00:15:16.880That means a lot, and I know it'll mean a lot to them.
00:15:19.000um we have our oh derek uh bolig donated five dollars to victory never sleeps thank you derek
00:15:32.780we appreciate it very much we also have that question from accompanied by 20 from entropy
00:15:42.380last week. So I hope that whoever it was is listening. Question is, can you elaborate on
00:15:51.140why different ethnicities of white people should follow the Norse gods rather than their own
00:15:59.740ethnic mythos. Yes. So, the question makes sense on the face of it, but I think that we need to,
00:16:21.340I don't know, I think it's useful to think about it. Where did those gods come from?
00:16:27.300um because if we think there's a tendency today when we look back at
00:16:39.840an ancient people or you know an ancient religion of a people
00:16:48.040you study it as if it started fresh under whatever name that is and that's how it was
00:16:57.040like for example why shouldn't greek people worship the greek pantheon of gods
00:17:03.520of course look back oh ancient greece what is ancient greece it starts during you know whatever
00:17:09.600the archaic or the classical period of greece but it doesn't those people came from somewhere
00:17:18.560the migrations of our folk if you trace things back linguistically culturally all these things
00:17:25.680had a root somewhere and they came from somewhere so at what point did the greek pantheon come into
00:17:37.440existence when white people move into greece there's no story or reason to believe that all
00:17:44.480of a sudden the gods were there waiting for them under the under those names no though they took
00:17:50.720with them the gods that they had wherever they came from so we trace that migration back to the
00:18:01.920proto-indo-european or to the arian period and the gods of the different european pantheons
00:18:09.280coalesce at that point so it's not as though all of a sudden when white people find themselves
00:18:17.200in scandinavia odin sprouts up or they find themselves in greece and zeus sprouts or in
00:18:24.800rome and all of a sudden jupiter appears these are all cultural understandings of deities that
00:18:32.240have been with us as a people since the very beginning of our folk we categorically reject
00:18:40.480the out of africa theory our folk are very much a distinct people that have a distinct origin
00:18:47.200We believe that our gods, the Aesir, or whatever they were known as at that point, brought us into creation and made us who we are.
00:18:58.740Those same gods have been with us this entire time.
00:19:01.740Over different centuries, different epochs, different geography, and different experience, our people have developed really different ways of relating to those gods and have come to know them by different names in different places for different reasons.
00:19:23.340And the stories of our gods and myths look really different in different lenses, at different times, through different periods of retelling and understanding.
00:21:14.240This is the way that we were inspired to do it.
00:21:16.500And this is the way that has brought us where we are,
00:21:19.320being unified and doing it that way is the most effective way to bring our folk back to our
00:21:26.340ancestral gods. And so that's why we do it that way. And that's why we encourage all of our folk
00:21:31.880to worship the gods as the Aesir and to join the Astro Focusing.
00:21:40.140That's what we got making up for donations and for last week.
00:21:46.360you guys got you guys are celebrating mayday this coming weekend correct yes
00:21:53.480so plug that and tell people a little bit about it if you will
00:21:59.000so um we have mayday at horsehof it starts at one o'clock our food pantry starts at 11
00:22:11.660um if anybody wants to come out and help give out food um then the event will start around one
00:22:19.180and usually um we'll do some folk time and then swan will teach us a class on
00:22:26.160um about mayday so if you're new you know um what's gonna happen and what it's about and
00:22:35.700then we'll do um ritual then we'll do the maypole and then we'll have dinner and then usually just
00:22:43.340hang out until everybody's ready to leave um unfortunately me and daniel will not be there
00:22:49.300it's our 27th anniversary so we are going to see niagara falls which i'm excited i've never seen
00:22:57.220Niagara Falls before. But if there's a lot of great people at Thor's Hall, so if you can come,
00:23:06.980you should come hang out with Swine and the other folks there. They would love to have you.
00:23:19.140Absolutely. We'd love to get you guys out. So here's the thing.
