Asatru Folk Assembly - Ásatrú Holidays - October 2025

00:00:00.000 ladies and gentlemen boys and girls and folk of all ages you know time it is it is October

00:00:29.520 and it is time for the holidays holy days and days of remembrance of our folk

00:00:35.280 all righty y'all it is the morning of the 4th of october and we've got a day of remembrance today

00:00:44.380 so let's get down to it seems like i'm running late every month and today is the day of remembrance

00:00:52.440 October 4th for Goethe Thorstein

00:00:54.560 Gutensen. Then

00:00:56.500 we follow that up tomorrow

00:00:58.120 on October 5th, Day of

00:01:00.540 Remembrance for Meister Guido von

00:01:02.560 List. Then on the

00:01:04.600 15th of the month, we

00:01:06.480 celebrate the birthday of our founder

00:01:08.260 Steven McNallan.

00:01:10.300 And on the 18th is

00:01:12.440 our holiday, Wernernader 0.70

00:01:14.260 or Winter

00:01:16.460 Nights. We follow

00:01:18.360 that up after that with two of our

00:01:20.300 newer heroes.

00:01:22.440 On the 23rd, the Day of Remembrance for King Eorik.

00:01:26.760 And on the 27th, the Day of Remembrance for Reckwald Odeokarl.

00:01:32.820 Alrighty, that is a lot of stuff to go over this month.

00:01:36.080 It is our busiest month of the year, October.

00:01:39.040 It's a great month. It's the best month.

00:01:41.060 My birthday's on the 28th, so I might be biased.

00:01:44.400 Alrighty, let's get down to it.

00:01:45.980 Get to the nitty gritty, the details, and all the paragraphs of text that y'all love to hear me read.

00:01:50.940 On October 4th, today is the Day of Remembrance for Gauti Thorstein Götgensen.

00:01:59.940 Gauti Thorstein was born on October 4th, 1928 in Reykjavik, Iceland.

00:02:06.940 He was an expert in Nordic studies, fluent in both Icelandic and English,

00:02:11.940 a loving family man, trusted friend of Svenbjörn Bientensen,

00:02:16.940 and a founding gothi of the Asatriba Feregith.

00:02:21.000 He passed beyond the veil and joined his ancestors on January 21st, 2000.

00:02:28.920 As a child, he contracted tuberculosis,

00:02:32.520 which physically impaired him for the rest of his life.

00:02:35.700 Many of the treatments at that time left him physically scarred and debilitated,

00:02:40.480 but he was said to never pity himself for this.

00:02:44.020 With more time on his hands, he dove into his thoughts and thirst for knowledge.

00:02:50.280 Books, dictionaries, and later computer technology became a large part of his life.

00:02:56.940 By all accounts, young Thorstein often spent more time in his mind than in the mundane.

00:03:03.760 When he finished his primary education, he moved on to Reykjavik Junior College and then on to the University of Oslo.

00:03:11.040 He studied history, Latin, ethnography, and sharpened his already great knowledge of our Nordic ancestors.

00:03:18.960 He also learned a great deal about how to deal with the Icelandic parliament when making institutions legally binding,

00:03:26.060 and this is where much of his work with the Ostrullafelgith comes in.

00:03:30.880 It has been said that while Sven Bjorn Bintansson was the heart of the Ostrullafelgith, Thorstein was the brain.

00:03:38.120 He led the charge to get the organization legally recognized by Iceland, and was present

00:03:43.900 at the famous moment where Lord Thor knocked out power across the nation during the meeting

00:03:49.680 where the Lutheran bishop finally gave the Ausatrullafelgith his stamp of approval.

00:03:55.260 As a man with a substantial knowledge of Ausatru, Gotti Thorstein was the most trusted advisor

00:04:01.160 of the Asatrullafelgith's first two Ásherjörgóðar, Svengjorn Bíntasinn and Jörmundur

00:04:07.280 Íngí Hansinn, both sought his council regularly. He was also a leading voice of folkish Asatrú

00:04:13.940 in Iceland, and is often cited as being the most outspoken proponent of recognizing Asatrú

00:04:19.660 as the native faith of the Aryan people. Góði Þórstáinn was a man of great knowledge

00:04:25.220 and ambition and piety, a beacon of right action for the folk of the Asatrullafelgith.

00:04:31.160 Although he shouldered the heavy burden of tuberculosis and its consequences for his whole life,

00:04:37.220 this never stopped his march to victory for the Aesir.

00:04:41.360 May we all remain unbroken and undaunted in our loyalty to the Holy Aesir.

00:04:47.860 Hail, Gotti Thorstein Guttgensen.

00:04:52.200 And we follow that up tomorrow with a day of remembrance for Meister Guido von List.

00:04:57.800 Meister Guido von List, born in 1848 on October 5th and passed away in 1919 on May 17th,

00:05:07.800 was an Austrian paywright, author, and esotericist.

00:05:11.800 He was the founder of Wotanism, which was an integral precursor to the reforging of Alsatru.

00:05:17.800 Born on October 5th, 1848, he was the eldest son of a wealthy family in Vienna, the capital of the former Austrian Empire.

00:05:25.800 As was the custom in the area at the time, his family was Roman Catholic and he was christened

00:05:32.300 as a baby.

00:05:34.140 He had a happy childhood and enjoyed trips with his father to the Austrian countryside.

00:05:39.760 On one such trip in 1862, he and his father visited the catacombs beneath St. Stephen's

00:05:46.400 Cathedral in Vienna.

00:05:48.560 Meister von Liszt had come to strongly believe that there was formerly a shrine to one of

00:05:53.120 the Aesir in those catacombs.

00:05:56.300 He felt so strongly about this that he knelt before a destroyed altar and swore that he

00:06:01.520 would one day construct a temple devoted to the Allfather.

00:06:05.820 Over the next 15 years, Myservon Liss joined the family leather business.

00:06:11.360 During his free time, he sketched and wrote countless pages about pre-Christian Germany,

00:06:15.700 as well as hiking and exploring the various Roman and Germanic ruins around the countryside.

00:06:20.840 He even spent midsummer nights alone on top of the Gieselberg hillfort as a sign of devotion to the faith of his ancestors.

00:06:30.540 When his father passed beyond the Vale in 1877, he left the leather business and became a journalist.

00:06:37.420 He wrote for many nationalist publications, as he was a big proponent of folkism,

00:06:43.880 mostly covering the practices and culture of the rural Austrian people.

00:06:48.440 He also spoke to various groups about the ancient priesthood of Wotan, which was his

00:06:55.660 understanding of Gothar devoted to Ozen.

00:06:59.860 While his information was likely fragmented, he was clearly devoted to the Aesir and was

00:07:05.480 doing his best to bring more people home to their birthright.

00:07:09.560 In 1902, Meister von Liszt's ideas of Alsatru developed a more occult and esoteric component,

00:07:18.340 many people now call Armonism. He received cataract surgery and was left blind for nearly

00:07:24.640 an entire year. During this time, he relentlessly studied Germanic language and the sacred runes.

00:07:32.940 Once he regained his sight, he immediately wrote a manuscript explaining that the runes

00:07:37.440 were the original language of the alien people. He claimed that a new futhor of runes came

00:07:44.440 to him via vision during his blindness, and these are now known as the Armin and Runes.

00:07:51.080 Although Meister von Liszt passed away in 1919, he spent the rest of his life promoting

00:07:56.320 his Armin and Runes and spreading what he knew about Alcetru to his folk.

00:08:02.260 His devotion to the Aesir was so deep that he held that troth until he passed to the

00:08:07.200 next life.

00:08:08.200 While his version of Alcetru was something of a rough draft compared to what we have

00:08:13.200 now. His writings and sketches provided an invaluable pathway to everything we have now.

00:08:19.980 His interpretation of the runes is still used to this day in esoteric work, even practiced

00:08:24.940 by many in the AFA. While my servanlist did not build a temple to vote on as he promised

00:08:31.000 in the Catacombs of St. Stephen's Cathedral, a man named Stephen McNallan did devote to

00:08:36.120 Hoff to the All-Father, a mere 96 years later in the United States. This temple to Votan 0.62

00:08:43.060 is Odenshof, founded in 2015 by the Alstro Folk Assembly, and it contains a dedicated

00:08:49.380 shrine to the memory and works of Meister Von List himself. May we never fail in remembering

00:08:55.140 where we came from. May we honor forevermore the brave men who laid the bricks so that

00:09:00.840 we could walk this sacred path. Hail, Meister Gudow Von List.

00:09:07.820 And following that is the birthday of the very man who founded that Hoth, our founder

00:09:16.180 Stephen McNallan.

00:09:19.480 Anyone who has raised a horn in honor of our ancestral gods has done so because of, or

00:09:26.520 in spite of, Stephen McNallan," said the Ausheri Goethe Matthew Favell at Ostara in the South,

00:09:33.660 March 2020.

00:09:35.880 This month, we celebrate the birth of our founder, Stephen McNallan, before he became

00:09:39.880 the father of modern Alcitru, before he started a religious movement on his own, before the

00:09:45.500 Kennewick Man.

00:09:46.500 He was born in a small town in Texas in 1948.

00:09:53.820 He says, On a more intimate level, I chose my parents well.

00:09:59.020 My father was a hardworking Irish Catholic oil hand who had come to Texas for the oil

00:10:03.780 boom some years earlier, and my mother was a loving, kind, and intelligent woman who

00:10:09.960 significantly bought me the books I wanted and read them to me.

00:10:16.020 Founder MacNallan developed an interest in pre-Christian religion in college after reading

00:10:19.800 the book The Viking by Edison Marshall.

00:10:23.340 In 1968 or 1969, he dedicated himself to the worship of the gods of Europe.

00:10:29.580 In 1969-70, he founded the first Alcetru church in the world, the Viking Brotherhood, which gained tax-exempt status in 1972.

00:10:41.460 He began writing and distributing the rune stone, which was hand-typed and copied on a mnemograph machine.

00:10:47.940 And he said,

00:10:48.700 At first it was a private thing, and then I began quietly promoting the religion, which at that point I simply called Norse Paganism, as I had no name for it.

00:10:58.520 I really was starting from scratch.

00:11:01.820 About the time of my graduation from college, I started a minuscule publication called The Rune Stone.

00:11:07.760 I cranked it out on a mimeograph machine.

00:11:11.000 The first run was 11 copies.

00:11:13.980 Within a year or so, August 29, 1972, I had received recognition of the Viking Brotherhood as a tax-exempt religious organization.

00:11:22.160 After reading Magnus Magnuson's book, Hamer of the North, where he first heard the word Alcetru,

00:11:31.440 Founder MacNallan began to use and promote his religious ideal as Alcetru rather than Odinism.

00:11:37.440 At some point during his time in the U.S. Army, Founder MacNallan began to adopt the belief that Alcetru was a religion of the peoples of Europe

00:11:45.440 rather than being a religion for all, thus adopting folkism.

00:11:50.160 In 1976, after being discharged from the army, he renamed the Viking Brotherhood to the Alcetru Free Assembly.

00:11:58.960 In 1987, Steve dissolved the Free Assembly.

00:12:02.920 After seeing what American Alcetru had developed into, which denied the Alcetru was a uniquely ethnic faith,

00:12:10.580 Mr. McNallan stepped back into the Alcetru scene, establishing the Alcetru Folk Assembly.

00:12:15.960 The emphasis on folk to differentiate from the universalist lie that threatened to take hold of our ancestral faith

00:12:22.680 He says

00:12:24.880 It flourished

00:12:26.500 Over the years it grew

00:12:28.540 And I wrote also true and native European spirituality

00:12:31.740 Which defines my convictions and purpose

00:12:35.080 We purchased a permanent building which became Odenshof

00:12:39.220 Our first temple to the gods 0.99

00:12:41.600 The AFA has expanded to include four hoffs

00:12:45.580 now five, in the USA, and continues to grow.

00:12:51.280 In 2016, after leading the Austro-Free Folk Assembly for 20 years,

00:12:56.080 I turned it over to a younger generation

00:12:58.000 and started the next phase of my service to my gods and to my folk.

00:13:03.160 In the years since Mr. McMallan retired,

00:13:06.880 he has remained an active participant at Odenshoff

00:13:09.320 with charitable giving and continuing in any way possible,

00:13:12.680 contributing in any way possible.

00:13:14.180 It is often said that we stand on the shoulders of giants, and none are more giant than that of our founder, the first Al-Sheri Yagothi.

00:13:24.500 Thank you, and happy birthday, Mr. McNallan, from all of us in the Al-Sheri Yagothi Folk Assembly.

00:13:32.960 Hail, Al-Sheri Yagothi, Stephen McNallan.

00:13:35.980 And following that, on the 18th, the third Saturday of the month, Vedernate, autumn has officially started.

00:13:50.380 The days are noticeably shorter, the nights are noticeably cooler.

00:13:56.160 The trees are ablaze with the colors of fall and the crunching of the fallen leaves underfoot has begun.

00:14:03.160 All around us, the world is dying.

00:14:05.980 This was a time of drawing in close, of hearth, and home, and family.

00:14:13.520 For our ancestors, this was not an autumn festival, but a quiet winter rite in which the female spirits were honored in a rite called Disabrot.

00:14:24.600 Today, Vedrnedr is often seen as a death of the physical world, the world we can see, and the reawakening of the intangible.

00:14:35.980 It is the world of high energy, of spirits.

00:14:40.380 It is a deeper feeling and connection to the things we know to be there.

00:14:45.200 This is the time we honor Ardysia, our female ancestors.

00:14:50.160 We remember that without our ancient mothers, we could not be.

00:14:54.820 They cared for the home and the hearth fires.

00:14:57.900 They cared for their families.

00:14:59.340 Our ancient mothers, with strength and determination, raise the next generation against odds we

00:15:07.520 cannot really begin to fathom.

00:15:11.020 With the harvest finished, there is a quiet lull before we turn our minds to the hectic

00:15:15.660 holiday season.

00:15:17.720 Now is a good time to turn inward in introspection and to self-improvement.

00:15:21.840 It is also the time to meditate on things of a more spiritual nature.

00:15:27.460 connect to the energy that is always there.

00:15:34.300 And we get a few days rest before on the 23rd of October is the day of remembrance for King

00:15:40.220 Georic, newly announced at the beginning of July of this year as one of our heroes.

00:15:47.020 King Georic of the Tervingi Goths, father of AFA hero Athanaric, was raised during the

00:15:53.440 4th century in the Eastern Roman Empire's city of Constantinople. There was a statue

00:15:59.520 erected there in his honor. Outside of these facts, we know nothing of his personal life.

00:16:06.120 The only other fact about King Ioric passed down to us is that he, like his son Ithanaric,

00:16:12.960 recognized Christianity as a foreign faith that would weaken his people by severing their

00:16:18.840 ties with the mighty Aesir.

00:16:21.920 According to Oxentius of Durastorum, he led a concerted effort in 347 and 348 to root 0.73

00:16:30.320 out Christianity amongst his people. 0.68

00:16:33.760 Since being Alcitru and being a goth were the same thing, these goths that abandoned

00:16:39.480 the Aesir were seen as betraying their gothic identity.

00:16:44.400 King Eoric dealt with these betrayals seriously, punishing these traitors with death if they

00:16:50.400 did not revert to their correct faith.

00:16:53.740 The story of King Eoric is short on details, but just as grand as one of our heroes resisting

00:17:00.680 the scourge of Christianity.

00:17:04.040 He refused to submit himself or his people to the universalist poison, choosing instead 0.88

00:17:11.200 to fight it relentlessly for his gods and folk.

00:17:15.120 May we all be brave in the face of adversity.

00:17:19.740 Hail, King Eorik.

00:17:23.800 And finally, I know there's been a lot this month,

00:17:26.860 but on the 27th, no less grand,

00:17:30.400 the Day of Remembrance for Rechwald Odiakarl.

00:17:35.740 Rechwald's date of birth is unknown,

00:17:37.880 but he was executed in 1484 and almost certainly lived his entire life in the 15th century in

00:17:45.580 Sweden. His second name, Odia Karl, means Odinsmann. We know precious little about his life

00:17:53.280 outside of the case which is recounted here. Reckvald was put on trial on October 27,

00:18:01.840 11th, 1484 for having stolen from a number of churches in the southern portion of Upland.

00:18:09.520 He robbed the churches in Skeptuna, Markams, Orkesta, and Valentuna.

00:18:16.360 Stealing from a church during this time was sacrilegious, yet Reckwald did this without

00:18:21.520 fear as he knew that he owed no allegiance to the foreign Christ.

00:18:27.520 Once on trial, Reykjavald openly admitted to being a pagan, saying that he had been a devout

00:18:33.360 follower of Lord Odin for seven years by that point.

00:18:38.680 All this implied that some number of Swedes still held troth with the Aesir, 500 years

00:18:45.280 after much of the nation had converted to Christianity.

00:18:49.760 Reykjavald Odiakarl was of course found guilty by the Christian Swedes and was burned alive. 0.59

00:18:56.120 At once, did he attempt to apologize or betray his loyalty to the Aesir, and he died as he 0.72

00:19:03.640 had lived for the last seven years, as a man of all of them.

00:19:08.440 Hail, Rekvall, do you, Karl?

00:19:13.300 And with that, it brings us to the end of the month.

00:19:18.940 But you don't think I'd let you get off that easy, did I, you?

00:19:22.180 we skipped that day

00:19:25.360 but on October 10th

00:19:27.940 through the 12th

00:19:29.760 that's coming up next

00:19:31.320 weekend

00:19:32.120 get your tickets now

00:19:34.440 winter nights

00:19:35.960 the 14th winter nights

00:19:38.160 in the northeast

00:19:40.240 that's in New Hampshire

00:19:42.220 at Othala Acres

00:19:44.360 lovely home and property

00:19:46.200 of our folk builder Ron Boardman

00:19:48.460 it's the second

00:19:50.420 Winter Nights in New Hampshire, beautiful, beautiful October weather in New England.

00:19:56.040 I'm sure the trees are just bright orange and reds and yellows.

00:20:01.940 And guess what?

00:20:03.120 It's going to be the last Winter Nights national event, not at the home of Frere.

00:20:10.840 Frere's office hours in Austintown, Ohio.

00:20:13.200 And this marks the celebration of Winter Nights.

00:20:18.660 14 years of hard work

00:20:20.500 New England and the Iron Belt 0.97

00:20:22.360 put in and they got there Hoff 0.99

00:20:24.540 go celebrate with them at

00:20:26.600 Winter Nights

00:20:27.220 get your tickets now

00:20:29.440 and then after that I'll see you

00:20:32.340 December 6th at Freyshoff

00:20:34.280 for the dedication

00:20:35.200 come on out y'all

00:20:37.220 alrighty thank you guys so much

00:20:40.360 for joining us again

00:20:41.600 it's been a wonderful

00:20:43.440 year so far we've got a few months

00:20:46.460 left to go

00:20:47.260 I'll talk to you later, and in the meantime,

00:21:17.260 Have a good night. See y'all everyone

00:21:47.260 Thank you.

Asatru Folk Assembly - October 04, 2025

Ásatrú Holidays - October 2025

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