Asatru Folk Assembly - 5⧸27⧸26 Victory Never Sleeps, Ep 203 - Bumper Stickers, Elevator Speeches, and Chesterton's Fence

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00:02:30.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:03:00.000 Hello everyone. Welcome back to another exciting episode of Victory Never Sleeps. This is,

00:03:12.840 of course, our monthly Adulting with Alan episodes. We are joined by law speaker Alan

00:03:19.220 turnage. Glitch there, but yes, absolutely. Thank you for watching. I hope you continue

00:03:29.720 watching. Top of the show stuff. I hope everybody is excited for Midsommar coming up. Got Midsommar

00:03:42.940 at odenshoff uh that is the premiere event at odenshoff from june the 19th through the 21st

00:03:52.460 in brownsville california if you can make it out there please do i will be out there and i'll be

00:03:59.340 looking forward to seeing our odenshoff folk and uh meeting folk i may not be able or may not have

00:04:07.820 met yet so if you're if you watch the program you can make it here i would encourage you to do so

00:04:13.100 it's our august uh it's our oldest half and it is our longest standing

00:04:18.380 premiere event there should be amazing people there it's going to be a great time

00:04:23.740 you'll also get a chance to meet or reconvene with our founder steve mcdallin and his lovely wife

00:04:31.420 githya sheila mcdallin so it's always a good opportunity and like i said i am flying back

00:04:35.980 outliers to be with folks for midsummer but if you can't good news that same weekend at each of our

00:04:46.380 four other hoffs you have the opportunity to be there and celebrate midsummer with your folk so

00:04:51.740 i'd encourage you to do that if you find yourself within driving distance of murdoch minnesota

00:04:57.180 linden north carolina white springs florida or austintown ohio or of course like i mentioned

00:05:03.740 bridesville california love to see you guys there um other top of the show stuff

00:05:10.860 thank you all for being amazingly generous um

00:05:19.660 pillar of generosity matthew bean um favored us with a tremendous donation last week and we

00:05:27.020 really appreciate that that moved all of our endeavors forward amongst his total thirty two

00:05:36.140 thousand dollar donation to the astrophores we have one thousand that went towards our phrase

00:05:44.060 off payoff so what are we looking at towards the phrase off progress we have already paid fifty

00:05:50.540 thousand seven hundred and ninety seven dollars towards paying off that off we're doing fantastic

00:05:56.300 that's forty point six percent um that takes us to about one hundred dollars per member would pay

00:06:04.700 that off off today thank you everybody who's been generous if you want to donate runestone.org

00:06:11.180 slash donate and thank you to uh matthew bean for his tremendous generosity it's much much

00:06:17.100 appreciated also in that amazing um pouring out with generosity uh we have a thousand dollars

00:06:27.340 towards the pavilion at sickerhang what are we looking at on that so we're already 21.8 percent

00:06:35.900 of the way there um i can look at the deal but i think 38 dollars per member gets us there to

00:06:43.740 having that immediately just putting it in perspective um so yeah thank you everybody

00:06:49.580 who's been so generous we appreciate you guys um we have had three consecutive um

00:06:58.540 matching donation uh i guess endeavors put forth put forth by members to match funds

00:07:06.700 in that donation which is much appreciated you guys have really come through big for us

00:07:12.860 so thank you guys for that and like i said anybody who would like to contribute

00:07:19.820 brunestone.org donate kitchen thank you very much appreciate y'all a couple others who are

00:07:28.060 our stalwarts of generosity on the program and always start off our show with their generosity

00:07:34.540 gw farmsworth donated um 50 towards the pavilion thank you for that

00:07:42.860 Steven in Japan donated $10 towards paying off Rayshoff and $5 towards the Pavilion.

00:07:49.260 Thank you for that, Steven. We appreciate you.

00:07:51.960 And Gilbert Page donated $150 towards paying off Rayshoff.

00:07:55.940 Thank you, Gilbert.

00:07:57.560 Also, Jeffrey in Texas donated $10 towards the Pavilion and $10 to New York's office.

00:08:03.760 So thank you for that.

00:08:04.580 We appreciate all of you guys' generosity more than you realize.

00:08:08.220 with that Alan you have a variety of things it says bumper stickers elevator speeches and

00:08:19.200 Chesterton's fence so you have the floor thank you I I will try to tie all those topics together

00:08:32.160 in like a uniform hole as I sometimes manage to do the first question though

00:08:39.880 from my last show did you buy yourself a squatty potty yet no you should and you

00:08:57.280 know i i'm not a paid endorser but uh i am um there you go uh so anyway i'm a long time user

00:09:09.520 of spotify not of other stuff so anyhow um so to start with um bumper stickers right

00:09:17.200 um and it ties in with elevators elevator speeches in eventually in the long end up of

00:09:26.000 this diatribe but um certainly you know we've always described also true as the religion with

00:09:35.600 homework um and not so much so as it used to be i think when in a lot of times in the earlier days

00:09:45.520 um not me but many uh practitioners didn't feel like you were worthy

00:09:51.760 of being able to call on the gods unless you had read a bunch of the books

00:09:56.400 and had this complicated understanding of the lore

00:10:01.380 and the meaning of a lot of these stories and so forth.

00:10:05.500 I don't cotton to that particular viewpoint.

00:10:08.720 I think that if you are a European person

00:10:14.060 and call on the gods with sincerity,

00:10:17.380 then they will hear you and your ancestors will hear you. 0.53

00:10:20.420 So you don't have to dig into the stuff the way us Gothar do.

00:10:27.500 You don't have to have this complicated, intricate understanding the way some do.

00:10:34.520 But what does that have to do with bumper stickers?

00:10:38.240 It's the exact opposite of a bumper sticker.

00:10:41.100 But what it comes down to in a certain way is that one thing that I've heard fairly often

00:10:49.560 is that you don't really understand a topic unless you can explain it to a five-year-old

00:10:54.400 like Aubrey. So, and I think it's also true that complicated ideas can be distilled into a few

00:11:08.640 phrases, a few short phrases, and I wouldn't say trite phrases because that has a negative

00:11:17.260 connotation. Um, one of the friends of mine that I used to argue with about, um, politics and other

00:11:26.920 trivia, um, was markedly progressive about his ideology, um, which was not his only flaw. Um,

00:11:37.380 but, um, when we would, uh, have these discussions and I would throw a phrase at him and he'd say,

00:11:44.180 You know, that's just a bumper sticker. That's just bumper sticker philosophy. And yes, in some ways it is. You know, like if you believe in the Second Amendment, you can have a bumper sticker that says, my rights shall not be infringed straight out of the Second Amendment.

00:12:02.720 In case you didn't know that, or the now famous phrase from, publicized by the movie 300, Molan Levy, I'll probably pronounce them that, probably butchering the pronunciation, but, you know, come and take them.

00:12:23.260 And, you know, so, yes, there is a complicated, intricate understanding and historical precedent for those sorts of bumper sticker philosophies, but that doesn't make it any less meaningful or, you know, because when you cook it all down, that that's what it means.

00:12:45.040 I can defend myself. I have that right. And in many other things, that is true as well.

00:12:53.260 And, you know, it can even come down to our mottos.

00:13:01.600 It's about roots.

00:13:02.580 It's about coming home.

00:13:04.940 Osatru is the natural birthright of every European, every person of European descent. 0.95

00:13:12.940 And just because you live in Europe doesn't mean you're European.

00:13:15.860 And so the so those sorts of things can be distilled into a, you know, a little bit of short phrasing.

00:13:25.200 And one of my favorites is and I should display this bumper sticker.

00:13:29.240 I actually think about making some more.

00:13:32.000 But from the old prior iteration of the Austrian Alliance, back when they were folkish, they produced a bumper sticker that just says Odin lives. 0.62

00:13:41.720 and in those two short words that says so much you know our gods are alive our gods are with us

00:13:52.220 our ancestors are with us our traditions are alive and being revived by the austral folk assembly

00:13:59.660 and so we can distill that into a bumper sticker so you know that bumper sticker philosophy

00:14:06.460 believe me i will explain all the 862 books that i've read on the topic if you want to sit still

00:14:14.460 that long or you can just take me at my word odin lives and um a man should not travel far

00:14:22.760 on the road without his weapons because you never know when you need a spear to hand

00:14:26.240 so

00:14:30.660 that's basically the summary of all of that

00:14:35.240 it dovetails with the elevator speech

00:14:38.240 because

00:14:40.300 and

00:14:42.520 again especially

00:14:46.980 to people who have never heard of

00:14:49.700 or are unaware

00:14:53.820 that there is a pagan revival

00:14:56.120 coming on to our own folkways um you know they they should know that um and if sorry good yes

00:15:05.240 i was gonna say would now be the time to talk about bumper stickers before moving on or would

00:15:12.760 you like to do the whole bit first i'm sure go ahead i was gonna say it works nicely because um

00:15:21.000 We frequently have members reaching out about that, either that specifically or the idea

00:15:31.320 of sticker stickers.

00:15:35.240 There seems to be a thing about pamphleting with stickers, putting little stuff with a

00:15:42.620 phrase such as you mentioned, places.

00:15:47.420 There's straight up putting stickers on light posts and things, but there's also leaving

00:15:54.760 stuff in community, I'm not sure the right word will come up, with little cork boards

00:16:02.260 that just stick stuff into a gas station or whatever, or distributing little perhaps regular

00:16:12.620 stickers if not bumper stickers that way.

00:16:15.120 people are always asking about and i think a first point what do you feel is effective that way and

00:16:24.320 secondly what would you advise people to do so we are not littering or you know or um defacing stuff

00:16:34.000 Well, first of all, we have started working on some, and I know there are some things

00:16:48.160 that meet with the modern attention span, in other words, a couple or three sentences

00:16:56.120 of, um, of language that, um, meet with, uh, the, uh, meet with our mission. Um, and I think,

00:17:09.720 especially if coupled with, um, uh, St. Harold's image, the, um, especially if coupled with,

00:17:19.680 right, exactly, do right and fear none. Um, so the, but those are the, those are absolutely

00:17:24.560 the sorts of things that that would that would do well and would capture people's attention

00:17:29.620 and capture their imagination we are our deeds um you know those are those are definitely the

00:17:36.640 sorts of things that can um uh get people's attention um and i i would certainly i would

00:17:45.760 contribute toward uh you know a bumper sticker fund or toward getting uh some some vinyls

00:17:52.980 made up um you know all of those sorts of things um odin lives with our uh and all you know always

00:18:02.320 everywhere with our with the runestone um url um the uh you know all those sorts of phrases

00:18:12.640 definitely can capture people's attention um and one of the things that i know it is sort of out

00:18:19.720 the limit out on the edge where we looks like we like to be um you know white man find odin

00:18:27.880 you know that's the um you know that's certainly the sort of thing that would uh

00:18:33.560 get attention um and coupled especially and you know i love the trihorn logo i use it in my

00:18:44.680 meditation for in various ways um so i'm i'm definitely a fan of that people more recognize

00:18:52.280 the valk knot um or the raven banner so you know a mix of all of those sorts of things in a um you

00:18:59.960 know in a variety pack of um stickers and cards that we could hand out you know uh certainly

00:19:08.040 spectacular kinds of attention grabbing, um, um, stickering. And, and as we know, I am a,

00:19:21.540 I'm definitely an advocate of being a good citizen. Um, you know, so we don't want to just

00:19:27.920 put these things up willy nilly in a way that is defacing public property, but it would certainly

00:19:34.060 go well to, say, overlay some graffiti or some less desirable piece of propaganda that's

00:19:46.840 out there in the public space. I mean, you know, if, you know, Cardi B is out there,

00:19:53.920 maybe you could slap one of those on her. I don't want to insult her. I don't even know

00:20:01.320 really who that is. But you know what I mean. I mean, if somebody else has already put up some

00:20:06.660 stuff, you're not adding to the ugliness of the public arena. You are improving it. So those

00:20:15.680 sorts of things, absolutely. Having, you know, the little cards are also true AFA cards, you know,

00:20:23.000 Stick them in books at the New Age bookshop, if you can stand and go in there, which I used to be able to do.

00:20:34.280 Or like in the philosophy or history section at one of the big chain bookstores.

00:20:40.920 I've read all of those, so I have to order stuff from Amazon now or from Arctos.

00:20:45.400 But those are definitely the sorts of things that capture people's attention.

00:20:50.820 Two or three words, honor your folk, come home to your own faith.

00:21:00.820 Those are all definitely in that family,

00:21:03.740 and I would support having a variety of those available for sale or give anyway.

00:21:12.900 Excellent.

00:21:14.640 All right, didn't mean to distract.

00:21:16.700 Carry on about the elevator speeches.

00:21:18.400 that's okay um now i'm glad you reined me in because i uh tend to race pell mill um elevator

00:21:28.460 speech um for those not familiar with the concept the idea of the elevator speech is you know you

00:21:37.220 get on an elevator with somebody you press your floor and they notice your hammer or i mean you

00:21:43.380 know in the broader context it's about other things you know they see your shoes and you go

00:21:48.900 hey what's the story about those shoes but of course what we're talking about is they see your

00:21:54.100 hammer and you go hey is that an anchor you know or maybe they recognize what it is i've seen those

00:22:02.100 things around what is that and so you've got the time between floors two minutes three minutes to

00:22:11.620 blurb out

00:22:14.460 your

00:22:15.820 bumper sticker

00:22:17.840 about what

00:22:20.100 Austru is.

00:22:23.080 And so

00:22:24.180 I think, Matt, I think

00:22:26.220 it's a good idea if we bat some ideas around

00:22:28.440 about what that is.

00:22:31.480 I,

00:22:32.160 you know, my own particular

00:22:34.300 thing,

00:22:35.500 I like to say

00:22:38.680 also true

00:22:42.660 is the

00:22:44.340 naturally arising

00:22:46.980 tribal religion

00:22:49.100 of the European peoples

00:22:51.200 and if they're curious

00:22:57.440 like they may go

00:22:58.520 what are you talking about

00:22:59.620 we're not tribes

00:23:01.100 there's a thousand places

00:23:03.640 that they can take that discussion

00:23:05.820 if they're interested

00:23:07.220 some people will just go

00:23:08.580 and you're not going to reach them

00:23:11.620 no matter what you tell them

00:23:12.780 or you plant the seed and maybe they go

00:23:15.640 home and look it up but

00:23:17.380 you know

00:23:19.480 this

00:23:23.480 you know this hammer honors

00:23:25.620 Thor who is

00:23:27.200 one of the patron gods of the European

00:23:29.580 peoples whom we worshipped

00:23:31.800 for thousands of years

00:23:33.120 and I

00:23:35.720 have finally broken the

00:23:37.680 habit of saying anything like the pre-Christian religion, both because I don't like to mark it

00:23:46.820 in that way, because we are both the pre- and post-Christian religion of the European peoples,

00:23:54.040 and because I think when people hear that, they are liable to chafe at it in the wrong way.

00:24:02.200 You know, if they've been Christian or think of themselves as sort of vaguely Christian,

00:24:06.260 as most people, most white people do, then, you know, they may

00:24:10.560 erect a wall, you know, and they may not hear all the rest of the stuff.

00:24:17.160 You know, so you just work around

00:24:20.600 that particular issue just by not bringing it up.

00:24:23.960 And if they mention Christianity,

00:24:27.800 yes, Christianity came along, but, you know, for 100,000 years before that,

00:24:33.520 we worship the gods of our own people.

00:24:36.260 Odin and Wodunaz and Thursaz and Pivaz and give it to them in a way that realize, like, especially somebody who has never heard of it or barely heard of it, you have to spoon feed it to them.

00:24:55.100 And, you know, and if you do it in a way that is inviting, you know, because trust me, I, you know, anybody who's least remotely curious, what I want to do is jump in their face and give them a bunch of literature and, you know, stand over their shoulder until they go to runestone.org and read the whole thing.

00:25:17.080 I mean, that's my naturally, that's my natural predilection is to want them to go ahead and do it while they can.

