Asatru Folk Assembly - 6⧸14⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 49 - Hofs and Sacred Spaces

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00:02:30.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:03:00.000 hello everyone and welcome back it's hard to believe it's been an entire week since

00:03:17.200 the last time we talked seems like it was uh just the other day

00:03:21.280 been an eventful week uh as far as updates and things just so everybody knows if you are

00:03:31.620 capable of doing it time is short but friday saturday and then part of the day on sunday we

00:03:38.000 are hosting the annual midsummer at odenshoff that's going on in brownsville california at

00:03:45.080 Odenshof. If you are in the area, or if you can make it so you are in the area, we would love to

00:03:51.560 see you there. Please make sure you check in with your local folk builder. Any of our folk builders

00:03:56.020 are capable of getting y'all set up. If that's something you'd like to do, and I'd love to see

00:04:00.340 you guys out there. We'd also love to show off Odenshof. I suppose it's fitting that we're

00:04:06.320 doing an episode on Hoffs and sacred spaces tonight, but we're all really proud of Odenshof.

00:04:12.340 we've put in almost eight years of ritual and of sanctification of that place and it's a really

00:04:22.600 special place so hopefully you guys get a chance to come out and see it if not now it's not going

00:04:27.640 anywhere so you always got an opportunity um we've got excellent so we got a guy over on the

00:04:38.080 side. Vril Vanir, I'm really excited to make the association with you as a real life flesh and

00:04:44.820 blood person here this weekend. Sounds like he'll be out at Odin's Hoth. That's great to hear.

00:04:52.560 Yeah, so we have Witten Svahn on tonight to talk Hoth's and sacred spaces. And this goes for

00:05:01.860 modern as well as ancient, and I suppose as well as speculating about the future.

00:05:08.080 So. Not sure how we're going to how we're going to take this or where we're going to going to start on this, Svon, but if somebody was coming from a completely different background and had never heard about Ausatru, either historically or modern.

00:05:24.540 what would you tell them about our concept of sacred space about what we use historically and

00:05:34.700 modern as places of worship and i guess we can go from there okay yeah i'll flip that though

00:05:40.980 because the concept i think first you know when you meet somebody that's coming in you want to

00:05:45.460 give them that kind of hard basis uh there's so much information out there it's a millstrom of

00:05:50.080 uh terms and ideas and concepts and a lot of them are coming from people again who

00:05:55.900 haven't even um uh constructed or created a sacred space in like a tangible time frame

00:06:04.700 or in a tangible space they haven't done it and so they're they're still in the conceptualization

00:06:10.120 phase when you meet a lot of people on the on the internet but we have transcended that

00:06:14.700 threshold numerous times now. And so it's, we have historical and modern. So I would say first

00:06:21.840 and foremost, you know, historical stuff is important and we acknowledge it and hold true

00:06:30.160 to it as much as we can. But there are slight variations or just kind of deviations from what

00:06:36.960 it may have been in the past to what it is now. In some ways, it's a way to preserve language.

00:06:43.220 We're not necessarily presenting the same thing, but instead of using perhaps maybe a Latinized version of a word, we're opting with a more Germanic or Teutonic-based word.

00:06:57.260 And we do that quite often, mainly because I think it's important for people to understand that we are Teutonic Aryans, and so we want to use Teutonic language first.

00:07:08.120 However, ever since the Normans in England, our language has introduced a lot of Latin and that's not bad, but when there's a lend towards the historical, we do that.

00:07:21.460 But that doesn't always equate to the same thing in history.

00:07:24.820 We're just using the historical word in a modern context.

00:07:29.040 And so I think a lot of people that don't are unable to breach that are either dishonest with themselves or maybe perhaps dishonest with other people around them, or they're dead set on making the equivalency, but then they're caught in the time that they're trying to reenact or reconstruct, if you will, for more positive view on that.

00:07:50.960 But the biggest thing I would say is modern and here now, if you're in Ausatru and you're in the AFA, the biggest thing to understand is that we have, we have Hoffs.

00:08:04.820 So a Hoff is a temple or a church.

00:08:08.940 Oftentimes it's a, it's a building dedicated.

00:08:11.300 And for a long time, I, as a matter of fact, I was, I was reading this book in preparation for the week.

00:08:18.960 And in this book, they still speculated that there were no actual official houses of worship or houses of religious ceremonial usage in our Nordic ancestors or even down into Germany, because this book does go all the way into that.

00:08:40.780 Um, and that's, has been debunked. That is, they, they have physically found excavation sites now

00:08:48.840 with pillars, with gifts, with, uh, you know, actual structures and foundations built with

00:08:55.240 no other purpose. There, there was no granary, there was no tanning, there was no wood carving.

00:09:00.620 It was a religious structure and it had pillar spots. Uh, the pillars were gone,

00:09:05.600 but the foundational rocks and stones that held those pillars um so on a general sense when we

00:09:12.960 speak to other americans are you know our fellow americans don't understand our culture

00:09:18.480 uh and we have our own culture and so when we uh when we say to other americans about it we

00:09:23.840 oftentimes just use the word church because it's easy um you know churches have kind of um

00:09:29.520 um, you know, some of them, you have grand cathedrals and, um, and, and, and, you know,

00:09:35.000 the architecture and all of that stuff, that, that European aptitude for, for, um, architecture is

00:09:40.240 beautiful. So I think a lot of people, a lot of Christians that are engaging us think that we

00:09:45.360 don't like that, or we're in some sort of mindset that that's terrible. That's not the case,

00:09:49.860 but most of the time, you know, religious spaces for Christians have changed, evolved to the times.

00:09:56.940 And so as a lot of the faith amongst them starts to wane, especially in areas, we have come in and bought places, whether it was a meeting hall or an actual physical church, and we change it to our purpose.

00:10:14.300 much like the gods changed emir and shaped emir to their purposes um we have done the same and so

00:10:21.900 i think that on a general sense we talk to people church but that's to people outside of the

00:10:28.780 community inside the inner guard everyone knows that's a hof a hof is a is a um a sacred building

00:10:37.420 it it really just means house but over time nordic words have changed to mean specifically

00:10:45.340 connected to things like an elevation like if there was a woman named you know a frau

00:10:51.020 a frawa she that was a woman but a through was specifically a woman connected to station 1.00

00:10:57.900 she was like a queen or a you know a landowner's wife hof is the same way people wouldn't call

00:11:04.300 their houses hoffs they knew that that word meant a very special place and so those buildings are now

00:11:14.140 what we call hoffs because we open them and dedicate them and bless and and do land taking

00:11:19.820 which is a threshold ceremony uh you preside over taking the the the the hoffs so under the 0.56

00:11:27.580 he comes and he takes the land in responsibility of the afa and we move forward from there

00:11:36.380 much in that sense that it's now no longer an outer guard thing it is extremely an inner guard

00:11:41.180 thing and so when we refer to the hof we are referring to the area and the building proper

00:11:48.060 um when we talk about getting into sacred space inside and outside that's where things get really

00:11:55.820 interesting um so for the most part we would i you know i would think that it would be best to

00:12:03.580 look at as like the inner sanctuary is called the ve or the vase stead um those two have been kind

00:12:10.220 of used interchangeably but ve um ve with a dash over the e is a sacred space the body or the

00:12:18.620 internal encapsulation of the soul like the vey stead of the body is the soul so the vey um of

00:12:26.220 the hof is the soul of the hof um this wasn't always the case though veys were also applied to

00:12:32.300 places outside you know and things like that and they had lots of other words

00:12:36.860 but we have correlated those two and then outside of the hof there may be a sacred circle

00:12:46.220 or a sacred space um oftentimes it has a stone there and that place is also considered of a it's

00:12:54.540 a sacred place you don't go in there you don't leave your trash inside the uh the the sacred

00:13:00.380 spot you don't um you know dispose of any trash or cigarettes within a a sacred fire in the center

00:13:07.740 of that bay space so it can apply to both outside and in and sometimes both at a at a hoth and

00:13:15.260 And what ultimately comes down to is the key component in every way is the place in which we conduct our ceremonies.

00:13:25.340 And we have items that are connected to our culture in the way that we connect to the gods.

00:13:34.340 So what we we use an Anglo-Saxon word.

00:13:39.780 And I was actually looking up for the equivalent in Old Norse, and I'm getting to that.

00:13:43.880 But the harrow is generally seen as the table in which all of the implements of ceremony are kept, often just referred to in a Latin sense as the altar.

00:13:58.860 and then there is the harg the harg is usually outside and it's a stone a natural stone a

00:14:06.780 collection of stones that is converted into kind of a table space but it's made of stone and to

00:14:13.340 withstand the outside elements so we have the hof the vey wherever we gather and there we have the

00:14:22.220 harrow if it's indoors and we have the harger or the harg outdoors uh and that's where we conduct

00:14:29.980 most of our sacred stuff in the modern day um we'll go into some history because i got a lot

00:14:39.660 of that but it's you know there's so much speculation about the way that our sacred

00:14:44.780 spaces but just uh for people that might be familiar there's there is uh the sacred groves

00:14:51.660 that were mentioned by tacitus the sacred um marshlands there was also the uh sacred oak of

00:14:58.700 the saxons that is mentioned in all of these places would be seen as um a sacred vey whether

00:15:05.500 they were a grove specifically or a cleared out place is is uh that's the part that's debatable

00:15:10.860 because most likely they weren't allowed people that chron a lot uh wrote all this stuff down

00:15:16.220 like uh they probably were not allowed to go into these places um they may have seen them from a

00:15:23.340 distance um but over time it has evolved even in iceland where a lot uh after that transference and

00:15:31.840 much of the sagas talk about the temples the temples are uh generally made from you know sod

00:15:37.440 and stone about halfway and then they have a gabled roof much like a regular house um and that's

00:15:43.580 because of implements and, um, uh, uh, resources. And then also to like the Swedes, they were known

00:15:51.960 to worship amongst the rocks of their ancestors. And I think a lot of people don't realize that.

00:15:57.260 And you really kind of, when you, you have been there, um, really focused that into me was like,

00:16:02.860 remember the, the Viking age Swedes, the Svear were worshiping amongst the bronze age Svear

00:16:09.260 stones and that's amazing um so groves stones places like that historically could be activated

00:16:21.180 used culturally yeah something to think about um a lot of those and certainly in the most

00:16:28.780 primitive times and also when other things weren't available a lot of natural elements were were

00:16:36.220 sacred in places of worship uh spawn mentioned several of them but also they were sacred islands

00:16:42.780 um sometimes seen as like a like and we'll talk about this in a little bit but the idea of

00:16:50.300 separateness of sacred space existing outside of the mundane the island is a really

00:17:00.380 visually it conveys the idea very visually that it's something set apart

00:17:04.380 and isolated from the other um but yeah i was thinking there was

00:17:11.580 oh i was also uh like uh sacred marshes was a thing marsh space depending um yeah

00:17:20.540 a lot of nature spaces yes and like rocks and mountains a lot of the time and we've mentioned

00:17:26.380 it before it's not because the place is a spiritual person but it is perhaps because that place

00:17:36.860 is home to or is special to spirits spiritual personages when we talk about you know a tree

00:17:44.940 or a rock being sacred it's not because the rock is a person it's because the rock serves as a

00:17:51.660 serves as a home serves as a as a locus for a spirit for a land spirit an ancestor

00:18:00.060 rivers often a river goddess so finding those unique nature spots was certainly you know one

00:18:07.900 of the one of the very roots of sacred spaces to our ancestors well and and speaking on on that as

00:18:14.220 well when when they saw the island when they saw the river when they saw the stone or the mountain

00:18:18.540 And a lot of the times what they did is they equated the gods and the divine powers, whether it's the land spirits or the holy divines, that they shaped the land to make sacred, that they created the river or separated the island to be.

00:18:37.340 So in a way, the structuring, the creation, the manifesting of space has been all the way back to the beginning with Odinvillian Bay shaping Ymir, this theme of the creation of sacred space so that when humans come across this, we see an island.

00:18:56.100 But it's clear in historical references that it's, no, this was separated by the gods for us.

00:19:04.360 This is even in the story in the Guilfaginning, when we talk about King Gelfi,

00:19:10.140 and he goes and sees the lands that are drug away from Norway and Sweden to create the Zeeland Islands,

00:19:18.560 that comes from the direct intervention of a goddess as she pulled the land.

00:19:23.740 So the idea I think that a lot of people get where the land is some sort of stasis thing that contains magic or divine elements in it and should not be altered or should not be cultivated or even aligned for better usage, the gods have done it numerous times.

00:19:47.860 So and so I think that our ancestors really did see is like, no, this was pulled away, made sacred by the gods.

00:19:55.360 And that the reason why they may have done this is so that we could commune with them better there.

00:19:59.980 And I think that that that's the coming of the divine to man at those holy spots, you know, where they were they there.

00:20:11.860 They are enacting a will upon the sacred space just as much as the humans are.

00:20:17.580 so i think that's important to get away from the kind of the idea that like everything is

00:20:22.540 you know um if you're cutting down something it's an extreme affront to a individual thing that is

00:20:29.100 in that tree i don't think that's the way our ancestors really saw that or they wouldn't make

00:20:33.420 boats and shields and and and manifest their will upon the world i think the gods they saw the world

00:20:40.700 as a sacred place but there's hierarchy to that sacredness if the gods touch a place

00:20:47.740 that place is sacred but not all the world is equivalent to that sacred place

00:20:54.540 no and i think you know as far as looking at nature in that hierarchy

00:21:00.460 it was very different um versus the inner yard versus the outer yard and these oases of special

00:21:12.600 order amongst chaos there's a big difference in our ancestors dealing with you know peaceful

00:21:21.820 grazing areas that are beneficial for them versus untamed wilderness that's scary that's dangerous

00:21:28.380 that's foreboding and nature took on many different faces depending on the circumstance

00:21:34.800 but one of the things often with these sacred spaces is something's abnormal in completely

00:21:42.560 seemingly random chaos there will be an oasis of order why is this perfect circular grove here with

00:21:49.600 a rock you know with a particularly table-like rock and just kind of the right spot or you know

00:21:56.940 man, all of these trees circling around this area make it look like a high timbered building.

00:22:04.120 You'll even see that today in a little bit more mundane version of it, but only sort of. They

00:22:08.540 perform weddings there and anything else. There's something called like the Cathedral of Trees or

00:22:14.740 something in the Redwood Forest, where it's this, I think it's actually started from one tree

00:22:22.880 initially that spread off into a number of them around a central almost built-in amphitheater

00:22:30.040 and made these pillars of these beautiful pillars of trees around it and when our ancestors

00:22:35.440 encountered something like that no that's that's something special we've we've rolled the dice we've

00:22:40.160 seen all the random formations of stuff this looks purposeful there must be some divine purpose to it

00:22:45.980 right i think that order is known seen exemplified in the gods and then we know that so yeah that

00:22:53.740 i think that's another we were somebody was talking about how do you how can you say the

00:22:57.580 gods are just of order it's like but that's that's how you see that order you see it in their in

00:23:03.420 their machinations so i think and i think that's an interesting point too um we talk a lot about

00:23:10.780 ordering chaos it's a theme that we come back to time and again and or there is

00:23:22.940 okay in your head when you're juxtaposing order to chaos it's very easy to see

00:23:29.340 chaos as like gibbering insanity whereas order is something very structured very proper

00:23:35.660 inherently righteous in some way but on a more base fundamental level order implies action by

00:23:44.480 will chaos is willy-nilly chaos doesn't have to be evil it can be good it can be bad it can be

00:23:53.000 both it's it's completely unfiltered order is filtered by willpower be it negative positive

00:24:02.600 anything else it's the act of a will doing something so when our ancestors saw order in

00:24:11.160 in nature it wasn't an issue of happenstance it reflected there was something or someone

00:24:19.480 that had a design for this that had a put this into place due to their will we look at order as

00:24:26.200 good and bad or order versus chaos as good versus bad and i think that's right and we're going to

00:24:31.960 keep doing it but on a more fundamental level there's it's consciousness and will versus

00:24:39.080 unconsciousness and randomness right or drawing down and dissipation

00:24:46.040 all right well so we've got some questions stacking up and it's such a uh

00:24:52.040 such a broad topic that i'm sure we'll have different stuff and i know spawn's got material

00:24:57.240 that he'd like to do that throughout yeah that's what i was gonna say just feel free to inject that

00:25:02.360 in i didn't do my normal deal and nick threw up the thing so please like and share and subscribe

00:25:08.600 to these things whatever platform you find this on um we're up on fridays on spotify if you consume

00:25:16.680 this as a podcast if you're looking at it on um youtube we're live right now as well as twitter

00:25:22.600 uh vk odyssey entropy um so yeah please like share it helps algorithms it it helps us get

00:25:33.760 more folks the opportunity to see this and please share the old-fashioned way if you like these if

00:25:39.220 you like what we're doing if you know i i think that we probably have an audience that's religious

00:25:44.980 and also true but we probably have an audience that just finds it interesting too and we welcome

00:25:50.200 You know, everybody with good intentions, we're welcome to come check it out.

00:25:55.720 Yeah, go ahead.

00:25:56.680 I was going to say on Twitter, there was a gentleman that was like, he was counting the idea that we need to start from these kind of small localized grassroots movements of, you know, tribal inclinations or community inclinations.

00:26:12.360 And then we need to move up into an evolved sense of locality and places to worship and organize.

00:26:20.200 and then and i was just like we're doing it you should check us out so you never know when when

00:26:26.040 uh there's somebody out there that's looking for the things we're we're already engaging in i'm all

00:26:31.640 i'm always baffled and this is this is a good problem to have my life is so involved with the

00:26:38.600 afa and it has been for so long it's it's hard for me to wrap my head around people that

00:26:44.920 that are also true, but don't know that the AFA exists, or if they do, they don't know the things

00:26:51.760 that we've been up to. It's been, you know, 100% of my life, and sometimes I forget that that's not

00:26:57.080 the case for everybody else. There's a lot of folks that we need to bring home that want to

00:27:02.120 and should be here, but just don't know it's an option. I really wish growing up that I knew it

00:27:08.120 was an option um so and if you don't know a lot about also true that's the beauty of of like a

00:27:15.160 folk builder or a gothar that you can get into contact with and just say hey talk to this guy

00:27:20.320 you don't have to be the face of also true if you um feel uncomfortable uh getting into those

00:27:27.120 conversations um and i think that one other thing is that we we talk about you know christians and

00:27:34.360 what we do and what they do and all that stuff but i think uh when we talk about prosely prosely

00:27:40.520 proselytization it's coming out terrible um you know spreading the good word if you will

00:27:47.880 uh one of the big things that i think that people need to realize is that we are more or less just

00:27:54.040 holding a light out for people that are that the gods are are are willfully leading in directions

00:28:01.240 and if there's no light there's no beacon they'll never know um but we're trying to bring people

00:28:07.320 home but it's not under the caveat of like uh saving souls it's not under the caveat of that

00:28:14.760 the gods are going to punish uh the cycles of of the soul are within their own and the gods i have

00:28:20.920 their their divine purpose for us but it's not under this uh you know sense that i think that

00:28:28.760 a lot of people lose sight of talking about your religion or at least you know clarifying things

00:28:35.640 they're like i won't do it just because it's so much like the the proselytizing christians and

00:28:41.160 and that there's a distinct difference we're not holding anything over anyone's head

00:28:45.640 we're just simply keeping the light on and if they come our way and they realize and they come home

00:28:51.480 yeah it's much it's about sharing information more than it's about manipulation or about you

00:29:00.080 know threatening i i remember this one tract that some christians left at my door one time

00:29:05.820 and it was a step-by-step explanation of the jesus protection racket um because it's like point one

00:29:19.520 everyone sins point two the payment for sin is death but point but wait if you accept jesus

00:29:30.800 then we'll we'll spot you for the rest and you don't have to die because he died for everybody

00:29:36.300 but it was just funny it's like

00:29:39.100 god creates the concept he creates an imperfect person then he creates the consequence for him

00:29:47.120 imperfection, but then he creates the solution. If you, if you know, we won't come bust up your

00:29:54.800 store if you pay us for protection. And it was just kind of an interesting thing. That's not

00:29:59.680 what we're doing at all. Like I said, when I first discovered this and a lot of people,

00:30:04.280 I think a lot of people still, but certainly a lot of people, you know, I found, I found

00:30:10.240 to Osa True. I came home to Osa True in 2001, 2002, thereabouts. And at that time, a lot of us,

00:30:20.080 we didn't know it existed or was an option. I wonder how many people didn't fully pursue it

00:30:27.600 when it occurred to them because it seemed like crazy talk or like they're the only people that

00:30:32.000 were doing it. And I wonder how many of those people would have been strengthened if they knew

00:30:36.100 that other people were doing it and it was an option so you're not being a jerk to go out and

00:30:41.300 invite somebody to check the hoff out if they seem like somebody who's interested or you see

00:30:45.620 people wearing um norse themed clothing or with north themed tattoos or you know whatever the

00:30:54.100 case might be but to let them know that it's a thing and hey if you want to know more i'd love

00:30:59.860 love to help uh if you're ever curious please ask and that's not invasive or intrusive yeah and i

00:31:06.940 think the other thing too that a lot of people uh get around is the um society wise here in

00:31:12.960 in america they consider the fact that we consider our faith to be ethnic as bad this doesn't apply

00:31:19.920 to anyone else but it clearly applies to us and this i i was reading and researching and i even

00:31:27.280 saw like a section in wikipedia that stated like also true and modern uh or norse paganism as they

00:31:36.880 called it is an ethnic religion and i was like wow but it's just shuffled in the deck but if you ever

00:31:43.360 get into the idea and you never know who you're gonna run into you meet somebody that's wearing

00:31:46.880 a thor's hammer or wearing um you know uh or having tattoos or shirts and things like that

00:31:54.640 um the understanding of of telling them like no this is an ethnic faith and if you want to

00:32:00.960 practice the the faith of the gods of your people you're more than welcome but if that language kind

00:32:06.720 of throws them off or they they you know immediately kind of cringe and try to they

00:32:14.160 have that visceral kind of um i guess you know like hardware that's been popped in there um

00:32:20.480 then you just know, Hey, nevermind. You know, that's, it's good. Good for you. Like, you know,

00:32:28.020 just maybe, you know, maybe you'll come around one day and that'll be different. Cause I know

00:32:33.140 a lot of, that's another thing is a lot of times people do come around. I came around,

00:32:37.540 I was pretty much neutral about a lot of things and was kind of taking in the landscape because

00:32:43.780 had been a solitary practitioner for years i mean almost a decade uh and was practicing in the

00:32:51.940 military by myself because i was in a place that there was no other house which were around

00:32:56.820 and when i finally got back you know i kind of got the landscape but i was trying to stay

00:33:02.100 uh i didn't even really know there were lines drawn until later on and then when it came down

00:33:06.820 to it it was well no i don't quite agree with this i've seen this for quite a while and i i

00:33:13.060 I see problems I don't like. So I drifted, I drifted away. And, and I, you know, was away

00:33:21.160 from religion in the community sense for many years to just kind of pondering and doing things

00:33:29.440 till about 2016. So, you know, that 2012 to 2016 was that hiatus where I was trying to figure

00:33:37.280 where things were going and how things were looking. And I think that the biggest thing

00:33:42.980 for some people is you need to come at this understanding this is an ethnic faith.

00:33:48.700 That's it. You can understand the concepts of governance and politics or philosophies and

00:33:56.980 ideas, but this is the ethnic faith of your people. It's your birthright. So other folks

00:34:04.400 have their birthright faiths, we have ours. And the more that they try to take it away,

00:34:09.140 I think it's more poignant. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. So first question tonight from Allie,

00:34:17.980 when picking the buildings for the Hoffs, besides price, what goes into it? Is there

00:34:23.480 an aha moment or is there more to it usually? So there is a lot and

00:34:30.040 we learn more and the balance shifts, the more Hoffs we get, we learn lessons. That's one of

00:34:38.560 the cool things is there will always be unique struggles to every Hoff that we get, but we're

00:34:48.180 going into each new one with the acquired knowledge, accumulated knowledge of the ones

00:34:53.860 have come before and it's interesting how that develops so and i even do this now and i show

00:35:01.940 them to cliff and it's we dream about them but one thing looking for the properties looking for the

00:35:09.140 buildings it does you despite admitting that i do that myself as we speak it does you no good and

00:35:20.660 it does you kind of a disservice to look too early because if you're not ready you're not in a buying

00:35:24.740 position chances are um the property that you see is not going to be the property that's still on

00:35:32.180 the market and the way it ends up so one thing that we have learned is it's really important to

00:35:36.420 keep a certain amount of elasticity in your dreams and it's hard because as people to conceptualize

00:35:45.220 to build dreams on these things and that's important you need to be excited and passionate

00:35:50.340 about getting off just like getting a home you want to you want to build dreams on it and so

00:35:57.380 often it's connected with a visual so when you see a building and you have that in your head

00:36:04.260 it gives you a stage for those dreams to play out on but it's really important to

00:36:10.580 have a certain amount of faith that the gods will help direct you to the to the right spot

00:36:19.460 into the place that's going to work out best as long as you're trying and doing your part

00:36:25.300 way easier said than done um but yeah that's happened with a couple of them we've we've seen

00:36:33.300 so all right i'm kind of all over the place with it because there are

00:36:36.980 all these factors so one of the first things which you acknowledged is finding the right location

00:36:43.140 but what does the right location mean and it depends so far the first half odin's off had to

00:36:50.420 be within a certain distance of steve and sheila because they were going to be the ones initially

00:36:57.700 running things there and it that's where we had our biggest um

00:37:07.780 conglomeration of members within a close geographic proximity so it was kind of a

00:37:13.300 no-brainer that there was a you know hour hour and a half radius around

00:37:21.220 grass valley nevada city california that we could work within to find that first hoff

00:37:27.460 um thorshoff was a different story we had we were initially gonna put thorshoff in minnesota

00:37:34.660 but we tried and we actually looked at I want to say five or six Hoff locations up there and just

00:37:42.100 nothing was working out the way we wanted it to saw some really beautiful things we even tried

00:37:47.200 to make an offer on one and it just didn't work out that we thought would have been perfect

00:37:50.940 so we expanded our search we looked at you know where else on our because we have this cool thing

00:37:59.120 And I'm, I'm silly, but I'm obsessed with this membership map.

00:38:03.940 I've said this before, but when I first became a folk builder coordinator way back when I got a big map, I put it up in my wall and I put all these little pins.

00:38:12.220 I put hundreds of little pins in it because I'm a very visual person that way.

00:38:16.860 And it's neat to be able to conceptualize it like that.

00:38:19.960 Well, now you kids today with your Google machine, now Google will do that, do that for us.

