Asatru Folk Assembly - 3⧸12⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 140 - Living Ásatrú

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

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

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

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

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

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

00:03:13.380 This is an episode we meant to give you this time last month, but due to unforeseen internet

00:03:22.260 outages in pennsylvania we uh we were thwarted but we uh it's an episode i really wanted to do

00:03:31.700 and it's one that i i think is really valuable and that uh

00:03:37.700 whitnerickson here has i don't know i think a really

00:03:44.100 a really important outlook on and a lot of really good perspective to share with us today so i

00:03:50.260 I really wanted to make sure this happened.

00:03:52.160 Cliff, appreciate you being able to be here with us tonight.

00:03:56.340 Top of the show stuff to let you guys know how things.

00:04:01.540 Okay.

00:04:03.020 Sorry, scattered in my head, trying to get everything remembered to make sure I hit it.

00:04:07.680 One week from this Friday.

00:04:10.920 So you got like a week and two days until Ostara at Thorshof.

00:04:15.980 i believe all three of us are going to be in attendance there and i'm excited for that

00:04:22.860 we would love to see each and every one of you there if you can make it that's at thorshoff

00:04:29.280 which is in linden north carolina and that's march the 21st through the 23rd it's going to

00:04:37.160 be a fantastic event we've got amazing people signed up to be there so far that area are some

00:04:44.980 of our best folk it is a beautiful beautiful hof dedicated to asa thor and something that

00:04:52.660 love for everybody not only to get to see once we get to see lots of times so yeah if you can make

00:05:01.420 it please do reach out to any of your folk builders or us here at vns at runestone.org and

00:05:07.420 we can get you sorted one of you need to talk to or any assistance that you might need to make that

00:05:12.760 happen um other stuff top of the show we are doing amazing on our um progress towards paying

00:05:25.400 off new york's off something we spend a lot of time thinking on lately and trying to you know

00:05:31.240 push towards because the end is getting so close in sight we are uh what does that look like

00:05:38.880 78.4 percent of the way there which is amazing um you're you guys generosity is really exceptional

00:05:47.340 we appreciate it quite a bit um

00:05:50.220 yeah this was this was a big deal for us we knew that anywhere that was going to be a state near

00:05:59.300 the coast that was gonna fit our needs for njordshoff was gonna be gonna be a little bit

00:06:06.300 out of the same price range as some of our previous Hoffs. Florida is very desirable for

00:06:13.780 a lot of really good reasons. So this one was a little bit, dig a little bit deeper to make this

00:06:18.960 one happen. And in such a short amount of time, in less than three years, you guys have helped us

00:06:28.140 pay this down like we said 78.4 percent we have 52 815 to go that's just about 72 dollars per

00:06:40.860 member we get that paid off immediately and we're pretty excited because we've got big plans and a

00:06:48.540 lot of enthusiasm behind getting phrase off in order to do that we have to pay his father's half

00:06:53.180 off first. So if anybody wants to contribute, we would appreciate it. And thank you so much

00:06:59.020 to everyone who's contributed so far. If you're listening to this on the podcast format, you can

00:07:07.360 contribute at runestone, R-U-N-E-S-T-O-N-E dot O-R-G. You can also apply there. If anybody is hearing

00:07:17.840 this message, if you listen to the show, maybe you're listening for the first time, maybe you're

00:07:22.380 long-time listener. You are a heterosexual white person that wants to come home to your ancestral

00:07:28.080 gods. We invite you to join us. Link at the same website. Any of our folk builders, any of our 0.99

00:07:36.960 leadership up to including Cliff and myself would be very happy to answer any questions you might

00:07:42.020 have or help you with that process if it's something you'd like to do. But we're doing really,

00:07:46.560 truly amazing and groundbreaking things. We're changing lives. We've got a lot of wonderful

00:07:52.980 things ahead of us. We would love to have you guys be part of it. So if you're not a member,

00:07:59.540 please consider it. Also, wherever you are consuming this, whether you're watching it

00:08:04.640 or whether you're listening to it as a podcast, please like, share, subscribe, tell your friends.

00:08:10.820 this is you know if you find this spiritually impactful wonderful if you find it educational

00:08:19.020 great just find it entertaining that's good too and we appreciate you share it around there may

00:08:24.540 be one of your friends or family that might really get something out of it so we appreciate

00:08:28.820 appreciate your help that way too um it's a little bit of a scramble to get ready for tonight's

00:08:35.880 broadcast, so forgive me if I get a little bit tongue-tied here at the start.

00:08:44.980 We still have 30th anniversary t-shirts on sale at our website, also at the previous link.

00:08:51.460 They look great. Go the East's lovely wife, Madison, did the design work on that and did a

00:08:59.140 beautiful job. They're nice quality shirts. If you would like yours, I don't know if we're going to

00:09:04.800 restock or just what we're going to do. So this may be your only opportunity. And we would love

00:09:10.400 to sell you one of these amazing shirts. And we appreciate you. So we got that.

00:09:20.220 So what I've got for you so far, and there's a lot of, please keep in mind, it's a question

00:09:28.080 driven program often so any question you guys have tonight about also true but probably about

00:09:37.060 most anything else we would be very happy to answer those may take us a while to get through

00:09:42.780 them depending on how big the stat gets but we will definitely get to them and if you have a

00:09:47.320 question at any time that you want us to answer on a future edition of the program please feel

00:09:53.780 free to email vns at runestone.org and we would be we'll definitely put that and it will move to the

00:10:02.820 front of the line in the order it's received for the next program that said um a lot of different

00:10:09.860 places for the conversation to go tonight i'm pretty excited about it uh cliff how are you doing

00:10:17.460 how are things in your neck of the woods and if you can lay the groundwork for us this evening

00:10:23.780 it would help if you were not muted yep it would help if i could find the right tab too sorry i

00:10:38.180 was looking around at some stuff um things are good here um we are starting to see signs of

00:10:46.340 spring i actually take the kids out and like we look for them you know hearing the birds chirp and

00:10:52.180 seeing those first flowers that'll probably get killed by frost in the next few weeks as

00:10:56.740 winter reminds us it's not quite spring yet um getting ready to head down to north carolina

00:11:04.580 for um ostara in the south at at thor's off i'm very excited for that to see a lot of my

00:11:12.420 my friends and and colleagues and our our folk it's it's exciting um and uh yeah we're we're

00:11:22.180 It's a good time of year. I really like this time of year, even though it's not, it's not quite there. The, you know, the, you know, I work, you know, like an eight to five job. So having daylight again after I leave the office is nice. I really do like this time of year.

00:11:52.180 So I suppose, and because I don't think you're the first person to use the term,

00:12:01.320 but you're the one that really crystallized in a conversation now probably two months ago.

00:12:08.440 When you say Ausatru is a living religion, what, I suppose, what do you mean when you say that?

00:12:18.200 so i mean um so i guess it came up we were in a conversation amongst our gothar um i forget

00:12:27.880 if it was one of our gothar calls or one of our our gothi student calls or something like that but

00:12:33.500 um when when i talk about asatru being a living religion um you know it it grows and it changes

00:12:42.980 is um i think i i remember now we were talking about um not being able to name the names of all

00:12:54.100 of the aesir um that you know sometimes a a christian or an atheist or anyone who's who's

00:13:00.660 not asitru or um you know who's not polytheistic really wouldn't really understand where we're

00:13:06.340 coming from on that well you know you you can't even name all of your gods you don't know um

00:13:12.980 all of your history um and and so on and so forth where that might be something that they

00:13:18.740 they challenge us on and you know use that to sort of undermine the legitimacy of our faith and

00:13:29.060 i don't think that's a a bad thing i think that not knowing the names of all of the aesir actually

00:13:35.220 enriches us true and some of it may be because some of their names are lost to time you know

00:13:41.620 Maybe our ancestors did know their names and, you know, particular poems weren't recorded in writing in the poetic edda or weren't referred to by Snorri Sturluson in the pros edda or in any of the other sources that we have from, you know, all over Europe at different times.

00:14:05.400 You know, that's I would wager that there's at least one Aesir's name who, you know, perhaps has been forgotten over time.

00:14:13.660 But I also mean that there are surely Aesir whose names we never knew, just as the folk, that when we, the stories that we have about the Aesir are nothing like the complete and unabridged history of all things that have occurred amongst the Aesir.

00:14:38.020 It's the portion of their existence that's been revealed to us through stories that were relayed, sometimes by the gods themselves to our ancestors, perhaps in visions by our ancestors, by inspiration from our ancestors and how they related to the world.

00:14:58.700 We know these things that were handed down, but that's not the totality of the Aesir.

00:15:04.080 You know, I think I referred to it at that time as that, you know, we know the names of the nobility amongst the Aesir, the greatest of them.

00:15:13.900 We know their King Odin.

00:15:16.380 We know the name of, you know, Prince Thor, so to speak.

00:15:20.320 We know about the most significant of them amongst themselves, but also as far as our interaction with them.

00:15:29.340 um so we may not know the names of all of those that the Aesir consider greatest if they just

00:15:36.540 never interacted with mankind in a way that's relevant to us their names could still be a

00:15:42.600 mystery to us um and you know the the Aesir are a a social unit they are a a civilization so you

00:15:52.920 know we know that they can die and we know that um you know we know that they can be born um you

00:16:01.220 know we we know that uh modi and magni for example are sons of thor which you know strongly implies

00:16:07.580 that they had a beginning that was after thor's right so you know if a sir can come into being

00:16:15.280 and can then cease to be then uh it's a dynamic living society and that would mean that there

00:16:26.960 could be new aesir that have you know perhaps come into being in the relatively short time since

00:16:32.720 snorri recorded the stories or um any other number of things like that it's not we don't

00:16:38.240 know everything about the aesir and um you know none of these things that i'm saying are necessarily

00:16:45.280 like i don't know i mean it could be that we know all the names of the ace here it's maybe

00:16:51.800 maybe they did all reveal themselves for us but it is entirely possible and i think much more

00:16:55.900 probable that they did not um because this you know just like all civilizations there

00:17:03.340 there are different strata and there are different parts of that hole that make it all work

00:17:08.960 and the things that are recorded in history don't usually have to do with the corner grocer

00:17:15.220 or the farmer who helps the warrior and the ruling class affect the will of that civilization into the world,

00:17:25.580 just as the Aesir affect their will into the cosmos.

00:17:31.660 Sort of a loose analogy that I made is, you know, if someone is English,

00:17:39.580 they may, if they're really knowledgeable about English history,

00:17:43.200 be able to name all of the kings of england but they could never name all of the english people

00:17:49.680 that's not a thing but that is still the reality of what english is and and more than that so

00:17:58.800 it changes over time it grows um it it's it's it's organic in in in the sense that you know

00:18:09.040 know that it's alive um and that um you know i sometimes will talk about how um our connection

00:18:19.380 to the aesir is how is like we are we are related to them we are their kin we are their their

00:18:28.160 descendants because we're part of a continuous chain reaction of life that has been ongoing

00:18:35.800 and unending and overlapping

00:18:38.380 since Odin, Vili, and Vey

00:18:41.740 imbued our folk with life

00:18:44.800 at the beginning of our existence.

00:18:46.900 And that same life force

00:18:52.060 that they gave Ash and Elm,

00:18:54.440 Ash and Embla,

00:18:55.840 it didn't start here, stop there,

00:19:00.820 and then start and stop

00:19:01.600 and start and stop again.

00:19:02.500 It's one river of life

00:19:05.120 that they gave us. And we're all part of that. So that's, that's kind of what I mean, you know,

00:19:09.260 more specific questions will help me flesh some of that out. But that's, that's how I approach it in

00:19:14.100 that. It's not, it's not monolithic, that it's not, it's not something that we should approach as,

00:19:24.960 you know, as, as, as carved in stone, as, as unchanging, as, you know, as cold and as dead,

00:19:34.440 it is very much warm and alive and dynamic well i think that's really important and a couple of

00:19:43.880 things we one thing about also true that i really respect but it makes it hard

00:19:55.720 but i think as you've said before and we all know to be true oftentimes the

00:20:03.460 the the easy thing is not the right thing so we're intellectually honest about the things

00:20:11.940 that we know about the things that we don't know anything that our gothar tell you on this program

00:20:18.760 is absolutely if they say it is true it is absolutely true to the best of their knowing

00:20:25.760 and we try to be very honest about things that we think versus things that we know

00:20:33.240 and i don't think you have that in many other traditions you have

00:20:42.360 and i don't like to overly compare but i think depending on the audience comparing and contrasting

00:20:54.540 has its place on here one thing that is interesting is there's many faiths in the world

00:21:03.100 that had like their period of time where their god or their gods interacted with

00:21:11.660 their ancestors and there was some kind of an exchange there and then everything else for

00:21:19.940 perhaps thousands of years is just studying ancient written texts and kind of a one-sided

00:21:30.700 endeavor and i you know i don't think other faiths would characterize themselves that way

00:21:36.880 but I think it's kind of true nonetheless.

00:21:38.540 And I think one of the things

00:21:42.640 that makes Alistair True so vibrant and so alive

00:21:46.560 is that we believe fundamentally

00:21:50.360 in the ongoing gift cycle

00:21:52.200 between us and between the Aesir.

00:21:55.940 We believe that through that continuation

00:21:58.900 of sincere worship and loyalty,

00:22:01.540 we receive insight, we receive blessings,

00:22:06.200 We receive, you know, countless boons in our life and that the Aesir guide us and help us in the, in the reforging and continual forging of Al-Satrim. 0.97

00:22:28.620 And what that means is, you know, as Cliff said, yes, there's plenty of things that are lost to history. 0.99

00:22:40.780 And I think that if any religion is honest, that's probably the case if it's very, very old.

00:22:47.120 But there's also within Ausitru a steady revealing process to where as we build closer and closer relationship with our gods, they reveal more and more of themselves, their personality, their will to us.

00:23:09.740 and fill in gaps in a way that perhaps our ancestors knew

00:23:18.080 that we don't know or didn't know.

00:23:21.780 Make no mistake, we know the gods that we focus our worship to

00:23:28.260 and we know the goddesses that we focus our worship to.

00:23:31.220 But the point about not knowing the totality of any level of divinity

00:23:36.340 is

00:23:38.120 certainly

00:23:40.600 our ancestors had local

00:23:42.320 deities or

00:23:44.280 you know less

00:23:46.560 less all-encompassing

00:23:54.580 deities that were deities of tribes

00:23:56.700 or of regions, of

00:23:58.460 rivers, of places

00:23:59.680 to say that we honestly

00:24:02.180 can factor

00:24:04.460 all of those in

00:24:05.880 from the dawn of our race until the conversion period

00:24:14.440 and spanning all of the lands that our ancestors conquered 0.90

00:24:19.940 and immigrated to and moved through would be preposterous.

00:24:27.420 But that's one of the things that, as Cliff said, makes things special

00:24:31.600 is we have a living relationship with our gods and goddesses.

00:24:35.880 We seek to know them and build from our increased knowledge and our increased relationship.

00:24:44.580 And over time, we get to know them better.

00:24:47.460 And we get to learn more and grow in our faith.

00:24:51.020 And as a result, the Astru Folk assembly grows in our practice and grows in ideally ever more perfect ways of knowing, worshiping, and honoring our gods.

00:25:08.460 And that's really kind of a special thing.

00:25:10.120 I've said on here before a number of times, and I believe it to be true, our gods are connected to us.

00:25:16.200 We are connected to our gods.