00:23:23.060our hoffs exist and they do something every single month we would love to have you guys
00:23:30.740come be part of things um each of our hoffs you can find on google maps and which is kind of a
00:23:41.460kind of a cool thing there's something legit and tangible feeling when you enter it into
00:23:47.220Google Maps and it gives you directions and takes you right to it. But you don't need to wait till
00:23:52.760a national event to check out one of our Hoffs and try to see what this is all about. So if you're
00:24:01.260within, so three of our Hoffs celebrated May Day last weekend. Thor's Hoff is going to be celebrating
00:24:08.240it this coming weekend. If you want to be a part of that, you absolutely should. It's in Linden,
00:24:13.580north carolina if you're interested please reach out to h young at roomstone.org or
00:24:24.300any afa leadership and they get you all set up and folks would be excited to uh celebrate with you
00:24:36.220one of the reasons that i had you on i want to kind of direct it this way and we'll take it
00:24:41.580wherever people who have questions are but i think a lot of people wonder what this looks like
00:24:48.620in real life and maybe haven't experienced it or are unfamiliar with what uh you know how this
00:24:57.820really works in the real world and i appreciate you giving kind of an itinerary um in a lot of
00:25:06.620ways this is should be very familiar to folks you show up there's a day of fellowship there is
00:25:16.380ritual that goes on there is usually some instruction in the form of like spawn will
00:25:23.260give uh goethe spawn who you guys have all seen on here you'll get to see him in the flesh he uh
00:25:28.940He gives wonderful classes or instruction on different things that are relevant to our faith, to the holiday being celebrated, whatever is particularly important to him at the time to talk to folks about.
00:25:47.040It's not a lot of sitting down for a big sermon time, though.
00:25:50.580A lot of it is active ritual of participating in the gift cycle with our gods and fellowshipping and getting time to spend with our folk in a holy place for a holy purpose.
00:26:03.540We share a meal, and then we also do a sambal, which is another ritual of ours that is kind of, I say it's ritualized toasting.
00:26:21.540toasting. It's not really like everybody's sitting around drinking heavy, but people will raise a
00:26:26.820toast to the first round to one of our gods, second round to one of their ancestors or one of our
00:26:34.280ancestors. The third round, you know, was kind of a little bit more free form on something that they
00:26:40.560want to make a toast about. But it's really special if you haven't been to one. It brings
00:26:45.900community together in a really special way that's hard to describe unless you're there.
00:26:50.420but yeah you should check it out definitely and that's kind of how things work one of the things
00:26:57.000i was talking to our law speaker about is i don't know often dealing with our fault it's like herding
00:27:06.480cats sometimes on things some people don't have a lot of experience in their life doing religious
00:27:14.060things we get people from a lot of different backgrounds a lot of different stuff
00:27:17.920now that we have hoffs we start developing a lot more of the kind of problems that are
00:27:25.820religious that any serious religious group deals with we get a lot of you know ladies fighting over
00:27:37.360who's doing what in the kitchen and people you know arguing over who they're dating or who they're
00:27:44.680not or whatever get stuff that i think any successful religion gets about people who
00:27:52.280build their life around their church and what they do within that religious community
00:27:59.240and you know you never want to see problems but those are the kind of problems that we want to
00:28:03.960have and it's a welcome change for some of the nonsense or the internet drama or some of the other
00:28:10.280artificial kind of problems that i think are so often a thing in today so i wanted heather to kind
00:28:18.760of speak a little bit on how that works how that has worked as a frith weaver those of you not0.63
00:28:26.040familiar that's a big responsibility and role for our ladies is i think we've all experienced in1.00
00:28:34.600life women can cause and exacerbate problems in a particularly destructive way they can also1.00
00:28:43.960bring folks together and calm problems and unite people in a really special way and that's what0.99
00:28:52.440they're called upon to do in house of truth so Heather could you kind of talk to people a little
00:28:56.760bit about that um i think like at thor's half when we first got thor's half um
00:29:08.680me and daniel were like i don't know and not to sound bad but like the outcast because
00:29:15.880thor's half was pretty much swan's kindred that came in and me and daniel were the two that
00:29:22.280weren't Svan's kindred. So they already kind of had their ways of doing things but I wanted to
00:29:29.720try to have like some way to put Heather in Thorshoth. So my thing was it is all the ladies1.00
00:29:39.080that come to Thorshoth because when I joined the AFA I was the lady that sat in the corner and
00:29:45.160wouldn't talk to anybody. So I decided everybody who comes to Thorshoth will not be that lady
00:29:51.480because i will harass you like an aggravating little sister and talk to you make you talk to1.00
00:29:58.200me um and i think that's what a lot of our ladies need um a lot of our ladies are we're in our own0.93
00:30:06.760heads so we're scared that people are judging us or don't like us where if we just come and smother
00:30:14.440them, that kind of takes that fear away. So at Thorshof, that's what I do. If you're new or old
00:30:24.580at Thorshof, I just will talk your ears off. Other ladies as well. I talk to a lot of ladies1.00
00:30:34.300in North Hoff as well as Odin's Hoff and Barbers Hoff. I just I think us women being able to depend0.70
00:30:46.060on each other being able to lean on each other and not tear each other down is is one of the big
00:30:53.500things for also true because I say out in the real world because to me also true is like
00:30:59.740my safe spot but um like being at the hof is my safe place but out in the world as women we have
00:31:09.260to it's always somebody trying to tear another woman down so i just didn't want that to be a
00:31:14.860thing in ossaroo because i love being at the hof i loved being with my kindred i love being there
00:31:24.140and i didn't want something that simple to make it a bad experience if that makes sense
00:31:34.940no it does and that's important i think that's
00:32:02.960We don't have the same community involvement that I think we once had.
