Asatru Folk Assembly - 4⧸29⧸26 Victory Never Sleeps, Ep 199 - Reflections on Perfection

00:00:00.000 Satsang with Mooji

00:00:30.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

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

00:02:00.000 Thank you.

00:02:30.000 Transcription by CastingWords

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

00:03:11.100 Tonight, we are joined by Speckinger Trent East and Gauthier Bodie Mayo.

00:03:22.880 Bodie is doing a sound check, apparently.

00:03:25.220 it's exciting to talk to everybody this fifth wednesday of the month we're figuring out kind

00:03:33.680 of a new thing to do with that as brandy is unable to join us uh this time so we are having

00:03:41.740 um two gentlemen that i think have a lot to offer on tonight's subject which is i guess

00:03:50.940 poetic reflections on perfection um the basic premise behind that is

00:03:59.820 talking about you know why we do the things we do what the direction of those things are

00:04:08.300 and the value of making the best of the realities we face and turning

00:04:20.940 transitioning from theory into practice, which I think is really important for a lot of people

00:04:29.040 who find themselves listening to this program. So a couple of top of the show things for everybody

00:04:36.120 this evening. First, Jeffrey donated $20 towards the Cigarhane Pavilion. Thank you for that,

00:04:44.460 Jeopardy. We appreciate it. GW Farnsworth, as always, started our program off with a generous

00:04:52.000 donation of $50 towards that Cigarhane Pavilion. Thank you. We appreciate you very much.

00:04:59.940 And Stephen in Japan donated, also a very frequent contributor on the show, donated

00:05:05.300 $5 towards the Pavilion and $10 towards paying off Frazehoff. A couple of few things.

00:05:14.460 um our progress on paying off phrase off i try to give you guys kind of a weekly

00:05:22.140 weekly rundown on what that looks like folks have been very generous as always and i appreciate you

00:05:29.820 guys. As of right now, we are 38.3% paid off. And that comes in at, if each member of the AFA

00:05:45.320 donated $103 towards it today, it would be paid off. I know that we still have a long way to go

00:05:53.200 on that but it's really remarkable because we only dedicated that off in december so you guys

00:06:00.400 are amazing with your donations and i thank you for it um the other thing that we are you know

00:06:07.520 currently raising money on is the pavilion at siggerheim the idea is to have a pavilion up as

00:06:16.880 soon as we can hopefully by i'm harry upload this year which is going to be our feature event at

00:06:22.080 at Sidorheim for this year at least.

00:06:25.480 And I would have to recalculate due to our recent donations,

00:06:33.040 but looking at about $43 per member,

00:06:38.560 I think we'd get this for us immediately.

00:06:41.320 And again, we appreciate you guys

00:06:42.740 making a lot of progress really quick on it.

00:06:45.300 We've got a cool plan in place

00:06:47.500 and it should be the kind of impressive structure

00:06:51.800 we're going to need for you know many years to come there it's going to be beautiful and i look

00:06:56.600 forward to gathering with all of you underneath it at some point but yeah thank you guys so much

00:07:03.400 for your generosity you guys are awesome if bodhi is struggling with some technical difficulties here

00:07:11.320 in the meantime um

00:07:19.160 so trent has been on the program a number of times but for people that might not be familiar

00:07:27.000 or whatnot trent could you tell us a little bit about who you are where you're located

00:07:32.840 and how long you've been involved with also true and with the astro focus

00:07:37.240 uh yeah sure my name is trent yeast i'm a honored to be a speckinger of the austral folk assembly

00:07:46.600 i've uh been with the afa for

00:07:50.040 11 years uh as of the midsummer will be 11 years even i've been also true for 11 years since uh

00:08:02.620 this past austra um a husband father army veteran uh and i'm in georgia usa

00:08:19.820 do you do people usually get that confused

00:08:24.780 uh no but you know we have an international audience just thought i'd say so in case the uh

00:08:30.060 bit of the american flag behind me wasn't a clue

00:08:35.260 it's courteous and you thinking about our our international uh listeners gentlemen and a scholar

00:08:45.260 what was that i said yeah i'm a giver what can i say see there you go generosity um

00:08:51.900 We are also joined by my good friend, Gauthier Bodie Mayo.

00:08:56.900 Bodie is not able to join us in a visual sense this evening,

00:09:01.900 so he will be here, his voice will be here for us.

00:09:06.900 We will communicate with said voice.

00:09:09.900 Also, he's been on the program a number of times,

00:09:11.900 but Bodie can tell people a little bit about who you are,

00:09:14.900 where you're from, or where you're located,

00:09:16.900 and how long you've been involved with Ausitru

00:09:19.900 Yes, sir. Thank you for having me again.

00:09:25.800 So I, too, reside in the state of Georgia, USA, not the country.

00:09:31.740 I am a Georgian by birth and Alabamian by raising.

00:09:38.920 I have the privilege and honor to serve as a priest of this fine church.

00:09:43.300 I have been a member, I believe, I'll share together, you and I could not pin it down,

00:09:48.660 whether it was 2012 or 2013 one of those two but either way i've been a member since around that

00:09:54.420 time i've been i've been an ostrich since mother's night of 2001 um i am currently at work on the

00:10:04.980 amber lamps um hence the visual or the audio only um let's see what else did you want to know

00:10:13.060 how long that you've been uh us true and how long you've been involved with the astro focus

00:10:22.100 center so yep i think i answered those been australia since 2001 and i've been involved

00:10:27.860 with afa since 2012 or 2013 i think it was 2012 2012. um all right guys well

00:10:37.060 So, we're going to have questions and a variety of things to talk about tonight, but one thing

00:10:47.420 that I kind of noticed is a series of interactions that seems to be on the uptick lately.

00:11:02.200 So, we have, over the last few weeks, we have had a number of our posts on X get a lot of traction.

00:11:15.800 And it's been a real blessing. It's been amazing to get our message and pictures of our folk worshiping our gods and gathering together in front of a much larger than normal audience, which is fantastic.

00:11:35.700 One of the biggest challenges for the growth of Al-Satru and the growth specifically of the Al-Satru Folk Assembly is that in today's climate and with a number of struggles with things like Facebook and Instagram and TikTok, for that matter, we're limited in the number of people that know we exist.

00:12:04.960 our potential membership is vast the likely percentage of those that would be interested

00:12:15.300 in joining the afa i think is tremendous compared to our current member level but the deal is a lot

00:12:21.700 of people just don't know that we're out here and just don't know we exist so the more we can

00:12:26.820 increase that reach and get out of our normal circles that is a great thing for all of us

00:12:32.660 But we get a lot of comments that indicate to me a lot of people struggle with a concept called, or that I like to refer to often, as allowing perfect to become the enemy of good.

00:12:51.380 And one of the things that is a forever, I don't know, hurdle that we've seen, and I think that these two gentlemen can attest in their time in Ossetree they've seen.

00:13:03.780 there's a whole lot of time that people spend mulling over minutia in their head

00:13:14.260 or theorizing about how things should be could be would be possibly could be different if they were

00:13:21.260 you know had unlimited resources or unlimited ability to do something and all of that um

00:13:29.520 analysis paralysis leaves them exactly where they started before they had those thoughts or before

00:13:36.800 they contemplated house of truth we find a lot of people that are stuck there for you know months

00:13:42.900 years and sometimes in some people's cases decades on you know man but the perfect thing but the

00:13:50.000 perfect man what i'm waiting for is the perfect group that does things the way that's perfect

00:13:56.360 with the perfect people in the perfect place when i'm at the perfect time in my life when

00:14:03.160 um you know the perfect star alignment or whatever the case is again those guys don't

00:14:09.880 end up getting up off the couch and doing anything uh and i think that's something worth

00:14:15.640 kind of pondering of what that looks like

00:14:18.360 like why we do the things that we do and why now is the quote-unquote perfect time to start

00:14:31.320 um so there's a lot to be spoken about tonight in regards that and

00:14:38.920 first um trent is that something that you have noticed or how how has that shown itself to you

00:14:50.440 in your experience with alsa true uh it happens in a few different ways and it's been pretty

00:14:59.780 consistent from uh even since i was just an atheist kind of looking into alsa true uh

00:15:06.840 uh and it it happens from so many different angles from uh mostly from other people claiming to be

00:15:15.620 also true or pagan or whatever else uh even on in the the right politically you know uh

00:15:23.700 they'll say well you're not doing animal sacrifice as well you're not doing human sacrifices

00:15:28.760 well you didn't build that that building so it's not really a half uh and even those are more

00:15:35.220 recent i'm sure there were there's been complaints since 1968 when founder mcnalen started this up

00:15:41.960 but uh it's a lot of that and then people will say things like this is why i can't get involved

00:15:48.100 with the afa they're not doing exactly what i would do and i know one of your favorite responses

00:15:54.560 to that sir is uh okay well where's your hof what does your hof look like where's your

00:15:59.020 uh national three-day event with 150 people and uh for some reason they never have a

00:16:06.980 response to any of those so uh yeah it's a pretty persistent theme that we hear from these types uh

00:16:16.480 the wording of it never really changes it's always one of a few different paths it's usually some

00:16:24.140 critique of uh the people or the building or the kindred flags or the lack of uh enough viking

00:16:33.820 looking stuff but yeah that's i've seen that a lot i've heard it in person and

00:16:40.060 mostly mostly over twitter though of course

00:16:45.580 so bode you have been involved in also true for quite some time have you noticed this phenomenon

00:16:52.620 And if you have, how has it reared its ugly head in your experience?

00:16:59.400 Well, you know, I hope that all of everybody listening who has access to the Rune Stone read my recent article that speaks to this specifically,

00:17:08.420 because I wrote about my experiences in the first 25 years of Ossetru so far that I've experienced.

00:17:14.360 And in the beginning in 2001, as I said in the, in the Rune Stone article, it was very, very much, you know, just, you know, how to be polite here, a dude fest.

00:17:27.180 So there was not a lot of, you know, not a lot of women involvement.

00:17:32.080 And there was always a lot of, a lot of, a lot of always backbiting, a lot of infighting, a lot of, you know, I know how to do this better than you do. 0.80

00:17:43.120 There was a lot of, you know, judgments being thrown around, you know, if someone was really

00:17:50.580 trying their best to be pious and really trying to, you know, worship the gods properly and honor

00:17:57.200 their ancestors properly and make offerings and do bloat, then they were accused as being more

00:18:03.160 ostrichry than thou and before the the afa became what it is now um and we were kind of all insular

00:18:14.820 um there was a lot of there's a lot of what i like to call in that article cannibalization of

00:18:21.800 leadership meaning that back in the early 2000s when i first came around anytime a man or a woman

00:18:30.320 and decided to take the reins or the tiller as it were to use viking you know imagery anytime

00:18:35.780 somebody wanted to put their hand on the tiller of the ship and steer us all in a good direction

00:18:39.260 immediately the you know the behind the scenes back talking started with you know who does he

00:18:45.140 or she think they are and why do they think they can be in charge and this and that and so

00:18:49.000 we experienced or at least i experienced just this rudderless existence where yes we had

00:18:54.740 tiny kindreds that were you know in isolated little pockets maybe those kindreds would get

00:19:00.240 together if they were in their same kind of area you know um as i said back in the early 2000s

00:19:07.460 people really wouldn't even travel out of their the area of their state let alone their state or

00:19:12.640 their region or across the country and so it existed for a long long time and you know there 0.99

00:19:19.520 was always you know this you know man one day it'd be great for us to have a hof man one day 0.72

00:19:26.320 be great to build a temple. Man, one day it'd be great to do this. And something else that you say

00:19:31.440 I'll share with you is that, you know, you know, one day needs to be day one. You know, it doesn't

00:19:37.260 need to, if we, if we had all sat around and said, man, one day, then we wouldn't be where we are now.

00:19:43.480 And I'm always struck by, like Speckner East said, our detractors come at us and say, well,

00:19:49.540 you're not doing this and you're not doing that. And our response is some variation of what we are

00:19:54.460 doing something, aren't we? We are doing something. We're moving the ball forward. We're advancing the

00:20:00.300 calls of Auschwitz. What are you doing? All you're doing is complaining that we're not doing exactly 0.94

00:20:05.040 like you want us to do. So there's that. You know, Trent's right that I do always kind of,

00:20:16.500 that's my default response about the, you know, hey, where's your Hoth? Hey, where's your, you

00:20:24.100 And it's, I can recall one instance, there was a children's bloat at Thor's Hoth.

00:20:34.480 And I believe at the time we had two Hoths in the world.

00:20:41.480 um and we had a go-fi like a legitimate ordained go-fi at one of the two hofs that exist both were

00:20:53.720 ours and a group of children worshiping our gods

00:20:59.660 but the onlookers well that's not how to do it well look how that's decorated that's

00:21:10.880 completely uninspiring man that's oh how how how protestant of you in my response this is the first

00:21:21.280 time i remember saying it and it was worded like okay well please show me a picture of how your

00:21:30.000 children do bloat in your hoof so that we can learn how to do it better and yes i so first i

00:21:38.840 to point out i was a hundred percent prepared if they're like fine then and they showed me

00:21:45.240 you know the von trapp family all doing this perfectly synchronized bloat in a towering

00:21:52.680 golden crusted hoff i was i was absolutely ready to sit down with the pen and a paper and take notes

00:22:00.520 i thought the smart money was that was not going to be the case but it was

00:22:05.400 It was a fun, sarcastic flex, but it was also a genuine, but wait, there's kids in a hof 0.92

00:22:17.860 with a gothy doing bloat to Thor in Thor's hof. 0.99

00:22:24.400 That's pretty cool. 0.98

00:22:26.880 And the complainers, as opposed to what, and that was kind of, you know, Bodhi talked about it, but one of the, one of the struggles that we had for a long time, we continue to have is we are in a culture where insincerity and sarcasm and just critiquing and criticizing is the coin of the realm.

00:22:53.260 it's very easy to allow yourself to sink into

00:22:59.320 commenting and critiquing on what other people do as opposed to doing and um

00:23:08.740 you know some of this is a defense of like hey we're doing the best we can but a lot of it is

00:23:15.440 also a call to action like hey if you want to see things that are great you want great things to

00:23:20.600 happen get up off the couch and make great things happen and if you want to effectively

00:23:28.600 help things progress in a way that you know to your mind or to your liking

00:23:33.960 that progression ought to go the best method for that is get on the team get involved we would

00:23:40.040 love to have your help um i think another point that needs to be made and i speak for myself but

00:23:45.480 but I'll speak for the entire AFA with this.

00:23:49.300 We are fully committed to doing things the right and best possible way.

00:23:56.900 It's not to say that everything we do is the right or best possible way,

00:24:01.160 but it's our best attempt at it.

00:24:03.820 We are sincerely committed to, you know, trending ever closer to perfection,

00:24:10.260 realizing that perfection is not attainable it's not that we shouldn't strive for it we should

00:24:19.280 but we're doing it wrong if at any step we don't see how we can do it better

00:24:26.360 um one of the reasons that i chose victory never sleeps is the name of this uh this broadcast is

00:24:33.660 it it's a constant process of pushing forward and our desire to do glorious things for our gods our

00:24:46.380 folk and ourselves should have no end we should always want to achieve more to do better and to

00:24:55.740 increase that's fundamental to our very nature as arian men and women and it's you know it is the

00:25:06.380 attitude and the determination that we owe to our gods um we have some some good questions

00:25:14.620 stacking up we also have some stuff i'd like to i'd like to get thoughts on and talk about a little

00:25:22.620 bit. Before I do that, Gilbert, thank you so much. You're awesome. Gilbert, a super frequent

00:25:30.520 donator on here, donated $150 towards the Pavilion. We appreciate you. That's amazing.

00:25:37.400 Thank you for that. And so I took some notes on some things I'd like to talk about.

00:25:43.560 One thing that, and this touches on other things, I'm sure we'll get back to it, but one thing that I find is a detriment of our folk is the purity spiral.

00:26:03.180 And I think that, you know, we all may have a different understanding of exactly what that means.

00:26:08.380 but in our demand that everything and everybody be our imagined version of perfect there's a

00:26:19.820 tendency amongst our people i think most prominently amongst our men and amongst our men most often

00:26:29.380 amongst young men with a lot of time on their hands, when everything is in the world of

00:26:39.960 theory, then you can come up with the most perfect scenario that doesn't have to conform

00:26:44.720 to the reality of life as it's lived by real persons.

00:26:49.240 so there's a constant infighting of let's find you know all the ways that everybody isn't perfect

00:27:00.280 and dismiss them and what you find is when you do that it accelerates it doesn't just okay this one

00:27:07.480 guy is not perfect enough well then the next guy that's slightly less perfect and then the next guy

00:27:13.360 the next guy and the next guy until it's just you in mom's basement wondering why nothing gets done

00:27:20.320 and i've seen that i've seen that an awful lot and you know whoever wants to jump in but gentlemen

00:27:26.720 what what would you say to folks that are afflicted with this this mentality

00:27:34.960 well you know one of the biggest uh insults or comments whatever we get on twitter lately is

00:27:45.820 you know uh these orthodox christians or whatever e crusaders will comment on the uh the weight or

00:27:54.880 lack of physical excellence in some cases of some of our members and i i find that

00:28:01.500 critique specifically coming from these types to be interesting because in anybody who's

00:28:08.340 done anything to worry and you know try and better themselves physically knows that it takes work

00:28:14.080 it's uh it takes time whether it's diet exercise should be both by the way but

00:28:19.620 both of those things take time effort and it's a journey as cheesy as that sounds

00:28:25.340 and so these same people will say you know no i'm not joining any any cause until i know it's

00:28:33.160 perfect well just like that fitness journey you know you want these overweight people to lose

00:28:39.140 weight it's a journey you want the afa to have purpose built poffs or uh more people or what

00:28:48.160 have you it takes work there's not going to be a uh you know a ready-made organization for you

00:28:56.740 hopefully i guess as soon as possible the afa is that organization and our kids or grandkids have

00:29:02.620 that available to them but it's we don't have that yet we're as close as you're going to get

00:29:07.480 i'll tell you that uh but it's not going to be you know hot and ready like the the hot pocket

00:29:14.400 that twitter person's mom is bringing them in a few minutes you know it takes work

00:29:19.080 side note hot pockets are delicious um the uh

00:29:28.060 ham and cheddar is good the barbecue ones are awesome um no they are trust me but that's a

00:29:39.500 that's a very common thing and it's something that you touched on a couple of

00:29:46.460 a couple of points there and i wanted to also i'm not

00:29:50.940 i'm not immune to that either i remember i remember when i first

00:29:59.340 um

00:30:00.260 when i first joined the afa and when i first um

00:30:09.500 I came home to Alistair. I had a whole lot of relief. I knew exactly the perfect way to do everything. And how come all of these other dullards aren't doing things perfect? Because I am a genius and I know everything and I'm 20.

00:30:27.200 And I think that a lot of people, when they're, you know, 18, 19, 20, and up into their mid-20s, I think all of us know absolutely everything about absolutely everything.

00:30:41.500 We have the perfect formula in our head.

00:30:43.500 If only we were calling the shots, then everything would be perfect.

