Asatru Folk Assembly - January 2022 Live Discussion

00:00:00.000 hello want to wish everyone out there a very very happy new year um it's hard to believe it's

00:00:18.560 already 2022 um hope you guys all had an amazing yule i know the flavelle family had a had a

00:00:29.160 fantastic yule and it's been really great to see around the country all of the different uh

00:00:34.840 different afa yule celebrations looks like you guys have have had a great holiday season

00:00:41.240 um and it's really encouraging to everybody else to to see you guys getting together um special

00:00:49.240 special shout out to those guys up in washington state folk builder mason johnson up there put on

00:00:56.200 one astounding looking Yule celebration.

00:01:00.060 Unfortunately, I was not able to attend this year,

00:01:04.140 but that was a huge turnout,

00:01:06.340 looked like a beautiful spot.

00:01:07.760 So congratulations on that.

00:01:09.700 And you have folks that were up there

00:01:11.900 and able to attend that, I'm envious.

00:01:14.400 We had a great Yule out at Odin's Hof and yeah.

00:01:19.660 So, excellent.

00:01:26.200 2021 was a was a really good year for the AFA. It was a very, very special year. We got a lot of great things happening. We saw tremendous activity at all of our Hoffs, but specifically at Thor's Hoff and Baldur's Hoff.

00:01:45.400 Baldershoff, this is kind of their first year that they, or last year rather, was their first year that they got their feet under them.

00:01:50.820 We got that use permit okayed in December of 2020.

00:01:56.320 So 2021 was Baldershoff's first year and did fantastic.

00:02:02.660 I was fortunate enough to be able to make it out there and spend some time with those folks several times during the year.

00:02:07.960 And what they've done is truly amazing.

00:02:10.840 Watching that grow and thrive is fantastic.

00:02:12.980 I am very, very excited about things we got coming up, about things we're going to do in 2022.

00:02:19.820 And we're just starting the year off right. And there's no better way to start the year off than talking to you guys.

00:02:27.640 Look over here on the side. Thank you so much, everybody making time on.

00:02:33.380 In your day, on your weekend to join us, I know usually we do this during the week, but I try to rotate it around different days because maybe we'll get a get a different audience,

00:02:41.840 get some folks that maybe worker for whatever reason can't make it some of the other times

00:02:46.640 so it's great to see you guys here um anybody got questions to start off with this evening

00:03:00.720 i know it's a busy time of the year and there's been a lot going on

00:03:03.840 I know one thing we got a question about, and I wish that I had a little bit tighter answer,

00:03:19.120 but it is something that we're working on in the coming year, was coming-of-age ceremonies.

00:03:25.020 And that's something that we've been asked for a very long time. And I wish that I had an awesome

00:03:30.440 to roll out to you but i do have some important thoughts on that i think are are relevant um

00:03:43.640 it's very important that when we do any kind of any kind of ceremony that it's real

00:03:50.680 and that it symbolizes something that we truly and that we truly mean any ritual we do

00:03:55.720 all of the all of the value of it comes from intention and if you put real intention and

00:04:02.900 sincere intention something it's very different than if you don't it's one reason um in the

00:04:08.240 astro folk assembly when we do weddings we only preside over legally binding weddings it's very

00:04:14.200 important to us that a couple that comes to us for a marriage not only are they married before

00:04:18.300 the gods but they're legally married where they're at where they actually have skin in the game

00:04:22.800 it's a legitimate marriage. And by the same token, when we do any form of coming of age,

00:04:31.200 the idea is transitioning from one stage in life to the next. Now, one thing that we're working on

00:04:37.540 in the AFA is a couple of those, a starting of the process, and then a complete coming of age

00:04:43.760 for both boys to men and girls to women.

00:04:50.940 It's important that on the other side of that transition,

00:04:54.340 when you go from child to adulthood,

00:04:56.940 that you're treated and viewed by your community that way.

00:05:01.400 So the other really important plank

00:05:02.880 for the Astro Folk Assembly

00:05:04.020 is when we get all the way done with a stage

00:05:07.540 and we say, you know, now you're a man

00:05:09.480 or now you're a woman,

00:05:10.400 And we want that to be, to have meat to it and have weight to it. 0.98

00:05:16.480 So we want to only perform that when someone reaches the age of 18.

00:05:23.800 I've seen in the past these coming of ages where a parent will give a 10-year-old boy a sword and declare it a coming of age ceremony.

00:05:39.280 and then, you know, right after the ceremony, okay, it's bedtime. And it's really important

00:05:44.580 to me that we don't do that. When we welcome someone as a man or as a woman, they need to 1.00

00:05:50.220 be treated differently than when they went into that ceremony as a child. And I think that 0.98

00:05:55.240 something that's always been utilized in the history of modern house, true, has been an

00:06:00.100 exchange of, or not exchange, rather, a gifting of a weapon to a young man as they become a man.

00:06:06.400 And I like that and I like the spirit of it. But I think something's gotten lost in the way that it's done. Very often we'll see some of these very young teens given a sword. The same young teen would not be given a rifle, would not be given another means of taking life. And it's important that we don't do ritualized action that doesn't have meaning to it.

00:06:31.680 So when we hand a boy a weapon in order to make him a man, we're handing him the implement of death and of defending his family with the power to take life.

00:06:45.700 And if we wouldn't trust him with that in a very real way, with a contemporary weapon that we genuinely have a fear of, then we shouldn't ape that action with an archaic weapon, because it's really important that what we do isn't pretending.

00:07:01.980 What we do is very real. And so those are my thoughts on it.

00:07:05.240 But it is something that we're working on and developing. And hopefully this time next year, we'll have a much, much better protocol for that.

00:07:15.700 Excellent. So, all right, Sarah, I have a question on the side.

00:07:26.140 Some of you may have noticed I've been wearing a stole for the last,

00:07:33.360 I want to say since the end of August, but yeah, I've been wearing a stole.

