Asatru Folk Assembly - 8⧸23⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 59 - ᚷᚹᚺ

00:00:00.000 This is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

00:00:07.000 This is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

00:00:15.000 We'll be right back.

00:00:45.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:15.000 Thank you.

00:01:45.000 Thank you.

00:02:15.000 Thank you.

00:02:45.000 uh hello everyone

00:03:06.120 good evening for those on the east coast or good yeah good evening on the east coast and i know

00:03:12.040 The rest of the country is following on as the sun sets, and I hope everybody's having

00:03:21.120 a good night.

00:03:22.040 Tonight, we're going to be covering the next three sets of runes.

00:03:30.060 Yes, sir, I was rolling.

00:03:31.600 well we're we were um we are definitely covering the next set three sets of runes but i don't do

00:03:41.880 the sweet intro with all the info drop that else here or go they does so that's why i was sweating

00:03:47.800 a little no i appreciate it i'm apologize for my tardiness today i appreciate that you got it

00:03:54.640 covered. I was running a little bit behind on a couple of things. I suppose news since last time

00:04:02.000 I spoke with y'all is we had an amazing Freyfaxi event up at Baldershof. Where to go with it? It

00:04:14.200 was sure where to start. It was a really, really good event. It was spiritually powerful. The

00:04:20.700 rituals were well-received. We oathed in Allison and Cody Clausen as folk builders. We oathed in

00:04:33.600 Christian Penner as a folk builder and Stephen Mundy of Pennsylvania as a folk builder.

00:04:39.800 We also ordained Nathan Erlandson as our newest AFA Goethe.

00:04:44.660 um two baby namings happened and those are always a a favorite i was privileged to be

00:04:55.700 able to conduct one of those and witten callahan conducted the other

00:04:58.900 very nice hotter and more humid than you'd think it would be in minnesota this time that time of

00:05:07.880 year. I am impressed and envious of Witten Svahn's Sigurheim banner behind him, and now his head is

00:05:19.040 wreathed in golden oaken laurels. I know oaken laurels is not the right term, but it gives the

00:05:25.320 impression to the podcast audience. But yeah, no, very exciting.

00:05:31.320 um we were we were talking about that backstage a little bit i was trying to

00:05:39.480 uh i was going to use the thor saw flag but it's not i had it outside so it was kind of weathered

00:05:46.200 so um this you've got the victory laurels within a black sun halo it's glorious indeed you have

00:05:55.080 You have frocked me with, with this.

00:05:58.900 I'm very, very excited about how that flag turned out in particular.

00:06:05.140 Other stuff since last time, and I don't know if Nick has the graphics still,

00:06:10.460 but you guys have been generous.

00:06:12.180 We have made good contributions and good progress towards that mower.

00:06:17.580 We were asking you guys about fundraising on last time.

00:06:21.060 So I appreciate that.

00:06:22.160 I want to thank everybody who has done the donations for that.

00:06:30.860 Coming up, we have Frere's Harvest Feast next month in September up in Montana at folk builder Tyler Heinlein's homestead that he and his family are building there.

00:06:45.720 That should be a very exciting, nice event.

00:06:47.520 and we also have the next thing coming up after that is going to be winter nights

00:06:54.660 in at Sigurheim this year for the first time. Some plans fell through to have it a little bit

00:07:01.960 closer to where it typically is and because we own the site and the plus of it's great to get

00:07:09.100 people down there and be able to show off that amazing property we're going to be celebrating

00:07:13.240 winter nights at Sigurheim for the first time. And so that'll be very exciting. Githya Katie

00:07:19.880 Erickson plans to do the desear bloat in the graveyard at Sigurheim, which will add extra

00:07:28.140 power to the ritual. And I think that'll be really special. So I invite you guys to come out if you

00:07:33.820 can. Also, be aware, and time is short on this, but in the next couple of days coming up on this

00:07:40.140 weekend we have a texas harvest feast in the dallas area if you can make it to that i know

00:07:47.020 that folk builder justin day has put a lot into that and is very excited to see everybody out

00:07:53.660 there that can make it if you would like to and you are a member you should be there if you are

00:07:58.860 not a member and you'd still like to go make sure you talk to your local folk builder and they can

00:08:03.740 get you all set up and squared away um as usual we are broadcasting on entropy youtube odyssey

00:08:14.220 twitter and vk and rumble and you can participate in super chats or send donations over on rumble

00:08:25.900 or on entropy and we really appreciate those guys um also wherever you find this

00:08:32.460 like it share it subscribe try to get this out to as much as we can i don't necessarily think that

00:08:39.260 algorithms are always applied favorably to us so every little bit a bit of effort on your guys part

00:08:46.860 helps and without further ado uh witness fawn if you will start i believe our first room this week

00:08:57.340 is gabo gabo yeah there's this is a a truly wonderful rune this is i think when we begin to

00:09:07.420 see the the coalescence of the cosmos we see the coalescence of the gods um and it's arguable as

00:09:16.140 to where that could be done but for people who don't know what the rune means right out the gate

00:09:22.700 basic it means the gift it means the transactional gift it means the balance between two parties

00:09:30.220 or two forces um so the the power of of the runes remember that the the highest lord olvin when he

00:09:41.180 when he gained access to the understanding of the fabrics of the universe through the the

00:09:46.380 sounds and uh and and understanding the the way that the universe isn't it's a a series of powers

00:09:55.020 that can dissipate and coagulate like an orchestra uh and that the gods are uniquely connected to it

00:10:02.300 just as we are uniquely connected to it it's just their understanding is so much more vast um so a

00:10:08.300 lot of people misunderstand the way that we view the divinity um of the gods they they they are

00:10:15.740 coming from a Christian background where they think of like just a God that's so obscure in

00:10:20.900 relative thought that it's, you know, just everything and anyone or you flip the light

00:10:26.020 and the darkness and all that. Whereas our divinity is seen as, again, a transactional

00:10:32.140 existence between the cosmos. Imagine as if all things that do flow together, flow together with

00:10:44.200 the intent of interaction polarity that's why we see things as gendered that's why we see

00:10:50.560 the masculine and the feminine and all of that and that all takes place in the gift so the gift

00:10:56.460 could be simple and it could be clean as to what you think of but it can be brought out far more

00:11:03.760 um whether we're talking about um the potential space in uh in between uh most bellheim and

00:11:12.860 nivelheim and uh that potential space in which the the interaction between those polaric forces

00:11:20.380 those those primal pieces of the universe waiting to be put into play again as they do in and out

00:11:27.260 like breathing in and out it's it's a consistent thing and that potential space in the middle is

00:11:32.700 is the gift room and so what often happens or understanding about the gift room is that there is

00:11:39.260 a give and a take there is oftentimes um uh dissipation and dissipation on one side

00:11:46.140 coagulation on another the these things require movement so this is the gift room uh sometimes it

00:11:54.060 can be symbolized as um i've heard people say like you know it's the signature at the end of

00:11:59.100 a contract you know the old cartoon x or um some people have seen it as um uh hands grasping

00:12:08.300 across from each other in symbology um some people have taken it as you know the power

00:12:13.580 from above and the power from below meeting in the middle or powers from the sides coalescing

00:12:19.660 in the center um but this rune as we we were talking about before in the other uh vns

00:12:29.260 broadcasts we were talking about the story of the runes and and the movement of the runes

00:12:35.900 So, continuing on with that theme is, you know, when we were last talking about Raido and the circular movements, I would definitely say that Gabo's movement is coming into center.

00:12:58.780 It's a condensing to the center point.

00:13:01.560 um it's it is i think one of the things and this really struck me when we were having our

00:13:09.740 conversations um matt when you were talking about the intent of the austro folk assemblies to always

00:13:16.600 kind of look forward and look upwards and and to keep our head above as you know things kind of

00:13:24.320 come you know it's um not to get mired into a lot of the things that are going around and always

00:13:30.060 focusing on the gods um this is that point that point where you kind of center and upwards because

00:13:38.140 the the rune that precedes it is absolutely a decro a declaration to the to the heavens if you

00:13:45.020 will so this uh this rune can mean a lot of things so in the story of the runes when we talked about

00:13:52.460 the setting of the sun and the setting of the moon and the setting of the stars and the rotations of

00:13:56.780 all things in movement or even if you would look at the sun and all the planets moving and

00:14:02.220 everything in rotation um as the gods have created the organization of all things in their track

00:14:10.060 this is the point i think where there comes a problem and i have spoken about this a lot

00:14:20.220 in the idea that understanding that the gods when they fight um this is a hugely important thing

00:14:28.780 it's a part of the overall process that needed to happen um when we move away from the tripartite

00:14:35.980 in the center which is um and of humla and emir and when emir is slain that tripartite

00:14:45.420 shifts and it drops and what ends up happening is the center has the divinity of the vanir

00:14:53.940 and the vanir are natural law the inescapable natural law and the holy esser are cosmic order

00:15:03.900 and these two are separate in this time frame and what ends up happening is polaric forces

00:15:11.060 They go against each other and they fight. They fight a bloody war, a terrible war. And in the conclusion, there is a peaceful contract that's aligned, that cosmic order and natural law combine together and pave the way ultimately for the creation of humanity,

00:15:39.380 um the creation of the folk and all of those things aligning with weird but we'll we'll get

00:15:46.000 to that um so a lot of people you know view this as like this is the war between the gods um some

00:15:53.040 people say no this is the sacrifice of odin when he uh places himself on the tree in heaven which

00:15:59.160 is yggdrasil um after it's lifted up during the slaying of him here um he correlates himself to

00:16:08.900 the center piece um really the only part of the tripartite that of the of the of gununga gap that

00:16:15.700 survives and um and finds and unlocks the key um so it is that as well and and in essence the

00:16:24.900 stories can be viewed as like epochs or or um um you know essences of time in a it's undefinable

00:16:35.620 it's um an age if you will so all of these things could be kind of correlated together

00:16:43.380 so gifting whether it's in sacrifice whether it's through contractual uh treaty through the balance

00:16:50.820 of forces of of above and in the middle um between natural law and cosmic order there's a lot going

00:16:58.740 on in this room it can be as simple as you need it but it could be far bigger if you were if you're

00:17:04.260 willing to go and delve down that path. So yeah, we're moving to, I mean, that's about all I have

00:17:22.860 to say on that. I guess. I don't know if you have something more. Yeah. A couple of things. We'll get

00:17:32.120 to the uh the one i believe there's one reference in any of our rune poems towards this room um

00:17:39.480 nick do you have the rune poems for uh gabo i have i have them set as well

00:17:47.080 yeah i'm waiting for the for the graphic um but okay so in the meantime one of the things that i

00:17:55.480 think is important about the the visual of this particular rune is that sense of equilibrium

00:18:09.240 it depends on

00:18:15.400 it depends on how the text is but when it's a true

00:18:18.360 x when it's you know equal from all different you know it's um

00:18:25.480 Word is escaping me. It's mirrored if you bisect it up, down any of the diagonals. It's an equilibrium from all of those angles. Now, very often we'll see it as a skinny X to where it's only equal in two of those planes.

00:18:43.660 But the idea of it being that point of equilibrium of the point of that exchange.

00:18:51.500 And we see that in a very visually reinforcing way about gift.

00:18:59.720 One of the.

00:19:02.720 Apologize, I'm a little bit flustered because I'm running late, so I'm going through in my head and I'm a little bit scattered.

00:19:07.660 I'm trying to get it all straight. I'm working on it.

00:19:09.420 Um, anyways, as I was going to say, the gift cycle is at the core of our relationships. Now our relationships, certainly between us and the gods, also between us and the ancestors between us and us.

00:19:31.140 It is it is how we build relationship is the sharing of things in a very obvious and traditional way that's done through gift giving.

00:19:42.740 But in a much more subtle but more frequent way, it's done by the give and take involved in the sharing we have as friends or as family.

00:19:56.720 And we see that with the gods.

00:19:58.660 You know, we don't typically wrap up a gift with a bow and give it, you know, and hand it to the gods, nor do they typically hand one of those to us.

00:20:07.580 But we do share our gifts. We share love. We share energy.

00:20:12.800 And it's not always equal in kind.

00:20:17.560 It was very important in any of the times of our ancestors.

00:20:23.140 Gift was different depending on the station of the giver and the receiver.

00:20:28.660 engaging in a gift cycle with a great king assuming you are not another great king is

00:20:34.820 very seldom you know an even exchange but it's a proportional exchange to your grandeur versus

00:20:42.820 that king's grandeur their gift they would give you is probably much more substantial

00:20:48.100 than the gift you would give them but it should be a similar scale to each of your magnificence

00:20:54.500 or lack thereof um and we see that this continuation of that cycle we see in the

00:21:03.540 references and lore brings um brings joy brings togetherness builds the bonds of society and

00:21:13.780 one thing more when we see the rune shape evolve and the the ultimate evolution that we saw of it

00:21:20.900 is in the Arminen system, the Gibor rune is, depending on how it's drawn or how you want to

00:21:27.220 look at it, either a wolf's angle or like a half swastika. And one of the key ideas with the symbol

00:21:35.600 of the swastika is that, is that movement. So it evolves gift, that X, and turns it into the gift

00:21:45.040 cycle itself with that with that idea of that that spinning motion uh and it's important to

00:21:51.120 keep in mind through all of this most of our sacred symbols including it's fine duck your head

00:21:59.040 over to the right including the tri horn itself the way it's positioned you're good implies uh

00:22:07.040 implies that's implies that spinning in that movement so many themes in our lore are about

00:22:12.880 the idea of moving forward and not stopping and letting entropy set in not the fine folks

00:22:18.800 at entropy that help us with this podcast the concept of when things are static and don't move

00:22:26.400 and don't grow they tend to descend towards chaos and towards destruction you've got to keep pushing

00:22:36.400 forward to maintain the things that we do we talk about we see that over and over again but a couple

00:22:41.440 of examples the sun and the moon always have to stay one step ahead of the the the gaping jaws of

00:22:47.920 the wolves chasing them with the idea that during the eclipse it's like they catch up enough to

00:22:53.280 quick get a bite and then they can pop back out and keep going but there's a chase going on

00:22:58.880 the idea is if everything stopped they would be devoured our sources of life light heat

00:23:05.760 the things we value would be devoured we see that also with the uh with yggdrasil and the wells and

00:23:13.280 the constant feeding of this tree lest it grow brittle and stale and wither and die it's constantly

00:23:21.680 fed with these waters from the well of earth and it's tended it's maintained through constant

00:23:27.280 vigilance it is that's reflected in oh go ahead you hit a spot you hit a spot i i didn't even

00:23:37.040 i the gift cycle that you just hit on i this like the first time crossing my mind in a way like so

00:23:43.120 yeah it's like whoa wait a minute oh yes it keeps it keeps it keeps that tree fresh and young it's

00:23:50.880 like the apples of the gods eat and receive keeps them with that eternal youth it's that constant

00:23:56.320 refreshing and we see that with the bonds of friendship or any sort of other relationship

00:24:01.200 by that continued exchange of gifts and the gifts come in form of pleasantries of

00:24:09.360 just reaching out and saying hi and not you know a friendship gets really old if you're

00:24:15.440 the only one that reaches out and calls somebody you know phones work both ways but if you're part

00:24:21.200 of a friendship and you're the only one exerting effort the friendship tends to to degrade and and

00:24:27.920 go away over time if both people aren't putting in effort something as simple as the gift of a phone

00:24:33.040 call the exchange of energy and the exchange of things back and forth is what renews that cycle

00:24:40.720 and keeps it growing um nick do you have those poems for us

00:24:45.440 if not i believe spawn has them in front of them i do could you pick one and go ahead if you would

00:24:56.560 so we're going with the uh anglo-saxon poem is um it it it's simply referred to in or actually let

00:25:05.200 me double check this too because i don't want to say without without hitting uh the correction is

00:25:10.480 In the Old English, it's givu, G-Y-F-U, but the F is a V sound.

00:25:18.760 So givu, gift, is for every man a pride and praise, help and worthiness.

00:25:27.640 And of every homeless adventurer, it is the estate and the substance for those who have nothing else.

00:25:34.500 and i believe that is the sole room poem is it not for this particular room

00:25:43.560 that is the anglo-saxon phrygian

00:25:46.380 and uh you know it speaks of a lot of interesting things in here when we talk about worthiness and

00:25:53.920 we talk about the exchange but we also we also talk about the homeless adventurers the traveling

00:25:59.640 um the traveling soldier or the uh again the gift cycle that's given to to uh folk especially in

00:26:08.840 elder times you know moving across the hinterlands and coming across the farmstead and um you know

00:26:15.240 offering under truce you know the promise of of no quarrel uh for a state to to be in inundated

00:26:24.920 into the estate for a night until you know able to travel again that was a very common thing so

00:26:31.240 that that gifting cycle is really really prominent in the um the uh anglo-saxon rune poem you know

00:26:41.560 it says uh you know gift is for every man a pride and a praise so that's talking about the notoriety

00:26:47.000 that that uh one can gain from giving gifts um and i think that's uh that's an interesting point

00:26:55.240 because in our day and age it's we we've kind of been inundated with this humbleness or perhaps

00:27:00.840 i don't know like a protestant dean style of of um not not maybe not so much about giving gifts

00:27:08.920 but receiving gifts without with a couple of things there's the caveat of oh you know thank

00:27:14.360 you and that you don't want to make a big deal out of it uh but at the same time you also kind

00:27:18.280 of have a tendency to lose the power of the gift giver in in marking it down you know like when

00:27:26.040 someone of high notoriety gives you a gift and you make it not a big thing one of the foul

00:27:33.640 parts of that is that you kind of rob the gift giver you know the praise so there's a couple of

00:27:41.560 points i wanted to make with that first absolutely correct there's a different

00:27:49.960 the christian idea of humility

00:27:57.160 it's very important that that idea is not a reaction to boastfulness we oftentimes look

00:28:05.720 at something different about christianity and think different has to mean opposite it doesn't

00:28:14.040 you don't need to be a jerk as opposed to being humble you do need to take pride in your gift

00:28:21.960 giving there is honor to be gained for you as well as the giver of you know for lack of a better term

00:28:29.640 a showy display of giving a gift that raises not just yourself but the one receiving the gift gifts

00:28:36.520 are very important and as long as everyone is doing that then you are not the standout braggart

00:28:44.360 in the group you guys are elevating all of your actions to epic proportions by you know adding

00:28:51.400 grandeur to the process and that wasn't wrong that was very much respected and expected from our

00:28:56.200 ancestors another one of the many examples and i'm never going to exhaust them all

00:29:01.480 in our worldview when it comes to exchange of gifts this rune uh two more things actually this rune

00:29:10.920 embodies the relationship between host and guest and guest and host i've said this before on this

00:29:17.800 program but it's speculated that originally in proto-indo-european the word for guest and host

00:29:25.400 was initially one word and it implied this give and take relationship within itself i believe it

00:29:32.280 was something to the effect of ghosty or something was the idea of the word and it reinforces as a

00:29:39.880 guest you have obligations to your host as a host you have obligations to your guest

00:29:45.960 and typically a proud tradition that you know we still see today very often within the afa especially

00:29:51.320 where we host a lot of dinners and things

00:29:54.020 is the idea of you have people in your home

00:29:56.920 and then they have people, they have you in their home

00:29:59.180 and you exchange those things back and forth.

00:30:03.820 The Have Them All talks about the path

00:30:06.460 between the home of friends being well-trod.

00:30:11.700 Then the next important thing about this rune

00:30:15.540 is its relationship between romantic exchange between men and women of the procreative life

00:30:26.220 force exchange in the sex act. And, you know, not to be gross, but the exchange of fluids and

00:30:34.060 the exchange of energy in that way, producing life. And I think that goes a little bit more

00:30:39.260 into the Armanin by Sir Von Liss understanding that this rune. Now, something to point out if

00:30:47.780 you've been following along. These runes in the Armanin system are one for one. The first one is

00:30:54.260 with the first song. The second one is with the second song. The third one was with the third

00:30:58.480 song. Now that went through the first six runes perfectly. Now we see a deviation. It doesn't

00:31:06.280 just continuing going in the elder Futhark order. This takes

00:31:12.100 us to the 18th. The 18th rune song. And this is for again, the

00:31:22.560 Gibor room and 18th I know which I ne'er shall tell to maiden

00:31:27.820 or wife of man save alone to my sister or happily to her who

00:31:32.160 folds me fast in her arms most safe are secrets known to but one the songs are sung to an end

00:31:44.480 i'm sure there are many interpretations on that it's i think the arminen

00:31:52.560 connection of these runes to the room to odin's rune songs are

00:31:57.040 one of the one of the things that leads to deeper contemplation and deeper philosophical

00:32:07.360 reflection on the runes but the idea of this being a conclusion to the rune system if you will

00:32:16.000 or the end cap of it being this powerful secret exchanged between lovers is is special so

00:32:26.240 we see that in the exchange. And I think this will come in more when we have some of the questions on

00:32:30.380 the side. But Gabo is a very important rune to understand and one I think that we use practically

00:32:39.620 a lot, even if we may not realize it. Svon, do you have any more you'd like to say on Gabo?

00:32:45.760 Well, and what you were talking about, the polarities between the masculine and feminine,

00:32:49.200 and whether it's you know um heroes love like to use the greek concepts and then um or or familial

00:32:57.840 if you're uh you know brother and sister or um grandmother and and grandson i think they're

00:33:03.760 playing on that the maestro is playing on those coalescent forces and he's much like obviously

00:33:10.560 it's um the uh rune at all is being spoken to um uh love fafnir is you know the the kind of the

00:33:20.000 receiver of the of the um the wisdom so he's kind of referencing into that so it makes sense that

00:33:26.080 he's using it like the male to to female but i think it's really important for people to realize

00:33:31.440 that this is the first deviation when we go into like the viking runes when we uh when you look at

00:33:40.080 the elder futhark and its usage in sweden and in norway and in denmark um there is this point

00:33:48.960 in which there starts to be an admixture of runes there's the elder futhark and the younger futhark

00:33:55.840 and this is the first rune that is removed from the elder in the new younger now there's 16 runes

00:34:03.200 in the younger and 24 in the elder so this is there's been a lot of theories as to why they

00:34:10.080 did this most languages don't do this but um dr stephen flowers has even uh proposed the idea that

00:34:16.320 perhaps vikis or rune men or runemasters purposely did this in order to stop the usage from having

00:34:27.120 uh potency or perhaps that it got leaked out and the idea was to ensure that the the true

00:34:34.080 magic of the runes was was not used um it doesn't make a lot of literary sense considering a lot of

00:34:41.120 these runes are um added together uh in their sounds and clearly there is a g sound in the in

00:34:48.480 old norse um but i believe it's in the younger futhark um the it's the uh kinas rune that is

00:34:58.320 used as a g rune in the younger when they write it so like uh the lord bragi would be technically

00:35:06.160 spelled like braki and and that's how a lot of the um the inflection in old norse kind of became

00:35:12.720 swift and and poignant um so it's really important i think for the audience to realize this is the

00:35:19.200 first rune that deviates away and with uh the elder and with the armanin and in the armanin

00:35:27.760 since um the the armanin is based off the younger futhar with two extra runes at the end um

00:35:35.760 Maestro Guidovan List, he felt in his receiving of the symbols that it was important to reintroduce

00:35:48.660 this in its point. And it's interesting because you did say it's, you know, the 18th poem,

00:35:56.640 and that might throw people off since we were kind of going one for one. And that's why this

00:36:01.240 is going on is because this is the first room that deviates and starts to change things and

00:36:06.000 after that point old norse ends up just using the 16 um and anglo-phrygian it used the 32 but then

00:36:14.800 the conversion and the usage of the um the the latin alphabet kind of ended up letting it walk

00:36:23.600 like wash away from their culture so that was the one thing i wanted to bring up because that's

00:36:29.420 to start causing confusion um you know in in if people are following the younger futhark or

00:36:37.340 dare i say it like if they're coming from you know like the viking show or if they're coming from um

00:36:43.020 you know uh like grim frost as a company focuses itself around um the you know viking age runes

00:36:53.900 and they even use some of the swedish and uh or the um norwegian short staff runes which are even

00:37:00.460 smaller sometimes it's just a line with a dot in the middle or or a key nose with a dot in the

00:37:06.060 middle um and those are some very very late um runic adaptations so you know i think it that's

00:37:14.220 where we're really since we are focusing in the entirety of the elder futhark for the audience

00:37:19.740 just bear in in the mental uh space that the the younger deviates here but we're not doing the

00:37:28.140 younger so that's yeah all right um let's start with some questions then um our first first

00:37:38.540 question up and i think this is a really good one what do the mythic heroes in our lore represent

00:37:45.260 and what part do they play in the religion as in is it valid to give offerings to and honor

00:37:52.080 our mythic heroes like sigurd for example swan what are your thoughts i would say astounding or

00:38:00.600 resounding absolutely um the mythos of even the um uh i mean it depends too like if you talk to

00:38:12.560 someone who talks about everyone would say sigr or a beowulf uh but you know some would argue about

00:38:20.320 weyland or volander amongst the norse or perhaps even um miley who's referenced as a son of odin

00:38:29.500 um or uh hermoth obviously um hermoth has almost no presence whatsoever until balder's drama and

00:38:39.240 there are references to hermoth as a mortal king um in uh uh one of the uh dynasty sagas so

00:38:49.480 it's been speculated that there is like and the way i've always viewed it in the hierarchy of

00:38:55.900 things is that there are the the 12 house there are the house senior and then there's the house

00:39:01.660 veneer and then there's there's kind of uh like a three-tiered i i because i again functioning on

00:39:09.020 that tripartite i see like leo salvar or or just alvar dsir and elevated heroes right underneath

00:39:18.540 the holy gods so if i was to draw a diagram of hierarchy i would definitely place those three

00:39:25.740 because you have you have um the masculine of the alvar and the feminine of the dsir and then you

00:39:30.700 you have these elevated heroes that whether or not you want to nitpick the the details of whether

00:39:37.280 they're absolutely real or not is almost irrelevant to the point that um you know we could look at

00:39:46.420 surely uh you know sigurd in his story he deals with atli and we know now in speculation that

00:39:54.380 atli is probably attila the hun so if that's the case then the the idea of the the story itself

00:40:03.340 and the power of sigurd and the power of atli being there or the power of um eor monarch who

00:40:10.540 is the the king of the goths that's kind of also added into the story we're in essence still

00:40:18.460 honoring their overall might and spirit within. And so, you know, holding bloat or holding gift

00:40:27.680 giving to Hermoth or Sigurd or Beowulf or Volunder, I would absolutely say is within,

00:40:35.820 you know, the ability to do so. I don't necessarily view them in

00:40:40.700 equalence with the gods. Obviously, I have a very strict hierarchy of the way I view the gods.

00:40:45.800 Um, but you know, anyone, uh, like above me is open to being honored, um, in, uh, in gifts,

00:40:58.620 in gift cycle. So that's, I mean, I would say that.

00:41:04.020 See, I, I absolutely get where the, uh, guy asking the questions coming from. Um,

00:41:11.200 And I think that that's. They fit in a in a gray area that's harder to place.

00:41:23.660 um being that they are

00:41:28.400 have a mythical element to them at at least

00:41:34.180 it's like our gods are real our historical heroes are real

00:41:43.940 are mythic heroes

00:41:48.460 there's that question mark right there's thought with each of them that you know there's theories

00:41:59.180 about their level of realness or not but i get the point if they're not real then they can't

00:42:08.240 exchanged in the gift cycle if they are not if they are not real and they're just literary figures

00:42:16.480 then honoring them in a public way reinforces the value that their myth represents

00:42:28.960 but it's a one-sided version of the gift cycle because it can't

00:42:32.640 a non-real non-personal concept cannot give you back things um but if they are real then they're

00:42:45.080 certainly you know the highest tier of our elevated heroes and so that that becomes a

00:42:53.160 that becomes a questionable area and the thing is and i think this requires some more internal

00:43:01.800 discussion within the afa for us to iron out some specifics but in general

00:43:10.760 and in some of the confusion sorry to be less clear with this some of the confusion comes in

00:43:15.560 when you have a figure like sigurd who is almost entirely in the realm of the mythic

00:43:25.480 yet his story overlaps with historical personages then you don't know what to do with that because

00:43:33.160 it crosses certain boundaries um but yes i'm of the mind specifically with folks like beowulf

00:43:43.000 and sigrid that they are real and exist where to put them in the historical scope of things

00:43:50.920 is another question and how much of their story to

00:44:01.480 take literally or not again when we deal with our high epic lore it's not meant to be taken

00:44:08.360 chronologically literally but when we deal with these heroes and they have this overlap

00:44:14.440 it's very tempting to do so especially when they reference figures like king atli that that

00:44:19.640 swan referenced um so that makes it tricky the other thing is if you look at sigurd's story

00:44:29.080 you see very different versions of the story that are both both cannot be true in a

00:44:35.960 literal and historical truth sense. The Volsung Saga and the Niblungenlied are not both simultaneously

00:44:47.560 chronological truths, yet the character of their story I do believe exists and can receive in that

00:44:58.760 gift cycle, but it's a much more confusing gray area, and I think that's one of the reasons that

00:45:04.660 you don't see us talk about them more often than we do in the sense of bloat structure that you

00:45:10.500 don't see them hailed during symbol in the way that you see historically attested persons so

00:45:18.680 would there be a fence if i mean again you know third round uh at the symbol and and someone does

00:45:27.900 tail a sigurd or beowulf or someone i don't know i i couldn't do would that be an offense or

00:45:35.500 i mean certainly the round of heroes i i don't know i my biggest my biggest draw to that is

00:45:43.280 because of the remember when we were talking about the framework of the chair that pieces

00:45:47.980 are missing and we have to comparatively kind of look at the greco-roman or the etruscan or the

00:45:53.280 slav um one of the things that really keyed out to me was the worship or at least the the honoring to

00:46:00.040 hercules so one of the things with hercules is he exists in in the high lore in the time of the gods

00:46:10.340 and as a ancient ancestor of say the royal house of macedon um but you don't see his interaction

00:46:21.520 with purely historical figures. And so it makes it easier to see him existing as a demigod,

00:46:29.960 as opposed to as a ancient hero that you could find artifacts of. But the way that our, you know,

00:46:40.980 folk of the, you know, archaic pagan Greek period, they did see it that way. You know,

00:46:49.140 Alexander thought if he went far enough, he could go to places that Hercules did some of his deeds

00:46:54.920 at. So yeah, I think that that is not a typical way that we think in this day and age, but I

00:47:04.120 think it would be completely appropriate to hail them at Sambal. What is an interesting thing of

00:47:09.500 note is those kind of figures were hailed much more during Sambal in the early days of modern

00:47:15.400 house of truth um there was a time talking to uh i'll tell you go through mcnellen that

00:47:24.680 it was very common this is

00:47:28.360 there were good things too in the you know in the viking dress up days there were things

00:47:34.200 that went well with that as well but there was a lot of focus on impersonal heroes of historical

00:47:42.520 figures yes of heroes of epic stories like beowulf and sigrid um and of you know viking stuff but you

00:47:55.320 didn't have a lot of personal hails of recent historical figures or of your parents or your

00:48:06.120 grandparents or your friends. Your hails were much more poetic and aimed at things much less

00:48:17.600 personal to you. One of the really cool things in Sambul now is most of the people that receive

00:48:25.580 toast are, it's very personal. It's friends that you know that have meant something to you. It's

00:48:33.620 ancestors of yours that you personally know or perhaps members of your family but obscure

00:48:38.980 persons that you happen to have familial understanding of that weren't you know

00:48:45.220 the the heroes of history books now you still see great historical figures hailed

00:48:51.140 but what you don't see as much is folks like beowulf or rolf kraki or or sigurd right but

00:48:59.860 But, yeah, I think that's a really good question, and it's something that I know a lot of people have given some thought to, and I'm glad that you bring that up.

00:49:08.500 From Trent, I'll tell you, Goethe and Witten Svahn, how do each of you view Gabo when it comes up in a Rune poll?

00:49:17.340 I want to preface this.

00:49:21.300 You know what?

00:49:22.120 I'll save that.

00:49:23.160 fun just taking the question as it is how do you view gabo when it comes up in a rune pool

00:49:31.000 uh verbiage wise remember when we're talking about drawing runes pulling rooms for for people

00:49:37.160 who don't know is about uh utilizing um runes in a divin divinational sense of trying to um

00:49:47.160 fine augury of the future or or perhaps uh the possible outcomes and uh i i mean it again it

00:49:55.560 greatly depends on the question that that is laid before but generally it is um a union or a

00:50:03.800 contractional agreement or a coalescing of forces i see it as a unity room oftentimes uh it it seems

00:50:13.080 you know based on just my notes of um interpreting rune readings you know i write them down and i

00:50:20.920 try to revisit them and see how they played out i have my initial interpretation and then every

00:50:27.240 subsequent you know maybe half a year i'll go back and look at them and kind of re recalibrate

00:50:36.120 what happened versus what i interpreted and uh my interpretations of that generally mean a

00:50:43.000 a union of some sorts a uh whether it's an ally ship whether it's a connection um but again it

00:50:51.640 could be it's uh depends on the question you know if you're if you're trying to seek um

00:50:59.000 understanding about something uh it has to be based on huge about need i don't like to

00:51:05.640 do rune readings for arbitrary reasons and um i think so when there's a great need this usually

00:51:11.960 comes up as a sense that the the querent is going to be heading down a pathway for an ability to

00:51:20.520 create allyship or union or that there is a need for it depending on where it's where it lands

00:51:26.680 positionally but yeah unification that's the one i see the most

00:51:33.400 i'd just like to take a moment and chuckle that you use the term querent um

00:51:41.640 questioner depends on who's asking the question they may very well um

00:51:50.680 yeah and this is the reason that i didn't want to say this up front is i didn't want to taint

00:51:55.400 spawn's answer it it would all depend on who i'm pulling it for why i'm pulling it

00:52:06.920 um i don't ever just do a one rune pull for anything um i always do a sequential three rune

00:52:18.120 poll and so it's hard because i'm thinking i'm trying to think of a hypothetical or something

00:52:25.480 to make it make sense because it's a good question that i don't want to um short change on the answer

00:52:32.520 but for example if it was the first one i pulled in a sequence of three

00:52:38.040 that is different than if it was the middle or if it was the final one

00:52:43.480 If it was the last in a sequence of three, I feel like that would indicate coming to equilibrium, coming to balance, things being in, you know, again, things being equalized or in balance or reaching a fair exchange if the question was something in regard to a negotiation or something.

00:53:13.480 Um, yeah, I'm, if it were in the center of a three-room poll, I would think that it would relate to the process of forging a deal, of forging an alliance, of forging a friendship, of building and maintaining a relationship.

00:53:43.480 if it came at the beginning if it was a if it was a question of

00:53:52.620 if some reason that i was pulling the runes had anything to do with

00:53:59.000 questioning how a circumstance came to be i would see this whatever the the question they're asking

00:54:07.600 about coming as the result of of an exchange or of a of a relationship or of a a treaty a marriage a

00:54:19.840 a brotherhood it would all depend on the question and i know it's just a cheap answer because it

00:54:24.160 really it's so very important what the question is on how all of these things are interpreted

00:54:30.160 interpret it and that's why being a gothi or a vitki for that matter pulling runes

00:54:39.920 is such an art form and everyone does it different i'm sure svan

00:54:46.960 has a whole different process his brain goes through when he does one of these

00:54:51.280 trent you're the one who asked the question i'm certain that your brain has its own process

00:54:55.760 and it's really neat to see that in practice when you have an actual context or an actual question

00:55:03.480 because the way this can be done by somebody who's very effective at it is really a beautiful

00:55:10.480 interplay of things but it's very much an art form and i think that's one thing uh that um

00:55:20.040 when we get asked these questions you know uh you know go the east is is knowing that uh to what

00:55:28.020 level we might be using it but not everybody in the audience so as soon as we get a question like

00:55:31.340 that it's like but i mean you brought up a great point about like not everybody does some people

00:55:36.840 do single rune pulls you and i both are on the same with the pulling of three i know some people

00:55:43.600 that have gone up to nine um and do some multiples of in that if you read and i'm trying to remember

00:55:51.840 which of edrid's books talks about it but maybe runecaster's handbook or something but they

00:56:02.640 some people have an elaborate thing where they throw them on a on a on a um a cloth and

00:56:13.600 do different things based on their how they fall compared to one another what angle they fall at

00:56:20.960 there's people that have very very complicated systems now

00:56:27.200 in a in a perfect world if you if swan myself and trent were all equally mighty and the gods were

00:56:37.440 all trying to tell us something we're equally good at hearing it i think that all three of us

00:56:43.600 perhaps we would draw different runes

00:56:48.000 and our process would be very different but i think that assuming that we were at the top of

00:56:57.580 our game and the gods were trying to communicate assuming that everybody was working together and

00:57:02.780 everybody was maximally proficient we could draw completely different runes and all come up with

00:57:10.120 these same answers our process of getting there would be very different undoubtedly

00:57:15.320 but i think we could gather gather the same basic answers from all three of those

00:57:20.520 and i don't know if all three of us are any of the three of us are up to that level but i'd like to

00:57:26.200 think that the better we get the closer we would all come to being very similar in our answers on

00:57:32.200 those um our next question what does kenaz torch mean what does kenaz torch mean knowledge or

00:57:45.320 dissolution so the punctuation is throwing me off does it mean i think the questioner is asking

00:57:50.680 does it mean knowledge or does it mean dissolution or does it perhaps mean both

00:57:55.400 Svahn's explanation earlier was a bit obtuse. Don't be obtuse, Svahn.

00:58:02.680 Oh, we're using big words tonight, aren't we? All of us.

00:58:05.400 All of us.

00:58:13.240 It can be, and I think some of Svahn's obtusism comes with,

00:58:19.160 it is so much about specifics and so much about intent as we said when we did the show on on kinez

00:58:28.160 it can mean torch or it can mean cancerous festering sore those are really different things

00:58:41.120 and so and it's a chuckle and one of the reasons it's funny is because it is so

00:58:49.260 seemingly silly and preposterous because it means such different things and if you really

00:58:55.360 intellectualize over it you can find points of commonality like burning or like if inspiration

00:59:03.620 is metastasized it would literally burn you up from the inside you can find relation

00:59:09.440 But it all really depends. And again, I think in a sequential rune pull, you see this play out more. So, for example, the last time I saw Kenaz in a rune pull that I did is when I was doing the naming for Relentless, the AFA's ritual sword.

00:59:32.520 in that case keen eyes came at the end of a three-room poll so you know

00:59:40.800 an oversimplified version is past present future where something came from

00:59:49.560 the role something is in in the present what something leads towards with the future in that

00:59:58.880 sense when it comes at the end, I tend to see that as inspiration for the future. I see that

01:00:06.320 as inspiration. If it were to come in the middle, and then, for example, if that were to come in

01:00:15.320 the middle of a pole, and the final rune were maybe Hagalaz, or maybe Nauthi's, then I might

01:00:25.900 see that that festering of inspiration not being let loose i might see that burning and decay as

01:00:34.060 causing a storm or causing a crisis or perhaps causing a desperate need with that mouthpiece

01:00:41.980 so it means something different to me in the center than it would at the end but i think

01:00:47.660 beginning or end i would see it as meaning inspiration if it's at the beginning it would

01:00:53.100 inspire the next two if we're at the end it would lead in something that is inspirational to others

01:00:58.700 or towards the future if it was in the middle then it would depend on what preceded and

01:01:06.380 post-seeded although i'm sure that's not the work i'm looking for

01:01:10.460 um but that's my thoughts on it's fine did you want to clarify your obtusity no i i think what

01:01:17.420 you kind of said too about position uh if it's in the if it's in the past it's the inspiration of

01:01:22.860 thought and and the clarity of mind uh perhaps in the present is the formulation and and the

01:01:29.660 creation and in the future it could be perhaps the exaltedness or or perhaps the uh the beacon

01:01:35.980 of inspiration for others um it yeah that that kind of in the clearest sense uh kinas is the

01:01:45.340 mental enlightenment or the spark of inspiration but it is the predecessor to creation of something

01:01:52.860 so the creative ability to formulate something to break it down into its base elements and

01:01:59.180 bring it to what you need and then the final result is to hold it up aloft and that power

01:02:08.060 exudes to others and inspires so it's it is a light amongst lights depending on whether it's

01:02:14.220 in your mind it's in your heart or it's in your hand i hope that can be as clear as i can make it so

01:02:24.860 and just as an example because it feeds on what we talked about earlier

01:02:31.100 hearing mine and spawns understanding of how we would use that rune in a pole is a prime example

01:02:37.500 we have a very different way we would use it it's connected to svan and i have the same access to

01:02:44.500 the same materials the same lore we have the same discussions with one another

01:02:48.360 he reads the runes differently than i do in ways i would like to think that when randomizing for

01:02:58.680 that poll if i were trying to get trying to get something that meant to break something

01:03:07.320 down to its fundamentals maybe i would get

01:03:17.160 haggalas maybe i would get thorough size there's other things that are just that mean more of

01:03:25.880 destructive to me of the breaking down of something that's kind of what i meant earlier is we may draw

01:03:32.600 different runes to come to the same conclusion the way interpretations work of these things

01:03:37.640 is really different and it's that's not a fallacy of the runic system it's a

01:03:44.760 it's a beautiful thing about gabo about what the practitioner adds to the process

01:03:54.520 of reading the runes it's not one-sided there are two pieces that have to work together

01:04:00.200 in a in a dance if you will to get where we're going and everyone does it a little bit differently

01:04:07.720 therefore the

01:04:11.880 i don't know a better term the randomization but if we believed it was random we wouldn't

01:04:18.680 be having this conversation so the mixing up process which will come when we talk about the

01:04:25.800 ruined pair throw but the uh that churning of what's going on in the cauldron before we pull

01:04:33.640 them out interplays with the one who's doing the polling and i think that's it's really neat when

01:04:40.920 you see that displayed over time i don't think this is a this is one of the challenging things

01:04:47.480 when we talk about esoteric things and we talk about religious experience when we talk about

01:04:51.880 most of the things we talk about here it's always a challenge to do them in a video format or in a

01:04:58.440 podcast format because words don't do feelings justice and they don't do metaphysics justice

01:05:05.800 but they're the closest that we can get without you being there and sharing

01:05:10.440 sharing an experience with us i hope that was helpful our next question matt and spawn

01:05:19.320 have you read the book series uh paganism explained by varg vikernis

01:05:26.120 he believes our gods and myths are descriptions of childbirth thoughts on that interpretation

01:05:40.040 you want me to go with this what are you doing you do it you just think no i'm gonna i'm gonna

01:05:43.240 own it i think it's really stupid and ridiculous um i think that

01:05:50.680 when we find symbolism that correlates with something in our life or something that's

01:05:55.160 very important to us that's not illegitimate but we run the risk of putting the cart before the horse

01:06:02.280 our religion isn't about childbirth but yes some of the concepts because we see so many of these

01:06:13.760 concepts and patterns repeated in so many layers yes you can see many of them through the lens of

01:06:20.200 childbirth if that's the way you want to see them but no that's not what it's about and it is

01:06:27.760 And the reason that I come out and say that's stupid, which is not nice, but I say it because I think it trivializes our entire faith to boil it down to that.

01:06:40.300 I have not read that series, but of the information that I've heard from VARG, it's atheism.

01:06:49.640 it's atheism assuming that our ancestors made really elegant allegories to natural processes

01:06:57.700 and again there's nothing higher we're just animals that have cool poems about our animal

01:07:04.420 stuff that we do like mating and creating puppies um we're more than that we are related to the gods

01:07:15.680 We have the potential and the spark of divinity in our soul to reach up and become more than we are and to denigrate that and to lower that.

01:07:26.000 Any of those attempts are in a way an idea to grasp the gods and bring them down to us rather than to pull ourselves up towards them.

01:07:38.780 And anything that lowers our gods and lowers the faith of our ancestors, lowers the intelligence of our ancestors, I find really insulting.

01:07:49.720 And I don't think it's just I don't think it's just wrong.

01:07:53.540 I think it's destructive to what we're trying so hard to do.

01:07:58.060 What are your thoughts, Juan?

01:07:59.420 i uh i and one one sense i see again his personal interpretations are that and i think that if a lot

01:08:11.720 of people just read into it as thus like that's his personal interpretations um and perhaps there

01:08:20.320 could be some gleaning wisdom in that but it's not the entirety of all the wisdom so i'm i'm

01:08:25.600 always a person who's never been like i i i like to search for ideas but i'm i'm not wholly

01:08:33.000 convinced to them until i i have admitted that to myself so you know learning from other people i

01:08:40.720 don't really have a problem with but it's uh at the same time like it kind of reminds me vark

01:08:48.460 varker varker is like a an outlaw and and sometimes i feel like i'm listening to the

01:08:54.300 of kind of crazy guy uh who's just like spouting synapses of ideas kind of connecting and firing

01:09:03.340 together um sometimes it i can see where he's coming from and other times i'm like

01:09:11.660 he i don't know about that so in my experience

01:09:18.380 and i've seen other people do this and not just varg this isn't

01:09:21.740 this isn't a this isn't meant to be personal um if i was varg i would take it personally like i

01:09:28.380 don't fault that i'm disparaging his his concepts and his work but it's not the pagan street creature

01:09:34.940 but it's but it's not it's not about that the thing

01:09:42.620 there is a current amongst a lot of people that are not pious in their religiosity

01:09:49.820 that they are infatuated with their own interpretation of things and it's more about

01:09:57.580 trying to slap their own stamp or label upon our faith than it is about truth or about

01:10:07.300 reverence to the gods outside of our own masturbatory instincts if the whole thing

01:10:17.460 is about us doing it, doing it our way. And I found this one obscure piece of things that I'm

01:10:23.100 going to build something around. You missed the point. And it's easy to want to do that if you

01:10:31.280 don't really believe in the divinity of our gods. If our gods are mythological concepts,

01:10:37.240 then if I have a cool theory, then that's awesome. My theory is the most important thing

01:10:42.140 because I've conceived of the gods in a new way. It's like making a movie that you want to make

01:10:46.620 your own new spin on the gods, your own whimsical interpretation. If they're just a story that our

01:10:53.400 ancestors had, then cool, why not do that? Why not just, you know, come up with new riffs on the gods?

01:10:59.320 But if they're actually gods, if they are living gods of our people,

01:11:05.040 then how horribly insulting that is, and confusing and misleading. There was a follow-up

01:11:12.440 statement to the question that I didn't read the first time because I didn't recognize as such. The

01:11:17.560 way these things come up sometimes, and I'm not sure if they're asked in this way, but there's

01:11:21.280 like a little follow-up that I often miss. And so I apologize when I do that. I'll try to read

01:11:25.020 forward a little bit. So the follow-up, perhaps it's one layer of truth among many layers. I think

01:11:31.860 that can be true. I don't think that's always true. I think he overextends the childbirth

01:11:37.160 metaphor far too much but some of that has seeds of truth in that like for example

01:11:43.480 the world tree is not a reflection of the placenta the placenta might very well be

01:11:49.400 a reflection of the world tree but those are two separate things the body's nervous system

01:11:57.800 the world tree isn't our artistic representation of our nervous system and our venal system

01:12:05.480 our venal system and nervous system might well be a reflection of that greater truth

01:12:10.600 but the direction that flows is very important and when it flows backwards that

01:12:18.360 is poisonous and detrimental when it flows correctly it's enlightening and it adds points

01:12:22.680 of connection yeah it's the it's kind of like um when uh you know the the people say

01:12:30.520 the gods are archetypes versus the archetypes are based off the gods that is that direction

01:12:38.760 is hugely important in the way you view things and i think that like many scandinavians um

01:12:46.600 here's a silver lining i think about varg is that when he talks about these things he finds divinity

01:12:53.080 in some of the material elements of his life but these elements have a magical sense to them

01:12:59.980 birth children um and the interplay of love between a man and a woman he finds i think he

01:13:07.600 finds these things truly magical but he again kind of explains them in a material sense and this

01:13:14.500 and that's that's the silver lining but then it kind of gets trounced when the direction is that

01:13:20.580 the the reason why yggdrasil is yggdrasil is because it's a it's simply a representation

01:13:26.500 of something material as versus the other way around and i i mean i'm just beating the same

01:13:33.780 drum that you just said but you know re-emphasizing that at least in a silver lining i do see

01:13:39.460 that he his the some of the themes but then he rolls off on other things about how you know

01:13:45.460 know cats and and the greeks brought cats and and gayness to scandinavia something like he just kind

01:13:53.460 of then he goes ranting again and i'm like oh okay so next question uh othen gave something

01:14:04.880 for the knowledge he received it's the gift for a gift idea from the have them all right

01:14:10.220 what are your thoughts on that svan uh yes this is an interesting thing to talk about if we talk

01:14:21.420 about um things that are taken from the gods if we talk about if you look across the pan arian

01:14:28.780 um if we look at king nuata or or um of course lord tier and his loss of his hand

01:14:38.700 uh being taken from him as opposed to something that is freely given um there becomes a a nuanced

01:14:45.740 kind of understanding about the displacement of things placed somewhere else and the and the

01:14:51.100 prices that need to be given so yes this like what i said before the the the gift of himself

01:14:58.540 to himself upon yggdrasil in heaven the gift that he gives to nimir to place himself in the flow

01:15:07.820 of all that that of time in the middle world um can also be kind of coalesced into that

01:15:14.880 um but the gift for a gift remember in some cases it's not always like uh i think a lot of people

01:15:22.820 get caught up on uh perhaps even the equality of that of that situation sometimes there is um

01:15:30.820 an understanding of like even just that the gifts aren't always equal per se as they are perhaps

01:15:39.100 one is clearly detrimental but there's gain and i know a lot of people talk about the faustian

01:15:44.580 concept of of um gifting in a situation or sacrificing in a situation um and this kind

01:15:52.980 of goes into another aspect of gabo is not necessarily the gift cycle or the exchange

01:15:58.060 unification between two forces but the giving of oneself within um and how to go about doing that

01:16:06.220 and i think that this does have some application i certainly have used uh gabo before in meditative

01:16:15.340 thought in the idea of what i must shed for myself or give from give of myself in order to perhaps

01:16:21.980 gain clarity um but yes i i think that applies in a in a sense if you're looking at gifting

01:16:30.380 internalized versus externally and between um forces

01:16:39.020 it's interesting but it touches on something that i that i wanted

01:16:42.060 to make sure we spoke about and i'm glad that it does

01:16:44.300 there are many translations of that line in the halaman and the most presumptuous and

01:17:01.100 chest-beating version is that a gift demands a gift first it doesn't say that whatever it says

01:17:12.140 is in Old Norse, and I don't speak it, but I'm working on that. But we take it for granted that

01:17:23.420 that's a gift demands a gift, and we repeat it too much. The much more subtle understanding is

01:17:31.040 that a gift looks for a gift, a gift seeks a gift. All of those are valid translations of the line.

01:17:38.200 The concept that giving a gift in a way obliges the receiver to continue that cycle of gift giving is true.

01:17:51.400 But the difference between demanding and asking is immense.

01:17:56.620 One of the things that has always troubled me about Ausitru ritual is the Ausitru guys or the bro Ausitru guys go out there and like, I gave you this bottle of me, give me stuff, gods.

01:18:15.840 And it's so disrespectful.

01:18:19.100 And I don't think it's done intentionally to disrespect.

01:18:22.180 I think we just and we all do this.

01:18:24.520 We ape traditions of our ancestors without evaluating them and realizing why we do what we do.

01:18:32.720 But the idea of us demanding anything from our gods is completely and totally inappropriate.

01:18:40.580 The idea of us thinking that our $20 bottle of mead is worth the gods fixing your broken marriage or whatever else you may ask of the gods is also stupid and presumptuous and preposterous.

01:19:03.560 I think it's really important. And I've thought about this a lot a lot today in a in a different context.

01:19:10.820 But we were talking in the last question or a couple of questions ago about directionality of things, about the gods, you know, elements of our myths symbolizing natural things and us making up cool stories about them or about eternal truths being reflected.

01:19:40.820 things that we see and observe. Those two directions make all the difference in the

01:19:45.760 world. And I think something important is in how we go about understanding the interaction

01:19:53.000 of us with the gods. We talked earlier about how gifting culture is perhaps its highest

01:20:07.900 form of expression in our lore is in hall culture between lord and retainer

01:20:14.700 you would never go into a lord's hall

01:20:19.800 and give him stuff and demand things that's the quickest way to get ejected from the hall

01:20:30.220 or perhaps wounded or killed

01:20:34.300 the retainer the freeman the carl doesn't go to the jarl and make demands

01:20:44.740 much less to the koninger and make demands

01:20:49.580 if we wouldn't go make demands of a king lest he give us a boot in the butt

01:20:57.960 why on earth would you think it'd be appropriate to make demands of our gods

01:21:03.880 It's preposterous.

01:21:08.700 One of the most important things to me personally was when I started conceiving of things from what I know and then going out from there as opposed to what I imagine and then coming back from it.

01:21:27.580 I don't think any of us have a perfect understanding of our relationship to the

01:21:34.480 gods. I think that some of us who are in Gothar and have spent long, long years doing it have a

01:21:41.440 better understanding than others who haven't. But I think we all have a very long way to go.

01:21:47.120 I think the best served we are is to start from how we relate to our parents. How would we relate

01:21:52.740 to our grandparents? How would we relate to our friends? How would we relate to someone who is

01:21:58.680 much higher in authority and esteem than we are? And work from there. I think that serves us much,

01:22:06.180 much better. And I think that if we err disregarding that and imagining the gods in

01:22:12.580 whatever comic book-y way we imagine them, I think our gods are much more likely to take offense at

01:22:20.580 that, then if we scale it up and treat our gods like they're the greatest of kings and then go

01:22:27.780 from there, I think our gods can grant us a certain amount of grace at that point because

01:22:32.060 what we're doing is respectful and makes sense than if we're so presumptuous to go out in a

01:22:38.100 circle and start demanding they give us stuff. So I think that's worth saying. And I know this

01:22:44.160 is a long way around the question that was asked. I think there is a difference between

01:22:49.820 things of value coming at a cost and gift giving.

01:22:58.560 In order for, now there's people that have to earn certain privileges from their parents or

01:23:05.280 certain things, but anyone you love or care about wouldn't demand that you commit self-harm or that

01:23:13.300 you hurt yourself in order for them to give you a gift. And in that way, I think it's very different.

01:23:19.820 the fact that things worth achieving are often come at a cost and very difficult and come at a

01:23:26.380 sacrifice. And I think that the use of the term sacrifice is problematic as well. So

01:23:34.900 broken down into the Latin, sacrifice is the act of making something mundane, holy.

01:23:42.700 it is make you know what i'm even adding to it there it is making something holy

01:23:47.720 to you know the face suffix means to make and sacred something sacred to make something sacred

01:23:56.940 it has come down to us as to give up something but that's not what the original word meant

01:24:04.340 and i think that's a very important thing when we're giving something to the gods the point

01:24:09.980 isn't that we're taking something away from ourself, that we're damaging ourselves or that

01:24:15.060 we're putting ourselves in need to give them something. The point is that we are giving a

01:24:21.900 gift out of love, out of worship and out of respect to beings that we genuinely love and

01:24:28.340 wish to offer something to. Sometimes we would dig deep to come up with that offering out of love

01:24:37.540 or out of need or out of respect or out of whatever.

01:24:42.740 But it's not like, you know, here, cut off your hand and give it to the gods.

01:24:48.660 Why do the gods want you to mutilate yourself? That's silly.

01:24:50.960 They don't need an extra hand. They may appreciate the gesture.

01:24:53.720 But at the end of the day, gods that care about you don't want you to hurt yourself for them.

01:25:00.940 If you need to sacrifice your hand to get something that you think is important,

01:25:05.940 If you're that guy that had the rock on top of him and you cut off your arm to get out from under the rock, a sacrifice is needed in that case.

01:25:14.220 It's not giving your arm to the gods. That's not the point.

01:25:17.680 The point is that's the cost it takes to save your life.

01:25:21.460 You know, if the only way you can get these runes is by pinning yourself to a tree and going through a certain trial to get them, then cool.

01:25:31.260 But there was no loving force on the other side of the gap that demanded Odin make a sacrifice in order to gift him with the runes.

01:25:39.680 That's not how it was. So I think it's a it's a little different concept.

01:25:44.920 There's obviously, you know, you got to spend some to get some is a truth that unites both concepts.

01:25:51.840 But I do think it's it's different than gifting in the term that we're talking about.

01:25:56.240 um the next and I I want to hear your take on this Vaughn what kind of moral message

01:26:05.960 am I supposed to learn from Freya getting Brissingamon

01:26:12.980 I have heard this asked many times and I think it's really interesting

01:26:18.200 uh I actually well that's interesting because the word moral

01:26:23.180 See, I feel that there is a mythos meaning of the understanding of gaining power from, in essence, the elements of the earth, if you will.

01:26:40.120 I deeply believe that Freya is connected to the earth as a Vanir and as also the correlation of that which is precious, that which is held in exaltation of gifting.

01:26:54.080 And the Brisingaman, I think, is ultimately that source of true desire, which is why Freya is so dangerous sometimes in the sense that her path is one of beauty, but can also be one of possession and desire.

01:27:14.540 And the idea of her gaining from the four directions or four elements or the ultimately the like the pillars of the Dvergar who are actual beings of material beings of, you know, coalescent powers between energy and matter.

01:27:38.540 matter. I've seen that as, in essence, a full drawing up of the material to create a synthesis

01:27:47.360 between beauty and object, if you will. The idea of when we talk about beauty, we can talk about

01:27:56.700 beauty, but when you see something beautiful, something created, something that inspires

01:28:02.260 to the point where it uplifts you. It opens up your mind. And I'm talking more in a physical

01:28:09.740 sense, maybe less like, say, in like auditory sense, is that to me, Freya represents that her

01:28:16.720 power is beauty and possession, or I would say overwhelming desire, much like fury is given over

01:28:26.140 to battle when we talk about Lord Odin, or we talk about the fervor of knowledge or the fervor

01:28:32.200 of of the ecstatic moment there's that it is good to to lift up and to be high uh you know and and

01:28:39.640 to to open up your mind and and feel that but it can cost you by falling off into almost delirium

01:28:49.720 and in that same way i view freya and her power of beauty exuding or or coming together in the

01:28:58.680 ring that is the brisingaman and that represents her true power her ability to garner um the desire

01:29:07.880 of possession and that in essence also brings out connection to the way that we interact with the

01:29:14.200 things that we see in beauty and the way that we want to desire things because i don't always take

01:29:19.800 like i know a lot of people you know see freya as oh this is a goddess of love um i pray to

01:29:25.720 for love um not uh uh freya i see freya as again a dynamic um part of natural law is is desire

01:29:38.680 possession or uh the desire to possess something or to be you know in in possession of beauty

01:29:46.440 uh i think that even our you know when we talk about the the uh every every type of folk greco

01:29:53.320 Roman or even the Gallic or every type of folk always had kind of an essence of that which

01:30:00.040 desired them or that which they desired. And I think Brzinga men is convoluted as the source of

01:30:06.620 love in the understanding that what it is is attraction. So when we talk about attraction

01:30:12.480 and we talk about possession, we talk about beauty, what Freya is gaining from this is that

01:30:18.060 she's pulling from you could interpret it as the four elements you could interpret it as um you

01:30:24.620 know again the taking from every direction so pulling from it the entirety of the earth the

01:30:30.780 power of the material um exuding of beauty a formulation of beauty if you will so uh first

01:30:44.700 everything that's fawn said about the elements absolutely one of the things that we see

01:30:55.500 with lady freya is very much a manifestation of material wealth and material beauty

01:31:03.020 we see that with the amber with the gold um with the lust for amber and gold with lust itself um

01:31:10.140 And there's a person asking the question. There's obvious sexual overtones about it, and I don't wish to disregard those. One thing that I reflect on with that is the nature of Freya's magic.

01:31:31.440 So say there is very often.

01:31:40.440 All right, so not to be vulgar, but to make the point, there's the pitcher and the catcher in the relationship.

01:31:50.440 relationship. In a sexual situation, the idea of safe practice or any oracular work is the idea of

01:32:02.760 other things penetrating you in a way and working through you. If you're a medium,

01:32:12.240 you put yourself aside and you are then a conduit for something else to possess and to act

01:32:20.180 through it's the reason that our ancestors felt that safe work was effeminate and was ergi so

01:32:28.340 it wasn't something suitable for a man to participate in because you were giving over

01:32:34.500 that power of yourself you're giving over the autonomy of your soul and letting yourself be

01:32:40.420 possessed by something else, which is very much reflected in the female position in the sex act.

01:32:50.920 And I think that's one element of our women's relation to magical things that's very different

01:32:59.980 than men's. Male magic is very much a flexing of will. It is a direction of will. It is man being

01:33:15.860 in the driver's seat and doing the pitching, as it were, whereas females approach to magic,

01:33:22.240 specifically in safe practice, is receiving the power of something or someone else into them as

01:33:32.260 a vessel for it. And then that person exacting their power through that woman. And I think that

01:33:41.100 that is graphically displayed in that particular story. I also, you know, you can see in

01:33:48.900 that iteration of our myths that was written down, it came to us a certain

01:33:53.980 body way of describing some things that I think would be approached very differently if it was

01:34:02.480 written 200 years previous by Gothar, as opposed to by Scholastic's 200 years after the fertile

01:34:13.520 time of our faith. It's what we have, and it's very valuable, and I don't disregard that at all,

01:34:19.280 but I think the story would be a little bit less vulgar if it was told by Argothar than

01:34:25.180 the way it's told by story. One thing to kind of piggyback on what you just said is

01:34:32.440 for the listener, one thing worth noting is that when you speak about the word

01:34:37.980 moral in relation to certain stories of the gods interchanging power and energy um it becomes very

01:34:47.800 interesting and it could be something to where it raises an eyebrow today or perhaps a chuckle

01:34:54.500 to our ancestors but ultimately i think it was missed is that there's a mystery beyond it

01:34:59.380 when we talk about like heimdall coming down as rig and he stays with you know great grandmother

01:35:07.320 and great-grandfather and uh then when he leaves there they have a bountiful children and i've

01:35:14.120 heard people take that in a way what they're talking about is some sense of like that there's

01:35:18.520 like triangular interactions going on there but what what they're not really understanding is

01:35:25.720 that's not the case at all the case is that this is great-grandfather and great-grandmother the

01:35:30.440 very nature of their name denotes a generation and the the taking in of the divine light and power

01:35:39.080 of the very conduit from heaven which is heimdall brings them up elevates them out so you know you

01:35:47.320 can look for those things in a in a material or moral sense and and be found you know where again

01:35:55.240 at a sense of conundrum or even a sense of agitation but when you look at the gods as

01:35:59.960 powers that interact with each other and this again is the same thing when we talk about um

01:36:06.520 odin lord odin and his bringing forth of the holy god valley in one iteration by saxo grammaticus

01:36:16.840 who greatly hated the gods he hated his ancestors he hated the religion of his people he was fully

01:36:23.240 all cards in to the roman religion or the religion of the middle east or or you know the the that

01:36:30.200 that subsect of judaism he was all in and so when he describes uh the situation of the birth of

01:36:37.160 valley he refers to it as first off odin is just a mortal man and king and he he rapes the rugian

01:36:43.960 princess which is where the ukrainians are now and and that there's like some sort of political

01:36:49.720 Game of Thrones kind of intrigue going on there. But you see Snorri, who is still faulty in his own

01:36:55.600 way, he does exalt the interaction to a more godly way. But if you can understand the interactions

01:37:09.360 of the gods, again, I always talk about movement. When we talk about the gods coming down or going

01:37:14.300 up or moving out or even going far below which is a big one um again the understanding of aryan

01:37:21.340 mythos is about the movement of the gods and how they interact with each other so freya who

01:37:28.940 goes into neither valor into the the world of elemental into the world of the dwarves is pulling

01:37:37.340 the four directional all-encompassing and that's another thing is like understanding directional

01:37:42.860 doesn't necessarily equate to like polaric it means the four directions is all encompassing

01:37:48.940 oftentimes it was seen you know if you did the four directions holding your horn it meant that

01:37:53.180 you were exuding out over the entire area and she is receiving in the entirety of all the of all of

01:37:59.980 this elemental force and it becomes the brzinga man and the brzinga man is the pinnacle of uh you

01:38:08.060 you know, like material possession and beauty

01:38:13.040 encapsulated in the power that it can have,

01:38:16.620 which is, could be both, you know,

01:38:18.600 wonderful or absolutely terrifying.

01:38:20.880 You know, whole countries can go to war

01:38:23.420 over beauty and over possession

01:38:26.120 of items or people or ideals.

01:38:30.480 Because sometimes ideals are so beautiful

01:38:32.860 that sometimes, you know,

01:38:35.500 people fight and kill each other over it

01:38:36.940 because they see a beauty that they want to attain so i'm gonna throw this out there i'm

01:38:43.180 just looking over the chat a little bit and i apologize it's hard to keep up we have a very

01:38:48.300 active chat which is really awesome it is a challenge for us to like follow all of the

01:38:53.100 intricacies of it and producer nick is more on top of it than we are certainly

01:38:58.700 but looking at it i saw the person who asked the question say that they're they're not of

01:39:03.260 the not only are they not afa members they're not of the folk but whatever i encourage anybody to

01:39:09.660 come on here and ask questions and thank you and i think it was a good question i think it was a

01:39:14.860 very valid question to ask i think it was an interesting one for us to ponder in answering

01:39:21.740 and like i've always said literally anybody can you know don't come in the chat room and like

01:39:27.820 start fights but anybody who wants to listen to these and ask questions i'm we're always

01:39:33.260 happy to answer any questions that we get if they're well intended and so yeah i appreciate

01:39:37.740 the question uh question from sarah witness fawn please talk about the horse you baked

01:39:43.740 and how awesome it is well first off a lot of people are baking horses around this time

01:39:50.060 so pause real quick producer nick challenge to you if you find a picture of that horse and put

01:39:54.700 it up it would be a bonus sorry sloan uh i i uh well actually i could probably send it to him

01:40:02.780 um they uh the oh actually i realized no i can't um the the big thing is there's a lot of uh

01:40:15.020 you know horses being baked around this time this is a cultural thing i think it's important

01:40:19.660 for people to understand if you are an american if you are folk and you are you know

01:40:24.700 uh, practicing house of true, especially in America right now, the, the, uh, and we want

01:40:31.220 to extend this out culturally to the folks overseas, but, um, the, the horse is symbolic

01:40:37.180 of this time of year. Uh, we're, we're, um, on the iron mark, we're about, we're running right

01:40:43.520 up onto the felling month, which is one, one moon away from winter tidying. That's when it all

01:40:49.680 starts. And, um, so it's, it's feel it in the air. It's, it's time for the harvest. Uh, loaf

01:40:55.980 mass is oftentimes what it's called or bread, you know, the bread harvest. Uh, but we call it

01:41:00.700 Freyfaxi. Yeah. Freyfaxi is a canning for wheat and, um, the horse, the vitality of the horse,

01:41:07.220 um, in multiple forms and an iteration. Oh, he did it.

01:41:11.620 uh this was made by um me and my daughter actually ravenna loves making uh these she

01:41:21.040 i was at the gym this morning and she called me it's like daddy you're at the gym you got to get

01:41:28.280 home we got to make the bread horse she's just like cracking the whip on me so she was super

01:41:33.180 excited um yeah uh and this isn't the only one though there have been lots of great bread horses

01:41:40.280 coming out and I love to see them all. I want to see them in every way I've, I've yet to see people

01:41:45.600 do kind of like a, a standing up one. That's going to be a challenge. Um, but yes, this time of year

01:41:52.460 is about harvesting the, the wheat. That's the, the, the final one that are the, sorry,

01:41:57.900 the beginning of harvest. Um, sometimes there's two, uh, harvests that will run, um, deeper into

01:42:04.400 the winner, but yeah, this is a simple recipe. Uh, it's, you know, cream of tartar, baking soda,

01:42:11.860 uh, any type of wheat, whether it's whole grain, um, and a little bit of milk and that's it. Some

01:42:19.380 salt, put it together, knead it into a ball and then, you know, make your pieces, put it together

01:42:24.680 and kind of shape it. And then we used icing pens to kind of add some extra stuff in there.

01:42:30.160 And I really like to put the Thundercross or the Fifat or the Sonnenrad or the Swastika in the center because it represents that exuding of power.

01:42:38.600 And that is what this is about, is the sacrifice of vitality at the end of the season in order to tide us over for the winter and to give us hope and fruitfulness for the next season.

01:42:53.460 And it is that kind of understanding that Lord Frey, you know, he turns now and returns back to Leosalfheim and he, you know, leaves the embrace of Gerðr, the earth, as she is one of the goddesses of the earth, as there are many.

01:43:16.160 And, you know, he turns and leaves with his retinue of elves. But in returning, he leaves his horse, Blodhenhovi, which means bloody hooves. It's a reference to the idea of a battlefield horse, a horse that treads upon the dead on a battlefield.

01:43:35.500 so it's a very powerful and virile name and the leaving of blood and hobby is about leaving that

01:43:42.220 last bit um of vitality before the recess the receding of the summer tide into the winter tide

01:43:52.300 so um you know that these bread horses are are i and some people make loaves just regular

01:43:59.500 loaves and that definitely has correlation to loaf mass and uh this time of year is a lot about

01:44:05.740 you know bread eating if you're if you're on a low carb diet you're sweating right now it's

01:44:11.420 it's uh it's the it's the uh a lot of beer is drunk and a lot of bread it's a great

01:44:17.820 festive time and it is about virility and it is about that last hurrah before the final

01:44:24.700 receding of the summer tide it's the season of gluten so nick no rush on this one but if you

01:44:34.860 could put up the picture of um the horse brandy made at uh at frayfaxi at baldersoft that would

01:44:42.380 be cool too that was so for folks who cannot see these visuals on spotify i assure you these are

01:44:47.980 beautiful horses we will not put the ugly horses up here um or if we did we would identify them as

01:44:54.220 such there have been it's fun making horses is neat sometimes people have beautiful horses

01:45:01.420 sometimes you have silly looking horses that look ridiculous it's all fun and it's it's just a neat

01:45:07.900 thing to do we had one at odenshoff one year and you know one of the one of the kids there

01:45:12.380 a young kid looked at it and he said it looked like a bear that was pooping

01:45:18.780 and it absolutely did but it was it was a well-intentioned horse it's not a beautiful

01:45:26.060 steed but uh it was glutinous it always makes you think of uh the the the meat the uh meme where

01:45:32.380 it's it's like very nice very nice now let me see it after it comes out of the oven

01:45:36.700 like because it's the oven does the changes yeah gluten has a tendency to rise and change

01:45:44.700 shape and do different stuff um but yeah it's it's it's fun and it's kind of one of our

01:45:50.940 our big traditions that goes with i did a

01:45:58.220 one of the coolest bloats that i was ever a part of was a fray bloat in denmark and

01:46:07.580 it was done in august and it was

01:46:14.700 so their group over there and certainly at the time it wasn't super organized but in order

01:46:21.820 all the different practitioners of also true there were part of a um

01:46:27.900 body called foreign sailor and that was so they could interface with the government as like the

01:46:34.940 also true folks but it represented a lot of different people that did different things

01:46:38.700 um one of their elder and very respected gothar he had just had i believe heart surgery and he

01:46:49.160 wasn't even supposed to be out of the hospital but i had gone on that trip with steve mcnallen

01:46:53.440 and steve's reputation preceded him and this you know old man who was recovering from ill health

01:47:01.060 wanted to be there and perform this bloat for Steve. I mean, for Frayer, but in the presence

01:47:08.920 of Steve. And so, you know, he's, he's there in a t-shirt and some sweatpants, and he's like,

01:47:18.220 just got out of the hospital, but it was important for him to be there. And it was done

01:47:22.800 in this cleared circle, I believe it was a stone circle surrounding a dolman,

01:47:29.540 But the Dolman was the was the centerpiece. And this woman, Justina, that had showed us so many things. I don't want to mischaracterize her, but she was a very, very loud, very assertive, very exuding with personality lady.

01:47:51.700 she was really neat she's one of the neatest people that i've met and that can cut both ways

01:47:56.660 but she was eccentric and she was loud and she was you know very full throttle personality

01:48:05.380 and she showed us so many beautiful things i will always be indebted to her for that

01:48:09.860 i was her uh so i was the driver and she was a very militant uh co-pilot and like

01:48:17.860 if you were within if you weren't within two kilometers per hour of where she wanted you to be

01:48:24.980 you would know about it in a abrupt way not a pleasant experience but a fun one to reminisce on

01:48:32.980 and i wouldn't that the the juice was absolutely worth the squeeze on all this

01:48:37.860 anyways this goes a long way to say this the entire trip she was very very

01:48:43.780 very loud and a very dominant personality

01:48:47.860 It was really beautiful to see her with this guy because this was like her mentor and he didn't speak English.

01:48:54.900 She was, you know, the older generation of Danes didn't as much, but the younger ones did.

01:48:59.700 So he would do the ritual and she would, you know, half hold him up and translate for him.

01:49:07.280 and the change in her demeanor when she was in his presence she became the humble student with her

01:49:14.660 you know with her master there that had taught her her spiritual things and it was really really cool

01:49:20.580 to see that and we did this ritual in the circle but the backdrop was so beautiful it was you look

01:49:30.800 across the way and there is you know wasn't windy but there was a slight breeze and the wheat fields

01:49:36.540 as far as the eye could see and the slight breathes making these waves over the wheat field and you

01:49:41.860 look in the distance and this guy had you know a pin with his horses so the wheat field and there's

01:49:48.640 you know these horses dancing and naing and doing their horse stuff while we're while we're at this

01:49:54.740 fray ritual during the harvest time it was really it was a very very special um yeah

01:50:05.460 that was a really neat thing and i hadn't thought about it in a long time but it was

01:50:10.500 especially remember

01:50:14.100 next one go ahead i found it yep i see that it's it's strange there it's running and he's got um

01:50:24.420 toasted i guess herbs over top of them a lot of clove in there uh that's the the horse on the

01:50:30.820 altar right before we did the sacrifice of it it was a particularly powerful bloat um

01:50:37.060 the first bloat from officially ordained gothy nathan erlandson as a matter of fact

01:50:44.020 um sarah's got a question are you familiar with the book the rune poems a reawakened tradition

01:50:52.180 uh there is a visual rune poem in it that really brings the symbolism of each rune

01:50:58.260 to life no sarah i'm not but i'm very intrigued that sounds really cool and um maybe the next

01:51:06.900 time spawn goes on his talk and i'm gonna google that on my phone just so i have it up and don't

01:51:11.540 forget about it because i'd really like to see that that sounds really cool spawn are you familiar

01:51:15.780 with that only lightly actually um i have heard it referenced before i have looked it up i have

01:51:22.660 actually i i wouldn't be surprised if it's in my cart on amazon but i don't own it i don't have it

01:51:30.900 i have seen um there was uh a writing uh a raido rune description as well that was placed out i

01:51:40.820 don't know if it's in an article or if it's in a review but it is a very interesting but i'm not

01:51:45.940 i'm not hugely familiar with it at all and i would be yeah dishonest to say i was but i

01:51:52.100 yeah i'm kind of now that it's been brought up again it's kind of like

01:51:56.340 is this a hint i should be looking at this

01:52:02.260 all right question are either of you familiar with the thunder wizard channel vids where he

01:52:11.700 explains thor's belt as an energy ritual and gauntlets with opening

01:52:16.820 yeah i don't i'm not familiar with that word

01:52:23.320 n-a-d-i-s or energy holes in the palms needing to be opened

01:52:30.000 uh thoughts

01:52:33.080 no i am not familiar with the thunder wizard or his channel or his theories about

01:52:41.860 electricity as relates to thor and his war year

01:52:46.600 uh what about you svan no i'm not but i have uh i i believe even on vns when we talked about

01:52:55.120 um the father of storms when we talked about thor i made um a point about the uh understanding of

01:53:04.300 of part of the um symbolic understanding of of thor is perhaps that again the great mystery

01:53:13.420 that the gods are trying to teach us about many things lies within the way that they taught the

01:53:19.820 stories of the gods and in in this case you know uh when we see something let's say for instance

01:53:27.120 the symbology of thor to our ancestors is what it is but since the gods gave us these stories

01:53:35.200 and these stories do descend down and they i believe know absolutely how they're going to be

01:53:41.680 How they're going to end up, where they're going to end up, how they're going to be seen or utilized and the mysteries within them. Again, same with Freya and the four dwarves, Heimdall and the generations, the three generations that he does in order to create the folk.

01:53:55.580 In this case with Thor, it's very, very unique in that when we look at what we know of knowledge now about electricity, and then we look at the symbology of Thor in his essence, we can clearly see that there's things that kind of the greater mysteries being hidden and time capsule released, you know, in our age.

01:54:23.420 And so I've made reference to the belt as, you know, the wrapping or coiling, superconducting, the iron rod in the center of the belt, that Mjolnir being much like a switch and a positive and negative with iron, or iron gripper and iron grover.

01:54:43.900 And I've made those correlations, but it is important to remember, again, it's about the way you approach those symbolic meanings.

01:54:52.440 i believe that the gods gave the stories to humanity humanity has told them spoken of them

01:54:59.320 he's given it to the folk to speak to their children and pass it down then it was written

01:55:05.720 in poetic form and in a way encapsulated and saved across a great drought of time when our

01:55:13.000 folk were under great duress um i think it's worth noting that if we see those comparisons

01:55:20.520 if we see those thoughts and ideas about positive and negative switches and and conducting an iron

01:55:27.800 course what we are truly doing is we should be understanding that there's wisdom that the gods

01:55:33.560 have been passing down to us and that we are now just becoming aware of it instead of perhaps um

01:55:43.000 placing that framework on the gods or shoving them into that kind of framework of our own

01:55:50.360 And I think that's really important. For instance, we know our ancestors when they didn't see, you know, Thor as red because red had cultural significance only.

01:56:03.540 No, it had cultural significance because Thor is Thor and red exudes from him.

01:56:10.300 That's, that's, he, he in essence is the reason why red is culturally seen as vital and filled with power and filled with might.

01:56:18.800 And it's not the other way around. It's worth noting that. I don't think that in a lot of ways, our ancestors didn't dress the gods up as opposed to more or less over time, the gods giving all of this to the folk and the folk speaking about it, it becomes top down, not bottom up in relation to like the intricacies of the stories.

01:56:44.160 and so we see those mysteries and then we can apply some of our knowledge so now

01:56:48.540 our understanding of electricity and things i haven't watched a ton i i haven't watched him

01:56:53.460 thunder wizard um i'm interested now i just wrote it down um i guess portals is the part that threw

01:57:00.580 me off there i was like hmm but uh you know again when we're talking about ley lines and we're

01:57:08.240 talking about connected points of power over the earth or even the magnetic field of the earth again

01:57:14.960 uh if you know we look at thor and see him as the son of heaven and earth he is uh i i believe

01:57:26.460 that's part of his power i i don't know 100 how it it exudes or how he perhaps um overlays to it

01:57:35.760 But I could absolutely see that his power is in that sense of the field, the magnetism, the ley lines, or the forces of power that kind of cross over Yorv.

01:57:47.980 So interesting.

01:57:49.420 Like I said, I wrote it down.

01:57:50.840 um do you okay so the next question do you think there are heroes from later times in history

01:58:03.320 that we can also honor and heroes that could even be alive today who will be remembered as

01:58:09.320 heroes in history yes absolutely um

01:58:12.560 and i think that you come on those episodes too i'm not sure or not literally every episode that

01:58:21.820 i do opposite these ones was fun for the past few months now has been about those heroes

01:58:28.580 the astro folk assembly recognizes

01:58:31.340 i think 15 heroes of our faith that we that we celebrate and that list is only going to get

01:58:42.360 added to over the years to come um right now we have roud the strong ivine kinriffe

01:58:50.520 olvir of egia jarl hauken john gibbs bailey elsie christensen king thaneric

01:59:01.000 swain bjorn vientensen alexander rudd mills

01:59:04.760 King Radbod of the Frisians, Prince Herman, John Ewell, Maestro Guido von List, Queen Sigrid,

01:59:18.380 and Egil Scalagremsen. As for heroes now, I'm sure there are lots, but I can guarantee you that

01:59:31.080 both Steve and Githya Sheila McDowell will be honored as heroes in the future.

01:59:38.140 Assuming I outlive them, I will ensure that that occurs.

01:59:44.220 And I charge whoever takes over after me, should I not, to make sure that that happens.

01:59:50.420 But absolutely, there are. And we try to try to make that special. We have a

01:59:55.680 an altar set up to a different hero in each of our Hoffs, and we're going to continue that

02:00:01.800 practice. Right now at Odenshof, we have an altar to Maestro Guido von List, who we'll be talking

02:00:08.120 about next week. At Thorshof, we have one to Alexander Rudd-Mills. At Baldershof, we have

02:00:15.060 one to the folk mother, Elsie Christensen. And at Njordshof, we have one that's under construction

02:00:21.080 to Roud the Strong. I say that. Did I say him on the list? If I didn't say him on the list,

02:00:30.900 I was an error. I don't think I did somehow. I don't know if I missed him or something. That's

02:00:34.160 my fault if I did. But yeah. Next question is, why would there be a hierarchy of the spirits?

02:00:43.180 because hierarchy is apparent is inherent in nature and is imperative to the concept of order

02:00:51.860 and we believe that our gods are the gods of of order both physical order and cosmic order

02:00:59.000 and so there's hierarchy in all things above and below

02:01:04.440 um has anyone ever gave gifts to gods who don't usually get hailed and receive more than say

02:01:14.520 odin uh been having bloats in the skull kill and a gift for a gift goes a long way hail njord

02:01:24.760 you know

02:01:27.880 that is a good question

02:01:29.320 i have often and i thought of this on multiple levels and i think this is important

02:01:37.640 first sure i think what you're saying is absolutely accurate

02:01:45.160 and again this has to go from relationships we are familiar with and then expand it on to the

02:01:57.500 best of our ability when contemplating the gods. But I have to imagine, you know, if first we live

02:02:07.820 in an age where these gods that are as ancient as our race, if not much, much more ancient,

02:02:16.280 have not been actively worshiped, certainly not in numbers for

02:02:26.140 a thousand years, not been worshiped by the whole of our folk in perhaps 2000.

02:02:40.240 We're in a time where in general, these gods are receiving worship that they were denied for a

02:02:45.740 very long time. That has to be special to them. And I believe that will fill my heart.

02:02:54.140 When you deal with gods that are very used to not getting the attention, you know, Odin, Thor,

02:03:05.860 Freyr, Freya, Frigga, a lot of these gods and goddesses get a lot of attention.

02:03:13.640 Gods like Uller, or you mentioned Norther, or Forseti, some of these other gods don't get nearly as much attention.

02:03:23.240 I have to think that when they do, it's appreciated.

02:03:27.540 And when there's a scarcity of attention, the attention that you get is appreciated much more.

02:03:33.940 So, yeah, I think that's absolutely true.

02:03:36.280 it's one thing I'm very excited about as our Hoffs grow and as we have more Hoffs

02:03:44.940 we get to build a relationship with our gods in a very very special and unique way

02:03:52.220 by consistent worship at their temple at their altar in their presence and I feel like

02:04:00.520 we're already seeing some of that. Odin and Thor, I think, have been

02:04:08.600 worshipped by our people since the dawn of modern Ausitru and are very, very prominent. So I don't

02:04:15.860 think we see it as prominently in that way. But Lord Balder, I believe that we are building a much

02:04:24.720 closer relationship with him since the establishment of his Hoff. I think that we are

02:04:30.540 coming to a greater understanding of him and building a stronger relationship with him. I

02:04:35.800 also think that with Lord Nyarther, having the first Hoff to him, that the first that we know

02:04:42.780 of for certain, and I'm certain that he had Hoffs in elder times, but that we have records of,

02:04:49.500 I absolutely believe that we're in the process of building a much tighter and closer bond with him.

02:04:57.980 So I think that's the case.

02:04:59.280 And as we build Hoffs to Vidar and Vaoli and some of these gods that are very under under celebrated,

02:05:09.100 I think those blessings and those relationships will grow in a really special way.

02:05:14.240 And I look forward to that.

02:05:15.200 um all right this is a good question what does it mean to pull gabo for a baby naming

02:05:24.060 it depends and i've done this a number of times um and i'll kind of

02:05:32.160 i'll go on some for instances and i don't do this as with any disrespect and i don't do it

02:05:40.480 some kind of a parlor trick um i hope that it is educational and informs people a little bit about

02:05:48.320 how the process works and this isn't the same for every child that would get this in any of

02:05:55.360 these three positions this is kind of generic but i have um it draws on it and i have uh pulled gabo

02:06:04.640 many times in baby namings, and I think intentionally so. So if I were to ask Mother Earth

02:06:18.980 to bless a child with a rune, and that rune came out to be Gabo, so that would be in the

02:06:25.420 first position. If I knew nothing else, I would interpret that as that child coming from a powerful

02:06:38.380 union between two people of an exchange between their mother and their father of energy to make

02:06:46.960 something, to create something new and something beautiful and something special, and to advise

02:06:52.780 that baby to always remember that they came from a union of love and they came from the uniting of

02:07:00.700 two really special people to make a third really special person and i think that's what i would say

02:07:08.060 on that one if it came in the middle i would talk it depends specifically if it was a boy or girl

02:07:15.900 would be different i'm gonna assume it's a girl for this one if it was a little girl and it came

02:07:20.300 in the center when i asked mother virzandi for a blessing and that was the blessing given and keep

02:07:26.700 in mind when i do baby naming i'm asking for a blessing i'm not asking for a you know a objective

02:07:32.860 prophecy i want a gift so i'm not going to interpret any of them badly that's not the

02:07:37.980 spirit of gift is given in so um if i do it for the middle i would say if it's a girl

02:07:44.700 that she would be known for her ability to weave frith and to build relationships and to build

02:07:53.560 bonds between people and between families, and that she would know friendship and know

02:07:59.180 relationships between people and between groups. And if I drew it, if it was what I received when

02:08:09.820 to ask Mother Scold for her blessings, I would interpret that as the fruits of what this little

02:08:19.900 girl does in her life will yield bonds of relationship and having people there for her

02:08:25.720 in times of need, just like she will be there for others in their times of need, that she will bring

02:08:31.120 people together and that great love will come from the works that she does. And I think that's

02:08:38.840 how I would interpret those three in a completely generic pretend baby girl setting if I was doing

02:08:44.940 a baby naming right now. And it came up three gaybos, which would be auspicious and spectacular

02:08:55.780 indeed. Wispy Crisp, can people of color join? No, they cannot.

02:09:08.840 Allie Clausen asks, is runic magic a gendered magic like Sather is? Which way does this lean if it is?

02:09:19.160 not as hardly differentiated as say there is it tends to be a masculine practice

02:09:30.520 it doesn't have to be there's not the same injunction that like

02:09:35.400 you know whatever the that it's butch i don't know whatever the not ergi the the opposite of

02:09:43.220 ergi would be in a in a female context but no you don't have to wear flannel and like

02:09:53.460 do that sort of no it doesn't have the same implications

02:09:58.100 but it does tend to be a male practice uh swan what are your insights on that uh

02:10:06.100 yeah magic in and of itself firstly and foremost i think our ancestors and culturally we see magic

02:10:12.580 prophecy as that that the female spirit has the soul of of the of women have a tendency towards

02:10:24.020 auspicious views or abilities to see beyond things um clearly they're you know the threshold of life

02:10:32.100 and the children come through them and there's a lot of power in all this

02:10:34.980 but when we talk about runes it's it's interesting i i think like as was say there is more uniquely

02:10:42.780 feminine when you look at the runes you look at the runes and i i look at the runes and i think

02:10:47.480 you should look at the runes in two ways one is there is a projective force a willful force

02:10:52.160 and there is a receptive force but not in the sense of like internalizing it's it's almost

02:10:57.440 again like receiving a gift receiving sight and interpretation of that sight and being thankful

02:11:05.840 for that you're not internalizing it you are an interpreter so a lot of people that do uh you know

02:11:11.760 divination um as as a primary would be seen as as more of a seeing signs and interpreting

02:11:21.840 interpreting their their meanings but there is a willful projective force in the carving of tines

02:11:28.800 and the carving of stavars and um i you know i find that there are some rune practitioners who

02:11:35.440 utilize the runes to either change themselves or change the the the energy around them the fluctuation

02:11:43.920 of the flow of life around them. They seek a willful end to a desired pathway. And they

02:11:55.380 start by influencing themselves, trying to formulate that magic and that power and utilizing

02:12:02.900 it in order to gain, whether it's an advantage, an insight, perhaps a leverage of all of these

02:12:13.540 things. And it really depends on how much you really do take stock in it. I know a lot of folks

02:12:19.800 don't, but when we're talking about magical practices within our religion, there are people

02:12:24.860 that would see it that way in regards to carving and placing tines in places. And one place you

02:12:36.040 can really see this, the Golderbach, the Golderbach or, or the accumulated sigils and signs that,

02:12:45.180 uh, Dr. Stevens flowers did, which is very much post the Viking age. It's not even really by

02:12:52.020 Viking age. And it's highly influenced by talismanic magic, hermetic magic. Um, and not all

02:12:59.220 hermetic magic is bad. People try to say hermetic equals like Kabbalah or whatever. And I think

02:13:04.340 that's more of a political angle or they're attempting to use that with leverage. But one

02:13:12.580 thing that you see is that there are runes hold over in the Golderbach and there's the way that

02:13:18.140 they're used is what I'm getting at. A lot of times the placement of carved pieces of wood

02:13:23.620 really, I think, is showing the importance of tines and stavars and the application of runic sigils

02:13:34.160 in places on things with intent whether it's over your door whether it's on your your person

02:13:41.200 sometimes particularly they even go into like placing it within your like your your pocket

02:13:46.560 or your shoe or under your arm it's very very interesting read but i think what it's really

02:13:51.840 gleaning is that the willful projected force of rune power is masculine in a way because that is

02:14:00.880 what masculine energy does it goes out it formulates will it creates and it it or it

02:14:07.600 stabilizes and manufactures that which needs to be done so that brought something to mind um

02:14:18.560 runic magic does a couple of different things yes if you are sending it out and willing it into

02:14:26.000 existence and doing that everything's fond said about the masculinity of it if you're pulling

02:14:31.760 runes or at you know for um divination that tends to have a neutral to feminine approach to it

02:14:40.240 because again you're as i've said before you're doing it but you're adding a lot of your own

02:14:45.360 things you're not just raw oh gift this that no you're interpreting it so it's not

02:14:55.520 the same way that you're completely giving yourself up but you're also not just projecting your will

02:15:02.080 i think it can be neutral in that regard towards the feminine so again i think women are

02:15:13.920 i think women are best suited for say their practice better than men are

02:15:17.680 I think that they can be well-suited for divinatory rune work, and I think men are more suited for proactive or projective rune magic, if that encapsulates it a little better.

02:15:38.000 Go ahead.

02:15:38.740 Oh, my teacher, he kind of divided them into the roidohos and the kvitohos, and the roidohos, the red house is the blood house, the house of projection.

02:15:50.300 And since, because I was a male, he immediately went to that, teaching stavars and tines and the idea of projection.

02:16:02.760 and then later on i learned uh the the the white house as it's called you know of course because

02:16:09.580 it's referencing the cloth that we cast on and so the idea of that being a little bit more passive

02:16:15.000 but again it was because you want to uh you you want to once you get a horse set you want to teach

02:16:24.520 it on the run because that's what it's built to do is to run so you want to so i would say yes

02:16:30.340 it has that kind of masculine forefront. And I think men folk can learn the divination side

02:16:36.200 very, very well, but it's, there is an energy interplay there.

02:16:41.400 Well, and so a different thing also comes into play here. And first, this is awesome, guys. A

02:16:48.460 lot of very, very good questions that are leading Svon and I in very, I think, useful ways. I hope

02:16:54.620 useful ways um we're over two hours in and we're one we've talked about and we still got lots of

02:17:02.460 questions left so we're not ready to transition over yet um but no thank you for the questions

02:17:08.460 one of the other things is and this is why i feel it's kind of a neutral practice that can go either

02:17:16.940 way when you're drawing you can go completely to a passive place where you are allowing

02:17:32.220 the nornir or the gods or other things to take possession of you to draw out runes and

02:17:39.660 not add your own spin to them just communicate what those beyond the veil have told you the

02:17:47.280 runes are that would be a much more passive or feminine approach to it you could absolutely do

02:17:56.660 that and that's valid that's a thing it would come at it from a different way what I do like

02:18:03.700 what I just did for the example a little bit ago is kind of a mix I'm asking for a blessing but

02:18:09.480 I am interpreting that blessing and I'm doing a lot of, a lot of mental process to interpret that.

02:18:19.560 There's kind of a difference.

02:18:29.380 I don't even know what I could liken it to that would make more sense.

02:18:34.760 I'm trying to think of an illusion or something.

02:18:39.480 If you are an ambassador, then you have plenipotenary powers when you're dealing with diplomacy to where you're representing forces higher than yourself, but you have autonomy to interpret things and to make decisions that way.

02:19:01.640 If you are just a messenger or a, I don't know, the carriage that takes, you know, royalty someplace, you're not doing those things.

02:19:15.820 You're directly servicing as a conduit for information.

02:19:20.860 You're not adding of your own.

02:19:22.180 So I think that that's kind of a difference in there.

02:19:25.440 Also, and I hope you guys can see me.

02:19:27.240 Svon disappeared, but I hope that's just on my end and you guys are with me.

02:19:31.640 we have a monetized question from entropy from chad rice uh first thank you very much it comes

02:19:38.280 with a five dollar donation we appreciate that thank you for that um his question is about the

02:19:45.160 upcoming frayers harvest fest uh feast so new york's bloat at frayers harvest feast is going to

02:19:52.280 be in the water what should we wear and how do you both feel about the ritual being done in

02:20:01.640 in the lake there and then there's a follow-up question to it question speaking of uh frayer's

02:20:10.460 harvest feast what would you say would what would you say someone going would get out of the

02:20:18.000 experience and should they wait till the last minute to buy their tickets at runestone.org

02:20:23.240 so uh the promoter of the event had this little tag on question i'll get that later but first i'm

02:20:28.260 to answer the money question for the five dollar bills i would say

02:20:37.460 and because tyler's talked to me about the logistics of it

02:20:41.860 where the best that you have that you are comfortable getting wet

02:20:49.620 and this is this is the nuance that i want to explain to people

02:20:54.820 yes it is our culture in the afa and we believe strongly that you show up and you try to dress

02:21:03.040 your best your best we like our ladies to wear dresses or skirts we like our men to wear

02:21:09.240 suits and ties at least yeah at least a button-up shirt and tie that is the optimal situation

02:21:16.560 we don't turn anybody away if they're not dressed the way we'd like to see them dressed we only

02:21:23.580 turn people away or ask them to change if they're wearing something that is blatantly offensive

02:21:29.260 um that said it's all about time and place like you may have seen my pictures of last month at uh

02:21:37.020 at sigger blood at siggerheim i wanted to so bad witten cliff showed me up he took the cake he was

02:21:44.220 the best dressed man there he was wearing his jacket and everything else full you know jacket

02:21:50.620 slacks wore it the whole time i salute you cliff right i honestly i'm not being silly i really am

02:22:01.980 impressed i could not i brought the clothes i wanted to you may have seen the pictures i am

02:22:07.500 wearing a afa tank top and some shorts i was literally soaked through my shirt i was soaked

02:22:17.900 through my shorts again not to draw too graphic of a picture but you know i i wasn't going commando

02:22:25.660 so i soaked through both layers i've never done that on my shorts before i was it was that humid

02:22:33.180 and i was that sweat did the best i could so that's a thing we're going to go out there and

02:22:38.620 stand in the water you don't have to wear your nice slacks that are supposed to be dry cleaned

02:22:43.020 and ruin your clothes to do that there's no reason for that if you have clothes that do well to lake

02:22:48.700 water and it's okay and just getting wet you're going to throw them in the dryer cool that's all

02:22:52.540 good wear whatever you would like again shoes don't wear nice fancy leather shoes that are

02:22:58.140 going to be destroyed by going standing out in water use some discretion the idea is to present

02:23:04.060 a nice package before the gods don't dress obscenely we're not doing it sky clad

02:23:10.460 wear what you'd like to wear it wouldn't say it if i didn't have to say it i've had experiences

02:23:16.640 um that said yeah dress the best that you can for the situation knowing that you're going to get wet

02:23:23.640 i'm not sure how deep we're going out there but you know if you got a tie a tie that you're going

02:23:29.840 to wet and dry i'll tell you what most ties i wear if they get wet and you try to put them in

02:23:34.000 a dryer or something destroys your tie you can't use them so i you know if i make it and i'd like

02:23:39.340 to make it. Probably not going to wear a tie. Probably going to wear a button-up similar to

02:23:44.240 what I'm wearing right now, but without the tie, maybe some shorts. This gets wet. We'll throw it

02:23:50.340 in the dryer. It's all good. That's probably what I'm going to do. And no, Svon, answer the money

02:23:57.440 question. Then we'll get Tyler's perhaps self-serving follow-up question here in a second.

02:24:02.920 Well, I was going to say two things. One, I don't think that people realize too that when we do

02:24:07.760 uh dress up it is a it's almost like um again a betterment uh competition it's for fun it's to

02:24:17.540 spurn each other on i think if you meet anybody that looks at people oh you know they're dressed

02:24:22.880 in these ties and button-ups and they've got like the wrinkle in their nose those people

02:24:27.480 are kind of reflecting i think their own fallacy we're not doing that we're kind of like oh man i

02:24:32.820 should have or you know like i hear it so often amongst us we're like dang it you know it's like

02:24:38.800 it's we're trying to be better it's not about pretentiousness as it is about excellence and

02:24:43.760 trying here's the thing flag on the play you can never be overdressed if you are dressed too nice

02:24:49.740 that's their problem not yours if you're going to look down somebody's nose because they're wearing

02:24:54.640 nice clothes and you're dressed like a slob you need to reorient how you see the world

02:24:59.160 And I'm not saying we need to look down on people that aren't dressed fancy, but we sure don't need to take anything off of people who are dressed like a slob, going to, you know, criticize people for dressing nice.

02:25:11.740 We owe each other better than that. Don't be a crab in the bucket and try to pull everybody else down because your stuff's not there.

02:25:17.440 Try to raise yourself up. And we always do that. I'm not always the best dressed person.

02:25:21.840 When I'm not, I gnash my teeth at the guy that is. And I'm like, all right, I'm going to show up next time.

02:25:26.840 no I remember this so uh anecdote when we went to my first AFA event again I'm coming from Alaska

02:25:33.880 and I'm going down to California in the middle of summer to this event and again I'm wearing

02:25:40.120 a sleeveless shirt and some shorts and if you you can find this documented if you look on our

02:25:47.680 past event videos of midsummer 2010. And I look like a bum. It's what I could do. I was overheating.

02:25:57.700 I was whatever. But there were these guys and Brad was one of those guys and his kindred was there

02:26:03.120 and they were dressed nice. And I took that as like a, you know, personal challenge. Like,

02:26:10.800 all right. All right. And I don't know if it was the next year. I don't know when I figured it out.

02:26:16.420 But when I figured it out, I'd try to do it. And so, you know, they'd save their dress clothes for maybe when they knew a bloat was imminent or whatever. And I would get dressed up before they did. And I was out there dressed up and they got caught, you know, I guess literally and figuratively with their pants down or at least not with their fancy pants on.

02:26:33.760 and we're out there doing bloats and I was dressed up and they weren't and they were

02:26:37.840 just visually like waiting to go run up to their room and get get their nice stuff on

02:26:43.220 as soon as we were done with ritual and it was a fun thing that raised all of us to try to be our

02:26:49.920 best and that's really the idea of what we're trying to do nobody's trying to give anybody a

02:26:54.760 hard time for you know if you're not able to dress fancy but nice you dress and again when I say nice

02:27:02.600 so much of nice clothes that i've had on at most of these things ties slacks lots of different

02:27:10.440 stuff get a goodwill it's cheaper than the jeans that most of the people that assume i'm dressed

02:27:15.560 fancier than them it's cheaper than their clothes it's cheaper than their concert t-shirt or their

02:27:20.540 jeans or whatever else it's just a matter of taking that care of what's dressed in i also

02:27:25.140 remember one guy that was an afa leader that you know he just wanted to dress in a sleeveless and

02:27:31.620 shorts all the time and whatever. And he's grumpy whenever I tried to get him dressed nice.

02:27:35.820 But every time he did, he was getting compliments and he felt like a million bucks and his chest is

02:27:40.680 out and he's strutting around and he's feeling good about himself every single time. So when we

02:27:46.080 dress our best, we hold ourselves better with more confidence. We feel better about ourselves

02:27:50.320 and we present a better image to the folk and to the gods. So I think that's good all around.

02:27:55.860 for the rest of the question on the um what are people going to get out of it

02:28:01.140 you know what i'm going to ask answer last things first should they wait till the last

02:28:06.880 minute to buy their tickets absolutely just to stick it to tyler and make his job that

02:28:11.960 much harder for planning on a serious note though for any of these for any of these events

02:28:19.160 including frayer's harvest feast it's really important whoever's hosting it to get an accurate

02:28:24.460 count. And that means registering as early as you can, because there's a lot of logistics involved.

02:28:30.920 I don't know who out there has been involved in throwing event for, you know, 50 people, 100

02:28:35.280 people. But we want to make sure that we don't have way too much in waste, because wasting is

02:28:41.880 not right. It's not sound economics. And it's also just disrespectful. We don't want to waste.

02:28:47.720 But we also don't want people to be hungry. And so figuring out exactly how to do that for anybody

02:28:52.620 who has hosted an event like that is always a challenge so it's really we're not going to turn

02:28:59.740 people away at the door if they didn't but it's really a nice thing to do for the person hosting

02:29:06.540 if you register as soon as you know so that way that planning can go into place and people can

02:29:10.940 have the right logistics everybody can eat i'll say this i have been at events where i didn't get

02:29:15.900 to eat because leadership eats last and we didn't plan well enough so with that in mind

02:29:24.060 if the leaders are eating last and you know a whole bunch of people show up didn't have food

02:29:28.700 i'll do it i'll eat a peanut butter jelly sandwich while you guys are having a nice dinner but it

02:29:33.660 works out a lot better if there's plenty to go around um the other thing on what would you get

02:29:39.180 out of it this is such a hard thing to answer because a lot of the things are intangible

02:29:50.940 some of them are quite tangible though first what you're going to get out of it is you're

02:29:55.100 going to see an afa member that's doing what so many people talk about doing he's actually

02:30:00.300 building a homestead with he and his family and very close friends of his and getting to be a

02:30:07.980 part of that and see that is special it's going to be in a beautiful part of the country that

02:30:13.260 maybe some of you haven't been it's going to be really special also you're going to have fellowship

02:30:18.540 with some great people especially if you haven't had that and you don't get together with people

02:30:23.820 in the afa often maybe it's your first time going to an event and you haven't met other

02:30:28.300 members of our afa family that is an amazing thing to experience that if you never have

02:30:37.980 And you're going to get to participate with your AFA family in rituals to our gods, not just the bloat out in the middle of the water, but other ritual.

02:30:51.680 That's going to be really special as well, especially if you haven't done it.

02:30:56.000 And any of you out there who have been to events, you know what you're getting out of it.

02:31:00.540 We all know what we're getting out of it, and that's why I really want to be there.

02:31:03.440 that's why it's it's already sold to the people who've been to events but if you haven't taking

02:31:10.160 that opportunity the other thing and forgive me if i'm wrong here but i'm pretty sure the

02:31:14.600 mcnallans are planning to be there you get to meet steve mcnallan not only do you get to meet

02:31:20.880 with him and have a conversation with get with him but you get to stand in ritual with steve mcnallan

02:31:25.820 that is such a special thing and it's an opportunity that you have by going to this event

02:31:31.500 and from people that went to it last year you get a good time you get a good event that everybody

02:31:39.360 enjoyed that's going to be great we don't I don't ever hear from anyone that they regret going to

02:31:46.240 AFA events what I know for myself is the first midsummer 2009 thought about going didn't go

02:31:57.200 whatever i'm way up in alaska it's down in california and whatever sheila did kind of

02:32:02.720 what i do after our events is the slideshow thing she does slideshow to some music of the event man

02:32:10.240 i just i was full full of regret immediately i should have been there i was kicking myself that

02:32:18.160 But I didn't after I went to it the next year in 2010.

02:32:24.980 There was some Ostaras in the South when it was just kind of a regional thing before it was a national event that I didn't make it to.

02:32:32.340 But I've made it to just about every national event since then.

02:32:36.800 I am addicted in the best possible way to these events with our folk.

02:32:43.680 If you haven't been, you've got to.

02:32:45.760 and this is a really good opportunity for you to have anything to add spawn i i would say kudos to

02:32:52.380 the water i've uh you know when we talk about the gifting cycles we talk about uh oftentimes at at

02:32:57.940 um also true uh bloats when we talk about giving um oftentimes to the uh s here we see uh fire and

02:33:08.520 wind and to the vanir who are essier now they are one um the uh the earth and the water so kudos on

02:33:18.760 the idea of of you know incorporating the lake and the water i always say if you're ever going

02:33:26.520 into those consider logistics of course gifting to the water um certain things making sure that

02:33:32.600 things are uh you know biodegradable and not you know you're not littering or things like that that

02:33:39.160 or if you're doing it by fire consider the smoke or consider you know fire hazards and all of that

02:33:44.040 stuff so when we do these things logistically wise that that's really cool that there is the earth

02:33:49.560 in the water and that is deeply connected to to the vanir in in a gift cycle sense and i i applaud

02:33:58.760 you on that one that's cool in a lake that's awesome yeah it is i'm excited about that the

02:34:05.480 next question is where's there a good place to buy rune stones honestly i don't have a good

02:34:11.800 recommendation off the top of my uh my head spawn do you know a good place that you can buy rune

02:34:17.560 stones okay this is gonna this is a interesting concept topic um i i

02:34:28.760 I don't believe in buying runestones. Now, I'm going to give a caveat to that statement. I find it better if you're starting out to learn how to fashion your own runes. And there's lots of instruction on that, whether you're doing a time style or a disc style, of course, to choosing the wood and having the intimate process from beginning to end, I think is hugely important.

02:34:54.340 however there are some mediums in which or even gifts in which uh there are perhaps runes that

02:35:01.180 are given as a gift on precious stones precious metals uh even precious or rare bone and i don't

02:35:08.200 think that those should be discounted i think that what you should do is take great care in

02:35:12.900 personalizing them to you um and i would you know recommend certain ways but as far as a physical

02:35:21.200 purchase um you know a lot of times when you come to national events you can find really

02:35:26.980 really good rune stones i've seen them done on metal on stone even on leather um and they were

02:35:33.580 none they weren't blooded they weren't there was no there was no gall there in them they were blank

02:35:38.560 slates with just the forms and i have to be honest even though i normally would say don't do that

02:35:43.980 don't you have to make your own from from the beginning i do find that there's occasions where

02:35:48.840 you're drawn or or perhaps it's all coalescing in the in the web of weird that you find these

02:35:57.240 runes and i would say the greatest thing is to consider what type of medium you're trying to

02:36:03.040 work with what type of medium you're you want to um see and if you can find you know even if it's

02:36:09.960 just pieces without the actual sigils in them and then being able to carve them and being able to

02:36:15.440 sing them and being able to color them and gift them up and follow the processes that is

02:36:20.660 to to uh bring them to you to to literally breathe life into them so that they can uh help you in

02:36:27.700 your interpretations um you know do that even if they're already preformed make them your own

02:36:33.420 wholly uh and completely but you know uh i have found etsy is a wonderful place because there's a

02:36:42.660 lot of really interesting you know folks on there especially like a lot of the vendors from ukraine

02:36:48.260 the slavic uh folk are you know really good at at making stuff and they put you know they put

02:36:55.780 spirit into what they're doing they're not just dishing out or you know mass producing things

02:37:00.420 there a lot of these are finite things whether it's you know the the bag that the runes are

02:37:05.540 coming in i've seen a lot of interesting stuff but you've got to play that on on your own terms but

02:37:10.980 But I would recommend the first thing to do would be either by wood or by molding clay.

02:37:17.080 And I think that it's important to understand that you can take runes, make them, utilize them.

02:37:23.100 And then you have to know how to also give them up, if you will, to sometimes you will grow.

02:37:32.440 I think there are powerful runes that people have had for very long times.

02:37:36.480 And then there's other times when it's like these runes were here for this time.

02:37:39.840 and now I know for reasons that it's time to let them go and to find a new set or to create a new

02:37:47.840 set. So as far as like a tangible actual website or something, I don't have it. So Svan lied to

02:37:57.180 you. He does have it. He said Etsy. Etsy is a really good choice. Etsy is a good place to go.

02:38:03.120 I agree with everything Svon is saying with the caveat, don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

02:38:10.840 If you're too lazy and you're not going to go out and make your own set of runes,

02:38:14.840 and I'm just being honest, you don't have to tell me that you're too lazy.

02:38:19.020 I asked Mandy, I got plenty of stuff I'm lazy about.

02:38:26.020 Yeah, get some and learn what you're doing. The best thing is to craft your own. And I'll

02:38:32.920 tell you this, I am not handy. We have a lot of amazing artists in the AFA that are great at

02:38:42.000 doing amazing art and craft and stuff. I am not that guy. But I made my own set of runes

02:38:52.120 way back when, and I still have them now, and they mean a lot to me.

02:38:56.620 um if you want to do it on rounds

02:39:01.580 nature helps you out branches come around so you know if if you've got any kind of a powered

02:39:12.360 saw it cuts them real smooth and clean and so max magnified by you know 24 or whatever

02:39:21.340 that's easy enough again i'm not handy i had a dremel tool so i just made little trenches for the

02:39:31.100 stuff i went over my whole method of blooding them earlier in a previous episode anybody has

02:39:39.080 questions we've talked more about it but i don't want to get graphically into that too much um

02:39:43.840 But yeah, I made my own. Anybody who knows me is going to know that that's a statement saying if I can do it, anybody can do it. And they mean a lot to me. Making them yourself, going through that process, blooding them with your own blood.

02:40:02.480 there's a very special thing to that um but i have so this you know i have had occasions where

02:40:12.320 i forgot mine or i didn't have mine and somebody had a need right there and there was runes and i

02:40:17.540 used them that's fine i didn't burst into flames gods don't hate me now i hope that's not a thing

02:40:26.440 yeah don't let perfect be the enemy of good do what you're going to do and i'll say that a lot

02:40:32.180 people are inventive swan mentioned that he's seen them done on leather um we just had some

02:40:37.300 i've seen them done on shell at new york's off um we had a lady also from york's off that made

02:40:44.180 a donation that were um and if she's watching i apologize i don't know my my weaving terms

02:40:51.540 but they were on fabric they were like woven into into fabric that was really kind of cool

02:40:55.940 a lot of stuff you can do with it i think etsy for any kind of crafts that way etsy is always

02:41:03.740 a great thing and specifically ukrainians do a lot of really good ostrich related work

02:41:09.000 um for some afa stuff i actually have a ukrainian company right now i'm talking with on etsy it's

02:41:15.400 on my little i'm one of those guys that's got a million different screens open or whatever

02:41:20.780 tab's opened. One's open right now. I'm getting some AFA rings that we're working on made right

02:41:26.940 now from a company in Ukraine. So Etsy's a good deal for that. Okay, next question. About 20 years

02:41:34.680 ago, I ordered a DVD of something called The Folk by Sean Owens, some kind of documentary

02:41:41.580 about Alcetru in Minnesota. I just came across it after over a decade and haven't watched it

02:41:46.500 since i first bought it uh though that was 20 years ago ever heard of it there's a follow-up

02:41:54.340 that says says on the back of the case he was part of something called the eldritch influence

02:42:01.540 which i've also never heard of i too have never heard of this group of people nor of this dvd

02:42:09.140 but i'd be very curious of what they had uh 20 years ago in minnesota that they would call the

02:42:14.100 folk um are you familiar with this in any ways fun uh okay sort of i remember

02:42:25.140 the name and i'm actually i was trying to jog my memory if i knew of this person from long ago

02:42:33.380 um however i think that the dvd is in relation to perhaps the production company is connected to um

02:42:44.100 some odd stuff. Um, the, uh, HP Lovecraft, like, uh, I guess writing society or something is

02:42:55.360 involved with it. And that's why I think there's reference to the Eldridge things. And I don't

02:42:59.980 know, uh, again, I've, I've completely take HP Lovecraft's works as what they are as, you know,

02:43:07.180 a fictional horror that's, that's interesting and sometimes even quite beautiful to read,

02:43:11.800 um, in his writing style, but I don't know if there's like people that, you know, actually

02:43:17.360 believe that the, uh, you know, like the, the Necronomicon that was in the lore of H.P. Lovecraft

02:43:24.160 was an actual tangible thing. Um, and I, I, I remember hearing about it being connected to,

02:43:33.140 again, that kind of, I don't know if it's like a book club or a movie production club

02:43:38.120 or something in relation to h.p lovecraft's writing and i wonder if they were coming at it

02:43:45.500 from the idea that uh you know the um an ancient religion being revitalized uh was just something

02:43:53.980 kind of again spooky or uh i don't i don't know mysterious and they wanted to showcase it that

02:44:01.340 outside of that i don't know i've never watched it um i just i remember someone talking about it

02:44:07.820 long time ago in relation to like a book club or something like that so i don't know so you guys

02:44:15.740 are awesome we still have a bunch of questions we're gonna hit it's uh two hours and 41 minutes

02:44:21.420 in we've done gaybo that's fine i'm i'm here for the duration and uh i don't know so i hear

02:44:29.100 different things some people want these to be smaller and easily digestible i'm that guy that

02:44:34.940 i'll listen to a podcast for days i like to have it on while i'm in the car while i'm at the gym

02:44:40.540 while i'm doing other stuff if i don't want to listen to baby shark for the million time um

02:44:48.060 various various things that happen in my life so um you're welcome to take as long as to watch

02:44:55.740 these videos on replay as you want if you guys need to go to bed you sleep good and you check

02:45:01.500 it out when you can um but yeah just so you know i'm a fan of doing these until until it's time and

02:45:09.900 until it's done and if it makes a six or six and a half i think was our longest hour so far

02:45:17.900 um is what it is i think when especially and here's another thing to consider

02:45:23.580 especially on these ones with swan and i that run really long we build a synergy doing this together

02:45:31.020 i think that not only that but our relationship with the audience we build a synergy in there

02:45:36.620 with questions if we're all on and we're in the right frame of mind you can't always recapture

02:45:42.460 that and so while we have it i try to fully utilize it until it's done so next question

02:45:51.740 was oath swearing common in other aryan societies such as the romans or is it only a germanic

02:45:58.620 tradition i don't know much about non-germanic societies so excuse my ignorance swearing oaths

02:46:04.620 to the gods more specifically um yes oath swearing was common amongst all aryan peoples

02:46:15.820 for the exact same reasons um it was

02:46:19.580 you see oath swearing in a you see them in their cultural context so

02:46:30.380 in

02:46:33.640 Norse and Germanic culture and you know Anglo-Saxon culture you see it often in a hall

02:46:41.860 context in a you know feasting hall context because that's such a common thing you see it in

02:46:49.220 greece and rome and the macedonians and things of that nature a lot in a in a temple sense as opposed

02:46:56.660 to in a feast sense their feasts seem to be less ritualized and more you know just celebratory so

02:47:04.340 you see it a lot as you know leaders would go to a temple when they'd go places or before they

02:47:10.340 would leave their city and they would make oaths to the god of that city or of you know perhaps

02:47:16.180 that they believed as a progenitor of their family to accomplish certain deeds

02:47:22.660 um a part of that that i assume involves oaths but i can't say that we have

02:47:30.820 specific instance of that i think is really special is

02:47:34.740 the spoils optimus maximus the best and greatest of the spoils and this is when a roman general

02:47:47.220 would be able to engage the leader of an enemy tribe or of an enemy army

02:47:52.700 and a roman general believed himself to be the equal of a king of lesser people

02:47:58.260 so if you had a barbarian tribe and their chief was at war with rome and you were able to meet

02:48:04.480 that if you were the general and you were able to meet that chief on the battlefield and slay him

02:48:09.360 bringing in his armor to um believe the temple of mars in rome and presenting that on the

02:48:18.320 altar and there was only i believe like four instances of this where it counted and i believe

02:48:27.840 a fifth one that should have counted but emperor augustus didn't want to share credit so there was

02:48:36.080 some kind of technicality but that was a really special like contribution of of fulfillment of

02:48:44.400 yeah i went on the battlefield and i slew the leader of the enemy army um but yeah othing was

02:48:52.080 was fundamental in arian society and all the ones that we know about and again it takes the shape

02:48:58.080 of of the the culture that was in do you have anything to add on that swan yeah if you see the

02:49:04.080 word fealty that is almost guaranteed oath othing uh you know when you see the knights that uh that

02:49:13.280 swear fealty to their king uh whether you know it's placing your hand upon the blade or having

02:49:19.680 the king places hand upon their shoulder it's almost guaranteed there's a predecessor of an

02:49:25.360 oath of some sort that has been taken uh fealty is often a word that's used and i think people

02:49:30.880 gloss over it thinking that well one it's interesting because it's not submission

02:49:35.520 but it's it is that exchange that gabo between the the king is giving land or giving riches or

02:49:42.400 giving prowess and the warrior then gives loyalty and life oftentimes and that fealty that word is

02:49:51.360 thrown down but it it means oh things so you see you see oath it just occurred to me in uh

02:49:59.200 in greece is a little different in rome specifically because their civics was so

02:50:03.600 developed you see oaths in terms of oaths of office and i don't just mean civil office but

02:50:10.640 religious office as well you may serve as a priest for a certain amount of time

02:50:17.760 and you would have oaths and expectations of your practice while you're in that office be it

02:50:22.960 sacrifices you have to make or certain way you had to dress or zone you were allowed to be in

02:50:31.840 you would see that you would see that in terms of slavery and then the abolishment of that slavery

02:50:39.040 You would have oaths to support your master, your former master, or whoever your leader of your.

02:50:53.040 So how it was broken down with family and tribe, again, the Latin on it is escaping me right now, but your oaths to support different candidates, you would have oaths in a much more legal sense.

02:51:03.220 and also when there was was trials and things before the senate and before judges you would

02:51:07.940 also have oaths those things came into play in in roman society quite a bit

02:51:15.300 all right another question i think i've asked this question in previous episodes

02:51:20.340 but i had to log off before it was answered this one goes to both of you

02:51:24.340 what is your favorite book written by an afa member and why

02:51:27.700 honestly i am unaware of any books written by afa members off the top of my head

02:51:38.520 outside of steve's two books i have not read the spear yet so i've got to say austrian native

02:51:46.100 european spirituality by steve first i think it's good regardless secondly it kind of wins by default

02:51:53.140 because as i said i'm not sure of any other books made by current afa members what's the use fun

02:51:58.660 also the the metagenetics um like uh book slash booklet if you will because it is a kind of just

02:52:06.260 a smaller book but i really think that's overlooked and i i think that uh people's comprehensions of

02:52:13.060 metagenetics is especially nowadays is um askewed and it's really a great um booklet to kind of

02:52:21.140 reaffirm and recalibrate an understanding of what that means and why we are pan-european that we're

02:52:27.700 pan-arian is and and you know i kind of had a brush with somebody who had a very miscued uh

02:52:34.580 idea of you know um metagenetics to the point where you know it's like um people from finland

02:52:41.860 can't be in the circle of metagenetics and i was like i don't you know borders and and the

02:52:51.140 understanding of the migrations of our folk and where we preside and the metagenetics of how we

02:52:56.020 descend from uh heimdall and the the generations that that were that make the folk um they have a

02:53:04.020 loss in that so that that's another one i really really like is the the pamphlet slash booklet

02:53:09.460 of metagenetics that's a good one i think people should read that more often so a note on

02:53:15.220 metagenetics i think it's very much ahead of its time i think the more that we go into understanding

02:53:24.340 genetic traits when it comes to behavior and preference are really playing out that

02:53:30.500 that that book is by far ahead of its time some people so

02:53:38.900 a lot of people like to nitpick over irrelevancies um steve never claimed he was a a doctor of

02:53:48.260 genetics or whatever his points are sound people who try to criticize them with you know well

02:53:56.900 actually if you study riboflavin and they got silly things that they say that are irrelevant

02:54:05.060 to the point that he makes it was not written as a scientific textbook it was written to express

02:54:12.420 truth and it does that very well and the more we learn about that particular field of science

02:54:18.180 the more it proves that out i remember long ago people gnashing their teeth and clawing their

02:54:24.660 faces out just absolutely saying it's such an evil notion and then like just recently science

02:54:30.180 is like well it's kind of true it's like ah eat crow um all right so the next question could

02:54:41.940 sacrificing be giving up something we think we might need or we really want but we don't really

02:54:48.020 need and giving it up shows dedication and that we are willing to give it up yes there is profound

02:54:55.780 symbolism in sacrifice in that sense of the word but i think it is important to put that in its

02:55:06.740 context. Self-harm or destruction of something that you like demonstrates a level of seriousness.

02:55:23.540 That's true. And of commitment. That's true.

02:55:27.660 but that is something you are doing of a testament of will more than it's a requirement or a

02:55:41.040 so when you sacrifice

02:55:47.380 okay this is a difference between Jewish sacrifice and

02:55:57.660 uh ancient Jewish sacrifice and uh Arian sacrifice

02:56:06.540 when

02:56:12.060 and I believe I'm off on this I'm kind of embarrassed

02:56:17.580 was it Abraham that was supposed to sacrifice Isaac or was it Igress okay I couldn't okay cool

02:56:24.780 There was a point of you need to destroy the thing that is most precious to you to honor Jehovah by your willingness to part with things that are valuable to you with something that is going to harm you to do.

02:56:48.380 but you need to show your willingness as part of your obedience that was part of that story

02:56:55.320 and to be fair in the end Jehovah supplied him with a lamb to sacrifice instead of his firstborn

02:57:02.820 son and made it all good once he showed that he was willing to do that that is a very different

02:57:09.760 way of looking at sacrifice and I think it's where some of our modern confusion comes from

02:57:15.480 a jarl or a thane or someone who was important would have a herd yes you would sacrifice your

02:57:25.280 best animal but you weren't like starving your family to sacrifice the only animal you guys had

02:57:32.660 because you have to because our gods demand that you be willing to hurt yourself for them

02:57:40.620 that's not the same concept what is what does happen in um

02:57:50.380 traditional germanic sacrifice of animals

02:57:55.740 and this is this is something i believe and i think it we get away from it a little bit with me

02:58:00.300 but the principle applies when you take something that is on this side of the veil that is living

02:58:09.900 you imbue it with your might your main your well wishes for the gods you imbue it with things

02:58:16.980 in an instant when you kill it that then trans it goes instantly from

02:58:24.060 what you've put into it in in this side of the veil and it travels beyond the veil

02:58:30.780 to the gods through the means of of life and death and i think that is what making it sacred

02:58:39.880 means in that context it's not so much a need to give up or to you know i'm gonna cut off my foot

02:58:48.620 to honor the gods that's that is a grand gesture and on one level the seriousness of that is

02:58:57.000 appreciated i'm sure but great now the god's got one one of their soldiers got no foot

02:59:04.300 But yay, it makes you less effective for the gods.

02:59:11.300 Breaking stuff just to break it doesn't help the gods.

02:59:16.300 It may mean something of you.

02:59:18.300 Sacrificing something that you do that's a vice might be good all around.

02:59:23.300 But again, it's about you. That's not about the gods.

02:59:27.300 You giving up.

02:59:30.300 You know, if you if you love alcohol, giving up alcohol for the gods is a it's a special gesture.

02:59:39.180 The gesture has value and I don't take away from that.

02:59:42.700 But the gods don't care whether you drink or not.

02:59:45.560 If you're a drunk and you abuse your family, then sure, they care about that.

02:59:49.100 But again, that's you correcting an action of yours, not you giving them something.

02:59:53.420 Your gift of not beating your family when you're drunk is not a gift to the gods.

02:59:58.600 It's a you fixing your behavior and maybe, you know, you fixing and justifying something that you're doing.

03:00:05.800 The gods don't need that. You're not making something sacred by doing that.

03:00:11.720 You're correcting a problem or you're showing your commitment and your seriousness to something.

03:00:17.840 Like if you're like, hey, Matt, I'm going to take this oath to you, but you know what?

03:00:21.180 I'm going to make a blood oath and I need to cut yourself. That may mean a lot to me.

03:00:25.780 that's shocking and like wow okay this guy is serious that's not something i'd ask of you that's

03:00:32.260 not part of the gift cycle it's not i don't get something from you doing that it is a powerful

03:00:39.380 gesture on your part um and so to be fair on that in an indo-european sense

03:00:48.740 one of the really powerful gestures that did garner favor of gods was the idea of the devotio

03:00:58.680 that roman generals would do if they were losing and everything was all going bad as a sacrifice

03:01:07.340 to mars and a last ditch with all his might plea for victory a general would ride out in the thick

03:01:15.640 the battle and just you know for lack of a better term go berserk on the enemy in the heat of the

03:01:20.920 battlefield of the thickest part thus offering themselves as a sacrifice to the god of war for

03:01:27.640 victory and that was a thing so i mean it's not what i'm not criticizing or saying what you're

03:01:35.720 talking about is very off base but i'm saying it's very different than the idea of an animal sacrifice

03:01:42.920 or something else that way or a bog offering or any of the other things we think of as sacrifices

03:01:48.600 traditionally um our next question could freya having the dwarves make brissingamon again i

03:01:59.000 skipped a bunch of these questions and went way forward earlier because the monetary question

03:02:03.160 threw me off could freya having the dwarves make brissingamon by spiritual internal practices

03:02:09.240 using different aspects of herself to empower her with a higher level of ellipses union

03:02:16.560 individuation or ancient or an ancient shamanic equivalent do you see any overlap there's fun or

03:02:25.340 any correlation there uh yes and i was thinking kind of along with what this question and what

03:02:33.540 you were saying before, when you give up something of yourself, whether, uh, in this case, let's say

03:02:40.540 the countenance of, um, of, uh, being with, with, uh, or the, the wholeness or the countenance of

03:02:48.740 wholeness that is the self and in, in enveloping or taking in these powers, there is a sacrifice

03:02:56.200 that is made in order to, you know, become, to threshold higher, very much similar to, you know,

03:03:05.580 again, the sacrifice Odin upon Yggdrasil in heaven in order to attain that which is understood

03:03:18.020 as being the building blocks of things. Yes, that kind of sacrifice. And I think we're still on

03:03:23.200 Gabo and in reality we were talking about gifts we are talking also about sacrifice because

03:03:28.960 sacrifices are gifts you know what Gabo of all the runes that we've done it's been the most simple to

03:03:37.200 explain but we're three hours in expanding on it and I don't think any of that's wrong or any of

03:03:44.160 that's wasted time I think it's that important of a rune go ahead I'm sorry to interrupt no no yeah

03:03:48.860 And that's where I think ultimately, whether you're talking about sacrificing something that you do, sacrificing something that you are, sacrificing the countenance of your wholeness in order to bring in elements that will elevate you later, oftentimes at a disadvantage, maybe in renown or in perception of others, things like that.

03:04:12.980 there is something that must be understood is, and you kind of hit on it earlier, and it kind

03:04:18.820 of struck a chord in me is, let's say if you have to trial through something that is beneath you,

03:04:27.500 or you have to enact in through a trialed state, or if you have to give something up,

03:04:35.480 or not have to, but want to give something up, the ultimate question then is, does what remains

03:04:42.960 what remains of you more, is it more sacred? If you give up something, you're giving up something

03:04:52.820 perhaps out of a function, but the bigger question is, is what remains after you give that up? Is

03:04:59.200 that more sacred? Do you gain a better understanding, a greater might, a greater

03:05:05.680 renown uh perhaps a victory all of these things have to be asked to you if you're going to sacrifice

03:05:14.960 something you're not making that sacred it's what remains after you remove it are you more sacred

03:05:22.800 from that uh that severance if you will so if you give up something uh that you know is a folly and

03:05:31.440 it's a problem or something like that like say for instance you know if we're talking about health or

03:05:36.640 we're talking about clarity of mind um perhaps like you know with with uh like you had said

03:05:41.520 earlier about drinking the idea is if all of those things the gods don't demand that of you

03:05:47.600 but after you give it up are you more sacred are you more more in the realm of clarity do you

03:05:54.000 have a better connection to the gods you or or to the ancestors or or just too weird and to might

03:06:00.880 itself you don't know that's the all the other caveat of it is is that you give it up with the

03:06:07.120 hopes of attaining the higher self and so your intention should be that when you give up or when

03:06:14.720 you displace or whether you um you know uh break the countenance of yourself in in a way that

03:06:22.800 you're going in your life and change it greatly the whole intention is to become more sacred

03:06:29.200 after the process and again i and i started it with this and i'll finish my part on sacrifice

03:06:35.840 with this the word does a disservice in modern english it absolutely means to give something up

03:06:42.000 it's hard to even express these ideas without using the term in a way that it didn't originally

03:06:46.960 me um sacrifice is not sacrifice in the sense of making something holy is not the same as cost

03:07:01.200 there are things that come with a cost and you have to be willing to pay the cost to get them

03:07:07.680 that's not the same as the gift cycle and sacrifice in that sense that's very different

03:07:12.960 um tear wasn't like hey i'll give up my hand for you guys because i want to have the gift cycle

03:07:20.520 no they swore an oath someone needed to put their hand in the wolf's mouth

03:07:25.440 he know what everyone else their courage faltered his courage was strong he stepped forward put his

03:07:32.200 hand in the in the wolf's mouth that is a testament to his willingness to pay a cost

03:07:39.240 for the rest of us all to benefit from in the binding of Fenrir. So taking it upon yourself

03:07:48.680 to pay a heavy cost for yourself, for the goodwill benefit of yourself, for the benefit of others,

03:07:54.000 that is a beautiful and amazing thing. I take nothing away from that. It's just different than

03:08:01.280 what this started out as with Gabo talking about the gift cycle. I just wanted to clarify that.

03:08:07.700 The next question, what if a person joins the AFA, but then at some point has trouble paying the monthly payments because they're tied on money at some point?

03:08:16.920 That is no problem.

03:08:19.120 But I want to be completely honest on this.

03:08:22.300 At present, the current lowest monthly dues payment thing that the AFA does is $10 a month.

03:08:30.340 I will say this, and I believe it is true. I don't say it to be offensive. There's no one

03:08:40.440 that doesn't have $10 a month for the AFA. That's not real. There are literally homeless people

03:08:46.780 right now with more than $10 that if it were important enough to them, they could give to the

03:08:51.920 AFA. Now I say that in the United States, there are other countries in the world where things

03:08:58.280 are very different, and maybe that's not the case. There's nobody that doesn't have $10. Secondly,

03:09:03.760 we extend people on their $10 memberships all of the time. We never,

03:09:12.580 I'm not going to lie, we need money. That's how we have Hoffs. That's how we have Sigurheim.

03:09:20.020 That's how we hold these events. That's how we do things. It is a currency of value, of time,

03:09:27.480 of stuff and it makes things work. It's real. That's honest. Truth is one of our values.

03:09:35.520 It's not about that. That facilitates this that we do, but it's about commitment. Usually if

03:09:44.520 somebody's cut because they stopped paying, it's because they stopped paying and we can't get a

03:09:49.640 hold of them and they express no interest in continuing. We'll extend people all day long.

03:09:55.560 We're not that hard up for $10. We want people that are committed to what we do. And we found

03:10:03.140 if there's no cost, first, we can't do anything. We have no funds to operate with. But secondly,

03:10:10.860 if it's free, people don't value it. If there is a cost to it, then they do treat it as something

03:10:18.780 that has a value to it. But the other thing, and the answer to your question, the bigger answer

03:10:23.640 the question, is the Hoftholler. The idea of the Hoftholler is percentage-based giving.

03:10:32.040 But wait, that's like the Christian tithe. Yes, it's exactly like the Christian tithe,

03:10:36.680 except for we're not asking for 10%. I'd love if you could do 10. We're asking for at least one.

03:10:43.480 It's why they have nice things, and it's why I don't want our kids

03:10:50.040 to have the high celebrations of our gods in camp chairs with a rotisserie chicken.

03:11:00.520 That just is what it is. Now, here's the thing on the Hofsteller, though, to your question,

03:11:04.440 if somebody runs in hard times, it's 1% or more of your income. And if you are Bill Gates,

03:11:12.660 that's awesome. We all do amazing because we're getting buckets of ducats because you're doing

03:11:19.780 so well if you're not dead broken you're making zero it's one percent of zero because that's what

03:11:27.860 we'll take that's fine it's not about that it's never been about that it's not going to be about

03:11:33.300 that do we want money yes do i ask for donations all the time yes do we you know have to make money

03:11:41.300 on membership absolutely it's how we do nice things but do i ever want money to be a reason

03:11:48.580 for any of our folk not to be connected to our AFA family or connected to our gods. No, never.

03:11:53.840 I never want that. I never have. I never will. That's not a thing. I promise you that.

03:12:06.820 How does one become a Witten? Do you have to be a Goffy first? Kind of like how you become a Goffy,

03:12:14.160 you need to be a folk builder first. Yes, exactly like that. Except for the difference is

03:12:18.740 being a Witten is a real limited number of people. It's a small people that are basically

03:12:26.180 my personal advisory council of people to run the AFA with me and to help advise me on AFA decisions.

03:12:35.080 In order to be on the Witten, you absolutely have to be a Goethe first.

03:12:38.360 but we intentionally try to keep the Witten small so everybody who is an amazing Goethe

03:12:46.700 isn't going to be Witten there's just not positions available excuse me as we grow there

03:12:53.000 will be more positions on there you may have seen but we just expanded the Witten over the

03:12:57.560 summer to include Witten Daniel Young there are other people right now if all of a sudden our

03:13:04.760 membership quadrupled and we needed to add a couple of new Witten members. There's people

03:13:09.080 that I would add that are worthy of it, but it's a much smaller, again, we don't need as many and

03:13:16.740 it's not just if you're the best Gothi you can be, you automatically make it to the Witten.

03:13:21.320 It depends on if there's a position open and how that works.

03:13:25.460 But yeah, the Witten are chosen from amongst our very best Gothar.

03:13:34.760 okay what is the punishment for oath breaking and what is one supposed to do if they break an oath

03:13:45.320 try to fix it with anything with anything you break try to fix it can't go back in time you

03:13:54.600 can't undo things that you've done but you can try to make things that you've broken whole

03:14:00.120 And that is the entire premise of Aryan justice. It's not we need to lock somebody up and punish

03:14:11.820 them. It's that we need to restore. And this is also a good question on Gabo. We need to restore

03:14:18.240 that equilibrium. If you've taken from someone and diminished them, restoring them and making

03:14:26.640 up on top of that for any damage that they've incurred during that time since you did it,

03:14:32.300 that's the closest we get towards justice is trying to make whole what you broke.

03:14:39.380 Now, here's the problem with oaths in today's world. The world of our ancestors, oaths meant

03:14:47.300 a lot because there was a social element to it that was first there's cosmic

03:14:56.040 implications to oaths to breaking them and to keeping them

03:15:01.140 you're not always going to see those as direct correlations and feel them i believe that your

03:15:09.500 weird suffers if you are breaking oaths and you are an oath breaker you're going to have a

03:15:16.200 disproportionate amount of unsuccessful things happen in your life. Maybe you think that's

03:15:25.180 random. Maybe you think whatever you think. I think that's because there are divine implications

03:15:29.600 to your oath breaking. But in a tangible sense, what's hard, people nowadays treat oaths as

03:15:35.980 completely disposable. You can just break your oaths as much as you want, and society as a whole

03:15:43.960 doesn't care um unless you are under oath and you lie in a courtroom there are very

03:15:52.040 few examples in our world of you know maybe if you lie to a police officer

03:15:59.160 but very few examples to where oaths count for much and that's sad to say

03:16:07.400 in our ancestors time we would all shun you if you broke oaths if you were known as someone

03:16:13.320 who broke his oath we wouldn't want to have anything to do with you and you'd be an outcast

03:16:19.880 and when you went to the next town over they'd be like oh bill bill from over you know

03:16:26.760 three mountain you're that dude that broke his oaths no get out of here you get to stepping

03:16:32.840 before i change my mind like you're that would follow you and it would hurt you socially in

03:16:40.600 a tangible way wait hold on you want to marry my daughter aren't you that guy that broke that

03:16:45.480 oath about 15 years back i think you are no get out of here there was a lot of social

03:16:52.840 social implications to your keeping or breaking of your oath unfortunately we don't have those anymore

03:17:01.160 um even folk who thump their chest the loudest about honor

03:17:07.160 No, you just need to make up a halfway plausible excuse that makes it okay for you to break your oath, and then it's all good.

03:17:15.200 We're trying to change that as a culture, but we're not there yet.

03:17:20.960 Unfortunately, there's very little in our world that enforces oaths.

03:17:30.380 Now, one thing, and I think there's implications on this, also it has to do with Gabo.

03:17:37.160 marriage in the AFA. Our go-thar do not perform weddings that are not legally binding.

03:17:44.600 The reason for that isn't because we believe the state that you live in or the United States of

03:17:50.360 America is the authority over your wedding. The point is that wedding's real and there's

03:17:57.260 consequence. You can't just abandon it. You can't just break your oaths. There's economic and just

03:18:03.460 a bunch of hassle to get out of it to where it makes it real when you have playground weddings

03:18:09.460 to where you know you just go before homeboy and they say you're married yeah i'm married

03:18:16.580 you're only married until you decide you don't want to be and uh that's you know one of our

03:18:23.540 attempts to make oaths mean more is not to perform that particular thing until there's

03:18:28.340 you know there's some consequence to it um other oaths it's a little bit trickier but we're trying

03:18:35.700 all the time to make sure those mean more and we've got some different options we've talked

03:18:39.700 with our law speaker about to reconcile people once they've broken oaths to try to restore

03:18:49.220 and fix things that have been damaged because of that

03:18:52.340 i did want to say to a concept culturally internalized when you make an oath one of the

03:18:59.940 big things let's say for instance if you make an oath let's talk about say something maybe personal

03:19:05.940 uh but it applies also to oaths that you make within culture within society with to the gods

03:19:12.740 uh to your ancestors um is that if you hold to your oath your might your main your your virility

03:19:21.620 and your power your grows and that is again affected in it affects your soul it affects um

03:19:28.500 your hammer and it affects your harmony um and if you go against that then much like a needle

03:19:34.580 to a water skin it slowly drains out of you if you do not uphold not saying that you can't rectify

03:19:42.420 and stop up the hole but again there is a a cultural significance of understanding that if

03:19:50.420 i hold to my oaths i build my might if i don't or if i fall or if i outright go against this causes

03:20:00.100 travesty it causes ill luck it causes many bad things so the the first deferment of uh if the

03:20:08.020 accusation is leveled at you that you are going against your oath the first thing should be to

03:20:13.620 seek mediation in order to make sure that everything is done well so that it can either

03:20:19.860 be stopped or it can be denied and refuted and then things can be figured out and then you're

03:20:25.060 you're back to good culturally and everyone's happy these things are important and i think

03:20:30.180 one of the things the first one of the big steps that we need to take to internalizing

03:20:34.020 oath building uh is about that contractual um value in the self because our society is deeply

03:20:42.980 individualistic and if we don't think of the gods as watching us if we don't think of the gods as

03:20:49.140 actually looking down into the well and and and marking us marking down our deeds or or even our

03:20:56.260 follies um if we don't take our oath seriously that causes that ripple of i want to make a point

03:21:04.820 on asking to be relief relieved of oaths you can have oaths be mutually dissolved by

03:21:14.660 the parties consenting dissolve them

03:21:19.060 but the point of your oath is that you don't do that the purpose of your oath

03:21:25.700 is that you stick it out through hard times you don't need an oath for when everybody's

03:21:31.300 getting along and everybody's in agreement. There's no purpose to it at that point.

03:21:36.420 An oath is to restrict you from breaking when there's hard times or from reneging when it's

03:21:44.820 no longer beneficial to you. If you take an oath and we're all good and everything's great,

03:21:51.540 you sticking to your oath doesn't matter. We didn't need an oath. We only need an oath to

03:21:56.900 where i know that you still have my back and i still have yours when we're in a point of

03:22:02.980 disagreement or when there's a conflict or when we don't like each other or when those things are

03:22:09.220 what matters if your first recourse as soon as there's something you don't like i want out hey

03:22:15.060 can i please be released on my oath that spits on the oath that's not the point

03:22:20.660 all right that's important for folks to think about would the afa consider having a day of

03:22:27.540 remembrance for ragnar lofbrook i understand it's a bit cliche but he is a very famous viking

03:22:34.260 and i'm surprised there is not a day for him

03:22:37.060 he is a famous viking he's not a famous aussituror oh he is an aussituror who is famous but his fame

03:22:45.580 is for his being a Viking, which is an occupation of raiding and, you know, conquering land and

03:22:56.080 raiding and bringing home booty, not of worshiping the gods. We, as a church, do our days of

03:23:05.140 remembrance based on heroes of the faith, not people who do good stuff who happen to be

03:23:10.980 but whose commitment to our gods is the defining that's the reason that we're remembering these

03:23:19.020 people so i don't and again a case might be made i don't claim to be an expert on all

03:23:25.580 elements of ragnar's life but the case him being a famous viking doesn't matter

03:23:31.460 him doing something great for our faith and for our gods him sacrificing again see i use the word

03:23:42.540 in a modern sense because it's just there him suffering for the sake of our gods him

03:23:49.460 doing something in their honor would earn him that more so than his fame at

03:23:56.060 plundering stuff. And, you know, that's, that's a commonality. And I think it's really important.

03:24:04.220 And that's not always something that we had. That's something that we've been

03:24:07.220 found important to refine. Um, yeah.

03:24:20.020 Michael Jordan isn't a Christian saint, though he happens to be a Christian who did something

03:24:24.500 else unrelated that's really good. He's a really good basketball player. That doesn't earn him

03:24:29.820 sainthood because none of that has anything to do with his faith. It just means he's awesome

03:24:36.120 at basketball. That's why he's in the Basketball Hall of Fame and not a saint. Ragnar is certainly

03:24:41.960 famous and awesome and fantastic and an amazing warrior, an amazing Viking. Laughing his death

03:24:49.940 song as he dies in agony in the snake pit is inspirational to all of us you know nothing

03:24:55.940 taking nothing away but these aren't secular heroes these are religious heroes that our

03:25:01.840 church is honoring with that status because of their devotion to our gods and our faith

03:25:07.980 and it might be worth noting there is that divergence there that you just set with

03:25:13.160 Egil Skallagrimson and Ragnar. Ragnar is a warrior but Egil is a poet and had actually

03:25:21.320 devoted much of his uh his um uh skaldic power and his interactions so uniquely with the religious

03:25:32.040 aspect of Ausatru that it became synonymous with him that he was a man of Odin and he exuded it

03:25:39.000 but he also spoke of it and constructed poetry in a way uh you know um you know expressing

03:25:46.760 religiosity through there and i can understand how people might like well why right why a but not

03:25:52.600 rock not and that i because he was a rune master devoted to odin who also was a really cool viking

03:26:00.440 right exactly and that's i i wanted to clarify that if there was yeah and you can and you can

03:26:05.960 do both you can absolutely do both um but the the thing that elevates you and do it to the status of

03:26:14.840 hero of of the austro folk assembly that we honor with the day of remembrance is your devotion to

03:26:22.600 the faith not your secular actions those are super important those are awesome we can absolutely

03:26:28.200 celebrate you and raise a horn to you and you are a hero in many other senses but not in our

03:26:34.760 church's day of remembrance um that reminds me i need to donate to a hof question which

03:26:43.160 off needs the most money i'll give some first thank you very much that means a lot it's

03:26:52.760 appreciated wherever it goes not just by the afa but i believe by the god whose hof it is um

03:27:00.360 yeah thank you for wanting to do that

03:27:04.760 So all of our Hoffs are contenders in different ways and have different needs.

03:27:16.820 And to be completely honest, we're always going to raise whatever standard of the Hoff to the money we have available.

03:27:27.080 We're going to make, you know, if we got enough, we'll coat it in gold and we'll, you know, do.

03:27:31.840 So that's never ending and not really a fair assessment of your question.

03:27:37.100 What I'm going to have to say is that Njordshof needs your money more than the other Hoffs due to the fact that it's not paid off yet.

03:27:48.160 So we own the other Hoffs. They belong to the Aus True Folk Assembly.

03:27:52.620 They're inassailably ours. Njordshof still has a loan out for it.

03:27:58.220 It's ours. We're secured. It's not a loan through the bank.

