00:20:12.820And one of the really special things are these two kings chose to stand together against the tide of Christianity that was overwhelming their country.
00:20:33.560The times were shifting. It was politically inconvenient for them to do this. Matter of fact, one of the customs was people with claim to the throne were sent away in exile during a king's reign.
00:20:57.780Like if he had important brothers or if he had sons or others that were really close to that line of succession, they were sent away.
00:21:10.460These two were both sent into Scotland where they were instructed in Christianity and baptized as children.
00:21:21.120And, you know, they got by and they eked out their existence in that way.
00:21:27.080But both of them, as soon as they took the throne and they were in the driver's seat, brought their countrymen.
00:21:33.560Because in that day, it wasn't just the choice of a monarch.
00:21:37.120If a monarch embraced a faith, the entire nation went with them.
00:21:42.220That was one of the important roles of kingship in England was them being in and of themselves, in a way, being a high priest.
00:21:57.720them being a mediator between the divine and the folk and through their kingship that connection
00:22:04.680was made and it transferred over in a very similar way in the early forms of christianity
00:22:11.560and even in latter forms of christianity that was kind of the basis of how the church of england
00:22:18.520operated um was king as high priest so when these two two men took the took their respective thrones
00:22:28.840it brought all of northumbria for for a year's worth of time back to the faith of their forefathers
00:22:35.880back to us back to relationship with our gods and
00:22:40.120And I think it's very difficult to imagine in this day and age what that's like to do that.
00:22:52.900When you have armies standing against you at the gate, you have your fellow monarchs of the different Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England fallen to Christianity or in some kind of unholy compromise between the two.
00:23:12.100and your predecessors have already converted your homeland that you come back from exile
00:23:20.460and take the throne and you try to fix things and bring things back before our gods and
00:23:25.720stand against all odds to do what's right for your folk and your country and bring them back
00:23:32.480back in trough with the Aesir and short-lived it was just a about a year there's no really
00:23:42.880good dates on when both of these two gentlemen were killed um and it was it was interesting
00:23:57.160because the savagery on display wasn't by the so-called
00:24:01.640heathen barbarians, the savagery that was on display
00:24:04.700was by this Welsh Christian who was raping, pillaging
00:24:11.220and slaughtering across the countryside
00:26:16.140Just kind of an adjustment on King Osric. I believe he was cousin to King Edwin as opposed to his son.
00:26:31.320um but yeah both these folks had a very a very short moment in the sun um and what they did was
00:26:45.340what most of the chroniclers the christian chroniclers took the tradition of was extending
00:26:52.220their Christian successor Oswald's reign by a year.
00:27:00.700So, you know, they would reckon the time by the original year of a king's reign.
00:27:10.580So, and, you know, in such and such a year of the reign of King Oswald.
00:27:14.280Well, they added an extra year at the beginning to kind of try to erase this period from history.
00:27:20.020But that is a wrong that I wanted to undo here tonight to the best of my ability and going forward so that we celebrate the courage to stand, I suppose, stand with a kinsman against the entire weight of history that's coming down upon you for what's right and for trough to our gods.
00:27:50.020And, you know, in many ways, and it wasn't just a religious conflict, but that was heavily on, that was heavily factored in.
00:28:01.980And that was a big part of the culture of the time and the way these people were treated by history.
00:28:08.000These are two kings and two in their time for their kingdoms, the high priest of the Iser to their folk.
00:28:16.960And both of them stood strong, brought their people back to our gods, reestablished that troth, even for a short window.
00:28:27.680I've mentioned our gods exist in mythic time.
00:28:32.140And the way we reckon time is really different.
00:28:39.020Even small moments of time stand out and count in the memory of our gods.
00:28:45.320they're not you know washed away by history in the same way that modern people tend to reckon
00:28:52.120history i think it's really important when we look at historical folks
00:29:00.440that we do our best to empathize with their situation
00:29:05.640they existed they were real they were like you and i they had the same
00:29:14.120the same brain capacity the same physiology the same tendency to to fear or to comfort
00:29:24.880or to weakness or to go along with the crowd as anyone else
00:29:29.280They had the same emotions that you and I have, but they both made a choice to define themselves by their trough to the Eysir, and at great personal risk, and in a way, great personal cost.
00:29:50.200I think that's really important for us to remember that, because it's easy to look at folks in history as if they're part of a movie or something that's not real.
00:29:58.700No, these were flesh and blood people like you and I.
00:30:10.080And that's kind of what we're doing tonight.
00:30:12.160We're happy to answer any and all questions you guys might have about either of these two heroes of Alcetru or about anything else you want to talk about.
00:30:22.480to start with we've got uh as always ronald blake doing some donating gave 30 to south africa
00:30:32.880thank you very much we'll make sure that goes to help our folk over there
00:30:36.960and uh bought us a coffee we appreciate that um and okay and also 30 towards the baldershoff fund
00:30:47.680waltershoff needs work on their steeple situation so that 30 is much appreciated
00:30:56.080taking a second to look over at the chat trent do you have anything else that you'd like to
00:31:01.440add about these two men or about that time or about that situation um yeah i guess i can add
00:31:10.080some more kind of historical context with how these events were recorded uh it was recorded by
00:31:15.600a christian monk uh his name would have been pronounced uh betta but that's like saying
00:31:20.480tacitus and i'm not going to do it the venerable bead because that's how it's spelled um was a
00:31:26.720northumbrian monk himself writing after the time of osric and ainfrith of course but that in itself
00:31:34.240is the biggest reason why nothing about their reigns were recorded however it it's worth noting
00:31:41.840that both osric and ainfrith when they you know rejected christianity and uh re-embraced the
00:31:48.560icer there were no riots there was no instability or anything from their people however when edwin
00:31:56.720their predecessor who would become become the first northumbrian christian king accepted
00:32:01.200christianity there was there was unrest there were riots and rebellions and things like that
00:32:07.600but you know beads not going to emphasize that in uh an ecclesiastical history of the english people
00:32:14.960so i suppose that's important to and he is he's the guy if you try to read about any anglo-saxon
00:32:27.040history the the venerable beta or whatever the venerable bead is the guy he is the chronicle
00:32:37.040source for the stuff and it is an ecclesiastical his uh history and he is very much under the sway
00:32:44.240of the white christ um so this goes into looking at stuff over on the side here trying to catch up
00:32:58.960on the chat i appreciate we have a lively and exciting chat room tonight um there's a couple
00:33:06.640few questions coming in and i think the first one is kind of interesting and i'll let you take the
00:33:14.800first swing at it and then i want to go for it as well uh owl of omens asks what are your thoughts
00:33:22.000on a anglist i think is how you pronounce it revival uh it's anglish
00:33:30.320there's no h in there language works but uh fanciful as uh as folks language or at least
00:33:40.780as an ecclesiastical language yeah what do you think about that i the anglish thing
00:33:49.180sounds cool in theory but um it's i'm trying to think of a different word to use
00:33:57.080but spawn used it once in a really in a context that made sense let me use it so forgive me
00:34:03.000anglish using it in any context really is kind of just masturbatory it um
00:34:08.840it's classy yeah you know gotta it um it doesn't really serve any purpose i know and
00:34:17.580so being of anglo-saxon descent mainly myself i i do understand the appeal to a purely germanic
00:34:26.140english but i i don't think it's right to step over the imports from the norman conquest and the
00:34:37.740middle ages the hundred years war all that that is all part and parcel of uh the english language
00:34:45.720and the english identity whether we like it or not just for the record though english people are
00:34:51.200still mostly anglo-saxon don't buy the the bs that says we're celts or normans because we're not
00:37:36.560We went in the circle until we came back and met ourselves.
