Asatru Folk Assembly - 8⧸13⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 162 - Three Decades of Faith

00:00:00.000 Mm-hmm.

00:00:30.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 Thank you.

00:02:30.000 Thank you.

00:03:00.000 Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's exciting edition of Victory Never Sleeps.

00:03:11.740 We have a special treat for you guys this evening.

00:03:17.080 As advertised, kind of, okay, so let's backpedal for a second.

00:03:24.160 All right, so this year, as hopefully you guys know, and some of our new listeners might

00:03:28.960 be unaware of and those listening on the podcast i apologize it's a visual heavy uh presentation so

00:03:36.320 if you're listening on the uh spotify version you may want to check back to our youtube channel to

00:03:42.480 see the the slides that we're talking about at your convenience um but yeah so this year we have

00:03:52.320 i guess we're in the 31st year all year we are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the

00:03:57.200 Yastru Folk Assembly. Being around and doing this for 30 years is a really special achievement and

00:04:06.920 something we're all very proud of. And as part of that, we've been trying to

00:04:13.160 collect and preserve and celebrate our history in a elevated way. As such, we've got folk builder

00:04:25.820 Chris Savage who is taking a lead in that history project and he's done amazing work with it

00:04:34.780 and a couple months ago Nick and I well it's an idea I had that Nick did all the heavy lifting on

00:04:43.020 wanted to put together a slide presentation of kind of pictures and and things that take us

00:04:49.980 through the course of the Ask True Folk Assembly and a little bit that brings us to the Ask True

00:04:55.820 Folk Assembly. So I guess our 30-year history with some prehistory involved as well. So we made this

00:05:02.060 slideshow and it was very large with lots of cool things in it. We're pretty excited about it.

00:05:10.300 I was all fired up to present it at Sigur Bloat at Sigurheim and a couple of technical things

00:05:18.940 did not go our way we had a had a lofty ambition of presenting this in the empty field under the

00:05:28.460 tent off of you know a car battery with a laptop it was going to be really cool but a couple things

00:05:35.580 didn't fall into place so we did not get to present it then and i'm like no we worked hard

00:05:40.940 on this i'd like to show it to people and i think that the audience might enjoy seeing it so i hope

00:05:45.420 you guys do hope everybody enjoys it uh as advertised we have afa luminaries and notables

00:05:52.860 and uh the luminary that shines the brightest is our founder the herald of odin the father of

00:06:02.220 modern alsatru stephen anthony mcnalen and his lovely wife sheila joining us so we are honored

00:06:08.060 to have them on the program and we got some other folks too and uh we kind of throughout the evening

00:06:19.580 people are going to pop in pop out however they'd like to but hopefully folks have some i don't know

00:06:25.500 reminiscing they'd like to do about slides that show up probably should have worked out a good

00:06:30.700 system before the broadcast but we didn't so if you guys got stuff to say feel free to cut in

00:06:37.340 whenever you'd like to nick if you could help facilitate that if you see people starting to

00:06:42.700 talk or whatever but yeah we'd like everybody to you know we're having a fun evening sharing

00:06:47.900 these slides uh as folks know we will take as long as it takes to go through all of these slides and

00:06:54.380 to answer any and all of you guys questions so as always the show is audience participation

00:07:00.780 is encouraged so if we've got people watching this live wherever you guys are please ask whatever

00:07:06.860 questions come to you. If it's about the show, awesome. If it's about other stuff, we'll get to

00:07:12.240 it when it's a cool time to thread it in and, you know, maybe get some different folks' thoughts

00:07:18.540 and feelings on it. And yeah, join us for a journey through 30 years of the Ask True Folk

00:07:25.820 Assembly. Top of the show, things to note for you. As always, GW Farnsworth has flexed his

00:07:34.620 generosity donating $30. We appreciate you. Thank you for that. Give you guys a, well, okay.

00:07:44.160 So coming up week and a half from now, we have Freyfaxi at Baldershof. That's in Murdoch,

00:07:53.260 Minnesota. If you guys are interested or are able to make it, we would love to see you there.

00:07:58.920 It's going to be a great event. I will be there. Folk builder extraordinaire Jason Gallagher, who

00:08:06.280 should be in your top right-hand corner of the screen, will also be there. You get to meet and

00:08:12.200 enjoy his company as well as other AFA leaders. It'll be a really good time. It's a beautiful

00:08:18.260 half. It's something that we're all very proud of, and we'd love to meet you guys there. If you're a

00:08:24.560 member, you should be there. Talk to your local folk builder. They'll get you all set up. If you're

00:08:28.440 not a member, but you'd like to come check it out. Again, your local folk builder or any of

00:08:33.060 our folk builders would be very happy to get you set up. And like I said, we'd love to see you

00:08:37.240 there. Other things, we, it's hard to contain excitement because we've got cool things happening

00:08:51.760 moving towards getting phrase off. We are making a lot of progress and I'm looking forward to

00:08:56.680 having good things to tell you guys, hopefully very, very soon. That is an old graphic we have

00:09:03.180 for our war chest that we've been raising with your guys' amazing generosity. We've raised $11,565.10

00:09:14.820 so far towards that effort. And that's just in a few months of you guys giving. So we really

00:09:20.720 appreciate that. Nick thought he was smooth and he just shuffled in the new graphic. Thank you,

00:09:25.880 Nick. We appreciate that. Yeah. So those are the top of the show things for you guys. Other than

00:09:34.060 this weekend at our other three Hoffs at Odens Hoff in Brownsville, California,

00:09:42.400 at Thor's Hoff in Linden, North Carolina, and at Njords Hoff in White Springs, Florida,

00:09:47.520 we will be celebrating Frey Fax. It's a great time. If you are, if you can make it to any of

00:09:53.160 those Hoffs, you should. And yeah, we'll be celebrating. We'd love to have you guys come

00:09:58.880 and join us. So if you're interested, please reach out to your local folk builder and we

00:10:03.580 can get it all figured out. Another thing I should say, if you are listening to this

00:10:10.800 broadcast, if you are white and you are a heterosexual, you should come home to Ausatru 0.92

00:10:16.680 and join the Ausatru Folk Assembly. We are doing great things. We would love to have

00:10:20.860 you join us and be a part of it. You know, best time would have been to get on board 30 years

00:10:28.240 ago. The second best time is right now. So get off the fence, get on the team. We would love to have

00:10:34.980 you. With that, I am, we'll go through some different things, but I'm going to be steering

00:10:44.300 tonight, so I trust you guys to be kind of looking through stuff in the chat room if

00:10:53.220 we got things that are coming up, and like I said, if people have questions, please make

00:10:57.420 sure you ask, and we will get people on them, and any of our amazing guests, if you guys

00:11:02.280 have stuff you want to say, stuff you want to add, things you want to share, please by

00:11:06.920 all means do that and with that Nick can you load up our slideshow for us

00:11:17.880 so we may be playing with configuration here if our our cameras are in the way or just what

00:11:23.960 happens Nick will make that work for us our lovely 30th anniversary logo was beautifully crafted by

00:11:34.360 Madison East. I think she did a really nice job.

00:11:44.360 All right. So for those of you guys that might not know, and this is one of the cool things about

00:11:52.280 this is it's a different audience and we usually deliver these things in front of. So people might

00:11:57.560 not be aware the house true folk assembly is built on the back of the relationship our founder

00:12:09.400 who's joining us tonight has with the all father and the things he's been inspired to put in motion

00:12:18.280 in our world um the predecessors were was an organization called the viking brotherhood

00:12:29.000 who as you see here is was established in 1972 and it was the name was later changed to the

00:12:35.560 house of true free assembly that lasted in the 70s and the 80s um and that will bring us to

00:12:43.320 and is the foundations that the attitude folk assembly is built from built as a response to

00:12:53.560 or a perfection of those two predecessor organizations i guess really one so yeah for

00:13:01.480 folks that are curious so in 1972 steve founded the viking brotherhood um the first

00:13:11.240 of its kind attempts to reforge the trough between our folk and our gods in modern times

00:13:23.160 the efforts made to do that are I don't know one thing I think is interesting for perspective is

00:13:34.200 it's hindsight's always 2020 and it's really easy to think of things that would be cool or

00:13:40.740 woulda, coulda, shoulda happened, but from the perspective of there is nothing like it,

00:13:48.680 well, we need to have something, and making those first steps towards creating something from

00:13:55.400 nothing, it's truly monumental. On this show a lot, I talk about, you know, one of the biggest

00:14:01.660 distances is from the couch to the front door. Breaking the status quo of not doing something

00:14:11.440 to forging a new path towards making something happen is always such a special and unique

00:14:19.160 challenge. And yeah, our founder took those steps for us and blazed a trail so the rest of us could

00:14:28.420 have, could have nice things. And that kind of brings us where we are today. Part of that effort

00:14:36.920 was the magazine publication that he started way back then called The Rune Stone. We call our

00:14:49.380 monthly newsletter The Rune Stone in honor of this. But these first publications were, you know,

00:14:56.920 Really humble beginnings. You see the little hand drawing on there.

00:15:03.620 But yeah, these were, it was a different time. It's hard to imagine. We've become so used to

00:15:10.280 being able to Google stuff and having stuff online, but being in a time where you have to

00:15:17.080 get this periodical mailed to you, that's a difficult thing. Steve, do you recall what the

00:15:24.540 initial how many people were receiving these first issues of the rune stone

00:15:33.820 it's much my mic on there okay all right now that i've got a mic um

00:15:40.060 it's hard to say i mean it started off literally a handful uh i would guess uh single figures for

00:15:49.100 the first issue or two uh probably uh escalated into two and ultimately three and see by the time

00:15:58.380 we hit three figures i was probably stationed in germany and other people were were you know

00:16:03.580 holding up the front hero in the the in the homeland um yeah the numbers are small but to me

00:16:12.060 that was never the point i would have done it if i had been the only person there period it wasn't

00:16:18.940 something that i had an option of do i really want to do this i knew i had to do this and

00:16:26.140 that's sort of the attitude i've carried you know since that so yeah small numbers small numbers at

00:16:32.220 the beginning and everything types everything types well okay so this kind of goes to to the

00:16:39.020 same time and place. How many members were in the Viking Brotherhood during this period,

00:16:49.260 would you say? I don't know, a dozen maybe scattered around,

00:16:57.180 some more serious than others. A few I had met, others that I probably never met.

00:17:04.460 yeah so it was it was it was a very small thing but again even if i was the only one i would have

00:17:14.140 done it anyway inquiring what minds want to know is the picture on the cover partially a self-portrait

00:17:26.140 no no no it's not uh people have noted the similarity yeah uh no i i've i've still got two

00:17:37.820 eyes uh had them then uh that was rude and rude and crude uh at its best but i'm no artist and

00:17:46.700 you know and i i always trying to talk some of my friends into doing stuff like that for me

00:17:51.980 but you know you gotta do something so there it is you did the drawing sir

00:17:56.580 uh no i did not draw that one of the other people in wichita falls texas which is where i was

00:18:05.460 was going to college uh did that for me um and you know people would would would step in and do

00:18:13.420 things like that. And that was good. And we published the issues on kind of a mimeograph

00:18:22.420 kind of thing. You know, some sort of crank operated smelly thing that probably you could

00:18:30.940 not even find in a museum anymore. But that's what we had. And so that's what we got to run

00:18:39.340 mission we run the mission there you go everybody's got to start somewhere and that's the

00:18:44.780 that's a lesson to all of us it's it's so tempting to conceive of great things in our heads

00:18:54.380 and realize our distance from where we are to our ambition or our dream and not know how to

00:19:04.460 move forward or to make those first steps happen. You know, everybody wants to go immediately from,

00:19:12.060 you know, A to P, but those B, C, D steps are very difficult. And when you're forging them,

00:19:21.420 you know, into the virgin wilderness, that's quite a task. And if you hadn't done those things,

00:19:28.940 we would certainly not be here today, certainly not in anything that resembles what we're doing.

00:19:34.460 I think it's cool. I just want to point out before we move on that the runic title

00:19:40.960 of The Runestone is in German there, Der Runenstein. Good job.

00:19:46.460 Well, hey, I was headed for Germany anyway, so there.

00:19:50.460 There you go.

00:19:52.460 I had, let's see, first issue of The Runestone is released August 1972. Yeah, I was probably

00:20:03.940 getting ready to head off to Fort Benning and go through infantry training and various schools

00:20:10.420 after that. So I knew I would be agile, hostile, and mobile, as we used to say. But still,

00:20:20.180 you do what you can. Whatever the cost, you do what you can do. And if you can't do everything,

00:20:25.380 you do something. Oh, for anybody curious, Nick, do we have

00:20:31.540 these loaded up on the website library? There are various runestones and other

00:20:40.420 publications old on there. They all used to be on there, but some of them are not there

00:20:45.140 currently as I'm working on moving and changing around the library and updating it. But they

00:20:50.420 will all eventually be back up there. You heard it here, folks. So eventually

00:20:55.540 this will be available to look at at our library at runestone.org um yeah we're trying to get as

00:21:03.940 many as we can available for everybody to look at on there it's worth your guys time if uh if you get

00:21:10.500 curious just talking about you know this isn't just an idea or a or a concept or or something

00:21:20.580 we're very official and I realize we may have an international audience listening to the program

00:21:25.860 in the United States the official tax designation for churches or you know religious institutions

00:21:36.580 is a what's referred to as a 501c3 and that's part of our tax code it means that the government

00:21:43.940 recognizes the the legitimacy of a religious organization and as such them being exempted from

00:21:54.260 normal taxes that other organizations or businesses would have so that was established early on this

00:22:01.460 was you know always something that was done in the open and official and and that's okay still is

00:22:08.660 today. This book is what inspired, I don't know, a lot of those early beginnings and the use of

00:22:25.060 the term Ausatru. Steve, you want to tell anybody about this book and the things going into your

00:22:33.380 decision to make use of the term Ausatru and to get things going in the way that you did?

00:22:41.300 Well, you know, obviously, I was interested in Vikings. But I was mature enough to know that

00:22:48.500 there was a lot more to the old ways than, quote, being a Viking, unquote. And so I absorbed a lot

00:22:56.820 of really good books on it. This particular one by Magnus Magnuson in addition to the really

00:23:03.540 outstanding illustrations, photos, and so forth in it. I used to know the page number. I think I

00:23:09.300 published it somewhere on page number such and such of that book. Magnuson used the word

00:23:16.260 also true and explained that that was the the name that the Vikings gave to their religion.

00:23:22.580 and i i was really glad to see that because you know you have

00:23:27.480 you know i get the allure of the vikings but there's so much more there's so much more i wasn't

00:23:33.960 a viking uh yeah what did you use on your dog tags before that oh on the dog tags

00:23:43.220 yeah well before i knew also too let me think um i i don't remember what i put on it uh

00:23:56.420 but i do remember that after uh after we had uh i was in a i was in a wreck on the way up to the uh

00:24:03.700 dahlonega the ranger school up up and up in the mountains and uh i was you know had a lot of my

00:24:10.660 stuff rifled through while i was gone and stuff was stolen so uh the um

00:24:17.860 okay folks said you know go down to these this little this little um office that's down actually

00:24:26.340 under one of the jump towers there at at uh at fort benning and there's a little old lady sitting

00:24:32.820 behind a desk and the little old lady when it gets gets to making them down you know tapping up

00:24:39.620 another another dog tag for me and she asked my religious preference and i said also true

00:24:48.020 i think that's what i said yeah yeah anyway it was definitely my beat was just norse i think

00:24:53.620 that was before i had magnuson's book and so i just i just said norse and she she typed it up

00:24:59.620 she was good with it so that was the beginning and then later as soon as i got uh the the official

00:25:06.180 word also true uh you know i i i got that corrected as well all right and just kind of a side note

00:25:14.900 over in the chat we have uh someone telling us hello watching the program in osaka japan

00:25:21.620 so appreciate you joining us from the other side of the world

00:25:26.100 Here we have in March of 77, you holding the first Oden bloat in the Americas.

00:25:40.020 Is there anything you would like to tell folks about the occasion of this bloat?

00:25:46.580 It was, this was number one as far as anything publicly. And believe it or not,

00:25:53.700 it was held in a public park in berkeley california which of course in many ways has

00:26:01.940 been hostile territory uh yeah and uh it attracted a very diverse crowd shall we say um

00:26:12.740 and i i don't know that i would do it that way again but sometimes you just got to get it rolling

00:26:19.940 you just got to take some action and make things roll and yeah yeah like i say i i would i would

00:26:27.460 not do anything of that sort you know in a public park today with onlookers uh you know the crowds

00:26:33.940 and so forth but uh uh especially in berkeley but you do what you have to do you do what you have

00:26:40.820 to do to get things rocking to get things rolling and um you know some good things came coming out

00:26:46.180 I picked up a fistful of really good people that then cooperated with me to do bloat inside at

00:27:02.260 the office of a friend and to invite the people who were really serious.

00:27:08.180 And that was a big beginning in many ways. If I hadn't done this rather public thing,

00:27:13.540 you know i would never would have met those people so do you know who the two folks who are

00:27:21.540 looking on in awe might be uh sean what was his name sean sean something or other

00:27:31.460 and his his girlfriend i don't remember his last name or or hers either um but they were

00:27:39.700 yeah you know they were compatible people and nice people and and wanted to do this and for for

00:27:47.140 whatever reason we were highly interested in it so we you know there were people that i i got to

00:27:53.140 know a bit and you know they were good enough folk but um yeah there was there were so many

00:28:00.020 other people that I needed to draw it. So. So do you want to tell anybody anything about

00:28:10.580 the name change from the Viking Brotherhood to the Alcatru Free Assembly? And Nick,

00:28:16.340 if you could rotate the thing so people could see the Alcatru Free Assembly's symbol.

00:28:22.660 Well, hmm, basically, of course, it was, it was leaving the singular Viking motif behind. It was more than just Viking, and Viking Brotherhood intimates, you know, suggests a small group of people getting ready to get onto a ship and sail away to burn a monastery.

00:28:52.660 or something. So the also true free assembly captured that attitude of capability, that

00:29:03.740 attitude of, you know, we are free. We assemble or disassemble as we desire. We are free to,

00:29:12.600 you know, a fair extent with what we do and how we worship and who we may or may not offend. I mean,

00:29:21.000 You know, if you're a Christian and you can tolerate us, that's fine.

00:29:26.800 You know, we're good with that.

00:29:27.840 If you're somebody who thinks we're horrible people, well, you know, that's not so good.

00:29:33.980 So the also true free assembly, people who followed our way and came together on their own free will was really the whole idea there.

00:29:48.100 All right.

00:29:48.980 you think about women how you know the whole feminine thing and yeah causes oh yeah

00:29:58.180 okay so that's a good question were there women involved in the viking brotherhood

00:30:05.620 very few at the very beginning um doing that that early berkeley sequence uh i think there 0.56

00:30:16.260 were one two three four five women and that was everything from people my own age to uh

00:30:27.780 little old ladies with extreme political views uh so so it was actually quite a mix uh

00:30:36.900 but you know it's it's all right if they were sincere if they were sincere and met our criteria

00:30:42.820 uh they were they were welcome to come to our events such as they were

00:30:49.460 religion without goddesses is halfway to atheism that's a good one yeah yeah yeah there's there's

00:30:56.740 that thing i put together somewhere at some point i don't remember when exactly that uh

00:31:04.500 that a religion without a goddess is halfway to atheism i was reading

00:31:10.340 one issuance of that, what, two days ago when I was reading a couple of old Free Assembly

00:31:21.760 pamphlets that Chris found on archive. What were those three pamphlets, Chris? Do you remember?

00:31:31.060 Some ostature values. Oh, geez. Let me check. Hang on.

00:31:37.860 No, I put you on the spot. It's all good. While we do that, I want to mention that a couple of few things here. Our folk builder in Florida, Alexander Casto, bought us a coffee, which is a $5 donation. It says, hail to the next 30 years and beyond. Thank you very much for that, Alexander.

00:32:00.400 uh ronald blake bought us five coffees that's 25 donation he says hail all well hail to you

00:32:08.200 ronald and thank you for your generosity we appreciate it and then he went on and again

00:32:13.640 ronald donated 25 to folk services thank you for that we appreciate it

00:32:18.660 ronald angela donated uh 25 to balder's steeple and 25 towards the phrasehof war chest

00:32:28.040 very much appreciated thank you very much and austin don't whoa okay they're just keep rolling

00:32:36.620 it's a good problem to have austin donated twenty dollars towards our phrase off thank you for that

00:32:42.820 austin and uh gilbert donated two hundred and fifty dollars to the steeple and two hundred

00:32:50.360 150 dollars to the phraseoff fund wow thank you so much very much appreciated on both counts thank

00:32:58.600 you uh you guys are awesome uh we really appreciate y'all's generosity that's how we're able to do

00:33:06.520 that coupled with the blessings of the icr or how we are able to accomplish so many

00:33:11.080 beautiful things we really appreciate it guys thank you um

00:33:14.920 um so wait wait the pamphlets were the values of Asatru the lessons of Asgard and what is

00:33:25.120 Asatru the values of Asatru is a collection of essays that were put throughout the runestone

00:33:33.640 uh akin to the nine noble virtues

00:33:37.960 I was talking to Brandy about that earlier those uh we will get those and have those

00:33:43.660 available at the Runestone Library as well. So in 1980, the

00:33:50.860 Oustru Free Assembly had the first All Thing. Do you want to

00:33:58.220 say anything about All Thing One? And I suppose before I go on

00:34:01.420 to that, pictured there is Gauthie David James, who is one of

00:34:08.460 two AFA Goethys that died in office. We appreciate him and he was, you know, active in Alistair

00:34:17.440 Tru all the way back to All Thing One in 1980, a year before I was born.

00:34:24.540 Steve, tell us about All Thing One and how that came about, if you would.

00:34:38.460 all right well it was oh there he is well hey i'm dealing with some lights and stuff here of course

00:34:45.420 um it was um held at uh in a a place in the east bay uh california yeah over the hills there there

00:34:57.740 was some uh a really nice place uh that uh that we could get together and you know it was you know

00:35:05.900 wooded and treed and so forth and um i talked with them and they were all good with doing it and they

00:35:13.180 would be glad to to do a pig for us and uh you know provide all the things that we needed

00:35:21.100 and so um yeah i put out the word and we had uh we had you know a number of a very interesting

00:35:28.300 people uh come we had uh edward thorson um as a very young guy and and kind of you know just yeah

00:35:41.820 hairy and you know unkempt uh hair and so forth you know uh but very bright and so forth and we

00:35:50.620 We had David James there, as you see He's a poet and a very good one and he's well educated on all the relevant things and has been following the gods for quite a number of years

00:36:09.620 and other people who were mostly from the Bay Area,

00:36:15.380 a few other people here in Yon.

00:36:17.380 England, you had Peter Seymour.

00:36:19.500 Yeah, Peter Seymour from England,

00:36:21.780 who was an amazing guy and true to the gods

00:36:28.700 and to our folk.

00:36:30.160 He was Odenic Wright?

00:36:31.840 Yeah, he was Odenic Wright, I believe.

00:36:33.920 uh and we did everything from rune stavagalder to uh you know a a weapons demonstration uh

00:36:47.520 put on by some of the the re reenactment people in the bay area um we had uh good discussions

00:36:55.600 i recall and and the whole thing went rather well um the pig was outstanding

00:37:06.560 and i got word later that uh there had been a a undercover police person there uh during the the

00:37:14.720 event but apparently that individual had nothing nothing bad to say about us nothing negative so

00:37:22.240 So, you know, one for us.

00:37:25.960 Yeah, I think that, you know, I always wonder what our enemies think that we're up to.

00:37:31.580 I think there's always, I don't know, wild ideas about what really goes on.

00:37:38.460 And I think they would, I think, be underwhelmed by the villainy or lack thereof that occurs and probably really moved by some of the beautiful things that go on.

00:37:50.140 Um, I met David James almost 30 years, like 30 years, yeah, 30 years exactly from this period at, uh, Midsummer in, uh, Alta, California.

00:38:05.200 So there you go.

00:38:11.100 This was a foundational thing that is, was ahead of its time.

00:38:18.260 Much of the science of metagenetics has come to be recognized today as an absolutely legitimate and accepted thing.

00:38:28.160 They'll put in slightly different terms, but this was really an important, I'd say was and still is a very, very important foundational concept for, I would say, for Alcetru, but also for folk religions generally.

00:38:46.020 and this was first, I don't know, first distributed in winter of 1980. Steve, is there anything you

00:38:52.640 want to say about metagenetics or would you like to define it for any of our audience that may be

00:38:58.000 unfamiliar? Well, I think that our audience basically thinks of this immediately, you know,

00:39:07.800 The idea that genetics shapes our religious opinions and our attitudes towards life, and so forth and so forth.

00:39:19.240 But back decades and decades ago, people didn't want to say that kind of thing.

00:39:24.520 It was too racially inclined.

00:39:27.520 But essentially, it was, hey, you know, people of a particular genetic collection are going to have similar beliefs and similar values.

00:39:46.020 That was really the essence of it in so many ways.

00:39:50.460 But at the time, it was, oh, well, we don't say stuff like that.

00:39:54.540 That's racist.

00:39:55.680 you know so there it was this was a bit of a poke in the eye to the system there you go and you know

00:40:01.960 truth truth is truth no matter what kind of name calling or labels you want to attach to it um

00:40:09.080 yeah this certainly is something that i think we all know to be true

00:40:12.360 all right and then before we uh go ahead i just can i just throw in a bit of uh

00:40:22.820 esoteric ossature trivia of course you can that's why you're here so in 1990 so um

00:40:31.860 in 1992 dr stephen flowers published his book a book of troth uh which was supposed to be

00:40:39.060 the central text of the ring of troth before that organization got grundled and it's uh

00:40:46.580 kind of funny because in in this book despite what later poor copies of this work would would say he

00:40:56.180 actually uses the term metagenetics in here to describe asitur as an ethnic religion so nice

00:41:03.940 just interesting to see where this this word goes so yeah i remember in um

00:41:10.420 I forget where it was. I want to say it was in History of the Rune Guild, but Edred mentions

00:41:20.860 that, you know, one of the, I don't know, one of the things that has the most meaning to him

00:41:27.000 was when, Steve, when you ordained him as a Gothi way back when, during the Free Assembly days.

00:41:36.700 He dedicated Luthark to you, too.

00:41:38.740 Yeah. Yeah. Sheila seconds that he dedicated the work Futhart to as well.

00:41:47.440 Kind of a side note and a plug. Anybody interested in the runes? Edred Thorson is

00:41:56.420 certainly the preeminent runemaster of the modern era. And I would say that there's a case to be

00:42:07.400 made perhaps ever uh his work that he has done on the runes both um in practice in esoteric usage

00:42:18.600 and in you know very traditional scholarship is um unmatched and anybody who's interested

00:42:27.560 futhark is the go-to text on that and i would encourage anybody interested to get that

00:42:33.480 and his you know following works that kind of pair with that runelore

00:42:40.600 runecaster's handbook and what is that runemite i think is the the title and that's the subtitle

00:42:48.600 i gave and uh aloo are all very very good works on the runes that i would highly recommend if

00:42:54.360 anybody is interested so for reasons uh the astro free assembly was dissolved in 1987.

00:43:06.120 and steve would you like to tell anybody you know kind of why that was something that

00:43:10.600 occurred how that went down what kind of what what that was like

00:43:14.280 oh god 1987 you're with maddie yeah breckenridge had done the northern society that was right

00:43:25.320 yeah at that time uh i was living in my my hometown breckenridge texas place i still love

00:43:33.240 in a state I still love. And I was holding down a full-time job with the local sheriff department.

00:43:47.060 I was, you know, their late-night guy and, you know, their radio guy and all that kind of stuff.

00:43:55.100 And so I was holding down a full-time job. I was trying to do things on the side. I had set up a, what did I call it, a Northern European Heritage Center in a storefront and just had a lot of information of that sort.

00:44:16.060 great deal of it being also true, but also just general stuff of our people. So I was doing that

00:44:26.620 and, you know, trying to deal with, I don't know, just life in general. And so I was hardly

00:44:38.440 making ends meet so i asked you know the the council such as it was of of the of the organization

00:44:48.360 to uh to yes can i get some sort of a stipend uh and people just went yeah excuse the expression

00:44:59.080 batshit crazy you know uh oh god you're just you're just in this for the money yeah yeah right

00:45:07.160 you know and it was so hurtful it was so hurtful i said hey i'm done i'm done 0.99

00:45:18.600 i stepped away i mean it was it wasn't just that no you know we we don't think you know

00:45:26.360 we can we can pay you that or whatever it was like it was it was vitriol it was vitriol i felt

00:45:34.440 insulted I felt that my my intentions were completely misunderstood and I just said okay

00:45:44.760 end of mission and those people turned on you later in other interviews the interviews that

00:45:52.520 happened books that you read from the 90s yeah some of those people were interviewed and they

00:45:56.920 did not treat steve fairly at all yeah it was anyway it was very hurtful so what was the outcome

00:46:05.640 yeah matt will probably ask no go ahead go ahead well i'm thinking when you stepped away what were

00:46:12.760 the two groups that took over uh what were they uh oh well it's the hospital alliance well it was

00:46:22.280 astro kindred okay of arizona with valgaard and then edred went off with the room guild

00:46:29.800 and started the ring of truth yeah so that that that they were the the main players at that point

00:46:36.760 what was interesting now is that until this time this was the only organization so everybody

00:46:42.200 considering themselves also true regardless of who they were where they lived they were all part of

00:46:48.200 the afa which was a really interesting mix of people but then they tended to kind of splinter

00:46:55.560 off right in the two the two groups one was obviously planned to be focused and the other

00:47:01.160 one edrid was just doing esoteric stuff yeah um so before we completely wrap up the free assembly

00:47:12.440 days can you kind of give us a snapshot i guess of what the free assembly was like at its at its

00:47:21.000 height where were you know what was the geographic spread what was the membership what was you know

00:47:27.800 how was it organized i guess for lack of a better term oh um the free assembly at that point you

00:47:40.360 before its torpedoing was spread geographically pretty much across the United States with a lot

00:47:51.080 of people in places we'd never met. Some foreign, but not a whole lot of them. We were just making

00:48:01.160 kind of casual contacts over there at that point um we were just trying to to practice and to

00:48:10.200 maintain practice uh we we would hold meetings or you know get-togethers events whatever you

00:48:18.520 want to call the golf thing every year yeah it turned out for that that is there was an annual

00:48:24.920 all thing as i recall those were held down at possum kingdom lake which was kind of cool because uh

00:48:33.720 yeah i knew that area well um we had we had all sorts of serious discussions we had people

00:48:42.520 repelling off of the building we had yeah we had uh you know it was it was interesting it was

00:48:50.440 interesting were you shooting off rockets at that point shooting off rockets at that point um yeah

00:48:57.240 i don't know i was kind of into shooting off rockets um it was and it was it was my excuse

00:49:03.400 was that um you know that's that's a future for our folk is is to to reach outward that's what we

00:49:12.600 do. You know, who were all the great rocket scientists? Germans, you know, and Englishmen.

00:49:22.840 So, you know, that, that was, I wanted to give people a reach, a sense of reach,

00:49:29.400 a sense of what we, we, not just us, we, but our entire fault. What was our future going to be?

00:49:38.520 what would we rise to uh we are we are the outward bound people we are the ones who want to go

00:49:45.960 farther go faster uh explore where nobody else has ever done that is us completely uh no no no race

00:49:56.600 can begin to match us in that drive and when i was when i was six or seven years old uh obviously no

00:50:05.080 no one had put out the word astronaut yet,

00:50:08.460 but I knew I wanted to go to space.

00:50:11.120 I knew I wanted to go to the moon.

00:50:15.580 My mother, bless her heart.

00:50:17.700 My mother, bless her heart is something she would have said, 0.51

00:50:23.320 rural Texas. 0.72

00:50:30.360 She read books to me endlessly.

00:50:34.720 I would get a book from a book club and she would read me that book before I went to school,

00:50:42.780 before I was old enough to go to school or, you know, when I was like in first grade and these

00:50:47.400 were like somewhat higher books. You know, that's, I owe a great deal of what I am to my mother

00:50:53.900 and her continued interest and encouraging me to go farther and to to to do do things i didn't know

00:51:07.520 i could do got kind of sidetracked there yeah but no that's true that's what this show is intended

00:51:14.720 for is to take any and all of those sidetracks or rabbit trails and i'm very glad your mom

00:51:21.560 instilled that in you i think that did a lot to bring us to where we are today so

00:51:27.880 i i agree completely yeah i agree all right well i'd like to thank alex for donating

00:51:37.880 50 to the phrase off fund thank you alex we appreciate you and with that we will

00:51:45.320 all right so there is a period of time if you could fill this gap for us if you'd like steve

00:51:53.580 because you are carrying the torch all of this time between 87 and 1992 what was going on in

00:52:02.180 your world okay at that time i was i was married to a very nice lady that obviously didn't work out

00:52:11.980 with it. Um, uh, but, uh, but she was, she was gung ho on, you know, doing things like 1.00

00:52:19.460 this. Um, 0.99

00:52:22.520 Yeah. Yeah. I became a teacher. That sounds dangerous, doesn't it? Uh, uh, yeah. I was

00:52:32.940 working as a teacher in small town Texas, lived in a, what am I missing? You've become a teacher

00:52:44.720 out here in California. You've moved back to California. You and Maddie were doing that from

00:52:49.860 California. Oh, did I say Texas? Yes, you did. My bad. I didn't mean to say Texas. I just had

00:52:54.940 text is on my mind sounds like a song doesn't it um um yeah uh yeah and uh right just a few miles

00:53:06.540 from where we are right now yeah the whole area there i had a nice little place out effectively

00:53:13.100 in the country actually it was just kind of a couple of acres that had a good degree of

00:53:20.060 of privacy and security um i had met yost turner uh and other

00:53:30.140 powerful people i'll say powerful because he was a powerful individual and

00:53:35.500 wish he was still here and uh had other contacts across the country uh and we we held meetings

00:53:45.340 held held gatherings well this is when this is later though oh okay that was in the 80s

00:53:50.540 this is back in california in the 90s when you came back after texas oh god and you went

00:53:55.900 started teaching oh yeah okay it was some kind of lost a decade there

00:54:01.500 but still the same people came into our lives within about five years i was thinking of something

00:54:07.020 with mandy a couple of days ago about you know some afa thing that happened and seemed like it

00:54:13.100 was just yesterday and it turns out it was six whole years ago so time yeah time goes we're

00:54:18.540 talking about something 30 years in the past but what i guess kind of a point here is the

00:54:24.220 austro folk assembly was founded over yule the yule period 94 into the very beginning of 1995.

00:54:32.540 so this is three years before that um something told you to get back involved in a house of true

00:54:41.660 and part of that as you can see we have a another snapshot of what the roomstone looked like this is

00:54:47.900 a much more advanced version of that you know very first one that i showed you guys a little while

00:54:53.820 ago we still got a yet another version i don't know if that made it into the slides yet needing

00:54:59.020 health because it was going uni it did so the question is what brought you back to doing that

00:55:12.300 with maddie in 1992 well yeah there's this gap there's this gap there something called you back

00:55:18.620 into the fray yeah my motivation was seeing that frankly things were just going to hell

00:55:26.060 uh there was not that much activity going on but what there was was largely universalist uh rather

00:55:36.060 than folkish and i i knew that that had to stop so i went into action and we started publishing

00:55:45.180 stuff and holding get-togethers and so forth and so forth uh yeah but it was it was largely a

00:55:52.140 reaction to to the situation at that time what was called the ring of truth is everybody

00:56:00.060 who was around that time knows who they were and very far left people based out of the in the bay

00:56:05.500 area who yeah became the truth later and may or may not even exist to this day yeah who knows

00:56:13.980 i can ramble a bit about that yeah go ahead yes chris so uh just to start because speaking of

00:56:20.860 things that oh geez that just happened yesterday uh 1994's yule period where steve mcnallan was

00:56:28.940 re-establishing the ossitru or become the austro folk assembly uh someone on this pub

00:56:34.060 this podcast was actually being born at that time a fun little fact so anyways about 31 years ago

00:56:43.900 So Steve McNallan was re-founding what would become the Ostru Folk Assembly.

00:56:51.940 So when he had taken a break from running things for a while,

00:56:58.120 there were two organizations that came up, the Ostru Reliance and the Ring of Troth.

00:57:06.360 You might more hear about it as the Troth today.

00:57:10.020 there's some back and forth about who came up with the name i believe i came to the conclusion that

00:57:15.940 dr flowers initially did uh the troth in his original formulation was what he wanted to call

00:57:22.420 the religion the ring of was the church for the religion so the ring of troth the church of the

00:57:29.140 religion for ossature right um they uh he he dr flowers ran the ring of troth initially as a far

00:57:39.300 more scholarly magical organization um that ended up his looser standards for who got in

00:57:53.060 and who got to have a say in things eventually resulted in a cast of some

00:57:58.100 pretty undesirable characters booting him out of his own organization and that kind of came to a

00:58:06.660 head around the same time that steve would start the afa co-co-temporal with this was valgaard

00:58:15.860 murray's uh ossature alliance which was more like rather than like a church was more like an outlaw

00:58:24.820 biker gang where like a kindred that you were a member of would affiliate and you weren't you

00:58:31.780 weren't technically a member of the aaa you were a member of an aa kindred more or less and

00:58:41.540 that organization didn't have as firm of a uh shall we say doctrinal solidarity and

00:58:49.140 some pretty unsavory people like uh bill bainbridge and whatever uh deep throats real name was um

00:59:01.780 Um, Gamlion, yeah, he, uh, in, in history of the Rune Guild, uh, Flowers relays a story

00:59:11.120 about this character that he apparently wanted to be called by the, uh, the heathen name

00:59:16.840 of Djupverkr, which he said meant deep throat, but actually means deep pain.

00:59:27.200 Let's, let's, let's take note and ruminate on that for a second.

00:59:31.780 oh dear he was evil

00:59:37.780 so there's another story about this character i was digging around looking into some of these

00:59:45.000 uh odd fellows and he was trying to do a pig bloat where they'd kill a kill a swine and offer

00:59:52.740 it and stuff but he uh wasn't very good at killing pigs so he screws up exsanguinating it

01:00:00.960 and it's making a mess and his wife has to come in and actually finish it off and he's kind of 0.52

01:00:06.000 embarrassed about this and so he turns to the crowd and says geez it's harder with a pig than

01:00:12.600 with a human this is the kind of these are the kinds of unsavory types that had an unfortunate

01:00:26.740 amount of say in things in between the free assembly and the folk assembly so something 0.96

01:00:34.000 that i should that you know sheila was making note of on the side there up to this point

01:00:40.080 universalist ausatru wasn't a thing all american ausatru was the ausatru folk assembly

01:00:48.220 and you know any Icelandic Alcetru was completely heterogeneous as Iceland is

01:00:57.680 there's a lot of like retconning what Alcetru used to be but it was inherently and always

01:01:06.220 folkish I had a conversation I want to say like Winter Nights 2017 with Robert Taylor who

01:01:13.380 um was robert taylor a member of the free assembly steve do you recall

01:01:19.080 i don't recall i don't think he was i think he came along he was kind of doing his own thing in

01:01:27.200 chicago and like a kindred up there i think at this at that point but did not really expand but

01:01:33.220 he was doing things up there if anybody ever gets a chance to interact with robert taylor it is well

01:01:41.540 all worth your time he is literally the most interesting person that I've ever spoken to

01:01:46.340 um real really interesting guy and he was uh very active involved in Alcetru around this point and

01:01:53.840 and further and he and I were talking you know he's an older gentleman and we were talking about

01:01:58.700 you know the early days of his involvement in Alcetru and yeah the whole idea of a universalist

01:02:08.840 Rainbow Coalition, Ausitru thing. It was never a thing. It was always folkish up until this point

01:02:16.480 of, you know, odd things and odd folks and deviation. But I have found something that

01:02:24.200 might cast doubt on that. Nick, would you like to throw up the picture that I sent you of the

01:02:29.620 foundations of universalist house of truth is that i don't know i don't know it's a picture

01:02:39.520 i found way back when of seven fidel castro drinking some horns what holy yeah they've

01:02:47.980 got drinking horns it's legit there's a couple of these pictures exposed yeah is that behind

01:02:56.140 them there i joke there's no house of true involved in this picture but it is a funny

01:03:01.740 picture of commies drinking from horns do we know who the the short guy but next to him is

01:03:10.460 i had no idea anybody else in this picture although wow i assume they're all red

01:03:17.980 could it have been khrushchev even that is

01:03:20.060 Oh, yeah, it's absolutely Khrushchev and Castro.

