Asatru Folk Assembly - Stephen McNallen on The Reality Calls Show (2018)

00:00:00.000 I think the generally agreed upon definition of neo-paganism would be an ancient pagan religion

00:00:10.540 which has been brought perhaps into modern times, usually with some modifications because

00:00:14.860 things change over time anyway, and is being practiced in the current day.

00:00:19.520 And that would pretty much match what we do in the House of True Folk Assembly.

00:00:23.920 Okay.

00:00:24.940 Yeah, because obviously there are, it seems there's like a wide range of paganism, obviously,

00:00:30.000 Obviously, there's no kind of, I don't know, authority saying what is and isn't paganism.

00:00:37.400 But my perspective from a total lay perspective is that there do seem to be some, I don't know, occult or witchcraft, wicca, that kind of thing.

00:00:49.480 I mean, that's what a lot of people think of when they think of paganism.

00:00:52.340 Would you view that as paganism?

00:00:54.260 Well, it's, I suppose you could say that's paganism, but it's really quite different from what we do.

00:01:03.360 I see, first of all, I seldom use the word pagan to describe what I do, actually.

00:01:09.000 The word pagan comes from the Latin and means paganos, if I'm saying that right.

00:01:15.400 I'm afraid my altar boy Latin is pretty corrupt.

00:01:18.700 But it referred to people in the countryside, the pagos.

00:01:22.520 And in the north, up in Scandinavia, around in there, the word would have been heathen because of the people of the heath, the people who lived out in the sticks, so to speak, you know, out beyond the reach of the established system sometimes.

00:01:37.880 So some people call what we do heathenry. 0.91

00:01:40.060 I don't use that word myself because to me the word heathen, at least here in the States, connotates someone who's ignorant and unwashed and unkempt and not very bright. 0.83

00:01:51.100 and I think that's not us at all. So it's a drogatory term. Right, you know to me I 0.89

00:02:00.280 think I think of Al-Satru in particular as an indigenous religion just as there

00:02:05.800 are native religions in in say Asia and in Africa and that you know the American

00:02:11.840 Indians have their own native religion and so forth this is the historical

00:02:16.860 religion of the people of one of the religions of the people historically in northern europe

00:02:22.740 and it reflects us it reflects our inner being it reflects all of our ancestors it reflects the way

00:02:31.340 that we have looked at the world as a people for thousands and thousands of years it's sort of

00:02:37.240 uniquely tailored to us as i believe all natural religions are yeah i've heard some speculation

00:02:44.480 that there's been a lot of, well, historically, there was a lot of interaction between

00:02:49.600 Europeans and perhaps Indians, and perhaps the East as well. And perhaps some people have even

00:02:59.340 suggested that there might be, you know, teachings in those religions that were wiped out in Europe

00:03:07.100 and kind of attempting to revive some kind of indigenous belief

00:03:14.040 by looking at those teachings.

00:03:16.920 What do you think of that idea?

00:03:19.900 Well, my approach to Ausatru is a sort of progressive.

00:03:24.360 There's several different steps that one takes.

00:03:26.280 I think your first sources that you use to try and recreate what you do in your religion

00:03:31.960 should deal with the established literature that exists.

00:03:36.520 And in the north, that's kind of scanty.

00:03:39.860 You know, we have the various sagas.

00:03:42.200 We have the Eddas and so forth.

00:03:44.460 I believe you had a guest on previously who had talked about those sort of things a bit.

00:03:48.740 And so that's sort of your first resource when it comes to putting together and reconstructing and trying to work with a religion of this sort.

00:03:57.840 So after the original sources, you want to look at parallel things in other related cultures.

00:04:06.180 For example, there are tremendous overlap between the old Celtic beliefs and the old Germanic beliefs and the old Slavic beliefs.

00:04:14.620 Because the Celts, the Germans, and the Slavs all are ultimately descended from what we call the funnel beaker culture that existed before any of those branched off and became distinct.

00:04:25.280 but it's all 0.92

00:04:28.040 it's all Europe

00:04:28.860 it's all Northern Europe

00:04:29.900 it's all our

00:04:30.980 our common European

00:04:31.960 ancestors

00:04:32.560 and

00:04:35.240 looking a little

00:04:37.000 farther

00:04:37.360 afield

00:04:38.360 say

00:04:38.740 the

00:04:41.640 the old

00:04:42.240 Indian beliefs

00:04:42.940 are still a part

00:04:43.800 of the

00:04:44.720 shall we say

00:04:45.180 the Indo-European

00:04:46.080 family

00:04:46.480 and there are

00:04:47.320 incredible parallels

00:04:48.600 surprising parallels

00:04:50.220 actually

00:04:50.680 especially between

00:04:52.220 the Celtic beliefs

00:04:54.120 and the beliefs of ancient India.

00:04:58.500 Of course, ultimately, my thought is that we are related to them genetically.

00:05:02.840 They are the original, quote, Aryans, which, of course, is a Sanskrit word meaning noble.

00:05:09.480 So there are connections there.

00:05:11.560 And there's evidence, I think, that there was very much European-type people in parts of India.

00:05:19.460 The traditional theory is that there was a, quote, Aryan invasion into northern India,

00:05:26.180 and therefore that many of these people are actually related to us and would have common roots,

00:05:33.820 common background, and of course, common inner selves,

00:05:38.080 because I think that all native religions reflect the race or the group of people from whom it comes.

00:05:45.440 um so yeah there there are parallels there definitely are i i kind of looked at some of

00:05:53.080 your your your things on youtube and i believe you're into meditation and so forth right um

00:05:57.880 yeah and and as as am i in many ways um in in the old mythic lore of the germanic peoples

00:06:08.760 specifically of the Scandinavians.

00:06:11.180 You have the story of Odin, the father of the gods.

00:06:15.740 And sometimes he's depicted as a war god.

00:06:18.260 You know, he's all about making war, and he's got Valkyries and berserkers

00:06:22.280 and, you know, all of these very aggressive things.