00:32:10.500I know that it's really popular to say that diversity is our strength in the West.
00:32:16.760And whatever else it might do, an overabundance of it has a tendency to push aside commonality.
00:32:32.900And commonality is what you build community on.
00:32:35.460It's all those things that everybody has in common.
00:32:38.120Most of us today, through a lot of different reasons, find ourselves surrounded by people all the time.
00:32:45.660we've got tons of neighbors especially if you live you know in a city in a town in a neighborhood
00:32:51.340tons of neighbors but do you know them there's a time not so long ago where you did you knew
00:32:58.300your neighbors and you had friends and you guys all went to the same church or you guys all
00:33:02.460kids went to the same school or you you know had the same things that you held in common that you
00:33:08.940valued i don't think we have that anymore um we don't have it regionally we don't have that in
00:33:15.500places and we are working really hard to in the sphere of influence that we have to bring that
00:33:23.500back and to bring community back our hoffs are such a huge step towards that and but what you
00:33:31.820get is you get people that aren't quite used to that and you get people that were raised without
00:33:37.980that and maybe not having those skills that so many generations of our ancestors and our family
00:33:45.020i don't mean in the way back i mean like our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents
00:33:50.300had when it came to coming together um for for church for worship for those kind of things
00:33:59.260and working together so it's kind of a new experience and it's natural and it's one that's
00:34:04.780healthy for us but it takes a little little finessing to get it there and so often our ladies0.70
00:34:10.540are the ones that do that and i know that heather's kind of a standout in that in the example1.00
00:34:17.180for a lot of our ladies in that so i wanted her on to kind of answer some questions and talk about1.00
00:34:22.380that i think we'll hit some of these questions and kind of see where it goes and heather please0.99
00:34:29.340feel free to jump in if something hits you or there's something that uh well i did want to mention
00:34:38.860building frizz doesn't all only have to be in the halls like um you've been to our house so
00:34:44.620you've met ginger um our neighbor ginger um is the sweetest thing ever but we don't hide who
00:34:53.980we are from Ginger. So every day or once a week, Ginger has some new question about
00:35:00.540Asatru. And it's just fun watching her learn and teaching her, even though, will she come
00:35:11.020to the Hoff ever? Probably not. But am I probably the only Asatru family she'll meet? Probably.
00:35:18.140So I want to make sure that I leave, you know, a good mark for us on Ginger.
00:35:25.160So when she talks to somebody else, she'll say, oh, my neighbors are also true.
00:35:30.500They mow my grass. They help me trim my lawn.
00:35:33.320They bring me over dinner, you know, when they have extra dinner.
00:35:37.380And I think that means a lot as well because it helps the way the community sees us.
00:35:43.960If we do the frith weaving with people outside of the AFA as well, then they will see that things that are said about us aren't necessarily true.
00:35:56.340They're just words. Our actions are what makes, you know, it true.
00:36:05.880All right. Well, get to a couple of things on here.
00:36:10.540uh trent asks heather which which hof is your favorite and why is it yours off
00:36:17.200i like all the hofs my favorite of course is thor's hof but i think um odin's hof was
00:36:28.160outside of thor's hof would have been my favorite hof just because i remember when we weren't also
00:36:35.660true daniel told us me and lauren that we were going to take a trip to this hof in california
00:36:43.820and he was going to prove to me that i would like the afa and that hof was odin's hof and then i
00:36:51.180finally got to go to odin's hof and it's just a very special place like it's a very special place
00:37:02.460in general, but to our family. So, I would say Odin's Hoff.
00:37:12.220Take that, Trent. All right. So, also from an East, Madison would like to know, hey, Heather,
00:37:21.860what's your favorite moment in AFA history so far?
00:37:25.460I have a ton, but I'm going to have to say renewing my vows at Thor's Hall with all of our friends, our true friends in our true religion.
00:37:43.560That was probably the best day of me and Daniel's life, much less our in AFA.
00:37:52.460the second would be watching my husband become a gothi and then a witten
00:38:27.900So that's a lot of stuff relatively quickly.
00:38:34.640Rachel asks, so Heather, just how awesome is your youngest kiddo?
00:38:40.860Oh, she's amazing. That's my best bud in the whole world right there. I came home today and she said she made bread because she wanted to have a grilled cheese sandwich. So she spent hours making bread so she could make a grilled cheese sandwich.
00:39:00.360But Lauren had a hard time at school a few years back and kind of digressed in her social skills and watching her and the young Kinsler become friends and see her feel confident again has really tickled my heart in a way that little Miss Kinsler doesn't even know.