00:30:47.460 and i appreciate that my elders at the time were gracious with me and i got to learn

00:30:58.660 why things are the way they are why things work the way they do and temper the purity spiral with

00:31:08.420 the reality of the world that we're in and as i did i was able to

00:31:18.820 stop sitting around frustrated about what we didn't have and be really excited about the

00:31:25.620 amazing things that i was able to be a part of by joining me part of the house true folk assembly

00:31:32.900 and so i think that we all you know we've all been there not something that you know anybody

00:31:37.940 on this call hasn't doesn't struggle with um but it's a really important shift in perspective that

00:31:44.100 kind of needs to happen um so you brought it up and i want you to answer this uh trent why are

00:31:51.940 there so many fats in the afa uh some of our detractors called a cop-out answer but oh well

00:32:02.100 uh i mean just the soul sickness as it's been called it's sort of the sign of the times

00:32:08.500 i but you know as some people in the comments on youtube are pointing out i could ask the

00:32:14.340 same of christians i could ask the same of uh white buddhists white hindus um i could ask the

00:32:23.380 the same of any ethnic group. Uh, and it'd be pretty funny if I did, I won't, but it, it's not

00:32:30.800 just an us problem. It's not just an AFA problem. In fact, I would argue that if you're going to

00:32:36.500 look at any, uh, Alcatru group versus the AFA, I think probably we look the best and that's not

00:32:45.060 to say there isn't work to do. You know, uh, I wake up on days and, uh, I feel scrawnier than

00:32:52.860 i'd like to right try and make sure i get my macros the way they're supposed to be for the

00:32:57.640 day and i feel fatter than i want to whatever uh and there's people who are in much better shape

00:33:03.380 than me in the afa or a good bit worse shape than me in the afa but it it's just where we're at right

00:33:11.320 now as a people and as a human population in the west frankly and everybody's aware if you're

00:33:20.380 watching this you're probably aware of all the stuff that's in food and how caloric surplus

00:33:25.340 makes you gain weight caloric deficit makes you lose weight and eating too much is going to make

00:33:29.980 you fat i mean it's pretty simple stuff and the answer like i said before to that is simple but

00:33:37.740 it takes work it's it's just what's happened you know but it do yeah that's the thing the the

00:33:45.500 simple answer and i i think that oftentimes it's not a question it's just a snarky

00:33:56.620 effete uh criticism of stuff the reason that there's so many fats in the afa

00:34:03.820 is that we're based in the united states it's where the majority of our membership is

00:34:09.740 and in the united states in 2026 we have a significant obesity problem

00:34:17.340 the mission of the also true folk assembly a mission assigned to us by the icer is to bring

00:34:25.180 our folk home to have as our founder called it an in-gathering of the folk and that means

00:34:33.260 taking our folk where we find them and inviting them to come home but we don't stop there while

00:34:42.060 we do have people at all different levels of fitness and different levels of fatness

00:34:48.460 we actively try to help and encourage our members to get better at that

00:34:53.260 bodhi could you talk a little bit about i don't know the culture of trying to help our people

00:34:59.500 fix it within the afa sure one of the one of the things that

00:35:09.260 kind of strikes me about this situation in this topic is that

00:35:14.060 our detractors seem to think that fat people don't have any worth they don't have any they

00:35:20.620 shouldn't have an opinion that if you're not swollen fit nobody should listen to you that

00:35:25.500 that you're basically a non-person.

00:35:28.500 And that is not the message

00:35:30.720 that we are trying to send to our people.

00:35:33.200 You know, just because you're not necessarily

00:35:35.060 the fittest person on earth

00:35:36.640 or if you have a few extra pounds

00:35:38.180 or if you just let yourself go,

00:35:39.840 that doesn't mean that you have lost all value as a person.

00:35:44.000 And I think that were we to take that approach,

00:35:46.580 then our number would be far fewer than it is today.

00:35:50.020 It's just a

00:35:51.600 It's just a

00:35:53.820 Mental block that people have 0.98

00:35:55.800 And yes you should always strive

00:35:58.020 To be as fit as you can both spiritually and physically

00:36:00.180 But

00:36:01.500 As Speckinger Trent said

00:36:03.660 It is a process

00:36:05.380 It is a journey

00:36:06.540 You can't judge someone

00:36:08.840 And one of the funniest things that I think we've all seen

00:36:11.640 Is

00:36:12.860 You know super fit people in the gym

00:36:15.540 Make fun of a fat person that's in the gym

00:36:17.440 Look at him 0.89

00:36:19.360 look at him over here tubby look at him and you're like but he's in the gym he's not on the couch

00:36:24.500 eating lace potato chips he's in the gym he's actively trying to fix the problem you should be

00:36:29.420 over there giving him tips on form you should be explaining to him that he's doing that exercise

00:36:33.900 maybe not the best way i saw a wonderful video of a super fit dude going over to a guy who was like

00:36:40.900 five six hundred pounds was doing lat pull downs and this guy walked over and stopped the guy and

00:36:45.580 I said, hey, man, can I help you out for a second?

00:36:47.680 Here's how you properly do a lat pull down.

00:36:50.000 Bring it to your chin.

00:36:50.880 Lean back a little bit.

00:36:52.240 He didn't mock the guy.

00:36:54.300 He went over and he helped him.

00:36:55.460 And I think that if we do more of that, then there would be less fats in the AFA and everywhere.

00:37:03.760 Yeah, something I'd like to say.

00:37:05.240 So within, within the AFA, one of the, um, I was, uh, this year at Midsommar, I will have been

00:37:19.360 Osheria Yothi of the Astrid Folk Assembly for 10 years.

00:37:24.400 When I was installed as Osheria Yothi, I addressed the folk.

00:37:29.900 And one of the things that I said was that I was committed from that day forward to help our people to achieve excellence mentally, physically, and spiritually.

00:37:49.240 And I always keep that in mind.

00:37:51.240 That's been something very important.

00:37:52.820 Literally since that day, the AFA has tried to encourage fitness amongst our members to help those who wanted to improve and to get better, be it to gain muscle or lose fat, to help those people.

00:38:12.400 we've created in every iteration of any of our you know groups and interactions we've had groups

00:38:19.060 right now we have a physical excellence group and I think that's why we called it physical

00:38:24.380 excellence those are the words that I used at that at that address and it's one of our most

00:38:32.960 active groups if not the most active group we have members on there every single day

00:38:38.760 um every single day talking about ways to tweak their diet to get better results ideas for

00:38:49.040 exercise we have a physical um summer challenge going on right now to kind of encourage everybody

00:38:56.620 to have accountability with each other and work towards a higher level of fitness

00:39:01.960 uh we post workout routines in there we talk about nutrition and it's active it's active

00:39:08.600 every day we don't chase around our members and you know demand that they um you know demand that

00:39:16.600 they lose weight that's not a practical reality in the world we live in it's going to be effective

00:39:23.560 but if we're looking at it right we should want all of our people to achieve physical

00:39:29.720 accidents and to be the best version of themselves they can be. If we allow people who are not

00:39:38.000 perfect in the Auschwitz-Folk Assembly, and I'm not to avoid the hyperbole, if we allow people 0.82

00:39:46.620 at a substandard level of fitness into the AFA, we are optimally poised to help them to get in a

00:39:55.260 better level of fitness for themselves, for their families, for their appearance, for their health,

00:40:00.880 for their well-being as souls. If we don't and we say, hey, no, move it down the road to chunks.

00:40:11.320 We got no room for you here. We have abdicated our ability to help them make improvements.

00:40:17.600 we have forfeited the opportunity to be a positive force in their life to help them succeed

00:40:26.100 that is antithetical to what we're about as noble people we want to lift our brothers and

00:40:32.880 sisters up even if they're heavy um so the and these are you know in no particular

00:40:44.960 no particular order but just kind of questions that come up and you know trying to get perspective

00:40:51.200 and answers on those questions because they're things people wonder and they're not um formatted

00:40:57.520 we live in the soundbite culture and it's not really formatted for a sentence or a witty quip

00:41:03.760 back at a detractor but it is worth explaining to people and it's something that does kind of

00:41:09.680 come up from time to time.

00:41:14.980 It's one of the things, gentlemen. 0.88

00:41:26.380 So, Trent, why do we dress like Christians? 1.00

00:41:31.920 Good question, but we don't. 0.94

00:41:34.160 We dress like respectable white people in the Anglosphere, specifically, to be fair, which Christians in the Anglosphere that aren't the annoying hippie Christians also do.

00:41:51.000 Something I kind of discussed with somebody about this a few weeks back on Twitter was, you know, they had that question, why you dress like Christians, you should be dressing like Vikings or whatever.

00:42:01.740 No, we shouldn't. Please don't do that. 0.90

00:42:04.160 um but the the point kind of came to me you know when the unfortunate uh conversion to

00:42:13.600 judaism to electric boogaloo was happening across scandinavia and the rest of europe

00:42:19.860 did the vikings start wearing a suit and tie in 1032 or whatever because

00:42:27.760 jesus or did they keep dressing like vikings and they swapped out their their mjolnir for a cross

00:42:35.780 or some other abrahamic accoutrement uh it's the second one no that they didn't start wearing suit

00:42:44.560 and tie because it's a christian thing uh suit and tie is uh an aryan thing i think it's specifically

00:42:51.500 probably a british thing uh forgive me for my lack of exact knowledge on where a suit and tie

00:42:58.660 comes from but it's just a very white man thing to do uh a well-meaning atheist could wear a suit

00:43:07.540 and tie he's still going to be an atheist uh a jewish person can wear a suit and tie

00:43:12.540 he's still going to be jewish it you see a white a white man in a suit and tie and there is

00:43:21.180 a not respect per se but there's an aura to use one of the the kids terms about him that says 0.55

00:43:31.460 okay this guy is serious whatever this guy is doing he means it and that's a big part of why

00:43:38.560 we do it i i suppose it's not the primary reason maybe the secondary reason the primary reason why

00:43:43.400 we dress the way we do is because we are going before our gods or ancestors and the rest of our 0.99

00:43:51.460 folk and these are gods you know uh it's it sort of relates back to that old stupid facebook bros 0.96

00:44:01.240 a true meme of i don't kneel before my gods uh as the old serogothia said is if lord thor came 0.95

00:44:08.640 down from on high in his chariot i promise you you would kneel um so when we get together to

00:44:16.840 worship the gods again literal gods yeah we want to look our best uh you want to put on a nice suit

00:44:25.260 a nice tie ladies put on a nice respectable dress what have you uh you would put on the best of what

00:44:32.480 you have and i'm sure that in the viking age or the uh also true saxon age of england whatever

00:44:38.580 our ancestors would have put on their best tunic or their best

00:44:43.400 whatever women wore kind of dressed back then you know it's it it relates really well to the

00:44:54.540 gifting cycle too when we do that the heart and hand to horn we're giving them the best of

00:44:58.800 ourselves because they're gods and they're our gods and that's what they deserve

00:45:08.080 buddy do you have anything you'd like to add on why we dress the way we do or as the question

00:45:13.600 is formed against us uh why we dress like christians yeah so one of the things that i

00:45:21.040 responded the way that i responded to that in the past when they're like you know why do you dress

00:45:25.360 like christians well we don't like trend said we don't we're dressed like respectable white folks

00:45:31.280 and the way i framed it to the person who asked it to me a while back was that all of the mother

00:45:37.520 countries in europe have a national dress and they are all quite beautiful you know especially the

00:45:44.640 women folks dresses and the different you know flower crowns and whatnot and things that they

00:45:49.680 wear you have the i think it's pronounced bunad that the scandinavians wear the norwegians and

00:45:54.880 And the Swedes wear the ladies' national dress.

00:45:58.680 So the question is left to us as Americans and Englishmen in the West.

00:46:03.920 What do we have as a national dress?

00:46:06.080 Well, for us men, it's the suit.

00:46:08.000 That is our national dress.

00:46:09.380 That is the hallmark of the Western man.

00:46:12.060 That is what you are expected to wear anytime you are doing anything official.

00:46:16.620 Anytime, I believe we've talked about this in the past.

00:46:19.140 Anytime you go to court, anytime you go to a wedding, anytime you go to a funeral,

00:46:23.800 anytime you go to any public ritual or any public official business for men that is the dress we're

00:46:30.260 expected to wear for women you're expected to wear a modest dress you're not you know you're not

00:46:36.260 supposed to dress lewd and lasciviously and that of same applies to us men so that is the reason why

00:46:42.840 and i wanted to go back to a little something a little bit earlier about you know our detractors

00:46:47.940 coming at us for all various different things i was reminded of an instance where a person who

00:46:55.100 had left the afa contacted me personally and accused me and all the rest of leadership

00:47:00.760 directly of being your yes men that we are just you know all we're doing is just being you know

00:47:07.160 all you are is matt flayville's yes man you just do whatever he says and i said you know what

00:47:11.840 we are under his direction. We do follow his, you know, his instructions on how to run the church

00:47:19.420 and how to do this. I was like, however, if he were leading us off a cliff, I was like, I can

00:47:24.780 assure you that I would, you know, be, you know, advising him to please not steer us off a cliff.

00:47:31.480 That's not a thing. So everybody always thinks that they can do it better than us, but they're

00:47:35.860 not doing anything. So we'll dress how we want to dress and that's that. A couple of things I wanted

00:47:42.840 to add on dress and the one thing I wanted to add about from people's physical condition. So

00:47:53.180 and Bodie made this point but I often it's something I often say

00:48:00.100 if you're dressing for something that you care about that's important and that you want to look

00:48:08.040 like you take seriously doing you dress like christians i'm doing air quotes but we got the

00:48:15.840 narrow thing so you can't see them anyways the same complaint for yes we are dressing like

00:48:23.360 serious white men and women who are doing something that we take serious you're approaching

00:48:29.660 our gods in worship. We should dress that way. It's funny because, yes, that's what Christians 0.63

00:48:38.240 do. Because the Bible says to wear a suit and tie? Well, no, of course not. Because they are 0.99

00:48:45.320 there to worship a God that they genuinely love and believe in. So they are showing up with the

00:48:52.620 respect that's due to that occasion that's admirable that's what white people do in western

00:49:01.820 cultures in 2026 when you're at something that's important when you're at a funeral when you're at 0.50

00:49:08.060 a wedding when you're at a graduation when you're showing up uh to court when you're showing up for

00:49:15.260 a job interview um it's a mark of taking something serious you know trent mentioned briefly you know

00:49:24.620 it comes from the like oh we don't kneel before our god's chest thump that so many have done in

00:49:30.700 modern house to true um but if you go to court and they say all rise the honorable so-and-so

00:49:39.740 preside and you stand up so you're willing to do an act of acknowledging

00:49:47.660 you were superiors in court of law you would salute in the military you would do all these

00:49:53.100 things you know you bow if you were in the presence of actual royalty but you wouldn't for

00:50:00.060 for a god for a god of your folk i think people it's a mark of whether you take it seriously or

00:50:07.580 not and we want to show our seriousness and our piety in the way that we dress another thing is

00:50:13.740 a thing is you know we have never demanded that people dress nice

00:50:19.820 we have encouraged our people to dress nicely and dress appropriately for for bloat and attending

00:50:26.860 maha we've never demanded that we've never thrown anybody out we've thrown people we have asked

00:50:32.300 people to change their clothing i think twice because there was obscenities on the clothing 0.99

00:50:38.940 or there were yeah there's some kind of crass lewd naked chick on something and then something

00:50:47.660 else with the f word on it and that's not appropriate at our hof when we're honoring 0.80

00:50:55.660 our gods that's not appropriate in general um but no outside of that we haven't ever made anybody

00:51:03.260 dress differently but we have tried to encourage it because we want to encourage our people to take

00:51:07.260 it seriously and to be their best we always want to encourage our folk to be the best

00:51:13.180 while we're on the subject some people who detract from that um will mention oh but you know

00:51:19.980 know, all of us don't have money for nice clothes. I said this on a show with Alan, I don't know if

00:51:25.700 it was last week, possibly, but the band t-shirt that people wear to the Hoff would cost more

00:51:36.120 than going to Goodwill and getting a shirt and a tie. You can get a whole outfit with slacks,

00:51:40.340 shirt, tie, and a nice pair of shoes for less than the jeans and the band t-shirt that so many

00:51:47.100 are fond of wearing. But also on the physical fitness thing, something that I've absolutely

00:51:54.320 learned in House of Truth. We are all flawed to one degree or another. Ideally, we're working

00:52:05.700 on those flaws to uh be our very best but we all have imperfections it is the imperfections

00:52:22.900 often there are some of us that wear our imperfections in a very visible and obvious way

00:52:28.420 there are other people that you know look like the recruitment poster that look you know that

00:52:37.640 look immaculate and they hide imperfections in places you can't see but oftentimes they are just

00:52:46.600 as flawed if not more deeply flawed and in a more insidious way because you can't see it

00:52:52.620 So we want all of our people at all their level of development to join and to get better.

00:53:00.720 Sometimes it's obvious.

00:53:02.640 Sometimes it's more subtle.

00:53:05.400 But yeah.

00:53:08.400 Another thing that has come up, and I'd like to ask you first on this, Trent Bodie, why 0.98

00:53:18.000 don't we wear stoles like the Christians?

00:53:22.620 because there is an attestation to it in ancient Aryan practices,

00:53:28.840 and we have been able to recover such things through archaeological and anthropological digging and research.

00:53:35.400 You may know better than I that famous statuette that we found,

00:53:40.040 not we, the AFA, but that archaeologists found that clearly shows a bearded man wearing a stole,

00:53:47.180 and it is mentioned in several instances throughout our history.

00:53:52.620 Um, I believe Speckinger Trent mentioned that the other day on X.

00:53:59.100 So I have him tag in on that because he remembers probably the, I know the answer that you gave Trent was more specific than what I'm doing right now, but it is historically attested to.

00:54:12.260 It's not just something that we picked out of a hat or we saw the Pope and his minions do it.

00:54:17.720 And so we wanted to do it.

00:54:18.820 um so i can't remember the exactly but it's not something that we do just frivolously

00:54:25.840 uh i think that was the altar ago that posted the exact source for why we do it uh i had argued with

00:54:39.900 somebody because they uh they mentioned that it was a greco-roman thing specifically and i was

00:54:45.420 oh white people and uh they didn't like my answer uh but no that was all i contributed to that

00:54:53.100 conversation yeah the stole is um from even the pre-roman period amongst the italics

00:55:04.460 and it was something specifically attested to as something priests of jupiter would wear

00:55:15.420 there's a whole bit and it was cool because on the same tablets that we're talking about the

00:55:19.180 use of the stole and that ritual and as a symbol of of that priesthood it also talked about

00:55:25.660 libations with mead which was interesting but yeah it predates christianity but also

00:55:33.660 in 2026 it is easily recognizable as something that a clergyman wears and it's a very practical

00:55:41.740 garment for people to understand that you are conducting religious rituals it's coming really

00:55:47.980 handy in prison ministry and in ministering to our folk who find themselves in long-term

00:55:56.220 care facilities or in the hospital it immediately marks our gothar as clergymen and with it they're

00:56:05.180 afforded the respect and privileges that come with that position and it's something that's um

00:56:14.140 used in a lot of different contexts and i've seen in other iterations outside of uh outside

00:56:20.300 of christianity but yeah it does have its roots in european paganism that predates christianity

00:56:28.380 I'd like to point out something, if I may. When we were at Alstra at Thorshof, one of our newest apprentices, Mr. Blake DeShane, give him a little shout out.