00:38:26.920 and so we can look on there and see that's to say this we can look on there and see where we have

00:38:31.860 clusters of membership so we looked and we have we found that we had a significant cluster in the

00:38:38.800 Carolinas and that's why we ended up getting you know and as soon as we decided that's what we

00:38:44.460 wanted to do we immediately found a great place everything worked out the realtor like

00:38:52.200 yeah told us to offer less than the asking part like it was it was ridiculous we ended up getting

00:39:02.300 a very very good deal on a wonderful property and it all worked out great um

00:39:08.360 baldershoff fell in our laps we had a little bit of extra saved up we got baldershoff for a steal

00:39:17.640 of a deal. We happened to find this spot where we had just enough money sitting in our pockets

00:39:23.640 and it worked out perfect. Yortsoff was different. We made several offers for Yortsoff,

00:39:33.240 came very close a number of times, saw a number of things that we just, man, this would be amazing

00:39:38.720 and ended up with this one. So this is a roundabout way to answer your question,

00:39:43.520 I do realize that. But yeah, figuring out the property is really important.

00:39:48.240 But where that property goes matters. Njortzhoff, you know, I mentioned the logistics of Odenshoff,

00:39:54.220 but Njortzhoff had to go in a coastal state. We're not at a point economically where we can

00:40:00.680 have it right on the water, which would be really cool, but it had to go somewhere coastal. And it

00:40:05.560 couldn't, and it had to be relatively distant from mountains. And there's just some things that

00:40:12.760 would make it more appropriate. And so we were looking at Washington State, we were looking at

00:40:19.860 Texas and the Gulf Coast there, and we were looking at Florida, and it worked out great for us.

00:40:27.080 So there's the geography to consider. There's the clusters of where we have members, and

00:40:33.860 Um, what seems to be a reasonable thing is two and a half to three hour, um, drive time

00:40:43.700 window of that Hoff.

00:40:46.500 So draw on a circle that's however that is, depending upon what part of the country, sometimes

00:40:51.240 if you're near a mountainous area and it's a bunch of windy roads, what as the crow flies

00:40:56.700 may seem very small could take a very long time.

00:40:59.080 So figuring that out where we've got a reasonable population to support the Hoff.

00:41:05.060 But more than that, what really makes a difference is a place where we have trusted volunteers.

00:41:14.320 And we've seen that even trusted volunteers and leadership, especially when it comes to the acquisition of Hoffs, sometimes that doesn't work out and you're left with an interesting situation.

00:41:25.780 We've been able to navigate it each time, but you really want to make sure that you have folk builders and especially Gothar, because it's hard to have a temple but no priest.

00:41:36.840 So to have Gothar in the area that can run it and take care of it and make it successful. 0.56

00:41:42.660 Once we establish a hof somewhere, we make a commitment to that God and to our folk, but specifically to that God. 1.00

00:41:51.620 This is their temple. And we it would be a great disrespect for us to not maintain that, for us to get it and not be able to take care of it and let it go into a terrible condition. 1.00

00:42:03.600 We don't ever want to do that. So once we get a Hoff, we make a commitment that that Hoff's going to succeed. 0.69

00:42:09.480 And we need to set that up for the best. 0.88

00:42:12.620 best way to do that the other thing is so so a lot of things

00:42:18.240 finding the property but there's a lot to it on that what can we afford because whether we like

00:42:28.980 it or not that is that's probably the biggest make or break factor is can we afford this or not

00:42:35.600 Then not just what we can afford on the initial price, but on the upkeep.

00:42:42.920 So we looked at some really spectacular buildings in Minnesota when we were first looking for a Thorshoff location.

00:42:50.220 and they were selling them for a very low very tempting price but the cost to heat them and

00:42:58.920 maintain them in a way that their pipes wouldn't burst in the winter was going to be shockingly

00:43:06.460 expensive so the initial cost was low but the monthly upkeep was just something that we wouldn't

00:43:12.220 be able to maintain and so that's another tricky thing that up front we didn't think about

00:43:16.540 also this is something that we learned as well zoning is huge so getting a hoff that is a former

00:43:28.820 church or at least a former um former house of worship ideally but it uh depending on where

00:43:36.180 you're at in the wording a former uh charitable location which could be a fraternal lodge or

00:43:42.620 you know, things like that. But that zoning is really important too. Sometimes you may think

00:43:49.740 something looks perfect, but depending on that county zoning rules, it may be next to impossible

00:43:55.220 for us to get it zoned the way that we want. So if it comes with grandfathered zoning that

00:44:00.820 fits our purpose, that's great. So that's a big thing to consider as well. Also, you know, is it

00:44:08.840 out away from densely populated areas where we have a little bit of space? Do we have some land

00:44:15.100 on there to do something with? Or is it urban? Eventually, I'm sure that there will be some

00:44:22.620 inner city hoffs at some point, but we're not quite there yet. And we do want a little bit

00:44:28.120 of space and a little bit of something natural around as well. It's a big factor also.

00:44:32.440 the other thing that's the big x factor and i want this is something that's hard to see

00:44:42.560 from the outside and i want people to know that we do asking the gods going before the gods and

00:44:49.960 praying and you know asking them to help direct you to something that they approve of for their

00:44:56.800 house, specifically the God you're making the temple for. If you find this pleasing, please

00:45:04.020 help us to succeed here. If you want this to be your off, please help it work out. If not,

00:45:12.440 we'll keep pushing until we find one that you do approve of. Those little conversations,

00:45:18.300 they're very personal, and I don't think we talk about them enough. But being prayerful in

00:45:25.620 you're, you're dealing with the gods to make these things work, I think is really important

00:45:31.020 too. And I really believe it's helped us find really good locations for our office thus far.

00:45:37.460 Thorsov was absolutely, well, it was a, it was a prayer for Minnesota to Thor, but for me,

00:45:44.180 it ended up becoming this kind of very neatly interwoven series of events that was like, well,

00:45:52.460 i've heard what you've said but it's gonna be you not not the people you were asking for

00:45:59.340 and that took a little bit more time i think that the gods see that perspective or you know

00:46:04.060 i believe it that way that's the way i i take that all right swan this one is a specific question

00:46:09.620 for you what makes something sacred swan and it's got an exclamation point too so

00:46:18.600 with emphasis what makes something sacred well so one of the things to understand let's let's

00:46:25.820 focus on um the concept of sacredness sanctuarial ideas um the biggest thing i i would say culturally

00:46:34.860 for ausitru is that there is an integration as opposed to always just kind of a separational

00:46:41.820 state uh sacredness is um a part of the the uh and will continue to be a part of all of the

00:46:52.760 processes so it becomes kind of a a spiritual inner guard there's actions that are involved

00:46:59.180 that make things sacred uh repetition um you know even to the point of a if there's a sense of like

00:47:07.000 great gravitas towards a place or a people, uh, or a person or a spot, um, that begins to,

00:47:17.060 you know, create a, a sense of awe. And, you know, we use that like sacredness is like a,

00:47:24.700 you know, the Latin ish word that we, we can understand, but some of the words that might

00:47:29.080 be better understood from a germanic concept is like eager why ggr that the terrible awe of

00:47:37.420 something the the um the the fact that it gains a may and a might to it that makes it sacred um

00:47:46.560 there's other things as well and i think sometimes it's it it depends on the unique interactions that

00:47:53.300 the individual or the group of people have in relation to the gods or that the gods allow to

00:48:00.440 see um so you know when we talk about items and things they gain sacredness through use they gain

00:48:09.520 sacredness because we believe in or law or we believe in in weird as it's often called in the

00:48:14.480 anglo-saxon it's that weaving of action the manifestation of will that we spoke of just

00:48:20.120 just earlier, um, where, uh, going out and manifesting our will into the world

00:48:26.560 then creates this framework in which sacredness can be, can be built up almost like a reservoir

00:48:34.580 of, of that sacredness. Um, I mean, we know life is sacred to the idea of bloat, uh, and, and the,

00:48:44.300 um, the movement towards, um, you know, the, the sacral butchering and, uh, the way our, 0.99

00:48:53.060 our holidays were formulated from agrarian culture and sacred butchering that, that creates. So we

00:48:59.820 have, you know, life and we have will and action that, that have a tendency to build the sacredness

00:49:08.660 of a place but some places you come upon them and the gods have already made them sacred

00:49:16.020 so there is that as well so there it's it's the understanding that the gods have intervened into

00:49:21.140 a situation and i think we kind of you know do a lot of that as well um so you know you have personal

00:49:27.860 sacred space at your home and perhaps you know the giftings that you give to the gods that's

00:49:33.060 you know, a sacredness and the idea of, you know, uh, giving things to the gods and those things

00:49:38.700 becomes, uh, part of the, the cycle, the, the will cycle, they cease to be material and they

00:49:46.060 become a sacred sense. Um, and then, uh, I guess the other thing would be, uh, and that kind of

00:49:52.620 goes along with will as well is if something is, uh, utilized in a way, uh, you know, we see it

00:49:59.440 with the idea of of rings of of swords of um amulets or or you know necklaces or pendants

00:50:08.440 if you will or i guess bracte as they might be you know that was that seemed especially to our

00:50:14.240 ancestors very important in the idea of placing upon those those things there were mundane ones

00:50:19.900 but you could find the sacred ones and see the amount of uh dedication placed into these objects

00:50:25.180 um so there is that sense but that kind of goes along again with will so you have life and and

00:50:32.660 the cycle of life and death and the sacredness of blood and the sacredness of sacrifice that

00:50:39.740 in order for your folk to live you know there is that cycle of life and death there is the

00:50:45.380 willful manifestation whether it's in gaining through instruments or going to places and i

00:50:51.220 the last and final um step of sacredness would be

00:51:00.180 i'm trying to think of how to word it but it would be um

00:51:04.740 the the this i guess the sense of results uh the the um the connection is made there

00:51:12.500 and then something happens so there is a correlation to this is where we made connection

00:51:19.220 now this place has become sacred not because the gods separated it but because we have

00:51:26.380 taken the time to stop place our piety down and and reach out and do the other things and that

00:51:32.820 place now becomes you know sacred um that that connection point between ourselves and the gods

00:51:41.240 whatever means we travel through and something else i'd like to say and i think this is important

00:51:46.240 to we often the meaning of of one thing is very often

00:52:00.480 um brought to life i guess by its difference between another thing it's one of the special

00:52:10.560 things about life is

00:52:13.680 males are special in large part because of how different they are from females and vice versa

00:52:25.500 um if you don't have to overcome bad things if everything's good all the time you wouldn't have 0.99

00:52:33.960 heroes heroes are forged by overcoming bad so good is a counterbalance or not or a you know

00:52:43.640 you can wow the opposite of the other so and the same i'm butchering that really bad it's not the

00:52:50.200 way i wanted to present it um but sacred and mundane are like that as well if you see

00:52:56.520 some people especially when they're very new to paganism or if they

00:53:04.520 are a bit eccentric and get lost in the sauce either uh literally or figuratively

00:53:12.120 everything's sacred every possible thing is sacred every blade of grass every rock every tree every

00:53:18.600 sunset everything is and if that's the case if everything is sacred nothing's sacred

00:53:26.120 and it's just like like friends well if everybody's your friend then you don't really have friends

00:53:32.600 um so that that making it special is one of the things setting it apart yes but with the idea that

00:53:41.880 it's something special you know if if every day was yule then you'll be just another day right

00:53:50.120 um so that's something to keep in mind also and this is the first time we've had this in several

00:53:55.320 weeks please keep in mind you can do this on entropy if you want to donate to us or if you

00:54:00.200 you want to throw us a couple of bucks to get your question to the front of the line and donate

00:54:06.800 to us. We really appreciate that. We've got about 13 questions lined up now. And Don Ricardo jumped

00:54:12.840 to the front of that line with a $5 donation. Thank you, Don. Do you have any favorite ritual

00:54:19.060 site blessings? How often would you recommend salting, sage-burning type of cleansing?

00:54:25.440 swan i want you to go first but i have things i'd like to add on this one okay well and i and i think

00:54:32.320 that you know it's so interesting for a lot of people to realize that also true is has been in

00:54:40.880 a very singular mode for a very long time 20 30 years it has been kind of one way and now we are

00:54:48.080 thresholding or going through a threshold that requires us to recalibrate things so one of the

00:54:54.640 things i would say is if you're talking about personal space i think that you know when we

00:55:00.640 talk about hallowing the hallowing of a of a space is when you you forcefully with your might

00:55:09.440 and with your will you seek to make that place ordered and ready or receiving of the might of

00:55:18.160 the gods it's like setting the table for them and so there is you know continuously within our our

00:55:25.840 faith if you're practicing at a place like what we would call like your your home uh

00:55:32.320 vey or or your home uh harg we we usually call them like that's yeah that's your that's your

00:55:37.520 harrow or your staller that place that um if you're using norse words is the place in which

00:55:43.280 is set aside for the gods and you to communicate um those places i think oftentimes require based

00:55:52.240 on how you feel with those interactions um because it's a changing environment your house

00:55:58.240 is a changing environment um and so and we see the the the actions of people moving in and out

00:56:04.880 can create that um so you know when you're when i think that's a personal thing when we start to get

00:56:12.000 into say like sacred groves or temples that's when things start to get more um formalized from

00:56:20.720 the gothar and things like that and i'll let i'll i'll say i'll say i know you're you were probably

00:56:25.840 going to go into that so i'm not going to cut into that i i would i'll cover it from the personal

00:56:30.640 space um and you know generally there's lots of different ways to do that you know the throwing

00:56:35.760 of salt that you mentioned that's that's a huge one um which is considered pure earth um and

00:56:42.160 or the burning of of um you know juniper or spruce or the burning of um you know mountain laurel or

00:56:49.920 um even sage um you know there there's there there's a sense of placing that but when you're

00:56:56.720 doing ceremony you're generally doing that as well you know you're burning um sacred smoke and

00:57:03.360 from sacred flame in order to kind of harken to the traditions of it you're lighting the flame

00:57:09.120 to allow the gods to see because it's a representation of your faith and then the

00:57:13.440 smoke is the gift the offering and also kind of like asking the gods to you know share in that

00:57:19.200 sacred smoke with you um so you know if you're if you're giving uh bloat regularly you're kind of

00:57:26.720 doing that but um special sense of if it's not a place where you're communing with the gods or

00:57:34.080 your ancestors or the land whites um it may be worth to think about just the fact of cleaning

00:57:40.800 and organizing and manifesting your will into the environment is a sacred act as well because you're

00:57:47.440 doing it with the intent of placing your might your will and your and your physical actions

00:57:53.440 into the into the area so if you have just even a tree that you consider a place where you perhaps

00:57:58.560 you leave your offering after bloat take the time to prune to clear out don't let it run amok

00:58:06.800 and that generally the idea that i think what you're really referring to is the beauty of your

00:58:11.760 space and the the sense of the of what reflects from your soul we don't worship in places that

00:58:19.520 are twisted and ugly we want to worship in places that are beautiful and hold uh emotional feelings

00:58:25.920 and and a representation as a reflection of our piety so from a personal space you know even if

00:58:32.960 it's just the the fact of like cleaning dusting re-oiling um resetting doing you know those those

00:58:39.760 little things sometimes i think are really important to resetting the um the function of

00:58:47.280 the sacred space it's not going to just suddenly become not sacred and then you have to you know

00:58:51.840 that that kind of thing but when you get into uh let's say group dynamics too and you you have a

00:58:57.520 few friends that you meet together and perhaps you're you know you're considering calling yourself

00:59:01.840 a kindred and you you have you know a meeting place that's a lot of times people people meet

00:59:06.880 in their homes but you might meet somewhere um outside or you know even if you're doing like

00:59:12.480 something on a mountain or at a sacred place the idea of giving of yourself to that sacred place

00:59:18.640 cleaning it up moving it about taking stewardship is a great way to recalibrate and re-cleanse the

00:59:26.400 sacredness of it so spawn uh said a lot of things that i was i was going to bring up um these are

00:59:36.080 kind of two separate questions so favorite rituals of a site blessing oh yes sorry i don't know i'm

00:59:44.000 thinking um i have done a number of land takings house takings um we do uh

00:59:57.920 we do a ritual okay and this is kind of the format that they usually take and everything's

01:00:06.880 a little bit different as far as a specific ritual for that an idea that i like is having a

01:00:16.200 having a fire this is for a half but you could make this whatever you like i like doing this

01:00:22.720 with fire walking perimeters with fire is a is an ancient way to do that you can have a torch

01:00:30.160 you can have a candle they'd blow out easy so i'd be careful with that you can turn um

01:00:37.040 yeah you could do a lot of things that way but having a flame i think is important it's it's

01:00:44.160 neat fires cool but i think that it also is a is a nice visual way of of marking boundaries

01:00:55.040 and doing that and i think that's nice what i like to do though what i was going to say is

01:01:00.560 having a fire outside in a ritual space or in a campfire and or whatever you're doing

01:01:08.240 if it's your cooking fire that's fine too especially for a home

01:01:13.360 taking a flame from that walking around the property around the building whatever you're

01:01:19.040 trying to to do and then eventually when you've done that circuit ending by going into the building

01:01:27.840 and putting that flame if it's a home you know in the hearth in in their fireplace or

01:01:35.280 you know in the kitchen using it to light the pilot light on the stove or something like that

01:01:40.960 and in a in a half taking that and and having that end up as a as a flame either on a candle

01:01:48.000 or in a brazer or whatever you have on uh on the altar i think that's a really

01:01:56.800 it's very easy to connect with that in your mind in the mind of anybody else who's there of the

01:02:01.120 symbology of taking you know your source of warmth and heat and life-sustaining fire from the outside

01:02:09.280 from out in the cold and bringing that into this new place with you with your family with the folk

01:02:16.080 whatever that might be depending upon the building and you can spice that up however you want with

01:02:21.040 different elements depending upon things that are relevant to the situation but the idea of taking

01:02:27.760 a primitive fire from outside and transmuting that into a cooking fire or a fire in the fireplace or

01:02:37.200 a fire on the altar is a really special thing to do so i think that's a really good one

01:02:43.520 as far as cleansing stuff you know it depends and i think that my view on this is different than

01:02:50.480 in a lot of people in Alcatru, and in, I don't know, paganism generally.

01:02:59.940 When you cleanse things, and by all means, in a certain circumstance, if there is a haunting, 0.91

01:03:06.620 if there is something very detrimental and very wrong, then yeah, you carpet bomb,

01:03:13.100 you cleanse the whole thing, and then you start fresh. But just like carpet bombing,

01:03:17.660 You're getting everything in the jungle. You're not just reorganizing something that's out of whack or re-centering it. You're banishing the things that are there, good, bad, or otherwise. You're resetting that in a way.

01:03:34.240 And you don't, you don't, for the same reason that we talk about, I've seen this in a number

01:03:46.240 of the questions, a number of the side chat, we haven't, Svon and I haven't addressed it

01:03:50.140 as much.

01:03:50.760 I think Svon has a little bit earlier, but we'll talk about this more as we address these

01:03:53.940 questions.

01:03:54.440 when you do something over time and you invite things in over time and you build up a spiritual

01:04:05.840 might you don't want to cleanse all of that you want to keep that there you don't want to nuke

01:04:14.020 it and start fresh um and this isn't an exact science i don't think that if that happens and

01:04:21.100 all of a sudden it's completely worthless or vice versa but i do think it has an effect um

01:04:28.060 and intent is a big part of that so one of the things like this is going to sound silly but it

01:04:37.260 in my mind is what connects and hopefully it connects for some of you as well

01:04:41.340 so rodney my uh my stuffed gorilla that does not look like a stuffed gorilla that i was given when

01:04:47.740 i was a i think i was one year old or i was just a baby in that first year of my life

01:04:52.940 it's really cool it's actually in my daughter's bed right now which is awesome rodney's my oldest

01:04:58.940 friend anyways he was given to me my by my grandfather for whatever reason i don't know

01:05:05.340 what but he always smelled like my grandpa and that smell is comforting when i was a little kid

01:05:14.780 and it was kind of special after my grandpa passed so i didn't want to wash rot i don't care if he

01:05:20.940 got filthy i don't care what was going on because i didn't want to wash that out and have it not

01:05:26.780 have that same touchstone and a funky stuffed animal is not may not seem like it's relevant

01:05:33.900 but i do think that it is you don't want to wash the palette clean on that sometimes there's been

01:05:40.380 traditions in a in a weaponry sense of not cleansing the blood off the blade because you

01:05:48.140 keep that imbued might and spirit in there you don't want to just strip it or even if you're

01:05:56.860 talking about antibiotics it kills everything in your gut and then you've got to retake a bunch

01:06:01.180 probiotics afterwards because it's it's just eliminated everything so i wouldn't sage or salt

01:06:09.820 something and do any kind of ritual cleansing unless things were very bad and i was in a spot

01:06:17.900 where i just wanted to start fresh and i think that if that is your sole intention maybe your

01:06:23.660 home if you have a bad breakup and you've got the house and you want to cleanse remnants of

01:06:31.420 a hurtful situation in your life and have a clean slate i think that's a good idea

01:06:37.900 maybe if you change faiths if you used a part of your home for for christian worship or for

01:06:45.740 something else you were doing and you decided not to do that to make a clean break and to start

01:06:51.660 again also true then perhaps that's an element so special guest my daughter brought in this is

01:07:00.220 rodney me and rodney been friends for 42 years next month i heard you talking about him so she

01:07:08.700 brought him i appreciate that my daughter's very thoughtful but yeah like i said i wouldn't cleanse

01:07:14.380 too often i'd only cleanse if your intention is to completely start fresh otherwise i think

01:07:20.860 there's other things you can do to invite good things in and to encourage bad things out and

01:07:28.300 just like dealing with humans you know dealing with humans this side of the veil dealing with

01:07:33.580 people in your everyday life i think your best place to start if you want to get rid of something

01:07:38.780 you don't like just ask it to leave it sounds simple it sounds dumb but i think that's the

01:07:45.660 place to start even if it's not effective you have acted within hospitality rules that transcend the

01:07:56.620 realms if it continues to be problematic then escalate your response to it but again i would

01:08:07.900 now now she wants to show off all of her stuffed animals um it won't be all of them she's got like

01:08:14.380 so this is rubble or doggy this thing i don't even know what this thing's supposed to be i

01:08:22.220 think half of it's supposed to be a ladybug but it is simply red anyways that's my daughter's

01:08:29.740 show and tell but no seriously to the question start small on any kind of cleansing i would say

01:08:36.620 unless you want a complete fresh start and see if you can manipulate it subtly that way

01:08:43.100 that way you keep the good um because i think that's really important well and and that's why

01:08:49.020 i was saying about like the the organizing and dusting the uh the cleaning in a sense of like

01:08:55.020 making things orderly as opposed to nuking it you just take that that extra amount to

01:09:01.980 reorganize clean the dust off uh restock and make good because i think that ultimately is one of the

01:09:10.460 best ways to kind of um you know make that place sacred but there is one other thing i wanted to

01:09:16.300 to talk about was the spurgement. So a spurgement or, or, um, what we call clout, the, the clout is,

01:09:23.940 is, is might, might coming from a liquid, liquid that we commune with. Um, and I think it's worth

01:09:30.740 noting that, uh, you know, when you're giving bloats and you ask the gods to give you their,

01:09:39.560 their might, or to give you guidance, to give you their, the essence of them being divine and

01:09:45.440 and placing it within your world physically and manifest it often goes through libational liquid

01:09:51.200 and so you know when you asperge the area but that's a very key point that the the gods are

01:09:57.840 involved in that and so we ask the gods to give us that might and then we asperge the area to make

01:10:03.600 it manifest from them into our side of the veil of things but uh you know that i think correlates

01:10:12.580 too with your duty to upkeeping the space um so instead of nuking it yeah cleansing and all of

01:10:18.500 that stuff you know giving your your um your piety and and your um your devotion to making order in

01:10:28.260 the space i think the gods see that and take that into the consideration of your overall um interactions

01:10:37.860 with them so the orderly the the tidy the aligned and then when you ask the gods to bless you to

01:10:45.860 give you that because i think a lot of people announce the true they it's part of the ceremony

01:10:50.500 and they lose sight of why we are asking the gods to place into the liquid their might and then we

01:10:58.180 take that might and we place it in the world around us um and so doing bloat is in a way

01:11:06.260 again the continual continual process of maintaining sacredness in your in your spaces

01:11:13.140 now we don't really do halloweings and temples because they've been hallowed and they remain

01:11:17.860 hallowed um and i think that that was one of the things that even i deeply had to to break my mode

01:11:25.220 from uh you know i've been living my life practicing my faith in such a way that there

01:11:31.620 was never a temple to remain i was in a migrational state all the time and and i think that that that

01:11:40.900 was actually quite first it was jarring and then it was very quite beautiful and poetic that that 0.61

01:11:46.100 that threshold that i'm speaking of so you know when you consider your own sacred space at home

01:11:52.820 like i was here he says don't aim for the nuke aim for like recalibration and and tweak and

01:12:01.380 and uh realignments and and and putting you know your your your love and devotion into that moving

01:12:06.660 things around uh maybe adding little things seasonal things or something like that um but

01:12:12.580 you know when you go to a hof and you know you realize there that the the burial grounds of the

01:12:18.020 folk and the the hoff itself in the they that's all hallowed space taken by fire spoken of prayers

01:12:25.220 i mean yurtsof had one of the most mightiest um uh land takings that i was ever able to witness

01:12:32.900 and be a part of actually but um you know so many uh practitioners of the faith who are from

01:12:40.020 localized areas are now coming together under a building and we're organized and we're led by an

01:12:45.380 and we're all involved in pushing this forward that was huge and that doesn't just go away

01:12:51.940 um you know come next monday or whatever day it was held on or something like that so i think

01:12:58.060 that's another thing to really conceptualize is why we're doing it what we're actually doing and

01:13:03.600 if anything has meaning then cleansing like thoroughly or like we've been joking about the

01:13:09.100 Nuke, that has power. So be careful when you do that kind of stuff. Go for the more tentative

01:13:16.760 piety of organization. All right, absolutely. So our next question, and I'm going to hope Nick

01:13:25.380 throws this up with the entirety of the question because we're working through tech difficulties

01:13:30.520 And I have a half a question here from Travis.

01:13:36.720 Svahn, how long did it take you to do the murals at?

01:13:41.440 So I'm going to assume he's saying the murals at each of the Hoffs, but I can't be certain.

01:13:49.660 That is so Thor's office unique because that is where I am at.

01:14:00.520 And so I was able to devote a lot of time. And I think it was also that Thor is the god. He's in our tripartite. He's the catalyst. He's the puncturer of barriers. He's the breaker of walls. So it was very, very fitting that he became the first of it as we moved through another threshold.

01:14:23.160 So I tried to calculate the time and I think it was close to probably about 10 days worth of overall work, if you will.

01:14:37.460 But the other Hoffs are different because I work, I have a regular job.

01:14:44.060 And so when it came time to coming to the other Hoffs, it was time crunch.