00:25:26.380 But if we can just get enough people to hear of us, hear about who we are, what we do,

00:25:32.060 maybe they don't come in the first time, but maybe the third or fourth or twelfth time that they hear about also true,

00:25:40.880 then they develop enough curiosity or the or the next time they see a hammer they go oh yeah i've

00:25:46.320 heard about you guys i you know it's cool to see another one and eventually they will find their

00:25:53.360 way home hopefully yeah so a couple of things that i think are are worth noting that do kind

00:26:03.520 of connect these things i mean this is all about advertising and presentation and it's about

00:26:11.280 maximizing your minutes when you have short amounts of opportunity to plant seeds

00:26:20.000 so and a lot of these things we repeat on the program but i think they're very repeating and

00:26:26.320 think we'd be a reminder um you being the person who engages this in whatever way you do

00:26:38.480 are the de facto spokesperson of our faith

00:26:44.720 the better you look the better you present yourself

00:26:49.120 the more compelling the case that you make in the seconds or minutes you have to speak to this

00:26:58.100 person about our faith and i mean that in a lot of different metrics yes if you are attractive

00:27:06.400 that is always better than if you are unattractive if you are in good physical condition

00:27:14.280 shoot, if you're in excellent physical condition, that's fantastic. If you look and your appearance

00:27:22.160 shows that you take the way that you appear seriously and you have discipline and dignity,

00:27:29.940 that's going to help. But there's a lot of other factors to that too. Look happy. Don't look scowly

00:27:37.680 and angry and unapproachable. If you look like you're enjoying your life and you're approachable

00:27:42.640 and you're a happy well-adjusted person that goes a long way um you know if you're not scary looking

00:27:52.240 and yeah that has to do with you walking around with a grumpy face but it also has to do with you

00:27:57.360 deliberately wearing clothes that are meant to be shocking that may attract a certain edge lord

00:28:05.600 group of people but a lot of the people that we want will be repelled by it because they don't

00:28:11.040 know what to make of it they lack the context or they do know what to make of it and you're going

00:28:15.680 out of your way to be obnoxious with the way you dress um having a friendliness and an openness

00:28:25.200 when you're talking to them all these things to maximize your minutes you want to be able to hit

00:28:32.720 them from a bunch of different fronts if you can present something that is i don't know catchy and

00:28:40.240 sets a hook linguistically

00:28:42.180 if you have something that

00:28:44.260 is compelling logically

00:28:46.280 those are great but you

00:28:48.240 also want to maximize the non-verbals

00:28:50.680 by

00:28:51.940 your appearance, by your demeanor

00:28:54.480 and your friendliness

00:28:55.740 you have those opportunities

00:28:58.500 and you are a living billboard

00:29:00.300 for ostrich if you choose to be

00:29:01.900 the other thing is wear your hammer

00:29:04.240 wear your hammer out

00:29:05.880 wear your hammer publicly

00:29:07.380 you have every right to do that at every place you are if you're in some strange workplace where

00:29:13.620 that's verboten i think those are getting fewer and further between um but you know again go by

00:29:22.020 whatever your work standard is but if your co-worker can wear a crucifix you can certainly

00:29:26.300 wear your hammer um but it provokes those conversations i think that's really important

00:29:33.600 Then you get to, like, all right, what do you do when there's the conversation?

00:29:39.300 I think messaging is really important here, and it makes it kind of challenging.

00:29:43.780 The things that are going to get the most understanding sometimes are at cross-purposes with our messaging, which makes it challenging.

00:29:54.760 We don't want to, and I hope this makes sense in the way I'm presenting it.

00:30:00.140 we don't want to proactively compare aussitry to anything aussitry is a standalone thing

00:30:09.500 what is aussitry aussitry is faith in the ice here it's the original religion of europeans

00:30:15.340 i thought europeans were christians a lot of people may think that but christianity came to

00:30:21.500 europe and blah blah and you can go from there you can go wherever they want to take the conversation

00:30:26.460 reactively if they bring up anytime that we want to use comparisons or negative things

00:30:34.620 we want that as a response to a question or as something they bring up and then we have to

00:30:41.160 respond to we don't want to present what we do in comparison to anything else if we present what we

00:30:48.660 do as counter-punching something we have already established in their minds that that other thing

00:30:54.380 is the big dog and that we're some kind of brand X contender to it.

00:31:00.360 We don't want that.

00:31:01.520 We want to present ourselves as the thing. 0.99

00:31:04.580 Oh, Christianity, you mean those guys? 0.99

00:31:07.020 Okay, well, since you bring them up, it sounds dumb and it sounds subtle, 0.95

00:31:12.620 but I do think that messaging is really important.

00:31:15.980 And the point of comparison, we want to try to avoid.

00:31:22.020 Al?

00:31:22.540 No, that's absolutely right. And, you know, of course, that's that's one of the reasons that I harp on language the way that I do.

00:31:30.500 You know, 20 years ago when I started in this on this path, we were a bunch of, you know, Viking Bulgarians.

00:31:43.500 But now we've evolved where we are, where we really are, you know, a family based faith who honors our ancestors and respects the, you know, the upright nobility of our culture.

00:31:58.260 And, you know, and that's why, like for most people, you are the only awesome truer that they know you're the like you're the only guy who wears that hammer.

00:32:08.020 You're the only woman who wears the little lady with the mead cup thing.

00:32:14.380 And so, you know, so to put your best foot forward always, yes, with a happy demeanor and, you know, you win more friends with honey than with vinegar, you know, all those things are true.

00:32:34.440 We want to be the kind of people that other people want to be around.

00:32:38.020 And we are those kinds of people.

00:32:40.100 Like, you know, when I go to the Hoff, any Hoff that I'm at is always so welcoming and friendly and open that, you know, it's a beautiful thing to be around the families that we have, the people that we are is, you know, it's a wonderful, joyous experience.

00:32:56.860 the, you know, because we are the people who believe that this life is joyous, that this life, that our people, this world is sacred.

00:33:08.180 And we act that way. And that's why, you know, we have a lot of the values of the, I'd say it like the broader pagan community where, you know, yes, we honor and nurture the earth.

00:33:26.860 you know we are in charge of it but you know you can we are benevolent dictators um we honor and

00:33:34.060 nurture our families children are not in charge though um so those are the you know so those are

00:33:40.620 the sorts of things that again we as we present that way in the world then the people who who see

00:33:49.900 us, you know, they will

00:33:51.540 come to understand that

00:33:53.500 we're the good guys

00:33:55.420 and they will want to be around that more and more.

00:34:01.500 So, since you bring it up,

00:34:04.400 see, as a response,

00:34:07.040 we don't want to

00:34:09.500 the forces

00:34:14.000 of chaos that have

00:34:16.140 such prominence in the world

00:34:19.580 around us, try to label many of the things that are our core values as being bad and

00:34:29.020 villainous in those chaotic circles that unfortunately control the media and control

00:34:37.620 a lot of the narrative in certainly, I don't know, vapid college-age people's minds. 0.99

00:34:46.180 whiteness is bad heterosexuality is bad traditional values are bad being a man is bad 0.90

00:34:57.960 so there's a constant push to say that anything we believe is villainous and that we are then 0.75

00:35:07.000 villains don't lean into that don't let that affect the way you think and don't as a way to

00:35:17.240 combat it celebrate the bad guy image we're the good guys don't ever forget that and don't get

00:35:24.680 tricked into identifying with the negative stereotype they try to put on you that's

00:35:33.880 it sounds so common sense but when you hear it enough eventually you'll see some of our people

00:35:40.360 that are easily swayed acting as if they are in fact the bad guy don't do that

00:35:49.640 no absolutely and i you know one of the

00:35:51.800 authors that I have read a good deal of watch several of his videos is Jonathan Bowden

00:36:02.920 notorious English patriot and he he had one of the one of the great phrases that that

00:36:17.080 that I've taken to heart and when presented the opportunity and necessity to address some of the things that maybe if you want to say it this way,

00:36:32.080 you know, some of the excesses of that Western civilization has engaged in, conquering people, being mean to people and that sort of thing.

00:36:41.860 sure yes absolutely that happened um we did that um you know in an ideal world that wouldn't be

00:36:51.480 necessarily the way to interact with other cultures um but it is also a fact of life

00:36:57.000 is a it is a historical fact that um cultures clash and um you know

00:37:07.780 you know, again, one of those bumper sticker ideas that is always in my head in that situation is

00:37:15.040 when it's us versus them, I take us every time. And, um, so yes, um, if you read about

00:37:24.860 some of the, again, like the cultural clashes, um, you know, why would you want to go out and,

00:37:33.520 you know, kill these other people. Well, they were trying to kill us. And so, you know,

00:37:38.500 when it's kill or be killed, again, easy choice, easy choice. Um, and yes, we have been aggressive

00:37:47.500 in trying and taking territory and all that sort of thing. Um, I think there's a, there's

00:37:53.660 absolutely a way to make that be reasonable in the big picture. We are trying to impose order

00:37:59.700 into a chaotic universe, into a chaotic world, the world of Midgard.

00:38:06.440 We've succeeded in greater or lesser extent in imposing order in various parts of Midgard.

00:38:18.180 And yes, that comes at a price, you know.

00:38:20.640 I mean, and at the same time, and that applies to, like, every arena, right, like one of the tropes right now that they, they, them, we know who they are, always hit us with is, well, you know, what about slavery?

00:38:41.440 What about, you know, you guys enslaved all these people?

00:38:45.000 Yes, we did.

00:38:45.800 slavery has existed

00:38:48.120 since there were two men with pointy sticks

00:38:50.860 who could gang up on another guy who didn't have a pointy stick

00:38:53.240 and so for

00:38:55.680 certainly hundreds of thousands of years

00:38:58.860 probably millions of years

00:39:00.820 there have been slaves

00:39:01.620 we didn't invent slavery

00:39:03.480 and we

00:39:06.260 western civilization

00:39:07.360 we're the only civilization who ends slavery

00:39:09.820 so when they hit you with that

00:39:12.900 that is a

00:39:14.120 you know that's a deflection that so yes people and john sorry jonathan bowden's term is you step

00:39:22.220 over it yes this happened next so first couple of points that is tremendously valuable and so

00:39:32.820 these kind of tie together have an intellectual conversation with people if you've got the time

00:39:38.540 and if they actually want to engage in that, by all means.

00:39:43.040 But I think your first and best order of business in that

00:39:46.560 is determine whether it's an actual conversation

00:39:49.000 or whether it is name-calling.

00:39:52.300 Don't defend, you guys are colonizers.

00:39:59.440 Okay, what are you talking about?

00:40:01.680 Well, when you guys colonize stuff.

00:40:04.340 Okay, what stuff? Who are you talking about?

00:40:06.320 and then you can get specific a lot of the time they don't have another step

00:40:11.180 they heard their friends say a thing and so they say it and they don't know anything about it

00:40:17.780 and that is really telling and I've

00:40:21.540 I dare say one but at least you know gotten into retreat and acknowledge well maybe I should read

00:40:30.800 a little bit more about that then on a number of occasions when people come at me with you know

00:40:36.880 what they think is elevated name call don't respond to you're racist what does that mean

00:40:44.000 what are you talking about get talk about a thing not a name or a label i think that's always a

00:40:51.760 valuable thing to do the other thing is when you don't like recoil in fear when they pull out the

00:40:59.360 garlic and like garlic and crucifix and silver bullets of calling you names they don't know what

00:41:06.880 to do with that and sometimes that short circuits something right there and they don't have another

00:41:12.480 step because that's always worked we're in in a time where it has become very very easy for the

00:41:18.560 the forces of chaos to call somebody homophobic or something and have an immediate victory in

00:41:28.880 and the person apologizing and backpedaling and they don't know what to do if you don't do that

00:41:36.320 you're like whatever well what but what uh yeah okay they're done that's all they have

00:41:44.480 and then you can kind of continue so there's there's a power on that too

00:41:49.440 right no absolutely and certainly one thing to know like if somebody comes at it from that sort

00:41:56.720 of name-calling perspective and it's obvious in the first couple of interchange exchanges

00:42:02.080 that you're not going to reach them i read years ago and probably said on this show and i'm about

00:42:08.480 to say it again um the left does not argue in good faith they are not trying to have an intellectual

00:42:15.600 exchange where they say some ideas and you say some ideas and like you're going to try to reach

00:42:19.600 some common understanding about the way the world is they have all of that preconceived they have

00:42:25.280 this packaged ideology that comes from the frankfurt school if you want to name it um and 0.91

00:42:37.520 it's many iterations in our institutions that um that the world is thus and so because white people 0.96

00:42:46.880 are evil you're not going to reach them don't waste your time arguing with them all it's going 1.00

00:42:52.240 to do you know what's the thing about you know wrestling with a pig you know the pig likes it 0.97

00:42:57.940 and you both end up looking like pigs okay they are you're never going to persuade them at all 0.92

00:43:04.020 ever so that's when you just give them the hand like whatever and find something more productive 0.70

00:43:12.000 to do so alan who is this chesterton fellow and what's up with his fence

00:43:25.840 okay so this is some more of my obscure um reading in the nether reaches of uh conservative and

00:43:36.720 traditional if you want to say it this way traditionalist ideology

00:43:40.320 gk chesterton famous formerly back when people gave a rip about such things he is a an english

00:43:52.720 writer who wrote mostly at the beginning of the 20th century and the idea of chesterton's fence

00:44:01.440 is a an idiom or example that he used to talk about the destruction that progressives were

00:44:15.100 already beginning to work on the world and I think it's very useful in the in the analogies

00:44:23.400 in the way that we see mouse utopia unfolding, idiocracy in the present arena.

00:44:32.980 What is Chesterton's fence?

00:44:34.660 All right, so Chesterton, in this thought process,

00:44:41.780 he envisions like a progressive and a traditionalist walking along down a path,

00:44:49.200 and there's a fence, okay?

00:44:51.040 And of course, the progressive is all about removing boundaries. You know, we should uproot this fence. This fence is harshing my buzz. It's in my way. We need to get this out of here. I'm not able to fully actualize myself with this fence here in the way of whatever it is that I want to do.

00:45:09.480 and

00:45:11.960 before I aged out of my libertarianism

00:45:15.140 before I matured out of my libertarianism

00:45:17.300 I would sort of be in that same mindset

00:45:19.440 like

00:45:19.860 you know

00:45:21.860 can't tell me what to do

00:45:23.880 but

00:45:25.320 the traditionalist

00:45:27.980 conservative

00:45:30.940 if that's the term that you want to use

00:45:32.620 would

00:45:33.640 like before

00:45:36.880 he would say something along the lines of

00:45:39.460 of before we go pulling this fence up, let's think about why it's here. Why did someone put a fence

00:45:47.200 here? What is this fence designed to do? What is this barrier that is between, like the way we

00:45:56.020 would say it, there's this barrier here that someone erected 600 years ago, 10,000 years ago,

00:46:03.400 They put this barrier up to help divide order from chaos.

00:46:11.180 The word meme was not originally written about a Facebook post.

00:46:17.080 The meme, memeology, is about those sorts of cultural ideals,

00:46:25.400 the cultural ideology specifically for us, Western civilization,

00:46:30.180 pardon the redundancy, but specifically for us, Chesterton's Fence then would be about those

00:46:37.560 sorts of things. And maybe the easy example is marriage, right? Marriage is a man and a woman

00:46:44.940 who partner together so that they, not exclusively, but primarily and in large part,

00:46:51.620 so that they can raise children in a stable environment. And of course, the left has come

00:46:59.140 alone, feminism primarily, but all the other progressive ideologies that have to do with

00:47:06.380 uprooting all these cultural boundaries. So, you don't need marriage. You can just have, you know, 1.00

00:47:13.340 you know, women can raise kids by themselves. You know, we don't need men. We just need a 1.00

00:47:18.740 child support check. So, and so they uprooted that fence, right? They have undone marriage,

00:47:27.920 And we can see that in both in the collapsing marriage rate, in the skyrocketing rate of unwed motherhood and in the high divorce rate.

00:47:42.880 What has that done? You know, if you and look, I'm divorced.

00:47:49.800 I know that it's you know, that that stuff is not easy.

00:47:52.860 um i put it all down again you know it's the you know it's the cultural enrichment um brought about

00:48:01.440 by the culture of critique but the um but but what has that done i mean look at this the the way that

00:48:10.300 the the mental illness among children and and actually studies show and i use that phrase but

00:48:18.300 Um, they do show they, those studies done by sociologists and psychologists demonstrate that, um, the number one, um, indicator, the number one leading, um, cause or, uh, indication of mental disturbance in children is divorce.

00:48:41.420 and it's, you know, it's a very real phenomenon.

00:48:48.460 And, you know, and when I say stuff like this,

00:48:56.120 I don't mean, I'm not saying this as a way to belittle women.

00:49:00.160 You know, women are our companions.

00:49:05.000 They complement us with the E, the complement. 1.00

00:49:08.460 They are our other halves, our better halves. 1.00

00:49:11.180 in many ways um biologically though women are you know eight million years of evolution um 1.00

00:49:22.060 they are um caretakers um for the home and of children and you know but in the modern world 1.00

00:49:32.200 Because of the ills of feminism and the way that we've been led astray by the forces of chaos, they don't always get to implement that. 1.00

00:49:47.900 Even those, again, studies show that most women would rather be at home. 1.00

00:49:52.520 But they can't be because there's complicated reasons about why housing is so expensive, blah, blah, blah.

00:49:59.020 I don't want to get too far off on that track because we're talking about Chesterton's Fence and why it is that the cultural meme of marriage is such an important foundational institution for Western civilization. 0.50

00:50:18.120 And because of that, that is one of the primary things that the Frankfurt School set about to unwind.

00:50:29.200 And I can't remember the name of the book that they produced in 1918 or whatever it was.

00:50:34.260 But, you know, the foundational element of Western civilization is the family.

00:50:41.400 And so we need to destroy the family.

00:50:43.840 And that's what they've done.

00:50:45.800 And because of cheap consumer goods and cable and smartphones and all that stuff, we are contributing to our own demise as the machine eats its way through Western civilization.

00:51:06.200 But, you know, if we could find a way, we traditionalists, if we could find a way to throttle that back, I think that's one of the things that we could do it.

00:51:26.060 And, and, and again, you know, there are any numbers of examples and that's just the easy one that comes to mind.

00:51:33.260 And Matt, I would entertain anything else that you want to posit along that regard.

00:51:39.520 But, you know, that's, again, marriage is the easy one to me.

00:51:45.340 And so, you know, but any of those cultural boundaries, maybe another one is children.

