Asatru Folk Assembly - March 03, 2021


Winter Nights (2010)


Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

125.29023

Word count

1,385

Sentence count

82

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! 0.97
00:00:30.000 This is Steve McNallan of the Asatru Folk Assembly
00:00:36.360 bringing you the latest on the revival of the ancestral faith of Northern Europe
00:00:41.100 and the awakening of the European-descended peoples everywhere.
00:00:46.000 The gods and goddesses never went away.
00:00:49.000 They are with us always, and now they stir, and we reclaim our spiritual birthright.
00:00:56.720 A glorious dawn awaits.
00:00:59.240 Hail our awakening!
00:01:01.440 Hail Asatru rising!
00:01:05.200 We had a big celebration a couple of weeks ago here at Runenburg,
00:01:09.600 with lots of fun and feasting,
00:01:11.700 and with many AFA members and supporters in attendance.
00:01:15.560 Music was provided by our friends,
00:01:17.620 Dylan Sheets of the band Lasher Keen and Marcus Wolfe,
00:01:21.320 who was down from Portland.
00:01:23.300 We served a stunning meal.
00:01:25.620 Before dishing it up, we did a food blessing,
00:01:27.740 and then made up a plate for the ancestors and specifically for the great women in our family
00:01:33.680 lines. After all, they gave us life. The least we can do is to remember them with a symbolic gift of
00:01:40.560 food. Before dinner, we had stood in a circle around Grandfather Oak, the huge and very special
00:01:48.420 tree standing in the field in the front of the house, and we did a ritual calling on all the
00:01:54.160 gods and goddesses, and on the beings we call the dísir. Then we went around the circle,
00:02:01.700 and each of us called upon a specific female ancestor to be with us. We gave these invisible
00:02:08.220 guests our love and asked their blessings in return. The event was one we call winter nights.
00:02:17.240 Traditionally, it falls on the Saturday between October 11th and 17th in the Icelandic calendar,
00:02:22.700 but Asatrua today celebrate it on pretty much any date in October.
00:02:29.820 Winter Nights is all about the Desir, beings who we usually consider to be our female ancestors,
00:02:36.860 those great mothers and grandmothers and aunts and great aunts and so forth extending back
00:02:42.140 into the past.
00:02:44.340 And here is a concept essential to Asatrua and, I suppose, to all native religions.
00:02:50.620 Death is not a brick wall sealing us off from those on the other side.
00:02:55.780 It is, at most, a curtain, a veil, through which whispers of love and remembrance can
00:03:01.740 easily flow.
00:03:03.740 We honor those who are no longer visible members of our community.
00:03:07.940 We tell their stories to our family and friends.
00:03:11.060 We show their pictures, maybe visit their graves, pour libations on the earth as we
00:03:16.020 say their names.
00:03:18.860 They in turn send us love, inspiration, wisdom, a hunch at a crucial time, or maybe that bit
00:03:27.000 of luck when we think all is lost.
00:03:30.640 The line of ancestors and descendants transcends space and time and mortality.
00:03:36.920 We are never truly separated from those we love and who gave us the gift of life.
00:03:45.200 While I always call on all our gods and goddesses at Winter Nights, we especially connect them
00:03:51.300 with the goddess Freyja, our Lady of the Vanir, the one most closely associated with love
00:03:57.400 and fertility.
00:03:58.980 October is just right for Freyja's more somber side.
00:04:04.900 But while we certainly hope you have friends with whom you can celebrate Winter Nights,
00:04:08.920 you can honor the De-Seer all by yourself.
00:04:12.760 An AFA member wrote us to say,
00:04:15.080 I did my own winter night's ritual on Friday night.
00:04:18.860 I filled my drinking horn with ale and went out to a fenced-off area on the grounds of
00:04:23.380 my apartment complex, where a few small trees grow and no one ever goes.
00:04:29.620 After calling upon the gods and goddesses, I spoke the name of every female ancestor
00:04:34.320 whose name I knew, and recounted as many of their deeds as I could recall.
00:04:40.180 I could feel their presence surround me as I gave them thanks and honored them.
00:04:45.140 I renewed my pledge to make them proud that I came from them.
00:04:50.240 I recounted my deeds from the past year for both good and ill.
00:04:55.660 I asked their continued guidance throughout the year to come
00:04:59.180 and thanked them for all that they had given me
00:05:02.280 in the time that I had known them as well as what was inherited through blood.
00:05:07.660 I hailed them all, hailed the gods and goddesses, hailed the whites of the land,
00:05:13.460 yet, even after ending the ritual, the presence of my desir remained thick in the air about me.
00:05:21.620 Even now their presence is still almost overwhelming.
00:05:25.380 I now understand what Steve was saying about the veil between the worlds being thin this time of year.
00:05:31.580 Since coming to Alcetru, I've begun to cultivate a deeper understanding of things I've felt my entire life, but could not begin to comprehend.
00:05:44.860 Here's a poem I wrote long ago about the Deesir and their interaction with us, their descendants.
00:05:50.940 I'll start with the little prose lead-in I wrote at that time, and then I'll go into the poem itself.
00:05:57.020 It's called October Women, in honor of the Deesir at Winter Nights.
00:06:04.540 October is just right for the Deesir, for the women ancestors who have left Midgard and look on beyond our world.
00:06:11.940 It's perfect, too, for Freya's somber side, which we honor at this time of year.
00:06:16.920 And if you've ever read any Ray Bradbury, you know that he's the poet laureate of the October spirit.
00:06:23.400 it. Here's my tribute to Freya, and to the Deesir, and to their special bard, whose stories
00:06:30.820 have meant so much to me.
00:06:35.140 Can you hear her? Can you hear them? Shut your eyes and listen through the dark. Rustle,
00:06:44.900 crackle, crunch on the leaves, once green, now brown, like Freya's cloak. Green cloaks
00:06:52.400 are for growing things and for tossing on the grass for a love bed. Brown cloaks, like fallen
00:06:59.280 leaves and bare earth, are for covering and concealing. For October.
00:07:08.260 Ray Bradbury knows about October, but he doesn't know about her, or it wouldn't be his thumbs that
00:07:14.800 prickle when Frost circles the moon like her necklace, and it's too cold to make love on the
00:07:20.120 dark ground. Maybe he hears the wants behind her and fears the desir, creaking bones, dried up
00:07:29.880 skin bags, wrinkles like old apples in the straw. But Bradbury's got October right, at least as far
00:07:38.820 as he goes. Summer's end, no more long days to run in the sun and play in fields like children.
00:07:46.360 It's adults' time now.
00:07:48.640 Indoors, schoolbooks open, turn pages, turn inward,
00:07:54.340 and keep the fire lit all night.
00:07:57.400 Falling leaves turn to falling snow, 0.99
00:08:00.000 but the ancient ladies ignore the chill.
00:08:03.540 Out in the paddock stand the burial mounds,
00:08:06.700 stones all icy, but the desir don't care.
00:08:09.800 They cackle and call as though the air was warm,
00:08:13.380 and flowers bedecked the barrow in the sun.
00:08:17.060 You can hear them better this time of year
00:08:19.420 without the humming of the insects
00:08:21.340 or the sighs of lovers moving over the grass.
00:08:25.720 The Deesir, those ancient women, call to you.
00:08:30.020 Mothers, grandmothers, cousins and kin of old,
00:08:33.880 they hail and halloo as though they'd never left the far side.
00:08:39.420 Remember to feed the animals, the Deesir say,
00:08:42.020 and brew the fine beer that will keep you cheery.
00:08:45.900 It's not too cold to take off your clothes under the cover,
00:08:49.280 especially if you've someone to snuggle with.
00:08:52.620 Keep a log on the fire of family's honor
00:08:55.280 and know that summer lies beyond the snow.
00:09:00.740 Creaking bones and leathery skin,
00:09:03.700 wrinkles, cracked voices, aged dulled eyes.
00:09:08.680 Mr. Bradbury should know Freya better than that.
00:09:12.020 October is now, but springtime is forever, and the Deesir call us from verdant vistas.
00:09:20.920 Their eyes shine brightly, and their supple bodies twist and weave as they dance in the sun.
00:09:27.100 You can make it, they say, and as usual, they're right.
00:09:33.280 If you haven't already honored the Deesir for Winter Nights, there are still a few days of October left.
00:09:43.600 The four mothers of your line will appreciate it, and you will find yourself blessed more than you can imagine.
00:09:51.560 This is Steve McNallan of the Asatru Folk Assembly, www.runestone.org, serving our gods and goddesses, our ancestors and our folk.
00:10:03.840 Visit us online, and if we are what you have been looking for, drop us a membership inquiry.
00:10:09.880 It's time to come home to the ancestral way of our people.
00:10:14.780 Be sure to join us next time for more of Ausatru Rising.
00:10:33.280 We'll be right back.