01:14:49.180 It was as much time as I could squeeze out of, you know, besides people being there.

01:14:57.620 So oftentimes we correlated it with around a holy tide, a celebration.

01:15:01.740 And I would come a couple days beforehand and then sleep and wake up and, you know, eat right there.

01:15:11.120 Oftentimes just eating, you know, I was eating MREs, I was eating canned foods and things like that.

01:15:17.120 and just being there oftentimes with other things going on

01:15:21.440 and other things being worked on and just trying to focus.

01:15:24.020 And I had help too.

01:15:25.020 Every time I've come to every Hoff, I've had people come in

01:15:28.000 and they want to help in any way they can.

01:15:31.360 And I thought, oh, yes, please try doing this, doing that.

01:15:34.040 So there's a lot of individual action or weird or Orloff

01:15:38.820 from the people in the area in all of the murals.

01:15:43.760 But, you know, each one is different.

01:15:46.060 I believe like, um, New York, New York's off was, um, like six days.

01:15:53.040 That was about six days.

01:15:54.280 And that the picture that's being shown is just the central piece.

01:15:57.300 There's two panels off to the side and that was a whole, a whole nother thing, but I had

01:16:01.600 a huge community there to help me do the coloring for the water and do the coloring for the

01:16:06.500 sky.

01:16:06.940 And they just turned this space into like a panoramic ocean.

01:16:10.540 And then I got to focus on placing, um, you know, the details and there were a lot of people helping out. Uh, Baldershof was the unique. And I would say the most, um, difficult is because that space is about eight or 10 feet off the ground.

01:16:28.540 the bottom is and the top i believe we measured was like 22 or 23 feet up at the at the apex

01:16:36.440 so that was a lot of ladder climbing i had i had suffered an injury in my knee and was going up and

01:16:43.760 down this ladder um desperately trying to make sure i got it in the time that i did that i had

01:16:49.860 and uh all the folks that and and uh witten uh brandy she you know she spent a great amount um

01:16:57.580 of, uh, effort and, uh, go deplored, you know, trying to keep me cared for, because it was so 0.99

01:17:05.800 kind of out of the way that I, and I didn't have a vehicle. So it was like, I was relying on them

01:17:11.480 to, you know, to make sure I had water, make sure I had food. I slept on a cot and, um, and, you

01:17:17.860 know, just got up in the morning and started working, getting all my stuff organized and

01:17:21.600 trying to make. And then of course, while this is going on, talking to us here, go the, about the

01:17:26.120 elements that that i'm looking at and what i'm seeing based on the space and what he wants to

01:17:33.320 bring in to show that that imagery that threshold the idea even here with a with balder um hand on

01:17:41.800 sword because i think a lot of people uh in ancient interpretations of balder see balder

01:17:46.760 is like this jesus figure but his name means bold one but he's holding his sword he's he's pressing

01:17:53.560 it and at the ready but he is looking upwards and forward and and shedding light to the situation

01:18:02.120 bold and ready but not uh you know overt like say as with thor um so there was a uh an element there

01:18:11.400 there was the also the element of the taming of the wolves bringing the wild under heel and bringing

01:18:16.920 it into the realm of organization um and of course you know that's their kin of um of baldersof so

01:18:24.200 every hof is is different ovens off was interesting too there was um uh you know a huge wedding that

01:18:31.080 was being held and there was an event and so i had a certain amount of time and i believe that was

01:18:37.400 five days i had to fly out to california and people ferried me there um because i was without

01:18:46.600 you know transportation and when i got there i had to have all my equipment and all my my my uh

01:18:53.320 you know paint and everything and and not knowing what i'm what i had no plan the only one i had an

01:19:00.440 absolute plan for was north and it was completely shot out of the water pun intended actually but

01:19:08.200 uh because of the space it was a panoramic as opposed to a so adjustments on on the moment

01:19:15.560 but yes those um those um the murals and i see a question coming up about uh the the the meaning of

01:19:24.520 the surrounding grounds behind balder and nana in the mural since we're talking about it i figured

01:19:29.080 i'd you know shoot that up there is um the symbology of the birch one thing is balders

01:19:38.040 is high enough north that birch is you know the aspen style birch is prevalent there it's

01:19:45.480 prevalent at least in that zone and it's not so much say like at thorshoth um so but there's

01:19:51.960 significance meaning to life anew that the birch tree has in our culture and in our spiritual

01:19:58.120 traditions the the birch tree is the tree of life the the uh making of new life without seed as the

01:20:07.160 as the rune poem speaks of so the idea of a sacred spring um was kind of thrown about the usage of

01:20:18.680 of the white in order to create uh contrast plus birch trees and this is just me being super honest

01:20:26.600 i was on a time time crunch i knew that i had to fly out so i knew how to do birch trees already

01:20:34.520 and that made that infinitely easier um but balder's hof is by and far one of my favorite

01:20:42.440 experiences but also the one that i'm like i want to get back and i want to do a little bit more

01:20:48.200 of the of the background like i really when i went up i just sketched the idea of balder's

01:20:56.760 visage and that's a really strange thing to like when you go up and you're like okay well you know

01:21:02.520 i'm just gonna draw the gods like that that was to me was just like ah so i'm using a pencil

01:21:08.040 and i'm thinking to myself this is going to not work out it's not going to look right it's gonna

01:21:11.560 be like a tiny head on a big shoulders because i'm thinking up right up in the wall and not down

01:21:18.280 in the in the bay itself and then drew the a sketch of what was coming to my mind

01:21:25.000 and then i got down off the ladder and it that was it so all i i mean so balder's face was

01:21:31.400 was the constant from the beginning. And so all the troubles I ran into after that, it was like,

01:21:38.480 again, remember, you can do this. You've done this once, you've done it already. You can fight

01:21:44.000 through all the other problems. And so working with like the positioning, hand positionings of

01:21:48.620 Nana, and I'm not great at drawing animals in my opinion. So I struggled with the wolves. I

01:21:54.420 struggled with Nana. I struggled with other things. And all the while the face was there

01:21:59.040 letting me know okay you're gonna get there you got the time you're gonna gonna do this and it

01:22:04.000 all ended up working out and the symbology there of the horn and the horn bearer and uh the brooch

01:22:10.800 on her neck with the with the broken heart but is also uh the um so willow room uh because again

01:22:18.320 you know her dying of a broken heart but that's ultimately the source of their dynamic power um

01:22:23.840 her piety to to his boldness and the the the return if you will so that's that the the the

01:22:32.080 idea of color is about the only thing i go for in the back um i wanted to do land and sky and light

01:22:40.560 and that was it so the choices of trees how the space is kind of evolved are just based on

01:22:47.280 starting with some basic lines or working with the idea of what clouds uh in the sky catching

01:22:52.560 light would be pretty much after i do the main body it's free for all at that point what what

01:22:59.680 am i able to do nortsov was the same thing like the pelican totally random just it had it it had

01:23:07.440 to be there it wasn't me i had no plans on doing a pelican i actually pulled it up on the phone

01:23:13.680 and looked at artwork of what other people have done and tried to mimic that and i'm these are

01:23:20.000 artists i'm just to vote and i felt like it just came out so well i was like wow you know so maybe

01:23:28.720 i'm on to something here so yeah after the main visage the the backgrounds become more free for

01:23:38.640 all and it's a it's a chance for me to just kind of stretch my legs but not feel overly stressed

01:23:43.280 that i'm you know when you're drawing the gods it's yeah you're drawing gods it's it's a very

01:23:52.640 very emotionally conflicting points if i mess up it's same with odin odin's face especially his eye

01:24:01.040 was right there at the moment from the beginning everything thereafter i was like okay now

01:24:06.800 now what am i gonna do and i tried a whole scene in um in valho and it did not work out because of

01:24:15.760 spacing and and and dimensions so i turned it into uh light and dark and the idea of being

01:24:23.840 and having the uh odin's ability to be dynamic between gladsheim and you know helgard and you

01:24:33.360 know speaking to the to the gods and speaking to the einherjar and speaking to the vulva and and

01:24:40.080 and in being in both of those places so yeah that was uh that was a huge part i think too a lot of

01:24:48.080 people um we were the the idea of doing the murals themselves came about from um seeing other houses

01:24:58.400 of worship uh in other like traditions and seeing things and going you know that's a beautiful

01:25:07.440 reflection of the way they feel about the gods or they the way they feel about their divinity and

01:25:12.640 and i think that that we were saying to ourselves we should do the same because that's you know when

01:25:18.720 someone's right about what they're doing we shouldn't reject it simply because they're not us

01:25:25.200 in the sense that we saw that we we realized and the symbology of the sonen rod um developed over

01:25:33.040 time and became all part of it all right um follow up and very relevant to the murals from

01:25:41.840 ally which mural do you feel most connected to and which is your favorite oh uh i feel connected to

01:25:52.000 thorshoff the most because i had a religious and a spiritual um uh event happen in relation to

01:26:02.000 thorshoff there was a moment when a storm came to the hoff and i heard it before it showed up i had

01:26:10.080 the wind trying to logically you know the pressure drop or something but yet all the while my human

01:26:17.280 brain is trying to make logic the spiritualness of it is deeply moving to me and that is in a

01:26:23.520 realm outside of just simply logic and numbers and so when i opened the door this rush of wind

01:26:30.080 came in and suddenly i realized i wasn't alone and i needed to i i i didn't need to step away

01:26:36.800 but i decided to step away out of reverence and um allowing you know myself to not be implemented

01:26:45.120 in this moment. And so I felt the wind rush through the front doors of Thorshof. And then

01:26:51.180 at a certain point, as I'm watching the storm slowly come closer, I simply just said, I hope

01:26:58.940 this is good. I hope this is good enough. I hope whatever this is, it is good. And then a light

01:27:06.160 rain. And that harkened kind of on the logical side, I had to get back in or I was going to get,

01:27:10.700 you know, soaked, but it was a light, soft rain. And I also took that as a spiritual sign that

01:27:16.120 this was good. And so I walked back in and, and shut the doors and began working again.

01:27:22.860 So I have that connection there, but every single Hoff has had kind of unique, but never as visceral

01:27:30.060 as that one. Um, I did have a strange event happen at Odense Hoff, uh, someone, um, uh,

01:27:39.080 in the middle of the night i believe it was like three in the morning i'm by myself and i'm working

01:27:45.000 and i hear a motorcycle pull up into the hoff parking lot and i assumed that it was one of

01:27:53.560 the members coming to meet another member that was camping outside in in a um an rv

01:27:59.760 so i didn't even think about it but i didn't hear anything and it didn't make sense that it was on

01:28:05.180 one side of the hoff and not on the other side where the rv was so after a while i was like

01:28:08.120 that's kind of odd. So I got down from the ladder and I went outside just to look around and there

01:28:12.640 was no one there. Um, so that was an interesting thing. I don't know what to make of that. Um,

01:28:20.420 but that was what it was. Um, aesthetically, to be honest, I think

01:28:27.000 I really, I've been working on Thor's Hoff a lot. So perhaps I'm not

01:28:33.960 happy with the aesthetics I'm tweaking and and and so that's I guess the only way I could say

01:28:41.620 is New York's Hoff New York's Hoff was the was the um the the one mural that aesthetically

01:28:48.920 worked out when I didn't think it was going to the space was smaller and then I was worried about

01:28:56.860 um you know drawing clean feet if you will uh as as as neither has spoken of as having

01:29:04.360 you know clean feet from from being connected to the water and doing that i've never done that in

01:29:12.740 art ever i've never drawn feet especially how do you transfer the idea of clean feet to an art piece

01:29:19.940 and it happened and it happened really well more than i could have have imagined and um

01:29:27.160 you know placing in these little easter eggs that i've i've done with the runes and

01:29:32.900 the placements of of the other the other um divines that are involved you know whether

01:29:38.720 we're talking about scadi or frey and freya and nerfus or yorth and um all of those little things

01:29:46.840 the and writing in runic it just all worked out so like aesthetically it was the one where i really

01:29:52.040 felt like i stuck the landing if you will um in the time that i had i felt really really good

01:29:58.600 about it and then when i got to hear the folks reactions um that really made me feel happy so

01:30:06.360 that one i think is the one where i stuck the landing the most but the most visceral connection

01:30:12.200 i have is clearly to thorsoff okay um next question and these are from back when the

01:30:23.160 questions were cut off nick has gone to a different format of feeding me the questions

01:30:28.040 sorry it's a little clunky we're looking on the working on the tech back end of that this one is

01:30:33.160 from rachel how common was it to have sacred rights within a building versus in a grove or

01:30:40.360 other uh outdoor sacred uh sacred place

01:30:47.240 so this is a question that comes up a lot because people have um a deep connection to the to the

01:30:53.720 natural world when we honor the gods but if we look back there is a huge palette of it

01:31:01.640 when we talk about the hof at upsala but also too let's look even further back when we talk about

01:31:07.800 the um the the kurgans if you will the sacred mounds there the the doors were built for

01:31:14.840 processional spaces there was people oftentimes wide enough for two people to stand side by side

01:31:21.080 you know if you're if you're building a uh burial ground that's that's going to be repeatedly used

01:31:26.200 to hold sacred rites in especially with the interment of the the honored dead um that is

01:31:33.080 is again a religious function um it's just it's geared towards the the king who has passed a

01:31:40.520 chieftain who has passed or a great warrior and so a lot of people don't equate that quite as

01:31:47.640 well in understanding that that's also religious you know rights and so those indoor spaces whether

01:31:53.400 they were mounds whether they were um homes um and little hints that we get like in in eric's saga

01:32:00.600 um you know the the idea of building a building in order to hold faith there because of inclement

01:32:09.300 weather was a very prominent understanding amongst the Icelanders because the wind

01:32:14.400 and the weather is so um can be so uh chaotic if you will um so implementing that order and making

01:32:23.480 sure you had that space is seems to be of great evidence but you know when we talk about the

01:32:30.300 people like um the areas around those hofs like at upsala there's mentions of the trees

01:32:35.820 and uh if we talk about the ermine soul amongst the saxons and the groves and we talk about um 0.70

01:32:42.300 like the gauls called them nematons but we do know linguistically the franks

01:32:47.020 called them nimids which shows an indo-european uh source of that word um by the time the norse

01:32:56.220 ended up doing it they called them uh lunder l-u-n-d-r and that was a sacred grove space an

01:33:03.820 outdoor space sometimes a waterfall especially amongst the icelanders uh stones and things like

01:33:09.100 that i think that a lot of times it really comes down to our conditioning of ourselves when we

01:33:18.220 have a hard time uh going to a hof and feeling like we're connecting in a place that has a roof

01:33:24.940 but we do it at home at a at a staller or or you know that that to me is is that conditioning is

01:33:33.740 more of i think a factor than the actual reality of the situation perhaps we're not perspectively

01:33:39.180 thinking about it or the fact that at the staller at home we're alone but at a hof there's many many

01:33:46.140 people and so that throws things off um but those are i think are are more conditionings if we look

01:33:51.660 at things more open-mindedly and just observe i think we see both indoor and outdoor um even uh

01:33:59.900 even fablon spoke of the gifts of the animal uh sacrifice that was committed by the the ruse um

01:34:07.740 at the doorways there were poles that were that the that were held up that were there but again

01:34:15.100 the doorways of sacred places um there were places in which you know they accounted that

01:34:21.900 um he you know he kind of wrote that they they threw themselves before

01:34:26.300 the gods and of course he's kind of referring to his own cultural understandings but they were

01:34:31.580 kneeling they were bending a knee or showing respect as they came in and placed you know

01:34:36.460 offerings and gifts or or the bowl and then they stood up and they and they spoke or they

01:34:40.780 sang and he had some disparaging words about about the the sound of of the songs something

01:34:47.300 about sounding like dogs uh howling or something like that but um you know again this is he's

01:34:53.320 coming from a totally different people and um and he's relaying this back to his people so

01:34:59.000 you know procopius did this ibn fadlan did this and it was always kind of um tinged with their

01:35:06.360 own cultural view of the way our ancestors did things but the fact that we have that palette is

01:35:14.040 i think more important that we should focus on there are times and places um the the idea of a

01:35:20.040 harrow a lot of people have asked me too about the etymology of a harrow because when you think

01:35:24.600 if you look up harrow now you're gonna see it's a grid with spikes in it that's drug behind an ox

01:35:30.680 to score the ground but the word harrow itself means a place of like diffusement between realms

01:35:40.980 between the the sky and the earth or in a case for us in evay it's the diffusement between the

01:35:47.200 material and the divine and that that scratching or moving of the veil and it also means when people

01:35:54.340 harrow they they cry out and again that's very fitting because of the nature of the way that we

01:36:00.180 conduct our ceremonies is a calling out to the gods in numerous ways blowing horns um ringing

01:36:07.860 bells singing prayers um guldering runes um and and in full on you know uh speaking of the gods

01:36:18.080 and asking them to come and be there that's all about crying out and so harrow fits it just has

01:36:24.600 tendency to be um used for an internal space and a harger is a stone or pile of stones and so that

01:36:32.280 would be more fitting for an outdoor space um but there doesn't seem to be one way it was always an

01:36:40.680 adaptive thing and i think that's because our ancestors were adaptive people they used technology

01:36:46.040 they had to consider the weather they had to consider the logistics um they had to consider

01:36:51.160 feasting because that was always kind of correlated with our festivals um and so it has a tendency to

01:36:57.800 take place and we see that in other aryan branches whether it's the slavs um or the uh the the hellenics

01:37:05.160 or or even the the gauls who have the least amount because i think you know the latin empire of rome

01:37:12.760 kind of um did not allow for a a chance it was very vapid during for the goals to change but

01:37:20.920 we see it in the aisle um goals the the uh the irish the scottish the welsh we see that as well

01:37:27.640 stones hedgerows um and and buildings or trees that are kind of roofed together if you will

01:37:37.320 so i think that's kind of an interesting um

01:37:40.600 um it's an interesting question because both are the case what the balance is on worship

01:37:48.600 in an outdoor space or in a in a structure or in an indoor space is really dependent upon

01:37:58.520 place and time and materials available and building culture and things that way

01:38:05.160 um so stone holds up to the ages better than wood does which makes it challenging spawn talked at

01:38:20.520 the the beginning of the program how at one point in time it was assumed that the the Norse and the

01:38:28.200 Germanics and, and the Gaulish didn't do indoor ritual because they couldn't find the temple

01:38:37.060 complexes they would expect. But over time, because like I said, wool, wood doesn't hold up.

01:38:43.280 Whereas, you know, you can go to the Parthenon today and see the stones of where, where the,

01:38:48.540 the Athenians worshiped Athena. You certainly see indoor worship as a very often practice thing

01:38:57.620 in the Greek and the Roman world.

01:39:00.160 You see it in other branches of Arian spirituality a lot.

01:39:04.600 But one thing that I find interesting,

01:39:07.760 the idea of sacred enclosure in an enclosed space

01:39:11.360 is fundamental to our language when we talk about sacrality.

01:39:15.040 We talk about worship spaces.

01:39:18.800 Certainly people worshipped outside,

01:39:21.040 but it wasn't just in a natural setting.

01:39:22.960 And what we find a lot is specially constructed environments for the outside, where maybe it's open to the sky, but you do have things like Stonehenge.

01:39:34.760 You have stone circles. You have things that were obviously made or constructed to facilitate worship, but wouldn't really be what you would call a building today.

01:39:48.180 but one thing i think is really interesting as it relates to this is cave art cave art

01:39:54.500 is some of the earliest example of something we know as a sacred space we find that inside

01:40:03.460 caves themselves we find that in in europe in in france and in spain a lot and some really profound

01:40:11.220 examples of worship in caves and at a time where people couldn't build you know big buildings and

01:40:20.660 things they certainly could have done their rights outside and they probably did as well

01:40:26.500 but there was a very rich internal space worship atmosphere in these caves with the most intricate

01:40:36.180 and beautiful art that really does stand the test of time even though it's the most ancient most

01:40:42.340 primitive religious art that we can find there's also caves where animal skulls specifically bear

01:40:49.860 skulls are put on on pedestals and it very much is a worship environment

01:40:58.180 it's in the closest thing they had to buildings but the idea is it's in a covered in an internal

01:41:03.620 an inside place as opposed to an outside place so i think that also adds some interesting

01:41:11.140 dimension and there's plus and minuses to both and always have been but any idea that our people

01:41:16.820 didn't have temple structures has been disproven often in recent years by some of these places

01:41:25.220 they've uncovered where you can see um you know the post holes for the for the posts for these

01:41:29.860 beams of these buildings but also you know the big example that that we have literary at its

01:41:36.260 station to is the hoff at upsala and that's you know was a celebrated hoff structure of our

01:41:43.700 ancestors and there's been a lot there's a lot of speculation and a lot of um theory put into this

01:41:53.540 and i think to where some of the elements are just factual and beyond theory at this point

01:41:59.300 but the idea of what those spaces look like was the transition between the stave church

01:42:05.620 like between whatever was before and the stave church in scandinavia as far as sacred spaces

01:42:12.260 and you see a lot of the artistic motifs in the early stave churches depicting pagan figures

01:42:20.660 pagan stories things from the elder period where the folk were aussitrew so i think that structure

01:42:28.340 Otherwise, the very earliest stave churches were probably similar, if not identical, to the late period Hoff structures.

01:42:38.320 But again, a lot of that's theory, but there's a lot of very valid things to support those theories, I think.

01:42:51.300 The next question from Allie, can you share the grand vision of Tiershoff?

01:42:58.340 I'm excited to see the first. It's another one of the questions that got cut off. First, purpose built off. So Svon and I have talked about that quite a bit since we got Sigurheim.

01:43:17.360 And that's been something we've talked about extensively, he and I, and a number of different ideas have come into place on what would work best, what financially is doable, what with our skills and our ability to get other people to do the work and various things.

01:43:40.360 what kind of structures work best what elements we want to have there what kind of a feel we want

01:43:47.560 for the place first and foremost the plan is to have tiershoff on top of this ridge which is the

01:43:54.680 highest point of the property there's a long winding path that takes you from the the i guess

01:44:02.680 the valley floor up into the saddle of this you know ridge line space and then up uh traversing

01:44:13.400 you know kind of gradually angling up to the top of this ridge line and then all along to this

01:44:17.480 highest point there's a big flat area up there that'll be really nice for it um aesthetically

01:44:26.360 thinking of things we can do and we're not completely sold on things yet it's gone through

01:44:30.920 a number of different um iterations on what we can do we've talked about steel construction

01:44:38.360 it's one of the things we've talked about for homes there it's one of the things we talked

01:44:41.640 about for the great hall that will be there and then also for the hoff um

01:44:49.400 so steel construction we've looked into some some different models and different ideas and shapes

01:44:55.800 that are appealing up there um one of the things about tiershoff as opposed to other hoffs

01:45:04.040 we have a feasting or we will have a feasting hall on site at the bottom so this is

01:45:11.400 just the vey space other hoffs that we've had and and i think that um

01:45:19.240 thor's hoff is a really good prototype for us to think about because thor's hoff we have

01:45:25.800 the vey and then in a separate building we have the fellowship hall and they're they're two

01:45:31.320 separate things now this is separated by a little bit more distance but the feasting and celebratory

01:45:37.320 hall where people are eating we have a lot of that utility will be down at the base and then

01:45:43.960 up at the hof itself it's just going to be worship space so i don't think we will need plumbing there

01:45:50.440 um i am not sure what kind of heating and cooling we might or might not do up there depending

01:45:58.300 um the idea is we'd like it

01:46:04.740 there's many things we could add on to it but the basic of it being a rectangular space to where

01:46:14.420 one end is a raised portion for the dais and the altar and things and sacred things there but then

01:46:22.820 we have room for folk to make you know a circle an oval whatever we want to do on the length there

01:46:30.180 to worship around the central space as we typically do when we do our rituals what we're

01:46:37.220 talking about and trying to see the feasibility of is doing perhaps a natural gas fire pit in

01:46:43.940 the middle with maybe some you know colored glass in there or whatnot to make it beautiful and have

01:46:51.620 you know a big fire pit in the middle that we gather around in this space we'd have to figure

01:46:56.900 that out when we're laying the foundation with the concrete or else figure something else that's

01:47:02.180 something we've really talked about i'd like to have if we can do it and then on size we tried to

01:47:08.500 look and biggest afa event we have had thus far i believe was 154 people so to prepare for that

01:47:20.500 at least and future proof it a little bit our idea was not including the raised dais portion

01:47:29.140 but there to be standing room for 200 persons at minimum so looking at that equation i think

01:47:38.500 um we could be looking at a building that is perhaps 60 by 30 for that main

01:47:47.940 rectangular of the hoff we're also looking at what we can do with the ceiling we've got one

01:47:56.080 building model we're looking at right now that has a fairly dramatic um pitch to the roof

01:48:01.740 and think and we think that would be really pretty it would harken back to more um nordic

01:48:11.600 architecture and i think a lot of the detail work that we're going to put in we'd like a little you

01:48:16.700 know a special entryway put onto it well thresholds are important but i think the things that we can

01:48:22.220 do to really make it special and make it ours are going to come into detail work we talked about

01:48:27.660 fringing the entire um eve of the building like on the hops that we have now on some of them

01:48:34.720 let's just on odin's off we have big crossed uh cross gables out front that run all the way down

01:48:42.040 the eve of of that front side of the building we're thinking about doing that perhaps even in

01:48:47.500 metal on it see that was one of the ideas that's a little bit bulky and spectacular i don't know

01:48:53.040 how close we'll be able to come to it but it was one of the original concept works that we did what

01:48:57.900 we're going to end up doing maybe a little bit more humble than that but we were thinking about

01:49:04.300 running um along all of that eve decorative metal work um having the the crosshead gables

01:49:15.300 or even um as you'll see on some of the old stave churches the head that projects out from the from

01:49:23.780 the face of the building is also an idea to think about and what i was thinking about and it's fun

01:49:28.740 where i and talk and i were speaking of the other day is have heads coming out of the corners of the

01:49:34.020 eaves too to add some decoration um the uh the the kinfilia of that hof is going to be the eagle

01:49:44.660 so we could have eagle heads coming off the corners maybe even wings and what we would very

01:49:51.220 much like to do and we have plans on we have an afa artist working on this concept and the ability

01:49:57.620 to do it is to have a like six foot tall with you know i forget what the figures were but a

01:50:07.460 six foot tall with maybe a 10 foot potential wingspan i'm not sure what the wingspan came out

01:50:15.220 to but a big golden colored eagle on top of it in the act of ascending in the act of taking off

01:50:24.660 and that's what we're thinking about doing also at this initial stage looking at colors and things

01:50:31.300 the building something very dark colored seems like it would be really cool up there especially

01:50:38.740 if we do the metal work on the um eaves that i mentioned and that eagle in in gold colored

01:50:45.700 metallic i think something black or very dark red or something like that might work really well there

