Asatru Folk Assembly - September 19, 2023


Worshipping the Gods is in Your Blood (from VNS Episode 1)

Topics
gift cycle
Hosted by
Steve McNallen
Mentioned
Brandy
That Could Well Cost You Your Life (from VNS Episode 62) That's Where the Magic Happens! (from VNS Episode 2)

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

152.69

Word count

1,115

Sentence count

66

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode of the AFA podcast, we have a special guest on the show this week. He is a fellow AFA member, a teacher, a husband, a father, and a husband. He has been a member of AFA for over 20 years and has been involved in the organization for the past 15 years. He is also the author of the book, "The Gift Cycle" which is a book on how to engage in a meaningful relationship with the gods.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 we talked about getting out and practicing real as a true in the real world and you mentioned
00:00:12.440 earlier that that real life as a true versus internet as a true is something you wanted to
00:00:16.640 speak on so go ahead and tell us a little bit about your thoughts on that i do so a lot of the
00:00:23.180 time and it's it's kind of a tongue-in-cheek funny not funny joke within as a true communities that
00:00:28.960 you're constantly being told you're doing it wrong. You're doing this wrong. You're doing
00:00:33.480 that wrong. I can sort this source from this book, from this publication date, from this author.
00:00:39.100 You're doing it wrong. As a true is not in a book. Worshiping the gods is not in a book.
00:00:48.420 Worshiping the gods is in your blood. It is in your soul. It is your birthright. There is no
00:00:56.020 book that can determine your birthright. The gods are your most ancient ancestors, and you carry
00:01:04.620 that on through your ancestors. You have a direct link. You don't need to read 500 books to have
00:01:12.420 that. That spark is natural. Now, there are a few things that we have historically that we can see
00:01:20.520 that we're done. However, for the people who are constantly telling you that you're doing it wrong
00:01:26.540 or telling the AFA that we're doing it wrong, they're putting a lot of faith in a book. We're
00:01:32.420 putting the faith in our folk. We're putting the faith in our leadership. We're putting the faith
00:01:35.960 in our Godard. We're utmost putting the faith in our gods. That's where we find out justification.
00:01:44.040 You can read a million books. You can write a million essays, but when's the last time you did
00:01:48.660 bloat? When's the last time you participated in the gift cycle? When's the last time you shared
00:01:54.120 frith with someone? Those are the things that are important. You can regurgitate all the information
00:01:59.360 you want, but it has no meaning without practice and it has no meaning without devotion. So that
00:02:06.900 is one thing I really wanted to touch on tonight is that, you know, this is your birthright.
00:02:11.980 As the folks, this is our birthright and you don't need a certificate from a book. You don't
00:02:17.140 need anyone else's permission. This is your birthright. You know, that's really important.
00:02:23.480 I made this, you know, first, it's easy for me to get on a tangent on this and for people to
00:02:32.500 misunderstand. Reading books is really important. Studying things, studying archaeology, studying
00:02:40.100 linguistics studying the lore is super important and it can do so much to inform your practice
00:02:47.940 to help you build a better relationship with the gods to help you build a better understanding
00:02:53.780 but if it ends there you're not connected to our gods in a relationship
00:03:03.220 you're a weird stalker like i made this analogy before and it may sound silly but i think it's 0.92
00:03:09.380 absolutely the truth you know if my wife had a strange stalker that dug through the trash 0.96
00:03:15.620 and you know dug up old records on essays my wife wrote in high school he would know certain
00:03:22.260 things about my wife that i don't know i will give him that but he doesn't have a relationship
00:03:28.020 meanwhile we're married and she's the mother of my child and every day i have a relationship
00:03:32.980 with my wife the minutia of details that you get when you go through the dumpster doesn't
00:03:39.380 doesn't make a relationship. A relationship is made through interaction. Brandy made this point
00:03:45.340 with the gifting cycle. A relationship is made with our gods when you stand before them and you
00:03:52.580 offer them your sincere worship or something from your heart when they receive it and when they give
00:03:59.420 you their blessings in return. And when you do that, it's a cycle. When you do that cyclically,
00:04:04.860 It doesn't just go in a circle, but it spirals upwards to even better and stronger things.
00:04:10.180 And we see that the longer we're engaged in that gift cycle with our gods.
00:04:16.320 You know, something I say to our detractors, but it's also something I say to our members and anybody listening to this.
00:04:22.260 The biggest thing I can recommend you do is go out there and practice Ausitru with other Ausitru art.
00:04:29.900 Go and open your heart, open your mind to our gods and and see, give it a shot and see what happens.
00:04:37.540 It's the hardest thing to argue with some of these people, because we can argue about different ancient texts.
00:04:43.340 But I can't talk to them in a way that's going to make sense about religious experience if they haven't experienced it.
00:04:51.160 But the people who have experienced it, once you do, you can never go back and you can never not know and never not have that.
00:04:57.980 But the folks that won't take that first step of participating, they miss out on that and they'll never know that joy.
00:05:05.060 And that's really unfortunate. So I can't encourage you more than more to go out and be part of that gifting cycle and be and do Ausatru.
00:05:17.080 For those, you know, for a lot of people that are just starting out and they are just feeling that first spark of pull to the ACR, the question is always, where do I start?
00:05:27.980 And we can give you a few good books to start with.
00:05:31.780 But one thing I want you to really think about and really start with before you get too deep into quoting any books is I want you to find a nice, quiet place in your home that's going to be undisturbed.
00:05:44.740 Get some candles, some incense, get a bowl for an offering.
00:05:48.780 decide who it is that you want to start that gift cycle with whether it's the aesir
00:05:54.440 whether it's a specific god or goddess whether it's what i would recommend also is your ancestors
00:06:00.960 that have passed on leave a gift for them on this space it doesn't have to be fancy wording
00:06:07.100 you don't have to have on a special cloak made of crushed velvet or anything like that
00:06:11.520 find a quiet place talk to your gods talk to the heroes and talk to your ancestors
00:06:18.160 and leave them a gift. And the more you do this, and the more you build that relationship,
00:06:24.200 the more that you're going to see these gifts return to you. And that's how you start the
00:06:29.400 cycle. It's not memorizing a book. It's something from the heart. Start the cycle. Everybody says,
00:06:36.620 where do I start? Start there. Doesn't have to be anything fancy. Start with what you got.
00:06:48.160 Thank you.