00:19:56.520So one of the things worth noting too is this is entirely new.
00:20:03.440The idea that Gudrun also ate of the blood or the, of the heart of the worm and was able to hear birds. Is this an aspect added in for better storytelling and better poetics?
00:20:27.720most likely um because it wasn't mentioned anywhere else but another interesting thing
00:20:37.800to think about is a lot of this poem is older than the nordic period so what if it's the other way
00:20:46.200around, and the Nordic Volsunga saga was edited, if you will.
00:20:59.080But in one, verse one, then did Gudrun think to die when she by Sigurd sorrowing sat.
00:22:57.420At least that's my understanding of it
00:23:00.120Then the wives of the warriors came, gold adorned, and Gudrun sought, each one of them, of her own grief spoke, the bitterest pain she had ever borne.
00:23:21.420so at this point there seems to be this deep sense of um there's a drought of feeling there's
00:23:34.600a drought of tears and this is unnerving in our culture of the woman not expressing tears but just
00:28:04.160my seven sons in the southern lands and my husband fell in fight all eight
00:28:15.960so she confirms it specifically to battle and that is a very interesting point
00:28:26.780uh you know generally people think of the cartoonish sense that if you die in battle
00:28:35.560you go to val hall or you go to valhalla and um you know that the the difference between
00:28:43.500fighting in battles and being chosen and chosen doesn't always equate to death
00:28:50.180but more so this shows the other side the grieving side and I think Snorri and kind of the after
00:29:01.020Christianity they didn't understand how the the grieving process for people would be
00:29:12.900and i don't think they changed any of this they just went with it but it's very very interesting
00:29:21.820in relation to the opposite of what we've been told and i think that this is actually
00:29:28.680more correct and it is again much older um so it does speak of the kind of the loss of the mother
00:29:39.220um what the what the sister what the daughter may feel about the loss of the menfolk in their
00:29:46.880family in their clan dying at war um and it's also interesting to think too
00:29:56.140she is the queen of the huns so the southern land could be the days like thracian
00:30:03.820And Dacians, actually, I think would be more correct time wise or even further with a great amount of the Gothic peoples actually coming out into the Aegean and kind of button hooking back to Athens and sacking Athens.
00:30:33.820Um, in seven, father and mother and brothers four amid the waves, the wind once smote and the seas crashed through the side of the ship.
00:30:51.840so she lost her mother's her mother her brother her father and her brothers to a ocean
00:31:02.500um and a lot of people might be wondering if uh she's the queen of the huns didn't they
00:31:10.840just come from asia or eurasia and a lot of people forget about the black sea the caspian sea
00:31:21.840vulgar river and uh there was a huge contingency of goths that moved down into the aegean sea and
00:31:36.400um sacked athens and many other places around there
00:31:41.040um while it was under roman control so anywhere of these could be um
00:31:47.920and then she says the bodies all with my own hands then I decked for the grave and the dead
00:31:59.440I buried a half year brought me this to bear and no one came to comfort me
00:32:09.280Now, a couple of things. One, the poem consists of these queens telling Gudrun in comparison of woe.
00:32:26.300Not to outdo her woe, but in order to tell her that she must grieve, she must let this out, she must go on and not be in this catatonic state.
00:32:47.140And so we can kind of see culturally that idea of like a catatonic state of of a woman would be perceived as uncanny and unnatural.
00:33:00.980And we also get a glimpse into the funerary practice.
00:33:08.920And we have to understand that our ancestors buried and did cremation based on many different things.
00:33:19.300There's not an ausitrue one-all catch-all throughout history.
00:33:27.860Now it has become the preferred and predominant way of doing things.
00:33:35.020And I would concur. I think that it is the best way to do this. But it was done because ultimately our folk, and especially the folk of the Germanic migration period, came from the same as the Dacians.
00:33:55.060And, you know, these folks are the Kurgans, and the Kurgan is the burial mound.
00:34:02.820So the burial mound never leaves, but it ends up becoming something more relegated towards perhaps royalty.
00:34:13.060And maybe that's why she buried them and that the Barrow Mound being constructed is more geared towards royalty, whereas cremation is for the warriors.
00:34:29.740And then, you know, kind of anyone that kind of falls out of that is it's variable and and is left to guess.
00:34:43.060But she says that no one came to comfort her after half a year of the process of burying.
00:34:52.900Grim to think about considering decomposition, but having to keep your loved ones around so that you could properly bury them, keeping them perhaps in a temporary place.
00:35:07.900place um then she says then bound i was and taken in war so she was kidnapped from um
00:35:20.140the enemy and that could happen at any time after since she no longer had her kinfolk to protect her
00:35:29.340um a sorrow yet in the same half year they bade me deck and bind the shoes of the wife of the
00:35:42.140monarch every morn so she became a thrall a slave working and i really love the fact that
00:35:52.960There are some key words being utilized here that really start to pull and elevate our faith and just the imagery and the aesthetic of it out of shoulder pelts, face paint, Viking go bonk.
00:36:14.900And we are, our ancestors are the royalty. They have royalty. They have lands. They have, you know, thanes, et cetera.
00:36:29.500And I was just speaking to a member here in Thorshoff district about how I place that aesthetic upon the gods.
00:36:42.640And that is, you know, a lot of people might look at Lord Thor in a certain way, but I look at him in a different way, like a regent and a defender of borders.