01:50:53.380 but that's what we're thinking and i'm also thinking for lighting inside

01:50:56.580 lighting that projects up against the wall in soft tones. I don't want bright white light. I want

01:51:04.500 tones that are reminiscent of torchlight or firelight kind of around the walls to where

01:51:11.840 it's very homey. I like a lot of yellow tone in light. I think it, I don't know, I just think it

01:51:17.760 works better than like bright neon white light that you get in some spaces. So that's what we're

01:51:23.480 thinking about so far on that far, far edge of the building, if we were to have just this big

01:51:28.760 rectangle with a very large, you know, apex is to have, you know, of course, the big mural

01:51:35.140 of Tyr there. And Svon's been planning up ideas for that. So that's, that's the vision that we

01:51:41.940 have as of now. We've also talked about some other things and we'll see how it all works out,

01:51:47.800 but that's the, that's the basics of that. Yeah. The, the, the windows too, the stained glass

01:51:52.280 windows in honor of the warriors okay so i i forgot about that that was one of the big things

01:51:57.880 i was at really early so this is something that we talked about too and these are these are ideas

01:52:02.360 these are not promises i want to reiterate because we'll see what works out but if we had

01:52:07.240 faux stained glass a painted glass um in tall um tall vertical windows along the sides and on the

01:52:21.620 front and we'll have to work with how many will fit in the space and some size issues but to have

01:52:29.940 the i to take the imagery of warriors throughout time with tear being the war god

01:52:38.420 all the way up to the present and one of the ideas on how to do that because our folk are

01:52:44.100 so very widespread is to take you know the the the general demographic of tennessee as far as the

01:52:53.940 scots-irish and do a progression of a person back to the earliest times with that so having

01:53:04.260 warriors of different stages of that people's development into you know the revolutionary war

01:53:11.220 into into the civil war into into up into modern times so we were thinking about doing that we'll

01:53:18.500 see how much of that we're able to incorporate but that was something we really talked a lot

01:53:23.140 about and were inspired on but yeah that's the that's the idea of that and then one of the things

01:53:29.140 that i think that idea facilitates is the idea of processions from the hall at the bottom up to

01:53:37.220 the hoff at different times of the year for different things is processing up there as

01:53:44.100 as a fault because it's you know it's a half an hour walk up there or something

01:53:49.700 and processing up with with flags with perhaps a wagon with the plow when we're going to do

01:53:57.060 charming of the plow with various things that way i think that'll be a special thing that we can do

01:54:01.460 there um our next question it's kind of a departure from the main topic sorry if it's off from corey

01:54:11.860 sorry if it's off topic with aliens slash ufos in the news again do either of you have any opinions

01:54:20.660 how does our faith inform the discussion maybe there are literally from a different realm

01:54:27.620 uh of existence swan what are your thoughts on aliens and ufos as they relate to

01:54:36.180 our faith our understanding of the cosmos

01:54:40.900 yeah well that and that's a super interesting question i think one thing that we we have to

01:54:46.260 again lay things out to to better understand them is when we talk about alien or ufo or any of this

01:54:52.980 modern uh words that are now just very common in our language you know we kind of context them in

01:54:58.900 a modern sense modern technology um as our understanding of of the powers of the universe

01:55:05.860 that are um becoming more and more understood by humanity um we have a tendency to function

01:55:13.300 them entirely in a scientific sense um however you know the there's plenty of discussion about

01:55:20.420 our ancestral connections to beings from other places and other other realms of existence if you

01:55:28.500 will uh you know and we talk about uh you know the gods coming down and interacting with the folk and

01:55:34.020 initiating um change within the folk um you know a progression if you will and uh perhaps a willful

01:55:42.740 evolution that even occurred after, um, the spark of life and, and initial, uh, movement,

01:55:48.800 I think that it's very hard for us to, um, I'll back that up. It's very easy for other people

01:56:04.620 to immediately either denounce or immediately take into formulating a clear definition based

01:56:13.980 off of, say, scripture or philosophy or what have you. But the one thing about our faith is that it

01:56:19.860 is extremely adaptive. And the understanding that when we speak of this, this transference of,

01:56:26.940 you know, a God coming down to the folk and, you know, numerous times and things like that,

01:56:34.260 when i don't like i think that alien and ufo and all these are mundane secular words that we use 0.61

01:56:40.740 um but when we but to context it you know when we're talking about like what little gray gray men

01:56:47.300 um you know our crop circles or or um you know beams of from radio things that were have been

01:56:54.340 received via um you know satellites and people not knowing what they are and all of these things

01:57:00.180 i think it's it's important that we um remain um adaptive towards those perspectives but i

01:57:11.780 don't think it's it's so much of incumbent upon us to explain what perhaps we don't fully know yet

01:57:21.860 in the idea of how the gods work we try to do our best to explain what we have and so

01:57:27.620 So they fill that gray zone. I mean, are aliens divine? I right now do not believe that. I believe

01:57:35.040 the gods are divine. But then the question could be, if we're pondering and just going through

01:57:41.680 these intellectual exercises, are the gods aliens? I mean, I guess by definition of not being from

01:57:47.500 here or integrated here, perhaps we could view that that way, depending on the meaning of the

01:57:52.200 word. But to say one way or the other, I think is people want a definitive and our faith is built

01:58:01.560 around holding our trough to the gods and our loyalty and our piety to the gods. But having

01:58:10.980 the ability to adapt, you know, if we were as migratory people, if we are honoring the gods

01:58:16.800 and we encounter an environment or we encounter a place that we've never encountered before,

01:58:22.200 not saying that others haven't but we ourselves haven't we have adapted and and implemented

01:58:28.760 our ordering and structuring upon that in order to best survive it and to best negotiate these

01:58:35.720 new factors so for me personally i have i'm at the point now where to say aliens um there's

01:58:47.000 interesting evidence and there's interesting accounts i i think there's a lot of misconceptions

01:58:51.800 And I think there's even a willful desire to obfuscate incidences enough to the point where it's like, OK, well, now I can't just wholeheartedly say one way or another.

01:59:05.360 And not that I would entirely right out out of the gate, because, you know, we we are taught even in the beginning with the Havamal, it's the idea is that when you enter into this, when you cross that threshold, you have to be ready.

01:59:18.100 You have to be adaptive, you have to be aware, and you have to carry what you have with you in negotiating new things. So that's where I'm at, is I'm carrying what I believe is our moral framework forward into unknown and, even to this point, theoretical environment and negotiation with willful beings, if you will, that are not from us or around us.

01:59:45.840 And this could apply to, this philosophy can apply to a lot of things. Dealing with, you know, people, dealing with animals, dealing with the environment, all of these things, I think if we hold true to our traditions and keep the nobility of our moral structuring, we can better engage things as they come at us in a very questionable state.

02:00:10.080 And I know that's not a great answer, and I know it's not something to say one way or the other, but it would be disingenuous for me to say definitively for myself.

02:00:20.840 So, it is such an extremely broad topic that I don't think we have any, any is I think

02:00:41.000 me presupposing too much.

02:00:43.820 doesn't appear that we have enough information to develop any kind of comprehensive understanding

02:00:52.220 of that the explanations of alien visitation and ufos are so

02:01:02.220 diverse that it's very hard to be able to say this is this and that's that as such

02:01:09.100 it's you know i i don't think our faith is one that needs to hedge its bets by preemptively

02:01:18.700 developing a theology that explains ufos as if their existence is some sort of a challenge to

02:01:26.780 our worldview because it's not i don't think there's anything in our lore that tells us that

02:01:33.420 you know that can't be the case or there's some spiritual significance to it one way or another

02:01:39.100 um it's fascinating it's a really interesting subject and I'll say this it's not

02:01:46.140 it's not all made up there's plenty of very reliable things of people seeing things in

02:01:55.960 the sky that they don't understand and don't make sense and what bothers me with this and

02:02:02.280 with a lot of other topics that are, quote, unquote, quote, I don't know why my mouth

02:02:10.460 isn't working tonight, quote, unquote, conspiracy theories.

02:02:19.300 When the government tells you things that aren't true, it leaves your mind open to all

02:02:28.160 possible speculation and you can't blame people for that when you have government reports and

02:02:35.680 things that describe stuff that's obviously not swamp gas as swamp gas what are you supposed to

02:02:44.400 think we're left on our own to give it our best guess and that is naturally feeding all types of

02:02:54.240 people from well-intentioned to hoaxters to people with mental illness to people that are

02:03:00.480 just scared and confused to completely credible legitimate people having so many different

02:03:06.720 explanations for what they see because all that we do know for a fact is government explanations

02:03:12.960 have so very often been deliberately not true and i think that's one of the issues with it

02:03:21.280 i'm very interested as things develop in this is one of those things that's fascinating um

02:03:26.800 i've always been a fan at coast to coast am especially when i was working nights bouncing

02:03:31.600 and working event security and whatever i lived lived like 45 minutes to an hour from where i was

02:03:39.200 working so i'd have these big long drives in the middle of the night and i could could listen it's

02:03:43.680 fascinating and one of the things that i find most fascinating i don't believe these people

02:03:48.640 are telling me the truth all the time but i also don't believe they're lying and the distance

02:03:54.720 between they're not lying but what they're saying is not true that distance is fascinating to me

02:04:02.320 because some process is going on in their mind in the collective unconscious in things that

02:04:10.240 is really interesting one thing i think is fascinating about all of

02:04:14.400 all of about most of the abduction stories is the things that are so very very similar

02:04:22.000 even in the instances where we know it's not true they have a very similar discussion of what things

02:04:30.000 they feel happened to them and that's really really interesting in and of itself i don't know

02:04:36.400 what that is and why it's shared by so many people and especially when you know there's

02:04:42.640 no collusion between the people they're not in cahoots

02:04:47.920 there's a phenomenon there that i don't understand that i think is fascinating but i don't think

02:04:52.880 you know it's not all made up i don't know exactly what the answer is to it and i don't

02:04:57.920 claim to and i don't really think it has a overt relation to our faith um

02:05:06.400 i think when we talk about beings from the different realms of our lore that's something

02:05:12.480 very different than somebody flying here in a ship we don't see in the lore ideas of that kind

02:05:22.480 of a mode of transportation in the same way so i think that's kind of telling and again our

02:05:29.280 ancestors described what they experience in terms that make sense to them at their time

02:05:34.960 but the nature of things feels very different so i couldn't tell you until i

02:05:42.240 know more about it or encounter an alien myself on whether i feel that's completely mundane or

02:05:48.960 there's some sort of spiritual significance to it but i still do find the situation very very

02:05:53.440 interesting um oh and also you started off your question with you know sorry if it's off topic

02:06:02.480 please feel free everybody ask any questions you like um we would love to talk to you about

02:06:07.920 most anything especially if it relates to also true um we love topic we we love questions that

02:06:14.400 are topical but we're here for you we'd love to answer whatever questions you might have

02:06:20.480 uh from olivia let me see if i find a more complete all right here's a more complete

02:06:27.040 version of the question uh what is thought of the practice of planting the placenta

02:06:33.360 at the base of a tree after the birth of a baby would that help form sacred space

02:06:40.960 what are your thoughts uh that's very interesting i've done that actually um i um i for my with my

02:06:51.040 first son um i placed um the the life-giving um the the that which was formed and forged

02:07:01.600 you know within the sacred space the the vey of my wife and the the life-giving of the child we

02:07:09.680 saw that as a as an opportunity to not just leave it in a mundane sense so that's very interesting

02:07:17.040 the way i just worded that is that it could have been and people have but we chose not to and we

02:07:24.240 took that and we placed it at a tree and that that that tree has become very special to us

02:07:29.360 on multiple levels um however is it in the entirety of say a traditional framework of our folk

02:07:37.840 i don't think so could it be in the future perhaps or maybe significant amongst a group of people

02:07:44.960 within our folk that uh have established this as an idea of make taking that sacred move um

02:07:52.000 and a lot of sacred rituals and traditions formulate that way organically amongst people

02:07:58.560 and so you know there but they're just as equally as much i know there's people that have talked

02:08:03.440 about like the consumption of it in a dehydrated form and a pill helps to facilitate you know um

02:08:09.360 lactation and so there's like even a kind of a tool usage of it um and it's such an odd subject

02:08:15.680 to talk about but at the same time you know it it clearly creates a sacred connection

02:08:24.000 between your offspring and you and this tree the the tree becomes significant because of the very

02:08:31.040 deed of committing to it and doing it with piety and sacredness and the going into it with your

02:08:38.640 your your mind and your heart built built towards that significance makes that a deep move so i

02:08:46.560 would say yes it would be sacred but you have to understand that it if there was someone to come

02:08:52.640 from outside of that situation they might not see it as sacred um and so you have to understand that

02:09:00.960 sometimes the sacrality of action the sacrality of deed um is has an echo it's far more visceral

02:09:10.000 for the people that commit the deeds um but not so much for the people outside of it you know it's uh

02:09:15.920 when you walk into arlington and you see those graves that sacredness of of their lives and

02:09:22.640 the events that they they experienced you're not experiencing that you're experiencing kind of the

02:09:29.440 the move of making that their lives their stories sacred and remembering um so again you know it's

02:09:37.920 it's important but i don't think you should shy from it it's just that you have to when we we deal

02:09:43.600 with uh people from various backgrounds and understandings of things some people might be

02:09:49.040 like ah or you know their initial reactions are sometimes just worn on their sleeves about things

02:09:54.080 and so you have to understand that a very important thing but i have and we have a

02:10:01.280 special connection to that tree but do we honor the gods there um no no actually we don't but

02:10:08.880 when we go there and and my son is climbing that tree and me and my wife are there and it suddenly

02:10:15.200 becomes very poignant to the inner center as my son gets bigger the tree is getting bigger there's

02:10:19.840 a lot of sacred poeticness to it that becomes very very visceral for both of for well for me

02:10:26.480 and my wife and we hope to transfer that to our son that he understands that not that he does

02:10:32.080 all the time because kids are kids but um yeah i i think it is sacred but you have to understand

02:10:38.480 that it's not across the board in the framework of it you have to understand it by context of

02:10:44.320 who's committing the deed so first like is that a good way of creating sacred space absolutely this

02:10:54.080 um and i thought about this while swan was talking to see how to describe it and

02:11:03.680 it's hard to put into words and i don't want there to be misunderstanding because all of

02:11:10.000 sacred space can very much be objectively real but it does rely on a lot of subjective factors

02:11:22.780 in certain instances like he was mentioning if you planted a tree amongst the placenta of one

02:11:34.480 your children um that would fundamentally in a very tangible way make you and your child

02:11:48.000 literally connected to that tree and it would be very meaningful for you and your child

02:11:55.520 because that very tangible connection exists it would alter you and put you in a more sacred

02:12:02.560 frame of mind when you're in that place and as you did that more and more i think the initial

02:12:10.560 action would not fundamentally change objective reality that much for me if i were to walk by

02:12:17.120 this tree but the more time you spent at that tree observing it in a sacred context

02:12:26.080 the more it would amplify that effect to where if generations of your family did that

02:12:31.120 and i were to walk by and you know somebody's great great great grandchild told me that that's

02:12:39.520 the tree that you know triple great grandpappy whatever had this placenta at at that point it

02:12:47.620 may have accumulated enough that it makes me stop and like man something about that tree i don't

02:12:52.100 know like just look at it come hey come here like do you feel that something about that tree

02:12:57.400 It's hard to put into words exactly, but the more energy is put into something and the longer the duration of that energy, the more it objectively puts out something that is noticeable.

02:13:18.980 I think something biological like that really does help and is a thing.

02:13:24.360 I think religious ritual at a space where you are using a location as a portal to channel

02:13:31.860 communication between the gods and men, between spirits, between ancestors, I think that makes

02:13:39.220 a space particularly potent. And I think the burial of dead or the disbursement of ashes or

02:13:47.780 the putting of someone's final remains someplace is very, very important for that as well.

02:13:54.360 And that makes someplace have a much more observable objective power as a sacred space. And you see that, you know, Svan mentioned Arlington, any graveyard like that, but especially one that has been so revered and so celebrated, obviously in different ways than maybe we typically do in an also true fashion, but, you know, how many burials and how many ceremonies and how many funerals

02:14:24.360 by the graveside and how many memorial days and veterans days and fourth of july and how many

02:14:32.280 things have been done there to honor the dead that are there and how many dead inhabit that space

02:14:40.200 and walk those grounds it's something like that is objectively powerful and sacred not just for

02:14:49.880 the person or somebody who has an ancestor there but for any of us and yes it's an american site

02:14:56.120 so certainly as an american it's powerful but you know you pick up random chinaman and put him there

02:15:02.840 he's going to know it's a powerful place where someone's ancestors are buried and it's going

02:15:08.040 to matter um so yeah no i think that's a an interesting thing to do i know that's something

02:15:13.800 people do we had uh when i was growing up there was no placenta involved in it but um

02:15:21.080 my parents got a tree when i was born and planted it in their yard and as i grew and as the tree

02:15:26.840 grew it was something special to acknowledge this tree and they called it the matthew tree

02:15:32.520 and so we'd watch it was a it was a blue spruce and we'd watch as it grow as it grew and eventually

02:15:38.600 was tall as the house and it was it was really kind of neat that's especially special if you

02:15:43.320 have it on land that your family's going to keep for a long time not a property that you that you

02:15:49.160 flip or that you buy and you move someplace but a place that your family's going to be in your

02:15:53.000 family for generations that helps maintain the sacred space over time um what do we got next in

02:16:04.120 line here um from europa the last no never oh yeah we do that's the right one sorry uh from

02:16:13.160 europa the last battle gentlemen what makes an item holy and or sacred and how can we bless

02:16:20.520 the space slash room so i think we touched on this

02:16:24.440 if you add a couple previous questions together you get kind of the answer of this

02:16:29.320 the same thing i just said with space applies to items the intentional use of an item

02:16:41.800 for a special purpose for a sacred purpose makes it sacred but if you have a great hero that has an

02:16:51.960 article that was something he had with him when he did his his deeds of heroism

02:16:56.680 that also has a power to it something an item that has witnessed great things maintains an

02:17:05.680 energy from that and can be used in a ritual function later and maintain that power

02:17:12.020 if that makes sense so you know something an item passed down from your ancestors

02:17:20.120 even if it's a mundane item, carries, you know, an element of them with it and helps it to be

02:17:27.680 enhanced when you do want to use it for a sacred purpose. But if you take a brand new item or just

02:17:33.900 something you got at Walmart, if that's what you've got, and you start using it for sacred

02:17:38.580 purposes, you're channeling will and intent into that and you're making it sacred. You're making,

02:17:46.060 And this is a this is an appropriate use of the word, but it's not how we commonly use the word in today's language.

02:17:52.500 But you are making it a they in and of itself. It is a.

02:18:01.260 A collection spot for that energy, so making imbuing an item with that has everything to do with intent, with putting the intent into that item.

02:18:16.060 The more you do it or the more special the person you have do it, the more potent it is. And over time, also, the more valuable and the more rich with energy it is.

02:18:30.240 But when we're talking about sacred space or sacred items, what I think is very, very important to remember. Yes, ancient stuff's cool. Yes, things that are time honored and passed down through generations are cool.

02:18:46.060 All of those things started with a generation at one point.

02:18:51.980 So rather than bemoaning the lack of having some great antique that has power or having, you know, a proximity to an ancient stone circle or an ancient sacred site, start today and it will be that much more sacred next year.

02:19:09.600 It starts somewhere, make something sacred for your great grandkids, because it'll be really cool then.

02:19:16.600 Everything had to start somewhere, and I felt this in a really visceral way at Odenshof.

02:19:24.600 We've been doing ritual at Odenshof now for eight years.

02:19:29.600 I have been the presiding, you know, doing a lot of the ritual there for about seven of those years.

02:19:38.600 And I feel the place grow in power and grow in energy and grow in sacrality over that time.

02:19:48.380 That's not even a decade, but it's so much more powerful than it was the day that we got it.

02:19:56.760 As far as your idea on doing things with a room to to like bless a room, the thing that I mentioned earlier with the fire, do that.

02:20:08.200 But another idea is to speak words over a bowl of mead or wine or beer or whatever fluid you'd like.

02:20:23.180 Invite, depending on the circumstance, your ancestors, the gods, whatever you're invoking to put their blessings into that liquid.

02:20:33.780 and then a spurging or sprinkling that around that room or on all four of the walls and

02:20:41.940 you know laying claim to it or pronouncing it to be sacred that's the fundamental that I would

02:20:50.100 suggest it's what we do in our Hoffs it's what I've done in uh house blessings and land takings

02:20:56.860 and that's what I would suggest what do you think on this it's fun yeah I and I think there's a

02:21:02.100 culmination of things too because we've spoken of the fire we've spoken of smoke of course that's

02:21:07.300 logistics too you know the idea of having a sensor with sacred leaves or dried uh sacred herbs um and

02:21:15.940 and blessing the the area or asking the gods to bless the area with smoke um a spurgement with

02:21:23.920 with a uh a liquid of communion um very important and sometimes it layers itself so the idea of you

02:21:32.640 you know being able to light a candle and and this is or this is a perfect example like what

02:21:37.760 we do at thorsoff we light a flame and we mark it as the start because the flame is sacred from

02:21:45.680 what we call the need fire and so the need fire is lit and then the smoke is lit from the need fire

02:21:54.400 and dispersed in the air there's ringing of bells there's blowing of horn there is a calling out

02:22:01.920 and asking the gods to be with us and to give them their might so that's that's where we're talking

02:22:06.720 about willful sacredness creating willful sacredness versus asking the gods to also be a

02:22:12.640 component in that layering and that's that's an an interesting point in and of itself so

02:22:19.840 if the gothar have been committed to uh the gift cycle with the gods for a very long time them

02:22:26.240 asking the gods to place a layer of their might within the structure of making that place sacred

02:22:32.480 we believe that is a huge and visceral component to it so the idea would be you know what level

02:22:40.080 of layering you're doing there there are some people like i i i think about it makes me think

02:22:46.400 there's um there's a rune um author who has kind of diverged into other things as well but his name

02:22:53.520 is nigel pennock and he talks about this thing called the nine the nine grid the nine square

02:22:59.040 grid what he was doing this for was for runic uh composition and this was part of again a layering

02:23:07.040 of creating sacred space for himself and when you get into deeply formalized and structured

02:23:15.360 layerings of of creating sacred space a lot of times that shifts over from simply a spiritual

02:23:23.280 connecting to a structuring for purpose and it shifts more over towards will as opposed to like

02:23:30.720 for us um when we interact with the gods a lot of times we take the the most simple and sacred form

02:23:36.880 of the circle and with that with the harrow in the center and and you know the circle is

02:23:43.200 within the square the hof is the square the four corners uh and that kind of applies when we take

02:23:49.840 land we talk about the hearth as the heart perhaps the center but we carry a flame to the four

02:23:55.280 corners of the land and so we're creating the the circle in the center and the sacred post that

02:24:01.680 that build and some people go further into that and they're doing that in order to create this

02:24:07.360 substantive thing that helps them create a separation from the mundane but it's again

02:24:15.040 we find that when it in a spiritual context it's it's uh easier logistically with a large

02:24:20.880 amount of people to focus on the circle within the the order of the of the guard the the walls

02:24:28.160 the four walls um and we find that that doesn't necessarily have to be defined because it's

02:24:35.040 defined in the building itself it's defined in the shape of the people and it and in the center

02:24:40.080 is the hero and therefore the gods and so we create this axis uh mundi if you will this central point

02:24:47.280 in a lot of this symbolic stuff but people go even further you know whether they have to wear

02:24:52.000 a red hat or whether they have to wear a specific clothing or garb or lay down specific runes or

02:24:59.040 create a grid pattern they're doing this and they're starting to manifest more of a willful

02:25:04.000 separation as opposed to perhaps an organic separation and that's why you'll find most um

02:25:10.480 sacred spaces take the form of a circle or take the form of a circle within a square because

02:25:16.080 these are the most you know potent uh and and uh easy and natural organic way in which our uh

02:25:27.040 expressing our beliefs within sacred space happen uh if you're at home and you have you know just a

02:25:33.120 wall and everything else behind you is not necessarily walled off um then you know you're

02:25:39.760 working in a in a smaller sense that circle again is is now brought back to you um so you know the

02:25:47.120 usage of of separating the mundane can happen and i think that happens more in a when people are

02:25:53.840 trying to do uh like again a visceral we call it like we we could call it magic we could call it

02:26:00.160 uh ceremony we could call it whatever it is uh sometimes it's often connected to certain

02:26:04.720 traditions hermetic traditions have a tendency to make grid make uh circle but with components and

02:26:12.800 and um and things like that uh but at the end of the day i think when we're talking about

02:26:19.680 spiritual connection we we are manifesting out the from us in a circular pattern and then the guard

02:26:27.040 the edging of that the the hof itself the sacred home or the land that we are upon and we've taken

02:26:33.840 ownership of that becomes our garth our our wall between um that which is out and that which is

02:26:41.280 within and we're asking the gods to come in and be a part of that space and so it happens to with

02:26:48.080 items uh during thoreblot uh big thing about thoreblot one it's a midwinter festival and in

02:26:53.920 winter there's doldrums of of the cold and so a lot of times just to get together and eat and

02:26:59.360 feast and have a good time that's a huge tenant of the entire holy tide but what we end up doing

02:27:04.960 is blessing the mjolnars the uh thor's hammers that a lot of folks wear and it's becoming more

02:27:10.640 and more prevalent as an organic thing in which the gothar will take the mead of the ceremony and and

02:27:19.440 asperge the hammers so that they can take that might layer that the kind of the construction of

02:27:25.200 all of that so that they can take it home and bear it with them and and remind them that they're

02:27:30.160 they're intimately connected to that that moment and that place um and so there we have sacred

02:27:38.240 space and sacred object in in one spot and that's what made me come to mind when we talk about items

02:27:46.720 versus space and oftentimes they're they're interchangeable and they're not wholly distinct

02:27:53.280 um i do i can think of a one way in reverse in which perhaps an item is used and there's some

02:27:58.800 sort of synchronistic or what we would call weird or orlog this kind of uh divine moment in which the

02:28:06.480 the tool or the implement is helping in in uh creating a sacred moment and then suddenly that

02:28:16.560 item becomes something that the the person holds sacred to them and then they ask perhaps that a

02:28:21.920 gothar will bless it or that they want to bless it at their own harrow um or that they you know

02:28:27.520 again tell their children that this is a special item for our family whether it's you know be a

02:28:32.800 family sword or a pendant or something these things kind of do organically happen and the

02:28:38.400 more we structuralize around it is because we are doing things either from a cultural

02:28:44.240 perspective or an intellectual perspective of creating formulation and i don't think that

02:28:51.280 people should get caught up in the idea that they have to do this massive amount of steps

02:28:56.480 in order to do it it's it again it's it's organic um you know we light the fire and the smoke we

