Asatru Folk Assembly - Living a Bright Life #afa #asatru #asatrufolkassembly #shorts

Could the story of Baldur's death be a warning about the dangers of over-attempting to protect one's children? Is this a good or bad way to interpret the story? In this episode, we discuss this and more.

00:00:00.000 Our next question, could the story of Baldur's death be a warning of the dangers of overprotecting one's children?

00:00:08.480 If she hadn't made everything promise not to hurt him, he wouldn't have felt invulnerable and no one would have thrown anything at him.

00:00:18.120 Is this a good or a bad way to interpret the story?

00:00:21.800 What do you think, Swan?

00:00:23.200 The path you take to avoid your fate often brings you to it.

00:00:26.160 And this is, again, I think this is an interesting debate amongst the folk in relation to willful action or fatalism, as it's often referred to on the other side, where it doesn't matter what you do, your fate is your fate, or is it a certain mixture of will and fate and things like that.

00:00:46.540 I think that also was part of the real drive of the story. And so I think it's ultimately a warning, a warning about in the face of danger, we laugh oftentimes. I think culturally for most people on this call will know what I mean by we laugh in the face of danger, we meet our end smiling and we go forth in glory. And that is culturally an aspect of our lives.

00:01:14.740 um this is kind of saying be careful about hubris versus thumos and i'm using the greek words because

00:01:23.080 those are a little bit easier to kind of um like allocate on on the internet if you look up you

00:01:29.280 know and again that's very hellenic too so there's a an overarching uh concept of thumos is about

00:01:38.840 bravery and about honor and about living a bright life hubris is when you take it too far and you

00:01:46.480 um you fail wisdom and so you know courageousness tempered by wisdom is thumos and

00:01:56.460 courageousness without it is hubris in a lot of ways so um yeah it was i would say it would be a

00:02:03.320 warning i don't know if it's necessarily a warning to a mother um again but the overall

00:02:09.120 arching point of the story is is that we must do all that we can because the option to do nothing

00:02:14.660 is is was seen far worse so do all that you can but um when when the gods are throwing things at

00:02:22.340 balder that is definitely a painting of that kind of hubris moment that allows for the deceitfulness

00:02:30.620 of loki to sneak in to find the blind and to guide his hand and he searched for the gentle

00:02:39.360 mistletoe that that frail and tiny and and and joyous piece the child of the oak and

00:02:46.060 the the one thing that wouldn't do any harm does the greatest harm there's a lot of things we can

00:02:51.980 see in like the grim fairy tales and even in like slavic lore and hellenic lore there's a lot of

00:02:56.940 that, those

Asatru Folk Assembly - October 06, 2025

Living a Bright Life #afa #asatru #asatrufolkassembly #shorts

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