Asatru Folk Assembly - 8⧸10⧸22 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 5

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00:03:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

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00:03:59.980 and welcome back for uh another week of victory never sleeps we have a treat this week we are

00:04:07.500 joined by githya sheila mcdalen she's going to talk to us tonight and uh i know a lot of you

00:04:13.580 are very excited about it i know i'm excited about it so welcome sheila thank you very much

00:04:19.660 yeah love the name victory never sleeps um it's making more and more sense as weeks go by and

00:04:27.100 you have so many great guests on anyway excellent name well i appreciate that i i liked it it's

00:04:33.420 really important to me that we that we always keep moving forward and stay stay active on it

00:04:38.620 it's easy to lose momentum and i don't ever want us to do that right um we got a for our first

00:04:44.620 question is question is for matt if he sees this will he ever iron his flag so i don't know it's

00:04:54.060 a good question i tried the throwing it in the the dryer with a wet rag thing and it didn't work well

00:05:00.220 and i'm worried that the young chinese children that constructed the flags made it out of

00:05:04.300 materials that are not iron friendly so that is the short question on that um and sarah has a

00:05:11.820 monetized question and we will get to yours first up when she was taking questions but i want to

00:05:16.860 get an introduction in first sheila in a lot of ways you don't need an introduction

00:05:23.900 but i think one is warranted anyway for people that maybe aren't familiar

00:05:28.620 about i don't know just how long you've been involved with the afa and and what brought you

00:05:34.140 to house the troop well my goodness um i was almost to a point where i was looking back into my

00:05:44.620 catholic upbringing i was irish catholic like so many people but um i had gone through teacher

00:05:51.980 training and i was living up here in the mountains and happened to get my first teaching job and um

00:05:59.900 there was a teacher there who was teaching science with me and that happened to be

00:06:04.140 mr stephen mcnellen and we got to be very good friends and uh

00:06:09.740 uh, actually we did a field trips with the seventh graders and I went out to the coast

00:06:16.360 for a environmental life weekend a week. And, um, you know, that's where I really learned

00:06:21.560 about the Norse gods. I'd never studied them myself. Um, but he, um, you know, kind of

00:06:28.100 filled me and he actually did a skid around the fire and I did a little Celtic skid around

00:06:32.480 the fire. It was really fun. But, um, for a long time, you know, I thought of it as quote,

00:06:38.440 the Viking religion. That's the way it came across to me even after I knew Steve for quite a while.

00:06:43.200 We had a Viking club at school, in fact. You know, I made garb for the kids and we had pork roast and

00:06:48.680 all those things. But it took a long time because, you know, I knew my Irish roots. I knew my German

00:06:55.240 grandfather. I knew my English roots on my father's side. But I didn't have anything Scandinavian.

00:07:01.700 So it took me a while before I really realized, come on, it's all, you know, it's that worldview

00:07:08.340 out of europe besides that you have all the vikings who settled the original um so many

00:07:15.060 of the cities of ireland and um and it just all fell into place eventually for me but it wasn't

00:07:22.100 something came really naturally to me i i just because i'm very aware of heritage and ethnicity

00:07:27.540 and those things um i thought that's really cool for other people but is it right for me

00:07:32.020 and um but i i was there steve and i um hosted a couple of early gatherings in the early days

00:07:41.860 before the reservoir announced to folk assembly and in fact um we kept talking about our folk you

00:07:48.180 know we're going to have the folk over we're going to reach out to the folk and it occurred to me

00:07:52.500 when we were looking for a name for this new organization that we were starting that uh

00:07:58.820 obviously alistair free assembly was not going to work but how about alistair folk assembly so

00:08:03.460 that was my idea i remember exactly where we were when i came up with that idea and it stuck way

00:08:09.540 back when and uh we applied for our corporation status in california and the 501c3 with the feds

00:08:17.940 which took quite a while um they went over it with a fine tooth comb but eventually we got that and so

00:08:24.580 um 1997 was the official um letter of uh that they sent but it was in the works for a while

00:08:32.740 and anyway that's kind of where this all began so that i was there on the ground floor and even

00:08:38.180 before which was really fun because i did not know where this would all lead you know i had

00:08:43.380 some grand ideas but nothing like four hoffs or ten hoffs or whatever we're eventually going to

00:08:48.340 have and i'm sure we will there's no idea that that would ever happen um so sarah wants to

00:08:55.780 know could you share with us uh one of your favorite memories from within the afa oh my

00:09:02.340 goodness oh favorite memories um oh gosh i mean i have remembered so many of our nightly bloats

00:09:14.980 bloats that matt has done um the uh the nervousness of my ordination bloat uh ordination

00:09:24.420 following bloat was was pretty amazing i remember some of the beautiful bloats at

00:09:29.620 winter nights in the poconos meant a lot to me every single woman whoever did one

00:09:33.940 did it with grace and with great depth um including katie erickson and i think there's

00:09:40.500 something very special about the way our women do bloat and uh bring in the essence of the goddess

00:09:48.260 and the mothers in our ancestors in a way that is truly moving and i've always felt that all those

00:09:54.740 bloats so those are just a few examples all right well um sarah also would like to know and sarah

00:10:03.300 i appreciate the donations she would also like to know uh before i get to that if anybody does want

00:10:08.980 to donate you can do that on entropy and nick can drop that link in for us there we go a little

00:10:17.140 better okay okay so we we have um on entropy there's there's just if you want to give us a

00:10:25.460 give us a donation that's awesome give us a tip or if you want to have super chat where you

00:10:30.180 monetize your chats right now we don't have a lot going on but you know here in a little while it

00:10:34.900 may be stacked up and we'll always make sure to get those first but don't feel any pressure

00:10:38.740 we're we are both going to stay here and answer any and all questions you guys might have until

00:10:43.540 we get them all answered but it is nice if you guys want to help out on entropy so sarah asks

00:10:48.900 could you tell us a little bit about what the beginning of the afa was like

00:10:57.380 well you have to realize that there was no internet the best you could do would be to

00:11:01.940 send letters and make phone calls and the phone calls are pretty rare so it was um

00:11:08.020 pretty much local you know we gather with the few local people we knew and started bringing

00:11:13.620 in people basically from northern california for our first few events which we called leadership

00:11:19.620 conferences and i remember going out to school and bringing back tables and chairs and things

00:11:24.260 like that getting all set up because we wanted to do it right it was always let's do it right

00:11:28.580 we also had an early kindred we were into kindreds at that time and so we established a local kindred

00:11:34.420 with a group of very close friends and we kept that going for quite a while um we would always

00:11:40.660 have a wonderful feast we would always do symbols sometimes we had music we had live musicians come

00:11:47.220 but we were also producing the runestone which was a magazine a lot of you've seen it it's online

00:11:53.700 there on our uh in the library on runestone.org and that was kind of fun because those were all

00:12:00.420 produced locally and i did all the layouts for the big format ones that you see um we also were

00:12:07.620 producing one called wolf age too at that time and uh we would have people over and it would be you

00:12:13.300 know that stuffing party here are the envelopes here the stamps here you know and you stuff it

00:12:17.060 stuff it and all that kind of thing um and that was really fun it was very very a dynamic time

00:12:22.740 to get people together and actually work together and get those out but that was the only way we

00:12:26.900 could communicate um so it had a very slow beginning and it was very again it was very

00:12:32.980 locally focused um and eventually we started kind of expanding to doing the larger events that were

00:12:42.660 of course known for and those started taking place the first ones we did were out on the

00:12:48.660 mendocino coast of california at a place called mendocino woodlands and it was a really cool camp

00:12:54.820 because it had been built by the ccc core in the 1930s so it had all these little um log cabins

00:13:04.260 with stone fireplaces dotted all along the hillside trails everywhere and very very kind of

00:13:11.140 very you would say norwegian very northern european feeling and um you know we bring in people again

00:13:17.940 literally from around so we get maybe 60 people 70 people to those quite a few kids do our own

00:13:24.580 meals and do all the things that we're known for now but it took quite a while to get there too

00:13:30.660 that was about a 10-year span between the time we really began and started doing our big events

00:13:36.020 so um it felt dynamic it felt really wonderful and of course in that time in those early years

00:13:42.260 not only were we doing all this but that's when the kenwick man

00:13:46.580 uh saga i'll call it the kenwick man saga that began in 1996. so that was very early on in the

00:13:52.500 the whole Alstroo Folk Assembly to have the Kennewick Mann situation pop up like it did.

00:13:59.580 And that dominated a lot of our lives for several years, which is very exciting.

00:14:05.860 How long did that run, the AFA's involvement with Kennewick Mann situation?

00:14:11.600 Well, it started in 96. He was discovered in late July of 96. And by a month later,

00:14:20.040 it was just very strange you know you could say somehow weird happened and things fell into place

00:14:27.360 and we happened to have people up there where he was discovered or very close to it

00:14:31.720 who um we had a lawyer friend we had thorgrim was up there a friend thorgrim was building a house

00:14:37.920 there next to our lawyer friend and we had other people up there and and so we had these contacts

00:14:44.920 that just made it all kind of flow together and um so it started basically like august of 96

00:14:52.440 and was kind of reaching a height around 98 um because we were very involved trying to call

00:14:57.240 ourselves kind of tribal they've got tribes we've got tribe you know and so that's what we were

00:15:01.560 pushing on the department which was a department of the interior we were actually in the justice

00:15:07.640 apartment up in portland one time and um kind of sequestered the the indians the tribes were over

00:15:14.600 on one floor and we were on another and we had to come up with plans for how to move his bones from

00:15:21.720 where they were in over by kenwick um the patel laboratory up to seattle because they were going

00:15:28.760 to go to the museum and be basically permanently interred until they decided what to do with his

00:15:33.480 remains and so we were all part of that process you know how does this get done what are the

00:15:39.080 the standards that we want everything to be maintained and um and we ended up being right

00:15:46.280 there they actually had to do an inventory and that was one of the most exciting things was to

00:15:50.680 actually be you know six feet away from kenwick man laid out there all of his bones getting

00:15:56.200 measured and weighed and put in bags and all that we got to be there and uh we have some wonderful

00:16:02.520 pictures from that time was very exciting by the time 1999 2000 came around we were kind of out of

00:16:09.480 money uh in fact it all been by donation you know the government had over a million dollars put into

00:16:15.240 it we had you know a few thousand but we did well and we had uh kenwick man coins that we were

00:16:22.120 kind of peddling at the time and um uh we just we got to the point where we just could not maintain

00:16:30.920 it anymore and he just by that time Kennewick man was sequestered he went into the kind of a cool

00:16:39.080 vault there at the Burke Museum and was placed there until such time as he had more testing done

00:16:45.080 and they eventually determined that he was closely most closely related to one of the tribes so the

00:16:50.840 tribes ended up getting his bones and they secreted him away and buried him someplace where no one

00:16:56.840 knows and so that is the end of the kenwick man's story and i doubt if there will ever be anything

00:17:02.280 more because i don't think he'll ever be removed from that location but there might be others as

00:17:09.800 well you know it was at the same time that cheddar man was being the same exact time same month um

00:17:16.120 and we were actually dealing with that particular um anthropologist who had done the analysis on

00:17:24.520 cheddar man and uh so we were in touch with a lot of interesting people at that time and we always

00:17:30.840 said we just want his dna tested we don't know if he's related to us but let's find out and that

00:17:35.480 was our story that was a good one we have another question for you a monetized one from tanner

00:17:43.240 thank you for your donation tanner hey sheila good to see you on the show what are the biggest

00:17:48.760 changes in also true that you've seen through the millennium and now that we're in the 20s

00:17:55.880 that's weird to say that now what are the biggest changes recently

00:18:04.440 oh my goodness um well of course probably the biggest change occurred in 2015

00:18:11.480 when we were doing a lot of our standard events at camps and we were doing very very well with

00:18:17.160 that and bringing people from even other parts of the country but it was discovering uh what became

00:18:24.440 odenshoff it was actually the old grange hall there in brownsville and um it was the right time

00:18:31.960 the right place the right amount of money for us and our budget in california things it just

00:18:39.560 literally it happened within hours after leaving mid-summer 2015 and that changed everything it

00:18:45.960 just did i mean it made it so that we now have odenshoff and i really thought that odenshoff

00:18:52.200 would be it i thought that was such an important change who could imagine going on from there

00:18:57.800 but once matt uh came in and you know steve and i stepped away for a while and steve's

00:19:03.480 still doing his own things um uh with that matt's vision was in a way much bigger than we had been

00:19:11.320 we were kind of making those tiny little steps and Matt took us leapfrogged forward so that we have

00:19:19.400 impressive leadership we have this structure in place everybody knows what the role is

00:19:25.080 um as folk builders what we're supposed to do the godhar program is excellent um every two weeks we

00:19:31.160 get together with godi spawn and you really get a very heavy deep lesson on the lore which i find

00:19:37.880 very enlightening and it is just it's not casual anymore it is serious and it is a church and

00:19:44.840 there's no doubt that i do consider it my church i mean we would never have used that term before

00:19:51.080 you know i kind of use in fact we had austral community church we were doing

00:19:55.160 in the late 1990s and that was at a local library and we called it that because we were trying to

00:20:00.520 draw in some of the public we were getting a little bit of notoriety and paper uh yule and

00:20:06.120 things like that um we really didn't bring anybody in except for one wonderful guy but um but it still

00:20:12.840 felt really odd to use that that name i'm comfortable with church i know other people

00:20:18.040 really prefer temple and to me temple was always kind of like a jewish temple and i'm getting used

00:20:23.880 to that now um but it's taken me a while but church i could deal with and of course because

00:20:29.880 we're doing the food pantry out in odin soft we were the first ones to start one the best way of

00:20:35.640 kind of explaining it to those people has been to use the word church and in fact they call it

00:20:40.280 us the viking church that is one of the terms that the people that i deal with at another

00:20:46.040 non-profit they just said well it's the viking church and you know they're kind of getting the

00:20:50.440 odinsoff thing but those who don't really know the name because it just hasn't settled in do

00:20:55.560 see it as that and they realize that we have a different approach to our religion than the

00:21:00.680 christians there but those are some of the big things uh the afa um now we have four four half

00:21:08.040 some more to come um again i think our leadership um structure is just perfect for the growth that

00:21:17.800 we intend to have and how everybody is working together and that was the other thing for a long

00:21:22.600 time we were pulling people together who um all profess to be also true but we have what we call

00:21:29.240 also true light you know it was that that kind of very flexible way of looking at and matt has

00:21:35.400 always been very very precise in his wording i think we all know that when he does his monthly

00:21:41.000 chats and he answers so directly and i appreciate that i always learn from those i'm sure everybody

00:21:46.680 does but um that conciseness of language is what is really in place and makes it clear so it's

00:21:52.920 it's never ambiguous you know really where we stand we get that

00:21:59.240 Excellent. So we've got a tip from Roy. Five dollars. Roy, thank you. We much appreciate it. Greetings from Monroe County, Georgia. Last overnight stay on my way to New York's Hoff dedication at a campground in heavy rain. Drove one Thorshoff distance today. Half of that left to go tomorrow.

00:22:19.960 Well, that's exciting. And I'm looking forward to seeing you. I'll be down there. I'll be landing in Jacksonville at noon on Friday. So looking forward to that. That's going to be amazing. Anybody who can make it, if you guys don't know, on Saturday, we are doing our official dedication of New York's Hoff in White Springs, Florida.

00:22:39.180 so if you can you still got time to figure it out if you want to be there i'd love to see if you can

00:22:46.120 if not it's not going anywhere so make sure to check it out i want to address a couple of things

00:22:52.180 i see going on over in the chat um first we're not going to stop building hoffs we're going to

00:22:57.620 keep building hoffs forever because victory never sleeps secondly um you guys talked about

00:23:05.360 how great it'll be to have Hoffs to our goddesses. It will be amazing to have Hoffs

00:23:09.440 to our goddesses. Please know that is part of what we're doing. We have a very specific

00:23:13.260 order that we're going in. We will get there and we will have

00:23:16.940 Hoffs dedicated to our goddesses, I promise you.

00:23:23.980 Looking over at the questions.

00:23:30.620 Oh, okay. I think this is in reference to the

00:23:32.940 Kennewick man's story. The story is epic. Wow. Is there anything created about this on YouTube?

00:23:39.900 Wow. Truly, truly epic. Are you aware of anything? Yeah. Well, I actually, Steve and I have done

00:23:50.620 a, basically a PowerPoint presentation we put together for Odenshof Midsommars. So we have

00:23:57.260 our own pictures. We have our storyline pretty much there. But the one place where you can see

00:24:01.960 a really interesting um look back in history was a video that was made by channel 4 in england and

00:24:11.320 they came out here in 1998 and they traveled through the northwest so they met all the key

00:24:16.040 players up there dr james chatters and they talked to owls layout at the smithsonian and all these

00:24:22.120 people and they tried to tell the story but it was also kind of like a docudrama you know how

00:24:27.320 those things go but it was very very well done i mean we loved it but they came out and they spent

00:24:32.440 time with us and um it was back if you start looking into kennewick man you'll see it was a

00:24:38.840 time when we were wearing garb steve would dress up in garb i made a really pretty black velvet

00:24:46.600 tunic for him and you know the hammer he still wears i made for him just prior to that

00:24:52.360 and um and he'd always wear his black or his blue cloak and he'd use that for his altar and all those

00:24:58.680 things you know there was a lot of um a lot of tradition we put into this i mean that was how

00:25:04.680 we were doing things back then but besides that they did come out they actually um we marched

00:25:10.600 into an area where we did bloat on our property at the time and we allowed them to videotape an

00:25:16.200 odin bloat and you'll hear the harriet father song in it we would never do that again we realized

00:25:21.400 that was a mistake that um our bloats blowtar should be kept private and so we don't do any

00:25:29.240 videotaping at any bloats anymore sometimes stills but not not a videotape but it's still it was a

00:25:36.120 lot of the great stuff um you know our viewpoint was expressed by steve and they did a great job

00:25:42.520 asking on questions he got to explain truly um what we were after why we were concerned how we

00:25:49.160 thought we might be connected um so many other places kept saying we thought he was a wandering

00:25:54.680 viking we never said that of course that's what the media wanted us everybody to think

00:25:59.640 so we again got a lot of flack for what we were doing in fact a lot of um

00:26:05.160 also true at the time actually took the sight of the indians and they even convinced the

00:26:10.600 Asatrufalag over in Iceland. And was it Yomadur Ingi, who was the head at that time? He actually

00:26:19.380 said he thought it was wrong for us to be involved in the case, which is really strange because he

00:26:23.180 knew nothing about it. But they told him, say that, say that. Said the AFA was bad to do this.

00:26:28.460 And he went along with that. But so anyway, as for what to see on video, even through Amazon,

00:26:35.360 on they have Homicide in Kennewick.

00:26:38.520 They have shortened the whole original time.

00:26:43.060 It was like an hour and a half,

00:26:44.080 it's down to about an hour now,

00:26:45.320 but they still get Steve plenty of time in that

00:26:47.940 and you can hear his views.

00:26:49.640 And it did end, it was 1998,

00:26:52.360 so it was still a few years before they came to a conclusion

00:26:55.360 as to what to even do with Kennewick Mann.