02:29:03.760 blow the horns we ring the bells those are things that have organically grown as our people have

02:29:08.880 come together but the idea of doing something simple for yourself as lighting pouring mead

02:29:15.520 asking the gods to bless the mead spurging the item or spurging the space and asking that the

02:29:21.280 gods become a component of the entirety of that sacredness with with absolute respect to bear

02:29:27.680 that in mind it's not like they're do you're not commanding them to do that you're asking them to

02:29:33.280 do that and you and you really are hoping that they will do it but there's no it's from the gods

02:29:38.560 at that point so so something to consider all right next one more business question who's the

02:29:46.320 folk builder over mississippi now it depends so mississippi is an interesting state it's where

02:29:54.800 all of my mother's family has been from since the very early 1800s

02:30:01.040 but we've never had a ton of members in mississippi um that's always been kind of a

02:30:06.640 challenge we got a lot of alabama members got a few louisiana members uh lots of arkansas members

02:30:13.760 lots of tennessee members so it's kind of a it depends where in mississippi you are if you are

02:30:19.920 in west mississippi your folk builder is tabitha owens in arkansas if you are in northeast mississippi

02:30:29.760 your best bet is russell brown who's in tennessee and if you are in southeast tennessee

02:30:39.080 it's just by a hair but amy joe stoddard is your folk builder and she is in in i'm sorry florida

02:30:49.300 um very very close to her so it's you could you know it's toss-up is uh bode mayo and he is in

02:30:57.180 south georgia so that one that was an easy one um wolfson you yeah you get you're surrounded

02:31:07.340 you you are and you're in a really good place to be like because we've got really cool things

02:31:11.500 happening in tennessee you're in a really good spot to be it's just you got to go slightly on

02:31:15.900 the other side of one of your borders to to get to where the action's at currently or help us

02:31:21.580 build that action where you're at um john horn's wife's question also true views on ghosts

02:31:33.500 um ghosts we absolutely believe it's thing we covered that extensively in the soul it

02:31:40.300 is a thing we've talked about it before um it is perceptible to people that have

02:31:47.500 that ability um that have second sight that have are perceptive to those things

02:31:54.780 and i think it would be dishonest for someone not to believe in ghost

02:32:01.740 yet to believe in ancestor worship if you believe that your ancestors exist in some form in a way

02:32:13.020 that they can um uh interact with you and they're conscious of you then the idea of of ghosts in its

02:32:25.980 fundamentals should be okay and we noticed this place as we talked about different ideas of it

02:32:32.380 being the conscious like ghost this is the ghost of grandma so-and-so versus some battlefield ghosts

02:32:41.980 that seem to just be endlessly redoing an event over and over again because they're a psychic image

02:32:47.900 that are imbued into a place but very much we do believe that ghosts are real and exist and i've

02:32:58.940 been i don't have that ability myself to see that or maybe if i do it has to be on some

02:33:05.820 really huge level or something for me to see it but i have been with people that

02:33:14.940 and i'm trying to be objective here it's not necessarily provable but these are people and

02:33:23.100 i see their eyes and i see their reaction they are reacting to things that i cannot see

02:33:29.980 and they're very much describing them as you describe ghosts and

02:33:35.820 that seems to be, you know, the more I've looked into those circumstances by those people,

02:33:41.440 the more I'm convinced it's a very real thing. Swan, do you have anything, you know, kind of

02:33:45.840 quick to add on ghosts? I was just going to say, definitely, if you're interested in that topic,

02:33:50.440 to look back into Victory Never Sleeps about the soul and about the afterlife, because we touch on

02:33:55.600 that subject numerous times. But one of the big things is the soul component that we talk about

02:34:01.680 called the hammer and when we when uh i was here was talking about the soldier on the battlefield

02:34:06.640 and the implication of a of an of a visage that's continually going through um that that that part

02:34:13.920 of the soul the hammer is uh scorched into an area uh through doing deed and and and the weird is

02:34:22.880 actually like uh kind of a recorded sense of it so there's that versus also to the um the you know

02:34:29.920 seeing of a spirit or interacting with a spirit and we talk about that a lot

02:34:34.000 in those uh episodes where we kind of really clarify some of those nuances so i would

02:34:39.520 recommend definitely go back and and um look at those but yes are are they a tangible part of our

02:34:46.800 cultural lore 100

02:34:48.400 percent all right so next question and we've talked this is quick because we've uh gone over

02:34:59.760 this quite a few times tonight uh gentlemen if the item used in in the rituals

02:35:07.680 okay i i'm i'm making the best out of this this really tiny print if the item is used in rituals

02:35:14.320 it will accumulate more energy power slash intent drinking horns for example is there any truth to

02:35:20.960 this statement thank you absolutely that is that is the fundamental in a nutshell it if things are

02:35:29.120 ritual objects are used in ritual activity they will gain ritual might um might power intent

02:35:36.720 whatever you put in them it's one of the things that i know and you mentioned the drinking corn

02:35:41.760 so i'll add this a little bit to to give more value to the question because instead of dismissing

02:35:47.840 it because we talked about it a lot one thing with drinking horns specifically i know people that who

02:35:54.960 have had very close relationships perhaps a kindred relationship or something else with

02:36:00.160 people where they shared a horn and over that horn if somebody that they know to be a terrible

02:36:07.520 person has spoken over it and somebody that's found out to be a horrible liar has spoken lies

02:36:13.040 into the horn or somebody something like that that horn carries the weight of some of that

02:36:18.800 and so i know a number of people when an oath is violated or when something egregious happens if

02:36:24.800 they want to put an end to that and ritually kill that horn and start fresh with a new horn

02:36:31.760 they'll offer the horn into the fire because it does contain and this isn't just ritual energy

02:36:38.960 you made sure to point out intent and i think that's really important if somebody has used an

02:36:44.480 object for foul purposes that intent gets imbued there if somebody who you know has con you've had

02:36:54.160 stumble with and you find out their whole you know their whole existence is predicated on lies and

02:36:59.520 deceit and they've poured lies and deceit into this horn with you you may very well want to just

02:37:04.880 get rid of it you know break it burn it destroy it and start fresh with with a new horn or with

02:37:11.840 a different something different um but yeah absolutely what you said is is absolutely the

02:37:18.000 gist and it's kind of the nuts and bolts of how you make something sacred or how you imbue that with

02:37:24.160 with might um

02:37:29.760 and i i do apologize i am shuffling here trying to deal with nick and my way of doing questions

02:37:36.640 because it is different than it's been in the past because entropy has been temperamental lately um

02:37:47.920 all right so i believe this is the next question

02:37:50.240 gentlemen what are requirements for a building to become a hoff and what circumstances can prevent

02:37:58.220 that history of the building perhaps proximity to something previous occupants thank you um

02:38:09.320 so much more on the first half than the last half um although that's important too I guess

02:38:15.800 things that make something appealing as a Hoff there are practical things and then there are

02:38:24.500 metaphysical things um practically so I know that especially early on and I think this is

02:38:33.500 the folks that are uncomfortable with it have sorted themselves out the folks that aren't

02:38:37.760 have accepted it and are cool with it one of the things there's some initial pushback on

02:38:42.920 repurposing christian churches as hoffs um one of the a very time honored practice

02:38:52.120 specifically of indo-europeans or arians is to take over sacred space and to repurpose it 0.94

02:39:04.360 because the energy that's there over a long period of time in a religious sense 0.53

02:39:11.240 and again it's so hard to talk about these things with our mundane language because it's very

02:39:18.440 imprecise but if families have come together in christian worship and fellowship for long periods

02:39:30.600 of time they have built a spiritual might in that place part of that is completely objective well of

02:39:39.880 spiritual gravity the place has part of it is a specific affinity towards the deity that they

02:39:47.160 have worshiped there when we go in and claim it for ours we lose the chunk that is tying them

02:39:54.200 to their god through their worship but we maintain this well of spiritual might that we then can add

02:40:04.520 to build upon and use to elevate our gods so a place that has been shown sacred and treated

02:40:13.880 sacred for long periods of time has both subjective and objective might we can maintain

02:40:22.520 the objective might and enhance that and build upon that foundation

02:40:26.600 to start way ahead of the game than if we did something otherwise.

02:40:34.980 And that's, so that's, that's a thing. On a completely practical scale, churches are really

02:40:41.220 good because they're built for exactly what we do. They most often are built for a room for worship

02:40:49.700 and an area a kitchen and an area for folks to eat communally and share together and then perhaps 0.98

02:40:58.100 some storage and administrative office that's exactly what we would need for for a hoff in a

02:41:05.200 completely perfect world if we were starting completely fresh the shapes of those buildings

02:41:09.760 or dimensions or aesthetics might be slightly different but we would need a place to communally

02:41:14.980 feast with our folk to prepare the feast we need a separate place to gather and do our worship

02:41:21.940 and set up an altar and we may very well need a spot for storage or for you know counseling and

02:41:29.700 in a office as i like to call the offices we have in our hops so churches make a very good

02:41:38.980 place for us to do something like that and as i mentioned earlier in the show

02:41:42.580 they also come very often grandfathered in with zoning that ensures that we can use the building

02:41:49.780 for what we we intend to without having to fight with the municipality as far as what would prevent

02:41:58.340 a place from being a hof um i mean if it was just a place of ill repute if it was a brothel

02:42:06.500 or was used you know for as a i don't know maybe a drug manufacturing location or a meth lab

02:42:16.580 i don't know those are things we would have to consider depending upon the circumstance

02:42:21.620 perhaps if really evil things were done there or you know heinous murders or rapes or abuses

02:42:28.980 and things that would just kind of sour the place i think those are things we would consider

02:42:34.580 um we haven't run into that yet though i we haven't run into a spot that we've rejected because

02:42:41.140 it was a nefarious place or or there was some reason to be disgusted by it and not and not

02:42:48.380 give it a fair shake so that's why i said initially more on the first half there's

02:42:53.040 things that have made places more appealing than others but we haven't really found things that

02:42:57.460 have made places distasteful to have a Hoff at so far.

02:43:03.100 Is that all, do you follow all that Svon

02:43:05.420 or do you have anything to add?

02:43:07.340 No, absolutely.

02:43:08.180 I think that you addressed really too,

02:43:10.960 people have those reservations

02:43:13.120 and I don't think they have any consideration

02:43:15.600 of other things that go into it.

02:43:18.000 They can just focus on that conflict within themselves,

02:43:24.340 but they don't consider it like logistics

02:43:25.780 and food preparation.

02:43:26.800 and zoning and and all of those things and why we have considered those things and moved forward

02:43:33.660 with them and made sure that those places became our own um yeah it's just and we try to be patient

02:43:39.960 with people that have that confliction within them because it is about trying to slowly make

02:43:46.460 their perceptions of understanding uh wiser uh if they're not in a wise spot at least to the

02:43:52.880 middling wise of understanding it to enough to where it doesn't, um, they're, you know,

02:43:57.720 they can work through a lot of the conditioning of it, but yes, absolutely. 100% nail on the head.

02:44:05.780 All right. Um, next one.

02:44:17.940 And I have some of these here as well. I can see them.

02:44:20.900 Well, this one, I just don't understand. Maybe I missed something in the side. Who exactly is Guilford? I don't know what that means. I'm sorry.

02:44:34.460 Yeah, I think that might be in relation to some conversation because.

02:44:37.200 Yeah, I wonder. It's a question that was was fed to me here and I have no idea any context to it. I have no idea how to answer that one. I apologize.

02:44:47.360 Yes. Next one comes from Daniel. Excuse me. Oh, newly minted Witten Daniel Young.

02:44:58.700 Question is, on the subject of ritual, whether in a hof, a home or outdoors,

02:45:05.600 can you speak on the symbolism of the sacred flame, the need fire? I mean, it's fine. Can

02:45:11.540 address that yeah um one of the things i think that to understand what where our lore and

02:45:18.260 understanding of the need fire comes from is most of it is is comparative but there is a very clear

02:45:24.580 and distinct point in an english manuscript in which a christian uh like i guess law uh one of

02:45:33.700 the things that they talked about was not creating fire through friction now that's not specific

02:45:40.980 They're not talking about or they say don't create a fire through friction because that's what the the ancient or, you know, what they said, you know, the pagans, the heathens, the people that came before us that in that negative light, don't do what they did.

02:45:56.840 You must, you know, create light in a different way. And I think that comes from, again, a biblical standpoint, because that's all in the Bible. A lot of the separation of the Yahudi or the Judeans or the Jews and their separation from their neighbors was a very distinct part of the Torah or the Tanakh.

02:46:17.520 and so that seemed to just traverse through as it was going through the folk but um but it gleans a

02:46:24.400 very important information and it talks about the fact that that sacred fires were made through

02:46:29.760 friction but it doesn't specify exactly how like whether it's friction through stick or a bow drill

02:46:36.320 or even a you know uh you know i don't know if it would be even the word itself in the in the usage

02:46:43.040 of stone and steel or like through like now you know a lot of people pharaoh rods are a form of

02:46:49.360 friction so um but the idea of making a sacred flame in the beginning is uh seems to be pointed

02:46:58.320 in that and then we look comparatively like i said to other things when we talk about the alderstav

02:47:04.400 of the icelanders taking land by lighting a torch and riding their horse to the four corners as it's

02:47:10.240 as it's uh spoken of of their land and holding the flame up and and then riding to the next

02:47:16.160 holding the flame up they're taking that land as a sense of responsibility um and they're they're

02:47:21.600 they're um kind of defining borders physically and spiritually through light and through smoke

02:47:28.160 um that is the ultimate significance i think of the need fire um it can apply both through light

02:47:36.320 through smoke and it can often apply itself through blessing the people in the light

02:47:41.680 or blessing the people in the smoke while also the significance of starting it um it has become

02:47:48.080 organically a thing at thor's hof in relation to the idea that the need fire being lit is a

02:47:55.360 representation of our piety the representation of our obligation and duty to the gods to maintain

02:48:01.920 their space to maintain their their house their halves and to regularly meet to them meet with

02:48:07.680 them and seek from them wisdom guidance help might or and also to to give it so that that uh the

02:48:15.360 significance of making the light is kind of like reciprocal as well um and it often serves a

02:48:22.720 logistical function because once the light is lit um that flame is used when lighting other things

02:48:30.160 during the ceremony like sacred smoke from um items in a sensor so if the sensor is like a brass

02:48:37.120 sensor with sand in it and there's you know uh dried um herbs that are sacred for the for the

02:48:43.520 hollow the holiday then that the need fire is used so it creates it has a logistical function

02:48:49.520 but it has a greater spiritual function and also in our faith we believe there is a very very

02:48:56.480 important god that is connected between the material and the heavenly and he resides on the

02:49:03.380 on the edge of things and it's he resides in heaven and he's he's at the warding of of ausgard

02:49:10.780 the place where the gods live in heaven and he has the ability to see so the lighting of the light

02:49:16.060 is kind of like lighting that beacon letting the light be known to the one who can see and and then

02:49:23.580 speaking to him and saying we are now lighting this light we are we we are keeping our oaths

02:49:29.500 we are holding our faith we are projecting that light to the folk here and to the gods

02:49:35.500 to let them know that we continue our oaths and so um that's how the need fires kind of evolved

02:49:42.780 now the usage of it back in lore may have been outside again friction fires and the usage of

02:49:48.060 blessing um people or livestock or even items and weapons through smoke um very very old traditions

02:49:55.980 of the aryan people no matter what branches we're talking about um so same for us but uh it has

02:50:02.860 changed a little bit sometimes it can be in a sensor it can be indoors it can be more functioned

02:50:07.900 around light and less around smoke because of you know internal fire systems or or um ventilation

02:50:15.180 and things we we have to take a lot of that consideration sometimes it can be a candle

02:50:19.260 sometimes it can be a brassiere of of um flame or it can be a outside fire that's that is lit

02:50:27.260 and it uh administers the beginning of the process of making the the the space and the folk ready to

02:50:36.700 uh make that connection to the gods

02:50:39.500 all right uh next question

02:50:45.140 this question seems kind of odd and i don't know if it was a real question or not i'm not really

02:50:52.140 sure when you open a new hof or vape do you think it's better to bury the animal corpses

02:50:58.400 on the main bloat tree or is it better to hang them to hang them on the tree so

02:51:07.480 with all questions here, and this comes from somebody asked questions a lot. So I'm just

02:51:13.340 going to take it at face value. If you were opening any kind of sacred space, and

02:51:22.840 animal sacrifice was a part of the worship practice there. I

02:51:30.540 again like spawn said earlier i think that if you're sacrificing an animal you wouldn't want

02:51:39.240 to dispose of the guts and the the the hair and and bones and things like that you wouldn't want

02:51:49.640 to take something that's been handled sacredly and then just throw them in the trash that wouldn't

02:51:54.740 be appropriate the idea of burying them by a tree uh that's by your like your ritual tree

02:52:03.940 makes sense the idea of burying them someplace special on the half grounds makes sense perhaps

02:52:11.380 even burning them in the ritual fire makes sense i think that the idea of festooning a tree with

02:52:21.140 innards and bones and stuff is a little bit more high lung than i think needs to be done

02:52:29.380 um and i don't think it has the i think it has aesthetic shock value but i don't think it it

02:52:37.780 really glorifies our faith in what we're trying to do i don't think there's any context where that's

02:52:42.340 not just needlessly spooky and grim for without without purpose to my mind and the moment that

02:52:53.620 becomes well yeah in the moment what you just said the moment that becomes your intent is to

02:52:57.300 make things spooky and to have an aesthetic that makes you feel like an edge lord you're immediately

02:53:02.660 devaluing the entirety of the gift itself uh if there is a cultural context to it that has been

02:53:10.180 developed um or is going to be developed i could understand it but for the most part we have already

02:53:16.820 had cultural and uh context in in the other things that you said i was here with the the burying

02:53:23.780 and the burning that seems to be a huge uh point of alsatru's current gift cycling processes is the

02:53:32.180 the burying and and the burning as opposed to say for instance the hanging or that would be of of

02:53:38.420 giving to the sky or to the wind or through water which is also not often done and again that i think

02:53:44.420 that's logistics it's about water it's about contaminations and things like that that has

02:53:49.700 application as of as well so it just seems that religiously we have a tendency to give to burying

02:53:57.220 and burning for multitudes of reasons the other thing is to consider is when we talk about uh

02:54:03.220 animal sacrifice i i also like to bring up the point that it is sacral butchering because we are

02:54:11.780 eating from the animal um and so it's not just some sort of like a a slaughtering to to burn or

02:54:19.620 to adorn with skulls and horns and and shoulder pelts and things like that it's it's there is

02:54:27.380 more to it than that and it's not always the case because we know in ancient um writings that they

02:54:34.660 had you know bro the blood they had bread bloat they had uh beer bloater all brought ale um they

02:54:41.860 gave of weapons that they broke and they buried in the ground or they gave to water but again a lot

02:54:48.340 of people don't do that simply because of the logistics of it if there isn't water readily

02:54:51.940 available and then if there is the context of understanding that you might be um placing

02:54:57.060 something in the water that might affect other people or or nature itself or the animals you

02:55:02.820 know we we take those into consideration now perhaps it you know in ancient times it was

02:55:07.220 easier because those things were not a consideration because the the rawness of nature at at our the

02:55:13.460 times of our ancestors versus now you know you you go and throw stuff into a water canal or

02:55:21.380 you know something that you know and even to think about it like with fire fire in california

02:55:27.060 has to be controlled and we do control it with great care because of consideration about a lot

02:55:31.860 of things then that's the intent is is uh what's the best way sometimes logistically but also to

02:55:39.060 commit the act in accordance with the intent even though we might use a different method and you

02:55:46.900 know if somebody says well it's not a real gift unless you burn it or it's not a real gift unless

02:55:51.700 hanging up in the trees those um that's that's again that's like have them all you know the

02:55:58.900 you're you're encountering someone that kind of has a foolish notion of them of the way things

02:56:04.500 go for them and they just apply it to everything to everyone and um it's it's it's kind of laughable

02:56:12.020 at sometimes because i i have seen and witnessed multiple different ways and all the while the

02:56:17.460 intent of the the gifting is what is really important um you know and i i think that when we

02:56:24.340 uh animal sacrifice is such a touchy subject nowadays because people are absolutely willing

02:56:29.380 to buy meat from a supermarket from an animal that wasn't sacredly butchered um and then at the same

02:56:36.500 time understanding that like even our tactics of sacredly butchering an animal have changed

02:56:41.700 from bolt and bullet and quickness of of of uh dispatchment um you know kind of leaning away

02:56:50.100 from uh more archaic ways of dispatching animals because that was the only way that it was able to

02:56:55.860 be done back then but also too that it is not the entirety of it um and so you know um i know there

02:57:02.900 was a big controversy um again on social media when there was a um like a self-practicing um

02:57:11.300 you know polytheist that that committed to holding a sacral butchering or at least i

02:57:17.780 assume so because he never went beyond just the act of ending the animal's life he never talked

02:57:22.660 about preparation he never talked about the the meat he never talked about how if he burned

02:57:27.620 or things or kept the kept you know the bones and things so like perfect example um during yule i

02:57:35.140 i cook a swine's head as a tradition of eating the the pig head uh the you know fried pig head

02:57:43.060 at the end of yule and i keep the bone the skull and i clean it and i take care of it and then i 0.50

02:57:49.780 decorate it to commemorate that yule um sometimes i gift it by placing it in the ground uh i want

02:57:57.540 wanted uh fertile crops this year in my uh my uh field of uh potatoes that I'm growing and um so I

02:58:07.560 buried one of them as a gift to the land in hopes to to garner um that because of the might and the

02:58:13.860 sacredness of that that time and um but again it's all about context in that so I think when we open

02:58:22.320 a new Hoff or Vey we do something called the land taking which is about taking the land with fire

02:58:27.360 there actually usually is not an a physical blood bloat there is a a bloat of ale and a bloat of the

02:58:35.520 of bread and food uh sometimes of flowers or even two of items some people have placed items at the

02:58:43.120 opening ceremonies of um the holy spaces where they're going to bury people they place uh even

02:58:48.240 if it's something that will eventually disintegrate like paper or or um people have left gifts of

02:58:54.080 flowers knowing that they're going to be slowly taken it's there's a lot of that there's no one

02:59:00.560 singular way and i don't think it's it has to be and i don't think it's good for people to think

02:59:06.320 oh man if i have to do this i have to you know i live in an apartment in you know downtown whatever

02:59:12.640 city you know i gotta get a a bull and paint it red and and um you know ride a chariot and then

02:59:20.480 bonk it on the head with a club that's getting kind of ridiculous and again so but yes land

02:59:28.800 taking is the big one when we open hoffs and bays all right next one europa hoff when uh

02:59:37.200 soon i hope i would love to um as soon as we get a group of afa members over there that can meet

02:59:45.280 semi-regularly and we see a meeting of you know 40 persons as soon as we have a gothi there

02:59:55.520 um both of those things would help that be a more realistic possibility we were very close we

03:00:02.480 almost opened uh thorshoff was almost done in sweden but we just didn't have the people

03:00:09.520 things didn't work out just quite right. And the folks reaction to COVID-19 kind of stopped a lot

03:00:18.440 of our momentum that we had going. So yeah, I would love to have one of those and we would

03:00:24.400 absolutely make one happen as soon as that's a realistic possibility for us. Yeah. I think

03:00:30.180 people think of the Hoffs as a top down. They see the, the, the Hoff creation as something coming

03:00:35.880 from the house of true folk assembly but they're not realizing that the hoffs are actually two uh

03:00:41.800 there's people there that are involved and there's an investment towards the idea that

03:00:46.120 there's enough people there that meet regularly and commit to giving offerings to the gods and i i

03:00:51.800 feel that the the folks in europe are too distant sometimes or oftentimes they i think they have uh

03:00:58.120 maybe disagreements on the way that they want to conduct uh you know their faith with others

03:01:04.040 amongst them and that causes a lot of uh you know conflict or you know just it there seems to be

03:01:11.000 these this like hold up that doesn't seem to happen in america and you know being of someone

03:01:17.080 who kind of can see from both sides of that um americans and and uh even and canadians they

03:01:25.160 know they've got a space they're gonna go there and they're gonna meet and they're gonna you know

03:01:31.480 shake hands and eat and honor the gods and then go home and do it again you know at the next holy

03:01:37.320 tide and for some reason the europeans are struggling with that i think a lot of it is

03:01:42.760 is based on geography because when you have uh you know maybe perhaps a small group in france

03:01:48.760 and a small group in england that isn't conducive as much as it would say um you know i get together

03:01:57.080 on the regular with a uh with members multiple members who are in south carolina

03:02:03.640 you know and i am a whole state away i am well over eight hours away from them and it's just

03:02:09.880 easy for me to do that even though it it's a large amount of distance it's relatively easy

03:02:16.280 to logistically pull that off and there's enough tenacity and so i would love to see the european

03:02:22.280 folk um really go that route um not saying that they aren't on individual levels but when it

03:02:30.040 comes to an organizational level they're not quite there yet and you know and then there's there's

03:02:37.320 also another understanding is like i think for folks that are over over the ocean they see the

03:02:42.920 afa as an american unique thing and it was kind of the way here in the united states for a long

03:02:48.120 time a lot of people thought of the afa as a west coast thing and that is again conditioning of the

03:02:55.240 mind it's just the perception of the way it seems no if you have you know multiple people in your

03:03:02.280 area and you're able to get them together and you know and hold you build a sacred space even if

03:03:08.440 it's at a home or at a at a a historical site in the wilderness or on a mountain or near a river

03:03:15.000 or a campsite or whatever it might be do it because i think that's more important than no

03:03:21.080 it has to be at a sacred site you know exactly you know three or more kilometers away from

03:03:28.920 civilization and we have to use wood and we have to dress up a certain way and

03:03:34.040 no that that stuff will come over time just go forth and do it is i think one of the the

03:03:41.000 there are as al-Sherry Gurley has said before the biggest distance is between zero and one

03:03:46.440 and we have that kind of almost there and then it kind of dissipates or again COVID was a big one

03:03:53.640 uh and and you know the atrocious uh governmental um mandates that happened on travel and other

03:04:02.600 things that happened over in Europe and in Canada too because a great number of folks that were very

03:04:08.280 active got extremely stunted because of the mandates that are happening in canada and um

03:04:17.160 you know and then it comes about again if you we you're also true this is your ethnic faith but

03:04:23.800 people don't consider it ethnic for you because that makes it somehow bad so now you're you're

03:04:29.640 you know or people are scared because they don't want to engage with you know society or what have

03:04:35.880 you um and that there's so many factors that i think have stopped the people from reaching one

03:04:42.680 and i would love to see we even talked about uh me and i was here ago they were like man

03:04:48.440 what if what if the first half like in in uh you know like in europe like could we picture um

03:04:57.800 zealand or latvia or you know um poland or hungary or somewhere in the central

03:05:05.240 east kind of an availability to pull people from the east and the west and the north you know and

03:05:13.160 and there's always considerations of how how best to accommodate directions and things like that we

03:05:19.880 do that here in the states you know when you you think about like when we're looking at new york

03:05:24.600 soft and looking at florida it's like well there's georgia and louisiana and there's all these states

03:05:29.080 that are kind of around it and we're starting to see patterns where about a six hour drive seems

03:05:33.720 to be the absolute limit for people on hoffs um and then at the same time we've got members in

03:05:39.000 the state they know the hoff is there but yet for some reason they can't come out and that's

03:05:44.760 very frustrating and i'm not immediately saying it's just lethargy but if it is that's no excuse

03:05:50.520 that's terrible but if it is like work or or family or pets or farms totally understand that

03:05:58.920 100 but those considerations come in the reason oh you're you're muted

03:06:07.720 right there for a sec no what i think is is important um

03:06:14.440 this is a subject that we hit on from various angles constantly and it's just honest this isn't

03:06:21.240 aimed at anybody and i think we've all felt this maybe when we first started out

03:06:25.400 one of our greatest struggles is conquering our own fears and we see that in so many different

03:06:35.960 ways i think one thing um with also true certainly with modern house to true is people you have to

03:06:49.400 very often you have to move outside of your comfort zone and that is scary

03:06:55.400 Either the group of people you're used to being around, the religious background that you were raised in or are used to, behaviors that are very, very comfortable, this is often really different to.

