Asatru Folk Assembly - 2⧸8⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps,Episode 31 - Víðarr

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00:02:30.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:03:00.000 Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week's episode of Victory Never Sleeps.

00:03:13.520 I am Witten Brandi Callahan, and I will be hosting for the Alciar Goethe, Matthew Flavel,

00:03:20.220 this evening, and we have with us Witten Svon Harrell, our resident educator of the Goethe

00:03:26.540 and of Goethe himself. Thank you, sir, for coming on tonight.

00:03:30.000 Thank you for having me.

00:03:31.980 So before we want to get started, I do just want to talk a little bit about a couple of things before we get into our talk on Vidar.

00:03:39.760 We just had a very successful in the first showcase event at New York's Hof, our national event, Charming of the Plow, this past weekend.

00:03:50.080 I unfortunately was not able to make it, but I did get caught up on all the goings on there, and I was really sorry that I missed it.

00:03:58.880 But we had really great things going on.

00:04:02.480 A couple of the things I want to send out a congratulation to tonight to Mike Joyner of New York's Hoff and to Shane Duffy, one of our Baldershoff folk builders.

00:04:15.520 And notice I did not use the word apprentice folk builder.

00:04:19.840 Shane and Mike both this weekend took their oaths and we are very, very proud of them and all that they have accomplished.

00:04:27.100 And we look forward to seeing all that they do in the future.

00:04:31.740 So congratulations to Shane and to Mike.

00:04:34.620 And also extra congratulations to Mike who took his folk builder oath and then was right

00:04:41.600 away called back up to receive one of our folk builder of the year awards.

00:04:46.500 So congratulations to Mike on that.

00:04:49.620 Also, if you are watching tonight, you can catch us on all kinds of different platforms.

00:04:53.700 you can get us on odyssey entropy uh twitter youtube vk we've got a links in the description

00:04:59.940 down there go ahead and take a look at that if you do want to ask us some questions and jump to

00:05:04.740 the top of the line every time spawns on here he gets a whole list of questions so if you do want

00:05:10.020 your question put up at the top you can go ahead and go on entropy and ask a question there if you

00:05:15.540 like to give us a donation and we will put you at the top of the list there we will answer any of

00:05:19.940 the questions that you do have even if you don't do that but if you do want it at the top of the

00:05:23.940 playlist go ahead and drop us a donation on entropy all right so we did actually have one

00:05:31.220 question that was already emailed to us this evening before the before the start and it says

00:05:38.900 if you have time on tonight's vns can go this one talk about any as a true origins or correlations

00:05:46.740 you are aware of in regards to Fat Tuesday? It's fun. Do you have any kind of correlations with

00:05:54.740 Fat Tuesday and if there's any kind of as-a-true origins in that?

00:06:03.500 Fat Tuesday, Fat Tuesday. Fat Tuesday is just before Lent, correct? It's the,

00:06:12.720 It is – now, from what I remember, it is a time in which the larders were released for – like it was the last and little bit of everything that was in the larders was brought out for the celebration of spring.

00:06:36.720 And as far as connections to Ausatru, I mean, I don't, I honestly, I don't know.

00:06:51.080 We have, I mean, we clearly, like if you look at some of the Ausatru calendars, right now we're in Lenting month or the idea that Lent is the time in which we're, you know, absolutely at the lowest amount.

00:07:04.780 And so, of course, Fat Tuesday would be in correlation to Lenting Month and the idea, again, of that final celebration.

00:07:15.080 Whatever didn't, you know, get eaten, I guess, would be the purpose of it or making a lot of the foods based off of that.

00:07:26.680 But so far as I know, it was originally kind of a solemn day.

00:07:31.480 I mean, it was an agricultural celebration, but it became more prominent with Christianity.

00:07:38.700 That's really off the top of my head, all I know.

00:07:42.800 Now, if you give me, like, that's the thing.

00:07:46.680 I really kind of wish we had some pre-show questions because then I could really kind of look into stuff.

00:07:53.520 That's just right out of the brain.

00:07:57.120 Beyond that, the connections to it, I'm not 100% sure.

00:08:00.860 And I would be very interested to look in its connections to Tuesday in and of itself, obviously being Tears Day or connection to Teo, if there is any correlation there.

00:08:15.000 But again, if we're talking about the Gregorian calendar, the Gregorian calendar's use has been varied throughout European history.

00:08:23.560 So it could have just simply been the day chosen.

00:08:28.540 that again i don't want to say because i don't i don't know fully that irks me that that might be

00:08:36.480 something's fun has to run down a couple rabbit holes and uh entertain us all with uh they all

00:08:42.360 the uh answers he finds as he crawls his way back out of it because i think that might be

00:08:46.720 that might be some interesting research there's to be fair um and uh and i i know i haven't

00:08:52.620 answered her question yet, but like three episodes back, four episodes back, there was a question

00:08:59.220 asked about the connection between, or if there is a connection between Enki from the Babylonian

00:09:05.320 and Sumerian and Luian and kind of the Mesopotamian area, if there's connection between Enki and

00:09:11.120 Yngwie Frey, and I'm still working on that question. So if you're out there and you're

00:09:16.160 thinking that I'm ignoring you, I am not. This is how I, I'm sorry, I'm in like,

00:09:20.940 my nose is in it, but I'm, I'm trying to find the answer and I can't, I can't say unless

00:09:27.840 I really am in the belief that this is the correct answer. Right.

00:09:35.560 Human Manipulation Nation asks, could you give us a few examples of how you live your practice

00:09:42.960 daily? Fun. You want to take that one first and I will follow up. Yeah. And actually I'll loop 0.52

00:09:50.540 this into obviously we're talking about the holy lord vidar so one of the things that i have always

00:09:59.740 taken into uh my belief and devotion to vidar is correct action and i believe that vidar is the

00:10:09.980 He is two things. He is a kind of, I would say, a passive karma and a active dharma, if you will.

00:10:21.020 Now, if you're not familiar with the terms, people watching not familiar with it, dharma is like natural law.

00:10:27.200 It's corrective action. It's foundations of moral cosmic order and moral natural law, as we would, you know, we talk about with the Asa and the Vana.

00:10:38.740 Or the Aisir and the Vanir. And Vidar really represents this, whereas Vauli is a, I would say, an active Dharma, I mean an active and immediate Dharma and a passive kind of karma, I would even say more just associated with Dharma itself.

00:11:04.480 in almost like immediacy.

00:11:06.980 But we'll get into that next episode with Vowli.

00:11:10.640 But Vidar is, I think, personification of correct action.

00:11:15.660 And correct action often involves what you do, the deeds in which you do.

00:11:21.960 Now, when you're speaking about devotional, there's a couple of things.

00:11:27.280 I think, um, sometimes I do morning prayer or sometimes I do morning, uh, affirmation.

00:11:39.960 Sometimes I do it right before I go into the gym.

00:11:43.460 I usually work out early in the morning.

00:11:45.960 Um, I'm old habit, but getting up at five 30 and going, then being on the grinder at

00:11:53.180 six in the morning.

00:11:53.880 um so i go into the sauna and kind of have a a moment where i just kind of really focus on what

00:12:04.120 i'm trying to do and um i think about things like i think about the gods i think about what we're

00:12:08.700 going to be talking about like tonight i was already thinking about it this morning um and

00:12:13.140 even yesterday as well um so there starts with kind of a impromptu non-formulaic affirmations

00:12:22.020 towards the gods. Um, and it's not all the time cause I'd be lying if I said I did this every

00:12:27.680 morning. I wish I, I, I wish I did, or I would say that the idea is the desire is to continue to,

00:12:33.980 to be better. I don't all the time, but I do have that moment in the, in the sauna where I can

00:12:38.920 really kind of focus and, um, and get my mind right. Then go kill it in the gym and start the

00:12:46.800 day. Um, I have a, I have a small, um, altar or a hero at my, in my work. So when I come back and 0.98

00:13:01.200 I start to prepare for work, um, you know, getting dressed, um, I'm actually in my work clothes right

00:13:06.200 now and I go, uh, to my work and usually there's a small like prayer and thank thankfulness for

00:13:16.060 bounty. It's a, it's a small hero and it's dedicated to Odin. Um, and then, you know,

00:13:23.880 coming home, uh, I get a chance. I usually come home right before dinner and we sit down as a

00:13:30.520 family and we say a food blessing altogether. Uh, this food blessing was, um, created by law

00:13:38.760 speaker Witten Alan Turnage. And it has been in our family for almost two and a half years now,

00:13:45.500 where we even my three-year-old is able to say it uh it it took him a while and he's still catching

00:13:52.540 on it's it's not the best but he's there we all sit down we all eat together we um bless the food

00:13:59.260 we um sign over the food and and hallow it and then we eat um and then depending on the holy

00:14:07.020 tide or in desire like uh recently a friend of mine was ill and so uh making prayer to like say

00:14:15.560 the ausenia uh air and um you know hoping praying and asking just for healing or help or knowledge

00:14:27.260 or at least the the way through it uh through the hardship might be something that i do and then

00:14:32.240 And Holy Tides, of course, is, you know, going down to the Hoff and conducting bloat there.

00:14:38.640 But that's pretty much the way it kind of rolls.

00:14:43.600 It can come at night.

00:14:47.220 And I usually work in the first half of the week.

00:14:50.780 So Sundays and Thursdays, Fridays, those are the days I usually kind of hold bloat at home for myself.

00:14:59.180 because my schedule is pretty tight.

00:15:02.460 We homeschool the children in the morning.

00:15:04.320 Then I go to work.

00:15:05.440 I come home.

00:15:06.320 We eat dinner.

00:15:07.120 And then usually sometimes there's a call.

00:15:09.480 So it's a very, very, very tight schedule.

00:15:12.160 So to make time for faith is really in the morning.

00:15:15.920 And Thursday through Sunday, I might be holding a bloat at home for myself in prayer.

00:15:24.920 um is it do i wish i could do more yeah but that's that's the truth

00:15:32.040 what is the male blessing spawn could you give that to us yes yes um it's uh we we bless this

00:15:42.700 food to might and main our bodies need to fill to keep us hearty whole and hail so we may work

00:15:52.360 our will ancestors guide us walk beside us help us in our needs keep us on the path that's true

00:16:00.680 because we are our deeds hail the gods and then usually we we uh at my house and this is i don't

00:16:08.440 think um uh across the board for everyone but my children i we we or sometimes i'll do it for the

00:16:16.360 whole table but we uh do the sign of the fee fought over the table and or over the food and

00:16:23.000 just ask the ancestors of the gods to keep us in the right keep us in the the moving forward and

00:16:29.800 and we thank them for you know the the next this meal the next meal because again it's never

00:16:36.840 It's never guaranteed. And it's, it's not without work. Great. So my daily practice is pretty

00:16:46.400 regimented. So if anybody who knows me well knows that I'm very, very structured in everything that

00:16:53.320 I do. Um, so I have time carved out in my morning, um, for specific daily practice. If I don't do it,

00:17:02.960 I don't usually have the best days for a couple of reasons.

00:17:08.460 One, because I am, I am out of my,

00:17:11.180 I'm out of my schedule for one. And that's, that bothers me.

00:17:17.920 But I also feel like if I don't do it and this is just for me,

00:17:21.560 not necessarily for everybody, but I feel like I haven't,

00:17:25.400 I haven't done what I promised I would do to my ancestors, particularly.

00:17:32.960 so i do have time that i've carved out every morning and i was telling the ladies this in

00:17:38.560 my ladies call i said that's that's really how i start my day that's before my cup of coffee it's

00:17:44.800 before i get ready for work and if i'm running late that's still happens and everything else

00:17:52.720 gives way to that because it's it's something that that i've tasked myself as a duty to my

00:17:59.360 ancestors to do. So that's something that I do every day. I might do something devotional in

00:18:05.740 the morning to one of the gods and goddesses as well. Typically to Baldr and Nana, but there are

00:18:14.140 other gods and goddesses that I do hold devotionals to as well, or I do do daily

00:18:18.680 dedications or something like that. But one thing that is always constant is my greeting of the

00:18:23.760 ancestors every morning. So that's one thing that if I don't get anything else done, that is always

00:18:29.920 done. Other than that, it's, I like to participate in forms of active meditation. And when I say

00:18:41.480 active meditation, you may not think that scrubbing your floors is active meditation, but when

00:18:48.060 you do so with intention when you're galdring, when you're singing. I like to sing with a lot

00:18:54.820 of things I do, even though I have a terrible voice and I probably shouldn't, and it's not

00:18:58.660 appreciated by anyone other than myself and the God. It's an active work, but it helps me focus.

00:19:07.300 So I do a lot of active meditation when I'm either cleaning or doing thread work or something like

00:19:15.560 that. And I try to implement that and put my mind in a space to where I can work out a lot of things

00:19:22.140 and I can still sing, even if I'm doing something, I'm queen of multitasking. So I may be doing

00:19:28.320 devotionals and singing to the gods while I'm scrubbing my floors, but I'm, I'm giving it my

00:19:32.540 all. My nightly practice is very similar to my, my daily practice, my evening practice. There's

00:19:40.560 usually some sort of ancestor devotion, more along the lines of thanking them for being with me that

00:19:46.900 day, greeting them in the morning, but thanking them at night. So if there's anything that is

00:19:52.580 absolutely constant, I would say it's my greeting of the ancestors and my thanking of them in the

00:19:57.700 evening. That would be an absolute constant. Everything else can give way to that. I mean,

00:20:02.360 I might not brush my hair that morning before I go out the door to work, but I've said good

00:20:06.460 morning to my grandmothers. I have for sure done that. I see over here UlfBjorn14 is writing it

00:20:16.340 down. He's screenshot that, folks. Beautiful prayer. It's really brought our family, my family

00:20:22.880 together and Law Speaker. It was a wonderful thing. I actually got coronavirus or one of the

00:20:29.900 strands of coronavirus last year and I was just ill and kind of out. And my son came up and he

00:20:36.900 was beaming with pride because he led the family in their prayer. And then the best thing too is

00:20:44.020 just like when my kids, sometimes I'll eat at work because I'm just, I can't make it home late

00:20:50.600 and I'm cleaning and trying to get things ready for the next day. And I'll come in and so I've

00:20:56.400 already eaten and my wife might've already eaten as well. Like just, and we're not hungry. So we're

00:21:02.540 not going to over, you know, stuff ourselves. There's, there's a have them all verse on that

00:21:07.320 one as well. So we'll just make food for the kids and they'll have kind of their own dinner that

00:21:12.620 night. And, uh, they, they say it then on their own too. And it's really nice. So I'm really glad

00:21:18.380 Again, I hope law speaker doesn't mind this, but it's absolutely an honor to him, I would say.

00:21:29.080 I think publicly I'm saying great prayer.

00:21:32.780 Before that, I always just said a small blessing that was kind of personal, but small.

