Asatru Folk Assembly - Matt Flavel on Full Haus 2021

00:00:00.000 Jesus or nothing is the religious binary that most of our people accept Christian or irreligious is 0.57

00:00:09.360 perhaps a nicer way of putting it that false dichotomy is understandable to an extent either

00:00:16.080 you subscribe to the faith of our more recent forefathers or you throw out the baby Jesus with

00:00:22.080 the bathwater concluding that the whole concept of an omniscient omnipotent celestial supreme

00:00:28.080 being is hokum but there is a third way one in keeping with our glorious history and also true

00:00:35.120 to our people and we're delighted to welcome a representative of the asatru folk assembly on this

00:00:40.880 week to dig into their faith their project and good deeds in a fallen world and uh yeah i'm excited

00:00:49.520 to have our have our guest on here so we'll move on to him with that our very special and very

00:00:55.680 patient guest he is pardon me here i'm going to give it the best shot i can the awesome ulcer

00:01:01.280 jagathi of the asatru folk assembly a very white friendly pagan or volkish faith we'll get into

00:01:08.400 what exactly it is and the proper ways to describe it but i can't wait to dig into that matthew

00:01:14.000 flavel welcome to full house sir under davion hey guys thank you very much for having me

00:01:20.160 you bet uh gave you some questions in advance sam and smasher are going to pepper you our

00:01:24.960 objective here is to learn as much as possible about what you guys believe in and what you're

00:01:30.800 doing. I know you got a big network already and you've been around for a while, but I'm sure a

00:01:36.180 ton of our listeners either have preconceived notions about what it is or perhaps like myself 0.96

00:01:42.120 are largely ignorant. So we're just going to get into all of it and get to it. But of course, 0.92

00:01:47.580 your first time on Full House and we always ask first time guests, what's your ethnicity

00:01:52.000 and your fatherhood status, religion, is going to come throughout the course of the show.

00:01:58.460 White man, I think getting more specific, most of my people are from England.

00:02:03.240 Most recent folks that came over to the New World are from France and Switzerland.

00:02:10.360 All right.

00:02:10.960 And you're married, have kids?

00:02:12.640 Yeah, I'm married, and I have a beautiful little baby girl that's 17 months old now.

00:02:17.780 Oh, man.

00:02:18.800 Awesome.

00:02:19.560 Congratulations.

00:02:20.440 You're looking to have more?

00:02:22.000 We'll see. My wife and I didn't know if it'd really be in the cards for us. We both

00:02:26.320 kind of waited too long in life. Both of us are 40 now, so we're really happy we were

00:02:31.680 able to have her. We'd love to have some more, but we'll see how that goes.

00:02:37.620 Sure thing. Totally understand. Yeah, 40 gang here as well, sir. So Godspeed to you.

00:02:42.240 I hope you do have more, but hey, you got that one precious babe. Yeah, exactly. Count

00:02:46.880 your blessings. And what were you raised religiously? We know you're probably something

00:02:51.660 different now or maybe well I wasn't I think in the most broad possible sense

00:02:57.780 I guess culturally Protestant Christian just because my parents had to put

00:03:02.620 something down on a piece of paper but sure it wasn't really a very active part

00:03:06.900 of my upbringing that way so you came to your current faith around when in life

00:03:14.880 So I had a brief period. I've always been a person with a spiritual need and didn't

00:03:23.060 really know my options. So my aunt was a very active Jehovah's Witness. I say was, I assume

00:03:28.720 she still is a very active Jehovah's Witness. And I got involved with that for a couple

00:03:33.700 of years, towards the end of high school. I found Ossetru in, let's say, 2001.

00:03:41.200 okay how'd you find it um so i uh i tried really hard with with christianity i i tried you know i

00:03:53.440 read my bible through i think three different times cover to cover to try to get you know try

00:03:58.480 to force the square peg into the round hole and uh i came to the conclusion that the biblical god

00:04:05.600 wasn't i think person's a strange word to use but just wasn't a very good person in my

00:04:13.760 understanding of that and i wanted to separate from it it was very scary because i didn't know

00:04:18.100 what the other options were right but you know i was a historically minded person i know that

00:04:22.960 our people had you know had religion before jesus came you know from the middle east to europe so i

00:04:31.120 I looked back into what that was, and I thought I was going to be the only, you know, weirdo out there doing this, but I was, I had, you know, Googled it at the time, just to find out, I was thinking I would get some historical information from historical sources, and I found this thing called the Astro Folk Assembly and Steve McNallan, and I saw, you know, regular folks that were practicing this faith, you know, right now, and it was fascinating, and once I got hooked, I've never really let go, it, it was,

00:05:00.140 we always say in the AFA, it's like coming home. That's one of our catchphrases or whatever,

00:05:05.300 but it really is that. It absolutely felt like coming home, and a lot of our members

00:05:09.160 described that as well. Fair enough. And before we get on to the faith itself,

00:05:15.020 your position, Alshur Jargothi, apologies for the pronunciation. What is that? Is that like

00:05:20.500 a high priest, or are you the top dog? Yeah. Yes. All right. Simply yes. Now, the word itself,

00:05:27.980 alzharjar gothi so it basically means like alzharjar harjar meaning warrior and so like

00:05:36.940 every warrior's gothi and gothi means like god man it's from the same root as the goths um gothic

00:05:44.780 and god for that matter all right very cool so my conception of afa is pagan the old gods uh odin

00:05:55.900 and Thor, and I always wondered whether it was more of a cultural movement or whether

00:06:02.020 your flock, your members, were true believers, actually believed in the divinity of those

00:06:07.840 very ancient and historic beliefs that so many of our ancestors held. So now's your chance to

00:06:14.720 describe it in your own words. I'm sure some of our Christian listeners will maybe get a little

00:06:20.560 bit triggered so bear with us folks we're trying to get uh the the straight dope from from the

00:06:26.800 chieftain himself so go ahead have at it matt what do you guys believe in and why well so i can't i

00:06:32.440 can't promise you that every member of the austral folk assembly has a deep and sincere faith i hope

00:06:37.360 that they're on the road to that i can certainly say our leadership myself very much included

