Asatru Folk Assembly - 4⧸3⧸24 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 91 - Goðar Class of '21

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

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00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 Thank you.

00:02:30.000 Thank you.

00:03:00.000 Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Victory Never Sleeps.

00:03:18.760 I am Witten Brandy.

00:03:20.200 The Elshira Godhi will be joining us shortly.

00:03:22.540 In the meantime, I do have some very special guests tonight.

00:03:25.660 We have all of the Godhar class of 2021.

00:03:30.000 with us tonight, and that would be Gauthier Stamm, Gauthier Plourd, Gauthier East, Witten Erickson,

00:03:39.340 Witten Young, and myself. And as we wait for the L.C. or Gauthier to get with us, we're just going

00:03:45.340 to get some housekeeping things out of the way. We are streaming on multiple platforms. You can

00:03:50.820 catch us on Odyssey, Entropy, Twitch, Twitter, Rumble, YouTube, and VK. On Friday, the audio of

00:03:58.880 The podcast will drop as always on Spotify, but what is new is Apple, Google, iHeartRadio, and Amazon Music.

00:04:06.920 Those are all new places for you to catch your favorite podcasts, so please check those out.

00:04:13.080 Also, take a look at what's going on around you in your district.

00:04:18.120 Go to the district sites.

00:04:20.260 There is a website for one of the districts, odenshoff.org, thorsoff.com, baldershoff.org,

00:04:27.560 and yourtoff.com. Make sure you check out that calendar feature. Take a look at what's going on

00:04:32.620 around you and who you need to contact. Also, going over to those websites, you can go into

00:04:37.360 the contact page and find any other with our org folk builders, and they can get you all set up

00:04:43.220 with what is going on around you. A couple other things that we've got. We do, oh, the LCR go the

00:04:50.200 is here. We're just wrapping up some housekeeping, sir. Would you like to tell us how we can donate

00:04:55.920 to the afa our districts and to our other charities all kind of ways so uh runestone.org

00:05:05.200 we've got a donate link with a bunch of different donate options there and that's certainly always

00:05:12.080 a good option if you want to do it during tonight's broadcast you can do that over on

00:05:17.680 entropy and you can also do it all the same fun ways you normally can on this broadcast we're

00:05:23.200 just going to have to throw the notifications up in an analog fun way and producer nick is already

00:05:31.280 prepared to do that so please feel free to do that and it's very much appreciated when you do

00:05:39.200 and we're able to do the amazing things that we are able to do because you guys are

00:05:46.560 we've been very generous and we really appreciate that and i want you guys to know that

00:05:57.760 um where we at

00:06:01.360 we just know let them know about all the new ways that they can catch the

00:06:05.200 the podcast on fridays fantastic and remember when you do that please please please

00:06:12.480 um like share subscribe do all of those things if you know people that ought to be listening

00:06:22.240 to this program that are not currently please let them know please share it with them um

00:06:31.760 yeah we'd love to have uh all of our people who would benefit from it who

00:06:37.200 would be interested in this to get a chance to listen to it are

00:06:43.920 the biggest hurdle um that the afa has to growth is that so many of our people do not know we exist

00:06:53.520 so the more you guys can help us get the word out it is very much appreciated

00:06:58.400 and we will continue to grow and succeed and do great things with y'all's help

00:07:03.600 um with that we got a special this is the first time ever we've had this many people on a uh

00:07:12.480 on a victory never sleeps so we've got seven plus producer nick um so that's that's a lot

00:07:22.440 you guys may notice we are back doing this a little bit old school um platform that we were

00:07:29.580 using for our streaming was proven a little bit glitchy there especially last week and with this

00:07:36.700 many folks on we have to go something that's a little bit more tried and true so that's what we

00:07:44.380 are currently up to um you may have noticed from the title of this episode that tonight we are

00:07:56.940 doing something a little different we're doing a special special podcast um or a youtube live or

00:08:08.140 i don't even know what you want to call it because it's on both uh both kinds of things but we wanted

00:08:14.860 to highlight a truly amazing assortment of people um every now and again

00:08:22.140 or log works out in such a way that uh you know an elite group of people come together at the same

00:08:33.980 time in the same place for a similar purpose and we had that occur in 2021 with this gothar class

00:08:44.460 a little bit of background so you guys may not know the uh the gothar training

00:08:49.900 there's there's academics for it but a lot of it is also

00:08:57.900 hands-on learn on the job

00:09:02.420 real application things so there's you know multiple steps to the process that goes into

00:09:09.920 ordination and i think a lot of folks go into this thinking that it's easier than it than it

00:09:19.000 turns out that it is. It's something that, and I'm, you know, I want all of our people who get

00:09:27.540 into the program to succeed, but it's something that I think's kind of, I don't know, speaks to

00:09:34.340 the seriousness of it, that everybody doesn't. Not everybody makes it through. It takes a really,

00:09:41.960 takes a special person to make it all the way through the gothar course and uh in 2021 we had

00:09:50.400 the uh the fine folks you see in front of you make it through and continue to do us proud

00:09:56.280 to this day and i have every confidence beyond um that said anyone listening we have

00:10:06.620 Witten Brandi Callahan, we have Gauthier and Dean of the Astro Academy, Rob Stamm,

00:10:17.880 we have Witten Daniel Young, we have also Witten Clifford Erickson, we have Gauthier Trent East,

00:10:30.280 who's famous, looking at the AFA Wikipedia page, Trent's name's on there and mine is not,

00:10:37.340 So there you go.

00:10:39.600 It's feathering your cap.

00:10:41.180 We got go-fee Jason plurred somewhere, but he has disappeared for a moment.

00:10:47.500 There he is.

00:10:49.600 And special note, this is Jason's first time on the show.

00:10:55.380 Welcome, Jason.

00:10:56.940 Would you like to tell folks a little bit about yours?

00:10:59.500 This is something I ask everybody who comes on, but if you could tell people a little bit about yourself,

00:11:03.360 what you do for the afa and kind of how you found house the true how you found the afa

00:11:11.200 your kind of your story on how you came home

00:11:13.280 how much time we got matt um me and spawn have done a seven and a half hour broadcast

00:11:24.480 so thereabouts um i guess i'll just take it from the top um

00:11:33.360 My name is Jason Ploard.

00:11:36.040 It's an honor to be here, first of all.

00:11:38.080 It's a privilege.

00:11:39.280 I've tuned in, especially watching all my peers on here.

00:11:44.820 I still feel like I'm learning stuff even after my ordination.

00:11:48.080 So you guys are a treasure and a gem, and I'm just happy to be here.

00:11:52.280 But, yeah, right now, I kind of had a baby, moved down to Florida, got married.

00:11:59.960 It's kind of big focus for me right now is counseling and kind of being the shoulder for a lot of our folk to talk to when they're having a hard time.

00:12:10.080 Because I'm at home a lot, but I can't necessarily go far.

00:12:13.220 So I have a kind of a unique bit of flexibility at the moment.

00:12:18.340 And that's kind of been my specialty at the moment.

00:12:21.960 Throughout the AFA, I was around in like 2016 when everything was starting to get super heated and political.

00:12:28.780 and all of these quasi organizations that claim they were practicing also true um really just

00:12:38.260 were out there creating a lot of division between all factions of also true and heathenism as far

00:12:44.840 as i'm concerned it was just it was super hostile and in 2013 is actually when i joined the afa

00:12:53.140 and i went to several events and i'm kind of jumped around and the afa was the one that just

00:13:01.420 it grabbed my heart um i found out about also true in 2008 uh inherently inherently paganism

00:13:09.440 meditation all the energy stuff and just took the gods and the ancestry part super serious so

00:13:15.660 never pledged myself in anything in particular just the the spiritual work and whatever higher

00:13:22.720 power that be to guide me and it guided me here so um come 2013 when i finally reached out and

00:13:31.200 participated in my first event with the australia focus emily it was uh winter nights out there in

00:13:36.080 the poconos and standing there and blow it with stephen mcnallan cliff was there um standing there

00:13:44.320 with stephen mcnallan and contrasting that with what i experienced earlier that year in august

00:13:49.360 with another organization. I mean, it just couldn't compare. It felt like home. It spoke

00:13:59.020 to my soul. And I'm like, this is the place I was meant to be. So I don't know how else

00:14:07.880 to describe it. I'm not really a feelings kind of guy, but I was absolutely moved to

00:14:14.160 action so um kind of hung around for a bit made an effort to at least make winter nights every year

00:14:20.960 if not you know several of the events um like ostara and uh midsummer and come 2016 where i was

00:14:31.200 kind of hinting at with the how things kind of got super politically charged um various factions

00:14:37.600 were going on each other all of the things that afa has been accused of my very first event there

00:14:43.840 There was one guy who was just, I don't know if he was deep in his cups or whatever.

00:14:49.540 He wasn't even a part of the AFA, and the AFA had him removed and apologized.

00:14:54.160 And it was spouting various stuff that other organizations would try to pin on the AFA as fact.

00:15:00.560 And I'm like, you guys don't even know what you're talking about.

00:15:03.540 Have you ever gone to an AFA function, see what these people are really about, see what's in their heart, their souls, share a horn with them?

00:15:11.260 and they just no interest whatsoever you know they had their rhetoric and you know god's be

00:15:19.120 damned they're gonna they're gonna hold on to it and spout whatever nonsense there was so i'm like

00:15:24.100 you know what no one likes a fence sitter these guys are treating me like family the following 0.99

00:15:30.600 winter nights i'm like hey matt can i try that folk building thing and not even kidding like

00:15:37.140 two three days later matt's like hey you still want to call me still want to be a folk builder

00:15:41.940 i'm like yes i'd love to he's like cool also we're gonna be shot by the way uh you got about

00:15:48.820 two three months to put on a national event i'm like what and i i had never planned an event in

00:15:54.580 my life other than hey i'm gonna make a bunch of food and have some booze come over for yule so

00:16:01.780 um that's how my my vote building apprenticeship started and at the end of the day it just i just

00:16:08.980 wanted to help right this meant a lot to me i i've had to pick myself up several times my own my own

00:16:14.820 bootstraps and i'm like hey if it's not in the cards for me to have like the sweetest of fruits

00:16:20.740 that austria has to offer i want to make sure this is around for somebody else and that just

00:16:25.540 was my sentiment that grew and grew and grew um you know each step of the way as i advanced even

00:16:32.340 into the gothar program so it was just something that meant a lot to me and i wanted others to have

00:16:37.140 it deep core my soul so um i think that kind of covers the back story um was there something else

00:16:49.780 you wanted me to share with the folks man um sure throughout the night but i think that

00:16:55.060 i think that gives people a little bit of background and that first event that you

00:16:59.300 threw was ostara in the south and um that was one of our i think that was probably our

00:17:11.860 okay so i'm torn because the past um

00:17:14.740 three years we have had no more than that now what past four years we've had

00:17:25.540 yep four ostaras at thorshoff which has been awesome time time really flies the older you get

00:17:33.160 i remember hearing that when i was younger it's absolutely a thing but uh yeah no up to that

00:17:39.480 point that was certainly the best one we've had if you take away the x factor to us having our own

00:17:46.360 hoff it was probably the best one we've had up until this year maybe um this year the one we had

00:17:53.320 about a week ago was better but um no that was amazing and again you did that very very quickly

00:18:01.640 with very little notice and opened a lot of people's eyes to you know what you could do at

00:18:06.440 that point that was really cool um i had a lot of fun doing that even though it was a lot of pressure

00:18:16.280 good good um

00:18:21.800 so we're going to we will come up with stuff but we rely on questions on this show so everybody

00:18:29.000 please feel free to ask unlike the uh spawn and myself lower episodes we'll take them as they

00:18:37.080 come we're not going to have to wait on them tonight so you can get yours answered a little

00:18:40.520 bit quicker uh but first i want to acknowledge once again um ronald blake thank you so much

00:18:48.600 you were amazing thirty dollars to the prison ministry and thirty dollars to the austro academy

00:18:54.840 thank you for that again you we really appreciate you um also

00:19:05.880 oh yeah so i was checking over on entropy uh which we don't get as much traffic over there

00:19:10.520 as wish we did it has potentially a good program we got a 20 donation from uh daniel wadley hail

00:19:19.000 the afa and hail our gothar and we appreciate it very much

00:19:28.120 and i think you know any of these questions that are kind of you know for the group as a whole i'm

00:19:32.840 going to rotate around a little bit to see who's going to ask uh answer what when but our first

00:19:39.000 question comes from ali clausen it's for the whole group how did coming up through the gothar program

00:19:46.520 together shape how you interact with each other both professionally and as friends and we're just

00:19:53.240 going in the order that it ends up on my screen so brandy let's have you uh start off on that one

00:20:01.240 sure so one of the one of the things about going through the godar program especially with a class

00:20:08.040 and was especially with the quality of the gentleman that i went through that class with

00:20:13.080 it. We have become best friends. We have become each other's confidants. We have become

00:20:20.440 each other's support and motivation. We complement each other where

00:20:27.320 one can do one thing, the other can do something else, and this person can do that. And we have

00:20:33.600 such a mix of talent in this class in particular that I believe that we all complement each other

00:20:39.200 in some way. But going through the Godard course, and especially for myself and Godi Plord,

00:20:47.060 you know, we went through the Battle of Baldursov together. So that brought us pretty close as well.

00:20:52.780 The same with, you know, Rob, Daniel, and Trent. You know, they are extraordinarily close. If I

00:20:59.720 could talk tonight, that would be great. I mean, I know that they rely on each other. They talk

00:21:04.000 every single day. I mean, there's not a single day of the week that I am not on the phone with

00:21:13.160 at least three of these men every day, every single day. They are amazing. They are inspiring.

00:21:23.080 And they do things to make you be a better person. And I think that's one thing about this class is

00:21:28.260 we pushed each other to be better and we supported each other along the way.

00:21:34.000 And I believe I can say for everybody on this call, you find your family in the AFA.

00:21:43.800 You find your best friends when you go through things together.

00:21:47.180 And the GoDart program is not something that's easy to go through.

00:21:50.280 So it's kind of something we all fought together.

00:21:53.860 So, yeah, these men are in my life every day.

00:21:57.820 All right. Joining us from the Bavarian Alps, we have got Rob here. Rob has chosen a festive

00:22:08.020 background tonight. Rob, same question to you. How is coming through the Gothar program together

00:22:14.200 with these folks, like how has that affected y'all's relationship professionally and personally?

00:22:23.080 um well during the program um you know everyone here is i mean the highest of caliber so we had

00:22:34.420 a rivalry but it wasn't a nat like a an angry rivalry it was uh oh really i'm going to one

00:22:40.220 up you this time you know it was a friendly rivalry of who could do the best work who could

00:22:45.500 do the best bloat who could make the best impression and uh that spurred all of us on

00:22:50.920 That spurred all of us on to greatness. It really did.

00:22:55.400 But it was friendly and we all became really close.

00:23:00.560 You know, Dan and Trent and I, especially being at Thorshof at the time before Njordtsov came around, we all were there and were working together, you know, at the Hof.

00:23:12.560 So we became not best friends, but brothers.

00:23:16.680 um you know i've been uh i've been a groomsman in trent's wedding and in in dan's vow renewal and

00:23:25.140 you know one day maybe they can return the favor for me um but yeah these these these folks here

00:23:33.400 they're not just colleagues they're not just friends they're family um everyone here you know

00:23:40.400 whenever i see everybody because there's some people i only see once or twice a year it's

00:23:45.220 it's like having a family reunion and still to this day um we still push each other to greatness

00:23:53.540 um when Witten Young got elevated to the Witten it didn't just feel like Witten Young was getting

00:24:00.780 elevated to the Witten it felt like all of us were because our boy made it you know um same

00:24:06.460 with Brandy when she got promoted to the Witten it's like that's our girl she made it you know

00:24:11.360 So it's when one of us succeeds, we all succeed.

00:24:15.040 And that's the kind of camaraderie we build.

00:24:20.060 Real good.

00:24:23.220 Same question for you, Daniel. 0.99

00:24:30.760 One thing was, you know, surrounded by the high caliber men and lady that was involved in that class is trying to find a way to stand out.

00:24:39.040 and you know rob kind of alluded to it that you know we were competitive with with each other

00:24:44.440 uh but in a in a friendly way uh but to kind of answer the question like i was i was very close

00:24:53.720 with rob and uh didn't know brandy or jason that well i didn't know trent that well and matt you

00:25:00.860 may recall we had a uh a facebook messenger group with all the go far students and every now and

00:25:07.140 we would get these uh you know these commands from the big guy and it would say by all's harrier

00:25:12.020 gothic decree you will do this and you know sometimes it was read a certain book or complete 0.96

00:25:18.260 a certain task and one of them was that you know i don't want you guys to just be homies you know

00:25:23.540 i want this to be you know a brotherhood a sisterhood and uh you know something even beyond

00:25:29.300 that and it occurred to me that you know i didn't know trent all that well we had met a couple times

00:25:34.180 and uh we're friendly but i wouldn't have said we were you know close friends or anything and

00:25:38.660 i gave him a call on a uh on a friday night and it was like hey what are you doing tomorrow

00:25:43.860 i got nothing going on so i said hey you know drive up to south carolina and i'll cook for you

00:25:48.260 we'll you know shoot the breeze and again we were friendly and you know we were uh you know

00:25:56.260 professionally you know colleagues or whatever but you know we weren't all that close and so

00:26:02.100 So the bond kind of started there with he and I.

00:26:05.040 And again, somebody that I look up to,

00:26:09.460 Trent, Rob, Cliff,

00:26:12.180 there were guys that were very visible in my region.

00:26:17.320 And I was constantly chasing that.

00:26:19.300 Like when Rob stands in the room,

00:26:21.160 you aren't the smartest guy in the room anymore.

00:26:24.200 And so just constantly trying to up your game

00:26:28.500 or find new ways to stand out.

00:26:31.820 And it's the same way with Cliff.

00:26:32.940 You know, I developed a really good friendship with Cliff throughout the program.

00:26:37.620 And I think because of that, you know, that closeness that we developed during, not just during the program, but again, pushing each other.

00:26:46.620 Because the three of us, Rob, Trent, and I, I mean, we got in trouble a couple of times.

00:26:50.740 So Matt's making a face right now.

00:26:55.920 I think we cost him at least one whole day at one time.

00:26:59.260 and uh yeah so i mean even like kind of going through that stuff you know where it was like

00:27:05.200 oh you know we might have put ourselves at risk or whatever um that just brought us in even tighter

00:27:10.060 and uh the three of us especially uh operated and still do to this day you know as a unit

00:27:16.780 and you know with people like cliff erickson and uh spawn harrell uh to look up to try to strive

00:27:25.400 toward uh they just made it that much more easy and and it made us all that hungry i i think this

00:27:33.000 group what separates us from um previous gothar classes is that we were we were all very hungry

00:27:41.080 and all you know saw where there needed to be some uh you know more help and we wanted to be the guy

00:27:47.880 to do that all right we're gonna pause real quick before we get to our celebrity

00:27:55.400 um ronald on top of his previous donation uh bought us three cups of coffee i think nick is

00:28:06.600 saying that's five dollars per either way we really appreciate it thank you so much sir

00:28:13.240 um checking real quick to make sure

00:28:17.480 cool just wanted to make sure i acknowledged that and uh same question to you trent uh how has

00:28:28.040 coming through the class together with these folks affected y'all's relationship professionally and

00:28:34.840 personally yeah it was uh pretty much everything that's been said already you know it i wasn't

00:28:43.340 super close with uh robert daniel at first uh rob and i had been through some similar uh

00:28:51.900 circumstances the year before so that kind of made us acquaintances and uh you know daniel and i

00:28:59.500 were just both in the deep south and kind of used to joke that we were a couple of hicks you know

00:29:04.940 just trying to trying to make it in the afa or whatever but uh until then you know i i didn't

00:29:11.580 have uh friends that i was this close with and you know all being on that same path that same time

00:29:19.260 was was really cool because uh it you know it it did make us grow you know independently but also

00:29:26.860 together and uh yeah like rob mentioned you know he and daniel were groomsmen at my wedding um

00:29:35.500 there's there's so much we've we've all been through uh together and anytime any of us has

00:29:40.860 a victory it's a victory for all of us anytime one of us suffers through something we we check

00:29:46.780 on each other we get each other through it uh we we joke around all day pretty much every day

00:29:55.180 anytime something goofy in the men's chat happens you know one of us will be like hey

00:30:00.620 man do you see what this guy said or whatever um yeah it's it's like they said we're we're

00:30:09.500 family at this point um getting to that point of ordination too was the coolest feeling in the

00:30:16.020 world being able to stand up you know next to these guys that uh that I've seen put in so much

00:30:22.000 work to make Thor's off what it was and is and now you know one of them's on the Witten and one

00:30:27.840 of them's the dean of the AFA academy doing arguably the most important job we have so

00:30:32.740 it's um it it makes you proud and it's also really humbling at the same time

00:30:39.320 all right real quick side quest for uh rob daniel and trent if either of you guys have that

00:30:47.080 picture of you guys all three getting ordained at the same time um if you could find that and

00:30:53.560 send it to producer nick i'm sure you can pop it up on the screen and it's cool cool picture um

00:31:01.400 it's a good night tonight i am extremely proud looking at my screen tonight

00:31:05.560 Cliff, what can you add on how going through the program with these folks has affected y'all's relationship?