00:21:40.100 And then this one just really, the uniformity of doing daily practice, whatever it might be, however small it might be,

00:21:46.720 the continuation of doing the same thing over and over and over and over again builds might,

00:21:52.840 builds, there's a connectivity. The moment you learn how to do something in corrective steps,

00:22:01.320 then it's almost like when you have the ability to break away from the mundane,

00:22:08.240 it happens even faster when you have a kind of a process in which you do it. And then once you do

00:22:14.840 that you can open up to the gods you can open up to your ancestors you can speak genuinely from

00:22:20.320 the heart you're not reading you know you're not reading from something in front unless i mean of

00:22:25.480 course you wrote something down that like a poem or something but it's just it's having that

00:22:31.940 repetition and being able to separate it's like when someone hears a drum or a bell or a horn or

00:22:38.900 something it just immediately goes into uh allowing the the soul to be open so sorry i

00:22:47.460 i was just looking over here i got i got the comments like last last uh show i it froze on

00:22:54.640 me so like all this stuff is going on and i'm just like i can't can't say anything

00:23:00.160 Sarah asks us since we are talking about Vidar let's talk about his shoes

00:23:07.280 what were they made of and what was the purpose fun

00:23:11.420 okay so um on the basis of just like right out the the bat I think this is a cultural reference

00:23:21.380 at the time of the of the nords um in relation to shoe repair and and creating shoes and so the

00:23:30.460 idea was and this happens a lot i think in european traditions um where uh there's a like

00:23:36.700 there's a cause and there's an effect and so uh it's simply stating a devotional the idea of

00:23:44.460 sacrificing a piece of the shoe was in essence a reminder to always help the processes it was

00:23:52.060 being also true it's it's being trothful and true and loyal to the gods so in regards to it having

00:24:01.340 validity say like all the way back you know it very well could um it doesn't have validity now

00:24:08.060 I mean, unless you're a cobbler, I mean, but what it represents, though, is Vidar or Vidar is the foundation of a vertical axis.

00:24:19.080 And that devotion to that is kind of a remembrance to the idea that how important Vidar is after Ragnarok.

00:24:32.060 And again, we talked about mythic time and spiraling time. So after is, I'm using that just in a common sense way. That devotion of taking a cut from the shoe of the soul and sacrificing it to Vidar is, I guess, more or less a testament to remembering what the gods are and what they will be.

00:25:02.060 Now, looking at Vidar, remember Vidar is, he stretches the mouth of the wolf, the chaos wolf, Fenrir, the dweller in the fens, and stabs him in the heart, but by opening his mouth, this imagery of the verticalness.

00:25:23.200 And it's very, very interesting when you look at Vidar's name.

00:25:26.660 Vidar means the wide ruler or the one who besets upon the width of things or sees widely.

00:25:36.640 There's a lot of different kind of takes to that.

00:25:39.380 I mean, there could be an essence to the idea of, like, the wide cycle or the wide, I guess, cycle would be season, the idea that he's waiting, that his time, his rise to karma is first precluded with a long wait.

00:26:06.220 And once he does rise, he rises vertically. He severs chaos. He severs the chaos, stabs the wolf in the heart, and then reclamates the gods back into order. That's when the tide is turned. Surtur is slated and recedes, and everything begins to start to reform again.

00:26:27.860 And, you know, whether this could be, let's say, like, we've talked about things in the metaphysical, things in the physical, things in symbolic or allegoric meanings.

00:26:42.660 Could this mean, like, a shifting of access of the earth?

00:26:46.840 Maybe.

00:26:48.260 Could it be a polaric shift?

00:26:50.300 you know these are these are things that i often think about and and try to correlate with some of

00:26:56.520 that or uh what that the symbolic meaning of what the gods are trying to say in the stories because

00:27:02.360 again the gods don't exist because of the stories the stories exist because of the gods i always say

00:27:07.060 that and so i i do believe that they are trying to transfer things and we have to go through what

00:27:13.240 translations and also go through uh perhaps even snorty himself you know trying to make sense of

00:27:19.680 what he wanted to do in meter and whether or not he was truly a believer or came from a devotional

00:27:27.000 state. There's a lot of that, but the idea of his presence, what he's trying to do correlates to

00:27:42.840 becoming an access point at that point. And so the foundation, the idea of the foot or the boot

00:27:51.400 is what I think correlates to foundation, is that he needs that boot thick. He needs it strong

00:27:58.360 because he's going to place it at the bottom of the mouth of the wolf to wrench the wolf up. And

00:28:05.000 it's just, it's a gesture towards remembering that he is the foundational

00:28:10.000 original axis that's going to be established to re-initiate and uh and slate chaos

00:28:17.400 godi trent east has a question for us swan and it is i was going to ask the i'll share your godi

00:28:29.380 this question but i'll ask y'all as well what was the best journey song i'm going to answer that

00:28:35.120 first the best journey song is separate ways worlds apart hands down but i'll let spawn give

00:28:43.280 it a crack and see if he can get close i know i i i mean what is it uh wheel in the sky is that the

00:28:55.440 yeah wheel in the sky um i mean i i grew up in the 80s uh my sister was very much a fan of journey

00:29:04.400 But she moved back to Iceland right after high school.

00:29:08.000 She was not having any of – I live in a military town where people are from everywhere, and she was not having that.

00:29:15.460 She went from a very homogenic society where everybody spoke everything, and she came here.

00:29:21.640 It was absolute insanity, and so she left. 0.94

00:29:25.220 So outside of that, like, you know, my brothers and stuff were into more, I think, just ridiculous 80s music, whereas my sister was the grounding of classics, you know, from Iron Maiden and Journey and all the way even to like The Police that were, you know, and those were the big ones.

00:29:48.500 but i like it because it always makes me think of you know sunar and and the process is the

00:29:55.860 the raido of the universe if you will but there's fun with the with a spiritual answer

00:30:01.700 and here's me just the one that i could just belt out to with balder's ball or thor's ball

00:30:06.340 all right tim asks when spawn can you give us some tips on making peace with hostile land

00:30:18.140 whites and house whites witten brandy as well i'll let you start spawn uh i learned from my 0.81

00:30:24.680 mother um she always had a a kind of a way um and it wasn't really burning anything in the air

00:30:33.900 though you know that has become kind of a thing for me now um uh i burned dry rosemary 0.87

00:30:44.300 but beyond that what really what it was was my mother um would salt the house that's what she

00:30:49.980 called it i'm gonna salt this house and i asked her when i was little like why and she said because

00:30:55.820 in pure spirits can't walk on pure earth and the idea that salt was the purest form of the earth

00:31:01.820 um so she would uh salt and she would salt everywhere she would salt under the couch 1.00

00:31:09.240 she would salt into the every corner of the closet um and and i mean she would just salt 1.00

00:31:15.620 anywhere and everywhere and sometimes she would make lines of salt at the door 0.98

00:31:19.120 um so salt was a big one but she also made sure not to she never salted the yard or anything like 0.99

00:31:28.160 that. But she would salt near the house on the foundation if it was particularly bad. 0.82

00:31:33.860 Or actually, when we first, I lived in a townhouse, so we couldn't really do that. I grew up in a

00:31:40.140 very bad neighborhood. When I moved to America, I was living in a military kind of row housing that 1.00

00:31:46.540 was, I mean, they tore it down. It was absolutely wretched. And it got no better after the, or during

00:31:53.040 and slightly after the carter administration so um wow that was a long time ago uh so they

00:32:01.040 i was like i was six uh um so yeah so like my mother couldn't do that but then when we finally

00:32:10.100 moved uh when i was a little bit older i was about eight or nine we moved to a house that had a yard

00:32:16.220 around it and um i remember her salting outside and that's the only time i ever saw her do that

00:32:21.420 But inside the house, most certainly. Other things, too, that she would do is hang a nail from the bedpost, an iron nail. There was only one incident where that was kind of a thing. 1.00

00:32:40.080 Um, I remember this really clearly. I woke up in the middle of the night. I was very young and, um, the, the blanket, uh, in, again, I don't know if I was lucid dreaming. I, I've tried to logically explain this away as an adult, but I'll just say it as, as a, as a kid, the blanket was moving down my face.

00:33:00.640 The room was extremely cold.

00:33:02.480 I woke up, and I was extremely frightened, and I thought it was my brother, Ragnar, but Ragnar, so I started yelling out to my – and we used to call him Rocky, so I was like, Rocky, stop, stop, and I thought he was pulling and just kind of preying on his little brother,

00:33:24.380 and I figured if I yelled loud enough, my, my mother would hear it and, um, really come in and

00:33:30.060 like wreck house. So, um, I'm yelling, I'm screaming for him to stop. It doesn't stop.

00:33:37.620 And by the time it gets to my chest, I'm like, Nope, that's it. I pulled the, I jump up in the

00:33:42.180 bed. I jump across the spance of the room and I opened the door and to my recollection, I didn't

00:33:47.580 close it, but the door closed. And I ran across the hallway and into my mother's room. I was very

00:33:55.820 little and she had a waterbed. So old waterbeds were, you know, they were like these frames with

00:34:04.460 a smaller frame underneath it. So there was a cubby and usually the blanket hung over. I slid

00:34:10.740 under there and was like terrified. And I guess I fell asleep. And my mother, many, many years later

00:34:17.020 when we were in Iceland and I was at my grandmother's funeral, I told her about that.

00:34:21.780 And she said, yeah, I remember finding you. And she said that my grandfather, Svanr, came into

00:34:29.100 the room, was speaking Icelandic, and he came in and she sat up in bed and she's like, you're not

00:34:35.460 supposed to be here. You're dead. And he said, I know, I know, I know, I know, but everything's

00:34:42.220 okay now. And she was like, you're not supposed to be here. You're dead. And he's like, I know,

00:34:47.740 I know. I just want to let you know everything's okay. And then he walks out of the room in her

00:34:51.520 dream and she wakes up and I'm under the bed. She hung a nail from my bedpost, but never really

00:34:58.540 explained exactly why. And she never told me, I remember her hanging the nail, but she never told

00:35:05.160 me about the dream of my grandfather until many years later. So that was an interesting thing.

00:35:12.220 But that's what I got. Salt the house. Salt the house, burn dried rosemary, and tell whatever it is to get out.

00:35:22.960 so we we talk about this a lot with um with the afa ladies we have a ladies uh mysteries group

00:35:30.820 that if you're interested in that at all if you're one of our ladies talk to um folk builders uh

00:35:37.980 sarah alt and christine dumas and they can get you the schedule for those but we talk about a

00:35:43.680 lot of these kind of things in the women's mysteries um one thing you have to remember

00:35:48.940 with the Vaitir. A lot of the time, they are curious about what you're doing. You've done

00:35:59.540 something or possibly said something or given an offering that's caught attention a lot of the time,

00:36:03.900 so they're curious as to what you're doing. If they become to whether frightening or

00:36:12.740 things of that nature, that's a different story. A lot of the time, they'll pop in,

00:36:17.380 they'll go away. And they're like, oh, I don't know why you're doing that, but okay. And then

00:36:22.040 they're done. They're curious. They want to know what you're doing. But if they're frightening or

00:36:29.040 they're becoming hostile or something like that, and you feel like you need to get rid of them,

00:36:36.220 the first thing you need to be is commanding. You have to remember this is your home. This

00:36:40.700 is your land. You took it. It's yours. Tell them to go away. I mean, people don't, people don't

00:36:48.320 realize that that is the first step. You need to make sure that you are claiming your energy

00:36:53.960 with, with your energy, you know, whether you're, you're doing a land taking or whether you're doing

00:36:58.960 a house blessing or whatever it is, you need to make sure that your energy and your power is in

00:37:03.480 that house. Um, people also underestimate the power of their ancestors. Like, you know,

00:37:09.280 as Fawn was saying with his, his grandfather coming in, I have a home that I'm not going to

00:37:16.840 say I'm, you know, they're all powerful, which maybe they are, but my grandmothers are not going

00:37:22.500 to let anybody come in here and mess with her babies. She's not, I know that she is here. And

00:37:29.140 this comes part of the daily practice. I have a daily relationship with my dad's ear. Um, I know

00:37:35.700 that they are here and i do not believe that they would allow anything to harm us

00:37:44.660 um we were just talking about this fun with the baits here not that long ago right yeah yep we

00:37:51.860 were we were talking about this you know when we're claiming sacred space when we're when

00:37:56.020 we're doing a ritual we call upon our our holy gods we call upon our honored ancestors

00:38:03.380 and we call upon the friendly bates here and the else year ago they said something during

00:38:08.420 that conversation that we had he goes i do not believe that anything is going to come into that

00:38:15.060 circle with the power of my gods the power of my ancestors and the friendly bates here that

00:38:20.820 are watching what we're doing and i don't believe that they're going to disrupt it

00:38:26.260 this is a place where we have powerful gods honored ancestors

00:38:33.380 we should not be disturbed and he also made a comment about make sure you're sending out

00:38:39.860 invites to who you want there the holy gods the honored ancestors the friendly vates here

00:38:46.980 the other ones you don't have to banish them they're not going to come in nobody's going to

00:38:50.820 let them in there so yeah we were just talking about that's one yeah and uh before that like a

00:38:58.820 month or two before our conversation which i think was like last week or earlier this week um there

00:39:06.180 was another uh member of the folk who was speaking about that there was a foul creature that was

00:39:11.380 plaguing a friend of his during uh right in the middle of sleeping and um i'm sure most people

00:39:20.260 probably already surmised that yeah the the knock the mata or the night the nightmare um the night

00:39:27.300 spirit uh foul foul creatures again and um sometimes the tethering of of is based on damage

00:39:37.340 it's not necessarily the house it's not necessarily the the the people in the house it could be

00:39:43.020 something perhaps that was outside of the house damaging of the mind damaging of of the heart or

00:39:48.920 the soul and uh where it's being carried in and it kind of acts like a beacon towards that so the

00:39:55.300 first thing i would say is again i'm insulting the house is a good move on the first first but

00:40:02.180 a rectifying trauma whatever that trauma might be uh that stress um seeking respite from the gods

00:40:11.620 asking them to give you guidance speaking to the ausenir again there's a reason why

00:40:17.220 uh like my mother was the one that kind of taught me about cleansing the house the home 1.00

00:40:21.620 and the ladies do talk about this because the home is that's where tight ships are run so

00:40:29.060 you know you know everything including that which can't be seen sometimes um i think that

00:40:34.660 the other thing is if you're dealing with a poltergeist or a poltergeist um a lot of times

00:40:39.620 those are mistaken for for ill um spirits um and it's worth noting whether or not it's a dvergar

00:40:50.420 or a troll a troll being a foul spirit that i think um very very bad needs a lot of work but

00:41:00.580 is oftentimes outside of the house as well as inside of the house um and you might need the

00:41:05.780 work of a lord locker in order to get rid of a troll um if if you're dealing with like a dvergar

00:41:14.580 or a lance i mean a land spirit that's connected to the earth they have the ability i think to move

00:41:20.180 very physical things because they are deeply connected to that which creates the physicality

00:41:25.380 of our world and so sometimes dealing with that again is um you know i've never had that situation

00:41:32.980 but i would think to like sacred smoke as opposed to salt might be of the better

00:41:38.740 um move for that and of course to you know um hallowing or gaining hallowed mead

00:41:46.340 from a Hoth, from a Gidia, from a Gothi, or, you know, besieging the gods to hollow mead for

00:41:54.080 yourself so that you can, you know, make the space sacred. Or any means of, I guess,

00:42:01.360 physical fluid, whether it's, you know, mead, it could be, of course, too, is so bad. Some,

00:42:07.360 I could see perhaps holding a bloat, like a blooding as a possibility. But generally,

00:42:15.940 you know those are very rare situations and by your circumstances right you know if you one one

00:42:22.260 really good thing that you can do too is to boil the water on your so think of your stove as your

00:42:30.660 modern day hearth right taking pots of water and boiling the water and boiling lavender rosemary

00:42:38.340 thyme throw in a little bit of apple in there if you want to and boil that up because you're taking

00:42:44.900 that and you're dispersing it in your home. It's like a humidifier. It's the same thing.