00:51:56.060 in recognizing and respecting their elders. Okay. That too is, you know, has gone the way of the

00:52:04.320 dinosaur in large part. But again, why do they do that? Because kids don't know anything. Kids are

00:52:13.500 dumb. Okay. Maybe some of them are, have a little bit of smart, but they're not experienced. You 1.00

00:52:20.140 know, why can't I just go out in the road and play in traffic? Why can't I just stick this fork in

00:52:25.260 electric socket okay well chesterton's fence would suggest that you don't go out in the road because

00:52:33.100 that's a good way to get smashed you don't stick for an electrical socket because you'll blow a

00:52:37.420 breaker and dad will get all pissy because he's got to go out in the closet and um you know swap

00:52:42.460 the breaker over or whatever so those sorts of cultural memetics are designed to to keep our

00:52:52.060 civilization from descending into chaos. And so when somebody asks you, why do we do things this

00:53:01.620 way? Because 200,000 years of civilizational evolution has demonstrated that this is the

00:53:14.820 way to do it. And before you start doing it some other way, you do a little test over here. You

00:53:20.420 don't upend the whole civilization because Gertrude Stein's got her panties in a knot 1.00

00:53:28.840 or whatever it is. 1.00

00:53:30.780 A hundred percent.

00:53:35.860 You know, I, my dad taught me something one time and I was, forget what the occasion was,

00:53:47.060 But I was some kind of a teenager of some age about some nonsense.

00:53:52.780 And he's like, well, why would you want to do, you know, whatever different thing?

00:53:59.540 I was like, oh, I should do this then.

00:54:02.000 And he's like, well, why would you do that?

00:54:04.800 And why not?

00:54:05.800 And he's like, no, no, you don't need a why not.

00:54:09.220 You stay the course unless there's a significant reason to deviate.

00:54:14.780 It's really funny.

00:54:15.840 and again different people got different ideas about vaccines and whatnot but it came up again

00:54:22.800 in a very sadly ironic way that spoke to me perhaps the most when considering childhood

00:54:35.360 vaccinations when that was being heavily heavily pushed by any medical establishment when we had

00:54:43.440 aubrey and you know long story short my father and my stepmother and i are fairly estranged over

00:54:55.760 that in covet stuff

00:55:00.000 and he didn't see the relation but i'm like okay

00:55:05.280 start out with this baby that's very healthy everybody around me is healthy

00:55:09.440 the thing's going pretty good why would i stab this baby with

00:55:16.280 many different injections of lots of different cocktails that i'm not given a compelling

00:55:22.700 reason that i need to other than because trust the science and it didn't occur and i mean we

00:55:30.300 may find different reasons for those things but the thought process is really important and i

00:55:35.820 encourage anybody listening to the show to apply this in all areas of your life something that i

00:55:43.020 i i don't know if it's a slight detour on the theme or not but

00:55:50.460 one thing

00:55:55.260 all right i started the show with some old

00:56:00.140 you know 1980s 1990s also true themes that get said that kind of get passe that are worth

00:56:11.500 remarking on about how is a religion with homework well any religion that you care about

00:56:16.800 should be the religion with homework but also no you don't need to be a scholar to worship the gods

00:56:21.980 in fact i guarantee you 97 percent of the worshipers of the gods in the course of history

00:56:27.880 probably not scholars, probably not literate in any sort of sense.

00:56:34.340 But the other one is this anti-dogma stance that a lot of people had early on in the modern

00:56:40.460 resurgence of us. Dogma is important, but with this caveat, we should always be willing to

00:56:47.960 re-examine why we do a thing and go through the thought process of asking why the fence is there.

00:56:54.080 courage and truth are both values that we hold dear in house of truth

00:57:02.660 having the intellectual courage and I guess just the personal honesty

00:57:08.120 to re-examine perpetually why we think the things that we think should we alter course

00:57:15.960 or should we double down that's always a valuable exercise if you're right it

00:57:22.080 strengthens your resolve and it reassures you if you're wrong and i don't mean like 180 wrong but

00:57:29.600 if you're off of the mark it should give you cues on how to trend closer to what you're trying to

00:57:36.960 accomplish and closer to the right way to do it and i think we owe that to ourselves we owe that

00:57:42.160 to our fellows within ausitru we owe that to our families and ultimately we owe that to our gods

00:57:48.400 to try to refine who we are and what we believe to the closest degree of perfection that we're

00:57:57.600 able to and hopefully that turns closer over time absolutely and you know like one example

00:58:07.360 um and matt i know you were there although i i won't because we bounced this guy out of the

00:58:17.360 um go to our program because of certain other problems that he had but you know like in the

00:58:25.460 old days there was no processing in in a sunrise circle you know we just kind of okay it's time

00:58:32.500 for bloat we'd all just kind of stand in a circle you know so so we have developed and refined

00:58:38.060 um these practices as uh you know as we have matured uh matured our uh ritual practice

00:58:47.660 um vaccine you know i don't want to spend a lot of time on that i feel very strongly the same way

00:58:56.180 that you do um the but um i can understand that there's you know at least childhood vaccines

00:59:03.620 there's at least an argument um one way or the other the code vaccine was a massive untested

00:59:10.040 mistake um that you know the more people got sick from the vaccine then they were doubling down like

00:59:19.480 you know that's utter but but at the same time if there was an ebola outbreak in the united states

00:59:29.340 and they developed an Ebola vaccine,

00:59:32.940 I would probably take it, you know,

00:59:34.780 because that's that rational thing of, you know,

00:59:38.360 and that's one of the hard parts of our religion

00:59:40.680 is we're not all yes and not no.

00:59:44.960 So my story lacked a bit of nuance

00:59:47.440 that I think is important.

00:59:48.500 The factor in there was

00:59:50.620 no research would allow me to fairly examine

00:59:55.840 why I should or why I shouldn't.

00:59:59.340 I just had the strong arm of big medical telling me that I had to, because reasons.

01:00:07.340 I've got the books. I've got the books.

01:00:08.840 That's not good enough.

01:00:10.840 I'll hook you up.

01:00:12.840 I'm not, but I believe those books are there,

01:00:16.840 but when Google curated all the results to where it was impossible to find the other argument,

01:00:22.340 And anytime they tell you that you can't look at the information to decide anything on your own, that is a powerful signal that they are lying to you.

01:00:41.060 Maybe not 100% of the time, but it should certainly push you that direction until proven otherwise.

01:00:48.920 And there's a few things in this world that are unquestionable.

01:00:52.340 you're not allowed to question them and think on them that should be a big red flag that's my thing

01:00:57.780 i'm not in just a word out here i know that some people tend to go all one way or all the other

01:01:03.940 like alan was saying if there is some hey this is a look at the bodies in the street piling up

01:01:09.540 because of this plague well cool then maybe there's an actual reason to do that it's funny

01:01:15.460 in the same conversation with my dad about the covid vaccine well why should i take it

01:01:23.060 and he said well why shouldn't you i'm like no that's not what you taught me in 1997 no

01:01:31.620 and i said i'm not scared of covid and i think what what i used was chop it up i'll do a line

01:01:38.980 of covid right now i don't fear covid i do fear getting this vaccine and you know that was the

01:01:49.140 logic it's not trying to rant at you guys about whatever you you think and i would encourage you

01:01:53.620 guys to make the best medical decisions that you can i think another great another great example

01:02:02.820 of you know chesterton's fence being uprooted and relocated based on the influence of

01:02:10.500 those who are trying to undo our civilization corporate catalyst is

01:02:20.020 the uh the food pyramid you know the food pyramid has destroyed american health

01:02:26.020 um you know we used to we used to invert we used to eat the inverted food pyramid right

01:02:33.660 um sugar's bad for you of course but you know the but like we used to it was all meat and dairy and

01:02:41.260 eggs a little bit of fruit and you know a side of bread and that was food and now they you know so

01:02:47.580 then they came up with the food pyramid and and again so like Chesterton would

01:02:54.900 say he probably I think I always invented having a pipe you know why

01:02:59.640 should we eat in a different way than our ancestors have been eating for the

01:03:03.220 last 20,000 years well because ConAgra and other Monsanto similar type

01:03:12.280 corporate interests, sponsored these studies that were gamed to show that grain-based diets

01:03:23.160 are better for you. It's totally wrong. It's totally the opposite of what stuff is. I mean,

01:03:29.560 look at the, and you know, again, in the Facebook memes, they put pictures that come out. Look at a

01:03:36.620 beach picture from the 1960s when people were eating meat and dairy, you know, 3,000 calories

01:03:45.860 a day of bacon and eggs and milk, you know, and everybody's thin because that's what our bodies

01:03:54.820 are designed and evolved to run on is that, you know, that's the kind of fuel. And what do

01:04:01.560 Americans look like now? You know, we're all a bunch of fat slobs, myself included. You know, 0.99

01:04:06.820 I have been trying to instill some more discipline in myself lately, but it's not all just because of

01:04:14.680 Pop-Tarts and Captain Crunch, but that had a big contribution. You know, breakfast is the

01:04:20.480 most important meal of the day. Look, this, you know, Captain Crunch is a delicious part of a

01:04:27.580 nutritious breakfast all totally bunk all totally false um but except the delicious

01:04:35.340 huh i said i said except the delicious part right it is delicious um uh but otherwise no um

01:04:47.360 although i do still occasionally eat a pop-tart if i can find one laying around loose somewhere

01:04:53.780 But so we have destroyed ourselves by listening to the science.

01:05:04.860 And so we have to decide for ourselves, you know, what, you know, what, and we can look at thousands and thousands of years of history, you know, about what it is that works for us.

01:05:18.520 um and not everybody can eat dairy and cheese and i realize cheese is subsanitary you know

01:05:27.620 but you know but ditto like where we have infused the western diet into places like uh you know

01:05:37.000 into the pacific islands and you know and i matt i know you've had some experience with those guys

01:05:41.880 from you talk about you know having the guys from samoa and they're you know working up in alaska

01:05:46.320 And, you know, it has destroyed their health.

01:05:51.320 You know, they've gone from these thin, healthy, lean, muscular guys to being obese.

01:06:00.400 And not all of them.

01:06:02.020 I'm not, you know, it's not everybody.

01:06:04.080 But by and large, they're by and large.

01:06:08.820 Just large.

01:06:10.680 Very traditional people.

01:06:12.160 they're very well

01:06:15.120 insulated for arctic climes

01:06:16.920 so again that's you know again that's just

01:06:22.840 another

01:06:23.700 example of

01:06:26.820 us

01:06:28.620 unwinding

01:06:29.960 thousands of years of cultural practice

01:06:32.580 on a whim

01:06:33.560 because you know some

01:06:36.980 well

01:06:39.040 intentioned but diluted

01:06:41.040 group of

01:06:42.740 progressive 1.00

01:06:44.700 morons 1.00

01:06:45.800 I realize that's redundant 1.00

01:06:48.120 came along and said

01:06:50.760 we should be eating more

01:06:53.080 plant food

01:06:55.960 I mean plant food

01:06:59.000 is not baloney, plant baloney is 1.00

01:07:00.540 crap, eat real baloney 0.99

01:07:02.120 well and the other thing 1.00

01:07:04.520 is worth saying

01:07:05.860 don't

01:07:07.660 just be an edgelord

01:07:10.060 be an edge lord don't be an extremist be an extremist maybe the fence is in the way and the

01:07:16.780 fence is bad but go through the process of figuring out why it's there and why everybody before you

01:07:24.060 thought it was just fine do you really know something better about the fence maybe you do

01:07:29.980 chances are you might not but it's worth thinking about um

01:07:34.540 Um, one of the things, and I harp on this, but it's a big thing about being Aaron, being

01:07:43.860 noble people implies an ability and an obligation to make decisions, to examine your circumstance

01:07:55.240 and to make choices about what you are going to do and what you're not going to do with

01:08:02.300 your life.

01:08:02.780 the path of nobility is in the choosing and it's facing real life situations as an adult

01:08:12.380 and choosing from imperfect choices with educated and informed decision making and then standing

01:08:21.080 by and handling the consequences of the choices that you make um but it's one of the least

01:08:30.000 sexy aspects of

01:08:32.400 Alistair Truman practice, but I think 0.80

01:08:34.400 one of the most important,

01:08:36.800 no, you have a responsibility

01:08:38.360 to be the adult

01:08:40.500 in the room and to

01:08:42.300 take a degree of ownership for

01:08:44.280 your life. You don't let

01:08:46.260 Jesus take the wheel.

01:08:48.180 Don't let Odin take the wheel.

01:08:50.820 You drive responsibly

01:08:52.740 and hopefully your driving

01:08:54.600 impresses Odin.

01:08:56.460 That's the hope.

01:09:00.000 Don't get me started about driving because, you know, I have a long list of road rage quibbles that not everybody.

01:09:12.420 Now, I should also go back and iterate that you can be a responsible vegetarian and be lean, but it's a lot of work in my experience.

01:09:25.760 because we were vegan for a while and it's a lot of work to do that and to get the right nutrition

01:09:33.440 and if you can do it great you know in fact there's a i think there's an ethical and there

01:09:40.860 is an ethical response about the way that um meat animals are treated they're treated horribly

01:09:50.520 that's another thing that we should, like as a civilization, we should be more, we should be

01:09:59.120 kinder to the animals that we eat. They live horrible lives. And, you know, so for some,

01:10:07.760 you know, that in and of itself is a reason to be vegetarian, not because it's wrong to eat meat,

01:10:12.440 But because it's wrong to raise chickens, you know, 60 in an 8x8 crate that, you know, that have horrible lives and they're slaughtered horribly.

01:10:24.340 And, you know, I get all that.

01:10:26.440 So we try to eat something that's a little more organic, pasture-raised and all that stuff.

01:10:31.560 I realize all the problems with all that terminology.

01:10:33.780 but the eggs that I eat

01:10:37.400 are raised right here in the yard

01:10:39.060 and they are

01:10:40.300 those chickens have good lives

01:10:42.500 rather than this being

01:10:44.240 another you know just

01:10:46.320 and we get a little bit further afield on some of these things

01:10:49.020 it's worth saying

01:10:49.860 have the courage

01:10:54.960 to own the reasons why you do things

01:10:57.260 we live in an age

01:11:01.220 where it is very popular

01:11:02.360 for you to choose an extreme position and then demand that everyone else do the thing you're 0.99

01:11:08.500 doing because i think sometimes because misery loves company or whatever if you are a fat and

01:11:15.620 you are trying to fix it and you are going on a diet that doesn't mean that everybody else who's

01:11:19.780 in good shape has to be on the same diet as you you can just pursue a very lean diet because you

01:11:25.900 have gone to a point you need to correct um i've seen a number of people who have a problem with

01:11:33.260 alcohol so they've decided they need to be sober not only that they've decided that all the rest

01:11:40.780 of us need to be sober no the rest of us haven't messed up our life with alcohol addiction you

01:11:48.060 need to take responsibility for what you need to do to manage your situation i think everybody

01:11:54.380 needs to do that we have a a strange thing if you want to eat poorly because you like it and it

01:12:00.220 tastes good then say that if you want to do whatever you're going to do but we have a tendency

01:12:08.140 instead to pick our own idiosyncrasy and try to force everyone else to do it whether they need to

01:12:15.900 or not and i think that extending some grace and having the honesty to say why you do a thing take

01:12:22.700 ownership of it and you know that's part of that adulting there too

01:12:30.700 big time so we've got some questions stacking up i think we got some good questions um

01:12:40.140 first uh multiple part question caleb

01:12:44.700 Okay, Caleb with a four-part. Part one, will you be at Odin's Hoff midsummer? I will be. Law

01:12:53.620 speaker, I assume you will not be. All right. So then a question, okay. Part two, what is one or

01:13:06.860 two of your favorite things about each Hoff? Alan, at each of the five Hoffs,

01:13:14.860 what is one or two things that are your favorite about each?

01:13:21.420 Yay. So, of course, I have to start. First of all, I love New York's Hoff community.

01:13:30.620 You know, the people there are beautiful, wonderful.

01:13:36.440 Me too.

01:13:37.900 So, you know, I think we've got a great community there.

01:13:42.840 And I assume that's true everywhere.

01:13:46.860 The rest of the Hoffs, I'm just more familiar with Njordtsoff there.

01:13:50.340 I love our grounds.

01:13:53.280 You know, we have five acres there that we have some big plans for eventually.

01:13:59.660 to you know to do some cool stuff with we've got two pounds two ponds two pounds of ponds

01:14:07.740 um with a live alligator um racing our uh uh our presence there um so we got we got cool

01:14:17.900 we have a cool place. Um, then, uh, you know, Baldursoff, um, love you, Brandy. Uh, the, um,

01:14:26.880 Baldursoff, uh, I love their, um, the Vey in there, the, um, I think the mural in there is

01:14:34.280 wonderful. Um, and the steeple I know is under reconstruction, mailed that check today, by the

01:14:42.240 to get that started but you know you know it just looks it looks so much like a you know a sacred

01:14:49.660 place and it's a you know and it's a cool little town you know if I was if I had my druthers and if

01:14:57.840 the demographics of Murdoch were more likely you know I would live in White Springs but

01:15:08.120 that's not going to happen. So Odeshoff,

01:15:13.020 I love what has been done in there. I love those big, beautiful doors that took so

01:15:18.640 long. Odeshoff has that big, majestic entrance, but I love that

01:15:24.620 big sun wheel in the back. That big

01:15:28.860 worship space back there is just absolutely awesome.