00:07:38.240 And a lot of people have wondered about that. It's a new thing in the AFA that

00:07:42.260 we're we're getting made it's a process that we've been trying for a long time and

00:07:47.520 getting custom work done has taken taken a little bit longer than we had wanted

00:07:51.720 but yeah um so the stole specifically that that i'm wearing

00:07:58.140 trying to think the best place to start on it okay so the stole in general uh some people have

00:08:04.740 noted that it is similar to to what various sects of christianity use that's because it comes from

00:08:10.300 a common common indo-european source the stole itself isn't isn't a christian garment though

00:08:17.660 christians have chosen to wear it it's a western religious garment and it was it was started and

00:08:25.420 popularized by the by the ancient latins as a sign of a certain amount of clerical education

00:08:33.180 uh so the stole has a has a built-in religious significance we want to make sure that that we're

00:08:45.820 we want to have a special 0.97

00:08:49.100 clerical vestment that separates our presiding gothar from the rest of the folk when conducting 0.96

00:08:56.460 ceremonies and uh that that elevates that position and that person while they're conducting a holy

00:09:03.340 rite and the stoles something we talked about and are are very i think they they look nice i think

00:09:09.580 it's a very nice touch something that uh witten's fawn uh harold has been working on getting made

00:09:16.860 we're going to have those for all of our ordained gothar the witten stoles will look different from

00:09:23.900 mine and then the the gothy and githya stoles will look different from that uh the colors

00:09:29.740 of the stole that i wear it's it's gold with a uh rhido rune in afa blue with a little bordering

00:09:38.700 of white and those are the af the three afa colors our witten will have white stoles and our gothar

00:09:44.860 will have afa blue stoles and again alternating colors on those runes now the rhido rune is very

00:09:53.100 important to the astro folk assembly and it's it's the rune that symbolizes our priesthood that

00:09:58.380 symbolizes our gothar um there's a lot of meanings to it i know that a very common one is journeying

00:10:06.700 but a really important element to that is right action and right action at the right times when

00:10:13.580 we perform ritual we're part of that cycle when we are representing our folk we're directing that

00:10:21.820 right action at that right time it's also a rune that symbolizes symbolizes the knight the writer

00:10:30.060 symbolizes nobility symbolizes things that we want to aspire to and again that rightness of action

00:10:36.140 and rightness of behavior the rhida rune is coincidentally and not coincidentally it's

00:10:42.860 important that we've chosen it for this purpose was the original symbol of the house true free

00:10:47.980 assembly way back in in that earlier incarnation of the afa so it's very important it's the room

00:10:57.260 that is on our gothar ring and it also adorns our gothar stools now those rooms might be different

00:11:06.140 when we have stools for different occasions like weddings or a baby naming or funeral but that's

00:11:11.980 why we have these for for our standard stools and here in the coming months you should be seeing

00:11:16.860 those on our witten and on our dotar um kevin do what do we accept hindus i'm not sure what that

00:11:37.820 question implies um as i saw somebody comment over in the in the side chat

00:11:48.300 hinduism is kind of a modern modern word that is i guess the current parlance for a

00:11:59.260 very old tradition as far as pure hinduism hinduism does come from a common root

00:12:07.100 with house a true but over the years especially since it's gone by the term hinduism has taken a

00:12:13.020 number of very distinct changes that have come with the mixing of the people the group of people

00:12:19.980 we tend to associate with hinduism uh which are the folks in india and the dravidian influence of

00:12:25.740 non-aryan peoples from the south has really shaped a lot of what modern hinduism looks like

00:12:30.460 And that time separated has really changed how that faith approaches the divine.

00:12:38.540 But as a guy over in the side, I'm sorry, I didn't see whom.

00:12:43.600 Anyways, mentioned about about Dharma.

00:12:46.760 um dharma is a concept that predates hinduism but a lot of hinduism would claim that as theirs

00:13:01.320 but it's a very old very vedic um concept of the right way of doing things uh the dharma being the

00:13:09.820 way and that's something there's modern practitioners that want to call their practice

00:13:15.060 dharma one of one of the individuals is uh a guy frank morales of the um i'm sorry i forget his

00:13:24.180 sanskrit name is sanskrit title but he was of the international dharma society and those folks have

00:13:31.460 been very courteous to the astro folk assembly um the idea of a dharmic faith or a faith that

00:13:37.780 follows that natural order that natural law coincidentally that does connect with that

00:13:42.660 that Raidharun that we spoke of earlier,

00:13:46.200 that tends to relate to Ausatru very well.

00:13:49.280 And so there is some overlap in those communities.

00:13:52.560 If you're referring to Hindus as a group of people,

00:13:55.000 as in Indians, as I've said,

00:13:58.140 the Ausatru Folk Assembly is Pan-Aryan,

00:14:00.680 but I think most people who,

00:14:03.600 there may be small pockets,

00:14:05.600 but most people who are of Indian descent

00:14:09.720 are a very mixed group of people

00:14:11.660 and it wouldn't really fit what we call white.

00:14:14.540 And that's one of the reasons the AFA uses the term white.

00:14:17.340 It's not to be contentious, but it is to be divisive.

00:14:20.460 It's to divide us and not us. 1.00

00:14:23.860 So there may very well be some specifically higher caste Indians 0.93

00:14:29.880 that have maintained that genetic integrity.

00:14:34.200 And we'd certainly consider that on a case by case basis.

00:14:37.720 But like I said, that's typically not what we interact with.

00:14:41.660 Sorry, guys, we're reading over here on the comments.

00:15:01.960 All right.

00:15:04.820 Goethe Daniel Young is asking if I can touch on the subject of oaths and the seriousness to them.

00:15:11.140 Absolutely. Oaths are extremely serious. Just like I was mentioning earlier about the coming of age ceremonies, very often in Ausatru, people are excited by the archaicness of our heroism of the past.

00:15:30.400 A big part of the warrior tradition is making these big grand oaths.

00:15:35.320 So I think we feel like we should or we feel like we ought to make these big, elaborate, grand oaths to things.

00:15:45.200 There's nothing wrong with that as long as we take the oaths with the gravity that's due them.

