Asatru Folk Assembly - May 01, 2024


Asatru Holidays - May 2024 - Else Christensen ｜ May Day


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

127.31

Word count

977

Sentence count

53


Summary

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

May Day and the Day of Remembrance for Elsie Christensen are two of the most important holy days of the month of May. May Day marks the beginning of the new season and marks the start of the growth where one has the will to do the things they have worked hard for.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and folk of all ages,
00:00:26.280 you know what time it is it is may the first so let's go over the holidays holy days days
00:00:34.940 of remembrance of our people for the month of may and easily enough today's the holiday
00:00:43.600 mayday now we do normally observe it on the third saturday of the month this month being the 18th
00:00:51.460 But officially, as we discussed last month, May the 1st is May Day.
00:00:58.460 It follows April 30th, or Hexanocht, right smack on the calendar.
00:01:06.020 So, let's talk about May Day first, mix it up a little bit.
00:01:11.460 Then we'll follow up with our Day of Remembrance, which as always is on the 9th of the month, for Elsie Christensen.
00:01:18.840 All righty, ladies and gentlemen, here we go.
00:01:24.240 Mayday, on the heels of Hexenocht, when the cattle were blessed in the smoke of the fire
00:01:30.620 before being sent to their summer fields, we celebrate Mayday.
00:01:37.240 Halfway between the spring and summer solstice, Mayday is often considered to be the first day of summer.
00:01:44.740 Warmer days are becoming normal.
00:01:47.860 The spring rains that help to nourish the awakening fields have begun to taper off.
00:01:52.880 The world around us is verdant again.
00:01:56.500 On May Day, sometimes called Sumermal,
00:02:00.440 big celebrations were held both to celebrate the end of the harder days of winter
00:02:05.080 and to bless themselves and their crops for a fertile and productive year.
00:02:10.960 Men and women leapt over fires together or alone, wishing for fertility in the coming year.
00:02:18.780 The maypole was raised, and around it, people danced and wove their ribbons.
00:02:25.380 Women decorated their windows and doors with flowers and wove them into their hair.
00:02:31.680 Mayday is a coming together of men and women to celebrate life.
00:02:36.800 We use this time to celebrate all the good things that we have, all the things that we have worked hard for.
00:02:44.740 We have survived the harsh months when stagnation is so easy a thing to fall into.
00:02:50.880 When the celebration is done, the real hard work begins.
00:02:55.960 The plan that was set into motion at Charming of the Plow will now begin the active stage.
00:03:02.560 those seeds that you planted
00:03:04.820 or that project that you planned at Ostara
00:03:07.360 will now need real tending to
00:03:10.340 May Day marks the beginning
00:03:13.080 it marks the start of the growth
00:03:15.900 where one has the will
00:03:18.400 all things can happen
00:03:20.900 that's May Day
00:03:25.660 we follow that up on the 9th of the month
00:03:28.820 for the Day of Remembrance
00:03:30.320 for Elsie Christensen
00:03:32.440 Originally born in Denmark, Elsie Christensen, nie Ochsner, was one of the leading figures in the modern Osatru movement.
00:03:44.340 As a young woman, she left her hometown of Esbjörg in favor of Copenhagen.
00:03:50.860 It was during her time in Copenhagen that Elsie awoke to the ideas of National Socialism in the midst of right-wing and left-wing radical struggles.
00:03:59.440 struggles. She met and married Ege Alex Christensen, and together they were members of the Danish
00:04:07.680 Workers' Party. Both she and her husband were imprisoned after the German invasion of Denmark
00:04:15.220 in 1940 for their involvement with elements of the National Workers' Party. After their release
00:04:22.280 from prison, Elsie and her husband immigrated to Canada via England. Even from Canada, Elsie
00:04:29.800 continued to nurture her desires to find a place for her own people. It was during this time,
00:04:35.960 while she was reaching out to far-right activists across North America, that she first discovered
00:04:41.880 Odinism in a pamphlet titled, Call of our Ancient Nordic Religion by Alexander Rudd Mills.
00:04:48.680 This was the beginning of Elsie's dedication to the revival of the worship of the Norse
00:04:54.920 gods.
00:04:55.920 Her understanding of our relationship with the gods was heavily influenced by the idea
00:05:01.440 that the gods were encoded in the collective unconscious of the Aryan race.
00:05:07.300 In 1969, Elsie Christiansen founded the Odinist Fellowship.
00:05:12.260 Before her death in 2005, Elsie worked tirelessly for her folk, spreading the word of our faith
00:05:19.160 and our gods to all who would listen.
00:05:22.360 She founded a prison outreach program that proved to be instrumental to many men.
00:05:27.940 She wrote and published many publications.
00:05:31.600 Her efforts saw her recognized as the folk mother to Asatrua everywhere.
00:05:38.100 So what can we learn from this story?
00:05:41.860 don't always know where our stories end. We can't always see the ramifications of
00:05:47.740 our thoughts when put into action. Elsie was just one single woman. She was a woman who
00:05:55.220 believed in unpopular ideas in a time when those ideas were definitively unpopular. Despite
00:06:03.920 being in prison for those beliefs, she did not give up. Our current times are, in many
00:06:09.680 way similar to the ones that Elsie dealt with. They are turbulent and wrought with anger
00:06:15.800 on all sides. We stand at the precipice of a new world, but we have no way of knowing
00:06:23.540 which way the tides will turn. Elsie didn't turn and run. She stood and faced the future.
00:06:31.980 In doing so, she became one of the most important women in the Austro movement to date. When
00:06:37.860 things are hard, when public opinion would have you conform, just remember, your story
00:06:44.760 hasn't reached its end yet, and only you can control the direction the story takes.
00:06:51.240 Stand strong. Stand with Elsie.
00:06:56.420 Elsie Christensen is the dedicated hero of Baldershof. For more information and a deeper
00:07:02.700 dive into the life and acts of our folkmother, check out Baldershof.org.
00:07:07.860 i'll make sure to include a link in the description of that and thank you so much everybody that is
00:07:13.740 may next month we'll talk about our next hero as well as the next holiday which is midsummer
00:07:21.160 and speaking of midsummer make your plans come out to odenshoth i'll see you there
00:07:27.640 have a good one everybody talk to you next month and until then hail the gods hail the folk
00:07:35.960 Hail the AFA
00:07:37.960 and hail Elsie Christensen