Latest / Random Heathen Ramblings / Random Heathen Ramblings: S3, EP35 - Pagans On Social Media (feat. The Bearded Viking)

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Random Heathen Ramblings: S3, EP35 - Pagans On Social Media (feat. The Bearded Viking) · Random Heathen Ramblings

• 0:02
  Ln. Hello everyone.
• 0:04
  Welcome to the random Heathen ramblings podcast, a midgard
• 0:08
  musings production. Join me, Jesse your host as we
• 0:13
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  Thank you all once again for listening to the random Heathen
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  ramblings podcast, enjoy. Hey LT walk.
• 1:34
  Tell everybody. Halen welcome back indeed.
• 1:38
  Getting close to the end of season 3 here on the random even
• 1:42
  ramblings podcast brought to you by me midgard musings, of
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  and description of every podcast.
• 2:55
  So thank you Rob. And thank you to all my
• 2:58
  supporters special. Thank you also to my patrons.
• 3:01
  I know I've been a bit remiss recently and getting my patrons,
• 3:05
  shout it out. There's not a lot right now but
• 3:07
  I am Hoping to bring back the not hoping to, I am bringing
• 3:11
  back the monthly ruin readings, but I'm doing it in a little bit
• 3:14
  of a different way. So I know I have Janet King and
• 3:19
  one other I'm blanking on the name right now but to my to
• 3:22
  patrons on patreon that get the monthly room draws every month,
• 3:28
  you're going to be getting a little bit of a different format
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  going forward. So instead of the email that I
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  send you with, you know, your monthly ruined, right?
• 3:38
  Are going to be getting something a little bit
• 3:39
  different. It still going to be in the form
• 3:40
  of an email but it's going to be a little bit different.
• 3:42
  So I'm just still working out the scheduling of all that it is
• 3:45
  the beginning of October, which means you will be receiving your
• 3:50
  podcast or not, sorry your your runes Arun readings here soon
• 3:56
  because I'm going to try to do that to beginning of each month
• 3:57
  for the month ahead. So there's a little bit of an
• 4:00
  update for you on that. As far as everything else goes,
• 4:04
  yes, we are in the month of October, it is finally feeling
• 4:06
  like such The temperatures have been very pleasant, very mild,
• 4:10
  very cool in the evenings. Even cool during the day and I'm
• 4:13
  loving it. It's been long overdue Winter
• 4:18
  nights is coming up for us here in Middle Tennessee.
• 4:21
  Where at least our tribe. The 30 folk very small right
• 4:26
  now, but we are going to be doing our inner tribal
• 4:29
  celebrations of winter nights coming up this coming weekend.
• 4:32
  So in just a couple of days time, we will start that
• 4:35
  celebration. It is going to be just a
• 4:37
  one-night thing with the try. But traditionally speaking,
• 4:41
  winter nights was, I think observed as a three day or three
• 4:43
  night, long celebration, much like The rest of the
• 4:48
  historically accurate traditional holy Tides, you
• 4:51
  know, he had Buell sigurd, lote, the victory bloat and then
• 4:55
  winter nights. So we have winter nights coming
• 4:57
  up this weekend, leading into the full moon cycle.
• 5:01
  And then the weekend after that will be camping out with the
• 5:06
  folks at Raven Moon hearth for their Shadow mood event.
• 5:10
  So lots of fun in exciting Pagan events coming up here this
• 5:15
  month. But today's podcast is going to
• 5:18
  be. I'm going to be joined here
• 5:19
  shortly this time for real, with a new guest, who I came into
• 5:26
  knowledge of through, actually my wife and although, my wife
• 5:29
  isn't Norse Pagan. She does entertain, and explore
• 5:36
  a bit more of like a, I don't know, maybe eclectic which,
• 5:38
  which he type stuff, is the right?
• 5:41
  It's not real label to what she kind of does.
• 5:43
  It's all, you know, very just free form and how whatever feels
• 5:47
  right for which is, which is important.
• 5:49
  But she certainly supports what I do here.
• 5:51
  And she's she's on Tick-Tock and she was.
• 5:57
  So I guess just scrolling through the feeds of tick-tock.
• 6:00
  I don't obviously have one. So, I don't know how the
• 6:03
  platform usually works, but we're going to have a guest on
• 6:06
  today who is a pagan, like a psycho.
• 6:10
  UND ich stalkers. Yeah, you know.
• 6:11
  So this guy has quite a large audience or a large following.
• 6:18
  He is known on the platform as the bearded Viking or the gets
• 6:23
  bearded. Viking 7, his social media.
• 6:26
  His Reach, I think includes also Instagram and YouTube so he will
• 6:32
  be jumping on to the podcast today to talk about kind of like
• 6:36
  the presence of pagans on social media and whatever else we can
• 6:40
  ramble on about for a bit. So if you want to find him on
• 6:46
  his various platforms, just check out the description and
• 6:49
  check out the show notes. If you're just listening for the
• 6:52
  Viking Tick, Tock, Instagram and YouTube.
• 6:57
  So Without further Ado, let's welcome in his name is David
• 7:00
  David Christensen or also known as bearded Viking.
• 7:08
  And ladies and gentlemen, back on the random even ramblas
• 7:11
  podcast. Thank you for listening.
• 7:12
  Thank you for tuning in. I've got with me the bearded
• 7:16
  Viking David Christensen. How are you?
• 7:20
  Alright, good come come. Come I'm doing well, I'm excited
• 7:23
  to have you on here. We were talking a little bit off
• 7:25
  line about some stuff that I think will have a really good
• 7:29
  content laid out for for the listeners and for the viewers
• 7:31
  today. But for for those that Maybe
• 7:37
  don't recognize your face. I mean, you have a pretty large
• 7:40
  audience on on Tick, Tock. We were talking about earlier,
• 7:44
  but go ahead and just introduce yourself to everybody listening
• 7:47
  and watching please. So, hello, everybody.
• 7:50
  My name is David Christiansen. I go by bearded Viking 7 on
• 7:53
  Tick-Tock or the bearded Viking on Instagram, but I'm in online
• 7:58
  content, creator. That's my full time and I teach
• 8:01
  about my Pagan journey. I do some funny Viking Cong.
• 8:06
  Contents. And I also do my best to be as
• 8:08
  interactive with the Norse or Pagan or Viking or whatever you
• 8:12
  want to call it Community. Just to help spread positivity
• 8:16
  love and create drama. Free environments for everybody.
• 8:19
  That's my big goal and that's kind of what I do.
• 8:21
  So and on on the respective platforms, you've and I don't I
• 8:29
  was telling everybody what. Before you got on here, I got
• 8:31
  have like an intro and everybody listened and heard that I don't
• 8:33
  use Tick-Tock my wife does and that's actually how we came.
• 8:36
  Into this whole thing happening is she was scrolling through the
• 8:40
  feeds came across. I don't know if it was like a
• 8:42
  live for something that you were doing there.
• 8:44
  Yeah. And reached out and was like,
• 8:46
  Hey you know, my husband does this podcast, would you ever be
• 8:48
  interested in and then now and lo and behold here we are.
• 8:51
  Yeah, it's been pretty quick actually.
• 8:53
  Yeah. Relatively quickly you know and
• 8:56
  I appreciate the interest and the response but your your
• 9:01
  audience on Tick-Tock. I mean I think we'll last I
• 9:04
  checked. You were in the thousands or
• 9:05
  hundreds Tens of thousands of what's your following like on
• 9:08
  Tick-Tock and right now right now I'm a little over six
• 9:12
  hundred thousand sheesh. Yeah I feel like it should be
• 9:16
  the other way around. I feel like I should be on your
• 9:18
  podcast because I'm over here, like I've got, you know, about
• 9:22
  four and a half K on YouTube. I've got I don't know, weekly
• 9:26
  regular listeners on all my podcast platforms and, you know,
• 9:29
  we're talking like may be in the hundreds but that's consistent,
• 9:32
  you know, and it's such a funny thing now with like, Being on
• 9:37
  social media and using the platforms that we have available
• 9:40
  to us to kind of work for us, you know, like and putting them
• 9:43
  to work you get really. I don't know how you are, but I
• 9:45
  get really deep in the numbers in the analytics is that
• 9:48
  something that you get tied up in too much.
• 9:51
  So so, so when I first grew up until I hit about 200,000, I was
• 9:56
  really focused on analytics and numbers now, it's, it's kind of
• 10:02
  very consistent now. It's where it kind of runs
• 10:03
  itself. So I don't look at those as Much
• 10:06
  as I used to, I'm more focused on the quality like the quality
• 10:10
  of the content and putting out but back then it used to be
• 10:12
  about how can I get more views and how can more people?
• 10:15
  See I'm putting out there but now it's one posted a back then
• 10:21
  it was for posts today you know. So it's kind of changed
• 10:25
  dramatically over time but I definitely harped on the
• 10:29
  analytics before for about a year.