00:39:30.360Well, that's awesome. It's really, it's really special to see the kids building friendships and getting just to see them playing together and doing stuff. And I know they're older kids. It's a little bit different, but we were at the Hoff last weekend.
00:39:52.020And Mandy was six, so it was just me and Aubrey.
00:39:55.180And it was really nice to just watch them play with the other kids
00:39:59.440and immediately feel so at home there.
00:40:03.680I love that about our Hoffs and about what we're doing.
00:40:07.980And that you don't have to watch your kid like a Hulk.
00:40:11.000You can just let them run around and play.
00:40:13.120That was the hardest thing for me at first,
00:40:15.080is just letting Lauren out of my sight and knowing she would be okay.
00:40:18.720But now half the time, we'll be at a national event,
00:40:21.400and I don't even know where my child is for three days.
00:40:26.160That's one of the really special things because in the world today,
00:40:29.840there's not a lot of places you can do that.
00:40:31.940So it's really nice to have that for our kids and for their families.
00:41:44.380So I guess the first foundation to lay on it, our founder, Stephen McNallan, talked about has always talked about how our folk suffer from a soul sickness.
00:41:54.560the more we have been separated from our gods separated from being able to be proud of ourselves
00:42:04.460and the further heterosexual white people specifically heterosexual white men but not
00:42:15.100only us are devalued by the world that we live in it affects us in a lot of ways and
00:42:23.640think up front it causes a lot of people to be really depressed but over time there's a class
00:42:34.280of people that have defined themselves by resisting or being different and they've seen a lot of stuff
00:42:44.840they've been a part of turn out to be dishonest or not what it was cracked up to be and they've
00:42:54.600wasted a lot of years and a lot of time and made a lot of destructive choices under the
00:43:01.720the pretext that it was gonna make things better and that it was gonna bring some kind of victory
00:43:09.160and then when that didn't happen i think it builds a lot of resentment
00:43:14.840we've got a certain amount of people that have built their identity around
00:43:20.200failure but failing in a you know gnashing of teeth and waving your fist in the air like
00:43:27.560crashing and burning in a spectacular way but in a way so they can feel more morally superior doing
00:43:35.080it and there's something and i've seen this in a couple of different ways so i know this is a
00:43:39.880really convoluted answer um the the same people and i want to follow on a little bit different
00:43:45.960thread here in a second but some of those same people and the only thing i know to liken it to0.93
00:43:52.520and i don't take this lightly and i don't say it flippantly um we've all known women that
00:44:02.680will find and they'll be in an abusive relationship and on the outside we can't
00:44:07.480understand we don't know why they deserve so much better they shouldn't have to live like that we
00:44:13.080want to help them we want whatever and so you try to you try to save them you try to go in and
00:44:19.880lead them to something better but a lot of the time there's something internally broken
00:44:25.720to where they always go back to the same abusive kind of situation even if it's a different guy
00:44:33.640they have a norm that they are used to and as odd as it may sound there is a comfort in being in a
00:44:45.820bad situation that you're used to than in a really good situation that's completely foreign
00:44:53.620and scary to you because you don't know how to live that way and I've seen that with a lot of
00:45:00.960our folk and i've seen it a lot over the years and it makes me really sad yeah the people that make
00:45:08.080pages and say mean things especially when they're not true yeah i get mad at those people
00:45:14.000but from a distance and in a bigger way i'm really sad that that's the way so many of our people are
00:45:21.700but going from a situation where you're losing when you start to win when we start to have see
00:45:31.440accomplishment and do things and i watch this and when we see the hate coming at us it's almost
00:45:37.820always when we reach a new plateau of winning or doing better or elevating something that we do
00:45:45.680it's like you can't have nice things because there's this crab in the bucket
00:45:50.440we've got to pull each other back down so we can wallow in losing together rather than
00:45:57.320concentrate on winning and getting out of the bucket um i wish it wasn't that way
00:46:04.520it very very much is and you can always kind of predict it almost and i wish it wasn't we're
00:46:11.160working really hard to heal that that's broken about our folk that make that happen
00:46:16.760the other thing is so that's the one thing and i said i was going to get to something
00:46:21.560else too that's a different phenomenon that goes along with it
00:46:29.720sometimes i'm trying to think of where
00:46:35.160we've seen it in different ways and i think some of the time you've seen it with
00:46:40.760long distance relationship pen pal things to where sometimes someone will find somebody
00:46:51.000and they will build so much of their expectations and their hopes and their dreams around them
00:46:57.880that when it comes time to actually have a relationship and meet them in real life
00:47:03.640they chicken out and they won't do it because
00:47:06.520actually doing it and actually meeting that person will shatter your dreams they can't ever possibly