00:15:51.400 But the concept of a man being only as good as his word is essential to Ausitru.

00:15:57.060 And it's been essential to Ausitru since the very beginning.

00:16:00.400 oaths are extremely extremely important and they should never be made lightly they shouldn't be

00:16:08.300 made frequently there's something that should be made seldomly and when they're made with the

00:16:14.740 greatest of gravity that's one reason that uh we make a point in afa symbols so the afa symbol is

00:16:22.460 three rounds one round to the grand symbol one round to the gods one round to our ancestors

00:16:30.140 And then in the third round, the round for the heroes, that one tends to be the time that people would make oaths.

00:16:37.540 We always tell people beforehand to get those oaths approved by Agothi at the event.

00:16:44.000 And the reason for that is we care so much about oaths that we don't want them casually spoken over the horn.

00:16:50.740 And we want to make sure when people make oaths, they're very committed to what they say.

00:16:56.360 And they don't make oaths that they can't achieve or that we don't believe they're likely to achieve.

00:17:03.920 Some said when you make an oath, especially in a ritual context like that, there's a great power.

00:17:08.660 If you make an oath and then you achieve what you owe to do, that's a greater thing and has more weight and more gravity to it than if you had achieved that without that oath.

00:17:20.740 um but that said i think people when they first get involved in also true maybe they make some

00:17:25.060 really some oaths that they didn't consider they'll oath to someone they didn't know for very

00:17:30.100 long or to a kindred that they don't know very well and instead of hey i'd like to be a part

00:17:36.260 of this for a year and see where it goes hey i'll take an oath to you know participate in this

00:17:42.500 relationship for a certain amount of time with certain conditions very often i oath to be your

00:17:47.460 sworn brother till the end of time and for all eternity and a really really grand oath

00:17:54.100 that maybe when you get to know someone a little bit better or events in your life or events in

00:17:57.940 their life change it's an oath that you may look back on and wish that you didn't make

00:18:02.820 so be very careful when you enter into oaths um and realize that most oaths are a contractual

00:18:12.660 relationship between two parties. It's very seldom a one-sided oath. So it's important if

00:18:18.820 you make an agreement with someone based on a certain set of contexts, that that person maintains

00:18:25.180 the integrity of their side of the oath as well. It's also something to think about is if you make

00:18:30.500 an oath with someone, there can be discussion between the two of you of dissolving that oath

00:18:35.660 in an honorable and amicable way, as opposed to feeling bound to something for all eternity. If

00:18:41.320 both parties agree to diverge on it. This is a subject that any AFA member that wants to go in

00:18:49.400 this in more detail, I'd encourage you to talk to our law speaker, Alan Turnage. This is something

00:18:54.660 that he knows a lot about and has a lot of thoughts on, and I think he has a great insight on it if

00:18:59.340 anybody wants to dig a little bit deeper into it. Next national event coming up. The next national

00:19:10.160 event coming up is going to be Charming of the Plow in Washington State. It's a great event.

00:19:15.420 It's been really amazing the last couple of years. I'm heading up to that. I'm looking very forward

00:19:20.040 to it. It was a lot of fun last year. I know we've got some leadership coming in from different parts

00:19:26.080 of the country. If you can make that, that would be great. You want to contact your local folk

00:19:31.900 builder, then get you squared away, or you want to contact Mason Johnson, mjohnson at runestone.org,

00:19:38.760 he can get you set up and squared away on that that's a very good question um if a legal minor

00:20:02.760 were going to be married would we perform the coming of age ceremony before the wedding

00:20:08.760 and does that ceremony prepare the individual for life events first hopefully and that's one of the

00:20:19.240 ideas i'm with as far as preparation for life events we want there to be a process and not

00:20:25.480 just one day oh i have a kid that's old enough let's get them in the circle and have a ceremony

00:20:30.120 what we'd like to do when i mentioned a book ending starting of the process and completing

00:20:34.600 the process would be to prepare a young man or a young woman for life events and for entering

00:20:43.640 that next phase of their life in a way to where they're prepared mentally, prepared spiritually,

00:20:51.640 and ready to take that on. And I think that the responsibility of preparing our young people

00:20:57.480 for that change of life event is more important than just that ritual.

00:21:02.760 um as far as the if a legal minor were getting married that enters into a legal gray area um

00:21:15.880 where i think i'd like to consult our law speaker alan turnage who's like he's also

00:21:20.840 a practicing attorney he'd know a little bit better about the implications of that

00:21:25.800 um i would tend to think from here that that is a special circumstance where maybe we would

00:21:32.200 accelerate that that coming of age if that life event was going to occur but i think that varies

00:21:39.080 state by state and like i said when we perform a wedding it needs to be a legal wedding we

00:21:44.040 certainly don't practice child weddings so the gray area of someone in that 16 17 category i

00:21:53.080 I think a lot of that depends on the state and the area that they're in and a lot of other factors.

00:22:09.920 Thank you, Mandy. Mandy gives the man's proper name.

00:22:13.060 Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya. And I'm really sorry for mispronouncing your title. No disrespect

00:22:26.840 intended. Like I say, that gentleman and his association have been very supportive and great

00:22:31.560 to us over the years.

00:22:43.060 Zacharoff expresses it a little bit better, I think, than I did about how dharma is, how dharma

00:23:08.220 relates also true is dharmic as Vedic faith is dharmic. Usually we hear the term dharma used

00:23:16.300 in terms of Vedic faith, but it exists as a bigger concept than that. And if you guys would

00:23:23.940 like to know more of that, I'd encourage you to go down that Google rabbit hole and look into that

00:23:29.040 because it's very interesting and I think a very important concept.

00:23:38.220 status of New York's off getting closer every one of these times I promise I want to tell you guys

00:23:45.760 hey we got it today's the day we're not quite there yet but we are very very close um as I've

00:23:52.300 said it's going to be in the state of Florida uh the it's called the property

00:24:00.500 property appraisals are set back in that entire state by several weeks. So we are in the process

00:24:12.500 of making that happen. We're waiting on an appraisal to come through and we should be set

00:24:17.960 and ready to close on that very, very soon. I am just as excited, if not much more so than all of

00:24:25.060 guys to announce us having it but it is in the works uh we're very much in the process

00:24:30.340 and hopefully i'll have something to tell you very soon on that

00:24:42.340 Sorry, guys, still reading over on the side.

