Latest / Random Heathen Ramblings / Random Heathen Ramblings: S5, EP13 - Roll For Heathenry! (feat. The Heathen Nerd)

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Random Heathen Ramblings: S5, EP13 - Roll For Heathenry! (feat. The Heathen Nerd) · Random Heathen Ramblings

• 0:01
  Hello everyone and welcome to the Random Heathen Ramblings
• 0:04
  podcast where we discuss all sorts of things dramatic heathen
• 0:08
  re related. My name is Jesse.
• 0:10
  I am your host. Let's get into it.
• 0:33
  The old eight-year workshop is dedicated to the old ways,
• 0:36
  offering a wide selection of animus, ritual supplies,
• 0:40
  divination tools, altered goods and home decor, including
• 0:43
  premium reindeer hides imported from traditional herders in
• 0:47
  Northern Finland. Whether you're just starting
• 0:49
  your spiritual journey or looking to expand your
• 0:52
  collection with a custom drum, we have everything you need.
• 0:56
  Visit our online store at the old eightyear.com and discover
• 1:00
  the beauty of mountain spirit. All right, folks, welcome back.
• 1:08
  How are you doing? How was your week?
• 1:10
  How was your weekend? How was your day?
• 1:12
  How was your night? How is just anything that's
• 1:15
  going on in your life? Hope it's well.
• 1:16
  Hope you're well. And thank you again for coming
• 1:20
  back here and seeing or hearing or both what in hell Haim is
• 1:25
  going on on the Random Heathen Ramblings podcast this week.
• 1:29
  We got another guest lined up for you today, coming at us from
• 1:35
  Parts Unknown. I don't remember exactly where
• 1:37
  he hails from, but you might know him by his online moniker
• 1:41
  across different platforms as Heathen Nerd name is Justin and
• 1:46
  he's got a Facebook page and an Instagram I believe and a
• 1:51
  YouTube channel. But to my knowledge he is mostly
• 1:55
  focused on a Discord server which is going to be LinkedIn,
• 2:01
  The show notes of this podcast as well as the description area
• 2:03
  of this video podcast if you are the one watching this on
• 2:07
  Patreon. As I mentioned to all of my
• 2:10
  Patreon supporters, thank you very much for making this
• 2:14
  content possible. If it weren't for you, there
• 2:16
  would be no video versions of the podcast to be quite honest.
• 2:19
  So you all make the wheels of this machine continue to run
• 2:25
  smoothly. So all of you from the Carl tier
• 2:27
  up to the A Seer tier, thank you so very much for continuing to
• 2:32
  support. You can find all of the ways
• 2:34
  that you can support this show down in the show notes of the
• 2:39
  description area. Just click on that link tree
• 2:40
  link that's linked down there or over here wherever and it'll
• 2:44
  bring you to the one stop shop for all the ways that you can
• 2:46
  support this podcast Mid Garden using is the brand.
• 2:50
  Additionally I do want to call attention to the fact that on my
• 2:54
  merchandise store so Midgard amusing store.com I'm running a
• 3:00
  it's not really like a sale or a special for Earth Day coming up
• 3:05
  this year which is in April. But I am I am selling
• 3:09
  merchandise for a a a group or or an organization really that I
• 3:15
  helped Co found with JM Bright Spirit Olufsen and my go the and
• 3:20
  my Fiola. It's called Sacred Trail Society
• 3:25
  and you can find some merchandise that is every cent
• 3:30
  every amount of of profits that are received from the sales of
• 3:34
  Sacred Trail Society merchandise.
• 3:37
  All of that money is going to be donated to The Nature
• 3:40
  Conservancy at the beginning of May.
• 3:44
  So check that out. If you just go to my mid garden
• 3:46
  music store, the the link for that's going to be down
• 3:51
  specifically to take you to that portion of my store.
• 3:54
  Just check that out. And if you buy a shirt or or a
• 3:56
  hoodie or a sticker or a coffee mug or anything that's branded
• 4:00
  with the Sacred Trail Society logo, you get to support the
• 4:04
  donations that go to The Nature Conservancy in observation of
• 4:09
  Earth Day. So that's about all the
• 4:12
  housekeeping stuff that I have to mention to you today.
• 4:15
  When when the heathen nerd comes on here, he's going to be
• 4:17
  talking about who knows what we're going to, we're just going
• 4:19
  to kind of roll the dice, as it were.
• 4:22
  You'll notice on the splash screen before the show started
• 4:25
  or as like the thumbnail of this video.
• 4:28
  He is his, his logo is, is was AD 20 dice with a Vulcanet in
• 4:34
  the center. So we're going to just kind of
• 4:35
  roll the dice and see what happens, see what we roll for.
• 4:37
  We're going to roll for Heathenry for sure and and talk
• 4:41
  about just kind of whatever things come up.
• 4:43
  I know he's got a lot of content on his TikTok that he shares on
• 4:48
  his Facebook page. So we're going to get into all
• 4:49
  that. He's going to talk about it.
• 4:50
  All of his links are going to be down in the description or in
• 4:53
  the show notes as well. So without further ado let's
• 4:57
  welcome in the heathen nerd and and folks we are here welcoming
• 5:02
  in Justin also known by his online moniker the Heathen Nerd.
• 5:08
  So welcome to the show, Justin. Is that OK?
• 5:11
  If we can call you that, right. He the nerd.
• 5:13
  Oh, of course he can call me Justin.
• 5:15
  OK. Justin Nerd.
• 5:18
  Yeah, whatever. That red headed, goofy looking
• 5:21
  guy. No, I'm just kidding.
• 5:22
  I'm not. I've been called way worse.
• 5:27
  Thank you for coming onto the show and seeing what kind of
• 5:30
  seeing, where the dice land, what we want to, what we want to
• 5:32
  get into today. But as I mentioned earlier,
• 5:35
  before you came on, I I told the people just a little bit about
• 5:38
  you. I'm like he he he hails from
• 5:40
  parts unknown. We'll just say that for the for
• 5:43
  the time being you can share as much or little of that as you
• 5:45
  want to. But you do have some heathen
• 5:48
  content out there, amongst some other things.
• 5:51
  So why don't you just kind of let the people know what you do,
• 5:55
  who you are, and and what your what your shtick is, as it as it
• 5:59
  were? Well, that in itself is a story,
• 6:03
  so let's just start with the basics.
• 6:07
  My actual name is Justin, as we discussed, and I've been a
• 6:12
  practicing heathen for just over 10 years now.
• 6:17
  I've currently residing in the middle of the Ozarks, but I've
• 6:22
  lived a little bit of everywhere and that was even before I did
• 6:26
  eight years in the military, and I think it was 2018.
• 6:32
  I set out with a vision. I I finally decided to do that
• 6:36
  thing of trying to find what you'd love to do and then try to
• 6:40
  find a way to get paid for. It ultimately didn't work out
• 6:43
  but that's how I ended up making web comics like every week for
• 6:47
  like you know two years, 2 1/2 years, something like that.
• 6:52
  Because that was that was Peak Vikings TV show era when when
• 6:59
  there is just a huge hunger for knowledge and just like things
• 7:04
  on how to do this. And I mean it was it was
• 7:09
  interesting. It was definitely an experience.
• 7:11
  It didn't pay much at all. Kind of disappeared for about
• 7:16
  two to three years, had a family got back into professional the
• 7:23
  professional world working a nine to five.
• 7:25
  And these days I make a more educational content on TikTok
• 7:31
  and I host lives with a semi regularity where I have people
• 7:37
  like Gooby Bodvar from the Northwoods Kindred and like you
• 7:42
  know other well known individuals within the community
• 7:45
  to come up and we just we discuss heathen things.
• 7:48
  You know, I try to try to give people the tools to do heathen
• 7:51
  shit these days, whereas where I started was kind of, you know,
• 7:56
  trying to use humor to highlight where people are wrong.
• 8:02
  But I've learned that that's not the that's not the way that most
• 8:06
  people are receptive. The only people that really
• 8:08
  enjoyed that content were people who already knew about the yeah.
• 8:15
  Yeah, I remember coming across your, it's funny you mentioned,
• 8:17
  right, Kind of when you started the the it's it's always been
• 8:20
  heathen nerd, right? You never rebranded or anything.
• 8:24
  Right. No.
• 8:25
  When it first came out, it was the all Heathen nerd heard it
• 8:29
  was a page because the idea behind it was a community and
• 8:34
  and ultimately what it is is like when it comes to like
• 8:37
  creating. So like when I'm creating Tik
• 8:39
  Toks or when I was creating web comics, really what I'm doing is
• 8:46
  I'm reflecting what I am seeing back at my audience.
• 8:52
  So like with the comics, I would see people making these either
• 8:56
  ridiculous, you know, fallacious arguments or getting things
• 9:01
  wrong in a comical way. Or at least it was comical to me
• 9:04
  and I would, I would draw about it and then I would present it
• 9:08
  back out there. Because the idea was if it's
• 9:11
  with fictional characters and fictional characters, explaining
• 9:14
  to each other why this practice is is like wrong, or why this
• 9:18
  viewpoint on it is not exactly lining up.
• 9:22
  They wouldn't be offended, and I figured out quickly that that
• 9:25
  was wrong. But.
• 9:28
  Crazy right? Like.
• 9:29
  As. As as as light hearted as it's
• 9:32
  intended to be with maybe like a a pointed focus on trying to
• 9:36
  educate. Still, at the end of the day,
• 9:38
  like, it's almost like comedy, you know, Like people get
• 9:41
  offended with a lot of content that that comics talk about and
• 9:46
  it's like, guys, this is, it's comedy.
• 9:49
  Don't stop it. Stop taking it so seriously.
• 9:51
  You know, like it's not meant to be taken seriously.
• 9:53
  It's meant to laugh at and smoke fun at and.
• 9:58
  To a degree, absolutely. But also like, I know you
• 10:02
  covered my phases of Paganism video and when I started that
• 10:08
  web comic, like I built the, I built each of the phases with
• 10:13
  like somebody specific in mind. And I did the phase two-part
• 10:18
  with me at that time period of mine.
• 10:20
  So like the the GIF of the man beating the dead horse, it was
• 10:24
  like how I envisioned me in my comic days.
• 10:27
  Like there was a point there, but I wasn't taking the time to
• 10:31
  try to find a way to say it receptively or to a way that
• 10:34
  people would be receptive to it. And I mean if you're, if you're
• 10:39
  sincere about, you know, trying to help people and educate
• 10:41
  people especially on spiritual matters, you really should take
• 10:45
  the time to consider how you want to say things.
• 10:48
  And when I first started the comic, I just, I wasn't there.
• 10:52
  But as I said, it was, it was also a reflection.
• 10:55
  So like the very first comic I ever did was, you know, is the
• 11:00
  the character I named Mitch leaning into the character I
• 11:02
  named Eric. And Mitch was basically the one
• 11:04
  that was always wrong and Eric was the one that was always
• 11:06
  right. And Mitch was asking Eric like
• 11:10
  what God he prays to for wealth, because that was what I was
• 11:15
  seeing a lot in like the community spaces, primarily like
• 11:20
  in a lot of the Facebook groups is, you know, people either
• 11:22
  trying to sell wealth spells or asking ridiculous questions of
• 11:26
  like, which God do I bug for my mundane problem.
• 11:30
  And you know, my, my point of view then and still is today of,
• 11:34
  you know, there's just some things, you know, you got to
• 11:36
  take ownership of you. You can't expect a a divine
• 11:41
  solution to, you know, come down and sort this out for you.
• 11:44
  So like, but what the comic said was I would start with the
• 11:47
  sacrificial offering to HR and if that doesn't work, try your
• 11:50
  employment office. And.
• 11:52
  I I went to the largest Facebook group for Pagans and Heathens
• 11:59
  that was that existed at the time and before I started my
• 12:04
  comic and I was like, hey, I have this idea for a comic but
• 12:08
  you guys have these rules about advertising so I can't share
• 12:11
  things from my page. Would it be cool though once I
• 12:14
  get my website up and running if I posted the link and then you'd
• 12:17
  be able to read the comic without even having to click on
• 12:19
  it and they said, well let me see it first.
• 12:22
  And I didn't have a comic drone at this point.
• 12:24
  So that because most people don't know the original concept
• 12:28
  for my comic was like a time travel thing, like a Viking era,
• 12:34
  you know, Raider trapped in modern society and then a modern
• 12:37
  day he then trapped in the Viking era.
• 12:40
  Oh. Interesting.
• 12:42
  It never quite got that far, So I just drew up that simple one
• 12:46
  based off of what I was observing to show them like a
• 12:48
  proof of concept. And I immediately got kicked out
• 12:51
  of that group and blocked. They're like, Nope.
• 12:54
  And then so I was like, what the heck, But I just drew this
• 12:57
  comic. I was proud of it.
• 12:58
  I liked the message. I wanted people to read it.
• 13:01
  So I went to the second biggest group I could find and I
• 13:04
  messaged the page owner and asked permission in accordance
• 13:07
  with their page rules if I could share.
• 13:10
  And they turn around and saying I'm also a member of this group
• 13:13
  and you just left that group because we told you you couldn't
• 13:16
  share yours. So I'm kicking you out of this
• 13:18
  like, you know, like it was it was a ridiculous.
• 13:22
  They were like accusing me of being like religion, bashing in
• 13:26
  that in that comic and like all these things.
• 13:28
  And all I was doing was asking if I could share a comic, you
• 13:30
  know, basically saying go to HR or your employment office if you
• 13:35
  want more money. Don't you know, Don't.
• 13:37
  Treat me with that vending machine.
• 13:38
  Yeah, yeah, like a. Vending machine.
• 13:43
  Those reactions, like they they fueled me to make more comics.
• 13:51
  But as I kept making them and I kept seeing diverse reactions
• 13:55
  that just it kept giving me more things to hold that mirror back
• 13:58
  up to. So it never, it never went the
• 14:03
  way that I originally envisioned it because I was so busy
• 14:06
  reacting. So these days, though I I do try
• 14:10
  to I I try to be more selective on the topics I cover.
• 14:15
  Yeah, it's interesting how you kind of start with start
• 14:18
  somewhere with something, especially coming from like a
• 14:20
  content creator's point of view. Obviously you had a vision, you
• 14:24
  had a desire, you had a a purpose or a reason to do it
• 14:27
  with with, you know, whether it was monetary or or financial
• 14:32
  benefit in mind, you know, but but kind of where it's what what
• 14:36
  it what it's morphed into what it's evolved into is something
• 14:40
  more holistic for people that actually need it.
• 14:43
  It's it's it's not so much for just like the general 'cause I I
• 14:46
  hit a phase with with some of my content there for a little bit
• 14:50
  like a year year and a half ago where I was like posting some of
• 14:55
  the some of the click baity type stuff.
• 14:56
  You know, really trying to understand or or figure out the
• 15:00
  various algorithms of these platforms like YouTube and and
• 15:04
  and Meta and and and stuff. And trying to really pull in all
• 15:08
  this this attention and all this audience, 'cause I thought
• 15:10
  that's what I need to do to stay relevant, this and that.
• 15:13
  And I got a pretty quick quick you know, kick in the ass of
• 15:18
  that's not what you're about, Jesse, That's not what you're
• 15:21
  out here doing. You're not you know you're not
• 15:24
  the next like Peyton Parish of of of you know podcasts or
• 15:30
  something like stop trying to be a clown out here.
• 15:35
  Take this seriously because you've got something of benefit
• 15:38
  that you can share. And I once I shift my focus and
• 15:41
  and and and focus more on that doing it that way I I don't even
• 15:47
  care so much about what what are my stats look like?
• 15:49
  What are my what does my reach look like.
• 15:51
  I was like, I didn't didn't matter anymore because I'm
• 15:54
  reaching the people that need to be reached, you know, so the
• 15:58
  quality over quantity was. That's exactly why I actually
• 16:03
  kind of switched to TikTok, because it's how it sounded in
• 16:09
  my brain when I was hearing you speak on it is like the
• 16:12
  psychology of the click, you know?
• 16:15
  And I've, I've admitted this before, you know, and I I
• 16:18
  absolutely hate that I have a part of my ego that does want
• 16:24
  validation, but I can't keep it in check unless I do admit it.
• 16:28
  You know, it's kind of like the fact that you know I am a
• 16:32
  alcoholic who's been in recovery for years And the my best weapon
• 16:37
  for that is to admit to people that I have a problem, you know,
• 16:40
  it it takes away all the risk and danger.
• 16:44
  So but there's a point in time when I was I was chasing that
• 16:49
  click and like you look at my Facebook page and I have like
• 16:52
  almost 30,000 followers on there but I couldn't sell like more,
• 16:57
  maybe more than 10 T-shirts a month.
• 17:00
  You know, off of that to like supplement it.
• 17:02
  Because most of those people that were there were there
• 17:05
  because I would find memes that I'd love.
• 17:07
  And I'm like, if I like this, they might like my comics and
• 17:11
  but I was really just I I was watching those likes and those
• 17:16
  share counters and those reach numbers go up and I'm like, man,
• 17:19
  I reached 2 million people this week.
• 17:22
  Like, you know, I I wanted to see the page grow, but then I
• 17:26
  couldn't do anything with it because it wasn't a focused
• 17:29
  audience. Whereas on TikTok, like it's not
• 17:32
  all Heathen related content over on TikTok but I was able to
• 17:35
  start back over from like you know Ground Zero to where people
• 17:39
  didn't really had to know me and I had to kind of make a
• 17:44
  reputation for myself and what kind of creator I wanted to be
• 17:48
  at that point. And there are a few moments
• 17:50
  where I tried a few things out. And I quickly found out, you
• 17:53
  know, like, one one of the ideas I had was something I was going
• 17:56
  to call like Quicklore, which is basically where I give, like a 0
• 18:00
  punctuation style, like breakdown of, like, lore.
• 18:03
  Because one of the my biggest gripes when it comes to
• 18:08
  interacting with the Heathens and the online spaces, There's a
• 18:13
  lot more Heathens online than there are that have actually
• 18:16
  read the lore. And I'm like, well, if they can
• 18:18
  get this content some way, whatever.
• 18:19
  Like, you know, So I was just gonna break down, like comical
• 18:22
  things. But I realized that I just don't
• 18:24
  have that kind of energy to present that.
• 18:28
  Like, I'm not, I'm not a very loud, boisterous personality.
• 18:32
  So like, I was listening to the playback and I'm like, man, this
• 18:35
  is really boring. So I was like, you know what?
• 18:39
  Oh, no, this this is going to be a no go on a project for me.
• 18:43
  Like, you know, I'll write the script for somebody else one day
• 18:46
  maybe and let somebody who's more naturally loud and
• 18:49
  energetic, you know, you know, read something like that.
• 18:53
  But it it, I had to find a place where I comfortably fit in and
• 18:59
  then start kind of making my content out of there.
• 19:02
  Yeah. So was that a real big challenge
• 19:05
  for you, 'cause it was. I mean, and and the reason I ask
• 19:08
  is, you know, where I'm, I'm also, you know, in the kind of a
• 19:11
  similar position, I create content, but a much different
• 19:13
  type of content. And when I see so many different
• 19:19
  creators with you know a lot of followers or a lot of you know
• 19:23
  again that that that ego that's kind of just biting at you at
• 19:26
  your heels like well you could do like something like that and
• 19:29
  get that kind of attention get that kind of validation.
• 19:34
  You know was it really hard for you to to to stop like giving
• 19:38
  that part of yourself the attention of of focusing and and
• 19:41
  shifting more into well, where do I need to be versus what do
• 19:45
  I, where do I want to be? Like where do I, where do I fit
• 19:48
  in what's where's the need, where's the where's my purpose
• 19:51
  not trying to fit in with everybody else and do the same
• 19:54
  thing that everybody else has done.
• 19:56
  Was it difficult for you to separate from that kind of that,
• 20:00
  that, that pull or that? That's that's honestly, really,
• 20:06
  it's honestly really hard to say because like since I did take
• 20:11
  like 2 years off of like creating content like in that
• 20:17
  time period, you know, life had a way of shifting me to a
• 20:22
  different point and a different perspective.
• 20:24
  Like, I I go back and I read some of my comics and I go,
• 20:28
  that's really flat. But then I look at some and I
• 20:30
  say, like, you know, like, wow, you know, I still love it.
• 20:32
  Like one of my favorite ones is like the last one I did, where
• 20:34
  they're like walking off into the woods and, you know, and
• 20:37
  they're talking about how, like, you know, 'cause and this was
• 20:40
  something I heard people would they would, they would do weird
• 20:43
  things. Like when you made New Heathens,
• 20:45
  they'll be like this, this anger I feel, you know, it's my
• 20:48
  ancestors inside of me. It's because I have this Nordic
• 20:50
  blood and I'm like, what are you talking about?
• 20:53
  No, you are. You have an anger inside of you
• 20:56
  because you're unhappy. And it's easy to be unhappy in
• 21:01
  our modern world. Our modern world is a trap on so
• 21:04
  many levels. Like, you know, we're not, we're
• 21:07
  not meant to live inside of, you know, massive, you know, cities
• 21:12
  with this digital everything like we do.
• 21:16
  And if we don't take the time to reconnect to that natural world,
• 21:20
  you start to feel sick. But the world has us convinced
• 21:23
  that, you know, it's our fault, that we might feel these
• 21:26
  frustrations. And so that like, that last
• 21:30
  comic was like about going on airplane mode with the digital
• 21:33
  world, you know, getting back to a simpler life.
• 21:35
  But that was exactly how I put it in there, a simpler life with
• 21:38
  less variables, A simpler equation.
• 21:42
  And I I see you your Facebook posts all the time of like, you
• 21:46
  going out and connecting with that.
• 21:47
  And I think that's one thing that a lot of people just, they
• 21:50
  they forget to do. I really tanged it on that one.
• 21:55
  But yeah, so during that two years though, there is a lot of
• 22:00
  that. And like, you know, I I moved to
• 22:04
  a new area. Like I started my own family.
• 22:07
  Like I had a different perspective.
• 22:09
  Like, you know, I I look at my son and then I reflect on so
• 22:14
  many things like who I want to be, who I was.
• 22:18
  You know, there's there's so many points of reflection.
• 22:21
  So when I started making content again, I think the hardest thing
• 22:26
  for me was just adjusting to the mean.
• 22:29
  Because I used to be, you know, just words on a screen.
• 22:32
  I would draw pictures and then I would type A blog post by
• 22:36
  getting used to being in front of the camera and, you know,
• 22:39
  trying to figure out like what postures were, where you know
• 22:42
  how to set things up, where the good audio distance was.
• 22:46
  Yeah, lighting the whole bit, yeah.
• 22:48
  Yeah, and a lot of my most popular videos don't actually
• 22:52
  show my face on them. And, you know, I'm not offended
• 22:54
  by that, but it's that at that point it's almost like a blend
• 22:57
  between the worlds, 'cause I'm still just basically words on a
• 23:00
  screen. Sure.
• 23:04
  Yeah. I mean, even for me, like this
• 23:05
  is like a lot of people don't watch this video.
• 23:08
  Especially now since I moved the videos only to Patreon.
• 23:11
  There's still a lot of people that don't watch what I say.
• 23:15
  They hear it, you know, so words on a screen or or or voices in
• 23:18
  your ear, it's I, I don't know if it was you or somebody else
• 23:22
  that I was at one point in time inviting on to my channel.
• 23:26
  I don't even know if it was the podcast yet.
• 23:28
  And I don't remember it was you or somebody else.
• 23:30
  But you know, they like, no, I don't think this is a good fit.
• 23:32
  I don't. I don't do well on camera.
• 23:34
  And I was like, OK, you know and now here you are.
• 23:40
  It may not have been you, but I've.
• 23:41
  I've gotten people like that where they've declined to want
• 23:45
  to be on camera or or or be heard because they had this idea
• 23:50
  of something like, I don't know, like they they thought they were
• 23:53
  going to bomb or it was just going to be awkward and I didn't
• 23:58
  push. You know, I'm like, that's fine.
• 23:59
  You know, that's the way you feel.
• 24:00
  But hey, you know, if you ever reconsider, all right.
• 24:03
  And I've had people like like that come back on and they get
• 24:06
  on here and the amount of information that they share and
• 24:10
  just how comfortable they become, it's like it's a like a
• 24:14
  breath of fresh air. So that I think things do happen
• 24:17
  over time. You know, like whether it's a a
• 24:19
  birth of a child or just time goes by.
• 24:21
  I mean everybody's life changes over time, you know, and we we
• 24:25
  get a different perspective on things and helps put put us in
• 24:30
  that position of where like it's like a trajectory you know, kind
• 24:33
  of lines us up in the the direction we're supposed to be
• 24:36
  going. Yeah.
• 24:37
  And it's, well, I mean, I I find a lot of people and they're
• 24:40
  having a hard time with this because they're like they're
• 24:43
  they're resisting it. You know, because there's we, we
• 24:47
  have this innate drive to succeed.
• 24:49
  We have this innate desire to be something, to be somebody, you
• 24:54
  know, and we have all these societal notions of, you know,
• 24:58
  that we are all intrinsically somebody, you know.
• 25:02
  And there's a lot of things that we kind of gotta deconstruct
• 25:06
  when we move into Heathenry because it it is not a
• 25:10
  spirituality that caters to that.
• 25:12
  It's not like, hey, you know you did a good job here's your pat
• 25:15
  and you know go on your way. You know it's it's constantly
• 25:18
  asking the question how could you do it better?
• 25:22
  And it's it's not a, at least to me, that's what it is.
• 25:25
  And to me it is not a it's it's not a hostile question.
• 25:30
  It's not asking as if what I did today isn't good enough, it's
• 25:34
  saying, hey, that was great work, What are we doing
• 25:37
  tomorrow? Yep.
• 25:39
  And a lot of people are hesitant to because they do feel like it.
• 25:44
  It is almost like asking or saying that, you know, they're
• 25:47
  not enough and what they did today was not enough.
• 25:49
  So they get really hesitant to this idea of change.
• 25:53
  Or defensive, you think like you think there's a bit of
• 25:56
  defensiveness to it as well. Like they they got their backup.
• 25:59
  That's almost like they feel like they got their backup
• 26:01
  against the wall. Like they have to defend the
• 26:03
  things that they've done, like, but look at all this shit.
• 26:07
  Like, yeah, I'm not taking away from that.
• 26:08
  Like, don't take, don't don't get me wrong.
• 26:10
  Like, that's great. Now what?
• 26:13
  I I definitely feel that there is defensiveness and I honestly
• 26:17
  think that that one is the defensive aspect.
• 26:19
  I think is 100% a side effect of the greater Heathen community
• 26:25
  because I know you've been there, I know I've been there.
• 26:29
  I'm pretty sure 90% of the people who who will be listening
• 26:32
  to this have been there. But that point, when you're new
• 26:35
  and you walk into like a grouping of heathens you've
• 26:39
  never met before, it's almost like getting mud checked in the
• 26:42
  MC world. Like you gotta prove you know
• 26:44
  what you're talking about in order to even get an ounce of
• 26:47
  respect from some people. And I mean, honestly, those just
• 26:51
  probably aren't your people unless that's the kind of
• 26:53
  personality you are and you, you suit well in that environment.
• 26:56
  There are other heathens out there that will not treat you
• 26:59
  like that. But we've all encountered it and
• 27:03
  it kind of builds up this thing or like, you know, when somebody
• 27:06
  says, like questions us or, you know, we feel questioned in
• 27:11
  general, we feel really defensive.
• 27:13
  Like we have to all of a sudden start providing our receipts,
• 27:15
  bring in our sources, you know, trying to prove we know what
• 27:18
  we're talking about. And sometimes it might be that
• 27:23
  might be a justified defensive reaction, but I've seen it a lot
• 27:26
  of times. I'm like, oh man, we were just
• 27:29
  asking a question. Right.
• 27:32
  You know what I've noticed from, from my perspective on it is
• 27:36
  that a lot of that type of behavior like you're talking
• 27:41
  about where you, you know, a newer heathen comes into this
• 27:45
  group, that group, right. That behavior that you're
• 27:48
  talking about tends to come from, or at least from what I've
• 27:52
  seen anyway, it it it's more prevalent with like the the
• 27:55
  reconstructionist types, the folks who are very heavily
• 27:59
  devoted or or or invested into reconstructing historical
• 28:04
  Heathenry. And I just had a guy on the show
• 28:07
  last week, Robert sass out Sidhu and he's got a pretty, he's got
• 28:13
  a very vibrant reputation in the Heathen community in a lot of
• 28:17
  different ways. And it's like interesting, like
• 28:19
  it's one of the things that came up on that episode was he's like
• 28:23
  what I want, what I really want now he's like it's not so much
• 28:27
  about like, sure to me it's important about, you know, when
• 28:29
  the the heathen holidays were were celebrated in pre Christian
• 28:34
  times, like that's all important, he said.
• 28:35
  But what what's more important, what I want to see happening now
• 28:38
  is, you know, are we exhibiting behaviors that are honorable?
• 28:42
  Are we being honorable? Are we projecting a positive
• 28:46
  image to others, not just within our heathen communities but
• 28:51
  those outside of our heathen communities?
• 28:52
  'cause if we project this image over just a bunch of gatekeeping
• 28:55
  jerks, why would anybody want to come be a part of this?
• 28:59
  And we're all about this, you know, community and right and
• 29:01
  tribe and all this inclusive, you know, bonding Frith and this
• 29:04
  that and the other. Well, how are we living?
• 29:07
  How are we, you know, expressing ourselves on this online
• 29:11
  platforms? Because we have them.
• 29:15
  If if if not then but then to to like we're we're almost
• 29:18
  countered acting the thing that we claim we want when we're
• 29:22
  being these. Like I'm not saying you or I I'm
• 29:24
  just saying like the general like that audience being these
• 29:26
  like gatekeeping assholes that well, where's your source?
• 29:30
  What site? Your source?
• 29:31
  La La la. And I've I've been that person
• 29:36
  because. It's easy to get to when you
• 29:37
  reach a point, I think it there's there's a little bit of
• 29:40
  tendency to go in that direction.
• 29:42
  I think a lot of it has 'cause I am one of those people that
• 29:45
  thrive well in a chaotic in a conflict filled environment.
• 29:51
  But it I think a lot of it really has to do 'cause.
• 29:56
  I mean heathenry it, you know, it it's been coming back for a
• 30:00
  while but we're really now just starting to kind of get into
• 30:02
  that bloom. You know that that full like
• 30:06
  springtime bloom to where we're starting to get recognized
• 30:10
  otherwhere like you know we we had the the truth was invited to
• 30:15
  you know the religion summit in Chicago.
• 30:20
  You know like an Institute of Religions.
• 30:22
  And you know they were there with their their tagline of you
• 30:25
  know, representing inclusive Heathenry.
• 30:27
  And I know a lot of heathens have opinions on the truth, but
• 30:31
  regardless of who was there, it was just it was refreshing to
• 30:35
  see that, you know, Heathenry was included.
• 30:40
  You know, most of the time on for events like that, we're
• 30:43
  outside the doors because we're not invited in, we say.
• 30:46
  So screw you. We're going to do our rituals
• 30:47
  anyways. We're going to do out here where
• 30:49
  the public who can't get inside your fancy building like us can
• 30:52
  watch. But you know this year, you
• 30:54
  know, there was we had heathens that were invited that were
• 30:58
  inside and then you still had your heathens and your pagans
• 31:00
  outside, you know, doing their practices.
• 31:03
  But I think the other aspect of it is since we are kind of in
• 31:07
  this bloom, we're starting to get this recognition.
• 31:09
  A lot of our more seasoned heathens, we're also brought up
• 31:16
  in that environment. So that's what they know, you
• 31:18
  know, it's kind of like, you know, somebody raising their
• 31:23
  child, like how you know their father raised them.
• 31:25
  It's it's it's what they know. And I don't think too many
• 31:30
  people have ever stopped to really you know consider cause I
• 31:34
  have seen in a lot of the reconstruct I like these days.
• 31:37
  I look at hardcore Reconstructionists and you know
• 31:41
  I'm I'm still very much a Reconstructionist in in many
• 31:45
  ways. I'm also at the same time, I
• 31:48
  really hate trying to fully define the divine and you know,
• 31:54
  the spiritual path because it it just seems arrogant for me to
• 31:57
  say that, you know, I know exactly what the gods and
• 32:00
  everything and all this is and this is it.
• 32:03
  You know, some people would call that faith and if you know
• 32:05
  people want to say they have more faith in me, that's fine.
• 32:07
  But I I like to keep it a little more loose or have a little more
• 32:10
  room to move around. And I find that having that
• 32:15
  looseness allows me to be more personable because I look at the
• 32:19
  hardcore Reconstructionists that don't have that and sometimes it
• 32:24
  feels more like they're practicing history than they are
• 32:27
  heathenry. Like, you know, if if if we were
• 32:30
  to take everything that we can find through our academic
• 32:35
  sources, so from, you know, the the sagas, you know, the poetic
• 32:39
  and the Prose Eddas through archaeological finds, we were to
• 32:42
  take everything in there that we could prove about spiritual
• 32:46
  practice. In Heathenry it would be a
• 32:49
  pamphlet like I mean there's talks in these things about
• 32:56
  spiritual practices and there's things that we believe indicate
• 33:00
  a certain type of spiritual practice but we don't know what
• 33:02
  that practice looked like to the arch events.
• 33:04
  You know we we can actually find you know stories in the in the
• 33:08
  sagas and the Eddas where kings we're not invited to like a
• 33:12
  local villages you know bloat because they were not part of
• 33:16
  that village and they're our king.
• 33:18
  You know it it was a very tribal practice in those days.
• 33:26
  And if we only use what we can prove happened, what we're left
• 33:32
  with is so small that it it's it's not even a framework to
• 33:36
  fully go off of at that point. So at some point you have to
• 33:39
  step outside of that in mind. Again, I know there's gonna be
• 33:43
  some people that disagree. With that, yeah.
• 33:45
  Well, you know, it's like the you know what what?
• 33:47
  What floats your boat? What tickles your pickle?
• 33:49
  I mean what makes you happy I guess is you know if you find
• 33:53
  fulfillment or joy and and and whatever and doing it that way
• 33:56
  and you got people with you that align with it and you guys have
• 34:01
  you know you know you can share and Frith together and you all
• 34:05
  these things and great. But I I do echo what you're
• 34:08
  saying and I also look at it from the perspective of, you
• 34:11
  know, so much of of what these Arch Eden's right pre Christian
• 34:14
  dramatic people did was very specific to kind of where they
• 34:22
  were from. You know, there were, there were
• 34:24
  regional differences, there's nuance too, but there were
• 34:27
  regional differences. Things that the, you know, the
• 34:32
  Saxons did weren't necessarily the same as as maybe the the the
• 34:36
  Danes and then the Swedes and the Norwegians and the
• 34:39
  Icelanders, right. Everybody kind of learned from
• 34:41
  somebody along the way, picked up some habits or picked up some
• 34:45
  things and made it their own. So you've got Modern Heathenry
• 34:49
  in North America will say today, looking at all of this stuff
• 34:53
  from all of these regions, trying to codify it into one
• 34:58
  way. And yeah, it really worked out.
• 35:02
  You know, I I really dislike attempts to do that because, you
• 35:07
  know, for me and I know for thousands of others, like one of
• 35:13
  the most beautiful aspects and one of the things that drew me
• 35:16
  to Paganism in general before I settled on Heathenry was the
• 35:20
  fact that it didn't have that rigid framework.
• 35:23
  It didn't have, you know, commandments.
• 35:25
  It didn't have all these lists of biblical laws and stuff to
• 35:30
  follow. Like, you know, and then you
• 35:33
  have people within our own community who are trying to
• 35:37
  codify things, who are trying to, you know, but maybe if we
• 35:40
  did it this way, don't you think it'd be easier?
• 35:43
  And I'm like, I think by trying to make something more uniform,
• 35:47
  we're going to extinguish some of the most beautiful aspects of
• 35:50
  Heathenry. Because what is beautiful is,
• 35:52
  you know, I could go do a bloat with you and then go do a bloat
• 35:58
  with somebody else's kindred and they could look astronomically
• 36:03
  different. And me being somebody who's gone
• 36:06
  to both of them, I could grab something from each of those, be
• 36:09
  like, wow, that is really beautiful.
• 36:11
  And that could be something that might inspire me to develop
• 36:13
  something in my practice. But it's these these nuances
• 36:18
  like it's a tapestry of many shades.
• 36:20
  So when I hear people want to try to codify it, really it
• 36:25
  feels to me like they're trying to grayscale it down, like
• 36:27
  they're trying to mass produce it.
• 36:29
  And I don't care how many people are heathen.
• 36:32
  What I care about is how many people stay heathen.
• 36:36
  Because we have a lot of people who come in who say I'm a
• 36:39
  heathen. But after like 2 years, like do
• 36:41
  you really hear for them again after that?
• 36:43
  Like they just kind of drop off the world is because.
• 36:45
  And I think it's a combination of that kind of gatekeeping
• 36:50
  tendency and the fact that it's difficult to get your questions
• 36:54
  answered without being browbeaten for it.
• 36:59
  Right. And I feel like there's a bit of
• 37:01
  a of a responsibility on folks that have some tenure the miles
• 37:05
  under the tires now right we there there's there's a there's
• 37:10
  a there's a degree of responsibility that that that
• 37:13
  those folks have or the newbies you know for the baby heathens.
• 37:20
  We we don't want to we don't want to see that that sort of
• 37:24
  mistakes being repeated. I think we want to see more
• 37:26
  people stay heathen like you say you know if you if this is where
• 37:29
  you found a calling to if this is what is spoken to you and you
• 37:34
  feel like this is where your spiritual home could be then we
• 37:37
  want you to stay and we want you to feel eager to learn more
• 37:43
  about what drew you here right. There's that romance phase that
• 37:48
  we've all gone through where we're super hardcore into you
• 37:52
  know, the myths or the this or the that, you know.
• 37:55
  And then we like we feel like we hit this bump like this this
• 37:58
  dead end or this bump in the road like well what next now,
• 38:00
  right. Well where are the people that
• 38:02
  are beside us to help us along, right.
• 38:07
  Or or help those people along and and and and give them
• 38:11
  directions to go and or or hey you know think of looking at
• 38:15
  this way. If you're if you're thinking
• 38:16
  about maybe wanting to you know explore the complexities of the
• 38:19
  soul. Well, you can look at this
• 38:21
  source or you can read this or you can watch this video or you
• 38:24
  can talk to this person. Right.
• 38:26
  And and kind of coach them and guide them in those directions.