00:47:15.240be as perfect as you've made them out to be in your head um they can't ever possibly
00:47:21.880live up to the dream and you don't want to risk it not being what you've built it up to be so you
00:47:28.360you're scared to meet that person i think i i know i've seen that with housetree too
00:47:33.960when people have an idea of what it should be or what it might be or what it could be
00:47:39.520there is a real fear when actually going out and being part of something because then it's real
00:47:46.520then you have to deal with the interpersonal stuff you have to deal with anything that makes
00:47:53.240you uncomfortable doing something you haven't done before or being in a social situation you
00:47:57.800don't with people you don't know. I watched this with Hoffs. I've had people and it's apropos. I
00:48:05.740think Heather's here for this because it's happened a lot of different places, but it happened in a
00:48:09.220really glaring way at Thor's Hoff. We had a group of people that were just begging. And I don't mean
00:48:16.220that in a disrespectful way, but they were, man, we want a Hoff so bad. What do we have to do to
00:48:22.220get a Hoff? How do we get a Hoff out here? Want a Hoff? A Hoff would be amazing. As soon as we
00:48:27.400have a Hoffman it's real all of a sudden those people a lot of those people got scared and ran
00:48:36.540off and hit and we haven't heard from them since the the reality of oh wow there's actually this
00:48:45.280building that we have to take care of there's stuff we have to do physically and we have to
00:48:50.700show up here and maybe somebody will drive by and say something nasty or honk a horn at us or flip
00:48:56.700us off or whatever man maybe there'll be some attempt maybe somebody i know will know that i go
00:49:02.300to this off all of a sudden when it's real the same people that say they want it so bad aren't
00:49:08.860really you know as the kids say about that life so i think both of those things factor in and that's
00:49:15.900why some of it is um we got some really damaged people and i think that's where a lot of that
00:49:22.060comes out um heather do you have any thoughts on on that i know you've seen a lot of that yeah um
00:49:32.140it was really hard we got the horse off because
00:49:37.020it was going to be our kindred you know doing something together um building something great
00:49:44.700and then the next thing i know it's me and daniel by ourselves i mean we have something great now
00:49:52.060But we didn't know where it was going at the time.
00:49:57.020We had to build new relationships and new friendships with people who didn't know us after we had been with another group of people for forever.
00:50:09.420I just feel like it was such a foolish thing because there was many days and nights that I was there by myself, all by myself.
00:51:46.940so it's a good step I would encourage everybody does that
00:51:55.700so Eric the red light his phone is about to die
00:52:03.080could could you talk about matron uh matrescence
00:52:08.120and that process of becoming a mother does it change your approach to Alcitru
00:52:16.940I don't think so. I think it kind of made me want to cling to Ossitru more. Watching my daughter grow and learn and make friends. And then also think about where she'll be one day in Ossitru if she decides.
00:52:39.260watching the the kids in the afa grow i think one day the erickson's kids might be githias and
00:52:50.000gothees and and aubrey might be i'll share your gothe you know you never know just you
00:52:57.840it gives you so many things to think about and so much to look forward to um
00:53:03.240being a mom in the AFA I just it's just great because like I if Lauren has a question and
00:53:16.840she I can't answer it for you her I call Aunt Brandy Aunt Brandy answers it for her or she
00:53:23.380takes Aunt Mandy and sends her some funny Instagram or and I don't worry that my kid
00:53:30.080is texting grown-ups you know it's just it's as a mom it's kind of freeing because i don't have to
00:53:38.320however be a helicopter mom over my child because i know she's gonna do what's right
00:53:43.920because being raised in also true she she does try to you know live her life right0.90
00:53:50.800and she's awesome by the way cool people personality that's for sure
00:54:08.800she does tell her i said hi um amy joe says well said heather it does make sense
00:54:15.680are you going to zipline over niagara falls oh heather don't do heights
00:54:21.280okay so cliff uh witton clifford erickson is asking for the ulceri goki does the afa have a
00:54:46.240decorum for hails ensemble to potential oh okay for hails ensemble to potentially controversial
00:55:03.360past or living folk such as washington trump duke hitler charlemagne crowley edred etc etc etc
00:55:14.000um so yes and no and i as with so many things on here i think folks want me to
00:55:24.640have some kind of black and white answer on everything but one of the basic tenets of
00:55:32.960is our responsibility as arian men and women to act nobly and make good choices
00:55:40.640So, yes, in the sense that anyone who is hailed at an AFA symbol needs to be one of our folk, needs to be, needs to, if they were alive, be eligible for AFA membership.
00:55:59.120So that means a heterosexual white person.
00:56:04.560And there's plenty of other occasions that different kinds of things can be honored.
00:56:09.640But in an AFA symbol, we're there for our commonality and the point while we're there as a family and as a folk is to honor our people.
00:56:22.960So much is in the details and the attitude of it.
00:56:27.260No, we don't want to make a list of people you can and can't raise a horn to.
00:56:32.240but you don't want to raise a horn to people who are viciously the enemy of our folk
00:56:39.740you don't want to raise horn to a horn to villainous people people who are
00:56:46.400bad people and i think those particulars are judged and reasoned on by
00:56:57.620The Thule Present, who is the officiator, the, I guess, bailiff, if you will, of the
00:57:10.880Sumble, their job is to referee things said over the horn and to put a stop to something
00:57:20.540if something's being done improperly to reject a toast that is done um that we don't want to be
00:57:29.740affirmed and that we don't want to be celebrated over the horn and they have a lot of discretion
00:57:35.740in doing that and if they are doing that it's because i have told them they have to so it's
00:57:43.340not because they're just being a jerk and feel like messing up something you're saying it's
00:57:47.740because we take what's said over that communal horn very seriously and all of us in the circle0.97
01:07:18.380No matter what that is, I've told many of people, I will leave work right now and come to your house if you need me. And I mean that. I'm not just saying that to say that.
01:07:29.280But after last year, there were some things, there were some people who were willing to jump on an airplane to come sit with me.
01:07:50.840And I want to give that to the folk, as many folk as needs it and wants it.
01:07:56.400um for whatever reason happy reasons sad reasons um because they're lonely i don't mind driving
01:08:07.200six hours to come have pizza with you i did with with gothi stam um we had pizza we got
01:08:14.160in the car and we came back home um if the folk need that i think that's what we need to give to
01:08:21.920folk, and that's why I want to be a Githya. I don't know, that's kind of a touchy one,
01:08:32.880and I don't feel like crying, so that's what I have for right now.
01:09:35.400no I was not probably that guy I was absolutely that guy um and I can say for myself and I assume
01:09:43.000a lot of people did didn't really know what all that entailed it's one of those you want to swing
01:09:49.700for the fences and do your best I mean I say that in my experience anything I do that I want to do
01:09:55.980I want to throw myself at it 100% and and go hard but I think at that time we didn't really know
01:10:03.540what it meant i think so many people think externally that being a gothi or a githia is about
01:10:12.360basically being a master of ceremonies and putting on some kind of performance art doing rituals
01:10:21.480for the gods and i don't say that in any disrespectful way i mean like i mentioned i
01:10:28.200i was that guy i was there um it's so much more than that and i describe that because
01:10:37.080most people when they first get involved they haven't developed that sincere faith in the
01:10:44.280gods they think they have it but thinking you have it i've described this a lot too
01:10:51.320so i'm gonna i'm gonna wax long-winded here all right so
01:10:58.200So if you've ever been hunting, this may make sense. If you haven't, bear with me. If you're looking for something that you haven't seen or you don't know, it's really easy to think that you see it or think that you found it.
01:11:14.460But it's different when it's real and all of a sudden you know it's real.
01:11:19.420I mean, you go hunting, even if you've been hunting a lot.
01:12:05.800A lot of us go in with good faith saying that we believe in the gods.
01:12:09.960and i think conceptually we want to believe and maybe academically we believe but there's something
01:12:17.800very different when your whole world is shaken because your reality as you knew it is no longer
01:12:26.760the same because our gods exist in a indescribably tangible way and those you haven't had that
01:12:37.160happen yet it may not make a lot of sense does you who it has it does i don't know there's any
01:12:44.840way to communicate it better other than to promise you it's a thing and when it is you
01:12:49.960realize there's more to it so i say that to say this when you go um
01:12:58.440when you go into being a gothy or gifia whatever case may be
01:13:03.560it is about putting on a performance that you think is going to impress the people who are there
01:13:12.720and hopefully impress the gods but once you are doing it and you know that our gods are there
01:13:21.420and you felt it it's very much about building that connection facility i say building and that's true
01:13:31.700That's not wrong, but more facilitating that connection between our gods and the folk present and sending the gifts of the folk up to the gods and the gifts from our gods out to our folk.