01:03:24.600 It is Khrushchev and Castro.

01:03:26.760 I just don't know.

01:03:28.040 I think he meant the fella in the Georgian jacket.

01:03:32.180 Yeah, that's what I was wondering, is the mustachioed communist gentleman.

01:03:40.080 Wow.

01:03:41.420 That's what they were doing while you were doing yours.

01:03:43.660 You won.

01:03:44.900 I won. 0.97

01:03:45.880 Screw them. 0.97

01:03:46.560 All right. 0.89

01:03:47.520 So.

01:03:47.820 Just to throw back here real quick, I kind of brought this up already a little bit, but

01:03:54.300 Dr. Flowers in 1992 put out a book of troth, and he says in here, this is a quote verbatim,

01:04:05.660 the troth is our own folk religion. This means that it is the religion that is particular to

01:04:10.800 this folk, to this ethnic group. We seek first and foremost to delve deeply into the long

01:04:16.680 neglected pathways of our ancestors. So in 2002, the eunuch scholar Stephan Grundy would put out

01:04:27.920 his version, Our Troth, which changes that around. So it's actually in this period that

01:04:36.060 the entire idea of universalist Asatru is invented, in part because Asatru is a folkish religion.

01:04:43.080 It doesn't make much sense to say universalist Asatru in the same way that it's like, there's no such thing as non-Dharmic Buddhism or non-Abrahamic Judaism.

01:04:52.700 These are classes that include the thing by its characteristics.

01:04:57.340 So if you want to have universalist Asatru, you have to make it because Asatru is folkish, just by definition, right?

01:05:04.560 So Jill made a comment over in the side chat, and I just want to say, Jill, I thought the guy standing next to her looked a lot like Trudeau.

01:05:12.220 so i can't confirm or deny whether uh his parents were in fact in that picture or not

01:05:18.860 but they might have been we never know um it's funny that you would say that because that's

01:05:24.060 literally what i was thinking all right so wow we take a little bit of a jump here um

01:05:33.420 something that i wanted to mention before we got here on it a little bit is the austro alliance

01:05:43.180 all of the things that chris said but one of the things that occurred i want to say in 1994

01:05:51.020 they signed off on a document that legitimized you know

01:06:00.620 also true being open for everybody and not being a folkish religion and that was a

01:06:10.220 that was a big problem um i'm trying to find a date for that i don't know chris if you might

01:06:16.300 know that off the top of your head but it was a a fundamental thing around okay so yeah in uh

01:06:24.060 looks like september of 94 they were signatories to a statement that you know

01:06:34.220 house true is for anybody who wants to be also true and isn't racially aligned um

01:06:40.060 um and i believe this is at the time you mentioned this when we did or when i presented this uh

01:06:50.860 slideshow at odin's off but would you like to share about valgaard reaching out to you

01:07:01.980 oh do you remember he was asking your help and you were supporting him

01:07:06.540 yeah 12 minutes yeah um yeah yeah yeah so yeah so bainbridge was doing a big push

01:07:17.900 on uh valguard valvard who passed away by the way just a few months ago yeah um and uh and

01:07:25.260 bainbridge and gambling and we heard steve heard later the gambling actually who said he was part

01:07:31.020 of the nsa actually came up to nevada county to look for dirt on steve that's how threatened they

01:07:37.900 felt because that is when he started making the push to move back into the australia folk assembly

01:07:44.940 start really pushing the runestone and everything and holding events and at that point we made an

01:07:51.900 alliance with the australia alliance with our own kindred because it was always a kindred organization

01:07:58.380 it was understood that the austral folk assembly would always be an individual membership

01:08:03.580 even though people could have kindreds we also had guilds but it was basically individual membership

01:08:09.580 but they could we could have kindreds as part of it but at that point steve and valgaard really

01:08:16.780 reconnected after quite a separation and we actually went out to wisconsin for a a very

01:08:25.660 what was a large moot at that point it was an all thing and uh it was a good really good event and

01:08:32.060 we announced at that point that there would be now be the also true folk assembly it was

01:08:37.100 the formal announcement with them and we had our um odenic right uh humgist was there we've got a

01:08:47.740 story about humgist that people haven't told but probably not a very good thing to yeah he had some

01:08:53.500 young men and they were all kind of drinking a little too much yeah and behind us was there so

01:08:58.940 this was belgaard kind of bringing together other groups and um seeing where we'd all kind of shake

01:09:05.820 out but we stayed very close to valgaard for the next uh dozen or so years uh having a kindred and

01:09:13.420 he also at that point had membership in the personal membership uh in the austral folk

01:09:20.140 assembly and by doing that we really pushed back on the gamligan and the the bainbridge thing and

01:09:27.260 i think they probably rewrote those bylaws because they always basically had a focus

01:09:36.460 presence it's just that it would be kind of sometimes a little over overrun by i don't

01:09:42.700 want to say overrun but influenced by um various kindred uh members and their leaders their

01:09:49.340 chieftains always a chieftain right uh and i'd go the chieftain go the kindred of four and um

01:09:57.100 and they would have their own say but ultimately valgaard always always had the winning card

01:10:04.140 he always to even to the very end kind of kept things uh under his control so it was really

01:10:10.700 important for the alistair folk assembly to come out and push back so that the the troth really 0.95

01:10:16.140 just went very independent of all of us and became very much against us and so uh and looking for ways

01:10:25.340 to for one thing there was a uh somebody did a niff song against steve you may not know about

01:10:31.740 that he was we were so hated in the 90s and banned from various events going to the panthea con for

01:10:38.860 one thing in the bay area they had a whole section was anti-afa and nobody associated

01:10:44.940 who knew steve mcnellen could be could enter and somebody actually got a horse head and did a nymph

01:10:50.940 staying downtown berkeley and put it up on a stake that's the kind of stuff that was going on we we

01:10:58.300 we were their arch enemies the way they saw it gave them a purpose for being i guess

01:11:02.540 but we just pretty much ignored them probably let it get to us more than it should we've all learned

01:11:07.500 you just let your enemies do what they wish in the background because they're gonna get nowhere

01:11:12.460 and we just let it just drop away from us and we move on and do what we need to do to keep building

01:11:19.100 our folk that was we learned that early on and that's where we still are today as as a church

01:11:24.620 so as a as a point on that just to kind of close that up this is a strange time where you start

01:11:30.860 having this push for universalism and uh you know the that's true alliance under whatever

01:11:38.620 and this is kind of a note on some things the everybody having voting rights in the trough

01:11:46.460 is why edward was booted from his organization the very democratic uh nature of the austro

01:11:55.980 or the australians is why sometimes things happen that maybe were fundamentally against the intent

01:12:03.420 of the the founders and people who put in a lot of the work but this was that time where they did

01:12:09.980 sign that you know alsatru is for everybody thing and as i remember you letting me know and correct

01:12:17.660 me if this is wrong but valgaard reached out to you and asked you to come back and basically save

01:12:22.460 alsatru and uh i suppose that happened yeah because that's really important and it's exactly

01:12:32.380 what you did and we're all grateful that you did um this goes into can i can i jump in of course

01:12:43.720 what do you got um it's i i want to ask uh steve a question real quick but i also just want to

01:12:49.840 point out like we keep bringing up gambling in his real name was alex jerome um we keep bringing

01:12:55.300 up gambling in and bill brainbridge it's important to note that there's this universalist

01:13:01.060 Asatru stuff comes about due to a very small number of people who with very few exceptions

01:13:07.380 were mostly interested in the like politics of Asatru rather than anything to do with the gods

01:13:15.540 or theology. I went looking around and as far as I can find regarding Gambling and Bill Bainbridge

01:13:22.280 everything they wrote comes down to politics not like here's what the runes mean or here's how to

01:13:29.600 Cray to Thor kind of stuff.

01:13:31.040 So at least as far as what they wanted to survive, it really was the idea of creating this Universalist Asatru thing as outsiders intruding in a space to control it rather than like people who just want to worship Thor, right?

01:13:50.860 At this time, there's a lot of consternation in Universalist Asatru about what does Asatru mean, controlling it from the outside, like park rangers watching wolves, as opposed to the Asatru Reliance guys who, for faults that can be levied against them, were like writing things about the runes and how to pray to Thor and what you're supposed to wear at Bloat and all this other stuff where they're actually doing Asatru.

01:14:16.280 um if you want to say something go ahead matt i'll oh no i just oh no oh i was just gonna say

01:14:25.480 that they did it in that format for decades what the australian alliance was like when i met them

01:14:32.600 in 1975 it was just the same back in um 2021 you know it had never really changed in their approach

01:14:43.700 And their level of involvement as kindreds and any kind of a global reach never changed.

01:14:53.120 And in fact, they still exist.

01:14:55.540 Real quick here, Steve.

01:14:58.740 So Dr. Stephen Flowers was ordained as a gothi in the Ostafree Assembly, and he never ordained anyone below him in the troth. 0.99

01:15:08.580 They had to invent the God woe slash man position after he left or after they kicked him out. 0.99

01:15:17.920 Did you ever formally ordain Valgaard in the Ossetra Free Assembly?

01:15:23.820 I don't think so.

01:15:27.120 No.

01:15:28.300 Well, in the Free Assembly, I don't know.

01:15:30.180 I wasn't.

01:15:30.400 No, I don't think so.

01:15:32.200 People could kind of self-acknowledge that they were a go-the-of-a-kindred and that was accepted.

01:15:38.060 he was clearly

01:15:42.680 in charge of what he was doing there

01:15:45.060 he was the leader

01:15:46.900 he was a good leader

01:15:48.260 and

01:15:50.220 kind of his show

01:15:52.380 I presume the same

01:15:54.980 is the case for his buddy

01:15:57.020 Thorstein

01:15:59.640 or Eric or whichever

01:16:00.860 he was going by at the time

01:16:02.200 the guy who published Vortru

01:16:05.100 yeah

01:16:06.980 He was an interesting sort. I have not heard anything about him in years and years and years. He was skinny. Obviously, we're all literous to a point, but he wanted to know exactly how you do this to a detail and how you do that.

01:16:33.740 and you know things that even i probably i think nobody knew um but um he was sincere

01:16:41.180 he was a quote good guy unquote but uh he wasn't really producing much or

01:16:49.500 making anything happen uh it was it was just him i would say he married you and

01:16:56.220 maddie yeah he officiated yeah at your wedding yeah okay his uh his his name was uh ernest

01:17:06.700 and i'm mostly just bragging that i found out this guy's name i'm sorry his name was ernest uh

01:17:12.620 eric for stein for our son the bidwell junior so yeah yeah yeah but yeah he's about frankly you

01:17:23.100 You know, I wouldn't want to say this to his face, but he was a pretty pathetic individual in many ways and sincere. 0.82

01:17:29.940 He had a good heart, but that was about it. 0.98

01:17:33.780 Well, there you have it.

01:17:35.200 I think that Chris rolls ours for the rest of us that struggle with it.

01:17:41.620 He does a little bit of extra roll in there just for the rest of us covering our bases.

01:17:45.380 We appreciate that.

01:17:46.240 To kind of close out on the Ask True Alliance, they've stayed around kind of as a museum of what things were like in the 80s until, you know, relatively recently, they, I guess two years ago, they made a full, complete cuckery of, you know, they don't believe there's any racial component to Ask True. 0.69

01:18:14.340 and they are fully rainbow globo homo uh on that team which is really sad but it is very defensive

01:18:23.140 that was under their um i'll share your go feet that i'm due to personal conversations with the 0.86

01:18:32.660 man doesn't believe those things but it's expedient to show cowardice in the face of opposition um

01:18:40.420 which they did it as a reaction to such a pathetic thing too wasn't it a reaction to 0.87

01:18:46.820 like some domestic terror thing it was like the guy tried to bomb a synagogue in texas or something

01:18:52.900 it was it was not because of any charges levied against them or anything to do with i think it's

01:18:58.420 because they asked people in a reporter in washington asked mac and elizabeth uncomfortable

01:19:06.420 questions and they got scared. I think that is the reason that the Ausitru Alliance decided to

01:19:14.980 forsake any of the principles that they were supposedly holding dear up to that point. And

01:19:20.100 that I know their current Ausheri Goetheus said that he holds dear. So it's really dishonest and

01:19:24.820 unfortunate. But it's a good thing that John Gard called in the hero of Ausitru to come back and save

01:19:31.300 it um and that's what kind of brought us here and another current that's led to this point and it

01:19:38.100 will get to the slide at hand but this is part of it what relationship up to that point was there

01:19:43.620 between uh you personally or the astro free assembly and lc christensen's uh odinus fellowship

01:19:51.380 oh wow that was a not much i mean uh we we knew elsie uh she showed up at some of our events i've

01:20:04.820 i've got that photograph which some of you may or may not have seen of her actually tossing a caver

01:20:10.580 i don't think that was your event you were invited to one in southern california

01:20:14.180 um maybe so yeah i don't know because we talked with somebody who was there okay but but uh

01:20:23.780 yeah i don't i don't know you know she was a lack of the low lady you know and and had you know

01:20:32.820 got to give her credit for for you know holding something together for years and years and years

01:20:39.380 uh so i i respect that respect that a lot one thing that she wrote in her uh odinus newsletter

01:20:48.180 i think it was either that or it was in a a letter in correspondence was that she knew that

01:20:55.780 also true needed to happen or i think she would have referred to it as odinism but

01:21:00.980 she understood the need and she tried to get our people to adhere to the values but as far as

01:21:10.260 connection to the gods and ritual was concerned that you and the astro free assembly were

01:21:17.460 pioneering that in a way that she couldn't and she was referring people to you in that vein and

01:21:22.980 i know that i read that in her hand i'm just sure where i read it okay yeah i i can believe that

01:21:30.980 I think that she had great intentions, but it was more politically motivated than most other things.

01:21:43.580 I mean, she respected the history and she respected the ideas, but when it came down to actual religious material, it wasn't really there.

01:22:00.280 well so what led to we got the picture up of the lc christensen defense fund and the afa's

01:22:07.160 you know or the proto afa i guess at the times involvement can you talk a little bit about

01:22:12.760 the circumstances of that and what that looked like

01:22:19.320 either a lot of that yeah we got word that she was in prison yeah um she had been

01:22:29.560 set up, carrying some drugs in a car, helping some ex-prisoners and his girlfriend and their

01:22:36.020 girlfriends across the state line got caught, whether they had been tipped off. She got picked

01:22:42.040 up. Janet Reno was the attorney general in Florida at that point. And talk about an evil lady.

01:22:48.060 And she went after Elsie. Elsie was actually Canadian by nationality. So she was in this

01:22:54.560 country and she was a widow at that point already in her late 70s and she had no means to to do

01:23:04.240 anything now what's interesting is that we were still focused you know west coast i'm involved in

01:23:09.620 it now we're putting out the runes down where this is the evening before the event was actually

01:23:15.560 at our home one of the very first ones we did before the afa actually but um but also the the

01:23:22.300 um the theods were doing stuff out on the east coast and that was kind of where the energy was

01:23:27.340 we've got so many people on our leaders who were doing that in the 90s and the 2000s and we had no

01:23:34.220 contact there was nothing no theodism out on the west coast at all so that's something we were not

01:23:40.380 even really aware of and got involved in until around 2000 where we got to meet people but with

01:23:47.180 with elsie she needed some help she was in jail we needed to get her some lawyers to get her out

01:23:53.580 and um we actually we had a fellow up in canada heritage and tradition who was making silver

01:24:00.060 medallions in in one ounce pure silver and he did one that was a elsie christianson one i think we

01:24:07.980 were selling them for 15 each or something like that we also did he also did one for kenwick man

01:24:13.980 to raise money for our our um legal fees for that of which we did have some even though we had a

01:24:21.580 pro bono lawyer but we still have filing fees and all but um with that we were asked could you help

01:24:27.980 and i don't know who came to us but we just stepped right in because it was like a perfect

01:24:32.780 thing for us we did not i never knew her at all never really had contacts steve met her the one

01:24:38.220 time but we were there to support folk mother we all knew that she was regarded as that but her

01:24:43.820 work was mostly with the prison populations when she went into prison we picked up her publications

01:24:50.940 like we still have that um what is at the odinus thing we have a little odinus pamphlet that she did

01:24:58.540 and um handled all of her her prisoner uh mail started coming to us and i would respond to those

01:25:05.020 so that's that's what we did for a long time was helping her um while she was in jail in prison

01:25:12.460 actually and then she eventually got out and went back to canada and died a few years later

01:25:19.180 very very sad and i wish we had gotten to know her better and we did not

01:25:23.180 and that's failing on our part um so we've got a couple of questions and i don't know how long

01:25:32.380 we'll have everybody so you can tell it's going to be a long show tonight we are less than a

01:25:37.740 tenth of the way through but this is wonderful and it is such a treasure to have both of the

01:25:42.940 mcnellens on this program so we're going to get all the best out of it that we can but nobody is

01:25:47.740 obliged to stay any longer than they want to got a couple of questions though um uh from hill which

01:25:54.700 i believe is a new listener to the program i'm steve and new to ouster true for a couple of

01:25:59.820 months i have stephen mcnallan's book also true book of out i have stephen mcnallan's book also

01:26:06.220 true and futhark any others that any of you would recommend we have book recommendations

01:26:13.180 for this new also true are anybody on the panel cool so i'll recommend something that was in the

01:26:22.700 chat uh but in case you don't have it i mentioned the really good room books but if you're brand

01:26:29.580 new and you're fresh to it a really good book is um the runes workbook by leon wilde it's a uh he

01:26:40.860 was a member of the room or what i assume is a member of the rune guild his book is really good

01:26:46.140 it's very accessible to um you know teenagers young adults people who are completely new to

01:26:52.460 the runes it's not as in deep it's not as in depth as the other rune books that i've recommended

01:26:58.460 but it's a really really good place to start and i always recommend that to brand new people

01:27:03.100 um it's something that you know i read in my 20s and i really liked so i would recommend that um

01:27:10.380 other stuff the culture of the teutons i would recommend i think that's a good book obviously

01:27:16.860 you know the eddas do any of you guys have any other books that you would recommend

01:27:21.660 by Daniel.

01:27:24.060 Chris Kershaw's The One-Eyed God

01:27:26.760 and The Serpent and the Eagle

01:27:29.720 by Chris Travers.

01:27:31.500 It's a nice runic book.

01:27:34.500 What about you, buddy?

01:27:36.680 Anything by H.R. Ellis Davidson.

01:27:40.900 Gods and Myths of Northern Europe 1.00

01:27:42.460 is a good one.

01:27:43.520 I can't remember the author,

01:27:44.400 but another good seminal work

01:27:46.820 is Myths and Symbols of Northern Europe.

01:27:49.840 But The Saga of the Icelanders, that's good, even though it's not necessarily lore.

01:27:57.120 What else?

01:27:58.420 If you want to get a little more highbrow, one of the most thought-after works in all of Germanic lore and also true is The Will and the Tree by Paul Bauschatz.

01:28:12.620 That's a pretty good one.

01:28:15.440 Yeah.

01:28:16.500 So apologies.

01:28:17.800 I've been remiss.

01:28:18.760 A book that I literally just finished today, and I've been chipping away at because it's very, very good, and I should have read much, much earlier, is The Elder Gods by Stephen Hollington.

01:28:31.140 Very good book.

01:28:32.500 It has material that I haven't found any other place that I've found really, really inspirational and cool.

01:28:38.180 So check that out.

01:28:39.260 he's done another uh number of other good books uh the mead hall one the english warrior i think

01:28:46.780 was the name of the other one i've read by him but uh stephen paulington's works really good

01:28:53.020 and we'll see but he's got it but he's flexing on us um but yeah that's a good book and uh

01:29:00.460 he actually came to an afa event we'll probably talk about that in uh i don't know about two

01:29:06.620 decades when it comes up any other recommendations real quick uh mystery of the goths by edrid

01:29:15.340 dorsen uh it's pretty cool because the goths uh for those who don't know originally swedes

01:29:20.460 and um they're i guess you could say the proto vikings if you want to reference the viking age

01:29:27.100 with them and uh he goes into a pretty pretty deep in some of their religiosity and how they

01:29:34.780 practiced and he also kind of mentions how they uh what was likely galder he mentioned that they

01:29:40.780 they sing their galder which was really cool and there's a lot of neat insight in that book it's

01:29:45.980 pretty cheap on amazon it's not a long read it's very very easy read so i definitely that's one of

01:29:50.940 my favorites by edrid and it's you know very obscure but i think it's really cool i like it

01:29:58.700 another question while we have everybody question for the panel speaking of big names and early

01:30:03.660 Yostru in the States. When did Ron McVann and his work with Voden's folk kindred hit

01:30:11.500 the scene, and what impact or collaboration, if any, was done with the Yostru Folk Assembly?

01:30:16.780 Wow. When was that? That was a long time ago.

01:30:20.780 Yeah. Joseph Yost was far more involved with him at that point. They were very Votanist

01:30:29.620 and odinus we were not so much tied in with the odinist uh group you know we were ours was kind

01:30:36.260 of that softer um edge to it but um ron mcvan you met ron in 1993 uh but um camis washington

01:30:47.780 uh if you you can see the video because you guys did to the uh yeah i did a little sword play

01:30:56.180 a little dance um that's the first time you ever met him and i did not meet him until years later

01:31:02.900 but so if you want to share the link to that video we have in the afa videos of the

01:31:09.780 like conan music with the light oh yeah oh my god yeah that's there while we're on it and i think

01:31:17.220 this is as good a time as any and there's a couple you know he's in a couple of these pictures uh

01:31:22.900 yost is a big influence on you and on your development is there anything that you would

01:31:28.980 like to say about him while we've got while you've got the floor here on it

01:31:35.380 he's the guy in red in the foreground um that you see there yeah um

01:31:45.620 certainly one of the most remarkable men i've ever known

01:31:47.940 uh vietnam veteran came back with you know lots of interior scars um found himself up in the

01:32:00.740 mountains uh ended up in a a yoga community which is up there um but he you know you think yoga and

01:32:12.180 When you think of little old ladies and soft people,

01:32:16.720 peace, love, good vibes.

01:32:18.580 No, that was not Joseph.

01:32:21.280 Joseph was disciplined.

01:32:25.460 He was hard on himself in a good way.

01:32:31.660 I would say he's one of the noblest men I've ever known.

01:32:34.820 I hope that when I get blown off of this realm,

01:32:38.840 that I hope he'll be there to put out a hand.

01:32:42.080 he you can go up to his to his to his uh to his grave which is you know i don't know

01:32:52.240 how many minutes from here 45 minutes from here and it's it's it's a rectangular solid

01:33:00.800 it stands about five feet high on the top is a a little statue of what's his face babaji

01:33:09.760 Babaji and on the front it says you know the center standard things they say

01:33:16.240 but on one side was do right and fear no one and on the other side was a Thor's hammer about

01:33:25.280 yay high. Actually Thor's hammer was there and the other has the Alma whatever and the little

01:33:31.120 yeah yeah um he uh outstanding individual he he actually found ways and i i think i you know

01:33:40.480 normally it's not the kind of thing i wouldn't espouse but he he found ways to to treat yoga as

01:33:48.160 an aryan philosophy with aryan potentialities um and uh he you can find the collected works of

01:33:59.120 of Joost Turner.

01:34:00.840 I don't remember if it says Joost or if it says Joseph.

01:34:04.860 I found it, I guess, sort of online.

01:34:07.920 It came into a bunch of things that I had

01:34:10.900 and I've got it in my computer now.

01:34:15.800 But he was, there's that photo,

01:34:19.640 which I didn't, didn't we publish that with the AFA?

01:34:24.120 Well, I don't, yeah, it's been posted.

01:34:27.060 I wrote a little bit about him,

01:34:29.880 I wrote an article about him

01:34:31.440 and then published a photograph of him.

01:34:34.800 He's laying on the floor in Shivashana, death pose,

01:34:40.120 you know, laying there, calm, eyes shut,

01:34:44.440 long flowing red hair, and he's laying there

01:34:48.460 and his yogi, you know, his meditation clothes, I guess.

01:34:53.460 i guess and you see just a little bit of a tattoo under the t-shirt and you think oh man is that

01:35:01.860 like is that like a like an old mantra man you know or whatever oh yeah it must be something like

01:35:07.780 Yeah, no, it's parachutist wings, crossed,

01:35:17.580 Parmalades, skull and crossbones and do right and fear no one, I think that was maybe, no, no, it says U.S. Army paratrooper.

01:35:31.900 Yeah, but he and his wife were involved in the

01:35:37.460 I was through free assembly days because his wife was Steve's wife's sister,

01:35:45.200 so they were brother-in-laws back before I was ever on the scene.

01:35:49.140 And then he lived until 1996, so I had the honor of knowing him.

01:35:54.960 And he and his wife helped us really to establish the idea of building a half

01:36:02.860 and building the folk and they were all for supporting us in that and then he had a very

01:36:08.860 untimely death we don't know why but he died in his sleep um at age 50 and it was a huge loss

01:36:15.660 but he still remembered and he wrote his stuff is called aria crea right yeah um i'd have to dig

01:36:23.820 and one of the best people i've ever known i'd have to dig i don't remember the uh month but

01:36:29.260 you but when you did write that uh article about him we did get it in the room stone so it is there

01:36:36.460 with all the pictures and stuff um it'd be on our website in the library i just don't know which

01:36:41.820 which issue nick can you please post the picture i just sent you of his tombstone

01:36:48.140 oh cool and uh it's interesting he's got the uh the motto of odenshof is what's carved into

01:36:57.820 his stone underneath so i'm giving nick a second because everybody's scrambling a little bit here

01:37:12.140 he will throw it up when he's got it got it oh here we go here we go there it is

01:37:19.740 yeah there it is that's one side of it just like steve's hammer by the way

01:37:23.900 yeah it is it's identical to Steve's hammer yeah yes yes yeah which i made way back yeah he was an

01:37:32.460 utter pragmatist uh if it had been really the right thing to do and if it was really necessary

01:37:41.820 he would not hesitate to do somebody out and hide their body in a mind you know if if that was what

01:37:49.900 the situation required uh but then on the other hand he was one of the most gentlest men i ever

01:37:56.540 knew when uh when well i guess people people probably know about the hammer right in the coffin

01:38:09.980 probably never heard it

01:38:13.420 the story of the hand yeah sure please if you want all right all right here it is

01:38:18.140 we built his coffin out in front of his house up in the countryside under a tree and we got it

01:38:27.080 pretty much put together um but uh and we had we we cut the runes into the into the lid but we

01:38:36.240 hadn't reddened them so and by then it was dark so we uh we picked up the the lid to the coffin

01:38:45.540 and we brought it in and and the only the it was a modest little house and the only really good

01:38:54.820 place to put anything like like a coffin lid was on the kitchen table so we we laid it there very

01:39:03.860 gently. And as we did so, my hammer fell off of my neck, landed on it with a blow. And

01:39:21.940 well, you know where it is now.

01:39:25.780 And that was important because his wife had said to people that she did not want to have grave goods

01:39:31.300 in the coffin well the very first one was that hammer and then his kids i guess he felt

01:39:36.680 about it but um and so yeah yeah my my hammer that i wore at that time is is with him uh and

01:39:48.020 yeah no accident no accident yeah that's what he would do this brings us to a oh by the way

01:39:58.620 what's also important is that he was coming to our very earliest events he and his family

01:40:04.480 and some of those events also had michael moynihan and his wife annabelle lee were coming down from

01:40:12.120 the portland area to to be at our events and they were musicians at the time and uh joseph

01:40:20.480 had put together a song for us which he played on his melodion which is something that the

01:40:24.880 the um hindu people play for their music and so he had i think written some music for them and he

01:40:32.680 did ours and that music ended up being harry a father so the harry a father song was written by

01:40:41.040 by joseph yost turner um before we even had the afa he did not even know that there was going to

01:40:47.920 be an afa he passed away no he put no i guess he he did 96 so he knew about the afa but he was

01:40:54.900 still there at the beginning yeah and uh so yeah i had uh i put a pair of my parachutist wings in

01:41:03.280 his coffin too yeah uh because we both had done that thing um great man yeah if anybody comes out

01:41:11.140 to california we're happy to take you up there yeah and we we go up there at least twice a year

01:41:16.160 and poor horn have made to him.

01:41:17.960 Yeah, it's awesome.

01:41:20.100 It is. I had the honor of going up

01:41:22.240 there with you one time. It really is.

01:41:24.400 Oh, yeah.

01:41:25.720 So this takes us to 94

01:41:28.060 and a clean,

01:41:30.200 well, not really a clean shaven,

01:41:32.260 but a mustache

01:41:33.260 sporting Steve.

01:41:36.460 And, yeah, so

01:41:38.200 where were we

01:41:40.100 in Viking days in

01:41:42.160 Washington in 1994?

01:41:46.160 um we were in camas washington uh with uh reinhold clinton reinhold clinton we we did have

01:41:57.200 uh what else do we have i think we didn't have anybody we knew at that point yeah but he and

01:42:03.060 ron mcbann were really close they were they were like you know as close as you could get at that

01:42:08.340 point um so that's how we started making our contact with with ron mcvan was through reinhold

01:42:16.580 but ron was over in idaho at the time he never you know he doesn't travel he doesn't travel now

01:42:22.980 he didn't travel to washington for any of those events either um so that was kind of distant but

01:42:29.540 we started going up at least once or twice a year up to chemist washington for these events being

01:42:35.700 put on by um by reinhold clinton that was the name he used he's used a few other names since

01:42:43.460 and um he put on quite an event and matt pointed out you see in the background that that sail for

01:42:51.700 a viking ship that is also what you see in the background of that 1993 astara video which

01:42:58.580 actually preceded this as you know by about one year um so this was my first trip this is my first

01:43:05.060 real trip out of california for anything other than what we had done and i was my first also

01:43:10.740 true event this is before we went out to wisconsin to the also true alliance but we were newly

01:43:18.020 together very happy and ready to take absolutely absolutely stunning picture of you sheila

01:43:25.700 yeah i know i was very happy yeah it's a neat picture on the show

01:43:31.860 I love that picture.

01:43:38.500 All right, so Steve had come back to save Ausatru from the grips of universalism

01:43:47.300 and had to get things started with the Ausatru Folk Assembly. And this, I believe,

01:43:52.740 is the first Ausatru Folk Assembly event in 1995, kind of laying out what is to come.

01:44:01.060 i assume that's the case if there's anything you guys want to add

01:44:06.420 i'm not quite sure even you know we said 1995 it could have been 94. it was we were in our

01:44:13.460 beginning days and we knew that we were going to take on and make an organization similar to the

01:44:20.500 elsewhere free assembly we didn't have a name for it yet but we gathered this is the same group of

01:44:25.780 of people you saw with the lc christians and stuff the very same people we took that picture in front

01:44:31.560 of the steps later but we would gather they would come in from the bay area and all over and wanted

01:44:37.140 to see us um attempt this and of course uh joseph is there and thorgan and katie a lot of you know

01:44:45.820 thorgan go the thorgan odin who passed away last year he and his wife um were coming around for

01:44:52.840 first time coming up from the santa cruz area and so we met them at this point the date i got the

01:44:59.480 date for this off of a picture in katie's photo album on the back okay that was probably mine

01:45:09.080 and so i might within a year anyway i don't know i i was 14 at the time and not involved so there

01:45:15.880 you go what's that date matt uh 95 uh yeah it says 1995. okay because we have a note here about

01:45:26.120 the first afa gathering held in uh april of 1995 and i'm wondering oh that could be it that's yeah

01:45:35.160 i am uh five months old in this picture so i am not present there you go somewhere in uh in michigan

01:45:41.720 somewhere is is um and that was again the same the same time roughly the same year uh there's

01:45:55.400 yost on the far left playing his melodion as we're singing harry father and we have annabelle

01:46:00.200 michael in that picture as well as our kindred at the time anybody who hasn't heard it it's

01:46:05.480 a repetition of this anybody is welcome to do it with me

01:46:35.480 and it's not repeated but it's really cool and we do it at every odin bloat and it's neat and this

01:46:45.800 was the genesis of it uh sorry for the christian term this is the uh I I don't know what the

01:46:54.440 equivalent is so there you have it but yeah this is the the the origin of that and uh cool

01:47:06.280 so with the start of the year and again in the runestone the winter edition in 94 it says the

01:47:12.440 afa is coming and the spring edition in 95 says the afa is here so over that yule the astro folk

01:47:19.720 assembly was founded we are an hour and 44 minutes into the program and now we start that 30 years

01:47:25.880 we talked about so there you have it um originally you can see uh it was using the the rhido rune

01:47:37.080 of the free assembly that is the rune of our priesthood and that we still celebrate today

01:47:45.800 carrying on the legacy

01:47:47.080 uh and things were afoot and this was run out of steve and sheila's home in uh grass valley

01:47:56.840 california is that correct all right there is the banner announcing the astro folk assembly

01:48:08.680 right that's the same picture in the other time that steve and i were

01:48:13.000 had that picture taken up in chemist washington

01:48:19.480 so there were a number of exciting things with a uh a ship burning and a picture of

01:48:26.440 you launching off a rocket or at least the exhaust from said rocket

01:48:32.040 i should add that the uh the ship burning was not connected to the rocket

01:48:36.440 i didn't i didn't set the vote on fire we actually you know something people don't know but

01:48:44.600 it was decided by reinhold clinton that we were going because he was kind of our right hand person

01:48:51.800 at that point he said we're going to build a viking ship he really wanted to we were raising

01:48:57.640 money we had a mill that milled the lumber to build a viking ship and that was and you'll see

01:49:04.120 that in the room stone it was what's the viking ship project how's it going how's it going

01:49:08.440 finally ended up get cutting the mill and cutting all the wood and it was the wrong length

01:49:13.880 it was all worth nothing it ended up going nowhere not that we thought it would but we were all

01:49:20.360 reinhold was very into vikings and so there's a beautiful there's a huge stone circle he built on

01:49:26.440 this property with 15 foot tall stones about eight of them in a circle and he'd have opera singers

01:49:32.840 come out and it was very dramatic back then but was very viking-esque he was he was a mover and

01:49:39.640 a shaker in the brotherhood of the sacred hunt is that correct bode you were a bosch member do you

01:49:46.760 have anything to tell us about the brotherhood of the sacred hunt um i was actually uh i was the

01:49:55.000 how to put it i was the guy who joined the team after they won the championship

01:49:59.240 um i was a probationary member i was given said spear that had been blessed and had runes graven

01:50:07.400 on it and uh uh founder steve you were there um at uh the meat hall moot remember that okay right

01:50:17.560 the one in missouri and when scarp was there and probably jason godsey yeah and all those people

01:50:25.000 yeah wayland yeah remember wayland okay yeah is that the spear that's in my garage it is

01:50:33.000 it is yep it absolutely is that was given to me by uh wayland um scarp hedenson um

01:50:42.440 who else that guy from arkansas i think i don't remember his first name was kurt

01:50:47.880 But he went by Vannerwolf.

01:50:50.780 Oh, okay.

01:50:51.840 Come on.

01:50:52.700 Yeah.

01:50:53.960 I remember a funny story.

01:50:57.000 They were great people.

01:50:58.420 Yeah, they were great people.

01:51:00.180 Yep, those guys were pretty serious.

01:51:01.900 And for any of the listeners of yours that don't know Brotherhood of the Sacred Hunt, they actually did some pretty doggone manly stuff.

01:51:12.000 These guys armed with nothing but spears and other pointy things.

01:51:16.760 No guns.

01:51:17.880 successfully hunted wild russian boar and also uh wild american bison these guys actually took

01:51:26.240 down a i think the guys told me the bison that they ran down and killed with spears i think he

01:51:34.360 dressed out or you know when butchered at like 600 pounds of meat so yeah these guys took down

01:51:41.060 a 700 pound buffalo um they were taking down 450 500 pound wild russian boar with nothing but

01:51:49.500 spears um that was kind of a come to odin moment for my young self or younger self when they handed

01:51:56.380 me the waiver uh for the hunt that never happened i never got to go on and the waiver said that um

01:52:02.500 i had to get my affairs in order because i may die and uh it was uh it was legit you know for

01:52:10.080 for all of our younger guys who you know wondered like you know man you know have have the older

01:52:16.480 guys and that's true you know have they ever done any just really like just chad stuff absolutely

01:52:22.900 we have absolutely we have or like me you know was in training to do it and then just for some

01:52:28.080 reason these guys just kind of fell apart kind of parted their ways um something that though that

01:52:35.600 that uh get this sheila brought up earlier was the the times we're talking about now when i came

01:52:41.200 along in the in the early 2000s 2000 2001 to be exact this was all like recent history but

01:52:50.320 because we were still kind of getting our sea legs under us and being connected by the internet

01:52:57.360 it was catches catch can as far as hearing about events going on on the other side of the country

01:53:02.800 i was in alabama and georgia the afa was a california thing it was not a nationwide or

01:53:09.180 worldwide thing it was a california thing and um so what what get you sheila said earlier about

01:53:15.580 a lot of times you'd have these people just meet each other on the internet they realize they're

01:53:20.180 in the same area they form a kindred the dude who'd read the most lore and didn't stumble over

01:53:26.300 his words performing a bloat was made the go the slash chieftain and then when that group of people

01:53:32.840 that kindred went to meet other people in other parts of the world or the united states this was

01:53:38.860 just kind of taking on a gentleman's agreement and gentleman's handshake kind of you know on

01:53:43.240 honor system like all right well these guys say this guy is a go the so cool nobody ever really

01:53:49.420 questioned it there was no formalized training like we have now there was nothing it was just

01:53:53.580 catch a sketch can, you know, and just kind of, you have to believe, you know, this guy is who

01:54:01.480 he says he is. And I thought it was funny when Chris was rolling his R's and talking about this

01:54:07.200 ridiculous, you know, old Norse name. A lot of people don't know that Bodhi is not my government

01:54:13.280 name, but in 2000, when I took my profession of faith, that was the end thing to do, was to take

01:54:23.220 a quote unquote he the name or or also true name and um the guy who was argothi in the kind of the

01:54:31.220 same vein as what i was talking about like he was just the smartest among us lore was um he asked

01:54:37.200 me did i want to do that or i just want to just keep being known by my government name and i was

01:54:41.440 like nah you know what man i'll i'll uh i'll pitch in with this whole you know he the name thing

01:54:46.660 and so he gave me the name that most of you call me and know me by in fact some of you

01:54:51.540 recoil in horror at my my birth name um because some people told me i just don't seem like a

01:54:59.240 don't seem like a matthew but that's what's on my license um but yeah it was i i wish i could

01:55:07.100 take you all guys back in a time machine and let you understand how fractured and and help me

01:55:12.760 in a bad way just kind of disjointed not connected australia was in the 90s and early 2000s for

01:55:20.460 people not on the west coast um it seemed like everything that was really cool that was going on

01:55:27.500 in Austin Tree was going on with those two people right there Steve and Sheila and everybody that

01:55:32.940 they knew so in as the 90s turned into 2000s those of us in other parts of the country

01:55:38.780 it was I mean it was like meeting legends already you know 25 years ago you know we were like wow

01:55:46.140 those are the guys who are really out there doing stuff you know the rest of us in other parts of 0.99

01:55:50.640 the country we were struggling to figure out how to do stuff there it is yep there's the Bosch spear 0.54

01:55:56.820 yep so Bodie I hope that you have the uh head of it somewhere I do okay I was gonna say I've got

01:56:04.900 the shaft, but it is

01:56:06.800 without

01:56:10.540 deadly spear points.