01:15:33.000 uh thorshoff i you know again the the bay in there um and the work not only uh the the mural

01:15:42.020 that swan did but all of the rest of the decor in there where they've done so much work it just

01:15:49.720 you know it really looks it's really taking on the full appearance of a you know full-born stave

01:15:55.580 church and they are not you know just spectacular and we just got phrase off but that is a you know

01:16:01.620 that is an awesome awesome worship space in there with and then you know that you know that's going

01:16:08.280 to be hard to top for you know for and then with that big community space down there i know cliff

01:16:15.240 and katie are going to make that into a wonderful uh and worthy space for the worship of fray

01:16:21.460 so

01:16:25.760 Oden's Hoff

01:16:28.920 Oden's Hoff is really powerful

01:16:33.640 it's our oldest

01:16:35.380 Hoff

01:16:35.860 it'll be turning

01:16:38.980 11 this year

01:16:40.280 the ritual space there

01:16:44.980 the outdoor bay

01:16:46.580 is very

01:16:49.100 powerful and it's a space

01:16:50.880 that I'm very

01:16:52.960 familiar with and very connected to

01:16:54.740 It's the Hoff I've done the most ritual at.

01:16:58.800 So it's very special that way.

01:17:01.240 I was also there when we first discovered and did the walkthrough of that property before we had it.

01:17:07.780 So it's very sentimentally important to me.

01:17:14.780 Also, it is...

01:17:16.740 so how far i got to meet the two people that are interred there and i you know was it was good

01:17:27.620 friends with uh gofi thorgrim so it being you know his his final resting place in midgard is

01:17:38.320 um makes it extra special and it's some a place i'm just very very familiar with and very comfortable

01:17:44.140 that um and mural there is really powerful and odin's one eye in that mural follows you in the

01:17:52.380 hof in a really special way thor's hof like a lot it's the oldest building that we have for one of

01:18:02.300 our Hoffs. I think the current building for at least the base space there dates from 1870s.

01:18:15.500 Swan's first mural, it is particularly powerful in the way that it dominates the space.

01:18:22.060 I absolutely love the feeling of that place there.

01:18:25.260 and it was the first Hoff that we got under my administration which was really

01:18:36.380 special to me in a lot of ways as far as proving the ability to accomplish that or to

01:18:44.940 I guess see that to be accomplished um

01:18:48.700 Um, Baldur's Hoff is special in a different, like I'm trying to think of the stuff that

01:18:59.940 I like the best about it, it being in town and having like town walkable around it.

01:19:07.100 It was the first one of our Hoffs that have that and you still have, you have that at

01:19:10.780 George's off to. But a little bit different way there in Murdoch. The space you can feel the love

01:19:23.000 that was put into making that place special. I got to see it when it was in the deplorable

01:19:29.640 condition it was when we purchased it. I got to knock down some of the old sheetrock that was in

01:19:39.460 away the tiniest little bit for one afternoon but i gotta feel like you know hands-on i was there

01:19:44.740 when it was getting remodeled a little bit and i got to see where it was and then what it's become

01:19:51.300 due to the hard work by so many of our people but you know chief among them uh speckling or brandy

01:19:59.380 and uh go through nate erlinson and the people who just put so much love into making that place

01:20:06.260 as powerful as it is and you can feel it there there is a spirit to that place that is really

01:20:11.940 special also it kind of was special in a way that it's the one that we had you know notable

01:20:21.460 opposition to in the media and misguided people in the community and it's a way that we've watched

01:20:28.260 that turn around in the community watch the overcoming of of that obstacle which makes it

01:20:35.700 kind of special in that way um new york's off and some of these are personal things so i don't know

01:20:43.540 if they go on to everybody else i think it's cool that there's ponds there one of which has a gator

01:20:48.740 in it that's awesome the big span or live oak with the spanish moss when you first drive in

01:20:57.060 is just beautiful and i think is really really special um

01:21:05.300 soft i was at most recently i appreciate the mural more each time i go there but also it was a

01:21:17.540 really special thing for me i had lived in florida for two years it's where my wife mandy was born

01:21:24.660 them raised and when we left florida to go out to be closer to odenshoff and that was the only

01:21:30.260 hoff we had it was one of those things that i wanted consciously when i left to return with

01:21:40.260 the hoff to show that we could to make that happen and to have that victory there and

01:21:49.380 And when I came back the floor for the first time,

01:21:53.900 it was for the dedication of that Hoff.

01:21:55.880 And that was personally really significant to me.

01:22:01.080 Frey's Hoff.

01:22:04.760 Frey's Hoff's just magnificent.

01:22:06.420 Look at it.

01:22:07.540 So go there.

01:22:09.060 The building itself is, you know,

01:22:15.220 I think perfect overstates it.

01:22:16.980 but it's really ideal in so many ways the space itself is just fantastic but the the main worship

01:22:27.860 area is amazing spawn gets better every time with his murals and his skill that he puts into it

01:22:33.580 um the mural of freya there is the biggest mural so far and it's just it's breathtaking

01:22:44.500 it literally brought me to tears when I saw it the first time. It's amazing. The rest of the altar

01:22:52.020 space, the different altars up there on the dais and just the whole of that room is amazing and

01:23:02.900 it's wonderful. Also, Katie does the food there and she does an amazing job. The meal that I ate

01:23:09.540 They're, what, two months ago now was best meal I've had at a Hoff, so that's a big plus there.

01:23:15.900 So those are mine that I've got.

01:23:19.260 But this is a four-part question, so we're on to part three.

01:23:24.380 What is the AFA's stance on sex before marriage?

01:23:28.800 What is ideal and what is practical?

01:23:31.840 um so

01:23:36.880 this goes back to the nobility discussion about making good choices the afa doesn't have some

01:23:49.960 kind of abstinence before marriage stance the afa doesn't have a big stance on sex before marriage

01:23:55.800 the AFA has a stance on wanting our people to be dignified and wanting our people to make good

01:24:03.900 and responsible choices. And there is an arc to that, especially when sex comes into play and

01:24:11.900 the consequences that come along with it. So there is a great deal to be said for

01:24:17.100 discretion and wisdom in figuring that out artfully i think there is a tendency by those in our

01:24:28.600 circles to want us to have a particularly prudish stance and i don't think that's appropriate even

01:24:35.240 though you know it's tempting to to go with that but i do think an honest stance is also necessary

01:24:42.620 in there um so yeah there's no great afa doctrine on sex before marriage but the responsibility of

01:24:55.480 dealing with that and dealing with the consequences of it i think we could talk we could talk an

01:25:00.680 entire show easily about what is ideal i think ideal is that our families are raised together

01:25:10.740 in a faith community and you have people that have grown up knowing each other and families

01:25:14.700 that have grown up knowing each other and you have people who are both 18 that are magically

01:25:21.980 in love with each other and have found the perfect partner and they stay with that partner

01:25:25.840 for the rest of their life and raise you know many healthy beautiful white babies i think

01:25:33.820 that that's a whole lot of um variables that are unlikely to all hit at the same time but i think

01:25:42.460 trending towards that gets us closer to the ideal alan what are your thoughts on these things

01:25:49.340 i agree with what you said um we have some work to do to correct um the errant path that uh that

01:25:59.660 we are on overall. Along that line, I would just say, you know, although, of course, you

01:26:07.560 know, it's not the last word on these sorts of things ever, but in Germanica, it wasn't

01:26:19.860 Caesar, who was it? Anyway, you know, when they were, when the Romans were trying unsuccessfully

01:26:27.680 to conquer the German peoples, you know, they noted that chastity was greatly valued 0.97

01:26:35.260 among the German tribes, and for a good reason. 0.96

01:26:45.400 So I'll say this on what's not ideal. 1.00

01:26:48.360 So, what is not ideal is for you to find yourself in a spot where you have children that you have no custody or shared custody of.

01:27:08.320 That is a horrible place to be most of the time.

01:27:14.140 It's a less than ideal place to be all of the time.

01:27:18.520 but i've seen a lot of heartbreak by people who have not been thoughtful in their

01:27:30.440 premarital sexual expression and they have found themselves with children that they

01:27:37.080 don't get to see or have say in their life or to where they kind of have to half borrow their

01:27:42.120 when the children are in a 20-year struggle with a person who hates them

01:27:51.400 with kids in the balance that really don't get what we would want for them in terms of

01:28:00.120 a family and upbringing trying to avoid that situation by some caution i think is very advisable

01:28:07.640 And at the same time, you know, we also recognize that in this modern era, especially where traditionalism is trying to gain a new foothold in a, you know, awash in a sea of anti-traditionalism, you know, and especially, you know, a man or a woman who gets in to a marriage with the best intention.

01:28:34.620 and then one or the other of them finds their way

01:28:38.120 to a more traditionalist viewpoint,

01:28:40.540 it's difficult to hold that together.

01:28:44.380 And, you know, there's no easy answer for that.

01:28:47.420 And I don't want any member or anybody watching

01:28:51.580 to think that, you know, that because, you know,

01:28:56.440 the way that your life has worked out,

01:28:58.260 that there's, you know, that that is anything,

01:29:02.360 you know that that's any kind of judgment against you because it's not

01:29:06.940 you know we understand

01:29:09.480 and know sometimes from personal experience that

01:29:14.680 you know that these are

01:29:17.460 we live in chaotic turbulent time

01:29:22.660 and

01:29:24.500 it's not easy to

01:29:27.840 you know do anything

01:29:31.500 up along that line you know we we can talk about the ideal and frame it in that way and you know

01:29:39.400 we can then try to project you know the various permutations from that you know what what you

01:29:46.100 know what's the next best choice the next best choice you know but it's also true that sometimes

01:29:52.440 you know like if you get married to some guy and he then he turns out to be a weenie then you know

01:30:00.360 you kick him to the curb and find a good man yeah there's life's messy and that's part of the the 0.99

01:30:08.360 aryan theme i mentioned of being the adult and having to choose between imperfect choices 0.94

01:30:14.520 and some things just are and we can get mad that they are but we know that they're

01:30:18.360 biological truths and there's reasons for them men are judged harshly by lack of sexual partners

01:30:31.880 and women are judged harshly by abundance of sexual partners and those things are at

01:30:38.760 cross purposes especially in young people's lives that we're talking about pre-marital situations

01:30:43.640 both of those things are true and those are difficult challenges for our young people to

01:30:49.460 face shoot for all of our people to face in some circumstances so again a certain amount of

01:30:55.320 discretion and a certain amount of wisdom and making wise choices is you know is good in those

01:31:04.880 scenarios. For the fourth part of the question, which of your bumper stickers causes the most

01:31:13.260 concern for people outside of the AFA? I'm going to assume that that is like your personal bumper

01:31:19.580 stickers. Alan, what personal bumper stickers do you have that cause the most concern for people

01:31:24.280 outside of the airfare?

01:31:29.580 Um, I don't think, you know, what I display now is subtle.

01:31:39.260 So I don't, you know, I've never had anybody be concerned.

01:31:42.860 Sorry, wait, there is an exception that I'm going to get around to.

01:31:45.560 But, you know, what I have, you know, like on my vehicles, I have, you know, like a walk

01:31:52.280 knot, although it's in its proper orientation, you know, everywhere on the rune stones where

01:31:58.320 the valk knot is displayed, it's not with the point up, but with the point down and

01:32:01.860 left.

01:32:03.040 So my valk knot is in the proper orientation, you know, and I have mead horns and, you know,

01:32:09.300 ravens and that sort of thing.

01:32:10.840 And so, like, for the most part, people have no idea what that stuff is.

01:32:16.400 Um, and honestly, part of it is because in my, you know, my car is, ends up parked outside my professional office and I want to keep the amount of controversy, um, below, uh, the minimum.

01:32:38.060 however the one that i won't say it causes a problem the one that draws the most attention

01:32:44.300 um is you know i have a i have a i have a peace sign on my truck but i have it right side up

01:32:51.500 um you know and and i mean that's an easy thing to goad people with because you know the peace sign

01:32:58.780 if you put it right side up it's the augie's room so you know i've been i've been stopped in traffic

01:33:05.900 and had people ask me you know why should peace sign upside down and like again i've got an

01:33:10.540 elevator speech for that and they go you mean they've been lying to us about that the whole time

01:33:16.620 they sure have um so that's one of those things that can you know inspire

01:33:23.820 attention and thoughtfulness among people and it doesn't mean war exactly you know the opposite of

01:33:31.420 although we are at war with the anti-traditionalists and i'm happy to own that

01:33:43.580 i don't have any bumper stickers um and i haven't gotten any negative feedback um

01:33:53.820 um to be fair you do you may not have a bumper sticker but you do have a car that says prius on

01:34:01.640 it that's bad enough so people dislike my prius but i really like my gas savings so

01:34:08.380 you know there's a cost for that um i have a

01:34:16.040 sons of confederate veterans license plate that i'm sure some people who are

01:34:22.660 I don't know, wrongly aligned

01:34:25.780 dislike. I've also

01:34:27.500 because in Tennessee you don't have to

01:34:29.540 have a front plate. I've got

01:34:31.480 a confederate battle flag

01:34:33.660 front plate on my Prius

01:34:35.360 which also

01:34:37.680 I'm sure some people dislike

01:34:39.400 but that's their problem

01:34:41.620 nobody's like said anything to

01:34:43.600 me about it.

01:34:48.000 Yeah I had a confederate

01:34:49.580 battle flag

01:34:50.180 um front plate for years and years and years i still have in the shop but you know then i

01:34:55.800 i had a client of mine make me uh you know some the you know and i've got that thor's hammer front

01:35:03.240 plate now and you know with an american flag motif and i've got to make like six or eight of them and

01:35:09.160 sold them all um random fun guy looking at his wiki article why would stephen mcnowin

01:35:20.160 and do a sort of neo-nazi purge during the reassembly dates um i've got answers and

01:35:27.360 thoughts on this but uh alan do you have any insight on this i don't um you know i when after

01:35:34.960 i joined you know i never dug into the history of all that stuff and you know when i joined you know

01:35:41.600 back in the 1830s they're just you know that this stuff wasn't all that available i mean there wasn't

01:35:46.880 all that much on the internet you know i joined because like mr mcnallan and his aura resonated

01:36:01.040 with me and i said this is a guy i can get behind and support um and you know the past is prologue

01:36:09.680 and here we are so it's a much misunderstood saga um there were a number of things that contribute

01:36:19.360 to it but the problem is it's been thrown around as an ideological football in different places so

01:36:31.600 people have

01:36:32.480 people who are strongly opposed to quote unquote neo-nazis are like aha steve's our guy because he

01:36:44.960 purged these evil neo-nazis see he's virtuous and so that has written as a narrative for a time

01:36:54.240 people who are inclined to be pro quote unquote neo-nazis are offended and think you know there's

01:37:01.840 some kind of a counter signaling or you know he's one of the bad guys because he doesn't like the

01:37:07.040 the neo-nazis the truth of the matter is a lot more nuanced and i'll say this um i think that

01:37:23.360 circumstances in life

01:37:25.280 helped shape a person's ideology over the course of decades i think that certainly in the free

01:37:35.360 assembly days steve was racially aware he was certainly folkish and understood that

01:37:44.880 ausitry was was folkish i think politically he would have been best described as as libertarian

01:37:51.840 or certainly of the libertarian kind of stripe that way

01:37:57.360 so i don't think it was out of some kind of you know

01:38:05.600 love of lefty universalism in any way but he has gotten more

01:38:14.960 i would say he's moved to the right over the last few decades

01:38:19.920 um i think that you know the circumstances in his life and things that he's been through and learned

01:38:28.740 have helped shape who he is today in a way that is a bit different but at the time there was a

01:38:35.580 couple of things it wasn't because you know some some well-dressed socially well adept people with

01:38:45.120 national socialist leanings had politics in the group that he didn't like that's

01:38:52.160 not a fair assessment there were two currents going on in austral free assembly

01:39:00.080 events at the time and and i don't claim this to be all end all this was all happening when i was

01:39:08.800 probably in elementary school but this is what i've weaned in my historical studies on it

01:39:14.080 trying to get to the bottom of it there was a large there's the intellectual national socialists

01:39:24.000 and then there's the like dress up nazi more skinhead

01:39:32.480 type of activists at the time right there were people yeah well there were people at events

01:39:40.080 that were showing up being very loud and abrasive and sometimes dangerous just being thuggish

01:39:52.320 that was a problem that was alienating a lot of people the free assembly saw like

01:39:57.520 renaissance fair nerds and eclectic odd 0.91

01:40:02.640 fatty orgy wiccan pagans getting together with hardcore racist um neo-nazi groups and 0.72

01:40:16.160 everybody in between and kids that like to play dungeons and dragons and legitimate historians 0.93

01:40:22.320 and people who are interested in history and everything in between it was a time of coalescing

01:40:28.640 where people from literally every

01:40:30.500 possible degree of the spectrum would try

01:40:32.660 to come together, see where they fit in

01:40:34.700 or if they didn't fit in, clashes were

01:40:36.740 happening. But there was an

01:40:38.700 element there that was doing that. There was also an element

01:40:40.580 there that was like

01:40:41.440 trying to make everything

01:40:44.820 a dress-up Nazi event. 0.71

01:40:46.540 I think that we use the term dress-up Nazi

01:40:48.680 means different things. I mean

01:40:50.800 literally in

01:40:52.740 reenactment SS uniforms

01:40:54.860 to do all of their stuff

01:40:57.060 and

01:40:58.400 And agree or disagree with that, it wasn't what Ausatru was about.