00:31:16.160 And just a side note that I'd like to make, initially, the AFA Whitten, we had, I'm trying to think the best way to describe this,

00:31:28.880 but there was a separation that i kind of inherited in the afa where the folk builders

00:31:36.000 were one thing and the gothar were another thing and the folks that were on the witten were not

00:31:43.760 necessarily ordained gothar and they kind of you know leveled up and had a certain amount of

00:31:49.440 gravitas being on there but i believe this was the first year that we you know made that a requirement

00:31:56.480 for folks on the witten certainly for new folks on the witten and uh so you know cliff has been

00:32:03.200 right there with me since the beginning but it was important to him not just to get rubber stamp

00:32:08.320 but to go through the program as well so that i think speaks to your character as well but uh yeah

00:32:14.720 cliff what say you we can't hear you cliff

00:32:26.480 Witten Erickson, make sounds. He is making sounds. I see his face moving. Sounds are

00:32:44.360 not coming out. All right, so we'll cut over to Jason, same question, and we'll get back

00:32:50.840 to uh cliff here in just a second so i kind of mentioned earlier it's just it's an honor to be

00:33:01.720 able to go through this with everybody else here especially for me cliff um i was originally

00:33:08.520 supposed to be the class of 2020 but um i think with any that's been around long enough you be

00:33:17.880 careful what you ask oda to do for you um i poured a an offering out shortly after being accepted

00:33:24.520 into the program and next thing you know i got fired from the job i had which i didn't think

00:33:32.680 was going to be a good fit with what was required of a gopi anyway and um took a chance that also

00:33:39.640 didn't work out but what i'd asked for was to get more insight right and to be better for my folk

00:33:46.920 and to just have the knowledge and some experience i found myself that year actually

00:33:54.360 picking up a job that had me traveling doing carpentry work and i had the opportunity to

00:33:59.480 spin that into every time i was in an area to look up a foot builder to look up a member to look up

00:34:04.920 a kindred at the very least have lunch and i got a lot of wisdom from that scene where people were

00:34:11.640 coming from uh the walk of life maybe they were on before they came to also true but that seriously

00:34:17.980 delayed me a lot so and i got pushed in with all these fine gentlemen and lady callahan um and

00:34:26.960 it was not easy so seeing these guys pull each other up seeing how motivated they were

00:34:34.940 um it helped me keep my eye on the prize and early early days when i first came in

00:34:42.720 seeing some of the stuff that cliff had been through um because he got razzed i mean he was

00:34:48.480 more open about interest in the afa and being a member than i was i was just drifting through

00:34:52.800 and seeing where i fit initially i always saw him with a notebook right he was always taking notes

00:34:59.120 He was always hungry for more.

00:35:01.460 And when I saw him come to the Go-Thour program, I'm like, this guy's got it.

00:35:06.080 I just got focused on watching him succeed and everybody else around me.

00:35:10.420 And you guys really helped me keep my eye on the prize as well.

00:35:13.920 And it gave me that focus to push through and to come back and get my whole house in order

00:35:18.980 and be in a good position to be more available and stable to help my folk once I was finally ordained.

00:35:27.600 So, you guys did a lot to lift my spirit and my heart during tough times.

00:35:34.140 And as I said, it was a pleasure and an honor to be taking this journey alongside all of you.

00:35:42.180 It might sound like I'm sucking up or kissing up.

00:35:46.980 I'm just speaking my heart, and I'm about the best at that.

00:35:49.580 So, you guys do mean a lot to me, and it helped me out a lot.

00:35:56.700 All right.

00:35:57.600 so have we fixed the audio issue with winton erickson i think so how can you hear me now

00:36:05.520 we hear you loud and clear all right um yeah so matt referred to it a little bit but my

00:36:12.240 my path to being ordained was different from from many others i um was was a folk builder for a long

00:36:20.400 time which is normal um but i was on the witten for oh gosh four maybe five years before i entered

00:36:29.440 the gothar program i think um and matt had always made it clear to me that if i wanted to to do that

00:36:37.360 that i could um it was it wasn't it wasn't something he forced me to do but it was something

00:36:43.360 that was a standing offer and honestly initially i wasn't super interested um i was and still am

00:36:51.440 in a lot of ways very much um dedicated to the folk with a capital f um and one of the things

00:37:01.440 what i mean by that is you know the folk like all of our people and our relationship to the gods

00:37:07.520 and you know for me one of the most important things is the the restoration of the glory of

00:37:15.120 the aesir in midgard to our folk and um and the part that was troubling for me to to the part

00:37:25.600 that i really had to learn and and grow into was caring about each and every individual folk too

00:37:35.120 um wasn't my default nature i'm willing to break eggs to make an omelet um i will still put the

00:37:43.440 greater good above any of you all individually if i have to don't make me do it but you know

00:37:50.000 where i'm gonna land ahead of time um but but this fine group of people helped me care i think about

00:37:56.720 individual people more um you know it's not like i was out there purposefully trying to do harm to

00:38:03.280 people or anything else but uh each of us is part of that greater good and i had to be more

00:38:13.040 attentive i think to making each piece of the machine if you will that's a horrible analogy

00:38:21.340 it sounds very communistic but but making all of us better to make the greater good better

00:38:28.040 as opposed to focusing solely on is this working at this meta level that it's supposed to

00:38:39.460 and you know what have we got to burn to make it right um and i'm very grateful to to everyone here

00:38:48.460 for that and and to all of our folk in the afa because it's not just these people who've who've

00:38:53.060 helped me do that. My wife certainly has. Githya McNallan certainly has. But these people in

00:39:01.660 particular, I think, really helped me as far as that direct one-on-one gothi to individual folk

00:39:12.240 relationship that's that's so important so

00:39:22.160 maybe questions that are for everybody so what we'll see about this i'm glad we did it on the

00:39:26.480 first one because i wanted everybody to get to hear from each of you i may throw some of these

00:39:31.840 out to you guys individually and certainly the ones that are earmarked for a particular person

00:39:36.880 but if you guys have anything to add or whatever you can chime in or if that gets messy just throw

00:39:42.000 your hand up. I'm watching. Next up is from Owl of Omens. What is the role of Agothi and

00:39:54.760 Githya during religious ceremony? Trent. Oh, we have a little visitor. Never mind, Trent.

00:40:05.660 hold on a second look we got irene hi

00:40:14.460 those of you listening uh in the coming days or whatever that's uh

00:40:20.540 gothi jason and githya anna's beautiful little daughter and we're honored to have her on the

00:40:26.540 program all right now we got our baby fix trent what's the role of a gothi and githya during a

00:40:33.500 religious ceremony if you could break that down for folks and assume assume people are starting

00:40:38.540 with zero context coming into this episode fresh right okay so uh there are two main rituals that

00:40:46.380 we do in austro bloat and sumble um bloat is probably the most relevant to your question

00:40:53.020 um so bloat is um a sacrifice to a god or goddess we uh gather the folk and we

00:41:03.500 know we all give of ourselves to uh whichever god or goddess it is essentially um and logistically

00:41:12.780 that can work a bunch of different ways but the gothi or githya is uh the best way i've heard it

00:41:18.460 put is the bridge between the folk and the gods so it you know we officiate the ritual we lead

00:41:26.620 the ritual we make sure all of the steps to the gifting cycle are getting done we speak

00:41:32.700 for the folk to the gods we are the mouthpiece between the two essentially for that ritual and

00:41:44.940 it's pretty much the same ensemble as well just being that that's a ritual among the

00:41:50.460 folk rather than to the gods but we are uh you know we lead that we are that bridge again

00:42:02.700 All right. Sorry, getting back used to this other platform. I'm having to back and forth

00:42:16.500 betwixt chats here. Don't mind me. My wife wants to remind us that we did, in fact,

00:42:24.540 to get engaged at the OSARA that Jason hosted. It doesn't seem like it was that long ago,

00:42:33.080 but I guess it was. The next question is going to be a surprising number, I think, on this

00:42:52.260 call uh the appalachian highlander or the appalachian highlander how many of you guys

00:42:57.940 are planning to relocate to seggerheim and can you tell us a little about where we are

00:43:04.900 where we're at on that so who all is planning to move to the home of victory

00:43:12.260 okay so that is for those of you listening who do not have the visual that is

00:43:18.660 five of us. And producer Nick is currently there abouts and going to get there eventually.

00:43:30.700 As far as an update on where we're at on it. So here is a...

00:43:39.660 All right. So where we're at on it is we've got an amazing property that is Sigurheim,

00:43:45.780 and it's not going anywhere and we're working hard to pay that off I don't know if Nick's got

00:43:51.320 the current number but we owe just over 200,000 on that property it's about 70 acres and we owe

00:44:02.840 that as kind of a secondary loan while we're currently trying to pay off the ords off so

00:44:10.080 we'll whittle that down faster as time goes on uh that said we already have one member living on the

00:44:20.000 property out there we've got several others including producer nick that go out there

00:44:24.160 regularly to take care of it we currently have a beautiful bronze statue of our founder

00:44:30.880 and his wife on the property because it's really important for us to get that out there first

00:44:35.200 um and random side note I guess not random weird side note in Jackson County Tennessee there

00:44:50.320 for those of you who don't know it will eventually be the home of Tearshoff

00:44:54.640 and the kinfilia or the lack of a better term animal mascot of that Hoff is the eagle and

00:45:05.200 Our lady who currently lives out there took a really cool picture of an eagle on the property in one of the trees nesting there a couple of weeks back.

00:45:16.220 And I thought that was really special and a really auspicious omen.

00:45:21.020 As far as timeline on large numbers of people moving out there, you guys are all free to move out to Jackson County as soon as you want to.

00:45:30.780 That's the bigger vision.

00:45:32.260 It's not going to accommodate all the people we'd like on the property itself.

00:45:36.180 But the idea is to build a community around that property, which means anywhere in that county is within 30 minutes.

00:45:43.200 Biggest city close by is about 45 minutes, and that's Cookville.

00:45:48.180 Lots of opportunity, lots of stuff to do there.

00:45:51.000 So it's enticing.

00:45:53.680 As far as when I get out there, if it was just me by myself, I would be out there in a tent right now just making it happen.

00:46:00.740 to move my wife and daughter out there.

00:46:03.860 I want to wait till a couple of the other folks 1.00

00:46:06.860 on this particular episode can move out there with me

00:46:11.820 so we can kind of do that pioneering work together.

00:46:17.860 One of those folks told me that the quickest they can do it

00:46:20.860 is spring of 25.

00:46:23.420 Another one of those folks is trying to tell me summer of 26.

00:46:28.120 But I'm going to keep chipping away at those people

00:46:29.840 and see if I can make it happen a little faster.

00:46:32.380 I'm trying to calibrate that to be minimally obnoxious.

00:46:37.540 So we will see, but we're all very excited

00:46:39.600 and building our dreams on that.

00:46:42.660 It's going to be a really special thing.

00:46:45.160 It already is, and it's only going to increase

00:46:47.440 as we get out there.

00:46:49.860 But that's kind of the quick and dirty update on that.

00:46:52.760 If there's any specifics, we could address those too.

00:46:55.740 um the next one comes from chris in michigan and whoever wants to raise their hand on this

00:47:05.640 are valkyries the result of women ascending

00:47:09.360 and it looks like cliff has an answer to this question cliff take it away i do and i know that

00:47:20.400 and brandy has thoughts on it too um but my short answer on it is is no i don't believe that they

00:47:29.180 are um i reserve the right to be wrong on that if uh our alshir gothi or odin were to uh inform me

00:47:38.000 otherwise but um you know i think that um from from what i understand of our lore it's it's the

00:47:46.540 other way around um with the example being sigdrypha being essentially punished for disobedience by

00:47:52.780 being a valkyrie who was made into a woman or cast down to to midgard or cast out of asgard depending

00:48:00.440 on how you want to view it um and as far as i know and witten brandy may be prepared to correct me

00:48:07.960 on this i don't know of anything that supports living women becoming valkyries

00:48:21.160 brandy do you have follow-up commentary i do so do i believe that valkyries are

00:48:29.400 something that our women can hope to transcend to no i don't um i also want to kind of explain what

00:48:35.400 it is when we talk about the valkyries what it is that we're talking about we are not talking about

00:48:40.680 scantily clad women in chainmail bikinis with helmets on their head dashing into battle

00:48:48.680 we are talking about feminine spirit and energy that is bringing comfort and peace and bringing

00:48:58.920 those men off of the battlefield, taking them to Valhalla. You know, when we talk about the

00:49:04.980 Valkyries, one of my biggest pet peeves is seeing the Valkyries overly sexualized into something 0.99

00:49:12.000 that I don't believe that they are. You know, when I think of a Valkyrie, I think of something gentle 1.00

00:49:17.620 picking these slain men up in their final moment, you know, flowing robes and flowing hair and an

00:49:24.540 ultimate, comforting, peaceful energy to take them to their next place.

00:49:30.900 So I just wanted to put that out there. And because I feel that way about them, and again,

00:49:35.360 I'll be like Witten Eric said, I will defer to the Alshira Gauthi because we're going to defer

00:49:39.940 to him and what he thinks. But that is not something that we as women would do in transcendence.

00:49:48.060 That is something that we as women should be striving to do here and now as women, as frithweavers, as mothers, wives, sisters.

00:49:56.540 That is our job here.

00:49:58.920 That is their job there.

00:50:01.420 So this is very much like you have servants of the gods and you have other, not necessarily spirits, but other like servants and things like that that are not necessarily the Aesir.

00:50:16.880 but they are in that realm and they are doing the work of the gods and that's how i see them i don't

00:50:22.320 see them as if i'm absolutely awesome that i'm going to turn into a valkyrie i don't see that

00:50:28.400 i see that as me being my ultimate goal would would be to be an honored this year

00:50:34.800 so that's what my thoughts on that word yeah i appreciate and this is a really really important

00:50:40.480 caveat and i'd like to mention this because it was included

00:50:44.160 in the original question this is a question we got prior to the program

00:50:51.760 it's really important that we recognize

00:50:57.440 the gods are not limited by our understanding of the lore or our i don't know our thoughts and

00:51:08.560 feelings uh all father can do anything he wants to do if he decides he needs to make susie into

00:51:17.440 a valkyrie by all means if he can chop up ymir and create midgard he can do that um but we don't see

00:51:26.240 examples of that we don't have any reason to believe that that is the case i think that if

00:51:32.320 that were to occur it would be the exception and not the rule and um

00:51:45.120 that's

00:51:47.840 i don't think it's always this because i think it's similar to in a way to what christians do

00:51:54.560 when they think you know when someone dies they become an angel that's not a biblical thing that's

00:52:00.880 a that's a post-biblical thing that's just kind of a nice sentiment that they have and i think

00:52:07.760 sometimes i think some of that crosses over with the question but i also think there's a tendency to

00:52:19.440 view advancement as becoming something of a completely different order than who you are

00:52:27.760 as opposed to actualizing the person that you are being like the best version of yourself no

00:52:35.200 you need to be transmuted into some other kind of being and i think that puts an artificial barrier

00:52:44.080 between the self and the woad self an artificial barrier between who you are and who you want to

00:52:52.560 see yourself becoming and the only way you could possibly do that is by some magical force or some 0.96

00:52:59.520 divine force making you into something else instead of you making you into something better

00:53:06.160 a better version of you and i think ascension works much more like that than someone becoming

00:53:15.760 something completely different one of the interesting things that i've heard about the

00:53:20.800 evolution of valkyrie imagery was that early on a lot of the um imagery and depiction was much more

00:53:34.480 you know okay we have the common thing of of uh you know as brandy was saying the like scantily

00:53:41.120 clad chainmail bikini women on like pegasus pegasi i guess um but so we have the idea of these white 1.00

00:53:52.480 winged horses that these beautiful maidens are on i think the image from what i've heard is in an

00:53:58.320 earlier time a little bit more grim than that it's the idea of raven wings on the back of wolves

00:54:05.520 depicting the scavengers that scavenge the battlefield the literal remains of the dead

00:54:14.800 on the battlefield being consumed and transmuted as part of that soul process migrating up to the

00:54:25.440 gods um but yeah i don't i don't see any reason to believe that women when they ascend become

00:54:34.960 valkyrie um like i said the all-father can do what he likes but we do see them becoming

00:54:42.720 uh the desir we see them becoming the um the word translates into like priestesses

00:54:50.960 but basically the sacred feminine figures of your family line looking on from beyond the veil

00:54:57.520 taking care of their family and i think that's much more likely to be what occurs

00:55:04.880 um the next question we have um i don't think anyone on here has done time so some of it's

00:55:16.320 going to be anecdotal uh but from derek how does house the truth different in the free world

00:55:23.040 than in prison where politics and the question cuts off but um

00:55:32.720 has any anyone on the call done any prison ministry

00:55:38.480 all right so daniel what can you what do you say to that question

00:55:47.480 i think the big thing is uh whether or not you know prisons uh whether or not a chaplain allows

00:55:57.440 people to use uh you know chapel space as holy space but i think the biggest difference is from

00:56:05.860 And what I my experience with the prison ministry is the guys aren't always together and they can't always, you know, do sacred rites together.

00:56:16.680 And space is limited, as you can imagine.

00:56:18.740 Like, for instance, like our charming of a plow ritual, you know, we we bless an actual plow.

00:56:25.940 We cut a furrow in the ground. We put offerings into that ground.

00:56:29.920 Those guys don't have plows, so they have to find other ways to be creative about it.

00:56:33.420 you know, having acceptable offerings available to them is also a challenge.

00:56:42.840 But as far as, you know, group cohesion and stuff, with my experience,

00:56:48.400 I've only done a little bit of it, with the prison ministry,

00:56:52.400 is that it's extremely scary.

00:56:54.680 And those guys really police themselves.

00:56:58.920 And for any, like, unwanted participation or anything, those guys kind of handle it themselves.

00:57:07.560 And I'll say this, though.

00:57:09.980 I met with a group of six a few times at a correctional facility in South Carolina.

00:57:17.260 They treated me with the utmost reverence and piety.

00:57:21.200 It was it was really, really kind of took me aback because it was a level of deference that I hadn't experienced here in the free world.

00:57:31.680 So I think because there's so limited options to them that whenever they do have an option,

00:57:36.800 especially if an ordained Goethe is present to help them perform rights, it makes that it makes that much more tangible and real to them.

00:57:47.160 But as far as what the difference is, the biggest thing I see in space, space and availability.

00:57:56.500 Brandy, you had your hand up as well.

00:57:58.800 Do you have anything to add on that?

00:58:02.180 So my experience would be pretty AFA experience.

00:58:05.920 but one of the things that i have noticed about the men and women that are you know behind bars

00:58:14.240 trying to practice as a true is getting information and a lot of the time the information that they're

00:58:20.240 getting is not always correct or accurate or good some of it isn't safe um they're really limited

00:58:29.840 on the information that they get which is you know one of the reasons why i think it's so important

00:58:35.520 that, you know, the Alshira Godhi has pushed to try to help, help move that forward. You know,

00:58:41.840 he has been in some of the, uh, the prisons doing ministry. Uh, Whitten Young has been some of the

00:58:47.640 prisons doing ministry. And if, you know, there's anybody that you've got, you know, behind the

00:58:52.360 wire and you don't feel like they're, they're getting their religious services, reach out to

00:58:56.520 our Alshira Godhi, you know, reach out to Whitten Young, reach out to any of us. You know, we can,

00:59:01.420 we can see if we can give you some good book references, some good recommendations, some good

00:59:07.800 information. That's the biggest thing that I've seen is there's, the information that they're

00:59:13.900 receiving is not always good. It's incomplete, or it is very, very swayed

00:59:22.860 with a direction that we don't believe Asitua should take. So just wanted to add that in there

00:59:29.820 with the information that they're getting

00:59:31.100 and how they can contact us for ideas.

00:59:34.180 So a couple of things,

00:59:36.100 and I think this is a good enough time

00:59:37.320 as any to mention some of them.

00:59:41.500 One of the big things right now

00:59:43.440 that we are working on

00:59:44.920 is getting this broadcast

00:59:47.160 that we are all sitting here listening to

00:59:49.140 available to guys who are locked up.

00:59:54.380 Again, I am speaking from the perspective

00:59:57.800 of somebody who's gone in i believe three times so take that for what it's worth i've known a lot

01:00:06.040 of men that have been incarcerated and found also true there but my observations are coming largely

01:00:12.440 from that uh it's not any of my life experience as far as being on the other side of it also

01:00:20.680 like i didn't really understand but they've uh very often and i don't know if it's true for

01:00:25.240 everybody but they have access to um to getting things like podcasts and there's a number of

01:00:33.080 podcasts in there they can get for a variety of different religious needs um some even claiming

01:00:39.200 to be also true but as of yet they don't get access to this uh this broadcast and i'd like

01:00:47.260 for them to so we're working on trying to make that happen as an option um i'm looking forward

01:00:52.800 that if and when and what i say if when that happens because we want to keep chipping at it

01:00:57.600 until it does um i've even talked about maybe doing something at the top of the show to where

01:01:03.360 i answer any uh incarcerated person's questions that way if they only get a portion of the program

01:01:10.400 they can make sure that they get that chunk so that they can get questions answered on here if

01:01:16.320 nothing else um so some good some bad and some just different um so producer nick just put the uh

01:01:32.160 link to go and support the any fundraising for that if we need materials or whatnot

01:01:38.880 but also nick if you have a good email address to contact our prison ministry if you could throw

01:01:45.920 throw that up. If not, Folk Builder Ashley McStocker has taken over that program and

01:01:54.500 she's working on it right now. I'm sure she would be very happy to hear from any of you

01:02:01.360 guys if you guys have things that you need, if you have loved ones that are incarcerated,

01:02:08.840 if that's a passion of yours that you'd like to provide help with or volunteer for,

01:02:14.180 She would love to hear from you guys.

01:02:16.300 And it is something that we'd like to always find a way to do better because a large number of people do find Alistatru when they're incarcerated.

01:02:24.800 So a couple of things.

01:02:26.440 First, just the different.

01:02:28.760 The obvious difference.

01:02:32.080 Alistatru is a holistic faith and it's about a lifestyle.

01:02:35.220 It's not something you do on Sundays.

01:02:38.140 It's something that's who you are.

01:02:40.020 And that goes into your relationship with other people. In prison, that relationship is obviously very, very different. It's gender specific. I'm going to default talk about guys, but I'm sure this applies for the ladies as well.

01:02:55.900 um but yeah when it's a bunch of dudes it's it's really different especially when it's a bunch of

01:03:03.380 guys that are you know depending upon the facility and the situation a little bit harder guys it's

01:03:09.980 much more of a war band than it is the whole community and that's not right wrong or otherwise

01:03:17.960 it's just a different context and in that context the rules and expectations are often a little bit

01:03:26.920 different um out in the world so much of it is about families and about kids ladies if you look

01:03:34.380 at any of our afa pictures that's something that blew me away at ostara it was you know when the

01:03:42.200 ladies went up to bless the mead it was over half of it was over half of the attendance it was

01:03:49.320 it was beautiful and just kind of you know almost funny and what a big transition that was because

01:03:56.480 i would say that i'll sit true on the outside in the 80s and 90s probably looked more similar to

01:04:05.180 I'll show you on the inside today, because it was just a lot of guys.

01:04:12.900 But like Daniel said, I have only had great experiences when I've gone and done prison

01:04:21.940 ministry.

01:04:23.260 The guys were extremely respectful every time.

01:04:27.580 They were amazing to me.

01:04:29.800 Uh, I think there is a much higher expectation of behavior and I think there's probably some

01:04:39.480 implied consequence if the behavior is not maintained. Um, that said attendance at, you

01:04:46.940 know, when I was going to be there was going to be mandatory. One guy had some kind of work detail

01:04:51.020 he had to go for, and I was assured that will never happen again for that guy. So, um, no,

01:04:57.620 they were they have been absolutely amazing to me when i went in also uh the chaplain at the

01:05:03.060 facility i went into was a catholic gentleman he was amazing he's he's really been eager to

01:05:10.340 work with us and to try to get the best um religious services for the guys under his care

01:05:17.380 there and it was really a pleasure to work with him so far so it's real different i think that

01:05:25.460 uh brandy mentioned about information one of the big things and this is something i would

01:05:30.180 love to to help with improving on um and this isn't

01:05:39.780 especially on the episodes with swan and myself

01:05:45.060 we are emphatic that this is the right way to do it and i believe that if i didn't believe

01:05:50.260 that with all my heart i'd be doing something really different no this is exactly the right

01:05:54.340 way to do it by my saying that doesn't mean that everybody who doesn't do it this way is wrong

01:06:00.900 it's not what i'm saying at all guys inside have a lot of information that

01:06:07.060 from my vantage point is outdated uh also true is an evolving it's a living faith i will tell

01:06:15.860 you one way that you are doing it wrong if you are doing also true you are confining it

01:06:21.700 to an ancient space in time or even a recent space in time like the 1980s and you don't keep

01:06:28.660 improving and getting better that's doing it wrong because that's not living up to our job of of

01:06:34.900 always improving and always being our best we always learn and we always improve and whereas

01:06:41.300 we've developed the faith and we've come a long way on the outside a lot of the information the

01:06:46.660 guys who are incarcerated have is passed down from you know ogs that have been there for a long time

01:06:53.780 and passed on their materials and taught people and they transfer to other facilities and they

01:07:00.020 share that information so a lot of it um also true inside resembles

01:07:06.420 like 1990s also true a lot more than the current way that we practice house true in the afa

01:07:16.660 A little bit more. And again, this. I don't mean any disrespect to it. It is what it is. It's a little bit more brosa true than the more evolved religion that we're currently working on.

01:07:31.600 And I say all of this with the full knowledge and the expectation, when I look on from the veil, from beyond the veil, whoever is also your go-thee number three, four, five, if they're not doing this better than me, and if they have not advanced to a more perfect relationship with our gods than I have, then they're not doing their job.

01:07:55.860 um so i do not think that what where we're at is perfect but it is closer than it was in the 80s

01:08:02.800 and the 90s and it will be still in the coming decades and centuries and i think we've probably

01:08:10.080 taken more time on that question that was intended but i do think it's important and this is something

01:08:14.300 a lot of people are curious about like i mentioned a perhaps depending on the audience a surprising

01:08:20.880 number of people who come to house the truth find us through being incarcerated or association with

01:08:28.720 you know relatives or loved ones that have been incarcerated um

01:08:36.000 so katie joiner asks what is one piece of advice you would give someone wanting to be a gofi or

01:08:44.640 one day and i'm going to go around to each of you on that we're going to go ahead and start with rob

01:08:48.960 Rob, what's one piece of advice you could give those who aspire to one day be one of our go-thoughts?

01:09:04.120 Rob's camera is froze or perhaps he is asleep.

01:09:07.900 There he is.

01:09:13.440 Can you repeat the question, please? I'm sorry.

01:09:15.560 I think I was right on number two. All right. Question is, what, what, you're fine, no worries.

01:09:24.960 What one piece of advice would you give, would you give to someone who wants to become

01:09:31.440 one of our go-throwers? Make sure you're paying attention to VNS and not sending memes to your

01:09:38.480 grows um that's an important one um so really solid advice is um show up consistently start

01:09:52.500 volunteering um become an apprentice folk builder and be consistent it's really easy to hit the

01:09:58.920 ground running and really hit it hard and then drop off and burn out but you have to be consistent

01:10:05.440 and put in consistent work over time, get noticed, um, show people that you're a hard worker

01:10:12.380 and that you're pious. Um, you know, to be a priest and to be a Gothia or a Githia, you have

01:10:19.660 to really internalize and believe in the faith. Otherwise you can't be that conduit for the folk.

01:10:27.320 So you have to be pious and it has to show. Um, so a whole bunch of stuff, uh, you have to show

01:10:34.500 you're willing to work hard uh you have to show that you're pious and believe in the faith

01:10:40.820 and you also have to show that you are loyal and believe in the church um

01:10:47.060 everyone on this call has gone through hardship and everyone on this call has stayed true to the

01:10:52.900 church we've seen people we call friends come and go um and the church has always known that we that

01:11:02.820 it has our loyalty everyone on this call um so that's a big part of it too is to to love and

01:11:09.300 be loyal to the afa um if you can show all those things you know we'll get you through the academic

01:11:16.900 stuff we will you know we will teach you how to do ritual we will teach you the bits and pieces 0.89

01:11:24.180 of being a gothy but if you are loyal and you're hard working and you're pious and you're a good 0.98

01:11:31.540 person is it the full respect it's really what you need okay excellent um side note nick if you

01:11:40.580 want to throw that picture up whenever you'd like it's a good time no worries anytime you get to it

01:11:45.940 and in the meantime there we go uh daniel what one piece of advice would you give

01:11:52.260 to someone wanting to become a uh one of our go thar so if i had to make it a single piece of

01:11:59.780 advice, it would be, be prepared to make this your life.

01:12:08.080 Quite often we hear people say that, you know, this is my other job, but this is, and I don't

01:12:14.680 even like using the word job or occupation because that kind of suggests that something

01:12:20.000 that you don't want to do or something that you have to do, but this is something that

01:12:24.380 you want to do and you have to be prepared to dedicate your life to it your family has to be

01:12:31.740 on board with it especially the family that you live with you know your spouse your children

01:12:36.760 just be you know prepared to be 100% all in because being half in and half out doesn't

01:12:47.720 make you a very effective gothi or githy um kind of like rob said you know the academic stuff you

01:12:54.660 know we could teach anybody that in fact you know a number of our membership are well educated in

01:13:02.380 that way but they're not prepared to dedicate their lives to this so they're not they're not

01:13:09.820 they're not part of you know part of this uh very elite group of people and uh not just the folks

01:13:17.520 on the screen but you know the uh the afa gothar in general uh literally dedicate their lives to

01:13:24.200 this there are times you know we walk away from your you know real job to uh take care of this

01:13:30.080 one and i would gladly trade that one for this one any day of the week um that's just the means

01:13:35.820 to pay my bills, but this is what I want to do with every waking moment that I have available

01:13:42.040 to me. I want to be spending doing this. And folks have had trade their real job for

01:13:49.240 this one. They have. Their quote unquote real job for this one. So their job that is more

01:13:55.840 financially lucrative than this one. That's like that meme and it really is true. Everybody

01:14:04.360 wants to be a gothi until it's time to do gothi stuff um it's a lot harder than i think people

01:14:10.840 anticipate some people are not serious people that want to do it other people are and they just

01:14:18.840 you know until you're in the midst of it it's hard to truly comprehend

01:14:25.560 how much is involved and how much of yourself you have to give to this to do it right

01:14:29.480 Before we continue with that question, I'd like to acknowledge Aldig Wadley, $50 donation. Thank you so much. Hail the AFA. Thank you. I believe this is a couple who has donated to us on entropy. We appreciate you guys a lot. Thank you very much. Your generosity is much appreciated.

01:14:54.920 But Trent, if you've got one piece of advice to give to someone who wants to one day be a go through your githya, what would it be?

01:15:06.780 It's something that you've spoken about before on here, kind of making everything in your life also true, sort of synergizing it, I guess.

01:15:17.340 And a big part of that specifically, I would say, is living every part of your life also true.

01:15:24.920 you should be the people who know you in real life should know you as the also true person the

01:15:31.720 viking religion person or norse pagan or whatever they're going to call you

01:15:35.240 that should be a core part of your identity it it's not a hobby it's not a club it's not uh

01:15:44.360 you wouldn't treat it like you would treat you know playing uh world of warcraft or something

01:15:49.560 it's it's real our gods are real you should wake up every day and be like man the gods are real

01:15:55.560 and i get to worship them how awesome is that it's got to be a core part of your identity

01:16:02.280 some people take their world of warcraft real serious for the horde

01:16:10.120 that said uh cliff what one piece of advice would you give

01:16:15.240 Devotion. You have to be devoted and you have to be devotional in your approach to

01:16:25.720 our gods. You need to be devoted to the Ashtu Folk Assembly as your church. You need to be 0.58

01:16:33.640 devoted to our Alshir Gothi and the Gothar as your colleagues and as your leader in the case of our

01:16:41.880 alshir gothi you have to be devoted to our our mission our declaration of purpose and all of

01:16:49.880 the work that we do in its various manifestations you need to be devoted to your family and uh

01:17:00.360 it'll be a heck of a lot easier if your family is asa true um i do not envy anyone who would

01:17:07.400 try to take this on without that support behind them um also it's good practice if you can lead

01:17:14.280 your household in asa true you stand a much better chance of being able to lead other households in

01:17:25.640 and devotion to your ancestors and a deep understanding that the the life force that's

01:17:33.320 in you is the spark of the gods that there's a direct lineage and a direct connection that it's

01:17:39.800 not it's not even generational it is one living thing that there's like a constant motion between

01:17:49.240 odin breathing life into our most ancient ancestors and you breathing today

01:17:54.760 absolutely um this is all really good advice that we're getting jason uh if you have one

01:18:06.600 piece of advice to give a perspective gothar what would it be

01:18:10.440 i want to say culture but that's without but for lack of better articulation

01:18:20.440 um felt a culture of servitude um because once you become a go-fi everyone you come across

01:18:30.820 your person's life no longer matters all that matters is that you're there the gods come

01:18:36.160 knocking they don't care about what you got going on they need you and as a priest your first

01:18:43.740 reaction not even thought not deed or whatever your first reaction should be to let them in

01:18:49.220 so letting go of whatever personal ambitions you have and putting them second and putting

01:18:58.980 your piety and your your servitude person at the forefront you'll go far

01:19:04.380 so i would say take jason's advice and marry it to trance that's the thing

01:19:13.540 if your personal life and your service to our gods are two separate things then you will always be

01:19:26.420 about to use a jesus reference i'll use it anyway you're robbing peter to pay paul

01:19:34.360 you're robbing one you're you're taking from one to give time to the other and there's always

01:19:42.440 going to be a conflict when you build your personal life around your service to the gods

01:19:50.040 then they work together just like your ambition you know your personal ambitions if you want to

01:19:56.040 be a gothi and you want to do it right there's nothing wrong with ambition everyone on this call

01:20:02.680 whether they admit it or not is here because they have ambition

01:20:06.040 some of us who are hosting this call perhaps have lots and lots of ambition there's nothing

01:20:14.600 wrong with that i respect that completely respect that and i want all of our leaders to be ambitious

01:20:23.800 everyone on this call it's one of the beautiful things about the class of 21

01:20:27.880 is they pushed each other to be better because there is a competition amongst them

01:20:34.280 and you can have malignant competition or you can have the competition amongst brothers to be their

01:20:42.060 very best and that's what we see on display here i mentioned it earlier it's silly but i'm

01:20:49.540 extremely extremely proud just looking at my screen tonight um that's the thing build build

01:20:57.940 your family build your personal life build your ambitions around your service to the icer and

01:21:04.820 that's what you need to do if you want to be a go here and give you one day and i see a um

01:21:12.660 comment on the chat i just kind of want to acknowledge that i appreciate

01:21:16.500 owl of omens says i do appreciate how the afa has made alcitru more substantial

01:21:22.020 it's not a bunch of neckbeard basement wizards or hot topic witches with daddy issues

01:21:27.940 You're real people, seriously devoted to the gods.

01:21:31.460 If that's the only takeaway from this program, then it is a success.

01:21:36.640 And it means a lot for you to say that and for that to be a takeaway from how we're presenting ourselves on the program.

01:21:45.880 That means a lot. Thank you very much for the feedback.

01:21:48.320 next one is specifically oh so i started with rob and i didn't get to you brandy i'm sorry

01:21:58.560 i apologize what one piece of advice would you give uh one piece of advice i would give

01:22:05.040 is to recognize that as a true is not a solitary practice it is a community practice

01:22:12.720 while it is important to spend time on your own personal spirituality and devotion and

01:22:17.920 relationship with the gods. As a Gothia or a Githia, you are responsible for nurturing 0.98

01:22:21.740 and taking care of and helping others to build that relationship. It's not always about you.

01:22:30.660 You have to help others find the gods, come home, help them build that relationship with them,

01:22:39.320 with their ancestors, and with each other. We are not, nor have we ever been, a solitary practice.

01:22:46.740 It is our job to cultivate all of those relationships in order to build a healthier people and a healthier folks.

01:22:57.300 Yeah, if you are stranded on a desert island, perhaps, but barring that, no, community is the goal.

01:23:05.820 Community is the context.

01:23:07.640 It's where all of this becomes real.

01:23:11.580 But double shot of Brandy.

01:23:14.400 what is or why is Beowulf such an important work to our folk, asks Gauthier Bodie Mayo.

01:23:21.860 Well, Gauthier Bodie Mayo, I don't know if you have another 16 hours for me to answer this

01:23:26.100 question. However, I'll be short, I promise. Beowulf, other than being an epic poem, is a great

01:23:32.800 example of several different things. It is an example of heroism and courage in our people.

01:23:39.120 It's an example of Anglo-Saxon women, and it is an example of good leaders and kings versus bad leaders and, you know, bad followers.

01:23:50.140 And it is overall just amazing and awesome.

01:23:52.860 There are several different things that you can get out of it.

01:23:55.220 I recommend when you read it, you read it five separate times for those five separate things I constantly keep harping on.

01:24:01.400 And take your time with it, find multiple translations, and study it.

01:24:06.500 beowulf is the the gateway lord understanding a lot of the higher written academic books that

01:24:12.980 are out there they reference they will a lot in order to understand those you need to understand

01:24:19.620 also and i mentioned this because fresh in my mind with uh witness fawn and i going through the have

01:24:25.780 them all as extension extensively as we have over the past few uh i guess past almost two months

01:24:34.420 it's a seven-part series um beowulf is very helpful and synergizes really well with that

01:24:44.900 because it's all about hall culture so much of what we know of hall culture goes back to those

01:24:51.300 points of reference found in beowulf it's one of them it's it is the premier single piece of

01:24:58.000 literature that exemplifies how hall culture works.

01:25:10.520 Also from Goethe Bode Mayo, Goethe East, who was the best Anglo-Saxon king, and why

01:25:18.980 was it Alfred the Great?

01:25:20.760 It was not Bodie because he was not Alcetru.

01:25:27.800 The best Anglo-Saxon king was not Alfred the Great,

01:25:31.000 but the best Anglo-Saxon king was unfortunately also not Alcetru.

01:25:34.000 It was Athelstan who united England and pretty much brought the entirety of

01:25:40.800 Britannia and a good chunk of Ireland to heel under the rightful dominion

01:25:46.740 of Anglo-Saxon supremacy. 0.71

01:25:49.160 But, you know, good try.

01:25:51.660 I didn't ask for the most powerful.

01:25:54.600 I flag on the play.

01:25:57.880 Breaking trough with our gods does not make one the greatest of kings who all trace their ancestry back to the All-Father himself.

01:26:08.980 There are lots of choices there, but those are not the choices.

01:26:18.220 Penda of Mercia was the most powerful of his time. 1.00

01:26:27.520 He was tolerant of Christianity in his realm, which was unfortunate, but he at least was also true. 1.00

01:26:34.880 So I'm going to say Penda has probably got the best claim on it. 1.00

01:26:39.380 Let me you know what? Let me say if we're going for also true kings, I'll say Redwald of East Anglia.

01:26:47.040 He fought against Christianity, whereas Penda did not. 0.80

01:26:51.700 Penda was unfortunately tolerant.

01:26:53.720 Redwald fought against it.

01:26:56.920 He considered giving into it at one point for political gain. 0.99

01:27:00.160 And his wife was like, no, don't be a coward.

01:27:04.320 And he kept up with the fight. 0.93

01:27:06.440 Which altars did he have? 0.85

01:27:09.440 Because I believe he had an altar to the white Christ as well as Alcetru. 0.84

01:27:13.720 Briefly. 0.77

01:27:14.200 So I'm going to throw out there, and this is honestly a conversation that I am trying to have, Enfrith of Bernicia and Osric of the other half of Northumbria.

01:27:30.680 um i think they are strong candidates in the fact that they though their realm had submitted to the

01:27:43.040 white christ they brought it back to alsatru it was only for about a year but each of them

01:27:48.300 in their own regnum brought back alsatru for the time that they were alive but their reign

01:27:55.220 was like less than a year each so take that for what you will ah cliff has thoughts on the matter

01:28:04.820 cliff i i'm not going to nominate a uh a candidate for for greatest anglo-saxon king but i thought

01:28:11.780 it would be fun to mention that um in in teaching my son about how um you know our our family members

01:28:21.700 may be christians and that it's not their fault because they were deceived that there are truth

01:28:27.540 breakers in our history who he uh refers to as the evil kings and who he has talked to

01:28:34.020 his grandma about much to her dismay parenting done right folks examples right here but throw

01:28:45.780 in there that apple said yeah i would say i want to throw in their apple stand 0.84

01:28:51.460 you know white christ god wasn't strong enough to take the heathen out of hawken

01:28:55.700 just saying that harold hairfare influence still managed to go over norway and

01:29:02.660 stay the course for quite some time

01:29:06.500 oh plus you raised another man's kid 0.75

01:29:09.060 okay um another one from chris in michigan can you reincarnate as the opposite gender

01:29:24.500 or are all our lives going to be the same gender

01:29:29.860 all right so i want to take i want to jump at this first and i'll let other people follow up

01:29:40.580 i think part of that is a misunderstanding about reincarnation

01:29:46.660 um again all of this is with the asterisks that

01:29:54.500 odin can do what he wants um i don't say that it is completely and totally impossible

01:30:02.720 for your soul to be preserved whole and reissued to another person down the line

01:30:13.920 if that's the will of the all father but i don't think that's a certain that's certainly not a

01:30:23.420 common thing mathematically it doesn't make sense for that to be a thing altogether and logically

01:30:30.140 it doesn't make sense either say your grandfather and you want to name your child after after him

01:30:39.340 and in the hopes that he'll reincarnate you can't simultaneously be potty training your toddler

01:30:47.820 and making offerings to your grandfather at your altar and it be the same person

01:30:55.180 it just doesn't quite work like that but the thing is our soul has many parts to it

01:31:01.100 there's pieces that absolutely reincarnate and are passed on as a inheritance through the line

01:31:07.340 and those are affixed and greatly amplified if you give a child the name of one of your ancestors

01:31:15.100 so there's a lot to that but the idea of one for one reincarnation that you are exactly the same

01:31:22.600 person as this other person in history in your family line and your great great grandchild may

01:31:28.520 exactly be you I think that is a I think that is a misunderstanding I think your hymenia

01:31:37.280 certainly can get passed on your luck I think elements certainly of your your hammer and your

01:31:46.760 leak can get passed on absolutely but yourself your you-ness not as much certainly memories

01:31:57.440 we've seen do get passed on but I don't think it quite works that easily I do I will say this 0.72

01:32:06.500 I think that for certain, if the All-Father were to will that 100% of you, your entire personage, your entire soul complex, gets reborn into another person in your line, it would be a person of the same gender.

01:32:22.240 Does anybody have additional thoughts or things to share on this? 0.91

01:32:30.260 Once, twice?

01:32:31.860 you do um it's not much but i think that um i think that one of the reasons why we

01:32:42.660 hold masculinity and femininity to be to be sacred is because we see that is

01:32:51.940 something that the aesir considered to be sacred in the way that they interact with each other in

01:32:58.100 in the way that Thor and Sif interact with each other.

01:33:02.960 And so, you know, with that big asterisk

01:33:05.340 that Odin can do what Odin wants,

01:33:07.680 I cannot imagine where that would be something

01:33:12.160 that Odin wouldn't want to do.

01:33:13.440 It seems like it would be sacrilegious to the Aesir

01:33:17.380 to conflate the masculine with the feminine.

01:33:22.380 feminine um you know i don't i i don't think that the way that our souls are constructed that if you

01:33:29.500 are um if you're a man that there's a you know some feminine part of your soul that could be

01:33:35.660 reborn or or vice versa i just don't i don't understand it that way um and it seems so counter

01:33:43.580 to just just to nature you know i understand that we don't worship nature but we certainly do

01:33:49.820 observe it for truth and that doesn't exist um unless you're like a reptile or something and

01:34:00.220 since we are not reptiles i don't think that that example applies it just it seems so counter to

01:34:05.500 everything that would be um that would be hail that would be good yeah i think that's an important

01:34:14.060 kind of side note i hit the um reincarnation bit but not the uh

01:34:21.100 the gender specificity as as much as as much as ought be uh be mentioned um

01:34:35.020 i think also every time that anything like gender conflation is mentioned in our lore it is

01:34:42.140 synonymous with evil and deceit and trickery and betrayal so um yeah i don't i can't imagine where 0.97

01:34:53.580 our gods would allow or find something like that desirable if it did happen i would i would have

01:35:01.100 to think that another force would be behind it yeah and it's i think that's a really important 0.87

01:35:07.340 point the other thing is um gender isn't a biological inconvenience it is a fundamental

01:35:20.700 part of a person's being it's a fundamental part of their character it's a fundamental

01:35:27.260 part of what makes them who they are it's not arbitrary it's not chosen it's not off

01:35:34.300 like optional it's a fixed part of what makes a person who they are we see that the gods didn't

01:35:44.860 find ask and make two asks and then make one of them male one of them female so they could

01:35:53.100 procreate no there was ask and emblem from the very moment of us becoming us there was male and

01:36:01.820 and then he's female and there's different um different things that were sacred about each of

01:36:09.580 uh to act as if it were interchangeable is a disrespect to both and ultimately a disrespect

01:36:16.620 to our gods that created us as very clearly men and women that's that's a really important core

01:36:25.740 principle of the austral folk assembly and unfortunately it's it's something that we need to

01:36:34.060 re-emphasize over and over again in 2024 because a lot of people have

01:36:40.060 become very confused about that uh seemingly

01:36:46.700 so speaking of gender specificity owl of omens asks and stuff kind of a follow-up to his question

01:36:53.980 about the roles of of gothi and githia in bloat what diff what difference in roles does a githia

01:37:01.580 have from a gofi and is there any difference when it comes to ceremonies um and this is a

01:37:11.980 there's a lots of there's lots of pieces to this question does any do any of you have

01:37:18.780 things you would like to say on this

01:37:23.980 Um, yeah, actually I got a few thoughts on first ones kind of the last thing we're talking

01:37:36.740 about.

01:37:37.740 Um, you know, when you inherit what you get from your ancestors, as far as your soul goes

01:37:42.480 and you humor the idea that you could even have masculine parts in a female, female body

01:37:49.500 vice versa that's setting the individual up to not be able to properly handle their spiritual 0.77

01:37:56.540 inheritance and build a legacy that's like setting up for failure and on the other side of that if

01:38:03.660 you're that great mighty with your coming and everything the gods are probably gonna pull that

01:38:08.860 up so you know unless you're on either extreme of that i i don't see how one for one incarnation

01:38:14.940 would work i just kind of want to throw that out there but um being fortunate enough to be

01:38:21.260 married to you know my fellow gothar anna anna florid there absolutely is things that we defer

01:38:28.540 to one another based on our our specific gender roles um when dealing with the goddesses you know 0.76

01:38:35.740 anna immediately picks that up but things like the horn the horn is a vessel that receives 0.87

01:38:41.980 Anna Jenny will carry that unless it's like a bloat dedicated specifically to a goddess

01:38:47.300 um in which she's more than likely to be doing that herself and when both are present

01:38:54.980 because you know we're not that many we we do work with what we have um it's only natural that

01:39:02.740 you know she would do that because she is the best vessel and conduit for um connecting with 0.71

01:39:08.280 a feminine divinity in the same way like a thor or a frayer would be more appropriate for a

01:39:16.440 masculine entity a masculine conduit to um abridge that to the folk um and it's you know i'm trying

01:39:27.540 to get more specific here with details but it if nothing else it absolutely is a thing and it

01:39:33.640 It absolutely seems to make a difference in the way our folks are able to experience and connect with it when we hold those bloods.

01:39:44.640 Gothi Stam, you had your hand up. Do you have something to add on that?

01:39:49.640 Yeah, absolutely. A couple things.

01:39:53.640 I'm of the opinion that it doesn't take a Gothia male to properly worship a goddess or a Githia to properly worship the goddess.

01:40:07.020 I think any one of the Gothar can properly give worship to any of the gods or goddesses.

01:40:15.260 um that being said they're masculine and feminine energy uh by the gothi or githia especially uh

01:40:27.260 i had the privilege of conducting a dual bloat with wet and brandy uh where we combine masculine

01:40:34.860 and feminine energy and we were honoring both uh odin and frigga and in that moment both those

01:40:44.220 energies and both those aspects uh were coming together in one ritual and i think that uh

01:40:51.100 that encapsulated everything in that moment and um so while i don't think it takes a githia to

01:41:00.140 properly worship a goddess or a gothy to properly worship a god um i do think there is something

01:41:06.540 special about Agithya worshiping the feminine and Agothi worshiping the masculine. 0.62

01:41:18.220 Brandy's got stuff to add. What do you got, Brandy?

01:41:22.300 So one of the things that I like to do when I do bloat, especially if I have,

01:41:27.100 you know, a Gothi present or a Gothi there, I like to do dual bloats.

01:41:31.260 um but one thing that i really like to see and emphasize is that the githias receive

01:41:39.220 the githias receive the gifts of the folk we can receive the gifts of the gods and the godhi can

01:41:46.860 in turn give the gifts he gives the gifts of the folk to the gods he gives the gifts of the gods

01:41:51.500 folk it's it's something that i like to do it's a personal preference um the women receive the

01:41:57.360 gifts and present them to the godi who then gives them so that's something that i personally like

01:42:02.240 to do um in the role of a godi or a githia just a personal preference so i've got i've got notes

01:42:11.280 on this that i'd like to like to throw out there first um all right so this is uh

01:42:27.360 After the 7 o'clock hour on the West Coast, a little bit later, the further you go east, children, earmuffs or whatever.

01:42:38.340 But you know what?

01:42:39.300 You guys know what you got and what you don't.

01:42:45.580 There's innings and there's outies.

01:42:49.100 It's a thing. 1.00

01:42:50.100 Gender's a thing.

01:42:51.440 Trent covers his eyes. 1.00

01:42:52.820 But I think Trent knows what's up.

01:42:54.460 He's married.

01:42:55.000 I assume he knows what's up.

01:42:57.360 um joking aside these I've talked before about how there's a lot of layers to our our spirituality

01:43:08.760 to our religion to our understanding in relation to the world around us and that's very much the 0.98

01:43:16.440 Women are physiologically, biologically, mentally, spiritually attuned to receive and to distribute in a way.

01:43:31.040 So when it comes to a couple of things on the question, first, even if I am doing a bloat by myself, 0.96

01:43:39.880 if there is a githia present sometimes even if there's a ranking woman there that's a

01:43:47.020 an elder in our community a folk builder a person with a certain amount of of gravitas there

01:43:54.040 them carrying the horn when it is the receiving or the giving round where people are putting

01:44:02.540 their energy into the horn if i have the option i like to have one of our women do that 0.58

01:44:09.440 If we are offering the horn in the receiving round, very often I like our women to do that as well. 0.98

01:44:17.280 If I'm a Spurging, and you can continue to extend my metaphor there if you would like, I tend to be the one to do that.

01:44:34.640 Three beers in, but I'm going to choose restraint on going further on that.

01:44:38.340 but yeah so i tend to be the one who does who does that the distributing in that way very seriously

01:44:46.980 in all joking aside that's really important so rob mentioned earlier that um you know any

01:44:56.740 gothi or githia can do a ritual to any of our gods but you'll notice they're very different

01:45:02.980 because the relationship is different i am very glad and honored to do a bloat to one of our

01:45:12.260 goddesses but i am going to give bloat to a goddess in a very different way than brandy is

01:45:21.620 you know i'm very happy to stand in bloat where brandy is giving bloat to one of our gods

01:45:27.140 but she is going to bloat to one of our gods with a very different feel than i would bloat to one of

01:45:34.260 our gods and both are both are beautiful and both are fine but they're very they're different

01:45:42.340 and it's subtle but if it's it's hard to it's hard to talk about over it

01:45:51.060 okay because i'm stumbling over my words clearly it is hard hard to talk about over a podcast but

01:45:55.700 it's it's harder to for me to communicate to you if you're not there because how do i communicate

01:46:02.740 the field or the energy in the area but it is different you do notice that when that's the case

01:46:10.500 um specifically trent mentioned earlier about our different rituals 1.00

01:46:16.980 well specifically in sample women are the ones that carry the horn around in our 1.00

01:46:22.660 high sumble. 1.00

01:46:26.920 They

01:46:27.160 carry the sacred mead.

01:46:33.420 They

01:46:33.660 distribute that.

01:46:37.200 They receive the blessings

01:46:38.860 of the folk. They distribute

01:46:40.940 the blessings of the folk.

01:46:43.120 Good night, Aubrey. I love you.

01:46:44.620 I'll see you in the morning.

01:46:49.140 Everybody's waving at you.

01:46:50.180 sorry about that guys um but yeah it's really um it's different but it's subtle um again i

01:47:02.140 in the austral folk assembly gender roles are really important

01:47:09.220 and they're natural and they're inherent to a smoothly functioning ordered society

01:47:17.740 we don't have to enforce them by anything ridiculous or intrusive things fall into

01:47:29.740 place very naturally in that situation and i've seen that in every example of it

01:47:37.360 certainly within recent years and that gets better all the time one thing ritually the in the afa

01:47:46.920 specifically the ladies always bless our mead before rituals they take the horn and they take

01:47:54.040 the ritual mead they take it off to the side ritual whatever fluid we're using if we're using

01:48:00.200 ale or you know whatever the case may be they take that off to the side and they perform special

01:48:06.680 rites over it to prepare it for what we're about to do and to imbue it with their holiness their

01:48:14.680 connectedness to the to the divine because they connect to the divine in a very special and

01:48:21.080 different way but you'll notice if you attend afa ritual how that works and it's harder to like

01:48:32.520 have a big list of do's and don'ts because it's much more organic and it's much more natural

01:48:38.120 you know like like i said you don't have to crack the whip and like tell people where their place is

01:48:46.320 and where to because it just works out naturally it's not something you've got to force and it's

01:48:50.900 not one of the big things about alsatru generally is the idea of coming home to what is inherently

01:49:01.520 right in our soul so so much of what we do isn't a forced or a legislated thing so much of what

01:49:09.760 we do is just coming back to what is normal and natural and right the more we try to force that

01:49:16.800 the more there's you know people get caught up with whatever baggage that they bring to the

01:49:22.800 table and all of us bring some kind of baggage our folk have a soul sickness from spending 0.98

01:49:30.880 1500 in some cases best case scenario 800 years in a foreign faith we all have a certain degree 0.74

01:49:39.200 of baggage that we bring with us when we come back home to house the troop but it really is coming

01:49:44.320 home to what's our default setting and not having to forcibly impose something i think that's a

01:49:53.040 really important distinction um next question is from finn wraith and he asks is there anyone who

01:50:01.440 is an adult who was raised in the afa or in the organizations that existed before the afa

01:50:14.720 yes but much much fewer than i would like to have seen

01:50:18.320 um that's something that you will hear from that founding generation of modern house to true

01:50:28.620 can't say all of them because i don't think everyone speaks with one voice but

01:50:36.560 a great many of them that i've spoken to have lamented that they didn't include their children

01:50:45.020 and more when they were starting out i think you know the older i get now that changes every year

01:50:53.500 there's more that were raised in house of truth that stay with us but much fewer from that um

01:51:01.980 generation of folks who were doing this in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s then uh than we'd

01:51:08.220 like to see and that's just honest i'd love to tell you oh yes there's legions of them

01:51:14.360 Ask me again in 30 years, and I'll be able to tell you that.

01:51:18.180 But not quite there yet, but that's something that we work really hard to build.

01:51:23.500 So that's something I take a lot of pride in, and everyone here takes pride in as well.

01:51:29.480 First, quite a few of us on this broadcast are raising our children in this faith very actively right now as we speak.

01:51:39.200 um but since and there were efforts before this i don't mean to discount that but

01:51:48.540 something that i'm very proud of since i've become alzharia govi

01:51:52.220 we have had a tremendous amount of women and children actively involved in what we do

01:52:01.940 actively living Alcetru, being Alcetru and raising their families on this.

01:52:08.000 And it's evident in our pictures.

01:52:10.960 It's beautiful and amazing.

01:52:15.680 I can't think of any pictures at any major events.

01:52:20.340 Now, people get together with just the guys and do stuff AFA-wise.

01:52:23.900 You know, that happens.

01:52:25.280 But any of our big holidays at any of our Hoffs,

01:52:29.400 I can't think of a time that there's not pictures of children and ladies and, you know, children of multiple different ages and pregnant ladies in the pictures.

01:52:42.220 So that's a huge part in that we've got kids from all different ages coming up in Ossetru and Gauthier Stamm, who's with us today.

01:52:51.520 His work in the Ossetru Academy is such a huge asset to move that forward.

01:53:03.040 That is building the foundations for our future.

01:53:06.540 And it's something that's, you know, you're not going to necessarily see next year or the year after or whatever,

01:53:12.300 because we're still coming up with our, we're still advancing our curriculum up that far in the grade levels.

01:53:19.100 but those foundations are going to pay off massively in the future for us being able to

01:53:26.240 bring our children with us into that next generation. I look forward to seeing that.

01:53:35.660 So Owl of Omens says, if we have a priesthood, which we do, does this mean that we can't conduct

01:53:42.760 ceremonies at home? First, no, it doesn't mean that, but it's nuanced. Do any of you guys have

01:53:50.160 anything you'd like to, you know, would any of you guys like to answer that question? Cliff?

01:53:59.340 So I appreciate the sort of follow-up question, because I wanted to point out on the previous

01:54:04.760 question, the word ceremonies is a bit broad, and referring back to the functions of Gothia and

01:54:12.040 wanted to make sure we point out as a, you know, a matter of conducting the standard, you know,

01:54:23.140 the threshold rights that all of our Gothar are fully qualified to name babies, to perform

01:54:31.680 coming-of-age ceremonies, to perform weddings, to perform funerals. So in those respects,

01:54:39.720 and and of course to you know to hold blood and bloat and officiate sumble that our our goth are

01:54:44.840 all have the standing to do those things even though their approaches and some of their roles

01:54:49.400 when we're we're blessed with the opportunity to have many present may differentiate but that any

01:54:55.640 one of our our our gothies or githias could stand on their own to do any of those rights for our folk

01:55:04.840 and that's sort of a lead into this question as well as far as conducting ceremonies at home 0.96

01:55:09.720 um it is it is right and it is good for you to make bloat to your ancestors and to your gods

01:55:18.460 in your home practice it is right and it is good for you to hold symbol with your family and your

01:55:25.880 friends in your own home the threshold rights that i mentioned are reserved um to our gothar

01:55:34.420 um in in many cases for legal reasons we we do legal binding weddings in the austro folk assembly

01:55:43.460 we we don't do um wedding ceremonies that are that are not legally binding with the

01:55:50.900 the the exception of vow renewals of course because those are already um legally um

01:55:58.820 what's the right word i want to say certified but there's a better word than that but they are um

01:56:04.420 You know, they have the seal of the crown on them already, as it were.

01:56:11.760 So those are an interesting exception to that. 0.91

01:56:15.760 But the threshold rights, such as the naming of a child or a man making or a woman making at their coming of age and funerals really should involve our gothar.

01:56:30.020 And, you know, logistics is a thing.

01:56:33.260 asa true is right now a a small and growing and organizing religion we are not as organized as

01:56:42.300 we would like to be and as um some of the religions that those evil kings embraced

01:56:48.940 have established themselves amongst our folks right now but uh we will be and in the meantime

01:56:55.740 what we will do is the asa true folk assembly is you know we want you to come to our gothar

01:57:01.100 for these these sacred rites and you know there may be times when we will um appoint somebody

01:57:12.220 usually a folk builder to do that in our stead if there you know is no one able to be physically in

01:57:18.540 your presence if there's a situation depending on where you are all sorts of things that we can

01:57:23.820 imagine um but our our gothar will do everything we can to make those things happen for you under

01:57:32.940 the blessings of the ossaroo folk assembly and under the the ordination um that that started

01:57:42.540 with um with founder and first alshire gothe mcnallan when he started

01:57:47.500 all of this for us when he rekindled this troth with our gods

01:57:53.820 does anyone else have something they'd like to add on uh on this uh daniel i saw your hand first

01:58:03.260 what you got i think a lot of times uh a lot of the focus goes to ceremony because a lot of what

01:58:13.180 makes this religion go is the gift exchange but something i don't see much of or i don't see as

01:58:20.380 much of that i think we should see more of is uh is simple prayer and we have an example of that

01:58:26.540 uh cliff mentioned earlier the uh cedrifomol the cedrifomol prayer is a great uh framework

01:58:33.980 for how a prayer should go if you understand the context of the prayer you'll you'll notice

01:58:40.140 that the first thing that she does is praise the day and praise the uh the night because

01:58:47.340 she had the ability to see that because she was asleep and uh so approaching the gods and uh

01:58:54.380 approaching the uh gratitude and a lot of the times too that we often tell people you know

01:59:03.580 like you know going to prayer into prayer with frig and asking her to you know help you with

01:59:09.020 your sat or help you with that job promotion gods have much grander things to consider than

01:59:15.580 than those uh seemingly mundane things but if you pray in a way that's more collective

01:59:21.740 praying for us as a folk us as a people us as a religious faith and then i think those prayers

01:59:28.780 are often heard and answered and if you'll notice in the sigrid and sigrid's prayer that she does

01:59:34.380 you know use collective speech you know to to the gods and goddesses she says you know look

01:59:39.740 Look upon us with favor, grant us victory, bless us with healing hands and honorable speech.

01:59:45.420 So I think that's something that is often overlooked and is something that can be, you know, ritualized.

01:59:51.520 I wake up every day and approach my altar that is right behind me and I give prayers of thanks every single day.

02:00:00.900 So that's something that I think we can do a lot more of and place more emphasis on.

02:00:06.320 It doesn't always have to be a gift exchange.

02:00:08.480 Gifts are great, and a lot of times the gifts can be very simple.

