Asatru Folk Assembly - 7⧸24⧸24 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 107 - Þórshof Edition

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

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00:01:30.000 Thank you.

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

00:03:00.000 hello and welcome to a very special edition of victory never sleeps tonight we are going to have

00:03:19.280 a variety of members of fa leadership in the forshof district

00:03:26.160 But before we get to that, just kind of top of the show things.

00:03:36.500 Some of you may have noticed last week we did not broadcast on Twitter like we usually do.

00:03:41.840 That is, again, a problem this week.

00:03:43.860 They recently changed their policy, so we've got to get verified and have the premium membership and whatnot.

00:03:50.200 That's in process, but that takes an undetermined amount of time.

00:03:54.840 so hopefully we will be back up there. Hopefully our folks that normally watch this on Twitter

00:04:00.720 will join us over here on YouTube tonight or one of the other fine places that broadcast this

00:04:06.620 program live, such as Odyssey, Entropy, Twitch, Rumble, and VK, and hopefully back on Twitter 0.52

00:04:18.480 very soon um i guess since last time i spoke to you guys we had sigger bloat at siggerheim when

00:04:28.560 i say we i mean we in the bigger spirit sense uh my travel plans were derailed due to friday's

00:04:38.560 worldwide airline nonsense it effectively

00:04:43.940 eliminated my ability to make that event which is unfortunate i was very excited and it looked

00:04:51.680 like they had a great time without me so i'm definitely going to be there next year um

00:04:57.060 and i hope you guys join us uh we may have some pictures of that tonight as it technically

00:05:03.980 happened in thorshoff district and a couple of the movers and shakers that made that a success

00:05:10.960 are here with us this evening i'm sure matter of fact it's probably what we'll start off talking

00:05:15.360 about in the meantime as always ronald blake has uh set the tone for generosity donating a hundred

00:05:24.300 dollars to our current folk services push for a family that is

00:05:29.260 in some pretty dire straits on figuring out some housing due to unforeseen circumstances

00:05:36.620 so we're working on that and we appreciate his donation towards it also he started off by buying

00:05:43.300 us three coffees which is 15 we appreciate that as always thank you so much rommel um folks that

00:05:51.620 want to do the buy coffee thing or figure out any of the ways to donate to any of the worthy afa

00:05:56.800 projects descriptions are or yeah it's in the description of this program how to do that

00:06:04.880 there's the little qr code deal a variety of things but we appreciate everybody's

00:06:09.520 generosity you guys are awesome um other news coming up next month we have

00:06:20.640 frayfaxi at baldershoff that's in murdoch minnesota that's coming up on the 16th

00:06:26.560 through the 18th of august love to see you guys there it's going to be great i'm looking forward

00:06:31.520 to it um and that's where we're at right now top of the show also i want to advertise a couple of

00:06:39.440 new products we have out this week we have got uh some vintage designed afa shirts and hoodies

00:06:47.920 they look amazing uh products have been really good quality folks seem to really like them

00:06:53.840 we're still working on the best system of doing that so if you're interested go ahead and get yours

00:07:02.720 i think that's what we got at the top of the show other than to once again remind you guys

00:07:06.960 like share subscribe any place that you find this the biggest tool that we have

00:07:11.680 to help us right now is you guys word of mouth so if you know people that would be interested

00:07:20.140 in this program for any reason please invite them to watch it live or consume it after the fact

00:07:26.420 either here on youtube on any of the other spots or as a podcast coming up you know those get

00:07:32.740 released on Fridays. So a lot of ways to find us and listen, and we appreciate your support in

00:07:42.500 spreading the good word. I think that's what we got top of the program. So we got a lot of people

00:07:52.200 who we have not seen before. So I think we'll go around and do introductions first, and then we'll

00:07:58.680 talk a little bit about uh cigar blood at cigar high so uh first timers on the program joe let's

00:08:08.040 start with you can you tell folks a little bit about yourself how you found ousatru and what

00:08:12.840 brought you to the ousatru folk assembly well hello everybody um well actually i'm not even

00:08:18.600 sure how long it was ago but uh at least four or five years when i became a member at the very

00:08:24.600 least uh actually a lady i was speaking to up in alaska uh introduced me to it i told her i felt

00:08:30.840 like an island there was no one around me who thought the same way and uh i'd already become

00:08:37.240 familiar with stephen mcdallan beforehand but uh she told me there was actually the aussie troop

00:08:42.680 folk assembly which i had no knowledge of i would just see interviews with him so that's how i found

00:08:47.160 it i joined and i never left and um like i said i don't even know how long i've been doing this but

00:08:54.600 at least a few years ago um there was no folk builders in ohio really for a short while and uh

00:09:01.720 a folk builder from i do believe wisconsin came down and lit a fire under our butts saying we

00:09:06.200 weren't doing anything so uh i sat there for a while and said well if no one's gonna do it i

00:09:11.720 guess i will and i stepped up and have it left and found all you fine folk and i love being here

00:09:18.840 so that's pretty much where i came from well so the folks listening kind of get an idea of the

00:09:25.560 geography whereabouts in ohio are you uh near akron if that makes sense to anyone i'd say

00:09:32.440 northeast about an hour south of cleveland there you go and uh joe is a is a folk builder in the

00:09:40.680 district uh next up i think this is your first time on mike is that correct mike you're muted

00:09:54.440 sorry about that yes first time on uh on the program i'm glad to be here tell folks about

00:09:59.960 yourself and uh how you came to both alsatru and the austral folk assembly if you would

00:10:05.160 Sure. So a long journey to get here. I've been Asitru, or at least what the meaning of the word

00:10:16.280 is, loyal to the Asir. This is going on my 33rd year. I was fortunate enough to, and I'm still

00:10:24.440 not sure if they called me or I found them, but either way, here I am. And I was involved

00:10:36.520 when I was much younger with what we like to refer to as an Asatru adjacent organization.

00:10:43.080 And then I kind of stepped away back from anything that was organized for quite some time. But I

00:10:48.040 always, with the advent of the internet, I was always keeping tabs on what was going on. 0.73

00:10:55.320 watch some groups come and go and the one group that always remained was the astrue folk assembly

00:11:03.320 before we were calling what we do folkish it just it didn't dawn on me that a folk religion

00:11:11.720 could be any other way and not quite three years ago i decided to rejoin my folk in an official

00:11:22.680 capacity uh decided to become a folk builder and serve our folk so that's how i i found the afa and

00:11:31.720 like joe said uh i'm not leaving so i'll be in this one for life all right and uh can you give

00:11:39.960 folks a little heads up on geography where are you located all right so i'm roughly half an hour

00:11:47.480 south of cleveland and roughly 20 minutes west of akron so about 45 minutes northwest of joe

00:11:57.160 also here in ohio

00:12:02.280 all right um we will continue but before we do uh aussie miller bought us three coffees

00:12:10.040 $15 donation. Thank you. We appreciate it. Ah, John, is this your first time on the program?

00:12:22.200 It is my first time on the program.

00:12:24.680 All right. Well, tell folks a little bit about yourself,

00:12:28.280 what brought you to Alcitru, what brought you to the AFA, and where you're located,

00:12:32.440 if you would please uh my name is john rock i am located in the great hoosier borean state of

00:12:40.840 indiana and um i came to aussitrew specifically aussitrew uh several years ago when i joined the

00:12:51.880 afa before that i was a practicing odinist and uh ran into a friend of mine who was

00:13:00.200 I have a friend who owns a tattoo shop, and he was tattooing a gentleman who is now my kinsman who said,

00:13:09.680 hey, have you heard about the AFA? You should come join up with us.

00:13:13.560 And I was skeptical at first because I did not actually realize that people like us existed,

00:13:21.260 And I assumed that we were, you know, that the internet Asatru scene was full of undesirables.

00:13:31.820 And I was pleasantly surprised to find otherwise.

00:13:36.420 And then I joined with the AFA and I have been with us since then.

00:13:41.040 I am located in central Indiana, just outside of Indianapolis.

00:13:46.700 But if you're in Indiana, I'll come get you.

00:13:49.920 where i travel all about indiana all righty and then uh next up we got the two tylers we're going

00:13:57.760 to start with the bearded tyler first bearded tyler tell folks a little bit about yourself

00:14:04.320 uh what brought you to alistar true what brought you to the afa and uh where you're located

00:14:10.800 uh good evening everybody i'm tyler um the bearded tyler and uh i live out near ashville

00:14:18.320 north uh carolina the better carolina um i came to as a true in a 2017 i'd had a lot of uh

00:14:32.080 a lot of doubts about christianity going on at that time and i've always been a lover of um

00:14:40.480 historical fictions and uh i came across an author called uh bernard cornwell he wrote a

00:14:47.680 book called uh the last kingdom um about a young man who uh grew up christian and then he got

00:14:57.920 kidnapped by the vikings and he learned all about his uh the culture and um the gods of

00:15:04.640 people and that resonated a lot with me uh a lot of the doubts he was having i was having so uh i

00:15:11.520 came to ozatru because of a book um and um that started me on my journey uh started to look around

00:15:21.520 online and everything and actually came across the afa on uh uh the reddit um at that time there were

00:15:29.600 were a lot of heathens on uh reddit and that's where i learned a lot of stuff and they kept on

00:15:36.580 talking about these awful individuals uh called the afa who uh that they loved their people

00:15:44.900 and everything and all that stuff resonated so i looked at the website and i looked up the youtube

00:15:50.820 videos and all that stuff and i worked a little bit um and i reached out to the folk builder in

00:15:58.720 my area at that time, and he asked me to go to a moot, and I did, and I met some real good folks

00:16:06.260 I talked to now, and they got me out to more events and such, and I dropped my application

00:16:14.840 in the parking lot of the first moot. A couple of months after that, I was at Austera in the south,

00:16:23.580 the first austera that that i went to um and i walked away from from that event with no doubt

00:16:30.620 in my mind in uh 2018 um i've not looked back since um yeah uh about me i've got three sons

00:16:43.140 between the ages of nine and one and a half and i have a daughter on the way

00:16:48.000 I always wanted a girl, so that's happening.

00:16:53.180 Life is good.

00:16:54.140 I work as a carpenter, been married for 10 years.

00:16:57.840 And other than my family, there's nothing I love more in the world than our AFA,

00:17:06.900 and I am pleased to be here.

00:17:10.200 Fantastic.

00:17:10.940 We're very glad to have you.

00:17:12.960 And Smooth Tyler, what do you got for us?

00:17:17.000 Tell us a little bit about yourself, what brought you to the AFA and where you're located.

00:17:24.340 All right. Well, I am a folk builder, Tyler Saugert. I'm in southwestern New Hampshire.

00:17:31.060 I'm a proud father and proud husband. My coming to Ossetru story is pretty typical of a lot of 0.99

00:17:40.220 people. I grew up in an agnostic household, so I didn't really have any spiritual guidance.

00:17:46.060 I went through like my, you know, preteen, I know everything atheism phase. And once you get to the bottom of that rabbit hole, you find that there's there's more to the story. I've always been into my ethnic heritage. I'm almost 100 percent German ethnically due to a German enclave in northwestern Ohio staying together.

00:18:08.940 Um, so I always was super infatuated with, um, you know, my, my ancestors and my history.

00:18:16.160 And then I, um, I stumbled upon just reading into pre-Christian religions and it was the

00:18:21.780 first time that anything, um, made sense. 0.71

00:18:24.840 And it felt like something had been like hiding from me my entire life.

00:18:28.640 And a really cool little tidbit about that is I told my mom how I was feeling spiritually.

00:18:34.740 And then she just said, well, I'm going to send you something in the mail.

00:18:37.560 um she sent me this book here and it's not the best rune book but hey mom was trying in the 90s

00:18:44.480 um and what was cool is like you can see my little scribbles of me as a baby like scribbling on the

00:18:52.500 runes so it was like kind of a surreal hair standing up moment to realize that i kind of

00:18:58.640 you know just through blood memory found my way home so yep that's me

00:19:04.240 that's fantastic thank you for sharing that story with us

00:19:09.040 um so we're gonna have a lot of people joining us this evening we've got a question over in the

00:19:16.320 chat will uh spawn be on the night he should be at some point he was going to give some other

00:19:21.360 people a chance to get out here a little bit and also kind of steal away a little bit of time to

00:19:27.160 spend with his family but he should be joining us a little bit later we've got witten clifford

00:19:31.880 Erickson and his lovely wife Katie on the show today they are coming at you from Erie Pennsylvania

00:19:38.600 and we also have uh Witten Daniel Young from uh the the inferior so I am told Carolina the

00:19:46.760 Southern Carolina so uh that's not a very big state but uh at least somewhere in South Carolina

00:19:57.720 um for what it's worth so there we go and we have uh nick rice our producer who has made

00:20:06.360 every one of these programs except for one um he is very close to sigurheim there in

00:20:14.680 north central tennessee and that said speaking of sigurheim had an event there this last weekend

00:20:22.840 that i so very much wanted to be at was not able to um nick could you talk to folks a little bit

00:20:31.160 about i don't know your experience at uh at sicker bloke this year and kind of how that

00:20:38.520 how that went down stuff you think folks would be interested in

00:20:43.560 absolutely so uh leading up to singer bloke it had me and whitney young and uh

00:20:52.840 folk builder tyler buffet just making all the plans getting everything ready and everything

00:20:59.800 looked good and then uh friday morning uh we're on the way out tyler's on the way to pick you up

00:21:08.360 from the airport and uh you're a no-show so uh well the show must go on so we did a little bit

00:21:17.480 of uh finagling and uh well it went well um we had about 20 i'd say reckon 25 people out there

00:21:30.120 we luckily uh miss katie got to jump on a quick movement vehicle on a last minute notice make

00:21:36.760 our way down from pennsylvania and goke east made it up from uh georgia got a little gothic

00:21:43.160 replacements but uh we had a couple bloats on friday with just uh just the group of us uh

00:21:50.440 the bigger group showed up on saturday and we had a really good time and all in all

00:21:59.000 i mean i think we really pulled through and had a really solid event and it was everything we

00:22:05.320 could have asked for um aside from you know you but uh that's okay for the record folks i tried

00:22:15.080 i was at the airport for about eight hours if i could never quite make it out of reno unfortunately

00:22:19.720 i wanted to be there no we we we may do had a great events um plenty of good bloats a great

00:22:29.720 assemble a nice auction and a lot of a lot of good time for folk and a lot of good meals so

00:22:38.520 it was it was a pretty good darn weekend excellent so katie as uh as nick mentioned you

00:22:46.760 i don't know you hopped in a car and drove what 11 hours or so down uh to make stuff happen and

00:22:53.720 and to cover for my absence.

00:22:58.760 First, thank you very much for that.

00:23:01.080 I think, you know, I speak for everybody

00:23:03.060 when we say we really, really appreciate

00:23:04.620 your willingness to do that for us.

00:23:08.160 Can you tell folks a little bit about your weekend

00:23:10.220 and stuff you think is worth noting for the people?

00:23:16.180 Sure, first, I'm lucky enough to be in a position

00:23:19.160 where I can hop in a car and drive at a moment's notice

00:23:22.220 because my job, which are very, very noisily,

00:23:26.060 not watching the movie next to me right now,

00:23:28.780 it travels with me, so.

00:23:32.520 And honestly, I didn't need to do much this weekend.

00:23:36.480 Nick and Tyler and his kindred did a really good job

00:23:39.900 and they had everything well in hand,

00:23:41.360 so I was just there in case I was needed for anything.

00:23:47.140 They did everything very well on their own,

00:23:49.540 but I had a very nice weekend.

00:23:51.860 It was actually probably the first weekend at an event where I've ever had the

00:23:55.640 opportunity to actually just kind of relax and talk to people because usually

00:24:00.080 I'm busy. Some of that's self-imposed,

00:24:03.140 but there literally was nothing that I could do to help because it was,

00:24:07.440 like I said, it was really well organized and taken care of.

00:24:10.200 So I enjoyed it and I really enjoyed the chance to get to know people in a way

00:24:14.600 that I haven't had a chance to get to them in the past. Yeah, it was,

00:24:19.580 I really enjoyed myself this weekend. I thought it was a good weekend.

00:24:21.860 Are the statues cool in person? I still have not got to see those statues that I'm very,

00:24:27.760 very mentally invested in. They are very, very much cooler in person. I'm looking forward to

00:24:33.120 the opportunity to sort of like landscape and pretty them up one day when we have a little

00:24:38.500 bit more of an organized space there. We could go crazy with the flowers and stuff.

00:24:43.780 Excellent. Me too. There's a lot of very exciting things that I'm waiting to do there.