01:41:03.920 They were trying to make it about their dress up Nazi stuff.

01:41:08.280 But also there was going on specifically in Los Angeles at the time, there were folks

01:41:16.280 that were largely atheists that were consciously trying to use Ausatru as a cover for national

01:41:27.100 socialist political activism instead of being at the event to practice house of truth and so i think

01:41:34.780 that it was a coalescing of those things of steve being like hey you guys aren't here for the right

01:41:41.260 reasons if you're not here to worship the gods don't be here hey if you guys can't act right

01:41:46.540 and stop being rowdy and acting up you can't be here and i think that happened to affect the

01:41:53.580 people that were most affected at the time oh steve doesn't like us because we're neo-nazis 0.88

01:41:59.900 no he doesn't like you because you're socially disruptive and because you guys are atheists

01:42:04.140 aren't here to worship the gods you guys are here to yell about politics and that's what had

01:42:09.100 happened that's the best i've come to understand we've tried to do a lot of chris has helped that

01:42:14.300 too chris savage is co-host on here periodically trying to research our history and get that

01:42:20.620 history recorded and i think all of those things go into play into that narrative that he had some

01:42:25.500 kind of neo-nazi purge i think it's largely try to clean up disruptive elements and elements that

01:42:33.260 weren't there and that happened to be a point of commonality bad that's the best i understand that

01:42:40.380 i think that again i know very little about it but that seems to be uh i'm sure that's an

01:42:46.380 accurate assessment and it's a good time to wedge in here too that there's a certain

01:42:54.780 um stripe of progressivism that fits well with our tribalism um you know it's so you know which

01:43:05.260 is to say that that also true is not about politics um it is about traditionalism

01:43:13.100 in large part and religion of course but also a traditionalist approach to religion but also

01:43:22.020 traditionalist approach to metapolitical issues like the direction of the civilization the

01:43:30.840 direction of the culture and how that's expressed um is not certainly doesn't fit neatly into the

01:43:40.960 um, the false dichotomy of, uh, blue and red politics. Um, so, you know, we don't take

01:43:50.860 political stance. We are not a political organization at all. Um, at the same time,

01:43:56.420 you know, by and large, um, we, um, you know, we, we, because we take a traditionalist

01:44:06.380 viewpoint we we tend to be a much more conservative group overall but like at some point those circles

01:44:13.420 meet like on the other side like libertarianism you know you can be a right libertarian left

01:44:19.000 libertarian you could be a sort of a you know a progressive traditionalist i guess the in fact i

01:44:26.960 just finished listening to a book by a guy who i was agreeing with one thousand percent till he got

01:44:31.420 like to the very end and talked about you know that like politically he's this uh super lefty

01:44:39.020 but it does go to show that a lot of the analysis and you know a lot we can we can agree on a lot of

01:44:45.720 things that are wrong with the direction that civilization is headed in um and disagree about

01:44:55.280 some other stuff and still be under the you know under the umbrella of the gods and the ancestors

01:45:01.840 so i'll say this as an example to people in the chat like don't get it wrong it wasn't i do not

01:45:09.300 have any reason to believe it was about national socialism it was about people trying to come to

01:45:16.560 AFA events, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, we get it. Instead of talking about Alcetru, hey, join,

01:45:25.040 you know, I don't want to pick a group if I don't know they were the ones doing it. Here,

01:45:29.360 join my political party that I'm doing. In the same way, you know, we have had people

01:45:36.480 in the past show up who, yeah, Alcetru, whatever. Anyway, here, join my chapter of the Klan. 0.74

01:45:44.080 that's not what we're doing you're not even also true you're just here trying to recruit for

01:45:52.980 the clan and that's not what we're doing and that's kind of the situation that if you had

01:45:58.600 people there at the same time and they were wearing three corner hats and yelling about

01:46:03.780 libertarianism at some point like hey guys how about we don't and we talk about odin and we do

01:46:10.340 bloat instead no i was here to you know talk about sovereign citizens and stuff no that's not what

01:46:19.300 we're doing so at some point it's it's about that or it's about whatever your politics if you're

01:46:24.900 drunk and loud and obnoxious and people can't get any sleep or have the kids around

01:46:31.380 let's not do that so i think that's what a lot of that was around again that was kind of a

01:46:36.420 a wild time of not a lot of group cohesion there was a lot of that still forming then

01:46:44.660 um from gilbert good evening i'll hear you go if you're in law speaker i believe one of the

01:46:53.400 major effects and goals of afa membership is an increase in group cohesion peter turchin's

01:47:02.620 asabaya or in other terms fulkishness how can we help build this fulkishness in others both

01:47:11.800 within the church and without thank you gentlemen for everything you do for our gods our folk and

01:47:17.520 our church well thank you gilbert um alan are you familiar with peter turchin are you familiar with

01:47:25.520 the concept of asabaya and can you talk about how our faith community relates to that concept

01:47:36.320 oh boy um so it's my fault that um mr page has become familiar with that

01:47:44.480 terminology and with peter turchin because he listened to a book that i recommended to him

01:47:49.280 um asabaya was specifically and maybe because you know i read a lot so the um so

01:48:03.200 what that term is about is group cohesiveness okay and what and specifically

01:48:14.000 you know it's about

01:48:18.680 civilization being attacked 1.00

01:48:20.840 by the barbarian 1.00

01:48:22.740 outsider

01:48:23.320 and so what

01:48:26.360 and it comes up in

01:48:29.060 Oswald Spengler

01:48:32.480 although he doesn't

01:48:34.740 use the term Turchin is the one who

01:48:36.720 came up with the term which I believe

01:48:38.480 along two books out

01:48:40.820 from the Prophets of Doom

01:48:42.580 which again is an excellent book by the way

01:48:44.640 The Prophets of Doom

01:48:45.800 but

01:48:47.720 I believe it was an

01:48:50.620 Arabic term because

01:48:52.500 what they're talking about there

01:48:54.440 is like you know

01:48:56.420 when a civilization is young

01:49:00.440 and full of

01:49:01.680 vim and vigor there's a different

01:49:04.280 phraseology that I won't use but full

01:49:06.580 of vim and vigor and is in

01:49:08.520 its conquering expansive

01:49:10.560 youthful stage it goes out

01:49:12.480 and, you know, absorbs the surrounding peoples and countryside into its sphere of influence.

01:49:23.640 But then the peoples at the edge that don't quite get conquered develop a sense of, in this term,

01:49:31.840 asabaya or cohesiveness, and Gilbert said, you know, folkishness.

01:49:39.840 Like, you know, so if you want to think of it, and it is widely true that this phenomenon occurs between, like, the city and the country, between the city and the rural, because you come, you know, like, the civilization conquers, and, you know, the warriors go out and make this big buffer zone.

01:50:07.480 and then they sort of retract to the city and become comfortable and wealthy and become soft

01:50:16.460 and lazy and that's what happened to Rome although it took several hundred years

01:50:24.040 some would say thousand years because Byzantium was really the end of the Roman Empire and that

01:50:29.840 didn't get conquered until like the 1600s right 1500s um anyway so but the but those those outer

01:50:39.700 groups develop a group cohesion because they are opposed to the control being levied against them

01:50:51.500 by the by the central authority okay so just like the german tribes were remained unconquered

01:51:03.360 because they kept their asabaya they kept their folkishness and they said we will not

01:51:09.100 fall under the domain of the Romans.

01:51:14.220 And so they came together

01:51:18.720 to eliminate the legions in Teutoburg Forest

01:51:23.520 and remain free.

01:51:27.980 It also happened, you know, 0.86

01:51:30.500 like when the Moors conquered and occupied Spain,

01:51:34.920 And, you know, you have to have that sense of history to remember, and certainly it wasn't taught to me.

01:51:47.340 I had to read it, you know, later on because what passes for history in schools is not, but anyway, it's not education.

01:52:01.340 But anyway, like the Spanish didn't reconquer Spain until the 1490s.

01:52:09.880 You know, so think about that.

01:52:10.840 It was, you know, I mean, Spain, like traditionally European had been hundreds of thousands of years had been, you know, the Celto Aryan people.

01:52:26.680 and then Christianity came

01:52:29.760 and they were

01:52:31.920 of course Catholic for a long time

01:52:33.960 and then the Muslims came along and 1.00

01:52:35.740 conquered almost all of Spain 1.00

01:52:37.600 and it took

01:52:39.040 hundreds of years to reconquista 0.97

01:52:41.680 because those last few Spanish 1.00

01:52:43.840 peoples coalesced

01:52:46.120 retained their

01:52:47.580 group cohesion

01:52:49.060 and finally

01:52:51.220 after a long and bitter and

01:52:53.800 bloody struggle 0.99

01:52:54.680 kick the Muslims out of Spain. 1.00

01:52:58.620 So, you know, and that 1.00

01:53:01.280 I believe is what Gilbert's talking about, you know, and I think that we

01:53:06.080 of the AFA

01:53:08.720 are out at the tip of the spear

01:53:12.180 of

01:53:14.720 regaining and or retaining

01:53:19.960 the, our group cohesion

01:53:23.520 as people that um that this is who we are this is why we are um and we don't care if you like or not

01:53:32.500 and i'll say it again because i like my little trite bumper sticker sayings

01:53:39.900 um you know when it's us versus them i take us every time and that's what that term is about

01:53:46.440 yeah i've never heard of peter churchin or if i have i didn't associate him with it i

01:53:55.240 i first encountered that concept of that term vasavaya with uh ibn khaldun and again he was

01:54:03.600 during that reconquista time i remember um i had to learn about him and came in contact with that

01:54:10.080 when i was on the debate team in high school um because he had some relevant quotations that i

01:54:15.980 yeah what alan said i but i think to add on to it um

01:54:29.820 and we see it in its small stages right now we are building on it in what

01:54:38.780 i don't know old old man wisdom since i turned 40 i've got i've got old man wisdom

01:54:44.620 So if you're around something long enough, you get to see how something has progressed over time.

01:54:52.680 And I think that when people encounter the AFA, they have to compare it with the image they had in their mind.

01:55:07.460 when people come in underestimating it they're overwhelmed by how amazing we are how far we've

01:55:15.220 come the fact that we have five hoffs how well we're doing other people who you know

01:55:22.340 don't have that context and assume like ah surely there's a hoff you know in my town where's my

01:55:28.940 closest hoff you know they're dismayed because they have an expectation in their mind and it's

01:55:35.200 beautiful that we have shaped enough in the world where we project that that's where we're at to 0.84

01:55:41.760 where people are crestfallen that surely there'd be at least three hoffs in each state

01:55:50.320 it's cool that the psychological impact makes that well of course there would be but for many of us

01:55:58.480 and i talked about our oldest half it's 11 years old this year many of us came up in this one that

01:56:05.440 wasn't there we've come a long way towards building that in group culture and cohesion and that

01:56:14.640 provides a tremendous base of strength for our members and we all want to see that grow

01:56:22.080 and continue to develop as the years go on and generations go on and I think that those of us

01:56:28.960 who've been here for a decade or more have seen how well that's taken root and how well that's

01:56:35.760 growing so I think we're absolutely doing the right things but to continue that everyone out

01:56:43.000 there who may be hearing this that might be sitting on the fence it's like I support you

01:56:46.860 guys a hundred percent but i just don't want to join i appreciate the thought that also equals

01:56:55.440 supporting us zero percent join be a member be part of actually supporting us and being part of

01:57:00.800 what we do if you're on the fence get off the fence get on the team um we're doing this and

01:57:07.340 you were doing this with us accelerates our progress and how well we can build that in group

01:57:14.100 focusedness. I am a unique case in my position, and I don't take that for granted, but my entire

01:57:24.420 life is wrapped in this. My friendships, the people that I have deep connection with over

01:57:32.760 the years, over the decades. I have this whole life built within the AFA, and a number, an

01:57:42.400 increasing number of our people have that they have friends and family that span across the

01:57:48.220 continent and at different points around the world that are afa members that they know that

01:57:53.440 they have connection with that they have shared shared faith shared bonds of culture shared

01:58:00.460 tradition and have that internal um internal bond we are building that in a really strong way

01:58:10.880 and the more you choose to get involved you will see that develop and take root over the years

01:58:17.440 and many of us have built families specifically around that and from that and born of that um

01:58:27.760 you know i i i met my wife through the afa we have built the afa into our life

01:58:36.240 Our daughter has known the Astro Folk Assembly since the day she was born, since her Asavatni,

01:58:44.880 since growing up playing in the in the yards of our Hoffs and building that in a fundamental

01:58:55.040 part of her DNA. We're building that all the time around us and you don't notice it until you step

01:59:02.000 away and you look in or you take note of like where you were and where it's come because it's

01:59:07.120 a slow build over time but it's a strong one and i think we're doing the right things that way and

01:59:12.720 i'm excited to see that continue to grow and take shape and be palpable to the membership and i

01:59:19.200 think it does now in a way that it you know greater than it ever has before

01:59:22.880 um caleb asks could someone who is fully aware of asa truth but rejects it for christianity

01:59:31.760 be hailed at some

01:59:39.120 alan do you want to take the first swing at that

01:59:43.120 i i can but you know the answer is yes um you know

01:59:47.920 You know, if they're a worthy person who has done good things and stands with their folk and, you know, I have no qualms at all about it.

02:00:04.140 Of course, my dad was an atheist, I guess, and my mother's a devout Christian, but at the same time, they didn't know about Ossetru.

02:00:17.920 So, I mean, I understand the import of the question, but I would still say, you know, that in the open round of oaths, toasts, and boasts, that it was, you know, that it's a valid expression.

02:00:36.900 See, I think that the devil is really in the details.

02:00:41.220 um people ask on here a related question but the difference to me is

02:00:47.940 knows about us are true but chooses to reject it for christianity

02:00:52.500 it depends on what that means

02:01:00.500 your friend who you told about us are true but they are a confirmed christian and remain so until

02:01:06.580 their death. Sure. If your friend was Ausitru and he turns his back on our gods to pursue 0.91

02:01:15.500 Christianity, then I would say no. Both of those people are aware of Ausitru and rejected for 0.96

02:01:23.740 Christianity, but the difference is really important. We get asked on here a lot, well,

02:01:30.120 what do I do? My ancestors haven't been Ausitru for a thousand years. Should we not honor them?

02:01:36.580 you should honor every generation of them except the first one who turned his back on his gods

02:01:45.060 and embraced christ that person i've never mentioned that person lives in the infamy

02:01:51.140 because they betrayed their gods if you aren't in trough with the icer and you stay loyal to the

02:01:58.100 thing that you are in trough with that's real different than you breaking your trough with the

02:02:04.660 is to prostitute yourself to a foreign god those are two different things and that's where i think

02:02:14.020 the nuance is there's lots and lots of people we hail at some who are not also true there's lots

02:02:20.980 of our own family members that we hail at some that know that we're absolutely true and don't

02:02:26.580 don't make the decision to join us in being Ausatru.

02:02:31.400 And I think those people are fine to hail it somewhere.

02:02:36.140 But people who reject Ausatru,

02:02:38.360 who were in trough with the gods and then break that trough

02:02:42.840 and don't return to it,

02:02:44.780 I don't think those people should be celebrated in some way.

02:02:50.820 But it's a nuanced thing,

02:02:52.620 and that's a really important detail.

02:02:56.580 so Mary says

02:03:04.600 Alcatru is the folk religion

02:03:06.780 of potato Europe

02:03:08.120 while the people of tomato Europe

02:03:10.500 have the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses

02:03:13.160 comments

02:03:13.940 Alan what are your comments

02:03:15.500 I mean I get what she's getting at

02:03:20.680 interesting that both the potato

02:03:24.060 and the tomato are new world foods

02:03:27.180 You know, both important, you know, so at the same time, I, you know, I mean, I know what she's getting at, you know, but the, but those are differences of degree and not of kind.

02:03:45.240 And the Greco-Roman panoply is very much the same as the Norse panoply.

02:03:54.900 The Indo-European people manifested that in slightly different ways.

02:04:01.580 But and I'm not super conversant on the, you know, the like which one represents, you know, like Mars, you know, because when, you know,

02:04:13.980 when the Caesars were conquering or tried to conquer the German tribes,

02:04:18.260 they saw very close analogies to, you know, between Mars and Thor, for example.

02:04:23.680 So, you know, so those are differences of degree and not of kind.

02:04:29.820 You know, there are heroic gods who smash the forces of chaos

02:04:34.960 and protect their own people.

02:04:38.080 So, and plus, you know, you put some tomatoes in your potatoes

02:04:42.860 and you got some good eating going on there.

02:04:46.560 So, you know, we can, that's the kind of multiculturalism

02:04:54.480 I can get behind. 1.00

02:05:00.600 Yeah, I think it misses a fundamental truth

02:05:07.560 that is not perfectly divisible so it is uncomfortable to try to rack our brains on

02:05:16.080 that we also know it's true our gods are real

02:05:21.560 them being real gods and not sociological constructs or literary characters

02:05:31.260 they didn't just appear at different points of time in history when someone first wrote something

02:05:39.980 down you can trace etymologically and culturally their worship back to shared and common roots

02:05:49.400 if these are the gods that created us and shaped us and imbued us with the divine spark that makes

02:05:57.720 us who we are then they've been with us since the beginning of our race we know that the helens and

02:06:05.960 the latins and the germanics were one people at the beginning of our race so they came from certain

02:06:14.920 gods the development of our understanding of those gods looks very different by the time

02:06:24.280 some of our folk are in the mediterranean and some of our folk are on the north sea

02:06:32.200 either version of that is an acceptable way of worshiping the arian gods

02:06:41.640 but

02:06:44.920 certainly in 2026 the gods have shown favor to one expression of that in a way that is above the

02:06:51.800 others and i think if we were having this discussion in rome or in greece it might look

02:07:01.080 really different i think if those people are pursuing hellenism or whatever they want to call

02:07:08.200 you know latin version of hellenism um i think that's fine i think that's great and that's pious

02:07:16.920 and i think that's fantastic but i think we would all be better off as a united race of aryan

02:07:25.160 peoples to worship the gods under the banner of ausatru in the conception that has worked

02:07:33.400 that has given us the best and most

02:07:35.800 accessible um corpus of lore and importantly the

02:07:47.480 names and conception that have been whispered into the ear of our founder steve mcnally by

02:07:54.280 the all-father himself to put this that we do in motion in the most successful way in the world

02:08:00.360 that's where we should be

02:08:03.600 whether your ancestors

02:08:04.600 come from potato

02:08:07.380 or tomato Europe

02:08:08.600 I think that we're all better

02:08:13.300 served if we're all practicing

02:08:15.540 house of truth

02:08:16.180 so the next question comes

02:08:23.580 from Austin

02:08:24.560 greetings all, hope you are having

02:08:27.600 a great evening

02:08:28.300 on more than one occasion members have responded negatively to ai generated flyers for afa events

02:08:35.780 when i send them out i'm sure there are many more members or there are more members that have a

02:08:42.060 problem with af flyers and don't tell anyone while i try to limit ai in my work i can understand if

02:08:49.140 others want to use it to save time but some members seem to think it's a kind of moral failing

02:08:54.300 or something. Do you think these members might have a valid point? What are your thoughts on

02:08:59.640 using AI for AFA-related things and people just using it in general? Thanks for all you do.

02:09:07.260 Alan, what are your thoughts on using AI-generated design for flyers?

02:09:14.120 i think it's fine you know because to use ai to say you know draw me a you know generate me a

02:09:26.360 picture of some vikings sitting around the dinner table i don't have the artistic ability to do that

02:09:32.820 i mean every flyer i've ever done back you know 100 years ago when i was a folk builder

02:09:39.280 Or, you know, it's all just a text, you know, which is, I mean, it's bland and boring, but I mean, it just says, you know, we're doing this at this point, you know, because I don't have that, you know, that be that flair for that sort of stuff.

02:09:57.260 I'm all about some vocabulistics, but the, but, you know, I see absolutely nothing wrong with it.

02:10:09.280 To the extent that it enhances, you know, just the publicizing of the event, you know, I wouldn't suggest that we should let the AI go out, you know, pick me a date and a restaurant and, you know, and, you know, and do the whole thing for us.

02:10:25.680 But, you know, as far as enhancing a flyer so that it is more eye-catching, now, I mean, at the same time, I understand, like, the objection to that is, you know, AI is eating the world as part of the machine.

02:10:45.480 And so, you know, to the extent that we are contributing to the downfall of all that sort of stuff, I mean, I, you know, that's the objection.

02:10:58.720 I mean, I sort of understand it, but, you know, that seemed to me to be just, you know, the the part of that purity spiral that we all get in sometimes.

02:11:12.800 And, you know, you know, for some it's objectionable, but for some it enhances the, you know, the beauty and attention that the flyer and that the underlying event deserve.

02:11:32.060 So, you know, do what seems right to you would be my suggestion.

02:11:38.820 Yeah, I think these people are drastically overreacting.

02:11:41.520 and I think they're being 0.97

02:11:42.960 yeah I think they're being silly when it comes 0.99

02:11:47.800 to that on flyers that's dumb 0.98

02:11:49.540 I could 0.95

02:11:51.740 pretend it's not but truth

02:11:53.640 is one of our virtues

02:11:54.680 AI art

02:11:57.920 like

02:11:59.400 art if you were

02:12:01.320 hey I painted this by telling

02:12:03.820 AI what to put on there

02:12:05.320 that's not really art

02:12:07.680 it may be a design concept

02:12:09.840 that ai helped you with but it's different having ai write you a song or ai compose you a poem

02:12:17.680 i think some of those things take away from art but this isn't art this is you trying to make a

02:12:24.880 quick flyer that's visually appealing and i think that everybody knows that you're not trying to

02:12:30.800 trick them or pass anything off and if a member objects do they have a hand-drawn flyer they would

02:12:38.000 like to present to you to use instead if they do and i say that as a flex like cool you want to draw

02:12:44.480 one what but if they come back hey here's this beautiful one i drew for you sure use that one

02:12:50.800 go for it awesome um no ai is a tool that is increasingly useful for us to not use it

02:12:59.680 is puts us at an unnecessary disadvantage there are certainly going to be many occasions where

02:13:09.600 it would be inappropriate but to navigate what is a good use of it when it's necessary

02:13:17.360 um no we need to be we need to be on the cutting edge of using all of the tools necessary as long

02:13:26.880 as they do not do something morally intolerable for our fold to advance us and move us forward

02:13:34.000 our ancestors were noted for doing that they were at the tip of technology and they wouldn't

02:13:40.160 shun using things outside of their sphere or that their ancestors didn't use in order to

02:13:46.800 be more effective at their goals efficacy matters and tying hands behind your back for no good

02:13:54.960 reason because somebody's purity spiraling because they want to use microsoft paint or

02:14:00.480 whatever they're used to using i don't see that as a as a moral argument and i also don't see a

02:14:08.320 dishonesty as if you're claiming if you're going to claim that you hand drew it and it was generated

02:14:13.680 by arvin yeah or ai then yeah your deception is is morally reprehensible but if you're not trying

02:14:21.040 to fool anybody i don't think it's inappropriate at all i think you're doing the best you can to

02:14:25.200 make visually appealing stuff and that's fun some of my flyers would use ai but i'm not bright enough

02:14:32.240 to know how to do that so that's where i'm at but i appreciate you asking i'm sure it'll come up on

02:14:38.800 a variety of things as those kind of lines get blurred more and more no but i think that's a

02:14:43.840 great point if anybody raises an objection then you ask them okay well next time i do it

02:14:49.840 But I would like we can work together.

02:14:53.640 You know, we can work together and put together a flyer that, you know, that you can do that art and I'll do the place and we'll meet and talk about it.

02:15:01.900 So that's a great that's a great co-option there.

02:15:05.040 There you go.

02:15:05.860 There you have it.

02:15:09.140 This was just for you, Alan.

02:15:10.800 Law speaker Alan Turnage, what is your favorite comfort food?

02:15:19.840 you know i hate to say it i'm not on ice cream um you know i mean as far as a

02:15:27.920 um and i and i hesitate to even now i have found a new like favorite brand of ice cream as in

02:15:37.920 general which is blue bunny ice cream because it doesn't have all that goop in it you know

02:15:44.000 it melts into liquid and not into goop like other ice cream does um and i

02:15:55.120 hesitate to admit it because of their politics but um i love me some ben and jerry's new york

02:16:01.440 fudge super junk so if anybody um is wondering what to get me for yule you know a big freezer

02:16:10.800 full of new york footage super junk i'm surprised out here if he hasn't got you on that ninja creamy

02:16:17.040 game yet on what okay so i'm gonna plug another product though they don't pay me and they should

02:16:25.680 um the ninja creamy ice cream uh maker thingy and there's a bunch of recipes that you can make

02:16:33.920 protein ice cream in there and again i don't i'm typically not that guy those recipes that are like

02:16:44.280 oh it's kind of good i'd rather eat real ice cream and then just chunk just you know cram down

02:16:51.180 protein shake that's disgusting i want to shoot it and get it done as fast as i can

02:16:55.140 i don't like the half measure thing that tricks you into thinking it's good no this ice cream

02:17:00.740 honestly really good it's extremely friendly to your macros um it's awesome i make well i say i

02:17:09.380 make no i don't uh i have mandy make for me um like chocolate mint that i put mint chocolate

02:17:19.540 chunks in i have them make uh chocolate protein ice cream that i put little mini m&ms in

02:17:25.700 And all of it comes out really good, really macro-friendly.

02:17:29.880 Each pint of it, I'm getting like 50 grams of protein.

02:17:32.660 It's awesome.

02:17:35.020 When Mandy has made them for me, I will eat several in a sitting, and it's all good.

02:17:40.900 It keeps me on track, and it's tasty.

02:17:43.440 But, yeah, ice cream's awesome, be it healthy or not healthy ice cream.

02:17:48.820 I make up for that.

02:17:50.240 I make my own Gatorade, so I can have commercial ice cream.

02:17:58.600 I also do not like Ben nor Jerry, and I'm ashamed to admit that I do enjoy their products

02:18:05.580 if one finds its way to me, though I cannot bring myself to purchase them.

02:18:12.780 But if someone hands them to me, I will enjoy them.

02:18:16.060 cherry garcia was a favorite growing up um i haven't had cherry garcia in a long time i could

02:18:25.420 go for some right now honestly i just finished some like two nights ago jealous um troubled guest

02:18:35.740 i have some questions one why did steve mcnallen step down and two can you tell me all your

02:18:43.180 thoughts if any on the goddess uh hecate um alan what you want to take the first shot at those two

02:18:54.860 um the greek panoply i'm so um unfamiliar with i'm not even positive

02:19:03.100 who hecate is um you know because i am focused in you know entirely in my practice and

02:19:10.860 diligence on, you know, in our own Norse gods, you know, as far as the first, that's a long

02:19:26.140 and complicated thing. I think after Steve had been at it for, you know, like 40 odd

02:19:33.920 years at that point, you know, I mean, he, you know, he had just reached the point where

02:19:38.260 he had he felt like he had pushed you know he had rolled the boulder as far as he could and

02:19:45.860 it was just time to pass the torch

02:19:53.220 i also have and i wish i had some you know long scholarly answer my familiarity with

02:20:04.420 uh greek goddesses is limited i think that her you know as fawn's favorite thing to say her

02:20:17.060 tripartite nature is interesting i think her

02:20:25.540 her similarity to woven in her relationship with death and like crossroads and

02:20:34.420 like liminal spaces is interesting,

02:20:37.700 but I couldn't say I have a lot of detailed thoughts to give you on that.

02:20:42.880 As far as Steve stepping down,

02:20:46.200 he,

02:20:46.880 he finally stepped down in 2016,

02:20:50.720 but when I first met him in 2010,

02:20:54.340 he announced that he was going to be stepping down sometime soon.

02:20:59.220 so I think it was the result of

02:21:01.760 a lot of processes

02:21:03.900 going on I think

02:21:06.060 you know he'd done this

02:21:08.060 for

02:21:08.640 his entire adult life

02:21:12.120 at that point and

02:21:13.820 I think there was probably a lot

02:21:16.240 of baggage that comes with that

02:21:18.220 I think there was

02:21:19.160 various you know

02:21:22.020 personal reasons

02:21:24.080 I think there was also

02:21:25.980 a

02:21:26.740 desire to explore some different things with his time as far as political things or writing

02:21:35.920 endeavors that I know he wanted to do there's a number of things but he was talking about

02:21:42.400 making that transition since like literally I the first time I heard it was the day that I met him

02:21:48.340 in 2010 so it was something kind of long talked about and planned to and I think a number of

02:21:56.240 things built up that way and i think something else is true kind of like alan said i think that

02:22:01.680 his inspiration for what he wanted to do and what he could do he kind of moved things

02:22:12.000 as far that direction as he had the um the drive or the inspiration or the the inclination

02:22:22.240 to do and he felt like it was time um to pass the torch he had mentioned the one time a quote

02:22:31.120 like he didn't mention as a quote i am quoting him but he he didn't want as he

02:22:37.760 aged for the afa to calcify with him and so i think you know

02:22:45.280 there is something to that for whatever reasons he felt that way

02:22:48.960 but if you would like to come

02:22:53.860 to Midsummer at Odenshof

02:22:55.980 you could ask him and he may have

02:22:57.840 a more in-depth and

02:22:59.560 better answer than

02:23:01.540 we've got for you

02:23:02.740 alright

02:23:07.940 do you have

02:23:09.920 prayer lines slash 1.00

02:23:11.900 lists like Christians do 1.00

02:23:14.020 when someone is sick or 1.00

02:23:15.900 in need

02:23:16.900 i know we do is the circle of air is that still active

02:23:31.220 you're muted

02:23:34.980 so i i prayer lines or lists i'm not sure what that refers to we have the circle of air we have a

02:23:44.740 thing where um our ladies led by our uh do prayers when somebody is uh in bad health

02:23:59.460 and we try to keep them abreast of what members are going through what stuff so that they can

02:24:07.540 do various rites and prayers to beseech the gods and the uh

02:24:14.740 the various spirits to help them and to heal them and i know that's been an ongoing thing i know that

02:24:20.180 we've had at various times we've had different um healing rituals where we've been called upon

02:24:29.220 as gothar to perform a healing right for people who are in ill health

02:24:36.580 um we've done that in like a ritual sense away from the person we've also had gothar go in

02:24:44.420 and minister to people who are in the hospital to try to help in that healing process so um

02:24:54.020 you know i i'm not one of the ladies so i haven't been involved in the circle there other than to

02:24:58.180 refer people to that i have performed healing rights and i have gone and tried to be of help

02:25:04.020 to people who've been in the hospital though um alan have you had any of those experiences or

02:25:09.380 anything you want to add on that no not personally um but i also know that in sumble air is called

02:25:19.620 upon many times with healing directed at specific members who are, you know, who are in need

02:25:30.520 of healing.

02:25:31.100 So in addition to Circle of Air, which is very much, I think, in keeping with that,

02:25:37.480 you know, that Christian idea of, I mean, it's a parallel on all fours, obviously, but

02:25:42.780 it parallels the, you know, the prayer list, and it's certainly done in Sambul as well.

02:25:49.620 for those who have turned their backs

02:25:58.200 on Alcitru

02:25:59.400 what is a good ritual

02:26:02.180 to pray that they come back

02:26:04.040 to their senses

02:26:04.880 Alan

02:26:05.640 there is the ritual

02:26:09.800 of alcohol

02:26:11.140 intake

02:26:12.780 the ritual of bribing

02:26:15.880 them with many beers

02:26:17.060 other than a ritual clubbing, nothing comes immediately to mind.

02:26:30.560 And I think, some kidding aside, one of the things that I

02:26:41.700 believe in in the hierarchy of our tradition is

02:26:51.220 reaching these questions within the chain of authority or within the chain of command if you

02:27:01.160 will. So if I were faced with that, I would try to formulate a ritual where offerings are made

02:27:18.420 to the desir, to your, you know, to your guardian spirits to ask your ancestors to influence their ancestors, you know, because I honestly believe that the, you know, that those sorts of things like my morning prayer involves an invocation to my grandmother.

02:27:48.420 fathers and my grandmothers um and and but less or so to the gods like the gods are out there

02:27:57.440 fighting ice giants and um you know they're out on the periphery maintaining the balance

02:28:04.760 in the world between order and chaos um so you know you want to try to keep these things it seems

02:28:13.540 to me at the uh you know at the at the proper level of um of involvement you know like if

02:28:23.940 your electricity goes out you don't call your senator you call the city councilman

02:28:30.500 so when the you know so if you want to try to influence a friend a nurse while brother to come

02:28:40.060 to you like 0.81

02:28:40.900 have your grandmother

02:28:44.240 talk to his grandmother.

02:28:47.380 That's

02:28:47.620 you know so I would

02:28:49.560 try to

02:28:50.620 imagine a ritual that

02:28:53.660 brings that to the fore.

02:28:58.540 I think that's

02:28:59.920 solid advice.

02:29:01.800 One thing that I would think

02:29:03.320 you know

02:29:05.840 needs to be said is

02:29:09.060 any time you are reaching out in prayer, be it to your ancestors, to the gods, whatever

02:29:21.540 it might be, if you're asking them for something that you have no hand in, that there's nothing

02:29:28.660 for you to do, and you're helpless and you want some help from the other side, okay.

02:29:34.920 but if it's something that you have the ability to affect yourself

02:29:39.180 it would be improper for you not to be doing those things as well and i would never want

02:29:47.080 to cut you off from praying also but like if you know someone who has turned their back

02:29:54.660 on our gods and you want them to reconnect i think reaching out to your ancestors is a good idea

02:30:02.160 I will say this, I have always been one to reach out directly to the gods on most things, and I'm not saying that's the right way to go, it's just how I've, it's how I've grown in Ausatru.

02:30:21.080 but again i think scope matters i think a general you know beseeching the gods to help

02:30:29.700 and this person open their eyes or come to their senses is a nice thing to do i don't think us

02:30:36.920 prescribing you like you know say this thing five times and turn around in a circle and whatever

02:30:43.820 i don't i think and i've always been an advocate for more prayer directly from the heart

02:30:51.020 and you just asking respectfully for the thing that you want

02:30:56.080 or even affirming an intention that you want

02:31:00.340 in front of your altar and the sight of the gods is helpful.

02:31:03.620 But it's also helpful while you're doing that

02:31:06.080 to make sure you have extended that effort towards that person.

02:31:11.640 You've tried to talk sense into them.

02:31:14.980 You've even said, like, hey, I'll be praying for you or whatever,

02:31:19.560 but that you're also doing your part.

02:31:22.960 I think that has the best chance of success

02:31:29.360 when the prayer is a force multiplier of what you're doing

02:31:34.020 as opposed to you asking for them,

02:31:38.500 be it the ancestors of God, to do it for you.

02:31:41.300 So make sure you're doing your part as well.

02:31:43.860 But I think any of those are fine.

02:31:45.720 And I think Alan's point about, you know, going to the ancestors first is probably a very valid thing to do on that.

02:31:55.700 But anything that you're doing, whenever you're praying for anything, make sure you're doing it reverently, respectfully, and make sure that you are putting in the effort on your part where it's available to make that thing happen.

02:32:10.040 And ply it with alcohol.

02:32:12.160 That helps.

02:32:13.140 So, okay, so joking aside, we have a social aversion, and it is sometimes, and it is easy to ask the gods to do it for you because it's awkward.

02:32:27.560 Face the awkward, like, hey, let's you and I sit down and have some drinks and hash this out and talk it over.

02:32:35.320 And, you know, Alan, you know, it's said in a joking way, but not really.

02:32:40.900 Um, the term in vino veritas was originally used to apply to our Germanic ancestors and our customs of drinking often heavily when having those kinds of conversations, because it tears down those awkwardness walls and, you know, vino veritas from lying truth.

02:33:03.840 you're sitting there and you guys do have a conversation

02:33:08.000 in that kind of an environment, you can get to the heart

02:33:11.860 of the problem in a way that is more challenging

02:33:15.880 without the aid of that situation.

02:33:19.440 So it's something worth considering.

02:33:24.460 How does one get in trough with the gods?

02:33:27.560 well i think answer asking the question is a perfect first step um the um there's no wrong

02:33:45.380 way there may be a wrong way i couldn't conceive one but you know you know if you as matt said if

02:33:53.620 you seek sincerely um then the gods will find you um the um there are certainly lots and lots of

02:34:07.320 books out there uh to you know that will give you some intellectual understanding of what we do and

02:34:16.580 why we do it um but you know you don't have to read any any of that stuff i mean and and i'll

02:34:24.680 say that that on our website uh runestone.org um in our library we have some very simple rituals

02:34:33.020 that um you know where you just ask the gods to show themselves to you uh you know and that and

02:34:45.620 and you know it's not like you know the uh the blue cloaked wanderer is going to

02:34:52.900 knock at your door in the next few minutes but if you seek with sincerity and persistence then

02:35:01.860 um the gods and the ancestors will clear a path so that you can find um what you need

02:35:11.620 when you need it um there are lots and lots of good books out there steve's book um also true

02:35:18.500 and native european spirituality um edrid's book our truth is a also an excellent resource there's

02:35:27.780 some other stuff that i like that it's hard to find but that have some good explanations out there

02:35:34.340 for some of the concepts um but you know and of course

02:35:44.420 an another strong strong way to to to correct to come into the gravitational pull

02:35:55.300 into the orbit of the gods is to come to the hoff you know come to the nearest hoff event um

02:36:01.940 um even if you know even if it's a day's travel for you and you know i realize that it's you know

02:36:09.160 that that can be a lot to ask of people um but come and talk to us i mean cliff spawn daniel

02:36:19.640 matt sheila steve we you know me trent all the go far that's what we're there for you know so

02:36:28.740 come to a Hoff event and, you know, as Val was saying earlier, you know,

02:36:35.080 this is a big part of our lives. You know,

02:36:38.700 I work to support my also true habit. Um, and, uh, uh, you know,

02:36:45.460 so man, you, you know, you get us started and I didn't mean to leave anybody

02:36:52.080 out. I, you know, I didn't go through the whole list because, uh, you know,

02:36:58.220 I mean, even John Rock's a decent guy most of the time, but ask us, you know, and then, and especially after you've kind of done it for a while, and again, you know, when you explore some of the folk ways to, you know, leaving some cream out for the house troll. 0.99

02:37:28.220 Pouring mead out to your land whites. 1.00

02:37:31.440 Those are the sorts of things that, you know, it's all one thing, right? 0.99

02:37:36.420 It's like, yes, the gods are critically important.

02:37:41.460 But all of these things, all of these things are part of the folk way.

02:37:46.600 And I will repeat, as I sometimes do, you know, that that I don't I really try to think of myself and I get to that point.

02:38:01.260 Like, sorry, there was, oh, there's a, there's a, there's an essay from several years ago that, that talks about how difficult it is to come from a place of Christianity or, and then penetrate through that place of lack of faith and to believe in the gods again.

02:38:21.980 um so you know that that that characterization was that we believe in the we believe in believing in

02:38:29.840 the gods and that's the start you know that's that's coming to the door you know i i want to

02:38:37.340 believe and then you open the door and you and you walk around in here and you and you accumulate all

02:38:44.720 these practices and folkways and beliefs and system to the point now i can honestly say i think

02:38:51.820 that I am the folk

02:38:55.960 and I live the way.

02:38:59.320 Actually, Austru is not something I practice.

02:39:03.080 Austru is something I am.

02:39:06.540 And if it takes you 15 years

02:39:11.140 to get there like it did me,

02:39:12.800 then you've got to get started.

02:39:18.120 So I have this really interesting question

02:39:20.100 and I want to come at it from a real different, maybe different place,

02:39:24.160 but certainly everything that Alan said is absolutely true. 0.99

02:39:31.440 I think you are built on your most basic blood and bone level to be true to the Iser. 0.97

02:39:42.900 people talk about converting to 1.00

02:39:49.780 but you don't convert to

02:39:51.540 you revert to

02:39:53.420 is your default setting

02:39:57.780 we often make things much more

02:40:01.660 complicated than we need to

02:40:03.720 and one of the

02:40:07.820 you know

02:40:08.260 we relate and our relation to the gods is one of um relationship forget the redundancy there but

02:40:21.680 we know how to do that you know how do you get in trough with the gods well how would you get

02:40:28.000 in trough with a person with um a friend with a spouse or a lover with with a king how would you

02:40:41.780 get in trough with that trough means loyalty to we're in loyal service to um in a relationship

02:40:48.420 between a man and a god so how do you how do you do that well you know there's a pathway to that

02:40:56.920 we all know first you you introduce yourself and you like alan said you have to open the door

02:41:02.360 of wanting to have that sincere belief and then you pursue that and you can make a declaration

02:41:10.020 of loyalty sir but you don't from day one like hey i'm super loyal all right cool tomorrow

02:41:17.060 we're good i'm in full trough super loyal loyalist guy in the world it's an intention

02:41:24.500 a communicating of that intention and then the lived living out that intention for a period of

02:41:34.020 time and that's you know sounds overly simple but that's because it is very simple now there's

02:41:42.340 many many things you can do to enhance that experience and to do better with it or to learn

02:41:48.940 more about it or to you know optimize that but first and foremost i would come before your altar

02:42:01.100 come before the gods and introduce yourself make an offering and just hey i'm here and i'm listening

02:42:10.400 and you know wherever you're at an honest assessment of where you're at and that you

02:42:16.080 want to live true to them and work on that work on making offerings and prayers and worshiping

02:42:26.640 the gods persist painting in that gift cycle and being open to hear them experience their response

02:42:34.880 and their part in that gift cycle when you when it is honest and heartfelt declare your

02:42:43.120 devotion to them and then live in a way that's true to your word and your intention over time

02:42:52.080 surrounding yourself with other outs that you are is a big part of that

02:42:57.360 attending the hoffs if you're able doing bloat with other outs that you are making that effort

02:43:04.800 is a huge part of that it's a lived experience over time that proves out the loyalty that you

02:43:13.120 profess or the loyalty that you want to have and i think that it's it's really that it

02:43:20.800 starts that simply you can add to it indefinitely but those fundamentals are really really important

02:43:28.560 and the other thing i want to say is you can't you can't study your way into trough with the gods

02:43:35.520 If you don't participate in the gift cycle and you don't worship the gods and you don't

02:43:43.640 pray to the gods, you're not Ausatru.

02:43:46.340 You can be a scholar about Ausatru, you can read every book about Ausatru, but the professor

02:43:55.980 of military history isn't Napoleon.

02:44:00.820 can be an expert about napoleon but napoleon conquered europe on horseback as a general

02:44:08.240 that's a different thing you can be an expert on football it's not the same as being a quarterback

02:44:15.400 on an nfl team and playing football you can be an expert about our faith and never actually

02:44:24.280 practice it and there's a lot of people that never get out of the research and development phase

02:44:29.600 of their experience adjacent to Ossetree.

02:44:35.000 You can never have read a book about the lore in your life

02:44:39.800 and approach our gods, your gods,

02:44:45.660 with sincerity, with worship,

02:44:48.780 and you are more Ossetree than the expert

02:44:51.660 that's read every piece of the lore,

02:44:55.060 but who's never made an offer.

02:44:59.600 um so alan has disappeared into into the ether um i'm gonna hold i'm gonna skip a question in the

02:45:13.920 line while he is gone what is your stance on devotional oustry music what some reconstructionists

02:45:20.720 we'll call Blotsomber.

02:45:26.660 It would be awesome if we had more of it.

02:45:28.760 The concept of it is fantastic and I love it.

02:45:34.000 I don't hear an abundance of it.

02:45:37.100 There's not a lot of it that has broken through

02:45:40.580 and become a tradition and become solidified.

02:45:44.940 I think there are people that work on it.

02:45:47.380 I wish that we had more of it.

02:45:49.480 I've always really wanted some like Alcetru bluegrass, unironically, I think that would

02:45:57.540 be beautiful and awesome, but yeah, I'm really pro Alcetru devotional music, and there was

02:46:04.600 a piece that our Githia Lauren Anderson made and was working on that I've been trying very

02:46:10.780 hard to get recorded and released in some way because it was beautiful, and I'd like

02:46:16.540 to see that more, and I'd like y'all to get a chance to hear that. I will continue to

02:46:21.680 pester to try and make sure that gets done. 0.98

02:46:28.600 Might be a dumb question. When you join Absitru, are you required to formally declare a patron

02:46:35.320 deity? Also, does prayer need to be talking slash asking for things, or can it simply

02:46:41.460 be listening so no you're not required in any way to choose a patron deity that is

02:46:52.020 irregular and was always irregular wasn't unheard of it's not inappropriate

02:46:59.380 but there's not a need to choose a patron deity it's one of the beauties of polytheism

02:47:06.900 is that all of these are your gods and you can develop a relationship with with all of them

02:47:13.940 um and there's a beauty in that you don't have to have like they're not in in conflict with

02:47:21.220 one another you don't have to choose one i'm team thor one team frayer it doesn't have to

02:47:27.220 work like that there are people who have a particular devotional relationship to to one 0.98

02:47:32.980 of idiots um but that's that's the exception and not the rule certainly also 0.99

02:47:43.940 you're to answer the last part of your question i think it just comes in 0.99

02:47:49.300 words and what the meaning is i think the point of your question

02:47:56.500 no prayer doesn't have to be talking and asking it can be listening but when we're talking about

02:48:00.980 prayers we mean talking and asking. I think people

02:48:05.020 will phrase the

02:48:08.860 listening part as meditating, but

02:48:12.860 I think that's just a linguistic distinction and not

02:48:16.960 I think it misses the meat of

02:48:21.040 your question. All of our worship of our gods is

02:48:24.980 about a gifting cycle. It's about an interaction.

02:48:27.800 So we don't just pray at our gods.

02:48:33.660 We certainly pray expressing ourselves to them.

02:48:41.780 But we should always be listening for response or for interaction from that.

02:48:49.600 I think any prayer situation should inherently facilitate some stillness and some reflection and some meditative, you know, being present for absorbing that response, however it comes to you.

02:49:13.300 And I think listening is part of that.

02:49:14.760 um alan do you have anything to add on the question you weren't here for the question

02:49:21.640 might be a dumb question when you join house to true are you required to formally declare it

02:49:26.140 no they said this i didn't say that i wouldn't insult our questioners that way um are you 0.94

02:49:32.260 required to formally declare a patron deity and does prayer need to be talking slash asking

02:49:37.280 or can it simply be listened?

02:49:41.780 I apologize for my brief absence.

02:49:44.160 I was fooling around with my screen

02:49:48.400 and managed to mute the program.

02:49:51.220 So now I couldn't figure out how to unmute it.

02:49:53.200 So I left and came back.

02:49:55.600 So I rebooted the live stream.

02:49:58.960 So sorry about that.

02:50:04.900 No, you're not.

02:50:05.940 you're certainly not required to um to declare a patron deity um some people have a special

02:50:14.260 affinity for one deity or another um like again in the olden days it was kind of this thing like

02:50:24.180 people felt pressured to decide you know whether they were more a thorsman or a

02:50:32.820 Odinsman or whatever.

02:50:35.620 Of course, back in those

02:50:36.500 days too, we were, you know,

02:50:38.500 everybody was taking a Viking name. 1.00

02:50:40.780 You know, half the practitioners

02:50:42.820 that I knew

02:50:46.720 from like up until

02:50:48.660 I got closer to the AFA,

02:50:51.340 you know, they all had like their

02:50:52.720 Viking name or their practice name,

02:50:55.040 whatever they called it.

02:50:57.300 Which, you know, that

02:50:58.780 luckily has gone by the

02:51:00.720 wayside.

02:51:02.820 so no you certainly and i think that's true both because like our gods are you know our gods are

02:51:12.800 the gods of all of us and also like unlike the greek panoply which to my understanding like

02:51:20.480 they're you know the greeks have like and the romans too um their deities are more specialized

02:51:29.560 you know there's a god of emotion there's a god of impatience there's a god of you know there's a

02:51:37.040 god of a lot of stuff that that are you know but like for us like the god of victory could be odin

02:51:43.200 or tear or uh freya so the you know so there there are our gods are a lot more generalist

02:51:52.800 than some others.

02:51:57.100 So no, don't worry about that.

02:51:59.520 And yes, pray, ask the gods for guidance.

02:52:05.740 Ask your ancestors for guidance.

02:52:08.800 Don't ask them for a bicycle.

02:52:20.940 Question, Mr. Flavio.

02:52:22.800 what is your favorite heart song since you mentioned them on a previous

02:52:26.040 episode? Alone. Absolutely.

02:52:31.360 Mr. Law Speaker, do you have a favorite song from the 80s?

02:52:36.320 Thanks to both of you for hosting BNS. You're welcome.

02:52:39.220 Alan, what's your favorite song from the 1980s?

02:52:43.080 Rock Lobster by the B-52s.

02:52:49.560 I'm serious, man.

02:52:52.800 unfortunately i know that you are serious

02:52:57.600 there you have it folks

02:53:02.720 i can sing most of it if you want to do no thank you i'll pass i'll pass

02:53:09.040 i can sing it in the style of journey

02:53:13.840 that's not nice

02:53:14.720 okay so i overthink things now i'm trying to figure out like what that might sound like um

02:53:29.040 i because you like cake it makes sense that you like the b-52s because they're both so awesome

02:53:37.360 they are both similar i would not say similar in awesomeness um but that's i like devo i like devo

02:53:46.640 too i believe i believe that all right so um alan can you explain the gift cycle

02:53:59.440 okay the gift cycle um

02:54:04.400 our gods need things we need things and it is very much you know our gods need our truth

02:54:20.320 they need our worship um they need our devotion they need

02:54:25.840 And like we're generally said, and in the greater theory of religion, there's a different word I can't quite come up with, but like as we devote our life energy to them, they become more manifest in our lives.

02:54:48.380 they become more manifest in the world. They become strengthened

02:54:52.080 in their

02:54:53.140 entanglement in Midgarden.

02:55:01.080 We are obligated

02:55:04.080 as their devotees, as their

02:55:08.540 soldiers, if you will, to bring that

02:55:12.520 manifestation into the world. So we give to them

02:55:16.260 our truth and our devotion in return they give to us guidance and strength and courage

02:55:26.940 and that is the gift cycle um i should know but don't um the exact uh chapter and verse of uh

02:55:38.780 you know a gift demands the gift um although i'm not positive that that's exactly what that means

02:55:44.880 in that context, but a lot of it comes back to the underlying

02:55:56.800 or overarching story of the world tree, right?

02:56:07.000 Yggdrasil reaches up into the sky and creates the dew.

02:56:12.460 The dew falls to the ground and nourishes the roots of the tree that rise back up and create the branches that create the dew that creates the life nourishing rivers that nourish the tree.

02:56:33.480 So in the exact same way, our devotion rises to God so that they can nourish our soil so that we can make more, more.

02:56:46.900 That's how I understand it.

02:56:49.800 And I know that's a little ambiguous, but, you know, I mean, it's that's that's the that's the way I understand the esoteric of it.

02:57:03.480 So, certainly, you know, what Alan said, but I'd further make it simpler than that.

02:57:16.140 Again, I think we overcomplicate it.

02:57:17.980 It's about relationships.

02:57:20.520 Our sharing of gifts, our sharing of things is how we build a relationship.