02:00:11.700 Often I'll burn an incense cone, or we have some really beautiful flowers out in the yard.

02:00:17.780 I'll go pick some flowers, and I'll offer those up to the gods and goddesses at my home altar.

02:00:22.560 But my interaction 90% of the time at home is just through prayer.

02:00:32.140 Does anybody else have anything to add on that?

02:00:34.540 Go, Lee, Stan?

02:00:37.980 Sorry, Jason, I'm going to jump you.

02:00:41.140 No, it's all right.

02:00:42.920 Yeah, absolutely.

02:00:44.500 Not only can you do ritual at home, but you absolutely should.

02:00:52.260 It is a fine old Arian tradition going back as far as can be that the father, Peter Familius of the family, conducted family rites at home.

02:01:04.600 There were priests that conducted major rites for the public, but family rites were conducted at home by the father of the family.

02:01:13.940 And that was his duty to do so, just as it was the mother's duty to cultivate the hearth and the hearth cult.

02:01:21.980 These are not just can we. These are imperatives. You should do these.

02:01:26.420 um and i really really recommend everybody create that practice at home where you're leading as a

02:01:36.040 man as a father you're leading your family in prayers to your ancestors and your household gods

02:01:40.860 and as a woman that you are cultivating that hearth that hearth cult that family 0.98

02:01:47.620 and the dissier of your of your of your people that's absolutely important to me

02:01:52.840 you know i think this is

02:01:59.840 so

02:02:04.280 absolutely and just logistically we don't have enough gothar to go everywhere that we need to

02:02:14.980 have gothar so necessity the most important things is that our gods are and our ancestors

02:02:23.780 are receiving worship and a great many of us for the longest time have had to do that

02:02:34.340 as individuals without ordained gothar in in in the area but what's really important to note is

02:02:41.940 Because when an ordained Gothi or Githia is in the area, you let them perform the ritual because something special comes with that ordination.

02:02:56.160 First, it's a sign of respect and honor to our gods that you're respecting that organization, that the ordination from the gods means something to you.

02:03:06.300 secondly when we are ordained something special happens we're no longer just you know matt or cliff

02:03:17.880 or daniel or or trend we are a priest of the isere that role connects what we're doing

02:03:28.580 with all those gothar who have come before us and all those who will come after us

02:03:34.240 There's a collected authority, a collected hymenia and luck that comes with that, that is represented when we stand in ritual and sacred space before our gods and we reach out to them.

02:03:53.000 And it is much better than somebody just doing it by themselves.

02:03:58.060 That's not a slap at anybody.

02:04:00.040 Before I was ordained, I performed a lot of rituals by myself.

02:04:04.240 But there's not one of them that I wouldn't have gladly given way to Agothi or Agithya if they were there to be able to do it for me and for the people who were there.

02:04:17.720 I would have been so tremendously honored.

02:04:19.440 It's not a slight, it's an act of reverence and respect to welcome Agothi or Agithya to perform those services for you.

02:04:34.240 and it elevates them and it aligns them with our iser in a very fundamental way

02:04:42.000 and by doing so we strengthen our priesthood and we strengthen the luck of our priesthood

02:04:47.840 which is fundamental and it's what future generations are built upon

02:04:51.760 and the uh ultimately the gravitas of our church is built upon that our ordination is

02:04:58.480 in a in a way certainly it's a point of connectivity between ancient gothar and

02:05:08.080 ourselves but in a very literal way it connects us to the very foundations of modern house of truth

02:05:17.520 all of us here are ordained with a lineage that goes back to uh stephen mcnowen our founder

02:05:25.360 himself and the relationship he established well actually the relationship that the all-father

02:05:31.840 odin established with him in 1968. um it seems relatively modern but everyone has to start

02:05:40.960 somewhere and modern though it may be that's you know like 50 58 i got a math um it's 50 some odd

02:05:56.320 years established and that puts it uh far ahead of just some dude and the more we respect that

02:06:06.800 and the more that's added to with gravity and with dignity over the years the more potent it

02:06:13.520 continues to become and uh yes 55 years i believe so the more that um adds that value year upon year

02:06:24.400 to our ordination to the relevancy of our gothar and it's a special luck that we pass from existing

02:06:33.200 gothar to newly ordained gothar and it's something that i take really serious with my um authority to

02:06:42.160 either maintain or revoke those ordinations um it's a very special privilege and it's limited

02:06:50.240 we try to keep it to folks who've earned it to folks who are worthy of it and maintain the honor

02:06:57.440 and the dignity of it and you guys help us do that by welcoming our gothar in to perform

02:07:06.240 these ceremonies for you and your family and the people that you're involved with

02:07:12.880 it has a value in ausgard it has a value in midgard and it builds the value of it

02:07:21.440 for the next generation to come um got another question about the othala rune sometimes i see

02:07:32.720 the room with little differences is one different from the other any of you have commentary about

02:07:42.400 the uh i guess straight-legged othala versus the winged othala

02:07:48.320 trent your hand i saw first what's up uh gothi stan will probably know more about this than me

02:07:57.500 but i can say that the um the othala room with uh serifs that's the little the little feet on it i

02:08:04.020 guess for lack of a better word that version of othala is the one we use in the folk food art

02:08:09.580 for one and it is typically seen as explicitly folkish uh you you know thalaroon in general is

02:08:19.940 pretty hated by people who pretend to be asa true the folk futhark version with the seraphs or feet

02:08:26.580 is explicitly folkish and uh it's yeah it really shows someone that you are real asa true rather

02:08:37.980 than Universalist Ossetru.

02:08:44.220 Does anybody have anything they want to add on that?

02:08:47.900 Rob, you got called out.

02:08:49.300 What do you got? 1.00

02:08:52.160 Yeah, and the interesting thing about the Othala

02:08:56.260 with the quote-unquote feet on it

02:08:58.100 is you'll often see internet,

02:09:01.920 for lack of a better term,

02:09:04.060 say, oh, well, that's from World War II,

02:09:06.260 but it's not.

02:09:06.900 It originated in Germany in the 17th century, and it was basically just an addition onto an ancient rune that the German people have been using for thousands of years.

02:09:17.860 I'm like, hey, it looks good to feed.

02:09:21.500 It did not originate in the 30s or 40s.

02:09:25.220 It's hundreds of years old.

02:09:26.980 Their wings

02:09:35.460 And the wings on the Othala rune

02:09:37.740 Help it ascend to the heavens

02:09:40.240 With our worship

02:09:42.460 And with our

02:09:43.380 Our Aryan nobility

02:09:45.540 It really is just a stylistic

02:09:48.880 Thing

02:09:50.080 There's no different meaning

02:09:51.880 Other than it 1.00

02:09:53.900 Harkens back to the runic revival 0.88

02:09:56.040 of Meister von List and folks in his day that, you know, reawakened, I guess what you'd call

02:10:03.800 proto-modern Ausitru. And so it's kind of a nod towards that. And as Trent said,

02:10:11.700 it tends to separate folkish from not. And it looks like Cliff has something he wants to add

02:10:19.000 on this clip yeah this this may or may not be silly but it's um additional insight um

02:10:29.000 when i was early in my my ossatre studies i i forget if this was a a githy that i knew once

02:10:36.520 or if it was someone else but it was described to me that you know when you look at the runes you

02:10:42.200 can see um many of them are are illustrative um you know like the the nouthies is the the rubbing

02:10:51.560 of the sticks for the need fire for example and for for othala it was explained to me that the

02:10:58.840 the top portion the enclosed diamond is the the the village walls the innengard the tribe and that

02:11:06.520 the the bottom whether it has wings or not is the gate and that

02:11:14.360 in connection with the esoteric meaning of the rune that it is symbolizing and and representing

02:11:22.760 and you know the essence of the the innengard being protected um and the the difficulty that

02:11:34.120 one would have to penetrate that if they try to come in through the gate unwanted

02:11:40.600 because i've heard that ideographically as well um something else that i just want to

02:11:46.440 say that i don't think is without merit it has power wherever you think it comes from

02:11:54.120 it certainly is a heraldic or heraldic uh medieval device it's absolutely something

02:12:01.160 that the arminists recognized early on but even if you think it comes from world war ii

02:12:07.320 what it comes from is folks that inherently understand that othala means birthright and

02:12:15.640 homeland the people who use that with the feet or wings get the power of that mystery

02:12:27.480 in a way that other people don't and it's powerful the fact that it causes um

02:12:40.600 norse flavored wiccans to you know to clutch their pearls and shriek

02:12:46.440 demonstrates the power of it so i think if nothing else that power is a testimony to 0.83

02:12:55.640 that's the way we should use it um but no good question i appreciate it um

02:13:05.880 gothe mayo asks whitten young why is heimdallar such an important house

02:13:15.080 i'm not sure if uh gothe mayo intended that to be a personal question

02:13:18.680 uh because he did he said he asked whitten young okay so i'll answer it along those lines um

02:13:26.840 i have uh a specific connection to uh heimdall um it was one of the first gods that outside of

02:13:36.460 odin and thor and balder that that uh i started to do kind of a deep dive on um because i think

02:13:44.460 lot of us, when we first come to Alcetree, we're attracted to, you know, I'll call them the big

02:13:48.400 three, Odin, Thor, or Tyr, and there's a plethora of information on Odin and Thor, a limited amount

02:13:57.940 on Tyr, but Heimdall was a bit of a mystery to me, and I wanted to do a lot more digging into him,

02:14:03.640 and one of the things that I found fascinating was the etymology of his name, you know, home

02:14:09.000 light or home fire or world fire or world light, which is interesting. But my understanding of his

02:14:17.960 position is that he is very much the, almost like the prism through which the heavenly light projects

02:14:26.960 and creates the Bifrost Bridge. And much like how the priesthood here in Midgard, we serve as the

02:14:37.800 Bifrost Bridge. We are the connectivity between heaven and Midgard. That is, it's Heimdall that

02:14:43.220 stokes that fire in heaven that creates that connectivity. It's one of the reasons I believe,

02:14:49.960 and this is, you know, kind of a UPG thing, but it's one of the reasons that I think that our

02:14:54.740 ancestors and modern Alceturus down to this day often use flame to begin a ritual. It's, you know,

02:15:01.020 lighting of the need fire it's it's connecting it's creating a signal fire to those in the heavens

02:15:09.420 whereas you know heimdall stokes the heavenly flame the gothar stoke the earthly flame and

02:15:14.300 create that connectivity um and for the to further answer the question you know through

02:15:22.780 our understanding of the rig stool it was uh it was heimdall himself that that came as rig

02:15:27.740 that set the social hierarchy in a very Aryan way and that tripartite form you

02:15:38.060 know the king and priest class the warrior class and the provider class so

02:15:43.440 we were we were taught that through Heimdall and as priests and to be clear

02:15:50.600 you know in ancient times there was the king was often a priest so they

02:15:57.080 served both functions, but they were specifically taught the runes, and we understand, you know,

02:16:02.860 the root word, or what the meaning of rune is, is, you know, the mysteries, the secrets of the cosmos,

02:16:08.180 so that specifically is why I found him to be so fascinating, and I think that's why he's so

02:16:14.020 important. An interesting stanza, and I can't quote stanzas like Mandy does, but in Vluspa on Skama, the short Vluspa,

02:16:27.080 The seerist mentions that Heimdall was born at the edge of the world, so he's very much like a god of boundaries.

02:16:36.620 And those gods that exist on those thresholds between heaven and earth are ones that I particularly have more truth with because I'm somewhat like I'm a people watcher.

02:16:50.660 I like to observe things and I identify.

02:16:54.740 whitton young did you just call heimdall an edgelower i did not

02:17:04.580 so i'd like to add a a note on uh the lay of reek and uh heim dollar in in his guys

02:17:14.580 um a lot of people think that it is a like the establishment of the

02:17:25.220 tripartite dumazillion breakdown of you know the the producer the warrior and the the ruler

02:17:36.740 if that were the case i think that um rig would have gone to you know john and sally and bill

02:17:45.860 and susie and cletus and gertrude he didn't very specifically the couples that he went into their

02:17:56.180 home they were great grandfather and great grandmother grandfather and grandmother father

02:18:04.820 and mother it very much talks and i'm not going to suggest that there's not overlays about the

02:18:11.460 divisions of society there certainly is but it's a progression of ennoblement

02:18:20.500 it took our folk our ancient ancestors over the course of time be it eons but it's clearly

02:18:28.580 generational and over time from thralldom to aristocracy and nobility it took a simple people

02:18:39.220 and made them a noble people he by welcoming the gods into their home

02:18:46.020 our people learned nobility all the way up to noble people the aryan people but also

02:18:56.660 up to kings themselves up to uh uh con con the young or uh conunger which is icelandic for king

02:19:07.460 um so it's it's very much a process of ennoblement and not just oh here's some you know here's

02:19:14.020 workers here's lawyers here's leaders it was more than just that but it may have that but it's one

02:19:21.940 of those things that gets said and gets repeated over and over again without thought to it it's

02:19:27.380 very deliberate the names and that's why i think um i'm just throwing that out there anybody reading

02:19:32.340 our lore spend the time to look into the names of people in our world because they are very

02:19:39.780 very deliberate and they add so much depth to it um our next question is from finn wraith can people

02:19:50.580 in prisons do rituals absolutely people no one and i think this is important to note

02:19:57.860 I get what you're asking and I will answer the spirit of the question but fundamentally and I

02:20:06.960 think this is important to realize everyone can do rituals no one can take your ability

02:20:14.840 to do ritual from you they can restrict the way in which you do ritual in a lot of really

02:20:22.160 inconvenient ways but you can always find a way to do ritual in whatever your circumstance

02:20:31.940 I would urge all of you to please not let perfect be the enemy of good

02:20:37.840 what is most important is that our gods receive worship

02:20:41.780 yes if you can do that in a better way always opt for the better way

02:20:48.900 but giving them worship as long as it's pious and respectful with what you have at hand is so

02:20:56.640 much better than waiting for the perfect scenario that doesn't come now a bigger thing to your

02:21:02.020 question it really depends on where you are and what circumstance you're in on how accommodating

02:21:10.680 um prison authorities are to people's ability to perform ritual

02:21:16.860 you being a finn i'm not sure how that works in finland

02:21:24.220 in the united states it's different federally versus state if that makes if that even has

02:21:33.340 context and makes sense but there is a federal system for federal crimes and there's a state

02:21:39.580 system for state crimes but even amongst that there's different levels of

02:21:49.660 i guess um severity in terms of incarceration so in a super max your level is very very different

02:21:58.780 than in something much you know much smaller than that i don't know what the equivalent is in your

02:22:05.420 country but it's short answer is here in the united states it really depends on where you're

02:22:12.540 at legally you're supposed to be afforded the same ability to participate in your religious

02:22:18.860 practice as anyone else in a similar state of security facility in reality a lot of that

02:22:26.300 depends upon your chaplaincy and whether they want to be accommodating to you or not or whether they

02:22:31.660 want to make it more difficult um i've performed i mentioned i went into

02:22:41.980 a prison three different times and i've performed ritual there all three times i can tell you what

02:22:49.420 it looked like when i did and then i'll kick it over to daniel and brandy i'm not sure if they

02:22:54.940 were able to perform in the in circumstances they were in so we had a common like a library space

02:23:04.300 that i think they used for different religious practices it served as their chapel so we got

02:23:11.100 like a desk set up there in a circle of chairs we had like styrofoam coffee cup

02:23:25.340 yeah styrofoam coffee cups and they were able to have a little uh horn cup it didn't have the end

02:23:32.780 it wasn't like a full horn it was like sawed off to where it had a flat end so you couldn't shank

02:23:37.980 anybody with the pointy end um but we used that they had a very simple

02:23:44.620 lightweight wooden ritual hammer to sanctify the space

02:23:51.900 they brought in mountain dew one time that a couple of the guys had been able to purchase

02:23:57.340 from the commissary or whatever some cans of mountain dew that we use another time we used

02:24:02.460 like crystal white fruit punch i think i think another time we used coffee

02:24:08.740 but we stood in circle we beseeched our gods to hear us we made toasts and offerings we asked

02:24:21.760 for their blessings we received them it wasn't as uh as fancy as it would be in another circumstance

02:24:28.600 but we were able to do the fundamentals and we were very accommodating or the chaplaincy was

02:24:33.440 accommodating you know to me personally and to the guys that wanted to do it as best as they

02:24:40.840 could and we were able to make it happen i know that a lot of other people maybe they'll have a

02:24:45.320 section of the prison yard that's set aside but sometimes they're forced to share that with other

02:24:51.440 groups. I know over here, sometimes they will make Native Americans, Wiccans, and Ausatru

02:25:01.860 all use the same space, and that's not optimal. So that's a little bit different. Brandy or

02:25:12.160 Daniel, were you guys able to do ritual in the facilities you were in?

02:25:16.620 yes sir um it was similar circumstance to what you described we weren't we weren't outdoors we

02:25:26.640 were actually in the the uh the chapel building whatever you call that chaplains chaplain i guess

02:25:33.820 um and we weren't we didn't get to use the uh the sanctuary we were kind of like off in a

02:25:41.900 almost like a conference room, small conference room with a table and some chairs.

02:25:47.360 And it was very much like you described.

02:25:50.000 I forget what liquid we use, but I believe it was juice of some kind.

02:25:55.160 And it was in a styrofoam cup and we had like a styrofoam bowl.

02:25:59.560 I used my, the hammer around my neck as a, as a way to sanctify the space.

02:26:07.120 Called upon the gods.

02:26:08.540 I believe that day we gave, we gave bloat to Thor. 0.91

02:26:11.900 And one of the interesting things was, is that the Muslim contingency there was using a room next to ours. 0.99

02:26:23.080 And I was absolutely surprised at how loud that gets. 1.00

02:26:28.280 And so they were almost upping their volume to try to drown us out.

02:26:33.460 And so we kind of matched pitch, so to speak, and got even louder.

02:26:38.320 and uh it was uh it was one of the one of the coolest rituals i've ever been a part of because

02:26:43.440 it was so stripped down and uh it was just the fundamentals the basics and uh and have a means

02:26:50.040 to a spurge or any of that so i just uh you know i anointed with a rune on the guy's foreheads and

02:26:55.860 uh most aggressive hugs i ever had from you know strangers with some of those guys that we

02:27:02.480 that I did that ritual for.

02:27:04.080 But I was only ever able to do it one time.

02:27:06.960 We did do a sort of sumble.

02:27:10.800 Did something very similar to what the AFA does

02:27:13.260 in welcoming the gods.

02:27:15.200 I passed around the cup

02:27:16.680 and had the guys introduce themselves.

02:27:18.920 And kind of like what you were saying

02:27:20.900 about like the native guys

02:27:23.840 and different people in the same space.

02:27:26.620 One of the guys that showed up to that group

02:27:28.580 was at one time a Wiccan.

02:27:31.180 And he immediately dropped that moniker while I was leaving.

02:27:37.880 He said, you know, I found the true faith.

02:27:41.380 And, yeah, it worked out pretty well.

02:27:43.940 But it was a bit limited.

02:27:46.420 And like I said, it was so stripped down and raw that it was certainly different.

02:27:51.560 And it will always stand out in my mind.

02:27:55.220 What about you, Brandy?

02:27:56.340 Were you able to do a ritual or did you opt to do one?

02:27:59.260 didn't opt to do on mine's usually on the educational side but as along the lines of

02:28:05.680 teaching them how to do it themselves you know whether you know what it is that they're going

02:28:10.820 to do and making them understand that these things that we use the hammer the bowl um the horn

02:28:18.580 they are things that we do use and they are sacred items but in reality

02:28:24.440 to do a bloat. You need to have an offering and devotion. If all you have is a cup of water

02:28:33.680 and all the love that you have for the gods and all of your devotion and all of your personal

02:28:39.180 gifts to put in it, if that's all you've got, that's all you've got. Use that. You don't need

02:28:46.440 you know a big horn you don't need the biggest hammer to bless the land your devotion and a gift

02:28:54.620 is what's important that is that is what you need you know you don't need to have all of these other

02:29:00.540 things and one of the things that they were running into is they kept asking for things i have to have

02:29:06.260 this and i have to have this and i have to have this and they wouldn't let them have these things

02:29:12.380 And so the chaplaincy wasn't taking them seriously because they were making demands of I have to have this or I can't do my ritual.

02:29:21.160 That's not true.

02:29:23.160 You would like to have those things, but in reality, not having those things should not prevent you from worshiping your gods.

02:29:32.100 So that's one of the best things that I was trying to relate to them is that that is not necessary.

02:29:37.860 What is necessary is your devotion and a gift.

02:29:40.580 That's what you need.