00:25:17.900 the more we know and the more we learn from a variety of things the better but if we had to

00:25:27.820 start fresh if somehow all that knowledge was lost the iser still exists and we still exist

00:25:36.160 and through good faith exchanging of gifts and giving of worship and loyalty to the iser

00:25:43.640 we would get to know them anew as a people we would get to learn their stories and know them

00:25:53.940 over time and rebuild you know the corpus of material that we have because they live they

00:26:03.460 exist. We live. We exist. Therefore, we can interact. A lot of really well-meaning people

00:26:14.460 get stuck in a research phase about Ausitru and neglect practice and neglect

00:26:27.180 very simple but heartfelt worship and gift exchange and i think that that misses the

00:26:38.100 richness and the for lack of a better term the realness of what we do before i get much further

00:26:44.880 i want to acknowledge um gw farnsworth consistent donor on the program we appreciate you so much

00:26:52.560 donated $30 to the BNS Fund. Thank you so much. We appreciate you and your generosity is an example

00:27:01.200 to us all. So I'm looking over on the side of some of our questions. I think what we'll do,

00:27:09.420 because it can go a lot of ways, is try to tie some of these things back into our main theme

00:27:15.340 as we go through. But our first question tonight is from Sierra, wonderful folk builder,

00:27:26.160 Sierra Chapman in California. Good evening. I hope you men are well. What is a bloat fair

00:27:32.940 and why is it important? Why should I strive to do it? Cliff, would you like to answer that?

00:27:39.520 Sure. Speaking of Asitru as a living and dynamic religion, the Blutfaird is something that we have only recently given a name to, although I think that the core concept of it has existed for longer than that.

00:27:58.240 And, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, Ashrigothi, this is something that's relatively new, even amongst our conversations in the Gothar.

00:28:06.060 So I may not have the full technical refined meaning of it down.

00:28:10.340 But as I understand it, it is a journey of faith, much like a pilgrimage, making a journey to our Hoffs, for example.

00:28:21.280 um and as i understand it the the name bloat um the ferth um actually has something in common with

00:28:29.860 the the the word ferth has the this a root connection to um like the fair in farewell

00:28:39.440 well, like journey well, and that it is an act of worship to make the effort to go to

00:28:54.680 a hof or to a national event. It's all of what we put into, you know, it's not just

00:29:02.980 physical journey it is all of the the effort and expense and um planning that's required to

00:29:10.660 make that happen to get yourself and to get our folk collected into a place where we can hold

00:29:18.340 um you know a high bloat as it were at one of our hoffs or our national events

00:29:25.060 how close am i how much did i miss

00:29:27.140 no you're good i'm checking right now to see if it was ever used that way historically and i and

00:29:35.780 i don't think that it was i think maybe if it was its happenstance but i'd have to check

00:29:41.700 but basically it's a bloat journey um a journey to do bloat in our ancestors time

00:29:52.100 time there was there's a number of occasions of it I think that the most I don't know most well

00:30:02.180 known is the uh like nine years apart journey to do sacrifice at Uppsala um they would have

00:30:17.120 travel great distances often to go to a religious gathering or to go to a hoth and do worship

00:30:26.880 and so the process of

00:30:31.200 preparing your things going on the journey gathering with your folk perhaps in a distant place

00:30:40.160 spending time in that in contemplation in worship in celebration

00:30:47.120 was a real testament to your faith, to the significance that you placed in your belief in the Aesir and your, I guess, your faith that they would look kindly upon the gift of that effort that you put forth.

00:31:06.000 And so in a modern sense, this kind of popped up organically amongst the membership.

00:31:12.800 We have members that, so Cliff and I, being leaders, have had the honor of going to a great many of our national events over the years, and more specifically, of being able to go to all of our Hoffs.

00:31:29.380 Anyone who's just tuning in, we have our first Hoff was established in 2015, Odenshoff in Brownsville, California, followed in 2020 by Thorshoff in Linden, North Carolina, and Baldershoff in Murdoch, Minnesota, and then in 2022 by Njordshoff in White Springs, Florida.

00:31:53.480 So we've been able to go to all four of our Hoffs, and many people haven't.

00:32:01.040 And so a lot of our members are very excited, and over time, as they're able, as life permits,

00:32:06.620 to plan trips to go worship these gods in their Hoffs, the first of their kind in well over a thousand years.

00:32:19.820 And that's a really special thing. We've had a number, we had a California member recently travel all the way across the country on a massive road trip to go to all of the different Hoffs and then to Sigerheim and in Tennessee, all in one, in one big trip to see them all.

00:32:39.320 and it was a really special thing for him we have members all the time that maybe they'll do one half

00:32:45.080 at a time some of them will have a road trip and they'll go to a couple of them and it's a really

00:32:52.740 nice thing and it's a beautiful thing to see our folk be able to do and for those of us who've been

00:32:57.380 doing this for for a long time I think it's kind of an amazing thing that I don't think

00:33:03.360 you know i don't think people were necessarily even thinking about the the re that being a

00:33:10.160 reality for our folk i mean 15 years ago or more that seemed like a very distant thing like man

00:33:19.280 one day if we can just get one off that'll be that'll be life-changing and the fact that in

00:33:26.120 such short time we now have four and soon to be uh five when we end up getting phrase off and i

00:33:32.300 that's going to be closer than people think but yeah going on those journeys everyone i know who's

00:33:38.380 made the effort to go out to one of our hafs has many have found it life-changing everyone has

00:33:46.300 benefited from the experience and so many people have been shaken to their core in a very good way

00:33:55.340 by the experience and it's so beautiful to watch our children play in the courtyards of

00:34:02.940 hoffs dedicated to our gods that is that was the dream of so many people for so long and

00:34:11.340 to live in a time where that dream has become reality is is a real blessing in and of itself

00:34:17.900 it's interesting you mentioned the uh the the months every nine year journey that our ancestors

00:34:23.500 would have made to upsala um and that is is you know probably the highest one at least the highest

00:34:29.820 one that we know of that our ancestors did but i think that also um in order to travel to any hof

00:34:36.780 um you know for their um you know for for for midsummer for example our our ancestors would

00:34:45.180 have had to have done some significant significant traveling even if it was just in their you know

00:34:49.740 their their petty kingdom um you know which would be like a county that we have today that still

00:34:55.340 might have been a day or two's travel for them to go to their most local hof and to to leave the

00:35:00.620 farm behind and to make that journey was was not a small undertaking that would have required

00:35:05.900 planning that would have required expense and effort um so you know for for many of us we're

00:35:12.780 fortunate and able to you know to to travel to a hof that's local in the same state as we are

00:35:18.300 or uh you know to to to have a bloke group or um you know other other gathering we can get to

00:35:25.740 you know in the same day and go home and sleep in our own bed all in the in the same journey and i

00:35:30.380 don't that was the exception for our folk i think um that they would they would have had to travel

00:35:36.780 at least a day or two to to make it to to to any off and um yeah i think it's a good thing

00:35:45.020 for us to exercise that that discipline and that sacrifice

00:35:51.820 absolutely so we have a couple of questions from twitch appreciate our twitch uh audience

00:35:59.500 it's good to hear from you guys any place that you're watching this feel free to ask questions

00:36:04.940 we'd love to get all of those on here uh bubblegumman how come so many self-identified

00:36:12.540 Norse pagans on TikTok are really aesthetically negative, like fat and colored hair and stuff.

00:36:19.180 You know what I mean. Yes, we do know what you mean. Cliff, do you want to take a swing at that? 0.85

00:36:25.380 Sure. First, I will state that I am not a self-identified Norse pagan. I am an

00:36:31.060 Ositre. There's a big difference. And some of the things that Bubblegum Man describes are,

00:36:37.860 are i think maybe central to that or at least they're symptomatic of it um i think that

00:36:45.580 for for for a lot of people um out there in general

00:36:50.580 um they they will look at finding a religion that is not currently mainstream as their form of uh

00:37:01.500 rebelling against the mainstream culture it's a very counterculture thing to do 0.91

00:37:05.440 So for them, being a self-identified Norse pagan is not much different from being, you know, a wigger into hip hop or being, you know, a punker. 0.96

00:37:22.500 It depends on what decade you're in, what would have been the thing that would have made your dad most pissed off. 0.97

00:37:27.180 But that's kind of what they're trying to do.

00:37:28.800 They're, you know, trying to distinguish themselves from a previous generation because they are trying to assert some sort of cultural independence from what they were brought up as, whatever that might be.

00:37:46.480 A lot of times it's Christianity, although more and more we're finding that is more of an atheistic secularism that people are being brought up in.

00:37:54.140 and I think that that's an unhealthy thing to do on the whole although a lot of us have to go

00:38:01.380 through that phase in order to you know be able to come to sincere belief in the Aesir I mean I

00:38:11.880 had a phase where I you know was was into different occult things and didn't really

00:38:18.320 connect with them and went through a period of atheism where i you know i thought i knew

00:38:24.760 everything because the the universe man right and uh i think that's what some of them are doing and

00:38:31.900 i think that a lot of the other things that you see i mean so being fat that's just because they're

00:38:36.320 lazy they're not actually applying the proper self-discipline in their life that is true

00:38:40.760 almost across the board um it's very rare that somebody has some kind of condition that

00:38:45.980 causes them to be that way that's out of their control um things like colored hair i i carve out

00:38:54.060 a special exception for like teenagers who are supposed to biologically be sort of in that um

00:39:01.220 trying to assert their independence mode where they're you know they're they're in that final

00:39:07.240 stage of becoming an adult and you know for anyone who's a parent we know that ultimately

00:39:11.780 what we're trying to do is to make our children not need us right like they're supposed to be

00:39:16.400 able to feed themselves and survive when we're gone like that's that's the most basic um sort

00:39:23.360 of primordial goal of um of raising a child so teenagers who do some of these rebellious things

00:39:30.520 i think it's a natural thing as long as it's a phase um you know for for people that get to be

00:39:36.400 into their early to mid 20s and are still, you know, exhibiting teenage rebellion, I think that's

00:39:47.460 where it can start to be problematic. And that the more distance you get from that being the natural

00:39:52.200 phase in your life, the less healthy and less complimentary that it is to someone. You know,

00:40:00.740 I think that, uh, a lot of it is, it's, it's,

00:40:06.100 it's common in American culture or in, um, you know,

00:40:11.800 Western European culture that, that this, that this persists, you know,

00:40:17.140 well into adulthood when, when it should not.

00:40:19.860 And it doesn't have to exist in teenage years. It just, I, you know,

00:40:24.420 I'm a lot more understanding of it there because they're still trying to find

00:40:27.580 out who they are. They're not grownups yet. So it's a different standard.

00:40:30.740 um but um i think that it's it shares a common root with other symptoms of of being unwell that

00:40:42.880 we see in you know in in our people you know thing things like alcoholism or other addictive

00:40:50.680 tendencies across the board i think that it is um it's a way it's a way of acting out a way of

00:40:57.960 getting attention which is negative it's you know like the kid who will um you know break a toy

00:41:06.820 rather than clean it up um because it gets them more attention that kind of a thing that's my 0.98

00:41:12.680 take on it it has nothing to do with religion that's for sure yeah so those people are gross 0.96

00:41:20.620 and i just want to put that out there those people are yucky uh cliffs opening volley i think 0.99

00:41:27.760 like bears repeating. I wish that we could, you know, completely control all of the branding

00:41:39.140 of who claims to be what. The world doesn't work like that. A lot of people can claim

00:41:43.840 to be whatever they are. One of the things that is very nice, we have worked very hard

00:41:50.180 for many, many years

00:41:52.400 to have

00:41:53.960 a certain level

00:41:56.160 of ownership

00:41:57.620 and integrity in the term

00:41:59.960 Alcetru and what it means.

00:42:02.280 I would never and have

00:42:04.040 never described myself as

00:42:05.820 Norse pagan.

00:42:07.320 The people that typically describe themselves

00:42:10.100 as Norse, and this is not monolithic,

00:42:12.060 there's people out there that genuinely don't

00:42:14.060 know, don't come to

00:42:16.060 it with the same associations the rest of

00:42:18.060 us have, and

00:42:19.700 yes the language of our paganism comes from the norse we are in fact pagans it's not wrong

00:42:29.200 but it's why it's so important to me everybody wants to call what they do something different

00:42:34.000 or odinus or heathen or this or that all of those things on their own aren't wrong and aren't

00:42:42.040 incorrect but it's really confusing and it mixes your association with a lot of unsavory things

00:42:51.640 like the people that you were identifying on tiktok um but no we are also true are

00:42:59.440 and we don't do that now you know like any other group of people people come to us with a varying

00:43:08.240 degree of health or unhealth. And it's really important to bring all our folk home. We got

00:43:15.040 fat people in the AFA and we actively try to help them be healthy. And, you know, if they're willing

00:43:22.940 to, we want to support them every step of the way and encourage our people to be healthy.

00:43:27.100 We've got people with colored hair in the AFA. A lot of them with natural colors that are quite

00:43:31.740 beautiful a lot of you know some of them with more exotic choices that i wouldn't advise them

00:43:39.100 to make but i think the commonality in the person that we're all picturing by your question

00:43:43.460 is that rebellion angsty try to be edgy thing and aside from just being disparaging to it

00:43:54.640 There is a phenomenon that I think Cliff touched on that children go through a phase of, but in the world that we live in, in recent decades, more and more adult people don't get out of that perhaps social adolescence until later in their life and spend a lot of time reacting against.

00:44:19.540 so oh well normal well-adjusted people in my country are christians so i'm not going to be

00:44:28.680 a christian i'm going to be a pagan i'm not pagan for any paganism's sake in a lot of ways

00:44:34.520 very often they're that to be the anti-christian or you know they dress up particularly edgy to be

00:44:44.200 anti-normalcy or anti, you know, whatever social constraint they feel is there. And they're

00:44:52.240 defining a lot of their stuff by either a desire not to or an inability to fit in socially with

00:45:01.600 their friends and their family and the world around them. And it displays itself in a lot

00:45:06.540 of ways, but I think the most common one we see is the grossly unhealthy and like just championing

00:45:16.000 degeneracy thing. And we see that phenomenon a lot. To be honest, a lot of our people are lost.

00:45:24.240 They don't know what to do. They feel let down by a lot of, you know, quote unquote,

00:45:30.540 traditional authority around them they don't see their place in the world and they it metastasizes

00:45:38.460 in some really unhealthy life choices and some visually unappealing trends and i think that's

00:45:45.100 what you see um but you had another question following this do you agree with oswald spengler's

00:45:52.780 uh idea that christianity set the stage for cultural marxism and progressivism cliff

00:46:00.540 So I'm not familiar with Oswald Spengles, but I mean, given the length of its history and reach, I think Christianity set the stage for a great deal of things in the modern world.

00:46:19.080 um not all of them bad by the way um you know it's certainly um you know the um you know the

00:46:29.000 certain certain aspects of it certainly could be you know considered um globalist and and

00:46:36.020 communistic and in the sense that you know it is a a universal religion that in its own text

00:46:43.260 explicitly says to go and to um you know preach the gospel to the four corners of of the earth um

00:46:51.580 it um you know it it taught it does talk about uh you know giving the the the shirt off of your

00:47:00.700 back to those in need there's a lot of ideas like that which um not all of them are bad i mean

00:47:06.220 giving to people who need um things people that are worse off than you is not necessarily bad

00:47:11.980 uh it's all in context and um i would say there's a lot about you know who are you giving to um and

00:47:21.680 you know supporting your own family i think should be obvious but not everyone does it so

00:47:26.120 it's not always um supporting your your own people it should be obvious um

00:47:32.680 i think that um in in other aspects christianity helped to um protect europe in a way um you know

00:47:44.840 i i was in some ways i wonder sometimes if um if christianity or something like it was

00:47:57.080 was not part of Odin's overall plan to have our folk ready um for for things that work to come

00:48:05.540 um our our folk tend to be disunited um and and tribalists um referring back to the previous

00:48:12.740 question about how everyone has you know a special name for what they do I I knew some guys that

00:48:19.340 referred to themselves as folkish, tribal, independent heathens.