00:56:40.020 There were a lot of young men there that were either new to the AFA or new to Alstra Street who were coming to a Hof for the first time.

00:56:48.700 And several times throughout the main event day on Saturday, Blake, you know, brought young men to talk to me that had questions and I was not wearing my stole at the time, obviously, because we weren't in ritual, but I was wearing my ring.

00:57:05.860 and Blake pointed to, pointed to my ring and told one of the young men that was,

00:57:11.560 you know, you know, he had brought over to ask, you know, have me answer a question for,

00:57:15.920 he pointed to my ring and he said, if you have any questions for, you know, that you, you know,

00:57:20.720 while you're here, just look for that ring. That ring means that they are a priest. That means

00:57:26.020 they are a goethe and they can answer your questions. And that struck me very, you know,

00:57:30.800 it really moved me that here's this young guy who just joined our church and just became you know

00:57:35.920 decided to be an apprentice and he already gets it and he's already pointing this out and he's

00:57:40.540 already cementing this in this young man's head and all those young men there that that was a sign

00:57:45.420 of our office absolutely um and that's really that's important and i think that

00:58:00.780 it's worth noting kind of a couple of things I think that in people's mind

00:58:07.620 when they complain about the souls they have some other other idea but the other

00:58:14.940 idea is like dress like a Viking and that's kind of kind of silly I'd

00:58:22.740 certainly be open to a variety of different ideas for money kind of a

00:58:26.940 clerical vestment that sets clergy apart but dressing like a renaissance fair viking doesn't

00:58:35.500 do anything to signify that you're a religious officiant practicing a serious faith

00:58:42.400 certainly not in any kind of superior way than us trying to wear stoles and wearing

00:58:50.620 and respectfully while executing our office um so trent why do we worship at hoffs instead of out

00:59:01.020 in the woods uh because hoffs are our space they are a space that we specifically can consecrate

00:59:12.860 and make sacred for us to our folk and to a purpose um i can answer that question better too

00:59:22.860 because uh if i kind of frame it in the way where i i know our detractors in uh other

00:59:28.520 austro organizations kind of throw that at us uh we often get this thing from i think we get it

00:59:36.280 from universalists too once they're done calling us uh racists or whatever they always say oh real 0.59

00:59:42.560 heathens worship in nature et cetera et cetera that's true of course um there's nothing like 0.55

00:59:48.040 doing a blow to the all father in a a little grove and in the middle of the night with a fire

00:59:53.080 you know it's nothing like it but they they think that's the case partially just because of facebook

01:00:00.360 memes or whatever uh and then the other big reason they think that is because they read

01:00:05.740 germania by tacitus which you should do and uh this was you know the uh iron age like well

01:00:14.600 early kind of roman imperial age and uh tacitus says then in that time that the germans worshipped

01:00:24.120 only in groves and they had sacred groves and i'm sure he was largely correct i don't think he was

01:00:30.700 totally correct because he had never visited germany himself but that's where they get that

01:00:35.200 from and that's fine but our people like any people and like anything in the natural world

01:00:41.880 we evolve uh and our faith evolves so you know back then do we worship only in groves

01:00:49.780 probably not let's say that was the case right uh 600 ish years later we have the temple at

01:00:58.400 Gamalupsala in Sweden. There was one in Javering in England. I think that's one in Northumbria.

01:01:06.480 One in Rendlesham in East Anglia in England, I believe. Probably more than those, of course.

01:01:13.800 There were temples all over Scandinavia, Germany, wherever else. So we know for a fact that our

01:01:22.060 ancestors did have Hoffs and that they really, really treasured those Hoffs and they were sacred

01:01:27.580 places so uh incidentally us worshiping in hoffs is kind of a a point in our favor to those that

01:01:36.220 say we're not perfectly reconstructing the viking age way of worship or whatever other nonsense

01:01:42.900 uh and and partially the reason why we do it too is because like with the suits and ties and and

01:01:50.580 also the gift cycle these are gods they deserve our best they deserve whatever we can give to them

01:01:56.820 And if we can give them a, you know, taking back Aryan-built buildings from the scourge of Christianity and repurposing them and rededicating them to something that is noble and beautiful and true, like the Aesir, I think that's a pretty decent step in the right direction towards, you know, honoring them.

01:02:23.040 so we worship in Hoffs

01:02:25.440 because that's what the gods deserve

01:02:26.840 do you have anything to add on that

01:02:33.620 yeah my only answer to that

01:02:37.500 is we evolved

01:02:38.360 our ancestors did that back in the

01:02:41.620 ancient forest of Germania because that's

01:02:43.600 what they had and that's what the gods

01:02:45.400 revealed to them as proper at the time

01:02:47.180 we have evidence as Speckner East

01:02:49.480 said of

01:02:50.780 temples to our gods from a long time ago. He mentioned all the hoss that he knows in England. 0.91

01:02:58.160 There was also one in Ireland that was referred to as the temple to the red thorn and was said

01:03:03.840 to be clad entirely on the inside in red gold. So if anything, we need to get more gold in our

01:03:12.460 hoss if we want to be correct. These people seem to think that worshiping outside is the only way

01:03:18.180 And that kind of plays into another trope that we see all the time.

01:03:23.180 An accusation is that, you know,

01:03:25.520 Ossetru is supposed to be a nature religion.

01:03:27.860 No, it's not.

01:03:28.960 We revere nature.

01:03:30.780 We, you know, we honor the land of Teer

01:03:32.960 and we try to live as much as we can in harmony with nature.

01:03:36.180 But we are not resigned to only worshiping outside.

01:03:39.820 As Trent said, out back in the ritual space at Odenshof,

01:03:44.760 is that a beautiful place to have a bloat

01:03:46.660 on a moonlit night with a giant fire and they'll share you go they doing you know one of his world

01:03:51.540 famous odin bloats yes it is it's one of the most powerful things i've ever experienced

01:03:56.180 but i've also had extremely moving experiences in bloat inside of all of our hofs so our 0.95

01:04:03.220 detractors are stupid there you have it so um a serious note on that

01:04:12.100 And it's really important when examining history and our lore in particular and the material 0.99

01:04:27.320 culture of our ancestors to take things into context.

01:04:33.380 Tacitus was writing a political work,

01:04:37.700 and one of the main aims was to contrast

01:04:41.980 the idea of the noble savage

01:04:44.840 with decadent Rome during his period.

01:04:49.560 So it was not saying it was dishonest,

01:04:53.360 but it was to his advantage of what he was trying to convey

01:04:57.080 to highlight a primitive element

01:05:00.620 to the Germanics and their practice, 0.93

01:05:04.500 as opposed to the decadence that was overwhelming

01:05:08.440 in the upper echelon of Roman aristocracy at the time.

01:05:14.100 You see all branches of Arian people

01:05:17.860 when they have the ability to create temples

01:05:20.960 and beautiful things to our gods.

01:05:23.460 there's nothing biblical or christ-oriented about the great cathedrals of europe as far as their

01:05:34.340 inspiration it's what white people do when they want to devote themselves to worship 0.53

01:05:41.060 and to grandeur is to build beautiful things to honor their gods to to house them in beautiful 0.57

01:05:48.240 places with soaring architecture reaching up to the sky. You certainly see that in the

01:05:59.640 classical world, but you also see that in the period where Ausitruar have access to

01:06:06.400 materials to build nice things. The juxtaposition between the crops and nature is kind of a false

01:06:18.740 one. You don't have them often worshiping the gods just out in the woods. You have them in

01:06:27.520 sacred groves that are meticulously tended and cared for, or in stone circles with stones that

01:06:36.080 traveled a great distance and have been shaped and put in a particular way in areas that they

01:06:42.480 have altered you have stallings and bloat houses you have hoffs and bloat structures in anglo-saxon

01:06:54.640 england you have them throughout scandinavia there's plenty of examples of our ancestors having

01:07:01.440 temples to our gods so it's absolutely an authentic practice something our ancestors

01:07:07.760 did and moreover it's something that people who take their faith seriously do and furthermore

01:07:13.520 it's something that we are so blessed and fortunate to live in a time that we can do

01:07:20.080 again these these same groups of people complained for

01:07:26.000 for, I don't know, roughly 45 years about, man, any day now we need a hoff.

01:07:36.560 A lot of these days we'll have a hoff.

01:07:38.100 I wish we could have a hoff.

01:07:40.200 As soon as there's hoffs and we have them, the people who don't want to,

01:07:45.600 well, we didn't need hoffs anyway.

01:07:47.400 We didn't need a hoff.

01:07:48.700 I can go out in my backyard.

01:07:49.600 are it's very tempting when you don't have something or when you're not able to accomplish

01:07:57.760 something to revel in your mediocrity and to act as if it's a virtue to not have nice things

01:08:12.080 that's you know what the kids these days call a cope um

01:08:19.600 So a final note on that, and then we'll get to some of your questions.

01:08:23.560 This follows along, and Trent kind of alluded to it or, you know, even answered the question a little bit.

01:08:32.320 How come our Hoffs look like churches?

01:08:38.200 Bode.

01:08:41.200 Because they were churches?

01:08:46.640 I mean, it's not rocket surgery.

01:08:48.340 i mean the and and one thing and i and i know i was being a little flip there but

01:08:54.820 i was asked that recently um from a member they were like hey are we ever going to actually build

01:09:01.420 a hof i'm like yes tears off we're going to be building that soon that's in the works

01:09:06.040 as soon as we can uh we're working on that i was like but i think the better question would be

01:09:12.740 why are all these former Christian churches available for purchase?

01:09:17.840 Hmm. 0.98

01:09:18.960 Maybe their dominance in Western society is waning and we are nothing else,

01:09:26.780 if not a pragmatic people.

01:09:28.520 I know the Al-Sherry Goethe and I often speak about our shared Scottish heritage

01:09:32.140 that makes us quote unquote cheap or makes us quote unquote thrifty.

01:09:37.000 So I think it was altogether fitting and proper that we should look around and

01:09:41.940 say well we have need of a building that can hold a congregation hmm what types of buildings do we

01:09:47.040 know scattered amongst the landscape that could serve that purpose and lo and behold what do you

01:09:52.280 know there are properties of Christian congregations who have fallen apart and fallen by the wayside

01:09:57.580 and their buildings were there to be bought by anyone so why can't we why couldn't we I mean

01:10:03.960 is not being used so why not do you have thoughts on that trend

01:10:16.360 uh i mean yeah but it's kind of just the same answer i've been giving you know why do our

01:10:20.680 house look like churches uh one because they they are and uh well as you mentioned sir you know uh

01:10:27.640 uh churches nice buildings to worship in that's not a christian thing it's a white people thing

01:10:34.420 uh white people built the cool gothic cathedrals white people built the various protestant

01:10:45.200 churches that we have rededicated into something better by making them hoffs

01:10:49.460 uh and of course white people will build all of our purpose-built hoffs but 0.70

01:10:54.300 yeah it a lot of this stuff like you're doing this like christians no other white christians

01:11:02.380 are doing white people thing and just devoting it to the wrong god and we're just devoting it

01:11:07.300 to the correct gods that's the difference a couple of notes um churches are built um

01:11:20.100 optimally for a group of people getting together sharing meals and worshiping

01:11:33.660 in a nice building with space for gathering and space for eating and preparing food

01:11:43.040 often with a nice surrounding acreage in places that are intentionally convenient for people to

01:11:54.080 get to and they're also zoned correctly which makes these things very attractive and exactly

01:12:01.880 what we need for the things that we're trying to do um so yeah we're not trying to to trick anybody

01:12:10.000 or to fool anybody but i think it's also really important to realize and again the the casual

01:12:19.720 passerby that doesn't have any actual interests it's just curiosity that maybe some they see in

01:12:24.680 a feed on x because there are three or four people removed from somebody who had an interest in it

01:12:31.340 they don't know about also true they don't care to they're just like i was sure they worship thor

01:12:36.600 they should be looking like vikings whatever i did there's it's too long of a conversation for

01:12:42.840 that level of you know not having the intellectual curiosity but it's important for anyone who does

01:12:50.040 care also true is not locked in the viking age um it's a real faith a sincere faith

01:13:01.160 that has been with us since our origin

01:13:06.920 and will be with us for the rest of our existence.

01:13:11.480 It's as relevant today as it was in the Viking Age,

01:13:14.600 as it was in the Neolithic period,

01:13:16.980 and as it will be in the future.

01:13:19.160 It's also not based around the negation

01:13:23.800 or counterpointing of Christianity.

01:13:26.920 we don't define appropriate practice by how exotic and different from christianity it looks

01:13:35.960 white people practicing religion looks really similar in a lot of different ways for very

01:13:43.980 similar reasons white people practicing religion in a particular country at a particular time

01:13:53.640 is going to look largely similar

01:13:57.000 because it comes from the same people,

01:14:01.320 the same culture,

01:14:02.540 in the same material culture,

01:14:06.480 devoting themselves and their worship

01:14:09.000 to gods that they have a reverence for,

01:14:12.260 care about,

01:14:12.960 and want to show their best selves to.

01:14:15.280 So we shouldn't be surprised

01:14:17.260 that there's similarities.

01:14:19.440 And a lot of these things go without saying,

01:14:21.180 but they kind of stack lately

01:14:22.440 with some of the things and i think they're things people have in their mind it goes to

01:14:26.200 the overall thing i want to kind of harken back to today is not letting perfect be the enemy of good

01:14:33.640 one day we'd like to have the most magnificent hof that's you know as big as you know the great

01:14:40.280 cathedrals of europe and you know made out of stone and marble inlaid and gold encrusted and

01:14:47.400 yeah we would love to have that but if we all sit around and wait until that happens

01:14:54.200 a couple of things first maybe waiting a really long time and secondly

01:15:01.080 the first question is kind of a non-starter because if we don't start where we're at and

01:15:05.800 make progress towards it there's no possibility of getting here so we do the best we can

01:15:15.000 with what we have at our disposal with our ability with our understanding and with our resources

01:15:23.640 we make the very best of it that we know how to and we build upon it and as we gain in resources

01:15:31.960 in knowledge and in ability we do more we reach higher we get closer to perfection that we all

01:15:40.120 you know would like to offer before our gods but the first step is seeing where you are currently

01:15:49.640 and moving forward and that may look different for all of us

01:15:55.160 but you know going back to what bode said towards beginning of the program

01:16:01.720 there was this thing for a long time and i think that

01:16:04.680 the conversations changed a little bit because a lot of the groups that were buying for prominence

01:16:13.240 at the time are no see have long since ceased to exist but everyone wants to start fresh

01:16:20.920 and when every year you cannibalize what exists and you start fresh you can't make any progress

01:16:29.640 if every year is year one and you don't get to year two or year three or you know year 32

01:16:38.040 like we're in right now in the house you're focusing so progress is happening we would all

01:16:44.900 like to be perfect it's important to kind of look and see who's making an effort to move towards

01:16:54.080 that perfection and can you be part of helping people get there or are you holding people back

01:17:02.080 another thing that is uh relevant to mention in this conversation is something part of the soul

01:17:07.760 sickness that afflicts our people is the crab in the bucket phenomenon where as soon as anybody

01:17:14.080 tries to better themselves or do something or have something nice all of the sad people have a

01:17:22.080 a pathological need to try to reach, pull them back down.

01:17:26.760 How dare you have nice things?

01:17:29.040 How dare you accomplish where we can't?

01:17:31.580 How dare you have things we want?

01:17:36.360 When you see inequality, you can't force the lower to be as good as the upper.

01:17:52.080 but you can always tear down the upper until they're as low as the lower and that's

01:17:59.360 the easiest path and the path that people sometimes intentionally oftentimes subconsciously

01:18:05.920 do let's pull everyone else down to our level so that we don't have to deal with the discomfort

01:18:13.600 of others being more successful than us we would all be so much better off if instead

01:18:20.960 of that we were inspired to do more and be more if we saw the success of others as

01:18:26.800 an example of what we could accomplish or as a challenge to do more and to surpass and overcome

01:18:34.640 i hope that our folk can heal and internalize that as we move forward to an increasing degree

01:18:41.920 we'll see we have some questions stacked up and i'd like to get to some of those

01:18:47.760 what's the most common religion slash denomination slash belief held by members

01:18:55.960 before they come home to Alcantre? Trent, in your experience, what would you say that is?

01:19:05.060 Just Protestant Christianity broadly. There's a few denominations in specific that we get a lot

01:19:12.460 of members from uh mormonism or the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints whatever

01:19:21.260 uh is a an especially big one myself uh folk builder tyler heineland

01:19:27.360 a bunch of other members that aren't coming to mind right now uh but a lot of us come from

01:19:33.920 that faith uh here in the bible belt specifically a lot of former southern baptists

01:19:41.700 we have uh a not a large number but a sort of when put in perspective kind of large number

01:19:52.820 of former jehovah's witnesses of course uh i would say and then i if i had to say the biggest

01:20:03.860 denomination would be just kind of the broad non-denominational just sort of nominally

01:20:09.940 christian you know uh christmas and easter only types would be the biggest that uh our members

01:20:18.980 come from largely just because of the state that christianity is in in the west

01:20:24.460 what would you say the most common belief denomination religious system uh that people

01:20:37.220 in the afa had former or had prior to their afa membership buddy

01:20:41.980 um like trent said i the most i've ever seen the most numerous would be protestant christianity

01:20:51.260 uh i myself was inside of central baptist church 1407 broad street phoenix city alabama

01:20:58.700 every time the doors are open but i'm not bitter um i've seen some mormons i've seen

01:21:06.020 jehovah's witnesses uh we also have a fair number of folks who weren't raised in any religion before

01:21:12.980 coming to aussitrew uh so super jealous of that that must be nice um to not have all that you know

01:21:21.780 baggage to you know drop at the door and and things to unwrap your head around so yeah pretty 0.61

01:21:30.920 much it's uh especially here in the south you know catholics are few you know are thin on the 0.98

01:21:37.240 ground here and i think for good reason um i don't think our ancestors really wanted to um 1.00

01:21:43.000 to deal with a fellow in a pointy head anymore they'd rather have you know one of their own

01:21:47.420 preaching to them so yep just protestant christianity is the most numerous

01:21:52.400 you know i'm gonna swerve on that i think that that was the case for a long time

01:22:00.900 I think that cynical atheism is the one that I've seen the most in recent times.

01:22:09.780 And I mean, it sounds in a way like kind of sidestepping the question, but I don't think it is because I think it is in this day and age adhered to with the fervor of a religion, of a religious conviction.

01:22:25.600 And that's been challenging because, as I've said on the program a number of times, I think it's easier for religious people to practice a different religion than for inherently irreligious people to learn how to be religious.

01:22:47.600 But I think that's certainly something we see with our brothers and sisters in Europe as they've been largely secular societies for a longer period of time.

01:22:59.380 But more to the meat of the question, I would say generic Protestantism, as far as church attendance stuff, I've seen a surprising amount of Pentecostals that have joined the AFA or at least been very interested in joining the AFA in recent years, which is interesting to me.

01:23:29.380 So I don't claim that's the majority, but it's a surprising number in kind of an obscure sect of Christianity.

01:23:48.220 Bodie, what can you tell us about numerology and does it play a part in our cosmology?

01:23:56.740 Can you be more specific?