00:06:25.700 And that's legit, but primarily he's a god of wisdom

00:06:30.540 and the acquisition of wisdom.

00:06:32.760 So he goes on these wisdom quests,

00:06:34.960 And one of them was the winning of the Mead of Inspiration, in quotes.

00:06:41.040 And in Old Norse, that would be something like,

00:06:44.700 or that which, the inciter to higher evolution, really, the way I look at it.

00:06:54.760 And in that story, Odin turns himself into a serpent, climbs up into a mountain.

00:07:01.960 And up in that mountain, there's a female character who's described as a giantess, although she has a Valkyrie name, but that's a whole other subject.

00:07:12.940 And he spends three nights with her, and she lets him drink from the elixir of immortality, and then he transforms into an eagle and flies off.

00:07:22.580 Now, obviously, myths are symbolic.

00:07:26.480 You know, they're not historical.

00:07:27.840 So, you know, we have to keep that in mind.

00:07:30.220 But then we look at, say, the Kundalini tradition in India, where you have the serpent power at the base of the spine, which is brought up from chakra to chakra, when in the Ajna chakra, you have the union of male and female principles.

00:07:49.120 The Amrita or the Soma is produced, which is transformative. It's the elixir of immortality, transforms the individual into a higher being.

00:08:01.180 And I think it would be highly unusual for those similarities to be just coincidences.

00:08:10.900 I think that there was an ancient tradition of religion or a tradition of spiritual evolution in Northern Europe that probably has been largely overlooked by scholars.

00:08:21.060 And it's one of the many facets of Al-Satru that interests me, in addition to all the other stuff that there is in our religion.

00:08:29.060 But yes, I think that there is a connection between various cultures and ours.

00:08:36.800 And with judicious use, we can examine those other cultures and see what they tell us about ours.

00:08:45.280 We can look at ancient India and maybe cautiously and with good judgment say, okay, so our ancestors, our direct ancestors might have done such and such.

00:08:59.060 um yeah i'm just wondering actually if for you is it more about the kind of historical

00:09:06.180 value or are you like seeking uh spiritual truth what's what's your main motivator

00:09:12.420 uh absolutely both absolutely both um my interest in in also true arises first of all because it

00:09:22.260 It just seems so right and so natural to me.

00:09:25.900 It is also valuable to me because I believe that it is important to our people, to the European descent of people, because I believe that in a way, our race has become lost.

00:09:40.080 We've sort of lost our soul in some respects.

00:09:42.920 In tribal societies, when someone displays unusual symptoms or is acting a little strange or maybe they're sick, they go and they see someone who is adept in the shamanic arts.

00:09:55.100 And that the shaman will typically go into the, quote, other world and recover the person's soul.

00:10:04.280 Is that that person's soul, quotation marks, has gone wandering.

00:10:08.260 And so he brings that back.

00:10:10.380 Now, that's a very broad description, and it applies to a lot of societies.

00:10:13.600 It's not just the Norse or the Germanic.

00:10:16.260 But I think we can make a comparison with groups as well.

00:10:20.020 I think entire nations, entire races can lose their soul.

00:10:26.140 And what I mean when I say that is that there's something spiritually wrong with them.

00:10:31.060 They've gone adrift.

00:10:32.220 They don't have a North Star to guide by.

00:10:35.140 They succumb to modernism and relativism and all of the things that afflict our own society.

00:10:42.100 I believe that my European-descended brothers and sisters, many of them are adrift.

00:10:48.120 Now, some find their answer in Christianity, and I don't mean to disregard that.

00:10:53.260 And certainly I respect their right and their interest in doing so.

00:10:57.340 But for me, for me, it's the way of our ancestors that gives us the guidance.

00:11:04.160 It's the way of our forefathers and foremothers, to whom we are still connected intimately, going back into time.

00:11:12.220 That is, for me, the way that we should follow, to find our souls again, to heal ourselves. 0.96

00:11:20.420 White people have to heal themselves. 0.98

00:11:22.680 They've become infected with strange and foreign viruses. 1.00

00:11:27.220 And we can set that right.

00:11:29.540 so what aspects of paganism have you seen that make you think that it will somehow

00:11:37.780 heal or be like a north star for european people our our faith we call it our faith

00:11:46.100 faith implies blind belief and i don't believe in blind belief but our our way

00:11:51.700 tells us that we are connected to the holy powers,

00:11:58.560 the gods and the goddesses, if you will,

00:12:00.900 that they are, at the same time, our blood kin

00:12:05.220 and, in a way, our friends.

00:12:09.420 And as our kin, as us being literally,

00:12:13.720 in some respect, their descendants,

00:12:16.660 there is a harmony.

00:12:19.980 there is a sense of belonging there's an awareness that we are a distinct group

00:12:26.940 we are of a certain descent a certain line one it's a belief that encourages

00:12:36.260 self-respect and and self-acceptance not acceptance to be a slob but the

00:12:42.000 acceptance of ourselves as people who are growing who are striving who are

00:12:46.620 trying in a very almost a Nietzschean or a Faustian way to become more than we are.

00:12:53.660 I don't think the gods and the goddesses want us to worship them, you know, to get down and,

00:12:58.140 oh, you know, just to submit ourselves to them. Quite the opposite. Especially Odin,

00:13:05.740 who is ultimately a god of self-transformation. What he's saying to us isn't, kiss my ring,

00:13:12.220 mirror human what he's saying is we are kin become like me become more than you are attain

00:13:24.040 a higher level push yourself grow that to me is our relationship with the gods and goddesses

00:13:32.440 and how could that not be a good thing for for white people

00:13:36.400 yeah that sounds like a definitely a positive positive uh message that would help people

00:13:42.640 whichever gods are there and what is their relationship like with the uh the followers of

00:13:48.880 the the way that of us us are true um well the gods and the goddesses are typically divided into

00:14:00.740 two very large groups, large, quote, families. One is the Aesir. That's spelled A-E-S-I-R.

00:14:07.560 Some people say Aesir. I say Aesir. I think that's probably closer. The Aesir are typically

00:14:14.340 aggressive. They have the capacity of being warlike. They are often associated with the sky. 1.00

00:14:21.700 They are the gods and the goddesses connected with rulership and with warfare.

00:14:28.740 And that would include Odin, who is typically conceived as father of the gods, and Thor.

00:14:36.140 You know, everybody knows about Thor, right?

00:14:38.060 Because of the movie, of course.

00:14:41.000 And in fact, what I'm wearing is what we call Thor's hammer.

00:14:47.580 In the mythology, of course, Thor wields this big hammer in which he defends the realms of the gods and the realms of humankind against the giants.

00:14:56.960 And we think of this as defending against stasis, against stagnation, against the forces of entropy, versus the living, developing, growing, changing way of our group, of ourselves.

00:15:16.140 and um and you you've got that you know oh then you've got four you've got odin's various and

00:15:22.800 sundry sons you've got the the the goddess uh uh frigga odin's wife who is she's a mother figure

00:15:30.480 but so much more than that she is a worthy counterpart for you know odin she is wise in

00:15:36.720 her own right she is powerful in her own right and then the other family is the the vanir and

00:15:44.480 the Vanir are typically more associated with fertility, with growth, with subsistence, with

00:15:51.120 sexuality, and so forth. The two principal deities among the Vanir are Freyja, the goddess. She's

00:15:59.780 called a goddess of love, and that's true, but she is so much more because, for example, in the

00:16:06.240 mythic lore, she has first choice of the fallen warriors. Everybody knows about Uthin taking the

00:16:13.800 heroes to Valhalla

00:16:14.980 and okay

00:16:17.200 that's a valid part of the lore

00:16:19.480 but at the same time

00:16:21.560 they forget that Freya

00:16:23.320 actually gets first pick 0.95

00:16:24.920 and take them to her hall 1.00

00:16:27.460 so she 1.00

00:16:29.720 is not just a

00:16:31.840 a Playboy centerfold

00:16:33.920 Playboy has

00:16:35.860 centerfolds these days, I think they were changing

00:16:37.760 or something, whatever

00:16:39.040 but

00:16:41.800 But she's not just a beautiful woman. 1.00

00:16:44.080 She's not just a sex object by any means.

00:16:46.220 She's a warrior, and she is wise. 0.99

00:16:48.860 She has her own form of...

00:16:50.800 Odin's magic is the magic of the runes

00:16:55.000 and the ecstasy that comes with the mead.

00:16:58.620 But Freya's magic is different. 0.93

00:17:00.760 It's woman's magic. 1.00

00:17:02.000 It's powerful magic. 1.00

00:17:03.120 It's called Savor.

00:17:04.440 And it's much more shamanic, really,

00:17:06.340 than what we think of as being Odin's hidden arts.

00:17:12.780 So you've got these two basic families amongst the Norse deities.

00:17:17.560 And I think that we can look at that many ways.

00:17:21.420 Some people like to think of the gods and goddesses as just archetypal symbols

00:17:25.420 and the collective unconscious, sort of that Jungian thing.

00:17:29.180 But to me, that's only a two-dimensional figure.

00:17:32.420 It's like a cardboard cutout, the actual deity.

00:17:36.340 I mean, certainly I've had things happen to me that convinced me that the gods are for real.

00:17:42.380 I'm going on and on and on.

00:17:43.920 You can just tell me to shut up any time.

00:17:46.240 No, it's good.

00:17:46.960 I'm listening.

00:17:48.620 So someone else on a slightly different topic, someone else has asked me to ask you.

00:17:55.120 So, you know, in real, right, there's been some discussion of whether we should embrace Christianity

00:18:02.580 or go all the way back to paganism,

00:18:06.080 considering that it's sometimes difficult

00:18:07.820 to recover large aspects of it, I suppose.

00:18:13.620 And some people theorize that maybe we need to adopt Catholicism

00:18:19.400 because it has the true legacy,

00:18:23.420 the unbroken lineage of pagan teaching

00:18:26.520 somehow kind of sewn in there.

00:18:28.280 What's your perspective on this idea?

00:18:29.720 Well, first of all, obviously, I personally am completely and unhesitatingly committed to the

00:18:36.940 gods of the North. But I was raised a Catholic. You know, my mom and dad were Catholics. All my

00:18:43.640 relatives were Catholics. All my ancestors for generations have been Catholics. Certainly my

00:18:49.540 Irish side is all Catholics, and probably some of my German side as well, probably not so much

00:18:56.700 my English side. But, you know, I exist in this matrix of ancestry and of kinship. And many of

00:19:06.660 those kin were Christians. I don't dishonor them for that. I revere and respect and care for all

00:19:15.200 of my ancestors, not just the ones that followed the old ways. Now, my take on it is that

00:19:22.240 we really need to kind of heal this breach 0.90

00:19:25.920 between Christians and pagans

00:19:28.860 each respecting the other

00:19:31.380 and allowing people to follow their conscience

00:19:34.460 just as you hear the expression

00:19:40.380 no more brother wars

00:19:41.600 no more fighting amongst the European descended peoples 0.52

00:19:45.560 no more white on white wars 0.96

00:19:47.480 just as you have that 0.86

00:19:49.760 I think we need to add a bit and say

00:19:51.540 no more religious wars between brothers.

00:19:55.200 We just can't do that.

00:19:57.240 I think that people need to be free to follow Christianity if they wish

00:20:01.080 or to follow paganism if they wish.

00:20:04.420 I don't know that we have to be all of one faith.

00:20:07.580 Now, my own observation is that despite some of the theories I've heard,

00:20:16.080 It seems to me that Christianity is still largely not a good fit on a very, very deep level for our race.

00:20:27.540 Actually, here, let me show you a book.

00:20:30.220 This is a really good book.

00:20:31.880 It's The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity by James C. Russell.

00:20:38.020 And it shows how when Christianity came into Northern Europe, it first of all tried presenting Jesus as as as pretty much the stereotype, you know, you know, peace, love, good vibes and so forth.

00:20:55.160 And, you know, my Christian friends, please forgive me for oversimplifying there.

00:21:00.660 But and people in the north weren't having it.

00:21:03.640 They wanted a heroic deity.

00:21:05.080 And so the missionaries went back and recast the message to Germanize it, to allow them to successfully convert our ancestors.

00:21:18.240 But that adaptation was necessary, and there's no adaptation required for our native beliefs.

00:21:26.780 I mean, that is us.

00:21:28.120 That is definitely clearly springing from our blood, from the soil of our being, from the very roots of our existence.

00:21:39.180 In fact, you know, pagans in Europe fought a thousand-year war in resisting Christianity.

00:21:48.700 That's just the truth.

00:21:49.660 If you start off with Constantine, say, in Italy, against the Italic pagans, and on up over the years, across the centuries, up painstakingly through Germany, France, modern-day Germany, modern-day France, and all of those countries in Central Europe.

00:22:10.600 Finally, up into the north, it wasn't until, say, 1300 or so that the last public practice of paganism was eradicating. 0.61

00:22:24.580 About a thousand-year war, our ancestors did not succumb easily to Christianity.

00:22:31.700 And in the north, in the sagas, the Norwegian King's sagas in particular, we have evidence time and time and time and time again. 0.91

00:22:40.160 People being martyred for the old faith, for the old pagan gods.

00:22:45.120 People were put to death.

00:22:46.720 They were mutilated.

00:22:48.480 They were exiled.

00:22:50.680 And if the particular king was in a good mood, they were only fined.

00:22:55.820 So with all respect to modern-day Christians, and with no animosity towards them for this because it's not their fault,

00:23:03.680 The truth is, our race fought Christianity for a thousand years.

00:23:12.660 We've been some version of pagan since our existence. 0.72

00:23:17.780 Let's say 40,000 years from modern humans in Europe.

00:23:22.620 And that's, who knows, there's a lot of dispute about all that sort of stuff.

00:23:26.160 But we have been Christian for about 2% of our existence.

00:23:33.680 All that other time, we chose something else, and we did pretty well by that. 0.99

00:23:38.420 We survived under incredibly harsh circumstances, and we had virile societies.

00:23:45.360 We had societies that have been largely underestimated throughout the Northlands.

00:23:53.880 The Celtic accomplishments, as you're probably aware, are incredible.

00:23:59.460 And the Greeks certainly had systems that were highly evolved.

00:24:06.880 The oldest democracies in Europe were pagan. 1.00

00:24:11.760 They were actually also true. 1.00

00:24:14.600 You have the Icelandic all thing. 1.00

00:24:17.200 You have the thing, that's T-H-I-N-G, which is the old assembly. 0.99

00:24:22.140 You had the assembly in Isle of Man, all of which predate Christianity. 0.99

00:24:27.940 by a long shot. If you look at the construction of the Germanic tribes, the archetypal,

00:24:35.200 typical, vanilla-flavored Germanic tribe had three main components. You had the chieftain

00:24:42.660 most of the time. You didn't always have a chieftain. I think the Saxons only had a chieftain

00:24:47.840 when they went to war, and then they elected somebody to take care of all of that.

00:24:52.300 But typically, you had the chieftain, you had an assembly of leading men, sort of intermediaries that kind of kept a check on the leader and kept him from just doing whatever he wanted.

00:25:05.880 They had to ensure that he stayed within the bounds of the law.

00:25:09.380 And the law was set by the freemen in the assembly.

00:25:12.280 So what you had was actually very parallel to, say, in the United States, where you have the executive branch, the judicial branch, and the legislative branch. 0.56

00:25:24.740 It was democracy in its purest and least corrupted form, unlike what passes for democracy today, which is absolutely obscenity.

00:25:35.180 So all I'm saying is people underestimate the way of our ancestors. 0.55

00:25:40.240 If people want to be Christians, hey, I support you.

00:25:43.880 I will fight shoulder to shoulder with Christians, with atheists, with agnostics, with theosophists, 0.57

00:25:50.600 Rosicrucians, I don't care.

00:25:52.340 For me, the struggle that we face today, the struggle on which the future of our race depends

00:25:58.800 is a, at this point, a political struggle.

00:26:02.260 It's not a struggle of faith.

00:26:05.300 And it's time to end the brother wars, all the brother wars, to include the religious.

00:26:10.240 that's what i think i yeah i agree um fox day i might have him on soon to talk about this but

00:26:17.560 he he's been making the case that um the the greatest enemy of the globalists today

00:26:23.820 is christians uh globalists they really seem to hate christians you know actually they are

00:26:29.640 often uh you know criticizing them trying to undermine them trying to tear down their monuments

00:26:35.000 kind of thing like things like that so um what's your perspective on on why the globalists even

00:26:41.980 hate christianity so much well christianity has has in fact been a powerful force against the

00:26:49.220 globalists and i respect that i acknowledge that um you've got poland you've got hungary you know

00:26:55.460 especially the ones that come mind to mind right now because they're fighting you know the

00:26:59.540 immigration thing and to retain their identity and i i see that that applies you know throughout

00:27:04.860 the culture to a large extent, and I respect that. But the ultimate weakness of Christianity, 0.58

00:27:12.360 as I see it, is that it does not spring from the soul of our race. Whereas the ancient Germanic 0.96

00:27:20.600 beliefs, the Celtic beliefs, the Slavic beliefs, all of these come from us easily, naturally.

00:27:27.340 We absolutely would be a big obstacle to the globalists, because they want a homogenized

00:27:34.200 mass we will fight not just not just for our gods we will fight for the existence of our people

00:27:41.440 you know my saying is the simple eight words the existence of my people is not negotiable

00:27:49.120 and i know that many christians share that but it certainly isn't limited to christianity and

00:27:55.860 And believe me, the globalists would find us for our size.

00:28:03.060 I mean, our numbers are tiny compared to Christianity.

00:28:05.920 But, you know, we're absolutely opponents of the globalists.

00:28:09.140 The comparison I like to use, this is sort of a semi-historical bit.

00:28:15.080 But Charlemagne fought an extended and stubborn insurgency, which was composed of the Saxon pagans for a long time.

00:28:33.020 Their ruler was strong and charismatic and fought Charlemagne, who wanted to impose Christianity upon them.

00:28:39.940 And so from that aspect, Charlemagne is not exactly one of our heroes. 0.73

00:28:46.500 But of course, Charlemagne also fought the invading Muslims. 0.62

00:28:50.860 And one of his aides, one of his right-hand men, was Holger Donska. 0.56

00:28:57.680 And Holger Donska was from Scandinavia.

00:29:01.500 And he's sort of semi-mythological.

00:29:04.880 We're talking the world of legends here.

00:29:07.260 You know, there's a few things that relate to him historically, but not a lot.

00:29:14.160 And people don't think about what religion Holger might have been.

00:29:18.720 They would have thought, well, he must have been a Christian.

00:29:21.460 But actually, since he was supposedly Danish, and he fought with Charlemagne long before Denmark became Christian.

00:29:33.520 Holger Dotsko would have been a pagan. 0.52

00:29:36.140 He would have been a follower of the old ways, but apparently he had the vision and the foresight to understand that he had to ally with a Christian king, despite what the Christians had done to his related peoples, in order to stop something that was truly alien and truly hostile to the very way of Europe. 0.76

00:29:57.460 And in that spirit, today, as we speak, and for years, ever since all the—I'm certainly not excusing the globalist wars, but in defense against or in combat against the forces, you know, the radicals and the various and sundry, not very pleasant types running around in the Middle East, 0.77

00:30:22.140 Many, many Al-Satruar, many, many pagans of the northern variety have fought against these guys.

00:30:32.600 You know, I've gotten tons of friends in the military who have fought against the radical Islamists, for example,

00:30:42.420 who are, you know, in their way of doing their best to serve that cause.

00:30:47.320 And that doesn't mean those wars are wise.

00:30:50.060 I'm not saying that.

00:30:51.020 I mean, I think those wars have been a horrible boondoggle, but nevertheless, there are young men wearing Thor's hammers around their neck with some with with also true on their dog tags, as I had, who are who are fighting against that very force.

00:31:06.700 yeah that actually uh reminds me of the issue um with some of the some of the eastern religions um

00:31:16.840 kind of they preach almost well in some instances pacifism and uh we've seen a lot of those

00:31:24.680 countries that did follow um uh you know native eastern religion eastern religions actually just

00:31:33.820 get taken over uh for example um pakistan obviously i'm assuming that was kind of once

00:31:41.120 part of india but now it's it's a muslim country and also the muslims are kind of going into india

00:31:47.680 and trying to take over there as well and uh when you've got a pretty pacifist worldview i suppose

00:31:54.460 that makes you susceptible um and i guess that's not the case with paganism well certainly that's

00:32:02.360 not not our case um i know i know i know many men who look forward to fighting in battle and going

00:32:10.980 to valhalla which is you know one of the afterlife concepts that we have in our faith are there any

00:32:17.460 particular ethical kind of or moral teachings within paganism from your perspective oh absolutely

00:32:25.520 You mean in that specific regard or just in general?

00:32:28.680 In general.

00:32:30.440 Okay.

00:32:31.040 Yes.

00:32:32.120 People think of those of us who practice Al-Satru and I suppose the other forms of paganism as being amoral, as not having any principles.

00:32:42.080 There's a lot of people who call themselves pagans who pretty much fit that description, but they're not us.

00:32:48.060 I have known a lot of people and sort of the new agey, quote, pagans, you know, very fluffy, very, you know, peace, love, good vibes.

00:33:00.120 We're all the same. And they're all radical liberals.

00:33:03.280 They're all, you know, far left, almost all of them.

00:33:07.100 But that's not us. 0.96

00:33:09.220 Now, also true, was founded as a as a folkish religion in the United States.

00:33:14.240 In 1972, I set up what became the first organization dedicated to Al-Satru in the United States. And from day one and for the next 15 years, everybody that we had was somewhere conservative to right wing, the whole gamut in there.

00:33:35.700 And it was only much later that there became people practicing Al-Satru from a very liberal left way that was not specifically connected to our people.

00:33:49.740 To me, Al-Satru inherently means our people.

00:33:53.380 It means European descended peoples.

00:33:56.500 But, you know, there's a lot of people today in our corrupt age that don't believe that.

00:34:01.560 No, I think that some of the moral standards, the moral values that Alsatruor try to practice include courage, honor, loyalty, kinship bonds, duty, cheerfulness, the ability to undergo stressful situations without succumbing to gloom and negativity.

00:34:29.240 I'm not always very good at that myself

00:34:31.620 but

00:34:32.160 I swear at my computer a lot

00:34:35.360 you didn't hear that

00:34:36.480 but anyway

00:34:42.460 someone's actually

00:34:47.620 sent in a very specific question

00:34:49.540 and it is

00:34:50.920 do you know anything about

00:34:52.820 Basque paganism

00:34:54.240 and what points does it have in common

00:34:56.840 with Celtic paganism

00:34:58.060 i you know i know nothing about basque paganism the basques are a very distinct group uh sitting

00:35:09.400 there you know largely in in spain and parts around there i had the pleasure of of being up

00:35:16.100 in san sebastian in spain which is sort of the basque if it had had a capital that would be

00:35:21.380 their capital and they're they're awesome people but i know very little about their ways to tell

00:35:27.000 the truth. I can't give you a good answer to that. I wish I could. Okay, well that's the answer.

00:35:33.800 That's okay. So what books would you recommend people read in order to get acquainted with

00:35:44.120 I guess either paganism or Al-Satru? Well of course I would very modestly

00:35:50.600 I'd like to mention my own book, which is Also True, A Native European Spirituality.

00:35:58.640 And the title says it all.

00:36:00.320 This is about native European beliefs.

00:36:03.860 It is our way.

00:36:05.400 It's intimately and inherently connected to our race, our people, our set of ancestors.

00:36:14.220 We revere.

00:36:15.240 And this is, right now it's not available on Amazon except at exorbitant prices because the stock has run out.

00:36:25.700 I talked with the supplier and those are basically on the way both to Amazon and actually people would be able to order this from me personally.

00:36:34.800 And if they'd like to do that, I'd be glad to sign up or something like that.

00:36:38.520 Okay, we'll put the details in the description for people.

00:36:41.720 Any copies, any version of the prose edda and the poetic edda.

00:36:46.840 And those are the original sources for most of the mythology.

00:36:52.580 Again, with the understanding that mythology is symbolic.

00:36:56.720 Mythology expresses realities of the soul rather than, say, history.

00:37:02.340 So those would be important.

00:37:05.140 One writer I like a lot is a former Cambridge professor.

00:37:10.700 H.R. Ellis Davidson. She wrote a lot of great books on the ways of the North. And her scholarship

00:37:18.680 is extremely sound. And in this particular volume, I like it because in it, she says in effect that

00:37:28.220 the beliefs of the Celts and the beliefs of the Germans are essentially two manifestations of a

00:37:36.780 common underlying european religiosity and i i like that because it doesn't split us apart

00:37:44.380 it ties us together and the name of the book is myths and symbols in pagan europe it's awesome

00:37:50.780 so so there's a few that'll keep them busy the aforementioned germanization of early medieval

00:37:55.660 christianity would be another one i would highly recommend so a guy a finnish guy has said um

00:38:00.140 Do you think we have enough information for clear practicing of Norse-Finnish-Astaru paganism without it feeling incomplete?

00:38:12.560 That's a very good question.

00:38:15.180 And I think the answer to that is, I think the answer generally is yes.

00:38:20.200 Throughout all of the existence of our peoples during the pre-Christian period,

00:38:28.020 You had beliefs that were practiced, you know, five years before the missionaries showed up and converted people.

00:38:35.340 And you have other things that were practiced for thousands of years before.

00:38:38.380 And in between that very long pagan span, there would have been natural differences and evolutions and changes in the way that people practiced and what they thought about their religion and so forth.

00:38:51.600 So it's not like we have to take a snapshot and just go with that.

00:38:57.060 We have to understand that it's more like a video.

00:39:02.060 And given that natural variety in time and also a natural variation in geography,

00:39:10.440 you know, the people in one valley in Norway might have practiced one way

00:39:15.060 and the people 100 miles away might have looked at things differently.

00:39:18.840 It wasn't uniform.

00:39:20.780 What was important is the underlying basic factors, the basic characteristics.

00:39:25.320 If we stay true to those basic principles, I think that we can produce and practice a valid form of the old paganism.

00:39:35.820 It won't be identical to what people did in Finland or in Denmark or in Sweden or in England, you know, back in the day.

00:39:45.700 But it doesn't have to be because those were changing anyway.

00:39:48.880 So I think it's important to identify the main principles and try to apply them intelligently.

00:39:54.260 And the information that we do have, to go back to kind of what I was saying about India earlier, the first thing, you know, look for the written sources.

00:40:05.760 After that, look for comparisons from groups that are closely connected.

00:40:13.580 And then finally, look for other groups, other practices, other histories, and peoples that are still within the same general framework.

00:40:24.260 Now, in the case of Asatru, that would mean, okay, the Elder Edda, the Pros Edda, the Sagas, and a few other pieces for the first category.

00:40:34.380 And it would mean saying, oh, okay, let's look at the Celtic material and the Slavic material and the Finnish material for the second category.

00:40:42.260 And for the third one, it would be, okay, now let's expand that out to the Indo-European family in general and see what, you know, compare it with Greece and Rome.

00:40:51.900 And there's been a lot of very good comparative Indo-European work that provides a basis for this.

00:40:58.680 But the left hates this.

00:41:00.760 The liberals can't stand this because it flies in the face of their theories about the European decided peoples and our limitations and who we were and who we weren't.

00:41:13.540 But I have no problem with irritating the left.

00:41:17.980 Yeah.

00:41:19.320 I did look it down to three of the Berkeley events.

00:41:21.900 Oh, okay. So what were some of those kind of founding principles, those key principles, are there any you could tell us about now?

00:41:31.740 Yes, yes. I think it's important, first of all, to understand that pagan beliefs spring from a particular people.

00:41:39.480 You know, it's not something that they acquired from a million miles away.

00:41:43.240 You know, it's something that comes from their ancestors.

00:41:48.720 We believe very strongly in an intimate connection between the ancestors and their descendants.

00:41:54.820 We believe in that kind of a connection very strongly.

00:41:58.780 I think the essence of Asatru, for example, comes down to a comparison I sometimes use.

00:42:04.280 You know, if you had, you know, a human suspended in space here,

00:42:10.500 sort of like that Da Vinci picture of, you know, the golden mean or whatever, you know.

00:42:15.760 And I like to think of it as connections.

00:42:19.660 We're connected to various things and to different people.

00:42:23.440 And I would represent that by, say, if you put axes through the human and to the rear, the axis would be the ancestors.

00:42:34.280 There's all the ancestors back there behind us.

00:42:36.760 Every single one of us has a long, gray, visible line behind us, figuratively speaking, of the ancestors.

00:42:45.180 people who lived and died, who lived at least long enough to reproduce, people who survived famine and

00:42:52.920 flood and war and disease to pass on the torch of life. We owe them something. We are connected

00:43:01.540 to them. We are their latest manifestation in this little slice of space and time.

00:43:07.420 So behind that figure, we have the ancestors.

00:43:12.360 In front, the descendants, those yet to come.

00:43:18.320 We are all ancestors in training.

00:43:22.500 100 years from now, 200 years from now, 300 years from now, your descendants are going to read about you.

00:43:30.360 Or maybe they'll have the equivalent of, you know, Ancestry.com or whatever.

00:43:35.800 and they'll say, who was that gal?

00:43:38.100 What did she do? 0.96

00:43:39.600 What kind of person was she? 0.82

00:43:41.740 We hear some real stories about her.

00:43:45.020 They're going to want to know about you.

00:43:47.140 We're all ancestors in training

00:43:49.180 and it's our duty to represent well

00:43:51.820 to those who will come after us

00:43:53.620 and to give them a good future.

00:43:55.840 Off to the side, out from our shoulders,

00:43:58.640 we have that cohort of people who are with us now,

00:44:02.280 our living kin,

00:44:04.100 Our brothers and sisters and cousins,

00:44:06.300 those of us who are in this world at this time,

00:44:09.780 and we need connections with them as well.

00:44:13.460 Above, we're connected with the holy powers,

00:44:17.200 however you conceive of them,

00:44:18.560 from either the gods and the goddesses.

00:44:21.560 And this connection with the divine has to be there.

00:44:25.300 And finally, below is the connection with the earth,

00:44:28.940 with the natural world.

00:44:30.820 To me, that is the essence of religion.

00:44:34.420 The word religion, my Latin again is pretty flaky,

00:44:37.660 but the word religion is derived from a Latin root that has to do with connecting,

00:44:42.100 with tying things together or chaining things together.

00:44:45.980 And that is connection.

00:44:47.880 It's connection with the ancestors, with the holy powers.

00:44:52.640 I sometimes say holy powers instead of gods and goddesses

00:44:55.860 because people get such a stereotype.

00:44:58.660 type, God, well, no, God, they've got their own views of that, you know.

00:45:04.640 Yeah, preconceived ideas about it.

00:45:07.600 Yeah, no insults intended.

00:45:10.440 But the holy powers, however they manifest to you, and of course, with the material world,

00:45:15.940 with nature, with the world around us, we are not separate from nature, and we cannot

00:45:21.340 abuse nature, and we abuse it at our risk.

00:45:24.880 So I'm sort of a right-wing environmentalist.

00:45:29.600 In fact, I'm very much a right-wing environmentalist,

00:45:31.880 but that's a whole other story.

00:45:33.380 Yeah, why not?

00:45:34.600 I think the left have a habit of trying to kind of co-opt

00:45:40.020 everything that's beautiful, you know, even rainbows.

00:45:42.740 They've taken rainbows as one of their symbols for degeneracy now.

00:45:47.540 Right, that's a great comparison.

00:45:49.120 Yeah, and they don't own that.

00:45:52.560 I mean, in America, I know we've had some astoundingly non-liberal environmentalists, a guy named Edward Abbey, a cantankerous old guy who wrote magnificent books like Desert Solitaire and a number of others.

00:46:09.540 And he was a gun-owning, beer-drinking, hell-raising, wall-breaking, hunting environmentalist.

00:46:18.560 environmentalist. You know, it's not just liberals. You don't have to live in Portland,

00:46:25.240 excuse me, all you people in Portland, and, you know, wear Birkenstocks and drink herb tea to be

00:46:31.800 an environmentalist. You can be a rough, tough, rugged environmentalist as well. Those are the

00:46:38.600 people I like. Right. And what's your perspective on sacrifices? I think this is one of the things

00:46:45.180 that comes to mind when people hear about paganism they think like you know sacrifices

00:46:50.040 obviously sacrifices were part of um christianity i'm not sure actually but i know that they're

00:46:56.600 written about in the bible and things like that so um what what part of sacrifices play what do

00:47:02.760 they mean do you still do them that's a magnificent question i'm sitting here petting my cat right now

00:47:10.380 who is not in fact a future sacrifice see our view of the gods and goddesses the holy powers

00:47:16.300 is that they are two things to us they are our kin and they are our friends they're not like

00:47:23.740 above us they're they are above us in magnitude but they are similar to us in fact in in in terms

00:47:32.120 of soul and spirit they are identical with us just bigger like this i have the same essence

00:47:39.740 as, say, the god Thor.

00:47:42.680 But the difference is one of magnitude.

00:47:46.360 You know, I would be a little leaky fossil.

00:47:49.140 That would be my power.

00:47:50.560 And Thor would be Niagara Falls.

00:47:52.320 I mean, we are kin with the holy powers.

00:47:57.080 And in Germanic society,

00:47:59.740 there's two things that you do with kin.

00:48:02.200 You know, you're loyal to them,

00:48:03.700 and you give them presents.

00:48:05.400 You give them gifts.

00:48:06.380 You connect with them.

00:48:07.360 We have sayings in the Edda, the same as the Poetic Edda, that talks about this.

00:48:15.540 It says, you know, give gifts to your friends and go visit them often because otherwise, you know, the road between you will grow brambly and bushy and, you know, be hard to navigate.

00:48:27.420 So, you know, keep those lines with people open.

00:48:30.460 That's the way we see the gods and goddesses.

00:48:32.540 When we quote sacrifice, it's not like, oh, we're going to give X and Y and Z to Odin so that he won't smite us.

00:48:43.680 Not at all. No, he is our kin. He won't smite us.

00:48:48.800 We give gifts to him and to Freya and to Frigga and to whatever, not as something given to a master from a slave.

00:49:00.200 It's not like that.

00:49:01.260 This is not a slave relationship.

00:49:04.180 It's a gift that we give out of love.

00:49:07.880 But a gift calls for a return. 0.63

00:49:10.960 In the old Nordic society, if you gave someone a gift,

00:49:14.460 they would really be expected to give something comparable back

00:49:17.620 because that was just the dynamic of it.

00:49:19.840 It was an exchange of gifts, of love, of energy.

00:49:22.860 And that is exactly the way we treat the gods and goddesses.

00:49:26.980 They're gifts that we give to our kin.

00:49:29.660 And we receive their gifts in turn.

00:49:33.480 So in the old days, goodness knows what they did in the old days.

00:49:39.300 People want to make a huge deal of human sacrifice, and apparently it did happen.

00:49:44.980 But, you know, I think that was wrong.

00:49:46.600 I think that was a misunderstanding.

00:49:49.380 I believe that as time, as history moves on, I believe the holy powers reveal more to us about what they expect.

00:49:58.540 The gods and goddesses don't need blood.

00:50:01.160 They don't need corpses.

00:50:02.640 They don't need any of that stuff.

00:50:04.560 They don't need money.

00:50:06.920 But what they do want is the same thing our friends want,

00:50:14.920 and accidentally, not accidentally, the same thing that our ancestors want.

00:50:19.200 They want to be remembered.

00:50:21.640 They want to be honored.

00:50:24.160 They want us to be with them.

00:50:27.780 and to maintain a relationship of love and connection and kinship with them.

00:50:34.060 In Ausatruth, we have two primary religious rituals.

00:50:39.200 One is the blot.

00:50:40.600 The blot is the, quote, sacrifice.

00:50:43.860 Now, essentially, in the ritual,

00:50:48.800 the person leading it fills a horn with mead,

00:50:52.120 good old honey wine,

00:50:53.900 which represents the mead of inspiration

00:50:56.820 that Odin won

00:50:57.860 and probably goes back to something like

00:51:00.840 that Soma or Amrita

00:51:02.160 of the Indo-Aryans

00:51:04.360 and

00:51:06.220 offers that to the deity

00:51:08.940 but

00:51:09.940 we all know as we do that

00:51:12.660 that that is symbolic

00:51:14.220 the deity doesn't need mead

00:51:16.800 they don't need blood

00:51:18.180 they don't need gold

00:51:19.160 they don't need mead

00:51:21.300 what they need is us

00:51:22.840 that connection with us they need our love our loyalty us standing beside them in the struggle

00:51:31.240 of life they need that that sort of intangible from us it's just a symbol um so that's that's

00:51:40.140 the one ritual we do the bloat or so-called sacrifice the other one is one i really like

00:51:45.760 called a symbol this this can be traced back through old anglo-saxon and back to the old

00:51:52.360 norse essentially this is a ritual that takes the power of the past the power of the ancestors the

00:51:58.920 power of those who have gone before us the way we do it we pass it three times around and each

00:52:03.960 person makes a toast in the first toast they toast a particular deity from our pantheon

00:52:10.840 and in the second one they will toast an ancestor of theirs some relative some ancestor and

00:52:18.760 And usually it's things like, you know, your grandfather, your mother, your uncle, or your ancestor who first came to America, or think something of that sort.

00:52:31.100 And you recount that person's heroism, their intelligence, their good sense of humor, all the good things about them, because those are the traits that we're pulling up out of the past.

00:52:42.840 We're pulling in that wisdom, that courage, that strength, that sense of the past to use for ourselves.

00:52:52.960 And then the third time around is sort of the wild card line.

00:52:55.900 You can salute a god or a goddess.

00:52:59.980 You could mention another ancestor.

00:53:01.820 You could recite a poem.

00:53:03.340 You could sing a song.

00:53:04.780 You could do any of those things.

00:53:06.700 So that's sort of our ritual framework as practiced in the AUSA True Folk Assembly.

00:53:11.260 okay thank you well sorry i said i'm throwing an awful lot of information at you no that's good

00:53:20.460 that's that's what i want so um i was actually going to ask um what uh what kind of message do

00:53:27.840 you have for those people um who uh just kind of listening to us out of curiosity what how would

00:53:34.500 it benefit them to um to learn more about paganism i think if they learn more about

00:53:41.440 particularly their ethnic paganism it's not going to benefit them to learn about ancient

00:53:47.200 egyptian paganism they need to know about their ancestors their forebears the people with whom

00:53:55.520 they are connected beyond space and time the the line of descent is is one they need to they need

00:54:05.620 to learn about their their own ancestral beliefs and you remember the ancestors those people who

00:54:12.580 lived and who died and who passed on that torch of life that they could be here and have a fair

00:54:18.600 respect for it they don't have to follow they don't have to they don't have to think that you 0.86

00:54:24.440 You know, you've got to be a pagan.

00:54:26.460 No, you don't. 0.78

00:54:27.540 You don't.

00:54:28.200 You're a Christian, and you'll still be my friend,

00:54:31.020 and I'll still fight by you.

00:54:33.460 But, you know, much to learn.

00:54:34.220 So that's the main thing, is actually go and find out

00:54:38.780 about your ancestors and how they lived and what they believed,

00:54:42.560 and you don't have to believe in anything.

00:54:46.600 Just make that connection with your ancestors.

00:54:51.540 Yeah, exactly.

00:54:52.920 okay well thank you very much um i'm going to put all the links to

00:54:59.480 your website and social media in the description is there anywhere in particular that you'd like

00:55:06.000 to direct people to find more information about you well right now i would say my youtube channel

00:55:13.520 okay steven mcnapp that's i'm i'm there's oh gosh there's so many things going on right now

00:55:19.860 and i've got so many things coming to a head uh and within a matter of days i hope to have a

00:55:26.700 website because we've got these other projects we're doing and uh so i would say for now the

00:55:32.240 youtube okay great fantastic well thanks everyone for listening to the show and i'll catch you guys

00:55:39.300 next episode thanks again steven thank you very much

Asatru Folk Assembly - June 04, 2021

Stephen McNallen on The Reality Calls Show (2018)

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