00:48:26.960 They couldn't just say, that's true.

00:48:28.000 They had to come up with this thing. 0.90

00:48:29.420 And it sounded silly to everyone but them.

00:48:33.660 But the questions are connected in a way

00:48:37.720 because I think that that independent streak in our folk

00:48:41.220 has not always served us well.

00:48:42.680 We have a real hard time at uniting against the common foe. 0.99

00:48:46.480 And I think that in the history of Europe, for all of its faults, I think that Christianity served as a bulwark against Islam that I don't know that the tribal society under Asatru would have. 0.93

00:49:04.780 A unified Asatru people would have been able to withstand that, but that wasn't the reality that existed at that time. 0.87

00:49:16.480 But, I mean, at its core, Christianity is is globalist and is, you know, it's I don't I guess the short answer is yes, but I don't I don't know that the things like cultural Marxism or progressivism would not have occurred without it, which I guess means the short answer is no, it's it's complicated.

00:49:46.480 Yes, I absolutely believe that Christianity is the root of both of those things. 0.68

00:49:54.120 But like Cliff said, I have no idea if they would have reared their ugly head in a different form or a different way if that hadn't been the medium that was there. 0.96

00:50:07.280 But I think it was specifically well-suited because the teachings of Jesus, certainly as recorded in the Gospels, are that way. 0.68

00:50:17.960 They are a specific appeal to the underclass in a Roman Judea that was downtrodden.

00:50:38.400 um the beatitudes and the sermon on the mount is a lot about blessed are the losers and i don't

00:50:48.780 mean that in a like pejorative but the people who are losing at life you know those who suffer

00:50:55.200 uh the meek those who are downtrodden um it's a celebration of

00:51:02.840 victimhood 1.00

00:51:05.260 and a promise

00:51:07.540 that one day

00:51:08.720 their God would

00:51:11.620 flip the scales

00:51:13.880 and that the greatest

00:51:15.760 will be made least and the least be made

00:51:17.860 greatest

00:51:18.480 that upheaval is literally

00:51:21.580 the promise of social Marxism

00:51:23.920 and the current

00:51:25.680 that we still see

00:51:26.820 recently very

00:51:29.660 disturbingly with progressivism

00:51:32.300 And it runs very counter to Alcitru and the faith of many people who are not, I was going to say monotheistic, but I don't even mean that.

00:51:47.180 I just specifically mean Christian.

00:51:49.200 this was covered and kind of downplayed quite a bit because in order to convert Europe among other

00:52:01.880 places there had to be an appeal to the warrior elite and to the winners and to the victorious

00:52:07.900 and you ended up with some very odd depiction of like mighty warlord Jesus and his warrior

00:52:15.660 thanes in his battle retinue to sell that to the princes and kings of europe

00:52:25.500 but over time and the more authentically christian european christianity became the more that

00:52:33.980 undercurrent of as you say cultural marxism and progressivism took hold and i think it was a slow

00:52:44.860 rot to our folk soul i think that's two-pronged i think the information information the values

00:52:51.820 the messaging was toxic and a poison to our folk that took centuries to fully manifest

00:52:59.740 but i also think that's doubled by the severing of our trough with the icr by breaking our bonds 0.94

00:53:11.020 and our ancestors betraying and turning their backs on our gods not only did they have this 0.75

00:53:17.980 horrible influence from something toxic but they didn't have the safe haven the protection

00:53:23.980 and the strength that comes through standing loyal to the ice here and that double hit

00:53:31.340 has caused the immense soul sickness that produces the uh the tick tock fatties that

00:53:38.540 you talked about earlier as just one of those symptoms i want to disagree on the small detail

00:53:45.500 i think um i don't think it's so much christianity as it is the lack of ositru that set the stage for

00:53:53.580 cultural marcus marxism and progressivism i think that buddhism for example would have had a very

00:53:59.500 similar negative effect on our people if it had been that because there's this core of world

00:54:05.260 rejecting um worldview that's in there um and that um you know that that this glorification

00:54:16.620 of being impoverished in this life for example um that is i think kind of at the the root of what

00:54:24.620 you were talking about there ashore goethi matt i think it's it's the same i don't know that it's

00:54:29.820 christianity specifically because you know i i agree that christianity um you know it's basically

00:54:35.900 a deception on our folk and that you know the only people who really have any business being

00:54:41.100 christians would be you know like jews for jesus because that's who the messiah was for um

00:54:49.740 but that um you know i think we see things in in in the east you know maybe this is more you

00:54:55.340 know pure marxism but i think that it leads to these things if even if they haven't gotten there

00:54:59.500 yet um you know in in vietnam or in china for example where you know they have very marxist

00:55:05.820 societies that i think could be headed that way if uh taken to their their logical conclusions

00:55:13.180 and that they you know had relatively minimal christian influences but there were influences

00:55:18.220 by other world rejecting um religion and face faiths that maybe um had the same effect on them

00:55:25.100 that Christianity has had on us.

00:55:33.260 Yeah, and that's why I was mentioning the dual thing.

00:55:36.880 It happened to take the form of Christianity,

00:55:39.380 but as Cliff said, if it was Buddhism,

00:55:41.000 it would have been very similar.

00:55:43.160 And I think that it matches really well

00:55:44.980 with tonight's theme talking about

00:55:46.620 how it's true as a living faith.

00:55:48.860 One of the implications of that

00:55:51.460 is that our faith is played out here in our lives

00:55:56.160 as a significant part of existence

00:56:01.440 and something that the Aesir are concerned with

00:56:04.740 and not just a distant afterlife that's unconnected.

00:56:11.580 It is literally something that we are participating in

00:56:15.740 in an active and meaningful way during this life

00:56:20.060 And there are, you know, rewards and benefits and blessings for that in this life.

00:56:28.040 So many other faiths, so many other universal faiths are world rejecting in the way that Cliff described, in the way that I mentioned earlier about Christianity. 0.97

00:56:41.280 There is a narrative that the world is bad, that the world is suffering, and modern Hinduism shares a lot of that as well.

00:56:48.440 whereas I don't think that Vedic Hinduism did in the same way. 0.89

00:56:54.240 Just this idea that life is terrible and something to be escaped

00:56:59.020 or something to be avoided or cloistered away from

00:57:05.320 or whatever that might mean, in Asatru,

00:57:09.260 we want our people to be actively engaged in life,

00:57:14.180 actively engaged in the world in the events and the things of their time that matter constantly

00:57:21.720 a force of nobility and of good in the world and the time that they live in their their sagas are

00:57:29.980 played out in the world and not in a you know an afterlife and this is part of something i've

00:57:36.900 mention too is a very important contrast in Christianity and perhaps in other

00:57:43.500 faiths as well there's an emphasis on salvation and salvation through the

00:57:54.720 benevolence of a higher power disconnected in part or in

00:58:01.680 christianity's case wholly from your own worth and value um in also true we don't have a concept

00:58:10.880 of you need to be saved but you are elevated and blessed and celebrated in proportion

00:58:20.960 to your deeds and to your accomplishments your victories matter your actions matter it's not

00:58:29.600 throwing all of that at the at the feet of a perhaps merciful perhaps not deity it's winning

00:58:38.960 respect and making the icr proud of you and making them proud to acknowledge you as one of theirs

00:58:47.360 and that's a real fundamental difference but i think it factors a lot into

00:58:51.920 the nature of also true being a living faith we're forging our relationship daily

00:58:59.060 with our gods through our deeds and through active things on our part

00:59:07.580 so what do we got next all right next one is from rachel and i believe spawn answered a lot of it

00:59:24.080 in the chat room but i think for our listeners it's a good question uh if we do not know for

00:59:30.420 certain all the names of the Iser, how do we recognize them as such? We celebrate Nerthus

00:59:36.580 and Ostara, but are they Iser? Is Prekta or Frauhola what determines belonging to that

00:59:46.240 specific pantheon? And to clear up a couple of things for a second, you just mentioned

00:59:55.040 names those names indicate existence and that gives us something to go on what i think is more

01:00:02.320 of the point isn't how many things that we might not have it's allowing for the possibility and the

01:00:08.240 near certainty that some of those names are lost to time and perhaps some of those names are yet

01:00:15.520 to come into existence um we know the ice ear that we are devoted to worship towards

01:00:25.600 now as fawn was talking about in the in the chat room we also include the osvanir

01:00:34.320 and the him and further the heavenly wardens so the osvanir are the loved ones of the gods ones

01:00:43.680 that have through marriage and through relationship given their loyalty to the iser and been and become

01:00:53.360 part of the iser compound when we talk about the iser in its broadest sense it extends to

01:01:03.120 godly beings within our cosmic order of things and that extends a little bit beyond

01:01:12.000 the the core tribe of the israel um we know them as they reveal themselves to us be them be it

01:01:24.400 through archaeological understanding be it through being blessed by insight and as we develop and

01:01:32.400 forge those relationships we build those kind of bonds it's one of the reasons we

01:01:37.280 pay particular emphasis to the gilfaginning because it lists there very clearly at least

01:01:46.280 at the time of its writing the gods and goddesses that were good for us to worship

01:01:53.120 the iser and the asenior that were good for us to worship and it lists

01:01:58.160 Allfather Odin, Thor, Baldr, Freyr, Njordr, Bragi, Heimdottler, Ullr, Forseti, Vowli, and Vidar.

01:02:20.480 And also it lists the great goddesses of our folk, Lady Freya and Mother Frigg.

01:02:28.160 along with Frigg's handmaidens who serve her and are in her court.

01:02:38.600 So we do know quite a bit of them, and those are where we're focusing our worship.

01:02:43.340 And then we learn and build relationship with the others as they make themselves known to us.

01:02:52.720 And we're always in that process of wanting to make sure we give proper worship to our gods and our goddesses, especially those that perhaps have been forgotten.

01:03:02.580 And the other thing to consider, and we, and our Gothar spend time on, on contemplating this too, our faith is expressed by a lot of different related cultures within Europe over the span of thousands of, you know, thousands of years and matching up linguistic differences to see where overlap is, is really important too.

01:03:32.580 you have anything to add on that clip yeah sure um i think it's important to specify that when i

01:03:38.260 was speaking about this earlier i was definitely referring to the aesir in the broader sense

01:03:43.540 um of the um the deities and entities that are aligned with the cosmic order of the aesir that

01:03:51.940 was set by odin so that would include a lot of the gods and goddesses that um you know maybe

01:03:59.940 were were localized um it would include all of the the vanir who were unified with the aesir

01:04:08.900 after um the the aesir vanir war and the exchanging of hostages um and and like

01:04:17.860 ashir gothi matt talked about and and what was a really um important in some of the initial

01:04:23.940 points i was making when talking about how we can't even name all of our gods is that you know

01:04:32.740 so we don't we we don't really understand cosmic time or mythic time the way you know the time

01:04:39.140 scale on which our our gods and goddesses operate um and you know we we know that it's cyclic but

01:04:46.100 that they probably don't exist in the same time that that we do um but you know you know thor

01:04:54.420 like to use the thor's son's example right so so magni and modi are the sons of thor so you know

01:05:02.260 to to my understanding as as a human as a as a gothi of the of the acer of the austria folk

01:05:08.740 assembly that makes them you know of the same type of being as thor you know maybe not as great as

01:05:15.700 thor yet but over time whatever that means to the gods um you know the the idea would be as a parent

01:05:26.900 that thor would be nurturing them to you know ideally be greater than he currently is you know

01:05:34.340 to to to consider continue ascension whatever that means to uh a deity like thor and then that

01:05:42.820 by implication i think means that um that magmi and modi would have that same capability one day

01:05:49.460 and that for we humans that the the pious approach is to understand that you know if

01:05:59.620 magmi or modi had their aesir man-making we would not necessarily be notified of that

01:06:06.740 and that if they took a bride we would not necessarily be notified of that and that if

01:06:11.940 they then had a son and then therefore thor had a grandchild we would not be notified about that

01:06:17.780 necessarily and so that there's a a continuing stream of life that our our gods and goddesses

01:06:26.020 have um you know we we certainly believe that they are capable of of creating life they are

01:06:32.660 i mean they are divine after all so i i think that leaves open the possibility that there

01:06:40.180 could be new aesir created that we simply are unaware of yet which is where you know we talk

01:06:47.540 about revelation the the the revelation of the aesir to us not only can we learn about our gods

01:06:59.780 by meditation and and by study and so perhaps we gain some insight into odin or thor that we didn't

01:07:07.300 have before um sometimes that's called universe uh unverified personal gnosis which is just for

01:07:14.660 an individual until maybe many people have the same unverified personal gnosis and it becomes a

01:07:21.700 more um you know a more widespread type of of revelation from the acr um and that's that's

01:07:32.980 sort of the you know the the point of what i was driving it at is that um we don't know what we

01:07:40.260 don't know and i think it would be um inappropriate and and um very prideful for us to not account

01:07:50.820 for the the possibility that the if the acer the in the broad sense are are more than what we know

01:07:58.980 and that and to discount the possibility of them growing beyond the ones that we do know

01:08:18.980 just thinking on that um before we move on i'd like to acknowledge uh tyler

01:08:26.500 m hall bought us a coffee thank you so much tyler that is a five dollar donation to the astro folk

01:08:33.220 assembly thank you we appreciate your generosity appreciate all of you that donate if you want to

01:08:38.660 do the buy us a coffee thing it's in the description of this uh this broadcast um

01:08:46.820 So the next question up is, Matt, why is that Jotun painted alongside Thor in the Hoth depicted as a Swarli foreigner when many of the Aesir have significant Jotun heritage?

01:09:06.440 Shouldn't Jotunar be depicted by the AFA as white?

01:09:12.860 Right. So Svan corrected this or spoke on this in the in the chat room.

01:09:20.060 But for those of you listening, I want to rephrase what or I don't know, paraphrase what Svan said, maybe add a little bit on that.

01:09:31.620 So. If you look, he's not a different ethnicity, like a different race of people, he's not like a black guy or something.

01:09:42.860 The Jotun in that particular depiction is displaying, and you see this a lot in lore and in epic poetry, nobility comes through in physical characteristic as well.

01:10:05.460 A person, often a hero, one of the gods, will be particularly bright and particularly gleaming their skin with bright, brilliant hair and piercing blue eyes and a nobleness of bearing of hue.

01:10:29.120 and that extends the entire image the entire hammer of that being and villains quite the 0.73

01:10:39.440 opposite even if they're white guys they're dark and they're they're brooding and they're

01:10:45.620 they have a darkness about them they have an ashen hue to their skin as opposed to

01:10:51.900 the gleaming skin of Asa Thor in this. They have a different bearing displaying

01:11:00.980 less brilliant, less highly prized, less noble appearance. As we mentioned in a previous episode,

01:11:12.480 But so folks realize one of the interesting and unique things about Alcetru is our soul complex.

01:11:25.620 It's not just that there is the body and separate from that is your soul.

01:11:31.520 Within Ausatru, your soul, that which makes you you, is made up of many different components.

01:11:42.100 One of them is the hammer or the visual effect that you project from your being.

01:11:49.460 And also one of those is the leak or the physical body or literally your physical body that you inhabit.

01:11:58.120 And that's reflected too in the art. 0.51

01:12:00.620 but if you look at the art it's it's clearly you know a white guy he's just not as white as

01:12:08.620 the gleaming white alsa thor but also it was modeled after a particular you know a particular

01:12:17.740 white person as the model of it so it was never conceived of as being um like a human of a 0.88

01:12:24.940 different race but more to point out the the darkness and the negativity of that that yoten

01:12:32.300 soul in contrast to the bright noble bravery of us the thorn picture um

01:12:46.220 nick asks what are the keys to working within the structure of living aussitry

01:12:51.420 how do we best incorporate it into our lives and advance it forward cliff what would you say to that

01:12:58.880 daily devotion i think is important and i don't just mean making daily offerings to

01:13:11.600 your ancestors and to the gods and i don't just mean um having a a meditative practice um i mean

01:13:21.500 you need to be asatru all the time so you need to share that with yourself first and foremost

01:13:29.940 you need to make sure that you are honest with yourself all the time which is you know probably

01:13:37.160 an impossible task but you got to try um you you need to you know see our natural world and our

01:13:49.640 man-made world for for what it is you know there are there's there's both good and bad in it and

01:13:55.520 there are truths built into the world that we can recognize to inform ourselves spiritually

01:14:01.760 um i think that it's important that we connect with our folk on a regular basis um you know if

01:14:13.220 if you're fortunate like i and you're you know you your family you know my my wife and my children

01:14:19.740 are are also true that um you make that part of your your daily going on in some way um

01:14:29.280 as i mentioned that doesn't necessarily have to be that there's an offering every day

01:14:32.640 or that there's a meditation every day although those things are good if you can do that certainly

01:14:37.440 do um but that um you know in in speaking with with my children in particular i try to relate

01:14:44.800 everything back to our folk and to asatru in some way um you know i talked in the very beginning

01:14:53.520 about you know the the signs of spring i really try to encourage my children to see you know the

01:15:01.600 joy in the world that we get and you know when it's when it comes time for fall we'll be looking

01:15:07.440 for things like that because we're always excited about the season that's yet to come right um but

01:15:13.520 but to you know to encourage them to and and this is something we should do ourselves i oftentimes

01:15:19.520 talk about it in things i encourage my children to do but these are all good things for me to do

01:15:23.840 and for you to do as well um to to embrace the world as as good and and as a place that can

01:15:36.480 can teach us about truth and to to make sure that we are not personally separated from it

01:15:41.840 you know take care of yourself physically take care of yourself mentally take care of the world

01:15:46.720 around you physically and spiritually you know if you're if you're able to go and you know clean up

01:15:54.480 a park do that if you are able to have a garden or a hobby farm do that if you are a hunter or a

01:16:03.040 fisherman or you know whatever other kind of outdoors activity do that um i'd encourage you

01:16:11.760 to build something that could be anything um you know it it could be a tradition in your family

01:16:20.000 it could be you know a structure on your property um you know again things um such as

01:16:28.960 you know gardening or farming or art all of these things are are ways to

01:16:36.320 to not only make Asa Shoe real for you, but to make Asa Shoe real for those around you,

01:16:43.940 because those of our folk who, you know, who observe you or who know you will see the things

01:16:50.420 that you're doing and will, you know, hopefully ask you about them, which gives you the invitation

01:16:55.900 to tell them why you do the things that you do and why you think certain things are important.

01:17:02.240 you know why why do you think that removing trash from a park is important you know and it's because

01:17:09.680 we we're blessed with this beautiful world that the god's made for us so you know we we should

01:17:15.840 care for it why do you take care of yourself physically because you were blessed with that

01:17:22.000 and if you don't take care of it then you won't be able to exert your will into the world and you

01:17:27.520 You know, do your part to help the Aesir in whatever small measure you're able to in maintaining order in the cosmos, in the universe.

01:17:36.120 The little part we can affect, it matters in the long run.

01:17:40.120 And it matters to other people.

01:17:43.000 And I think it matters to our ancestors and to our gods because, you know, cumulatively, all these little things, they build up a lot.

01:17:51.760 And I think that's one of the reasons the Ashtore Folk Assembly has been so successful, because it is something that starting with founder McNallan and Alshir Gauthier Flavel and so many others along the way and currently and in the future have, you know, brick by brick, mile by mile put together.

01:18:13.760 together and any one of those people would have had less of an impact than than all of us together

01:18:23.520 and some of the impact those people make would have been you know greater than others but

01:18:28.000 it all stacks up and it's it's really important um and and and talk to the gods and talk to

01:18:37.200 your ancestors you know be be respectful it's going to be a different conversation

01:18:41.600 with uh with a deity than it would be with your ancestors your tone should you know be a little

01:18:48.280 different um with your ancestors you probably know the tone to take with the uh with with the

01:18:55.780 acer um you know piety and respect i think is always good advice

01:19:02.300 yeah i mean i think that nick your question is a good question it's also a exponentially

01:19:13.840 broad question because there's lots of right ways to do it there's also lots of wrong ways to do it

01:19:22.220 kind of starting where cliff left off and working my way back

01:19:29.120 Piety is always a great default option. When in doubt, be truthful and pious. If you rely on piety and honesty, that is a really good default setting.

01:19:53.040 when you're approaching being Alcetru,

01:19:58.420 when you're approaching interacting with the gods,

01:20:02.540 with the ancestors,

01:20:04.420 keeping those things as hallmarks

01:20:08.260 in how you live your life will do you well.

01:20:16.300 Part of living Alcetru is, again,

01:20:19.580 and I think it's worth reiterating

01:20:20.920 for um for all of us to be reminded but also for first-time listeners also true

01:20:29.880 yes it really it means belief in the icier if you look it up but if you look up the etymology

01:20:36.600 that belief is based on the concept of trough of trusting in of putting your faith in and being

01:20:45.400 true and loyal to.

01:20:51.340 And that is a reciprocal thing. 0.94

01:20:54.600 It means true to or loyal to the Iseer. 0.94

01:20:59.320 And that is an action.

01:21:00.800 It's not a passive setting.

01:21:03.520 It's something that you do every day by choosing to stand with them.

01:21:08.580 something I would say is develop a mindset to where you base your decision-making in part

01:21:19.440 upon that trough what act when in doubt when in question will an action

01:21:27.420 be in line with that loyalty to the Aesir.

01:21:36.000 As I mentioned earlier, the Aesir want to be proud of us.

01:21:42.180 We honor them by being great.

01:21:45.940 We honor them by excelling.

01:21:49.500 they are better honored by heroes than by villains or by those that are not accomplished

01:21:59.100 we honor them by making the very best of ourselves and a big part of that

01:22:04.380 is when you wear a hammer when you're also true and that defines who you are

01:22:09.660 are you are their representative here in Midgar you are the person that people see just like it

01:22:21.180 pains Cliff and I even though we have no kinship to the fat strange-haired uh tick-tock quote 0.94

01:22:30.660 quote, Norse pagan, they're putting themselves out there at that is damaging to the overall

01:22:40.620 fame of us, our faith, and the Aesir themselves. We want to glorify them, and we best do that by 1.00

01:22:50.660 when people see pictures of us and say, those guys are Ausatru, does that elevate the Aesir

01:22:59.240 and our ancestors or is it a cause for them to be ashamed considering that not just in our appearance

01:23:06.600 but in how we act you are also true when you interact with your neighbors you're also true

01:23:13.880 when you interact with your spouse when you interact with your children

01:23:18.440 you're also true when you interact with your co-workers does that interaction bring glory

01:23:25.560 to the isera and our ancestors or does it make them cringe or does it bring them shame living

01:23:34.680 your life that way matters another thing that i think is extremely important is considering

01:23:44.120 legacy in the next generation. There is a, among some Alistair that I have known in my time doing

01:23:56.460 this, there is a feeling like, no, we're just going to stay in this, you know, backyard group

01:24:02.500 and it's good enough for me and my four buddies and that's all there is. And bully for you that

01:24:10.880 it's good enough for you and your four buddies, is it good enough for the Aesir? Are you building 0.96

01:24:17.800 something that will be greater and better for our children and them to practice Ausatru?

01:24:25.820 I believe an obligation that we have living Ausatru is to move this forward to where the

01:24:34.800 next generation when you say also true people don't say huh people know what that means and

01:24:43.500 they know what that means in a good way for us to have more Hoffs and places for our children

01:24:51.100 together and play under the watchful eye of the Iser and to grow into men and women fathers and

01:24:59.580 mothers in that place giving worship throughout their lives to our gods that's done when we live

01:25:07.720 intentionally to provide that and pass that down to those who come after us i think we also do that

01:25:14.220 by remembering and honoring our heroes and those who've come before us making sure that their name

01:25:21.120 is spoken with reverence and with praise and with celebration in years to come

01:25:26.480 remembering and telling the tale is a big part of our obligation in living ausitry i think some of

01:25:37.300 the next part comes in uh next follow-up question he says how does that look different uh for the

01:25:46.660 member as a layman versus those in gothic ordinance cliff what are your thoughts that way

01:25:53.480 well um the the biggest responsibility that is given to our gothar is the maintenance of the

01:26:07.140 gift cycle between the gods and the folk um with you know capital g and capital f

01:26:14.480 We have a sacred responsibility to bring the truth and to bring the gifts, the sacrifices of the folk to the Aesir and to accept whatever blessings the Aesir see fit to bestow on us that they find us worthy of.

01:26:43.120 and to bring those back to the folk.

01:26:49.920 There are other responsibilities that we have that are very important.

01:26:54.760 Presiding over Sambal is one of them.

01:27:00.020 Conducting the threshold rights, the rights of initiation, 0.99

01:27:06.640 such as a man or a woman making the naming of a child, 0.81

01:27:11.540 the marriage of a man and a woman and the funeral of someone who's passed on are are all very

01:27:21.980 important but the the maintenance of the gift cycle in blue is the the highest of them if we

01:27:28.300 had to choose one and could only do one it would have to be maintaining the gift cycle because

01:27:33.560 without that the rest of it breaks down um there are other responsibilities outside of um

01:27:44.120 outside of of holy rights that that are very important that our gothar do uh counseling

01:27:52.040 of our members in any way that they need um whether that's you know some kind of um marriage

01:27:59.160 counseling or grief counseling or um you know anytime our folk find that they need

01:28:07.160 really someone to listen to is mostly what it comes down to but sometimes it's advice

01:28:11.400 sometimes it's guidance sometimes it's being told what they don't want to hear

01:28:20.840 for a lay person i think that is

01:28:22.920 is, for a layperson, it really is about being truthful to yourself and being truthful to others

01:28:33.820 that you encounter. And that may take forms that we don't always think about. For example,

01:28:40.200 and I may make some people angry on this one, I've got to say at least one thing every time I'm on

01:28:44.080 that might make some of our people angry. But if you have children, it is important to

01:28:52.480 actively teach them asitru um if it's good enough for you it's it's good enough for them um i you

01:29:00.660 know i've met people over time not recently so if you think it's you it's probably not but you know

01:29:06.620 reflect on it if if you feel called out um you know there are people who will say things where

01:29:15.420 you know like well you know i'm going to raise my child to kind of determine what's true on their

01:29:20.280 own and you know i want them to to be asa true if they find that it works for them but if they find

01:29:27.000 something else then then i'm okay with that you shouldn't be um you know if you you teach them

01:29:33.800 to read you're not just like well you know i'm gonna see if my kid wants to read and if they 0.82

01:29:38.300 don't that's cool too no that's dumb and wrong and we should absolutely teach our children what 0.93

01:29:46.400 is correct what is the correct religion for them um we should teach them uh the you know we should 0.96

01:29:55.040 teach them the eddas we should teach them as much as we can um about asa true and about how to

01:30:01.600 practice asa true and about how frankly to be better asa truers than we in our generation can be

01:30:10.080 um yeah so i i don't subscribe to the i mean we should indoctrinate them and doctrine is just

01:30:19.840 another word for teach it's not a bad thing as long as what you're teaching is good so um that's

01:30:26.760 you know that's the basis of of cultural uh memory and of uh of tradition and of um of many things

01:30:36.060 in particular religion so that's that's something the lay person should absolutely do

01:30:41.180 if they don't have children or in addition to their children they should do the same things for

01:30:45.580 members of their family um it's different when you're talking to someone who is your

01:30:51.100 your peer or your elder but uh again if it's good enough for you it's good enough for them

01:30:58.380 if they are your family or your folk and you consider them a friend and you care about their

01:31:02.940 well-being then you should show them why also true is healthy for them and a lot of that like

01:31:11.420 i talked about before is in the example that you set for them being happy with your life

01:31:18.700 and doing constructive and productive things on a daily basis is a big part of that because

01:31:25.180 lecturing doesn't always work right but when you have those opportunities to actively talk about

01:31:32.220 also true which doesn't always mean that they're the ones who brought it up sometimes it's you're

01:31:37.100 allowed to bring it up um you know when when someone says merry christmas to you and you say

01:31:43.100 yuletide greetings back and they give you a funny look you can continue with that conversation about

01:31:49.660 why you know you got to keep the yule and yuletide it's okay to do that um you got to have some tact

01:31:57.900 you know you don't want to be a bore about it you gotta you know you want to win success victory

01:32:03.340 right but so your strategy needs to be important but don't be afraid of that sort of thing and

01:32:10.460 i gave this advice to a young man who who had his man-making at um at njortsov

01:32:17.820 just uh last month at charming of the plow um you know if you ever aren't sure what the right

01:32:24.140 decision is it's the hard one um you know i think a lot of people a lot of people kind of will fret

01:32:32.340 and say like you know i don't know what to do and i don't believe them i think it's really that

01:32:37.420 they're afraid of doing the right thing and they're trying to talk themselves out of it and

01:32:41.480 they want someone to give them an excuse they're going to come to you and like i don't know what

01:32:45.000 to do how about the easy thing and they want you to say yeah do the easy thing man and that's

01:32:49.940 That's not good for them. It's very rarely that the easier thing is the right thing because we're afraid of doing right.

01:32:59.860 A lot of times, I think, because there are consequences for it.

01:33:05.280 So, yeah, you know, act truthfully. Don't act out of fear.

01:33:09.600 act out of courage and be an active example to our folk of what we already know is right for them

01:33:22.080 so that's a again i'm gonna i'm gonna go from

01:33:26.640 from where he left off and kind of backtrack on my response answers or whatever

01:33:31.280 all of our virtues and values only take substance with con with consequence or the potential of

01:33:48.200 consequence when it's easy okay so this may not seem like it relates but it does bear with me

01:33:57.840 we have mutated the concept of good men in society a lot

01:34:10.020 and it's been mentioned by a number of different people in recent years

01:34:16.920 and i think it's really important to reiterate that's kind of a

01:34:22.300 oh he's a good guy is he though when we say that you're a good guy quote unquote good guy

01:34:33.880 if you're not mean if you don't like hurt people if you're nice and easy to get along with 0.51

01:34:45.700 if that's your coping mechanism because you are feeble and do not possess any character and you're

01:34:55.660 just easy to get along with with whoever dude that breaks in your house dude that wants to 0.97

01:35:00.580 steal your wife from you dude that you know wants to hurt your children you being nice and easy

01:35:08.060 going and like that doesn't make you a good man your kindness in a situation where you don't have

01:35:18.300 another option or you will get destroyed that's not virtuous when it becomes virtuous is when you

01:35:26.100 have the ability to meet out great violence on people who cross you and you choose to be nice

01:35:36.760 and you choose to be kind and you choose to do things when there's consequence,

01:35:46.580 when there's things at stake.

01:35:47.860 If you go along with the flow and it's politically popular or socially popular

01:35:52.920 for you to hold a view or a position, and then the second it changes,

01:35:58.120 your positions and deeply held values change with the new political or social wind,

01:36:05.060 that's not virtuous.

