Asatru Folk Assembly - Thus Says Bragi the Ancient Skald (from VNS Episode 12)

00:00:00.000 without any further ado witness fine can you give us tell us uh about the gil fagging where it comes

00:00:16.400 from what it is and uh feel free to go ahead and start off with what you want our folks to know

00:00:23.520 about it this evening? So the, the Gilfagining or Gilfagining or I mean, the translation of it is

00:00:33.100 hard for a lot of folks as far as exactly how it's kind of placed together. I always say

00:00:40.300 the Gilfagining, the, the, the tricking of King Galfi, the delusion of King Galfi or the,

00:00:48.140 kind of illusion of the mind, if you will, is really Snorri Sturluson's setting up of

00:00:59.700 more or less a handbook or a manual for scalds to utilize as a backdrop, a format,

00:01:13.280 that in order for them to continue on the tradition of of uh poetry um there are many different styles

00:01:19.520 of poetry that were utilized and um i think that this represents the corpus of of lore as a story

00:01:29.360 to be transformed into poetic um format i think that was his first and foremost intention um i

00:01:36.560 believe that Snorri Sturluson was an Icelandic nationalist, especially given the time of

00:01:43.920 politics with Denmark and with Norway. And one of the key factors, I think, in his drive,

00:01:52.000 almost in a sense of formulating national pride, was to keep the poetic formulations alive and to

00:02:00.720 keep them going and this you know it's coming uh quite a long time after the conversion of iceland

00:02:09.440 in the year 1000. uh you know by the uh by 1220 you know snorris uh studlesson and um

00:02:18.800 saxo grammaticus were starting to really formulate their lore and build it together it wasn't found

00:02:24.640 until a lot later and actually uh you know disseminated but it was more or less i think uh

00:02:32.560 its intention was set early on to uh and that's why like during the um uh gilvigating when you

00:02:41.760 see a lot of things he references other other scalds and he he talks he pulls from the poetic

00:02:48.320 ate us and shows that the uh certain he mentions certain skulls utilizing things in references to

00:02:56.560 um the shields of valhall or or um you know just in the turnings of of certain verses

00:03:04.080 he'll say you know such did brag braggy the wise or of uh you know of uh actually let me see i have

00:03:10.880 one of their names right here um let me see

00:03:20.560 so while spawns looking some of you might not know as far as spawn street cred spawn is by birth

00:03:26.560 an icelander so uh he's sharing some of the the nation of his births uh heritage and poetic

00:03:34.960 tradition with us tonight i always default to spawn on pronunciation and things of that nature

00:03:42.800 yeah um it says like thus says uh bragi the ancient scald that gavion drew uh from gelfi

00:03:51.680 gladly the waves drove freehold um so he's referencing how they would utilize it poetically

00:03:59.200 and when you get translations there are a lot of different translations but

00:04:01.920 But, you know, the idea of transferring meaning and also holding to a literative format is the big, I would say, the biggest hurdle that a lot of translators try to do.

00:04:18.240 They don't want to lose the meaning, but they want to try to maintain the poetic format, predominantly being in Fornidaslaug, the old style of alliterative rhyming in Icelandic.

00:04:30.300 Yes, for a lot of people that might not know, I was born in Iceland. I was born in Reykjavik. I grew up speaking Icelandic until I was about six years old, and then I moved to the United States.

00:04:47.020 So that's why I don't have an accent. I was the baby of the family and came here. And my father is American, but he worked for NATO and spoke the language. And for the longest time growing up, I remember thinking that he was a police officer when he was in uniform. He worked with NATO up there and was a sub-hunter. So he was looking for Russian submarines and was working with them.