00:24:51.860 And I guess, you know, one of the men that had the most to do with setting it up

00:24:58.120 and making the event run, Tyler, can you tell us a little bit about how your weekend went

00:25:04.560 and anything folks should know about, I don't know, about Sigur Bloat this year?

00:25:15.280 Yes, sir.

00:25:16.020 So the first thing I'd like to say is that this event was a huge demonstration of perseverance and industriousness.

00:25:35.140 I'd say the majority of the people who turned out, they came to work.

00:25:42.360 Everybody there, for the most part, put in a whole lot of work from apprentice Charles Moore, putting in a lot of work, putting up our tent.

00:25:56.920 I don't think our tent would have been ready whenever the folk arrived had it not been for Charles.

00:26:05.260 Our directions had been weathered and turned into a rat's nest, so there was no logic involved on my part.

00:26:18.160 Charles said, you know, hey, I think that this goes here, this connects into that, and we were able to raise the shelter very well under his direction.

00:26:29.740 Um, all the meals were team efforts. Um, yeah, I mean, I mean, everything top to bottom was just everybody, uh, the roll their sleeves up and they worked really hard. Um, but, uh, highlights for me was, uh, conversation. Um, when we did our welcoming of the gods, we made sure to emphasize that from this point on everything that we did,

00:26:59.740 that we do needs to be in the mindset of a piety and a ritual and i'd say that 90 of uh

00:27:11.500 what i overheard was uh topics on also true and that is pretty rare um there were folks talking

00:27:21.500 about the the rooms there were folks talking about their uh favorite events on how they came

00:27:29.180 into oz a true uh their their motivations the things that uh keep them going and such um a

00:27:37.500 whole lot of uh pretty good conversations and that was my highlight was to see that everybody

00:27:45.020 kept kind of on task and uh a lot of breath was built uh bonds were strengthened a lot of the

00:27:53.500 people there already knew each other um but there were a handful of like outliers and i think they

00:28:00.780 they were made to feel the real welcome and uh i think that bonds were built at this event that

00:28:06.620 are going to last um and we'll make our region expand even more uh which will help to to to to

00:28:15.100 call the more of our uh the folk home so that's what i've got your region you say

00:28:23.500 So, for those of you who might be curious what all falls into the Thorshoff district, I'm sure Nick has got a graphic for us that's going to show everybody.

00:28:37.640 Thorshoff is orange.

00:28:39.180 So, as you can see, that's South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, and Michigan, and everything further to the north and east of that in the United States, including, if you drew that line, kind of straight up through Canada, and everybody in potato Europe.

00:29:09.180 So, that's what we got going on. It is a population-dense district. I don't know that geographically it's the most, like, square miles, but it's certainly very, very thick with members.

00:29:26.900 So we've got tons of people spread out all the way across.

00:29:30.720 You can hear on here a number of different accents.

00:29:36.280 I don't think we've got any like super nasally Yankees.

00:29:42.620 We don't got some of the thicker and more obnoxious Northeast accents, which is cool.

00:29:47.900 But we do have some good Southern accents on here.

00:29:52.240 Got a lot of different people in a lot of different places.

00:29:56.900 This would also encompass, when I say Tater Europe, if you guys don't, I don't know, I've never seen the meme or whatever.

00:30:05.360 We kind of split Europe in half with, I guess, Northern Europe and Central Europe, mostly going into the Thorshof district and kind of more Mediterranean Europe going to the Yurtshof district.

00:30:26.900 Um, no, I, I'm ahead of myself. I'm sorry, guys. So they have the entirety of Europe. I am thinking

00:30:35.280 of future plans on what we're doing when we get our next half. I apologize. I completely messed

00:30:40.700 you guys up there, disregard the last whatever few seconds I just said. So the entirety of Europe

00:30:46.240 and that chunk of the United States I mentioned, and that Nick showed you in orange. So we're

00:30:52.140 happy to talk about anything you guys want tonight in general certainly happy to talk about anything

00:30:59.420 district uh related absolutely we'll talk about thorshoff itself but tonight's kind of getting

00:31:06.620 to know the leadership of the district as a whole so that's kind of the idea this evening we got a

00:31:12.780 lot of great people some of them entertaining and uh it's good to have them all on um

00:31:22.140 we're looking at where we're at tonight on starting some some topics and questions

00:31:29.340 sorting through a couple of things i apologize all right so the wolf throne asks you can always

00:31:39.480 count on wolf throne to come through with the questions i know you stated in the past that

00:31:44.000 the afa does not believe in equality correct me if i'm wrong but i interpret that as saying

00:31:48.760 no two persons are equal in quality that no two persons are the same and that no two races of men

00:31:56.020 are the same so I just wanted to clarify does the AFA have uh an official stance on the political

00:32:02.860 side of equality such as equal equal opportunity and equal rights like should women have rights

00:32:09.280 and should everyone have a chance to prove their worth for a particular job or career regardless

00:32:14.860 their race uh witten erickson would you like to take this question

00:32:21.820 i was hoping it would fall on me um yeah i'd love to answer this question so i think that the um

00:32:29.420 the in the first part of the question that you know basic interpretation that no two persons have

00:32:36.220 the same quality is correct um you know we we will say that um you know we don't believe

00:32:43.900 in equality or that equality is a myth and that's true just observationally if you look at the world

00:32:54.300 you know the the the concept of equality in you know the the american notion of equality i suppose

00:33:01.580 is that everyone has the same capabilities everyone has the same aptitude

00:33:08.620 but if we observe the world that's just not the way that it really is

00:33:11.420 and that's okay that's the natural order of things um you know some people are stronger

00:33:18.100 some people are strong or are smarter some people are faster um and that's that's the way that the

00:33:24.920 world is supposed to be men and women are not the same as each other men excel at some things

00:33:30.540 women excel at other things and we're better off when um when we work together as men and women

00:33:37.540 um as far as things um related to occupations um i think that that really would you know depend on

00:33:47.460 those capabilities and and some of that is you know your your natural gifts that are given to

00:33:54.240 you from your ancestors and from the gods um you you need to nurture those skills though you know

00:34:02.040 if you are blessed with good health and, um, you know, just, uh, uh, a good physique in the sense

00:34:10.380 that you are physically healthy, you, you need to not be lazy about that. You need to nurture your

00:34:15.360 body and grow your body through a good diet and exercise and learning skills, your muscle memory

00:34:22.360 and what your body is used to doing is as important as, uh, you know, it's base strength

00:34:27.820 and all of that. The same thing goes with your mind or talents related to music or art. You can

00:34:35.300 have something that's just there inside of you that maybe other people don't have, but you got

00:34:40.480 to do something with it for it to have any worth. And as far as different races, I think that extends

00:34:48.440 out the same way. The races are not equal, but that doesn't mean that one is superior over the

00:34:57.780 other um what it does mean is that they're in sort of a competition the way that you know the

00:35:05.300 way that people are in our societies or in a job market and that um success is something that is

00:35:14.020 made to happen victory is something that is that is made to happen um you know we

00:35:21.140 nobody has claim to success but something that is exercised um now sure go the matt and i were

00:35:30.260 talking about this not so long ago um in in relation to rights you know when people think

00:35:36.180 about equality people will often bring in you know rights into that conversation you know the

00:35:44.500 common phrasing would be god given rights you know if you also true eyes that it could be god's given

00:35:51.060 rights, I suppose. But that's not a real thing. If you strip away all of these things that we've

00:35:57.700 built up, just like one can build up their mind or build up their body, if we strip away

00:36:02.280 civilization, your rights are not any more existent than a bear's or a wolf's or a fish's.

00:36:10.560 You have to assert your place in the world.

00:36:14.540 You have to, you know, you have to stake a claim to anything, including rights.

00:36:24.240 You know, the right to your life.

00:36:25.560 Well, you maintain the right to your life by defending it and by removing obstacles to the continuation of your life, whatever that might look like in a particular circumstance.

00:36:40.560 so no we we don't believe in equality um we do believe in in treating people fairly we we do

00:36:48.320 believe in justice so um you know we we don't believe in you know living a life where you

00:36:56.640 treat any living creature you know whether it's a person or an animal um you know badly just for

00:37:05.040 the for the heck of it we we expect people to act responsibly to act in favor of the order that the

00:37:13.840 acer established which means being respectful to to life and in particular i think life that is um

00:37:23.440 that is weaker than you you have a duty when you are strong or dominant to um to also be a protector

00:37:32.400 and a caretaker so i hope that answers your question if you have any follow-ups i know you're

00:37:37.440 asking yeah i i guess uh add a couple of things i've mentioned before that politics is

00:37:52.080 very situational and the context matters a lot so there's different answers to different

00:37:58.880 certainly the different circumstances and different situations folks find themselves in.

00:38:08.740 That said, our values should affect our politics and our political decisions.

00:38:15.140 The AFA doesn't, we deal in values and there's political implications sometimes,

00:38:20.820 But overall, the concept of equality is, I don't know, degrading to the human condition.

00:38:31.580 In order to get equality, because you can't make those who underperform perform better, the only way to enforce it is to hamper those that perform, that quote-unquote overperform, that perform highly.

00:38:54.280 And setting a ceiling on people's ability to achieve and succeed is wrong. 0.89

00:38:58.960 it's just wrong it's wrong all the time to do the astro folk assembly supports the concept of 0.86

00:39:06.580 struggle and merit and success success through effort and through courage and through discipline

00:39:15.580 and through doing but yeah nobody on this screen is equal in station in physical ability in

00:39:24.400 in speed in knowledge in any of these factors and to suggest otherwise diminishes the accomplishments

00:39:35.220 of those of us that that have at great cost been able to you know in whatever way rise above rise

00:39:44.720 above the pack and achieve something so um hopefully that clarifies uh something's going

00:39:51.840 on with my power supply here that's why my video feed dropped i'm going to play with that for a

00:39:57.520 second uh brandy has a question and she wants to know uh who here

00:40:12.800 all right so we lost asher growthy matt i will finish the uh the the questions so we can keep

00:40:19.200 things go until he gets power back um witten brandy facet asks uh our panel here who from

00:40:26.240 this amazing panel of folk are coming to balder's office for fray faxing next month

00:40:31.140 and uh she's asking for a friend unfortunately i will not be able to attend i have used all of my

00:40:38.500 currently available time off from work um traveling to midsummer in california and making sure that

00:40:45.600 i'm available for winter nights in new hampshire and taking a few other days here and there to

00:40:51.100 make sure i can do um some other mostly also true folk assembly related things but believe it or not

00:40:57.720 even a few personal things um by implication that means also that my lovely wife will will not be

00:41:05.460 there um but um nick are you gonna be there

00:41:14.580 no sir unfortunately uh much like you i am out of pto for a while

00:41:21.860 maybe let's uh let's do a show of hands who is gonna be there

00:41:28.260 awesome so mike let's start with you what are you looking forward to the most

00:41:33.620 about going to Freyfaxi at Boulder's Hall? I would say that first time entering

00:41:46.260 Boulder's home here on Midgard, likely the most recent in potentially a thousand years.

00:41:57.620 um and a very close second to that is uh you know getting to meet some of the folk up that way that

00:42:06.580 i have yet to meet and get to see people up that way that i already know um you know a lot of strong

00:42:14.740 bonds uh with everybody that i've met in the afa uh leadership or otherwise and anytime i can spend

00:42:22.580 more time with the folk and meet folk i haven't met before it's a wonderful experience so very

00:42:30.340 much looking forward to it and i'll be my first time there so i was just about to ask you read

00:42:36.580 my mind if that's going to be your first trip to to balder's off yes it is a it is a beautiful temple

00:42:43.140 um it is um yeah it's hard to describe but uh you can describe it for us when you get back i've been

00:42:52.020 there but it's always nice to hear things in someone else's own words and their own experience

00:42:57.620 absolutely what about you john

00:43:05.940 you raised your hand right yes i will be there um i you know like like so many people i'm looking

00:43:13.940 forward just to visiting murdoch minnesota wanted to go ever since i was a child so i will finally

00:43:21.380 have that opportunity awesome you're in for a treat it's it's i'm sure that i am i i in seriousness

00:43:30.820 i have also never been to baldursof so i am very much looking forward to visiting baldursof and

00:43:36.980 seeing the seeing the hof not the people people come and people go that hoff's there forever

00:43:51.380 oh i wish you were kidding and the people i always i i love all the people i used to go to lc fest

00:43:57.460 uh you know all the time in baldershoff district so i i have gotten to know some of the uh

00:44:03.540 baldershoff faithful and uh and it's always good to visit with them

00:44:10.740 they're good people we'll keep them yeah they're not thorshoff people but they're i mean they're

00:44:15.380 okay all right nobody's perfect no equality right actually you know just to add on that

00:44:23.220 that's sort of like an underpinning i think theological premise for why there can't be

00:44:28.660 equality because we also don't believe in perfection so um that's just not the way the world works

00:44:37.940 when daniel you raised your hand right well will you and heather both be going yes sir heather and

00:44:44.900 lauren and myself will be going there and uh it's our first time too uh looking forward to being uh

00:44:52.020 in the light of balder's temple uh some of my very closest friends are uh you know situated

00:44:58.660 around it off um go through rob stam recently relocated to that area of course uh whit and

00:45:04.500 brandy is one of the very few women in the world that i actually call sis i want to give that name 0.97

00:45:10.660 to a couple of girls uh and uh yeah there's a reason for that looking forward to spending

00:45:16.100 some time with uh nathan and ashley uh and i have never met the um very famous now jason gallagher

00:45:23.780 now i'm so looking forward to that you know jason you're in for a treat jason's the man

00:45:30.580 yeah he's awesome um he's he's he's been in the austral focus somebody longer than anyone

00:45:36.420 on this screen that's your guilty matt hasn't beat but he is not on the screen technically

00:45:41.220 right now so yeah jason's uh one of those guys i've gotten to know as much as you can get to

00:45:46.340 know somebody through social media and stuff and we have a lot of you know mutual and common

00:45:50.660 interests and uh yeah i'm looking forward to you know talking music and and uh all the stuff that

00:45:57.860 we have in common with him he's a just a phenomenal character and yeah really looking

00:46:02.740 forward getting of him and getting to meet him finally awesome i'm going to just move on to the

00:46:12.980 next question uh out of omens asks who's y'all's favorite god or goddess nick let's start with you

00:46:23.860 all right well um i think i kind of answered that uh in a recent uh class question for one

00:46:36.100 of our gotham classes um i think that the god i would lump it in as my favorite god as well

00:46:43.540 um the god i have most connection with really before coming to the afa i would have said

00:46:51.140 odin or ur but just growing up or growing up uh starting my journey in the afa balder's hof

00:46:59.860 and such and getting to know all the people there getting to go to the hof

00:47:04.980 and just trying to you know dive into that and connect with balder

00:47:10.420 has been a really amazing thing and uh yeah so balder's the answer

00:47:15.620 all right that's a that's a that's a good answer from a from a ballershoff man

00:47:23.660 joe how about you favorite god or goddess and we have what's that and why how it had one yeah

00:47:34.740 it ought to be thor we walk we don't run um we both have an affinity for justice uh

00:47:41.140 you won't see it often, but a fiery temper. Um, I chose him because he chose me. Uh,

00:47:50.140 I speak with him. Let's just put it that way. And, uh, we drink whiskey to whiskey together. So,

00:47:56.660 uh, hail Thor.

00:48:00.460 Hail Thor.

00:48:01.900 Hail Thor.

00:48:05.020 Mike, your favorite God or goddess?

00:48:07.420 uh it's an interesting question uh favorite uh i don't i i don't know if i could say i have a

00:48:18.460 favorite um i can say that if you asked me that question uh when i first came to asatru

00:48:27.020 uh i would have said four um if you asked me 20 years ago i would have said uh tear

00:48:35.660 um and when i hear favorite i think more of the stages where i have been in my life and

00:48:46.860 um i've come to a greater understanding of their nature uh through my life experience

00:48:55.820 So currently, I would say the all father has been very prevalent for the past seven or eight years for me.

00:49:09.180 I guess if you want to say coming out of my my tier phase, though, it's not really a phase.

00:49:16.100 Like I said, I've actually tracked it throughout the years and I've come to understand why

00:49:25.920 I'm drawn more toward one of our particular gods as I age.

00:49:35.720 So currently it would be Odin.

00:49:38.700 i think you're right about that position in life um both as far as you know how old you are but

00:49:47.860 that's not all of it you know also the other things surrounding um what your life is like

00:49:53.880 what your role in life is what your role to other people is makes a a big impact at least on on who

00:50:01.780 someone you know might be drawn to more than the other gods and goddesses perhaps

00:50:06.960 um john you're up

00:50:11.280 um like mike i'm i'm reticent to use the word favorite but i am in this stage of my life

00:50:24.460 partial to tear. I also often get partial toward Heimdall, but I, you know, tear is, among other

00:50:40.400 things, representative of righteous discipline, and sorry, I have dogs barking, and also doing

00:50:52.220 what needs to be done, you know, a matter of sacrifice. I affiliate him a lot with the job

00:50:58.600 of folk building, sort of like many of us sort of affiliate Heimdall with, you know, the gothic

00:51:07.020 level in our church. So I have an affinity for Tear.

00:51:13.580 well said well said and yeah you know since john mentioned it let's take a minute to just

00:51:22.420 recognize all of our folk builders um i think most people recognize this in some degree or

00:51:28.660 another but folk building really is a position of service and sacrifice to the folk and to the gods

00:51:35.660 They put a lot of time and their own money and time away from their family and friends into that that calling to to bring our folk all together and to to bring their folk closer to their their gods and goddesses. 0.92

00:51:59.700 Welcome back, Alshir Gauthier. We were going through Al of Oman's question about who are y'all's favorite god or goddesses? We had wrapped up the previous question. Do you want to go next?

00:52:17.320 sure and thanks cliff i've been listening the whole time but and i just kind of figured out

00:52:23.860 how to get my audio back as soon as i was able to get the video back but i i was silly and not

00:52:30.240 paying attention and uh my laptop was plugged in but the little thing between the power thingy and

00:52:37.960 the wall was loose and anyways whole bunch of nonsense but you handled it really well um i

00:52:44.460 so i know a lot of people have gone and given their answer this is not aimed at them i would

00:52:51.740 just feel impious answering the question because it's like you know who's which is your favorite

00:52:58.380 parent barring a really bad experience it's just kind of it's not something i do i know that there

00:53:08.140 are some people that have a particularly proprietary relationship with one of our gods

00:53:14.240 or goddesses that stands out above or different from the others, but I don't feel that way.

00:53:21.560 Kind of like Mike was saying, in the different seasons of our life, depending on our

00:53:31.680 circumstance, things we're going through, whether we're looking at the world as a husband,

00:53:37.080 as a father, as a, you know, a young man that's just striking out on his own.

00:53:46.600 Different of our gods and goddesses appeal to us at different times.

00:53:51.120 Are we badly broken and in need of, you know, some caring and some support?

00:53:57.020 Sometimes that's the time that, you know, our goddesses really stand out and our need for a relationship with them stands out.

00:54:03.340 So I think that question really depends on where you're at in your life.

00:54:07.780 But one of the beautiful things about polytheism is we have many gods and many goddesses so we can have a wealth of really significant relationships between ourselves and divinity in many different forms.

00:54:25.540 who's next on the go ahead and finish this one out cliff because you know where you were at

00:54:36.360 sure thing we got the bottom row still so uh next up is githia katie

00:54:43.380 uh so my answer is pretty much the same as mike's and matt's i'm not gonna

00:54:50.100 to go on too much about it i've been doing this for a real long time and i think

00:54:54.640 the longer you've been practicing off the true and the longer you've dedicated yourself to the

00:55:00.460 gods um to the aesir you you just you develop relationships with the gods as they come into

00:55:09.040 your life in a way that you need them to so it was freya when i was 19 years old and i was figuring

00:55:14.460 out what i was doing um it was odin when i was experiencing difficulties and i wanted to grow

00:55:20.600 and be better and stronger and uh gain wisdom it was uh frigo when i became a mom um

00:55:30.120 it's frayer now who i've always uh thought was kind of a nifty god but now that

00:55:36.440 that we're looking into the future of the austral folk assembly and freres hoff is you know in the

00:55:43.800 relatively distant i mean relatively near future um i find myself working to

00:55:51.480 build a relationship with him and by that i mean i'm not sitting here and having a conversation

00:55:55.640 with frere where he answers me word for word obviously what i mean by that is i am developing

00:56:00.680 a relationship as in i am developing a deeper understanding of who i think for is as as one

00:56:08.120 of our gods um but as i don't have a particular one of our gods that i find that i'm closest

00:56:18.680 to or that i prefer more than the others i just find that if with every stage of my life i have

00:56:23.240 a different reason to to learn and grow closer to a different one of the acr assuming that makes

00:56:31.960 sense because i'm not the first one to say it so i think it makes perfect sense

00:56:41.560 smooth tyler you're next yes uh i'm also reluctant to use the word favorite um i think

00:56:51.000 my understanding of the gods is very dynamic and i call to different ones depending on what i'm

00:56:57.160 going through as others have said here um but i'd say currently my fate if i had to if i had

00:57:03.320 to reduce it to my favorites my favorites currently are the ones that my daughter will

00:57:09.160 will call to on herself um so for example right now my daughter who's only a two-year-old is very

00:57:16.520 infatuated with balder because i made this this beautiful painting of him um that sits upon our

00:57:23.720 altar and every night at dinner she looks over and she says she goes that's my balder that's my

00:57:29.480 balder um and she also is very into thor right now so to to answer the question in in the way

00:57:38.280 it was framed i would say my two favorites right now are thor and balder um just seeing my my

00:57:43.480 daughter uh all on her own call to them but um me myself i've been calling a lot to uh like air

00:57:51.960 any dune and frayer recently um but that doesn't take away from my relationships and

00:57:59.960 my future wants to develop further ones with all of our acers so

00:58:07.960 thank you bearded tyler you are now next

00:58:15.560 so not to be an echo chamber um 0.74

00:58:18.200 Um, I don't think you can have a favorite, uh, polytheism is, it works a little bit differently.

00:58:30.440 Um, I look at it a lot more like a God of the moment.

00:58:34.500 Um, there are times where I call upon Odin a lot more, um, you know, recently, uh, right

00:58:46.600 before we conceived our daughter um we had held our our mayday ritual where we called upon frayer

00:58:55.080 and uh we blessed the wombs of our women and i feel like frayer was a participant in the gifting

00:59:03.960 cycle there uh real grateful for that and i've been trying to acknowledge him more uh

00:59:09.800 uh i'm a big hunter um i spend my whole fallen winter i'm in the woods quite a bit uh so if i

00:59:20.300 don't answer an email immediately that's why um and when that happens you know uh if i have a

00:59:27.420 harvest um i pray to ulira pray to ulira at the beginning of a hunt and at the end of a hunt if i

00:59:35.540 If I harvest an animal, he gets its heart.

00:59:41.320 So it's all about a God of a moment for me.

00:59:46.100 There are gods that I need to work more to have a better relationship with.

00:59:56.300 So I would say, if anything, there are gods that I need to work more with as opposed to there being a favorite.

01:00:07.140 I need to work more with Braggie and Forseti and, you know, these other gods that a lot of us don't hear about as much.

01:00:18.660 So that's what I would say.

01:00:19.920 i have no favorite but i have those that i need to build them more intimate connection with

01:00:33.040 thank you very much i will go next since that is the order on the screen

01:00:37.840 um i think affinity is probably a better word than favorite um

01:00:43.360 Um, when I was younger, but not brand new in Asatru, I, um, really tried to, to foster

01:00:54.660 a devotion with Forseti, uh, Matt may or may not remember it almost every sample for

01:00:59.440 a few years, I would toast Forseti in the first round.

01:01:03.840 Um, and that was partly because of things I wanted to see happen in, in the world.

01:01:09.800 at that time this is about eight to ten years ago there had been some falling outs with people that

01:01:17.060 I was pretty close to you know whole kindreds a lot of people went different directions and

01:01:25.100 you know some of them don't deserve sympathy but a great many of them you know went where

01:01:31.940 their friends went um and you know for seti is a god of of reconciliation and arbitration and uh

01:01:41.860 i i i felt drawn to for seti because i i truly believe and i then and i still believe now that

01:01:49.400 all of our folk um should be also true and and to be also true is to to practice and worship in

01:01:58.620 in the austral folk assembly um more currently i'm i'm gonna borrow from from my wife and and

01:02:10.700 say that i have an affinity towards frayer and that's something that's that i think developed

01:02:14.300 over time too because i've kind of always been a wannabe farmer gardener i'm not very good at it

01:02:20.460 but i keep trying i i like how the dirt feels in my hands and i will continue to try to grow things

01:02:27.260 from seed whether or not i end up with any actual produce if i end up with three seeds to try again

01:02:33.020 next year i'm happy enough katie's probably lying she knows i'm pretty grumpy when that happens but

01:02:39.100 um nonetheless i do think it's a really important thing for for my soul and for my mental and

01:02:46.140 spiritual well-being to try to tend the land and i think that may come from the fact that

01:02:51.420 many of my ancestors on on my father's side at least were farmers and um you know some of that

01:03:00.900 is a missed opportunity of not spending enough time with my grandfather when I was younger

01:03:05.000 um and quality time I mean you know he spoke fluent Norwegian he was both a mechanic and

01:03:10.800 a farmer there's a lot of cool stuff I should have learned from him um I'm glad about the

01:03:17.220 things i did learn but um yeah lord frayer is definitely someone that i uh is a god that i

01:03:24.240 think is very important for for me to um intentionally foster a relationship and a

01:03:31.860 devotion too and then uh witten young i will let you finish out this question and i need to step

01:03:40.840 away for just a minute so don't ask me anything for a minute or two copy that

01:03:45.540 so when I first became Alistair you know in a real way practicing with a group and stuff I was

01:03:55.920 at a Yule event with my old kindred in North Carolina and there was a lady there that was

01:04:02.880 and I might be misspeaking here but I'm pretty sure she was a part of a failed and she had a

01:04:09.780 very failed this worldview and she specifically asked me at some point it

01:04:15.480 was I a Thor's man and because I one because I was ignorant I but I I

01:04:22.320 answered her no I'm also true so I mean a lot like Matt and and the rest of the

01:04:30.120 panel I don't like the word favorite I do have a I have a different different

01:04:36.420 relationship with each of our our gods and goddesses um and a lot of that's intentional

01:04:44.980 tyler mentioned it in sort of the cliff that depends a lot on the moment or whatever but uh

01:04:50.180 we have so many in our uh in our gods we have so many gods that uh you can't get to

01:04:59.620 a close relationship with all of them all at one time so a lot of us do this in stages

01:05:04.820 And a lot of it's like a mic setter or beyond.

01:05:06.940 It depends on what stage of life you're in.

01:05:09.340 When I first came to Alcetree, I was drawn to Odin.

01:05:14.420 And then that became Thor for a while and for different reasons.

01:05:21.600 But over the last few years, I've worked on my relationship with Haym Doll.

01:05:29.700 And I really appreciate my relationship with him.

01:05:32.780 It's born in my life.

01:05:36.180 It's the God I prayed to when I had a brush of death last year.

01:05:42.280 It was the first God I prayed to.

01:05:44.780 But no, my favorite gods are the ice here.

01:05:48.440 My favorite goddesses are the awesome here.

01:05:53.120 All right.

01:05:53.940 Well, so we've got a kind of a follow-up question on our equality question that happened over to the side.

01:06:02.780 i gotta go look exactly how it was phrased but it yet the patriarchy men are better that's one of the

01:06:17.820 people make knee-jerk reactions to stuff that are kind of

01:06:27.420 i don't know born out of emotional trauma and not out of

01:06:32.780 you know, fair, objective reasoning on stuff. So first, the patriarchy reference,

01:06:41.260 I think that's kind of, kind of overdone.

01:06:49.620 And I think the two flow together. So men are better? Well, nobody said that. But then it 1.00

01:06:55.080 also begs the question, better at what? Better in what way? And there's a variety of different

01:07:01.440 skill sets that all of us are you know either to a greater degree or a lesser degree capable of

01:07:10.000 and it depends on what the context is and where that lives um

01:07:18.240 even even taking the patriarchy at face value and i think there's some there's some truth to that

01:07:23.760 men tend to take more of a leadership role in a lot of in most aspects of things like it tends

01:07:33.120 to be more inherent to men's nature in a lot of ways and i think we see that a lot in a healthy

01:07:39.920 situation but clearly that's not always the case and it doesn't have to be some rigid some rigid

01:07:49.120 point of doctrine but it is something to acknowledge it does tend to be a thing

01:07:54.480 but let's take that on its complete face value even if that were the case that

01:07:59.680 complete patriarchy male controlled society

01:08:06.480 that still isn't necessarily a value judgment it's a suitability for leadership judgment perhaps

01:08:12.400 but i don't think that even in that situation in and of itself it implies that

01:08:20.160 men are better at all things than women um and any of us using common sense knows that's not

01:08:27.280 the case there's many things that women are obviously much more better equipped to do 0.97

01:08:32.080 than men are typically and but then it goes to the yeah in there's individual women that are

01:08:39.840 more or less good at the things that their gender is supposed to be good at

01:08:44.640 and individual men that are more or less good at things that their gender is supposed to be good at

01:08:51.520 that's really not the point of the afa and the thing is all of these things have a context

01:08:57.520 in the situation that you put them in but the basic principle remains there is not sameness

01:09:03.680 very often not equality doesn't doesn't always mean a judgment of better or worse but often a

01:09:18.260 judgment of different in a lot of ways and different in ways that aren't necessarily

01:09:23.900 equivalent or certainly don't have to be equivalent we would never interact you know we deal with this

01:09:30.000 all the time. The way you interact with people is different, and gender is certainly a big factor

01:09:34.440 of that interaction. I think everyone on here interacts with women differently than they

01:09:40.080 interact with men in most of, if not all, circumstances, if they're being fair with it.

01:09:47.440 I think that's just natural and appropriate. Sometimes, you know, is that a slight against

01:09:53.680 the one or the other? Maybe. Is that a point of deference to the one or the other? Perhaps.

01:10:00.000 circumstances dictate that and individuals dictate that to put everybody in a box

01:10:05.760 as this is better than that just defies the natural truth that we observe all around us

01:10:13.720 you know if i were to say men are better than women you would point out all of the men that

01:10:19.560 you know that are subpar and you'd point out a bunch of outstanding examples of women that are

01:10:24.120 clearly better than the men that you listed and vice versa and that never really goes anywhere and

01:10:30.500 it's unnatural in its in its construction no in the afa we like to let things sort themselves out

01:10:40.760 as they would naturally and we recognize strengths where they lie we recognize leadership where we

01:10:47.740 see it we recognize um ability where we see it and where it demonstrates itself and then we

01:10:56.060 you know support and celebrate that so i hope that adds a little bit of clarity to that um

01:11:05.420 we are joined by one of my cats apparently she says hi to tyler's cat okay apparently there's

01:11:11.340 show and tell of animals on program at this point uh going back to a couple of questions

01:11:18.780 oh also and i meant to do this a long time ago please forgive me because of my technical

01:11:23.260 different difficulties gw farnsworth bought us five coffees it's a 25 donation and we

01:11:29.420 really appreciate that so thank you um back in the questions i gotta

01:11:41.340 sorry guys i gotta go back and look at a couple of couple of things oh wolfthrone asks matt

01:11:47.500 juice or natty first the fact that you would ask the question is complimentary and i appreciate

01:11:53.340 that thank you um complete transparency vast majority natty i am on like a low dose trt

01:12:04.620 because i'm getting older but just enough to keep me in like normal healthy male range

01:12:11.260 so nothing extravagant certainly nothing before that and nothing you know that

01:12:19.820 that's not legally and readily available no um

01:12:27.020 yeah the fact that you would ask makes me feel good about about the state of my physique as a

01:12:31.980 as a man that just turned 43 so i appreciate that

01:12:38.460 um that said i would encourage uh men out there listening to this as you are getting up in years

01:12:43.740 especially if you're over 40. if you got the insurance and it works out get that tested out

01:12:48.780 and see where your tesla levels are at um the stuff you can do to to get that in a normal spot

01:12:54.460 and we live in a day and age where that's kind of a concern and it's something that we have the

01:12:58.620 ability to to work with going forward for health so it's something to think about guys

01:13:04.860 uh the next question i've got uh this question is discussed at sigurbloat but looking for more

01:13:12.700 perspectives how would you describe the difference between the othala rune and the odle version

01:13:19.260 wings versus no wings uh daniel what do you got to say about this

01:13:23.580 there is no difference between the two except for just the way they look they represent the same

01:13:30.480 concept ancestral inheritance I heard this matter of fact I want to say one of the last times I was

01:13:42.400 a guest on here that question came up and I really liked a explanation that Cliff had mentioned about

01:13:48.780 I thought the iconography of the rune,

01:13:51.600 whether with the feet or without,

01:13:53.920 or if the wings are without,

01:13:56.660 but the end portion of the rune

01:14:01.180 representing like kind of the homestead or the kin fence

01:14:04.340 and the legs that split off from it at the bottom,

01:14:09.200 they're kind of representing the gate

01:14:10.540 that needs to be guarded.

01:14:12.760 But as far as the,

01:14:14.760 as it pertains to Rachel's question,

01:14:16.360 just a aesthetic difference yeah it really is um that's all it is it's kind of a development

01:14:25.960 of that particular runic sigil over time um it's more serif than winged i guess exaggerated serif

01:14:39.000 but looks cooler um i think that's about the only difference the meaning has always been

01:14:45.960 the same no matter what the the picture is that's been drawn um so yeah that's that's

01:14:53.800 really all there is to that one but also a rachel question is kind of a different question but i

01:14:59.560 think a really really deep one um how do we as an organization deal with the effects on our group

01:15:09.800 paminya with the loss or negative actions of members um we will throw this one to svan who

01:15:21.880 just joined us oh what are we what are we doing dang it i knew you guys are gonna get me on a

01:15:29.400 like as soon as i walked in so this this is what i do uh rachel wants to know rachel wants to know

01:15:38.280 how do we as an organization deal with the effects on our group of mania with the loss

01:15:44.200 or negative actions of members and i wanted your thoughts on this that's a good one um

01:15:57.000 well i think that hominia is something that can be

01:16:00.040 manipulated uh for the for for the better or the worse through deed through the manifestation of

01:16:09.080 will or or the creation of weird that will become or long so humming is um again a result or um

01:16:19.440 something that happens after things are done whether they're good or whether they're bad

01:16:24.500 So if you're speaking about, say, negative deeds specifically, really the only way that you can rectify the negative is by altering and keeping aligned with good deeds.

01:16:41.360 And how do we specifically do that?

01:16:43.620 I mean, I think one of the biggest things is that we continually kind of see the separation of people.

01:16:52.620 there are people that they're they're negative humming you kind of filters themselves out in a

01:16:59.560 way so sometimes i wonder if even some of the stuff that they do that's that's kind of seen

01:17:05.160 as negative is bad in the sense that in the long run the people that are able to rectify negative

01:17:12.340 actions and deeds stay longer and the people that don't always end up kind of weaving themselves out

01:17:20.080 shattering themselves off but yeah it i i kind of apply that to the individual as well as the

01:17:26.880 the the the group the the whole of us is that the only way you can rectify from the the negative

01:17:33.680 uh actions that may have tainted and brought about a draining of your harmony is to immediate action

01:17:41.520 to correct and to try to fix or to maintain or and rectify and i think that we do that

01:17:48.640 the the positive stays and the negative will create blemishes and marks but it always ends up

01:17:54.640 kind of flagging off and the good remain to kind of keep rectifying it is it tiresome is it

01:18:01.120 annoying yeah but it's uh but is it necessary yeah i think it's absolutely necessary so i

01:18:08.400 I, this is something that was kind of explained to me early on when I was in, when I was studying

01:18:20.920 to be a gothi in, I don't know, sometime in 2011, I think.

01:18:30.800 In a way, your hymenia serves as a type of spiritual armor.

01:18:38.400 and you build it up so that it can take hits you don't unnecessarily expose it or mistreat it

01:18:51.160 but life is messy and people and groups that emerge with a completely pristine

01:19:01.360 amenia do so through you know trying to hide in a closet somewhere when you go out into the world

01:19:10.080 things happen when you're a group involving other people people people are characterized

01:19:20.320 by their imperfection and especially in the wolf age in which we live our folk in the state of

01:19:28.080 soul sickness that we find ourselves are all too often characterized by dysfunction and

01:19:37.920 i don't know maladies that would harm a mania in order for us to try to raise our folk up

01:19:46.560 and heal our broken folk it means exposing ourselves as a group to some really broken

01:19:54.720 people we do our best to try to make them better and sometimes they fall short of that so as a

01:20:02.720 group to protect our hymenia we try to first of all fix what's broken if we have people that are

01:20:09.920 bringing the hymenia down we try to get them to repair their behavior to make it better

01:20:16.160 if we have people that are so abhorrent in their behaviors then eventually we may need

01:20:22.160 to break with those people for the protection of you know our humania but also

01:20:32.160 you know we lose people people betray us people there's

01:20:44.880 the longer you're involved in the more you devote your heart to this the more susceptible you are

01:20:51.360 to seeing and being really hurt by the actions of of members that go astray or or act dishonorably

01:21:01.280 but one of the best things to strengthen our hymenia is all those members that don't all

01:21:08.160 those members that stay loyal all those members that with consistency and consistent right action

01:21:14.800 build that hymenia greater than the sum of its parts by us doing it together as as a folk as

01:21:24.900 a people as a church um and that's one of those things question came up specifically about sambal

01:21:32.040 i was like well man you know i'm going to go to my first national event i'm going to do all this

01:21:36.740 stuff what about what if there's people there that are dirtbags you know what if there's people i

01:21:41.200 don't know. And maybe, you know, they, they lead these double lives or they're bad people or

01:21:46.040 whatever. And my mentor at the time told me, he said, yeah, that's true. But Matt, you're going 0.99

01:21:51.160 to get to go and stand in ensemble with, you know, with Steve McNallan and with Sheila and with,

01:21:59.200 with Gauthier Thorgrin and with these heroes of our folk. And that raises my Armenia tremendously.

01:22:06.680 So the best thing that we can do collectively to fix our situation materially and spiritually, you can't undo wrong that's been done, but you can outpace it with good deeds and with accomplishments.

01:22:31.820 best thing that we can do to wash away or to you know dilute bad deeds of the past is by

01:22:40.660 overwhelming good deeds and overwhelming victories and successes one of the other

01:22:46.040 things that's a big hymenia builder and there's a lot to hymenia and i think we use it as a catch-all

01:22:53.680 for like spiritual reputation but we're judged all of the time by our ancestors and by our gods

01:23:05.040 and one thing that is a huge boost in that arm is when we succeed in spite of people that do wrong

01:23:13.280 by us in spite of people that betray us in spite of people that don't live up to it if those of us

01:23:20.800 that do succeed even when others try to bring us down we raise our amenya and what's more when

01:23:29.840 people when we lose people or people succumb to their sickness if those people come back later

01:23:36.880 because they've fixed themselves or they've allowed us to help them get fixed that i believe

01:23:43.760 has an exponential effect on our amenia um so there's a a spiritual

01:23:53.360 i mean i think the term spiritual battle is overused but there is a spiritual

01:23:59.040 balance and reckoning that is always being done and through perseverance and victory in spite of

01:24:06.400 those who have have done us wrong or in spite of betrayal i think that you know that adds an

01:24:15.840 extra value to those victories and an extra value to that perseverance and uh you know i believe

01:24:23.200 that our gods judge us in that way and that our ancestors judge us in that way because they see

01:24:29.120 they see the truth they know the truth of what's going on and uh and they see that so pushing on

01:24:36.240 through struggle, I think, is a Hymenia boost greater than Hymenia loss by people who have

01:24:46.740 been fraudulent or dishonest.

01:24:54.880 So, I've got a question from Immortal Rising Comic Book.

01:25:00.180 I'm sorry, I'm new.

01:25:01.160 Are you all based in North Carolina?

01:25:03.880 No, we're not.

01:25:04.840 But for this episode, this episode is, we're doing a special episode just on Thorshoff District.

01:25:14.120 And that district is based in North Carolina because in Linden, North Carolina is where we have Thorshoff, the second half of the Astrid Folk Assembly.

01:25:24.280 Nick, I don't know if you have something handy, but if you want to throw up a graphic of our beautiful half to the Thunderer, that would be cool.

01:25:34.840 But, yeah, it's in Linden, North Carolina, but we have people in this district that are from all over the place.

01:25:43.540 If when I call on you, you just say where you're located, that would be cool and give some perspective.

01:25:50.360 Joe.

01:25:51.580 I'm in Hartville, Ohio, which is northeast Ohio, about an hour south of Cleveland.

01:25:56.680 Daniel.

01:25:57.200 i am from camden south carolina which is almost right in between

01:26:04.960 columbia south carolina and charlotte north carolina clive

01:26:12.960 from erie pennsylvania or at least that's where i live now and we travel all over the place katie

01:26:22.400 same

01:26:22.800 uh spawn virginia beach virginia

01:26:31.280 uh smooth tyler i am in southwestern new hampshire so i have easy access to vermont

01:26:39.200 uh new hampshire obviously massachusetts connecticut maine uh rhode island anywhere in new england so

01:26:46.880 mike uh i'm also in northeast ohio uh roughly a half an hour south of cleveland um but like tyler

01:27:00.640 said you know i have access to uh pennsylvania uh western part of pennsylvania and uh eastern

01:27:06.800 part of indiana and also west virginia and northern kentucky not too far away john

01:27:16.880 Okay, John looks really creepy, and he is still muted, so bearded, Tyler.

01:27:33.780 I live about halfway in between Asheville, North Carolina,

01:27:39.140 and the border with South Carolina,

01:27:42.380 so I've got pretty easy access to Tennessee, both the Carolinas, Georgia.

01:27:51.380 The majority of our events are in the eastern part of Tennessee,

01:27:55.760 close to the Carolina line.

01:27:58.820 Producer Nick.

01:28:06.760 I had to remove somebody in order for me to come on

01:28:10.020 because there's a cap of 10.

01:28:11.360 but I'm in

01:28:13.280 north central Tennessee

01:28:14.920 about halfway

01:28:17.240 between Nashville and Knoxville

01:28:19.440 just outside Sagerheim

01:28:21.220 Alright, John

01:28:23.520 round two

01:28:24.040 I am looking and being

01:28:27.640 creepy in central Indiana

01:28:29.880 I'm from Indianapolis

01:28:31.320 right in the middle of the state

01:28:32.980 Watch out if you're in Indiana

01:28:35.380 Alright

01:28:37.600 but that said

01:28:39.980 that was just

01:28:41.360 being fun because of what we got on the program we have uh members in 48 of the united states

01:28:50.880 states we've got members in 14 countries i'm talking with you guys right now based in reno

01:28:58.880 nevada and technically we are based out of california that's where we got our federal 501

01:29:07.440 see three uh and our first hoff which we did show on uh four weeks ago or two weeks what am i

01:29:15.040 thinking two weeks ago i apologize um is odenshoff and that's in brownsville california which is

01:29:21.360 uh in northern california but like i said we've got we're gonna do two more of these episodes on

01:29:28.640 our two other hoff districts um as you can see here's the map we got them split up into four

01:29:35.920 different districts one for each of our hoffs and this is working on getting new hoffs all of the

01:29:42.880 time so we we have a lot of really good coverage i'm not sure where you're located i see over on

01:29:48.800 the side that you're asking because you're looking for a group of people to really consider joining

01:29:53.280 if you go to runestone.org that is the spot where you can do that um yeah we chances are we have

01:30:03.040 folks in your area and you have if you have a question you can ask over in the comments section

01:30:07.840 or whatnot we've got a number of our folk builders who are in the chat room as well as any of us here

01:30:13.840 that could tell you who to go to if we knew you know kind of exactly where they're located um

01:30:19.200 that said anybody listening to the sound of our voices uh if you are not an afa member well first

01:30:26.080 if you are an afa member awesome we're glad to have you secondly if you're not an afa a member

01:30:31.680 why not if you are a heterosexual white person and you are desiring a relationship with our

01:30:39.440 isere i would encourage you to try to join the astrofolks and we submit an application

01:30:44.720 and we would love to have you join us in the uh truly amazing things that we're doing together

01:30:51.600 so please give that thought and consideration um question if the gods of many of our forefathers

01:31:00.640 are irish or scots irish do they fall more in the background now i came home through

01:31:07.040 the celtic gods do we forsake the historical irish festivals cliff

01:31:21.120 so a few a few different things about that um the the celtic the the irish the scottish and

01:31:29.440 and other divinities are expressions of arian divinity um we believe in the austria folk assembly

01:31:39.680 that the best and most correct expression of arian divinity is is the aesir um that said um

01:31:50.800 Um, being familiar with and knowing the, the names and practices of, um, the gods that

01:32:01.420 our ancestors held dear is something of great value.

01:32:05.160 Um, we don't believe in syncretism, um, but there is overlap for sure between the different

01:32:16.120 pantheons of

01:32:18.100 Arian divinity all

01:32:20.260 throughout Europe and in some cases

01:32:22.460 even beyond.

01:32:24.940 Anywhere that our people

01:32:26.460 went, our gods were.

01:32:31.940 There you go. I mean, that's kind of the short

01:32:34.300 answer. You're

01:32:36.080 understanding

01:32:39.800 the gods in a different way,

01:32:42.020 I guess, would be what I would say.

01:32:46.120 And this is a thing, and I know that it is tempting and satisfying for us to have very, very clear answers on everything.

01:33:01.640 But it's more important and more valuable to have honest answers on things.

01:33:06.580 And the honest answer is, it gets messy when you try to compare Aryan pantheons and find a one-for-one example of what this god is in that pantheon versus the next.

01:33:22.620 Sometimes that's very obvious and very easy to do.

01:33:25.920 Sometimes it's a lot more convoluted.

01:33:29.200 But surely, we believe our gods are real.

01:33:34.620 the fact that they are real means that they are our gods and when we talk about them creating us

01:33:42.220 as a people that means that they are at least as old as we are as a people and so if you trace the

01:33:49.500 the migrations of our people over time certainly these gods didn't you know stop being gods or

01:33:59.420 become a bunch of different gods or like it just doesn't logically bear out that when our people

01:34:05.900 crossed over into a different valley and start a different city and begin to talk a little bit

01:34:10.860 differently that the identities of our gods completely change but over periods of isolation

01:34:19.660 the relationship that our gods developed with our ancestors was very different depending on place

01:34:27.660 and time and that doesn't need to be a hurdle even though i know that it may seem like that

01:34:36.460 when you just start out um in the same way that you know folks at work know you differently

01:34:49.740 than your parents know you then your wife knows you and your children know you

01:34:54.460 you then if you're you know involved in a sport or hobby then those people know you all of those

01:35:02.080 things are you and are true expressions of you but the relationship's very different depending

01:35:08.500 upon each of those individuals that you have that relationship with similar to our gods relating to

01:35:15.100 ancestors as they migrated as different environmental and other factors shaped those

01:35:24.220 relationships in really different ways over the course of you know thousands of years so

01:35:30.140 no it's not about not worshiping the celtic gods it's about

01:35:37.680 viewing and relating to the Aryan gods

01:35:43.960 under the Norse expression as the Aesir.

01:35:52.580 And that seems more complex than it is

01:35:59.380 when you actually start building your relationships

01:36:03.680 in those terms.

01:36:04.800 um if i might um sometimes i like to describe it as you know our

01:36:12.640 our our cousin folk within the the aryan family and you know anyone who has uh a blood cousin

01:36:22.220 in in life knows that you know if you have a grandfather you have different relationships

01:36:28.760 maybe a different name and different stories to tell about that grandfather he might be pappy to

01:36:33.420 one of you and granddad to the other you might have taught one of your football and the other

01:36:38.060 one checkers but he's the same man absolutely um oh and time to make note uh chris lucat uh donated

01:36:49.900 25 to the njordshoff fund thank you very much for anybody that is curious and this is relevant to

01:36:58.380 i'm just gonna say most it's more even split than it was when we started out the program

01:37:06.620 um all right nick and i think you got the graphics so here's the deal here's what we

01:37:14.220 look like on our payoff of new york's off we have made tremendous progress in the past few months

01:37:20.540 due to your guys generosity add 35 bucks

01:37:27.740 35 all right i haven't added the last 10 you told me about yesterday goodness gracious all right

01:37:35.180 so but that said um uh let this count as your note nick please update this with the

01:37:42.620 most recent 25 as well uh but that said this is moving ever closer and this is our first step

01:37:49.660 towards getting our next hoff and katie mentioned it earlier that's going to be phrasehoff

01:37:56.540 and phrasehoff the plan as it is now is to have that in western pennsylvania

01:38:05.500 or eastern ohio we've got a sweet spot of like a

01:38:14.620 was it cleveland the one up by the lakes you guys all your cities start with c

01:38:19.660 All right, Cleveland's the one up by the lake.

01:38:21.840 So Cleveland, Erie, Pittsburgh, if there was a triangle that was slightly bigger than each of those,

01:38:32.600 that's kind of the sweet spot, but it's not a guarantee.

01:38:35.900 It's just an idea of where we're trying to target Frazehoff.

01:38:40.640 But that's when we'd be splitting the Thorshoff district.

01:38:46.640 But that's still in the future.

01:38:48.460 in order for us to get there we need to first pay off new york's hall so you guys have been

01:38:53.580 super generous we appreciate that anybody who would like to uh to do that money currently

01:39:00.460 uh there you go we've got a link right there also if you are listening to this at runestone.org

01:39:08.380 there are several different links in there directing you to donate towards this effort

01:39:13.500 We appreciate you guys.

01:39:15.100 We appreciate the generosity.

01:39:16.840 It's how we're able to do nice things and that you guys continue to impress.

01:39:22.380 That said, we can move on to the next question here.

01:39:28.120 Katie, I have no idea when you asked that question back at 7.08.

01:39:42.900 I don't know what you wanted to interject, but feel free to interject it now.

01:39:47.440 We were talking about the patriarchy and equal and all that stuff.

01:39:52.880 And I just wanted to add, as the only female currently on the call right now, 1.00

01:39:56.820 that from the female perspective, as far as the patriarchy goes, I'm pretty sure all of our ladies 1.00

01:40:03.060 in leadership are not raging feminists, so we like the way things are. I'm also going to say

01:40:09.960 that as far as between men and women go, something we're talking about at Sigurheim this weekend is

01:40:15.840 that men and women are partners in all things. That means that sometimes women are stronger and

01:40:22.180 sometimes men are stronger. We all have our own things that we're good at and we all have our

01:40:25.720 own things that we are literally built differently to handle better than the other sex so equal is

01:40:31.500 not really a thing but um being a partner or being equal insofar as we all have a a role to play for

01:40:40.680 sure i'm actually really impressed with myself for remembering that that's what i wanted to talk

01:40:44.800 about however long ago excellent and that goes for any of you guys if you guys need to interject

01:40:50.160 something or whatever, I am much more likely to see you on the screen. Or if you need to,

01:40:56.160 feel free to jump in. A lot of these questions I don't necessarily look at because I'm looking

01:41:00.660 in chronological order and we are answering questions. Right now, the one I'm about to

01:41:05.380 have us answer is from 649. So that's almost an hour ago. All right. Question, guys, as far as

01:41:14.680 us being American now, do you all feel as though the original settlers, us, hold blood

01:41:22.400 in the land and that this country is possibly to say, okay, that it's possible to say this

01:41:30.500 country is our homeland now as far as we do?

01:41:34.900 I'm going to go, I'm going to go around and, and I don't know.

01:41:50.460 Daniel, what are your thoughts?

01:41:51.920 Go for it.

01:41:55.620 I have ancestors bones in this land going back since it's a settlement.

01:42:01.340 My ancestors were among the earliest settlers of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York.

01:42:09.120 In fact, what is now known as Coney Island was originally owned by my very first American ancestor.

01:42:15.020 So, yeah, I say this often.

01:42:18.260 I've said it during Off Our Bloat and other ritual action that involved our ancestors. 0.76

01:42:25.040 Wherever Aryan feet are is Aryan land. 0.95

01:42:31.340 so i was going to go around but i don't need to that might that mic drop kind of says it all

01:42:37.900 i've got something about that if i could um this must be said please go ahead um this could be

01:42:48.540 debatable but um if you look it could even go further back uh look into the clovis and salutrian

01:42:53.740 peoples uh there's actual physical evidence of us being here far before uh native americans as you

01:43:00.620 call them and um this is even pre-dating uh leif erickson so uh look into the clovis and salutrian

01:43:07.500 peoples uh they've found uh michigan copper you can uh i don't know how they do it exactly we

01:43:15.100 have to look it up but uh you can basically uh find what copper came from what part of the world

01:43:21.020 in any part of the world and they have found michigan copper in uh i think celtic burial

01:43:26.700 mounds predating any time that uh supposedly christopher columbus or anyone was here so if

01:43:32.700 he's interested look into that this is this very well could be a very old homeland of ours but uh

01:43:38.780 but yeah i just had to say that no absolutely and i think that's something that's fascinating i

01:43:45.740 wonder how much we can learn about that as the science that you know develops and we discover

01:43:52.780 more things but there's a lot to that as far as um pre-columbian um white folks in north america

01:44:04.060 and and i suppose south america for that matter it's an interesting thing to ponder but the

01:44:09.740 greater point that i think daniel brought up our people are explorers and conquerors since our

01:44:17.580 inception um wherever we go and establish ourselves we have the right of struggle

01:44:29.340 and victory to claim it as ours and to you know regard it as such we have you know

01:44:38.860 i don't know how long everyone on the call has been in the united states and it may not

01:44:45.260 this is as relevant to any of you who are listening to this wherever you find yourself

01:44:50.380 as it is to those of us in the united states once you're in a place and you establish yourself there

01:44:59.100 especially once you're burying your dead there and uh you know you've been there generationally

01:45:06.060 you know you have as much right as any to call that your spot and to stand up for it and and

01:45:15.740 own it and uh and treat it as such and so i don't think there's anything wrong with suggesting that

01:45:21.980 you know the land where your ancestors are is is your homeland a lot of us look to europe as our

01:45:28.860 homeland but our people migrated into europe from the steppe from uh hyperborea at the pole from

01:45:38.060 wherever you want to talk about there was migrations all of the time it's not just one set

01:45:44.280 point that our people are stuck in where that's where they can call home and i think that's a

01:45:50.780 really important concept for us to own and be proud of it's been a narrative by people who want

01:45:58.780 to hold us down and diminish us to, you know, speak poorly of our ancestors going about

01:46:09.940 and winning and being successful and exploring and conquering and just, not just over other

01:46:18.260 peoples, but carving out of nature, untamed, uncivilized wilderness and making it their

01:46:24.560 home thousands of miles from where they started that's a source of pride and a testament of pride

01:46:31.760 for our folk and it uh was and always has been up until you know about 50 years ago so

01:46:41.360 there's nothing wrong with that and uh and i think that's a fundamentally important thing to

01:46:47.600 to put out there and to stand by um

01:46:54.560 so this is a question and i will get to everybody on this i know you guys are not

01:47:02.080 all getting a lot of mic time and i apologize for that it's kind of the nature of one of these

01:47:06.440 programs it's a good problem to have and it's cool but i know some of you guys are

01:47:10.280 underutilized so a question for you all do you ever leave out offerings inside your home

01:47:17.000 for house spirits. John, is that something you do?

01:47:26.300 Have done, do not always do.

01:47:33.140 I don't even have a rhyme or reason to it. I don't have anything more astute to say. Sometimes,

01:47:38.900 you know, sometimes we'll do it. It's a nice thing to do. My children are older now,

01:47:43.760 But when they're younger, you know, it's it's a nice thing to do to sort of acclimate them to the feeling that if there is a thing in the house, that it's friendly and not malicious.

01:47:57.520 But certainly I have done it. It's not something I engage in with any particular regularity.

01:48:05.960 All right. What about you, Joe?

01:48:07.920 uh same thing not in a regular fashion but um what i understand and i've been told by uh very

01:48:14.500 very young members of this very organizational previous members of this organization but there

01:48:19.320 is a young girl that is upstairs we had a moot one time and a small child said um can i play

01:48:25.300 with a little girl that's upstairs and i said we do not have a little girl here so i leave her root

01:48:30.600 beer and candy and ribbons and stuff like that because not only he but um other older members

01:48:37.120 and many other people have said that they have experienced the presence of a little girl in my

01:48:41.840 home so i do leave her little things here and there um i don't have any palpable experience

01:48:48.720 with her but uh if she's there i give her a little bit of respect and as uh as far as everything else

01:48:54.420 goes like i leave a lot to the land whites because i try to cultivate my land a lot so i have a nice 0.83

01:49:00.760 little dead stump back there that I like to leave off. I leave offerings for her for land whites and 0.98

01:49:09.240 other house spirits from time to time but not in any severe regularity. What about you Mike?

01:49:16.520 uh nothing indoors uh like joe said i i have a stump outside um and i always make sure to

01:49:29.680 uh share some of uh some of our meal um that we have here uh i hosted sager bloat over the weekend

01:49:39.260 so you know before we ate i selected what seemed to be the uh the choicest looking of the smorgas

01:49:48.140 board of food that we had uh and i set that aside and i i always will leave that out um and i've

01:49:55.420 done that for a very very long time um i learned a a long time ago uh inside of our vey and we had a

01:50:05.340 what was seemingly a fantastic bloat. Everyone was uplifted and we had a tribal banner that

01:50:16.320 one of the gentlemen was holding and just out of nowhere it almost seemed like when a child

01:50:23.740 tugs on your leg really fast and trying to get your attention you know mommy mommy mommy or daddy

01:50:30.000 daddy daddy only it was happening on our banner and it just popped off of the pole that it was

01:50:35.300 on and we all kind of stopped and looked and uh when we left i was trying to ascertain what that

01:50:40.980 was and i smacked myself in the head and i said you know we didn't we didn't make an offering for

01:50:46.980 the land it's here uh and that was 20 something years ago and uh i haven't failed to do so ever

01:50:53.700 since um so uh always something for the lambs here absolutely um what about you daniel

01:51:10.820 on occasion not with any regularity but uh you know we've we've experienced some uh some stuff

01:51:17.700 in this house since i've been here it's a pretty old house um but we try to at least whenever we're 0.86

01:51:24.260 um you know if we're hosting something here at the house we we make offerings to uh land whites and uh

01:51:31.460 and the house whites but uh but i wanted to add that something we got away from doing i would

01:51:38.340 like to bring back is that thor's off we used to uh prepare a plate and a glass of beer for uh

01:51:45.700 terry rumpf in the fellowship hall and uh as a matter of fact i believe the anniversary of his

01:51:51.380 death is upon us so usually often at cigarette we um we we make an offering to him uh he was a

01:52:00.580 devotee of tears so it seems like the right thing to do uh cliff

01:52:06.900 um yes we do um with semi-regularity or consistent irregularity um but we do make offerings to

01:52:20.900 house whites to land whites um to yule whites and other winter whites um i know a tradition

01:52:32.820 among Norwegians when moving from homestead to homestead or house to house, and presumably

01:52:38.880 some of them still do it when they move from apartment to apartment, is to invite the house 0.87

01:52:43.760 whites in particular to come with you, and you would leave a shoe out for them to hitch 0.91

01:52:51.000 a ride, so to speak. 0.99

01:52:52.600 The land whites, of course, are tied to a particular place, maybe a field or a stream 0.98

01:52:59.060 or a mountain or something like that. 0.98

01:53:02.980 But house whites, I think, are transportable

01:53:06.640 and are something that if you cultivate a good relationship with them

01:53:11.520 and get a decent two-way level of respect,

01:53:17.220 it's not worship when you're dealing with any white. 0.95

01:53:19.260 I don't think it is a lot more building up a cohesion, 0.98

01:53:24.920 kind of announcing yourselves to them

01:53:26.780 and making sure that they understand that you are, you know,

01:53:31.660 that you are also true folk and that you are on the side of order

01:53:35.900 and the side of Odin and on the side of ordered nature

01:53:41.840 and that your presence there will be to their benefit

01:53:45.220 or at least not to their detriment.

01:53:47.660 And many good things can come from that.

01:53:51.260 And like John pointed out, it's a wonderful thing to do

01:53:54.580 if you have children.

01:53:55.460 um it is a fun way to engage them in asa true um katie and i are fortunate our kids are pretty 0.99

01:54:04.280 engaged anyway but i think part of that is because we've developed this cult of whites 0.66

01:54:09.780 in our our household um you know to the extent that um you know we

01:54:17.420 we we take some of the colloquial names and and apply them to whites when i speak to owen about

01:54:25.440 winter whites there's the yule white who is the um the the gift bringer and katie can talk about

01:54:33.380 this tradition more because she really owns it so i'll let her do that but also you know we we we

01:54:40.100 have named other winter whites like jack frost just because it's a name that makes sense you

01:54:47.220 know it's a name that our ancestors used to describe where the ice the frosting on the the

01:54:54.800 windows comes from i mean yes it's condensation that freezes but um it's uh you know we can feel

01:55:02.820 it in in the seasons you can feel when the spirit of a season arrives when you get that first whiff

01:55:08.300 of autumn air you know that something has changed and i do think that there are personalities and

01:55:16.920 entities associated with those things and we try to try to maintain a good relationship with them

01:55:23.140 they're it's just like um you know trying to maintain good relationships with your neighbors

01:55:29.160 or with animals um you you want to be a good neighbor to everything that's around you

01:55:34.480 uh what about you tyler uh smooth tyler uh yeah so uh in terms of like uh everyday things

01:55:47.340 our, our majority of every day is, uh, we have our ancestor and ancestral altar and our God altar

01:55:55.480 in our dining room. Uh, and that's the majority of our daily practice. Um, but as far as house

01:56:02.720 whites go, my wife has set up a bunch of, uh, idols around the house, guarding the doors and

01:56:08.840 stuff like that. Um, so specifically like offering them blessings and stuff is quite rare, but

01:56:14.620 acknowledging them and their existence through the idols uh at the doors and stuff like that is

01:56:20.700 you know definitely something we witness every day and acknowledge uh via those idols so

01:56:30.540 um it's not fair i'm gonna start household things i'm gonna start alternating my ericson's ear

01:56:40.700 um it's fun what about you

01:56:44.620 uh mainly around yule um is the only time i really do it uh everything that we put in a

01:56:53.340 in the hlaut bowl usually gets taken outside it doesn't stay overnight um i live in the south

01:57:00.060 and ants and things are a real concern um but during yule that's a different story because

01:57:07.980 it's it's cold and uh so stuff out for the yule elf or the yule white is um

01:57:15.420 is more done in the latter half of the year um yeah otherwise i take it outside

01:57:24.540 i'm bearded tyler

01:57:25.820 so for the house whites um when we purchased our home back in uh 2020 we definitely we left

01:57:42.620 some offerings in the corners of the home um also outside for uh the land veteer

01:57:51.860 um but typically when we do the rituals at our home altar um we'll use a libation and now that

01:58:03.160 that libation will will remain on our altar overnight uh or there have been occasions

01:58:10.180 where we'll leave it in there until all the liquid kind of evaporates and there's just a little bit of

01:58:16.800 I don't know what you call it in the bottom of the bowl, and we leave that out.

01:58:25.280 There are times when we will do, like on a birthday or an anniversary for one of our ancestors,

01:58:33.380 typically for them, we will use milk.

01:58:37.060 Well, milk will go bad, so after 12 hours or so, we'll take it outside.

01:58:43.200 I have carved in a tree that we have outside the front door here.

01:58:49.500 I have a fir tree, and the boys and I carved an Anzu's rune in the trunk of that tree,

01:58:58.880 and that is where we give our offerings, whatever's in the bowl.

01:59:04.160 We put it out there. 0.96

01:59:06.920 Typically, though, during the Yule time, we will give offerings to the whites, 0.99

01:59:13.200 Not just the leavings that are in a plot bowl, but we will make an offering to the whites at that time. 0.98

01:59:22.620 Also, I hunt on my property that I live on. 0.99

01:59:28.540 We have an intimate relationship with our herd of deer here.

01:59:33.660 We feed them all year round.

01:59:35.480 I've got apple trees and such.

01:59:37.140 um so there will be times when when we go outside and we'll we'll make a pile of of apples uh out 0.98

01:59:45.240 of our apple trees and such and uh we'll we'll dedicate part of that to the land whites to ask 0.98

01:59:53.020 them for a good hunt and um you know the herd looks good i'd like to harvest one then we would 0.98

02:00:01.680 harvest a deer and we would offer part of that to lord uhler and um part to the land whites as as

02:00:09.200 as well so that's about the extent of my practice with the whites 0.74

02:00:17.680 and 0.80

02:00:20.720 she is somewhere i don't know where katie went but i was going to ask her if she

02:00:23.840 had anything to add about erickson household house white interaction

02:00:31.680 Um, so coming from a Thetish background, we took, there were a lot of like superstitions

02:00:40.880 about house whites. 0.99

02:00:41.960 One of the things we always did, um, more for the land whites, for the land that's here 0.78

02:00:46.220 than the house white, but, um, after you leave an offering, you're always supposed to back 0.89

02:00:50.600 away three or four steps before you turn around and walk away. 0.96

02:00:54.220 Um, because the land whites, while we work with them, they are still the land whites. 0.98

02:01:00.180 it was just like a respect thing um and i still kind of like that um i still do that and i kind 0.96

02:01:05.540 of try to get my kids to do it with me but they don't really they just run they don't really care

02:01:10.980 they're not going to back up three three steps first but um as far as in the house goes cliff

02:01:15.780 already covered it uh when swan erickson gave us a really beautiful um dragon bell uh when we got

02:01:24.180 married and we saved it and we saved it and we have it hanging in the threshold between our

02:01:28.740 kitchen in our living room right now because they're basically the same room it's just got

02:01:32.500 an archway in between and every night before bed um except for when we get off track like we have

02:01:39.140 the last couple weeks because we've been super busy um we each take a turn ring in that bell

02:01:44.420 and hailing the house white no one will often say something like house white house white full of might

02:01:49.620 uh please keep the nightmares away tonight and he'll ring the bell and we'll all say

02:01:53.220 hail housewife um there's something really cute like that it gets them used to having to say

02:01:58.420 a hail on their own uh and the housewife is easy it's it's the the spirit that kind of

02:02:03.860 lives in our house and helps us out or makes things complicated for us um and we do leave

02:02:09.380 offerings for him um in a special spot in the house and we always check in the morning to see

02:02:14.100 if it's gone uh mostly usually it is when we remember to move it outside but you know

02:02:21.380 No, but yeah, no, it's just, I think we're in the young children's stage of life right now since we have young children and that's where a lot of our focus is.

02:02:31.680 And as I think it was Tyler said earlier, having young kids and the house white is a really easy way to get them engaged.

02:02:42.680 engaged i mean obviously they like to hail the gods and thor is owen's favorite followed very

02:02:48.680 closely by odin but not quite still thor anyways whatever i lost my train and thought yeah housewives

02:02:55.400 are cool all right so no you're good um

02:03:01.560 i figure it'd be good to get um because we're still on it wants to go oh there he is all right

02:03:16.480 nick what do you do sorry we got to play this ring around the rosie merry-go-round thing because

02:03:22.780 there's 11 of us and stream yard has a 10 person cap um but so actually i i'm pretty much going to

02:03:31.900 repeat uh what uh folklore buffet tyler bearded tyler said um mostly it's just that leaving when

02:03:42.880 i do um offerings in at my altar leaving those out with the express kind of mental understanding

02:03:52.720 that that offering is going towards

02:03:55.340 the gods as well as the whites. 0.98

02:03:58.640 And the 0.96

02:03:59.400 whites probably have the more 0.67

02:04:01.040 I don't know 0.84

02:04:02.960 quick access to it.

02:04:06.500 But I did

02:04:07.320 want to add because she mentioned it in the chat

02:04:09.700 out at Sigurheim

02:04:12.940 we did

02:04:13.720 install I guess you could

02:04:17.320 say slash dedicate

02:04:19.460 a house white

02:04:20.780 or a land whites house

02:04:23.060 in the woods 0.97

02:04:25.340 they did

02:04:27.000 they put that in on Saturday

02:04:29.300 and then in the evening

02:04:31.440 after stumble went out and

02:04:33.060 dedicated that so a little

02:04:36.800 I don't know home abode

02:04:39.680 shrine 1.00

02:04:41.200 thing for the land whites out there 0.97

02:04:43.480 so that's pretty cool 0.99

02:04:45.360 and I'm going to actually

02:04:46.400 remove myself and add

02:04:49.320 Tyler back so he could say something

02:04:51.420 about it because he was a little bit more present with that.

02:05:01.980 Okay, I'm on the spot then.

02:05:03.420 Okay, so

02:05:05.300 what we did there is that one of our members

02:05:09.420 had constructed

02:05:11.080 out of

02:05:13.520 kind of like a birdhouse

02:05:15.400 type deal 0.98

02:05:16.120 um small abodes for the land whites and

02:05:20.360 earlier in the day we had uh taken that house up there to the uh the graveyard

02:05:30.480 halfway up the hill and um we we place it there and what we did after assemble is we went up there

02:05:38.740 and kind of held a small

02:05:42.020 ritual to the land

02:05:44.780 and we told them

02:05:48.680 there's going to be a lot of improvements upon

02:05:52.260 the land here and how we've already begun to make

02:05:56.020 improvements and to make our presence known

02:06:00.020 and that we thought it was important

02:06:06.060 that they had a place where they would be undisturbed and where they

02:06:10.080 could find their refuge and a place

02:06:14.020 where we could honor them and that they could kind of

02:06:18.260 call their own for a while.

02:06:22.860 I'm not sure if that is all that Nick

02:06:26.080 wanted me to talk about, but that's kind of the gist

02:06:30.080 of it. It's a small thing that we did

02:06:33.700 they're the lambeteer good deal um while we're you know before we get too far away from it

02:06:43.100 um and it relates to the equality question i have a question over there in the comments i have an

02:06:49.740 interesting question if you had no control of being born or what race you are and what gods

02:06:55.600 you belong to then do you agree that all other gods and races are just as powerful as ours and

02:07:02.340 has a caveat here uh he is i'm not looking for the run-of-the-mill answer of we encourage all people

02:07:09.540 to seek their own answer ancestors gods so

02:07:22.100 it's

02:07:22.420 it's I get it that is a convenient way to I don't know bypass the question but not out of

02:07:41.500 it's because that's not really our concern that's one of the things

02:07:45.340 um first no i i don't believe that other races and other races gods are equally powerful or equal to

02:07:59.500 our gods because we've stated before we don't believe in equality that's not a thing of course

02:08:06.180 that's not the case by saying that does not mean that they are better it does not mean that they

02:08:14.240 are worse, it does not mean, it's not any kind of indictment against any group of people

02:08:20.160 or any pantheon of deities. It is a statement that I don't believe in equality in any sense

02:08:27.300 ever amongst any two things. No two dogs are the same. No two cats are the same. Two of

02:08:36.840 the same book that are printed off the same printing press, sitting next to each other

02:08:42.860 in the same run are not exactly the same there is some degree of difference between them in some

02:08:49.500 small if unrecognizable way there is no such thing as equality that applies that way as well

02:08:57.980 um and as far as and i know that that's the easy answer but

02:09:02.380 But no, it's not the point of the AFA to analyze other races of people's comparative value to ours or other people's gods comparative value to ours.

02:09:20.120 We recognize the existence of other races of people and that those races of people have their own unique interests, makeup and destinies that they want to pursue and that they have just as much, you know, right to want to pursue those things as we do.

02:09:39.120 Sometimes that puts us in opposition to one another.

02:09:42.140 Sometimes it doesn't affect that.

02:09:44.080 Sometimes perhaps even there's cooperation between one another.

02:09:47.140 um also it's not our position to judge other races racial gods that's not uh it's not up to

02:09:58.840 us and it's not the mission of the astral folk assembly it's up to them to judge the value of

02:10:04.100 their gods or not we do believe in the existence or the potential existence of their deities so

02:10:12.100 nothing we intend to do has anything to negate that or to take away from those deities dignity

02:10:21.700 except for and this is an important caveat when one of their core principles

02:10:26.500 is the elimination of ours and i say that in the sense of abrahamic faiths believe that

02:10:35.860 our gods are devils or don't exist or are demons or should be destroyed and absolutely we stand in

02:10:46.780 firm opposition to that other than that like that's the real answer it's entirely up to those

02:10:53.760 group of people to rise to fall to succeed or to fail to reach their potential or to miss their

02:11:02.280 potential. And whatever the result of that at any given time makes them inherently not equal to us,

02:11:10.240 perhaps superior to us, perhaps not, depending on how they play the hand that they were dealt.

02:11:18.040 And as you mentioned, we don't have that say of where we find ourselves in life. Of course we

02:11:24.760 don't we all have an opportunity to achieve great things and to do great deeds um but no nothing

02:11:34.600 nothing in existence is equal it's a lie and a delusion that makes us all weaker for pretending

02:11:43.880 that's the case if i might um i think it's worth mentioning that the point of our relationship

02:11:52.140 with our gods is not how powerful they are it is that they are our kin that they are most ancient

02:12:01.000 ancestors and so um you know if if there was anyone out there who was like trying to shop

02:12:08.300 around for the most powerful god that is wrong-headed um that's not the point in our

02:12:14.620 relationship with them um you know it's not like going to the toy store going down to the transformer

02:12:20.280 aisle and checking out their power matrix on the back of the box to see which one is coolest

02:12:24.720 um it is a lot more serious than that and um you know when whenever anyone approaches

02:12:33.580 their divinities whether they're um of of our race or of another race they need to make sure

02:12:40.160 that that they're basing it in a sincerity and are honestly trying to find and worship their

02:12:48.420 natural gods the gods and goddesses of their ancestors who created them and created their

02:12:54.820 people and i mean i'll be blunt anything other than that is wrong and kind of cucked

02:13:03.300 agreed i would i would just like to add quickly too it's it's more of a basis

02:13:08.900 in truth of what you will get out of it and how possible these connections are to achieve

02:13:14.660 So, for example, if I wanted to get into Shintoism, you know, I'm not going to get anything out of it. I don't have that culture behind me. I don't have that connection to that spiritual history.

02:13:29.600 and that's the bottom line is that we have a direct line back to our gods and our ancestors

02:13:36.400 worshiping and the continuation of that gift cycle over long periods of time and those

02:13:42.120 delineations matter and that's what makes it significant to stick to you know the gods of

02:13:48.260 your folk well also when you're so focused on what another race and religion is doing it begs

02:13:55.440 the question for me uh is it resentment and uh sort of you're already complex focus on

02:14:04.080 what others are doing because otherwise you'll never find yourself that's just my opinion

02:14:12.160 yeah and i'd like to add to that also um you know i'll share your girl that you've you've said it

02:14:18.080 many many times on vns episodes and also in person you know the the afa is not here to be

02:14:28.240 in opposition to anyone anything um or any other gods uh that may or may not exist we are here for

02:14:39.120 our folk we are here to have a relationship with the acer we are here to build we are not here to

02:14:49.840 destroy or take anyone else down um that's not the path to success um we're here to build a strong

02:14:59.520 foundation for our folk and you know to guide our people back home uh where we all know that they

02:15:06.960 belong uh with us and uh having that relationship with the aesir and as wet and erickson said they

02:15:14.160 are our most ancient ancestors they are our blood uh that is why we are the asatru

02:15:20.640 folk assembly uh folk being the key there um so it doesn't really concern us

02:15:30.720 uh what other gods may or may not be out there we're concerned with ours and our connection to

02:15:37.440 them and our fault i would say too i personally um i think that any any god that is is known to

02:15:49.200 a people is probably real i mean i think that ra is a real god i think that jehovah is a real god

02:15:59.120 um i i think that shiva is a real god but i don't think that there are god and it's not a

02:16:05.840 not a power competition now made up modern gods like the flying spaghetti monster are bs but um

02:16:12.720 ancient gods that have been worshipped by you know particular peoples and that are

02:16:18.560 inextricably inextricably linked to their histories those are are real entities at a minimum

02:16:28.560 All right. Svahn, is the Holy Trinity inspired from the Aryan tripartite? 0.95

02:16:40.460 I believe it is. If you ask a tripartite, or is it a Trinitarian Christian, which is most Protestants and Catholics and Orthodoxy, they would say, no, that's not true.

02:16:55.360 um but they're kind of biased the uh the biggest thing to remember is in the book of matthew

02:17:01.160 um after jesus is dead the disciples who say he is resurrected and talking to them

02:17:08.220 so by this time saul and saul of tarsus who christians know him as paul and simon who

02:17:16.960 christians know him as peter um they're basically changing the game they're going outside they're

02:17:23.080 not trying to convince other Jews that Yeshua is the Messiah of Yahweh, they're going to start 0.76

02:17:32.120 going out. And that's when they, you know, Jesus or Yeshua says to them, you know, go out and,

02:17:38.820 you know, bless and convert the world, the nations in the name of the Father and of the Son

02:17:48.640 and of the Holy Spirit. And I think that caused a problem because up until that moment,

02:17:54.920 Judaism really was like strictly monotheistic. The Messiah placement was not seen as 100%

02:18:05.820 connected to Yahweh. It was always kind of like a prophet position. The Christians made that

02:18:13.780 profit position into a, like a bi, uh, I don't know what a, uh, bi, bi-partis, 0.90

02:18:22.280 bi-partisism of, of divinity. And then many, many years later, almost 400 years later,

02:18:29.480 uh, and finally the dust settled. So between, I would say after the first hundred years

02:18:35.620 and 400 years in, in Europe, um, there were wars fought over this and Christians killed 0.72

02:18:43.340 christians all over the place because they they could not agree and these councils were getting

02:18:49.980 together and it was all because of this statement that was passed down to them by saul of tarsus

02:18:56.060 and simon you know they said in the name of the father and the son and in the holy spirit

02:19:02.940 and um i think that again the holy spirit itself was the covenant that was kept between the

02:19:09.740 israelites and yahweh but they construed that because i think innately being arians being of

02:19:17.500 european descent they needed to construct a trinity because it is where all arians are it's it's it's

02:19:26.300 the it is the footprint that you can find and heavily lean in on on every arian branch and and 0.91

02:19:33.260 see it um clear as day and so i'm not surprised that it came and if you ask around you know again

02:19:40.460 most christians are trinitarians and they're going to say no it wasn't like that it was

02:19:45.100 already established but that's not the case at all um the arian christians which are from arias

02:19:52.140 um they actually argued that it was a bi uh trinitarian bipartitarian i don't know it was

02:19:59.740 a dual situation there um and uh that wasn't you know commonly agreed on so yeah i do believe it

02:20:06.940 was heavily influenced but in a way that i think a lot of things that we do today are heavily

02:20:12.540 influenced is through our blood the metagenetics of our people people try to say that there's some

02:20:18.220 sort of disingenuousness because there's like gaps of perhaps usage or uh traditions aren't

02:20:26.940 you know that they're they're broken in some way no the traditions aren't unbroken they're

02:20:31.740 they're in our blood they they can't be broken they're just resurrected again it's like saying

02:20:37.100 that um you know the the seeds of a plant are invalid because they're no longer growing at the

02:20:43.180 time of their of of the the the the tree that bore that seed you know the seeds are invalid

02:20:50.780 growing out because the plant that produced is no longer around that's not the case they're

02:20:56.220 they're united um i also wanted to comment a little bit on that last question i didn't get a

02:21:02.060 chance to i hope i hope that answer that's a clean answer to one and i was wondering if i could

02:21:06.940 comment a little bit on that um about other other gods one of the things i think that we really need

02:21:14.140 to do and this is from my personal point is i believe that my gods created us in our world this

02:21:23.820 is our world and heimdall created the folks specifically and my concern outside of that

02:21:30.700 for any other um point or proclamation of any other people as to how powerful their gods are

02:21:36.940 or or what they have um is entirely on them and not of my concern so are we equal in the possibility

02:21:46.700 of making those proclamations and having that world view yes i think that all people all over

02:21:52.380 the world can see the divine through their own eyes in their own way that is one thing we all

02:21:58.300 share but are we equal and does the value of other gods have the same value as my gods to me absolutely

02:22:05.980 not nor does you know anybody can come in and say that yahweh is more powerful than your gods or the

02:22:11.820 flying spaghetti monster is more power i would you know equally laugh at both of them just because

02:22:18.540 everything that's built around in in my trough to the gods is the entirety of everything

02:22:27.140 structured together the only answers i don't have sometimes i don't have answers well some like my

02:22:33.820 my kids ask you know did the gods create other people and i say i don't know i know how they

02:22:40.280 created my people but i don't know how what that was about and that's that's for the gods not for

02:22:46.040 me and I left it alone and they they understood that they said okay well we have our store we

02:22:51.180 have we know where we came from because they told us through the first storytellers through

02:22:56.160 class here through Heimdall so all the way back and that's really all that matters and I think a

02:23:02.260 lot of people have a hard time digesting that when they see one sun that we share we all share the

02:23:09.860 same sun yes but the sun is very different all throughout the world the sun is different to you

02:23:15.320 in the desert as it is opposed to say in the in the north and in the mountains um and again it's

02:23:21.480 it's that relationship and what it may be but my concern isn't for for others in relation to

02:23:29.560 the way i interconnect with divinity so i just wanted to shoot that in there i was

02:23:35.560 everyone was giving good answers and i was like ah maybe i'll sit on it but

02:23:39.320 all right um so cliff if you could sub for me again and go around the circle the next question

02:23:52.120 is do you bless every meal you eat or do you only bless the meal do the meal blessing uh for dinner

02:23:59.000 could you go around and talk to everybody about their meal blessing um traditions and i'm gonna

02:24:04.680 run real quick we're back yeah of course um i'll go first um so in in my household we do our best

02:24:15.160 to bless every supper or dinner depending on where you are um our family meal together um

02:24:24.520 i think it would be great to bless every meal um but i i don't know if anyone who's

02:24:32.600 completely honest actually does that um someone somewhere along the way ate a peanut without

02:24:38.440 blessing it or something like that um but it's a very good practice i know right it's fun it's

02:24:44.280 trouble um but uh i i think it's a very good practice it's an ideal to strive for i think

02:24:51.320 for families in particular is a really important thing you know first just to have the dinner table

02:25:02.200 and to have dinner at the dinner table together as a unit that's a very valuable thing and

02:25:09.240 once you're doing that it makes sense to to recognize um you know our gods and our ancestors

02:25:16.920 and our folk and where that food comes from um everyone i think probably has some

02:25:23.800 different meal blessings that they do i i know of several i i know which one i prefer katie and i

02:25:31.080 prefer different ones so our kids get to hear it kind of alternate back and forth um

02:25:38.040 but uh let's go to joe next joe do you do that i'll be honest i'm a slacker um i'm single don't

02:25:45.480 have a family unfortunately so uh basically what i do is i thank them for a wide variety of things

02:25:50.920 on a regular basis i don't particularly bless meals it's as simple as a scent as that um but

02:25:57.560 i do thank them and uh try to bless other actions and things that i do but uh no i don't bless meals

02:26:06.680 barely ever unless we're having a uh a special occasion all right what about you mike

02:26:15.480 Similar to Joe. I'm a single guy, so I live alone. I don't generally bless what I consider more mundane meals, kind of rush home from work and take the dog out and shove something in my face.

02:26:37.120 And, you know, but certainly when whenever I'm performing any kind of rite, I always say a few words.

02:26:48.260 And then if it's something that's, you know, a little larger, one of our holy tides, I will bless the meal then.

02:26:58.420 But I do agree with you that it's it's a good practice to be in. 0.94

02:27:04.200 It's just yet another element that you can have that can only strengthen the bonds, you know, between your ancestors and yourself and the gods and the land whites.

02:27:17.960 It's always a good idea to thank the food that you're about to eat because something there gave its life for your nourishment.

02:27:28.920 um so it's certainly something that i i want to make a part of my my daily life

02:27:37.960 uh at work is a little more different difficult when you're eating lunch but uh you know you don't

02:27:43.640 have to make a big production out of it either be something in a in a hushed whisper because

02:27:50.120 the intention is there so hey john how about you

02:27:58.920 We are a lonely lot here in Northwestern Thorshoff District.

02:28:04.680 I, too, am single and I'm typically, you know, eating a burrito in my car or something for supper.

02:28:13.720 So I do not do very many meal blessings.

02:28:20.060 I like the idea of it.

02:28:21.440 You know, certainly if you're a family, young children, a wife, I mean, it's a fantastic thing to do.

02:28:28.920 Uh, frankly, even a lot of our moots that we have here monthly, um, you know, we get

02:28:36.160 a fairly, a fairly good turnout most of the time, but we are, we're typically grilling

02:28:41.920 and people are kind of snatching food as they go.

02:28:45.960 And so we don't do a lot of, uh, a lot of feasting yet though.

02:28:50.960 It's every so often we do, you will, we get together and we have a more formal feast and

02:28:57.120 we do a blessing, Feast of the Anhariar, but we're looking to actually purposely implement

02:29:04.400 more feasting in what we do. It's just as a matter of practicality with people coming

02:29:10.780 and going and what have you. We have been doing the serve yourself as you show up at

02:29:17.960 John's house kind of a thing, but we bless large feasts and large meals when we have

02:29:26.780 them well that's excellent something that i used to do um and still do sometimes a good trick to

02:29:35.900 to get people around the table for a feast is to just wait them out until they're really hungry

02:29:41.340 keep all the food until you know after bloat make sure that it takes a couple hours to get

02:29:47.420 the bloat and then you've got everyone's attention real fast how about you daniel

02:29:56.780 Daniel appears to be frozen. Oh, there he is. Daniel, do you do any kind of meal blessings

02:30:06.760 on the regular? As often as we can. As in a lot of American households, we don't always

02:30:17.480 eat at the supper table, which is a real pet peeve of mine. I complain about it all the

02:30:22.660 time but whenever we get around the supper table as a family yes we we do

02:30:27.640 our meal blessing but kind of like what you said you know every time I eat a

02:30:31.660 peanut or something I don't ask the guys to bless it but yeah so anytime we have

02:30:37.720 like you know the whole family together you know myself and my wife and all my

02:30:42.260 kids and perhaps some of their kids you know we'll do a meal blessing then and

02:30:45.940 when of course we do meal blessings whenever we have I'm gonna have to get

02:30:52.120 off here in a sec and i know i'm jumping in where there's still more people to answer

02:30:57.640 but i wanted nick to put up that uh fundraiser for the veins there's a family in north carolina

02:31:04.460 that's uh very loyal uh very dedicated and uh really industrious at thorshoff that are in a

02:31:11.840 bad way right now they have a very unfortunate set of circumstances surrounding their housing

02:31:16.280 and they're personal friends of mine and personal friends of fawn's personal friends of tyler's

02:31:21.460 So any little bit that anybody can do to kind of help them get a leg up to start the next stage in their life and their living conditions or living situation would be greatly appreciated.

02:31:33.740 Awesome family, young kids, and yeah, super loyal people.

02:31:38.560 We need to give them as much help as we possibly can, folks.

02:31:45.680 All righty, guys.

02:31:46.900 I am back.

02:31:48.620 Where are we at, Cliff?

02:31:49.640 Do we still got people that need to answer?

02:31:51.460 yeah just like last time um other than me we got the whole bottom row still

02:31:56.400 oh yeah we're brady bunch now so go for it cliff you know who's gone

02:32:01.680 all right uh tyler uh smooth tyler you're up next so yeah um we are very religious about it

02:32:11.200 in our household uh we're in the fortunate stage of having a two-year-old and a one-year-old that

02:32:16.540 are very compliant with our dinner arrangements. Uh, I can understand how maybe over time that

02:32:22.000 gets more difficult to maintain. Uh, but as of now, uh, every single day for dinner time or

02:32:29.080 anytime that we have a meal at the table. So sometimes more than just dinner, but a majority

02:32:35.880 of days is, you know, supper time. Uh, we, we recite the meal blessing. I think that Alan

02:32:42.480 Turnage came up with, um, which I, I love so much. Um, I, I like the shorter one with just

02:32:50.300 the acknowledgement of the gods and making the Thor's hammer, but I like the intimacy of the one

02:32:56.060 that, uh, law speaker Alan Turnage came up with. Um, and we also make a point of doing it in less

02:33:04.000 comfortable situations. Um, so if we have guests over that are not also true, we do not throw it

02:33:10.540 the side because we take it very seriously so we tell them we say hey um we're gonna do a meal

02:33:17.900 blessing i'm you don't really have a choice to be comfortable with it or not but just prepare

02:33:22.860 yourself this is what we do um so yeah every every day we do it and it's uh it's a beautiful thing

02:33:30.780 because my two-year-old daughter she is very smart and is very ahead in in speech uh the the

02:33:38.540 pediatrician says she talks almost like a four-year-old already at just at almost two and

02:33:44.820 a half years old. But she goes, we say, Nora, would you like to say the meal blessing? She goes,

02:33:51.140 we bless this food, my domain, hail the gods. So it's very important. And like I said previously,

02:33:59.120 we have our ancestor altar and our god altar in our dining room so as we're dined at the table

02:34:08.980 we we see a wall full of pictures of all of our ancestors going back generations and this this

02:34:17.040 collage of pictures of our ancestors continues to grow as i dig into uh like my grandparents and

02:34:25.100 beg them to send me any pictures that they may have and my wife's uh does the same and so the

02:34:31.940 wall keeps growing with these generations of our ancestors so every day um my daughters see

02:34:38.700 uh you know especially towards the part where we say hail the ancestors

02:34:43.680 you know or ask the ancestors to bless us within that meal blessing we make an intentional

02:34:49.460 shift in our focus towards the ancestor wall, uh, as well as when we, uh, ask for the God's

02:34:57.600 blessing as well, we'll make it, we'll make an intentional shift towards the God altar.

02:35:01.820 Um, so I think it's very important, um, ritualistically, ritualistically.

02:35:08.680 Um, so yeah, that's what, that's, that's our daily practice. We're very religious about it.

02:35:13.820 Even even when we're out to eat, as awkward as that may be or may seem, we're very we're very steadfast in our our belief that that's an important ritual to partake in every day and something I'm very proud of sticking to.

02:35:30.160 you know and I would say we've I don't think we've missed many days but if we do it's almost

02:35:37.680 like how I am with exercise it's like if I miss it I feel like something's wrong like something

02:35:43.500 happened in the day that I feel off like you know if you shower differently it throws your whole

02:35:49.700 day off it's that same sentiment where it just throws your whole psyche off so I think it's

02:35:55.320 it's very important um and then in terms of when i do uh gatherings with the folk uh cliff cliff

02:36:03.400 laid it out very nicely that approach is my approach we have our nice chat period before

02:36:10.120 ritual you know maybe some little snacks nothing too filling and then we do ritual and then it's

02:36:16.920 time to feast and i make sure that everyone gathers together beforehand and we we bless the

02:36:23.800 entire meal and then i also follow the standard afa practices of women and children eating first

02:36:32.200 then the men and then leadership so yeah very important to me um it's not as hard as it seems

02:36:39.720 you just got to make it a habit and once you do i don't think you'll regret it because it's

02:36:44.600 it adds it adds continuity to your spirituality that i i think is can seem understated by such

02:36:52.840 a simple ritual but it's it's very important in my opinion thanks tyler so you mentioned the

02:37:01.000 very popular meal blessing um handed to us by by law speaker turnage um would you mind reciting it

02:37:10.760 for us absolutely we bless this food to might in maine oh nick come on i could do it without

02:37:19.240 reading it come on take it off we bless this food to might in maine our bodies need to fill

02:37:26.840 to keep us hearty whole and hail so we may work our will ancestors guide us walk beside us help

02:37:33.720 us in our needs keep us on the path that is true because we are our deeds hail the gods

02:37:40.600 hail the folk hail the ancestors hail the aussitrew folk assembly

02:37:49.240 Thank you very much, Tyler. That one's very popular. I have seen that one more and more over the past several years. That is Githya Cady's favorite as well.

02:38:00.280 um the other one um that um that that i learned first and and that i um have have adapted from

02:38:10.120 from when i first heard it from founder mcnallan um which which invokes the the the hammer right

02:38:16.740 is um in the holy names of odin balder frey and thor may this food be blessed and may we be blessed

02:38:24.660 we remember the life that has been taken so that we may we may live we remember the struggles and

02:38:30.740 victories of our ancestors that have brought us together at this table today we remember our

02:38:36.260 living folk within and without that they may know our gods and kinship with the folk hail the gods

02:38:42.580 hail the ancestors hail the folk hail the afa let's eat uh that let's eat part is is all me

02:38:51.540 it was definitely uh it's something i started uh really early on in our um in our uh our our moots

02:39:00.660 and and an early bloat group that turned into our kindred it just kind of it took you know it was

02:39:08.340 like let's eat because now it was it was feast time um next up um i don't think we got to you

02:39:18.340 you get uh witness fun does does your family do a meal blessing or did i get you already oh no i

02:39:24.960 didn't go i'm kind of in the same realm with tyler um i was over here like you're good you're good

02:39:33.280 i was right in there no um i uh i definitely am one who espouses law speaker turnage's um

02:39:41.980 food blessing um it was a proud moment of mine when my son got to lead it when i was

02:39:47.660 like gravely ill and um you know he he um he led it and he came up and was so proud that he

02:39:56.580 you know got to do that while i was kind of i was in bed and locked away for the safety of everyone

02:40:02.460 else but yeah we do it uh if there are children that are over our house um that are not house

02:40:09.820 and they're friends and they're doing a sleepover we tell them they don't have to say anything but

02:40:14.340 we are going to bless the food because this is our faith and this is our religion. And, and yeah,

02:40:19.300 generally they, they're just quiet. Some of them get involved, which is fine too. But I, you know,

02:40:26.980 we, we don't really have, I think anybody who's fundamentally against our religion, whether

02:40:34.660 they're folk or not folk. Generally, most people that we know are, know exactly what's, what we're

02:40:41.920 about and what we're doing and we are amicable. And, um, the, uh, the other thing is we do it

02:40:48.700 in public spaces. So we do it at restaurants. Um, and, uh, yeah, we, um, I don't know that one

02:40:57.080 thing I would say is like, we don't do it for breakfast usually because at our house breakfast

02:41:02.340 is rolling along with like homeschool and things like that. So that's a really odd thing. And then

02:41:09.060 there's great grandmother and it's just it's it's um not a super planned out thing i have i love

02:41:17.540 catching my kids during lunch because i don't usually like to eat a lot of lunch right before

02:41:22.420 i'm about to head to work and um uh because i work mid-shift from like noon to eight so um

02:41:29.620 catching them doing it all on their own is just so good um and then of course when we

02:41:38.180 Yeah, we're at dinner, but I would say the one thing that I noticed is, and I'm sure that

02:41:42.060 Mike can attest to this, you know, like in the 90s, there was kind of this knee-jerk reaction

02:41:48.260 from Alcatru community to just reject the idea of doing anything that was remotely

02:41:54.420 looked like it was Christian. And the attitude of that has completely changed in our community

02:42:01.760 to be thankful to the, to the gods, to our ancestors, to everything that brought us to

02:42:07.720 this moment at the table. Um, and it used to be like such a kind of a, Oh, we don't do that kind

02:42:13.420 of thing. And that has completely changed. And, um, I think that's awesome. But I mean, you know,

02:42:19.780 if you're single and, uh, you know, you're not eating with a family and stuff like that. I think

02:42:24.980 a lot of folks generally reserve their thankfulness for when they do bloat. And they're

02:42:30.320 like, I'm thankful for the fruitfulness that I've received, you know, the many meals I've had before

02:42:34.520 this moment um and so i think that it's it's not necessarily something that we look at as being

02:42:39.480 bad but it is such a component that adds a whole new level when you're in a family or when you're

02:42:45.640 in a a kindred or you know big groups that is just so good um and i'm really really glad to

02:42:53.480 have seen to actually witnessed the change of that mentality yeah you know and back to your point

02:43:02.200 back then i used to say well you know they breathe oxygen too right you know so should we

02:43:08.040 do that um you know i wouldn't be surprised you know well yeah back then i wouldn't be surprised

02:43:15.320 at all but i share your sentiment i i thoroughly enjoy how that has shifted and how that's changed

02:43:23.720 um because like i said earlier you know we're not here to be in opposition to anyone else we're here

02:43:28.760 to build um and focus on us and our gods so um yeah yeah one wonderful changes over the past you

02:43:38.040 know 30 plus years for me one of the things that makes it a feast is that there is a meal blessing

02:43:45.800 it's different from going through the drive-through you know um bearded tyler you're up

02:43:52.200 i'd like to say that it goes as well as uh smooth tyler's does but um as your kids get a little bit

02:44:06.040 older um they come to an age where you don't want to push things on them um i know that uh

02:44:15.800 Growing up in a highly Protestant house, that made me resent the religion of my parents.

02:44:28.080 So anytime that we go to the Hoff, for about two weeks after that, the kids are arguing about who gets to lead the meal blessing.

02:44:38.940 Then it just gradually tapers off for a while to the point where my middle son now, he'll roll his eyes and he doesn't want to do it and everything.

02:44:56.920 He's like, do we have to do this?

02:44:58.620 Like, well, I feel like there's a line you have to ride there where you want to keep them on track, but you don't want to push them off.

02:45:12.480 So in those moments, it's just kind of, well, we're going to do this.

02:45:17.400 And if you don't want to do it, just, you know, you have to be quiet and you just have to respect this.

02:45:24.880 um so it isn't as common as i'd like to but uh when we do do it we do alan

02:45:33.560 turnage as a meal blessing um we do it at all of our events because all of our events do have

02:45:43.640 a small feast um so we do do the meal blessing then but uh individually in the household it's

02:45:53.240 kind of a hit or miss um after a half event is you know the real regular and stuff because the

02:46:00.500 boys are into it uh then it just kind of slowly drops off um but again as a as a parent of like

02:46:09.920 older kids you just kind of have just have to ride that line you you uh the last thing i want

02:46:16.400 to do is to push them away uh you know so i hope uh you are able to maintain that as your your your

02:46:27.400 kids they get older and stuff because um that's that's real beautiful man yeah no i i even

02:46:35.420 acknowledged in the beginning that it's easy when they're two and one but i i will be reaching out

02:46:40.740 to you for some advice as time goes on i'm sure of it so i appreciate that foresight though because

02:46:45.820 i know it's it's easy man two and one they're the best they love you no matter what everything's

02:46:51.720 great but i know i know the i know it gets tough so i'll be reaching out for some advice so i

02:46:57.440 appreciate that yeah uh my middle son um he he hasn't ever known any he he hasn't ever the known

02:47:07.320 a world that wasn't as a true um from his you know earliest days we were also true so he he grew up

02:47:17.320 in this um the older boy he was two years old well when we came home so you know both of them

02:47:27.320 this is all they know um so it's like all this is real this is a thing that we do all the time um

02:47:35.400 But, you know, they are kids.

02:47:41.040 They've got Oz and True everywhere in the house.

02:47:44.360 This is our altar here.

02:47:46.060 This is in the living room.

02:47:48.960 We have a library in our house, and it has an altar in it.

02:47:53.340 We have kind of a foyer, and, you know, that's where all the pictures of the ancestors are.

02:48:00.920 There's a horde there for them.

02:48:02.920 So, I mean, it's all over, but you have to keep their interest or they will pull away.

02:48:14.080 Well, thank you, Tyler's. I'll share with you, Matt.

02:48:18.200 I'll pitch it back to you and ask if you have any thoughts on meal blessings.

02:48:22.640 And I'll put you on the spot and ask if you have a preference between the McNallage or turnage versions of the meal blessing.

02:48:31.040 both of which of course are completely acceptable so

02:48:35.240 this is first both of those are awesome um i i do a modified version of uh steve mcnallan's

02:48:53.440 version just because it's the first one i saw but i'm always i don't know i always try to speak from

02:49:01.680 the heart when i do um prayers which i think that meal blessings are are a form of so depending on

02:49:11.700 the the situation what i usually do i guess most common what i'll do is you know the sign of the

02:49:20.800 hammer and the holy names of odin balder frey and thor may this food be blessed

02:49:26.440 may depending on where we're at may our home be blessed and may our family that we have around

02:49:38.940 this table be blessed whether they're you know my biological family there or the people i've

02:49:44.800 gathered for an event. If there's something else to acknowledge, then I'll do that. And then I'll

02:49:52.160 say, you know, hail the ISEER, hail the folk, hail the AFA. And then again, we'll do the women and

02:49:58.680 children first. If there's people gathered, if it's a family meal, it's a little bit different.

02:50:04.540 But be completely honest, I need to do that more often. I like what Smooth Tyler said a lot

02:50:13.860 about doing it, even when it's not like a comfortable time to do it, because we got to

02:50:19.840 train ourselves. Habits are really important. He also talked about habits. All of these things,

02:50:25.620 if we come from a point of not doing them, doing things needs to be reinforced habitually.

02:50:34.000 And we do that, there's a certain amount of muscle memory. And, you know, that applies to

02:50:40.260 non-muscular things as well you get in patterns you get in habits to where something becomes

02:50:49.100 your norm and that's really really important when you do something you know when you want

02:50:55.340 to accomplish something different than you've accomplished previously so i think that's really

02:50:59.680 important i'm really happy hearing all your guys experiences especially with your kids

02:51:04.960 when this is involved

02:51:06.520 and thank you for

02:51:08.800 emceeing that

02:51:11.180 Cliff, I had to run, speaking of kids

02:51:13.380 I had to go tuck mine in

02:51:15.300 I've got your back always

02:51:17.340 sir, I appreciate it

02:51:19.240 I know you do

02:51:19.940 Also, Smooth Tyler donated

02:51:23.240 $50 to the

02:51:25.020 Njortov Fund, thank you so much

02:51:27.240 for helping us, that's

02:51:28.400 very, very much appreciated, thank you

02:51:31.160 Um, so another kind of going around, Joe, what is your favorite holiday and why?

02:51:45.200 Well, my favorite holiday would have to be winter nights because that's when I was oath

02:51:50.760 and that's what I can make it to all the time.

02:51:52.640 And I've had extremely wonderful experiences there.

02:51:57.500 So I'd have to say coming to Winter Nights every year would have to be my top

02:52:03.000 because I'll be there again this year and every year after.

02:52:07.860 I'm hoping to be able to do other things like maybe midsummer

02:52:12.300 and certain other things across the country.

02:52:15.380 But until then, that's been my top tier.

02:52:20.900 Mike, what's your favorite holiday and why?

02:52:22.900 uh i'm all about yule um there's just something incredible about that um

02:52:36.580 and i'm also all about krampus so that kind of segues in there and uh i i believe uh

02:52:46.260 Witten and Giffey Erickson's children might have a different opinion of that because they

02:52:53.720 were here last Yule when I dressed as Krampus, but I just, I enjoy everything about the season

02:53:02.660 and, you know, our son be getting its ascent yet again.

02:53:09.800 So just something very, very special about that for me.

02:53:13.480 smooth Tyler favorite holiday I'm gonna follow Mike and Yule is my favorite I think that winter

02:53:24.480 is such an essential and critical part of who we are as a folk it's a time to reflect on the year

02:53:33.040 that we just witnessed and a time to prepare for the next it's a time to share you know in the

02:53:40.900 bounty of what all of our hard efforts earned us over the more prosperous months in terms of

02:53:48.620 cultivation and all that kind of stuff. It's a very spiritual time. I feel more connected to

02:53:57.560 my family in that time. I'm not saying that I get distanced from them at all, but I think it's a

02:54:03.500 special time and the seasons are designed in such a way that we have this kind of slower period

02:54:09.660 to where we're in the house. We're with our family. We're enjoying each other's company.

02:54:16.000 And like I said previously, reflecting on the year and preparing for the next.

02:54:20.560 And it's just a special time. Me living in the desert, I'm from a Four Seasons area originally,

02:54:28.360 and then I lived out west for a while. And I felt like I was never home there until I moved up here

02:54:36.720 to the shire, the beautiful shire with a nice long winter. Uh, I realized that's what I was

02:54:42.720 missing that time of that time of reflection and preparation for what is to come. Um,

02:54:50.120 it was, it was a really, it was really a void that I felt was, was a part of my life. Not saying

02:54:56.480 that you can't achieve greatness in these other climates, but for me personally, you know, growing

02:55:01.780 and growing in a place that had a nice winter originally,

02:55:05.700 I felt like I missed that time.

02:55:08.640 Even you can see it outside of Vossature too

02:55:11.720 in places that have a winter

02:55:13.800 is that people slow down and understand

02:55:16.540 and work slows down and that's normal.

02:55:19.400 There, you know, it's just, it's a season to,

02:55:22.800 it's a season to just expand and prepare.

02:55:28.360 And I think it's invaluable

02:55:29.700 And I think it's a core tenant of why we are the way we are to have foresight and, and, and, you know, be, be good neighbors to one another in case, you know, your crops didn't do well.

02:55:42.480 You know, you had to be a good neighbor to have your neighbor take care of you through the winter.

02:55:47.480 And this is where high trust comes from.

02:55:50.760 And it's very important time of year for me.

02:55:52.820 So I would say you'll and it's cool to see you'll stick through through all the, you know, oppression and repression that Abrahamism has forced upon our faith that that that they can never get rid of a semblance of that holiday because it was so ingrained in us.

02:56:10.720 So you was very special to me and I love it.

02:56:16.100 What about you, Cliff?

02:56:17.300 i'm going to give a multi-part answer because i think a lot like the question about favorite

02:56:27.040 gods that um the the holy days really depends on on one's perspective and honestly i love them all

02:56:35.340 i've got young children so yuletide we make a big deal about yuletide um in in our household

02:56:42.200 um that that season the the yuletide season has always been been pretty wonderful for for me um

02:56:51.880 but when you when you've got young kids and you can just you know um i mean

02:56:59.480 part of it is is is utilizing it as a device to bring joy to them and to bring gratitude to them

02:57:07.400 to to bring that out of them um and i you know for me at least in doing so that

02:57:15.400 it does the same for me that way um

02:57:20.600 winter nights i love winter nights i have so much history and investment in winter nights

02:57:28.280 i do have to say that the day after winter nights is pretty awesome too

02:57:31.320 after, you know, putting a lot of work into an event on a scale like that. There is something

02:57:40.380 about having nothing to do the next day that is just really refreshing. But AFA Winter Nights in

02:57:47.180 particular is really close to my heart. At the camp we used to host it at, I met my wife there.

02:57:54.340 I know, Matt, you met your wife there.

02:57:58.580 So many of us on this call have been both there.

02:58:04.440 I proposed to Katie there.

02:58:06.000 There's just so many things, but that's, you know, it's all mixed up with the venue too.

02:58:11.440 That's not the actual holy day, you know, honoring our ancestral mothers

02:58:15.960 And, you know, being able to, you know, hear the whisper of our ancestors through the veil as it's thinning is really special.

02:58:30.320 Also, I love food. So Thor bloat is awesome because Katie makes this goat cheese bread that is just killer.

02:58:38.040 um you know and of course thor is um

02:58:42.680 i want to say the most jovial of our gods but that's probably not true

02:58:51.060 gotta account for braggy but um it it it's a good time when you know you you have a thor party

02:58:59.760 so um thor bloat is also really great but i i also love midsummer in june the fireflies are

02:59:06.940 coming out, I really can't make up my mind. They're all special in all so many different ways.

02:59:13.840 What about you, John?

02:59:17.140 They're all fantastic, and sometimes they, you know, depending on where you are in life and

02:59:22.480 what you're doing, they really hit hard, and that's great. On any given Sunday, I do have

02:59:29.560 particularly nostalgic feelings, like many people, about winter nights and Yule specifically.

02:59:36.940 it's fun oh for me it's yule all the way um i do the 12 12 nights um i like the

02:59:50.060 what yule represents too for our people i know that our ancestors really viewed the end of the

02:59:57.120 year being around winter nights and winter nights is extremely powerful but our understanding of

03:00:03.380 things have has changed so yule has become this great galvanizing force um but also a chance for

03:00:11.500 us to share our traditions with our families that are not also true um and i've never gotten any bad

03:00:19.500 feedback from any of that they've always just loved everything that we do um i don't do uh

03:00:27.160 like crampus or anything because i i grew up with gorilla and that was heesh um so i don't

03:00:33.480 really do a lot of that i the the yule the yule white definitely leaves burnt pieces of wood

03:00:39.320 for for chocolate no no what do you do to my house

03:00:47.800 no so like uh i you know i definitely have him where he burns uh he burns wood and gives him

03:00:59.880 that for miserly children for children who don't want to give because the big thing is is they get

03:01:04.980 their gifts from their ancestors and then they give each other gifts and that's so huge and if

03:01:10.300 they don't follow that um the yule elf just uh you know pitches in the the crunchy uh firewood

03:01:20.440 and and maybe some goat pellets and then he's he's not having it um yeah so no mine's my favorite

03:01:27.500 is yule um other than i mean i love all of them but 100 percent we can do it in my house

03:01:36.580 all right bearded tyler favorite holiday and why um so as far as the national events go

03:01:46.760 uh i've really only gone to three national events but um austera would be my big one

03:01:54.580 um that's when i was a true became real to to me uh austera 2018 that odin the bloat you

03:02:06.580 you did out there uh i remember you uh you called for for more wood on the fire more and more and

03:02:15.060 more and we just kept on piling logs on over and over and over and i mean that fire was larger

03:02:22.340 than any fire i had ever seen and uh yeah i mean that was that was was my uh the coming home

03:02:30.660 experience um and the austaras after that have been

03:02:41.140 unique in their own way um but wonderful uh austera for for this year

03:02:47.780 um the amount of the people that we had out at the hoff with we made

03:02:54.500 the actual uh floor of the hof sag um it was incredible um i renewed my vows to my wife

03:03:05.060 at that event so austera will always have a a place in my heart um but for for local events

03:03:12.660 it would have to be the mayday um for two years now we've done a pretty nice mayday um

03:03:19.620 um all the aesthetics of that event um from uh picking out the maypole we get that cut um

03:03:29.700 on the way up there that my wife and i have a place where we pick the rhododendron because

03:03:35.660 at that time in appalachia uh the rhododendron are in the bloom and it blooms in all kinds of

03:03:43.560 colors uh the pinks the whites reds orange all kinds of colors so we we pick a lot of that on

03:03:52.920 the way up to uh to to uh tennessee and um we make a topper out of that um and all of our ladies they

03:04:03.560 make their their crowns the flower crowns and uh we dance around the maypole we tie the ribbons

03:04:11.000 around it it's a lot of fun you know i don't dance ever uh but but we dance around a maypole um we

03:04:19.320 we play old appalachian tunes and stuff on a speaker as we dance around one day we're gonna

03:04:28.520 have a guy out there with a fiddle and we're we're gonna make it good you know but uh till then we

03:04:34.840 we just have to use a speaker um but i love the mayday um i'd say that's that is my favorite

03:04:43.560 overall has to be the mayday that sounds awesome um i'm just picturing a lot of those actually at

03:04:56.380 sigerheim when you move out here you're going to have to experience the mayday in appalachia

03:05:03.880 We're going to have you out there to the eastern end of the state,

03:05:06.620 and we're going to have all you guys out for Appalachian May Day.

03:05:12.760 It'll be a lot of fun.

03:05:15.480 I mean, technically, Sigurheim is in the, like,

03:05:18.680 last county that counts as Appalachia out there.

03:05:23.900 So, like, geographically, it counts.

03:05:27.160 But, no, I really want music out there, and I want a fiddler,

03:05:32.000 and I want a banjo guy and I want some stuff.

03:05:36.060 But anyways, we'll get to that when the time comes.

03:05:40.320 Holiday-wise, man, so many different ones.

03:05:45.240 Mayday, I've got a lot of really fun Mayday memories.

03:05:49.340 It's just fun.

03:05:50.240 The dancing around the Maypole is such a, I don't know,

03:05:56.200 it's just such a happy and fun experience for our folk.

03:05:59.740 you know old and young and everything else in between it's fun and i look forward to it and i

03:06:05.140 love doing that um you will i am so much more winter oriented i guess not even really

03:06:15.880 just like fall and a chill in the air and some stuff so you will as i want to say you will

03:06:25.480 absolutely. It's a big deal. You've got lights. I've got a lot of childhood memories

03:06:31.600 wrapped up in it. Yule for all the reasons that everybody says Yule. But spiritually,

03:06:42.320 The winter nights and specifically the disablote during winter nights is where I've had some of the most powerful religious experiences in my life.

03:07:01.020 Um, I mean, yeah, I can't, I can't say enough.

03:07:11.480 And I've talked on here a lot about them and I get a chill just, just thinking about them.

03:07:16.240 Um, but those have been tremendously powerful.

03:07:20.200 So I'd say, I'd say those two are probably my favorites.

03:07:26.220 Um, but again, all of our holy days are, are awesome.

03:07:30.360 And if you've got a couple that aren't your favorite, then you should fix that and figure out why they're not your favorite and step up your celebration game.

03:07:42.700 But that said, hey, thank you guys all for making the point of being here tonight.

03:07:48.440 You guys are awesome.

03:07:49.420 You have such a large and dynamic, just dynamic in so many different ways spread in the Thorshoff district.

03:08:02.520 I appreciate you guys all, all the work you guys do to make that, that Hoff and that district such a success.

03:08:09.360 And I appreciate you guys joining us this evening.

03:08:12.100 Thank you guys all very much. I look forward to talking to you all and having you guys all back on, either collectively or individually or all points in between. I appreciate you putting up with the impromptu nicknames, Bearded Tyler and Smooth Tyler. I second Mandy on that. I hope Smooth Tyler sticks.

03:08:33.560 i think that one's a keeper um i'll take it you guys are awesome i've enjoyed it tonight

03:08:40.280 and i'm sure our audience has as well thank you guys um

03:08:45.200 next week swan and i will be going over the locasena um which is going to be interesting

03:08:55.140 and uh yeah i hope you guys have it might be a little bit spicy i hope you guys have a really

03:09:03.040 good week uh talk to you guys then if not before and until then hail the isere know the folk hail

03:09:14.240 the afa and remember victory never sleeps good night everyone hail

03:09:33.040 We'll be right back.

03:10:03.040 We'll be right back.

03:10:33.040 We'll be right back.

03:11:03.040 Thank you.

03:11:33.040 Thank you.

03:12:03.040 Transcription by CastingWords

Asatru Folk Assembly - July 25, 2024

7⧸24⧸24 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 107 - Þórshof Edition

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