Asatru Folk Assembly - February 01, 2021


Focus on the Folk part 2 October 2007


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

141.50943

Word count

1,305

Sentence count

67

Harmful content

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Stephen, what do you think?
00:00:04.000 Well, growth is very, very important to the folk,
00:00:08.000 but as Helga said, you know, quality is
00:00:12.000 I think to be maintained over quantity, and I would rather
00:00:16.000 have a small group of dedicated heathens than
00:00:20.000 a group of eclectics who mix a little heathenry 0.99
00:00:24.000 with a little Native American religion, with a little Wicca, with a little 0.64
00:00:28.000 Celtic with a little whatever, whatever the New Age flavor of the week is.
00:00:37.980 I think that the growth of our folk is important.
00:00:45.100 It's important that we continue to network.
00:00:48.320 In the AFA, we have a folk building program.
00:00:51.100 And what this does is we have folk builders all across the United States.
00:00:55.380 and a person from, let's say, Missouri will contact us.
00:01:01.000 We can direct the local folk builder to get in touch with this person 0.82
00:01:04.320 and put them in touch with the local heathen community. 1.00
00:01:08.220 But now we have the Internet, which is unbelievable.
00:01:17.820 When I got into heathenry, we did not have the networking capabilities that we do now.
00:01:23.860 I mean, this is unbelievable.
00:01:24.600 We can carry on conversations with people in Europe and for free.
00:01:30.660 We can start fights with people in Europe.
00:01:32.120 Oh, boy, that's a whole different subject.
00:01:35.520 But we have the ability now to network, and this network ability is going to help us grow,
00:01:41.260 is going to help us get the word out.
00:01:43.040 So many people say, when I start telling them about Ausitru,
00:01:47.480 I've been looking for this.
00:01:48.880 I didn't know anything like this existed.
00:01:51.040 and that to me just blows me out of the water
00:01:56.480 because I'm thinking, how can you not know about it?
00:02:00.160 And so it's important that all of us as Ossetruers are ambassadors 0.62
00:02:07.160 and wear your hammer, wear your hammer out
00:02:11.220 and if people ask questions, be forthcoming, invite them to what's going on.
00:02:18.100 And it's important to let people know that we're out there and we exist.
00:02:22.820 And that's how we'll grow.
00:02:25.540 Mr. McNallan, what kind of organizational structures do you think our folk needs
00:02:30.260 to advance its interests in the years ahead that we don't already have?
00:02:34.820 Well, I think we've actually got a good start.
00:02:36.940 I think, like, for example, the clergy program that we've got rolling is one thing
00:02:40.480 and the folk builder thing that was mentioned a moment ago.
00:02:43.740 I think that others will evolve.
00:02:45.480 I think that we need to consider things such as economic networking for our people.
00:02:51.220 We need to be helping each other get jobs, jobs that work.
00:02:54.220 We need to be pushing the idea of education.
00:02:56.860 You know, are we thinking about engineers in the generations to come
00:03:00.980 and, you know, other things of significance.
00:03:04.100 We need to be looking at networking on a broad level,
00:03:08.660 at overcoming the geographical distances that separate us,
00:03:12.880 trying to actually weld a community that is not just a cyber community but a community of flesh
00:03:17.820 and blood. Helga, what do you think? As someone who lives in Nevada where our numbers are fewer
00:03:25.740 and more spread out, I think one of the keys is creating things that bring people from further
00:03:33.400 geographic areas to physically meet and network with each other, as he was saying.
00:03:42.880 I also think that, and this is the hard part a lot of times with Asatru, having organizations that we can all agree on a set of rules that does not restrict anyone's practices or beliefs,
00:03:57.960 but gives us a common ground that when people ask us questions about,
00:04:02.540 oh, what is this Osatru you talk about?
00:04:04.980 We have something in common so people aren't getting a totally different answer
00:04:09.400 from every person that they talk to,
00:04:10.860 so that we have some sort of a folk identity as ourselves.
00:04:14.740 How do you think we would do, just how would that happen?
00:04:18.400 Oh, boy.
00:04:20.320 I told him I was going to ask difficult questions.
00:04:23.900 It's, go ahead.
00:04:25.520 No, please, Stephan.
00:04:26.460 I tell you, it's not going to happen, and I'll tell you why.
00:04:32.420 It's because people who have discovered the flavor of Asatru that they like are going to stay with that. 0.92
00:04:44.800 A lot of Asatruers began as Asatruers, then they discovered Thetism and Saxon heathenry.
00:04:54.200 some people call themselves odinus other heathens want to be called heathens and they don't want to 0.82
00:05:01.960 be called asitur because they want to separate them from that from that group so we are a living
00:05:10.380 growing movement and religion and we're just beginning I mean this is a this is a new beginning
00:05:19.580 The religion that we're practicing now is not the religion that was practiced by our ancestors.
00:05:26.460 It's close.
00:05:27.780 We worship the same gods and goddesses, but we're doing things as 21st century heathens.
00:05:33.720 And it's not going to be the way it was back then, but it's not supposed to be that way,
00:05:39.060 because we're supposed to grow.
00:05:40.820 You know, the All-Father teaches us to continue to seek out knowledge, to seek out change,
00:05:45.760 keep on moving forward until we get it.
00:05:48.300 So, we're going to basically probably have various flavors of Ossetru eventually, just the same way the Christians have Lutherans, Presbyterians, Catholics, and Southern Baptists.
00:06:01.760 We'll have different flavors, all basically worshiping the same gods and goddesses.
00:06:06.420 Now, the important thing is that that be so without the conflict that is tearing the folk apart at this point.
00:06:17.920 And I blame that on the Internet.
00:06:19.860 The Internet is a blessing on one angle.
00:06:23.100 On the other hand, it's one of the worst things that could possibly happen to us.
00:06:27.360 So to actually put that down into a sentence,
00:06:30.180 I think we could say that what we're looking at is open competition in the marketplace of ideas.
00:06:36.000 You know, everyone in every group is just going to have to get out there and speak the truth that it feels.
00:06:41.400 And then from that, things will rub together and evolve, and we'll end up wherever we end up.
00:06:47.280 I don't know that we can program that in advance, really.
00:06:50.480 There may be some debate on this, but I'm going to make this statement.
00:06:55.220 I think the majority of our folk live in urban areas.
00:06:57.880 What special approaches can we take to make, as a true, relevant to where people are
00:07:03.720 and make it relevant to their lives that they have to deal with in the cities?
00:07:08.560 Do you think we should do that?
00:07:09.920 Hmm. I think one thing that we can do is to entice people who are in the cities to experience the rural, more relaxed, often more folk-related kind of life.
00:07:28.560 If you take a person who's in the city living a very stressed out, very intense 21st century high speed kind of life, not that that's all bad at all, there's some very good things about that, I think that we can use this as an enticement.
00:07:42.560 Come to the mountains, come to the forests, come and commune with nature and with the holy powers.
00:07:47.700 Another thing that we can use, I think, with people in the cities is the whole idea of the necessity of preserving our culture, our identity, in a very urban, a very metropolitan kind of environment, where every other group has got its agenda and is pushing that agenda.
00:08:07.780 And it's surely in defense, if nothing else, we're going to have to do the same.
00:08:12.540 Helga, what do you think?
00:08:13.340 I recently moved to two acres in rural Nevada and started raising livestock.
00:08:19.340 I honestly am not sure I understand the urban mind well enough to be able to draw parallels.
00:08:27.340 Do you think everybody should do that?
00:08:29.340 In my heart of hearts, yes.
00:08:32.340 But then it wouldn't be rural.
00:08:34.340 I know. But they should at least all come visit me and meet my chickens.
00:08:43.340 Thank you.