Asatru Folk Assembly - 5⧸31⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 47 - Cosmology

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 Thank you.

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

00:03:00.000 Hello, everybody, and welcome to another exciting edition of Victory Never Sleeps.

00:03:21.920 Trying to figure out my lighting, my camera automatically adjusts, and apparently I'm

00:03:27.520 jaundiced this week as sun goes down that shall change um since last time i talked to you guys

00:03:37.620 i had an amazing time this last weekend at lc fest three in wisconsin it was fantastic it was a

00:03:46.540 really really nice weekend blown away by all the kids all the kids it's beautiful watching them

00:03:54.600 play with each other and you know just grab another little kid they never met and become

00:03:59.480 instant friends it was really cool to see numerous pregnant ladies there

00:04:06.040 it was it was a really really nice weekend um saw several people that i hadn't seen in about a year

00:04:14.760 and it was really special not just this weekend but in general when i go to these things when you

00:04:22.120 can see you know you check in with people that it's been about a year since you've seen and you

00:04:26.840 can see the progress that they've made or i suppose in some people's case lack thereof but

00:04:33.000 wasn't the case this weekend i was really really proud of the folks that i saw for the first time

00:04:38.520 in a year knowing where they were last year knowing the things that they'd said they wanted to

00:04:43.800 build and do in their life and then then seeing and hearing about their progress is really a

00:04:49.000 special thing so thanks to uh folk builders james and sarah alt for hosting that and doing such an

00:04:55.800 amazing job with it we appreciate it guys another kind of top of the show note here in

00:05:03.800 just a couple few weeks we're going to have midsummer at odenshoff nick can go ahead and

00:05:09.160 post links and such for that we would love to see you guys out here it's our biggest event of the

00:05:15.080 year at the first half of the astro folk assembly it's going to be a really fun time really exciting

00:05:22.040 time and i'm looking forward to seeing everybody on this show who can make it so we'd love to see

00:05:28.440 you there um this week we're going to we're likely to have another uh i think we'll try to break it

00:05:39.640 into some sections here i had should have planned this a little bit better before we started but

00:05:45.800 it's it's another likely to go on and on and on for a long time on the actual spawn breaking down

00:05:52.280 the topic so i think we'll try to do it piece by piece and then answer some questions in between

00:05:59.400 and uh and see where we go with that and uh without further ado

00:06:04.440 swan in the beginning there was what

00:06:11.400 there was muspelheim and niflheim and the great gap between you know so let's talk about those

00:06:22.120 three things and then pause so i i and i i actually see a question that um kind of

00:06:32.840 i'm gonna be answering it kind of in this response um the biggest thing i think that

00:06:39.880 we have to take away from cosmology in and of itself the subject itself and it's it's um

00:06:49.800 the sense of what it means within our faith and within our religion is that we have to understand

00:06:55.400 it causes a lot of confusion with people because they don't see it in the poetic sense possibly

00:07:01.880 too just in the way that our ancestors conceptualized it that the um the cosmology for a lot of people

00:07:09.800 uh they don't see the idea of it being on a two-dimensional plane or or in in a singular

00:07:16.680 planar sense uh that you know to the north when we speak of the north and we speak of uh

00:07:23.480 nif like niflheim and the ice and the proto matter uh or not even proto matter just the

00:07:29.480 the ice the the ice and into the south we see the fire so ancestrally the understanding of the divine

00:07:39.880 in relation to the material was so intimately connected that it was done in a in a singular

00:07:46.760 planar sense that they they saw the north and correlated it with nivelheim they saw the south

00:07:55.080 and correlated it to Muspelheim, even though, of course, being in Europe, the idea of the south

00:08:00.040 would most likely be the equatorial heat. So we see that. On top of this, there's a lot of

00:08:06.120 verbiage used in the prosatas and overall about Yggdrasil that causes a lot of confusion for

00:08:15.840 people, but it becomes a lot more, I guess, clearer, consumable when you think of it in

00:08:22.120 the planar sense that there is um you know the the idea of the of the gods living above in the

00:08:29.540 mountain or in a beyond him in bjork in a valley where the tree is but it is still it's above but

00:08:36.940 connected to this plane niflheim is connected to this plane and and muspelheim is connected to this

00:08:43.640 plane and svartalfheim or murkalfheim is below and uh leosalfheim is kind of surrounding the

00:08:50.720 mountains of the gods and where the tree is and why the roots are spread a lot of people don't

00:08:56.560 understand that and they try to twist and fit some sort of like logic into that conceptualization

00:09:04.820 without understanding that in essence spiritually cosmology was overlapped on a on a singular plane

00:09:13.100 all of the realms or the the the lands or the everything that's involved in cosmology

00:09:20.140 was seen simply as the sky above and the the the land around and the land underneath or the place

00:09:29.580 away but but as our faith has come about the usage of uh the the singular plane has has gone away

00:09:40.460 and in actuality the stratification of the worlds has become more of a way to i guess dissect

00:09:49.500 the realms and what they mean spiritually materially and i think that's a huge problem

00:09:56.460 that a lot of people don't understand because they get confused when they hear about where the roots

00:10:00.620 go and how things are perceived why is jotunheim in the east and why is you know uh vanaheim in

00:10:07.500 the west and if you're thinking about it in it as you are an individual on a singular plane

00:10:13.660 suddenly becomes very very clear but we know that if we travel west physically the western

00:10:22.140 we're not going to run into vanaheim so what ends up happening is is that we start to

00:10:30.700 understand the difference between the spiritual and the material and anybody that that um

00:10:37.260 well it was kind of like anybody that doesn't say that is is being spiritually and intellectually

00:10:47.020 dishonest and a lot of times what people don't understand is as we've come to understand the

00:10:54.380 world not being simply like our ancestors saw it as as a semi-hemispherical flat plane they knew

00:11:02.540 that it was hemispherical but that it was not like a completely flat table but that everything was

00:11:08.860 kind of connected to the central plane of everything and then as our faith has come to

00:11:15.180 understand the secrets within we understand now that these planes are interconnected to us but are

00:11:23.260 above or below or west is again language east is language to show certain things and as gothar we

00:11:34.940 have furthered that and i think uh not just ourselves but i mean obviously the founders of

00:11:40.380 also true um have spoken uh a large amount founders of of american also true or just

00:11:47.740 um overall uh have spoken of stratifying the cosmology in order to better understand

00:11:55.100 um these constructs of the way that they interact with the material so that i know that's a mouthful

00:12:02.380 but i think it's really important that because it says right you know there's a question that came

00:12:06.380 as a gentleman as always pleasure to see you and learn can you both speak on the uniqueness of the

00:12:10.700 cosmology and the overall deeper meaning and i think that it's really important for us to

00:12:14.940 understand that we have to be able to shift from singular plane to separating the cosmology in

00:12:22.140 order to understand their significance i think it's extremely important because it causes a

00:12:27.740 deep amount of confusion when people only see it in one way and the then there's there's even more

00:12:34.540 of a grievous sense when there are some people now who are trying to change the cosmology completely

00:12:40.460 differently and i think they're they're missing the point of the arian concept of upper middle

00:12:47.580 and lower and they're shifting things into the lower realms and that i think has deeper spiritual

00:12:54.300 significance than they realize and they're doing this in the name of logic and i don't think you

00:12:59.900 can do that when we talk about the spiritual realms i don't think they they necessarily

00:13:05.660 follow logic and they certainly don't follow what makes this world distinct they follow rules that

00:13:14.140 are not bound by time and the material so i think that's really important and i think that's really

00:13:20.540 unique about our cosmological view and i think that people are being dishonest if they don't

00:13:26.060 talk about the discussion of how poetically our ancestors hearing the stories would see everything

00:13:31.740 on a flat singular plane with the world above being uh you know through the mountains and up

00:13:37.420 above and in the valley and then things below would be to the north and down under the ground

00:13:43.980 and and that was because of that but when we start to realize the spiritual significance

00:13:49.580 of the cosmology we can separate it dissect it and then with furtherance we've discussed

00:13:57.580 what those what all of that entails so that's one thing i wanted to bring up and i'll be harping on

00:14:07.740 that repeatedly episode um i don't because he also said you know he wanted to get your

00:14:18.620 your take on the uniqueness of it um as far as the sorry my daughter felt the need to come and uh

00:14:26.700 make a guest appearance as far as the uniqueness of it um

00:14:36.620 yeah it's unique to our people you see a lot of similarities in different branches of

00:14:41.340 arian faith about how they see these things but i think what you said is really important that it

00:14:47.900 was never like any of our myths it's never intended to be a literal map of

00:14:54.620 north south east west in you know you can't plot one of the troubles that we have trying to even

00:15:02.860 draw it up is that you can't plot it in two dimensions even with the poetic language

00:15:11.340 and so i think that's i guess something to keep in mind as we go forward and plot where these

00:15:18.060 things are and i know that you know as we get a little bit further in here we'll have some

00:15:22.300 visual aids to help that so if you could start by telling people about gununga gap

00:15:30.860 well oh yes sorry bringing it back to that it's it's important to understand so if we're talking

00:15:35.100 about uh just as is if we're looking at it in the singular plane to the north there is niflheim

00:15:43.100 niflheim is a realm that is mentioned as being inhabited by

00:15:47.900 jotnar and jotnar are ancient beings okay they are they a lot of people get this confused because

00:15:55.980 they try to to to collude with the idea of emir and emir is not here yet the roarer so the the

00:16:03.660 jotnar it just it's an ancient being and that and that niflheim is inhabited by

00:16:12.380 beings that exist before emir same in the south with muspelheim now nivelheim nivel means nether

00:16:20.860 or underneath or or the misty place underneath um and muspel now muspel and it's its translation is

00:16:28.940 very very hard it's been used even post-christianity to represent kind of like a fiery

00:16:35.900 inferno or an Armageddon-like style. It was even used by German Christians. But the meaning of

00:16:42.980 the word is very debated as to what it may mean. But it seems to have coalesced very similarly to

00:16:53.420 the way the word hell is used for death. Muspel seems to, again, ignite the idea of an inferno

00:17:00.980 and flame so the land there is nothing there is no grass there is no waves there is no green fields

00:17:09.060 there is only nivelheim and muskelheim and the great gap in between and as they come together

00:17:16.900 there is something that happens in the great gap there are three things that that come about

00:17:23.300 There is avhumla. Avhumla is, it means that the cow with no horns. What this really is, is poetic language for the giving cow can do no harm. It's the quintessential of life giving amongst the Aryan folk, is the cow has massive significance culturally for food and the use.

00:17:51.800 So that's pretty obvious. Then there is Ymir. And Ymir is, again, meaning sound, the roarer, and clearly described as being in juxtaposition to order, almost like a manifested chaos, if you will.

00:18:14.720 but seen as slumbering, not quite fully aware and lethargic, if you will, at any sense.

00:18:23.800 And then in the center of that is the tree, the great tree.

00:18:30.100 And it has a name. The name is significant, obviously, in connection to Odin.

00:18:36.300 Yggdrasil. Yggdrasil means the steed of the terrible one.

00:18:41.800 and this is in reference to odin and his sacrifice to gain the deeper knowledge of understanding

00:18:48.040 even the proto matter of of of the cycles of creation and so it's the one it's the name we

00:18:55.960 use but there are other names uh lydera and and um even modern names have been used so whether

00:19:02.920 it's the great tree the um the ermine bomb or the ermine wood uh because airman means just

00:19:10.120 giant or big with greatness. There's lots of different names, but Yggdrasil is what we're

00:19:18.580 going to use throughout all of this. You know, so that we have a tripartite. That is extremely

00:19:28.200 significant in all Aryan cultures. We have the foundation of a tripartite and tripartites

00:19:34.480 are always containing three things within all Aryan branches. And not enough people are talking

00:19:42.520 about this, but I think that Ar-Gothar have really formulated an understanding of this

00:19:48.480 through the observation of even other religious Aryan groups, the branches. But the tripartite

00:19:55.580 is always built around, there's a dynamicism, there's a stasis, and there's a catalyst.

00:20:01.580 And in this case, we have Yggdrasil as the stasis. It's the center axis. It's the central point. And then we have the catalyst, which is always something that breaks or purges, and often threatens the edge or threatens the order or the consistency, and that's Ymir.

00:20:22.540 And then the dynamic force is Adhumla at that time. And so we have this tripartite in the center, in the great gap, that's mentioned as only being misty with no up or down or there's only it's it's there's only north and south.

00:20:41.600 there's only fire and ice and in between it is the nothing and in the nothing the tripartite is made

00:20:48.160 and from the tripartite begins the sparks and the overall um rolling of all things

00:20:56.480 as it comes to be in our understanding of the cosmology so if you look at the if you look at

00:21:05.200 the gap as in a singular plane sense it is uh there is nothing but to the north and to the south

00:21:12.960 but if you look at it in a deeper sense the void itself is potential it is the gapped place in

00:21:21.200 which you have proto matter the ice being melted from nivelheim and the ignition spark the uh

00:21:31.680 whatever you might want to might want to see it as um some people have speculated the idea of like

00:21:37.120 cosmic radiation so you have matter and you have energy you have heat and you have um

00:21:44.320 the substrate of things so and that's looking at it in a far more i guess metaphysical sense

00:21:53.200 as opposed to simply taking it in the in the sense of the story but that's the beauty of our

00:21:58.320 of our stories and our myths as they they tell these stories and within them the secrets of

00:22:04.000 the knowledge of the gods is in there it's just our understanding is slowly coming to

00:22:14.320 one thing i'd like to and i think we need to do this with

00:22:19.600 any of the anything involving our lore i think it's very valuable to go into the etymology

00:22:25.440 in uh svan could you tell us a breakdown etymologically of the gununga gap

00:22:33.660 yeah uh gununga gap or gununga gap is is the

00:22:39.040 i guess like in a direct translation of it would be like the gigantic gap or the the um

00:22:49.480 If we're talking about closeness of language, Old Norse or even modern Icelandic does have some deep connections to elder English.

00:22:59.920 And so you'll see these similarities.

00:23:01.700 And that's why the words have a certain sense of kind of latent familiarity.

00:23:08.340 The gigantic gap, the yawning gap, all of these have the same.

00:23:14.880 Um, I, you know, I remember somebody debating whether or not the G in the beginning was hard

00:23:20.060 or soft, like yinungagap or gunungagap. And, um, but again, I, I find the application to be both

00:23:28.560 the same, the gigantic or the yawning gap, uh, the space in between. See what I find in my research

00:23:37.340 on it is yeah yawning or or wide is extrapolating on gap but gununga means sacred or magical

00:23:55.500 so the gap that's that's full of of magical energy or magical potential and i think uh

00:24:02.940 well i just hit on potential i think cosmologically it's extremely important

00:24:10.620 to realize that but i also think esoterically and spiritually as we examine other things in our lore

00:24:22.220 this gap this primal abyss from which consciousness emerges and from which

00:24:28.300 all of our existence in a spiritual way emerges out of i think is very important and i think it

00:24:40.580 becomes extremely important where manifesting that chaotic magical potential and bringing

00:24:49.300 it under order is a very significant theme in a macrocosm and in a microcosm of our faith

00:24:57.900 And I think it's one of the mysteries that I really like to emphasize at Hexanocht versus Mayday.

00:25:08.380 When we celebrate Hexanocht, the women in elder times, the witches go out and spread that magical charged atmosphere into the world and charm the world around us, charm the ether around us, for lack of a better term.

00:25:31.320 and then the men set that to order at mayday which is a phallic very masculine ritual

00:25:38.600 and put chaos into order initiating good things initiating you know wheel for our folk

00:25:47.960 and so the idea of this wellspring of undifferentiated magical chaotic potential

00:25:57.420 and it's subsequent being brought onto order or order emerging from it i think is a is an

00:26:02.140 important theme that we're going to come back to so i want to point that out right now yeah i think

00:26:07.580 that's important when you think like when we're talking about the tripartite within the gap when

00:26:12.540 we talk about of humla and we talk about intersil you you can see that in the idea of the the um

00:26:21.580 Um, Avhumla is still an oxen. She's still a very large, seen as, you know, very, very bountiful,

00:26:31.760 but still strong and somewhat untamed, if you will. And the axis, the Yggdrasil as the centering

00:26:40.880 point of that order is very much in play in those two. Uh, and it's always seen that way,

00:26:46.600 even too with the idea of why the why the witches uh and and just to go a little further in that a

00:26:52.600 lot of people have been giving me feedback um they were like wondering why i was using the word heaven

00:26:58.840 and hell and things like that and all germanic words and go into that later but witches too if

00:27:05.400 ever if anyone gets kind of why are they using the word which is the the word nor near means

00:27:10.520 which and it means the one that yes that twists or or um you know creates the outcome so for those

00:27:17.640 people uh you know watching now when we say which we're not talking about you know like a cat lady

00:27:25.560 or a uh you know a hot topic kid we're talking about the real intention of the word meaning the

00:27:31.640 twisting and the beneficially uh of of luck and activity um but yeah you see that always there's

00:27:39.800 always the the polaric sense of the the uh potential and the wildness but also the the

00:27:47.160 life-giving of the feminine and then the order and structuring of the masculine or the centering the

00:27:52.920 axis mundi and then the third part of that is the chaos the potential chaos that can come about from

00:27:58.600 that and what it's kind of seen is that muspelheim if if if allowed too close will dissolve all

00:28:06.440 things and if niflheim gets too close it will freeze and constrict all things so at this point

00:28:12.520 there seems to be an understanding that the the the world's or at least muspelheim moves away

00:28:19.080 if you will um far enough away in order for life in the center to begin

00:28:28.760 i think while we're at this uh this phase it's worth um

00:28:37.080 worth mentioning this concept of polarities and the need for an ordered cosmology that

00:28:45.320 spaces them appropriately apart and i think that there's truth to that on a lot of different levels

00:28:53.720 i think it's also worth noting that if the earth was you know just slightly closer to the sun

00:29:00.520 we would all burn up and not maintain life if it was slightly further away and closer towards

00:29:07.800 extreme cold we also would not be able to live our exist we literally on this planet exist

00:29:17.560 in that balance between heat and cold that it that optimizes our existence and our life

00:29:25.240 so we have a couple few questions here with those pieces laid out um i'll start getting

00:29:35.480 to the questions it's fun if you can think about the next step of cosmology you want to hit when

00:29:42.360 we uh when we get um looks like about these first five questions in okay so question one um

00:29:55.240 King of Cheese. I'm having to look at it on my phone because we're having a little technical glitch, but the producer, Nick, is working on it, as he always does, making it work out for us.

00:30:08.400 It's a fine night to talk about cosmetology.

00:30:13.720 Cosmetology. Okay. That was a little bit thrown off. No, I get it. It's all part of the joke. I suppose it is a good night to talk about cosmetology. Oh, comatology. Anyways.

00:30:25.880 matt's fun how are we doing tonight i'm doing great um always doing good like i said i had a

00:30:31.080 really good weekend at lc fest um i look forward to these every week and i think it's a big and

00:30:36.680 and meaty discussion tonight so i'm happy guys fun how are you doing i'm doing great and i'm

00:30:43.320 not a cosmetologist that's uh it's funny that he used that word is um there's a there's a rivalry

00:30:49.720 i guess or a kind of uh divide between barbering and cosmetology cosmetology is the newest word

00:30:57.080 for like a you know beautician or something of that nature and after a while they learned that

00:31:02.680 they really like it's easier to cut men's hair or something and so they say they're a barber

00:31:07.800 and they're not they don't have a barber's license they have a cosmetology license

00:31:12.040 so that's you guys may be disappointed but some inside dirt on spawn i asked he is not

00:31:19.400 though he is a master barber he is not able to do the jerry curl activator and get the jerry curls

00:31:26.840 working but i did i did ask him to pursue that he wanted to see if i could do the soul glow but no

00:31:34.520 no i can't even i can't cut women's hair that's too long or men's hair that's too long i can't do it

00:31:41.080 i'm not i've tried a couple times would not recommend

00:31:48.280 fair enough um

00:31:52.840 go the east ask with the alfar being our noble ancestors does they reside in alfheim or helheim

00:32:03.640 svan how would you approach that question okay first it's again a lot of people have

00:32:10.200 misconceptions about the word jotnar and the classification of jotnar it's just the same

00:32:16.840 with alvar and biser alvar is very similar or or at least i would say a little bit more

00:32:26.360 magnificent than just using the word vetter like a white a land white or a a river white or a tree

00:32:33.720 white or or anything in which perhaps the spirit has decided to take an inhabitants within a

00:32:39.480 physical thing um and again it's it's not that all things have this these these magical spirits

00:32:47.240 within them it's that oftentimes there is a enough of a willful being to inhabit something physical

00:32:55.640 but with alvar it's just the same in the sense that it's a it's a title used numerously over

00:33:03.480 different uh spiritual beings when we talk about when we get into um the cosmology you know with

00:33:12.440 uh the idea of we'll get into emir and midgard and and how the the world but one of the realms

00:33:21.000 in between the heavenly realm and the earthly realm is leo salvar it's the the light or leos

00:33:28.840 alfheim the the light elf home but these light elves are not the same alvar that are um of of

00:33:38.920 ancestral um create uh creation they uh you know an idea that the way it would be seen as an alvar

00:33:47.480 as a as a spiritual being in the hierarchy of the gods the leo salvar are connected to light

00:33:54.520 and the bringing of warmth and life a doc alpha a doc alpha means a dark elf and generally what

00:34:03.400 that means is that the the the uh the alvar is sourced from a mortal shade so oftentimes the

00:34:12.360 barrow whites if you will or the the mound ghosts that are in in kind of uh interacted with

00:34:20.440 in the stories are tak alfar they're they're they are uh spiritual ancestors oftentimes masculine

00:34:27.400 male uh that they um they were sometimes seen as still in the imagery of their former selves

00:34:34.360 but they have a power that's in between it's not quite connected and um oftentimes you know they're

00:34:41.840 they bestow gifts like uh sacral swords or um you know rings or crowns or baronies and hauberks

00:34:50.720 that are or helmets um the dak alvar are oftentimes associated with battlefields as well where where

00:34:59.120 um or places of sacredness that are defended by the masculine a spiritual centering point in which

00:35:06.560 they manifest order on a concentrated level in that area and sometimes it could be multiple

00:35:14.160 so when we talk about the alvar in the masculine sense of of descendancy we are in essence talking

00:35:20.880 about doc alvar and then the land below we call svart alfheim or merk alfheim merk and svart

00:35:31.440 means black now, but it meant sooty, swarthy, dark, shaded. And Merkur means the same thing,

00:35:41.100 murky. It's the place of the shade and the darkness and in the earth.

00:35:46.760 Like Santa's sidekick.

00:35:49.060 If you're in Holland, yes. Yes. The coal and switch, if you will, amongst the Dutch

00:35:59.740 um svartapit but um they uh yes it means sooty really is kind of a way to look at it and um

00:36:08.140 svartalf doesn't mean that that your ancestor is a svartalf and uh leosalf is not a docalf it's

00:36:17.840 now we're starting to get stratification just like oftentimes uh valkyrie and disir are oftentimes

00:36:26.480 interchangeable as well as nornir uh the the norns themselves are oftentimes mentioned as

00:36:33.020 of the gods and so it's a title and so don't get caught up too much into the idea that it has to

00:36:41.860 be so singularly laid out but that it it can apply to in essence the station in hierarchy

00:36:49.180 The gods being very, very high, the Jotnar being ancient, and the Alvar and Disir are kind of in between us and the gods, if you will.

00:37:01.700 So, to answer your question, oftentimes they're connected to the material, and oftentimes they can be connected to the hills or the lands, the battlefields, and are often honored with ancestors in general, but they're kind of seen as like, perhaps you could look at them as slightly closer than the ancestor, the folk soul improper.