00:42:49.520 You're putting water into the air, right? So that's one thing that I have seen a lot of

00:42:55.240 women do. I have seen my mentors do is they would do rosemary, thyme, I think it was rosemary, 1.00

00:43:00.960 thyme, lavender, and apple. And they would slice it up and they would boil all of that

00:43:05.220 with the intentions that they had. Now remember, those are tools, right? Those are tools you were

00:43:14.460 using it's not that itself that has the power it is what you are doing with it and your intentions 1.00

00:43:21.660 of it that have that um i also know a very a lot more than one several ladies who will something

00:43:30.300 goes bump in the night they are not below getting into their cupboards and getting out their pots

00:43:35.020 and pans and chasing it out of the house opening up the doors i have done this it works something

00:43:41.420 goes bump in the night scaring your kids that's perfectly fine teach your children to do that and

00:43:45.740 teach them to control their fear and to control their space open up the doors and start banging

00:43:53.180 the pots and chase it out the door so i'll go away don't come back ask your ancestors to be there

00:43:58.700 with you for the rest of the evening scaring the hanks yep it's a thing all right sarah asks

00:44:09.820 sometimes vidar is associated with silence is related to him not speaking or is it more a

00:44:16.140 reference to him being calm and focused so we do um go ahead it's fine i'll give that one to you

00:44:25.260 oh no no well i mean you know there's is there really anything that says he does not speak other

00:44:31.740 than um other than snorri saying that is there anything in the lord that says he doesn't speak

00:44:37.420 I know Snorri says he's a god of silence. Yes. Well, it talks about where he resides,

00:44:46.380 you know, stating in the bushes and the high grass grow where he is at and that he's

00:44:51.340 far away. But it also states, too, that he's asked by the gods for help. So there's kind

00:44:57.580 of a conflicting idea there that there is a separation, but there's also a reference to him

00:45:03.420 being of great help for the gods and that he is nearly as strong as Thor and, you know, these

00:45:10.840 references. But I think one of the things that is most said is that, you know, he sits in silence

00:45:21.120 and waits in his land for the time in which, and that's in Vivi. It's actually named. So

00:45:30.080 that's another interesting thing. I mean, one thing that's worth noting is that out of the

00:45:36.220 lands that are named, like for instance, there's Skadi and Thrymheim, and that is not seen as being

00:45:44.540 in the heavenly abode, but seen in the middle world. Vivi, again, I'm not stating that it is

00:45:51.660 in the middle world, but it could be if there's, you know, possibilities in, in, in, in, in the

00:46:01.380 regards to like, say, Thrymheim. But the idea of the wide expanse, the, the place in which is silent

00:46:10.060 and the place which is in the widening of, of the gap in the middle, you know, sitting in silence

00:46:20.160 uh in the in the lone place i think the the loneliness is comparative to the idea of not

00:46:26.980 being connected and in waiting as well and it's there that he's again enacting himself as the

00:46:34.700 eventual karma that will flow over and rip the chaos wolf in half and it has to be done in a

00:46:43.540 very specific way in which the consumption and you know and the rising up and being released

00:46:50.060 from the black lake where he is um you know once he's uh you know takes to consuming the universe

00:46:57.200 there has to be these these actions that are made in order for him to suddenly become exactly what

00:47:03.800 he is destined to be dharma at that time and ultimately the karma of chaos um as far as

00:47:10.180 Silence goes—there is reference to him, but there's also reference to Forseti being worshipped in silence.

00:47:17.660 And so I often wonder if there is perhaps an overall Germanic practice of silence, or at least enacting silence in faith to the gods.

00:47:36.360 But silence, determination, separation, I think these all denote the ideas of focusing and preparing.

00:47:47.500 I've always taken Vidar to be, if he takes that oath of being separated, takes that oath of being quiet and waiting, I've always taken Vidar to be the lord of personal attestments.

00:48:01.440 He's the representative of Thumos, but Thumos has to start first in preparation.

00:48:09.680 Thumos, of course, heroic action and having the heroic soul.

00:48:17.540 But like in Greek stories, you know, when somebody has a lot of hubris, it's usually done because they do it in rash action. 0.67

00:48:26.300 They speak over much, and then they go forward headlong, and they end up getting just desserts.

00:48:35.860 And I think in our people's stories, they're making note of the ideas, not about warning us about hubris,

00:48:44.680 but instead showing us that there's great consideration, concentration, and devotion in preparing for Thumos.

00:48:51.500 And that, I think, is a unique thing between, I think, our people, like our cousins to the south and us to the north is in that recollection of Vidar is quietly preparing his soul for the moment to strike as opposed to, you know, saying over much.

00:49:15.960 So silence, yes, I could see it. And I could see it as perhaps a form of worship. I've seen it elsewhere. But it's also about determination, separation, and preparedness for moment.

00:49:31.100 shield maiden has a question for us what are the mourning practices of as a true i recently lost

00:49:41.800 someone but haven't lost anyone since i've been become as a true so first of all i'm very sorry

00:49:48.900 about your loss um one thing i always talk to people when we're talking about um loss of loved

00:49:56.440 ones is there are so many ways that you can keep that memory alive and remember that part of our

00:50:04.320 immortality lies in the fact that our name will still be spoken on the lips of our ancestors

00:50:10.560 and our friends even when we're gone. So that is going to be part of that mourning process

00:50:16.760 is speaking their name, telling their stories and making sure that that person is never forgotten.

00:50:22.980 Um, there are, um, there are rights that we do for rites of passage. We do have a funeral rite

00:50:33.480 of passage on that. Um, the, the AFA does have an official, um, funeral service for those who pass

00:50:41.980 away. And if you are interested in that, um, or just curious about that, um, get ahold of any of

00:50:48.920 Godar and you can find that on our runestone.org website under um contact us and you can get a

00:50:55.640 hold of the Godar and they can kind of talk you through what that looks like um just in case you

00:51:01.580 were curious on on like an as a true funeral um one of the hardest things with grief is

00:51:10.840 understanding that it's first of all okay to hurt and it's okay to feel that loss a lot of times

00:51:19.700 people will get caught up in what they have to do next and what step to take next and i shouldn't be

00:51:25.940 sad because it's been a year already it's okay to be sad that grief is going to come in waves

00:51:31.420 it's going to ebb and flow like a low tide and a high tide and a big part of that is riding the

00:51:38.520 tides appropriately. When you are on, when the waves are coming crashing in, part of that

00:51:46.520 mourning process is going to be reaching out to that person. When you feel like it's overwhelming

00:51:52.720 and that you need to speak to them, speak to them. Do a bloat for them. Mention their name and

00:52:00.120 symbol. Hang their picture on your wall. Include them in your ancestor dedications and devotionals.

00:52:08.520 And that is what I would say would be one of the biggest parts of mourning in as a true is understanding that you still have that duty to love them and honor them and keep their memory alive.

00:52:23.540 But don't forget it's okay to hurt when, even if it's been a year or two or five, there's going to be days when that grief is at high tide.

00:52:34.340 And those are the times to really connect with them the most. And that will be a big part of taking care of that mourning and dealing with that loss. Svon, do you have any recommendations?

00:52:44.940 I really think you hit it right to the source of it. I would say that it's incumbent upon

00:52:56.600 us to remember that we have a deep, and now it's true, we have a deep obligation to honor

00:53:02.920 our ancestors because we realize that we are part of a cycle, that we too will be ancestors

00:53:10.640 one day. So I would say, obviously, grief and mourning can be met in many different ways. I

00:53:21.520 think that when we talk about going into silence and preparedness of it, there's a torrent of

00:53:30.480 emotions that can come out in that moment of silence. And I think it's important to collect

00:53:34.420 oneself. I'm not saying don't experience it. But what I am saying is that there's going to be a

00:53:39.280 moment in which others are going to be looking at you. Because we are a community. AFA is a

00:53:45.240 community. Whether you're dealing with your fellow folk, whether you're dealing with your children,

00:53:51.320 whether you're dealing with siblings or parents or family members living and close to us,

00:53:57.240 whether they're AUSA True or not, after that moment of, I would say, coming to grips with

00:54:06.760 the loss of the mortalness of someone close to you and experiencing all of that.

00:54:13.420 That is that it is an obligation for us to then step out of that and be strong for others.

00:54:26.280 It's our obligation to help continue on that, the memory of them, to show your kids,

00:54:34.480 to tell your kids about them, to honor them during Yule, during Ancestors Night, to honor them

00:54:41.040 throughout your daily practices or weekly practices, and to speak fondly of them, to tell

00:54:48.100 stories of them, and encourage others to speak about them, find out about them, things that you

00:54:55.680 may have not known. And again, we spoke about honored dead. I know that the ideas that

00:55:04.420 we have to understand, too, that people, as we learn about them, even after, you know, there's

00:55:09.920 a tendency in the rawness of emotion to find things out that may, you know, bring us right

00:55:18.960 back into that torrent and milstrom of emotions. It's a time to understand that they see things

00:55:26.300 differently now. It's a time to understand that they are not completely severed or gone.

00:55:31.020 uh and just like we will not be completely severed or gone and so uh it's okay to even

00:55:38.500 try to make peace to uh maybe if if the folk or somebody that's passed away is is was good

00:55:47.340 but maybe there was something personal between you and that person um i think it's important that you

00:55:54.420 hold a horn and give honor to them in the sense that you are airing thoughts, ideas,

00:56:06.360 grievances, things like that, and that you ask not just to air them, but you ask to heal them

00:56:13.040 in hopes that now that they are in a different way, now that they've passed through the veil,

00:56:19.580 that they um see things differently and that they help you build peace between uh you know

00:56:30.560 that time that they shared with you here in the middle um i think that's important but other than

00:56:36.580 i mean that is you've hit it right on the head

00:56:39.500 all right we have ril veneer asks can you explain the underlying underlying meaning

00:56:48.960 of Vidar being the spatial god, and does it correlate with him surviving Ragnarok? I know

00:56:54.920 you've touched on that already, but is there anything else you want to add with that, Svam?

00:56:59.520 Yes. I mean, being the spatial god, yes. The correlation between Vidar and expanse is clear

00:57:09.000 in the name of the domain or the hall or the home in which he lives. It is remarked as

00:57:18.900 being a wide open space filled with grass and shrubs. So it kind of lends this idea that it's

00:57:25.420 not trod very often. So it is seen as almost like the spaces in between. Yes, absolutely

00:57:34.300 seen as a horizontal spread that at the proper moment condenses immediately into a vertical

00:57:44.140 accessing, a support structure of the middle world and heaven in which, again, chaos is usurped

00:57:54.200 and the strut between things is established. Yes, I mean, spatial, yeah, in the name,

00:58:03.300 the wideness, but again, I think it's about motion. And when we see motion, we see this

00:58:09.780 spreading out and this constant spreading out. And then all of a sudden, there's this moment

00:58:14.660 where everything starts to recede back in, condense up and vertically rip chaos apart.

00:58:21.640 So yes, spatial and spatial by movement. Thank you, sir. Wolf Shirt McNewt asks,

00:58:31.320 is anyone here familiar with the prophetic writings of Wolf in Gesuno as they relate to

00:58:38.700 either i am not swan are you familiar with that at all no um

00:58:50.620 i am not the prophetic writings of wolf ingess

00:58:59.340 uh wolf shirt i would love for you to expound on that um yeah no i i am i am not

00:59:08.700 um that's an interesting question we get we get man we're getting the interesting ones

00:59:18.540 now i'm like now now we're gonna have an opinion i gotta go hunt it down

00:59:28.220 all right antonia rodriguez asks since vdar is associated with vengeance can you explain about

00:59:36.780 Vidar killing Fenrir for Odin's death? Well, remember to vengeance. I know that

00:59:43.420 a lot of folks are, when they look out into say like just the internet, the word vengeance comes

00:59:52.740 up specifically with Vidar, but Vidar and Vauli take a unique formulation of vengeance. One is

01:00:05.080 long and timed the other is immediate and pinpointed extremely fast within the strains

01:00:13.220 of time with within weird or within orlog it's like a the difference between say again karmic

01:00:18.920 action slowly building up to the moment where it needs to be corrective dharma and then there's

01:00:23.300 corrective dharma that's immediate and just strikes straight into it uh this is the correspondence

01:00:29.560 between the two. So I've always taken the vengeance aspect is about understanding

01:00:40.200 correlative buildup of the doom that is to come. It is known that, you know, the gods know of their

01:00:52.020 doom. It is spoken, you know, that they do know it. So the idea is that everything has to be done

01:00:58.780 correctly in time. And that vengeance is corrective, but only after a great expanse of

01:01:08.600 preparation. So, you know, I, again, that's why I always, it's like karmic vengeance versus 0.94

01:01:16.900 dharmic vengeance. And I take Vidar to be more of the karmic vengeance in relation to the topic 0.86

01:01:24.140 of vengeance. You know, other than that, I mean, seeing him as the source of, like, devotional

01:01:32.380 practice in which you hold yourself to an oath, again, that's another thing, is Vidar

01:01:38.320 as owing to avenge is, I think, a key point. The holding focus on the inevitable turn is

01:01:52.720 important in relation to Vidar as opposed to with Vaoli, which there is no weight. There is no

01:01:59.360 oath. There is just action completely. So, oathing to proper action, I think, is the most important

01:02:10.160 consideration when we talk about Vidar. And with Vidar specifically, of course, it is vengeance

01:02:16.160 against Fenris or against the chaos, the consuming chaos, but it's not the entirety of it

01:02:24.960 and involves more about the patience, the planning, the othing, the consistency to keep

01:02:31.760 and understanding. I think vengeance is one of those topics that when we,

01:02:36.020 it's like, do you have a God of Vengeance? Yeah, we got two.

01:02:39.240 no uh um it's it's misplaced in the sense that again it's about forethought and understanding

01:02:48.540 it's about understanding all things that are connected to the moment of it so uh you know

01:02:53.620 understanding that when we talk about good and evil amongst our folk what is good for the folk

01:02:59.540 and what is bad for the folk and sometimes immediate vengeance uh is done and it i think

01:03:05.580 it is kind of seen that Vaoli is immediate vengeance, and that that has a brashness to it.

01:03:11.520 It has a kind of a raw and slaking sense that is kind of seen by our ancestors as like,

01:03:19.840 whoa, that might not be the wisest of ways. Whereas with Vidar, it is the wisest of ways

01:03:26.660 to consider all of the situation, to consider all the balances, and then waiting for the correct

01:03:32.920 and opportune time. And understanding that once you take that action, however it may be,

01:03:40.660 all the implications that will follow after that moment. So Vidar is a threshold. He's the build

01:03:46.980 up to a moment. And then once you pass through that moment and its action is created, what comes

01:03:51.660 after that? So after the vengeance, Vidar becomes the substantial axis, divinity axis,

01:04:00.640 and severing chaos and ripping it asunder to create the new, to create the whole of the

01:04:08.920 universe again. So that vengeance, that karma is correct. It can't be done earlier. It can't be

01:04:17.080 done too late. It has to be done at the moment that it was set to be. So vengeance has a

01:04:25.580 threshold as opposed to an action with all consideration and keeping oath to that. And so

01:04:33.180 what I mean really too is giving credence to heeding all situations. Seeking vengeance

01:04:42.240 immediately in the heat of things I do not think is the path of Vidar. Yes. That's all I can say,

01:04:53.260 guess so before we go into uh any of the other questions you know we're talking about how

01:05:01.020 important timing is and things like that i think now is a good time to uh let folk know about

01:05:07.740 ostara that's coming up next month swan ah yes yes yes we're we're having uh austra in the south

01:05:18.060 once again. We've been holding this tradition very well. Oster has always been, you know,

01:05:25.180 in the heart of the south for many, many years, even before Thorshof, so the continuation is

01:05:31.260 present, in which we give honor and thankfulness for the opening of Dellings Hall, the openings of

01:05:40.860 the gates and the return of the warmth that is to come through um and begin you know begin spring

01:05:51.340 and we're prepping for it right now with charming of the plow that's that's really what this is

01:05:54.940 about is this is the bottom of the barrel it's the scraping of of the larder it's the scraping

01:05:59.820 of the pantry it's the lenting time it's the tightening of the belt but we are focusing we're

01:06:05.100 We're honing, we're preparing the earth, we're preparing, you know, in preparation.

