Asatru Folk Assembly - May 01, 2024


Asatru Holidays - May 2024 - Else Christensen ｜ May Day


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

127.30747

Word count

977

Sentence count

53


Summary

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

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