00:37:42.660Apologize, flat earthers, but it's a thing.
00:37:45.880So what has happened in modern times, the world looks really different.
00:37:55.700we've recognized our commonality as a race and our difference from other racial groups of people
00:38:04.500and macro races of people because most of us in the united states come from
00:38:25.700you know every year every decade that goes by it's a little bit further away but most of us
00:38:33.320most of us find our way to house a true here in the United States come from largely an English
00:38:40.640background those who are not predominantly English usually have that in their their makeup
00:38:49.700and we're an English speaking country and language is so very important I see the appeal of that
00:38:55.700I think it's fun, and if you want to do it because it's a fun thing, awesome, go ahead, that's great.
00:39:02.760But fundamentally, Latin words, French words, Spanish words, Greek words are just as Aryan, just as racial to our people as our English words or German words.
00:39:24.040now some of the some of the fluff and the imagery that i think we all hearken to and like
00:39:30.060that's a little bit different story what i think is a much more inconvenient but a much
00:39:36.420more appropriate and something i'm trying to work towards if we need to have special terms
00:39:45.680for ecclesiastical things i am trying as best i can to do those towards the old norse that's the
00:39:56.720language of most of our lore that is the conception that our faith has come to us from that is the
00:40:08.000the the flavor and the context and the backdrop and the nomenclature that this was revealed and
00:40:16.940restarted when the all-father spoke to the soul of Stephen McNallan and
00:40:24.620reforged this that we're all here doing and so I think it's under that conception that
00:40:33.860is best to move forward to the extent that we need to do that
00:40:38.000Now, by all means, in whatever country you find yourself, and I think we're predominantly talking to English speakers,
00:40:43.280but if you're a Frenchman and you're listening to this, practice how it's true in French.
00:47:28.740um there's a fine line there hell is not one of the Isir
00:47:37.620she exists she serves a function we have no reason to think that she is evil or terrible
00:47:50.160um in our lore she's very reasonable when
00:47:53.940when the isir wanted to bargain for the the life of balder she was very reasonable with that
00:48:03.780um the story of the hell ride and visiting and seeing balder being
00:48:11.320entertained in splendor and taking taking care of and celebrated and given you know a lavish
00:48:22.280spot appropriate for a god while in her domain that hospitality is appreciated
00:48:29.780I think that there is time to give respect to but worship's a little bit different
00:48:39.540especially in an AFA context because worship implies a level of exclusivity
00:48:52.260if we treat everybody the same then we don't treat anybody special
00:48:59.840and we owe it to treat our god special there are certain things that you give in certain ways that
00:49:09.000you treat people that have a special relationship with you that you don't do to other entities
00:49:15.020And this may sound cheesy or silly or whatever, but I think it's important to our thought process.
00:49:22.940I said it before, I think all too often we look at the lore through a scholastic lens, through either it's like a book report thing or it's like a science thing.
00:49:41.060it's not it's about relationships with living entities that we know are real that have thoughts
00:49:50.740and feelings and consciousness and the only way that we can begin to develop that is by learning
00:50:01.860from other things with that are persons and how we treat them and build relationships
00:50:09.540and then to the best of our ability magnify that towards our gods but at the very bare minimum
00:50:17.920our gods are the very best of people there's so much more than that but at the ground floor of
00:50:25.020us starting to build relationships we can at least extend that to them we owe them much more
00:50:31.080um so if you think about it we're us we're our folk and we hold our folks special you hold your
00:50:40.460family is special guy at the gas station if he's cool to you you can say thank you and be nice to
00:50:46.860the guy but he's not your family he's not who you are in that relationship with you can go outside
00:50:57.000of the isir where you find yourself and give respect and treat someone respectfully without
00:51:04.680venerating them and give them worship like you would your gods of your folk who are our isir
00:51:11.640and i think hell exists in that kind of spot i think there's plenty of times
00:51:17.560if someone that you love has passed away if it's a funeral situation if you yourself are facing
00:51:25.480the end of life i don't think that honoring hell is inappropriate or bad but there's a distance in
00:51:36.200between that and the way that we would worship our isere and it may be a subtle difference
00:51:41.560but i think it's an important one um i hope that makes sense the question also i think um
00:51:52.360is overly literal with our war so our lore is never meant to be hyper literal it is
00:52:06.580artful and poetic ways of expressing truth but the more we try to limit our gods to the text
00:52:18.560of the lore i think that's inappropriate the lore is the best attempts of gothar and poets of the
00:52:25.040time to express and to explain or personify the higher truths of our gods um i think it's a
00:52:39.920misnomer that there's some hard fast rule about you know what qualifies you to get in
00:52:48.400which gods hall any of our gods are gods they can invite whoever they want into their halls
00:52:57.520for whatever reasons they want to it would be very impious of us to presume that because an
00:53:05.840ancient skull wrote down that you know death in babel takes you to certain god's halls that they
00:53:13.040could not invite people for other reasons and we have examples of that in the lore of folks that
00:53:18.960didn't die in the heat of battle that were welcomed into valhall um so i think keep that
00:53:25.920in mind because we die of old age or sickness doesn't prevent us from going to the halls of
00:53:33.040the icer that's up to the will and the judgment of our icers as literal sentient beings that have
00:59:00.640On this, literally, no matter who you are, if you are hearing this and you are in a place where that's something you're thinking about, there's no rush.
