Asatru Folk Assembly - May 2020 Facebook Live Discussion

00:00:00.000 Hey, guys.

00:00:29.040 I'm trying to get this all set up and figured out on this new Facebook Live studio.

00:00:33.520 So I'm hoping the comments are working right.

00:00:36.040 I hope whatever we're doing tonight fixes last month's issue where I was asking for comments

00:00:42.580 and then feeling like I wasn't getting anything while you guys are sitting there asking questions

00:00:46.440 and trying your best to engage.

00:00:51.980 So, hope you guys are all doing well.

00:00:56.640 I know we are living in interesting times here with the lockdown and stuff, but it looks like a lot of folks are getting opened back up, able to get back out and live a little bit in the world and excited for that.

00:01:12.900 I'm excited to get back out. Really excited to see AFA events start happening more and getting our people together.

00:01:19.440 I think we're getting close to that in a lot of places.

00:01:21.500 So, again, forgive me as I go through this because I'm going to look at these comments on the side.

00:01:33.740 I'm having to unhide some of these comments and get that figured out.

00:01:40.580 Again, sorry about that, guys.

00:01:42.080 um so huge huge news last month and i wanted to update you on a little bit uh last month we

00:01:53.620 announced the official the official finally establishing thor's off it's been something

00:02:04.440 i've been trying really really hard to do um the witten's been trying very hard to do

00:02:10.280 And last month, that became a reality in our world.

00:02:15.560 And I annoy all the AFA members that talk to me about going to the Hoff.

00:02:23.440 And every time somebody says going to the Hoff, I'm like, the Hoff?

00:02:26.700 What Hoff?

00:02:27.680 Because now for the first time, we can say we have two.

00:02:31.260 And this is, as I promised you guys, this is only the start.

00:02:36.400 It will not be long until we can say we have three.

00:02:39.280 So we can say we have four. This is a huge step.

00:02:42.560 So during this time, we've had the AFA leadership in the Upper South region getting together and going down to the grounds of Thorshof,

00:02:54.000 doing some cleanup stuff, getting it getting it all ready to to officially open to welcome our folk to be prepared as a as a temple to to Thor and to our gods.

00:03:08.140 um yeah we got guys hard at work at that it's very exciting i am looking forward to going down

00:03:14.980 there for the dedication ceremony and grand opening be looking for that guys we're going

00:03:20.920 to try to do that in july again with this lockdown situation everything's up in the air and we've got

00:03:25.940 to we've got to take our time figuring that out once we know more but that's the plan

00:03:31.200 so we would love to see you guys there

00:03:33.180 looking at my comments over here getting it all figured hey terry it's good to have you with us

00:03:45.800 i'm glad you're here hey george hey everybody um you know i got a lot of folks here tonight

00:03:54.860 that's awesome uh mike i'm glad that that alan got you to join us that's fantastic

00:03:59.860 So other news items this month that I want to talk to you guys about a little.

00:04:08.560 Sean Sanden worked very, very hard to run the AFA store for a lot of years.

00:04:14.340 Sean did a lot for us, and he's still doing our shirt designs, our clothing items.

00:04:23.840 But Sean got to a point where he needed to step back from running the store.

00:04:27.140 And so now the store has been run out of out of Mandy in my garage.

00:04:32.700 We are doing the very best we can on it.

00:04:35.360 You guys have been great on getting on there and purchasing all of our wonderful AFA items.

00:04:42.000 And we appreciate that a lot.

00:04:43.660 I'm trying very hard to get those orders out as close to as soon as they come in as humanly possible.

00:04:51.160 But, yeah, thank you guys for bearing with us on that as we get it straightened out.

00:04:55.740 And as that evolves and gets better and carries more things that you guys would like, please do know I'm hard at work on it.

00:05:02.220 And the AFA store is going to continue to get even better.

00:05:07.720 Hmm.

00:05:09.520 Other things that you guys, well, also happy May Day, guys.

00:05:14.280 This falls on one of our AFA holidays.

00:05:16.880 Very often they don't.

00:05:18.300 So I hope everybody is having a really exciting and happy May Day.

00:05:21.320 I hope everybody had an amazing Volpergisnacht last night, amazing Hexnacht.

00:05:25.740 Yeah, I hope everybody's doing good. I know it's a challenge to do things the way we're used to right now, but our folks are finding a way, and hopefully that'll all be a thing of the past year soon.

00:05:39.340 You guys have probably noticed that this last month we have added an unusual amount of folk builders to our AFA leadership team, and that is done on purpose.

00:05:52.260 We've made some big changes in how we do certain things as far as AFA leadership goes.

00:06:03.720 So one thing that we've done is we're, as a prerequisite to folks that would like to become a Goethe or Githia in the Astro Folk Assembly,

00:06:12.520 We have now made it a requirement and a standard practice that you need to first do your time as a folk builder before you get to the point of being accepted into our Gothar program and pursuing the path of a Githya or a Gothi.

00:06:29.780 There's a couple of reasons for that. It's very important that our spiritual leaders are very well acquainted with our membership, with our leadership team, with how all of that works.

00:06:43.800 And it's also really important that folks put in that time in building local things and seeing how their local area and community works in helping establish and build our membership there.

00:06:57.400 And then once they've put that time in the trenches, then moving on to pursue a spiritual leadership in the area.

00:07:04.660 So that's a new thing. But along those lines, the first the entry level into volunteering and being part of AFA leadership and really, you know, being at the forefront of making our church succeed and grow and develop into the future is that folk builder position.

00:07:24.660 um it's very proud of that i i started out as the folk builder for alaska the time i was doing

00:07:31.960 alaska hawaii was considered part of that region don't know what to do with that i had northwest

00:07:37.700 territories in canada and yukon territory can't say i was very effective anywhere outside of my

00:07:43.780 state of alaska but i tried um from that i ended up becoming the folk builder coordinator and doing

00:07:51.200 that for a great number of years. And that was something very special to me, very important to

00:07:55.540 me. So folk building is near and dear to my heart. But yeah, so in doing that, we've tried to open

00:08:03.660 the doors for the future AFA leadership to step up and to shine. And so we've got wonderful folk

00:08:09.500 builders serving us, you know, in diverse locations that we haven't had a lot of representation

00:08:14.200 before, some in places that we've had a lot of representation. And I'm really excited to see

00:08:19.520 what they do, a lot of fresh energy there. So when we're able, everybody's going to hit the

00:08:25.880 ground running. We've got a lot of great things planned and a lot of great things we're going to

00:08:29.600 do. Does anybody have questions tonight? What are, it's on y'all's mind. Anything you want

00:08:35.980 you want us to talk about or anything going on? Don't mind me if I'm looking down. It just means

00:08:46.960 I'm checking for comments, because sometimes they come in a little bit different.

00:09:10.220 All right, so a little bit about the folk builders I mentioned that joined us.

00:09:16.960 Somebody was asking about a cheese head. 1.00

00:09:19.600 That cheese head is not a she, it is a he.

00:09:22.440 We've got James Alt in Wisconsin joining us. 1.00

00:09:28.960 James has been working really hard without the folk building title for a while now to try to get things going in his area.

00:09:35.820 We think being officially a folk builder, that'll really ramp those things up a little bit.

00:09:40.460 um we also have katie allen going to be folk building for us in idaho in the coeur d'alene

00:09:49.340 area um trying to think because we had a whole bunch of them in this last month we have fiona

00:09:57.220 edgar in northern ireland folk building for us i'm very excited to see our folk grow and

00:10:02.860 and develop in that part of the world um we also have crystal bailey who's spent a lot of time

00:10:10.440 a lot of effort out at Odin's Hof, making that a success basically for the past several months, 0.84

00:10:16.600 being in charge of our kitchen, in charge of making sure those things work out, making sure

00:10:21.560 people are taken care of out there. And we're very excited to see her folk build already in

00:10:26.440 an unofficial capacity. She's brought around some great people that we love having with us out here.

00:10:31.240 so very excited to see see what she does we have been timeire in stepping up in

00:10:40.620 Ohio Ohio is an area that's been really really active in the past I'd say two

00:10:48.880 years we've had a lot of a lot of folks really showing interest in Ohio and we

00:10:54.560 want to want to make sure we've got something built there for those people

00:10:57.160 and I think Ben's gonna be a big part of doing that in the future so those are

00:11:01.640 some of the things we got going on and then for me personally in this last month

00:11:09.160 oh we got this little girl like everybody to meet my beautiful little

00:11:16.240 daughter Aubrey Rose Flavelle she's making a face we've caught one of the

00:11:21.820 rare moment moments that she's not fussing and that's great and I'm

00:11:25.960 excited to introduce her to you guys and have her say hello to her afa family um uh while i've got

00:11:35.640 you guys thank you so much um you guys have really really been kind to my wife and i during pregnancy

00:11:43.320 so many people have stepped up and donated us all kind of baby stuff so this little girl is

00:11:48.520 very well taken care of and we really appreciate you guys she's getting squirmy so i'm gonna hand

00:11:54.280 back to her mom um that was mandy's hand waving at you guys she says hi hopefully she will help me

00:12:05.160 wrangle some of these comments so that i can better respond to folks

00:12:09.960 so Aubrey is named after my grandfather on my mother's side her father a guy that's did a lot

00:12:25.920 raising me when I was a young man I was very fortunate to be raised close by my grandparents

00:12:30.900 and so yeah my grandfather was a big part of raising me as a he didn't he didn't go by Aubrey

00:12:38.340 amongst his friends. I always thought it was a really pretty name. I thought it sounded like

00:12:43.080 a girl's name. And yeah, I was really, really happy to honor my grandfather by naming my

00:12:49.520 daughter after her. It was very special. And my wife and I just overjoyed all the blessings,

00:12:57.540 trying to take it all in, trying to get some sleep when I can. And yeah, those of you coming

00:13:02.820 out to events you guys should get to see and and meet her in person here so kind of questions we

00:13:10.320 got tonight what do you guys have on your mind that you want to talk about or that you want to

00:13:14.180 listen to me go on about i am listening and watching and like i say if i miss you guys this

00:13:22.880 time facebook has done a lot of crazy stuff with how they're doing these live streams and how we're

00:13:27.740 getting questions. We're going to keep trying to refine it and make it better. But yeah,

00:13:33.100 if I miss you, it's not on purpose.

00:13:44.460 So while you guys are coming up with amazing questions that you guys are going to ask,

00:13:49.620 uh we'll talk about another business um midsummer midsummer is still on um odenshoff happens to be

00:14:01.340 located in uh the the communist utopia of california so i am not sure what their plans are

00:14:09.760 as far as what the rules will look like in june um but we can't wait forever to plan

00:14:17.340 it's going to be a big celebration it's the 25th anniversary celebration that we're really focusing

00:14:22.940 on um the quarantine situation has kind of thrown thrown a lot of that up in the air

00:14:29.960 but it's our plan we're still going to make it happen i'd love to see you guys out there

00:14:35.000 as far as specifics on it we're uh we're working and trying to make that happen but like i say if

00:14:41.220 you can get out here we would love to see you guys and we'll do the very best we can to have

00:14:45.360 amazing event uh george asked about post covid events as soon as we can we will and behind the

00:14:59.600 scenes we've been talking to all of these new apprentice folk builders that have stepped up

00:15:04.080 they are very excited to get back to business um we got a new hof that we're sprucing up and

00:15:10.720 excited to get at to worship at and to spend time uh imbuing with holiness so we got big things

00:15:18.720 going on and everybody's chomping at the bit as soon as they open up the gate we're gonna hit the

00:15:23.440 ground running and we're gonna run hard i hope all of you guys can come out and make up for lost

00:15:29.680 time get too many events as you can let's come back swinging let's come back strong um yeah and uh

00:15:38.640 And post-COVID events are going to be bigger, they're going to be better, they're going to be more fantastic, filled with more family, with more love, with more fun, with more worship, with more fellowship, and the future is bright.

00:15:59.040 We're sitting here, we're poised, we're ready.

00:16:01.660 Let's go, let's do this.

00:16:02.900 yes and people have been utilizing the time to spruce up odenshoff we've had a number of

00:16:14.880 weekends out there of people taking care cleaning up the grounds thank you for pointing that out

00:16:20.260 crystal we we look forward to sharing the hospitality of the hoff that's out here in our

00:16:25.440 neck of the woods with everybody who comes out we've had ladies working on our flower beds out

00:16:31.600 front we've had folks fixing up stuff uh putting some shine on it showing some love to the first

00:16:38.080 temple of the astro folk assembly indicated to to the all father so looking forward to everybody

00:16:43.520 coming out and experiencing that and enjoying that thank you so much to our folk that have

00:16:47.520 come out and helped you know our spring clean up and getting getting odin's off to be

00:16:55.120 the amazing and wonderful place for our folk and our gods that it is thank you guys

00:17:01.600 Apparently on the 17th, there's the fourth annual beach bloat in Florida, says Lane.

00:17:09.080 If you guys can make it out to that, please do.

00:17:11.820 I'm sure Lane will correct me, but I assume that's in central Florida somewhere.

00:17:15.880 So if you guys can do that, that would be awesome.

00:17:22.800 I'm trying to look at folks coming in.

00:17:25.180 I don't know what else we got going on.

00:17:32.580 I'm waiting for a picture on somebody,

00:17:35.100 but we're about to have our first ever football builder in Norway.

00:17:42.400 We've got Burner stepping up.

00:17:46.220 I will announce him a little bit later.

00:17:47.960 He said he was going to give me a picture,

00:17:49.340 but hopefully he will get me that here tomorrow

00:17:52.580 and I can officially announce him.

00:17:54.800 But Werner's a great guy.

00:17:56.560 He picked us up, showed us around in Norway in the afternoon when we flew over there on our way to Sweden.

00:18:03.200 We ended up, the AFA leadership ended up flying into Oslo.

00:18:06.880 Our Norwegian members took care of us, showed us the ship museum, which was absolutely phenomenal.

00:18:13.280 And took us down into Sweden where we spent the rest of our trip.

00:18:16.860 So I'm very excited to see that, to see that growth happen over in Scandinavia.

00:18:22.860 We've got a lot of really exciting growth happening all over the place.

00:18:26.800 It's been very amazing to see.

00:18:29.580 But, yeah, look forward to announcing Burner on that.

00:18:33.140 We also have a new official AFA.

00:18:35.820 See, the center of this hat is not lining up with the lines on the hat,

00:18:41.600 and I'm noticing that.

00:18:42.680 That's why I keep fussing with it.

00:18:43.780 I'm sorry about that, guys.

00:18:45.620 What I was going to say is we have a new kindred in Carolinas.

00:18:49.340 In South Carolina, we have Donner's Oak kindred.

00:18:52.860 We have Donar's Oak Kindred. Donar's Oak Kindred is, like I said, it's in South Carolina, and it's going to be a huge part in making Thorshaw a success.

00:19:06.540 Iron Guard has been coming down from Virginia and Maryland area, and they're going to be a big part.

00:19:12.420 And having those kindreds working together is going to be a big part of making that work really well.

00:19:16.560 other announcements and things I'd like to

00:19:21.620 things I'd like to draw a little bit of attention to hope you guys are all familiar and if you're

00:19:31.100 not I hope you guys get familiar with Volk Faxdum kindred which is one of our one proud family of

00:19:37.720 AFA kindreds and it's in South Africa and our members there are working really hard all of the

00:19:43.800 time to build Ausatruans in South Africa, and to help white folks in South Africa that

00:19:53.480 are struggling so bad under current circumstances there.

00:20:01.240 While ago now, I want to say two years ago, the AFA, so many of us look on to the things

00:20:10.780 that have happened to the white south africans and the way that they've been viciously persecuted

00:20:18.140 that they've been pushed off their ancestral lands there they've been impoverished they've been

00:20:24.220 often times raped murdered abused and uh so often the the resources there are legally mandated not

00:20:32.300 to go to those people they have to go to businesses and organizations there are a certain high

00:20:37.580 percentage of uh black and i believe colored is the term they use for for folks that are that are

00:20:45.260 of a mixed heritage over there and so much of the money and the resources is spent on that and very

00:20:51.100 little and oftentimes none makes it to our folk who are really struggling i don't know if you guys

00:20:57.260 have seen the the uh the squatter camps that they're forced to live in oftentimes literally

00:21:02.380 in the dump um but yeah i don't want to bring anybody down but there's a lot of bad stuff going

00:21:08.540 over uh going on over there to our folk and the afa decided um i don't know how to fix it but one

00:21:16.860 thing we're not going to do is continue to do nothing so we started raising money and you guys

00:21:22.380 have been extremely generous um through your generosity we've tried to find ways to turn

00:21:29.500 your goodwill into money and resources to turn those money and resources into the things that

00:21:37.340 folks over there desperately need and to get those things to the people uh and to go more and more to

00:21:47.100 give them to the people without intermediaries without outside organizations that we don't

00:21:52.700 know what their deal is and we've made huge strides there the first time we were able to give

00:21:59.660 that was those resources to an organization the south africa family relief fund or relief project

00:22:05.660 i believe and i have every reason to believe they're above board and they're great and we

00:22:10.300 worked with them and it was fantastic but after that first time now that we have an afa kindred

00:22:16.460 over there. We have AFA members handing out bags of food and provisions with an AFA sticker on it

00:22:24.580 saying, hey, the AFA loves you. Hey, the AFA cares about you. And we're able to go into those camps

00:22:30.060 themselves, go directly to the people who need it and have our people, members of our AFA family,

00:22:37.880 hand them the things that you guys have donated to make happen. And you can read about that in,

00:22:45.280 I posted an article on runestone.org, but there should be some more pictures and things in this month's The Runestone that should be coming out.

00:22:56.020 Cliff's working really hard on that. I'm hoping that's going to come out today. If not, I'm sure it'll be out tomorrow.

00:23:01.640 But yeah, I just wanted to hats off to Foxton and to Christo LaRue, our folk builder there.

00:23:08.980 Those guys are working so hard, and they're doing really great things that we are all very, very proud of.

