all are doing well i heard things went well last week uh

00:03:50.400 fawn and myself were not able to be here because we were at a spiritual retreat in florida

00:03:59.560 to get prepped and ready for Charming of the Plow. I suppose kind of first up is just a

00:04:07.080 appreciation of the folks at New York's Hoff. Charming of the Plow was a was an amazing event.

00:04:13.480 I'm really really excited to have been able to be there and attend with y'all this year and get to

00:04:20.440 see my AFA family down there that I haven't seen in a while and to to charm the plow and celebrate

00:04:27.880 with you guys so yeah it was a fantastic event um if you were not able to make it you definitely

00:04:35.000 should try to next year and in the meantime you should join witness fawn and myself as a matter

00:04:41.320 of fact every member of the afa witten is going to be at ostara at thorshoff coming up just about

00:04:51.080 a month from today so if you have not registered yet please do that's something that interests you

00:04:58.920 we'd love to meet you guys there and uh it's gonna be an amazing event it's a it's a really

00:05:05.560 special place and uh i hope we get to share that with each of you guys i think that's what we've

00:05:18.120 got for top of the show things but i'd like to just kind of publicly here on victory never sleeps

00:05:26.840 congratulate jordan wells uh and uh chris mcdowell for taking their folk building oaths

00:05:38.760 those two gentlemen have worked very hard for our folk and are doing an amazing job folk building

00:05:44.760 So we're very excited to have them officially oathed in as AFA folk builders.

00:05:51.400 That said, I'm trying to think if there's any other top of the show things.

00:05:54.600 As always, please, okay, so not just in general, but call to action.

00:06:01.140 Please, if you have not, like, share, and subscribe wherever you are hearing my voice or seeing our faces.

00:06:09.960 That's assuming that you are enjoying what you're seeing.

00:06:14.440 getting those algorithms and stuff up is the best a best way that i know of to try to get

00:06:20.440 our message in front of a larger audience if you've got folks that you think would enjoy

00:06:25.880 what we're doing please be sure to invite them also keep in mind not only can you watch live

00:06:35.640 as you know the current program that you're watching but you also can if you're so inclined

00:06:43.080 listen to this as a podcast comes out every friday on spotify so if that's how you consume

00:06:50.120 things like this that's a spot to do it um i think if there's any other top of the

00:06:59.400 program things tonight i saw a donation come through so i'm looking at that whoa we've got

00:07:06.520 got a chat. Wow. Goathe Rob Stamm with $200 to prime the well tonight. We have a challenge.

00:07:17.600 Highest donating Hoff is the goat. I will match every donation up to $1,000. Hashtag bestest

00:07:27.200 Hoff, gentlemen. Don't skip leg day. Always try to advise, do not skip leg day. And thank

00:07:34.600 you so much for that rob that is that's awesome that is a huge and really nice donation to start

00:07:41.660 us off with and uh yeah everybody out there uh rob's gonna match your donations so please

00:07:48.640 um give if you can it would be much appreciated and with that i believe we left off at have them

00:07:59.380 all 56. So anybody who needs to follow along tonight, we are doing Bellows translation.

00:08:07.180 And Nick, if you have the link, if you could put it up in case anybody wants to look at the

00:08:11.660 website that Svon and I are directly looking at. If not, if you want to follow along a different

00:08:17.840 way, we're going off of the Bellows translation. That said, I would encourage any of you guys that

00:08:25.100 want to to you know follow along in whichever translation you have handy or you prefer

00:08:31.180 the comparing contrasting is is interesting and and adds adds some depth

00:08:39.020 with that it's fun would you start us off at uh have them all 56 please

00:08:46.140 That's a bold move there. Sorry. I was taking it back.

00:08:57.980 Yeah, I'd like to point out he didn't say up to $1,000 total. He said every donation

00:09:03.420 up to $1,000.

00:09:07.100 Uh-oh.

00:09:09.820 If we start getting closer, I'll worry about the fine print.

00:09:16.140 uh everyone will have to excuse me too i am recovering from a respiratory um issue so

00:09:23.860 in a little scratchy voice um but we're working through it um should be you know not too much of

00:09:31.400 a problem it's it's in the late stages of it and i'm clearing the last little bit of garbage out

00:09:37.340 um so yeah we're moving in on 56 and we were discussing um

00:09:44.660 last episode about we were entering into the middling wise um series or actually we were

00:09:53.520 already in it this is kind of the last of it um that we move into in which we

00:09:58.400 um speak of being measured wise or middled wise um

00:10:05.480 And so, you know, in 56, the last one, a measure of wisdom each man shall have.

00:10:12.480 Again, this is a repeating, but never too much let him know.

00:10:17.540 Let no man the fate before him see, for so is he the freest from sorrow.

00:10:25.040 So, and this one is, if anybody can attest to or has been well-versed in runic lore, in particular in the auspicious nature of the runes, this is definitely true.

00:10:46.480 the idea really is is that uh the the repeating of measuring of wisdom means knowing when to know

00:10:56.900 enough is about the measurement and that's the kind of tongue-in-cheek placement of it a lot

00:11:04.580 of people take it as like that lord lord wasn't saying you know be be middle smart or middle dumb

00:11:13.120 But I think it's more about the ideas that it's kind of like trying to, you know, pin down a puddle of water.

00:11:25.520 It's know when you know too much.

00:11:29.760 But the problem with that, of course, is the search for wisdom, it's like oftentimes it's too late.

00:11:35.840 and um so you know knowing knowing when to to pump the brakes on wisdom is good because

00:11:45.500 uh if you know too much if you see too much and you can project your fate to the future

00:11:51.700 um you'll find you know very little accommodating to what you you know what you are here in the now

00:12:00.340 you know thinking or projecting or trying to do um

00:12:05.320 i don't know i think this is one is truly an interesting one because

00:12:11.300 speaking of the future and speaking of fate as um especially since we focus on the negative

00:12:18.780 and a lot of times i think that the way things work the gods the norns a lot of times a perceived

00:12:28.320 bad can often be good. And, you know, you find these in other maxims, like I believe the story

00:12:36.920 about the farmer who, you know, breaks his leg, but then doesn't have to get conscripted into

00:12:43.760 the military and so on and so forth. They keep saying, you know, this is terrible news. And he's

00:12:49.000 like, perhaps for now. And so on and so forth. It's this idea is that, you know, if you know

00:12:56.120 too much of your fate. You will focus on the bad. You will focus on the negative, and it can dash

00:13:03.540 a lot of your desires, hopes, and dreams. So it's better to focus simply on what's in front of you.

00:13:10.500 And I think that's the ultimate warning that Lord Odin is giving in this stanza.

00:13:17.440 All right, so a couple of thoughts. First, Brandy gives $50, hashtag bestesthoff. Thank you very much, Brandy and Rob. Sarah donated $20, just adding to the hashtag bestesthoff amount. Hail the AFA. Thank you, Sarah and Rob.

00:13:41.720 And Ronald Blake, $50. Ronald, thank you so much. You are so consistently generous on here.

00:13:54.860 Each donation you make makes a difference, but certainly the accumulation of donations has made a tremendous difference. Thank you very much.

00:14:05.940 People probably do 20 and 20 and...

00:14:09.420 Yeah. So thank you, Ronald and Rob. That said, we also have a question and I'm going to get to

00:14:16.620 the meat of the verse here in a sec, but Anna wants to know what you're drinking and is it good,

00:14:21.980 Svon? Oh yeah. I'm drinking some liquid death, just water, carbonated water.

00:14:31.340 and it was labor tv static is in it cherry obituary okay there you have it so we went over

00:14:43.300 um a number of these stanzas are grouped together around a common theme

00:14:50.600 like spawn mentioned we talked a little bit about some of the implications of

00:14:55.340 this admonition to be middle wise or to be measured in wisdom. And this one specifically

00:15:05.180 talks about knowing your fate. What I think is here, you know, very worthy to reflect on

00:15:13.280 is paralysis by analysis very often it is easy if you are overwhelmed with information

00:15:26.220 especially if that information relates to outcome it can cause you to freeze

00:15:32.840 and to not take action and to not do things and we've talked a lot but one of the biggest

00:15:40.120 themes in our lore and in our faith is the idea of entropy being

00:15:49.040 I guess the gateway to chaos and an ultimate

00:15:54.540 malady for our folk is inaction not seizing the day not taking action not exhibiting uh the 0.82

00:16:07.160 mystery of Rhydo with right action at the right time. So if you're obsessed with data and

00:16:17.180 information about outcome, it's very easy to never take those first steps that are so crucial and so

00:16:23.440 very important. I've talked a lot on here, you know, over and over again about the biggest

00:16:28.800 distance is the distance between your couch and the front door. And if you never get up and make

00:16:35.100 that trek, then you accomplish nothing. And I think that's something we all need to work really

00:16:42.980 hard to avoid, especially in the day and age to where we are bombarded with more information

00:16:53.020 today than at any other point in our history. With social media and everything else around

00:17:00.920 us technologically and there's a lot of ways it's a really really powerful advancement there's other

00:17:06.520 ways where sometimes you have just too much data coming at you and too much opinion and too much

00:17:13.480 well what do these guys think what are these guys over here well if i do that what about this what

00:17:18.360 about this other factor what about if you never get around to implementing it then it's all for

00:17:25.080 not so i think that's important to keep that in mind and with that uh it's fun will you take us

00:17:33.800 to verse 57 please yeah and this one actually quite fitting with uh what what uh uh rob

00:17:42.760 stam has done a brand from a brand is kindled and burned so uh you know from a fire from a torch to

00:17:50.520 a torch is basically what's being said here you know a brand from a brand is kindled and burned 0.99

00:17:56.280 and fire from fire begotten and man by his speech is known to men and the stupid by their stillness 0.96

00:18:04.600 so what this really is is it's kind of a combination of what you just said and what

00:18:12.280 rob did with you know like his idea was to inspire people like i'm willing to put up if

00:18:18.680 you're willing to put up let's do this together so that you know a fire lights a fire uh and then

00:18:25.400 you know the inspiration of one's deeds one's words uh one's intent can light others to do the

00:18:32.840 same um and then it just kind of at the end speaks of the fact that you know there's there's nothing 0.91

00:18:38.680 to be won by being still uh and and the word stupid is kind of funny they the word dull like 0.96

00:18:44.520 dullard um it is you know again referring to the idea that that the still uh man the the one who 0.99

00:18:53.560 does nothing um gains nothing and and ultimately brings about nothing and is not recognized

00:19:03.080 you know so again a lot of a lot of um our faith and the precepts of our faith are really built

00:19:10.120 around doing things inspiring others to do things and act and come out and show up and

00:19:20.280 and participate and get things done and that's i think one of the biggest things that the have them

00:19:26.920 all is speaking about in in relation to a lot of what we have to do when we fight a lot of

00:19:34.760 of the common things in modernity is you know people get comfortable people get set in their

00:19:43.940 ways just like you said they the longest distance is between the couch and the door and you know

00:19:51.660 it's it's it's easy for us to say it out loud but and and people hear it but one thing is is when

00:19:58.160 they go out and do something and then they have a tendency not to like realize all the stuff they've

00:20:06.720 done and that they should how easy it was or eventually how easy it becomes until you get

00:20:13.120 there and then you can do more it's uh it's like shaking off that webbing i don't know that something

00:20:21.040 that just kind of pulls people into their modes of comfortableness to the point where nothing gets

00:20:27.440 done yeah um absolutely on that there's uh

00:20:41.360 it's never i don't know anyone who's listened to this program for any amount of time

00:20:49.360 is uh reminded if not annoyed by the fact that we repeat certain key themes over and over again

00:20:58.320 but uh we do it on purpose because some things are just so very fundamental to

00:21:04.800 our worldview and as building blocks of what also true is and one of those is we are our deeds

00:21:11.920 also true is about action it's not about thought or intention it's about the action that's brought

00:21:19.280 about by those thoughts and intentions and the difference between the two is literally everything

00:21:28.480 um we are known by our deeds the stanza talks about you know we're known by the things we say

00:21:34.960 and the actions we take we talk before speech in and of itself is the is the starting of deed

00:21:40.560 it's when you take a thought from your head and you put it out in the world and then you test it

00:21:45.680 and as the stanza says you know you test it and maybe you're thought wise or maybe you thought 0.98

00:21:52.240 stupid depending on you know what comes out of your mouth so it's it's a proving ground 0.92

00:21:57.600 the other thing and uh this is you know right on and uh in line with weird rob's uh 1.00

00:22:07.040 brand lighting another brand with his matching donations tonight um we're inspired by the

00:22:17.480 actions of others it's don't think that it's easy for us to sit here and talk about oh the

00:22:24.500 biggest distance is the couch the front door oh you guys are all lazy no it's a big distance for

00:22:30.280 us too, at least for me, I understand that there's, there's always the force of entropy

00:22:37.540 trying to pull you down, pull you back and keep you inactive for a variety of different

00:22:41.900 reasons. It's always a struggle. It's just well worth doing and something that we've

00:22:47.200 learned over time. So it's not, you know, I don't know. It's not, it's not a struggle

00:22:53.560 that that certainly that i'm unfamiliar with so i do get it um we have another another couple few

00:23:01.640 donations came in that i'd like to note from the phelps family another baldershoff family

00:23:09.720 for the record 25 dollars hail go through rob and hail the afa appreciate that phelps's and rob

00:23:18.280 um and we have anonymous donated a hundred dollars hail the gods and hail the afa hope

00:23:26.760 everyone is well uh we are well and we are doing even better thanks to your generosity

00:23:32.600 thank you anonymous and thank you rob

00:23:37.320 ah let's go on oh this is yes is going off it is it is

00:23:42.440 I know, I know, uh, I know Rob well, so I know he was probably anticipating

00:23:53.580 kicking the hornet's nest, stirring it up.

00:24:01.520 Uh, and I was caught off guard on something, but I'm prepping for it. It's a couple stanzas down,

00:24:06.900 but, uh, you know, we can continue to move. I'm still angling on something. Um, so let's see,

00:24:13.020 we're, uh, ah, yes. Now this, uh, 58 and 59 have the same, uh, intro stanzas. Repetition again

00:24:24.160 is, uh, you know, to build and to create that poetic beat and sound. Um, and these two are,

00:24:34.660 you know are no different it's and you know he must early go forth um who feigned the blood

00:24:44.260 or the goods of another would get the wolf that lays idle shall win little meat

00:24:51.680 or the sleeping man success

00:24:55.140 so and uh this these two here um are really again these are the halvamal um stanzas of

00:25:08.920 early bird catches the worm or the one who acts first gains first

00:25:15.880 um and that's what you're finding you know here especially

00:25:20.260 um that i was looking at trying to see if about his translation of who feigns the blood

00:25:29.420 um and i you know i'm taking this too is um to defeat another um in order to you know

00:25:44.360 beat your rival, if you will, or gain wealth. Um, you know, it doesn't, you don't gain unless you

00:25:56.460 get out and get is basically what this is saying. I'm, I'm actually looking that up because of the

00:26:02.200 usage of his word, feign.

00:26:11.380 Hmm.

00:26:15.500 So,

00:26:16.340 while Svan looks up a little bit

00:26:18.080 on the

00:26:18.620 translation

00:26:21.620 note there,

00:26:29.820 yes,

00:26:30.460 absolutely.

00:26:31.020 early bird gets the worm um a lot of this is about taking initiative uh he who hesitates is

00:26:39.560 lost and fortune favors the bold all of those quotes that we're familiar with teach us this

00:26:46.460 lesson that's really true and i started thinking about it's it's

00:26:51.700 one of the things we talk about magically here is getting in a runic mindset or getting your

00:27:00.720 mind to where you pick up on points of connectivity throughout your day. And it doesn't mean that

00:27:06.600 everything is some magical happening, but it does mean you align yourself with things to where you

00:27:11.340 notice synchronicities and you notice points of commonality. Earlier today, when I was just

00:27:16.900 scrolling through some reels, there was a Joe Rogan clip where he talked about why sucker

00:27:24.160 punches work and the reason they work is it is much quicker for you to execute an action

00:27:33.120 than for you to react to what somebody else is doing um if you're always reacting

00:27:42.520 then it's much harder for you to accomplish the things that you want and it's much harder

00:27:48.400 for you to get momentum it puts you putting yourself in a place where you're just reactive

00:27:56.760 all the time is it's very it sets you up at a disadvantage and i think that's true in that

00:28:05.940 scenario it's also true if you've ever you know arm wrestled if you're arm wrestling it's not

00:28:11.640 usually this epic test of strength where it goes back and forth and back and forth usually it's

00:28:17.980 whoever gets the jump on that first thing because the second you move your arms away from that 90

00:28:23.420 degree point in the middle it's all downhill from there and it's very hard to make up that deficit

00:28:29.580 and that's like so much about and you take initiative you have momentum going forward

00:28:35.580 on accomplishing your goals if you wait every second you wait it's that much harder to get that

00:28:43.900 momentum. It's that much harder to work against anything that might be working, you know, to

00:28:52.700 counteract anything that might be working against your will. And it makes it that much harder to

00:28:57.140 implement your will. So I think it's a really valuable thing. What'd you find out on that Svon?

