Asatru Folk Assembly - 5⧸22⧸24 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 98 - Frithweaving

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

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

00:03:00.000 Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome once again to another Wednesday and another exciting edition of Victory Never Sleeps.

00:03:20.720 And today we are joined by the lovely Heather Young, folk builder in the Thorshoff District and Frith Weaver-in-Chief of Thorshoff.

00:03:35.420 i'm gonna have heather on tonight for a variety of reasons she's pleasant to talk to she knows a lot

00:03:45.820 of stuff but chiefly tonight i want to talk a little bit about building local community what

00:03:53.320 that's like the task of frith building and how that relates to our ladies and in our community

00:04:02.900 in a really contemporary and ongoing

00:04:06.100 as of like this week and next week kind of way.

00:04:14.060 Before we get to that, some top of the show stuff,

00:04:19.260 I want to give a shout out to Jason Gallagher,

00:04:23.120 amazing folk builder, amazing man, good friend of mine.

00:04:26.460 That is why I'm dressed down a little bit tonight,

00:04:29.080 is to celebrate him with his shirt that we happen to sell

00:04:31.740 in the afa store um that amongst a lot of other cool products that um

00:04:40.700 madison east and uh witten brandy and a number of people have been working on

00:04:46.860 to get looking good and i will tell you because i'm wearing one right now they're soft they're

00:04:53.820 nice quality um we appreciate everybody who gets one of these and in doing so donates a little bit

00:05:03.900 to the afa through that purchase we appreciate it goes to a good cause and we got a lot of cool

00:05:09.900 products out there tonight and we've been kind of dropping a new product every week and folks seem

00:05:15.900 to like it so far tonight we are dropping baldershoff merchandise so there is

00:05:25.180 so remember on i believe the jason gallagher shirt and the i'll share your gothic disapproval

00:05:31.100 shirt i believe those are separate little kind of hidden links for limited time products the

00:05:37.820 rest of this is at the store proper um all the baldershoff stuff looks or yeah all the balders

00:05:44.620 stuff. Looks really cool. The other products are awesome as well. Appreciate that. If you guys

00:05:50.580 want to make a purchase, awesome. If you guys want to participate in the chat. So, this is going on

00:05:57.940 across lots of platforms simultaneously right now. So, we are on YouTube, as most of you can

00:06:07.700 see i think our second biggest live watch is on twitter or x if you will we also have um

00:06:26.820 so anyways uh yeah so we're on a bunch of spots we're on odyssey rumble entropy twitter

00:06:34.660 uh vk as well um we got a question last week on entropy that we didn't get to because

00:06:44.920 i didn't look in time it was a monetized question and we're going to see if nick can find that so

00:06:50.920 we can go ahead and get it answered if you're listening and you ask we're going to try really

00:06:54.340 hard to get to your question and i apologize we skipped you last week any question if you want to

00:06:59.960 uh attach um any question that's attached to a donation we'll jump right to the front of the

00:07:09.320 line but you don't have to donate anything to get your question out answered any question you ask

00:07:14.840 we'll be happy to answer and we will get to all of them I think tonight's show is going to be

00:07:20.940 uh kind of a question heavy but we'll see where it goes anybody who wants to donate otherwise

00:07:31.660 the ways to do that are in the description of the program also be aware that we are

00:07:39.420 coming out as a podcast here in a couple of days on spotify on

00:07:46.780 Apple Music, iHeartRadio, and on Amazon Music. So I say Apple Music, I mean Apple Podcasts.

00:07:59.240 So if that's how you do it, I'm not sure where you listen to your podcast, but we've tried to

00:08:04.360 make it as convenient and get as big a reach as possible. Any of those platforms we're going on

00:08:10.000 live, you can ask questions. We're happy to answer them. I guess most of the conversation

00:08:16.360 is happening over on youtube if you want to be part of it and yeah we appreciate y'all's tuning

00:08:23.000 in and participating in the chat um some other things coming up we would love to see you guys

00:08:30.600 at odenshoff this next month we are celebrating midsummer it's likely to be the biggest afa

00:08:38.360 gathering of the year not guaranteed something could outshine it but it typically is our biggest

00:08:44.200 one and it's going to be special it's certainly our longest running one and it's at our oldest

00:08:49.320 hof it's at odin's hof that we got in the fall of 2015. so i believe this is the eighth midsummer

00:08:57.560 at odin's hof and that was carrying on a tradition so if you can't see it's from the 21st to the 23rd

00:09:05.000 if you're interested get in touch with your local folk builder or any folk builder for that matter

00:09:10.200 we can get y'all set up um yeah that event was going for a long time it's carrying on a tradition

00:09:17.960 long before we had the hoffs i think the first midsummer as a national event first big midsummer

00:09:24.600 celebration in what we call it uh it was midsummer in the sierras at the time it was a little further

00:09:33.720 up i-80 in alta california i think the first one of those was 2008 2009 thereabouts i think my first

00:09:47.080 one of those was 2010 and that's the event that really got me completely overwhelmed and in love

00:09:55.300 with house of true and doing this the way that i the way that i did and put me on the trajectory

00:10:02.580 i'm on so it's a real special event love to see you out at odenshoff um following month in july 0.76

00:10:09.380 we're going to be celebrating sigger bloat at siggerheim that's in jackson county tennessee 0.98

00:10:15.220 that's going to be july the 19th through the 21st with the main happenings going on on that saturday 0.98

00:10:23.140 i'd love to see you out there it's a little bit more rustic um

00:10:26.100 um a really special place uh this will be our second sigger bloat at siggerheim and a lot of

00:10:36.360 love in that place a lot of people been putting in work we're building something really special 0.96

00:10:39.920 there and we'd love to have you guys come out and be part of you know these foundations that

00:10:44.720 that's being built from um also that's the home of the uh absolutely beautiful statues of our

00:10:52.980 founder, Stephen McNallan, and his wife, Githya Sheila McNallan. I am excited to see those in

00:10:59.940 person. I've had a whole lot of check-ins on those and a whole lot of involvement, but

00:11:04.060 this will be my first chance to actually get to see and touch and experience those

00:11:08.760 in the bronze, as it were. So I'm excited to do that.

00:11:15.860 And then following that, and I guess this last one will plug for right now, but in August,

00:11:20.960 We're going to be celebrating Freyfaxi at Baldershof, and that's in Murdoch, Minnesota.

00:11:27.500 It's going to be August the 16th through the 18th.

00:11:32.040 That is a really special place.

00:11:34.440 It's beautiful.

00:11:35.320 People are wonderful.

00:11:38.740 If you can make it to any or all three of those, we would love to see you there.

00:11:43.640 If you are a member, absolutely.

00:11:45.540 If you're not a member, we would still love you to come and check us out and see what's

00:11:50.620 what, if you're interested, reach out to any member of AFA Leadership, Folk Builders,

00:11:56.040 Gothar, myself, and we'd be happy to get you set up and make that happen.

00:12:03.120 Remember to like, share, and subscribe wherever you find this. If you like it and you want to

00:12:10.640 help out because that helps all those algorithms. And word of mouth does so much. If you know

00:12:16.700 anybody who should be listening to this might find it interesting, might be spiritually

00:12:23.100 strengthened by it. Let them know. Send them this way. We'd love to help.

00:12:31.080 If you're listening to this and you are a heterosexual white person that wants to believe

00:12:37.820 in our gods and build a relationship with the ISEER, we would encourage you to join the AFA.

00:12:43.520 we'd love to have you be part of what we're doing if you're not we ask you to you know consider why

00:12:50.240 not and if there's questions or hesitations please reach out somebody be happy to clear

00:12:55.880 anything up but we want to bring all our folk home I think that's what I got off the top we've got

00:13:04.100 some donations some questions some things but before we do that welcome Heather how are you

00:13:10.460 doing? I'm doing good. How are you? Doing fantastic. Getting to be casual this evening with my What

00:13:19.920 Would Jason Gallagher Do t-shirt on. So I'm doing all right. I've been watching Aubrey be a different

00:13:27.340 princess all week. Yeah, she's in rare form. She is excited. She is all in on her gymnastics right 0.95

00:13:35.300 now and she's doing really really good at that so i'm impressed it's really cool as a dad to just

00:13:41.940 watch her level up with her different little girl skills i don't know seemingly every couple days

00:13:50.020 she surprises me with something she can do now that she couldn't do before so yeah maybe um

00:13:56.100 maybe sent me a text saying she was ready for the olympics and i said save me a seat

00:14:00.500 probably got a little while for that but she's she's doing it all right he's perfect stop

00:14:12.020 he's pretty amazing i was telling mandy the other day we're really really blessed if uh

00:14:17.540 within any bounds of reality if i was to design a child i don't think i could

00:14:24.020 come up with something as perfect as she is she's fantastic

00:14:27.380 We are very lucky, very fortunate, very blessed people.

00:14:36.980 A couple few things right off the top, because he is that kind of guy.

00:14:42.940 Ronald Blake bought us a coffee.

00:14:45.080 Ronald, you are very much appreciated, and your generosity is an inspiration.

00:14:57.380 A few other things also, okay, so the question that we, while we're on Ronald, he also donated

00:15:08.780 $50 towards a current fundraiser we've got going on for helping an AFA family that's

00:15:14.940 in need.

00:15:15.760 Thank you for that.

00:15:16.880 That means a lot, and I know it'll mean a lot to them.

00:15:19.000 um we have our oh derek uh bolig donated five dollars to victory never sleeps thank you derek

00:15:32.780 we appreciate it very much we also have that question from accompanied by 20 from entropy

00:15:42.380 last week. So I hope that whoever it was is listening. Question is, can you elaborate on

00:15:51.140 why different ethnicities of white people should follow the Norse gods rather than their own

00:15:59.740 ethnic mythos. Yes. So, the question makes sense on the face of it, but I think that we need to,

00:16:21.340 I don't know, I think it's useful to think about it. Where did those gods come from?

00:16:27.300 um because if we think there's a tendency today when we look back at

00:16:39.840 an ancient people or you know an ancient religion of a people

00:16:48.040 you study it as if it started fresh under whatever name that is and that's how it was

00:16:57.040 like for example why shouldn't greek people worship the greek pantheon of gods

00:17:03.520 of course look back oh ancient greece what is ancient greece it starts during you know whatever

00:17:09.600 the archaic or the classical period of greece but it doesn't those people came from somewhere

00:17:18.560 the migrations of our folk if you trace things back linguistically culturally all these things

00:17:25.680 had a root somewhere and they came from somewhere so at what point did the greek pantheon come into

00:17:37.440 existence when white people move into greece there's no story or reason to believe that all

00:17:44.480 of a sudden the gods were there waiting for them under the under those names no though they took

00:17:50.720 with them the gods that they had wherever they came from so we trace that migration back to the

00:18:01.920 proto-indo-european or to the arian period and the gods of the different european pantheons

00:18:09.280 coalesce at that point so it's not as though all of a sudden when white people find themselves

00:18:17.200 in scandinavia odin sprouts up or they find themselves in greece and zeus sprouts or in

00:18:24.800 rome and all of a sudden jupiter appears these are all cultural understandings of deities that

00:18:32.240 have been with us as a people since the very beginning of our folk we categorically reject

00:18:40.480 the out of africa theory our folk are very much a distinct people that have a distinct origin

00:18:47.200 We 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.