00:37:28.440 they're kind of in between and um in the cosmology i believe that that ordering of

00:37:33.640 hierarchy comes from the gods so the idea that uh an alvar or a dc at all being a presiding or

00:37:40.760 guardian spirit of the family or the blood or the individual is there because of the anointment of

00:37:47.080 the gods and the fame and the the the uh the build up of fame and renown amongst the living

00:37:55.560 and also the ancestors themselves seeing the the the the desir and the alvar as being worthy of

00:38:03.240 being kind of connected to the material um leo's alvar are nature if you will are cosmic light

00:38:15.960 heat the the essence of of the uh the brightness and this is where the connection between freir

00:38:22.920 and the light comes from is when freir is talked about as you know when he cuts his first tooth

00:38:28.600 he gets a gift and that gift is alfheim um it's because freir is the lord of bounty and the light

00:38:37.160 and the warmth that rushes through uh through delinger's gate is that that's his presiding sense

00:38:46.040 that is his dominion if you will and so the leos alfar are not like doc alfar or the alvar

00:38:53.320 of the ancestral lines i hope that clarifies we're going to be kind of hopping in and out

00:39:00.120 on that one a lot titles and names yeah i think um i think it's important to note that there's

00:39:13.000 a tremendous amount of overlap and beings can move between the worlds to do different things

00:39:24.440 and i think that's one of the i think we see it exemplified with the all-father all the time but

00:39:30.600 odin can you know travel to the different worlds that's something that he does notoriously in our

00:39:38.520 uh in our lore thor travels to jotunheim to to do battle and to do things just because an ancestor

00:39:49.320 doesn't mean people can't go in and out of helheim to hang out with you know the the more mundane

00:39:54.920 ancestors even if they ascend to something that's higher or more than that by the same token you

00:40:01.160 know we see all forms of the alfar interacting with us in midgard clearly if they can interact

00:40:08.040 in midgard they can also interact in hellheim and other places and i think to get overly bogged down

00:40:15.720 in particulars does a disservice to lore that was never meant to be literal in that sense um

00:40:25.640 but yeah i think

00:40:28.520 you know most all the ancestors go through hellheim maybe after hell you get there you can then

00:40:36.520 progress to something different you can ascend to something more or in you know particularly

00:40:45.320 heinous situations decent to something less but that's a staging area that that begins the rest

00:40:53.640 of your afterlife journey um yeah and i think that again words matter elf meaning spirit you

00:41:04.600 know if we're in victorian times i could you know describe you as a as a jolly elf and i'm not

00:41:12.920 i'm not wrong in doing that um you know santa is is an an elf in uh

00:41:21.640 lots of lots of linguistics from earlier times um it's only recently that that

00:41:28.920 implies pointy ears and skill at archery right and that's that's the uh the speaking of that

00:41:36.440 because we're you know with uh you know the lord of the rings is a hot topic and and what that

00:41:40.920 actually means and all of this i will lean in a little bit because i i kind of foresaw some of

00:41:45.560 that coming um perhaps in the questions too um you know aragorn having his uh long gray brown hair

00:41:54.360 and light green eyes um but the idea of understanding that uh over time as christianity

00:42:02.040 became more prevalent uh it it needed to um is it dominionized is that the right word to to make

00:42:10.600 small or to to kind of overlap and and kind of disseminate the power of of beings within the

00:42:19.160 world of our ancestors so like uh there's a song in iceland called um oliver ridros and it's it's

00:42:26.120 talking about two uh young men and oliver himself is being chased by uh an alvar or hoodlful queen

00:42:34.680 from the mounds and um there's like the mention of the church bells like if they can get to the

00:42:40.280 church bells it'll scare him away um again that's part of that that diminutive sense the and then

00:42:48.200 of course um uh you know like tolkien and his usage of of and his speaking about the the the elves as

00:42:56.120 being these kind of paragons um they were they were strong they were upright they were shining

00:43:02.280 um and he was clearly pulling this from the leo salvar um oh it wasn't until even recently that

00:43:07.880 the um the kind of the idea of the androgynous i think that kind of comes from uh christianity's

00:43:15.640 trying to also androgynizing their the angels when they went more in a hellenistic sense they

00:43:21.960 made these androgynous beings i mean obviously in in uh the the the parent religion or the source

00:43:28.200 of christianity their angels were horrific and very very odd with eyeballs and wings and fire

00:43:35.640 and all that stuff um but you know when they became the angelos that that process started

00:43:42.280 to build towards and it was painted with a bit of the alvar concept of the leo's alvar concept

00:43:49.540 of the germanics so that's why uh when you see like the statue of of um uh michael uh and he's

00:43:58.060 you know upright and shining and a paragon of the spiritual essence the the um the elevated

00:44:06.040 essence of the soul. That's, you can kind of see that being veneered on to Christianity as it,

00:44:13.000 as it morphs over in time. So I lied. I don't think we're going to hit the first five right

00:44:19.500 now. I think we're going to hit the first two. And I want to comment on a couple of things I see

00:44:22.940 over on the side. Ronald once again, starts the show off donating another $50 to help one of our

00:44:34.080 folk uh every single week we appreciate it so much thank you so much and um the gentleman who's

00:44:42.400 receiving the help is also in the in the chat room robert very sorry for your loss

00:44:49.040 he acknowledged the generosity of our our folk and our members and uh

00:44:57.600 first i love hearing that i'm very glad that our people take care of each other and are generous

00:45:03.360 something to consider for for folks out there

00:45:09.840 so many times when a tragedy occurs something bad happens and man you just wish you could do

00:45:16.320 something to help and so often what you could do to help seems elusive and hard to find so

00:45:25.680 you just kind of wish that you could help and throw up your hands and we all feel that way

00:45:30.900 Our folk services and our special, you know, donate to this person or that person who needs some help.

00:45:38.780 It's a really nice way for us to go in and be able to help out and feel like we're doing something good to make some things better.

00:45:47.280 So I appreciate everybody that has been and continues to be generous.

00:45:52.140 We appreciate you guys.

00:45:55.700 I should have mentioned at the top of the show, but I didn't.

00:45:59.340 We are being broadcast on Odyssey, VK, YouTube, Twitter, and other stuff.

00:46:11.280 Oh, then Entropy.

00:46:12.700 So that goes to the next thing I was going to say.

00:46:15.080 So on Entropy, if you want to go over there and throw us donations or participate in the Super Chat,

00:46:23.180 I promise if something pops up in Super Chat, I won't push it off.

00:46:26.980 I'll jump right in as soon as I finish a thought

00:46:30.060 or Svahn is done with the thought he's on

00:46:31.940 and we will read your question.

00:46:34.820 So that is probably especially useful today

00:46:38.560 because we are going to be jumping around a little bit.

00:46:42.900 So we hit those first two questions.

00:46:47.220 Svahn, what is the next element of our cosmology

00:46:50.360 that you want to hit?

00:46:51.640 And I'm hoping that you have a list somewhere

00:46:53.420 of all the pieces you want to hit

00:46:54.840 so we can make sure we get them all.

00:46:56.420 Oh, I got a list. So, again, if we take it back to an understanding of a singular, planar sense, now that we have the tripartite, and I'm trying not to get too metaphysical, but go more just in the poetic sense, that we have Adhumla, and she is the power creation that creates the first aus, or the proto aus, or the origin aus.

00:47:26.420 And that is Buri. Buri is the one that is created from the power and matter. And he moves up into Niflheim at first and exists there within the matter and within the material.

00:47:46.960 and again i want to go metaphysical but i'm not not going to go so let's just read this like like

00:47:51.360 almost like a story in the just uh as we're sitting around the campfire um but he exists

00:47:57.840 in niflheim for some time and it is there that he uh he intermingles with a yotnar and again

00:48:07.680 don't get this convoluted with emir or uh and i'm not speaking to you else here but to the to the

00:48:13.360 audience is that don't get this convoluted with the idea that the yotnar um of emir this is a

00:48:20.480 that's a different stage of things right now we're talking about deeply ancient beings that have

00:48:26.000 been in the direct uh creation of the middle and it is there that he bears a son and his son

00:48:35.760 is bore and bore means to lift up and and that that has a a very poignant sense in the name of

00:48:45.760 the word and he is he has with a bride and his bride's name is best law now it's a little um

00:48:53.680 argued as far as the etymology of her name but the closest that i have found in my studies is that

00:48:59.920 it's the closest to the word beset like to beset a table or to to order things but in the sense of

00:49:07.200 make things ready making things with potential ready to be used and so board lifts up and makes

00:49:17.680 order and best luck creates the potential ready to to be had and it is seen here now that that

00:49:26.000 they move to Yggdrasil at some point because this is where the foundation of of the of the

00:49:32.560 Aesir become uh poignant and there's this moment in time now in poetry time is is it's it's kind

00:49:42.400 of hard to grasp so I'm trying to paint it in a sense that um you know most people when they read

00:49:48.720 the poems it's it's like border and besla and then and and then that's poof um but seeing it

00:49:55.840 as an understanding in the stories that that at this point the gods move to the tree to the

00:50:01.600 stasis point to the point of order and heaven is in its sense kind of around the tree and

00:50:11.440 it is there that the gods make themselves but other things start to happen the understanding

00:50:17.680 of the reason why Ymir is a threat is when the gods that are born from the beginning,

00:50:25.560 Odin, Vili, and Vey are sent to destroy Ymir because of his potential danger. The idea is

00:50:33.440 that he's sleeping or he's potentially able to shake the tree or attack the order. And so he

00:50:40.360 must be slain. But to be slain does not mean ended. It's to be changed. Again, reemphasizing

00:50:47.140 just like on our last episode, nothing ever really truly just stops. It always transmorphs

00:50:54.980 into something else. And so Ymir is just the same. Now, it's mentioned that Ymir is covered in

00:51:02.760 Jotnar, ancient beings, because they're ancient to us. So the sons of Muspel and the Nivel Jotnar,

00:51:12.120 are a rhyme ice uh the rhyme giants as they're often referred to are in niflheim and muspelheim

00:51:18.360 but emir starts to sprout his own offspring and there is uh you know i've seen people speculate

00:51:27.240 and talk about the the idea of the the yotnar that spring from his upper body are like a hierarchical

00:51:33.080 sense and that the the yotnar that spring from his lower body are some sort of more based version of

00:51:38.440 chaos but what we do know is that no matter what in the story we know that when the gods send down

00:51:46.360 the three that the tripartite within himself olvin comes down slays emir and deluges the

00:51:55.240 world with water and they formulate the middle world and if we're talking about it in a poetic

00:52:03.560 sense of the singular plane he fills the middle they they he they the the the three who are one

00:52:10.840 and the one who is three the tripartite and dynamicism creates the middle by reforming emir's

00:52:17.320 body and there um the deluge kills the jotnar that spring from him whether upper body or lower

00:52:26.280 body and is there there's only one that escapes is berry elmer and uh the the the uh the strong

00:52:33.640 roar or um yes the mighty roar and his wife is mentioned but i think that um perhaps snorri was

00:52:41.960 alluding to his christian roots and possibly trying to make some emphasis of connection with

00:52:47.160 perhaps the story of noah or or and um perhaps even to further back you know again um i guess

00:52:55.240 guess it wasn't known by him then, but, you know, even the, uh, the flood myths of the Babylonians

00:52:59.940 has a very similar kind of sense, but, um, the Deluge, uh, uh, you know, kills the Jotnar except

00:53:08.100 for Berielmer and his wife, and from them come the Jotnar of the middle. Uh, they, they remember

00:53:18.360 the slight, so it seems in the stories as we go along, it's, it's worth remembering that some

00:53:23.620 jodnar uh remember uh and they have a the grudge and the and the the wanting to fight against order

00:53:31.860 some of them do not and they fall into a gray zone um and that's why we we speak of the brides uh

00:53:40.100 we call them the beloved ones because they're in that gray zone of primordial energy that aligns

00:53:48.020 with the gods but i digress um so at this point we have the middle the middle is made and the

00:53:57.220 the uh it's seen as like the the gods are in either of all either of all is kind of

00:54:04.420 congruent with heaven he oven them or hymenia and we know this because of heimdall being you

00:54:11.220 know in heaven's mountain or or the mountains of heaven um and so if we're talking about on a

00:54:18.580 singular plane the gods are elevated and there is the tree and the mountains and the rivers that

00:54:24.580 spring there and the rivers that spring here and the rivers that spring from the world underneath

00:54:29.700 nivelheim and uh these sources where they pop up the idea of seeing where you know rivers and or

00:54:37.460 springs popping up out of the ground and kind of roots digging into the earth and ending up

00:54:42.980 somewhere else all of this starts to take place in understanding how the cosmology is structured

00:54:50.020 in the poetic sense okay so i think that brings us to another i suppose stopping point to take a

00:55:01.860 breath on that um nick i think it's worthwhile and if each time we go into the next piece of

00:55:10.580 cosmology you could throw it up for a few minutes it would be good but could you throw up the

00:55:16.740 cosmology graphic and if you could leave this one up a little bit longer than you leave normal

00:55:22.020 pictures you show up just so people can examine it a little bit we've got more questions coming

00:55:29.220 in and i should have i would have done this a few minutes ago if i would have paid better attention

00:55:34.340 to the questions because kind of a direct follow-up but we're getting some really good

00:55:38.420 questions here and i don't want to leave them too far in the past especially

00:55:43.540 me and swan can get on these shows for as you've seen six and a half hours and i know other people

00:55:48.580 are going to log off and go to bed at some point so the next question follows on trent's

00:55:54.740 hell or alfheim question um but it says so we answered the first part of it it follows with

00:56:03.700 or what determines where we go and is there a connection between hellheim and alfheim and i

00:56:10.660 think we i i think we answered the top and the bottom but what determines where we go

00:56:20.740 and the the destination of our soul in the afterlife i think is a is a valid question

00:56:26.340 uh svan what would you how would you like to set the stage for that well i think we've talked

00:56:34.820 about it quite a bit and i think that uh we're past the point where i think people have kind

00:56:39.220 of scoffed at or or even at least side-eye glance the idea of ascendancy ascendancy is the upward

00:56:47.540 but the upward is also again we're talking about directions is is the advancement forward it's the

00:56:54.020 building up if you will um when we talk about the mortal world when we talk about the souls of man

00:57:00.980 and we kind of alluded to this in the last episode is we're talking about the the meeting out of the

00:57:06.740 doom by the gods in essence the marking of the taking note of uh very rarely on individual levels

00:57:14.340 but oftentimes can be on on the group or on the uh the nation or the folk or or what have you

00:57:21.540 but also too very very significant and very very special when it's on the individual

00:57:26.340 but that ascendancy there still has to be there there's a couple ways that can go ascendancy and

00:57:32.580 immediacy uh when we talk about odin ascending a soul by being by choosing that soul the idea is

00:57:41.700 some people often immediately go towards battle and um and that's a fair point because we're

00:57:48.820 talking about this time in which the fate of of a a warrior is being quite literally placed on the

00:57:56.180 line so the that point and the again the reasoning why odin has that lust for battle is because

00:58:03.620 that's when the the fate the weird of of the individual was at the at almost like for us when

00:58:09.860 we were talking about the veil becoming thin in a way it's like that as well so oven can ascend

00:58:16.900 the soul he is the vowel father vowel is is both an adjective and a verb to choose the ability to

00:58:25.220 choose which what's what makes olden so uniquely powerful is that his ability to choose the soul

00:58:33.620 in the moment of their of the weaving of their end and there's that's an immediate ascendancy

00:58:39.060 but it doesn't always happen in battle and that's where that's where the confusion comes in because

00:58:43.540 we have other uh instances in which even upon deathbed the ascendancy of a particular individual

00:58:52.500 is marked as being that the valkyrie comes snatches the soul then and ascends immediately

00:58:59.780 so once we get that in our in our head that the odin is the the lord of the choosing

00:59:05.620 the ability to choose the valkyria are the carriers of the chosen who are chosen by the

00:59:11.460 valfather um the moral sense of returning to the place beneath does not mean the end it's not it's

00:59:20.740 not a filing cabinet of eternity it's not some kind of slow motion uh thing it is it's an

00:59:27.620 encapsulation away from time which is important when we talk about balder but uh you know it

00:59:34.180 it becomes more eternal escaping away from time is like again uh going into the miasma of the

00:59:42.100 eternity and sometimes that can be both frightful and purposeful and when our souls go through and

00:59:49.940 join the folk soul the idea of the ascendancy even post death again the ancestors exalt the soul

00:59:58.420 the gods exalt the soul and then the ascendancy through fame is possible there and this is

01:00:05.940 referenced to like in in um when gerder says to skirner she says um are you a god and he says no

01:00:15.860 are you an elf no are you a man no and so the idea of the hierarchy of of the heavenly

01:00:22.900 beings having this these stations is not clearly written there but it can be understood if it just

01:00:31.080 think about it for a little bit and so the gods are they disseminate order so when the souls are

01:00:40.140 ascended up from the lower they are then re-encapsulated or pieces of the soul remember

01:00:46.460 too that's that's a little dicey when we talk about it's not like just the entirety of the

01:00:52.100 soul. Sometimes it can be elements of, or the elements of the multiple. And so the idea of an

01:00:58.480 entire group soul kind of coming back and manifesting, um, there seems to be a point in

01:01:05.880 which those souls are, can either be orderly placed in the upper realm and is mentioned as

01:01:13.080 being there, um, uh, living amongst the gods. And then there seems to be that place in between

01:01:19.400 the alvar and those those alvar are most oftentimes placed in the middle again but are not material

01:01:26.900 they're exalted spiritually and so they have a power to preside over a place and they're placed

01:01:34.940 there by the the ordering of the gods while they they they are around earth as well the portal or

01:01:42.700 the the manifest transfer point into the material so when we talk about that ascendancy uh we see

01:01:50.620 it numerous times over and over again and there seems to be this placement of beings in between

01:01:56.380 and so alvar are kind of seen as more connected to the material and they're different than the leos

01:02:04.060 alfar because remember alfheim is leosafheim and those are the ascendant uh spirits of of light

01:02:14.300 and and again it's you can't quite say that it isn't also ancestral as well we don't know uh if

01:02:23.260 the alfar uh as you ascend you know they are in between the heaven and then in the middle

01:02:29.020 are they leo so far i mean technically they they could be what we don't we don't fully know but

01:02:35.820 the idea of understanding that they are um in between so when we talk about alfheim in comparison

01:02:44.700 to to hellheim or to hellguard is we're talking about the place that you step away from from time

01:02:54.620 and it's not the end point if it was need hogar the serpent the the remnants of the destruction

01:03:02.220 of emir wouldn't be trying to rip that root out to break that cycle but i digress again alpha

01:03:11.580 alfheim is a place that exists between the highest of the mountain of either wall or heaven or the

01:03:18.860 the gods and the mortal in the in the flat plane if you will

01:03:26.300 so um what decides where we go and where we end up the gods decide um there's numerous things that

01:03:34.220 can influence that decision uh intercession through prayer and through offerings posthumous

01:03:41.260 uh offerings and attempts to elevate a person's fame and a person's reputation can factor in

01:03:48.860 But ultimately, gods can do what they want, and our gods have the say on whether or not a person's soul is elevated to something more, whether it remains in stasis, or ultimately if it is so horribly malignant that it needs to be recycled.

01:04:11.600 um but what i think is really important and i don't ever want us to do so the gods are not

01:04:21.140 obliged to conform to our understanding of the lord our lore is an attempt to understand

01:04:28.520 the will of the gods and the truths that the gods make manifest to us but

01:04:35.940 it's absolutely up to the gods and no evaluation of of ancient writings makes that different or

01:04:46.140 makes that not so so keeping some humility on the gods have those choices the gods can do what they

01:04:53.500 like and uh you know feel free to to act accordingly in course of your ritual and

01:04:59.780 in your prayers and in your offerings and things to try to you know ask that they that they grant

01:05:06.660 boons to those you love who pass um let's do one more question and then we'll get back into the

01:05:14.980 cosmology hope everybody looked at that exciting graphic uh that is the the hard work of uh witness

01:05:22.500 fawn here and go the trent east lovely wife madison they by their powers combined they

01:05:31.780 make some really beautiful things so i'm having a look here on my phone through a little side

01:05:37.860 chat to get my questions because again like i said we got some some tech difficulties tonight

01:05:43.620 uh from sterling matt having met you i certainly feel you embody what it means to be also true

01:05:51.140 and a hero to our folk thank you sterling i appreciate that do you feel it's possible to

01:05:56.980 reach such greatness that we are immortalized in the stars slash constellations what would that

01:06:04.580 greatness look like so uh i got to meet sterling this last week at lc fest one of the one of the

01:06:14.340 really cool things that happened this last week it was great to uh to get to meet you and and

01:06:21.140 I don't, I think a lot of that is, is symbolic and pretty. The idea of constellations being,

01:06:33.860 you know, like, ah, Sterling was so awesome. We took him, we chucked him up in the sky and

01:06:37.720 made him into a constellation. Realistically, to be so heroic and fantastic that you

01:06:46.880 become a constellation, what that needs to do is you need to impress people with the power to name

01:06:53.500 constellations. And I don't say that in a silly way, but the idea of seeing heroes as immortalized

01:07:02.260 amongst the stars is all an idea of that heroic ascension to something more, transcending our

01:07:10.880 world into the cosmic, into that which is greater and that which is more.

01:07:17.760 and to do that i believe that you need to trans

01:07:24.160 you need to transcend the bounds of your station in life

01:07:33.280 we see that in our ancestors time a lot with the idea of going to valhalla through

01:07:40.240 transcending it through deeds on the battlefield

01:07:42.720 but there's other ways to transcend and to be more than you are

01:07:48.720 and those transcendent acts are the basis of heroism

01:07:53.700 I'm trying to think of the best way to to describe it and I don't claim this is the

01:08:03.000 only way I think you can merit it through great deeds through great acts of devotion

01:08:07.260 through mastery and leadership and, and things, but the concept of becoming more than the sum

01:08:15.140 of your parts of being, reaching and touching that woad self that we spoke about a few weeks ago.

01:08:26.120 That's something you see in those acts where you see people do

01:08:29.520 things beyond humanity in the moment of crisis to go out and express bravery beyond

01:08:39.200 beyond what's fathomable because you have that inside of you and that's one of the reasons that

01:08:46.100 so much so much of our lore talks about these things in terms of battle because the time that

01:08:53.460 lore was written in but also because that is a very intense and very instructive crucible to

01:09:05.220 determine what you truly are about or are not any of us here can you know and veterans aside any of

01:09:13.940 us who have not served or have not been in life or death situations can speculate about what we

01:09:20.900 think we would do or what of course we do because we're awesome or whatever we think the case might

01:09:26.900 be but when there's consequence and consequence to the point of life and death you see when people

01:09:37.300 you see what people are made of um and that's no slight to folks that find out that maybe they're

01:09:45.060 not made of the stuff that they think they are i think that's a a big reality check but it's always

01:09:52.740 been for our people one of the the most obvious ways to see that kind of transcendence through

01:10:00.340 acts of heroism that's why we celebrate you know medal of honor winners or uh iron cross winners

01:10:08.420 or or folks that get those kind of um valorous decorations for for those deeds that they do

01:10:21.060 and i think that those are your most obvious way of ascending to where you're worthy of a

01:10:27.220 constellation being named after you but again i think to do that you got to know the right people

01:10:32.180 i think what you're really talking about is ascending to where the gods recognize you as a

01:10:37.060 hero and they move you up closer to them or ultimately to commune with them in their halls

01:10:45.860 and that's what i think we all want to do it's a big part of uh you know i say that maybe some

01:10:51.300 of us don't i don't understand that something i would absolutely love to do i have no pretense

01:10:56.260 to think that that i i am or am worthy of it i hope if i do everything right that the gods might

01:11:02.980 find me worthy of it one day um but all of our heroes that we honor with days of remembrance

01:11:10.500 are folks that we believe have transcended in some way or gone above and beyond for the cause

01:11:16.580 of alsatru and for the cause of our gods and we believe they're rewarded for that by by some sort

01:11:22.980 of ascension in the life beyond and we celebrate them as heroes and we depict them with red red

01:11:32.260 sun wheels as halos to represent their they certain sacrality and the ascension that they've achieved

01:11:40.260 so yeah a lot of these questions are are focused on some of these topics but um again we'll have

01:11:49.700 tons of questions lined up i think i'm going to try to knock them out two at a time like that

01:11:55.700 so it's fine you talked about in the beginning there was the yawning gununga gap with

01:12:03.060 musfelheim and neffelheim on either side then came a dumla and uh

01:12:12.340 yamira and the race of giants and then we're starting to establish the the middles um

01:12:19.380 proportions and spacing and dimensionality where do you want to go next so and we talked about as

01:12:28.100 the as the in the poetic sense that the elevated place upon which the gods reside where the tree

01:12:35.860 is where the root the the roots of the elevated again still plain early to the to this part where

01:12:44.980 we are at um oh sorry i think my i don't know if my on your end my camera keeps kind of going in

01:12:52.180 and out this is a brand new camera for everyone that was that's why i'm so clear apparently um

01:12:58.500 no longer an ai um so when we speak about the the heavenly realm or the elevated realm in which the

01:13:06.100 gods are with the uh they build there and it is spoken of as their attainment towards the golden

01:13:13.620 age of where ausgarth is built ausgarth is not heaven like the entirety it is in the upper it is

01:13:23.540 in the celestial or the the heavenly expanse this is spoken of numerous uh where you know when the

01:13:31.220 wall is being built around ausgarther and the reason why the bar that is used to say like land

01:13:38.980 or um time is it's in a capsule place uh it's called either wall either wall is the plane of

01:13:47.620 work it is the place in which order is made either means to to to work to toil to be busy

01:13:55.620 and so what this is the ordering structure um and it is built at the base of the tree and there

01:14:03.220 springs the first spring and uh you know the middle is made and we then know that to the west

01:14:13.140 is the the ancient land where there are ancient beings but these beings are not

01:14:20.580 jotnar and it's speculated as to because the origins here are there's a lot of hypothesis

01:14:27.380 But we know that all the old gods as well because of their time.

01:14:35.980 So there's beings that are made during this time.

01:14:38.440 There's the Yot-Nar and they seem to recede to the east and they are being Ymir's eyebrow or the lashes of his eyes.

01:14:46.940 Again, I think this is the gods, preferably metaphysical, but it is meant that they are beyond the sight and they recede to the east.

01:14:58.520 And then in the west, there is the vanir, which is correlated to the word waning.

01:15:05.000 Waning means to go down or to recede, or at least it's talking about the potential of cycle.

01:15:12.420 The idea of that which goes down must come up, which is pulled away must come up.

01:15:17.040 It's a sense of cycling.

01:15:20.060 When we talk about the Vanir, the Vanir are seen as in the middle.

01:15:25.460 They're not quite elevated.

01:15:27.640 They're connected to the middle plane of man.

01:15:32.300 And they're intimately connected with the cycles of things.

01:15:37.260 They're seen as, you know, water and of earth.

01:15:42.420 it's only till later do they begin to take on the more aspects of the heavenly light warmth but we

01:15:48.900 in the in the west the vanir at some point come and uh are connected and so that we in the west

01:15:59.420 and then we talk about in the body of emir there is the they're referred to as maggots and the

01:16:06.240 reason why I think the word usage of maggots is twofold. One is that they are base creatures that

01:16:14.020 have not formulated themselves quite yet. They begin to evolve as well into something that is

01:16:19.940 called Dvergar or Svartalf. They are oftentimes referred to as in the common, like we use the

01:16:28.560 but not and we changed that to giants dverga changed into dwarves but what a dvergar is

01:16:36.800 is again this is connected to the primordial but within it the the confines of the structure of the

01:16:42.480 material so these beings are starting to be structured and then as we go into the story even

01:16:51.280 further um there is later on much much much later on there is a placement in the lower beneath so

01:17:01.360 smart alfheim is kind of seen as underneath our feet but even further down is nivelheim and in

01:17:08.320 nivelheim there is a place like an access point much like ausgard is in the heavenly realm there

01:17:17.280 is Helgar, or Helgaard, Helheim, it's, and of course the story, you know, of the three children

01:17:24.640 of Loki, and we'll go into that, you know, a little bit later, but as we're starting to see

01:17:29.540 the structuring of the above and the below, and the places in between, to the north, to the south,

01:17:35.840 to the east, and to the west, there's an understanding of these directions having

01:17:41.000 cultural significance. And this kind of begins the stratification of the worlds. And, you know,

01:17:50.820 it's mentioned that Helgard is on the edge of Niflheim, and to die, the soul goes northward

01:17:57.340 and downward. These, again, have significance because the cold in the north was detrimental.

01:18:02.900 um so the idea of of hellheim being that encapsulated place that you have to pass through

01:18:12.000 before you broach into nivelheim and and ultimately you know to to the the toiling well

01:18:18.980 and the third root very important um and there is this uh structure now we have the upper or

01:18:29.040 elevated oftentimes again it's seen on this on the poetic sense as being like mountainously high

01:18:34.480 and then there is the plain and to the east and to the west and to the north and to the south

01:18:37.840 and then directly underneath this is the smart alfheim and then in the the entryway to navel

01:18:44.640 the the great place underneath there is helgarth and so what we end up having is the number nine

01:18:52.000 and the number nine is deeply significant to us multiple times throughout the lore but it's worth

01:18:58.400 noting that there's not such an easy way to dissect the number nine when we talk about

01:19:04.720 muspelheim and niflheim and and how they're deeply separate but we talk about helheim and niflheim

01:19:11.120 is being connected um and then again when we we speak about the gods in their elevated mountainous

01:19:17.920 state the place above they ride down into the east into the land of the giants or into the land

01:19:25.760 of the ancient beings or or they are greet they're uh you know they are visited by by the the ones

01:19:33.360 from the west the the vanaheim the vanir and they send their emissary up to the icier to ultimately

01:19:43.280 test them um the uh and this this brings about the big part of what kind of catalysts the middle

01:19:53.040 we have the or excuse me the the catalyst of the slaying of emir is the doom of heaven that's when

01:20:00.280 we see that the gods are are connected and sourced and all things that evolve out of time

01:20:06.340 but for the middle the big point of i would say uh our our spark of being connected to all things

01:20:15.180 is the war between the gods again this is deeply arian every branch has a talk about or a story

01:20:22.640 about or hinting towards the war of the gods and it's really important that we we understand this

01:20:28.320 because there are people trying to change the way like arian thought has been um you know there

01:20:35.840 there's there's ideas that the gods will like descend into the underworld and measure your

01:20:40.800 worth like uh almost like the egyptian kind of story of the heart and the feather um this

01:20:46.320 This is not the Aryan concept of the idea of the gods descending into the underworld, and it's even more so in the Nordic and Teutonic sense, because it's not a god that is given domain over the underworld.

01:21:03.620 It's Hela, or Hel, and she is not quite an Aesir or a Vanir.

01:21:08.760 um it's so much so an understanding that the divine took rain in the middle and took rain

01:21:16.000 in the upper they didn't descend down into the lower um and it's this exists with the death of

01:21:23.600 hercules or the battle between perun and veles um and the the the fight between uh uh poseidon and

01:21:32.660 hades and and uh uh zeus these these all aryan concepts are consistent and one of the big ones

01:21:41.720 is the the war between the gods and in other branches we see the war between like say the

01:21:47.220 titans and the olympians um but it's interesting in our our faith we do not see that we see the

01:21:54.340 The primordial chaos, there's never quite a peace made until much, much later.

01:22:02.200 The Vanir are gods of the middle, and they broach with the gods of the upper, and they make a truce.

01:22:11.660 And that truce creates what I've always referred to as the alignment of cosmic order and natural law, that the Vanir represent natural law and the cycles that are inescapable.

01:22:24.340 and they are the gods of that middle power and so there has to always be that conflict

01:22:30.900 um some people try to equate that to um the simple idea like i think a lot of people are going back

01:22:38.320 to like a sky daddy earth mommy conflict you know just kind of absolving and washing away

01:22:45.940 the the polytheism and just kind of doing like a dual theism um in which the sky and the and the

01:22:53.060 earth are united and we have that but it's not just like you know the lord and the lady coming

01:22:59.140 together uh and creating um but it's it's still there it's clearly there except we have other

01:23:06.340 aryan concepts that are deeply intrinsic to us the the natural law the cosmic order the tripartite

01:23:13.060 the the stratification of the of the earth and of the the trifurcation of the sky and so

01:23:19.380 So to say, you know, just to boil all the gods down into a masculine and feminine solely for the sake of, I guess, I don't know, trying to explain the way perhaps our ancestors saw things in an entirely, I would say too simplistic view.

01:23:37.120 But so now we have the stratification. We have the ordering and we have the separation between the elevated realm, the lower realms, the realms to the west, realms to the east, to the north and to the south.

01:23:54.660 And poetically, it was just seen this way. But as Ausatru has returned, has been reemerged from the blood of the folk and the birthright is being attained, what we start to realize is that our religion evolves.

01:24:10.340 and it evolves in, in the sense of stratifying the mystery, spreading the mystery apart in

01:24:17.340 order to better understand how the gods work. Doesn't mean that we can make the gods work in

01:24:22.000 the way we want. We're just observing and trying to make sense of the mystery. And in doing that,

01:24:28.960 that's why we stratify. Um, and so the elevated place, the mountainous place where the tree is

01:24:34.840 the gods live in their in the in the garden and in each of their the valley that becomes the

01:24:40.520 celestial and it's referred to that as hymenya that the celestial plane and so when people uh

01:24:46.920 have remark why do you use the word heaven it's it's our word um and and and hell is seen as that

01:24:53.720 gateway to um to niflheim and that is that the the deep and the lower the under and natural law

01:25:02.760 and of course to the east the jotuns are the source of primordial resistance so when you have

01:25:08.840 natural order conflicting with with um uh primordial resistance you get up you get evolution

01:25:15.800 if you will and i mean evolution in the sense of change growth and in the process of time it goes

01:25:21.640 even into the concepts of time um that's when we get really metaphysical i think because our faith

01:25:28.280 has evolved and people are still trying to stratify it in their own ways some are saying

01:25:33.160 that everything's in the lower world and the gods are just kind of at the top of things um and then

01:25:38.920 the middle world is just kind of just i don't know a flat disc or kind of a i don't know it gets it's

01:25:46.200 crazy people are still doing this and that's why i thought it was really important that when we

01:25:51.640 talk to people we explain to them that yes poetically we saw things on the flat plane

01:25:56.920 but now in the modern age when we talk about the realms we are we are seeing them beyond just the

01:26:03.560 physical they're not uh you know a place where we can drive to and find him and bjork and and uh go

01:26:11.960 into and drive around and then drive out and uh i think our ancestors understood this to a degree

01:26:18.360 in the sense that they were seen as just as close as any other landmark but they were also just as

01:26:25.640 far as the spiritual divide and that was not seen as again we didn't need the logic we didn't need

01:26:31.880 the linear all right so let's uh let's pause there and answer a couple of more questions um

01:26:44.920 so next one how does the big bang theory fit into norse cosmology if at all do you have

01:26:52.840 thoughts on that spawn yeah um i mean i i i if you wanted to take it in that sense like we could

01:27:00.280 look at muspelheim as cosmic radiation we could look at niflheim as um uh you know cosmic proto

01:27:10.040 matter whatever that might be base elements or what and um the idea that um there is an explosion

01:27:18.680 or separation of these two to create the polaric forces. Most people see the universe as ever

01:27:26.040 expanding, but when we talk about Muspelheim and Niflheim, it's worth noting not are we just only

01:27:31.500 talking about fire and ice. We're talking about temperature. We're talking about heat. We're

01:27:37.040 talking about cold. And again, what you had brought up about the idea of our placement

01:27:43.100 within um being perfect within the hot and the cold um it has more to do um with that but when

01:27:52.220 we start talking about galaxies and the middle you know the the material in the middle uh is so

01:28:01.900 to be intellectually honest is so mind-boggling that if the possibility that the gods um

01:28:10.940 um with us on earth it's like the life is of all the of the expanse in the middle of the gap

01:28:19.340 is on not the planet but on the skin of the planet um to the point where it's almost like

01:28:28.000 if all of the expanding gap all of life is on the skin of an apple that is

01:28:34.960 very very mind-boggling i it i try to understand that i think our stories bring the gods closer to

01:28:43.720 us because when you go down that road you get into a sense of deep uh despair at the relativism

01:28:49.520 of things and i don't think that's the case i think that quite literally as far away as they

01:28:54.860 are they are as close and sometimes even again within to see yggdrasil as you know the center

01:29:01.420 of ourselves and the worlds and what they represent the they they that which is within

01:29:07.260 is also without that which is far away is also that is close and we start getting into you know

01:29:12.780 the in priestly thoughts of those things and and i think that a lot of um folk that uh come into

01:29:20.460 also true that learn it they want one way or the other and and it's it slowly comes to them that

01:29:26.460 it's kind of all there's a lot of that that goes in the the pushing and the pulling are happening

01:29:33.260 but they're they're happening within and they're happening without and you know above in the

01:29:37.500 elevated and below in the lower and it's it's kind of crazy but as far as like explanation

01:29:43.820 i you know the pontification of the idea of the big bang the idea of the beasts coming out of in

01:29:49.260 mirror and that having a allegoric meaning to possibly the earth in its stages before um

01:30:00.140 uh mankind or before mammalians or or that um the the understanding of of the

01:30:07.180 the uh periods that scientists are talking about like the younger driest period

01:30:12.060 and the idea of like you know comets changing the faces of the earth and

01:30:16.460 great thing i mean i think that when we talk about it scientifically it's very meticulous and

01:30:22.300 we look at time and time is stratified but when you look at it in mythos it it's all painted there

01:30:29.340 with words all right so next question and i think you know also an interesting question

01:30:38.300 how does the astro cosmology beginning differ from the proto-indo-european creation story

01:30:45.100 beginning well it's interesting to note that the proto-indo-european creation story is a very broad

01:30:54.860 term like the the idea is that a lot of it is speculated through etymology a lot of it is

01:31:01.260 speculated by re uh retro spec retrospectively looking at the branches of um many different

01:31:11.820 arian traditions that have expanded out so the exact pinpointed written down

01:31:20.940 proto-indo-european creation story if you're talking about like and again uh deep ancestors

01:31:26.780 he spec he says i i'm making etymological and spiritual speculation in retrospect

01:31:34.380 so he you know he's looking at arianism as a in a broad sense and he's connecting the dots

01:31:41.340 when we talk about the serpent when we talk about the striker when we talk about the the tripartite

01:31:46.940 when we talk about um the heavenly and the earthly uh we talk about the first sacrifice

01:31:54.140 uh whether it's you know in reference to the idea i'm assuming that when you're talking about like

01:31:59.180 uh the sacrifice of yama and manu and things of that nature but to be fair those aren't um

01:32:07.500 So those are, again, they're loosely connected in the sense of their theorization and where they come from.

01:32:16.380 so um we see the the similarities are so strong in the sacrifice of emir

01:32:25.500 to the uh speculation of the like this first sacrifice of yama um uh when you talk about the

01:32:33.420 the creation of heaven and the domain of the heavenly uh gods the the uh you know the creation

01:32:41.020 of the shrouded one the helia though the one that covers over but again those are

01:32:47.500 etymologically speculated and and and brought together as opposed to we see our stories being

01:32:55.340 written down uh by an icelander who you hammerizes creates hellenistic parallels to create a a story

01:33:05.900 based off the classical ideas that he was influenced by and religious tones from

01:33:10.540 christianity possibly even alluding to christian church like looking over his shoulder to make

01:33:16.460 sure that he's not doing anything that they disagree with so even despite all that we can see

01:33:23.260 clarity in uh the proto-indo-european root of the teutonic faith uh we don't get that so much

01:33:31.900 with say like the gauls we know the goals have a tripartite we talk about tyrannis and teratatus

01:33:38.540 and essus uh we know that the hellenics do with with zeus and uh neptune and hadis or obvious

01:33:47.420 um and so on and so forth but um greatly changed in their own right so um the difference the

01:33:56.060 difference is one is far more tangible than the other and uh i believe that the root of it still

01:34:03.900 remains true especially considering that the westward expansion of the uh arian folk that

01:34:10.380 moved westward was far less molested than in other areas where they uh ran into um the uh

01:34:18.700 you know the the proto i guess they would be proto-semitic or speakers of the language of

01:34:25.580 shem or proto um uh dravidians from india and things like that there seems to be a lot of that

01:34:34.380 influence or even the phoenicians with the hellenics but you have the gauls and the slavs

01:34:39.500 and the tutans that have a very uh concentrated form of the the proto-indo-european root if you

01:34:47.260 will yeah i don't think that there is a proto-indo-european creation myth that we have

01:34:54.060 documented anywhere i think we have various um descendants of that myth in all the different

01:35:04.220 places that spawn spoke about and you know one of the older ones is in ancient vedic literature but

01:35:14.380 one of the one of the reasons that so many things in proto-indo-european all have an

01:35:23.740 asterisk by them is they're all speculation and attempts to

01:35:28.780 piece together what it must have looked like based on descendant traditions so that makes

01:35:36.500 it a little bit more challenging spawn one thing that i want you to kind of break down for folks

01:35:42.340 if you would, is the dismemberment of Ymir and the subsequent structuring of the world

01:35:53.700 by Odin and his brothers, if you would. Well, and again, these are also deeply poetic

01:36:01.600 kennings. You know, when we talk about the skull of Ymir being placed in the sky,

01:36:09.040 um uh the idea of the of an atmosphere if you will um but the idea that there is a an encapsulation

01:36:17.660 of the sky and within the sky is emir's brains are thrown into the sky or they reside in the

01:36:24.700 skull as is so this is referring to um excuse me i don't know if you guys can hear the the jets

01:36:31.040 going over um the uh the the the idea of the of the the clouds being in the skull the brains being

01:36:40.080 scattered that the skull itself these poetic words for the primordial clouds and that's something

01:36:45.840 that i think is very interesting that when we talk about the divine the divine gods are and have

01:36:51.200 dominion over great powers the primordial so when we talk about thor as the storm father that the

01:36:58.800 the clouds the storms they're referred to as emir's brains uh and and again i've used it poetically

01:37:06.160 too where um saying that you know emir uh scowls at at the the the progress of the of these things

01:37:14.560 and i'm just referring to that the storm clouds are gathering um but the idea is that the dominion

01:37:19.680 of the storm father over those elements within the material are very important that he has that

01:37:25.120 dominion but um you know the skull is seen as the sky and the brains are are the uh the clouds the

01:37:33.040 hair is is seen as the trees and as the grass the flesh is the soil the bones and the teeth are the

01:37:43.200 stones and the mountains uh his eyebrows are referred to and again the idea of the poetic

01:37:49.760 sense of a ridge line uh sometimes the the the brow was called um like the mountains of the helm

01:37:57.680 and to be struck above the mountains or in the mountains of the helm meant he probably caught

01:38:03.200 an axe to the face it was just a poetic way of saying it um the idea that to the east and beyond

01:38:11.120 the jotenheim beyond the lashes um of of his eyes is again i think alluding to the fact that the

01:38:19.200 realms are close but they are also far they are to be understood as seen but unseen if you will

01:38:25.520 or like we call it the veil sometimes so i would even say the veil itself is emir's eyelashes if

01:38:31.600 you want to go poetically in there the blood of course is the ocean and the water um and

01:38:37.120 it is the primordial source i think that there's a reason why the gods make it a truce with uh

01:38:42.640 ayur and raun who are the cauldron bearers and the primordial source of the blood of emir

01:38:49.200 there's deep connections to the idea of emir being the earth and also perhaps the organized material

01:38:56.000 of the middle whether that's meteors and planets and gas and going even even further again big or

01:39:03.840 micro or macro but um you know um i'm trying to think of of what else i mean we you know if we

01:39:12.720 refer to delinger's hall we are also kind of referring to emir skull um but our ancestors

01:39:18.960 saw this encapsulation as the gods in the elevated place on that flat plane at being encapsulated in

01:39:27.280 all of this that they descended down from that elevated space um and so all of emir really is

01:39:34.960 the the um the connection of all of that whether it's energy or physical matter so

01:39:42.160 the reason that i wanted to uh have you expound on that is first it's it's cool imagery secondly

01:39:51.120 our ancestors weren't stupid it was obviously poetic right you can pull a hair from your head

01:39:58.400 and you can look at a pine tree and you can clearly tell the pine tree is probably not

01:40:03.920 yamir's you know some of his hair well and you say right but so many of our people

01:40:16.320 read it literally because they are used to the bible or the quran or whatever

01:40:23.600 being meant to be extremely literal myth was never meant to be that way outside of

01:40:31.600 the sons of abraham um so it's really cool imagery but

01:40:42.960 the big truth of it that is esoterically very important religiously very important to us

01:40:51.760 odin the the god of consciousness and the master of ecstasy

01:40:57.680 he and his brothers took the giant of primal chaos, dismembered that chaos, broke it down,

01:41:11.340 and built the ordered world that we have around us that's beneficial for mankind,

01:41:17.800 from which we've always gotten our resources, maintained our needs, built the things that we've built.

01:41:27.680 The story of the Aryan people is one of overcoming chaos, breaking it down and reshaping it into our existence,

01:41:39.020 taking stone and trees and ore and making halls and homes and farmsteads.

01:41:48.640 the idea of breaking down that which is chaos and reshaping it under our will

01:41:56.560 into something ordered is the story of arian man

01:42:02.880 yeah this applies to light and to sound i mean it's re-emphasized when the mysteries of the

01:42:08.400 dvergar are given to humanity uh or or they speak of a great smith that can that knows the spells of

01:42:16.000 the dvergar the beings of material they can speak to the ore they can speak to the metal and the

01:42:22.400 heat and the pressure these are poetic you know um

01:42:30.720 life poetic sense of mythos that that brings about uh because of the the fact that stories

01:42:37.600 were so important to our to our ancestors especially as we moved um they they speak a

01:42:44.560 truth that you can find if you get away from only taking i i've even seen people argue the

01:42:52.240 literalism of it um and then you you've even mentioned witnessing some people chat about uh

01:42:58.960 thor and his uh like protein intake and stuff like oh it's so painful but that linear mind the

01:43:09.280 the the mind that our the west has cultivated for so long can run into a speed bump really

01:43:16.560 really hard when it comes to mythos well so one of the that's not a joke that was a real

01:43:26.320 that was a real conversation that i had with people and one and i

01:43:31.200 yes it is funny and obviously i laugh at it it's a funny thing but um

01:43:36.640 And especially new, new Ossetruir, when they're just coming into our faith, they have a tendency to want to display their, their zeal or their piety by forcing all the myths to somehow be literal and just going hard on that.

01:44:01.720 And the intention is beautiful, but it misses the point.

01:44:14.140 And that's kind of the point that we're making.

01:44:17.440 Mythic language is challenging because it is not linear and literal in the way that we're so very used to.

01:44:25.140 And it's very difficult to quantify and to bring order to.

01:44:31.140 And that's what we're trying to do. That's what our mind and the mind of our folk is trying to do, is to make order out of something that appears chaotic or jumbled or incomplete. We want to order it.

01:44:42.840 And that's, you know, as I just said a second ago, that's part of the story of Aryan mankind, is to bring order to chaos.

01:44:52.040 But sometimes we need to accept that we don't know all of the answers and that some things are poetic and meant to convey deeper truths that require us to do deeper examination.

01:45:06.480 And we, this is kind of another broad ous-to-truth theme.

01:45:12.840 So there are many among us who consistently allow perfect to be the enemy of good.

01:45:21.600 So we need to have the perfect answers in order to have any answers.

01:45:28.400 And what is unfortunate about that is that we will never, ever, ever get to perfection.

01:45:37.500 but that's no reason to waste our existence by not picking good enough and going with it

01:45:44.500 and part of the the story of of our faith of also true is so math people can help me with this

01:45:54.320 what's the graph thing where your line trends closer and closer and closer and closer to perfect

01:46:03.280 but it never quite gets there, but it exponentially gets closer and closer and closer.

01:46:09.300 There's a word for it, and I'm hoping the guys in the chat can come up with it,

01:46:12.980 or maybe Spahn knows it. I'm not a math fellow, but somebody out there knows what I'm saying.

01:46:19.480 The idea is, though, we want to evolve out of true closer and closer and closer and closer

01:46:26.880 to the truth with a big T. And that's what we're doing our best to do.

01:46:36.780 With all of the advances that our people have made over the past 2,000 years, I feel like we

01:46:43.680 are able to do that in a way that our ancestors weren't. And 2,000 years from now, I certainly

01:46:50.040 hope our descendants have brought this much closer to a state of perfection than we have it right now.

01:46:56.880 um svan i'd like to go ahead and hit a couple of more questions so bode asks since etymal etymology

01:47:08.160 matters how is it that nagal fari is both the name of one of the husbands of night

01:47:16.480 and the name of the ship of the dead at ragnarok

01:47:20.160 let's say so technologically before we go into it the furthest i've been able to trace it is it

01:47:31.200 means nail fairer or nail ship outside of that um you being in an icelander might know a little

01:47:40.880 bit more about that well and so the g is soft so it's it's nail like the nail body fair the nail

01:47:49.520 fairer and that has poetic meaning that's kind of ingenious one obviously the story refers to

01:47:57.600 the the dead men's nails of those who are doomed um and it's not quite specified the doom um you

01:48:04.800 know perhaps those who are so abhorrent um again there's there's cultural significance towards

01:48:11.280 um symbology of the dead there's like the clippings of the of the the shoe are given to

01:48:17.440 vidar and that the dead man's nails are to be trimmed as to not give credence to the um

01:48:25.280 the uh the dead souls that are repugnant to their ancestors and to the gods um so there's a cultural

01:48:32.560 tie there and that's what they mean by nail in one sense there's another reason why they mean nail

01:48:38.080 is the carving or the scratching or the idea of it being able to scratch its way through

01:48:45.200 uh in this sense in in relation to a boat uh would be um you know uh water like again scratching or

01:48:55.280 it'd be almost like uh to name a a boat like knife slice it's again it's it's referring to the fact

01:49:01.360 that it's slicing through the water um but again very specifically about the dead man's nail and

01:49:07.440 so the poetic naming of like nail father i think in reference to to um to not the goddess of the

01:49:15.520 night um when what we're talking about is um the turning of the sky or the turning of the earth if

01:49:23.920 you will um and when we see this reference again we see it again in mandal fari we see it the

01:49:32.240 reference their fari the traveling so in reference to not i believe it's about the

01:49:39.120 scratching or streaking of the sky just like neo fari in reference to the boat of the dead

01:49:46.960 um i don't know if snorri when we talk about not and we talk about the the list of like

01:49:53.760 the husbands that came before. It's interesting. There's not a lot to go on. There's not a lot

01:50:03.060 that's been referenced. However, again, I've always taken the gouging of the, of Nayalfari,

01:50:13.900 the idea of the gouging or the scraping, to possibly allude towards the creation of celestial

01:50:22.920 bodies especially ones that are made of material um some people have a theory about uh the moon

01:50:31.020 mauni uh but the actual physical moon as being uh struck from the the the making of the earth

01:50:39.040 and i've often wondered if the idea of nail fari the idea of scratching or picking is that is a

01:50:45.780 poetic uh reference to it the the secret understanding that gods were saying that

01:50:51.980 the celestial bodies were kind of scraped from proto matter and placed into order so i think

01:50:58.840 that's the difference between the two and i've all i've i i've looked at um a lot of that with

01:51:05.140 not and i think that that's when we're talking about primordial alignments when we talk about

01:51:10.140 delinger when we talk about not and day and an idea of the rotation of the earth seeing the dark

01:51:16.700 and the light um and the riding of the horse and um things like that that that origins of

01:51:22.620 not are referring to creational points um and i think that in reference to that it's talking

01:51:30.700 about the scraping or the cutting or the the shaping away of the fairing bodies that rotate

01:51:37.320 around the planet and then separately from that we look at nail fadi in relation to ragnarok the

01:51:46.020 ship that the uh you know the the unfunctional dead the the the the souls of of uh complete and

01:51:58.820 other utter like primal uh you know evil again another germanic word in case people want to

01:52:06.020 why are you using the word evil um this this this evil within them uh ceases you know they're no

01:52:12.740 longer admitted amongst the out the ancestors so they become these kind of vargar these outlawed

01:52:19.620 souls and on nastron and they're consumed and transformed and reshaped and when when loki cuts

01:52:27.060 loose he rides on the ship of dead men's nails again it's poetic and it's talking about the

01:52:32.820 the slicing up the vehicle that slices up from the the nether to jotunheim and then to heaven

01:52:42.740 And something else I think, this isn't going into the etymology, but with the imagery of dead men's nails, I think that a part of funerary rites involved clipping and maintaining the fingernails and the toenails.

01:53:09.580 And when that's neglected and people aren't caring for their dead, I think that's part of what creates the ship that chaos rides upon is that neglect for the dead.

01:53:27.300 If you're not worthy of the caretaking, then you are adding to that vehicle of the souls that have been rejected.

01:53:35.040 Well, I think if your folk don't care enough to take care of that, then that is symbolic of the rot of our folk and a quickening of bringing bringing chaos to us instead of keeping it at bay.

01:53:54.940 um we have another question as well this one's kind of random and acknowledge it's acknowledged

01:54:04.700 as such off topic but wanted to know your thoughts on ron mcvan his books and his

01:54:10.860 contribution to modern house are true so ron's great um i think very highly of ron as a man

01:54:24.940 I think he's very misunderstood. Certainly very active and ran in circles that were active with

01:54:33.460 a lot of people that, you know, have have since been been labeled as infamous.

01:54:42.180 But Ron is a Ron is a really nice and sweet man from everybody I've known who's ever met him

01:54:48.660 from any, you know, I have had very, very limited. So, OK, here's a kind of a story.

01:54:54.940 Um, people probably listening in, listening in chat that, uh, know the details better,

01:55:08.140 but Ron had invested very greatly in producing, you know, a big run of his, his books, Temple

01:55:19.040 of voton it was a huge deal and he invested all this money and he got he got cheated and scammed

01:55:26.240 and somebody who's in business with took all of these books and absconded with them or

01:55:32.000 did something with them we thought they were lost forever and and it was it was very damaging

01:55:38.800 um it was difficult for a long time so

01:55:42.560 So Ron, a couple of years ago, you can tell I'm getting old because years are just starting

01:55:50.220 to run together, but a couple of years back, he had a situation where terrorists burnt

01:55:58.660 down his garage and the AFA tried to do what we could to mobilize people to go out and

01:56:05.940 help him.

01:56:06.400 We had some folks go out and help with some of the construction work and we raised some

01:56:11.260 money for that.

01:56:12.560 And Ron, at that time, joined the Ossetree Folk Assembly.

01:56:18.000 And when he joined, right there in very short order, mysteriously, we get contacted by somebody who bought some property and found this old, abandoned, broke-down trailer on their property.

01:56:36.980 When they went in there, there's these boxes of all these books.

01:56:39.640 and this is like 30 years later all of these books are are uh weirdly uncovered and uh he's

01:56:52.400 been selling those and the afa has some copies of those and that was kind of a again that's off

01:56:58.300 topic too but i'm going to throw it out there because it's kind of an interesting anecdote

01:57:01.420 when i first got involved in ausitrue in like 2001 2002 that was one of those old stories that

01:57:08.000 got passed around about um these books and it was really cool you know two or three years ago to

01:57:15.800 to be part of of seeing the conclusion of that now Ron's been uh been great I think that his

01:57:24.040 biggest contribution is in his artwork his poetry um that's what I was gonna say yeah no Ron is a

01:57:34.560 But Ron is a very artistic guy.

01:57:37.900 I say that.

01:57:39.080 Mr. McVean is an artistic guy.

01:57:41.000 Like I'm talking, one of my elders, I'm talking, you know, like we're good friends.

01:57:45.600 We're not.

01:57:45.960 I spoke to him on the phone one time.

01:57:48.440 But Mr. McVean is, seems like a fantastic guy.

01:57:53.880 Was very gracious.

01:57:57.120 Everything I've ever heard has been great.

01:58:00.400 His art is really special.

01:58:02.860 he's a musician he's a poet and he also is a graphic artist uh and a lot of and most people

01:58:11.280 who've been around this for some time can you know instantly pick out a ron mcvan piece because his

01:58:17.560 art style is very distinctive um but yeah building that inspiration in the soul of our people

01:58:25.900 you see that today there's a lot of our folk that come from different avenues and different stuff

01:58:31.840 but there's a very strong strain of our people that that was their introduction to House of Truth

01:58:37.960 was Ron's books and his artwork. And that touched them in the 80s and the 90s and maybe even the

01:58:48.660 early 2000s and stuck with them ever since. And it's very enduring. Yeah, I think that his biggest

01:58:56.940 contribution was as as an artist it's one of those things when you see people

01:59:03.740 man so nick's fast on these things i'm going to find a picture that i want him to put up of rob

01:59:09.340 because i are of ron i apologize because it's a really cool picture so i'm going to find it for

01:59:13.980 him and he'll throw it up at some point during the broadcast but right so ron mcvan comes from

01:59:22.140 an age where uh when he was super duper involved a lot of folks really into the viking larp with the

01:59:29.820 elaborate costumes and everything else and ron mcvan is one of the few guys that doesn't look

01:59:36.380 completely ridiculous in the viking larp because he was always you know an in-shape guy and he

01:59:42.460 looks like he could actually wield a sword and actually you know have sword and shield and go

01:59:48.220 out and do some damage instead of uh some of these these behemoths that i think can be winded by the

01:59:54.060 time they got off the ship um i'll say that as my testament to ron again i think he's one of the

02:00:01.980 only guys in the viking lark days that looks like a legitimate scary viking and not just a not just

02:00:08.700 a fat dude with a costume so no ron's ron's awesome let me see if i can pull up some some

02:00:15.180 pictures to pop up that i think are cool swan do you have any thoughts about ron mczan yeah kind of

02:00:21.660 like a uh piggybacking on what you had said the exemplification of might and strength the the

02:00:28.700 even the the the poetry and the words you could feel it that it was just vicious and strong and

02:00:38.460 weighted but swift and and poetic but for me again art is a big thing and i you know i've

02:00:44.940 been outstrue since the early 90s and you can't not place the emphasis of the the power of the

02:00:52.300 art perspective the the black and white art with detail line detail of crazy amounts using lines

02:01:01.020 as uh for texturing and bordering um perspective and again might a big thing about it is might

02:01:07.820 um and strength and showing perspective of strength um you can't get away from that in

02:01:15.480 the art and i've actually been inspired by especially um for the mural of thor like

02:01:20.300 the the posturing positioning of thor on the on the boat is very it was drawn from that influence

02:01:31.420 that that was uh you know huge again black and white um i'm when we're talking about the the um

02:01:39.820 the i was a true in the early days the artwork uh and the way that we disseminated information was

02:01:46.060 through like newsletters and mailing list orders and and books and you know you had to go and find

02:01:53.340 you know like a mailing pamphlet to get stuff there's no internet there's none of that

02:01:58.460 you know it's like the artwork just made it more there when it got word heavy the knowledge

02:02:07.260 amazing but you needed that artwork it brought spirit to the words and made it

02:02:13.340 and one of the cool things that i'll say about ron is his uh again i talk like i know the guy

02:02:19.580 like we're close um i wish we were he sounds amazing i'd love to be his friend um

02:02:25.260 um but his things were were broad and were throughout the scope of our folk through

02:02:34.860 medieval times through modern history I remember one he's got a really cool drawing he did of

02:02:40.920 Patton like all within and also true context he even though like I mentioned earlier he was part

02:02:49.080 the the whole viking larp thing he never confined our faith to being ancient or um just existing in

02:03:00.040 the viking age he kept it going you know he kept his clear under he saw a very clear thread that

02:03:08.600 ran from our most ancient ancestors to us and he never conceived of our faith as only existing

02:03:17.640 amongst the ancients he saw that thread of our folk soul all the way up to and including

02:03:25.560 and flowering in us and i thought that was really i think that's really special

02:03:33.240 um we've got more questions lined up but swan where you know i know we're getting

02:03:39.080 we're reaching kind of a fullness here what uh what other cosmological points do you want to uh

02:03:51.720 clarify for folks or expound upon well one is intellectual honesty like you've been reiterating

02:04:00.680 and i've reiterated too is that understanding of the potential and the evolution of our

02:04:08.280 understanding of cosmology of the soul or any aspects of aussitrew have evolved and

02:04:16.280 really we don't see them as being broken up but again that the string continues on and evolves

02:04:22.440 and so what we have is the once we begin to look at the upper realm not being just a place within

02:04:30.520 the nestled heart of the mountains of of the celestial gods but seeing the celestial gods and

02:04:37.000 and the heavenly mountains as being of heaven we begin to see there's that yggdrasil

02:04:44.680 is that source of power and that the heavenly realm around it is very important there's elements

02:04:50.200 there there's earth's well and when we talk about water and roots is what i'm getting at

02:04:56.760 we talk about rivers and we talk about the well springs we're not talking about just like an

02:05:01.720 encapsulated well a matter of fact earth's well is is uh described as being like a lake with swans

02:05:08.760 in it and that the the bows of yggdrasil drip the life dew into the water and then that water

02:05:16.760 and the mud is scraped up by the nornir and placed upon the roots to to to uh rejuvenate it

02:05:23.320 all of these these things when we start to see the celestial realm as the celestial realm and

02:05:30.200 all that that encapsulates and understanding that the reason why the roots spread deep

02:05:34.360 and why they disappear or they they they can go in they transfer through those things and so do

02:05:41.240 rivers that's very important the understanding that there are and it's grimness mall is the real

02:05:47.400 big one that we that we pull this from is that there are 11 rivers in heaven and 11 rivers in

02:05:53.960 the nether and then there are 14 rivers that are described poetically in the middle um and to

02:06:01.320 understand that i think it's caused a lot of confusion for people what are what are rivers

02:06:05.960 where i mean rivers were of course seen as primordial sources especially the rivers

02:06:10.120 underneath in the nether there are the 11 rivers of primordial creation that are spoken of

02:06:17.080 and they have dreadful names poetically you know with reasons so like just to give an example so

02:06:24.920 like when we have like gunthrow gunthrow is the is the the river of the rush of death like when

02:06:31.320 when there's a sudden flushing of of the loss of life when when the soul leaves the body if you

02:06:37.960 will um you know uh silk is the slurping river it's it's again all of these um mentions of the

02:06:47.000 river beneath have such deep intrinsic like primordial dreadful names that talk about

02:06:53.400 primordialness uh is doom and you know sometimes it's translated as a female wolf and that causes

02:07:00.440 a lot of confusion but if you understand like poetry the idea of seeing a female wolf was gloom

02:07:07.240 inducing because it meant that there was going to be more wolves coming to you know harass your

02:07:13.960 inner guard so it was that the potential of of dread that and so that's why i think a lot of

02:07:20.920 people get those those translations confused um you know when we talk about like a lot of people

02:07:28.360 you know don't see but if you look at like uh the word um like yellow yellow horn means to cry out

02:07:35.400 or like a resounding sound your means this it means a sound but it's the sound of like grievance

02:07:43.000 or or crying um or crying out to give at the the the condemned dead they have to cross the river

02:07:52.840 and they're crying out and then you know sleeve sleeve is is is like ripping and slicing um the

02:07:59.720 soul and so the primordial rivers below and what they mean and what they represent and how they

02:08:05.400 emerge from the the the wellspring of the the bubbling toiling loud one the the screamer the

02:08:16.680 the resounding one these rivers represent deep primordial sources that are unseen they lie below

02:08:26.040 and then when we talk about the rivers above now when we're talking poetically and we see the gods

02:08:30.600 in the mountain in in beyond the mountains in the veil either vol in the veil of of the work

02:08:36.600 where the gods live high up in the mountain where the tree is and where the where the uh the well

02:08:42.280 spring earth's well is um there are rivers that descend from there and they're talked about they

02:08:49.080 go around val hall there's there's a river named thund and thund has in it the fish of the wolf

02:08:57.000 nation and a lot of people have really misled that translation that some say that it you know

02:09:03.640 is um heimdall or fenris or uh some relation to those but you know when we talk about the

02:09:11.800 the defense of valhall you know the einherjar within and the children of the wolf or the the

02:09:17.080 nation of the wolf are like patrolling the river outside um you know we're talking about the the

02:09:23.720 Ulf Hidnar, the Berserk, are dedicated, you know, esoteric, ecstatic warriors of Odin, you know,

02:09:33.240 harrying around Valhall, and they're just beyond the gate that can't be crossed, Valgrind. So

02:09:40.600 there's, in the stories, when we read them, a lot of them are poetic references for the poets to

02:09:45.880 learn and remember in order to utilize, but we see beautiful stories. And so the 11 rivers below,

02:09:53.720 the 11 rivers above and in cosmology we see that polarity happening all the time we see um

02:10:01.240 for instance like when when hell is placed in the lower she is one of the three children in the

02:10:06.840 center is yorman gander and yorman gander is biting his own tail he's stasis and then so

02:10:13.400 hell is seen as like a less threat because in in the in the guild beginning it's mentioned that

02:10:19.880 her domain resides over all the nine worlds and we're talking about the ending of time

02:10:25.400 and the consumption of the life force um the uh you know she is seen as farthest away

02:10:34.120 in the middle is the stasis and then there is the the deep threat that is brought into heaven

02:10:39.560 into the upper realm is fenris and that is when the you know chaos gets a foothold into heaven

02:10:48.600 And it's only through the bravery of Tyr that it's expounded away and then dragged to the east and placed in the Black Lake.

02:10:59.340 And, you know, his sword is placed in the wolf's mouth and his venom is just leeching out into the water and seeping into the middle world with that consumptive kind of evil from Fenris' hunger and revenge and all the things that he represents.

02:11:16.780 so the immediate threat is removed and placed in the middle um it's it's you know when we talk

02:11:23.560 about cosmology and movement in the stories a lot of people get hung up on things you know like when

02:11:29.200 we talk there's 11 rivers in heaven and uh you know folks try to say well like no there can't

02:11:36.520 be rivers in heaven because it's an it's an it's a it's a uh it's outskirt it's just this little

02:11:41.980 thing. And, um, they don't understand like the, the 11 rivers in heaven have celestial names

02:11:48.700 like, uh, Kormt and Ormt is, you know, Kormt is the cold one. Ormt is the serpentine river.

02:11:54.880 And, um, it's described as being, you know, in the land of heaven and that Thor must walk over

02:12:01.020 them in order to get to the first root, the wellspring, which is in heaven. And, um, you know,

02:12:06.640 there's thund and uh like gomol is the babbling river there's um the running river the lucky river

02:12:15.520 all of these are kind of like broad ideas uh when they refer to as like cold or lucky or um

02:12:24.480 winding and then when we look at the rivers in the middle we can clearly see their connection

02:12:29.840 to mankind because there's ones like there's the river of the that the people have conquered um

02:12:35.440 that's uh theos numa the river theos numa is mentioned as the river that's feel of its people

02:12:41.920 and numas to like take preside and sober um you know there's the thin river the patient river

02:12:49.520 the holy river again another point the holy river the reason why it's in the middle is because it's

02:12:55.280 been blessed by the gods it's been sanctified by the gods and it's been deemed holy um when we see

02:13:02.320 the vine river and the wine river there's all these things are kind of connected to the material

02:13:07.200 so the gods their rivers are heavy lucky winding cold or cool uh like refreshing um and then the

02:13:16.160 rivers below are just detrimental they're screaming crying slicing uh rolling uh swelling battle wound

02:13:25.680 is one of the the river svol um or the uh excuse me the the not svol uh the river gunfrau means

02:13:33.840 battle wound or like like something just wretched across the land and so you can see that poetic

02:13:41.520 language being utilized but what is it really is we're talking about each of the wells having

02:13:47.920 source that they exude out into those planes the upper the middle and the lower they exude

02:13:54.000 out into and create a liminal space between things and so we see these rivers as in-betweens between

02:14:04.400 the gods and the middle between the middle and other parts of the middle and between the middle

02:14:09.920 and the lower and so what rivers really represent in the stories are liminal spaces between tangible

02:14:17.040 spots in which the spiritualism can transfer so when we talk about um you know uh thor you know

02:14:26.200 traversing rivers between ausgard and the and midgard it's hard for people to conceptualize

02:14:32.640 that can even happen because they need to think of everything in that flat two-dimensional space

02:14:37.420 um so they but it's not it's stratified so then it causes conflict if you understand poetry and

02:14:45.100 you understand the names and you understand the conveying sense of what the poets were trying to

02:14:52.660 tell. Not just Snorri. Snorri was writing them down, compiling them, and cleaning them up. These

02:14:58.380 stories came from before, and they had all of these poetics in them. And so there was reasonings

02:15:04.100 behind them and what they represented to our folk. And in reality, too, ultimately, the secrets that

02:15:10.740 lie within that the gods were the first storytellers of the folk they were the that heimdall was the

02:15:17.380 first storyteller of the folk if you will when he transferred that knowledge to the folk letting

02:15:23.060 them know about all of these things and then we you know we find out about them even more so

02:15:28.420 with olden reciting them in grimness or or you know whatever you know or even even alvis mal

02:15:35.860 with thor and alvis there's references again so language and stuff like that's really important to

02:15:44.180 kind of gain perspective but to understand the meat and potatoes of like what water means

02:15:50.420 that the liminal space and the dissemination earth's well is in the realm of heaven and it

02:15:58.020 it spreads out order and through that transference comes from the gods and it descends into the

02:16:05.460 middle and then mimers well again has rivers going out but all things flowing in and the

02:16:12.020 root is pulling up from there these these are uh really important ways of looking at these things

02:16:18.900 that's again going all the way back to that first question um from bodhi is that's what makes it

02:16:23.540 unique is you can see movement in the stories where the gods go where men go where the souls

02:16:31.220 descend downward balder and you know hermoth and then the drawing up of the roots and ratatosk

02:16:38.340 moving in and out between the phases of the realms and carrying messages to the to uh wind torn and

02:16:45.460 to need hog it's it's uh it's a lot of movement cosmology isn't just static it's very dynamic and

02:16:53.620 catalystic all right well so we went through uh the rivers i want to answer a couple of more

02:17:02.020 questions um robert whose wife passed very recently uh has a question and i hope he's

02:17:12.180 still on the chat i'm not sure if he is this question was asked a long while back

02:17:17.540 i have a question then is my wife in helheim i hope i spelled it right and what if i go

02:17:24.820 to a different place we can move between and see each other or do our families have a set home

02:17:33.620 question mark um i would say this probably is that where she probably is currently

02:17:46.660 um sure in the land of the dead that way what i also think the case is probably in her

02:17:53.620 and again i don't know your wife very well so i don't know if you know she was

02:18:00.900 someone who would be ascendant i don't know what what her whole situation is and it's not

02:18:07.460 ultimately up to me to judge the destination of her beyond the veil but what i think happens with

02:18:14.100 most of us and probably with your wife is yes she exists in helheim she exists with the rest of

02:18:20.580 of her ancestors and uh yeah i i think that's a that's a thing and i think that's probably the

02:18:30.500 way that you will go through i think even if you go on to something bigger or something better

02:18:37.700 or something ascendant if you're some kind of great hero you still have that home base of

02:18:42.580 interacting with your ancestors um so i don't

02:18:51.220 i don't think we can look at those realms in the same physical distance

02:18:59.220 realms that we look at here in midgard because again things beyond the veil exist in a very

02:19:04.180 different way they exist here i don't think you have to catch a train and travel days to go

02:19:11.060 see your wife if you're you know in the halls of the gods and your wife is in hellheim i don't

02:19:17.700 i don't think it works like that so i think that we interact with and exist with our loved ones

02:19:25.940 beyond the veil in whatever shape that takes but that's not something that i'd worry about if i

02:19:33.060 were you because i think that has a way of working itself out uh svan what are your thoughts on that

02:19:38.900 yeah i i think that we can only speak of our observations of the stories of our ancestors and

02:19:46.260 how we we carry that and when we talk about death you know and we talk about hellheim a lot of

02:19:52.580 people again i i reiterated that it's not just like some filing cabinet in an essence because

02:19:59.140 all things like i was here ago they said they're they don't work like they do here and what the

02:20:05.140 root represents is that connectivity that's why nidhogg is trying to break it because that he

02:20:12.660 needs to destabilize the connectivity of the realms beyond the material and so when we talk

02:20:19.380 about like the poetics of helheim the vipers and the the the shades moving slowly and the cold

02:20:27.860 and the and the dark and the disease and the famine what we are talking about is death itself

02:20:34.260 i often say the calamity of man um but we're talking about what hell hell is what she were

02:20:43.380 dominion and in reference specifically to things that our ancestors could poetically identify with

02:20:49.540 death the color of death being hell blau hell blue death blue um the usage of the words but

02:20:58.020 What we do know is that if the gods, like, meet out the doom of those by witnessing, witness the deeds, if the gods take a pawn to mark the individual of great deeds or terrible deeds, that carries weight.

02:21:19.600 But for the most part, I think the idea is that we don't become needlings. We don't go against the transgressions of natural law and cosmic order. And we pass through into the realm of the folk soul. And we call that Helheim, or we call that the place beyond the veil, or the resounding place where we're all connected.

02:21:44.400 um you know and if you're ascendant i don't think it necessarily means that you're separated

02:21:52.860 because again those connection points exist the liminal spaces of rivers the connection of the

02:21:58.820 roots um all of those things are important and i think that for most of us i'll even speak for

02:22:05.640 myself in the sense that and i think it might be easier to do it that way because i don't want to

02:22:10.240 um offend you in the this time of loss is so i'll speak like if i die and i go i will be

02:22:18.080 intimately connected to the lines that have brought me here and that goes back so far

02:22:24.900 and then laterally the people that are connected through family through clan through nation through

02:22:32.540 through blood we begin to see not only the depth of time but the width of time of all the souls

02:22:39.220 that are connected to us and so i i think it's nigh impossible to not see your loved one again

02:22:48.260 it's it's the again when we talk about the ascension of the soul after death too it doesn't

02:22:54.180 mean quite a separation we talk about the parts of the soul coming back up to be ordered by the gods

02:23:00.660 or or elevated to alpha or elevated to dsir um that doesn't mean that there's ever really truly

02:23:07.700 like a cutoff point but again we are now part of the roots and part of the tree and part of the

02:23:14.660 strata that makes the cosmos that makes the spiritual cosmos if you will and so i'm not

02:23:23.620 going to say that i know 100 that uh how things work but i believe that there's just not a way

02:23:31.060 for us to be intrinsically separated from each other no matter the level of ascendancy or or

02:23:38.580 uh placement in the folk soul to be utilized and and to be to to ascend or to be replaced in the

02:23:44.500 cycle or to remain and guide our our living ancestors or to uh dispense the humming again

02:23:51.460 that again all in tying into the soul of last um victory never sleeps so i i'm my condolences and

02:24:00.020 And I'm I'm trying to speak of this with humility and respect to and I have lost people close to me as well.

02:24:09.940 So but I'm trying to with sincerity tell you that I don't believe there is this disconnection.

02:24:16.400 But at the same time, I cannot say. This is what's going to happen, A, B, C and D.

02:24:22.340 It's more of, again, the poetic mythos tells us and gives us observation.

02:24:26.940 and and we we need to trust in that because the gods gave those those stories to us and they can

02:24:33.620 do what they will but they did give us those in a sense of i think comfort the problem is is that

02:24:40.200 a lot of times like with snorty he wrote down things and he painted things and i think ways

02:24:46.720 that i are you know to him his ancestors just a hundred years ago saw death very differently than

02:24:53.960 way he had saw death by the involvement of christianity or his attempt at um you hammerizing

02:25:00.920 the gods and things like that so i think that we are looking beyond just that surface delving

02:25:09.720 just as much deeply into the meaning of the stories as we are bringing them forward into

02:25:13.800 the modern world and not holding them entirely to just a like a viking age concept

02:25:18.600 all right uh the next question what is the afa's position on evolution

02:25:29.960 and look i press the wrong button all right evolution and the origin of the universe

02:25:35.080 um how can we ensure that science doesn't conflict without the truth

02:25:41.240 um that's an interesting question especially the last part

02:25:48.600 Origin of the universe.

02:25:53.900 I don't know. I mentioned this before.

02:25:55.800 It's one of those questions that doesn't have an actual answer.

02:26:01.940 In science, well, cool, there was the Big Bang.

02:26:05.060 Well, then what was before the Big Bang?

02:26:07.740 Something.

02:26:09.660 And then when we answer that, well, what was before that?

02:26:14.960 But what was before that?

02:26:16.660 It's like a little kid if you've ever had them ask you the endless, but why, but why, but why?

02:26:24.420 And you can never find an end to that question.

02:26:32.160 I think that there's some very, you know, evolution is real and exists.

02:26:39.180 That we evolve from amoebas, I don't know.

02:26:43.100 That we evolve from monkeys, I don't know.

02:26:45.460 But you can see in the small scale that making biological choices on partners and selective breeding creates specific results.

02:26:55.820 So clearly things, species, mammals evolve due to breeding conditions and interaction with their environment and various things.

02:27:08.940 And in our case, I believe interaction with the divine.

02:27:11.880 um the exact depth and breadth of that is to be determined to a degree and it's really important

02:27:20.280 that so this is kind of my note about science that i've made several times you can't out science

02:27:27.240 truth reality exists science is our current best attempt to explain that in ways that are

02:27:39.440 quantifiable. But you can't get truth wrong. Truth exists. You can get science wrong. Science can be

02:27:49.980 incomplete or it can just be erroneous. Truth isn't. So Ausatru, our gods and their relationship

02:28:01.080 with our folk is the truth that is constant. Our mythic language and poetic understanding

02:28:11.400 of the exact depth and breadth of that is subject to evolving and getting closer to

02:28:19.480 that truth and to understanding and quantifying that truth, just like science is. But the

02:28:25.200 question at the end, how do we make sure science doesn't conflict with us a truth?

02:28:29.440 I don't think it's incumbent upon us to to make sure that science supports stuff that Svan and I say.

02:28:40.620 I think it's really important that science and what Svan and I say conform to our gods and the reality in which we live.

02:28:54.940 and you know that's the challenge we are all trying to understand that better and to quantify

02:29:01.280 that and qualify that in ways that are meaningful to us and that makes sense but i don't think there

02:29:08.400 is an inherent conflict between also true and science i think if they were both taken to you

02:29:17.980 know their very best versions they would both end up with the same understanding of truth perhaps in

02:29:25.300 different terms but with similar conclusions what are your thoughts swan yeah i i'm simply going to

02:29:33.240 piggyback i think on that because i think you speak more to the spirit and the and the again

02:29:39.340 the perennial truth of it i'm going to dress it with a little bit more of like just some of the

02:29:45.080 more material trappings if you will um you know we we talk about the the secrets that reside in

02:29:53.640 the stories we can see them but you can't quantify a timeline in mythos because mythos is perennial

02:29:59.800 truth portrayed in a story timeline that has no specific dates um but you know when we talk about

02:30:08.520 like we talk about how when heimdall comes down to to great-grandmother and great-grandfather

02:30:17.400 and he is invited into their home and so that they bring the faith of the gods into their their home

02:30:25.400 and that home isn't a literal home and great-grandmother and great-grandfather aren't

02:30:29.320 literal people we begin to see you know and then from that time he leaves and a generation that

02:30:35.960 follows is better and then he comes down to grandfather and grandmother and now we're

02:30:42.440 starting to see a semblance of a timeline in the idea that there is a evolutionary process

02:30:49.640 and and when we use that word whether we're talking about scientific i'm talking about just

02:30:54.280 change in general um you know when we see these these truths and great grandmother and great

02:31:00.760 grandfather grandfather grandmother and then father and mother and from them descending the

02:31:05.480 the great knowledge of the folk, making the folk the folk through Heimdall, we see that sense of

02:31:12.420 divine interplay with changing or evolution. We see it again. I call Jotunheim, I've said it before

02:31:20.200 earlier tonight, and I've said it before in previous episodes when I talk about

02:31:24.400 Jotunheim being primordial resistance is because primordial resistance creates change, creates

02:31:32.820 evolution, an adaption. And that natural law is cyclical and always follows its track. It cannot

02:31:41.760 be moved, but it is constantly being berated by that evolutional resistance. And so it continues

02:31:49.500 to adapt itself internally over and over and over again, thus making the inescapable natural law.

02:31:56.200 So when we talk about science, I think that science is, again, ever-changing and always enumerated, but we see kernels of the mystery of the universe in our stories that coincide, I think, with the discoveries of science.

02:32:15.420 A perfect example that I often use is when they refer to the vehicles of the spark of Muspel, the sun, the flame itself, and of Maoni's, the moon, the physical moon, and the earth.

02:32:32.240 and we talk about the rider of the day and the rider of the night. It was brought up earlier

02:32:38.940 about Noct. The earth has day and night, and this involves revolution, and each of those riders have

02:32:46.580 one horse, but together they make the rotation of the earth. The sun has two horses, denoting both

02:32:53.400 speed and rotation, early waker or seasonal waker, and very swift or all swift. And then the moon

02:33:00.120 only has one horse but doesn't it's the only celestial body that doesn't rotate on its own

02:33:08.680 i thought that that was so poetically beautiful and i couldn't quite explain how that could be

02:33:13.640 understood but yet it seemed to be the earth had two horses rotating the sun has two horses the

02:33:20.840 moon only has one and of course we could talk about the idea of like speed and time but interestingly

02:33:28.280 enough talking about rotational access too very very interesting and i think that when we talk

02:33:35.320 about things like thor and thor's power and symbology the idea of mjolnir and and um his belt

02:33:43.720 and of of uh the rod the iron rod and a belt the the gloves iron gripper and iron glove and the

02:33:52.520 switch suddenly you can scientifically look at that symbology and place the idea of a coiled

02:34:00.120 iron rod and electromagnetism you can find science if you want in the stories you can

02:34:07.960 make those connections and i think it's deeply important that the gods are hiding those kernels

02:34:12.280 of understanding as we grow as a people i don't think they want us to remain ignorant or encapsulated

02:34:18.520 strictly in a time frame whether it's like the viking age or you know it's it's there's not

02:34:24.200 it's not encapsulated it's united it's all connected there's an unending line between

02:34:30.040 the two so you can find the science but it's not about confirming our faith and the perennial truth

02:34:38.440 of mythos with science instead it's upholding perennial truth and then seeing the the road

02:34:47.400 signs of like confirmations of our perspective oh look we're we're growing we we're starting to

02:34:52.840 understand things will we truly understand them in the scope of the gods i don't think so but

02:34:59.480 you know i where that ends i'm sure that only the gods know but yes you can find the sciences

02:35:05.240 perennial road signs showing that our perspective of the way that they function

02:35:09.880 we get to understand a little bit more every generation i don't think that's ever stopped

02:35:15.320 since rig stula i think that's again a perennial truth they speak about three generations and some

02:35:21.880 people say oh that's just the viking uh you know hierarchy of the thrall and the coral and the

02:35:26.600 and the jarl sure that's what perennial truths are they apply on multiple levels but it's also

02:35:34.360 something else and to say that it isn't something else is is kind of again being dishonest with

02:35:40.520 oneself so yeah i don't think it conflicts i just think that they're there's signs of our perspective

02:35:47.080 growing and i think the gods know that that we are going to grow that that uh you know it's it's

02:35:52.360 even like the attainment of the stars or uh founder mcnalen talked about you know uh you know reaching

02:35:58.840 for the stars and living amongst the you know beyond um i don't think that would conflict with

02:36:05.960 our with the spirit of our what our the gods are looking for they want to see us explore they want

02:36:11.800 to see us create they want to see us bring order and and to test ourselves and just you know just

02:36:19.400 like the gods witnessing the the first boat that would travel from norway to iceland there was no

02:36:25.000 way of knowing that they were going to make it and some of them didn't but they did it anyways

02:36:30.600 and they were witnessed for it because that's the spirit that the gods put in us

02:36:36.760 so this is a good follow-up to that um our ancestors didn't slash couldn't have known

02:36:47.160 of the sheer vastness of physical space i.e other solar systems galaxies etc can modern

02:36:55.240 understanding of our known universe lend to or hinder our faith um

02:37:06.200 truth is truth if things are scientifically true

02:37:13.320 they're true if they're religiously true they're true if they're true they're true

02:37:19.240 um modern so this is the point where we have to be courageous and be willing to

02:37:32.260 roll the dice instead of bury our head in the sand and come up with crazy

02:37:40.920 mental gymnastics to make pieces fit. Truth exists and is true whether we want it to be or whether we

02:37:49.780 don't want it to be. Now, quote unquote, science, whoever the scientists are, don't automatically

02:38:02.340 become the arbiters of truth, but the more we grow as a race and as people, the more

02:38:11.940 we understand and learn of the world around us and our existence.

02:38:19.220 The gods are true and exist.

02:38:22.380 Our faith is true and it exists.

02:38:26.300 The universe and existence is true and it exists.

02:38:32.340 But our understanding of it is imperfect and hopefully gets better. We need to have room that it continues to get better instead of doggedly sticking to things that are not true in order to go down with the ship in some sort of, you know, fight till the end struggle on facts that aren't necessarily relevant.

02:39:02.340 Our gods exist there. What they do is true. Everything I'm saying is true to the best of my knowledge, but it's not true like what the gods says is true. It's as close as I can get from where I'm sitting.

02:39:20.200 and it's done with the best of intention. Me and Svan are sitting here telling you

02:39:25.740 the closest that we have come to that truth. But if we learn through objective, and when I say

02:39:36.200 science, I'm watching the chat and there's folks in there with varying degrees of acceptance of

02:39:44.380 modern science or not. When I say science, I don't mean like stuff the CDC says. I don't mean

02:39:52.740 Fauci. I don't mean whatever that may be. I mean, over time, collected science that becomes true

02:40:02.140 by weight of experience and continued testing, not by political agenda. Certainly people

02:40:09.720 misuse science for their own ends. And I'll say this, people misuse religion for their own ends

02:40:15.860 as well. I try to be really cautious that we in the AFA don't put our own political ideologies

02:40:26.000 in the mouths of our gods. That if the truth of our gods is expressed politically, fine,

02:40:37.280 but it's improper for us to force in messages of our own ideology in the mouths of our gods

02:40:47.120 if it's not based on something that we believe is true from them and same thing with science

02:40:53.600 but during the course of things science we should fully embrace and explore and examine

02:41:05.900 the world around us in science in order to try to better understand the truth of our gods and

02:41:13.660 our existence our faith also true must stand up to the test of further inquiry and further

02:41:22.700 understanding. We shouldn't, you know, pretend that we are Vikings and lock ourselves in the

02:41:29.100 8th century in order to somehow not see science. Something that a friend of mine who was deployed

02:41:36.580 in Afghanistan said that he witnessed. He was doing civil affairs things. There was an imam

02:41:44.480 in this village that he was in that insisted that the Quran said that metal can't fly.

02:41:52.700 So they were bringing in some supplies on a helicopter and this guy's running around, flapping his arms around, telling people, no, do not believe your eyes.

02:42:01.520 Metal cannot fly. When it was right there in front of them, something happening.

02:42:09.820 And I feel bad for that man because his his religiosity put him in that untenable of a position.

02:42:19.160 Ours doesn't do that or ask you to do that.

02:42:22.680 Pursuing truth, truth is in fact one of our virtues.

02:42:26.740 And the better the science, the least it will conflict with our faith.

02:42:31.980 And the better our understanding of our faith, the least it will conflict with real and provable, demonstrable science.

02:42:40.500 But that is where courage comes in, to be willing to reexamine things.

02:42:45.640 And I'll extend it further.

02:42:46.780 It's really important that we all re-examine our beliefs, what we think, what we have hard lines on.

02:42:58.140 Often, if we're right, that re-examination will strengthen our resolve, will buttress us against possible argumentation and criticism, and will make those positions much, much stronger.

02:43:14.200 And if we're wrong, we should want to fix stuff we're wrong about.

02:43:19.900 Rather than the sunk cost fallacy of, hey, I believed this for the last 10 years, therefore I'm going down with the ship, even if I know it's not true.

02:43:29.700 No, adjust and reevaluate and get closer and closer to truth.

02:43:35.800 And that does take courage.

02:43:38.740 What are your thoughts, Svon?

02:43:40.240 yeah i i enjoy i think one of the reasons why i'm even here is again the um spiritual honesty and

02:43:51.560 the intellectual honesty and the physical honesty that uh pervades in our church in

02:43:58.440 our true folk assembly in our faith um because we we see a lot of people especially um again

02:44:07.440 the dogged abrahamists that you know that book is literal and and so on and so forth and if we

02:44:15.440 voice these opinions about our seeking of the truth and our understanding or seeking of the

02:44:20.960 perception of the truth um they take oh you guys are just atheists you know you're just atheists

02:44:26.080 and it pretending to be vikings and they couldn't be further from the truth in actuality we're

02:44:30.640 organic and we're no longer like a static um you know uh just i guess man-made internalized kind

02:44:42.080 of conventional thing uh we we speak about life as a growing and as a as an expounding and the

02:44:49.440 truth of the gods exists here and our perception is expanding towards that and science i think

02:44:58.320 oftentimes helps us understand that our like again if you look back at when you were a younger kid

02:45:06.000 and you think you were just the coolest thing that doesn't happen often usually it's always like

02:45:11.760 you know yeah i've i've evolved i've moved um but that's you're not carrying the truth of the

02:45:18.960 gods with you as you go it's here and we are expanding out to it so it exists outside of

02:45:24.880 of that and scientific perception helps us kind of i think confirm a lot of our understanding of

02:45:30.640 the way that gods work um so lending to again i kind of spoke of the idea of this the stories and

02:45:38.320 the rotations and so lending to the idea of the the uh the truth about the moon and the sun and

02:45:45.580 the earth long before its absolute understanding of our perceptions um but at the same time we

02:45:54.900 we are speaking about the truth of the gods while we are expanding in our understanding

02:46:03.720 and perception of things and we aren't afraid to examine ourselves and look forward we're not if

02:46:10.280 we're not afraid because the truth of it is, is that we have all the expanding pillars out,

02:46:17.420 the truth of truth, honor, courage, all of these things, the boldness, all of these truths that

02:46:25.880 we carry with us as we expand. So those don't go away. It's just that as we learn more, we begin

02:46:32.160 to understand the mysteries of the gods that they've been telling us as we've, as we've gone

02:46:37.280 along. So I don't know. I don't think it, I don't think it necessarily detracts. I think that it's

02:46:43.260 so interesting when people talk about science, the problem in this day and age is science is

02:46:48.100 used as a weapon and it's constantly used that way. You know, uh, like I say, my faith in the

02:46:55.040 gods exists more than any scientist's theories about how the moon was made or what, um, dark

02:47:03.240 matter is they don't know they it's not even a thing it's it's just a they use that as a reasoning

02:47:10.120 behind something else that they might see but not fully understand and that's okay that's science

02:47:15.680 it's questioning but people take that as an absolute truth that you know uh somebody has a

02:47:23.120 theory about something and oh no that's what the science says so that's what's that's what it is

02:47:26.700 a dark matter is a you know is an absolute thing and most scientists will tell you it's not it's

02:47:32.300 not at all um again and uh there was a somebody who'd said at i saw it recently in a video where

02:47:39.380 it's like you know if you're looking at the mysteries of of the universe is like dipping

02:47:44.380 a cup into into the ocean you don't see any fish in the cup so they must not exist but they do

02:47:51.100 exist in the ocean it's just we've only seen but our our awareness is still growing it's very very

02:47:57.120 small and so i don't think we had we should have this antithetical view of science i think that

02:48:04.480 um our ancestors didn't either when they they understood when they found something good and

02:48:09.440 they tested it and it proved to be true they they utilized it they made it something a part of their

02:48:15.600 culture they they expounded they knew where the ocean what the ocean was and what it was capable

02:48:20.800 of doing yet still they built the boat yet still they crossed it and that you know when we look up

02:48:26.240 into the sky and we talk about the gods and you see an airplane cross over it's not it's that

02:48:32.800 that's that's the spirit of that boat crossing the inescapable truth of the sky but yet still

02:48:40.800 we strive and i think our gods will want us to do that all right so we have you know several more

02:48:52.160 questions is there more about the basics of our cosmology that you have on your list that you want

02:49:01.040 to cover this evening uh no just basically to understanding and reiterate we talk about um

02:49:08.960 heaven or what oftentimes we refer to ausgard but seeing ausgard as a place of heaven because

02:49:18.560 him and björg is mentioned the heavenly mountains the tree and the first root are mentioned in

02:49:24.320 heaven we must see these realms as more than simply just encapsulated spaces and we see that

02:49:32.320 with there's heaven and or we call it ausgard often because that's where the gods live

02:49:39.200 we see the middle as the place of time and there are forces above and below and to the west and

02:49:46.000 to the east if we're using poetic language that emphasize their flux into the middle and then the

02:49:52.000 places beyond time niflheim helheim all of those places and the interconnectedness between them

02:49:59.200 through rivers through wells and through roots are all important concepts that if you're tackling

02:50:06.560 cosmology you must bear in mind and then of course to the polaric forces of muspelheim and niflheim

02:50:14.080 um maspelheim is far and it is spoken of as one day it will return and uh the the cycle is that

02:50:24.200 that part of ragnarok does come but right now just conceptualizing and breaking things up into

02:50:30.900 the nine worlds and knowing the above and and the slightly above and here and to the east and to the

02:50:37.100 west and to the north and to the south and to the lower and even lower still uh is important

02:50:42.840 to help you engage cosmology,

02:50:47.760 to understand the poetic movements of the stories.

02:50:51.720 That's about it.

02:50:52.920 All right.

02:50:53.480 So we've got about, I don't know,

02:50:56.340 we've got several more questions,

02:50:58.100 one of them coming up, I think.

02:51:00.580 Anyways, I apologize.

02:51:02.780 My mind wanders.

02:51:04.200 So the next question is,

02:51:06.080 Mr. Flavel, you spoke about mythic time

02:51:09.080 and how our myths are happening

02:51:11.180 in the past present and future simultaneously it's an intriguing concept and i struggle to wrap my

02:51:18.060 head around it is there anything else that can be said about mythic time and how the nature of that

02:51:24.860 works so be completely honest with you i struggle with it too it's a very confusing concept

02:51:34.300 um and it's even harder to describe it in a way that

02:51:41.260 captures it perfectly because we are temporal beings we exist in time our language is based

02:51:48.780 around our experience in time and

02:51:56.540 it's kind of beyond our

02:51:58.860 are points of reference to understand things that exist outside of that concept.

02:52:16.620 Our myths take cosmic cycles that exist outside of our temporal existence and explain them

02:52:26.960 in a temporal narrative. In our best attempt to understand that, we try to decouple it

02:52:42.120 from the temporal narrative to understanding the truths within it that are beyond time.

02:52:53.980 So when we hear about Balder, for example, his birth, his life, his death, his rebirth,

02:53:08.600 all of those things tell us what we need to know to comprehend Balder to the best understanding

02:53:19.180 of our ancestors that codified these myths.

02:53:23.640 there's more to learn and more to know and we we come to a better and closer understanding to lord

02:53:29.320 balder now that we have a hof to him and we're engaged in his worship regularly um

02:53:38.440 but for us to conceive of balder our mind picks a time do i think of balder when he's in hell

02:53:47.640 do i think of balder when he's returned do i think of balder when he's currently the

02:53:52.520 most glorious of the gods and all the gods are fawning over how great he is all of those are

02:53:59.400 balder me picking a time or an instance is me attempting to make balder relatable to me and

02:54:11.160 my existence but that's a tool for me to understand balder balder isn't beholden to my

02:54:20.280 mortal understanding of things so i don't know if that cleared anything up or just made it more

02:54:27.400 confusing but yes it is very confusing because we live a temporal existence it's the reason that our

02:54:34.360 lore is written the way it is because to present it other any other way would be outside the bounds

02:54:40.440 of how our mind works do you have any more you can add on that's fun the only thing i would say

02:54:46.600 is just a little bit what you just said at the end it would it would work on the outside of the

02:54:51.720 the bounds of our our minds but it would also if we did it in any other like entirely

02:54:57.160 literal sense it would also downplay the the magnificent or awe-inspiringness of the gods

02:55:06.440 it would it would detract just as much as it would also like extract our understanding of things um

02:55:13.640 so it goes it kind of goes both ways that's why the beauty of mythos is as al-sario gothi said

02:55:18.760 just it is very almost spiraling in the sense that it can applicate all moments to understanding

02:55:25.720 you can apply so much in in various ways over and over and over again whether it is and that's that's

02:55:33.080 again that's one of the mysteries that i think abrahamic religions deeply struggle with is that

02:55:39.400 that the literalists and the linearness of things but yet understanding uh perennial truths at

02:55:45.640 certain times they accept it and at other times they absolutely shoot it behind the shed and that

02:55:51.320 they put it down in the ground um and so they conflict with themselves so deeply about all of

02:55:56.520 that for us there is that that conflict conflict doesn't exist it's it's um it's just an understanding

02:56:03.480 that when we do make things linear and we do make things separate we stratify understand but i always

02:56:11.000 um i remember a very very good friend of mine talking about the nine worlds and he said what's

02:56:16.840 really gonna you know uh throw you off just understanding that stratify them is to understand

02:56:24.040 them but as much as they are separate they are together and overlapped so the grandest distance

02:56:31.160 between the middle and the upper is uh as far as you know as far as uh you would imagine it would

02:56:41.720 be to travel between the the material and the spiritual but it's also in the blink of an eye

02:56:47.000 because they're overlapping and that's something that like you can't you have to stratify to make

02:56:52.040 sense only in experiencing and seeing and observing and living life can you interact with

02:57:01.640 the divine if you begin to realize you know it doesn't apply to the rules that we

02:57:06.520 we place down in order to understand it all right so nick can you throw up um

02:57:16.120 the yggdrasil graphic as big as you possibly can i'm not worried about

02:57:23.800 seeing swan's face or my face for this next deal the next question is from you nick as a matter of

02:57:33.160 fact can we get a breakdown of the nuances of this episode's picture and the points of interest

02:57:42.840 therein swan can you kind of take us through this depiction of our cosmology

02:57:53.240 and decode some of the some of the detail and important pieces of this for folks

02:57:59.960 yeah it's hard to um and i think that many people have tried to stratify

02:58:05.240 in a two-dimensional image something that isn't even spoken of in two dimensions but um as we go

02:58:16.820 remember I was speaking poetically when we speak about things in a singular plane and as we've come

02:58:22.220 to know now that there is not just a singular plane but a multi-layered what we begin to look

02:58:29.720 at is aryan mythos and what it repeatedly emphasizes about the upper the middle and the lower

02:58:37.880 and so this is really uh lending to lore when we talk uh you know at the very top

02:58:47.400 the eagle and the hawk the eagle is wind torn the the hawk is not actually ever named in the poems

02:58:54.920 and we see the four hearts existing in the branches uh one of them is specifically over

02:59:00.840 ausgar because it is mentioned about the dripping of the dew from from uh the antlers so there's

02:59:07.320 lots of lore in here there's the rivers dripping from either wall from the mountains and at the

02:59:14.120 base of yggdrasil is the the council seat of the gods as they observe into the middle but it was

02:59:22.040 really important to show the middle as the world and that the upper world and the divine realm is

02:59:30.180 again um above it and orders or disseminates it down of course bifrost the glimmering path we've

02:59:39.340 talked about that with heimdall about how the light of the divinity being placed within a god

02:59:46.600 that is the white house with one foot in the material and one foot in the divine that divine

02:59:52.920 light being spectrumed in the form of of you know prismatic colors and again that could be science

03:00:01.000 lending again uh whatever however you wish to you know see that again it's also mentioned too about

03:00:06.520 the sun traversing in the celestial and the moon traversing in in uh alvis mall um the gods have

03:00:15.400 names for the light but the light is kind of seen as not quite literally the sun is yeah you know

03:00:22.440 it's it's uh it's the the light itself that represents so you know placing the the solaric

03:00:30.360 light in in the above world and the the uh waning and uh cyclical light of the moon in the underworld

03:00:39.160 and placing the colors again light in the upper uh green and grays and blues in the middle and

03:00:46.360 then the dark and shades in the lower um and now some people i the stars are kind of representative

03:00:53.720 of leo selfheim of the of the the celestial in between the light and the the heat the when we

03:00:59.400 celebrate delinger's door being opened in the warmth so the cycles and that's why a circle of

03:01:05.400 stars is kind of represented some people might be thrown up by the ermine soul but the ermine soul

03:01:10.840 really represents how again the perennial truth of axis mundi presides even though you can see

03:01:18.360 the tree and its roots spreading out and creating a connective system there's still the the axis

03:01:24.280 mundi itself the central point and the shape of the ermine soul upholding or separating the material

03:01:31.560 from the divine keeping the two in in order and in structure is important um you know to the east

03:01:40.280 or to the right you see jotunheim and mimirs well and the the rivers that exude from there

03:01:48.760 uh to the west we see um vanaheim the place of of life and and natural law uh the inescapable

03:01:57.960 and i i you know ratatosk is there the the the uh if you talk about odin being the psychopomp of

03:02:04.360 the soul rata tusk is like this the psychopomp of the of the of the tree itself it's it's

03:02:10.600 communicative connection between the top and the bottom um and you know that then the the third

03:02:16.920 route going all the way down to vergelmer in the lower realm and there's nidhogg because nidhogg

03:02:21.960 is spoken of being at the at the the beach nastron at the gates of helgard but also being spoken of

03:02:29.560 as being at the root where uh the eleven rivers of the underworld are source that he's trying to rip

03:02:36.280 apart that root because that again is the cycle back up the cyclical nature of it all he's

03:02:43.000 desperately trying to break it because that's where the gods um and their application of the

03:02:48.760 the entirety is there and it can serve against them it's chaos again gnawing at order um and

03:02:56.920 the shaded hall below there you can see um um uh mothgoth on the bridge the wide bridge

03:03:06.280 the souls of mankind traverse um you can kind of see it a little bit but it's it's not there

03:03:12.280 in the middle world in the upper right of the of the world there's a cave there with a with a

03:03:17.560 a hound it's kind of hard to see but that's garmer and that's nipa's cave and uh that

03:03:23.160 represents that that transitional point between the middle and the lower and when you traverse

03:03:28.120 down you know mav good make sure that she she is the adjudicator of the decisions that are made by

03:03:34.520 the gods and the ancestors either you get to go through and continue or you are placed on the

03:03:41.240 beach the the river that flows underneath the the technically the two rivers yol and sleeve

03:03:48.760 um and there's nastron so that's why that river is highly emphasized and then there are exactly

03:03:54.920 11 rivers the called they're called the um the uh elva god is the the 11 rivers that were ever

03:04:05.320 since primordial creation and in essence all primordial power flows from niflheim through

03:04:12.120 the liminal spaces of those rivers so there's a lot going on there uh but with intention of keeping

03:04:18.920 spiritual um congruency with arian thought and with understanding um of the way both kind of

03:04:28.920 mixing a little bit of our understanding of the world it's not seen the world isn't seen as a

03:04:33.160 flat disk the world is the world and the the realms around it influence the center so um yeah

03:04:43.640 you can see uh him and björg with the cave and ausgarve and uh there's uh more to it actually

03:04:50.200 that we've added so this is um just a slightly older picture oh oh sorry and the eagle behind

03:04:58.440 the ermensel is the source of winds that the jotun of the winds just like iron ron um exist

03:05:08.440 in the primordial ocean race velg also exists on the edge of um the the knowing of the world as

03:05:17.960 the source of the winds

03:05:19.080 um all right so how do how do you feel about colonizing mars the moon the stars so um

03:05:36.280 this is

03:05:39.880 i feel that we need to do those things um this is kind of a fundamental that our founder

03:05:48.280 stephen mcnallan put uh put into place so they used to

03:05:56.440 at the all things and at austro free assembly gatherings and for those of you who aren't aware

03:06:03.320 austro free assembly is the predecessor organization of the astro folk assembly

03:06:10.520 they would start the event by a ceremonial launching of i don't know if you guys remember

03:06:15.800 those, those like rockets that had the, uh, what was it? They had the little thing. So you'd shoot

03:06:25.560 up these rockets way, way up in the air. And sometimes they'd have a little parachute guide

03:06:29.660 that'd come out or whatever, but those model rockets that you'd shoot up back in the early

03:06:36.240 days, they would start the events with that. Um, it's always been the belief of the AFA that our

03:06:43.880 destiny is is in the stars and to continue the faustian instinct of our folk to colonize um

03:06:54.760 the beyond whatever that may be uh and i think that the imperative of that

03:07:03.720 is you know a lot of issues eventual overcrowding of the earth and wherever we feel that's at

03:07:10.200 at some point in the future if we expand exponentially we will need more living space

03:07:17.960 but beyond that there's a clock on things so the sun has

03:07:26.520 whatever many bajillion years left in it before it goes supernova and it destroys everything

03:07:35.000 in our solar system the real test of endurance is if we can colonize

03:07:44.920 additional solar systems and once we have the ability to do that then supernovas aren't

03:07:54.200 the existential threat to our existence now all of this is fanciful but she did ask the question

03:08:00.600 um colonizing other bodies in our solar system and in our our galaxy in our universe

03:08:11.740 it's absolutely something in keeping with our people in fact the space program

03:08:17.620 has largely been the effort of our folk despite modern movies that say it was three sassy black

03:08:25.200 ladies um that wasn't really how it all worked out it's been largely the the work of of our folk

03:08:34.400 and and work that they put in and the science they put in to get to the moon to put rovers

03:08:40.840 on mars to do all of those things so you know i think those are absolutely goals for our people

03:08:49.460 to achieve at some point it's fine do you have any thoughts on that yeah i i've thought about

03:08:57.060 this a lot i think uh especially in this day and age when you know we're the first time i ever saw

03:09:03.140 a rocket land you know feet down if you will um i know that was always stuff of science fiction and

03:09:10.340 and then it became true um and in this innovation that we are are doing i think that perhaps the

03:09:20.260 world in and of itself is involved in certain things but what isn't the world is our spiritual

03:09:28.420 outlook of what this means i think that we should always temper our movements with moral

03:09:35.220 understanding and guidance of, you know, keeping to truth, keeping to courage,

03:09:41.300 keeping our honor, keeping our nobility to it. But

03:09:44.180 that doesn't necessarily hinder us either. It's just that I think that we should see the voids

03:09:54.360 of things and try to breach across them, look to the West and move. I think it's just innately

03:10:02.500 in us. I think that God's put that in us for a reason. And that reason is again, to expound on

03:10:10.580 more of an understanding. And I think, yeah, I don't, I've never seen it as an antithesis

03:10:17.680 against faith. I've always seen it as just an understanding that is inherent to us, that we

03:10:26.920 have to that we wanted to and wanted to and were firstly the ones to really really want to um you

03:10:33.800 know whatever nations or countries if you're talking about astronauts and cosmonauts and so

03:10:39.400 on and so forth at the end of the day the folk wanted to traverse the stars um yeah just a random

03:10:49.400 thought uh heathen man your questions are in the queue and i am going to answer them

03:10:54.920 so you know go to bed do your thing but they will be on this if you listen to it at a later time

03:11:02.520 um because they're a little bit further down in our list

03:11:08.520 this is a i think a good question i'm gonna let you take the first uh first swing on this one

03:11:16.600 uh to your knowledge does a seeth woman travel between worlds or does she bring the other worlds

03:11:25.720 to her by thinning the veil that is a great question yes it is yeah um again

03:11:36.520 so from lore let's just go with lore first we see that there seems to be a spiritual movement

03:11:47.460 almost like a projection if you will um that can can and seems to take place i've had a personal

03:11:54.740 experience or not me personally actually my my mother and sibling and their story of this

03:12:02.140 happening with it with a um a man from iceland who you know he just called himself a psychic um

03:12:11.420 and that that projection forward so there does seem to be travel and movement and i think that

03:12:16.620 means more in the material but you're talking about the worlds and that i think is the key

03:12:23.020 to say that is that you're bringing in so the traveling distance between the worlds is

03:12:30.940 again like i said as far as you can conceptualize but always one step away

03:12:36.380 um that's what makes it feminine in nature as a as a form of mysticism within our religion

03:12:45.520 is that when we talk about like the formulation of galder and the construction of willful

03:12:51.120 manifestation into order that's outward say there is inward and it brings about that and i think

03:13:00.260 that women are more apt to do that. I think it's, uh, not necessarily within the nature of the

03:13:07.420 masculine, but in the nature of the feminine to bring, to bridge that gap, to bring the, the,

03:13:14.620 the, all the far, far distance into the receptive to the point where, again, like I said, it's only

03:13:21.580 one step away. And, um, you know, again, I've seen that I mentioned that in the soul, um,

03:13:27.120 episode of of the woman that spoke of my my grandparents behind me are they in hell guard

03:13:34.020 are they in the the are they in the place beyond death and time are they with the folk soul yes

03:13:39.460 are they right behind me yes did she see them apparently she did and it was confirmed later

03:13:47.060 so that i think is um a great way of placing that there that the way you wrote that question was

03:13:55.020 kind of an answer in and of itself. Yeah, I think

03:13:59.840 to touch on that, I think one, that's one of the,

03:14:10.340 and all these terms we use far too loosely, because I don't think we have as in-depth of

03:14:15.280 a tradition on it, living now as we should, or certainly than our ancestors did.

03:14:20.960 In saith practice, I do think the idea is drawing that other into the saith kona, or the woman practicing saithor.

03:14:38.960 That's one of the things is not to be vulgar, but one of the truths of female magical practice is girls have an innie and guys have an outie.

03:14:58.720 It's one of the things. Safe practice brings other things into and in a position of taking possession of or in channeling through the safe practitioner.

03:15:19.720 Whereas men, when they do similar things, it's often called faring forth and the idea is sending out your fetch or sending things out beyond yourself to these other places.

03:15:36.660 And I think it may seem like kind of a subtle difference and it might be in some ways.

03:15:43.740 But I think it's a fascinating question that you asked, and I'm really glad that you did.

03:15:51.940 Yes, safe practice. I think you're summoning the other across the veil to you. Certainly,

03:15:57.560 you also implied you are thinning that veil. You are doing through ritual ways to make that

03:16:04.520 membrane more permeable to where the other can come to you.

03:16:10.520 and when men do kind of similar practice they're they're sending their self in their fetch out

03:16:20.980 to the other to interact on those planes and again that's the most broad way of explaining it

03:16:30.080 and there are folk that are much more experienced with that and can probably make that more clear

03:16:36.660 to you but that's uh that's my take on that but i just i absolutely love that you asked the question

03:16:43.140 like that um also from ali based on description and current understanding of our lore which realm

03:16:53.300 would you be most interested in experiencing as you are today swan oh man laying out the good ones

03:17:05.060 oh yeah we can count on ally to lay out the the good questions she likes to come in

03:17:11.780 you know halfway through or towards the end of the program and and really put out some of the good

03:17:16.740 stuff interested in experiencing oh um i mean to heaven is is is the highest attainment i think

03:17:34.340 but it's a it's definitely for me it's a toss-up between the idea of the source of natural law and

03:17:40.220 all life and what that could spiritually reflect into my eyes if i could see it what would it look

03:17:46.840 like just as much as the heavenly expanse but i i don't know it's kind of caught between those two

03:17:52.680 to see um heaven or to see uh the waning the the west that the place beyond that the whether it's

03:18:04.200 you know the avalon of the west or the the place of magic and life it's a toss-up but

03:18:12.120 i don't know that would be rough those two that's i'll go with two political answer there

03:18:22.440 um

03:18:28.840 i would

03:18:34.200 It almost feels presumptuous or improper.

03:18:39.420 I would absolutely love to, even for a day, even for a moment, see the realm of the gods, see the heavenly realm of Asgard.

03:18:58.080 And, I mean, there's enough of this to last, you know, any one of these things would be an amazing, mind-blowing thing.

03:19:13.060 But, I mean, there's so much to just see there, to experience being in the presence of the gods in a closer, more tangible way.

03:19:33.060 That's a tough one.

03:19:34.400 But I think what I would like the most from it is to know their will, not just to interpret their will, but for them to tell me, you know, I approve of X, I disapprove of Y.

03:19:55.560 I mean, it is the greatest hope that I can imagine that they would be pleased with something that I've done or was doing for our folk.

03:20:07.000 But I guess to get that interaction in some way of knowing, validating what I'm doing,

03:20:28.380 what I have done in my life

03:20:30.900 and if

03:20:31.380 how closely that

03:20:34.940 connects with what they would

03:20:36.920 have wanted me to do

03:20:38.340 and

03:20:40.400 I mean that answer I guess could cut both

03:20:43.080 ways if I'm off in left field

03:20:45.060 and I'm screwing up then it'd probably

03:20:47.020 be you know

03:20:48.220 devastating beyond

03:20:50.600 belief

03:20:51.260 if I was on the right track

03:20:54.660 and am on the right track

03:20:56.060 then it would be it would mean more to me than anything else

03:21:01.340 so I think that's the realm that I would most

03:21:04.820 want to experience in some way

03:21:07.240 dang that was a good one

03:21:13.400 even to go see like go to the folk soul and see

03:21:20.240 just find the wisdom of those that come before us

03:21:24.700 that would be mind-blowing as well oh all right so now we're on to uh heathen man's questions

03:21:37.500 and i've gotta

03:21:41.980 it feels like these questions are coming from a very personal place so i don't know if this is

03:21:47.980 relevant to this man's background or a friend of his or someone he knows or just what

03:21:56.540 um the last few shows you and svan have talked a lot about the folk soul

03:22:02.860 blood memory etc how do you believe these concepts apply if at all to someone of mixed blood

03:22:10.780 So I saw some of the responses in the chat and what I want to, so I want to do two things. I'll speculate on the esoterics of it and then I want to explain how that relates to group practice.

03:22:31.780 So that is a fine question, and it's one that in the world that we live in, we are faced with more and more often.

03:22:47.600 The answer is, I don't know, and I don't think any of us truly know the answer to the question.

03:22:53.380 There are undoubtedly many people who practice house of true very successfully that are not 100% pure Aryan in their stock.

03:23:07.320 We get accused all the time of this demand for purity that we don't have.

03:23:12.960 The purity of our soul and how it relates to how the blood memory interacts with us and how the gods accept us or not is ultimately up to them.

03:23:27.360 That level of purity and how our folk accept someone is very different and it's up to the folk.

03:23:39.400 I don't know how all that interacts.

03:23:42.140 You mentioned the idea of someone who's 50% German and 50% Japanese.

03:23:51.140 It doesn't work as good as if they were 100% German or 100% Japanese.

03:24:03.140 I can't speak for the gods and say that there's no connection there. I think that'd be improper.

03:24:09.140 I don't know how that all works. I know that that's not how it's supposed to be. And I would advise that person's parents on both sides to stick to their ancestral roots and to people of their race to procreate and further their lineage with.

03:24:29.140 those people are put in a in a terrible spot where you know you mentioned and you know

03:24:36.340 also true or shinto neither would accept that person in an authentic way

03:24:42.520 um how that relates to group practice the finer points of your soul are going to end up being

03:24:54.940 worked out by the gods but what you bring into the group if you group dynamics is very important and

03:25:05.900 this is hard for a lot of people to understand in christianity jesus is your personal lord and savior

03:25:13.500 and it's all about your personal relationship with the divine in that way and that's true it's not

03:25:19.980 it's about your relationship to the group and the group's relationship to the divine

03:25:25.260 as well as your personal interaction to the divine um when something

03:25:34.860 so we're sent messages that we are culturally enriched by diversity

03:25:41.500 and variety of things does enrich certain things it also diminishes certain things

03:25:47.740 In the context of religious practice by a group, homogeneity is what we're celebrating.

03:26:01.000 The fact that when you look around, it's all us.

03:26:05.900 When it's us and then a them gets introduced, it's no longer all of us.

03:26:13.160 it's us and then this one them that isn't us so if you come into a group and genetically you look

03:26:25.140 of mixed origin you don't look like us then we can no longer focus on all of that we have in

03:26:33.940 common the focus is on the things you don't have in common with us and it disrupts that group

03:26:40.740 dynamic in a really detrimental way if someone comes into the group of us and they look like us

03:26:48.340 but they want to go on and on about how not us they are again it breaks what we're trying to

03:26:56.580 it breaks the emotion of us trying to be cohesive unit and it makes us you know focus on the other

03:27:04.660 instead of us for the example being elizabeth warren as white as the rest of us but she

03:27:11.860 pretends that she's um a native american of some sort and talks about that

03:27:19.700 it's not her ancestry that messes it up it's her pretendianness that messes stuff up

03:27:26.100 and if anything either what you speak of and identify as culturally or what is plain to see

03:27:37.680 through your genetics disrupt that group dynamic it's not fair and it's not worth it for the group

03:27:44.360 and it puts those people in a very lonely and very isolated situation and a situation that again had

03:27:53.220 their parents listened to me they wouldn't be in but one that i don't know how to unravel

03:28:00.740 do you have any thoughts on that swan yeah i like i like to use um it's kind of a again polaric thing

03:28:09.940 if we talk about the native americans it's absolutely accepted but if it's talked about

03:28:15.060 the folk or white people it's not accepted ever so i like to use those polarics also too because

03:28:22.340 again um you know reading the the book god is read and and understanding focused dynamics from it

03:28:29.780 from that that was a native american who wrote that book so a lot of times i find when i converse

03:28:34.820 with people i use that and of course people always try to oh you can't speak for them and so on no i

03:28:41.860 can't but i'm just going to use by based off of observation is the idea that when we talk about

03:28:47.940 native americans and we know and i've actually interacted a lot with native americans in my life

03:28:54.580 i live in a place where the like the lumbees um are very very common here um the mclaurins and all

03:29:01.860 of them um so there are varied senses of of native americans what they look like from all over just

03:29:08.740 like there are europeans that have variations but at the same time they they do identify themselves

03:29:14.980 they have a draw an ethnicity and a a visage of the self that is different otherwise there

03:29:22.500 wouldn't be the white man or the yellow man or the black man or or or the brown man as as many

03:29:27.940 have even referred to in their writings um so that visage of themselves at what point do they get to

03:29:36.900 say that that can't be convoluted that can't be addressed and that's why i think christianity had

03:29:44.500 it was a double-sided sword for them on one hand it allowed for universalism to be applied to the

03:29:52.740 individual soul but at the same time it completely destroyed the homogeneity of

03:29:57.860 the native american spiritual soul in its connectiveness together which is just what

03:30:02.900 also he was talking about so on one hand it allowed or made for a broad pasting of everything

03:30:11.860 but in in what way did it not completely destroy the very thing that made their identity and it

03:30:20.580 was important to them even amongst each other you know there was a difference between like a lakota

03:30:26.500 and a sue or uh you know a cree or a crow or um you know it's just there there there's so much

03:30:34.980 there when we talk about tribal dynamics tribal spirituality um in a sense we're not doing that

03:30:44.740 in in the idea that we're we're fracturing down into such small groups we see ourselves as folk

03:30:50.100 because that's the way in a way like even the native americans are doing that with the the

03:30:55.700 colors the white man the red man the brown man the yellow man the black man um they were doing it too

03:31:02.180 but by that time it was already kind of too late universalism was washing over their spiritual

03:31:07.860 formats and it caused a great spiritual spiritual disconnection but also a physical and mental

03:31:15.220 disconnection and um you know a lot of people would assume that we like don't have a problem

03:31:22.180 with that but that that is clearly we see that happens whether you're japanese and shinto or

03:31:28.180 or Native American, or folk.

03:31:30.880 I mean, the applications is,

03:31:33.100 that's I guess the one universal part about it

03:31:36.380 is that each group deserves to have that dynamic.

03:31:40.320 And so universalism lends to that blurring

03:31:45.240 between the lines.

03:31:46.680 And, you know, the only thing I could say is,

03:31:50.300 I have seen that most people make an attempt

03:31:55.300 some point if they are of mixed ethnicity to identify sometimes they do it virulently sometimes

03:32:01.940 i i made a joke in just a few days ago about how um there was a very very very uh vicious-minded

03:32:10.740 woman who was of mixed ethnicity talking about white people and how much she hated them

03:32:15.700 and i i said you know that she's overcompensating because of her turmoil um and i was merely i was

03:32:22.340 was making a joke and kind of prodding but what i was really saying is that that turmoil is real

03:32:27.220 uh because there is a there's the physical the mental and the spiritual and when you start

03:32:31.940 getting that but eventually i hope she comes to peace with understanding not so much about

03:32:37.140 hating others as she needs to delve into trying to reconnect at least to her african descent

03:32:46.660 and come to peace with that and build that up and try to build her people up and hopefully

03:32:50.340 they'll accept her if they don't again i can't speak on that a lot of a lot of times that does

03:32:56.100 happen where uh blacks don't accept you know uh you're not really black because you know you have

03:33:02.420 a white or an asian parent that's not for me to say that's on them uh but just like they have the

03:33:11.140 right to say it and either accept or not accept so do we and i think that that is very very important

03:33:18.500 and it goes down and i wish i could give you a clear-cut answer but it's it's not clear cut um

03:33:25.060 so i just i i you know i'm not a universalist and i don't believe that there's a universal answer

03:33:31.460 across all of these um important distinctions um but instead that there's a pathway that you need

03:33:38.260 to to find in order to reconnect yourself and you have to understand that unfortunately wherever you

03:33:45.060 go no matter what side you're on there's always the possibility that the people that have remained

03:33:50.660 will make that line because they don't want it to continue to happen they don't want that turmoil to

03:33:57.140 continue it's not that they hate you it's not that they want you to people take that immediately in

03:34:06.020 that regards but no there has to be a point where the turmoil needs to stop and it and it throws

03:34:12.340 people off when we bring in a spiritual context to it because a lot of times when they want to

03:34:17.380 justify um people's reactions it's either mental or strictly physical and we we are we compound

03:34:24.500 all those together um and i think that you know a lot of people um especially just as uh if you

03:34:33.940 think about any group of polynesian whether they're micronesians or samoans or or people of the the

03:34:40.580 pacific islands as they island hopped and usurped whether we're talking about the maori or anything

03:34:46.580 there was always this sense of you know the expansion and domination but it was within

03:34:52.900 kind of an ethnicity group um that clearly is defined now people say like i'm pacific islander

03:35:00.500 and that's just like a an identifying umbrella um it just got crazier when it crossed ethnicity

03:35:08.420 borders uh whether it's you know the arabic to the european or the african to the arabic

03:35:15.140 or the european to the native american or south american and so healing those wounds involves

03:35:23.380 shoring up the edges and making sure the turmoil stops then mutualistic respect can be built in

03:35:29.860 order to understand spiritual peace between the two forces as opposed to trying to force everything

03:35:38.020 down into this kind of sense like uh what you said uh i was here with the um the the variety

03:35:45.220 brings benefit but it also detriments greatly recognizing those detriments and then healing

03:35:51.460 from them requires you know hard lines hard decisions so also by heathen man um also

03:36:03.460 Also, could you describe the ritual you were involved in when your grandmother visited

03:36:08.900 you from the other side of the veil?

03:36:12.840 For those who don't have access to group rituals, could you give an example of what kind of

03:36:18.060 ritual a person could do on their own to have that experience?

03:36:23.300 Also does there need to be a grandiose purpose when calling out to a loved one beyond the

03:36:29.140 veil?

03:36:30.140 it okay to just want to feel their presence and say hello? So I think I'm going to answer these

03:36:36.580 in reverse order. No, there doesn't need to be a grandiose purpose. You can absolutely just reach

03:36:42.940 out to your ancestors and say hi and want to commune with them. That's completely and totally

03:36:48.540 appropriate and absolutely something I would recommend everyone here that hears this do.

03:37:00.140 So, I guess I'm not answering them reversely.

03:37:08.280 I want to answer the last one, then the first one, then the middle one.

03:37:14.260 So, this was 2016.

03:37:24.660 Winter Nights of 2016 was the DeSeer Bloat, and we were at a camp in the Poconos in Pennsylvania.

03:37:39.760 It was a camp we did a lot of our rituals at. We were there for 10 years for Winter Nights.

03:37:48.580 githya pat hall who one of the most spiritually powerful people i've ever met

03:38:01.060 did the de-sear bloat and it was it was after dark

03:38:07.600 and as we typically do for for bloats that are outdoors where we don't have a hof

03:38:14.380 we'd gathered in the field in a circle

03:38:19.980 and Pat was

03:38:24.100 conducting the ritual. And this is

03:38:28.120 as I remember, again, this was

03:38:30.020 like seven years ago.

03:38:38.940 Pat, as I recall it, Pat called upon the

03:38:42.100 the seer generally. And, you know, anybody who hasn't been there, the setting is, you know,

03:38:49.240 there was a fire in the middle. I don't believe we had torches around the outside at this

03:38:56.760 particular ritual. There was a fire in the middle. It was after dark. And

03:39:01.940 Pat had us focus on calling one of our female ancestors specifically and inviting them to be

03:39:16.420 there with us. She asked us to close our eyes and to call out to them as we made our offerings

03:39:27.540 from heart to hand to horn,

03:39:30.220 into the horn as it came around.

03:39:34.400 And

03:39:34.880 we did that.

03:39:39.220 I called on my grandmother,

03:39:41.680 Mary Ann Davis,

03:39:43.880 and I asked her to be there with me.

03:39:47.300 And

03:39:47.420 there was a moment

03:39:53.160 But so if you haven't been to one of these rituals, one of the things we do is we put our hand over our hearts.

03:40:02.560 And when they come around with the Horn of Mead, when the Gothia or the Githia comes around with the Horn of Mead,

03:40:09.420 we try to focus all of our spiritual energy that we have for that ritual into our hand through our heart.

03:40:20.060 And then we take our hand and we reach out and we hold on to and imbue that horn with our spiritual energy.

03:40:30.480 So I did that.

03:40:33.120 And then I think Pat was two or three people in the circle down from me.

03:40:41.700 And I put my head down.

03:40:47.500 as

03:40:50.500 as I do, my grandma was probably

03:40:56.360 I don't know, girls are short, it's hard to figure that out

03:41:00.460 but she was chest high to me

03:41:04.560 let's just say that

03:41:06.020 so I put my head down

03:41:10.040 and I closed my eyes

03:41:14.540 we were asked to close our eyes for it

03:41:16.880 and I put my head down, and it's hard to describe because it didn't just like boom instantly out of nowhere.

03:41:31.700 It was softer than that, but I felt my grandma give me a hug.

03:41:41.100 in the same way that I mean, I can vividly remember giving my grandmother like this because

03:41:50.420 she passed when I was, I don't know, 20 or so. So I mean, I was, you know, the same height. So

03:41:59.960 the dimensions were the same. And I, you know, I leaned down and I could smell her

03:42:08.240 old lady hairspray that she would use she was one of those in in that day um

03:42:17.440 the old ladies when they got old they would put their hair up in these curlers and they'd get

03:42:21.680 these old lady perms and they're just about 50 about 55 years old they start putting in the old

03:42:31.040 lady curls and then they're just waiting at that point uh we don't see that amongst our

03:42:37.920 our older women anymore um but in in this time we did and so you know

03:42:50.400 her bathroom wall had this uh

03:42:52.960 wallpaper up. And if you looked at it and the light caught it, it was just ridiculous. All

03:43:00.700 this overspray of hairspray on the back of this wall. Um, but yeah, I could, I could smell that

03:43:08.740 very specifically. And I felt the shape of her old lady head and body and arms

03:43:17.780 up against me

03:43:19.820 and I just put my arms out

03:43:21.900 to hug her and to pull her

03:43:23.940 close

03:43:24.440 and

03:43:26.280 I kept my eyes closed

03:43:30.240 with

03:43:31.880 every other sense that I had

03:43:34.180 besides sight

03:43:35.720 I felt

03:43:38.240 my grandma there with me that day

03:43:40.120 and

03:43:42.120 it was one of the most profound

03:43:45.680 spiritual experiences of my life

03:43:47.560 I, uh, it, it's silly.

03:43:53.880 I don't do this on purpose.

03:43:56.100 I literally tear up every single time I remember it because it bypasses any of the, the thought

03:44:05.760 process logic in my brain.

03:44:08.380 And it just touches me on such a primal level because that's, that's that connection.

03:44:16.200 And I, I just took a minute there giving my grandma a hug who had passed away 15 years previous.

03:44:36.020 But yeah, it's not, it's not a simile. It's not me describing it in my head symbolically.

03:44:43.780 no, that was the last time I grabbed my grandma a hug.

03:44:47.020 I a thousand percent believe that.

03:44:51.160 But what was really telling with the power of the ritual,

03:44:55.100 and sometimes you have rituals that just hit one person in the right way.

03:45:00.400 But this one, and it's a testament to how powerful of Agithya Pat was,

03:45:07.760 a bunch of us, a bunch of guys left that circle afterwards and just went off into the dark

03:45:17.380 and just wept like children because it was so moving to them.

03:45:23.160 A number of guys that you wouldn't have thought would.

03:45:27.460 So something really special happened there that night.

03:45:30.660 I'll take that with me for the rest of my life.

03:45:32.900 As far as what you could do individually to have a similar experience, I don't know.

03:45:44.380 You could call Pat Hall and ask her to come to your house.

03:45:48.280 Honestly, it's hard because once the magic gets captured like that, I don't think you could recreate it exactly if you tried.

03:45:58.280 um the efficacy of a ritual like that facilitating that has so many factors

03:46:08.600 that aren't readily apparent you know it is a combination of you and your spiritual

03:46:19.520 gravitas and your ability to connect and the matrix that makes you who you are

03:46:27.580 It is that from the other side of the veil with who you're trying to connect with and who they are and how powerful they are.

03:46:37.020 And if they want to make that connection with you.

03:46:42.000 And in a case of a group ritual, that Goethe or Githya's ability to channel that and to help facilitate that.

03:46:51.880 And it's harder by yourself because it's just you facilitating and trying to make that thing happen.

03:47:01.980 I would suggest the closest I could say would be to find a time where it's still, I always like nighttime.

03:47:14.380 Other people are different. You might be different.

03:47:16.760 But going before your altar, if you just have one, or if you have an ancestor altar specifically, lighting a candle, lighting incense, making an offering, and again, I think closing down the senses of yours that wouldn't be helpful to it.

03:47:41.820 so closing your eyes and inviting asking praying to your ancestor to to visit you or to speak to

03:47:53.760 you or to interact with you and giving an honest and heartfelt pouring out of of your feelings

03:48:01.320 That's what I would recommend, but without expectation, just as an offering of, hey,

03:48:11.500 please be here with me. I love you. I miss you, whatever. And sit there for a time.

03:48:19.560 If you have to set a timer for 10 minutes and just sit there focusing on your loved one

03:48:28.480 and the feeling of it with some candlelight and just see what that does.

03:48:36.400 Maybe it'll be amazing. Maybe it won't do anything.

03:48:41.640 Again, that's between you and your loved one you're reaching out to

03:48:46.740 and how that all fleshes out. But that's what I would suggest one does.

03:48:52.080 it's fun do you have any um insight on maybe what to recommend as a as a solo practitioner

03:48:59.760 to facilitate something similar to that yeah i well first i would like to frame for those listening

03:49:10.200 everything that the alzheimer godi just said i want to stratify it for people to better understand

03:49:16.520 perhaps a little bit so that they can start bridging or breaking out or stepping forth to

03:49:23.000 possibly have those experiences and it takes time i was here ago he's been doing this for a long time

03:49:29.420 and he at the same time is fulfilling multiple levels as being a receiver of spiritual uh power

03:49:38.000 and insight and also experiencing it at the same time so there it's a i call it the three p's

03:49:44.740 There's pathos, praxi, and pontifex. And all three were mentioned just now in Al-Sara Godi's

03:49:54.700 experience. Pathos is of the self, the feeling of the self, and it requires practice to open

03:50:03.380 oneself up. We get inundated with so much information and so much stress and so much

03:50:09.160 mental gymnastics that we're doing throughout the day that it's very, very hard for us to calm down.

03:50:14.740 And so, like I was here ago, they said about just sitting down and sitting in the dark or having a moment.

03:50:23.760 That's pathos. And that takes time. Sometimes things will happen. Sometimes things won't.

03:50:28.980 And it takes a dedicated mind. It takes discipline. Then there is praxi.

03:50:34.920 sometimes praxi is utilized to separate ourselves from the world in order to be more

03:50:42.920 pathos to be more receptive of those of those things and that's what we call ritual or bloat

03:50:49.420 or whatever it may be and sometimes it's very hard to bridge the gap i've heard it said by

03:50:57.380 before the biggest distance between is is between zero and one so you know you have your pathos and

03:51:03.680 have your praxi and that's very hard to bridge sometimes you have the pontifex the the the middle

03:51:10.880 the in between somebody else that is guiding you so that you can let go and so all of those three

03:51:19.760 have interplayed in in in what you just heard when we talk about patricia gidea that that led

03:51:26.560 the ceremony that became the pontifex that set up the situation in order for

03:51:34.320 azir godi to release and become completely within the pathos of of the moment to experience the the

03:51:44.160 the feeling of the tenderness and the sorrow or the uh the love the emotion that comes out that

03:51:49.840 we have it uh we oftentimes try to control or hold and so it's important that we cultivate

03:51:56.560 these that's why we have clergy the clergy are the pontifex sometimes you have to have it

03:52:02.320 and i'm using latin words and i know i'm sure there's somebody out there right now just like

03:52:07.360 you know we're supposed to use viking words um yeah

03:52:11.360 these words work just as well no um the uh the whole point of it is is again if you can concentrate

03:52:22.000 and stratify the understanding of pathos praxi and pontifex and what they're used for you can

03:52:29.120 pathos by sitting and just opening yourself up and that takes discipline you got to do it a lot

03:52:36.560 i recommend you do it a lot daily multiple times a day if you can then there is praxi the ability

03:52:42.960 for you to set things up to separate your pathos from the mundane and that might mean turning off

03:52:50.960 the lights and sitting in a particular chair that might mean going to a specific spot that

03:52:56.800 makes you remember your ancestors that could mean that's uh that's picture of my grandma

03:53:04.000 that came to me in that ritual uh marianne davis that's a great just just uh putting it out there

03:53:11.680 for you guys because i talk about it a lot thanks nick guys he's good but i just i i just wanted to

03:53:20.800 stratify and i won't beat the drum anymore just remember the three p's and understanding that

03:53:26.400 clergy is important because we can help you let go of a lot of things in a way clergy becomes

03:53:35.920 the praxi we we open up we set your mind we set the place but you got to let go some people just

03:53:43.680 can't do that they they feel a certain way or they're going into the situation with a certain

03:53:48.720 way but if you allow this moment to be just okay the the veil is thin the time is the words have

03:53:56.000 been spoken the traditions have been upheld the obligations have been laid at the feet

03:54:00.880 of the divine of of those on the other side i'm just gonna let go of everything and open up my

03:54:08.560 pathos because i didn't do it myself so i they did it for me and then you know that the spiritual

03:54:16.640 gravitas of the person doing that i think helps i think it was no coincidence that uh

03:54:23.360 uh Patricia was the one that helped build that bridge um but it can happen on your own as well

03:54:33.200 as a solitary practitioner I I of course encourage people to find the gothar to help if they need

03:54:41.060 help in breaking that that threshold but also practicing on your own in in we have our traditional

03:54:47.960 our cultural ways of beginning bloats and to you know and beginning prayers and passing the horn

03:54:55.400 and drinking and communing that's all praxis and ultimately pathos comes down to the individual

03:55:03.640 repeatedly practicing and when you get all three of those together when you have somebody who's

03:55:08.760 path the ability to bring in the pathos or to experience it while also knowing fully well

03:55:17.320 the praxi and being guided by someone who's kind of the docking or the runway if you will of the

03:55:26.440 takeoff point there is this moment that is hard to explain i can't explain it it's just you you

03:55:33.960 have to experience it and when you do it becomes real and we've we've spoken about that before

03:55:39.960 seeing it real in their eyes i have experienced things alone i've experienced things through

03:55:46.280 uh disciplined ritual and i've experienced things by being guided by others and you need to be able

03:55:52.920 to do that until you can break that threshold um you know and then ultimately combined all three

03:56:00.520 it that's the spiritual journey you're on i'm not saying i'm not saying you're dilapidated or

03:56:05.160 handicapped or anything in that or at a disadvantage no it takes discipline takes practice

03:56:10.280 nothing just comes right out the gate but what you just heard i just wanted to stratify is all

03:56:17.160 three of those things we are all at a disadvantage because we don't have pat facilitating i'll say

03:56:25.800 seriously that's so svan is a really really good priest i am doing my very best to be the best

03:56:37.000 priest i can be man pat pat brought the magic and uh we are all um we're all missing out on

03:56:50.520 not having that there i was there too at that ceremony so i i just don't speak too much of it

03:56:58.700 but there's no need you got you you've traversed the magic there and

03:57:03.880 You normalize it very well.

03:57:06.000 And I'll say that.

03:57:07.280 So I am the high priest of the Astru Folk Assembly.

03:57:12.820 Those kind of just magical, brings you to tears every time you think about it, spiritual experiences, those are rare.

03:57:25.420 I am blessed beyond comprehension with the amazing people that I have around, with the ways that the gods have blessed me.

03:57:37.740 I am in this all day, every day.

03:57:42.300 And I mean, I haven't had something that felt like that since then.

03:57:48.980 I've had other really special spiritual experiences, but again, one every couple few years.

03:57:58.520 And it's not to discount wonderful ways that I experience spirituality, but please don't feel that these things are common or like, man, if only I could tap into that, then every day is a spiritual adventure.

03:58:16.480 No, these things are precious, and they're few and far between.

03:58:21.700 And if you have one of these experiences in your life, that's amazing.

03:58:28.220 If you have more than one, then, man, you're really smiled upon.

03:58:33.360 So please don't feel like a lack of these is, you know, a negative reflection on you in any way.

03:58:43.720 because you know i try to do this a hundred percent for my entire life and you know just

03:58:51.000 a handful of these but man i a handful of these is is more than i could hope for um

03:59:02.680 lou asks in the context of mythic time being non-linear does odin actually have one eye

03:59:11.160 is it appropriate to portray him with both eyes um so to take that you know with logic

03:59:23.000 sure he's got both eyes he's got one eye he's got as many eyes as he wants to have

03:59:29.640 we're drawing a picture based on an understanding of an image of odin that makes us

03:59:41.160 conceptualize him in a way that we can understand.

03:59:49.660 Odin exists beyond the veil, and he can manifest himself physically however he'd like.

03:59:57.160 It's completely appropriate to portray him with two eyes, and I've seen that done.

04:00:02.160 portraying him with one eye harkens back to that myth and to our understanding of that truth

04:00:10.920 that he has will did sacrifice a part of his perception in order to understand and have a

04:00:22.460 greater share of wisdom or to see things differently through that well of of memory

04:00:32.080 you could make Odin have all kind of different eyes coming out all different parts of his head

04:00:43.500 but that would be ugly and we wouldn't know how to comprehend that to make sense

04:00:49.140 so portraying him with one eye shows an understanding of his sacrifice

04:00:57.080 and is respectful in that way i would say but i don't think it's it's wrong to portray him with

04:01:03.800 two eyes just like you'll see um in archaeology when you see mjolnir's the scandinavian ones

04:01:14.280 are all very short handled because the myth of the story about how his hammer was forged

04:01:22.840 and the fly landing on on the nose and the the things that went into play to make that hammer

04:01:29.960 short-handled but in england the anglo-saxons didn't remember that bit of lore that lore wasn't

04:01:38.440 in their cultural lexicon of our tradition so you'll see thor's hammers that are much longer

04:01:44.120 like a like a sledgehammer like a two-handed sledgehammer you'd see today um so i think

04:01:51.640 portraying him with one eye is is most respectful because it shows an appreciation and a digestion

04:02:00.200 of all of our lore but again i don't think it's wrong uh svan do you have thoughts on that yeah

04:02:07.560 this is a great question because i i concern myself with a lot of the imagery of the lore

04:02:12.840 um perfect example of this so you know when we make things linear and we want to express an idea

04:02:19.960 the first thing that i think that is really important for anyone expressing the like we

04:02:25.080 we talked about uh mr mcvann's artwork having might okay the biggest thing is and there's a

04:02:32.040 beauty in the might but that all there should always be the sense of beauty because remember

04:02:36.600 the reflection of what we we show of the gods should be of beauty we should strive towards

04:02:42.040 that because we want to show our relationship with the gods as a beautiful thing should never be

04:02:49.960 i think trite or or ugly or deformed uh and we've talked about that before uh in uh victory never

04:02:56.760 sleeps about the deformities of things and what that represents in mythos but i've drawn a picture

04:03:03.080 uh of just a conceptualization of of boar and best law with three babies and and this of course

04:03:13.320 alluding to olden villi and vey and there wasn't like a little baby in there with like an eye patch

04:03:19.960 so i mean it's but it's it's and i'm a big fun just for fun of it it's but it's you know what

04:03:27.420 i'm getting at is it's about perception and cons consumption of lore and cultural context um

04:03:35.120 i i could like i didn't portray odin in the godstead at odin's off without an eye patch

04:03:44.980 because i think it had cultural significance of how deep that part of the mythos of odin placing

04:03:53.140 the godhead of time in the well of memory and then sacrificing his eye for a draught of that water

04:04:01.940 so this i'm going to throw this in here because it's important i don't know who is listening to

04:04:09.300 this that's seen the mural at Odinsof that Svan painted for us.

04:04:19.940 Odin's eye, both of them, because Odin is at the well of Mimir and his eye is in the well,

04:04:28.260 and he has his eye that's in his head.

04:04:30.980 it's it's really amazing what spawn was able to do with it because the eyes they follow you

04:04:42.980 and that sounds silly i understand that but if you've been there i think you'll know what i'm

04:04:48.940 saying and his wolves eyes follow you as well to a different degree but at any point in that

04:05:00.220 in that room in the the hall at odenshof it's like he's looking right at you it's really

04:05:09.660 interesting how that eye works and it's a really special thing that's fun was able to achieve

04:05:16.940 there's an old um painting uh it's i think it's called i think it just says odin woos gunload

04:05:26.780 and i can't remember where i saw it and it might have been a modern one but it was a the the image

04:05:32.540 was very um renaissance like renaissance style traditionalism and it it was uh kind of the back

04:05:40.060 and over shoulder of gunload and then there was this kind of the the looming but uh

04:05:45.740 it was Odin, both eyes, under Sutton's Mountain, when he wooed Gunnloth, and he looked like a

04:05:53.760 young man. I think that was the point, is showing that attraction between Odin and Gunnloth,

04:06:02.080 literally battle song, and their union under Sutton's Mountain, in order to attain the need.

04:06:08.800 um that you know it was perfectly within context he didn't even have a beard in the in the picture

04:06:15.880 it was just like he looked like a kind of a renaissance style um physique and facial structure

04:06:22.880 um and i thought it was amazing and i thought it was perfectly content contextual i just needed to

04:06:28.200 know the title and once it did it made perfect sense i didn't think wow where's his eye patch

04:06:33.200 um but it's it's important to understand the cultural context of certain things um in order

04:06:41.340 and we do this in our artwork uh njordr is covered in gold and bronze because of the

04:06:48.460 significance of the bronze age in the vanic worship and the cult of njordr um odin has

04:06:55.260 gray and dark hair showing that kind of in between the the youth and the elderly and but is

04:07:02.260 he's holding both sides showing polaric of of darkness and of light at odin's hall so you know

04:07:09.700 depictions of the gods as you see them again i mean it's like uh the in in uh thor soft if you

04:07:17.940 look at you can see thor's teeth and the reason why i did that and i didn't do his tongue which

04:07:24.100 is actually traditional to the time is the grimacing face of thor was often associated

04:07:30.340 with the statuary to thor the idea of showing the teeth sometimes they were open and he was like

04:07:36.580 yelling um again those were just nods to historical periods or certain things like that again

04:07:44.980 positioning was nods to uh rob mcman and his you know his drawings so um yeah i just don't think

04:07:52.980 it's wrong it's just you've got to take it within the cultural context and a lot of times people

04:07:56.980 that see your artwork if you say that's olin and he doesn't have an eye patch they just can't get

04:08:02.340 past that you know they can't see uh that so you just got to deal with that as it is

04:08:10.340 or or a baby with an eye patch baby with an eye patch and like a gray beard and gray hair

04:08:18.580 yeah i mean i don't mean any disrespect to the guys it's just it was no of course not

04:08:24.340 sometimes you'll i've seen this in medieval art i've seen baby jesus be just like a little

04:08:31.540 miniature version version of 30 year old jesus i've seen that too it looks ridiculous um

04:08:41.620 all right so next question considering what von list said that the tree has three levels

04:08:49.780 the macrocosm microcosm and mesocosm uh the last is the folk do you think the tripartite effect

04:09:00.660 of our folk society is a reflection of the tree what are your thoughts swan yeah i think the

04:09:07.540 tripartite is a reflection of us as what what makes us we continually see that there there

04:09:16.980 always seems to be three numbers that continually uh represent um i think in the in the micro

04:09:26.180 there's the singular there's the the the tripartite and then there's the the the four corners if you

04:09:33.140 will and you you see this in um whether it's you know like a singular bolt or it's the you know

04:09:39.700 the the fifa or thunder cross in the four or you see it in the valk not in the three there there's

04:09:46.180 a sense of what we would call like completion uh dynamicism and then the singularity is like the

04:09:53.860 the individual moment like the iron or um uh the sword or the spear or or the single rune being

04:10:02.100 presented so the singularity has like absolute point of power for one thing and then the

04:10:09.940 triplicate is always dynamicism and i think it really applies to the the tree the again we talked

04:10:17.380 about yggdrasil and emir and of humla and that tripartite you know we we talk about an upsala

04:10:25.860 where they had you know uh odin and thor and freir there as their tripartite at that time and um it's

04:10:36.580 it's part of our dynamicism if things come in three it's always showing an organic growth

04:10:42.020 but organic growth can also or i wouldn't even say organic growth because that always denotes

04:10:47.060 expansion organicism is can fluctuate it goes up it goes down it means in movement i think four

04:10:56.740 always has encapsulated stability and solidness um and then of course 12 uh is completion not nine is

04:11:06.580 the dynamicism of three upon three and 12 is again like it is the completion of all that

04:11:15.940 encompasses so like numerologically and symbolically they do have but the tripartite

04:11:22.580 is by far i think i think it's even more important than the number nine because the number nine is

04:11:27.540 um intrinsic like to nordic branch but the number nine can't i mean obviously we talked about

04:11:36.900 planets we even talked about the the openings of the body there being nine of them um so nine does

04:11:43.220 have a great significance but yeah three is always about dynamicism and i think it's no um

04:11:49.700 um no mistake when we talk about macro micro and mezzo um and talk about the upper middle and

04:11:58.340 lower or um you know just again the reason why there's four worlds in the center when we talk

04:12:04.220 about leo self-heims fartafheim danaheim and jotenheim there are four around the center

04:12:09.860 creating the material and then there's the upper and the lower and we see the the tripartite

04:12:17.780 affect whether it's even even in the negative when we talk about like hell and jorman gander

04:12:23.700 and fenris there's always um a play between um you know the singular being polarized the triplicate

04:12:34.020 meaning things are moving and the four meaning stability um but yes i i think it it absolutely

04:12:42.180 applies and i think it applies to us culturally any one of us who's ever gone over like uh

04:12:49.540 duman's duman cells you know tripartite of the the priest king and the the the warrior king

04:12:57.060 and the the warrior class and then you know the producers when we see that is it as clear

04:13:04.500 cut as that i don't think so but it's a great way again to immediately do it and i just did it with

04:13:09.220 the you know with the pathos and the praxi and and the uh the pontifex the idea of the triplications

04:13:17.300 it's very arian

04:13:24.180 i think it's kind of funny in the sense that um having that conversation with people and

04:13:28.580 wanting us to use proto-indo-european instead of arian but i i stick to my guns

04:13:33.620 good deal um

04:13:41.300 are okay so it's fun can you shed some light on this uh josh asks gothar please excuse me

04:13:50.900 if i was if it was covered already but could i ask your reconning of vanaheimer

04:13:58.980 yeah the reckoning or yeah like i i know i know specifically it's reconning i looked at it okay

04:14:08.100 so have you have you reconnoitered um the the realm of the veneer that was part of the question

04:14:15.620 before if i had a hard choice between um no i my my understanding of vanaheim has always been about

04:14:23.620 the source of natural law and the production of organic um life but life as in the sense of not

04:14:33.060 just movement but organized and and um organic movement it's the only way i can explain it

04:14:40.900 and what's truly again i referenced this earlier life if there is no life in the cosmos in the gap

04:14:47.380 and there is life only on earth it's on the skin of the earth it's that's so amazing to me but that

04:14:55.300 makes the threshold of life or at least the place where life escapes and and plays out in our world

04:15:02.260 even though we look around and see it everywhere in the trees and in the grass and in in animals

04:15:08.420 um it makes a finite razor edge cosmically that that the power of the vanir the power of vanaheim

04:15:19.040 is flowing out from on a razor's edge if you look at it in scope and so it's extremely focused

04:15:26.480 and it comes from there and it is spearing out while being bombarded from the east by

04:15:33.440 primordial resistance and it continues to make its way continues to the power of the vanaheim

04:15:41.440 continues to flow um in death and in life and it just refuses to quit and i think that that's one

04:15:49.640 of the huge powers of the vanir and and vanaheim itself i think it's important to note too the

04:15:56.460 reason why we call the vanir gods the old gods is because i believe that our ancestors did not

04:16:02.040 interact with the iser till later and it's it's talked about that in the stories that the iser

04:16:07.400 were in the heavenly realm but it was when they came down and started doing things that there were

04:16:17.240 forces in the middle that became aware of it vanaheim became aware jotunheim was aware obviously

04:16:24.280 because what happened the last time the gods showed up and um the uh there was this moment

04:16:32.040 of the middle kind of reacting to the heavenly powers and that's when cosmic order every time

04:16:36.840 cosmic work came down all the organic resistance everything around in the center was changed for

04:16:43.400 forever and so the vanir had decided that there was one way was to basically take organic cycles

04:16:51.480 perpetual and perennial truth of natural order had to align itself with cosmic i mean a natural law

04:16:59.160 had to align itself with cosmic order it was the only way that we would create the the uh

04:17:05.640 the true axis mundi within this world against chaos otherwise it would it would all fall apart

04:17:12.360 i think that's what the vanir uh did when they when they uh propositioned the gods they the story of

04:17:19.720 course tells about how they send their emissary gold thirst um amongst them and she doesn't test

04:17:25.560 them because of their strength they know that they're strong to test them in a in a very visceral

04:17:31.320 way of their minds and their hearts and um didn't succeed because the icer are better than that so

04:17:40.440 uh but almost almost in the story it's i love that story but um the uh again vanaheim is that source

04:17:47.640 it's the organic source of natural law and what that can entail metaphysically life

04:17:56.200 so we've got um three questions three like authentic questions left but something i saw

04:18:03.480 in the chat from lou matt are you related to slash descended from the davis family of mississippi so

04:18:13.400 i am certainly descended from a davis family of mississippi i'm really not sure what fame you are

04:18:22.840 you are referring to or exactly where um but yeah my uh my family my grandmother and my grandfather

04:18:33.240 and all their people back for a very long time were from wiggins mississippi

04:18:39.400 in stone county and um in bond county which is right adjacent my most ancient ancestor in

04:18:49.440 mississippi was um colonel john bond who was a revolutionary war veteran and then he and his

04:18:58.160 sons were cutting a rail or cutting a road to new orleans for the battle of new orleans and they

04:19:05.580 kind of stopped and settled in bond county which is named after him that's my sixth great grandfather

04:19:13.020 in stone county which is adjacent but yeah that was uh my grandfather my grandmother's family

04:19:19.740 were from there since since the way back i'm not sure if that's what you're talking about or not

04:19:26.300 but yes that is that is my davis family from mississippi so our next real question um i am

04:19:34.620 an apache pilot in the u.s army how can i honor tier without engaging in direct uh conflict

04:19:45.180 swan what are your thoughts yeah i saw that question and um you know

04:19:50.620 without engaging in direct conflict to i'm assuming an enemy of sorts uh

04:19:57.020 take that part out and just say you know how can i honor tier um there's lots of ways again the the

04:20:07.580 understanding i think first and foremost of tier tier is um yeah and let me let me go a little bit

04:20:18.140 into this tir is a very very powerful god he's he's and i think a lot of people there's people

04:20:28.700 out there today that are trying to discredit on the existence of his power um and pushing all

04:20:37.260 that aside it's worth noting that the stories that we have of tear are about self-sacrifice

04:20:44.140 for the greater good of the whole so oftentimes any sort of service that you relinquish yourself

04:20:53.420 to the service of your folk of your people is a great way to start and i would say that's that's

04:20:59.900 um one of the easiest ways a physical manifestation of it um remember too tier is the north star

04:21:07.340 if you look at the anglo-saxon rune poem speaks of tier being the guiding star so oftentimes

04:21:14.140 um i i talk about the affixing to the north um when we start ceremonies is always to look to the

04:21:22.340 north to remember the north and hold its hold its axis because that the one hand that is remaining

04:21:29.020 is holding the axis is maintaining the the separation um that the the axis of the material

04:21:38.480 is to Tyr like Yggdrasil is to Odin in heaven. So in the material sense, I would say, you know,

04:21:46.640 looking to the North Star and, and holding, you know, personal, maybe that's the start of your

04:21:55.840 praxi, building that praxi, looking to the North, or, or even on your instruments. Well, you know,

04:22:03.900 you know where north is because that's a big part of understanding how to fly an apache um

04:22:10.020 but the other thing is is here is he's the the lord of um substance of deed and the idea of

04:22:25.020 committing to deed in order to benefit the whole of the folk he's also about understanding justice

04:22:32.720 in the external and this is the biggest mystery i think that it's hard for people to wrap their

04:22:38.020 minds around with tear is it's not internalized justice like like as with for centi when we pray

04:22:45.120 to him about law and mitigation and reaching um an end to conflict through compensation of each

04:22:52.960 other tier is about justification and justice of defense expansion sometimes just the implication

04:23:03.040 of will and understanding that through your deeds you must always seek to gain

04:23:12.400 the justification of noble victory and then creating that order and creating

04:23:18.400 that discipline of either the self or the the world around you uh these ways are great ways of

04:23:26.920 like bending your mind towards trying to understand the dominion of such a powerful god

04:23:33.880 um i think it's it's it is it's really important to see that uh you know understanding the stories

04:23:42.740 of how he helped bring chaos into heaven which is a fault and then the corrective action he took

04:23:52.500 to bind that chaos so uh in a way to owning up to your faults um finding your past grievances

04:24:02.800 I was a long time ago sent me on a kind of a mission of self-reflection, placing things on a board of my positive perceptions and my negative perceptions of myself.

04:24:18.220 And I tell you, that was like the tier application of thought for that whole time was understanding the bad things that I have done and the paths of rectification and the good things that I have done and what I could do better.

04:24:37.100 So a lot of internalized self-reflection and understanding and being a beacon of virtue and justice and nobility amongst your people is the absolute way you can go.

04:24:49.800 And it starts with changing the way you perceive yourself, the way you act, become aristocratic, become noble, and conduct yourself accordingly.

04:25:03.160 become a professional in everything you do you know they say you know we're professional war

04:25:09.880 fighters no just become a professional at everything you do treat everything professionally

04:25:17.160 and and and hold true to that nobility and aristocracy in the soul and strive

04:25:23.960 to attain it physically and spiritually that's you know so engaging in direct conflict that doesn't

04:25:32.360 that happens based off of where you find yourself.

04:25:36.140 And I can speak from personal experience.

04:25:37.960 Sometimes direct conflict will lend you down roads that you may again,

04:25:43.400 regret. Sometimes you bring the wolf in and sometimes you take it out.

04:25:49.680 So I've been in theaters where I thought I was taking the wolf out,

04:25:55.460 but I was clearly bringing the wolf in.

04:25:58.020 And so you have to come to terms with that.

04:26:00.720 and so try to act nobly in everything that you do and maintain your oaths

04:26:09.840 so everything that swan said um

04:26:19.360 and uh you know i as as a veteran everything that's fawn said i think is is a good

04:26:29.840 barometer for you um what else i think is something to uh just something to think about um

04:26:47.760 so i think this is good to honor any of the gods honestly but i think is very tier specific

04:26:55.200 first, to honor our gods. I think that if you're not a member, you should join the AFA. Secondly,

04:27:03.380 Tiershof is the first Hof that we're going to be constructing, not repurposing, but constructing

04:27:11.380 from the ground up. We're doing that at Sigurheim. It's going to be one of the very, you know,

04:27:16.620 important things that we're doing in the Sigurheim endeavor. And, you know, you're welcome to

04:27:23.660 contribute to that, be a part of that if you become a member as far as, you know, establishing

04:27:29.720 his first Hoff in thousands of years. So that's absolutely, you know, rather than focus internally,

04:27:39.800 if we're focusing on things that are going to honor and elevate and worship Tear, being part

04:27:48.280 of making that Hoff happen, I think, is a big thing that anyone can do right now at

04:27:55.020 this time in this place to do honor to tear.

04:28:03.140 That's huge.

04:28:04.680 Thousands of years, first temple.

04:28:08.460 Yeah, I think that's a real big deal, and I think it sounds self-serving to me.

04:28:13.180 Like, yeah, join the AFA and contribute to our thing that we're building.

04:28:17.660 But realistically, establishing a temple to our gods, any of our gods, is a huge and really spiritually important thing.

04:28:30.020 So, yeah, I invite you to be a part of that.

04:28:37.080 All right.

04:28:37.780 does odin's eye existing in the well mean that he has constant vision of all that exists in the

04:28:44.660 well or was it a one-time viewing of all that exists in that knowledge what are your thoughts

04:28:52.100 on that's fun well understanding the flow of mimir and what mimir's well is that middle well

04:29:01.780 wasn't i mean when when when odin places mimir memory as the godhead of time what mimers well

04:29:11.700 is is both the expansion and the reception of the material and the reason why he gave his eye

04:29:21.540 was to see all that is flowing in the material all that is coming and coalescing um i think it is

04:29:33.140 consistent i think that um there that it is eternal that it was a another brooch uh it's

04:29:42.980 it's sometimes it's interesting to think about because when you talk about

04:29:46.340 tear tear is very much like when you think of like uh i think it's king noara uh and the the loose

04:29:55.940 the losing of the arm amongst the gaulish and they talk about the king on unable to serve

04:30:01.620 because he's not whole but yet interestingly enough with odin the the purpose of making

04:30:08.740 unwholeness is seen quite differently instead of it the the a part being placed within chaos and

04:30:16.660 being kind of consumed in essence there's a connection that's created um and that connection

04:30:23.140 i don't think ever is severed i think the intention was to maintain that understanding

04:30:29.700 and perception of of of time and when we talk about memory what we're talking about is the

04:30:34.980 cumulative action of the middle um all flowing into the memory well if you will and so he sees

04:30:43.940 the culmination of all actions so thus can make an understanding of what is to come and the reason

04:30:49.780 why he did it was not faustian it was to save the gods and the folk to stave off to see beyond things

04:31:02.340 and then it of course brings a lot of questions is if you could see all things

04:31:06.820 why not see certain things well again it's it's about the memory of the middle

04:31:12.500 the coalescence of time if the gods and the lands below are outside of time that's a

04:31:19.380 different story that's why more than traveling to the lower world is such a big deal

04:31:24.500 that the gods don't just travel to the lower world no arian branch has ever just made it to where

04:31:29.540 you know it's like taking a sunday trip no it's it the lower world is a task it is deeply

04:31:37.780 uh powerful you know you're going from the apex at the top where all things are organized

04:31:43.180 to the bottom where all things are kind of dissipated and so odin being able to do that

04:31:48.640 he connects himself to yggdrasil in heaven he connects himself to the eye in mimr as well

04:31:55.740 And then he connects himself to the Volva in the Voluspa, in the lower realm.

04:32:03.860 He's stratified all three because he is the lord of dynamicism.

04:32:08.420 So I don't think it's broken. I don't think it's severed.

04:32:10.780 I think it's consistent.

04:32:12.720 And I like to tell people to remember all the things that Odin gained for the mead of poetry.

04:32:21.480 He gave his eye for a sup of water.

04:32:25.740 I don't know why, that just seems to, I think people fail to realize that sometimes like the benefits of hindrance and discipline have greater value sometimes than the exertion of victory.

04:32:40.900 It's good to have gifts to give, but it's also sometimes you have to give of yourself to gain things that help you only.

04:32:50.520 And it requires a great, great sacrifice sometimes.

04:32:55.740 Yeah, absolutely. And I, it's, it's interesting. Um, I always thought in my head, I always thought

04:33:12.760 it was a one-time thing. Like he sacrificed his eye and then he got a drink from the well

04:33:18.840 to see things or whatnot. But my thoughts on it kind of changed or the imagery of it really changed

04:33:28.740 when I saw Svon's mural and the eye is sitting there in the well looking out. And I always try

04:33:38.920 to make really sure it's at the very bottom of the mural. And I try to make sure that nobody

04:33:45.760 puts anything on the altar that would block that eye's vision. But yeah, that really got

04:33:55.340 me conceiving of it a little bit differently, like the eye exists in that well to see those

04:34:01.880 things. That was my thoughts on it. So last question of the night. A riddle for both of

04:34:15.300 when odin sacrifices himself by hanging on the tree who or what is it that screams

04:34:23.540 while falling to the ground oh then himself or all the rooms um

04:34:33.780 it's fine go ahead well in the translations that that are coming to my mind right now

04:34:40.100 it's odin because he says i seized them up screaming i fell

04:34:49.460 so i would say oh then uh but at the same time understanding what the runes are our sound is the

04:34:57.860 vibrational uh um when you think about light and heat and proto matter and all the stuff we've been

04:35:05.380 talking about in cosmology one of the biggest things i think that um uh is emphasized but not

04:35:12.660 seen because you can't see it is frequency sound and it begins to with like when we reference emir

04:35:22.020 but emir is just a piece of that that proto-creational sound and and and that

04:35:30.340 resonation is is dangerous because it can't be formulated so in a way it's it's like

04:35:38.020 chaos being again structured and ordered by odin seeing those pieces in structure and order

04:35:47.300 so i would say oh then yeah i think it's uh it's the all-father um any of the translations

04:35:55.460 i've read you know are done in a first person that roaring he took them um

04:36:08.180 but again the idea of roaring that primal scream that primal

04:36:19.300 projecting all of that out into the world

04:36:22.340 I think is a reflection of the mysteries of the runes that he's now in full possession of,

04:36:32.340 speaking that into existence, vocalizing that into existence. And we've seen that throughout

04:36:42.580 odin's line from ymir and um virgomir this idea of roaring of screaming of of the mouth of speaking

04:36:56.900 of uttering of enchanting literally uh and i think that is the magical action that it's part of

04:37:06.260 um that is his incantation of the runes his primal galder of all of the runes

04:37:17.460 yeah it in the mural uh of the the sun wheel around odin's head is wreathed in red outside

04:37:24.740 of the gold because it's talking about his mortality in an essence his sacrifice of himself

04:37:31.300 in order to become the focus point the if if the sound of the runes is primordial sound

04:37:39.860 he is the focused laser or the the amplificational focal point of all of those

04:37:46.980 pieces coming out in the roar

04:37:51.460 all right well that is our final question of the evening um i appreciate you guys and all

04:37:59.460 of your wonderful questions Svahn thank you so much as always for enlightening us sharing your

04:38:08.500 knowledge and also for the really amazing picture that you and Madison did illustrating our cosmology

04:38:18.660 thank you for having me as always great conversations in the chat great conversation

04:38:24.180 with you and again to uh being able to kind of go over some of the experiences that you've had and

04:38:30.900 and and i've had and hopefully helping some of the folk kind of get get there if you will

04:38:38.580 all right well thank you guys so much hope you guys have a great evening um if i don't

04:38:45.380 talk to you until then i will see you next wednesday for another exciting edition of victory

04:38:50.660 never sleeps. Till then, hail the gods, hail the folk, hail the AFA, and remember that victory never sleeps.

04:39:20.660 We'll be right back.

04:39:50.660 Thank you.

04:40:20.660 Thank you.

04:40:50.660 Thank you.

04:41:20.660 Thank you.

04:41:50.660 Thank you.

Asatru Folk Assembly - June 01, 2023

5⧸31⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 47 - Cosmology

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