00:59:18.720You're contemplating a permanent decision.
00:59:23.320I'd ask as a favor, please reach out to one of our Gothar and give us an opportunity to talk to you.
00:59:30.640you can do whatever you're going to do but we would really like a chance to talk to you about
00:59:38.780it before you decide on that I wish I could have had that conversation with a number of people
00:59:46.540who we've lost who uh have made that choice um maybe it could have been different I'd like to
00:59:55.480think it could have um we don't have any belief that suicide means some kind of eternal damnation
01:00:07.420but as Trent said you're taking something away from your folk when you do that
01:00:16.600they have them all talks about that a lot and if I had thought while I read this question I
01:00:21.700of texted my wife mandy is don't tell nobody but mandy is my secret source on have them all thumping
01:00:28.660if i need to get like a particular have them all verse she's really good at that
01:00:35.460but it talks extensively about how you know the land can ride a horse about how
01:00:43.060you know the deaf can do stuff and the blind it talks about a number of infirmities and how
01:00:48.180there's still things those people can do to help their folk um
01:00:57.620no matter what your circumstance typically there's still things that you can do to
01:01:04.820advance your family advance your folk do things to advance the cause of the isere
01:01:12.580and you rob us all of that when you prematurely take your life now there's circumstances there's
01:01:22.660acts of extreme heroism where somebody jumps on a grenade for their buddies or whatever
01:01:27.460that's technically suicide but most of us don't count that there's uh you know I can't think of
01:01:36.160example in the lore of that per se but i i there's a practice that i i read for the first time in
01:01:43.120metaphysics of war by julius evola of something that roman generals would do called the devotio
01:01:51.680um probably not that's probably not how they pronounce it in latin but a general as a final
01:01:58.560if they needed to turn the tides of battle and they were losing as a final offering to mars
01:02:03.760they would charge headlong into the enemy and offer themselves up as a sacrifice for victory
01:02:13.100like there's circumstances to where there's something to be said for it but for the vast
01:02:20.100majority of us no that's uh and so here when the question's asked we don't want to say anything at
01:02:30.400that would encourage people to do that because as we said before there's always opportunities
01:02:35.760every day provides opportunities opportunities to advance our folk your family and the cause of the
01:02:47.840but we're also speaking to those who have loved ones who've already made that choice
01:02:53.120and I don't think that choice is an automatic you know something terrible in the afterlife
01:03:02.420we also believe in the idea of posthumous ascension and we believe that there is life
01:03:09.020after this physical life in Midgard where hopefully some of these things can be worked
01:03:17.220out and there's still opportunities to advance and to become more and we believe that strongly
01:03:25.140so you know if you have a loved one that chose that path don't forget about them
01:03:31.540don't forget to honor them don't forget to tell stories of them and speak of them
01:14:42.720as well as fabulous cash and prizes and all this and that.
01:14:49.360And at one point, Olaf tried to engage Roud in battle on the sea, and Roud allegedly cast some sort of spell or magic on the sails on his ship and managed to sail away through a windstorm of some kind, if I'm recalling it correctly.
01:15:10.340Eventually, though, he was captured by Olaf Tryggveson, who slowly and brutally tortured him to death.
01:15:18.440And through all of that, Raoul did not, he did not accept Christianity, did the right thing.
01:15:26.020He stood his ground, even though it cost him his life here in Midgard.
01:18:03.700and it currently exists long long after that um the story of our folk is far larger than the
01:18:15.460you know I think 300 years that they reckon is you know like the Viking Age
01:18:23.380uh it's much much deeper than that when I went to Denmark and when I went to Sweden on uh AFA trips
01:18:33.700And the sacred sites there that we went to, very, very few of them are from the Viking Age.
01:18:40.580Most of them, the vast majority of the dolmens and the stone circles and the sacred places that we went to are, you know, in what they would call the Celtic period.
01:18:54.260They were in a period far before that time.
01:18:57.220Honestly, a lot of them dated back to the Neolithic period.
01:28:39.880recognized as heroes with days of remembrance has been those who
01:28:47.680didn't just happen to be also true but being also true was fundamental to their story
01:28:57.360or they were also true in the face of opposition to it um and that's not to
01:29:05.160again you can't fault somebody who's in an also true society that everybody's also true and they
01:29:11.700are a hero and they also happen to be also true that's great i don't want to deny them
01:29:17.000uh their their spotlight but there's a different kind of heroism when you are standing against
01:29:24.520opposition to maintain your faith against those who would tear it down or destroy it
01:29:31.980and you choose to take that courageous stance specifically because of your tribe to our gods
01:29:40.020Those are the people that I've focused on so far who are really pillars of the religion of Al-Satru as opposed to other heroes who are also Al-Satru, if that makes sense.