00:18:58.740 Those same gods have been with us this entire time.

00:19:01.740 Over 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.

00:19:23.340 And the stories of our gods and myths look really different in different lenses, at different times, through different periods of retelling and understanding.

00:19:35.080 the one that is

00:19:38.260 the one that we believe very much has come to us in the best and most accessible way

00:19:48.420 is the norse conceptualization the norse nomenclature the norse understanding of our

00:19:58.240 gods and their stories. And more than that, that is the conception of our gods that

00:20:07.500 caused this reawakening of our folk and our faith that we're experiencing today.

00:20:17.300 It was under those terms and under those names and through that experience that Allfather Olin

00:20:26.500 and reached out and inspired our founder, Stephen McNallan,

00:20:32.660 and built the relationship that our current

00:20:36.740 House of True Folk Assembly, our ordination,

00:20:39.960 all of what we have traces back to.

00:20:42.900 And so it's under those terms and that understanding

00:20:46.300 that we can proceed forward in a unified way

00:20:49.000 that makes sense.

00:20:50.560 That simply hasn't been the case

00:20:52.220 with other conceptions of the Aryan deities,

00:20:57.440 but it has been through our conceiving them as the Aesir.

00:21:01.220 And that's why we do that.

00:21:02.540 And it wouldn't be wrong to have done it any of,

00:21:07.400 you know, tens of different ways,

00:21:12.200 but this is the way that we did it.

00:21:14.240 This is the way that we were inspired to do it.

00:21:16.500 And this is the way that has brought us where we are,

00:21:19.320 being unified and doing it that way is the most effective way to bring our folk back to our

00:21:26.340 ancestral gods. And so that's why we do it that way. And that's why we encourage all of our folk

00:21:31.880 to worship the gods as the Aesir and to join the Astro Focusing.

00:21:40.140 That's what we got making up for donations and for last week.

00:21:46.360 you guys got you guys are celebrating mayday this coming weekend correct yes

00:21:53.480 so plug that and tell people a little bit about it if you will

00:21:59.000 so um we have mayday at horsehof it starts at one o'clock our food pantry starts at 11

00:22:11.660 um if anybody wants to come out and help give out food um then the event will start around one

00:22:19.180 and usually um we'll do some folk time and then swan will teach us a class on

00:22:26.160 um about mayday so if you're new you know um what's gonna happen and what it's about and

00:22:35.700 then we'll do um ritual then we'll do the maypole and then we'll have dinner and then usually just

00:22:43.340 hang out until everybody's ready to leave um unfortunately me and daniel will not be there

00:22:49.300 it's our 27th anniversary so we are going to see niagara falls which i'm excited i've never seen

00:22:57.220 Niagara Falls before. But if there's a lot of great people at Thor's Hall, so if you can come,

00:23:06.980 you should come hang out with Swine and the other folks there. They would love to have you.

00:23:19.140 Absolutely. We'd love to get you guys out. So here's the thing.

00:23:23.060 our hoffs exist and they do something every single month we would love to have you guys

00:23:30.740 come be part of things um each of our hoffs you can find on google maps and which is kind of a

00:23:41.460 kind of a cool thing there's something legit and tangible feeling when you enter it into

00:23:47.220 Google Maps and it gives you directions and takes you right to it. But you don't need to wait till

00:23:52.760 a national event to check out one of our Hoffs and try to see what this is all about. So if you're

00:24:01.260 within, so three of our Hoffs celebrated May Day last weekend. Thor's Hoff is going to be celebrating

00:24:08.240 it this coming weekend. If you want to be a part of that, you absolutely should. It's in Linden,

00:24:13.580 north carolina if you're interested please reach out to h young at roomstone.org or

00:24:24.300 any afa leadership and they get you all set up and folks would be excited to uh celebrate with you

00:24:36.220 one of the reasons that i had you on i want to kind of direct it this way and we'll take it

00:24:41.580 wherever people who have questions are but i think a lot of people wonder what this looks like

00:24:48.620 in real life and maybe haven't experienced it or are unfamiliar with what uh you know how this

00:24:57.820 really works in the real world and i appreciate you giving kind of an itinerary um in a lot of

00:25:06.620 ways this is should be very familiar to folks you show up there's a day of fellowship there is

00:25:16.380 ritual that goes on there is usually some instruction in the form of like spawn will

00:25:23.260 give uh goethe spawn who you guys have all seen on here you'll get to see him in the flesh he uh

00:25:28.940 He 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.

00:25:47.040 It's not a lot of sitting down for a big sermon time, though.

00:25:50.580 A 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.

00:26:03.540 We 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.

00:26:21.540 toasting. It's not really like everybody's sitting around drinking heavy, but people will raise a

00:26:26.820 toast to the first round to one of our gods, second round to one of their ancestors or one of our

00:26:34.280 ancestors. The third round, you know, was kind of a little bit more free form on something that they

00:26:40.560 want to make a toast about. But it's really special if you haven't been to one. It brings

00:26:45.900 community together in a really special way that's hard to describe unless you're there.

00:26:50.420 but yeah you should check it out definitely and that's kind of how things work one of the things

00:26:57.000 i was talking to our law speaker about is i don't know often dealing with our fault it's like herding

00:27:06.480 cats sometimes on things some people don't have a lot of experience in their life doing religious

00:27:14.060 things we get people from a lot of different backgrounds a lot of different stuff

00:27:17.920 now that we have hoffs we start developing a lot more of the kind of problems that are

00:27:25.820 religious that any serious religious group deals with we get a lot of you know ladies fighting over

00:27:37.360 who's doing what in the kitchen and people you know arguing over who they're dating or who they're

00:27:44.680 not or whatever get stuff that i think any successful religion gets about people who

00:27:52.280 build their life around their church and what they do within that religious community

00:27:59.240 and you know you never want to see problems but those are the kind of problems that we want to

00:28:03.960 have and it's a welcome change for some of the nonsense or the internet drama or some of the other

00:28:10.280 artificial kind of problems that i think are so often a thing in today so i wanted heather to kind

00:28:18.760 of speak a little bit on how that works how that has worked as a frith weaver those of you not 0.63

00:28:26.040 familiar that's a big responsibility and role for our ladies is i think we've all experienced in 1.00

00:28:34.600 life women can cause and exacerbate problems in a particularly destructive way they can also 1.00

00:28:43.960 bring folks together and calm problems and unite people in a really special way and that's what 0.99

00:28:52.440 they're called upon to do in house of truth so Heather could you kind of talk to people a little

00:28:56.760 bit about that um i think like at thor's half when we first got thor's half um

00:29:08.680 me and daniel were like i don't know and not to sound bad but like the outcast because

00:29:15.880 thor's half was pretty much swan's kindred that came in and me and daniel were the two that

00:29:22.280 weren't Svan's kindred. So they already kind of had their ways of doing things but I wanted to

00:29:29.720 try to have like some way to put Heather in Thorshoth. So my thing was it is all the ladies 1.00

00:29:39.080 that come to Thorshoth because when I joined the AFA I was the lady that sat in the corner and

00:29:45.160 wouldn't talk to anybody. So I decided everybody who comes to Thorshoth will not be that lady

00:29:51.480 because i will harass you like an aggravating little sister and talk to you make you talk to 1.00

00:29:58.200 me um and i think that's what a lot of our ladies need um a lot of our ladies are we're in our own 0.93

00:30:06.760 heads so we're scared that people are judging us or don't like us where if we just come and smother

00:30:14.440 them, that kind of takes that fear away. So at Thorshof, that's what I do. If you're new or old

00:30:24.580 at Thorshof, I just will talk your ears off. Other ladies as well. I talk to a lot of ladies 1.00

00:30:34.300 in North Hoff as well as Odin's Hoff and Barbers Hoff. I just I think us women being able to depend 0.70

00:30:46.060 on each other being able to lean on each other and not tear each other down is is one of the big

00:30:53.500 things for also true because I say out in the real world because to me also true is like

00:30:59.740 my safe spot but um like being at the hof is my safe place but out in the world as women we have

00:31:09.260 to it's always somebody trying to tear another woman down so i just didn't want that to be a

00:31:14.860 thing in ossaroo because i love being at the hof i loved being with my kindred i love being there

00:31:24.140 and i didn't want something that simple to make it a bad experience if that makes sense

00:31:34.940 no it does and that's important i think that's

00:31:42.060 one of the

00:31:46.940 i think just one of the the ills of the world that we live in is

00:31:51.180 Because folks have been, and it's ramped up recently, but it's been going for a while.

00:32:00.120 People have been really atomized.

00:32:02.960 We don't have the same community involvement that I think we once had.

00:32:10.500 I know that it's really popular to say that diversity is our strength in the West.

00:32:16.760 And whatever else it might do, an overabundance of it has a tendency to push aside commonality.

00:32:32.900 And commonality is what you build community on.

00:32:35.460 It's all those things that everybody has in common.

00:32:38.120 Most of us today, through a lot of different reasons, find ourselves surrounded by people all the time.

00:32:45.660 we've got tons of neighbors especially if you live you know in a city in a town in a neighborhood

00:32:51.340 tons of neighbors but do you know them there's a time not so long ago where you did you knew

00:32:58.300 your neighbors and you had friends and you guys all went to the same church or you guys all

00:33:02.460 kids went to the same school or you you know had the same things that you held in common that you

00:33:08.940 valued i don't think we have that anymore um we don't have it regionally we don't have that in

00:33:15.500 places and we are working really hard to in the sphere of influence that we have to bring that

00:33:23.500 back and to bring community back our hoffs are such a huge step towards that and but what you

00:33:31.820 get is you get people that aren't quite used to that and you get people that were raised without

00:33:37.980 that and maybe not having those skills that so many generations of our ancestors and our family

00:33:45.020 i don't mean in the way back i mean like our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents

00:33:50.300 had when it came to coming together um for for church for worship for those kind of things

00:33:59.260 and working together so it's kind of a new experience and it's natural and it's one that's

00:34:04.780 healthy for us but it takes a little little finessing to get it there and so often our ladies 0.70

00:34:10.540 are the ones that do that and i know that heather's kind of a standout in that in the example 1.00

00:34:17.180 for a lot of our ladies in that so i wanted her on to kind of answer some questions and talk about 1.00

00:34:22.380 that i think we'll hit some of these questions and kind of see where it goes and heather please 0.99

00:34:29.340 feel free to jump in if something hits you or there's something that uh well i did want to mention

00:34:38.860 building frizz doesn't all only have to be in the halls like um you've been to our house so

00:34:44.620 you've met ginger um our neighbor ginger um is the sweetest thing ever but we don't hide who

00:34:53.980 we are from Ginger. So every day or once a week, Ginger has some new question about

00:35:00.540 Asatru. And it's just fun watching her learn and teaching her, even though, will she come

00:35:11.020 to the Hoff ever? Probably not. But am I probably the only Asatru family she'll meet? Probably.

00:35:18.140 So I want to make sure that I leave, you know, a good mark for us on Ginger.

00:35:25.160 So when she talks to somebody else, she'll say, oh, my neighbors are also true.

00:35:30.500 They mow my grass. They help me trim my lawn.

00:35:33.320 They bring me over dinner, you know, when they have extra dinner.

00:35:37.380 And I think that means a lot as well because it helps the way the community sees us.

00:35:43.960 If 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.