01:13:48.540and for example this last weekend and I you know I didn't phone it in or anything I think we all
01:13:56.800all once you've had that moment you always think that every bloat you do should be better
01:14:03.320because these are the gods of our folk they always deserve better there is no way to do
01:14:10.460good enough to what they deserve so I'm out there and I did bloat to fray this last weekend and you
01:14:17.240know in my head man i wonder if this is good i hope this is good enough i hope this is you know
01:14:24.620i hope i didn't mess up there's all this responsibility and i want to always feel that
01:14:30.220i don't want there to ever be a time that i don't worry that i'm not trying hard enough
01:14:38.460victory never sleeps you don't rest on your laurels you always try to do more but so anyways
01:14:45.120you know i'm like man i hope i did good enough and and whatever and i had people coming up and
01:14:52.200being like no i felt it i felt prayer in the circle i felt that made the everything to me
01:14:59.000because it's not about my performance it's about is the bloat we offered something our one of our
01:15:05.540gods approved of and by that approval blessed the people who were there and if you can be part of
01:15:14.720that that's that's everything but i say all that again i warned you i said i was going to be long
01:15:21.860winded on this one and i am that's only a part of it that's such time wise that is such a small
01:15:29.300fraction of what being a gothi is about the vast majority of time spent doing the work of a gothi
01:15:39.300or agithia is about counseling our folk it's about working with people and helping them go through
01:15:46.420things and not not necessarily spiritual questions usually those are relatively easy and kind of fun
01:15:59.380to go through but it's about hey you know my mom died what do i do with this how do where does she
01:16:08.100go what do i do how do i go on with these things how do i help my dad who's got to live on what do
01:16:15.300i do hey my wife died or a child passed away or a brother or a friend committed suicide
01:16:24.260or hey my wife left me or i have a terminal disease or and all of these things are
01:16:32.260actual things that I've been through or uh I say been through that I've counseled people through
01:25:12.900Um, I like to say I'm only five years old. Also true. So it takes me a little while longer and a lot more studying to get some of the things done. But, um, I have 14 assignments left and I finished my first year. So I think that's pretty good for somebody who is to go at a snail's pace. Um, and I just don't know what my first goal is.
01:25:41.320My first goal, I think, will be something maybe simple to others, but accomplishing a ritual that the gods will appreciate, because that's probably the one thing I'm the most scared of.
01:26:01.720I understand. I hope that you never stop being at least a little bit scared of doing them.
01:26:15.220Cody asks, with the difficulties surrounding the founding of Thorshaw,
01:26:21.400what are some of the biggest lessons you learned?
01:26:26.360um i would say the biggest lessons you can learn from a situation like that is not to judge
01:26:35.240everybody you tend to get in it people in general tend to get in a negative state of mind um
01:26:43.840a witness fund came actually to my husband after that kindred left and asked my husband
01:26:53.940if he would help with Thor's hogs and um if you usually if you ask my husband I'm right there with
01:27:02.960him so I took it as he asked me to even though he did not so just don't let it turn you negative
01:27:12.440don't let it make you bitter I mean if we would have let that one incident
01:27:21.680taint our lives. We would probably be doing ritual in our backyard still, not at Thor's
01:27:30.860Hof, enjoying the beautiful Hof that we have and the beautiful folk that we have there
01:27:36.840and have the friendship with Witten Svahn and his family that we have. You just don't
01:27:45.260let one person make you think about everybody in one way. Always keep your mind open and
01:28:12.880Our first three Hoffs had that same kind of experience.
01:28:18.140It displayed a little bit different in a little bit different ways,
01:28:21.900But a common point with the first three Hoffs, specifically with Thor's Hoff and Baldur's Hoff, which both were, we got both of those in 2020.
01:28:35.720the first group of people who were so gung-ho to establish them
01:35:44.460that's an interesting question and i think that every family kind of needs to define
01:35:53.500the boundaries of that question for themselves um
01:35:57.660kind of like Heather said I mean I it's different because in the generation we live in now quite
01:36:11.520often we have people that come home to house a true after their kids are raised and are adults
01:36:18.300or um maybe are significantly along in their upbringing so it's not like they have that
01:36:26.280baked in in quite the same way I'd like to think in the future our children who are born into
01:36:35.280Alcitru will be less likely to turn their back on it but the reality is I'm sure that's going
01:36:42.780to happen for some people and children are often going to make choices that we don't approve of
01:36:51.060Sometimes those choices have consequences that are harder to decouple from and come back to ausitry.
01:37:05.060It's, you know, it's a curse that I think all parents kind of deal with is what if your kids go astray or what if they do stuff you don't approve of and you hope for the best.
01:37:16.760At the end of the day, you're still their parent, and there's no real way to dissolve that relationship.
01:37:32.180Depending on choices made and situations people find themselves in,
01:37:37.100it's very often a path back home for people that do go astray.
01:37:41.320Think what you find in a lot of faiths.
01:37:43.760I think I'll choose less likely to have this because we're life-embracing, but you'll have, at least in Christian churches and other things, but that's what I'm most familiar with, this phenomenon happening.
01:37:58.820You get young people that break from the church in their late teens, go off and be wild and crazy and have life kick them in the butt and then come back to their faith a little bit later when adulthood and responsibility settles in.
01:38:21.640and when life displays some realities in ways they didn't see0.94
01:38:26.400when they were young and full of hormones
01:38:28.700and full of a lot of things that may distract you
01:43:27.360you know if you went back in time if if daniel were proficient in viking era sword
01:43:33.360play would that have been more or less likely to result in your family um
01:43:39.520Probably not. Although we do play around with the sword that I bought for my wedding. It's a replica, but it's pretty fun to threaten him with sometimes.
01:43:55.260Okay, there you have it. Which European, also for you, Heather, and we'll start with you on this, which European country do your ancestors come from?
01:44:09.520Uh, I think it's, I have to look at my ancestry. It's a bunch of them.
02:12:56.160Yeah. And I think it was the first time that everything became real. It was Matt's Thor bloat. And like, I don't know, it was just something about that bloat that it made it real for our whole family.
02:13:18.060Even our son, our oldest son was there and he was like, holy crap.
02:13:31.060But yeah, I think that's the first time.
02:13:35.120I mean, I had been to other, you know, bloats or whatever with the kindred we were with.
02:13:40.660But I think that's the first time I was in bloat and actually everything was real.
02:13:53.120I felt like I was where I was supposed to be.
02:13:55.880I mean, I knew that I was comfortable with the group of people, but kind of like what you were talking about earlier with the Jehovah Witnesses.
02:14:05.380We had always tried to fit ourselves into places, and it was like we were a square trying to put ourselves in a circle.
02:14:12.340And when Matt did that Thor bloat that night, it was like, oh, we fit.
02:14:21.680We're a circle going into a circle hole.
02:14:24.140We're not a square trying to show ourselves into a circle.
02:14:36.440I talked a lot about the de-seared blood at winter nights where I had that interaction with my grandmother.
02:14:50.520The de-seared blood at winter nights this last year where I was able to experience that at my mother's, like our whole circle, the whole ritual at my mother's grave.
02:15:06.440I'm trying to think into the way back because I've been doing this a long time.
02:15:19.340There's a number of rituals that stand out for a lot of different reasons.
02:15:27.180Trying to think of the ways that stick out for something really good or something really special.
02:15:34.320There have been – we just had a bloat or a sumble, so we'll keep it at that.
02:15:53.320actually might have been at the high symbol where we had
02:16:02.600wolf callbacks now we cheated we were at a wolf preserve in southern california but it was really
02:16:11.920cool to when we'd hail something or we'd do that might have been a bloat i'm trying to even remember
02:16:18.540But the cool thing was the wolf callbacks, what we do in Alaska.
02:16:23.920I was at a couple of bloats where we had wolf callbacks and that was authentic because we were out in the woods in Alaska and, you know, in the distance sound really carries.
02:16:35.520But that was really kind of cool and special.
02:16:38.060I remember once we were doing a Yule bloat in Palmer, Alaska, 35 miles north of Anchorage or so, and we had this raging bonfire.
02:17:00.960It was amazing. It was the best bonfire we ever had in a bloat.
02:17:03.980it was 10 pallets i think 10 pallet bonfire but we'd carved the ritual circle with a snow
02:17:14.220snowblower out of the snow because it was probably four foot of snow around so we carved it out in
02:17:20.780the yard with this snowblower set up this 10 pallet fire in there and we had a just spectacular
02:17:30.460yule lock made out of hay bales that we were going to offer and so we had it and it was you know
02:17:40.620i don't know 10 10 feet or so away from the fire but the fire was so hot
02:17:52.540but everything else it was probably negative 30 out
02:17:55.580so during the bloat we were spinning around because our front would be so scalding hot
02:18:06.620but our backside would just be almost frostbitten so we would like rotisserie ourselves
02:18:15.460on our own little axis during this and right at the point in blow and i was conducting blow
02:18:26.820right at the point in blow where we were going to offer the yulebach
02:18:35.140like at that second when i was like and we offer you this yulebach and i went to grab it
02:18:41.220it immediately hit its smoke point and burst into flames and it was so cool at the time and this is
02:18:50.820in you know it's pitch black in out of the city in alaska so there's no light interference
02:18:58.180it's the fire in the sky and you can see forever and this raging bonfire we're surrounded by four
02:19:04.900foot of snow and boom it all uh burst into flames it was it was spectacular
02:19:14.260that sticks with me i remember that one a lot
02:19:18.500um yeah there's tons i remember those ones really stand out and are special um
02:19:27.220Finn Wraith asks have you visited the countries your ancestors are from and if not have you
02:19:38.200considered going there in the future Heather have you ever been to Europe and have you or
02:19:45.700Daniel ever talked about going over there and visiting some of you guys ancestral homelands
02:19:50.560we have talked about um he wants to go to germany one day and i want to go to ireland um
02:20:05.060but i don't know if we'll ever go i mean it's a dream we may one day when we get old