01:06:12.020 And Charming of the Plow comes from remnants of Akerbot, which if you guys, you know, read up on that, that's really the origins of Charming of the Plow.

01:06:22.080 And the idea, again, is focusing and preparing for the threshold, the moment that Ostera comes and she brings with her a new tidying of the dawn, which is the warmth.

01:06:35.760 And, you know, we are celebrating again in March, and it'll be a multiple-day event, and, you know, classes, auctions, storytelling, bloats to Ostra, kids games, lots of, you know, running around with eggs haphazardly, or the children should.

01:07:03.840 i mean sometimes i'll i'll get in there too but um yeah it's gonna be a great time

01:07:10.560 so you heard it here first if you're bringing your kids to ostra make sure that you bring an

01:07:14.560 extra set of clothes because fawn throws eggs yeah yeah sometimes sometimes they do it themselves

01:07:22.160 though so bring an extra set of clothes for the kids and come down to um ostar in the south march

01:07:29.040 10 to the 12th. You can get your tickets at runestone.org under Product and Ostara. We've

01:07:36.920 got that link up there on the screen. I will tell you that Ostara at Thorshof is my second

01:07:45.120 favorite event. I only say second because my first favorite event is going to be Freyfaxi

01:07:50.200 at Baldur's Hoth.

01:07:53.620 That home turf loyalty.

01:07:57.960 I'm not on my home turf,

01:07:59.760 Ostra.

01:08:00.980 That's where I go.

01:08:02.040 That is,

01:08:02.500 if I could only pick

01:08:03.420 one other event to go to,

01:08:04.820 I will have to say

01:08:05.780 I love going down there

01:08:07.740 for Ostra.

01:08:08.860 I absolutely love it.

01:08:09.840 I love the people.

01:08:11.180 The Hoth is absolutely beautiful.

01:08:13.560 It is so much warmer there

01:08:15.400 than it is here

01:08:16.500 in Minnesota in March.

01:08:18.900 It's everything

01:08:19.900 that you could want for a family vacation so please take a chance go down there if you have

01:08:25.260 not seen thor's off already and you have not met the people down there please go

01:08:29.340 please go because you won't forget it all right yeah we might be uh covering hopefully if i can

01:08:37.440 get the proper stuff um because we have to get multiples of things but uh um utilizing um uh

01:08:45.000 the dyeing and uh painting with beeswax on eggs yes yes yes yes we yes that is a blast if you

01:08:54.520 come to bouldershof for ostaro you'll see that but definitely hit uh thor's hop because they're

01:08:59.020 going to be doing it too that is an absolute art that requires patience and a steady hand

01:09:05.220 also bring another set of clothes if you're an adult because i promised you you were going to

01:09:10.800 splash that on there and this is not like your egg dye people this is right emptying the eggs out

01:09:16.900 and yeah having to purge the egg of the yolk and then getting things and then and then too you

01:09:22.880 know doing some of those um beautiful designs with the beeswax and and dipping um a lot of times

01:09:30.600 what i'll do is i'll sacrifice that egg by burying it in the ground to start spring so all that hard

01:09:36.420 work, all that devotion, all that time and patience, and then, um, you know, placing it

01:09:40.980 within the ground for, for fruitfulness of the, of the summer tide. Yes. One thing you can do with

01:09:46.840 these, just a recommendation, especially if you have kids, what you can do with these eggs,

01:09:51.180 once you hollow them out and you've put all of this time, work and dedication and painting them

01:09:55.820 is you can go, we used to turn them into wish eggs, right? For the kids and the kids roll up

01:10:03.340 their goals and a little piece of paper and they shove them in there with a bunch of um pretty

01:10:09.200 um pretty papers um and some herbs and things like that and you seal them back up

01:10:15.500 and then you put them on your altar and you whisper to them every day just like a mother

01:10:20.760 bird sitting on her nest and then at uh mayday you break open your egg and release all of the

01:10:28.500 stuff that you're doing so that's a lot of fun to do with kids and it's really cute to see your

01:10:33.240 kids whispering to their eggs on the altars it's they're tending them just like a little mother

01:10:39.120 bird it's adorable manifesting too manifesting their will using their will yes all right we've

01:10:48.100 got a request a question from return of the nolder are land spirits the same as fairies and

01:10:56.440 elves. Fairies and elves are, well, fairies and elves are going to be Vaetir. I'm going to let

01:11:04.020 Spawn take the elves part of that one, but land spirits and things like that. So a Vaetir is going

01:11:11.860 to be a spirit of some sort, whether that is your house Vaetir, whether that is just spirits

01:11:18.960 that are wandering around um i would say yes fawn what do you got yeah yeah i would say uh when we

01:11:27.380 talk about what uh when we consider like our gaulish cousins um uh celtic if you will again

01:11:36.000 greek word uh i like i like using the word gaulish because they speak gallic and um uh yes when we

01:11:43.980 talk about if they're you know like words that i think culturally are familiar i think it's very

01:11:48.560 interesting too, in the Teutonic sphere, some of the languages not died. When you look at it

01:11:56.840 from a perspective of the empire of Rome, where a lot of that was completely eradicated or subverted,

01:12:05.720 even before Christianity, the Hellenistic tendencies of Rome to wipe a lot of that out

01:12:16.020 was part of their process of growing as an empire, but with the Teutonic people.

01:12:19.820 And it hasn't been, you know, all roses and fairy dust, if you will, between our two folks as cousins.

01:12:30.040 I know we've had a long and torrid history of battle between each other, 1.00

01:12:36.020 but it's worth noting that, yes, when you speak of fairies,

01:12:39.280 Our folk, who might be completely Teutonic and not have any of the Gallic blood in them, they still know by the language, and that's how much the Gallic language and the idea.

01:12:52.200 But yes, to consider the Vetter to be like that. Yes, absolutely. 0.85

01:12:57.160 When we talk about the Alvar, though, we get into understanding that Alvar is kind of a spirit,

01:13:05.440 but that spirit is connected to perhaps even more of a primordial or an older sense,

01:13:13.460 whether it's the Alvar of the sky and the light.

01:13:17.980 And sometimes we see them as guiding spirits.

01:13:22.600 Sometimes we see Alvar as being connected.

01:13:26.000 They were once mortal and have descended down from Yggdrasil as the dew drops into Urzuel.

01:13:33.000 And then they enter into this world in a new form, not quite mortal, but something more.

01:13:40.600 So we see the Alvar there, whether it's the light elves or the dark being connected to the mortal.

01:13:47.820 Svart or Swarthi or the Dvergar are seen as, again, manifesting spirits that could be very much like what would be considered, I guess, a fairy or a fae or a seely kind of aspect,

01:14:03.680 except that they're connected deeply to the physical building blocks of the universe, and so they can be, in their own right, very powerful.

01:14:12.440 And it depends on how you interact, but Alvar is a broad term.

01:14:17.200 Just like Disir is a broad term. We generally correlate the Disir to be our, you know, matron lineage and a dark elf is a, you know, a male connection, a spiritual being that's not quite mortal and not quite godly, but is in the middle.

01:14:40.680 But like the Leosalf and the Svartalf are, you know, they're part of the primordial parts of like, you know, the creation in light and in void or in the neither, that which is beneath in the darkness and neither valor and in, you know, Leosalfheim where Frey is lord presiding over the mortal, over the middle, over the material.

01:15:08.340 So alvar is a broad term, and it causes a lot of confusion when people read and look into things and how they're referenced, and it was used to mean, like even post-conversion in Iceland when they spoke about church bells scaring away, you know, the huddle folk, and the huddle folk are seen as like somewhere in between alvar and vetir.

01:15:30.400 So we more or less stick to definitions in order to create clarity.

01:15:38.080 But I think our ancestors and the following years or centuries after, there was a lot of broad term usage of words like Galdr and Alvar and things like that.

01:15:50.480 So there is a little bit of confusion there.

01:15:52.740 But yes.

01:15:54.240 Yes.

01:15:54.760 Yes.

01:15:56.020 If you will.

01:16:00.400 Sorry, I did want to say, they manifest in things. I wanted to really point out too that some people understand that the building blocks of the material can be manifested with vater, but that the material of the world is not simply like a vater is in every tree, but that a sacred tree can be manifested.

01:16:29.540 A stone, like in Iceland, when they have people go out into the land and talk to Alvar, they're looking at not every stone.

01:16:38.880 They're looking at oftentimes very specific stones where there's a manifestation of the vater, where they kind of gravitate, where their weird collects or where their oar log collects.

01:16:48.560 And oftentimes, you know, it's spoken that in that manifested area, there might be problems if you disperse or relieve yourself.

01:17:00.720 Like there's lots of points in, you know, in the sagas about not relieving oneself in improper places that the vetir or the alvar will take offense to that.

01:17:12.700 So it's, it is about, you know, a lot of respect because of where they can manifest themselves. And so we generally treat all of those interactions with a sense of respect and try to gain allegiance with and friendship with those manifested spots, but not in all things, not every stone, not every tree. So I wanted to bring that up.

01:17:40.000 Yes. Wolfshire McNewt asks, what's your opinion on the practice of burning sage to cleanse a room

01:17:48.360 of negative forces? My mom does that. She believes in spirits, but not gods and is generally new EG.

01:17:55.800 So you can do what you want. I'm not going to tell you to burn sage or not to burn sage. That's

01:18:02.000 going to be between you and what you're going to do in your house. I personally, I personally don't

01:18:08.680 burn sage. Um, I burn, if you look at the bundles that I have on my altars, I have a mugwort. I

01:18:15.920 have cedar. Um, I have mixtures of rosemary and lavender. Um, I also, one of the things that I do

01:18:23.880 as well, and this has to do with where we've talked about house cleansing before getting rid of the,

01:18:28.540 the bad energies or the, the bad, you know, the baits here that you're think that need to go.

01:18:33.820 I give roses a lot as offerings to my desir. So when those roses are done, I don't

01:18:41.020 bury them and I don't throw them away, obviously, because they're gifts. So what I'll do is I'll

01:18:46.360 actually dry them out. I collect the petals and I mix it with either lavender or thyme and I mix

01:18:53.120 it together and I actually burn that over charcoal and I'll use that if I am asking my desir

01:18:58.620 specifically to come into my home to help me get rid of whatever it is that's built up because

01:19:04.900 things build up. Just like if you don't clean your house, it gets dirty. If you don't do the

01:19:09.780 same thing, it gets heavy. So I will ask, that's what I will do to ask my grandmothers. This is

01:19:14.840 where I want you to be. Right. And that's what I use is those roses mixed in with the, you know,

01:19:20.440 some, some rosemary or time or whatever we've got going for whatever reason, but I keep those.

01:19:26.300 and that's what i burn i personally don't burn sage myself doesn't mean he can it just means

01:19:31.740 brandy doesn't it's fun uh yeah to go in specifically to sage uh when we're talking about

01:19:41.180 that i think that first and foremost yeah it is kind of new agey and that's because i think it

01:19:47.900 it really originates from the uh native americans in the in the southwest and they're using a

01:19:54.140 specific type of uh salvia and the bundling and things and i think that you know there's there's

01:20:01.100 been that pull in in uh as of late where people are kind of either pulling away from the things

01:20:10.780 that don't speak to their soul and these have been having for generations of course the gods

01:20:15.580 are you know calling people back a lot of folks though they they grip onto things that are

01:20:20.860 attempting to hold some sense of an otherworldly sacredness. But it's not culturally based. So

01:20:32.780 Burning Sage, I would say, is kind of more or less looking at it from another, pulling from

01:20:40.300 another culture, or at least being influenced from another culture. And there is a lot of

01:20:45.240 you know, symbiotic kind of things that we have picked up from, say, you know, whether we're

01:20:53.680 talking like we're talking about the Gauls, and we're talking about the Teutons, and even the

01:20:57.080 Hellenic folk, the Roman, the Latin, and Greek, there's a lot of stuff there that we have picked

01:21:04.100 up and incorporated. But yeah, I think sometimes people do kind of go with that being, you know,

01:21:14.820 new agey and that that is i guess that's the best term that we can we can really encounter

01:21:20.580 but the burning of wart or burning of herb um in order to make sacred that is not you know

01:21:30.260 that's that's that is something as much of a part of us as it is a part of most every

01:21:35.300 you know type of people in the world so you know seeking like witten callahan said just about

01:21:44.180 you know, if the roses have portents, the idea of drying them, the idea of burning them,

01:21:49.960 burning them on coals, burning them on a sacred fire or a sacred, you know, even a sacred box

01:21:56.600 that has, that is, you know, built for holding coals, whether the coals are from the Yule log

01:22:02.060 or they're from, you know, the sacred fire that's burnt during Hexanoct or whether or not they're

01:22:07.560 just like a charcoal resal um but me personally like i i often do rosemary um dried rosemary and

01:22:17.480 also to hazel bark uh in in particular for protection um as hazel is you know associated

01:22:25.080 to boundaries creating a boundary spaces amongst our folk so it's not necessarily

01:22:31.800 sage-specific. I think you can really start to broaden your usage. Some people have been using

01:22:43.060 on recently mountain laurel or bay leaf, as it's known, has been kind of popular. A lot of people

01:22:51.420 were using that too. I occasionally have because seeking a gift of dry herb that I have, bay leaf

01:23:00.800 is one that's readily available in my kitchen and in my house, but is by no means the only thing.

01:23:07.420 You can get pretty creative with it based on certain things. And again, herb craft and ward

01:23:13.800 craft and things of that nature are often, seek the women folk out, ask them about their knowledge

01:23:20.480 of these things, or find wise women that know these things that can be good. As far as using

01:23:25.780 things that might be correlated more towards um you know native american stuff like as in sage

01:23:33.220 it's it's still worth noting that there is a sage that is in europe there is a sage that is in in

01:23:38.500 um it's often referred to as russian sage uh it's commonly grown as a as a horticultural plant

01:23:46.340 um so yeah i mean if that's what you got and that's what you're trying to do

01:23:52.260 that's what you got but you it by no means are you confined to it right sage is not the just

01:23:59.540 because you can buy sage in any metaphysical store and that's generally what you use does not mean

01:24:06.340 it's your only option there's there's many many many more um jamie asks i have a question and i

01:24:13.620 know we've touched on this already swan a little bit just to see if you have anything to add on

01:24:16.980 that. I have a question. What was the meaning for Vidar to be frugal in words? Do you have

01:24:22.060 anything else to add from what you were talking about earlier? Yeah, again, and this is really

01:24:27.640 interesting because we've already covered a question about mourning, and when you look at

01:24:32.400 some of the sagas, like when Eyal Skallagrimson's son passes, he goes into a drought of words,

01:24:41.620 And for a poet to go into a drought of words is strong. He goes into a deep silence and in preparation for the poem that is recited. But I think, again, sparing in words is more or less showing a preparation for moment, preparation for an activity or a threshold or an indication of what could be the end of a devotional moment.

