Asatru Folk Assembly - 9⧸10⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 166 - An Ásatrú-Centered Life

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

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00:02:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:02:30.000 Thank you.

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

00:03:18.000 Appreciate everybody joining me.

00:03:20.100 Tonight, we have, as you have noticed, three of my distinguished AFA colleagues.

00:03:27.500 We've got Witten Young, Witten East, and Witten Erickson on to talk about an Alcatruz-centered life.

00:03:39.280 And I kind of, so the concept for the picture with the AFA trihorns on the sun and the planets,

00:03:46.940 that was really cool and seemed very self-evident.

00:03:49.380 The concept of what I wanted to title the episode, not so much because there's a lot of nuance.

00:03:57.500 in the concept that i want to talk about this evening and probably a lot of

00:04:04.060 a lot of ways it can be expressed but the theme and i think we've we've hit the topic of living

00:04:13.260 also true a number of times from a number of different ways and i want tonight's episode

00:04:21.740 at least the first portion to be a little bit more, I don't know, have a directionality to it.

00:04:30.500 And I'll get to that in a second when we get to the meat of tonight's program.

00:04:38.640 First, I would like to, and I should have consulted a calendar, so I have the dates on hand,

00:04:43.860 but producer Nick will help me. And if he doesn't, Witten Erickson is sure to.

00:04:47.960 We have coming up relatively quickly winter nights in New Hampshire.

00:04:54.840 We are doing New Hampshire winter nights at folk builder Ron Boardman's property, the lovely Othala Acres that we did it at last year.

00:05:05.260 It was beautiful and crisp, especially that time of year.

00:05:10.100 It was very nice, and this year plans to be even better, so I'm looking forward to it.

00:05:15.900 that's going to be uh october 10th through the 12th and you can get your tickets for that at

00:05:22.220 runestone.org or talk to any of your gothar or uh your well you can talk to your gothar if you'd

00:05:27.980 like but i was going to say any of your local folk builders they can get you all set up but matter

00:05:32.380 of fact and from my misspeaking any member of afa leadership would love to get you set up for it so

00:05:37.660 if you'd like to come let somebody know we can get you all set up and let you know about ticketing

00:05:45.340 And it's a it's just a neat time to be in that part of the country.

00:05:49.900 Some of our amazing people and something I kind of always look to.

00:05:53.440 This is a look forward to this.

00:05:55.420 A very it's a nice time of year.

00:05:58.640 You know, I think that we all have different seasons that speak to us or that, you know, are particularly moving to us.

00:06:04.920 But, you know, fall into winter has always been.

00:06:08.260 I don't know. It's been kind of special.

00:06:10.240 And I think there's plenty to go into that with the thinning of the veil and a lot of different things.

00:06:14.520 But fundamentally, in a lot of ways, it's just really cool, and I think it's a nice time of year and one I'm looking forward to sharing with my FA family.

00:06:22.580 So October 10th through 12th, if you can be in New Hampshire, we would love to celebrate winter nights with you, so please keep that in mind.

00:06:33.360 Weekly update on Frazehoff.

00:06:36.820 so

00:06:38.740 there's exciting things happening things are awesome we will absolutely tell y'all more when

00:06:50.400 we're able to but exciting things are happening everybody should be happy folks

00:06:56.660 and also you guys are really generous and I am blown away by it I'm very appreciative of it

00:07:05.260 and I think I speak for all of us, you know, thank you guys very much. Everybody who

00:07:10.380 gives of their time, of their money, of their effort, of their devotion to making this all work.

00:07:17.940 It is really something to behold and it's special to be able to be a part of it. So thank you guys.

00:07:24.240 That said, we've been raising money for the war chest. We're calling it for that down payment

00:07:30.480 and to pay off whatever loan we end up getting on Frazehoff.

00:07:36.480 So we're working on that right now.

00:07:39.640 You guys have been more than generous on it.

00:07:42.160 We are sitting at $17,900 raised so far.

00:07:47.620 And, you know, I could go back and try to play with the dates on that,

00:07:50.660 but that's a lot of money and not a lot of time.

00:07:53.240 So thank you guys so much.

00:07:55.300 This definitely moves that needle in a really good way

00:07:58.340 and gets us much closer to where we where we all want to be doing exciting things.

00:08:05.520 And it's because you guys are generous. So thank you.

00:08:07.900 Also, by the way, sir. Ah, since the end of May, you said.

00:08:13.560 All right. So. Yeah, that's that's tremendous.

00:08:19.640 Thank you guys very, very much.

00:08:21.280 G.W. Farnsworth starts us out tonight with $50 towards Frazehoff and $25 to VNS, as well as $25 to Baldershoff Steeple.

00:08:33.840 Thank you very much. We appreciate you. You set the example first thing on this show every single week.

00:08:42.120 We appreciate you.

00:08:44.140 Also, Nick donated $10 to Frazehoff. Thank you, Nick. We appreciate you as well.

00:08:51.280 And I know I saw something else here before we get too far.

00:08:58.820 Oh, this was a note.

00:09:01.860 Apparently, my wife wants me to let folks know that we have a current, it's a strange picture

00:09:09.580 advertising it, a current folk services effort in play, and in just a few hours, we have

00:09:16.240 raised $540 to help out one of our members who is struggling with something.

00:09:21.280 So thank you for everybody who's contributed to that.

00:09:24.500 If you are interested in donating towards our folk services effort, also donate at runestone.org.

00:09:34.600 Yeah, we appreciate that.

00:09:36.660 We appreciate all your generosity.

00:09:38.460 And you can see different ways or different things you want to give to there if you're so inclined.

00:09:45.060 All right.

00:09:46.240 So tonight I mentioned a little bit earlier the idea of an Alcatruz-centered life, and a couple of the concepts I wanted to kind of key in on tonight are the idea of increasingly making your life holistic, where all the pieces match together and synergize.

00:10:14.700 we live in a world in our modern age in the west where too often we are very very compartmentalized

00:10:25.500 in our approach to life to family to friend groups to our faith community and whatever

00:10:35.840 other things we're involved in we compartmentalize and we're like little different versions of

00:10:42.060 ourselves to different people. And you have to adjust your settings for every situation that

00:10:48.300 you're in because we have, I don't know, to a degree, we all have different masks we end up

00:10:57.640 wearing. I think the nicer way we say it in the West is, you know, we wear a lot of different hats.

00:11:02.880 But I think those hats often do a lot to conceal us and separate different pieces of our life out.

00:11:13.180 One of the biggest overarching components in the Aryan understanding of health is the idea of being whole.

00:11:21.660 When you're missing a piece, when something is missing or a piece is broken and not congruent in the overall whole,

00:11:30.000 the whole suffers when all of the pieces are working together they synergize and the the value

00:11:38.840 or the effectiveness is enhanced and i think that's very true with us as individuals and so

00:11:46.500 to that end and i've encouraged folks on here a lot with it but i want to talk a little bit more

00:11:52.320 about what that looks like, I want to talk about making the gods and our loyalty to our gods

00:12:02.140 the building block or the centerpiece of your life and what that does in terms of orienting

00:12:12.240 things and how that is in reality. I think a lot of these things too are very easy to talk about

00:12:21.440 as concepts, but they have faces and you see some of those faces before you tonight and

00:12:29.200 everybody's life and experience a little bit different. So in order of how we're showing up

00:12:41.160 on the screen uh trent tell us a little bit about

00:12:51.640 the position also true holds in your life and how that affects all those different

00:12:59.080 you know fractals that your life ends up taking sure uh something i think about a lot is you know

00:13:07.320 would my ancestors be proud of me would they see what i'm there you know do they look at what i'm

00:13:12.760 doing and do they approve or do they look at it with disgust or whatever and then on a more grandiose

00:13:21.880 scale i don't think this directly as often but sometimes i like to think you know would the gods

00:13:28.360 be you know approving of this action that i'm taking this decision i'm making whatever is this

00:13:35.080 Is this something that's going to bring glory to the Aesir?

00:13:39.780 Is it something that's going to bring glory to the AFA as the church of the Aesir?

00:13:47.460 I don't want to say literally every decision I make.

00:13:50.060 You know, there's mundane stuff that doesn't revolve around Alcetru, of course.

00:13:54.540 But any of the big stuff in life is it's just kind of a thing in the back of my head at all times, I suppose.

00:14:07.180 Is this the right thing to do? Is this the noble thing to do?

00:14:13.040 Can't think of any specifics at the moment, I suppose.

00:14:15.460 But, you know, that's that's pretty much it, I guess.

00:14:19.700 Well, okay. So some kind of, does your family know you're Alcitru?

00:14:29.260 Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah. I, I am openly Alcitru. I go to work and I work in manufacturing in the

00:14:39.080 state of Georgia. So there's lots of, lots of Guatemalan gentlemen. I wear my hammer outside

00:14:45.620 of my shirt so i don't care some ask what it is and i explain it you know my the ceo of the company

00:14:51.540 knows uh i go out in the town it's a small town and i've been in the news before so everybody

00:14:59.540 knows i'm also true my family knows the you know the born-again christians in my family know the

00:15:05.380 left-leaning atheists know uh any space i go to online will know because i tend to just tie

00:15:15.660 whatever i'm doing online to my role as a gothi in the afa um you know as as we say on the program

00:15:24.640 a lot truth is one of our virtues and also true is the it is my life so i live it that way online

00:15:33.960 or offline i don't have to uh i don't know i don't have to go on the internet and pretend to

00:15:39.480 be something i'm not uh yeah everybody and people i've met too i've gotten the comment before uh

00:15:47.800 when i've met people they'll they'll remark sometimes as a compliment sometimes not so much

00:15:53.160 that uh i'm just as stubborn or or whatever online as i am offline

00:16:03.960 How has that, I suppose it's a complex question.

00:16:17.780 Okay.

00:16:18.740 Have you always been openly out so true with your family?

00:16:24.100 No.

00:16:26.200 So I was Mormon for a while as a kid.

00:16:29.940 Then I turned 13 and, you know, went down the whole God is dead man thing, became an atheist.

00:16:38.340 And I was openly atheist because that was a really edgy thing to do in the Bible belt, I guess.

00:16:44.640 And, you know, clearly I didn't and still don't believe in the Semitic faiths, not for myself anyway.

00:16:53.040 and uh when I first got into Alistair Truitt I've told the story on here half a dozen times now but

00:17:01.080 like I mentioned uh just hearing about Alistair and learning about it it was like the flip of

00:17:06.480 a switch and I think that was you know by design so to speak and so I knew I was going to sound

00:17:13.360 ridiculous I guess if I if I just came home from high school one day I was like well no longer am

00:17:19.940 an atheist now i'm a a full hard polytheist uh so no i i did not i would you know i bought like a

00:17:29.780 a hammer on amazon or something at the time and started wearing it and people would kind

00:17:34.660 of ask me what that's about and i'd be like well i just i just like vikings and stuff they're cool

00:17:39.540 uh see i sort of skirted around it for a while and then when i started folk building in 2017

00:17:46.740 uh some people kind of caught on that i was taking this serious uh there was a time specifically

00:17:52.820 when i was when i was going up to winter nights in the poconos in 2017 uh i didn't tell my parents

00:18:00.660 or any of my family i was going i just got in the car and and went up there and i remember my dad

00:18:06.340 called me and was like wanting to meet up for lunch or something and he was like where you at

00:18:10.020 and i said oh scranton pennsylvania area and he thought i was joking and i that's when i had to

00:18:16.100 to like really come clean to him specifically about now i'm uh i think i said heathen at the

00:18:22.680 time probably and uh that was sort of the point i think right i started being a little bit more

00:18:30.440 open about it uh and you know just kind of went from there it became easier i guess and

00:18:37.440 then so you know i started being so open about it it uh as i mentioned everybody in the area

00:18:45.340 knows I'm Alcitru now whether I like it or not I do like it for the record but uh yeah no I

00:18:52.020 definitely had to kind of dip my toe into it I was almost embarrassed of it at first but not

00:18:58.240 embarrassed enough to not go to AFA stuff is a funny line to walk and I'm you know a thousand

00:19:07.780 times happier now just being openly Alcitru being openly pious to our gods and getting

00:19:15.100 speak to people about it and everything like that are you

00:19:30.060 were you also true when you met your wife uh yeah yes i was um

00:19:36.940 Um, yeah, you know, actually the, I met her a week before that trip to the Poconos I mentioned.

00:19:46.320 Uh, it was kind of like that thing you see in like old movies where a guy sees a pretty

00:19:52.760 girl across a crowded room.

00:19:54.580 And I specifically remember thinking like, man, do I like wear my hammer outside of my

00:19:59.300 shirt and like potentially scare her off?

00:20:02.580 And I decided yes, I think, because I forgot to put it in my shirt. So I accidentally decided yes. But my wife is not a fan of Christianity. So that worked out well for me, obviously.

00:20:21.180 uh but yeah i was mostly openly asked true then and then from that point forward

00:20:28.380 uh just yeah openly house true from then on

00:20:38.220 all right well

00:20:42.300 okay i guess the other thing um

00:20:44.700 um you mentioned that you are openly also true to your Guatemalan co-workers

00:20:52.380 have you always been openly also true at your place of business

00:20:57.500 uh no at my last place i worked from 2020 until earlier in the year uh my employer was uh you

00:21:08.300 know super super duper christian conservative christian the type of guy you would meet

00:21:13.740 anywhere in Georgia just about and uh was mostly making like Christian products and so I

00:21:22.780 I kind of kept it under wraps for a bit but then I got ordained while I was working there

00:21:30.060 and uh at that when I got ordained um and I went back to work after getting back from the

00:21:37.640 poconos that weekend i came clean about it and uh he didn't care he'd argue with me or tell me i was

00:21:44.540 praying to demons or whatever but i think from then on is when i started being open

00:21:50.500 uh even under like workplace pressure i guess about it

00:21:56.880 it would it felt really silly and cowardly to not be openly also true as a gothy i don't

00:22:09.720 i don't think you can do that you know it defeats the whole purpose

00:22:13.980 good deal i'm gonna kind of keep going around a little bit um

00:22:20.120 Um, Quentin Young, can you talk to us a little bit about the, how Alistair centered your

00:22:32.760 life is and its effect on the other pieces of your life?

00:22:37.500 Yeah, I mean, my story is pretty similar to Trent's.

00:22:42.140 So I first discovered Alistair around 2013.

