Asatru Folk Assembly - 5⧸6⧸26 Victory Never Sleeps, Ep 200 - Prose Edda： Gylfaginning, Part 8

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 We'll be right back.

00:02:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:02:30.000 Thank you.

00:03:00.000 hello everyone welcome to victory never sleeps uh see a couple of things over in the chat that i

00:03:12.840 wanted to address first um troubled guest i remember you from last week i'm very glad you

00:03:22.280 decided to join us. We're excited to have you with us. And also, Virginia, chiming in from

00:03:31.160 the great state of Alaska. It's always nice to have people on from the last frontier.

00:03:39.900 A friend of mine I went to high school with had a birthday today, and I've been kind of,

00:03:44.000 I don't know, reminiscing about where I come from and growing up here. So,

00:03:49.440 So welcome. I'm glad we've got Alaska in the chat room.

00:03:55.740 Got a couple of few things to talk to you about, some exciting stuff at the top of the show.

00:04:01.480 First, thank you guys who are so very, very generous.

00:04:05.120 People have been exceedingly generous today.

00:04:07.660 Wanted to thank William in Pennsylvania, who donated $50 towards paying off Frasehawk.

00:04:14.920 Thank you, William. We appreciate it.

00:04:16.560 A good friend, Jamie, donated $2,500 towards the pavilion.

00:04:24.540 That is astounding, and it is deeply appreciated.

00:04:28.720 Thank you for that, Jamie.

00:04:30.120 We appreciate you very, very much.

00:04:32.860 And our pillar of weekly generosity, G.W. Farnsworth, contributing $50 towards the pavilion.

00:04:40.580 Thank you for that.

00:04:41.580 We always appreciate your generosity.

00:04:44.020 It's an example to us all.

00:04:45.940 Stephen in Japan, another weekly donor with $5 towards Pavilion and $10 towards paying off Frazhoff.

00:04:53.940 Thanks, Stephen.

00:04:55.380 And different Stephen, this one from Alaska with $150 towards Frazhoff.

00:05:01.920 Thank you very much.

00:05:03.520 Again, much, much appreciated.

00:05:05.040 Thank you, guys.

00:05:05.600 You are astounding with your generosity.

00:05:10.000 So on that note, some updates.

00:05:13.380 First, Frazhoff.

00:05:15.200 There we go. We've got the graphic up. We are 39.2% paid off of Phraseoff, which you guys have been tremendously generous. We are looking at a $102 per member would pay it off immediately just to put it in perspective.

00:05:35.440 If anybody interested in helping on any of these donation efforts, click the donate link

00:05:40.940 at runestone.org slash donate, and we'd really appreciate it.

00:05:47.400 Also, kind of update on where we're at with the pavilion.

00:05:53.120 A huge jump today from our generous donors.

00:05:58.060 13% towards getting that pavilion happening, which is amazing.

00:06:02.760 i'm talking to people as we well i say as we speak but within a day or so about

00:06:09.720 getting the earthwork done to set up the pad for the hof or i'm sorry for the pavilion and then to

00:06:18.040 get the uh price out what the concrete is gonna cost us so we're looking at that so that when

00:06:28.120 we have the money we will move on those steps and see some progress on it yeah 13 paid off

00:06:35.720 that breaks down to just about 40 per member would pay that off immediately and to that note

00:06:42.760 our apprentice folk builder jill jaffney in pennsylvania has come up with a double the timbers

00:06:50.600 challenge. Jill would like to match dollar for dollar up to the first $300 we can generate. So

00:06:59.000 your dollar has twice the impact if you donate that through the month of May. And we want to

00:07:07.180 see how fast we can hit that $300 goal of this. So again, you guys figure out $300 and Jill will

00:07:16.820 match it and that'll be 600 total towards getting that pavilion we're on track to have a great place

00:07:23.540 together under come i'm here you bloat this year so thank you guys we're excited and again your

00:07:31.620 generosity is very very much appreciated um it's fun you remember where we were when you and i left

00:07:39.380 off um i believe uh were we going over the einherjar i think we were just about to

00:07:51.060 uh step into or we had stepped no yeah i think it was the einherjar

00:07:59.140 perhaps did we talk about frayer uh and girder

00:08:03.380 uh because we did a big section on um no we did not we stopped all right here okay so we got done

00:08:17.800 with the valkyria and we will be starting at section 37 um anybody who is just tuning in

00:08:25.940 we are going over the poem the guilt beginning tonight um and that is in the poetic edda

00:08:36.420 we are going to start tonight on section 37 and if you want to follow along directly where we're

00:08:45.620 looking it is at beluspau.org um that's where swan and i have been going over the lore that we've

00:08:54.340 gone over so far and you can follow along there but feel free to follow along whatever translation

00:09:01.300 you might have handy again kind of to reiterate because it's been a few weeks we had five weeks

00:09:11.060 in the month of april so it's been a little bit since we were on here doing this um this

00:09:18.260 This piece is particularly foundational and special because the intent and the way the

00:09:27.140 poem is laid out, it is very intentionally a, this is what the elder faith was by Snorri

00:09:37.080 Sturluson only a few generations after the Christianization of Iceland.

00:09:44.960 So it is a very intentional explanation of what his forefathers believed.

00:09:54.140 And, you know, all the other, yeah, I was going to say, I'm trying to think if there's

00:10:01.520 another one that does something similar, but this is the piece that most directly is intended

00:10:07.980 to be an informative, this is what Alcetru is.

00:10:12.620 other pieces we get glimpses it's this is the story of thor in an adventure or this is the

00:10:21.140 seeress's prophecy or this is the sayings of how are um this is audience that may not know

00:10:31.580 this is an explanation of my forefather's faith of us and so that is particularly informative to

00:10:38.700 us today. So that's why we are eight episodes into a not very long piece because it is really

00:10:46.060 important. And also we've been experimenting a little bit with kind of show format. We've been

00:10:56.740 talking about the piece of lore in front of us for about an hour at the hour break. We kind of

00:11:01.880 take a stop and go through our questions and then get back into it as we can. The birth of this show

00:11:09.480 has always been, you know, about answering questions in the Q&A portion. So we're willing

00:11:13.980 to take as long as it takes to get through the material. We want to make sure we're answering

00:11:18.260 everybody's questions that they have for us. So, and you know, we've been running about three hours.

00:11:23.920 We'll run a little longer if we need to, but that's kind of, kind of the mark that makes it

00:11:28.340 work for us and our families and our ability to function the next day. So that's kind of

00:11:35.200 where we've been at. Svan, are you ready to take them back into the poem? Absolutely.

00:11:46.180 Absolutely. All right.

00:11:49.240 We start in section 37.

00:11:52.960 Frer married Gerður, daughter of Gimir.

00:12:00.840 A certain man was called Gimir.

00:12:07.160 And bear in mind the usage of the word man, meaning of the stock.

00:12:13.280 It's not a human, but of that group.

00:12:19.020 And they clarify this in the next line.

00:12:23.340 But I just found some of the writing very interesting in this part.

00:12:28.980 A certain man was called Gimir and his wife, Aurboda.

00:12:36.020 She was of the stock of the hill giants.

00:12:40.160 Their daughter was Gerder.

00:12:44.120 A couple of things, just right in that first sentence.

00:12:49.620 In Germanic languages, the masculine man is applied to all people of the folk.

00:12:59.640 So, like, if something is public, it's a la madre, it's for all the men, mankind.

00:13:07.520 And so in an essence, the masculine shares with the totality and the feminine has its own unique derivative.

00:13:20.880 Some people also think that our boda is angre boda.

00:13:25.780 That is not the case.

00:13:27.620 Our means to shape.

00:13:30.040 It has connotations to the earth and to mud.

00:13:37.520 Another name for Ymir is Aur-Yelmer, or the shaper, the yeller of clay, or the yeller of

00:13:51.040 soil. And it also can just apply to craft, crafting, shaping. So there is that. And

00:14:01.800 Of the stock of the hill giants, a lot of people get really caught up on Alvar, Disir, Nornir, and it is very confusing, to be honest.

00:14:16.580 The way that the language being translated was understood versus how we see it now.

00:14:28.020 But the Old Norse that's mentioned is Berk-Riser. Now, Jotans are varied and enigmatic in many different ways. I know that some people try to lump all Jotans to Ymir, and that's not the case.

00:14:52.380 We have Nivelheim, Muspelheim, Jotun's there. Then we have Ymir and his descendancy. And then from his descendancy, there is variation that happens after Bergelmer, mountain yeller.

00:15:09.800 And there are generally, it's seen as jatins as a general term.

00:15:18.580 Then there are risi, which has connotations to mountain.

00:15:24.260 So size, strength, and stone staying for long.

00:15:32.800 And then there is thursur.

00:15:35.380 Thurser is most likely the source of where we get the word troll.

00:15:41.760 And troll is about as definitive as the word monster.

00:15:48.680 If I was to say, you know, this person was a monster, or if I was to say there's a monster in the woods, it's not highly definable.

00:15:58.440 And so we do have words comparative in our own language. 0.83

00:16:02.600 But Rizir are definitively connected to the land and definitively connected to mountains and could lend to the idea of them being large.

00:16:17.280 And in essence, they're referring that the gods perhaps were seen as large, that the gods are larger than regular humans.

00:16:32.560 And by their coupling with the Risi or the Risir, it's that there's a balancing or parallel in size.

00:16:46.120 But we don't usually have any definitive works that says, oh, the gods were seen by our ancestors as human sized or just larger than humans or as big as mountains.

00:17:05.160 And I think that our ancestors saw them as the possibilities of all of those.

00:17:09.940 but um clearly this descendancy comes from the middle world of the mountain of the land

00:17:20.440 of Midgard and not from Niflheim and not from uh Muspelheim I felt like I needed to

00:17:29.580 say that but uh as we go so what in a while we have a break for just one sec I want to thank

00:17:36.340 Gilbert for his $150 donation out to Fray's Hall. Thank you, Gilbert. We appreciate you.

00:17:43.740 He's another weekly giver on this program, and we genuinely are so grateful for his donation.

00:17:52.600 Perfect timing, too, as we are talking about the Holy Lord, Fray.

00:17:59.580 and the the big point of this is that the story is giving abbreviated account

00:18:10.460 um and the necessity of keeping it in the forefront this is one of the major uh poems

00:18:20.540 brought forth spoken to king gulfing and that's i think also kind of important um

00:18:29.580 the the fact that she is or this section is specifically brought up and ends the uh total

00:18:40.220 of this section is i think interesting and it's pretty weighty the amount so a certain man named

00:18:49.820 And Gimir and his wife, Auerboda, were of the stock of the Berg-Riser, or the hill giants.

00:19:01.600 Their daughter was Gerder, who was the fairest of all women.

00:19:07.820 It chanced one day that Freyr had gone to Hlidskjalf, that is the precipice of battle.

00:19:17.200 It can be kind of seen as like a balcony or a perhaps a peninsula of stone where Lord Odin sits.

00:19:31.100 And gazed all over the world, but when he looked over into the northern region, he saw an estate, a house great and fair, and towards this house went a woman.

00:19:44.200 When she raised her hands and opened the door before her, brightness gleamed from her hands, both over the sky and the sea, and all the worlds were illuminated by her.

00:19:59.060 Thus, his overweening pride in having presumed to sit in the holy seat was avenged upon him, that he went away full of sorrow.

00:20:12.880 When he had come home, he spoke not, he slept not, he drank not, no man dared speak to him.

00:20:20.640 Then his father, Njardr, summoned to him Skirner, one of the elevated, Freyr's foot page, and bade him to go to Freyr and beg speech of him and ask for whose sake he was so bitter that he would not speak with the other gods.

00:20:46.980 But Skirner said he would go, albeit unwillingly, and said that evil answers were to be expected of Freyr.

00:20:57.220 so the the translations here are kind of missing the mark uh as we talked earlier uh in other vns

00:21:08.520 episodes about illness or what ill and evil and the different classifications of what marked evil

00:21:17.540 what he was most likely saying was either untrue answers as he would hide his his feelings or

00:21:25.940 that he would deceive Skirner because ultimately he was not supposed to sit

00:21:34.140 on Kleed's scalp. And that's kind of not focused in on in this section.

00:21:44.260 But we also have beauty standards are mentioned from her hands and in the poems elsewhere in

00:21:54.780 the Adas, it says her hands and her arms shine brightly. Again, this is a reference to the

00:22:04.360 whiteness, paleness of her skin. Also, the ruddiness of farmers or the ruddiness of 1.00

00:22:12.340 folk who worked the land. This was, again, a beauty standard of the time that if a woman 1.00

00:22:22.840 had white arms it was because she was not needed in to farm the land she she was uh of a high

00:22:32.720 station so um skirner goes but when he came to frere straight away he asked why frere was downcast

00:22:47.080 and spoke not with men.

00:22:50.120 Then Freyr answered and said

00:22:52.480 that he had seen a fair woman

00:22:55.840 and for her sake

00:22:57.580 he was so full of grief

00:23:00.480 that he would not live long

00:23:03.200 if he were not to obtain her.

00:23:07.620 And now thou shalt go and woo her

00:23:10.940 on my behalf and have her hither,

00:23:14.380 whether her father will or no.

00:23:17.080 I will reward thee well for it.

00:23:20.780 So a couple of things there.

00:23:22.680 One, the ultimate point of this, he goes and sits upon the all-seeing seat.

00:23:31.160 And what he finds is not the things that Lord Odin searches for.

00:23:37.960 He sees his other half, the circular nature, and it immediately connects him.

00:23:47.080 But they're not connected. So there's a great sorrow.

00:23:51.600 Now, at the time of in Old Norse society, the kind of the way that this worked, especially in Iceland, was if there were movements, courtship or courting a woman was not like it was done today.