00:26:57.880 But it gives an idea of who the key players were

00:27:00.360 and why we thought he might be related to us,

00:27:05.840 ancestrally out of Europe.

00:27:07.140 There was the Solutrean stuff,

00:27:08.460 you guys probably all know about that.

00:27:10.540 And of course the Beringia land bridge,

00:27:12.580 and now we're finding Northern Eurasians

00:27:15.320 were part of the migrations over here.

00:27:17.420 And those are also our people.

00:27:19.060 Ours went West and they came East.

00:27:21.540 And so it's really a very complex story.

00:27:23.920 We knew it was, and we pushed on it.

00:27:26.100 Homicide in Kennewick available through Amazon.

00:27:29.020 And we actually have the full CD and probably will make copies sometime.

00:27:33.100 It was actually bought by the Discovery Channel.

00:27:35.560 They bought it from Channel 4 and they were going to show it.

00:27:38.720 It was going to be here.

00:27:39.600 We were told a certain date it was going to be out.

00:27:41.260 And guess what?

00:27:42.120 It went into a dark hole.

00:27:43.660 It never appeared.

00:27:44.840 They would not allow anybody to see it because it was so controversial.

00:27:48.900 So it never got shown.

00:27:50.380 And somehow Amazon brought it back.

00:27:52.400 And it was the full one there for a little while.

00:27:55.380 Now it's edited, but it's still okay.

00:27:57.940 So anyway, kind of fun.

00:28:00.020 You get people together, do some popcorn, have a beer, root beer, whatever you want, and watch that.

00:28:05.580 And you get to see some AFA history.

00:28:08.880 Good deal.

00:28:11.260 Oh, we got $25 from Folk the Rude.

00:28:15.380 Thank you.

00:28:16.120 You've donated every time we've seen you on here for the past several weeks.

00:28:20.340 I appreciate it.

00:28:21.960 You are on your way to Florida.

00:28:23.500 What time does everything start at the Hoff?

00:28:26.460 The man you want to reach out to is Lane Ashby.

00:28:29.460 Lane Ashby is our folk builder, one of our folk builders in Florida,

00:28:34.500 and he's been really taking a lead on this off.

00:28:37.840 This is very much his baby, and I know he's taking care of the scheduling events.

00:28:42.620 I can't tell from his screen name, so I apologize.

00:28:45.340 If you are already a member, awesome.

00:28:47.320 If you're not a member, just go ahead and contact Lane and have a conversation with him

00:28:53.960 so he can give you the official go-ahead that it's all good.

00:28:57.700 And I'm looking forward to seeing you there.

00:29:01.660 Excellent.

00:29:02.260 Thank you so much, Nick, for popping the address up there.

00:29:05.320 And if you can't get Lane or if anything goes strange,

00:29:07.900 please feel free to email me, mattflabel at runestone.org,

00:29:12.560 and I will help you also.

00:29:15.680 I've got a question from Sarah, again, with another $3.

00:29:18.720 That is much appreciated.

00:29:21.340 For Matt or Sheila, let's do Matt and Sheila, because I like this question, and I think Sheila

00:29:26.140 is the perfect person to answer this question. Since the AFA is growing especially,

00:29:32.620 okay, since the AFA is growing especially, what are some ways that keep the personal

00:29:38.620 slash family aspect of the AFA so our folks don't end up feeling like numbers?

00:29:44.300 do you wanted to go with it i do but you know what to to lay the groundwork one thing that

00:29:52.860 has always i mean man i i've had the pleasure working with sheila now for for many many years

00:30:00.620 and when i first joined as a folk builder up to this very day it has always always amazed me

00:30:06.620 how sheila is so amazing at knowing our membership knowing the most you know intimate you know who's

00:30:14.220 this guy's you know who somebody's dating what sports their kids are in she knows the family life

00:30:22.380 of so many of our members and it's always really impressed me sheila is amazing at seeing

00:30:31.020 all of these folks as truly members of our afa family so what advice you have about that sheila

00:30:36.940 what do you got my goodness well it's usually the single people who are kind of hesitant to

00:30:43.820 come out and i always tell them that when you come to an afa event it should feel like you're

00:30:49.500 coming home should feel like family i say that over and over because that's the way i approach it

00:30:54.380 i really go out of my way to make people just come in and blend in children come in and find

00:31:02.540 other kids you know so they're feeling very much a part of it um one thing we did now i actually

00:31:08.700 had in my notes after looking at listening to Rob's thing this morning was Matt insisted that

00:31:15.580 throughout COVID that we continue to be together that we gather at Odin's Hof every month I think

00:31:22.060 there was one month we really couldn't because of quarantining other than that we did we had

00:31:27.500 well over 100 people to mid-summer 2020 and it continued with 2021 we never wore masks nobody

00:31:36.540 ever got sick we were still passing the horn you know but it should if somebody had wanted to wear

00:31:41.740 a mask they could have nobody would have faulted them for that because there could have been of

00:31:45.500 course reason they can do whatever they want but that was so good because it let our families know

00:31:52.460 that you are you're in a healthy environment you know we want you and your children to come and

00:31:59.660 interact and meet other adults and other children other families and share so we really have grown

00:32:07.020 in terms of families it used to be that we would have events and it was a lot of single people and

00:32:11.340 a few kids and now odinsoff sometimes will have 40 kids you know that's not too unusual easily

00:32:18.540 20 to 30 on a just a typical monthly event but um i think we're doing obviously you need to bring up

00:32:29.180 Austria Academy. I mean, I should have done that before. What are some of the changes? Obviously,

00:32:34.540 Austria Academy, which, you know, we're just on the threshold of that. So exciting to see that

00:32:39.560 all taking place. And I think that's going to make such a difference for our families. I just

00:32:45.380 can't imagine, even as a teacher for 30 years in the public school system here in California,

00:32:50.180 I can't imagine putting my kids in any kind of an urban type school. I know that sometimes the

00:32:58.160 rural schools are still very traditional. I actually taught in one, but not all are. And

00:33:03.220 I would never put my kids in a school with a lot of indoctrination. So I totally support

00:33:07.820 that. And I think that more families, we have babies being born all the time. They're going

00:33:12.020 to find their way to AFA because of the Alstrew Academy. And it's going to be a wonderful place

00:33:17.840 for them because it's going to be the kind of childhood that we grew up with, you know,

00:33:23.020 playing with kids, going out and playing, having fun, staying out late, all those things. Plus

00:33:28.140 get to add our religion our lore our practices our traditions our holidays and that just it binds

00:33:37.340 everybody so you know it's i the question i think is is very important um the bigger that we grow

00:33:48.700 it is more of a challenge you know you there's a certain number of names you get in leadership to

00:33:55.100 where it does become difficult for any one person to know very very personally each one of those

00:34:02.140 members but we try as best we can and that's something that we really rely heavily on our

00:34:06.940 gothar and our folk builders to do so that's one of the good things about them is that they're that

00:34:12.620 local face of the afa but it's a two-way thing so our folk builders are the face of the afa to their

00:34:20.460 local membership but they're also the face of that local membership to the rest of us

00:34:25.820 and they let the go thar and and up to me know when a member's going through something or when

00:34:31.820 somebody has a has a need or when somebody needs to be reached out to or just when somebody's got

00:34:36.540 something going on so we try to be very very connected with that um one of the things that

00:34:43.340 women have always done so well and our ladies in the AFA really excel at is networking with

00:34:50.540 the other women in the AFA to build those connections and to build that web of families

00:34:57.180 that know each other and that share with each other. I know that Sheila has always been amazing

00:35:01.980 at that. Mandy helps me so much by, you know, keeping me informed about, you know, the goings

00:35:09.260 on with individual members and their families and what everybody's got going on um yeah no

00:35:15.420 i don't want anybody to ever feel like a number the attitude that sheila talked about about

00:35:21.660 welcoming people in his family and them coming home um that was so important to me when i joined

00:35:28.140 and i'm doing my best to do justice to that it's one of the nicest things that i can hear from a

00:35:34.540 member is that they felt like they came home when they joined the afl uh roy thank you for three

00:35:41.180 dollars and he wants to give us a little bit of clarification on what a thorshoff distance is i

00:35:46.700 just defined one thorshoff distance as 20 000 feet which is 378.78 miles and a bit short of my actual

00:35:58.060 distance to the Hoff. Already left for Njortzhoff on Monday and have been camping. Well, I really

00:36:04.780 appreciate the pictures that I've seen of that too on you and your camping adventures. Looking

00:36:09.660 forward to seeing you this weekend. Got some other questions stacking up here.

00:36:19.340 Okay, this is one that we get often. Is it right for pagans to call it a church?

00:36:28.060 It's useful and it's practical. And I don't think it's wrong. I think that if we were in a in a complete bubble, then you could call it whatever you like amongst yourself and your small in group. But what's so important about communication is clearly conveying an idea.

00:36:47.320 and when you refer to and i should specify there's two separate things there's the building

00:36:53.800 and i don't ever refer to the building as a church it doesn't offend me if somebody does

00:36:58.120 but i always refer to the building as a hof so that people can learn what that means and what

00:37:04.360 that is but i call the afa as a international religious body a church because that word means

00:37:14.760 something um certainly in the united states and again i don't know where everyone's joining us

00:37:19.080 from tonight so linguistically it could be very different in your country with local

00:37:23.400 connotations in the united states though a church has a meaning and there's no other

00:37:30.360 there's no other word for a religious body that carries the same meaning or that's as familiar to

00:37:37.640 where people understand what you mean and within christian churches there's such a diversity that

00:37:44.040 nobody associates church with one particular sect of christianity it already is is diffused a little

00:37:50.840 bit that way but it's really the thing we found that's been most useful to convey what we're doing

00:37:56.840 a lot of that comes in play with legal things with situations at work with hr or whatever

00:38:02.680 else when you're describing to somebody who doesn't know what's going on oh me and my

00:38:07.160 pagan religious group are getting together this weekend, so I need the time off. It doesn't have

00:38:17.220 the same impact as telling your boss in the United States, oh, I'm going to church retreat this

00:38:21.540 weekend. The one has a meaning and a built-in respect in our legal system to where the other

00:38:27.800 one doesn't. And it has a built-in understanding by when you're trying to explain it to friends,

00:38:33.100 to family to anyone else when they ask you oh what church by all means tell them the astro folk

00:38:38.540 assembly and explain explain as much as they want to hear but to specify that we are doing something

00:38:44.860 specifically religious protected and important church is the best word we have for that i'd also

00:38:51.900 like to point out that it's not a hebrew word you know it's perhaps a german word perhaps a greek

00:38:59.180 word i think the greek word tends to get the most play but either way those aren't uh those

00:39:05.740 aren't hebrew words those are those are arian words true um could i just add something you

00:39:12.940 know amongst ourselves amongst ourselves we always say the word hoth like it's always going to the

00:39:17.900 hop we'll meet you at the hoth that is the way we do it amongst ourselves but again when i'm talking

00:39:23.100 outside the people within our hoff and typically in our community of brownsville i will sometimes

00:39:29.580 refer it as or write it up as the odenshoff church other times it's odenshoff odenshoff

00:39:35.580 food pantry so trying to let them see that your church does not have to be attached to it for it

00:39:41.580 to be our food pantry odenshoff food pantry makes sense too but i agree with matt it really comes

00:39:47.980 back to the idea we kind of researched it the fact that our ancestors gathered in a circle

00:39:54.460 in the woods you know it's the way we do in which we still do at odenshof we do all of our ritual

00:39:58.780 most of our rituals outside until we got our odin's altar but um with that it's standing in

00:40:05.260 a circle and so it's the circle circumvent circum circumstick you know um circumnavigate

00:40:13.260 all those ideas of going around um so it's it really fits very well and it was used with the

00:40:21.900 idea that that's what our people did they gathered in a circle so it goes back to kirk you know circle

00:40:27.660 and kirk and all those things that we hear about anyway so i'd like to add just about the circle

00:40:35.260 esoterically it's really nice to reinforce that too a circle doesn't end it's that

00:40:40.460 endless cycle of connectivity between the participants and that's fundamental about our

00:40:46.620 any of our ritual structure is completing that circuit connecting each other in a bond that

00:40:53.260 that's eternal and i think that's really important um sierra wants to say hail githia mcnalen we love

00:41:00.940 you so much with a little smiley face with hearts all over it uh thank you sierra one of our folk

00:41:07.740 builders katloa wants to know i've heard a lot of talk about using the runes are there any other

00:41:18.220 forms of magic that you both use or you know others commonly use in the afa let's go ahead

00:41:25.020 and take a swing at that first sheila oh you know we always hear about things like scrying

00:41:30.620 and all those old folk forms of divination you know i i don't really know of anything

00:41:40.780 that people do we use runes a lot um there's also safe work and other groups have kind of done it

00:41:47.660 but in not a way that makes me comfortable because sometimes i had men doing it and it somehow felt

00:41:53.900 very wrong um so we've never really had saved koinas or vulvas in the afa as much as we would

00:42:00.780 like that would be another form of tapping into the deep mysteries i think most of us use runes

00:42:08.140 pretty much consistently um but you know we have other things sometimes people will just set the

00:42:14.620 mood with candles and sometimes incense and those things that can just contribute to the setting

00:42:21.260 but generally speaking i think it's ruins that's what i would say what do you think matt

00:42:26.540 well you know i think so too i don't want to short change the question but to give it a little

00:42:31.500 bit of a little bit of extra um runes are so there's something that so many of us are very

00:42:41.820 familiar with at least the general concept of them and the values for certainly the the elder food

00:42:48.220 arc that i think we superimpose runes onto all kinds of rituals that we do in different ways

00:42:55.980 so i think you know in a different time and place if you ask you know do we just do rune magic or

00:43:02.940 other magic maybe that would imply that that was for uh divination through the runes and that's

00:43:09.100 certainly something that a lot of people do but you can apply runes thematically to so many other

00:43:17.660 magical things that you do um i'll say this we've uh myself personally but also others in the afa

00:43:25.660 will do healing rituals but very often that involves galdaring runes and it's a very different

00:43:34.300 kind of magic than interpreting runes that you pull for a divination a divinatory purpose

00:43:41.180 but we still incorporate a rune in it because that's such a powerful touchstone for us magically

00:43:47.660 um we'll do rituals where you will um attempt to to affect the outcome of something from a distance

00:43:55.520 either by yourself or connected with a magical chain that way but often we use runes as a medium

00:44:02.520 to project that or as a the rune itself being the sigil if we do sigil magic so

00:44:09.100 we use runes in a lot of different ways for a lot of different magical functions

00:44:15.760 but I can't honestly tell you of something magical that's not runically connected that

00:44:22.600 most of our people do. Another thing is people in a magical way will carve runes into things

00:44:31.200 with a certain power. That's also a completely different thing than divination, but it does

00:44:36.960 still in corporate rooms. So hopefully that gets close to an answer for you.

00:44:44.020 Another question, but okay, by the way, the Telegram group hasn't been posted anything

00:44:48.580 in a long time. May I ask why? Yes, you may. And there's no, there's no big exciting reason.

00:44:57.020 We migrated most of our interaction from Telegram to MeWe, I want to say like a year ago or

00:45:05.460 something i could be off on my times but probably since the last time you saw that group being

00:45:10.100 super active um it was a better format for us to interact in group and that's what we were trying

00:45:18.500 to do um but moving from the one to the other it's taken focus away from keeping that published

00:45:26.100 right as a matter of fact we had somebody reach out today to volunteer to try to revitalize that

00:45:32.100 group and make sure it still looks active and that we put more more content in it so i'll try to try

00:45:37.940 to move on that here with that volunteer but no there was no no crisis or anything it just we

00:45:44.340 moved over to a different uh different service and telegram got kind of put on the back burner

00:45:50.420 i'd like to add something too the problem with telegram for a lot of us is the fact that people

00:45:55.220 use fake names and you never know who you're talking to and in fact here um on this chat you

00:46:01.060 know a lot of you have used really clever little names that that you you probably are not known by

00:46:07.060 outside of of these chats that matt is doing perhaps you're using them but i don't know who

00:46:12.020 you are so a few people i know sarah i know sierra but it's it makes a difference if you know who

00:46:19.460 you're talking to so that's one thing we did with me we is that everybody has it's very clear who

00:46:24.500 you're talking to at all times and i really personally appreciate that it just clarifies

00:46:29.380 everything you don't have to there's no mystery a little more inside baseball to that and i i know

00:46:34.740 a lot of people like a lot of functions on telegram and this isn't a criticism of the

00:46:39.380 of the platform but more of how our people were using it especially when and there's obviously a

00:46:45.780 time and a place to have a cool handle or whatever this is a perfectly fine place for it but what we

00:46:51.780 were trying to use it as was a place for our members to build relationships and talk with

00:46:55.620 each other if they were at distance and we would get a couple of um

00:47:04.100 socially deficient people that would get in there and be very very contentious

00:47:11.860 and the trouble with the running stream of chat is that by the time we were able to moderate it

00:47:18.340 a big problem had already metastasized and we ran into that a few too many times so that's

00:47:23.620 why we decided to make the move um so that's a little bit more to you know what we were thinking

00:47:28.900 about it um brandy says githya mcnellen i was very happy to be a part of a morning ritual at

00:47:37.540 charming of the plow this year with you and mr mcnellen uh yes is there any part of your daily

00:47:43.780 outs to practice uh you would share yes well that is what we do um my husband and i started

00:47:54.500 probably two three years ago doing a morning ritual we have a beautiful uh view of the rising

00:47:59.780 sun we can actually watch the sunrise from midwinter to midsummer you know the solstices

00:48:06.100 we get to see the progression along every every day how it changes and we go out on our deck and

00:48:12.740 And we actually do Brimhild's, her speech from the Cedrifamol.

00:48:23.240 So it's hail to the day, hail to the sons of day, hail to night and stutter.

00:48:28.040 And we do that together.

00:48:29.000 We take turns.

00:48:29.920 Steve does it one morning.

00:48:30.820 I do it the next.

00:48:31.440 And then we have this really very touching thing that we would never not do.

00:48:36.780 We even did it.

00:48:37.600 We went camping this last week, ended up at Lassen with four of our friends.

00:48:40.780 and we did it and we faced the sun and we did a greeting to the day and we did it and so we always

00:48:47.120 uh we do we galder we we clasp our hands and we um we galder uh gaybo it's what we do we just go

00:48:55.540 gaybo together just intoning perfectly and then we switch and we do um it was which is the

00:49:03.400 partnership and we do that also clasping hands and we end with a hug and that's how we start our day

00:49:09.760 And it's really a beautiful confirmation of who we are and our relationship and how we want to make it the most positive day we can together.

00:49:22.160 And it works.

00:49:23.500 And I encourage other people to do such things.

00:49:26.760 So thank you for asking about it, Brandy.

00:49:28.980 We're not embarrassed doing it in front of people.

00:49:31.020 And we also did it at the Hoff last month.

00:49:34.260 We did a greeting to the day.

00:49:35.720 And Steve and I always finish that.

00:49:36.980 And other couples can do it, too, if they choose.

00:49:38.960 But it's what we do.

00:49:39.760 so we got a question from tanner he wants to know what steve has been up to lately

00:49:48.640 oh steve is for a lot of you know that he has a um a system that he came up with that he calls

00:49:58.480 the three cauldrons and it's about very much like chakras but it's three places of body where he

00:50:04.880 works runically with it in galdring and and and actually there are two wounds associated with each

00:50:11.440 of those three cauldrons and uh what's really cool is the last one up here on his head he actually

00:50:18.960 has a tattoo of the trihorns that we have the afa trihorns is there on his top of his head

00:50:26.160 as that that onsous connection with odin um so he's doing that he's putting his what was his

00:50:33.200 masterwork with the room guild and he's putting that into book form as a practicum so that people

00:50:38.400 can actually apply the principles in their daily practice um he is oh my goodness um you know he

00:50:47.680 does his own personal um gonna live forever because he has too much to do so he works hard

00:50:53.920 at taking care of himself going to the gym eating right getting exercise and all that kind of stuff

00:51:00.800 and um you know he's he's got a new website there we go and in fact tanner helped us with that and

00:51:07.040 so stephenmcnallan.com if you guys are interested we put in a lot of the old articles now um and

00:51:14.160 we're selling steve's book there too um so if you want an autograph version you can get that

00:51:19.280 and we're just launching that now and tanner was great helping us do that and also voton network

00:51:24.240 same thing which is also something that steve when he basically retired from the afa he started

00:51:29.760 doing voton network and that you know he went obviously was the things he didn't do while he was

00:51:36.480 running the afa because he focused much more on that but he kind of had that free reign to

00:51:42.560 do a little more self-discovery um when um matt took over and so voton network has been one of

00:51:50.320 his projects all along and there's a website that tanner is also developing for that so um anyway

00:51:57.280 those are some of the things he stays very very busy believing and we still try to get a lot of

00:52:02.080 time in for ourselves because that's really important supposedly we're supposed to be in

00:52:05.360 retirement doesn't really feel like it we work pretty hard but um anyway okay all right so uh

00:52:14.480 finn would like to know what does the afa think of members who have family members who are

00:52:20.080 christians or atheists in family members who might not be okay with views on things like race

00:52:26.640 are you allowed um i'm gonna try to get at the meat of the question certainly certainly if we

00:52:32.240 have mem i think probably all of us have family members that are not also true at this stage of

00:52:42.080 of australia's development um in a perfect world obviously your whole family would be devout

00:52:49.760 Ausatru are and everything would all match up and it would be fantastic. But we understand that,

00:52:56.040 you know, for almost all of us, we're first generation Ausatru. Very few of us have the

00:53:04.140 honor of being second generation Ausatru or that being part of the family tradition we've been

00:53:10.900 raised in. Now, more of us today than certainly, you know, decades ago, and that gets better every

00:53:16.300 day. We have families born in a day. But, you know, we realize that people are going to come

00:53:22.060 from places where their family will have religious and political. And it's hard because I don't think

00:53:30.240 that race is just a political issue. It's more than that. But people will have issues with,

00:53:36.540 I don't even think the issue is with things like race. I think the issue becomes

00:53:41.420 the politicization of things that have to do with race. But we all have family members that

00:53:48.080 disagree with us politically and religiously. And I think that, you know, that's a very normal

00:53:54.740 thing, even if it's unfortunate. So certainly, you know, not only are those folks allowed,

00:53:59.780 I think those folks are the vast majority of our membership have those family situations.

00:54:03.820 We would encourage you to help bring your family to Ausatru. We would like to see the families,

00:54:13.780 and we have seen this. People will join. Their family will see the example they've set and see

00:54:20.520 the life they're living, want to know more about it, will eventually join and join the AFA. I can

00:54:25.920 think of several families off the top of my head. People have ended up bringing their parents to

00:54:32.480 Ausatru have ended up bringing brothers, sisters, cousins to Ausatru. It's harder if you're talking

00:54:40.760 about family members, if that family member happens to be a spouse. That's very tricky

00:54:46.140 sometimes. It certainly can be. I know there's a lot of folks that find themselves in that

00:54:50.460 situation. I'm very, very fortunate that I met Mandy through Ausatru, so I'm not in that situation.

00:54:58.840 um but the more we can get uh spouses on the same page religiously and on those core values

00:55:06.360 i think the happier and the the better of a situation that is

00:55:10.280 but no those kind of things choices that your family members have made don't prevent you from

00:55:16.280 joining the afa uh tanner wants to know sheila what are some of the things happening throughout

00:55:23.400 the alsatru movement that you're excited to see and what would you like to see more of in the near

00:55:29.240 future oh well we've had conversations with tanner i know he's interested to see music um

00:55:40.120 especially musicians we know music written i know we have a fellow another tanner he's up

00:55:45.240 in washington state who works with a lot of german music um i think there's some real potential there

00:55:50.840 um you know my my focus is always afa and particularly the odensoft district because

00:56:00.600 um it's very vast if people don't realize it also includes alaska and australia and new zealand

00:56:05.680 and western canada as well as the western part of the u.s and um i feel like i'm kind of running it

00:56:12.700 but um but that's fine you know it's it's hard to sometimes for other other leaders to be able to do

00:56:20.320 what I have. I do have time. It occupies so much of my time and I love doing it and reaching out

00:56:25.980 to my people. But I think that there is, you know, there are things happening out there

00:56:31.460 with others. And I think the AFA still has great potential. This coming event that we're going to

00:56:38.820 be doing for Freight Faxing, we're actually bringing back a little bit of live music and

00:56:44.460 our folk builder, Ashley Stockton, is going to be singing for us. And our kids love singing,

00:56:49.840 so we'll be doing that around the fire and i think just building in a lot more culture

00:56:54.560 we can certainly do that in the afa we're seeing more of it certainly with people who are gifted

00:56:59.200 artisans more than we ever have before that's wonderful it's now time to really kind of up

00:57:05.200 the ante with our kids make sure that they're getting heavy doses of wonderful traditional

00:57:10.240 things like music art all those kinds of things that will be in place for them

00:57:14.320 do you think that regular camping trips could be held for those without reasonable access to a

00:57:23.280 hoff well absolutely they can be that all depends on the folks you got in your area and who wants

00:57:28.640 to do it um you know most of most of us who've been around and involved with house to true

00:57:36.160 before 20 all of us who've been involved in house to true before 2015 didn't have access to hoffs

00:57:41.760 and you know many people still don't have very reasonable access to it even though we have four

00:57:48.360 now that gets better every year but so many of us started out um doing outdoor things be they in a

00:57:56.420 park or be they you know out in the woods camping I know growing up in Alaska that's certainly

00:58:02.240 something I did a lot of starting out was those kind of camping hiking rituals and we would do

00:58:08.060 those in all seasons of the year. And Alaska can be unforgiving in particular seasons, but there's

00:58:13.280 many times we'd hike, you know, in the snow out to different spots in the woods or up on mountains

00:58:19.000 to do bloat and to do various rituals. So, of course, that could happen. It all depends on

00:58:24.400 where you're at and who you can get together with and how to make that happen. If it's something

00:58:27.980 you're interested in seeing in your area, I'd suggest reaching out to your local folk builder

00:58:32.380 and trying to arrange something like that happening. We love to see that. That's fantastic.

00:58:36.780 yeah i'd also like to add that a lot of people don't have a folk builder nearby

00:58:41.500 but in any district all the folk builders are there for you you reach out to them reach out

00:58:46.700 to the godar in your district and it we can arrange for somebody to to um to host an event

00:58:56.140 whether it's at a park or a camping trip or something else who is not in leadership it just

00:59:01.740 we want to know how it's done and give guidelines and kind of keep an eye on it but it doesn't

00:59:06.780 require a folk builder to do that so long as you're working through a book builder so you could

00:59:10.780 you could actually host um plan a camping trip with you know four or five people and have a

00:59:15.980 great time and hopefully somebody would step up to be a folk builder we need more of them

00:59:21.820 yeah absolutely folk builders you know we through the magic of the internet our folk

00:59:27.020 builders are very good at being able to help arrange stuff even if it's at a great distance

00:59:31.020 from them so that's always a really good resource to use um is anyone familiar with the author helen

00:59:38.140 a uh gerber yeah i am not are you sheila no i'm not all right apologies i don't have anything to

00:59:50.220 really add on that i'd be interested to hear if other people do know about that author um

00:59:56.460 um when did you become alls harrier gothe matt uh officially i became alls harry gothe at midsummer

01:00:04.440 of 2016. and so yeah six years now six years yeah it seems it doesn't seem like it was that long

01:00:17.400 go. Yeah. Time is flying. Absolutely. It is. This question is Sarah for you, Sheila. During the

01:00:26.900 bloat, as you walk around the circle with the horn, you place meat on the forehead of the

01:00:32.520 children. Can you explain what you are doing during this? Well, we do. Sometimes it's done

01:00:43.540 with a fingertip sometimes it's done with the the the sprig of evergreen that we were carrying

01:00:50.700 around the tine the um piece of greenery but it is it is a blessing you know we're all taking part

01:00:58.740 in the circle and inviting the wonderful spirit and blessings of the god or goddess to be with us

01:01:05.560 and we're also doing our own offerings to them of course the offering comes first and then we

01:01:09.520 receive the gifts from them but in giving out the gifts of course we want to be able to share the

01:01:14.240 mead with our children as well and um so typically we have meat in a horn sometimes there's water in

01:01:21.360 a horn and some places might even have two horns so that they have one with non-alcoholic maybe

01:01:26.400 apple juice or something and of course kids could take a drink of that but generally speaking

01:01:32.400 children are not going to be drinking mead until they get old enough to really understand what

01:01:37.200 they're doing and i think that there's just that blessing is is given to them just as it's

01:01:44.640 sprinkled um on the rest of the the people in the circle it's just a way of acknowledging

01:01:50.400 their presence and the fact that they are important to the whole

01:01:53.520 it is as matt says it's a circle we don't want it to be broken

01:02:00.080 i tend to be a big fan of splashing the children in the eyes with the me

01:02:03.680 it's not done on purpose, but it seems to always happen when I'm making a circle.

01:02:12.220 Okay. So, Matt and Sheila, got any advice for aspiring young men and women of the folk

01:02:21.560 looking to start families of their own? Sheila, go ahead and start us off.

01:02:26.780 Well, I would definitely recommend that you get out and meet people, try to attend local events because that person you might be seeking might not be there, but might be associated somehow with the people who are there.

01:02:44.420 I mean, it's do not isolate yourself. You've got to get out ideally and try to meet people.

01:02:51.300 You know, we don't have any kind of a singles group. Those have never really worked for us. And I would say it's such a noble endeavor to want to find a mate, build a relationship, a beautiful relationship in the model of our gods and goddesses, and to try to raise family with it, that I think you also can do your own personal ritual to it.

01:03:17.000 You know, have an altar, light a candle, talk to Frigga, Freya, Frey, Odin, you know, as to help give guidance and make things happen in your life.

01:03:28.760 And to do anything like that with a sincere heart can't hurt.

01:03:33.500 So try to get out, meet people, go places, you know, hiking groups, clubs and kind of mix the meat.

01:03:43.180 And obviously, I would say don't get in a relationship with somebody if you can't be honest about your religious views.

01:03:51.740 That's so important. I realize it's very tempting to try to do that.

01:03:57.180 But, you know, if you're serious about a mate who will be also true with you and support your your also true practices, do wait till you find somebody who you think will be compatible with you in that way.

01:04:13.180 You've got to have that religious foundation if you're going to have a family, especially if you're seeking it.

01:04:18.700 So that's what I would say.

01:04:20.860 You know, I would also everything Sheila said.

01:04:25.020 Absolutely. I would push harder on that.

01:04:29.920 Sometimes situations happen in life or there's a friend of a friend and you meet up or you you have that magical love at first sight moment with somebody.

01:04:39.380 And that is what it is. But if you're actively searching where you should be searching is within the AFA.

01:04:45.740 Find you another AFA member. Don't be afraid of distance.

01:04:51.120 It it sounds. It sounds difficult hearing it, but I've seen a lot of relationships in the AFA work very well that originally started at a great distance.

01:05:04.100 I met my wife at winter nights in the Poconos in Pennsylvania.

01:05:09.740 And at the time I lived in Alaska and she lived in Florida, literally as far on this continent as you can be from one another.

01:05:18.560 And, you know. Now I've got to try to math again.

01:05:22.860 So now we've been together, been together a long time.

01:05:26.500 We've been married five years. We've got a beautiful daughter and we've we've built a life and a family together.

01:05:34.100 all through meeting through the AFA at a great distance. One of the other benefits that we have,

01:05:40.600 and this is something with other, you know, religious communities and churches, that's a

01:05:45.580 thing. We have a network of women that can help behind the scenes get people. Now, that's not

01:05:54.080 foolproof, but it's nice instead of just going out, you know, going out to the world and casting

01:06:03.540 a line out and seeing what happens it's so much better to build your reputation within the afa

01:06:11.140 for what kind of a man or what kind of a woman that you are and let the people within the afa

01:06:18.260 see that value judge you by the things one should judge a mate by and watch that happen and we've

01:06:26.820 had that a lot too so i think the key to success and another thing i'm assuming the person asking

01:06:32.900 the question or wanting to know is a man and that may not always be the case there's some ladies

01:06:37.940 that are shy that that maybe don't have that circumstance but the the recurring problem

01:06:43.780 is that you know there's more single men than are available single ladies um that problem is better

01:06:51.060 now than it's ever been in the afa it continues to get better but the women in our afa family are

01:06:59.140 going to be the best bet at arranging those things and making those connections behind the

01:07:03.860 scenes to help that to happen and they do that so i would just encourage you to be very active

01:07:11.460 meet people talk to afa members across the world and see what happens but we this is a really good

01:07:19.620 time for it it's been way better now than it ever has been and there's plenty of success stories so

01:07:24.740 it's it's a real thing may not happen as fast as you want but it's very real that it can happen

01:07:32.260 i just want to add one more thing be your best self i mean be a person who shines and somebody

01:07:38.020 wants to spend time with you um they see you as the ideal mate for them and that's not impossible

01:07:45.940 you know we all can step it up and a lot of people are kind of sloppy in their way

01:07:50.340 and if you're really serious you're going to kind of uh do a metamorphosis into a greater

01:07:56.500 self than you have been and that will be very attractive when there aren't any women out there

01:08:02.340 absolutely uh what books would sheila recommend i have some books that always gets asked so um

01:08:13.780 because i do things with women more i do have one that i like um actually met the lady who this is

01:08:22.420 where are we we're right there alice carl's daughter and it's north north goddess magic

01:08:27.700 it had a different name originally um and this is uh where she goes into details about uh 12

01:08:34.340 goddesses minor goddesses that you really only hear names about that she did trance work and

01:08:39.700 things like that again some of those things one can do meditation and transfer but it does it

01:08:46.820 works really well for women because it outlines various situations personalities and things like

01:08:53.380 that that women can relate to and i find it very useful and yeah it's quite inspiring

01:09:00.500 Another one is

01:09:03.560 Odin's Wife

01:09:05.060 I know that one

01:09:06.540 By William Reeves

01:09:08.620 People always ask about

01:09:12.640 What you like for the Eddas

01:09:14.060 We have this one which is James Chisholm

01:09:16.720 And it's a beautiful book

01:09:18.980 We treasure this one

01:09:20.580 And it's a nice version

01:09:22.180 Over the weekend

01:09:24.320 We were talking a lot because we are

01:09:25.940 Doing a lot of phrase stuff

01:09:28.540 Coming up at Odin's

01:09:29.580 at odin's hall for freight taxi and so um the pork column and he he wrote he died in 1917 no 1971

01:09:38.300 but he wrote um really nice basic kind of primer stories and of course doll layers is nice and i

01:09:45.820 have at least one more thing oh nor smiths you know i was going through this again today this

01:09:51.180 one by uh crossley holland kevin crossley holland and i went on amazon and you can get this book for

01:09:56.540 seventeen dollars and it's very similar to children of odin it tells the stories the various

01:10:03.020 stories of our gods and goddesses um but he also goes in a little bit more detail on origins of

01:10:08.780 words you know breaks them down and there's more background so it's it's much better geared to

01:10:14.380 adults i think and those are just some that i would recommend uh don says uh githya sheila

01:10:24.780 wonderful desir bloat at winter nights 2018 in the poconos could you could you recommend some

01:10:32.140 ways to connect with uh desir for those who may not have had such good relationships with their

01:10:43.660 well anybody who knows me if you ask me what my hobby is uh first and foremost i'd say genealogy

01:10:49.100 i've always done it um i was raised with the sense that you're irish you know it right you

01:10:55.340 know it was one of those things and um when i became an adult and had means to start going to

01:11:01.420 live well anyway i started searching it and i love the idea of family trees

01:11:07.660 if and you can do free ones online if you don't want to get an ancestry.com account but the nice

01:11:14.380 thing is you can start building in the stories of these various ancestors you'll see what they

01:11:20.220 lived through the times they lived through um you know what they did for a living how much money

01:11:25.820 they have and yeah it's really hard sometimes when we have close relatives that we've known

01:11:31.100 um mothers fathers for that matter who have been terrible at parenting and i know people have that

01:11:38.940 and so my thing is it's okay to skip a generation you can leave those people beyond but know that

01:11:44.300 you've got is we always say winners back in that line or you wouldn't be here today those people

01:11:49.740 who forged a life for themselves who went through all sorts of setbacks and and travails in their

01:11:55.580 lives but made it and had children and raised those children and here you are and we are we

01:12:02.780 really have to think about we are a composite of all those ancestors and it is wonderful to

01:12:08.700 acknowledge them um you know you can certainly do an ancestors altar and one thing even is to

01:12:16.460 look into your ancestors and see when they're born and when they died and so you have a birth

01:12:21.100 and a death date if you want to do special acknowledgement of of your grandmothers on

01:12:26.860 the days that they were born or died and connect with them and do a special offering and call on

01:12:33.580 their connection their support their love and um guidance in your life i think i really feel very

01:12:40.540 connected that you know that makes us different than other forms of also true um where and i've

01:12:46.940 been at some things where you you go to some kind of maybe it's a wedding or something else

01:12:51.260 and it's simply about the gods but in the afa we've always had this integral part with our

01:12:58.460 ancestors we know we wouldn't be here if it weren't them for them and in fact we are them

01:13:03.340 and we're doing what they did and so this continuum that we have is is essential to how we look at

01:13:10.880 also true and how we we practice also true and and have developed our belief system within it

01:13:17.800 and our confidence that this is the right way for us so loving your ancestors and looking into that

01:13:25.520 and learning their stories and all those things are important and share it with those relatives

01:13:30.720 around you with the young children or with your cousins or brothers or sisters when you find

01:13:35.160 interesting stuff um keeping them alive you know telling the stories and um they will never really

01:13:42.300 die so long as they're remembered so there are some good people in your line mothers and fathers

01:13:47.700 you know i again it's such a the details matter so much on why the relationship wasn't good

01:13:58.100 um but i'm trying to think of the best way to put this

01:14:03.780 if we're very sincere that we believe that our ancestors hear us when we go to the altar when

01:14:13.660 we pray to them. If we believe that they exist, I have to also believe that they have regrets

01:14:26.280 about relationships that didn't work the way they wanted and that they maintain an interest

01:14:31.040 in their families. I'd like to think that death is a big enough life change that it

01:14:39.320 makes you reevaluate folks. I know that often it makes living people reevaluate the relationship

01:14:47.080 or lack thereof that they've had with members of their family. Once that person's passed,

01:14:52.480 I have to assume that on the other side, your family member might be feeling the same thing.

01:14:58.220 I think there's value in trying to mend those relationships. And I think that after someone

01:15:05.740 has passed, perhaps both of the people are in a emotional place where that's something that

01:15:12.440 they're more inclined to do. And I think there's a value in making that effort either way.

01:15:17.260 But again, the details matter. It's just something to think about. Our ancestors living on and

01:15:22.700 looking on from beyond the veil isn't just something we say. It's something that we

01:15:27.420 internalize and we believe. And if you believe that and you think of it in that way,

01:15:35.040 i think it opens up some possibilities that maybe other people wouldn't think of

01:15:41.440 um okay i wish the site uh human manipulation nation again thank you you're always on here

01:15:49.120 you're always asking questions and we look forward to seeing you on here i'm glad you're with us

01:15:53.680 i wish the site in the poconos was still active i'm in central pa uh has the hoff site been decided

01:16:01.840 upon western pa or ohio so first a site no because we're still a little ways out um i've been updating

01:16:15.120 that with our uh runestone even this last month on how close we're getting we still have you know

01:16:22.400 we've already paid off i believe 35 percent of the total value of new york's off which is fantastic

01:16:30.640 for this you know this far in but it does mean there's still i got a math it means there's still

01:16:36.960 65 percent that we do need to come up with before we get there um and there's some other benchmarks

01:16:42.800 we need benchmarks we need to hit before we get there so it's a little bit immature to look at a

01:16:48.640 specific site but as far as a general site you're right western pa or uh ohio and realistically

01:16:56.560 if i was betting on it i would bet somewhere in ohio um but again we'd like to keep it close to

01:17:02.320 that ohio pennsylvania border so that's that's where i'd be that's where i am aiming for uh phrase

01:17:09.280 hoff going uh arranged marriages when um first that's not such a terrible idea when you if this

01:17:21.200 if and it's followed by laughing and i know that we're we're being lighthearted with it but in a

01:17:25.600 serious way of families arranging it with children i think we're quite a ways off from that

01:17:32.800 in a way to where friends and family start with serious matchmaking i think we're right there

01:17:40.480 right now um so yeah that would that's one of the really cool social functions in western culture

01:17:50.240 of so many religious communities and churches is having that um family built around core values

01:18:00.640 that works together to help help connect people that otherwise aren't connected and it's a very

01:18:07.040 real thing so if you want some help arranging that you should reach out to sheila and i'm sure

01:18:11.360 she may have some ideas can you pull some strings or shake the free and see what we can

01:18:16.720 it's going to be fun we have with all these babies being born and we have that balanced

01:18:20.880 male and female i mean it's going to happen there's no doubt you know 15 years from now

01:18:25.600 we're going to start seeing some of that with all these children so it's yeah very possible

01:18:31.760 absolutely uh sierra says githya mcnellan you do so much for the folk and for the community

01:18:37.680 how can we ever repay you

01:18:38.960 oh my goodness you know i never came into it expecting to be repaid of anything

01:18:47.200 you know i've said to uh people sometimes you know let folk builders know if they do something

01:18:52.720 that you appreciate or they write something and that's always nice to get recognition

01:18:59.040 i am not expecting anything more than doing my job and doing my job it's not really a job it's

01:19:06.080 you know i've said it this is my life's work um i couldn't stay away from the afa i retired from

01:19:11.520 teaching i actually taught the whole time we were doing the afa and i tried to juggle them both and

01:19:18.080 i'm glad i don't have to do that even though i'm going back to austere academy but um you know

01:19:25.120 i'm not a person who wants to draw attention to myself i love having help

01:19:30.080 um i love having parents come in and take charge of a lot of things we need more of that

01:19:36.640 probably at every hoth certainly at oden soft we have parents come come up with ideas um help us

01:19:43.280 do things for our kids i would love that those are the kinds of things i would like to see

01:19:47.680 more involvement by our membership and um we have a lot of work to do on the hoth

01:19:53.760 um known soft it's it's an old building and it needs a lot of work so you can show that show

01:20:00.560 appreciation to me by coming out and working side by side with other good people

01:20:07.840 sheila do you prefer larger or smaller events

01:20:15.440 well it's hard to say you know the really large ones i will have to say midsummer and you will

01:20:20.880 because i'm so involved in the planning of it it um it's not nearly as relaxing so for me they're

01:20:29.740 not nearly as fun i know for a lot of people they're just blown away by being around so many

01:20:34.380 people lots of rituals lots of talks um you know feasting together all those things we have

01:20:40.480 um and that's really important um i really i like the size uh gatherings we have at odens

01:20:49.500 hoff right now we have typically 25 to 30 adults and you know 15 kids sometimes 20 kids it's a

01:20:56.000 really nice size uh very manageable and it works whether whatever the weather is we can be inside

01:21:02.620 outside that kind of thing so it's kind of my preference i would say it makes uh everybody

01:21:07.100 can mix and mingle with those two it's too small it just you know it's fine for a small event like

01:21:13.760 a camping trip but i think when you have a hoff you kind of want to fill it with people

01:21:17.120 It needs that energy. There's. Yeah. So that's what I would say. Probably a moderate size gathering is the best, but one that has some planning to it and structure.

01:21:27.580 All right. I'm going to take a break from questions for a second and talk about something that.

01:21:33.080 just is. So we had a member who passed away recently. And every time that happens,

01:21:45.440 it, I think, naturally makes some of us think about death and think about

01:21:52.600 just things related to that. And I figured this would be a good time to mention this.

01:21:59.040 Nick's got a link for you guys, but I want to encourage everyone on here to do your will.

01:22:07.820 Not only to do your will, but to do your will and to send a original copy to our law speaker, Alan Turnage.

01:22:21.280 There's a couple of reasons and a couple of things on this.

01:22:23.980 So as the AFA has grown from time to time, we have members that pass under a number of different circumstances.

01:22:32.700 Sometimes these are our elderly folks that it's just their time or a sickness that they know about takes them.

01:22:40.220 Others are much younger and tragic circumstances occur.

01:22:43.960 but very very few people seem to have their final will taken care of um i know especially

01:22:56.580 with younger people it's not something you want to think about that's way down the road and i

01:23:01.020 really hope it is for you but it's really important to me that all of our folk get

01:23:07.100 that they get their wishes respected after they pass, be that with whatever kind of funeral

01:23:15.060 service they have, with whatever happens to their remains and with the distribution of their assets

01:23:21.720 and things like that. I've seen a lot of things go a different way because as we mentioned earlier

01:23:27.060 in the broadcast, a lot of folks have family that are opposed to what we do or that just don't take

01:23:33.220 it seriously. I've seen a lot of people not being honored in their death the way that they wanted

01:23:40.380 because they didn't have that squared way. So whatever you want, again, this is not me plugging

01:23:47.540 anything for the AFA or for anything else. This is completely open-handed, open-hearted.

01:23:54.920 Do your will and let us know so that our law speaker has a copy of it so that if you should

01:24:02.200 pass we have some legal document to help inform your family on what your wishes were uh it's very

01:24:11.160 important i can't stress it enough and so many people and i was like this for a long time i was

01:24:16.520 scared of you i don't want to go to a lawyer and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on writing

01:24:21.160 up a will and man maybe i'll get to it sometime and you know any number of excuses uh the site

01:24:29.320 that nick posted um now i'll mess it up if i try to say what the site is but anyways you'll post

01:24:37.160 it again the deal is with your own will do your own will.com see it's pretty simple but i still

01:24:44.360 needed it um luckily we got sheila here the i looked into it it's free it's absolutely free

01:24:52.840 and i asked for our law speaker to look at it and again this may only apply to

01:24:57.080 folks in the United States, other people listening to this. I know that Do Your Own Will was looking

01:25:04.220 at some international things, but I can't speak to that. In the United States, Alan is an actual

01:25:10.820 attorney that deals with financial matters and other things. And he looked into it and he says

01:25:16.840 it looks completely legit and legally binding. I've timed it. I've done a couple on there because

01:25:23.460 wanted to do some revisions it takes 10 minutes 10 minutes it's absolutely free we found the website

01:25:30.660 for you please do your will and please send a copy to alan um it's something that i've been

01:25:39.540 thinking about lately and i just really want to encourage you guys to do that and so with with

01:25:45.060 that i talked to sheila earlier today about something we wanted to talk about because it's

01:25:48.500 It's, you know, so far it is unique and it's a really special benefit that we get with having

01:25:54.160 Hoffs. Sheila wanted to talk a little bit about the cemetery that we have at Odin's Hoff.

01:26:02.460 Sheila, can you kind of give people some background on that?

01:26:04.740 Yeah, sure. We have quite a nice piece of property. There's a large parking area,

01:26:12.040 but to one side of it between the parking, the gravel parking lot and the road,

01:26:16.480 there was kind of a scrubby piece of land and we decided that would be a perfect place to set up a

01:26:21.580 cemetery um it's separate from kind of a ritual area but um it looked like would be perfect and

01:26:27.860 actually matt and others went out and they pasted off and figuring out like a three by eight foot

01:26:33.740 section which is what we've envisioned um we figured out i forget how many the plots there

01:26:41.900 be but plenty and uh we actually started using it a couple of years ago um and the first internment

01:26:50.220 there were ashes um from our our godi thorgan odin and his wife katie thompson their daughter

01:26:58.540 passed away about probably 12 years ago and she was also true if she was anything you know she

01:27:05.020 would come to our events and all that and uh they decided to do a formal internment we did that at

01:27:11.020 midsummer a few years ago and they've planted they've maintained the plants there and all that

01:27:16.700 and then we had another fellow who unfortunately it was a um a very unplanned uh death and a very

01:27:27.320 tragic one and his friends got together and decided now we're going to really do something

01:27:33.380 nice with the cemetery and they arranged to put up fencing so we have very nice black wrought iron

01:27:40.040 fencing all the way around encompassing this area so you will see that um it's actually on

01:27:47.240 the the site findagrave.com you can go there and see the odenshoff cemetery

01:27:52.280 in brownsville california so go take a look you'll see our two current uh interments there

01:27:58.280 and again we only use ashes at this time if for some reason we didn't have ashes a person could

01:28:03.720 certainly set up a headstone which we have headstones for each of these people but we're

01:28:08.200 not going to be able to under the circumstances do a full coffin with with uh someone's remains

01:28:14.120 in that but it's still this is it's a beautiful thing we're not asking any any fee for this you

01:28:20.440 know you compare that to any cemetery anywhere else which is multi-thousands of dollars and we

01:28:26.520 just would like to have you try to help us maintain it you know arrange for your own headstone kind

01:28:33.160 of thing i have a cat on the table here she's trying to get to my wine uh kitty anyway um

01:28:40.600 but we're ready for more internments and i know that they're also talking about these

01:28:45.320 at the other hops and they're going to be doing a columbarium is that what it is matt where it's

01:28:49.720 one of those more vertical uh concrete um boxes basically it's not box it's a a unit where you

01:28:58.040 would have section off and people's remains being there and again with some kind of notations who

01:29:04.920 who who that represents so people can come there and acknowledge and give honor to those who pass

01:29:11.800 it's very exciting that we have this um it came much faster than we thought we were going to

01:29:16.920 and but it was perfect timing and so far um two people are there and just keep that in mind again

01:29:24.040 if you do your will and you would like to have your remains and a memorial done at thor's off

01:29:30.200 or new york's off or aldershoff put that in your will and we can make that happen if it's not there

01:29:37.080 it might not happen at all so it needs to be in writing and i think matt i think it needs to be

01:29:43.240 notarized am i right i thought i asked and because we have will let's state you're in on on that and

01:29:50.840 we can ask alan but when i say an original copy if you have just two or three of them or whatever

01:29:58.200 you need so that certain people in your life have them you can get those signed and notarized all at

01:30:04.200 the same time and have those completely binding uh some states require you to notarize other states

01:30:10.120 do not yeah yeah so again get the will get it to ellen and we can give you his address um and uh

01:30:20.360 do consider about what you would like for your memorial service and where you would like to have

01:30:25.080 your remains end up uh as ashes or whatever you want that kind of thing and we're just very proud

01:30:31.000 to be able to offer that i mean that does make us feel again as legitimate as any other religious

01:30:36.680 uh church organization i mean it has moved us forward in that regard we take care of births

01:30:44.040 we take care of deaths we do baby namings all those things where we can do anything that the

01:30:48.920 folk need and that's uh i think that goes back to the question of things that we do to make sure

01:30:57.400 that our members aren't just names in a database that they're real people is we want the afa to be

01:31:05.800 there for you in all points in your life you know we want to be there to help with the pregnant ladies

01:31:14.280 and to you know send a baby blanket to the new baby and participate in the baby naming and perform

01:31:20.520 your wedding and when it comes time perform your funeral and take care of your remains forever

01:31:28.360 we want to be there for you guys literally forever because that's what family is

01:31:34.280 And that's really important to us. Tracy asks, have you seen many romantic relationships develop

01:31:41.080 in the AFA post-divorce? What is the AFA's stance on divorce and in parentheses, oath-breaking?

01:31:54.600 I'm trying to, I think I probably overthink the questions. A lot of us in the AFA, myself included,

01:32:00.600 have been divorced before and have found, you know, have found love again within the

01:32:10.200 Astro Folk Assembly. And that's happened a lot. I'm trying to think of examples of people who

01:32:16.080 were a couple in the AFA, got divorced, and then started new relationships both within the AFA.

01:32:24.080 And though I'm sure that's happened, I'm not thinking of a good example off the top of my head.

01:32:28.660 But no, we have a great many of us in this day and age don't start out with the right match when we get married the first time, unfortunately.

01:32:41.100 And that just kind of is how it is.

01:32:45.380 What's the AFA stance on divorce and oath-breaking?

01:32:49.620 That's terrible.

01:32:51.140 Divorce is terrible.

01:32:53.500 Oath-breaking is certainly terrible.

01:32:55.520 I'd like to specify, though, that oaths are almost always contingent on a set of agreements.

01:33:05.020 And it's not always a case of one side just up and breaking a marital oath.

01:33:13.240 Sometimes it is.

01:33:15.360 But oftentimes it's the process of disintegration of some of the core things that were the basis for that oath to begin with.

01:33:23.820 And I'd also like to say that oaths, typically, it was acceptable to dissolve oaths if both parties agreed.

01:33:33.200 I think that sometimes people get a very rigid concept in their mind of what an oath is, but fundamentally it's a contract.

01:33:41.500 And if both parties agree to separate, I don't feel that's oath breaking.

01:33:47.140 Uh, you know, if the situation changes and stuff happens, I saw this over in the side, but sometimes divorce is the best thing. And I, I don't ever, you know, don't, don't quote me that, you know, Matt says oath breaking is okay. I don't, but you do have to take a measure of is staying in a relationship that's not fulfilling to you.

01:34:12.020 and that's not fulfilling to your partner, and that's perhaps unhealthy or unsafe

01:34:17.600 for the next 40 or 50 years, is that a better solution than trying to sever your oath with the

01:34:30.240 most, you know, pay some shield, which, you know, is another thing when you've done something wrong

01:34:36.680 you do something to try to make it right and to move on with your life. But I don't think we

01:34:43.620 should martyr ourselves on oaths for decades upon decades of our life that aren't helping us or

01:34:51.600 anyone else for that matter. I think that the real answer is to think more carefully on the oaths

01:34:58.460 that you make and to not make binding oaths to things, don't make permanent oaths to impermanent

01:35:05.800 situations and maybe consider that before you enter into some of these kind of oaths but um

01:35:14.280 i mean that's not the rosy version but it is the honest version of where we're at with that

01:35:19.720 i think one thing we're seeing with afa couples those who are practicing and believers in our

01:35:27.240 gods and our way that those are tend to be pretty solid relationships i think there's

01:35:32.520 there's much less uh discord and uh separation with our with our families it just really is

01:35:40.840 pretty rare compared to the regular population so i think a lot of us who have gone through divorces

01:35:47.000 it was prior to being also true for one thing and we weren't with with a maid who was compatible to

01:35:54.040 our lifestyle at this point and what we believe so yeah we move on and we we do a better job this

01:36:00.600 next time is what we must do so we have a um a super chat question from lawrence thank you i

01:36:08.280 just noticed one of our earlier questions was also in canadian dollars for 25 canadian dollars

01:36:13.160 thank you lawrence we really appreciate it very informative and interesting it leads to something

01:36:21.800 i've wondered about for a while i always thought cemeteries and burial was a judeo-christian

01:36:28.360 tradition and that cremation slash ashes was a pagan slash heathen maybe i have it backwards

01:36:37.000 one of the things is when you deal with our folk over such a long span of time you see those kind

01:36:44.600 of traditions ebb and flow um i think if you have to choose one where like if you have to pick one

01:36:52.760 that's very indicative of christianity certainly burying the body is if you have to pick one that's

01:37:00.040 thematically very indicative of of also true i would say that cremation is but one of the things

01:37:09.480 that i think there's some misnomers on what happens after cremation um a lot of the time

01:37:17.080 people will see the idea of a big funeral pyre and then that's the end of it and it's not or

01:37:24.760 think that maybe they just took the ashes and scattered them somewhere very often over top of

01:37:29.640 that pyre they would then build the burial mound um very often they would collect from the pyre

01:37:36.440 they would collect the ashes into urns in fact burial urns for ashes were one of the defining

01:37:43.160 characteristics of our people in prehistoric times talking about their different urn shapes

01:37:52.200 so urn burials are a very ancient thing uh amongst our folk i think that it will become iconic

01:38:00.920 certainly since the prominence of odin to do uh cremations and the idea of your your soul being

01:38:09.240 released and going up to the gods in an instant as opposed to a during a long process of of

01:38:17.080 decomposition um i don't think but because our people have gone back and forth so many times i

01:38:24.280 don't think that you know it's some sort of a heresy to be be buried in a in a casket um

01:38:31.320 i do think you know if i had to say what the preference is i think that cremation is certainly

01:38:37.000 a much more ousetre way to do things but again i don't think there's a hard line on that um

01:38:44.760 and i think this is a good time to throw this in um

01:38:52.760 burial of bodies implies other environmental concerns that states and municipalities may

01:39:00.760 be more involved in regulating one of the reasons that we

01:39:07.000 decided to be strictly earns at Odenshof is it frees us from some of the restraints of having

01:39:13.320 to jump through particular hoops but it was also very important to me that we had you know full

01:39:19.000 size burial plots there because space to accommodate it so nobody feels short changed and

01:39:23.720 they get a full size a four by eight plot with whatever burial marker or monument you or your

01:39:30.200 family wants to have on that um we plan on entering ashes on the grounds of all of our other

01:39:37.160 hoffs as sheila mentioned at balder's hoff because of its position in in a neighborhood and with a

01:39:43.560 small lot that's going to be done in the form of a columbarium but a beautifully done one um and

01:39:49.800 that'll be you know a first for us but yeah any of those hoffs isn't options if that's something

01:39:55.720 the folks want to do with their remains like to have one more thing is that um i think a few of

01:40:02.760 us when we were young were at funerals where people use added grave goods and it's perfectly

01:40:09.000 fine to do that at all of our burials all of our memorial services um so whether it's a letter

01:40:16.280 written to someone or or a weapon or jewelry or whatever you want it is very traditional to that

01:40:22.520 we don't throw the cat in and we don't you know that kind of thing but uh definitely things that

01:40:28.760 um remind you of that person and again to send them into the other world um into hellheim into

01:40:36.040 the hall of the ancestors you know with some tokens of love that go with them so it's more

01:40:43.320 for us than for them but still it does it kind of makes everybody feel more involved in the process

01:40:48.920 so yeah at uh at adam's adam's grave there was a lot of grave goods that went in uh it's something

01:40:56.840 to think about in a situation like baldur's off of the columbarium the the space allotted will be

01:41:02.360 much less i mean anything that's four foot by eight foot we could technically put in in the

01:41:09.000 hole at odenshoff it'd be a little bit different situation at baldur's house so sierra asks being

01:41:17.640 a woman who does so much for the community and the church how do you do it all

01:41:26.360 well um it helps that i have helpers and those helpers are my apprentice folk builders in this

01:41:32.120 area because um steve and i live about an hour and 15 minutes from modem's off so we would go

01:41:39.160 out there more often i would be there more often but it is a drive it's mountain roads and it's

01:41:43.480 expensive out here so we have to work together as as a team and we're really doing a good job with

01:41:50.440 that i think we're going to shine at fray faxie but i can't do it all i would never try to do it

01:41:56.760 all but i do need the help of the folk builders who are out here to assist because the role of

01:42:04.120 a folk builder is one to um again be aware of who's in your area what do they need um reaching

01:42:11.080 out doing wellness checks you know we were doing that for a while um encouraging that our members

01:42:17.000 to reach out to them if they need something and also to me i always try to do that i don't often

01:42:22.360 hear from people but occasionally i do and i love it um but you know i just i have to do it there's

01:42:30.040 a certain amount of work i do and it somehow fills my days and i love doing it but um i definitely

01:42:37.640 need others to help and that's just the way it is we're a huge we're a family but we're also

01:42:43.320 a wonderful network of people working together i will say this there is absolutely no one who's

01:42:49.480 done more for the afa than sheila the amount of the amount of man hours that sheila has put into

01:42:57.800 this that we have is staggering and to consider she's been doing this going full speed you know

01:43:09.320 28 years now with the ASA and we are so so very blessed to have that help Sheila thank you so much

01:43:19.560 thank you what is your favorite thing that you do for the community in Brownsville

01:43:27.800 Well, what we're really doing for the community where they recognize us and our role in the

01:43:35.900 community is the food pantry. And I'm just going to give a little background on that.

01:43:42.240 Brownsville is a relatively low-income area. We do have some retirees there who have left

01:43:50.240 Bay Area or whatever, but a lot of the people are living very marginal lives.

01:43:54.000 um there are very few schools there are very few resources and in fact it's all unincorporated all

01:44:00.260 those little towns out that way are all unincorporated so and it's way out in the hills

01:44:05.980 so the county seat really doesn't take care of them and it was evident to us when we got out

01:44:11.720 there and purchased odenshoff that it actually played a pretty major role in the community for

01:44:18.360 a long time as as a community center way back when and they would do dances and karate classes

01:44:26.360 and being on all sorts of things well we weren't going to do that but we did think that we did hear

01:44:32.920 that they needed a church to step up and help with some food distribution so for a couple of years

01:44:39.880 our people participated with the Yuba Sutter Food Bank which would bring a lot of food in

01:44:48.600 on a Saturday morning and we provided the space and also the tables and everything and the manpower

01:44:55.400 and being a Saturday morning we had a good turnout of our members over time they changed their policy

01:45:04.920 COVID came on and they decided that they were going to switch to Friday mornings,

01:45:09.880 early Friday morning. And of course, people are working and it was much harder for us to do that.

01:45:14.840 And then they decided they were going to, well, besides that, sometimes they would get there two

01:45:19.680 hours late. It was crazy during COVID. Everybody, of course, had to be masked up. But then they

01:45:24.740 decided, well, we're just going to change the location. And at that point, you know, it was

01:45:29.120 getting so frustrated. That was fine. And my attitude was, let's see if we can do it ourselves.

01:45:35.020 And I began looking around for other sources of food. And I found a group of, apparently they're

01:45:43.940 in other branches and other towns that the IFM, Interfaith Food Ministries, and they've been great.

01:45:50.420 They're actually in a different county, the county where I live, but they know that we're serving a

01:45:57.740 very needy community. And so actually next Thursday, uh,

01:46:02.180 Steve and I will go pick up a huge load of food and we'll take it out and bag it

01:46:06.020 all up on Thursday and get ready to distribute it Saturday morning. And, um,

01:46:11.260 we have people who come in,

01:46:13.420 sometimes people are brand new and they immediately get out their, their, um,

01:46:18.540 driver's license and their PG and E bill or whatever they happen to have,

01:46:22.220 because that was the requirement before when we were working with the USDA

01:46:26.420 food bank, they had certain zip codes. If somebody couldn't prove they were on the right zip code,

01:46:33.940 we weren't supposed to give them food. If they didn't have a picture ID, we weren't supposed

01:46:36.920 to give them food. We had literally homeless people who had no ID. And we kind of gave them

01:46:42.540 food that said, we'll try to get some ID. Tell us where you're living. Have somebody write a note

01:46:46.920 for you. It was horrible. So from the get-go, I said, it's open to anybody. You don't have to have

01:46:53.200 any ID. You don't have to prove where you live. You don't even have to be in Yuba County. We're

01:46:57.460 actually in also on the borderline with Butte County, which is where the town of Chico is.

01:47:02.880 Oroville is the county seat. And it's worked so well. Nobody has taken advantage of us,

01:47:07.840 undue advantage, because they've been wealthy people getting a little bit of, you know, two

01:47:11.740 bags of food. It's worked very well. And, you know, they grab at their purse to give us some

01:47:17.220 ID. I said, forget it. You know, just give me your name. I keep really good notes on who comes,

01:47:22.380 how many people in the family and i give that back to our source of food every month every month

01:47:30.140 and say you know we served 41 families which is 112 people kind of thing and they love that

01:47:35.420 information i give it to them right away and then they pass it to their higher up to their board or

01:47:40.380 whatever and shows that the food that we are taking and giving out in our county is making

01:47:47.180 a huge difference those people just can't believe the good fortune that we're there giving them food

01:47:53.100 and they love us for it a lot of people say nobody does what we do out there so i mean who could have

01:47:57.980 a better reputation than that in a town um we are our deeds i've always said that and some of you

01:48:03.340 have heard me say say that even on a recent balder's hopping we are our deeds and when i was a

01:48:08.460 teacher i insisted that kids understand that and uh we do we prove over and over and over that we

01:48:14.700 are genuine in what we do and we do have goodwill towards the people who could use some help so

01:48:21.820 and again we give to anybody um it's almost all white people but you know we obviously other

01:48:27.660 people can get food too we're happy to give food to whoever comes and we're not buying the food

01:48:32.780 it's gifted to us so we gift it on through the whole system so it's really been fun doing that

01:48:39.420 we also do we also do a harvest thing at halloween um last year we kind of got rained out but it's

01:48:45.500 open to the community and we also at you all of course sierra was here for that too we um we

01:48:51.420 collect toys we start doing toys in early december late late november and also gift cards and we

01:49:00.540 put them on tables we did it first year we wrapped everything it was way too much work

01:49:04.700 but we've simplified it because we have of course a lot more kids coming through now so anyway we

01:49:09.580 we give every every family like three toys per kid and they love that they've got cookies and

01:49:15.980 hot cocoa and all those things we do that um when we do the food pantry in december or

01:49:23.500 sometimes before anyway that's been a really nice thing for the community and we're they're just

01:49:28.700 starting to learn about that that we do but they do know us for the food pantry that we do every

01:49:32.780 month uh third saturday of the month so that's what we do and sierra knows it well okay next

01:49:40.380 sierra question what do you uh what do both of you what i'm sorry i can't read tonight what are

01:49:46.780 both of you most excited to see with the future of the afa sheila let's go first have you go first

01:49:54.140 um well i'm very excited to see the elster academy i mean we were talking homeschooling

01:49:59.260 nine months ago and it's all shifted to an actual program. And like I said, I think it is something

01:50:06.280 that's going to be essential for families in the future. It's a beautiful idea and it has great

01:50:12.580 staffing already. We have so many people taking on roles and we have, you know, right now it's

01:50:19.920 only kindergarten, fairly small number of people enrolled in it, but it will grow. And I think

01:50:28.220 it's going to be a wonderful resource. I really look forward to it because teaching kindergarten

01:50:32.580 was my favorite role. You know, I did everything from eighth grade to kindergarten and I have to

01:50:38.580 say I love kindergarten. So I'm very excited to be helping Rob Stamm with this as the assistant

01:50:47.180 dean of curriculum and I'm already starting to pull stuff just today that I would like to adapt

01:50:54.740 for our our own curriculum so it's very exciting to think we've got this and of course just the

01:51:01.580 continual growth we're seeing growth we're seeing people less fearful of being part of us and

01:51:07.040 understand that we're thriving they're thriving everybody who comes to an event feels so good

01:51:13.720 being there they don't want to ever lose that the connection that we all have and you don't get it

01:51:20.200 anywhere else. A lot of people are out there saying with the craziness of this world, and we're

01:51:25.420 looking at so many things happening in the future, some not too far off, what is really needed is

01:51:32.580 community. What is your community? We have no doubt what our community is. It is so clear and so

01:51:38.500 supportive and solid. And there's, the AFA should be here forever. There's no reason to think it

01:51:46.260 will go away. And I'm proud to be part of this part of it because, you know, in a way, we're

01:51:52.860 just beginning to take off. We've been in our infancy. We're kind of getting into adolescence.

01:51:57.820 Let's grow into being the potential of what we have. And we're not far away from that. It's

01:52:03.020 really looking good. Yeah, there's so much to be excited about. Trying to think of the stuff that

01:52:12.220 I'm willing to talk about at this point, because I've always got plans in my head. There's a very

01:52:17.300 special project that's probably going to coincide around the time we get tiers hoff, but I'll tell

01:52:22.300 you more on that when we get closer. Stuff that I'm very excited about is to watch those hoffs

01:52:28.860 continue to develop. It's amazing to me that we're, you know, we have plans for the next

01:52:34.800 several hoffs, and they don't seem distant, whereas just a few years ago, you know, it was

01:52:41.540 just a distant dream. And now getting another Hoff is a very reasonable thing for us to plan

01:52:48.540 and talk about doing. And we have a system of doing it. It's really nice to see that.

01:52:52.940 As Sheila was talking about, the AFA Academy, it's a little bit less flashy than a new Hoff,

01:53:00.200 but it's so very impactful. They're putting in such good work on that. I'm so proud that we

01:53:07.060 have that now. We're taking our first kindergarten class this fall. They are working hard to get

01:53:13.140 more age groups added as quickly as they can as far as getting the curriculum fleshed out.

01:53:21.220 That's really something I'm looking forward to is that generation of children getting that

01:53:27.360 experience and maturing with the AFA as a part of their education. You know, I'm excited that

01:53:35.340 they will be shielded as best we can from the degeneracy and self-loathing that is so indicative

01:53:42.940 of public school, but also so they'll be in an environment where they learn our values

01:53:49.220 and our faith, and hopefully they will grow into amazing members of the AFA when they get out and

01:53:56.840 get done i think that's such a huge part of as sheila has said growing up and and um advancing

01:54:05.240 as a as a faith is when we have those second third fourth generation house of true or

01:54:10.920 and we're getting to that point so there's there's a lot to be excited about right now i'm excited

01:54:16.840 about going to uh going to the dedication this weekend that's going to be an amazing thing

01:54:21.400 i look forward to seeing what those guys have done and all the love they've put into that off

01:54:26.760 uh matt and sheila how do i get started creating an altar what do you say to that sheila

01:54:36.360 um yeah first of all what is the purpose of your altar is it going to be to the gods and do you

01:54:42.600 have a particular god that you would like to honor you're going to rotate it depending on

01:54:48.520 the season of the year or your particular needs or is it going to be an altar to the ancestors

01:54:54.280 a lot of people do that they have a special one to the ancestors with pictures and artifacts and

01:54:59.400 things like that where they can pour a horn and again you don't need to have a horn and you don't

01:55:04.840 need to have mead you need to sincerely recognize and give blessing and honoring to those ancestors

01:55:14.120 to a god or goddess a lot of people will get a statue statuary that's not necessary you can

01:55:21.000 start with something very simple if you're on a tight budget again it all has to do with your

01:55:26.760 heart and your intentions i remember years ago we used to actually um when elsie christensen um

01:55:34.040 kind of gave up some of her work we took on a lot of that prison work for a long time

01:55:39.320 and I remember actually corresponding with several people who ended up coming into the AFA

01:55:45.620 and kind of moving up through the ranks. The one thing I would have never forgotten was some guys

01:55:53.260 who were incarcerated and they wanted to have some kind of a ritual fire. Well, they knew they

01:56:01.460 couldn't do it, but they were able to gather together some pine needles and with that they

01:56:07.300 wove the pine needles into a traditional old sun wheel the the kind of the primal sun wheel the

01:56:13.540 circle with the cross in it and then they all sat around it and they envisioned that just bursting

01:56:20.260 into flame that to me has stayed with me my whole life i mean how could i say that was not a real

01:56:28.340 experience and one that wasn't profound it was profound for them to have gone to that much

01:56:34.020 attention to it and to manifest that and then to describe it to others so know that the gods are

01:56:41.540 not going to uh have a checklist on whether you've done it right if you do it with a good heart with

01:56:48.820 good intention and again what we do is give a offering of some kind and and usually heart

01:56:56.820 tanned a horn or our truth our love our wish for well-being for our gods for them to to be able to

01:57:06.020 do their work in all the worlds and then to ask for a blessing if that's what we need or to ask

01:57:12.340 for guidance or to ask for intuition or whatever might be needed but again we don't just say give

01:57:20.100 me riches no it's not that kind of thing that would be kind of abusing the relationship but

01:57:24.820 but it doesn't take very much.

01:57:26.360 So you can get a drinking horn, you can have some mead,

01:57:30.100 but you could use spring water,

01:57:31.660 you could use fine apple juice or wine.

01:57:33.980 In fact, we were reading about how wine was typically used

01:57:40.680 in Scandinavia because it was imported.

01:57:45.080 And so offerings to Odin would be typically with wine

01:57:50.140 rather than with mead

01:57:52.280 because mead was the common beverage there.

01:57:54.900 So when we did open world prayer day yesterday,

01:57:57.200 we used red wine and that just felt right.

01:58:00.020 You know, it's what you do.

01:58:00.900 So again, it's your intentions,

01:58:03.180 but definitely plan it, execute it as best you can

01:58:07.120 and put your heart into it.

01:58:10.740 You know, I don't think I can put much more on it than that.

01:58:13.660 I think that the thing that I would add is do it, do it now.

01:58:17.800 Don't wait until it's perfect.

01:58:20.400 don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Ideally, it'd be great if you got your own special altar

01:58:27.140 table set up in the perfect spot and you're able to have statuary and the things that you really

01:58:32.880 want there. But until you get to that point, clear off the top of a bookshelf. Clear off the top of

01:58:40.600 a bookshelf. And if you just got a candle, set it up there. Don't let the logistics prevent you

01:58:48.720 from taking that first step the most important part is that you're doing it and the intention

01:58:54.400 of doing it so by all means make it beautiful make it elaborate make it your own make it as

01:59:00.720 special as you want over time but start today and look up to it don't don't let concern of doing it

01:59:09.120 the right way hold you back from doing it often and uh and right away

01:59:15.280 sierra asks githy mcnellen how do you how did you and steve meet and were you an

01:59:25.600 outsider when you met him i know you addressed this at the top yeah but for folks that weren't

01:59:31.200 there and maybe if there's i don't know something else you can add to it um

01:59:36.560 um yeah um steve and i met um early in my teaching career and i was 40 years old already

01:59:46.720 and uh in fact we're celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary this week but we have two we have two

01:59:53.300 wedding anniversaries um one that we did a legal one and the one before the folk um so that's

01:59:59.480 coming up our 25th in the next few weeks but um we we were both science teachers and that's how

02:00:05.880 happened to meet and he was not really doing anything else at the time he was just starting

02:00:11.400 to bring back the runestone magazine and some of those things and so he was kind of dabbling

02:00:16.920 at it and we got into conversations and he was telling me about it and again i did not

02:00:22.120 was interesting but i did not personally connect in any real way i was quite fascinated but you

02:00:29.400 know i was still kind of clinging to my old maybe i should be a catholic because that's what i was

02:00:33.720 raised with and uh you know but i'd really left it behind long before so that's how we we actually

02:00:40.680 met while teaching and working together with seventh graders um he did so i have to tell you

02:00:47.560 this um i actually saw him do ritual once and it was so unexpected it was more powerful than anything

02:00:54.200 i ever saw in the catholic church it was actually our first year we had gone out to the little

02:00:59.800 community a point raise we went to an environmental ed center and steve is a lot like me he's very

02:01:07.400 creative in how he teaches and he had decided that we were going to take the counselors who were

02:01:15.480 actually from our school that had grown up and were now in high school neighbor our

02:01:19.400 our high school counselors with our seventh graders and he wanted to put them through

02:01:25.320 um a particular ceremony to um highlight their role as not just counselors but as

02:01:37.320 basically trustees of that land and he did it because this place so we have to understand

02:01:43.400 point raises where the 1906 earthquake it was the epicenter of that is very powerful

02:01:49.800 and it's where sir francis drake supposedly took shelter in the bay there and then left a plaque

02:01:56.600 um in bronze and so i would always do things with my students with with you know writing and

02:02:02.680 metal kind of stuff but he did something called the order of drake strum and he uh he had the

02:02:10.680 kids all get up at daybreak and blindfolded all the counselors and marched them out in single file

02:02:19.800 out to the campfire circle and all the seventh graders were behind and the parents and everybody

02:02:24.780 was there, all the chaperones. We marched them out. And then he very seriously, he went through

02:02:31.880 this thing as a ceremony to imbue their spirit in that place with having them taste the water

02:02:43.180 from the place, having them feel the air with a feather on their cheek. There was a lit candle,

02:02:50.240 and I forget exactly what that was, but it was perhaps, you know, enlightening them and their

02:02:55.560 spirit, tasting a bit of the soil of the land. And then they would receive it. I actually hand

02:03:02.400 calligraphied a certificate for each one that we gave to them at the very end. And they actually

02:03:10.820 achieve the order of drake's drum and to me it was done very solemnly it was done with with

02:03:17.860 seriousness it did not invoke the gods but at all but it was still something that that had meaning

02:03:23.940 for those those kids many years later in fact probably about six years ago um we heard from

02:03:30.500 one of those counselors and she was living over in reno and she said you know i have traveled the

02:03:35.220 world she said if you recall i went up to alaska after i left california and she said when you gave

02:03:41.460 us all because we would give a little gift it was like a sand dollar and what she got a little bottle

02:03:45.780 of water from the pacific ocean and all those kids did that year and she said i have traveled with

02:03:52.100 that bottle she said i'm looking at it right now this there my bathroom and it's the one that you

02:03:56.980 guys gave me and i've carried it every place i've gone so you know it shows the impact we can have

02:04:02.340 on people's lives that we can raise everybody to a higher spiritual level um in ways that we don't

02:04:08.900 even realize and but it can be done and if we can do it without the truth that's ideal we still need

02:04:14.340 to show the exemplary people we are and bring good things into others lives and that's what we did

02:04:20.980 with that and i've never forgotten it i know those those kids who are now probably pushing their 50.

02:04:28.660 i don't know how old they are yeah probably about 50 now um i think it changed some of their lives

02:04:33.460 it was a really cool thing and so it was a very powerful because you know how steve does ritual

02:04:37.460 anyway it was kind of done with that that major um personal power into it was very very good so

02:04:45.540 kind of sold me on the idea of i'm gonna follow this guy he's got good things going

02:04:50.420 and of course elsa tree came soon after

02:04:52.180 thank you for sharing that story with us that's a really cool story

02:04:58.500 why is it okay so uh cliff asks uh for you specifically sheila why is it so important

02:05:08.620 to find mates at afa events and how often have you seen that occur

02:05:13.900 well out here in california we tend to have many more men than women

02:05:23.740 we don't grow like you guys are in other parts of the country we'd love to have that

02:05:28.860 our rate of growth is not the same yes we have seen people come together and uh and

02:05:36.220 build a life together uh we have two folk builders right now one is out here and one is uh in arkansas

02:05:43.260 and they met up several months ago and have basically dedicated their lives together

02:05:48.060 and working within our yeah the afa to help continue building it and it's wonderful to see

02:05:55.260 um i think yes that is it's absolutely the best place you could meet people would be within the

02:06:00.300 afa how do we get more women i'm always asked how do we get more women i haven't figured that out

02:06:06.220 um because you know it tends to be something that is always appealed first of all because

02:06:12.380 was always seen as kind of a warrior religion which as we know is a misnomer it is not at all

02:06:17.020 it's very well balanced with our women and in every role that a person can possibly have

02:06:22.860 is valid in the afa you don't need to be a warrior um so ideally yes um single women

02:06:31.340 tell your friends tell them to come and experience the most wonderful thing they could possibly

02:06:36.460 imagine by coming to our events and perhaps meeting the man of their dreams and we will

02:06:42.700 all support everything we can to help make their lives work together give them a beautiful wedding

02:06:48.620 and all those it's really fun to to actually participate in a wedding um some call to him

02:06:55.340 fasting is still a wedding that we do for our own people and that has happened many many times um

02:07:00.780 there's actually one coming up in november in arizona we had a couple from arizona who came

02:07:06.860 up here in may and got married um and they were all afa members so ideally that's what we would

02:07:12.780 love to see and if you can send more people into afa for that reason alone it's well worth it for

02:07:19.500 us all uh tracy has got a series of questions githya what is it like from a woman's perspective

02:07:30.540 watching the reawakening of our folk and being the supportive wife of steve through it all

02:07:41.420 well anybody who knows me has seen me very much i tend not to be very active when i'm in a large

02:07:47.100 group i'm a very quiet person but i have a lot of strong opinions and in my own world i'm very very

02:07:53.020 busy but i've always been a friggas woman and it always made sense because steve was and is and

02:08:00.060 will always be an odin's man i mean that is the the god who drives him forward and he feels you

02:08:07.020 know pushes him each and every day and we've made a very good balance because of that and um

02:08:14.380 um you know it's just something i i know i just i feel like uh i'm kind of filled with frigate

02:08:25.100 energy when i'm around my folk it's just what i do and it seems it's comfortable odenshof is home

02:08:31.820 to me it is where i want to welcome people no matter their ages come on home this is where you

02:08:37.660 are this where you should be and and um steve has always been a passionate leader and i've always

02:08:48.700 given him the the space to do that whatever he needed to do to lead his lead the folk and um

02:08:56.380 i just think the afa is going to continue doing amazing things i love seeing as many women involved

02:09:03.660 in the afa as as we have we have so many great uh women folk builders now um tracy as an example

02:09:12.380 had the most horrendous trip out to midsummer but um i mean it couldn't have been much worse

02:09:19.340 but she made it and she kept a smile on her face all the time and she managed with almost

02:09:25.020 nothing with her she didn't have her clothing she didn't have all her toiletries and she never

02:09:29.180 complained i mean we have the strength of our women strength of our men is uh formidable you

02:09:36.140 know we can do almost anything when we have people like that and it's a great time to be in the afa

02:09:41.180 to be a leader in the afa if you are at all interested in taking on probably the most

02:09:47.740 important one of the most important roles you could ever do in your life um this is it being

02:09:52.700 a folk builder will will make a huge difference and to you and also to everyone around you and

02:09:59.740 i forget if i answered everything but but you know my my it's been wonderful for me to see the afa

02:10:06.380 grow and still feel like i can be a part of it as small as it was and i was so new i was a newbie

02:10:13.420 and i was learning it all and i'm still learning i have much more to learn and much more to

02:10:19.020 experience so it never ends all right tracy also asks as a follow-up what were the struggles like

02:10:29.900 oh struggles struggle for me was always trying to balance um work and we'll give you an idea

02:10:37.980 of what i was doing the afa and it still had you know many hundred people um but it was

02:10:43.260 doing the newsletter, handling orders, handling membership, Mary Mitchell also helped, but I

02:10:49.940 would, I would send out a new card to everybody every year. I mean, that was the kind of detailed

02:10:53.960 person doing events, sending out the rune stone when we had that. We also had something called

02:11:01.680 room pebble. I mean, there was always AFA stuff as well as regular correspondence, but I also

02:11:07.520 had a full-time job teaching and was trying to do that to my best of my ability too. I don't know

02:11:12.840 how I managed it really. And it wasn't easy. And I will tell you, that is one of the things for our

02:11:17.260 leaders. You take on a role like this. You still, we always say, do it with good intent. Don't flake

02:11:25.720 at a job as a folk builder or a goatee or anything like that. We really need to have people serious

02:11:30.760 in it. But you also, if you have a relationship, if you have a husband or wife, you've got to give

02:11:37.100 back to them. You have to give them some priority because it does not take very long for them to

02:11:42.400 say you never pay attention to me all i hear is if a if a and so we really need to make sure that

02:11:49.360 the time that we spend with those we love is quality time and they know that you know that

02:11:56.560 we're given the best we can in all the areas of our life but they are of course very very

02:12:01.360 important and so do not overlook those people who depend on you and who are critical to your

02:12:09.680 well-being and to your own future as as a person and in a relationship you've got to take care of

02:12:15.440 that and that that's been some of the the headaches we've had was when i particularly didn't balance a

02:12:22.080 lot of things and things went awry and um you know those things happen but anyway you can get back on

02:12:28.480 track when that happens don't give up on a relationship when it goes kind of sour on you

02:12:32.560 you can fix things really it's possible to do that if you both intend to do so also from tracy

02:12:40.640 how often did your husband come to you for counsel

02:12:45.920 oh i don't know if he ever did i always give my counsel i think that's that frigga thing you know

02:12:52.080 did i really gotta forget ask very much maybe a few times but i'm sure she gave him her piece of

02:12:59.200 advice and i've certainly done that and a lot of things i've just done on my own without consulting

02:13:03.920 him steve is you know matt matt is all-encompassing matt is 24 7 or i'll tell you you're going to be

02:13:11.280 he knows everybody who's beneath him and the roles and what's going on and he is very well suited to

02:13:18.800 this job um steve is not that kind of a detailed person he was always a visionary you know and um

02:13:25.840 and which is great because we're not all the same and he gave everything he could to get it to a

02:13:32.240 point where it was a perfect time to pass it off to matt matt was ready to take it and run with it

02:13:38.560 and try new things and expand it and um you know we got that first hop we got there we made it

02:13:45.600 happen it was amazing the way it happened it was like the gods ordained it um in fact odin i think

02:13:53.440 ordained it it was perfect that it ended up being odin's off so many synchronicities about that

02:13:58.960 whole thing it was meant to be and matt is the guy who's perfect for being an ulcerative no doubt

02:14:05.200 about it in my mind and i love serving under matt and serving the well-being of the afa and under

02:14:12.480 the witten and all that it's it's a true honor i i never feel like i'm being taken advantage of

02:14:18.640 i do it because i love it and as for giving steve advice um are you never yeah i don't know

02:14:28.160 i just give advice matt asked me i give advice but matt has other people giving advice that's

02:14:33.120 what the witten does in a way you know i never wanted to be on the witten i told him that pretty

02:14:38.560 much when i came back no i'll just be a boat builder at large that suits me just fine and he

02:14:44.080 has a great written right now and i love seeing brandy there brandy is one of the most amazing

02:14:48.320 women i've ever met not that all of our god or giddies aren't they all are but brandy is quite

02:14:54.560 exceptional and i've learned so much from her we're so blessed to have someone like her with

02:15:00.400 her ability to communicate so well and her her personal strength and the fact that she's

02:15:06.080 bosses met around at work i think she's really good at that and i'm not i'm not good at bossing

02:15:10.720 people around and it's good to have those people who can do that

02:15:16.720 also from tracy and this is the last in this the tracy string that we got going right now

02:15:21.920 tracy these are great questions and they are really really good responses so thank you

02:15:27.840 uh how would you attempt to awaken more women to our faith what would you tell them

02:15:32.960 yeah i'm just not around women um i really think that we need to find women who are already

02:15:44.600 somewhat traditional it's awfully hard to think you could go out into the modern world and start

02:15:49.680 talking to the average woman but i think the times are changing and we're seeing it day by day how

02:15:55.400 crazy it is and how so many people are kind of going retro back to our values and i think that

02:16:01.820 is going to help a lot. I personally just don't really have the answers. I know that there are

02:16:07.440 probably Facebook pages and other groups where one can be around traditional women and encourage

02:16:14.380 them to come in and, you know, check us out. Certainly, I think for anybody, the idea that

02:16:23.220 we follow, you know, our holidays are really the original traditions, not the Christian stuff. And

02:16:29.780 that's so important to be able to tell people, especially if they have children, you're not

02:16:34.720 giving up anything when you come to, when you become a usager, you know, it just enhances

02:16:38.680 your life. We get 12 days of Yule, you know, rather than two days of Christmas. So I don't

02:16:45.380 know, maybe, you know, we, women really need to get together and figure out what we can

02:16:49.920 do to draw more women. And again, I suppose spiritually, we need to seek them, but I don't

02:16:56.520 have an answer we have that's been one of the biggest conundrums since the afa began was how to

02:17:03.400 draw more women our direction um but i think women are kind of toughening up in this world too

02:17:08.840 and uh perhaps they'll say hey i really want something that matters i need a spiritual focus

02:17:14.280 and i want something traditional and what is out but it's usually by friends you know that's how

02:17:19.800 we're getting most of our members is friends of friends of friends and it's hard when we cannot

02:17:25.400 just lightly advertise ourselves and you know that so it's it's what we have but we're still

02:17:31.160 growing and we're drawing a lot more women and sometimes single women and a lot of wives are

02:17:36.440 joining because their husbands are here and that's a good sign so i over on the side i noticed

02:17:42.360 somebody thought i went to sleep for a second i was not i was looking down at my lap at my uh

02:17:47.320 Apple cell phone because I was running some math for us. We all this talk about

02:17:53.940 how many women are involved or whatever. I checked the numbers and I was kind of surprised to see

02:18:00.620 only 21% of our current membership is female. And I don't, you wouldn't notice that at our events,

02:18:11.340 man, when I first got involved in the AFA, it was a lot of guys. It was a lot of guys. And

02:18:20.020 women were very, very few and far between. And it's not that way anymore. But I think we still

02:18:25.380 have a certain phenomenon of wives or girlfriends attending, but not joining or taking a while to

02:18:32.820 join. I'd love to see that get tightened up a little bit. It's gotten way better than it used

02:18:37.340 to be, but just running those numbers shows me that it does have a ways to go on, on getting

02:18:41.940 more ladies in. But one thing that's been really, you guys may have heard me say this on a previous

02:18:48.420 podcast or a previous stream, but just going through the pictures at Midsommar on my phone

02:18:56.440 to post on our social media, I looked at a group picture and thought it was the group picture and

02:19:01.740 I was very happy with it. And then when I look closer, I'm like, no, that's just the women in

02:19:07.180 children. So if you come to a national, if you come to a big event, I think you'll see that

02:19:13.840 ratio be a lot better than what I just mentioned. But that's what I was doing. I was not falling

02:19:19.100 asleep. I promise. Because victory never sleeps. Yeah. I would just like to add something too.

02:19:26.340 In terms of women feeling that they have a place in the AFA, the one place where we all

02:19:32.260 show our worth is when we bless the horn before bloat. And that is something I have a picture

02:19:39.540 the first time we ever did that. And it was like 2010 out at Camp Norge when we had midsummer out

02:19:46.120 there. And David James did the midsummer bloat and he asked the women to go to the side and

02:19:54.760 pour the horn. And a lot of those women did not end up being AFA, you know, but still the point

02:20:00.940 is we learn from that experience and it has become a key thing that our women do and you know we kind

02:20:08.620 of talk about it we we giggle about it you know we have certain things but we also take it very

02:20:14.620 seriously it is a beautiful ceremony that um began in the afa and will always be afa and women who

02:20:24.700 come in and they just wonder what am i doing here what role do i have it's mostly men right

02:20:30.220 no we've got things specifically for our women that only women can can uh can do because they

02:20:36.380 have the ability the innate magic passed on to them and passed on to us that we understand the

02:20:43.660 nature of what goes in the well and that is what is represented in the horn and so we give good

02:20:51.180 blessings to the folk uh in what we say and it's wonderful we also have a lot of babies because of

02:20:57.260 it believe it or not anyway it's been a wonderful thing we did for our women absolutely uh sierra

02:21:04.700 asks sheila what is one of your favorite memories during your time as githya oh wow you know i really

02:21:16.220 um

02:21:20.140 my role as gideon doing uh bloat is kind of the way i taught i always get kind of a framework

02:21:26.620 in my life my my mind and i tend not to do things the same way a second time the one thing i have

02:21:33.980 done though is recently as i moved away from always connecting with frigga and um because it's

02:21:42.220 the summer months we did secret bloat and because i wanted to give some balance um for that event

02:21:49.420 knowing that matt would be doing um the secret bloat with odin in the nighttime and we have

02:21:54.780 families we have so many families with little babies and toddlers who tend to leave early and

02:21:59.260 i thought i don't want them to leave before bloat so let's give them something during the day so i

02:22:03.660 also i chose freya because talk about um a goddess who has power to almost match odin i mean very

02:22:12.780 very powerful in all that she does and um and so i did a freya bloat and that was done out at this

02:22:20.460 this special space we have which was set aside for freya uh with a freya goddess pole and it was put

02:22:27.820 in a couple years ago and it was never really initiated or recognized appropriately and so

02:22:35.260 we tried to do it mid-summer it was just a little too hectic but we did it last month and it was

02:22:41.260 quite amazing and you know i i tend to get a little flustered when i'm doing bloat because i'm still

02:22:48.620 not all that experience doing it that was neat because we actually in when pictures were taken

02:22:54.060 there were orbs in some of the pictures so that was a good sign i know that at least one of the

02:22:59.020 women said she just got goosebumps all over i really felt that from freya so that made me feel

02:23:06.460 really good that i was glad i chose to do that it definitely felt really good we also did our

02:23:12.940 intentions for a year from now the whole victory um i've been on a victory thing if those my leaders

02:23:19.180 out in my area know that because i asked them the other day about victory but we put in our um into

02:23:24.860 a time capsule that we buried right there at the base of the freya goddess pole and we put our little

02:23:31.420 slips of paper and what would be what would we like to see victory look like a year from now

02:23:36.780 and uh for people to put something that could almost be quantified so we can open it up in

02:23:41.340 year and said whoa yeah that happened that was great because we put our efforts because you know

02:23:46.540 it is all about doing but also bringing in the goodwill of the gods to assist us in all that and

02:23:54.060 um you know working with others and all those things we must do it was really cool to really

02:23:58.620 play up secret bloat this year with freya so i love that excellent and that was a very powerful

02:24:05.260 bloat i know that affected many people um sierra also asks this sheila do you have a preference

02:24:12.780 over which one you enjoy performing more baby naming or weddings i've not done a baby naming

02:24:20.380 yet i have one coming up and i'm going to matt has actually set the kind of standard for it and

02:24:26.460 it's now um basically our official way of doing it of taking the three runes for the child what was

02:24:33.260 quite amazing was when matt did the baby naming for the twins at midsummer and we had poor mama

02:24:40.620 with two with their arms full of two babies and sierra ashley helped hold one but it was a

02:24:47.340 beautiful ceremony um and i've done a couple of other um i've done a couple of weddings

02:24:54.300 um i did one for crystal and victor which was very very nice a few years ago because they're

02:24:59.420 just such loving people and i really enjoyed that it was very special so it's hard to say

02:25:05.100 but i'll let you know once i've done a baby naming that's coming up i believe

02:25:12.140 uh all right so the salutrian how many members does the afa have and has the uh what has the

02:25:20.620 growth been like recently um afa as of this second we've got 877 members that's up

02:25:35.340 so up 157 from mid-summer of last year of uh 2021 so i don't know what the math is on that

02:25:46.780 percentage but we're doing really well we're growing very well uh for

02:25:53.660 we still have um more turnover than we'd like to see obviously but the growth rate has been

02:26:00.140 very steady and very good um when i was became ulterior goethe we had 520. we're now sitting at

02:26:08.700 877 and that continues to grow we've actually seen i'd say we've seen a pretty big surge

02:26:17.260 specifically since the top of the year but we're still we're doing very well with our growth uh

02:26:25.340 compared to compared to what our norm is we're doing really well right we're also bringing back

02:26:30.940 former members some of them are coming back and that's always a good thing to see

02:26:35.180 um and the other thing is that when you hear about other churches that they talked about their quote

02:26:39.420 congregation they probably include everybody who's in that that pew when they come in on the sunday

02:26:45.340 and we're only talking about the people who actually are the ones paying in a family so along

02:26:50.380 with that is sometimes a spouse and several kids you look at that and we're up to a couple thousand

02:26:55.180 people really in our church easily easily the point about the kids can't be overstressed there's

02:27:00.860 so many children at all of our events and those children aren't aren't counted as members until

02:27:06.700 they become adults and choose to you know if they choose to stay on as members with us

02:27:11.260 so as far as bodies in the room it's much greater than that but those are all people who

02:27:17.180 are currently regularly donating members uh next question i'm not looking to just bury

02:27:23.180 my nose in a book we always ask for book recommendations but is there any consideration

02:27:28.220 to create an adult academy to provide some structure to adult ausitru learners

02:27:34.620 that's something that we've talked about and we've kind of flirted with over time but it never really

02:27:42.540 materialized because the folk that wanted to participate at the time it just wasn't a time

02:27:49.180 where they could really put in the work on that but yeah we have given that thought uh brandy

02:27:54.860 callahan b callahan at runestone.org would be who i'd suggest to send suggestions to

02:28:02.460 i know she was heading that effort up back when we did try it

02:28:11.500 okay sheila it's another question for you from sarah

02:28:14.700 of all the pioneers of alsatru that you've met besides your husband who have you found the most

02:28:21.020 interesting oh my goodness um we i was going through kind of the list today of who i've met

02:28:31.340 i never met elsie christensen i'm sorry we didn't um that's really sad that would have been nice

02:28:37.980 um certainly you know it's hard to say how because i haven't spent that much time with people

02:28:43.660 i've met ron mcvan and edward thorson and um robert taylor talk about a character he's out

02:28:50.380 there in west virginia um with his so-called band changes with his cousin um michael and annabelle

02:28:57.340 Moynihan loved being with them certainly was close to valgaard murray for many many years

02:29:02.860 as part of the australian alliance and we were kind of like sister organizations for a long time

02:29:07.660 um said that we were individual membership they were always uh kindred membership and that's where

02:29:13.020 kind of the the division line was until you know we kind of kept moving he always said you know

02:29:18.780 if it is the point of the spear and we're the shaft and you know and we've always been the

02:29:23.260 point of despair we still are and we always will be if they is the point of despair regardless and

02:29:29.900 um i'm trying to think who else met heimgist once um you named some people that i could probably

02:29:36.540 tell you if i've met them all of them um to some extent have been really interesting um

02:29:43.580 rune guild there were some really characters in there um ian reid from england he was quite a

02:29:50.540 funny fellow and plus we've had afa members but well um yeah old um who was i saying before um

02:30:02.700 david james david james was such a character um he was a master of gothic language gothic languages

02:30:11.980 he was uh very much a ladies man when he was young in life um very passionate about this

02:30:18.540 and he came to us late in life and he was within like the last years of his his uh life when he

02:30:28.220 re-emerged on the alsatru um uh frontier back with us and he came back with us and his health

02:30:35.260 at that time was was deteriorating very quickly but he still had so much information and love to

02:30:42.380 share and everything he was he was really a very kind and generous man um and he was you know he's

02:30:49.180 somebody to be missed in fact we do have some um cds or recordings that were made of him and i

02:30:56.860 forget who did it but we have hours of some of his stuff that would be really nice to re-release

02:31:02.860 because that was done i believe when he was a member and he was there at the very beginning

02:31:08.620 if you read the history of the rune guild you'll see that he's listed described there in the very

02:31:13.260 early days of that and i know he influenced steve in the early days as well and those are some of

02:31:19.020 the people i've met um all right so guys we're about two and a half hours in we're winding down

02:31:30.780 on some questions if you have questions that you want to get answered please make sure you

02:31:37.260 throw those questions up in the chat and nick will get them over here for me

02:31:41.500 i will be sure to answer those um but yeah just so you guys know we may be winding down here if

02:31:48.060 more questions don't materialize uh next question is what is your favorite place

02:31:55.260 that you and steve have visited and done blow oh well

02:32:02.540 what was really special for me was and we we both um love going to ireland we went to ireland twice

02:32:12.620 20 2003 2004 uh he had just um healed from um cancer surgery um and so it was a big undertaking

02:32:26.220 for us um he had colon cancer but caught it early which was wonderful and we went over and what we

02:32:33.420 did was connect with family over there his family in particular you know in terms of doing bloat

02:32:38.860 he basically had a horn and he acknowledged his ancestors over there i can't say we did bloat

02:32:45.500 together um when it comes to places where we've done bloat whoa um in germany i don't know if i

02:32:54.780 did bloat we had some amazing experiences over in germany as talk about another country i think most

02:33:01.980 of the times we've done things though if we've done bloat it's been probably here in california

02:33:06.380 for the most part um again the coast the mountains whatever um we often do bloat and um

02:33:15.260 they generally are pretty powerful you know but yeah as for in a foreign country i can't recall

02:33:21.980 doing bloat there maybe he knows he just walked in see did we ever do bloat together any place

02:33:27.740 right i don't know in europe can you recall i don't think so matt might even remember if we

02:33:33.740 did but anyway no probably not anyway good question but yeah we did we did a couple of rituals i

02:33:49.420 remember we stood in bloat in sweden at uh in that field by that dolmen um yes with their elder over

02:34:00.780 there i forget the gentleman's name and we also yeah steve did the uh odin bloat on top of uh

02:34:08.460 froborg mountain mountain with the most loose sense of the term but kind of the hill that was

02:34:14.860 was the biggest and tallest thing on the island of Funen.

02:34:18.880 That's true.

02:34:21.480 Yeah, that's right.

02:34:22.800 We did all those, and we even did one.

02:34:24.620 If you recall, what was unique was that we went out

02:34:28.580 on top of that open area where there were trees all around.

02:34:31.820 It was kind of a flat area.

02:34:34.380 And I remember that the Danish people were with always

02:34:39.340 take oatmeal out.

02:34:40.700 And then they created their bloat circle

02:34:44.480 by spring playing oatmeal, and that was unique.

02:34:47.260 And the other thing they did over there that was,

02:34:49.780 is that they always pour the horn out

02:34:52.460 in the old sun whale motif of the circle and then the cross.

02:34:57.240 And that's how they do that.

02:34:58.720 And even the old gentleman, if you recall,

02:35:02.000 I think he had at the end of his staff,

02:35:04.040 he had a ring that was the sun whale

02:35:08.260 they poured the meat into the horn through that and love that the idea of using the sun wheel

02:35:14.420 as often as they do over in denmark i had forgotten about uh that one where they made the uh

02:35:20.580 the oatmeal um solar cross yeah that was a beautiful beautiful spot i wish i could remember

02:35:28.420 what the name of that little park was we were at this was kind of an amazing thing we were

02:35:34.020 our hosted had taken us and this was just kind of a random night it was like a tuesday night or

02:35:39.300 something uh they took us to this park to you know have have a meal and do a bloat in this really

02:35:46.660 special place at this park so we went there and when we came we entered we at random interrupted

02:35:54.260 another group of australia who were over there performing a ritual now they were unis and there

02:36:01.780 was some weird beef there and whatever and there was a little argument that went on in danish that

02:36:05.860 i didn't know about all right you know couldn't follow but uh they took us into to this circle

02:36:15.300 say a circle it was this kind of oblong ship shaped um clearing in in this in this wood

02:36:24.580 and it was it was beautiful and there they had uh a number of runestones they had some

02:36:29.380 ancient rune stones but they had some modern rune stones i think they had like a world war one uh

02:36:34.100 rune stone there they had a couple of modern ones with this ancient stone it was it was a really

02:36:41.860 beautiful spot and the way we were doing it we were just the right time of day where it was sunset

02:36:46.980 and it was just so beautiful in those trees when we did that but yeah i i had forgotten about that

02:36:52.020 we did so many amazing things over there in such a short space of time it was very easy to to forget

02:36:58.100 some some really special stuff tell about the time we went through the field and came to the

02:37:04.100 the mound remember that yes did you tell that one so well well i okay so that one

02:37:10.740 really stands out to me so we had this um very energetic uh lady over there who was our tour

02:37:19.300 guide on this and she in her you know in her free time she goes out and explores all these off the

02:37:26.820 beaten path um you know old pagan sites there that you know most of us would never know so

02:37:34.980 we were really special we got we're really privileged in this we spent a couple of days

02:37:38.900 in copenhagen seeing the touristy things which were great but she took us to all these places

02:37:45.940 that if you didn't know a local you'd never know were there and but she had this very you know

02:37:51.460 militant timetable of of where we were going and she was a difficult lady to uh drive while she was

02:37:57.860 the the the passenger seat driver i wouldn't trade it for anything in the world but that was

02:38:03.700 that was a challenge um you had to be within like two kilometers of where she wanted you or she

02:38:08.980 would tell you about it uh as far as your speed limit um so anyway she took us and again it was

02:38:17.060 just back to back to back to back of these really cool spots but they drove us out in the middle of

02:38:22.500 some dude's wheat field and at this point

02:38:27.380 the the dolmens these you know small earthen mounds that would have these burial chambers in them

02:38:36.100 were so very common on all of these farms in the countryside that at this point they became um

02:38:42.740 no longer remarkable like you just saw them places and they drove us out we had this little convoy of

02:38:49.060 i think three or four vehicles and they drove us out in the middle of this guy's you know some

02:38:53.140 farmers wheat field and you know all of a sudden we stop and they get out and they said you know

02:38:58.900 look there's two dolmens over there would you guys you know would you like guys like to go see

02:39:03.620 we're like yeah of course you know we thought we're just going to go hike on these little hills

02:39:06.660 and take a look at them and they're like no would you like to go in and you know our eyes got

02:39:11.940 big we had no expectation of that and they said hold on um and they went up there and prepared

02:39:18.340 some stuff and they came back and so we walked through this wheat field uh up to these i think

02:39:24.740 there were two adjoining um dolmens there one of which i guess the farmer at some point you know

02:39:34.020 recently in the last 50 years or something had hit the whatever the capstone was with his

02:39:39.700 farm equipment and dislodge the opening to this this shaft into this dolmen and so you know we

02:39:49.460 were all all amazed and uh sheila was the first one in and we had this i'm trying to think the

02:39:58.820 best way to describe it there was this there's this shaft that was you know a little tunnel that

02:40:04.740 maybe three foot by three foot tunnel maybe a little bit bigger than that but you know you

02:40:15.660 had to hunker down and crawl through it and uh it was i don't know i'd say it was you know six feet

02:40:23.220 long tunnel to get into this this chamber and it was really cool sheila had to move the cobwebs

02:40:30.060 out of the way to get in there and these black um black moths flew out of from from within the

02:40:39.420 the shaft within the burial mound they flew out when sheila opened it and it was a really

02:40:45.580 i thought it was really symbolic of these these things emerging you know the way that uh the way

02:40:53.100 that butterflies and moths do where they go into their hibernation and then they they emerge

02:40:57.500 transformed so these these black moths came out it was really special and we we hunkered down

02:41:04.380 and we went in there and they uh they'd set up some tea lights on the ledges of these rocks it

02:41:11.580 was flat stones so this was made up of like all these um you know three four inch flat stones

02:41:21.260 that were you know these slabs of flat stones stacked upon one another so there's all these

02:41:26.700 little natural ledges in there and they set up these little tea lights and it was really interesting

02:41:33.740 the feeling of going in there the space itself i'd say was maybe 10 foot wide and

02:41:44.220 six foot long or the other way around yeah you had to hunker down to be in there you had a little

02:41:51.500 bit more room than you did in the shaft but you still i mean the ceiling was maybe five foot or

02:41:58.060 something i don't even know if it's that high maybe four feet yeah yeah it was a little bit

02:42:04.220 bigger than the shaft but you had to you know you had to sit down or you know maybe get in a real

02:42:09.020 squatted position if you wanted to be in there but anyways there was some really interesting times

02:42:14.300 where some tea lights flew off the ledges that there was no you know physical reason why that

02:42:22.220 should happen it was really kind of interesting and we sat in there and we did a um a burcano

02:42:29.660 galder in there um because we were in this tomb and we were in you know the womb of the earth

02:42:36.140 and we did this this burcano galder and then when we emerged back out of it it was really special

02:42:43.180 and it was really transformative so we'd gone in this place deep in the earth we did this

02:42:48.540 transformative ritual and then when you emerged you had to travel through this shaft on the way out

02:42:56.060 and hunkering down and traveling through that you slowly kind of get a glimpse of the world around

02:43:01.500 you and the way we were looking you see you know rolling hills and you know what it would have been

02:43:06.940 like in ancient times but the further you get you start seeing a little bit of modernity you start

02:43:12.860 seeing a piece of the farmhouse further out you start seeing some power lines um but it was this

02:43:19.820 process and when we emerged out of there it was it was a really special feeling of of transformation

02:43:28.060 and that'll that'll always stick with me that's one of the coolest things we get over there yeah

02:43:32.460 absolutely

02:43:37.020 uh sarah also asks as i understand in the early days there were a couple of all things

02:43:45.020 what were they like and why was the one in wisconsin your favorite

02:43:50.780 oh the one in wisconsin was my absolute first all thing and to me it was a huge event there were

02:43:57.340 probably 35 people there it was actually out at robert taylor's place on um out of northern

02:44:05.740 wisconsin was rock island um and it was a camping type thing and it was you know first time i'd ever

02:44:14.060 been to something like that and so it wasn't like there was a lot of ritual i remember there was a

02:44:19.580 a blessing of steel and i think there was a gun or two that you know kind of came out and that

02:44:24.860 was a little surprising to me um a lot of men very few women very few there were only about four of

02:44:30.700 us there um but i remember who they were in fact so it was it was quite exceptional also the fact

02:44:38.300 is we went cross-country to go there that's the only time we've ever done anything like that and

02:44:43.100 we drove out and we had um my son who was 16 at the time and and uh uh joseph turner's a 16 year

02:44:53.260 old too it was really fun having them there one thing that happened to us that made it again

02:44:57.660 indelible in my mind is we were heading across i believe it was kansas and we got into one of those

02:45:04.700 heavy rainstorms and we had a bunch of stuff we had a big old boat of a car a big old

02:45:11.580 nine-seater station wagon that we bought just for our kids right for doing these trips and we have

02:45:17.180 all sorts of stuff on the roof rack and we decided just pull off as quickly as we could go into a

02:45:23.260 gas station and pull off

02:45:26.020 all this stuff and try to get it undercover and

02:45:29.200 As we're pulling in and the windshield wipers are going all crazy and we look and there's a

02:45:34.500 Bumper sticker in front of us that says Odin lives

02:45:37.480 What what because we have one on our car too was what are we looking at and we end up pulling in and

02:45:44.900 find out that those fellows were going to the old thing too and

02:45:49.140 and we ended up knowing them for many many years and they said in fact we were just listening to

02:45:54.680 cassette tape of steve mcdalen you know it's one of those crazy kind of coincidences it was great

02:45:59.080 fun it was very nice we actually did something ourselves as the afa and it was called gathering

02:46:05.240 of the tribes and it was well over 100 people for three days at our own home here in grass valley

02:46:11.740 we had 24 acres at the time that we were renting and it was really cool we had um

02:46:18.860 we had michael moinehan and his group of people from portland came down and robert taylor came

02:46:25.820 out with his his wife and we also had james russell who wrote the germanization of early

02:46:31.340 medieval christianity we brought him out to speak and it was a very very neat thing we also at that

02:46:37.340 point announced that we were just getting some land that we were going to build a hoff on and

02:46:42.060 so it was kind of momentous to be doing that and steve did a fantastic bloat and we all marched

02:46:48.460 out in this field and uh it was cordoned off with the vey with uh vey bonds of a rope and um

02:46:57.100 it just felt really in fact we had people called in the various tribes and we had representatives

02:47:04.460 calling in the tribes of old europe and that was a really neat bloat and i remember that and then

02:47:09.500 other than that been to lots of austria alliance all things over the years um and you know they're

02:47:17.100 about the same they have not changed very much and that's great for them they love it that way um

02:47:25.820 and so yes i've been to a lot of events like that went to a theodish event one time in virginia

02:47:31.980 and that was very different um i will never forget that but anyway yeah i'm glad to have

02:47:38.220 those those experiences but boy i'm stuck on the afa from now on don't need to look any further

02:47:46.940 matt when are you going to put out a book when i can find a good ghost writer i tell you what

02:47:52.460 writing in any kind of length or volume is very difficult it's a very big challenge for me i won't

02:47:59.740 say never it's something i'd like to do at some point but man being able to to fill hundreds of

02:48:05.500 pages with writing uh you know on here i i can flap my gums for a long period of time when they

02:48:10.700 sit down to write it's always comes out very very brief so you know i'd need a lot of help but it

02:48:16.300 would be something i'd be interested in doing at some point yeah uh sheila how can we bring

02:48:22.460 spirituality forward in a way that's palatable for the children and easy for them to understand

02:48:28.380 and grasp well i think you know there there is a difference at our hoff so we're talking about our

02:48:39.580 hoffs i think they're very well set up at the other three hoffs because they have areas where

02:48:45.580 they've got space set aside for children and if you have that quiet room you get their attention

02:48:51.020 We have nothing like that at Odenshof. So it's very hard to get them focused, get them calmed down and do that kind of thing.

02:49:00.620 And that's our biggest challenge there. I think the Austria Academy is going to be wonderful for for providing us all sorts of ways of introducing the lore and our things to our children.

02:49:16.560 but you know right now of course they can learn everything from our values and hear the stories

02:49:23.120 the myths of course um i have the children of odin was is great and other ones to read to our

02:49:32.040 children there really is no shortage of that it's a matter of setting your kids down and talking to

02:49:37.260 them and then encouraging them to take part in family bloats one thing that uh we saw this last

02:49:42.620 month was um ryan harlan who is out in montana with his wife rachel and they have two little

02:49:48.300 girls heidi and um what's the other one i'm sorry skipped my mind but i know her anyway

02:49:56.940 sorry about that but they have beautiful pictures where they went out and did bloat on some some

02:50:03.260 beautiful landscapes overlooking great vistas and their children were there taking part and you're

02:50:09.580 seeing the little girls holding the horn and knowing what they're doing i mean they're not

02:50:14.140 doing it frivolously they're not tipping it they are taking part in very serious rituals with their

02:50:18.620 parents every parent should be doing that with their children when they're really young and the

02:50:22.860 other thing is very important as we found it and so please encourage your children to understand

02:50:28.700 that ritual is a time to be quiet and respectful and when we have sacred space that's not a place

02:50:36.780 to play those are all the things that we need to instill in our children so that they can participate

02:50:42.140 with adults and not take away from the experience um but yeah we're really working on how to um

02:50:50.940 basically bring our children along in our religion at odenshoff and it's a challenge but i was

02:50:56.220 working on that today too making sure we had things that um in fact we're working with both

02:51:01.420 sleipner and gulimbers through this time and i have several activities and we just

02:51:06.380 can introduce that to the children and again knowing about our gods uh knowing their symbols

02:51:12.860 such as the animals and all that that's what we do and um doesn't mean that there's one way to do it

02:51:18.780 probably doing anything is better than doing nothing so we've got another question for you

02:51:24.380 sheila uh shay asks we just saw your photos where you had climbed to the top of a mountain

02:51:31.420 what sort of climbs and adventures have you had while doing voton on the peaks oh my goodness well

02:51:38.300 we did one several years ago in fact matt matt mandy were with us where we went up to another

02:51:43.820 place called sierra buttes and very spectacular it looks kind of like the grand tetons when you're

02:51:48.540 from a distance and that was quite a hike and there was snow up there and it was a bit of a

02:51:53.740 challenge to get up i remember slipping quite a bit that was really cool um you know vote on the

02:52:00.700 peaks we always do odin world prayer day i know that and other people have done lots of vote well

02:52:06.300 we've done vote on on the peaks on a couple of other mountains in the bay area we did mount

02:52:11.180 saint alina steve and i did and we also did mount diablo and we still keep saying we're going to do

02:52:18.140 mount timelpais um so that's where we've kind of done it but we did mount lassen this last time and

02:52:24.220 that was a photon on the peaks as well as we also had our afa flags which was great we loved having

02:52:29.580 those um it was pretty amazing i could show you i i fell and got all scraped up and that's why i'm

02:52:35.420 wearing long sleeves tonight it was well worth it to to push myself i didn't think i could because

02:52:41.580 it's over 10 000 feet and my first 30 yards in and i was saying to the other five people with us

02:52:49.100 four who are you know half my age or even younger i said i don't think i can do this um i think was

02:52:55.740 the elevation at the altitude and um i just was having a hard time breathing and i wasn't expecting

02:53:02.700 because i've been doing a lot of exercising and lately and i shouldn't have had a problem but

02:53:08.300 they said come on why don't you try it why don't you try this i think we need to stay back they

02:53:11.580 said no and then that was was the best thing for me to keep on because i did i did something i

02:53:17.100 didn't think i would be able to do and we all got to the top and we did um votel on the peaks up

02:53:23.340 there and that was pretty cool and uh yeah it was it was uh you know i'm 72 i think i did a pretty

02:53:31.660 good job getting up there and steve too steve did great so it was great being with those young people

02:53:36.460 because they were so encouraging to me to to do it so those are some of the things we've done

02:53:40.700 for vote on on the peaks obviously plenty more we're going to do this and other bloats as well

02:53:48.620 this question is for either of us do you feel the viking aesthetic is hurtful to

02:53:54.540 furthering the faith in modern times and do you think it has a place if it makes one feel

02:54:00.780 connected to the gods you can go ahead and this one first well there was certainly a big emphasis

02:54:07.500 on vikings in the old days i mean we actually one time went to

02:54:13.980 san francisco to some kind of i don't know where there was oh it was actually norway days or

02:54:18.620 something and we had a big song that said i'll sit you the viking religion you know and that's

02:54:23.580 how we were peddling it back in 1994 of course we'd never do that now and um you know i was

02:54:30.780 thinking for our children obviously it's a it's a very visual motif that our kids can get into the

02:54:35.980 viking shifts the horns what our gods look like and and i think that is an important phase to push

02:54:44.860 our children through and it's good to have those visuals i think we as adults we need to realize

02:54:50.860 that the viking era was a very small period of time of our of our ancestors i mean we go back

02:54:55.500 50 000 years with all those deep deep spiritual connections they had to the earth and everything

02:55:01.020 else and into what they considered divine powers so i don't think we emphasize uh the viking era

02:55:09.180 nearly as much as we used to i don't think anybody pays attention much to the stupid cartoons that

02:55:14.940 that are out there and people you know don't really talk about um like the vikings uh series

02:55:21.420 anymore like they did when it was at its height um we do what we do like i think all this we like

02:55:27.420 the music that's come out of that that may be kind of viking-esque it's that kind of primal stuff

02:55:32.300 that hailing and um word runa do and most of us really get a lot out of that um and it's it's

02:55:40.540 ancient, that it's not Viking. So that's what I would say. So, all right. Do I think that the

02:55:48.940 Viking aesthetic is hurtful for furthering the faith in modern times? Yes, absolutely it is.

02:55:58.640 When

02:55:59.100 trying to think of the best way to answer it, because it's easy to be

02:56:05.800 just flipping about it. And that's not my intention. Um, when you perform a ritual or

02:56:14.020 when you're engaged in anything that way, the connection, cause this goes into the second part

02:56:18.880 of the question too, the connection needs to be authentic. Um, that's one of the things about my

02:56:28.040 bloat style. I don't like to plan or rehearse bloats. I like to speak from the heart when I'm

02:56:33.360 giving bloat because it's really important to me to be as authentic and as open and as connected

02:56:41.620 as I can be with whoever I'm giving bloat to with the people participating if it's ensemble

02:56:49.640 with people in the room there's a principle of openness there that if you have to dress up like

02:56:56.740 something you're not that separates you from that connectedness um and i think i don't think it's

02:57:05.860 dishonest because i don't think you're trying to fool the gods into thinking that you're a viking

02:57:10.980 but i do think that extra piece of you know silliness takes away from the seriousness of

02:57:20.900 what we're trying to do and i think that that hurts us in a metaphysical way i think it also

02:57:29.860 hurts us in a mental way because if you need to escape from your real self to put on a fake

02:57:39.220 persona to somehow feel more comfortable in front of our gods that puts your head in a strange

02:57:46.900 headspace it makes you conceive of our faith as only limited to a specific period of time and space

02:57:56.740 for a very small sliver of our folk and a very long and outdated period ago and it takes it away

02:58:03.540 from that being relative relevant and integrated into your daily life so i think mentally it's

02:58:09.140 hurtful as well and i think the most obvious is it looks silly and it makes the rest of us look

02:58:15.220 silly and it makes the reputation of the people that you're with and of our faith in general

02:58:21.060 it degrades that whether it should or it shouldn't isn't really the point it does

02:58:27.940 and i would never want any of my actions to be an embarrassment to our gods or

02:58:37.220 to the elders that have come before me and something that i take very serious

02:58:41.300 i would never want anything i do to diminish that reputation i only want to build that up

02:58:49.300 and i feel like dressing in in period costume would take away from that

02:58:53.700 uh so that's that's my take on it yeah okay and i was not interpreting the way and i totally agree

02:59:00.820 you know we gave up on those wearing ritual garb you know the year 2000 that was last and so we've

02:59:08.780 along and never regretted that um yeah it's not part of who we are you know nor do christians

02:59:14.780 typically dress like people out of the middle east and uh we shouldn't have to do that yeah

02:59:21.260 now if we're performing a play or something if there's some ritual purpose for a certain element

02:59:26.860 of something that makes a little bit of sense context is king but yeah it looks silly um the

02:59:34.620 times that we've had someone show up wearing a viking period outfit you know they've gotten a

02:59:43.100 lot of strange looks and you know it hasn't upped their reputation it's moved their reputation down

02:59:49.100 right some people also take viking names very seriously to me yeah if you want to get rid of

02:59:55.900 a christian name like christian if that's what you want to do but i still feel that um you know

03:00:01.260 it's part of our identity and we definitely don't need to take on viking names that just

03:00:06.220 seems very pretentious and awkward and silly you know and again there's a time and a place where

03:00:13.660 that's just what people were doing and you know if you're in your 60s or 70s and introduce yourself

03:00:18.860 to me in some viking name cool i'll respect that because it made sense at the time that that was

03:00:23.900 what you did but you know i i wish i was not i wish i didn't have a hebrew name but it's the name

03:00:31.740 my mom and dad gave me and uh you know it's authentic and it's it's who i am and i think

03:00:39.100 that i think authenticity is such an important key to what we do yeah um so a common view is this is

03:00:48.460 from the King of Cheese, a common view is that Valhalla can be attained by most anyone who dies

03:00:55.300 with a weapon in their hand or dies fighting. But then I've heard Valhalla is a very exclusive

03:01:01.480 thing and it's not enough to die fighting. Then another is that Valhalla is even more exclusive.

03:01:09.780 so what is it is it enough to die fighting uh with faith in our gods and ancestors

03:01:18.540 uh for odin or frigate to take you up or is there something else necessary it confuses and confounds

03:01:26.680 me so our faith doesn't work like that i think it's very easy and i think and i you know i have

03:01:37.900 no idea where you are in your in your progression throughout the truth but i think it's very common

03:01:43.480 especially early on for people to treat our myths as literal truths like if we were if if this was

03:01:52.700 a christian podcast or a stream and we were talking about a passage from the scripture then

03:02:00.180 the literal how it reads is how it is and that's very much how their faith is set up

03:02:05.160 that's not what folk faith is, and that's not how our myths are set up.

03:02:11.460 Our myths don't speak of literal truth.

03:02:16.140 They are a figurative way to tell us truth and to communicate big truths in ways that make sense.

03:02:25.900 At the time and place that we see the documentation about Valhalla,

03:02:30.620 that is a time to where most any man is a warrior in some degree if it's during raiding season or

03:02:43.580 when your lands are being raided the warrior aspect of a man's existence was so very prevalent

03:02:52.520 all of the time due to the living conditions and the geography of where that occurred

03:02:57.780 I think that the point of going to the halls of one of our gods, in the case of Valhalla or in the case of of of going to Folkwanger, the truth that that's conveying is the idea of ascension and elevating your soul through whatever process that is.

03:03:24.780 is um there's there's a few occasions where even sagas and stuff talk about a king going to valhalla

03:03:34.620 that didn't die violently um the idea was he was a hero and a famous personage and worthy of being

03:03:42.780 recognized and invited to to odin's hall um so i think that ascension can take many forms i think

03:03:51.100 one of the truths that we've seen in many warrior cultures is

03:03:58.940 the moment of abandoning your connection with outcome and being purely in the moment and

03:04:08.220 letting your soul free through combat at risk of your life does something transformative to

03:04:16.060 a person's soul and elevates them and i think that's something that valhalla speaks to in a

03:04:22.700 very clear way so i i think that you know if our gods can take you to their hall if you die a

03:04:30.620 certain way why can't they take you to our hall for to their hall for any number of other reasons

03:04:37.340 that they would choose to if they deem you worthy um we do our gods a disservice if we try to limit

03:04:45.500 them to the literary sources we have from the Viking age and suggest that that's the depth and

03:04:51.960 breadth of all of their power. Our gods are real and they're beings that we interact with. If they

03:04:58.980 have the power to elevate you to be with them or to be more like them through your ascension

03:05:03.960 because of certain deeds, then certainly they have that power to do that based on whatever

03:05:10.560 criteria they choose is necessary and i wouldn't i wouldn't limit ourself to that kind of an outcome

03:05:17.040 um i just don't think it works quite that literally

03:05:25.760 uh trying to find my place i'm sorry uh for those of us

03:05:31.760 who think of also true as the viking religion will this be a point of contention going forward

03:05:40.560 um yeah if you think it's limited to being the viking religion absolutely um if you see it in

03:05:48.840 terms of being a viking religion certainly it was the religion of the vikings that's not

03:05:53.160 it being a viking religion isn't inaccurate it's just incomplete and it's a small

03:06:01.560 sliver of what it's truly about um you know typically we track the viking age from the

03:06:10.860 raid at lindisfarne so what was that guy's dad because he wasn't a viking

03:06:16.860 a generation previous to that but he still honored our gods what was that guy's fifth

03:06:24.740 great grandfather he wasn't a viking um at some point there he was considered part of

03:06:30.940 know the the celtic um whatever the celtic culture in that part of scandinavia was at the time

03:06:39.900 but he clearly still believed in our gods we find depictions of our gods going back

03:06:44.940 in the neolithic times um so to confine them to the viking age just isn't true if you connect

03:06:54.620 through the viking element of it and that's something that's very powerful to you then

03:06:58.220 absolutely and that's also true and completely legitimate but if you try to limit it to just

03:07:04.140 that then sure that'll be contentious um and the follow-up question once you take away that

03:07:11.260 why wear hammers well because a hammer is a symbol i'm not using this as a weapon or pretending that

03:07:19.500 this is a you know my side arm um it's a symbol of our faith to define who we are to show others

03:07:28.140 who we are um you can do things that are symbolic it's a false paradigm to think that if you have

03:07:36.380 one thing that's symbolic of the viking age that you need to dress in full viking clothes when you

03:07:41.980 do ritual there's such a vast area in between those those extremes that doesn't really exist

03:07:51.980 there's there's all kind of latitude on stuff you can do that you think is symbolic or important

03:07:57.900 but the further you go into looking

03:08:02.700 ridiculous is such a loaded term but it's the right term because it garners ridicule from people

03:08:07.900 who see you the more you bring down the reputation of our gods no one has that

03:08:13.660 reaction when they see hammers people do have that reaction when they see somebody wearing

03:08:18.220 a tunic and a and chain mail yeah um do we have any more question guys it's been it's been three

03:08:28.700 hours tonight oh let's see one more question on here uh if you guys do have any more questions

03:08:34.860 please go ahead and get them over there. We'll follow up with these last couple and

03:08:40.540 we'll call it a night and I will go get me some dinner. So Matt slash Sheila, what's the best

03:08:49.680 translation slash version of the Eddas to purchase? I've used the Hollander book for

03:08:56.000 20 years. Always wondered if there was a better one out there.

03:09:04.860 what do you think uh so well um like i said i like the chisholm book um we actually met

03:09:15.820 james chisholm i like it um because it goes into a lot of detail it's one that's hard to find um

03:09:22.780 have to say i like the crawford for um just easy access um for the poeta

03:09:30.380 data um and you know some of the other translations certainly bellows is is one that's very very

03:09:38.460 popular and easy to get because it's it's on um pdfs you can get pdfs of some of these um

03:09:47.260 what are some of the other translations i have and i don't know i'd have to go back and see some

03:09:53.020 of them anyway matt you take that okay so this is kind of a okay i have some substance but i also

03:10:01.020 have kind of a cop-out answer that i do think is valuable um hollander's my go-to because that's

03:10:06.860 the first one that i read and so that's the one i'm i'm that's the first way that i heard it

03:10:13.660 i think the most popular amongst people that i talk to is the bellows version

03:10:18.380 i don't like the crawford version but i think that's just personal bias on my part

03:10:26.700 what i would encourage you to do in my kind of cop-out answer but it it's legit if you've been

03:10:33.200 reading the the hollander one for 20 years get some other ones and just compare um there's a

03:10:39.040 really cool one i don't have the site right now but there's a cool website where you can go through

03:10:42.660 and it has a bunch of them side by side so you can compare sometimes it's not much different at

03:10:49.140 all but sometimes it can be very different and i think and again this was kind of the purpose of

03:10:56.820 the jackson crawford one was to simplify it and so obviously that one is not meant to be

03:11:03.620 as direct a translation um you know and some of them take liberties in order to make it more

03:11:10.260 poetic all of them vary from being perfect so taking a look at what they look like together

03:11:16.900 and seeing the commonalities and seeing the differences i think that's really valuable

03:11:20.900 and that's something i enjoy doing when i look at the edits these days

03:11:27.940 do we have any last questions from you guys

03:11:30.660 I see one on the side. It hasn't popped up by Nick yet, but Roy wants to know if we could

03:11:41.920 possibly gather all these very valuable book recommendations and have a list on the website.

03:11:47.540 I think that sounds like a great idea for some of our folk builders under the direction of Nick

03:11:54.500 to do. I think that's an awesome thing for Nick to help do. No, if somebody could go back and

03:12:00.600 recapture a lot of the the recommendations i do think a good recommended book list would be there

03:12:05.100 um so figuring that out would be awesome yeah nick that's what i'm talking about hunting down

03:12:10.940 the list is going to be the challenge but we hear it but we do hear it every time and it's

03:12:15.320 it would be valuable to have that you know i would like to see us have a kind of a

03:12:20.760 a central place where all of the various book studies can be listed because some are open to

03:12:27.520 anybody anywhere in the country I know that Sarah Alt is doing one and you know we've got our rune

03:12:35.200 studies and all those things and so many of our members have no idea that those are happening and

03:12:40.180 they're so isolated they'd love to take part so that can be all pulled together in one place too

03:12:49.120 I'm just trying to comb to see if there is any last questions I think that we've got them all

03:12:54.100 answered. It has been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show tonight, Sheila. It's always

03:12:59.540 a pleasure to talk to you, but it's nice to be able to share that with the rest of the folks

03:13:03.860 that are tuning in. Yeah. I see one last question. Matt, what about the Norena Society books?

03:13:14.840 I would advise folks against the Norena Society and their books and that whole group of folks.

03:13:24.100 um for a number of reasons and i say that um mark purrier himself i think is a really good guy

03:13:33.700 i've met him i like mark mark was here right now to give him a big hug but the norena society i

03:13:39.840 think has a lot of really bad actors in it a lot of people that i think are of low character

03:13:45.900 and their approach to Ausatru, first, obviously, I think that it's wrong, but it differs from ours

03:13:56.420 very significantly in some fundamental ways that I think are important. I don't know the

03:14:00.900 most eloquent way to put this. We approach the gods with faith, with piety, and we build a

03:14:13.800 relationship with the gods. The point of the lore and any additional study to that is to help us

03:14:21.580 better understand the gods and to bring us closer to a relationship with them. We participate in a

03:14:31.580 gift cycle with our gods, and we've been very blessed because of that. The folks in the Norena

03:14:38.420 society from what i'm aware most of them are not actively practicing aussitrew they

03:14:45.460 sit in various basements and criticize everybody else does it and the scholarly approach to me to

03:14:56.660 the level that they take it is disrespectful they theorize about our gods based on scholastics

03:15:04.420 and try to force our gods to conform to their scholasticism and again if this comes off muddled

03:15:11.220 i apologize but they try to force the gods to fit the lore and they're willing to

03:15:23.460 make very illogical leaps to force the gods to cleanly fit their interpretation of lore

03:15:31.860 rather than being open to the gods on their own terms and using the lore as a tool to understand

03:15:37.540 them and i think that comes from a lack of a sincere belief in those gods as actual beings

03:15:45.860 so i would i would advise people to stay away from the norena society i think it's a bad deal all

03:15:50.260 around i wanted to add one more thing i meant to suggest any hilda davidson books especially if

03:15:58.740 you're into history her um her books are so great on where traditions come from and um

03:16:07.860 how our religion was practiced in different places around all throughout europe and um even in more

03:16:15.220 than indo-european times but she also wrote road to hell and all sorts of things that are really

03:16:21.620 really wonderful scholarly work so just about anything from hilda davidson is a worthwhile

03:16:26.340 book to have on hand absolutely also also the oh shoot what is it called i just had it out the

03:16:32.820 other day in fact i loaned it to ashley you the one um anyway can't remember it um the one that

03:16:40.660 is the basically the companion the glossary of all you know um norse words it's just amazing

03:16:48.580 it's about so thick black anyway something mythology norse mythology love that one anyway

03:16:54.820 i'll give that recommendation too just as a reference book because it gives such nice little

03:17:00.020 quick little summaries of uh names all the dwarves and everybody else who's mentioned in

03:17:05.700 in the lore you know just very concise and good stuff there dictionary of norse mythology i guess

03:17:14.100 it is what it is something like that it's a great book yeah i'm familiar with that that's a really

03:17:19.700 valuable tool i think that all of the lists of names of things that that may seem insignificant

03:17:27.700 in a story context if you translate what those names mean the it adds so much depth to the attic

03:17:36.100 stories all right guys i appreciate you guys listening to us for the last three hours

03:17:44.020 um thank you so much for everybody who participated everybody who asked questions

03:17:48.260 our generous people that have donated tonight thank you guys so much um and thank you very

03:17:55.200 much with you sheila mcnalen it's been an honor to have you on tonight it was an honor to be asked

03:18:00.540 thank you matt all right well you guys have a good night and i will not see you next week

03:18:05.380 because i will be in the air this time next week flying to fall fest in minnesota so

03:18:12.780 So Githya, Brandy Callahan, or Witten, Brandy Callahan will be on hosting for me.

03:18:17.960 And she's going to have Lane Ashby on as her guest.

03:18:21.360 So that should be a good show.

03:18:22.740 I'm looking forward to hearing that.

03:18:24.420 And I'm sure those guys will do us proud.

03:18:29.000 Until then, hail the gods, hail the folk, hail the AFA.

03:18:32.940 Remember, victory never sleeps.

03:18:35.540 Good night, guys.

03:18:36.760 Absolutely.

03:18:37.800 Good night.

03:18:42.780 Thank you.

03:19:12.780 Thank you.

03:19:42.780 Thank you.

03:20:12.780 Thank you.

03:20:42.780 Thank you.

03:21:12.780 Transcription by CastingWords

03:21:42.780 You

Asatru Folk Assembly - August 11, 2022

8⧸10⧸22 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 5

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