01:24:00.100 no i'm not asking i am repeating a question that was submitted to us

01:24:05.460 uh numerology as in the 19th 20th century study of numbers and their effect on

01:24:13.140 anything in society i don't think so we have a sacred number which is nine um

01:24:23.140 other than that i don't necessarily know how numerology would

01:24:26.180 be a part of Austria at all, outside of our sacred number being nine.

01:24:34.300 So yeah, no, I don't really have anything on that one.

01:24:40.960 Trey, what are your thoughts?

01:24:44.740 I would say, what can I tell you about numerology?

01:24:49.440 Not much.

01:24:50.440 Does it play a part in our cosmology?

01:24:52.280 I'm going to say no, other than there being nine realms and nine being a recurring motif.

01:24:58.580 And I know that's not like an interesting answer or a cool answer.

01:25:03.420 And I'm not going to be so full of myself as to say that numerology definitely has no part in our cosmology.

01:25:12.540 Only the gods would know if that's the case.

01:25:15.660 But in my short time in Alistair, relatively speaking, no, I've not seen any real connection to numerology outside of the number nine being sacred to us because it recurs in the various stories in the lore.

01:25:38.340 yeah um it's one of those things i don't want to be flippant about something that i'm just

01:25:49.840 not very well versed in um in my understanding numerology means different things to different

01:26:00.880 people there are recurring numbers in the lower um tend to most often be multiples of three

01:26:13.280 uh as the spectrum respond frequently reminds us there are tripartites

01:26:21.040 in many many elements of our lord on many different layers

01:26:25.760 um nine certainly is a number that you know recurs too many times to just be coincidental

01:26:34.800 12 is also very well attested and a frequently utilized number there's numeric significances

01:26:44.320 that way um that i think our mind draws us to seeing them being recurring and then being kind

01:26:52.800 of stand out and i think there is symbolism and significance that is inherent in those and can be

01:27:02.080 built upon those but i don't see numerology as being overwhelmingly meaningful i know that people

01:27:10.720 will position different letters in the alphabet with different numerical values and they'll try

01:27:17.440 to add up the letters in a name and it will be meaningful to them in some way i truly don't

01:27:24.640 understand that enough to you know debunk it or say you know have an opinion on it one way or

01:27:32.080 another although it's not something that i've noticed to be meaningful i know that uh dr steven

01:27:39.120 flowers and some of his runic writings has talked about you know assigning numerical correspondences

01:27:46.000 to the rooms in the different room rows and for there to be some numerology built into that

01:27:53.360 that's never been a part of my practice and i can't really say that i know

01:27:58.160 who is a part of their practice.

01:28:08.340 Trent.

01:28:16.200 From Selene, I was looking up the medicinal purposes

01:28:20.500 of the herbs used at Nornanot and wondered,

01:28:24.120 uh do they have any magical significance slash correlation to the ritual blow performed

01:28:31.000 especially in relation to the feminine as i noticed that most of them

01:28:36.040 do help with feminine reproductive health problems

01:28:42.040 uh i'm not gonna be able to answer that as well as guilty mayo most likely but i will say

01:28:49.880 uh speckner spawn got that list of herbs from the nine herbs charm which is something that's

01:28:58.760 kind of in our b list of uh lore stuff uh gothy mayo do you know more about the nine herbs charm

01:29:06.040 than i do unfortunately no um i do remember that

01:29:14.280 the nine herbs charm speaks to the herbs and the nine herb charm is as follows let me pull it up

01:29:28.100 so i can read it um speck and your response simply says um or the the subtitle to the charm

01:29:37.680 simply says it's an herb bundle to protect the folk uh and the herb charm goes as follows

01:29:42.560 be they wound to witch's bane in the fire a hag's fate wanes an englishman's foot is bushel bound

01:29:50.760 there a swine's snout will be found let the tongue of a toad cover thee and sprinkle thyself with the 0.93

01:29:56.280 dew of the sea a tuft of hair from the old man's head twine twined round right excuse me round

01:30:03.020 tight the old wood bed valerian turns away the evilest eye and so must the nymph's spur die

01:30:09.580 lastly thor's helper must be a strong rod and on the gray road your your prayers well shod

01:30:17.280 so in that the witch's bane is rue uh plantain is the englishman's foot dandelion leaf is the

01:30:26.440 swine's snout sage leaf is the toad's tongue rosemary sprig is the dew of the sea mugwort

01:30:31.980 is the old man's head valerian root is simply valerian and spearmint is the nymph's spur

01:30:37.740 and the Rowan Twig is Thor's Helper.

01:30:42.280 There it is.

01:30:42.880 So as far as those things,

01:30:46.320 I have a little bit of knowledge 1.00

01:30:47.460 of some of those things being used for feminine issues. 0.70

01:30:53.360 I'm not exactly sure of all of them.

01:30:56.100 You know, I don't traffic in herbs.

01:30:59.520 I traffic in modern Western medicine.

01:31:01.780 So I'm not really exactly sure how those apply,

01:31:05.460 But that is the charm, and that is what we did burn at Nornanot. 0.72

01:31:10.680 So the purpose was not specifically to address any female health issues.

01:31:18.880 The purpose of the herbs charm was to recreate and push forward an old tradition in a new way.

01:31:29.020 and that to it, that at Nornanot in olden times,

01:31:35.500 the women folk would gather these herbs 1.00

01:31:37.520 and they would burn them 1.00

01:31:38.440 and they would waft the smoke in two fires

01:31:41.380 and pass the cattle and the men between them

01:31:43.680 because in our agrarian past, 0.89

01:31:47.480 this time of year is when the Alshiri Agothi

01:31:50.440 and Sprenger East and I,

01:31:52.180 were we rich enough to have many head of cattle.

01:31:55.880 we would drive them up into the mountains or up into the summer pastures at this time and so in

01:32:04.500 order to ensure our safety and the health and wealth of the animals those blessings would be 1.00

01:32:10.960 bestowed upon us by our women folk so this is a recreation of that so that we can cleanse

01:32:17.040 ourselves of all the negativity that we're bringing forward into the year and get rid of it

01:32:21.940 So that was the exact purpose of Nornanot. I'm assuming that any of these herbs taken in a tincture or in a tea, I know for a fact that some of them do alleviate symptoms, but that's about the extent of my knowledge as far as herbs and women's health issues.

01:32:40.020 Fair enough.

01:32:46.140 So that particular blend of herbs and spices is about cleansing and protection from witchcraft.

01:33:08.760 And one of the ideas, Nornanat, means Witches' Night. 0.96

01:33:15.060 And it is a dual-purpose bloat that welcomes in and empowers the female magic

01:33:28.920 inherent by our women, by our goddesses, by the spirits on our team,

01:33:37.640 and simultaneously seeks to protect us and shield us from the magic that's leveled against us by opposing forces,

01:33:51.400 by the forces of chaos, by our foes, by malignant spirits. 0.98

01:33:56.640 So the frequent practitioners of said thing, the witches, are generally and inherently a female domain.

01:34:11.260 And I think that's why some of the herbs have relevance to female issues and female health. 0.52

01:34:20.620 It's very much a female holiday, both in offense and defense, in that sense. 0.98

01:34:37.300 Sorry, guys, I'm looking back over the questions.

01:34:39.780 Bode, I had read somewhere, also from Celine, I had read somewhere about the philia part

01:34:55.700 of the soul helping or hindering depending on one's actions. It specifically mentioned

01:35:01.880 evil people having chronic illness or injuries in cases of harming women and children. Is

01:35:07.540 there any truth to this or was it misleading i wish i knew where i have read it from or i would

01:35:13.540 reference it more specifically well i would say that if you are a worker of ill that your field

01:35:22.820 gear is not going to assist you in such things and it's probably not going to look favorably upon

01:35:28.340 you doing so um it is there for your guidance and assistance it is there for benevolent inspiration

01:35:39.620 and to keep you as best it can on the path that is true so i do not think that uh it would look

01:35:51.800 kindly on you doing things like harming women and children other than that i don't know really know

01:35:57.220 of any, you know, adaptations in the lore about that, but I can definitely tell you that it's not, 0.75

01:36:06.140 you know, to be a worker of ill is not going to put you on a good footing with your filgia and you.

01:36:17.120 Trent, do you have something to add to that?

01:36:18.880 uh my answer is pretty similar i i would say it's correct to say that

01:36:26.080 your filgia would assist you in times of need or in times of

01:36:32.760 uh when you're aligning yourself with right action in a way that's very important

01:36:40.060 and you kind of need the assistance uh similar to how uh when you align yourself

01:36:48.660 perfectly with right action and your uh woad self as it's called is sort of there to

01:36:56.340 make sure you uh hit the target so to speak i would say that's a fair a fair thing to say

01:37:03.940 is that your field get would assist you in that that's kind of its its purpose um

01:37:10.500 i don't know that your field get would sort of

01:37:14.020 uh injure you if you were planning on harming women and children i guess i would hope it would

01:37:22.260 you know i don't know of any uh attestation that that happens but i would certainly say that yes

01:37:29.540 your affiliate does help you when needed if uh your your deeds are good or your attempted deeds

01:37:36.980 are good in that case so a lot of this has to do with a recurring theme on the program of

01:37:47.860 um of wholeness and of right action at the right times the more you align yourself with the forces

01:37:59.380 of order the more you align yourself with the iser and with the flow of earth

01:38:10.660 the more in sync the elements of your soul are together when they harmonize

01:38:17.380 and when they're all working together for common purpose

01:38:22.980 there are instances and i wish i could remember where in the lore this was mentioned as well

01:38:26.900 but there's instances where one's philia would abandon them because they had become worthless

01:38:32.500 they had become um malignant and so i absolutely believe that there's a point where you're thinking

01:38:39.060 the philia can cool i'm gonna sit this one out because you are not aligned because you're at

01:38:46.100 odds with your failure one of the key aspects of early psychology and of

01:39:01.700 legitimate psychology is the ill health that come from you being conflicted and from

01:39:09.380 you having internal conflicts with yourself so when pieces of your soul are at odds with one

01:39:18.760 another and they're not working in harmony it opens the door to ill health and malignancy

01:39:25.200 spiritually physically and otherwise and reflects on your luck when things are harmonized and work

01:39:33.020 together in sync you know the opposite happens um and i think that in a case where somebody is

01:39:42.700 deranged or evil-minded evil-hearted and does wrong action the philia can can flee from them

01:39:52.060 or can work against them and you have that conflict between pieces of your soul

01:40:03.020 what would you say to this one um a couple of pieces here what i struggle with is a person

01:40:21.660 asked once basically i'm not white but can't believe in also true and you suggested it's

01:40:30.460 only right actually i'm going to take this one first and i'll throw it to you it's a direct

01:40:34.060 thing about something i said and you suggest it's only right they worship their own gods

01:40:39.980 but not but doesn't i'm sorry i can't read i promise you but does that mean just any and all

01:40:48.140 gods are real because if that's the case well that makes this even harder to believe just any and all

01:40:54.540 gods are real on a whim? Every other racial group's cultural deities exist? Isn't that a little too

01:41:01.440 convenient? It sort of feels like, shoo, shoo, go away, this is our little club, go get coming. But I

01:41:08.200 thought these gods aren't philosophical, but highly serious and real, meaning everyone's other gods

01:41:14.440 can't be. Why not just say only the European deities are true and everyone else is false,

01:41:21.100 and it's simply the harsh reality but true um i would gladly say that if i thought that that was

01:41:28.920 true um but i don't necessarily think that that's true so

01:41:36.720 there's nuance here and i'm really not evading taking a stance on it this is very intentional

01:41:46.740 it is not the position of the afa to adjudicate the relationship between other races of people

01:41:55.900 and their deities i'm not saying that their gods are all real i'm not saying they are all

01:42:04.300 not real i'm not saying which ones are and which ones aren't

01:42:08.620 they're all not my gods and our focus is on our folk and our gods and respecting the dignity of

01:42:19.240 other groups of people to forge their own relationship with their deities is you know a

01:42:28.040 courtesy and a nice thing on our part and is respectful of them being able to work out their

01:42:35.460 own destiny and their own existence. The races of mankind are very different and are

01:42:45.860 not the same. They all have concepts of religion and deity. Ours is ours, and ours is true, 1.00

01:42:58.740 and ours is the gods of our folk that's absolutely true and it's not a philosophical concept but a

01:43:07.700 truth that we know other races of people have to work that out for themselves and explore the truths

01:43:14.560 of their various um forces they interact with beyond this world and i do think that that's

01:43:26.460 the appropriate position. It's not our job to tell non-whites what gods they're supposed to 0.99

01:43:35.740 worship or not. It's kind of presumptuous for us to do that. And I don't think that inherently

01:43:42.020 the existence of our gods doesn't inherently negate the existence of other gods of other

01:43:49.320 kinds of living thing and i don't think that's inherently true i think that

01:43:55.940 we are very used to abrahamic deities that claim to be the god of all of the things that's inherent

01:44:04.920 in monotheism but in the history of uh existence on earth that has been the exception not the rule

01:44:12.980 It didn't occur to non-Abrahamists that other people's gods don't exist or don't count.

01:44:21.960 That's not the case.

01:44:24.200 You would see time and again when different groups of people encounter one another,

01:44:30.240 their belief that the other group of people's gods exists, that was common amongst...

01:44:36.980 shoot all the time in the classical world it was common um when europeans interacted with

01:44:46.900 any of the different variety of native americans the understanding that other groups of people have

01:44:52.020 their own gods and that those gods have a power for those people was a very common thing in the

01:44:58.100 world when and i believe still is in the world when you're not dealing with abrahamic faiths

01:45:06.980 Polytheism lends itself to that understanding of the world in a very particular way, whereas monotheism rejects that possibility inherently.

01:45:17.300 But even in that case, you don't see that to be true.

01:45:24.240 You read in the Bible about how thou shalt have no other gods before me.

01:45:29.720 It acknowledges that other gods exist, but you're not to worship them.

01:45:34.400 in uh europe during the colonization of christianity taking over europe the conversion

01:45:41.280 it wasn't so much that our gods didn't exist it's that they were demons and they were bad

01:45:49.720 but i think that the the most common stance until it had become culturally ingrained for generations

01:45:59.320 was that other gods exist, but the right God,

01:46:05.380 the only God you're supposed to worship, is the Jewish Jehovah God. 0.99

01:46:10.260 So no, I don't think that's inherent or a necessary thing, 1.00

01:46:13.340 and I don't think it's too convenient.

01:46:15.440 It is, you know, in a way, you know, shoo, shoo,

01:46:19.820 this is our own little club, go find your own.

01:46:23.580 But that's because that's the facts on the ground,

01:46:26.340 not because it is of convenience.

01:46:29.320 We believe that people are inherently genetically built to have their own spirituality in their own way and are inherently different and they relate to the divine in very different ways.

01:46:45.740 Hopefully that interfaces between them and their gods in a, you know, in the way it's supposed to for them.

01:46:53.040 Gentlemen, you guys have anything to add on that?

01:46:59.320 uh not a whole lot but it's an interesting conversation and uh i appreciate the question

01:47:05.720 because that's always a really it's a really fun topic to get into i think i i hope that

01:47:14.560 uh every race has their own gods and that their own gods are real but uh just because you know

01:47:21.540 it's nice to be nice and want nice things for people or whatever but on another level and uh

01:47:27.960 sounds flippant but i i don't really care in a sense and that's nothing against those other

01:47:34.200 groups uh no more so than usual anyhow uh you know i'm i'm white my wife is white my son is white

01:47:43.480 my best friends are white you know i and i know our gods are real i've felt the presence of our

01:47:48.900 gods uh and all the white friends i mentioned are all in the afa so they all have two uh i've

01:47:57.620 I've never, I've never sought out the presence of other gods other than the Jewish God when I was a Christian, of course, I never felt anything there. 0.56

01:48:09.880 It, I don't know, it's just one of those things, when people come to Austria, they kind of ask this, and they'll also ask, you know, well, the story says that Odin and Vili and Ve created the first man and woman.

01:48:25.180 was that the first people ever was the first white people ever and uh i i don't want to minimize it

01:48:32.640 and say it doesn't matter of course it matters but again in a way it it doesn't we know that

01:48:40.460 whoever uh oscan embla were they were like us um in the rig stula uh jarl carl and thrall

01:48:50.120 uh they were us right and just as a nice person i i want that same situation for all the different

01:49:01.580 races i want them to have their own stories and their own gods and i want them to have a

01:49:07.500 great relationship with their gods or whatever it's let me see the other question worded this

01:49:12.220 real quick uh so it sort of feels like shoo shoo go away this is our little club get your own

01:49:22.680 yes this is ours go away have a great time going away but go away yeah uh in all seriousness though

01:49:31.520 yeah no i just the ulterior go the answered it pretty well um this is this is ours and i hope

01:49:38.920 have yours but this is mine you know excellent all right one of the more recent complaints by our

01:49:53.640 detractors is our membership costs why does the afa have membership costs how does this make us

01:50:01.320 different from other quote-unquote Norse pagan groups that are free to join. Bode.

01:50:09.540 Money is how we do nice things. Money is how we have Hoffs. Money is how we have a priesthood. 0.62

01:50:18.080 Not that we get paid, but money is how that we have a priesthood. Money is how that we have

01:50:22.000 all the things that we do. And those free quote-unquote Norse pagan groups, again,

01:50:28.220 back to the earlier part of the broadcast where are their hoffs where are their members

01:50:33.660 they're not doing anything they are as you said earlier when you talk about people being stuck

01:50:39.840 those groups who you know cry and moan at us about having a membership fee

01:50:45.960 those are the same people who still meet up in state parks and still do camping moots because

01:50:52.080 that's all they have now camping moots and all that were great 25 years ago but we've evolved

01:50:58.140 and things cost money we can't just wish hoffs and make them happen we live in the real world

01:51:06.180 in 2026 things cost money and we've said it a lot you know when people ask me personally

01:51:13.000 hey why do why do i need to pay a membership fee to be in the afa well do you want nice things

01:51:19.420 i mean again we can't we can't whip these up out of hopes and dreams that's not how the real world

01:51:25.920 works, and we live in the real world, so that's why.

01:51:32.820 Trent, anything to add?

01:51:37.420 Yeah, that complaint has always bothered me, and I get why you would make that complaint

01:51:47.440 if you don't take this seriously from the get-go or whatever, or if you're just genuinely

01:51:53.200 asking but typically it's asked from a place of someone who already hates us and they just want to

01:51:59.120 level accusations at us or whatever and and maybe it's easier for me to answer this because i've kind

01:52:04.600 of been in leadership long enough and high up enough in leadership that i see where the money

01:52:12.080 goes spoiler it just goes to the hoffs and all of the things we say it goes to uh but

01:52:19.320 this matters what we're doing matters and i know especially now times are tough economically

01:52:33.440 uh you know i work a crappy blue collar manufacturing job i don't make a lot of

01:52:39.400 money i i get it but my 22 a week 88 a month uh and no that wasn't on purpose just a happy

01:52:48.440 coincidence that i give to the afa is it goes to meaningful things it goes to help

01:52:55.400 all five of our hops pay their bills it's

01:53:01.240 yeah my donations go basically to the general fund that's pretty much what they do but still

01:53:05.720 they it goes to whatever little half repairs we need etc uh folk services if you know a member is

01:53:13.640 in need uh it goes to helping them out it goes to making all of this run it's such a cliche and i

01:53:22.600 know everybody that's ever heard it was instantly tired of hearing it the first time they heard it

01:53:26.840 but money is what makes the world go round right now and uh does that make us seem corporate or

01:53:34.520 catholic or whatever to the people that want to worship in their backyards or worship in their

01:53:40.600 their backyards probably, but, uh, the little bit of money coming out of my paychecks also

01:53:49.100 helps make things nicer for AFA members or AFA families that have fallen hard times or whatever. 0.99

01:53:57.620 And, uh, think of all the stupid crap that our money goes to otherwise through taxes, right? 0.99

01:54:05.080 you know some of my money goes to the afa some of it goes to israeli tomahawk missiles to blow up 0.99

01:54:12.300 iranian school girls i'm not crazy about that but i'm glad that i can control where some of

01:54:17.300 my money goes and that it goes to the afa that went a little far afield of what the question

01:54:23.820 was asking but uh it is what it is yeah um

01:54:31.460 Um, so, I mean, Bodie, I'll add to it, but just kind of restate, it's how we have nice

01:54:42.180 things.

01:54:42.780 More than that, it's how any religion ever in the history of the world has nice things.

01:54:48.900 Um, and furthermore, most often that's done in the form of a percentage-based giving.

01:54:59.660 i was trying to look around one of my first things as i was hearing go through was trying to figure

01:55:05.680 out how does this work how does fundraising for religious things work how does it work

01:55:11.420 you know outside of christianity you know what are the other options on that this is how it works

01:55:17.140 is people give a percentage of their income to their religion it's how as far as i know it's how

01:55:24.880 most Hindus do things, it's how Sikhs do things, it's how Buddhists and Shintoists, it's how

01:55:32.620 everyone does things, or something very, very similar, because it's how people who take their

01:55:40.380 religion seriously do things. Importantly, it's how our ancestors do things. The Hoftaler is our

01:55:48.880 word for giving to the AFA based on a percentage-based giving model. That is extremely

01:55:56.000 important. Our members that have chosen to give in that way have been a huge part of our ability

01:56:02.420 to accomplish things. If you'd like to know more about that, please talk to your local folk builder.

01:56:08.720 Anyone would be happy to help you if that's something you're interested in learning more about.

01:56:12.820 but it's not a word that we made up it's a word from our lore that and from our history that was

01:56:21.140 the toll the hoff toll that people paid to support the gothar and the hoffs in you know the prior

01:56:30.340 period of aussitry uh at upsala there was the expectation that you had to pay to contribute to

01:56:37.460 support the the hoff and the gothic structure there and so much so that if you didn't want to

01:56:45.540 participate in bloats as a christian you had to pay to opt out during that period where there was

01:56:51.460 some transition i was learning about that a little bit more today as i was reading about hoffs just

01:56:56.260 kind of incidentally um it was remarked at one point in in uh during the conversion period in

01:57:04.900 anglo-saxon england it was i think it was actually in contrast when there was the danelon

01:57:12.180 there was a uh a danish presence in england that the uh the australia would regularly stock and

01:57:19.460 pay for their temples and they were meticulous about making sure that they were bountifully

01:57:24.820 giving to their uh their religious structure whereas they couldn't at the time get the

01:57:31.300 christians to regularly pay their tithes and it was a point of contrast about man why are these

01:57:37.300 christians being so cheap if they're giving to the church when you know the australia were regularly

01:57:43.460 supporting their hoffs and their gothar um so yeah the kind of the contrast is we're able to 0.73

01:57:50.940 accomplish things we do things we build legitimacy and we build nice things for

01:57:58.740 the reputation of ourselves of our folk and of our gods here in midgard we build institutions

01:58:08.020 that will be here for our children our children's children i think the groups that complain about it

01:58:15.040 some of it is just to find something to complain about because they're um overwhelmed with

01:58:20.960 negativity i think sometimes it's because they've just been so conditioned to see anything that you

01:58:30.640 know we have to be the anti-christianity so if christians do something we have to do the opposite

01:58:36.640 and i think there's other people that just genuinely don't take this seriously

01:58:41.360 there are people that are very content to like well you know me and four of my friends get in

01:58:46.560 camp chairs in the backyard and we share a rotisserie chicken and we drink and we yell

01:58:53.600 about the gods and it's fun and that's all there is those are often the same people that don't

01:58:58.880 include their families and those are the kind of people that you know as soon as one or two of them

01:59:04.720 move or pass away they they stop being also true and it stops with them we're building things for

01:59:12.160 the future we're building we're trying to build an institution worthy of our gods and something to

01:59:22.320 further our faith because this is so very important to us and the things that are

01:59:26.880 important to us you know the expression put your money where your mouth is you show what's valuable

01:59:33.120 to you by what you're willing to donate towards and make happen and you know there's

01:59:39.680 There's an evergreen source of complaining by people on the outside that we require a donation in the AFA, but no one has yet to have any idea how to do it any differently or any better.

02:00:03.060 There's always, oh, that's wrong.

02:00:04.960 We shouldn't do that.

02:00:05.900 But there's never a suggestion.

02:00:07.120 The same people want us to have hawks. They want this to be a legitimate thing. They want this to be something for their children, or they say they want that. But money is something that our people are kind of rally around complaining about. And the difference between us and groups that don't is that we accomplish things, and they don't. We're relevant, and they're not.

02:00:34.660 something i'm something i'd like to add if that's possible is that um something that just struck me

02:00:42.020 is that a lot of our people yes they like to complain about things and they like to

02:00:46.600 complain about money especially and wonder why we have to have a membership donation

02:00:51.400 um number one i think it's so that we know that you at least as you just said put your money where

02:00:59.420 your mouth is and you're at least going to put some quote-unquote skin in the game but also i

02:01:04.440 think that for a lot of our people of all ages that come to also true they they are under this

02:01:11.380 impression because they have experienced in their lifetimes this monolithic thing of religion

02:01:18.420 you know they see a christian church of all type of denominations on every street corner

02:01:23.360 they see these big catholic churches they see all of this and it never strikes them that all of that

02:01:28.320 took money that never it never occurs to them that these things just don't you know appear out

02:01:35.200 of whole cloth they took money it took lots of coin lots of treasure to make these things to

02:01:42.220 make these towering edifices that are catholic churches to make all these you know little

02:01:47.460 protestant churches it takes money but somehow you know they turn around to see us in 2026 and

02:01:54.220 well why do you have to charge a donation why do you have to charge a membership fee

02:01:59.580 because if we want the same things that they have on the same scale that's what it requires

02:02:05.500 so i just want to throw that in there well and some of it's just

02:02:11.740 i think a lack of being honest with themselves how much money do you spend every month on netflix

02:02:18.300 how much money do you spend on takeout food how much money do you spend on a subway sandwich how

02:02:26.700 much money do you spend on cigarettes how much money do you spend on you know whatever the

02:02:32.860 things are that you like and this is not to disparage any of those products but it's to say

02:02:38.780 you spend money you know all day every day on things that you choose that you think are priorities

02:02:45.420 to you, be them things that you need or things that you enjoy and you want, it says something

02:02:53.680 if you're not willing to put money towards something that you claim to believe in.

02:03:01.600 That's something that I think people should give some thought to if that's their position

02:03:06.660 on it.

02:03:07.900 I think sometimes it's just people being grumpy and bitter.

02:03:10.360 to add a quick second

02:03:14.060 hoftaler is not a word we invented

02:03:16.040 it was not a Christian word

02:03:17.360 it was a word used by our folk

02:03:19.080 outside of Christianity

02:03:21.280 and all of 1.00

02:03:23.800 the Hoffs or the Gothar

02:03:25.480 or the spiritual leaders

02:03:27.340 the folk

02:03:29.300 for thousands of years

02:03:30.880 have paid them

02:03:32.300 via

02:03:33.940 it may have been via corn

02:03:36.240 and slabs of beef

02:03:38.560 but they were they all needed money to survive

02:03:42.480 um next up uh so let's start with you trent question in terms of seeking perfection

02:03:57.920 how have you three grown spiritually since entering in leadership are there any lessons

02:04:04.680 that you have learned lately uh i entered leadership in 2017 so it's uh lots of changes

02:04:15.480 but as far as lessons i've learned lately i don't know if i would call it a lesson but something

02:04:19.960 i've been sort of trying to do is uh just build relationships with the ic or the alcenior that

02:04:28.040 uh we don't normally build relationships with through uh the regular holy tides so

02:04:37.020 or specifically as well i've been working on my relationship with lord new order because uh i'm

02:04:43.880 the hof goothy of his temple and he uh before this he was not one of the ice here that i

02:04:53.380 specifically kind of sought a relationship with uh you know i'm a i'm a guy so thor

02:05:02.480 tear odin uh frere on occasion were the ones i uh sought after the most uh so i've had to sort

02:05:10.340 of go out of my way to build that relationship with lord jordor as well as uh you know the

02:05:17.320 other Isier, Ullr, Bragi, the maidens of Fensaler, etc. And it's been really cool to kind of give

02:05:28.120 little solo or family bloat to those different Isier, Alcenior, and kind of hopefully as many

02:05:38.900 of you as possible listening know that kind of feeling when you perform bloat or are standing

02:05:43.180 in bloat and you you know that you were you were heard you were seen whatever um it's really cool

02:05:50.860 to reach out to a god or goddess you haven't before and perform a very sincere pious dedicated

02:05:57.960 bloat and you kind of you know the wind blows a certain way or whatever and you you feel heard or

02:06:05.560 seen and you know that you made kind of that first contact with that god or goddess i would encourage

02:06:12.900 everyone listening to do that because you know we don't have a holy tide centered around broggy

02:06:18.640 we don't have a holy tide centered around clean uh etc so not exactly a lesson but just some

02:06:26.220 advice i suppose what about you buddy

02:06:31.600 sorry about that guys i had to step away for a minute what was the question

02:06:36.560 the question is uh how have you i'll read it to you exactly question in terms of seeking

02:06:45.880 perfection how have you three grown spiritually since entering in leadership are there any

02:06:52.540 lessons that you have learned lately okay so the first part of the question how have i grown since

02:06:59.400 becoming part of leadership um i have grown in my understanding of how the church works

02:07:06.580 i have come to understand all the i say all the all the moving parts that i am privy to as far

02:07:15.860 as things that are in my purview to do um i was i will say it i will consider myself woefully

02:07:23.120 ignorant in how the church ran until becoming a part of leadership um you know there's kind of

02:07:28.860 that when you're an apprentice folk builder, and even when you're a folk builder, there's 0.95

02:07:32.960 kind of a, um, lack of understanding about exactly the inner workings or the inner baseball,

02:07:40.720 as we sometimes say, um, spiritually, I've grown by leaps and bounds. Um, everyone likes

02:07:49.240 to think that, uh, I'm this great lore master. I don't see it. Um, but, uh, that what knowledge

02:07:58.080 I do have has been hard won and hard fought for, for, you know, reading, reading many a dusty tome

02:08:05.380 and making sure that I could understand and glean the knowledge from it. Um, recently,

02:08:12.060 um, I've gained a lot of confidence when I perform bloat. I was always kind of nervous in the service.

02:08:20.380 Uh, number one, because I did not want to disrespect any of our gods that I was giving 0.99

02:08:25.600 bloat too i did not want to do a bad job for the folk i didn't want them to think what's this idiot 0.91

02:08:31.380 doing standing up here he doesn't know what he's doing um but recently through talking with the 0.92

02:08:38.180 and talking with speckinger east and asking them for pointers asking them for tips and you know

02:08:44.880 um things that they do to not only prepare but to perform bloat well i feel that i've gotten

02:08:51.520 way better at it um and just overall as the days and the months and the years roll by

02:08:59.360 my knowledge of our faith and of our gods and how i fit in all of this has just only

02:09:05.880 deepened and gotten better so that's my answer

02:09:09.580 Yeah, it's an interesting question to answer, and I think it's important, and it's always

02:09:23.500 good to reflect on those things.

02:09:26.020 hard to try to calculate or encapsulate um tons i've

02:09:39.540 so i jumped right in when i when i joined the afa and i tried to get involved in in

02:09:46.020 leadership as soon as i could because i really wanted to be as as involved i was so

02:09:51.220 so zealous and on fire for this when i found it i wanted to be as involved as i could so

02:09:59.780 early on i stepped up to be a folk builder for alaska and at the time with alaska and

02:10:05.780 the yukon territories and i think they put hawaii with me because there was no place

02:10:11.300 else for it to be but um so i've been involved in afa leadership

02:10:17.460 in some capacity since 2009.

02:10:25.640 I have had to interact with the other leaders.

02:10:28.880 I've had to interact with all of our members

02:10:33.940 at all of the different geography and stages of life and age

02:10:40.020 and all different ways.

02:10:42.880 And I got to really, I feel like I've grown by getting a better understanding of our folk as a whole, having my finger on the pulse of modern house of true.

02:10:56.660 I've got to forge a friendship with our founder, Steve McNallan, and learn from him and from Githy Shulam McNallan and learn their wealth of experience being involved in this for as long as they have.

02:11:18.340 I got to get so much, I don't know, so much wisdom and insight from their experiences.

02:11:31.720 And I also, becoming, the more I got involved in leadership, the greater I got to learn the weight and the responsibility of that.

02:11:48.340 being a gothi and now being the else harrier gothi to

02:11:53.280 have to navigate that and counsel people in a variety of situations and

02:12:04.220 i've grown in the paternalism that i have towards the afa towards our fellow leaders and the

02:12:15.800 membership, but I've also grown tremendously in my relationship to the ICer and the very

02:12:25.480 personally, uh, just in my personal relationship, but also very specifically in my position as

02:12:32.580 I feel that I have interacted with him in a very special and very particular way that

02:12:42.000 has um helped me to better myself in a lot of different a lot of different ways a lot of

02:12:52.560 different ways psychologically emotionally spiritually i feel like i've been blessed

02:12:57.760 with a much closer relationship with the icr than i would have experienced otherwise and

02:13:04.080 And I also am able to appreciate all of the victories of the folk because I'm in a spot where kind of all roads, all paths of communication kind of come up to where I'm at.

02:13:20.940 So I get to hear about the accomplishments and the promotions and the marriages and the babies and all the different things going on within the AFA that are really special.

02:13:36.000 I get to have a very special perspective on that that most people don't get to see.

02:13:43.280 From my vantage point, I get a much wider scope of vision on seeing those kind of things.

02:13:49.380 as far as stuff that i've learned lately or that i've ways that i've grown

02:13:54.960 i wish i had a really cool answer just off the top of my head i feel like i'm always learning

02:14:09.460 something new or something different one of the things that i always tell the gothar is you know

02:14:14.880 we always have something unexpected or, you know,

02:14:18.300 when you think you've seen it all,

02:14:19.640 you always see some new thing that helps you see stuff a little bit differently.

02:14:25.200 So I wish I had a really cool thing to just throw out there really quick.

02:14:28.080 As far as recent lessons that I've learned, I'm sure there've been tons,

02:14:32.940 but I don't have one readily at my grasp to give you. I wish you did.

02:14:38.680 Before I get to the next question, though, I don't want to forget Ben in Arizona.

02:14:42.240 Thank you so much.

02:14:43.200 He donated $20 to this program and says, had a victorious day today.

02:14:49.420 Thanks, Speckinger East.

02:14:51.640 So I'm glad to hear about your victory and appreciate your donation, Ben.

02:14:55.780 Thank you.

02:15:04.540 Next up.

02:15:05.700 it really is a rite of passage to go get fitted for your first suit 0.98

02:15:13.200 and buy it custom size can the afa men help the younger men be properly sized

02:15:20.100 to appropriately shop for suits

02:15:23.180 do either of you gentlemen have any any thoughts on that

02:15:28.420 uh sure i mean

02:15:34.320 i don't have the exact measurements that uh you're supposed to know to get fitted for a suit

02:15:43.620 but i know it's it's kind of like neck thigh um chest etc you can look up the list uh

02:15:53.680 and you know you measure all that in inches keep it on hand update it every so often depending on

02:16:01.680 if you're going through a physical change or whatever uh i i mean i guess to answer the can

02:16:09.400 the afa men help younger men be properly sized etc uh yes yes we can uh

02:16:15.120 also like the site i order my suits from is uh

02:16:21.640 it's going to sound fishy but it's this uh suit retailer in hong kong called bd tailor-made

02:16:28.880 I promise that while they are no longer owned by the British Empire, the Cantonese and Chinese hands there yearn to serve the Anglo-Saxons still. 0.89

02:16:41.820 And so they make a damn good suit. 0.99

02:16:43.920 And when you're ordering the suit, they have to do it custom made. 0.97

02:16:48.680 And so you type in your measurements and I've ordered four or five suits from them now and I've never had a single issue with it.

02:16:58.880 uh so yeah i would say bare bones what you need to do is look up what measurements are needed for

02:17:05.680 uh fitting a suit and then get one of those flimsy tape measures more flexible ones you can

02:17:13.840 kind of wrap around your different parts of your body to get a good measurement

02:17:18.480 and uh that's pretty much all you need

02:17:20.720 yeah i get um suits off of suit outlets.com and

02:17:35.760 for some advice on that first yes absolutely people can help instruct young men on how to do

02:17:41.280 that um but you can go into any place that sells suits and they will usually just be happy to

02:17:51.360 measure you for them i think there's sometimes shoulders neck chest waist hips thigh but um

02:18:04.720 there's usually a guy there that does that all day every day that can get you those measurements

02:18:09.200 accurately the other thing that i would suggest too especially like i can't i would have to

02:18:16.320 custom order suits that way but i don't like the way those fit they're like way too tight

02:18:21.360 it's popular now to have like skinny leg stuff i don't like that um

02:18:29.120 i have to alter anything if i buy it off the rack but i think that a good way to go is suit outlets

02:18:35.840 has got cheap suits and i don't mean like poor quality or whatever maybe they are i don't know

02:18:41.600 but uh low price affordably priced suits and then take those and get them custom altered

02:18:49.680 and that's what i've always done that's worked out good for me because i'm just very irregular

02:18:54.480 that way i can't you know if i get something that's going to fit my chest and shoulders then

02:18:59.200 it wears like i'm wearing a tent on my midsection and one thing that i think uh

02:19:08.000 larger size men know they don't make big and tall that's a misnomer they say there's big and tall

02:19:14.080 it's big or tall so it's for like short fat guys or tall skinny guys but it's really hard to get

02:19:21.520 like big chest big shoulders but also long enough in scene so there's options but i think that the

02:19:32.480 getting something that's big enough to fit your maximum measurements and then get it custom

02:19:38.000 tailored is the way that i've found success um 1.00

02:19:44.560 Bode, can you address the disparaging comments about having female priestesses and having 0.96

02:19:53.820 a female ranked above men that have been on the recent trash posts? 0.98

02:20:01.520 Sure. We can start with the basics. Duality exists in nature. Men and women are complementary 0.99

02:20:10.400 to each other um we want to accelerate that forward into cultural practices and historicity

02:20:18.580 um our people have always had priestesses um the greeks had them the romans had them

02:20:26.260 the germans had them the celts had them the angles had them everyone had them it was only 0.99

02:20:31.640 the monotheistic abrahamic face that said nope women are beneath us they can't do the things 1.00

02:20:36.960 that we can do so they can just sit back and do as they're told. We didn't have that. We've never 1.00

02:20:42.880 had that. We are committed to reflecting the best practices of our ancestors as it pertains

02:20:50.520 to Ositre, and this is one of those. I can't imagine, I really can't imagine our church

02:20:59.120 without Githias. I can't. They are extremely important to our church. They're extremely 1.00

02:21:07.740 instrumental in a lot of, well, a lot of every aspects of things that we do. You know, one of the,

02:21:18.360 the, not to disparage any of the other women of our faith or in our church,

02:21:23.160 but I often refer to Spickinger Brandy Fassett as the hardest working woman in Ossetree. 0.99

02:21:28.220 she definitely does a lot of stuff and there are other hard-working women in 0.96

02:21:34.360 all of our githias are they provide services and counseling that are nuanced

02:21:43.820 that not necessarily all of us you know godhar or us godhis can do

02:21:48.980 they add a feminine touch you know to everything that goes on and

02:21:56.820 And to be kind of silly for a moment, you know, they zhuzh up the place.