00:24:53.860 I want to make sure I'm getting everybody's questions answered or at least addressed.

00:24:57.900 Lord Fafnir, he makes a comment that AFA members that he's met have not been very serious about

00:25:23.220 some of the oaths they've taken, I'm sorry. And he's seen oath members of Kindred's leave

00:25:31.160 in less than a year, and founding members of Kindred's leave as well. That is a huge problem.

00:25:38.440 It's a huge problem in House of Truth generally. It is a problem within the AFA, and it's something

00:25:43.140 that we're trying really hard to fix. I've seen the same thing you've seen, and it's really

00:25:49.120 disappointing and it makes me sad too. It's one of the reasons that we keep trying to make the

00:25:55.720 point. It's a reason that Gauthier Young asked me to address the point because it is very serious

00:26:01.820 and a lot of people take oaths far too lightly. So please be very serious about the oaths that

00:26:10.560 you take and don't take oaths lightly. There's no need to and make sure that the verbiage of

00:26:15.820 oaths that you take is something that you can live by and not setting yourself and the people

00:26:21.100 you oath with up for a failure and a disappointment but uh every time i see anyone break an oath it's

00:26:27.020 it's a sad thing

00:26:39.580 insight into ancestral new year's traditions

00:26:45.820 i suppose biggest one i have a little bit of insight into kind of goes with oaths is the idea

00:26:50.060 of taking uh making new year's resolutions whereas i don't encourage oaths that you can't make

00:26:57.740 or that you can't fulfill i think that this is a really good time of year to make commitments

00:27:02.300 to accomplish things in your own life whereas othing to other people requires a different level

00:27:08.860 of understanding i think making an oath on something that you are capable and willing

00:27:15.180 to put in the effort to accomplish is a very good thing to do this time of year and a lot of

00:27:20.700 different traditions one is is placing the hand on the yule bore and making oaths on that yule

00:27:27.900 bore i know that during yule that's something many of our people participate in um but making

00:27:34.860 new year's resolutions resolving at this time of year to fix some things to make things better

00:27:42.060 and to achieve absolutely one of our traditions absolutely something that we all should do but

00:27:48.060 it's not something that we should do casually even when we just make an oath to ourselves

00:27:53.500 or about ourselves it's important that we follow through and that's one of the reasons

00:27:58.780 of sacralizing it with making a commitment to it is that we're going to accomplish the

00:28:04.220 thing that we say we're going to accomplish and i hope that all of us make resolutions

00:28:09.500 And I hope all of us keep those resolutions this time next year and can share with one another how we've accomplished them and can share our victories together.

00:28:18.240 But I think those are really important.

00:28:31.000 Folk builders, we got a question on what weekend Charming the Plow in Washington will be.

00:28:35.880 I can't look it up right now. If one of you guys can post that over in the side chat.

00:28:39.500 I would really appreciate it.

00:28:41.000 Thank you.

00:28:51.180 All right.

00:28:52.380 So Cody is asking me to explain the 10th noble virtue.

00:28:55.660 The 10th noble virtue is victory.

00:28:59.280 And some of you may not have heard that before, but in the Astro Folk Assembly, we absolutely

00:29:06.240 treat victory as a as a tenth on that list of nine noble virtues and it may not

00:29:14.680 may seem more of an outcome than a principle but it's not it is a virtue within itself to be

00:29:24.220 victorious our ancestors saw someone being a winner as an expression of their luck and luck

00:29:32.080 is built through right action it's built through hymenia it's built through relationships with

00:29:37.440 other people and it's built through a relationship with your ancestors um but it's also built through

00:29:44.560 hard work victory is a sign of you being a virtuous person it's a sign of you being able

00:29:51.360 to accomplish and to overcome sometimes those victories are are grand accomplishments and

00:29:57.280 grand things. When we get in Jordshof, we'll be able to boast of a great victory for Jords and

00:30:05.700 for us. But victories are also smaller accomplishments in your own life, winning,

00:30:13.740 being successful in your relationship, being successful in your family, being successful

00:30:18.500 in your job or in your pursuits. Victories come in all shapes and sizes, but the idea of setting

00:30:26.180 out to accomplish something and succeeding is so very important. It's one of the things

00:30:31.820 that really defines the Ausatru Folk Assembly is we have amazing people that do things,

00:30:40.020 that get out and accomplish things. So often I find myself saying this, but

00:30:46.320 Ausatru isn't about belief in the Aesir. It's about loyalty to the Aesir. It's about an active

00:30:54.480 loyalty it's about doing things belief and intention are great but if they're not followed

00:31:01.600 up with action they're worthless what counts is what we do what we accomplish we are our deeds

00:31:10.560 and we truly believe that there is a virtue in those deeds being victorious

00:31:24.480 Sorry, guys, still reading over here on the side.

00:31:54.480 We do have a lot of new people in the chat tonight. That's great to see. Hopefully

00:32:02.780 it helps having these on a little bit different day of the week. I know having this on the weekend

00:32:06.860 may mean some of our regular folks can't join us tonight. Hopefully everybody gets an opportunity

00:32:12.080 and hopefully I get the opportunity to talk to each of you guys.

00:32:24.480 We're glad to have you tonight like I said we're glad to have all the folks that aren't that don't get to be here usually.

00:32:53.480 Looks like we got a really interesting conversation going on on the side.

00:33:02.640 I'm glad to see that.

00:33:09.180 Sorry, guys, I'm spending a lot of time reading here.

00:33:11.600 Anybody got questions, please go ahead and ask them.

00:33:15.400 Almost done with this chat on the side.

00:33:17.220 I just want to make sure I'm not missing anybody's questions.

00:33:23.480 So, I've got a question. What are the differences and commonalities of the AFA and the Norana Society?

00:33:37.220 I'm trying to think of the best way to put this. And whenever I address questions about the Norana Society, it's really important to me to separate two things.

00:33:48.600 Mark Puryear is is the founder of the Naranis Society and the guy that's put in the majority of the work in the Naranis Society.

00:33:59.660 And I want to start out by saying I and I mean this, I genuinely like Mark.

00:34:06.500 Mark is a really good guy. He has always been great to me, to my family and to the Astro Folk Assembly.

00:34:12.320 I think Mark Puryear is a fantastic guy, not a fan of the Norena Society.

00:34:22.300 It's weird in the traditional sense of the word how so many things tonight are connecting and

00:34:29.120 building upon one another, but just as I talked about that virtue of victory and of deeds,

00:34:36.420 this is my assessment of the norena society but i've not seen activity i don't see a lot

00:34:45.780 of the practice of alsatru going on with those folks what i do see is a lot of

00:34:53.780 endless critiquing endless scholarly debate on things endless

00:35:00.340 pondering what ancient people might have done to do different things but

00:35:06.420 All of those things are cool and interesting, and I'm fascinated by what our ancient ancestors did to practice their faith as much as the next guy.

00:35:17.820 But that is not nearly as important as practicing our faith.

00:35:23.820 Practicing Ausatru is much more important than learning about Ausatru.

00:35:29.680 Practicing our belief, and this is where that virtue of victory comes in.

00:35:34.260 doing Ausatru, engaging in the gift cycle with our gods, worshiping with our folk is so much

00:35:44.460 more important than obscure tidbits of ancient practices by ancient people. And I don't mean

00:35:51.600 any disrespect to our ancestors. I certainly hope that 1,000, 1,500 years from now,

00:35:58.180 So my descendants will be practicing Ausatru in a way that's relevant to their time, to where they're at. And if they don't ever do things like we did in the good old days back in Matt's day, good.

00:36:13.400 If they're doing something that's relevant to what they're doing, if they're honoring their ancestors and their gods in a way that brings them glory and they appreciate, meaning the gods and ancestors, then fantastic.

00:36:28.880 They're accomplishing what they're doing.

00:36:30.400 Alcetru is about doing and not only do I think the Naranis Society spends far too much time critiquing what other people might do or what they think our ancestors may could have should have done by some obscure bit of archaeology.

00:36:46.400 The other thing that I've seen them do, and I've seen this turn in the past probably three or four years, they've become very, very negative.

00:36:54.580 They don't just do all this research, but then they want to criticize those of us who are actually practicing Ausatru in all the ways we're doing it wrong.

00:37:04.720 instead of venturing out into the arena and practicing it themselves or building something

00:37:09.120 they very often as a whole seek to critique and thumb their nose of people who are

00:37:15.360 doing activity. And I take offense to that.

00:37:35.440 Ross, do I think there'll ever be a Sunday Mass equivalent where folk meet regularly to discuss

00:37:40.980 and or listen to a go feed, discuss some specific topics. Absolutely. The more we have,

00:37:49.580 and we already see this a little bit in kindreds and small groups, the more we have more of our

00:37:54.760 folk near Hoffs, and that means folks moving and getting closer to our Hoffs, but it also means

00:38:00.160 as our Hoffs expand and we have more Hoffs, we'll have a better opportunity to get together weekly

00:38:05.600 like that, or even a couple of times a week. And I'd love to see that happen. Right now,

00:38:12.880 our model tends to be much more get together a couple times a month, or maybe even one time a

00:38:17.240 month and, and have one of our, if a bloat, have a sample, have a meal and to celebrate our faith

00:38:23.960 and to worship, it would be great. We do have talks at those very often. But it would be great

00:38:29.860 to be able to get together on a more regular basis. And that's just an issue of proximity.

00:38:34.440 As I've seen, that's getting better all the time, though.

00:38:58.920 Zakharov, I do not like the way the Norana Society interprets a lot of things.

00:39:03.960 um i'm just talking about mark in the sense of him being a good guy and he's he's a nice guy and

00:39:09.880 he's uh he's been very open-handed in uh in dealing very respectful in dealing with us but

00:39:15.400 as far as his theology another point i should have made um on differences between the norena

00:39:21.320 society and the austral folk assembly trying to think of the best way to put this but because

00:39:31.480 so much of their effort is put on finding new obscure bits of lore. I think very often when

00:39:41.280 they find one piece that doesn't fit, they try to mold the whole thing around the obscure exception

00:39:49.500 that they found. Instead of the plethora of things that say to go one way, if they're the

00:39:55.420 only people that found this obscure tidbit to where maybe one guy diverged, they're really

00:40:00.280 quick to embrace that. And I think that's, you know, we all have a tendency to want to have our

00:40:05.400 own special idea how to do something or to feel important because we know some obscure thing that

00:40:11.260 other people don't know. And I think that sometimes they take that too far. And I think that that's

00:40:15.800 something they do tend to do. The other thing that I do think is important. So when I talked about

00:40:21.360 practice and engaging in that gift cycle, in the Ask True Folk Assembly, our relationship with our

00:40:29.040 gods is real and not conceptual. And it's hard to explain this if maybe you haven't had that

00:40:35.420 experience in your life, but there's no question to me about the reality of our gods. And there's

00:40:42.440 no question to me that the Austro-Folk Assembly has built a relationship with these gods and

00:40:50.820 that I'd like to, that these gods are very important in my life. And hopefully I've brought

00:40:57.740 myself to their notice in some in some honorable way um

00:41:04.420 it's really different when you approach religiosity through

00:41:09.660 a relationship scope than through an academic lens

00:41:16.460 if it's all a science project then you're not building a real relationship with the gods you're

00:41:24.080 you're learning about the gods. And I think that sometimes that's one of the things that

00:41:30.000 Norena society does that deviates from the Austro-Folk assembly. They approach the gods 0.99

00:41:34.520 through academics and through studies and through rehearsed things, as opposed to through open-hearted