00:24:06.840 oftentimes you would send a friend over to even ask for the ability to speak with and kind of

00:24:19.260 orbit towards the woman because it was very dangerous society. And, you know, her father

00:24:26.740 and her brothers were always kind of around. And so you would send a friend and that friend,

00:24:34.340 if they were hurt, that was a crime. If you were a lowly born person and you attempted to

00:24:42.120 gain the favor of a woman's father, he could take that as an insult, but he couldn't if it was done

00:24:49.720 by a friend. So that's another point where I see a lot of modern folks try to, they modernize

00:24:58.420 things without understanding context. He is fitting completely within an understanding of

00:25:10.660 the time. But again, on top of all of this, the gods are being greatly euhemorized right now

00:25:20.040 in the story and we have spoken i think at length about um how of the gods as they are forces not

00:25:31.240 uh actual people or humans or or uh stuck specifically to one time frame but that's

00:25:41.540 clearly how the story is going to be contextualized and um i think that you know the when other

00:25:49.260 holy books say this is the absolute truth and then they speak from the context of the time

00:25:56.200 uh one they're being dishonest with the whole truth part and then two they damn themselves so

00:26:04.660 um so he says uh skirner answers back he would go on this errand but frere should give him

00:26:17.740 his own sword, which is so good that it fights on its own. And Frer did not refuse, but gave him the

00:26:27.720 sword. Then Skirner went forth and wooed the woman for him and received her promise. And nine nights

00:26:37.360 later, she was to come to a place called Bari, or the grove, the grove in the woods, and then go

00:26:46.300 to the bridal with Freyr. So they were to meet and then go and be brought into union.

00:26:55.920 But when Skirner told Freyr his answer, then he sung this prose. Long is one night. Long is the

00:27:08.200 second. How can I wait thou three? Often a month to me seemed less than this one night of waiting.

00:27:17.820 And so we have very, I would say, Shakespearean levels of kind of love and yearning,

00:27:29.520 uh showing again that those signs of what was uh popular or acceptable culturally at the time

00:27:41.260 uh that lord frere is yearning for her and he cannot wait three nights um

00:27:50.620 i just i find it very very beautiful and poetic and uh telling and again it is so much so that

00:28:00.320 we forget the fact that these are gods and not young people um working through all of these kind

00:28:13.300 of marital norms. A lot of people get very upset at this story, but realizing that Lord Freyr is

00:28:25.660 the god of the return of spring, and he's bringing in, through Skirner, whose name means

00:28:35.720 ray of light he's bringing in the cold earth and opening her up so uh

00:28:45.880 this was to blame for frere's being uh that's interesting as a misspell frere being uh weaponless

00:28:55.960 so weaponless when he fights belly and has to slay him with the horn of a heart

00:29:04.120 um a deer and again the mural um i really emphasized this with the empty scabbard

00:29:14.500 and his holding aloft a weaponized um uh deer horn then ganglary said

00:29:27.780 It is much to be wondered at that such a great chief, Asfrer, would give away his sword, not having another equally good.

00:29:42.180 It was a great privation to him.

00:29:46.460 When he fought with him, called Belli, by my faith, he must have rued that gift.

00:29:54.660 Must have been upset that he had to give up his sword to fight Belli.

00:30:03.460 There was a small matter in that.

00:30:05.740 There was a small matter in that when he and Belli met, Frere could have killed him with his hand.

00:30:14.260 It should come to pass that Frere will think a worse thing to come upon him.

00:30:19.440 when he misses his sword on that day, and that the sons of Muspel go a-harrying. 0.51

00:30:28.700 Again, the word harry, as in the English sense, to attack or to raid.

00:30:36.880 We see it in the word, like the Vikings harried the coast of England.

00:30:44.220 um but in this case there is no mention as to exactly why the sword is gone uh skirner

00:30:56.160 goes there arranges things but there's never any mention fully of the sword uh having to be

00:31:04.400 sacrificed or, uh, sacrificed at their wedding or, uh, given to the, to the, uh, hill giant,

00:31:14.320 the, the, the Berggris, um, all it is, is that the significance is in order to make this union,

00:31:21.360 in order to create this cycle where the prolific warmth and, uh, that which grows

00:31:32.240 and spring and all of the requires both the masculine and the feminine the willful masculine

00:31:40.080 bringing the cold feminine into giving and it required him to sacrifice a great part of him

00:31:49.920 that sort that would ultimately affect the gods later and i think theologically we could look at

00:31:57.960 it is there is this great sacrifice of the the virility of defense of the gods that lord fray

00:32:08.860 has in order to build a more perfect place here in midgard with the correct cycles of spring

00:32:18.040 something we often talk about or mention this in the context of is our ritual of charming the plow

00:32:26.440 at a decent thing the the symbolism of the plow breaking into the cold earth digging a furrow

00:32:41.800 and the seed being planted in the unyielding earth

00:32:47.800 it has a lot of lessons and a lot of inspiration for us.

00:32:55.180 The idea of the willed masculine force of creativity

00:33:02.200 making a place for itself in a world that is unyielding,

00:33:10.080 in a nature that's unyielding.

00:33:11.760 cutting a path digging a hole breaking ground on something to to build and to do planting seeds

00:33:23.240 biologically and conceptually in the world around us to grow into the things that we want

00:33:32.540 it is a is literally a triumph of the will um and i think that is a really important

00:33:40.840 piece of imagery of that assertion of masculine dominance of circumstance of nature of the world

00:33:52.540 around us to put chaos to order and to bring about purpose and so you know the very clearly phallic

00:34:04.180 and the fabric imagery behind the plow is definitely at play in that.

00:34:13.200 I'd like to break here and answer some questions because I think it fits the mold better.

00:34:19.080 The next several sections are going to be about the Einherjahr and about the Valvo,

00:34:24.820 and I think that we should probably handle that as a chunk.

00:34:29.320 so we go back to a couple of a couple of things here and take care of some questions first one

00:34:37.440 how do i join like to be able to go to moots meet people get involved is it with the monthly

00:34:43.480 subscription on the website yes that's exactly how you join is you click the join link on the

00:34:50.540 website you read through a couple of things you agree to a couple of things and then you begin

00:34:56.120 with your with your donation contributions um yeah it's a fairly straightforward process but

00:35:05.560 if there's any questions or if anybody is curious um please reach out to any of us or any of our

00:35:11.640 folk builders and they can talk to you about it um but yeah joining we would encourage everyone

00:35:18.760 listening to the sound of my voice either now or in the future to join the austral folk sale

00:35:24.200 it's awesome to talk about this it's great to ponder it and to think about it and to dream on 0.72

00:35:34.140 it but it's even better to do it and to do it with your fellow Al-Satuar who are engaged in

00:35:42.260 the same struggles that you are and hope to share the same triumphs with you so we'd love to have 0.92

00:35:49.400 with us now is the time if you're considering or you're sitting on the fence time to get off the

00:35:55.640 fence and get on the team we got awesome things we're doing love to have you with us um the next

00:36:02.920 question uh this one is for you specifically um i was looking up the medicinal okay yeah so it was

00:36:16.440 asked last week i mentioned something on it but you were i was like ah we need swan to chime in

00:36:21.560 this is from selene i was looking up the medical purposes of the herbs used at norna not and

00:36:28.200 wondered uh do they have any magical significance slash correlation to the ritual bloat performed

00:36:35.800 especially in relation to the feminine as i noticed that most of them do help with feminine

00:36:41.320 and reproductive health problems. 0.58

00:36:45.540 Yeah, but I can imagine if you go and look at,

00:36:50.020 from that perspective, it would be very confusing.

00:36:53.340 Like they're kind of all over the place medicinally.

00:36:57.280 But let's consider the administration of the herb.

00:37:04.740 It's done through smoke.

00:37:06.760 Um, so the way that I kind of look at leechcraft is that it's how it is administered that affects the multi various things. So if you look at the plants, each one of them has a lot of medicinal things of valerian root for sleep, but you would do it through a tea.

00:37:28.820 sage has lots of different properties from cleaning the liver and cleaning the blood and

00:37:36.080 you can do it through eating it or through drinking tea from it but the most important point

00:37:43.440 of the herbs is actually the standpoint against the evil eye and curses and what would ultimately

00:37:57.280 be the the the point of the ceremony is like there are troll in the masculine sense there's

00:38:07.900 also the feminine sense of the troll witch and the wild outer field of society when we look at

00:38:21.140 and I think I talked a little bit about it maybe two episodes back or two times back that I was on

00:38:26.960 tomato europe having uh the feminine kind of in the form of the witch and the hag being uh past her

00:38:35.420 her child uh child bearing days and they would find themselves in these kind of outer fringe

00:38:44.420 it that wasn't really necessarily the case in germanic and you could say it's because it's

00:38:49.900 cold and everybody's kind of needed and and things like that and and once a woman had children she

00:38:56.140 was kind of a mother of everyone. So you don't necessarily see a physical witch or hag, but

00:39:04.920 still what remains is the feminine troll, just as much as the masculine troll. And it stays 0.96

00:39:13.780 even in Iceland after Christianization, there is clear differentiations between the masculine troll

00:39:20.380 and the feminine troll and the feminine powers because the gods are gendered and we are a

00:39:28.540 reflection of divinity. So we're gendered. So is to the darker nature of the wilds. So 1.00

00:39:38.580 what it kind of goes towards is the masculine troll, the masculine kind of negative forces

00:39:46.420 is one that you would physically have to worry about, I don't know, if you're, you enter and you disappear,

00:39:56.320 or you, they, it's like you get a rock thrown at you, in a way, kind of very simple, but, and straightforward. 0.91

00:40:04.800 The feminine troll of it is the curse, the being kind of altered, or changed, 0.82

00:40:14.280 And so it has a much more, I think, subtle point.

00:40:20.100 And those herbs were specifically chosen in the idea of going against evil, more feminine style magic where there is the curse or the baleful twisting of fate.

00:40:40.400 And so that's why they're administered through smoke. And that's why the smoke is laid upon the body is a protective measure in that sense. But each of those herbs has medicinal properties in many different ways for many different reasons on their own. This one is far more religious and metaphysical.

00:41:10.400 All right. Also from Selene, can you talk about hell and how we as Ausatru can appropriately

00:41:17.280 venerate her? Svon, would you like to take that first? Sure. I think that

00:41:25.200 one of the things that's worth noting for all folk who are Ausatru

00:41:31.240 is understanding the dichotomy of mythical movement we see the children of the kinslayer

00:41:40.980 and the least dangerous one is placed farthest away and uh she's clearly the stasis throne

00:41:53.460 and we talked about the tripartite and how the thrones apply kind of across the board

00:41:59.200 she takes the stasis throne and is given that position specifically by Lord Odin.

00:42:08.500 And we see Yormungandr. He's the kind of catalystic position. And then Fenrir is brought

00:42:21.080 right into heaven. The most dangerous one is brought there. This movement in the story is

00:42:28.300 not accidental. But what ends up happening specifically with her is that she is given task

00:42:35.060 of holding over and keeping in that place the souls of the dead. And a lot of people get the

00:42:47.720 whole up down thing wrong. Christianity kind of makes us like up is good, down is bad. Even

00:42:55.500 though early christianity didn't even have a down it was just earth and up so technically

00:43:02.060 uh they were viewing it as we were we're living in the bad place um that slowly changed

00:43:09.460 because uh as european christians uh went they're still europeans and so the the faith is in their

00:43:18.680 blood they applied the trinity they apply the uh triplicate world and they just miscued these

00:43:27.580 things about good and bad so in this place it is misty it is uh hard to define time moves slowly

00:43:39.140 this is all done in mythical language where the there are the people move slowly it is

00:43:46.020 far away from the gods as the gods are the gods of order. And as it is far away from them,

00:43:54.260 it is less confined by those rules. And this is done on purpose. As the forces of chaos and law

00:44:05.700 battle the the the safe place of the soul and specifically of the soul of balder are kept in

00:44:17.080 the mystery of the the the undefinable of and the hard to kind of pin down

00:44:28.080 um place of the cosmos so that they can be protected like uh placing a seed deep into

00:44:36.780 the earth or wondering where the wellspring comes from it's it's that that all of that

00:44:43.100 kind of mystery is being placed in the story as it's being told in its way so

00:44:49.740 So she is given stewardship over the souls of the folk and over the soul of Baldr and Nanna.

00:45:02.300 So there's a lot going on in that.

00:45:07.440 So there's not necessarily a negative look upon her, but there's also not a glorification of death.

00:45:15.080 because she fills a role that has been deeply conflicting in Aryan societies.

00:45:25.780 The word holy, the word whole, to be complete, and she is a diffuser of wholeness.

00:45:35.220 She is the necessary.

00:45:38.580 So I wouldn't say that there's reverence.

00:45:41.940 I would say that there's certainly honoring.

00:45:45.080 because she is the necessary part of a cycle and there is the the filtration as well when the

00:45:54.560 ancestors gather there and they look across the bridge and again the bridge is uh mentioned as

00:46:02.300 being wide and covered so that it it will be long standing unlike the bridge to to heaven is a is

00:46:10.240 fiery and shimmers and can disappear so access into the upper world is not given to everyone

00:46:17.980 but for death death is uh open to all who draw breath and at that point if you are a

00:46:30.220 are deemed by the ancestors unworthy you are then separated from the line that you are actually

00:46:37.600 connected to right now in the living sense and so you get severed and you have to cross the river

00:46:45.920 which uh survives in english language with the word yelp so it's the it's the river of mournful

00:46:53.280 cries is how i've i've uh translated it and then slither the the cruel river kind of rends the soul

00:47:01.760 apart and they get to the other side of the of the river and there they are no longer themselves

00:47:08.240 they are completely disconnected from the collective of their bloodlines uh it's so important

00:47:16.500 to be connected and to be separated especially willfully separated was seen as absolutely

00:47:26.320 a woeful situation. And it is. People just don't think about that nowadays and kind of have this

00:47:35.180 whole, I'm going to go off and do my own thing, or I can be an island unto myself, which is usually

00:47:43.300 a learning process. But at that point, we see the ancestors are kind of kept in her dominion.

00:47:55.960 She is the breaker of all things that must be broken down. And so in a way, she is a Nornir. She is an element of divinity and time. But she is also timeless. Again, there's the dichotomy of the half and half with her. 1.00

00:48:16.440 and uh she is brought in by lord ovin to steward the souls and keep them there and what a lot of

00:48:27.900 people forget is um they you know first they get caught up on the whole dark imagery um the the

00:48:36.920 snakes and the poison and and all of these things well to our ancestors death was cold death was

00:48:44.500 like it is today uh kind of seen as scary i know that many of us can come to terms with it

00:48:52.740 but it is still mysterious and undefinable and that the imagery of venomous snakes

00:49:00.560 it's not about literalism it's about an understanding that uh an adder could bite

00:49:07.220 you and you die you eat a plant and you die it was the the rationale of understanding that

00:49:15.580 sometimes dying was not held in leagues with everything you were accomplishing in life

00:49:24.900 it was on its own timetable it is on its own timetable and that's also by proxy her and

00:49:35.300 you will notice too in the adas and in the sagas her name is used synonymously with death itself

00:49:44.100 um so sending someone to hell sending them on the road to hell we're referring to they were

00:49:54.740 going to battle and they were going to kill these people they were they were their time here was 0.99

00:50:00.740 was dwindling. So ultimately, I think from the church's total perspective is we don't celebrate

00:50:11.260 death and we don't celebrate the breaking down of wholeness, but to be noble is to understand

00:50:19.780 and observe the world and the truths around you. And that is inevitable. That is often necessary.

00:50:28.400 And as Lord Odin designs, as he understood, it was imperative to keeping the future of the gods and the folk for the next turn through Ragnarok.

00:50:48.260 So with that, there's more of a sense of honor, not so much reverence.

00:50:58.400 um yeah i um i'm less prickly about that than a lot of our people um

00:51:06.720 i think that why matters

00:51:17.640 i think that with and specific to this poem when we mention um

00:51:28.400 The Aesir, the 12 that are listed, and when we mention the Al-Señor, specifically the two great Al-Señor, Freyja and Freyja, but also the Maidens of Bensauer, it's good for us to worship them.

00:51:49.320 You should worship them.

00:51:51.640 That's kind of a proactive default setting of should.

00:51:54.860 other deities and things the question comes to you know why what is your purpose what are you doing

00:52:02.700 um and i think that that requires an answer so

00:52:12.140 i've seen very appropriate honoring of uh of hell with you know people at funerals

00:52:24.860 or people who've lost loved ones

00:52:27.380 that want for their loved ones to be well-treated in the afterlife.

00:52:33.400 Those things all make sense and are a very reasonable thing to do.

00:52:38.780 I've seen far more people that just want to do dark, spooky, goth stuff.

00:52:46.180 And it sounds silly, and I don't mean to belittle it. 0.93

00:52:50.320 I don't think that they necessarily think that they're silly doing it. 0.81

00:52:54.860 but it's the honest answer is that's why they're doing it is because they're in that

00:53:04.480 spooky goth phase of their spiritual discovery and that's what they want to do

00:53:12.180 i think that's something you have to be a little bit careful of doing and it's important i think

00:53:20.340 The general taboo or idea that you don't want to invite death into something that's healthy and vibrant, you don't want to inject that into an otherwise unrelated place, makes a lot of sense.

00:53:37.440 I don't think there's cause to set yourself against or be opposed or in opposition to hell.

00:53:46.720 um but again it's different to you know build a reciprocal relationship and to to nourish that

00:53:55.600 and i think it's kind of just something to be very cautious about it's certainly not something

00:54:00.640 that we do in a formal way as the astrofocus assembly but it's not you know it's not wrong

00:54:08.300 but it's certainly got an asterisk of why and make sure your intention matches and

00:54:13.780 And there's a general caution against inviting in or dealing with things that you don't understand.

00:54:25.720 And there's kind of safe waters of the gods that are explicitly there to be in a worship relationship with the folk as a beneficial relationship that is prescribed to you by your elders, by the Gothar, by your ancestors.

00:54:45.340 and venturing outside of that into some of these things that are peripheral to it require a certain

00:54:52.220 degree of understanding and caution and i think that's kind of the case here so i think the why

00:54:56.720 is a good question i think being honest with yourself because here's the other thing aside

00:55:01.880 from you know oh matt said that i was just being edgy and goth well i'll show him i've had

00:55:08.200 conversations with people that you know will honestly admit like yeah that's kind of what i

00:55:12.940 is doing. So again, you don't have to like run it by me or get a, I told you so, or whatever,

00:55:19.840 but consider is that, is that why you're doing it or do you have another purpose?

00:55:27.200 I think that's, that's worth considering. Um, the next question from Jill and your experience,

00:55:32.960 what are the most common self-inflicted mistakes that prevent apprentice folk builders from

00:55:39.220 progressing. Svon, what are your thoughts towards that? I think getting disheartened by

00:55:50.640 the day-to-day. I know you've mentioned kind of seeing how things are made or seeing how

00:56:00.000 the inner workings are can be very disheartening from the more romanticized look of things.

00:56:09.220 But at the end of the day, there is that balance of mystical might and keeping the lights on. And a lot of people don't like to address the lights part.

00:56:27.800 And so I think a lot of times or they get disheartened by the fact that they hold a moot and maybe no one shows up, maybe one person shows up.

00:56:42.420 And I have always seen that in the long run, it has turned around.

00:56:51.340 There was like no one in the area.

00:56:54.640 And then a year later, there's an overabundance and there's people showing up locally and getting involved.

00:57:04.760 So I think that's one of, or that's the one thing is disheartening.

00:57:09.320 Whatever is disheartening you can vary, but keeping at it and maintaining the horizon, I think, is the answer to that.

00:57:21.060 I saw a question come in the queue, and I have a book.

00:57:26.080 It's not near me.

00:57:27.180 I'm going to go grab it because I don't want people to think I'm making stuff up.

00:57:31.380 This is for something, another, a totally different question, but I'm going to go grab it now.

00:57:36.060 All right.

00:57:37.200 So, Jill, and guys, this is a little bit of inside baseball, but I think that it is applicable to other situations.

00:57:50.540 so the thing the self-inflicted mistakes

00:57:54.700 big one is not

00:58:05.380 there's a couple i can think like three right so the big one i would say is not being in regular

00:58:15.880 participating communication with your colleagues um we have ongoing like 24 7 um chat on teams with

00:58:30.440 our leadership in general separated by district and you know different ones for different purposes

00:58:39.080 but interacting regularly with your fellow folk builders with the go-thar is really really

00:58:46.040 important because it builds the necessary relationships to be successful for the long term

00:58:56.600 um and this is true with house true in general it is about your folk and community and doing

00:59:02.120 things together and being part of a connected web a kin fence of your compatriots and whatever 0.99

00:59:09.880 you're doing building those relationships even if it's stupid and silly mundane conversation 0.94

00:59:18.520 keeps you fresh in each other's mind it reinforces the bonds of friendship and of team 0.86

00:59:25.400 with the people you work with and it builds the relationships that sustain you when times are tough

00:59:32.120 and strengthens the others when the times may be tough for them so building those relationships and

00:59:37.980 having you know daily interaction with your fellow leaders on teams is the key I guess not

00:59:46.080 doing that would be the mistake I see people make another one is getting discouraged by

00:59:54.760 by swinging for the fences on gatherings and then being resentful and upset if people don't show up

01:00:03.180 to it. This is a marathon and not a sprint, and Mandy and I were trying to get people to join us

01:00:11.680 at the Pickle Festival here this last weekend, and nobody showed up. It happens to all of us,

01:00:17.980 but sometimes an apprentice folk builder will. I got a great idea for a moat. We'll get together

01:00:24.180 and we'll have you know I'm gonna lay out a bunch of money for food and for

01:00:30.360 drinks and for venue and for stuff and then no one shows up and there's a

01:00:35.500 resentment there don't do that keep it simple until you have people committed

01:00:40.800 to something and then you can scale up keep it simple and realize it's a it's

01:00:45.940 marathon and not a sprint um there was another one that was kind of top of my mind a second ago

01:00:55.860 and i'm kind of spacing it uh now that i see is a common thing that prevents

01:01:04.420 maximal success that way so

01:01:09.700 all right i'll mention it if it comes to me but that's

01:01:12.100 That's what I can see off the top of my head

01:01:15.420 that are really important ones.

01:01:19.700 Next question from Caleb.

01:01:21.420 Do Hoffs charge any kind of a fee

01:01:23.200 to hold a wedding there for two members?

01:01:26.260 Can weddings be held at times

01:01:27.660 other than our holy tides and gatherings?

01:01:30.080 Why'd you ask that?

01:01:31.700 No, we don't charge any kind of a fee

01:01:33.780 to perform religious services to our folk.

01:01:37.560 sometimes people will will donate or will give us money as a courtesy on that you know those

01:01:47.920 things aren't something we charge a fee for the other to the other question yes you can get

01:01:53.680 not only can you but it's highly encouraged that you do set up times outside of of the the major

01:02:04.580 gatherings to host to you know to hold your wedding um there's a plus side to doing it at

01:02:15.700 a gathering because a lot of other afa members will be there but you know it's no different than

01:02:24.900 how any other group of people choose to have their wedding it is optimal in my mind to do it on a

01:02:33.720 time where the focus can be on you and your spouse to where you can have your wedding

01:02:39.320 the way you would like to where the whole day or the whole event is about your you and your spouse

01:02:46.760 and your marriage and so that can be the focus so yes we you know we would encourage that to be the

01:02:55.380 case. So absolutely. And thank you for asking the question.

01:03:05.220 Maybe pick and choose a little bit on the questions here while we

01:03:08.380 wait for Spawn to get back. As to a monk and your comment about

01:03:18.240 hell. So is it wrong to leave offerings because you're grateful

01:03:21.360 for them taking care of your loved ones? No, because I think

01:03:24.420 like I said earlier, that is a very specific purpose.

01:03:29.020 And I don't think that's wrong at all.

01:03:32.280 Because I think your intent is very clear.

01:03:34.860 And I think when there is a solid intention,

01:03:39.200 it puts you in a better position to,

01:03:46.240 I don't know if be protected is the right word,

01:03:48.640 but to be confident and secure in what you're doing

01:03:53.640 and the purpose that you're doing it for.

01:03:55.340 And so I don't think that that is wrong.

01:03:58.720 We have another question,

01:04:00.160 and I think we're optimally poised for that.

01:04:03.400 Manny, come here for one second.

01:04:09.360 Ditto, come here. 0.96

01:04:10.980 Come here.

01:04:18.180 We're asked when Ditto is going to make another appearance.

01:04:21.280 Here he is.

01:04:24.120 some of you may notice obnoxious tippy-tap noises in the background when i'm speaking from time to

01:04:30.120 time that's you mandy and i are very excited to have um wood floors and to not have carpet

01:04:40.760 we did not anticipate that dog toenails are thunderous in our house that we don't have a

01:04:47.240 a whole lot of stuff on the walls just yet as we're moving in, and as we listen to him

01:04:53.860 run throughout the house and echo. Thus, we have these. He's got little sock things that

01:05:01.200 he has to wear at night so that we are not kept up all night by his little feet, noiseless.

01:05:05.560 There you go, bud. All right.

01:05:17.240 um so our next i i was kind of laughing i so i didn't find the book and i imagine that some

01:05:28.600 people in the audience probably think i have like some sort of end of the indiana jones movie

01:05:35.160 like warehouse box or some sort of weird like i got i hope at least you have on those ladders

01:05:41.160 it's on the wheels i was thinking that as i was looking no uh we had construction done

01:05:48.040 um and i had to break down my my uh bookcase so in reality the only reason why it took long was

01:05:57.400 because everything is discombobulated stacked on top of each other behind the you know in in in uh

01:06:04.440 uh voluminous pillars and um no i couldn't find it but i will um nonetheless find it on the internet

01:06:15.160 so that people can find it themselves in the meantime spawn uh can you tell us about the

01:06:23.720 zoo rune and is it related to tear uh how are the medieval runes used in magic and healing

01:06:33.320 And how are they different than the other rune sets, especially the Elder Futhark?

01:06:39.260 The Ziyu rune.

01:06:42.920 Okay.

01:06:43.680 Well, one, that's very interesting because the medieval rune set that most everybody thinks about is later Nordic period.

01:06:57.320 And sometimes they're simplified staff runes.

01:07:03.320 um and that's generally the medieval runes the reason why i was running to get the book

01:07:09.560 is because there is another medieval futhark that no one ever talks about and is only mentioned in

01:07:16.360 uh one book that i i it's by nigel pennick and i will say the name of the book once i find it

01:07:24.440 Um, he does talk about the German Futhark that has the wolf angle and the, uh, Erdra rune, which is the Othal rune with the, with the feet.

01:07:40.480 Um, and he very, very unbiasedly talks about how this was already established in medieval Germany.

01:07:48.660 it was part of their heraldric systems um any political parties that took any of these runes

01:07:56.060 later on they did it because they were uniquely german in their traditions they there was no

01:08:03.960 uh co-opting there was no like sneakiness they're sneaking into scandinavia and taking these runes

01:08:11.520 to use no these were already established in their germanic traditions and um the strange thing about

01:08:19.040 that futark is there's only i believe 14 runes listed and that's another thing is the younger

01:08:26.080 futark had 16 and the medieval ones that most people are referred to when you look up medieval

01:08:34.640 runes is going to be the short staff or simple staff swedish danish variations of the younger

01:08:44.400 booth ark so with that i was also trying to figure and i'm almost positive it doesn't

01:08:52.400 the german one does not have a zyu rune um and i was just making sure i was kind of uh panicking

01:09:00.240 on the inside uh ah okay so we have the is this the anglo-saxon um

01:09:17.440 because once we start moving in the classification of runes get very strange

01:09:25.120 If you understand, the elder Futhark is classified in two groups.

01:09:30.480 There's the Kelverstone elder Futhark and the Vat Stenebrekteat Futhark.

01:09:38.200 And those are the oldest Futharks that we have.

01:09:41.520 And then we have Anglo-Saxon.

01:09:45.960 But Anglo-Saxon is the oldest one that we have with poems.

01:09:51.880 a lot of people are surprised to find out that the anglo-saxon rune poems are actually older than

01:09:58.420 the old norse rune poems he says it's from the gothic oh from the gothic now so in the gothic

01:10:08.520 futark tu it's a tiu and the only reason why i know that is in relation to ufilos the um

01:10:20.260 And he was the, he was a goth or gutten who was trying to convert his people to Christianity, specifically Aryan Christianity, which believed that Jesus was a mortal, a mortal man.

01:10:36.880 he wrote the book of Matthew and he utilized Gothic runes and he wrote them out, but he used

01:10:45.700 Greek grammar and the TU did not look like that. So that's interesting. And that's another thing

01:10:54.120 we have to kind of tackle is there's certain sense of misinformation kind of floating around,

01:11:01.780 Which is why I was so concerned with making sure that we clarify where everything is.

01:11:09.060 That rune that you just showed, Nick, looks very, very similar to the Anglo-Saxon.

01:11:18.180 Yes, it's the ear rune in the Anglo-Saxon.

01:11:22.740 If it's wrong, I'm blaming that. I don't know.

01:11:25.380 Well, and that no, that just proves a point about how things can get very muddled. And then like to look up the Futhark with the wolf angle, because that was one of the most interesting things. We have Othala with the feet and we have the wolf angle. Still, nothing comes up.

01:11:45.420 But Nigel Pennick, who is a very influential runester, he's kind of, you know, he's always, he was always kind of more of the, in the background, I think, but not as upfront as other people, very, very solid in his work.

01:12:09.940 And he was the one that I first heard about, this heraldric futhark that was kind of utilized and eventually led to the wolf angle being utilized during World War II and the Othala rune or the Erdra rune, but that it was from 17th century Germany or 16th century.

01:12:32.280 um so when we say medieval that's where i was kind of like uh-oh which one um however let's just

01:12:42.460 assume one of the things there are two runes throughout all the futharks and one of them is

01:12:50.360 the teyu, teyu, tir, and the other is the kon, kenaz, kin, and again, remember, kenaz is a

01:13:01.500 reconstructed word, utilizing all of the formats to kind of go back to the source.

01:13:09.960 Those two letters specifically, the k sound and the t sound, are in all the futharks.

01:13:17.500 and i really focus in on the anglo-saxon uh specifically because there were some people

01:13:28.500 on the internet trying to justify that uh that lord tier is not a god and that he has no heavenly

01:13:36.280 um correlations and they're jamming trying to jam him very disrespectfully into a box

01:13:44.200 And the oldest rune poem that we have clearly states, Tiu is the North Star. And this was part of that process of the tripartite and of me coming to understand through observation about stasis and dynamicism and capitalism and the stasis representation of the North Star.

01:14:10.820 so clearly there's a celestial tie there um we don't have a lot of meaning behind the runes

01:14:22.000 outside of the rune poems uh we have going all the way back to the gothic language as he wrote it

01:14:31.100 pulling the runes that were in use but until the rune poems we have very little understanding of

01:14:40.260 meaning um until we get to those and then i want to add something there's um with the with the

01:14:48.700 rune poems so we don't have enough information to have a real clear picture of various magical

01:14:58.340 schools medieval uses of of ruins when you look up medieval ruins there's a number of different

01:15:05.220 things so it really depends medieval scandinavia they're using the other huthark in early medieval

01:15:12.500 anglo-saxon england they're using the anglo-saxon food fork in continental magical traditions

01:15:18.820 they're using some of the ones that become house signs and things like wolf's angle that swan's

01:15:24.820 talking about it all kind of depends zeo linguistically goes back to tier and it's

01:15:30.340 certainly related to tier it develops in the anglo-saxon footwork in terms of writing and

01:15:38.500 language and needing to have letters to accomplish linguistic developments so i'm sure that there are

01:15:48.660 magical elements people put to it but i think the primary innovation in that sense and at that time

01:15:54.340 period was uh linguistic development but i'll say this in the in the um

01:16:02.740 memonic um

01:16:06.340 rumors it talks about ear in terms of death

01:16:13.700 and like the corpse and laying the corpse in the grave and

01:16:18.340 And the strange correlation that occurs to me as it relates to the tear rune is that that's the rune in the Arminen system that correlates to the rune song about necromancy, about, you know, the hanged man coming down from his noose and speaking when you compel him with that song.

01:16:46.640 so that's the little bit of connectivity that i've seen other than it's a tear room with

01:16:54.860 wings on it um that's about the best i think we got on such an obscure thing spawn do you have

01:17:04.140 more i was just gonna say um the book is called the complete illustrated guide to the runes

01:17:11.180 by nigel pennock it is a great book for anybody who is interested in runic history and understanding

01:17:18.540 all aspects of runic um perspectives and he covers them all very cleanly and provides

01:17:28.440 massive amounts of photos it's really really a good book um but i would also say too the

01:17:36.980 interesting thing the anglo-saxon rune poems are the oldest coming from the 10th century and then

01:17:43.160 the norwegian and the icelandic uh coming from the 11th or the 10th and the 11th respectively

01:17:50.660 there's huge gaps of time and huge gaps of land and yet they are well at least the icelandic and

01:17:58.860 Anglo-Saxon ones are remarkably close to each other. No internet, no mail service. This was

01:18:07.660 clearly passed on and kept in connectivity. The Norwegian ones, I like them. They're more of what

01:18:16.020 I kind of jokingly refer to as zen-like, as in the way that they're structured leaves a lot more

01:18:23.500 to question and ponder about because of they're so minimalistic but still the huge expanse of time

01:18:34.280 huge distances and we have runic traditions being focused on and so that leaves us to only

01:18:44.060 we can only look at the evidence and presume going back all the way back to the goths to

01:18:52.400 guttens and and throughout the germanic people there clearly was magical traditions spread and

01:19:01.840 carried on formulated and cared about nurtured by the culture and clearly had connective

01:19:11.360 meanings all the way through and that would then lend uh the the the holy god tier is present

01:19:20.800 in every one of those rooms we're we're an hour and 19 in and we've gone through one little section

01:19:28.920 but this as we do on this show it's kind of that the lore itself is a conversation starter and

01:19:37.880 something for us to take and go through as long as we want because it brings up points that are

01:19:41.940 relevant to our practice and that answer people's questions and so um something i want to mention

01:19:50.180 here while we're on rooms language both written and spoken is inherently magical

01:20:03.700 that's why as a subtle form of low magic being very intentional with your speech

01:20:13.140 has a power to it and it's a power that circumvents logical barriers and filters and just ingrains

01:20:23.460 thoughts through particular word choice or through embedding ideas and concepts over time

01:20:31.700 speaking brings things from speaking or writing brings things from the world of the

01:20:37.300 imagination or the internal and it inserts them into the world around us it manifests

01:20:47.300 in the way it makes at least the concept real um we get that that that kind of dual purpose in the

01:20:59.060 schools of magical stuff are enchantment literally chanting or speaking things into existence

01:21:08.420 singing i spoke earlier about odin's room of songs and written spells like

01:21:18.180 runework and the sigil magic that our rooms represent i also this is one of the myriad

01:21:25.220 reasons that i take linguistics really seriously and i think you know though it is very slow going

01:21:32.820 um my efforts to learn uh icelandic slash old norse is fruitful because it does

01:21:43.140 um calibrate you to receive the lore in a different way to understand it in a deeper way

01:21:51.220 and to connect with the um context of it in a very particular way so language matters and i think that

01:22:02.900 runic

01:22:05.940 runic understanding is a part of that um it's worth worth mentioning so on books and things

01:22:13.780 from frank my wife who still considers herself a christian has agreed to read a book about

01:22:19.380 What book do you recommend that I have her read?

01:22:25.380 Svon, for somebody who I'm assuming from this is unfamiliar and is finally relented to like,

01:22:32.000 all right, if this is so important to you, I'll read something.

01:22:37.740 So I'm not going to read all this stuff, but if you've got one book, I'll read it.

01:22:42.520 What should I read?

01:22:47.640 That's a tough one.

01:22:49.380 um don't mess it up you're gonna you're gonna destroy frank's marriage no

01:22:54.200 well because i'm i'm trying to think of all of all of the books that are out there

01:23:04.500 i mean and again i know this sounds like kind of a um default but founder mcnalen's book

01:23:14.360 Ausatru, A Native European Spirituality, I think is important because it addresses something that

01:23:22.080 other books don't, and that is the necessity of understanding metagenetic

01:23:30.660 bloodline connectivity. Other books don't touch it, or they completely go against it,

01:23:43.880 even though they know it's true and it applies to other people, but they can't let it apply to us

01:23:49.980 because of their political standings. So I think that's a key component. It doesn't break down

01:23:59.800 our faith into components that are super understandable. What it does is I think it

01:24:10.080 it shows the brick and the mortar, not the individual bricks. When you get into certain

01:24:16.980 other books, there are points where they dissect each section and very clearly show them

01:24:25.920 and perhaps even go into them further. I think a lot of Dr. Flowers' stuff in his early days,

01:24:37.580 like the Book of Troth and all of that, but also, too, those books have a tendency to be

01:24:43.880 a little bit more geared towards academic research or what have you. I feel like

01:24:51.940 Founder MacNallan's book gives brick, mortar, and brick of every single

01:24:59.140 thing that you can understand. Instead of long, over grandiose and metaphysical descriptions

01:25:08.360 about the soul, the learning at the end of that is we believe in the soul, we believe in the

01:25:14.360 multifaceted soul, and that each component is important. It is the quick, clean,

01:25:22.220 broad overview that I think is the, is really, really important for somebody coming from the

01:25:33.280 outside. Well, so I'm not trying to steal your answer. That's immediately what came to mind.

01:25:46.720 You guys may notice on this show, it's always one of my guests that mentions Alcetru, a native European spirituality by our founder, Steve McAllen.

01:25:59.100 I rarely recommend that book, not because I don't think it's good and I don't think people should read it, but it's intended for a really particular way.

01:26:09.220 And it's usually not the most direct answer to the question that I'm being asked.

01:26:13.140 In this case, I think it's the perfect answer.

01:26:16.200 Right.

01:26:16.720 Um, so like, I think everybody should read the true log model that's on our website.

01:26:22.960 We're working on getting physical copies of it.

01:26:25.920 That is what we do in a detailed, this is what the AFA believes Steve's book talks substantially

01:26:36.440 about what we believe, but more important to this particular case, it walks you through

01:26:45.660 the process of, you know, why, why do this instead of stay in your, you mentioned your wife's case

01:26:55.320 that she considers herself a Christian. Why stay in whatever you're currently doing and come to

01:27:02.980 Alistair, come home to Alistair. Why Alistair is in fact your spiritual home. Um, and it walks

01:27:11.080 through Steve's kind of foundational journey of why he set the modern iteration of our faith

01:27:23.000 into motion. And I think that's a very, very good introduction specifically for your wife's case.

01:27:32.760 so i i second spawn's recommendation on that one also while we are on the topic of um

01:27:42.680 uh books uh from mary matt and spawn last week there were some book recommendations mentioned

01:27:51.260 one of which was the rune workshop can you please repeat these recommendations especially

01:27:58.060 noting whether Rune Workshop is the book, The Rune Workshop by Jennifer Halls. So that's an

01:28:06.160 easy miss here. It wasn't The Rune Workshop. It was The Rune Workbook. And Rune Workbook is by

01:28:16.240 Leon D. Wild. I'm not familiar with Jennifer Hall's book. That could be amazing. It could

01:28:24.120 not be i have no no familiarity with that but the one i was recommending is the rune workbook

01:28:30.200 by leon wilde um and that was a very simple rune book that i kind of recommend to people who

01:28:37.400 aren't familiar who it's like their first taste of like what is this or um to like a younger

01:28:43.960 audience to you know a child and i don't mean like a little kid but like you know junior high

01:28:51.100 or after that I think is a really

01:28:53.360 good introduction

01:28:54.160 I can't speak to what

01:28:57.580 Bodhi or Trent may

01:29:01.340 have recommended I think

01:29:03.440 if I recall

01:29:04.900 they recommended 1.00

01:29:06.580 Myths and Symbols of Pagan Europe 0.94

01:29:09.440 by

01:29:10.260 H.E. Davidson

01:29:13.100 I'd say any

01:29:17.120 of her works are a really good

01:29:19.380 thing to read i believe spawn did she write a road to hell she did write a road to hell

01:29:26.500 is a really good and often overlooked book just anybody listening road to hell is a really good

01:29:33.620 book you should read it i think there's a lot there and i anything that um she writes i think

01:29:39.220 really good the ones i mentioned were booth arc runelore

01:29:50.660 and alu a l u but i think it's called alu an operative guide to new knowledge but i'm not

01:29:59.460 sure i'd have a look either of all three of those are by dr stephen flowers or his penman

01:30:06.340 those are really good for runic understanding he is you know he is my go-to source i think he is the

01:30:17.780 preeminent room master of all time outside of the all-father himself

01:30:25.380 i say that i know that is a bold claim while i don't think he was raised in the living runic

01:30:31.940 tradition of some of the runemasters of old he has spent his entire adult life immersed in

01:30:41.540 the academic understanding of runes in the magical implementation of using them and

01:30:52.660 he has studied the depth and breadth of all available living knowledge of runes in a way

01:31:00.100 that has a scope that our ancestors didn't have access to so you know i'm not recommending him

01:31:07.380 for lifestyle choice or for a variety of different things i do recommend heeding his counsel as far

01:31:14.020 as runes go um this one's an interesting one i'll let you go first on this from ron for both of you

01:31:23.380 If you could have a national event at the site of the old Uppsala temple, which holy day would you have it for, and why?

01:31:35.700 Freyfaxi.

01:31:37.900 And I don't know if he, Adam of Bremen, was actually there.

01:31:50.480 And there were some cases where he was attempting to describe things, but also kind of like, yeah, this is this is what they do.

01:31:59.620 But it's also really bad. There was some propaganda motivation there.

01:32:04.220 But he did speak of the priests of Freyr wearing bells upon their their belts at Freyrshof.

01:32:16.140 I, he's wearing bells upon his belt. And I just think that Holy Frey returning back to the soil of his bloodline, the Inglinger people, I think would be really good. 0.98

01:32:43.180 I also think that, you know, there are some considerations to the idea that the euhemorization of Holy Freire isn't just a technique, but that perhaps he came down to Midgard to guide the people there like a King Arthur, if you will, as the king is connected to the land.

01:33:13.180 And that he may have also influenced the Anglo-Saxons, even before they came to the island, as is mentioned, the great hero, S.H.I.E.L.D. Sheafing, the sheafing part, of course, being the wheat.

01:33:30.480 And that's, I think, a good telling of that. So if there was in Ausatru an avatar sense of the divine coming down to guide mortals in a mortal form that's even kind of historically remembered, it would certainly be Holy Freyr.

01:33:56.360 And he is the Vralta Gaudir. He's the god of the world. His connection, all the Vanmir that come to the Aesir and join them and become one, they are still deeply connected to the middle world.

01:34:11.400 And he has such a unique, poetic and beautiful sense.

01:34:17.960 And I just think it would be amazing for his faith, his cult of worship to be reestablished in the heartland of Sweden.

01:34:31.860 That would be amazing.

01:34:33.360 so i would i would do disa thing because i think that's likely the highest holy day that was

01:34:48.560 celebrated there during our ancestors time so that's the one i would like to do if i only got

01:34:56.660 one to do um that was also known as the you know the thing of all the swedes it was the big

01:35:06.020 gathering of the swedish kingdom for their big festival um so that's the one that i would choose

01:35:13.300 just because that's that's kind of the big at least going by the information we have that's

01:35:20.900 likely the big one that was celebrated there by the nation of this fae at the time um

01:35:31.860 it's fun what are your thoughts on looks maxing clavicular

01:35:38.900 and beating your face with a hammer to grow bigger cheekbones

01:35:42.660 okay uh look maxing is kind of wild i do uh think that there is some merit in the idea of 0.63

01:35:55.940 working out your body including perhaps parts you don't normally think that to work out you know

01:36:05.140 talking about wide palates uh to gain facial structure as we're losing them because we're

01:36:11.540 eating softer foods uh before i was a barber i was a chef and you know i'm kind of i like

01:36:21.140 entertaining all of that um i do think however it is it's becoming uh it's crossing a line

01:36:31.700 and that line is unseemly heterosexuality yes it it has it borders on this kind of worship of

01:36:43.700 the male to a point where it's it's like uh late roman or late greco period and uh

01:36:53.700 I think that especially in the media part of it, there is this hyper fascination of homosexuality with it.

01:37:04.940 But if you were, if you were talking about that, and I've seen some people argue, oh, no, no, it's the return of the masculine.

01:37:14.420 I don't necessarily think that because how it's framed, it's framed with kind of posturing in front of the camera.

01:37:22.640 It's not framed with what men are supposed to be doing. And so you end up kind of getting it. It's like a deviation away. And what you end up kind of also going down the trail of vanity. I think it's youth worship.

01:37:42.340 I don't know if anybody's familiar with Craig Ferguson. He ran a late night comedy show and one of his monologues was about how our society has lost an understanding of growing older.

01:38:01.840 and that wisdom gaining the gray hairs in your beard etc um has this classification and so

01:38:10.220 instead we worship these kind of youthful but then the youthful becomes infantile and and the people

01:38:17.100 that do this are like in hollywood they're you know childlike brains that are easily swayed

01:38:23.940 etc it's really really good um but it's kind of on the same track with that and it's it's i think

01:38:35.860 it's missing the point completely so again bashing your face for cheekbone growth one there's the

01:38:45.300 desire for cheekbone. I hate to break it to you, but, uh, Germanic Nordic are one of our,

01:38:54.820 if you look at the old books about, um, like physiology of the races, we have flat cheek,

01:39:03.860 uh, uh, cheekbones. Um, so you're kind of trait you're trailing after a desire that's set.

01:39:12.700 The other thing is, is agitation. I know a lot of guys talk about it with their hairline. If they agitate their hairline, they'll get growth. I think if you agitate any part of, you know, as you work out, you're agitating your muscles.

01:39:28.500 Um, it's far better to focus on that than to focus on hitting your cheekbones to try to get them to grow. No, focus on agitating your muscles and working out and agitating your brain and thinking about deeper things and building towards that.

01:39:47.840 that it's ultimately navel gazing when it comes to um doing this diet and working out will get

01:39:58.480 you all the same results that smashing your face with a hammer or hitting your hairline with

01:40:05.580 needles will get so speaking of agitating one's brain this this agitates my brain 0.98

01:40:13.640 i am also agitated that reading such a ridiculous thing with such ridiculous terms

01:40:20.360 i knew exactly what he was talking about and asking about that language is important it's 0.99

01:40:29.560 yeah i think that's really gay i think it's gay and childish and i mean i think it's gay in like the 0.83

01:40:36.840 just standard negative pejorative and i think it's also gay and it's overtly homosexual um 0.96

01:40:51.720 yeah it's just really gay like i'm trying like i could there's a there's a trend with our young 0.80

01:40:58.440 men that i've seen the more they remove themselves from living real lives in the real world 0.98

01:41:06.840 in a normal healthy way that's rooted in real existence they go in these really strange

01:41:18.360 deviant ways like this in intentionally celibate thing this incel thing and then men go their

01:41:26.820 own way that way is called homosexuality um and then there's this like look maxing thing

01:41:35.780 and the cheekbone and it's really an unhealthy obsession with prettiness it's just it's it's 0.58

01:41:49.040 gross and it I'm kind of I'm more than kind of disgusted by it the advice is like hey guys

01:41:55.700 don't hit yourself in the face with a hammer I the people who are doing this and starting this

01:42:04.260 phrase are not people i'm going to discourage from doing that um so what i will say though

01:42:10.980 because i think the questions on here outside of me just make fun do require serious answers too

01:42:21.220 i think that your cheekbones specifically like your orbital bone is really easy to break

01:42:29.220 and have bad problems with there is science involved in toughening your bones if you want

01:42:37.060 to toughen up your bones rather than trying to make yourself have pretty cheekbones 0.95

01:42:43.060 so you look good at the gay bar you should probably funny punch um 0.98

01:42:48.500 there's a lot of martial art techniques in striking various degrees of hardened things 0.92

01:43:00.260 like wood and even stone in some instances with one's knuckles again i'm not victory never sleeps

01:43:06.740 is not encouraging you to do this i'm just saying it's a thing to where you can increase your uh

01:43:12.420 the density of your bone structure in like your knuckles or on your shins. 0.99

01:43:18.780 I know the Thai kickboxers will often do that. 1.00

01:43:22.820 They'll toughen up by kicking different reed and bamboo and wooden posts to get stronger 0.99

01:43:29.360 shin bones or to run like wooden dowels and things up and down their shins to harden them.

01:43:39.680 like there's some degree of science to that the obsession with trying to make

01:43:47.980 yourself that pretty goes too far and don't get me wrong try to look good guys that are 0.98

01:43:56.660 slobs and look like crap stop that try to look your best try to present yourself well 0.97

01:44:03.100 but that level of hyper fixation on pruning is and preening is really 1.00

01:44:13.380 it's very effeminate and gross and if we are in a day and age where

01:44:20.780 i don't think that if if it's if it's done to appeal to ladies i think ladies that it appeals to

01:44:30.760 aren't necessarily the ladies that you

01:44:33.380 want to build life with 0.99

01:44:34.840 and I worry that it's to appeal to 1.00

01:44:39.520 people who are not ladies 1.00

01:44:41.220 I think that whole thing, stay away 1.00

01:44:43.460 from that, it's gross

01:44:44.700 get out while you can

01:44:46.420 sorry for the

01:44:51.480 over focus on it, it's just

01:44:53.220 disturbing and

01:44:55.020 I think we've got

01:44:57.500 a lot of young men that need to get out and again 1.00

01:44:59.560 as the kids say they need to touch grass they need to go like talk to a girl go

01:45:07.240 rough house go do something go dig a hole go chop down a tree go do something in the world

01:45:16.760 uh question from austin greetings all and i hope you're having a great evening

01:45:21.880 uh so i've been trying to build a better relationship with the lampeteer who reside

01:45:26.760 in a nature park close to where i live however a friend pointed out those spirits of the land

01:45:33.240 are quote unquote native implying that i can't or shouldn't try to reach out to them because

01:45:38.680 they belong to another race is that true and does each race have their own land spirits

01:45:44.600 thank you for any help and for all that you do swan would like to address that colonize the land

01:45:51.480 spirits. No, first off, the relationship that people have, the folk have a relationship with

01:46:04.600 the land in their own unique way. If you've ever read, there's a really good book called

01:46:11.160 God is read. It's written by an indigenous North American, and he speaks about how the spirituality

01:46:24.720 of the world is perceived within their capacity to perceive and measured based on that litmus.

01:46:34.560 The same applies to us. And our capacity and what fits our understanding. I think that when you look at the spirits of the land and you build a relationship with them, you can perhaps take into consideration certain things.

01:46:59.000 I do know of certain folk who may offer gifts in relation like tobacco, for instance, and that's clearly a nod to that.

01:47:13.060 But does it have to be? Absolutely not.

01:47:16.180 Because remember, our eyes are in our head.

01:47:20.340 And as we walk through the world, we see through our eyes, we can empathize, perhaps, or we could try to consider. But ultimately, it's still the reality is that it's our eyes.

01:47:35.000 So if you deal with spirits, the other thing that's really kind of important to understand is most spiritual practices, especially with land spirits or earthly spirits, we get the information entirely built around a homogeneous society that considers hospitality in its own way, not considering anyone else's way.

01:48:05.000 So, you go forth having this relationship with the Lanvertier, and that's the beauty of the spirit and the divine. They know the framework of the living, the fleshed mortal.

01:48:23.140 And so you go where your feet go. You interact in the same rules that are correct for your people.

01:48:34.320 I think one of the more tragedies is that our folk have lost any sense of respect in that. It's an exchange. It's not a worship, which is kind of what a lot of new age people try to make it seem.

01:48:50.340 But also, too, our ancestors of Abrahamic faith, they lost all sense of it and even perhaps threw in the scorn on top of it.

01:49:04.400 And that was a tragedy, too.

01:49:05.780 So finding that middle path, and I don't think you should take any consideration that there's somehow, you know, there's engine spirits that you can't talk to.

01:49:23.840 It builds a false dichotomy that our presence here is not wanted, yet we have created national parks and we have done all these things in the land and have accomplished them quite well.

01:49:40.720 So there is clearly a relationship here that has already been built even by people, our ancestors, that preceded us with absolutely no consideration of the divine spiritual element of nature.

01:49:55.000 But yet they weren't kicked out. And, you know, it's kind of this Internet thing where it's, you know, Europe has the fanciful mushroom gnomes and then you come here and it's like shooting your AR at a Wendigo.

01:50:12.200 This is all kind of more, I think, a psychological propaganda that leads to ultimately saying, oh, the land doesn't want you, white man.

01:50:25.660 And the reality is that we have done so much for the land.

01:50:30.940 Sure, some of it not good, but we have done far more good.

01:50:35.940 um in my area alone uh some of the state parks were built uh out of absolute nothing there was

01:50:44.980 it was like a a fetid swamp with uh even poison like literally poison water and they managed to

01:50:54.020 create and restart the the the system so that it it like could sustain more life um

01:51:02.780 and so there there is relationships that our folk have i think it's okay you should absolutely

01:51:10.540 honor them but honor them in the parameters of of our understanding not someone else's

01:51:15.840 that's for them to do absolutely and i

01:51:19.780 it is important to step back and realize that also true is not about racism

01:51:32.300 we have a very particular circumstance that we find ourselves in that makes a focus on race

01:51:43.160 particularly stand out and important in this day and age but even you know there's not prohibition

01:51:52.420 from interacting with people that are different than us it's different than intermarrying and

01:52:00.240 breeding with them and then being part of your religious structure but sometimes we have a

01:52:07.280 hyper focus on race to prevent us from normal and reasonable things to create some big cult

01:52:17.040 around the land spirits and i think some of the confusion comes with the venerating or worshiping

01:52:22.880 aspect being hospitable to the spirits of a place being a good guest being a good overlord being a

01:52:31.920 good whatever you are has to do with your circumstance and isn't the same as worshiping

01:52:37.680 them since that you worship the gods or your ancestors so i'd like to point out that too

01:52:45.040 are and so and then i'd further like to say that the spirits of a particular place

01:52:50.400 can kind of break down into two different things there are racially specific spirits

01:52:58.320 like the spirits of deceased ancestors that look over a place that's very different but there's also

01:53:10.400 nature spirits that exist in a neutral place that are not particular to

01:53:16.800 our faith or any other place they're simply consciousnesses that exist in the natural world

01:53:23.440 around us that we interact with now our ancestors have always interacted with land spirits when

01:53:30.000 they've gone places to say that you know it's less racially specific to us to interact with

01:53:39.920 land spirits in north america than you know any other place is really splitting hairs

01:53:49.200 you know our ancestors maybe they came from the caspian step maybe they came from hyperborea

01:53:58.880 but nobody would think twice about venerating river goddesses in europe

01:54:04.880 because for a very long time our people have been there but when you get further afield it

01:54:12.140 becomes stranger but our people did this wherever they traveled and it makes sense

01:54:17.900 depending on your thoughts and feelings are the spirits in North America are they all

01:54:25.700 you know are they all Native American spirits are any of them

01:54:31.460 um uh salutrian spirits are any of them you know we have no idea the mists of prehistory of where

01:54:43.160 people have gone are there you know again you could do that forever and it would be like you

01:54:50.500 know we can't make use of animals that come from someplace that's not europe that's preposterous 0.90

01:54:57.260 How dare we, you know, use. Shoot, I don't know. I'm trying to think about if we found ourselves in India, we'd be making use of elephants and not, you know, that's no white man would use an elephant. 0.70

01:55:13.100 that's you know that's dravidian stuff um i think when you go places there's

01:55:19.580 we share the natural world around us with other groups of of living things

01:55:29.520 to interact in those spaces and to be respectful of spiritual forces wherever we find ourselves

01:55:38.140 I think is a wise thing for us to do.

01:55:41.500 How deep of a worshipful relationship you have with them,

01:55:44.800 I think is really different.

01:55:46.940 And I think that worshiping our gods is different

01:55:50.500 than making offerings to spirits of the land where you're at

01:55:55.080 as far as maintaining good relationships with the spirit world.

01:56:00.300 I don't think those two things are in conflict.

01:56:03.060 And I think that hyper-focusing on that is going steps too far.

01:56:08.140 um here's kind of a deep question spawn what is the relationship between gods and man

01:56:19.000 for christians god had unconditional love but for pagans isn't it the opposite like everything

01:56:29.080 is proven with sacrifice and value no i've always thought the relationship was closer to an exchange

01:56:37.540 gods are far greater than us or greater to us and they are life itself we worship them because we

01:56:44.420 have to coexist with them if we want a blessing then we have to give something up to them because

01:56:50.540 they will not give us gifts or they do not love love us because how would a god love something

01:56:57.620 that is so far beneath them what are you thought oh that's an interesting question

01:57:06.280 um okay first off let me tackle the unconditional love that's a bait and switch I think that's

01:57:15.780 pretty clear someone can say that they love you unconditionally but in order for you to get into

01:57:26.380 the good place you have to do these conditions and you know whether you do them or not I still

01:57:32.920 love you unconditionally but you got to do these conditions so it's kind of a uh

01:57:41.640 it's a bait and switch it's it's a very kind of abusive like framework there um you know

01:57:48.840 you have to do this you have to believe this you have to affirm this you have to change this

01:57:55.160 but remember i the onset even before all of these conditions i loved you unconditionally

01:58:02.920 But you still got to do it. So it's like, what do I do? So the bait and switch there is, I think, more about a misunderstanding of Christianity in that part, because it's been sold.

01:58:19.080 The love part has been sold as of late in the last century.

01:58:24.200 I think you go further back, and it was pretty clear there were deep conditions, maintaining the covenant with Yahweh, etc.

01:58:32.360 And I think even Jesus in the Bible spoke about maintaining these covenants, and that there was very little confusion.

01:58:44.500 Even when he said, I do not come as a peacemaker.

01:58:48.200 I come as a sword to sever the ties between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters.

01:58:55.820 He is talking about conditions that leave you on one side of the line or the other.

01:59:03.640 So the unconditional love kind of concept is something, I think, to lure people in.

01:59:10.700 And then there's the conditions, the bait and switch.

01:59:13.120 but that doesn't answer our relationship with the gods and I think that we view things very

01:59:23.020 differently one there isn't a bait and switch it is about building a relationship with the powers

01:59:32.900 of the world outside of ourselves and I know that some modern Christians can find some connectivity

01:59:41.500 there, the idea of having faith outside of ourselves, removing our ego, has a lot of

01:59:49.580 potential in both religions. But for us, building that relationship is not done because we have to

01:59:56.600 live with the gods. No, the idea of all of it is that it is an interconnectedness,

02:00:05.560 And it's an interconnectedness with our source. The gods are the source of us. And we can become disconnected as time goes on. And that it is important to replenish that connection, that our parents do it and our grandparents do it.

02:00:26.100 And unfortunately, that has not been the case.

02:00:31.140 You know, perhaps there's theories about that as well in the idea of like the gods, you know, knowing that there was going to be this severance time and then returning and all of the reasons as to why.

02:00:43.660 But the relationship is just that. It is a relationship that is built on worth, worship to the divine, to the gods. And that worth is defined by source. It's defined by that which we are attempting to do outside of ourselves.

02:01:11.640 And then there was another part where I think it kind of shows the division between us.

02:01:21.360 And I would definitely say, no, pagans is not the opposite of that.

02:01:27.300 Because, again, the unconditional love, that's a bait and switch.

02:01:30.460 But you have all of the examples are in the Bible, and those are Levantine Semite pagans.

02:01:36.980 I don't know a huge amount of them, but pretty wild stuff there.

02:01:44.380 we're talking about european germanic polytheism and um i think that it's not hinging on love

02:01:56.620 nor is it hinging entirely on uh what i do as an individual getting the reward at the end getting

02:02:07.220 the cookie. It's not built around that. It's built about how I am in the ecosystem of my family,

02:02:16.420 how I am in the ecosystem of my tribe or my nation, how I am in the ecosystem with my ancestors and

02:02:24.860 the land spirits, and ultimately then to the ecosystem with the gods. We share this space

02:02:33.260 with them and we are of and from them and we get a chance to celebrate this existence that's why

02:02:44.440 uh when we had mentioned the books um that also true uh the native a native religion

02:02:49.720 uh native european religion is one of the key factors that really sticks out there is

02:02:54.160 a celebration of life. We are part of this process and our coming forth is another event

02:03:05.040 in that process. And we get a chance to share it and we get a chance to share it with others.

02:03:11.680 And if our families or siblings or anybody connected to us in this ecosystem fall short,

02:03:20.320 that happens but you find it you you join the church you find this ecosystem and you get a

02:03:30.360 chance to share and experience life and enjoy life uh you try to it's not hedonism it's it's

02:03:39.600 obviously you you bring upon duties upon yourself because you know that the gods are watching and

02:03:46.440 anybody who just hedonistically runs off, that's not good. Anybody who's completely inactive,

02:03:52.440 that's not good. So we see the gods are interacting with us in a relationship that ultimately is about

02:04:02.640 us being thankful and learning how to best express that thankfulness to the gods in life.

02:04:14.920 And the gods don't want unconditional worship. They don't want some sort of jealousy condition where if you put other gods before them, it's not, they didn't set that basis.

02:04:30.440 instead they set the basis of how can you be a greater person of the folk that they know we can

02:04:40.460 be and one of those conditions is building that relationship and giving worth to that which is

02:04:49.680 worthy you give worth to your elders you give worth to your children you give worth to the gods

02:04:56.780 you are doing this because you're part of that ecosystem so it's not diametrically opposite nor

02:05:04.920 is it atomizing christianity has a tendency to atomize because the bait and switch uh your

02:05:12.060 grandma could be a great person but if she didn't accept jesus into her heart she didn't do this if

02:05:19.600 You didn't do that. You can follow the trail. Those are conditions. Whether the person defining

02:05:28.740 the split says they loved you before them, those are still conditions. What we see is the over

02:05:37.020 arching connectivity between all of us. And that's why when we measure things like good and evil,

02:05:44.300 We consider them in relation to how they affect the people around, you know, it's like the murder dilemma, killing dilemma in Christianity.

02:05:55.700 A lot of military people come back from wars, really, really twisting themselves up about the fact that they killed someone else.

02:06:06.660 In our faith, the idea is that if you are defending your people, if you are holding true to your honor and your duty, then you are not, it's not some grand sin to fight a warrior from another land.

02:06:27.440 And in a way, too, you kind of end up building a connectivity there of respect for them as well, because they're doing the same thing.

02:06:35.400 So I think that the balance and the interconnectivity is being lost because many Christians only think about their individual soul, and they kind of have been taken by the bait and switch.

02:06:55.680 It's unconditional love, except if you don't follow these conditions. 0.87

02:06:59.680 And that intellectual dishonesty to the self creates a kind of confusion when they encounter a group of polytheistic Germanic pagans, and they immediately default to the way that the Judeans viewed their neighbors.

02:07:23.760 and uh that really like misconstrues I think a lot of what they're attempting to do if they're

02:07:33.580 if they're genuinely trying to learn so uh you have to kind of step back pull some away from

02:07:41.980 yourself and then come in with fresh eyes because I see a little bit of kind of a framework and I

02:07:49.880 understand that might be the only framework you have that you're coming from but that framework

02:07:54.380 needs to be uh destroyed in order to understand uh where our folk are coming from in our relationship

02:08:04.900 with the gods yeah so

02:08:09.920 i think there's always um

02:08:19.880 i think there's always danger of misunderstanding when you try to define paganism as the opposite

02:08:28.520 of christianity it's never going to be the opposite of anything because it's not defined

02:08:36.280 it it isn't a reaction to it wasn't created as a antagonist towards christianity it is an

02:08:44.440 independent completely separate thing so you'll notice things that are similar and you'll notice

02:08:50.200 perhaps more things that are dissimilar but nothing is a counterpoint to that's not how

02:08:59.240 that's just not how it was created it's not how it grew and that's not how it's developed so

02:09:05.320 So again, like Swan said, the depiction of the Jewish God loving unconditionally is not borne out by the terrible things inflicted upon the people that don't meet his conditions in their holy book.

02:09:25.820 I think that's self-evident in reading the Old Testament, and I think that defining all mankind worthy of death and destruction isn't showing love for them, but wait, he doesn't do that to everyone.

02:09:47.160 there's a condition the condition that you that you give your life over to

02:09:57.300 Jesus so there's there's clearly a condition you are right in the sense

02:10:07.320 that you need to show worth to our gods our understanding is you know and it

02:10:17.100 is easy to get too polaric in how we do things i don't presume that our gods have some deep

02:10:27.580 abiding love for each and every one of our people i don't mean to say that maybe they don't

02:10:35.820 we would like for them to love us and care for us

02:10:39.420 we achieve that by building a relationship with them and by making ourselves worthy of their

02:10:49.360 notice but so that gap of worthiness isn't insurmountable one of the last you know last

02:10:57.380 part of questions you know how could the gods love something so far beneath them

02:11:01.440 because they're gods and they can do big things there we wouldn't want to limit what limit what

02:11:08.960 they can or can't do they can love big things they can love small things they can love all

02:11:14.320 things in between they're not beholden to or obliged to but they certainly can and

02:11:23.600 i don't think that it is transactional in the

02:11:29.200 marketplace sense of that but it is transactional in the medieval sense of it and you see transaction

02:11:42.140 between unequal forces throughout medieval europe and it's one of those defining things

02:11:48.000 the relationship between lord and retainer or between a knight and their serfs or whatever else

02:11:54.940 the gifts exchanged aren't equal

02:11:59.700 but the intention is is there like you would you know if you're a serf you would give your lord

02:12:09.480 uh labor and you know produce or you know you would provide labor and produce and things

02:12:17.160 in exchange they would you know allow you a piece of land to work and their protection

02:12:24.280 and various other things it's it's always in relationship to to the person your relationship

02:12:30.500 you know a nice relationship to the king the king would owe them protection or lands or equipment

02:12:38.840 and you would owe the king your you know your military service and your your loyalty your

02:12:45.320 fealty there's it's not a one-for-one kind of exchange and it's very frequently seen in europe

02:12:52.740 between unequal people and that roots itself from our tradition no we can never give the gods

02:12:59.860 something equivalent to what they can give us but it doesn't invalidate the sharing

02:13:05.700 and the relationship through gift giving reciprocally back and forth

02:13:13.940 it's like giving gifts to members of your family is yes they give you gifts and you exchange gifts

02:13:22.660 is not the same transactional relationship as going to the store and purchasing something

02:13:30.500 though it does involve exchange of resources so i think that it's it's slightly different that way

02:13:39.860 but i also think that our lore is full of

02:13:44.980 expressions that the gods do care about individuals now often the individuals they

02:13:51.220 care about are heroes or kings or great people that's kind of the nature of the literary tradition

02:13:58.660 but if they have the capacity to care about individual mortals certainly we can work towards

02:14:06.180 building that and earning their uh earning their care for us something that i brought

02:14:12.900 up while swan was speaking that i've always thought was kind of a poignant thing it's from a

02:14:17.940 A poem, Farskina, which is a section of the Eriksmael poem about her blood acts.

02:14:33.380 What kind of dream is it, said Odin, in which just before daybreak, I thought I cleared Valhall for the coming of slain men.

02:14:42.940 I waked the Einherjar, bade Valkyries rise up, to screw the bench and scour the beakers, wine to carry, as for a king's coming.

02:14:54.000 Here to me I expected heroes coming from the world, certain great ones, so glad is my heart.

02:15:00.140 And the idea that the poet accepted the concept that the All-Father would be gladdened and happy to see the arrival of noteworthy heroes from the world of living is telling of the belief of our ancestors.

02:15:18.720 And as I can say in my life and in my understanding, I have absolutely felt the love of the gods in many, many ways.

02:15:33.700 I wouldn't want to presume their feelings towards me.

02:15:38.540 I don't mean to do that and be presumptuous.

02:15:42.100 But I have greatly appreciated their blessings.

02:15:44.940 blessings and i know that they hear me when i reach out and speak to them and they have blessed

02:15:52.860 me many times over and i'm very appreciative of it they've certainly shown me love or shown

02:16:00.020 me favor in that way and i think that that's absolutely something you know i think that they

02:16:06.000 love our fold who and to what degree that's for them to decide not for me to dictate but i have

02:16:12.900 no reason to think that that's not a thing and there's nothing on our board that tells us that's

02:16:17.460 not a thing i think that's a i think that's something that is kind of from the chest-thumping

02:16:27.400 sword and sorcery school of understanding that's got itself woven into a certain thread

02:16:35.480 of early modern house are true and i think it's kind of persistent i think it's a similar thread

02:16:40.980 people that talk about we don't kneel before our gods and things that way i don't think it's meant

02:16:48.100 badly but i do think it comes from a similar kind of misunderstanding and kind of kind of like

02:16:55.300 making our faith a counterpoint to christianity and an enhanced like i don't know exaggerated

02:17:03.620 bravado that's not there but yeah that's that's what i would say to that that's just something

02:17:10.260 you said earlier svan the dc are connected to the earth is that what he was saying

02:17:18.260 earlier when you were talking about um the different forces in the world uh the reaser

02:17:24.740 and the thurser and things like that can you clarify yeah i i think did you say dc

02:17:33.300 um because the desir are connected to the blood the risi or thurser are connected to the land

02:17:45.480 um but there it's not a clean cut specification it's kind of more or less the

02:17:53.740 um it's like the word enemy or friend um an enemy is antagonistic a friend is not

02:18:03.360 an ally is not but a foe is antagonistic so um these classifications are not super clean

02:18:15.080 Well, the idea, Jotun's being ancient and Risi being like the mountains and Thursar being aggressive.

02:18:29.580 That's where you can kind of take a lot of that and you can't always just say, well, it says this clearly.

02:18:39.700 it's like again the definition of the word in old norse is not it's it's it's

02:18:45.460 kind of a broad word just like the word monster or just like the word uh guardian um but

02:18:54.660 uh dc are connected to the blood and risi is generally another word utilized uh

02:19:04.480 in compound words, with Yotin. And they have a tendency, based on all the lore and observation,

02:19:15.960 they can be, some can be negative towards the Aesir, and some can be positive. And some switch.

02:19:26.000 They start out negative, and then become positive. But ultimately, it is about intention.

02:19:33.600 Intention is, I think, one of the driving factors.

02:19:36.120 The Jotun are not some different race of people.

02:19:41.920 And that collectively, the Aesir are one race.

02:19:47.660 No, it's their intention, their dominion in the world is built in this direction. 1.00

02:19:54.460 And the Jotunar have a different intention. 0.97

02:19:57.820 sometimes it lines up or they join the intention of the iser and other times it goes beyond

02:20:07.500 it goes the opposite of lining up and it becomes antagonistic i would say thirster though has more

02:20:15.060 connotations towards mankind uh our folk encountering spirits of the land that are

02:20:21.200 clearly aggressive and malicious and hence the reason why that word i think eventually morphed

02:20:28.800 into troll which is akin to like monster um or demon so um but yeah dc are connected to the blood

02:20:38.520 they're clearly uh there are norniers they are part of the nornier hierarchy structure

02:20:47.240 and they are connected to the individual members of the families

02:20:55.560 so a question about thor who's called half jotun

02:21:03.480 but his mother is the earth so the noble spring land when the thunderstorms happen

02:21:10.040 upper part of emir destroying the plague and arguments he is half racy not half thirst right

02:21:19.620 regarding thor it's fun you follow the question and what is your reaction i think first off that's

02:21:27.380 kind of what i was just talking about there's a lot of confusion in that i think there was also

02:21:31.540 a lot of confusion in that during snorty's time because we can also see the earth honored in

02:21:39.700 previous iterations, like Tacitus' Germania. So again, if the word Joknar doesn't have an

02:21:51.160 antagonistic title, it's not simply the opposite of the gods. It is what they're doing, their 1.00

02:22:01.260 intention, their place. If they are a combination of order and chaos, then they would not be of

02:22:09.580 the gods of order. They're in the middle somewhere. And again, the striker, the Aryan god,

02:22:18.020 the third part of the tripartite, which is the striker, is in every Aryan 0.54

02:22:27.280 classification of religion and always connected between the earth and the sky.

02:22:37.080 Even the Greco-Romans did it, though they humanized him through Hercules, but the concept is still there. There is a deep connection between the strength and the might of the earth and the strength and the might of heaven being aligned through the god Thor or through whether it's Tyrannus amongst the Gaulish Celts or what have you.

02:23:07.080 these stories do change based on the cultural references that they come from.

02:23:16.920 But there are people, again, that try to classify,

02:23:20.620 oh, Ymir's upper body, that's symbolic for these type of jotuns,

02:23:25.480 and lower body for these type of jotuns.

02:23:28.160 And none of that actually really matters because the lore is very clear 0.56

02:23:31.760 after Ymir is slain and his blood comes and the gods shape the earth, the Yotnar line

02:23:39.940 descend from Burgalmar. And it is really clear that not all of the Yotans, by the time that the 0.88

02:23:50.320 gods start moving around in their dominion after the war with the Vanir, that some of them are not 0.52

02:23:58.600 against the gods at all some are indifferent and some are antagonistic so that's what kind of uh

02:24:06.680 i think that comes from abrahamic religions where they have these kind of classifications like

02:24:12.040 there's a cherubim and uh nifalim and and they do all of these kind of they need categorizations

02:24:20.360 um and then when they don't get that in our faith they get very uh they start cramming

02:24:27.480 things into different spots um and if they have the intention of oh the gods are race mixing with

02:24:35.920 another race the jotnar are a totally different race no lord odin the the jotnar the ancient ones

02:24:43.720 of of uh of uh nivelheim that's that's where they source from and adumla and her creation 0.99

02:24:52.500 so it it it kind of becomes ridiculous if you lightly map it out but people are desperately

02:25:03.080 looking for definitive points so yes lord thor is a connection between the middle world and

02:25:11.180 the heavenly world he is uh somewhat kind of like fighting fire with fire the aggressive

02:25:19.480 yotnar who are chaos he can bring that chaos but he is also of the order of the gods so he is that 0.99

02:25:29.640 ability to kind of bend the rules to to kind of uh attack things at a at a different mode of thought

02:25:39.480 and that's what makes him so special and you know we could talk about even just the physical sense of

02:25:46.920 the iron rod in the belt and magnetism and all of those things connected to the earth

02:25:53.560 and protecting us from solar radiation etc um that's all really fun to to look at but at the

02:26:00.120 end of the day there is this deep connection the link and the reason why our faith has the hammer

02:26:06.520 as a symbol of our faith is because it is the worldly divine and the cosmically divine

02:26:14.600 connected and it's connected through through holy four

02:26:21.320 so i'd like to um

02:26:25.160 thank uh nicholas from ohio for his 20 donation um 22 general fund or i'm sorry 10 to the general

02:26:39.720 fund and 10 towards paying off race hall thank you for that and the first one to take us up on

02:26:45.480 the double the timbers challenge dollar for dollar donation challenge we got twenty dollars from

02:26:52.760 jeffrey from texas towards the cigarette pavilions thank you for that jeffrey and

02:26:58.840 nick could you mark that down so we can keep a tally of that until we reach out of them

02:27:04.440 all right that said question go ahead i was going to say uh there there is another kind of uh add-on

02:27:13.740 question to thor sure go ahead it says thor is part matter question mark fjordgin which is why

02:27:23.060 he can't go across the bivrost bridge um one the bivrost bridge and the overarching poetic

02:27:33.280 point of the Bivros Bridge is that the accessibility that heaven has is a fragile

02:27:41.400 thing. It's a thing that is allocated to those who are very special. I think that the bridge

02:27:49.480 shattering is again, showing just the massive power that is Lord Thor. And, you know,

02:28:02.140 your interpretation of, uh, of part matter, um, could very well, you know, that's, I think, uh,

02:28:10.040 uh, theological concept that we could definitely kind of, uh, put into frame. And I think it would

02:28:17.880 be interesting. I think it does have merit, but I don't think one correlates to the other.

02:28:23.660 I think that the real point of him crossing over the cooling river and the serpentine river to get to the wellspring in heaven is because the bridge is not for everyone.

02:28:41.280 access into the divine heavenly realm is for the heroic, for the advanced, for those who have

02:28:48.100 broken through and above into understanding the perennial truths. But that's not saying

02:28:56.780 that Lord Thor can't do it. What it is saying is that he's just so big and powerful and massive

02:29:03.100 that such a fragile thing can be destroyed by his presence um do i believe though about his

02:29:14.200 connection to matter i do believe that he has a deep connection to matter um but is not simply

02:29:23.400 half matter or i don't i don't think we can classify that and say oh yeah thor is um uh part

02:29:31.360 of part of matter i think he can be part of matter if he wants to and i think perhaps maybe

02:29:36.640 the idea is that because he's connected to it it's easier uh then you see some of the other gods

02:29:44.600 perfectly content working within the realms of the heavenly like freak um but and has all matter

02:29:52.600 come to her in the story um but i think it's an emphasis poetically yes that he is connected

02:30:00.760 and has the ability to connect to the middle world as he is.

02:30:06.100 We often say he's the son of heaven and earth.

02:30:11.820 All right.

02:30:14.280 Question for you, gentlemen.

02:30:15.600 Can you talk about Skabi?

02:30:17.560 And why isn't she listed as a goddess on the website?

02:30:21.340 Can we worship her, though, or no?

02:30:25.740 Svon, what's up to you?

02:30:27.460 Yeah, that's kind of why we're going over the guild beginning.

02:30:30.760 Because in the Gilbeginning, it clearly states the Aus-Senior, and it states the Aus.

02:30:39.520 And a lot of people have been confused over the decades as to why, say, Idun or Sif is not mentioned in the Gilbeginning.

02:30:48.600 Well, authors have taken their attempts to frame this, but they never do it in a sense of hierarchy.

02:30:57.660 And that has caused, I think, even more confusion.

02:31:03.140 But they generally call them troll wives or Jotun brides or what have you.

02:31:09.340 And I think that is because they're attempting to foreign the Jotuns and make them foreign so that they can push some sort of narrative.

02:31:20.160 But the reality is that when King Galfi talks to high, just as high in the third, he says, these are the gods and these are the goddesses that the folk should pray to. 0.93

02:31:34.640 But we clearly know that there are forces that are connected to the gods that are beloved by them.

02:31:47.000 So the word Ausstvinnir was kind of settled on, Ausst meaning like great, and Vinnir, friend or beloved one. So it's a beloved one. And they enter into the hierarchy along with the Himenverder.

02:32:06.820 So they're not expanded upon in the Trulagmal because it would drag the intent of the Trulagmal down.

02:32:17.180 They're mentioned briefly, but the whole point of it is that it's a direct, concentrated shot of our divinity and our theological framework in a concise point.

02:32:34.740 And if we went into all of the Ausvenir and how the relationships between the, you know, the Jotun forces that align themselves with cosmic order and some are done through oaths and some are done through marriage in the stories and what is marriage between them, it would drag the purpose of it down.

02:32:57.360 So I think that they will be expounded on much more in the future, and I also think that it's absolutely okay for our folk to honor them and build relationships with them.

02:33:13.420 They are with our gods, but it is clear that the Gilbeginning says these are the gods that our folk should worship.

02:33:23.300 so yeah i think that there's um sometimes a there's a subtle distinction that is meaningful

02:33:37.860 um as we've kind of codified in the true love model

02:33:43.140 these are the gods that you should worship that doesn't mean that you can't also include

02:33:50.180 some local deities

02:33:53.480 or other elements

02:33:55.980 from our lore like

02:33:57.280 the Hammond Brother or

02:33:59.440 the Alcineer or things like that

02:34:02.040 but it

02:34:04.080 is that we proactively

02:34:05.660 focus on the worship of

02:34:07.800 the ones that are listed

02:34:09.700 to try to list

02:34:11.860 every

02:34:13.040 every heavenly

02:34:18.200 character in all of our lore

02:34:20.120 in the history of our folk and our people for all time

02:34:24.580 would be endlessly confusing and tedious.

02:34:28.080 And we have clear directive on, you know,

02:34:30.400 these are the ones that it's particularly important

02:34:32.660 that we focus on.

02:34:33.920 So I don't think it's wrong to honor her.

02:34:37.160 It's not attested that she is the one

02:34:39.600 that we should be spending, you know,

02:34:41.480 a particular point of making sure

02:34:44.080 that we give worship to.

02:34:46.480 And I think that's the only question

02:34:48.260 or only point on that.

02:34:50.120 On another question, says Troubled Guest, is rune pulling slash rune casting something you guys do, or is that just a modern thing?

02:35:04.160 And can runes give you protection, like if you were to wear one or draw one on your body?

02:35:10.460 So, yes, we do that.

02:35:14.780 No, it's not just a modern thing.

02:35:16.860 People will try to tell you that it is.

02:35:19.080 those people are confused we have um i mean we have examples up from the lore tacitus talks about

02:35:28.120 it very early on um i think that undoubtedly the way that we do it is probably not exactly the same

02:35:39.560 as gothar did it way back when and the way gothar did it in 900 is probably different

02:35:48.440 than they did it in 100 and probably different than they did it a thousand bc so i think that

02:35:55.080 you know the the methodology changes over time and evolves with time and place and experience

02:36:01.720 um but yeah room pulling and room casting is absolutely something that i believe both spawn

02:36:05.880 and i do um and rooms can and they can absolutely give you protection um or they can be used as

02:36:16.840 protective sigils if you know if done correctly if the intent is there i

02:36:28.040 i have seen people with very carefully constructed and very meaningful runic amulets

02:36:34.840 or very important runic tattoos and things that are absolutely something to be a point of protection

02:36:44.700 I've seen other people very casually approach them,

02:36:48.880 and I don't think their runes give them any protection at all.

02:36:53.060 I think there is a very important subjective component to rune magic

02:36:57.700 that you have to be engaged,

02:37:00.080 or at least the person who created them or put things in motion.

02:37:07.340 There has to be a will behind it.

02:37:10.260 You can't just make a drawing and do magical stuff.

02:37:14.120 there has to be an intention behind what it does they have to be empowered

02:37:21.000 in their in their usage and that doesn't necessarily have to be by the one who's

02:37:25.240 wearing them or the one who you know has possession of the runic item but it certainly has to do with

02:37:30.280 the person who's created them i don't think you get magical efficacy out of accidental things

02:37:38.040 now you can do them wrong and misuse your intentionality and then backfire

02:37:44.040 or not work as intended absolutely but again that is a um

02:37:52.200 that is a like a misshapen intentionality but it's still intention it's not just

02:37:58.840 oh i randomly crossed two sticks and it made a gabo gabo magic engage it it's not it's not

02:38:07.000 doesn't work like that in that way spon do you have something to add on that

02:38:12.840 uh no i think you you covered it i know that there are people on that there are people on

02:38:19.400 the internet um that do say oh it doesn't say runes specifically when tacitus is talking about

02:38:27.800 casting lots but you know it that that utilizing that to create to dismantle some something that

02:38:38.960 clearly is set that transfers beyond writing um is very disingenuous i see it a lot with with

02:38:48.360 ostra and easter and the eggs and all of these things oh no that but it wasn't written about

02:38:54.840 so therefore it's not real um and again they're they're not they're they're picking and choosing

02:39:01.640 the little things that they want in order to knock it down um uh pulling lots divining

02:39:12.380 in these senses but i think there's one point i would bring is that i like to look at the runes

02:39:19.700 as something of going to the deepest, darkest, and farthest point

02:39:27.280 is the sound waves that Lord Odin and all the mysteries of

02:39:34.760 when he synthesized himself with the circulatory system of the universe

02:39:38.820 that is Yggdrasil and going and following the roots

02:39:42.240 all the way down into the primordial points of sound.