• 10:32
  Yeah I want to get back to that here in a little while because
• 10:36
  As you know, you talked about the the number that, you know,
• 10:41
  the actual quantity of content whereas now it's more of a
• 10:44
  quality of content. But before we get into all that,
• 10:47
  I do want to come back to it. I what I do want to maybe pick
• 10:52
  your brain about a little bit is what, what brought you to social
• 10:57
  media to like with your paganism?
• 10:59
  Because I'm assuming and you if you're willing to expound a
• 11:03
  little bit on it, you were a pagan before you were a content.
• 11:06
  Creator at least in this vein, as a pagan content creator,
• 11:09
  right? Ashley, very, funny is my page.
• 11:14
  My Tick Tock started when my pig and journey started.
• 11:18
  So me personally, and again, all love to them, that I was
• 11:22
  Christian right before I started my my main Tick Tock that I am
• 11:25
  now, but I had read the book, The untethered Soul by Michael
• 11:29
  Singer and with that a Little Help from, you know, other
• 11:33
  things, I kind of just One day just clicked.
• 11:38
  I hope my whole mind changed and I started looking at the world
• 11:41
  differently and I started. And then I looked into my
• 11:43
  Heritage, my dad always told us. We were heavily Norwegian, my
• 11:47
  grandparents built boats and like away and I had no idea my
• 11:52
  dad. Like yeah, we're heavily
• 11:53
  Norwegian so I look deeper into it.
• 11:55
  I was like wow this is my belief system.
• 11:57
  This is what I this is how I feel, I feel morally like this
• 12:01
  is the path. I'm guided towards just started
• 12:04
  diving deeper into it and if You look through my Tick-Tock way
• 12:07
  back. You'll have to is thousands of
• 12:08
  videos but if you go back you can literally see from the
• 12:12
  beginning of what I was learning how to say the word no Mia.
• 12:16
  Literally from there, you know, it's pretty Wow, so yeah, if we
• 12:22
  were to put a timeline on things, how long have you been
• 12:25
  Pagan? Almost two years now.
• 12:29
  Yeah. So you've been you've been
• 12:30
  putting a lot of work into building and if this is not a
• 12:34
  slight bit like building the brand by or building a brand,
• 12:37
  you know, that's that's that's the right term.
• 12:40
  But yeah. Yeah.
• 12:42
  I know what you mean by that? Yeah.
• 12:43
  Because I've been the same way, right?
• 12:44
  Like I was actually, I actually was Pagan for years before I I
• 12:49
  came up with the idea of Putting it out on social media, you
• 12:54
  know, like because again, same with you.
• 12:57
  And I think the same with a lot of us.
• 12:59
  A lot of folks that that follow what I do and probably follow
• 13:01
  what you do as well. The, the background of
• 13:04
  Christianity is rampant, right? Like that's a lot of what
• 13:08
  especially if I you a native to the South?
• 13:10
  I think you're in, you know, your your your.
• 13:14
  But I was born and raised in New Jersey.
• 13:16
  So I'm East Coast. I'm from New York, man.
• 13:19
  Oh, there you go. So so yeah.
• 13:21
  We're Plants. Right?
• 13:23
  Like we're you know, we're in a strange strangers in a new land
• 13:27
  or whatever, but I've been in the South, I've been in
• 13:29
  Tennessee for going on 20 years now, almost 16 years.
• 13:35
  Yeah. And But Ray's getting raised,
• 13:39
  you know, in a non-denominational
• 13:41
  non-denominational Christian values, worldviews and stuff.
• 13:46
  So, when I, you know, left that I was in Tennessee at the time.
• 13:53
  You know, I wasn't in New York with my where, all my family
• 13:55
  still lives, but the change from that into this particular
• 14:02
  offshoot of paganism, right? Because there's, you know,
• 14:05
  paganism of all kinds in all different cultures but nor sir
• 14:08
  Germanic paganism carries with it.
• 14:11
  And I don't know if you've picked up on this yet because I
• 14:15
  think when I was like two or three years into my journey, I
• 14:17
  still haven't quite picked up on like the world view or
• 14:20
  worldviews. There's the, it's vastly
• 14:23
  different. There's some similarities, but
• 14:25
  there's there's, you know, certain things about dramatic
• 14:29
  Heathen, re specifically or Germanic paganism as he even
• 14:32
  read as we call it that are that are not the same as what you
• 14:36
  would find in a Christian Universal, kind of worldview,
• 14:41
  you know, there's certain term, certain, you know, how the world
• 14:44
  is viewed. Just, you know that.
• 14:46
  So my, you know, social media was pushed into paganism years.
• 14:52
  I had kind of started this Pagan path of mine and then, and then
• 14:55
  along the way, it's become a almost, like a journal, like a
• 14:59
  digital or virtual Journal of the journey.
• 15:03
  Oh, great, that's awesome. Because down the road, you're
• 15:05
  going to look back at it and be like, man.
• 15:06
  That's so cool that I did that. Yeah, you know, like yeah.
• 15:09
  Do you do you like? So since you are kind of, and
• 15:12
  again, no disrespect. But like your new, be your,
• 15:14
  you're young in the in the past, like two years is like you're
• 15:17
  still learning to walk a bit when you look back at your
• 15:21
  content, That you started your social media platforms with on
• 15:25
  bond paganism. So, if you're talking about,
• 15:27
  like pronouncing, the word mjolnir or some of these other
• 15:29
  things, like, do you see But do you look back and sometimes go,
• 15:34
  you know, like you most cringe a little bit at yourself like not
• 15:36
  in a bad way but because I do, I'd say my own stuff.
• 15:38
  I'm like man, I need to revisit that.
• 15:40
  Yeah. When it comes to, at least the
• 15:43
  information I released from the video that filmed them cranky.
• 15:46
  Totally definitely. Oh, but but I was always very
• 15:50
  particular on being educated before I said anything.
• 15:55
  I like I don't like saying anything.
• 15:58
  I don't know. I don't like saying anything.
• 16:00
  I haven't researched it. It's just something that I do
• 16:03
  because when people ask and I have no idea what I'm talking
• 16:06
  about. Like that's yeah, that image all
• 16:10
  around, not good. Morally, for me, at least, I
• 16:12
  like to be a man of my word, you know, which is part of our
• 16:15
  values. I believe in paganism, you know,
• 16:17
  our word means a lot. So I really fully live within
• 16:22
  that so when I look back the information I released, I still
• 16:26
  I still really do hold on to that but obviously the way it
• 16:29
  was Transmute. Transmute, it wrong word, right?
• 16:34
  Whatever the right word is the way it was projected.
• 16:36
  There you go. Could have been better?
• 16:38
  All right. Bye.
• 16:40
  And I wonder too like how much we like not necessarily that the
• 16:44
  information was wrong or incorrect, but how much we've
• 16:47
  learned in our respective Journeys, along the way that
• 16:49
  kind of expound upon it because we learn things that we didn't
• 16:53
  know back then. So it's not like necessarily it
• 16:56
  was, it was wrong or incorrect. It's like, well, there's
• 16:58
  actually there's other layers of the onion that were peeling.
• 17:00
  In a back. Yeah, it's all an onion and and
• 17:04
  discovering along the way, you know, so what brought you to
• 17:09
  paganism? I mean, obviously your heritage,
• 17:11
  you know, you said things clicked.
• 17:14
  Was it just that? Or was there anything profound
• 17:16
  that? You can think of in your mind
• 17:17
  that like, stood out to you as like?
• 17:18
  Yeah, this is this is the direction I want to head in.
• 17:22
  So, so I'm pretty open about it and I actually, I meditated on
• 17:25
  the thought forward a little bit, a couple years back.
• 17:28
  I don't know how you guys feel about.
• 17:30
  But I do of into a psychedelic Realms and a man.
• 17:35
  That's a that's a whole other podcast man, we can talk about
• 17:38
  that. That's awesome.
• 17:39
  Yeah, a bunch of Mine Chain like again, the untethered soul is
• 17:46
  one that really opened up that, that that mindset for me to
• 17:50
  start like looking into paganism.
• 17:52
  And after I read that book at the time, I was, you know, in a
• 17:57
  good mood and hmm literally. The first chapter, I remember.
• 18:02
  I listen, I'm an auditory reader.
• 18:04
  I need to listen to the books. I can't sit there and read it
• 18:08
  the first chapter. I literally sat down and had to
• 18:10
  rethink my whole life, you know, and I had that realization.
• 18:15
  I went home and within six months, I was I do this now, you
• 18:19
  know, in six months, my whole life flipped, I dug pools in
• 18:22
  Arizona, you know. So worst job ever, and then in
• 18:27
  six months later, I was able to quit.
• 18:28
  Do this full-time Not the part, that's it.