00:41:40.520 gifting and relationship building between the gods and the folk. And it's much more important

00:41:47.700 to me that I convey to the gods my devotion to them and that I receive from them their blessings

00:41:56.880 or their favor in some way than it is that I become super knowledgeable about obscure

00:42:06.480 bits of their lore but don't have that personal connection in any way with

00:42:11.220 between their energy and mine between their heart and mine um and I think it's just a really

00:42:17.060 different way to approach religiosity i think that being a having a phd in military science

00:42:25.060 is very different than being napoleon i think that studying aussitrew is very different than

00:42:30.820 being aussitrew

00:42:47.060 we absolutely will keep building offs like i said on your top is coming it's coming up very fast

00:43:00.400 very excited about it i'm looking forward to it i think that's going to be

00:43:04.560 starting this next year off in a really really cool way here very soon

00:43:17.060 I think it's an interesting point on the side.

00:43:21.680 Practice of our beliefs will also give knowledge far beyond what can be gained in a book.

00:43:29.980 And I think that's really true.

00:43:32.040 Something that I firmly believe, I think that we are certainly blessed with all of the lore

00:43:36.300 and all of the wisdom that's come down to us from our ancestors.

00:43:40.340 I think that the history, the archaeology, the literature out of Iceland, all of those things are amazing.

00:43:50.280 And we're so very fortunate to have them. But our connection to our gods is deeper than that.

00:43:56.780 And I fully believe that if our ancestors found themselves on the other side of the galaxy someday without any of that,

00:44:04.540 that they could still build a relationship with our gods and they might have different stories

00:44:10.480 or know them by different names. But I think that as long as our folk exist, we can connect

00:44:16.660 with our gods and build a relationship with our divinities. We do that through practice and we do

00:44:22.400 that through that exchange of gifts, be they physical gifts, be they energy, be they love

00:44:27.780 and devotion and worship. That's how we build our faith.

00:44:34.540 Dr. Axford. I would suggest you go first to www.runestone.org. You can learn all the stuff

00:44:57.500 about the Astro Folk Assembly. You can look at our library with our monthly newsletters,

00:45:02.580 a lot of our old publications. I recommend this YouTube channel can show you a lot about our

00:45:09.940 practice and what we do. As far as learning about the lore of Ausatru, there's a ton of different

00:45:19.220 sources and it really depends on what you want to learn for some very basics. Just as a good

00:45:24.560 introduction to modern Ausatru, I'd suggest Ausatru, a native European spirituality by our

00:45:30.720 founder, Stephen McNallan. That's always a really good place to start. I think that the poetic and

00:45:37.840 the prose eddas contain kind of the main broad strokes of our lore, but those can be really

00:45:44.340 difficult to access all in one gulp. So I'd recommend picking through those and

00:45:52.220 going down rabbit holes on what those things mean. I would also recommend for

00:45:58.580 kind of a basic understanding of how our ancestors saw it um the culture of the teutons by wilhelm

00:46:04.960 groenbeck i think that that's a very very useful book and it's one of the one of the books on

00:46:10.120 that i've got the most out of in my time

00:46:12.860 Um, John Ray, I know absolutely nothing about the National Justice Party, so I can't comment on that.

00:46:36.180 I think it's the first I've heard of it.

00:46:42.860 um

00:47:07.580 um

00:47:12.860 Apparently, a lot of folks over inside have heard of the National Justice Party and have

00:47:19.160 have thoughts on that.

00:47:42.240 Okay.

00:47:42.860 Okay, Ox, can you clarify your question a little bit? I'm not sure I follow. You ask over on the

00:47:51.240 side, as far as representing the AFA, what would be a decent choice of symbols and materials? And

00:47:58.260 I'm not sure what you're asking. So if you could clarify that a little bit for me, I'd really like

00:48:02.180 to answer your question. Corey, I wish I had a lot to say about Wisdom of Odin on YouTube. I've heard

00:48:18.600 a lot about them. I've never watched one of their videos, so I really can't comment on it.

00:48:26.160 I have heard in the past when other people were condemning the AFA, they refused to

00:48:31.340 flat out condemn the AFA. But again, I don't, I don't know what I'm talking about it on it. So

00:48:36.640 I really don't want to over speak on that. Is good personal optics a revolt against the modern

00:48:48.420 world? Unfortunately, yes. In the world that we live, so I'll say this, and I think this is really

00:48:54.340 important um society around us certainly in the west has embraced everything antinomian

00:49:07.060 a lot of the strange the bizarre the deformed the grotesque and i think that when we exemplify

00:49:19.620 beauty in be that in the physical form by being in the best shape we can be be that by dressing

00:49:29.120 nice looking nice acting nice with politeness and noble behavior um beautiful art be it you know

00:49:39.400 visual auditory anything else we embrace beauty that you know not only is it a revolt against the

00:49:47.760 modern world, it's the right thing to do. And it sets us apart. And one thing I like about the term

00:49:53.020 Aryan is it applies shining with nobility, not just being noble, but shining with that nobility.

00:50:00.720 Oh, we got our special guest.

00:50:04.860 Daughter Aubrey wanted to join us for a minute. Mandy, thank you for bringing her up here. Look, 0.90

00:50:08.840 it's you. It's I'll tell you what's really neat as kind of an aside. It's cool because, you know,

00:50:16.180 everybody with our tvs now we use uh roku's or fire sticks or whatever else it's neat to have

00:50:23.940 this on the on the big screen downstairs and for her to get to watch it and see herself and see

00:50:29.460 your dad on the tv screen um it shocks me that she's growing up as fast as she is she's getting

00:50:36.580 big but uh yeah that's a little bit of a side um i suppose having little beautiful daughters

00:50:44.580 is a revolt against the modern world too so yeah good optics looking nice and being classy

00:50:51.380 is always a really good and advisable thing we do and it represents the afa very well

00:50:58.580 All right, guys.

00:51:11.580 Still checking in on the side here.

00:51:18.800 Sorry, guys.