00:29:04.820 Okay. Sorry. I was, uh, I just realized too, one of my, one of my, uh, translation books

00:29:10.160 on Old Norse was misplaced.

00:29:13.300 So I was like, oh, no.

00:29:15.860 How did I miss that?

00:29:18.100 The winning of blood.

00:29:20.580 This is really speaking about,

00:29:23.680 and again, lending back to the time of

00:29:26.800 when, you know, the poems were spoken in the halls.

00:29:31.900 Again, if you were to go out and attain victory,

00:29:36.340 if you're going to go out and, you know,

00:29:39.340 seek the uh though the winning over one other by by way of blood is what is being really said the

00:29:48.620 the enjoyment of the battle is not given to those who to tarry long is in essence what's being said

00:29:59.060 there feign of course coming to as a you know enjoyment or pleased or willingness to so if

00:30:05.540 you know the willingness of of attaining victory by you know war fighting um and and spilling of

00:30:16.620 blood and so i think that's really kind of you know uh what's being said here is is it's about

00:30:26.500 the the the attainment of victory through battle if you go out and you seek to fight or you seek

00:30:33.440 to gain goods. So raiding and trading, you know, you get nothing if you tarry too long.

00:30:45.360 All right. Well, Swan, if you'd take us through 59.

00:30:49.240 Yeah. And here we see again, you know, he must, he must early go forth whose workers are few,

00:30:57.080 himself his work to seek much remains undone for the morning sleeper for the swift is wealth

00:31:06.380 half one and this is um again referring to and you could apply it even to today

00:31:16.120 in relation to perhaps a network or a team of people and the idea is that you know if if there's

00:31:24.680 no one there to help you pick up the slack. Um, even more so this applies is that you should

00:31:32.620 be up and add it early. If you wish to succeed, if you wish to, to gain that victory, if you wish

00:31:40.720 to, um, attain, you know, for the swift, uh, is wealth half one. I love that line. Um,

00:31:50.080 And sometimes, again, not letting perfect be the enemy of good, getting your foot in there will sometimes be what you need.

00:31:59.660 And I think that that's kind of something that our society today really does kind of place on, especially like with students and things like that, the idea of, you know, you put your time in, you put your ticket in, you put your resume, and then you wait.

00:32:16.440 And this is saying, no, no, do that extra mile, do that extra bit.

00:32:23.620 What do you have to lose?

00:32:25.680 You know, step in, raise your hand, you know, make a point.

00:32:31.880 It's not saying be crass or beyond or understanding, but have that initiative.

00:32:37.120 and uh having just the initiative alone means that the battle is half won

00:32:43.620 compared to someone who has you know no drive no move

00:32:47.200 yeah absolutely um i think this just uh tightens in on the idea of momentum

00:32:58.040 um you got young men today like giving uh all these internet talking heads like thousands of

00:33:04.440 for these little nuggets of wisdom

00:33:07.640 that Lord of Oathen has already given to us.

00:33:12.260 You don't have to pay the Tates and stuff like that.

00:33:18.600 All right.

00:33:19.480 So producer Nick, $10 donation, Haley AFA, Fahoo.

00:33:25.100 So thank you, Nick.

00:33:26.320 And thank you, Rob.

00:33:27.860 Nick is the first donator outside of the Baldershoff District.

00:33:32.920 So thank you, Nick.

00:33:33.860 We appreciate it. All right, Svan. So to switch up a little bit, can you take people through verse 60?

00:33:46.920 Yeah, and this is the one that I was really focusing in on.

00:33:49.800 It looks like, at least from the website standpoint, there is a perhaps a misspelling or an editing issue.

00:33:57.640 they didn't quite finish the idea in this verse, so bear with it on that one. And again, I would

00:34:05.400 even encourage people to look at other comparative on the internet while we're doing this.

00:34:13.020 Of seasoned shingles and strips of bark, for the thatch let one know his need,

00:34:21.400 and how much of wood he must have for a month, or in half a year he will use.

00:34:27.640 And this one kind of, I think, falls a little short on the purposes, I think, of this.

00:34:38.640 um maybe it's just the way it's written but it's like again projecting what you need

00:34:47.400 um for the for the for the year to come or even the half year to come you know of of um firewood

00:34:55.720 to which uh should last him out quarter and a half of years to come so this this part doesn't

00:35:03.640 quite emphasize and i think you know i would love to look it up and see if this is bellows or if

00:35:09.880 perhaps it was the person placing these into the into the website um that might have you know

00:35:17.720 glanced over um or or just the lack that of the ideas how much of wood and that specifically

00:35:26.840 it gets lost when you just say wood as opposed to firewood and so when we're talking about the

00:35:35.020 first half of this the shingles and strips of bark for the roof one of the big things that

00:35:40.600 they're talking about there is how much do you have to cut to cover and you know if you don't

00:35:46.680 have enough it's going to be a problem if you have too much you've wasted too much time so the idea

00:35:53.860 again is is more or less about having a good plan of projecting where you will be in the future

00:36:01.620 and then it's re-emphasized with how much firewood you must have in a month that will let you know

00:36:08.180 how much you will need in half a year or or what have you so this really is about taking small

00:36:15.620 amounts of information and building off of that by projection. And Lord Vothen is basically saying

00:36:24.840 that that which you see in the little can help you understand the big. The micro can help the

00:36:30.700 macro. If you're willing to take notes in the small amount, then they'll help you. And when it

00:36:37.460 counts, firewood in the wintertime sometimes could be life or death. And so, you know, understanding

00:36:45.480 and taking note slowing down and focusing on what's happening in front of you and then trying

00:36:52.920 to get an idea about how much you needed how much you you went through or the issues that you ran

00:36:59.580 into you know i i cut 50 shingles and i lost about 10 of them so that much i'm gonna know i'm gonna

00:37:07.420 need you know it only covered this amount of space so i'm i know i'm gonna need to do this

00:37:12.820 So really, it's, you know, quaint and quick knowledge.

00:37:20.040 Pay attention to what you're doing now, and it will save you time in the future.

00:37:24.660 Measuring twice, cutting once.

00:37:26.720 I mean, anybody who's a fabricator, and I know quite a few folks in our church who are, and I was as well.

00:37:34.960 This is golden wisdom, because you just never know.

00:37:39.800 and then you end up kind of over wasting and you know you maybe never get to realize how much time

00:37:46.740 you wasted because you know you don't get a chance to sit down and kind of calculate but

00:37:51.460 it's one of those things you might not want to find out how much time you wasted so you can

00:37:56.800 save yourself more in the front end than you can you know uh later on or even unquantifiable

00:38:09.800 Yeah, another thing about this, not only measure twice, cut once, but also failure to plan is planning to fail.

00:38:24.280 So taking your time to strategize and make a good plan before you rush headlong into something is very important for all of the economics of it.

00:38:44.540 But just in general, having a solid plan and, you know, in the AFA, I try to make sure that when able, we've got, you know, plan A, B, and C, just, you know, we've got triple redundancy in case something doesn't work.

00:39:06.900 And you don't always have that. But when you can acquire that, it gives you a certain amount of breathing room in a crisis to where you have a plan, you have contingencies, you've thought it out, and it gives you a freedom of action in the moment that you don't have otherwise.

00:39:26.900 And I think that's, I think that's a very important part of this stanza and of life.

00:39:39.920 Ronald Blake just donated 50 more dollars, $50 for Baldursov.

00:39:46.720 Excellent.

00:39:47.680 Thank you so much, Ronald.

00:39:49.620 Again, your generosity just blows me away.

00:39:54.700 And thank you, Rob.

00:39:56.900 for your accompanying donation appreciate you um all right yeah we're flipping we're flipping the

00:40:11.780 page now and going over to uh 261 and looking stuff up on the back end and a couple others

00:40:19.300 have done it as well that seems to be a damage to the original manuscript that is

00:40:24.500 is is consistently not something folks have access to the kind of truncated

00:40:31.620 piece of the of the last verse right

00:40:38.900 um so here we're at we're at 61 now

00:40:46.180 um washed and fed to the council fair

00:40:54.500 But care not too much for thy clothes.

00:40:57.680 Let none be ashamed for his shoes and his hose.

00:41:01.960 Let still of the steed he rides, though poor be the horse he has.

00:41:09.480 So the first part of this, Washington fed to council fair.

00:41:16.500 It's an older way of saying, but I mean, it's again, it's fairing forth or going forth.

00:41:24.500 so this is you know washed and fed if you're going to the thing and that's the translation is uh um

00:41:34.180 that um so if you the the thingy is the all thing most people that are into

00:41:46.500 house true or have been announced for a while might know what this is but those that are new

00:41:51.060 might not. A huge, I guess, it would be really focused more on an Icelandic sense, because I

00:42:00.580 don't think there was an Elfinki in Norway or what have you, but in essence, it's a grand

00:42:06.280 meeting. It could be, in Iceland, it was perhaps political. It was built around land disputes and

00:42:15.080 trading livestock and so on and so forth but i would even argue that a thinky um could be like

00:42:24.760 i say uh you know uh an annual or a multi-year uh build up to a meeting at a religious site and it

00:42:33.880 could have a religious connotation so i you know the the temple of upsala uh would very much be

00:42:40.440 that but the the idea here is that you know you should when you go forth to an official place

00:42:47.160 when you go forth to a religious um uh gathering if you go to a courtly meeting if you go to

00:42:55.160 something that has importance what it what it's really saying is that you shouldn't not go if

00:43:03.720 If you are not of the highest, you know, of your ability, or even, let me see, that's

00:43:14.120 not right.

00:43:15.020 It's, you should still go, even if you don't think that you are as dressed as nicely or

00:43:20.820 as, you know, set as more, as organized as others.

00:43:27.000 It's, it's saying that you should still go and do the best that you can, that you should

00:43:33.160 show up with the best that you have because that's better than not showing up at all and

00:43:40.760 in reality you should look at others not in the sense that oh that's a thing i think that's going

00:43:46.760 on right now victimization people victimize themselves so quickly in our culture that when

00:43:51.880 they see somebody dressed up they're like they become kind of conscientious and that's fine you

00:43:57.240 know in a certain sense but it doesn't necessarily mean that the people that are dressed up are

00:44:02.120 looking down on you as so much as they're saying next time you know do a little bit more try to

00:44:08.040 get a little better you know and we're all on that that scale of getting better um and i think

00:44:15.320 that a lot of people get lost in that and they get falsely intimidated and uh lord vodan is saying

00:44:23.400 show up care to the best of your ability and show up your your car might not be that great

00:44:30.520 your clothes may not be that perfect, but you're there and people will know that

00:44:36.960 more so than if you don't show up at all. So, all right, first, say it a thousand times,

00:44:45.480 we'll say it a thousand more. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. That's what this is saying.

00:44:53.820 One thing that you might notice is in our lore, there's lots of seemingly contradictive

00:45:00.340 stanzas, and they're not contradicting so much as indicating a certain amount of balance.

00:45:09.220 One of the things that's, our faith is a mature faith, and it requires a level of maturity and

00:45:23.060 discernment. It is much easier for every single thing to be black and white. That's much easier.

00:45:31.400 You don't have to think too much. You don't have to work too hard for it. You don't have to balance

00:45:35.060 it. It's very clear and very easy, but all too often the world's not that way. Now that said,

00:45:41.080 there's plenty of things that are black and plenty of things that are white,

00:45:45.600 but there's also a lot of things that are nuanced in between.

00:45:49.380 you know swan talked about people judging it yes people absolutely judge you by what you look like

00:45:54.100 i said that last show i'll say it again we absolutely judge you everyone judges everyone

00:46:00.100 by what they see first but also judged by other things they judge whether you're there or not

00:46:06.260 showing up with the best you can is better than not showing up at all and if you wait for that

00:46:12.260 perfect time where you can strut in with the finest you know of everything chances are you're

00:46:18.820 never going to go and uh you know we a previous line we talked about is how you know even the 1.00

00:46:28.020 cripple can do stuff but the dead can't do anything you know if you're not there you can't 1.00

00:46:33.740 affect anything at the meeting if you're there with the best you have try to be fed try to be 1.00

00:46:39.420 clean the things that you have power over and showing up you're way better off than if you

00:46:44.100 don't try or don't make the effort and that's the thing you know over the years and this has

00:46:48.480 been part of the evolution of also true in our modern era um folks in the afa have taken our

00:46:58.200 appearance a lot more serious when we show up for a religious occasion presenting our best self

00:47:03.620 trying to dress nicely and dress in our nice clothes when we go to the hof for a religious

00:47:08.660 of it or for anything else for that matter. And so the pushback is, oh, well, so we can't show up

00:47:15.840 if we're not wearing a suit and tie. Of course not. Like I said, there's balance to things.

00:47:22.240 No, dress the best that you can, that you've got handy, that's going to be comfortable and

00:47:26.520 practical for what you're doing. Nobody's ever been turned away because they're not dressed

00:47:32.420 nice enough. That's not real. But what is real is when you can and you have the ability

00:47:38.160 to show up, you know, representing yourself to the best of your ability, behavior-wise,

00:47:45.680 visual-wise, speech-wise, show up offering your very best to the gods and putting your very best

00:47:52.200 foot forward. And some days your best foot forward is not as good as other days. And your best foot

00:47:58.660 forward may not be as good as the guy next to you's best foot forward in certain, you know, areas.

00:48:03.460 but it's better than nothing. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Show up now and get some

00:48:08.980 better clothes. And that's time you show up. If that's something you want to do and you feel

00:48:12.000 you're deficient in, or, you know, get a better horse or whatever, whatever the case may be in

00:48:17.060 the time or the place. Um, yeah, just keep that in mind. Perfect doesn't exist. If you're, you

00:48:24.860 know, you're showing up in a Mercedes with a suit on, there's going to be some guy next to you with

00:48:31.360 a newer model or a fancier suit or a sparklier tie or whatever else there's never going to be

00:48:39.160 perfect do your best and if it's not good enough then you know up your game next time but uh yeah

00:48:47.660 don't let perfect be the enemy good uh and monk hundred dollars hail odin odin hail uh monk the

00:48:58.800 first one donating from Odenshof District. Thank you so much. I really, we really, really appreciate

00:49:04.460 that. Thank you, Monk. And thank you, Rob. All right, Svon, if you could take us through this

00:49:12.660 next one. And this next one is interesting imagery. So go for this next one, Svon.

00:49:17.600 All right. So when the eagle comes to the ancient sea, he snaps and hangs his head. So is a man of a throng who few to speak for him, he finds or him finds.

00:49:38.020 excuse me i'm adding a little bit in there to kind of smooth that but uh yeah so a lot of these ones

00:49:47.180 are where we're starting to get i i find most of our members in the church will ask about these

00:49:54.240 in the later maxims because there's perhaps a context or something's lost in it and

00:50:00.920 doesn't quite seem to fit because the other ones are so straightforward and now they're starting

00:50:07.180 get a little cryptic or a little mirroring. But this, again, is kind of referencing to the

00:50:12.460 althingi or referencing to the meeting place. You know, when the eagle goes to the sea

00:50:20.140 and is looking, flying out and about, you know, looking and scanning the ocean,

00:50:27.980 going for the kill, going for the for the hunt. But the first thing that's note is that when it

00:50:33.500 arrives out there in this kind of wide horizontal waist, looking left and right, constantly scanning.

00:50:41.080 That's what's being kind of referenced here. And so as a man, if he goes to the Althing, if he goes

00:50:46.300 to, you know, an official place or has to stand perhaps, you know, in dispute and needs retainers,

00:50:56.920 needs someone to stand up for him or with him and having an ally, he finds few he finds

00:51:06.280 that are able to speak for him. And so this one is more or less kind of speaking about

00:51:14.620 the desperation of that, that a person should take great care in what they do and how they invest in

00:51:21.860 their their friendships because you never know when you're going to need someone and you don't

00:51:27.180 want to be that eagle you know um lowing its head and looking around you know in desperation for

00:51:36.740 people that aren't there is really what this is kind of coming at

00:51:41.880 um yeah it's worth reiterating our value is given context and given life by community

00:51:53.100 um time and again in our lore the unfortunate position is portrayed as as the person outside

00:52:02.920 of society the person finds himself alone with no friends we are social we

00:52:11.300 are social creatures society our community is is the context and the

00:52:21.240 proving ground for all of our principles and all of our values how we function

00:52:27.440 within a community, how the community treats us,

00:52:32.980 how our friends treat us, how our foes see us,

00:52:36.920 all of those things are, you know,

00:52:41.420 a huge part of what adds meaning to life.

00:52:44.820 And we see that, you know,

00:52:46.680 no matter how bad you think you are, you need friends.