• 38:30
  We're not like laying it out the answer for you because our
• 38:32
  answers like might be different than what they come up with.
• 38:34
  Right. What what's what's important to
• 38:36
  me what I find relevant to me and my Heathenry may not be what
• 38:40
  they find relevant. So I don't want you to.
• 38:42
  I don't want to like, teach somebody my Heathenry to do, you
• 38:46
  know, I don't want them to do my version of Heathen Ray.
• 38:48
  I wanted them to do their version of Heathen Ray.
• 38:50
  And here's where you can find some of your answers.
• 38:51
  And now develop your own hearth cult around it, you know?
• 38:56
  That's the good thing. You definitely hit on something
• 39:00
  that I absolutely wholeheartedly agree with this because when I
• 39:03
  do make my my heathen related Tik toks and stuff like it's
• 39:07
  always aimed at the beginner heathens.
• 39:12
  Like the the intro to all of those videos is.
• 39:15
  So you've decided to become a Norse Pagan.
• 39:18
  And then I get into whatever subject it is.
• 39:20
  Like I am going for the square one, square one Heathens.
• 39:24
  And I think it'd be so much better.
• 39:27
  More like. Not that there doesn't need to
• 39:29
  be content creators that make educational content for, you
• 39:34
  know, higher levels people with tenure, because we need that as
• 39:37
  well. There there's more, there's more
• 39:40
  desire for education than there are creators, which sounds
• 39:44
  baffling at times because there are so many people out there
• 39:48
  that are a content creator, but there's so few that are actually
• 39:51
  educators. And a lot of times what you'll
• 39:53
  find when you start looking for content creators and educators
• 39:57
  is people who are trying to teach their Heathenry.
• 39:59
  They're saying this is exactly how you do it step by step.
• 40:03
  Here is a cookbook to Heathenry. And that's just not how so much
• 40:08
  of it works. Like you can you can go find a
• 40:12
  book of lots and rituals online. You can buy it, You can open up
• 40:16
  and you can follow the steps as a brand new heathen.
• 40:21
  And most likely you're not gonna feel anything when you do that
• 40:26
  as a brand new heathen, because your energy is not in that.
• 40:31
  You're just following somebody else's instructions, and I love
• 40:36
  how you put that of We need to teach heathen read, not teach my
• 40:40
  heathen read. So I mean it's.
• 40:43
  Kind of you you you touched on something earlier that I keep
• 40:46
  thinking of in in the back of my head and and I feel like it's a
• 40:49
  good point to like dive into a bit of it more.
• 40:51
  You mentioned the word deconstruct earlier and you've I
• 40:55
  think brought this up in some of your short form and and and
• 40:58
  whatever videos maybe. I haven't seen a lot of the
• 41:01
  lives that you've done on 'cause I don't do like the Discord
• 41:03
  thing, but I think that's been a topic that you've kind of leaned
• 41:06
  into a lot. And so much of what I was gonna
• 41:10
  like just mention real quick about that is when I think, you
• 41:13
  know, deconstruct is one of the big things that I had to
• 41:16
  deconstruct was this idea. So one of the things that I had
• 41:21
  to deconstruct when I became Heathen and as I became, you
• 41:24
  know, familiar and started to learn about Heathenry was to
• 41:28
  remove this idea that I had to follow instructions from
• 41:31
  somebody or from something. Because if not, then I'm doing
• 41:35
  it wrong, right. I I came into this with this
• 41:39
  Christian worldview mindset of, well, where are my instructions?
• 41:42
  What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to do it?
• 41:44
  Just tell me what I'm supposed to do and I'll do it.
• 41:48
  And I had to deconstruct that worldview on things.
• 41:50
  So you want to you want to elaborate a bit on that or?
• 41:54
  So deconstruction in general is one of my favorite things to
• 41:59
  talk about because it is such a wide range.
• 42:03
  Like most of the time when somebody hears the word
• 42:06
  deconstruction, they're gonna think one of two things they're
• 42:08
  gonna think of like you know the current deconstructing from
• 42:11
  Christianity trend which can apply to new heathens.
• 42:15
  Absolutely, because there are definitely aspects because most
• 42:20
  of us came from a Christian family.
• 42:22
  And if we didn't come from a Christian family, well, then
• 42:25
  most of us were raised in a society based around
• 42:28
  judeo-christian. You know, principles.
• 42:31
  You know, like our that it's it's just like here in America,
• 42:36
  you know, even if you're not raised Christian, you're raised
• 42:39
  in a Judeo-christian society and everything.
• 42:41
  'S closed on Sundays. You know, the holidays.
• 42:44
  Just, yeah. Like, you know, aspects of our
• 42:48
  legal system, you know, like sex work, sex work is, you know, a
• 42:53
  crime and practically everywhere except I think like a place in
• 42:58
  Nevada. I think there might be one in
• 43:00
  the city. I don't know.
• 43:01
  But like, you know, just aspects like that of like, and then why
• 43:04
  is that illegal? Like, you know, if you're to
• 43:06
  like really push like, well, OK, why?
• 43:08
  Why though is that ultimately what you're going to come back
• 43:11
  to is you're going to come back to that that Judeo-christian
• 43:14
  fundamental, you know, the the the sanctity of marriage.
• 43:18
  It's the sin. It's this it's that what and
• 43:21
  what is all they have to do legally.
• 43:22
  So there's like this understanding of the world that
• 43:26
  we, when we're raised in it that we really gotta, you know, like
• 43:29
  stop and you know, tear down, which gets into the other thing
• 43:33
  that people would likely think about when they think of
• 43:35
  deconstruction. And that's, you know, men in
• 43:38
  yellow hats And then you know you got a tractor over there
• 43:40
  with a Wrecking Ball on it just knocking things down.
• 43:42
  But that's. Like demolition, Yeah.
• 43:46
  That's demolition. Like the the concept when I say
• 43:50
  deconstruction is, you know, it's it's the process of
• 43:54
  studying and observing, you know, patterns as they relate to
• 44:00
  like linguistic patterns and behavioral patterns and a
• 44:03
  process of breaking it down because we're gonna reuse a lot
• 44:07
  of the concepts and like everything we deconstruct.
• 44:10
  Like one of the first things that I always encourage people
• 44:14
  to deconstruct is the notion of what is a God and what is your
• 44:20
  relationship to that God right now at that beginner stage.
• 44:24
  Because a lot of people have this idea, you know, they carry
• 44:27
  this the the Christian mindset of, you know, omnipresence,
• 44:32
  omnipotence, Omni, benevolence, you know, and then you know the
• 44:36
  whole idea of, like, God has known you even when you were in
• 44:39
  the womb type thing. So everyone comes in and they're
• 44:41
  like, no, I was called here by Odin himself.
• 44:44
  He sent his Ravens to me. So I I know this is where I'm
• 44:50
  supposed to be. And I'm just like, I mean, it's
• 44:54
  entirely possible, but we really need to stop and, like, really
• 44:58
  kind of deconstruct 'cause otherwise you're setting up
• 45:01
  unfair and unhealthy expectations for the divine that
• 45:06
  just aren't gonna be met. The gods just don't come.
• 45:09
  When we call them. They don't, you know, they're
• 45:12
  they're not there for us to walk around and parade on a leash.
• 45:17
  So we really need to look at things like, you know, let's go
• 45:20
  with that example I gave, which is the most common one I've
• 45:23
  heard of, you know? Well, I I was called here by
• 45:27
  Odin. He sent his Ravens to me and all
• 45:30
  this, So, OK, well, in order for that to have happened, you would
• 45:36
  have had to have been singled out out of everybody because we
• 45:39
  know that Odin is not omnipresent.
• 45:43
  We know this for, you know, a few guys.
• 45:45
  One he has slut in here which can travel through the realms
• 45:48
  and it was, you know, one of his greatest gifts, you know, so
• 45:52
  before that they have to travel. We don't know how quick it takes
• 45:56
  them to travel, but we know that there is travel involved.
• 45:59
  So he's not everywhere at once. He's traveling from point A to
• 46:02
  point B and then when it comes to all knowing, he has human
• 46:07
  immune, he sends out into the world each day.
• 46:09
  They observe everything and then they come back and they report
• 46:12
  to him. Or when he sits on his throne,
• 46:13
  he's able to observe everything, but only when he's sitting on
• 46:16
  the throne. So there's conditions to what he
• 46:19
  knows and when he knows it. It's never as it's happening,
• 46:23
  it's always after the fact or it's limited by, you know, him
• 46:26
  sitting on that throne. So now we know that he is not
• 46:31
  you know the in the Christian sense all knowing.
• 46:35
  And then you know we look at Omni benevolence and I really
• 46:38
  don't think I need to explain to a whole lot of people.
• 46:41
  But sometimes I wouldn't as a Dick, like, you know it's it's
• 46:45
  said when he throws his spear he causes war and then he sometimes
• 46:50
  he favors one side of the war over the others.
• 46:55
  Those actions don't really communicate like hey, I love you
• 46:59
  all so and then then chucks his spear right into the middle of
• 47:02
  them like, you know and it might paint or paint a a bleak picture
• 47:08
  to somebody who is kind of new. But what what I'm trying to get
• 47:14
  to them is there's a lot of concepts that you're gonna carry
• 47:18
  with you that you need to stop and you need to kind of like
• 47:22
  breakdown and then reassess with, you know, what Heathenry
• 47:26
  really is. And what it is, is our gods are
• 47:30
  like the ultimate Gen. X parents.
• 47:32
  You know, they're we, we are the latchkey kids.
• 47:35
  You know, they they care for us at some level.
• 47:38
  They they have built, you know, this world for us.
• 47:40
  They have given us the ability to, you know, take care of each
• 47:45
  other, to take care of ourselves.
• 47:46
  They built, you know, a wall to separate, you know, us from the
• 47:50
  giants. And there's all these things
• 47:53
  that show things, but they don't know each and one of us
• 47:55
  individually. But that doesn't mean they
• 47:56
  can't. That's the point of Heathenry is
• 47:59
  we've decided this is what we're going to.
• 48:01
  This is what we believe. And now I want to get to know my
• 48:07
  gods. You know, the whole aspect of,
• 48:10
  you know, ritual is kind of saying, hey, you know, notice
• 48:12
  me, look at me. You know, it's trying to get
• 48:14
  their attention. It's trying to show them that,
• 48:16
  you know, you are grateful. You are thanking them, but
• 48:19
  they're they're not just automatically looking at us and
• 48:23
  a lot of times. Oh yeah, go on.
• 48:26
  No, sorry, I didn't mean I was almost like let's say like
• 48:28
  shooting a flare gun up in the sky, you know, and you hope they
• 48:33
  see it and may or may not it's. Yeah.
• 48:37
  And cause like a lot of times you'll see people and that they
• 48:42
  get really upset. Like when they're new and you
• 48:46
  know, and you try to explain to them that you know, just just by
• 48:51
  becoming a heathen, just by, you know, all of a sudden saying,
• 48:54
  hey, I'm a heathen, these are my gods.
• 48:56
  I believe in them. Does not mean automatically.
• 48:59
  The gods are turned around and invested in you.
• 49:02
  They know you intrinsically and they love you like.
• 49:05
  They they don't get some kind of cosmic notification that goes
• 49:08
  up. Thanks, Jesse.
• 49:09
  Yeah, it's. I mean it.
• 49:13
  It's not like they they have social media and they get a
• 49:15
  notification. So and so started following you
• 49:18
  like, oh, let me follow him back, yeah.
• 49:21
  Yeah, let me post an appreciation thing about thanks
• 49:24
  to my new followers. You know, like.
• 49:26
  And this, that, that particular one, is a topic that's almost
• 49:32
  discussed ad nauseam, like every four months on TikTok of whether
• 49:36
  or not the gods love you. Because there's a really
• 49:39
  inflammatory way to say this, and I'm sure you've heard it
• 49:42
  before, which is, you know, the gods don't give a shit about
• 49:44
  you. And then everybody's brain turns
• 49:48
  off as soon as those words are uttered.
• 49:51
  So somebody will say that their brains turn off, they stop
• 49:54
  listening. But like, the next sentence is
• 49:57
  like breaking it down, saying, like, what they mean to say is
• 50:00
  that the gods are not intrinsically invested in you.
• 50:03
  You know they're not. They're They're not just your
• 50:07
  best friends since birth, 'cause they don't know you that way,
• 50:09
  but that is one of those areas that really need to be
• 50:11
  deconstructed, 'cause otherwise you're gonna have trials in your
• 50:16
  lifetime, you're gonna have things not go your way and
• 50:19
  you're gonna be, you know, looking at the sky saying like,
• 50:22
  what the hell, I thought you guys loved me and.
• 50:24
  Right. Blaming the gods for your
• 50:26
  misfortune or whatever, Yeah. When in reality they have their
• 50:31
  own agency and I hope they have better things to do than to come
• 50:34
  visit me at work as I lose my mind on, you know, the 50
• 50:38
  millionth ticket asking for a password reset after a long
• 50:41
  weekend. Right.
• 50:45
  Yo, who would be the God of IT? Who would be the Norse God of
• 50:50
  IT, do you think? Like if we if we had to
• 50:53
  triangulate us a specific God of something?
• 50:56
  All right. I know this is just a wacky
• 50:57
  question, but like who would you, who would you put in like
• 51:02
  the director of IT for the in the North?
• 51:07
  There. There's so many options that are
• 51:09
  rolling through there, but I'm gonna have to go with Braggy.
• 51:12
  Braggy. You think?
• 51:13
  Yeah, OK. Because though though he is a a
• 51:18
  God of poetry. Really.
• 51:19
  Like when we take that into consideration of what it meant
• 51:23
  during, you know, that time period, you know of, like
• 51:28
  lorekeeper's law is highly educated, the man has runes
• 51:31
  carved on his tongue, and then you actually think about what a
• 51:34
  computer is. It's just nothing but an
• 51:36
  astronomical line of code that somebody, somewhere had to
• 51:39
  memorize. Yeah, so.
• 51:42
  And I know you've you've seen, you know, the collection of the
• 51:47
  sagas of the Icelanders like for somebody to memorize all that
• 51:51
  like. And get it written down.
• 51:54
  Yeah, yeah, that's a that's an interesting analogy.
• 51:57
  I was going to think I was thinking maybe more along the
• 51:59
  lines of like, I don't disagree. I'm not saying we're just making
• 52:02
  fun right now, but I was thinking also maybe like a four
• 52:05
  SETI, if everything is is it's it's this or that.
• 52:10
  There is really, there's no emotion involved.
• 52:12
  There's no feeling. There's no it just it is what it
• 52:15
  is. This is process.
• 52:16
  It's like the. See him being my authentication
• 52:19
  token. Yeah, yeah.
• 52:21
  It's like I think of that old 80s movie Short Circuit.
• 52:25
  You know, it doesn't get happy, it doesn't get sad, It just runs
• 52:28
  program. But now we are in an age of AI
• 52:33
  doing every damn thing, so Broggie does seem a bit more
• 52:38
  bidding, I think. Well, see if if we, if we're to
• 52:42
  try to say like, you know, who would be like just the God of
• 52:46
  technology? And I I was thinking like the
• 52:48
  God of IT. So, like the God with the IT
• 52:51
  headset on, he's trying to walk Odin through how to, you know,
• 52:54
  recover his Twitter account. He would need that too, wouldn't
• 52:58
  he? I wouldn't probably need it.
• 53:01
  Wouldn't be the one. Be like he.
• 53:03
  He has his cap locks on the whole time.
• 53:05
  Doesn't realize it. Well, it's out of my bad eye.
• 53:08
  Damn it. Give me a break here.
• 53:10
  See him with the capture on. You know, like capture pops up.
• 53:13
  Prove you're not a giant. What the Oh man, that's some
• 53:21
  good stuff, though the another deconstructing thing I think
• 53:24
  that comes up pretty regularly is kinship.
• 53:30
  Oh yes, there's. A.
• 53:33
  Lot of health kinship. When, Yeah, 'cause when people
• 53:36
  come into this thing right along with thinking of or wanting to
• 53:41
  think that, you know, I'm called by the gods, and and the gods
• 53:44
  notice me this and that comes also with that, I think this
• 53:48
  idea that now everybody is my brother and sister because we
• 53:52
  all believe in the same thing. Yes.
• 53:54
  And I I I've already had strong opinions on that one because I
• 53:58
  actually got into Heathenry when I was in a motorcycle club and
• 54:07
  so and when I was when I was in a the the club, I'd find myself
• 54:12
  sometimes in situations that made me nervous.
• 54:18
  I I was already in the Marine Corps, but I I now I'm doing
• 54:22
  this and these situations make me nervous in a different sort
• 54:25
  of way. So I actually use the Hava mall
• 54:29
  as like in other Nordic forms of philosophy and stuff to as like
• 54:33
  a way to like try to readjust my perspective.
• 54:37
  So that was like my introduction to it and one of the big things
• 54:41
  in the MC world is don't bro me. If you don't know me, you, you
• 54:45
  know you run into somebody else in a different club.
• 54:47
  You don't call them bro. You know, because that is not,
• 54:50
  that is not your club brother. Like your brothers are the
• 54:53
  people that are wearing the same patch as you.
• 54:55
  You know you've you've gone through hell to earn that patch
• 54:58
  to be there. You know those people have their
• 55:00
  back, have your back, they're tested, so on and so forth.
• 55:04
  So then when I get into Heathenry and I do see people
• 55:06
  and they're like, hey brother, hey sister, and I'm just like,
• 55:09
  yo. And like, it's like you don't
• 55:11
  even know me. Like sometimes I'm an asshole.
• 55:16
  I I might not be the kind of person that you would want to
• 55:20
  call brother. Like, you know the idea of
• 55:24
  kinship just in Kinship and Frith?
• 55:27
  That is one that gets wildly misconstrued, especially in an
• 55:31
  online context. Mm hmm.
• 55:36
  Do you think that do you think that your background with the
• 55:43
  military and then your involvement with an MC gave you
• 55:49
  an advantage with understanding the social constructs of how
• 55:54
  Heathenry really works? Talking about right, the the
• 55:58
  grassroots type stuff, right? Knowing what Frith is, that the
• 56:01
  the kinship bonds that we're talking about right now, do you
• 56:05
  think that that those experiences gave you an
• 56:07
  advantage, 'cause I see a lot of similarities between being
• 56:12
  battle tested or even just having a group of people that
• 56:16
  you've gone through basic and advanced training with going
• 56:21
  through those ordeals together. That's what gives you the right
• 56:25
  to call one another and know one another by those titles.
• 56:30
  You know what? Do you think?
• 56:32
  Give you an advantage. I I don't know if it's an
• 56:36
  advantage. It's it's definitely something
• 56:39
  that assisted with my understanding of things like,
• 56:44
  you know, one of the the big things when I first started
• 56:47
  engaging with online Heathenry is, you know, and I I quickly
• 56:52
  learned that everybody was a warrior, 'cause they had a
• 56:56
  warrior's mindset and I'm just like, hey, like it is not the
• 57:00
  mindset that actually makes you something.
• 57:03
  And you know, once again, that's another one of those early
• 57:05
  popular ideas. You know, they even did a
• 57:08
  comment on that. People really didn't like
• 57:11
  hearing. But you know, like if if the
• 57:14
  mindset actually made an individual, you know, how many
• 57:17
  billionaires we'd have floating around, like, you know, it's at
• 57:24
  what point are we gonna be honest and say no?
• 57:27
  Our actions determine that I I, you know, I wasn't a warrior
• 57:32
  because of my mindset. I was a warrior because of my
• 57:36
  actions, because I I went and willingly participated, you
• 57:42
  know, in the military during a time of war.
• 57:44
  Like I made that muscle occupation for eight years.
• 57:49
  And then when it came to MC culture, MC culture, I I would
• 57:52
  say MC culture actually did give me an advantage, but it gave me
• 57:56
  an advantage for interacting with heathens and kindreds in a
• 58:03
  face to face kind of setting It it, it's useless really when it
• 58:08
  comes to online because you're going to run into so many
• 58:11
  various personalities in the online spaces and nobody's going
• 58:16
  to care until you've, you know, established A rapport anyways.
• 58:21
  But there's there's actually a lot of heathens inside
• 58:25
  motorcycle clubs. And I I think it's because that
• 58:28
  they are so complimented. They are very tribal
• 58:31
  organizations. And Heathenry is a very tribal
• 58:35
  practice. Like you know how one kindred
• 58:39
  does something is not gonna be the same way that another
• 58:42
  kindred does something. And you know, there's each
• 58:45
  kindred might have their own body of governance, like some
• 58:49
  some have a Chieftain, some just have the goatees.
• 58:52
  You know, there's there's all these different ways that you
• 58:55
  know, people can do this and it it really gave me the insight I
• 59:02
  needed to be able to look at it and be like, OK, so there
• 59:06
  there's uniformity to the aspect of like here is the idea, here
• 59:10
  is the concept, this is what it all is.
• 59:14
  But how it all is depends greatly on where you look.
• 59:20
  So you can say a motorcycle club is, you know this, but how a
• 59:26
  motorcycle club operates also is gonna depend on where you look.
• 59:31
  So they had that that overlap, like that severe overlap that
• 59:36
  really assisted me in being able to be like, OK, so 'cause, you
• 59:39
  know, in Christianity you can go to, you know, any denomination
• 59:43
  on the same denomination and find the same beliefs.
• 59:45
  And that's that's just it. You might, you know, find you
• 59:47
  like one church better than the other.
• 59:49
  But this core structure is going to be the same and even outside
• 59:53
  of the core structure a lot of, a lot of everything is going to
• 59:56
  be the same between that. But in Heathenry, like if you up
• 1:00:00
  in to move places and you have to find a new Kindred, like
• 1:00:03
  yeah, it's it's going to take time because the level of
• 1:00:07
  differences and variances between, you know, Heathens and
• 1:00:10
  their practice is, you know, it can be quite severe sometimes.
• 1:00:16
  Yeah, Yeah, absolutely. Like we talked earlier about the
• 1:00:19
  the way things were different regionally.
• 1:00:22
  I I remember talking with with Robert on the last podcast about
• 1:00:26
  you know the the tribe of the Saxons you know all these
• 1:00:30
  different tribes but and then like the downfall of Heathenry
• 1:00:35
  back then and and kind of what brought it about was there not
• 1:00:40
  necessarily the the Saxons specifically but like the
• 1:00:42
  overall Heathen countries right. Whether it was you know some of
• 1:00:48
  the Danes that were left the Frisians they of course they
• 1:00:52
  turned to Christianity very early on.
• 1:00:54
  What I mean is, is like there was this imagine imagine if at
• 1:00:58
  the time the the various tribes formed this like federation
• 1:01:03
  right. Not that any.
• 1:01:04
  Not that they were all governed by one.
• 1:01:06
  Because the Saxons, they didn't like the kings as as like the
• 1:01:12
  the Divine Ordained Ruler. They didn't, they didn't go for
• 1:01:17
  that. They had their governing bodies.
• 1:01:21
  But imagine how strong they would have been if there was a
• 1:01:24
  federation of well, when war is happening and when we're at this
• 1:01:28
  conflict, we need to band together, put aside our
• 1:01:31
  differences. We don't care if we're, you
• 1:01:33
  know, I'll just use like modern terms.
• 1:01:36
  I don't care if you're, you know, with the truth or with,
• 1:01:38
  you know, tack or with whatever, right?
• 1:01:41
  Put aside those differences, Band together and really allow
• 1:01:46
  your commonalities to be the thing that bonds you together,
• 1:01:49
  that that keeps you strong. And then when the war is over,
• 1:01:52
  when when the conflict is done, go back to your separate ways.
• 1:01:55
  But in those times when everybody's needed, don't let
• 1:01:58
  your petty differences keep you from forming this sort of like
• 1:02:02
  Federation. And it seems like there's it's
• 1:02:06
  like we're it's it's a weird time right now like 'cause I
• 1:02:08
  see, I see so many people craving that kind of grassroots
• 1:02:14
  connection, wanting to be a part of something, wanting to go
• 1:02:19
  physically to be a part of something, right?
• 1:02:23
  Whether it's an event or or or a meet up or a moot or something.
• 1:02:27
  They want that, they want that, they want that interpersonal
• 1:02:32
  relationship, you know? And then I'd also see where
• 1:02:36
  they're like there there's, well, there's nothing in my
• 1:02:37
  area. Well, so then.
• 1:02:41
  Make it. Make something in your area
• 1:02:43
  right, like you think you're the only one that in, you know, BFE.
• 1:02:46
  Nowhere is thinking the way you're thinking.
• 1:02:48
  Probably not. You know, you'd probably be
• 1:02:51
  surprised at just how many other people are craving the thing
• 1:02:56
  you're craving and thinking the way you're thinking that.
• 1:02:59
  Well, there's nothing here, so I guess I'm just up a Creek.
• 1:03:02
  Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. And I mean, like you went
• 1:03:06
  through so many things there. So I'm I'm gonna try to like
• 1:03:08
  respond to a few. Yeah, sorry.
• 1:03:11
  Not letting my squirrel brain get the better of me, but like
• 1:03:14
  you mentioned, you know, like the the different tribes and all
• 1:03:20
  that and you know how it would be cool if they would have
• 1:03:22
  banded together like, well, I mean one they did during one
• 1:03:25
  period. I mean it was known as, like,
• 1:03:27
  you know, the Great Heathen War and Dublin was ruled over by
• 1:03:32
  Danish and the Norwegians, you know, until they were eventually
• 1:03:36
  evicted out. But they built, they built that
• 1:03:39
  city and you know, it's still a massive thriving state today.
• 1:03:43
  It was hugely, you know, successful.
• 1:03:47
  So like it can be done. But it also highlights the
• 1:03:50
  earlier point on false kinship. Like when we really look at the
• 1:03:55
  historical record for the Scandinavian areas before the
• 1:04:01
  Viking period, like when it comes to like the bindle period,
• 1:04:04
  most of the people they were fighting worry each other.
• 1:04:08
  They did a lot of trading outside there.
• 1:04:09
  There's this notion out there that, you know, it wasn't until
• 1:04:12
  the Viking area that they discovered these other lands.
• 1:04:14
  Now they knew they were there. They were trading in them.
• 1:04:16
  We found fines from the Bendel period with, you know, you know,
• 1:04:20
  Middle Eastern riding and, you know, items from freaking
• 1:04:23
  Africa, you know, and burial mounds from, you know, those
• 1:04:26
  periods. But most of their conflict was
• 1:04:29
  internal and it was internal squabbles.
• 1:04:31
  You know, basically they came over here and they came over
• 1:04:33
  here going back and forth, which leads into a conversation that I
• 1:04:37
  was having just the other day though that cause is, you know
• 1:04:42
  the Christian trolls, they always like to roll in when they
• 1:04:45
  see things like this, you know, on YouTube, on TikTok and all
• 1:04:48
  that. And somebody's like and that's
• 1:04:49
  why the Vikings got defeated, cause Christianity was superior
• 1:04:53
  and I'm like, look, you're like the Vikings basically defeated
• 1:04:57
  themselves. And I hate just blanketing using
• 1:05:00
  that term like it that was literally was I was trying to
• 1:05:03
  speak to the lowest common denominator for that particular
• 1:05:07
  comments section. But they really kind of did
• 1:05:09
  because you know, you have this practice of during this period
• 1:05:13
  of, you know, small kings over their swaths of land and they're
• 1:05:18
  kind of rating trading, combating each other all while,
• 1:05:21
  you know, going and conducting raids elsewhere.
• 1:05:24
  So you get a disposed king like Denmark had.
• 1:05:27
  This happened many times. So then they would go, you know,
• 1:05:31
  over to what, what was that guy's name like names, name flew
• 1:05:39
  out of my head. It'll come back to me as soon as
• 1:05:40
  we get off here. But he like went over basically
• 1:05:44
  to this king and he converted to Christianity and then got like
• 1:05:48
  2000 men and like, you know, some ships and he went back into
• 1:05:52
  Denmark, took back his keep, but he didn't have the troops or the
• 1:05:56
  battle prowess in order to, you know, hold it for there.
• 1:05:58
  So he's basically just locked inside of his castle.
• 1:06:01
  And we eventually see this pattern, you know, spread
• 1:06:04
  throughout of other people saying, like, hey, if I convert
• 1:06:09
  to Christianity, then I can get the support I need to go and
• 1:06:14
  take out these other neighboring kings within my own landmass
• 1:06:18
  until I am the king of all those.
• 1:06:20
  I mean, the Vikings defeated themselves their their desire to
• 1:06:24
  have a unified rulership over their lands.
• 1:06:28
  And it wasn't until after that process had already completed
• 1:06:32
  that we really started seeing the ugly things like, you know,
• 1:06:35
  the Baltic Crusades. Like by that point you had
• 1:06:38
  Scandinavians crusading against, you know, other pagans and
• 1:06:44
  Heathens. And a lot of times people will
• 1:06:47
  point at that and be like, well, you look at the Baltic Crusades,
• 1:06:50
  you're like and I'm like, well, yeah, that was Christians, but
• 1:06:52
  it was, it was also Scandinavians that did that.
• 1:06:55
  Like they they came from, you know, from Norway, from Sweden.
• 1:07:00
  Well, they came from Denmark. You know these these were not
• 1:07:02
  outside entities. These were people within those
• 1:07:06
  lands that committed these things.
• 1:07:08
  Doesn't excuse it, doesn't make it any better, but I mean, they
• 1:07:12
  really did kind of convert themselves at that point, be it
• 1:07:15
  for greed or power reasons. Yeah, there was a lot of
• 1:07:19
  political. Oh, yeah, stuff back then.
• 1:07:23
  You know what I mean? Like it, you know?
• 1:07:24
  Sure there were. I I do need to 'cause I I know
• 1:07:28
  that there's somebody who's gonna be listening to this
• 1:07:29
  that's just fuming. I I do need to put out there
• 1:07:32
  that the conversion of the Scandinavian lands does vary
• 1:07:36
  greatly depending on where and when you look at, because there
• 1:07:39
  are some areas that were just straight up violent, brutal and
• 1:07:43
  were atrocities. There's no other word for it.
• 1:07:45
  But then you got places like Denmark, like their number one
• 1:07:48
  reason was economic benefit and the security of their southern
• 1:07:52
  border. Because how?
• 1:07:54
  I mean, they are up against that massive landmass and they're
• 1:07:58
  like, hey, that's the Holy Roman Empire down there.
• 1:08:03
  Yeah, we we want to stay alive, right.
• 1:08:05
  We want to have. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:08:06
  Again, it was there was a lot more voluntary slash peaceful
• 1:08:12
  conversions to to to the Christian faith and there were
• 1:08:15
  violent ones not to take away from, like you say, the violent
• 1:08:19
  ones. I mean the the the Saxon wars,
• 1:08:21
  Charlemagne, that's that's an atrocity, you know what I mean?
• 1:08:25
  But. That was the name I was
• 1:08:27
  forgetting, Charlemagne. Charlemagne yeah, I was
• 1:08:29
  thinking, that's who you were talking about.
• 1:08:31
  I'm like, well, let me just wait and we'll get to that.
• 1:08:32
  But that's who I was thinking of, yeah.
• 1:08:35
  And then the further north you go, I mean Iceland, the
• 1:08:37
  Icelanders were were some of the last ones to to to get
• 1:08:40
  converted. They all, they all, everybody
• 1:08:42
  left like Norway. They all left, 'cause they
• 1:08:44
  didn't want to convert and. They held Iceland.
• 1:08:48
  But I mean, there's interesting things we can look at even after
• 1:08:51
  the Christianization of Iceland, you know, that we really need to
• 1:08:53
  consider. So like, Iceland was
• 1:08:56
  Christianized in like 1000. You know, I don't know if it was
• 1:08:59
  exactly on the year 1000, but they were Christianized in 1000.
• 1:09:02
  But yeah, and like the year 1100, we can see in the Gracas
• 1:09:05
  laws that they actually have laws against practicing, you
• 1:09:10
  know, paganism. So like, if nobody did it, there
• 1:09:14
  wouldn't have been a need for that law.
• 1:09:16
  You know, like we we don't, we we don't have laws arbitrarily.
• 1:09:21
  So a lot of people like, oh, yeah, but Iceland was
• 1:09:23
  Christianized by this point. So it was already defeated.
• 1:09:26
  It was like Heathenry was no longer a thing.
• 1:09:28
  And like then they wouldn't have had the law like it.
• 1:09:31
  It was a constant combative struggle.
• 1:09:34
  Snorri Sturgelson, you know, his father is believed by many to
• 1:09:39
  have actually been a heathen because the whole way that he
• 1:09:42
  ended up getting his education was because at one of the old
• 1:09:47
  things his father was discussing with the a local Chieftain some
• 1:09:55
  legal dispute and the chieftain's wife tried to stab
• 1:09:58
  out his eye in the records from that you can actually read those
• 1:10:03
  records on, you know, the Icelandic parliament website,
• 1:10:06
  but you know, it is, she was quoted as saying.
• 1:10:09
  I tried to stab at his eye to make him like his one eyed hero,
• 1:10:12
  Odin, you know, so a lot of people say that.
• 1:10:14
  But as a result, you know, part of the, the settlement of that
• 1:10:18
  was that he would adopt his son and send him to be educated.
• 1:10:22
  And then I'm getting into another tangent of things that
• 1:10:26
  people get commonly misconstrued.
• 1:10:31
  But yeah, so I mean, we count there's that idea of like, you
• 1:10:36
  know, to go against false kinship is 90% of the battles
• 1:10:39
  throughout the historical record for that area were actually
• 1:10:42
  infighting, you know, against each other.
• 1:10:45
  So even though their neighbors believed in the same gods they
• 1:10:49
  did, they were not calling every other person brother.
• 1:10:53
  Right. And it's funny, man.
• 1:10:54
  Not, not, not funny, like, ha ha.
• 1:10:56
  But it's, I mean, more ironic, you know, we, we, we see it
• 1:11:01
  happening today, Yeah. And I forgot where you went
• 1:11:06
  after that, but there's something else I really wanted
• 1:11:08
  to. With the infighting there was
• 1:11:10
  there was more. I don't know what happened to
• 1:11:12
  my. Yeah.
• 1:11:14
  Are you using Lion? I'm frozen.
• 1:11:16
  Let me try one thing real quick. Play with the beard.
• 1:11:24
  Beardy beard, Beard. Let me see here.
• 1:11:27
  Technical. Yeah.
• 1:11:34
  Let me just try one thing here real quick.
• 1:11:38
  All right, Technical issues. We're back.
• 1:11:42
  No, But I think what I was going with, like, just the the irony
• 1:11:45
  is, is what we see today, like mostly online, but the the
• 1:11:49
  infighting that's going on. No, you do it this way.
• 1:11:52
  No, you do it that way. Well, what this source says, No,
• 1:11:54
  what actually what you find here is this that.
• 1:11:56
  And yeah, it's like we're all bickering about Is it?
• 1:12:01
  Does it really even matter? No it doesn't.
• 1:12:04
  I remember are we being honorable?
• 1:12:07
  Are we being the type of heathen that we want to be known as and
• 1:12:11
  and have this and have our give frame to be strong and our might
• 1:12:14
  and our main to, you know, the the reputation, the whole thing?
• 1:12:17
  Like, that's what we really ought to be focusing on all
• 1:12:21
  pettiness. I brought up the the metaphor
• 1:12:24
  earlier of, you know, like treating like a a book of
• 1:12:26
  rituals, like a cookbook and just running with that.
• 1:12:30
  Like, you know, it it what we're fighting about 90% of the time
• 1:12:34
  really doesn't matter because like cooking like a recipe, you
• 1:12:37
  can follow the recipe and that's not wrong, but you can also make
• 1:12:41
  changes to that recipe and it's still not wrong, you know,
• 1:12:45
  flavor to taste. But where I was ultimately
• 1:12:49
  trying to go when responding to you as you talked, we were
• 1:12:52
  talking about how people have this desire to, you know, go do
• 1:12:56
  heathenship. But there's nobody around them
• 1:12:58
  doing it or at least nobody that they can find and you know,
• 1:13:04
  saying, well set it up, go do it yourself.
• 1:13:07
  And I just really want to add that on the Northwoods Kindred
• 1:13:12
  they have, they have a Discord server, they have a bunch of
• 1:13:17
  knowledgeable people in there. I'm in there quite frequently.
• 1:13:20
  But if you go to their website and then you go to go the
• 1:13:23
  Baudvar's web shop, you can actually go in there and you can
• 1:13:27
  find pamphlets on how to structure bloats and rituals and
• 1:13:32
  all this stuff and then stuff you can download for free.
• 1:13:35
  It's not telling you step by step what to do.
• 1:13:38
  It is saying, OK, so in the first process you need to, you
• 1:13:42
  know, form the circle. You need to open the circle like
• 1:13:45
  it's it's detailing that and it's giving you that framework.
• 1:13:49
  So if you want to create it, there are great resources like
• 1:13:53
  that out there that you can go and can get and then you can
• 1:13:57
  start kind of looking into, you know, other other how other
• 1:14:02
  people do their rituals, try to find things that speak to you
• 1:14:05
  and try to structure it based on that.
• 1:14:07
  But you don't have to go in completely blind and you also
• 1:14:10
  don't have to go in, you know, just straight up reading, you
• 1:14:13
  know, the first book you find online.
• 1:14:16
  That was where I was trying to get to.
• 1:14:18
  Yeah, no, it's good advice and I'm glad you mentioned the
• 1:14:20
  Northwoods Kindred cause I've been, I've been eagerly awaiting
• 1:14:24
  a response from them to come on the show here and I I subscribe
• 1:14:28
  to their YouTube channel. So a lot of what they share they
• 1:14:31
  got their own podcast too the NWK podcast and so.
• 1:14:35
  So for anybody watching listening this I'll I'll link
• 1:14:38
  their stuff in the description and in the show notes because
• 1:14:41
  they are definitely they're doing heathen rewrite for them
• 1:14:46
  and like you know Justin said their information that is shared
• 1:14:50
  publicly is a great framework to build your heathenry around.
• 1:14:54
  You don't have to like I love the cookbook analogy man like
• 1:14:59
  that is such a great you know you can follow the cookbook
• 1:15:02
  verbatim step by step. You're going to you're going to
• 1:15:04
  you're going to get the result out of it that you put into it
• 1:15:07
  exactly how you do it. But then you you you customize
• 1:15:12
  it. You you make it something, you
• 1:15:13
  add some of this. You take away some of that if
• 1:15:15
  you like it a little sweeter, you like it a little salty or
• 1:15:17
  whatever you know you you add add the flavor to it of yours
• 1:15:21
  and makes it unique to you, so it's all valid.
• 1:15:25
  That's a that's a great comparison in Ally.
• 1:15:28
  I love that. And then anyone who's ever tried
• 1:15:30
  to follow a a moderately complex recipe knows that sometimes you
• 1:15:34
  don't always get exactly what you thought you were getting.
• 1:15:37
  You just need to practice. You're still going to get a
• 1:15:40
  product. It might not be as good as, you
• 1:15:43
  know, the one they show inside the book.
• 1:15:45
  Well, that just that just means you need to practice more,
• 1:15:49
  right? That's the beautiful thing about
• 1:15:52
  Heathenry. It is a practice it's it's and
• 1:15:55
  you know I I like the term practice also I I I can't
• 1:15:58
  remember where I heard it but a guy that I used to watch you oh
• 1:16:03
  he he does like chili pepper he's he's in like hot stuff you
• 1:16:07
  know hot foods Chili Peppers and chili sauces and things like
• 1:16:10
  that. But he it was like it was a
• 1:16:14
  weird thing on on one of his videos but he said that the term
• 1:16:17
  practice. He says I'm I'm I like to say
• 1:16:19
  that I'm practicing etcetera. I'm practicing my religion let's
• 1:16:24
  say we'll just I'm practicing heathenry.
• 1:16:27
  Now you take that term and you and you compare it to like what
• 1:16:30
  law right. A lawyer is practicing law.
• 1:16:34
  A doctor practices medicine no matter how many years they've
• 1:16:40
  been doing it. A doctor of 35 years who's done
• 1:16:44
  thousands of brain surgeries is still practicing medicine.
• 1:16:49
  It is an ongoing learning process.
• 1:16:53
  It it's, you know, you never get it 100% right all the time.
• 1:16:57
  That's the beauty of heat. We're we're practicing old ways
• 1:17:01
  in modern times. We're practicing heathenry.
• 1:17:02
  This is a a work in progress. So if you don't quite get the
• 1:17:07
  result out of it that one time, well, guess what?
• 1:17:10
  That doesn't have to be the end of it.
• 1:17:12
  You do it again. You tweak something, you figure
• 1:17:14
  it out, you modify things along the way, and if you land on
• 1:17:18
  something that works, you get the results out of it that you
• 1:17:21
  need, Then you stick with that. You, you, you, you work with
• 1:17:24
  that, maybe add on to it, maybe embellish it a little bit.
• 1:17:27
  But once you've found that sweet spot, now you know how this
• 1:17:31
  works for me, 'cause look, the interesting thing about
• 1:17:34
  cookbooks and recipes, right? Is like if you're I I remember
• 1:17:37
  this from my parents and people in in the community that I grew
• 1:17:41
  up in. Anybody who makes bread will
• 1:17:43
  know this. There are certain things about
• 1:17:46
  making bread. Certain bread recipes will tell
• 1:17:50
  you right if you're in a certain elevation, you need to
• 1:17:53
  incorporate less or more of something or another because the
• 1:17:57
  altitude changes the outcome of the recipe.
• 1:18:01
  So somebody in a higher altitude doesn't need to use as much
• 1:18:04
  yeast or less yeast or something like that, right?
• 1:18:07
  Similarly with our, you know, way we do things, you know, if
• 1:18:13
  it does well for the Northwoods Kindred, well, then it's because
• 1:18:16
  it's the Northwoods Kindred way of doing things.
• 1:18:18
  And you might be able to take some of that information or
• 1:18:21
  their framework. But if you're in the southern,
• 1:18:23
  eastern tip of the United States, then you probably need
• 1:18:26
  to do things a little bit different 'cause you're not in
• 1:18:27
  the Pacific Northwest or the West Coast or whatever, you
• 1:18:31
  know, that sort of thing. It's interesting how it all
• 1:18:36
  compares. It's it's absolutely true.
• 1:18:41
  I mean cause like Northwoods and and if you guys listen to their
• 1:18:45
  podcast, you'll know that they're not shy about why they
• 1:18:49
  do what they do honest. Because they saw that there were
• 1:18:52
  a lot of people that wanted that information but they didn't have
• 1:18:58
  you know that example, that framework to follow.
• 1:19:00
  So they're just like, hey, this is how we do it.
• 1:19:05
  But you also kind of, I loved how you said, you know, after
• 1:19:09
  you find something that works, you know, maybe dress it up a
• 1:19:12
  little bit. And I feel that's where a lot of
• 1:19:14
  new heathens really kind of sadly get focused.
• 1:19:18
  They get really focused on how it's dressed up.
• 1:19:21
  What does it look like? You know, they, they want that,
• 1:19:25
  that pomp and circumstance. They want the the altar
• 1:19:28
  decorations, They want the the nice ritual hammers and all
• 1:19:31
  that. But I mean like everything you
• 1:19:33
  use in a ritual is it's 90% of it is symbolic, if not 100% of
• 1:19:39
  it. Like you, you can make a, you
• 1:19:41
  can dig a hole in the ground and use that to pour your offerings
• 1:19:45
  into. You know, you can cut a a switch
• 1:19:48
  from a branch and use that, you know, for, you know, the spread
• 1:19:51
  your incense smoke around or to you know, spray the water.
• 1:19:56
  Like there's so many things that it doesn't have to be dressed up
• 1:20:00
  and a lot of people, they get really focused on, you know.
• 1:20:02
  There's there's an entire market built around Paganism and
• 1:20:07
  specifically new Pagans. They say, hey, you're a new
• 1:20:10
  Pagan. Guess what, I have this whole
• 1:20:12
  altar kit, you know, that you can buy right now, right here,
• 1:20:15
  everything you need to set up an altar.
• 1:20:18
  But in reality, like, the altar is not an essential aspect to,
• 1:20:23
  you know, heathenry it it. It's something that you might
• 1:20:27
  even opt in to do. And I would caution any new
• 1:20:30
  heathens that may ever listen to this, you know, to to truly
• 1:20:34
  consider whether or not you're ready to have an altar because
• 1:20:37
  that is that that is a that is setting up an expectation.
• 1:20:44
  Because if you have a place for the gods, guess what, they're
• 1:20:48
  kind of they're expecting you to be a good host at that point.
• 1:20:51
  You know, you got to keep that space clean.
• 1:20:53
  You know, you should make make occasional offerings.
• 1:20:56
  You know there's a whole thing in The Hobbit Mall about you
• 1:20:58
  know better to offer nothing than offer too little.
• 1:21:01
  But if you've invited them into a space, be it in your home or
• 1:21:05
  else did like that is something that is reflecting on you at
• 1:21:11
  that. Point Yeah, I do want to be
• 1:21:14
  quick. We had a bit of a hiccup on
• 1:21:17
  Technically, so some of what you said may have not have made it
• 1:21:20
  as far as you think you did, as far as you think it did, As far
• 1:21:24
  as the the altar thing goes, you mind just briefly recapping what
• 1:21:28
  you just said for everybody, 'cause we had a bit of a
• 1:21:30
  technical glitch and I don't think it made it through in its
• 1:21:33
  entirety. So I was saying in case there's
• 1:21:37
  any new heathens that ever, you know, tune into this one because
• 1:21:41
  I mean the people are hungry for this information and you're
• 1:21:44
  thinking about setting up an altar.
• 1:21:45
  You might really want to really consider that because when you
• 1:21:50
  decide to put an altar up in your home, Hogar you you are
• 1:21:57
  setting up an expectation of yourself.
• 1:21:58
  Like one of the things that's talked about in the the whole
• 1:22:02
  first half of the Hava mall is being a host.
• 1:22:04
  And when you set up that space for the gods you are putting
• 1:22:07
  yourself in the position of being a host.
• 1:22:10
  So you need to maintain that space.
• 1:22:12
  You should make offerings. You should not neglect the
• 1:22:14
  space, because if you do, then I mean, it's reflecting on you as
• 1:22:19
  a bad host, and it's something you should really consider.
• 1:22:21
  And another thing to consider that you know later on in the
• 1:22:25
  Hapa Mall, you know, that says it's better to offer, you know
• 1:22:29
  too little than too much. You know the gods are not gonna
• 1:22:33
  be offended if you never set up an altar.
• 1:22:35
  The gods are never going to be offended if you don't leave them
• 1:22:39
  an offering. But if you invite them into an
• 1:22:41
  A, a space that is supposed to be for them, and you let that
• 1:22:44
  space fall in disrepair, you let your offering sit in that bowl
• 1:22:47
  until it bolts over, you know that's that is an action that
• 1:22:53
  reflects your level of involvement at that point.
• 1:22:57
  Yeah, yeah, 100%. Another thing I was going to
• 1:23:02
  mention also real quick as I was thinking, you talking about, you
• 1:23:05
  know, the trappings and all of the, you know, it could be
• 1:23:09
  ritual attire, could be items like you say a hammer, you know,
• 1:23:13
  this or that. All of the the external imagery,
• 1:23:16
  right, the aesthetics of things and what people think they need
• 1:23:20
  to have. It's almost like, again, like
• 1:23:24
  looking at the cookbook analogy, it's almost like they think that
• 1:23:28
  if the if the end result doesn't come out looking exactly like
• 1:23:31
  the picture in the book, then they fucked up, you did
• 1:23:34
  something wrong and it's no good.
• 1:23:36
  Oh no, I got to throw this. I got to start all over, right?
• 1:23:39
  No. It's like, it's like me coming
• 1:23:43
  home with a stand mixer and my lady's like, what is that?
• 1:23:46
  I'm like, I'm going to make bread and she's like, and you
• 1:23:47
  had to buy a stand mixer for that, like you need that dough
• 1:23:51
  yourself. Right.
• 1:23:54
  But like, look, right here beside me, I I like, I these
• 1:23:58
  are, you know, totems of the gods.
• 1:24:00
  Like this is Odin here. And like, I made these, I didn't
• 1:24:04
  buy these. I just picked up a branch from a
• 1:24:07
  ditch outside of one of my offices and took it home and
• 1:24:10
  carved it. And this, to me is worth more
• 1:24:13
  than the nicest Odin statue that I could, you know, buy off of
• 1:24:17
  Etsy. Like it's if those if that's
• 1:24:20
  something you want, you do not need to purchase it.
• 1:24:24
  Like it means more and you put a lot more energy and you're going
• 1:24:29
  to get a lot more back from it when you put your own time into
• 1:24:32
  it. Because when I made this,
• 1:24:34
  there's a point in time when this was no longer a piece of
• 1:24:39
  wood to me and I felt very like self-conscious.
• 1:24:42
  Like I'm in my kitchen getting ready to like go to bed for the
• 1:24:45
  night and this is just sitting on my counter like half
• 1:24:48
  completed. And I'm just like, I feel very
• 1:24:52
  awkward. I feel watched.
• 1:24:54
  And so I went and got some incense and I lit some incense
• 1:24:57
  and I put some water in a bowl and said at the end of it.
• 1:25:00
  And I was like, crap. And I actually went and bugged
• 1:25:03
  go to go to the bodvar on Discord.
• 1:25:05
  I'm like, hey, I've never made one of these before, 'cause that
• 1:25:10
  that was the first one I ever made.
• 1:25:11
  And I'm like, hey, is at what point should I stop treating
• 1:25:17
  this like a stick and start treating it like, you know, a
• 1:25:21
  representation of Odin. And he's like, at whatever point
• 1:25:26
  you feel it. And I'm like, oh, OK, so it's
• 1:25:29
  nice. So now, yeah.
• 1:25:30
  So basically now is what you're saying, right?
• 1:25:32
  Yeah. And that's a lot of it too, you
• 1:25:34
  know, And I love that response. You know, a lot of us go to
• 1:25:38
  people we know or trust to get an answer out of something.
• 1:25:43
  And a lot of times the answer is within us and the people that
• 1:25:46
  are the real deal recognize that.
• 1:25:50
  And so they're not going to give you an answer of something
• 1:25:54
  external the of your of yourself.
• 1:25:56
  They're going to help you find the answer within yourself.
• 1:25:59
  They're going to be that sort of guide for you to to locate and
• 1:26:05
  and and find that answer within. And finding those people that
• 1:26:10
  you can ask those questions to that That is something that I
• 1:26:15
  cannot understate the importance of enough.
• 1:26:18
  It's just, you know, finding somebody who's more experienced
• 1:26:21
  of you that you can go to. Like me, I don't.
• 1:26:24
  I make a habit when I have questions like that, like I
• 1:26:26
  didn't just ask Gobi Bodvar. I have three people that I go to
• 1:26:31
  and I ask and then I look at all three responses and then I
• 1:26:35
  either see that they have a lot in common or I see that I still
• 1:26:39
  have to make a level of discern. And now so far every time I've
• 1:26:43
  asked a question of, you know, these three people, they've all
• 1:26:46
  basically been on the same page, which you know, really just
• 1:26:50
  feels good to me. But I mean if I didn't have
• 1:26:54
  those people to to pick the minds up.
• 1:26:57
  Because even though the answers are inside of my head, for
• 1:27:01
  myself sometimes, like sometimes I just need that extra comfort
• 1:27:06
  of hearing somebody else say it. Yeah, well, fire Kindles fire.
• 1:27:11
  You know what I mean? There's something about that in
• 1:27:14
  the hall of them all too, you know?
• 1:27:17
  And you know what? Word leads to word and deed
• 1:27:20
  leads to deed. And and and we find this solace
• 1:27:24
  discomfort, this inspiration through interaction with people,
• 1:27:31
  with the right people, you know? Yeah, and you know, you can
• 1:27:34
  learn stuff from everybody. I mean, you can learn things on
• 1:27:36
  how not to be from the wrong people.
• 1:27:39
  I mean that's a learn, that's that's a learning opportunity
• 1:27:41
  too, if we're, if we're being honest.
• 1:27:44
  And and there's many words our ancestors had on ill advice.
• 1:27:48
  Yeah, yeah. And there's plenty of that going
• 1:27:50
  around. So it's like, you know, you
• 1:27:53
  don't have to do everything that everybody tells you to do.
• 1:27:56
  There's again, there's a degree of discernment that's required
• 1:27:59
  and you know it's all a learning process.
• 1:28:02
  But don't be afraid to fuck a cake up every now and then and
• 1:28:06
  and if your recipe doesn't turn out the way you think it should,
• 1:28:08
  because it's not looking like the textbook picture definition
• 1:28:13
  of it. It ain't the end of the world
• 1:28:15
  and it's OK, Try again. Keep at it, you know modify
• 1:28:20
  things as you will. And and also don't be afraid to
• 1:28:22
  put the work in right. I wonder how how many people
• 1:28:26
  expect that their first experience, their first thing,
• 1:28:29
  has to look like the, the, the, the, the most extravagant thing,
• 1:28:34
  right? It's like they want that they,
• 1:28:37
  they they set that expectation, They want that they're not going
• 1:28:39
  to settle for this seemingly less than, you know, perfect
• 1:28:45
  result. It's fine.
• 1:28:47
  At least you put the work in. At least you did something and
• 1:28:51
  be proud of that, right? Be proud of you, actually,
• 1:28:54
  having gone and done the deed, put the work in, learn the
• 1:28:58
  process. I mean, I'm just for an example,
• 1:29:01
  right? People on on Patreon and stuff
• 1:29:03
  that see the video of your carving and then they go and
• 1:29:06
  they try to carve something and it doesn't turn out like yours.
• 1:29:09
  How many people would be like, oh man, I suck at this, Well,
• 1:29:12
  no, you're just not Justin, right?
• 1:29:14
  Like there's plenty of people out there that have their own
• 1:29:17
  style, their own way. Well, if you if you like that
• 1:29:19
  and you want to emulate that, or you're inspired to do that, make
• 1:29:23
  it yours, do it. I I've been doing artsy stuff my
• 1:29:29
  my whole life, you know, in general.
• 1:29:31
  So like no matter what the medium is, I I do have a bit of
• 1:29:36
  an advantage, you know, when it comes to that.
• 1:29:41
  But I mean, absolutely. And like, you know, when you
• 1:29:44
  really start kind of breaking it down into like, you know, an
• 1:29:48
  animistic or a metaphysical, you know, process, I mean, what
• 1:29:52
  we're doing when we're venerating the land spirits or
• 1:29:55
  ancestors or the gods, you know, 'cause I feel like a lot of
• 1:29:59
  people forget that, you know, there's much more to Heathenry
• 1:30:02
  than just the gods, is where we are expending energy.
• 1:30:08
  You know, there's this whole idea of reciprocity within
• 1:30:11
  Heathenry, you know, a gift for a gift.
• 1:30:13
  We're giving energy. And if we do that, then we get
• 1:30:18
  energy back. You know, it might not always be
• 1:30:21
  in the way that we've expected it.
• 1:30:22
  We might not present them the most beautiful cake, but we will
• 1:30:26
  get something in return, even if that is, you know, the
• 1:30:30
  experience and the motivation to try again.
• 1:30:33
  You know, like you know it, it can manifest in so many
• 1:30:36
  different ways. But, you know, we already know
• 1:30:38
  through science that energy is not created or destroyed.
• 1:30:42
  So what we put out there is out there.
• 1:30:45
  So, you know, if you're going to put it out there, you might as
• 1:30:48
  well sign your name to it and, you know, stand by it.
• 1:30:51
  Yeah, commit, you know, and and and be accountable, you know,
• 1:30:57
  Don't be afraid of it. Be accountable of it, you know.
• 1:31:01
  So dude, this has been great. I've.
• 1:31:03
  I've had a really good time rambling on and I feel like we
• 1:31:07
  got a good roll of the dice this time.
• 1:31:09
  You know we had a sort of rough framework of of where the
• 1:31:12
  conversations would be going. But I I I couldn't have planned
• 1:31:15
  a better way for the conversations to the kind of ebb
• 1:31:19
  and flow on this which is I mean it tracks it's it's typical of
• 1:31:24
  of this show at least for stuff to no matter how many times I
• 1:31:26
  get on a on an episode with somebody whether they're a new
• 1:31:29
  guest or a return guest I'm always just sitting here going
• 1:31:33
  man this was so much fun. I learned a lot things just
• 1:31:36
  really kind of flowed, you know, despite the little technical
• 1:31:39
  hiccups along the way that whenever they come, we make the
• 1:31:43
  most. And there you go, right?
• 1:31:44
  There's another example of, oh, I could have been like, shit,
• 1:31:47
  fuck damn the the, you know, Internet went out or the camera
• 1:31:50
  died or this that this is a terrible episode.
• 1:31:52
  I'm scratching the whole thing. I'm done.
• 1:31:55
  No, man, just just roll with it. Just go with it, right?
• 1:31:59
  Yeah. And and especially, you know for
• 1:32:02
  things like this and which by the way, thank you for having me
• 1:32:05
  on. I only, I I get a lot out of
• 1:32:09
  things like this and like doing the lives with you know, other
• 1:32:14
  heathens and stuff. Because I find that there's just
• 1:32:17
  so much more benefit when there's this exchange and flow
• 1:32:21
  of ideas. Because otherwise 90% of what I
• 1:32:27
  feel and what I believe just sits inside my head and it's it,
• 1:32:31
  it's fine inside my head, but it's not doing anything else.
• 1:32:34
  But when I exchange ideas with other heathens from other places
• 1:32:39
  like my my understanding and my knowledge, it expands, it grows
• 1:32:44
  and it enables me to be a better heathen.
• 1:32:46
  So thank you for that. Yeah.
• 1:32:48
  Man, absolutely. Speaking of as we kind of go
• 1:32:51
  towards towards the towards closing this episode out, you
• 1:32:54
  talk about the lives that you do are they on what, what, what
• 1:32:59
  platform do you go live on? I do them on on TikTok.
• 1:33:05
  That's generally where everyone is.
• 1:33:09
  TikTok is, you know it, it remains up and around, which you
• 1:33:14
  know is a huge question. But that seems to be where most
• 1:33:17
  of the the newer Heathens have gone to.
• 1:33:23
  So that's where a lot of the educators have also went to and
• 1:33:29
  I generally try to hold one of those every two weeks.
• 1:33:32
  I haven't done one in about a month right now.
• 1:33:35
  We're opening a bunch of new offices.
• 1:33:38
  So I would like to try to get one scheduled and probably you
• 1:33:41
  know in the next week or two, but those are live panel
• 1:33:46
  discussions. So I come with a pre set of
• 1:33:48
  topics and we have a guest list and they they usually start at
• 1:33:53
  like 8:30 central time and we'll talk some anywhere between like
• 1:33:58
  2 to 3 1/2 hours on these topics and everybody you know gets a
• 1:34:03
  chance to say their piece on it. Nobody's interrupting each
• 1:34:06
  other. Then it comes back around, I
• 1:34:08
  phrase a question based off of what they've discussed, they
• 1:34:11
  talk about that. Then we move on to the next
• 1:34:13
  subject and at the end of it, we open up it for questions and
• 1:34:19
  answers. So the people who are watching
• 1:34:21
  live, if they have enough followers to be able to access
• 1:34:25
  the live feature, they can come up and, you know, speak with the
• 1:34:28
  panelists directly or they can type a question in and we can
• 1:34:32
  answer it from there. But it is all tailored basically
• 1:34:36
  to heathens of all levels. Like it will start from a
• 1:34:39
  beginner topic and like end on like a really deep you know
• 1:34:44
  topic for you know the more experienced practitioners.
• 1:34:48
  That's really cool. So I'm sure if I don't have it
• 1:34:52
  right now, then I'll have it before this air.
• 1:34:55
  So for the folks that are watching and listening, you know
• 1:34:59
  Ethan nerds information, all of his socials, the TikTok,
• 1:35:01
  everything, Discord, blah blah blah.
• 1:35:03
  All of that will be in the description for the video folks
• 1:35:08
  and in the show notes for the audio listeners.
• 1:35:11
  So you guys, on whatever platform you're catching this
• 1:35:14
  can find he the nerd here, Justin on his various platforms
• 1:35:19
  and what he does in the capacity that he does it, which sounds
• 1:35:22
  like a great time. Sounds like you're doing really
• 1:35:23
  awesome stuff, especially with some of the people that you
• 1:35:26
  mentioned before having part of it, like Northwoods, Kindred and
• 1:35:30
  others. That is is definitely.
• 1:35:34
  But as I look at it my security blanket, it makes it me feel a
• 1:35:38
  lot more comfortable because I know I'm surrounded by people
• 1:35:43
  are way more knowledgeable than me.
• 1:35:45
  So when we get the inevitable troll that comes in or the
• 1:35:47
  person who's just being belligerent and not being
• 1:35:49
  teachable, I'm just I can comfortably like, hey, look in
• 1:35:54
  this live. You have over 70 years worth of
• 1:35:57
  practicing experience in these boxes.
• 1:36:00
  I think we know what we're talking about.
• 1:36:02
  Yeah, yeah. Settle down, girl.
• 1:36:06
  Settle down, boy. Well, Justin, thanks again for
• 1:36:10
  coming on here. You hang out just a minute.
• 1:36:13
  When I wrap this up, I'll just say a few parting words with you
• 1:36:17
  offline. But anything else that you'd
• 1:36:20
  like to say before to the listeners and the viewers before
• 1:36:25
  we wrap it up? Let's see.
• 1:36:30
  Go do heathen shit. Remain teachable.
• 1:36:35
  And I mean, it's not our mindset, it's our actions.
• 1:36:42
  So you're not a heathen because you think like when you're a
• 1:36:45
  heathen because you do heathen things.
• 1:36:47
  So just get out there and do it, and then work on refining it
• 1:36:51
  after the fact. I know you couldn't hear it, but
• 1:36:55
  I'm sitting here while we're recording and there's a storm
• 1:36:58
  that's been going around the area and when you said, you
• 1:37:01
  know, go out and do it, like when you said you know, it's not
• 1:37:04
  your mindset, it's your deeds. A big roll of Thunder just
• 1:37:09
  echoed overhead. So the storms do what they do
• 1:37:14
  and timing is what it is. Was that a sign from the Gods
• 1:37:18
  moo? Maybe, maybe not.
• 1:37:20
  But interesting timing nonetheless.
• 1:37:22
  So I just wanted to put that out there I.
• 1:37:26
  Find it very interesting. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:37:28
  You know, I mean, I'm not the one to just say every time I see
• 1:37:31
  a this or that that it's a sign from the gods.
• 1:37:33
  But given the topics of conversation and the presence of
• 1:37:38
  of the divine tonight, then I'd like to think that we have been
• 1:37:41
  noticed. So thank you for being a part of
• 1:37:44
  this. Thank you for having.
• 1:37:47
  Me. All right, Justin, I'll talk
• 1:37:48
  with you a bit offline. So don't go anywhere.
• 1:37:50
  For everybody else here that's listen and watch this episode.
• 1:37:52
  Thank you so much for continuing to support Midgard Musings, the
• 1:37:56
  Random Heathen Ramblings podcast.
• 1:37:57
  Don't forget to check the description area below where the
• 1:38:00
  show notes for the link tree link that gives you all the ways
• 1:38:02
  that you can support what I do here.
• 1:38:05
  And also don't forget that from now until the end of April, I'm
• 1:38:09
  running a sale on Sacred Trail Society merchandise, all of the
• 1:38:13
  profits of which goes to The Nature Conservancy in
• 1:38:18
  observation of Earth Day this year.
• 1:38:19
  So check all that stuff out, and check out Justin's stuff, The
• 1:38:22
  Heathen Nerd on all the platforms that he is available
• 1:38:25
  on. So thank you all so much.
• 1:38:27
  Thank you to my patrons for making these video episodes
• 1:38:29
  possible. Until we see and talk to each
• 1:38:32
  other again. May the gods continue to notice
• 1:38:34
  you and may your ancestors smile upon you.
• 1:38:37
  We'll see you in the next one.