00:22:45.460 and this was after square peg round hole kind of stuff when i went up okay let me back up a little

00:22:53.360 bit when i discovered true christianity scriptural christianity uh through my study with jehovah's

00:23:02.200 witnesses i saw all the missing pieces of what that religion was about all the stuff that made

00:23:11.040 traditional or more orthodox christianity in the south what made it more palpable they

00:23:18.540 they removed all that they removed all the you know pagan aspects of

00:23:22.700 that spiritual expression and i thought man this is just really boring and i went uh there was like

00:23:33.060 a book depository at the kingdom hall that i went to and i'm sure that's probably the case in all of

00:23:37.200 them or it's almost like a little like a store and there's just rows and rows of books and

00:23:44.400 to ask you know ask the clerk for whatever book is up on yourself that you catches your eye and

00:23:48.720 i remember being like a row of spines that were all white and there was one red one kind of

00:23:53.360 mixed in there and i said let me get that one and if i remember correctly i might have the title

00:23:58.640 mixed up but i want to say it was called man's search for god or something like that and it was

00:24:05.840 it was set up for, you know, people that were out in the field doing the, uh, I'm sorry, the, uh,

00:24:11.560 recruiting work, or I forget what they call it now, and so they could counter, you know, whether

00:24:16.660 it was Muslims, uh, people who practiced Judaism, or Shintoism, it went through this whole gambit of,

00:24:23.580 uh, other religions that, you know, you may encounter as you're going out to do your

00:24:28.140 door-to-door service, and one of the things that really caught my eye was, uh, it kind of concluded

00:24:34.480 with there were a number of ethnic tribal religions that they didn't have enough space to cover

00:24:43.120 ethnic white bulb went off and so i started now i started to pursue that and this is a long way

00:24:51.040 of saying that when i found alistair and i found my ethnic faith uh matt referred to this as you

00:24:59.760 know the health being you know making you feel whole and use the word holistic that was when

00:25:05.200 things everything for me uh came full circle um and this was not knowing much about

00:25:14.080 doctrine or the do's and don'ts or whatever but it was uh it wasn't so restrictive it was more

00:25:21.680 about life embracing from what i what i was reading and it wasn't so much about the denial

00:25:28.240 the pleasures of life and um like the need to like almost like self-flagellate and

00:25:37.280 if god made me in his image but also made me imperfect and thereby would punish me for

00:25:43.440 falling short of perfection that he created me then i felt like that was an abusive relationship

00:25:50.160 whereas when i made the shift to also true and i went through some other spiritual transitions

00:25:55.440 in the process you know i spent some time agnostic atheist probably isn't quite the

00:26:01.040 right word just kind of i don't belong anywhere then i found austral but i found that all the

00:26:06.960 things that make me me fit neatly into that compartment and i decided i was going to take the

00:26:16.560 to dive and so i joined the afa in 2018 and it was right before um winter nights that year i think

00:26:25.540 there was winter finding was like the next available uh like local thing that i could

00:26:31.460 attend and i remember just being blown away by the hospitality and stuff but i say all that to

00:26:37.560 say that the minute i discovered this i'm somewhat of a windbag and you know i guess people to see

00:26:44.980 like extra bounce in my step or whatever and what's what's going on what's new

00:26:50.740 with you in this and it's this religion that I found it's an ethnic religion it

00:26:55.180 ties me back to my my history for a millennia on on end and just you know I

00:27:01.660 can't wait to tell people about it so when I made the commitment to really do

00:27:06.700 this and not just some like a cultural curiosity and I decided to make this a

00:27:13.420 a thing and celebrate it and participate in the gift

00:27:17.380 cycle and give worship and all that. I was immediately open with it because

00:27:21.180 before all this, I didn't really have

00:27:24.520 friends. I had more like business

00:27:29.200 associates and things like that where you might swing by

00:27:33.100 your bro's house for a barbecue and have a beer and complain about your local

00:27:37.160 football team and stuff. I mean, that was always real shallow and

00:27:41.100 superficial to anybody that would listen I'm gonna tell them all about it so

00:27:47.980 honestly that and that came to came to be a discussion with myself and my

00:27:52.980 parents who at the time at least were on I don't know that I think their

00:27:59.220 perception to me as I get obsessive about things this was just Daniel's new

00:28:04.980 obsession and it would just it'll pass like some of the others before this or

00:28:09.660 whatever and uh i said no no no i'm serious about this this is this is the way i want to live my

00:28:16.280 life and and i say that because as we've said on this program more times than we can count that

00:28:23.580 this this is a way of life it isn't just something we do once a month or once a week or a couple

00:28:31.220 time of year. I think everything we do is an act of worship, whether it's mundane or otherwise, that

00:28:40.740 we carry the chariot of our ancestors. We are the living embodiment of that, and that everything

00:28:49.620 that we do, mundane or otherwise, whether it's sacred, whether it's, you know, being a good

00:28:55.620 employee being a good son being a good neighbor all those things i think that is you know paying

00:29:02.660 devotion of those who came before you and being a good representative um here in the last year or

00:29:10.900 so some of this kind of come to a head with members of my family and i and uh trent was

00:29:18.740 actually at my house for part of this my mother had stopped by I want to say we

00:29:25.700 were celebrating Heather's birthday and I had just gotten a really cool hand

00:29:31.820 carved wooden Heimdall mask from it was made by Gilbert Paige but it was given

00:29:38.220 to me by Bodie Mayo and it's got a prominent place on my mantle and my mom

00:29:44.720 was looking at it and she asked me what it was and I said well that's the

00:29:48.440 god heimdall and i went to try to explain who who he is and what function he serves and all that

00:29:54.900 she kind of cuts me off and said something really like passive aggressive and she referred to him

00:30:00.660 as a haint which is uh you know kind of a deep south pejorative for you know wicked spirit or

00:30:09.020 whatever and i was i was grossly offended by that and and i prayed to heimdall later

00:30:18.260 that, you know, he wouldn't hold that against my mom.

00:30:20.900 She just doesn't know any better.

00:30:22.680 But it created, like, this friction and tension between my mother and myself

00:30:26.060 and my wife as well.

00:30:30.300 I'm not one to just jump at my parents, regardless of where they stand on things.

00:30:37.720 That's part of my upbringing.

00:30:39.180 I'd rarely ever raise my voice to my mother or certainly would never do that to my dad.

00:30:44.160 But Heather has no such compunction.

00:30:46.060 She went went straight for her. We don't disrespect what you do. Don't disrespect what I do.

00:30:52.740 But OK, so what does all this what does all this mean?

00:30:56.780 It means that even at the cost of people that I do hold dear.

00:31:03.480 This still comes first that you'll hear often that, you know, family comes first.

00:31:09.080 And while that's true, but I think if you're a good outsider, you're a good family man to begin with,

00:31:14.740 because that's part of who we are um as far as uh my employers and stuff like that again

00:31:22.820 before i met all of you guys that i didn't have any friends so all of my friends were people i've

00:31:27.060 worked with and stuff and so yeah i've always been very very open about about uh what i believe how

00:31:33.700 i believe and uh all of that without without any fear maybe some concern but not fear

00:31:41.540 oh good um

00:31:53.540 just trying to think of how i'm gonna weave the weave the narrative this evening

00:31:57.620 all right uh cliff same question how

00:32:03.540 what does the central role of also true look like in your life and how does that

00:32:11.380 affect the other the other portions of it

00:32:17.380 so um

00:32:21.940 i wasn't openly asa true to start um i uh

00:32:28.180 i started learning about asa true in 2010 or 2011 um through other interests and

00:32:36.980 And, you know, I did the internet heathenry thing for a few years there.

00:32:43.580 And then I started to go out on these, like, you know, I guess meet and greets.

00:32:50.180 Not all of them were AFA.

00:32:51.720 Some of them were.

00:32:53.260 Trying to see what this whole thing was all about.

00:32:58.220 But I did, I kept it to myself for at least the first two or three years.

00:33:05.920 I've mentioned it on this show a number of times where, you know, I would disappear on my family.

00:33:15.500 I was a single man then, so I'm talking about my dad, who I owned a house with at the time,

00:33:20.380 and my brother and, you know, my pre-Ossetru friends, as it were,

00:33:28.100 the people that I knew from, you know, graduating from high school together or work or other associations.

00:33:34.240 and um like you know we both go to the same bar on the same corner or something like that some

00:33:40.340 of it was pretty shallow as far as how we knew each other um but um i would go on these secret

00:33:47.020 camping trips basically kind of like what trent did you know i would just kind of up and disappear

00:33:52.640 and i'd done that for a few political things before too um i'm just not around this weekend

00:33:58.340 you know and uh you know you do that often enough and you start to get questions about it like

00:34:04.700 hey where were you you you know sometimes we can't reach you are you okay and they're probably

00:34:09.340 picturing me depressed sitting in my apartment all by myself or some other such sadness and uh

00:34:16.720 you know i was like oh i'm camping like who are you camping with them friends oh who you don't

00:34:22.700 know i'm you know real shady kind of i didn't think of it that way at the time but i was being

00:34:26.460 like an evasive teenager who was going out you know um but i did eventually come clean about it

00:34:34.460 because also she started to become more um more more central in my life i was

00:34:40.300 making friends and forging relationships that i could no longer keep off to the side and you know

00:34:48.780 treat it as a hobby because you know for hopefully this is something that most of the people watching

00:34:56.000 this don't understand and for anyone who does understand it fix it but when i started in like

00:35:02.940 trent what i would have called heathenry back then it was very much a one weekend a month thing

00:35:09.180 i went to also true i wasn't also true it's something that like i did it was something

00:35:17.560 that i went to it was you know like going to a concert or something like that it was you know

00:35:25.020 it was more serious than that but the way that i was treating it it was very much it's sort of this

00:35:30.520 special interest hobby that i have that i would do either when i was on the computer alone

00:35:35.840 reading stuff or when i would go out to these events that um

00:35:39.680 you know that the the people who are in my life organically didn't know about um

00:35:47.720 so i think that's i think that's something that's common for people when this is new because it's

00:35:53.120 scary at first. You don't know how people are going to receive it, especially those that are

00:35:58.180 closest to you, those that have known you long before this, you know, your parents, my parents

00:36:05.300 who, you know, tried to raise me to be a proper Roman Catholic. I think most of our people have

00:36:10.820 parents who at least nominally raised them Christian and if not raised them Christian

00:36:16.040 very, very seriously. And so I don't hold it against them when the proper thing for a Christian

00:36:24.820 to do if their child is not Christian is to fear for their immortal soul and to feel both a sense

00:36:33.120 of defeat and obligation to kind of save you. So I try to be patient in that regard. But my parents

00:36:39.820 actually really impressed me when I came clean about what I was doing. My father was pretty

00:36:49.400 matter-of-fact about it. I don't know, maybe he suspected already or, you know, just knew that I

00:36:54.780 was into strange things already and it didn't faze him. My mom, though, really, really impressed

00:37:01.260 me. I, you know, I gave her a call one day and I'm like, all right, mom, I need you to sit down.

00:37:08.360 need to tell you something um and so you know i probably scared the daylights out of her with

00:37:13.880 that opening you know she's thinking that i'm about to tell her that i've got cancer or something like

00:37:21.560 that you know like that's the i i treated it so serious way more i mean not also true as serious

00:37:28.120 but i treated it in like a grim seriousness like i expected that i was about to like wound her soul

00:37:35.560 when I told her this and I let her know about Asatru and the Asatru Folk Assembly and what I'd

00:37:42.000 been up to and you know how important it was to me and she told me he was like you know I thought

00:37:47.860 you seemed happier and more confident that's awesome and it floored me I thought she was

00:37:52.680 going to be you know invoking the Blessed Mother and you know doing you know all the stereotypical

00:38:02.740 irish catholic mom things you know like you gotta get down here right away and i'll have the holy

00:38:07.660 water ready you know so it wasn't like that um now she may have done that privately and i again

00:38:14.180 i wouldn't be offended by that because if she's a sincere christian she does have to have some

00:38:18.380 level of concern based on what she's been taught right um she's wrong so um you know hopefully

00:38:26.260 she'll see that one day she will see that one day at the very latest when she passes i think people

00:38:31.300 are all of our people are i think all of us are in some kind of a surprise that way because we

00:38:37.460 can't really know exactly what that's like but the people who aren't also sure in for a particular

00:38:42.900 surprise um as far as how it factors into you know into my life on the regular i

00:38:53.860 i i took a page from a friend of ours brad a long time ago because we you know i talked

00:39:01.060 to him a lot whenever i got the opportunity and um a lot of what he said stuck he had a lot of really

00:39:07.860 smart ideas about things especially at that time and one of them was that you need to align

00:39:16.660 your professional life and you need to align your social life so that you can make asa true

00:39:24.580 the center of your life and i didn't do anything about it at that time because i

00:39:30.340 you know i had a regular drive 30 minutes one way um you know nine to five kind of job so i spent a

00:39:39.940 huge chunk of my time in the car you know eating junk food or smoking cigarettes or

00:39:44.420 getting my blood pressure up because somebody cut me off or was going too slow all that awful

00:39:49.460 commuter stuff and um that job ended up um changing in a way where i i mean like i guess

00:39:59.140 officially i was let go but they gave me a really nice severance package so that was the year that

00:40:03.940 i went and i did all of the uh the national events um that we had at that time which was

00:40:10.900 winter nights ostara in the south uh midsummer in california and uh

00:40:19.140 freyfaxi in the northwest at that time and um you know that was awesome that i was able to do that

00:40:26.020 But when I, you know, finished my summer of my year of traveling, when I when I was looking for, you know, a new full time job because I'd burned my parachute in a rather it was a good thing to do, but it probably should have saved some of it.

00:40:44.100 Um, I, uh, I specifically looked for work that I could do from home online, um, that, uh, would allow me to have, you know, get rid of that time in the commute and be able to spend time in a way that I could, um, be a greater contributor to, to Asitru.

00:41:09.800 um so that that kind of joins two topics of some of the things that you've asked um i i would say

00:41:18.520 that i am openly also true at work except that it's never actually come up because i do it work

00:41:25.600 remotely so when i'm on the phone with a customer troubleshooting their network it's not really an

00:41:31.380 appropriate topic to broach and in that setting and as far as my colleagues go the only time it's

00:41:37.260 ever like we don't we don't talk about religion or politics at all and because we're not in the

00:41:41.520 same physical space we don't take breaks or lunches together or anything like that so it is all

00:41:46.740 shop talk it's not there's no no real social conversation there um but when i you know when

00:41:57.660 i when i put in time off i say i put down what it's for i don't hide it there so my manager

00:42:03.120 has at least seen the words even if he doesn't understand what they are um i have my health

00:42:09.920 dollar set up through direct deposit so the payroll department has you know i had to give our um ein

00:42:17.480 and the 501c3 letter and all that stuff so they've seen our letterhead so it's been there that way i

00:42:22.740 haven't hidden it but it doesn't it doesn't come up organically and i know in a lot of ways it's

00:42:30.080 not appropriate for me like if i were to just bring it up it would be very strange in those

00:42:34.200 settings you know um but if anyone ever asked me about it i'm going to tell them exactly what it is

00:42:39.780 and you know answer as many questions as they'll as they'll as they want honestly um once if anyone

00:42:47.580 ever opened that door i think it would be a pretty fun day um so there's that and i i i have the

00:42:57.340 the great fortune of having met my wife, um, in Asatru. Um, I,

00:43:04.280 I think that's a real blessing. Um, I, you know, it's funny cause on this,

00:43:10.240 on this show here today, we have, uh,

00:43:12.920 two people who met their wives and their wives were already Asatru.

00:43:17.880 And then we have two others who, who brought their,

00:43:21.300 their wives into it and, um, both are correct. You know,

00:43:25.440 i think that um we we need our we need our men to be able to find quality women where they can

00:43:33.480 and the afa is one place where you can do that but it's not the only one um

00:43:37.820 you know since i've had children um also true in in my daily life has taken on a whole new

00:43:47.480 character than it did when I was a single man or when I was, um, you know, uh, dating or, um,

00:43:55.640 anything like that. It, um, has really enriched a lot of, uh, my, my day-to-day Asitru because

00:44:03.620 being able to explain the stories, um, and our gods to my kids helps me see them in a new light.

00:44:11.540 Myself, being able to, you know, express it in terms that a five-year-old can understand

00:44:16.780 um is a is a good exercise and sometimes that's right at my level honestly um another thing that

00:44:25.880 um that's cool is when they see things that i don't i mean there there have been times when

00:44:33.460 owen has corrected me on the lure and been accurate on it and you know i'm not glad that

00:44:39.140 i was wrong about something but it's it's darn impressive that you know um we we've taught him

00:44:45.100 those things and that and that he's retained them he's going to have uh a real advantage over me or

00:44:50.380 i think any other adult as far as that the things that you learn young you know you you keep them

00:44:55.820 forever and um you know being able to never i had never really developed any kind of a practice or

00:45:04.700 relationship with like land whites or house whites until i was um married and had children

00:45:10.540 And that's become a real big part of Asatru in the Erickson household.

00:45:16.140 I think that, you know, in addition, ancestors, of course, are almost always at the center of my focus.

00:45:23.280 But land whites and house whites are something that the kids can relate to in a real easy, tangible way.

00:45:32.960 And I've noticed things that I would have never noticed without, first of all, recognizing them.

00:45:38.980 and without the the kids recognizing them um just just earlier this week we were

00:45:45.000 talking to the kids about how um you know sometimes they get scared of like ghosts or

00:45:51.700 the dark or things like that and um you know i wanted to present some alternatives to them then

00:45:58.780 like you know something strange happened in in your bedroom so it must be a ghost i like you know

00:46:05.560 Well, maybe it was a land wipe playing a trick on you or maybe it was the house wipe playing a trick on you because because they do that.

00:46:11.880 And, you know, we forgot to wind the clock and we forgot to turn the page on the calendars to September and there's a pile of socks in the bathroom.

00:46:21.760 They don't like that stuff. You know, we got to clean it up. We got to wind the clock.

00:46:26.220 We got to the calendars are a kind of clock. We got to get them all correct.

00:46:29.700 Things need to be neat and tidy and the way they're supposed to be.

00:46:32.780 um so that part you know that part brings me a lot of joy and it's the sort of stuff i never

00:46:40.100 would have thought of 10 years ago um as far as how i was approaching those little

00:46:47.220 little day-to-day things um you know i i'm a priest of the aesir in the asa true folk assembly

00:46:55.860 Right. So I I take our our religious practices and in particular devotional practices very seriously, like like prayer and religiosity are super important.

00:47:10.960 But the. Work is important, too, you know, I don't know. I don't know quite how to express it, but but sometimes I think that somebody who prays all day but doesn't contribute any work into moving forward.

00:47:32.740 our declaration of purpose who doesn't make us a true real for other people or you know

00:47:39.860 inform them about things or you know help to maintain or dedicate our hoffs or um any of the

00:47:49.480 vast number of things that someone can do that are you know real work things that help move the

00:47:57.320 ball forward as far as letting all of our, you know, our white brothers and sisters out there

00:48:03.740 who don't know this is even an option for them. You know, for me, I think that that is,

00:48:11.540 in many cases, not all, it's not a like for like comparison, but that a lot of that is

00:48:17.580 more important than, you know, simply praying a lot. And I'm not obviously suggesting that people

00:48:25.620 shouldn't pray um but that that that's that that's not enough and maybe that's the maybe that's the

00:48:32.500 catholic upbringing in me it's it's the whole um works versus um you know prayer kind of argument

00:48:42.500 that christianity has sometimes but i don't think that's a christian argument in particular i think

00:48:46.660 that's a religion argument in general um but that's a lot of where i'm coming from on this stuff

00:48:53.700 i uh i can't imagine at all what my life would be like if i if i hadn't well i can imagine actually

00:48:59.940 and it's not it's not great you know what where i would be without asa true is um quite a bit more

00:49:07.540 miserable than that this isn't miserable it is just it's miserable compared with where i am now

00:49:13.780 um you know before before i was also true i i worked to play basically you know i went to work

00:49:21.540 five days a week sometimes six and it was all about getting money to go to that concert or to

00:49:28.600 have that party or you know to to pick up party supplies as it were so um it uh it it wasn't it

00:49:39.560 wasn't something that was was good for me in in mind or spirit or body certainly would have taken

00:49:45.260 its toll um probably already did a bit but um i'm a i'm a very fortunate man i'm a very lucky man

00:49:52.700 i i really do feel blessed by being able to participate in the asa shufulk assembly

00:49:57.660 on the regular and that i i have a wife who does the same and that my kids are being raised in this

00:50:04.380 um it's uh it's a good thing and all of you watching should do it too

00:50:10.380 absolutely so you brought up something that i think is really important

00:50:15.600 and i think conceptually

00:50:20.960 i don't know people get too comfortable spending too much time in their head

00:50:26.820 um and a fundamental about the austro folk assembly is

00:50:33.600 how we define Ausatru and I think it goes to the definition itself

00:50:41.740 Icelanders would tell you that Ausatru means belief in the Aesir and it does but etymologically

00:50:52.040 the point of belief like the root word is troth with is loyalty to it's something that you can

00:51:01.580 trust because of established loyalty it's from trust and loyal adherence to agreements is how

00:51:13.460 you come to um you know a a belief in or a um a trusting of the word uh true comes from the word

00:51:26.600 troth which means a like an oath loyalty to something or to someone so in the astro folk

00:51:38.760 assembly also true means loyalty to the icr it's not about what you believe you need to have

00:51:48.520 a certain amount of correct belief but if your belief doesn't dictate your action

00:51:54.040 that first it only sort of matters and secondly i mean it doesn't equal religion we all have things

00:52:04.120 that we believe or ideas that we have it's different from those being a code of core

00:52:12.360 beliefs on your relationship with the divine that are expressed through a devotion and a loyalty to

00:52:20.280 a deity or set of deities it's a real different thing there's a lot of people who are very well

00:52:26.520 read or very well you know well educated in whatever way conceptually or philosophically

00:52:33.080 on a subject but if it doesn't change how they act what is what's the point of that i mean other

00:52:40.280 than you know it's fun to learn things but it's different if they affect your action and what you

00:52:46.840 do um also true is expressed through

00:52:54.280 through active worship of our gods and through living deeds in your life very common expression

00:53:04.360 and also true since early on has been that we are our deeds we are we and we're not our thoughts

00:53:10.680 we're not our beliefs we are our deeds we are defined by the things that we do in this life

00:53:20.880 not just by intentions that we have but those

00:53:24.420 intentions when they're made manifest with actions

00:53:28.320 and I think this is important to conceive of or think about but oftentimes we we overthink it

00:53:39.640 Our gods are conscious, living entities with personality, with agency, and with, you know, cognition.

00:53:57.920 We know how to interact with other things in our life that have those faculties.

00:54:04.800 faculties, what is valuable to them? You perpetually, you know, saying they're awesome,

00:54:15.480 or you doing things that you think they approve of doing things in order to

00:54:22.500 give with them or to share with them or to honor them. People in your own life or in your own

00:54:30.380 experience what matters more to you is you know is it somebody who has nice thoughts about you

00:54:37.740 perhaps in the privacy of their own home and their own mind or people who express those thoughts

00:54:43.780 with deed with gift giving with uh with celebrating you publicly and making

00:54:52.860 your relationship and the things that you care about important in the way they live their life

00:54:57.980 And I think our gods are much, much more than that. But certainly on the most basic level, what do we think they value? Because a lot of the time, we look at so many things individually and through our own lens of like, how does my faith affect me?

00:55:19.220 How does Alcitru affect me? And so it's easy to think about everything from your perspective. It's a challenge, but I think a very worthwhile one to consider what the gods might think about us.

00:55:36.620 what do the gods think of how we're behaving what do the gods think of a ritual that we're doing

00:55:43.680 does it please them does it not is it something that they would approve of or is it something

00:55:48.260 they might not approve of how often do we think that way and I think that's really important

00:55:53.900 because again all of that is reflected in deed and deed is so central to Alcetree

00:55:59.860 While I got the floor, I want to acknowledge John donated $20 towards our Folk Services

00:56:09.820 Initiative. Thank you very much for that, John. We appreciate it. And we've got Angela,

00:56:16.760 who donated $25 towards Frazehoff. Thank you very much, Angela. It's much appreciated.

00:56:22.260 so we got some questions um some questions coming in one thing that the chat room has kind of

00:56:34.260 noticed is there is a disproportionate number of former jehovah's witnesses uh either on the show

00:56:41.780 or in the chat tonight so that's kind of an interesting place we find ourselves uh daniel

00:56:49.180 Do you think that there is, I don't know, anything particular about the Jehovah's Witnesses that would, I don't know, have overlap or lead, you know, former Witnesses towards Ausatru?

00:57:04.780 i i think there's a number of things i think because they they approach their religion with

00:57:10.860 honesty and and they approach the religion at its core and they're strictly uh scriptural based

00:57:20.380 and their approach i mean to the t um and you know there may be debate amongst other christian

00:57:29.420 scholars about you know the accuracies you know translations and things of that nature

00:57:34.780 I'll say this. They know their Bible. And one of the things that really struck me was that I mentioned earlier that they stripped away all of the non-Semitic Aryan traditions from the faith.

00:57:53.220 and matt you being up in anchorage i'm not sure about the the diversity of the population up

00:58:01.080 there but you know down here it's a very diverse population and it really encapsulated like

00:58:08.920 universalism at its very core um you know they're very traditional and almost fundamentalist in

00:58:16.020 their approach i mean so i mean they're they're not about degeneracy and stuff like that but they

00:58:21.120 don't they certainly don't see color ethnicity is absolutely nothing it means

00:58:27.900 nothing we're all you know children in God's eyes and all that but there was a

00:58:33.120 specific passage and I believe it was in Genesis this I'm really embarrassed to

00:58:38.100 say that I can still remember this passage better than I can remember some

00:58:41.580 other things this was after Jehovah had found that Adam and Eve had discovered

00:58:47.880 they were naked and covered themselves and were hiding their nakedness from him

00:58:52.380 in the Garden of Eden and when he came upon them he said why are you hiding and

00:58:56.700 they said we're naked so you've eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good

00:59:01.140 and bad and he starts to skin this animal and gives them clothing to cover

00:59:08.460 up with and and tells them to consume the flesh but he specifically says do

00:59:13.760 not consume the blood but the soul is in the blood and that's that line in that

00:59:20.300 particular part of the Bible stuck out to me the soul was in the blood it

00:59:23.940 almost echoed in my head over and over and over again my blood is not in the

00:59:28.700 desert and that was what kind of hurried me along to this this path I talked

00:59:35.320 earlier about the square peg round hole and I probably did a poor job of

00:59:40.700 explaining it but it felt like I had to change everything about me that made me

00:59:44.240 me to fit into that worldview and it's a lot of like you know denial of I won't

00:59:52.040 say denial of life but certainly like enjoyment is almost viewed as a as a

00:59:58.100 sin or falling short idolatry is a big no-no there and you know hero work well

01:00:10.000 lot of things are called hero worship like you know i'm a i'm a kid from the 80s and 90s so

01:00:15.360 i had you know football players posters on my wall and stuff and that's that's hero worship

01:00:21.280 and why are these things bad and you know again i i understand that the concept was you know

01:00:26.560 misguided by you know my admiration for athletes or whatever um

01:00:31.600 i think because they strip so much of the uh the pagan veneer from it that it kind of reveals it

01:00:44.000 what how ugly it really is and i think um that was what kind of drove me away and had it not

01:00:51.720 been for that that's that single line in genesis and that book that i found at the kingdom hall

01:00:56.960 I don't know where I'd be right now.

01:01:01.140 Yeah, I'm, you know, I don't know other than what I found.

01:01:09.800 So anybody in the audience might not know.

01:01:12.460 I was also a Jehovah's Witness for a time.

01:01:16.300 And that experience really primed me to understand Christianity,

01:01:25.040 to reject Christianity and then to embrace

01:01:29.980 Austru. And a lot of the, you know, a lot of overlaps

01:01:34.000 there and stuff that Daniel said

01:01:36.320 wasn't a lot of diversity in it in Alaska. And most of it I was

01:01:41.880 involved with was in Fairbanks with my cousins and my aunt, where it's even less so

01:01:45.960 there are almost no Alaska native Jehovah's Witnesses

01:01:50.260 as far as I'm aware. But there was, you know, mostly white people

01:01:54.040 because that's most of the population there and there was you know a couple hispanics and

01:01:59.240 a couple blacks and a mulatto lady and i think that was most of it but it wasn't super super

01:02:05.960 diverse but i remember that i always remember all of the frequent watchtower pictures

01:02:13.720 of the diversity because they'd have like the asians with the like i don't know what you call

01:02:18.760 the asian hat that they wear when they're in the rice paddies doing asian stuff and there's like

01:02:25.080 this you know blue black dude and a dashiki doing something and they're all in like switzerland

01:02:31.080 building log cabins with their you know rainbow coalition of those that uh that made it into the

01:02:39.880 new system so don't forget that they were like snuggling with like predatory large yes they're

01:02:44.920 snuggling with the predator with there was a lion that i think i think there's a white lady

01:02:50.120 snuggling with a lion yeah i remember i remember a number of those pictures they're they stick out

01:02:55.640 in my head they're real iconic um but yeah they did a really good job of honestly removing all of

01:03:05.080 the um pagan elements from their christianity and keeping it real biblical and i think that there's

01:03:13.560 room for debate on the biblically speculative things like they like to get real fussy about

01:03:22.280 jesus wasn't killed on a cross it didn't have like a cross bar it was just a straight pole

01:03:27.780 and christians who use a cross are doing it wrong i think that's highly up for archaeological debate

01:03:34.220 they've got a whole bunch of math they do on prophecies that i think's debatable but as far

01:03:40.080 as like removing non-hebrew influence i think they did a pretty good job of that and it was

01:03:46.580 very telling because it took all of the cool things out of christianity and it just left

01:03:51.720 the semitic evolved judaism that christianity fundamentally is and it it certainly wasn't

01:03:59.400 for me and it's not ours um you know like all these uh gentlemen said before me

01:04:05.420 I it would be hard for me to imagine my life without Ausatru um I have been fortunate enough

01:04:17.280 to build my family within the Ausatru Folk Assembly um I've you know

01:04:26.260 initially when I first got involved with Ausatru it was you know to a degree kind of like Cliff

01:04:34.400 was saying, you know, it was, I would go to Ausatru was something I could, you know, try to

01:04:39.680 get people together locally, but I would, you know, once a year I would go, I would fly out to

01:04:45.660 California for midsummer or I would go to midsummer and then to winter nights and subsequent

01:04:50.760 years and feel like for those, you know, handful of days here, a handful of days there, that was

01:04:57.740 my authentic life and I was living all of the days in between kind of in anticipation of

01:05:05.420 or to facilitate going and doing those things and so I very consciously you know it seems

01:05:13.540 obviously it seems obvious with me as the else here you go through that yeah of course my life

01:05:18.760 revolves around that's true but that was a very intentional thing that I sought out and did and

01:05:25.500 my life's been amazing so far because of it. And it's hard for me to imagine life without it.

01:05:35.980 It's, you know, my friends group is all AFA members. The trips and things that I go on,

01:05:44.720 not that there'd be anything wrong with just going on recreational trips, but just because

01:05:48.820 of how things work, they're going to AFA events and to see AFA members and be involved in House

01:05:54.620 true and it's extremely fulfilling and i've heard that from a lot of people who've joined the afa

01:06:01.660 and i'm i'm glad to hear that it's not that i'm like contorting the rest of my life to fit

01:06:08.300 aussitru it's that once you embrace and internalize aussitru all the other things in your life that

01:06:16.780 have been confusing or have been conflicting if you let them they can all find their place and

01:06:25.740 work together you don't have to force square pegs into round holes things just kind of fit

01:06:33.660 and you start seeing a synergy and you start experiencing blessings in your life

01:06:38.460 and friends and success and it's like that for a great number of us i can't guarantee that for

01:06:45.660 everyone who joins. We all have different things we need to work on and different starting points.

01:06:52.980 But that's something a lot of us have experienced. So we've got some questions kind of stacking up.

01:06:58.860 Caleb wants to know, hello, I've got a few more questions. Is there an AFA stance on splitting

01:07:05.500 the body slash ashes upon burial so it is stored in different locations? What are some pros and

01:07:12.000 cons of doing that. What about making jewelry from the ashes by compressing them into diamonds?

01:07:21.040 There is not a official AFA doctrine on it, but I do have some thoughts.

01:07:26.160 Trent, what are your thoughts on this subject?

01:07:31.920 I don't have any like deep lore based answer to it. And it's something you and I have discussed

01:07:40.800 before i was here because we had a a georgia member who passed away a few years ago and

01:07:47.200 i did his funeral and his family wanted his uh ashes split you know some buried at yordsoff

01:07:53.760 and some with them and i'm not gonna tell them no you know what i mean that's uh someone's son

01:08:01.040 someone's brother whatever but there's something about it just feels uh i would not want my ashes

01:08:09.280 split up um if i were the executor of someone's will i would not split up their ashes unless they

01:08:16.000 specifically requested that but again i don't have an house true based reason for it it just doesn't

01:08:21.840 feel right i don't know i like the idea of keeping the person the person's remains as whole as

01:08:28.640 possible uh what are your thoughts daniel

01:08:34.480 up very similar to Trent I think because we don't view the body of something

01:08:44.140 separate from the soul that's a very apparent I'm sorry very prominent part

01:08:53.860 of the soul complex itself I think it should be kept whole but I don't have

01:09:03.000 breaks through a stanza 37 says kind of thing uh cliff you got thoughts i do um and like with many

01:09:15.620 things i'm going to have more than one point of view on this just because um for a long time i

01:09:24.040 actually was a strong had a strong preference falling somewhere short of being a strong

01:09:31.600 proponent of non-cremation and of interring bones because um because of what daniel said

01:09:42.800 is that we believe that the body is part of the soul complex and that um i saw and i still see

01:09:51.220 in the proper context a great value to having the body which eventually will be bones no matter what

01:09:59.660 you do to it to try to slow that process available for descendants to come and visit and commune with

01:10:07.260 the ancestor i think there's a lot of value of that a lot of our stories um you know have

01:10:14.420 pretty significant moments where someone will go to a grave mound or into a grave mound and

01:10:21.340 you know, converse with their ancestor. And I don't know that that sort of thing was necessarily

01:10:30.180 seen as possible without the physical remains being there. There's a reason you had to go

01:10:36.200 to the grave in order to do that. And actually, it was you, Astrid Gauthier, who, I don't know if

01:10:43.960 you knew you were doing this, but that you kind of changed my thinking on this because we were

01:10:48.400 talking about cemeteries at our temples at our hafs and um you know practical and spiritual

01:10:59.380 conversation was going at once as far as how to you know lay out plots and um you know what

01:11:07.280 we would make available to the folk i don't know how many people watching this know this but if

01:11:13.380 are a member of the austria folk assembly you have the right for your remains to be interred

01:11:18.740 permanently at uh half of your choosing um and now sure go the matt and i were talking about

01:11:24.100 the practicality of that you know what happens when somebody wants to bury you know a full coffin

01:11:30.980 and um you know build an obelisk above it that they would have to you know that's not the

01:11:38.020 automatic thing you know the the automatic thing is you know you can have your your cremated

01:11:45.220 remains in an urn buried in the grounds there with um you know a memorial stone and certainly

01:11:52.180 i think um the option is there for people to you know make a contribution to to have more than that

01:11:59.460 but the basic thing that someone's entitled to is the the plot for the the burial of the the ashes

01:12:08.020 and how they make that happen uh how can they make that happen they would they would do that

01:12:15.940 by putting that in their will but that's not exactly what i'm talking about right now um

01:12:22.020 as part of the conversation that i was having with matt we were talking about um

01:12:25.860 um, cremation as a mechanism for our soul to ascend. Um, and that, you know, in archeological

01:12:42.400 Asitru and in the, the arc heathen times that, um, interment of whole physical remains

01:12:51.540 was a more common thing but kings and great warriors had ship burials or ship ship burnings

01:13:02.520 and that that was you know that was almost reserved for for the elite and it changed my

01:13:11.520 thinking on it in that you know i had been against the destruction of the the body because you know

01:13:17.580 in you know in in in a in a proper you know thinking about it too much i wanted to leave

01:13:26.240 my bones for my kids right um that that leaving behind ash remains was was just as appropriate

01:13:35.160 or perhaps even more appropriate in in in context i don't think that either one of them is wrong

01:13:40.300 um but i you know kind of coming back around to the the original part of this um

01:13:48.240 the destruction of the body through cremation to me is already a release of that corporeal part

01:13:58.540 of our soul complex the ashes aren't your body they're a part of it but there's so much more

01:14:03.500 that was there that's destroyed in that process that i don't think that the separation of the

01:14:09.160 ashes from one another is um is going to you know mess with our soul complex for one thing

01:14:17.140 that that ascension process of that part of the soul has already happened at that point

01:14:21.820 and i think that um you know scattering you know some people want to have their

01:14:28.940 their ashes scattered in you know their their favorite forest or in the ocean or on a beach

01:14:35.740 or something like that and those ashes invariably end up all over the world right um some people

01:14:42.460 want to have their ashes put in one of those little tree plant potters and so the materials

01:14:46.160 from that would go up and become part of the the living tree there so i don't know that um

01:14:52.060 you know distributing your ashes among several loved ones rather than one would be would be

01:14:58.500 inappropriate i can see a a certain spiritual power to that and certainly a sentimental value

01:15:04.100 to that uh you know if you have three children and you give them each some of your ashes to carry in

01:15:10.820 a locket or to have as an urn on their mantle or you know in a very stylish way to compress into

01:15:18.020 a diamond that's that's cool i'd never thought of that that seems kind of cooler than a tree

01:15:22.820 as much as i like the tree idea um it's probably going to be a tiny diamond though i don't know

01:15:28.260 that there's that much ash that comes out of a person that would and i don't know maybe not um

01:15:34.100 but anyway i don't i'm not opposed to the distribution of the ashes to places that are

01:15:40.420 gonna to places and people that are going to be in respectful to them and where the uh the the

01:15:50.180 spiritual and religious intent of them is you know going to end to someone's life because um

01:15:57.140 while our physical remains are part of our soul complex it's one of many and most of them um you

01:16:05.540 know don't remain in midgard some of them may not survive death some of them go back to the halls of

01:16:11.900 the ancestors some of them can be recycled in our bloodline reincarnated is the better word for it

01:16:16.640 not recycled but same thing really um and yeah i'm you know i think that there are strong cases

01:16:25.280 both in the historical record and in practical modern religious terms for for cremation and

01:16:34.580 you know whole body internment what i think would be a really fun conversation and then i'll i'll

01:16:39.640 let it go here because this is a fun one is what do you do if you decide you're not going to get

01:16:43.860 cremated but you still want to distribute your body parts amongst your loved ones so i think the

01:16:49.980 idea of relics is awesome um i think you know somebody having i don't know

01:16:59.180 herman detruski's uh bronzed finger is a really cool idea um but i digress so why do i think okay

01:17:11.820 so that's funny because you mentioned the quote unquote christian idea about relics and having

01:17:17.740 pieces of saints bodies but why because that's an inherently non-christian thing that is one of the

01:17:27.020 like turbo pagan aspects of medieval european christianity and i think that's because

01:17:37.820 the body itself becomes a um

01:17:41.900 storehouse for spiritual energy um and i think a piece of the body of somebody who is

01:17:54.300 an ascended person of heroic stature there's a piece of that that

01:18:02.060 goes with that physicality of it i think in the same way that having you know

01:18:09.320 family heirlooms or you know uh ceremonial implements or weaponry or things that way

01:18:20.940 there's something that's imbued into that thing that connects you in a special way and that is

01:18:29.020 empowering and i think that's similarly the case with remains as either bones or as ash

01:18:42.700 first i don't think and that there the the astute folk assembly does not believe that your

01:18:51.900 afterlife experience has a relationship good or bad to whatever becomes of your body

01:19:03.740 um that said you know burial has its merits and its places something our ancestors practiced at

01:19:09.740 different times cremation is something that our ancestors absolutely practiced

01:19:16.380 they practiced often and it was seen in contrast to the christian's practice of burial

01:19:23.860 in kind of a special way and especially associated often historically with the with the cult of the

01:19:31.440 all-father um but yeah if you're you know if you're lost at sea i don't think that you know

01:19:39.260 you you don't get to ascend or you are somehow penalized in the destination of your soul after

01:19:47.100 that i think at death your soul casts off the the the leak or the the physical body portion of its

01:19:56.940 pieces and the pieces that are necessary to go beyond the veil they do so so i don't think this

01:20:05.420 has those implications i think most of the implications otherwise are to those left behind

01:20:12.300 and to the power in your um in whatever your resting place is there is something powerful

01:20:24.220 about graveyards i think that the human condition and experience resoundingly tells us that

01:20:33.580 The presence of deceased remains is powerful.

01:20:42.780 Well, why is that the case?

01:20:45.280 I think probably a number of reasons.

01:20:48.380 I think the remains themselves have a power to them.

01:20:51.640 But I also think that the commemorative nature of whatever monument is erected, be it a simple plaque or whatever is used as a tombstone there,

01:21:08.860 That grave becomes a, I don't think portal is the right word, but special point of connectivity between the living and the dead, specifically between the living and that particular deceased person.

01:21:34.360 and I think that when all of the remains are in one place and there is one location of that

01:21:41.040 all of that energy is centralized in one spot I think that the more that you divide that up

01:21:50.100 the more that energy is spread out and I think you know for example we my grandfather

01:21:58.700 and my grandmother for that matter and my uncle all wanted their ashes

01:22:05.040 scattered at arctic valley in just outside of anchorage it's a really cool

01:22:13.340 I don't know old time ski I was saying see saying ski resort is misleading but a place where locals

01:22:20.840 would go ski and it had at one point in time it's like half on military land and half on civilian

01:22:27.880 land. And so when they came up for my grandfather, my grandfather came to Alaska in 1964 and moved

01:22:35.340 his family there as his kind of final posting in the army. And so they spent a lot of time there

01:22:40.980 growing up. Anyways, long story to say that we dumped all of their ashes, scattered them in this

01:22:45.380 valley, and we dumped them from a plane. So while they're spread out, they're localized, and they're

01:22:53.540 like when you're in that valley or in that place, you feel like you're amongst them or whatever.

01:23:00.120 So I get that, but I get, you know, hey, there's a little bit here and a little bit there and a

01:23:05.660 little bit over in this other place and a little bit, I think it disperses that. And again, that's

01:23:10.320 not wrong. That's not wrong. That's the sentimentality that Cliff mentioned as far as,

01:23:16.740 you know, if each of the kids or each of the grandkids has a little urn on their mantle with

01:23:21.740 a little piece of grandpa in it or whatever I don't think that's wrong but I do I would like

01:23:30.220 all of my remains to be in one location um I endorse that as the best way to do it but I think

01:23:38.680 there's probably a lot of a lot of ways to do it that are all okay I don't think as long as they're

01:23:43.960 treated respectfully I don't think that's sacrilegious and honestly I think a lot of it has

01:23:49.840 to do with the wishes of the person who is deceased. If they say, hey, this is what I

01:23:55.520 want done with my remains, then I think that trumps a lot of these things. That should be

01:24:00.700 an overriding driving force. And this goes to what Nick was saying. And this is a fine time

01:24:10.740 to bring it up. So nobody likes to think about their wills. Nobody likes to think about dying.

01:24:23.460 But it is something that's going to happen to all of us one day. And it is surprising how much

01:24:32.060 we, because we don't think about it, we just assume things are going to happen a certain way.

01:24:37.060 in my time in the astro folk assembly i've known a lot of our members that have passed

01:24:44.560 and i will say the majority that i know about who have passed did not have wills in effect

01:24:52.480 and i don't want to say the majority but unfortunately several that have passed

01:25:00.260 didn't get what they wanted with their estate with their remains with their funerary rights

01:25:07.680 because nothing was in writing and so their family who may or may not have been supportive

01:25:14.000 of their faith got to make those choices based on whatever criteria they wanted

01:25:20.480 and uh often that meant people not getting what they want so in the house true focus simply we

01:25:26.000 found a resource uh do your own will dot com it's legally binding and appropriate and acceptable

01:25:36.560 in all 50 states and i believe in some canadian provinces i'd want to check that to make sure

01:25:43.680 and again if we have any international listeners it's something you may want to check but do your

01:25:49.680 will you can do it on there you can do it on there for next to nothing or as far as time it's free

01:25:56.880 but you can do it on there for i think i did mine in less than 10 minutes

01:26:02.640 but it's really important especially if you have children and what we would want you to do is to do

01:26:09.520 your will and have an original signed notarized copy sent to our law speaker alan turnage

01:26:17.280 at P.O. Box 16027, Tallahassee, Florida 32317. Do that, and we are in a spot where we can help

01:26:32.800 advocate for your wishes after you pass. If you do a will and nobody knows about it,

01:26:40.080 then it defaults to your next of kin or whoever happens to fill that spot being able to do what

01:26:46.480 they'd like. If you have a will, and that will is registered with someone to where people will

01:26:52.360 know about it, then you can have your will advocated for. Please do that. Everybody should

01:27:01.500 do that. But yeah, if you are an AFA member, and you would like your ashes to be interred at one

01:27:10.780 of our Hoffs with whatever, you know, memorial stone or, you know, sculpture or what, however

01:27:20.460 you want to do that, there is a, all of them except for Baldur's Hoff, Baldur's Hoff is

01:27:27.300 going to have a columbarium for the ashes. It's got a limited amount of space. The other

01:27:31.640 you get a four by eight chunk of ground to set up as the grave for your ashes with whatever

01:27:41.640 whatever memorializing that your family would like to do with that space within reason

01:27:50.420 so yeah let that be known make sure that your gothar know about that and let that be known put

01:27:59.000 it in your will. We have a number of former members and family who are currently interred

01:28:06.900 in our, around our Hoffs and our grave sites. So please know that's a thing, a part of an

01:28:12.640 Ausitru centered life. It's funny because I was thinking about that centering being

01:28:17.580 two-dimensional and not three-dimensional. I was, you know, like, well, all the different

01:28:23.620 things you do in your daily life revolving around Ausitru, but your life itself and the

01:28:28.920 progression of it from birth to death. That was a really special thing when we got that facility

01:28:35.520 as the AFA and when we broke ground at Odenshof to inter the first ashes of one of our loved ones

01:28:44.180 there we have we have womb we have we do marriages for couples we have womb blessings for

01:28:59.380 uh ladies who want to be pregnant for children who are in utero we have baby namings to welcome

01:29:07.300 a child into our faith community, into the Ausatru Folk Assembly, and we celebrate them

01:29:16.320 and care for them as best we can throughout their life with different things like the

01:29:19.880 folk services deal we're running right now if they come into hard times. And then we're

01:29:25.520 also there for them for funerals and for interment of their remains after they pass. So throughout

01:29:33.060 the entirety of an also true ours life we want to be part of that and share that and and be there

01:29:42.100 for them in that way and we're able to do that now and i think it's really special way um another

01:29:48.740 thing that i wanted to talk on briefly and then we'll go to another question

01:29:54.900 in structuring your life around also true something i think is really misunderstood

01:30:01.300 or sensationalized in the lay of rig and rigs thula there is a

01:30:14.100 vulgarity that people look at it like heimdall is going around and you know basically having

01:30:22.420 some kind of threesome with these different couples to produce the next generation of children

01:30:27.060 and i think that misses the point of the story entirely i think the point is these couples who

01:30:34.580 are named you know great grandmother and great grandfather grandmother grandfather mother father

01:30:42.740 is to invite the gods in to your home and into your marital bed in the sense that they are in

01:30:50.180 to the creation and formation of your family in the most blood and bone sense you invite the gods

01:30:59.060 in and make them part of your relationship make them part of your marriage make them part of your

01:31:04.100 parenting since day one and build your family around the iser and through doing that we saw

01:31:12.180 these generations um symbolically of our ancestors grow progressively more noble and refined and

01:31:22.180 better and benefit from inviting the isir into their house into their home into their marriage

01:31:30.900 and the the the produce of that was was beneficial because of it so i would challenge everybody to

01:31:38.020 to take a little bit more, I don't know,

01:31:40.440 more mature look at the Riggs Thula in that way.

01:31:46.860 Next question.

01:31:48.720 Greetings, I was Harry Gauthier Matt,

01:31:50.800 Witten's Young Erickson and East,

01:31:53.600 and Folkwilder Nick.

01:31:55.540 What is your favorite royal virtue?

01:32:00.240 Thanks for all you do.

01:32:03.200 Nick, what is your favorite royal virtue?

01:32:08.020 To be fair, I'd have to go look them up.

01:32:17.960 Yes, so I wish I would have pre-screened the question because I do think that's something that's largely in concept and not something that a lot of people talk about.

01:32:28.600 So I think that's a concept and a thing that will get fleshed out more in the future.

01:32:32.680 But along the same lines, let's go with this.

01:32:36.140 What is your favorite of the noble virtues, Nick?

01:32:42.900 Industriousness.

01:32:46.860 What about you, Trent?

01:32:49.740 So I did pre-screen the questions, and I did not know the royal virtues.

01:32:54.080 But I messaged Witten Brandy on the side to ask, and she answered really quickly because it's her deal.

01:33:02.680 And just for everybody's benefit, the masculine royal virtues are nobility, chivalry, might, reliability, piety, cunning, adroit, virility, and ferocity.

01:33:14.020 The feminine royal virtues are regality, frith, duty, beauty, intuition, altruism, morality, charity, and forbearance.

01:33:25.860 But if I had to pick a favorite on the spot right now, I'm going to go with chivalry.

01:33:32.680 uh which chivalry is kind of already an area an ideal like picturesque ideal of nobility anyway

01:33:41.260 um but knights are cool and uh that code of well nobility and chivalry they uh were known for in

01:33:51.420 the high medieval ages is something i've always aspired to like uh you know people kids like uh

01:33:58.540 know dinosaurs or astronauts or cowboys or whatever i always always thought knights were cool so i'm

01:34:04.540 gonna go with chivalry right now and if the question is asked at a later date i might have

01:34:08.140 a more fleshed out answer but that's my current answer what about you daniel

01:34:17.500 um i'm gonna have to go with piety

01:34:20.140 as the

01:34:23.300 royal virtues are laid out for me

01:34:25.020 I think

01:34:27.760 there's

01:34:28.220 a really cool word

01:34:31.420 that means devotion

01:34:32.840 means reverence

01:34:35.460 something that

01:34:37.100 was discussing

01:34:39.760 earlier about the etymology of the word

01:34:41.560 also true

01:34:42.160 I think that true part

01:34:45.640 that stems from the word truth

01:34:47.640 that we get now the word true

01:34:49.840 trust and truth

01:34:51.940 I think it

01:34:54.140 signifies not just

01:34:56.080 loyalty and devotion I think it also

01:34:58.120 signifies alignment

01:34:59.400 so I would go with piety on that

01:35:03.920 and if you put me on the spot

01:35:05.920 and ask me about noble virtues I would say

01:35:08.120 perseverance

01:35:09.100 cool

01:35:12.340 what about you Cliff

01:35:13.860 so for the noble virtues

01:35:16.400 I agree with Daniel

01:35:17.800 perseverance is

01:35:19.820 very important especially uh in our our current times um as far as the royal virtues

01:35:29.340 um the one that i think i hold in highest esteem for our ladies um is morality and for our men

01:35:41.820 reliability so they're all awesome um

01:35:58.140 all right so to not overlap um yeah maybe of the male uh the masculine royal virtues

01:36:06.300 might and i don't i don't mean it in the comic book way that it might easily come off as but i

01:36:18.780 mean i do might is awesome um conan style might is really cool and i don't diminish that in any way

01:36:28.220 but what i also think is might equals your ability to do things some people are you know excessively

01:36:37.900 mighty and they can do amazing things with their super abundance of might other people less so

01:36:46.380 but we all have some sort of might in the vigor of our limbs to do things it is very

01:36:54.540 tempting in the world we live in to feel powerless that there's much we can't do. No, it's your

01:37:01.160 obligation to exercise your might towards your goal to the best of your ability. It doesn't

01:37:08.200 matter that the guy next to you might be mightier. You, in and of yourself, make use of the might

01:37:15.520 that you possess. And if you're, you know, envious, then go to the gym and get mightier. If you're

01:37:23.200 envious learn a new skill or gain power in your life but as a man it is your job fundamentally

01:37:30.240 to wield and exercise your power to craft the things you are able in your world to

01:37:39.380 towards what you want them to be and towards a better place for your folk for your family and

01:37:45.340 for your gods I'd also say I like that beauty is in there for the ladies I think beauty is neglected

01:37:52.840 and perverted in the world that we live in so very often.

01:37:58.060 I think beauty exists in art, in audio art, in visual art,

01:38:06.440 in many, many things, in the artful display of your behavior.

01:38:13.380 But I also think undeniably physical beauty is really important

01:38:17.380 And it's become like somehow a bad thing for us to say that and admit it.

01:38:24.960 No, I think that our people should strive to be beautiful and to excel at that and let that be a shining symbol of their nobility that they take care of themselves and present themselves beautifully.

01:38:39.460 So I think that's awesome.

01:38:40.540 Um, as far as the noble virtues, it's really, they're, I mean, they're all good or else it

01:38:48.740 wouldn't be there. I think different things at different times. But one thing I wanted to mention

01:38:53.940 is truth. Um, truth in how we conduct ourselves towards others, but very, very importantly,

01:39:03.580 truth in our ability to be honest with ourselves about both our weaknesses and our strengths,

01:39:12.300 to take an honest assessment of things that we could improve, to be honest about when sometimes

01:39:18.520 it's not your fault and it's somebody else's fault, to be honest with our reactions to one

01:39:26.560 another very often we have allowed politeness to be an impediment towards speaking honestly to

01:39:37.520 one another especially when that honesty is asked for there is a challenge as men for us to

01:39:45.040 honestly answer questions in a straightforward way even when we're conscious of not wanting

01:39:52.660 hurt feelings or not wanting to make waves or not wanting to be rude there is an art to being able

01:39:59.220 to avoid those things while still being honest and i think that speaks to our virtue of truth

01:40:08.660 um and guys at any time if you want to say something or add anything please feel real free to

01:40:15.940 given the afa is a religious organization could you all please address how

01:40:24.740 an outsider should be responding to recent events um

01:40:36.580 sure we'll go around a circle again cliff or uh yeah we'll go in reverse order cliff

01:40:41.860 what say you sure so i'm gonna assume that the question is about the assassination of

01:40:49.460 charlie kirk today um which is a terrible thing i i didn't agree with charlie on everything in

01:40:57.780 particular um you know some of the christian zealotry that he held and that's you know

01:41:05.140 something that i think civilized people can disagree on even though i know he was wrong

01:41:11.380 about that um but the i we need to be an example of of righteousness we need to be an example of

01:41:22.580 of what's good so we need to be there for people who are mostly aligned with us and to

01:41:29.700 um you know be be sympathetic to them and to you know to condemn evil where we see it

01:41:38.340 and this certainly was an evil act um and i think that overall um charlie kirk was working as a

01:41:46.180 force for good in our world today um you know i mentioned i obviously didn't agree with a lot of

01:41:53.300 his you know devout christian views are also not quite a libertarian like he was um some of my

01:42:00.500 views are different than that but um you know the the pushing back against the um you know moral

01:42:08.820 degeneracy that's that's rampant in in our country right now and in you know in in in the the west

01:42:16.420 and in the world at large i think is something that was an overall net positive and that uh

01:42:23.700 he brought young people into you know activism and the conversation in a way that

01:42:30.260 that didn't exist before um you know i don't know that there's a particular response other than

01:42:38.340 being good people being visibly also true and um

01:42:45.220 you know working for what we know is right publicly um you know i'm

01:42:50.660 you know it's it's sad but i'm i'm pretty sure his family will be well taken care of

01:42:54.740 i don't think there's any question there so you know i don't know if there's any kind

01:42:58.420 of fundraising or anything that we need to do um but yeah i think we just need to be honest you

01:43:06.340 know we we agree where we agree we disagree where we disagree and um you know that's that's not

01:43:14.020 something that

01:43:14.660 I want to see become

01:43:17.940 commonplace, although it's

01:43:20.300 trending that way.

01:43:24.440 What say you, Wooden Young?

01:43:30.220 Kind of co-sign

01:43:31.400 what Cliff just said, but

01:43:33.540 I just want to share

01:43:37.320 a quick thought on this.

01:43:39.720 I texted this to Matt earlier

01:43:41.920 that a man lost his life because of

01:43:46.260 ideas and words. In

01:43:49.180 2025, that's appalling.

01:43:55.300 I feel for the guy's family.

01:44:01.100 I don't like the trend because there's been

01:44:03.980 random acts of violence. I don't know how much of it is

01:44:09.420 we're just more aware of it, but it seems like our people are falling prey to random

01:44:16.340 acts of violence like this at an alarming rate, and that's unnerving, concerning, and

01:44:24.160 I'm saddened by that.

01:44:28.960 Trent, how should Alistair Truar respond to current events?

01:44:39.420 uh yeah i agree with what winton erickson said essentially and this is what charlie uh thought

01:44:47.780 he was doing i suppose and in some cases was doing is uh kind of embodying that virtue of truth

01:44:54.960 speaking truth calling out evil and treachery where we see it uh and yeah like winton erickson

01:45:02.140 i did not agree with charlie kirk on everything and there are some instances where i would have

01:45:09.500 and sometimes did goof on him a little bit for some of his christian zealotry and pro uh israel

01:45:17.900 stuff um but this was a a a man a normal family man around my age too i believe i think he was

01:45:27.020 early 30s um with a wife and two kids who he was such a you know not to get political he was such

01:45:36.460 a moderate as far as conservative um and even still that was enough for somebody to feel the need to

01:45:43.900 take him out and i something i wanted to mention about him though is uh people were talking about

01:45:52.060 he wore um a plate over his chest at these events because he knew the risk

01:45:58.620 that speaking truth in this day and age uh you know that that risk was there and

01:46:07.180 i uh i really admire that he was able to go out and do that that you know

01:46:15.820 he knew the risks and he expected this was a possibility but he still went out and he

01:46:21.180 He spoke mostly actual truth and then some stuff that he thought was the truth and that he sincerely believed to be true, whether he was wrong or not.

01:46:31.240 He went out and he preached that to young people, and he would have these respectful civil debates about it, knowing full well there was a possibility he would be killed for it.

01:46:44.080 and you know he's not he's not going to be an afa hero or something like that of course but

01:46:51.600 i just really respect that and i i've been thinking about it a lot today leading up

01:46:55.600 with this episode just because like i mentioned he was around my age he was

01:46:59.840 he had two young kids and i i just i kept thinking about you know what would it be like if i woke up

01:47:07.840 for work one day or to i don't know get here on bns and i told uh my wife and son you know

01:47:13.840 love you guys i'll be back in a minute and then no i'm not you know what i mean um so yeah uh

01:47:23.120 all i can say about charlie specifically i guess uh beyond that is i hope his journey to his

01:47:29.520 ancestors is swift and uneventful and that he isn't too terribly shocked on the other side and

01:47:39.440 sees the truth of some things yeah i uh

01:47:47.040 want to address um charlie kirk's assassination but also some other current events things um

01:47:56.800 the overarching answer to the question, I don't say it simply to be flippant, but to be succinct.

01:48:05.240 How should we address that as also true or nobly? And I think that means giving thought to what we

01:48:11.940 say and how we say it. A lot of people on our side, I'm sure a lot of people on the other side,

01:48:18.460 A lot of people in our circles will get very polarized and very extreme, and it's almost like the day-to-day vitriol on social media is a game with nameless, faceless, like, I don't know, computer characters that you're doing stuff with.

01:48:43.940 And so people say really hateful things without giving it much thought because they don't look someone in the face.

01:48:50.020 There's a tendency to, if somebody is 95% on the team, we will say the most vile things about them because they're not there on the other 5% instead of appreciate and at least have respect for the 95% that, you know, we can get along on.

01:49:10.320 Like everybody here, I don't, you know, I don't agree with everything Charlie Kirk has ever said, but I think in general, most of the stuff he says is a lot better than the opposition stuff.

01:49:25.100 I think that most of the values that he talks about are stuff that, you know, we would all probably be really happy with him and his family being our neighbors and feel safe with them in and around our communities and our families.

01:49:40.380 and I think that he had a tremendous amount of courage to speak truth and what he felt to be true

01:49:47.960 to a world where there's a lot of consequence for that and uh you know I think that he's a good man

01:50:01.180 and I think that there is a young wife and two young children without a husband without a father

01:50:08.760 tonight and over somebody at distance shooting him dead because he said things that weren't

01:50:20.520 mean-spirited, but things that some people don't like. And that's really unfortunate.

01:50:27.140 And it's a scary and a concerning thing. So we should be honest. And when asked,

01:50:34.140 should give honest opinions but we also there's nothing wrong with having condolences for somebody

01:50:40.460 who is not you know also also true uh i think it is a tragedy when you know any young white men and

01:50:48.860 women die for needlessly over over senseless things that's sad and then i think on another

01:50:56.460 thing that we're we're all tracking the different um lately uh white women that have been racially

01:51:07.580 targeted for uh for abuse for murder randomly for happening to you know commit the horrible crime

01:51:17.900 of being being white i think we all as also true are need to be very aware of the world that we're

01:51:26.780 in specifically uh as also true men we need to be aware of our surroundings and we need to um

01:51:38.700 with the murder on the subway there were men in the picture that didn't do anything

01:51:50.060 didn't stop anything didn't attempt to stop anything and also didn't render any aid to the

01:51:58.860 dying victim don't do that um as i mentioned earlier about might there's a lot of things you

01:52:07.580 can do, take agency, do things, behave legally and responsibly, but look out for those around

01:52:16.600 you. Especially when we're places with our children and our ladies, be aware of who's

01:52:23.280 around you. Be aware that there are a lot of people in this world that wish you ill

01:52:29.160 because you're white. Be aware of that and look out for your brothers and sisters in

01:52:37.180 case they're not looking, in case they're not paying attention. And I think that's a smart

01:52:41.220 thing for us to do as well. I want to just add, I'm glad that you mentioned Irina Zarutska, Matt.

01:52:48.440 I wanted to specifically say her name. I thought of it after I had talked about Charlie Kirk,

01:52:54.520 because I guess the shell shock of that from today was so fresh in my mind. But

01:52:58.280 um you know for our women in particular don't surround yourself with dangerous people i mean

01:53:07.700 this this poor girl was you know her throat was slit by an animal and i don't blame her in any way

01:53:14.220 but also i don't think any of us were surprised so avoid situations like that i don't i don't mean

01:53:21.740 we should behave cowardly but we should behave wisely and you know have a defensive posture in

01:53:31.260 dangerous situations like that and like matt said for the men um be on the lookout and you know

01:53:38.860 protect your own yeah i it is not in any way her fault but she's not from here

01:53:49.260 she had black lives matter stuff around her so she conceived of the world where this wasn't

01:53:59.080 the danger that i think everybody on this program is aware that it is

01:54:03.860 and found herself in a very dangerous spot that many of us who are older and who are men would

01:54:12.660 have avoided that spot because it was not a safe place to be with your back to people that

01:54:18.300 you have every reason to be concerned about.

01:54:23.700 Just try to learn from it as best we can

01:54:26.400 and make sure that we are aware of where we are

01:54:29.980 and who is around us

01:54:31.200 and that we look to the safety of ourselves

01:54:34.940 and our brothers and sisters.

01:54:39.320 But with that, and on to happier things,

01:54:43.320 three coffees were bought for us by Lana.

01:54:46.840 Thank you so much, Lana.

01:54:48.300 We appreciate your donation.

01:54:50.840 And we appreciate you being on the show tonight.

01:54:54.000 What is the best next book to read after Ausatru,

01:54:58.300 A Native European Spirituality by Stephen McMillan

01:55:00.680 for somebody who is a beginner?

01:55:05.800 Daniel, what is the best next book after that?

01:55:11.800 I would say Culture of the Tutons by Wilhelm Grombeck.

01:55:18.300 okay trent what say you

01:55:24.060 uh i would maybe have said culture of the teutons by bilhelm grombeck but um germania by task this

01:55:32.380 is a good one because it's a shorter kind of less dry read and i think it gives a kind of broad

01:55:38.300 scope view of our ancestors in a way that's interesting enough that'll pull you into

01:55:43.020 wanting to read culture of the teutons cliff i'm gonna go a different direction because those do

01:55:50.460 not sound like beginner's books to me um they're excellent but um i'm gonna recommend one of my

01:55:57.500 go-to's i'm gonna recommend the children of odin by padrick column um that will get you in a place

01:56:04.060 where you can be in a room with other oss truer at our hoffs and when we start talking about

01:56:11.260 different stories of our gods you're going to have some kind of clue as to what we're talking about

01:56:18.060 it's not perfect some of the details in the stories are a little bit mixed up but it will

01:56:24.220 give you a good kind of um for lack of a better word chronological kind of telling of our eddas

01:56:33.340 and of the Volsung Saga, which is the story of one of our great heroes, and

01:56:43.100 it will give you some footing to read other materials in some kind of context.

01:56:49.020 You know, if you move on from that to reading the Pros Edda and then the Poetic Edda and then into

01:56:55.660 sagas, I think that's a good approach. And I also like it because it was published in the

01:57:01.820 early 20th century i have a strong preference for uh older translations of uh of our stuff

01:57:09.900 or in this case an older retelling of the the eddas all right so there there's infinite right

01:57:22.700 answers the more we know about the situation or what your interests are or you know how comfortable

01:57:31.180 you are reading dry scholastic tomes how comfortable you are with epic poetry and history

01:57:38.220 or how fresh you are on some things so there's a lot of there's a lot of right answers what i'm

01:57:45.100 going to recommend first is not a book but you should read it and i think it will help you

01:57:50.780 orient yourself and know where we're at if you haven't already read it and i would recommend

01:57:57.260 that to anybody listening anybody you know consuming this at any time it's the also true

01:58:03.980 true lugmo uh nick if you could post a link already got it because nick's on the ball we

01:58:09.020 appreciate you um but if you don't know how to find it or whatever runestone.org in the library

01:58:16.860 section it is there i would just say but it's gonna be hard for folks to spell we'll put it over

01:58:22.380 in the chat um it's really important but in the purpose of it and what it is is a

01:58:35.100 condensed just the fundamentals of what we believe is the house to true folk assembly

01:58:43.820 and what are the fundamental truths as we believe them and it's laid out in a way that's intended

01:58:52.140 for new people to easily be able to read get the totality of and understand where we're

01:59:03.180 coming from and what we believe and i think the more that this might seem overwhelming

01:59:09.980 or like there's infinite sources that we could all recommend to you that ties them into what

01:59:16.860 the afa's fundamental beliefs are and will give you something to keep in mind when you

01:59:21.900 read the other texts like Culture of the Teutons, which is one of my favorites. It's a fantastic

01:59:28.380 book. It is just a high level book. And it relies on familiarity with certain things that you might

01:59:34.460 not know about. I think the true log mall will help you know about those things. The other thing

01:59:40.940 i would suggest is to jump right in and um jump right in and read so the the eddas aren't books

01:59:54.540 i guess they're kind of books but they're more collections of individual poems and individual

02:00:01.100 works that are kind of curated into these books. So the Prose Etta, The Gilfagining. I would

02:00:12.880 suggest that you read that because it also lays out our faith and our cosmology in a more

02:00:19.520 systematic, digestible way. And you can go different places from there. Again, any of the

02:00:26.120 things my colleagues have suggested tonight are awesome choices. If you are starting out

02:00:32.160 at the beginning, I am envious because there are so many cool things for you to read for

02:00:36.760 the first time, and those are all great experiences that I'm, I don't know, I'm excited for you

02:00:43.460 to experience. And Gilbert donated $150 to Phrasehoff. Thank you, Gilbert, as always.

02:00:50.940 so other stuff um where we at here all right trent are sicilians white

02:01:06.240 if they pass the duck quantum uh yeah uh sicilians are interesting though from a genetic standpoint

02:01:15.700 They're like, I think they're the modern European group with the least Indo-European DNA.

02:01:26.040 They're like almost wholly old European.

02:01:31.380 That said, they are European.

02:01:33.860 Moors are not old European.

02:01:36.940 Say again?

02:01:38.360 I said Moors are not old European.

02:01:41.360 No, no, they're not.

02:01:43.040 But the Sicilians, you know, if they look white and identify as white and we would all recognize them as white, then yes, they're white.

02:01:51.620 And I don't have a more like scientific answer other than that.

02:01:58.980 Daniel, are Sicilians white?

02:02:05.000 Yes.

02:02:05.560 okay cliff are sicilians white case by case i don't know i've met some that aren't

02:02:21.560 i'm inclined to agree with cliff i no no you've already you've already

02:02:26.680 decided some of them are part eggplant but i think that's that's obvious in the cases where that's

02:02:32.680 the case we were talking about this in um in one of our leadership groups i went to a catholic

02:02:39.960 school that was made up almost entirely of irish polish and italian and um the genes were not evenly

02:02:48.520 distributed yeah so i kid and it's funny question i think we all kind of understand

02:02:58.680 why it would be of question it's interesting because it was a norman kingdom at one point

02:03:06.360 it has a it being an island in the mediterranean it has a lot of different peoplings it was

02:03:17.080 an area that was greek for a very long time instead of being italian it has

02:03:24.200 has a massive, I mean, it has a significant Moorish influence. There are varying degrees

02:03:36.420 of mulatto folk there that you don't find in other parts of Europe or other parts of

02:03:42.840 Italy for that matter. So I think if you were looking for people that are not white in Italy,

02:03:48.180 would suggest you go look in sicily but um but that said i think probably most sicilians are

02:03:57.940 probably white but i i think it's worth i think it's worth you know cocking your head and looking

02:04:05.860 at a different angle perhaps sometimes i'll point out that of all the groups you mentioned the moorish

02:04:12.180 were one of the most recent um other than the modern italian state uh funny i did not it did

02:04:21.300 not occur to me and i guess i did not realize and it sounds real self-evident now that i know

02:04:26.820 but the name maurice means like the maurice guy

02:04:34.580 so there you go maurice's case is not one of the ones that rises

02:04:38.500 yeah they don't call him that because he's the gangster of love

02:04:43.120 what else do we got

02:04:47.280 oh

02:04:49.540 oh no they'll call him more because he speaks to the pompadus of love

02:05:00.280 which also doesn't make any sense that said

02:05:03.580 gold maple and i know a lot of people know this answer but it's always

02:05:08.380 is instructive to see how different people answer it.

02:05:14.160 Cliff, what is also true?

02:05:17.140 So I'm gonna start by repeating

02:05:18.520 and presenting maybe a little bit differently

02:05:20.920 how you defined it earlier.

02:05:22.300 It is troth to or troth with the Aesir.

02:05:28.180 I've often thought of it as literally true to the Aesir.

02:05:35.560 It's also true.

02:05:38.380 know a lot of um icelandic and other germanic language words if you just look at what they

02:05:45.900 mean would mean literally like by sound in english you get a lot from that as far as the etymology

02:05:51.660 it's true to the aesir troth with the aesir meaning that um we are loyal to the aesir who

02:06:00.300 are the gods of order as understood by the the norse people of of scandinavia and and more broadly

02:06:10.700 northern europe um in in modern ossaroo it means the ossaroo folk assembly um we are a

02:06:20.620 pan-arian church of our of our people we are the church of our natural

02:06:33.580 kinship related gods of of of us of our of our people our folk white people

02:06:41.420 Daniel what is also true

02:06:47.740 It is the ethnic religion

02:06:51.520 Of the European peoples

02:06:53.820 Minus eggplant

02:06:55.560 Trent what is also true

02:07:01.660 First I just want to say I hate

02:07:05.680 When you let Cliff go before me on these things

02:07:07.740 Because he words things in a really similar way

02:07:09.760 how i would but then better and so i can't top it and i just kind of look like a goofball but

02:07:13.520 that's all right uh yeah i always took it i the true to the icier thing is specifically how i've

02:07:19.360 always viewed it you are true to them saying troth or loyal to is is better probably uh i like

02:07:26.960 nowadays i typically say loyal to the icier because it's a an easy word uh and one of those

02:07:33.200 things it's easier said than done lately but it's an easy word to at least understand on the surface

02:07:39.760 But it is a loyalty to the Aesir, the gods of all of Europe and all of European man and woman, but viewed through the lens of the Norse and their ancestors.

02:07:53.440 gods of order

02:07:57.760 as Witten Erikson mentioned

02:07:59.880 gods of

02:08:02.340 nobility and

02:08:03.900 victory and

02:08:05.680 defeating chaos

02:08:08.120 wherever it may arise

02:08:09.980 that's about all I got

02:08:13.660 everything else that

02:08:14.760 Witten Erikson and Witten Young said

02:08:17.420 kind of covers what I had

02:08:19.360 okay

02:08:21.760 Okay. Next question. Would Mimir technically count as a Duluhan? I know Duluhan are fey, but Mimir's head is separate from his body, so it makes me curious if it's the same way Duluhan are made.

02:08:48.800 as you can tell by my pronunciation i am completely and totally unfamiliar

02:08:53.920 cliff are you more familiar i wasn't until i looked it up because this is actually a really

02:08:59.920 fun question um dulahan i guess are a celtic spirit like a harbinger of death um i don't

02:09:10.460 know a whole lot about why they're

02:09:13.720 described or portrayed

02:09:16.500 as being headless.

02:09:19.500 But

02:09:20.140 they don't strike, I mean, other than

02:09:22.500 the headless part, and it's

02:09:24.440 kind of in reverse because they're

02:09:25.960 missing their heads, whereas

02:09:28.240 Amir

02:09:29.760 becomes his head.

02:09:32.720 But I don't think that they're

02:09:34.520 really a

02:09:36.420 good cognate for that.

02:09:38.620 um mimir is um you know a a god of of wisdom and i call him a god because as i understand mimir

02:09:51.180 um he was a seer um he was one of the hostages traded to the vanir after the the aesir vanir

02:10:00.220 war which you know you don't trade away one who's not your own as a hostage um

02:10:06.060 um and that um you know before that before that war odin sought him out to drink from the well

02:10:15.900 of wisdom um where he plucked his eye out um and put it into the well of wisdom and um

02:10:24.780 and specifically you know mimir is is is told in that story to be if not the wisest being at least

02:10:32.140 the guardian of wisdom but he's you know specifically not a giant because um in in that

02:10:42.300 same story um is a giant known as the the wisest of the giants um vath through near which i actually

02:10:51.260 just read the story about to owen um from the children of odin like over this weekend that's

02:10:58.620 where we are in it right now as we're going through it for i don't know the eighth time

02:11:02.700 or something like that so it was fun that this question came up and that was story was

02:11:07.740 was fresh in my mind at least you know the kids book version of it um

02:11:13.180 so i you know i don't see them as being related other than that there's the head thing um

02:11:20.620 yeah so i i think they're separate now i i think it's an interesting question in that um you know

02:11:29.260 it's asking about um you know celtic fairies basically and i do think that those sorts of

02:11:35.820 thing are um those are a description from arian people of spirits that um you know i think we

02:11:45.900 should approach with respect and also true we would call them whites i don't know um that we

02:11:52.220 um that we have a particular classification for like whites that would come around and be a

02:12:01.580 harbinger of death um or you know an omen of death we have valkyries who um are are associated with

02:12:08.880 death as far as the uh the the the collection of the the souls of the the the battle fallen

02:12:16.960 that are chosen um by odin or for odin by the valkyrie to to go to valhall um but from the

02:12:27.040 little bit that i was able to look up about the the dullahan i don't know they seemed like more

02:12:30.640 of a menacing demonic kind of power which is completely in line with um celtic fey they're

02:12:37.440 They're not usually pretty friendly.

02:12:39.300 They tend to either be neutral or evil.

02:12:47.440 Yeah, I think that the short answer is, let's see, would Mimir technically count?

02:12:53.280 No.

02:12:55.180 But, yeah, it is a neat question.

02:12:56.960 I didn't know what a Dullahan was either.

02:12:59.300 I don't know if I'm even pronouncing that right.

02:13:01.640 Gaelic stuff is always funny with their use of letters.

02:13:06.020 no offense to anyone's children um uh or something like that yeah right um yeah no i've always just

02:13:17.140 viewed mir as one of the icer eyes the all-fathers uncle you know uh so he's in that same literal

02:13:24.940 family of beings but yeah i'll have to look more into the celtic stuff again i i kind of dip my

02:13:34.800 toe in some of their mythology every few years, and it's probably time I do that again just

02:13:39.720 for some fun reading.

02:13:45.540 Ah, should we move on?

02:13:47.520 No, there is no other question, is there?

02:13:51.140 Let me see.

02:13:56.060 There might be in the chat.

02:13:59.700 Three of you and we still got dead air?

02:14:01.780 Come on now.

02:14:02.300 It didn't for more than like a second or two

02:14:06.300 Hmm, a second or two I caught

02:14:08.620 No, so anyways

02:14:10.100 I heard a little bit of that

02:14:13.400 And I did run a quick Google

02:14:14.920 No, I don't think that particular kind of overlap

02:14:21.500 Just because he's headless

02:14:23.600 I don't think that makes the case

02:14:25.720 Because he is

02:14:27.580 i think cliff is right to say he's a god he is not one of the isere that we typically give worship to

02:14:36.240 but that doesn't change his legitimacy as a god and i think that that puts him in an entirely

02:14:44.880 different sphere of of being than what we would call you know some kind of of whites or

02:14:57.180 Yeah, in a way, the brief little bit that I read, you know, the spooky elements remind me a little bit of Wild Hunt imagery.

02:15:16.400 But yeah, I wouldn't think that, but that's interesting, and I appreciate learning something new,

02:15:20.440 because I'm going to go down that rabbit hole and try to learn a little bit more about that, including the proper pronunciation.

02:15:27.180 um we're actually not that far off it'd be something like duh hahan

02:15:37.020 says a a throaty third a throaty middle syllable whatever yeah i don't know what to do with that

02:15:43.020 when they yeah i don't sometimes when they describe pronunciation i don't speak that

02:15:51.980 i run into that with proto-indo-european there's a bunch of stuff that it describes certain letters

02:15:58.940 with like exponents and you're supposed to like sing them somehow and it gets real confusing if

02:16:06.940 you're not a linguist in that situation um okay so here's a question what does it mean

02:16:20.220 to be priests of the same church do you find yourselves interpreting things differently

02:16:26.460 or complementing each other daniel what say you

02:16:33.740 i would say yes to both um certainly there's

02:16:40.620 at least behind the scenes whenever we're discussing doctrine or orthopraxy or orthodoxy

02:16:49.180 Sometimes we'll come up from a different approach.

02:16:51.140 We all come from very different backgrounds, and sometimes the expression of those approaches can vary based on that background.

02:16:58.860 But I think, not think, I know that with what we do and what we present and what we do in our active worship is in alignment.

02:17:15.160 What about you, Trent?

02:17:19.180 Yeah, what Wynton Young said yes to both, I think we find ourselves adding layers to things that the others have said.

02:17:29.080 Like I mentioned earlier, Wynton Erickson often says things that I would have liked to have said if I were smarter.

02:17:34.100 He says them in a better way, but in a way it kind of validates what I believe, I suppose,

02:17:41.640 and then gives me an extra kind of jumping off point for a future conversation with a lay member or something.

02:17:47.820 uh something to consider too is the gothar we are one entity and we're one body i guess

02:17:56.100 and so all of our uh our knowledge and our doctrine or whatever is all based on one shared

02:18:04.240 foundation um and then we i don't want to say branch off from there but our experiences and

02:18:09.660 our individual perspectives shape our little acreage of that foundation i guess in a really

02:18:17.200 specific way uh it's i guess it would be like you know like acreage you know maybe you and

02:18:23.440 your neighbor live on the same ground but you know you plant rose bushes uh if you're a female

02:18:31.920 or a homosexual i guess and the other guy plants potatoes you know they're both cool uh you get

02:18:38.720 something out of it but it's the same grounds the same soil etc

02:18:50.080 all right so uh cliff what do you say to that question

02:18:55.920 i like roses but my wife did plant them so it's okay i i particularly appreciate the thorns

02:19:02.080 weaving into my fence to keep people out um she likes the flower part so you know it works out

02:19:08.640 um i think as far as our our gothar uh we i mean we do interpret things differently from time to

02:19:19.880 time and those interpretations do complement things i think it's a lot of uh you know a

02:19:27.520 compare and contrast um as far as um practices and interpretations of stories of our gods and

02:19:37.400 the the way that we may have devotional practices um to them when you know um i think that

02:19:47.160 in the end it all ends up being um very supporting you know if you if you

02:19:54.840 somebody was asking me recently one of our folk builders um about what

02:19:59.000 what the members of our Witten look for when we are considering people to begin studying to

02:20:08.300 to be a Gothi or a Githya and we all have different things I think that we're looking for

02:20:13.200 but for me the big thing that I'm looking for above everything else is can I trust that person

02:20:22.660 to speak with the voice of the Asatru Folk Assembly and and what that means to me because

02:20:28.100 it's kind of a that's language that we use in our leadership that probably not everyone knows

02:20:35.000 what I mean by it but what I do what I do mean by that is that basically you know I trust each

02:20:43.240 one of these men to give the correct answer on any question before I know what the question is

02:20:52.820 you know i think that that's what we are that's what we're entrusted with um in part a lot more

02:21:01.600 but that's a big part of what we're trusted with when we are ordained and that you know there are

02:21:09.620 going to be times when you ask the same question to two of us and we may give vastly different

02:21:18.280 answers but i think that in most cases with with pretty rare exceptions both answers are correct

02:21:23.560 it's just a matter of point of view a matter of personal experience um and that you know that

02:21:31.320 that they are that they end up being complimentary and that my interactions with with my fellow

02:21:37.320 gothar tend to inform my practices um my practices improve when i see somebody do it differently

02:21:45.560 than i do especially when i see someone do it better than i do sometimes it helps to see someone

02:21:50.920 do it worse too you know you know what to avoid um but but mostly it's best when you when you are

02:21:57.560 just flat out impressed with um you know with a bloat or with an understanding of um one of our

02:22:07.880 gods or goddesses or um you know or or in a more more practical and probably going back to the

02:22:14.680 works thing i was talking about earlier perhaps a more important way how to handle a situation

02:22:21.160 with our folk when you know they're in need in some way um those things build us up and um you

02:22:31.480 know on the rare occasion when one of us just gets it totally wrong we will correct that we will

02:22:37.080 learn from it and and and be a better gothy personally and be a better gothar as a whole

02:22:47.240 so i uh

02:22:51.000 i think it's really interesting because one of the things as cliff said and

02:22:58.680 i don't know maybe a little bit different from my perspective is i'm always

02:23:02.360 is wanting to make sure that we speak with the AFA voice, and that everybody's on the same page.

02:23:11.400 And I'm surprised how often that's not a problem, or how often that we really do sync up in

02:23:21.160 our individual interpretations of different things when we come to the table with them.

02:23:26.680 um i find it really interesting though the longer that our um

02:23:34.600 people the longer that our growth are actively engaged in the service of our gods

02:23:41.880 there is a

02:23:46.440 egregory amongst us there is a unification that kind of bonds us together and

02:23:53.080 centers us around truth and we kind of come together on the things that are fundamental

02:24:01.480 I don't think that we try to get in useless arguments on like how many angels fit on the

02:24:11.740 head of a pen kind of silliness but I do think it's very important that we do have dogma and

02:24:18.780 we do have fundamental beliefs and i don't think we we deviate on those but i do think the way

02:24:25.100 that they're approached or the little pieces that help add you or add up to or or direct you toward

02:24:32.780 a conclusion are always really different it's interesting when i talk to um margothar about

02:24:41.660 things we'll come to the same point we'll have the same fundamental agreement but the

02:24:46.460 The road that brought us there is often really different, and I think that's a neat thing for us to be able to see each other's perspectives and get a more well-rounded understanding of our lore, of fundamental religious truth,

02:25:07.920 and also of our core doctrine, getting it more well-rounded by discussing it with different

02:25:17.040 people with different life experiences. And I also noticed that different interpretations of lore and

02:25:25.360 truth stand out differently and in different ways at different seasons in a person's life.

02:25:33.220 they're going through different experiences when they're at different ages i know that

02:25:39.140 when i read things that i haven't read for 20 years it hits me really different than it did

02:25:45.940 when i was in my 20s and i think that's a that's an interesting element also um

02:25:52.500 um what small action what small simple actions connect you to your faith on an ordinary tuesday

02:26:08.400 trent go

02:26:10.920 um ordinary actions i guess i feel like that might imply mundane and not spiritual

02:26:21.740 uh but i don't know i'll answer the question uh how i want to answer it i guess

02:26:26.280 um i asked it however you want all right thanks for your permission producer um

02:26:34.260 uh the past couple years now maybe two two and a half years i've i've i've uh prayed a lot more

02:26:43.700 i guess and then something else i i just try and speak to the ancestors or one of the particular

02:26:51.020 I see or I'll see or depending on what I'm thankful for and just express thankfulness.

02:26:58.880 I'll do that.

02:27:00.200 I'll think about different stories of the I see or heroes when I'm bored or whatever.

02:27:11.840 Just little things like that outside of doing AFA stuff on my phone most minutes out of every day.

02:27:21.020 What about you, Daniel?

02:27:30.700 Simple actions.

02:27:36.820 I don't really view these things as too simple.

02:27:42.760 But I do think just being grateful, being grateful for the gifts we've been given by Odin and his brothers,

02:27:49.600 the gifts we were given by Rick

02:27:51.660 in the Rickstool

02:27:52.380 each day is a gift

02:27:55.660 and

02:27:56.520 I think

02:27:58.720 talk about a gift for a gift

02:28:04.140 and there's never a one for one

02:28:05.820 right because as the

02:28:07.740 Altshari Dothi says the gods have

02:28:09.760 plenty of need that there's no shortage

02:28:11.960 of need for the gods

02:28:13.140 but it's more about the intention

02:28:14.980 and

02:28:16.540 i think about what i've already been given to this point i've been blessed beyond measure

02:28:22.900 i've quite literally been blessed with my own life and i think the best gift to give

02:28:30.660 the best gift i have to give is a life of service um to the ice here

02:28:36.740 but to kind of get back to the uh the root of the question you know what what simple

02:28:42.900 day-to-day stuff do I do is, you know, definitely approach my altar in prayer.

02:28:47.060 And rather than just ask for things, I'm very, very thankful about what I've already been given.

02:28:54.560 What about you, Cliff?

02:28:57.360 So I think that actions that can be taken on, you know, an ordinary Tuesday or any other day.

02:29:06.680 you know i'll i'll put aside all the the things that i do in my capacity as an afa leader because

02:29:16.360 those are um those are those are extra that's not something that would be expected i think of

02:29:21.840 you know um one of our one of our congregants one of you know that's not something you have

02:29:27.800 to do to to be also true but i think that um maintaining your household is important making

02:29:35.880 sure that yourself and your family are are healthy animals if you have them um

02:29:44.680 blessing your meals um making sure to acknowledge the gods and your ancestors

02:29:52.440 as often as you can i would be lying if i said that i did that every single day but i do it as

02:29:58.120 often as i can um you know in in my case as a parent um sharing all of those interactions with

02:30:06.600 my children is very important um full immersion you know is the is the way to teach anything um

02:30:14.120 i'm i'm a big proponent of uh of having them participate in austria before they can walk

02:30:23.560 basically you know um and that's much easier to do in the household setting than it is you know

02:30:30.040 at uh at a hof or at a at a large gathering um because it doesn't matter if they're in their

02:30:35.640 diaper and screaming you can do it because it's just your dining room you know um we you know we

02:30:42.440 we honor the the house whites here as well um my my family and i have a garden that we maintain

02:30:49.880 which has uh been especially important to me in the the run-up to uh fraeshoff um just a little

02:30:58.360 brag it's the best garden that we've had at this property since we moved here i've had better in

02:31:02.680 the past but um moved to a slightly different climate and that confused me a lot more than i

02:31:08.360 thought it would um yeah those are those are the things and and you know as we as we beat the drum

02:31:18.600 on so often just being openly also true you know matt says it basically where you know you're also

02:31:26.680 true when you're at work you're also true when you're walking down the street you're also true

02:31:30.760 when you're grocery shopping and you don't have to do anything unordinary but it's how you respond

02:31:36.120 to things and people that matters that you behave with nobility and that you know if somebody

02:31:42.040 broaches the topic that you share with them what's so important in your life and if they're one of

02:31:49.000 us that you share what should be important in their life too that they just haven't had a

02:31:52.360 chance to hear from anyone but you yet yeah i um simple tuesday stuff so it is

02:32:12.040 Some of my answer is different now that I'm a parent.

02:32:23.580 Kids give you a, I don't know, they encourage and give you an outlet to make more of a point of things than maybe you would if it was just for you or whatever, because you have to teach them things.

02:32:39.220 you have to demonstrate things for them for them to see and for them to learn so um

02:32:48.340 when we're getting ready for the day making sure we go before the altar and do our prayers we light

02:32:56.260 the candles and light the incense and doing that and getting aubrey involved in that and you know

02:33:04.340 going through the different statues on my altar and, you know, trying to teach her the names of

02:33:10.940 our gods and, you know, a little something about them for her to remember. Doing that's really

02:33:17.380 a nice Tuesday mid-morning thing to just do. Stuff like meal blessings or just taking

02:33:27.440 occasion to point out or to be thankful or acknowledge the gods in some way. It's funny.

02:33:35.700 Every time there's thunder now, Aubrey instinctively says, hail Thor, because it's just

02:33:41.060 something we do. She'll catch me if I'm slipping on, we need to bless the food or call me in. I

02:33:49.940 to bless a her baby dolls pretend birthday party birthday cake so they could eat it um

02:34:00.340 just little stuff like that is really neat um

02:34:07.540 again just bringing bringing them up regularly bringing the gods up and keeping them

02:34:13.540 in mind for things that we do taking moments to just be thankful when you know something works

02:34:23.860 out well or something good happens and you taking a moment to acknowledge that i think helps a lot

02:34:30.900 i think little prayers help a lot too i think praying at the altar is a really powerful way

02:34:36.500 to reconnect or to you know re-infuse your day with overt also true but i think um

02:34:47.140 i think just little subtle taking a moment to

02:34:51.060 say a few words of thanks is is a nice thing too and does a lot to help that way

02:34:57.620 um what does self-reliance look like in a modern interconnected world cliff

02:35:06.500 well for starters i think it means having a job um or otherwise supporting yourself if you uh

02:35:18.180 if you won the two billion dollars great you're self-reliant um but uh yeah i mean it means taking

02:35:26.980 care of the things that you can um you know very few people although some can but very few people

02:35:34.020 are going to um you know have a homestead where they're completely self-sufficient that's not what

02:35:41.140 self-reliant means um but it does mean that you can depend on yourself and i think that it you

02:35:47.700 know i would apply it to a household that it means that the members of your household can rely on you

02:35:53.220 and that you can rely on them so um you know being employed for most people is going to be

02:36:00.100 a big part of that um but if you um you know if you have additional skills that aren't your

02:36:07.620 your primary income um developing those as well um you know knowing how to do basic

02:36:15.460 repairs and maintenance on an automobile is a really good thing

02:36:18.340 if you don't know how to change a tire you're not a grown-up um you know you need to be able to

02:36:25.220 do basic maintenance of pretty much everything that you own i think um there's some exceptions

02:36:32.820 and big corporations keep trying to make it more difficult to do these things in-house but

02:36:37.620 um you you should have some level of proficiency with basic tools and

02:36:46.260 basic you know auto repair basic household maintenance basic plumbing um you know you

02:36:53.300 shouldn't be so dependent on someone having to come and do things for you um i'd include in that

02:36:59.140 also that um you know you should do preferably all of but at least one of guarding gardening

02:37:06.420 fishing or hunting um it's not going to be your primary food source but um it is something that

02:37:13.300 first of all does help connect you um with your ancestors and with our gods i think um you know

02:37:21.460 it's literally down to earth stuff to do that um makes you look at the world differently

02:37:28.820 makes you look at life and death differently um and you know knowing people

02:37:37.940 the stuff that you can't do in-house make sure you've got a guy

02:37:45.940 um what about you trump

02:37:47.620 all the stuff witten erickson said but also taking care of your health i would say uh just

02:37:57.640 on top of that knowing how to uh and health in in every sort of way so like knowing when to

02:38:05.680 go to bed and actually get some sleep knowing when to stop getting fast food and maybe cook

02:38:13.840 a meal at home instead, knowing how to have a budget, you know, how to budget out your

02:38:20.280 paycheck every couple weeks or whatever, knowing when you need to go outside and get some sun

02:38:27.160 rather than being inside on the phone or whatever all day, adulting as millennials would call

02:38:35.100 But just sort of being holding yourself accountable to yourself and for yourself.

02:38:46.960 Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned cooking, Trent, because that's something that every grown up should be able to do, too.

02:38:51.760 If you've never cooked anything that doesn't come out of a box, then you need to fix that.

02:38:56.920 But, you know, rice, fresh vegetables and some meat, it's not that hard.

02:39:02.160 what about you daniel what do you think

02:39:06.440 i don't have a whole lot more to add than what my colleagues did um but i think trent

02:39:12.660 trent brought up uh finances and i think that's uh that's a that's another big one that

02:39:18.900 we we find ourselves and uh this cultural thing where it's like acquire acquire acquire like

02:39:28.060 gets stuff stuff's not worth nothing if you can't take care of your phone bill or your light bill

02:39:34.780 or whatever um or if you're not saving for your future um but i think uh all the stuff cliff said

02:39:42.940 you know being able to take care of some like basic repairs at home because i i'm not a handyman

02:39:47.340 i'm a i'm a mechanic by trade i work on you know industrial machinery that's not the same as a

02:39:54.780 guy that you know works on piston rings and stuff but i've i find that if it's got moving parts i

02:40:00.940 can typically work on it but as cliff also alluded to that major auto manufacturers are building

02:40:07.580 cars that are not built with the shade tree mechanic in mind anymore um and and and the

02:40:14.580 cooking at home and by the way that there's more to the cooking at home than just being self-reliant

02:40:19.420 it's if you think about all the all the like fond memories when you were growing up at the time with

02:40:25.180 your grandmother and you know time with your mom and dad you know if you're you know you're an adult

02:40:29.740 like us with your own children a lot of that's centered around the supper table man so i mean

02:40:35.340 cook do a home cook meal get around that supper table and make memories

02:40:42.140 the smell of a used kitchen is always better than some febreze i'll tell you what absolutely

02:40:46.940 yeah i it's i appreciate the question because it's easy to

02:40:59.260 i don't know it's easy to miss in a world where we have so many specialists that you call in for

02:41:06.060 all of the things but i think in a really fundamental way it means taking agency to

02:41:14.220 see that stuff gets done maybe your self-reliance is you engaging those experts and those specialists

02:41:21.660 when necessary but it's being an active part of making sure things get accomplished and sometimes

02:41:32.940 that's you doing those things sometimes it's you making sure and seeing that those things get done

02:41:39.260 but there's all those little subtle adulting things that um you know that trent and cliff

02:41:46.140 and daniel talked about that sometimes we don't think of like ah self-reliance i should be able

02:41:52.060 to build my own cabin that'd be cool and that's awesome if you can but a lot of the time it's

02:41:59.180 being able to make sure that the needs that your needs and your family's needs are met and that

02:42:04.620 takes a lot of different forms um there's a lot of self-reliance in trying to handle your own

02:42:20.460 handle your own things when you're able to so that you're not burdensome to those around you

02:42:26.620 and so that you add a net value to a group of people that you're in and that will look

02:42:32.460 real different depending upon your skill set or your inherent abilities but making sure you are

02:42:39.020 an asset to groups that you're in and not a detriment or a hindrance is very important

02:42:46.540 and there's many ways to do that you know the have them all talks a lot about how you know

02:42:54.700 deaf folks can ride a horse and you know cripples can tend the fire

02:43:01.180 and there's a lot of stuff that you may see disadvantage but you still have to find ways to

02:43:06.940 make yourself of use and it's very easy nowadays to throw up our hands and not do that and so

02:43:14.620 resisting that tendency i think is a big part of it um so next another question has been thinking

02:43:22.060 of joining for a while you guys have much activity in England slash Britain no and I wish that we

02:43:31.980 did we have a very little activity there what happens is and this is kind of a phenomenon

02:43:39.900 that applies to a lot of stuff we have um somebody will join and they'll look around

02:43:52.300 they'll see that there's not a lot of other people around they won't get satisfied with

02:43:57.020 what they're getting and then they'll quit and then very soon after somebody else will join

02:44:02.620 same thing and then somebody else will join same thing and then somebody else same thing

02:44:07.580 if all those people stuck around in a relatively short amount of time we'd have enough people to

02:44:13.500 where they could all get together and they could start something and build something

02:44:18.700 what it's going to take in your country and i don't know if you're the one to do this but maybe

02:44:24.300 you are we need someone to step up and become a member and we need that member to become a folk

02:44:32.380 builder and to host things to where your countrymen and countrywomen see that something

02:44:40.540 is happening near them and see that it's happening consistently and make the effort to go be a part

02:44:46.940 of it but it takes consistency and it takes somebody who has the perseverance to be the

02:44:53.900 first one out there and to be willing to say hey how about we all meet up at this pub or at this

02:44:59.260 place and get together and to go and maybe nobody shows and so you go again the next month and the

02:45:06.940 next month and the next month and eventually somebody will and you get two or three people

02:45:13.260 that will then you start building a community and that's how it's been successful every place that

02:45:18.540 we have members we are still waiting to see that building process happen in the united kingdom as

02:45:25.020 whole we do have members um but not a ton right now i wish that i want to see that change and uh

02:45:33.820 you may just be the one to help make that change if you would like to um can i add something to

02:45:40.060 that uh you can yeah so um you mentioned uh you know is there a lot of members there are a lot

02:45:49.900 going on how much activity is in england and britain yeah not much but being part of the afa

02:45:57.100 isn't isn't just what you get out of it as far as activity that's an important part and that's

02:46:03.820 something we're constantly improving getting better at and spreading amongst our folk but

02:46:09.500 the purpose of being a member of the alsatru folk assembly is you get to be alsatru in a meaningful

02:46:16.540 way where you you get to stand with the rest of us you get to stand up and say i am alice true i

02:46:23.180 am a torch for the icier and i get to light the way for more pulp to come home you get to enter the

02:46:29.980 57 yeah 57 year relationship that we have with the icier through our founder stephen mcnallan

02:46:41.020 you get to be a part of that that lineage in a way and you get to be a part of the reforging

02:46:45.280 of Alistair, and you get to be a part of history. But on top of that, yes, all the other stuff,

02:46:51.400 the old Sarah Yoki said, please join and be a folk builder. We'd love to have you.

02:46:58.360 Yeah. Just a person who has a meetup. You don't even have to be a folk builder.

02:47:02.700 So, what is the official man's flower to plant, Trent?

02:47:18.700 Turnips.

02:47:20.700 I will not be taking questions.

02:47:24.700 the turnip the the lovely flowering turnip is the official man's flower to plant says

02:47:35.260 go the east all hot pepper plants have flowers perhaps so i love my roses i have in my backyard

02:47:47.800 i got four rose bushes um some of them do better than others but it's a cool fit roses grow really

02:47:55.320 well here in northern nevada roses are beautiful does not have to be a negative reflection upon

02:48:01.240 your sexuality it's putting it out there i appreciate you guys all being here tonight

02:48:07.800 that is the end of our questions um i would encourage everyone listening to this

02:48:13.960 to find ways to put the gods and your loyalty to them at the center of your life at the center of

02:48:24.640 your family and to build around that and to allow that to be the central point that you pivot all

02:48:34.580 the other things around that being a fundamental and not a an extra or a thing you do when you

02:48:41.420 have time or a thing you do when you feel the circumstances right but that being the thing you

02:48:48.300 hang on to and letting all the rest fall into place is the key to good spiritual health and

02:48:56.400 something i would encourage you all to do and i would encourage you to do that through being

02:49:00.360 members active members the ask true folk assembly so if you are a heterosexual white person and you

02:49:06.820 like to return to the faith of your ancestors and to the gods of your blood come home to

02:49:15.540 house true come home to the astro folk assembly runestone.org um yeah best time to join is right

02:49:23.220 now so i would encourage you guys to do that uh gentlemen thank you guys for joining me this

02:49:27.620 evening i look forward to talking to y'all uh again soon until next week hail the iser

02:49:35.220 Hail the folk, hail the AFA, and remember, victory never sleeps.

02:50:05.220 We'll be right back.

02:50:35.220 Thank you.

02:51:05.220 Thank you.

02:51:35.220 Thank you.

02:52:05.220 Thank you.

02:52:35.220 We'll be right back.

Asatru Folk Assembly - September 11, 2025

9⧸10⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 166 - An Ásatrú-Centered Life

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