00:52:51.180 And when you show up to the assembly

00:52:53.420 and don't get hung up on the all thing,

00:52:55.840 an example for this time but you know wherever you go when you venture out to a new group of people

00:53:03.600 it's much better for you if you have people there that know you people there that can say something

00:53:09.840 good about you and that have your back it that's always preferable you know you can substitute

00:53:17.680 going to one of our hoffs for any of these things but you can also substitute

00:53:21.440 i don't know go into a concert go into a town council meeting going to any place that there's

00:53:29.300 that there's other people and there's social interaction these things really do apply and

00:53:34.620 they're very very important um and you would be well served to listen to the words of the high

00:53:41.360 one, as we all would. Svon, if you could read 63 for us, please. Yeah, and I just wanted to briefly

00:53:52.040 state to it, the usage of the word is really about going, it's, you know, going to court or going to,

00:54:00.040 again, a place of defense, which would presumably be at the Althing, so you'll see some of the

00:54:06.080 translations. They make reference to court or the althing, but yeah, a formal situation in which

00:54:13.080 you have to rely on others is what they're, you know, going on in there. 63.

00:54:24.840 To question and answer must all be ready who wish to be known as wise. Tell one thy thoughts,

00:54:33.980 but beware of two all know what is known to three oh that's so it's such a great way of

00:54:46.340 of saying it but um you know the first part too is is that uh you know wise folks are often um

00:54:55.020 sought for their insight. And so it's basically saying that you should very much, you know,

00:55:05.180 be able to ask and answer well any questions that you have or are brought to you. But then

00:55:14.240 it kind of goes into, you know, making of your thoughts so open that perhaps you have

00:55:22.740 inclinations or ideas maybe it's something you're not even really committed to but you tell someone

00:55:28.240 else and that's fair but tell three and now you might be committed to an idea you were just

00:55:37.580 throwing out there or a comment that you were just throwing out so I think this really

00:55:42.760 is is a warning about the ideas that it's best to to be limited in your speech

00:55:48.520 until you are absolutely set in the idea that you're committed to.

00:55:56.260 Because once it goes down too far or spreads out,

00:55:59.680 and then you're holding it, you have to hold your position.

00:56:03.540 I think it's like oftentimes when people say,

00:56:05.360 yeah, this is the hill I'm going to die on,

00:56:07.300 that's basically confirming that you've thought about this enough.

00:56:11.760 You're willing for the inclination or idea

00:56:14.440 to spread past one or two people that you know.

00:56:19.640 But if you're not ready to die on those hills,

00:56:24.040 perhaps ruminate to the self a lot more before you do that.

00:56:29.420 Or perhaps ask a fellow friend you know

00:56:32.180 with a good enough sense that it just stays between you two

00:56:36.420 until you can figure more out.

00:56:38.320 But say it in a group, and then you're locked.

00:56:44.440 You know, I really think this is valuable going through this with Spahn because, you know, he and I see different implications in each of these, in so many of these stanzas.

00:57:05.940 And not in a contradictory way, but just in a, like, just in a subtle context way.

00:57:13.240 So, yeah, absolutely what Svon said. If you got a plan that you're just kind of, you know, just tossing some ideas around, word gets out. You know, I'm thinking more in terms of if you have a secret or if you have something that, you know, you're trying to say in confidence to somebody.

00:57:31.240 loose lips sink ships. And, you know, if you tell one other person, okay, maybe you can trust that

00:57:37.820 person, but they're going to have somebody else that, well, surely I can trust them too.

00:57:44.220 And that circle of trust or, you know, trust in air quotes gets real big, real quick.

00:57:52.420 Even if people aren't trying to betray a trust, the more people, you know, once a couple people

00:57:58.980 know a secret it's not a secret anymore because inevitably stuff gets out stuff gets out there

00:58:05.140 so there's that but there's also the thing at the beginning you've got to be

00:58:09.620 quick on your feet if you want to be successful amongst other people you got to be quick to

00:58:17.220 analyze the situation to assess it to know what questions to ask to get you the knowledge that

00:58:23.220 you need to know or to improve your position and you know how to artfully answer questions

00:58:30.740 that are asked of you to where you can make the best of your situation and you know that has a

00:58:39.140 lot to do with and our ancestors valued speech craft a lot it's one of the standout characteristics

00:58:49.300 of specifically um the northern branch of our ancestors culture but even at a time with

00:58:56.900 you know limited writing and literacy and things you see our our brothers and sisters to the south

00:59:04.740 having very developed um legal processes and speaking before the senate

00:59:11.380 and you know prosecuting or defending legal cases it's really important you also see that in the

00:59:17.460 north when people come together if it's you know composing poetry and composing verses back and

00:59:24.900 forth at one another or answering questions when people want to test you about the lore test you

00:59:30.340 about things so much of what we'll see as we go through our lore is in an answer form when you're

00:59:36.740 in someone's court you're in someone's hall you know people will make a game of asking obscure

00:59:42.180 questions or asking riddles and you're having the swiftness of mind to be able to artfully respond

00:59:48.980 to those things was you know held in high regard by our ancestors and is today if you have a quick

00:59:54.420 wit um it adds a lot of adds a lot of value to social situations

00:59:59.780 this uh this next one i really like it's an interesting one because i think anybody who's

01:00:15.380 been on the giving and receiving end of a punch or has been in an altercation in their life

01:00:24.660 that this one, this one rings really true. Um, it just doesn't seem, uh, you know,

01:00:31.540 especially as it's written, it can be a little obscure, but it becomes pretty clear if you

01:00:37.160 think about it. Um, the man who is prudent, a measured use of the might he has will make.

01:00:47.480 he finds when among the brave he fares that the boldest he may not be

01:00:54.660 so the way this is written and the way bellows writes it is so it's kind of coily coily um

01:01:05.700 uh wise it's it's not quite revealing the full it's like like what we did on the last one me

01:01:14.460 you is uh i'm saying about plans intentions and you're saying no secrets it's like that

01:01:21.260 there's levels you could take it and the way he writes it it leaves it's so lightly touching it

01:01:28.580 but in reality what's what's going on here is um you know like in the first stanzas the uh

01:01:35.380 if there's a mighty man he should be prudent and measure in his actions in his deeds what he's

01:01:41.940 trying to do if he's uh you know a strong or you know he's particularly good and this is in reference

01:01:47.400 to like strength prowess and and so on um that he should use measure when he goes out and finds

01:01:56.400 himself around other brave folk because he might not be the you might not be the bravest one there

01:02:04.940 and what this is really saying is is like you find yourself in a situation you come out

01:02:10.660 banging the pot saying you're, you know, your, your confidence is good, but you're over the top.

01:02:18.360 You are way out of, you know, you're rubbing in people's faces and doing so on and so forth.

01:02:25.200 And meanwhile, there might be someone in that throng of people with you

01:02:28.940 that have a lesson to teach you. So you never, it's, it's hard. Uh, you know,

01:02:37.240 you're just basically showing off too much it's about if you got a lot if you got a good sense of

01:02:42.940 confidence you should still do it with a measurement of wisdom because you don't know

01:02:48.860 what other people are when you're around them you don't know how good uh like so again i spoke of

01:02:57.280 this like in a martial arts sense is the ideas is that if you're a martial artist and you are

01:03:02.260 out there you don't show off you don't um make a big over you know ridiculous like uh show of it

01:03:10.960 because you just never know who might have a better technique and you're showing off

01:03:15.120 what you got these you know there might be somebody in there who's just being quiet and

01:03:20.280 watching and he's also a monster you know on the mat or in the ring um and you just never saw it

01:03:28.840 coming because you were so busy you know fluffing kind of your own stuff so i think this one really

01:03:34.740 talks about it's better when you don't know the people around you to be measured in your confidence

01:03:40.980 and to uh or at least the showing of it showing people what you have your abilities and what you

01:03:47.760 can do it's nothing wrong with being confident about yourself it's just that you don't always

01:03:52.720 have to reveal everything you know yeah and i mean i think folks over in the chat have it have

01:04:01.280 it down pretty good it it behooves everyone to have a certain amount of humility and to not

01:04:14.480 you know as one of our folks over in the chat says so don't flex all the time um that's a thing

01:04:22.720 If you start strutting around and you get real comfortable exerting your will over others, bullying people, being cocky, being a loud mouth, whatever the case is, it may work out well for you a lot.

01:04:35.620 You may be the biggest, baddest dude in the room that you're usually in.

01:04:39.440 There's always someone out there, bigger, faster, stronger, more brutal, whatever the case might be.

01:04:50.820 you get too comfortable in your in your surroundings and you stop

01:04:57.900 assessing your situation before you act life has a way of of pointing out your

01:05:08.040 inadequacies that way and you could save yourself a lot of heartache if you have a

01:05:17.580 If you're measured about it, if you have a presence about you to where you are not being cocky, you're not flaunting the skill that you think you have. 0.99

01:05:29.640 Because it's very easy to end up looking foolish or end up, you know, getting your butt whooped. 0.98

01:05:35.800 So don't do that. 0.99

01:05:39.060 I mean, I think, again, so many of these things, the jaded amongst us, well, that's common sense.

01:05:48.300 some of it is but we're in a day and age where common sense is far less common than it once was

01:05:57.180 and sometimes it's the fundamentals and it's the common sense things that we need reiterated the

01:06:03.260 most often because they're they're that important and checking back in with the fundamentals is

01:06:08.220 always something worth doing all right yeah never remember that from the marine corps boot camp

01:06:19.580 all right so i've got an anecdote i gotta do i learned this at very i learned a very fortunate

01:06:27.100 um in outcome lesson to myself when i first started bouncing

01:06:32.460 i got very good at snatching up drunk people and ejecting them from the bar

01:06:39.780 cool so it's closing time i'm you know pushing people out doing stuff i'm very well calibrated

01:06:48.540 for drunk people um well dude came in to pick up his friend and he was stone sober he'd just

01:06:54.660 gotten in before closing time he was just mad so he was he was in complete possession of his

01:07:01.880 motor skills in his faculties he was just angry and he wasn't about to do what I was telling him

01:07:06.660 to do but I'm I'm used to whatever I'm doing working I'm a big enough guy and I've thrown

01:07:13.220 out 10 people that night no problem this guy's I got this took my off the ball literally took my

01:07:20.520 off the guy's hands I snatched him up but I wasn't paying attention to where his hands were

01:07:25.000 And so I got him outside. He slipped the hold I had. And next thing you know, he reaches around and I got a finger in my eye socket up to that second knuckle. And I'm on my back like a turtle wondering why I'm seeing rainbows.

01:07:42.660 um luckily i had i had my team of gods with me and they got me out of my situation you know

01:07:51.580 in seconds but i got up and he had because he had his finger all in my eye it had stretched

01:08:01.820 out my eye sock or not my eye socket but my eyelids a bunch so i wasn't seeing right i'm

01:08:07.860 like uh-oh I gotta push my eye back in so I thought that's what was going on one of my one of my my

01:08:15.260 bouncer guys was making fun of me he's like oh Matt's crying uh-oh that's blood and I was just

01:08:23.280 bleeding from the eye um so I learned pretty quick I wore an eye patch for about a week

01:08:31.060 all in all i'm very thankful to that lesson because i things may go wrong in my life 0.89

01:08:38.840 again in many different ways i may not always come out on top but i'm gonna i'm gonna damn

01:08:44.220 sure know where people's hands are and that's not gonna happen to me again so it's one of those

01:08:49.420 things don't don't get cocky don't get cocky i tell you what i learned so i keep going back to

01:08:58.980 it and it's not it was a very it was a time in my life as a young man where I learned so much

01:09:06.340 about myself and so many so many really cool lessons in a very matter-of-fact way and it was

01:09:12.720 really cool that way but I learned a lot more for the times I came up you know I came up short than

01:09:17.620 on the times I was you know times I was you know on top of things it's it's the the coming up short

01:09:25.800 times that i learned the most important lessons so yeah thanks for indulging me on that we can

01:09:33.080 we can move on to the next stanza now no that was epic just

01:09:40.920 second digit in the eye

01:09:44.280 um excuse me laughing too makes it just the cough kind of like comes out so um i

01:09:53.960 it's kind of good that we were following this one after that one,

01:09:59.500 because this one isn't, this, obviously, if you, if anybody's looking at it,

01:10:05.300 by manuscript sense, the first two lines are gone,

01:10:09.460 and they're often added in because of a note from manuscripts elsewhere.

01:10:17.580 And so you'll find that line in 65, the first two of the stanza are gone.

01:10:22.840 And, you know, there is, of course, a recommendation here as far as from those manuscripts that, you know, a man must be watchful and wary as well and fearful of trusting a friend.

01:10:37.500 Oft for the words that to others one speaks, he will get but an evil gift.

01:10:46.060 This is not quite right.

01:10:50.220 the way that it comes off is basically saying like you know you should be watchful of friends

01:10:56.380 because they will betray you at any minute and i think that what is the real

01:11:03.600 translation part of this is that you should be weary of making friends swiftly because often

01:11:13.600 people will tell you what you want to hear when in reality they're going to gift you nothing

01:11:19.980 but treachery and that i think has a lot more of a standing point um i remember you know uh

01:11:32.700 speaking highly and speaking grandly about when i when i first came in to the um to the church

01:11:40.240 and i remember you saying like okay well you know all in all in good time all in due time like

01:11:47.300 don't you know you're you're waving flags and ringing bells right now it's like okay and i

01:11:53.860 you know i felt crestfallen but that's because i was naive and i imagine now and knowing now

01:12:02.100 how many times people do come out of the gate you know saying a lot uh promising a lot

01:12:10.340 and doing a lot saying you know again like you've mentioned it before you know i'm ready to slay

01:12:14.980 dragons but then let me ask them to show up for a food drive they just oh buddy i hey hey now

01:12:22.260 showing up for a food drive you sleep that's okay you got a number in case those dragons come at you

01:12:35.380 yeah excuse me so yeah there there is um that's kind of what it is is is this this

01:12:44.980 stands as saying that you should never take a fast friend but that a friend should be gained

01:12:51.300 over time as you get to learn about the person and as you you understand them more and you get

01:12:59.700 a chance to measure their word to what they do and you know it as opposed to someone who

01:13:06.900 you know says all the right things or um you know even for a short amount of time just does the

01:13:14.100 right things but then you know you you build in on this false sense and in a lot of ways um

01:13:24.420 you know those people that look at you in say your work or in the church or what have you

01:13:31.940 um or any social groups you'll find a lot of people you know being friendly to you

01:13:39.460 but thinking another thing this happens all over it happens in every social groupings we can we

01:13:46.660 can think of and you know the the person you joke around with um you know is laughing and joking

01:13:56.900 but he doesn't care about you or he's thinking only about himself but that that kind of that

01:14:03.380 guy that never jokes with you the guy that's kind of maybe even standing off or whatever and then

01:14:08.900 you go to ask him for help and he helps you out he has no intention of like somehow crushing you

01:14:15.140 for for his own gain it's just you never know you've got to be very careful about a lot of

01:14:20.100 times the people that put up front and forward views um might have alternative views behind them

01:14:27.780 so don't make fast friends uh recklessly as i really think that that that's what this stanza

01:14:34.980 is going for you know that's one of the

01:14:46.820 the have them all is not always warm and fuzzy and

01:14:52.980 And there is something truly beautiful about somebody who comes and is just so open and genuine that they share of themselves right up front, that they're trusting, that they're, you know, right out there with it.

01:15:14.320 honestly that's a that's a trait of our folk i learned that when on an afa trip to denmark

01:15:21.120 and i forget what the expression was because i don't speak danish but there is a trait that

01:15:28.320 the danes get uh stuck with called blue wideness that kind of means you're gullible they go

01:15:37.520 vacationing down in in spain or in the mediterranean and they're an easy mark because

01:15:43.440 they can be taken advantage of because they you know are are so trusting um

01:15:54.800 in the wolf age when our people still suffer from such a great soul sickness

01:16:02.720 it's very easy to become jaded and have all this this very jaded very guarded advice

01:16:08.640 face it's worth having and it's worth knowing even if you choose to forego implementing it

01:16:18.240 because any of these things it's not about telling you what you are and aren't allowed to do

01:16:27.600 it's about being mindful of things to factor in any of these things we've talked about no if you

01:16:36.480 up and you just want to stuff your face and you're confident you know your situation and you're

01:16:40.400 hungry and your value isn't to make a good social impression it's to get fed eat up if you're you

01:16:49.520 know your surroundings you know who you're around and you're you want to show up and get lit get lit

01:16:54.400 but know the consequence when you do it if you want to share with people and and say things do

01:17:02.880 but be very aware that there are people there are ill-intentioned people out there

01:17:07.760 that will use that against you and if you're willing to run that risk then by all means

01:17:13.760 but don't go in uninformed and that's kind of one of the it's a

01:17:23.120 just so you know admonition especially knowing that the high one who is speaking in the have them all

01:17:31.440 is all father odin who gave his eye for wisdom who hung from the world tree for wisdom he's not

01:17:40.360 one to be middling wise but he's saying hey you know i've gone to the abyss and i've looked in

01:17:48.720 and stuff stares back know what you're getting into before you go too far on some things

01:17:54.580 it's really a valuable caution you don't have to be middling wise but if you're not going to be

01:18:00.580 than be prepared for consequence.

01:18:03.220 And I think a little bit about this trustworthiness

01:18:05.500 and trust over time is gonna be, I say, I think,

01:18:08.640 I know that's gonna be stressed a little bit more

01:18:11.120 in a little bit different way later in the Habermal.

01:18:15.300 But yeah, I suppose like Reagan says,

01:18:20.860 trust but verify, like some of these things

01:18:23.320 and write them down and see if they come true

01:18:26.060 when somebody's puffing their chest

01:18:28.120 about stuff they're gonna do.

01:18:29.200 see if they follow through and that's one of the things about boasts that's the value is you talk

01:18:36.980 about something you're gonna do and then people can see whether you do or you don't so so many

01:18:41.600 of the things we talked about in the way swan took the last verse is hey don't put it out there

01:18:46.880 into the world unless you're going to follow through on it but that said if you call your

01:18:51.100 shot and you make it then good you've earned yourself um something valuable by it so uh yeah

01:19:00.940 and let's flip the page and go to uh go to 66

01:19:10.220 oh we'll pause before you do

01:19:11.820 jimmy cracks corn in thorshof and i do care uh five dollar donation

01:19:21.180 am i missing the context on that one i know that's just the name he chose oh and uh the

01:19:34.860 little song the little ditty um excuse me anyways uh go through rob ain't broke yet let's keep going

01:19:42.700 uh come on y'all dollar for dollar uh and that's true so the five dollar donation from jimmy cracks

01:19:50.860 corn and thorshoff i appreciate it and thank you jimmy and thank you rob all right proceed

01:19:58.220 oh sorry i was reading uh some of these the the comments as well as before

01:20:07.460 so um uh 66 oh random side note before you do i'm just watching the thing in the chat and i'm not

01:20:18.960 sure we got some east coasters asking the question i don't know if they'll be here when we get to

01:20:22.960 questions who holds the hoff wide record for the most families fed at a food pantry

01:20:30.000 uh hashtag hardest working hoff so that's odin's hoff um but new york's hoff is doing amazingly

01:20:40.880 and for anybody who may or may not know uh last weekend at new york's hoff they fed 72 families

01:20:49.840 um and that's what they're like an hour of that food pantry that's a huge huge impact on that

01:20:54.560 community and thank you everybody who took part in that um odenshoff has had some that are bigger

01:21:00.720 than that but we've been doing it at odenshoff now for i want to say about six years and

01:21:12.000 And that's been, I apologize, 74 families is corrected in the chat room, even better.

01:21:19.920 But Odenshoff, I think, has got in the low 100s, but I'd have to check with Githya McNallan on that.

01:21:27.300 But again, it's been going for six years on doing it, and in a particularly impoverished area that's gone through some very targeted calamities with fires and other stuff.

01:21:42.000 So I'm all for let's continue to compete to see who can feed the most families and help the most in their community.

01:21:51.040 I think that's a that's competition where everybody wins.

01:21:54.180 so uh moving here into 66 uh too early to many a meeting i came and some too late

01:22:16.780 have I sought. The beer was all drunk or not even yet brewed. Little the loathed man finds.

01:22:29.620 So again, the usage of this, of the loathed man, that's kind of an odd placement to the idea of

01:22:40.500 what this, the context of this verse is really talking about is, is again, for someone to show

01:22:47.120 up too early isn't always a bad thing. It's talking about context though. The context of

01:22:55.540 this is, is someone who shows up early to gain much. If they're showing up there to, you know,

01:23:02.000 make sure they get the best seat and make sure they get the most food and make sure they get

01:23:05.320 the most drink um and then you know or again the one who shows up too late um this is really

01:23:14.960 talking about the idea of understanding timing if you show up too early you put people out

01:23:22.620 sometimes they're still in preparation uh and now you're just kind of like the person standing there

01:23:28.700 while everyone else is trying to get things together and i'm speaking maybe not so much

01:23:32.840 like for a religious event or something like that because oftentimes showing up early just means

01:23:38.280 extra hands to help but let's say for instance just in our day-to-day lives if we show up uh

01:23:44.120 you know too early at an event where things are being prepared and the house is not quite ready

01:23:51.080 people aren't even fully dressed and here you are standing there kind of in the middle of it and

01:23:58.120 And, you know, this is a benign thing initially, but if it happens over and over again,

01:24:08.880 so it's really talking about the ideas that make sure that your timing

01:24:12.700 is measured in accordance to things around you. Because if you are showing up always ever early

01:24:21.760 or always ever late it causes issues and you end up missing out or being

01:24:30.560 too much at the not the right time um you know in your social circles

01:24:38.800 so it is it i think this is really about um measuring your your your timeliness it's not

01:24:46.080 um sometimes it's about showing up i i'm trying to like not say precisely when you mean to

01:24:54.640 and do some some uh gandalf quote there but um the uh the idea really is is that you should

01:25:05.280 take stock of the situation before you even show up um do you need to be there exactly on time

01:25:13.200 do you need to be there early or not because if you don't need to be there early sometimes

01:25:21.440 not getting in the way especially if you haven't been told like hey i need you to show up early

01:25:28.320 don't come in there unless you have the ability you know you you never know if you even your

01:25:33.840 usefulness and i would even say have the wherewithal to understand too like oh i came

01:25:38.240 year early everybody looks kind of busy i'll i'm gonna go out and i will be back or i'm gonna go

01:25:45.120 pick someone up i'm gonna go do something something elsewhere before um you know and come back at a

01:25:52.240 better time it's still helping out but it's out of the way i i remember in the marine corps they

01:25:58.000 they spoke about this often was the ideas like being able to lead being able to follow and also

01:26:04.720 being able to know when you're more or less in the way so you know i think this stanza

01:26:12.240 is basically laying to that

01:26:17.280 so this is extremely important and nuanced and there's no one size fits all answer to it

01:26:27.600 one of the greatest if not the greatest theme theme that we've encountered in this study

01:26:34.640 is being socially adept reading the room and being able to understand social cues

01:26:44.160 and i think in this generation where people have become very very reliant on online interactions

01:26:52.240 and where a number of people especially young people in their very formative social years

01:26:58.080 were unfortunately made to be sequestered in their homes

01:27:04.860 during the reaction to COVID-19,

01:27:08.500 people lack social skills.

01:27:14.180 And this is sad and unfortunate for those who lack it,

01:27:19.800 but it's also an opportunity for those who recognize it

01:27:24.900 to quickly catch up and be ahead of their peers.

01:27:31.920 Read the room, be aware, pick up on subtle things of, you know,

01:27:36.140 when it's too early, maybe when you're not wanted,

01:27:39.300 maybe when there's a couple that wants some alone time

01:27:41.780 and you're intruding on it, maybe when there's, you know,

01:27:45.700 just people that are having a private conversation

01:27:48.020 that maybe want a little bit of space.

01:27:51.000 Like Svon said, sometimes you show up early

01:27:53.200 and you're just making it awkward and people are all in their pajamas like hey uh i guess sit down

01:27:58.560 and make yourself comfortable we're kind of getting ready um maybe you oh hold on guys i'll

01:28:04.400 be right back does anybody need anything from the store and go grab something or maybe you know

01:28:10.400 they're really good friends and you've read the room and it's all good but knowing those things

01:28:15.760 is really is important and you know how long you push in hospitality you stay in late when people

01:28:21.360 are like you know well i got an early day tomorrow a lot of a lot of stuff to do in the morning you

01:28:29.120 know or people giving out hints that you're not picking up on read the read the atmosphere of the

01:28:36.160 room and see see what's going to meet your social ends best maybe sometimes it is outlasting last

01:28:46.400 guest so you have a private moment with the host to talk about something you you were holding back

01:28:52.160 on or maybe it's you know leave early and encourage other people to go with you because you know that

01:28:59.120 they want a little bit of space and a little bit of family time figuring those things out as a is

01:29:03.840 a really important skill and uh

01:29:06.800 Matthew Gordon gave us $25 says hail the gods and the AFA also spawn that tie knot is awesome

01:29:18.720 that's the second compliment you've got on your tie knot tonight spawn so doing something right

01:29:23.600 with that uh we appreciate go ahead eldritch knots on YouTube they're easy it makes you look like you

01:29:30.940 know what you're doing there you go you heard it here folks Matthew Gordon thank you so much we

01:29:35.820 appreciate your donation and thank you rob

01:29:41.340 carry on uh let's see here so uh oh and uh it's kind of funny too i just

01:29:50.140 wanted to say too i just found out this is a donald trump tie

01:29:56.540 signature collection i did not know that until tonight

01:30:02.300 actually i uh i don't know so yeah finding out that doing the knot and uh trying to figure out

01:30:10.380 how to do it made me pay close attention to the small print on the back and i was like

01:30:15.020 oh so when i looked and this is completely unintentional mine is a puff daddy time

01:30:23.980 did not know that one yeah i didn't know that these names

01:30:28.220 uh um i'm sure people are gonna love that one uh so let's this one is kind of interesting

01:30:41.100 it makes more sense but it is cryptically written uh to their homes men would bid me

01:30:49.580 hither and yon if at mealtime I needed no meat or would hang two hams in my true friend's house

01:30:59.180 where only one I had eaten. So a couple of this, a little bit about this. One is basically saying

01:31:08.740 Like I've been asked often to my friends' homes, you know, and I oftentimes did, you know, would sit and eat with them, even though I didn't even bring anything.

01:31:24.140 And that's kind of what's being said there is that, you know, with good friends, I have often found myself, and even though I was unprepared to sit and eat with them, it didn't burden them.

01:31:38.160 They didn't see it as a loss. On the other hand, oftentimes you show up at the right time

01:31:47.460 with more and you leave them when you only partake in just a small amount.

01:31:54.960 And that's the usage of the word hanging two hands. Back then, the idea of hanging meat around

01:32:03.980 the fireplace to to smoke and to dry out was very very common and to have a good amount of this meat

01:32:12.460 hanging around was a great way of ensuring that you had a meal um and this is kind of saying like

01:32:19.660 showing up with two hands and only eating the one and leaving the other one for your friend so

01:32:26.300 it's we often joke about that cycle of giving and gifting that you might have with a close

01:32:31.740 friend but it's it's like you never sometimes you might not have a lot and your friends will cover

01:32:37.980 for you but make sure you reciprocate by showing up every now and then and only taking a little

01:32:44.220 bit of what you showed up with with the intent of you know letting letting your friend have

01:32:50.620 the overabundance and that is how things will balance things out it'll it'll always you know

01:32:57.420 pay itself forward kind of thing. Um, you know, you show up with a little extra and, um, as long,

01:33:05.960 you know, not so burdensome, I guess, I guess nowadays, if you think about it, you show up

01:33:10.940 with too much, say like drink or something, um, you know, and you, you, you clog someone's

01:33:17.680 refrigerator up might not be so good, but, um, you know, showing up with two legs of lamb and

01:33:25.260 saying oh well i only planned on you know us grilling out on this one you should just throw

01:33:29.780 this one in your freezer that's a nice really really nice gesture that kind of compensates for

01:33:36.680 perhaps times that you couldn't show up so when bounty is good and your bounty is high give

01:33:42.640 because it will help you when sometimes when your bounty is low

01:33:45.820 see what i took for from this is is the same on the last half but on first half like

01:33:54.160 cool if i wasn't going to eat anything then everybody'd invite me to all kind of stuff

01:33:59.420 like you'd be really popular if you don't show up and actually consume but when you do that's

01:34:06.040 when the cuts are made on who's you know worth having around and who's not it's like when you're

01:34:10.900 doing invitations to a wedding or anything else where you're providing the food well maybe we can

01:34:16.920 only afford a certain number of guests um i don't know if swan's making the cut because you know

01:34:23.120 what does he offer compared to how much he eats? We'll see. This is kind of the juxtaposition to,

01:34:29.660 I mentioned, I think last episode, my cousin Scott and I used to, used to when we were Jehovah's

01:34:39.080 Witness or when I was a Jehovah's Witness, we, you know, a much younger man who was not wise,

01:34:44.720 not proud of the story, but we would show up to the church picnic and you win if you eat more

01:34:51.820 than you bought. So we would show up, you know, and we would try to consume more than we bought

01:34:57.080 and then go away thinking, aha, we won. Yeah, don't do that. But this is an interesting point

01:35:05.400 to it. And it also points out like, it's a nice thing to show up with extra that's not needed.

01:35:12.200 So the host can have a little bit more. I tell you what, many a time I have, you know,

01:35:17.740 I've been on here drinking beers that are left over from folks that came by and brought more than was necessary to meals that I had at my house, and I appreciate that.

01:35:29.720 Little, you know, seemingly small gestures of things like that for somebody who hosts or somebody who, and it describes as your true friend.

01:35:39.980 So much of the have them all thus far is strategic.

01:35:47.740 think cynical is probably not the right word but it's aimed at going in strange places where you

01:35:56.620 don't know who's friend and foe or where you're trying to politically maneuver it points out very

01:36:03.580 specifically advice that it means for your friend to your friends even if it's a long way away and

01:36:10.620 way out of your way no that's an easy trip because it's important for friends to see each other

01:36:15.980 give gifts to your friends share your true mind with your friends and also here like yeah share

01:36:22.620 your resources if you got extra show up and like ah my eyes were bigger than my stomach here you

01:36:28.380 can have the rest of this stuff um especially when times are tough that can mean a lot to folks and

01:36:36.620 yeah

01:36:41.900 simple enough um

01:36:46.700 swan can you take us through

01:36:51.500 sorry i lost my place there for a second can you take us to 68 please yeah well and i do enjoy

01:36:59.740 this translation um though i i imagine it might catch some people's uh ire in the usage of words um

01:37:09.180 um, I, yeah, it's, um, let's see. So here we have a fire for men is the fairest gift

01:37:22.440 and power to see the sun health as well. If a man may have it and a life not stained with sin.

01:37:31.140 so i was quickly like i was trying to go over here and like search something of um of it but

01:37:43.520 i didn't quite make it so i'm gonna do it now but i think that um the uh the true point of this

01:37:53.800 here is about the attainment of what is good

01:37:59.980 based off of perhaps need.

01:38:05.000 You know, fire for men is the fairest gift

01:38:06.700 and the power is to see the sun.

01:38:09.820 Until you're freezing cold

01:38:11.860 or until, you know, you're lost in the dark,

01:38:18.000 these two lines might not have a lot of weight.

01:38:23.800 But, you know, when starving, colds, just waiting for the sun to come up so you get that warmth, it's such a good thing to have.

01:38:36.020 And so unless you have that, you know, you've had that deficit before, might not make a lot of sense.

01:38:41.920 though fire um is a good one but that's really what it's talking about is fire and the warmth

01:38:48.000 um and and the warmth of the sun and the light is so good especially if you've just experienced

01:38:56.740 you know the darkness of these things and to that health is the same to a man um especially if and

01:39:06.700 this is the last part, and a life not stained with sin. So a lot of people might be going,

01:39:12.000 what? You know, that this translation, oftentimes the word of shame is also used. So, you know,

01:39:25.320 a life not stained with dishonor could be another word used. And it just, it struck me and I was

01:39:33.200 like, oh man, I wonder, I want to know the etymology of the word sin. But I've seen other

01:39:38.260 translations and utilizing this is that basically what's being said is, is that there are good

01:39:45.740 things, fire and the light of the sun are so good to the soul. And so is health. So long as you

01:39:54.940 haven't lived your life with, uh, you know, where you're dishonored kind of, uh, you're, you're 0.99

01:40:03.380 healthy, but everyone hates you or, or, or you're just a wretched person. Um, no, I think that's, 0.90

01:40:12.800 that's what is in essence being said is that, um, health is good. It is like a fire,

01:40:20.440 the comparison between the two it is that which keeps you warm and keeps you going but it's the

01:40:26.140 light and the hope and the uh the kind of emergence out of darkness that good honor brings in your

01:40:32.280 life in like the equivalency to you know seeing the sun and feeling the warmth of the sun

01:40:38.680 um your honor is not necessarily always like equated to the building blocks of who you are

01:40:45.900 as a person as far as being able to you know breathe and move and go to work and do things

01:40:51.900 but it carries on a far broader warmth and a far broader light than simply a fire and so if you're

01:40:59.260 marred with that it draws so much away from your life and so that's something that you should

01:41:06.460 always you know tend to

01:41:08.620 And I'm already, for a lot of people who might not know, you know, sin is not a Hebrew or

01:41:25.260 Judaic word or an Aramaic word from the Bible.

01:41:28.760 It's a Germanic word.

01:41:30.080 We get so many things.

01:41:31.820 I would caution everybody in English speaking I believe probably in all European language

01:41:47.820 countries Christianity was translated into our languages and the words that we so often

01:41:58.880 associate with Christianity aren't the Hebrew words. They're the English or German or whatever

01:42:09.580 culture it might be is equivalent to those words or concepts that we are familiar with that best

01:42:16.040 fit that space um so to reiterate sin is a thing sin as far as i can tell etymologically goes back to

01:42:33.480 latin at least and into the proto-indo-european meaning basically guilty and being guilty

01:42:40.840 feelings of guilt and certainly it is a blessing to man to have simple things like fire to warm

01:42:47.400 yourself sunlight to illuminate the world good health and not having to sit around feeling

01:42:56.120 guilty about stuff and i think that this is an admonition to appreciate the simple things in life

01:43:06.680 that are fundamental but that are often of the most value one of which is

01:43:13.880 not having to worry about wrongs you've done or ways you've messed up and sitting around

01:43:19.320 not having to live with regret and feelings of guilt for things that you did wrong and

01:43:24.840 i don't think that means we shouldn't feel bad for things we do wrong it means we shouldn't do wrong

01:43:30.120 stuff as self-explanatory as that might be it's worth saying having inner peace is invaluable

01:43:40.400 and that comes from living right and so do that

01:43:47.660 yeah i didn't mean to hyper focus just on the word itself no our because i guarantee you a lot

01:43:55.120 of people who listen to this, the only context that they've heard the term sin is in a Christian

01:44:01.120 or a Judaic context. So I think it's really important to point that out.

01:44:07.760 Yeah, the idea of an offense against the gods or against your ancestors,

01:44:16.920 um you know this this word was chosen because of its equivalency you know malak became angelos

01:44:25.520 because of the equivalency um and everyone just assumes oh angel that's you know but no that's

01:44:33.180 that's a greek word what did they they used a totally different word and it sounds crazy

01:44:37.840 uh the word sin the word heaven the word hell evil and good these are all our words and they

01:44:44.620 were in place and stood in testament to our moral sense long before uh christianity contextualized

01:44:53.260 these words for its uses yeah the hebrew word is i can't make the like phlegm noise but kata

01:45:01.260 basically which means uh falling short or missing a goal um that's not the same as being guilty of

01:45:09.460 offense which is a is an aryan word and arian concept yeah and this one's unique arian because

01:45:15.220 of that that bridging between you said that you know with the latin it goes all the way back to

01:45:20.180 in the uh in uh the uh gothic language which you know oldest germanic that we we have um these both

01:45:29.540 kind of run parallel with each other so that's showing this goes all the way back and so

01:45:34.580 that's kind of why i wanted to i love this translation and i wonder how many people have

01:45:42.900 kind of turned their nose up to things without you know looking at some of that stuff i would

01:45:48.500 highly recommend if anyone's ever interested in like words and and you know check the etymology

01:45:53.940 on words you'd be surprised where they come from etymology trumps definition all day long oh it's

01:46:01.220 so fun it's it's it's amazing to like see the history and the ancestry of a word and i've had

01:46:07.540 people ask like oh why do you use the word heaven when you talk about the gods and it's like because

01:46:15.540 heaven is our word it's uh him in bjork where heimdall is in on you know is in the edges

01:46:24.980 of ausgard that's heavenly mountains it's it's you know such it is a word of common use and

01:46:31.220 understanding before christianity it's just that we've become so kind of yeah either bitterly

01:46:36.900 rejecting or what have you and and so um you know looking at these words and and being open

01:46:43.780 to their etymologies are really important you end up finding out we have a lot more of our own

01:46:50.580 it's just i i know years and years of people kind of getting conditioned by

01:46:56.740 a foreign faith these words might have more of a bitter taste to them i guess but

01:47:04.260 taking the time is i think good it'll break out of that get you out of it and that's what i think

01:47:10.420 too is this uh this this sin is on multiple levels for us the the sins against your ancestors the

01:47:17.620 sins against your folk the sins against the gods um what we're really talking about here is yeah

01:47:23.940 these transgressions against the way that the gods perhaps want to see us become and the way

01:47:31.060 our ancestors want to see us become and so it is best you know that you live your life

01:47:37.780 so nick nick makes a good point in the chat for anybody who's listening that doesn't

01:47:43.140 doesn't see it this is a point i wanted to make as well

01:47:47.940 this is maturing in our faith um i've mentioned before in the early

01:47:54.500 days of the modern resurgence of aussitrew

01:47:57.300 so much was about trying to reject a foreign religiosity 0.83

01:48:02.420 and everything you know so much of what was being done

01:48:05.700 was a reaction to or oh well christians do this

01:48:09.860 so we need to immediately do the opposite we're past that now we need to embrace

01:48:17.540 who we are and what we're about and not define ourselves by counterpointing everything that we're

01:48:24.660 not um and that comes with reclaiming our nobility as a people so much of the image

01:48:32.660 that you see on tv with the you know dreadlocks and shoulder pelts and ashes on the face

01:48:40.740 is trying to contrast and make our ancestors as barbarous as possible

01:48:46.100 no our people were civilized people we were the civilizers um dignity and nobility are inherent

01:48:55.940 in our blood and in our folk and reclaiming pious religiosity is is a mandate from the gods that we

01:49:06.660 must do and so re-evaluating these terms is really important if you look at the the jewish word that

01:49:14.100 means to miss the mark or to fall short that's pointing out the imperfection of yahweh's creation

01:49:23.540 The protection racket that was set up to where people are born broken and they can't be perfect and anything less than perfection is worthy of death. 0.59

01:49:33.720 But wait, if you give everything to Jesus forever, then maybe I'll save you from death.

01:49:41.520 That's not that's not our situation.

01:49:45.480 It's about responsibility.

01:49:47.660 You're guilty.

01:49:48.940 You bear responsibility for doing something wrong.

01:49:51.980 And the difference in those concepts may not seem like a lot at casual observation, but fundamentally it is responsibility versus, you know, oh, well, I can't be perfect.

01:50:07.800 I'll just Jesus take the wheel as opposed to, no, I'm responsible for my actions.

01:50:13.880 I'm responsible for guilt that I've incurred through doing wrong to another person, to the gods.

01:50:24.020 And that implies that it's something that can be corrected or can be compensated.

01:50:29.820 And I think that's really, really important.

01:50:37.800 um let's see all right so 69 if you will right okay all wretched is no man though never so sick

01:50:56.120 some from their sons have joy some win it from their kinsmen and some from their wealth

01:51:05.900 and some from worthy works.

01:51:13.020 And I think this one is an interesting one

01:51:17.080 because it's confusing the way Bellows

01:51:19.620 kind of places it out there,

01:51:22.340 but it really does.

01:51:27.880 Like, once you see it, you can't unsee it.

01:51:31.740 It's basically saying that no one is so wretched

01:51:34.400 that there is no happiness in the world around you.

01:51:40.520 There's no point in which the darkness should be able to claim you

01:51:48.760 because there are joy in things that are around you.

01:51:55.520 So a man is never so wretchedly sick or ill or even downtrodden

01:52:02.060 that he should not see. There are joys in things. You can find joys in your children. You can find

01:52:10.040 joy in your friends. You can find, again, the uses of the word wealth. And I think this means,

01:52:18.240 you know or is more speaking of your um accumulated like uh

01:52:28.480 achievements and of your or of doing worthy work so it's it's you can find positives in things

01:52:39.040 even in the darkest of times and that you should you should never let that wretched illness fall

01:52:44.400 before you that it it washes away all the things you've done um and i know people battle with

01:52:52.480 depression a lot and this is i think kind of the referencing of that is that um no matter how dark

01:53:00.480 you think it is there is testaments that you have done there are people that you are that you know

01:53:06.480 So your children, you know, even if you have problems with your children or things that are, you know, because we all grow up, grow older or what have you, you know, you should take comfort in the truth of knowing that you've made these testaments, you've made these achievements, you've gained these things,

01:53:30.220 or you can and should go out and do worthy works in order to, you know, remember that you are worth

01:53:41.200 living, you are worth doing, you are worth continuing on. And this kind of juxtaposes,

01:53:46.340 or not even, but it kind of aligns with, you know, the dead, the dead do nothing, the dead are worth

01:53:52.000 nothing. At the end of the day, if you are at the point where you're, you know, at a loss,

01:53:59.780 you know, go out and, you know, forcing yourself to remember, forcing yourself to do or more. And

01:54:07.620 then, you know, ultimately I would say, of course, speak to someone, get counsel, you know, reach out

01:54:13.600 to your friends, reach out to those people, reach out to your gothar, but you're never so lost that

01:54:21.580 you cannot have some list of your worth in the world don't forget that yeah i think it's

01:54:34.300 one thing that's very okay i'm trying to think how to set this up i'm sorry um

01:54:43.020 all too often when we think about things historically

01:54:47.100 we fail to realize that

01:54:51.860 people are fundamentally the same

01:54:59.100 and we share fundamental similarities with our ancestors.

01:55:05.340 I've talked a lot.

01:55:07.800 Also true isn't aping the actions of our ancestors

01:55:11.120 because actions and like thou shalt and thou shalt not,

01:55:15.920 a lot of that has to do with circumstance but principles are eternal it's worth realizing

01:55:24.960 that our ancestors and that's why the have them all is so very very accessible

01:55:30.480 is it talks about real life social interactions that our ancestors dealt with and felt

01:55:37.120 in the same ways that we that we do and they dealt with with depression and with

01:55:43.120 with evaluating your life and seeing what everybody else has that you wish you had that

01:55:52.240 that you know that you don't have and i think that it's easy when you're when you're in an

01:56:01.880 in a negative place to focus on all of the things that you don't have or ways you come up short

01:56:10.980 and being honest with yourself is fine but honest doesn't just mean

01:56:17.720 honest about ways that you're less than honest also means fairly evaluating the things that

01:56:28.200 you have and the skills that you possess and it talks here you know there's there's a lot

01:56:33.600 of different ways that people measure a successful life. And, you know, some have been blessed

01:56:47.680 with good health and have taken care of themselves and they can, you know, rejoice in that. Some

01:56:55.000 Some have big families that they can, you know, take pride in the family they've made.

01:57:03.680 Some people, you know, made really good financial decisions in their life, and they can celebrate

01:57:10.220 their wealth.

01:57:12.020 And that's another thing that we need to get out of a bad mindset on, there's nothing

01:57:15.160 wrong with that.

01:57:16.160 Being wealthy is awesome, good for those people.

01:57:19.380 We should celebrate that instead of, you know, get grumpy or resentful.

01:57:24.540 a huge accomplishment and testimony and wealth is power you can use that wealth to you know

01:57:31.740 drape yourself in jewels if you want or in like you guys have been doing tonight and donating and

01:57:40.620 helping us as a church to build temples to our gods or to take care of people that you care about

01:57:46.080 or any number of things so there's all kind of really some people from just the good the pride

01:57:52.380 and the good deeds they've done.

01:57:53.980 There's a lot of things that you can stop

01:57:59.080 and appreciate that you have in your life.

01:58:02.840 And to be honest and to celebrate truth,

01:58:06.540 which is one of our core values, our noble virtues,

01:58:09.940 you can't just beat yourself up

01:58:13.320 on all the things you don't have.

01:58:14.840 You have to also acknowledge and take stock

01:58:16.980 of the things you do have.

01:58:18.340 um as an aside one of the most important uh one of the most important things

01:58:27.100 good night Aubrey I love you all right sleep good anyways one of the most important uh

01:58:34.280 one of the oh okay this is what I was gonna say I'm sorry uh so something that has added a lot

01:58:45.980 to my growth spiritually was something that I picked up for, and I'm sure it's been stated

01:58:52.240 other places, but in the nine doors of Midgard, there's an exercise in there to where you're

01:58:58.800 supposed to write a list that's brutally honest about your strengths and your weaknesses

01:59:06.180 and to tally that and to every so often check back in on that list and take stock of what

01:59:13.820 you've accomplished or what you haven't the things that you still need to work on things that you've

01:59:18.520 achieved and things that you haven't and it's not it is what it is everybody everyone on this

01:59:29.440 listening to this and this will be true no matter when you listen to it we are all

01:59:34.800 where we are right now we have a starting point that starting point is this moment

01:59:39.680 what's been done has been done evaluating it fairly is neither good nor bad it's just honest

01:59:49.840 but honesty with ourselves gives us an accurate set point to build from

01:59:55.740 and I still go you know that's a list that it's probably been 10 years now since I made

02:00:03.020 but I go back and look at it every so often and compare and see stuff that I've improved on stuff

02:00:09.120 that maybe I haven't, um, skills that I have, but I didn't have then things that maybe I used to be

02:00:16.500 good at that I slacked on, whatever that might be, but it's really valuable. But always remember,

02:00:21.820 be honest with yourself. And sometimes that means, you know, recognizing when you mess up,

02:00:27.560 but it also means not recognizing when you succeed too. And you can't,

02:00:32.340 it's not true unless both are factored in if it's just the negative view of yourself or if it's just

02:00:40.180 the rosy view of yourself neither of those is true those together make the truth

02:00:47.780 um and then i think that's followed up really well in this next one

02:00:56.240 uh spawn if you would take us through 70 please yeah i wanted to make a point about the um

02:01:05.280 uh the part here where uh that there's a removal of a worthy life so at in the beginning of this

02:01:14.080 it is better to live the removal of a worthy life was placed are removed with and then juxtaposed

02:01:22.960 two than to lie a corpse. And I think that that kind of still, it fits, even though poetically

02:01:30.060 it doesn't, is that, you know, it is better to live than to lie a corpse. It is better to live

02:01:37.500 a worthy life than to lie a corpse. The live man catches the cow. I saw flames rise from a rich

02:01:47.200 man's pyre, and before his door he lay dead. And so this is kind of an interesting one. I think

02:01:56.160 it's more about the substance versus solely the achievement. Achievement is good. There's nothing

02:02:05.080 wrong with gaining those achievements, but if you are not right within oneself, sometimes you

02:02:17.000 meet successful people who are, they're missing or they have a hole in themselves. Um, they're

02:02:23.140 successful. They've gained things, but something is lost. Something is, is, uh, not quite there.

02:02:29.480 And so you have in juxtaposition to that, a person of a well, you know, well-lived life,

02:02:37.940 uh, you have this, these kinds of drawing of similarities is that you can be a well-living

02:02:45.620 person, and it is surely better than being a corpse, but to go out and to gain, as it says,

02:02:55.860 to catch the cow. Again, of course, the meaning of a cow to our ancestors as being a source of

02:03:04.420 money and a source of food and a source of utility and vast amounts of wealth to it.

02:03:08.980 um uh but to to be one that is without that to not live that good life uh is akin to being that

02:03:23.040 dead man even though you have many achievements you know you still are the the dead man at the

02:03:30.600 door if you will and that's kind of where i've taken this one is especially in with with context

02:03:36.640 to that missing part in the manuscript is a well-lived life is what really kind of

02:03:46.080 angled that for me, the idea that, you know, your achievements are good, but you really

02:03:57.640 should come to a point.

02:03:59.360 It's almost like you see beautiful people and well-off people with great achievements,

02:04:04.580 and yet they're constantly cutting into themselves they're changing their faces they're they're

02:04:11.200 they're trying to avoid um aging to such a degree that it and it's not just like oh you know it's

02:04:19.520 maybe a little thing they're trying no they're like the the desperation in it is is palpable

02:04:26.060 and so it's like and it becomes to the point where it's almost sickly and then it gets even

02:04:30.320 worse and worse as it goes. Those people have great achievements, but there's a deadness inside

02:04:38.680 them. You know, gaining achievements is good, but living a life where you are whole is good as well.

02:04:49.380 You should try to be a successful person, but who is also whole within themselves. And a lot of

02:04:57.140 sometimes you can see if you look around a lot of people who are successful um aren't whole

02:05:03.960 sometimes and i think that this is the this verse is speaking on on that um

02:05:10.700 you know in relation to the substance of your soul over time gain your achievements build your

02:05:19.120 power and rely on your friends and and do great fame but make sure that you don't uh you know

02:05:29.520 sacrifice you you're either yourself or ultimately looking at being having the ability to look at

02:05:36.560 yourself and say am i doing all of this because of something and trying to heal that trying to make

02:05:43.440 that is worth you reaching that equilibrium. Otherwise, you know, the hole might drive you on,

02:05:52.680 but it's eventually going to, you know, drop everything out on you. So I think it's worth

02:05:59.820 keeping that spiritual constitution going, keeping that self-reflection going, despite any sort of

02:06:07.620 tasks and hurdles that you're attaining, you should still attain them, but look inward as

02:06:18.560 well and make sure you're doing them for the right reasons and that you're coming to being

02:06:22.780 a whole person and not just, it's the only thing you have.

02:06:37.620 this is a again a very interesting one the way it's it's kind of written and

02:06:44.040 other translations kind of holds interesting like instead of catching the

02:06:51.180 cow it's which in the you know in Old Norse they use the word get it but it's

02:06:57.660 It's, you know, in other translations, it's like, I guess they're suggesting riding the

02:07:08.700 cow, like, tis the living of who come by the cow.

02:07:13.800 That's Bray's translation, and I always thought that was very odd.

02:07:18.180 And I think it's more about, again, attaining those things, attaining those goals, attaining

02:07:23.340 those wealth, but doing so with a, a sense of, uh, spiritual accomplishment as well as

02:07:32.460 material accomplishment. If you have just one, you'll end up kind of berefting the other.

02:07:39.920 All right. Well, yeah, I think, I think something else this speaks to is opportunity.

02:07:48.080 once you once you're dead your work here here in midgard's done for good or for ill

02:07:57.080 is what it is um as long as you have life in your body

02:08:04.040 there are things you can do to improve if you have lived a great life and you got awesome stuff

02:08:14.500 you have time to make it better if you haven't you find yourself lacking there's still a chance

02:08:21.320 to uh balance those scales out to make things to make things better to fix things that aren't the

02:08:30.020 way you'd like them you still have that flexibility of movement here in midgard when you're live

02:08:35.640 and you don't after you pass and the idea is you know

02:08:39.620 this isn't exactly what it's saying,

02:08:44.400 but I do think it's an implication and something that's worth realizing life

02:08:48.980 short,

02:08:50.200 life short. And I think that most everybody,

02:08:53.940 unless they're dying of a protracted illness or something that that's making

02:08:58.760 them miserable,

02:09:00.860 people wish they had more of it and they find, you know, man,

02:09:04.700 there's stuff that I wish I did that I didn't do. There's things that,

02:09:08.260 you know,

02:09:08.480 we have a lot more ambition than we do life so making the most of it is really

02:09:16.800 really something we need to be conscious of of trying to do um

02:09:23.660 that's why it's important to you know to not rest on your laurels and keep trying to win

02:09:31.780 keep trying to succeed keep trying to find victory uh on yet another reason this show's

02:09:38.420 called victory never sleeps okay time ain't got time um interesting side note we just finished 70.

02:09:51.060 this is where we planned to be after our first episode

02:09:56.740 two thirds or so into our third episode we were finally

02:10:00.100 catching up with where we had hoped to, uh, end on our first episode and that's funny and we

02:10:07.580 chuckle or whatever. And, you know, maybe sometimes we told the story we didn't need to,

02:10:12.720 or waxed a little bit too much, but I, I think this is great that we're spending the time to

02:10:18.400 really go over this and, and apply it in different ways and use it as a medium to express

02:10:26.260 important points about our religion that come from a very, very good context here

02:10:34.040 in the Habermal. So I'm glad we're taking our time on it.

02:10:41.220 Swan, would you? I think we were being a little

02:10:44.420 overzealous in the beginning. Well, yeah, but I mean, if we were just reading,

02:10:51.440 that's one thing, but we've stopped with anecdotes and lessons about life that we've

02:10:56.180 learned thus far and you know really valuable things and i think it's been time well spent i

02:11:01.460 hope that our audience thinks so as well um yeah if you'll flip the page for us and start us off

02:11:09.700 171 yeah this is the one this is the one that we've uh referenced a couple times and uh that

02:11:15.860 you you have said before you really uh find yourself referring to this one a lot as well

02:11:22.900 And I think this is an important one for those listening is 71.

02:11:31.020 The lame rides a horse.

02:11:34.340 The handless is a herdsman. 0.56

02:11:37.040 The deaf in battle is bold. 0.99

02:11:40.580 The blind man is better than one that is burned. 0.99

02:11:44.440 No good can come from a corpse.

02:11:49.180 He hammered that one very well.

02:11:51.560 he you know placed it out the tempo is really good and it just drives it home you know that uh

02:11:59.400 you know that we find ourselves there is that is um

02:12:07.160 i i don't i think it's it's interesting like the blind are better than the burned

02:12:13.000 this of course really does show at the time uh and i think still true today

02:12:20.680 our cultural usage of what death is in relation to cremation that wasn't always the case for our

02:12:27.400 ancestors we've gone back and forth but the finality of being burned really does drive

02:12:33.000 this home even more than than perhaps saying being buried um is is is that there's no the

02:12:39.800 transformation is complete uh and and and the living must live on and so you know here we it's

02:12:49.880 the, you know, the lame can still ride a horse. The lame can still, you know, they may have

02:12:57.160 trouble walking, but there are ways for them to get around. And, you know, the handless,

02:13:03.120 and I find that it's like a missing of the hand, you know, can still help with guiding the animals

02:13:11.660 and moving them about because their body and their presence needs to be there. And the deaf, 0.81

02:13:17.460 I mean, even in this regards, the usage of the death, being able to not get overtaken by the din of battle can sometimes be an advantage, or at least I would say, perhaps in Elden times, but, you know, it's the idea is still there. 0.95

02:13:36.520 And, you know, even a blind man is better than a corpse on the pyre.

02:13:41.800 yeah i mean i think we hit on a lot of this in the last stanza but this one i go to a lot because 0.99

02:13:51.780 again it's easy to feel useless in one or more areas especially if you you know are disabled

02:14:02.160 in some way or you've suffered some kind of loss very often when we suffer loss all we can see

02:14:09.240 is what we lost and what we wish we had.

02:14:16.840 I try to make this point a lot to our folk,

02:14:20.020 and I think it's worth talking about.

02:14:24.140 If all we focus on is self-pity,

02:14:28.740 we miss all of the opportunities that we still have.

02:14:33.000 I guess it's, you know, trying to think of the analogy, but, you know, we are not made whole by complaining about that which we lost or which we wish we had that we don't.

02:14:54.700 Some of it just is.

02:14:56.600 But we can focus on the things that are in front of us that we can accomplish.

02:15:01.100 Those things are many.

02:15:04.660 There's people that are able to, and this comes a lot because in leading the AFA,

02:15:10.260 we have all different kinds of our folk.

02:15:16.340 We have all different people at different ages, different life experiences, different skill sets, different abilities, physical, mental, and otherwise.

02:15:32.860 We have people that come to us from so many different places at so many different levels.

02:15:38.120 all of those people can contribute in a valuable way to the success of our folk

02:15:46.500 to the success of our faith and building something glorious for our gods

02:15:51.720 and for our descendants to have in the future

02:15:54.560 the challenge is finding what ways those are and then applying it

02:16:01.860 we part of the soul sickness that afflicts our people so much

02:16:07.180 is a mourning for what we don't have that we feel we should and a resentment at what we perceive

02:16:15.560 others have taken from us instead of an empowerment of what we have and how we can make the best of

02:16:24.160 what we have and how we can take the best advantage of the circumstances presented to us

02:16:29.040 and crying over spilt milk helps absolutely zero zero of us focusing on what is within our grasp

02:16:40.140 and making little victories where we can that's what moves us forward and yeah I think it's really

02:16:47.320 important um sorry i was um that's this next one looking at some of the old norse to uh

02:17:04.440 his translations was just throwing me for a loop on this one um 72

02:17:09.960 a son is better though late he is born and his father to death have fared memory stones seldom

02:17:20.840 stand by the road save when kinsmen honor his kin and i think um i was just looking at some of the um

02:17:34.680 the the old norse but so the first part of this a son is good as a son is good or a son is is best

02:17:43.840 or better uh to be born than to never be born at all it is good to leave a legacy uh or or to have

02:17:52.920 someone to carry on the the honor and the name uh even though his father is his dead past you know

02:18:04.000 before he's fully an adult and it's it's memory stones are you know seldom raised by by strangers

02:18:14.060 and so i think this one really lends to a key component in our in our faith about um

02:18:20.260 if you have the ability to you should invest in having children you should have offsprings you

02:18:30.060 should have someone who honors and remembers you and caretakes. These things are important and

02:18:39.980 you know especially here clearly our society and the keeping of the name by the son is so important

02:18:49.420 in our culture that this is what it's focusing on. But I also think of just children in general

02:18:55.580 uh be they a son or a daughter it's best to have them later than never because um

02:19:02.900 you know that the legacy of your deeds and the things but that also involves you living a life

02:19:11.340 that your children remember you being that person that deserves that that memoriam that deserves

02:19:22.120 that who speaks highly of you and i think about that a lot uh when we're at sumble and people are

02:19:29.000 speaking of um their you know kin folk that have passed um it's such a beautiful thing to be spoken

02:19:39.160 of highly by your children especially in this day and age you find a lot of folks um perhaps either

02:19:47.560 didn't have very good parents or, you know, their parents were good people, but they perceived them

02:19:55.140 as being bad. And so it's, that's a touchy kind of thing. It's very, very hard to measure out,

02:20:02.940 but living the life in which your kids thank you later when they are older and realize,

02:20:11.420 how much sacrifice you put in and how much caretaking and love that you had for them

02:20:18.940 that maybe perhaps they don't realize it at certain times in their life,

02:20:23.900 but when they get older, they realize and speak highly of you.

02:20:29.360 I think this is laying into that.

02:20:33.540 I think, um, I mean, it's, so it's the challenge on this. I want to have something useful to say

02:20:51.020 on these things. And some of them are very obvious. Yeah. It's, it's important to have

02:20:57.720 children uh that's a biological imperative of all mammals so i mean we all know that's important

02:21:05.080 but what is really important here that again we've reiterated over and over again

02:21:11.560 is the context of community and society and even if that's a small community being your family

02:21:21.240 you know if a tree falls in the forest doesn't make a noise who cares

02:21:25.560 it's one of those things

02:21:28.200 a big part of life is legacy and it's what you leave behind and what you remembered for

02:21:39.040 and if you're remembered and having children is the surest way to to be remembered for good or

02:21:49.800 or ill, but to have people know you were there, passing down through your bloodline is really

02:21:56.740 fundamental to our faith. And it's really important. Having somebody celebrate your

02:22:03.660 deeds and speak highly of you, it's the fundamental behind the ancestors round in

02:22:08.620 Sambl, which any of you that have experienced Sambl, that's the most, that's typically the most

02:22:15.160 emotional round is people sharing stories of their ancestors and their kin that have passed

02:22:25.440 and remembering them and bringing up and speaking their name, you know, sometimes long after they

02:22:32.400 do their last breath. That is a profound thing. It's a profound continuance of existence beyond

02:22:43.540 the grave um it is a a small a small touch of immortality that's that's extremely important

02:22:54.180 and yeah other verses point out that there's other ways you can measure success

02:23:00.500 but people are seldom remembered unless they have they have family that take care of them and that

02:23:07.220 you know erect stones to them and remember them and take that time to remember

02:23:11.940 i think this is important to like yeah go out and make a family but also as a an admonition to those

02:23:23.100 of us who you know who live on when we have family that passed to remember them to tell

02:23:29.660 their stories to speak of them to keep their name fresh and alive on your on your tongue and in your

02:23:37.100 heart and in the hearts of your children and uh and share that and it's such an important part

02:23:43.020 of how we worship in uh in also true that i don't think it can really be overstated

02:23:50.780 um it's fun this next one's a little bit tricky can you take us through 73 and

02:23:56.380 what you make out of it yes so in it's it's of my

02:24:03.420 it's of my take on this one that 73 and 74 are in essence kind of together

02:24:10.800 and perhaps there was a miswriting or a misplacement of the writing of the verses

02:24:19.320 in which they kind of either ran together or there was a purpose that wasn't quite fully met

02:24:24.540 the first one 73 can be read by itself but i think it lends to 74 and i'll explain

02:24:31.800 so 73 just by itself on its lonesome is uh that they're the two make make a battle the tongue

02:24:42.240 slays the head in each furry coat a fist I look for so the the uh this is often um

02:24:53.460 in the translation here, you know, that there is two warriors or there are two that battle each

02:25:02.300 other. It is, so it doesn't necessarily say like lords or something. If you look at certain

02:25:10.200 translations, it just says that there are two that often make battle. It is the tongue that

02:25:15.680 slays the head, or at least in this sense, the foolishness out speaks the wisdom.

02:25:23.460 and in each cloak or each under the cloak or in the pockets of your of the people around you 0.51

02:25:33.380 there could be a fist balling up and that means that you know since you're speaking your own doom

02:25:38.260 creating enemies when you're using your tongue outside of the breadth of your wisdom

02:25:46.820 and so there's a warning to that but i think there's this kind of again leans into uh

02:25:53.460 uh 74 as well but by itself right there you could just simply read it at that but

02:25:58.420 the fact that it's simply two lines and there's no the the

02:26:05.540 it seems so out of place with no uh additional is i'm wondering if there was again like a skipping

02:26:13.380 or or a miss writing or a piece of it at least being lost and so it was like well we're just

02:26:18.820 just going to write what we have. But if you look at 74, he welcomes the night whose fair

02:26:30.400 is enough. Short are the yards of a ship. Uneasy are autumn nights. Full oft does the

02:26:40.260 weather change in a week and more in a month's time. And so it's hard to, at first, to glance

02:26:50.880 at that. But in reality, what we find is that when we are out and about, wisdom is our greatest

02:27:01.580 burden to bear. Wisdom is the greatest thing that we have with us. And oftentimes, if we

02:27:08.540 outspeak our wisdom we make enemies and you can't make enemies sometimes when you're out in the

02:27:15.660 night when you're out in the dark when you have very little shelter short are the yards of ship

02:27:20.940 or small is the birthing of of a ship you have to go out into the world and find uh and this means

02:27:27.980 like travel you don't find much comfort you know sleeping in the ship you don't find much comfort

02:27:34.060 sleeping in the car you need to have the ability to to find places to to rest your head um and so

02:27:42.780 this is kind of speaking of you know if you are traveling abroad and you don't want to make

02:27:49.340 enemies you need places that you can find to rest because when the when the weather turns it turns

02:27:55.900 quickly and it can turn even worse in the span of a short amount of time from a week to a month

02:28:03.260 So I kind of always took these two to be together, is that, you know, don't make enemies when you are in need.

02:28:12.800 Don't make enemies when you're, when you yourself are compromised.

02:28:16.740 And it is best to speak wisely and kindly than it is, you know, to lap your tongue without realizing just how much of a deficit you're in.

02:28:33.260 Yeah, I think this sets a tone and goes into the next few stanzas here.

02:28:46.500 A lot of things are uncertain and you can't trust and you never know when the winds, literally, the winds of fortune, things shift.

02:29:03.260 and you find yourself in need, there's not a lot you can rest with complete surety and being solid

02:29:11.720 on. So I think that's one of the, you know, kind of the lament is like, hey, there's a lot of stuff

02:29:20.600 you just can't trust. So some of this is about making the best of that. And you never know when

02:29:27.560 you're going to need friends, or you're going to need the goodwill of someone else, when you find

02:29:32.940 yourself, you know, come up short. And I think that's, I think that goes in and sets a tone

02:29:41.320 here, like I said, for the, for the next several verses. Um, yeah. So Svan, will you take us

02:29:50.320 through um 75 please yeah um a man knows not if nothing he knows that gold often apes begets 0.72

02:30:06.800 one man is wealthy and one is poor yet scorn for him none should have

02:30:12.240 this one is interesting especially in relation to the like the gold oft apes begets and uh the

02:30:25.040 the word api does mean ape but it also means fool and so in this uh regards i'm i'm you know he he

02:30:35.040 uses the word ape as in a simian a primate um but i think you know that that it's it's more or less 0.97

02:30:45.680 using the word like a fool um but it's i think this is speaking predominantly that even foolish 0.98

02:30:56.000 people, you know, get rich. Even this kind of, I think, is speaking more along the lines of like 0.99

02:31:05.340 the nature of a truthful thing. There are good people who are not successful and there are bad

02:31:13.200 people or foolish people who are successful. And it's often very hard for someone to hold in this

02:31:24.980 kind of concept that uh you know how dare they you know be well off and i'm not well or or so

02:31:34.020 much like kind of what you were saying before about this uh context that people have in their

02:31:38.420 minds uh that wealth is somehow bad and that if other people are wealthy you know we don't um

02:31:45.380 you know congratulate them in these regards and so this one's kind of saying like that you know that

02:31:51.380 it's the wealth and treasures begotten by others are not your own and that you should focus

02:32:07.060 there on your own gaining. And you shouldn't spend your time scorning them or deriving them

02:32:16.860 or holding them in contempt.

02:32:20.160 And this one's kind of, I think, having a funny sense.

02:32:23.040 It's like, you know, sometimes wealth is a fickle thing

02:32:27.140 and it falls in the laps of people who you just wonder

02:32:30.120 how they're doing so well.

02:32:32.100 But fortune is a fickle thing 1.00

02:32:35.020 and it can be lost by a fool in a moment. 0.99

02:32:38.760 So you can't hold in your head this idea 0.99

02:32:41.400 that somehow they're deserving of scorn.

02:32:45.000 It can be simply a moment and that you should focus on yourself and what you're attaining.

02:32:52.020 It's not wasting your time comparing yourselves to others.

02:32:57.260 See, that's another one of these where it's interesting to me because Svon and I will come at the same thing from different directions.

02:33:08.600 Yeah, wealth is uncertain.

02:33:11.800 um just like the other things alluded to earlier in life like the weather or or whatever

02:33:19.840 I think this is these stanzas are teaching us that life is not fair um and it never will be

02:33:28.400 it never has been it never will be um lamenting that and losing sleep about that's a waste of

02:33:35.280 your time but the last part you know about not scorning them about how wealth can come and go

02:33:42.960 I take that for like hey don't look down on poor folks because you don't know where they you know

02:33:48.060 where they came from or what their situation is don't look down at people that appear lowly because

02:33:53.300 they're poor at the moment because you know shoot last year they could have been rich you don't know

02:33:59.500 um life life is fickle and

02:34:05.420 you there's things out there that you can't trust and life's not fair

02:34:11.720 i think a lot of the wisdom and have them all teaches us a bit about what to put your stock

02:34:21.640 in and what not to and it also talks a little bit about that with spending um money comes and goes

02:34:29.480 those friendship often does not often you have friends that you make for your entire life and

02:34:38.180 maybe you haven't seen them for a long time and you get back with them and it's like you know

02:34:42.160 it's like no time had passed there's certain things you can invest in that are really good

02:34:48.980 return on investment and things happen where money comes and goes but wisdom and learning

02:34:59.840 and relationships and friendships and family these things tend a lot more towards the eternal

02:35:07.040 and towards something you can trust and put stock in experience and a life you know that's been

02:35:14.700 worthy in deeds once a deed's done and in the record books it's there and it exists in eternity

02:35:21.900 no matter what happens afterwards at that moment in time the thing happened and that can't be taken

02:35:27.420 away um it's one of those things people always always save up and nobody's saying don't save

02:35:38.300 your money. I get that. But balancing things out to where, you know, maybe you have a bunch

02:35:44.580 of money now and next year you invest and stocks go bad or, you know, a thief comes

02:35:51.480 and takes the things that you have. A good life and accomplishments and deeds are things

02:35:59.940 they can't take from you. A well-tended friendship with a worthy person is something that can

02:36:07.440 last lifetime. Sons to remember you. I mean, these are things that are worthy of putting your stock

02:36:16.700 in. So a lot of this is caution of things to place too much trust in. And that's kind of a

02:36:23.620 theme throughout the Have Them All is things to trust

02:36:26.740 and things not to trust.

02:36:32.980 So making good pace on that.

02:36:38.680 Could we, this next page that we're about to flip

02:36:43.720 has, I would say the most commonly,

02:36:51.120 not quite there yet, I may have jumping ahead of myself.

02:36:53.620 let's go ahead and uh read 76 if you would

02:37:00.340 right so among fit young's sons saw i well stocked folds now bear they the beggar staff

02:37:13.940 wealth is as swift as a winking eye of friends the falsest it is

02:37:20.340 is. So Fithyong's sons, I am unprepared. I just realized in relation to the origins 0.97

02:37:43.520 of fityungs. I mean, the passage is clear about wealth being, you know, fickle, but

02:37:54.000 I'm, you know, I've been looking for relations specifically

02:38:01.120 and story-wise with fityung, the nourisher.

02:38:09.200 And in the notes here that they're speaking of the earth, that this is a poetic name again

02:38:22.920 for the earth, like Fjord, you know, Fjordgen and Fityung. So in essence, I would imagine

02:38:32.800 it referring to humanity the sons of the earth um and that's where i was kind of a bit

02:38:42.800 taken aback i was like quickly trying to um

02:38:48.720 you know the the meaning of it in relation to their specifics but if it's read as

02:38:54.480 among the sons of the earth i saw well stocked folds now they bear beggar staffs

02:39:01.840 wealth is swift as a winking eye so like people who gain bounty from the earth and or or just

02:39:08.320 again that's a very interesting um point but the overall of the of it is not and that the rest of

02:39:16.240 it is simple is that you know you could have one minute a large bounty and the next you know you

02:39:22.160 you're at a loss and it's simply stating this

02:39:25.940 as a wise fact.

02:39:29.140 Don't rely on wealth, it comes and it goes.

02:39:33.480 You should not be taken about,

02:39:41.140 if you lose wealth, you shouldn't lose all hope.

02:39:44.060 But at the same time, if you gain great wealth,

02:39:46.040 you should remember that it's flowing and it can flow.

02:39:51.040 So, you know, bear that in mind and take that into account when you do things.

02:40:07.400 Yeah, I don't have any more to add.

02:40:09.300 I wish I did.

02:40:10.020 I thought I was going to be clever and look it up while you were talking on that.

02:40:13.840 but there's not a lot to be found on uh 50 um other than people likening

02:40:21.040 that to be a nether name for for yord or or mother earth um

02:40:31.280 but i you know we talked this to death a second ago i think this is a

02:40:35.920 you know a restatement of of that truth that that wealth is fleeting you can't trust it

02:40:42.560 if you put all your all your faith in your wealth you know people can take that from you

02:40:50.320 we have a lot of institutions in the world today to make investments and savings

02:40:57.840 safer than they would be otherwise in the time in which this was written you know if you have

02:41:05.040 a treasure hoard if i get some of my buddies and we want to come at you and you're not paying

02:41:10.560 attention we can take all your wealth from you um that happens in this day and age too just in

02:41:19.440 you know more sophisticated different ways maybe it's a nigerian prince i don't know but wealth can

02:41:25.760 come go um so yeah this just talks about how fickle that is now these next ones these next

02:41:35.200 two are probably the most popular verses from the have them all i would say certainly ones

02:41:44.080 that i think we're all familiar with or more people are familiar with them than the others

02:41:50.160 yeah i think um this these uh this stanza that we just covered about the fickleness of wealth

02:41:58.160 uh sometimes is uh either a lot of people remove it or they they they bring these to the forefront

02:42:06.160 and then kind of mention it later and so these three uh next three or the stanza we just covered

02:42:12.640 in the next two are kind of often uh thrown about if people are looking at other translations they

02:42:19.600 might see that i know um in the two that i'm looking at right now they were kind of flipped

02:42:25.280 um you know that's just interesting um yes so 77

02:42:34.040 cattle die and kinsmen die and so one dies oneself but a noble name will never die

02:42:48.780 if good renown one gains or one gets excuse me

02:42:55.280 yes this one is is uh you know and 78 are are clear to and and concise and i think everyone here

02:43:07.040 uh that's or that's been around us go ahead and just read 78 because i think they pair together

02:43:12.880 and we might as well speak about them as one one thing yeah and again uh the usage of them

02:43:21.280 being doubled up um you know whether or not this was seen and i think that things get shaky because

02:43:30.000 the halvamal is most likely three poems placed together and what happens is during those

02:43:35.760 jointing parts they get a little mishmashy and flipped about and uh i think that's what's kind

02:43:45.200 of going on here but yeah so we have 77 which cattle die and kinsmen die and so one one dies

02:43:52.800 oneself but a noble name will never die if good renown one gets and 78 cattle die and kinsmen die

02:44:03.760 and so one dies oneself one thing now that never dies the fame of a dead man's deeds

02:44:11.680 that one just is just right it's like the first one is a little bit choppy in the way that it

02:44:20.260 sounds that second one is perfect yes and most folks um do quote this is is you know money can

02:44:30.580 fall out on you because remember cattle dying is wealth can fall and your friends and kinfolk

02:44:39.340 could suddenly pass on you and you have no one to help um and you know we too ourselves one day

02:44:49.160 will will fall and take her road um but one thing that doesn't die is the culmination and

02:44:58.780 renown of our deeds and this is a huge point i think that a lot of our especially in our church

02:45:04.940 we look at is is building bright frame and being witnessed while we live but also building great

02:45:11.180 renown even after our past our days here in the middle and it's done through deeds how you will

02:45:21.020 be remembered and uh that was so important to our ancestors and it is you know fallen away

02:45:29.660 um and i would say it's a product of falling away in this modern the last two centuries has fallen

02:45:38.140 into a kind of sense like ever since the um industrial revolution uh a lot of our our kind

02:45:46.600 of ability to build renown for ourselves and and build a name for ourselves has kind of been

02:45:53.380 thrashed away in a lot of folks, a lot of people in the West, um, and have become part of the

02:45:59.820 faceless masses, um, and are okay with that. Some people even celebrate that they want to be part of

02:46:06.400 the, the faceless mass, the, uh, the glob, um, the mono culture, mono society, mono, whatever,

02:46:16.840 you know and uh and that's really really sad i think that that um our ancestors sought

02:46:24.160 uh renown through deed that didn't mean that they were solely an individual but

02:46:30.000 they did rely on their folk and their people but you wanted your people to speak about you for ages

02:46:38.560 to come you know your children your grandchildren your great-grandchildren

02:46:45.760 and great great and so on and so forth speaking your name long after you've passed

02:46:53.520 yeah i think um these ones are extremely important

02:46:59.120 uh for for a great many things as we've said and i think that the juxtaposition like

02:47:06.880 of these things so cattle die your mobile wealth you know your herd can get stricken with a disease

02:47:14.240 something can happen wealth is fleeting so what's better than wealth well cool family

02:47:21.680 investing in family is better than wealth and you can trust that more but those folks die too

02:47:28.880 you can't count that they're always going to make it those folks can die

02:47:35.200 but reputation doesn't have to if enough people know it and there's certain people and

02:47:42.160 And I think this is something we've all, you know, that's worthy to aspire to, but that so few people have.

02:47:49.860 But when you think about certain people, you know, Alexander the Great, it's been, what, 2,500 years, 25 centuries or so since his time.

02:48:11.960 yet everyone knows who that is

02:48:14.600 to one degree or another

02:48:15.680 or Julius Caesar

02:48:17.380 or heroes from our past

02:48:21.100 we all know their names

02:48:23.560 we know their deeds

02:48:24.500 those people have achieved a level of immortality

02:48:27.500 that surpasses

02:48:29.020 most people

02:48:30.820 so if done right

02:48:33.700 you can do deeds

02:48:35.200 that echo throughout thousands of years

02:48:38.140 um maybe we won't get there maybe we will but if we try we'll get a lot further than we would have

02:48:48.320 if we didn't but reputation is so important so this is advice to us to build our own

02:48:56.400 investment in our own immortality by being worthy of being spoken about being remembered

02:49:03.920 But it's also a responsibility upon us to remember those people from our past, to remember our kinfolk that have passed, to remember the heroes of our folk who have done worthy deeds and to celebrate them and carry on that cult to them after they've passed, to keep their names and their reputations alive here in Midgard as long as we can.

02:49:33.920 And we need to do that.

02:49:39.420 And so many of our people, and I think this has been a conscious effort by our foes, have tried to erode all of that.

02:49:46.640 It's our responsibility not to let that happen and to remember the heroes of our people, to celebrate them, to sing their praises, to talk of their deeds.

02:49:57.480 And we all bear that responsibility individually and collectively.

02:50:03.920 And I think this is a really important mandate for us to do that and make sure that we do that.

02:50:10.640 I was wondering if that would be a good place for us to stop off because I have some interesting, I want to try some stuff as far as translations go for the preceding verses from here on out because now we're starting to shift towards.

02:50:30.080 okay as long as nick can remember because it's not at a page break so yeah i think that's a

02:50:37.280 good place for us to stop we are through 78 please keep this remembered for next week and

02:50:45.400 next week we will start at 79 um i do think that that's you know if ever there were a perfect place

02:50:56.460 to stop. I think that's the place. That said, we have a couple of questions to get to. And we also

02:51:05.380 have another donation that just came in from Chris Lucat for $5. If one of our folk is rich,

02:51:13.940 we should rejoice, not scorn. Absolutely. 100%. $5 from him. Thank you so much, Chris.

02:51:22.260 and thank you, Rob.

02:51:27.380 With that, I'm going to go back

02:51:29.140 and see what stuff we missed.

02:51:34.840 Can we put the link up for where Svon

02:51:36.900 or for instruction on Svon's spectacular tie?

02:51:41.480 And it's something that I want to try

02:51:42.640 to learn how to do too.

02:51:47.060 What's that tie called, Svon?

02:51:49.220 The Eldritch Knot.

02:51:50.820 so let's all work on protecting our eldritch knots and i look forward to seeing folks at

02:52:00.180 ostaro with those and maybe i can figure out how to do one myself but no you that's fantastic um

02:52:09.380 uh bear in mind too um it only it gets you use the entirety of the the thinner piece to do it

02:52:16.420 so you only end up having one which some people like because they don't like dealing with that

02:52:21.380 but it does make your tie kind of light so a tie clip might be good as well well and you got to

02:52:26.340 calculate the length of it but if you wear a vest you can get away with your length not being

02:52:31.220 exactly where you want it that's actually one of the best parts about this uh this knot is uh you

02:52:39.060 actually set it where you want and then tie it and it won't change the length of what you set

02:52:45.220 on the on the main top awesome so it's really it's really easy that way you never have to

02:52:49.620 worry about it riding high or going short and rob is a glutton for punishment we just see another

02:53:00.260 a reminder in the group from gothi rob stam that he is going to try to make the donation before

02:53:05.860 the show ends so let's get the last minute donations in um rob seriously thank you so much

02:53:13.620 it's much much appreciated this is high renown

02:53:21.380 all right so question uh from michael from newertshoff in episode 83

02:53:30.020 witness fawn spoke of the valk knot why did you describe getting one tattooed turns you

02:53:37.060 into a cog in the wheel and also what side is up point or flat i've heard both

02:53:47.220 so yes fawn could you break down your you talked about runic tattoos two weeks ago could you

02:53:56.420 reiterate the bit you did about the valk knot and also

02:53:59.780 and i think this is interesting because of just the archaeology of it

02:54:04.500 um which which way is up

02:54:08.740 well i i would be amiss to not be absolutely truthful and i can always imagine that there's

02:54:18.540 always going to be this basement dweller um internet wizard that's going to do well actually

02:54:23.660 so i'll cut ahead and and just show that i know this um there is no written reference

02:54:31.860 to the meaning of the symbol to our ancestors it is carved on stones but there is nothing

02:54:40.740 explaining its meaning and its usage to our ancestors in the past so you know there's always

02:54:47.700 somebody that's going to be like well the meaning doesn't have any meaning because of it wasn't we

02:54:53.720 don't know what our ancestors thought however it was always it is uh all on its accounts is

02:55:01.780 placed on stones that show sacrificial transitions battle transitions and life-to-death transitions

02:55:14.420 and it has been referred to as the valk knot or the vowel note like the the knot of the chosen

02:55:25.140 And so the correlation between Lord Voden and the Valknaut are clearly there based on the context of the carvings.

02:55:36.840 But there is no runestone that says this symbol means this.

02:55:41.940 So a lot of people have different interpretations of it.

02:55:44.260 And that's what makes, one, symbols extremely enigmatic.

02:55:48.280 And two, the validity of symbology in our culture today does not get lost because we don't know what it meant to our ancestors, because it does mean something to us now.

02:56:01.920 And so people have always thought of this as the, in reference to Lord Vothin's binding of fetters and loosening of fetters, and that the idea of the sacrifice of, or the commitment to, the processes of Lord Vothin's deeds and what he's doing, the ultimate goals, prolonging Ragnarok, or whatever it might be,

02:56:30.100 is associated with this symbol as well.

02:56:34.900 So if you look at it from an archaeological standpoint

02:56:39.580 and say, okay, it's just a symbol on a stone

02:56:42.600 that depicts sacrifice and dying in battle

02:56:46.060 and being chosen, but that's it.

02:56:51.340 Perhaps it's just a little bit of carving filigree,

02:56:58.120 but it is it has become one a symbol of lord othen himself by our people of today because of those

02:57:08.220 those connections um they are not it's never placed it's actually placed numerous directions

02:57:14.480 so there is no correct up or down uh that's the same with the runes a lot of that the idea of

02:57:21.220 upside down being negative or what have you no they were often turned sometimes they were placed

02:57:27.240 together. There would be two or three of them kind of touching it on sides. I've seen some

02:57:34.020 very interesting diagrams of people having a lattice of them connected, and I thought that

02:57:40.160 was extremely interesting. There's also two different variations. Generally, there's the

02:57:45.540 one where it is three triangles interwoven, and then there is another one where it is actually

02:57:52.080 like a triskelion that the uh they're not individual woven triangles they are

02:57:58.860 triangles that all meet back up in the center um and that they branch off with three legs

02:58:05.100 so i've seen both of those what culturally it has become is that if lord volvin is

02:58:12.420 the one who binds and unbinds then by placing the knot on your

02:58:20.020 skin and in your blood you are binding yourself to lord vodan and his

02:58:26.740 uh deeds his machinations if lord vodan is trying to inspire the people if lord vodan

02:58:37.540 is trying to call people home if lord vodhan is trying to re-dawn and bring back our people

02:58:44.020 to the gods because now is the time that he has determined to do so then you dedicate yourself to

02:58:51.380 doing so but there's a kind of a darker side in this lore and that is that um you are um

02:59:02.020 you know, at his disposal, if you will, that whatever his, you know, and it's always speaks

02:59:09.260 of the ideas that when you make an oath with Lord Vothen, you cannot always be sure that it

02:59:15.400 will benefit you. It's that he is fickle and turns, and not all that is bad is necessarily

02:59:21.360 bad, but maybe bad for you, because everything that's, that's the wisdom of knowing broad

02:59:28.960 things means that oftentimes in our ignorance, we might think that we know what's going on and we

02:59:34.700 don't. I've taken it beyond even more so with the meaning of that the Valknot is also the symbol of

02:59:46.480 the tripartite of the dynamic Lord himself, that it is Woden, Willi, and Ve that the three triangles

02:59:55.000 represent. But a lot of people have counted the points, and that, of course, leads up to number

03:00:03.500 nine, and could mean the nine realms. I've seen some people interpret it as three separate

03:00:10.400 tripartites, where they speak of, like, of Ovin, Tyr, and Thor, and then they'll speak of, like,

03:00:16.880 in the middle, they'll speak of, like, the Jotuns and Jormungandr, and then below is, like,

03:00:25.000 you know i i just interesting like takes on it and i'm not super familiar with it um but i have

03:00:31.960 seen like where they mention jormungandr fenris and uh and hella and then another tripartite and

03:00:42.280 another tripartite um there are a lot of interpretations to it but this aspect

03:00:48.600 I'm speaking of goes way back. I remember coming into Asatru in the early 90s and people still

03:00:56.560 speaking of it as the ideas that you don't bind yourself to Lord Vothen and make yourself available

03:01:03.780 to the mission lightheartedly. And that's where it comes from. So the symbol itself just has its

03:01:16.760 own mythos even now and has built up in the last 40 50 years um but you know if you were to ask

03:01:27.320 what does it mean on the stones you're not going to find an answer and i think that's

03:01:32.760 kind of the cool part about it is the mystery that it's built um so that's what and i've seen

03:01:39.160 different uh spellings and and there's you know val knut k-n-u-t i've seen val not k-n-o-t um

03:01:51.240 they're all there but it it does mean the knot of the chosen or the the knot of the chosen knot

03:02:00.120 and um again the source of where that comes from is it is not written down so i don't know it's it

03:02:07.640 most likely is a fairly modern no telling as to who exactly would lay claim on naming it

03:02:18.280 so

03:02:22.120 i i think it's i don't know just worth mentioning the uh the well actually basement wizard

03:02:37.640 So, what do we do when we have a symbol that's clearly very powerful from our ancient past, but we don't have a record of exactly what was meant by it?

03:02:57.320 If you throw up your hands and like, oh, well, I don't know, it could be anything, then you're useless.

03:03:08.860 What we do is as Gothar, as priests of our faith and our gods, is we try to ascertain the best use of it and the best meaning for it.

03:03:21.940 What do we do?

03:03:22.640 We look at the different instances it was used and why.

03:03:27.320 We meditate on it, we pray on it, we compile the modern understanding of its use in the last, you know, 50 years, and we, you know, make of it the best that we can, and we seek truth in it.

03:03:46.540 Symbols evolve their meaning over time as social context changes, as people's wisdom grows, and as their relationship with our gods grow.

03:04:03.160 It certainly is an Odinic symbol, and we see that in the archaeology.

03:04:08.700 We see it associated with Odin.

03:04:12.060 It has always been associated with Odin in modern times.

03:04:15.880 It is, in fact, associated with the All-Father.

03:04:22.340 Exactly what it means is unclear.

03:04:25.000 It shows the, you know, tripartite that Svan always talks about.

03:04:30.380 It even shows a tripartite version of the tripartite.

03:04:34.760 It hits that number three in a really profound way.

03:04:39.300 We also have someone mention that it, you know, is reminiscent of the Nine Realms.

03:04:44.540 and it is and it's a pathway between all of those realms i mean if one were to take it that way the

03:04:52.400 corners are accessible through all those different ways it is a really powerful and sacred symbol to 0.98

03:05:01.200 our folk and the well actuallys contribute nothing and you know they can they can do what 1.00

03:05:09.880 they like with it as they, you know, eat dry cereal on mom's couch in the basement. 0.98

03:05:21.400 But the orientation, we've seen it at, you know, seen it sideways. Okay, if you think of it in a

03:05:29.260 pyramid kind of the point goes up way, we've seen that, we've seen it exactly the opposite of that,

03:05:35.520 we've seen it sideways and we've seen it diagonal so we've seen it in most any orientation that you

03:05:42.260 could make it in the archaeology it's it's very widespread in in its usage so there's that

03:05:51.020 we also have and I'm just looking at the questions that we have we hit a lot of them

03:06:01.900 during the show which i which i like um so the wolf throne asked i guess he asked this question

03:06:11.580 last week i asked the question in the last stream with brandy and the giphias but i wanted to know

03:06:16.220 your thoughts as well do you think the idea of having a patron or matron is quote unquote new age

03:06:22.860 and to either of you have a patron or matron or a deity you have the deepest relationship with

03:06:29.420 with. So I'm going to throw this to Svan, but I'm going to say up front, I think that

03:06:36.740 the obsession with it is new aged, but the concept is very old. And you certainly have

03:06:45.260 people that were what's called full truly with a particular God or goddess. You have

03:06:55.100 recorded instances of that in our, you know, the arch heathen past, I guess, or whatever in the, 0.70

03:07:00.860 in the original house of true, uh, before the Christianization, you have instances of that.

03:07:07.020 Certainly often associated with a priest of a particular God or with somebody who is consecrated

03:07:14.300 and like devoted to that God by their parents at their birth. Sometimes even given, you know,

03:07:20.620 a name that has that god's name incorporated in it and so you do see some of that um svan what

03:07:29.340 are your what are your thoughts on that and do you have a god or goddess that you have a special

03:07:35.580 a more special than others relationship with well yeah uh to kind of lean in on what you said um i

03:07:43.100 I think the original Gothar maybe perhaps,

03:07:52.220 I mean like in reference to Hrapkel's being phrase Gothi,

03:08:00.780 being a Gothi of a specific one of the gods

03:08:05.200 is interesting in two folds.

03:08:08.180 One, it denotes the idea that our ancestors had a common knowledge of the multiplicity of the gods, and that so much so that a person could be a gothi of one of the gods, and it was just understood that they held that link.

03:08:27.680 um i think that it's again has to be measured we have to be careful in this day and age because

03:08:34.420 a lot of people lend too much into monotheism as the template that they left or that it's just

03:08:41.960 easier to have one or you know all all all the gods are really just odin uh we got to get away

03:08:48.660 from that for sure. Um, but the, uh, you know, having full through or having a higher troth or

03:09:00.300 perhaps a sacred moment that you like, I have a huge amount of, um, like visceral emotional,

03:09:11.160 uh feelings in relation to lord thor like i have prayed and have had things i can't explain just

03:09:21.300 happen to the point where i i feel a greater connection than say to perhaps for seti um

03:09:29.760 but i believe it is important that we do honor all the gods in the way that you know by expanding

03:09:38.100 our knowledge about them and again reaching out to them because i have met people who

03:09:43.460 have a great uh perhaps like connection to uller uh perhaps for whatever reasons they they find

03:09:50.500 themselves uh leaning in that direction um and i think that's good i think it's fine for us to

03:09:56.900 build relationships with the gods on individual levels and goddesses i think that all the the

03:10:02.340 the women folk of Asatru should take great desire to learn about the Asanya and reach out to them

03:10:09.400 and pray to them and learn their wisdoms. And I do believe that they will teach you. You just,

03:10:15.140 again, it's about opening yourself up to those wisdoms. I don't think it's foolish or childish.

03:10:20.260 It's just, I would be careful of like, again, I'm doing paganism, but it's really just monotheism.

03:10:26.800 like some people do that nowadays and um yeah uh for myself I when I was young everything was

03:10:37.000 Odin everything was about Odin um and I had a profound experience in which I can't say that I

03:10:47.940 like Odin didn't come down and say hey this but I will say this much after a long period

03:10:56.040 of being out at night in a forest when I was very young and I probably should not have been

03:11:05.100 out there I was I was not nobody knew I was out there and I was doing um a ceremony to

03:11:13.060 to Odin in dedication what I came back from that was you cannot spurn the forest

03:11:20.440 to praise but one tree. And that's what I got from that. The reason being is because there

03:11:26.380 was a tree I specifically chose that looked like it was covered in eyes. And I was like,

03:11:31.100 that's Othyn's tree. I got to honor Othyn at the Othyn tree. And I really just like drove it,

03:11:37.380 drove it, drove it. And then what I got from that was kind of like, hey, stop being so

03:11:42.460 one-dimensional. You can't just gain the protection of the forest if you honor only one tree.

03:11:49.660 And that's when I became a hard polytheistic practitioner. I got that placed into my head. And suddenly I understood I had to understand why Lord Voden was trying to stave off Ragnarok and why all things in nature are in multiplicity and why the gods are important, all of them.

03:12:13.100 and um so i i moved to that i moved to to hold devotionals to all the gods and all the goddesses

03:12:21.540 and to memorize their names and to know their number and um and bear that in you know all in

03:12:28.120 mind and that was because of the multiplicity so um speak and build relationships with the gods

03:12:37.320 they especially give unto you blessings but never forget the whole never forget the kingdom of the

03:12:44.360 gods the assas themselves yeah um as i mentioned it's it's not just a new age thing that certainly

03:12:55.240 was the case in our ancestors time but sometimes it was sometimes exceptional circumstances are

03:13:05.720 pointed out and shed light on because they are exceptional

03:13:12.440 we don't see that as being the common thing for all the people to do we see that as very select

03:13:20.200 individuals do that um certainly when we see somebody phrase gothi or somebody you know

03:13:27.640 thor's gothi or whatever in the golden age i would imagine that our our ancestors had very established

03:13:40.120 cults to all of these gods that had their own individual people who were responsible for that

03:13:48.200 cultic practice we see that in you know other arian faiths that's clearly a thing you have

03:13:55.320 people that attend to just to odin because that's his shrine and it's a particular priest to him

03:14:02.760 that does those sacrifices that makes sense in that context and again when we have you know

03:14:10.120 millions of our folk come home to aussitru then we'll probably have some specialized cults to

03:14:16.600 these different gods and that's that's a really important evolution we're not there yet though

03:14:22.360 we're bringing all of our people home

03:14:25.520 and the celebration of our faith as a whole

03:14:28.820 is extremely important now.

03:14:34.640 Svon's point, and I think it's well taken,

03:14:36.820 is it's very easy for us to,

03:14:43.260 oh, this God seems cool.

03:14:45.820 I'm going to jump on this

03:14:47.820 and then turning it into a monotheism

03:14:50.840 of whatever of our gods you think is particularly cool.

03:14:55.680 And that misses the point.

03:14:57.900 And I think that's sacrilegious.

03:15:02.880 Even in the most, even in those cases 0.98

03:15:05.740 where you have someone who is a particular goathy 0.95

03:15:10.180 of a particular God,

03:15:11.980 we have no reason to believe they were irreverent

03:15:15.200 towards all the other gods

03:15:16.440 or that they had no relationship with the other gods.

03:15:19.240 they just had a particular special relationship with one of them and that's a little bit different

03:15:26.340 than what the modern tendency tends to be um no polytheism the beauty of that is there are many

03:15:35.660 gods and you can have a very complex relationship with divinity and that's important don't cast that

03:15:45.520 aside because it's easier to just pick one thing that's not holistic it's not whole it's not

03:15:53.580 what we were what we were meant to do

03:15:57.280 now having a special relationship with one of our gods is a completely appropriate thing if

03:16:06.040 that's something that you're called to do but i would again say that should be based on a real

03:16:12.240 relationship with that God through prayer and offering and the gift cycle and building that

03:16:18.420 as opposed to just, oh, I think this one's cool. That's what I'll do. But no, a great

03:16:24.400 many of people have a special affinity for a particular God or goddess. And like any

03:16:33.020 relationships, you have people that you are closer to, or you have family members who

03:16:38.780 you are closer to than other family relationships are like that there is no such thing as equality

03:16:45.660 so no relationship with any of the gods is is perfectly equal nor should it be

03:16:53.260 but i think it's like you don't need to look at it as an either or or you have to choose one

03:16:59.180 scenario because it's not that at all and i'd say even if you did have a specific relationship with

03:17:05.580 one of our gods or goddesses you should build a relationship with all of them to the best of your

03:17:11.100 ability that's respectful and pious and you know maybe you have one you have a special relationship

03:17:18.300 with but that doesn't preclude you having relationships with all of them and coming to

03:17:21.980 a better understanding and when people do the whole like oh i'm gonna pick this one because

03:17:26.860 they sound cool i think it does a great disservice to our gods and goddesses that have less spotlight

03:17:33.980 on them so i look forward to as we establish hoffs to more of our gods and goddesses especially

03:17:42.380 you know when we have a hoff to forsetti or a hoff to to to vali or to vidar um building those

03:17:50.540 kind of special relationships and special better understandings and i think we'll definitely get

03:17:58.380 there but um i mean as for me i i would feel impious saying that i have a particular

03:18:09.020 god that i have some greater relationship to others i feel tremendously blessed by

03:18:14.780 the gods in general and certainly different gods at different times absolutely

03:18:22.700 but yeah so that's the thing and no that's not just a new age thing but it's very easy for it

03:18:26.620 to become new agey and i would just advise caution on that that said we're gonna call it a night um

03:18:36.540 but oh swan uh you got a last thing you'd like to throw in there yeah i just wanted to lean in a

03:18:43.180 little bit on two comments that were made about the valknot um the the one uh ryan orion uh spoke

03:18:53.660 of, sometimes it's referred to as Hrongnir's heart, and that's because Hrongnir's heart is mentioned

03:19:01.020 as having three sides, or three corners, and so I think that that's the correlation, but the stones

03:19:10.700 in which the Valknan is carved upon has no references to a Jotun or to Thor, and he was

03:19:18.300 such a pivotal part of Thor's uh you know triumphs that I think um that that placement other than the

03:19:27.900 fact that that has three points is is about it the other is um uh is the Valknark could be seen as

03:19:37.500 like a symbol of Bivros then well I will say this much every time that it's ever utilized and the

03:19:43.820 The big one is in Gotland, in the Hamara Stone.

03:19:49.000 There is a sacrifice of a human, like most likely a war capture,

03:19:55.960 because they did that then in which they would capture opposing warriors

03:20:01.840 and then give them as an offering to the Lord of Battle, to Lord Vóðinn.

03:20:09.500 The Valkna is placed above,

03:20:12.340 And so most likely utilizing that summation is that it is heavily associated with death and with the binding of perhaps a soul as property to Odin.

03:20:27.480 And that's what brings a lot of the dark, mysterious, don't get this just on your body for the sake of it kind of mythos.

03:20:37.400 because it is on the back of a image of a person presumed to be being sacrificed to Lord of Odin.

03:20:49.080 So that is a pretty, you know, dark and mysterious thing.

03:20:53.100 But that's as far as it being a pathway, I have done a ritual with the Valknaut as a labyrinth,

03:21:01.420 walking the Valknot and attaining three draughts from each of the corners representing his

03:21:08.500 attainment of the the meat of poetry and uh you know being guided in through a woman that ritual

03:21:15.580 is extremely powerful and so you brought up the idea of it being a pathway uh I certainly have

03:21:21.460 seen it used that way but as far as its actual meaning we'll we don't know but our summation is

03:21:27.740 is death and most certainly connections to to odin just as much in um statuary that shows ravens

03:21:38.060 eagles wolves and horses in relation to him the valkna is can easily be placed in correlation to

03:21:46.460 him as well so i mean that's really all we have i just wanted to do a little bit more on that one

03:21:53.340 absolutely and as a as a final note capping it um gofi rob stam has rounded up slightly his

03:22:02.540 contribution is 500 for the night so uh that's that's amazing thank you so much rob we appreciate

03:22:11.660 you that's a really important thing you did thank you um not only that but he encouraged

03:22:18.460 you know others to to donate in kind so that that that really does help out a lot of what

03:22:24.860 we're trying to do and and it's examples like that that are very inspirational thank you for it um

03:22:31.180 it's fine you're not feeling well let you get a little bit of rest uh i'm gonna go eat some dinner

03:22:37.420 and we will pick up where we left off next week i'm really enjoying this series i hope the rest

03:22:44.700 of you are as well um yeah uh thank you for for your questions thank you for you know thank you

03:22:54.460 for listening and being such a great audience and thank you very much those that donated we really

03:22:59.180 appreciate you guys your generosity goes a long way until then until next week that is

03:23:05.420 Hail the gods, hail the folk, hail the AFA, and remember that victory never sleeps.

03:23:35.420 We'll be right back.

03:24:05.420 Thank you.

03:24:35.420 Thank you.

03:25:05.420 Thank you.

03:25:35.420 Thank you.

03:26:05.420 Thank you.

Asatru Folk Assembly - February 22, 2024

2⧸21⧸24 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 85 - Hávamál, Part 3

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