03:07:13.400 You're having to go to a different place you haven't been around an entirely different peer group that you don't know to do a religious practice that's very far outside of your normal understanding of the big religions where you grew up.

03:07:34.720 and that's scary for a lot of people and i don't think there's any shame in that as long as we own

03:07:40.900 it and work towards getting over it but it's scary for a lot of people you don't know what to expect

03:07:45.620 and that's that can be really uncomfortable and especially if you're going to bring your your

03:07:51.560 family it's you don't know what you're getting into so you want to scout it out or or whatever

03:07:59.340 i remember my first uh my first gathering with other alsatruar uh i didn't know what to expect

03:08:07.020 they were having a moot and i think they were doing like a little bloat in you know park i

03:08:14.140 remember i i stalked around in the woods creeping on them to see what they were up to what was going

03:08:21.740 on what was i going to get into here and no i understand that feeling absolutely

03:08:30.140 um but i think that's what a lot of these people face and then i think another fear that people

03:08:34.940 don't want to admit because it sounds silly but it's very real you have an idea in your head

03:08:40.940 built up of what this is supposed to be how this is supposed to be done and you don't want to

03:08:47.420 shatter your fantasy by going somewhere and this not being what you thought it was

03:08:56.540 and i know people that that's been a real thing too but our people have a soul sickness

03:09:02.460 and one of the symptoms of it is that that fear of sometimes it's a fear of success sometimes it's

03:09:09.180 a fear of change sometimes it's a social anxiety but all those things play in and have really

03:09:15.500 really hurt our people and i think this is part of that um let's see where we're at on the next one

03:09:25.500 here okay so this was the europa hof question we got kind of far afield so the next one is uh what's

03:09:42.140 the most promising cluster of members within europe sweden sweden has been the front runner

03:09:48.220 for a long time they're doing great trouble is right now our folk builder in sweden lives very

03:09:53.260 far away from the population centers where our membership are so figuring out that logistics

03:09:58.620 has been complicated but i would still say sweden is our is our most promising area over there

03:10:04.940 okay so this one is another one that's that's off topic but but interesting i want you to answer

03:10:14.800 this first it's fun user 123 says what are both of your thoughts on voluntary 501c3 independent

03:10:24.720 financial audits with the aim to prevent graft and to guarantee extreme transparency over the long

03:10:32.240 term okay so when we're talking about audits are we talking about audits from a i guess

03:10:40.800 from a governmental standpoint well they said independent so i'm assuming internal independent

03:10:47.760 uh no but external like calling in an account of an outside accountant to just take a look

03:10:54.480 at the books and and do that um i don't know this is an interesting question just because

03:11:02.240 So, you know, serving a purpose for monetary functioning, I think, as we, a lot of people don't realize, like, again, I just said the people. So from the bottom up part of the office is the organization of the people from the top down is the monetary structuring of how things are done.

03:11:23.160 um and that has really come into hyper focus because of the idea of buying properties this

03:11:29.520 isn't uh has become was a newer thing to us a little while ago now we're starting to get the

03:11:34.260 idea of it but um you know that monetary uh placement of money and the usage of funds um

03:11:41.640 really you know it's like and I think a lot of people don't realize it it does come from

03:11:46.500 I was hearing Agothi's ability to crunch numbers, his ability to be transparent with the Witten and talk to them about the money coming in, the percentages of amounts that we need to pay off properties as we're in debt because being in debt is not good.

03:12:03.640 And so we want to get out of debt and what that does giving us time scale.

03:12:07.360 so there's been a lot of deep internal transparency um as far as the functioning of the where things

03:12:14.720 go and why we are doing what we are doing um i don't know i i i mean i i an audit is it as a

03:12:22.800 function perhaps to see money flow or to move as a tool but to be fair i mean that again like

03:12:31.760 i've had nothing but transparency from the outsider go the about money and where we're

03:12:36.000 replacing it what we're doing what we're trying to get done but like that from from my perspective

03:12:41.440 of this question is like i'm you know focusing on certain things within my sphere of influence

03:12:46.880 as the witten uh um in relation to you know temples or murals or aesthetics and religious

03:12:54.480 structurings and uh lore and books and things like that um i don't know i i would say you know is is

03:13:02.560 is it would it be utilized to help facilitate perhaps financial flow and understanding the

03:13:10.400 best way to utilize that fehu power but so far we have had pretty good like al-sir-goody has

03:13:20.160 done very well in relation to um again clarifying why he's doing this and doing that what numbers

03:13:27.200 we have to do so i don't know i guess it's from just my understanding is if it had a benefit

03:13:35.600 i don't see why it would be bad but i don't think at the same time it's is it necessary right now

03:13:42.160 at all so reading the question and it may have been completely general because we spawn and i

03:13:49.920 are currently um in leadership positions in a 501c3 we are looking at it through an afa context

03:13:57.200 It would really depend on the file of 1C3 and what the purpose was.

03:14:04.200 I think that because this isn't transparency, it's extreme transparency.

03:14:11.440 And there are instances and organizations where that might be an appropriate thing to do.

03:14:19.720 I think that if there was significant reason to believe that there was malfeasance going on, perhaps, but in an organization with a hierarchical structure, I think, you know, in general, if they wanted, if the leadership of the organization felt it was appropriate to call in an outside auditor to see where money was.

03:14:49.720 is leaking or what's happening if there's something nefarious but you know suspected

03:14:54.840 that makes sense if it's from a member's perspective as to just wanting to know everything

03:15:02.840 no i think that's contradictory to our belief in in structure and hierarchy i

03:15:10.680 if this came out as you know in the for the afa as an example if the witten or the gothar

03:15:18.200 had an actual like legitimate concern about financial malpractice and wanted to call someone

03:15:25.000 in that makes sense i could see some of that but if it's a bunch of karens that just want

03:15:31.640 you know think they're they need to know all of the inner workings of everything

03:15:38.280 i think it's it's disruptive and i think the principle it's kind of a communist thing and it's

03:15:44.040 the democratization of what we're doing would be very disadvantageous and i think it's

03:15:52.680 antithetical to what we're trying to do to have this extreme transparency as if everyone has a

03:15:59.880 right to know all of everything of how business works the more you do that it's hard enough if

03:16:06.280 you have you know 20 competing voices it becomes next to one as possible if you have a thousand

03:16:12.520 competing voices with everybody trying to nitpick and argue over the tiniest minutiae it works much

03:16:18.760 better in a in a structure like we have where that's that's not how it works um and i think

03:16:25.960 that is much more in line with the best values of our folk yeah i think and i think too it's

03:16:34.360 important that people understand i remember the when i when i was surprised with becoming witten

03:16:40.440 but before then there was a great discussion about the the emperor's new clothes and the idea that

03:16:46.920 it's about speaking the witness supposed to they're not yes men they are contemplative

03:16:53.480 sometimes contradictory sometimes cantankerous if you will towards each other in the relationships

03:16:59.400 of where things are going money how this is going to be talked about how what it will be perceived

03:17:04.200 some of us play you know like the the the devil's advocate and things there's a lot of discussion

03:17:09.560 that goes back and forth and every single person in the witten is there um and the outsider has

03:17:15.800 asked us to be there to talk from our perspectives whether it's law i mean all of us i think

03:17:21.160 theologically are there when we think about our relationship to the gods it's a huge important

03:17:25.800 factor for every witten member but every other witten member also brings a unique factor whether

03:17:30.200 it's organizational and logistics the idea would this just gum up everything for no apparent reason

03:17:35.320 Well, the law, you know, law aspects are huge and are very, very filled with gravity. And sometimes our law speaker can speak with a brevity and swiftness to those topics with no fear of, you know, ire. He owns that sphere.

03:17:55.620 and when we all know it so when he speaks up about it we all listen and there's a lot of

03:18:00.120 that that kind of happens in that a hierarchical structure that is is made and then ultimately

03:18:05.760 once it's been completely milled over oftentimes doggedly milled over the point is is that that

03:18:13.740 point that alzeragoti makes the decision with all those considerations involved and then we try to

03:18:18.840 make the success of it so and one of the things that i want to to express it again in the world

03:18:25.780 we live in it's not a good soundbite to say yes extreme transparency is bad and throwing it out to

03:18:31.280 you know every member to know every inner working of the organization isn't efficient

03:18:36.560 but from a practical standpoint it's just not that said transparency has always been really

03:18:45.460 important to me. And our membership being able to trust is really important to me. And I've always

03:18:53.300 asked for anyone who has a question to ask, and I would be glad to give them an answer.

03:19:01.940 And that's, I've been really committed to that for a very long time. It's extremely important to me.

03:19:08.440 And as a matter of fact, it's the genesis of these shows that we do. These all come from my once a

03:19:14.940 month question and answer shows that I would do by myself in a similar format, but just me and I'd

03:19:22.480 answer questions. I started that when somebody years ago accused, they made some kind of statement

03:19:31.320 that wasn't true then, it was an ignorant statement, but in case anybody felt that way,

03:19:36.360 I wanted to fix it. They said that, you know, the Witten and the Ulterior Goethe didn't want any

03:19:42.280 feedback and they, you know, didn't want anybody asking any questions and weren't transparent

03:19:47.780 enough. So I vowed like, no, I will literally take every question and I want to give people

03:19:53.500 the opportunity to ask me any question. I believe very much in an open door policy. I've given

03:20:01.140 everyone out my phone number to ask anything that they'd like. Nick, please feel free to put that

03:20:08.080 phone number up if you'd like right now, but anyone is always welcome to call me if they have

03:20:13.500 any questions because it's important to me to be able to build that relationship and maintain that

03:20:23.380 trust with folks. So I don't think the idea of transparency is bad. I think bombarding people

03:20:29.420 who don't need to know with all the details or having disgruntled individual members demand

03:20:36.680 audits of the books is offensive, counter to our values of hierarchy and kind of a commie thing to

03:20:46.580 do. What I do think is being approachable and having anybody being able to ask me any question

03:20:52.380 they'd like and give an honest answer is the right way to address transparency. And I'm very,

03:20:57.360 very committed to that next one uh this is okay question have you had a dream of a god what

03:21:11.120 happened also have you seen a god in the form of clouds i saw odin very crisp and vivid in a cloud

03:21:19.280 and i'll never forget it's fun have you ever had a dream about a god if so what happened and you

03:21:25.920 have you ever seen a god in the clouds uh yes and no um mainly just because not to my memory um but

03:21:37.440 first that yes i remember when i was very young i had a uh a dream and at that time i was i was

03:21:44.400 young then and i was even younger in the dream and i didn't quite correlate it till many years later

03:21:50.640 what the significance of of that imagery in my dream um i was young as a barely a

03:21:58.480 barely a teenager if you will and i had a dream of myself even as a child and i remember very

03:22:04.160 distinctly of the clothes i was wearing in the dream um having a white um softball jersey style

03:22:11.360 sleeve red and white with the red sleeves of a mickey mouse shirt with a red collar

03:22:17.280 around it um i don't really recall like my i was wearing shorts and um there was an elder man next

03:22:25.780 to me and he was entirely gray like he wasn't wearing pants or it was almost like the top of

03:22:33.060 him or whatever he was wearing covered his entire body and all i could really see is his hands and

03:22:37.520 the bottom of a beard um his face was obfuscated and i couldn't see it even though i was desperately

03:22:43.920 trying to see him and all that was said was are you ready and I said yes and then he released me

03:22:52.820 down an aisle of trees like almost like a road with planted trees where the branches cascaded

03:22:59.080 over the road and then I woke up and um to this day now you know in correlation only a couple

03:23:08.380 years after that dream i it hit me that that might be the divine and and and in my opinion of of

03:23:17.420 negotiating with imagery and things like that it that that i felt that that was odin but i am not

03:23:22.940 claiming that i have you know yes that odin came down and sat down in the chair next to me you know

03:23:30.220 and that and the dreaming of it itself the seeds of our soul remember in our own

03:23:34.300 and our older being connected to oven i always kind of even thought about the idea that perhaps

03:23:39.980 it was just a seed planted and all the imagery that i was attaining at that moment had significance

03:23:45.260 in order to guide me in a direction i needed to go so that almost like a recording or even just

03:23:50.220 a self-constructed seed image to move forward from there but i do still feel to this day that's the

03:23:57.820 only dream i've ever had where that was the case um i do have one incident with my when i was a

03:24:03.740 child and i think i briefly talked about this in a victory never sleeps where um my family found

03:24:09.180 me in the hallway uh curled up in in in a in a ball i must have been like maybe four or five

03:24:14.700 and they tried to wake me up and i said to them that the man with the wide brim hat told me to

03:24:19.340 sleep here or i would be safe and that creeped out my family so much that they left me there to

03:24:26.140 sleep because they didn't want to disturb whatever i was doing and then they told me that many many

03:24:31.260 years later but i don't recall it at all as far as the clouds go um no but i don't and i certainly

03:24:39.180 don't discount anyone's visage when you said you you saw that clearly because again to the way that

03:24:45.180 we encounter some of the divine isn't always just um in dreams it could be audible it could be um

03:24:53.180 visual it can be symbolically so in which we um you know we're looking at something where we

03:25:00.700 we in our mind we we think of clouds because we're looking at the sky but then suddenly the

03:25:05.020 image of of becomes very very visceral and clear and that is again kind of in relation to that

03:25:11.340 story i told about the storm coming i didn't see anything but that storm came in the visceral

03:25:17.260 visceral moment the synchronicity of all that had significance to me so when you're working in

03:25:22.540 imagery and i'm big into art and i'm big into imagery and the idea of shape uh there is a

03:25:30.220 visible sense that you can open doors into your subconscious through seeing imagery that you

03:25:36.780 immediately connect on the conscious level you're you're again when we talked about the soul and we

03:25:41.660 talked about the the humor the thought and the mini and so when one of when when you see an

03:25:47.740 image like that that pierces right through the thought and into your memory and will never ever

03:25:52.780 leave there that's a significant moment and you correlated it immediately so but i have not had

03:25:59.660 that that luck in in relation to clouds but i did have a drink um it's always and swan and i are both

03:26:12.700 hesitant to over speak or make more out of something because we don't want to be impious

03:26:17.740 And I had, so one that I had, I had just, okay, you guys have heard my story about my silly, wasn't mint silly, but it is certainly silly in retrospect.

03:26:32.840 But my example of I placed a shot of Goldschlager and a can of Fancy Feast out as an offering for Freya and her cats when I first found Alcetru.

03:26:46.120 and that was I was going through this sequence where I was I forget for how long but we I was

03:26:56.240 going through this for a certain number of nights I would go and approach one of our gods and make

03:27:04.160 an offering for lack of a better word introduce myself and let them know that I'm here I'm open

03:27:13.160 you know if if you want to communicate with me please do but I'm here I'm listening here's an

03:27:23.120 offering and that night I actually fell asleep in front of it was again at this point I was

03:27:32.340 brand new I didn't have an altar but I set up a little space on top of a dresser

03:27:38.340 and, and did things. And I sat down in front of it and tried to meditate and it was hurting my

03:27:44.500 back. So I laid down and I actually fell asleep there. And I had the, what I remember of the

03:27:51.060 dream. And I believe this was, was lady Freya. Um, there was a, uh, an angry young woman

03:28:00.940 kind of charging up the stairs like I was downstairs and she was storming off upstairs 0.99

03:28:10.120 and yelled at me she doesn't even know you love her and I don't didn't know at the time like what

03:28:21.640 that was a reference to it didn't I know that it sounds like that's necessarily in a romantic

03:28:28.340 context, but I didn't feel like that was the case per se. So at that, I kind of examined the

03:28:36.740 different relationships I had with women in my life. And I tried to make it a really

03:28:41.300 a really specific point of telling the women in my life that I care about how much I care about

03:28:50.520 them and making sure that they know that instead of being taken for granted or not. It's strange.

03:28:57.200 it was simultaneously romantic and familial and everything else all in one and it was very

03:29:06.960 interesting and it was you know it's just a subtle little thing but it i remember it very vividly

03:29:15.040 20 20 some years later um and no i've never i've never seen things in the clouds that i found

03:29:23.760 particularly meaningful i know a lot of people do and i don't discount that at all

03:29:28.000 but that's never really been something that i've experienced

03:29:37.440 so the next one uh is the same question is the same craftsman doing all the woodwork

03:29:44.160 a wood carving slash woodwork on the outside and inside of the individual hoffs

03:29:49.600 um no we really don't have a lot of decorative woodwork that's been done in any of the locations

03:29:58.320 except with some exceptions so mark mcleod has done um the crossed gables woodworking and he's

03:30:07.040 had a couple people help him on the first set but he's been doing the woodworking on those at odens

03:30:12.960 off um and oh no i was gonna say um gothi jason plurred has done one two three four different

03:30:27.280 um altars that he's built inside hoffs um for ancestor altars and for the heroes of those hoffs

03:30:36.000 so two at baldershoff and also two at njordshoff and we had a member um he's not a leader in the

03:30:43.200 afa so i don't know if he wants his name out there but he he did a really beautiful um

03:30:50.240 altar for maestro guido von list at odin's hoff so we've had a lot of different people help us

03:30:56.800 but we really don't have a lot of extensive woodworking inside the hoffs and then go through

03:31:01.600 Rob Stam went up to, well, first he did some gabling at, uh, at Thorshof. And then he went

03:31:10.580 up to Baldershof and he did, he carved a balder godpole from a tree that was, you know, truncated,

03:31:18.280 like broken down during a storm. And with what was left, he, he made a, a godpole to balder.

03:31:24.800 So we've had a number of different woodworkers do different projects here and there, but, uh,

03:31:30.160 But yeah. All right. So the next one is from Monk. Matt, I have some friends in Sweden. Who do I put them in contact with in Sweden? You put them in contact with Eric Lugnet. And Eric is really cool to have his wife.

03:31:51.400 i actually i was i was very honored i performed their their wedding service for them years ago

03:31:57.320 and she's a she's an american and he's a swede but he spent a lot of time in america so any kind of

03:32:05.640 cultural miscommunication or cultural not not quite understanding isn't there he understands

03:32:12.280 swedish culture being a native swede but he's very acclimated to american culture so he can

03:32:17.400 deal well with with expats and with people here in the united states talking to him and it smooths

03:32:23.560 over any the swedes are very good with the communication anyway but any problems that

03:32:29.480 might be there are completely out of the way because he's so very fluent in both cultures

03:32:35.080 but e lugnet at runestone.org hopefully nick will throw that up oh also over on the side

03:32:43.800 we just got a donation over on entropy thank you very much from folk builder nick salo

03:32:51.240 15 we really appreciate it hail the leaders of the afa onwards and upwards hail victory

03:32:58.040 hey thank you for that we appreciate it um next question

03:33:15.320 okay um

03:33:19.560 okay i understand it now i'm sorry uh nick sent this to me as screenshots and they're very small

03:33:26.360 so i'm having a hard time reading and i apologize um i'm a more uh politic centered now i feel my

03:33:35.960 spirituality need to align with my political beliefs am i being incorrect in my views here

03:33:43.400 no absolutely they should at first the way it should work is your whole life should mesh together

03:33:52.680 in um it should synchronize and it should uh

03:34:03.160 so there's a word that says what i'm trying to say perfectly it'll probably come to me

03:34:06.360 after i don't need it anymore anymore but no um

03:34:14.520 no it's frustrating me because it's perfect for the thing all of the pieces of your life should

03:34:18.760 work together and they should build upon and benefit from each of the other yes politics

03:34:26.120 should flow downstream from your core values and your core values should be informed by your faith

03:34:33.160 um because politics are and i'm not anti-pol i think that i don't discourage anyone from being

03:34:42.200 politically active i'm not anti-political things but politics are based on the moment the politics

03:34:49.640 of today would have been very different 20 years ago different 20 years prior to that they will be

03:34:56.520 different 20 years from now because they are specific to the problems a political unit is

03:35:02.920 facing in in a in a context in a specific space and time core values are timeless core values

03:35:13.720 you can apply them differently in different circumstances but the core value is is timeless

03:35:20.040 so it should that's where it should come from and those core timeless values are intrinsically linked

03:35:26.760 with our gods and our faith so you absolutely need that and you've done yourself a disservice

03:35:35.080 in being political without that other that other element that you build good politics on so i would

03:35:45.000 strongly encourage you to do that and i think you would notice that that helps inform your politics

03:35:51.320 in a in a very good and organic way all of those things should inform how you interact with the

03:36:00.120 people around you and your interactions with the people around you should be looked at through a

03:36:06.200 lens of your core values and should affect you know how you express your politics so again

03:36:12.920 all of these things in your life should work together and um blend with one another

03:36:22.200 do you have anything to add on that spawn no i think from a a church standpoint from the

03:36:27.560 from the astro folk assembly i think a lot of people when they come from a strictly political

03:36:31.640 mindset one of the things i got to realize is that not everyone is um as political as they other

03:36:40.840 people might want people to be i think that this is i'm just speaking from experiences that there

03:36:46.360 there is a a huge spectrum our core values define like a framework but there's a level in between

03:36:55.880 where you find more of the nuances of certain people and so like if somebody has in their mind

03:37:01.320 one specific way of a of an ideology or something and they meet someone in the afa who doesn't like

03:37:08.440 fit all of those bills they have a tendency to work from a political mindset and this ends up

03:37:13.480 stifling them in the idea that they're part of a community and not everyone's going to agree

03:37:18.360 about everything there are core principles that other politics have that are completely antithesis

03:37:24.840 to the core principles of our faith so you know again uh somebody was speaking about being

03:37:31.000 atheistic but yet believing in the gods and i was having this kind of discussion with them about

03:37:36.440 how that you either are or you're not and um but there's a there's a sense of uh when we talk

03:37:44.280 about governance and things um you know people may understand certain political ideologies and

03:37:52.120 see value in certain things but if they don't you know believe in it as much as i believe in it

03:37:58.600 then the whole of the church is flawed and they have this kind of like all or nothing mentality of

03:38:04.520 of um of that but you know it's like as i've been in the ancestral folk assembly i i've heard

03:38:10.600 plenty of opinions outside of our our our guard about their opinions and blind people pointing

03:38:19.480 at things is kind of funny so beyond that the reality is i've met many people in the afa many

03:38:26.280 different takes on things uh philosophically uh politically whether we're talking about platoism

03:38:34.520 uh whether we're talking about you know the usage of primitivism versus you know organic spirituality

03:38:41.320 uh in the modern world reconstructionism or if we talk about politics and we talk about um

03:38:46.840 you know uh more libertine senses of of um you know self-right citizens rights human rights

03:38:54.440 even monarch monarchism versus you know authoritative traditionalism you go all over

03:39:06.100 the place and it really just kind of depends and and but these are just people talking about the

03:39:11.260 things they believe in outside of just the faith and I think that the one problem that really

03:39:15.620 disheartens me is when someone's super active and they know they're active from a political sense

03:39:20.060 and they meet somebody who's like well I don't really care about any of that stuff I care about

03:39:23.880 coming here and building a community how could you be that way and they just get all stifled up

03:39:30.300 and they don't understand that it's you know a community is built around um the core principles

03:39:35.860 of faith and our spiritual not the nuances of governance and so you have to really come to

03:39:43.900 terms with that and if that's a problem for you you know one you're again you're going to purity

03:39:49.640 spiral yourself into inactivity um and so you know that's i think something that i would warn

03:39:57.800 against don't purity spiral into this kind of sense of of why you're really doing what you're

03:40:03.720 doing or why you really believe what you believe in and understand the benefits of spiritual

03:40:08.760 connection to the gods a spiritual connection to your ancestors and a visceral soulful experience

03:40:15.880 with your community and understanding there are different people you're going to meet people

03:40:19.640 that you might have more in common with than other people that's okay you're going to meet

03:40:24.120 people that are in different times of their lives you might meet an elderly person you don't have a

03:40:27.720 lot in common with or you might meet someone who's married or not married if you're married

03:40:33.160 and so on and so forth and you'll meet these people and they'll have different levels of of

03:40:38.840 the way they intimately work with you in the community and that's okay at the end of the day

03:40:44.040 it's about developing your your moral and spiritual growth and connection to the gods

03:40:49.800 your governance and your ideas and philosophies which i have met people that have changed over

03:40:55.160 the span of a decade multiple times as long as they hold true to what is not changeable which is

03:41:02.360 the gods of our folk that has a tendency to guide people i think when they have falls or they meet

03:41:08.680 people that they like politically but then something happens between them you can always

03:41:13.560 you know go back to honoring the gods and working your way from there and trying to

03:41:17.160 re-figure out your life i mean i'm older now so being young and being uh full of you know

03:41:25.720 ideas and thoughts and passions and things like that those have evolved over time so yeah that's

03:41:31.720 my only warning if you're if you're coming and you you admitted it saying you know i come from

03:41:35.480 a political kind of ideology ideological background consider this before stepping forward

03:41:45.240 all right um elsie christensen never bore children does women rising in leadership 0.75

03:41:52.360 distract them from their higher highest purpose of continuing the folk how can these two activities

03:41:58.840 be balanced um i think the answer on how they can be balanced is going to be different in every

03:42:03.800 circumstance. I also think that life is shorter than we'd like it to be. But it's longer than

03:42:20.040 that, you know, if it allows for the time in a woman's life to bear children to raise those

03:42:31.080 children and also to be active in leadership when that's appropriate and when you say in leadership

03:42:39.800 i don't we can talk about different fields or politics or various other things i have to assume