01:43:59.920uh well the second round of high stumble for one is important i i'm not a big fan of
01:44:10.060that thing some people do where you know they get nervous about talking about an ancestor during
01:44:17.860someone they just say well hail all the ancestors and everybody's done it at some point i have
01:44:22.080myself but i think specifically giving the full name of an ancestor a little bit about them is
01:44:27.880really really important because when we're doing that ritual those words echo into the well and
01:44:34.820our ancestors are supposed to be able to hear them from beyond the veil and so you know i'm sure
01:44:41.000i like to think all of our ancestors are happy to hear us say hail the ancestors but it's even
01:44:48.080more special if you can name one and share a little bit about that person with you know the
01:44:53.960rest of us because that is you showing them off for lack of a better term i suppose uh the other
01:45:01.900thing i like to do and this is something i was doing as a christian even it's still it's so
01:45:08.820permeates our culture at least here in the south i don't know about everywhere else
01:45:12.160i i just talked to my ancestors sometimes my granny east specifically because she was such
01:45:17.880a big part of my life uh the one i toast and stumble pretty often i joke about she's gonna
01:45:24.020smack me because she wanted me to be a christian preacher not a not a goathy uh so that's that's
01:45:30.880big, just acknowledging them, really speaking to them, thinking about them on their birthday or
01:45:36.440the day they passed. My granny passed on Mother's Night, and she was kind of the matriarch of our
01:45:41.960whole family. So it's a fitting time to think about her either way, for example. That's pretty
01:45:48.420much it. I could probably do more, but that's what I do. Yeah, that's important. That's kind of a day
01:45:57.960that's always coalesced for me my grandfather the one i spoke of earlier who i named the daughter
01:46:03.080after he he died on his birthday on march 31st he was exactly 70 years old so march 31st has
01:46:11.320always been kind of a special day for celebrating ancestors for me um
01:46:20.040everything trent said um i think it's really important to tell
01:46:24.120tell stories especially if you first tell stories to anybody you can hear
01:46:30.420if you have kids tell stories to your children about their ancestors
01:46:37.840because you are the connection that they have to those that who've already passed that they'll
01:46:44.680never know um so yeah keeping their names alive telling stories um one of the things
01:46:57.160i mentioned kind of my roots in doing ostrich stuff is having people over and
01:47:05.000you know hospitality having people over for a meal that was always something
01:47:09.080that in our family my grandmother was the one who did that for for holidays or whatever else
01:47:17.160so when i do that i often honor her and i've got a a really cool picture it's one of those um
01:47:27.960i don't there's probably a technical term for this but those pictures
01:47:31.400from like the 40s ish where they're like recolored so they're like they're almost like a black and
01:47:43.720white image that retroactively is colored somehow i don't know what the term is anyway it's cool
01:47:50.280picture and i have it up in my kitchen so when i'm preparing those meals for you know the i was here
01:47:57.160gothic dinners at my house i can kind of look to her and i don't know have a moment there so that's
01:48:06.920something that i do i've also and i happen to this may not always be the case because i don't know
01:48:12.840what our situation on segerheim is going to look like but i've got that staircase situation in my
01:48:19.240house where i have a two-story house and i've got one of those you know anyways got a staircase
01:48:27.160So along the staircase, I have pictures of my ancestors and, you know, I try to acknowledge them in some way when I go up and down the stairs and point them out to my daughter, Aubrey, as we see them.
01:48:41.520Who's that? Oh, that's, you know, your great grandmother, so-and-so.
01:48:45.540That's, you know, have something to say that way.
01:48:47.960so you know little things like that um sometimes at a special time if I want to I will
01:48:58.520honor them with a special food or a special drink that they like and as stupid and cheesy
01:49:05.840as it may sound my grandpa and I spent a lot of time when I was a little kid
01:49:10.560any of you who's ever been to Anchorage Alaska might know this there's a place called Arctic
01:49:19.980Valley that's like a road up this mountainside where you get a really cool view over Anchorage
01:49:26.520and uh it's a neat spot so we would just go up there we'd get um we'd get Whoppers and we'd go
01:49:35.820eat Whoppers up there and just sit and look over the city and talk about
01:49:40.560life and whatever you know a grandfather talks to his grandson about and so you know sometimes
01:49:47.460I will it sounds cheesy but sometimes I'll you know as a way of honoring my grandfather I will
01:49:53.880do that with a Whopper in my case I will usually do it with a double Whopper um
01:50:01.440or stuff like my mom my mom was obsessed with Diet Coke I don't know why but that was like she
01:50:09.000lived and she was fueled on Diet Coke for some reason so even something cheesy like that it
01:50:15.960just connects it's something to connect over it was really really special um I interred my mom's
01:50:24.780ashes at Sigurheim and it was really special to be there at Winter Nights because the way that
01:52:53.400Oh, it's kind of nuanced question at the end there, but they're called the Anglo-Saxons because the two biggest tribes that came from Germany, Denmark area to Britannia after the fallback of the Western Roman Empire were the Angles and the Saxons.
01:53:16.300The Angles came from southern Denmark. The Saxons came from northern Germany and also southern Denmark.
01:53:25.720The term Anglo-Saxons specifically was decided on because Saxons were the more plentiful of the two tribes in England once it had been established.
01:53:41.460But during the Viking invasions, Alfred the Great and his successors wanted to sort of solidify the ethnic and cultural identity of the English people.
01:53:56.140And so Anglo-Saxon was picked because it was it was saying so Saxon had pagan connotations, whereas Angle had Christian connotations because it sounds like angel.
01:54:08.860not joking that's really why and uh so yeah i think it was pope gregory that came up with that but
01:54:19.100anglo-saxon was chosen because alfred a west saxon was claiming dominion over the other
01:54:27.360saxon lands as well as the ones that were said to be inhabited by angles like northumbria
01:54:32.600and so he came up with the term anglo-saxon so it was acknowledging his also true forebears
01:54:40.560and that heritage and his descent from the god odin but still saying hey we're christians
01:54:47.540as opposed to the uh raiding danish vikings which by the way uh are
01:54:54.360genetically the exact same thing as anglo-saxons for anybody that wants to do some scandinavian
02:01:45.260I think a lot of their ideas are really cool,
02:01:47.180but it's like let's LARP that we're offended over slight grievances and treating me with my regal
02:02:00.440position like you moved the wrong way and handing me my piece of rotisserie chicken or whatever
02:02:08.420instead of well no and I say this because I was talking to um one of our former theods went about
02:02:14.420I get that I get the hierarchy I get wanting to have nobility I get wanting to
02:02:22.580I get wanting to be a king I get ambition I don't fault any of those things
02:02:28.220do you want to be a king because you want to wear a crown and get the choice like you need the
02:02:39.080chicken breast or do you want to be a king because you command armies and men in the kingdom
02:02:48.040and it's like no i just want people to treat me deferentially and give me the choice
02:02:57.240you know cuts a rotisserie chicken or i get to finish off the mountain dude and it's not
02:03:09.080i'm joking but not really i think those exact examples were a big part of a lot of people
02:03:21.320who did that i know that i come off like a little bit of a jerk on that sometimes i realize that as
02:03:27.600i say it but i had to because it tickles me and i also think it's true and and i say that as a guy
02:03:35.340who my start in also true was very much sitting around i remember um in anchorage in mountain
02:03:42.700view which was rough hood in anchorage keeping a gangster in mountain view with uh guys in the
02:03:50.780backyard of their the closest thing i think anchorage has to projects literally we had this
02:03:59.580pit that we were throwing broken furniture in to burn we're sitting in camp chairs and we're
02:04:06.140literally eating rotisserie chicken and two liters of soda that we're passing around like that's
02:04:13.260that's a place a lot of us started and i don't fault that if that's what you're doing right now
02:04:17.660by all means go for it it's a lot of our roots in this but the difference is a lot of people start
02:04:24.300from a humble beginning on things but you try to build and that's the idea of the kingdom it's not
02:04:31.340about you sitting around and having everybody pamper you if you want to be a king you should
02:04:37.100be about accomplishment and building and conquering and doing stuff and i don't think
02:04:44.540that was embodied in a lot of the theodism that i've heard about or that i viewed um externally
02:04:53.660again i think a lot of their core material is awesome i think the wovenings um wrote some
02:05:00.460really good things that we still hearken to today the whole we are our deeds thing is a swaying
02:05:07.180woven expression and i think that we have completely adopted that and made that a mantra
02:05:14.620for us in alsatru and rightly so and i think that's fantastic um i've just seen a lot of the
02:05:23.500time that it was people that it's my view especially in this day and age that leadership
02:05:32.060isn't typically drawn through a dynasty or a bloodline that it's done through a meritocracy
02:05:37.580But if you find yourself in that spot, it's your job to every day try to be worthy of your spot as opposed to sit in it and fester and like build a culture of trying to get other people to more eloquently or more expressively tell you how great you are.