01:36:06.760 It's easy to hold the same values as everybody else around you with no consequence.

01:36:15.660 It's difficult to take an unpopular stance because you know it's the right stance.

01:36:23.540 It's difficult to be the one person who stands up for what they know is right when you are the one who everyone looks at funny.

01:36:34.980 or you are the one that possibly bears scrutiny from your peers.

01:36:41.680 Those things are important that we do the right thing,

01:36:44.840 even if we're the only ones doing it,

01:36:47.860 and that we show that example to our children

01:36:51.200 and to our brothers and sisters that may be flagging in their courage,

01:36:57.360 that we show an example of courage and an example of honor and dignity

01:37:01.240 to our peers for them to learn from.

01:37:04.980 i'm really glad that cliff mentioned our duty as parents because that goes into the legacy thing i

01:37:13.860 spoke about but from a different direction in a way it is your job as a parent to instruct your

01:37:22.820 children in the things that you believe are good for them and right if you abdicate that responsibility

01:37:31.460 that is wrong um sure let them pick what sport they like let them pick what flavor of ice cream

01:37:40.560 they prefer those things are of no consequence but your choice in religion your choice in core

01:37:48.880 values of the things that make you who you are it's a parent's job to instill those in their

01:37:58.700 children that's should go without saying but it has become unpopular to say so um

01:38:09.500 please keep that in mind and you know husbands it's your job to show spiritual leadership in

01:38:19.980 your family and to bring your family to troth with the ice here and to provide also true parents and

01:38:31.900 an also true environment to raise your house of true children to give you one day also true

01:38:38.380 grandchildren and move this forward that's the job of any person with sincere conviction

01:38:44.620 is to share and build their household around that and pass that into the future

01:38:52.140 and those are things that should go without saying but in today's world they often don't

01:38:58.300 go back to nick's question he asked how these things look different from a layman to a gothi

01:39:05.500 and as a layman you should do lots of these things as a gothi you are

01:39:16.900 specifically you have taken on the mantle voluntarily that you are going to do these

01:39:24.520 things and the weight is on you because you have risen to a higher level of trough with

01:39:32.800 is here and more is expected of you as a gothi these things are each individually your job to

01:39:40.720 do and to provide and if you don't you are accountable for your lack of doing

01:39:48.640 as cliff mentioned that fundamental is the gift cycle but it takes a lot of forms

01:39:54.400 certainly it takes bloat but it also takes any kind of devotional worship between folk

01:40:02.800 and their gods, and the core of Arian priesthood is being a bridge

01:40:16.580 between man and the divine, and between divine and the congregants.

01:40:24.540 As Gothard, it is our job to convey the blessings and the teachings

01:40:32.620 and the wisdom of the Aesir to our folk.

01:40:37.860 And it is our job to facilitate the exchange of gifts

01:40:42.600 between our folk and the Aesir

01:40:45.320 and to maintain that eternally. 1.00

01:40:50.620 That must and need be done.

01:40:54.360 As Gothard, it's also the responsibility

01:40:57.280 to build, nourish, and shape the institutions

01:41:02.720 that push AUSA True into the future

01:41:07.800 and provide it for our following generations

01:41:11.520 through work in preserving our history,

01:41:15.900 in building our AFA membership,

01:41:20.060 in building and managing the Hoffs

01:41:22.780 of the AUSA True Folk Assembly,

01:41:24.340 of consulting on and depending on your position,

01:41:29.960 developing the positions and the doctrine of the Asatru Folk Assembly moving forward.

01:41:37.540 Those things are fundamentally important,

01:41:42.320 and this ties back in with the idea of Asatru as a living faith.

01:41:47.300 Our Gothar build what it means to be Asatru and what that looks like.

01:41:54.340 We build and craft Ausatru to maximum relevance in the world that we find ourselves in, and we refine that always.

01:42:07.140 it is our job to make that the best it can be and to incorporate

01:42:15.820 new revelation new understanding and new wisdom newly attained wisdom

01:42:23.840 into that process so also true 10 years from now is better more refined closer to being worthy of

01:42:33.260 our gods than it is today. I will give you the very best of what I have for the remainder of

01:42:41.360 my lifetime to make the Ausatru Folk Assembly the best and most pleasing to the Aesir that I

01:42:49.580 possibly know how to. But I sincerely hope that when I look back beyond the veil 100 years from

01:42:56.540 now the ostrich folk assembly has made great strides and become even better than the best 0.98

01:43:03.660 that i can provide and hopefully that always advances it's our job to make those advancements

01:43:11.500 as go far um next question we have i've heard a lot of new terms today is there a document laying

01:43:20.700 out all the afa theological terms

01:43:29.740 no a great deal of them are laid out in the house of true true luck ball which is

01:43:35.900 at runestone.org and you can download that there and read it that is our

01:43:41.260 um most fundamental statement of what we as a church believe and that has a great deal of the

01:43:51.540 terminology explained in it um there's not a standalone document like deciphering terms but

01:44:01.920 any any member of afa leadership any folk builder any gothar would be very happy to clear up anything

01:44:09.220 that might be confusing to you and i'd encourage you to ask any of us anything at any time and

01:44:15.700 we'd be really happy to to clear any of that up it's a good idea that we should put it on the

01:44:23.300 project list we should nick could you mark that down for us please we have something proto of that

01:44:31.460 internally that we've worked on um finn wraith oh welcome finn it's good to see you uh he asks

01:44:40.260 does it ever happen that someone's children grew up in ousatru and decided they don't believe in

01:44:45.460 ousatru cliff sadly yes i can think of specific examples of that i uh i can't name them here of

01:44:55.540 course that wouldn't be appropriate but um that is a real thing and it is sad um

01:45:02.980 i think that's the thing about raising children we can do everything we can to you know to feed

01:45:09.620 them properly to teach them to exercise to give them a good education both in you know letters

01:45:16.340 and um in runes as it were um you know we can teach them everything that we need to to prepare

01:45:23.380 them for the world but ultimately they are going to make their own decisions when they leave the

01:45:27.540 nest and we may or may not approve of all those decisions and the other thing i think is important

01:45:34.820 to keep in mind is they have a whole lifetime however many days that may be they don't know

01:45:39.940 the answer to that but um you know just because those situations have unfolded doesn't mean that

01:45:44.820 they will never be also true um but yeah um i can i can think of more than one example of that having

01:45:54.260 happened um yeah i think i think that happens in any faith um as cliff mentioned just because

01:46:08.260 someone drifts away doesn't mean they don't return home one of the really important things

01:46:15.780 i think when we're talking about raising children

01:46:20.500 building their childhood full of positive associations and

01:46:28.900 touchstones with your faith so that it's something they look back on fondly

01:46:36.660 and that they see as their home as a as a as a base to come back to we talked earlier in the

01:46:44.500 show it's funny how a lot of these things come full circle but when talking about 0.52

01:46:51.060 you know fatty blue-haired tick-tock norse pagan whatever people go through a period

01:46:58.180 of rebellion and we see it a lot with children where they want to strike out on their own and

01:47:02.420 they you know reject what their parents do not all children do that either but some and there's

01:47:07.700 a tendency to want to separate from their parents and figure out their life on their own terms to a

01:47:16.100 degree i think there's a lot to be done to where that doesn't equal a complete separation but more

01:47:25.540 a natural growing and going out on your own but when you give them those positive touchstones to

01:47:33.940 come back to it makes it a much it's a port in the storm when they go out there on their own

01:47:40.740 and the grass doesn't look greener on the other side for them to have a place to return to

01:47:47.140 that they remember the things that were so valuable about what they had and sometimes

01:47:52.500 they need that separation to really get what they lost we see that with adults who have a crisis of

01:48:01.540 faith and break with also true and and return to christianity or whatever they might do we see a

01:48:08.580 lot of those people come back because they realize the grass isn't green but one thing that's

01:48:14.200 beautiful about also true today as opposed to in the past and i and as i mentioned in the previous

01:48:20.840 comment this is a constant refinement and process of doing this better the early generation of

01:48:29.800 Alcitru didn't do such a great job of incorporating their children a lot of that founding generation

01:48:36.900 of modern Alcitru it's a lot of young men and it was a lot of guys that didn't proactively

01:48:43.900 involve their families and their children in this that we do and a lot of them today very

01:48:50.380 much regret not making that more of a part of the practice in that day and in the last

01:48:57.660 10 15 years in the austral folk assembly we have seen this beautiful surge of of women

01:49:05.500 and children and families coming to the austral folk assembly and also being forged within the

01:49:13.180 house of true folk assembly cliff's family and my family are both really really special examples of

01:49:21.420 that um so uh another question what are the him and brother uh that means heavenly warden

01:49:36.060 those are the gods and goddesses that are

01:49:40.620 associated with turning of the seasons and with, you know, bigger cosmic elements of

01:49:53.340 our existence.

01:49:55.560 Dellinger, Naut, Sunna, or Sol, Mani, Deir, and Ostara being the ones of note.

01:50:08.160 There's a lot of gods in our cosmology that exist outside of the very human relationship that we see the Iser in, that exist in more of a cosmic and a bit more of a distant sense. 0.79

01:50:29.740 and that's an example of those

01:50:32.100 and we list those because

01:50:33.520 it's worthy and good to worship

01:50:36.200 and to honor them

01:50:37.180 but they're not quite the same

01:50:39.900 or in the exact same way

01:50:41.280 as the 12th Aesir

01:50:44.020 and the two Aesir

01:50:46.140 I mentioned earlier

01:50:47.200 and then Matt and Cliff

01:50:51.140 do you have morning rituals or prayers?

01:50:54.020 do you do anything special

01:50:55.100 for Woden's Day Wednesday?

01:50:58.580 Cliff

01:50:58.880 so no and no um i'm much more of a get up and go to work kind of person in the morning

01:51:11.460 where most of my ritual activity focuses is in the evening with my family around supper time

01:51:21.400 that's when we're all together and when we would you know bless our our meal together

01:51:29.600 when we would give an offering to any hero who may have a day of remembrance that day

01:51:38.720 or to the land whites or to our house white or you know it's dynamic it's living

01:51:47.360 um but that's where we would do that sort of thing um although i've always wanted to

01:51:55.360 have more of a specific morning ritual i uh i i would i would require more discipline

01:52:01.280 in my daily routine to do that at this point um it's not to say that i shouldn't um

01:52:08.320 and for um for for rodent's day wednesday um no not in particular um

01:52:17.360 I'll leave it at that.

01:52:20.360 No.

01:52:22.460 So,

01:52:23.660 yeah,

01:52:28.460 there's morning people and there's evening people and I'm,

01:52:33.580 I'm with cliff.

01:52:35.680 I don't know for different reasons or the same or whatnot,

01:52:38.240 but most of my,

01:52:42.320 most of my prayer,

01:52:46.080 time

01:52:48.000 when it's done on my own

01:52:51.240 is done in the evening.

01:52:54.500 And

01:52:54.820 there's plenty of times to do ritual.

01:52:58.360 Coming up and

01:52:59.420 celebrating Ostara,

01:53:01.540 that's 0.97

01:53:03.500 usually something that's done best

01:53:05.280 during the day or even

01:53:06.560 better at the dawn

01:53:08.960 on the equinox.

01:53:11.460 But

01:53:11.860 I find

01:53:14.540 my mind

01:53:18.000 best suited for that in the evening

01:53:22.720 something about like I'm fully there

01:53:27.620 I'm fully awake and fully present and

01:53:30.680 you know dark with candles

01:53:35.440 and stuff is a nice atmosphere

01:53:39.560 for me to really get in the right headspace

01:53:43.780 to do that and it's also i mean it depends on your life or what you what you deal with

01:53:50.180 um my wife mate wakes up early in the mornings and my daughter so she ends up going to bed before i

01:53:58.020 do uh and my daughter wakes me up super early and is you know go go go the second we we get up

01:54:06.180 so at night is the time i have with stillness in my house for me personally just as me not with my

01:54:14.900 family to do any kind of personal prayer or devotional work but i do that a lot and it

01:54:24.500 there's not a lot of song and dance to it um i'll light some incense maybe i'll pour

01:54:31.460 a libation and light some candles and come before the altar and and pray and it depends on what the

01:54:43.620 occasion is sometimes it's to celebrate something sometimes it's very often it's to ask for guidance

01:54:53.500 and for wisdom, it's to check in and assure them that I'm doing my very best

01:55:02.720 and ask their wisdom and their guidance so that I can get my job as a go-fi right

01:55:10.100 and do things in a way that they approve of.

01:55:15.400 I also try to make sure I'm thankful for good things that happen to myself,

01:55:22.120 for my family and the Austro Folk Assembly.

01:55:26.920 Other times, I'll come before the altar and reach out to one of my ancestors

01:55:31.660 if I want their guidance on something particular

01:55:37.680 or if it's a special time to remember them

01:55:41.180 or just if I miss them and I want to reach out.

01:55:44.480 So that's what I do, but again, it's in the evenings.

01:55:48.280 I don't do anything special on Wednesday.

01:55:52.120 um there's absolutely nothing wrong with that it's a really neat kind of immediate association

01:56:03.020 thing to find days of the week that specifically and overtly correspond to our gods and worship

01:56:11.880 them specifically on those days that's awesome that's wonderful if that's what you do

01:56:16.980 that's just never been my thing um i reach out to gods individually as

01:56:28.020 the moment calls for or as the the need or the situation warrants many times multiple gods and

01:56:40.480 goddesses at the same, you know, during the same session of approaching the Aesir and approaching

01:56:46.840 my altar. So it doesn't have to be anything fancy. If you have something more fancy that you do,

01:56:54.380 that's great. What I think, and I'll go back to what we said earlier, the default of piety and

01:57:01.680 honesty are so very fundamental. There's a lot of cool stuff you can probably do that might be

01:57:09.680 very impressive to the gods i mean maybe if you have a special poem or if you have a special song

01:57:19.200 that you do or any number of things that you do and that's great fundamentally though in order

01:57:29.520 for it to be of value in my understanding the piety and the honesty and opening of of your heart

01:57:39.680 so piety honesty and openness if you go before your altar and you're just saying stuff because

01:57:46.800 you're supposed to maybe that's a good step for your very first step

01:57:55.360 but quickly after that for you to get any result you have to open yourself to be receiving of

01:58:01.840 you know they're part of the gift cycle so when you go before your altar speak honestly

01:58:10.320 and be open to what happens don't be full of expectation or demand of what happens

01:58:17.520 but be open be receptive be honest and be pious and i think the rest will evolve from there in a

01:58:25.280 good way um i got a couple of more questions coming in so

01:58:39.680 That's a two-parter.

01:58:44.020 On the topic of living Alcitru, can you touch on the importance of practicing Alcitru in a very experiential way rather than taking too much from a scholarly approach to Alcitru, which makes it into a head game rather than something that is experienced?

01:59:02.480 Absolutely.

01:59:03.500 Cliff, do you want to start with that?

01:59:06.340 This question is what this entire episode is about, right?

01:59:09.680 yes so first i want to um emphasize that knowing your runes um studying our lore um you know all of

01:59:22.160 the book learning that you can do about asatru is very important but you can be asatru without

01:59:31.360 any of that if you you know like like ashir gothimat talked about if if all of that had been

01:59:37.440 lost if we didn't know any runes and we didn't know any poems and you know you woke up out of

01:59:45.840 like a cryogenic chamber you know 3 000 years from now and there was nothing your

01:59:52.640 internal spirituality if you are if you were truthful with yourself about who you are and

02:00:03.500 what you experience in the world would lead you to us true um it would look very different than

02:00:10.620 what we do today in the 21st century which of course looks very different from what our ancestors

02:00:16.700 did 10 000 years ago um but there's some commonalities the you know the underlying ethics

02:00:22.780 i think would um take very much the same shape some some of that's contextual so you know certain

02:00:31.020 things um would would likely be different but the the core things that matter i think would

02:00:37.340 would really manifest because they're they're inside us and this is kind of what i was talking

02:00:42.540 about earlier about you know being open to observing the natural world and and even the

02:00:50.620 man-made world and you know the parts of it that are good and the parts of it that i don't know i

02:00:56.140 don't want to say bad i think i said bad earlier that's not quite right but that maybe seem cool

02:01:00.780 or or harsh might be a better way to put it um you know that you know that there that

02:01:07.500 there are predators and prey right that um that that all life feeds on other life these things

02:01:15.500 are just true um and being open to that you know taking the time to to reflect on on the importance

02:01:29.420 of of small events something that that people talk about in in many faiths frankly um but in

02:01:37.500 also true in particular is um omens or you know signs um those are those certainly fall into the

02:01:48.700 you know the the unverified personal gnosis category that i talked about earlier but the fact

02:01:53.180 that one observes them at a time when it matters and that they have some significance to you

02:02:01.900 personally and you know in a moment when maybe you needed to see a sign like that whether it was

02:02:08.380 you know affirming or dissuading whatever it might be um be open to those sorts of things and then

02:02:15.800 and also you know have a humility about it don't expect everyone you tell about it to take it as

02:02:21.040 seriously as you did you know you you may see something that changes the course of your entire

02:02:27.940 life and the person you tell about it is going to just say well that just looked like some bird

02:02:32.560 poop on a leaf to me and that's okay it wasn't meant for them it was meant for you I think

02:02:41.740 um you know in an exp in in a more

02:02:51.260 i guess a more a more common way or um

02:03:00.780 when when you are participating in bloat or when you are

02:03:06.540 speaking to your ancestors or when you are meditating or anything like that any sort of

02:03:17.260 devotional practice that that you can engage in to to go into it with little expectation

02:03:26.620 not that you go into it without faith and and without piety just that you that you go into it

02:03:33.500 with um with a humbleness that

02:03:43.900 it's the right way to say this that what you need out of that is not necessarily what you

02:03:48.460 think you need out of it so you know not not every time that you stand and bloat

02:03:56.540 not every time that you make an offering to your ancestors is there going to be

02:04:00.780 some immediate makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up kind of experience and that's

02:04:08.700 perfectly normal um alshagothi matt talked about how when you are at your altar

02:04:15.180 don't just say words because you think you're supposed to um

02:04:21.100 but don't not say them because you don't know what you're supposed to say either

02:04:25.020 i think that going through devotional practice over time can help to build up that relationship

02:04:35.020 um it is it's it it's like charging up something um sometimes we talk about charging up a sacred

02:04:43.820 space and that that happens over a period of time sometimes um you know when we when we

02:04:51.900 establish new hof we dedicate it and we mark it apart from the mundane world and

02:04:59.260 that sets it apart but from from personal experience i know that that process continues

02:05:05.340 as the temple stands and as it's used its power becomes greater because of the energy

02:05:13.180 of the gothar who have made blood on behalf of the folk there because of the folk 0.99

02:05:19.180 who have been there because of you know every child named there every wedding that's been held

02:05:25.020 there these places and and other items um can really manifest and and become imbued with a

02:05:34.140 power that's that's real um and be open to that kind of thing you know i mean even even hearing

02:05:39.900 myself i i you know before i was also true i tended to be quite a a cynic and you know very

02:05:46.140 kind of empirical and some of what i'm saying even still sounds a little hokey to me sometimes

02:05:50.940 um but it's real and i know it's real because i allowed myself to be open to it even if i may

02:05:57.340 um you know have a skeptical nature at heart um

02:06:05.020 i think also that um

02:06:07.580 not discounting the the things that other people say share stories with other ossaroo folk um be

02:06:18.740 open to things that people say that maybe you know you don't have to believe what they say

02:06:24.920 necessarily but it's important to recognize that they believe it you know if somebody says

02:06:29.500 that they had a dream where thor came to them and told them something you don't have to believe

02:06:35.980 that's literally true you can believe that that was just a dream um but recognizing that they

02:06:41.840 believe it and um and being constructive with them about it may lead you down paths that you

02:06:51.320 didn't expect to go um i would don't don't make assumptions make observations i think that is

02:07:04.300 a good way to go in a lot of things.

02:07:11.340 So,

02:07:12.100 what Clif said

02:07:13.840 on all of those things, I think, were really good

02:07:16.180 points. I think I'm going to...

02:07:18.760 I mean, I could parrot

02:07:20.200 all of those. I think the openness

02:07:22.280 is really important.

02:07:25.660 It's also

02:07:26.260 important to...

02:07:28.420 Okay, a couple of things

02:07:29.780 that relate to the question and some that may

02:07:32.300 not, but I think are good to say.

02:07:34.300 When you come to Ausatru, you should be very cautious of allowing preconceptions to determine your practice of our faith. 1.00

02:07:54.440 Our gods don't expect or want you to be stupid. 1.00

02:08:04.300 They don't want you to be irrational or gullible or foolish. 1.00

02:08:14.500 And so you having skepticism of things sometimes, there's a place for that.

02:08:23.300 But there's also a, I believe, a requirement to do this right, that you have an openness.

02:08:31.560 As Cliff said, maybe it's just a dream.

02:08:35.060 But there needs to be a part in your head that says, but I'm open to it, not me.

02:08:41.000 Maybe it was genuinely Thor communicating.

02:08:45.660 And when your mind closes off possibility, that's when you start really distancing yourself from the divine.

02:08:56.760 You don't need to believe everybody's story about everything.

02:09:00.980 In fact, you shouldn't. 0.75

02:09:01.980 a lot of them are liars or lunatics there's also a lot of very sober very 0.52

02:09:09.740 well-reasoned um serious people that have profound experience in their life 0.78

02:09:17.980 that they want to share and maybe the way that we communicate those things

02:09:22.140 you know i learned this i learned this bouncing again it seems like strange deviation but it's

02:09:33.120 it's relevant when we get new guys when you would report an incident to the police

02:09:40.220 because you didn't in that industry you interact with police often

02:09:45.780 how you characterize things makes the entire difference between the bad guy going to jail

02:09:55.900 or you going to jail. Even if the facts are exactly the same, the way you characterize

02:10:03.140 an experience makes all of the difference. And I say going to jail, maybe in a trial process,

02:10:11.540 that's different but going away and getting arrested that goes on depends on what you say

02:10:19.540 and how you say it and what those words mean because again you can completely honestly

02:10:26.740 communicate the exact same circumstance depending on your word choice makes all of the difference

02:10:34.180 So sometimes, sometimes you have, sometimes you have a circumstance.

02:10:45.760 One second.

02:10:47.280 so sometimes you'll have a circumstance to where people will express their

02:10:57.940 spiritual occurrence in ways that you might find very grandiose or silly maybe that's just the

02:11:08.720 words they have to describe it because i think when we're trying to describe something that is

02:11:14.520 outside of our normal experience we all grasp the best way to present it and sometimes if somebody

02:11:21.460 is very enthusiastic because they just had something beautiful happen to them they may

02:11:26.300 express it in a way that seems unhinged to you or seems again seems grandiose maybe you would say it

02:11:36.100 in a more cautious way maybe you would present the same experience in a much more measured way

02:11:42.600 It doesn't mean anybody's lying.

02:11:44.720 It just means some people express that. 0.74

02:11:47.080 But back to how to do this in an experiential way and not to be, I don't know, cheated out of your experience by never progressing beyond the scholastic.

02:12:01.900 I think what really needs to be emphasized most is directionality.

02:12:06.180 Our gods have zero obligation to conform to your reading list

02:12:16.740 Or the stuff that some scholar somewhere has posited about the way the gods work

02:12:25.380 That's not how this works

02:12:27.960 The gods work the way the gods work

02:12:32.080 and everything else is us trying to better understand that

02:12:39.660 or build a better connection.

02:12:42.160 Oftentimes, people, and I don't think they do this intentionally,

02:12:50.940 but they project the gods as that which they read about

02:12:57.780 in their source material and the things that they've studied and they project that into a

02:13:07.120 picture of what the gods are supposed to be because some scholar somewhere said so

02:13:15.840 and that doesn't lead to a sincere faith if you don't believe your gods are real and that they

02:13:25.700 exist and have agency and then approach the understanding of them to be just that you reaching

02:13:34.980 up to the gods rather than trying to make them conform to a book you read then your your whole

02:13:44.900 being is oriented in a much better place to understand and grow in aussitry um i've used

02:13:55.220 this analogy before but our faith is about building relationship through interaction

02:14:03.300 it's not just about study study should bring you closer and help you to do the rest better

02:14:15.300 but as cliff said you can have zero study and be also true in an authentic way

02:14:25.220 you can't have zero interaction and be out so true it's the difference between

02:14:35.940 the dude who's never played sports that is a memorized all the stats of football and sits

02:14:44.980 in his you know in his chair at home complaining about all the plays on tv and the guy that's

02:14:51.000 actually out there playing football or the military historian that's been a professor all his life and

02:14:56.760 never been in the military lecturing you about napoleon and napoleon the two things are really

02:15:05.160 really different you can be a scholar on old norse religious practice or on the sociology of

02:15:17.720 of um germanic paganism that does not make you out so true you can be none of those things and

02:15:28.760 just one of our folk who decided to reach up towards the heavens and say i'm here i'm listening

02:15:37.400 here i bring you an offering

02:15:39.000 you know hail odin one of those people is practicing ausitru the other is imminently

02:15:49.660 knowledgeable but isn't ausitru and it's a real big difference and i i'm going at you with all

02:15:57.860 these different little analogies but i think they're they're meaningful you can go on the

02:16:05.520 internet and run credit reports and background checks and you can dig through my wife's garbage

02:16:12.100 and you can do all these things. I can know none of those things, but I'm still married to her and

02:16:18.960 she's still my wife and you're a creepy stalker. Those are similar things. You can learn about

02:16:25.680 Ausatru all you want, but until you go before the gods and make an offering and reach out,

02:16:31.320 You haven't practiced the religion.

02:16:35.200 And if you are going before the altar and reaching out, you are more ausitru than the greatest scholar of any of this subject matter as a scholar.

02:16:50.840 Please keep that in mind that scholasticism is a tool to better understand and bring us closer to the gods.

02:16:58.580 it should never be an impediment to appreciating the glory and the agency that our gods have

02:17:05.920 and that gets misunderstood a lot i think i think it's really important too um most of the books

02:17:15.720 that people will will recommend about also true especially primary sources were not written by

02:17:23.820 also sure um they they are by and large literary or scholastic works sometimes they're archaeological

02:17:30.460 works but um that does not mean they do not have value but um it's important to keep in mind that

02:17:38.460 they you know that the you know the prosetta for example was not a religious document when it was

02:17:46.640 written we're fortunate to have it we get a lot from that but that it was written down by a a

02:17:53.320 christian and that you know sometimes we need to read it as such um so that's something i think

02:18:00.600 that is important to remember about most of the um scholarly scholarly works we we're fortunate

02:18:07.160 that that is becoming less the cases you know people like our founder stephen mcnellen put

02:18:12.320 out works that are actually about also true by an author truer but a lot of the stuff and this

02:18:19.140 includes modern stuff too are not really um not really so much awesome true books as they are

02:18:26.100 books about something that is also true

02:18:28.620 absolutely um okay that leads right into the next question if you're new to all this where do you

02:18:39.600 start cliff what do you suggest all right so if you haven't already the first thing that you do

02:18:44.940 is that you go to runestone.org

02:18:47.680 and you fill out a membership application

02:18:50.320 and we get you hooked up with a local folk builder

02:18:53.020 because you're going to want to meet other folk.

02:18:59.420 That should be your number one priority as a new person.

02:19:04.900 Getting engaged with the folk,

02:19:07.320 finding out what their story is,

02:19:09.920 how did you find Asatru

02:19:11.180 is one of my most fun conversations to have

02:19:13.760 with new and old members alike

02:19:18.120 because the stories are usually something

02:19:20.920 that are really meaningful to the people sharing them.

02:19:25.540 And they're not all the same.

02:19:27.040 You know, it's easy to come into this thinking

02:19:28.440 like everyone went through the same process

02:19:30.900 that you did to get here, you know, but they didn't.

02:19:35.560 People are coming in from all different vectors

02:19:38.180 depending on what, you know, their life story is,

02:19:40.600 what generation they are, and so on.

02:19:43.760 from there i would read our founder's book also true uh native european spirituality it's really

02:19:50.360 important it'll lay out a lot of the basic beliefs that we have and and how many of them

02:19:58.080 are directly applicable to your life and your your practice

02:20:04.160 as far as stories or lore about our gods I not everyone will agree with this and that's fine

02:20:16.160 but I usually recommend that you start with the children's books not because that they are perfect

02:20:21.340 or all-encompassing but because they are easily digestible you know the biggest thing that I

02:20:29.280 you know for some of the books i'll recommend here is that when you read them make sure that

02:20:34.920 you change the tense in your own mind a lot of them are written in the past tense read them in

02:20:39.860 the present tense instead but if you don't know the names of our gods and you don't know 0.94

02:20:46.860 any of the stories of them and you don't want to feel like an idiot when you're a room with

02:20:52.840 other people who do I recommend starting with Dallaire's book of Norse myths it's literally a

02:20:59.340 children's book with big beautiful pictures in it that will help you understand what's being talked

02:21:03.200 about and that'll get you to where you have some basic understanding of who the different gods are

02:21:11.460 and what how they kind of relate to each other another good one last page rip out the last page

02:21:17.640 yeah this is well understand that this is not these are not books that were written by asa truer

02:21:22.580 um and yeah i literally do not read that one to my kids they don't know it exists and i do when

02:21:29.060 i read it to them as like a bedtime story i change the tense as i'm reading it it's not

02:21:33.720 thor it's not thor was it's thor is um i mostly catch myself i haven't i hit you know every once

02:21:42.640 in a while i'll slip and read what's actually on the page um but they're they're it's a good one

02:21:47.460 um to get you know a basic understanding um padrick columns the children of odin is another

02:21:52.520 good one to get an easily digestible form of our our stories um and these are both retellings of

02:22:02.180 the eddas um they're not the eddas themselves but um you know i would suggest the eddas aren't the

02:22:08.660 eddas themselves either because they're all retellings of oral traditions that predated them

02:22:16.500 after that i would move on to the purse edda uh written by by snorris thurlson it's the

02:22:24.420 the younger of the two eddas it's called the younger edda sometimes but it is written in

02:22:30.180 relatively plain english which makes it easier to understand and then after that and i would read

02:22:38.660 read all of it as much as you can. And then when you are ready, go into the poetic edda,

02:22:47.040 which is significantly harder to understand, even in the most friendly of translations.

02:22:52.860 So having that frame of reference, that kind of knowledge base from the other tellings of the

02:22:59.580 eddas will help you in that. It'll make a lot more sense in context than out of context.

02:23:04.600 but most important is the first thing i said you know submit an application to the afa and join

02:23:12.040 or send an email in to your your nearest folk builder or go see or githia and and get involved

02:23:19.880 in person um that'll that will go farther than the rest of anything i said after that

02:23:26.000 everything cliff said with the

02:23:30.360 um everything cliff said with the addition i dipped out for a second because i needed to go

02:23:41.460 and kiss my daughter good night so i may have missed it but i think that the

02:23:47.160 also true true log mall is a really important thing for you to check out first i would say

02:23:54.060 even before anything else because it and again it is it is not perfect uh but with a lot of help

02:24:05.820 from argothar i did the very best i could to lay out the to lay out the fundamentals of our beliefs

02:24:15.820 in a way that would be um accessible to someone who was familiar with also true but also someone

02:24:25.700 who was completely fresh and wasn't and because i put it together with that purpose in mind

02:24:33.540 i think it's well suited to give you kind of a foundation to work from but yes as soon as you can

02:24:45.040 get involved with real people doing this in real life i'm not sure where you are located

02:24:51.440 but if you are in the united states chances are you are close to where you can get together with

02:24:57.200 real alsatruar doing this and that is the most healthy best way to get started

02:25:06.640 also we have members in 11 different countries

02:25:10.720 uh i think 11 in addition to the united states so we could find just someone depending on where

02:25:19.520 you're at but joining and being part that is much closer to how our ancestors did this

02:25:30.560 i get it i love to read i love history i love those things so when i first came home to

02:25:37.280 ausitru i wanted to just jump right in and read all the books and and do that too but

02:25:45.120 our ancestors didn't do that they learned ausitru from their elders from the gothar from the people

02:25:55.920 in their community who were already practicing our faith and it was passed down that way

02:26:01.440 it wasn't go do research or go do study now do all of those things please and cliff's

02:26:09.760 thing about starting with children's books sounds silly but if you genuinely have no other

02:26:15.840 familiarity do that this is funny and until cliff brought this up i don't really bring this up as

02:26:24.000 part of my origin story but before i became aussitrew when i had very little familiarity

02:26:33.680 i was in high school the lair's book is meant for like little kids i got it in high school

02:26:45.120 to read and look at i remember to this day i can't remember i think i was a sophomore

02:26:50.480 or a junior and i got it in high school because it did it had all the pictures it's beautifully

02:26:56.640 illustrated and you know i don't consider that my first house of true book because i read it far

02:27:02.160 before i became also true but that was my introduction um so yeah it's not a bad idea at

02:27:10.400 all there's a lot of good things that any of us can help direct you to if you get further in what

02:27:16.480 you're doing but like i said the true limo and if it's something this is something to think about

02:27:24.080 too guys for joining our standard for you joining isn't that you are a die hard 100

02:27:34.480 loyal to the ic or also true are that day that's a relationship that's built over time

02:27:40.640 our standard is that that's something you want to pursue and joining is your first step towards

02:27:50.300 that so you don't need to be a thousand percent committed to everything the day you join but you

02:27:57.740 do need to be open and desirous of that at the end of your journey so please keep that in mind

02:28:04.820 Don't let that be a hindrance from you taking that step and joining.

02:28:09.640 Because in order, again, like I said earlier, that's not the most convenient thing, but it is the right thing and the true thing.

02:28:19.460 For you to build that deeply sincere faith, you need opportunity provided to you where that can happen.

02:28:29.740 joining with your folk and being there in bloat and being actively involved in that process

02:28:38.220 that's the best way and the way that we can be most helpful to facilitate that experience and

02:28:47.240 help you get there so do keep that in mind something i want to add real quick um

02:28:55.840 so yeah the uh the Dallaire's book it's like the picture book of saints for Asatru and I think

02:29:02.320 that you know most Christians remember those early childhood books like the picture book of

02:29:07.500 saints way more than they do some yeah that's it they remember that way more than they do some

02:29:13.040 you know um some some prayer study or or something from when they were older um the other thing that

02:29:21.520 I wanted to mention real quick about Pros Edda is, you know, don't skip the Skald Skaparmel

02:29:28.480 because it's a little tough to get through, but there's a lot in there that will benefit you

02:29:37.440 when you get into the Poetic Edda. So read The Gilfoginning, read Skald Skaparmel,

02:29:43.820 or I'm sorry, Skald Skaparmel, and there's a lot. The whole list of kennings in there

02:29:49.480 is really important for um understanding what the heck the poetica is talking about in a lot

02:29:56.560 of places it's good that you mentioned that I want to say if you read all of it the the best

02:30:04.440 answer is all but if you're prioritizing and there's only one that you can can do and keep

02:30:12.420 in mind, the Eddas aren't set up sequentially. So they're a collection of lore, a collection of

02:30:22.660 poetry about our ancestral faith. But they're each kind of individual, so it's not like you

02:30:29.620 need to read each of the poems in succession. If you could only read one, I would say read

02:30:37.880 the gilfaginning if you could read two the gilfaginning and the veluspel

02:30:44.900 if you could read two the gilfaginning and the havamal and if you could read three the gilfaginning

02:30:53.100 and the havamal and veluspel i say that other people may have different choices they put on

02:30:58.840 there and i think there's probably merit to all of it but i think the gilfaginning gives you a

02:31:03.320 really good orientation about the broad scope of it and it's kind of written with that purpose in

02:31:09.520 mind so I think that's a very accessible one to start with that tells you this is this and that's

02:31:17.120 that and this is here and this is there and it gives you that orientation in a really direct way

02:31:23.180 um our next thing I feel like I'm missing a question okay that's why because I'm on the

02:31:30.460 on ten all right have you had dreams of the gods or do you know people who have had dreams of the

02:31:37.900 gods or things like near-death experiences cliff oh man my dreams we don't want to get into that

02:31:46.780 is like scramble city there um so uh you know in all seriousness i don't remember in particular

02:31:58.500 if i have had you know a dream of a god where like a a god or goddess spoke to me or even like

02:32:09.240 featured as like the the central theme of the dream if a lot of my dreams don't have a central

02:32:16.600 theme but um but i have had quite a few dreams that are about also true in my folk um i don't

02:32:27.280 know that those are revelations as much as they're you know kind of a function of the fact that my

02:32:32.420 life is so deeply invested in Asitru so that it's only natural that I would have dreams about

02:32:39.100 Asitru and the people that I know through Asitru just like you know one might have dreams about

02:32:45.660 work or you know going back to one's grade school or any of those things that are you know so deeply

02:32:53.260 embedded in our minds um i have heard you know as a gothi i certainly have heard people talk about

02:33:01.700 having dreams of the gods um and like i was talking about earlier i i don't necessarily

02:33:07.360 literally believe that they had that dream but i always take them at at face value it's not really

02:33:13.200 my judgment on that that's important whether or not they you know had a god or a goddess

02:33:21.620 speak to them or provide some revelation in that dream it's more about helping them understand

02:33:29.260 what it means to them because whether it came from inside of them or you know was something

02:33:35.520 that was communicated from outside that's the most important part is that they understand it

02:33:40.200 and are able to you know have something productive and constructive come of it

02:33:47.340 um as far as um i think the second part was about near-death experiences um

02:33:55.380 so i i come from a very catholic um background and family and so in my family there were all

02:34:05.540 sorts of sort of like spooky stories um my grandmother and my mom um and

02:34:13.900 And a lot of the ants, it seems like it was always the females who talked about this stuff.

02:34:18.940 My grandfather and the uncles and stuff really didn't. 0.96

02:34:22.580 It was much more down-to-earth kind of stuff with them.

02:34:27.320 They were very devout, but it wasn't, you know, spirits with them.

02:34:33.020 But I've had lots of stories in my family about, you know, like visitations or apparitions.

02:34:44.600 Being a Catholic family, a lot of times it was, oh, so-and-so saw the Virgin Mary or something like that.

02:34:49.880 I personally haven't had any of those.

02:34:52.600 But, you know, and I don't disbelieve the things that my family members said,

02:34:58.620 although I do think that perhaps they misinterpreted them.

02:35:03.020 you know just because uh you know some kind of female spirit with a glowing aura appears to you

02:35:12.020 and tells you to do something i don't think it they necessarily correctly identify the identity

02:35:18.740 of that entity uh but that's again just like in the other scenario that's not really for me to

02:35:25.740 that's something that um you know observationally like i was talking about earlier that that's

02:35:34.420 something that uh even though i had a skeptical attitude for a good chunk of my younger years

02:35:42.240 that i think helped open me to the idea of um spirits or or supernatural sort of things being

02:35:52.520 a part of, uh, of, of human existence in this world.

02:36:00.500 Yeah, I, so to answer your question, there, there is this murky area of dreams, as Cliff

02:36:13.240 kind of mentioned, you know, what is legitimate revelation from the gods and what is just

02:36:22.060 a dream um it's really a cool sign in your life and people talk about this about languages like

02:36:31.840 you really know you've mastered language when you start dreaming in a different language

02:36:36.600 it's nice when your touchstones in your dreams are fully integrated incorporated

02:36:49.160 also true to where that is the context of your dreamscape that speaks a lot to

02:36:57.960 your interior as a person and how much that's become a part of you um

02:37:06.920 i have had i've had the gods in many many dreams that i've had but of note there's a difference

02:37:16.600 It's because a lot of my dreams are really fleeting, like they're really cool and I'll wake up and I'm like, ah, this dream's amazing, and an hour later I will have lost it.

02:37:29.300 It's very hard for me to remember my dreams, except for a couple really important ones that I can remember clear as day decades later.

02:37:42.880 one of those involved lady freya and one of those involved y'all father

02:37:52.240 those are both really significant to me and i do think that messages were

02:38:02.500 were given to me that were important in those um i've had a handful of other really

02:38:10.820 profound experiences in waking time which asked about dreams um

02:38:17.940 near-death experiences i have never experienced that but i do know people who have

02:38:24.500 one really specific who you know usually is often a frequent um audience member of this program

02:38:31.620 had a very visceral near-death experience that led him to Ossetree and that's really inspirational

02:38:42.000 and if he comes on here I may prompt him to share that with the chat room

02:38:45.420 um what do you think about books about people's modern experiences with the gods Cliff

02:38:55.200 well i think that seems good um

02:39:02.220 i'm not i mean other than founder mcnallan's and edward thorson's works i'm not so sure i've read

02:39:14.300 one of these books but um i mean i think that like i was talking about people sharing that

02:39:22.000 they're also true with other people um any way that they can do that is good so um as far as you

02:39:28.900 know books where people are relaying their their genuine experiences with also true um you know

02:39:37.340 whether that's um a story about something that happened that happened to them or an academic

02:39:43.640 work where they're you know relaying their insights and they add their their personal

02:39:50.300 experiences into that um i mean it sounds good to me as far as what i think about them i think

02:39:59.500 i'm not sure if i'm answering the question but it sounds good to me but that would depend on

02:40:04.140 the specific book i guess what cliff said um really and truly yeah it all depends on the

02:40:12.300 author and whether their experience is an honest one and whether the author is

02:40:16.060 is a worthy individual or a lunatic.

02:40:22.860 I would love to hear or to read written accounts of people's experiences with the gods,

02:40:31.080 assuming that I believed those people and they were people of merit that I trusted.

02:40:36.240 The books that I can think of that match your description

02:40:40.800 are written by mentally disturbed and disreputable people that I can think of,

02:40:48.180 and I don't find value from their books that I've read on the subject.

02:40:53.960 There may be a lot out there that I'm unfamiliar with and I'd love to know.

02:41:00.320 But the ones I'm aware of are ones that I wouldn't put a lot of stock in

02:41:05.420 and that I do find blasphemous.

02:41:07.140 uh okay so sir omega hello i am a beginner at european pagan faith and i want to know what

02:41:18.120 i can give as an offering to thor clip

02:41:22.940 um you know whatever you give it needs to be

02:41:32.880 genuine and it needs to be something that both is meaningful to you and that you believe Thor

02:41:42.600 would appreciate. It's easier when it comes to ancestors, especially ancestors, that you had

02:41:50.820 personal, you know, personal relationships while they were living because you, you know, you may

02:41:56.400 know what type of beer that your your grandpa liked or you may know what kind of cake your

02:42:02.600 grandma liked or something and so those can be you know fairly fairly easy to know what's going

02:42:09.320 to make grandpa or grandma happy well i'll get them their favorite thing um but i think you know

02:42:15.800 if you're if you're a craftsperson anything that you put your time and energy into um given with

02:42:21.820 the proper intent is going to um be a a good offering i mean ultimately of course it's it's

02:42:30.360 it's thor's determination as to whether that has worth or not i mean if you want to go based on

02:42:36.640 um based on our lore i think that um an alcoholic beverage such as ale or or mead is a good choice

02:42:46.500 uh certainly you know some kind of a a meat like salmon or um you know ox or or beef um would be a

02:42:55.960 good choice um goat could be a good choice i know at uh at thor bloat um something that we've done

02:43:04.280 in the past in in my family and and in my kindred is to focus on goat themed meals and that thor

02:43:14.200 gets a plate of that so you know goat cheese bread and goat cheese with like you know the

02:43:19.720 blueberries or cranberries rolled on top of it and um you know some kind of a goat meat based

02:43:27.180 entree like a stew or something like that it's uh you know it's a bit gamey so depending on your

02:43:34.420 taste it may be tricky to prepare in a way that pleases everybody um but knowing that there's you

02:43:40.060 the story of thor sharing the the meat from his goats with uh theophy and his family um seems

02:43:47.980 like something that um you know the the intention i think would be recognized by thor um but also

02:43:58.300 you know i mean i mean i guess if you are um you know this is a real much more niche thing but if

02:44:05.740 you are like an iron worker or something something that you have made and struck with a hammer and

02:44:11.340 fire would probably be a good choice but most of us i don't think meet that uh meet that criteria

02:44:18.060 but something that you you know something that you've put your intent into is is the most

02:44:23.980 important part i i think that if if it's a personal offering something you've put your own time and

02:44:29.740 energy and perhaps made with your own hands is a good choice but something that you purchased can be

02:44:35.180 of equally good intent because you have put your labor um into that uh

02:44:42.060 giving it giving it with with good intent um is is i think the most important part

02:44:49.180 determining what exactly that gift should be is really a much more personal choice from you

02:44:56.460 when the gods are concerned it's all the more true that it's the thought that counts

02:45:04.380 thor doesn't need stuff like a lot of the time when we're considering giving a gift

02:45:10.300 to some to to a person that we know we have to consider the utility of it or like is there

02:45:18.540 something they need thor doesn't need from you so it's all about the intention of what you're giving

02:45:28.540 and

02:45:30.980 that said

02:45:33.340 I don't think it's a value thing

02:45:35.460 but I think it's an

02:45:37.200 intention thing so there's

02:45:39.140 two routes you could go and I think Cliff

02:45:41.020 talked really good

02:45:43.060 about the first one so

02:45:44.600 you can base it on

02:45:47.000 stuff that you

02:45:48.980 think Thor would like

02:45:51.240 from the things that you

02:45:53.180 know about Thor

02:45:54.200 um traditionally uh cliff mentioned you know any of the things cliff mentioned absolutely

02:46:06.640 i think that you know mead is kind of a go-to for all of the gods and goddesses and

02:46:12.920 in also true it's just become a very customary thing that we do but any alcoholic beverage i

02:46:21.160 think is something that is a good option. I think that's a frequent thing folks do that's

02:46:28.520 well-received and well-thought. The general thought is that Thor likes beer or ale,

02:46:45.480 something that's

02:46:46.920 that's stout

02:46:48.460 again

02:46:49.880 that's

02:46:51.240 you know

02:46:51.880 what people

02:46:52.660 that's the impression

02:46:55.280 that many of us

02:46:56.100 have gotten over time

02:46:57.220 I think anything

02:46:58.440 you want to offer

02:46:59.560 that way is nice

02:47:01.140 and as long as it's done

02:47:02.200 with the right intention

02:47:03.140 it's not a bad thing

02:47:04.460 but also

02:47:05.480 so there's the other

02:47:06.680 thing to consider

02:47:09.760 is what

02:47:12.220 is meaningful

02:47:13.400 for you to give

02:47:14.880 so if you brew your own mead or your own alcohol or you make wine or whatever you make

02:47:21.760 that's special because it's a gift it's special because of its relationship to you

02:47:27.700 if you have something that is a tradition in your family that's special to you or your kinfolk and

02:47:34.960 you offer that to thor it's special because it's something that's special to you and you're sharing

02:47:41.340 that. So you can go with something you think you have reason to believe that Thor might like

02:47:48.620 on his own or something that's really special to you that you want to share with him. I think

02:47:55.600 either way is a really good way to go. And the bigger thing is that you just get out there and

02:48:03.980 it a lot of people with the best of intentions will hem and haw and not actually make the offering

02:48:13.820 so consider this might be your first offering to thor but it should by no means be your last

02:48:20.540 offering to thor so think of something that you think is respectful offer it in piety and

02:48:30.380 with noble intentions that is good and it's a step in the right direction

02:48:36.860 and i have every reason to believe that asa thor will accept it with the intent that you offer

02:48:44.460 um but i think that's admirable that that's something that you want to do

02:48:50.060 as a side note i've told the story on here a number of times and i did this as a grown man

02:48:55.580 not very not very grown i think i was like 20 but my first offering to freya was

02:49:06.780 in the war she likes gold so i got goldschlager shot

02:49:13.340 and she has cats that pull her chariot so i had some fancy feast for her cats

02:49:21.180 that was but again i didn't know a lot i

02:49:28.620 used what i knew to try to do something nice and i thought that was really meaningful and i hope

02:49:38.540 that it was i feel that it was and it loops back to that is the same day that i had the dream that

02:49:46.140 involved freya that i feel is particularly meaningful to me so i think that from very

02:49:57.100 you know humble but well-intentioned results you know or uh offerings you can get really

02:50:04.380 really nice result and uh some really special things can happen um it's not exactly the same

02:50:11.660 in the have them all odin talks about you know with uh with half a cup and a half a loaf you

02:50:20.060 know he was able to make a friend and i think that that's something to be said you making an offering

02:50:25.420 even if it's a humble one is a nice gesture and that gesture is likely to be repaid in a in a

02:50:32.780 special way for you trying is so much better than not trying the the attempt at giving a gift of

02:50:41.660 worth i mean think about it this way our our gods have been neglected by our folk for for such a

02:50:49.580 long time um that you know even i think even the attempt at giving something um may have more value

02:51:00.220 than some very costly offerings perhaps made by our ancestors

02:51:05.000 when that was what was normal.

02:51:10.680 And I don't mean to diminish the offerings that our ancestors gave,

02:51:13.540 but, you know, clawing our way back to the Aesir,

02:51:19.300 I think is a gift in and of itself that they would see with some worth,

02:51:25.880 granting the fact that I don't know what they think or see.

02:51:28.960 so a hundred percent we live in a time that is very special in that way

02:51:36.160 i mentioned earlier that our values matter much more when there's consequence

02:51:43.520 when everyone's also true and that's the culture you're in

02:51:47.520 you're being also true is right and good and you should do it but there's something

02:51:52.960 more and an extra layer of value when most people aren't house of truth and you are coming from not

02:52:03.760 being also true to restoring your family to trough with the icer that's a bigger deal

02:52:14.560 and this is another point to the question we had a little a few questions ago about experiential

02:52:21.760 versus scholasticism when it comes to practicing our faith when you do what cliff just did

02:52:31.120 that's living out so true when you consider our gods as living beings with thoughts

02:52:39.760 with feelings and with agency and you phrase things that way and you contemplate

02:52:48.800 your relation to them and your offerings and your behavior in a sense of, well, what do I think the

02:52:59.480 gods would think about this? That's never going to be perfect. So no impiety intended. None of us

02:53:07.000 know the mind of our gods to a complete degree. But the best that we owe them is to, or the least

02:53:16.140 that we own them is to employ our own empathy to try to envision them as the very best we can

02:53:25.980 imagine of people and to treat them as at least that and treat them

02:53:34.780 like living sentient beings and not like scholastic constructs

02:53:47.980 our gods live and exist and they they see us and they know us

02:53:54.060 and us considering them and thinking of them in that very vital living way is a big part

02:54:01.980 of doing this right and this flows naturally into our next question do you believe that gods see

02:54:10.780 into our hearts and hear our minds i think keeping that in mind can help us to be noble not only

02:54:18.460 outwardly but inwardly noble in both thought and deed cliff let's say you so i will address the

02:54:27.180 second part first i agree absolutely that what we keep in our minds and what we feed our minds as

02:54:35.580 far as you know media that we consume um is is very important to us being noble outwardly as

02:54:45.660 well as inwardly um you know we we very much um we're we're energetic creatures right we

02:55:01.340 we can make things real in the world by our thoughts you know the the power of power of

02:55:06.300 positive thinking it's been called in like pop culture and like books for how to train sales

02:55:11.980 people and stuff like that or books on how to be successful at dating or whatever you have you and

02:55:17.500 there's there's a real element of truth to that um you know if you if you envision yourself in

02:55:24.620 you know a better situation than you are whatever that aspiration is you can make that real um

02:55:30.540 because it's motivating and i think that there's a bit more than that going on there i think that

02:55:34.860 there's a real kind of magical energy for lack of a better term that that goes on there that we

02:55:43.020 you know can output energy that will draw us towards things or draw things towards us and

02:55:51.740 that can be good and bad you know if you have a bad attitude you tend to encounter bad situations

02:55:57.340 it's not foolproof either there's other people with other energies out there and other entities

02:56:01.100 with other energies that can totally affect us so it's not like just thinking happy thoughts is

02:56:05.660 gonna you know make you invulnerable and only good things will happen to you but if but if you're a

02:56:12.220 pessimist that can pretty well guarantee that bad things are going to happen to you all the time

02:56:15.740 because you won't even recognize the good ones when they do um and you know on top of that i i

02:56:21.820 really do believe and i i don't i don't i don't follow what i'm about to say here perfectly i

02:56:26.940 i don't think anyone does but what we put into our minds um very much matters and i'll probably

02:56:32.500 make some people angry when i say this because you know it's not things that we like to think

02:56:37.020 about but um you know i think that things that we consume in pop culture in in movies and in music

02:56:43.500 um often have a very negative effect on the kind of people that we can be that they affect our

02:56:50.760 potential and that they affect um the way that we see the world uh you know just just for an

02:56:58.260 old-timers kind of example schools out for the summer by alice cooper is a song about how

02:57:04.620 basically it doesn't matter to learn and that you should just go and do whatever and you know it

02:57:10.600 you know it may seem like a fun song on the surface level but if you realize that that's

02:57:17.240 telling you know young people or did tell young people a long time ago who are now older than me 0.97

02:57:22.680 um about you know why it's good to be dumb and a bum that's not really something that you should 0.97

02:57:32.280 be feeding your mind and certainly not feeding your soul and you know the same thing can be said 0.98

02:57:36.980 about you know um movies that glorify um like wanton violence i'm not talking about you know

02:57:45.860 you know movie about battle necessarily but all the you know the murder porn out there not to

02:57:50.640 mention regular old porn these are not things that are that are healthy so um keeping our

02:57:56.340 minds strong and filling them with things that will make us stronger and better is absolutely

02:58:03.440 important um and will help us be noble both inside which i think is a prerequisite we have

02:58:11.520 be noble inside before we can be noble outside because if it's a false um outward nobility it's

02:58:19.360 not really nobility at all you're doing something different then it's a it's you know it's fake um

02:58:26.640 now as far as whether or not i believe the gods see into our hearts and hear our minds

02:58:33.280 um they are divine so i don't doubt that they could do such a thing but i don't believe they

02:58:41.600 often do i don't even believe that they know all of our names because we're not all that important

02:58:49.120 uh some of us are you know and i don't mean me i just mean that some people are um important

02:58:55.120 because they've made themselves important they have caught the attention of the gods by

02:58:59.280 doing worthy things um i would hope that i'm one of them but that's not something i can determine

02:59:05.040 what i need to do is to keep trying to be one of those worthy people um you know so i think

02:59:16.640 you know if if odin wanted to send hugan and munan out and for them to bring back reports

02:59:21.920 about what clifford has done today he certainly could and he would get that information i i just

02:59:27.840 don't think that's probably something that uh that he's likely to do um but maybe i don't

02:59:35.680 i mean could yes do probably not so that's interesting following cliff on that so first

02:59:52.960 i can say confidently that our gods know your name cliff

02:59:56.080 um secondly i agree that they have better things to do and we don't have any reason to believe

03:00:07.580 that they like creep around in your thoughts and your stuff again as cliff said they are gods

03:00:17.440 they are mighty uh i do not for a second think that they could not have such knowledge if they

03:00:23.980 wanted it. But I don't think that's how they operate. We don't have the same built-in within

03:00:32.920 Alcitru that they do in some other faiths to where our gods are looking to condemn you for

03:00:38.420 microaggression things. But like Cliff said,

03:00:44.820 what you consume and what you spend your time thinking on directly affects the things you

03:00:56.300 manifest in your life and the way you conceive of the world so certainly the more we can

03:01:05.320 when we have thoughts that are unworthy the more we can adjust when we make note of them

03:01:14.740 and make the effort to think worthy thoughts

03:01:21.060 or to bring unworthy thoughts in line with worthiness,

03:01:26.080 that process in and of itself is instructive and helpful for us to become better people.

03:01:33.680 But here is the caveat and the thing that came to mind when you asked the question.

03:01:38.700 i think that they certainly do both of those things when invited to

03:01:47.220 so when we communicate with the gods i don't think that they

03:01:56.140 have a language preference i think they speak whatever language your soul is speaking

03:02:05.740 I think they speak intent.

03:02:12.400 When I give bloat, I ask the gods to see into our hearts, to hear our words, to know our deeds, and to judge our worth.

03:02:24.960 I invite them to do that as an open-handedness and as a bearing of truth.

03:02:34.240 and I think when invited to do so they're inclined to perhaps do so

03:02:41.720 um so I think they have the if the question is like are they spying on us all the time

03:02:50.500 probably not I don't think I don't think that's really their nature or something that

03:02:56.680 they would lower themselves to really do um if the question is do they know your intent when

03:03:05.080 you go to the altar and you speak to them can they see through the either deception or just

03:03:12.500 inadequate inadequacy of your language yes do they see into your heart know what you're what

03:03:19.600 you mean even if you don't have the right words yes i think those things are true so it's kind

03:03:26.100 a nuanced answer to the question um question for both i'm in the process of publishing a nine song

03:03:37.620 australia folk music album if i emailed a song or two would you give feedback on them i'm looking

03:03:45.700 forward to sharing with you just joined first welcome uh i am excited that you joined that's

03:03:54.020 fantastic and yes i would love to hear the music that you made i think it's amazing that you made

03:04:00.100 music and i would be glad to give you you know my feedback on it uh what about you cliff

03:04:08.340 yeah welcome first of all and i i would love to hear what you want to share with us in fact

03:04:14.980 something that i think that we all can do better at at ossa truer is involving music in ossa true

03:04:21.940 it's something that I know we've wanted to do for a long time but haven't I don't think yet

03:04:29.340 been able to really successfully pull off so anyway I think you know I mean I don't know if

03:04:36.560 this is your intention or not if it's just for fun or just for nice as the Pennsylvania Dutch say

03:04:40.760 that's great but if you know if there's you know aspirations on you know on more than that

03:04:48.420 um we would love to have more music involved in um also true um at a ritual level as well so

03:04:58.820 please do share it we'll give you any feedback that you want and i'm excited to hear it absolutely

03:05:04.500 that all of that so many times we know stuff we want but knowing it and being able to produce it

03:05:12.900 two different things we want a lot of a lot more else to true art and i mean that in all sense of

03:05:21.780 the word certainly in visual arts but in in music in poetry in cinema in sculpture in any number of

03:05:34.340 things sometimes it's a matter of waiting for the artist to come forward and it's really cool that

03:05:42.820 you want to do that so brings me to the last question we have for tonight uh question i got

03:05:50.020 dollar bills back in change that have triple numbers and sometimes quadruple could this be a

03:05:56.260 sign 999 for example where can one find number symbolism meanings that is also true if there

03:06:05.780 is such thing cliff do you know about that well i talked about omens and signs a little bit earlier

03:06:12.740 and i think that part of how those operate is that you see them um most people wouldn't see

03:06:21.380 that there i think um but if you do and that has some meaning to you then then that is relevant to

03:06:28.020 whether or not that that is a sign or an omen and it would only be for you in that case you know it

03:06:34.740 wouldn't necessarily be some universal truth but it would be something that um is informative to

03:06:40.740 to you um i mean i think that there are you know some some numeral symbols in in also true three

03:06:54.180 is the easiest one to think of uh triplicates and and and triples are are very common not

03:07:00.660 only in austria but in in all arian religiosity um and then an extension of that is nine it's a triple

03:07:08.100 three um there are there are others but i know there's there's sources that are that are better

03:07:16.180 than than me as far as uh numerology and and how that might be applicable to what you're looking for

03:07:24.420 so i i am not that guy uh cliff's first thing could it be assigned to you yes if that is a

03:07:32.900 language that you speak and there is you know perhaps there is something meaningful to it i

03:07:38.500 don't discount that for a second um numerology or number stuff has never been something that

03:07:48.820 has spoken to me particularly but a source that i would encourage you to get i know uh edrid

03:07:55.700 thorson has written about numeric correspondences and runic numerology i think that he has written

03:08:04.100 that in a number of places i know for a fact he talks about that in runelore so runelore by edrid

03:08:11.860 thorson i think is a good source for you to check out if it's something that you find interesting

03:08:19.220 thank you guys so much i think it's been a good uh discussion this evening we've had a lot of

03:08:23.940 really good questions and i appreciate you guys i appreciate those of you that donated thank you

03:08:29.700 for being generous and i appreciate the guys that show up and ask questions and our new people that

03:08:35.620 decided to join us on the broadcast and especially thank you cliff for joining us and talking about

03:08:43.220 something that i think is extremely important for all of us so thank you for being here you're

03:08:48.180 You're welcome. Thank you for having me. And thank you to my modem for not blowing up today.

03:08:53.820 There you have it. All right. Well, Cliff, I will see you next week at Ostara. Folks here,

03:09:00.300 I hope I will see you next week at Ostara too, if you're able to make it. And wherever you find

03:09:06.800 yourself, your local Hof is celebrating Ostara this weekend. If it's not Thorshof, because we'll

03:09:12.940 see you next weekend. So if you are near Baldur's Hoff, near Odin's Hoff, or near

03:09:19.080 Yord's Hoff in White Springs, Florida, Odin's Hoff in Brownsville, California, or Baldur's Hoff 0.70

03:09:28.600 in Murdoch, Minnesota, or if you can get there in the next few days, each of those Hoffs on

03:09:35.860 Saturday will be celebrating Ostara and we would love to have you join us at any of our Hoffs

03:09:42.940 And, yeah, get involved and participate.

03:09:46.900 Thank you guys all for making the time this evening.

03:09:48.840 It's been great talking to you.

03:09:50.680 Until next time, hail the Iseer, hail the folk, hail the AFA.

03:09:55.360 And remember, victory never sleeps.

03:10:12.940 We'll be right back.

03:10:42.940 Thank you.

03:11:12.940 Thank you.

03:11:42.940 Thank you.

03:12:12.940 We'll be right back.

03:12:42.940 Thank you.

Asatru Folk Assembly - March 13, 2025

3⧸12⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 140 - Living Ásatrú

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