01:25:08.120 So one of the basis of heroic action is the preparedness of it and what those parameters might mean culturally to our ancestors in the time. Silence, I think, was culturally understood. I think it's still understood, you know, is when someone goes quiet, things, you know, it's serious.

01:25:30.280 And so, yes, sparing of words, I think, is about dedication to the timing of correct and heroic action.

01:25:44.960 We had a question in regards to a comment about Sigurheim in the chat, and it was, would people resent us for seeking our own Israel?

01:25:55.980 Do we actually need it at this point in human history?

01:26:01.080 So what, not quite sure exactly what the question is, but if you're talking about, do we actually need a Sigerheim at this point in our human history?

01:26:10.960 Absolutely. We need a community of our folk that can worship together, that can live together, that can implement that super important daily practice together that we were talking about earlier in the podcast.

01:26:25.740 But one thing that we also need is a community for our elderly, a community for our disabled, a community for people to come when they have hard times.

01:26:38.620 We absolutely need a place like that for, you know, our folk, for the members of the Ashton Folk Assembly that something happens and they need help.

01:26:50.800 Where do you go?

01:26:51.520 um you know you get older as we all are and you don't have any family left who's going to help

01:27:00.240 you if you come across an accident and you're disabled you know who's going to be there the

01:27:08.900 folk are going to be the ones that are going to be there so do i think we need that in this point

01:27:14.260 in human history yes and i think that there are you know places like this all over the country

01:27:21.200 You know, not necessarily a Sigerheim, but there's communities of people all over the place that are taking care of each other, that are taking care of each other's children, that are taking care of each other's elderly, disabled, downtrodden, needing help.

01:27:38.280 There's communities like that all over the place.

01:27:40.940 And do we need one of those?

01:27:42.280 Yes, I do believe we do.

01:27:44.220 Svon, what do you think?

01:27:45.200 Well, I think kind of in context of the question, first and foremost, our holy land is Europe, is that source from which I think the culmination of layers of the folk kind of moving westward into Europe has created Europe to be our holiest of lands.

01:28:04.420 But at the same time, it's understood that when we take up, you know, into moving into a place, we don't move into a place seeking to create a new holy land, if you will.

01:28:23.920 But instead, we take up and build that which is sacred to us as well.

01:28:29.800 We have the ability to do that.

01:28:31.340 Transience is part of the process, but it's not the end of it all. It's not what we seek to be. We don't seek to remain transient. And so I think that in context of the question is we're not separating ourselves from society.

01:28:50.280 We're not separating ourselves from our land, this land, the land that our forefathers built, but instead looking at it as more of a spiritual homestead in which we can cultivate, again, helping the elderly, helping our folk, building a more cohesive community or communication network in which we can get things out and more focused.

01:29:17.160 because right now we are kind of all spread about you know uh america is the americ it is the it is

01:29:24.040 the giant kingdom it is the uh the immer reich if you will um it is one of our downfalls is that

01:29:33.480 there's so much space between us i think a lot of times that we have to work through a lot of

01:29:38.920 communication problems and things like that but it's also about taking up a steady making a place

01:29:45.640 wholly on our own. Uh, we do that with every Hoff, but there's something more that we're doing with,

01:29:51.720 with Sigurheim as a community, but we're not seeking to separate. We're not seeking to

01:29:56.600 isolate. We're not seeking to create a, um, like, uh, I guess I, I don't know what the term would

01:30:04.200 be, but, uh, you know, a, a, a separate neighborhood that, uh, you know, is completely

01:30:08.920 like, like say for instance, like maybe the Amish or the Mennonites or something like that is it's,

01:30:13.160 we're, we're seeking to build strength for ourselves, but not be completely disregarding

01:30:22.040 of the, of the land that we're in, um, of the history of it. The, the, the, the history of

01:30:28.100 our land is, is, you know, it's, uh, like comparatively to Europe. I mean, the history

01:30:35.100 of America is, especially for me, like coming in, you know, from a young age, coming into America

01:30:41.720 and falling in love with the history of it, but it's been so active in such a short amount of

01:30:47.040 time in comparison to a lot of the countries in Europe. And so it's filled with vibrant life.

01:30:54.020 It's filled with war. It's filled with emotion. It's filled with nobility. And I think that

01:30:59.980 by separating away from that, we would be doing a disservice to our ancestors. And so I don't

01:31:06.840 think that we are looking at it as a, you know, creating, I guess, like a new holy land, if you

01:31:16.320 will. But in essence, doing as our ancestors have always done is taking up stead and holding

01:31:22.700 sacredness of the land beneath our feet and utilizing that to build strength and network

01:31:28.540 for our gods and building the glory of our gods up in faith and making a beacon for

01:31:36.480 for people to come home to a spiritual beacon if you will not necessarily like a land beacon

01:31:42.640 that would be cool if we had a land beacon though you know instead of the batman signal it's just a

01:31:49.780 big trihorn right lighting the lighting the fires upon the upon the towers of the west

01:31:56.920 wish list for sigurheim is a trihorn beacon because i think that would be great

01:32:05.840 that would be awesome but yes spiritual beacon first look what happens when we're left unattended

01:32:13.840 yeah last time we were left unattended in a call all right chris jones asks good evening i'm a

01:32:31.680 trad european and i'm exploring the oara linda book by william r sandbach do you have an opinion

01:32:38.580 on this book the aura linda i'm gonna have to defer to spawn on this one i do not have an

01:32:47.480 opinion no this is the second time we're getting hit with uh references to um you know to books um

01:32:55.600 let me see something real quick if you would permit me i would see now some of the stuff

01:33:01.380 that I've come across too is like knowing origins of, of, um, complete names, like seeing essays

01:33:09.020 or snippets. Um, okay. So we're talking about the, uh, um, the manuscript that surfaced in

01:33:16.260 the Netherlands in the 13th century. Um, let's see here. Yes. 1867, a manuscript that surfaced

01:33:30.560 in the Netherlands. Now, I'm familiar with this, interestingly enough, because we were recently

01:33:40.740 talking about the laws of the Frigians in specifics to Forseti. We were recently discussing

01:33:47.900 this, except with the 13th century, I'm not 100% sure to what degree Frigian law might be placed

01:33:55.960 in this but coming from that area um i'm not surprised um but i'm not i'm not completely

01:34:05.380 familiar with it so i'm i am putting a pin on that one and definitely holding uh true with it

01:34:13.200 and and searching more about it um found another rabbit hole for fun yes

01:34:19.740 i actually had a question in mind earlier about objects can any object in imbued with a purpose

01:34:33.700 for a lack of a better words grow a soul if nurtured by that person or some kind of proto-soul

01:34:39.900 no so not every tree has a soul not every blade of of grass has a soul

01:34:49.000 um trees themselves don't have those um they don't grow those they can be inhabited

01:34:55.600 by a vatir they can be taken over they can house many of them they can house one of them

01:35:04.340 but can you put a proto soul or grow a soul of some sort or nurture that um i don't know

01:35:13.000 You know, you can't nurture a soul into a stone or a tree that can only happen if you're going to have some sort of bait here that would claim that as a space.

01:35:24.240 It's fun.

01:35:25.540 Yeah.

01:35:25.920 And I think there's confusion there, too, in the sense that sometimes things gain attachment through through or law, through through action and deed.

01:35:35.180 And there are pieces, components of our soul in which like haminya could be attached perhaps, or maybe the hamr of a person could be attached to an object.

01:35:50.460 But it's it's not the entirety of a soul as it is so much more a kind of a radiant effect of the soul being placed on an object that's used in continuous deed, whether it was to say the like, I guess, in ancient sense would be like, like if you're referring to like a sword, a sword having that imbuement of its owner through the deeds that it's doing creates a kind of primitive sense of

01:36:20.460 uh, imbuement, but it's not necessarily in the entirety of a soul, nor is it a vetter. It's more

01:36:26.460 of a, a component that's, um, being awashed and, and being a component of those, of those deeds.

01:36:35.720 And we see that in our, our, our stories, like if a weapon is to break and if a weapon is to be

01:36:42.240 reforged, uh, you know, and we see this like in the Volsunga saga, uh, or, you know, just in general

01:36:48.680 through like even like Arthurian, you know, where we see the, the correlation of, of an object being

01:36:56.640 directly kind of connected to perhaps the spirit of a nation or the humming, the humming of a

01:37:02.220 nation or the hammer of the, of the, uh, the wielder there's of that, but complete and total

01:37:07.620 soul in willfulness and in, in, um, like, uh, in, uh, an incorpore illness, but being completely

01:37:16.120 willful upon its own i do not believe that's that's necessarily the case it's it can be confused

01:37:21.500 because it does have a lot of layering and components to it but to be completely and

01:37:26.860 independently willful yeah that's uh that's a whole other subject in regards to like say for

01:37:36.520 instance like animals and humans and the gods and the alvar and the dsir those those are willful

01:37:42.700 you know whole even though they may not be may not be corporeal so we're kind of going all over

01:37:51.980 the place here tonight yeah shane folk builder shane duffy has sent us ten dollars thank you

01:38:00.700 very much shane and he asked hello witness unrelated to vitar but i needed witness fun

01:38:06.700 harrell's take nonetheless i have posed this to the go there recently as well so for some it's

01:38:11.940 familiar what would you think of including a return of balder in our celebrations of ostara

01:38:17.700 i will be discussing a presentation at ostara balder soft the return of balder with the return

01:38:26.020 of spring well i think culturally uh we have connected the deep significance of the understanding

01:38:35.940 the complete rise and the complete fall, if you will, as being correlated to the mid-summer and

01:38:47.260 the mid-winter. I think that there, you know, again, with Mother's Night and with honoring

01:38:53.100 Frigga, there's a sense of loss and, you know, remorse for the loss of the Bold One amongst the 0.81

01:39:03.500 Aesir. And then, of course, we correlate Midsommar. The emanation, though, is an interesting 1.00

01:39:12.240 point, because we do see Baldr, you know, as the source of emanation of light, of the

01:39:19.080 expanse of the folk soul, expanse of boldness and things of that nature. In direct correlation to

01:39:28.260 Ostara, you know, I could see it. And I think that every holy tide, there is perhaps an Aus or an

01:39:38.420 Ausanir that are correlated heavily to a holy tide, but there are others too that, you know,

01:39:45.400 for instance, during Winter Finding, a lot of times we hold great honorings towards Ullr,

01:39:49.980 but also, you know, to Iduna or Idun, and so there's no, you know, disrespect towards Ullr,

01:39:58.820 but in essence, we're spreading our love and our devotion towards multiple gods, so I mean,

01:40:05.300 honoring Boulder during Asura, I don't think is wrong at all, I mean, I don't think honoring any

01:40:11.100 of the gods at any time, and especially with the significance of understanding the radiance of

01:40:16.060 light, of understanding the spreading or the emergence of light from darkness. By no means

01:40:22.020 do I think that's misplaced. But culturally, I think we focus on Ostara and we focus on

01:40:32.260 Baldr during Midsummer. But again, that convergence time, the day rune and the expansion of light

01:40:41.680 from darkness does have i think significance so could it be incorporated absolutely i don't think

01:40:50.560 there's anything wrong with that all right ryan oran wilson asks question do you think there's

01:41:01.840 a spiritual significance of ask and embla coming from trees while trees come from ymir's head aka

01:41:10.400 the noble parts okay so one of the things about uh i i guess the seeing of the upper part

01:41:21.680 uh as being the noble and the lower part being the ignoble because again if we are we are to

01:41:27.680 place that polaric sense we'd have to look at the opposite side um i mean

01:41:33.520 the significance of the grass and the trees uh being of the hair and um you know the stones being

01:41:44.320 of the bones and things like that that is mentioned um we're seeing again the poetics of it um

01:41:54.480 as related to ask and um blah one thing that's worth noting is it said that they are

01:41:59.520 unfaded and unrooted. That's the condition upon which they are found. So if there is any sort of

01:42:09.480 language there that's being spoken, one of them is that there's a disconnect, that there is a

01:42:14.080 complete disconnect, that the gods find a canvas to work upon that's been separated from origin,

01:42:27.860 Or that the placement of the souls of mankind, because again, Asken Amla do represent the entirety of the folk, both men and women, and seeing that the generation of starting is that they are separated from the natural.

01:42:47.660 They are seen, again, as unfated, and that they are made fated, that they are breathed into. So the emptying of the vessel, the idea that they are dead wood floating and, you know, washed upon the beach, there's a lot of language there about there's a clear separation from origin to the new potential.

01:43:11.060 So as far as direct correlation, again, I think the language states pretty clearly that there is a separation. So I don't know if nobility being as from Ymir's head or things.

01:43:26.420 I mean, Imr is spoken of being, you know, just clearly not seen as well for the gods, and that's why the slaying must be done.

01:43:38.680 So there is that, but again, separation from those.

01:43:43.100 The usage of tree, and again, the idea of shaping something from what was readily available.

01:43:50.880 What we see as the usefulness of the shaping of the tree is showing more, I think, of the gods understanding our usefulness and seeing our potential and what we must be formed to.

01:44:02.860 And that our soul might is important in the collecting of the soul might that will help in the end of times.

01:44:11.300 I think that's one of our big purposes. And I think that's why Odin does collect the might of the souls of folk. But yes, yeah, separation I see there.

01:44:24.800 So even if there is, is there after? Is there a correlation after? Perhaps before, but it's unrooted and unfaded and washed upon the shore and reshaped and rebreathed, breathed into and given on and given new purpose.

01:44:43.140 all right so i hear that um our producer has indulged our silliness fawn and we actually

01:44:55.560 have a batman style afa spotlight picture at the beacon yes there is our best

01:45:04.280 this is why uh folk builder nicholas rice is absolutely amazing and anything that his

01:45:12.180 Githya asked for, she receives, including a Batman-style trihorn for Sigurheim. It must be

01:45:20.920 made of gold. Again, the soul might. If the soul might of the gods is we are to return to the gods

01:45:28.440 and come home, the beacon is lit, but the purpose is there, is to call people home so that the

01:45:35.220 soul might can be refilled and brought to bear, you know, when things come asunder, when chaos

01:45:43.680 and order do meet head to head, our soul might is imperative in that process. And I think that's

01:45:49.960 a grander purpose that I, you know, is the reasoning for the breath to be brought about,

01:45:57.520 the shape to be made, for the folk to be, you know, focused upon and lifted by the gods up

01:46:04.080 and into the world is because he understood the purpose of what we would play in his staving off

01:46:11.500 of that moment. But that moment will come. And when it does, the soul might of the folk will

01:46:15.920 be a huge part in that. So come home. Folk come him. All right. Our next question that we have

01:46:25.820 comes from Jamie. I have a question. Did Vidar take, I think, did Vidar take Odin's place as

01:46:35.680 king of the gods after Ragnarok was over? It specifically states about Vidar and Bauli

01:46:43.000 taking stead. It's interesting when we look at the correlation of things. First and foremost,

01:46:53.940 it's worth noting that Vidar's mother is Gríder. Gríder is, by Snorty's account, and he does this

01:47:01.800 a lot, where he kind of, when he sees elder, really, really elder, divine, he kind of slaps

01:47:10.340 Jotun on it. I think sometimes just, you know, he's just slapping it on there, but it's worth

01:47:18.640 noting that the benefits that Gríder gave to the gods in making her allegiance happened

01:47:23.780 before she gave birth to Vidar, but Gríðr is a part of the earth and part of the middle world.