03:42:45.480 without you know anything else that it's in an afa context especially because you mentioned the

03:42:50.600 folk mother so i assume this has to do with house a true i don't know why her and her husband never

03:42:57.320 had children but she was an old lady when she was doing most of her house of true things

03:43:04.360 um most of her her fame in also true was after her childbearing years

03:43:10.360 so i don't think that's the reason or that was the conflict um

03:43:18.680 we have i'm trying to think most of

03:43:21.240 yeah I don't want to misspeak but I would say I would say most of the women in any leadership

03:43:32.400 positions in the AFA have children and have you know very active very successful family lives

03:43:39.180 often they have multiple children that they they're raising and doing things with and I

03:43:44.520 don't think they have to conflict um when kids are very very young then yeah it's much more

03:43:50.100 hassle and they require much more hands-on all the time as they get older there's more time to

03:43:57.540 focus on some of these things but again a life is a long time and i think that planning that

03:44:03.300 out with how your family develops is something that can absolutely be done but there's no one

03:44:08.980 answer in how that balance works or it doesn't i imagine it works different many different

03:44:13.300 situations also it depends on on the father what he does what time he has available what his

03:44:19.940 aptitude is for helping out with the kids there's a lot of x factors but i certainly 0.65

03:44:27.220 think it can be done i it does it add an extra challenge absolutely if a woman spent her whole 0.98

03:44:33.060 existence focused solely on the creation of and raising of children that's going to have more 0.98

03:44:42.020 focus than other things that's just common sense but it doesn't mean it can't be done or that it

03:44:48.820 shouldn't be done to do you know a myriad of other things including leadership in our church

03:44:57.540 um oh okay so from james speaking on hallowed places once you've done a hammer hallowing on

03:45:08.020 your own land around your family's sacred space is it necessary that every time to do that every

03:45:14.260 time or would that simply be unnecessary i think that the answer to that question is based on

03:45:23.140 is it is that sacred space only used for sacred things or does it get used for mundane things as

03:45:32.260 well if it's permanently used for sacred things then no i don't think you need to continue to

03:45:39.300 do it i think that is redundant if you set up a sacred space in your yard you do ritual there

03:45:46.820 then you take down whatever your implements are and it's the same place that you know the kids

03:45:52.740 are playing and you you know are doing any number of other things or you're gardening or whatever

03:45:58.660 if it's if it's something that you use frequently but is not permanently sacred then you should

03:46:05.300 you know do that each time but that's you know that's that's what i have that's the principle

03:46:12.740 behind that is if it stays for sacred use to do that and i wouldn't i wouldn't fuss if animals

03:46:19.780 happen to walk through it or or small things i wouldn't fuss but if it is permanently made for

03:46:26.500 sacred space just because somebody throws a football and it lands in there and somebody's

03:46:30.900 got to go get it i don't think that requires a re reconditioning of the space um and monk

03:46:39.780 wants to ask me what i think about oh no he wants to ask all of us later on he wants to

03:46:44.660 ask me something specific uh what do we think about valiant valiant for this is kind of

03:46:54.100 hearkening back to the alien question so i don't know anything so i googled that

03:46:58.420 when i first saw it pop up on the screen i saw that those are the kind of topics he covers i

03:47:03.780 know absolutely nothing about that guy so i it would be ignorant of me to even speak on it well

03:47:09.780 and i'm i'm relatively intimate with the with the subject but it is a nuanced thing like if you

03:47:14.660 don't know what that is you wouldn't and it's it again it's in the it's in the coast to coast

03:47:21.860 framework if you will you know that's a george nori um hot button but we can't unfortunately

03:47:27.300 have listened to all of the episodes so it's like but i'm i'm i've so the only outside of the name

03:47:35.940 thor that was utilized in the story um outside of that i do not believe there's any sort of

03:47:42.560 religious connection between the lord and storm father of the sky thor and valiant thor the uh

03:47:49.080 proclamation of uh eisenhower's uh daughter and her uh speaking on the on the act that that

03:47:56.700 eisenhower was approached by a group of like beatnik aliens and i'm i'm i'm joking there i

03:48:04.000 really it's an interesting story and i i'm i just remember seeing the pictures of them and they're

03:48:09.980 you know they're wearing these sunglasses and they got these kind of mod suits on and and um

03:48:14.480 and and and that story is super interesting but outside of the name thor and valiant thor i do

03:48:20.580 not believe there is a connection spiritually to our religion outside of that is an extremely

03:48:24.660 interesting story of the idea of like an alien taking human form and approaching the president

03:48:29.460 of the united states and getting access to be talked to and numerous people saying they talked

03:48:34.180 to him and eisenhower's daughter saying that this was a real thing but um that's just an interesting

03:48:41.220 story and i i don't quite know where to where to believe in it um i do have a recommendation

03:48:46.420 if anybody's ever interested in looking into it there's a great presentation of it from a youtuber

03:48:51.380 called y files all you have to do is look at y files valiant thor he does a great uh presentation

03:48:56.820 and then he he kind of talks about it at the end about what he believes based on his research

03:49:01.780 and he leaves it he's not super biased his whole thing is to present the case as it is presented

03:49:08.580 via the internet which can be dangerous in and of itself and then at the end he talks about um

03:49:14.500 the points and some of the considerations and people that were involved and some people that

03:49:18.020 made money or wrote books about it and so on and so forth um but yeah not i don't know yeah

03:49:25.540 the connection of course there between it perked my interest when i heard his name and and went

03:49:31.460 into it but outside of that it's it's uh certainly an interesting story all right so i've got to dig

03:49:40.340 into that uh maybe later tonight maybe tomorrow but i'm kind of curious one way or another

03:49:45.300 good deal i appreciate it um

03:49:54.980 next one is from william i have an off-topic question when did you get your first mjolnir

03:50:01.220 pendant and where or who did it come from so i got my first one at the museum store

03:50:11.620 in the fifth avenue mall in anchorage alaska i don't even know if they have those anymore they

03:50:16.980 almost don't have any malls anymore but it was this place that had a bunch of cool educational

03:50:24.020 things history loosely history based items and art things and knickknacks and at the front counter

03:50:32.820 they had a little whirly do what do you the little thingy that spins that had different jewelry on it

03:50:41.620 and it had a couple of different varieties of Thor's hammers it was a so it's the same

03:50:50.440 model or it's based off of the same model the one I currently wear is is from it's based on that

03:50:57.860 original archaeological model and it actually was a brass one it's gotten a little bit green

03:51:04.740 and discolored over the years I could probably clean it up but I actually gave that to my daughter

03:51:10.180 Aubrey at her baby naming so she's got my first hammer it's too big and inappropriate for a little

03:51:17.140 girl but it was important to me to pass that on to her and yeah that's mine it's fun where'd you

03:51:23.320 get your first hammer what's the story behind that okay so I just I just looked it up just to

03:51:28.080 see if he was still there um so I didn't have a hammer for many many years because um when I

03:51:34.980 when I became Ausatru I was uh 14 like in 1994 1995 somewhere in there and um there wasn't

03:51:48.840 yeah like internet accessibility there was no like shop or place that I could go um to to attain

03:51:56.460 that but I there's first off there's two things that I remember about that time that were very

03:52:01.600 very important one of them was really dumb and the other was really cool it was very cool for

03:52:08.700 everybody to receive or try to get their thor's hammer it was a testament to the faith and i i 0.87

03:52:13.700 think that is the coolest thing i remember also at the time a lot of people going by these moniker

03:52:17.960 names like you know bloodborne pathogens and sun and and all this stuff and it was just like

03:52:24.180 oh you know but but the hammer part is i the fact that you bring up the question just flooded me

03:52:30.900 those memories of like trying to attain my hammer um i ended up i don't remember when but i got some

03:52:38.580 internet access to a website and i well there was a long time before i i even wore a hammer um

03:52:47.940 that the website is called so it's the the name is yelling dragon but it's spelled with a j

03:52:53.460 so j-e-l-l-i-n-g and uh but the the website i think is just called yell dragon j-e-l-l dragon

03:53:02.420 and and that's because of the yelling of the the period of artwork and time frame and place in

03:53:09.160 sweden and it's a swedish um uh website but when i got access to that i bought a blowing horn which

03:53:16.460 is currently at thorshof right now um i bought a drinking horn which is currently at my uh vey here

03:53:25.180 in my house and i bought a thor's hammer but that thor's hammer i ended up placing on my grandmother's

03:53:32.060 grave when she passed away in reykjavik i placed it on her her coffin um at the at her funeral

03:53:41.660 before they placed the the the soil over her um and she had passed away uh that's another

03:53:48.940 interesting story of uh for uh kind of spookiness as far as that is involved but there was also a

03:53:54.700 loss of a child from one of my aunts and um she was born still and so my grandmother left with a

03:54:02.540 child through the threshold of of life she she she's a mother of 11 children so this is this is

03:54:11.740 uh she it was able to carry that child back to the ancestors one last time she was a mother

03:54:20.700 again um so but yeah so i placed that hammer there but that was my that was a really powerful

03:54:27.260 one and it was probably the best way i could ever i will never regret giving away that hammer um

03:54:34.460 but it was a silver pendant hammer uh full-on silver and it was but it was many many years

03:54:41.020 i don't even recall when i got my first thor's hammer in relation to when i first started giving

03:54:46.700 bloat to the gods um but yeah that was a huge significant one after that i think i went to like

03:54:53.500 some uh uh events and and bought some off of uh vendors you know that are trying to support them

03:55:00.780 and um and then over time eventually uh etsy has become the place and and um this you know being

03:55:08.220 gifted i i like iron as um the the pendant metal um and the last one i got was a wooden one from

03:55:17.660 the red oak outside of thorshof and it is um actually there's right here

03:55:28.300 this was made by a um a member of ours there was a storm and lightning struck the the uh red oak

03:55:37.580 outside of the hof at thorshof and a branch fell it didn't hit anything and um and strangely enough

03:55:43.900 an old man came by while we were gone and cut it up for us and so pieces were taken by uh folk

03:55:49.900 builder um bobby shotwell and he did an amazing work and he built these these wooden hammers

03:55:58.140 and so i have this one as well the only problem is is that um i accidentally cracked it uh at the

03:56:04.460 gym i was doing a bench press in the bar and it just right and cracked it so that's the problem

03:56:09.740 with wood as a as a median but for um wearing it in while you know for ceremony in suits it's

03:56:16.780 beautiful stuff very very meaningful to me the only um temple to thor in north america or even

03:56:25.660 you know dare i say the world um specifically to him and the red oak right outside so that's

03:56:31.980 really cool this one was given to me and um i will eventually gift it to my son so

03:56:39.740 All right. I'm trying to find where we were in the order of operations here.

03:56:55.460 This is a clunky way to find our questions. I apologize. Reminds me of the good old days where I'm spending half the time reading through the chat and there's dead air.

03:57:06.880 all right uh in relation to funerals when doing our wills is there specific language needed to

03:57:14.960 indicate where we want an afa funeral service what does an afa funeral look like

03:57:22.960 uh so first spawn have you ever conducted a funeral yes okay so

03:57:30.320 So as far as specific verbiage, law speaker Alan Turnage, I would suggest reaching out

03:57:39.840 to him. He might know better. In mine, I specified that the AFA should be the one to handle any

03:57:49.420 funeral services and the disposition of my remains just to ensure that the AFA will be

03:57:58.040 able to do what the AFA wants and give an max discretion. I think what's very important verbiage

03:58:05.180 wise is the who you choose as the executor of your will. And again, like I said, Alan Turnage

03:58:14.000 would be the one I would ask because he would know specifically, and he is an attorney, so he

03:58:18.400 would know the language. But yeah, just make it clear. And I don't think it always needs to be

03:58:25.900 in legalese. It just needs to be very clear. What does an also true funeral look like? It depends

03:58:35.180 on where it's at. I think it looks like most funerals would look. It can look like whatever

03:58:41.280 the deceased or the family wants. I've done several different funerals in several different

03:58:47.760 kind of situations i did one in a funeral home that you know in their auditorium is probably

03:58:56.160 not the right word but in their room they have set aside for funeral services i did one in there

03:59:01.200 i did one at a military cemetery and that was

03:59:09.280 was a little bit different um i've done yeah i've done several in different locations

03:59:17.200 so it all depends the biggest

03:59:21.440 it doesn't look it okay if left to our own devices unless the family has special wishes

03:59:27.600 to do special things it looks like any other normal funeral um what i think is really important

03:59:34.560 and i try to do though at all of them is to have um a horn of mead and have people come up and say

03:59:44.560 things about the deceased and make a toast all of the rest of it is very wide open but the most

03:59:51.200 important thing to me is for people who knew the deceased to be able to come up and tell stories 0.95

03:59:58.800 about them and tell the group about them it's always off-putting to me at some other religions

04:00:05.920 funerary services when it's not about the deceased it's an opportunity to talk about jesus or it's an

04:00:13.200 opportunity to do something generic because very often the officiant doesn't have a personal

04:00:20.560 relationship with the person they're providing the service for and i sympathize i have some funerals

04:00:25.840 that i've done i didn't know the person i was doing it for so opening it and speaking about

04:00:36.080 our hope for the afterlife speaking about reputation speaking about these things

04:00:44.000 and calling and invoking the gods to bear witness or to bear witness and watch over

04:00:51.920 this person's soul on its journey those things invoking of the divine is something

04:00:58.560 i would do as a goathy but so much of the service that i would do would be having

04:01:05.120 friends and family come up and speak about the person who's passed and that's what i would uh

04:01:14.240 those are the bare bones of of what i think uh the funerals that i've conducted anyway

04:01:19.440 it's fine do you have any more to add on that yeah i i did two and one was like as you said

04:01:24.800 almost well and for me i don't know it was at a funerary home it was an admin it was a memoriam

04:01:30.560 i mean the body had already been cremated and it had already been placed so it was a memoriam

04:01:35.440 and then then the holding of the horn and speaking and and and basically as a as gothar you become um

04:01:43.360 an organizational hub in order to conduct the ceremony you you initiate you bring forth the the

04:01:51.120 the entire connection of it all and then the folk end up kind of carrying it for this moment and

04:01:56.560 then you end up closing it again that release that's the way it was for me and that's i'm

04:02:01.120 speaking um you know to uh it william um that that's kind of how it would look from from that

04:02:09.520 standpoint the other one though the first one i ever conducted was deeply intimate i knew the

04:02:14.000 gentleman um he was as true he had married a woman who wasn't as true but he um and i got to do

04:02:19.760 bedside rights for him which was unique um one i was not um ordained i was not brought into um the

04:02:32.240 the proper uh you know gothar titling what what happened was there was an he had a lung disease

04:02:38.800 and it was very rapid and it was very very quick and it was happening and he i met him bedside and

04:02:44.000 and he said you're the only person i know that is going to be able to do this and i took it up i

04:02:50.560 said i would do it so um we held bloat or i i conducted bloat next to him and anointed him and

04:02:58.880 spoke of some very significant stanzas from the halvamal and from grimness mall and then

04:03:08.800 um we drank and we honored he wanted to honor uh lord fray and um you know asked for bounty for his

04:03:17.040 wife and family that you know that now that he was leaving and he wasn't able to provide for them

04:03:21.920 and um and that his ancestors greet him well it was very very tough and then afterwards uh

04:03:30.480 it was conducted at the beach he was already cremated i had constructed a wooden boat with

04:03:35.280 two friends of mine and we placed his ashes in a wooden boat and we pushed them into the chesapeake

04:03:40.960 bay off of ocean view beach and we lit it on fire and i'm surprised to this day that nobody

04:03:47.680 said anything because again i was not ordained and i did not have an understanding of what

04:03:52.080 we were just doing it and apparently there's no no police or anybody came and it just we had two

04:03:59.840 gentlemen that were there at the whole time to make sure didn't like float off anywhere but it

04:04:05.120 but we stood on the beach and i sang a dirge in memoriam to him that uh i still remember and

04:04:12.160 sing oftentimes to the dead now and um and then her side her some of her friends and her family

04:04:19.520 and uh a clergyman from her uh religion which i to be honest i don't recall um said a few words

04:04:27.360 but um that was i think more for for his wife i conducted more because he was physically alive

04:04:33.840 when we talked about what we would do but again that was based off of what he wanted

04:04:41.840 all right the next question um i'm not sure i i follow the question would an extended outing

04:04:50.000 in nature like a month or more using survival techniques and all that be something that could

04:04:55.440 be considered would sit to you out sitting maybe could be considered for what um i think an

04:05:05.200 adventure like that would be meaningful if somebody wants to do that if you get your

04:05:14.960 spiritual fulfillment by being in nature and opening yourself to the sights the sounds

04:05:21.680 that experience and also opening yourself up to survival by excuse me by your own means

04:05:30.520 so living off the land in in a natural situation sure that might be a really meaningful thing for

04:05:37.900 you that might put you in a space mentally and spiritually where you can more easily commune

04:05:44.740 the gods and your ancestors in the serenity and the the quiet of the woods so yeah that might be

04:05:52.340 a really good thing for you if that's something that that speaks to you i don't think objectively

04:05:59.060 that's any more um potent than other things but i do think subjectively that can be very very

04:06:06.660 spiritual depending upon the person um so do you have thoughts on that that question the first

04:06:13.860 thing that came to my mind when i saw the question was out sitting but out sitting has a different

04:06:19.380 context especially when you're talking about like laying on top of the grave mountains of

04:06:23.700 your ancestors in order to be inspired but i am also a big proponent for survival stuff and

04:06:28.980 things like that so i would say hold a bloat to ular and to vidar vidar and go out and test

04:06:39.300 yourself but be safe i mean don't put um if you're if there's people depending on you um

04:06:46.500 you know for livelihood and things like that you going out there be safe have contingency plans

04:06:51.620 don't wrap pork chops on your face and run around in front of bears that's bad and you know you got

04:06:56.340 to think properly and correctly about what you're doing um but if you find a way and to make an

04:07:02.980 itinerary of useful spiritual conduction like if you're doing survival stuff during the day

04:07:07.700 and prepping for fire at night and then you hold ceremony you hold bloat that night and you're

04:07:13.460 doing this in communion i i would say that trials to commune with the gods and build that that's

04:07:20.660 absolutely great stuff is it in relation to sacred spaces and stuff but quite all questions right so

04:07:28.260 just be safe remember that you know if there's other people involved in your life you need to

04:07:33.220 make sure you don't just disappear on them and and go do of be wise before you step out the door

04:07:40.580 prepare yourself for what you might encounter and ultimately have the religious experience

04:07:46.420 of communing with the gods as the highest of priorities on top of really the luck of

04:07:52.340 survivability which is a lot of it is luck so you know it depends where you go depends

04:07:59.060 where in the woods and i grew up in alaska if you're in the winter in alaska then

04:08:07.140 good on you if you can survive out there with your own your own skills then you are a better

04:08:14.660 man than most so it it really depends on when and where but getting out in nature like that is very

04:08:21.140 very viscerally important to a lot of people when it comes to them connecting some people

04:08:27.460 that's the only way they really connect with the divine is getting i think a big part of it is

04:08:34.580 nature and the setting but another part of it is just getting away from people and getting in a

04:08:40.500 place that's serene and there's no buzzing and there's no ringing and there's no noise and

04:08:45.780 there's no there's nothing to distract and i think that's really important to a lot of folks as well

04:08:52.100 yeah and don't make that the entirety of your spiritual journey because a lot of people that

04:08:56.340 are just only going to nature they are they can't community build they want community

04:09:01.780 they believe in community they can't community build because the only way they can connect is

04:09:05.380 by isolation try to broaden the palette but do it do both absolutely absolutely be a be a whole

04:09:14.260 person be balanced right um next question uh matt i did my will i'm really glad to hear that

04:09:24.500 uh who do i send it to you mentioned someone a few streams back law speaker alan turnage

04:09:31.300 um nick will throw up the p let's just think of it that's kind of a gross way to put it

04:09:37.620 nick will put the uh the address up the po box and make sure that it is signed and notarized

04:09:47.540 that it's an original copy you can get multiple copies signed and notarized so you have your own

04:09:55.060 or whatever but an original copy to alan um and we would do our very best to try to make sure that

04:10:03.780 no pun intended that your will is done uh for the the handling of of anything you put in there again

04:10:12.340 in. Even if it has nothing to do with Ausatru or an Ausatru funeral or being interred at one of the

04:10:20.820 Hoffs, we just want to make sure you get what you want and that that's taken care of. It's

04:10:26.780 how our dead and their wishes are treated is very, very important to us. So we just want to do our

04:10:35.860 best. And we've had so many times where we've been unable to help and we don't want to do that

04:10:41.040 anymore uh from monk matt what do you think about portlock alaska i have never heard about that so

04:10:52.060 when you mentioned it i googled it real quick and it's in a hard place to get to unless you're like

04:11:00.540 a commercial fisherman or you go by that spot it's not something you can really get to on the

04:11:04.840 road system so i don't know much about it but i am kind of curious and it's on my list of things that

04:11:09.780 I'm, I'd like to know a little bit more about when we get off, get off the stream tonight.

04:11:25.300 Okay, so I think this is the same question in kind of reverse order. Okay. I say Christianity

04:11:36.880 is a Jewish Trojan horse used to conquer Germanic tribes where Rome failed militarily.

04:11:44.080 Is it wrong? Is it wrong? My interpretation of Christianity? Um, 0.80

04:11:49.960 you know, I think that it, so separating intention from outcome, I think is important.

04:12:03.060 I think when viewed by outcome, you're correct, but I don't think that's what the intention was.

04:12:09.860 And you see that because of the friction with the early Christians and the Jews, there was a very strong slave underclass revolt thing that involved Christianity forming that isn't related to the politics of Judea as the time as far as Hebrews go. 0.58

04:12:39.860 So I don't think it was the Sanhedrin didn't conspire to let's make Christianity so we can go trick Germanics because Rome couldn't get it done.

04:12:52.780 I just don't think that the collusion worked like that at the time. 0.72

04:12:55.720 I think that certainly it is Jewish in its roots, Christianity is, and it succeeded in converting and conquering Germanic peoples where Rome was unable to militarily.

04:13:11.400 So your outcome is correct, but I don't think that was the intention of it.

04:13:15.620 I think that's giving far too much credit to a process that took, I mean, a thousand years to the very end of it, probably 300 years until it had any effect whatsoever on Germanic tribes.

04:13:32.060 So that's some extreme long game planning if that was the case.

04:13:36.860 Yeah, I think to say that is kind of like saying that the Civil War was entirely fought because of slavery.

04:13:42.980 uh you know that that functions itself well now as a political argument uh but it clearly wasn't

04:13:49.140 the case then so to say that that christianity was entirely just a trojan horse i mean when you think

04:13:54.900 about the the like what i was going to talk about when when it coming of age in the roman empire and

04:14:01.140 the fall of rome and then eventually the holy roman empire and then of course immediately the

04:14:06.020 the the correlation between um charlemagne and his uh you know uh allowance of of the the the

04:14:14.820 migrations of um uh jewish people from you know central europe or central asia westward and

04:14:22.260 throughout and then eventually it flipped again when it went and eventually turned into like the

04:14:27.060 inquisition so there's like this back and forth interplay that has happened numerous times

04:14:32.100 throughout and so i think the key component that you're talking about would be charlemagne's kind

04:14:38.180 of decrees um but then after that it was just you know back and forth and there was also like

04:14:45.620 other groups that had moved throughout europe after charlemagne and even before charlemagne but

04:14:49.940 really i mean that that moment of charlemagne's rise of the holy roman empire really brought about

04:14:57.620 the turning point of what i would think you're kind of leaning towards is that ideologically

04:15:04.340 christianity for a brief moment was kind of paralleling with its the the founding sect

04:15:10.420 that it came or the founding religion that it came from and then it became its own sect once it would

04:15:16.340 completely adopted arian uh like ethos like the trinity and things like that the tripartite is

04:15:22.660 arian there was no trinity in early christianity and then it was adopted and even fought over for

04:15:27.620 many years about um and then once that happened there was a great divide between christianity

04:15:34.420 and judaism that happened in europe but you know again most of my arguing on social media a lot of

04:15:41.620 times is telling european christians that that christianity is from judaism and i've had virulent

04:15:49.220 arguments where they just refuse to believe that that it's a middle eastern religion and it i mean

04:15:53.380 to the point where it's just cognitive dissonance of like nova explosion levels um where they they

04:16:01.540 just disconnect even reading the reading the bible and reading everything about the you know

04:16:06.900 the tanakh and then eventually conspiratories out into that again there was this grand architectural

04:16:14.180 conspiracy to that christianity was originally its own thing and it was you know a european thing

04:16:21.140 and then these people stole it and turned it into and that was even before it got to europe and and

04:16:26.180 jesus was a white guy and all that stuff it gets wild but really charlemagne was that point and

04:16:32.900 after that it was a a a slinky effect i think that happened you know whether we're talking about

04:16:39.460 charlemagne letting decreeing that uh nobody should really mess with the the practitioners 0.73

04:16:44.500 of judaism in europe but then you look at like long shades long shanks extraditing all jews out

04:16:49.460 of england there's just this back and forth and and so on and so forth so i think that the intimacy

04:16:56.420 of conflict and resolution in europe between christians and jews happened after charlemagne

04:17:02.580 and then now we can see it with like you know protestantism you know i've heard nothing but

04:17:07.860 incessant complaining from catholics saying that protestantism is the reason why now it's

04:17:13.060 a trojan horse or something like that there's a lot of finger pointing orthos are pointing

04:17:18.420 at catholics and so on and so forth and it's all quite um tiresome but at the end of the day

04:17:26.420 now that the information about christianity is available via the internet that like runes for

04:17:32.580 us are so vapidly we have so much information now that net was never around before now christians

04:17:40.340 are starting to see more of their connectivity to the parent religion and where it came from

04:17:46.500 and have the ability to see its evolution you know when the the um soul of tarsus and and all

04:17:53.460 of them in greece and then moving to rome and then the rise to charlemagne and and again as

04:17:58.740 i was heard ago they said this took over you know 300 to a thousand years and even then the slinky

04:18:04.100 effects been going on to even still today um i think the one thing that's worth noting though

04:18:09.780 is because our faith is ethnic christians and um i mean i can't speak for jews i don't know but the

04:18:16.740 idea is like an ethnic faith of european peoples uh frightens universalists all around um uh just

04:18:26.580 everybody whether they're jews muslims or christians i think that the idea is that

04:18:31.300 because we have an ethnic faith and that ethnic faith can also suddenly invigorate sovereignty of

04:18:38.500 land and sovereignty of lineage and sovereignty of ethnicity and culture and language and art

04:18:44.180 and all that stuff terribly frightens people who want all those things to be blurred so at the end

04:18:50.740 of the end of the day they're just either willing to admit like christians are either willing to

04:18:54.900 to admit that their parent, they're, they're, they are the subsect of Judaism. And, you know, 0.79

04:18:59.960 some Jews don't want to admit that that Christianity is that, or they believe it's

04:19:03.500 some sort of, um, heretical offshoot or whatever. The end of the day, Alistair is the ethnic faith

04:19:08.860 of Europe and, and our people and where they stemmed from in the central and all the way

04:19:14.060 westward. Our Holy land is the place that we, our blood sprung from. So, and that, that really

04:19:20.200 gets in the crawl of a lot of different people all right uh witness fawn james asks

04:19:27.640 during a halloween can you explain stead as opposed to having heard it pronounced steed

04:19:35.320 yeah absolutely stead homestead like we use the word english uh stead but if you're familiar with

04:19:41.000 german or dutch they use the word stat so like um there's the the south africans have the the

04:19:46.760 the Volk stop, where they're, you know, they're creating a, a, a suburb in South Africa to kind 0.84

04:19:52.900 of get away from a lot of the, the grotesque violence and things like that. Stop just means

04:19:57.300 town. So, uh, but it, it comes from the same source. It ultimately we get it from Anglo-Saxon

04:20:04.280 steda and a steda is a place. Uh, it can be a town. It can be a home. It's the same root as

04:20:12.120 steadfast or um steady if you will is maintaining your place yeah your place your positioning so

04:20:20.120 to hallow a stead is just um you know like in the prayers that i i have in relation to the usage of

04:20:28.360 the word stead that was actually just a hearkening back to linguistics for our folk to understand

04:20:34.440 that we have a con a common language of germanic words the word steed though um i'm not super

04:20:42.520 familiar with uh it's etymology i will actually look that up in here in just a second but um

04:20:50.120 you know because the the the uses of the word for horse is varied horsa and uh equos and uh

04:20:58.680 even like in iceland icelandic it's fair which is like p f e r d um and like which would be like

04:21:06.360 applied in english for a baby horse like a foul uh horse um and then you know we have stallion and

04:21:13.240 and latin words and things like that and uh mayor and so there's tons of stuff in relation to horses

04:21:20.600 but stead itself has nothing to do with horses it has everything to do with start

04:21:24.760 steading steadfast it's a that's where that comes from so hallowing the stead means

04:21:30.040 hallowing the place you're standing okay so the next one is kind of complex all right

04:21:42.280 this is from ryan uh lila olive oleva i sorry a temple dedicated to uller in sweden

04:21:52.360 was found to contain many offerings of oath rings, Ullr being associated with oathing.