00:06:43.080 without a doubt believe completely in the existence and reality of our gods and in

00:06:50.040 the relationship that we have built and are building with them um i think it's very easy

00:06:56.640 for people who don't who haven't been raised with that and haven't had experiences that way

00:07:03.360 to picture our gods in these very you know comic book fairy tale images sure and there's so much

00:07:11.280 more to it than that i don't believe that thor is you know big buff dude with a red beard driving a

00:07:18.000 goat chair i think that that image tells me about the great divinity that is thor it helps me wrap

00:07:25.000 my head around it but our gods are so much more than you know the the images and myths of our

00:07:32.400 ancestors they're they're the supreme forces of consciousness of our of our folk of our race

00:07:39.480 and through ritual and interaction

00:07:42.740 I absolutely have seen the reality

00:07:44.680 of them in my own life and in the life 1.00

00:07:46.900 of the Astro Folk Assembly 0.98

00:07:47.980 how do you

00:07:49.720 feel about the concept

00:07:52.720 that you know

00:07:54.240 particularly in pagan religions that there

00:07:56.760 is some sort of ancestral

00:07:58.980 hero that

00:08:00.800 then became

00:08:01.880 part of our mythology

00:08:04.040 I think

00:08:07.580 i think that's an easy way for people to have their cake and eat it too and try to

00:08:15.240 rationalize things that don't fit neatly in what they typically can rationalize or what they can

00:08:22.320 touch i don't preclude the idea of a hero apotheosing and becoming becoming more and

00:08:28.500 ascending to something you know like a lesser lesser g godhood but i certainly don't think

00:08:34.480 that's the root of of all of the great gods of you know arian creation and when you mentioned

00:08:42.440 the gods matt uh which ones are you referring to i i don't know if there's a thousand of them or

00:08:47.240 if we're just talking about the big ones but uh give us a little more information on the uh yeah

00:08:51.520 the pantheon itself well so in the austral folk assembly we we worship our gods under the you know

00:08:58.040 i guess the norse names for our gods the old norse names um the what you would think of is those very

00:09:06.520 specific divinities goes back much much older than that to you know neolithic times to glacial times

00:09:14.440 to hyperborea um i think that there's a common thread and a common face of some of this godhood

00:09:22.840 to all indo-european or arian religions and i think that they're expressed a very specific way

00:09:29.240 in uh germanic nations and by the time we got really in-depth writing on it in the in the nordic

00:09:36.600 countries all right well that's if you look across the uh different groups different uh pantheons

00:09:47.880 you know you have a lot of the same stories with just different uh different proper nouns applied

00:09:56.200 to them absolutely as our people migrated our stories and our the way that specific groups of

00:10:03.800 our people related to our gods became different over thousands of years but this is a very ancient

00:10:11.000 aryan faith that i think is common to all of our folk

00:10:16.680 what uh would you describe it what's the most succinct way to describe it pagan folkish

00:10:22.600 yeah i'd go with the folkish pagan absolutely it meets the dictionary definition but that's got so

00:10:28.680 many trappings of degeneracy in today's world that you know we we have very little in common

00:10:36.680 with if you just searched for pagan groups um those people and us have very few things in common 0.64

00:10:41.960 sure and that's something that i think people probably assume right that this you guys are

00:10:46.580 like in costumes and weirdos and neckbeards and i hope they don't assume that i've tried every way

00:10:51.920 i know how to break that assumption and i continue to try i hope they don't think that but i'm sure

00:10:56.600 some folks without a you know a context for it probably do start that way thinking that

00:11:00.780 very good uh and where would you point people who want to learn more about this you have a website

00:11:06.480 Is there a one Old Norse holy book that is primary?

00:11:13.000 No.

00:11:13.880 I mean, the prose and poetic eddas are certainly a really rich source for the high points of our lore.

00:11:21.860 But I think that it encompasses the traditions of our folk back to the beginning.

00:11:28.300 There's a lot of history and archaeology involved to getting a well-rounded view.

00:11:31.640 But to understand the modern religion of Ausatru, I'd say go to our website, www.ronestone.org, and also check us out on YouTube.

00:11:44.240 We're still on YouTube, and we've got a lot of followers there, and we've got quite a bit of content there that goes a little bit more in-depth.

00:11:53.120 And you guys are recognized, you know, not that we care whether the government recognizes it or not, but you have one.

00:11:59.760 uh i don't what were court battles or did you have to struggle to gain legitimacy from people

00:12:05.420 you know against people who either thought it was racist or uh sort of a front you know just

00:12:10.180 a way to be racially exclusionary no i mean folks don't necessarily like it but we've always been

00:12:15.900 treated fairly in that regard by the government we got our uh 501c3 acknowledgement from the irs

00:12:23.900 in 1995.

00:12:27.080 So we've been around

00:12:28.080 for 27 years now, just about.

00:12:30.920 All right, and you have

00:12:32.060 flock all over the country, but you have

00:12:34.040 a few, you call them 1.00

00:12:35.900 hoffs, right? Not churches or

00:12:37.760 parishes. 1.00

00:12:39.720 Yeah, hoffs are basically a house of worship

00:12:42.080 and we have three

00:12:43.980 of those. We're actually well

00:12:46.000 underway to getting our fourth one

00:12:47.840 at present.

00:12:50.200 And what is,

00:12:51.660 I guess if you had to boil it all down, it's a religion, it's a faith. So it's obviously about

00:13:00.120 connecting people to something higher, something greater. But I assume it's also very cultural

00:13:04.920 and that your fellow faithful view themselves as a family of sorts. Is that fair?

00:13:11.600 Absolutely. The family aspect of it is extremely important. And again, it's not just kind of

00:13:19.800 something we say it's really something you feel when you when you get together

00:13:22.920 with other AFA members it's certainly something that that I feel and you know

00:13:27.420 that's certainly what we aim for it's it's absolutely cultural but what we

00:13:32.060 really want to get away from is a tendency that we've seen out there and

00:13:36.120 in other faiths of it being you know just something they do on Sunday and

00:13:39.780 also true should affect who you are throughout all of your life not just

00:13:43.380 when you're in ritual or at a religious event and how about some of those you

00:13:49.500 You know, when you think Christianity, you think the Ten Commandments as a moral guidepost.

00:13:53.980 So what are some of yours?

00:13:55.140 Do you have a golden rule and that sort of thing?

00:13:59.060 The essential practices for someone who's in your faith?

00:14:03.460 As far as a set of rules, much less thou shalt do this, thou shalt not do that.

00:14:15.460 What we have is the nine noble virtues, and we've got much more than that, but these are kind of nine concepts that encapsulate a lot of what it means to live true and also true.

00:14:29.640 And those are courage, discipline, fidelity, honor, hospitality, industriousness, perseverance, self-reliance, truth.

00:14:43.640 And then the AFA would believe in a tenth noble virtue of victory.

00:14:48.100 All right. Very good. I like it.

00:14:50.860 Now, I'm sure that a lot of guys and gals listening to this would be like,

00:14:55.300 this all sounds great, but I can't see myself sincerely believing in Odin or Thor or the old

00:15:02.420 gods. Would those people, would they be sort of like auxiliaries? Could they be friends with your

00:15:08.800 flock, but not real members? What's that dynamic like? A lot of people start there. I think a lot

00:15:17.620 of our folks start there. We got kind of two dynamics now, and it was different years ago,

00:15:23.160 But now, you know, there's the people that come to Ausitru from Christianity, but there's a lot of people who come to Ausitru from atheism or at the very least agnosticism to where they don't have, they're not people of faith before they become Ausitru.

00:15:38.540 Spiritual, not religious?

00:15:40.900 A lot of people like to say that, and I think that's just people being noncommittal. 0.97

00:15:45.020 Yeah, no, I agree.

00:15:47.900 Really, what we would ask before you join the AFA is that you open yourself to it.

00:15:52.280 I don't expect you to be the most devout follower of the gods when you haven't built that relationship.

00:15:57.600 It's very much about building relationships.

00:15:59.740 But what I've always seen is when people come and they're open to it,

00:16:05.520 when they reach out and say, hey, if you guys are here, I'm listening, let's go.

00:16:10.620 One of the most beautiful things I've seen as a gothi is that moment when it becomes real to someone.

00:16:18.140 And you can see it in their eyes.

00:16:19.640 um when you do a ritual and it doesn't hit everybody at the same time but even people

00:16:26.680 who think they believe you can catch that moment when like oh wow this you know it's like when you

00:16:34.580 go hunting every stump is is what you're hunting for until you see the animal and then you wonder

00:16:39.560 how you could have been so easily fooled before when they see it and they're like oh okay this is

00:16:45.160 real sure that's really a special thing can we circle back to the nine noble virtues 0.58

00:16:52.600 of course um so there's what the oh dick right that it's a similar set of uh rules i guess right

00:17:04.920 and how do you how do you feel about them do you guys use those well so the nine noble virtues is 0.83

00:17:09.800 kind of a commonly agreed upon up until there's some lefties very recently that take issue with

00:17:15.880 it which makes it even better um yeah the nine noble virtues have been kind of agreed upon by

00:17:23.160 most uh also true organizations like i said until very recently um certainly i believe they were

00:17:29.160 developed in large part by uh stoba in in the odenic right um yeah so those lists are very very

00:17:39.000 similar i think there's some people that have it in a slightly different order but that's pretty

00:17:43.320 much common across the board in the history of modern house of true smasher we were talking

00:17:49.480 before we hit the record button and i i figured that this was up his alley and indeed it was

00:17:55.160 smasher was there anything that uh you know you're not a member of course but is was there anything

00:18:00.440 that turned you off or gave you pause are you still uh interested and it's just a question of

00:18:09.000 The biggest challenge, I think, for Pagan or Asatru curious people would be you don't grow up with any, you know, knowledge of, you know, any of the old faiths, basically.

00:18:28.200 You learn some really surface level garbage or you get like the Marvel DC version of, you know, Thor.

00:18:38.840 And so you have this, you know, basically you get this huge barrier to entry because it's all these foreign or seemingly foreign words and you don't understand any of it.

00:18:52.400 uh maybe you grew up in the church and even if you aren't in the church any longer it's like

00:18:57.360 you still you know all of this stuff about christianity uh culturally i mean we're not

00:19:02.560 really christian but we're still kind of you know culturally christian in a way

00:19:08.400 at least from a knowledge base i think people you know just know a lot more about christianity than

00:19:13.120 they do about any type of pagan or old faith um so that was i would get a bit of a barrier to entry

00:19:22.800 uh and i mean i've read and i'm certainly better than like i was years ago when i first heard

00:19:28.560 about the afa uh but for me it's mostly been a time thing where it's just like i was in the army

00:19:35.680 and didn't have any time uh then i had a set of twins and didn't have any time and now i have

00:19:41.680 another set of twins but we recently met uh someone in the afa and so having somebody local

00:19:49.440 to you kind of makes access a little easier and sure hopefully we can jump start jump start that

00:19:56.880 yeah i'm sincerely curious about it obviously it's not on my to-do list yet but uh i'm leaving

00:20:02.960 that door open to be candid now sam on the other hand said that these are all a bunch of heretics 0.99

00:20:07.840 who deserve to be burned before before we record it that's true 0.85

00:20:14.880 yes sam what are you thinking about this does this make you uncomfortable do you respect it

00:20:18.960 grudgingly what's your take on all this uh no no um yeah as the resident christian on this show i

00:20:25.840 i have been waiting to chime in waiting for the right moment you know this if you uh read the

00:20:33.600 new testament this uh very thing was a a controversy because christ said oh do you not

00:20:42.240 realize that that the scriptures say ye are gods you know and so this thing of uh honoring the

00:20:48.880 ancestors and um you know the gods so to speak small g gods uh this is in the bible it's in our

00:20:58.960 faith and um i was just at a beautiful wedding uh over this last weekend one of our dear comrades

00:21:06.560 locally here was married and was officiated by an afa guy i'm not going to say his name on the air

00:21:14.800 uh and maybe we talk a little more about that uh later but um you know he he hearkened to that

00:21:22.720 in his remarks about uh the ancestors and stuff like that and uh you know i i don't think anybody

00:21:29.520 have could have a problem with that but um as the resident christian here i would like to to

00:21:37.120 comment on this you know for the sake of the christians or for the sake of anybody i guess

00:21:41.520 who's listening but uh you know um in in the scriptures in our new testament it says

00:21:50.160 be a doer of the word and not just an ineffectual hearer and i have had a lot of experience through

00:21:57.760 the years with these um asatru or pagan types and these are people i don't know matt extremely well

00:22:08.000 but uh i i have the idea that if we sat and talked just like i sat and talked with this

00:22:14.160 uh man that was officiating the wedding we're on the same page we have the same morals

00:22:20.800 you know as a christian whether this person exactly agrees with the things i believe in

00:22:28.720 the thing is he's living to the things i believe in and he's doing the things i believe in so in

00:22:34.960 that way if you're a christian and you and you are wondering about this look at it in that respect

00:22:42.640 that uh you know our people have the law written in their heart and so we we uh have this inclination

00:22:50.640 to to be a certain way and and uh matt and and his people they have that same inclination to be that

00:22:58.160 way uh that's the way i would put it as far as a question to matt uh you know for just speaking

00:23:06.320 for myself i am uh unabashed white nationalist and uh i don't know if the does the afa take a very

00:23:16.960 explicit position like we are for white people per se or or do you express it more in this

00:23:25.200 these spiritual terms you know uh affirming these ideas about uh odin and these different different

00:23:34.320 characters and things like that um i don't know can you can you say just a little bit about that

00:23:41.840 how how explicitly white nationalists argue come yeah and if i and if i could piggyback off that

00:23:49.520 real quick too sam yeah i mean at least in the news and in what the enemy describes you as you 0.96

00:23:54.320 know of course you're you're terrible horrible racial racially exclusionary you know what budding 0.86

00:24:00.480 or crypto white supremacist but but it does sound like you are you got away with this is a faith for 0.97

00:24:06.000 people of european descent so yeah talk talk about race and afa if you would bet well we didn't get

00:24:12.000 away with anything because we're not doing anything wrong it's absolutely an ethnic faith and it's 0.89

00:24:16.880 absolutely just for white people and we put that in our uh in our um declaration of purpose and in 0.93

00:24:24.880 our statement of ethics to where it's clear um it's an ethnic faith in the same way that many

00:24:30.440 native american faiths are ethnic faiths yeah honestly most religions that aren't abrahamic

00:24:37.300 in origin are ethnically based and ethnically exclusive and so in that sense absolutely now

00:24:44.820 as far as nationalism goes well we're a we're an international uh church we have members around

00:24:50.540 the world and we're a religion and not a political movement so you know i don't know if i'd throw

00:24:56.460 that on it but we are certainly uh for our folk which we define as white people sure and now how

00:25:04.140 about i'm not trying to be cute here what about southern meds or uh those from the levant i assume

00:25:11.020 that not you know not all europeans believed in odin and the old norse god so how do you square

00:25:17.420 that circle you know i i think that all europeans believed in indo-european aryan divinity and i

00:25:26.940 think that that takes certainly as you branch out from northern and central europe that starts

00:25:34.220 looking quite a bit different it ends up looking different in the mediterranean and i think that

00:25:39.340 the racial makeup there tends to look a little bit different too for a similar reason

00:25:43.420 um but we're absolutely pan-arian and the people that join the afa we have italians we have

00:25:50.380 spaniards um the reason that we use white isn't to be provocative it's because in the united states

00:25:57.160 it has a meaning um sure absolutely you know there was a time where we you know we're much

00:26:03.300 more cautious and talking about ethnically european and this and that but barack obama

00:26:07.700 is ethnically european and all right oh yeah yeah really yeah yeah all right so yeah

00:26:17.300 you got a lot of people at the time who are genuinely confused they're like well if i'm

00:26:21.860 half german and half nigerian why why couldn't i join if it's for ethnic europeans

00:26:28.900 and when you go and you fill out a job application or any kind of a survey in the united states you

00:26:33.700 know what box you check right so do you have a take it do you have a hard rule not not a drop

00:26:41.060 of non-white blood or you know we basically have that job application rule if you're if you look

00:26:47.860 like the rest of us and you identify as the rest of us then then we're fine i'm not into rooting

00:26:53.460 into anybody's family tree or whatever but by that same token and i'll say this for anybody thinking

00:26:58.260 about joining um you know if you're elizabeth warren and you're a hundred percent white but you

00:27:03.620 want to identify as something else that hurts our group cohesion it hurts what we're all gathered

00:27:09.540 together to do and to celebrate so we wouldn't allow her to be a member for that reason sure

00:27:15.140 well the reason i brought that up was because and and you already addressed it but i i wanted to

00:27:21.620 underscore that this word pagan um you know like you like if if i put up a flyer in my town here

00:27:30.420 and i said hey pagan festival next weekend or something like that you know what kind

00:27:35.300 of weirdos would show up you know so that's you know so i'm glad you drew that distinction because

00:27:48.900 you know like it in a way like i've i've met enough people where somebody's using that word

00:27:54.660 that moniker pagan okay well i talk to them enough and i see okay all right we're on the

00:27:59.540 same page here it's fine you know but i i think that's important uh to understand like for somebody

00:28:05.620 who's approaching this they think oh yeah pagan i'm gonna jump on that you know let me tell you

00:28:11.300 if you go attend something and it's being described as a pagan thing you're not going to want to be

00:28:16.420 there i don't think you wanted to start out start out as a pagan and next thing you knew you were 0.96

00:28:21.220 homosexual i mean you're literally gonna see like redlock pot smoking no that that sounds 0.95

00:28:29.860 that sounds like a joke but no i bet you that the majority of that pagan festival the theoretical 0.79

00:28:35.780 pagan festival is probably they're probably wearing a lot of costumes it may not be a furry

00:28:42.340 costume and it's very disproportionately homosexual yeah yeah the same the same people that are going 0.93

00:28:51.300 to the uh pagan festival or the same people that would go to like the libertarian kid rape park 0.57

00:28:58.420 well this is something that i wanted to kind of mention that that i think is important um

00:29:04.020 one of the things that drew me to the astro folk assembly specifically and that i'm very proud of

00:29:09.380 about us is we define ourselves positively we're not also true because of how not christian we are

00:29:18.020 we're also true because of our positive faith and our gods and our celebration of our folk

00:29:24.020 um a lot of people who are under the you know the pagan that i'm doing a little air quotes

00:29:29.860 uh banner they're pagan because they're not christian or they're not this or they're

00:29:35.940 non-conformists generally so they've decided to put you know a special label on it but

00:29:45.620 they're atheists that like marvel yeah or that like just renaissance fair stuff

00:29:52.740 smasher i gotta stop you there you're you're keep mentioning marvel and comic books i am

00:29:57.220 a comic book guy but i just wanted to quickly say there's a series going on right now it's

00:30:02.740 called norse mythology uh it's a neil gaiman uh produced thing it's on image comics and uh

00:30:10.260 it's actually really good it's like a very straight telling of the nordic myths so uh

00:30:16.500 check it out you know if if somebody's out there and they're into comics sure thing uh matt tell

00:30:23.060 us a little bit about the uh the v i gotta ask you had a vision of the gods but uh before that

00:30:29.220 where did the where did the roman and greek gods fall into the picture are they considered sort of

00:30:33.380 like uh ancillary or relatives of the old norse gods what's up with that and then talk about the

00:30:38.580 vision that yet so that's that's the murkier one and it's kind of difficult if you said are the

00:30:44.900 celtic gods the same i'd say yes are the slavic gods the same i'd say sort of when you start

00:30:52.020 getting the overlap in divinity functions and personality is very different in greco-roman

00:31:03.060 religion and i think it cheapens that to say it's exactly the same but i do believe they're drawing

00:31:12.660 on the same sources of divinity presented in a different way and it's presumptuous to say that

00:31:20.020 you know our version of it is the correct version and their version of it's wrong what i will say is

00:31:26.560 any modern attempt at reviving that faith that i've seen tends to immediately go to the 0.97

00:31:35.060 gay backic orgy and not go to hire you know they're not worshiping you know 0.97

00:31:41.840 jupiter optimus maximus they're they're going into immediately into the the license for 1.00

00:31:49.480 degeneracy i've seen a lot of that unfortunately which makes it very hard for the people that are

00:31:53.260 very sincere i've seen the same thing with um modern attempts to revive uh the celtic faith

00:31:59.700 so i would encourage those folks to come be part of the afa it gets it it gets you to where you're

00:32:07.200 trying to go, it reconnects you with your ancient, you know, Aryan spirituality. That's the true

00:32:12.120 faith of our people. Sure. And I guess before the vision, tell us what a, you know, for lack of a

00:32:18.220 better term, a mass or a ceremony, you know, an assembly of your faithful looks like. And then I

00:32:24.380 assume that your vision was maybe perhaps part of some ceremony. I don't know how much of this

00:32:28.180 stuff is, you know, secret in-house or what you can share with the audience to give them a taste.

00:32:32.140 and yeah i'm a pretty open book on it um so usually most of most of our events that we do

00:32:39.080 because we there's a distance factor you know we'll have people to our homes or whatever but

00:32:43.840 to go to one of our hoffs a lot of people have to commute a little way so we make a day out of it

00:32:48.020 um spend a lot of that day just in fellowship getting to know people making friends um

00:32:54.900 doing any work that needs to be done on the on the hoffs or the grounds preparing a meal together

00:33:00.940 um that's something that you know can be a very important community building fact of our faith

00:33:07.420 is we do base a lot of the things we do around around mealtime around sharing a feast together

00:33:12.580 so sometimes the ladies will be in the kitchen helping prepare that or the guys will be out by

00:33:17.380 the grill that's a cool bonding time but it's a lot of time just you know getting to know each

00:33:22.200 other we often have um little classes or discussions on various topics that are relevant to the reason

00:33:28.480 that we're there um our main religious ritual of the day is called a bloat i think that's the

00:33:37.440 closest thing to a mass that that we do and it's um i'm trying to describe it depends where you're

00:33:44.400 at whether you're outside or inside but in general we do that in a in a circular formation um we do

00:33:50.400 things sun wise so you go into the circle and sun wise or clockwise um do all your movements that way

00:33:58.480 the point of the bloat is to connect the folk with the gods and vice versa the gods with the

00:34:06.680 folk and as the officiant of that ceremony the gothi um that's really a lot of what you do and

00:34:14.140 it depends on the purpose let's say we're at odin's hof and we're doing an odin bloat um

00:34:18.780 the gothi would go into the end of the circle usually we have a fire in the middle um

00:34:24.360 yeah and he would uh invite the gods to to witness what we were doing to be there to join us

00:34:33.080 uh he would invite the ancestors to watch what we're doing and to celebrate with us

00:34:38.920 and he'd often invite the spirits of the land the spirits of that location

00:34:43.560 to to witness what we're doing okay um at that point you usually invoke whatever deity you're

00:34:51.320 honoring and say your peace um it's really important to me that you address the god you're

00:34:58.860 talking to and don't just look at the people and talk to them about the gods and during bloat

00:35:05.020 you're communicating directly with divinity uh at least if you do it right so um the gofield will

00:35:12.220 talk to the god uh speak for the group to the god and then the main the main portion with most

00:35:18.980 everything we do is a is kind of a form of a communion it's a sharing it's a gifting cycle

00:35:24.500 so we'll take a horn usually filled with mead that our ladies bless and prepare for us

00:35:29.780 and we'll walk around the circle and you'll you'll pour your energy into that horn you'll you touch

00:35:36.020 the horn and imbue that with with your feelings of of worship of loyalty of of commitment to

00:35:43.780 whatever god we're celebrating we'll do that in a circle and then we'll uh pour out that horn and

00:35:50.340 offering and then i'll raise a horn and i'll ask that that if if that god if you know we use the

00:35:56.900 odin example if odin hears us and you know accepts our offering and sees what's in our heart and is

00:36:04.020 pleased to pour out his blessings on us and so well hold the horn up until i feel like we have

00:36:10.820 received those blessings and then we'll distribute it around the circle and it depends you know when

00:36:16.500 i first started out everybody's drinking out of the horn and it's all good at this point if you

00:36:21.940 get you know at our midsummer we had 150 people so we'll often a spurge with the mead and usually an

00:36:28.900 evergreen sprig to distribute it amongst amongst the folk all right um we'll do that and then

00:36:36.260 And that's usually the conclusion.

00:36:38.620 We will usually thank the God and thank folks for joining us,

00:36:44.160 and people will leave the circle and go out and reflect on it.

00:36:47.080 That's the most simple.

00:36:48.440 I mean, sometimes we'll offer different things if there's a particular meaning to.

00:36:53.400 Usually at Yule, we'll offer like a straw Yule Bach that we make,

00:36:59.100 a Sunwheel very often at midsummer.

00:37:02.220 All right.

00:37:02.780 tell us about the did you have a vision during one of these uh bloats or assemblies or was it a more

00:37:07.900 personal thing oh i think i think a vision is kind of a big word for it

00:37:13.820 uh trying to think the best way to describe i've had a couple of really really profound experiences

00:37:20.060 and it's it's hard to say one of the things that people will notice will be certain things um

00:37:26.700 happening it happening at auspicious times you'll have animal signs there'll

00:37:33.060 be a particular point of emphasis in your bloat and all of a sudden a raven

00:37:39.720 will call from a tree or an eagle will land or you know something that doesn't

00:37:43.860 usually happen but happens at a really specific and important time or a gust of

00:37:49.020 wind will make the fire rage you when you want to make an emphasis you'll see

00:37:55.440 those things and those are always really special all of them sound very uh you know if you're not

00:38:01.520 actually experiencing them they sound like yeah whatever so the wind blew that's fine but if

00:38:07.200 you're there it's really different and i'll tell you the most profound ritual experience i had

00:38:12.000 um it was by a githya named patricia hall um who's no longer with the australian assembly but

00:38:18.160 she she was doing the winter nights uh dc upload and that's where we invoke our female ancestors

00:38:26.400 that watch over us and our families and at one part of the ritual she was basically summoning

00:38:32.960 those ancestors to be there with us and she had us close our eyes and speak the names of one of

00:38:39.200 our our female ancestors that we that we connected with that we wanted to to be there with in that

00:38:44.800 circle and the most when I say that when I say that my grandmother was with me in

00:38:58.060 that circle I'm not saying it as metaphor I'm not saying it's symbolically I could

00:39:05.740 feel what it felt like to hug my grandma the last time I was able to I I could

00:39:11.860 smell her it's very hard for this happened I don't know six years ago and

00:39:18.580 it's very hard for me to this day to recount it without tearing up because it

00:39:23.260 was so powerful we had all these grown men leave the circle just crying like

00:39:28.140 babies because they connected with with female ancestors that were important to

00:39:33.400 them and it was really moving I think another time that I had a really

00:39:37.960 profound experience i had just become the all's harrier gophie uh our founder steve mcnow and it

00:39:43.000 had passed the torch to me and i'd been doing it for a few months at this point there's a lot

00:39:47.160 of weight on my shoulders those are really big shoes to fill and a really big responsibility

00:39:52.680 and that was at the star event and we're getting and i didn't mention this and i'll say more about

00:39:57.960 it later if you're interested but another one of our rituals we do is a ritual drinking

00:40:01.720 rounds of toast called the sumble so i was getting ready to to stand up and initiate that

00:40:09.240 and i was just really feeling the weight of my position what i was doing and

00:40:13.720 you know there was a hand on my shoulder so you know there's any number of people there

00:40:18.360 who would have given me a reassuring hand on the shoulder you know shoulder grab shoulder pat and

00:40:23.560 so i looked around just kind of thank them because it was a cool thing to do there was no one anywhere

00:40:27.800 near me but when i say there's a hand on my shoulder i don't mean it felt like there was

00:40:31.640 a hand on my shoulder or it was as if i mean no there was a hand on my shoulder um i don't think

00:40:39.720 those translate really well over podcast but i can't i can't get them out of my head so

00:40:47.640 uh but no i was just saying i believe you buddy and uh i'm a supremely skeptical person usually

00:40:54.760 when it comes to the supernatural to to ghosts and spirits and heaven and hell and all that stuff but

00:41:00.120 i'm 95 sure that i saw a ghost on my property just happened to coincide when smasher was visiting

00:41:05.800 once i woke up uh and camped out with the kids in a tent watch your uh breathing there matt you're

00:41:10.600 a little hot on the on the phone uh but i swore that i heard the sound of a extension ladder

00:41:18.120 rattling off in the distance and smasher and a couple other friends were over helping us out

00:41:22.200 i was like man they're really getting going early it was like right after sunrise so i get up and

00:41:27.400 look out and sure enough off there in the distance i see in the mist a vision of a man walking around

00:41:33.560 with a extension ladder so i get out of the tent put my shoes on go to look nobody there uh i go

00:41:39.720 up to the house to see if the guys are awake everybody's asleep and it just so turns out that

00:41:43.560 the man who built this house uh here in great appalachia where we live uh did excuse me in

00:41:50.280 fact die in this house so i think it's possible that you know his spirit or whatever was wandering

00:41:55.320 around the property that morning hopefully in uh sort of happiness or gladness that we're doing

00:42:01.560 honor to it and fixing it up so uh yeah i i don't know maybe i was just seeing things in the morning

00:42:07.720 in the mist but well i think i think that's one of the good entry-level things to to get people

00:42:13.400 who are skeptical involved with house the true is the worship of your ancestors first factually you

00:42:20.360 know they existed there's no question that at least while they were here on earth they existed

00:42:25.560 or you would not be here um to honor them is is only a positive but in doing so and trying to

00:42:33.400 connect with them i find people have a very real very visceral connection with that and if you can

00:42:40.120 believe that your ancestors look on from beyond the grave and here with you in some way then it's

00:42:46.760 that much easier to to accept you know the divinity sure uh how about heaven and hell uh valhalla is

00:42:57.240 there uh if if people fail to live up to your moral standards do they go to hell um no i don't

00:43:03.560 think so i i think there's something you know fundamentally off about believing there's a place