01:56:14.260 These 1.00

01:56:14.860 Bosch guys are the ones that 1.00

01:56:16.820 these are the guys that Gamblingan

01:56:18.820 wanted to be.

01:56:23.500 When you guys say

01:56:24.980 that name, I know who

01:56:26.980 it is, but only

01:56:28.480 kind of nebulously, I guess

01:56:30.840 you'd say.

01:56:31.300 It was really like

01:56:33.480 he was already such a bad actor bad character by the time I came along in the early 2000s that

01:56:38.860 whenever anybody would mention his name you know it was like oh that guy you know and everybody

01:56:44.420 rolled their eyes I'm like well we're not gonna talk about that you know so and and I remember

01:56:49.480 specifically Chris the Bosch brothers guys were like you know somebody mentioned this dude's name

01:56:54.700 and I was like who you know and they were like I don't worry about it dude you know you don't

01:56:58.460 to know that guy he's a bad egg like all right so that's how i remember that name and i haven't heard

01:57:04.060 it in years but when you guys said it i kind of perked up there you have it we can talk a little

01:57:09.340 bit more about the uh guflorga moot when we catch up in the uh in the timeline um

01:57:20.780 so sheila do you want to take us through and again we have an audience here that may not be aware we

01:57:27.020 got a lot of we got about 7 000 people who are listening to this so they may not know about

01:57:34.940 the kennewick man thing can you tell people what they need to know about kennewick man

01:57:40.060 and y'all's involvement yeah summer of 1996 uh was july we had um

01:57:53.180 rhino clinton up in camis washington who was an attorney at the time

01:57:58.460 um and also thorgan odin was building a house right next to reinhold's property

01:58:04.860 and so both of them were up there at that point um and we got a phone call at the end of july

01:58:14.220 or i don't remember exactly maybe it was the middle of july from reinhold saying

01:58:18.780 something has happened there's a really interesting discovery that happened in the

01:58:25.420 columbia river that um some bones were found and they're thinking that um i guess by this point

01:58:35.860 maybe they had done the um forensic work on it and had carbon um carbon dated the bones

01:58:44.840 they thought originally that this was probably a pioneer it was on the banks of the columbia river

01:58:50.900 and the story is that they had boat races going on an annual event they do every year

01:58:57.160 and a couple young guys college guys wanted to avoid paying a ticket price so they were walking

01:59:04.740 around on the beach on the outskirts and as they did they came across a bone or two and then they

01:59:11.240 found a few more bones and then a skull and they found all these bones and they reported them to

01:59:18.680 the local authorities the coroner came out the coroner collected the bones took them home

01:59:25.640 started looking at them and as he analyzed the bones and measured them and looked at the skull

01:59:32.200 he figured that this was a pioneer and so there was nothing really

01:59:37.000 unusual about it he just looked like a regular white man with old bones that had aged over time

01:59:47.560 but he actually happened to notice that there was a hole in the hip

01:59:54.120 bone and when he analyzed that he saw that there was a spear point inside and the spear point

02:00:01.460 went back to like a clovis point i'm not sure if it was clovis but we're talking something

02:00:06.760 date back that far they did uh some carbon 14 dating and found that no he was not a pioneer

02:00:14.200 from the 1800s he was actually from 9300 years ago and with that because this is columbia river

02:00:23.560 washington over in eastern washington we had a lot of white people white afa members who were saying

02:00:31.880 oh interesting he looks white he has everything about him but he is not a pioneer how did a white

02:00:41.880 person get there in 9 300 or this would be you know 8 000 7 500 years ago and it uh we embarked

02:00:51.880 on that journey uh at that point we happen to have some people in the area as we said we had another

02:00:58.440 fellow who actually filed his own claim saying that he was what he thought was a descendant

02:01:04.040 of kennewick man who at that point they called him uh richland man he was called richland man

02:01:11.400 and then he took the name within a few weeks of kennewick man because he was near kennewick

02:01:16.440 washington um we got involved because the waterways are run by the army corps of engineer

02:01:27.560 uh on behalf of the indian tribes up there because of tribal treaties and and rights the waterways

02:01:34.920 are considered theirs and overseen by the u.s army corps of engineers and so the two of them

02:01:42.600 teamed together to immediately say oh well the bones are too old to be a pioneer so we're going 0.98

02:01:48.200 to take the bones and we're going to bury the bones because the indian tribes get the bones 0.92

02:01:52.920 And we were saying, wait, wait, wait, wait. We don't know that he is of the Indian tribes. Let's hold on. And so we filed suit. And we did our very best with no money to go against the Clinton administration, which we heard did not want us involved in the court case. 0.77

02:02:13.340 but we did file and we had made ourselves known and stayed in it the court case against the u.s

02:02:21.660 government for quite a while and there were also i think it was six uh well-known scientists who

02:02:28.940 were also trying to prevent the the rebearing of the bones because they said that this this uh

02:02:36.940 specimen is just too rare and we need to find out exactly who he was

02:02:40.940 this is he would say well do the dna testing well this is at the beginning of dna testing

02:02:46.380 there was no dna testing even for archaic bones at that point so they actually did though they

02:02:55.080 did try so james chatters who went on one of those boar bosch the the bosch boar hunts which

02:03:02.220 is really interesting you will see james chatters if you watch the movie homicide in kennewick which

02:03:07.760 is has been available on uh amazon prime and uh he was the he was the forensic guy he was the

02:03:16.820 coroner in kennewick who did all the initial analysis of kennewick man and said yeah he looks

02:03:24.860 like my norwegian father-in-law you could pass him on the street you wouldn't think a thing if

02:03:29.820 you passed him because he looked like all of us that is what uh james chatter said about kennewick

02:03:36.080 man so he was on our side and he actually took some samples of bone and got them to three different

02:03:43.200 institutions to check them out and one of them was at uc davis with a dr smith there and dr smith

02:03:52.400 is on the video too because he was explaining how he was grinding up the bones and getting ready to

02:03:58.560 do this dna test to see if we could indeed find out who kenwick's man roots were and lo and behold

02:04:06.160 the government comes in and takes his sample and the other two samples and to this day they've

02:04:10.720 never reappeared and this is very early on in the case this is just a few months in to this whole

02:04:17.680 thing um there were a lot of things though that were going on james chatters himself had had a

02:04:25.920 lot of unusual things happening he looked through the skull and looked through the ice sockets and

02:04:32.560 see the world as it was in kennewick man's day we had people in the afa who were getting dreams

02:04:38.080 lorgan was standing on the bank of the columbia river and he saw this mist come in that really

02:04:43.680 didn't exist but he saw it come in and to him that was an omen it was like kennewick man wanted to

02:04:50.960 be found every single bone of his body was found except for one small bone and it was fascinating

02:04:59.680 because we we went with it we made the most that we could we had no money so we had to get press

02:05:06.560 and steve was really good at it he was on lots of talk shows he was um uh interviewed on the uh

02:05:15.840 coast to coast with um not our bell but with hilly rose was hilly rose's last time there

02:05:21.920 by the way because you could not talk to steve mcnell and not have something bad happen to you

02:05:28.000 because it was giving us press but we stuck with it for a few years there we had some really

02:05:34.160 fascinating experiences because we pushed ourselves as tribal people so you'll see that a lot of the

02:05:39.920 writing back 1996 for the year 2000 steve was talking about a time for tribes we did a big

02:05:47.200 event that you're probably going to see called gathering of the tribes we said hey they're

02:05:51.840 tribes so are we we had our european tribes have all come together in this time and place of 1998

02:05:59.040 and um we're just as tribal as those indian tribes and kennewick man was not we're not

02:06:05.680 descended from him we know we're not but do we have common ancestors and that's what steve kept

02:06:11.280 telling people we want to see if we have a common ancestors with kenwick man that somehow his people

02:06:17.840 came over here but we have roots the same in the meantime there were some horrible books written

02:06:23.040 about us where we were not necessarily about us one or two were evil evil books and um but also

02:06:30.400 some scholarly works that totally misrepresented us said that they also to folk assembly you know

02:06:36.080 the viking brotherhood was a prison gang um that um that we believed that he was a viking

02:06:43.520 you know all these things were just ridiculous um and people never did the research as they still

02:06:49.200 don't but we were involved we finally got to the point in the about 2001 where we could not afford

02:06:57.280 to stay in the case anymore and had kind of some issues with our attorney at the time and um but

02:07:07.040 it's still there were some wonderful things happened the two of it the pictures you see

02:07:10.880 were two different times one on the left was um a uh an actual bloat that steve did an odin bloat

02:07:19.760 that um some of our friend michael moynahan's one with the uh drum there um thorgrins stand

02:07:26.080 walking in front of him and uh i was not there but they did a bloat and had a lot of press and

02:07:31.600 a lot of indians came out you may see pictures of that um because they were not happy we were

02:07:37.760 involved but we felt we had to do that we had to stand with this man for a second steve did you

02:07:44.480 make the indian cry no he didn't cry darn i did everything i could but he wouldn't cry

02:07:53.920 it's unfortunate the indian that did cry in fact was an italian gentleman carry on

02:08:01.920 so but some of the things that happened this very same day they had gone to

02:08:06.480 the place where kennewick man was being stored he was actually stored in boxes they never actually

02:08:13.600 put him together so that he was a complete skeleton but each each bone or a few sets of

02:08:20.720 bones were put in ziploc bags and and very carefully packaged in boxes because the indians

02:08:26.880 have been given rights to those boxes to do ritual over them they had to do the same for us so steve

02:08:35.440 and these folks went into the room where the boxes were kept and under supervision they opened up the

02:08:41.200 boxes and lo and behold inside the boxes were a whole bunch of cedar fronds that were laid on the

02:08:47.360 top and steven instinctively knew there that was wrong that was wrong and that was just

02:08:55.040 indicative of what was going on at this point um chatters ended up telling us personally that

02:09:03.120 it was so bad for them to do that that that kind of contamination could vary any future testing of

02:09:09.280 the bones because it it altered the dna within the box so we had that going on at the same time

02:09:17.280 the army corps of engineer brought in um huge mats of of um coconut coconut rolls that with tons and

02:09:28.720 tons of boulders totally covered the site where kenwick man was found to protect the site but

02:09:35.520 But somehow it also made it so you could never go back and do any further archaeology work there.

02:09:41.280 But they came in and then they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars dropping those by helicopter.

02:09:46.920 Again, to kind of thwart us and people like us.

02:09:50.360 Another thing they did is bones disappeared from the boxes.

02:09:54.900 Nobody knew what happened to them.

02:09:56.500 They'd been in lockers.

02:09:57.640 They'd been put away.

02:09:58.460 But somebody took the femur bones out of the boxes and they were missing.

02:10:03.520 and they reappeared a couple of years later um in some other place we didn't do it somebody took

02:10:11.840 them out and the thing about the femur bones is that they can indicate the height of the person

02:10:18.320 um who they belong to and the thing about kind of a man is he was in fact when you hear chatters

02:10:24.120 he says he was five foot eight he had the same broken ribs as i did he was the same age as i was

02:10:29.300 had the same this and that and this and that and he came across he looked like just a white guy

02:10:35.460 in the end so where are we now in the end we walked away from the case we couldn't stay in it

02:10:41.060 but in um just a few years ago they finally had the ability to check his dna along with everything

02:10:48.340 else had so many experts working on him they found that yes there was a descendant or somebody who

02:10:54.900 was close connect to him genetically and that person was a lady in one of the seven tribes up

02:11:02.900 in the northwest and therefore he was closely related to them all the bones were given to

02:11:11.140 to them and they buried them someplace where nobody will ever know and we were writing about

02:11:18.420 it a lot every every issue of the runestone had updates on what was going on with kenwick man and

02:11:23.220 my thing was let's just put him in some place where he could be uncovered again where when we

02:11:28.820 had better testing you could remove him and and take a small sample because that's what he wanted

02:11:34.660 we felt he materialized at a time that we could be there to help him um that he he wished it he

02:11:42.980 willed it kenwick man came to us we called him the far traveling one we feel that he had roots

02:11:49.940 that were over in asia or europe or eurasia um and um forget what else what is that that's not

02:12:01.380 how they said he looked i actually made him look like uh abraham lincoln like how do you show it

02:12:09.940 yes that's when steve made the indian cry ah okay there's the crying indian

02:12:16.100 all right and by indian they mean the italian guy yes

02:12:23.380 start with i yeah so um yeah and i forget what else i was going to say at the end but if you

02:12:32.980 want to kind of see the story as it was and and watch it unravel channel four from england came

02:12:39.380 over and interviewed all the key people at that time including steve he was interviewed and even

02:12:46.260 though it's been shortened they took about 15 minutes off the video just about everything of

02:12:50.900 steve is still there um vine deloria was interviewed who talks well our stories tell

02:12:57.460 us that there were red-haired giants in this area right because that's true so the

02:13:02.820 sadika people of lovelock cave and all the giants chatter said that they were all connected vine

02:13:08.660 deloria uh leader well not a leader of but an elder in the standing rock sioux tribe

02:13:16.020 uh is one out was i think he's dead now yeah quite a ways but he was a very squared away man

02:13:23.700 he understood completely how i we we corresponded back and forth uh and he understood that you know

02:13:30.980 how i needed to work for my people and he works for his people but he was very respectful throughout

02:13:38.660 out um and yeah hope he's in a good place yeah well he's with his people we know that he was a

02:13:45.860 good man yeah happy hunting grounds yes he is no honestly that's really cool and i think

02:13:55.620 it's i don't know it's interesting to note that lots of

02:14:00.100 self-loathing white people have problems with things the afa does legitimate uh people of

02:14:09.460 different ethnicities very seldom do um make note of the picture on the right hand side because a

02:14:18.180 really cool picture of steve and sheila yeah it looks so familiar yeah it does it does that picture

02:14:25.860 actually made it ap was supposed to get all over on the front page of newspapers

02:14:30.580 that day we were on our way home from from washington state pulled in at the town of

02:14:35.700 mount shasta picked up the local newspaper and there we were right on the front page that was

02:14:39.860 really cool and this is perhaps the actual indian that steve may have made cry yes yes that's the

02:14:50.420 the real one this is not a reenactment this is the legit uh yeah yeah but he shook your hand

02:15:01.060 so that's a that's a flex yeah i i think he was probably a little grudging but you know i looks

02:15:07.460 like it yeah yeah i like it and and i i think that i think that deep inside he he knew i had a point

02:15:16.580 panthusa i agree with your quotation marks i raised questions as to the authenticity as well

02:15:23.700 um all right so here's the thing and this is a newly added slide that i asked nick to add

02:15:33.060 you went on a to a speaking tour of northwest colleges in the spring of 97. do you recall

02:15:40.820 any of that to share with us it was a big thing getting talked about in i don't know some ancient

02:15:46.980 publication i found on the way back machine okay holy moly yeah annabelle michael sponsored you up

02:15:54.100 there yeah yeah yeah i remember that now and yeah over there on the side yeah yeah um

02:16:02.340 the i i don't remember a great deal about i yeah i don't know it was just you know

02:16:10.100 you were doing the theosophical society up there yeah yeah that was part of it and then he was

02:16:15.780 scheduled at a couple of uh colleges if you know reed college it's very much like that evergreen

02:16:22.740 right just like a very far left college in salem a private college and yes and so steve went up

02:16:29.620 there going to talk about kenwick man with every plan to present a very factually unbiased i mean

02:16:38.020 somewhat biased but still i'm just going to lay it out there they had professors who had already

02:16:44.500 coached their their students to be there and be rioting and it was awful you had a really hard

02:16:51.300 time even getting in there and and people were making all sorts of racket outside and trying to

02:16:59.060 prevent you just like they do now same thing but that's what happened but he did have one or two

02:17:04.580 you're you're an american student union one that was a better one i think that was good but the

02:17:09.860 reed college was not good uh you did room class with the annabelle michael the theosophical and

02:17:15.700 you also did with from up in and that actually happened before this but it was interesting

02:17:21.860 again to show show politics he went up to canada to montreal and um what's from's first name

02:17:31.380 so many years from political guy up there anybody involved in immigration would know him yeah um

02:17:40.500 i wasn't a problem it wasn't um but he brought steve up paid for him to come up and the whole

02:17:46.340 thing and arranged for him to speak to um i think it was like emeritus um soldiers people who who

02:17:55.380 we're all decorated with medals and stuff some kind of a a really nice group of elderly gentlemen

02:18:02.420 but again word got out and they steve's driving to this venue and they're saying

02:18:08.580 floor because people were were around the car trying to stop it he got inside and then they

02:18:14.820 started breaking windows and we're saying that was before this it was 90 probably within a month or

02:18:21.620 two of this um that he had done that one um and so if people did not like what steve had to say

02:18:29.300 about kennewick man just put it that way it was not a good place nor was

02:18:35.700 within two months of this previous um young gothe trent east was born into midgard

02:18:43.060 so happy birthday little trent um also of note we have a question was kenwick man the same as

02:18:52.500 cheese man and it was determined cheese is a cheddar man no cheddar man was it was a proto

02:18:59.460 englishman and uh i do not think that he was chocolatey in the way that he is currently

02:19:07.860 depicted i think you think uh similar similar nonsense is at play but no there were two

02:19:15.780 different gentlemen separated by literally on the other side of the world from one another

02:19:20.260 but both being uh white people but it was at the same time it was the same summer that he was

02:19:27.060 finally analyzed in 1996. so he came out um the cheddar man's story was worldwide at the same

02:19:36.740 time that kenwick man was also a very ancient man and steve is part of that haplogroup of cheddar man

02:19:43.140 which is interesting there you go and cheddar man were probably looked real similar and didn't look

02:19:50.580 like um the uh clinket and hyde of people in washington yeah right so but wait there's a

02:20:04.340 pre-thing gathering in 1997 and steve is performing an oath and bloat with valgaard and somebody else

02:20:12.820 michael moynihan michael moynihan yeah it is yeah the older is all set up for valgaard in fact you

02:20:19.300 asked about his stuff i have a close-up of all of his implements that he put on his on his altar

02:20:25.700 cool get you that that would be awesome we would appreciate all of that stuff um i it

02:20:32.180 It is worth just saying it is such a tremendous boon to have the both of you on tonight to tell stories and talk to us and tell us about our history from a time that many of us were not, you know, I mentioned Trent was just born.

02:20:52.560 I was a sophomore in high school and still, what, here four years before I came home to Alcetru.

02:21:02.160 Yeah. Let me add something real quick. In 97 was when I married my wife. There you go.

02:21:08.800 Oh, there you go. 28 years ago.

02:21:14.640 Wow, that's wonderful. Riddle me this because we have asked questions about this.

02:21:21.760 it looks like snow is it just brightness from the camera or is this actually a dusting of snow in

02:21:27.760 this picture do you know no we did we did get snow there but that's not i think it was

02:21:34.640 no i can't imagine i really don't think it was snow

02:21:39.280 i don't know i that would be surprising i think that was perhaps the day that the channel four

02:21:46.960 people came because we set up the table for quite a few few people we had thorgan and katie there's

02:21:52.720 pictures of them and other people it was either that or one of those other events about then um

02:22:00.160 okay so i got a question what is the um the red banner with the viking ship with the white uh

02:22:09.360 solar cross and thor's hammer and such i don't know valgaard probably brought that the same

02:22:15.120 thing with the other one with the uh looks like that is the uh that is the ostrich kindred of

02:22:21.520 arizona's banner there you go it pops the red one okay i gotta give it did that pop so i see the

02:22:29.040 colossus one as well yeah yeah that was our our logo uh their bear because the bear visited us

02:22:36.480 the day that we made our our kindred um actually i'm wrong probably that was what was called the

02:22:43.760 the west coast thing or the pre thing the west coast thing was basically an all thing for the

02:22:49.600 australians with all kindreds there um so but it was still co-sponsored by afa at our home so i gotta

02:22:57.200 ask if you call it the west coast thing what is its relationship to the troughs east coast thing

02:23:05.520 or is it just a coincidence no but there was i believe an east coast thing of the australians

02:23:11.200 because they did have some kindreds out there and they still do they had the southeast kindred

02:23:15.680 and then this and the that they had uh some people um blood um blood eagle kindred remember that one

02:23:23.040 but he might remember that bloody kindred that was up in that area was he put on no sorry go on

02:23:30.000 go on i'm sorry no no no i'm just saying that uh there i'm sure there was uh australian's east

02:23:35.680 coast thing was east coast thing a a truth like a official truth thing or was it just something that

02:23:44.560 no it wasn't to my to my recollection had nothing to do with the truth a lot of truth

02:23:51.280 members intended it you have to remember that there was a lot of when i said earlier that

02:23:57.120 also true other than uh founder mcnallen and sheila's efforts the other than the west coast

02:24:03.360 world of also true the they were and i'm sure sheila looks back and goes i know we weren't

02:24:09.440 but to us over here in the eastern half of the country y'all looked way more organized and had

02:24:14.480 your stuff together than we thought we did because it was very very fractured so the truth had a lot

02:24:20.480 of truth had a lot of midwest kind of membership and then you had this enclave up in the northeast 0.94

02:24:27.120 And like Getty and Sheila was saying earlier, the Theotish guys, they were all in the upper northeast, all of them.

02:24:35.680 And there was also a faction of people who put on the East Coast thing.

02:24:40.200 It's called Gladstein Kindred.

02:24:42.420 Yes. 0.90

02:24:43.880 Those guys were, I don't know if they were actually, you know, like the face of the troth or if they were like official troth kindred or whatnot. 0.95

02:24:55.120 but there was a lot of like petty kingdoms a lot of little petty fiefdoms going on back then

02:25:00.760 you know you had the theods that had you know their areas that they that they controlled or

02:25:05.880 whatever um or that was their provenance that area then you had people like gladsheim kindred

02:25:11.680 that did the same thing so that's interesting bodhi i'm glad you're able to share that with us

02:25:17.900 was glad time run by joe merrick at the time at that time yes yes yeah i went to a glad time uh

02:25:26.360 at their uh house that they had repurposed into a hof i went to that to an ostara there

02:25:33.280 almost maybe i was gonna say 19 years later um so that's interesting well that's that's an

02:25:43.040 interesting thing that some of those old guys uh who still are around when they talk crap about us

02:25:51.120 and they say you know oh the afa says they're the first people to you know you know raise a

02:25:57.140 in a thousand years well what about this house thing that we converted in like maryland or

02:26:03.020 whatever and said it was a hoff and uh i remember reading all the the little you know uh promotional

02:26:12.140 stuff they would do you know the post online and whatnot about them doing that with that

02:26:17.760 quote-unquote hoff but very specifically you will not find i know when chris is doing his

02:26:23.020 excellent uh sleuthing for our history you won't find any mention of them dedicating that

02:26:28.940 quote-unquote hoff to any of our gods or goddesses so i kind of i kind of throw it back in their face

02:26:35.320 as a technicality like yeah but you didn't dedicate any of those hoffs to any of the gods

02:26:38.680 we did we have you just said this is a hoth we're gonna do you know bloat here sometime and

02:26:45.700 everybody come look at our pretty thing but it's different to me it's different we we were doing

02:26:50.920 it the right way or we have done it the right way they were just kind of playing around it's

02:26:56.300 not ours is our stuff's a recognizable house of worship and this is just kind of a note that i

02:27:03.220 think is worth saying. There's a lot of people prior to Odenshof that made, you know, I saw a

02:27:12.480 number of, and I don't say this disparagingly, I think this is an honest assessment of like

02:27:19.860 sheds. Sometimes, you know, kind of the pre-made sheds people you see sometimes outside of

02:27:27.220 um like home depot or lowe's um people having sheds that they made as hoffs and that's awesome

02:27:35.700 that they had something substantial to worship the gods in that's really cool and i don't want

02:27:41.380 to take away from that or or be insulting to that and again um joe merrick and gladsheim had

02:27:49.300 myself and a number of other afa members they hosted an afa ostara gathering there

02:27:55.140 in i want to say 20 2016 um and that was really cool too uh i was i appreciate going there but

02:28:06.180 again it was a it was a house that had a section of it repurposed to serve as kind of a worship

02:28:12.980 space and that was really neat the difference in having a standalone building that is would

02:28:22.660 be recognized by the general public as a house of worship is kind of a order of magnitude different,

02:28:28.660 but it's not meant to insult people who had made attempts before or done things that I think we

02:28:36.260 would call like stallies or in the glad time way, their own like house, like, that's really cool.

02:28:45.540 And I don't want to be insulting of that. That's a nice thing. And that's real, real quick,

02:28:50.580 before i uh i have stuff to ramble on here but i just want to say before i see the florida

02:28:55.700 whitney erickson who i think how's the time the time is now um

02:29:01.780 there's a different like if the property is zoned residential because you're still paying property

02:29:07.060 tax it's not really a temple in like uh words or wind deeds or iron sense like it is still

02:29:13.780 literally a house as far as the government is concerned chris said that i didn't say that

02:29:18.820 um but in the sagas the uh there is the thing that's a test today blotus which is used actually

02:29:28.740 in translation by christians as something akin to a chapel so there there was actually in the

02:29:34.420 elder period a distinction between like a proper temple and the shed out back where we do bloat

02:29:41.140 like not and i don't use the term shed disparagingly there just because of how architecture worked at

02:29:45.540 the time uh you wanted to say something whitney erickson yeah i'm just going to add from from my

02:29:51.540 experience with them because i've traveled around a bit before i committed to the aussage folk

02:29:56.260 assembly um as i understand it gladsheim kindred started the east coast thing and then many years

02:30:03.220 later um you know they they needed help with it or got tired of running it or something like that

02:30:09.700 and it was rotated around between gladsheim kindred the vingulf kindred and the raven

02:30:14.900 kindred north um all of which were were universalist um mostly affiliated with truth

02:30:21.700 although i don't know that uh that their membership was like a hundred percent all

02:30:27.300 troth members a lot of the times there was you know they they didn't require that kind of thing

02:30:32.980 and yeah the the the the glad time hoff that they that they called a hoff was you know it was

02:30:41.220 basically a house with a country western theme and some taxidermy um in the living room honestly

02:30:49.220 um when when you're driving up to it you would not recognize it as anything other than

02:30:52.980 like a ranch style house and there was one room that had like a collection of kind of neat stuff

02:30:59.780 like a sword and you know a stuffed deer head and like a bear pelt but um that's true you were there

02:31:07.620 mad and and then there was a kitchen with like you know your regular sliding doors and there

02:31:12.500 was a hallway you weren't supposed to go down because that's where some dude lived so it was

02:31:16.980 dallas it's true all right so let the record indicate witten clifford erickson said that i

02:31:23.380 did not say that um one thing that could be said though is that um joe merritt came out in 2016

02:31:31.140 two odin's off for the um for that major midsummer and that's interesting last time we ever heard

02:31:38.900 from him yeah i hope he's doing well so everything else aside i'll say this real quick joe's awesome

02:31:47.860 he was really nice um he was great the times i've interacted with him um zero part of anything

02:31:56.020 we're saying or doing is to disparage that that was really cool uh nice guy uh right now

02:32:02.580 if he's listening to the program you should join the house true folk assembly we would love to have

02:32:05.860 you um that would be fantastic you should come home to the astro folk assembly um but yeah and

02:32:12.740 yeah he gifted uh odenshoff to um wooden i think they're uh wood burnings of the like

02:32:22.820 weapon the odenic weapon dancers that we have on either side on the the entrance to the hof there

02:32:30.420 oh nice yeah so that was a get that on the back yeah that was a gift from gladsheim and we

02:32:37.060 appreciate that very much um this brings us to and maybe you can add context to what this was

02:32:45.220 when i first read about this in anchorage alaska i thought this a real big deal and it sounded very

02:32:50.980 grandiose like a cool thing um i've heard that it might not have been there was the formation of the

02:32:58.340 international aussitrew odinist alliance in the summer of 1997 and i think sheila you were the

02:33:05.380 all terrier githia of this arrangement i was not in its concept i think that it probably was

02:33:13.700 started out at the east coast thing and um i did not you know i'm not a person who likes really

02:33:22.420 running things and i got kind of dragged into it late in the game so i don't know if steve remembers

02:33:30.340 i don't i remember almost nothing about yeah it says how strange yeah yeah it is very strange

02:33:37.620 so yes so it was really valgaard heimgist and steve who were the ones who were in charge of it

02:33:45.300 and um um i don't think heimgist ever came to our house did he no so somehow he was i think

02:33:54.980 well i know he did come to an all thing we did see him in an all thing two all things

02:34:00.100 so that's probably when it was established and then we probably have pictures of that

02:34:04.100 old thing in ogden utah and then but it didn't do anything i mean again there is no internet hardly

02:34:10.580 at this point we don't have any connection with the identity right we never did and actually the

02:34:15.460 identity right and the australians were always at loggerheads with each other they they they both

02:34:21.780 you know thought they were better than each other and so really did not it was not a congenial

02:34:26.980 grouping by the time it got to me i think they had run out in fact eric wood was i think the

02:34:33.940 had eric wood totally stabbed us in the back and did some nasty things when a person who we totally

02:34:40.660 trusted and he left and then it was like well who's gonna run it sheila you run it and so i did

02:34:46.740 but i could see that these guys uh because we did have a little bit of an email were just arguing

02:34:52.180 and getting nowhere and finally i i had to say no it's time we must close this we must end this

02:34:58.740 because the there is no alliance here it's nothing but bitterness and fighting so under my under my

02:35:06.660 my auspices of running it um it was ended and steve was never interested it was one that you

02:35:12.820 know steve doesn't like this kind of stuff so he got roped into it it wasn't he wanted to focus on

02:35:17.780 the afa not the international australian missile odenic alliance yeah yeah anyway it was really

02:35:26.340 and nothing it was something on paper and never did anything never had any particular goals never

02:35:32.580 hosted anything so there you go aside from that it was really harsh there you go real quick i just

02:35:41.060 wanted to throw in here if we could just go back to the vowel movement slide for a second we

02:35:47.380 mentioned another if you look there there's the afa the or and the aa on there the truth is not

02:35:53.780 on there because yeah but there's another group of people that we've mentioned a few times

02:36:00.900 who aren't also on there and that is the theadish guys so in uh 1976 thomas germain better known

02:36:10.740 by his uh second magical name of uh the government uh supposedly was visited by a

02:36:19.460 wuldane and fria and establishes what we call today as theodishism theodishery so on and so

02:36:29.220 forth which i i don't use this term disparagingly i know it's really hard to believe that but was a

02:36:35.940 sort of anglo-saxon pagan larp group that came out of his days in wicca and i i'm not being disparaging

02:36:43.860 when i say that it was about reconstructing the social order of the anglo-saxon war band

02:36:49.300 and kind of enacting it out in the world so they were the thing that people make fun of them for

02:36:55.140 is they were really concerned with where people would sit at dinner so you'd have like the the

02:37:01.460 sacred king and then he would have his his thanes and like where you sat at the table really mattered

02:37:08.740 and they'd get in like fist fights over the seating arrangements because they were trying

02:37:14.260 Chris, how many thanes were in this august assembly?

02:37:18.740 I know that he had two.

02:37:20.420 He had Ward Smith and they were his thanes.

02:37:27.720 In 1977, he got two more.

02:37:30.060 They were and and then he got two more in 1978, Saist and .

02:37:38.940 So about ruffles have ridges.

02:37:49.720 So like 10 over a few years at most.

02:37:54.860 I just want to kind of, long time listeners of the program are familiar with my referring

02:38:04.800 to the good old days as being five fat dudes arguing over who gets a big piece of chicken

02:38:10.720 this is exemplified in this particular arrangement that we're currently discussing

02:38:16.760 carry on they adisheri i really wish we would call them something different because i want to

02:38:23.520 take that root failed it's the anglo-saxon cognate sort of it means the same thing as ethno

02:38:31.920 and like ethno religion anyways that's not the point um it was always very small and

02:38:39.580 unironically elite in a certain sense because you had to do a lot to be part of this community you

02:38:46.560 had to follow a lot of rules you had to perform things very correctly or you would literally get

02:38:51.460 kicked out like declared an outlaw and expelled from the kingdom the like the kingdom of the

02:38:58.740 Wiccan coven LARP group, like unironically, and they had an outsized impact because they had a

02:39:06.640 lot of people who, to their credit, wrote books, and people who write books tend to be listened to 0.95

02:39:12.800 long after their influence in the real world wanes, and like I said, that gave them an outsized

02:39:20.820 influence, but it has to be understood that this has always been a very small thing, and it's

02:39:25.940 produced a number of very good people who have come to the AFA.

02:39:29.640 So I'm not trying to insult the people who were into this,

02:39:34.560 but you read their stuff and they're like,

02:39:38.040 like they use the Anglo-Saxon calendar.

02:39:40.820 So it's not like September, it's blotmornef, you know, like.

02:39:47.940 You read like the Windland Reaches thing and it's like,

02:39:51.620 garmin left where the iron man established the blutes and called a wheat town to make a

02:39:59.220 good rewrite ship and go out for a sec when we again long-term listeners the program when

02:40:04.980 i refer to the smurf hats this is also what i am referring to they wear a smurf hat um

02:40:14.660 Um, it's probably not called that. I apologize. I don't know the historical name for the Smurf

02:40:22.820 hat, but it has the same point of origin as, you know, uh, Thorbert's has the same point

02:40:32.120 of origin as Papa Smurfs. So I, I just, just to kind of close it off here, talking about

02:40:40.060 a conflict involving at most

02:40:42.000 20 people. I'm going to read a bit here.

02:40:43.720 During this time, outlaws 0.96

02:40:45.880 of the Normani Thewd 1.00

02:40:47.400 and the Anglisiaks 0.64

02:40:49.840 established a 0.99

02:40:51.740 theolish pretendership 0.53

02:40:53.340 under the guise of an affirmation of

02:40:55.760 thew, which Jarman had previously

02:40:58.020 rejected in 2002

02:40:59.720 as unthewful.

02:41:01.680 From this weerg samdung

02:41:03.320 spread much misunderstanding about

02:41:05.360 theolish jelife and thew.

02:41:08.300 Right? And again, I like

02:41:09.940 the word stuff i like languages but it's like this this isn't helpful this isn't what does

02:41:17.060 this mean you know i can feel uh i can feel my ancestors rolling their eyes so hard as you

02:41:23.960 pronounce all this yeah

02:41:25.260 so i just wanted to clarify about who these theodish guys were right and again i'm not

02:41:33.900 trying to knock or disparage anyone who came from that sphere or is interested in this stuff

02:41:39.640 but it was a very small group of very elite people who were doing something that isn't what

02:41:47.060 we are doing now so right can i can i fill in a little bit about they and they audition people

02:41:55.980 we were at an all thing was probably 98 um and garmin lord came with his retinue

02:42:05.520 and they set up their camp and the girls all had really nice slits up their dresses when clear up

02:42:13.920 their thighs that was something that Garmin kind of liked and it was clear that there is a hierarchy

02:42:20.940 in that group and one thing they did that really they were guests they came as guests but they also

02:42:27.320 I think they did bloat for everybody and one thing they wanted to do was was tie everybody up with a

02:42:34.880 long it was either a chain or a long rope and for free men who are also true that was a real no-no

02:42:43.480 it caused lots of problems um that that was expected because that was fine for the for the

02:42:49.360 theods men but not for alsitur do you remember that stage yeah yeah that was a biggie and so 0.86

02:42:54.160 they never came back after that the garmin came to our house once i have pictures and he and his

02:43:01.060 his buddy, his Thane at the time, um, it was probably in the early 2000s, came and stayed

02:43:08.180 with us, um, I think one night. And so I have some pictures of that. I mean, you know, they had their

02:43:12.820 little plinky instrument that they played and all, which was kind of cool. Oh, we also, he came to

02:43:19.640 what we call the Virginia thing in 2001. And, um, we may see pictures of that later, but that was a

02:43:26.700 thorbert thing travis lily was one of our top men in the afa at that point he was a folk builder he

02:43:33.380 was doing stuff helping us and he was also concurrently doing they had stuff and uh and

02:43:41.960 so he hosted this virginia thing that brought together garmin's group and our group and also

02:43:48.480 another person was dan o'halloran who got into problems later on but he was also one of the top

02:43:55.700 people in that whole Theodish movement at that point, and we knew them all, but we never

02:44:01.720 had any close connections, anything more than just in passing at events, and a few people

02:44:09.020 maybe we shared membership with groups, but the Theodish stayed very much, they were an

02:44:15.680 East Coast thing, and definitely, and we have a lot of our members, a lot of our leadership

02:44:20.400 have gone through that katie erickson in particular got a lot out of her time with

02:44:25.080 with the theodish group that she was in just going back to that go deep there um katie's

02:44:32.540 asleep unfortunately but she'd love to participate in this conversation she had reached the the rank

02:44:38.360 of churl which is a equivalent to a carl so you know a free person i guess but her biggest

02:44:45.820 criticism of theodism compared to what the ossaroo folk assembly does is that it's a web of oaths

02:44:53.340 everyone has an oath to someone when you first come in you're a thrall and you have to be sponsored 0.96

02:44:58.620 by a churl and um when you know you are deemed to have some worth and are you know given some kind 0.87

02:45:06.780 of formal status you make an oath to a man to a person and it's this web of oaths that effectively

02:45:13.740 for all of them, goes back to Garmin. And as we know, people are flawed. And so the whole web

02:45:22.900 collapses with the failings of individual people. And that's basically what happened to the Theods.

02:45:28.880 Some of them are still out there, but they're kind of scattered and not very effective.