00:36:55.920um anyways so 10 uh so she's wrapping this monarch's feet every morning and she's basically
00:37:07.180a thrall and she says in jealous rage her wrath she spake and beat me oft with heavy blows oft
00:37:17.900meaning often never a better lord i knew and never a woman worse i found
00:46:20.520In the court was greater gladness than the day my Sigurth.
00:46:27.340Granny saddled, granny is the horse, faithful horse of Sigurth,
00:46:33.100and went forth Brynhild's hand to win that woman ill in an evil hour.
00:46:40.420then so okay this is an interesting part Gudrun speaks in before 23 and then it immediately comes
00:46:54.460out with then Brynhild spake and I've been looking at that spot to try to figure out
00:47:00.760They're speaking in the past, or if there is a mistype here, and Brynhild now has entered the area near Gudrun.
00:47:15.460But we'll read it as it is, and hopefully I can get some gleaning from it.
00:47:21.740Then Brynhild spake, the daughter of Boothli, may the witch, now husband and children, want, who Gudrun loosed thy tears at last, and with magic today hath made thee speak.
00:54:00.500The short, the, what the short lay of cigarette. So it's oddly named, but yeah, we're going to read that here next time. It's 70 something stanzas.
00:54:17.500this is really well composed uh the imagery is really powerful and i like to
00:54:34.140i like to look at these fragments and pieces and stories in the edda as being
00:54:41.180stuff to add to and like background and depth material for the volsunga saga
00:54:47.500It's interesting, the Niblungenlied was written near the same time as the Walsunga Saga was recorded.
00:55:05.300and when you read the the writing they appear to take place at different uh
00:55:12.580different periods in in history because i think a lot of the time at least when i read it
00:55:21.140it reads as though in the niblungen lead it's you know current to the author writing
00:55:27.860And I think in the Volsunga saga, it's the imagery and the material culture is depicted as being from an earlier time.
00:55:39.000But they're both kind of contemporary, and this is a continental story that moves into Scandinavia and is told by the Scandinavians.
00:55:54.320So I think a lot of the extra material from things like this is legitimate addition and things that perhaps predate the Volsunga saga the way we have it.
00:56:09.260So I think, you know, it's valuable, I don't know, extras that flesh out the story more and give us a deeper and richer understanding of it.
00:57:36.900Um, one of the things I think is that it's really important to remember, uh, that this is hopefully an organic growth of things across, uh, Ausatru, um, our church, uh, wide.
00:58:00.940so i'm really glad you're asking the question um and it it comes from a very very old tradition
00:58:09.500that in essence is a ritual to perform in which we kind of foreshadow the uh the coming of winter
00:58:22.780almost like a groundhog's day um you know in our lore acceptance of the light is always priority
00:58:34.060and then when it comes to darkness it's conflict uh ostra or you know the bringing in of the light
00:58:42.460is always about acceptance but when it starts to shift it's about fighting and conflict and then
00:58:51.500in uh yule it's about holding the light in the darkest time um
00:58:59.100so i find that very very interesting but this tradition came about after bloat so uh bloat
00:59:07.740happens and then everyone goes outside and conducts this but it's very very fitting in
00:59:17.180relation to house bloat house bloat being dedicated to lord uller uh to even and this
00:59:25.900time about remembering eternity as everything starts to die and about judiciously pulling
00:59:34.060from the land around you as our ancestors went into winter and needed meat um and all of those
00:59:41.980considerations um but the land spirit fight where one side dresses as the light side and wearing
00:59:52.780all white and wearing masks um uh comes forth to defend the light which is usually a fire of some
01:00:04.540sort and then the dark side comes the winter tide side and they come in to battle the light side
01:00:16.620and what you end up having is a ritualistic dance or well it's not a dance it's like a
01:00:25.980uh well-placed movements in which the sun or the light side is moving sunwise and the dark side is
01:00:34.700moving uh widershin and they fight each other um and uh i think a lot of people generally
01:00:44.700immediately think it's tongue-in-cheek that they're actually beating each other up but
01:00:50.940But what it is, is the staves that are being utilized in the ceremony as they are conflicting with each other.
01:01:03.000If your stave is broken, you then are out of the fight and everybody's given a stave.
01:01:14.020The staves are random, equal, and then it is red.
01:01:20.520It's read as to if the light side wins, if the dark side wins, whether or not we're going to have a light or a harsh winter.
01:01:45.840I hope that, you know, you would do this.
01:01:48.500but it does require this is a community ritual just like the maypole requires multiple people
01:01:54.180this ceremony does at least require nine people you need four on one side and four on the other
01:02:03.300and one person to kind of observe and and run run the rotations to make sure everybody's kind
01:02:11.160of working together especially once you uh wear masks and the masks are representations of land
01:02:17.900spirits or the summer or winter tiding. So no giraffes, no animals from, you know, Siberian
01:02:29.360tigers. Hold on. What if this ritual were taking place on the Serengeti or in Siberia?
01:02:39.200That absolutely is, is pertinent then, but it's generally the animals are always of the local area. And then the, there are other masks that some people do, which if they just don't want to do an animal, because you have to choose an animal and they're kind of themed.
01:03:05.180You know, generally bovine, deer, anything of the air, eagles, hawks are summer tidings, seen as part of the light.
01:03:22.400and then um coyotes wolves owls um even the white rabbit has been on the dark side or the buzzard
01:03:35.360the turkey vulture um and so each of the sides kind of do that but some people just kind of get
01:03:41.480tossed up in that and they don't know which one to do so the other one that they generally do is
01:03:47.200just make a mask out of the foliage of each side one side has coniferous and the other side has
01:03:55.760deciduous i've seen like pine cone horns and big bristled mustaches out of pine needles um and then
01:04:06.340like oak men um and the idea about this is this has been around for a long time but the organization
01:04:15.180of our faith has really given way to opening this up.
01:04:21.580And I would love to see this in comparison to perhaps the Swiss herdsman dressing up
01:04:31.140or a Krampus style where people are excited, the children choose sides,
01:04:37.700they make a big noise for each other when they want, and then the battle commences.
01:04:42.760um and i hope that it gets a lot more um detailed and intricate as we go but that's pretty much the
01:04:53.140basic breakdown of it um and it happens in reverence to the land spirits it's their time
01:05:00.900of great conflict as well that um the darkness is coming the food is disappearing and
01:05:08.180The hunting is coming about. So that's kind of the ultimate motive of the battle during Housed Bloat. But it does happen after Bloat. They are connected, but not completely.
01:05:29.360it's uh they're kind of one is faith and religion and the other is cultural and semi-magical i would
01:05:40.980even argue with the predictions um part because seeing certain light sides being taken out or
01:05:50.920dark sides being taken out and reading that as oh you know the first couple months will be right
01:05:56.800and then we're going to get hit pretty heavy at the end.
01:06:00.800It's not an exact science, nor is it definitive.
01:07:42.840no uh in the i'm trying to think back into the alphabet um that may be an esoteric question
01:07:53.240uh i'm i'm losing the uh the actual question i'm trying to answer and apologize for that
01:07:58.840no it's uh all right so it's a process of a number of things
01:08:03.000there for a very long time in the uh reforging of modern ausitru
01:08:16.360there is a recognition of the pan-arian nature of our faith a number of our traditions
01:08:26.200and the names of those traditions were getting cobbled together from different sources ancient
01:08:36.920and modern and spread over time and space of our ancestors um
01:08:46.440And in, I don't know, in the modern Alistair True that I came into, we would regularly use English words, Anglo-Saxon words, Swedish words, Old Norse words, German words, and it was really kind of a hodgepodge of things.
01:09:12.800I talk on here a lot about the concept of wholeness and how getting things to match up and to synchronize is a key to a lot of success in our faith and in life.
01:09:29.940And so it has been a particular effort of mine to try to codify our practice in either the, you know, the lingua franca of wherever it's being practiced or have Old Norse be the point of commonality.
01:09:54.100the old north source is where we get the abundance of our lore it's where we
01:10:00.900get our terms so increasingly we're trying to bring those things together there's no
01:10:07.940no penalty or no like shame or scorn in calling it winter finding but at least officially
01:10:16.340we want to call it a house bloat because it's already an existent thing we always want to be
01:10:23.920really honest in the afa2 there is no shame in innovating or in coming up with new ceremonies
01:10:32.360coming up with new holidays and new things
01:10:35.640so when that happens cool let's call it that let's do that but one of certainly
01:10:45.540the original efforts and one of the reasons we celebrate many of the things that we do
01:10:51.080is we connect with our ancient ancestors in time-honored celebrations of our folk
01:11:01.420in attaching our celebration with the history of things that our ancestors in the elder
01:11:11.460Alcatru period practiced connecting with that carrying that tradition forward is also part of
01:11:18.900what we do it's a nuanced thing it's easy to be all reconstructionist and larpy or to be completely
01:11:28.580modern and cast all that aside but in in my view the best way to do that is to be judicious in
01:11:39.460practicing in an authentic and modern way, but also celebrating our lore and our history and
01:11:46.620where things come from. And the September celebration of our Ausitru ancestors was
01:11:55.220called in Old Norse, housebloat, which means like the fall, the autumn, the autumn sacrifice or the
01:12:03.340autumn religious ceremony, the autumn pouring out of libation, I guess, most etymologically.
01:12:13.600So it's, this is literally that it is autumn bloat. And that's what we're doing. It's what
01:12:21.580we're celebrating. It winter finding is completely appropriate. But no, that's the reason that we
01:12:28.080changed is when we were trying to standardize and codify our tradition in a consistent linguistic
01:12:37.920tradition. And it's an imperfect process, but it's something that, you know, it's never going to get
01:12:44.560perfect if we don't start trying to move that direction. And so we decided to do that and move
01:12:49.760forward with it. And I appreciate you asking, because I think a lot of people are probably a
01:12:53.940bit curious so from autumn does each god have a specific bird that represents them
01:13:05.940for example odin has ravens idun has a sparrow
01:13:13.940frig has a falcon are there any other birds connected to other gods so
01:13:19.540So, funny that you ask that. I was, I have a long-term project that I'm kind of in the processes of thinking of and working on.
01:13:34.040And I asked the Gothar at different Hoffs that we have to come up with the bird that most symbolizes or is, you know, the mascot bird of that particular Hoff.
01:13:52.800And it could either be a bird related to the god of the Hoff, or it could also be something regional to that area.