00:23:15.280 so tonight has been a lot of me just throwing stuff at you guys if you guys have any questions

00:23:24.140 or things you would like me to address or to discuss please let me know please go ahead and

00:23:32.300 ask um and like i said i hope you guys are not asking questions that we're missing somehow we

00:23:39.080 are doing our best to find those um and we're going to continue to work on this facebook live

00:23:44.700 thing to where we figure out their new system because it looks pretty slick if we knew how to

00:23:48.120 use it a little bit tighter. Well, in the meantime, while I wait for all you guys' fantastic questions

00:24:06.980 that are coming, I want to mention something else that I've been working really hard on. I say I've

00:24:12.480 working hard on i've been trying really hard to find other people to work hard on is uh afa history

00:24:21.360 i try not to announce too many things that are gonna happen because i think uh folks in general

00:24:29.360 do too much of that i know that the afa has done too much of that in the past i don't want to learn

00:24:34.640 from that try to announce things once they are happening or once they have happened and uh

00:24:42.480 I want to put out there that it's been a dream of mine since I first came home to Ausatru to see our modern history be made available to us.

00:24:56.100 We are a faith that talks a lot about history.

00:25:01.340 We revere ancient history and medieval history.

00:25:05.240 And we have these folks that are, you know, scholars on the Viking Age.

00:25:10.740 But when it comes to our own history and our recent history, unfortunately, we're often very, very uninformed.

00:25:19.540 And I want to fix that. I love history. I want to fix it for everyone else.

00:25:24.740 But I mean, at heart, I'm I'm a fan. I want to I want to know where we came from.

00:25:30.260 I want to know about the great deeds that Steve McNallan did back when this thing got started.

00:25:35.920 I want to know about those guys that stepped up and made this happen for us.

00:25:40.740 um knowing our history and know where we come from is is really special to me if you guys know

00:25:45.860 this i've been every week i post a little historical article or segment from the rune

00:25:52.020 stone so we can catch up on a little bit of that history but what i want to announce to talk about

00:25:57.700 i have a team put together and we're going to see how long this takes but i'm not going to stop till

00:26:01.940 it's done and we're working on putting together a uh a history book or certainly at least a

00:26:10.340 chronicle of the history of the australian assembly first 25 years we're also going to try

00:26:16.900 and see what material and what stuff we can gather about the australian free assembly

00:26:21.700 that's also part of our shared history that's part of what laid the foundation to uh to get

00:26:27.460 where we are now it's such a special thing this year to be celebrating 25 years the astro folk

00:26:33.140 assembly that's a quarter of a century it's huge in the circles that we have historically ran in

00:26:41.460 one of the most special things that i've seen with the afa in the last you know in the last

00:26:46.660 10 years is we've outpaced uh folks that were our traditional um i guess rivals if you will

00:26:54.500 in the world of Alistatru. And we've moved so far beyond that. The sky's the limit. We're doing

00:27:01.700 amazing things. And telling that story, we would not be here without the blood, sweat, and tears

00:27:08.740 of so many people over the years that have given up themselves to make this happen.

00:27:14.060 Those stories deserve to be told. They need to be told. And I'm proud to say that right now we

00:27:19.640 have a team of people working on telling those stories. So be looking for that in the future.

00:27:24.500 All right. It looks like we do have a question. Jason is asking how one celebrates Hexenacht. I've had this asked a couple times recently.

00:27:37.160 So Hexenacht is a mysterious time of celebrating female magical potency.

00:27:52.160 It's a time where in days of old, I guess, and now, the witches would gather out on the heath, out on the brocken, and they would do their strange rites that had been lost to a Christianized land that didn't understand them. 0.57

00:28:08.820 they would do these spooky uh spooky girl magic and that was so important to our ancestors if 0.83

00:28:20.260 women come at their interaction with the divine from a different place than men do 0.58

00:28:24.820 they have a special connection that way and a special connection with um often with second

00:28:30.420 sight often with a lot of a lot of magical magical things their their intuition their senses

00:28:37.620 genetically one of the reasons the afa one of the many reasons that we appreciate the difference 1.00

00:28:44.300 between masculinity and femininity uh women and their magical interactions function of a whole

00:28:51.680 different set of rules a whole different uh a whole different sphere than ours do as men 0.98

00:28:57.700 and hexanoct is a time where the women charm charm the ether charm the world with with their 1.00

00:29:06.380 special magic they put all of that potential energy out there they make the air thick with 0.99

00:29:12.620 that magical energy much like the energy that came from from the gap that the young

00:29:21.820 translations of gununga gap is the yawning void of potent with magical energy 1.00

00:29:28.700 um so on hexanot uh these magical women charm the world if you will with with all of this 1.00

00:29:38.400 chaotic potent magical potential for great things and then on mayday a uh a very masculine day we 1.00

00:29:48.860 see that in the celebration of of the maypole literally charming um that phallic image of

00:29:55.400 of male potency with that male energy on mayday we harness that magic we harness that potency

00:30:02.760 that's filled the air and we direct that through that masculine that will we take all of that magic

00:30:09.960 and we put it towards purpose towards making things happen and that's kind of the

00:30:17.000 what we focus on we celebrate has knocked in mayday um in a more practical way often if we

00:30:22.680 do bloat on hexanoct it will be towards uh towards freya who is is that patroness of uh of female

00:30:30.360 magical potency that way um but also that's a time to to honor honor nerthus and then on mayday um

00:30:40.520 it's time to honor frey and uh the god of that of that uh that masculine vitality

00:30:47.800 that's symbolized by charming and dancing around that

00:30:51.720 and yes George that's a

00:30:59.480 that's a time for Sather magic

00:31:03.400 and things in that category

00:31:07.080 what else do we have guys

00:31:10.000 I hope I'm not missing anybody I'm periodically checking down on my phone

00:31:15.500 to make sure I'm catching the best that I can.

00:31:23.100 What's on folks' mind this evening?

00:31:29.300 I'll throw out a couple of things.

00:31:32.000 And I'm not pushing super hard on fundraising right now

00:31:36.500 because I know that everybody, I say everybody,

00:31:39.380 but quite a few of our folk are having a hard time with this lockdown,

00:31:43.580 not being able to work um this can be rough on a lot of people so no pressure no push but i do

00:31:51.660 want to put out there um because it's important what we're doing in south africa a little bit

00:31:55.820 does go a long way um if you guys are interested if you guys see the pictures see what uh what

00:32:02.940 chris goes up to see what volk voxton is doing and the good works that they're doing in the afa's name

00:32:09.020 over there let's get some supplies to those those folks who are suffering if we can as bad as this

00:32:16.780 crisis is hitting us it's hitting those guys a lot worse i've heard that because of the various

00:32:24.140 concerns with the virus and whatnot that they're even taking the camps away from these folks and

00:32:30.700 further dispossessing them and making them even more homeless so if you guys want to support that

00:32:36.780 if you go to www.runestone.org to the donate link there's ways there to donate directly to our south

00:32:43.420 african efforts and like i said a little goes a long way in south africa um just the way world

00:32:50.220 economies work what seems very little to us is huge in south africa in general and it's huge to

00:32:58.220 those folks that are so very poor and uh in a real big way so that's very appreciated uh yeah

00:33:06.540 it's very appreciated if you guys can do it also something else i'd like to mention

00:33:12.860 takes funds to make hoffs happen we just put down on thor's hoff but in the coming months i'm really

00:33:19.660 going to need as much help as i can to uh get donations in on trying to help us pay that place

00:33:26.300 off make that truly all the way ours to where we're not owing anybody um and we're out of debt

00:33:33.100 on it and as soon as that happens just like i promised as soon as we got odin's off we started

00:33:38.600 working on thor's off i promise as soon as this off is paid off we will start working on our third

00:33:44.720 off and we already have folks behind the scenes looking and planning and trying to get as close

00:33:51.420 to making that a reality is possible and uh so we'll be poised to to really go hard on that as

00:33:57.340 soon as thor's off gets paid off so uh also if you're able a place to go is uh loomstone.org

00:34:04.680 click that donate button and we appreciate everything you guys can do still looking haven't

00:34:10.340 had anything pop up in the little side screen for a while as far as any questions look down

00:34:15.660 phone here try to figure it out um it's funny that George I think comically

00:34:26.820 when trying to drive hex and knock he says no Wikipedia references um something

00:34:32.580 I'll put out there and I put our volunteer group today anybody knows how

00:34:37.080 to play that system of Wikipedia please reach out let me know if you know how to

00:34:43.740 to do it or if you even better if you know how to do it you want to help something that is really

00:34:49.180 important i don't know if you guys have uh looked at our wikipedia um or steve mcnallan's wikipedia

00:34:55.900 page for that matter that's how you know you made it big you made it in the big times when you got

00:34:59.500 a wikipedia page well our founder steve mcnallan certainly does yeah he does and unfortunately

00:35:07.580 it seems the only people who either know how to use

00:35:12.080 that well or who are being allowed by the powers that be to use

00:35:16.060 that well are detractors.

00:35:19.300 So as we can expect, there's a lot of negative

00:35:24.200 information from our detractors on there and a lot of

00:35:27.700 things that either aren't true or are the worst possible

00:35:36.160 version of a truth but what's missing is any comments about the good things that we do

00:35:42.800 about great accomplishments that we've made or even current information about the state of the

00:35:47.120 afa and you know what we're doing these days and and our history and and what we're all about

00:35:53.440 um there's no part of me that thinks thinks or expects we're going to get uh super favorable

00:36:01.440 coverage in Wikipedia or that we're going to be able to fill it with, you know, cheerleading

00:36:07.960 articles about how great the AFA is. But what I do expect and what I'm going to push for as best

00:36:13.600 I can is for fairness to happen. I don't expect cheerleading to be on there, but what I would

00:36:20.400 love to see is just objective facts about what we're doing when we were founded, what's going on

00:36:26.940 about Thorshoff, about Odenshoff, about our food distribution, about our

00:36:31.060 good works in South Africa. Got a lot of people doing a lot of great things, and it'd be

00:36:35.080 nice if people could look that up on Wikipedia and figure it out.

00:36:39.040 So yeah, anybody that knows that system, knows how to make that thing work

00:36:43.140 if you want, if you would like to help, we would certainly

00:36:46.800 appreciate it, because it's a whole science.

00:36:49.140 alright guys

00:36:54.480 if there's questions going on

00:36:57.020 they are not showing up on my end

00:36:59.020 I really hope that they are showing up on

00:37:00.960 somebody's

00:37:02.720 I will certainly

00:37:06.920 keep doing these once a month as long as it's

00:37:08.960 something people want and people like

00:37:10.500 it's something I look forward to doing every month

00:37:12.900 and I hope

00:37:14.380 yeah I hope you guys enjoy

00:37:18.580 as much as i do um but they're kind of driven by y'all's questions um i've told story before

00:37:28.420 but i might as well tell it again there was a time years back where some people were expressing

00:37:34.180 these concerns that you know afa leadership was inaccessible or that we didn't want feedback or

00:37:41.140 that you know we didn't care about the concerns of our membership and this was by a few

00:37:48.580 um poorly intentioned people uh who were just bad folks but it highlighted something and i didn't

00:37:57.060 want there to ever be a time where our members felt that way where they felt that they couldn't

00:38:04.260 get a straight answer from people higher up or they couldn't communicate with afa leadership

00:38:11.300 or that their voice wasn't heard or not cared about i don't ever want anybody listening to this

00:38:17.060 to feel that way um not just because it's not a nice way to feel but it's just not true

00:38:23.700 you're very much where you guys are at i care very much what your thoughts or concerns are

00:38:29.620 i might not always do what you suggest we may not always agree on everything but there's no

00:38:34.900 point in time that i don't care what you think or that i don't want questions or that i'm

00:38:40.500 inaccessible my door my door is always open and i want to be responsive to these things that's why

00:38:45.780 have these is so that when you guys have questions we can answer them and if they're if they're nice

00:38:52.500 questions about also true stuff cool if they're concerns and questions you have that you may feel

00:38:59.220 less comfortable asking please ask the uncomfortable questions because the last thing i want is people

00:39:04.900 functioning under um false preach or uh false pretense not the right word assumptions because

00:39:11.620 nobody asks a question so just putting that all out there to say you know no

00:39:15.800 holds barred ask whatever questions you want and please come back and join these

00:39:19.960 as much as you can I love doing looking on the side got a couple of things yes

00:39:30.860 absolutely people do need to know what a great organization the AFA is we've got

00:39:35.860 the very best people in the world and the wonderful things that they that they

00:39:40.420 have done and that they will do needs to be out there so people know about them so we can build

00:39:44.900 uh build our fame build our reputation and bring more people home to alsatree

00:39:52.100 if a podcast um i don't know a lot of people have talked about that we have a couple of um

00:40:01.460 volunteers uh talking about platforms to host an afa podcast on

00:40:08.740 what i don't want to do is set up an afa podcast and not be able to fill it with content or not

00:40:14.180 have presenters on there that are going to commit to doing it regularly but it is something that

00:40:20.260 that we're talking about if an afa podcast is something you would like to see and you have

00:40:24.980 ideas for things that you would like to see on an afa podcast please reach out reach out to me

00:40:29.940 um after this reach out to your local fault builder or your local gofi and yeah if you

00:40:37.940 got suggestions or anything on the podcast front you want to know this is specifically directed

00:40:42.660 that mike who asked question um yeah we'd be willing to i'd be very willing to consider

00:40:48.340 that and it's something that folks have thought about

00:41:00.580 so apparently there are questions and things coming in that i'm not seeing um i will continue

00:41:07.220 to work on that uh ryan mentioned that squeaky wheel i assume that's about our uh the wikipedia

00:41:12.820 thing i just randered about a little bit and i think that's right what we need in any kind

00:41:17.300 of volunteer that's going to run that we're going to i guess address the wikipedia problem

00:41:22.020 is somebody who's going to continuously continuously push and eventually some of

00:41:27.860 that progress will happen but i do imagine a lot of pushings involved you know we've run into that

00:41:32.340 on a couple things though um it's seems like a small thing but it's really special when you're

00:41:40.020 trying to get out to the hof in california and the first time you don't know where you're going

00:41:44.020 and it's off in the middle of nowhere and so you use google maps and right there in google maps

00:41:49.300 we got odin's off first off the austral folk assembly looking all official it's there anyone

00:41:55.460 around the world can go to google maps type in odin's hoff and bam there's a little pin in

00:42:00.180 brownsville california right where our hoff is that's a special thing but to get google maps to

00:42:05.620 change that around and make it work it took the squeaky wheel continuing to squeak and finally

00:42:10.420 they did it here soon we'll be able to type in thor's hoff and have that pop up in north carolina

00:42:17.380 there so especially when dealing with technology and dealing with that squeaky wheel thing really

00:42:23.060 it's an important part of our strategy on it hmm what else we got guess somebody

00:42:35.660 asked me something here while I'm waiting for questions one of the other things I

00:42:49.040 I wanted to kind of mention to you guys and just put the little bug in here.

00:42:53.360 I know it's a long way away, but this should be much more certain than some other things.

00:43:01.020 Next February.

00:43:04.820 So this past February, I had the honor of attending the Northwest Regional Event,

00:43:13.220 the Charming of the Plow in Washington State.

00:43:16.240 um that was put on by joe rosinic um it was it was fantastic i loved being up there that time of year

00:43:26.720 around our af family in the northwest it was fantastic it turned it turned out so amazing

00:43:32.240 it has the past two years that in 2021 it's going to for the first time be a national afa

00:43:39.200 so you guys right now if you have any interest if you've never been if you want to go to uh

00:43:44.880 washington state in february we're going to be doing a charming of the plow there

00:43:50.960 as an afa national event and we would love to see you guys there

00:43:56.240 um so adam asks about outreach ideas

00:44:05.760 um

00:44:06.080 the perfect plan that's going to make all of the outreach work no but ideas a little bit

00:44:16.400 I have some thoughts on it at least people always wonder where our best bet is for getting new

00:44:26.780 members there's been kind of a sacred cow about us not proselytizing no proselytize all day long

00:44:33.560 go out there do it make it happen um but we have a lot of members that don't want to go stand on a

00:44:39.420 street corner and proselytize and we've got a lot of people we certainly don't want to go to people

00:44:44.080 door to door and annoy them into you know letting us in and that's not what we're about but spreading

00:44:50.580 the message about us are true letting our folk know that there is a there is an indigenous faith

00:44:56.840 of our people where we can come home to and where we can experience the spirituality that's meant

00:45:03.360 for us that's connecting us to our gods our people need to know that and very often they don't

00:45:10.320 what has worked tremendously for us lately has been things like this has been social media

00:45:17.120 and finding ways to break out of the very small circles we are one of the troubles with social

00:45:23.360 media and i put this to any of you guys that know a way to break it out of that is we've got this

00:45:29.200 little circle of people that all share a similar world view that all have come home to alza true

00:45:36.800 that all maybe politically are in one place or culturally or in one place it's a small circle

00:45:44.160 and maybe we've got a couple of different circles that interconnect but it's this it's this insular

00:45:49.440 echo chamber where we share the same memes and the same posts and we all get excited rah-rah

00:45:56.880 about it it's very hard for anything that we do to break out of that circle or to to go to a

00:46:02.960 different audience we're working on ways to do that we would love to know the secret of how to

00:46:08.800 get our material and our um our ideas and what we do to break out of that circle and to get these

00:46:17.280 guys over here that don't know about it but these guys over here that don't know about it

00:46:20.720 and we find when we do it has a tremendous effect one of the things that used to point

00:46:28.160 of outreach for the afa infrastructure back in the 90s was you know pagan bookstores and

00:46:34.800 celtic festivals and things like that and renaissance fairs whatever else if you want

00:46:41.720 to do those and those are going to work i'm one of those let's let's go everywhere and see what

00:46:48.080 can do but as the world's changed around us those places tend to not get folks that are compatible

00:46:55.520 with our worldview and with our value system uh those venues have gotten less and less really

00:47:03.040 solid people and a lot more weirdos and a lot more people that we may not want to be around

00:47:08.960 and that way we may not want to have around our kids um but i think one place for outreach

00:47:16.240 would be just other grassroots things i know people try to do outreach at farmers markets

00:47:23.200 i think outreach it at gun shows outreach wherever you can think that there's our folk

00:47:30.560 do some outreach there um yeah there's a simple out re uh answer to the outreach question but

00:47:38.800 getting out of the renaissance fair celtic you know fair pagan bookstore thing and getting out

00:47:47.760 into more contemporary america where our folk find ourselves at that's going to be a key and

00:47:54.000 that outreach really helps us build the stuff we're trying to build um but we've seen that

00:48:00.000 we've seen tons of the demographic of the afa change as far as having families lots of young

00:48:05.440 families lots of folks that uh are more successful than had um typically we're getting a different

00:48:13.200 group of people coming to the afa in the last i don't know five or six years than we had previous

00:48:18.480 so it's working it's going in the going in the right direction um yeah

00:48:28.480 looks like my wife is having a conversation with somebody she's seeing questions come in

00:48:32.320 that I am not seeing, but I'm glad that she's addressing those.

00:48:36.900 What else do folks have? What else folks want to talk about?

00:48:50.320 I'm looking in reference to the

00:48:52.200 kind of cautious comments I was making about folks

00:48:56.500 that show up to the pagan bookstores, i.e. universalistic.

00:49:02.320 it's a really nice way of putting it i think um

00:49:08.880 one of the things we have made great strides in that's been great in the afa is

00:49:17.520 and i mean this on a couple levels it's a little bit about what you just said but i

00:49:21.040 think that this message needs to get out there too um for a long time

00:49:26.240 when OstraTru was being defined by what we weren't.

00:49:31.120 And that's natural, that's a process you go through when something new is being started

00:49:35.400 or when something very old is being restarted.

00:49:39.260 A lot of people came to OstraTru because they weren't Christian or because of a reaction

00:49:44.300 to a bad church experience or a reaction to things in society they didn't like.

00:49:52.120 We have made huge strides.

00:49:54.580 The AFA has always done this, as a matter of fact.

00:49:56.600 When I first joined in the AFA and started to become involved in the early 2000s,

00:50:01.300 one of the things that attracted me most was when you went to the AFA's website,

00:50:06.320 it talked about what we were about, who we are, things we like to do, things we support, our values.

00:50:14.900 When you went to the competition at the time site, to other national organizations,

00:50:20.680 a lot of we don't tolerate this we will not support this we won't accept this we don't like

00:50:29.040 that we don't like this we don't like that it's all defined negatively about things they didn't

00:50:35.140 like whereas the afa has been defined positively about who we are and the things we do like

00:50:40.620 that's the way to say that the people that we're attracting now the people that we want to attract

00:50:46.960 are people who want to be ausitry,

00:50:50.820 who want to live a noble life

00:50:53.060 full of meaning, full of value

00:50:54.620 in a way that honors our ancestors and our gods,

00:50:57.400 not a fringe group of people

00:50:59.320 that couldn't make it other places.

00:51:02.360 Very often people that, you know,

00:51:04.760 people in my church don't understand me.

00:51:07.220 They don't like me.

00:51:07.940 They don't like me because I'm really pagan.

00:51:10.580 No, oftentimes I don't like you 1.00

00:51:12.380 because you're a loser that doesn't have social skills. 0.99

00:51:15.120 And that's important to know 1.00

00:51:16.480 is just because you don't make it somewhere else

00:51:19.840 doesn't mean it must be because they belong over here.

00:51:22.960 A lot of people, and we've seen this,

00:51:25.600 have needed to develop their selves and their lives

00:51:27.940 and be successful wherever they want to be

00:51:30.780 and choose to be here because it's the right place to be,

00:51:34.580 not because it's the last place left that will make them.

00:51:37.540 So when we think about outreach,

00:51:39.480 we want to get great people.

00:51:41.460 We want to get wonderful people that want to be here

00:51:43.780 because this is where they want to be.

00:51:46.480 not because they're just grumpy with other places they've been and we've been very successful at

00:51:51.200 that and i'm really proud of that for our people uh but when we're considering outreach i think

00:51:55.920 that's a really important thing to make note of um try to reload some stuff here because

00:52:07.200 i feel like people got to be asking more stuff than is getting uh popping up on my screen and

00:52:12.000 And we're trying to always get a little bit better, but every time Facebook does an update or something on how they do these lives,

00:52:20.600 it makes it harder to navigate our comments.

00:52:28.400 So bear with me a little bit as I reload that page and try to see if there's comments and stuff that I might be missing.

00:52:42.000 Yeah, there's tons when I reload this thing. I'm sorry, guys.

00:52:48.480 All right. So I'll get to them, though. I'm in no great rush tonight.

00:52:55.280 Must have books to start studying out.

00:52:57.600 I posted today we now have Steve McNally's book, Oustru, a Native European Spirituality, back in socketrunestone.org.

00:53:06.040 By all means, get that, because it's fantastic.

00:53:09.300 it's Steve and his own words talking about talking about also true and what it

00:53:16.740 is and kind of Steve's involved with it and I think that's really important I

00:53:20.760 think that there's a number of things historically that are super important I

00:53:27.960 think that context is everything and you need context for it but color the two

00:53:34.220 times by Wilhelm Groenbeck is very important and then I'll throw this out

00:53:39.240 there because i always really like to plug this if you guys don't have um if you guys are new to

00:53:44.920 the runes it's a it's an introductory book but i think it's the best introductory book out there

00:53:50.120 i think it's really good for kids and young people getting into it i say kids but you know older kids

00:53:55.480 getting into it but i think it's really cool for adults too and it's still one of my favorite room

00:53:59.960 books is the Rune Workbook by Leon D. Wild. If you guys can find that, I think that's a great

00:54:09.020 resource as far as getting started if you have an interest in the runes.

00:54:20.220 There we go. Lane says fertile ground for recruiting is at the racetrack he found, folks.

00:54:27.200 So we really do, Elaine's comment is we've got people everywhere we do.

00:54:31.460 Everywhere the sons and daughters of your brother, that's where we've got folks.

00:54:38.860 That's where we've got interest.

00:54:41.680 That's where it's fertile ground for us to find potential AFA family members.

00:54:57.200 Something else, and I think this is a good point that George made, is think of how you

00:55:07.320 got here.

00:55:08.320 When looking for where to go to bring more people to Alistair True, why are you here?

00:55:15.040 Where did you come from?

00:55:16.040 What was your background?

00:55:19.340 There was a time where a lot of the AFA members, at different times, there was a commonality

00:55:25.320 of where they came from um you have a certain group that came you know from one thing or another

00:55:31.220 one thing that's really cool about the afa now is we've got so many different people from so many

00:55:36.220 different walks of life that have joined us um how's true is always a strange strange thing in

00:55:43.320 the afa you'd have you know you have guys that came because they were skinheads and guys that

00:55:48.760 came over here because they played magic cards and were Dungeons and Dragons nerds. Now you have

00:55:55.300 guys that come from, they like music, guys that like history, or guys that have had a political

00:56:03.100 awakening about the future of our folk, or you have guys that just didn't know, always knew

00:56:10.580 something didn't fit with Jesus and knew there must be something else and found this. And you

00:56:16.420 have people that are a mixture of all of those things. In the AFA now, you have people that come

00:56:21.500 to us because they saw that we had, that we now have two Hoffs and think that's a great thing and

00:56:26.380 didn't know it existed until they drove by and saw it. We have people coming to us from all

00:56:31.720 different angles. We've got people that have been pagan their whole life joining, and we've got 0.88

00:56:36.360 people that have been atheists their whole life that have found us. We have people that spent 0.75

00:56:41.300 their life being a hardcore Christian because they knew they were people of faith, but they

00:56:44.900 didn't have a context to put that faith in until now we have great people from all over that have

00:56:50.740 joined us and it's uh it's a really special thing and it opens up a lot of doors for us

00:56:57.380 and people bring their family and come to an afa then chances are there's people there that share

00:57:03.780 commonality with them there's also people there that have lived very different lives we can all

00:57:08.660 come together and worship our gods we can all come together and fellowship with our folk and learn

00:57:13.460 from each other grow together and that's how we get a whole community there's a lot of people

00:57:18.420 talking out there about about tribes but a tribe was all walks of life being united

00:57:27.700 by a common ancestry and a common purpose um those are all different kind of folks of all different

00:57:35.620 ages, women, kids, elders, youths, all together. And the AFA's got that now. We've grown leaps and

00:57:44.100 bounds in that. So yeah, our people are everywhere. What else do we got, guys?

00:57:54.320 If we have any more questions or anything else you guys would like me to address, I'd be really

00:57:59.980 happy to just taking a look seeing if there's comments and questions that I

00:58:07.520 might have missed I'm sure there probably is but uh yeah

00:58:17.360 Let me refresh and reload just in case on that.

00:58:39.080 George, thank you for putting up the list of the room workbook. I think that's kind

00:58:43.840 an unsung hero in the world of uh world of runes it doesn't get talked about a lot but i think it's

00:58:50.720 really really great it's got really cool uh illustrations in there that i certainly really

00:58:55.600 got a lot out of when i read it i think it's visually good i think it simplifies things

00:59:00.960 into a digestible way for people who are new to the runes and i think it's really solid and it

00:59:06.000 provides these little um little activities to help you internalize those mysteries and to help you

00:59:12.240 think about them on a different level and i think that's been really useful as well

00:59:25.120 all right guys well i appreciate you guys especially on the side covering for when i'm

00:59:29.520 not seeing a question or you know making that work good for us um i appreciate you guys joining

00:59:36.160 conversation tonight like i've said and i'll continue to say i look forward every month

00:59:42.080 to doing this because i love talking to my fa family um if we've got any more or anything that

00:59:50.700 you guys would like to hear me talk about please do let me know um and i would like to get to that

00:59:57.280 with the time i have left this evening

01:00:00.560 uh zach i did not see any post about kindred flags for thorshoff but just today i was speaking

01:00:17.300 with a company that gets us tags and uh putting in an order so um i'm ordering up a flag of all

01:00:25.340 of our existing AFA kindreds to go

01:00:27.500 in Thorsthoff. We're going

01:00:29.400 to do that just like we do at Odenshoff, where

01:00:31.300 all our kindred flags are

01:00:33.060 there in our holy

01:00:35.240 space, in our vey, in our

01:00:37.280 sacred area.

01:00:39.620 When the AFA gathers,

01:00:41.300 all of our kindreds are present

01:00:42.900 in a way. We share that

01:00:44.960 hymenia there in that holy place. When we

01:00:47.240 stand before our God, we stand 0.87

01:00:49.080 before the Allfather at Odenshoff.

01:00:51.820 All of those kindred flags

01:00:53.160 are there. They're all standing there with us.

01:00:55.340 When we stand before Asa Thor at Thorshof, all of those kindred flags will be there

01:01:00.340 because we're proud of our kindreds and that we want to stand before the divine with them.

01:01:05.140 So, yes, we're going to have those flags.

01:01:06.940 I'm not sure if that was your question or not, Zach, but that's what's going to go on there.

01:01:17.300 All right.

01:01:18.540 Well, I really appreciate you guys joining us this evening and being part of this.

01:01:26.060 if i missed you i'm gonna go to the comments and see what i need to answer and i'll answer what i

01:01:30.460 can um hopefully by the next time i speak to you we're out there having events again

01:01:36.540 doing things again and moving forward i look forward to all you guys coming out and celebrating

01:01:41.260 our 25th anniversary with us at odenshoff and i look forward to folks joining me in july and

01:01:49.740 dedicating uh dedicating thors off and opening that up officially um thank you guys so much

01:01:57.500 you guys are having an amazing uh amazing mayday i hope things are going well in your life i hope

01:02:02.860 everybody out there is healthy i hope everybody out there is doing okay economically if you're

01:02:08.620 struggling if things are hurting please reach out to your folk builder because uh folk services is

01:02:13.580 there so far we haven't had a lot of requests on that which has been nice but we are here for our

01:02:19.740 folk if you guys are in need and are struggling talk to your folk builder folk services here take

01:02:24.940 care of our own especially during times like these so if you guys get out there get outside

01:02:30.140 enjoy the springtime, and we'll talk to you guys later. Hail the gods, hail the folk, hail the AFA.

Asatru Folk Assembly - May 02, 2020

May 2020 Facebook Live Discussion

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