02:19:17.120So if you wanted to name somebody after someone named Matthew, maybe instead of gift from God, it would be, you know, gift from Odin or gift from Tyr.
02:19:30.940Again, my Old Norse fails me, but I'm working on it on the Memrise.
02:19:36.700But you would come up with what that is, and that would be a way of carrying on that naming tradition.
02:19:44.960Now, I was lucky, you know, I thought, and this is something that comes into mind.
02:19:50.040It is very traditional for our folk to name our children after someone we have respect for in our family line.
02:19:58.760And sometimes that's challenging if you've got a lot of ancestors that have biblical names.
02:20:03.040um a number of reasons that I wanted to name my daughter Aubrey but one of the really good ones
02:20:11.800was it it's a Germanic slash Celtic name that means you know elf ruler and it oscillates
02:20:22.300generationally on whether it's popular for for girls or boys it's a strange name that way but
02:20:29.260and at least it goes back to one of our languages so I was you know excited to do that but that's
02:20:38.920I don't know that's that's my thoughts on it don't look down on it not and I'm thinking
02:20:44.800a lot of people who do that if you're going to do that you've got to own it so I would say this
02:20:52.480if you want me to take you seriously and you want to take your you know claim your Viking name and
02:20:58.780cast off your slave name whatever get it legally changed and that's legit you've invested you've
02:21:07.240made it real if you're Ivar on the weekends and you go to work and you're Steve then you're Steve
02:21:19.240if you're Ivar on the weekends and you pay the money and you go to the courthouse and you're
02:21:24.160Ivar all the time, then I'll call you Ivar with straight face. It's about owning it and making
02:21:32.020it a real thing and not just a pretend thing on the weekends. I'm thinking of it and off the top
02:21:40.620of my head, I know two people right now that have done that and announced a true name because that
02:21:49.140the custom way back when have been first of all involved with our faith for decades to where that
02:21:56.260was the culture when they got involved and have maintained it and i respect that i don't even
02:22:02.660consider them by whatever their birth name was like it's odd when i see that in print somewhere
02:22:08.900because they are that to me because they've made their real thing not just a silly thing they do
02:22:14.580let me dress up. Trent, your wife asks, Trent, who is your favorite king and why? She did not
02:22:27.060specify what nation that king might have to be from. Sorry, anybody who knows me knows what
02:22:32.660nation it's going to be. I said Henry V earlier because I was kind of sticking with the Anglo-Norman
02:22:40.420uh angle of the question no pun intended uh from rob earlier but if talking all time it's
02:22:48.680gonna be harold goblinson and uh i i say that because you can kind of read about how when
02:22:56.960edward the confessor as he was passing away he had promised the uh throne to three or four
02:23:03.960different people because he sucked uh one of which was king william the first uh and the other
02:23:12.160was harold godwinson but harold godwinson was there at his deathbed and so edward said well
02:23:18.380you know you're here so you be king and so harold said okay the king said i'm the king so i'm the
02:23:23.340king and uh he uh in his short time on the throne he accomplished a lot he kind of squared away the
02:23:33.440military and put a lot of things back into a good state of being and i know we were talking about oh
02:23:39.740well harold hardrada and harold godwinson and william the conqueror all fought and william came
02:23:45.600out on top and he did he did but it's really really worth noting that it's like that uh that
02:23:53.140theodore roosevelt quote about the man in the arena harold godwinson really really exemplifies
02:23:58.780that for me outside of, you know, people in the AFA that I could think of. Because, you know,
02:24:06.560as soon as his kingdom was threatened, you know, where all of the other nobles had gotten all
02:24:11.480decadent and weak and limp wristed, he did not. He immediately got on a horse, grabbed his sword
02:24:18.160and his, you know, badass Danax, excuse my language. And he took his Huskarls and a bunch
02:24:24.100of fear has been with him and marched north at uh i don't remember the exact distance in time but if
02:24:29.200you look it up it was inhuman how hard he pushed those men and how hard those men were willing to
02:24:34.780go for him to go fight off harold hardrada and yeah since we're just sharing stories and killing
02:24:41.880time here i'm going to share a quote too so when he met harold hardrada uh at the you know right
02:24:48.400before the battle at stamford bridge um i know where you're going yeah it's a good one harold
02:24:54.780godwinson kind of rides up and uh his brother tostig had sided with harold hardrada in this
02:25:00.300uh attempted takeover of england and uh harold was like you know come on man if you drop this
02:25:08.420i'll let you have your lands in northumbria we can just go back to the way it was we can be
02:25:12.840brothers again and uh he said well what about my friend harold hardrada and harold godwinson's
02:25:19.240demeanor changed and he said he can have six feet of english soil or however much it takes to bury
02:25:24.540him because he's a tall fella and wrote off and harold hardrada was like whoa that guy's awesome
02:25:29.500who is that and tossing had to be like oh it's my big brother so and they handily defeated harold
02:25:38.620i respect him a lot too about as much as i do william the conqueror but no harold godwinson
02:25:44.700i think about him i i almost tear up a little he's he's one of my uh historical heroes and yeah
02:25:51.900he lost william but he was fighting on two fronts that's not entirely fair
02:25:58.140he raced all the way up there and then all the way back down to haystings
02:26:02.860catch an arrow in the eye that's uh no he was actually he was uh charged by three different
02:26:12.280knights uh near the end of the battle william's forces kept going up that hill and then you know
02:26:18.380they were feigning retreat and they'd come back down and attack and they had cavalry and the
02:26:22.040saxons didn't for the most part what uh people agree actually happened nowadays is that really
02:26:28.620there was just an opening and William said, Hey, there's Harold, get him.
02:26:33.260And three nights just charged into him and took him out. So not nearly as
02:27:44.320And I know that Trent, you kids these days, as you said, you just look up stuff on Wikipedia and you don't read books, but if you deign to read a book, and I joke, because I did not actually physically purchase the book because I like it, but I listened to it on Audible.
02:28:07.400So I suppose that pokes holes in my argument.
02:28:13.420But by Ian Mortimer, The Perfect King, about Edward III, it was awesome.
02:38:37.700Another was looking at how I idealized myself,
02:38:42.700myself, the guys that were like role models to me, intellectually, and the difference
02:38:49.180between them and myself. So I had all these big, larger than life 80s, action hero role
02:38:55.700models, like Arnold, and it's sad what's become of him, like Stallone, like the Hulk Hogan
02:39:04.040and his people. And I was this like, frail, nothing, sat in my house, not participating
02:39:11.320in life so i went out there a couple of things around this time 2021 when i first got involved
02:39:19.320i started going to the gym i started working out
02:39:24.680doing what i could to get in shape do something with myself i fought at thursday night fights
02:39:33.800on a dare so i could see what that was like to be a man in a fight that taught me a lot
02:39:39.080about myself it was around that time that i started trying to get involved with um with
02:39:45.720bouncing and i picked the roughest place threw myself in there was going to bounce there
02:39:51.000i tried to radically evolve who i was into who i wanted to be and part of that i think was
02:39:58.120embracing a little bit of that that biking mentality a little bit but i don't think it
02:40:04.040ever got silly but again like a lot of young people i was headstrong i remember one of my
02:40:08.200first afa interactions was on whatever message board or email group or whatever we were doing
02:40:15.720i got in an argument with sheila mcnalen about something stupid i think it was about a charles
02:40:23.880linbergh quote and again i got all out of my place and like i'm gonna argue with sheila about
02:40:31.560something and it was really stupid and i'm glad that uh glad that she either doesn't remember
02:40:38.360that or didn't hold it against me um but yeah i don't i i never really got into the dress up
02:40:46.040thing or the viking lark thing hard that was never really something that i did
02:40:52.200in reality whereas i think mentally i probably placed more prominence on that than i should have
02:41:01.560I, uh, before you start the next question, I guess I had a really similar experience getting right out of high school and yeah, I joined the army rather than going and fighting at a local thing, I guess. We didn't really have that in 2015 anymore, but yeah, real similar situation.
02:41:18.460All right. So the next question I'm kind of confused by from Bronlock. Why do we not
02:41:38.700explore the genetic side of things anymore trip why don't we explore the genetic side of things
02:41:48.220anymore uh i don't know what you mean by we but i can take a stab at why uh because
02:41:55.180well you know uh the afa is pan-arian of course and we are pan-arian because all white people
02:42:03.280are white people and so for a lot of us that's good enough and i'm fine with that i get why
02:42:09.820they feel that way it is good enough but uh who's they yeah they or we i don't know but
02:42:17.420um that's just my guess that what you're talking about is you know nobody i guess some people
02:42:24.860don't talk enough about genetics for your liking i don't know uh i could talk about genetics all
02:42:32.880day every day as long as it's northwestern and northeastern maybe european why don't you stick
02:42:40.160with him like a certain space at least uh so yeah i don't i don't quite understand the question but
02:42:46.480i hope that helps answer it so seeing a little bit of um this is a brown lock um
02:42:56.480seeing a little bit of what you've posted in the chat room i'm under the impression
02:43:02.880that you're not an AFA member and that you're kind of new or new to the audience or certainly
02:43:11.520the first time I've seen you here so I'm not sure where you're coming from with the question I don't
02:43:17.280say that with any other intent then I'm trying to I'm trying to answer what I think you're asking
02:43:25.440because we do um in the AFA we got a whole group to genealogy and a whole lot of people
02:43:33.840you know run their genetics on the different companies that do that and chart ancestry and
02:43:39.840we've got a lot of people that are really into that so i don't think it's something that we don't do
02:43:48.640i have to interpret it like trent did so that's how i'm going to kind of answer it and if there's
02:43:54.640more questions i'm happy to clarify um if i don't get to it or get to what you're asking
02:44:02.880there is a tendency of reductionism when you start getting into that and some people have a
02:44:14.880need to break our folk down into smaller and smaller and smaller groups of commonality
02:44:23.700and there's a point where you have to recognize us and not us when that point starts to become
02:44:34.380smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller it makes all of us less and less and less and less
02:44:42.300relevant so the afa makes that as broad as is reasonable while recognizing
02:44:53.660difference so if there's cultural community differences in parts of the country
02:45:02.220in certainly in different countries around the world that's beautiful that's awesome
02:45:08.460but there's a difference between white people and not white people
02:45:12.300and that's kind of where we keep it to um we are Pan-Aryan in that way because we recognize the
02:45:22.740broad commonality that that is and the more specific to small pockets
02:45:33.840while it's cool and we certainly do respect that we are all part of a folk a common racial
02:45:42.120group of people that has that point of commonality and religiously our gods all are the same gods
02:45:50.660from that root the further out you get we develop difference in names and stories
02:45:59.100but that root has to be the same by any fair um logical extension these are the gods that
02:46:08.200created our people and have been with them since the beginning the linguistics bear that out
02:46:16.920so to be to be if we i say if we since we know that our gods are real and exist
02:46:29.320then we have to track them realistically historically
02:46:34.680and that doesn't mean that every time we change language or location a new batch of gods is
02:46:42.660is spawned that's not logical and it doesn't make sense the gods of our folk have been the gods of
02:46:50.000our folk since our folk existed we may know them by different names we may know different stories
02:46:58.380to help us relate to them depending on where we developed or were isolated into or a particular
02:47:06.940relationship that our ancestors built with the gods due to their circumstance or their time
02:47:13.980but the gods themselves haven't changed our understanding of them has evolved in different
02:47:19.660ways in different places i hope that addresses what you're asking and if not like i said i'm
03:04:52.140And honestly, it's just fun to get out there with your folk, to dance around the pole, to weave in and out with the ribbons, to see the ritual that you're all engaged in, making a really cool pattern in this woven ribbon around the maypole.
03:07:56.300if you're interrupted during a gift exchange
03:07:58.660with Roman gods, do you have an emergency? Do you try to come back and finish what you started?
03:08:04.340It feels bad to leave during a ritual. Trent, what are your thoughts on this?
03:08:10.180I would certainly intend to come back and finish what I started. I would love to be
03:08:15.060able to say that I would definitely do that. But, you know, I mean, depending on what the emergency
03:08:22.740is i can't say for certain um i think it's the right thing to do is come back and finish
03:08:30.980but at the same time i think the ice here you know they see that you're having some kind of
03:08:36.900emergency and uh i'm also pretty certain they would forgive you for having to leave in the
03:08:44.180middle of the blow to take someone to the hospital or whatever the case may be
03:08:49.380and the ulterior gothi is gone so i'm gonna move on to the next question while he does whatever
03:08:57.740he's doing uh favorite film about english or anglo-saxon history
03:09:02.560there aren't really any good ones about anglo-saxon history as far as english history
03:09:13.020my favorite film is the one i mentioned earlier with probable homosexual timothy
03:09:19.000Chalamet. Timothy Chalamet, if you're watching this, I want to arm wrestle you. You did not
03:09:25.540deserve to play Henry V. The King on Netflix, that's a great movie. I joke, but he did a really
03:09:33.040good job. He portrays really well the character of Henry V in that Henry was seen as always
03:09:44.700pious, devout, and devoted. You know, he was pious and devout to a foreign desert death cult
03:09:54.060god rather than his own, but piety at its core is something to be respected, I think.
03:10:01.180It showed his willingness to fight when necessary, his willingness to find, you know, peace when
03:10:10.020necessary and also uh a kind of a very germanic kind of ruthlessness that uh was really shocking
03:10:19.140to the rest of the western world at the time there's a it was after the battle of azincourt
03:10:25.420which uh he won due to some just brilliance on his part with the terrain and uh essentially they
03:10:34.920They had captured all of these French nobles afterwards, and they were not sure if they were going to be able to keep moving wherever they needed to get to after that at a decent time without losing luggage and things like that.
03:10:53.000And so a choice had to be made to either let them all go or to execute them, and King Henry made the choice to execute them.
03:10:59.880And a lot of people got upset about that because it was the opposite of chivalry, but I don't know.
03:22:16.900um so I'm trying to look for a word here because I don't count Loki amongst the
03:22:23.920gods he's certainly not my seer the Yotnar are not gods but they are
03:22:32.740big spiritual forces for lack of a better term and I think to negate
03:22:40.540their efficacy or their power we do in our own peril and our own ignorance but also i think
03:22:50.860we're trapped in a system to where we look at things as jehovah or satan and then our
03:22:59.460equivalencies to both and our also true is not that even though we've been conditioned by that
03:23:09.180as have our ancestors for centuries that's not quite how it works
03:23:18.300every good thing in your life isn't because odin willed it to be so
03:23:26.460every bad thing you do isn't because loki whispered in your ear and tricked you
03:23:33.420that said some good things that befall you in your life are gifts from the alpha
03:23:45.420and sometimes when you feel compelled to do things you shouldn't do
03:23:51.100maybe that's loki whispering in your ear to do things you ought not
03:23:56.940And that's the challenge of our faith, is we have to approach it as noble people to where there's black, there's white, and then there's a lot of shades of gray in between.
03:24:11.480Some people make the mistake of saying there's no duality in Ausitru, and that's not true.
03:24:18.220There's duality and then everything in between.
03:24:22.060um one of the things that plays in Loki's favor is the default is chaos the default
03:24:33.040is entropy and the tendency towards chaos and destruction
03:24:39.640it is a conscious effort to outrun and outpace that every single day that we build our success
03:24:54.380upon it's one of the meanings that this is called victory never sleeps
03:25:00.060we have to outrun the entropy that is chaos
03:25:04.520loki doesn't have to do things to win the default trends in his favor
03:25:14.060we have to actively do things to defeat him if that makes sense
03:25:20.360so that's an interesting way to look at it
03:25:27.020chaos takes hold in the world in many ways some of that may be the will or the activism
03:25:34.700of loki some of that is the degraded nature of how things work
03:25:44.060if you look at the isir what they found was chaos
03:25:48.220chaos they broke down chaos stole ymir broke him up in his parts and used his parts to create order
03:26:04.300it is our lot as arian folk and the icers lot as the gods of arian consciousness to shape order
03:26:13.480from chaos it's not loki's challenge to extract chaos from order if that makes sense so the weight
03:26:24.040is on us to always win to always build to always do our best because doing nothing or waiting for
03:26:35.720someone else to do it works in loki and surter and the forces of chaos it works in their favor
03:26:46.120so the obligation of vigilance is on us and not on them if that makes sense and i hope it does
03:26:55.720uh before we move on uh in the live chat uh there was some kind of discussion on whether loki was
03:27:03.400evil or just misunderstood so i'd like to make it clear and you can correct me or not sir of course
03:27:09.960uh yeah loki is evil he caused the death of balder and then made sure that balder stayed in hell
03:27:20.040when uh all mother frigga was working to meet uh hell's requirements to have balder brought back
03:27:29.800so and he leads a host against the icer at ragnarok he is evil he is a bad guy i you know
03:27:40.440i know we there's this thing in aussitrew where we say uh you know oh there's no black and white
03:27:45.800it's everything is or that's how i was taught about aussitrew initially and that's that's just
03:27:51.560not true there are lots of gray areas there are lots of false dichotomies in life loki uh loki's
03:27:58.040a pretty easy pretty easy one to nail down he's evil so um
03:28:09.400all right so uh hammer first uh chris lucott donated 115 to vns thank you chris we appreciate
03:28:18.360a lot um also kevin t bought us three coffees love the afa and everything you guys stand for
03:28:29.000hail appreciate that kevin i really hope you're a member um if you're not you should consider
03:28:35.160joining us but i really appreciate your donation that's awesome um hammer advisor we'll answer your
03:28:42.920question next because you say you gotta go and you're a bit of a celebrity so we'll go ahead
03:28:48.280and hit that here in a second um as to loki being evil or not loki's absolutely okay so
03:29:00.760i think we go into a little bit of what that means to you not to be too um
03:29:12.920esoteric with it, but at some point it doesn't matter. So here's the thing with Ausatru.
03:29:21.740A lot of people try to translate Ausatru as belief in the Aesir.
03:29:29.160It means that but sort of. It means that in modern Icelandic. But if you trace the roots
03:29:36.620of those words, true to the Aesir. True means true. We know what that means. It comes into
03:29:43.320English as true. It even sounds the same. Even if it doesn't have the funny little dash
03:29:48.680above the U. It means loyalty. It means in troth with. We are loyal to the Aesir. Odin
03:51:13.020And, you know, any major historical battle, the Battle of Azencourt that I talked about earlier, you know, I can't remember the guy's actual name in Shakespeare's play.
03:51:24.980His name was Flagstaff, but he volunteered to be one of the guys in full plate armor on the ground during the whole terrain situation I mentioned that were essentially sacrificing themselves to the French cavalry so that later the more lightly armored infantry from the English side could come in and wipe out the French cavalry that would be stuck in the mud.
03:51:53.700So that guy, for an example, to kind of call back to that time.
03:51:59.400Another one that's cool, George Washington, a man of Anglo-Saxon descent, at least partially, keeping with tonight's theme.
03:52:09.880There was a battle, I don't remember which one it was, but during the Revolutionary War, where he needed to rally the American troops.
03:52:18.320And so what he did was, despite all the clear and present danger in the situation, he rode in front of his troops and in front of the British troops on his horse, you know, yelling a rally cry.
03:52:30.360And I would compare that to being the last man standing on Stamford Bridge like that.
03:52:47.000uh and sadly yeah not a lot of the names of those heroic people are remembered
03:52:53.160and that's part of why it's important remember heroes and ancestors so the question
03:53:02.760the question traps itself in its own verbiage
03:53:06.360um are there any other notable heroic acts from regular men that are comparable no if you do an
03:53:19.080act that is comparable to the hero stamford bridge you are not a regular man you are a hero
03:53:27.080and so the question defeats itself you can't have regular people don't do that and this is
03:53:36.360but this is important this isn't just semantics we believe in ascension that's part of our days
03:53:48.760of remembrance we celebrate people who have ascended their condition and become more
03:53:56.540One of the most profound ways to do that is on, is in battle, because the lines are so stark. It's life or death in the balance in one moment.
03:54:15.460And that's the clearest, you know, most obvious display of heroism.
03:54:21.420if you are a regular dude that does that you are no longer a regular dude
03:54:41.820in the legend in the story that we have about Stanford Bridge
03:54:51.420We have no reason to believe that that person is a Jarl or a hero or a champion before that point.
03:55:02.280You have no reason to think that that's not any regular member of Harold's army that happened to be on that bridge and decide that now's his time.
03:55:19.840Well, perhaps we'll never know. But that's not the story of a king or anybody of note. Just to say this, if it was, we would know the guy's name. There's no reason to think it wasn't a regular soldier that just, no, I'm going to hold this bridge as long as I can.
03:55:41.840um and there's a lot of examples of that and there's examples up to this very day but you
03:55:49.880see them less and less but I think there are countless um Medal of Honor recipients
03:55:59.000recipients, Iron Cross recipients. There are men of our folk who have received their
03:56:14.000people's highest honor for battlefield bravery. Most of them aren't nobles or celebrities
03:56:24.600or didn't go into the fray as you know elevated beyond their fellow man next to them but emerged
03:56:36.180something much much more and I think there's a lot of examples of that in history
03:56:45.660um and there's examples of that to this very day uh I think it's harder to find the more obscure
03:56:52.180the versions of that that aren't displayed on the battlefield
05:18:13.960One of the most damaging things I've seen specifically to our veterans is them coming back from combat, having to take lives for their country, and then having this flagellation of trying to deal with the guilt of doing things that in any other time and place,
05:18:43.220we would celebrate them as heroes that mental gymnastics i think has damaged a lot of our
05:18:52.020people that have seen combat and have come back very very broken because i think in large part our
05:18:59.860cultural context that it's put in i don't advocate that we be murderous or violent
05:19:16.180or unnecessarily disregard the consequence of taking human life of course not but
05:19:23.940But we're in a day and age where things happen and where once the warrior was celebrated
05:19:32.940and honored for difficult things they had to do that involved undertaking the lives
05:19:39.620of enemies, now they are almost encouraged to live in shame with that for their existence.
05:19:51.100And I've seen a whole lot of unhealthy manifestations of that.
05:19:58.800I don't think that's fair-minded of Christian parents to teach their children,
05:20:05.420because we've never seen that in the history of Christianity.
05:20:09.460If you read your Bible, it is full of death and battle and conflict.
05:20:18.020If you look at any stage in Christianity outside of maybe the lives of the apostles, death and violence and life-taking was a reality in the ancient world in harsh times and harsh situations.
05:20:39.860and that's seen today and it creates a really unhealthy paradigm for our soldiers who go out
05:20:49.700and have to fight and it's really easy i think for the majority of people in the united states
05:20:57.780right now because we happen to be in a window of peace but that's been the anomaly in the
05:21:05.620history of our folk not the norm and i think if you look at a different time in a different place
05:21:13.380you have a lot of russian and ukrainian christians right now that are well acquainted with taking
05:21:20.740lives that have to go through that same very odd gymnastics that i think is probably
05:21:28.820put in a very different context where they live. I think it's a,
05:21:35.380I don't know, a benefit we take for granted in the very civilized situation that we live in.
05:21:47.180And it's not something that we should embed in the hearts of our people.
05:21:53.320Yeah, that's a, it's complex, but I think it's one of those opinions that other people
05:22:07.620who have gone out there and been willing to take lives have created a situation where
05:22:14.700other people can philosophize about pacifism,
05:22:19.720but from the safety of their air conditioned homes
05:22:24.500in a peaceful place where they have all the things