01:13:59.820um both were kind of valid things but we talked about it and it got kind of a
01:14:05.420a uh i don't know the creative juices flowing on that because you're right
01:14:09.820some of our gods specifically have birds related to them in the lore or traditionally
01:14:17.500um i have never heard that frig has a falcon a falcon i have yeah heard is traditional with lady
01:14:25.260freya um frig though there's a tradition of her having an owl and i'm not sure
01:14:35.820and yes and i'm not sure where the owl tradition comes from
01:14:43.500but in german lore that was a point of association and the
01:14:48.700there's a poem by herman loans where he references that owl that might have something to do with
01:14:59.840athena she's very often referenced with an owl yes that yeah i see that and i don't know if it
01:15:08.040was just directly taken there wholesale or if there's some deeper piece of lore on it i think
01:15:12.420it's a really interesting subject you're right uh odin uh with the ravens i think is a is an
01:15:18.420obvious one that's that pops out um and i personally have always associated the owl with
01:15:26.460the maidens of fensaller and clean and the you know the the idea of the always watching
01:15:34.680always kind of knowing without having to move and i think that's where the the thing comes in is
01:15:42.380the the owl's association with wisdom and a lot of the wisdom tradition the foreknowledge
01:15:51.300the knowing things to come but being silent about them I think it lends itself really well to Frigg
01:15:58.400in that way um there's a rich tradition of uh swan maidens and the the Valkyrie uh
01:16:08.880either you know being able to transform into swans having swan uh cloaks to put on to take
01:16:17.960on their swan form that is talked about a lot in our lore uh spawn are you aware of any other
01:16:26.100specific bird connection with uh with our gods well and i know that i spoke about how
01:16:34.880um some people who like make proclamations about our ancestors um the owl is a perfect example of
01:16:44.840it is in our lore um and again i could be wrong but i going through the only time it is ever
01:16:55.100mentioned is the owl's beak um is made reference to now these are poems and they're very very very
01:17:04.600tightly uh written for sake of meter but um if we were to just simply look at the lore and think
01:17:14.200that okay this is all our ancestors knew then it would be very very questionable as to whether or
01:17:21.560not they have ever seen or heard of of an owl which is ridiculous but um that's i think another
01:17:30.520point is when the poems are written what's seeping into them is the saturation of cultural norms
01:17:41.560and they may have very well have been different i know that in germany the cuckoo has a huge
01:17:49.800significance um so or or the egret um and i believe the i think it's the white egret
01:17:59.880amongst like the Dutch or the Phrygians is I think the better way for us to look at this is
01:18:10.160is that there is this local generalized understanding of the birds especially the
01:18:18.180birds that people would understand in their local area and then it's brought into the poems
01:18:25.080for poetic flair um the speaking about the herons that fly over the host in the halvamal
01:18:35.800is the theory is that um the ladles that were held inside the large mead containers
01:18:48.160had a heron head or a heron body and that's what was dishing out into the horns so when the heron
01:18:57.120flies over the host everyone's drinking and everybody's getting very very into their horns
01:19:03.480so that really is about the the knowledge of the animal kind of showing up and being utilized
01:19:17.060poetically but i think that means that that leaves us to a lot of ability to bring forth
01:19:26.180and i mean we've already done it in our church um the the marlin for njordshoff as a symbol
01:19:36.500uh you know oh i'm you know some basement wizard saying i don't think the vikings actually ever saw
01:19:44.100marlin and it's like all right you know out of the way but we've we've done yeah so if they would
01:19:54.100if if we were to under uncover some kind of uh hof to to norther in ancient
01:20:04.820norway then yes it would be really odd if the marlin were were depicted in those those carvings
01:20:11.380i bet you vikings never saw marlins but we're not vikings and we're not trying to be the people that
01:20:17.700worship at new york's off have seen plenty of marlins right yeah that's that's a silly argument
01:20:26.980i i actually remember somebody arguing about like oh it should have been a salmon
01:20:32.020uh i guess because they're more in the northern climes but if we were going to open it in
01:20:38.340in seattle we absolutely would have done that right oh yeah or up in the northeast
01:20:44.820yeah that would all of those things were on the table if it were a different location
01:20:50.820um yeah those people are silly we're not trying to lark something our ancestors did we're doing
01:20:56.740things that are relevant to where we are and what we do and it goes very well into the birds
01:21:02.340um you know it's funny there's a lot of good choices to represent each of each of our gods
01:21:11.960in different ways and we'll draw different associations between the natural world around us
01:21:18.580and the gods will make use of the animals in different place we find ourselves to
01:21:27.380reveal things to us or to deliver messages to us or you know contextualize the world around us
01:21:38.520and i think that's completely in keeping with the best traditions of our ancestors
01:21:43.440um i don't think that the the animals that the vikings would have utilized and been familiar
01:21:52.320with with their imagery are the same uh animals that one would find you know in the caucuses
01:22:00.160and in different you know places our people found ourselves um so that's really a very
01:22:06.560i don't know small-minded argument from the basement wizards well and you were the only
01:22:11.360person that didn't kind of scoff at my uh interpretation of thor's hof as a for the bird
01:22:18.000um the red bellied uh woodpecker the the striker of the oak um and you were the only one that was
01:22:26.640like oh interesting and you just kind of i think you were writing some stuff down and
01:22:31.520um speaking i mean speaking of birds people that have issue with that are silly geese
01:22:36.160this next one is interesting and i'm curious about the spawn take on it also speaking of birds um
01:23:38.680Well, um, I, I assume you're talking about the, uh, brimmed and linked various leveled
01:23:49.060hats and the speculation as to why they were.
01:23:55.240So, Nick, could you get a picture and put up so that we folks listening that may not be familiar know what we're talking about?
01:24:04.980Unless I'm off, because I don't know, like I'm just going off of kind of memory right now.
01:24:15.100I was looking, I didn't actually see this question.
01:24:18.280I was looking up a question down below because I wanted to kind of formulate a better answer.
01:24:23.240and i didn't see this one so now totally off of my memory i'm assuming you're talking about
01:24:30.660those hats um now as far as like the research and speculation around them i don't know a lot
01:24:40.320but um you know i think it's interesting because the same linking method that was used
01:24:48.540on the levels was the same later on used with gold and silver and and bronze with horns as well
01:24:58.000this kind of um folding of sections that wasn't like they weren't welded so um as far as their
01:25:10.180usage i mean when we look at comparative pieces oh yeah there it is it looks like a giant
01:25:18.860um uh shield boss it's very kind of uh you know perhaps symbolically phallic um
01:25:29.880they got them even more phallic than that
01:25:32.560right well so and then that one i wonder is that truly a hat you know based out of function
01:25:43.400or what have you but uh the other one before it can you go back to that so down at the bottom
01:25:49.020near the brim there is a linking method that they do and that's how i i know about these uh is
01:25:58.800because looking into the linking methods for building metal drinking horns and making them
01:26:07.100so that they don't just drain everywhere. Um, and this, uh, these hats, I often wonder if this
01:26:20.200is simply, and I don't mean to actually downplay it, but I think it's a very, very important part
01:26:26.700of our culture because we see it continuously throughout our history is the adornment of either
01:26:36.380like warriors or kings of high renown um i know some people speculate religion
01:26:48.700but one of the things that it instantly kind of made me think of was um
01:26:54.380um uh the adornment of art like ceremonial armor uh and swords ceremony oh that that
01:27:07.820one in the middle kind of bells out for like a head um the other thought is I you know
01:27:17.300do we have proof that they were worn or were they placed on the ground much like akin to
01:27:27.100a lingam amongst the uh later hindu way well after the araya um that would be interesting
01:27:40.760if that can be confirmed but i don't know enough to know if we i i can't recall at all
01:27:47.340if there was an actual uh like skeleton found with it on on its head but it strikes me very much as
01:27:59.220um kind of in the same cord as when the spanish king gets a completely bedecked suit of armor
01:28:12.020that is masterfully made but was not intended for the battlefield um it was intended for him
01:28:20.840to go forth amongst the folk and bring out a sense of awe, bring out a sense of glory
01:28:31.180when they see him. And I think that that's ultimately kind of the purpose. If this is a hat
01:28:39.520again, um, and I'm still kind of more leaning on that, uh, with the idea of the presence and,
01:28:47.680uh taking that kind of space it would also too i think the height of it is symbolic i think that
01:28:55.820the idea of where it is and how it's um how high reaching it is could it have been something of
01:29:05.720the priest class i don't know um i need to look into that a little bit more but um
01:29:13.920Again, we see throughout all of our people in Europe, there is this decoration of the kings, decorations of the warriors, where they go forth in things that are not at like at all.
01:29:36.200they don't make any sense like as far as um for battle they're not functional that's the word i
01:29:43.980was looking for but instead take on this almost bombastic sense of of uh purpose and i you know
01:29:56.380decorative now in use in our modern day faith perception is a huge part of the world um
01:30:11.020and it is the reality that none of us can escape um we dressing nice you know and people were
01:30:18.780complaining like vikings don't wear ties and et cetera et cetera um but that really was about
01:30:27.660perception it was about letting people know like our place is a place for the folk to come home
01:30:35.260and there are normal good people here who take care of themselves who want their children to
01:30:43.580be healthy and to to look good and this is western civilization so you know and then the stole
01:30:52.780which is a greek but if you wear a stole and you go into a hospital to perhaps administer the last
01:31:02.940and final um bloat and rights of an ausitru man or woman nobody in that hospital is gonna doubt
01:31:13.580what you are if you show up wearing a wolf head and have charcoal paint and a wolf pelt and a
01:31:22.940loincloth people are gonna think you're crazy you escaped their loony bit right that's ridiculous
01:31:31.820so that's another reason why when people see our godies wearing the stole and i in a way if this
01:31:39.500was a priestly sense um the stole kind of offers that as uh the regalia but um
01:31:52.620i don't know about modern you know we were just talking about masks the the adornment of masks
01:31:59.820And I surely could see someone building a mask that was big, loud, crazy, and certainly light side if it's made out of gold.
01:32:16.140But as far as just everyday total usage, I don't know.
01:40:35.380And this person, of course, perceives this as, that's why you should let everybody into your country, which I think is ridiculous. But what it really does show is, again, our ancestors were not like, you should dress like they did in the Bronze Age.
01:40:56.140no they were on the forefront of everything going on and what was available to them at their time
01:41:03.420and since they were well traveled they did just pick up so many things um and so us doing
01:41:13.860and dressing a certain way has a double statement and i think that double statement is um especially
01:41:21.580in relation to the ties and the nice, is because it's Western civilization, and I think the
01:41:27.360stole's because it's universal in our culture as religion, as a religious point, so.
01:41:36.420Next up, also for you to start out, Svan, are Albanians white?
01:41:42.160oh okay um this is kind of i i this is actually an easy
01:41:51.280answer but it's a hard kind of thing to get around the ottoman empire
01:42:01.600coming into the mediterranean there was a time and people don't think of it
01:42:08.000it. There was a time when Greeks were blonde, light-skinned. There's still many Greeks in
01:42:16.700the area that are like that. Because I remember somebody referring to them as spicy white,
01:42:26.560and that just basically means black hair or whatever. And again, black hair, I don't think
01:42:35.800uh removes folk from being folk i mean you know we we see this in a in a pan-arian sense where the
01:42:47.340the the darker hair darker eyes but when you have turkic influence then you know but
01:42:59.020i think the big thing is is just like uh folk in argentina just like folk in mexico um we normally
01:43:10.660try like i think most people not the church but normally people think about oh like just simply
01:43:20.940germanic but there are other pockets of the arian folk in europe that we have to i think it's
01:43:29.580important that we maintain and don't just cut off because you could fracture yourself to death
01:43:36.140you know and i'm hearing internet spurgs yelling about the irish and i'm like oh but um
01:43:42.220Um, you know, when you go to Mexico and meet Germans who have been living there for a couple
01:43:52.460of generations, but they've all kind of lived around each other and, um, and they're genetically
01:44:00.880German, um, that's they're Mexicans, but they're folk. Um, and that's another thing is like,
01:44:10.240because of modern politics and things people are trying to constantly consist the idea that
01:44:15.600like being mexican is race no it's it's a big combination of things and you have folk mexicans
01:44:23.840you have folk argentinians you have folk albanians you have folk greeks um it's just that it's
01:44:31.280It's it gets a lot harder to kind of sift through.
01:44:40.960But generally, because one of our big things is, you know, if you look folk, if if if people look at you and they're like, yes, this person is me and everyone around me says this person is me.
01:44:55.340and there's not like a uh you know carving out the spergs that like ah the welsh um
01:45:06.940i think that's important that we we don't fragment and purity spiral that is uh such
01:45:15.180a fallacy that is absolutely a weapon used against the folk uh who are uh getting together and and
01:45:27.340worrying about their self-interests so yeah the ottomans did an absolute they were a terrible
01:45:35.260force and anybody that researches about the atrocities of the ottomans um is in for terrible
01:45:44.700awakening of how evil um they could be but um again it is more so not about you are born in
01:45:56.220this nation so now you are this you are you know you could you're from africa but you're born in
01:46:01.900sweden so now you're swedish no you're folk we can see it or you're not folk because our nations
01:46:10.300have come and gone it's beyond nations so that's kind of my my take i don't know if that's
01:46:17.980controversial um oh are you okay sorry i didn't know if you were if you had left no i was eating
01:46:30.460costco shrimp cocktail and i felt it would be impolite to eat it in front of our amazing audience
01:46:40.300And I did not. So, son, are Albanians white?
01:52:46.540Yeah, I think that's something that we should emphasize as well. That is clearly Middle Eastern. And for European Christianity, we have a lot in common with Europeans, because we are European descent, but their Christianity only goes so far before you're, you know, talking about crusading to the Middle East.
01:54:03.620Thoughts on Dr. Crawford and his translations?
01:54:06.020Okay. I'm going to give completely just more or less an unemotional take. His translations are simplified. I think that if you are trying to wrap your head around concepts, might be worth taking a look.
01:54:27.800Um, he has kind of built his entire, uh, translational, uh, persona around simplifying
01:54:40.940things in order to make them more digestible.
01:58:02.240sad as forlorn or melancholy or depressed or displeased each of those things can have
01:58:18.700subtle implications linguistically that are different and every translator has to make
01:58:24.280certain word choices are you going to make it flow with the meter of the line or are you going to make
01:58:31.940it word for word accurate are you going to keep the grandiosity and scale of the original text
01:58:42.200or are you going to make it clunky because of the linguistic choices there's a lot of different ways
01:58:49.800you can go. You will get a different result if you have someone translating it depending
01:59:06.200upon their assumptions about the material and the culture it was created in. If you
01:59:15.500are a person of faith, you will translate religious texts differently than if you're
01:59:23.100a scholar of Old Norse poetry. So I think that there's different ways you can go.
01:59:32.340So, Dr. Crawford's trivialization of our faith makes me skeptical of his translation work.
01:59:52.000I would feel less so if he were devoutly Ausitru, or if when discussing Ausitru, he was respectful about it.
02:00:02.340The fact that he finds it absurd is, I wonder in what ways that goes into his translation work.
02:00:15.240But no, as far as the scholastics involved, I think he is eminently qualified and an expert in his field.
02:00:23.260So I think all of that's probably very, very legitimate.
02:00:26.720what is the afa's stance on circumcision
02:00:32.440so well i was going to say for the caveat so a couple of things circumcision is bad
02:00:45.040the afa is absolutely anti-circumcision unless you are a jew and that is what your people do
02:00:54.960for your ethnic faith then you know that's what you guys do for your ethnic faith for
02:01:02.800ausitruar uh for white people the afa is is fundamentally opposed to circumcision
02:01:09.680i was gonna say unless there's some kind of medical necessity like if you say have some
02:01:15.280kind of genital malformation that requires a corrective surgery when you're little
02:01:22.400And this sounds absurd, but I knew someone who that was the case. Their kid had some kind of a skin problem that needed to be corrected when he was a baby. And so that's how that ended up happening.
02:01:37.580I don't know that so here's the thing I am not I have a daughter and not a son so I don't know
02:01:47.020how that works at present that in my understanding wasn't really a thing for white people in Europe
02:01:57.440it was a thing it was the default thing until at least recently if not currently in the United
02:02:06.700states so a lot of men find themselves not having had an opportunity to make that choice
02:02:15.100yet still missing that that chunk of foreskin that they cannot you know regrow or reattach
02:02:24.180so it kind of is what it is um but no circumcision is very specifically a covenant between yahweh
02:02:35.680and his chosen people and how they would mark their loyalty as his chosen people.
02:02:43.760So we are opposed to that as a practice.
02:02:52.540I kind of have something as well I really want to add to this.
02:03:00.460Because it kind of emphasizes what I said.
02:03:02.720yeah go please speak on uh on circumcision swan well because it's not practiced in iceland
02:03:10.700um to this day and they've actually outlawed it which is an interesting move because of the
02:03:20.740effects that that has you're not allowed to do that there um maybe the laws have changed since
02:03:27.200but the last i remember is that they they were like no we outlaw this which gets rid of a lot of
02:03:33.360uh situations um but remember how i was talking about how christianity you dig deep enough
02:03:43.440and you will find the semitic middle eastern religion and this is where i love to bring up
02:03:50.880about the holy preface and how there were sects in christianity that had relics and those one of the
02:04:02.320most famous relics was the foreskin of jesus it was charlemagne gave this foreskin
02:04:13.120to pope leo the third and there were like pilgrimage to see the you know fried calamari
02:04:23.920of the rabbi and this is in europe at what a lot of you know european christians would just
02:04:32.160consider like the apex of european deuce vault and out there making pilgrimages to
02:04:41.360you know see the little ring um and i just it blows my mind that people don't know about that
02:04:52.720at all it's it's very interesting uh their choice of relics i don't know how charlemagne came across
02:05:03.120that i don't know if there's like a like a back alley uh kind of thing or i i don't i don't know
02:05:10.400So our European ancestors who converted to Christianity absolutely knew that Jesus was Jewish because of the circumcision, and they were Gentiles because the tradition of circumcision was not suddenly and magically picked up then.
02:05:32.120It was absolutely understood and celebrated.
02:05:37.240so do with that knowledge what you will
02:12:24.720frau holda that's never been that has always been something that i don't have any connection to i
02:12:33.520I don't have any tradition of that's never been an element of folklore that's come my way.
02:12:44.200And as I've run into it later in life, it doesn't fit cleanly or I don't know, call to me to reconcile or to figure something out with.
02:12:57.460I'm not delegitimizing it or speaking out against it in any way.
02:13:02.020It doesn't have a clear spot in our lore that has come down to us in a way that fits and makes sense and connects to the rest of our practice in a way that's been particularly accessible to me.
02:13:22.960So it's not something that I've spent a lot of time pondering or finding, you know, finding the right way to fit that in.
02:13:33.740I know that's not a real satisfying answer, but it's honestly what I've got.
02:13:37.580um so my friend's boyfriend wants me to ask you about which material was used to craft
02:15:01.520i think during gulen bursty and skeet the blobner this the the ship but there is no mention
02:15:10.160specifically of a medal that i could think of right now i could go back look in there
02:15:15.360and maybe there's something but um the mention of uh the iron club or iron staff that uh thor gets
02:15:29.840from an oust veneer she becomes an oust veneer i would argue when she helps thor but she later is
02:15:40.000brought into the the domains of the gods and gives birth to vidar the wide ruler so um
02:15:51.840that's something that a lot of people don't know about and when we look back at the axes the clubs
02:15:57.520through the bronze age and stuff that is a very interesting kind of question but i we don't know
02:16:05.200but i would go out on a limb to say following
02:16:12.080the association of power with it iron would be and again the usage of iron to stave off
02:16:22.080ill and evil spirits um the usage of bronze to call them in like bronze bells
02:16:30.160and then iron to stab them away and uh lord thor is the one who rides on the edges
02:16:38.480of the realm he keeps the the chaotic powers at bay they do slip by and that's what the fighting
02:16:47.360is is about and the re-emergence of trying to create balance and pushing those forces back out
02:16:54.320so that they cannot interfere in weird as they do um ultimately i i would think fits the motif of
02:17:03.680of iron but it doesn't say yeah it really doesn't i mean
02:17:17.360trying to think if there's more to it or not it is oh long handle short handle
02:17:26.720like what you you and i've discussed yeah so in um anglo-saxon england the versions
02:17:36.720of mjolnir that you find are long handled exclusively
02:17:41.120because you know if you wanted a hammer for battle purposes that's what you would get to where you
02:17:51.920have closer to like you know either a traditional warhammer or like a modern sledge you can get you
02:18:00.960know you can choke up on the haft and really get momentum in it's the story of the the forging of
02:18:07.760the hammer talks about how it's, you know, less potent than it's the most devastating
02:18:15.180of the gifts, or of the, well, they really count as gifts because they're compensation
02:18:22.160pieces. But yeah, it's less potent than it could be. Because during the process, the
02:18:35.540dwarf is distracted and he doesn't he's not able to make the full um the full handle so they're
02:18:41.300short handled in scandinavia in the tradition in the in the wearing of them they're all like
02:18:48.420short handled um that that myth wasn't known in anglo-saxon england or wasn't understood so you
02:18:56.660don't see it there in the representation in the lore it doesn't really talk about
02:19:01.540what the material is i think it's tempting to like wonder what that might be what it might be
02:19:09.640made out of and it's interesting as fawn said stuff that is made out of iron is named you know
02:19:19.240iron stuff it's not named um yarn hammer which would be iron hammer it's named uh mjolnir which
02:19:30.880etymologically folks are speculating is is you know like grinding lightning um
02:19:39.740so i wonder about that i've heard people talk about thinking it's meteorite iron before because
02:19:48.780it you know comes crashing to the earth like that that's kind of a cool idea but there's nothing that
02:19:54.880that says that or whatnot the dwarves are known to you know fashion other things out of
02:20:06.560magical non-comporally existent materials like um
02:20:14.960like the the binding they used to fetter uh fenrir um there's so there's no telling but no it doesn't
02:20:23.120doesn't say exactly what that material is or if it does uh i'm not aware of it well and i wanted to
02:20:30.560say too because we're talking about poetic motifs about the the queen poisoning the horn or the
02:20:37.360bride or the the wife not crying at the side of her husband and how you know these have strange
02:20:43.840effects based on cultural intentions i really do the shortening is about having to be to get close
02:20:55.120the weakness of having to get close the the kind of um it's just i i think very like instilled
02:21:03.760in the poetics of it where lord thor is dreadfully powerful and terrifying but his
02:21:12.400one fallacy is that he has to get close and that creates a lot of um motion but
02:21:22.160the reality is is that you know to view the gods view thor is actually carrying an object like that
02:21:29.680or looking at it as the beings of the earth and of the material and of energy and and material
02:21:40.080and energy interacting, are gifting over this powerful force to the Lord of the earth and
02:21:50.540heaven. And perhaps the iron rod is polaric magnetism. We could go into a lot of that
02:21:59.740and the iron belt, the earth belt, and the right and the left being almost like a positive
02:22:06.240and negative and we're we're going into some other stuff and what i'm saying is is that uh the stories
02:22:14.560are they they have their purposes and that the gods are gods separate of the stories obviously
02:22:22.800they're cultural the anglo-saxons that are different to to the norse but um the power and
02:22:30.240and the majesty of it all is still there it's just realizing those differences and definitely
02:22:37.120not speaking into literalisms um which i think we should be careful of and understanding that
02:22:46.260the gods are bigger um but that the stories are part of it it's like a rope they're they're one
02:22:52.040definite strand of the faith uh that we have towards our gods but you get people say oh you
02:22:59.280literally believe uh that thor is riding a chariot and carrying a hammer i mean we tell our children
02:23:06.720this yes but do i believe that he is a binding and barriered force that keeps chaotic forces
02:23:14.000from coming in and pulling and creating polaris rifts in weird or orlaw or fate yes yes i do so um
02:23:24.000Um, I, I think that's, you know, something I think all of us should consider.
02:23:30.160Uh, Al Saragot, he once told me about a story where he was kind of present in a chat room
02:23:34.660when they were talking about Thor's protein intake or something, like making him complete.
02:23:43.120They just, you hemorrhaged him completely.
02:23:46.220Well, yeah, because you get some, sometimes you get new people to things that try to
02:23:53.440They're used to religious lore being explicitly literal to the point of it's heresy if you think that some of it is symbolic.
02:24:11.280So they need to know Thor's PRs on lifts and stuff to make it make sense to them.
02:24:22.260And it's just it's wrongheaded. But sometimes you get, you know, people come from a lot of different places on it. And this is in a world where at times you would be put to death if you questioned that the Eucharist was not literally at the moment where they said the magic words on it didn't literally become like actual flesh and actual blood.
02:24:49.060if it represented or was had the same important if you moved any degree away from no it is literally
02:24:59.160human meat and human blood that is supreme heresy and bad things that happen to you
02:25:07.300you're always going to get a sacrifice that's i mean that's the world we live in it's not the
02:25:12.220time we live in but it is dealing with contemporary religious traditions um so next up
02:25:25.260uh matt and svan now that you are both experts in old norse would you consider writing the first
02:25:32.700ever devotional translations of the eddas um at which time at some future point when i become an
02:25:40.540expert in old norse uh perhaps i would consider doing that uh i don't know old norse i know just
02:26:03.340a little bit of old norse i can speak just a little bit i'm working on it i'm working on
02:26:10.300making a little bit of progress here and there um my wife came around the corner and was like
02:26:18.540see you should and i'm like no i will also i will recommend pimsleur to get icelandic
02:26:27.100i am under the my plan is to learn icelandic and then from icelandic
02:26:35.020turn my Icelandic into Old Norse. It's mutually intelligible. Icelandic to Old Norse in the way
02:26:46.220I understand it is modern English to Shakespearean English. Like it still works, but you phrase some
02:26:54.740things archaically, you do some things differently. That is also a really good resource that Svon
02:27:00.520just held up as far as going word for word um old icelandic old norse it's um yeah so that would be
02:27:11.000really cool i think it'd be fun to do what we are already seeing though spawn and i when we're going
02:27:17.480through especially because we use the the list by battleworks site where it's got the uh the
02:27:22.760parallel script of the original material and the translated material next to one another something
02:27:29.640sounds funky we can look over and not always but we can read the original material and we can
02:27:39.480make note of some things that are just off and that has helped us in going through the lore so
02:27:45.880far it is something that both spawn and i have caught things that look strange and then we look
02:27:51.000over at the the old norse and we're like hey now that's not what these words mean
02:27:56.040that's really valuable even with the little bit that we know it helps um
02:28:03.720so yeah it'd be cool to get there at some point and i i was gonna my big contribution
02:28:11.000i'm hoping in the future is to map out the rivers of heaven midgard and of course the
02:28:19.000The Elvigar, Elvigar, are already kind of known,
02:28:24.200but nobody's ever talked about the other rivers