01:47:30.020 And so again, there is the sky and the earth producing yet another, and it's worth noting

01:47:38.020 that it's said he's nearly as strong as Thor. So again, I think that's another connective tissue

01:47:43.120 to understanding the earth giving birth by the divine of. But I think it's also important to

01:47:50.300 know that like again his foot is placed within the physical realm and he creates that axis point

01:47:57.120 again kind of like uh his steading is um uh like an ermine sila new um but it is mentioned

01:48:06.500 specifically that vidar and vali will take stead um and then balder and nana return and um and

01:48:15.060 Magni and Modi then take the, you know, the weapons, the weapon of their father, though it

01:48:20.960 is also, again, worth noting, Gríðr gives Thor a iron rod called Gríðr, and it's at Thor's

01:48:33.180 when you see in the godstead there, there is a rod in his belt, and that weapon is the weapon

01:48:42.660 before Mjolnir. And that was given to Thor by Gríðr. So again, we see Magni and Modi taking

01:48:54.720 the stead and taking the weapons. There are two weapons. So I've often always taken that as one

01:49:02.440 is to take the rod, the other to take the hammer, but that Vidar and Vali are again taking up their

01:49:09.760 instead, in order and dominion, and Vidar's specific place is maintaining the axis.

01:49:18.640 Okay. Shiro asks, can you suggest Havamal and Faluswal translations? Does the AFA have a

01:49:27.220 suggested poetic Eta translation? So I personally, and it's going to be based on how you relate to

01:49:37.400 it and how you understand it and what you can take from it and how you can read it. I am personally

01:49:43.580 a Bray fan. I, I like Bray. That's my favorite. Um, but what I always recommend people doing is

01:49:51.760 taking as many translations as possible. Um, Bellows, Bray, Thorpe, Hollander, um,

01:50:00.780 um Larrington is really good so uh you've got Jackson Crawford's you've got

01:50:06.620 uh what was the other one that we were just looking at the other day

01:50:12.320 Chizom I think it was yes there are several different translations um you know even people

01:50:20.920 who may not be believe exactly the ways that you do they may they may not like the AFA that

01:50:29.920 that doesn't matter. You can still take all of their translations and put them all together and

01:50:34.020 break them down. And you will find that some you relate to better than others. I'm personally a

01:50:41.160 fan of Bray. That's usually my go-to. I highly recommend, and I actually have our Godard students

01:50:49.780 do this as well, is go through them and write them side by side, whether that is in a notebook,

01:50:58.140 whether that is on the computer, you know, whatever you want to do,

01:51:02.320 but take those translations and break them down and write them side by side.

01:51:06.140 And you're going to see some differences in numbering, especially in Voluspo.

01:51:10.280 You're going to see a lot of difference in the numbering of them,

01:51:13.620 but read through the whole thing, pick them out and put them,

01:51:16.560 block them together where they go.

01:51:18.240 And you'll notice a difference between authors that have taken,

01:51:23.160 or translators that have taken a lot of artistic privilege with those.

01:51:28.140 Some who've tried to stay as close to the translation as possible.

01:51:32.500 Some who have tried to keep, you know, the poeticism of it together.

01:51:37.020 So, I mean, my recommendation is to take at least three, a minimum of three that you can relate to and write them down side by side.

01:51:47.980 Svon, what are your recommendations on those?

01:51:50.300 Yeah, I think basically what you were saying is the official is that there isn't an official, but that the utilization of multiple translations in order to find an understanding sometimes where there are deep differences in the translations, whether they're speaking of rivers or they're speaking of ages or people.

01:52:15.020 um we were just discussing some of this stuff earlier the only way that you can really see

01:52:20.820 those is by looking at all of them so a lot of times what we and you can find these on the

01:52:26.180 internet there they are they are available where you can see multiple translations of every verse

01:52:32.560 uh with the old norse initial and then every scholastic like translation and again just like

01:52:41.080 what uh witten brandy just said is that sometimes you know they they come from people that are

01:52:45.480 strictly scholastic uh there some are strictly linguistic some are strictly poetic and so we

01:52:53.400 have the the huge benefit of having the well of information that is right at our fingertips to

01:53:00.280 kind of compare and i think that's where the afa utilizes multiple translations for that reason is

01:53:06.360 to see the differences between them. And, you know, again, it's that this instigates conversation

01:53:14.500 for us to ask questions about, well, in this translation, you know, he speaks of rivers

01:53:19.540 descending. And then in this translation, there seems to be a kenning in relation to, say,

01:53:25.120 the, you know, the desire for, or mankind being the desire of sons and things like that. And

01:53:33.640 And so we kind of go through and try to understand perhaps why certain translators have chosen certain things to say and what their reasonings are.

01:53:47.320 Um, but we don't take one as a, uh, uh, like a, a biblical sense where there's like, there's just one way. And this is the only way it's, it's, um, again, there it's, when you look at all of them together, there's, that's not the way our faith works is, uh, we don't have this like pinnacle singular Bible.

01:54:09.780 and we know that because the stories were compiled down and then of course are translated into

01:54:16.920 various languages so if you're German or if you're from the Netherlands or you're from France

01:54:22.600 you know these translations could be drastically different or if you're an English speaker you know

01:54:29.180 if you're looking at Dumazil or if you're looking at Bellows or you know there's a lot to be had

01:54:35.920 there. So I would say the best thing to do is find as many variations and translations in relation

01:54:43.500 to the Old Norse. And again, ultimately, having a lexicon of understanding the Old Norse is

01:54:49.140 important. But at the same time, you can't be 100% about that either. And I think some people

01:54:55.320 do take the folly of that, where they take liberation in saying that the Old Norse means

01:55:03.700 this and that requires a lot of delving into uh kenning work poetic works and the language at the

01:55:13.240 time you know it's uh you know some people will shoot straight in the dark and say oh well this

01:55:19.820 old norse word means this and that's not always the case especially when you start looking at

01:55:26.280 other people's translations and looking into why they chose certain ways to say it you begin to

01:55:31.540 realize that, you know, again, kenning work is not something you can just immediately pin down.

01:55:38.260 You see that in, you know, in Fafruzismal and Grimnismal where they, you know, there's no

01:55:46.180 one definitive sense. And so that requires, I think, study and cross-examination of all of them.

01:55:56.160 and I know no matter how many years you read the lore and how long you study it you're always

01:56:06.080 going to find something new in there no matter how many times you're always going to find

01:56:09.860 especially when you start comparing the translations you're going to go wait a minute

01:56:14.380 I did not realize that that might not be what I thought it was or until you have a conversation

01:56:20.920 with a group of people with different with different translations or you have a conversation

01:56:26.240 with spawn that will open your eyes on it you know you're always going to learn something no

01:56:31.160 matter how many times you read it and you can't go wrong with too many translations so i'd get as

01:56:35.800 many as you can all right our next question is has the afa or the members of the afa interacted

01:56:44.920 with the Arskeitsmeinschaft

01:56:47.140 Germanic faith community at all?

01:56:50.720 Not that I know of.

01:56:52.100 I can't speak for individual members 0.73

01:56:53.560 unless Svon... 0.53

01:56:55.280 I believe Al-Sahir Gothi did.

01:56:59.300 He's spoken of it quite a few times

01:57:01.600 in his visit to Sweden,

01:57:04.820 that there were members from Germany there

01:57:07.380 that had come up.

01:57:09.620 They had actually,

01:57:10.300 they had heard that Al-Sahir Gothi

01:57:13.580 and um some of the folks that were that were going over uh they made a trip of it and a lot

01:57:18.540 of people like you know built up the funds to get over there and to to uh hold ceremony and uh frith

01:57:27.180 with our our swedish you know uh brothers and sisters and there were uh germans that had come

01:57:34.300 up after hearing this and wanted to spend time and and um hold bloat with the americans and the swedes

01:57:42.860 so there was that but outside of that i'm not 100 sure um just specifically that story that i i you

01:57:50.460 know we've discussed about but i remember him talking when we were doing um stuff for the

01:57:56.620 history project is that was one of the most amazing experiences that he had when he was

01:58:00.780 over in sweden and they were having bloat in and honoring the gods in like six different languages

01:58:07.740 it was just something that really meant a lot to him so i yeah okay i remember that yeah he was

01:58:14.160 talking about when he was in sweden there was people from germany and there was people from

01:58:18.800 italy and people from norway and sweden and all over europe and there was so many languages being

01:58:26.200 spoken there it was just it was a beautiful thing to see yeah and the fact that they had come after

01:58:31.040 hearing that was seen as a great gesture of of um uh frith between us i think that uh we we sought

01:58:39.040 um that they that actually sought out to come there and when they did show up and share their

01:58:46.160 time they they were everyone was again doing their own you could tell culturally too there's

01:58:53.120 some differences the americans and the swedes and the germans had uh very unique ways uh but they

01:58:59.400 were sharing them all and it was um all the folk that were from germany were spoken very highly of

01:59:05.660 by the alzheimer movie so all right we have another question from we have a question from

01:59:13.720 obsidian skull would you say that vidar represents the natural aspect of the human who seeks revenge

01:59:21.000 for a wrong cause revenge was something culturally very important to the old germanic peoples

01:59:27.400 Yes, I mean, we're talking about the culture of the Teutons. That is a huge pinnacle to point. Again, though, I think it is about proper time and understanding of all of those things.

01:59:44.680 when you take vengeance, but it puts your folk in danger, again, the immediacy of vengeance is

01:59:51.400 often brought about by need and also emotion. And I think Vidar speaks more of a greater

01:59:59.560 understanding of the timing of things. So again, a corrective action, much like with Odin,

02:00:09.100 There's forethought. There's a lot of understanding of multiple angles being integrated into that thresholded moment of corrective action, and that corrective action brings about karmic release of wrongs that were done to the gods.

02:00:27.720 then in return, he gains vengeance. So yes, I mean, it is vengeance, but

02:00:36.540 in particular with Vidar, I think it's vengeance based upon deep forethought and an understanding

02:00:44.960 of all of the matter and all of the actions, all of the threads that are connected to the moment

02:00:51.100 that will be the threshold and measuring whether or not the worth is endangerment of the self

02:00:57.560 or endangerment of the, um, your, your fellow folk, you know, it's, uh, it's kind of like,

02:01:04.120 I remember I was here talking about it where he said, you know, it's if you seek vengeance,

02:01:08.400 but you leave your, because you seek vengeance, you leave your children fatherless or motherless.

02:01:15.600 Does this correlate correctively the worth of that vengeful moment? Yes. The wrong is,

02:01:22.600 is righted in a way, but creates a whole new perhaps imbalance. So the idea is that I think

02:01:31.400 with Vidar is preparation for the singular moment to create a return of karma that will leave the

02:01:39.440 moment not less, but more. And that's something worth noting when we speak of the idea of

02:01:47.200 vengeance and the action of vengeance is about taking in those considerations.

02:01:54.880 Obsidian has another question and it says, why the AF, I'm assuming, why does the AFA expand the

02:02:02.480 cult of Odin to all people? Historically, it is a cult focused on a community, on community leaders.

02:02:09.160 It makes no sense for a farmer to worship Odin when he should worship Thor or Freyr.

02:02:17.200 Oh, well, so that's like saying if you're not Swedish, you shouldn't worship Frey or something of that nature, I think. Or if you're not a skald, if you don't know the poetic meters, you shouldn't, you know, worship Odin or have troth with Odin. 0.75

02:02:37.960 I think another thing to understand is that we don't see the gods in a static sense of the past. 0.90

02:02:45.260 We see Odin as what he is doing is building, inciting the fervor in the folk to return.

02:02:56.340 This is kind of alluded to with, you know, the sudden reemergence of Ausatru in multiple different places in a time when we weren't really connected to each other.

02:03:06.860 There was no Internet. There was, you know, letter writing and maybe perhaps book mailing clubs.

02:03:13.680 But suddenly, you know, variant places, this this starting of the emergence of Ausatru blows through the middle world, through the folk.

02:03:24.660 And all of these people are kind of incited to start.

02:03:28.220 And I think that Odin is doing that now. He's doing that in a lot of people.

02:03:32.700 Now, is there a kind of an over focus? I would say yes. In a lot of ways, I think people correlate that that that fervor and ecstaticism that Odin brings to the folk as when they come from a monotheistic like mindset.

02:03:52.580 They have a tendency to kind of hyper-focus and only focus on, you know, one sense when the AFA is a huge proponent for honoring all the gods.

02:04:07.160 So the idea of, you know, a farmer honoring Odin.

02:04:13.860 But again, Odin is seen as the prosperous god.

02:04:17.000 He's seen as a god that if you are to create crops and you want to make money off of them, he's farmateer.

02:04:26.320 Your goods are to be blessed by him.

02:04:31.980 It's like you can't pin Odin into one particular spot, but nor should you hyper-focus solely on Odin when the gods are.

02:04:41.780 And it is stated that our ancestors honored many.

02:04:46.700 So we're not whittling all of the gods down into one or into two. We're not making a singular soul, sky dad, earth mom, a sky lord, and an earth lady, or just lord and lady. We're not doing that.

02:05:04.160 We are hard polytheists that believe that there are multiples of the divine will of the gods in many respects.

02:05:14.580 But it's also, since Odin is the first in fervor and the first in inspiration, and often the one who, he's dynamic, he moves through the world and inspires people to come home, oftentimes that is, I think, a heavy emphasis, with rightfulness too.

02:05:32.060 um but we can't say you know of if you're you're um you're this you must worship this

02:05:41.100 um it's like saying if you're a man you shouldn't give honor to the ausenia that we don't believe

02:05:47.760 in either you know there's um many folk who do honor both the aus and the ausenia or the gods

02:05:55.880 and the goddesses. And that correlation is heavily built on personal experience. And then

02:06:03.340 from the AFA, we honor all of the gods throughout the year in our devotionals. That's why we've

02:06:10.240 expanded our tidings and had culturally incorporated many, because as Ausatru was

02:06:18.020 spreading, it was still divided, and it's scattered in its intention, and different

02:06:25.180 areas have different things different people do different things and we're starting to formulate

02:06:30.140 that but within consideration of understanding that all the multiple pieces need to be honored

02:06:34.460 so we you know we have 12 tidings we have you know the honoring of multiple gods and goddesses

02:06:42.940 throughout the year and then on an individual level um you know i i've had many personal

02:06:48.700 religious experiences with frig and i honor her often and i honor the maidens of fensaler

02:06:54.700 quite often as well as odin and thor obviously thor because at being at thor's off um but it's

02:07:02.620 it's it's circumstantial and it's not i i don't think it's it's objective if you're um

02:07:12.140 if you're folk you have the right and you have the obligation to honor all of the gods and to

02:07:17.900 build relationships with them as your life bears need of it and an understanding of perhaps the

02:07:24.060 It's the way your mind wants to expand in building those relationships with the gods and the goddesses, and it's not balanced strictly by, say, class, station, desire.

02:07:35.700 I mean, I was in the Marine Corps, and I didn't just honor Tyr for war.

02:07:43.820 I didn't honor just Odin, all of the gods I found great inspiration in building relationship with.

02:07:53.120 in that time in my life. And now I'm no longer in that time. And still my relationships have changed,

02:07:59.620 but are built because of the past and because of those things. So we're not static. The gods

02:08:06.540 aren't static. They move. They have willful movement. And so we have to see them as that.