00:35:56.340 They're just words. Our actions are what makes, you know, it true.

00:36:05.880 All right. Well, get to a couple of things on here.

00:36:10.540 uh trent asks heather which which hof is your favorite and why is it yours off

00:36:17.200 i like all the hofs my favorite of course is thor's hof but i think um odin's hof was

00:36:28.160 outside of thor's hof would have been my favorite hof just because i remember when we weren't also

00:36:35.660 true daniel told us me and lauren that we were going to take a trip to this hof in california

00:36:43.820 and he was going to prove to me that i would like the afa and that hof was odin's hof and then i

00:36:51.180 finally got to go to odin's hof and it's just a very special place like it's a very special place

00:37:02.460 in general, but to our family. So, I would say Odin's Hoff.

00:37:12.220 Take that, Trent. All right. So, also from an East, Madison would like to know, hey, Heather,

00:37:21.860 what's your favorite moment in AFA history so far?

00:37:25.460 I 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.

00:37:43.560 That was probably the best day of me and Daniel's life, much less our in AFA. 0.88

00:37:52.460 the second would be watching my husband become a gothi and then a witten 0.96

00:38:04.220 acceptable answers

00:38:10.380 just so everybody is kind of if they missed your first appearance on the show or

00:38:15.900 stuff, how long have you been in the Outstreet Focusing?

00:38:22.460 I think this is our fifth year.

00:38:27.900 So that's a lot of stuff relatively quickly.

00:38:34.640 Rachel asks, so Heather, just how awesome is your youngest kiddo?

00:38:40.860 Oh, 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.

00:39:00.360 But 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.

00:39:30.360 Well, 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.

00:39:52.020 And Mandy was six, so it was just me and Aubrey.

00:39:55.180 And it was really nice to just watch them play with the other kids

00:39:59.440 and immediately feel so at home there.

00:40:03.680 I love that about our Hoffs and about what we're doing.

00:40:07.980 And that you don't have to watch your kid like a Hulk.

00:40:11.000 You can just let them run around and play.

00:40:13.120 That was the hardest thing for me at first,

00:40:15.080 is just letting Lauren out of my sight and knowing she would be okay.

00:40:18.720 But now half the time, we'll be at a national event,

00:40:21.400 and I don't even know where my child is for three days.

00:40:26.160 That's one of the really special things because in the world today,

00:40:29.840 there's not a lot of places you can do that.

00:40:31.940 So it's really nice to have that for our kids and for their families.

00:40:42.080 Next up, Screwball88.

00:40:45.440 sorry there's a little mix up on the uh time tonight looks like you were you were here a

00:40:53.780 little bit early for the program but we're glad you're here glad you made it Matt I've been

00:40:57.840 watching the AFA for a while I think what the AFA is doing is great my question is why are

00:41:02.440 there so many haters I saw a nasty Twitter page um it's a complicated question and

00:41:12.140 And our people, so I'm trying to, those things, of course, they make me angry and they make

00:41:28.800 me angry because most of the time the criticism is dishonest.

00:41:33.460 But one thing that I have noticed is there is a.

00:41:43.620 All right.

00:41:44.380 So 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.

00:41:54.560 the more we have been separated from our gods separated from being able to be proud of ourselves

00:42:04.460 and the further heterosexual white people specifically heterosexual white men but not

00:42:15.100 only us are devalued by the world that we live in it affects us in a lot of ways and

00:42:23.640 think up front it causes a lot of people to be really depressed but over time there's a class

00:42:34.280 of people that have defined themselves by resisting or being different and they've seen a lot of stuff

00:42:44.840 they've been a part of turn out to be dishonest or not what it was cracked up to be and they've

00:42:54.600 wasted a lot of years and a lot of time and made a lot of destructive choices under the

00:43:01.720 the pretext that it was gonna make things better and that it was gonna bring some kind of victory

00:43:09.160 and then when that didn't happen i think it builds a lot of resentment

00:43:14.840 we've got a certain amount of people that have built their identity around

00:43:20.200 failure but failing in a you know gnashing of teeth and waving your fist in the air like

00:43:27.560 crashing and burning in a spectacular way but in a way so they can feel more morally superior doing

00:43:35.080 it and there's something and i've seen this in a couple of different ways so i know this is a

00:43:39.880 really convoluted answer um the the same people and i want to follow on a little bit different

00:43:45.960 thread here in a second but some of those same people and the only thing i know to liken it to 0.93

00:43:52.520 and i don't take this lightly and i don't say it flippantly um we've all known women that

00:44:02.680 will find and they'll be in an abusive relationship and on the outside we can't

00:44:07.480 understand we don't know why they deserve so much better they shouldn't have to live like that we

00:44:13.080 want to help them we want whatever and so you try to you try to save them you try to go in and

00:44:19.880 lead them to something better but a lot of the time there's something internally broken

00:44:25.720 to where they always go back to the same abusive kind of situation even if it's a different guy

00:44:33.640 they have a norm that they are used to and as odd as it may sound there is a comfort in being in a

00:44:45.820 bad situation that you're used to than in a really good situation that's completely foreign

00:44:53.620 and scary to you because you don't know how to live that way and I've seen that with a lot of

00:45:00.960 our folk and i've seen it a lot over the years and it makes me really sad yeah the people that make

00:45:08.080 pages and say mean things especially when they're not true yeah i get mad at those people

00:45:14.000 but from a distance and in a bigger way i'm really sad that that's the way so many of our people are

00:45:21.700 but going from a situation where you're losing when you start to win when we start to have see

00:45:31.440 accomplishment and do things and i watch this and when we see the hate coming at us it's almost

00:45:37.820 always when we reach a new plateau of winning or doing better or elevating something that we do

00:45:45.680 it's like you can't have nice things because there's this crab in the bucket

00:45:50.440 we've got to pull each other back down so we can wallow in losing together rather than

00:45:57.320 concentrate on winning and getting out of the bucket um i wish it wasn't that way

00:46:04.520 it very very much is and you can always kind of predict it almost and i wish it wasn't we're

00:46:11.160 working really hard to heal that that's broken about our folk that make that happen

00:46:16.760 the other thing is so that's the one thing and i said i was going to get to something

00:46:21.560 else too that's a different phenomenon that goes along with it

00:46:29.720 sometimes i'm trying to think of where

00:46:35.160 we've seen it in different ways and i think some of the time you've seen it with

00:46:40.760 long distance relationship pen pal things to where sometimes someone will find somebody

00:46:51.000 and they will build so much of their expectations and their hopes and their dreams around them

00:46:57.880 that when it comes time to actually have a relationship and meet them in real life

00:47:03.640 they chicken out and they won't do it because

00:47:06.520 actually doing it and actually meeting that person will shatter your dreams they can't ever possibly

00:47:15.240 be as perfect as you've made them out to be in your head um they can't ever possibly

00:47:21.880 live up to the dream and you don't want to risk it not being what you've built it up to be so you

00:47:28.360 you're scared to meet that person i think i i know i've seen that with housetree too

00:47:33.960 when people have an idea of what it should be or what it might be or what it could be

00:47:39.520 there is a real fear when actually going out and being part of something because then it's real

00:47:46.520 then you have to deal with the interpersonal stuff you have to deal with anything that makes

00:47:53.240 you uncomfortable doing something you haven't done before or being in a social situation you

00:47:57.800 don't with people you don't know. I watched this with Hoffs. I've had people and it's apropos. I

00:48:05.740 think Heather's here for this because it's happened a lot of different places, but it happened in a

00:48:09.220 really glaring way at Thor's Hoff. We had a group of people that were just begging. And I don't mean

00:48:16.220 that in a disrespectful way, but they were, man, we want a Hoff so bad. What do we have to do to

00:48:22.220 get a Hoff? How do we get a Hoff out here? Want a Hoff? A Hoff would be amazing. As soon as we

00:48:27.400 have a Hoffman it's real all of a sudden those people a lot of those people got scared and ran

00:48:36.540 off and hit and we haven't heard from them since the the reality of oh wow there's actually this

00:48:45.280 building that we have to take care of there's stuff we have to do physically and we have to

00:48:50.700 show up here and maybe somebody will drive by and say something nasty or honk a horn at us or flip

00:48:56.700 us off or whatever man maybe there'll be some attempt maybe somebody i know will know that i go

00:49:02.300 to this off all of a sudden when it's real the same people that say they want it so bad aren't

00:49:08.860 really you know as the kids say about that life so i think both of those things factor in and that's

00:49:15.900 why some of it is um we got some really damaged people and i think that's where a lot of that

00:49:22.060 comes out um heather do you have any thoughts on on that i know you've seen a lot of that yeah um

00:49:32.140 it was really hard we got the horse off because

00:49:37.020 it was going to be our kindred you know doing something together um building something great

00:49:44.700 and then the next thing i know it's me and daniel by ourselves i mean we have something great now

00:49:52.060 But we didn't know where it was going at the time.

00:49:57.020 We 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.

00:50:09.420 I 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.

00:50:17.900 And nobody bothered me at all.

00:50:20.400 my job knows uh where i go to church nobody bothers me at all they actually donate to our

00:50:29.600 coat drive they um you know try to get food together to help for our food pantry if they 0.90

00:50:36.300 can it's not usually a lot because it's just you know women donating what they can but

00:50:42.260 if you don't try to be so secretive about your life none of the stuff that these people say

00:50:49.980 usually i won't say none of it because it has affected other people but it usually doesn't

00:50:55.740 affect you if you don't make it a fear like if you hide it people find it like they're scared

00:51:01.900 of what they don't know and if you teach them then they won't be afraid of it fair enough um

00:51:16.940 Um, so Amy Jo wants to know, what is your beauty secret, Heather? 0.92

00:51:24.500 Makeup. 1.00

00:51:32.820 That's all I got for you. 1.00

00:51:35.500 Keep it to herself, ladies. 1.00

00:51:40.100 I don't do anything. 1.00

00:51:41.480 On your own.

00:51:44.220 So I just used to dial soap.

00:51:46.940 so it's a good step I would encourage everybody does that

00:51:55.700 so Eric the red light his phone is about to die

00:52:03.080 could could you talk about matron uh matrescence

00:52:08.120 and that process of becoming a mother does it change your approach to Alcitru

00:52:16.940 I 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.

00:52:39.260 watching the the kids in the afa grow i think one day the erickson's kids might be githias and

00:52:50.000 gothees and and aubrey might be i'll share your gothe you know you never know just you

00:52:57.840 it gives you so many things to think about and so much to look forward to um

00:53:03.240 being a mom in the AFA I just it's just great because like I if Lauren has a question and

00:53:16.840 she I can't answer it for you her I call Aunt Brandy Aunt Brandy answers it for her or she

00:53:23.380 takes Aunt Mandy and sends her some funny Instagram or and I don't worry that my kid

00:53:30.080 is texting grown-ups you know it's just it's as a mom it's kind of freeing because i don't have to

00:53:38.320 however be a helicopter mom over my child because i know she's gonna do what's right

00:53:43.920 because being raised in also true she she does try to you know live her life right 0.90

00:53:50.800 and she's awesome by the way cool people personality that's for sure

00:54:08.800 she does tell her i said hi um amy joe says well said heather it does make sense

00:54:15.680 are you going to zipline over niagara falls oh heather don't do heights

00:54:21.280 okay so cliff uh witton clifford erickson is asking for the ulceri goki does the afa have a

00:54:46.240 decorum for hails ensemble to potential oh okay for hails ensemble to potentially controversial

00:55:03.360 past or living folk such as washington trump duke hitler charlemagne crowley edred etc etc etc

00:55:14.000 um so yes and no and i as with so many things on here i think folks want me to

00:55:24.640 have some kind of black and white answer on everything but one of the basic tenets of

00:55:32.960 is our responsibility as arian men and women to act nobly and make good choices

00:55:40.640 So, 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.