02:39:49.700 And then what we look at when we're doing rune pulling and when we're doing protection, these points are tapping into those powers with our intention, like Al-Sahirgothi said, but these are very, I think these are very mortal usages.

02:40:08.740 and that there's layered understandings of the runes,

02:40:19.000 but we are only able to utilize them within the capacity of our understanding.

02:40:27.280 And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

02:40:29.540 It's not an insult on ourselves as beings, but we're not gods.

02:40:33.620 And so the runes for the gods in their usage and makeup might be very, I mean, almost incomprehensible to us.

02:40:47.360 And our stories are just trying to let us grasp some of that.

02:40:51.960 But yet, at the same time, as is viable in all things, a breeze on one side of the world can affect so much, so too does the great powers of the runes allow us, with our intention,

02:41:07.740 open up our consciousness to these powers so we can utilize them for protection or

02:41:15.080 to get kind of glimmers into interpreting the way that or law is going to play out

02:41:24.120 and i think that people have a hard time differentiating that or or conceptualizing

02:41:32.040 that that's all i wanted to say about it well i'd like to just consult the text and it's funny

02:41:37.620 because this version this translation of tacitus just straight up says ruins oh that's always been

02:41:44.740 the understanding until modern well actually want to find fault um i think the it may have

02:41:53.380 been closer to marks or carved carved marks into sticks could that be something other than runes i

02:42:02.820 suppose is the most obvious answer of runes yes so let's go with that because that's what makes

02:42:13.620 sense and it's very similar it's exactly what people do today often in their room casting

02:42:22.900 germania 10 says for auspices and casting of lots they have the highest possible regard

02:42:28.820 their procedure in casting lots is uniform they break off a branch of a

02:42:34.260 fruit tree and slice it into strips they distinguish these by certain rooms and

02:42:40.100 throw them as random chance will have it under a white cloth then the priest

02:42:45.860 of the state if the consultation is a public one and the father of the family

02:42:50.300 if it is private after a prayer to the gods and an intent gaze heavenward pick

02:42:57.020 up three one at a time and read their meaning from the runes scored upon them

02:43:04.860 so that is described in you know one of our earliest sources that's laura and how our

02:43:12.540 ancestors practiced our faith um again that translation just straight up says runes because

02:43:18.700 it's the most sensical answer they certainly carve symbols or markings onto sticks and use

02:43:29.420 them as we would runes so i think it's incredibly solid but that's how they used to practice it

02:43:35.500 that's how great many of us practice today that's typically what i do as a three-run pull that's

02:43:43.100 the most common i would say that people do so um there's that just for a point of

02:43:50.380 point of information on it um matt and spawn either of you ever

02:43:57.740 do sauna slash cold plunge contrast therapy no i certainly do not i don't like the cold

02:44:06.300 honestly I don't like saunas either I like hot tubs like hot tubs a lot they help me a lot as my

02:44:15.640 older I get the more my joints hurt and I get sore hot tubs do a lot to loosen up my muscles

02:44:23.380 help my joints and overall feel nice but sauna is not my friend I don't like the trouble it gives me

02:44:31.200 breathing and i have not tried the cold plunge deal heard lots of good things about it i am not

02:44:37.920 speaking against the science involved it just sounds very unpleasant and i have not felt

02:44:42.800 going to do it because i i don't want to experience that unpleasantness what about you spawn

02:44:47.760 it is mr alaska man don't like the cold well we don't like the hot either here

02:44:52.000 yeah not liking the cold in alaska is how you survive um no uh same with iceland too uh no

02:45:02.260 no it is unpleasant but uh but then there's like this body rush afterwards i've done i've done um

02:45:10.040 both and i do gotta say i like um so i will do 15 minutes at 170 degree sauna um and i i don't do

02:45:21.860 them. That's the only thing the question said, like, do you do them in contrast? I don't do

02:45:27.240 them in contrast. I generally will, will focus on one particular at a, at a time, um,

02:45:36.040 for various reasons. And I think I look at saunas for circulatory recovery. And I look at

02:45:47.740 hot tubs for muscular recovery. And I look for cold plunge for onset of

02:45:57.040 activity, a kind of getting cold and then slowly starting to warm yourself up with movement and

02:46:10.740 then warming yourself up with activity. So I don't necessarily do the whole hot, cold, hot,

02:46:16.580 cold. I think that those kind of things, um, I don't know if they have some adverse effect,

02:46:24.000 but I just don't enjoy doing one and then the other, but I have done them just in their own

02:46:33.500 allotted times. Um, and I, I, I agree with you, I was here to go, the, uh, recovery in the muscle

02:46:41.080 with the sauna i mean with the uh hot tub seems to work uh especially if i do a leg day and my

02:46:49.220 legs are feeling really rickety um i could go into a sauna and walk out and i'm still in the same but

02:46:56.680 i feel far more relaxed and and and the muscles seem to have gotten a chance to recover when i

02:47:07.640 do the uh like the hot tub the hot immersion in water um but there's a rush that comes from

02:47:15.880 cold plunging that i think really kind of gets you in proper headspace especially if you go in

02:47:22.860 and move your body and break there's a slight barrier that's kind of created you break that

02:47:29.400 barrier and it is very very intense and then you get up and slowly start to kind of move out of

02:47:38.000 that and you have this energy from it it's very strange uh getting that kind of uh hyper sense

02:47:45.460 from it you wouldn't think but it it's there i just i don't know about doing one after the other

02:47:53.140 yeah i've read a lot about you know and a lot of people do the the alternating hot and cold

02:48:02.120 i've never gotten any benefit out of that um has the fa ever received anger or hate messages from

02:48:10.880 christians after moving into a new neighborhood or after setting up a huff in what was once a church

02:48:17.640 spawn i've got some schizo mail um with drawings all over them ballpoint pen uh it looked like

02:48:31.240 something like a rob zombie cover and we did it at thorsoff about uh once a year and it's it's

02:48:40.720 you know, the same stuff, repent, uh, worship Yahweh, God of the Jews, or go to bad place,

02:48:50.140 Gehenna. Um, and it just ramble. It's a lot of rambling. Um, I, I never really keep it. I, 0.85

02:48:56.980 I read it more for entertainment. Um, I feel like it would be rude not to because of all the effort

02:49:06.360 that this one guy puts into it um and the drawings are pretty cool um but i that's the one that

02:49:15.640 sticks out to me every now and then we'll get an off shoot one where it'll it'll say that and i

02:49:21.100 remember too uh we used to get emails that were like oh uh christianity jesus would never exclude

02:49:29.640 people by race and i always used to write back to them i'm sorry for your confusion but we're

02:49:35.280 not a christian church and they would kind of not know what to do with that very rarely respond back

02:49:42.240 um because it was just the onset of their own confusion that brought them in but

02:49:49.520 the guy that sends stuff and i i think i'm due for one this year at thorsoff so yes but i can

02:49:58.240 can only speak for myself i don't know about other hof uh go the at at the other hofs yeah um

02:50:08.780 it's it's very irregular like you can't say none that's not what the problem is though

02:50:19.800 people the people that get grumpy give us a hard time because of they're woke and we're not and

02:50:32.300 we're racially aware and that's the thing it's more of a you know them being bad and saying you

02:50:41.640 know racism's bad and woke stuff a lot more left versus right uh like chaotic wokeness versus

02:50:54.480 traditional stuff very seldom is it a a Christian thing and matter of fact we've

02:51:01.560 gotten a lot of positive response from Christians both pastors and and congregants

02:51:11.280 on stuff that we do we have a number of different uh churches that will send people to our food

02:51:19.360 banks and encourage their parishioners to come get food when we're doing our food uh

02:51:25.920 our food pantries every every month um yeah so far more positive um usually the stuff we get is from

02:51:37.680 you know social justice warrior people not from christians that are mad at what we're doing um

02:51:49.040 yeah and we so something that we've gotten more of than the opposite and there have been a couple

02:51:53.520 of people that are upset but most of what we've got in relation to us getting former churches has

02:52:01.040 been people that used to you know celebrate you know they used to be congregants there

02:52:08.080 specifically and i think this has happened at thor's off too but i know specifically it's

02:52:12.880 happened at baldur's off to where they'll come and they'll be really happy that somebody's taking

02:52:17.520 care of the place and they'll want to reminisce about how they got married there you know decades

02:52:24.800 ago or how they had you know they used to go to dances there however long ago we've had a lot

02:52:30.800 of that around baldur's hof i believe we've had some of that at thor's hof um we definitely had

02:52:36.800 that at odenshof odenshof started out as a grange hall for the grangers and then over its um it was

02:52:46.320 built in 1938 i believe so over its time it's been a number of different things and some of

02:52:56.640 those have been it's been a church at different points it's also been like a i think a christian

02:53:03.200 school at one point um and so yeah those people are glad people are taking care of the building

02:53:08.960 and it's showing some love most of the places that we've purchased have been neglected and not

02:53:14.800 well cared for for quite some time so people are happy to find that they're getting taken care of

02:53:21.040 for the most part yeah i was going to speak a little bit on that i know that uh you have

02:53:26.720 expressed too that people have said uh ridiculous things about uh like the churches and stuff like

02:53:33.600 that and um or like buying churches and so on and so forth um when uh thorshoff was coming about

02:53:41.760 and i didn't know thorshoff was going to uh be you know real estate is and all of that um

02:53:49.280 we were i was looking at schools uh there's uh in in western virginia there's a couple of um

02:53:57.360 school buildings so you know a lot of the people that try to i think throw a lot of detraction at

02:54:05.440 us because they don't have anything and they're like oh they're doing it in a church and it's like

02:54:12.400 no we're we're finding these buildings and rebuilding them up and dedicating them to the

02:54:20.720 gods and whether it's a grange hall or you know a school or uh a former christian church

02:54:31.760 people that try to like claw at that and gnash their teeth um i think it's just so it's that

02:54:41.060 desperation of just wanting to cause pain and really to cause pain towards the gods because

02:54:48.460 they can't let that be a thing that happens no if if if if it was us we would you know build a

02:54:59.500 viking reenactment religion and or uh building and and it's like it's so ridiculous so i i

02:55:07.260 really find it interesting when you bring it up and i i had just i forgot yeah the grange hall is

02:55:15.020 it's history there as well and um lastly there was a um a woman who came in during the uh mural

02:55:25.660 um she uh while i was painting at thorsoff and she was absolutely just so happy that we were

02:55:34.580 going to keep the building um because she was afraid that it was going to get uh demolished

02:55:40.840 and that's why she was there and we were like no we're not demolishing the building and then uh

02:55:46.100 we also showed her uh mr bethe's grave on the side and she was deeply moved by that that that

02:55:54.320 we were tending that grave and caring um for his grave and so nothing but just positive sense and

02:56:03.920 she had her congregation had moved to erwin methodist so it's not like there was some

02:56:10.060 lamentation that her her church had died that the the congregation just had moved but she wanted to

02:56:18.320 make sure that the building was still there and and it was and we had no intention of disrespecting

02:56:25.420 any anyone there anything there we were just practicing our faith there now and you know

02:56:33.240 just that southern hospitality of it she was just absolutely enamored with the idea of of it all so

02:56:43.620 yeah the reaction's been and again there's a lot of comments online or whatever that is far more

02:56:52.900 about wokeness than it is about religion and when the news just focuses on racism and not on

02:57:01.740 house a true there are christians that will be concerned as fawn said earlier like that we're

02:57:07.880 doing christianity wrong and then they stop and we're like no no like we're not christian that's

02:57:15.400 not what we're doing they're like oh uh okay and it ceases being an issue with the vast majority

02:57:22.200 of people so that the battlefield where we get pushback isn't really bad but honestly we don't

02:57:29.080 experience that in real life most of the time most of the real life interaction with people

02:57:34.600 be they Christian or otherwise

02:57:36.960 it's been great

02:57:37.860 online heckling

02:57:42.440 it's not

02:57:43.140 in real life we have tons of really really

02:57:46.640 positive things

02:57:47.780 in the interaction with folks

02:57:50.300 so that is

02:57:52.920 Victory Never Sleeps for this evening

02:57:54.960 we covered a minute amount

02:57:56.920 of the guilt beginning

02:57:57.800 that's fine we had a great conversation

02:58:00.140 I appreciate everybody's questions

02:58:02.220 next time

02:58:04.500 that's fawn and i are on here we will cover at least the valhalla portions of the guild beginning

02:58:10.460 and we'll see where we go from there um thank you so much to everyone who's been so very very

02:58:17.160 generous today with their donations we appreciate that a lot and do remember that jill has got the

02:58:23.280 double the timbers um funds matching situation with any money up to three hundred dollars that

02:58:32.980 comes in for

02:58:34.860 the Cigarham Pavilion.

02:58:36.740 Anybody doing that from now until

02:58:39.100 the 20th,

02:58:41.000 your money will

02:58:43.100 be twice as effective 1.00

02:58:44.820 because she is

02:58:47.080 willing to match your contribution.

02:58:48.920 Thank you guys.

02:58:50.780 Thank you guys for everything.

02:58:52.360 Thank you for being on the show.

02:58:54.860 Thank you.

02:58:56.240 Nick, thank you for your production.

02:58:59.300 You guys have a

02:59:00.940 great evening.

02:59:02.700 Until next time, 1.00

02:59:03.840 kill the ASEER of the Folk, 1.00

02:59:05.780 kill the AFA, and remember, 1.00

02:59:07.700 victory never stops. 0.94

02:59:09.460 And thank you to Matt for giving me an episode

02:59:11.820 for next week, so we have a proper outro

02:59:13.760 this week for the first time in a month.

02:59:17.320 Do what I can do.

02:59:31.880 Transcription by CastingWords

03:00:01.880 Thank you.

03:00:31.880 Thank you.

03:01:01.880 Thank you.

03:01:31.880 Thank you.

03:02:01.880 Thank you.

Asatru Folk Assembly - May 07, 2026

5⧸6⧸26 Victory Never Sleeps, Ep 200 - Prose Edda： Gylfaginning, Part 8

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript