Asatru Folk Assembly - March 03, 2021


AFA Communities (2010)


Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

116.94119

Word count

1,569

Sentence count

80

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! 0.97
00:00:30.000 This is School of Navajo in the Asatun Folk Assembly, bringing you the latest on the revival
00:00:38.740 of the ancestral faith of Northern Europe and the awakening of the European descended
00:00:44.060 peoples everywhere.
00:00:46.380 The gods and goddesses never went away.
00:00:49.040 They are with us always, and now they stir, and we reclaim our spiritual birthright.
00:00:57.420 A glorious dawn awaits.
00:00:59.280 Hail our awakening! Hail Alsatru rising!
00:01:06.280 Mark wrote to say why he joined the AFA.
00:01:10.280 I have been impressed with Steve since I became awakened to my ancestral tradition.
00:01:15.280 And of the organizations out there, I think the AFA is the one that is most on target.
00:01:20.280 So, I would like to strengthen it.
00:01:23.280 Thank you, Mark. We're always trying to improve what we do.
00:01:27.280 the AFA is the work of many dedicated men and women and I am fortunate and proud to represent
00:01:33.360 them. Bethany writes to say, I have been studying Alsatru for over three years. I am tired of being
00:01:41.520 alone in my practices and beliefs and would like to become a part of something bigger than myself.
00:01:48.880 Welcome, Bethany. That's a common reaction and ties in with our theme for today, which is
00:01:54.800 Community. One can certainly be an individual practitioner of Asatru. Some people have no
00:02:03.200 choice because they don't know of anyone near them who practices our faith, and some people
00:02:08.960 just don't want to meet with others. The great majority of us, however, look forward to the
00:02:15.060 fellowship of other people who follow our ancestral religion and are greatly enriched by it. Indeed,
00:02:21.360 I believe it is possible to experience Asatru at its best only in association with a group of
00:02:28.300 like-minded men and women. And that, my friends, is what community is all about.
00:02:35.660 Now, folks who have been Asatru only for a few years may not recall that the AFA was
00:02:42.220 energetically promoting community about a decade ago. We had, or more to the point,
00:02:48.180 thought we had, a piece of land on which we could base such a community. By community, I don't mean
00:02:54.660 a commune or some inwardly turned cultish group, but rather a situation where each family would
00:03:02.020 have its own private home on its own land, but would meet several times a week on land owned
00:03:07.940 by the community to worship the gods, weed the garden, operate small businesses, and so forth.
00:03:14.820 We spoke of tribalization, a term, by the way, that I would not use today,
00:03:20.480 and modeled our efforts on the traditional structure of the Germanic tribes many centuries ago.
00:03:27.200 That endeavor fell apart over the issue of land ownership,
00:03:31.080 and I was not successful in getting strong support for the tribalist idea from the AFA as a whole.
00:03:39.060 As usual, we were just too far ahead of the times. 0.98
00:03:43.320 Now, times have caught up with us, and the idea of Asatru communities is quite popular.
00:03:51.100 The AFA is still interested in communities, and we are actively working along these lines.
00:03:57.800 We don't call them tribes anymore, because that word has a negative connotation to many of the people we want to attract.
00:04:05.880 Rightly or wrongly, they suggest isolation, cultism, and primitivism,
00:04:11.320 and none of these things are what we have in mind.
00:04:14.940 We just call what we are building communities, and they may take any of a number of different forms.
00:04:22.800 Is it possible for the AFA, which is a national organization,
00:04:27.600 to build communities across the country and around the world?
00:04:31.480 Of course it is.
00:04:32.580 Sometimes we hear the argument that communities can only be built from the ground up.
00:04:38.580 Well, yes and no.
00:04:41.580 There is no substitute for personal contact, and that implies geographical proximity.
00:04:47.580 But a national organization can provide the theological and ideological basis,
00:04:53.580 and in our case that basis is described in the Declaration of Purpose of the Asatru Folk Assembly
00:05:00.580 and in the other relevant documents of the AFA.
00:05:04.460 You see, we are not interested in just creating Asatru communities.
00:05:09.640 We are interested in creating Asatru communities with a particular outlook and a specific program.
00:05:16.960 The outlook and the program of the AFA. 1.00
00:05:20.920 This is where the folk builders come in.
00:05:24.720 Folk builders are the AFA representatives in a particular state or states.
00:05:29.380 They welcome new members, stay in contact with old ones, organize get-togethers of AFA members, and, in effect, create community in one form or another, while at the same time recruiting other interested people to become AFA members.
00:05:47.020 Folk builders are the ones who make the AFA real and relevant on a local level.
00:05:52.900 But, you may say, that's fine on a local level, but how do you get those people to
00:05:59.720 feel any connection with other AFA members on the other side of the country?
00:06:04.780 How can an AFA member in New York feel close to an AFA member in California?
00:06:12.400 We have at our fingertips social media that were never available to even our recent ancestors,
00:06:19.440 much less our forefathers and foremothers in tribal times.
00:06:23.940 Now, I am the first to admit the limitations of these media.
00:06:28.480 Nevertheless, they are, number one, a great way for people to meet each other in cyberspace
00:06:34.380 in order to arrange a meeting in the real world,
00:06:37.660 and, number two, to stay in touch after they have met in person.
00:06:43.820 The missing link is the in-person contact,
00:06:47.340 and not merely contact, but significant experience.
00:06:53.300 AFA gatherings provide exactly that.
00:06:57.140 Ritual is, or should be, an intensely emotional thing
00:07:01.100 with the power to bind people together
00:07:03.300 out of all proportion to the time spent together
00:07:05.760 as measured on the clock or the calendar.
00:07:08.860 If this experience is refreshed every year
00:07:11.580 or even every few years,
00:07:13.660 powerful bonds can be created, a true community.
00:07:17.340 For example, I spoke with one of our members on the phone a couple of days ago.
00:07:24.140 We had met once before at Midsummer a little over a year ago, where I joined her and her
00:07:30.020 husband in marriage.
00:07:32.220 It was as if we had parted only last week, and I felt a very real connection with her
00:07:38.820 and her family.
00:07:40.220 Sure, it's great to see your community members every week or so, but that is not essential
00:07:45.820 for building bonds even around the world here's another example i am sure there is no former
00:07:54.540 marine in this country who if called from his sick bed would not respond to another marine
00:08:00.540 who needed him even if he had never met that individual every marine is eternally connected
00:08:07.820 to every other marine true we in the afa cannot match the experience of combat or a boot camp
00:08:14.780 but we can provide other intense experience that will bind us together.
00:08:21.420 The AFA can create community among members who are spread over great geographical distances.
00:08:29.820 Think then of the closeness that exists between members of an AFA community who are in close and
00:08:36.060 frequent contact with each other at the local level, bound by blood, by religion, by culture,
00:08:43.180 by a common folk-centered way of looking at the world and by close physical proximity they will 0.58
00:08:49.740 be tight indeed what is the road forward for afa communities how do we proceed if you are an afa
00:09:00.300 member take a look at the members forum you will find sections dealing with personal finances
00:09:06.860 fitness and health, self-sufficiency, brewing, crafts, parenting, our newsletter for children,
00:09:14.540 gardening, cooking, items wanted, items for sale, advertisements for products and services,
00:09:21.580 and much more. We have the framework for community right there, online.
00:09:29.900 At the local and regional levels, community starts with meeting other AFA members locally
00:09:35.660 and doing things with them. The folk builder for the area can initiate that, or members can take
00:09:42.220 the lead themselves. It usually starts simply, a meet-up in a pub or a coffee shop, get-togethers
00:09:50.220 at someone's home for social and religious observances, various forms of mutual assistance,
00:09:56.700 and they're on the way. They may create something they want to call a kindred,
00:10:01.900 but whatever label they hang on it, it will be made up of AFA members
00:10:06.540 and adhering to the Declaration of Purpose of the AFA.
00:10:11.160 Ultimately, the result can be that tightly knit and sizable community,
00:10:16.060 perhaps with land and places on it with which to honor the gods.
00:10:20.080 It starts simple and small, and grows to be large and all-encompassing.
00:10:26.420 Call it a tribe or call it a community, it is men and women of the AFA growing together
00:10:33.920 and helping each other.
00:10:37.140 This is the direction in which the AFA is moving.
00:10:40.520 We'll never force anyone to join such an association, and we will always respect the
00:10:45.260 privacy of the individual.
00:10:47.620 But for those members who want to join with others, we will facilitate that.
00:10:54.240 If you are ready to find your way home to the spiritual path of our forebears, the Asatru
00:10:59.460 Folk Assembly invites you to consider membership.
00:11:03.380 Please visit our website at www.runestone.org, read our Declaration of Purpose, and, if what
00:11:13.080 you see there speaks to your soul, send us a membership application.
00:11:18.360 Together, let us write the next chapter in the history of the sons and daughters of Europe.
00:11:26.640 Only when we realize we are a river will we stop drowning in puddles.
00:11:33.480 This is Steve McNallan of the Asatru Folk Assembly, www.runestone.org.
00:11:40.420 See you next time.
00:11:48.360 We'll be right back.
00:12:18.360 Thank you.
00:12:48.360 Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
00:13:18.360 Hey, hey, hey