02:45:35.820 And that's her biggest criticism of it. You know, there's a few good things that I think

02:45:40.260 we've taken from it too some of the the recognition of hierarchy in um in high sumble is is useful

02:45:47.340 but we don't take it anywhere to the same degree that that they do and this that's about it it's

02:45:54.600 just that the the oaths to individual people as the basic structure of that society as opposed

02:46:01.520 to oaths to the folk or oaths to the assembly that makes it weak in the end and this thrall

02:46:10.100 stuff just to clarify here so this is something that um thomas germain brought in from wicca

02:46:16.660 it's like when you join a magical society which are uh themselves i what's the the guy who came

02:46:25.540 up with wicca um doesn't matter so this is a very old magical society thing but like you basically

02:46:31.540 have to join as a pledge where you are i'm not going to cuss on this program but you know what

02:46:37.140 i want to say someone else's female dog here and you have to do whatever they say like whatever 1.00

02:46:44.180 they say like go do my laundry go do my dishes hey my lawn needs mowing you are their slave the

02:46:50.100 thrall in this usage being slave yeah not just the defense either it's like personal stuff yeah like

02:46:56.260 you are expect like if if you're i don't know what the your lord says come mow my lawn you are

02:47:02.500 expected to go mow your lawn if you don't you're out of theodiciary you are outlawed 0.52

02:47:06.660 and you would you know be a pledge until you got to be a real sorority sister and they'd make you

02:47:12.580 a free man and again again this this like acting out anglo-saxon warband society is needing to be

02:47:21.380 emphasized here it's not a church it wasn't a church so let's let's pause for a second on that

02:47:26.580 in anglo-saxon society unless you were taken as war booty you didn't start out in thralldom um

02:47:37.540 so i'd like to also just kind of as an interesting uh historical aside thorbert their current king

02:47:47.700 um was the folk builder coordinator for like a week before i was and he got real he got big

02:47:56.420 mad because steve called him travis one time and he he refused he cut off all communication

02:48:04.820 and he needed to go contemplate in the wilderness because steve had the audacity to refer to him

02:48:11.300 by the name that his parents gave him so um yeah that was

02:48:19.860 anyways that's an interesting side note in the history of adjacent things to modern house truth

02:48:26.420 If they got federally tax exempt in 97 and California tax exempt, I believe in 95. 0.87

02:48:39.140 And here is even Sheila getting married at the all thing in Ogden, Utah in 97.

02:48:47.220 Actually, who was not June?

02:48:51.260 Why did I put that?

02:48:52.600 It was actually September, September, gee, I used to know it because it's the same as

02:49:00.900 Katie.

02:49:01.900 I might have prayed June based on Chris's timeline, maybe?

02:49:05.900 History people, please make note.

02:49:07.900 Well, we had our actual, our legal one was August 15th, and this was like September 16th,

02:49:17.700 I think, of 97.

02:49:20.900 I'll have to get it.

02:49:21.900 But yeah, it should be in the rune stone.

02:49:25.380 To be fair, you should be the expert on this one, so I'll call to you.

02:49:31.280 That said, is this Valgaard doing the officiating?

02:49:35.140 It is.

02:49:36.140 Yes.

02:49:37.140 Yes, it was Valgaard.

02:49:38.400 He was drunk, we heard later.

02:49:40.740 Okay.

02:49:41.740 Yeah.

02:49:42.740 And yeah, those were the Bosch brothers behind us. 0.98

02:49:48.500 Not the Bosch.

02:49:49.500 They were called the Bosch. 0.93

02:49:50.500 No, they weren't the Bosch brothers.

02:49:51.500 called them we called them the dolf brothers the dolf brothers hildolf kveldos and we'd met them

02:49:59.100 in wisconsin and i really liked them and so they were always wearing um all the regalia and mac

02:50:06.940 elizabeth's um husband you know mac was actually cousin to these guys and so he was part of their

02:50:14.220 group but they would always they'd always go liking everything so they were there protecting

02:50:18.460 me so Steve couldn't steal me away before the marriage or something like that. But we were

02:50:24.220 very much, this was my Braveheart wedding. I was way into Braveheart music at the time

02:50:31.580 in the movie. So my brave, and it was beautiful, really was nice.

02:50:37.820 There you go. My favorite wedding.

02:50:41.260 Gathering of the tribes in 1998.

02:50:44.940 yes you guys talked about this already a little bit this is this was at you all's home at the time

02:50:56.300 is that correct yeah we we did we had it was like a four-day event we had over 100 people

02:51:02.140 coming and camping with us on our property 24 acres in grass valley um yeah we were still

02:51:12.300 you know dressing up a bit for ritual um it was a great turnout we had people coming from all

02:51:17.660 over the country robert taylor and his family came out michael and annabelle were there of course

02:51:23.500 valgaard came up from arizona we had as you will see james russell the author of uh germanization

02:51:31.820 of early medieval christianity came as our guest speaker um i made these really neat banners that

02:51:38.620 that went up our road, which was really cool,

02:51:41.460 living in the tribes.

02:51:42.460 And Steve wore his beautiful garb

02:51:44.820 that was actually brand new at that point,

02:51:47.340 all handmade for him.

02:51:49.820 And we did a really powerful bloat out in our,

02:51:53.140 in an area we usually did bloat in a circle of apple trees.

02:51:58.140 And this, we went out into our field

02:52:00.020 and it was kind of all hummocky

02:52:01.960 and people described the Odin bloat as Belgard did.

02:52:05.620 He said, boy, there were waves happening.

02:52:07.700 Several people said the earth was literally moving, wave function.

02:52:13.780 I don't know.

02:52:16.300 Just saying.

02:52:18.120 That was cool.

02:52:18.640 We had live music with Moynihan and his people, and Robert Taylor talked, led a panel discussion.

02:52:29.000 Yeah.

02:52:29.580 James Russell, by the way, is impossible to find at this point.

02:52:34.580 he was

02:52:36.280 he got

02:52:38.460 bad response

02:52:40.720 from the academic community

02:52:43.000 for the Germanization

02:52:44.800 of ruling medieval Christianity

02:52:46.260 I personally think it was a great book

02:52:48.480 but that he

02:52:50.820 was

02:52:51.180 basically exorcised

02:52:54.740 yeah

02:52:55.240 I can't find him

02:52:58.200 I mean I've tried to locate him since then

02:53:00.200 and I cannot

02:53:00.920 I think he was crushed

02:53:03.620 in just about every sense except the most physical kind of gives an idea though because

02:53:09.040 we were at that point trying to do one major event every year just as we do now with our

02:53:14.420 midsummer so we were starting that tradition and trying to put on an event with great food great

02:53:20.780 music great speakers wonderful bloats all those things that people have nowadays with the afa we

02:53:27.660 were we had established that that was our mode that we would do there at these events and we had

02:53:33.840 generally you know really nice area with vendors and all that kind of stuff this is just uh steve

02:53:40.400 of course on the right guard in the middle and then um what was his name anyway the interesting

02:53:49.100 thing about the man on the far left um is that when he died huh oh yes oh but but but oliver

02:54:02.220 uh when he died he had wanted a viking type um passage and so the dolf brothers were all

02:54:11.260 part of his group and they got steve they all went down to the mortuary and and were given

02:54:17.580 permission to actually use a lance was it and lance him through his heart which i guess was

02:54:24.860 an old viking method of sending someone on which was interesting so that's actually pretty cool

02:54:33.900 yeah it was oh wow how are we we're back to kenwick man

02:54:40.780 in chronological order so it happened okay that's okay

02:54:47.580 that's a cool picture i've always thought of you guys got a lot of cool pictures from this time

02:54:53.460 period yeah i took that one probably we also have some really nice ones that were done by

02:55:01.120 professional journalists and they showed how they'd always gather around steve and then so

02:55:07.740 this was important because they were at the point of trying to put him into safekeeping we were

02:55:13.480 involved in a day-long event in portland um typing up on we didn't have a laptop nobody had laptops

02:55:23.960 the government did we had some little tiny little tutorial thing from my school that i was trying to

02:55:30.840 type on and give them notes but they wonder what did we want what what were our requirements for

02:55:36.760 moving him and having everything about kenwick man's bones so they had to acknowledge us as one

02:55:43.560 of the tribes in this and we did move him were involved in a caravan to move him in his boxes

02:55:50.360 up to the burke museum where he now resides well he doesn't reside because he got buried

02:55:55.240 but he was there for a long time in in seattle um university of seattle or washington but what was

02:56:02.280 neat is we were allowed the night before this to sit in with um owlsley who is the top anthropologist

02:56:13.640 in uh the smithsonian at least he was at the time and we sat in a very small room and probably

02:56:21.560 measured um 10 by 30 feet and there was room just for about three chairs three to four chairs of

02:56:29.720 visitors and then they had a long table and his bones were laid out and every bone was measured

02:56:37.320 nobody could talk it was all recorded and measured and weighed and put into a plastic bag for

02:56:44.520 inventorying cam and we got to actually sit in there and watch this all happening along

02:56:50.040 with representatives of the indian tribes thorgram was he didn't do that thorgram was not there the

02:56:54.920 next day we saw thorgan over at the burke museum we got to do one more viewing of his bones it was

02:57:01.400 really interesting because one of the um scientists who was there actually picked up the skull and

02:57:09.960 looked at he said oh look there's so much soil inside that skull i imagine what that could tell

02:57:15.560 us and then he got actually wrapped up again and never to be well we don't know because he ended

02:57:22.520 up being analyzed by various universities after that and then getting the dna testing but anyway

02:57:31.240 it was an interesting time all right brings us to the altitude community church

02:57:38.600 oh at the library i was there today yep we were doing it it was an experiment

02:57:44.760 we do i think twice a month and got on the church page which was big listing of probably 75 churches

02:57:55.160 in the area we we paid to be in there every every week and uh we never really got anybody

02:58:02.040 it also did a little roadside um side that i put out there um we got a few looky loos a few people

02:58:10.120 kind of interested but we did get our our one good guy and that was dave moore who ended up

02:58:15.880 being with us clear to his death and a lot of his artwork his drinking horns his jewelry

02:58:24.200 the abalone jewelry the hammers were all made by by dave and he came to us wearing tie-dyed

02:58:30.360 and he wore tie-dyed to the end but he was one of us he was such a cool guy i actually died

02:58:35.720 basically just with organ with him was in the hospital stood up after being um in the hospital

02:58:43.960 overnight and stood up and killed over with organ right there so that was at least he had his buddy

02:58:49.000 there with him he was good guy but uh it was our way we kind of did it with rows of chairs we had

02:58:55.640 our little collection basket there and our people would it was our kindred they would put money in

02:59:00.440 we still of course have that hammer and all but um yeah steve would dress up in viking garb the

02:59:06.600 rest of us did not and then we'd always have uh gee braveheart music playing in the background

02:59:12.200 and cookies and coffee for everybody who was there i think we all had that soundtrack i think we all

02:59:18.920 had that soundtrack i think we all had the braveheart soundtrack at the time yeah right right

02:59:25.080 so all right so we talked earlier about hoffs i'd been reading in the runestone since the early 70s

02:59:33.400 about one of these days any day now we're gonna have this hoff and hoff's gonna happen and it

02:59:38.280 took a really long time and there's some missteps and so this is a hoff that you know clearly you

02:59:44.040 guys put blood sweat and tears into constructing and trying to make happen so what is the story

02:59:51.160 here for folks that might not know do you want me to tell it yeah go ahead okay okay so back there

02:59:58.440 at the gathering of the tribes there's a picture of steve and i standing there with a collection

03:00:03.960 of photographs we had just come up to this land and taken a bunch of pictures it was quite

03:00:10.840 beautiful with lots of tall pine trees on the uh on the ridge overlooking what is the american river

03:00:18.440 canyon where it's very steep very very treacherous a beautiful part of california

03:00:25.160 and it was 13 acres and we had been looking for property for some time but it was like

03:00:31.400 how are we going to buy the property well we happen to have two brothers twin brothers who

03:00:36.440 were older gentlemen in their probably late 40s at the time never married and they had money put

03:00:42.360 away and they said yeah they they have the means for doing it they would pay for this we would

03:00:47.880 build the hof it would be an afa hof and the afa would own the land and so we started going out

03:00:55.720 there um we announced it to everybody the line we have our hof we have our land and we it took a

03:01:02.840 while to begin the construction but we've chosen the place thorgan did all the planning of it and

03:01:09.480 did the plans i think it was 18 by 27 feet he wanted to do units of nine um it was really

03:01:17.240 nicely constructed it was labor of the folk who would go out there and camp every every weekend

03:01:23.640 at least twice a month we were out there and was quite a distance for many diane erickson

03:01:30.600 shakter lee erickson who people know from odin soft was out there cooking every time she'd bring

03:01:37.640 in the food she'd cook it she'd wash the dishes she'd put it away and that's diane and she did

03:01:43.640 that for a couple years and so we we did our best and thorgan came all the way up from santa cruz

03:01:52.600 and we kept saying great this is wonderful we were doing bloat there we did baby namings all

03:01:59.160 kinds of things but we never quite got it in our name and so everything was done on a handshake

03:02:06.040 guys that's the lesson here and over time we had we ran into a really interesting time period called

03:02:14.760 y2k it was 1999 going into the year 2000 and everybody kind of got off kilter especially the

03:02:21.480 people around us uh survivalist types were all our people were actually um canning butter

03:02:27.960 canning canning meat canning butter canning everything and planning for their families

03:02:33.960 and it was like oh the end of the world's coming and so the our kindred which had been very close

03:02:39.560 started splintering and over time um new people came in was just a little on the rough side

03:02:47.560 the property was never transferred and within about a year or two we were finally in it we

03:02:57.240 actually had a roof on it we celebrated uh winter nights in there by candlelight it was really cool

03:03:04.040 we had a nice time but it was still um that was 2001 in fact i know because there was a loki

03:03:12.440 uh toast which ended up not being very good for us

03:03:18.520 the people who owned it ended up deciding to leave

03:03:22.040 california with some member kindred members and what they did is they moved up to idaho northern

03:03:28.120 idaho and in doing so um sold the property for their own benefit to whoever they sold it to we

03:03:38.040 were not given any option to lease it to buy it or anything to buy a portion it had been in three

03:03:43.160 parcels and so we lost it and it was a very very hard time for us and along with the loki

03:03:51.720 the loki toast and a few other things that happened we kind of stepped back and said well

03:03:57.320 we're kind of done with this and so we took a few years off from actually running afa membership

03:04:06.760 like we had and that's where we kind of came to the end of uh the runestone journals because they

03:04:13.240 were hard to put out anyway and they were a lot of work for me and um so we were doing we were

03:04:21.240 starting to hold more local events we went back to california focusing on california and doing

03:04:26.280 really cool things seasonally yeah of the room go ahead oh no i was just gonna say it got to be

03:04:38.760 you know beautiful and really really professionally done and this as you can see came a long way from

03:04:44.280 the uh the first image that we showed oh yeah yeah it was nice yeah we we had those done locally

03:04:53.720 and we used glossy cover it was all black and white but it was always a glossy color uh cover

03:05:00.280 and um i did do two more after that that you can find on wayback machine they were um digital and

03:05:07.480 you can find um from two more whatever that was was 23 and 22 and 23 or something issues

03:05:15.160 are still out there um but we started doing things more locally like i said

03:05:21.240 and then we eventually said let's bring back membership again and so we did

03:05:27.000 so oh and this is 2001 yeah this is during that time period

03:05:37.160 with uh steve raising a horn at the grave of robert e howard yes indeed

03:05:46.280 i presume that the audience knows who robert e howard was i hope so he's the author of numerous

03:05:52.440 short stories that are inspirational to certainly the young men in the early part of uh the 20th

03:05:59.560 century uh most notably among them conan but also a number of other ones that are amazing yes yes

03:06:08.440 well it turns out he was a texas boy uh born and raised a relatively short drive from the

03:06:18.280 little town that i was from uh and on one of my one of my expeditions to texas i went down and

03:06:26.760 i lifted a horn to the the place where he's buried um and i mean he was one of my heroes

03:06:36.280 i loved i loved those books you know they were they were strong masculine makes you want to go 0.98

03:06:41.800 out and lift weights and shit. 100%. We have a question in the chat. Where in Texas is he buried? 0.99

03:06:50.600 Brownwood. Is that Brownwood? He was from Cross Plains and I think he's from

03:06:55.240 Brownwood Cemetery. You're right. You're right. Yeah, he was from Cross Plains,

03:07:00.120 but Brownwood was the place that they buried him. Highly recommend people in Texas

03:07:07.560 making that a moot they in fact have a robert e howard days i think in like june or july and

03:07:14.680 going back to his place where especially if you see the movie whole wide world you've got to see

03:07:22.440 that it's awesome we have had multiple copies of it ourselves and we give them out because it really

03:07:28.520 tells his story so well if you if you admired robert e howard you've got to see that and you

03:07:33.320 can you can visit his home his childhood home uh uh in cross plains and we were able to go down to

03:07:42.200 the uh courthouse or whatever it was and with gloves on able to to peruse the actual pages

03:07:53.000 of his some of his manuscripts yeah it was awesome it was awesome i'll never forget it

03:07:58.760 I remember decades before that, I remember lifting weights at my house in Turlock, California,

03:08:16.040 to the music from the movie. Good stuff, good for young males and old males for that matter.

03:08:28.760 yeah absolutely as kind of a note of some promotional things the afa did back then

03:08:35.320 or these beautiful stamps that they had made or that we had i guess right yes we had regular ones

03:08:42.520 that just happened i still have some um the trihorn um and they were 37 cents back then i think

03:08:49.480 you can see we have faihoo and urus and those were actually designed by our son-in-law at the time

03:08:54.920 who was irish and um so he did that for us and um it was kind of cool we would give those as

03:09:02.440 gifts and we actually had them so they could be put on that was the time when people actually

03:09:06.440 sent you all cards so it was kind of cool having those we have a note of when sheila officially

03:09:12.760 called for the disbanding of the bowel movement or the out of the vowel movement i'm sorry i missed

03:09:19.160 the pond gosh it was just flush it away flush it away there you go as we do so here is winter

03:09:30.120 nights in the redwoods uh circa 2005 2006. right do we know where this was it was so it's on the

03:09:42.600 california coast mendocino woodlands which is um on the coast it's way above the bay area it's down

03:09:52.840 halfway to eureka on the coast little windy roads getting there and the problem was we had to

03:09:59.880 bring out all our own food for a big three-day event for what was a lot of people for us at that

03:10:06.440 point we were starting to do our big events again we had probably 65 people what was cool about this

03:10:13.640 place is that it had been a ccc camp from the 1930s they had built it with um they were all

03:10:21.000 little log cabins with stone fireplaces and little front porches just like you'd find in

03:10:27.400 appalachia right look just like that and it was in the redwoods so that and on a on a slope so

03:10:34.280 that the road that was like a a hobbit kind of a environment it was so cool and then these

03:10:41.320 this building was one wing of a three-winged uh unit well actually had it was actually two and

03:10:49.320 they had a big octagon octagon kitchen in the middle that was probably 20 feet across or more

03:10:56.600 at least 20 feet but these two wings each had big stone fireplaces and they had french doors at the

03:11:03.960 end and then there was another the the dance hall had wide french doors and again the same look with

03:11:11.800 the stone fireplace the place was so cool and so we made the long trek out there it was a long trip

03:11:19.560 for everybody but it was so worth it and kind of got us enjoying our events again we would do things

03:11:25.160 like everybody would get a bag of cookies and a custom cup of which you sometimes see that our

03:11:31.720 cups around still we would do those every winter nights and we had non-stop coffee so there was

03:11:38.280 homemade cookies and coffee for everybody it was really cool and then we had local entertainment

03:11:43.240 play for us a couple who were professional musicians as well as having a well-known

03:11:50.920 music uh business music instruments so and that's where yes we adopted the trihorns

03:12:01.240 as the official symbol of the astro folk assembly these are adopted from the snoddle of stone in

03:12:06.840 denmark seen amongst a couple of other notable solar symbols uh these represent the three horns

03:12:16.520 of odinic inspiration uh son bolden and oh here is steve in 2007 uh fighting for the rights of

03:12:31.640 veterans to have the uh the hammer upon their like official dod tombstones can can we go back

03:12:40.040 to the trihorns real quick what what led to this as opposed to just continuing to use the raido

03:12:49.560 symbol i see this as a a a very well i'll put it yeah turning it's it's it's i see it in movement

03:13:06.680 it's forward progress um and uh i i just i think it's just that yeah so just just to ask

03:13:17.880 group what was i guess what i'm asking is what was the the mindset about at the time about why

03:13:23.080 the logo needed to be to i guess it's not changed because we still use raito but you know what i

03:13:28.440 mean yeah why do we need to do that you know we really were not using the rhido very much it was

03:13:36.520 on that one banner and maybe you'd see it inside runestone or something but we were using a lot of

03:13:43.960 other artwork and we always wanted we always wanted to in fact we put up competition sometimes

03:13:49.720 asking people send us your logo idea send us your idea for all sorts of things that you know

03:13:55.960 asking people to contribute and at some point steve came upon this i do think that's the uh

03:14:02.200 the the trip to denmark no this was long before that yeah okay my bad i'd like to add um something

03:14:11.080 that i read that you wrote steve at the time was in searching for a new symbol is not wanting to be

03:14:19.160 tied to the destiny and the fate of the astro free assembly um something that we talk about here a

03:14:27.640 lot and i think that uh spawn and i talked about this on last week when you name something and you

03:14:32.920 affix an identity to something it has a hymenia it has a degree of a soul to it and it has a destiny

03:14:41.480 and you wrote that you know this is a different organization it's built upon the lineage of that

03:14:48.360 but it's its own thing and you didn't want it to have the same the same destiny and the same

03:14:53.640 trajectory so to forge a new path to uh to adopt a new symbol and i don't think at that point the

03:15:01.400 trihorns have been decided upon but i remember reading that article in the runestone a couple

03:15:06.600 years ago yeah a lot of change started happening at this point we really did get out of our our

03:15:14.520 mode of doing things locally and for instance this came up you know the opportunity to do some travel

03:15:21.000 in other parts of the country go out and visit joe merrick was involved in this um but it was

03:15:28.280 it was a time of forward looking and um yeah you meant to ask this earlier but bode when did you

03:15:35.800 get involved in ausa troop um i um let's see i think when we were talking earlier about 1997

03:15:47.400 and everybody was saying oh that's what i did that's what i was doing you know i was just born

03:15:51.560 i think i met my first foster tour in 1997 but i was doing the whole neo-pagan thing because

03:15:58.120 i thought that was the right way to go and those people are all nuts um uh 2000 it was um 2000 when

03:16:07.640 When I first started kind of really sniffing around in 2001, I think you and founder and a couple other of us have the kind of similar stories.

03:16:21.800 All of a sudden it just kind of hit us, you know, I was struck with the realization that all this other BS that I was doing,

03:16:30.820 trying to figure out, you know, my spirituality and my, you know, the correct faith for me,

03:16:37.140 just shaving my ugly mug in the mirror one morning.

03:16:40.520 And I said, and this was probably spring of 2001, I said, you know, I need to find

03:16:46.880 where does that guy come from?

03:16:53.080 Where's the people they come from?

03:16:56.100 What was their face?

03:16:57.180 and uh auburn alabama um and um or eagle um and the guy who i said earlier was my the the go the

03:17:08.140 at the time sky named craig him and my roommate were already also true and uh they kind of

03:17:13.500 jokingly said that they knew this was going to happen and they were waiting for me to come around

03:17:16.700 so um back then i don't know if uh mr steve and sheila uh knew about this movement we had on the

03:17:25.520 east coast or in the south it was very much in vogue back in the early 2000s to take a profession

03:17:30.740 of faith like once you were really serious about it being honest or true and you're really going

03:17:35.200 to stick around and be a part of things um you know some people will see it as they reverse

03:17:40.660 baptism in fact you know the um transcripts or the actual words of that right um actually um

03:17:51.860 you did verbally and in front of the folk forsake and renounce all ties to Christianity and Jesus

03:17:58.320 and anything that wasn't of your people. So that was Mother's Night of Yule of 2001.

03:18:06.040 So, yep, that was me.

03:18:09.280 Yeah, I had also come home to House True in 2001, this time 2007. I think I was still involved with

03:18:19.460 what I think they were calling the heathen folk revival with a guy Sean Ridland and Wyatt

03:18:27.340 Kaldenberg and we were doing something you know kind of online and I kept trying to get them like

03:18:33.980 hey why don't we join the AFA they're actively doing real things in the world and you know

03:18:39.960 everybody wants to be the king of their own little their own little backyard fiefdom this is when I

03:18:45.600 started really wanting to be part of the Austria Folk Assembly that it you know inspired me since

03:18:51.260 2001 but wanted to get involved well I want to share I want to share a little rabbit hole since

03:18:57.140 you said we could do rabbit holes tonight yes so in 2002 uh so I was an officer of all of like a

03:19:05.780 year and a year and some change um I take that back it wasn't even a full year um in the southeast

03:19:13.880 We were kind of all loosely, like I said, kind of clumped in little dribs and drabs here and there.

03:19:19.240 But this group, because if you guys have been paying attention the whole night, we were talking about, you know, when I said that for those of us in the in the eastern half of the country, the AFA was the California thing.

03:19:31.220 Well, there's also the sentiment back then that, you know, those AFA guys and there's Austria Alliance guys and there's Troth guys, you know, screw them because they're just trying to like, they're trying to nationalize this.

03:19:45.520 They're trying to make this like a big deal.

03:19:47.020 And we want to maintain our, you know, five dudes sitting around a fire.

03:19:51.060 Like, we don't want to give that up.

03:19:53.020 Like, who are these national organization? 0.80

03:19:55.040 So there was this actually this kind of sentiment of anti-national organizationism, which was kind of silly.

03:20:02.260 But in 2002, I was invited to and went to a moot that was put on by a organization that called themselves Kayak, C-I-A-K, which stood for Confederation of Independent Ocetree Kindreds.

03:20:18.920 OK, I kind of remember.

03:20:20.320 Yep. And these were the guys who were like, you know, you know, we're going to flip up. We're going to put the middle finger up to the AFA and the AA and the right because they're trying to be nationalist organizations. But, you know, to combat that, we're going to create an organization. It was just extremely silly.

03:20:39.600 Was it National and Stoke? 0.92

03:20:43.760 No, no.

03:20:44.840 It was like guys from – I don't even know where they were from,

03:20:48.540 but there were people at that moot that were from, let's see, Alabama, Georgia,

03:20:52.960 Florida, I think Mississippi, Tennessee, and I think maybe Kentucky and Arkansas.

03:20:59.520 Yeah, it had a pretty good turnout.

03:21:01.020 It had about 50 or 60 folks, but, you know, it was just some silliness.

03:21:06.440 I forgot who it was earlier that it was talking.

03:21:09.600 Talking about the guy at got there.

03:21:21.520 You're breaking up on intelligence.

03:21:27.280 All right.

03:21:29.140 Better now.

03:21:32.840 Okay.

03:21:33.100 in the meantime steve you were in our nation's capital trying to get uh

03:21:46.540 out true recognition for fallen soldiers do you have anything to share with us about that

03:21:54.860 well obviously i felt very very strongly about that about the issue

03:22:03.100 Being a veteran myself, it was, I thought it was inspiring because it seemed like there was a lot of folks there. 0.73

03:22:12.840 There were, of course, also a lot of people, organizations that we didn't really go along with, you know, the Bay Area, you know, Witchy Poo.

03:22:24.840 Yeah 1.00

03:22:26.080 They were very fair with that

03:22:27.860 He was invited by them 0.99

03:22:31.000 Because they were doing the Wiccan

03:22:33.360 The Wiccan pentagram 0.96

03:22:35.720 Yeah

03:22:36.340 Was what was being celebrated

03:22:39.040 But they wanted Steve to come out

03:22:40.740 Oh, where'd you get those pictures?

03:22:43.380 Wow

03:22:43.860 I've never seen those

03:22:46.240 Or not for a long time

03:22:47.680 Oh, interesting

03:22:49.920 This, I think the picture was over

03:22:53.240 At Joe Merrick's house

03:22:54.960 rick over like we found some ancient rick oberg pictures that he had on some kind of

03:23:02.240 yeah so one thing that happened there is that we were bringing back folk builders we were

03:23:10.400 establishing the folk builder program and also the clergy program seriously is what happened

03:23:15.760 it all began during these years 2005 and on so um that's why he was a folk builder we had a

03:23:23.920 folk builder in washington dc um and stuff like that so continuing on with that we have pictures

03:23:34.240 also from the oberg collection of uh our law speaker getting his uh first gothic ordination

03:23:42.960 who is doing that i don't recognize that guy who is that hang hang on hang on uh

03:23:54.720 um let me look that up and i believe this was at an east coast thing

03:24:00.320 yes it was it is that is that is camp oh east coast thing that is rick oberg oh okay yeah that's

03:24:09.040 rick oberg at camp natimas uh east coast thing 2008 sorry sorry let's talk over you

03:24:17.440 okay interesting thank you for that chris so we have a big gap there and i would love to fill the

03:24:25.760 gap but in june of 2010 was my first ever afa event this picture is really grainy and hard to

03:24:34.880 see but it's the the class of folk builders that took their oath as folk builder with me

03:24:43.200 um sadly a lot of these people did not live up to that oath

03:24:48.720 but uh i have thus far and uh gothe thorgrin on the end uh did all the days of his life

03:24:56.880 i can't even tell which one is you matt i have the swole one what are you talking about

03:25:06.400 you got a beard i do have a bit of a beard in that one with the white sleeveless because

03:25:11.360 i was a basketball boy down in california in the summer and and that was a little bit warm for

03:25:17.360 for what i'm used to uh but yeah that was uh at uh camp norga in alta california

03:25:26.480 this same event was when i mentioned you know 30 30 years ago in this presentation

03:25:32.800 are uh yeah 30 years ago in this presentation i'm we showed a picture of uh goethe david james

03:25:39.680 this he did a presentation at this event and i met him where he talked about uh our people's naming

03:25:46.560 customs and among other things so this is a really huge deal uh in my life uh this is the first time

03:25:55.760 that i met uh steve and sheila and got out of i had started folk building in alaska in or i had

03:26:03.360 joined the afa in 2009 and very quickly i wanted to be involved and i tried to folk build where i

03:26:10.240 could and i had like alaska and other places that didn't fit in well with the other stuff

03:26:17.120 i got alaska hawaii and like the yukon territories or something

03:26:24.160 but yeah uh this was that year i think i remember uh i remember when you walked up to uh to our

03:26:34.160 our place there at camp natimas weren't you carrying a gallon jug of say norga

03:26:40.960 camp norga oh yeah it was in norga but yes my bad my bad carrying a jug of milk yeah

03:26:47.760 milk is very anabolic i was drinking a gallon of milk a day a gallon of whole milk a day at that

03:26:52.480 point i had eventually got to where i was drinking two gallons of whole milk a day

03:26:57.440 um do what you got to do to put on size um i started drinking gallons of milk when i was about

03:27:05.840 220 and i think i stopped when i was about 310 so well it's your macros right there it at that 0.88

03:27:17.600 point i was not i was only concerned so this is this was my stupidness i was always used to being

03:27:22.880 scrawny so my only focus was getting my protein in so yeah it fit my protein like i was trying to get

03:27:29.920 i think that my goal for for a number of years there i was trying to get two grams of protein

03:27:35.600 per pound of body weight by any means necessary as brother malcolm would say so yeah i was i was

03:27:45.200 going hard uh he would say that but he would not drink the milk because his people are lactose

03:27:49.760 and tolerant. So here we have Githya Lauren Anderson getting her ordination also at that

03:28:00.400 first event I went to in June 2010. I think technically this would be a picture

03:28:06.560 of her bloat, the first bloat she did right after her ordination. I think this was to

03:28:12.640 get her ordination. She had to do the bloat to complete it, but it looks like she is making

03:28:18.080 a toast to the afa flag that's the flag that i the first afa flag and it's the flag that i swore

03:28:25.520 my folk builder oath on that she took her ordination oath on and that happens to be in

03:28:34.400 attendance this evening so i'm not playing for it but i do have some afa artifacts oh you blew it up

03:28:44.400 wow look at that cool

03:28:51.200 so yeah that was a really special uh special event in my lifetimes certainly

03:28:57.280 um here's a year later when y'all renewed your vows at midsummer of 2011.

03:29:05.360 there's a picture of thorgan there looking serious

03:29:13.520 Also around that time, a picture of both of our two Gothar that passed while in good standing as Gothar with us.

03:29:25.440 David James and Thorgan Odin are following Gothar.

03:29:33.100 I am proud that I have the honor of meeting both gentlemen and being good friends with Thorgan.

03:29:38.000 yeah i got my ordination in uh 2012 also at uh camp norga there i was extremely proud still

03:29:52.400 am of that and uh yeah here's me looking looking proud and smirking for the picture

03:29:59.120 also in 2012 the AFA went uh bi-coastal as Bodie was kind of saying earlier the AFA was really a

03:30:14.080 a west coast deal for most of its stuff it had members a lot of different places but the activity

03:30:20.480 was all out West. It was very important for us to really try to get out there. We had a lot of

03:30:30.700 members in the Northeast, and we wanted to literally go and fly our flag out there and

03:30:38.120 see what we could do. And it was a really special event, an amazing event. Cliff, you weren't at

03:30:45.800 this first one were you I was but I was not a member yet I was a vouched for guest of Patricia

03:30:53.640 Ball all right so what did you think as somebody coming in from not being a member and I think you

03:31:03.440 were at the previous east coast thing ah actually I think if you look in the left hand corner of the

03:31:09.340 picture uh upwards there's a bald gentleman with a goatee and i believe that might be you cliff

03:31:16.260 is that could be all right let's let's let's say it is sure

03:31:24.580 yeah so it was i mean it was

03:31:30.180 it was one of the best things that ever happened to me i remember being like really buggy to

03:31:37.840 Patricia to, you know, confirm that I was able to go. Um, it was, you know, not that it wasn't

03:31:43.600 really in question, but I needed to hear the words. Um, and, uh, it, it was, it was refreshing

03:31:51.840 for me because I had, this is at this time when I was still kind of drifting around between the

03:31:57.020 different groups and much like we talked about in, in the East, it wasn't, it wasn't solidly

03:32:03.500 folkish there were tribalist groups which basically means people sitting on the fence

03:32:09.680 between universalists and and folkism um there there were a lot of of universalist groups and

03:32:18.040 um there were a few folkish people like patricia and um and the rad cliffs and some others that i

03:32:27.000 met and in my goings but i was going to i was going to new jersey to the central pennsylvania

03:32:34.760 northern pennsylvania and down to you know like the maryland area where gladstine was trying to

03:32:40.380 trying to figure out what i where i fit in i had you know

03:32:45.100 i had i had become aware that there was a problem with our with our people and that

03:32:54.100 needed fixing but i wasn't quite ready to to face the reality of it you know um but the the event was

03:33:03.540 was amazing it was overwhelming in a lot of ways i mean i almost everybody there was was

03:33:09.780 new to me except for you know literally um a handful of people that i could count on my hand

03:33:15.300 And I remember being absolutely starstruck at meeting our founder, Stephen McNallon there.

03:33:27.800 You probably get used to that, Steve.

03:33:29.960 Everywhere you go, you are a celebrity.

03:33:32.400 But I apologize if I was annoying because it was one of these things where I'm meeting a living legend.

03:33:42.280 you know um and a lot of the people that i knew in pennsylvania said bad things about you and you

03:33:52.040 know some of them were true and those are still things that i consider good now and some of them 0.91

03:33:58.100 you know i mean a lot of their criticisms are things that i just generally agree with and

03:34:03.540 that's one of the things when somebody says bad things about something and you know that

03:34:09.360 good story kind of a turd it's it's kind of an endorsement so um you know the the the the bloats

03:34:19.860 were absolutely amazing and you know steven's odin bloat was the the most powerful bloat that

03:34:27.000 i think to this day that i've ever been to um it's it's difficult for any of our gothar to compete

03:34:33.240 with that um it it really was it really was special to me um yeah gosh it's it's kind of a

03:34:45.880 blur at this point i think i mix up different winter nights from other winter nights you know

03:34:51.180 all in that same setting there for i think we did nine of them there maybe 10 um and um you know

03:35:00.220 a lot happened i will i will share an anecdote though that was a part of it so

03:35:08.660 asatru or or heathenry as a lot of people called it back then was still pretty disorganized you

03:35:15.860 know we've we've touched on how you know all these little tribal groups didn't want to give

03:35:19.980 up their their power and a lot of them were like mini cults of personalities and you know it was a

03:35:26.540 a lot of coming together of people who had a general alignment,

03:35:30.300 but that we're not all exactly on the same page. And, um,

03:35:35.520 so it was, it was a heck of a stumble that weekend. Um, there,

03:35:42.200 there were, yeah, Matt knows where I'm going with this. There were,

03:35:47.680 there were some, some unhale things set over that horn. And I, uh,

03:35:53.400 there was there was one young man in particular who basically swore to like murder his grandfather

03:36:02.100 or something like that over the horn i forget all the details he swore to murder um and i i the part

03:36:12.020 that that's that's a bad part right obviously we shouldn't be doing that if we do it needs to be

03:36:15.980 real serious um and our our thula should be definitely be getting involved and i don't know

03:36:23.040 that there was one there but i remember i was sitting close enough in the circle that i could

03:36:28.900 overhear this where she's how sure go with the steve disavow it and he mentioned it to his

03:36:36.400 leadership that was there at the end of the the sumble hall that what was being said there

03:36:43.860 wasn't good and those aren't those are not his words that's definitely a simplification of it but

03:36:50.900 it stuck with me because

03:36:53.280 it was

03:36:54.120 it was indicative of

03:36:57.400 the positive

03:36:59.080 that I was looking for

03:37:00.720 so yeah that's just an anecdote

03:37:05.240 it was

03:37:05.840 it was a great event but it was

03:37:09.280 rough too and I think that was part of what made it so

03:37:11.280 special you know for me

03:37:13.020 it was you know

03:37:14.140 it was our first time at that camp

03:37:17.300 you know through the years we

03:37:19.100 We learned all the little nooks and crannies and, you know, had built up a trusted relationship with the camp leadership there and could kind of do what we want.

03:37:27.700 It got to the point where, you know, by the end, they would just give us the keys and we could, you know, use anything on site and they wouldn't bother us all weekend.

03:37:35.520 But this was our first time there. So the learning curve was was just just beginning.

03:37:42.400 but it was, it was really amazing. And, and it was properly cold, you know, it didn't snow that

03:37:49.960 year, but it was, it was, it was cold at night. And I, I'm pretty sure I, I was tenting. There

03:37:57.280 weren't a whole lot of people tenting that year out in the field, but I was one of them.

03:38:01.360 um gosh yeah and i i met i met a few people that um that i'm still still friends with today i i

03:38:12.080 believe jason plourd was that at that event as well i think so the board was there and i i think

03:38:18.240 that is where i met him if it wasn't it was like the second time i ever met him um i met a few other

03:38:25.360 people that would be important to me for a time but that you know aren't aren't aligned with us

03:38:30.320 or aren't um in in my life anymore and uh i was kind of a pain in the butt back then i still give

03:38:38.720 it gave pat a whole oh i gave pat a hard time about signing up because like bode mentioned i

03:38:43.360 was still kind of in that camp of like why do we need national organizations i definitely didn't see

03:38:50.320 the asa true folk assembly or the asa true alliance or the odinic right or the troth or

03:38:58.160 any of those as like a church that wasn't the way that it was looked at by a lot of people

03:39:06.400 back then at least it was a if it wasn't a majority view it was uh like a plurality view

03:39:13.460 if you will so um this is this event definitely firmed up in my mind that the afa was was a force

03:39:19.620 to be reckoned with and by the time the next winter nights rolled around i had officially

03:39:24.400 joined um and had you know been dragged off of that fence by um by my dedicated folk builder and

03:39:32.000 mentor pat bode you were at this event also weren't you i was that's where i first met

03:39:39.980 clifford erickson as well um i don't know if i think i remember cliff and i talking but

03:39:46.880 um a few points me i remember yep and that's back uh if you'll allow me to share some ancient lore

03:39:55.040 um back then our uh our al-shariah godi was known by a little little poem he was the man

03:40:04.940 the myth of the mountain matt flavel um because matt was quite possibly the swollest person there

03:40:11.280 um yeah he was he graduated from jugs of milk by that time to uh uh already his luggage consisted

03:40:19.660 mostly of protein and supplements um so that was pretty rad i remember him uh making that but i

03:40:27.000 don't know matt if you remember like we became kind of fast friends me you and uh brad and all

03:40:31.720 those guys and um the evening of that symbol and for those playing along at home if you want to

03:40:38.260 you know, check your programs. That was Dylan Sprouse of Disney fame that, uh, threatened to,

03:40:44.820 you know, threatened vengeance on his grandfather's murderer. Um, but we were all standing around in

03:40:51.300 the kitchen and we, we thought the night was over because we were like, well, we ran too long. 0.98

03:40:57.700 Sumble's probably not going to happen. But then, uh, founder McNally said, no, we're having

03:41:01.900 Sumble tonight. And we're like, all right, we're having Sumble tonight. And everybody's looking

03:41:05.980 at their watches and they're going but it's 11 p.m. and we're like yep um and uh uh one of the

03:41:12.920 guys made a joke about listen if the big man says you stumble at 11 you stumble at 11 and we're like

03:41:17.340 all right cool um some of us refer to that symbol as the bataan death march symbol because you can

03:41:24.300 see you can see by this photo of everybody standing around in the main uh ritual area

03:41:29.400 All of those people, and probably more, were in the hall for Sumble.

03:41:34.480 So three rounds took forever.

03:41:38.340 I think we started around 11, 11.15.

03:41:41.680 That Sumble ended at about 2.30 in the morning.

03:41:45.340 So there were people falling asleep.

03:41:48.420 We were going for the ambiance where it was very, you know, like candlelit and whatnot, like we like to do.

03:41:53.120 And you just look over and see people, you know, elbowing their bench mates, like, hey, wake up, you know, horn's coming.

03:41:59.400 Um, there were, you know, some of the classic, there was the guy who talks too loud, a guy

03:42:11.900 who gills his entire toes, guys on the other side of the tunnel, you know, speaks at a

03:42:18.000 whisper.

03:42:19.160 So nobody, especially during the Ancestor round, um, it was great.

03:42:25.080 It was great.

03:42:26.260 i feel like we all deserve campaign ribbons for surviving it um but steve steve's odin's bloat

03:42:33.480 um he did it much in the style that else here ago he does his now probably where else he learned it

03:42:39.460 um but it was so powerful that um as founder mcdallan used to do back in the day he would

03:42:47.780 tell us that after the bloat to kind of disperse and be with ourselves and you know kind of take

03:42:54.440 in nature and we were talking a lot about the numinous quality back then and um so we were

03:43:00.520 just kind of literally kind of hey before we all come back together in a social setting decompressed

03:43:05.100 from the spiritual setting and um it was so beautiful and so moving and so powerful well

03:43:10.380 there were people crying there were people like walking out in the field of camp natimus like

03:43:14.080 openly weeping and um i remember that the uh then alzeria go the uh mcnalen uh instructed

03:43:24.380 us as, uh, as you know, the call and response, Hey, I'm going to say this and you say this.

03:43:31.360 And we're like, cool. And, uh, the call and response of Votan mit uns, uh, over and over

03:43:39.480 and over again, by the time the bloat was over, um, my throat felt very raw and I felt like more

03:43:46.380 than just hoarse from yelling it, you know, it kind of felt like maybe something was a little

03:43:50.160 wrong. And I remember I kind of, kind of coughed and kind of touched my tongue like that. And

03:43:58.760 yeah, I had screened myself to the point where there was blood in my throat. And yeah, I know

03:44:05.100 it sounds gruesome, but I was very proud of that fact. It just showed me the lack of care for my

03:44:12.920 own, you know, physical well-being I had in that moment because, you know, Gozie McNallan

03:44:20.740 had us, you know, whipped up into a frenzy, you know, especially those of us who are not

03:44:26.280 necessarily Germanic, when you had us yelling, you know, woo, and that ring in the hills

03:44:35.920 of Pennsylvania, I mean, this is probably going to go down, this event is going to go

03:44:41.020 done in our history also done as a very powerful weekend very powerful happening

03:44:47.580 you know for people who were there um it was a wonderful wonderful weekend

03:44:58.300 yeah this this event is really important in our history and set a lot of things in motion

03:45:03.660 and was a real big deal um also from this event

03:45:11.900 there's that's the back of my giant head with the uh tactical hat on uh with tausher next to you i

03:45:20.220 think yeah um yeah here's uh alan's second ordination he had gotten ordained in 2008

03:45:32.700 And he stepped back for some reason, and then he re-upped at this event.

03:45:42.240 I did a Wayfarer's Bloat.

03:45:45.940 There's me doing a Wayfarer's Bloat. 0.91

03:45:51.300 And then the next year, we had the Mother of All Moots in May of 2013.

03:45:57.900 We couldn't get the camp we wanted for June, so we moved it up a month and went over Mother's Day weekend.

03:46:06.720 We had an amazing, amazing maypole there with fresh flowers.

03:46:11.800 It was beautiful. It's a really big event.

03:46:14.120 this event cliff and i and a tattoo artist former member spent like into the wee hours of the

03:46:24.920 morning out around the fire talking about the finer points of alsatruan related topics i remember

03:46:34.440 i believe that was a later midsummer i thought it was before you joined maybe it was before you

03:46:40.120 became a folk builder it was before i became a folk builder i did not travel out west for

03:46:45.320 an afa event before i joined okay when did you travel out what 2014 yeah i think 2014 2015 and

03:46:53.400 2016. i came out all three years okay but not 2013. yeah that was the time period of the great

03:47:01.320 cliff wandering he was showing up at every afa event back then whether it was west south north

03:47:06.360 three i was a single man with time and money to burn with the dressing

03:47:14.840 that's right and the jeep to burn

03:47:21.000 so also in 2013 uh steve and sheila myself and a couple other friends of ours took a trip over to

03:47:30.600 denmark to meet our uh danish folk builder at the time lars our irene son and his uh

03:47:40.600 his afa folks that we had over there in denmark and they showed us amazing amazing things

03:47:46.200 i mentioned earlier that the trihorns is from a rune stone in denmark and this is the actual stone

03:47:53.800 and there we are looking at the stone itself um the snowball of stone there and it's in the

03:48:00.360 museum in copenhagen and their museums are awesome because they're not all like blocked

03:48:07.000 off and cordoned off with glass and like protective barriers lest they become enriched um

03:48:16.600 so yeah you could kind of experience things in a more i don't know in a closer way you're not

03:48:23.160 supposed to reach out and touch stuff we absolutely touched the stone but it was a really special

03:48:30.200 event you know the previous year we'd taken the afa from coast to coast and this year we'd taken

03:48:36.040 it overseas so could i add something please i have a memory from that museum um it had various um

03:48:48.440 rooms that you'd wander in dark and just indirect lighting really really wonderful environment

03:48:56.120 and behind me i heard this deep guttural roaring and it was you and brad standing before the oryx

03:49:07.160 doing urus i mean they had an oryx skeleton there oryx skeleton of which to me is just so powerful

03:49:14.680 anyway to think it's a it's a an animal no longer with us and the way you brought forth

03:49:21.400 the uru sound um i've never forgotten that and yeah to me that is that was a really really cool

03:49:30.680 moment we we were so excited we wanted to get to the viking exhibit but you had to go like

03:49:37.960 chronologically the way they had the museum set up through the rooms that the rooms that you go

03:49:42.280 to so we weren't even thinking but we went through the prehistoric room and all of a sudden we

03:49:47.480 stumbled upon this young aurochs that had wandered into a bog or something and been

03:49:54.280 been very well preserved so we again you're not supposed to reach out and touch things

03:49:59.400 we absolutely touched the skeleton we galdred into the face of this aurochs the the uru's room

03:50:05.880 was really powerful and the very next rune over in the the celtic period just these things that

03:50:15.680 you see in in history books and you don't pay attention the whole room was blacked out with

03:50:22.660 these like led lights in the exhibit so you could really see and all this metallic stuff would just

03:50:27.900 shine there was two things in that room that were just stunningly beautiful in person um i mean

03:50:35.740 they're beautiful in books but things that you thought you'd never see in your lifetime there

03:50:40.220 was the uh what is the trondheim uh solar chariot that we've all seen the like a little bit pieces

03:50:49.820 broken off a gold sun chariot and then there was the gundastrop cauldron which looks like it's this

03:50:59.100 tiny little cup in the books it's like a big i don't know two two and a half three foot across

03:51:07.500 cauldron and it's got you know raised um relief depictions all over it um yeah that's the the

03:51:18.620 sun chariot we saw and again it's black around it and lit up by these leds it's beautiful

03:51:25.180 and then the uh the cauldron which has got all kind of cool uh design work on it that you don't

03:51:32.620 see in the other so there we go there's there's the same or walks there's a picture with me with

03:51:37.660 it somewhere that i want to find but yep that is the one i don't know where that one's at but this

03:51:43.420 works for now i think we got that one in an old voice uh issue way back when but yeah it's it's

03:51:52.460 this guy right here that we galdered into and uh good job nick on finding these

03:52:03.580 um here's steve and i at uh a hotel near uh i think near the airport there was we

03:52:12.220 were fixing to head home our hosts showed us some of the most amazing things and they showed us a

03:52:22.940 lot of things that were off the beaten path that tourists wouldn't normally see so here's steve

03:52:28.540 in a magnificent uh little dolman stone thing inside of a stone ship we saw you know countless

03:52:39.340 of these in different ways and they were really, really powerful and they were magnificent.

03:52:45.040 This one particularly with big stones and it was very dramatic.

03:52:54.460 So I've told this story a couple of times on the program, but this is one of the coolest

03:52:59.580 things.

03:53:00.580 So we would see all these driving through the countryside and it's pretty flat country

03:53:04.340 denmark we'd see these you know different little raised bumps on the landscape and they were

03:53:11.300 obviously not natural we'd ask people and they were these these dolmens which were these stone

03:53:17.860 quote unquote burial chambers but you didn't find urns or bodies in them um so these were everywhere

03:53:27.300 and we were driving through and so one day and we had this yeah so anyways one day we're over there

03:53:34.340 And we stop in the middle of this guy's farm, and I think we're getting out and figuring out about directions, or I don't know.

03:53:44.320 We have a caravan of, you know, three or four different vehicles, and somebody runs off over towards one of these kind of little hill things, and we don't think much of it, and they come back.

03:53:56.140 And they ask if we want to go and check and go inside one of these dolmens.

03:54:01.540 And we, you know, of course we, I mean, the only answer to that question is yes, but we didn't know what to expect.

03:54:08.760 And they had gone in before us, and this next part doesn't make sense, but it is what it is, so it happened.

03:54:15.500 They'd gone in before us and lit these tea light candles, and these are inside of this burial chamber.

03:54:23.960 It's made up of all these flat stones, so there's all these little irregular ledges where the stones are set together.

03:54:30.820 And they set up all these different little tea lights on them.

03:54:34.020 And so it was nice and really cool ambiance inside.

03:54:37.840 But when we went up to this entrance, it was as if nobody had gone into it.

03:54:43.340 Sheila was the first one at it.

03:54:45.100 And she had to kind of move aside cobwebs and overgrown weeds and stuff.

03:54:54.320 And when she did, these black moths came out, which I thought was really cool.

03:54:59.700 And we went in there and we, you know, we just kind of took it all in for a little bit.

03:55:06.400 And we did a Bercano-Galder session inside.

03:55:12.100 And the candles were flickering strange.

03:55:17.440 And at least one of them fell off in a strange way.

03:55:21.580 There was no wind in there.

03:55:22.720 It was very, forces were at work in that place.

03:55:27.480 It was really, really interesting.

03:55:29.700 And, uh, we did this and so to get into this, there's what you see here, this opening into the mound, but then you, it's probably a chamber that's, I don't know, maybe 10 foot in there.

03:55:43.580 This is probably maybe three foot high. You can kind of bend as the maximum you could and squat down and kind of inch your way into it.

03:55:54.740 but it was really really powerful and we were going into the womb of the earth here and doing

03:56:01.800 this and doing our galltering and this was a you know the locals thought that these were places of

03:56:10.560 stasis where they'd put a body wait for the soul to you know cast off its requisite parts and then

03:56:18.320 would take the body for you know burial or or cremation or whatever elsewhere and that was you

03:56:26.960 know i don't know if that's true or not that's what the locals had told us they thought the case was

03:56:33.040 but we did this ceremony in there and then when we were coming back out it was very much

03:56:37.920 a rebirth and a re-emerging into the world you look out of this as if the camera were

03:56:43.520 flip the opposite direction and you see out over these fields and this you know could have been

03:56:49.440 very ancient uh farmland but you look a little bit further and as your eyes adjust to the light

03:56:55.360 you start seeing some power lines on a highway off in the distance and we went in here and had

03:57:01.120 this transformative experience and then we emerged back out in the world and it's one of the most

03:57:07.440 powerful i don't know moments in my life was was this it was really really special and i'm i'm

03:57:13.760 very glad that i got to be a part of that here's us if they had a um austro cemetery there and they

03:57:24.640 had to rent this space i assume they're still renting it from a uh a lutheran cemetery there

03:57:33.760 but they have a communal burial space in there to enter ashes of dead asatruar within this stone

03:57:41.600 circle and each of the families could create their own um plaque within this concrete symbolic shield

03:57:51.680 wall and i'm curious uh how far how far that's grown since that time i'm really not sure but

03:58:00.480 i'd be really interested to know but this is a really cool thing that they did the first

03:58:05.520 you know modern house true burial site that i've seen

03:58:12.560 here's us we had this uh panel there uh there's me on the end and steve and uh brad and lars

03:58:22.560 and uh wasn't super heavily attended but a number of folks there i don't know i'd say maybe 15 20

03:58:32.320 people something like that uh this this house a true elder um had just had some surgery and he

03:58:45.760 was in the hospital and he kind of checked himself out because it was very important

03:58:51.360 he knew that steve had come there and he wanted to perform this this bloat for steve we were

03:58:57.520 doing a fray faxy like a frayer bloat there and um we had this guide and she was eccentric and 0.86

03:59:12.080 like aggressively demanding and kind of a harsh to be around lady in a lot of ways but 1.00

03:59:19.200 really cool in a lot of ways too she would go out in uh i think she was a stewardess and when she 1.00

03:59:26.000 wasn't at work she would go like sleep in these dolmens and and stone circles and holy places

03:59:34.720 off in the woods and she was a very mystical really cool lady i appreciated getting to spend 0.99

03:59:40.080 some time with her but she was a lot but she was just like really abrasive and really aggressive 1.00

03:59:45.200 in a lot of ways but it was neat because she was just so in your face the whole time but when she

03:59:53.760 got around this guy she just became a little girl because this was like her mentor that had taught

03:59:58.480 her about alsatru and she immediately completely changed her whole presence and we did this uh

04:00:06.400 this frayer bloat in this stone circle around this dolman um with wheat fields all around us

04:00:13.680 or grain fields at least all around us and off in the distance if you look at this straight on

04:00:18.320 where we're looking to your yeah left and then up there was a stable with some horses and the horses

04:00:25.760 were dancing as we did this bloat it was really very very cool you need to bring that up on saturday

04:00:33.280 uh this is a

04:00:38.200 why do we have this one we have this one here for a purpose this is a west virginia park moot

04:00:46.400 in september of 2014 i believe that is you cliff do you have any any insight on this i think this

04:00:53.720 was just an early cliff sighting that we have yeah maybe um that's pat hall there uh two people

04:00:59.420 over for me we did a field trip uh if you will um to to west virginia this was oh and that's

04:01:05.940 robert taylor and his family right in the front row there oh yeah right there so i'm trying to

04:01:12.360 remember if these guys were afa members or if this was just one of um patricia and wise adventures

04:01:20.780 visiting local-ish kindreds to try to, you know,

04:01:28.840 get them to come and participate in the Austro Folk Assembly.

04:01:33.680 But, yeah, we went down to West Virginia to, I mean,

04:01:39.940 basically for Patricia to hold bloat for these guys and a few gals.

04:01:47.540 And they were pretty nice.

04:01:49.720 i don't remember any of their names and um they ended up deciding to just continue to do their own

04:01:57.720 thing um but it was nice because um robert and uh his family were there and this is one of the

04:02:05.880 opportunities i got to spend a whole lot of time talking to patricia in the car because we drove

04:02:12.040 like 10 hours to get there and then well maybe not 10 hours we drove a long way to get there

04:02:18.680 back it was one where i basically went and slept over at pat's house before we left

04:02:23.240 and then i think we probably had a hotel there that night and then came home the next day

04:02:29.000 a lot of the runestone article was about just how far you drove yeah it was a lot of that i mean it

04:02:35.400 was a it was a regular park move um but it i think it exemplifies you know how our folk builders

04:02:44.200 the ones who are doing it right will travel to to bring ossature to the folk

04:02:51.320 and how you know sometimes that pays off and sometimes it doesn't um you know i don't know

04:02:59.280 if any i don't know if any of these people are members of the afa other than me in this photo

04:03:04.120 right now if any of you're out there watching we we'd love to have you back um or if you are still

04:03:09.700 member like shoot me an email and remind me who you are in this photo but uh yeah it was

04:03:16.920 kind of also true missionary work as it were trying to to reach out to people who

04:03:22.600 you know they reached they reached out to us initially they contacted patricia and asked if

04:03:28.060 she would come this is one of those one of those events in this time where like

04:03:32.800 an afa folk builder and especially an afa gothi or githia would be like a celebrity guest or

04:03:41.080 speaker at some small kindred's thing that they were doing so daniel you reached out on the side

04:03:49.180 and said this was around the time that you became house or true do you have anything to

04:03:53.200 to add or to throw context in on this so you would uh share the uh photos of the denmark trip and i

04:04:01.240 And I remember that specifically.

04:04:04.660 I think I discovered Alcetru in 2012 after, you know, square peg round hole of, you know, other spiritual paths and, you know, kind of dug into it and didn't realize it even had a name for a while.

04:04:18.660 And then, you know, found the word Alcetru.

04:04:20.520 You Google Alcetru, you come across the name Steve McMillan.

04:04:24.000 And that kind of led to some other stuff that, you know, I was looking into when it comes to stuff going on in the world.

04:04:32.200 So two paths were kind of merging together.

04:04:34.680 And I remember seeing those those photos from where you guys were squatted around the room.

04:04:42.200 And I specifically remember the tribal shirt that Mr. McNallan's wearing in that shirt.

04:04:46.980 And I remember thinking, oh, these guys are really cool.

04:04:49.480 They flew all the way from California over to Denmark.

04:04:51.760 I imagine they don't do anything on the East Coast, and I kind of set where I was at until, you know, I didn't, I think there was a Red Ice episode that Mr. Flabel was on a little while later that they had discussed.

04:05:05.260 They had just had Ostara in Georgia that year, and I'm like, that's right next door. I don't know how I missed that.

04:05:11.600 So, yeah, that was, that was where the hospitality journey for the young household started was in 2014, and I specifically remember coming across that thinking how cool that was.

04:05:21.760 uh nick you said you had something you wanted to share yeah this uh this west virginia picture is

04:05:27.040 the first in what's going to be a series of pictures on this slideshow where i think matt

04:05:31.520 was just going through old runestones saw pictures that went that's cool let's put it on the slideshow

04:05:38.400 so there's going to be a group of these that are kind of random but let's talk about them

04:05:43.520 yeah it was to give flavor and the idea eventually this was going to be presented at uh

04:05:49.520 at sigurbloat in tennessee there and i wanted you know some of the early appearances of

04:05:56.480 some of these folks to to be on there this is a uh burial that we did for an afa member

04:06:04.080 in west virginia that was um one of the first uh department of defense issued

04:06:10.880 military plaques with bjolnir on it this was for uh clark woe and weber

04:06:18.560 There's me and Brad and a friend of mine, Julian, there in the middle.

04:06:26.760 I actually just heard from him today, as a matter of fact.

04:06:31.020 I said he met Julian.

04:06:39.800 And as mentioned earlier, Gauthier David James passed away in 2014.

04:06:45.560 um here's us just kind of make a note of that

04:06:50.100 and here's a young uh a young Bodie Mayo

04:06:57.140 Bodie what do you have tell us take us back you look you look like

04:07:05.800 20 years younger in this picture what happened uh first of all uh other than the lovely altar

04:07:14.680 in the banner um hate this photo um feel like a look feel like i got a little jimmy neutron hair

04:07:21.100 going on there um but no uh i uh i like to regale i like to regale the godhar students uh whenever

04:07:30.460 they go to our program whenever they bemoan their fate about their assignments and how arduous and

04:07:38.460 difficult they are i remind them that i had a mentor that uh was a certain go the flavell

04:07:45.100 and he called me for our weekly call one day and he said um okay buddy for the next 24 weeks

04:07:52.060 and i don't know if you remember this but you said uh for the next 24 weeks we're going to go

04:07:57.880 through the elder futhark and you're going to meditate on each run in order and you're going

04:08:01.820 to meditate on it for seven days and you're going to write a report you're going to give it to me

04:08:05.560 for the next 24 weeks and i kind of uh you know and uh you know i said you know matt i already

04:08:14.200 know the runes he's like cool show me and i was uh i was very uh a very um upset student there

04:08:23.560 for a minute but i forgot about your insolence on that until right now i remember that specific

04:08:28.520 yep i remember that specific time yep i was like come on you're like come on nothing you're like

04:08:34.340 you want to do this or not i'm like yes so um yeah that was actually taken in my home because

04:08:40.580 they were like hey we need an official picture uh there is a picture somewhere of maybe it's

04:08:46.260 in the slideshow of um the law speaker giving me my oath back in ostara that year

04:08:56.020 we do not have that picture otherwise it would be in place of this one unfortunately

04:09:00.900 when you you were unable to provide it for me i asked right yeah yeah i don't know exactly where

04:09:08.900 that i might have a copy i'll see if i do i'll be going through lots of photographs that we'll be

04:09:14.820 adding to all these slideshows yes i um when we were when you were talking earlier i'll share it

04:09:21.060 go the about githya anderson githya lauren doing her um her ordination and that she had to do a

04:09:28.340 bloat you know at a national event to get her ordination that was still the case when i was

04:09:34.900 ordained the first time uh back in 2015 and uh yeah my i like to joke with the fellow go there

04:09:42.020 i'm like you know no pressure you know i had to do my pretty my quote-unquote graduation bloat

04:09:47.540 and um then go the flavel was there like most of the afa leadership was there and so was

04:09:54.820 the founder of modern also true and uh as we say in the south i was as nervous as a long-tail cat

04:10:03.080 in a room full of rocking chairs um i was just extremely nervous to to perform a bloat in front

04:10:09.800 of front of steve and anthony mcnalen and um i was just so nervous and i very famously

04:10:17.980 back then i was as a kind of a passion project um i was i was fabricating and welding together

04:10:26.940 these steel bloat hammers um which i believe witten erickson still has the one yep he probably

04:10:34.680 has it right next to him um yep so i was yep i was making those and sending them out uh one of them

04:10:42.520 went to Lars Irensen in Denmark and I have those scattered throughout the world that I made for

04:10:49.040 people but I had made one that I was going to use in the bloat and I forgot I forgot to use it it

04:10:59.620 said on the it said on the altar table and I never used it and the bloat went off other than that

04:11:05.480 without a hitch no one knew that I was supposed to be using the hammer and like I said I was

04:11:09.960 extremely nervous extremely nervous and uh after the bloat i think during the bloat i kept every

04:11:17.300 now and then looking over at founder mcnalen like you know just just breathe buddy just breathe you

04:11:22.020 know just kind of making sure he's not had a pain look on his face you know like uh like this is

04:11:27.280 going awful and when it was over steve pretty much shot between everyone else to be the first

04:11:35.060 one to shake my hand after the bloat and tell me I did a great job and you could have knocked my

04:11:41.340 big behind over with a feather when he rushed through everyone else and made sure he was the

04:11:45.960 first one to shake my hand and say that was a very very powerful bloat buddy thank you so much

04:11:50.460 and uh I think I had to turn away you know because you know I was getting a little misty-eyed like

04:11:56.060 you know is this really happening is this really my life right now so this is so important yeah

04:12:02.140 because it was it was so important to me and it was so you know like like we say you know down

04:12:09.660 here you know after that you couldn't tell me nothing you know i was 10 foot high and bullet

04:12:13.340 proof um it was such a good time and such a such a good feeling to have that happen

04:12:22.380 it's good to feel bulletproof

04:12:24.220 well bode do you want to tell everybody the story about when you first met steve

04:12:32.460 oh boy um i've told the story a thousand times it feels like um it was uh in 2003 and at that point

04:12:47.020 uh yahoo groups were all the rage and there was a yahoo group called our meat hall and it was

04:12:53.660 literally it had started as we had said earlier tonight when we were talking about the the rise

04:12:59.060 of universalism so in the late 90s early 2000s on yahoo groups that was kind of where the war

04:13:05.640 was being fought uh online between the universalists and those of us who are correct and

04:13:11.580 it generally devolved into a bunch of name calling and just you know bad words back and forth by you

04:13:19.300 know by two groups of people who really you know should have been trying to find common ground but

04:13:24.800 they did in this our meat hall moot yahoo groups and so basically it was a it was a you know you

04:13:32.860 know oh i think this about you and i think this about you back and it was kind of okay you know

04:13:37.940 why don't you meet me why don't we have a moot and we'll talk about it you know say it to my face

04:13:42.800 we'll have a moot and you can say it to my face and so that's what happened i think in 2001 they

04:13:47.320 the first meat hall moot um it was a success 2002 was a success i had heard about it by then

04:13:54.120 i was also true that but that time very new 2003 i went with my um my then wife and uh in-laws

04:14:03.560 and we had our own little family kindred at the time and um the mo back then the logistics was

04:14:10.920 that we're all meeting from around the country in missouri and each kindred family took

04:14:16.440 responsibility for cooking a meal for everyone and my family slash kindred had the friday morning

04:14:25.080 breakfast and that meat hall moot was really was really important to everybody there because

04:14:31.480 steve mcnellan was coming steve and sheila mcnellan were coming and i knew who steve was

04:14:36.440 but even though you know it's 2003 i did have the benefit of the internet honestly had no idea what

04:14:42.920 steve looked like couldn't have picked him out of the lineup and so early friday morning we're in

04:14:47.820 the northern ozarks and i'm in this little cabin in this kitchen and i've got several little flat

04:14:54.660 top griddles and and stove and oven in front of me and i'm making scrambled eggs and i'm cooking

04:15:01.520 bacon and i'm baking biscuits and i'm doing all this stuff and about halfway through the through

04:15:08.280 the cook in walks this very slender fellow wearing a black polo shirt and black jeans

04:15:13.720 and with that you know unique voice of his i heard this fellow say uh hey good morning you guys is

04:15:23.260 there anything i can do to help and one of my family members said yeah and they pointed over

04:15:29.280 at me and said you can go help body cook the rest of whatever and so this old gentleman comes over

04:15:34.200 to me older gentleman rather sorry he came over to me and he says uh hey are you Bodie and I said

04:15:39.500 yep and he said uh they told me to come help and I said cool why don't you get on the sausages

04:15:43.280 right there and pointed to the flat top with all the sausages on it and he didn't say a word he

04:15:49.840 said okay sure he grabbed the the tongs and the spatula and Steve and I together and like whipped

04:15:55.700 out the rest of this breakfast in short order like a couple of old hand short order cooks and

04:16:00.360 And so everything was over with, you know, and we had all every plated up was ready to feed the folk.

04:16:06.120 And I'm kind of wiping my hand off, you know, on a tea towel or whatever or a kitchen towel.

04:16:11.280 And I stuck my hand out and I said, I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch your name.

04:16:14.620 And he stuck his hand out and gave me a very firm handshake and said, I'm Steve McNallan.

04:16:18.860 And I've literally kind of wilted while he was shaking my hand because I was like, oh, crap, because the overriding thought going through my little pea brain at that moment was

04:16:29.360 for the past 15 20 minutes i've been ordering around the father of modern austro like he was 0.71

04:16:34.440 a private in the army you know i'm like oh no you know i have committed a faux pas and i said i said

04:16:43.440 as much to him later that day and steve just you know laughed and clapped me on the shoulder and

04:16:48.180 gave me a hug and said it's all right dude you know it's you know i was happy to help and

04:16:52.440 i always tell that story and i believe that's a year ago that he wants me to tell it every now

04:16:56.780 and then to illustrate just what a good man Steve is.

04:17:01.440 I mean, he is who he is, and he didn't think twice.

04:17:05.560 And he and Sheila had just gotten off the plane

04:17:07.300 and driven like five or six hours

04:17:08.880 just to make it to this out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere spot.

04:17:12.340 Probably got two or three hours of sleep maybe

04:17:14.060 and woke right up at 6 a.m. and came in to help cook breakfast.

04:17:17.580 So, yeah, that was my infamous story

04:17:19.820 of the first time I ever met Steve McNeiland.

04:17:25.140 What fun.

04:17:25.900 lot of fun. Also in 2015, and I should point out, 2015, we're celebrating 20 years of the

04:17:33.520 Asatru Folk Assembly. Steve released his book, Asatru, a Native European Spirituality.

04:17:40.300 It was cool. I remember being there when the box got opened and when we had a

04:17:46.180 a rousing speech or presentation by Richard Redgley um he came out and spoke then we've

04:17:56.920 had a number of authors speak at different events but yeah I remember this one I forget

04:18:02.740 what the name of the camp was um I don't know if that was at the CYO camp or not it was at

04:18:10.600 CYO camp, yeah, and Occidental.

04:18:13.360 There we go.

04:18:13.780 There's the flyer for it.

04:18:22.080 And then right after that, the Sunday following the event,

04:18:26.200 we went out and looked at the property that would become Odenshoff.

04:18:31.420 This is a number of us, Mandy and I, Steve, our friends Brad and Gilly,

04:18:39.520 and then Goethe Thorgrin there at the altar stone that we use to this day at Odenshof there.

04:18:49.120 And we did our walkthrough of this old Grange Hall building that was absolutely perfect for our needs.

04:19:00.520 And, yeah, we had discovered that just literally the Sunday following the event.

04:19:05.720 so we had uh went ahead and did what we needed to do and got the hoff as you can see it was

04:19:17.240 originally named new grange hall for a while um it was kind of interesting there because

04:19:26.280 we had wanted a hoff for decades it was such a thing that at that point

04:19:34.040 there was the difference between no Hoffs and Hoff so it was really special to me about five

04:19:41.480 years later when we started having to specify which Hoff we were talking about because

04:19:47.320 it's a five-year window there that there was the Hoff or not and it was a really important moment

04:19:54.920 as it says here on the slide the first you know the first Hoff in a thousand years is dedicated

04:20:03.320 I believe this is at the Hoff dedication.

04:20:09.500 It's funny when you look at these old pictures and so much has changed in the building.

04:20:15.040 It was, you know, now it is filled and we have so much stuff that we traditionally are so used to.

04:20:21.840 But when we saw that hall, it was just so massive.

04:20:23.920 Like, what are we going to ever do with all this space?

04:20:26.280 and uh you know the ritual circle there it was maybe half as big as it is now and we're

04:20:33.920 how are we ever going to fill this and now we've had the current one we have three ranks deep at a

04:20:40.400 at a midsummer before this is work going into making the hinges for the doors

04:20:46.480 work going in making the mjolnir that sits above the door

04:20:52.700 carving the

04:20:56.300 crossed boards that would become

04:20:58.600 emblematic of our Hoffs.

04:21:02.700 And look, in red

04:21:04.680 there's little Trent.

04:21:08.940 Also, Nick is in this picture

04:21:10.760 over on the other side

04:21:12.280 with another

04:21:14.420 variety of former

04:21:16.480 members.

04:21:18.180 Yeah, held the cast there.

04:21:20.580 these are these are your people all right take us back to uh to you and your world in 2015

04:21:31.960 around the time of this okay so um the march 2015 picture of uh gothi mayo being ordained the first

04:21:43.240 time is right when i discovered alcitru i've told the story before and i'll tell it briefly here i

04:21:48.680 guess for history's sake um uh Dalton and Karen Woodward the two people standing in front of Nick

04:21:56.800 in that picture were my childhood best friends they're no longer members or else true I guess

04:22:01.340 but at the time we were in our senior year of high school a couple months from graduating

04:22:05.860 and Dalton comes into math class after having attended that old star where Bodhi got ordained

04:22:10.740 the first time and I was you know the typical kind of edgy liberal atheist of uh my high school

04:22:18.640 But for whatever reason, Dalton describing Altair Goethe-McNallon at the time, his Odinblow at that event, it was like the flip of a switch, and I wanted to make my entire life about Alcetru, and, you know, I did.

04:22:33.800 so uh and then i joined the afa like two weeks before that picture of you guys standing at the

04:22:42.760 stone in front of the ritual circle at what's now odenshoff uh so midsummer that year this event

04:22:50.720 in particular uh 2015 sounds right um i would have been yeah 18 we would have just started our

04:23:01.320 first semester of college me and uh the woodward's there lots of people in there who joined the afa

04:23:08.280 and left or a couple of them that never joined

04:23:10.900 yep that's pretty much it as far as catching up to october 2015 i hadn't been to a national event

04:23:20.640 or anything yet at that time those people in that picture were the only people i had met

04:23:24.920 And this is funny

04:23:27.180 Gothi Bodhi mentioned

04:23:29.780 Yahoo Groups back in 2003

04:23:32.740 Yahoo Groups was still around in 2015

04:23:36.220 Because that is actually how I found this

04:23:39.140 I had heard of the AFA probably a couple months before

04:23:43.180 I was true for probably two or three years

04:23:45.420 And I'd heard of the AFA probably a few months beforehand

04:23:49.820 But I didn't actually know this was an AFA thing I was going to

04:23:53.820 nothing in the yahoo group where they advertise this event um mentioned the afa so i didn't know

04:24:00.880 i just knew it was a fulkish heathen thing in alabama and i'm like yep let's go to it

04:24:06.120 yeah this was kind of during a time when it still wasn't really cool on the east coast at least not

04:24:11.520 in dixie to um call things an afa thing like uh the guy in gray there trying really hard to look

04:24:19.520 cool next to me in the picture he um he uh he was a folk builder i think or he was kind of

04:24:26.480 proud of being the afa for like a minute or so but other than that yeah it wasn't really

04:24:31.500 called an afa event it was just yeah like you said a hulkish even event yeah i didn't i didn't

04:24:38.280 know so it was funny and the ones in florida at this time were afa events i'll tell you that

04:24:43.580 yeah some of these groups you had to it depended on the admins and the moderators if they were

04:24:49.560 openly hostile to the afa they would be advertised without that tag in it just to get the word out

04:24:56.060 um i couldn't tell you how i found it on yahoo but groups but i did um it was obviously it was

04:25:03.160 at that older fellow in the middle's place um and it's funny because i remember camping out and

04:25:09.160 looking back on this i remember every single one of the faces in this photo so vividly but i i didn't

04:25:18.120 join the afa for another five and a half five years and um that entire time i just did my own thing

04:25:27.240 whatever um but then when i even when i joined i had this picture saved on my computer for a full

04:25:34.840 two years being in the afa and i still didn't know this event was an afa thing um and then me

04:25:42.600 and sierra were chit-chatting one night going through just screen sharing pictures and all of

04:25:47.800 a sudden she's like is that baby goat the east and i'm like oh my goodness it is and it turns

04:25:54.120 out i live 45 minutes from go from well it would have been folks builder trend east at the time

04:25:59.000 time um and for five years before anything just it you know the the weirdness of it is

04:26:08.880 is very apparent but i don't know it's a funny picture i'll yeah that's a word for it 2015 i was

04:26:16.800 in uh st augustine florida i'd moved down in december of 2014 to uh be with mandy and

04:26:26.320 get the next chapter of my life going there um it's it's fun going through this and i hope i

04:26:35.100 hope the people who are watching this are enjoying it as much as us who are participating but it's

04:26:41.460 neat to look back at some of these things in uh so i became alzharia goethe in june of the

04:26:49.080 following year in 2016 and these are a couple of pictures from that event at uh at Odenshof there

04:26:57.700 and yeah just remembering and looking back um doesn't seem like it was nine and a half years

04:27:07.760 ago but or nine years ago in two months but but it was so uh I was I was at boot camp yeah during

04:27:15.900 that time when you came almost here ago because it was the summer of 2016 and because i i had been

04:27:21.280 to one national event before that and it was a star 2016 you know a real foundational event for

04:27:26.840 me everything witten erickson said about winter nights 2012 this was that for me and that's when

04:27:32.580 uh witten erickson got the folk builder excellence award i believe and i remember uh not really

04:27:39.700 understanding the hierarchy and like rank structure the afa at the time and so i was like all right

04:27:45.660 this cliff guy he's he's the man and i still think that to an extent of course but like i i got a

04:27:52.840 letter from my buddy dalton in the previous picture at boot camp and was like yeah man steve stepped

04:27:58.140 down and this this matt guy is in charge now and i was like that's lame they should have put cliff

04:28:03.280 in charge that guy knew what he was doing so yeah funny story it was hilarious hilarious

04:28:11.740 i'm a big fan of that story the dystopian timeline that might be

04:28:19.340 no i'm just playing you could have could have made far worse choices

04:28:25.420 some hairy turtle doves novel to write about it

04:28:29.900 so one of the big things that was super important to me that i wanted to

04:28:39.260 make clear at that time so during this whole time and we kind of talked about this way back in 1990

04:28:51.500 but there'd been this rise of universalism and by this point there was a whole lot of interplay

04:29:01.020 between various factions within alsatru and a wide array of different ideas about the world

04:29:12.540 and there was a lot of crossover membership at different times between different groups

04:29:18.380 and there was a whole lot of people that were kind of confused about where they ought to be

04:29:23.660 and as a result there was a lot of tiptoeing around some core value things and there was a

04:29:29.820 uncomfortable mixture of different folks with different ideas of our core values.

04:29:44.260 And I wanted to make really clear what the AFA's core values were because I wanted to

04:29:49.840 do a couple of things. I wanted to draw a line in the sand to separate those of us who are folkish 1.00

04:29:55.580 from those of us on the other team, and I wanted to stop the crossover, back and forth, 0.99

04:30:02.840 kumbaya, we're one big team, but we don't share any of these core values. I wanted to make it

04:30:10.040 very clear where we were. And so this was the post that I made on Facebook, and it was big deal at

04:30:17.740 the time. Today, we are bombarded with confusion and messages contrary to the values of our

04:30:24.440 ancestors and our folk. The AFA would like to make it clear that we believe gender is not a

04:30:30.400 social construct. It is a beautiful gift from the holy powers and from our ancestors. The AFA

04:30:37.780 celebrates our feminine ladies, our masculine gentlemen, and above all, our beautiful white

04:30:44.560 children. The children of the folk are our shining future and the legacy of all those men and women

04:30:52.000 of our people back to the beginning. Haley AFA families now and always.

04:31:00.320 Apparently, that was greatly offensive to a lot of people

04:31:06.080 and did exactly what I had hoped that it would do by making a really clear separation. We have

04:31:14.560 a lot of folks that said they joined because of this post and we have a lot of people that,

04:31:21.520 you know turned their nose up in disgust and you know did us all a favor by making themselves scarce

04:31:29.040 after the posts i was very glad about that there was a whole declaration 127 in opposition of this

04:31:38.800 where all of the um woke degenerate ausitru people decided to make a stand against the afa

04:31:52.320 and it made that line crystal clear of where those people are and where we are and uh yeah

04:32:02.400 it was a it was a big deal and uh this petitions went around and you know all these signatories on

04:32:11.600 their declaration 127 everybody who had a a stuffed animal tea party kindred in their mom's

04:32:18.320 basement signed up on that uh some i literally think that's the case this is when we had a

04:32:24.720 internet micro nation declare war on us um which is some kind of silly little larp group

04:32:32.400 that exists online. We had a number of one-person organizations stand in opposition to us.

04:32:42.240 But this was a real, a big moment of separating some real core things.

04:32:49.940 So real quick, just to say on that for, so the number there, Declaration 127,

04:32:58.100 have them all 127 is where the all father says to speak out against evil right and so to their

04:33:06.200 credit the forces of evil said oh we're evil let's be clear about this um they actually released 0.81

04:33:12.660 declaration one uh declaration 127 1.0 in august so that that the white babies post is on august

04:33:21.920 21st they got the the blog post of denunciation out pretty quick then a few years later in march

04:33:29.040 of 2021 they released declaration 127 2.0 which just more whining is what it really is because

04:33:37.760 it doesn't go anywhere but it is an interesting this was them formally saying they practice a

04:33:44.240 different religion from us if you actually look at what they're saying so that uh that's true

04:33:51.360 they are not also true something that you know to put some of this in perspective when i first

04:33:56.000 got involved in asa true in 2011 before i joined the afa um and to be clear i never joined anything

04:34:03.920 other than the afa it just took me a little while to join the afa but it was very common to go to

04:34:11.840 a moot at least in pennsylvania where i was and i think this is true at least up and down the east

04:34:17.040 coast where you would go to a moot and there would literally be an afa folk builder and a troth

04:34:24.120 stored at the same table i don't know if that was approved of by leadership but that stuff happened

04:34:29.400 and there would certainly be afa members and troth members going to the same moots and there

04:34:36.320 were people that held dual memberships in these organizations like there was a there was a phenomenon

04:34:42.080 on like of pin collectors basically if you had all the org pins you were like extra heathen or

04:34:50.200 something like that um which of course is garbage because really it just meant that you were

04:34:56.040 collecting pins you know um but it was that was the that was the common culture that i first came

04:35:04.120 into and i had become persona non grata in in all but the afa circles by about 2014 um because by

04:35:14.460 then i was going to anything that i went to with afa colors on so to speak and once i was a folk

04:35:22.580 builder they didn't want me around but that that kind of crossover culture existed for probably a

04:35:29.180 long time before i got involved because that was you know de facto when i when i did get involved

04:35:35.920 but this was the nail in the coffin for it any if anything that was left of it was done once

04:35:42.520 this happened and on the other side of the aisle the the she was the leader of the what's the term

04:35:52.480 she actually called herself president slash ceo instead of uh sorry it's late where i'm at what's

04:35:57.980 the term for their leader was that um not steward stew no anyways word is like the equivalent of a

04:36:05.340 yeah yeah steersman yes the uh the steers woman um the one prior to the current one uh she did

04:36:15.100 just outright say you know if we find out that you are associated with the afa then you are not

04:36:21.020 allowed in the troth you are not allowed to come to our events you are not allowed in our internet 1.00

04:36:25.020 spaces so that period of intermingling has been dead for quite a while now like the the truth

04:36:34.300 will not let you be us in their spaces oh no this isn't like an us thing necessarily but

04:36:41.340 it doesn't at the time it was very revolutionary for us to use the word white um we had not been 0.74

04:36:50.220 comfortable with doing that before and it was very important to me that we do that in this

04:36:54.220 case so we removed confusion so it wasn't masked and so we were very clearly saying what we mean

04:37:02.060 and meaning what we say and that was very important to me to do and I think it it helped

04:37:09.020 things a lot in that moment so then we decided you know to move here and I think that you know

04:37:18.780 a note that i'll make to our history folks is to get some pictures of uh ostara in the south because

04:37:24.380 we'd actually started that event earlier but this is us moving to doing stuff in the midwest in

04:37:32.700 minnesota we hadn't done anything there for the afa's existence that area had been largely

04:37:40.620 a universalist space it was a spot to where we had some people who were working hard to get things

04:37:46.700 going and we wanted to show support and make stuff happen and unfortunately jason gallagher who's such

04:37:53.420 a big part of this uh ended up going to bed because we're running very late tonight but um

04:37:58.620 he was instrumental in making this happen um so we started our first fall fest as it was called then

04:38:06.860 which became uh it it was going on in september it eventually migrated into august and became

04:38:13.740 our Freyfaxi celebration that week and a half from today, we're going to be celebrating at

04:38:19.100 Baldershof. But the reason we got Baldershof and that that occurred was because of this event and

04:38:25.240 the things put into motion with it. So this is a really big deal and something we're very proud of.

04:38:32.720 And that was the, I don't, apparently I'm excited about it. I'm toasting with the beer there.

04:38:38.660 uh but yeah this was this is a big deal and the uh the ilk from the 127 folks tried to get us

04:38:48.440 canceled and we ended up the play the camp that we were going to do this at uh had booted us out

04:38:54.960 and you know denied us the ability to to meet there a week before this event so with just a

04:39:02.180 couple of days you know actually within a couple of hours of scrambling we were able to locate the

04:39:07.980 spot we did this event. And it turned out amazing. Ironically named Camp Courage had booted us

04:39:17.420 because of pressure from the woke crowd. But we persevered and it was cool because not only did

04:39:26.320 we find a good spot to do it and have a great time, but it really solidified us through struggle,

04:39:33.560 through knowing that there were people who were out to get us for, you know, our very normal,

04:39:38.780 very reasonable beliefs. It really was a source of bonding and galvanizing us.

04:39:45.840 Here is October of that same year, Winter Nights in Poconos 5. This is a cool event. And the reason

04:39:55.880 that i had this one stand out is because over in the left hand corner in a hat you see a very early

04:40:05.560 appearance maybe i think the first appearance of wittance fawn um and he couldn't join us this

04:40:12.440 evening but he is in this picture and i think this was his first event that he attended or first

04:40:17.480 national event that he attended he's not in the hat he's on the other side of the picture next to

04:40:22.360 his wife in ravena is he yeah he's got these over there it's little on my computer now yeah like

04:40:29.800 he's on the he's on the road and a little oh no that's absolutely who's over here in the hat that's

04:40:36.040 like five inches taller than him that's somebody else i honestly thought that was fun but uh same

04:40:43.720 purposes just different guy over here in the other corner good catch the tailors are in the front

04:40:48.920 there with the flag too just to point that out that's cool and i think this might have been the

04:40:55.080 first one that i ran okay um i remember yeah i don't i i think patricia had taken a step back

04:41:04.520 by this point because this is the same year that you were made named alshire gothy and

04:41:11.560 we lost track of her shortly after that yeah she was but she ran this event i think she was at the

04:41:17.160 next year's event as well and that was the last time we saw her yeah she might have gone to bed

04:41:23.800 yeah i think she let you run this one though i think it was yeah she definitely handed a lot

04:41:28.840 of it off to me she was she was still in charge of a lot um and was i think she was doing the

04:41:34.120 stuff dealing with the camp directly but as far as like the event schedule and who was doing like we

04:41:40.360 might have still had the meals catered this year um but yeah this is when i first started to be

04:41:46.600 much more involved in it more than just like moving benches and you know basically being a gopher

04:41:52.040 which was always pleasing work by the way if you ever have a chance to just volunteer to move things

04:41:57.000 or collect wood or light a fire at one of our events please do it you might be surprised how

04:42:02.200 rewarding it is so nick as a note we should move this slide before the previous one because this

04:42:08.440 is september and that was october yep yep i noticed but uh here was an event that we did in

04:42:15.000 south carolina uh trent's in the picture bode's in the picture mandy and i are in the picture

04:42:22.520 so it was just a cool picture and a fun uh reminiscing

04:42:27.800 that was a fun and a nice event and a cool trip up there

04:42:37.080 there's cliff taking

04:42:39.000 is this your uh folk builder oath

04:42:43.460 no that was getting elevated to the witten i can read i promise yeah i mean the photo is me

04:42:52.040 making a toast at a fall fest i think this is just a photo from that year that i could find

04:42:56.980 okay you didn't make the pomp and circumstance of the of their elevation so i had to pick cool

04:43:04.040 pictures no that's absolutely true but this is the time that um both of these two gentlemen were

04:43:11.000 elevated to the witten uh out of curiosity daniel when was your first afa event

04:43:19.960 2018 okay

04:43:23.000 Okay. So, here is Ostara in the South, March of 2017. This was the best Ostara in the South

04:43:38.280 until we started hosting them at Thorshof. It was a really important event for a number of reasons.

04:43:48.700 Um, this event was, so I became, uh, I was Harry Gauthier in, uh, mid-summer of 2016, but at Ostara of 2016 is when that process really started in earnest.

04:44:08.680 So this was just about a year of me trying to do my best.

04:44:17.760 And the first, I mean, the first order of business was don't mess it up.

04:44:23.840 Um, Steve had done such an amazing job of building this over such amount of time and

04:44:36.060 making this such an amazing thing that I wanted to make sure that I was worthy of it.

04:44:40.920 I wanted to make sure that, you know, I didn't drop the ball and I didn't mess up what people

04:44:47.820 had spent so much of themselves creating. I didn't want to mess that up. I, you know,

04:44:55.520 and there was a lot of soul searching and work and coming closer to the ICR and working with

04:45:04.960 my colleagues, trying to, you know, really be worthy and do the best job I could in that year

04:45:13.060 and see, you know, what I could do and, and, you know, how I could, how I could do this. And if I

04:45:20.940 was up to the task, and this is a really important event for that. Um, I've mentioned this on the

04:45:26.500 show before. And, uh, so I was hoping Svon would be here for this. He was at this event. It was,

04:45:34.600 it was really special and something happened that was very meaningful to me when I was getting

04:45:43.860 ready to do Sumble this year or at this event. I went out there and there was a big

04:45:50.700 big outdoor fire pit and people were gathered around for Sumble and when I got up to

04:45:58.100 bless the horn and start the first round, I was really, I don't know, I was very much

04:46:08.160 contemplative and in my thoughts about this event and how this marked kind of a year of

04:46:14.020 doing things. And I was standing up and I was just, I was really feeling, I was very much in

04:46:21.460 my feelings on it. And I stood up and I was getting ready to make my toast and I felt a

04:46:25.940 hand on my shoulder and a reassuring you know grip on my shoulder to tell me I was doing good

04:46:35.540 and you know they were with me and I turned around you know didn't think anything of it other than I

04:46:44.780 really appreciated it and I turned around to uh to thank you know whoever done that I assumed it

04:46:50.540 was Alan. There was no one anywhere near me, not to mention no one in arms reach, but there was

04:46:58.600 no one anywhere close to they could have scurried and sat back down. And that moment, I believe

04:47:05.740 very much that the Allfather put his hand on my shoulder and, I don't know, approved of me being

04:47:13.200 the Allsheria Gophie. That's very much something I deeply believe to my core, and I don't say

04:47:20.100 lightly and it was really important to me and that's why i wanted to make sure this slide was in

04:47:23.940 here um so later that year uh that's the year that in i guess december 2016 in january 2017

04:47:41.860 mandy and i moved out to california we're in california for about a year but we needed to

04:47:46.660 move out west to be near the Hoff and again the Hoff because it was the only Hoff at that time.

04:47:54.580 So we got married and did our the first marriage at Odens Hoff here in June of 2017.

04:48:03.860 Southern picture is not anywhere near that time but it's a good picture of us so I left it in there

04:48:08.660 a picture with me with the hat that was at Ostara in the south I think maybe a year later

04:48:15.940 2018 but it's a good picture so i kept it in there and there's alan performing our wedding

04:48:24.580 on the steps of odenshoff there

04:48:31.540 2018 we did uh we started our uh quarterly fundraising to help our folk who are persecuted

04:48:43.060 and uh ethnically cleansed in south africa um i don't claim that we're you know solving the

04:48:54.100 problem but we've all been very concerned at things we saw occurring there and uh

04:49:02.020 they seemed very little we could do and it was really important because at this point

04:49:06.660 you know we don't didn't know the fix but what we did know was

04:49:09.780 we didn't know what we could do but we knew we couldn't continue to not do anything so every

04:49:17.700 you know every quarter since then we've raised money and distributed money as the

04:49:22.660 house true folk assembly to causes that help um persecuted whites in south africa

04:49:31.460 and that was and continues to be really important to us and that all started in april of 2018.

04:49:39.780 june 2018 we announced king of phaneric as a announced true hero with a day of remembrance

04:49:48.320 it was important to me it was one of the early heroes of our faith that i recall reading about

04:49:55.060 in a an essay called the german and the roman and the teuton i believe was the name of that

04:50:05.360 the uh like lecture series that was written down wish i could remember the author off the top of

04:50:11.060 my head but um it was very inspirational to me when i first uh came home to house of truth

04:50:16.840 so june 2018 um we started to see one of the really special things about having hoffs

04:50:28.180 in Brownsville California it is a small fairly impoverished community that's quite a ways away

04:50:37.400 from a you know traditional grocery store probably about an hour away from you know a Walmart or a

04:50:47.380 big grocery store there was a gas station with a you know a little best they had grocery store

04:50:53.580 there that served as the main you know marketplace for that town well as you guys know in california

04:50:59.340 there's fires very very often and this year that fire had burned down that gas station where

04:51:06.220 everybody is used to getting their groceries and their food um it was so we had the uh

04:51:15.900 the local food bank run the yuba county food bank reached out to us and asked if we would help them

04:51:22.860 by being a distribution site for their food pantry because they were doing a special food

04:51:28.860 distributions in the area because they'd lost their their access to food and we jumped on it

04:51:35.100 we said absolutely um i drove all the way over and you know tried to get this going immediately

04:51:42.140 our only answer was you know yes thank you for the opportunity and uh so we hosted the first

04:51:48.300 food pantry at odin's off there and we've done one every month ever since um it was a really

04:51:56.220 special opportunity and it's something that was made all the more special by the fact they reached

04:52:02.540 out to us so this organization had reached out to every church in the area every christian church

04:52:09.580 which there are several but none of them wanted to be part of it if they couldn't

04:52:14.300 um you know have people sit down and and attend a sermon first or if they couldn't leverage the

04:52:23.140 food to convert them they didn't want to be a part of it um so we were we had that opportunity

04:52:32.340 to go serve the community and help out and it's been such a blessing for us um it has allowed us

04:52:39.240 to make all kind of connections with that community, to build our reputation, to gain

04:52:45.780 members, and to gain, you know, the trust and respect of people in the community. And it's a

04:52:51.840 really cool thing. It's neat. When you go to the area, people recognize you and they recognize

04:52:57.040 Odenshof and the Astru Folk Assembly. We actually have a presence in the community, which is

04:53:02.580 it's the first time that we had that. And it's a really special feeling. I was up there

04:53:06.780 a couple of months ago at the the gas station they built back up and they rebuilt the gas

04:53:16.360 station really nice there and I was there checking out getting something to drink or whatever and

04:53:20.920 there was a gentleman in front of us in line that had uh rune tattoos behind his ear and I was you

04:53:28.760 know about to go up to the guy and and introduce myself and say hi and he turned and he saw me

04:53:34.000 And he said, I was here to go. It's so great to meet you and introduced himself and says that he watches VNS all the time.

04:53:43.180 So that was a really cool thing to happen.

04:53:46.180 And I think a large part of how that happened was us doing food pantries like this.

04:53:50.580 I'll note for honesty's sake, these are pictures from food pantry number two.

04:53:56.060 Oh, we did not put any pictures for food pantry one in the article in the runestone for food pantry one.

04:54:03.480 when we talk about shameful all right there you go uh also uh july of 2018 uh we recognized

04:54:18.160 alexander red mills as an official house true hero with the bay of remembrance

04:54:21.960 also somebody very important this was um the first of our heroes to be recognized

04:54:29.360 you know, from the modern period, you know, somebody practicing Ausatru in a very modern

04:54:35.980 context, you know, not one of the typical Vikings that we've celebrated in the past,

04:54:42.500 but, you know, somebody who looked and lived very much in a similar way that we did, that was

04:54:47.980 nonetheless true to our gods and reforging Ausatru, and we wanted to celebrate him for that,

04:54:55.440 we continue to do so. Yay, Anna joined us. In October 2018, the AFA got an officially

04:55:07.400 recognized tartan with the Scottish Registry of Tartans. Anybody who is interested in that,

04:55:14.240 that is a legit thing. It's on the registry. You can look it up and you can get stuff made.

04:55:18.460 It's extremely expensive because they don't have skeins of this sitting around, so you got to get

04:55:23.420 custom done but if you are well-to-do and you would like stuff done in the afa tartan uh there

04:55:29.980 you go and it is it's a legitimate option uh in may of 2019 we honored uh the folk mother elsie

04:55:38.700 christensen with her day of remembrance so that was again important it's always been important to

04:55:45.580 me to honor our heroes to find heroes that have been neglected with honor and to honor heroes

04:55:53.340 as they come up uh it's fundamental to us ensure that we celebrate those who've passed and it's an

04:56:00.380 obligation we have as those who uh benefit from their accomplishments to celebrate them to speak

04:56:07.500 their names and to keep their fame bright and alive um have them all talks about how you know

04:56:16.460 seldom is seen by the roadside uh you know a stone raised other than by by a man's sons

04:56:23.900 so if somebody dies without you know without offspring without loved ones who's there to

04:56:29.660 celebrate them and it's important to me that the afa makes sure we celebrate our heroes

04:56:35.740 so this is a continuing part of that

04:56:38.380 May of 2019, some of us went to Ultima Thule in Sweden. This was an event hosted by our folk

04:56:51.460 builder in Sweden. We had a lot of Swedish members then. The COVID lockdowns and issues

04:56:58.760 with travel have really damaged our ability to build internationally there for a time,

04:57:05.020 but we do still have quite a few members in Sweden, which is a really nice thing.

04:57:09.760 In 2019, we were able to go over there and visit them and see the sites and celebrate with our AFA family in Sweden.

04:57:20.760 It was a really, really nice, really cool opportunity.

04:57:25.420 This picture to the right was, I was there with our folk builder at the time, Anders,

04:57:32.520 and the president and one of his guys of the German Artsgemeinschaft who came and celebrated

04:57:41.300 with us. They were fantastic. It was great to get to meet those guys and celebrate with them.

04:57:47.620 Here's us. We did a bloat and we hosted this event at a recreated Viking hall there that

04:57:53.660 our folk builder at the time, Andrews, and his father had built. It was part of a living history

04:58:00.820 area they had over there but him and his father actually spent time building this place which

04:58:05.060 made it extra special uh it was a really cool spot we had a great time and uh gothe thorgrin

04:58:12.740 went with us on the trip there was us doing some folk dancing and and enjoying our time there

04:58:18.580 2019 Githya Anna got her ordination

04:58:25.500 you can see her there with her horn taking her oath at what would this be fall fest three

04:58:37.940 in october of that year we ordained uh githya katie erickson cliff's lovely wife

04:58:53.060 anna corrected me she said it was fall fest four i am mathing incorrectly there

04:59:02.020 but yeah this was also at camp natimus in the playhouse but it's lit up this time the

04:59:07.060 same picture that i'm or the same uh building that i misidentified spawn in this time i am

04:59:12.900 helped by the lights being on and there is steve and myself uh as we swore uh katie in with her

04:59:21.620 ordination it is not the same building it is absolutely the same building no we took the

04:59:28.420 group photo in the pavilion that's why it's so dark not that year that was the playhouse wasn't

04:59:33.860 it i have to go back and look i know we've taken it in the pavilion before no that was that was

04:59:39.540 the that was the pavilion and also i think it's nice to interesting to note that that is the old

04:59:44.660 afa east horn that has since lost aka stolen by our enemies or at least we strong have

04:59:52.340 strong reason to believe but it was it was still in our care at that time

04:59:56.980 and this picture has nothing to do with the fact being celebrated but uh sheila was ordained as

05:00:09.600 githia in december of 2019 and we uh ordained her at odinsoff that year it was dark and windy

05:00:18.380 but we were out in the, in the, the Vey. And yeah, it was kind of surprising to me that being

05:00:27.560 involved for so long, she had not been a Githya before, but she is officially ordained in December

05:00:36.840 of 2019. And has since, you know, is the Hof Githya for Odenshof and has been officiating there since.

05:00:48.380 Here is just another fun picture from December of 2019.

05:00:54.700 Trenton Madison there, along with Terry Rumpf, who was, you know, a very active AFA member

05:01:04.120 and someone who really solidified a lot of our community, especially in the Southeast.

05:01:09.200 East, but all around the AFA became a real focal point for bonding around and, I don't

05:01:17.640 know, celebrating and enjoying our time with.

05:01:20.480 I wish he would have been around to see some of the things we've accomplished since he

05:01:25.160 passed.

05:01:30.560 Trent, do you recall anything specific about this event?

05:01:36.660 Yes, a few things.

05:01:39.200 I was really proud of that folk builder polo, uh, clearly. Um, uh, we, I had led that particular

05:01:49.040 group of folk in a probably not great bloat to the all father. Um, that was when I think at this

05:02:03.500 point you guys were looking to put Thorshoff in Minnesota, right? It was around this time.

05:02:07.760 it was kind of up in the air we were that was yeah I think at this point Minnesota was probably

05:02:14.540 in the front runner or in the front I feel like I recall us at that event talking about a second

05:02:21.460 half happening soon and we were kind of lamenting that it was going to be far away or something but

05:02:26.080 I may be misremembering um but oh yeah so at the same event Terry gifted me a copy of Elder Gods

05:02:34.320 by Stephen Paulington, which was mentioned earlier.

05:02:36.980 And his copy he had had since, I want to say, like, the early 2000s,

05:02:43.480 and I have that still.

05:02:46.220 So it's kind of a relic that I keep with me.

05:02:50.320 And for those that don't know, the Fellowship Hall at Thorshoff

05:02:54.960 is named after that gentleman, Terry Rump.

05:02:58.360 So Rump Hall.

05:03:00.260 That's all I got on that event.

05:03:02.360 That's about as much as I can remember.

05:03:04.320 All right. So, January of 2020 brings us to 25 years, quarter of a century of the Astro Folk Assembly. Just an exciting and important milestone that we wanted to acknowledge in that.

05:03:24.640 In March of 2020, at Ostara in the South, Witten Svahn was ordained as a Gothi.

05:03:34.820 um this was a really cool event we had we were in contract for thorshoff at the time

05:03:47.060 but we wanted to keep it as close to you know under wraps as we could to not foul any kind

05:03:53.380 of deal or make any waves but we were very very close to having thorshoff at this point

05:04:00.460 And this was, you know, right down the road from where Thorshoff would be.

05:04:06.900 And it was the last event that Terry Rumpf was at.

05:04:13.980 And it was a really cool event.

05:04:18.080 It was the last Ostara in the south before it found its home at Thorshoff.

05:04:24.920 So a lot of really important things were in the works when this was going on.

05:04:30.040 that was when i started apprenticing also there you go do you have any recollections

05:04:36.840 of this event or this time period absolutely um some that are um all of them directly afa related

05:04:44.360 but also personally at the same time um you know our our local folk builder in the carolinas had

05:04:51.400 just tucked tailed and run and the ericsons were um going to be uh staying at their place for this

05:05:00.440 event which was over in eastern north carolina and they were just going to drive down to south

05:05:05.240 carolina and uh i touched base with uh the guy that eventually took over the event in their stead

05:05:11.880 and said you know hey if anybody needs a place to crash because i where i live now is only about

05:05:16.920 an hour from that site where we held the event and uh somebody said yeah the ericsson's been

05:05:22.840 up for a place and i said well you know shooting my info and they can come crash at my place and

05:05:28.920 and they did and uh that was where i expressed interest to them about you know wanting to become

05:05:36.120 a gothy and uh you know do my part to chip in to the afa because there was a you know kind of a

05:05:42.200 vacuum in the Carolinas. And interestingly enough, and this is just probably more a personal thing,

05:05:49.740 but it's something I think is cool to share. The guy that split on us from North Carolina,

05:05:56.340 apparently, you know, words had got pretty heated between he and Cliff upon his departure,

05:06:02.060 at least through social media and stuff like that. And Cliff didn't know how I felt about it. And he

05:06:07.440 wouldn't come into my house until we talked. So he stood on my porch, but wouldn't break the

05:06:12.720 threshold until we sat outside and talked for like three hours. And I just thought that was a

05:06:18.660 hell of a gesture by a hell of a man. So I mean, I met Cliff before this, but I didn't know him.

05:06:24.840 And that really kind of started what, you know, has blossomed into a, you know, really wonderful

05:06:29.700 friendship kind of started that weekend. Also, another cool, you know, reflective part of this

05:06:36.860 is uh i remember the day we got there we got there a day early with the rest of leadership

05:06:44.520 even though we weren't members of leadership because we we opened up our homes to the erickson's

05:06:49.860 you know they said you know come on down thursday and we did and uh i was here to go through

05:06:56.180 flavel showed up and i didn't know that mr mcnalon was coming and somebody said oh yeah he's over

05:07:01.200 they're talking to steve i said like the steve yeah that guy so i rushed like hell over there

05:07:07.420 that to that house for that driveway was these big old houses that were part of the uh the rental

05:07:12.520 and all that i remember sitting on the tailgate of my pickup and having a beer with the father

05:07:17.640 of modern ostrich i remember thinking he's real you know i was trying not to go like fanboy on him

05:07:23.340 and uh really had some cool conversations with him but i when i was walking away from that you

05:07:30.480 know kind of sticking my chest out i just had a beer with the father of modern ostrich ever says

05:07:35.460 to me that spawn was looking for me and uh this place was right on lake murray right outside of

05:07:41.380 columbia he was down by the lake and i went down there to go see what was up or whatever and again

05:07:46.580 i knew who spawn was we had met no spawn and uh spawn was wearing those really dark wayfarer

05:07:52.640 glasses and he looked really like almost angry you know i think that's just the way he looked

05:07:57.420 And I thought, you know, maybe I'd done some kind of like cultural faux pas or something.

05:08:02.160 I don't know. And he asked me, he said, hey, man, will you have my back with this this half project that's going to be in eastern North Carolina?

05:08:09.040 Because he was tasked with keeping it afloat from Virginia Beach three hours away.

05:08:15.240 And I said, absolutely. And that was the beginning of the partnership and friendship with me and Swan, too.

05:08:23.000 So there's a lot of, like, I don't want to paint it out like it was turmoil or whatever, but Heather and I arrived at that event because we had just lost our fault builder, several fault builders from the Carolinas in the previous year.

05:08:36.380 And, like, so what we saw as the AFA locally was just gone and with no notice or anything.

05:08:43.740 And we were kind of there, like, rudderless, like we didn't know what our purpose was going to be.

05:08:47.720 and it was like coming to this event and connecting with Trent,

05:08:51.520 connecting with the Ericsons, connecting with Swan,

05:08:54.200 and aha, Thor's office coming to the Carolinas,

05:08:57.140 which we kind of already knew.

05:08:59.800 But it was like now we have a direction,

05:09:02.320 and that's when I sat down with Mr. Flabel

05:09:05.540 and talked about folk building and all that stuff.

05:09:08.780 So it was kind of like that event was a big launching pad for me and for Heather.

05:09:13.480 yeah it's interesting kind of to note um

05:09:18.360 it's interesting when stuff gets real um i think it was the year previous

05:09:28.740 no maybe it was two years previous now i'm gonna call it two years previous

05:09:33.660 we were at an ostara in the south and uh

05:09:38.200 it was the year previous it was the year previous that was my first national event

05:09:47.540 the year previous okay then we're off on the year that that picture of me and mandy was either way

05:09:53.220 um we uh folks got in this tent there and everybody in the carolinas was you know how

05:10:03.940 we get a hof we want a hof so bad there's this hof out in california how do we get a hof out here

05:10:10.740 and everybody you know swore up and down how much they want one and they'd do anything for

05:10:15.140 hof out there and all this stuff and so the kindred and the uh the folk builder that were

05:10:24.820 so very gung-ho about this we ended up finding a hof that was right in the same in the same town

05:10:31.140 or like within the same little county area of a couple of towns that he worked at and that they 0.97

05:10:37.220 were all located at like boom here's a hoff in your backyard literally and uh all of a sudden

05:10:44.340 well uh well um can uh you know i can can maybe i just go by my middle name because that's what

05:10:51.620 people call me no they don't well um you know i hey how about can i and this person was you know

05:11:01.140 training to be a Goathe and various other things. Well, can you just take me off the website for a

05:11:06.260 little bit and I'll come back on once the heat dies down, but the attention is just a little

05:11:11.060 bit too much. And I got a family, you know, and well, I quit the AFA, all of this in one night.

05:11:20.960 Same person that two days previous swore up and down, they would do anything for the Hoff. They

05:11:28.040 were right there. They were going to take care of it. They were going to mow the lawn. They were

05:11:31.040 going to do the stuff. We have such a cool sign. That sign's awesome. Love the sign. We're going

05:11:35.360 to do all these things. It's going to be amazing. This is wonderful. Are you sure? Because there's

05:11:39.720 going to be a tension here. So we're about to put down money. Are you okay with it? Yeah,

05:11:43.840 absolutely. This is going to be wonderful. Thank you so much. This is amazing. The second we put

05:11:47.760 down a down payment, their bowels turned to water and they fled. But heroes rose. We have

05:11:57.840 Svon, we have Daniel, and

05:11:59.840 from Virginia and South

05:12:01.800 Carolina on either side,

05:12:03.680 we've made the Hoff in North Carolina

05:12:05.760 work. So, appreciate you, gentlemen.

05:12:09.000 And,

05:12:09.260 you know, words are wind,

05:12:11.960 deeds are iron. 0.91

05:12:15.920 Ta-da! The next month,

05:12:18.780 Thors Hoff is established

05:12:20.000 in lovely

05:12:21.560 Linden, North Carolina.

05:12:27.840 looked a little bit different here's you know some of the mural as it's going up and swan's got his

05:12:33.920 paints and accoutrement they're ready to do the beautiful his first ever mural that thor mural

05:12:42.080 um it's funny looking at these these buildings so bare when we first got them and seeing what they

05:12:49.120 are now so this half it was a really big deal for me because this was a again another one of those

05:13:04.360 proving grounds I had still have some very very big shoes to fill and you know under Steve's

05:13:15.700 administration, we were able to get that first half, you know,

05:13:19.660 do I have what it takes to lead our folk to getting a second

05:13:24.760 half? Is that something that we can accomplish under my

05:13:28.180 leadership? And, you know, that wasn't, that wasn't a for sure

05:13:34.180 thing that was, you know, that first half was literally the

05:13:41.140 70s until 2015. So can we do this? Can we make this happen? And I tried really hard to

05:13:50.340 efficiently raise the money to pay off the remaining balance on Odenshof, which took us,

05:13:57.300 I think three years. And then am I able to get things together and mobilize the ability to get

05:14:08.100 us our second half it's a lot of a lot of work uh amongst the whitten and myself

05:14:14.740 to try to get this in place a lot of time spent in prayer uh

05:14:21.860 asking that alsathor help us find the the building that's going to bring him honor and make him proud

05:14:30.340 and uh you know a lot of hope and a lot of a lot of effort went indeed making this happen

05:14:37.620 and so i was very very proud when we got this and uh it was a very special thing

05:14:46.180 elevated spawn to the whitten in june of that year

05:14:51.940 also did our first interment of ashes on an afa property in that year

05:14:58.340 um thorgren's daughter uh becca was laid to rest there on the grounds of odin's off

05:15:08.540 they had kept her ashes because there was no place to put them there wasn't a spot for this

05:15:19.460 and it was very important that we make that happen and that we have a spot to put our loved

05:15:26.300 ones when they pass. I think that was a big advancement for

05:15:31.880 Ausatru certainly in this country is to be able to have

05:15:35.460 sacred space where we could put the remains of our loved ones

05:15:41.040 and honor them through the years and decades and centuries to

05:15:45.560 come. And we did we did just that in June of 2020. And since

05:15:52.100 And she is joined by her father Thorgrin and by a member Farren as well.

05:16:01.720 So there's three of our loved ones interred there.

05:16:05.720 We have Thorshof came with a burial already on the grounds, but we are prepared to inter the ashes of loved ones there as well.

05:16:17.280 We have a plan in place. We have no one at Baldershof yet.

05:16:20.260 we have in place for a columbarium there to inter ashes of loved ones we have uh two

05:16:28.260 that have passed away that are interred at new york's off and we have i believe 16 people that

05:16:36.660 were in an existing uh burial ground at sigerheim and i interred my mother there with them so we

05:16:44.900 We have spots at all of our properties to inter our loved ones when they pass.

05:16:54.160 And in July of that same year, faster than anybody thought possible, we've got Baldershoff.

05:17:03.560 This one was in Murdoch, Minnesota, all because of that picture we showed just a while ago, that first fall fest.

05:17:12.780 There we got Jason and Anna with the keys.

05:17:18.320 Such a special place, a place I will be visiting, and I hope you guys can join me at here in about a week and a half.

05:17:27.000 The first one of our haffs that's kind of in a neighborhood that's right in the midst of a town there,

05:17:33.200 and it's been an amazing experience.

05:17:35.060 I'm so honored that we're there.

05:17:36.280 I mentioned the food pantries, the food pantry that we started at Odenshoff.

05:17:41.880 We have food pantries every month at every one of our hoffs.

05:17:45.360 It's a big part of what we do and our involvement in our local communities.

05:17:49.820 We're very proud of that.

05:17:54.320 July of 2020 also saw the official dedication of Thor's Hoff.

05:17:59.560 and uh we got we got cliff and daniel both in attendance there is anything you guys would like

05:18:07.780 to to say or to add to the conversation on this

05:18:11.060 yeah um just on a personal level i think uh it was this event it was a one-day event but

05:18:22.220 we healed we had 75 people or so there and it was like our first uh taste you know hosting an event

05:18:30.540 that size any of us myself swan heather rob and you know most of the folks down south we had never

05:18:38.060 hosted an event like that so it was kind of a proving ground for the three or four of us and

05:18:43.980 really kind of i felt like kind of made me and heather put us on the map so to speak

05:18:49.420 that we were serious about this

05:18:52.460 and that we could be counted on.

05:18:54.220 So I look back at that with a lot of pride.

05:18:56.880 As well you should.

05:19:00.100 There's nothing like the dedication

05:19:02.040 of a new temple to our gods.

05:19:06.520 I've had the pleasure to be able to go to three of them

05:19:09.840 and my family by my wife

05:19:13.220 was represented at the Baldur's Off dedication.

05:19:16.340 um they're they're they're incredibly powerful we don't get to perform that rite of blessing

05:19:25.460 a new temple very often and you got to do it twice in one year um it's uh

05:19:32.880 it's proof that what we're doing is working and i i think it's you know

05:19:38.960 physical proof that our that our gods are real um

05:19:43.860 yeah it's it it means a lot and um it's hard to put into words

05:19:51.800 yeah it's hard you know mentioning that our gods are real it's very hard to walk into one of our

05:20:00.200 and not feel the presence of our gods there um anybody listening i hope you guys all have the

05:20:09.880 opportunity to experience that uh you should reach out it's definitely worth doing seeing that mural

05:20:17.240 for the first time was was striking no pun intended it was um

05:20:26.440 just a it was a it was a profound experience you know literally made the hair stand up on the back

05:20:31.480 of my neck yeah it's powerful um spawn there's something different and something very special

05:20:41.720 about an actual priest of the isir painting a mural to gods that he worships um

05:20:50.840 the god of the temple occupies that mural in a special way and you can feel that with each of

05:20:56.920 of the murals that Svan has painted for us in the Aesir.

05:21:02.580 They're absolutely stunning.

05:21:04.100 This is the first one and a truly amazing one.

05:21:14.520 Next up, we have work going into getting Baldershof ready for the dedication.

05:21:21.760 Baldershof took a lot of work.

05:21:23.220 The way we were able to get two Hoffs in one year is we got a building that was in very much need of a lot of repairs.

05:21:33.700 And so we had a lot of people putting in sweat equity there and making it work.

05:21:38.020 We had some amazing people.

05:21:39.400 It's another story of we were willing to take on a building that needed a tremendous amount of remodeling

05:21:46.060 because we had people there that swore their loyalty up and down and they were all in and they were super duper loyal.

05:21:53.220 And as soon as we got a Hoff, again, bowels to water, and they disappeared on us.

05:22:01.340 But as is so often the case, our really amazing folks that we have, led by Witten Brandy, stepped up and made it happen. 0.91

05:22:13.160 And in a just tremendous way that I couldn't, we couldn't ask for better, turned into a beautiful, beautiful temple to Balder.

05:22:20.640 and something that we're very proud of it's really cool right from the very beginning

05:22:27.580 bringing the whole family in to help work with her her oldest boy we're standing there right

05:22:32.920 next to you yeah I appreciate we got a picture of me doing stuff there I put in an afternoon

05:22:41.520 of work there so many others put in days and days and days but I was there for the photo op

05:22:48.700 appreciate that um i want to point out too that it was it was a real it was a band of real tough guys

05:22:56.540 up there that that tuck tailed and run and and left it to two women to hold that basket and make

05:23:04.540 it you know and at least get started on making it what what it has become real tough guys yeah 0.96

05:23:11.580 Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's proofs in the pudding when it gets real. That's when you see what people are made of. And we've seen that when we get our Hoffs and the God's witness and the God's remember.

05:23:30.400 more work that was put in there anybody who's been down the stairs in the feasting hall there

05:23:37.760 will notice how far we've come from this

05:23:40.900 in march of that following year of 2021 we were able to dedicate this third half of the

05:23:53.520 House True Folk Assembly, and our hofta to Lord Balder there, a moment of tremendous pride for

05:24:01.680 all of us. Funny note, Cliff said that, you know, he was not able to be there for this dedication,

05:24:08.580 but he sent his wife and his daughter to it. So Cliff's daughter and my daughter are almost

05:24:18.400 exactly the same age and it's a funny thing it's a strange anecdote but it just it's what i remember

05:24:26.720 so here it is i was at that she got into where she's at the point where she's scream crying in

05:24:32.960 the car when we're trying to drive places so i am white knuckle erratic scared for my safety like

05:24:41.200 insane because my daughter's screaming in the back of the car and i'm like ah

05:24:44.800 And every drive with that was just nails on a chalkboard, me at full, you know, tension, trying to get the car from point A to point B safely because it's just setting off all of the, you know, all of the bells and whistles in my head.

05:25:00.640 there's something about your own child's noises that just hit real different. I flew up there

05:25:10.120 and Katie and I and Alice shared a rental car to go from Minneapolis Airport to this.

05:25:18.600 Alice was doing the same screaming thing in the back of the car, but it's not my kid. Like,

05:25:22.880 hey, Alice, calm down. It's okay. And I'm fine. Everything is completely calm.

05:25:28.880 zero difference other than it's not mine that's screaming in the back.

05:25:33.160 So not necessarily AFA history, but

05:25:37.000 a mental note I made to myself.

05:25:41.060 I'm glad it worked in your favor there. It did.

05:25:44.700 It really did.

05:25:50.100 So Goethe Jason Plur got his ordination

05:25:54.760 that weekend.

05:25:58.880 as did Witten Brandy.

05:26:05.900 And a couple of months later, Brandy was elevated to the Witten.

05:26:14.900 She is not angry there. 0.99

05:26:16.780 She is just German looking, is the inside joke. 0.77

05:26:20.340 in September at 1.00

05:26:25.640 still doing Fall Fest there

05:26:31.000 I got the builders off the year it was dedicated just not at dedication

05:26:35.120 you did and you were there in the background as well Steve

05:26:40.020 yeah Cliff got his ordination

05:26:43.700 at long last he had been serving on the Witten for a while at that time

05:26:48.160 uh being a we had this was around the time that we had consolidated um the folk builder and gothar

05:26:57.620 programs into one you know organizational tree as opposed to separate things so it was important

05:27:04.720 that uh that our our witten be made up of ordained gothar and uh as you can tell cliff

05:27:14.160 Rose to the challenge.

05:27:21.340 In October, the following month,

05:27:24.340 we got three other gentlemen who got their ordinations.

05:27:29.320 Two of them are here tonight, and they were competing to see who could look the angriest.

05:27:38.180 Trent, who won, and why were you guys so angry?

05:27:41.280 uh because we thought it was pennsylvania and it was going to be cold because it was october

05:27:47.220 and we all wore tweed and instead it was sweltering hot for no reason that's why and i won that's

05:27:54.160 reasonable um daniel you were also present is there anything you would like to share about

05:28:01.680 this occasion or your uh discontented face no okay so what trent leaves out is we were doing

05:28:08.940 a goofball picture right before this and someone said be serious and we we went

05:28:14.260 extreme the other direction no if you go back several slides and look at the

05:28:22.180 class of 21 I don't think it'll ever be topped now now we got four Witten out of

05:28:29.120 it right the Dean of the Astro Academy yeah I mean it's pretty big deal yeah I

05:28:34.920 I mean, I remember all year ago, we had like a chat group, you know, like a group text with him.

05:28:45.600 And I remember him talking about how excited he was about our class.

05:28:49.120 This is why we're all still going through the program.

05:28:51.120 Myself, you, Cliff, Brandy, Rob, Jason.

05:28:54.260 And he was talking about how excited he was.

05:28:58.180 He hadn't been that excited for a class of Gothar in a very long time.

05:29:02.420 And I remember thinking, you know, well, I mean, of course he's saying that.

05:29:05.600 He's got to say that.

05:29:06.360 He's got to inspire us or, you know, whatever it was he was thinking.

05:29:11.100 But I think we knew by 2022 that, you know, he wasn't joking.

05:29:15.280 We thought, you know, previous classes were good.

05:29:23.280 I mean, you had the previous class, Sheila, Katie, Anna,

05:29:28.920 and then that's followed by Svan.

05:29:30.740 That's a pretty powerful class.

05:29:32.420 And then the one that came out of 21, like I said, I don't think it'll ever be matched.

05:29:37.920 And I reflect back on that time.

05:29:41.000 I really like doing that when I'm talking to our students about how stressful, challenging, but at the same time, it's probably the most fun I've had in my ostry journey personally.

05:29:53.760 Yeah, a lot of really permanent bonds were built during that time.

05:29:58.240 Absolutely. Literal bonds by people who take oaths very seriously, by the way.

05:30:02.420 At that same event, Heather took her folk builder oath, too, and that was equally a big deal in this household.

05:30:11.200 So that event was very special.

05:30:14.120 If you remember the ordination bloat that we had to do, we had this big, grand idea.

05:30:23.800 It was the three of us, Rob, Trent, and I were going to do an Odenvillee and Faye bloat,

05:30:29.400 and we had all these moving parts that

05:30:31.300 none of it worked

05:30:32.420 and

05:30:33.920 we pulled it off

05:30:37.980 hopefully Odinville and they were pleased

05:30:39.700 with the offerings and bestowed their

05:30:41.640 gifts upon us but

05:30:42.700 I can just remember thinking while we were

05:30:45.260 spurging the folk that like this was the

05:30:47.520 clunkiest bloke that I've ever been

05:30:49.680 a part of but

05:30:50.660 man that whole event

05:30:53.660 just lived for a very

05:30:55.700 very warm place in my heart forever

05:30:57.640 I'm very proud of that

05:30:59.380 Yeah, it was a really exceptional group of people. It was really a special time. It's one of those, I don't do that. I'm not going to just say nice things because I'm supposed to. I will not say anything. I'm not going to like, I mean, there's a time and a place. I'm not going to be rude.

05:31:18.720 but I'm also not going to give compliments or say things I don't mean because I think that's

05:31:23.560 really important. And this was and is, you know, a group of people that I'm tremendously proud of

05:31:30.440 and we have built upon in a really important way. And I appreciate you gentlemen very much.

05:31:35.940 In June of 2022, we got our fourth Hoff. In just seven years there, we've got four Hoffs now.

05:31:51.280 So we got Njord's Hoff in White Springs, Florida.

05:31:54.600 um a lot a long time coming we had a big

05:32:00.920 a steady I don't know a steady surge of enthusiasm in Florida for a long time and we had a

05:32:11.400 a kindred there American crow kindred that had been putting in you know doing bloat to

05:32:17.600 there for years very piously devoted a lot of themselves to his worship in that state 0.80

05:32:26.800 and it worked out really well and they were a big part of us getting getting this off

05:32:33.840 it's beautiful it's on a beautiful piece of land with you know these really cool uh live oaks

05:32:40.160 which are some of my favorite things they've got their own gator in one of their two ponds there

05:32:44.480 which is awesome so we're excited about that

05:32:53.920 the work begins there was a you know a lot of work to be done there and guys did a great job

05:33:06.640 this broadcast victory never sleeps started

05:33:09.760 a little bit over three years ago now.

05:33:14.400 It doesn't seem like it was that long, but it was.

05:33:18.160 This is episode number 162.

05:33:22.620 Could not do it without all of you guys and your participation.

05:33:26.460 Everyone who is listening and consuming this,

05:33:28.340 thank you guys so much for your, I don't know,

05:33:33.480 your listening, your watching,

05:33:36.060 You're giving us encouragement and thoughtful questions.

05:33:43.160 And so much of this program is audience driven.

05:33:45.480 And you guys have really done a lot and given us a lot to work with.

05:33:49.460 It's very special to hear so many people talk about how they regularly watch this show or listen to the program.

05:33:59.400 That really says a lot.

05:34:00.900 It's something I'm really proud of.

05:34:01.980 I appreciate all of you on the side who've been my guests on this program.

05:34:05.400 over the last three years.

05:34:07.100 I look forward to having each of you guys on here

05:34:09.040 in the future as well.

05:34:12.440 And Nick, thank you so much for all your hard work

05:34:15.080 in producing every one of these episodes.

05:34:17.760 Thank you.

05:34:19.240 To be fair, 161 out of 162.

05:34:23.360 I missed one.

05:34:24.580 I was flying to Odin's off.

05:34:26.080 Yeah, but you set it up.

05:34:28.160 I did, and I watched the episode while flying.

05:34:31.380 in August of 2022 we did the official dedication um again we were graced with another one of Svon's

05:34:44.340 amazing murals um was a very special event it was really uh meaningful to me so I uh

05:34:55.140 I mentioned before in December of 2014 I've moved down to Florida and

05:35:01.380 I had lived in Alaska for, I don't know, like 33 years or something at that point.

05:35:05.760 I moved down to Florida for two years with the woman who had become my wife.

05:35:14.100 And there's turmoil there with a mentor of mine and his kindred and falling out over some things.

05:35:23.560 And negative folks that parted with the AFA having, you know, prognosticating doom and gloom and, you know, we'd never be able to be successful and the AFA could never possibly be successful with me running it and all this other stuff.

05:35:42.940 And so I left Florida with a lot to prove when I moved out west.

05:35:49.060 It was really special to me that when I returned back to Florida, I brought with me a Hoff.

05:35:56.620 And that is a big point of pride with me.

05:36:02.020 um also from the ordination this is where we ordained gothi lane ashby he leads um and led

05:36:18.520 at the time and the the placement of the uh black sun halo around his head is just circumstantial

05:36:24.820 here uh but it but it worked out well um he was ordained uh he is the guy that his kindred and his

05:36:34.820 dutiful worship of nyorder over the years um is what allowed this off to happen and take shape

05:36:43.140 and it's much appreciated and so we wanted to make sure we ordained him at that that dedication uh

05:36:49.300 there's cliff in the background there and spawn over in the other corner you can't see his head

05:36:54.100 but that's him i promise laughing or smiling about something i said that i have i've mislabeled

05:37:01.220 swan before but i can tell by the stole so i'm i'm pretty confident on this one

05:37:08.580 in august of 2022 we launched the first class of the austro academy this is

05:37:17.060 not flashy it is something that is a slow burn on seeing the results of but it's one of the most

05:37:25.540 important things we've ever done um we have known for many many years that we needed a place to

05:37:34.740 homeschool our kids that public schools uh again we have an international audience so it may look

05:37:40.500 different, different places. But public schools in the United States have become often very, very

05:37:51.860 bad places to have your children. Doesn't mean every place. You know, I don't, my mom was a

05:37:58.100 school teacher her entire life. I'm not trying to denigrate the institution and everybody that

05:38:05.040 works there, but it's really become something quite negative. And it's become a place where

05:38:09.420 often kids are abused by their cultural enrichment and taught to hate their parents and to hate all

05:38:22.120 of the values that we try to instill in them while literally being victimized and not safe

05:38:27.920 in many instances. So again, if you find yourself in a spot where your school district's great,

05:38:34.160 that is wonderful. And I'm really happy that you have that. A lot of people don't. We wanted to

05:38:39.080 sure we had the opportunity for our children to have the support they need for families to have

05:38:44.680 the support they need to educate their children in a way that is in keeping with their values

05:38:50.360 that protects their children spiritually and physically and we have that now we are currently

05:38:58.360 enrolling for the for the uh 20 so forget 2025 2026 school year we are taking children from

05:39:08.520 kindergarten to seventh grade at present so the commitment in august of 2022 was to have

05:39:15.000 kindergarten and then to follow those children to where you know by now we'd have uh

05:39:24.920 third grade ready for them but uh gothe stam and the people who've helped him

05:39:31.320 have made sure that we now have k through seven so they've certainly overachieved on that

05:39:38.520 In December of 2022, we purchased Sigerhaim and that land there in Jackson County, Tennessee.

05:39:52.180 That is going to be the home of Tearshoff, which will be our first purpose-built hoff.

05:39:57.980 It is where we have hosted Sigerbloat each summer in July.

05:40:04.040 it is a really amazing and special place it is something we put a lot of trust in uh and daniel

05:40:13.300 here to scout for us because i was looking at places across the country and relying on him to

05:40:19.420 go check it out and be the boots on the ground and he did he hit it out of the park with this spot

05:40:24.100 It's amazing.

05:40:29.380 And in January, we went out, many of us, and did our first event there.

05:40:35.180 We did Bloat to Lord Tear.

05:40:37.260 We explored the property.

05:40:39.340 You can see so much more.

05:40:40.780 It's amazing how different that piece of property is in January than it is in July.

05:40:47.840 There's a number of us there.

05:40:50.340 Bodie's there.

05:40:51.580 Nick's there.

05:40:52.180 Svon and his wife are there. I'm there. Some other folks are there. It was a special time.

05:40:58.780 And it's a really, really special place. A number of us, my family included, are going to be moving

05:41:06.020 out to the surrounding county to make this the centerpiece of a community out there. And we're

05:41:12.120 very much dedicated to that. And hopefully within the coming years, many of us will be out there.

05:41:18.260 Hopefully we'll be doing our broadcast from that county very soon.

05:41:22.180 Can I tell a quick story on that?

05:41:25.180 Please.

05:41:26.180 It's again, going back to the Matt doesn't pay compliments unless he means them.

05:41:32.180 Hey, Daniel, here's a quarter million dollars. Go find us some property.

05:41:37.180 I'm never going to take a look at it, by the way, until it's already a done deal.

05:41:43.180 So you can only imagine the stress and all that that creates.

05:41:47.180 So, Alshira Goethe had never seen the property up until this particular day.

05:41:52.860 Maybe it was the day previous.

05:41:54.500 You and I had gone out there with Heather, and you didn't say nothing.

05:41:59.740 I'm walking around.

05:42:00.500 I got a bottle of champagne.

05:42:04.460 I'm halfway going up the hill with you to go check out the top of the ridge,

05:42:09.400 and you still hadn't said nothing.

05:42:11.040 I'm thinking, man, does he hate it?

05:42:12.660 You know, and I didn't want to ask because I didn't want to be like, you know, fishing for compliments or whatever.

05:42:17.380 So I just got, I guess he hates it.

05:42:20.640 And I'm getting ready to slip my ring off and hand it to him.

05:42:24.180 You know, it's been a nice ride, Matt.

05:42:26.320 I appreciate it.

05:42:28.240 And you socked me in the shoulder so hard that it actually cracked my back, like my back, like adjusted like at a chiropractor's office.

05:42:39.640 That was all I needed.

05:42:40.840 And, yeah, very happy about that whole project.

05:42:46.600 It's very near and dear to my heart.

05:42:53.980 In February of 2023, we announced the elevation of three other Oust True Heroes and gave them their days of remembrance.

05:43:03.900 Stobbe, Hoskold of the Odenic Rite, and Svenbjørn Bientensen of the Ausatruer Fælligeth in Iceland.

05:43:14.720 All of these men worked hard to take those foundational steps to make Ausatruer a reality,

05:43:24.140 and the organizations that they built have not served that vision well,

05:43:32.440 but their efforts are not forgotten and not lost on us and deserve our eternal celebration

05:43:40.440 and honoring these men that took those brave steps. We appreciate them very much.

05:43:52.380 In June of 2023, Daniel was elevated to the Whitten. I surprised him with this,

05:44:00.040 and I'm entertained by surprising

05:44:01.920 with it to this day.

05:44:07.800 My phone went 1.00

05:44:08.920 Heather's phone 0.96

05:44:11.980 is dinging. My phone is dinging. 0.58

05:44:13.740 It's like 1130 my time. 0.92

05:44:16.280 I'm thinking what in the hell

05:44:18.100 is going on? I thought

05:44:19.400 everything was burning down or something.

05:44:22.120 Got a bunch of messages saying

05:44:23.760 congratulations buddy and I'm like for what?

05:44:26.220 Check your social media.

05:44:27.280 Yeah. That was really cool. I used curse words on the phone with Matt when I called him. But thank you. Now and forever. Thank you.

05:44:39.480 Well, we're definitely better for having you with us.

05:44:46.380 In July of 2023, our founder, Stephen McNallan, published his second book, The Spear.

05:44:55.220 A second book in this kind of a real book format.

05:44:59.580 So there's that.

05:45:01.760 You can get both of his books on our website.

05:45:06.180 But it's really cool.

05:45:07.420 This book, especially, was really neat to read some of Steve's writing again.

05:45:15.360 Anyone who doesn't know or hasn't had the pleasure yet, our founder made a living off of writing at one point in time.

05:45:22.440 And he's a very powerful author and he writes in a really distinctive way.

05:45:29.240 And he's one of the people that when I read something that he's written, I can it's like I can hear him speaking it in my head as I'm reading it.

05:45:36.220 And so that was really cool when I read this book for the first time is to kind of experience that again in the same way.

05:45:43.220 way. July of that year, we held the first Sigur bloat at Sigurheim there. There is us.

05:46:01.140 I am in an unusual state of casual dress for a ritual. It was overwhelmingly hot and humid

05:46:09.380 and I was not prepared, but we had an amazing event there, very special, and I can't say

05:46:19.620 enough good about that place. It is truly, truly amazing. Somebody is asking over in the comments,

05:46:26.280 where is the Tears Hoff land? It is right here on the slide in Jackson County, Tennessee.

05:46:32.220 here is the naming of the afa sword the sword of victory being a symbol of success

05:46:47.080 of accomplishment and of the afa hymenia leading us forward to future victories is a really

05:46:55.560 important thing. In July of 2023, the sword was named. It was named Relentless. It is a Confederate

05:47:05.260 used heavy cavalry saber. That model of sword was known as the old risk breaker because it

05:47:15.460 was particularly heavy to wield and to swing. This was buried for over 100 years in a southern

05:47:25.320 barn, just in case the time would come where it was needed again, if the south should rise,

05:47:32.620 and it is now the official sword of the Ostru Folk Assembly.

05:47:41.220 On that sword, Gauthier Mayo, who is no... Ah, he is still with us. I was going to say he's no 0.96

05:47:47.900 longer with us, and I realized that sounded like he is dead, and he is not. Here he is. Bodie,

05:47:53.880 This is you taking your second ordination oath.

05:47:56.540 Is there anything you would like to add to this?

05:48:03.220 I mean, it was a great day and one of the greatest days of my life here to present.

05:48:10.080 I remember afterwards you commenting that I was really giving you a run for your money trying to hold relentless

05:48:21.940 because I was so caught up in the moment

05:48:25.260 that I was very forcefully pressing down

05:48:27.440 with my two fingers on the sword

05:48:29.940 and it was causing a bit of an arm wrestling

05:48:36.280 kind of match between you and me during that time.

05:48:39.300 But it was a very, very great, very great moment.

05:48:45.520 Yes, I was holding it there in my right arm

05:48:47.600 and I was reading the oath off my phone there

05:48:50.620 while we were doing the, you know, repeat after me portion.

05:48:54.840 And man, Bodie was putting his entire weight into that hand on trying to push that sword down.

05:49:01.880 So we were struggling there for a minute, but it was really special.

05:49:05.920 And I was very honored to be able to administer that ordination.

05:49:10.340 One of my truly best friends.

05:49:12.160 And here I am interring my mother's ashes as the first of our people at the burial ground

05:49:29.660 there at Sigurheim. As I mentioned, there's a number of people who were buried there that

05:49:36.480 folks had not taken any care of this burial ground.

05:49:44.060 It was forgotten about when we bought the land. They told us there was some kind of Indian burial

05:49:50.340 ground out there. Just be careful because there's like a pile of rocks. No, it's a white folks

05:49:58.120 burial ground um there's a revolutionary war soldier who is buried there his uh mos

05:50:06.120 was uh fighting indians as as luck would have it um along with a number of other graves

05:50:15.320 uh i think the most recent one before my mother's was from um the early 1900s like 19

05:50:25.240 10-ish I'd have to check to make sure but a number of the headstones were broken and snapped off

05:50:34.020 we have repaired one of those and we've got two more that we need to do some work on repairing

05:50:41.440 a lot of work is going to be put in to make the burial ground they're really special and well

05:50:47.200 taken care of um those people uh deserve that and uh it's going to serve us well in the future

05:50:57.760 we've also done some really powerful rituals in this burial ground that

05:51:02.960 are very special so we're honored to have those people in our in our keeping there

05:51:07.200 General Barney DeKalb Clark passed away 1936 is the most recent one.

05:51:18.160 1936 the most recent, and though he is named general, he did not in fact serve. So he is

05:51:27.120 first name general, not rank general. It's important to make the distinction.

05:51:34.480 So here is Steve and Sheila with Nick and a member of ours from California that visited Sigerheim in August of 2023.

05:51:49.060 There they are.

05:51:50.920 I'll note on this.

05:51:52.380 A lot of the other folks here have talked about their first time getting to meet Founder McNallan and the like cool conversation they had with him or bossing him around and telling him to cook the sausages.

05:52:10.020 I'd thankfully or fortunately been able to meet him a few times before this, but this was really the first time I ever got to have a one on one with him.

05:52:17.300 And, well, I guess it was, there was four of us there, but, you know, a personal conversation, lots of fun stories, and lots of stories that I was sworn not to tell, so you won't hear them, but it was awesome.

05:52:33.780 Good deal. In August 2023, we ordained Gauthier Nathan Erlinson, a powerful force in building our folk in the Baldershof area.

05:52:50.440 and in december of 2023 we dedicated uh the statues to our founder steve mcnallen and his

05:53:02.680 lovely wife githya sheila mcnallen um it was important that we build what will one day be

05:53:11.220 the capital of the house true folk assembly literally around these two and around this

05:53:19.860 moment of reforging our faith um steve is facing to the north there and this recreates

05:53:29.040 a picture that we saw hours ago in this slideshow um yeah it recreates this one of my favorite

05:53:38.760 pictures. And we wanted to recreate that in bronze and have that adorn the capital of the

05:53:50.200 Astru Folk Assembly. So that was a very special thing and a very special moment. And I appreciate

05:53:55.700 everybody who went out during Yule that year to get that set up. Witten Svon went out and a number

05:54:03.140 other gentlemen helped him get that all arranged and cemented in and set up um

05:54:10.820 so yeah that was something that was very important to me that i wanted to do for

05:54:15.540 many years is to get statues made and uh by 2023 we were able to make that a reality

05:54:22.740 And in May of 2024, we honored kings Anfrith of Brenicia and Osric of Daira.

05:54:37.120 These two Anglo-Saxon kings are largely unsung and uncelebrated.

05:54:47.220 their reigns were brief

05:54:49.820 but for a moment in time they restored 0.97

05:54:52.160 their people's trough to the Iser 1.00

05:54:54.000 and that should live 1.00

05:54:56.340 in celebration for eternity

05:54:58.200 so unsung

05:55:00.700 that in certain sources

05:55:01.860 they weren't even officially kings

05:55:03.720 yeah they were

05:55:06.340 the Reginal

05:55:08.340 years were like edited

05:55:10.180 out of

05:55:11.380 chronicles because

05:55:14.020 it was so like offensive that they

05:55:16.220 would revert back to Ausatru. Also in 2024, we published the Ausatru Trulagmaul. And this is

05:55:32.520 really important because it is a condensing and a clear statement of the fundamentals of our faith

05:55:43.040 and what it means to practice Ausitru.

05:55:48.060 For the longest time, there had been a whole lot of, you know,

05:55:52.420 maybe this, but maybe that, and kind of this and kind of that

05:55:56.000 when asked, what do you guys believe?

05:55:58.600 So it was very important.

05:56:00.560 It's something that I always knew that we needed

05:56:03.920 but took a lot longer to actually formulate.

05:56:07.200 um but a statement of our faith and the fundamentals of you know what that faith is

05:56:17.380 built upon and this is available it is currently available and always available at the afa library

05:56:23.080 at runestone.org it is something that all of our members should read and that i would encourage

05:56:28.640 anybody who would like to know about us true to read and ask any questions they might have

05:56:34.560 to any of our Go-Thar about.

05:56:47.620 It is, yes, we've had a very long program tonight.

05:56:51.520 We have a little bit more to go,

05:56:52.920 but we are nearing the end.

05:56:54.880 So I appreciate everybody who has stayed with us.

05:56:58.420 In June of last year,

05:57:00.360 we celebrated 100 episodes of Victory Never Sleeps.

05:57:04.560 We appreciate, again, every one of you that's made this possible.

05:57:10.180 That was a milestone for us and something much appreciated.

05:57:16.520 In July, Gauthier Thorgan, who is in a number of these pictures and was very fundamental with Steve and Sheila to the building of the Ossetru Folk Assembly, passed away.

05:57:32.880 um i was very fortunate that i got to see him as he was on his deathbed and spend time with him and

05:57:39.660 his wife during that period um that meant a lot to me i will forever be grateful that i got that

05:57:46.720 time with him and yeah that's so far two men that have lived this through the entirety of their life

05:57:54.680 and passed away as priests to the Aesir in our day.

05:58:03.900 In August, we laid his remains to rest in the cemetery at Odenshof,

05:58:12.260 a cemetery that he helped take care of for a very long time

05:58:16.520 and was a big part in making it happen.

05:58:18.100 In November, we honored Gauthier Thorstein Guthjansson of the Asatruer Felegith, another

05:58:28.720 one of the gentlemen there that founded very much in keeping with our view of Asatru, that

05:58:34.640 organization to, again, reforge that ancestral faith.

05:58:41.300 um oh and something of note uh isaac bought us a coffee and said 30 years hail the folk

05:58:48.660 hail the folk indeed and hail to you isaac thank you very much for your donation we appreciate that

05:58:53.700 he also donated 25 to balder's steeple so thank you for that very much appreciated

05:59:02.900 and in january of this year we uh celebrated 30 years the ask true folk assembly

05:59:10.340 what a tremendous accomplishment and something that I'm so very honored to be a part of and to

05:59:17.300 share with these gentlemen on the call with me tonight and with all of you. 30 years of this

05:59:26.180 is no small feat and there's much much more to come but 30 years is quite an accomplishment and

05:59:34.420 something for us all to be very proud of. In March, we ordained Whitten Young's lovely wife,

05:59:44.840 Githya Heather Young, as well as Gothi John Rock. We ordained them at Thorshof at Ostara in the south.

05:59:54.400 We are very proud to have them serving as priestess and priest of our Iser.

06:00:04.420 and because of how we've grown and that we've divided the world up into hoff districts and

06:00:11.300 those districts will get smaller and more centralized and make a little bit more sense

06:00:15.860 as we grow but as it is now we have four hoff districts headed up by uh githya sheila mcnalen

06:00:24.500 witten daniel young witten brandy facet and witten trent east so these are the first of our hoff

06:00:33.460 gothar or the gothar officially in charge of hoff districts

06:00:39.780 in april we reordained uh githya lauren anderson you guys may have noticed her

06:00:46.100 initial ordination way back in 2010 um she's come back to us and is serving as a githya in

06:00:53.780 the odenshoff district and we are very honored to have her

06:00:56.500 May 2025 we paid off New York's off thanks to many people on this show is generous donations

06:01:05.240 thank you guys so much the search began the second we paid it off to start our work towards

06:01:14.700 getting phrase off stay tuned we've got very exciting things on this front you guys have

06:01:22.940 already been tremendous in your generosity. Really special things are happening in regards

06:01:30.240 to this. And as we are able, we will let folks know. But yeah, some really special things are

06:01:37.040 going on. And hopefully in the very near future, we'll have some cool stuff to tell you.

06:01:41.480 About another $400 tonight to the down payment. We're up to $11,910.

06:01:47.620 That is fantastic, guys. Thank you so much. That is a huge sum to have raised in

06:01:52.660 just a few months, three months. That's tremendous.

06:02:02.860 In July, we celebrated the elevation of King Aorik, Wengerik, and Atherid as AFA heroes

06:02:10.860 with their Days of Remembrance. You guys may remember the episode that we talked about,

06:02:15.660 our Gothic heroes that Chris did such a masterful job of. That was just last month.

06:02:22.660 Also, last month, we elevated Gauthier Trent to the position of Whitten.

06:02:32.600 Trent, do you have any recollections or thoughts or anything you would like to add?

06:02:39.440 Yeah, sure.

06:02:40.460 So it was similar to Whitten Young's being announced, except mine was in person.

06:02:45.460 So whereas Daniel was allowed to be in bed and look surprised all to himself,

06:02:50.780 i had a bunch of people staring at me and uh i was so in shock that uh i don't remember any of

06:02:59.920 the words that were spoken about the whole thing i'll tell you it was great sitting there we just

06:03:06.860 finished up a float and all of a sudden alceur gothe turns to uh whitney said or to goate the

06:03:13.900 East. It says, and Goathe East has been elevated officially now to my Witten. This is nonchalant,

06:03:22.140 no pomp and circumstance, just like the rest of them. Yeah, good times. Now, it's, like I've said,

06:03:30.300 it's the greatest honor of my life. It's something I've dreamed of for years. And

06:03:33.840 yeah, I'm excited to be here, even if it is three in the morning.

06:03:38.040 we're very excited to have you um that's that's the cost that goes with your uh with your elevation

06:03:45.400 so uh you're welcome um but yeah we're very honored to have uh to have you with us serving

06:03:53.460 in that body um and just this month we announced the elevation of three more

06:04:00.900 Oust True Heroes with Days of Remembrance. Jarnskega, Eric Clausen, Rackenwald, Odia Karl,

06:04:10.660 they were all celebrated and announced. So Jarnskega is much more in line, out of actually

06:04:19.480 the same set of sagas as the first round of Oust the True Heroes, and in a very understood Viking

06:04:29.000 context, but these other two gentlemen, not so much, both in the late 1400s were loyal to our

06:04:37.360 gods, specifically both loyal to the All-Father Odin at a time where others were not, to where

06:04:44.820 this was well into the Renaissance, where it wasn't a thing, and when it was found out it was

06:04:51.820 a thing, it was punishable by death, and both of these men met their death by professing their

06:04:58.440 loyalty to the Allfather. And with that, we have reached the end of our slideshow. Nick, thank you

06:05:11.420 so much for putting this all together. And Chris, thank you so much for all of your work to

06:05:17.000 coordinate AFA history and get all this put together. I know you've got a lot of work

06:05:26.020 yet to do. I know I've sent you a number of notes and things and stuff going through this

06:05:31.400 tonight. I think going through this is an important, hopefully, piece of getting that

06:05:36.300 further solidified in a good way.

06:05:44.960 We have generated some questions tonight, and I will try to make it through answering those.

06:05:51.160 you guys are welcome to stay and help me answer them if you would like or go to bed if you would

06:05:56.360 like to um it is it is late it's been a six hour program but i uh i appreciate you guys being here

06:06:05.480 so we've had some questions that have gotten uh emailed to us like these first few are from that

06:06:11.480 anybody who is interested can email vns at runestone.org anytime you want we will shuffle

06:06:19.320 your question into our next show or shoot if you send it right now we'll shuffle it into this show

06:06:24.840 but we will answer it at the next available time and yeah we appreciate that many of you already

06:06:31.080 do that so that's great from caleb hello i have a question about the lgbt pronoun stuff

06:06:40.040 a lot of us have employers who enforce dei uh what do you recommend

06:06:46.440 and also true or do if forced to comply with pronouns that obviously do not match the individual

06:06:53.640 wouldn't addressing a biological man with she slash her or vice versa be against our noble

06:07:00.200 virtue of truth daniel you had your hand up what are your thoughts so the company i work for started

06:07:07.640 attempt to enforce that

06:07:10.520 right around

06:07:12.740 the whole COVID madness,

06:07:14.340 2020 or so,

06:07:15.240 and a bunch of us

06:07:17.600 did white slash guy.

06:07:20.920 They stopped immediately. 1.00

06:07:24.740 That's awesome

06:07:26.220 and makes me happy.

06:07:28.360 Do any of the others

06:07:31.020 of you have suggestions

06:07:33.320 in regards to this?

06:07:38.420 Cliff, I'm going to put you on the spot because I kind of want to hear what you have to say on it.

06:07:42.040 I think you are a clear thinker in regards to these things.

06:07:45.560 You can see my brain churning away as I think about it, right?

06:07:50.600 So, I mean, first of all, yes, it would be against our virtue of truth to do that.

06:07:57.060 That's not in question.

06:08:00.980 But I also think it's under duress and you have to evaluate what your greater responsibilities are in any situation.

06:08:07.640 Um, it would be probably smart to do something like Whitten Young suggested and to challenge it in whatever the most appropriate way is.

06:08:17.520 Um, you know, that could be putting your own pronouns that are, you know, not that they're not going to find acceptable.

06:08:27.200 It could be, you know, seeking some sort of legal recourse through, you know, religious liberties avenues, although that, depending on where you are, that may or may not be a successful path and you need to evaluate the resources that would be needed to engage in that.

06:08:46.960 if possible start looking for another job one where they're going to be more respectful to

06:08:56.520 to you rather than have you you know be compelled to be respectful to you know people's imaginary

06:09:03.920 identities but I think you know while yes it would be in violation of our virtue of truth

06:09:12.640 I don't think that it is, you know, a gross violation of our ethics to do what you have to do to put bread on your family's table.

06:09:24.160 A lot of us, I think, are probably less than ideally employed by less than ideal companies that do less than ideal things.

06:09:35.240 and um you know do do what you need to do um like like you would in a survival situation because it

06:09:46.180 really is um but you might have options and if you do you should avail yourself of them um the

06:09:54.280 other thing that i i guess i would point out and i think i even did it here in my answer is that

06:09:59.320 sort of it used to be real strict i remember when i was in grade school in the 80s this would never

06:10:05.120 have flown but i think without all the gender bending stuff that's happened um there's sort

06:10:11.840 of been a casualization of pronouns anyway people will refer to like unknown third parties as they

06:10:19.040 as opposed to he like it used to be when i was in grammar school so

06:10:26.720 it's just something to consider you know i referred to the employer as they rather than

06:10:31.680 like it or he i don't think i've offended any of our gods or ancestors by doing that even though

06:10:38.480 it could be seen as falling into that sort of pronoun game i didn't mean it that way it was

06:10:45.440 just sort of a you know a literally a gender neutral in the grammatical sense pronoun but i

06:10:51.360 think it's also technically grammatically incorrect and that he is the correct one if you don't know

06:10:57.840 the gender or it if i'm referring to a a corporation which i know i do not believe

06:11:03.440 corporations are persons unlike her government but that's where i'm at on it just to chime in on

06:11:11.360 the oh sorry go on sorry i was gonna be pedantic well i was just gonna say i think that most often

06:11:18.560 there are options i think there's specific fields i think there are you know like military fields

06:11:24.960 where you have to use sir or ma'am I think a lot of the time you don't I think that there is a

06:11:32.080 whereas there may be very there may be consequences and a lot of problem at your workplace 0.67

06:11:38.080 if you were to label them the correct gender instead of bending to their mental illness

06:11:43.520 I think oftentimes you can just conspicuously not you can just use their name I think there's

06:11:51.120 There's increasingly less fields to where you are required to refer to somebody as Mr.,

06:11:58.680 Mrs., or Sir, or Ma'am.

06:12:00.480 I think that sometimes you can say, you know, Pat Johnson, here's my email, rather than,

06:12:09.800 you know, do it formally and more politely.

06:12:12.960 And if that's their preference due to their mental illness, then that's the route.

06:12:18.200 that's the first route that I would take if that is an option for you. And I think most places that

06:12:24.100 is absolutely an option you can do. I think we're over a lot of the ridiculousness of that. I don't

06:12:32.660 think it's eliminated, but I think it is less prevalent than it was a couple of years ago.

06:12:38.740 And so I think that's positive. But yes, it is, you know, acting untruthfully if you are

06:12:45.340 placating mental illness in that way. But you have to make certain value judgments on what's worth

06:12:54.520 keeping your job over or not. Again, I wouldn't want to work at a place that forced me to do that

06:13:01.420 and was not reasonable, but some people may not be in that kind of a situation.

06:13:06.540 So you have to use your good judgment and figure some stuff out. But I think that the first

06:13:11.540 The first and most easy answer to the question is, then don't use any of those gendered language at all and just refer to them by their name.

06:13:21.340 And I think most places you can do that.

06:13:26.000 And if it's conspicuous, they're the ones that are making it conspicuous, not you.

06:13:30.360 as of now what do you think future Hoffs will be dedicated to when we arrive at the end of

06:13:40.000 the current list with Freya will we move on to the maidens of Fensailor and the heavenly wardens

06:13:48.140 if we do make a Hoff for all of the above what then I know this is currently about 20 years out

06:13:54.080 at our current rate before we'd act on this and so a lot could change before then I'm interested

06:14:00.260 in speculation. Thanks. Do any of you have speculation

06:14:04.440 you would like to offer on this?

06:14:07.840 Yeah, I'd like to see our heroes use the

06:14:11.680 name places for our Hoffs. Guido's Hoff.

06:14:18.820 Sorry, I took a different meaning.

06:14:24.100 So, if, yeah,

06:14:26.420 okay. I agree with the proposed speculation that we

06:14:30.120 probably would move on to you know the additional babies that we don't have you know in our our list

06:14:38.520 of of 12 plus two i think that's a a reasonable thing to think that we would do um in what order

06:14:47.080 we do them that opens up more speculation i think yeah i you know i hesitate to overly speculate as

06:14:56.680 you mentioned there's a lot of things between now and then and i think that when we start getting

06:15:01.480 much closer we will have a much better idea it's a cool question and it's an awesome problem to have

06:15:08.680 when we're in a spot where that is the problem i think that's a testament that we're doing pretty

06:15:13.240 well i don't know what the order and when this will occur is but i think that once you know

06:15:22.120 Once our gods and goddesses have Hoffs, there will be a day where there are many Odin's Hoffs and many Thor's Hoffs and many temples dedicated to each of our gods and goddesses.

06:15:35.920 So figuring out the exact nomenclature that is going to be interesting. I don't know if we assign a region or a state or a place to them if we figure out a more colorful or honorific way to celebrate an aspect of their personality in each of those or just what it looks like.

06:15:55.520 But I think there's a lot of cool directions it could go.

06:15:59.020 I know at one time you guys have talked about you were throwing around the concept of doing Hoffs based on Hoff names,

06:16:06.600 based on like the region or the area or something special about that place.

06:16:10.020 So I'm thinking of Odinshoff of the mountain or something or something like that.

06:16:16.120 I think that's a reasonable thing to think.

06:16:20.660 Again, it all depends.

06:16:22.460 And I'm not trying to evade the answer.

06:16:24.120 it's something that's deliberately kind of i don't have a great for sure idea on and i want to see

06:16:32.680 what strikes me as we get closer but i mean i think those are all fine options i think whatever

06:16:40.360 we do as long as our um our intentions are noble in honoring the icr and the ausenior i think that

06:16:48.840 that we will be well served with whatever that choice might be um but i want you know i want

06:16:54.920 piety to be our guide and i think that we will have a uh good idea when we start getting

06:17:01.320 significantly closer to that eventuality just of note i did a little tabulation if we did in theory

06:17:09.400 move into the rest of the asenur and then the maidens of fen salir and then the aspenir and

06:17:16.040 then the hymn and vorthair the heavenly wardens that would take us up to like 43 hoffs if i

06:17:21.560 counted correctly yeah if we get to where we're naming hoff 44 like we're doing real good if

06:17:30.760 that's the case this is this is an amazing problem to have and i i hope for that day that'd be a

06:17:35.800 spectacular thing to be there for um next question hey there what is the afa's position on blood

06:17:44.280 sacrifice. I've seen individuals online claim that it is some kind of secret requirement in

06:17:50.780 the AFA, particularly for the Gothar. I've always known you folks to be pretty open and truthful

06:17:56.520 and was curious as to if you'd shed some light on this topic. Thanks for all you do and much

06:18:03.860 love to the AFA. So Cliff, would you like to speak to our secret blood sacrifice requirements

06:18:12.100 for argothar sure they do not exist he needs to clue me in because like i'm out we keep them

06:18:20.980 secret from our alshire gothi it's uh it's a it's a real inside thing um no we're not we

06:18:29.220 i've never been to any austro folk assembly event or ritual that included blood sacrifice um

06:18:35.860 um i i know people who have been to generally asatru events where there have been animal

06:18:45.800 sacrifices um i think that's not something that we're morally opposed to but that is extremely

06:18:52.480 rare and that needs to be taken with great skill and care and respect i would never engage in such

06:19:00.540 thing unless the animal was raised for that purpose and i knew that i had the proper skill to

06:19:07.340 butcher that animal properly so that it doesn't suffer um partly because that's the right thing

06:19:14.300 to do and partly because doing it any other way would bring really bad luck to anyone who

06:19:22.220 who was participating in that, right?

06:19:25.480 In particular, the Gothia or Githia leading that, right?

06:19:28.960 If you, you know, end up torturing an animal

06:19:32.580 because you don't know what you're doing,

06:19:34.740 you've really put something bitter,

06:19:40.220 something poisonous into the well.

06:19:43.420 Something I'd like to make a note of,

06:19:45.140 I think it always bears repeating and refreshing.

06:19:52.220 The word blood sacrifice or the concept of animal sacrifice immediately sounds very scary and very concerning, and I think a lot of that is cultural context.

06:20:08.380 What kind of needs to be specified here, animal sacrifice in an also true context is the slaughter of an animal for ritual purpose, and that purpose always includes consumption.

06:20:26.500 so you're slaughtering an animal in a sacred way in a sacred context you are typically offering

06:20:38.140 maybe some organs usually splashing of of the animal's blood in as part of the offering and

06:20:45.620 then you're sharing a meal prepared from the animal with the folk or the people who are gathered

06:20:51.760 so it's not as you know scary or other as people might think especially people in farm country who

06:21:00.240 you know have raised their own food or people who are hunters that know about you know dispatching

06:21:05.760 an animal and then distributing you know and then butchering it and eating it and so i don't think

06:21:10.800 there's anything scary about it i would say that you know the appropriate laws and ordinances in

06:21:16.720 in your community are always at play.

06:21:18.840 That has never been something that is required

06:21:21.280 in the Asa Troop Folk Assembly.

06:21:23.040 It's not some secret rite performed 1.00

06:21:25.980 that we forced the Gothar to partake in.

06:21:29.120 None of that's true.

06:21:29.960 I appreciate you asking the question,

06:21:33.120 but no, we don't have any policy against that.

06:21:36.120 We also don't force that on people.

06:21:37.940 And we certainly understand that, you know,

06:21:40.720 that's going to be strange to a lot of people

06:21:43.280 and it's not what's necessary.

06:21:44.840 another note here that I think is really important. A lot of people, and I used to think this too,

06:21:50.940 and this was kind of something that they said now is true early on, was the idea that

06:21:55.980 bloat was taken from the word blood, and it's not. The more of my linguistic, you know,

06:22:05.600 studying and trying to get to the bottom of things in Old Norse,

06:22:09.080 the little dash over top of the o means a lot

06:22:13.480 there is with the no dash that does mean blood and there's with the dash that means to pour out

06:22:24.840 it's to pour out a libation so when you go out when you go back linguistically the original

06:22:32.840 concept of blotar is our gothar pouring out libation offerings to deities so it's funny

06:22:45.040 because i always thought this was the other way around but the more i learned the original

06:22:49.220 act of worship was a pouring out of of sacred liquid and not a blood sacrifice not that either

06:22:56.160 is not appropriate depending on time and place but the fundamental of the root of bloat and uh

06:23:05.040 one of the roots of the word the uh the goths is the people who pour out and bloat being a pouring

06:23:11.840 out of an offering to a deity um also from worth mentioning with the you know animal sacrifice 0.72

06:23:24.000 topic is i mean anyone who eats meat should not be offended by the killing of an animal

06:23:31.680 if it's done with respect anyone who's you know raised a rabbit for meat or has had to put down

06:23:39.200 a pet compassionately or anything like that um what you're talking about is adding more respect

06:23:46.960 to those basic actions the you know pampering of the animal and you know treating it very well

06:23:54.220 i mean maybe feeding it and giving it beer before the right there's all sorts of things that can be

06:24:00.400 done to you know make the animal calm and happy and you know i'm not suggesting that anyone do

06:24:08.740 any kind of political action here but if you look into um industrial meat production and see the way

06:24:16.820 that most of the meat that we eat is actually treated you'll find the concept of what would

06:24:23.460 be an animal sacrifice bloat quite an improvement over that absolutely if you look at what they do 1.00

06:24:30.180 with pigs in china it's pretty rotten i tried the chinese people it seems more than just 1.00

06:24:38.100 disregarding they seem intentionally cruel when dealing with animals um hey there another 1.00

06:24:45.780 question for the week. I have a friend who has questions about Austertroup teachings

06:24:50.740 around polygamy and promiscuity. He is very against both of those things and is wondering

06:24:56.660 what the AFA's stance on them is and what, if anything, the lore says about slash against them.

06:25:04.020 How does this contrast with the more stereotypical quote paganism has no rules unquote

06:25:10.260 stance that a lot of people take. Thanks. Daniel, you want to start on this?

06:25:20.920 Sure. In the past, I think we've read throughout history that

06:25:25.880 I would say men of high stock would take on an extra life for the sole purpose of producing

06:25:35.200 more children to literally grow their tribe and their bloodline i think in the modern context

06:25:43.680 our literal existence isn't really being threatened and i know that we're under

06:25:49.440 i know that we are culturally being attacked but as far as our physical existence not not as much

06:25:55.680 not not through the scale that puts us at the you know on the brink of genocide

06:26:03.200 uh and not only that in the united states and i think in most western countries i think everywhere

06:26:08.320 but africa i believe polygamy is against the law and certainly as a church we don't we wouldn't

06:26:13.200 want to encourage anyone to break the law as far as like our moral stance on it again it was done

06:26:19.360 in the past uh that didn't always have to be men of high status could have been men who needed more

06:26:27.440 hands on the farm. They would take a second wife because you didn't go and hire help. You had to

06:26:34.980 raise it. So it made sense. But I think in today's context, it doesn't. Cliff, do you have anything

06:26:41.960 to add to that? I do. I completely agree about the polygamy. And in the modern sense, I know

06:26:49.720 this question came from the opposite direction where someone was concerned about it and that

06:26:54.400 might be permissive about it but every once in a while we get someone you know who wants us to say

06:26:59.360 that it's okay and um it's always some single guy uh so you know i don't think anyone has any

06:27:08.480 business asking about it until they can prove they can manage one wife and family but also

06:27:13.760 there was a part in there about um promiscuity and i think that that is a section a topic where

06:27:20.560 um it depends a lot you know we're we're not puritans um we have i think a healthy

06:27:31.280 holistic and well-rounded view of sexuality and um you know while some people may have

06:27:40.800 particular preferences as far as who they're going to you know choose as a spouse there's no

06:27:48.720 requirement that people enter into marriage as virgins or anything of the sort um and i do think

06:27:57.280 that there's a certain benefit to young people having an idea of what's what before they become

06:28:05.040 more serious um you know our we're part of nature and we shouldn't deny ourselves what's natural

06:28:15.440 um we also should always with everything think things through and understand what the consequences

06:28:22.420 might be i think that can apply in a couple of ways too and not just in a physical or sexuality

06:28:32.700 stance um you know before you get married i recommend living together you know for six

06:28:39.440 months or a year or whatever because you know that that little annoying habit that cliff does

06:28:43.720 might be okay and kind of cute when you go home every night right but whenever

06:28:49.300 you're there you know with that person every day for a year and you know call

06:28:55.000 it a trial run or try it before you buy it kind of thing but that little

06:28:58.980 annoying habit might be more than that might be just the tip of the iceberg you

06:29:02.740 know I don't think you truly know a person until you you've slept under the

06:29:07.560 same roof with them for a time that is certainly the case with Heather and I

06:29:11.600 i mean we well it wasn't that long but we only knew each other for six months but we uh but we

06:29:18.000 lived together for almost that entirety uh i met her in october of 96 and she was living with me by

06:29:26.960 by the winter of that year and then we got married in spring 97 but i do recommend that

06:29:33.120 and again that that goes out you know maybe broader broader than the question intended but

06:29:38.800 since the topic came up yeah i think it's it's important that we recognize i think that asa true

06:29:45.160 isn't prudish like we we appreciate the beauty of the human form so you know we want people to

06:29:55.120 be respectful when when they're at our halves but i've i've had this conversation i think that both

06:30:00.040 um i'll share with you matt and and witten daniel before that i think that the standard

06:30:04.960 really depends on what stage in life you are at you know if you are a single person looking to

06:30:09.860 attract a mate there is going to be a somewhat different standard of dress than you know for

06:30:15.340 um you know a married person who has children um you know i think context really matters in that

06:30:23.260 and um you know doing things with intent really matters um i do think that marriage is the ideal

06:30:32.300 place to have children um but i don't think that it's some grave crime or sin when when children

06:30:41.680 are brought into the world outside of that i think that all of our white babies are blessings

06:30:47.220 and um you know the githya katie and i we we made our son before we were married and we knew what

06:30:54.980 we were doing we knew how it all worked and um you know it he he's one of the greatest blessings

06:31:01.100 in our lives and he knows the timeline he knows when he was born and he knows when we were married

06:31:06.460 and he knows that he was our ring bearer so um that's not something that i find embarrassing or

06:31:12.780 or disgraceful or anything like that um but at the same time we were quite serious and we knew

06:31:19.500 we were going to be getting married so it wasn't really uh a large risk i think that you know

06:31:26.220 there's plenty of people who are married that may have been in greater risk of their relationships

06:31:31.660 failing when they had children than than we were at the time we did that so i want to um there's

06:31:37.420 a couple of kind of baked ends to this question that i'd like to address used to be we'd have a

06:31:46.780 lot of people come to alsa true from christianity increasingly we have people who are atheists

06:31:53.660 that come to alsatru and sometimes those people don't really approach religion like

06:32:00.860 divine truth they approach it like they look for stuff they like and try to find religion

06:32:09.340 that conforms to stuff they like or that affirms their preferences and that's not really the point

06:32:17.740 The question of what is appropriate in Ausitru is very much what do the Aesir like and what do the Aesir not like?

06:32:27.680 What are the culturally proven tenets of our faith that are imparted to us by our gods and our ancestors?

06:32:36.540 It's not about us pushing our own opinions or strong views on everyone else.

06:32:46.060 So fundamentally, yeah, I think that people want to say, oh, there's degeneracy in the world.

06:32:54.420 I don't like degeneracy.

06:32:55.860 So Alcetru should be super prudish.

06:32:58.960 I'm not saying your friend's saying that, but I do see that from people.

06:33:02.640 Well, no, everyone doesn't have to be a prude because you don't like, quote unquote, degeneracy. 0.93

06:33:08.880 Or for the opposite, you know, like I'm tired of Christian repression. 0.91

06:33:13.160 and Ausatru should be about do whatever you want. 0.95

06:33:15.980 Well, says who?

06:33:16.800 Just because you decided that that's what you like

06:33:19.120 doesn't mean that's in keeping with the way of the gods.

06:33:22.300 So this question isn't about what Matt or Daniel or Cliff

06:33:27.140 think is cool or what we prefer.

06:33:30.060 It's very much about what we've learned as truth

06:33:32.920 through our faith and through interacting with our gods

06:33:35.360 and consuming our lore and listening to the divine.

06:33:43.160 So Cliff's point should be well taken that we're not prudes in Ausatru.

06:33:47.760 That's not the thing.

06:33:51.440 There's no admonition against premarital sex.

06:33:56.620 There's no, you know, it's the worst thing in the world if there were to be polygamy.

06:34:00.940 But what has always been true to our folk is you don't want to be shocking in your behavior to the world around you or to your kin or the people that you want reputation from.

06:34:17.160 Having a good reputation is very important.

06:34:19.280 polygamy in today's world would be very offensive to everyone around you and make you an oddball

06:34:27.840 for no reason without a suitable purpose or a suitable benefit while talking on polygamy

06:34:34.360 one thing that was noted about our ancestors certainly in the time of tacitus was how

06:34:43.240 remarkable they were for not practicing widespread polygamy and for being faithful to their wife

06:34:50.640 and having one wife and having marital fidelity was important to our ancestors.

06:34:59.380 Any relationship that you are in, being a person of your word and holding up the expectations

06:35:06.320 that you've agreed upon with your partner or with, you know, the people you've made oaths to

06:35:12.800 is very important um polygamy we don't see that in the lore a bunch we don't see a lot of that

06:35:21.680 that was not the norm in any out of true period prior that we can think of now did it happen as

06:35:29.440 far as affairs of state with chieftains or with kings certainly but even then it was not the norm

06:35:36.480 that was a uh an exception and not the rule of behavior i found a lot of people are very

06:35:43.280 concerned with polygamy in today's world but often the people that want to get to have us 0.56

06:35:52.480 say it's okay for you to have multiple wives these people can't get one girlfriend let alone

06:35:58.480 like multiple wives um so yeah that's not that's not a thing that's endorsed by also true it's not

06:36:08.240 a necessary thing in also true it's not given any any great approval in also true and in today's

06:36:14.960 context um no the astro folk assembly doesn't accept polygamy because it is shocking and jarring

06:36:24.080 without purpose to those around us and it damages our reputation in a significant way

06:36:32.080 um as it goes to uh you know promiscuity again reality is very important to us as far as

06:36:42.800 reputation there is no tenant and outs to true that everyone must be virginal but 0.88

06:36:47.840 But virginity is important in women, oftentimes, especially at young ages with people's first and beginning relationships.

06:36:58.680 It does have a value and a reputation as being particularly or notably promiscuous is frowned upon.

06:37:08.460 And it does cut a different way for women than it does for men.

06:37:12.460 So maintaining a good reputation and being somebody who is well thought of and adds value to your mate is really important.

06:37:23.580 So, yeah, you don't want to be notable for your promiscuity. 0.86

06:37:28.540 That doesn't mean you have to be a virgin, but it does mean that, you know, you don't want a bad reputation for being slutty either.

06:37:38.980 um the other thing that i'd like to say on that is we also have to be realistic 0.62

06:37:44.660 in the world that we live in today you know in our ancestors time people would be getting

06:37:50.340 together and starting a family and having children by you know 16 years old in you know

06:37:56.380 iron age times that's not the world we live in today um we have a lot of people getting together

06:38:04.380 and finding their mate in their 30s or their 40s, and that would be very odd for you to find a mate

06:38:11.980 of your age in your 30s and 40s who is virginal. That would be a very strange occurrence in the

06:38:18.880 world that we live in. So keeping those things in mind. But yeah, the Ask True Folk Assembly doesn't

06:38:24.900 celebrate promiscuity and we don't condone polygamy, but in large part those things are

06:38:35.280 very contextualized by the world in which you live and the maintaining a good reputation with

06:38:43.520 the people in our families that we surround ourselves with. And I think that does add a

06:38:48.300 of context to both of those situations are there any also true holy sites in the united states

06:38:56.940 aside from our afa hoffs and sigerheim do you guys know of any other holy sites

06:39:05.820 in the u.s there are a few alleged rune stones in the midwest area that i don't know if i'd go so

06:39:14.060 far as to say that they're also true holy sites but they're at least noteworthy also something

06:39:19.900 that comes to mind to me is the uh the ruins of the the vinlander settlements in labrador

06:39:28.540 but not exactly holy sites but

06:39:32.860 something that are probably worth going to at least once in your life

06:39:39.580 yeah daniel do you have any any thoughts

06:39:44.060 uh no aside from the ones that cliff just mentioned i'd forgotten about the uh the

06:39:49.960 rune stones in the midwest yeah i'm you know i i wish i had some cool like secret holy site to

06:39:57.780 tell you guys about there are undoubt so as far as big ones that we would all agree are holy sites

06:40:05.240 i don't think so as far as noteworthy places um again the uh the havener runestone in uh in oklahoma

06:40:19.720 and

06:40:23.080 what's the one in minnesota it'll come to me it's late guys i apologize there's a couple of runestones

06:40:29.000 that people have a kissinger or something like that kensington kensington thank you so those two

06:40:35.560 are of also true interest i don't know that anybody counts them as holy sites and there's

06:40:42.680 question to both of their authenticity um what i will say is there's a number of places that

06:40:48.760 individuals uh groups of people have done bloat over time like traditionally or lots there's

06:40:57.800 places that are special but i don't know that rise to the level of you know really calling

06:41:03.720 an house a true holy site um there's certainly the grave sites of a number of our heroes

06:41:12.600 um i think those are special places uh but i was gonna say a number of our heroes i don't know i

06:41:19.960 know elsie's uh interned in canada i don't think that we have any other heroes that are here i

06:41:28.600 know that our two gothar that have passed their you know their graves are interesting like of

06:41:39.240 special note for alsatru but forgrins is at odin's off um but yeah there's local spots that people

06:41:49.000 have done ritual out for a long time that i think are are probably special or you know more special

06:41:56.280 than your run-of-the-mill park or other place i know there's a spot in florida at the

06:42:04.920 fairchild oak that i did a lot of ritual at that i think's a special place i don't know that it

06:42:11.160 counts as an austral holy site but at some place that's always special to me because we did a great

06:42:17.080 number of bloats there and it has a special place in my heart so i think there's some places like

06:42:22.360 that certain first thing that i thought of me is the the kennewick man site perhaps

06:42:30.680 not quite that level but it's a place that um is significant sure the first one that popped

06:42:37.400 the first thing that popped in my head and it's in relation to the special sites that you mentioned

06:42:42.840 are culturally or americana or just powerful sites specifically one that the erickson's

06:42:49.960 go to all the time uh that was the first thing that popped in my head gettysburg

06:42:57.000 yeah there's um alpha true site but it is a powerful and cultural and important site

06:43:03.960 so i'll say this too um also true as far as sites that are sacred to the gods

06:43:09.880 is a little bit different than sites that are special and set apart um graveyards and battlefields

06:43:18.840 generally are spiritually elevated those are places where um the dead are in a fundamental

06:43:29.400 you know there's a thinning of the veil there and a portal if you will to the the remembrance sites

06:43:37.160 So the remain, people's remains and their presence in the afterlife.

06:43:44.820 Those places are special.

06:43:46.960 I think that, you know, it counts as a holy site.

06:43:51.600 If you have a place where your ancestors are buried or are interred and you go there, that's a special place.

06:43:58.520 There's a place where a number of my ancestors are buried, or their ashes were scattered, that's very important to me and special.

06:44:07.500 I don't think that counts as like an ausitru holy site, but it is a spiritually special site to me.

06:44:14.840 So I think there's things along those lines.

06:44:18.640 Does the AFA have a guided self-study of lore, like when reading interpretations of meanings and things to reflect on?

06:44:26.420 no not in a written way the closest that we have at present and i know this isn't exactly what

06:44:34.700 you're looking for but uh witness fawn and i are going through our lore on this broadcast

06:44:41.300 twice a month and we have covered quite a bit so far in the eddas as well as a il saga

06:44:51.300 and the Vulsunga Saga, and we'll continue doing that.

06:44:56.240 If you listen to those, we read those passages of lore

06:44:59.920 and add, you know, quite a bit of commentary.

06:45:05.020 I hope those might be useful to you.

06:45:07.880 We don't have some kind of a, like a formalized guided study,

06:45:13.000 guided self-study thing on that.

06:45:14.660 And that might be something very, very cool

06:45:17.720 if we had that set up, but we don't at present.

06:45:21.300 sorry i read that one we've got just a couple more here guys

06:45:28.040 sorry i'm sorting through the questions and the number of them we answered during the broadcast

06:45:38.900 uh how do you guys think being in house to true has impacted your lives and changed you as a

06:45:47.680 person cliff uh it has made me more confident more happy it gave me a sense of purpose in life

06:45:58.380 i mean just it's made me the man that i am today in in so many ways when i when i first stumbled

06:46:07.520 into finding asa true i was not confident i wasn't sure of myself which i guess is the same thing but

06:46:16.380 mean just as far as like what what was what was my purpose you know i had uh

06:46:26.140 i didn't really have i didn't really have anything to live for except for like the next paycheck and

06:46:31.020 the next party like there wasn't a whole lot going on like football sunday it was pretty shallow um

06:46:40.540 and and getting involved in Asatru and being part of something bigger than myself that really

06:46:48.860 matters and that you know that that has a connection back to my ancestors and that

06:46:57.500 will connect my children and their descendants back to me and our our shared ancestors

06:47:04.560 has just been irreplaceable in my life.

06:47:09.080 You know, my family was founded in Asatru.

06:47:13.600 I can't imagine my life without it at this point.

06:47:19.000 Like, I'm here to stay.

06:47:23.720 What about you, Daniel?

06:47:28.500 Kind of the same as Cliff.

06:47:30.000 um by the time i joined afa and and by the time i became out so true i was already a father of

06:47:39.960 three and had been married for you know well over a decade hell over two decades by that point

06:47:47.120 and uh yeah so my quote the jamie johnson song my life had just become a routine

06:47:55.620 it was you know clock in clock out eat dinner rinse and repeat kind of living for the weekend

06:48:03.300 kind of thing and i remember after becoming also true we were unpacking uh what was our christmas

06:48:10.500 tree was going to be our you know our yule tree our first our first uh celebration is as an also

06:48:16.980 true family uh you know all of the you know like the balls on the tree were like you know cool

06:48:23.220 little trinkets of like sports teams and stuff that i followed that you know family members

06:48:28.580 had got me which were real nice you know nice gifts and all i appreciate that but i can remember

06:48:33.460 like looking at that and thinking like up to this point this is all i have to say about who i am

06:48:39.860 like you know it's a silly example but like my twitter bio it was like

06:48:44.180 dedicated dad and die hard carolina panthers fan that's all i had to say about who i was

06:48:49.860 and since you know finding Alcatru it's more about big picture stuff I'm thinking so far in

06:48:58.340 advance I'm thinking generations after my passing and you know honoring and recognizing and treating

06:49:05.760 with reverence the generations that came before me as far as what it's done for me personally as

06:49:11.720 you know as a man I think the confidence thing for sure like Cliff said in 2013 when I first

06:49:19.100 became austro i had all these ideas of what this looked like and it doesn't look the way that that

06:49:25.880 i had imagined it to but all all for the better uh would i be here on a six hour and 49 minute

06:49:34.000 podcast with uh two austro luminaries at some point i'd have laughed in your face um

06:49:40.920 thank you i appreciate the compliment um what i've performed bloat in front of 150 people

06:49:49.600 including the father of modern ossaroo in california i laughed at you um it's certainly

06:49:56.440 given me more confidence i think the other thing that i've discussed this a bunch you know at afa

06:50:01.640 events and probably here too that surrounding yourself with successful people is a is a key

06:50:08.100 and I think the key to success.

06:50:10.340 When you're surrounded by successful people, that becomes contagious.

06:50:13.520 You know the whole crabs in a bucket thing?

06:50:15.240 Well, this works the opposite way.

06:50:17.240 You know, we're here to pull the crab out of the bucket

06:50:19.140 and, you know, the fish out of the aquarium and back into the ocean.

06:50:25.380 Yeah, I – it's hard to even think about the question in the way that it's asked

06:50:36.340 Because this has been the context, and in a lot of ways, the entirety of my life for a very long time.

06:50:51.160 I have built my family around Ausatru. It has given context and meaning to so, so very much of who I am.

06:51:09.980 it has tremendously blessed me in every way imaginable our gods are amazing and being in

06:51:17.320 their service has enhanced my life in ways i couldn't imagine my life without uh alsa true

06:51:25.640 these this is where i said this where i met my wife this is what i've raised my daughter with

06:51:32.480 This is what I've built all of my friendships around and upon.

06:51:40.760 It's, you know, it is fully integrated into who I am, and I couldn't imagine myself separated from it, and I wouldn't want to.

06:51:51.740 This has been the greatest possible blessing I could hope to imagine.

06:51:57.020 something i'll say for anyone who's new or you know been at this for for less time than we have

06:52:06.140 is that this the blessings don't manifest all at once um it it was sort of like you know the

06:52:14.520 the confidence thing that i mentioned i didn't realize i was more confident until someone told

06:52:20.080 me like it's not the sort of thing that's like a switch that's flipped but then after being

06:52:26.960 involved in this for so long and then looking back and just seeing a stranger at the beginning

06:52:33.020 of that journey basically um you know it's like oh my gosh there's there's all these blessings

06:52:41.260 that happened to me on the way there's all these things that i'm you know i'm just not who i was

06:52:47.260 and it's it's it's for the better um it if if you're just getting into this make sure that you

06:52:54.540 keep in mind that these things will take time they take devotion

06:52:58.060 um and you won't notice them until suddenly you notice them all at once

06:53:05.980 yeah it's not a one-time thing it is very much a lifestyle thing and it displays itself you know

06:53:16.300 exactly like, like Cliff mentioned. I've mentioned this

06:53:25.900 before, but the key is to make this a holistic part of what you

06:53:29.920 do. One of the things that happens and it's because of

06:53:33.880 also true, but it's also because of aligning your life with it.

06:53:41.740 The more all the pieces work together

06:53:46.300 It fits in a special way that blesses you greater than the sum of its parts, if that makes sense.

06:53:53.540 If you are an also true employee and an also true son and an also true brother and an also true husband and an also true father and an also true friend.

06:54:03.080 the more you live this authentically in every aspect of your life, all of the pieces fit

06:54:10.560 together and they work together towards making your life something truly special. And the more

06:54:17.780 of those pieces that you have working together, the more you will notice the blessings in your

06:54:22.260 life in a really significant way. I think it's really important that it's not about calling

06:54:28.260 yourself alsatru it's about making the effort to go to the hoth to go to that moot to drive across

06:54:37.220 the state and to actually do alsatru words are wind words are wind deeds are iron i mentioned

06:54:48.660 it earlier some some of the events that i've participated in that i got the most personal

06:54:54.820 reward out of were the ones where i worked the hardest the ones where i had to miss a speaker

06:55:01.460 because i was getting something set up for a gothe's below this is going back i was a folk

06:55:07.460 builder once i was the guy who had to make the fire or had to move the benches up to the fire pit or

06:55:13.220 get the dining hall ready or or whatever it was but you know

06:55:18.020 keeping yourself busy with good work it really can be fulfilling absolutely

06:55:37.380 so the next thing up here um and this is from finn wraith where do you guys

06:55:42.980 see the afa going in another few decades what is your prediction for the future

06:55:48.020 also greetings from prague czech republic cliff where do you see it in few what are the plans

06:55:54.980 for future where do you see this in a few decades well i'll pander a little bit i definitely see

06:56:00.820 a half in czechia um i think um no but realistically and seriously i think that's a

06:56:08.980 that's a possibility we need people on the ground that will help build that but

06:56:12.260 But we want to have temples accessible to as many of our folk as possible, and that includes getting out of the United States and into Europe and into Australia and into, you know, the white South American countries and anywhere else that our people are.

06:56:31.880 You know, maybe in 20 years there will be a Hoff on Mars if those projects are successful.

06:56:38.660 I don't know.

06:56:39.120 We've got to get one of our people to sign up and go.

06:56:43.220 but i don't know every time that we establish a new hoff and then therefore you know subdivide

06:56:50.900 at least one sometimes more than one of our of our hoff districts it's about where we have the

06:56:57.140 leadership in place and it's about where we have the congregation and support in place to make that

06:57:03.620 hoff work there needs to be someone there to preside over services and to preside over um you

06:57:10.100 you know, the food pantries and to maintain the building and, you know, to show up and worship

06:57:16.520 there. But it's also about reducing the travel distance for everyone who's in between these

06:57:22.800 places, making it so that, you know, the farthest away, rather making it so that the closest Hof

06:57:30.060 to as many of our people is reduced as best we can. You know, it has to have those fundamentals

06:57:37.700 there there needs to be a gothi or a giphea and there needs to be people who will care for the

06:57:41.940 place um and it needs to make sense that someone's going to actually show up there regularly but

06:57:48.020 in addition to that you know it really is how many people can we concentrate and so it would be you

06:57:54.820 know a half in every town and every city in every country that's probably not the next few decades

06:58:03.700 that's a little bit more of a project but i might be surprised by that we thought that getting

06:58:10.100 new grange hall after you know 35 years of efforts or more um was this major milestone

06:58:19.140 and you could have easily at that time expected that it would take another 35 to get a second a

06:58:24.820 second temple somewhere and it didn't it took five and then that that pace has been accelerating

06:58:33.700 So I don't I don't see any reason that on average that pace wouldn't continue to accelerate as the number of people who come home to Asitru and their serious commitment to that both increase.

06:58:48.880 But that's the biggest thing, you know, we're a church, so we want to build churches and we want people to be going to those churches.

06:58:56.400 i think that's the primary thing um maybe the also true academy completes its k through 12

06:59:03.280 program and starts to offer some higher education programs that's a huge undertaking that we don't

06:59:09.760 have the resources for right now but it would be awesome if at some point we did some a place like

06:59:15.520 sigerheim could make that possible you know that there could actually be an also true college or

06:59:21.680 something like that um you know i'd like to see more people move close to the hofs that we already

06:59:30.400 have and to the ones that we established so that we can you know do more things like maintain a

06:59:36.880 community garden or have a lending or sit in library at each of our hofs that's used on a

06:59:43.600 a regular basis um to have school houses for the ossaroo academy at each of our hoffs would be an

06:59:52.820 amazing thing to do um you know and we'll see how long it takes to do all those things but i think

06:59:58.520 that if we're doing this right those are all natural obvious things maybe one day we'll have

07:00:04.400 an ossaroo hospital i mean these are all things that religious institutions do and those should

07:00:10.220 all be on our list of eventually we'll want to do them something else that i think is important is

07:00:15.240 that we continue to organize asa true um you know i sometimes describe the asa true folk assembly as

07:00:25.420 an organizing religion because a lot of what we should be is still aspirational like we know that

07:00:33.160 our job is just getting started right um so having a professional full-time paid clergy would be a

07:00:41.400 big part of that because then you know if each of our kothar could put in 40 to 60 hours a week

07:00:47.700 without impoverishing their families we would get so much done um parsonages play into that too as

07:00:55.840 a way to you know make sure that our priesthood has the you know we already have the full

07:01:03.340 moral support of our church but the full support of the the folk and the australian folk assembly

07:01:11.460 in the way that you know the way that the christians do um that sort of stuff would

07:01:18.340 would really propel us forward so i know that's a long list of it and i don't think decades is

07:01:24.600 a few decades is realistic for all of them but again if this if this accelerates then

07:01:30.140 we could do all that and less than that so it's we've got two more questions here and we're going

07:01:37.980 to wrap this up um cliff stole any and everything i was about to say i think he answered that

07:01:46.340 question as thoroughly as can be and i agree with all of the things that he mentioned uh

07:01:52.840 like completely not jokingly what Cliff said. As far as Ask True Artists have a question

07:02:01.980 for family members that have married outside of the folk and have kids, do we have a concept of

07:02:08.780 what happens with the child's soul and how do you navigate the discussion when they discern that you

07:02:14.980 don't think that they should have married outside of their folk and that these kids therefore should

07:02:21.440 not have been born. No, and I think that's an unfair question. And I don't fault you for asking

07:02:29.280 a question. That's not what I mean. But when people outside do things that we instruct them

07:02:36.400 ought not be done, and then ask us how to manage the consequence or expect us to have

07:02:44.000 the answer to the consequence of those decisions that they made we can speculate but the kind of

07:02:52.120 fundamental thing at the end isn't what everyone wants to hear but it is a factual truth those kids

07:02:59.080 should not have been born that relationship should not have occurred those things should not exist

07:03:05.000 and it's not really our job to flesh out what the consequences of that look like metaphysically when

07:03:17.100 you know deities and ancestors start divvying up souls uh in the afterlife um and i know that it

07:03:26.300 would be great to have a more complete answer and it's compelling to just make one up but i don't

07:03:32.660 think we can do that. I think we have to be led with discernment through interaction with our

07:03:39.780 gods and through understanding of our lore, and I think that we don't know how that fleshes out on

07:03:46.600 the other side and just how that works, but it's not a favorable situation. It's not one that we

07:03:54.380 would have recommended or been in support of, and then when, you know, if family are uncomfortable

07:04:01.740 with that, that's something that I think we try to navigate with the best tact that we can. I don't

07:04:10.960 think it's appropriate or advisable to be rude or to be disrespectful. It's certainly something that

07:04:18.000 the person in your family asking you has a lot of stake in and a lot of feelings deeply involved,

07:04:24.580 and perhaps so do you. So I don't think it's something to be rude or flippant or not compassionate

07:04:31.400 about in how you answer. And the thing is, it already is, it already exists. So whatever's

07:04:39.460 going to happen is what's going to happen. I don't think it's your job to, you know,

07:04:46.940 you can choose how much or how little to interact with that family member or those people who've

07:04:53.220 made those choices. And you can choose how much to engage or how much not to. But there's no,

07:04:59.760 you're not being impelled or compelled by the Astro Folk Assembly to treat members of your

07:05:07.180 family poorly. And I wouldn't advise that you do so. So it's a long roundabout way to say,

07:05:15.380 no, we don't have a full conception of what happens with that child's soul. I think a lot

07:05:22.800 of that depends on the mixture, and how mixed, and all kind of intangibles that we could

07:05:29.420 speculate on, but we don't really have good grounding to speculate on, other than don't

07:05:36.300 get in mixed-race relationships, and don't make mixed-race children, and try to avoid

07:05:41.340 that circumstance. I know it's not satisfying, but it is the best answer that we have right 1.00

07:05:46.860 um the last thing here does the afa have an opinion on the norena society and its attempts

07:05:56.540 to reconstruct teutonic mythology in mark purrier's writings

07:06:05.580 yes but i want to be nuanced and separate two things mark purrier is a really nice guy he's

07:06:13.180 always been very kind to me he's been very kind to the house true folk assembly he has been a

07:06:18.380 gentleman in my dealings with him he has been very respectful i genuinely like mark i don't

07:06:26.060 think he is an evil person i don't think he is a bad person what i wish is that mark purrier and

07:06:33.500 the well-meaning members of the norena society would join the house of true folk assembly

07:06:37.980 I wish they would get on the team and help us move forward.

07:06:42.600 Appreciate Nick putting the link up.

07:06:45.240 I would appreciate if they would get on the team and help us all move forward and we could, you know, have meaningful discussions amongst one another and get people squared away to where we're all going the right direction. 0.90

07:06:57.660 Outside of that, no, I think the Narina Society is wrongheaded in their approach.

07:07:04.100 I think that they approach religion from, like, studying about religion and not from practicing religion.

07:07:18.500 I think that they try to, and I don't think this is done evilly, I just think this is done through a not religious lens.

07:07:28.940 We talk about directionality, but I think they attempt to reduce the gods into quantifiable pieces that fit into their theories as opposed to advance their understanding in order to meet the gods and elevate their understanding in a way that approaches a closer understanding of the gods.

07:07:53.140 If you treat the gods as academic subjects or literary devices or whatever, then it's a lot easier to take liberties with those things to make them more digestible.

07:08:06.600 And I think that inadvertently, that's what the Norena Society absolutely does. 0.82

07:08:11.280 I think that their work is detrimental to the development of Ausatru, because I think some of it is wrong, and I think their existence is in and of itself a distraction from us all moving forward together in a unified way that best pleases the Aesir. 0.97

07:08:32.780 Do either of you guys have thoughts that you'd like to share about the Narana Society or their writings with folks? 0.91

07:08:41.280 I do. They'll be brief, too. And these are my opinions. They're not the position of the Austro Folk Assembly. But one thing, I've never really cared for their co-opting of the name Norena Society.

07:08:59.980 I personally find it confusing to people who are trying to find out what's what and a bit disrespectful to the original one.

07:09:09.800 I don't I just don't care for it. That's my personal opinion on it.

07:09:16.340 Also, I mentioned this in the chat way back. I forget how many hours ago.

07:09:21.760 I have a personal preference for older translations of the Eddas and our lore for a lot of reasons.

07:09:29.980 um i'm not against new ones but i think that they need to be

07:09:37.500 i think they need to be done with a respect for the original material trying to change it

07:09:43.420 is wrong um you know if someone thinks they can legitimately do a better translation from

07:09:52.140 old norse into english by getting more of the actual fact right and doing a better job of

07:10:00.540 maintaining the poetic meter then okay go for it but i don't find that there's a dearth of

07:10:07.180 translations that requires things like norena society or jackson crawford i just i'm disinclined

07:10:15.980 to pick up the new ones i prefer the older ones like going back over a hundred years

07:10:22.140 all right daniel do you have any thoughts or feelings about the norena society you would

07:10:28.060 like to share with the class nothing that hadn't already been shared except that uh

07:10:32.660 yes mark's a nice guy yeah that's the thing i don't people ask questions i don't want to give

07:10:38.800 an honest answer i'm not trying to beat up on those folks or whatever i don't think that they're

07:10:44.840 all or mostly, you know, bad or ill-intentioned people. I think that they don't, they do a lot

07:10:53.160 more arguing over obscure theories and points to where they, when you approach religion through an

07:11:02.980 academic lens and not through the lens of faith, it's very sexy to like come up with really

07:11:12.060 obscure theories and then be excited about your obscure theory because it doesn't really matter

07:11:20.120 it's not really offending anyone if you're not really religious and i think they would probably

07:11:25.660 say they are but i don't think their actions show that i don't know of a track record of

07:11:31.540 actually worshiping and participating in a gift cycle with the gods and i think that if they did

07:11:37.760 And if they did that more regularly, then they would come to, I don't know, come to better conclusions and hopefully come home to the Oustru Folk Assembly.

07:11:49.300 And I would invite them all to do so.

07:11:53.900 There's a lot of talk about what if and what Oustru could look like or should look like or might look like.

07:12:00.520 Well, this is what it does look like.

07:12:02.560 Get over here and get on the team and let's do this together.

07:12:05.740 It's always going to evolve and hopefully become, you know, better and better and better.

07:12:11.040 We want to get ever closer to that perfection that's worthy of our gods.

07:12:17.520 But that's a process that's done through actual practicing Ausitru. 0.85

07:12:23.300 If you don't have the relationship with the Iser, then it's not really Ausitru.

07:12:29.100 But I appreciate everybody being here tonight.

07:12:32.580 you guys last

07:12:34.060 men standing so thank you guys

07:12:36.820 for making it to the end of this

07:12:38.840 program it's been the longest one we've said

07:12:40.880 there you go

07:12:42.680 it's even later for you

07:12:44.740 fellas Nick

07:12:46.080 we know that you were there I appreciate

07:12:48.540 you're making it all the way through

07:12:50.580 with us and it's actually not

07:12:52.540 the longest episode though we reached

07:12:54.460 720 something oh I know I just

07:12:56.680 said it's the longest we've done in a while

07:12:58.260 you guys want to talk for another 20 minutes

07:13:00.200 no I'm alright

07:13:01.660 um but thank you guys so much no thank you guys so much for being here um i have thoroughly enjoyed

07:13:09.040 it i hope that the audience enjoys it uh i appreciate all of the efforts everybody put in

07:13:16.040 to make tonight's broadcast but also to build our house of true folk assembly over these last 30

07:13:23.260 years and all those steps that came before it um so we have much more in store thank you guys for

07:13:29.820 being here. Uh, I'm glad that we're doing this together. Uh, yeah, I'm looking forward to talking

07:13:36.340 to you guys next week. Until then, uh, hail the Iseer, hail the folk, hail the AFA, and remember

07:13:43.900 victory never sleeps.

07:13:59.820 We'll be right back.

07:14:29.820 Transcription by CastingWords

07:14:59.820 Thank you.

07:15:29.820 Thank you.

07:15:59.820 Thank you.

07:16:29.820 Transcription by CastingWords

Asatru Folk Assembly - August 14, 2025

8⧸13⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 162 - Three Decades of Faith

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