02:22:01.580 They make it nice. 0.66

02:22:02.860 So that's why.

02:22:10.500 So this complaint, there is a phenomenon amongst our very often young men that are isolated,

02:22:21.980 that lack a lot of real world experience.

02:22:24.740 kind of the same set i mentioned earlier that do a lot of the purity spiraling to where

02:22:30.700 they treat life or their idea of what life is like it's a video game where you've got to like

02:22:42.520 pick and choose where to place stats and like how to do your character creation and oh you need

02:22:50.720 something for the religion slot so let's put something in there well what's my preference

02:22:58.080 on how i create a religion it doesn't work that way our religion is based on our understanding

02:23:05.200 of divine truth and relationship of our full twitter folk and our gods um if we were creating

02:23:12.960 like a made up religion with just random stuff that we think would be cool then sure we might

02:23:20.400 created that way with no female priesthood and we could have all of our priests be you know 0.98

02:23:27.280 six foot or greater and they could all be you know five percent body fat and we could have 0.98

02:23:35.840 they would all be geniuses and like you very quickly get outside the realm of

02:23:41.360 dealing with real people in the real world our ancestors never had um

02:23:46.480 that kind of distinction. And it wasn't equality and it wasn't sameness. It was out of a unique

02:23:59.820 understanding that the women had a very particular skill set in relating to the divine. And you see

02:24:10.360 this in you know all aspects of of arian spirituality it's not unique to um house true

02:24:17.960 or to the the norse expression of it you have priestesses in all of the arian faiths because

02:24:25.640 women are able to relate to the divine in a very particular way in a way that's very beneficial to

02:24:31.720 the community to we've always understood there is a divine element to femininity just as there's a

02:24:40.040 divine element to masculinity to to cut part of that off or to negate part of that

02:24:48.760 would be unbalanced and you'd be missing out on a lot of a lot of things there is an inherent 0.61

02:24:58.840 anti-woman bias in abrahamism that leads to like oh it's trad and it's based to not let women do

02:25:08.280 stuff we're not trying to be trad we're not trying to be based yes stuff that we do happens to be

02:25:19.000 based or happens to be trad because the right thing to do but that directionality is really

02:25:24.980 important we're not trying to create this whole cloth thing to impress our internet friends so

02:25:34.080 they can tell us how based we are we're trying to do something that reflects the natural order and

02:25:39.760 that um is true to divine truth the way that we understand it so githias have always been

02:25:47.040 a part of our faith they're an extremely important part of the modern expression of our faith

02:25:54.880 i know that feminism so this is something else also true isn't a reaction to something else

02:26:02.160 it's its own thing we do a disservice by making it a reaction to things we don't like out in the 1.00

02:26:10.000 world so feminism and an inbalanced um in your face like gross feminism has been repugnant in

02:26:23.520 our modern world and so we recoil at it and it's very natural to feel a need to react against it

02:26:30.800 But that's because there's a gross imbalance created by the degenerate world around us.

02:26:38.740 That's not the natural state of things.

02:26:41.360 In the natural state, there's a harmony there.

02:26:44.380 There is a coalescing of men and women around rules that are suited for them to fit well in them.

02:26:54.680 And that was always reflected in society and is reflected in our priesthood today.

02:27:00.800 But something else that's really true, despite whatever people wish were the case, we evaluate the individuals who step forward and want to take a position of leadership in the church and want to serve our gods as priests or priestesses.

02:27:23.100 um that's not who we wish were there or who we designed to be there that's these are the

02:27:33.480 individuals who step up who have that faith who feel that calling and who want to contribute in

02:27:39.760 that way very often our githias step up in ways that you know our gothar don't they step up in

02:27:48.380 ways that other members of the AFA don't, and they fill slots that there's not men out there

02:27:54.580 that are going to do. So not only do I think that they're very uniquely inclined to do certain

02:27:59.860 things in ways that are better or certainly different than men can do, but they also are

02:28:06.420 sometimes the ones willing to carry the load and do the work, whereas a lot of men let us down that

02:28:11.820 way. But they're uniquely situated for a lot of things ritually. They're especially uniquely

02:28:21.800 situated to serve as conduits for the divine in particular ways. And we've seen that with

02:28:28.640 our ancestors. In a just practical way, they're very good at building the frith and weaving

02:28:37.580 the frith within our community within the congregation and also counseling our members

02:28:45.020 and not just like you might think with counseling you know men counsel men or women counsel women

02:28:50.540 but sometimes you need that cross-gender counseling sometimes there's men that need

02:28:56.700 to hear certain things from a woman from a female perspective are willing to

02:29:01.740 um to share or to be vulnerable talk about what they're going through with a woman in

02:29:10.300 a way that they wouldn't be with a man and that's facilitated very well by our idea of this so

02:29:17.900 we have him there because this is also true and that's always been something that also true has

02:29:22.460 and they feel unique and spiritually um significant role in our faith

02:29:28.860 faith. That's the way the gods have ordained that to me, literally and figuratively, and

02:29:35.520 that's always been expressed with our faith. We don't have an anti-woman bias. We have

02:29:40.740 a pro-nature, pro-natural order bias. It's very important that we don't define ourselves

02:29:48.840 by the negation of things we don't like, but by positive values of things that we do like.

02:29:53.900 We try very hard to do that in the Austrophoism.

02:30:03.340 Trent, besides Founder MacNallan's book and the work by Edred and the Eddas,

02:30:10.560 what other books slash authors do you guys like or that have influenced you?

02:30:17.720 I would recommend Germania by Tacitus, as I mentioned earlier.

02:30:22.100 Culture of the Teutons

02:30:24.620 by Wilhelm Gronbeck

02:30:26.020 specifically the Antelope Hill

02:30:28.100 publishing version I believe

02:30:30.220 it is

02:30:31.300 Beowulf by

02:30:33.140 translated by anyone other than

02:30:36.120 Emily Wilson

02:30:36.840 what's

02:30:43.780 Deep Ancestors by

02:30:46.000 liberal

02:30:47.920 guy whose name I can't remember

02:30:50.000 it's got a wheel and a donkey on the front

02:30:53.820 of some copies I guess

02:30:56.380 Lady with the Mead Cup

02:30:59.940 Road to Hell by 1.00

02:31:05.400 what's her name

02:31:09.260 if you look that up you'll find it

02:31:12.400 H.R. Ellis Davidson

02:31:16.080 yes

02:31:17.100 I don't have specific authors

02:31:25.060 where they've just

02:31:27.440 written banger after

02:31:29.460 banger but

02:31:30.460 Julius Evla had some good stuff

02:31:34.880 Revolt Against the Modern World

02:31:36.340 Ride the Tiger

02:31:37.920 Mystery of the Grail

02:31:40.160 that's more esoteric

02:31:42.780 kind of big picture I guess but

02:31:44.560 yeah 1.00

02:31:46.760 that's what I got what about you buddy so the lady that Trent mentioned HR

02:32:01.520 Ellis Davidson little Hilda Rodham Ellis Davidson she was actually a a reader I 1.00

02:32:07.760 think or a lectern whatever it's called in the Church of England but her

02:32:12.440 her academic discipline was in studying the ancient faiths and the pre-christian times of

02:32:18.240 europe so she's written many many many many many fascinating books i say a lot of minis like there's

02:32:24.720 dozens but the ones i can think off with off my head are um like trent mentioned i believe you

02:32:33.180 mentioned the road to hell um so there's the road to hell there's gods and goddesses of northern

02:32:38.740 europe um just anything with her name on it i would say read it um i do not believe i remember

02:32:47.820 the author but there's a very famous book that studies the comparison between the celtic faith

02:32:53.840 and the germanic faith which is called myths myths and symbols of pagan europe that's a pretty good

02:32:58.900 one um if you would like to read more about than you ever thought you would ever want to know about

02:33:08.140 the Battle of the Tudorberg Forest

02:33:09.780 with Prince Herman.

02:33:12.700 There's a wonderful book called

02:33:13.900 The Battle That Stopped Rome

02:33:15.200 by the historian Peter S. Wells.

02:33:17.700 That's a very good read.

02:33:22.280 Let's see, what else?

02:33:24.020 Trent already mentioned

02:33:24.900 Culture of the Teutons.

02:33:28.020 I would also, of course,

02:33:30.660 recommend the book

02:33:32.140 that the questioner asked about

02:33:34.000 or mentioned,

02:33:35.720 Founder MacDallan's book.

02:33:37.080 I would also recommend reading his most recent book, The Spear.

02:33:43.900 There's too many to list.

02:33:46.220 Too many to list.

02:33:54.600 Sure, what they said.

02:33:58.060 Culture of the Teutons by Wilhelm Grombeck is really good.

02:34:02.520 I got a lot out of that.

02:34:07.080 Trent mentioned it earlier, I really enjoy reading Evela.

02:34:17.460 I've read all of the Julius Evela material that's been translated into English.

02:34:26.660 Depends what you like to read.

02:34:28.220 I mean, the question wasn't just relegated to Alistair-specific books.

02:34:37.080 it's hard because I very seldom remember authors of history books.

02:34:43.840 I really like historical biographies.

02:34:48.520 And I would have to go over to my bookshelf and read around to find names of

02:34:52.600 some of the authors of those that I've liked.

02:34:56.040 Again,

02:34:56.600 I very seldom have names of people that write nonfiction kind of books.

02:35:01.820 It's hard to,

02:35:03.440 my brain just doesn't do that,

02:35:05.660 but there's a lot of stuff.

02:35:07.080 And I know that in a fun way, and this is something that Steve and I kind of bonded over, but Robert E. Howard wrote a lot of really cool short stories.

02:35:21.600 And like, it's not that they're necessarily deep, but the tone of them is inspiring and masculine and assertive in a proud and excited way.

02:35:35.860 so those are always really cool um historically i really like david irving's books i think there's

02:35:44.580 a lot of again really good authors there's a bunch of authors there's a particular author

02:35:49.380 i can't think of right now writing about medieval kings of england that i really like

02:35:58.260 but yeah so a lot of that type of reading but these other gentlemen kind of got some

02:36:03.620 of the major oustertree ones before i did uh what are the

02:36:16.500 bode what are the similarities and differences between agithya vulva and witches

02:36:24.340 uh pretty simple um to me um a githya is a priestess a vulva is a cirrus and a witch is someone who

02:36:39.860 typically and historically is someone who hexes people that is why the the german word we have

02:36:50.200 the german word hexen knocked for what the holiday or the holy day rather that we call

02:36:56.300 um three important distinctions i think one uh if there are any to my mind and correct me if i'm

02:37:07.580 wrong here but to my mind if any of their any dnd fans in the house a githia would be

02:37:12.960 Lawful Good

02:37:15.800 A 0.98

02:37:17.200 Vulva would be 0.99

02:37:18.500 I would say Chaotic Good

02:37:21.420 And a 1.00

02:37:23.380 Witch would be 1.00

02:37:24.600 What's the

02:37:26.980 Help me out here, I'll show you

02:37:28.320 What would be the one on the chart

02:37:31.020 For Evil Bad

02:37:32.980 You're nerding out

02:37:35.160 All on your own here

02:37:36.140 Yeah, I mean

02:37:39.360 There are three distinct

02:37:40.300 three distinct

02:37:41.980 pursuits I would say

02:37:44.280 Agithya is pursuing

02:37:46.400 you know

02:37:47.900 right good action and performing 0.86

02:37:49.860 ritual for her folk

02:37:51.980 and leading her folk

02:37:53.380 Evolva is

02:37:55.540 tapping into things that

02:37:58.340 us men do not understand

02:38:00.680 the very most

02:38:04.120 famous Evolva of all would be the one 0.86

02:38:06.220 in the Veloosbow

02:38:07.740 which translates into English as

02:38:11.520 the song of the seeress

02:38:12.780 so she is the one who 0.97

02:38:15.540 would be performing save magic

02:38:17.060 and a witch 0.96

02:38:18.940 would be one who would be 1.00

02:38:21.420 putting hexes on folks and doing things

02:38:23.400 that ought not to be done to goodly

02:38:25.600 folk

02:38:25.900 Trent do you have something to add?

02:38:35.080 Bodhi

02:38:35.640 addressed the differences and the question

02:38:37.560 asked about similarities uh i guess for similarities i would say they uh well they're

02:38:46.820 all women first of all uh but they're all women who kind of dabble in in the esoteric to varying

02:38:58.860 degrees obviously um not all githyr are super duper you know say they're magicians but i think

02:39:09.900 all of our githyr have uh dabbled in it a bit whereas a vulva cirrus

02:39:18.220 that's kind of her specialty in a witch uh that term has so many negative connotations i'm not

02:39:24.300 But I don't really know, honestly, where they would land and how much Sather they work with.

02:39:31.700 But yeah, that's the similarity, I think, is they all do some form of Sather in some way.

02:39:38.800 so um

02:39:49.520 there's a lot of overlap in those things and i think that's worth um

02:39:58.440 Um, worth saying. Um, yeah, they're, they're all, you know, obviously, as Trent said, they're all, um, women. I think that the witch thing takes different connotations. It certainly does etymologically over time as it comes to us and develops. 0.88

02:40:24.880 Agithya is a priestess 0.86

02:40:30.840 I think that's the

02:40:34.980 last two we can kind of talk about

02:40:37.260 the difference between the first and the last two 0.92

02:40:39.120 Agithya is a priestess 0.98

02:40:40.340 a vulva and a witch 1.00

02:40:42.940 are

02:40:43.580 magical

02:40:46.680 practitioners

02:40:47.620 all of these things can have overlap

02:40:50.280 and I think that they typically do in one way or another

02:40:53.180 um but and because bodie opened the door to being a nerd on it i think that one of the ways that you

02:41:03.060 can kind of think about it is you know there's there's cleric spells and there's wizard spells

02:41:12.480 and those are different things that you do through different means and i think that's

02:41:19.660 you know, an element between the Githya and the vulva or the witch.

02:41:25.800 But like I said, there's overlap. 0.66

02:41:26.960 The vulva certainly is a seeress, but I think, you know,

02:41:31.540 very often depending on what you're talking about in witchcraft,

02:41:37.300 there's a variety of things, and I think it becomes a catch-all.

02:41:42.460 Yes, they put hexes and curses on things and people,

02:41:46.600 but also they practice healing and, you know, various herbal medicinal charms.

02:41:59.640 They enact all kinds of different types of magic,

02:42:03.320 and I think they end up becoming an overarching kind of catch-all between Safe Kona and Vulva.

02:42:10.560 All kind of get lumped in a witch category by the time you use the term.

02:42:14.780 it's not really uh it's not really the term our ancestors would have used congruent to githya and

02:42:24.940 vulva um it'd be i it'd be closer to githya vulva and norn and norn like the big norns in the high

02:42:37.660 mythology are weavers of fate so the idea with witchcraft heavily relies on the idea of binding

02:42:47.020 and separating and weaving things together and you see that kind of um

02:42:55.500 weaving of things in a lot of um spellcraft and in that kind of practice so i think that there's

02:43:04.860 overlap and the witch becomes the overall term for women who do magical things

02:43:13.020 but i'd say those are similarities if something is if one is just a vulva by itself you could look

02:43:19.660 at that as an as an oracle or a cirrus oftentimes a safe corner would be both that and what you

02:43:27.500 refer to as a witch but this is us piecing together imprecise linguistics i think there's

02:43:33.900 a lot of overlap the next questions uh for you trent does everyone in your kindred need to be

02:43:47.580 also true to be your kindred i know afa kindreds need to be all afa also true for a non-afa kindred

02:43:56.140 If I ordained a wedding or ceremony, am I a Githya?

02:44:01.880 Not by the AFA standard, but in my family.

02:44:05.140 They want me to get ordained and do a wedding.

02:44:10.060 Yeah, okay, let me answer that a piece at a time. 0.85

02:44:12.680 Does everyone in your kindred need to be Alcetru to be your kindred?

02:44:16.220 Kindred in the Alcetru sense.

02:44:18.720 So the word kindred means family.

02:44:21.040 So if you mean that sense, no.

02:44:23.200 If you mean kindred as anyone in Alcatru would use the term, yes.

02:44:32.140 AFA kindred needs to be all AFA members.

02:44:36.800 That's correct.

02:44:37.900 For a non-AFA kindred, if I were to perform a wedding or ceremony, I might get you. 0.98

02:44:44.440 This isn't the nicest or prettiest answer, but no. 0.98

02:44:47.700 um i am of the opinion that the only current gothar are afa gothar uh

02:44:56.200 but even if that were not the case i would say that the title of gothi or get you a sacred it's

02:45:04.000 a lifelong thing it's something you need to study for and you put the work in to

02:45:11.220 be recognized by that title uh so simply getting a um an ordination at the courthouse or whatever

02:45:24.340 uh to do a wedding uh would not make you a priestess no uh i mean that said if your family

02:45:32.080 wants you specifically to get some form of ordination reform wedding absolutely do that

02:45:37.120 that's certainly a tremendous no no okay ordination means something getting an ordination

02:45:47.680 out of a mail-ordered thing is just offensive there's a lot of ways that you can do things

02:45:54.400 in your state as an officiant oh i don't know your statement in a lot of states

02:45:59.120 to officiate a wedding without being clergy but an ordination specifically for any faith

02:46:09.460 is a serious thing those of us that are gothar or priests in any capacity have devoted our lives

02:46:18.320 to the service of our gods in a very particular way and it's disrespectful to the concept

02:46:25.680 for people to go get a quick mail order ordination so they can fill out paperwork.

02:46:32.700 I get it being special to your family, and there's a lot of states

02:46:36.720 that you don't have to have any ordination in order to do it,

02:46:39.840 but you do have to register as an officiant.

02:46:42.360 There's ways they can get married civilly at a courthouse.

02:46:45.680 You can perform some sort of ceremony, and then they can get it stamped off by the judge.

02:46:51.480 There's a lot of workarounds, but I think it's really important not to disrespect the position of a priest in any faith by that.

02:47:05.240 Ordination is a serious thing. I get that it's easy to get in today's world, but it devalues the position of all the rest of us when people get it without the sincere commitment of, you know, being that.

02:47:23.260 i'd say if you wanted to become a githia then certainly you know go through the steps within

02:47:32.260 the afa and be happy to help you get to that if that's a commitment that you want to make that's

02:47:38.820 lifelong um but yeah and i get i get it we live in a time where families are very disconnected

02:47:48.320 and often don't have a religious tradition or a religious body that they're a part of

02:47:56.380 and they want to have a particular kind of ceremony for their wedding.

02:48:01.600 But it's something that we take really seriously. 0.98

02:48:05.360 There's a point of having a Githya or a Gothi perform a wedding before the Aesir.

02:48:11.960 it is a significant and a holy right performed by people who the gods have ordained and recognized

02:48:21.720 as clergy going through that system in that way recognizes the authority of the icr and the

02:48:30.920 position of gofi and githya as being something important so i really urge people to do that

02:48:36.760 if your family members are also true you know they should join the afa if they haven't and if

02:48:43.000 they did we'd be happy to you know arrange for someone to be involved in um officiating that 0.87

02:48:50.200 wedding but no i would not consider you githya if you got a quick ordinations for a family githya

02:49:00.120 and i think it is and none of this is aimed at you for asking the question thank you for asking it 0.75

02:49:06.760 and it's not to be a jerk but it's because it's our job to be honest truth is one of our virtues 0.84

02:49:13.480 and i think that that kind of a quick ordination to do a one-time ceremony 0.95

02:49:18.040 is disrespectful to the office and go through

02:49:25.000 um

02:49:29.160 all right emily has two questions

02:49:31.320 and Bodie maybe you can help with this hello I have two questions if there is time for both of

02:49:43.840 them there is absolutely time for both of them I'm interested in joining the AFA but my husband

02:49:49.460 who is Catholic is the sole breadwinner and will not allow me to pay the dues to join because he 0.63

02:49:55.820 is morally opposed to it what do i do about that and is there any hope for me joining

02:50:03.900 and i think the second one is might as well include it in the first one here can you give

02:50:11.660 advice on how to navigate a situation where my husband has forbidden me from practicing

02:50:16.060 ausitru in our home thank you very much for your time bodhi what would advice would you give emily

02:50:22.540 on these things and before you do that i just want to say um

02:50:29.500 no if you if you do not have money at your disposal and you would like to be part of the

02:50:35.260 ostrich folk assembly in your unique situations that you can't at this time pay dues because of

02:50:43.100 marital situation while you get that figured out don't let don't let that hold you back from

02:50:48.060 joining if you sincerely want to worship the icer and you know we'll make that work please don't let

02:50:54.380 that hold you back from joining outside of that boby would you like to advise her

02:51:01.020 um the first thing and foremost is an uncomfortable truth that i have observed over my lifetime

02:51:08.380 especially the past 25 years of being also true which is that mixed-faith marriages rarely ever

02:51:15.260 work they rarely ever work out um i've seen but a few instances where it has your predicament

02:51:24.680 emily is quite the pickle i would say um i noticed you mentioned in the question that

02:51:31.160 your husband is the sole breadwinner and therefore controls the finances and will

02:51:34.860 not allow it because he's morally opposed to it um as they all share ago they said

02:51:41.160 um from our standpoint do not let that be the money issue be a bar to you i'm sure that we can

02:51:48.720 work something out on our end with that um the best advice i could give you is that

02:51:55.980 speak honestly and earnestly with him explain to him that this is your sincerely held belief

02:52:03.560 that this is not some idle fad that you're pursuing and if this is truly in your heart that

02:52:10.380 you, you know, like all of us, you must follow it. If this is something that you seriously wish

02:52:17.740 to pursue, then I would say, you know, let nothing stop you. I do not condone or advise you to,

02:52:26.640 you know, blow up your marriage or cause any friction in the household unduly. However,

02:52:34.080 However, if this is what you sincerely want to do, then I really don't have any other advice.

02:52:44.800 If that's something that you really want to do, then I say that you have the right to pursue it.

02:52:50.480 But again, that is quite the situation.

02:52:55.780 I'm not quite sure exactly what words I could say to, you know, make this situation seem, make it make sense.

02:53:06.880 I'll show you, I'm just going to have to defer to your wisdom on this one.

02:53:12.380 Cool.

02:53:12.900 But let's first defer to Trent's wisdom.

02:53:15.040 What do you say, Trent?

02:53:19.720 I mean, as Bodhi said, that is, yeah, definitely a pickle.

02:53:25.140 as far as navigating that situation where your husband's forbidden you from practicing

02:53:33.120 in the home

02:53:34.200 it's if he specifically said in the home not to get all semantic but uh

02:53:44.100 like i mentioned earlier in the question about hawks um our ancestors did also practice their

02:53:51.760 faith in nature uh because the world was made by odin and his brothers for us um

02:53:59.520 if you gotta find a way around the rule i would recommend that um

02:54:06.880 but also as as difficult of a conversation as it may be you may just need to press the

02:54:15.680 conversation with him and say hey we need to talk about this because it is it is a serious matter

02:54:20.840 and uh i can tell by your questions that you know that and he's looking at it from a different angle

02:54:29.600 your husband but it's a serious question for him too and it's it's a conversation that used to be

02:54:35.300 had and you guys need to work together on that and figure that out one way or another uh that's

02:54:42.080 much all i have so um again it is it's important to be honest on here and to be as honest as uh

02:54:56.160 as we can be on it

02:55:00.640 so i don't know your situation and i don't know if you have recently

02:55:05.600 become alsatru or if you were alsatru before your marriage um i don't know if your husband

02:55:13.480 was catholic before your marriage or has recently become catholic

02:55:18.100 it is

02:55:22.820 the advice is that you need to be on the same page religiously and about your core values

02:55:32.980 with the person that you're married to.

02:55:37.260 Now, that can go both ways.

02:55:41.080 That can be you becoming a Catholic,

02:55:42.800 or that can be he becoming Ausitru. 0.95

02:55:46.360 Obviously, I think that the perfect solution

02:55:49.080 is him becoming Ausitru.

02:55:51.900 But if one of those two things doesn't happen,

02:55:56.320 it's going to make your relationship very, very difficult,

02:56:00.160 and there's going to be a lot of heartache involved.

02:56:02.980 I also don't think it's something that magically necessarily gets resolved overnight, and I don't think it's the first step isn't, well, fine, let's get a divorce.

02:56:19.440 I think that there is a discussion process and a working things out process that should be pursued.

02:56:28.420 And, you know, again, him becoming Austro is the best bet.

02:56:35.560 But it's important to consider how important this is to you.

02:56:42.600 and is your trough to your husband more important than your trough to the gods

02:56:49.580 or is your trough to the gods more important than your trough to your husband

02:56:55.040 and i think honestly reflecting on that will inform how you deal with this situation

02:57:03.160 i think if you have the flexibility in your situation to be a house of truth to practice

02:57:11.080 also true and to reflect the good that you know also true making you a better person also true

02:57:24.120 making you a better wife also sure making you know if you can connect your faith with your

02:57:30.680 value as a person perhaps he would look at it differently perhaps it would cause him to

02:57:36.680 reconsider his own faith or his own position when you practice wars that's a very very difficult

02:57:43.960 circumstance and there's nothing i can say that will make it not one but that is between you and

02:57:50.840 your husband as far as um how that affects your marriage you're absolutely welcome to join the

02:57:58.600 afa and if you're unable to to pay that's we don't ever want that to be a blockage for you

02:58:07.240 practicing our faith so if you reach out we can make that part work out the rest is something

02:58:13.160 we'd be happy to kind of help you work through or you know advise you where we can on it but

02:58:18.760 ultimately that's a decision that you're going to have to make and navigate based on the things that

02:58:23.720 are truly important in your life um and it's kind of a side note um just a follow-up on um

02:58:34.120 the question about uh the ordination uh the the response in the chat the ordained question i

02:58:41.800 understand i'm not a newbie though i've been reading and practicing for a couple of decades

02:58:46.200 i feel like it's an honor that i would be asked by my true blood family to do the wedding certainly

02:58:51.960 that is an honor absolutely i understand that you want to do that and

02:58:58.520 i understand that you've been also true for a long time

02:59:03.860 but this is part of the reason why it's so important the idea that if you know enough

02:59:11.280 stuff you can just do it and be a githia for your family negates kind of the importance of

02:59:20.880 of what that means or the value of what that means. 0.90

02:59:25.640 Neither of the three of us are Gothar because we know stuff.

02:59:30.160 We need to know things to be Gothar,

02:59:33.180 to execute the duties of our office, absolutely.

02:59:38.160 But it's not about reading enough books

02:59:40.940 or knowing enough things.

02:59:43.360 It's about devoting our lives to the service of the gods

02:59:47.260 in a very particular way.

02:59:48.680 It's about asking for them to bestow upon us the authorization and blessings to represent them as Gothar and go through a fundamentally transformative process of being ordained and bound to the responsibilities of that position for our lives.

03:00:09.320 and a lot of people, it diminishes that if, well, if you know enough stuff and read the

03:00:19.580 right books and you kind of know how ritual works, then that's good enough.

03:00:27.480 That's not in religions that folks take very seriously. Nobody, you know, in sincere Judaism,

03:00:37.540 Nobody thinks that you can just be a rabbi for a day because you've read your Torah and it's just for a day.

03:00:45.160 So you're a rabbi or the Catholics wouldn't suggest you're a priest and you can perform the sacraments

03:00:51.320 because you are very familiar with, you've been Catholic for a long time. 0.81

03:00:56.920 It would just seem preposterous. 0.99

03:00:59.280 I assume that that's the case in many other faiths.

03:01:03.580 It's a very serious thing.

03:01:05.300 the reason you know this was there's kind of a modern skirting around that in american law

03:01:12.260 where you can just kind of get married willy-nilly a lot of places some places you don't need any

03:01:16.900 authorization other places you know it's all across the board it once was really important

03:01:25.540 that you're married by a legitimate clergyman and now we kind of just do a nod to that by the

03:01:31.860 mail-in coordination situation but it does really diminish what it means to be a go through your

03:01:38.900 githya when you know anybody who wants to becomes that for a day in title it makes it a lot harder

03:01:47.380 to establish the credibility of the office and the dignity that it deserves and i also think it is

03:01:54.020 a disrespect to the gods and to all those people who have come before us and devoted their lives

03:02:00.820 to serving the gods in that way.

03:02:07.400 Our next up...

03:02:21.140 Bodhi. 1.00

03:02:22.740 Do any gothi do bloat to goddesses 0.98

03:02:26.640 known only from votive stones in the Germanic lands?

03:02:30.820 like Alphenier or Sandro Viga.

03:02:37.820 No disrespect.

03:02:38.820 I know that I mispronounced both of those things horribly.

03:02:43.820 I can't speak to the rest of the Godar,

03:02:45.820 but not in an official capacity in front of the folk,

03:02:51.820 but in my personal practice,

03:02:54.820 personal practice, I have often given bloke to Nehalania. She was a Germanic goddess and her

03:03:04.320 shrine was specifically centered on an island in the middle of the Rhine. This is kind of a,

03:03:12.980 what some might consider a wild story. I read about her once and then was gifted with a dream

03:03:22.560 of her in her shrine. I've spoken with Witten Speckinger Svon about her cult and one of the

03:03:35.260 things that was on a statue of her, which I saw in said dream, was that she was always depicted

03:03:44.760 with dogs uh with hunting hounds and i saw that uh i did not read this in any material i saw it

03:03:53.180 in my dream and then read it in the material and so i have given blow to her often now am i somehow

03:04:01.220 connected to that island or is that to that part of germany not to my knowledge um i had been

03:04:07.740 heavily studying the gods and goddesses of our people and searching for lesser known ones

03:04:13.000 and before I came upon that material as I said I did have this dream one night about an island

03:04:21.460 shrine with a goddess sitting on a throne with dogs at her feet as part of the statuary and

03:04:28.720 I also received images of folk coming by boat to make offerings so was I tapping into something

03:04:38.900 i don't know um but yes i personally have given bloat to a lesser known goddess

03:04:45.860 i also was set upon a path of creating a uh creating a gift cycle with one of our lesser

03:04:53.300 known goddesses seen uh by speckinger harrell and i've often given bloat to her in the past year

03:05:01.620 as part of my continuation of opening up a gift cycle to her

03:05:06.960 because she has not been given bloat

03:05:11.680 or had a gift cycle initiated with her in quite some time

03:05:16.440 as far as our reckoning is concerned.

03:05:19.380 So, yes, I at least have done that.

03:05:21.860 I cannot, again, speak for the other Godard.

03:05:23.940 um do you have any anything to add on that trip

03:05:33.620 uh i have also specifically given boat uh bloat to nail inya because uh

03:05:41.220 the part of europe she is from is where the anglo well some of the anglo-saxons would have come from

03:05:47.520 and uh so when i was kind of in this phase of alcatru where i was really wanting to use only

03:05:53.640 the anglo-saxon or west germanic names for the gods and goddesses i uh included you know nehelenya

03:06:01.080 uh peretha sax not a bunch of others uh in this one kind of bloat i did so i have

03:06:11.000 done that uh i want to say gothi jason plort has also done bloat to nehelenya

03:06:17.400 in his personal practice it's not him it's one of the other go though i don't know which one though

03:06:23.640 all right has the afa offered the interpretation of the story of asker and embla somewhere i've

03:06:34.760 read the argument that it entirely dissolves any notion of northern people's unique relation to the

03:06:40.280 gods and that also true is in fact explicitly a universal religion um and i saw some of the rest of

03:06:48.280 the commentary in the in the comments um i mean sure you can read in the uh austro true love model

03:07:05.480 about the afa's position in that story not as like a breakdown of the story but on some of

03:07:11.800 its fundamentals and how that's developed our faith um it in no way does any of the things

03:07:19.880 that is claimed there um it doesn't explicitly state that austral is a universal religion

03:07:26.120 it doesn't entirely dissolve anything it says that um

03:07:33.800 um the uh progenitors of our race of our people are asking emblem it talks about how they were

03:07:47.720 bestowed with the elements of the soul that made them us uh by by the gods by

03:07:56.840 there's no part there that talks about universality or about any of that it does

03:08:07.560 none of those things and i'm kind of confused why anyone would think otherwise because it simply

03:08:15.200 doesn't our lord is for us about us and our unique relationship to the gods and there's not

03:08:22.040 any claim

03:08:24.200 ever that it isn't

03:08:26.460 or that we're somehow the same

03:08:28.560 as far

03:08:30.260 far-flung different

03:08:32.460 types of

03:08:33.980 things that

03:08:36.500 our people encountered

03:08:37.700 and

03:08:44.180 so

03:08:45.000 Bodie

03:08:50.560 you have any anything to add on that uh as far as the our particular take on asking embla

03:08:59.600 i as far as the like

03:09:04.160 why yeah our particular take and why other people might be confused thinking it means

03:09:12.800 some kind of universality i think they're trying to compare asking emla to adam and eve

03:09:20.560 and there the distinction in my mind lies that is a a common fallacy that just because

03:09:30.480 we have something that sounds similar that it is similar um for my money and to my mind it is not

03:09:38.560 people often make another comparison and say that lord other than hanging on yggdrasil

03:09:44.240 and winning the knowledge of the runes is similar to christ on the cross so you cannot be further

03:09:52.160 apart um a distinction that i learned early on and this question did come up was that when i

03:09:58.480 was a young australian and i was very new to our faith about asking emblem and in in reference to

03:10:06.340 the comparison to adam and eve is that in the christian mythology the christian god created

03:10:12.920 adam and eve out of mud out of basically out of dirt um dirt while it does contain

03:10:21.100 microscopic organisms and does contain quote-unquote life the contrast to ask an embla

03:10:27.440 is that othen villian ve found ask an embla as an uprooted ash and an uprooted elm on the beach

03:10:35.300 on that primordial beach so one could intuit from that that their names meaning ash and elm

03:10:44.280 meant that they were once alive and one could also argue and i do that just because a tree

03:10:51.540 is uprooted does not mean that it is dead so in our conception of our cosmology ask and embla

03:10:59.660 were already living material they were already living essences that were laying there unshaped

03:11:07.140 and uprooted and Othenville and Ve bestowed the gifts upon them that created them into the first

03:11:14.200 man and woman of our people not of any other people of our people and also the distinction

03:11:21.460 of course as I said is that they created life out of life that already existed well it's incorrect

03:11:29.080 to say they created life out of life that already existed they took material of life that already

03:11:35.520 existed and they transformed it into something useful an uprooted tree is not is no longer useful

03:11:42.840 you know it's it's there you know it's laying on the forest floor it's laying on the beach it's

03:11:47.880 dying but if you come along as a villain they did and you have the powers that they had and have

03:11:54.860 you then you were able to transform it into something greater than what it was going to be

03:12:01.020 so to me that is the distinction

03:12:03.760 what about you trep

03:12:08.940 i think perspective is important something to keep in mind uh is that the iteration of our

03:12:20.260 ancestors i guess that would have recorded this uh or began kind of passing the story around orally

03:12:26.920 when they say humanity they mean white people uh they might have meant just northern you're like

03:12:33.540 pale white people too something to think about is uh probably when this started getting passed

03:12:40.040 around in the version that we know of the furthest like most exotic contact that we'll say

03:12:47.880 the vikings had was uh or the ancestors of the vikings really would have been the romans and

03:12:54.480 there they were white you know they're uh the italic people are closely related to the celtic

03:13:01.980 people who are closely related to the germanic people etc etc so their version of humanity uh

03:13:10.600 was white people so yeah no and they they didn't feel the need to add some kind of qualifier about

03:13:19.440 how like black and brown people were also you know descended from asking ember or whatever because

03:13:25.140 they said humanity they meant themselves and it kind of ties into this thing um speckinger swan

03:13:32.320 touches on it on many of his episodes because it comes up uh a lot of the meanings of different

03:13:43.540 germanic tribal names would mean something like the people the folk right um like uh deutschland

03:13:51.700 the german name for germany it means uh the land of the people essentially um so that's

03:14:01.560 that's that is why it's specifically worded as them being the first of mankind they they meant

03:14:08.480 white mankind essentially they just didn't know that that's what they meant if that makes sense

03:14:13.840 and so yeah no they would not have viewed alice true as a universal religion unless of course

03:14:22.960 the universe was small enough that it was only white people as they may have thought at the time

03:14:29.600 yeah that's uh and i understand the the confusion on that but again it was not

03:14:38.960 it's very recently that there's some kind of universal understanding of like the human race

03:14:48.460 um the other types of creatures we inhabit this earth with our ancestors didn't

03:15:01.120 consider that under the term mankind and most cultures didn't as trim pointing out

03:15:07.900 it's a common linguistic thing that you know when you talk about the people it's

03:15:17.200 just us and them are something else and that's not meant as a derogatory necessarily towards

03:15:26.640 the other but it's from an internal perspective like this is mankind and then we've encountered

03:15:34.220 this other species of thing that we're dealing with um and that was really really common and

03:15:43.900 see it you know up until the enlightenment period you see you know the literally the author of you

03:15:51.420 know behold these truths to be self-evident you know that all men are created equal

03:15:57.980 they didn't at all think that uh blacks or native americans or chinamen were created equal to white

03:16:07.260 men that wasn't no one thought that no one who signed that document thought that no one who

03:16:16.220 authored that document thought that it's it's also self-evident in the owning of slaves the way that

03:16:26.700 the entire society was structured they clearly didn't think that equality was a thing at all

03:16:33.100 when they're talking about all men they mean all european men all white men had that equality and

03:16:42.460 it was enshrined in that document in that way and i don't say that to make a political point i say