03:28:00.700 there's it's not going to be repossessed or anything but we don't own it outright yet because

03:28:06.380 that loan is still in place so i would say njordshoff is in the most need right now swan you

03:28:12.620 concur uh 100 in relation to i'm i have bias because i'm uh you know centered out of thorsoff

03:28:20.540 But no, I'm 100% Njordeshof.

03:28:25.540 Njordeshof, again, is we have debt and the debt of that to pay it off is higher.

03:28:32.540 To be free of that is number one, because that gives us the autonomy to then fix and

03:28:38.540 applicate as we need it.

03:28:40.540 So I 100% concur.

03:28:42.540 Absolutely.

03:28:43.540 All right.

03:28:44.540 So three hours and 26 minutes in.

03:28:48.540 Rune number two. Will you speak to these people about the rune Wunyo?

03:28:55.500 Wunyo. Yes, Wunyo. Wunyo is the rune of joy, the rune of happiness, the rune of

03:29:07.500 um ecstaticism the rune of elevated uh mind elevated soul elevated uh

03:29:19.020 everything it's it's a truly it's an interesting rune that's at the end of the first

03:29:25.820 ether the ether is a family there are three families of runes making 24 because they consist

03:29:32.460 of eight and uh this is the eighth rune and this rune is i think in the grand story of everything

03:29:40.620 um is uh again the the contractual equilibrium of cosmic order natural law coming together in

03:29:49.020 alignment making and and conjoining in the center now there is this elevation this um

03:29:56.140 Um, heaven has taken its seat. It has been born up. It has been beset. And it is now that the

03:30:03.440 gods are in the place above and, and there is the place in, in the middle, the time, uh, that place

03:30:09.860 is encapsulated. It is encapsulated by Nivelheim and Mespelheim and Vanaheim and Jotunheim and

03:30:16.620 Niederveler underneath. And the time, the place below, even further down and away from time is

03:30:22.360 now set everything is now kind of taken stage and the gods celebrate it is a the golden age if you

03:30:31.860 will it's kind of referenced um you know in the in the volaspow uh and um in the gilfagining as

03:30:40.240 the time in which the gods fashion greatness and they they built this you know in the story

03:30:46.200 I think that it would be like, say, for instance, before prose, it would be understood that this was a great and joyous time when heaven and earth and all things come into alignment and it is good.

03:30:59.640 I think that poetically it formulated itself, especially during the Nordic age and post Viking or Nordic age, when it was, you know, written down as to equivalency of building the halls and fashioning gold and having tools and implements.

03:31:23.260 Ithaval is created in heaven. Ithaval is seen, sorry, not created. It is seen and Ausgard is created. Ausgard is the encapsulation of the gods. It's where they reside.

03:31:36.020 So one of the things that I really hold to this rune is elevation of purpose, the gods coming into alignment with Ausgard in heaven being fashioned, refashioned, reconstituted.

03:31:56.140 The walls are rebuilt. The gods are now functioning together. They're not dilapidated in a polaric sense.

03:32:04.220 Everything is moving forward, and this is the time of anointment. So I often associate this rune with anointment, and I oftentimes, you know, with the runic symbol itself, kind of take this as to the higher mind, the placement upon the head of the crown or the spiritual enlightenment of growth.

03:32:28.060 um it is a time of contentment it is a time of um of great joy so whenever this rune comes up if

03:32:34.820 we're talking about in a divinity a divinatory sense um the the rune itself is always kind of

03:32:41.660 seen as a as a joyous rune it's one of those runes that is not seen as terrible um uh it's

03:32:49.540 some runes have a kind of an exuding sense to that we'll get to the in the next rune um but

03:32:55.360 in this rune uh i would say like when we're determining it is even hard when it is a murk

03:33:02.000 stab when there are other runes around it that determine it's it's kind of correlation to a

03:33:07.120 divination topic even still it is very hard to trounce this rune in murkiness in darkness um

03:33:16.800 or to taint it with any sort of negativity this rune just ultimately means it's kind of like in

03:33:23.600 in its negative sense, is a warning against being lost in the joyousness. It's the keeping focus

03:33:30.820 on what you're doing and ultimately what attained that victory, that joy. Hold on to it, keep it,

03:33:40.780 and project it forward. Don't get lost and don't rest on your laurels. Don't get too deep in the

03:33:49.620 mead of in celebration and get soft around the edges. I think that's the most negative kind of

03:33:55.080 aspect of it. Otherwise it is a time for celebration is a time to experience the joy to, um, carve the

03:34:02.600 memories in your mind of, of happiness. And so this symbol is often associated with like, say

03:34:07.860 a pennant flag. Um, and I enjoy, um, especially when it comes to like mid summer pennant flags

03:34:14.800 strung on strings, uh, with the triangular, um, you know, uh, shape, um, or being held aloft on a,

03:34:22.940 on a, a pole, um, is, uh, certainly the imagery that you could place to this rune, and so the

03:34:32.220 idea of, of, um, its, its meaning. In, in the, uh, Elder Futhark, it is called Wunyo, in Anglo-Saxon

03:34:43.200 it's called the wean w-y-n-n and uh it's been translated to joy um sometimes it could be kind

03:34:50.640 of uh you can etymologically looking at words like the word uh winning or wishing uh are also

03:34:57.800 kind of sourced in the same field of the the the either the attempt of it at attaining joy or

03:35:06.760 attaining joy through, through, uh, victory, through, um, hard work and, or, or harvest or

03:35:13.500 things like that. So when you is the joy rune, and it's one of the runes, I think that, um,

03:35:21.000 it's simple and it's upfrontness, but there is a deeper, um, layer to it. When we start to talk

03:35:30.240 about um ecstaticism amongst our ancestors when it came in relation to say prayer fervor and battle

03:35:38.240 fervor and poetry and and again i think a lot of people that are not folk or people that are

03:35:43.440 of a different branch they um they're always kind of perplexed at the the combination of that we

03:35:50.800 have of kingship, war, death, and poetry, especially in relation to Lord Odin, is that

03:36:00.040 that always seems to have kind of an odd, like, really? How does that work? And it all plays out

03:36:09.560 in in wunyo uh joy is good completion is good ascendancy the uh the attainment um but it's

03:36:19.960 it's always kind of like at the caveat or the warning of never getting so far over that you

03:36:25.800 become degenerative to the to the uh tasks that you were that helped you attain the victory um

03:36:32.680 and to not kind of get disillusioned or addicted to just the simple happiness of it

03:36:39.960 um it so it does kind of have that air of warning don't go down that road because

03:36:44.440 you could end up losing yourself and then dropping back further than what it took you to get there

03:36:50.520 um and again divination wise this this rune is always kind of seen as a perhaps a a favorable

03:36:58.680 outcome. It could also come up sometimes as a source of perhaps in the, in the source of things

03:37:07.420 in the earth, in the origin, when it comes up, it could denote that when you did lose yourself into

03:37:14.500 things or that the, the, the good time of it is over. And now you have to either refocus yourself

03:37:21.360 on your task or something happened and it's starting to degrade. And that's what brought

03:37:26.920 you to the questioning to begin with. Um, sometimes you have to be aware of, um, a false

03:37:34.420 happiness too. Uh, so it, it, again, internalizing and addressing the true nature of the situation

03:37:42.560 is a huge part of, of Wonyo is, um, taking the joy, but assessing, um, that, that level

03:37:52.320 happiness and perhaps what it means to um you know again move forward or move to the next step

03:38:00.320 to move to the next platform if you will uh but yes this rune is the joy rune and i i've so when

03:38:06.000 we talk about movement we talk about um you know gabo is is internalized it's centered it's the

03:38:12.080 equilibrium the the upper the lower all directions coming in wunyo is then that lifting up that that

03:38:21.280 that placing on high, holding the trophy, holding the horn, holding the torch.

03:38:27.920 It's that pure exhilarating joy of standing on the precipice of victory

03:38:33.760 and considering what it took you to get there and, you know, ultimately how you define that

03:38:41.780 happiness and where you will go from there. And so I've always definitely just, I've taken this

03:38:48.120 standing on the on that precipice holding the flag waving it back and forth and that exhilarant

03:38:54.440 joy of of triumph and um just exuberance sheer exuberance yeah wunyo um it's one of my favorite

03:39:08.160 runes like you said it's it's simple i don't think we have the mass of commentary on it we

03:39:17.380 necessarily do with some of the others. But it's, it's nice. And I

03:39:26.020 think that we don't very often, we now it's true, we focus a lot on

03:39:39.220 doing. And as somebody who's doing oriented, we constantly are looking for problems because

03:39:50.080 we can fix them. We're looking for something to do, to build, to achieve. And the most efficient

03:39:57.440 thing to do for that is you look for weaknesses, you look for problems, you look for things that

03:40:01.900 are broken so that you can throw yourself into the mix on fixing them. I know that that's

03:40:08.320 something that I struggle with a lot. I see negative stuff like all the time because it's my

03:40:15.220 job to make sure everything doesn't fall down around us. You know, I've got to make sure that

03:40:19.120 everything's working well. So I'm looking for things that don't work. But we have to be really

03:40:25.380 careful that that doesn't blind us to all the amazing and beautiful things around us. And

03:40:31.340 There's so, so much of that within our AFA.

03:40:37.640 I use Wunyo a lot.

03:40:39.540 One of the most frequent things that I do with runes is I galled her at the beginning of ritual.

03:40:46.960 I galled her to harmonize and to unite our folk who are in ritual into a way of thinking or a focus.

03:41:01.340 And I use Wunyo for that a lot because we have so much to be happy about and so much to celebrate and so much to be joyful of.

03:41:09.820 And often people come in and are grim and have, you know, all kind of stuff that they're grumpy about.

03:41:17.500 We all do that. But focusing on things that we love and things that we're happy about and the joy in our life is extremely important.

03:41:27.720 And at particularly at this time, it's really important to draw attention to it.

03:41:36.040 Shouldn't be that way. Shouldn't be that way. We should be focused on joy a lot.

03:41:41.440 But one of the part of living in the wolf age is needing to recalibrate to that sometimes.

03:41:48.440 One of the things with the picture of Wunyo, with the bind rune of Wunyo, Wunyo contains the rune Laguz, and it has helped me early on, and it stays with me now,

03:42:10.860 is the idea of joy washing over you, like a wave, the liquid involved, like when you're overjoyed

03:42:25.360 and you blush and the blood rushes to your skin, the idea of just being washed over with a wave

03:42:33.040 of joy um that's always stood out to me and and been something that's helped me internalize this

03:42:40.960 room so no wunyo is is one of my favorites it is easier to digest than some others

03:42:50.720 it's also not represented in the armin and runes um i believe we have one

03:42:59.280 one rune poem mention in the in the anglo-saxon runes yes who uses it knows no pain sorrow

03:43:13.840 nor anxiety and he himself has prosperity and bliss and also enough shelter um

03:43:21.760 I don't know if you have a different version. They're all slightly different, but

03:43:28.760 it's straightforward in joy is good. It sounds dumb, but I don't know. That's basically the

03:43:41.340 room poem is joy is awesome. It means you're not homeless and you're not. What I do think

03:43:48.080 is important is it's an absence of want of those basic needs of life. Like it's hard to embrace

03:43:57.140 joy if you don't have shelter. You're sleeping out in the rain and you're homeless and you don't

03:44:02.660 have those things. It's hard to feel this. So joy as a caveat to it often means having your most

03:44:12.540 basic needs met and that's kind of the what i get out of that that's particularly valuable to me

03:44:25.820 i was gonna say i saw wunyo uh in the um what is it the poolside picture of baldershoff or the

03:44:32.460 you know i just saw arm and arm shoulder to shoulder happy faces and it was like

03:44:37.900 when you that's just that sliver of a drop of a moment of happiness and everyone's smiling and

03:44:43.820 joking and laughing and it can be gone in a moment because of you know schedules and flights and uh

03:44:50.460 or you know deadlines and logistics and all that stuff but for a brief moment

03:44:55.580 boom it's right there it's like yes just worth it so our next two questions

03:45:01.900 the one answers the other um wuno frith can it mean frith and the healthy maintenance of a tribe

03:45:13.680 and community yes you can certainly have joy out of that the rune that more aptly personifies that

03:45:25.860 is man as um man as is you know boiled down to man is the joy of man it's getting joy from our

03:45:35.540 relationships with friends with our community with one another also one that i'd like to use

03:45:41.540 a lot to open rituals with which goes to daniel young's next question witten harrell would you

03:45:47.620 agree that man as is a representation of the joy shared between friends as in man is the joy of man

03:45:55.860 uh manas looks like two uños facing each other yes comment on that yeah mother and mom mother

03:46:05.320 and man's gamma man is the joy of man and friendship and kinship is is is the key um

03:46:12.460 they uh i would say one thing to to note between the two when you is like a culmination and i think

03:46:20.200 in relation to perhaps as you know the the gods coming to alignment there's a culmination sense

03:46:26.740 whereas manas is joy through maintenance the idea of the cycle the idea of the unilateral

03:46:35.100 friendship and backing of each other the security in that so like the the friv is about security

03:46:42.860 in the the the fence the guard uh whereas when you it's like almost like a culmination of all

03:46:50.580 elements whether it's the sacrifices that were made the um the hard times that were experienced

03:46:57.380 by some or by all and ultimately kind of the celebration of that so yeah it's it's it's the joy

03:47:04.540 um but also i get i feel like there's the in the symbology of manas the way it is there's a

03:47:11.740 maintenance of joy between the two uh sides the two polarics so the maintenance between the two

03:47:20.260 which makes it relevant to today's discussion is gabo if you take two eases and you put gabo in

03:47:29.780 betwixt them that is madness um and it is that exchange if you just you know with your finger

03:47:38.180 tracing it do those two that you know the gay boat part the two wunos facing each other just

03:47:45.460 doing that figure eight it's that exchange back and forth and back and forth and back and forth

03:47:51.640 and i realized now what i'm doing with my finger is off camera and now i feel silly doing it

03:47:56.520 but yeah well no but seriously that um dagaz is a room like that if you cut off the the legs of

03:48:06.700 man as it makes the dagas and it's an equilibrium between between day and night uh gabo's very much

03:48:14.140 like that with that man as it makes dagas makes basically an infinity symbol it's a it's a that

03:48:21.720 constant cyclical exchange and gabo is very much that i think this is all very apropos to our

03:48:27.940 discussion tonight but man as is more of joy in a context of relationship between people

03:48:37.860 and between community whereas wunyo is more of a standalone joy of things being good in your life

03:48:46.340 yeah um

03:48:51.220 swan can you tell the people about hagalas

03:48:59.300 will we jump into that one yeah okay all right um questions i'm not in charge of these questions

03:49:05.140 we only had two on this last one i think they burnt themselves out with the three hours of

03:49:09.860 previous questions with cable that's fair enough so uh hail hagalas hagalas of course is the

03:49:21.380 reconstructed um the this this image um interestingly enough we know very clearly

03:49:28.340 that this is the eldest image of this rune uh because of stone and uh carvings of the elder

03:49:35.540 and also the gothic alphabet um this is the ninth rune uh which has you know certain portents

03:49:42.900 obviously um but what i i've always um it or let's go basic first it is the hail rune it is

03:49:51.220 the rune of hail and hail is seen as intrinsic offensive forces that stop your progress or stop

03:50:00.420 stop your movement or uh create um calamity or at least uh i i wouldn't say maybe not just calamity

03:50:09.060 but create crisis if you will crisis does come to us and in a lot of ways hale is a great example

03:50:16.020 of that because it's not necessarily something contrived through conspiracy it's seen at or or

03:50:23.140 that it's manufactured it's it is just crisis at at the the most primal level is that sometimes

03:50:31.300 you receive resistance in order to make growth and um and that is the overall theme every time

03:50:40.740 you you hear about hagalas being described it is the the grain of ice that pelts the fields that

03:50:47.940 crushes the the the harvest it it's seen as like this um destructive force that's that comes in

03:50:56.180 and ultimately leaves with this kernel of water or potential to re-soothe and regrow and that could be

03:51:08.020 taken as a positive mindset um it could also be you know taken again as um that you know the you're

03:51:16.580 always going to be faced with some sort of strife and that you you need to reevaluate and it's so

03:51:22.020 interesting because it's juxtaposed right after wunyo so it's like joy and then crisis um i i

03:51:31.220 think it's worth noting though i and i believe this in the in the uh overall tale of of the

03:51:36.020 runes and epoch mythos is that this is the coming and it's it's mentioned in the volus vow that at

03:51:43.300 this point after the joy of the gods and after everything is made in alignment there is an event

03:51:50.900 that ultimately is laid down at the feet of the gods and that is the arrival of the nornir the

03:52:00.100 the the norns show up and they say your your gilded age is good but there are things that

03:52:07.620 have been done and set into motion and now we are a part of this and we will be a part of this

03:52:14.100 we will they they end up joining in the realm of the gods coming to the to the tree in heaven

03:52:22.100 and they the the pool that is there is the they are the uh uh threshold keepers

03:52:31.380 of that well and of that water where the gods take counsel and view um

03:52:37.620 the middle place, the place of time, the place of coalescence of weird, and it originates from

03:52:44.480 them. And so I've always taken this to be the first of the Nornir runes in relation to the

03:52:52.140 next series we'll be expounding on this is Hagalaz, Naufiz, and Isa as being kind of symbolic of the

03:53:01.380 three nornir and what they ultimately represent when it comes to order and it comes to the source

03:53:09.380 of things i think one of the things that it's it's uh stating is that there are outside elements that

03:53:15.860 are that affect us it doesn't always it's not an equal transaction that all bad things happen

03:53:22.420 because of your deeds sometimes there's other actions in the world around us that lead us to

03:53:28.020 have to face trials that have to face crisis and it is how we it spurns need and it's it's how we

03:53:37.860 uh we learn from the gods that despite this is laid down before them they have to now negotiate

03:53:45.220 it they have to overcome it they have to meet their fate and rise above or and achieve victory

03:53:53.380 and that starts first with having the crisis happen so when this rune comes up i think a lot

03:53:59.540 of people um rightly so see it as oh this is in a divination sense this is going to be a trial

03:54:06.500 this is going to be something where in the midst of it you might not be looking at this as being

03:54:11.300 good at all in any way shape or form it could be um breakdown arguments it could be uh dissipation

03:54:19.540 and ultimately though it leaves the seeds to regrow and to reform so after that dissipation

03:54:26.980 even though it's terrible at the time you might be actually clearing away the dross and that the

03:54:32.900 new growth that will come from the field that's been pelted by hail is going to renew itself and

03:54:38.340 be even stronger and even more um and and so it's it's a in essence it's it's a a rune that combines

03:54:47.300 will and fate the crisis of of things that sometimes we can't see the origin of

03:54:53.460 and our willfulness to overcome it i think that's that's a big part of this this room hagalos

03:55:03.940 oh and it's the room that we when we go back in the younger futhark uh gabo and wunyo are

03:55:10.500 taken out, but Hagalaz remains. And so it restarts again. This rune has three rune poems

03:55:19.420 because the Anglo-Saxon follows the elder, that Stenna Brekte style, and the younger has,

03:55:28.440 you know, been changed or modified or morphed.

03:55:32.540 nick do you have an image of the snowflake have laws our haggalas

03:55:43.220 if you do cool if you don't it's one of the um

03:55:49.740 a lot of the runes have variations that are really subtle this is one of the ones that's more

03:55:58.180 dramatic. There's very little relation between the two staves. Snowflake one's cooler. I like it

03:56:06.960 better. So, okay, I've got some thoughts on this, but I think before we do that,

03:56:18.680 we should read the rune poems. And the Anglo-Saxon being the oldest,

03:56:24.880 hail is the whitest of grain it is whirled from the vault of heaven

03:56:31.340 and is tossed about by the gusts of wind and then it melts into water

03:56:37.080 the old icelandic hail is cold grain and shower of sleet and sickness of serpents

03:56:47.180 and then the old norwegian uh hail is the coldest of grain christ created the world of old

03:56:55.940 oh yeah that throws a lot of people off

03:56:59.000 um yeah again um yay nick threw up the graphic he threw all three of them yeah there's the two

03:57:09.080 bar haggalas and then there's the snowflake haggalas one of the things that's cool all

03:57:16.160 All right, so first, those rune poems, as Fawn has said before, but for those of you that maybe haven't listened to the previous episodes, the Anglo-Saxon rune poem is actually the oldest.

03:57:27.040 And it reflects much more of a also true interpretation of the runes, whereas past the Christian conversion, they stayed as letters, but the esoterics changed.

03:57:43.120 um the icelandic and the old norse is much more a is for alligator than it is teaching an esoteric

03:57:52.660 lesson of the roads and i also want to throw in and i think this is really important and

03:57:59.200 this is the reason that i like the snowflake haggalas better um

03:58:06.280 In Meister Von Liss, Armin and Runes, it is associated with the seventh of Odin's rune songs.

03:58:17.680 A seventh I know.

03:58:19.760 If I see a hall high or the bench makes a bench mates blazing, flame it ne'er so fiercely, I can still save it.

03:58:29.420 I know how to sing that song.

03:58:31.160 So one of the attributes of Hagelaz, and we see it come through in the snowflake version, is potential of various potency.

03:58:51.920 So we see an image, and often you'll see this connected on the outside.

03:58:58.040 If you can imagine drawing a line from each of the points on that Hagalaz, making a hexagram, I guess.

03:59:11.140 It's the idea of a seed rune, and you see this idea of seed and grain in the rune poems.

03:59:17.740 there is a juxtaposition within this room of storm and chaos and ability to utilize that

03:59:33.700 for potential of stuff whatever you want that potential to be the idea of

03:59:42.460 just the image of the halls on fire with people in it and the vidki knowing the ability to stand

03:59:53.760 there and to invoke to sing this song to to quench the flames um

04:00:00.780 i ran into this recently in a rune poll that i did

04:00:08.400 And it would seem, you know, it could easily seem inauspicious. But again, I did it in a naming. So you don't, you know, you don't bestow the gifts of bad stuff happening to you.

04:00:24.700 So I, within that, within that context, though you may know storms and chaos, you have the ability to see your way through it by understanding it.

04:00:42.000 If you understand, again, words fail me on the exact way to do this esoterically.

04:00:52.880 If you become accustomed and clear thinking when storms are upon you and when chaos is upon you, you're able to see the potentialities that it brings.

04:01:08.120 the hailstorm is a potent symbol of chaos it is chaotic it's destructive to order and stuff that

04:01:21.420 makes sense it's all of a sudden in the middle of the summer it's snowing it's craziness like

04:01:28.000 we had this no so we had it out here in a while back and again fortunately we don't get those

04:01:33.720 texas like you know golf ball size hail coming down and destroying everything we had a hail

04:01:41.160 storm it was the middle of summer and aubrey was so confused she thought it was snow because yeah

04:01:45.880 it's snowing in the middle of summer and it's it's chaotic we don't want to invoke chaos into our

04:01:55.720 world we don't want to embrace chaos we don't want to celebrate chaos but one of the

04:02:03.720 You know, hush-hush secrets of the runes is that magic is the shaping of chaos.

04:02:19.020 So chaos happens and is naturally occurring.

04:02:23.720 The vitki can shape chaos to his will to build something ordered and structured out of it.

04:02:33.720 One of the special things about Othin, Vily, and Ve is destroying the primal giant of chaos, and then from those parts, building and constructing the ordered world around us, our ordered existence.

04:02:49.580 The idea of harnessing chaos, breaking it down, and using those component pieces to build beauty and order out of is at the very key of also true magical practice.

04:03:08.420 It's a key for esoteric understanding of how to deal with trauma and things in your life.

04:03:14.340 And it's very important for us as people in a religious sense, every time bad things happen, we are presented with a new, we're dealt a new hand, as it were.

04:03:33.840 We're presented with a new set of opportunities.

04:03:38.460 Now, if we focus on the chaos and we focus on the storm, we don't see those.

04:03:44.340 If we take stock of the change situation and the fact that the game board is completely reshuffled and rechanged, we can find the new avenues to success that are dealt to us.

04:04:00.840 And all too often, we're so overwhelmed by the overstimulation of the chaos that we can't see these new pathways that are open to us for success.

04:04:12.860 ideographically um the the snowflake hagelaz teaches us all these potentials for different

04:04:22.260 shapes and different runes that you can make out of it that provide different avenues for

04:04:28.900 success that provide different avenues for different outcomes

04:04:32.360 um storm and destruction reshuffle the deck for us

04:04:39.420 doesn't matter whether you like it or whether you don't like it it is what it is

04:04:45.280 but you can be obsessed with all the things that are lost or all the old opportunities that are

04:04:51.620 close to you or you can be present cognizant of the new opportunities that are open up

04:04:58.540 and you can take those and i think that's very much at the heart of understanding this room fully

04:05:06.740 if that made any sense yeah and i i the the older forms the single cross hash or the double hot uh

04:05:17.680 cross hash um some people have talked about uh in symbology there that it's the broken stock

04:05:24.360 the broken uh or crushed or bent um wheat or the the uh the stock or the grain because again

04:05:36.060 um in the uh old norwegian when it talks about um you know the it says you know hail is the coldest

04:05:44.820 grain the word for grain in old norse is corn which is like what we call corn it just means

04:05:50.880 a grain or a kernel and um and so uh some people have speculated that it's it's a dilapidated or

04:05:57.300 broken or shifted from a central point and that it is it's it's cracked and that the next room

04:06:03.960 isa is its return back to its vertical state but i i i like this the what is often referred to as

04:06:11.320 the snowflake style um because it yes and that's why we chose it for the folk futhark i think

04:06:17.080 because it was present in the younger futhark it's it's um presence in the arman and futhark so

04:06:23.400 whichever one of those two you know we did we we pulled it from uh with the intention of its its

04:06:31.400 uh place and i think uh dr steven flowers really uh places emphasis on that as well especially

04:06:39.320 when you're doing like stava work or uh sometimes it's called runic yoga which is you know just like

04:06:44.360 the common name for it but again the it's it was um you know in his books he talks a lot about

04:06:51.560 the placement of being in the central kind of cosmic kernel if you will

04:06:56.600 all right so we were almost at a conclusion but we have a question that popped up

04:07:04.600 actually we have two the one's not serious but i do think people want this and i harass you on this

04:07:09.780 on a different level uh one comes from sierra can spawn read a bedtime story before we log off

04:07:17.060 yes he can but he's not gonna today but spawn those of you that may not know spawn is an

04:07:25.420 amazing storyteller um he can keep children and adults in you know enraptured by his storytelling

04:07:34.100 um our real last question i see up and please feel free to you know continue to ask questions

04:07:42.080 nobody's in a rush here and we would be very happy and honored to answer any questions you

04:07:48.240 all might have but last one that i see question i've come to the understanding that hegel is

04:07:55.180 the destruction of the old world and the germination of the new the new tree you was you

04:08:03.820 uh from isa and nouthis or enough nifelheim and muspel yara equals their interaction

04:08:14.060 like in the villus bow ice and fire um now can mean need fire right

04:08:25.980 it has correlation symbolically as to the need fire yes yes now these roughly equals

04:08:32.460 need fire absolutely but what do you think about the the earlier part of that question

04:08:38.540 i and i as you're reading this is the beauty of like um again reading the transitional states of

04:08:45.660 the of the symbols uh the interesting thing about that is that the kilver stone has ewaz

04:08:57.260 and perthrow flipped so i i'm only laying that out there because i wonder what that does to the

04:09:04.300 thought process if you're following the vatstena brekte then this process is full and through but

04:09:10.700 the calver stone flips it and that could add a whole nother aspect or in correlation the well

04:09:17.100 but yes um the creation what you're talking about is the transformation the breaking the realignment

04:09:24.140 and the and or the the breaking the need fire realignment and then finally culminating to the

04:09:30.780 new tree um yes and that's an interesting point in and of itself when the vol when the vulva says

04:09:37.980 that she has lived amongst the the giants and most likely she's talking about the rim thurser

04:09:44.620 of niflheim she says i have seen this tree grow nine times and have seen it grown before and

04:09:51.660 we'll see it grow again she's again the cyclical state of the idea of the vertical access re

04:09:57.580 manifesting itself continually that is uh you could take that in a lot of different ways you

04:10:03.980 could take that as the grand arc of all things you could take it as a repetitive thing um whether

04:10:09.980 you're talking about the central axis of heaven or the central the central axis of of the material

04:10:14.940 world um yggdrasil ermin sol um so many of these points of of that re-accessing um but again the

04:10:25.580 yew tree is a mystery in and of itself because uh you know amongst the norse it was pretty clear of

04:10:31.980 the ash tree as yggdrasil and so the yew tree becomes an interesting thing and i think that um

04:10:40.220 i've i've you know we'll get into that in that room but the processes of what you're thinking

04:10:46.220 is great that is exactly what i think correlates to expanding our personal understanding of the

04:10:55.180 runes as a practitioner as a vitki even the idea of correlating them together even bind ruining

04:11:03.100 them together perhaps on a stavit or a tine in which they're all connected but laid out with the

04:11:08.940 intention of understanding that story um i i it's it's interesting because again that interplay of

04:11:17.340 movement when we talk about gabo is coming in wunyo is lifting up and then hagelaz is actually

04:11:24.380 pressing down it's that crushing um kind of a feeling of the of the the rush of the sky kind of

04:11:34.860 demolishing that which is underneath so again there's a pressing down again where you go to

04:11:39.660 the ultimate heights in winyo and then we go all the way down into this kind of crushing

04:11:44.780 dilapidating force and now it it comes right back down to the very present moment

04:11:49.660 And we have to cultivate again the friction, the light, the spark, and begin starting the axis again.

04:12:01.500 So I really – that's a – it's good. It's good.

04:12:05.840 You're in the right frame of mind. I agree.

04:12:08.280 I see your process of thought. I think that's what we need.

04:12:13.380 That's what's good. As a rune-ster, you're thinking that way.

04:12:19.660 um yes it doesn't so I think you're absolutely on the right track it doesn't have to mean

04:12:36.880 the total destruction down to the roots of something but

04:12:42.700 But the idea that from stuff being broken down, new stuff is built. Absolutely. And, you know, I don't know. I always really like the imagery of after Ragnarok, the waters receding of the re setting up the chessboard and the pieces of the reestablishing of order after cataclysm.

04:13:12.700 um and yes absolutely from the forest fire clears the way for new growth

04:13:24.580 um it's something that I learned in Alaska because my uh uncle worked for the fish and game

04:13:34.760 And he explained as far as moose habitat goes, if it's all established forest all the time, then the type of plants and the things that moose need to feed on aren't there.

04:13:52.380 but it's most healthy for forest fires to happen periodically and take out large swathes of trees

04:13:58.940 and things for that new growth that undergrowth to get a chance to grow up to uh to feed the moose

04:14:05.820 population and i think that you see that all the time and it goes in cycles and it goes back to

04:14:12.300 what we talked about on gabo and some other things sometimes destruction happens um

04:14:22.380 There is cyclical, like, controlled burn kind of destructions.

04:14:27.140 And then sometimes there's calamities.

04:14:30.100 You can get lost in those and washed away in those.

04:14:33.820 Mourning for what's lost.

04:14:36.780 And we all do that.

04:14:38.980 We all do that.

04:14:40.120 I'm sure when Svahn does that, I know I do that.

04:14:43.480 It's very easy to get pulled down when there's destruction.

04:14:47.740 But destruction opens the way for new growth.

04:14:51.840 And if you're cognizant of it and you can master it, it has all the potential in the world for you to reshape it the way it should be.

04:15:01.760 Reshape it better.

04:15:02.820 Build it bigger, better, stronger.

04:15:05.700 Learn the lessons of the past and what you're recreating and you're doing.

04:15:09.940 And I think that's fundamentally important to what we do.

04:15:12.700 um people in the chat are plotting my demise what what they're asking no no no i'm i'm

04:15:28.300 completely kidding they're asking um the process of how a new alter ego is is chosen and if that

04:15:35.100 needs to come from the whitten or not the way that the afa bylaws are written it is

04:15:42.700 So my sole right and discretion to appoint my successor.

04:15:49.540 That does not have to come from the Witten.

04:15:53.620 Doesn't have to come from Goethe.

04:15:55.440 I suppose technically by the letter of the rules doesn't have to come from an AFA member for that matter.

04:16:01.560 Realistically, the last one obviously is silly and would not be the case.

04:16:09.320 It all depends.

04:16:10.480 So I will say this.

04:16:12.700 And it's because it is specifically one of my duties and something that I don't want to mess up. It's part of me keeping my will on file with our law speaker to where I, you know, and that needs to be updated and updated regularly to where I have a front runner in mind in there just in case something should happen to me.

04:16:37.740 And I hope that it doesn't. I hope that I'm here to labor your Wednesday nights well into well into the future.

04:16:47.380 But that is something that, and this is a really important point of continuity, to ensure that it, that the AFA continues to grow in keeping with our core values and keeping with our commitment, our culture and the things we believe.

04:17:09.360 it's not a free for all it's not up for a vote it's not up you know for the will of the masses

04:17:17.480 it's important for each alzharia gothi or i suppose conceivably alzharia githia to

04:17:25.280 appoint the successor and that keeps a continuity in the relationship of our high priest to our gods

04:17:35.280 and that keeps the AFA resembling what it was meant to be and what it will continue to be into

04:17:41.720 the future. I wanted to address something that I see. First and foremost, I saw, wait, where was it?

04:17:54.180 Wolf Throne. Knowledge does not make a leader. Knowledge

04:17:59.440 is a great component of leadership, but it is not the entirety of it. There's more, I think,

04:18:07.120 and I think it's worth noting. I feel like I'm a good observer of wisdom. And I think I'm a good

04:18:13.580 observer of action and character in folk. And I choose to follow Al-Sheria Goudi for a very,

04:18:23.220 very poignant reason. And it's because I see the leadership, the culmination of deed,

04:18:30.920 the integrity of action, the vision, if you will, it takes all of those things, gumption,

04:18:40.640 devotion, again, the minute details of all of the things to push things forward

04:18:50.280 in a way, armchairing knowledge or just being a receptacle of knowledge, that's all well and good,

04:18:58.460 but that is not the culmination of entirety of leadership. And I think that that's the reason

04:19:02.820 it's worth me physically saying it out loud. I feel a good sense in my role as being an advisor

04:19:12.760 and engaging in spiritual matters and discussions, but that does not a leader make.

04:19:21.960 So a quick note, and I want to address that.

04:19:24.980 Secondly, I don't know how your flag keeps like zooming in and out.

04:19:28.840 It's psychedelic and odd.

04:19:32.440 Oh, yes.

04:19:33.860 Something happens with your camera to where it's like it zooms in and out.

04:19:36.840 It's kind of cool.

04:19:37.540 But when we're talking about wisdom, someone with a large measure of wisdom is Leanna McGuire in our chat room.

04:19:46.940 Does not know who we are, but we are both really hot.

04:19:52.740 And that is that is absolutely path of wisdom.

04:19:55.620 Joking aside, seriously, that boosts my ego, makes me feel good.

04:19:59.460 I appreciate you.

04:20:00.340 um wolf swan would not be a bad choice at all i will fight him for it if that was the case

04:20:10.580 but what you what you just said i think he would be fantastic at it um i'm with swan on that

04:20:17.280 it's and and swan is not limited to this though his knowledge is he leads really strongly with it

04:20:26.180 and he is is deep in it um it's a lot more than that though um so much more no and i and

04:20:39.380 it is

04:20:42.660 and these are these are qualities that you know when i'm examining

04:20:47.860 choices of who to succeed me that i think about and i this is a really good question i don't find

04:20:55.540 this uncomfortable or odd at all i think it's a great question um

04:21:08.100 honestly i think that knowledge is relatively low on the list and it's like an elite list so it's

04:21:17.620 not like way down on a on a list but as far as the you know top handful of things it's important

04:21:24.180 But you can you can learn that you can gain that anyone who takes this seriously will immerse themselves in that.

04:21:37.520 I think strength of character, I think devotion to the gods, but also commitment to action and to doing is really important.

04:21:54.180 I would say somebody that has the right mixture of assertiveness and self-confidence, but also piety and humility before the gods is very important.

04:22:17.240 It's, it would be an easy position to take advantage of or to misuse if you weren't wired

04:22:28.340 that way.

04:22:29.880 If it was about, if it was just about the as a person, there's many ways that you could

04:22:40.340 take advantage of it or do things wrong, you know, if you're selfish with it. And it's not to downplay

04:22:49.700 ambition. I think ambition is really important, but your ambition can't just be for self. It has

04:22:55.940 to be for the gods and for the organization that you're leading. Um, one thing that there's a couple

04:23:05.920 of there's two things that i'm really proud of and there's a lot of big list i could do this

04:23:14.820 all night and i'm not going to belabor you guys with that but two things that

04:23:20.460 i'm personally really proud of that i would very much like to see in those that succeed me down the

04:23:28.560 line um there is an all in and i've described this before but i've put my life all in with this

04:23:47.280 i've built it i've built my life to where

04:23:51.440 where the symbiosis between myself and the alzharia gothi position, alzharia gathor, perhaps, is irrevocably intertwined.

04:24:09.660 When people in my friends or family ask me, hey, Matt, how are you doing?

04:24:15.960 My answer is always, oh, we're doing great.

04:24:19.440 We had this awesome event and the AFA is doing great.

04:24:22.160 We've got this much members.

04:24:23.420 We're doing this thing.

04:24:24.460 We've got, it's always an AFA answer.

04:24:28.460 It's not a, oh, I'm doing fantastic.

04:24:31.220 I collected a bunch of stamps or whatever people's personal hobby is.

04:24:37.820 The AFA is my life.

04:24:39.820 my joy. And that's not to say obviously there's family things. I love things with my wife and

04:24:49.900 with my daughter, but they're part of this. They're part of our AFA family. They're part

04:24:56.480 of what we're building together. And my personal ups and downs

04:25:02.720 are linked to the AFA's ups and downs. When the AFA is struggling, when a crisis happens within

04:25:10.760 the AFA, I'm struggling and a crisis happens for me. When the AFA is doing well and doing amazing

04:25:19.780 and we're doing great things, I am happy and I am proud and I'm overjoyed.

04:25:25.480 that fully linking your life with the AFA,

04:25:31.540 I think is essential to the role as Osherio Gauthier.

04:25:35.180 And the other thing is I,

04:25:42.140 and this is maybe a silly thing to be proud of,

04:25:46.560 but I'm very proud of my ability personally

04:25:50.440 to not be jaded and to still be

04:25:56.280 moved to my core emotionally by by things

04:26:04.500 you never want a man to lead that's like a weepy mess all the time and i don't mean to suggest that

04:26:13.480 But the fact that I cry doing weddings and I cry doing baby namings and that I'm overcome and I get just chills and I'm blown away when metaphysical, you know, when the gods reach out and touch you, the fact that I feel that in my core and like I viscera, I feel that on my skin.

04:26:38.740 and I get flushed, and I weep, and I shake, and I experience interaction with the gods on that

04:26:48.120 level, I would like to see that in those that succeed me because it's something I'm very proud

04:26:54.280 of, and I am very thankful for that I have that. Ryan, Orion, just two things that he

04:27:08.620 kind of culminated from questions from the path from back yes uh i understand you're any the

04:27:15.720 threshold of hagalah's being a transitional point the golden age of the gods ends and now suddenly

04:27:20.720 it transfers there's also another point here that i did make and i wanted you to i wanted to be clear

04:27:26.200 on it is that um well yes i was talking about the uh in the calver stone the well comes before the

04:27:34.460 tree. Most people don't know this, but it is true. The 13th rune and the 14th rune are flipped

04:27:41.340 in the Kelverstone and not the Vethstenebrektae. And the current Futhark, Elder Futhark, that we

04:27:47.440 use now is the other way around. So it's interesting to note, look at the Kelverstone,

04:27:53.960 look it up. I'm not feeding you, but that adds an interesting layer to the dimension of the story.

04:28:00.120 so yes the well um comes before the tree in uh don't come at us with your dagas heresy

04:28:09.400 i figure we'll be getting to that later on

04:28:14.040 but no the the but the calverstone does it does flip it um where uh ewaz and perthro are

04:28:22.120 are flipped as well that was weird is is was that thematic to our discussion

04:28:30.120 But one more thing on what you were saying is it pains me if I've met people who say that they feel like I'm wise or something of that nature, but yet they somehow question if a wise person is following and pledging loyalty to something that has gravity, that should have gravity.

04:28:56.400 and there is reason because i've seen it i've physically seen it i've been doing this for a

04:29:00.920 very long time i've seen the strangest of things whether in runic sense or in spiritual sense and

04:29:07.220 i have seen physically very very weird things and i use that correctly um in relation to our

04:29:16.320 go the ant uh and and there's like photographic evidence so it's like even crazier but we don't

04:29:24.500 talk about that that much because i think that sometimes strangely enough we're also very

04:29:29.420 humble about some of those things but i've seen them so therefore i believe and that's all that

04:29:37.000 really matters on that so were you planning to foment um some sort of regime change i will fight

04:29:48.580 you to the death but if spawn was the guy you'd back we would end up in a pretty good spot

04:29:55.780 uh we'll just tell you i would put your word here at tears hoff as the the the uh optimum

04:30:06.760 sacrifice at that point were i to get it but that said if i lost we'd still be in a really good spot

04:30:13.700 i think spawn is a fine choice if that if that were to happen um oh something just came in

04:30:22.740 so all right we got a couple other questions generated here um

04:30:33.220 uh uh chelsea yeah now i'm now i'm now i'm gotta read see you guys posting interesting and

04:30:40.660 thought-provoking things over on the side and i gotta gotta have dead air while i read them for

04:30:44.900 a sec all right cool so back to our line of questions but i do want to get to that because

04:30:50.420 that's a really interesting question um gentlemen great stream can we unlock the full potential of

04:30:58.180 the runes in our times like stuff that mentioned in the sagas even dr flowers being a rune master

04:31:07.940 don't have this power thanks can we and will we are two separate things

04:31:18.180 uh so all right as an aside

04:31:31.300 i apologize because it's late and again words kind of fail me on some of these things because

04:31:37.300 it's a big concept that i want to encapsulate in a in a few words

04:31:46.660 i said at the beginning of our discussion on the runes the runes very much are a lens

04:31:54.980 taking all of the magic hoodoo that we do with the runes not diminishing it i do it too i'm not

04:32:02.900 speaking ill of it, taking all of that aside, fundamentally and in a building block as children

04:32:14.660 sense, us learning to see the world through the lens of our runes is probably the best thing you

04:32:24.560 can do as someone starting out with the runes. Internalize them, digest them, see the world

04:32:34.040 through that lens. A lot of people will look up and they'll see architecture or trees and they'll

04:32:40.320 just pick out rune shapes. And to some people it sounds silly and goofy. The fact that you're

04:32:49.120 training your mind to see those things is an important first step

04:32:59.040 seeing and interpreting stimuli in correlation with these runes helps build your mindset

04:33:08.800 in the right place to best practice house a true and to best advance esoterically and exoterically

04:33:19.120 And I say that because the question, each of these things that you may have noticed tonight, I'm like, aha, that relates to Gabo.

04:33:29.060 This other thing relates to you.

04:33:31.020 They can relate to anything you want.

04:33:34.160 In my mind, because that's something I've tried to train myself to do.

04:33:38.980 I see the connectivity in that because I'm trying to train my mind to see the world through that lens.

04:33:46.700 I noticed that with this question.

04:33:49.120 When he talks about potential to do something like, ah, the snowflake Hagelaz, that's the potential of all the, so everything else in the like, magical stuff aside, seeing these things, viewing the world through the lens of the runes is very valuable if you don't do anything else with them.

04:34:14.800 Maybe you're listening to this and you're not, you know, a magically inclined person. You're not going to cast spells with them. You're not going to use divination with them. Fine. If you just learn that each of these symbols encapsulizes core principles in our world, our universe, and our soul makeup, and it helps you to see the world in a different way. Great. That's a win. That's awesome. That's a perfectly valid use of our runes.

04:34:44.800 Can we fully actualize that? Yes. You say in our time, the runes are timeless. They may manifest in a different way, in a different place, in a different time. But in every age of man, we have the ability to actualize the fullness of the Futhark in our life.

04:35:05.020 but i've said this before and i don't know where that threshold of full is

04:35:14.200 perfect isn't attainable we're all trying to trend closer and closer and closer and closer

04:35:22.660 and closer and closer and closer to that line of perfect um how close we get to that

04:35:29.580 is up to us and how much we do and how much we put in.

04:35:39.320 The question.

04:35:45.420 So the question.

04:35:47.320 it references Dr. Flowers, and I have a lot of respect for Dr. Flowers in a lot of different

04:36:02.540 ways. His runology, he is the most knowledgeable in this world, probably ever on the roots.

04:36:13.080 like Svon said earlier though it's about a lot more than just knowledge

04:36:21.160 other aspects of his life as relates to his relationship with our gods

04:36:30.360 I think his exoteric religiosity

04:36:38.260 or lack thereof, hampers his esoteric actualization of the runes. And I think that that's,

04:36:55.380 I feel bad, I feel bad even saying that, because he is a very respected elder, he is a rune master,

04:37:04.140 were it posed to him, he could probably give you a whole list of reasons that he feels I can't

04:37:14.560 better manifest the roots. But I think that his lack of devotional religiosity to our gods

04:37:23.200 hampers his ability to fully realize the potential of the roots.

04:37:28.400 I don't claim that I have. I don't claim that I can. I don't claim that I will.

04:37:34.140 I will certainly try to, and I hope that I might.

04:37:39.160 But yes, I certainly think that's within the realm of possibility and something that we aim towards.

04:37:46.280 Our next question, question in Alvis Mall.

04:37:50.880 Alvis turns or tries to ask Thor for his daughter, but all the knowledge isn't enough.

04:37:58.400 is is the sunrise that turns him to stone revealing that he doesn't have the gifts of the gods

04:38:07.220 it's fun how do you see that in terms of that uh poem i really think that it's i mean obviously

04:38:17.320 when you look at the structure of the poem it's a it's for skaldic used to to learn kennings and

04:38:23.320 learn alliteration forms but the the deeper meaning behind it is that uh thor is is the son

04:38:31.160 of olden and it is he is deep-minded deep-souled he even has many names attested to this outside of

04:38:41.720 just you know thor or also thor um the one that uh i was hard of the huger uh harder the huger

04:38:50.840 that is like broad-headed and it's talking about his like he's not just an arm in a way and

04:39:01.000 oftentimes i think that that's the the absolute that's the first um one that uh that i'm doing

04:39:07.880 for an art piece uh that's going into thor soft is alvis and thor and again the accumulation

04:39:16.120 of knowledge and action is what makes thor so powerful and i think it's a it it plays out in

04:39:25.480 that story he is the deep soul he is the deep-minded he is the broad-headed or you know

04:39:31.880 big-brained if you will uh it's kind of the the equivalency but at the same time he is

04:39:37.080 clearly the manifestation of bravery and uh lordship and deed and the the fighting and

04:39:44.200 the quenching of enemies um so i i i think that one of the most interesting things about it is

04:39:54.760 alvis is coming for through the through there is the this the strength of uh thor's

04:40:02.200 Thor's descendancy is strength. And I think that this goes along with the idea of grounding,

04:40:09.340 the idea of manifesting that, that in essence, Alvis cannot ground Thor by attaining or,

04:40:19.080 or, uh, because he goes there under the premise that, okay, you're mighty, you're strong.

04:40:25.360 I'm going to get you with your mind. I'm going to beat you with your mind.

04:40:28.580 and then he learns the hard way that's not gonna happen that's not the case at all so in essence

04:40:34.180 the power and the the energy and the force of thor and what through the her strength is is in

04:40:42.300 relation to thor he cannot ground him even in a non-strength sense so it's i've always taken it

04:40:51.340 is is the um yes the material the material that a dvergar is the that uh that a svartalf is and

04:41:00.540 what they are in the cosmology of things cannot ground the power of alsator because he understands

04:41:09.100 both realms he understands the material and he understands the higher form and he attempts to

04:41:15.420 try to ground his power and steal the strength from him and he gets owned so yeah so with any

04:41:25.820 of our lore i think there's there's lots of layers to be considered i've never seen that poem as being

04:41:33.340 a slap against the dwarves as much as a testament to the abilities of thor um

04:41:45.420 I've tried to say this a lot, and it bears infinite repeating.

04:41:53.000 We have a tendency, and I think that just modern understanding of polytheism has this tendency.

04:42:04.980 It limits.

04:42:10.120 Okay, so this is a super nerdy reference, but I'll make it anyway.

04:42:13.960 so it's like when you're making a role-playing character sheet it's like you've got a certain

04:42:24.060 amount of points you can distribute and so you can have guys super strong but then you don't

04:42:29.000 got the points to distribute to the wisdom or the charisma or the whatever else or you can max out

04:42:35.520 this guy's super smart but he's riding around in a wheelchair because he can't hold himself up and

04:42:40.300 he's got a comically big like jumbo head and he's a super villain that's really smart

04:42:45.740 it doesn't work like that these are gods

04:42:50.640 just like a person can be a power lifter and a genius our gods can do different things there's

04:43:02.340 some people that just suck they start out with three points they can distribute and other people

04:43:08.220 can distribute 20. There's no equality. Just because you're really smart doesn't mean you

04:43:16.060 have to be scrawny. Because you're really strong doesn't mean you have to be an oath.

04:43:22.180 Because you're super good looking doesn't mean you can't be wise. Because you're super wise

04:43:28.540 and you're super nice doesn't mean you have to be hideous. That's not how these things are

04:43:35.440 distributed and they're not evenly distributed. Thor is the foremost son of Odin. He is a warrior

04:43:49.680 par excellence. He is the mightiest. Doesn't mean he's slow and drooling because he's super

04:44:03.800 strong. This poem is special to me because it shows that he has the wisdom of a god. He's wise.

04:44:16.600 He's profoundly wise. Is he as wise as Odin? No. Is he wiser than you? Yes. Is he wiser than these

04:44:28.760 dwarves absolutely um no but we look at that thor's god of strength odin's god of wisdom

04:44:38.120 yours god of the water that doesn't mean they're useless in other pursuits or deficient

04:44:46.120 it means they have certain things that they excel at and are particularly specialized in

04:44:51.560 but that doesn't diminish them in other ways they don't have to sacrifice the one for the other

04:44:59.440 and i think it's really important to realize and this is one of those examples and i think

04:45:05.500 that's always been what's very very special to me about this story is that it shows the the cunning

04:45:14.040 and the wisdom and and it's not just the knowledge but it's that cunning wisdom it's the the creativity

04:45:21.040 of Thor to work his way out of this situation. This isn't about him, you know, drinking enough

04:45:28.920 to lower the oceans or, you know, any of these feats of body. He's fully capable of feats of

04:45:36.920 mind that can confound these other very ancient creatures that are also wiser than you or me for

04:45:44.300 that matter. So I think that's the beauty of this story. That's always what stood out to me.

04:45:51.040 so here's the here's the question that's fun took an interest in that i think is is unique and it's

04:45:59.600 something that i don't think it's asked enough and it's a very good question question should you

04:46:05.840 curse your enemies with the hagelaz room if so uh how do you go about doing that first there's a

04:46:15.140 couple of things I want to digest here should you curse your enemies stop what are your thoughts on

04:46:23.540 that's fun oh is there is there this is like a runic equivalent to a fed post like if you had

04:46:32.180 something you you were gonna hide how would you hide it it's like uh I don't know no um when it

04:46:40.820 So there's many, many attestments towards cursing in the lore. Again, this kind of goes back to the masculine and feminine. There's a great point. There's some people that have talked about Scyther being like just straight witchcraft and evil and twisting of the, but they failed to mention that the runes were used quite often in this kind of workings against your foes.

04:47:04.880 um you know where there's a a a rune corner that you know witter shins around uh um uh driftwood

04:47:14.560 and she carves these runes and then she sends it out into the ocean and then it um the the runes

04:47:20.320 are are cleft uh the the wood is cleft and it hits him in the shin and he gets gangrenous wound

04:47:26.560 and that makes him weak for attack and and i think that's a really interesting thing because when you

04:47:31.760 you look at that attestment or like ale scala grimson's um cursing of ericur the blood axe

04:47:41.200 there is an interesting point about the way the runes are used as opposed to say

04:47:47.040 like in the runatal where and in this question about our understanding the full potential like

04:47:52.320 the snatching of the arrow out of the mid-flight uh very very very poignant uh effects uh versus

04:48:01.520 these kind of like long-term uh effects of of the runes being used in weird to kind of uh degenerate

04:48:10.160 or slow down or obfuscate and things of of weird um when you move around things though i would say

04:48:18.400 and whether we're talking about for bounty or for curse you are moving things and when you move

04:48:24.960 things again you are creating debt and that debt can find itself um

04:48:35.760 to be brought up later if you will now if you have the might and the and the main to do it

04:48:40.960 you also may have the wisdom and the and the might to overcome that movement that you've created so

04:48:46.720 i'm not saying like there's some sort of rule where i think like uh with wicca you know there's

04:48:51.520 this concept of you know if you do harm it'll come back threefold and i'm kind of glad they

04:48:56.960 have that considering the caliber of people that often apply some of that stuff it kind of keeps

04:49:02.000 them in check because uh some of them are out out there um i think it's more important to look at

04:49:09.920 if you're doing anything for boon or for bane against your enemy or for yourself or your for

04:49:17.120 your your friends and kin you are moving things and that causes things to happen and it creates

04:49:23.360 a ripple effect that you must be aware of and you must be acknowledged that it's going to happen

04:49:29.200 and that you have the wherewithal the mental uh acuity to overcome those movements it all becomes

04:49:36.560 kind of like a very large strategic game of chess we're moving pieces here or or if you're playing

04:49:42.880 like uh the idea is still the same you're moving pieces here you might not be seeing pieces over

04:49:48.720 here that are going to cause you issues later on having that acuity is key so before you ever step

04:49:56.160 into that realm ask yourself do you have the wherewithal to understand that you are moving

04:50:02.400 things and that you will possibly have to adjust and and and renegotiate what life is going to

04:50:08.400 throw at you based off of your actions so yes i'm i think that was a really good way to explain it

04:50:21.120 one uh

04:50:25.600 that was different than the analogy that i was going to use but it works

04:50:29.120 what i was going to say is you know when you throw a punch you open yourself up

04:50:34.720 Now, if you know what you're doing, cool. But until you do that, you're not in a fight. When you choose to engage in a fight, then you've got to be prepared for the consequences. When you take it there, then you are opening yourself up to counter punches that you wouldn't normally.

04:51:00.620 If me and Svan are beefing over something, we're all good. When one of us decides to

04:51:11.180 conjure the arcane to damage the other, then we've opened up a field of battle that

04:51:19.900 we're now fighting in. Do you want to escalate it to that point? Are you capable of escalating

04:51:29.400 that point and if you are is that an advantageous battlefield for you to fight on

04:51:36.600 and i think those are all things to consider i think swan's explanation

04:51:43.320 and when he started talking about debt is where i think a lot of the confusion gets in

04:51:50.360 you shift the playing field and you change things that are currently in motion to be in motion in

04:51:56.840 a different way if you are prepared to ride that out or to

04:52:05.480 reshuffle how you're doing things in accord with that okay if you're not it can mess up

04:52:11.960 other things that you're doing and you need to be aware of that as well

04:52:16.120 some things are different and you are liable to use different methods depending on your station

04:52:34.600 and where you're at when I was

04:52:39.640 lower in status and i wasn't the else harrier gothi and i was doing other things and i didn't

04:52:49.360 have an ability to affect things around me as much in a straightforward way i have in fact

04:52:58.760 used curse curses and runic things to affect change

04:53:08.760 well the best word way to say this um i have gone on the offense with magical things

04:53:16.980 a few times i have not done that as ulterior gothi i have done that before i was in the

04:53:27.440 position. Now that I'm in the position I'm in, I have a lot more resources to affect change

04:53:34.620 in a positive way. Whereas before, when I felt I had few of those,

04:53:41.500 I chose to take it to an esoteric plane to accomplish things that I couldn't in the mundane

04:53:48.580 plane um as far as i know and can observe i didn't get any bad blowback from that spiritually

04:54:03.380 and the things that i did were seemingly effective

04:54:09.220 so we will answer the rest of the question on the particulars of how to use

04:54:19.740 heigalize when you're cursing people because we'll take all comers we'll answer any question

04:54:25.180 that's brought to us that being said kids don't try this at home if you don't know what you're

04:54:33.640 doing, this is a dangerous thing for you to do.

04:54:39.220 Doing this wrong can bring back bad things on you, depending what you're doing, who you're

04:54:47.020 doing it against, and other powers that observe your doings, there is consequence, or there

04:54:56.200 can be consequence.

04:54:57.280 Don't. I'll say this.

04:55:06.940 And we we shy away from a lot of talk about this kind of stuff, because when you talk about it too much, you sound like a lunatic and it just isn't.

04:55:20.400 This is very real.

04:55:23.300 And it's very serious.

04:55:27.280 when you stare into the abyss sometimes the abyss looks back when you open certain doors

04:55:35.840 you can't necessarily just close them and you open yourself up to consequences

04:55:44.880 if you are not prepared for that don't

04:55:48.400 don't start. None won't be none. So one of the things is if you go poking around in stuff that

04:55:58.080 you don't know what you're doing, you might get bit. Remember that Matt and Svon said,

04:56:05.280 don't do that unless you know what you're doing. But if you do know what you're doing,

04:56:10.800 or you're a particularly adventurous sort that wants to venture into this,

04:56:15.120 and you wanted to utilize the rune Hagalaz to bring about the downfall of your foes in some way.

04:56:24.500 How would Svan use that?

04:56:29.760 So when we talk about this, and I really like the fact that like sometimes when you go into

04:56:34.840 runic questions and somebody says, you know, how can I use this to curse someone? And

04:56:39.840 and uh you know some people shy away from it or again there's like this triple fold rule

04:56:46.260 no we're going down it and the ideas is some considerations one if you're uh trying to

04:56:53.200 target an enemy that is spiritually powerful there are things it's just like if you punch

04:57:00.240 an elephant and the elephant decides to hit you back

04:57:05.140 you you you threw the punch you threw the press you you send it out there and sometimes even in

04:57:13.920 a spiritual sense that elephant can and hit you back so you got to be careful and i think that

04:57:20.180 when you talk about uh utilizing the runes it's sometimes it's it's more along the lines of in a

04:57:26.600 culmination of events that correlate physically, mentally, and spiritually. So if you find that

04:57:36.000 your enemy is drawing themselves out, pursuing too much for an ambush, if you will, uh, or

04:57:43.000 beleaguering themselves with denoting way too much energy and way too much time into moving towards

04:57:48.920 you, that is the time I think to, to hit it's again, it's kind of like the idea of using your

04:57:53.840 enemy's momentum against them. Um, if they're fatigued, if they're out of sorts, um, if they're

04:58:00.980 scattered, or if they're, uh, if there's a, a shred of kind of, uh, disunity within their mind

04:58:07.620 or within their, their kinship with others, that's when these cracks, that's when these punches can

04:58:12.900 kind of have the most effect. If you throw it, when the elephant is healthy and the elephant

04:58:18.740 throws back you're probably going flying but if you if you time yourself and understand weird as

04:58:25.300 it flows the the biggest thing about haglas is that it is an obfuscational effect i have found

04:58:32.660 in my personal uh studies in in relation to say for instance like we've already covered one rune

04:58:39.460 that can be used in in offensive senses and that's kusma or kenna's or keen it's the it can have a

04:58:47.860 a festering effect hagelaz has a way of slowing people down and blurring their goals or intentions

04:58:57.860 um it has a a way of turning people around causing confusion it's a millstrom if you will of um

04:59:08.340 creating a this point in which weird starts going in all different directions to the point where

04:59:14.500 uh at that they're just hanging on and so it has more of what i would call an a a motion stop effect

04:59:23.300 um as i learned it the way that hagalas would be applied is to cause misdirection to cause

04:59:33.460 confusion and to slow down um a rushing force if you will and so something's going on a track

04:59:42.180 but it has problems and then it can cause confusion um again it's it's one of those runes that

04:59:51.860 if you utilize it and i i i have found personally that when you do things like this at great

04:59:58.980 distance you have to have a very strong might one of the big points that i've noticed about

05:00:04.660 the application of of curses if you will is that a lot of times you have to make the tine

05:00:12.180 physically get near the intended person or the intended target, if you will.

05:00:21.240 If you do it over great expanses of time, that's actually a reflection on your might.

05:00:26.740 And I have found that some people try it and it doesn't work at all. It's because their might

05:00:32.240 isn't strong enough to turn all of those threads of weird in a direction of their desire. And

05:00:38.680 sometimes it is better to physically make a contact point whether it's on the land like again

05:00:44.920 with uh ale skull grimason when he made the need star but he did it in the land of the kingdom of

05:00:51.000 eric he he told the land spirits that they would not find their homes so he attacked the land with

05:00:58.200 the specific reaction of causing confusion in the land and laying the onus on Eric.

05:01:10.040 But if you're targeting just the actual person, I would say the idea is that, again, it is about

05:01:16.320 placing proximity, physically affecting weird, placing your will and intention into something

05:01:22.500 And then having that something near your target is what causes, I think, the most effect unless you have great might and a lot of practice and a lot of prowess in doing things like this.

05:01:33.700 And again, if you do have a lot of practice and prowess, sometimes it's better to just complete it with your deeds and your fists are sometimes far more surgical than this because it can affect other people's weird around this person.

05:01:49.000 Hale does not discriminate.

05:01:50.640 It's an area effect.

05:01:52.500 And it can also draw in other people and they get affected. And that's when things start to really shift outside of your scope of understanding. But it can also be used protectively in the idea that it is something laying in wait, that you can utilize it to obfuscate someone who moves against you.

05:02:13.360 so it's also used in a sense of protection if someone physically or spiritually attacks you

05:02:21.860 it can also be used as a retribution attack that's laying in wait it is the grain it is

05:02:26.660 the kernel and it can activate itself as it's needed fit against people moving with you so

05:02:33.740 I would say offensively proximity is probably your best bet unless you're an esteemed

05:02:41.040 you know uh rune mother or rune corner um if you are again it is understanding that it is an area

05:02:50.140 effect and sometimes it's best reserved to hold it as a defensive measure for people who move

05:02:55.140 against you that they get nothing but hail thrown right back in their face and so my my rune teacher

05:03:00.860 oftentimes taught me that it was a a rune of barriers and thresholds to be released if someone

05:03:06.220 moved across it do without what you will there are lots of varieties of stuff you can do

05:03:21.420 um so we're wading out in water we usually don't get in

05:03:26.780 one thing as a again a preamble to this

05:03:37.340 lots and lots of magical spells and practices are made specifically to reverse stuff

05:03:47.740 So, if what you're doing doesn't hit, there is good reason to believe it can come back at you, the same thing that you tried to put out.

05:04:04.440 We covered that in, let's cross-reference this, because my memorization of the Armin and Runes with their rune poem is not what it should be. I admit this, I apologize.

05:04:21.060 Okay. So I thought it was this one. With Kinez. I believe with Kinez. Let me check. Yeah. Or the Armin and Rune Cowan.

05:04:43.060 A sixth I know when some thing would harm me in runes on a moist tree, moist trees root on his head alone shall light the ills of the curse that he called upon mine.

05:04:56.280 A lot is made of.

05:05:03.120 I'm rubber, you're glue, whatever you say, bounce off me and sticks to you.

05:05:07.320 But in a.

05:05:09.660 Tell me I'm wrong.

05:05:10.660 though but in a but in a elevated way let's say um so be careful of that again

05:05:21.380 why are you punching an elephant find something else to do an elephant is stronger than you it's

05:05:27.500 better at that um you've got guns and stuff if you're trying to fight an elephant why are you

05:05:38.140 trying to get in a physical like wrestling match with it. It will be you up.

05:05:46.620 One of the other things, this is one of the ones that's hard. It's late guys,

05:05:50.320 we're getting loopy, but one of the things that's harder to articulate

05:05:54.260 only the very best of us that are at the point of transcendence into something better than we are,

05:06:04.940 are fully integrated soul components.

05:06:11.540 So we have various pieces of ourself

05:06:15.900 that function outside of our true selves direction.

05:06:21.440 We've got autonomous pieces of ourselves

05:06:23.700 that do their own thing.

05:06:29.700 The philia, perhaps.

05:06:32.240 You have things about yourself that protect you outside of your operative room knowledge.

05:06:40.740 You've got things that can be looking out for you.

05:06:44.880 You've got guardian spirits looking out for you, or you can potentially, that know how to play this game better than whoever's in mom's basement casting spells on people.

05:06:56.620 There is potential for someone who is spiritually mighty not to know that they're doing it, but to redirect bad things on you.

05:07:09.920 Even if you're not scared a homeboy you're trying to cast the spell on, maybe you should be scared a homeboy's field.

05:07:16.820 you um that said if i was going to do it i don't

05:07:28.500 there's stuff i've never done this but i've read about stuff you could carve it into a dissolvable

05:07:36.340 substance and then dissolve that into a drink that you hand them and they can consume it

05:07:44.260 that's a thing it works on spawn's proximity deal i anybody watching this i'm not advising anybody

05:07:53.220 poisons people that's not what i'm suggesting i'm saying you could carve something in the example

05:07:58.020 that edward uses a piece of cheese you could carve healing runes in a piece of cheese and

05:08:02.180 feed it to somebody you want to heal you could cause mess people up runes in the same piece

05:08:07.300 of cheese and feed that to people what i would most likely do would be a knot binding involving

05:08:18.420 chanting of haggalas with specific ill intents in a string hair would be even cooler if you had

05:08:31.300 hair the person who did stuff getting somebody's lock of hair is tricky it's whatever but with a

05:08:38.420 rope or with a string binding and then whenever i'm done with it burning it but keeping that

05:08:45.540 in a special place and with each of those knots implanting a effect that i want caused

05:08:52.660 by hagelaz what i'd also do is spend meditative time

05:09:00.100 gauldering the rune with projected imagery of chaos and misfortune that i wanted to cause

05:09:12.180 the more visceral my imagery while I'm Galdring, the more effective, the more hate and just

05:09:22.900 bad stuff you shove into it while you're doing it, the more effective the potential of that is.

05:09:34.620 I don't advise that. I feel dirty talking about that, honestly.

05:09:39.820 But that's what I do, and that's the question that's asked. Svan's absolutely right. This is about Hagalaz's rune in that context, about confounding and disrupting plans, reshuffling stuff chaotically on what's going on.

05:10:03.820 basically destruction through

05:10:10.220 a storm of chaotic random everything's busting apart I'm confused don't know up from down getting

05:10:20.300 lost confounding them in that way um but it's a good question it's important I think that when

05:10:31.200 get in these topics is the kind of thing that somebody wonders but doesn't ask and i appreciate

05:10:36.720 that you ask um i hope that you guys take that in as a as a as an informative point of what people

05:10:47.280 can and cannot do and don't necessarily take that home and start using it on stuff

05:10:52.400 again if you do matt and swan didn't tell you to so you know you you that's that's on you um

05:10:59.200 Svon, you said you've been Alcetruar since you were 13.

05:11:05.040 Can you give us a brief timeline from when you joined the AFA, your journey to becoming a Gothi, and finally a Witten?

05:11:14.220 Oh, can I keep anything brief?

05:11:16.660 Negative.

05:11:17.760 Negative.

05:11:23.160 Man, I didn't see this question.

05:11:25.180 uh okay i would just say this much uh you know i i grew up in a household that was lutheran

05:11:34.160 predominant when i moved to america um i tried different um religious churches and institutions

05:11:43.000 searching uh i was always very inquisitive and and i tried to observe the magic of the world

05:11:49.920 even in foreign faiths to try to find the truth of things um and it was in a time uh 1993 1994

05:11:59.700 the internet wasn't around uh and things had led me to um understanding that my

05:12:07.740 uh my ancestors and had a faith and the faith was real and the faith was um

05:12:14.800 like tangible. It was not something that was spoken about in some sort of sense of like a

05:12:21.380 a comedy or a comic or something or a movie. Um, and I started learning and I learned, I think

05:12:33.240 with, with what we had at the time, which was some of it was very rudimentary. I think a lot

05:12:37.500 of people might remember um i mentioned it ed fitch's book um and all of it all of that kind

05:12:45.780 of stopped when i found edward thorson's uh book of troth and the book of troth the old one it was

05:12:53.420 a white book with an ermine sill on it and then there was a one that preceded or yeah that followed

05:12:58.900 that which was what was called the space hammer book it was a book with a um a hammer over it

05:13:05.980 kind of floating through a space but in that book um that was the first time that i saw the um

05:13:13.260 edward thorson had placed um the ritual in which he kind of did a reversal of the prayer that

05:13:18.380 charlemagne forced on the saxons and at that young age it lit something in me i had a dream

05:13:27.980 the dream was very poignant um in which there was someone accompanying me uh an elder person that i

05:13:34.700 didn't quite see his face and i was like a young child in the dream even though i was a teenager

05:13:40.220 and um i was already interested in the runes uh and was studying and things compounded on themselves

05:13:48.220 and i i threw a series of events i i can i committed to and performed that bloat and that

05:13:55.820 ceremony of what was very much a hot button uh button topic at the time was the professional

05:14:01.820 ceremony, in which back then, Ausatru, there was like, kind of, I would say, the proto-polarization

05:14:09.480 of Ausatru at the time wasn't about fulkish or non-fulkish. It was, Ausatru was fulkish. You

05:14:15.640 were celebrating the Germanic gods. What it was, was professing your faith. There was a lot of

05:14:21.680 people, I think, in the faith that were still kind of washing over from the eclectic fields of

05:14:29.800 wicca and things of that nature and uh so the profession faith was i'm professing my faith to

05:14:36.460 the gods of my people and that involved you understanding your identity as an ethnic group

05:14:41.420 and that your gods are connected to you through your blood and that caught starting to ruffle a

05:14:46.660 lot of feathers but i went through that right on my own young punk kid i didn't know anything but

05:14:55.740 I just threw myself at it, uh, with seeking the truth. And what I got back was, this is the path,

05:15:04.880 this is the time, and you're just now starting it. And, um, it scared, um, my, my mother,

05:15:11.560 she thought that I was, um, you know, again, doing like Wicca or witchcraft or evil stuff.

05:15:17.020 And she didn't quite understand because she was still very much in the mode of Christianity.

05:15:20.360 and uh i managed to explain things um i built a um staller or a harrow in in my home and in my room

05:15:31.200 and i took great care of it and i i cultivated my spiritual um understanding of the gods solely

05:15:38.740 and alone there was no internet there was no uh large organizations that spanned and had

05:15:46.360 inner communications it was i was just on my own and um most of the stuff we did was through

05:15:51.080 uh newsletters and books and things like that mailing orders and um i i found some people

05:15:57.400 locally and uh to be honest my start to entering a community was not good um i saw i met a lot of

05:16:06.440 very odd strange characters a lot of them utilizing the religion to accentuate their oddity uh they

05:16:13.960 They were edge, edgy upon edgy upon edgy of things.

05:16:18.420 And so I recoiled back and didn't quite know if this is what I was going to do.

05:16:23.380 And I remained faithful to the gods on my own for many, many years.

05:16:28.380 And then I joined the military and I carried my faith with me.

05:16:33.760 and so in hawaii in all numerous uh countries on top of the deck of a ship i've held bloat

05:16:43.520 all over the world um and honored my gods and it was at a time when i was overseas in the middle

05:16:50.720 east that and it wasn't a plea i was really trying to find the ideas like if i'm going to be chosen

05:16:56.880 i want to be chosen i want to i want to fight and i want to be chosen to rise above and then

05:17:03.360 the question sort of creeping into me is what if you aren't chosen to rise above in battle what

05:17:09.360 happens are you forsaken and uh it was young it was a young man's thoughts tackling faith um and

05:17:17.760 war and death and uh fighting and uh i was in the thick of it um i held a bloat on the euphrates

05:17:25.280 river and um with minimal things i had like a canteen cup and um water and uh

05:17:34.880 uh i basically said that i was going to strive to uh if if if i wasn't chosen in this theater of war

05:17:44.160 i would move on and try to start something so when i returned i immediately started

05:17:48.720 looking for community again and um i found it and it seemed less odd at first um but uh it

05:18:00.800 it got odd over time there was a lot of um i i was convoluted at the time i was coming back

05:18:06.720 from war so um a lot of it was spent studying the lore and studying everything but i got lost in the

05:18:15.600 the motions of it. I got lost in the, the, uh, um, the mead and, and, and the partying and the

05:18:24.440 backyard kind of craziness. And I lost, I think what faith really is about. And, um, once I finally

05:18:33.580 got my head out of it, I backed away again and I stepped away from those, those people. And I

05:18:39.400 stepped away from myself and I reevaluated things and I started searching again. And that is through

05:18:47.220 a series of events through a friend. I was told about the Astro Folk assembly. And by this time

05:18:54.500 I'd already withdrawn again. So it's a receding and progressing wave in and out, in and out. And

05:19:00.660 he had said that he was going to go to a winter nights festival in Pennsylvania for the Astro

05:19:08.520 folk assembly and i was like i gotta see what this is all about so i went very quietly in

05:19:16.040 uh you know again when you walk into halls it's best to keep your thoughts to yourself and just

05:19:21.720 observe and i was blown away i was blown away by the kind of the complete difference of from what

05:19:29.720 i had experienced and that there was true piety true faith there was people talking about the

05:19:34.760 gods but they they were very real people they were successful people they were people that were

05:19:41.720 well dressed and focused and they had all of this uh movement and motivation towards being

05:19:49.560 better people and doing great things and that hit me like a freight train so i told people that where

05:19:56.120 i was coming from the people that i had interacted with before and um that i i wasn't them i wasn't

05:20:02.680 trying to be them i was looking for something else and i listened in i met a lot of uh interesting

05:20:10.680 people some of them were characters too and some of them have fallen away over time but ultimately

05:20:16.920 um it was it was alzergo that he was speaking at this event and i was sitting in the back and i was

05:20:24.360 just very quiet and i've been carrying my faith with me for so long and i'm listening and and

05:20:29.960 there's goosebumps rising off of and i'm just like i couldn't quite could figure it all out i

05:20:38.600 was it was just movement and i didn't know what to do i was shocked by it and um and something

05:20:44.600 just told me like the flag had been planted and i needed to come to this flag this was what i needed

05:20:49.800 to do and that's what started it i think uh keeping it open and honest i had to go through trials in

05:20:55.480 the beginning i um before i wasn't always folkish in the sense that i wasn't aware of my focus like

05:21:02.200 what focus what also true is and i was convoluted by the people i had met and the experiences that

05:21:09.640 i had and i had to that last time withdrawing was me base cleaning the slate and opening my mind to

05:21:16.840 the idea like this is an ethnic faith this is who i am this is my identity this is what i'm really

05:21:21.560 about and all of a sudden i'm surrounded by all these people that are already there and i was i

05:21:27.720 was behind i was off the wagon i was trailing behind the the the the trail so i jumped in and

05:21:35.160 i threw myself in and i started a kindred um in virginia and i got a bunch of people together

05:21:42.120 and um i started a concept of and i i don't think it was it was successful in its own right but it

05:21:48.520 probably wasn't the wisest way to go but i was learning and i started a kindred that was

05:21:53.560 statewide and had multiple groups and i was organizing and and doing things but i realized

05:22:00.600 that it was a chemistry balance of keeping uh odd people in focus towards the horizon and again

05:22:08.920 leadership is hard that is one of the biggest testaments that i learned that one i don't

05:22:16.920 negotiate that very well and there are people out there that do that a lot better than me

05:22:24.040 and i learned that at that time and i learned about people um i always thought that you know

05:22:30.920 going into this there would be an outside force and everyone would be united but sadly enough

05:22:36.760 a lot of dissension within is what causes the most problems and again in this world i always

05:22:42.440 seem to understand uh hierarchy and collective unity and i think a lot of people say that they

05:22:51.240 understand those things but more often than not are immediately driven by their own rudder um

05:22:58.760 they're inclined to do their own individualistic intentions and um they uh they end up fracturing

05:23:07.640 off so my growth period between 2007 after coming back from the marines and um joining the the afa in

05:23:15.560 2015 16 um was a very long and arduous process of understanding chemistry of community and what that

05:23:26.200 meant and what that did even though i can think back and go oh what was i thinking it taught me

05:23:31.240 a lot about understanding loyalty understanding fealty understanding faith understanding piety

05:23:37.400 understanding what real religion is about and what the gods i think are waiting for us to find

05:23:43.480 out on our own and they want us to prove it to them they don't they're not going to hand it to

05:23:48.600 us they want us to prove to them that this is for real this is serious and our faith in them

05:23:54.120 is going to drive us forward and that's what started it all and eventually um

05:23:58.520 Um, the organization of I was here ago, the towards temples just ripped everything that

05:24:10.380 I thought as a, as a mainstay, just tore it all apart.

05:24:13.860 And it was like, Nope, this is where we're going.

05:24:16.100 We're going, we're going to the top and it's not stopping.

05:24:19.960 And I was like, I have to, I have to be a part of this.

05:24:23.700 the, I want to put everything I got into having the gods have their temples on Midgarth with us

05:24:29.720 standing there. And I'm not going to back down from it. And the moment I just like, again, it was

05:24:34.560 just like when I was 13 and I committed to the gods as my ethnic gods. And I forsake

05:24:39.960 the, the, the angels and, and the, the, the prophets of alienation. And I took up my,

05:24:48.200 my people's gods. This was the second time in which I realized I needed to do that again.

05:24:53.400 and it was in that no i'm not going to stop i'm not going to back down we're going to push this

05:24:59.800 over over the precipice and i want to be a part of it i want to be there because i had all this

05:25:05.560 accumulated knowledge i wanted to help and i wanted to just be there when i wanted to be on the front

05:25:11.800 line of anything that was going down i was going to stand right there arm in arm with anybody that

05:25:16.920 would stand with me and when the flag was put down by alice hiragovie i wanted to be there

05:25:23.960 i wanted and um i had multiple times in which people have tried to dissuade me from it and

05:25:29.960 i don't know i take it as an insult sometimes like they think that some sort of folly but

05:25:34.440 my loyalty my honor is in my loyalty and they got a very very vicious kind of turn of events

05:25:41.080 when they found out that the nice amicable wise uh swan is not i'm not messing around like i'm

05:25:49.400 very very serious about this and don't try to dissuade me from it and people use trickery and

05:25:54.840 gifting and oh thing and all of these things and i managed to just fly right through them and um

05:26:03.160 when it came time to um find a temple for thor i was praying for minnesota to to uh

05:26:11.080 get the temple, and I wanted everything for them to find it, and I prayed, and I had a very poignant

05:26:17.860 moment during a thunderstorm, and then everything fell in, uncannily so. I can't explain it other

05:26:26.040 than simply by the divine grace of the gods, everything pointed out to Thorshof where it is

05:26:33.920 now and that that's it that's sealed it and it's been there ever since then outsider goli surprised

05:26:42.800 me with because he does this is the is um you know the everyone on the witten is uh brings an

05:26:50.960 extremely poignant uh craft or trade or knowledge or intent that makes them i i mean all of them

05:27:01.600 sometimes as to what they do um and so suddenly it was just laid at my feet would you be willing

05:27:09.280 to do this as well and i i get knowledge is sometimes intangible it's something that you

05:27:16.720 can kind of thoroughly press out into the world or recede back in and and so it felt very different

05:27:23.840 as opposed to say somebody who has tangible knowledge of the law and what is written or

05:27:28.880 someone who can produce things quite literally out of the electronic field of the internet or

05:27:35.680 something these things are so palpable and and impressive it's almost magic in and of itself

05:27:42.240 i felt very odd but i said yes and then got um frocked into the witten and um

05:27:52.160 have have seen have been in the at the pleasure of being shoulder to shoulder with some of the

05:27:59.920 greatest people i've ever met and accumulating and seeing things and also seeing people

05:28:05.120 like again uh witten young and his uh attestment to sigurheim and all of those things and kind of

05:28:11.460 some of the things i learned at thor's hof and and some of the things uh learned at going to the

05:28:17.200 to the hoffs and to the murals and making pilgrimages to every hoff and and living there

05:28:22.540 and drawing and never even considering the idea that i would one day be doing art for

05:28:28.380 the gods in such a level to where there's people coming to the hoffs and seeing

05:28:33.880 these attestments of my faith to the gods and then it being also their part of their life

05:28:39.520 part of their attestment and elevating them having them look up and feel a connection there

05:28:46.200 it's

05:28:48.000 mind-blowing

05:28:50.280 and oftentimes

05:28:52.340 kind of

05:28:53.760 humbling but also

05:28:55.580 just joyous.

05:28:58.200 All the way in it in the sense that

05:29:00.360 it's like that elevation.

05:29:02.840 So that's kind of the

05:29:03.720 briefest way I can

05:29:05.340 cover almost two decades

05:29:08.420 of Asitru.

05:29:11.360 So

05:29:11.920 So, Svon talked about this earlier.

05:29:22.520 It is self-evident, a lot of things about Svon that recommend him to being in the position he's in.

05:29:31.280 Um, you know, his, his becoming a Goethe has to get my, my approval for it, or at least

05:29:43.340 I've got to not put my foot down and veto it. Um, but he obviously qualifies that for that in a lot

05:29:51.800 of ways. One of the things that is so above and beyond that necessitated him being on the Witten

05:30:00.140 is his strength of character and his piety.

05:30:06.360 Knowledge of all this stuff comes after that.

05:30:11.360 And Svan is, you know, you guys have all heard it.

05:30:14.500 He's obviously no dullard,

05:30:17.120 but he could have put in that learning on so many different things.

05:30:23.400 His knowledge being about Ausatru is a testament to his piety and his devotion.

05:30:31.640 And if that piety and devotion had not manifested in book learning, it would have manifested in a different way.

05:30:45.100 His expertise on Germanic languages and on the lore isn't wise on the Witten.

05:30:53.400 his piety and his devotion to the gods, his seriousness about what we're doing.

05:31:00.720 And then there's an X factor that I, again, I come back to words don't accurately express, but

05:31:08.720 there is something that happens. That's how namaste was explained to me. The divine in me

05:31:19.800 sees the divine in you. There's something when you look at people and you get to know them that

05:31:26.800 you can, you get a glimpse of their woed self and you recognize something there. And it,

05:31:39.880 it's obviously a no brainer. You guys all know that. That's why the audience for the Svan episodes

05:31:46.980 is bigger than any of the other audience uh the gravitas that's fond brings to the afa

05:31:57.020 to the witten to our gods to making this happen in general is self-evident but

05:32:04.160 yeah that was it was absolutely where swan needed to be one of the things and there's different

05:32:12.380 stuff that different members of the Witten and I talk about all the time. But as far as sculpting

05:32:18.880 the deep spirituality of the AFA, Svan is very much, you know, my right hand man in that he and

05:32:26.560 I have spent countless hours discussing that. I'd say the spirituality of it, the doctrine of it,

05:32:38.640 But very often the the artistry, the imagery, the overall plan of a lot of things, something that that he and I spend hours just he and I talking about and making happen.

05:32:54.720 But grows late. We have one more question left.

05:33:02.900 Take a quick peek at these comments. Cool. All right. Last question coming from Odyssey.

05:33:13.180 We appreciate our Odyssey audience. We don't often get questions from over there. So we're glad when we do.

05:33:18.300 Certainly. Question is, so curses aren't free. No, curses are not free.

05:33:28.340 um nothing is free i was gonna say neither are boons and not not being silly or anything else

05:33:38.540 um this goes back to to fayhu when we talked about that a few

05:33:44.580 shoot i don't know over a month ago now i guess um

05:33:49.940 everything is a is a is a commodity or a resource in the sense that it gets spent

05:34:02.720 it gets regenerated it gets used it gets circulated and it's misused when it's hoarded so

05:34:10.380 amenia spiritual might any of those things are a finite commodity where you have a certain amount

05:34:23.820 that you can that you can spend luck is that way if you wish someone luck you are

05:34:30.180 breaking off a chunk of your luck and granting it to them so i'm always very careful when i wish

05:34:37.300 someone luck. I don't wish them luck unless they're a person that I genuinely would be willing

05:34:41.480 to sacrifice some of mine to make sure that they had the best luck possible. But it's something

05:34:48.720 that you gain by spending it. By using that muscle, you make yourself stronger on it. But yes,

05:34:55.020 there is a cost to it. And, you know, I think we went over with curses, how stuff it opens up to

05:35:04.600 and various things that way. It's not, you know, it's not as finite as all that, but it is a thing

05:35:14.680 and it does, there is consequence with anything that's worth doing. There's consequence. I've

05:35:22.040 said this, um, I don't know. I I've said this a lot, but courage doesn't exist without consequence.

05:35:28.940 If it doesn't have the potential for there to be negative consequences, then it's not courageous. You know, you don't boldly eat your breakfast cereal in the morning because there's it's not courageous because you don't face a consequence.

05:35:46.220 So, yeah, you you open doors and you step out on a completely for many of us unfamiliar battlefield and you engage in rules that you don't clearly understand with groups of people that you can't necessarily assess what they're bringing to the table when you do it.

05:36:10.280 And it takes, it takes a certain amount of courage to do, but no, it's not free of consequence. And the bigger, the risk, the bigger, bigger, the potential payoff, I would say in a lot of those things, but don't hear that and hear, oh, big payoff.

05:36:33.740 you should much more hear big risk um

05:36:39.820 but yeah uh i think that's got a couple more comments here just checking to see if there's

05:36:46.980 any last questions and such don't seem like there is um it's been a really good show tonight guys

05:36:59.060 thank you so much i've really enjoyed it i think the audience has been great on this one you guys

05:37:03.780 have had really good questions really thought-provoking questions um i appreciate a lot of

05:37:11.540 people say that they really like these programs and that they learn a lot from them i'm

05:37:19.540 i'm appreciative of that i'm humbled by that i'm really glad that folks are enjoying these

05:37:25.940 I know that sometimes me and Svon will get on all kind of different trails on different stuff.

05:37:33.300 It makes sense to us, but it's hard to know, you know, how well it's necessarily digested by everybody that listens.

05:37:42.940 I appreciate you guys.

05:37:45.220 So this has been a joy to do.

05:37:47.320 Svon, thank you so much for continuing to come on and be the guest 50% of the time on this program.

05:37:53.840 um really you bring you bring so much to it and the spawn episodes are the the highest uh

05:38:02.600 certainly the highest uh watched and participated in episodes one of the reasons that they're as

05:38:08.440 long as they are um people look forward to these as do i so thank you so much for being here yeah

05:38:15.460 thank you for having me and i mean i just if you're for the folks that are watching get get

05:38:21.580 books get good books get yourself a big notebook filled with all of your uh your your cumulative

05:38:27.500 knowledge and get a scratch notebook that has just ideas and become a mad scientist about it

05:38:33.580 get get into it there you go uh words of wisdom so good night hail the gods

05:38:43.100 Hail the folk. Hail the AFA. And remember, victory never sleeps.

05:39:13.100 Thank you.

05:39:43.100 Thank you.

05:40:13.100 Thank you.

05:40:43.100 Thank you.

05:41:13.100 Thank you.

05:41:43.100 Transcription by CastingWords

Asatru Folk Assembly - August 24, 2023

8⧸23⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 59 - ᚷᚹᚺ

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