04:21:59.160 Many other stories from the sagas have been proven through archaeological digs.

04:22:05.880 What is the thought on how many other holy sites or historically important sites to our people

04:22:12.180 may be proven through archaeology as they are attested to in what many consider to be

04:22:18.320 over-exaggerated stories rather than literary fact?

04:22:23.080 for clarification this question sort of deals with the wholesale acceptance of other cultures

04:22:27.880 lower as fact yet ours often seems fanciful despite archaeological evidence which proves it

04:22:36.680 um do you have thoughts on that's fun yeah and we kind of hit on it before when we were talking

04:22:42.280 about how like even i i love this book it's a great book and even at that point they were

04:22:47.560 saying like there was no definitive temples in in evidence of existence and now we know that

04:22:53.880 not to be the case that that there were definitive temples for worship and we have lots of archaeological

04:22:59.400 um proof of it the the pro or i would say the problem archaeology is great and it's good and

04:23:05.320 it helps a a definitive amount the only problem is that context of it um when we talk about um

04:23:12.600 you know most of the burials and when we think of things we don't think of them we think of

04:23:18.680 them broadly for instance viking helmets we know they don't have horns now most everybody knows

04:23:23.880 that but what they don't know is we really only have three of them we have three intact

04:23:29.800 metal ones we can assume based off of art and drawings from like medieval manuscripts that

04:23:35.560 they wore conical helms but a lot of people have argued that was an art that was a helmet style of

04:23:41.160 the age and they were drawing people from elder times in their context so archaeology has helped

04:23:48.840 us find nose pieces for what might be a conical helmet so i think archaeology really does has

04:23:55.800 two things it can clear up misconceptions that we like gaps that we have but it also kind of in a

04:24:01.240 way creates more gaps you know if if you look at the funerary uh ships and you know you see the

04:24:07.720 ladies that um of high status that are laid to rest there and you see the women next to them

04:24:15.880 it's not known whether or not they were daughters and if they died because like a natural or a

04:24:19.560 sickness or if that woman was sacrificed with the queen there so it adds more ponderings but it does

04:24:27.640 seem to answer a certain amount of things and and other things that we have to take into context

04:24:32.040 again not every viking warrior had a sword not every viking warrior had a helmet we only have

04:24:37.640 three helmets to even conceptualize what they might have looked like um you know most people

04:24:43.880 think of like viking swords as double-sided but now archaeologically we have found many single-sided

04:24:50.680 um viking swords and i'm not saying that the vikings were rolling around like you know

04:24:54.920 samurais or something ninjas but the again people just get in the concept of one way and i think

04:25:01.160 archaeology allows us to break that apart in ale saga when they talk about halberds

04:25:07.320 instead of axes and then people found out from archaeology that they had these big cleaver

04:25:12.280 axes that were kind of interesting like bill hooks stuff that was later in the medieval ages

04:25:17.960 archaeology is awesome and i think that especially like when you said in reference to othing

04:25:22.360 to uller and the significance the cult of uller in the nordic countries was far more extensive than

04:25:29.160 anywhere else in europe in my opinion based on the evidence we have right now archaeology could

04:25:34.440 change that but um i i mean i guess the overall point is is the significance of archaeology

04:25:42.360 in relation to our faith i think it it it's huge and it helps us out but we need to focus on

04:25:49.160 overall perception of what archaeology does the questions it creates and the questions

04:25:53.880 it could possibly answer it ends up becoming an open-ended thing creates more so everything i

04:26:02.440 agree with everything swan said to add to it on what i you know my thoughts on why that is

04:26:10.600 that some of our things are left written as being speculative even when they're very very provable

04:26:19.480 whereas other things are taken with very little resistance archaeology is one of the most

04:26:26.920 i don't know politically influenced branches of science is that um people have built entire

04:26:34.360 lives based on theories that if you find evidence that challenges or or discredits that theory then

04:26:44.200 you know that that deconstructs their entire claim to fame so you have this

04:26:50.440 entrenched archaeological culture to where these 70 year olds sit around and they don't let new

04:26:56.920 theories come forward a lot because if not they feel like their past you know 50 year career in

04:27:04.600 archaeology has been completely invalidated and it's really unfortunate but that happens

04:27:09.800 very often in i've heard that from anything that i look at in archaeology that challenges norms and

04:27:19.160 paradigms gets that same treatment and i i've heard a lot about that lately in research that

04:27:27.400 i've been doing so that's very common it's really hard to reformat what people think of different

04:27:35.080 historical subjects and archaeological subjects because it completely you know it completely

04:27:42.200 invalidates something that a person a person who's developed a lot of status and say in that

04:27:47.960 community and ability to hold things down it completely invalidates that person's life's work

04:27:55.480 so they are viscerally connected to fighting tooth and nail to poke holes in any possible

04:28:02.680 change in those paradigms and that happens very often unfortunately i wanted to say too about the

04:28:10.600 the steed i just looked up the word steed seems to also come from stada so steda means the place

04:28:19.160 where you are standing stada means to stand and they're referring to the position you take

04:28:24.520 when you're in the stirrups of a saddle you're like standing so the word steed in application

04:28:30.360 to horses seems to uh come from that that though that i don't think was the common usage of the

04:28:35.640 word horse saw and echos and uh ferret and all those are more common but the word steed

04:28:42.120 stems from standing in relation to the way you ride a horse so

04:28:51.240 all right so next question how common was animal and human sacrifice in history

04:28:56.600 extremely common especially animal sacrifice um up until very recently historically

04:29:05.960 large large large portions of society were devoted to farming and ranching that was the primary

04:29:14.680 function of you know the if you look at like the social pyramid that's the entire bottom of

04:29:20.360 Two thirds of the pyramid is food production through those activities. So that produced an abundance of animal sacrifice culture. There was herds. It was ingrained as part of the culture. The idea of slaughtering and processing animals was very, you know, was an everyday part of life. 0.99

04:29:45.180 So animal sacrifice was extremely, extremely common.

04:29:49.600 Human sacrifice, much less so historically.

04:29:54.320 We don't hear about that being a common thing.

04:29:57.080 And as we hear about it most often,

04:30:01.400 either as spoils of war things or if things were very dire.

04:30:11.680 And I think we see that across the board

04:30:14.600 when society is collapsing and there is rampant death and starvation and extreme circumstances

04:30:25.400 human sacrifice is kind of a last plea for of desperation for something and we see that we saw

04:30:33.480 that um and we see it get less and less as a society develops and has you know more structure

04:30:42.200 and becomes more civilized uh you know we saw that again in the very archaic periods

04:30:47.960 in greece and rome that was that was a thing human sacrifice but as they civilized and and

04:30:54.600 grew an infrastructure where they weren't at the brink of destruction all the time

04:30:59.240 it happened less and less and i'm trying to remember the specifics but there was a crisis

04:31:03.080 in rome one time that it was so bad it was forbidden to do human sacrifices for a long

04:31:09.000 period but they brought it back at one point because the situation was so dire like cool we

04:31:15.240 we're we're opening it up for human sacrifices because we got to try something death is upon us

04:31:22.040 and so that was kind of a i don't know gives us a perspective on it is an act of

04:31:27.320 desperation even when you see it in germanic context it wasn't

04:31:34.200 you don't see it gratuitously used and you don't see it referred to very often it's like

04:31:45.960 a special occasion or the sacrifice of a king or over a particularly noted victory and it's not

04:31:53.400 all of the people that you know it's not all of the slaves because again slave culture was important

04:31:59.560 so the trade in slaves or the use of slaves on your lands largely because of the agricultural

04:32:08.360 society that i mentioned earlier they didn't just off huge numbers of people as a sacrifice to

04:32:15.320 celebrate victories that wasn't a common thing there would be a very small number that that

04:32:19.960 would happen to so you still had a very viable population of slaves to to sell or to impress

04:32:26.520 into service um it's fine do you have anything to add on that yeah i i think you've covered i mean

04:32:35.640 when we talk about animal sacrifice i think the only thing i would say too is i've had people

04:32:40.360 argue with me about the idea that since there were cattle and cattle sacrifices in arabic or

04:32:48.200 semitic lands people that speak from the language of shem uh that they are somehow connected to

04:32:54.280 say like the arian sacrifice culture but you will notice that sacrificing is different amongst

04:33:00.760 like arian groups versus uh say dravidian indians or the the shemetic speakers of shem very much

04:33:09.160 yeah the purposes of sacrifice are very different sacrifice seems to be very much a kind of

04:33:15.560 universal religious trait within ethnic faiths across the world but their purposes and desires

04:33:21.960 and reasonings are very different and again this applies to the human as well the elements of like

04:33:28.440 war death uh sacrificing um your enemy that was captured to um to the gods uh oftentimes um

04:33:40.200 you know is it's seen it can be seen as very barbaric but you know you're considering the

04:33:43.880 times of things lots of things are we're pretty crazy then and um so the idea again is is uh you

04:33:52.440 know some of them too come from written accounts from people who don't like the people they're

04:33:57.080 writing about bear that in mind as well so if they're writing this account about a germanic

04:34:01.880 tribe and they want to tell their king or emperor or whoever or their legate that hey these people

04:34:08.040 are absolutely uncivilized we could never ever control them because they do this this this this 0.99

04:34:13.480 and this and this it's going to be a laundry list of garbage they kill their their parents they mate 1.00

04:34:20.360 with animals they kill the war dead they don't even like take prisoners um they eat flesh you 0.98

04:34:26.600 know these things are huge moral infractions that are being propagandized for reasons so we got to

04:34:33.000 make sure we look through that as well but when we talk about like nordic culture and we talk about

04:34:38.760 the gods there you know the reference of the of the king that held lots when he got you know where

04:34:45.080 they were going to give a sacrifice to odin um it seems so matter of fact that when they got there

04:34:50.200 they were going to sacrifice one of their own and uh the the king thought he could get away with it

04:34:56.680 by giving himself the you know the improper thing he pulled the the short stick if you will and he

04:35:03.160 he was like okay well we'll just hold a mock sacrifice and then Odin turns his rope into real

04:35:08.480 rope and then he he gets speared by the real spear because all gifts given to Odin Odin takes

04:35:15.000 I think that that that story may have a lot more significance into the idea of both

04:35:21.200 how sacrifices to Odin were done and not necessarily that it actually happened because

04:35:27.460 one of the things that I think interesting about that story is the sacrificing of their own

04:35:31.200 when they get to land uh taking from their numbers seems a little

04:35:35.560 out of place there and i think that that may be the context that starts where we can

04:35:42.460 conceptualize that story might have more of a symbolic significance of sacrifices to oh then

04:35:48.100 that perhaps were witnessed or poetically accounted turned into stories things of that

04:35:53.320 nature so even by the time that that thing was that that story was written down it was convoluted

04:35:59.740 to exactly what happened in human sacrifices they've heard about it they talked about it

04:36:03.900 but nobody had ever attended one or seen one um that's yeah outside of everything that also really

04:36:10.060 said i just wanted to key in on those those key points of context that we should consider

04:36:15.580 so the next question uh do you guys have permission to perform pyre funerals is that part of the

04:36:21.900 religion um no that okay funerals and i and again i don't know because this reaches an internet

04:36:35.740 international audience rules governing that vary dramatically from state to state certainly

04:36:47.500 uh here in the united states from country to country certainly i have known people that wanted

04:36:55.500 to do that and have that happen i have not known of anybody who has done that or certainly any of

04:37:02.300 our gothar have not um officiated a uh funeral pyre we do it is part of our faith that we do

04:37:13.100 encourage cremations. That was, but that's fairly arbitrary as well, that many different ways of

04:37:20.940 handling the dead have happened through our folk. Cremations specifically has an association with

04:37:27.240 the cult of Odin, and the idea of all the processes that Svan and I talked about on the soul,

04:37:36.180 migrating to different places the the pieces that need to sinking down into the self and

04:37:44.260 the other things that are only necessary for an existence in this world in this place

04:37:50.180 kind of cast off and it's this this slow process whereas our ancestors thought that by burning the

04:37:58.020 body immediately we're sending the soul on to the to the next location and hastening that

04:38:04.020 And so, yes, in a perfect world, if we had more say in the ability to do whatever we want,

04:38:12.280 I think a funeral pyre would be an amazing thing to do and would love for us to do it.

04:38:17.080 Currently, I am unaware of any location that it is legal for us to do, but it does raise

04:38:22.520 questions because that's a similar practice to the way that Hindus, or at least some sects

04:38:29.580 hinduism process they're dead so i'm curious about that and by that same token if we had afa members

04:38:38.140 in india they could probably do a pyre just fine uh do you do you know any more about that spot

04:38:44.940 uh i was gonna say that you know cremation like when we burned the boat the boat the ashes were

04:38:51.660 already cremated so that's worth noting uh that there's a possibility to have a memoriam

04:38:57.340 structure built to be burned but you know burning a funeral pyre in california is probably a no-go

04:39:04.940 not going to happen just because of the reality of things i had i remember um you know they're

04:39:12.940 arguing with some people saying that you know we're not reconstructing we're modern and

04:39:17.660 re you know the reconstruction of our faith is the most important thing and

04:39:20.860 this is one of the topics i've often brought up to them like okay what are you going to do about

04:39:23.900 funerals i mean you're gonna burn on pyres because if we're talking about the reconstruction of that

04:39:29.340 specific funeral right if you don't do that then are you really reconstructing things and not just

04:39:34.300 modernly larping and so that conversation brewed up some some research on my end uh the the problem

04:39:44.300 is you can actually apply to the state to create cemetery space on land that you own for like a

04:39:50.140 family estate but the body has to be buried and somebody has to go out there to make sure there's

04:39:54.140 not like a water source or you know an underground river or something you know that can be contaminated

04:39:59.740 or something people will go out and look and if they're they're good to go they're going to say

04:40:03.660 yeah you could do that and you plot out the land and and they will not mess with that cemetery

04:40:08.220 you know unless it gets completely swallowed up by the earth um however when you burn someone

04:40:14.300 that means that you you can become problematic to other people around you if you're in a

04:40:19.020 like montana or you know farm country and you're burning something and that could cause issues

04:40:23.580 elsewhere um so one of the arguments that i just wanted to bring this up is about the reconstruction

04:40:29.660 versus modernism and i've always felt that modernism had its point like and what i was

04:40:34.380 heard he said it would be great if we could do that i had even thought about the idea of creating

04:40:39.100 funerary cages like um in the shape of a hof but made of iron with grid to keep the flames from

04:40:48.300 uh the flames could pass through it but none of the um ash or spark would be able to pass through

04:40:54.700 so you build the pyre inside this kind of like permanent funerary hof cage and then you you know

04:41:02.300 light the body and hopefully with the cage being built to keep the embers from spreading um but at

04:41:09.260 the end of the day you got it you know we follow the the laws in for reasons in regards to these

04:41:14.700 things and i think cremation i'm not a fan of crematoriums and i would love for the afa and

04:41:22.940 also true uh like to have crematoriums that that are in relation to our religion through members of

04:41:31.900 our uh church that would be great if that could happen everywhere but yeah that's long down the

04:41:39.820 line and being realistic is not but you know if everyone was also true in the united states and

04:41:44.780 every city had a a funerary site to where the people getting cremated there were all you know

04:41:50.940 folk and aussituary that would be phenomenal but the reality of it is you know crematorium

04:41:57.500 and then at memoriam with with a burning afterwards is probably the closest you're going to get to

04:42:02.140 that all right um is the afa considered a religious entity can they perform funerals yes and yes um

04:42:13.820 like we're we are legally recognized in the united states as a 501c3 charitable religious

04:42:21.100 organization that's the designation that all churches and houses of worship fall under

04:42:25.980 And we've had that since 1995. And we mentioned this earlier, we absolutely can perform funerals. We've performed many funerals. I've performed quite a few. Svon has, sounds like he has performed several. That is something that our Gothard do.

04:42:44.560 uh gentlemen can you touch on a subject of ritual blessings and cleansing on a freshly purchased

04:42:52.720 land uh on freshly purchased land please uh what outdoor sacred objects like totems are appropriate

04:43:00.880 in modern house to true so we talked about um land takings earlier but svan can you talk about what

04:43:08.080 sort of outdoor sacred objects are appropriate in an outdoor context? Well, one thing if we're

04:43:16.040 talking about based off of lore and traditions and some cultural ideals, one of the big things

04:43:22.920 taking the land by fire, carrying a lantern, carrying a torch, carrying some form of light

04:43:28.580 to the four corners, which can be defined as you see fit, you know, it doesn't have to be in a

04:43:34.600 square, but it could be, you know, four distinct spots. I have heard of people placing warded

04:43:41.240 hazel rods, taking hazel rods and carving runes of protection upon them and hammering them into

04:43:47.220 the ground, underneath the ground entirely, not open and available. And the only thing I would

04:43:53.340 greatly, um, uh, go against is placing any sort of totems or imagery that has, um, offense to

04:44:02.080 the land vetir. And that generally, culturally speaking, no grimacing faces, no bulging eyes

04:44:10.060 and tongues and, you know, no great, horrifically scary things to scare off, you know, spirits was

04:44:18.720 generally seen. But the idea, again, I like the idea of carving either runes of protection or even

04:44:25.780 carving a in english it doesn't have to be runic our language is germanic so you can

04:44:32.300 create a prayer of protection and hammer it in a hazel rod and hammer it down in the ground and

04:44:38.500 then carry yourself to the next point hold up and tell the land spirits that you're going to take

04:44:43.640 this land and that it is your stewardship and that you are responsible for it and it's that's

04:44:48.700 another thing about land takings is a lot of people think it's um you know in context of like

04:44:53.180 today with like leftism and like uh you know white people taking land and all uh it's about

04:44:59.860 taking responsibility of the land it's about caring for it it's about making your borders

04:45:04.740 um i think a lot of people it resonates with um them in certain shows that are on right now like

04:45:09.960 ranchers defending their lands and i'm not doing any plug i've never watched the the show uh

04:45:15.420 yellowstone but you know kind of in that vibe of the ideas that owning land and protecting it at

04:45:21.620 all costs that's very germanic and anglo and we get that that's what land taking is you're taking

04:45:28.100 on that land and the responsibility and all the people on it and all the life the cattle and

04:45:32.180 everything and if something bad happens on that land you're negotiating not only with the living

04:45:37.060 but with the unseen the hoodl folk the land spirits you're saying i'm responsible if anything

04:45:42.820 goes afoul i'm the man that's going to be showing up at your doorstep to explain why what and how

04:45:48.180 can we make amends so that's what you're doing is you're going there and claiming and taking merit

04:45:52.820 of that land and you're connecting yourself to it so carrying that light maybe placing a rod in the

04:45:59.460 ground with something written on it um would be a a good idea and then moving to a central space like

04:46:05.780 a a vey or a um an altar a staller and holding the final part there where you you um maybe

04:46:13.860 extinguish the light into the earth as the final closing of that saying it's you know ask the gods

04:46:21.940 to give you guidance ask the gods to protect and look over ask your ancestors to look over

04:46:27.380 but ultimately you know sometimes even to play placing things over doors um i have a uh a uh

04:46:36.340 sun and rod on my door with the runes around it i got that from a gentleman who makes hex signs for

04:46:42.180 from Pennsylvania Dutch. Really cool. I have horseshoes and brooms over my front door and

04:46:50.500 back door. And that's just an old thing, obviously European, but also in Iceland as well. And

04:46:56.620 placing those things at those times would be good as well, but ultimately walking the land and then

04:47:05.260 working your way inward is the best way to go. All right. Well, all right. Last question.

04:47:13.060 is destiny manifestation go against the faith's view of violence only in defense

04:47:20.420 so we have no view of violence only in defense um what we do have is we're law-abiding citizens

04:47:30.820 if we were a nation state there's a lot of circumstances that violence is appropriate

04:47:35.780 um as citizens there are very few instances where violence is appropriate and as you mentioned often

04:47:44.740 those are in a very defensive nature but we have no general prohibition against violence

04:47:51.780 or attitude against it and we're also not opposed to colonization or conquest or or things of that

04:48:00.740 nature our ancestors did those things so we could have nice things if it wasn't for that most of us

04:48:06.740 would not be where we are most of us would not have the things that we have so violence is all

04:48:14.180 about the context of the world that you're living in the situation that you're living in and your

04:48:21.060 various purposes but we don't have any um we we're not pacifists as a faith but we are

04:48:29.380 law-abiding citizens that don't go out and break laws and when we're in spots that that restrict

04:48:37.540 violence we obey those laws and and behave ourselves uh it's fine do you have anything

04:48:44.580 to add to that could you read the question again just because i i caught it was kind of it was

04:48:49.860 the destiny part threw me off okay is destiny manifestation go against the faith's view of

04:48:56.820 violence only in defense and it's written awkwardly but comparing manifest and destiny

04:49:03.620 the only thing that comes to mind is the conquest of of north america by the united states

04:49:10.740 from sea to shining sea right okay and that makes perfect context to your answer there

04:49:16.500 i was thinking of the idea like were they were they talking about how uh destiny and the and

04:49:22.900 fate and things that lead us towards perhaps inevitable conflicts that we might find ourselves

04:49:29.300 in does that mean does that go against the idea of defending ourselves in those moments that's

04:49:35.460 where i was going with that one but as you started answering it i was like wait a minute i read that

04:49:40.020 entirely well it was um and no disrespect it was written awkwardly and i'm not sure if the person

04:49:45.860 who wrote it was an english speaker as their first language so i think maybe that's why the word order

04:49:54.020 was a little bit different yeah in relation to from your perspective of that question the way

04:50:00.100 you answered it i agree one whole i mean obviously that's i would agree because you are correct

04:50:06.340 but um the uh the um couldn't get any clearer in that answer too i just didn't quite understand

04:50:13.220 because i i heard it wrong but also too yeah i think it's important that we realize um

04:50:19.540 that when it comes to personal self-defense that is a huge factor in i think our faith um but it's

04:50:26.180 within um again the the law is important friv is based around law too we have a god of law

04:50:35.780 we have for seti and we try to attain things through proper channels but if you're trying

04:50:42.100 to defend yourself by all means you know the um you know the second amendment and just in our

04:50:48.100 faith in general having the ability to defend yourself is important but it also makes you

04:50:54.900 incumbent upon nobility when you have a weapon and you have a noble soul those two coincide to

04:51:01.380 you to being a moral prudent and adjudicating person um it doesn't mean you're pacifist it

04:51:09.140 doesn't mean that you have to but it it requires upon us to be lawful to consider that when we take

04:51:17.620 things over or when we conquest things there is things that must be built and structures that

04:51:21.940 must be had and and um you know there are things that you know we save and we we keep it safeguarded

04:51:29.140 i i was recently hearing you know somebody's like oh the people in england need to give all those

04:51:33.060 artifacts back and considering the countries they took them from at the time you're lucky they did

04:51:38.260 because the countries were like boiled into like cannibalism and full-on war and burning things

04:51:44.340 down so on and so forth um but yes i agree with what you said i just wanted to hit those points

04:51:52.660 and i also think um depending upon the person asking the question on what their religious

04:52:00.820 background is we live in a pretty soft um soft world as far as social things go and many you

04:52:10.500 know most religions that he may come in contact with in his day-to-day and certainly if he's

04:52:16.020 looking into paganism most quote unquote paganism it's a lot of it's a lot of non-violence there's

04:52:24.100 a lot of talk about pacifism and you know jesus talking about turn the other cheek and pagans

04:52:31.300 you know talking about not harming anybody and and so i can understand why it's a it's question

04:52:36.500 to ask but no as true has no blanket opposition to violence violence is is contextual on when

04:52:43.140 and when it's not appropriate but hey i appreciate everybody with their questions tonight you guys

04:52:49.620 had a lot of really good questions swan i always appreciate you coming on it adds so much and we

04:52:55.300 always i don't think you monitor the social media the way that i do but we always get great feedback

04:53:00.580 from all the episodes you're on so thank you very much awesome thank you thank you for having me

04:53:05.780 all right well i hope to see some of you guys at midsummer at odenshoff uh until then or until

04:53:11.700 next week when i talk to you hail the gods hail the folk hail the afa and remember victory never

04:53:18.740 Sleeps.

04:53:48.740 Thank you.

04:54:18.740 Thank you.

04:54:48.740 Thank you.

04:55:18.740 Thank you.

04:55:48.740 Transcription by CastingWords

04:56:18.740 Thank you.

Asatru Folk Assembly - June 15, 2023

6⧸14⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 49 - Hofs and Sacred Spaces

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