02:57:27.520 It's not just demanded of one party.

02:57:30.300 It is a sharing of things.

02:57:33.480 And that sharing doesn't imply any type of equity of gift.

02:57:41.080 You giving a four-year-old a bicycle and then giving you a hand-drawn stick figure that may remotely look like you, there's no equity in that.

02:57:52.640 But there is an exchange of you love your child and you're giving them something that you think will make them happy.

02:58:01.460 and they're giving you something because they love you

02:58:05.280 and they think that you'll really like this thing.

02:58:09.140 That exchange matters, and it's not because your kid needs a bicycle

02:58:12.800 and it's not because you need a picture to put on your fridge.

02:58:16.580 It's the thought that counts in the most sincere and visceral version of that.

02:58:23.840 It's the energy that you put in to your offering that is meaningful.

02:58:31.460 And, you know, certainly the gods don't need, there's not a mead shortage in Asgard.

02:58:40.760 It's the imbued intention and worship that you put into the mead.

02:58:45.860 It's that exchange of your devotion for their might, for their inspiration, for their blessings, whatever the case might be.

02:58:58.140 And it's cyclical.

02:58:59.780 The more you exchange gifts with the gods, the more you're regularly engaged in that worship gift-giving cycle, the more potent and the more powerful and the closer that relationship becomes.

02:59:15.820 The more you exchange gifts with a loved one or with a friend, the closer your relationship becomes.

02:59:21.960 And sometimes that exchange is, hey, you were really sad and you needed something, you called me up.

02:59:27.520 hey i really needed you one time and you were there for me that's also an exchange of gifts

02:59:33.000 building that shared experience over time builds a stronger more powerful connection and it also

02:59:40.800 makes the environs that it happens in more powerful i mentioned earlier about you know

02:59:47.620 some of the favorite things at the hoffs the fact that the gift cycle has been observed for

02:59:53.280 almost 11 years now at Odenshof, you can feel the resonance of that in the place because it is

03:00:00.900 powerful. But yeah, it's that exchange of gifts between parties that care for one another

03:00:11.500 is the fundamental essence of that. And you can get deeper with deeper esoteric truths to it.

03:00:18.360 There's layers, but on the most fundamental layer that we all understand as human beings, yes, that sharing gifts and the important thing, the divine spark that makes you one of our race, one of our people, that is the first part of that gift cycle.

03:00:44.840 The gods found Ask and Embla

03:00:48.700 And gave them gifts

03:00:50.560 So we're always in the

03:00:53.880 It's on us to do the repaying of the gift cycle

03:00:57.520 To keep it going

03:00:59.380 We've already been blessed with a gift

03:01:01.900 That we don't have the capacity to like

03:01:05.200 To match

03:01:06.200 So they took the first step in that gift cycle

03:01:09.960 So it's on us to do our part

03:01:12.180 To maintain that gift cycle from our end

03:01:14.600 Also, Joy donated $20 to B&S.

03:01:19.600 Thank you, Joy. We appreciate you.

03:01:21.600 A couple of more questions have come in since we got on here, so we have a few more.

03:01:33.600 Alan, what is the most powerful bloat you have experienced?

03:01:44.600 Alan, you're muted. You've been muted.

03:02:04.880 Okay, sorry about that. Yeah, thank you. There's sort of a range there, and I, you know,

03:02:12.960 and i don't like to give a lot of credit now to this guy because he's not the afa anymore but

03:02:20.380 um the one of the very first and this before i even knew about the afa but

03:02:26.260 i was in a bloat where like a very real image of uh of uh tear appeared to me

03:02:38.940 um you know so like that manifested the reality of the gods

03:02:43.540 um i was in a small circle with founder mcnallan

03:02:50.580 um and i i'm not good at remembering who all is in these things and matt so matt you may have

03:03:00.940 even been there this was up at steve's house um and you know that was you know i mean there were

03:03:08.660 five or six people there

03:03:10.640 and that was strong,

03:03:12.880 strong, strong

03:03:14.100 stuff. The manifestation

03:03:17.080 of energy there.

03:03:20.240 So,

03:03:21.320 you know,

03:03:22.780 the strength and manifestation

03:03:24.740 of these things is very real.

03:03:36.500 So

03:03:38.660 i've talked about this a number of times on here but i suppose it's it's always worth

03:03:44.340 mentioning again most powerful there have been i'm very blessed there's been a number of extremely

03:03:52.500 powerful bloats i've been a part of um both as the one conducting the bloat but also as as

03:04:03.540 one participating in and i remember the first early bloke that i was in with uh steve mcgallon

03:04:10.580 was tremendously powerful it was the first blood i've been in with um you know outside of my small

03:04:18.180 group of people literally in my backyard in alaska it was the first big bloke that i've been part of

03:04:24.980 and the founder of modern house true was was doing it it was amazing and it i mean it blew

03:04:33.060 my mind it was fantastic um the most powerful one we tried to reason when it was i think it was

03:04:42.340 2017 winter nights was the dcr bloat and githya pat hall was doing the bloat and um

03:04:53.220 it's part of the bloat we're reaching out to our dcr female ancestors

03:04:57.060 and she wanted us to call out to a specific one of our dc and ask that they be with us

03:05:06.420 in the circle so we all called out the name of one of our ancestors i uh you know i invited my

03:05:15.780 my grandma to be there with me and they had us close our eyes and they um the githias went around

03:05:24.280 circle and you know distributed the blessings and in that moment my grandma was with me in that

03:05:33.960 circle and i felt her with me just like the last time i hugged her and uh like i felt what her

03:05:46.200 old lady frame felt like in my arms and i smelled her old lady hair with the hair product in it

03:05:53.640 whatever else she had passed in 2003 but 14 years later she was with me in that circle

03:06:03.560 and she gave me a hug again it's the most powerful bloat i've never been a part of hands down

03:06:09.960 um next question yes two questions okay they're kind of they're looped together first have you

03:06:26.280 heard of sorry hans have you heard of hans jorgen lisglint johansen political leader in norway and

03:06:38.760 Austershore. Alan, have you heard of Hans? Not only have I

03:06:45.700 heard of Hans, I've met Hans. I've been to Hans's home and

03:06:50.300 Hans drove me from the airport in Oslo to an AFA event in

03:07:03.460 Tannenscheide, I think is the name of the area in Sweden

03:07:07.500 where we were at hans is awesome he was hans is a character that was fun and so he picked mandy and

03:07:16.380 i up and drove us from the airport to the event and stuff we were doing was all in sweden but

03:07:24.940 the only part in norway i got because we even flew back from stockholm we flew into oslo because we

03:07:30.220 We got an amazing deal direct from not SFO, but direct from Oakland, Oakland to Oslo was

03:07:38.440 this amazing deal anyways, side of the point, uh, but no, Hans picked us up and he showed

03:07:47.440 us really cool stuff that I wouldn't have gotten to see in Norway, um, showed us just

03:07:55.840 kind of driving through oslo um so i have to see a little bit of that took us to oslo fjord

03:08:03.280 also took us to this park that just the history in europe's really cool i know it's not relevant

03:08:09.280 to australia but king sigar the crusader who was the you know as far as i know the only

03:08:16.640 scandinavian king that went on crusade uh his um his grave is in the middle of this like park

03:08:24.080 in downtown oslo that we just happened upon looking down and seeing the whatever you call

03:08:28.400 the capstone thing on the on the grave and like i'm walking on this king's grave it was very

03:08:34.720 strange but really cool i got to see that i got to see he took us by a really cool room circle

03:08:42.480 that was kind of off the beaten path on the side of this highway we never would have found otherwise

03:08:46.880 or not room circle i'm sorry stone circle out there and it was really neat because it was again

03:08:52.800 so many of the stone circles i've been to in scandinavia are really special because so many

03:09:02.240 of them are are just you wouldn't know they're not a tourist kind of a thing there's something

03:09:06.960 that locals know about that you can go check out that are special because you

03:09:11.520 it's not cordoned off and not through like plexiglass you can actually be there and experience

03:09:17.200 in that circle and he showed us that and he took us back by his by his house and

03:09:25.040 uh fed us some hot dogs they like sausages over there and that was cool and yeah he was with us

03:09:31.840 for um for that event it was really cool hans was a great guy he uh i think the kids would say he

03:09:39.600 calf mod me we went and uh we're looking at the the petroglyph carvings over there that we see

03:09:49.600 so often in the red um like the red overlay so you can see the stuff and the you know the heroes of

03:09:59.040 these were stick figures and occasionally if they were a guy they would have like an erection 0.92

03:10:03.600 or they'd have the only other prominent you know flesh on them was they'd have these huge calves 0.90

03:10:11.280 and he you know got next to it and flexed his calf and he had his massive you know he said he

03:10:15.520 had calves of the arian conqueror and he said that i had to hold your calves and which is the case he

03:10:23.280 had much more impressive calves than me but yeah i got to meet him and it was pleasure hans is

03:10:27.840 fantastic, and I thoroughly

03:10:29.940 appreciate his hospitality and the time

03:10:31.760 I've got to spend hanging out.

03:10:35.020 You've got to stop 0.98

03:10:36.040 skipping leg day.

03:10:39.260 I don't. My calves are surprisingly

03:10:42.060 really strong, but they sure

03:10:43.860 don't look like it.

03:10:47.300 So,

03:10:47.940 okay, I guess secondly, can you be

03:10:49.820 a member of the AFA and the ISVS?

03:10:52.040 Because I heard Hans

03:10:53.260 is in both.

03:10:55.640 We don't like to talk about, you know,

03:10:57.400 confirming or denying membership

03:10:59.380 stuff or whatever

03:11:00.740 but sure you can be part of both

03:11:02.960 I don't

03:11:05.540 know all of the details of that

03:11:07.280 party's situation but

03:11:09.240 but no Hans is fantastic

03:11:11.580 and you know I don't

03:11:13.360 see why you can

03:11:14.560 we encourage as long as it's legal

03:11:17.300 we encourage you to be as politically

03:11:19.040 active and involved as

03:11:20.920 you feel as

03:11:22.300 appropriate and you're inclined to be

03:11:24.920 I don't think the I is do you know what the I is D is

03:11:27.380 is no okay so it took me a second because i had to cogitate about it um it's the international

03:11:34.980 satanatna dharma society oh i thought it was related okay i'm sorry i thought it was hans's

03:11:40.340 party over there yes you well okay alan you can speak to this more now that i know what he's

03:11:46.020 talking about i apologize uh alan tell us about can you be a member of both i don't know how that

03:11:52.900 works um yes uh you know the and i and i'm less versed in the sanatana dharma society

03:12:01.780 um but it is uh headed by acharya g whom i have met um and um spent a very productive

03:12:12.820 spiritual weekend with um he is very much on the team with us um sanatana dharma is um the idea

03:12:25.540 at base of um the original religion of each folk um so uh there's it doesn't seem to be and i and

03:12:35.540 again i'm less versed in like the intimate detail of the isds and but i i understand that they don't

03:12:41.940 have you know that structured belief system that says you have to believe like in the in the um

03:12:49.380 um the uh the the indian the the hindu deities um you know and in fact in achari g's book which

03:13:00.500 i have bought and given as a gift several times um he speaks approvingly of uh mr mcdallon quotes

03:13:08.260 him a couple times in his book in one of the books um the dharma manifesto which is about

03:13:16.180 you know the the war between the dharmic religions and the abrahamic religion so i

03:13:21.540 i certainly don't see any conflict so all right i apologize for my earlier gaffe on that um

03:13:29.780 hans's party is the alliancen which i guess means alliance alternative for norway

03:13:37.460 but should probably be part of that and be an afa member also but as far as the uh isds i

03:13:42.980 don't know their stance if you have to be a hindu then no you can't be a hindu and in the afa if

03:13:51.700 but as i understand it uh acharya gene recognizes that also true is a dharmic faith um he has

03:14:02.420 always been very supportive um of us you know personally and in different ways he speaks um

03:14:08.660 highly of steve mcdalen in the dharma manifesto if it is an association of people from a variety of

03:14:18.740 dharmic paths to interact with one another then i don't see that that's in conflict again i would

03:14:24.260 have to know the particulars of what the requirements of membership of that is to

03:14:29.380 really speak authoritatively on whether it conflicts or not uh next question is soft

03:14:37.540 polytheism or hard polytheism more common in the afa malin's book says either are acceptable i am

03:14:44.340 really curious yes your folks said we are hard polytheists um the vast i can't say that nobody

03:14:56.900 in the afa is a soft polytheist but we are hard polytheists in our in our doctrine and you know

03:15:08.180 to the extent that people uh believe what they claim to believe then one needs to be hard

03:15:14.740 polytheists are you aware of a large contingent of soft polytheists in our ranks alan

03:15:26.900 I know that it is within the range, but I, you know, I have not polled membership to determine which is where.

03:15:43.260 And then last question of the night, anyone in Anchorage, Alaska, in Ausatru?

03:15:49.860 I hope so.

03:15:51.480 I certainly was.

03:15:52.660 That's where I came home to Ausatru.

03:15:54.800 I was born and raised in Anchorage. 0.82

03:15:56.900 I lived in Anchorage until

03:16:00.980 2000, maybe 2010 or so. And I lived out in the valley in Palmer for a couple of years

03:16:12.260 before I moved out of Alaska in 2014. So certainly there were people that I practiced with in

03:16:18.720 Anchorage. I know that we have members, you know, it's hard because there's so few people there

03:16:26.880 and getting people to stick around before other people show up is always challenging. We do have

03:16:32.840 a member in Anchorage. We have somebody down around Soldotna and we have some folks out in

03:16:39.600 the valley. So that is our situation there. Alan, do you have any parting thoughts?

03:16:48.500 Yes, point of order. There was a question that you skipped when I was ducking in and out due

03:16:54.840 to my technical misfeasance. So I don't want that person to feel slighted by not having...

03:17:00.440 It was not. It was the question about my favorite heart song and where you unfortunately

03:17:05.640 Let me share the folks, your love of rock.

03:17:07.720 No, it was something else that what you asked.

03:17:10.920 That was the one that I skipped and I went back to it.

03:17:13.240 I, oh, I just didn't ask you because you weren't there.

03:17:17.400 What is the stance?

03:17:18.680 Adam, would you like to share your stance on devotional oustrum music?

03:17:23.340 What some might call bloats on there.

03:17:28.380 Sure.

03:17:29.120 I mean, you know, I, I galled her.

03:17:31.640 I have a runic meditation that I do every day, mantra, runic mantra, and I Galdar the Futhark, you know, because sometimes when I sing Lizzo, it just doesn't sound right.

03:17:51.960 so I called her

03:17:55.140 the Futhark instead 1.00

03:17:56.220 and I picked that up

03:17:58.440 as I have told many people

03:18:00.920 there's a high lung

03:18:04.560 song where they

03:18:06.900 chant the elder Futhark

03:18:09.200 over and over again

03:18:10.200 they do it in a slightly different cadence

03:18:12.840 than I do but that's where I

03:18:14.720 because I went

03:18:17.020 to a high lung concert and

03:18:18.600 saw them do that and I thought man that's cool

03:18:21.060 And so I just, so I found that song and I looped it a couple of times so that I could just get in the rhythm of it. And again, I do it slightly differently now, but yes, I think that is very, very much a way to manifest our order into the world.

03:18:41.240 all right well there you have it so um final announcement of the night starting next week

03:18:51.900 victory never sleeps will occur at 6 p.m central that is two hours earlier than its current start

03:19:00.980 time um i am hoping that's going to be more convenient for most of our guests certainly

03:19:08.680 for our recurring guests i hope it will also facilitate um some of the members of the audience

03:19:14.840 that it just runs too late for maybe they will be able to catch more of it participate a little

03:19:19.800 bit more i apologize for any inconvenience it might cause our west coast folks um hopefully

03:19:26.440 you guys are all listening to it if you miss it on any of our uh like apple music spotify

03:19:35.640 any of the places that you can find us also uh looking at this on youtube we are i know a lot

03:19:43.720 of people will consume it at later times so hopefully you guys can get that i think it's

03:19:48.280 going to be a good move with time change um but yeah i want to let everybody know we'll be you

03:19:53.960 know reminding folks as we get closer to it thank you guys all for being here tonight uh next week

03:20:00.600 we will spawn and i will continue on the gilford getting um we are almost through that but we have

03:20:08.680 generated some really interesting and i think very important conversations come along with that

03:20:12.840 which has been great alan it's been awesome talking to you tonight we always get on and i i

03:20:18.600 you know the initial conversation gets done in the first 45 minutes and then we are able to spend

03:20:26.200 you know a couple hours on some really good questions from the audience so thank you

03:20:31.160 everybody who's contributed and uh yeah alan these these uh adulting with alan episodes

03:20:37.720 are a favorite of many so thank you for coming on tonight

03:20:43.320 all right folks we will see you next time until then hail the icer of the folk of the afa and

03:20:49.240 And remember, victory never sleeps.

03:21:19.240 Thank you.

03:21:49.240 Thank you.

03:22:19.240 Thank you.

03:22:49.240 Thank you.

03:23:19.240 Thank you.

03:23:49.240 We'll be right back.

Asatru Folk Assembly - May 28, 2026

5⧸27⧸26 Victory Never Sleeps, Ep 203 - Bumper Stickers, Elevator Speeches, and Chesterton's Fence

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