00:51:19.640 I lost where we were at.

00:51:28.580 what is my uh general opinion of epstein and maxwell and that whole mess it's gross and i can't

00:51:47.700 i can't plumb the depths of what all's going on in that situation um

00:51:58.740 i don't know what's fact and what's fiction i know

00:52:03.700 it's very hard to me for me to believe when stuff gets when stuff that's very very scandalous all

00:52:12.560 of a sudden gets disappeared and we don't hear about it again that certainly makes me suspicious

00:52:16.880 of things and anything that that exploits and abuses children is abominable no matter who you

00:52:25.560 are it's a terrible thing I don't want to go into the whatever theories about those two people but

00:52:33.280 a little bit I do know is is disgusting and should offend all of us the fact that they're connected

00:52:39.600 to so many people who do have power in our society is also very very concerning and I think that

00:52:44.840 concerns most of us who know any bit about it. So what are some of the goals for the AFA in 2022?

00:53:06.380 It's a complicated question because I don't, I don't always want to

00:53:11.380 want to show the cards when there's still some things out that we're that we're waiting on we

00:53:17.240 always got a lot of things in the back burner that we're working on and that we're doing

00:53:20.440 um your top is is huge getting that establishing that doing the dedication building that region

00:53:28.280 having a half in florida is going to be a big big game changer for us um i can't go into super

00:53:35.540 detail on it just because we don't know and don't have it figured out yet and there's a lot of

00:53:39.260 variables. But, you know, certainly once we get in your top, there's also the consideration of

00:53:45.320 phrase off that will come after. I can't guarantee anything about that in 2022. But it's something

00:53:52.680 that we're certainly looking at and planning on not just acquiring your top, but figuring out how

00:53:58.680 how quickly and how responsibly we can go ahead and pay that off is going to be an interesting

00:54:04.920 challenge in the coming year um i know we're continuing to watch some growth a lot of what

00:54:12.760 i want to see happen in 2022 depends on some things with borders and with international

00:54:19.560 rules in response to to people's various things that they're doing labeled under the the covid

00:54:27.640 umbrella i know a lot of folks still can't travel internationally but we'd love to see and

00:54:33.800 strengthen a lot of our international membership i know it's been very hard for our folks in canada

00:54:38.200 not being able to cross the border regularly that's something if that changes in 2022 we have

00:54:43.320 some things we'd like to do certainly love to see some better support for our folks in in europe and

00:54:50.440 our folks in australia and again finding out what what the governments around the world do with

00:54:56.280 different things is going to determine a lot of that what i would like to see is hit a new membership

00:55:01.720 high in 2022 we've been growing tremendously not just numerically but in quality in this last year

00:55:08.280 a big part of that is we've had a some of you guys may have noticed we've had a big

00:55:12.200 influx of people volunteering to be apprentice fold builders and we've had some amazing people

00:55:18.600 come through and do amazing things we've got some really thriving afa communities where we haven't

00:55:23.160 had before so we're very excited about that and got another side project that we're working on

00:55:30.040 that i think you guys will be pretty excited about but i want to find out a little bit more

00:55:33.400 about some details before i before i throw it out there but i'm pretty excited about

00:55:37.400 what we're going to accomplish together in 2022.

00:56:07.400 sorry guys when i start scrolling over on the side it jumps sometimes so i go back and i miss

00:56:26.920 something so how exactly do we plan to bring all like-minded whites under both the gods in a single

00:56:32.980 banner um this i i don't pretend that that's going to get all of our people to come home to our gods

00:56:44.420 and to join us to focus on me but i'd like to think that it does um it certainly is bringing

00:56:49.540 people in numbers and it's there's a lot of people that are also true today that weren't this time

00:56:56.420 last year there's a whole lot of our folk that are united under the afa banner than there was

00:57:02.500 last year. So I'm going to keep doing the very best I can to build the Oss True Folk Assembly,

00:57:08.560 to one thing that I think helps for that to be successful is by having real things. And when I

00:57:15.520 say real is probably misleading, but tangible things. Are Hoffs being physical, where people

00:57:22.080 can go into a physical place of worship, have an address, and as silly as this may sound,

00:57:27.360 have a marker on Google Maps that you can type in, you know, Odin's Hoff, Thor's Hoff, or Baldur's Hoff,

00:57:34.800 and you can get directions to a place where we're worshiping our gods. That's huge. And it's done a

00:57:41.280 lot to legitimize what we're doing, not only in the eyes of our members, but also in the eyes of

00:57:47.680 their family and their co-workers and other people in these expanding circles that get to see that

00:57:54.060 our faith is sincere, that what we do in the Theostry Folk Assembly is a real sincere thing.

00:58:01.740 And in the communities that we're in, those folks get to see that we're a force of good,

00:58:06.020 that we got good looking, smiling families doing good things, worshiping our gods,

00:58:13.620 and building healthy lives together in those communities. I think the more we do that,

00:58:19.340 the more of our people will come home, the more of our people will come back to our gods,

00:58:22.880 and more of our people will join under the trihorn banner wow this is far behind i'm reading stuff

00:58:37.520 from just when uh when aubrey came on uh you guys have been great i'm glad oh wow it's almost seven

00:58:43.280 okay time is flying tonight people have had some really good questions and good stuff they want to

00:58:47.600 talk about. Okay. What are my thoughts on anonymity versus using our own real names? Do I think

00:59:10.060 there's a level of being personally public where that line is crossed and can no longer be

00:59:16.840 anonymous. So this is, I think a lot of us have really strong feelings on this. I want to start

00:59:25.380 out first. I get it. It's very, I don't know. I get it. I get that there are many reasons why

00:59:37.500 people would want to be very anonymous with their faith, with their interaction with the

00:59:43.940 true folk assembly with a lot of things we live in a very scary world i think that we've always

00:59:50.900 lived in a scary world but i think that the the fears are different now i think people are very

00:59:56.660 scared of information gathering i think uh folks are scared certainly of doxing of being shunned

01:00:04.020 for political wrong think certainly in the west that's a huge problem that we face now with this

01:00:10.100 deplatforming and cancel culture that we're in i get it folks who've built careers are scared

01:00:17.140 of losing careers folks who have young families are scared for safety i think if everybody's

01:00:24.660 honest folks are scared of being shunned by their friends and family or being thought of

01:00:30.980 as being politically correct or being called names i think a lot of people are scared just have eyes

01:00:37.460 on um i don't like that but it's real and it's honest uh and i do understand that

01:00:48.900 i think that as much as we can we should not be anonymous we should live our life

01:00:55.940 live our faith live our values in the open with our name and our face associated with it

01:01:02.180 I think that means we need to be careful of the way we say things and the way we present ourselves.

01:01:09.180 I think that when we are practicing openly and doing things openly, it's there's a much bigger, much bigger need to be articulate, to be noble in our speech, noble in how we present ourselves and to be mindful of that.

01:01:29.180 that that's something we should be doing anyway and a truth that is uncomfortable for a lot of

01:01:35.660 people is the more of us are out there living in the open standing by our values standing by who

01:01:43.180 we are and what we believe in we pave the way for other people to be comfortable doing that

01:01:49.180 when there's a significant number of people doing that there's safety in that

01:01:53.420 when it's just one guy out by himself it's hard there's two or three it's that much easier

01:01:58.140 it's two or 300 even easier still when there's thousands tens of thousands millions it becomes

01:02:05.100 much easier for those who come after us to be able to to live authentically um i found in my own life

01:02:12.220 that the more the more i unify who i am to where there's not you know i'm this guy around my

01:02:21.500 friends i'm this guy around my family this guy over here this guy around these people the more

01:02:27.820 it's holistic and that all the parts of my life synergize the happier i am the more successful

01:02:36.460 i've been able to be in my life with my family with my friends um and just personally i think

01:02:43.020 there is absolutely an esoteric truth that the more authentically you exist and the more courageous

01:02:50.140 you are with being honest about who you are and what you believe and presenting that well

01:02:57.740 there's a certain luck benefit that comes with that and i think we all benefit from that

01:03:02.620 so as much as we can i think that being open with who we are and what we stand for is extremely

01:03:09.580 important it is courageous and courage is certainly one of the noblest of our virtues

01:03:15.180 um so i'm not calling anybody out that feels the need to be anonymous i get it

01:03:21.060 but each and every one of you that's not anonymous that's proud that puts your name out and says here

01:03:27.520 i am this is who i am this is what i believe this is what i stand for i salute you for that

01:03:32.580 and i think that's the way to go and i'd love to see as many of our people possible do that

01:03:36.480 Okay, that's an interesting question.

01:03:58.180 um if a woman is having trouble holding a pregnancy what can we what can we do spiritually to help

01:04:08.520 i'm not sure if i understand the question but i think the answer is the same

01:04:14.520 um but what can we do spiritually to help

01:04:20.580 there's a number of different healing healing rites that get practiced I think within the

01:04:32.280 outs true folk assembly if you contact Githya Katie Erickson our circle of air is a kind of

01:04:40.440 a healing prayer group that we have that helps people I know that we did a very powerful healing

01:04:47.460 at winter nights a few years ago for a member's daughter, a young daughter who's going through

01:04:53.040 some surgeries. And I can't say definitively it's because of that, but that situation worked out

01:05:00.420 very well. So I think there's power in that. There's power in shared intention. I think it's

01:05:06.820 really important to get folks that know that person or that can connect to that person in

01:05:14.220 some way, know their name, a picture, have some interaction to where there's a strong intent.

01:05:20.360 I think there's a lot of healing rites that can be done. One of the, I know I'm kind of repeating

01:05:25.360 myself on that because it's really hard to get into specifics. I think people call upon that

01:05:29.600 healing in really different ways. I think certainly approaching and invoking the ancestors for help

01:05:34.780 that person's particular ancestors. I think that's valuable. I think approaching the gods,

01:05:41.620 especially Frigga's Handmaiden Heir is a really important thing to do.

01:05:49.380 I know that Ur or Urus, that runic galler and runic chanting that way,

01:05:57.340 especially when done by people connected with their intent, is valuable.

01:06:01.860 That's typically one thing I do when I do a healing rite,

01:06:05.400 is a group galler while we're each physically touching one another

01:06:10.000 and gauldering that that ulu's primal healing strength i think that helps um so i think those

01:06:18.480 are some of the things that we can do but i think boiling it down the more people with the more

01:06:25.360 focused attention and calling in help from the other side of the veil combining those

01:06:33.280 three things in the best way that you can i think has the best chance of success

01:06:37.200 I know it sounds a little a little bit out there but I've seen it I've seen it work and I believe

01:06:45.540 that it does work and if you want help with that like I said if you reach out to Githya Katie

01:06:51.600 Erickson that's going to be your best bet hopefully somebody can put her information over in the side 1.00

01:06:56.640 window for you as far as her email address but she runs our circle of air and a lot of the women in 1.00

01:07:02.220 We asked you focus and we do some healing rites that way.

01:07:32.220 Sorry, guys, I'm reading through the chat.

01:07:45.880 It looks like you guys are having a good discussion.

01:07:47.440 I appreciate that.

01:08:02.220 all right guys let's get a little bit after seven here if anybody has any last minute questions or

01:08:11.640 things they want to get my take on please let me know over inside and I will be happy to answer

01:08:16.580 those if not I'm going to be wrapping it up here pretty soon it has been it's been fantastic

01:08:22.600 talking with you guys I'm very excited to start 2022 with you guys very excited for the things

01:08:30.420 we have in store. It's been a great conversation tonight, and I really appreciate you guys all

01:08:36.560 taking the time to join me. All right, guys. Well, I wish you all a fantastic year. Get started on

01:08:54.060 the right foot. Go out there and make victory happen, and we will talk to you guys next month.

01:09:00.420 Hail the gods, hail the folk, hail the AFA.

Asatru Folk Assembly - January 02, 2022

January 2022 Live Discussion

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