00:05:12.180 So as far as my linguistics go conversationally, I would not be so filled with hubris to proclaim I have conversational, but pronunciation and reading it and also being able to look through translations and kind of get an idea based off of other words, what they may mean is the huge, I think, strength that me and you kind of often

00:05:42.740 you know pass around is the idea of what could these things mean um there's a a perfect example

00:05:49.540 is like with emir emir or a lot of americans call it you know yimmer uh the emir uh goes by another

00:05:58.660 name oh i would get our yelmer or yelmer the g is not a hard g uh and it and yelmer means to

00:06:06.900 scream or to roar or to uh primordial sound um an hour is often translated to being like clay

00:06:14.580 but i think it means shaping and so uh because it it denotes to what you can do with clay not

00:06:20.980 necessarily clay itself so the primordial shaping sound would be i think a more spiritual translation

00:06:29.380 as opposed to maybe a literal one or a poetic one so that's where i think for a lot of people to

00:06:35.060 understand my reasonings behind it is because it's coming from a spiritual point of view as opposed

00:06:42.660 to trying to keep the poetic or even the linguistic uh truth to it um and again these are my

00:06:52.260 interpretations but i you know interpretations are based uh you know every every uh publishing

00:06:57.380 company and and uh scholar and i am not uh by any means like a schooled scholar i've just been a

00:07:05.060 uh believer since the early 90s and has long since just poured over a lot of the writings

00:07:11.540 to try to make a better understanding from a spiritual perspective so svan may not be a

00:07:19.460 lettered scholar in these subjects but he is a practicing priest of the isere he sits on the

00:07:27.540 witten of the church of the isere in midgard the certainly the largest and most successful

00:07:32.740 real louser true organization there is um thanks fonds expertise is self-evident when you hear him

00:07:40.260 talk but certainly um he is absolutely an expert in the field the other thing i'd like to say

00:07:48.580 at this juncture and svan brought it up

00:07:53.300 word meaning is so very important um when you look at names

00:07:59.700 if they're in a foreign language they may sound cool or different but names mean things and i

00:08:08.980 think that sometimes you know with the exception of a few of them in english we've lost that

00:08:13.880 connection between the name and its meaning that's extremely important in our lore

00:08:22.020 um the gods didn't come to us and introduce themselves by name the name was assigned to them

00:08:32.340 by worshipers based on perception of the deity uh it's very important to understand the names

00:08:41.700 for the high gods for their accoutrements and you know things associated with them but also for

00:08:49.860 you know the the lesser carry us characters in our myth cycle but etymology and understanding

00:08:58.380 names add such a depth to our lore I know a lot of you are already are already there and already

00:09:04.060 do it but for some of the new folks maybe take the time to you know go down those rabbit holes

00:09:10.860 of etymology as you read our lore and I think that your understanding will be much richer because of

00:09:15.500 yeah uh i'm looking at some of the comments on the side here um uh tracy adler brings up yeah

00:09:27.280 the gilva gilva gaining the f in the middle of the word is usually a v sound um so yeah gil

00:09:34.700 gilva is of course gilfee king gulfi um and his uh ginning is tricking of himself

00:09:42.600 And he goes by the name Gang Liri. Gang is the same as like in Wolfgang. It means to walk or to go, to travel the path, to take the stride. And his name Liri, kind of synonymous with like the word Liri, like a cautious, but in the Nordic sense, it means tired or kind of refusing to go further. 0.56

00:10:04.580 And so it's a tongue in cheek name that he he presents to the ice here. He says, you know, I'm just I'm travel weary. I'm over walking. Basically, it's kind of the joke behind it. My feet are tired. My dogs are barking. I'm done. So I'm here and I want to ask questions.

00:10:22.480 So Svahn, why is, why do we care? Why is the gilfagening of importance to us? 1.00

00:10:35.720 Well, there's, in overall, I mean, this is such a, I find a great point in which we, 1.00

00:10:42.260 we have to remember that the poetics, the stories that we normally talk about in story form come

00:10:49.060 from poem and in the um tricking of or in in the tricking of king uh galfi we see more of a story

00:10:59.220 format being supported by poetics and i think that's really important i um i have dabbled around

00:11:05.540 with poetry throughout my time and trying to you know in prayer and things like that but i'm a

00:11:11.700 storyteller at heart and um i think this is really important for us to remember that the the poetics

00:11:19.780 are being formulated from stories that were spoken um and that that the elevation of a poet

00:11:27.700 was high somebody uh you know that was had a lot of land a lot of money they could afford to have

00:11:34.500 a poet in their hall memorizing these things and speaking to the to the folk and it was a treat

00:11:40.980 uh much like a musician and to hear these these uh poems was uh beautiful almost sing-songy and

00:11:50.180 and had a lot of uh comedy and entertainment and uh so it's i think it's really important

00:11:57.380 for us firstly to know that they come from stories but when we talk about religiously

00:12:03.380 There is a crossroads where this really happens to, one, us understanding the time and climate in which Snorty was in and kind of the material of the situation.

00:12:19.780 A lot of things that are confusing to people are the reasonings, which are unexplained and often speculated about his euhemerism, the idea that he's writing the gods as humans.

00:12:33.200 And he does it in good faith. He does it in the premise that he is not trying to usurp the power of the church. He's trying to keep the poetic form alive for Icelanders.

00:12:56.960 And so it's generally accepted that Snorri was doing this in order to lessen the kind of the fervor that it would create in the people of Iceland.

00:13:08.040 So on the material level, we can kind of see that and it throws a lot of people off to the idea that, you know, there were humans.

00:13:16.860 But Saxo Grammaticus did this before Snorri and he did it not in good faith, being that he was a devout Christian.

00:13:23.360 So he kind of showed the gods as extremely mortal, extremely filled with avarice, and oftentimes switching roles in which the gods of goodness were seen as kind of antagonistic or driven by mortal and earthly desires.

00:13:39.920 So even though Saxo does play some very interesting, like, I think, nuggets of lore and interesting things to ponder about, it's more so Snorty is better to look at to building or unraveling the spiritual nature of the writing.

00:14:00.620 And when we talk about it from the church aspect, I mean, obviously, a lot of people don't know certain things have already kind of been implemented.

00:14:10.260 The understanding of the 12 Aesir, or the 12 Aos, the male, the gods, or the masculine, and then the 12 Aosinir, the feminine, is brought up during this time in which Gangleri asks.

00:14:32.100 And it is said that the tripartite that he encounters explains to him that these are the gods that we pray to.

00:14:39.900 There are other divine beings that are encapsulating in heaven, and there are not necessarily divine beings, but powerful primordial beings that we are all interacting with.

00:14:53.620 But these are the 12 that you should pray to.

00:14:57.040 So a lot of times when people see the Sonnenrod that's in a lot of the murals that I've been painting, the symbol of the 12-spoke wheel has become synonymous with the 12 aus and the 12 ausenier.

00:15:12.280 It's the completion of the solar aspect, the idea of divinity in and of itself, the idea of being the moving power around the axis mundi or around the house himself in the temple.

00:15:29.200 So a lot of that, the aspects of the 12 became a huge part of the of the church.

00:15:35.600 I think one of the most notable things was the reconstruction of the holy tides. For the longest time, everyone was kind of doing different things. And as 12 became more of a prevalency in understanding and creating a foundation back towards everything that's being spoken of in the Gilfagining, we start to reiterate that through things.

00:16:04.640 so what ended up becoming of the the holy tides making sure that we had 12 12 was again another

00:16:11.600 reiterated number of um you know structure order amongst chaos and so taking from i guess the

00:16:21.440 generally accepted eight and saying nope we are going to do one a month and it's going to cover

00:16:28.000 the the spans of the year and we'll have 12 and so i think that that huge significance has as of

00:16:36.880 recently i think if um anybody who's been around long and has seen this maybe wondered why this

00:16:44.160 transition happened uh we've had questions on before about why sigur bloat and austera and all

00:16:50.000 of these things were moved around and um that was the reasoning was to attain the order of 12

00:16:56.960 um not necessarily to fill in the gaps but to see that the structure is solid in 12.

00:17:03.600 how do we get there what what is the best way to achieve that order and that's i think

00:17:12.000 one of the biggest things that's kind of come out of this um uh reading of as far as substantiating

00:17:19.600 it within the church. Nick asks, getting us back to the, to tonight's theme. So the order of our

00:17:31.260 Hoffs is from the Gilfagening. Why? Yes, it is, Nick. Yes, it is. I'm glad that you said that 1.00

00:17:37.560 because it's something that I wanted to mention. It's one of the reasons I say it's one of it's

00:17:41.920 the reason that we're doing this show on this topic tonight. So one of the early conversations

00:17:53.740 I remember having when I first got involved in Ausatru in 2001-2002,

00:18:00.660 I was with a gentleman up in Alaska. And again, that's 2001 or 2002. And Ausatru has been going

00:18:11.360 since in its modern incarnation since 68 so 40 years in 34 years in or whatever anyways

00:18:21.200 he was asking and we were kind of pondering like what is it what gods do we believe in

00:18:28.520 which gods do we worship and these really fundamental questions stayed very nebulous

00:18:34.720 because our source material is spread throughout the continent, throughout the British Isles,

00:18:42.280 throughout Scandinavia, and over the course of 1,000, 1,500 years, it makes it a daunting task

00:18:51.820 to exhaustively figure out which gods exist, which gods, who do we call on, who's this,

00:18:58.920 who's that. There's all these endless questions, and it was time to come up with some answers.

00:19:03.620 So. Around 2014, a mentor of mine at the time, a gentleman named Brad Taylor Hicks, who was the second in charge of the AFA at the time, he and I were together and we were we were contemplating this question and like, OK, so let's break it down to where we simplify.

00:19:25.160 And one of the beautiful things about the Gilfagening, as opposed to it being a way to teach poetry, like so much of the rest of the Edda is in that way, the Gilfagening specifically is a way to give background, is a way to set up the cosmology of Alcetru in a coherent way that made sense to somebody who was seemingly unfamiliar.

00:19:49.880 You know, all the way from the creation story through explaining our gods, explaining our goddesses, explaining the worlds and really drawing that out in a clear way.

00:20:05.940 And so that clarity is really important so that we stay focused on what we do.

00:20:09.700 and we decided at that point that that's the order we were gonna that those 12 are the 12 gods that

00:20:18.560 it's beneficial for us to worship so we're going to start there and that's what we're going to do

00:20:24.340 um and at this time this is before we had odin's house we had no office at that point

00:20:30.040 but those are the 12 gods we're going to focus our worship on and at that point

00:20:34.700 we were resolved together and I was resolved internally to start rebuilding that bridge

00:20:44.000 between us and our gods in terms of our worship, in terms of of our temples, in terms of how this

00:20:53.240 was going to go. And, you know, I didn't know I was going to be the one making those calls at

00:20:58.400 that point. But that was going to be a focus of what I was doing. Early on at Odinshoff,

00:21:05.920 before it was Odinshoff, it was initially called the Newgrange Hall. And we ran into a copyright

00:21:12.980 issue with the Grangers who had owned the hall before us. And this was, you know, this was a

00:21:20.400 decision made before I was, I was calling the shots. But very shortly after I took over,

00:21:26.840 we had to rename the the hof and it was essential and crystal clear to me at that moment that we

00:21:34.780 needed to dedicate that hof to odin and that we were going to from there on however long it was

00:21:42.780 going to take us you know at this point had taken since 68 to 2015 to get our first hof so

00:21:50.480 in the decades to come when we finally get a second hof we're going to order them in this

00:21:55.940 skill fagging order. But by reestablishing that bridge, I think that has led to many, 1.00

00:22:03.600 many blessings for us and an acceleration on all these things. Five years later, within five years,

00:22:13.660 we got our second two Hoffs and we stayed faithful to that naming scheme. We just two years after

00:22:21.220 that initial five seven years from our first half we now have our fourth half um and we're continuing

00:22:28.340 in that process but yeah that's why i wanted us to talk about the significance of this poem tonight

00:22:33.460 and i'm glad that you asked that question uh cody asks fawn would you say the gil fagening

00:22:39.940 was a precursor to you picking up your storytelling style

00:22:43.940 uh yes and no uh i wish i could say yes or no but um there's so much of the lore in the uh

00:22:58.440 gilfagining that uh you can't i mean this is what this is the deep root of what we had i think this

00:23:06.000 is where odin um encapsulated the mysteries of a lot of things wrapped in a lot of more of the

00:23:13.160 material and an understanding uh that you know snowy was going to portray the gods as mortals

00:23:20.420 but in this portrayal as we go we see so much of these secrets and and the divines and there

00:23:27.660 are little things that i would i would uh in my story telling style kind of um look into try to

00:23:34.320 unravel some of those secrets so i think that um the the corpus of the lore is deep and numerous

00:23:42.740 but there are little things that are worth noting that i that i in my stories i try to

00:23:49.860 um preface um different things from uh the formulation of adhumla uh being from

00:23:58.740 the proto matter of the universe uh in niflheim um to uh uh everything from the tripartite

00:24:08.660 that's being presented before gang leary in which he does see the high one and he sees even high

00:24:15.940 which uh is even meaning leveled with the same height as the high one and the third or three

00:24:23.860 and um so the tripartite concept uh i think is being presented there pretty clearly even though

00:24:30.820 maybe even Snorty wasn't necessarily trying to present it as a kernel of knowledge that

00:24:42.020 connects us to other Aryan branches of our faith. So my storytelling, I think, takes a little bit

00:24:48.900 more leeway into trying to reveal little hints that help spurn thought as to why things might

00:24:55.860 be presented in a certain way why there might be two horses as vehicles for the sun and two horses

00:25:02.580 as vehicles for the earth but only one vehicle for the moon and out of those three celestial bodies

00:25:10.100 the moon is the only one that doesn't have its own access it doesn't have its own rotational

00:25:14.900 so that i think is a kernel of deeper truth that isn't necessarily uh placed out there and sometimes

00:25:22.660 in my storytelling i'll try to leak those things in as just a proponent of thought that our

00:25:28.340 ancestors and their knowledge may very well have been or the fact that the gods gave this knowledge

00:25:34.660 to us even if king galfi is uh seen as a a real man or as seen as uh a king of men

00:25:46.740 uh the the idea that uh the nobility learning power from the gods um and then transferring

00:25:52.740 it to the people uh i think is important i think that that's so i will um oftentimes

00:26:00.580 try to pepper those little things into my storytelling

00:26:06.820 rowdy dude asks is the topic piece of literature a standalone piece or a part of a bigger collection

00:26:14.100 it's fine break it down for us uh no so the guilt forgetting is uh part of i would say three pieces

00:26:22.900 the scarper small or that basically the rules of the skulls and the way that um it can be

00:26:32.980 spoken about or the the rules of of poetry and uh last is the uh the list of kennings

00:26:39.780 uh a kind of a corpus of lore for the skulls to use and it's very very interesting because they're

00:26:46.020 they kind of um allude to either common things war things or divine things um the idea of um

00:26:55.060 the multiple namings of emir are kind of listed there as well um in which you know the idea that

00:27:02.500 like uh brimnir uh the brimming one or a blaunir the blue uh and all yelmer the shaping screamer

00:27:12.900 are all part of that so there's a lot of cool uh poetic things i think that are worth looking into

00:27:18.660 and oftentimes it's glossed because um there's only a few stories in the uh gilfagening that

00:27:27.860 has uh um things but for instance like one that most everybody knows is is thor's uh it's often

00:27:33.620 referred to as thor's trip to jotunheim or thor's travel to jotunheim that's in uh placed within

00:27:40.260 the uh uh gilfaginning so there's a lot of stuff there but it it does have as it goes into the

00:27:48.740 latter half or the the latter uh two-thirds it's more driven towards poetics but there's a lot of

00:27:55.940 mysteries to be gleaned in some of the kennings there so yes it is not just only there's three

00:28:01.780 pieces all right since the gilfaggening speaks on ragnarok how is that displayed in reality 0.54

00:28:10.580 microcosm macrocosm is it the future past present all three yes it's fun anyway yeah i was gonna 0.96

00:28:21.540 say the same thing yes um no the beauty of and i think the power of odin in his correlation to um

00:28:33.940 folding and weaving this this seed that would surpass into this through the dark ages and

00:28:42.500 through the times where uh the the expression of the folk to their gods was going to be greatly

00:28:48.100 tested um the beauty of it is that the application of of meta or mythic language it applies in all

00:28:58.260 levels of timing um you know so some people can speculate in different schools of of uh trying to

00:29:05.380 understand germanic mythology they have placed of course uh euhemerism and the idea that they're

00:29:10.580 they're humans or that there's a vegetative cycle to them and there's some sort of a premise around

00:29:16.820 nature uh or sometimes they go based on arian tribal structure and government that's like a

00:29:24.180 dumazil in his structuralism um but overall when you read them yes it applies that the timelessness

00:29:31.700 of it i've heard a perfect example would be and again i'll address ragnarok but uh the binding

00:29:38.580 of fenris or fenner wolf in in his binding some people have argued perhaps this is some sort of

00:29:45.940 of mythological connection to the uh germanic people making certain agreeances with rome and

00:29:54.200 obviously the wolf in connection to the founding of rome uh that's the beauty of of the the the

00:30:02.020 language and the stories of the gods is that they are timeless and they interlap with everything

00:30:08.080 in the moment and in the past and thus into the future um so we yes we can project the

00:30:16.880 understanding of ragnarok um and seeing balder both as uh presiding as the heart of the of the

00:30:24.280 folk soul uh the heart of the gods seeing the death and the uh the value of of the the outsider

00:30:32.260 guiding the hand of the blind brother against the heart of the folk and the gods and him

00:30:38.380 descending and then him rising again as being all of those. And so I think it's a disservice for us 0.65

00:30:45.480 to strictly think of things in a logical or linear pathway, but to see them as more of a

00:30:52.520 coiled spring that's compressed all into one moment.

00:30:55.400 But so, and this has taken a long time to make sense to me as well. So if it's a strange concept, I understand that.

00:31:07.980 The mythic takes place in mythic time, and mythic time is very different than historical time, than linear time.

00:31:16.560 It doesn't make it any less truthful, but so many things are simultaneous in a mythic sense.

00:31:25.400 the story and the value of those cycles play out in millions of microcosms and millions of

00:31:35.320 macrocosms you find those cycles in your own life you find them in the life of your community

00:31:45.000 you find them in the the life of races and the life of nations um perhaps you find them in the

00:31:51.480 life of galaxies. As it is, one of the things that I think is most beautiful when I think about this

00:31:58.000 period in the Austro-Folk Assembly, I think about this in terms of when the waters recede and the

00:32:05.960 gods come back after Ragnarok, and they set the table upright, and they replace the pieces,

00:32:11.880 and they reset up what was once holy. We're reforging that bridge. We're reforging that

00:32:20.680 golden age and we're a part of it right here and right now sigurheim that i just talked about is

00:32:26.920 such a huge plank in that we are currently on you know it the vol restructuring that holy center

00:32:37.320 that place for our folk and it's really special to be a part of that in the meantime i'd like to

00:32:43.880 cover a little bit more about the gil fagening as a as a source um

00:32:53.240 as nick mentioned earlier it is the uh the source that we get our ordering of our temples

00:33:01.560 uh at least to start out and kind of a definitive measure of which which of our gods are

00:33:06.680 the gods beneficial for mankind to worship, and it's a really well-presented and concise way of

00:33:16.560 understanding our cosmology in an informative way and not just in an artistic way.

00:33:26.380 Svon, do you have any more you want to add on the gilfagening, its importance,

00:33:31.100 its place in our corpus of lore or why it's particularly significant for us to give credence

00:33:39.000 to? I think it's worth noting first and foremost that what is spoken of and then what is brought

00:33:46.680 into verse is very important and should be noted by the reader that we're gaining extra access

00:33:54.840 when we talk about uh knowledge that's cross all the stories when we're looking at them from whether

00:34:01.720 it's you know the the uh gilfagining whether it's uh through this mall whether it's uh grimness mall

00:34:09.080 whether it's the alvis mall in which thor or thor even talked to alvis about correlations and

00:34:14.600 kennings and things these across the board can be used to compare and to kind of glean

00:34:21.880 glean deeper wisdom of the way our ancestors saw the divine, saw the divinities in a poetic format

00:34:32.120 and thus glean some of the ideas of their power. Another major thing, too, is bringing it back to

00:34:39.380 the 12 temples of the gods. So it's worth noting, of course, in the Gilfagining that Freyja is 0.52

00:34:46.960 mentioned in the list um and also hod hoder or uh hod uh balder's brother and of course lastly

00:34:58.980 the kinslayer lopter is mentioned um you know and so it's worth noting first and foremost when we

00:35:07.100 come into that njorder yeah his or correction let me back it up odin it's his sons are mentioned

00:35:15.780 first, and that's, of course, Thor and Baldr. And then when we talk about Njordr, Frey is mentioned

00:35:22.500 and Freyja is mentioned. However, we've decided to go first with the Aus and to take the formulation

00:35:28.840 of the Aus first. And so when you look at the list, you see this ordering and like, oh, well,

00:35:34.860 it's kind of changed. But it's not necessarily changed. It's that when we, the concept of the

00:35:42.200 And how they will be placed in devotionals and in the premise of hoffs or buildings or harrows or groves or whatever it may formulate into.

00:35:51.680 The point was to find the way now.

00:35:55.740 And so Freyr is mentioned.

00:35:58.700 Yes, Freya is mentioned, but she will be that that will be negotiated when we tackle the Ausenir.

00:36:07.180 so i've always been of the mind to state that we have the 12 house that are mentioned

00:36:14.700 in the gilfagining and in which uh the the the three say there are 12 house or gods and 12

00:36:23.820 our senior but in the list they of course mention freya because of her correlation to nyorder

00:36:29.500 the other point is is it's well worth noting and stating that hod is not worshipped by men and it

00:36:35.900 is stated as such. And again, in our faith, looking at Balder and Hoth as both diametric

00:36:43.920 polarities, they source from the same. They are, but one is bright and one is dark. One is awareness

00:36:53.600 and one is ignorance. One is governance and the other is even possibly the point of destruction

00:37:01.980 And the idea of whether it's internals or external destruction. So Hoth is seen as a polaric force to Baldr. And so Baldr is, of course, order and light. So the temple to Baldr was focused upon.

00:37:19.800 and uh because hod is mentioned is not being uh prayed to by men but merely understood as his

00:37:27.360 the point of his orlaw and lastly of course lopter and in our total rejection of the kinslayer

00:37:35.640 uh the total rejection of the outsider the one who who kills his his blood brother's son um that

00:37:43.640 would be obvious and i think that that that we don't really need to go into that but it is worth

00:37:48.620 noting that the austral folk assembly has that stance against that kind of desire or need to

00:37:55.980 um aggrandize aberrations to that seem to be pervading in modern times they aggrandize the

00:38:04.220 aberrant when our ancestors saw the aberrance of loctur they knew that uh yes these things are

00:38:13.900 Oftentimes, that which is vile remains because it seems to give credence to its existence and even aids in the folk.

00:38:25.040 And there's a lot of lessons to be learned in that. 0.94

00:38:26.760 And I think that's why the gods have the story for us to clearly see.

00:38:31.760 But eventually, that aberration turns into malevolence and malignant form.

00:38:37.320 So obviously, we take a strong stance against that.

00:38:41.000 That is chaos and the warning of allowing chaos to come in, both in Fenris Wolf and also into by Lopter Laufison.

00:39:11.000 You

Asatru Folk Assembly - October 12, 2023

Thus Says Bragi the Ancient Skald (from VNS Episode 12)

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