00:55:59.120 So that means a heterosexual white person.

00:56:04.560 And there's plenty of other occasions that different kinds of things can be honored.

00:56:09.640 But 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.

00:56:22.960 So much is in the details and the attitude of it.

00:56:27.260 No, we don't want to make a list of people you can and can't raise a horn to.

00:56:32.240 but you don't want to raise a horn to people who are viciously the enemy of our folk

00:56:39.740 you don't want to raise horn to a horn to villainous people people who are

00:56:46.400 bad people and i think those particulars are judged and reasoned on by

00:56:57.620 The Thule Present, who is the officiator, the, I guess, bailiff, if you will, of the

00:57:10.880 Sumble, their job is to referee things said over the horn and to put a stop to something

00:57:20.540 if something's being done improperly to reject a toast that is done um that we don't want to be

00:57:29.740 affirmed and that we don't want to be celebrated over the horn and they have a lot of discretion

00:57:35.740 in doing that and if they are doing that it's because i have told them they have to so it's

00:57:43.340 not because they're just being a jerk and feel like messing up something you're saying it's

00:57:47.740 because we take what's said over that communal horn very seriously and all of us in the circle 0.97

00:57:53.900 who share that experience bear

00:58:00.780 either benefit from it or responsibility for if something's poorly done over it

00:58:06.460 so there's a certain amount of discretion there i think that we want adult people to make good

00:58:11.340 decisions because they're not just hailing that person on behalf of themselves they're asking

00:58:17.420 everyone in that circle to assent to that hail so that's what i'd say to that

00:58:29.660 and the reason for the hail matters too just to say something edgy or controversial to

00:58:36.780 virtue signal or to flush out people that you don't like or something of course not

00:58:43.420 your motives are wrong your intentions aren't pure we don't want that put in the heart

00:58:47.820 if it's an honestly held belief and you're hailing them over something that

00:58:52.540 is that you believe genuinely is worthy and right to hail them over okay but again use

00:58:59.900 some discretion you know who you're in a circle with don't take don't put them in a spot where

00:59:06.460 they're made uncomfortable by unnecessarily by things you feel compelled to do for whatever

00:59:14.700 for whatever reason um be more heathen says heather and matt uh other than say a

00:59:28.060 usual blow is there anything specific you would recommend as far as between myself and my wife

00:59:37.480 and more of a personal ritual just us together um heather go ahead and take a swing at this first

00:59:45.700 is there anything that you would suggest maybe he think about doing different if it's just he

00:59:51.940 his wife doing a ritual or any thoughts you may have on that um i know we do um daniel has a little

01:00:02.980 ritual that we do every morning and usually every night um where we stand by his altar and

01:00:10.020 and hold hands and he'll say stuff and me and lauren repeat after him it's kind of like a

01:00:15.620 like a prayer ritual um it's just kind of giving thanks and um for everything that we've

01:00:25.880 still have um and not taking things for granted um we also do the meal blessings together um

01:00:37.840 i'm trying to think of other things before we um had a hof we would do um daniel would go

01:00:48.860 in the backyard and do um heirs blessings rituals with me um or if we had a mutual friend that was

01:00:58.120 um sick we would go and um we have a little table in the back and and a little fire pit and we would

01:01:05.480 ritual out there together or um even like friends of ours that are trying to have babies we'll do

01:01:14.520 like a small little ritual for um together with Lauren of course um our daughter you know

01:01:23.160 trying to help them any way we can um I think you can do

01:01:30.940 there is no like limit on what you can do as a couple it just depends on how well you

01:01:39.280 you work together like me and Daniel work together very well as a team so

01:01:44.800 every everything he does I usually follow or vice versa so um anything that you anything you try

01:01:55.260 isn't going to be wrong um you just have to try things until you find what fits for you and your

01:02:03.660 wife and you'll know and then you'll know when it fits and what it is for you so

01:02:16.460 i don't know i know sometimes the answers are not as yes this is exactly what you should do

01:02:22.700 because things don't necessarily work like that and there's a lot of details it depends

01:02:25.980 on what you want to do but you have a all right so

01:02:42.140 as a husband and wife by yourselves

01:02:46.940 i wouldn't do it you know necessarily you can do it in front of your home altar

01:02:51.580 in a special place in your house you could certainly do it in a special place outside or

01:02:57.340 wherever um i don't think it needs the same space and a combination of people that a regular bloat

01:03:07.660 would need but the other thing depending on your purpose you have an opportunity for it to be far

01:03:18.380 more intimate and far more about you guys as a couple and as a family and your relationship with

01:03:24.460 the gods um in a group maybe the blessings that are asked for or what's expressed is much more

01:03:35.500 general because it's got to apply and be meaningful to everyone who's there but it's just you and your

01:03:42.620 wife it can focus a lot more on you on your household on your family on your relationship

01:03:51.020 on any hardships or struggles that you guys are facing together and going through or on any

01:03:58.780 particular blessings or joys that you guys want to celebrate in your life and in your family

01:04:05.340 and in your marriage um so it can be a lot more personal that way in a lot of ways it can be a

01:04:12.380 lot more powerful that way it's you guys coming directly before the gods as a couple

01:04:19.020 and opening your hearts and really inviting the isir into your marriage in a special way

01:04:29.660 it's one of the things fawn and i will go into um the rigs thula when we do our

01:04:37.580 lore study of it a little bit deeper but

01:04:43.180 people make a mockery and come up with some really gross swinger degenerate nonsense about that

01:04:57.100 fundamentally the couples mentioned in the rigs thula took in one of the icr

01:05:05.180 brought so again our lore is never meant to be taken literally it's meant to express truths the

01:05:14.300 truth is they opened their home and they opened their marriage to the icr coming in and being a

01:05:23.420 part of their household and of their union they involved the gods in their family and in the

01:05:32.940 propagation of their family to the next generation by opening ourselves and letting the gods in

01:05:38.580 as a couple and as a family that's what elevated our people from a low status

01:05:46.340 to greater and greater levels of nobility you and your wife bringing the gods into your marriage

01:05:56.300 and into your family in a very special and important way i think that's a really cool

01:06:02.380 opportunity that you guys have and there's a lot of a lot of opportunity for that to strengthen

01:06:10.140 you as a couple in your family um from some bald dude named daniel

01:06:18.380 Heather, what motivated you to study to become a Githya, and are there any Githyas that inspired

01:06:26.300 you to do so? Yes, there are Githyas that inspired me. Katie Erickson has asked me every year since

01:06:36.400 I've joined the AFA if I would join to be a Githya, and of course, Witten Callahan. 0.98

01:06:48.380 Why do I want to be a Githya? 0.50

01:06:56.920 I want to be a Githya to do the things that need to be done for the folk.

01:07:09.800 Like, I don't want to make promises that I can't keep.

01:07:14.200 I want to be there when they need me.

01:07:18.380 No 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.

01:07:29.280 But after last year, there were some things, there were some people who were willing to jump on an airplane to come sit with me.

01:07:50.840 And I want to give that to the folk, as many folk as needs it and wants it.

01:07:56.400 um for whatever reason happy reasons sad reasons um because they're lonely i don't mind driving

01:08:07.200 six hours to come have pizza with you i did with with gothi stam um we had pizza we got

01:08:14.160 in the car and we came back home um if the folk need that i think that's what we need to give to

01:08:21.920 folk, and that's why I want to be a Githya. I don't know, that's kind of a touchy one, 0.96

01:08:32.880 and I don't feel like crying, so that's what I have for right now.

01:08:37.040 yeah um

01:08:48.640 i appreciate that and i and i know this is a heather question but i'm gonna throw my two cents in um

01:09:01.120 when i first got involved in alistair true it was probably around 2001

01:09:07.040 I think a common thing, everybody, this was very, very common.

01:09:15.640 Everybody wanted to go from zero to being a go-thee like day one.

01:09:20.200 How do I be a go-thee?

01:09:22.340 And this is the stage we're in, so I'm not, I mean, shoot,

01:09:28.060 I was probably that guy, so I'm not making fun of that.

01:09:33.440 No, flag on play.

01:09:35.400 no I was not probably that guy I was absolutely that guy um and I can say for myself and I assume

01:09:43.000 a lot of people did didn't really know what all that entailed it's one of those you want to swing

01:09:49.700 for the fences and do your best I mean I say that in my experience anything I do that I want to do

01:09:55.980 I want to throw myself at it 100% and and go hard but I think at that time we didn't really know

01:10:03.540 what it meant i think so many people think externally that being a gothi or a githia is about

01:10:12.360 basically being a master of ceremonies and putting on some kind of performance art doing rituals

01:10:21.480 for the gods and i don't say that in any disrespectful way i mean like i mentioned i

01:10:28.200 i was that guy i was there um it's so much more than that and i describe that because

01:10:37.080 most people when they first get involved they haven't developed that sincere faith in the

01:10:44.280 gods they think they have it but thinking you have it i've described this a lot too

01:10:51.320 so i'm gonna i'm gonna wax long-winded here all right so

01:10:58.200 So 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.

01:11:14.460 But it's different when it's real and all of a sudden you know it's real.

01:11:19.420 I mean, you go hunting, even if you've been hunting a lot.

01:11:22.420 I say a lot.

01:11:23.220 I don't know if I've been hunting a lot in my life.

01:11:25.780 But I've been hunting, you know, quite a few times.

01:11:28.940 Whatever you're looking for.

01:11:30.760 Any dark spot in the woods.

01:11:33.560 Oh, wait, is that?

01:11:35.140 No, wait, is?

01:11:36.760 But I heard something.

01:11:37.480 Look over there.

01:11:38.460 Look, that stump.

01:11:39.640 Look, that shadow.

01:11:41.000 Look, there it is.

01:11:42.000 There's a moose over there.

01:11:42.840 There's a moose over there.

01:11:43.740 There's a moose.

01:11:44.460 Until, oh, wow, there's a moose right there. 1.00

01:11:48.220 How could I have been so stupid this whole time? 1.00

01:11:52.480 It, you know, smacks you in the face. 1.00

01:11:54.360 Hopefully not literally. 0.99

01:11:58.040 That's the same with religion, I found. 0.70

01:12:00.680 Certainly within Ausitru.

01:12:02.320 I would assume other faiths.

01:12:05.800 A lot of us go in with good faith saying that we believe in the gods.

01:12:09.960 and i think conceptually we want to believe and maybe academically we believe but there's something

01:12:17.800 very different when your whole world is shaken because your reality as you knew it is no longer

01:12:26.760 the same because our gods exist in a indescribably tangible way and those you haven't had that

01:12:37.160 happen yet it may not make a lot of sense does you who it has it does i don't know there's any

01:12:44.840 way to communicate it better other than to promise you it's a thing and when it is you

01:12:49.960 realize there's more to it so i say that to say this when you go um

01:12:58.440 when you go into being a gothy or gifia whatever case may be

01:13:03.560 it is about putting on a performance that you think is going to impress the people who are there

01:13:12.720 and hopefully impress the gods but once you are doing it and you know that our gods are there

01:13:21.420 and you felt it it's very much about building that connection facility i say building and that's true

01:13:31.700 That'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.

