Asatru Folk Assembly - February 08, 2026


How We Speak： A Path Towards Piety

Hosted by
Steve McNallen
Mentioned
Alcatru Auschwitz Kneeling
Óðinn's Sacrifices, Self-Mastery in the delay of Ragnarök #afa #asatru #asatrufolkassembly #shorts 2⧸11⧸26 Victory Never Sleeps, Ep 188 - Ásatrú Academy： Checking in with Goði Stamm

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

128.87

Word count

1,004

Sentence count

76

Harmful content

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, I discuss the role of religion in shaping the way we think and speak about our ancestors, goddesses, and gods, and how they shape our ideas of God and the universe. I talk about the role religion plays in shaping our understanding of the world and how we speak about them.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Sometimes we don't think before we speak or sometimes we don't think about the way we speak
00:00:06.660 and how it reflects our worldview and sometimes informs it. Like any religion, Alcatru has
00:00:14.380 developed some bad habits over the years. Some habits are good, some are inherited,
00:00:20.360 and all of them come from a good place of intention. Some are repeated so often that
00:00:26.120 People stop questioning where they come from, though.
00:00:29.800 Modern Alistair and broader traditional European religion are no exception to this.
00:00:34.880 Over time, certain phrases have become slogans, spoken casually, shared as memes, and treated as markers of identity.
00:00:43.720 Three of the most common of these phrases are,
00:00:46.800 We don't kneel before our gods, or I worship the old gods.
00:00:52.460 Speaking of our ancestors strictly in the past tense is another example.
00:00:56.940 All of these are usually spoken with good intentions, but all three also quietly distort theology.
00:01:04.280 Not because the people who say them are malicious, but because these habits did not arise from a spiritual or ancestral worldview.
00:01:12.520 They arose from modern psychology.
00:01:15.020 If we want a path toward genuine piety, we have to break some bad habits.
00:01:18.840 And the first habits to examine are the ones shaping how we think about, speak about, and physically approach the gods, goddesses, and ancestors. 0.88
00:01:30.040 Early generations of modern Auschwitz were formed in a cultural environment saturated by Christianity. 0.54
00:01:37.240 Many practitioners come from backgrounds carrying frustration, disappointment, or even spiritual trauma. 0.54
00:01:44.000 That context shapes language.
00:01:46.380 Instead of simply rejecting Christian theology, some also rejected anything that resembled Christianity.
00:01:54.920 Kneeling was labeled as weakness.
00:01:56.900 Submission was seen as slavery.
00:01:59.100 Reverence is confused with humiliation.
00:02:02.260 And from this reactionary environment emerged, we don't kneel before our gods.
00:02:07.240 Not because our ancestors taught that, but because modern people needed a symbolic distancing from their former religion.
00:02:14.040 But reaction is not tradition, and trauma is not theology.
00:02:22.020 Alcetru cannot be built as an emotional recoil, but it must be built on the correct relationship.
00:02:29.980 Across the ancient European world, archaeological and artistic evidence repeatedly show humans kneeling, bowing, and prostrating themselves before divine or authority figures.
00:02:41.320 That is not unique to one culture
00:02:44.660 It is a universal human religious behavior
00:02:47.680 The body expresses what the soul recognizes
00:02:51.360 Posture can be seen as theology in motion
00:02:55.100 To claim that ancient Europeans never knelt before their gods is not Reconstruction
00:03:01.280 It's a modern projection
00:03:04.920 Traditional societies knelt before kings, queens, and chieftains
00:03:08.640 Not because they were worthless, but because they recognized order.
00:03:13.960 Now ask the uncomfortable question.
00:03:16.460 If one would kneel before royalty, but refuse to kneel before the gods and goddesses of their folk,
00:03:21.980 what hierarchy is being applied here?
00:03:25.160 Our gods are not our peers. They're not metaphors.
00:03:28.800 They are cosmic powers.
00:03:31.600 Refusing to kneel before such beings is not strength.
00:03:34.560 It is incoherence.
00:03:35.880 modern minds hear kneeling and they think well i am nothing ancient minds understood kneeling as
00:03:44.780 i know my place and the order of things hierarchy is structure hierarchy is not oppression the cosmos
00:03:53.420 itself is structured and kneeling is a voluntary alignment with that structure
00:03:58.600 i worship the old god sounds poetic and it's usually memed with a background of mountains
00:04:07.700 and some archaic script but modern language loads this word old with meanings like outdated
00:04:14.580 replaced or belonging to the past yes our gods are ancient but no they are not obsolete
00:04:22.000 a god who only exists in history is not a god that is merely a character and our gods are so
00:04:30.400 much more than that here's an important distinction when it comes to our ancestors and our speech
00:04:38.300 they are not gone they're not erased they're not memories only and also true ancestors exist both
00:04:47.440 beyond a veil and within us. Their blood is in our veins. Their instincts move our hands.
00:04:55.560 Their courage and their choices echo in our own choices. They are living in another mode of being.
00:05:05.500 Our gods are our most ancient ancestors, yet they did not die or pass beyond a veil.
00:05:10.500 They simply are. They exist.
00:05:14.520 Our ancestors are living beyond death, and our gods, eternal beyond time.
00:05:21.220 Both are present. Neither belong to the past, though.
00:05:26.600 Listen to how people commonly speak.
00:05:30.400 My grandfather loved me. My grandmother believed in me.
00:05:34.980 They were proud of me.
00:05:36.480 this type of speech quietly implies that their love ended when their body stopped breathing
00:05:42.980 that is not an ancestral worldview our ancestors are still aware they still witness
00:05:49.980 and they still care the correct mode of speech and the correct tense should be
00:05:56.800 my grandfather loves me my grandmother believes in me they are proud of me
00:06:01.600 Their love for us did not expire at death, and our relationship with them did not terminate at the grave.
00:06:10.040 We do not say, I used to have ancestors. We say, I have ancestors.
00:06:14.940 Present tense.
00:06:17.040 When we speak of gods as old, we treat them casually.
00:06:20.180 When we speak of ancestors as were, we unconsciously distance ourselves from them.
00:06:25.680 Language trains behavior.
00:06:27.960 Casual language produces casual religion.
00:06:31.220 Precise language produces piety.
00:06:34.300 You do not kneel before nostalgia.
00:06:36.580 You're not offered to metaphors.
00:06:38.880 You're not swear oaths to abstractions.
00:06:42.260 Alcatru is not a history hobby.
00:06:44.380 It is a living religion with living relationships.
00:06:49.540 Instead of we don't kneel before our gods,
00:06:52.080 we kneel willingly before our gods and goddesses.
00:06:55.220 Instead of I worship the old gods,
00:06:57.660 I worship the ancestral gods of my people.
00:07:02.180 I worship the living and eternal gods of my folk.
00:07:06.600 Instead of, my grandfather loved me, my grandfather loves me.
00:07:11.820 Small corrections, but profound consequences.
00:07:17.560 Before the altar, and before the horn, before the offering, piety begins in the mind.
00:07:23.480 It's how you think.
00:07:24.320 and that translates to how you speak
00:07:27.100 and how you imagine your relationships.
00:07:30.860 Break bad habits.
00:07:32.860 Reclaim reverence.
00:07:34.340 Reclaim language.
00:07:35.980 Reclaim presence.
00:07:37.760 Because a spiritual path toward piety
00:07:39.660 begins long before the first prayer is spoken.
00:07:43.200 It begins with how we regard the gods,
00:07:45.560 goddesses, and the ancestors themselves.