02:29:41.320 so that was more along the lines of the educational stuff so kind of a side note

02:29:46.300 to guys out there that don't have any experience with

02:29:49.480 Alistair true in a prison context um it's kind of a dual thing like Brandy said in the meantime

02:29:59.620 practice your religion don't allow scarcity of resources to prevent you from worshiping your

02:30:06.580 gods. Yes, you need to ask for the moon in order to get what you want. It's like any

02:30:15.760 kind of adversarial bargaining system. You overshoot on what you ask for so that you

02:30:22.660 somehow settle in the middle so that your compromise position gets you where you need 0.99

02:30:28.840 to get and that's a stupid game that has to be played but but it do that said in the meantime 0.96

02:30:39.260 don't let that prevent you from worshiping your gods and that's relevant in prison but it's also 0.97

02:30:47.280 relevant at your house well i don't have an altar but one of these days when i do have an altar then

02:30:52.580 i'm going to worship the gods or maybe you get hit by a bus the day before that you never know

02:30:59.120 so worship your gods today and then worship even better when you have your super awesome

02:31:04.920 altar with all the things the way you want it but uh yeah don't don't let that prevent you from

02:31:11.360 starting so githya anna asks what's everyone drinking i see a lot of tasty looking beverages

02:31:19.520 So I got this variety pack from Costco of 21st Amendment IPAs.

02:31:30.180 It's a variety pack, and it's from Costco, so that automatically makes it, you know, gives it some points.

02:31:36.840 It's got three different varieties in it.

02:31:38.900 One is cold, one is hazy, and one is blood orange IPA.

02:31:46.560 Blood orange really comes through and is awesome.

02:31:49.520 the cold is the same alcohol volume as everything else usually if something's like ice brewed it's

02:31:54.960 much higher alcohol content so i don't really know what makes it cold they were all cold they

02:31:59.360 all came out of my fridge so i don't know but uh that's what i got what's everybody else drinking

02:32:07.200 i got a home brewed hard apple cider oh points for homebrew that's cool i don't know if it

02:32:15.760 comes across but i've got the uh afa 20th anniversary mug here it does not but yeah

02:32:23.120 in the mug and that's awesome too the rest of us suckers are just drinking out of cans

02:32:28.460 um trent's drinking coke brandy's drinking pepsi rob doesn't finish whatever he was drinking what

02:32:36.760 what'd you have it what was in that glass before he finished it

02:32:39.700 Cedar Creek, Kentucky bourbon.

02:32:45.020 Excellent.

02:32:47.200 Zero sugar, Dr. Pepper. 0.96

02:32:49.200 Give me all the chemicals.

02:32:52.440 It's in the great state of Florida.

02:32:56.020 What do you got, Justin?

02:32:57.640 Publix.

02:32:58.760 Got my old-fashioned already mixed up for me.

02:33:00.980 Tastes pretty fancy.

02:33:02.320 Old-fashioned, good job.

02:33:04.880 Yep, 50-50 with some bourbon.

02:33:07.820 There you go.

02:33:09.700 Daniel, I will say this as far as diet soda goes. Diet Dr. Pepper tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper than other diet sodas do. It's a thing. It's not just good marketing. It's true. So that's what we got here.

02:33:26.220 I'll show you your go the I need to add something for a go the East.

02:33:29.940 All right.

02:33:30.820 Just wanting to let him know that Pepsi is the bestest soda just like Baldur's Hoff is the bestest Hoff.

02:33:36.560 Why would you do that to Balder and his Hoff, Brandy?

02:33:43.480 First, cola's not good in general.

02:33:46.580 I'll just throw that out there.

02:33:49.600 Cola is not a good flavor.

02:33:51.300 Dr. Pepper's different.

02:33:52.300 Don't turn your nose up, then.

02:33:59.500 You know what I haven't had in a long time is RC cola.

02:34:01.920 ah daniel daniel is is is revolted by the rc cola but that's what you need with the peanuts in it

02:34:10.940 gonna gonna throw out the local reference for anyone in new jersey or eastern pennsylvania

02:34:17.600 a treat cola and all the a treat sodas are superior to everything else in the rest of the

02:34:22.960 country no color is king growing up before it was commercially available everywhere certainly not up

02:34:37.020 in alaska we used to drink barks root beer down near the bottling plant in mississippi

02:34:43.820 and it was awesome like not the store-bought bottles but like the direct from you know within

02:34:51.420 100 miles of the bottling plant, like big, thick bottles of barks were awesome growing up.

02:35:00.120 We digress. So Brennus asks, how did you guys settle on Tennessee slash Jackson County for

02:35:13.220 Sigurheim. So there's a variety of

02:35:17.000 So when we settle on any

02:35:21.320 Hoff or any property, there is

02:35:25.280 a variety of considerations.

02:35:30.580 Tennessee or Sigurheim is a little bit

02:35:33.100 different because we're

02:35:37.060 deciding where a number of us who are making the decision of wanting to

02:35:41.160 live and again the default position is uh let's let's live in my backyard you know let's live

02:35:49.620 where it's close and convenient to me or close and when i say me whoever's talking uh everybody

02:35:55.580 wants it as as convenient to them as possible but realistically what things made sense for everybody

02:36:05.220 So, proximity to jobs and infrastructure where we could have the quality of life kind of things that we wanted was important.

02:36:21.640 Centralness to AFA activity or easy access to large numbers of AFA members is also an important factor.

02:36:35.220 reasonable legal setup and uh state income tax issues was also you know something to think about

02:36:46.920 cultural and traditional values in an area was certainly something to think about

02:36:55.800 um and I think you know one of the things that was particular the more we were looking at it

02:37:01.200 was a number of intentional communities that have been set up in tennessee it's really kind of a

02:37:06.560 good state for that also looking at property zoning the unrestricted zoning in tennessee is

02:37:17.200 very good as far as them not making you jump through hoops or making every project you want

02:37:23.200 to do exponentially expensive through permitting and other nonsense was also appealing and um

02:37:30.960 to a number of us who are going to move there it was appealing to have just culturally if we were

02:37:38.400 going to have it somewhere in the general area to have it somewhere that was you know in the

02:37:43.920 old confederacy was kind of a feather in in the cap of wanting to have it there culturally historically

02:37:52.960 respect to our roots and our ancestors. Five of my ancestors that I know of in my fourth

02:38:02.840 great grandfather's generation fought for Dixie. So having something in the South was

02:38:08.960 a nice appeal to a lot of us. And something just came with, you know, looking at what

02:38:17.020 was available what was available for a reasonable price it was kind of an interesting story so

02:38:24.300 we couldn't all get everybody on site to check everything out that just wasn't an option

02:38:31.900 so uh along with a couple others but consistently witt and young here was our point guy on talking

02:38:41.420 to realtors and exploring property and kind of deciding. So if it would have ended up being a

02:38:48.900 terrible property, it would have been all Daniel's fault, all his fault. But no, he found us an

02:38:56.060 absolutely amazing property. If any of you guys get the opportunity, go there, check it out,

02:39:05.780 walk all the way to the top of the ridge. Don't turn the way halfway up. That's lazy. It gets

02:39:12.560 cooler the further up you go. But it's really an amazing, amazing space. I'm looking forward to

02:39:19.260 building life there. But that's kind of some of the things that went into it. It's an hour and a

02:39:28.340 half from Nashville and from an international airport, which is a good thing. Like I said,

02:39:34.460 45 minutes from cookville which is close enough for a commute especially you get something on

02:39:41.580 the outskirts there to where you can do stuff you can still go get the things out of a city

02:39:47.580 that you need but also have enough distance to where you've got some space it's beautiful

02:39:53.740 it's in an area that is kind of i don't know known for i think overstates it but the properties

02:40:02.700 around there were advertised as hunting properties so there's a lot of a lot of game there a lot of

02:40:07.900 deer when we first rolled up there there was turkeys um so it's really neat and what turned

02:40:15.260 out is on the property we have a a old a pretty old uh graveyard that was not well tended over

02:40:27.740 the past couple centuries and we are limiting that i laid my mother to rest there and uh

02:40:35.660 we're taking care of that so it's it's really a really a special spot if you guys get an

02:40:40.060 opportunity i'd urge y'all to go there and check it out uh daniel since you were the i don't know

02:40:47.660 the scout for that expedition do you have anything you want to add on on that front

02:40:53.580 but we were looking in uh in eastern tennessee in the beginning uh remember at one point we

02:41:01.660 were even discussing like west virginia but there was as far as like proximity to jobs and whatnot

02:41:06.860 west virginia just wasn't viable and the uh the first trip we took up there was myself and heather

02:41:13.660 and our daughter along with the east and there was a couple properties that were like right in

02:41:20.380 in line with our, our price line, but it just required, like we were going to have to go in

02:41:26.320 there with sticks of dynamite to make it livable. And, uh, the realtor that we were working with,

02:41:31.820 uh, stumbled on the, uh, the property that we eventually settled on and, uh, put us in contact

02:41:37.320 with the, uh, the selling realtor. And, uh, I can't explain how stressful that whole process

02:41:46.040 was for me personally uh you know i've talked about this behind the scenes with matt and with

02:41:50.520 alan and others uh here daniel here is a quarter of a million dollars go find this property to live

02:41:56.680 on and by the way i'm not going to set foot on it until you have already bought it whoa okay um

02:42:06.040 but when we pulled up to that property and and saw the large you know open fields and it was just

02:42:11.800 you know kind of a no-brainer like that was easy place to build on uh you know we walked that

02:42:18.440 walked that property with the uh the real estate guy and all that and uh and my wife was going and 0.99

02:42:24.120 like with a knife like carving greens into the trees and stuff trying to trying to make that

02:42:30.680 happen with some help from our friends on the other side and um we knew it was we knew it was

02:42:38.000 right property because it kind of had all the things we talked about proximity to uh

02:42:42.240 to cookville was uh was one of them and um it looks like you know finding work that work in

02:42:49.360 that area within a reasonable distance isn't going to be that be all that difficult and uh not only

02:42:55.760 that just the scenery like driving into the uh the whitleyville area you know there's a the

02:43:02.320 The Cumberland River is right there.

02:43:04.280 It pools up in several, almost lakes, around some of the foothills there.

02:43:12.180 If you're an outdoorsy kind of person, it was just an ideal spot.

02:43:16.520 And we fell in love instantly.

02:43:21.520 Out of all the things that I've helped contribute to in the AFA,

02:43:25.960 that one's probably my proudest.

02:43:30.380 And it should be.

02:43:31.400 That's the thing. Daniel was nervous and it entertains me to know him that he was. I was not nervous because I completely and totally trust him. So, and he did not prove me wrong.

02:43:48.820 all right so finwraith wants to know if any of us have ever played world of warcraft

02:43:58.000 uh i have it's been a very long time

02:44:02.620 um i always was an orc i was usually an orc warrior i think it was an orc death knight at

02:44:13.160 one point that's kind of how how i roll um cliff what uh what side were you on and what uh race

02:44:25.240 and class did you play well i played as a as a human um but honestly world of warcraft wasn't

02:44:34.920 really my jam i played it but it was you know very one-tracked um and in in my mmo past my

02:44:44.920 my more more fun games were were old school star wars galaxies everquest uh dark fall which was

02:44:54.820 like full loot full pvp permadeath lots of fun there um age of tonin which was just gory and

02:45:04.660 graphic as all get out and then of course eve online gotta play eve online but i will say uh

02:45:12.660 also mmos are bad for you um if i had to list all of my past vices of which there are many

02:45:18.940 online games are

02:45:21.480 very high

02:45:23.460 ranking. It's a great way to waste

02:45:25.520 a lot of energy. You could be doing

02:45:27.200 something better with.

02:45:31.100 Jason, what race

02:45:33.480 and class did you play?

02:45:36.140 Trick question.

02:45:37.580 High Supreme Commander of the Humans

02:45:39.180 because I played the RTS, which preceded

02:45:41.300 the MMO.

02:45:43.520 Okay. 0.93

02:45:45.040 Always the Humans, Death of the 1.00

02:45:47.340 they've always been so effeminate 1.00

02:45:56.620 although the little dances that you could do as the orcs you could do like

02:46:00.700 the mc hammer dance so i started to think of the uh the application to the orcs

02:46:07.980 and i don't think they were our people i think they might have been folks that acquire bicycles

02:46:15.740 by other means than purchase um it's probably fair that online was more my mmo ruthless business and

02:46:25.340 collecting ice cold bodies in space was my thing there you go all right so another uh

02:46:34.620 fun question uh what are some of your favorite kinds of music and some of your favorite bands

02:46:41.500 slash artists so um give me three musical artists you enjoy as i get to you because

02:46:53.180 if not we'd spend all night on this question daniel name three

02:47:00.940 slayer allison chains pantera trent

02:47:05.180 uh para slayer metallica

02:47:11.680 cliff i'm so old that i don't like music anymore i listen to talk radio

02:47:20.880 i do like music i'm kidding but i'm it's just i can tell you what i liked 20 years ago but

02:47:27.860 it's not really relevant it's it's always relevant music doesn't die you can tell me

02:47:33.400 like Louis Armstrong or something

02:47:35.300 if you want. You can tell me Mozart if you want.

02:47:38.180 Mozart and

02:47:39.700 Baroque are awesome.

02:47:42.140 Yes, indeed.

02:47:44.740 If

02:47:45.260 I mean, if I had to name

02:47:47.340 something

02:47:48.060 Stone Temple Pilots,

02:47:51.280 even though they died from

02:47:53.400 drugs, at least

02:47:55.380 Scott did.

02:47:56.600 It's about a commentary on their lifestyle.

02:47:58.940 Alright, Stone Temple Pilots.

02:48:03.400 Metallica and Soundgarden.

02:48:11.480 There you go.

02:48:13.520 I got Journey, Heart, Dio.

02:48:17.600 Jason.

02:48:21.500 Dio, Warlock, and Thereseus.

02:48:25.640 Brandy.

02:48:28.680 Fleetwood Mac, Black Label Society, and Blacktop Mojo.

02:48:34.040 Rob.

02:48:40.200 That's why I said Rob.

02:48:42.580 I didn't hear you.

02:48:43.960 So I'm going to give you a sampling of my musical taste then.

02:48:48.680 Rachmaninoff, Taylor Swift, and Satanic Warmaster.

02:48:54.560 Okay, serious question.

02:48:55.860 on the swifty on the swifty note are you being ironic or is this a serious is this a serious

02:49:03.000 endorsement i seriously like taylor swift yeah i will admit that she is extremely talented and i

02:49:11.140 cannot say i've never enjoyed a taylor swift song i would not call myself a swifty per se

02:49:16.780 but i will i will game recognize game she's extremely talented in photographs

02:49:25.060 we'll take it um 0.97

02:49:32.180 all right

02:49:35.220 okay so this is a good question um and i'm sorry i default to answering a lot of these i need to

02:49:42.100 pass them around a little bit what are the responsibilities of various positions within

02:49:47.380 the afa i.e apprentice folk builder folk builder witten etc i want to go ahead and throw that to

02:49:53.780 you clive break that down for folks if you would sure so an apprentice folk builder is a folk

02:50:00.340 builder in training um a folk builder is the muscle of the ossaroo folk assembly their core

02:50:08.180 responsibility is is really three-pronged it's it's recruitment it is getting the folk together

02:50:17.940 for events, whether those are simple meetups or large national events at campgrounds or

02:50:25.580 hoffs, and helping the Gothar implement the mission of the Alistair Folk Assembly that

02:50:32.920 Alistair Gothi Matt here sets out for us. The Gothar are our priesthood. We've talked

02:50:39.920 about that quite a bit already, so I'll let that stand. And the Witten are Gothar 0.96

02:50:47.180 selected by Alshir Gauthier Matt to act as his advisors, an advisory council, if you will.

02:50:56.720 And the Alshir Gauthier himself is our high priest.

02:51:03.960 All right. And yeah, there you have it.

02:51:09.260 um we as i mentioned earlier there was a time to where there was kind of separate tracks now it's

02:51:18.380 all a unified pillar upwards um but yeah and then below that we have quite a few volunteers that

02:51:29.900 don't necessarily have titled positions but that do a lot to help us out um so there's always ways

02:51:37.340 to contribute and help if you want to you don't necessarily have to be one of those people but

02:51:41.980 one thing i will note in order to be one of those people you have to own it you have to use your

02:51:46.980 face and your name be on the website and be proudly associated with us for all the good and

02:51:54.540 all the not so good that comes with us and that's that's really important um

02:52:01.620 alveg asks what age do you recommend for a man-making ceremony or a coming of age ceremony

02:52:11.320 and what do those ceremonies entail so i will throw this out as a caveat first well

02:52:19.520 okay those are things that are important and that we have

02:52:31.200 not codified nearly to the level that we would have liked to have

02:52:45.200 anybody have uh hey rob what are your thoughts on this

02:52:49.520 sorry I was looking in the chat this is on the age of a man making yeah um what age do you think

02:53:00.680 is okay so I okay this is more of a I'm just going to throw this out there because it's not

02:53:06.440 a trick question I want your thoughts on the actual ceremony itself the age of a man making

02:53:12.860 woman making ceremony first you got to be post puberty secondly realistically in whatever

02:53:20.380 jurisdiction you live in you need to be recognized as an adult it's ludicrous for us to give you a 0.61

02:53:26.620 man-making ceremony and then tell you to go to bed at your bedtime hey it's a man-making ceremony but

02:53:33.660 you can't do any of the things entitled by adulthood a ceremony doesn't have value if it

02:53:40.540 doesn't really mean something so for welcoming you as a man or a woman that means cool if you're

02:53:48.460 a man i'm okay with you know once my daughter is old enough to be a woman i would be okay with her

02:53:54.620 dating you and pursuing you know a relationship with you if you're a man i'm going to respect you 0.97

02:54:02.220 as a man and if you you know if you come at me i'm going to pop you in the jaw

02:54:07.580 i also don't want to catch a charge for that because you're

02:54:10.620 12 and somebody gave you a man-making ceremony it needs to be a real

02:54:17.820 in the afa we don't believe in doing things that aren't real just like cliff mentioned earlier

02:54:22.940 about weddings we don't perform pretend weddings are we have actual priests we sign wedding

02:54:30.220 certificates we do legal weddings that are real that are legally binding we believe the same one

02:54:37.740 on when we declare someone a man that said rob could you talk a little bit about what one of

02:54:44.460 those ceremonies might entail oh sure um and there's a couple caveats to that i i think uh

02:54:54.460 One thing that Swann has done, and I like a lot, is when a man or a woman reaches of an age,

02:55:03.180 there's a ceremony to say, okay, now it's time to put childish things away and learn to be a man

02:55:08.840 and learn to be a woman. You're not a man or a woman yet, but you're learning to be now.

02:55:15.560 It's time to put away the toys. So I think that ceremony is going to be a little different

02:55:20.660 than an actual man or woman making um in that first scenario it's one thing we've talked about

02:55:29.000 is here's a wooden sword and then once you actually are an adult you will break this or

02:55:35.480 turn it in or sacrifice and etc and then you'll be handed a real man's weapon whether that be a

02:55:40.680 rifle we don't use swords anymore right you're not going to defend your family with a with a sword

02:55:45.860 um and i i really like the symbolism behind that um that here is a an effigy of a man's weapon

02:55:57.680 to remind you of your journey and once you have reached the the pinnacle of that journey

02:56:03.780 then you are handed a real weapon as a man um now of course uh for a woman making i have two

02:56:11.780 daughters so this is going to be more prominent for me what does that entail well i don't want

02:56:17.920 my 14 year old daughter thinking that she's a full-grown woman and she can get married and 0.54

02:56:22.500 you know drive a car and all the rest absolutely not but she's also at that we did a a uh an

02:56:30.560 entry-level ceremony where it's okay it's time now that you can seriously learn about your faith

02:56:37.780 the gods, you know, there's no more playing with the kids

02:56:41.500 at ritual. Now you have to pay attention.

02:56:45.800 You know, you have to learn and watch the women of the church 0.96

02:56:49.500 and how they conduct themselves. What are they doing? What are their roles? What is important? 1.00

02:56:55.640 And all of that is

02:56:57.300 absolutely explained to them in this initial entry

02:57:01.500 level ritual. And then once they're adults, then

02:57:04.820 There is a symbolic exchange. I know that the tradition is maybe keys or, you know, it may be something that's not even so formalized.

02:57:19.640 it may be sending them off to school or sending them to you know eventually if it happens later

02:57:27.400 you know i don't necessarily advocate for young marriage but if it uh if it happens later it's

02:57:34.040 sending them to their husband's home um you know i i honestly have not given much thought uh into the

02:57:43.080 the end ritual for for girls although i do have girls so i need to start thinking about it

02:57:48.840 um but i have thought more about the male aspect and that's just because i am a man so that comes

02:57:54.360 more natural to me to think of masculine things and masculine energies and rituals involving that

02:58:00.840 um but i do like the the ideas that whit and swan has put forward of uh you know an effigy

02:58:07.640 of a man's weapon to start the journey and then a real weapon and you are a man now you

02:58:13.000 can be a full member of the church as the final ritual yeah the idea of it being a process makes

02:58:21.960 a lot more sense um one of the things that was always very off-putting to me when i first got

02:58:30.680 involved with house the tree was these man-making rituals with some 13 year old kid and they would

02:58:41.400 give him some kind of silly larpy weapon but when suggested like hey how about you give him a rifle

02:58:52.120 well no no that's preposterous how what oh that's crazy okay well then you shouldn't be doing doing

02:58:59.800 ritual the idea of giving a man the ability to take life is is important and it's really serious

02:59:11.400 This, it doesn't always have to be that, but in a pinch, it is that.

02:59:21.260 If I'm accepting you as a man into my tribe, if stuff gets hectic, I need to trust that you have my back and that you will protect my family and that I'll protect your family.

02:59:39.560 me if I wouldn't trust you with a loaded firearm and again we respect the legalities of wherever

02:59:48.740 we're at and maybe in the country or or communist state of the United States you find yourself in

02:59:57.800 you may not have the rights that uh a free man would normally have

03:00:04.040 But up to that ability, the idea that you have the responsibility of being able to literally take life if it is necessary, that's a really fundamental responsibility.

03:00:23.240 And if we wouldn't trust you with that, then we ought not perform a man-making ceremony with you.

03:00:30.560 If we wouldn't trust you with a weapon that's deadly, then we shouldn't perform that ceremony.

03:00:38.220 And so I think that it's not just about hitting an age on a, you know, on some kind of a chart or a calendar.

03:00:46.780 It's fundamental that rituals mean something, because if not, we cheapen them for everyone else.

03:00:55.880 So next question, here's kind of an interesting one from the Wolf Throne.

03:01:00.560 have any of you ever experienced aggressive paranormal activity moving of objects loud bangs

03:01:08.880 strange voices etc and how do you respond to it spiritually so in case i didn't see hands i see

03:01:18.080 brandy jason daniel anybody else ah rob's got fingers so let's start jason jason what do you got

03:01:30.560 so this is going back like pre like any idea what paganism or anything is um i was actually

03:01:40.280 adopted not necessarily the greatest home and looking back i can't help but think it was you

03:01:46.440 know maybe the the myth of like the pied piper and possibly you know other things surrounding it

03:01:54.940 but I very vividly recall when I was probably like three or four crawling out of my crib

03:02:02.780 because I heard something. And when I crawled into the closet, this is like an attic room,

03:02:09.400 it's top floor. The actual window was pitch black. It's nighttime. I shouldn't have been up.

03:02:17.940 right and i heard something from the closet i walked across the room crawled up you know a

03:02:24.980 couple packages of diapers and i pulled myself to look over the window sill and outside it was a

03:02:32.340 stormy gray there was kids on a playground um could hear something saying like hey come join us

03:02:39.400 and i was actively trying to crawl out the window and then here comes the foster mother

03:02:46.140 slaps me fall out of the closet puts me into the bed and anybody knows me i'm hard-headed i'm like

03:02:56.420 there was something there and i'm gonna go hang out so i crawled back out of the bed out of the

03:03:00.540 crib go to the closet that window is no longer there and there's a few other smaller things

03:03:06.960 because that was probably the most intense of that house.

03:03:12.860 All right.

03:03:15.640 Brandy, tell us your Hank story and how you respond to it spiritually.

03:03:24.240 So I've got several, but I'm going to talk about Hoff Grandma, if you don't mind.

03:03:28.980 All right.

03:03:30.340 So Hoff Grandma and anybody who's been to Baldur's Hoff,

03:03:35.520 And when you walk into Baldur's Hop, there is a very strong energy there, mostly because it is the Temple of Baldur, right?

03:03:44.940 Keep in mind when I'm telling you this story in the Temple of Baldur, nothing bad is ever there.

03:03:49.380 It is only bright and beautiful things.

03:03:51.300 Keep that in mind.

03:03:53.040 So I'm there one night getting ready for the first Freyfaxi that we had there.

03:03:59.480 and I'm on a ladder like rocking back and forth trying to paint a ceiling because I'm like five 0.90

03:04:05.160 foot nothing and tiny and I can't reach and all I smell is like this old woman's perfume and you 0.98

03:04:11.540 can hear the Hoff doors going back and forth and you can hear the clicking of a woman's heels

03:04:17.340 in the bay and all I all I can remember hearing is what are you doing be careful what are you

03:04:23.920 doing and be careful. And I'm not the only one that's experienced her. She does not seem

03:04:30.300 malevolent in any way, shape, or form. Jason Gallagher makes it a point every time he walks

03:04:36.480 into Hoff to say, good morning, Hoff Grandma, good evening, Hoff Grandma. It's kind of just a

03:04:40.600 Baldur's Hoff tradition that we greet her as one of the veitiers of the Hoff or possibly one of the 0.87

03:04:46.500 ancestors of a hof. Things have moved, noises. I know Goethe Plourd has experienced hof grandma

03:04:53.920 in the past as well. Anybody who's spent a significant amount of time, you'll feel her.

03:05:01.000 One interesting story about that, there has only been one time, one time only, that she has ever

03:05:07.180 quote unquote done harm to anybody. And it was at an event where there was a member who is no longer

03:05:15.680 a member and that member left in a blaze of glory, claims that there was something

03:05:22.720 malevolent, I can't speak today, in the Hoff that touched him and pushed him away from Bloat.

03:05:29.200 That's the only person she's ever done anything to like that. And they're no longer here.

03:05:34.160 and they were

03:05:36.180 good deal

03:05:40.680 Rob did you say you had a story for us

03:05:46.900 sure mine aren't quite as

03:05:50.740 quite as cool

03:05:51.880 so right after I got

03:05:55.120 yes baby hold on a sec

03:05:57.520 so right after I got out of the Navy

03:06:00.120 I was staying with my parents

03:06:02.080 and um i thought they were they were supposed to be out of the house and i was taking a shower

03:06:08.300 and i very clearly heard a woman's voice say my name clear as day like in the state like okay

03:06:14.600 well my parents must have come home so i said yeah mom just a second and i get out of the shower and

03:06:21.280 i you know dry off and i go out and like yeah mom what did you need and nobody's there um

03:06:27.040 they had not come home yet but i mean that voice was very clear um and what's interesting is back

03:06:34.460 then i was very very fresh to the hospital so i you know i didn't even really know there was

03:06:41.660 anything i could do um but just actually yesterday um i heard a voice say my name while i was in the

03:06:51.020 shower and it was an adult woman's voice and i had young kids so it wasn't my kids um and i got out

03:06:59.700 and uh in that case i went to after i dried off i went to my altar and i lit some and i lit some

03:07:08.120 incense and some candles and said you know some prayers to the if there are housewives that want

03:07:15.420 to get my attention you know you don't have to scare the bejesus out of me you can just uh you

03:07:19.720 know, say hello without, you know, spooking me while I'm in the shower. But that's my

03:07:28.240 story. All right. And Daniel, what do you got for us?

03:07:40.620 So what the author is referred to as Hanks and the Carolinas, we call them hags. And

03:07:47.540 And yeah, so I've had I had a problem with that most of my life.

03:07:54.340 And how to explain that?

03:07:57.380 So it's like this sensation that someone is sitting on your chest while you're sleeping and you can't move at all and you can't cry out.

03:08:06.680 You can't do anything. And it's a it's a it's a very aggressive, like violating experience.

03:08:16.220 Like it feels like someone's just pinning you down. And the medical peoples would call it, you know, sleep paralysis or whatever.

03:08:24.960 I don't think everything can be explained by science. But when I had given myself to the gods of my people, it kind of went away for several years.

03:08:37.540 And I had mentioned it to another fellow that was also an Alcetruer that that was the case that I'd had this experience for years. 0.96

03:08:46.760 And when I gave myself over to the Aesir, they just, you know, I never connected those dots. 0.98

03:08:53.480 And he responded to me with a verse from the Runetal where Odin is talking about his spells or his charms or his songs.

03:09:04.160 and he refers to the 10th and he says if i see hags flying about i could sing this song

03:09:12.140 and they will lose their shape and return back to their haunts and when we started looking into the

03:09:17.620 um the etymology of the of the word that was used it was mentioned on uh spawns uh and matt's most

03:09:24.420 recent uh havamal uh episode that that word is called tuner either which uh kind of means like

03:09:32.040 fence rider and it was uh a word that literally translates to night hag um or nightmare so that

03:09:42.740 that went away for a while but um in so i've had two visitations in the last year uh one of them

03:09:52.500 was in june and uh it was the first time i can remember actually being able to actually see an

03:09:59.380 entity. And it didn't have

03:10:01.400 like a human form or any of that.

03:10:03.380 It didn't have a recognizable form.

03:10:05.620 It was kind of like almost this like

03:10:07.220 gray black haze that

03:10:09.400 kind of hung over the bed. And I

03:10:11.340 remember

03:10:11.680 I remember it just like it happened yesterday.

03:10:15.300 I remember

03:10:16.180 somewhere in between that dream and

03:10:19.320 awake state, 0.98

03:10:21.180 I thought I was talking to Heather and 0.85

03:10:23.340 Heather was talking back to me and I said to her, I said

03:10:25.400 I can actually see her.

03:10:27.840 And

03:10:28.040 the next day, I found out that I was appointed to the AFA Witten, and hooray, that's great stuff,

03:10:37.940 but something was telling me that that energy wasn't telling me something positive, so

03:10:42.860 it happened again, and two days later, I had a massive heart attack and almost died,

03:10:51.660 and I've told that story on this show before, and I don't need to go into all that again,

03:10:58.040 So it happened a third time since then. And I went at it rather than coming from a place of fear, but coming at it from like a place of like aggression.

03:11:12.040 And I had this conversation with Matt not long after half because it was really concerning me.

03:11:18.420 but the question asked is how do you respond to those spiritually and what i did was

03:11:24.180 is i drew on a piece of paper of the aura rune which is the 10th rune of the uh armin and futhar

03:11:32.120 to coincide with that 10th spell that odin mentions in the runatal and my understanding

03:11:39.180 on why that could be working is that rather than just laying there and being a victim

03:11:45.840 i'm fighting this entity on on a different plane a different playing field so to speak you know

03:11:54.100 coming at it with uh literal songs of the all-father and uh so far it's worked but uh you

03:12:03.640 know we'll see it's continuing to be a developing thing but i haven't i haven't had that experience

03:12:08.200 in a couple of months but yeah that's that's something that i've fought with all my life as a

03:12:12.500 night hags. And again, I think they're referred to as night terrors

03:12:16.880 or sleep paralysis by medical professionals, but I don't think

03:12:20.700 everything can be explained that way.

03:12:23.880 It's like Jason has something to add.

03:12:28.900 What do you got, Jason?

03:12:31.260 Have you considered raw iron nail after you purged

03:12:36.520 the area to secure the doorways?

03:12:42.500 I've considered and done a few things. I'm glad to talk to you about it on the side.

03:12:48.360 Within the last two weeks, you have not implemented Haint Blue.

03:12:56.640 Haint Blue is a thing.

03:12:58.540 No, I haven't.

03:12:59.680 It is not our people's thing. It is a different group of people's thing, but you'll run into that.

03:13:06.580 It's a South Carolina thing, which is also interesting.

03:13:09.400 that uh there's different shades in different southern states for it too i learned yeah

03:13:19.560 sometimes you paint it on like the ceiling of your porch like deck area

03:13:26.840 sometimes where i'm most used to it is you paint it around like window frames and door frames

03:13:33.480 it keeps the haints out

03:13:39.400 That's what some of your colorful friends there swear by.

03:13:46.280 Got to look into some Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs.

03:13:49.220 They're not just for nice.

03:13:51.220 See, that's the thing.

03:13:54.380 So a word on how to respond to them spiritually,

03:14:00.400 and I suppose this is not as much of a response as a pre-sponse,

03:14:09.400 It's not a word, but you heard it here first, folks, is now.

03:14:14.740 I also hear your Gothic decree.

03:14:22.120 When you're dealing with metaphysical things,

03:14:28.220 your state of mind

03:14:33.740 comes into play in a much more visceral way than it may seem to in your everyday life

03:14:42.980 but this happens in your everyday life too so this is the portion of the show where matt goes

03:14:50.920 into his his bouncer stories reliving his glory days but one of the things when i first started

03:14:59.800 and i was not sure of myself i was in fights all the time bouncing because the uh

03:15:09.080 disruptive folks could smell that one

03:15:13.480 once i became confident in my skills and abilities to handle myself

03:15:18.040 and it doesn't mean that i was confident i could whoop everybody or whatever but i was confident i

03:15:24.980 could hold my own and there wasn't a question if i asked somebody to leave that they were either

03:15:29.420 going to leave or i was going to see to it that them leaving happened um all of a sudden not so

03:15:37.480 many fights because the energy that i projected however you want to take that was very different

03:15:44.600 same thing happens in a spiritual arena i believe

03:15:49.520 um i've always since i was very young

03:15:55.860 never understood why ghosts for lack of a better term were scary

03:16:03.340 like yes when they do scary things like in a horror movie or something that's scary

03:16:09.080 but if they're the spirits of deceased people why would i treat them like i wouldn't treat

03:16:20.420 other people without context like if somebody did something scary or mean to me then sure i

03:16:27.960 would be scared of that but sight unseen their presence or making themselves known

03:16:37.260 isn't inherently scary and i've felt that way since i was little before i really had a context

03:16:44.940 to it i believe it really strongly now that's why i've kind of

03:16:51.020 taken an outlier position on uh also true ritual um used to be it was very

03:16:58.540 very common and just kind of what everyone did because again we we didn't have hofs until

03:17:03.820 relatively recently our first off was established in 2015 so we would be going to parks or other

03:17:11.660 places and creating sacred space and one of the things in doing that people would have more or

03:17:18.380 less elaborate things to banish bad spirits or to chase stuff away

03:17:25.980 and they would do it in a in a like a fearful way that they needed to

03:17:33.580 you know chase these things out or else you know they were at this terrible risk

03:17:40.860 that's never been something that i wanted to do in ritual

03:17:48.140 because that's not something that i would do in normal life

03:17:51.500 i don't need to protect myself against stuff i'm proud to stand on my own in a crowd and say hey

03:18:01.580 here i am this is what's up and stand tall and not you know need a bunch of security to protect me

03:18:09.860 from you know people i think that translates spiritually too and i don't mean to take it

03:18:17.840 lightly or to be cocky, I don't think that's right either.

03:18:23.800 But as I've said with religion and with anything else that's, for lack of a better term, unseen,

03:18:32.640 a lot of this is about relationships in a similar way that you would have relationships with people.

03:18:39.940 It's not the same, but as a starting point, if you are fearful,

03:18:46.140 malevolent entities be them corporeal or not will prey on you because they sense fear

03:18:55.500 if you are confident in yourself and your abilities and your gravitas

03:19:02.780 things are less likely to prey on you because you are not a soft easy target

03:19:13.300 doesn't mean that if they want to prey on you bad enough or if they're you know that much more

03:19:21.000 confident in their efficacy than you are in yours that they won't prey on you but it means they are

03:19:27.600 less likely to and you do not stick out like a victim waiting to be preyed upon and i think

03:19:36.340 that's valuable in as much as you can internalize that and authentically embody that within yourself

03:19:45.540 and that's what has worked for me in my life

03:19:51.460 um

03:19:54.500 all right so this is a really interesting question and i kind of like everybody's thoughts on this one

03:20:01.380 uh this is from the wolf throne and i think it's a good question he often comes with really good

03:20:05.540 questions i assume it's a he um do you ever feel you are loved by the gods and goddesses

03:20:15.460 i sometimes hear christians say our gods are cold

03:20:21.460 probably due to the warlike image of our gods from the viking age um start with you daniel

03:20:29.380 So have you ever felt that, have you ever felt loved by our gods and goddesses?

03:20:38.760 Absolutely.

03:20:43.420 I refer to our gods and goddesses in a loving way because they're our oldest parents.

03:20:51.000 and we don't have the master-slave relationship with our gods

03:20:57.980 the way that the Abrahamic faiths do.

03:21:01.360 They are literally the progenitors of our people.

03:21:04.760 So I would think that they would hold that position

03:21:11.580 in an almost like parental way.

03:21:15.480 Authority, yes, but it's a loving authority

03:21:20.120 the same way that you would love a child uh have ever felt loved by my gods yes absolutely um

03:21:27.640 i felt the gods speak through me in ritual space uh before i became a gothi and uh you know

03:21:36.200 participated in ritual and and stood in that circle i felt the god's presence

03:21:42.040 and i never walked away feeling anything other than love

03:21:45.800 uh what about you trent

03:21:50.580 yeah i agree with daniel absolutely i mean you can't look at all the blessings the afa has

03:21:58.880 received and all of us individually here i know all of you have received blessings from the gods

03:22:03.360 you can't look at those things and not feel loved and like daniel said yeah i've stood in ritual

03:22:09.440 um you know what the first time i'll tell a bit of a story i suppose real quick

03:22:15.400 The first time I ever felt love from a god or goddess, I would say, is during your Ostara bloat at Ostara in 2016, Al-Shera-Gothi.

03:22:27.360 And that was what convinced me this is real, is I felt the love of Ostara.

03:22:32.800 And I said, OK, this is real. I need to, you know, be in this 100 percent.

03:22:38.320 So, yeah, absolutely. We have four Hoffs. We have Sigurheim. They absolutely love us.

03:22:45.400 Oh, what about what about you, Cliff? What have you ever felt love by one of our gods or goddesses?

03:22:52.340 I have felt the love of our gods and goddesses for our folk and for our work.

03:23:00.720 I think that the.

03:23:05.200 The way that I feel these things is that, you know, my ancestors are my connection to the gods and.

03:23:13.200 my ancestors are the gods connection to me as well and so it's not necessarily that like

03:23:20.560 you know i feel a hug from thor or something like that um i have experienced the blessings

03:23:30.900 of the gods in my life i think that when you know i guess it depends on what you mean by

03:23:36.560 feeling love if you're talking about um if you're talking about the kind of love that you know you

03:23:45.680 you have for your parents or that you have for your children then i don't think i've directly

03:23:51.440 felt that from our gods but i have felt it from my ancestors and i have felt and seen

03:24:00.880 the love of our gods for our folk as a whole, you know, almost in like a

03:24:07.040 way that you would ideally say that like a king loves his people, but that it's not that he loves

03:24:14.960 each individual one in a personal way necessarily. That doesn't mean that it's like there's an

03:24:22.160 unloving relationship there. It's just that it's a bit bigger than that and a bit more distant than

03:24:27.460 that. Yeah, I think that, you know, I think that our gods are, are in many ways, they're so big

03:24:42.020 and so great and have, you know, what I can only imagine is so much on those vast minds and in

03:24:50.700 those vast hearts that it's a very complicated thing for you know for me to assert that i have

03:24:58.500 felt the love of frigga um or or that i have felt the strength of thor or something like that i think

03:25:06.080 i think that those things are true but it's um a more complicated feeling and is sometimes less

03:25:13.760 direct than um i mean the question the question referenced christianity right and in christianity

03:25:22.320 there's this sort of implicit like jesus loves you personally and you need to love jesus personally

03:25:30.720 i i don't think that's exactly how it works with us true um i think that it's a lot more

03:25:37.680 interconnected that there's a lot more of a web of relationships and that if we're in tune to things

03:25:44.640 we can feel the reverberations through that web but um but yeah it's it's it's complicated maybe

03:25:54.320 i'm over explaining it the simple answer is yes the complicated answer is no but also yes

03:26:00.800 fair enough um jason have you ever felt loved by one of our gods or goddesses

03:26:11.360 uh absolutely um i mean when i was younger didn't know him i used to be very monkish i spent a lot

03:26:19.120 of my time and i wasn't like training for a sport i was in meditating trying to reach out and um

03:26:27.040 Um, if I knew more than I can be more specific, but when the divine touches you, like you

03:26:35.180 can pick up if that's a male or female figure and, and a bit of the intention, because it

03:26:40.640 kind of pierces and spreads throughout.

03:26:43.320 And it's very much like a motherly love or fatherly love, but it's not like you're going

03:26:48.340 to feel someone literally hugging you.

03:26:50.520 It's a, like an affirmation that yes, you're on the right path.

03:26:54.580 Keep it up.

03:26:55.140 um i've heard from others when you're not it's a bit sharper um but more recently i mean like

03:27:06.440 every time i come home i uh admittedly said like hey doing a lot of work here and i'm kind of

03:27:12.200 lonely just to be the short of it you could just help me find a partner or make myself a better

03:27:18.000 man to attract said partner i've made offerings and i don't think um it's been said many times

03:27:24.240 about, you know, when you give a gift, you're owed something. It's a nice gesture. It gets

03:27:29.220 attention. And I think in part, there's a relationship there. And if there's a fondness

03:27:33.820 that is made through a repeated cycle of gift giving, you might get the occasional message

03:27:41.000 or affirmation a little bit more. In my case, I found out that a friend of mine for several years

03:27:46.640 felt more strongly about me than I initially thought. And now I have a beautiful daughter.

03:27:52.020 I couldn't say that that was a more loving gift than I could ever receive from my gods and my ancestors.

03:28:00.080 I do think they absolutely appreciate us and care for us.

03:28:03.560 But I don't think that, you know, like the day to day, they're going to give us their undivided attention at the same time.

03:28:11.860 But if you're active, you're involved, you let them in.

03:28:15.820 They will show their love.

03:28:16.940 They'll show their appreciation and bless your home and give food gifts, too.

03:28:22.020 What about you, Brandy?

03:28:25.160 My answer is going to be a lot like Cliff's, the whole yeah, no, no, yeah, because I believe in the same way that Cliff does.

03:28:35.140 They love their people.

03:28:37.620 They love our folk.

03:28:39.380 They love our church.

03:28:41.320 They love the heralds and the spears of Odin.

03:28:46.600 but that individual personal relationship with the gods i can't answer that for anybody who

03:28:56.920 has that question only they can answer that only they are able to work through the complex

03:29:04.780 emotions and feelings that they're going to get because of their devotion some people might feel

03:29:11.720 the strength of Thor because they feel powerful after worshiping their gods. Some people might

03:29:19.460 feel love, you know, after they've done offerings to Frigg or to Freyja as an answer and a reciprocal

03:29:26.640 energy that they're receiving back. Because oftentimes we give gifts and we ask for gifts

03:29:32.240 in return. How we interpret those gifts is going to be deeply personal. So whether that is, you

03:29:38.220 know the love of freya or the wisdom of odin or the strength of thor i think it's going to depend

03:29:43.280 on the person but do i think they love us they do they love their folk they love their temples

03:29:50.580 they love their church i believe they love us as the attitude folk assembly but those complex

03:29:57.240 emotions like i said i think that's going to be very deeply personal on the energetic blessing

03:30:01.640 you're receiving and how you're interpreting that at the time

03:30:04.820 all right uh rob have you ever felt the love of one of our gods or goddesses and uh hi scarlet

03:30:18.680 um i am of a very similar vein as cliff and brandy on this um

03:30:26.860 i believe they love us as a people in our church uh individually i think they've got

03:30:34.080 bigger fish to fry um do i do i often wonder if i've garnered their attention at points in my life

03:30:43.640 maybe um and i certainly believe that fate has smiled on me on more than one occasion

03:30:51.720 um but i think they love us in a grander sense um

03:30:59.860 um and I think our ancestors love us on a personal level that's that's how I look at it so um

03:31:16.900 and this you know there's always kind of a lament of mine

03:31:22.240 it's very difficult to describe

03:31:28.400 metaphysical esoteric spiritual things with mundane language um it's always imprecise

03:31:43.340 it's never quite perfect it's always us kind of flailing to get as close

03:31:49.460 to being able to communicate it as we can we do that through a lot of different ways we do that

03:31:55.260 through um you know likening it to a shared experience or you know don't quite have the

03:32:05.440 language to bend it down um in a one for one like very specific yes absolutely i felt completely

03:32:18.120 loved by in ritual in a spiritual sense i've described a number of times these ear bloats

03:32:26.880 but very much was the case with my ancestors um in the sense of of our gods and our goddesses 0.98

03:32:36.860 i think we experience love in a lot of different ways and as stupid as as it sounds um you know 0.83

03:32:46.500 You feel, you receive different kinds of love and you feel love in different ways from, you know, your wife than you do from your dad than you do from, you know, your dog or your cat. 0.81

03:33:04.200 Each of those things loves you, hopefully.

03:33:11.440 But the way it's expressed is really, really different.

03:33:14.520 Love's not always, you know, a super warm, overwhelming, tearful embrace.

03:33:23.860 You know, some of us who have had more stoic parents or grandparents that we know love us may show that in a much more formal way or a more less snuggly way.

03:33:41.440 but it doesn't mean that it's still not love and doesn't count the love you may get from one of

03:33:48.040 your brothers you know maybe not even like a literal brother but your your comrade in arms

03:33:55.480 your your you know another male friend of yours that you care deeply for again that's going to

03:34:03.920 feel like a different kind of love as well um the short answer is you know all of the things

03:34:15.440 people said the gods love our folk they love the afa we have felt their love time and again

03:34:23.200 will continue to i hope um absolutely i believe that on an individual level

03:34:33.920 so in this you know take this answer this isn't intended as a non-answer um it's just me being as

03:34:42.320 as transparent with it as possible you guys have seen me you guys have seen me on this show

03:34:49.280 before i found out so true i was not a weepy mess all of the time um

03:34:57.280 the more deeply engaged in also true that i am

03:35:03.920 the more I'm just overcome with emotion and not in a bad way or in a,

03:35:12.020 and I mean this too.

03:35:15.320 It's never,

03:35:16.840 I'm never a weepy mess about like I'm sad or I'm depressed or,

03:35:22.100 you know,

03:35:23.440 people being mean to me weepy.

03:35:25.480 Like,

03:35:25.820 yeah,

03:35:25.980 I feel those emotions,

03:35:27.160 but I'm overcome with emotions of just,

03:35:32.980 love and appreciation

03:35:36.140 and being

03:35:37.160 if this makes sense, I guess

03:35:39.940 being deeply moved

03:35:41.380 if you guys have seen me at like a wedding

03:35:43.840 or baby naming, it's just

03:35:45.880 absurd, I'm fighting

03:35:47.940 it right now, honestly, to be honest 0.78

03:35:49.760 I didn't have that

03:35:51.680 before

03:35:52.200 I engaged in Alistair

03:35:55.680 and I certainly didn't have it to this level

03:35:58.180 before I became the Alistair

03:35:59.760 Goethe

03:36:00.240 one for one when i became y'all's hair ago of the astro folk assembly i became a fountain of

03:36:10.560 weepy tears and uh loving emotion and i feel very much that that is an expression of love

03:36:23.460 from the gods. One of the things that I like most about myself is my ability to be just

03:36:33.160 so moved with emotional things. And it may sound like a strange thing, but that I feel

03:36:49.300 is love from me, I see her.

03:36:59.200 I wanted to add something, too, about

03:37:01.520 the, you know, just the nature of our understanding of the

03:37:05.440 gods. I think it's like when we talk about mythic time.

03:37:10.080 I don't think that the gods experience

03:37:13.280 something like love in the same way that we do. Not that they don't

03:37:17.260 have it but that our understanding of love is very different from their understanding of love

03:37:22.700 just like our understanding of time is very very different from their understanding of time and it's

03:37:28.780 i think hard for us to conceptualize or emotionalize if that's a word it is maybe now um

03:37:38.460 what that would even feel like you know you know you know sort of like asher gauthier matt was

03:37:42.700 talking about you know the a nod from the old stoic grandpa can mean much more than a big hug

03:37:49.020 from the touchy feely ant you know you get those hugs all the time with the nod well that's reserved

03:37:55.580 you know um and i just you know i don't i don't know that we could necessarily understand that

03:38:02.620 and another thing i wanted to add is that um whether we feel it or not is not necessarily

03:38:08.380 relevant to whether or not it exists i'm sure we've all had experiences where we love someone

03:38:16.780 and they don't know it or where someone loves us and we have no idea about that

03:38:24.380 or at least not the true nature of their feelings we might you know know oh yeah of course

03:38:28.860 you know my grandpa loves me but we don't really understand the depth of it or the reason for it or

03:38:34.940 or any of those finer details.

03:38:43.180 Yeah, again, it's...

03:38:45.940 The place that I suggest we start when dealing with our gods

03:38:53.280 is the way we would deal with other humans

03:38:57.600 and then amplify it or then work from there.

03:39:00.520 But it's always important to realize

03:39:03.180 it's not one for one in their way of of doing things and their knowledge and their experience

03:39:11.040 is so much wider deeper greater in all dimensions than ours that it doesn't always look the same

03:39:24.300 um but yeah absolutely i feel the love of the gods and i think that you know it first

03:39:33.160 the gods are much more likely to have big feelings about us collectively than about us

03:39:42.060 individually i think they certainly do have particular feelings for individuals and i think

03:39:49.200 you can build and cultivate that relationship but certainly i think that it is more common for it to

03:39:57.200 be broad um but yeah that's not a question and i think that um it's silly for i think that it's

03:40:11.260 It's silly for Christians to try to characterize our relationships with our gods without context.

03:40:21.700 I also don't necessarily.

03:40:25.200 The difference is most of us on this call were Christians at one time.

03:40:32.000 So I do think we can speak a little bit about that religious experience because many of us have been a part of that.

03:40:41.260 Um, for a Christian that has never been out so true to try to characterize our relationship 0.99

03:40:54.380 with our gods, I think is, you know, it's offensive, but I also think it's, it's uninformed 1.00

03:41:00.240 and kind of ridiculous.

03:41:02.500 Um, but yeah, so I think that's a really good question, a really interesting question.

03:41:09.140 um super honky asks have you guys ever thought about doing a live stream of your religious

03:41:18.560 services like jimmy swagger and all of the christian pastors in the 80s and the early 90s

03:41:24.620 um yeah of course absolutely we've thought about that um we don't do that but we've thought about

03:41:33.560 that i think there is a case to be made to think about that when there's people that are

03:41:43.000 at great distances or in circumstances that they couldn't possibly participate otherwise

03:41:52.040 but one of the big priorities for the austral folk assembly

03:41:56.200 is that this needs to be real and done in real life

03:42:01.240 so as a as an issue of policy we don't do that because we want to encourage our people

03:42:08.280 to make a real connection with other real humans and participate in our rituals in a

03:42:16.840 in a tangible authentic way so many of our people have allowed themselves to be

03:42:24.200 you know to be prisoners of the couch or mom's basement or whatever the case is

03:42:30.360 and if there is a way for them to claim that they're actually doing also true without

03:42:36.680 actually doing house a true i wouldn't want to enable that um

03:42:45.000 what we have thought about we do plan to do at some point is like a instructional bloat or an

03:42:51.240 instructional sample with some of the girls are together to like like a how-to guide kind of a

03:42:56.760 thing so people may know you know what it would look like or you know so people can take confidence

03:43:04.040 from seeing it done to feel comfortable doing it in their own home or in their own environment

03:43:10.040 but but not the other and we have thought about that and it was one of the

03:43:14.520 sources of pride for the astro folk assembly during um all of the coveted lockdowns

03:43:24.280 other places of worship decided to not gather together and not engage in worship in real life

03:43:31.960 and to do a lot of virtual worship um and not just within you know various

03:43:40.360 pagan religions but you know mainstream christianity you had people

03:43:47.960 you had people that you know you had 80 year olds that for the last 80 years of their life went to

03:43:53.080 church every sunday and all of a sudden for two years they didn't uh because you know powers that

03:44:00.200 be told them that was bad and those naughty and they shouldn't the afa we got together

03:44:05.960 we gathered together we got two new hops during that time we shared hugs and horns and we actively

03:44:15.400 worshipped our gods and i think that meant a lot certainly meant a lot to me and i know it meant a

03:44:22.360 lot to the people that i that i worship with so we want to do everything we can to

03:44:28.280 facilitate but i almost mean this and i'll own it to almost force people to have to interact

03:44:36.760 in the real world and that's not out of elitism or out of being a jerk that's out of love i want

03:44:45.720 we all want you to experience this in real life and if you don't have to come out from

03:44:53.080 you know and this isn't named anybody in specific but you know if this is you if you have to come

03:44:59.960 out from hiding to actually do it maybe that's enough to make you want to take that step

03:45:06.600 because you know the biggest distance is is the couch to the door and we've all had to overcome

03:45:12.360 that to varying degrees i know that you know i'm not naturally the most outgoing and the most social

03:45:18.440 person i think there are certainly people who are you know have a bigger problem with that than i do

03:45:26.440 but there's also people that it comes much easier to but either way it's essential that we do this

03:45:32.520 in a real community and not a virtual community um does anybody else have any thoughts on that issue

03:45:41.640 cliff i'm going to be strong worded about this so i apologize if i offend anyone's sensibilities but

03:45:52.360 um i was raised catholic and i remember um it was a sin to not go to mass every single sunday

03:45:59.960 even if you were sick if you were sick it was your responsibility to get your name on the list

03:46:04.760 for the priest to come to your house to do it there if you didn't do that you had to confess

03:46:10.760 that it was a sin now i was long gone from the catholic church when these covid lockdowns 0.90

03:46:15.960 started but what they did was absolutely pathetic they disregarded all of their ethics and all of 0.80

03:46:22.360 their standards whether i agree with them or not and it was just like oh now we're scared 0.99

03:46:27.400 so it doesn't matter and yeah just don't be pathetic show up in person 0.99

03:46:32.840 copy that don't be pathetic uh jason 0.97

03:46:39.280 i i think it says a lot about um conviction you know especially in regards to like the fear of 0.83

03:46:48.340 god and the christian faith but yet they feared the united states government or whatever country

03:46:55.800 even more. And it just, it speaks volumes when you get together because your conviction and your

03:47:03.840 faith and your piety is so strong that the word and law of man means nothing to you. Coming together

03:47:11.220 to honor your ancestors, to stand before your gods with your folk is more powerful. I think

03:47:18.120 I think it says a lot about the faith of Ossichu and the Ossichu folk ascendals. 1.00

03:47:25.120 All right, so from the wolf throne, fellow Midgardians, of which of the Aryan tribal 0.90

03:47:36.460 branches do you descend, i.e. Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Latin, Greek, etc.? Trent, what flavor

03:47:47.200 of arian are you um pretty much a mishmash of germanic and tiny bit of celtic um largely english

03:47:57.680 both my parents sides come from the former dane lofts there might be some danish in there uh i

03:48:03.760 found a swedish and finnish line the other day on my dad's side a little german uh proper north

03:48:10.840 germans and dutch a tiny bit of lowland scots so germanic certified cliff uh what what flavor are you

03:48:25.880 i'm a quarter norwegian from my my dad and grandpa's side a quarter german on

03:48:32.760 my dad's mom's side and irish on my mom's side

03:48:36.840 all right what about you jason

03:48:40.700 i'm a bit of a mutt as far as that goes um it's just easier to say i am pan baltic

03:48:50.260 both sides all around all right how about brandy

03:48:55.900 i am german and a little bit i and a little bit of a scotch irish but

03:49:05.000 very german you don't believe it catch a candid a candid shot it's not i'm not angry i'm just german

03:49:14.360 what about you rob

03:49:17.960 uh i am german uh specifically bavarian which are the best germans i can tell that from the background

03:49:25.160 I also am quarter English, and from surnames, it's Norman English, so ha-ha, Trent.

03:49:39.480 And Spaniard, European Spaniard, specifically Catalonia.

03:49:45.960 I'm a quarter Catalonian.

03:49:49.960 All right, and what about you, Daniel?

03:49:51.800 dixie

03:49:55.240 anglo-saxon mostly uh the uh lowlands um netherlands uh specifically my dad's family

03:50:10.680 immigrated to the u.s in the 1600s from belgium and uh mom's family's a little bit more of a

03:50:17.440 mystery um since they were hillbillies you know they didn't track a lot but uh it's my understanding

03:50:23.580 that they were mostly english so my dna stuff says you know england and northwestern europe

03:50:29.520 is like 70 percent that tells you anything so yeah germanic and dixie

03:50:35.900 all right so my people vast majority of my people have been here a long long time

03:50:43.420 um before that most that i'm aware of i guess most recently i have uh one couple one of whom was

03:50:55.580 a swissman and his wife was french they came over most recently crossed over um in like the 1910s

03:51:06.460 um before that most all that i can track go back to england um one one line goes back into scotland

03:51:19.480 and my haplo group tells me that at some point in uh like southern norway but um vast majority of

03:51:34.720 The family that I can trace goes back to England.

03:51:39.680 And, yeah, that's where my people come from.

03:51:43.080 But almost all of my folks were here before the United States was a nation.

03:51:49.320 And, you know, at least half of those from Dixie.

03:51:57.200 So that's what we got represented on the show tonight.

03:52:01.060 it's a fun contrast because almost all of my ancestors are only 150 years in this country or

03:52:07.540 less late 19th century all around post-war we weren't involved in all that mess yeah most of

03:52:15.220 mine were in were in the carolinas and then moved moved west from there but most of them point of you

03:52:24.580 You know, disembarking on this continent was in the Carolinas.

03:52:34.240 Next.

03:52:37.100 Okay.

03:52:38.280 Sure.

03:52:39.160 We'll do this.

03:52:39.980 It's that portion of the evening.

03:52:42.340 Fun question for everyone.

03:52:44.300 What superpower would you choose to have and why?

03:52:48.040 You can only choose one.

03:52:51.000 Cliff, superpower, which would you choose?

03:52:53.540 Only one.

03:52:54.580 it's the only one part always is

03:53:02.260 well i don't want to read people's minds that's for sure

03:53:09.120 let's go with enroll invulnerability because obviously copy that all right jason superpower

03:53:21.500 or choose one, only one.

03:53:28.680 I mean, I like

03:53:29.580 the invulnerability and super strength. I don't want you

03:53:31.540 to go with flight because sometimes people just can't

03:53:33.480 act right and I need to excuse myself from the room.

03:53:37.700 Yeah, but if you're not invulnerable,

03:53:39.440 flying is dangerous.

03:53:41.800 Well, I'll figure out the landing.

03:53:44.220 I'm sure it comes with the powers.

03:53:45.280 You can have a bird strike or something.

03:53:48.980 No, that's

03:53:49.720 legit. Alright, Brandy,

03:53:51.100 What superpower would you have? 0.56

03:53:53.660 Only one.

03:53:54.540 This is going to change probably day to day depending on my mood.

03:53:57.760 But today I'd like to be able to start things on fire.

03:54:02.660 Okay.

03:54:03.440 There's a back story there.

03:54:06.840 Always is.

03:54:09.800 What about you, Rob?

03:54:13.820 I'm going to say I'd like to be able to move things with my mind.

03:54:17.760 I think that saves some time.

03:54:21.100 Daniel, what superpower would you have?

03:54:29.840 Time travel.

03:54:33.140 Okay.

03:54:36.200 Trent, what you got?

03:54:39.380 Super strength, because it would be cool to be able to bench press a car.

03:54:45.460 There you go.

03:54:47.300 All of those things would be awesome.

03:54:51.100 what about you i don't know i've been trying so that's why i went last i was trying to like

03:55:00.220 contemplate it while y'all were going

03:55:02.500 i get stuck on these only choose one it's like when people say you're top whatever

03:55:09.660 anything i get i overthink the question it's intended as a fun question pick a random thing

03:55:16.180 I start getting too analytical.

03:55:34.640 All right.

03:55:35.300 So this is going to make for a lot of dead air

03:55:36.940 and that's not good for the program.

03:55:39.060 So I'm going to rip Cliff off.

03:55:41.560 I'm going to go with invulnerability.

03:55:43.460 i the idea of super strength sounds cooler to me and i want that but if some if like the super

03:55:53.640 villain can just shoot me and i'm done that's not that's that's disheartening i would rather be you

03:56:01.020 know indestructible and then i don't really got to worry about much so i will take that and choose

03:56:08.400 be indestructible i'll say the super strength to be redundant with you though matt you already got

03:56:14.320 it thank you so that is the best note to end it on um this has been a really really fun show

03:56:26.320 tonight guys thank you guys all for being here i've really really enjoyed it this evening

03:56:30.800 um we got a treat for everybody uh we've got our event slideshow up for Ostara at Thorshof 2024

03:56:42.020 a week and a half ago today so Nick is going to take us out with that as soon as I I close out

03:56:49.820 the program here but that's going to be the official ending is the live premiere of that

03:56:54.800 slideshow uh which all of us but uh but jason were there for so no wrong slideshow we're doing

03:57:02.960 quarter one slideshow my fault i'm sorry i apologize last week so jason did things in

03:57:12.560 quarter one i'm a week off it's late leave me alone be nice um cool but we are going to have

03:57:19.360 a live premiere of that it'll be cool this is for anybody who hasn't seen these yet or doesn't watch

03:57:24.000 these on YouTube. This is all of the AFA moots, gatherings, happenings that have happened

03:57:33.140 in the first quarter of 2024 that folk builders have had the presence of mind and ability to get

03:57:43.100 us a picture of. So this is most of the ones that have actually happened, but keep in mind there's

03:57:49.340 more of this also. And these go on everywhere. We've got folks in 14 countries. We've got folks

03:57:56.700 all across the United States. Chances are we've got folks close to you. Thank you guys very much

03:58:02.520 for joining us tonight. Nick, thank you for making that slideshow. And until next time,

03:58:11.560 hail the gods, hope the folk, hail the AFA. And remember, victory never sleeps.

03:58:19.340 Transcription by CastingWords

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04:00:49.340 Transcription by CastingWords

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04:02:49.340 Thank you.

04:03:19.340 Thank you.

04:03:49.340 Thank you.

04:04:19.340 Thank you.

04:04:49.340 Thank you.

04:05:19.340 Thank you.

04:05:49.340 Thank you.

04:06:19.340 Thank you.

Asatru Folk Assembly - April 04, 2024

4⧸3⧸24 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 91 - Goðar Class of '21

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