00:43:09.720 of eternal torture that's just kind of sadistic um i we do believe that at some point if you

00:43:19.000 if you don't have worth then you get uh basically disintegr disintegration you cease to be and your

00:43:27.640 component parts go back into to making the next batch um i think that's what's described in our

00:43:35.400 lore a lot about you know when the poison drips on when there's snakes that are dripping poison

00:43:40.360 in uh the strand in kind of our our unhappy underworld that's the idea of that is that

00:43:46.920 disillusion and dissolving of that person that's of very little or no worth or i guess of negative

00:43:56.040 worth and how do you guys uh yeah reboot reboot that soul um how do you guys handle obviously 0.95

00:44:06.940 we are in a fallen world with rampant degeneracy either satanic or just jewish running wild all 0.90

00:44:13.780 across the west very good special but uh i mean it's it's dark out there man uh do you are you 1.00

00:44:20.740 growing are people coming to you looking for salvation from the sick society that we live in

00:44:26.580 and uh yeah do you do you plan to combat it or is this more of just a we are doing right

00:44:31.860 by our folk and the rest of the world be damned yes all right so it's a multi-pronged approach

00:44:41.860 yes we have a lot of people who have come to us lately because things out there have gotten as bad

00:44:46.580 as they have um mostly because values that we all were kind of agreed upon 20 years ago are

00:44:54.820 completely foreign to the values that are in vogue now and if you take that back a generation or two

00:45:01.300 it's it's really shocking um so we got a lot of people that come to us for

00:45:06.980 what would normally be standard western values um the world is a you're right the world is

00:45:14.980 degenerated in a lot of ways and there's a lot of a lot of bad things out there and i think it's very

00:45:19.620 easy for us to gnash our teeth and you know shake our fist at it and be upset about it but in the

00:45:26.660 afa we have an opportunity to fix things for each other fix things for our folk when last year when

00:45:35.460 everything was you know in full swing with the coveted lockdowns and people weren't going to

00:45:40.020 their churches. I mean, there's millions of Americans that couldn't gather together to

00:45:45.060 worship their gods. During that time, we had our largest gathering ever at Midsommar. We got two

00:45:52.780 new Hoffs during that year, and we spent that year together because we had our own properties

00:45:58.020 in fellowship, worshiping our gods, celebrating our folk, and we had that outlet where so many

00:46:04.420 other people weren't lucky enough to have that. So we look for the opportunities we have,

00:46:08.840 the state of the world gives us a tremendous opportunity to do things and to make significant

00:46:15.280 differences in the circles that we run in. And yeah, if we can, you know, if we can change the

00:46:21.360 whole world and get our folk going in a good direction, fantastic. If we can make things

00:46:26.500 better for our families and our media community in the meantime, even better. We can do both.

00:46:31.580 that's perfect exactly i think you know without um a guy you know some type of guide you're going

00:46:41.420 to be significantly more uh negative in your in your outlook you know if you don't have a worldview

00:46:48.700 that kind of guides you to still good in this world of evil like you're going to get locked in

00:46:55.580 the sauce yeah absolutely i think that's really important one of the things that i think is

00:47:01.580 so at least was refreshing to me about also true is it's about doing and about achievement it's

00:47:08.500 not about you know letting jesus take the wheel or whatever the expression is where you give up

00:47:14.020 and leave it to the gods it's very much about taking action being the hero and doing things

00:47:21.300 and accomplishing and making your ancestors and your gods proud and it really strives it really

00:47:26.920 gives you a push to be all that you can be how about i'm sure that you attract some dubious

00:47:36.520 characters or eccentrics have you i assume you've had to kick people out for misbehavior or immoral

00:47:43.320 activity obviously i'm not looking to give you a bad rep or anything like that but what would get

00:47:48.120 somebody kicked out or have you had to uh eject members uh we have um yeah it you know it depends

00:47:57.320 i'm trying to think of the most common the most common things that cause us to part ways with

00:48:01.240 members uh in general as a church we want to help people be better so people have struggles

00:48:08.840 you know we we would prefer to keep them involved in the afa and and help them grow and help them 0.98

00:48:14.680 fix whatever's wrong uh we've thrown people out for deciding to pursue interracial relationships 0.96

00:48:23.880 um that that'll that'll get you thrown out um good no based asian i'm sorry you broke

00:48:32.440 up there for a second my end oh no based asian waifu no negative 0.79

00:48:37.560 of no no body pillows no yeah watching anime i i hope is certainly smasher you can't join

00:48:46.260 they don't allow anime watchers um another another thing and i'm trying to think of stuff

00:48:51.800 you mentioned how degenerate the world's getting um there was one uh person that we had to to

00:48:57.200 part ways with who was passively allowing their daughter to transition as

00:49:06.440 into pretending she was a man or whatever and in our view that's child

00:49:11.640 abuse and we couldn't allow yeah those are the things or if you do something

00:49:18.020 unsafe you know we've had members that will will make women uncomfortable by

00:49:23.700 being unsafe or will be violent towards women and families and we are absolutely a family

00:49:28.640 organization and the protection of our women and our families is you know one of our top priorities

00:49:34.920 so if you if you become unsafe we can't have you around sure i assume abortion is a no-no

00:49:40.400 um so here's the thing uh we don't have some kind of universal no abortion stance i think there's

00:49:50.320 probably a lot of reasons that a family might choose that some of those being medical we all

00:49:57.600 have a different standard that way but something that's happened out there in the world is you know

00:50:02.160 used to be abortion was universally bad but sometimes it was the better of two two evils

00:50:09.200 now it's celebrated like yay let's have more infanticide and we want to stay as far away

00:50:15.280 from that as possible but there's health reasons and and perhaps other things that may make that

00:50:21.840 a thing we try not to get in the family's business on that more than we need to sure uh matt i just

00:50:29.200 have uh one or maybe two more questions here we'll give sam and smasher a chance to chime in too we're

00:50:33.600 already at an hour i think it's flown by go ahead smasher i was just gonna say it's not illegal

00:50:38.160 goats frowned upon fair enough uh animal sacrifice you guys killing goats and drinking their blood 0.51

00:50:46.000 um drinking their blood no i mean i assume that most of us eat meat and uh we so animal sacrifice

00:50:55.280 is not a a big or a common part of also true but i can't say that people haven't practiced it i

00:51:00.480 mentioned earlier though that one of our big things is the community meal and the sharing so

00:51:06.500 So every instance I know of an out-of-true sacrificing of, you know, a goat or a pig or whatnot has been to then prepare it for the folk to share it at a ceremonial feast and dinner.

00:51:19.300 Sure.

00:51:19.860 We slaughter livestock and eat it in that occasion.

00:51:23.620 Makes sense.

00:51:24.320 Yep.

00:51:25.260 And the one big one that I wanted to ask here at the end, not to go on too long here, Sam said, Coach, I got to pee.

00:51:33.340 No, I'm sorry, Sam, for calling you out.

00:51:35.180 I got to go, too.

00:51:35.720 uh regardless but you guys were you guys were in the news big time with the minnesota approval you

00:51:41.420 got a you got a half approved there and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth there oh god

00:51:46.820 you know a church that's only for white people if you read the press it was like another show

00:51:52.380 and yet it wasn't quite uh as it seemed from media depiction so let us know what happened

00:51:58.000 in uh minnesota the status there so i mean the status then we'll kind of rewind everything's

00:52:04.600 fine we've got a conditional use permit that is an automatic renewal unless we do something to

00:52:11.060 significantly violate those terms which are like you know have loud parties after 10 and

00:52:17.640 become a nuisance to our community no everything's great the people in the town have been very

00:52:23.900 supportive of us in real life I know the media doesn't portray that unfortunately we got at when

00:52:31.340 we first when we first got into town there the media had gone out of their

00:52:37.040 way to go to specifically Hispanic families and to terrify them with what

00:52:43.920 dangerous evil people we are and that's that's unconscionable that's literally 0.99

00:52:50.180 terrorism they went out of their way to make these families scared to live in

00:52:54.660 their community right many of those people are now our friends they come by

00:52:59.400 regularly we do a food distribution to anybody in the community who's hungry frequently hispanic

00:53:06.360 families show up to that church leaders in other towns send members of their congregation to come

00:53:13.000 get fed if they're hungry because we do our food pantry there the neighbors have been great people

00:53:19.560 we've dealt with as far as inspectors and city people have been great as far as i can tell

00:53:25.240 there's two people in that town that don't like us they just have the loudest voice

00:53:29.400 there you go yep and uh and you're when you're working on new hofs around the country and that's

00:53:34.760 really my final question here is uh well a little editorializing here i certainly hope that our

00:53:40.120 christian listeners are not offended by this conversation or think that we're trying to

00:53:45.320 convert people away from christianity and toward asa true but i would posit we've had plenty of

00:53:50.920 pro-christian episodes oh absolutely 100 yeah i'm just a little preemptive defensiveness here

00:53:57.080 But I would posit that for a lot of the guys out there who are irreligious or agnostic or atheist or most especially despondent and sort of lost in life, this sounds like something that would be absolutely a net positive for them.

00:54:11.980 It's not just about them.

00:54:12.800 It's what they can contribute to your community, too.

00:54:15.260 So I would certainly encourage them to consider it.

00:54:18.140 and uh and what would you say to those you know potential recruits out there matt where you want

00:54:23.180 them to go to runestone.org and anything else you would suggest yeah go to runestone.org go check

00:54:30.060 out our uh youtube presence we got a lot of videos there that can help you feel comfortable

00:54:35.500 reach out to your local folk builder we have that on our contacts page at runestone.org they're

00:54:42.460 kind of the local representative of the afa they'd be happy to answer any questions you can always

00:54:47.500 email me i'll answer any questions but yeah i'd encourage you guys to come home give it a shot

00:54:51.660 you don't have to you know devote your entire life to the gods day one i just think it's a good idea

00:54:57.340 to open yourself up to it and see reach out see who reaches back yep sam you still want to burn

00:55:04.540 this guy at the cross right now well like like i'm saying like i said already i think i said enough

00:55:13.740 which is uh okay you know we have differences of belief and differences of the way we view things

00:55:21.100 but when it comes down to brass tacks you know the way we're living our lives the things we stand

00:55:26.460 for the things we live day to day you know these these people have substantially if not entirely

00:55:35.500 the same values at heart you know and so i would say look at it that way i've been around enough to

00:55:42.860 deal with people who are atheists and pagans and you know this and that uh you know as white people

00:55:51.420 we we have the law in our heart and and it's it's telling us to go a certain way and so

00:55:59.100 so try to view it in that respect very good and and matt for somebody like me who likes what you

00:56:06.460 guys are doing but is skeptical that i could come around to believing in in the old gods literally

00:56:14.220 is it worth it for me to reach out or uh should i just uh you know wish you guys well and and stay

00:56:19.580 out absolutely it's worth it for you to reach out if you go with a bad attitude and you're certain

00:56:25.020 that they don't exist then don't come around right if you're you know if you're giving it a shot and

00:56:30.300 you're not fully sold that's fine we'd love to have you around and and see if that you see if

00:56:35.020 if you can build that relationship i'm confident you can what uh i'm bad if you guys names i'm

00:56:40.300 sorry with the gentleman who just spoke the christian gentleman what he talked about having

00:56:43.580 the law in your heart what we refer to that as an aussitrew is our folk soul that way of

00:56:49.820 understanding how to be a good person is inherent to our ancestral folk soul that we all share no

00:56:55.900 matter what our belief is right as as white sons and daughters of europe we share that

00:57:01.660 right amen yep i'd love to get some uh spiritual connection to my ancestors of course especially

00:57:08.780 the ones that i remember and are now gone so all right matt flavel head of the afa thank you so

00:57:15.180 much for coming on full house brother you're welcome to stay on in the second hour you know

00:57:18.620 i know you got a little baby girl and and life to go so uh it's up to you if you want to stick around

00:57:23.260 or hit the road all right guys well i appreciate it i'd love to but i do got to get going here

00:57:27.900 Thank you so much for having me on the program.

Asatru Folk Assembly - September 21, 2021

Matt Flavel on Full Haus 2021

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript