00:00:30.000I'm Greg Johnson. Welcome to CounterCurrents Radio. I have two special guests today.
00:00:40.080I have Matt Flavel and Alan Turnage from the As A True Folk Assembly. Gentlemen, welcome.
00:00:48.800Thank you for having us, Greg. It's a pleasure to be here with you this afternoon.
00:00:53.180yeah i i met you uh matt years ago uh out on the west coast i haven't met alan until today
00:01:02.600but we've have corresponded recently and i i go way back with as a true i i'm not a follower of
00:01:12.140it but i'm one of these interested parties who's sort of been watching the development for a couple
00:01:17.720of decades now. And I thought that it would be great to have a conversation about what you guys
00:01:24.940are doing and how the As-A-True Folk Assembly is growing. So could I just begin by asking you,
00:01:34.540gentlemen, first Matt and then Alan, for the people out there who are just total novices,
00:01:42.080normies, newbies, what is the meaning of the word As-A-True and what is the AFA about?
00:01:47.720All right, so word Ausatru is a combined word that means trough or loyalty to the Aesir.
00:01:57.980And the Aesir are, you know, the gods of Northern Europe as expressed by the Old Norse.
00:02:05.280The Ausatru Folk Assembly is celebrating our 30th anniversary this year.
00:02:11.920And we are the Church of the Aesir in Midgard calling our folk home.
00:02:17.720We are a fully functioning church religious organization that practices and propagates the religion of Ausatru.
00:02:28.780Currently, we have four Hoffs. We are working on Hoff number five right now.
00:02:35.380And we have been tremendously blessed by the ICR over the last, certainly over the last 30 years, but a lot over the last 10.
00:02:43.700Yeah. Alan, do you have anything to add to that?
00:02:45.560No, I think that sums up the beginning. That's a great introduction. And also true, although specifically an Old Norse word, we practice it as a pan-Germanic religion. So everybody from Greece to Scandinavia to England to the Western Balkans, all welcome.
00:03:19.720And did you have a religion before you discovered it?
00:03:23.700I grew up in a pretty strict Christian denomination,
00:03:29.500strict constructionist, church of Christ.
00:03:32.960But then I sort of plumbed to the bottom of that and found my way out,
00:03:36.980wandered through buddhism and daoism and then um work into kind of paganism and was in a pagan
00:03:48.060group for a while and one of the facilitators there said you know this is kind of what you are
00:03:53.240and kind of shunted me off in the asatru assembly and as soon as i found it i knew this was where i
00:03:59.080needed to be you know it fit me pretty exactly i had always been it's it it felt like something
00:04:06.720I had always been rather than something that I became when I found the faith. It was just cool
00:04:12.080to find that there were other people already doing it. Yeah, that's great. It's like coming home.
00:04:18.180So what about you, Matt? How did this happen? And did you have a previous religious belief
00:04:23.860or education? So I grew up generically Christian if my parents had to be pinned down on what we
00:04:33.860were because they were probably as loosely affiliated. I think it was a cultural thing
00:04:38.160more than anything else. And then because I've always been a real, you know, fairly spiritual
00:04:42.840person, certainly a spiritually curious person, I was a Jehovah's Witness for a time before I
00:04:48.240found House of Truman. I had a hard break with that and, you know, knew about history and decided,0.75
00:04:55.500you know, what did our folk have before, you know, a Middle Eastern religion came in?0.79
00:05:00.920And I thought I was the only person doing this by myself.0.66
00:05:04.100But when I got online to do some research, I found the AFA and found that other folks were doing this in the modern world and were taking it serious.
00:05:12.920And you said, you know, it's like coming home.
00:05:15.480That's kind of one of our slogans, but it's not just a slogan.
00:05:18.820It's how so many of us felt when we first found it.
00:05:22.120And, you know, hopefully how folks still feel when they come home to House of Truth.
00:05:27.140So I taught for a while out on the West Coast.
00:05:31.680I was living in Berkeley, California, and there was a group of people there who were
00:05:36.320into Azutru, and I went to a couple of their gatherings, and I won't mention any names.
00:05:42.680I know Berkeley has some connection with the origins of the AFA, but these people were,
00:05:47.980well, I guess you'd have to say they were very multicultural.0.70
00:05:51.600They were very sort of woo-woo, New Age-y, pagan.
00:05:55.320And they put on some actually really good events.
00:06:50.740But for those that are that are curious, there are certainly people who are absolutely strange and gross that think they practice Ausatru.
00:07:00.980But a lot of that, realistically, the situation you described with likely the people that us and folks in the audience picture are attending those events you mentioned, they're typically viewing this as another plank in their generic smorgasbord of what they perceive as paganism.
00:07:27.960and very often it's not so much a positive paganism as a rejection of, you know, social
00:07:36.760propriety and appropriate norms. And folkish Ausatru is certainly not that. It's traditional
00:07:46.340in the most fundamental sense of the word tradition, and it's not about, it's not licensed
00:07:53.440for degeneracy. As a matter of fact, our ancestors were known for their, you know, moral uprightness,
00:08:00.260especially contrasted with other, you know, other surrounding cultures. So that's really not a thing.
00:08:07.140And I'll say this, the universal practice of our faith has really diminished over time. That's not
00:08:13.360really a divide that I see that often anymore. I see people in the AFA, and I see, you know,
00:08:19.580Other folks that have yet to join the AFA, but I don't see a lot of that universalist crowd. Maybe
00:08:26.080it's because I no longer run in any kind of circle where there's that overlap.
00:08:30.320Well, this is more than 20 years ago now, actually. There were a couple of things about it
00:08:35.020that I already mentioned that I thought were, well, how to put it? If you want your group to grow,
00:08:42.400you certainly don't make strangers and newcomers feel unwelcome. And they really did that very
00:08:49.920poorly, I thought. It was very cliquish and odd. And later I was in a conversation with
00:08:57.400another person who was somewhat affiliated broadly with this strand of paganism. And the question of
00:09:05.520what paganism meant came up. And it was fascinating to me because this person really
00:09:13.080wanted to define paganism or neo-paganism as a marginal outsider critique of some kind of
00:09:23.740established religion or culture. And she actually went to the point as far as saying, so for Roman
00:09:30.800paganism for me that would be something like the mystery religions you know the subaltern cults the
00:09:38.400the outsider things not the actual uh civil religion of rome and i thought this is a very
00:09:44.480fascinating divide here because uh what's going on is these people have basically identified paganism
00:09:53.040with you know being teenagers who's mad at mom or something or or or people who who feel disaffected
00:10:02.340with the dominant culture and religion of their society and so if they define it that way it will
00:10:10.080never become the culture and religion of a society it's always a counter-religion or a counterculture
00:10:16.260which I think is completely contradictory to the spirit of any actual healthy religion.
00:10:24.560It's the mainstream of a society or wishes to be the mainstream of a society.
00:10:32.080And so it doesn't surprise me that this kind of stuff might fade away for a while.
00:10:37.600But I guess there are always going to be people who want to define themselves as outsiders and rebels.
00:10:44.620but they're the kind of people who would probably get upset if, you know, say something like Azatru
00:10:51.660actually became the mainstream religion of a society. Then it wouldn't be pagan as far as
00:10:56.460they're concerned. Well, if they got upset, we would find some way to balm their wounds, I'm sure.0.61
00:11:05.340Right. Yeah. Well, I think it's really important that you point that out because
00:11:10.140I think it illustrates a couple of things. It's one of the reasons that we don't typically refer
00:11:15.340to ourselves as pagans. I mean, obviously it is factually the case, but the word itself
00:11:21.180is a Christian word to describe the other. And I think that's the same with a term like heathens,
00:11:27.260why we use Ausatru is to say proactive what we are about, not that we're those guys over there0.64
00:11:33.980that don't do the the normal thing um and we've seen that come and go i think it's a blessing that
00:11:41.880some of the edgelord thing is so flaky and comes and goes because you see the same people that
00:11:50.140would be very very edgy and punk and gothic and whatever else all of a sudden you know a number
00:11:58.120years ago it became edgy to be you know quote unquote trad and so you get the same people
00:12:03.420trying to do that. And it's just putting on whatever the new edgy, non-conformist uniform
00:12:11.180of the day is. And that's absolutely not what we're doing. It's really important that we're
00:12:14.740defining Alcetru on its own terms and not as an anti-Christianity or an anti-establishment.
00:12:21.600It's its own unique, independently upright and standing tradition.
00:12:26.640And you certainly identify part of the issue and why we fit into this, let's say, unique niche, because most of the neo-pagan stuff is fairly left wing.
00:12:40.960We are not. And then when most people think of traditionalism, they think of Christianity, which we are not.
00:12:49.480You know, we're and I think of myself as a radical in the in the true sense of the word, you know, in the Latin root, you know, meaning going back to the root.
00:12:57.320We have examined, I think individually, when you come to Austria and certainly at the level that I was here, you go, you and I practice it.
00:13:07.340We've examined this stuff in pretty close detail.
00:13:11.320We try to bring the practice and the profession of the faith into the modern age.
00:13:17.840But with, you know, in the way that instead of trying to reconstruct what our folk were doing 1500 years ago, you know, if Wotan was alive today, what would he be doing?
00:13:31.280And that's what we're trying to bring to the folk.
00:13:34.240Well, this brings me to a couple of questions that are related.
00:13:38.980what happened with the old religions of europe in the mediterranean in the far east of europe
00:13:48.100and in the north of europe is they were extirpated and in various ways by the coming of christianity
00:13:56.580and the traditions have been severed they've been broken to some extent perhaps completely and
00:14:05.300And the question then becomes, well, how do you revive an old religion that was killed off?
00:14:15.760And how do you do it without being what some people will basically parody you as?
00:14:22.700You know, these are just a bunch of people who were LARPing as Vikings, right, with horned helmets or whatever.
00:14:29.000How do you bring back something that's dead?
00:14:33.880I guess that's the question. How authentic is this connection with the old religion?
00:14:43.120So our gods are real. And if you're looking at religion through a, I don't know, a scholastic
00:14:53.280cultural phenomenon, it becomes really different. But if you're looking at it as a religion,
00:14:58.940And as a people's relationships with their gods, it is authentic in the fact that it's a real connection between us and the Aesir who continue to exist.
00:15:14.120It's very much a reforging, you know, like Sigurd's sword.
00:15:19.000You know, it is it is reforged together to be stronger and to, you know, take the pieces that we've inherited from our ancestors and forge them back together in a cohesive whole that comes through consistent gift cycling.
00:15:35.060And it comes to the blessings of the Iser.
00:15:37.800It's a fundamental that we believe that in 1968, the Iser, specifically the All-Father Othen, reached out and spoke to our founder, Stephen McNallan.
00:15:49.900And that that moment of inspiration brought us to where we are today.
00:15:55.020But it's been the consistency of the gift cycle over that time and sincere prayer and dedication to our gods.
00:16:03.880And, you know, hopefully along that way, getting blessed with wisdom and understanding that connects us.
00:16:11.360It's important that we become as knowledgeable as we can on the lore that's available to us.
00:16:16.960But our religion doesn't stop in the Viking Age.
00:16:20.420It's a religion that, you know, pre-existed the Vikings by thousands of years.
00:16:25.460And it's a faith that's eternal as long as our folk and our gods exist.
00:16:30.220And that force has been pushing its way through and tried to arise again in Germany, in Australia, in England at various times, and it finds what founder MacDowell called vectors, you know, that we are instruments that the gods find to bring their will back into the world.
00:16:55.600And so by expressing the will of the gods and by doing our duty, we are bringing this faith back, you know, an old faith for a new age.
00:17:07.740One of the analogies that I think is really useful for understanding how you can revive
00:17:16.400old religions, old religious traditions, is the revival of authentic performance techniques
00:17:27.540Because there's a tradition of performance, but this tradition was changed over time.
00:17:34.260were changed tunings were changed things like that and yet when people were looking back to
00:17:44.340music from the baroque and the renaissance era uh and they they realized okay we we've lost
00:17:50.260something here uh we're not playing it the way that it was originally played we don't we can't
00:17:55.940hear what it sounded like uh maybe we can recapture how they they did this and so there were treatises
00:18:04.260and and records on tunings there are actual instruments original instruments around
00:18:11.140in museum collections you could reconstruct these instruments and the tunings and
00:18:19.620you could look at the scores but ultimately what you had to do to to really get back to the old
00:18:26.340performance techniques is you had to actually perform you actually had to practice and when
00:18:32.660the practice began people were doing it in a kind of mechanical way which is the way things are when
00:18:41.380you practice any kind of music it starts out kind of mechanical and then the necessity of performance
00:18:50.340sort of teaches you uh you you're you're aiming at making this sound its best right and the
00:18:59.540what happened with these authentic performance practices over time is they just got better and
00:19:06.080better at it. It seems to be more and more a reflection of something that was alive once,
00:19:16.140and then it was lost, and now it's been regained. So yeah, you can look at texts, you can look at
00:19:22.020history, but you have to actually try and bring this back as a practice. And when the practice
00:19:29.500begins, and you get more fluent at it, then the thing really starts coming alive. And I wonder,
00:19:37.400what is the role of performance, religious ritual, religious practices in this revival?
00:19:47.380And how has it changed over time? How did it start out back in the 60s? And how has it
00:19:53.800uh continued since then has there been an evolution in your practice as you feel like
00:19:59.960you're getting this right or getting this more dialed in so it's funny and i think it's a good
00:20:08.840way to start and i know the the way you use the word but performance so when it was again i've
00:20:16.200i've only been involved for the last you know 20 24 years or so but when folks started
00:20:24.040reforging this a lot of the ritual structure was you know we don't know what to do this is what we
00:20:33.160think it might have been similar to and there was a lot of performance art involved people tried
00:20:40.920through various means of what they could deliver the best uh you know make the best show of and i
00:20:47.800don't mean that inauthentically but as a place to start without having any experience figuring out
00:20:53.800what that might have looked like some people took that in a really dramatic uh like a ritual drama
00:20:59.880direction other people would draw on what they what they knew or what they assumed and see what
00:21:05.960works um over time what i've found ritual has become more and more genuine and from the heart
00:21:15.400it's been more and more a direct connection between our folk and the gods and a lot of that's
00:21:22.920been built on experience with what the icr approve of and what garners you know garners their favor
00:21:33.640and what may not as well and over time through ritual and through consistently being part of
00:21:38.360that gift cycle i think we've got a pretty consistent way that many of us do it that
00:21:45.400our gods seem to deeply bless and favor us with and i think ritual practice is important i think
00:21:51.960a lot of people confine this to that and it's not a religion is about your entire way of life
00:21:58.760but it's all informed around and built upon that point of connection which we do through
00:22:04.600ritual between us and the gods and so you know i don't think that's a the highest percentage
00:22:11.320of what we do but it's one of the most essential and without that we wouldn't have the faith but
00:22:18.680it's been great to watch that evolve over time and become less of a scripted thing and a much more
00:22:24.920or authentic outpouring of devotion and emotion from the folk and the Gothi presiding over the ritual and that gift being given to the Yisir.
00:22:38.660And we've seen their approval and their blessings in countless ways.
00:22:43.900and i can say that i have been in ritual both conducting ritual participating in ritual
00:22:51.240where i have felt the presence of the gods so i have no doubt um in the reality of
00:23:01.300of what we're doing it's you know it's not sterile and and to me it's not even really
00:23:08.220reconstructed as much as re-blooming. I'm just now thinking of this, but it's like a field that
00:23:15.480is blossoming again after a long period of laying fallow. We have definitely evolved the way that
00:23:23.740we do things in some manners becoming more formal, in some manners less. Back in the long time ago
00:23:33.660when I started practicing in 2005, many people wore, it was called garb, you know, you'd wear
00:23:42.680a Viking tunic, and maybe a Viking belt, and those sorts of things, just to try to get yourself back
00:23:47.200in that space, but we have come to understand that that's not what they would have done,
00:23:52.260they wouldn't have looked, you know, to their ancient ancestors, they would have just worn
00:23:55.840their best suit to go present themselves to the gods, and that's what we do. We have followed,
00:24:02.120We have followed and do follow the architectural investigations that go into the sites, which informs how we understand and practice our faith.
00:24:15.660Many of the laws that were written, we can look at what the laws when the Christians took over.
00:24:22.780We can look at what was prohibited.0.67
00:24:25.580And those were the, for lack of a better word, Matt doesn't like it.
00:24:29.280But the pagan practices that were forbidden when the when the king became Christianized, you know, what were they forbidding?
00:24:35.720The rituals that we were conducting. So we can look at that negative example is what we, you know, again, as as some information about what what the way that our faith was practiced.
00:24:47.220We can also look at lore that came down. It is, although imperfect, when Snorri was writing stuff down, there's an open debate whether he was writing these things as a Christian who was kind of deriding and specifically misinforming the practice.
00:25:07.200But but he but he certainly at the very least copied down the lore and brought forward the stories of the gods.
00:25:14.200And even like the Grimm's fairy tales and the folklore that came down to us through the centuries that were collected mostly by the Grimm's, but by hundreds of other scholars as well.
00:25:26.500Those sorts of things bring in, as Matt mentioned, you know, the whole way of life.
00:25:33.400It's not just what you do once a month on a Saturday.
00:25:38.020It's how you live your life, how you view the world, what your philosophy is, philosophy, religion, worldview.
00:25:46.880Those are those should all be the same thing.
00:25:48.960And that's whole and holy have the same root word.
00:25:52.980And the more holistic we can be in the way that we approach this faith, the more that it can fit with the Western culture and the Western way of life and readopt this faith and this practice for the modern era and for our folk.
00:26:10.940I have no assumption, I have no pretense that, you know, through some act of magic, if a Viking were transported to one of our rituals, that it would be the same.
00:26:25.980But I hope he would understand what was going on, and I'm confident that he would.
00:26:30.140And I don't think that if he were transported back to, you know, the Neolithic times, that the ritual would be the same.
00:26:35.840the essence and the understanding and the importance of it would be understood
00:26:39.980and I'm confident that it would be and just kind of a note on Snorri I uh I do think that Snorri
00:26:46.220was trying to authentically tell the the the faith of his ancestors and a quote I ran into by him
00:26:51.960just the other day which is I don't know haven't struck me before but in his advice to the Scalds
00:26:57.300who were you know continuing the edict tradition he says do not lose sight of the splendid tales
00:27:03.540of the fathers. But remember always that these legends are to be used to point a moral or
00:27:08.480to adorn a tale. Not to be believed or to be altered without the authority of ancient
00:27:14.640skulls who knew them. Belief is sin. Tampering with tradition is a crime against scholarship.
00:27:21.520So in that way, I do think that he was a fairly honest broker.
00:27:26.260That's a very interesting quote. It's actually very encouraging. We've talked a bit about ritual
00:27:32.840what about life in general? Because as you emphasize, yes, this is a religion that encompasses
00:27:40.500the whole of life. It's not just a ritual you do once a week. Have your lives changed
00:27:46.380in positive ways, perhaps some in negative ways, as you've lived into and in the light of
00:27:56.460this new religion that you've come to yes a thousand times yes my life has changed in
00:28:04.860amazing ways um alan just talked a little bit about the idea of of the whole and being holistic
00:28:12.840in our practice, the more that my beliefs, my daily life, my family, my politics, my interests
00:28:27.760have all coalesced in a harmonious and synchronized way. The blessings have really poured out. And I
00:28:36.240don't know. I don't know if everybody listening to this thing may believe it or feel it the same
00:28:41.360way, but I met my wife through the practice of Alcetru, did a naming ceremony for my daughter.
00:28:48.480She's grown up playing at the Hoffs to our gods and building relationships with other AFA members
00:28:55.980at our Hoffs and in the practice of our faith. The gods have blessed me tremendously through
00:29:03.160my participation in Alcetru, and I am deeply, deeply thankful for it.
00:29:09.520I would not trade it for anything in this world.
00:29:14.500And I'll say that right about the time I was really steeping myself in the practice of all the truth,
00:29:22.580I took a kundalini meditation course, a teacher's training course.
00:29:28.340And so many of those folk who were taking that course adopted Sikh names.
00:29:34.660It was through the Yogi Bhajan's tradition of Sikhism.
00:29:38.900And so they were, you know, so they were sort of, again, like we were talking about at the beginning, they were taking this little one course from the buffet and taking their little, you know, taking this part as Sikhism and, you know, trying to cobble that together with their, you know, with the rest of their new age smorgasbord.
00:29:57.340But like like any other thing that's, you know, a combination of wood and plastic and metal, it just doesn't fit together well.
00:30:05.540Whereas what I've done is taken that practice and brought in the practice of rune mantra, which is called Galder, and using that both in ritual and in my own personal meditations.
00:30:19.440So, again, incorporating that holistic structure of the entire faith that we practice into a unified, for me, progress toward some kind of higher realization.
00:30:35.880The other thing that I think brings a lot of folk to and certainly has helped me in the way that we understand this is that also true.
00:30:49.400In addition to having a strong relationship vertically to our gods, we have a strong relationship to each other.
00:30:55.880And so to say so we are answerable to each other for the acts that we do.
00:31:01.820One of our sayings that we repeat frequently is that we are our deeds and by and through those acts, it holds you in a way that you know that it's not just that Santa Claus is looking over your shoulder.
00:31:20.700It's all your neighbors are looking over your shoulder.
00:31:23.020All the folk in our church are looking over our shoulders all the time and we're accountable to all of them.
00:31:28.040And that horizontal relationship is equally important.
00:32:38.500You can also just send us questions in the various chats.
00:32:42.680And you can also email me at editor at counter-currence.com.
00:32:47.380And we will try and get to this, get to all questions, of course,
00:32:51.820as a true related questions in the course of the stream today.
00:32:54.960So, yeah, just keep that in mind. Also, scrolling across the screen is runestone.org. That is the website of the AFA. If you want to find their presence in the World Wide Web and then maybe find their presence in the real world, start at runestone.org.
00:33:13.900And so I want to ask a couple questions here. These are questions that I imagine people in
00:33:22.160the audience might be asking. I think I know the answer to these, okay? But I wonder if some people
00:33:28.440in the audience are wondering things like this. What is the relationship of Azitru to nature?
00:33:36.880is this some form of nature religion or is there an element of this religion that transcends
00:33:45.080nature how do you uh relate yourself to the natural world no also true is not a nature
00:33:52.720religion and i think the way some people might think that it is but we do recognize the beauty
00:34:00.780of nature and the beauty of the order that's found in nature. We believe that's crafted and
00:34:07.340instilled there by the Iser. One of the things that is fundamental to our faith is the
00:34:13.860harnessing nature for our benefit and the overcoming the chaos that is in nature to create
00:34:22.660ordered, structured, beneficial nature. And I think that's seen time and again in our
00:34:28.080in our myth cycle. But something that is fundamental is to be a good steward of the
00:34:33.240things that we have and to be respectful towards the creation of the Iser in how we interact with0.74
00:34:40.720nature and how we how we treat the world around us. I think the honor and the nobility that we
00:34:47.420treat one another is also reflected in the way we behave in our environment and the implications of
00:34:54.360that. Absolutely. And in fact, one of the things that when we talk about Christianity in a lot of
00:35:01.400ways, even within the AFA, there is a wide range of views about how the planet should be treated.
00:35:07.580We certainly exploit its resources, but we try to do it, as Matt said, we try to do it in a way
00:35:13.740that is respectful to the gods of nature, the Vanir, the gods of blessing and fertility.
00:35:21.860I think the more respect and gentleness, if that's the right word to use, that we that we express toward the planet, the more that we are blessed in return, because the the earth in its own way is sacred.
00:35:39.720And frankly, that's one of the things that which is I started out the way I did, because I know that Christianity has come back around to the to the idea that the earth should be treated with respect.
00:35:50.640But for so many Christians for so long, the only thing that was holy or expressed any type of holiness was the ritual toward toward Jesus and his father.
00:36:04.120So that's one of the things that put me out of Christianity was that disdain that so many hold in the Cartesian worldview that there is, you know, that the world is sort of a binary thing.
00:36:18.060there's holy over here and there's profane over here and what's holy is very limited and what's
00:36:25.600profane is everything else that we can see and touch. So trying to adopt that holistic worldview
00:36:32.140is another way that we express a healthy relationship with each other and with the world.
00:36:37.660so nature isn't the holy in the sense that it's untouchable or unchangeable because
00:36:47.960you do believe that well it can be changed to benefit us in in particular ways so
00:36:56.140what is sacred what is holy in as a true life as far as our life and how we live it
00:37:07.460either heroically or not the relationship with the iser tradition is holy our folk are holy and
00:37:17.460sacred and something to be safeguarded and that is our folk at large but it's certainly also
00:37:24.740our families our our bonds of kinship um you know there's there's things that are
00:37:32.260ritually exalted to a more holy or a more sacred you know place like our hoffs or like certain
00:37:41.620sacred locations but the process of life here in midgard is in fact you know something sacred
00:37:49.780and important uh and something to point out that i think alan opened the door for in his last
00:37:54.660comment was we are a life embracing relationship we make a name for ourselves and earn our fame in
00:38:04.980this life in the art in which we live our life and display our deeds and our character in the world
00:38:14.980that we live in we believe in an afterlife certainly but our focus is the here and now
00:38:22.420while we are here and while it is now and so the moment is in fact sacred and forging a better
00:38:32.260world for those who will come behind us yeah so if life is this human life is the locus of the sacred
00:38:43.300then that would include the fact that human beings are creative creatures that we change the world
00:38:50.900to suit us, that we impose our designs upon nature, you know, given a choice between
00:38:57.140the salmon and your child, you choose the child and you eat the salmon, those sorts of things.
00:39:06.060That makes sense to me. Yeah, thank you. There's some other related topics that maybe we can delve
00:39:15.100into, but before I go into that, let me just check and see if we have any questions from our audience.
00:39:20.900here. While you're looking at that, I'll flip out a little bit on the, you know, it's certainly,
00:39:28.800as you say, the, you know, one of the, I think the vulgarities that is being committed against
00:39:34.620the planet right now is factory farming, for example. Right. It's not quite a religious
00:39:40.320thing, but it's the next best to it. You know, the lives of those animals are,
00:39:47.100or are literally a profanity against the against the god the life force uh that our gods brought
00:39:56.700into being at the same time just because something has a degree of sacrality doesn't mean that it
00:40:03.180can't be eliminated you know we kill and eat animals and they're and that is both in the sacred
00:40:10.240and, you know, in an everyday context, but they should be treated with respect.
00:40:17.020And, you know, I think there's a lot of analogy.
00:40:19.420I haven't really thought it out a lot, but I think there's a lot of analogy to the way our prisoners are treated.
00:40:24.100I think there's something to be said for execution of the violent criminals and, you know,
00:40:29.200and restitution for those who can be rehabilitated.
00:40:33.380Yeah. If life is sacred, we have to recognize that life feeds on life.
00:40:37.680we have to uh act appropriately so i i take it you're you're not vegetarians well let me ask
00:40:48.000you are there vegetarians or vegans who are into as a true or is that something that you just you
00:40:56.300frown upon or is that something that's totally optional or is that considered sort of uh exotic
00:41:02.460perhaps. So one of the things that's, I don't know, frustrating, but honest when people ask
00:41:09.760questions like these, so much of the challenge in our faith is to rise to the requirements of
00:41:18.580noble people to make choices for themselves. There's no, you know, veganism is not frowned
00:41:25.040upon unless it becomes the obnoxious trying to make everybody else do veganism because
00:41:30.840No, there's, I would say that would, I don't know of any vegans who are also true.
00:41:38.460I don't know of any strict vegetarians who are also true.
00:41:44.240If they show up, they would have to provide some of their own food at our communal, you know, get togethers.
00:41:51.740But no, I don't think that's frowned upon at all.
00:41:54.880Bacon is not quite a ritual food, but it's the, it's the next thing to it.
00:42:00.000Yeah, well, let me ask you another related question. How do you conceive of morality? Is it something where you've got a list of commandments? Is it a rule-based religion like Christianity or Judaism or Islam, or do you conceive of morality in a different way?
00:42:30.000so i i think that there's a false dichotomy there a bit acknowledging the tremendous amount of
00:42:40.500nuanced decision making when it comes to moral decisions doesn't abdicate the position that
00:42:47.800there are some things that are absolutely completely righteous and some things that are
00:42:52.720completely abhorrent there is that but the challenge in aussitru and the admonition is
00:42:59.300to do things that are honorable or dishonorable, things that gain your reputation amongst the gods
00:43:06.320and amongst your folk and things that diminish that reputation amongst God's folks and folk and
00:43:12.120ancestors due to their ignobility, due to their disgrace. So we recognize you live in a world
00:43:21.100with a lot of different choices and sometimes values come up conflicting, but handling them
00:43:26.280in a morally upright in an honorable fashion as opposed to a dishonorable one and so it's never
00:43:33.340it's not a list of do's and don'ts as if you know there's there's not that playbook there's
00:43:41.440the playbook of building character to where your character is such that you live in an artful way
00:43:49.560that impresses and pleases the gods and the ancestors in that way I'd say it's much more
00:43:55.200an art than a science yeah this sounds what people in philosophy like what people in philosophy
00:44:04.560described as virtue ethics and it seems very consistent with say the the ethical attitudes
00:44:11.760of the ancient greeks too so that's that's an interesting parallel there uh archie has written
00:44:19.200in with $7.44. Thank you very much. And he says, this stream is important in that it opens a door
00:44:26.360to places that people need to find the progress of knowing to practicing than to having the
00:44:31.680spiritual experiences like learning to play the violin. How do different folk religions work
00:44:37.320together? So I guess the question is, does the AFA have any kind of relations with other
00:44:46.720practitioners of folk religions, or Christianity for that matter, I guess, do you engage in what
00:44:54.640they like to call interfaith dialogues and ecumenical get-togethers, which are very popular
00:45:02.260in the world of religion today? Is that something that you make a point of doing?
00:45:09.300No, it's not something that we make a point of doing or that the opportunity often presents
00:45:15.400itself, but it's certainly not something we're opposed to doing. When you mention other ethnic
00:45:20.580faiths and working together for a common goal, or at least having dialogue, I think that's
00:45:25.180completely appropriate. But our position towards those outside of our folk or our faith, it all
00:45:32.680depends on the circumstance. It's completely appropriate. And in fact, we ought to act noble1.00
00:45:37.940with everyone that we deal with. Sometimes we have conflicting values and conflicting
00:45:43.340conflicting goals and that's fine. Other times they work together. But what I think is really
00:45:49.460interesting is the places in society where those things do intersect. And it is interesting. I have
00:45:57.280found a tremendous amount of professional respect the times that I've had to minister to our folk
00:46:04.540who are in the hospital or the few times that I've gone into prisons to minister to our folk
00:46:11.960there, or when I've been, anytime I've interacted with a existent chaplaincy somewhere, there's been
00:46:19.640a moment of dialogue. And I've been surprised at how well received that's been by, you know,
00:46:26.280the others that I've had to work with. I think it's also true that dharmic faiths,
00:46:33.440and that's a term that I got from Acharya Ji's book, The Dharma Manifesto,
00:46:39.680So dharmic faiths can exist side by side.
00:46:43.160We would never try. Not only would we try, we'd never try to impose, but we would exclude anyone who was an ethnic Japanese, for example.1.00
00:46:52.520Shintoism is their ethnic dharmic faith. And that's, you know, so they practice that.0.95
00:46:57.940We do us. They do them. And it's so it's not so we can get along and harmonize ourselves in that worldview.
00:47:06.960because, you know, we live in a very real way in different worlds.
00:47:13.500As long as they respect the border where it is, you know,
00:47:16.620then we don't have to – we can cross-pollinate our faith in a certain way
00:47:25.100and find value in the way that these organic expressions of faith
00:47:33.540of the different peoples have come to blossom in the field of the world
00:47:38.640and without trying to impose our worldview onto anybody else.
00:47:56.000The Japanese are not trying to convert you to Shintoism
00:47:58.840and you're not trying to convert them to Asatru.
00:48:01.600But I think you can probably appreciate and get and understand some of the things that they do.
00:48:09.500One of the things that was really remarkable to me was a scene in The Hidden Fortress, the Kurosawa movie, where these people who are basically refugees from an enemy that's destroyed their castle, they're in disguise and they come across this harvest festival in the woods.
00:48:34.860and there's this huge bonfire and you see this festival and basically it's a it's a kind of
00:48:40.540bacchanalian revel uh it you you can see what's going on there uh the language is foreign the
00:48:49.100the mythology is foreign but i know this song anyway somehow uh i can sort of hum along uh play
00:48:57.100a few bars and i can hum along uh because there's there's something intelligible about that uh and i
00:49:04.620I think that that's an interesting thing that followers or people who are knowledgeable about,
00:49:12.780say, one folk religion can do when they see echoes or parallels or analogies with others.
00:49:20.460But yeah, they still remain other and they have their own integrity.
00:49:25.420Our friend Friedrich has written in with 20 US dollars, thank you. He has a question,
00:49:30.300does as a true have explicit safeguards to make sure it will never become universalist great show
00:49:37.500best regards yes in a couple of different ways um and again in the austral folk assembly we don't
00:49:47.580there's no mechanism by which we can you know forcibly disallow other people from using the
00:49:53.820term also true so that's unfortunate but it is what it is in the afa it is very explicit
00:50:02.700we have always been the you know at the forefront of being folkish enshrining that in our core
00:50:10.060principles requiring that of our entrance as far as members go and i think that one thing that
00:50:19.020ensures it is our organizational structure we're not democratic there's no
00:50:27.580parliamentary process of different people getting in and and changing the rules on you it is very
00:50:34.060much done through the succession of the alzharrier gothar to where that authority rests with the
00:50:43.180person in that position which is much more secure than a committee and we've seen this in other
00:50:49.020early outs to true organizations and other related organizations where you get
00:50:53.980enough people in that decide they want to bow to political currents and things can go real
00:50:59.820different directions. We try to safeguard against that, you know, as best we can. And the way of
00:51:05.620doing that is kind of trusting that authority in a select few and not in a larger democratic
00:51:12.860process and then our hierarchy if you will um with matt the alteria or go the um having all
00:51:22.200the decision making authority then but before you can become a gothar which is um god man or
00:51:30.020githya's god woman um the before you can become that you're you know you you're known you're known
00:51:37.600entity um you have to practice with us for a long time and then you come up through the hierarchy
00:51:44.320and are trained in our uh in our worldview to the extent that you don't have that already
00:51:51.040then we can you know you're you can be educated the afa as an entity is in no danger of becoming
00:51:59.120a universalist russian because those people are excluded at the membership level you know people
00:52:05.520would want to try to join that are not of our people,
00:52:49.480So it seems to be out there in terms of a cultural presence, a graphic design thing, merchandising and so forth.
00:52:57.580But is it growing as an actual religion?
00:53:04.540And specifically, is the AFA growing as an Asatru community?
00:53:12.200Yes, and I'd say yes on all of those fronts.
00:53:15.400I think awareness of Asatru as an actual faith is certainly growing.
00:53:22.220um as far as with the general public and people recognizing it i think absolutely i think there
00:53:30.000was a time you know again i mentioned you before the program but you know i'd wear my hammer and
00:53:35.580people would question if it's a a broken cross or an anchor or you know any number of things
00:53:42.300then i watched it to where oh that's a thor's hammer now semi-regularly at a store or a random
00:53:48.500location. Oh, nice Mjolnir. And they'll even ask if I mouse it true. That's a tremendous amount
00:53:55.240of growth. The AFA has certainly grown numerically, but we've grown in our practice and in our scope,
00:54:03.680I think, tremendously. We have members in 12 different countries at present. And what I think
00:54:11.780has really amplified the growth of our practice in a very practical sense is our four Hoffs.
00:54:20.260We now have a Hoff to Lord Odin, to Baldr, to Thor, and to Nyordr. And so we have four different
00:54:30.220physical locations that every month our folk gather at, engage in ritual and fellowship,
00:54:36.100and have physical places to where people in the community can literally go feel that it's real0.80
00:54:44.340and that it exists and has a has a place on the map and for for what it's worth and as silly as
00:54:49.840it may sound it's really cool to try to type in the name of one of our hoffs on google maps
00:54:55.500and it populates and you get a blue line that takes you right there that adds a level of realness
00:55:01.020i think to people uh we've also had you know a number of our our folk will do uh
00:55:07.660with their local group of afa members they'll have an adopt a highway i know we've gotten
00:55:11.740members off of just seeing the sign on the road hey this is real and exists in the real world
00:55:16.140so our real world practice is has grown tremendously over recent years and i expect
00:55:24.540to continue to go that way. And I'll take advantage of that to segue into a note of
00:55:32.780thanks that I want to get out in a very public way to one of the members of the No White
00:55:38.180Guilt family who financed Njordta for us after the bank that had pre-approved our loan turned
00:55:48.100us down because of who we are. So thank you very much to those folk who, who made that purchase
00:55:55.300possible. It's, you know, I can tell you it was, it was a tough, it was a tough couple days while
00:56:03.200we were trying to make sure that we could finance this property that we had made a down payment on
00:56:09.340when the bank, when the banker called me after having pre-approved our loan and basically read
00:56:15.840from a script using very carefully parsed terms, obviously, that had been assigned to him by his
00:56:24.140attorney, who basically said, we can't finance you because of the religion that you practice.
00:56:31.520You know, the fact that that got turned down, but then we had one of our, you know, that next
00:56:37.360circle of folk that are, that who know who we are, who support what we do, that was willing to come
00:56:45.120in and put money down so we could buy that property. And we paid off that 10 year loan in
00:56:51.800four years. So wow. Yeah, that's, that's a nice story that I always love it when these networks
00:57:00.060work. So another question, what are some books and thinkers about Ozzatru that inspired you and
00:57:10.740you might be able to recommend to people who want to learn more about it as far as the the lore to
00:57:17.060be inspirational i think the edda's are really important i think that um the culture of the
00:57:22.740teutons is really important but as far as thinkers and people that inspired me early on as far as
00:57:31.780Ausatru getting involved in talking to actual participants and practitioners is what really
00:57:41.240sunk it into me getting involved meeting our founder Stephen McNallan and speaking to him
00:57:46.280and getting to see real people doing this and not just you know theorizing or pun or you know
00:57:53.420speculating on it I think did a ton and as I've grown learning about some of the early
00:57:59.940The early pioneers of Ausatru, like Sveinbjörn Vientinsson in Iceland and Alexander Redmills in Australia, have really inspired me in the sense of this being a real modern thing that some pretty great people have spent their life building and making happen.
00:58:21.000In addition to that direct transmission through the Eddas, which, of course, that's excellent work, I think the cultural tradition, I certainly got a lot out of Evola, although, of course, you have to unpack his compound complex sentences, but much of what he talks about in the preservation of European tradition is exactly what we are on point about doing.
00:58:49.500you know, protecting and preserving the traditions and expression of the faith of our folk.
00:58:56.940I think Alain de Benoit, his book that I've recommended over and over again at the at the top of the show,
00:59:03.840when you were explaining the you know, that that so much of the neo-pagan movement is just about being anti-Christian
00:59:13.040and where they've thrown out all of the strong, noble traditions that Christianity adopted its
00:59:21.560way into, Benoit's book on being a pagan very definitely defines them and helped me define my
00:59:28.280way out of that neo-pagan movement, because it very definitely says you can't define yourself
00:59:34.920as against that because you're still allowing that religion then to define you. Beyond that
00:59:41.200sort of thing. You can look at the book, The Germanization of Christianity, where the author
00:59:51.780there who, name I forget, but he talks about how so many things like from the cult of the saints
00:59:56.860to many of the ideas that our Christian folk, that our traditionalist Christian people rightly
01:00:05.920respect is actually the way that the Christian church, when it came in and overtook the tribal
01:00:17.020practices, that they adopted those folkways into their own tradition, like Easter, for example,
01:00:24.500with bunnies and Easter eggs. That's, you know, that's very much the Germanization of the way
01:00:31.040that Christianity has become to be practiced.
01:00:33.820And so, yes, there are those few core books,
01:00:36.440and there are hundreds and hundreds of books right outside that
01:00:40.040that populate that entire practice area.
01:00:46.260We should also mention, of course, Steve McNallan's book,
01:00:50.720also true of Native American spirituality,
01:00:53.100where he has narrowed down and defined a lot of these concepts
01:00:58.260in a way that is that is very accessible to people where you can read the stories and just get the
01:01:05.460idea of the practice and what it's about and then if you're uh if you want to come out and experience
01:01:11.780it just like matt said you know that's that's really where you find what the practice is because
01:01:16.340the practice is not what you believe it's what we do yeah the book you're talking about is the
01:01:22.100The Germanization of Medieval Christianity by James Russell, which is a really very interesting
01:01:29.080book. And we have a review of the Steve McNallan book on Asatru at Countercurrents by Colin Cleary.
01:01:37.020Colin Cleary has published a couple of useful books at Countercurrents. One is called Summoning
01:01:43.740the Gods and the other is called What is a Rune that deal with Asatru? And I'm working now on
01:01:49.260another collection of his essays called what is odinism so that'll be out later this year just to
01:01:54.980plug his work he's also done a whole bunch of essays that haven't been collected that that deal
01:02:01.880with with these sorts of topics so you can find a lot of that at countercurrents just type in
01:02:08.900colin clary or type in as a true in the search bar and a whole bunch of stuff will come up so yeah
01:02:16.060Sorry, I should. And I apologize to to Mr. Cleary, who I had the honor of meeting traveling through Idaho fairly recently and and got to share a couple of meals with him.
01:02:29.440I have a great deal of respect for the way that he has brought, and especially his book, Summoning the Gods, it helped, definitely helped me to coalesce my understanding of a lot of what it is that we are doing, what it is that our lore expresses in the way that those stories about Odin, about the way that Odin brought order from chaos.
01:02:57.340And I thank him again for bringing that work and for the book that he gave me when we were up in Idaho.
01:03:06.660What is the relationship of the AFA to the Rune Guild?
01:03:11.200That's another organization I understand in North America that has a lot to do with Azatru.
01:03:21.840The Rune Guild was founded by Dr. Stephen Flowers, and he and our founder, Steve McNallan, are certainly acquaintances and friends over the years and have worked together.
01:03:34.520There have been a number of people in the AFA over time that have crossed through the Rune Guild, but I haven't heard a lot about the Rune Guild being very active in a lot of their things in a great many years now.
01:03:49.480But they did, and I'll throw this out there. One of their members, Leon Wilde, wrote a book about runes called The Rune Workbook.
01:04:00.560and it is as far as an introductory book to someone who's maybe you know young high school
01:04:10.260age folks or somebody who's completely fresh to it I think it's a really good primer on the runes
01:04:17.560and I think it is very very accessible so I anybody interested in the runes and you know
01:04:23.880the also true worldview that surrounds them and gives them context that's a really good book for
01:04:29.920that. And also their core curriculum, the nine doors of Midgard is really beneficial. And it's
01:04:37.160a lot, it's a lot to, it's a lot to chew on, but especially their first couple of doors in that
01:04:44.700book, I've gotten a lot of benefit out of, you know, using that early on in my house to true
01:04:51.860practice. And I think that's really beneficial, but there's not, not a lot of current interaction
01:04:56.380going on there. Okay, that's interesting. I have a question here from Jace. Does Azzatru seek to
01:05:03.660emulate the ESER? When you spoke of honor earlier, what does an honorable life look like?
01:05:11.360Is it obvious to say what a dishonorable life looks like? So that's three questions there.
01:05:17.000But you emulate the ESER, first of all. Is that how you understand your practice?
01:05:21.340no and i think again being forcing that into a binary yes or no i think is complex i don't think
01:05:33.960that the point of the isere is for them to be instructive as things to model ourselves on as
01:05:40.660opposed to be instructive as gods we want to build a relationship with and invite into our lives
01:05:51.040We're not gods. We are people. And I think that that functions, you know, really differently.
01:05:57.720But I would say as far as the follow up questions, I wish there was a very clear cut.
01:06:04.800Hey, this is what a noble life looks like. This is what an ignoble life looks like.
01:06:10.400And I think we recognize them when we see them.0.97
01:06:12.900But I think the noble life for an IT professional in 2025 is likely very different looking than for a Viking raider in 800, than from a, you know, Germanic farmer in 100.
01:06:28.300the actualization of facing your life's unique circumstance with a dignified and honored practice0.82
01:06:36.780informed by our tradition and in light of the judgment of the iser and the ancestors
01:06:43.180and your folk it's a very complex thing but we certainly know and celebrate when we see it and
01:06:49.460we're very aware and we um shame it when we see the the contrary it's interesting because i would
01:06:56.920answer in the exact same way, except I would say, yes, we are to emulate the gods, although not in
01:07:02.640that, it's certainly not in some precise exact way, but in the story, like, for example, of Tyr
01:07:09.900sacrificing his hand, his good sword hand, so that his folk could survive, we can look to that
01:07:17.200as an example of what a noble life looks like. It's certainly not that direct pointing where
01:07:23.980you can do something that looks exactly that way. But those sorts of examples do allow us to
01:07:30.060inform our discerned understanding and our judgment about what a noble life looks like.