02:08:15.020 They're not just in the stories. They're not just in the poems. They're here now and they interact

02:08:21.520 with us. You know, who are we to say that you can't, you know, honor Odin if you are a tradesman

02:08:31.820 or a worker? Again, we see that in Uppsala when we see Thor was taking center in the tripartite

02:08:40.580 that they had set there with Odin and with Frey. And I believe that they moved those. The center

02:08:48.080 spot was, you know, during harvest or perhaps during the need or the relationship that all

02:08:54.620 folks, and again, during, you know, during Sumble, you know, giving of honors to Njordh and to Frey

02:09:03.740 as much as to Odin were also stated. So again, we can't, there is no like just set lane. It's

02:09:11.300 understanding that they are a whole with many parts and that we we are obligated to search

02:09:18.740 and build those relationships with multiple parts okay jamie asks how important do you think dwarves

02:09:28.900 are in germanic myths and culture and i want to add on the side in folklore as well could you

02:09:37.460 you answer that for us? Yeah, I mean, when we talk about, even like, I find it really

02:09:44.160 interesting when we talk about spirits of the earth, you can look, especially the Germans

02:09:52.380 with like the land geist, with the kobold, or, you know, like even here in America, those 0.87

02:09:59.420 remnants, speaking about the Tommyknockers. There's a lot of rich history of our folks' 0.84

02:10:08.380 relationship to the spirits of the building blocks of the middle, the material, and the

02:10:19.900 correlation again of great items and great knowledge being passed on by the Dvergar or the

02:10:28.380 the Svartalfar, the material whites, if you will.

02:10:36.000 So, you know, when you look at folklore, you can really see it still. 0.67

02:10:40.860 It never really kind of went away.

02:10:43.640 The relationship was still very much there from the salt mines of Salzburg

02:10:47.680 to, you know, the coal mines in West Virginia.

02:10:52.860 The relationship with the spirits of the earth and where they manifest,

02:10:58.380 And, you know, seeking not offense, creating alliance, building respect or frith, while also taking the things that we need in order to help build our people forward.

02:11:12.040 I think that's a big thing for our folk to understand is that we are not locked into stasis, but moving and having components. And that involves both building allegiances and possibly even creating, you know, disruption in areas.

02:11:32.160 And that part creates the need for us to build allegiances, the need for us to build relationships even after the fact. 0.76

02:11:39.520 And we see that even in post-Christian folk in the way they interact.

02:11:46.340 That's very much a cultural thing for us. 0.55

02:11:48.960 And I think it's important that people that are not folk, if they were to look at – they could write us off, especially in this day and age.

02:11:57.840 oh, Europeans just don't, you know, care about these things.

02:12:02.240 We do, and we see it even after Christianity has, you know, 0.98

02:12:10.320 kind of spread throughout our culture or throughout our societies.

02:12:14.100 And so they have a very poignant place.

02:12:18.740 When we talk about, like, again, like the question before,

02:12:22.880 like, you should never give honor to the Svartalf or to the Dvergarh

02:12:27.320 unless you're a smith. That's not the correct way of thinking. It's correlated on what happens.

02:12:37.340 It's subjective. How is weird built with these entities in mind just as much as your neighbor

02:12:44.500 or your kinfolk that live nearby or things of that nature when we deal with the spirits of the land?

02:12:53.640 building those allegiances holding those honors or understanding that we could again um i'm a firm

02:13:01.840 believer that a lot of the uh physical interactions with with entities in the house that uh might be

02:13:09.280 considered like poltergeist are oftentimes slighted and capriciously uh sometimes even malicious

02:13:15.980 spirits that are

02:13:18.180 Svartalf.

02:13:19.980 They are the 1.00

02:13:21.300 Dvergar. 1.00

02:13:24.220 And then when you look at the Nordic

02:13:25.920 folklore too, there's a lot of that

02:13:28.280 as well. And this resides

02:13:30.120 to, again, in England,

02:13:32.620 in Sweden, in Germany,

02:13:35.040 and looking at a lot of those

02:13:36.120 things.

02:13:37.740 Even the Gnome,

02:13:40.380 when we talk about

02:13:41.240 yes, I know their origins

02:13:44.200 like linguistically might come from alchemical practice of like magic and things like that but

02:13:50.360 understanding what they represent in their connection to the material it has a lot of

02:13:58.160 place i always say like the gnome is like the french dvergar it's the french it's the french

02:14:04.200 or frankish uh like kind of modernish name for a svartalf and so again that's many many many years

02:14:12.940 after uh christianity had kind of spread itself uh and kind of intertwined itself into the the

02:14:20.520 pillars of our our already spiritual um terrain so that i think it's important but it is it's not

02:14:29.460 again objective it's subjective based on where you live and um perhaps even to where your uh

02:14:36.020 ancestors or or uh the considerations of those things like if you move to iceland uh and or if

02:14:41.760 move to west virginia and the relationships they may have with those spirits from before

02:14:46.080 good or bad and rectifying them making peace with them or building allegiance or taking

02:14:50.640 responsibility of the land and and seeking friv if you will um it's just generally seen as that

02:15:00.080 the those spirits are not always accepting of that friv and oftentimes cause issues or uh sometimes

02:15:07.680 again, they can be helpful, like the kobolds knocking on the walls, and some of our folk

02:15:13.640 taking that to mean like, oh, this could be a collapse, and we're being warned by the spirits

02:15:18.140 that this is, or that some took it as an antithesis that they were working against us to keep us out

02:15:23.760 of certain places because they had taken offense. That's, again, it depends on the situation.

02:15:29.060 thank you sir travis spoutish uh sent us ten dollars thank you travis appreciate that

02:15:38.840 and no question just hail the afa hail victory thank you trail hail

02:15:44.900 see the next question we've got for you swan aren't the alfar mainly uh talk offer and

02:15:53.520 dead people when Freyr installed the mound ages and finished the burning ages it made that pretty

02:16:01.540 clear well so the mound ages and burning ages if you if uh reading like the road to hell is a is a

02:16:09.080 great book um kind of covering about the funeral practices of of mound building and burning and i

02:16:15.740 think the migration period of our folk uh especially when we were fighting um wars with

02:16:22.000 each other, and when we were fighting wars for, like, when many of our folk were part of the

02:16:27.340 Fodorati, and during the migration periods with, like, Odeker and, you know, the battles in 0.56

02:16:35.040 Ravenna and the Lombards taking over the Alps and things like that, we have seen the Burning Age

02:16:43.020 and the Mound Age kind of go back and forth. It wasn't necessarily settled. I mean, it's worth

02:16:49.280 noting, too, that when Snorri even speaks

02:16:51.280 of it, you know, he humorizes the

02:16:53.280 gods as being mortals, but

02:16:54.440 there's this

02:16:56.040 time in which

02:16:59.720 like Odin

02:17:03.080 is taken to height, but then

02:17:05.200 dies in the story, and I

02:17:07.200 think this would be more correlative to

02:17:09.140 perhaps the worship, or the

02:17:11.100 folk kind of focusing themselves

02:17:13.120 on that, and

02:17:15.140 then they return to Njordh, or

02:17:17.180 Njordh takes stead after

02:17:18.920 And so this, again, correlates to this burning time, mound building time. But our folk were, again, because of migrations or in Iceland, like there's not a lot of trees. The trees are scarce and the wood was extremely valuable in usage for ships and usage for housing.

02:17:39.640 And again, we had to correlate stone. So mound building became a thing again in Iceland, even though burning was already established from before, especially in Norway, because wood was readily available.

02:17:54.620 So I would say it's not settled so much as you can see it kind of ping-ponging back and forth based upon these things.

02:18:02.460 Now, Dok Alfar. Yes, I am of the belief that Dok Alfar are, again, Alvar that were once mortal and are deeply connected to the mounds.

02:18:12.820 Whether we, you know, in English, the barrow white, if you will, the barrow vetter, and we say white as in W-I-G-H-T, the English word kind of gets muddled when we talk about the color white and when we talk about the spirit white and how the spelling is lost because people just sometimes hear that.

02:18:35.580 Um, so yes, the Dark Alvar are, um, again, once mortal, but Alvar is a broad term. It's a title. And that title means, again, that not quite a god, not quite a mortal, somewhere in between, and heavily focusing on that.

02:18:52.620 So Dark Alvar versus Svart Alvar, I think, is what you were referencing. When I saw Dark Alvar slash Dvergar, I saw two separate things. I see the Dark Alvar in their correlation to the dead.

02:19:07.240 I think we see them, especially when there's having, you know, loss in battles and in sacred places, you know, whether it was the nematons of our Gaulish cousins or the groves of the Teutonic folk.

02:19:22.760 There are Alvar that were once mortal that are set to protect those places, and then the Dvergar or Svartalvar are actually more and older. They're not of a mortal origin. They have originated themselves from the beginning of the formulation of Ymir.

02:19:42.860 josh has a question for you hello godor do you see a certain showing of piousness as a quality

02:19:55.100 or a trait of vidar got in a little bit late forgive me if this was already touched on

02:20:01.980 uh yes as a quality and a trait of piousness to uh i would say to again piousness to the

02:20:10.220 preparation of a moment uh piousness in and of itself towards the devotion of something of a

02:20:19.420 moment or of a a deed a pinnacle sense placing upon oneself the um hindrance of certain things

02:20:29.340 I often partake in a, I would believe, a pious ritual in which I refrain from utilizing or doing something, or I actually set about doing something for 12 nights before Yule.

02:20:52.360 and uh i take this as a a moment a set block of time in which i can either abstain from something

02:21:00.020 or commit myself to action of something but in that is the is piousness the piousness uh whether

02:21:07.360 whatever form it might be so that's what i'm trying to get at is like it's not always necessarily

02:21:12.060 piousness as an action but piousness is cultivated from the action or the inaction the removal of

02:21:21.220 oneself from it or the taking up of the action into it at the right time. So oftentimes it could

02:21:28.540 be like, I've done fasting. I've done 12 consecutive days of meditation. Again, I would

02:21:38.120 love to meditate more when you had mentioned that before about daily meditations. I don't get a

02:21:42.580 chance often to, I mean, little kids and we got the whole house going and there's a lot of time

02:21:48.080 And seeking peace is like, I guess meditation would be for me like in the sauna, but the idea of taking up an action, like whether I'm going to for 12 days consecutively commit to doing a deed, whether it's daily devotional, whether it's running a mile.

02:22:08.980 i've done that once before i used to be a very um avid runner i'm not so much now but as more i

02:22:15.060 prefer to work out and lift weights and things but i used to like i i one time had committed

02:22:20.340 to the action piety of of my devotion was to go out and run a mile for 12 days so a total of 12

02:22:27.620 miles for the for it and and it was solely done with dedication not only to myself uh in getting

02:22:36.580 better but uh in dedication to the gods and understanding our purpose and having kind of

02:22:42.740 you know moments of clarity in those those times to um further understand i think like how humanity

02:22:50.020 and our soul might affects the gods so yeah awesome matthew gordon asks is there anything

02:23:02.820 in the stories and sagas about ritual tattoos whenever i get tattooed i feel connected

02:23:13.380 i mean we know culturally tattooing was it it it was done with a i mean our ancestors had

02:23:23.140 it's kind of like um when we when they talk about drumming like they they say like oh you know did

02:23:30.180 they use drums but there's no evidence of the drum because the you know the materials the wood

02:23:35.220 the leather you know those things degrade and they go away i certainly would uh i think it would be

02:23:41.300 foolish to say that you know a drum was never used uh but again the same with tattooing is that the

02:23:47.220 evidence has kind of um you know gone away but when we see like again the uh the the tattoos on 0.98

02:23:54.580 some of the mummified bodies that have been found um and seeing some of the placement whether it

02:23:59.380 It might be speculation that there's magical attunements to it, that there, you know, are marks or remarks of it being in correlation to station,

02:24:09.560 whether it's like perhaps a powerful priestess or a woman of high magic might having, you know, that on her on her body.

02:24:21.300 And we find that through this evidence and, you know, mummified remains.

02:24:25.020 And as far as specific picturing on the body and the skin, I'm coming up with a blank right now.

02:24:36.760 I mean, it is mentioned, of course, too, that Bragi has runes carved upon his tongue, but again, that's not necessarily – that's more or less showing the power and the manifestation of power from the mouthpiece of the gods, the sound of the gods, the frequency.

02:24:57.600 Um, I, I too, I mean, I have tattoos as well. I used to, um, I used to give tattoos. I was, uh, uh, for a brief while, I mainly runic tattoos and, and, uh, doing, um, you know, Galdor and runic inscriptions on, on folk that, you know, were seeking it, um, for various reasons, whether it was magical or, or perhaps a reminder and dedication or something.

02:25:27.600 spreading of willfulness in their life. But as far as right off the top of my head in relation

02:25:36.840 and reference, I can't find it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's not there because we have

02:25:44.460 it elsewhere showing that it clearly was. Body modification was done. Was it done entirely by

02:25:53.280 all the folk? No, by no means. I don't think that all the folk did it. I think that it may have been

02:25:58.140 more of a testament, maybe perhaps by warriors or by a station. If you were wealthy, the idea,

02:26:04.080 you know, the carving of the teeth and having gold in the teeth might've been more of a status

02:26:09.640 thing. I know that our ancestors viewed wearing jewelry and wearing things upon their body

02:26:16.320 differently. I think like a lot of us have that kind of Protestant vestige leftover of where it's

02:26:22.900 like, it's not good to adorn yourself. And even I do it to a degree, you know, it's keeping, 0.89

02:26:27.160 I don't like to wear a lot of, you know, adornment. But again, culturally, does it have

02:26:37.780 significance now? Again, I've given runic tattoos now. So the gods and culture, our culture and

02:26:45.120 expressing devotion and piety to the gods, if it's finding that correlative sense to the past

02:26:51.360 doesn't mean that it's negated in the cultural sense now.

02:26:55.240 Expression to the gods and devotion to the gods,

02:26:57.420 and again, too, that self-sacrifice,

02:26:59.640 that pain, I think, does have a religious component.

02:27:03.740 The same as when we suffer through, you know,

02:27:07.300 going utziti and going out into the cold,

02:27:10.320 or, you know, again, going without food

02:27:13.900 for long periods of time,

02:27:15.800 or committing to silence for long periods of time,

02:27:18.800 whether in mourning, these things are about creating that devotion and piety through suffering or through challenge.

02:27:31.400 But it's not suffering as in a, you know where I'm going with this one, hopefully, is the suffering of,

02:27:37.880 I have suffered the sins of others, that kind of stuff I don't think is what, no, we're not into that.

02:27:43.540 It's more about the testament upon ourselves to withstand that in order to show devotion.

02:27:54.520 But I think it has cultural significance more than, say, perhaps like a decree from the gods, if you will.

02:28:03.240 I think we only have a couple more questions tonight here, Svon.

02:28:07.340 Okay.

02:28:09.440 All right.

02:28:10.680 i've got if loki is an agent of change like a catalyst from within the tribe

02:28:18.200 could utgard loki be subversive hostile foreign change or revolution from our enemies

02:28:28.200 i i would say the opposite actually because um loki is an outsider and uh

02:28:35.240 So the difference is that Loki is an outsider in and Utgard-Loki is an outsider that is gone too.

02:28:46.900 So it is known from the onset that Utgard-Loki is an outsider that is, again, being interacted with.

02:28:55.760 The danger is that Loki is the element of, I would say, subversiveness from within.

02:29:05.240 And it starts off with oftentimes with benefit, the ideas that, you know, to keep around.

02:29:11.820 I think that Loki is very much a warning that the benefit of the subversive within oftentimes shrouds.

02:29:21.520 And I think that the gods and the stories are telling us about that is that, you know, when you take in, whether it's, you know, even the gods took in Fenris.

02:29:31.120 The idea is that, you know, with Hela being placed in the lower, you know, and Jormungandr in the middle, Fenris first was placed in the upper.

02:29:43.200 He was in heaven.

02:29:44.700 And so that is a correlation in and of itself, and Loki would be more subversive.

02:29:51.600 Whereas Fenris is quite, you know, up front that the gods understood that this was a bad thing, that the rising power of Fenris was clear and was immediately met with action.

02:30:08.680 The warning would be the subversive, you know, making allegiances.

02:30:13.740 And again, the question of why those allegiances were made, sometimes a catalyst of change isn't always necessarily good, as it is perhaps necessary for things to happen in a certain way.

02:30:28.500 And I think that Odin is certainly the god of that wisdom, but it's not necessarily, I would say, the wisdom of humanity to see all things and have all understanding of the consequences of bringing that subversive power element into the inner guard.

02:30:51.020 so i would view loki as subversive in the inner and utgard loki is in the outer he's

02:30:58.300 he his implementations of what he's in the outer realm is flowing from his place in the

02:31:07.180 middle in jotunheim in that seeing that further you go back from the middle the further you go

02:31:12.780 back into that that realm of jotunheim is that that's the influence and powers but that's known

02:31:18.300 that's known from the onset that's that's known in the beginning of the

02:31:23.860 story the problem is the unknown within is a problem and eventually it forms

02:31:32.220 into malicious sense you know it brings about the downfall of the bold one by

02:31:38.160 the hand of not only a physical brother but also the blood brother and so then

02:31:44.100 there is this kinslay and that kinslaying is seen as an atrocious mark it is a moment of absolute

02:31:51.780 there is this is wrong there is a wrongness there and it it is met with swift action afterwards

02:31:58.720 in which you know uh loki is bound and if you know how he's bound you can see the severity of

02:32:07.780 his actions um bringing about that but it was it was far too late and in a way um again part of the

02:32:16.240 overall destiny of the cycle um so yes yeah i would see i would see it as opposite loki is

02:32:25.860 definitely the subvert within and utgard loki is the subvert without

02:32:30.500 next question is from lutetia and she asked where's your water brandy so my water

02:32:42.260 i am hydrating with high fruit fructose corn syrup and chocolate

02:32:50.900 there's water it's in the ingredients

02:32:53.300 it's in the interview she caught you you need to hydrate she caught me you called me out 0.93

02:33:03.340 yep at a girl that's why we love her that is why we love her big oof

02:33:08.560 all right our last question from the night let's see last question from the night is from bob

02:33:19.900 It says, is there anything inherently magical about the runes themselves, or is the magic just in the words the runes spell?

02:33:31.640 When we talk about the runes magically, I think we're talking more about frequency and sound, the power of those, the creation of all sound within the universe.

02:33:44.520 all things have frequency and sound. And those frequencies and sounds are part of the building

02:33:50.680 blocks of the universe. And Ovin sacrificing, or in essence, transferring between his state

02:33:59.780 as a divine being into the state of death of a divine being, to see, to glimpse into that,

02:34:10.300 And to see those structural sounds is what they truly are. But when we talk about the runes after that, when we talk about how the runes disseminated to the folk, we talk about the symbols and the inspiration for those symbols where they might have come from.

02:34:32.080 whether it's, you know, some people propone the idea that there's a mimicking of language from other folk or of other cousins of the folk.

02:34:43.680 If you're well, if you're talking about like perhaps, you know, like getting it from the from the Romans or the Etruscans, there's some of that.

02:34:51.540 Um, there's also, you know, looking back at the symbols that were carved on stones, um, even before the Nordic Viking age.

02:35:02.600 Um, when we talk about power, uh, from a runic standpoint, the idea is that the, the symbol is a gateway to the frequency of that power that can change or shift things, shift, uh, the or law of an, an area around it.

02:35:31.220 But again, when all things are shifting, that creates movement elsewhere.

02:35:36.260 And those things are, again, are about consideration of those actions, that threshold.

02:35:41.140 Again, too, it is spoken that they must be correlated correctly.

02:35:46.920 And I think that when we see the runes, you go to a website and find a, you know, like a vikang shoulder pelt, buy yourself a rune, whatever.

02:35:58.860 whether it's a you know for your beard or it's on a it's on a horn you know these things are

02:36:04.980 manufactured they're not done in the proper set way of manifesting that gateway the the rune

02:36:13.480 itself is is a gateway to that power to that primordial frequency that's that makes up and

02:36:20.460 how they all interact together. But they can become deep symbolic images that have correlation

02:36:31.040 to change within the self as well. There are some people who practice the runes that don't

02:36:37.200 see them as necessarily affecting that which is without that or outside of them, but more or less

02:36:43.020 affecting what's within. And so they utilize that symbology to open up, say, more like subconscious

02:36:50.680 gateways to manifesting different ways of thinking and feeling and acting and thus gaining power in

02:36:59.420 that understanding and that opening of the gateway. But for me, I've always taken the

02:37:04.920 runes to be, again, gateways of that power. And when you correlate them correctly, if you sacrifice

02:37:10.980 them correctly. If you speak them correctly, they have an ability. But runic studies within

02:37:22.640 Alcetru, I've always joked, it's almost like a religion within the religion. Not all Alcetru

02:37:29.560 have high merit or they don't take high stock in the runes. They don't need to. Again,

02:37:39.880 And it is a mystery sometimes. And it's a mystery for a reason, because it's not for everyone.

02:37:44.700 Other folks find the usage of those powers differently.

02:37:49.480 We utilize Galdr a lot in our ceremonies as a way to harmonically connect all of the folk.

02:37:56.840 And that symbol has importance in our culture when we think of the day rune, or if we use the reconstructed word dagas,

02:38:05.860 or if we use the word day and you know just sounds like day like we speak it but we're

02:38:11.000 talking about the anglo-saxon d-a-e-g um that symbol has portents in our culture and so if we

02:38:20.560 are trying to manifest like um the importance of that power and we galder that during say

02:38:27.420 austra or midsummer uh we are harmonizing ourselves and culturally kind of connecting

02:38:33.860 our minds to a symbol that has purpose, meaning, and significance within our folk.

02:38:39.900 So there is a latent and kind of magic there for ourselves, but not necessarily the same

02:38:51.080 as it would be, say, doing, you know, like creating, you know, a stavr, or creating a

02:39:00.540 mark on a stone or making a mark on a on a on um something that is going to affect things like

02:39:07.660 they're they're creating uh using rister and going out and and carving rune to create and speaking uh

02:39:16.540 or a song creating a like i guess would be considered like a bind rune again is the

02:39:21.180 correlation of a of a um multiple runes brought about to manifest to create a change in the area

02:39:31.580 um again we use some of these bind rune combinations like uh we oftentimes will um

02:39:39.180 gold or aloo because that has uh deep significance both numerically within

02:39:44.620 the the elder futhark and within the anglo-saxon futhark

02:39:47.740 it's historically been written down, and there's correlations that we use it during

02:39:53.500 symbol because, again, the horn is filled with mead or with ale, and it's more about the

02:39:59.760 power of the fluid that we are sharing with each other, and that fluid has might. That fluid has

02:40:07.540 inspiration in it. So, religiously, we kind of dabble in runic for purposes that I think are

02:40:17.220 different than, say, for instance, if you were a lone person that was trying to create change

02:40:25.860 through magic or whatever it would be called, the Galdr, in order to affect things around us.

02:40:35.920 And then, of course, too, the big one is divination. Divination is argued amongst a lot of the folk.

02:40:44.660 did our ancestors use the runes for divination that is a that is a rabbit hole and it's a fun

02:40:50.660 one i really like it i i'm you know i use it for divination now but did our ancestors you know

02:40:57.820 that's we i've heard great arguments on both sides and i i i really do enjoy it but not all

02:41:03.500 the folk do um and again not all the folk take stock in it and they don't have to um some folk

02:41:09.960 are perfectly content with going about and having devotion to the gods and and committing to deed

02:41:15.480 for their family and their folk and that's it others are intrigued by the mystery and uh see

02:41:22.040 the the the enigmatic struggle of odin to understand that they they take that deeply

02:41:29.640 within themselves and they try to emulate it um and that in and of itself is its own kind of

02:41:36.680 sanctum. But it's different with everyone you talk to. Some people say, you know, this

02:41:44.220 Futhark is only, you know, worthy, or this Futhark, or things like that, or, you know,

02:41:50.440 why the Nords only use the younger and for a writing system predominantly, from what we can

02:41:56.260 see. But yet, Eil Skalagrimson, he carves runes to defend himself against, you know, baleful ale

02:42:05.680 that's poured in a horn and, um, you know, heals, uh, someone who is sick. Um, so we see both and

02:42:15.160 it really just depends on who, who you talk to and how interested they are. And you'll always find

02:42:20.060 somebody that can counter signal it. Um, and I don't, again, I'm one of those people that don't

02:42:25.760 take counter signaling as like, uh, just no, I like to entertain it, debate with it, consider it,

02:42:33.420 go home go down rabbit holes search further um but ultimately it's not going to affect where i am

02:42:40.140 personally right now if i if i see the validity in it i will utilize it so to answer your question

02:42:47.740 that the runes are gateways to primordial powers and you manifest them uh through certain steps

02:42:56.860 in order to create a effect in the world around you and it does depend i think greatly upon

02:43:05.660 um where you learn who you learn from and how you learn and i think that's stated

02:43:10.380 uh pretty clearly in the runatal um and it's a a hairy subject when you get into the into uh

02:43:23.260 circles on the internet so sometimes i think it would be best that you start off by doing it at

02:43:29.100 home and focusing on uh written things and and just gathering your own and utilizing what you

02:43:35.180 see if it works and then it works if it doesn't then it doesn't so you you can't you can't say

02:43:43.020 that it doesn't work for others in that regards because there are some folk that do believe

02:43:47.420 heavily that it has that they have tapped into it that they have made a change and then other folks

02:43:52.620 say no these are just decorations or these are just letters and words that we use to to write

02:43:57.280 messages down um because they have been you know we there's uh rune carvings in scotland

02:44:03.500 uh inside um old halls that that are like literally like a a man's wife yelling at us

02:44:12.520 you know, she's, she's just not happy or, or there's graffiti, you know, that, that, yes,

02:44:16.900 there is, but that doesn't negate one to the other. I guess I did miss one question.

02:44:25.740 Rabbi Moshi Goldstein wants to know if your wife is Icelandic and are Scandinavian,

02:44:32.220 Did you preserve your Icelandic ancestry?

02:44:36.220 No, no.

02:44:39.220 I am pan-European, I believe, in the entirety of the folk.

02:44:46.220 I'm not a Nordicist, if you will, whether passively in my genes or vocally.

02:44:53.220 I'm actually pretty open.

02:44:55.220 I think coming to America has made me appreciate some of the spiritual additions that I'm, you know, Anglo and Nordic, but I take great pleasure in, you know, seeing some of the Scotch-Irish traditions of America.

02:45:18.560 And I find a deep and loving respect and connection to that.

02:45:24.520 I see I don't I don't purity spiral into that, I think, is a big thing is we should not. 1.00

02:45:30.120 You know, it's I need you to fill out this DNA test before I marry you, because if you're not this percentage of Nordic, you're out of here. 1.00

02:45:38.680 Like, no, not at all. 1.00

02:45:41.340 In actuality, my my wife is Welsh and Slavic. 0.82

02:45:45.340 on one side of her family. Her family's been connected to America for a very long time,

02:45:54.120 and she descends from the twos, T-E-W. And if anybody knows pirates, you might know a Thomas

02:46:00.800 two, and her family comes from Rhode Island. But the other side also moved to Rhode Island from

02:46:06.980 the Ukraine back when the Bolsheviks were taking over Ukraine. Her family, well, in actuality,

02:46:15.160 not her family just just two of her family made it out um and it took all of their family and

02:46:22.360 their finances to get those two young um that that the two young the couple to get out there was quite

02:46:30.120 a large amount of ukrainians coming into rhode island in the 20s from running from as refugees

02:46:36.520 from the Bolsheviks that were just ravaging Ukraine. But she's American. So again, that

02:46:46.520 mixture there. But I am too. I have English and Nordic blood. My Islamic side is strong in the

02:46:54.760 upfront, but in the past too, there's a lot of connection to my Anglo side and Canadian too.

02:47:00.680 I found out that my father's English blood comes from English-Canadian folk, and they moved down after the Civil War.

02:47:10.840 Because of the westward expansion, there was a lot of jobs and opportunities in Rhode Island.

02:47:17.240 Again, my family on my American side is from Rhode Island.

02:47:22.360 My wife's family is also from Rhode Island with the Welsh and the Ukrainians.

02:47:29.800 And so that's I found very interesting is that we did not know that about each other until, you know, being with each other for a long time, that there was that correlation that that our families kind of descend from the same place, even in America, even though we came there from very different spots, whether from Europe or from Canada.

02:47:49.600 And I thought that was truly interesting.

02:47:53.480 And even too, there are folk in the AFA, speaking about you cuz, she knows who she is, that we

02:48:02.720 found out that I am actually related through marriage to a prominent member of the AFA

02:48:09.820 as well.

02:48:10.820 And so in a way, I'm related to folk within the AFA from Rhode Island through the Burling

02:48:18.780 games and they're the the anglos that uh of that family and i again ancestry.com it's just that's

02:48:27.420 not a plug i'm just saying there's been a lot of uh very interesting stuff that's come about from

02:48:32.940 that i even found out like uh my my great great uncle uh was a he came from canada but he was a

02:48:40.220 banjo player and a mandolin player um on uh he played in coney island he played all along the

02:48:48.620 east coast and was part of a kind of one of those straw hat bands um that played on the on the piers

02:48:55.420 and that banjo was in our attic for years and and my mother did not know where that came from that

02:49:00.940 came from my father and it wasn't until i saw the picture of him with his band that i realized what

02:49:07.020 that banjo uh was about and then again going to bouldershofen and uh running into the mandolin

02:49:14.540 And that I, you know, and that that connection to that instrument was, again, very strange how our ancestors kind of play, you know, in our modern lives.

02:49:27.360 But, yeah, no, my wife, my wife is not Icelandic.

02:49:31.940 She is American and she is of Welsh and Ukrainian descent.

02:49:39.920 I think that officially is the last of the questions tonight.

02:49:45.540 All right, Svan, I thank you very, very much for being on.

02:49:48.620 It's always a pleasure to learn from you and talk to you and to listen to you answer all of these questions with humor and a lot of philosophical knowledge. 0.98

02:49:58.040 So one more time, we're going to call the folk home, Mr. Nick, if we can get that trihorn one more time.

02:50:06.600 So folk come home, if we can get our light back up and you can go to runestone.org if you like what you're doing. 0.86

02:50:14.160 If you agree with what we've got going on and you want to be a part of that, please go to runestone.org and follow the light home over to your folk.

02:50:26.320 All right.

02:50:27.220 Thank you, Spawn, very much.

02:50:28.820 Thank you, everyone, for bearing with us this night.

02:50:33.500 This is great.

02:50:36.400 Well, with that, I just say hail the gods, hail the folk, hail the AFA, and remember, victory never sleeps.

02:50:42.380 Have a great week, everybody.

02:50:44.160 Hail.

02:51:14.160 Thank you.

02:51:44.160 We'll be right back.

02:52:14.160 Thank you.

02:52:44.160 Thank you.

02:53:14.160 We'll be right back.

02:53:44.160 Amen.

Asatru Folk Assembly - February 09, 2023

2⧸8⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps,Episode 31 - Víðarr

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