03:16:47.180 it to make a linguistic point they were very well educated it just that didn't occur like what do

03:16:53.340 you mean that's not what that's obviously not what we're talking about and i think that extended to

03:16:57.820 our ancestors who never in their life would have encountered encountered someone who was not from

03:17:04.300 a branch of the area race um except for maybe somebody who was on the expedition and encountered

03:17:12.300 uh scraylings in north america or maybe somebody traveled far enough south that they might have

03:17:19.020 seen an arab um but yeah i get that i get the question where it comes from but it didn't say

03:17:26.860 like all mankind didn't need to be inclusive it said mankind uh men uh man candy i think

03:17:37.020 um which meant the race of men as opposed to the race of dwarves or the race of elves

03:17:43.980 but yeah i see i see where the question comes

03:17:46.860 sorry there's

03:17:55.420 some different stuff going on

03:17:57.740 where I get my questions

03:17:59.660 got sorted out

03:18:00.640 alright

03:18:01.860 don't we have a right

03:18:09.220 to curse our enemies 0.92

03:18:10.800 like Schwab with

03:18:12.980 the Thurs Room

03:18:14.060 this is a question

03:18:16.080 Trent what do you say to that question

03:18:19.760 A right to curse our enemies

03:18:24.920 I don't know if that's the

03:18:27.080 Word I would use per se

03:18:30.560 But I will say that the album all

03:18:32.260 I forget which stanza it is

03:18:35.600 I can't recall the stanza number

03:18:38.460 But it's the one that says

03:18:39.740 Repay gifts with gifts

03:18:42.940 Repay treachery with treachery

03:18:44.600 uh i if someone is truly an enemy then i and you know how to use the runes to that effect

03:18:52.880 you know i i can't tell you it's totally unreasonable or wrong to do it uh depending

03:19:00.300 on what you're doing and how you're responding you know but um i mean you know morally speaking

03:19:09.820 behalf of them all tells us how to act in broad situations uh that's about all i can think of on

03:19:18.460 that one bode do you have any perspective on that um i would advise caution and such things um

03:19:32.780 Um, oftentimes if you are driven to thoughts of correcting any ills, you know, done against

03:19:43.960 you in such a fashion, maybe it's time to stop and reassess what your priorities are,

03:19:53.400 uh, what the after effects could be, what the, as the phrase goes, the knock-on effects

03:19:58.960 could be um i'm reminded of the phrase of when you point a finger at someone remember there are

03:20:07.200 three fingers pointing back at you so our ancestors did not take things like this serious

03:20:14.500 or not seriously they did not take them lightly they took them very seriously in fact so do we

03:20:21.100 have the right to curse our enemies i would say in times and in instances of extreme evil

03:20:28.840 and extreme duress maybe one could find themselves in that situation but again i would counsel

03:20:37.100 someone to try and resolve that conflict in any other way that you can but that if that is truly

03:20:46.920 your last resort and you've exhausted all options still i cannot sign off on that

03:20:52.720 i would say that you need to again reassess the situation because such to do such a thing is

03:21:01.100 is serious you are calling upon things that you might not really understand

03:21:08.120 and you might not get the intended effect in fact there is you know there is uh references in the

03:21:18.300 sagas um in ale scala grimson saga and ale was the you know the also true renaissance man par

03:21:29.620 excellence i mean he could do it all he could speak a verse he could hew down foemen um but

03:21:37.660 he also there was an instance where he came upon a girl who was lying sick in her bed

03:21:41.380 and none of her kinfolk could figure out why and ale being the man that he was

03:21:47.840 uh walked into her room and immediately knew something was not

03:21:52.520 something was not right in a very non-physical sense and so he lifted up her mattress and he

03:22:00.620 found a i believe it was a whale bone or a jaw bone that had been carved incorrectly with runes

03:22:07.880 to enchant the young maiden to fall in love

03:22:11.540 with said irresponsible young lad.

03:22:15.320 And Aeol very famously snatched up the bone

03:22:19.000 and scraped off the runes

03:22:20.680 and wrote down or carved down onto the bone healing runes

03:22:26.180 and then very famously spake that

03:22:29.040 one who did not know how to carve the runes properly

03:22:32.580 should not do so.

03:22:33.780 So there's an example of

03:22:35.880 not someone cursing someone as an enemy but someone trying to enthrall another by means of

03:22:42.600 the runes and it ended badly he didn't want that girl to get sick and almost die or die he wanted

03:22:48.520 her to fall in love with him but he didn't know how to do that at least not via the runes and so

03:22:54.220 his you know his intended effect backfired on him and harmed that girl so in this instance of

03:23:01.480 can I curse an enemy with the runes, again, probably not a good idea.

03:23:09.720 So, it's a strange thing.

03:23:17.580 No, I don't think you have a right to use magic to do things.

03:23:23.440 and when we say that

03:23:26.880 now I'm not saying

03:23:28.800 that you are forbidden from

03:23:30.740 using magic to do things

03:23:32.420 but to say you have a right

03:23:34.880 to it is like you're entitled to it

03:23:36.900 in some way and you're not

03:23:38.260 very specifically

03:23:40.860 I think

03:23:41.820 using

03:23:45.300 using magic

03:23:49.180 especially in a curse

03:23:51.140 way

03:23:53.440 is outside of the things you have a right to it's going outside of your box and venturing into

03:24:05.600 kind of a restricted territory that there's consequence to it doesn't mean that it's forbidden

03:24:12.880 to you but it's not in the toolbox of things that you are entitled to use or that are naturally

03:24:19.840 available to you it is you going for something outside of that and it is you know clear you know

03:24:28.880 we talked about earlier part of norn and not is you know magically empowering our you know

03:24:35.280 witches on our side to go do cool witch stuff and i don't even mean that frivolously because i think

03:24:41.440 there's fun you know there's healing things that are uh very beneficial there's there's stuff to

03:24:47.280 be done and there's time where people who know what they're doing and are experienced and

03:24:54.960 have built gravitas in that arena to do curse work to raise a knifing pole to

03:25:06.480 employ spiritual warfare in that way but it is a path that is fraught with

03:25:12.720 dangers and unforeseen consequences and you know be careful when you stare too long into the abyss

03:25:24.880 because the abyss can stare back when you delve into those kind of things you expose yourself to

03:25:32.240 a game that you know many of us most of us if not all of us are not super well equipped to

03:25:39.520 venture into so I think that there's a lot of caution to be said to be very

03:25:44.860 very careful and very thoughtful in how you approach any of that okay so this is

03:26:02.500 a good question and I assume it was answered in the chat but it's good for

03:26:05.860 other people that might wonder it too i'm skipping one but i already kind of started so i'll go back

03:26:12.800 to anyways if i reach out via email can i schedule a time to meet a leader or guide or some of some

03:26:20.520 sort at a hof and spend time asking questions being shown around and such as a non-member

03:26:26.420 absolutely um reach out to literally anybody and they can get that scheduled and get you to the

03:26:36.600 right person on that if anybody out there is curious about that and you have questions and

03:26:44.980 you want to talk to a go through maybe in person and see what we're all about check out the hoff

03:26:53.600 get an in-person familiarity before joining by all means you can certainly do that we can get

03:27:02.240 that arranged for you just reach out and we will get a good contact with you and we'll make that

03:27:07.400 work out for you and uh you know good on you for asking that so other question is rune magic sigil

03:27:15.600 magic grant morrison style is there an ausituar version of that trend

03:27:24.800 yeah i saw this question coming and while i did not know who grant morrison was

03:27:28.960 um then to go i sort of do now the closest thing we have to that would be uh sather which is done by

03:27:42.160 women um and then just kind of general rune work which we done by men or women um

03:27:55.040 galder might be the closest thing where we uh sort of

03:28:00.240 uh chant or sing a rune and sort of focus on the meaning behind that rune and we

03:28:07.120 we kind of put our vocal energy into that concept uh bind runes might be the closest

03:28:16.780 thing to i guess they literally are sigil magic if done properly um that's something i would do a

03:28:24.720 lot of research into uh speckinger spawn is especially knowledgeable on bind runes and

03:28:31.520 runes in general uh i would shoot him an email if you're going to do anything like that third

03:28:39.600 and this isn't necessarily grant morrison style anything but uh divination or augury i guess

03:28:47.900 with the runes uh by sort of calling out to the nornier and giving bloat in a sense and asking

03:28:56.640 them to answer a question or kind of give you a road map of what of what that which should be

03:29:08.140 for a given period of time for uh example i've mentioned on here before uh every year on the

03:29:14.680 ninth night of yule i will do a three-room poll to see kind of how my next year is going to go

03:29:20.600 and uh it's sort of the nornir sort of uh i pull three runes each one from each of the nornir and

03:29:31.040 it kind of lays out how that year will go for me and uh i've never had that rune pull not

03:29:41.440 be clear

03:29:45.200 by the end of the year what it meant.

03:29:48.400 I think

03:29:49.280 that's probably as close as you'll get to that

03:29:51.340 kind of magical stuff, though,

03:29:53.640 is find

03:29:55.320 runes, rune divination, and then

03:29:57.560 Sather in general.

03:30:02.860 Bodhi,

03:30:03.420 what do you have?

03:30:05.840 Well, first,

03:30:06.900 like Trent, I assume had to look up who this

03:30:09.400 Grant Morrison person is.

03:30:11.440 um some pretty fascinating stuff he's doing um i don't like the whole chaos magician thing

03:30:19.720 or label that's put on him um i was just reading that

03:30:24.980 he believes that corporate logos are powerful quote-unquote super breeder sigils that invade

03:30:34.180 and alter collective imaginative space um okay um reading what he believes you know hyper sigils

03:30:43.020 as he calls them to be you know quote extended reality bending narratives uh designed to edit

03:30:50.920 reality well i mean that is one thing that you could say about the runes themselves is that they

03:30:59.700 are they are ideographic representations of mysteries and of cosmic lessons that our

03:31:09.040 ancestors used to bend reality to their will to do things that could not normally be done

03:31:17.360 by other means so yeah i agree with everything that trent said as far as you know reaching

03:31:26.120 out to speckner's fun he knows all about that there's um also in that kind of realm of thing

03:31:32.520 there uh especially sigil magic uh a lot of our folk are aware of the galder staffer or the

03:31:41.140 the um the galder book from iceland um that's been largely i don't want to say debunked but

03:31:50.280 it was a later working didn't come around until i believe correct me if i'm wrong i'm sure you go

03:31:55.640 that was like the 1500s or 1600s when the galder stuffer book was made we don't know is we can't

03:32:03.660 necessarily hang our hat on the validity of those um everyone's familiar with two symbols that come

03:32:10.820 from that book being the agis llama or the helm of all and the vegvas here aka the viking compass

03:32:18.700 um i can't again we would have to get we would have to get fingers fun on here to

03:32:25.640 really elaborate on that um but yes our ancestors our also true ancestors most definitely worked

03:32:32.900 with rune magic and sigil magic maybe not just in the style of mr morrison but yes they definitely

03:32:40.080 did yeah so old does not equal authentic or i guess more precisely new does not equal inauthentic

03:32:54.240 um sure sigil magic is absolutely a thing i think in morrison's kind of vain but not really

03:33:04.560 art is inherently magical or can be if the intention is imbued in it in its creation

03:33:13.520 there's a lot of ways to do that there's a number of artists and craftsmen that you know

03:33:20.520 enchant items with you know literally galdering as they create with you know casting runes into

03:33:32.160 paints or molds or things they do. There's all kinds of ways to magically imbue items

03:33:40.600 and visual pieces that relate to signal magic. I think the most overt is obviously vinegreens,

03:33:50.300 but I think that corporate logos can be, but to assume that they all are is naive. I think

03:34:01.100 that the efficacy of magic comes from intent and imbuing something with intent and if something

03:34:11.180 accidentally looks like something else it lacks the force of intent and the magical

03:34:17.740 efficacy of something that is purpose purposely crafted in a particular way to alter an outcome

03:34:24.860 or to affect reality so i think in order for that to be effective you have to imbue it with intent

03:34:31.100 But yeah, there's plenty of that done in Anoush the True Context with Sather practice, with bind runes, but in other forms of art in spells we mentioned earlier with the Norns, the Nornir weaving and binding and weaving and binding.

03:34:53.540 there's a lot of magical work involved in that but yeah that is a absolutely but to get like a

03:35:03.200 really you know a how-to manual or something isn't really a thing so much of magical practice within

03:35:11.840 the master true context is taught you know master to apprentice between colleagues it's not something

03:35:22.220 that is talked about very openly i think sometimes there's a initiatory aspect to that i think it also

03:35:32.220 sounds goofy or silly to people that aren't well schooled in it or that don't have the context or

03:35:39.500 the experience so it's something that's typically um discussed quietly in between people in private

03:35:47.340 but there's certainly a house true application to sigil magic absolutely

03:35:53.500 um in the the final question of the night what are the requirements of someone to become a go-fi

03:36:00.060 with the afa after becoming a member if that's someone something they want to do so um

03:36:06.860 The basic requirements are that you be a member, that you be a folk builder, and you spend

03:36:18.100 your time as a folk builder apprentice, that you take your oath as a folk builder, and

03:36:24.740 that you apply or are selected to enter the GOTHAR program, which requires you getting

03:36:36.500 the trust of the existing GOTHAR and specifically of the Speckengar and myself to where we trust

03:36:46.860 that you're someone you want to potentially entrust with that organization, with that

03:36:55.440 responsibility. That requires you to go through training with a mentor and with the GO-THAR

03:37:06.840 as a whole to develop the skills and the knowledge that you need and the trust that you need

03:37:15.420 be able to execute that office so all of those things it's important that you be a folk builder

03:37:21.260 first and you do the hard work of building and maintaining our church a lot of people want to 0.62

03:37:31.980 you know they get excited and they want to immediately become a go-thi so they can

03:37:36.140 do and i don't think this is always um frivolous people are excited and they're excited they want

03:37:46.060 to serve the gods and they conceive of that in a way that perhaps unknowingly is very theatrical

03:37:54.700 they want to do bloat they want to perform ceremonies they want to be this master of

03:37:59.100 ceremonies person they want to be you know the flashy filthy that does the stuff and that's not

03:38:05.500 wrong but the position so much more than that involves counseling and it involves the responsibility

03:38:14.700 of building and maintaining the house true focus simply in a dignified and professional way that

03:38:24.700 is so much more than just um officiating ceremonies and so we make people who want

03:38:33.740 to be ordained go through the process of doing the not fun things the uh the mundane things that have

03:38:42.540 to be done for this to function and from there having an understanding of our membership of how

03:38:50.140 the afa works along with their understanding of the lore and their ability to counsel and their

03:38:58.060 or building that relationship with the gods.

03:39:02.300 So all of those things.

03:39:08.460 Bodhi, is there anything you would like to leave folks with tonight

03:39:12.720 as far as reflections on perfection?

03:39:17.560 It is something to be strived for

03:39:26.260 But hardly ever attained

03:39:28.500 I don't know what perfection

03:39:35.740 Necessarily would look like in all aspects

03:39:39.160 I know that

03:39:41.020 I every day

03:39:44.200 Try to perfect

03:39:46.480 not only my craft of being a goethe, but my professional craft.

03:39:51.680 I try to be the best me that I can be every day.

03:39:57.080 And I know that that's all that, you know, can really be asked is that I do try and that

03:40:03.320 I do, you know, there's kind of the, like the, the platitudes that you hear, you know,

03:40:10.040 like around you know around like you know like coaches like sports you know sports analogies

03:40:15.760 you know you don't have to beat the other guy you just need to beat you from yesterday

03:40:19.880 so i think that's that's on the road to perfection if you can if you can do better than you from

03:40:27.660 yesterday if the you of today can be better and then the you of tomorrow can be better than you

03:40:32.760 are today well then you know perfection is just a few more days down the road is it not

03:40:37.580 all right and uh trent what final final words would you like to leave folks with this

03:40:47.520 uh as we kind of mentioned a couple times throughout this episode the world is a little

03:40:53.960 cynical now um the world is cynical and it kind of wants to atomize us and make us all

03:41:02.160 hyper individualistic and we are all individuals we have egos whatever but

03:41:07.160 when you're going through a tough time don't separate from your folk don't separate from

03:41:13.340 your gods instead draw closer to your folk and draw closer to your gods um if anyone

03:41:20.540 in the afa of course or even anyone here listening is going through something and they need to talk

03:41:26.800 about it uh email gothar at runestone.org you can also email any of us personally but

03:41:33.340 gothar at runestone.org will be the quickest way to get a hold of somebody

03:41:37.180 um but yeah reach out if you're in trouble or you need to speak about something don't

03:41:45.600 just wander off into the dark where we can't find you

03:41:48.440 Alright, something I'd like you guys to remember, don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

03:42:01.560 Doing something is better than doing nothing.

03:42:08.680 all right so starting with your personal practice if you're listening to this a lot of people want

03:42:22.540 to know you know how do I start what do I do one day if I read enough stuff if I read these things

03:42:31.480 then I'll know enough that I can start praying to God's if I get an altar I get an altar that's got

03:42:38.460 idols on it and set up the way i want and then i can do an offering um man maybe if i if i

03:42:47.020 save up and i can go travel to an afa event then maybe i could think about joining or you know i

03:42:54.300 could one of these days life settles down and i get stuff figured out then then i think i might

03:43:01.420 apply you know one of these days um no on all of those things make today the day

03:43:10.300 to have the perfect altar would be awesome work on building that in the meantime

03:43:15.660 make offerings to your gods give prayers to the gods um

03:43:22.780 reading and learning is amazing never stop always learn more but right now wherever you are

03:43:31.420 start being

03:43:34.020 ausitry.

03:43:37.320 Join the

03:43:38.160 AFA, not when you can

03:43:40.140 travel somewhere, not when

03:43:41.780 things settle down or when whatever.

03:43:45.000 Right now,

03:43:46.340 fill out the application and join.

03:43:48.480 Get on the team. Be part of what we're doing.

03:43:51.060 There's infinite

03:43:51.980 ways that we can make this better

03:43:54.060 and do things more perfectly.

03:43:57.540 We're all

03:43:58.380 eager to do that. Get on the team

03:44:00.280 do that with us don't worry about the perfect gathering worry about the gathering that you

03:44:06.760 can make it to that's better than being stagnant and not gathering with your folk

03:44:15.000 don't worry about your perfect vision of what you think the afa or what you think also true

03:44:20.120 should be participate in what also true is and where you can help us all to make it better

03:44:28.520 that's perennially valuable that will always be good and always be welcomed

03:44:34.880 what's not is endless contemplation endless navel gazing and being paralyzed by the analysis of

03:44:44.680 things start doing start living our faith instead of you know finding holes in what somebody else

03:44:52.860 does, or, you know, finding ways to critique, find ways to participate. Don't let perfect be

03:45:01.060 the enemy of good. I look forward to talking to you guys again next week on our 200th episode.

03:45:10.200 Till then, hail the Iser, hail the folk, hail the AFA. Thank you,

03:45:15.660 gentlemen, for joining me this evening. Remember, victory never sleeps.

03:45:22.860 Transcription by CastingWords

03:45:52.860 Thank you.

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03:48:22.860 Thank you.

Asatru Folk Assembly - April 30, 2026

4⧸29⧸26 Victory Never Sleeps, Ep 199 - Reflections on Perfection

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