01:13:48.540 and for example this last weekend and I you know I didn't phone it in or anything I think we all

01:13:56.800 all once you've had that moment you always think that every bloat you do should be better

01:14:03.320 because these are the gods of our folk they always deserve better there is no way to do

01:14:10.460 good enough to what they deserve so I'm out there and I did bloat to fray this last weekend and you

01:14:17.240 know in my head man i wonder if this is good i hope this is good enough i hope this is you know

01:14:24.620 i hope i didn't mess up there's all this responsibility and i want to always feel that

01:14:30.220 i don't want there to ever be a time that i don't worry that i'm not trying hard enough

01:14:38.460 victory never sleeps you don't rest on your laurels you always try to do more but so anyways

01:14:45.120 you know i'm like man i hope i did good enough and and whatever and i had people coming up and

01:14:52.200 being like no i felt it i felt prayer in the circle i felt that made the everything to me

01:14:59.000 because it's not about my performance it's about is the bloat we offered something our one of our

01:15:05.540 gods approved of and by that approval blessed the people who were there and if you can be part of

01:15:14.720 that that's that's everything but i say all that again i warned you i said i was going to be long

01:15:21.860 winded on this one and i am that's only a part of it that's such time wise that is such a small

01:15:29.300 fraction of what being a gothi is about the vast majority of time spent doing the work of a gothi

01:15:39.300 or agithia is about counseling our folk it's about working with people and helping them go through

01:15:46.420 things and not not necessarily spiritual questions usually those are relatively easy and kind of fun

01:15:59.380 to go through but it's about hey you know my mom died what do i do with this how do where does she

01:16:08.100 go 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

01:16:15.300 i do hey my wife died or a child passed away or a brother or a friend committed suicide

01:16:24.260 or hey my wife left me or i have a terminal disease or and all of these things are

01:16:32.260 actual things that I've been through or uh I say been through that I've counseled people through

01:16:39.340 um or

01:16:41.260 you find people at the very very worst days of their life and you're trying to help those people

01:16:51.880 and it's a lot and there's nothing I would rather do I am so blessed to be in a spot where I get to

01:16:58.240 to do that but it's a really heavy burden and it's something really serious so when we have

01:17:05.260 somebody now that wants to step forward as a goat here to get you they really have to be made of

01:17:12.100 some some solid stuff for our folk and our gods because it takes a toll it is the most rewarding

01:17:18.820 thing I could possibly imagine but it is also one of the heaviest responsibilities I can imagine too

01:17:28.240 so don't know if that affects the question or not but i think it was worth being said

01:17:36.480 um all right so kevin t says what are your guys views on the bhagavad-gita and the aryan priestess

01:17:45.360 savitri debbie do you believe that even though she was influenced by hinduism

01:17:50.560 her points slash books are still relevant um

01:17:59.200 Heather, do you have any thoughts and feelings on Savitri Devi or the Bhagavad Gita that

01:18:04.380 you would like to share with folks?

01:18:06.560 I do not.

01:18:09.340 Fair enough.

01:18:10.160 So I will say this as far as relevance goes.

01:18:14.420 Those two topics are obviously within our circles and tangentially related.

01:18:24.440 to the question of relevancy no i don't think either are particularly relevant i think the

01:18:34.740 bhagavad gita can be but i will admit this it is so inaccessible to me because all of the points

01:18:43.040 of reference are so foreign and so distant i understand all of the academic arguments on why

01:18:49.680 it's valuable and i don't in any way disrespect it or claim that it's not

01:18:56.560 but it is told through such a unfamiliar lens that it's very very hard to relate to

01:19:03.440 and i'll say this so a couple of things

01:19:08.960 i don't pretend that i've read every work of savitri debbie but i've read um several

01:19:16.880 I really like her I really like her writings

01:19:22.760 they're very very specific to a specific time a specific place and to her experience in

01:19:37.660 the time and place that she lived and so I think they're fascinating I really enjoy

01:19:46.260 them and i have a tremendous amount of respect for her i don't and i could be wrong here so

01:19:53.140 please don't if if i i don't intend to misrepresent anything i don't have any reason to believe she's

01:20:00.740 actually a priestess of anything or ever took any kind of ordination or vows of becoming a priestess

01:20:08.820 in anything i think that's more of an honorific that's given to her and

01:20:17.700 yeah i would be very glad to to meet her it would be really cool to meet and discuss

01:20:25.060 things with her beyond the veil when i get there um again i really enjoy her writings i really

01:20:32.660 enjoy her but i don't think that what she was offering touches on also true in a direct way

01:20:42.260 i don't think it's particularly relevant to stuff at 2024 and what we're trying to do

01:20:51.780 i think it's very interesting and i think it's you know not taking anything away from it but

01:20:58.260 it's trapped in a really specific moment in time and i don't like i said i enjoy it and i think

01:21:07.460 that it's relevant in the sense that it informs our understanding of history or how a lens in

01:21:14.740 which we view the world and i think that's good but i don't think it's you know so it's certainly

01:21:21.220 non-essential what we're doing moving forward but like i said big fan not taking anything away from

01:21:27.620 it i just don't it's not an overtly also true forward text um olivia heather which of your

01:21:38.900 ancestors do you feel most similar to and what characteristics make you all so alike

01:21:47.860 how do you honor that ancestor

01:21:49.540 So I would say my grandmother, Minnie Leneve, she's much different than me in a lot of ways.

01:22:04.320 She was a very tough woman. My uncle used to call her old iron britches. So she was a way tougher 0.98

01:22:15.480 a woman than I was but that I am but um she taught me how to do so much for myself um

01:22:27.400 as she raised me for a lot of my life um we worked fields she had a restaurant that she opened for

01:22:35.720 breakfast and lunch and then we'd come home and work in fields like 30 acres of fields and um

01:22:43.320 um canned food and we never went to the store to buy anything but meat um

01:22:50.240 she she just really was amazing like the things this woman could do in one day 0.95

01:23:00.760 reminds me of witten callahan kind of now that i think about it um she could accomplish so much 1.00

01:23:09.020 she wanted a story they told at her funeral was she wanted a boat and my grandfather wouldn't buy 0.84

01:23:15.960 her a boat so they lived in Florida on the coast and she built a boat and then my grandpa wouldn't

01:23:26.480 pull it to the ocean so she cut down trees and rolled her boat into the ocean um so I like to

01:23:35.920 think the small things that I overcome in my life are because of the big things she overcame in hers

01:23:41.940 but I do honor her the most. When she passed away I got flowers out of her yard and I

01:23:54.020 have them at my house and when I get down or when I get where I just need somebody to tell me I'm

01:24:02.620 doing good, I talked to my flowers. And they hadn't bloomed in like 10 years. I just had these green

01:24:10.960 flowers that never had flowers on them for like 10 years. And about two, three years ago, I started

01:24:20.000 going out there and talking to them. And every year since, I would ask her, you know, show me

01:24:28.020 you're proud of me or you know things that you would say and they started blooming so

01:24:36.980 that's my grandma that's my hero she was my everything um

01:24:45.060 and if i'm half of what she was i'll i'll be happy

01:24:48.580 so also to heather how are your gothar studies going and what is your first goal as a githia

01:25:08.980 um my gothar studies are going um

01:25:12.900 Um, 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. 1.00

01:25:41.320 My 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.

01:26:01.720 I understand. I hope that you never stop being at least a little bit scared of doing them.

01:26:15.220 Cody asks, with the difficulties surrounding the founding of Thorshaw,

01:26:21.400 what are some of the biggest lessons you learned?

01:26:26.360 um i would say the biggest lessons you can learn from a situation like that is not to judge

01:26:35.240 everybody you tend to get in it people in general tend to get in a negative state of mind um

01:26:43.840 a witness fund came actually to my husband after that kindred left and asked my husband

01:26:53.940 if he would help with Thor's hogs and um if you usually if you ask my husband I'm right there with 0.97

01:27:02.960 him so I took it as he asked me to even though he did not so just don't let it turn you negative 0.97

01:27:12.440 don't let it make you bitter I mean if we would have let that one incident

01:27:21.680 taint our lives. We would probably be doing ritual in our backyard still, not at Thor's

01:27:30.860 Hof, enjoying the beautiful Hof that we have and the beautiful folk that we have there

01:27:36.840 and have the friendship with Witten Svahn and his family that we have. You just don't

01:27:45.260 let one person make you think about everybody in one way. Always keep your mind open and

01:27:55.180 positive.

01:28:08.340 And kind of a note on that.

01:28:12.880 Our first three Hoffs had that same kind of experience.

01:28:18.140 It displayed a little bit different in a little bit different ways,

01:28:21.900 But 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.

01:28:35.720 the first group of people who were so gung-ho to establish them

01:28:51.260 turned out to not be

01:28:53.120 worth it once it happened um once it happened they all of a sudden had second thoughts when

01:29:01.900 became real like i mentioned earlier so it's not an uncommon thing and it's uh worked out really

01:29:09.980 well in all circumstances so the next question faith informed politics is greater than

01:29:21.740 politic informed by faith why is this so important

01:29:26.460 a number of reasons but i think that the key reason is that faith is fundamental and it's

01:29:40.620 internal or it's eternal rather um your religion always exists is always

01:29:49.740 just as valuable and just as relevant politics is invariably a function of circumstance

01:30:02.340 politics depends on where you live and when you live and what issues affect where you're at

01:30:12.000 and how that works um the same person with the same core beliefs same core values same religious

01:30:22.920 values would have very different politics at different times in their own country certainly

01:30:32.160 different times historically absolutely different times depending upon where they lived

01:30:39.060 the realities of the time present different choices different circumstances

01:30:46.420 are everything but your faith is is eternal the values that your faith gives you

01:30:53.700 should certainly inform your politics and help you structure how you address political issues

01:31:00.260 based on your core values but those things don't change the expression of them changes

01:31:07.460 and that has a lot to do with politics and your situation but the guiding principles and values

01:31:13.620 don't change um the other thing is you can see political choices through religious lenses based

01:31:27.380 on religious principles based on the things that you know to be right by your gods and your folk

01:31:34.260 book that's very valuable in informing how you make political decisions or engage in politics

01:31:41.940 depending on your circumstance but you can't really build a sincere faith off of politics

01:31:52.620 now some people come to our faith through political ideologies and that's fine a lot

01:31:59.580 people come to our faith for a variety of things some people come to our faith through music some

01:32:05.940 people come to our faith through the Vikings TV show some people come to our faith from all kind

01:32:12.000 of different angles no shame in any of that um but if politics what we've seen a lot is people want

01:32:23.520 to add a special faith component to their politics so they pick ours because they need something

01:32:36.780 like I said that's a good place that's an okay place to start but that's not real

01:32:43.380 because you realize that religion is good so we kind of need a religion might as well pick this

01:32:48.360 that's not a real faith that's window dressing at its surface level developing a genuine belief

01:32:59.180 like I talked about earlier where you know our gods exist and they're watching and you devote

01:33:05.900 yourself to be loyal to them and that's what Ausatru means it means loyalty to the Aesir

01:33:12.580 that's very very different and it allows you to be fluid in the situation that you're in

01:33:21.620 in the area you find yourself in and not tied to a political party that you don't necessarily

01:33:27.980 share all those things with it informs you in whatever your situation is wherever your politics

01:33:36.480 might be. And like I say, it's eternal. Your religion is useful to you no matter what country

01:33:43.660 you live in, no matter what time period you live in. Politics, not so much. Your identifying as a

01:33:52.240 Trump Republican would mean absolutely nothing if you lived in Mongolia in 1257. It would be

01:34:00.500 completely meaningless. You being also true, however, would mean a lot. From Monk, Matt,

01:34:11.320 is there a particular ritual for blessing in naming a sword for ritual? Yes, Monk, there

01:34:16.180 absolutely is. It is most similar to a baby naming. It's obviously a little bit different,

01:34:28.540 but that's the closest thing i'd liken it to we performed one for relentless at uh 0.98

01:34:36.460 sigger bloat last year at siggerheim um your sword that you donated to new york's hof

01:34:43.340 also had the same ceremony performed over it at new york's hof and if you reach out to trent he

01:34:50.300 can give you all the details on it there's absolutely a ceremony for naming a uh a weapon

01:34:57.820 and imbuing it with a fate and with gifts of the Nornar.

01:35:07.900 Finn Wraith asks, what happens if your kids grow up and decide they don't believe in the gods?

01:35:13.180 Would you still accept them? What say you, Heather?

01:35:16.940 I would say yes. I do have older children that are not also true. I would hope that

01:35:29.180 wouldn't happen with Lauren, but if it does, she is still my baby, so she will always be my baby.

01:35:38.780 oh yeah that's a

01:35:44.460 that's an interesting question and i think that every family kind of needs to define

01:35:53.500 the boundaries of that question for themselves um

01:35:57.660 kind of like Heather said I mean I it's different because in the generation we live in now quite

01:36:11.520 often we have people that come home to house a true after their kids are raised and are adults

01:36:18.300 or um maybe are significantly along in their upbringing so it's not like they have that

01:36:26.280 baked in in quite the same way I'd like to think in the future our children who are born into 0.99

01:36:35.280 Alcitru will be less likely to turn their back on it but the reality is I'm sure that's going 0.61

01:36:42.780 to happen for some people and children are often going to make choices that we don't approve of

01:36:51.060 Sometimes those choices have consequences that are harder to decouple from and come back to ausitry.

01:37:05.060 It'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.

01:37:16.760 At the end of the day, you're still their parent, and there's no real way to dissolve that relationship.

01:37:24.740 It's not a voluntary one.

01:37:26.260 It's a biological one.

01:37:32.180 Depending on choices made and situations people find themselves in,

01:37:37.100 it's very often a path back home for people that do go astray.

01:37:41.320 Think what you find in a lot of faiths.

01:37:43.760 I 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.

01:37:58.820 You 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.

01:38:21.640 and when life displays some realities in ways they didn't see 0.94

01:38:26.400 when they were young and full of hormones

01:38:28.700 and full of a lot of things that may distract you

01:38:33.680 from an accurate view of things.

01:38:39.220 So, you know, just what stuff they do

01:38:42.580 that's led them away from Alistair True

01:38:44.700 makes a big difference on that acceptance.

01:38:48.500 and like I said, the devils are really in the details

01:38:52.060 and it's something that every parent's going to have to figure out

01:38:55.560 where that line is, where too far is too far

01:38:58.920 or something there's no coming back from

01:39:00.940 and I think that's probably a little bit different

01:39:05.280 for each family and each circumstance.

01:39:10.960 Ryan O'Ryan Wilkinson asks,

01:39:13.760 next question uh there are vids in YouTubes about using swords similar to the Viking sword which

01:39:23.180 were used throughout Europe for self-defense at home do you think that's good maybe a bat won't

01:39:29.060 be enough um and I've seen a little bit of the chat on the side sometimes honesty isn't meant

01:39:41.480 insultively it's just keeping it real no that's silly and using a real modern weapon is much much

01:39:46.940 better um is it fun and interesting to learn how to use a viking sword absolutely if you

01:39:56.540 want to watch on YouTube and train and practice and learn how to do

01:40:02.180 sword fighting in an authentic way to

01:40:06.500 as a fun activity as a hobby as a living history thing as a ceremonial thing absolutely i think

01:40:19.080 that's great i think it'd be awesome like i'm not i'm not kidding with you we were both here

01:40:24.200 we both had swords and you want to practice watching some youtube videos i'm game for it

01:40:30.420 let's do it um i'm not making fun i don't think there's anything wrong with that

01:40:36.980 i've seen some of your arguments no a gun is much much better for home defense

01:40:42.980 and i don't think you get any special points in court for using strange and obscure weaponry

01:40:50.900 i think that makes you look eccentric and unbalanced and odd i don't think that gets

01:40:57.540 you sympathy from the court um so i don't see that at least not in the united states

01:41:04.980 maybe in other places it's different i don't know what this question looks like in a country to

01:41:11.460 where you don't have a right to keep and bear arms or maybe what this looks like to someone

01:41:17.860 who's lost that right they're a convicted felon other reasons i don't know but home defense

01:41:26.180 and sword play i don't think lend themselves well to one another and i i don't think that's

01:41:33.540 a really effective or reasonable thing to do if you want to do it i'm i'm all for you legally

01:41:39.700 defending yourself with whatever you have available um and and go for it if that makes

01:41:46.020 you happy and if that makes you better at defending yourself and your family um

01:41:51.700 and in states where it's legal to do so your home and property absolutely um but i don't think it's

01:41:58.820 most efficient way and i certainly don't advocate for that that said i'm looking at the wall right

01:42:04.260 now i have an axe somebody gave me at a uh afa um event i think at ostara what three years ago four

01:42:12.500 years ago it's really cool i like it it's awesome i have a german world war one era artillery saber

01:42:21.300 um i am heather's actually in possession of this but i am the owner of uh relentless the

01:42:30.340 ceremonial afa sword it is a um model 1840 cavalry saber um confederate use it's awesome

01:42:43.920 i love it i think it's great i've even thought of learning those larpy sword things for just

01:42:49.120 in case i could use it if i needed to so i mean you're not silly for thinking that but i don't

01:42:56.480 think that is the effective tool for home defense and i i think you're better served if that's your 0.89

01:43:03.200 real concern thinking about other options um okay so heather side question as a woman do you think 1.00

01:43:14.320 that that appeals to the ladies if you become an expert in viking sword fighting 1.00

01:43:22.080 um i guess it depends on the lady

01:43:27.360 you know if you went back in time if if daniel were proficient in viking era sword

01:43:33.360 play would that have been more or less likely to result in your family um

01:43:39.520 Probably 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.

01:43:55.260 Okay, 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?

01:44:09.520 Uh, I think it's, I have to look at my ancestry. It's a bunch of them.

01:44:18.160 Find that suspect.

01:44:20.740 I know. I'm pretty sure it's, um, I just started this job, so I'm sorry.

01:44:28.940 You're fine.

01:44:30.540 I know.

01:44:31.360 all right looks into this i will tell you that my ancestors are

01:44:40.080 my ancestors from america i my people most of my people have been here for hundreds of years

01:44:48.160 um certainly on my mom's side most of my my ancestors have been here since like the 1600s

01:44:54.960 um most of them come from england i have some ancestry from scotland i have uh

01:45:07.680 dna tests says i have some ancestry in the way back from southern scandinavia

01:45:13.680 as far as people that i know that came over mostly like i said from england

01:45:19.760 uh some scotsman through canada and into the united states eventually in the 1800s

01:45:26.000 and most recently in like the very early 1900s i have a swissman fritz charles montandon and his

01:45:36.800 wife who is a french woman sophie uh who came over separately i believe her marriage was

01:45:46.080 arranged in some way they came over separately in the early 1900s but like i said most of my

01:45:54.720 people have been here for a very long time but uh a lone frenchman and all of his ancestors

01:46:02.320 or i'm sorry uh swissman and his ancestors french lady and her ancestors and then the

01:46:09.200 vast majority from uh brookshiles specifically from england heather did you get the bottom of

01:46:16.880 that yeah i know my my grandma on my dad's side was polish but um i'm just english german and

01:46:29.360 and Scottish. There you go. Heather, which of the eyes here do you feel closest to?

01:46:48.360 I think I would say Frigga. 0.86

01:46:52.200 I've been a mom almost my whole life,

01:46:57.620 even to my younger sisters and brothers.

01:47:01.260 I had to take care of them at a young age.

01:47:03.620 So I've just always been the caregiver,

01:47:08.260 taking care of everybody, loving everybody,

01:47:10.600 and making sure everybody gets what they need. 0.93

01:47:15.340 So I think I would say Frigga.

01:47:21.500 From the Wolf Throne, several questions, but all related. 0.97

01:47:30.820 What is the earliest known origin in history for the existence of white people?

01:47:38.280 and would that be the indo-europeans or the pontic caspians um

01:47:47.660 i don't want to misspeak because the deep are just so

01:48:08.600 so this is what happens when people ask me what are your five favorite movies

01:48:13.480 i go into an infinite analysis of all the movies i've ever watched and which is the exact top five

01:48:22.680 so the question you asked is about history history as i understand it implies the existence of writing

01:48:31.480 um archaeologically and historically is a slightly different question in academic circles so I think

01:48:41.860 I'm overthinking your question in the broadest most you know what's our earliest reason to

01:48:55.480 believe about white folks I tend to believe in a hyperborean origin I think that's attested to

01:49:06.700 in the ancient Indian scriptures it certainly obviously permeates Germanic and Nordic writings

01:49:18.280 about our origin but that's a little unfair because that's the most northerly group of

01:49:23.680 people but we also see it in a book called arctic homeland in the vetas by baltelak and so i believe

01:49:36.520 in a far northern orientation i think polar might overstate it as far as an origin thing

01:49:49.760 as far as the oldest like written account or archaeological evidence of white people

01:49:59.520 i don't know there are people that are far more down that rabbit hole than i am as far as the

01:50:07.840 intricacies of the archaeology historically with writing i believe

01:50:14.560 are descendant civilizations for the indo-europeans but again when you go back to

01:50:27.060 actual writing of those people it's always you know the proto-indo-european language is

01:50:34.200 is speculative or guessed at from fragments and things so

01:50:45.800 the first emergence of writing amongst white folks is going to be hard there's a lot of them

01:50:53.320 that were very very early but exactly where and with the pontic and caspian areas i know

01:51:03.160 that some of the early migration went down there as i said this is no reflection of current modern

01:51:09.480 populations in asia and the middle east but you know you have people hearkening back to their

01:51:17.880 aryan origins very early on that's obviously the most ancient calling card of iranian people

01:51:26.680 was that they're the land of the arians just like you see the irish also ireland meaning

01:51:32.760 land of the arians so you see that ancient arian current reflected in some very old population

01:51:42.040 groups but also you see what's called um the old european cultures are also white people

01:51:53.480 and they exist simultaneous with and perhaps pre-indo-european like aryan migration peoples

01:52:02.840 so you have kind of a spreading out of ancient white people in the ice age

01:52:11.960 ice age receding and progressing time so it's really hard when you get that far back into

01:52:19.480 history and i think discoveries are made often enough there that it changes if you're talking

01:52:25.000 about the archaeology if you're talking about the written history i'm sure there are people

01:52:30.040 out there a little bit more educated than i am on it i try to be on top of it and i will try to bone

01:52:35.800 up i feel bad not being able to give you a little bit better analysis than that was the best i got

01:52:41.560 at this point um oh there was more to the question okay cool there's more questions i'm sorry this

01:52:50.280 got separated by two different posts from producer nick and it is my fault i did not read them all

01:52:56.840 uh where did we come from before that do we know where would you place hyperborea in our history

01:53:04.520 and did we move from the north in yeah cool i think i hit those i think i didn't know those

01:53:10.200 were the questions but i hit those i do think we have a

01:53:16.440 very far northerly origin point i think you see that in some of the myth cycles i think you see

01:53:24.600 that in some of the imagery and like i mentioned arctic home in the venice is very convincing to me

01:53:31.960 me um so yeah I think that hyperborea might be polar or thereabouts but I don't hold hard

01:53:46.840 to that it's not a firm tenant of my faith it's just kind of a theory that I find really appealing

01:53:51.940 that I like.

01:53:56.400 Yes, that's the best I got.

01:53:58.480 Heather, do you have any

01:53:59.160 thoughts on that?

01:54:02.000 Is it something you have pondered?

01:54:03.940 This is a Rob Stamm question.

01:54:07.200 Fair enough.

01:54:18.160 So

01:54:18.840 Trent knows better.

01:54:20.140 uh trent asks all's hurry i was here you go see what's your proudest achievement

01:54:25.100 in your almost eight years leading the astrofoil assembly

01:54:29.820 again when you ask what is the most then i start balancing all these things and doing ridiculous

01:54:40.300 calculations in my head and needless nonsense um up there

01:54:50.140 quite a few and from different reasons so here is an assortment I don't think I can give you

01:55:00.160 one that's the proudest the question skews towards like in and out of true capacity but

01:55:11.680 in those eight years i'd be remiss if i didn't mention

01:55:18.700 um

01:55:19.680 marrying mandy in 2017

01:55:25.200 um the birth of my daughter in uh 2020

01:55:31.800 each of our Hoffs when we got those

01:55:41.680 this I am taking a moment on it it's all of us it certainly wasn't just a me thing on any of the

01:55:53.420 hoffs um and i don't want to i don't want to diminish anybody else's contribution or

01:56:05.900 self-aggrandizing more than you know is what it is you ask me what i was proud of you know in a way

01:56:17.980 and it's different in each of them thor's office special because it was my first one that i

01:56:22.380 proved like i can do this and that's not about me being a badass that's about

01:56:30.940 at that time especially it's about me proving being worthy of being in the big chair on it

01:56:38.860 you know can i bring this to our folk and our gods so that was huge for me um but with

01:56:45.980 all three of the hoffs that we've gotten under under my leadership

01:56:54.620 on behalf of the afa being able to because it's what we do at a dedication to be able to formally

01:57:05.260 gift our gods

01:57:09.260 their very first temple in a thousand years

01:57:15.980 I'm tremendously proud to have been able to be in that position and to do that.

01:57:32.620 I was very, very proud this last December to, because I've planned this for a long time.

01:57:43.680 um the statues of steve and sheila i

01:57:51.200 wanted them for forever i remember um

01:57:57.200 talked about them before i was anything special in the afa wanting that wishing that we had that

01:58:04.560 um I remember talking to our law speaker the weekend of my wedding so Mandy and I got married

01:58:15.360 in 2017 uh at Odenshoff and we did the Sunday following our midsummer that year

01:58:24.900 and uh law speaker Turnage came out he performed our wedding and he was out at the uh at the

01:58:32.760 summer and i remember talking to him then about getting a statue of steve and what that would

01:58:44.280 look like and looking into it and it seemed so very out of reach but it's something i really

01:58:48.200 wanted to do and i felt we needed to do um last

01:59:05.320 i don't know last spring sometime like march april may somewhere in there

01:59:10.280 I, after we, you know, short, a little while after we got Sigurheim, but shortly there,

01:59:19.340 I found a company that could do it at a price point we could do.

01:59:25.720 I started planning with them and trying to make that happen and try to keep it under wraps

01:59:31.380 and not let the McNallans know.

01:59:33.220 and uh took for getting custom-made statues done and ship around the world to us and whatever else

01:59:45.540 didn't take a long time but it took a long time compared to what the customer service told me it

01:59:50.580 might take so i spent a long time anticipating that and trying to keep it a secret and work

01:59:58.880 towards it and get it to happen and at yule being able to

02:00:09.360 present that as a gift to steve and sheila

02:00:16.560 and to get the phone call after they watch the little video that um lydia phelps made for us

02:00:23.200 to hear their appreciation and their voice

02:00:31.920 of doing that i was very proud to be able to offer that to them on behalf of the austral folk

02:00:38.000 assembly um very very proud of that because i think it really touched them in a way that

02:00:47.040 maybe other things hadn't in the same way and that was really special and

02:00:53.200 the phone call conversation i had with them

02:00:57.440 about that was very i was very very proud to be able to do that

02:01:04.960 um wolf throne do afa members often say scowl when toasting um sometimes

02:01:13.840 Sometimes. I don't think it's a thing that happens disproportionately, but sometimes.

02:01:29.640 So Kevin T asks a really good question.

02:01:35.440 um can a local group of people who want to join the AFA integrate their group into something like

02:01:46.180 a kindred uh yes absolutely um the exact details of how that would work would depend

02:01:54.040 on some of the circumstances but yes certainly um like I said the particulars matter I'd love

02:02:02.380 that conversation if you've got a group of people that would like to join let's make it happen um

02:02:09.340 but yeah i imagine that's how it would work and we'd be very eager for something like that to happen

02:02:16.460 and that actually did happen with a couple of groups when we first started our kindred program

02:02:21.740 that's been a long time from a long time ago but yeah i'd say yes to that

02:02:26.700 question to matt as an ex-jobs witness my family is still active how did you leave your congregation

02:02:36.540 and open up to telling your family your new spiritual path and do they still talk to you

02:02:43.320 so alexis it's an inch or yeah it's an interesting question um

02:02:48.660 um so it wasn't as though my parents were because that would be a little bit different and more

02:02:59.220 complex was my aunt I was raised by my mom and my dad without in real religiosity um generically we

02:03:11.160 were Protestant Christians of some sort I suppose because you have to put something down

02:03:18.660 none of them went to church it wasn't a part of my life at all but my aunt and my cousins were very

02:03:26.100 very same my cousins they were kids but my aunt was very devoutly a jehovah's witness and so

02:03:37.860 remember around 1995 my grandfather passed and i had a lot of you know i always felt like i was

02:03:44.660 a spiritual person but i didn't have any expression to that 95 i was in eighth grade and i

02:03:52.180 you know didn't really know where to turn or what to do my family wasn't very religious and there

02:03:58.020 wasn't really much to offer there so independently i started reading my bible and i read it all the

02:04:04.740 way through and ended up doing that a couple of times my aunt was a very devout jehovah's witness

02:04:10.980 and it seemed at the time to me they were the christians that were most familiar with their

02:04:16.660 bibles the most strictly biblical in how they did things and so i started attending stuff with

02:04:28.020 her and with my cousins and going to the kingdom hall and eventually got baptized when i was 18.

02:04:35.220 um and i still am very thankful for that like i'm very thankful that they kept it completely

02:04:45.340 jewish in their expression of christianity because it it separated things all of the

02:04:54.660 things that they're against doing that other christians do or the vast majority of those 0.74

02:04:59.940 things are the elements of our faith that christianity co-opted when they um

02:05:08.260 converted the tribes of europe so i got to see like the fun christianity and the cool christianity

02:05:15.380 and the christianity that really resonated with me was all pagan stuff that was bad

02:05:23.300 and the good christianity you know in the air quotes the good christianity was all 0.81

02:05:30.080 a very jewish practice that was very foreign to me and my values

02:05:35.840 and eventually when i finally had a hard break it wasn't for alsatru because i didn't know

02:05:42.920 alsatru was a living thing that existed it didn't even occur to me but i finally

02:05:48.460 i wanted to be honest and if jehovah is the all-powerful god of all the things and he knows

02:05:57.380 our thoughts and whatever i don't want to try to be dishonest with him about who i am and what i

02:06:04.560 believe and from really trying hard to study my bible he was a bad person and i didn't want to

02:06:15.600 on his team it was scary and then when i realized okay well what did our people have before this

02:06:23.360 because you know we had stuff i i knew my history i knew that was the thing i looked into it and i

02:06:29.760 found the afa and i know that wasn't really your question so when i did that it was a little bit

02:06:36.080 different being as how i didn't live with my aunt or my cousin and they weren't my most direct

02:06:43.440 family lake but no ever since i was disfellowshipped for rejecting jehovah and being a

02:06:54.000 jehovah's witness they don't talk to me at all um one of my cousins has talked to me a little

02:07:02.320 bit we used to be very close we weren't for you know a while we still aren't but he talked to me

02:07:07.760 a little bit when my mom was going through some struggles but he wasn't a jehovah's witness his

02:07:12.720 family some of his mom and some of the siblings were uh the ones that are still jehovah's witnesses

02:07:20.960 no i don't think they've talked to me ever since then even once

02:07:30.640 and i say that i haven't reached out to talk to them a lot and had it rejected

02:07:35.360 a little bit with my cousin scott me and scott used to be really close

02:07:39.360 um but no it was a it was a hard break with people who were very very close to me for a lot

02:07:46.880 of years of my formative years i'd say with my cousins man since i was like seven or eight we

02:07:54.720 were together often like several several times per year spending weeks and months together

02:08:02.800 until until I was 20 or so let's say 20 or so I was like 18 19 maybe maybe 20 you know I'll go to

02:08:14.660 20 until I was about 20 so yeah that was really hard and I still think about it sometimes I care

02:08:21.700 about my cousins I ironically during that time my cousin Scott made a friendship with another friend

02:08:29.780 of mine from high school so i kind of vicariously try to ask about him and see how he's doing or i'll

02:08:37.220 ask my dad or other family members you know to check on some of my cousins and wonder how they're

02:08:41.700 doing and keep up with them a little bit um but that was really hard um you know how did i leave 0.73

02:08:51.300 the congregation a couple of things i i didn't do this on purpose and it sounds kind of chicken crap

02:08:59.380 from a distance but it it was i went through a couple of things my uncle

02:09:09.460 so i was living all right when i was most active participating with children's witnesses i was

02:09:15.380 part of a congregation in fairbanks i'd grown up my mom and uh and i'd lived in in anchorage

02:09:23.060 and to go to college briefly and i didn't graduate but to go to college really briefly

02:09:27.860 i went up to the university of alaska fairbanks and i lived with my uh aunt my cousins for a

02:09:34.260 short time up there you know maybe about a year or so um during that time that we had a family

02:09:41.060 emergency at home my uncle had passed away he ended up uh ended up drinking himself to death

02:09:48.100 unfortunately and my mom was down there all by herself trying to deal with it so i had to go home

02:09:52.900 and once I got down there I never really went back and while I was down there when I first got

02:10:02.360 there I tried to go to a congregation in Anchorage but relatively quickly going through things it

02:10:09.660 really got me to thinking a bit more and so I while I was down there and going through some

02:10:19.540 other stuff i i ended up making some decisions about the trajectory of my life and i never went

02:10:26.260 back and i started down the road towards us so it wasn't like i it was a little bit different i had

02:10:34.180 the convenience of distance to make a little bit of that initial separation um but no it was really

02:10:41.220 hard and the separation from kin is really difficult that was one of the most the harshest curses of

02:10:49.380 our ancestors was for someone to be separated from kin or for there to be strife amongst kinsmen

02:10:55.940 because there's no win on that you guys are on the same team so anything you would do to hurt

02:11:01.540 one another just collectively hurts your team there's no recompense there's no making it right

02:11:08.100 striking strife amongst kinsmen is is bad and it's one of those bads that's not really fixable

02:11:15.620 all right so also from the wolf throne have you heard of the right-wing music genre

02:11:23.700 rock against communism and national socialist black metal yes i have i don't like that kind

02:11:32.500 of music it's not even a reference to the politics i just i don't like just loud hard

02:11:39.700 poor vocal screaming i hate that i hate punk so much of the national socialist black metal that

02:11:48.580 i've heard is like punk music with really bad vocals and i don't like that i like pretty vocals

02:11:56.760 um i like to sing along with music i'm a lyrics guy and not like a instrumentals guy so much

02:12:05.480 so i really like to be able to sing along with my music and that's just not my not my genre

02:12:13.240 heather are you aware of those types of music what's your thoughts i am not my husband probably

02:12:20.520 is but i do not know yeah it's kind of a niche uh niche genre um

02:12:29.880 Um, but yeah, it was just not, not my thing.

02:12:35.680 Cody asks, is there a bloat and or sumble that really stuck with you?

02:12:42.120 Heather, is there a bloat or sumble that really stuck with you?

02:12:46.160 I would say, I know Daniel spoke about this a million times, but our very first event

02:12:52.500 was Ostara.

02:12:54.720 I think it was North Carolina.

02:12:56.160 Yeah. 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.

02:13:18.060 Even our son, our oldest son was there and he was like, holy crap.

02:13:31.060 But yeah, I think that's the first time.

02:13:35.120 I mean, I had been to other, you know, bloats or whatever with the kindred we were with.

02:13:40.660 But I think that's the first time I was in bloat and actually everything was real.

02:13:48.060 Like, I actually felt the gods.

02:13:53.120 I felt like I was where I was supposed to be.

02:13:55.880 I 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. 0.93

02:14:05.380 We had always tried to fit ourselves into places, and it was like we were a square trying to put ourselves in a circle. 0.81

02:14:12.340 And when Matt did that Thor bloat that night, it was like, oh, we fit.

02:14:21.680 We're a circle going into a circle hole.

02:14:24.140 We're not a square trying to show ourselves into a circle.

02:14:32.400 You guys have heard mine lots.

02:14:36.440 I talked a lot about the de-seared blood at winter nights where I had that interaction with my grandmother.

02:14:50.520 The 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.

02:15:06.440 I'm trying to think into the way back because I've been doing this a long time.

02:15:19.340 There's a number of rituals that stand out for a lot of different reasons.

02:15:27.180 Trying to think of the ways that stick out for something really good or something really special.

02:15:34.320 There have been – we just had a bloat or a sumble, so we'll keep it at that.

02:15:41.320 I've been at a really cool bloat.

02:15:53.320 actually might have been at the high symbol where we had

02:16:02.600 wolf callbacks now we cheated we were at a wolf preserve in southern california but it was really

02:16:11.920 cool to when we'd hail something or we'd do that might have been a bloat i'm trying to even remember

02:16:18.540 But the cool thing was the wolf callbacks, what we do in Alaska.

02:16:23.920 I 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.

02:16:35.520 But that was really kind of cool and special.

02:16:38.060 I remember once we were doing a Yule bloat in Palmer, Alaska, 35 miles north of Anchorage or so, and we had this raging bonfire.

02:17:00.960 It was amazing. It was the best bonfire we ever had in a bloat.

02:17:03.980 it was 10 pallets i think 10 pallet bonfire but we'd carved the ritual circle with a snow

02:17:14.220 snowblower out of the snow because it was probably four foot of snow around so we carved it out in

02:17:20.780 the yard with this snowblower set up this 10 pallet fire in there and we had a just spectacular

02:17:30.460 yule lock made out of hay bales that we were going to offer and so we had it and it was you know

02:17:40.620 i don't know 10 10 feet or so away from the fire but the fire was so hot

02:17:52.540 but everything else it was probably negative 30 out

02:17:55.580 so during the bloat we were spinning around because our front would be so scalding hot

02:18:06.620 but our backside would just be almost frostbitten so we would like rotisserie ourselves

02:18:15.460 on our own little axis during this and right at the point in blow and i was conducting blow

02:18:26.820 right at the point in blow where we were going to offer the yulebach

02:18:35.140 like at that second when i was like and we offer you this yulebach and i went to grab it

02:18:41.220 it immediately hit its smoke point and burst into flames and it was so cool at the time and this is

02:18:50.820 in you know it's pitch black in out of the city in alaska so there's no light interference

02:18:58.180 it's the fire in the sky and you can see forever and this raging bonfire we're surrounded by four

02:19:04.900 foot of snow and boom it all uh burst into flames it was it was spectacular

02:19:14.260 that sticks with me i remember that one a lot

02:19:18.500 um yeah there's tons i remember those ones really stand out and are special um

02:19:27.220 Finn Wraith asks have you visited the countries your ancestors are from and if not have you

02:19:38.200 considered going there in the future Heather have you ever been to Europe and have you or

02:19:45.700 Daniel ever talked about going over there and visiting some of you guys ancestral homelands

02:19:50.560 we have talked about um he wants to go to germany one day and i want to go to ireland um

02:20:05.060 but i don't know if we'll ever go i mean it's a dream we may one day when we get old

02:20:13.260 right now i don't think it's feasible

02:20:16.880 well, fair enough.

02:20:37.240 So, okay.

02:20:40.680 Yes, sort of.

02:20:42.840 so i mentioned before no i've never been to france and i've never been to switzerland

02:20:48.520 never been to scotland i have been to england and the time i went it wasn't specifically to

02:20:55.320 any location that a specific ancestor came from but i did get to go to england and that was really

02:21:02.200 cool and special generally just knowing migratory patterns and stuff i think it counts the time

02:21:11.960 that i have been fortunate enough to go to uh to norway and sweden denmark and germany i know that

02:21:21.800 many of my ancestors were there at one point in different ways in different places

02:21:29.080 i've been so very lucky and blessed to go to those places

02:21:34.600 i have very specifically been to parts of the united states that my ancestors were from

02:21:41.960 and visited their graves and that's been really special um most it's not fair okay so it is fair

02:21:52.600 most of my mom's uh ancestors during the time they've been in the united states were all

02:22:01.960 coalesced around a small area in mississippi that they were there from 1812 onward

02:22:08.280 they moved from the carolinas helped cut the road into new orleans to get munitions and stuff to new

02:22:17.540 orleans for the battle of new orleans and kind of stopped and made a home in bond and stone

02:22:26.220 counties mississippi which is you know kind of southern southern mississippi and that was kind

02:22:34.000 where they were for about a hundred and I don't know a lot of them some of them still are today

02:22:42.520 you know I still have a great aunt that lives there today and never left it was part of that

02:22:50.320 I've been back there to that part of Mississippi a number of times you know once as an adult I

02:22:58.400 would plan on doing more when I moved to Sigerheim because that's a really special place where a

02:23:03.240 whole lot of my ancestors buried and that's very special um what else we got

02:23:18.760 heather how did you find ausitru when did it all start to make

02:23:22.920 sense that it was the natural slash correct way

02:23:26.520 well i found also true um actually daniel my husband found also true um we were studying

02:23:40.780 with the jehovah witness and they said the soul was in the blood so daniel started tracing his

02:23:46.980 blood which led him to the afa um through his ancestors um then daniel and lauren my youngest

02:24:04.580 started learning aussitrew and i picked on them about learning aussitrew

02:24:10.420 told them they were gonna wear the you know the metal helmets and the capes and rob the neighbors

02:24:15.620 i mean i was the worst of the worst and then daniel finally reached out to a folk builder

02:24:22.740 in the afa to meet up with them to um

02:24:29.700 our daughter wanted to have more people like us or stop doing it so

02:24:36.660 they said that they could come in and uh join them for i want to say it was charming the plow

02:24:44.260 but i may be wrong um and then i told daniel he wasn't taking our daughter without me

02:24:51.300 so i went and when we pulled out of that particular house i joined the afa not because

02:24:57.860 i knew what the afa was like as a religion but the way the people treated me at that event um

02:25:09.460 they didn't get aggravated when i had to ask questions because i didn't know

02:25:13.220 anything like literally nothing um there was one fellow he sat there he's still a friend

02:25:19.940 a good friend of ours he sat there and literally explained everything to me

02:25:26.100 at the most like 101 level you could possibly get and and never got aggravated when i was like

02:25:33.780 i still don't get it um and then the more i learned like i said it was it wasn't

02:25:43.220 too long i don't remember how long it was when uh we joined uh we went to the ostara in north

02:25:52.440 carolina and i went and to that bloat that matt did and that's when i actually knew i was in the

02:26:02.460 right spot um i always felt like i fit fit here but once i felt the gods then i knew i fit here

02:26:10.380 all right um and heather did you have a serious or a similar experience with also true affecting

02:26:29.660 your family as matt has i think that's hearkening back to the jehovah's witness question um we do not

02:26:38.140 that problem um daniel's mother is um jehovah witness but she has never been baptized so she

02:26:48.340 is what they call a student so if she was to get baptized then she would have to stop talking to us

02:26:56.340 um but um for whatever reason she will never take that next step so she just studies with them which

02:27:05.740 is like having a bible study you know every week and she goes to their church but um no we still

02:27:15.340 talk um his mom's a little different we still do holidays and things with her um and she does them

02:27:23.500 with us um she i think she just has a harder time of letting go of things so she's not a hundred

02:27:31.640 100%, like I said, baptized.

02:27:34.940 So none of his family turned on us.

02:27:41.680 All right.

02:27:43.140 Well, I appreciate you being here tonight, Heather.

02:27:48.040 Thank you very much for sharing of yourself this evening.

02:27:53.080 Thank you guys all for your questions.

02:27:55.300 We appreciate you.

02:27:56.300 I look forward to seeing you guys again next week on our 99th episode of Victory Never Sleeps. 0.57

02:28:04.960 Witten Svan will return, and we will go through and study the Harbarth Sliog.

02:28:12.040 So I look forward to that. It's going to be a good conversation.

02:28:15.880 We'll see you guys next week.

02:28:17.620 I hope those of you anywhere near Thorshof can make it out and celebrate May Day.

02:28:22.560 Until then, hail the Aesir, hail the folk, hail the AFA, and remember that victory never

02:28:30.760 sleeps.

02:28:52.560 We'll be right back.

02:29:22.560 We'll be right back.

02:29:52.560 Thank you.

02:30:22.560 Thank you.

02:30:52.560 Thank you.

02:31:22.560 Transcription by CastingWords

Asatru Folk Assembly - May 23, 2024

5⧸22⧸24 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 98 - Frithweaving

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