01:07:38.580And it's like a lot of, like the Supreme Court justice says a long time ago, we know it when
01:07:45.300we see it. And it's one of those things where I've often wished that we were a more rules-bound
01:07:53.460religion, if I were making the rules, where we could say, yes, this, no, that. That would make
01:07:59.260us easy. It would make it, you know, it would make Matt's job easier, my job easier, and the job of
01:08:04.600our folk. We could just, you know, track along the rules, but it's not. We, you know, we just
01:08:10.800have to walk along that razor's edge and try to discern in each modern situation, you know, how
01:08:18.680it is that our folk way informs the decisions that we are forced to make so in the chat we have
01:08:27.560a comment from placeholder what the afa is doing is critically important for all people of european
01:08:35.480descent god bless you matt and alan and god bless the afa and archie agrees with that ron boardman
01:08:43.880writes in, in the AFA, there are many with quite a few years of longevity in worshiping the Easter,
01:08:49.940which leads to knowledge, maturity, and a pious nature being dominant. We've seen pain, growth,
01:08:54.500change, and victories. Much dead wood has cleared away over the years. The AFA knows what works on
01:09:01.220Midgard and Asgard. That's a good point. Basically, with time and experience, you learn things. You
01:09:10.300learn things and grow you know i don't think you need to apologize for not having tablets with
01:09:15.900rules on them because rules need to be interpreted and interpreting rules in the light of what's
01:09:25.820going on around you is an act of judgment and judgment is seasoned through experience and
01:09:34.780it wouldn't be judgment if uh you know you could you could predict in advance what you're going to
01:09:42.620decide in every given situation uh so i think it's a recognition though that there's a kind
01:09:49.580of knowledge that you gain from practice and that is a higher form of knowledge than the rules uh
01:09:58.060any any set of rules that are put down they have to be interpreted uh so there's this
01:10:03.500active judgment that takes place and polish polishing your ability to judge in the circumstances
01:10:09.900happens with time and there's a natural authority of people who are older and more experienced0.98
01:10:17.600you know there are there are old fools in this world there's no question about it there are
01:10:22.660people who've gone through life and not learned a damn thing but if you go through life with your0.95
01:10:27.900eyes open and you hone your ability to discern what's good and bad in particular circumstances,
01:10:34.940you're a natural authority that other people can look to. And of course, then there are heroes
01:10:41.040from the past. You can look to them and wonder what would they do in those circumstances.
01:10:49.040You'd be naive and childish to think, well, Tyr cut off his hand or lost his hand,
01:10:55.720So we should all cut off our hands. Right. That that's that's contrary to the spirit of, you know, any kind of wise religion, I would think.
01:11:08.100But that would be the sort of rule bound or LARPy or merely imitative approach to things, which thank God you're you're too smart to to fall into.
01:11:21.000let me see if we got any more questions and comments here and then we can wrap
01:11:25.320up because I don't want this to be too long I want people to be able to wrap
01:11:31.320this up and immediately go and investigate more about the AFA so
01:11:37.680gentlemen how do people find out more about the AFA we have the runestone.org
01:11:43.920url but are there other ways that people can find you do you do podcasts are you on various social
01:11:53.600media platforms and things like that absolutely first you know and foremost runestone.org and
01:11:59.760thank you for putting it on the on the bottom of the screen that is a great place to go and find
01:12:05.020out who we are what we believe what we're what we're doing and to find contacts for the folk
01:12:10.280builder near you. Our folk builders are our local representatives, the Astro Folk Assembly, and each
01:12:16.360and every one of them would be happy to field any of your questions, get you involved locally, or
01:12:21.680sort you out on where you need to go. But we also, every Wednesday night, we do a live broadcast on
01:12:29.660a variety of platforms on YouTube, on Odyssey, on X, and a variety of other places called Victory
01:12:37.500never sleeps. And that's every Wednesday at six Pacific. And I think we're at like, I think we're
01:12:43.820almost at episode 160 on that. So we've been doing that for a little while. That's a great way to go
01:12:49.160and to look us up on YouTube. You can find the archive of all of our previous shows. If there's
01:12:55.660a topic that interests you, chances are, if you have questions, there's one of those that you can
01:13:00.200find that'll help you get closer. Or if you tune in live, you can ask any question you want. We'll
01:13:06.380address it. That's what I would suggest. As far as social media, X is our biggest outlet right now,
01:13:13.140as well as, you know, I guess YouTube doesn't really count as social media, but it crosses
01:13:17.300the sphere a little bit. Yeah, you can find us on X at Folk Ausatru. Yeah, but any of our contacts,
01:13:24.140our Gothar, myself, or our Folk Builders, please feel free to email any questions you might have,
01:13:30.480and we will answer them to the best of our ability and see if we can help you out.
01:13:35.900That's great. So are there any final thoughts, any final words that you'd like to impart to
01:13:42.300our audience out there? I'll start so Matt can have the last word. First of all, I want to thank
01:13:48.540you again, Greg, for having us on. I have a lot of respect for Countercurrents. I read it
01:13:58.460and stay current on all the articles. I'm a member of the website. I forget what it is that you guys
01:14:03.820call it but um you know uh thank you for subscribing yeah well you're welcome i i think
01:14:10.220that what you guys do brings the right tone of both of information and the philosophical
01:14:18.540underpinnings of what it is that we are all trying to do in our own ways uh to protect
01:14:25.420the uh the zeitgeist the world spirit of uh of western civilization our folkways our religions
01:14:37.580our viewpoints our folk are noble and worthy we are worthy of respect and worthy of tradition
01:14:47.020and thank you for the hard work that you do in protecting our faith of our folk ways
01:14:58.880and making sure that it continues into the future.
01:15:02.300Well, thank you. I very much appreciate that.
01:15:05.520You know, I'd like to certainly echo that.
01:15:09.860Thank you for having us on the program today.
01:15:12.720It's always much appreciated for us to have opportunities to talk to people who may not
01:15:18.900know about us or who may have questions or things they'd like to learn. I appreciate getting to
01:15:24.240speak to your audience. I would like to, I suppose, leave people with this. I know that
01:15:31.220I am aware that the most difficult thing is very often going from a place of inaction
01:15:36.900to a place of active engagement. I jokingly say that like the greatest distance is from the couch
01:15:42.740to the door, but it really is. And I think we all have had that feeling. So I would encourage
01:15:47.920everyone out there that conceptually likes the idea of Ausitru, thinks that it would be really
01:15:55.100cool, or it should be really cool, or, you know, it's something one of these days they might do.
01:16:00.280take that initiative and be Ausitru, participate, join the AFA and meet with your folk and be part
01:16:10.260of it. We're doing absolutely amazing things. And we would love for all of our folk to come
01:16:16.460home to Ausitru. Like I said, there's a lot of people cheering us on from the sidelines,
01:16:22.280but get on the team. We would love to have you. So thank you.
01:16:27.120well that's really beautiful that's really well said thank you guys for coming on i really really
01:16:33.140appreciate it and i do hope that this has been educational but more than educational i do hope
01:16:38.420that some people will actually take that step and reach out and get in touch so that's a nice way of
01:16:43.880ending ending the show and we will be back next week with another episode of countercurrents radio
01:16:50.480we have not yet determined the guests there's so many things going on i'm trying to get eric
01:16:55.340Orwell of the Back to the Land initiative on for an interview as soon as possible, because he's
01:17:01.980now in the crosshairs of the global establishment for wanting to basically live among his own kind.
01:17:09.960Apparently, that's not legal in America. So I will definitely try and get him on board.0.93
01:17:14.680There are a few other people I'm trying to get on the show. Chris Brunette, for one,