• 18:32
  Like this, the detract from what you're saying, but when you say
• 18:34
  pools in Arizona, I got to, I got to assume that that's a
• 18:37
  pretty sustainable source of work out.
• 18:39
  There is as hot as I mean, almost, everybody must have a
• 18:41
  pool or at least someone nearby. So it's probably a pretty at
• 18:45
  least reliable form of work. Yeah.
• 18:49
  There was actually a log you couldn't work outside outside.
• 18:53
  If it was 115 degrees or more and that happened a lot.
• 18:58
  You and I are both from the north, right?
• 18:59
  The Northeast. II for all intents and purposes.
• 19:02
  When I say I'm a Northman I mean that in the literal sense you
• 19:06
  know I mean I'm not just being like oh because I follow
• 19:08
  Germanic paganism. I'm a Norseman.
• 19:10
  Not no bitch. I actually from the North like I
• 19:13
  grew up in New York where it would snow you know six feet a
• 19:16
  year and and and stuff like that going into like the South here
• 19:21
  in Tennessee. Dude.
• 19:22
  Like and you are Arizona and you're like a Southern state.
• 19:25
  Now I believe What a, what a what a man.
• 19:29
  I I mean like, it's not like I hate being here but man, the
• 19:31
  summer months I tell people want, I'm like, well, if you
• 19:35
  want to know what the seasons are like in the South, it's
• 19:38
  summer and not summer, not, it's it's, you know, you don't really
• 19:43
  get a true winter. I mean, yeah, you might get like
• 19:45
  a couple of weeks or maybe a month total of like bitter,
• 19:49
  bitter cold, where you know, you get snow and ice.
• 19:53
  But no, that's that's like that's like Thanksgiving
• 19:56
  morning, you know, I really prefer the snow out here.
• 20:00
  So me personally, I know, I know, I prefer this know because
• 20:03
  I sweat that crazy. Same this over 80 degrees I'm
• 20:07
  like, man, I need the environment and shorts and I
• 20:10
  don't like shorts. So yeah, put in snowy areas
• 20:14
  again, I love Maine, I've been the main when it snows, Jersey
• 20:18
  New York, Massachusetts I like Michigan Minnesota.
• 20:22
  I love I love the snow. Yeah.
• 20:25
  But all four seasons, you know. But out here, I'm in Texas right
• 20:30
  now. Here, it's all summer.
• 20:33
  Yep. Which part of Texas.
• 20:34
  If you don't care me, ask it and Antonio.
• 20:39
  Okay, I know some people in the East Texas area, like Tyler on.
• 20:43
  As a matter of fact, I it's not like not a sponsor, right?
• 20:47
  But the Ravens, call Eric shervin, if you anybody that's
• 20:51
  followed me, Me for any length of time knows that.
• 20:54
  I speak. Very highly of Eric but he is,
• 20:57
  he is he is the chieftain and go the of the cleared gar bokor
• 21:02
  feed gauri in East Texas. So Tyler, you know, that area
• 21:06
  and they have regular like public meet ups and stuff.
• 21:10
  And I want to say there that there's people that have
• 21:13
  ventured out for some of his meetups even as far away as like
• 21:16
  the Dallas Fort Worth area. Which is, I think an hour and a
• 21:20
  half or so is dry from from him. But I was, I was asked, I was
• 21:25
  asked, like, my wife was like, well, maybe he knows Eric.
• 21:26
  I'm like, Texas is a big state. I don't know, maybe he's heard
• 21:30
  of him on YouTube, but he's also on Tick-Tock.
• 21:33
  He's, he's that sick talk to because I have you heard of how
• 21:37
  Siddiqui good my Discord Community.
• 21:40
  I think I've heard of it because of some of the content that I've
• 21:43
  like, breeze through on, on the various platforms that I can
• 21:47
  catch it on, so I don't have a tick tock, but I'll like, go
• 21:49
  through and I like educate myself a little bit because I
• 21:52
  don't want to Bring a schmuck on here.
• 21:53
  You know what I'm saying? Yeah, and I'm like, David seems
• 21:55
  like pretty cool guy. It's, you know, thumbs up for
• 21:58
  me, you know, I don't, fortunately, this podcast is
• 22:00
  small enough where I don't have to go through a committee to
• 22:03
  determine guests or whatever. It's a.
• 22:04
  What do I want on my podcast. Right.
• 22:06
  So it works out but yeah I've heard of it.
• 22:08
  Yeah. This court thing.
• 22:09
  Yeah on there we have a lot of like clams and kindred's that
• 22:13
  come through I created it as like a hub for Norse paganism or
• 22:16
  just paganism in general for people to come in and meet
• 22:18
  others. And there's a lot of plans
• 22:20
  kindred's and communities that come in Here and just like
• 22:24
  talking to you and I feel like I've heard that you said their
• 22:27
  Clan right? Yeah.
• 22:29
  So the they're they're very tribal in their approach and
• 22:33
  it's a grid, gar folk or red gar could gauri right.
• 22:36
  People afraid gar is, it's their very tribal Heathen group, you
• 22:42
  know? So as much as you maybe learned
• 22:47
  or seeing, you know, the collective of people in the
• 22:50
  community, right? You've got your large community,
• 22:52
  you have Like smaller cells or group, some of them will be
• 22:56
  called kindred's. Some of them will call
• 22:58
  themselves tribes, some of them may call themselves Clan.
• 23:01
  I have a pretty like specific view in terms of like the
• 23:05
  terminology but it's semantics at that point.
• 23:07
  I mean you can call it whatever the heck you want I guess.
• 23:08
  But yeah they are a small tribe. Smallish tribe of people out
• 23:15
  there in East Texas. Yeah, that's interesting.
• 23:17
  Yeah, I feel like I've heard of them.
• 23:19
  I just don't know anything about it.
• 23:22
  Yeah. So You guys, you know, you to
• 23:24
  David but like anybody listening watching the Ravens call on
• 23:27
  YouTube. And I want to say that he's it's
• 23:30
  probably the Ravens call. I'll make sure that you got is
• 23:33
  because he's on Tick-Tock to. He's actually starting to really
• 23:35
  use that platform to share his stuff because in this kind of
• 23:40
  maybe like Segways back into and will bounce around a little bit
• 23:43
  if that's okay. But like in terms of like the
• 23:45
  the quality over quantity thing, have you noticed that?
• 23:50
  Content in general for like influencers, social media
• 23:56
  content creators, have you noticed that digest like the way
• 24:01
  that content is being digested and absorbed?
• 24:03
  Now is so, it's short like it. If you're not engaging with
• 24:09
  people with like a minute long clip, so they could got your
• 24:12
  tick tocks, you got YouTube really short, so you got
• 24:15
  Facebook reels, Instagram, reels, It's almost like you're
• 24:18
  not staying relevant anymore. If you notice that 100%, in
• 24:22
  fact, if you don't capture them. So there's been an like a study
• 24:26
  done. So I do a lot of research on the
• 24:28
  algorithm and stuff like that, and I see how I'm starting to
• 24:31
  find out how it's working. Again, it changes all the time,
• 24:34
  but if you don't catch him, catch some within the first
• 24:37
  seven seconds and they will Hop Off Tick-Tock kind of Lies, is
• 24:41
  your video 7 website. Wow.
• 24:45
  So look at my recent videos if you if you checked it out every
• 24:50
  between five and seven to eight seconds, I have a new clip even
• 24:55
  if it's me on the same sentence. It's just hey, guys, doing well?
• 25:01
  Oh so you trim it. Yeah.
• 25:02
  You like you splice the content to the clip and and when it does
• 25:07
  that it re-engages people's attention span so thing.
• 25:12
  Yeah. So I've been getting people to
• 25:13
  watch one minute videos instead of struggling to get them to
• 25:17
  watch a 15 second video, you know.
• 25:20
  So like you're saying like the algorithm actually figures out
• 25:22
  when your video is split like that.
• 25:25
  This is like if you were to just run like a minute-long thing
• 25:28
  where you just like holding your phone talking, whatever your
• 25:30
  content is like a minute long and that's a minute long.
• 25:32
  The spliced sections of the video are that recognized by the
• 25:38
  algorithm to be like, that's what we wanted.
• 25:40
  That's what we want. So the algorithm will recognize
• 25:44
  that people are watching it more.
• 25:45
  Wow. Make it past that 7 Seconds,
• 25:48
  which if you can put 24 second Clips together that catch
• 25:53
  attention, you'll improve your Chances of getting more views
• 25:57
  and the algorithm will push the video.
• 25:59
  But if you drag it out too long, the algorithm docks your video
• 26:03
  and you're less likely to getting to gain traction.
• 26:06
  Wow, yeah so this is it is crazy and it's interesting because
• 26:10
  I've made jokes here at times because I'm always like you know
• 26:13
  I mean you're a content creator dude.
• 26:14
  Like you understand like when you engage with people you give
• 26:17
  them verbal nods or prompts hey like 4 more subscribe this sort
• 26:22
  of thing, right? I always I refer to that as a
• 26:25
  Using the algorithm Gods, you know stuff like that.
• 26:27
  We're engaged with us, right? Leave a comment, leave a like,
• 26:31
  share it around, you know, be engaging, don't just be like sit
• 26:33
  here and make yourself known, right?
• 26:36
  And and and it's almost like a, it's an active part of this
• 26:40
  whole thing. And for me, It and again I'm not
• 26:45
  trying to make something out of nothing here but it's almost
• 26:47
  like how as a pagan you have to be active.
• 26:50
  It's not just going to church listening to what somebody else
• 26:54
  says going home and feeling good about yourself to get something
• 26:57
  out of this path. This folkway, this religion,
• 27:01
  whatever is work is required. You have to be engaging, you
• 27:05
  have to do hail the viewers, right?
• 27:07
  Yes. You you need to do it, you know.
• 27:10
  It's not just given to you, you know?
• 27:12
  Yeah. Now, there's a lot of things
• 27:14
  where it's like, oh you see this prayer and you're forgiving, you
• 27:16
  know, I'm not just talking about Christianity but it's just like
• 27:19
  in this, what I really like about it is, if you want
• 27:22
  something out of it, you need to find it, you know, it's not just
• 27:26
  like, oh, pray, you know, which wish and do not hate on
• 27:30
  anything. I'm just using it as an example
• 27:32
  but it's just like I'm sure this is much deeper and much more
• 27:37
  inward than it is external, you know.
• 27:40
  Well and it goes back to like some of the world view stuff
• 27:42
  that I was. What about because prayer?
• 27:45
  I don't know if you get this covered this within Heathen,
• 27:48
  rage specifically, but prayer is absolutely part of this religion
• 27:54
  and I use the term religion because it's an accurate.
• 27:57
  Depiction for me at least of what we're doing here.
• 27:59
  The way that I kind of see things is that as heathens, you
• 28:04
  know, pagans whatever term you want to put to it.
• 28:08
  Italy we share existence with other beings around us.
• 28:12
  Us. So those are our, the whites.
• 28:14
  There are the weightier, there are there's life all in and
• 28:18
  around us. And that that that is spiritual.
• 28:21
  That is our spirituality, how we engage with our ancestors, the
• 28:24
  whites around us the land, the home, Etc.
• 28:27
  Right. That touches on the spirituality
• 28:29
  of this path, when we talk about connecting to the Divine, the
• 28:33
  sacred, the gods, and goddesses, that to me, touches on religion,
• 28:38
  the religious aspects of it, the ceremonial the ritual.
• 28:43
  Exactly. And prayer is definitely a part
• 28:47
  of it, but it means something different in a heathen context
• 28:50
  and it does in Christianity right?
• 28:52
  Like there's there's layers to prayer, there's layers to it
• 28:55
  it's not just lip service. You know it's an invocation and
• 28:59
  evocation kind of like a declaration of intent almost
• 29:04
  along the way. Like it's there's layers to it
• 29:07
  all. Did you have did you watch that?
• 29:12
  Because it's about prayer in paganism, which one, I literally
• 29:16
  just post it like couple hours ago but it's just about what
• 29:19
  prayer is and paganism. It's about intention, it's
• 29:22
  about, you know, sitting meditation meditation is more
• 29:24
  like the prayer, you know, it's kind of sitting in word and
• 29:27
  listening and it's less asking because what one thing at least
• 29:32
  with me personally is I found that it's If you, if you asked
• 29:38
  with the intention of doing what's necessary?
• 29:42
  Not just like, hey, give me. Give me.
• 29:44
  It's, hey, like, I need some strength to get through this
• 29:48
  guy. Knew some wisdom, you know, give
• 29:50
  me the path to earn the wisdom to make this happen, you know,
• 29:53
  where it's said differently than in prayer.
• 29:57
  Like, when I was Christian and be like, hey, you know, I really
• 29:59
  need help here. Like, please help me through
• 30:02
  this, you know, type of stuff. And now it's like, hey, like
• 30:06
  hey, You find the Inner Strength, you know that?
• 30:10
  Let's make this happen. You're my intention is to move
• 30:12
  forward and I ask from your guidance, you know, something
• 30:16
  like that, you know, it really all just kind of depends on how
• 30:20
  I'm feeling at the moment, but it's been less of asking me more
• 30:23
  of like, intention setting, I guess.
• 30:27
  Well, yeah and I guess I'm going to I'm going to pose a question
• 30:30
  for you just to kind of make it. Make it an interesting.
• 30:35
  Engagement here. When you when when, when we pray
• 30:40
  or when prayer is, is delivered as a in the Heat.
• 30:42
  And cause if you're talking about, it's not so much give me,
• 30:45
  give me, give me. It's, it's, it's retrospective.
• 30:49
  You know? There's there's intent.
• 30:50
  There's focus and all that. Right?
• 30:52
  What are you sit on? The doing of things to get
• 30:57
  something. And I mean, this specifically in
• 30:59
  the context of reciprocity, Man. Okay, so I'm going to start off
• 31:05
  very funny reciprocity. Can you identify that?
• 31:07
  For me? A little bit?
• 31:09
  Yeah, so yeah. So the to give a gift, you must
• 31:14
  to receive a gift. You must give a gift.
• 31:17
  The gifting exchange, the reciprocal exchange of gifts to
• 31:22
  like offering. Hmm.
• 31:24
  Yeah, yeah. So so my offerings typically
• 31:27
  tends to be like I use incense, but I use different types of
• 31:33
  incense for different for different intentions.
• 31:36
  I guess you'd say it's like, if I'm say depressed, you know, if
• 31:40
  you we we all feel this. Like I don't, like saying I'm
• 31:43
  depressed, but we feel the depression, you know, you put
• 31:46
  us. And it's like, I don't want to
• 31:48
  feel that weight lifted off. You know, I'll use an earth and
• 31:51
  Earth incense, you know, and I'll kind of just set the
• 31:55
  intention to release to, to, to be to feel it.
• 32:00
  Come off my chest, but I do and that is I sit with the instant
• 32:05
  in front of me, I have my altar, which is actually up here.
• 32:10
  See it here. Lovely.
• 32:12
  I sit here. Let the incense flow and I just
• 32:16
  meditate on the feeling of release and typically I tend to
• 32:22
  feel like they are It Whatever again, whatever you want to call
• 32:26
  the Davies, or entities or gods. Typically I'll feel something
• 32:32
  breathe or like a light like a weight just comes off of me but
• 32:36
  almost in like a breeze. Even if I'm in a room with no
• 32:39
  Reese, you know, it's the weirdest thing I get chills and
• 32:42
  then I open my eyes after that meditation or that intention.
• 32:46
  The world seems brighter things feel, I feel happier.
• 32:50
  I feel like things just start falling into place.
• 32:53
  Once I started incorporating that actually with my intention
• 32:56
  on social media, like I said, within six months, my Life
• 33:00
  switched just the second I started integrating meditation
• 33:04
  and you know prayer whatever terminology you want to use for
• 33:09
  it. They set those intentions and I
• 33:11
  started making it like a part of my life.
• 33:14
  I really noticed. My life actually changed.
• 33:17
  You know that if you like living in it and hoping something
• 33:21
  changed, you know what I mean, it really felt about real.
• 33:26
  I hope that answered the question.
• 33:27
  Yeah, no I do and I think that, you know, so I've had different
• 33:32
  people on this podcast talking about, you know, the the
• 33:35
  approach to Heathen reading stuff.
• 33:37
  And I for a long time for any, of the oh, geez of midgard
• 33:41
  musings, you know, like I would always preface my videos saying
• 33:45
  that I am not what I would refer to at least as a hardcore,
• 33:49
  Reconstructionist Heathen, and I think that there's a lot of
• 33:53
  value and there's a lot of importance to Being the
• 33:57
  documented historical sources and things that we know for a
• 34:02
  fact were more than just the conjecture or you for you
• 34:07
  familiar with the term U PG unverified personal gnosis.
• 34:13
  Have you heard that term? First I so I'm not heard that
• 34:17
  term back earlier. So so you'll you're gonna
• 34:23
  obviously, obviously came across it now.
• 34:24
  But you're gonna if you continue down this path, you're going to
• 34:26
  come across the term especially as a Content career.
• 34:29
  Like you're gonna you're going to hear the term UPG and that's
• 34:32
  essentially just your feelings. Your personal experiences that
• 34:38
  are unverified that are not rooted or based on any sort of
• 34:42
  concrete historical, archaeological evidence, right?
• 34:45
  Yes. So I'm not what I would
• 34:47
  necessarily refer to as a hardcore Reconstructionist, but
• 34:50
  I'm also not someone who is just all fluffy bunny willy-nilly
• 34:53
  Dancing In The Meadows. You know, just feeling my way
• 34:56
  through life. Like I've got a foundation and
• 34:58
  I've got a root which does have a lot of focus on the historical
• 35:03
  side of things, but I'm not. Like so rooted in the past and
• 35:09
  I'm not so rootbound that I can't grow and that's where I
• 35:12
  think there's a there's a there's a very Important line to
• 35:17
  follow is that you need to have a foundation, you need to know
• 35:20
  where your roots are, you need to nurture those roots.
• 35:24
  Yeah, allow for New Growth because and I've said this
• 35:28
  before that tradition, right? So people many people get stuck
• 35:31
  on the fact that well, you don't do it, you're not supposed to do
• 35:33
  it that way, man, because that's not how it's done.
• 35:35
  Traditionally, well, what is tradition, right?
• 35:37
  Tradition was at one point in time, somebody's unverified
• 35:42
  personal gnosis, they was there UPG there, like I think this is
• 35:44
  going to work. And then next thing, you know,
• 35:46
  5, 10, 15 people thought, hey you know, Bjorn over here is
• 35:50
  doing it, I want to do it like Bjorn and then it because go is
• 35:52
  what becomes tradition right? So we build New Traditions
• 35:55
  tradition is the preservation of fire.
• 35:57
  It's not the worship of Ashes. Yes, I like that.
• 36:01
  That's cool. I like that one, you know.
• 36:03
  So when you talk about like when I was asking you about like the
• 36:07
  whole like reciprocity, the giving the understanding that
• 36:11
  you have of, I have to give something in order to receive
• 36:14
  something. I can't just be like, hey man, I
• 36:17
  need help over here. What are you going to do for me
• 36:19
  without first being like, I am giving something of myself.
• 36:23
  I'm giving Thing of value there, there is an exchange.
• 36:26
  I'm there's a gift cycle that takes place, and we see this
• 36:29
  incur occurring in nature right in the natural world, you know.
• 36:35
  There is, there is a give and a take, there's this cycle that
• 36:38
  that continuously happens, we see it across many cultures,
• 36:42
  it's just, it's a natural intrinsic thing in digs, in the
• 36:46
  universe, I feel ya. And so, when we, when we, when
• 36:50
  we realize that, when we tap into that, is that when we pray,
• 36:53
  what our prayers? Is are not just, you know, lip
• 36:56
  service. It's not just asking for a
• 36:58
  favor, it's I need something. Here's my gift to you in hopes
• 37:04
  of receiving the gift in return. And when we tap into that, like
• 37:07
  you say, when we, when we realize that things change yes
• 37:11
  changed for you, you know and in your mind it was you know, the
• 37:15
  instance, the meditation whatever.
• 37:16
  Now, you know, people are probably going to come across
• 37:19
  this and be like well that's not necessarily the way that the
• 37:21
  ancient pagans did it in Germany, you know, ancient And
• 37:24
  at times or whatever. Like, well, yeah, who gives a
• 37:25
  shit about how we do it now? Sorry, it's fine, you know,
• 37:31
  like, that's that's, that's cool.
• 37:33
  Like, you can go back to those sources, you can go back to
• 37:35
  those ways and and definitely feel a connection.
• 37:38
  Like I mean, if you look at like some of the I'll just, you know,
• 37:47
  off the top of my head, like, if you were to observe holy Tides,
• 37:52
  like you'll, for instance, based off of the historical recounting
• 37:56
  of it. When it was done, how it was
• 37:58
  done, you're probably going to feel something different than if
• 38:00
  you were to. Let's say follow it based off of
• 38:04
  a more modern 12-day Night. Celebration that kind of
• 38:08
  reflects more of like the wiccan wheel of the year not to say
• 38:11
  that there's anything wrong with that because if it works, it
• 38:13
  works and I always say, you know do what works For you.
• 38:16
  If it's, if it works for you and yours then nobody else can tell
• 38:20
  you differently. That's that's exactly how I
• 38:24
  feel. So I consider myself at least me
• 38:26
  personally, I consider myself more eclectic, but yeah, so I
• 38:31
  kind of I pieced together. A lot of things from everywhere.
• 38:35
  Again, I'm still like you said newborn, you know, I'm two years
• 38:38
  in. I'm still finding practices and
• 38:40
  finding things that work for me. And what I do is I don't
• 38:43
  restrict myself to One, you know.
• 38:47
  So so I consider myself eclectic because I'll look into Buddhism,
• 38:51
  you know, and I wouldn't Hinduism, it just kind of just
• 38:53
  like look at the way they do things the way they think the
• 38:55
  way I act I'll just kind of be like huh.
• 38:57
  I wonder if that changes anything not the whole religion,
• 39:00
  but that little thing they do, you know like the way Buddhists
• 39:03
  meditate with their breathing techniques.
• 39:06
  You know I incorporate that into my meditations sungazing is very
• 39:11
  much like a new age thing. You know I try that you know,
• 39:14
  just to see if it Because I want to, I believe a practice a
• 39:20
  practice that works is the practice for you.
• 39:23
  Yes. So that for myself more eclectic
• 39:26
  than I would say like Norse Pagan or Heathen, you know,
• 39:29
  people would call me that. I don't mind that at all, but
• 39:32
  I'm still piecing together my spiritual journey.
• 39:34
  You know what I mean? Yeah, well, I mean, and you
• 39:37
  definitely have a, I mean, when you talk about, like, branding
• 39:41
  and stuff, when you, when you put yourself on out out, on a
• 39:45
  social, Well, media platform with a moniker like you know,
• 39:48
  bearded Viking and and and have the look that you have and you
• 39:51
  don't, you know, mjolnir on your branded clothing and and all
• 39:56
  that like it, it it definitely attracts a specific audience.
• 40:00
  I think it definitely. And I've run across people in
• 40:03
  our Pagan communities around here that are eclectic in that
• 40:06
  way. But they they adopt certain
• 40:07
  Norse or dramatic things like the runes.
• 40:11
  Being one of them specifically, like the runic divination is
• 40:14
  such a big Has been, I think for so long and you practice that
• 40:19
  I'm still learning, there's still a lots of rooms that I'm,
• 40:22
  I'm learning about, but I do practice rooms and divination
• 40:26
  and reading. I'm just still practicing
• 40:28
  learning to read them, you know, that's just be honest.
• 40:31
  But it is heavily into my Heritage sighs.
• 40:35
  That's why Norse paganism attracts me so much, or even
• 40:38
  ready, whatever, whatever the state of wrong, but it attracts
• 40:42
  me a lot because it's my roots, it's where I'm from it.
• 40:45
  Who I am. So I dive deep into it.
• 40:48
  I have heavy respects for it, and I do practice.
• 40:51
  I do practice it. I find what works for me.
• 40:53
  But I also a huge on somebody who I'm really bad in a world
• 41:00
  where it's hard to identify and hard to identify my belief
• 41:03
  system, you know. It's yeah.
• 41:05
  I guess I'm too young. I think to really subscribe to
• 41:11
  exactly one thing I want to try new things but I definitely
• 41:15
  You're in that, you're in the discovery stages and that's, and
• 41:18
  that's what it is. It's all about discovering and
• 41:20
  learning and you're not limiting yourself and, you know, to each
• 41:23
  their own, right everybody finds.
• 41:26
  There's no right or wrong. It's just do it your way, you
• 41:29
  know, whatever works. If you follow Eric shervin, the
• 41:34
  Ravens call, you're going to hear him.
• 41:35
  And he's got, like I said, a wonderful catalog of YouTube
• 41:39
  videos. He wanted one of the things that
• 41:42
  he's known for for saying and he's like Like tried to hashtag
• 41:46
  this but it's not my haul, not my call.
• 41:50
  That's cool, doesn't work for me, then if it works for you,
• 41:54
  then I and nobody else is in any position to try and tell you or
• 41:58
  them otherwise, you know, reciprocate both.
• 42:04
  Yeah. And I and I like I like the fact
• 42:07
  that you explore like Eastern philosophy and other like, say
• 42:10
  Buddhism, because I think it was a YouTube video of yours because
• 42:14
  you do have a YouTube channel. Yeah, I think seven soda but
• 42:19
  yep. Yep.
• 42:20
  And all this is going to be like I said at the beginning guys,
• 42:22
  check the description and show notes of the podcast because all
• 42:25
  of all of David's stuff is going to be annotated in link down
• 42:28
  there so follows like subscribe, you know, bit.
• 42:30
  But I remember I think it was a video you did.
• 42:33
  It might have been this year. I might have been last year, but
• 42:34
  you were talking about grounding.
• 42:36
  Yes. Yeah, that was a couple months
• 42:38
  ago. Yeah, I love that video because
• 42:41
  I've more recently and I've been taking now four.
• 42:46
  Going into seven years that I've classify myself as Pagan, you
• 42:50
  know, like there's there's parts of my life that I look back on
• 42:52
  them. Like, well it's always been
• 42:54
  there. Like I've always done things
• 42:55
  that were kind of inherently. Pagan dad just didn't have the
• 43:00
  name to it at the time and I was raised in Christianity, so we
• 43:03
  called it something else. But the, the grounding video,
• 43:07
  you know, like, I've within like the last year or so, yeah,
• 43:10
  almost do last year. Like, I had an Awakening, you
• 43:13
  talked about, like, yeah, psychedelic, psychedelic
• 43:17
  psychoactive experiences things that that really kind of whoa.
• 43:21
  Profound yeah. And and and one of the things
• 43:24
  for me has been a reconnection To Nature animism.
• 43:30
  Yeah, as it were and you were talking in that video, you're
• 43:34
  welcome to expound on anything that I may have missed out
• 43:38
  grounding, and you, and I keyed in on very specific thing.
• 43:41
  He talked about getting your bare feet into the Earth and
• 43:45
  into the ground. That's huge, that's huge.
• 43:48
  We are magnetic creatures who are literally just a bunch of
• 43:51
  electrons. So the thing is, when we ground
• 43:54
  ourselves to the Earth, it's like plugging your battery in
• 43:56
  the Earth. Reggie Source, you know, so the
• 43:58
  thing is, when you walk Barefoot into the dirt over grass or even
• 44:01
  water, that's why people when people are like, oh, I just feel
• 44:05
  connected to the water. Well, it's because it's the only
• 44:07
  time where you're actually in, you know, most people don't take
• 44:10
  their shoes off and go into the dirt but it's like when you're
• 44:14
  in water or the ocean, you know, I'm not just saying pools, but
• 44:17
  when you're in the ocean you just feel their present grounded
• 44:22
  centered, you know, Rivers streams lakes rivers see.
• 44:27
  Whatever waterfalls. I waterfall a while back, that
• 44:32
  was great. Hi.
• 44:35
  I post regular content on like the YouTube shorts and stuff and
• 44:39
  then Facebook reels, if you follow, but like, I'm in the so
• 44:43
  where I live in Tennessee, Murfreesboro Middle Tennessee.
• 44:48
  It's Civil War. Land, you know what I mean?
• 44:52
  Like there was there's all kinds of Civil War history here, but
• 44:57
  if you Google or research Stones River, the Stones River is
• 45:01
  essentially in my backyard. And so I go to the river.
• 45:05
  I go on walks almost every day of the week and it's always
• 45:10
  Barefoot, you know? And III Advocate it, man.
• 45:16
  It's like, I don't care. If you can't go on a walk for
• 45:21
  miles or feet like just get outside.
• 45:24
  Touch touch Earth. Yeah, even if you're in the
• 45:27
  city, you can find a park. You can find something that has
• 45:30
  soil, then ground, You're right our Earth Mother, you know, the
• 45:36
  doors mother, you know Fiore and the the everything that you can
• 45:41
  find in the lore even if you want to just Lean more towards
• 45:44
  like the Germanic Norse mythologies.
• 45:49
  She's around us, she is a part of us, and we are a part of her.
• 45:51
  And so, if you are having a bad day, and this is one of the
• 45:55
  things I say, if you haven't, if you're, if you're having a bad
• 45:58
  day, things suck, right, life sucks.
• 46:00
  If you take your shoes off and you get your feet, anchored
• 46:02
  connected, and grounded, back into the Earth for just 10, 15,
• 46:05
  20 minutes, I guarantee and I would almost bet my next
• 46:09
  paycheck on this. You will feel leagues better.
• 46:12
  Oh yeah. Well, does it and then the
• 46:14
  Germanic dramatically systems Oak and Ash tree You know.
• 46:19
  So from their core, even if you're a Christian watching
• 46:23
  this, at a dust or dirt, are those not centered in the earth,
• 46:30
  you know, Carlos is what you believe, we're part of this, or
• 46:34
  part of this Earth. So, when you ground yourself,
• 46:36
  Barefoot, or whatever you want to do, I mean, some people are
• 46:39
  like to roll in the dirt. Cool, good for that.
• 46:42
  But the thing is, like, once your scent, once you do that,
• 46:45
  you're it's just such a great guy, do it every morning.
• 46:48
  Ting, I wake up, cold shower, outside grounding and then I
• 46:53
  have my little morning routine that I do.
• 46:54
  And then I start work, I'll ground myself in the middle of
• 46:56
  the day to just because my mind runs A Thousand Miles a minute.
• 47:00
  So well, I bet now especially with, you know, because because
• 47:05
  what, like, as a content creator as an influencer on social
• 47:08
  media, that is it death as that your full-time gig.
• 47:11
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 47:11
  So I'm full time on social media.
• 47:13
  I run the brand that's to, you know, and then So when you're
• 47:18
  when you're online, right? And when you're in such this and
• 47:21
  this is kind of one of the things I wanted to come back to
• 47:23
  earlier. I said we'll come back to like
• 47:24
  the analytics and quality versus quantity.
• 47:27
  It's such an artificial field to play in.
• 47:30
  It's so like you can be anything you want, literally line.
• 47:35
  You can be anybody. You can be as genuine or as fake
• 47:39
  as you want, and whatever people see is what they're going to
• 47:42
  perceive you. As exactly, it's a big part of
• 47:45
  ourselves as a part of yourself, and I feel like a As social
• 47:48
  media. You know, content creators,
• 47:51
  influencers, whatever do you think?
• 47:54
  I guess, I should say I don't want to put words into your
• 47:56
  mouth. But do you think that there's a
• 47:58
  sense of obligation that we have as pagans on social media?
• 48:02
  Do you think that we have a level of obligation to be
• 48:09
  genuine and not just try to push quash quantity over quality for
• 48:14
  lights follows? Yeah, 100%, I think that
• 48:20
  authenticity realness and quality is way more important.
• 48:24
  Again, I started the whole thing with four or five videos a day,
• 48:28
  you know, just trying to get numbers up and we all do that
• 48:30
  well at some point and sure, and starting up your page.
• 48:35
  This is what I always tell people, okay?
• 48:36
  And the sounds harsh in the beginning.
• 48:38
  When you first start your social media, nobody cares who you are,
• 48:42
  though, create stuff that people will like watching until they're
• 48:46
  curious, who's the person making these videos?
• 48:49
  What are you like? You know, and then eventually
• 48:52
  you can move into like all right here's about me or hears about
• 48:55
  what I want to start teaching or about what I want to start
• 48:56
  creating content about, that's more like quality.
• 49:01
  But in the beginning when you first step on social media,
• 49:04
  Nobody knows you, nobody hits it again.
• 49:07
  I mean this but nobody cares until you create something for
• 49:13
  them to care about, you know? Yeah.
• 49:15
  Yes. Small fish in a big pond or
• 49:17
  mean, you know, like it's such a saturated area, you know, like
• 49:22
  new accounts are created every day, it's a biggest social
• 49:24
  you're talking about Tick-Tock specifically it's the biggest
• 49:27
  social media platform out there at the moment so this like you
• 49:30
  just need to be consistent first See and quality, I mean,
• 49:35
  quantity in the beginning and then you'll learn quality,
• 49:39
  you'll learn quality, don't try to hop in right away to talk,
• 49:42
  doesn't like quality wider right off the bat.
• 49:44
  It's the weirdest thing. I have a few other pages that I
• 49:47
  experiment with the algorithm with, I don't tell people about
• 49:50
  it but when I, whenever I do those experiments and it changes
• 49:54
  every couple months, but we definitely have Bacon's.
• 49:58
  I think on social media platform, it's a really fast
• 50:02
  growing community. On, I don't know if you've
• 50:05
  noticed that a huge boom, these last couple of years, like my
• 50:08
  opt-in on Tick-Tock, the Pagan Community was just starting.
• 50:12
  Hmm. And for be able to kind of be
• 50:16
  one of the first ones to hop in and start really being open
• 50:19
  about it. And now people are opening up
• 50:22
  more and it's getting way bigger and people are becoming very
• 50:24
  interested and I think it's it's a huge.
• 50:29
  It's very important for people to know What it really is
• 50:34
  because the thing is there are some stigmas about it.
• 50:37
  But I have experienced those personally, and in my real life
• 50:41
  or even on my social media platform, I don't really get a
• 50:45
  lot of hate, and a lot of that drama stuff because that's kind
• 50:48
  of a kind of try to repel them much as possible, you know, it's
• 50:52
  interesting that you mentioned it because I was going to
• 50:54
  actually ask you, what has been your experience.
• 50:57
  Because if I want to understand to tell you right now, dude,
• 51:00
  like if you haven't experienced that yet, All 600 with six
• 51:04
  hundred thousand followers on Tick-Tock that's surprising, but
• 51:07
  otherwise like just give it time.
• 51:11
  All right? It's going to happen.
• 51:13
  It's happened to me and I was, and I was going to want to talk
• 51:16
  with you about that. If you had like I use the term,
• 51:20
  like horror stories, kind of loosely, but like any sort of
• 51:23
  like negative experiences of the less than Savory types and I'll
• 51:28
  just come right out and say you know the the the the alt right.
• 51:32
  Bigoted racist, you know, scum of the earth, you know, jerk
• 51:38
  offs that, that tend to leech and attach themselves to this
• 51:43
  particular brand of paganism. This particular branch of
• 51:45
  paganism, you know, where you've got these superiority complex,
• 51:49
  you know, small dick energy folks that run around thinking
• 51:53
  that they're better than everybody else just because they
• 51:55
  have a percentage of blood lines from northern Europe which is,
• 52:00
  that's so silly. I mean, I Okay, I've seen it and
• 52:03
  I get comments every once in a while, but I'm not saying like
• 52:06
  it's something I should ever struggle with up, until I hit
• 52:09
  about 300,000 on Tick. Tock, I would say no, I didn't
• 52:14
  even. And again, all respect to
• 52:17
  Christian. But if you can get those like
• 52:18
  Repent, Jesus loves you. I didn't get those.
• 52:22
  Yeah. It was a lot more now.
• 52:24
  But the thing is, I always say, thank you.
• 52:26
  You know, like, oh, thank you. Jesus Loves Me.
• 52:27
  Appreciate it. Thanks like no hate, right?
• 52:31
  Because I mean, When I see stuff like that in there, like they're
• 52:34
  thinking that it's like a message or they're doing their,
• 52:38
  you know, due diligence to try to, you know, convert or
• 52:41
  whatever. I'm like, hey man, I'm already
• 52:45
  polytheistic, you know, and I come from a monotheistic
• 52:49
  background and I'm polytheistic now and so were the at the time
• 52:54
  during like the Viking age, when there was a heavy movement to
• 52:57
  convert the indigenous people from paganism into Chris, Gianna
• 53:02
  T, right? They were like, oh, it's just
• 53:05
  one more God, to add to our already vibrant array.
• 53:08
  Yeah, no problem. God's presence, no problem.
• 53:10
  So, it's like, oh, Jesus, let me cool.
• 53:12
  That's one more God to, you know, I guess, you know, be on
• 53:16
  my side or whatever and so that's kind of the way I look at
• 53:18
  it, too. It's like, all right.
• 53:19
  And you know, my, my background, I've talked about this openly on
• 53:24
  my podcast and and the channel and stuff before in other videos
• 53:27
  is my background with with that whole thing has been kind of a
• 53:32
  rough go, you know. My side of the family that Still
• 53:37
  Remains devoutly. Christian is definitely not in
• 53:42
  agreement with my decision to abandon those ways.
• 53:45
  And there's, it's always, you know, conversations in the past,
• 53:49
  I've always gravitated towards trying to, you know, show me
• 53:53
  where I'm wrong and convince me that I'm making a bad decision.
• 53:56
  And a lot of us, I say us, but a lot of, a lot of people are
• 54:01
  subject to that kind of scrutiny.
• 54:05
  And all I've tried to ever do is just approach it with a sense of
• 54:09
  love. And and being like, look man,
• 54:12
  I'm trying to tell you what to do.
• 54:14
  I just ask for the same thing. Yeah, exactly you know it's and
• 54:18
  I always say I've been very fortunate, my family is very
• 54:20
  supportive, that's great, I'll Christian but my dad is very
• 54:25
  curious now about our culture and our belief system and who
• 54:29
  you are, who we are. He wants to celebrate you all
• 54:31
  with me. You know, we have this place
• 54:33
  Balki Ranch here. In Texas.
• 54:35
  They celebrate it the old way. Giant bonfire music drinks.
• 54:39
  Everybody shows up when we celebrate you all together, you
• 54:42
  know and it's a he really wants to come and just see what it's
• 54:44
  like and experience it. And my family is very supportive
• 54:48
  about it. Friends have been very
• 54:49
  supportive about it and I grew up in the church, you know?
• 54:51
  I mean yeah. So it's like even all my church
• 54:54
  friends, you know, they're still my friends.
• 54:57
  Yeah, it's not like getting re thing.
• 54:59
  It's like I always say I've been so fortunate because again I
• 55:04
  approach it with Whenever I do have those instances like, oh
• 55:07
  man, but don't you believe in God?
• 55:09
  I'm like, well, I mean whatever. You know, kind of oh man, heck
• 55:15
  I've had that. So I've had like, where they'll
• 55:19
  say I don't know. It's like you don't believe in
• 55:23
  God anymore. Like, hold on a second.
• 55:25
  I never said, I didn't believe in God or you're an abrahamic.
• 55:29
  God, I never said, I didn't believe in all I ever approached
• 55:33
  it is that I don't adopt the doctrine that your abrahamic.
• 55:37
  God enforces, his followers of their followers to adhere to if
• 55:43
  I believe in the existence of my gods.
• 55:46
  Then I surely believe in the existence of any other gods,
• 55:49
  regardless of the culture or pan.
• 55:52
  Ian Wright. I believe that the Hindu gods
• 55:54
  exist. I believe that the, you know,
• 55:56
  Asiatic and other gods exist above a various cultures.
• 56:02
  So why wouldn't I accept the existence of said, God in what
• 56:07
  you want to follow her? Believe I never said that I
• 56:09
  didn't believe existed. I just said, I think his ideas
• 56:12
  are kind of whack in that the doctrine that it had you know,
• 56:15
  kind of goes along with that. Don't really aligned with with
• 56:19
  me and my you know views at the time and my views.
• 56:22
  Going forward so that's different.
• 56:24
  Oh curiosity and all on the same topic but a little bit off.
• 56:28
  What was the hardest part about going from Christian to Pagan?
• 56:32
  Because I know what mine was but I'm definitely curious what
• 56:34
  yours was. Mmm.
• 56:35
  That's a good question. so I think there's there's layers of
• 56:41
  difficulty that you have to deal with at different points in
• 56:44
  time, I think, I think the initial shock or the initial
• 56:49
  difficulty was Dealing with how my loved ones, my family, the
• 56:55
  time would react to it. Okay.
• 56:59
  You know, and it was like, I want to be true to what I feel.
• 57:02
  I don't want to be true to how this is Pulling in the dirt,
• 57:07
  like how I'm the direction I'm being pulled in?
• 57:09
  I want to be true that I want to answer that call.
• 57:12
  But then I got to deal with this backlash, right?
• 57:15
  You know, so that I think that was the most difficult thing.
• 57:18
  Because again I was I was facing ostracization being ostracized
• 57:23
  from the people who raised me who I had every bit of my life
• 57:29
  tied to in it and and and facing that possibility and ultimately
• 57:34
  the actuality of it facing that but remaining.
• 57:40
  Aesthetics and true to what I felt was right.
• 57:42
  For me, I think that for me was the most initial initiative, the
• 57:46
  most difficult part. That's not easy.
• 57:48
  Wow. See I never, I never had again,
• 57:51
  like I said, very fortunate, I haven't had that issue.
• 57:53
  But man, no, my my my biggest, my hardest transfer was getting
• 58:00
  over the fear of hell. That's a big one, the Eternal
• 58:05
  damnation, right? What I do?
• 58:07
  Now I'm going to be punished for later.
• 58:09
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, whoo.
• 58:11
  Yeah, I'm over it now but when I first, you know, switched over.
• 58:15
  I was like, man, but like don't want to burn forever and not now
• 58:19
  like So what did you what did you as a counter question,
• 58:23
  right? What did you what was the moment
• 58:25
  that gave you that Clarity of? Like, I don't need to worry
• 58:28
  about that anymore? What was the thing that kind of
• 58:32
  eased your mind or change your world?
• 58:34
  Because that is a definite worldview.
• 58:37
  Yeah, it was very hard. I guess it would have to be the
• 58:41
  fact that I mean, if I know me personally, if I no longer
• 58:47
  believed in that version of heaven, then that He'll could
• 58:51
  exist, you know, in my head. You know, like, I needed to get
• 58:54
  over that because because when I fully felt like this was true,
• 59:00
  my Pagan path when I felt connected to the earth when I
• 59:04
  started noticing my life changed.
• 59:05
  When my mental, when my mind shift changed and my life
• 59:08
  changed, and everything started flowing better than ever had.
• 59:12
  When I was, at least, me, personally, when out when I was
• 59:14
  first in, I was struggling all the time, you know, always
• 59:19
  begging for help, you know, and And now it's less begging more
• 59:22
  like. Alright let's get through this.
• 59:23
  Let's go. You know and yeah, man, it's go
• 59:25
  time. It's the doers like if you want
• 59:28
  change, be the change. Exactly, exactly.
• 59:31
  You know. And man, it was just, it was
• 59:35
  just when I fully stepped in. I'd say that was about a year
• 59:38
  and a half ago because I started my Pagan Journey about two years
• 59:41
  ago. That's when I started saying,
• 59:42
  you know what? I was even comfortable saying I
• 59:46
  was Pagan yet, but I believe system was a Christian anymore.
• 59:51
  So you know I was like what am I you know, like I'm gonna I'm
• 59:55
  gonna go out on a very, I'm going to go out on a limb
• 59:58
  because that's just what I do. And I'm going to say that your,
• 1:00:05
  your perception of Christianity Christian versus Pagan write
• 1:00:09
  that whole thing. It wasn't it wasn't such a on
• 1:00:13
  and off sort of thing. Matter of fact, I think there
• 1:00:17
  are still times and I in you don't have to Right wrong or
• 1:00:21
  indifferent. But at least for me like there
• 1:00:23
  are still times where you have shadows of questioning and
• 1:00:28
  shadows of maybe doubt. Doubt.
• 1:00:30
  Maybe a harsh word. There's there's going to be
• 1:00:33
  Echoes. Yeah.
• 1:00:35
  Memories of past because you were brought up in it, man.
• 1:00:38
  Like you can't just like, you can't just turn that shit off
• 1:00:41
  overnight. I couldn't.
• 1:00:43
  And I was born and raised in that for 20 some odd years.
• 1:00:46
  It's a I was again, like I said I was very fortunate because my
• 1:00:50
  dad, He's very adamant about me finding my own path.
• 1:00:54
  Hmm, well, that's good. He said, find something and run
• 1:00:58
  with it, but he says, while you're in my house we go to
• 1:01:01
  church together, you know. And it's like yeah acted that
• 1:01:05
  you know, I was part of the chapter one.
• 1:01:07
  And but after I grew up in, like I left the house, I started
• 1:01:12
  Living my own life. I was a man.
• 1:01:15
  I never wanted to do those things for myself, like I had to
• 1:01:20
  do those things. I go get Tory.
• 1:01:24
  Yeah. Yeah, you know, it wasn't like,
• 1:01:25
  I felt bad doing it. Me and my dad have a really
• 1:01:27
  strong connection. You know.
• 1:01:28
  I love my dad with all my heart. You know, me and him were very
• 1:01:31
  close, but it's just like I did that because he was really
• 1:01:36
  trying to get into his spiritual path because, you know, he's,
• 1:01:39
  he's always struggled with his health.
• 1:01:40
  So never knew when he was going to be gone, so he just wanted to
• 1:01:43
  be ready, you know? and I respected that and that's,
• 1:01:46
  you know, it's emotional for me but outside It wasn't really.
• 1:01:53
  Who I was, my morals weren't even fully Christian, you know,
• 1:01:57
  like they were very much what I'm noticing now, you know,
• 1:02:02
  pain. You know, it's just the earth I
• 1:02:04
  always felt a connection to the Earth, you know.
• 1:02:06
  But that was an idol when I was in my Christian path.
• 1:02:10
  You know. I was trying to use me the Earth
• 1:02:12
  doesn't hold any particular power and I was like, okay, you
• 1:02:16
  know, just you're right. You know, and yeah that's weird
• 1:02:20
  too, right? Because even in Christian
• 1:02:21
  doctrine there it talks about from the dust you came in from
• 1:02:24
  the dust. You shall return?
• 1:02:26
  Yeah. But don't worship it.
• 1:02:29
  Yeah, you know, because I'm a jealous God, you know, you know,
• 1:02:35
  again it goes, it's, you know, not to bash the, you know,
• 1:02:37
  different denominations, but it's just almost like, but
• 1:02:41
  that's why it didn't make sense to me.
• 1:02:42
  And that's why I was like, let's, let's I'm I need to move
• 1:02:44
  away from this because I'm getting mixed signals.
• 1:02:48
  Here. Yeah, you know, question before,
• 1:02:51
  I personally, I don't find myself questioning myself
• 1:02:55
  anymore and sometimes, and I do. I even ask myself, I say, do I
• 1:03:02
  believe in hell? Now, but literally I wait for
• 1:03:07
  myself to feel something, I listen to my body a lot, you
• 1:03:10
  know. And when I say it when I used to
• 1:03:13
  say that he's tense up a little bit, he's be a little scared,
• 1:03:17
  you know like oh maybe you know you know now it's not know do
• 1:03:24
  you think that it has to do with just as humans, right?
• 1:03:27
  Just as our We don't have any clear understanding of what
• 1:03:33
  happens in the afterlife. Do you think that feelings like
• 1:03:37
  that that apprehension that owed out whatever exists because of
• 1:03:41
  our constant desire to like, figure out what happens when we
• 1:03:47
  die? Sorry, yes.
• 1:03:54
  Yes, I truly think that is exactly it.
• 1:03:56
  We're just full of questions. Yeah, fact is like, none of us.
• 1:04:01
  At least, this is my perspective.
• 1:04:03
  None of us really know. We can feel like we truly know.
• 1:04:07
  We can feel like we feel like we know.
• 1:04:09
  But the thing is Do we, you know, or we adopt enough of a
• 1:04:15
  belief that gives us satisfaction to me.
• 1:04:18
  Like I don't know. But I'm comfortable with not
• 1:04:20
  knowing and what I do know is is my mind and I can sleep at night
• 1:04:24
  and it doesn't give me such crippling anxiety, that it keeps
• 1:04:27
  me awake and makes me live in fear me personally.
• 1:04:31
  I feel like I have no fear of the Judgment that I used to
• 1:04:35
  First be if you're afraid of now, I'm like worst-case
• 1:04:40
  scenario. I'm Born, you know what I mean?
• 1:04:43
  Like, that's kind of peel and it's like, really nothing a
• 1:04:47
  whore. It's just a, the next level of
• 1:04:51
  our Consciousness, we die. We go to the next part, you
• 1:04:53
  know, whatever it might be. And it's like man if anything
• 1:04:56
  I'm cool you know, right? Yeah.
• 1:04:59
  Oh man, I get to I get sites like this isn't even my final
• 1:05:02
  form. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:04
  Super saying now. Yeah.
• 1:05:07
  I mean, and that's so much of what I feel like, the and I
• 1:05:12
  guess, you know, in any culture in any religious views, any any
• 1:05:16
  any sort of spirituality, You can go down so many rabbit holes
• 1:05:21
  with the thoughts of life after death and what that actually
• 1:05:23
  means the really fun thing that I got into with this particular
• 1:05:28
  branch of paganism. Norse paganism is the the soul
• 1:05:31
  complex. It's not just you know the
• 1:05:35
  version of me that you're talking to her right now is just
• 1:05:37
  one aspect of my soul, the version of me that my tribe
• 1:05:41
  speaks to is a different version.
• 1:05:44
  The version of me that my wife encounters is a different
• 1:05:48
  version. Version.
• 1:05:49
  It's all part of me. You know, I mean, it's all part
• 1:05:52
  of me as a soul. There's, there's various
• 1:05:55
  elements in. These are various aspects of the
• 1:05:57
  social complex and we are Eternal beings.
• 1:06:00
  Yes. Oh yeah, you know, I mean like
• 1:06:02
  we're not just going to adjust that, and dye into the ground
• 1:06:05
  and that's it. This meat suit, will you know
• 1:06:09
  what I mean? Like that all everything that
• 1:06:11
  that my vistage and my likeness is, is gonna eventually rot and
• 1:06:17
  die and go away, but I Will never go away and that's when
• 1:06:21
  you get to that point when you realize that when you hit a
• 1:06:24
  point in your life where you think, and actually believe that
• 1:06:27
  I'm never going anywhere. That's something exactly.
• 1:06:31
  Because the thing is to my perspective is that our bodies
• 1:06:34
  are car. It's like if you think about it,
• 1:06:37
  literally, our spirit is driving this through the world.
• 1:06:40
  Hmm, whatever spirit. So the thing is like, we take
• 1:06:44
  care of it. Change the tires, you know, give
• 1:06:46
  good gasps, no, do some Bodywork, you know, whatever,
• 1:06:50
  getting a few wrecks along the way, you know, what to think
• 1:06:54
  that your spirit or Soul, or who you really are your essence,
• 1:06:58
  your energy. Is judged off 80 years of a
• 1:07:02
  vehicle's Drive. You know, I really pretty
• 1:07:06
  shallow some limiting. Yeah, very limiting.
• 1:07:10
  The thing is our, if we're Eternal, which I feel we are, I
• 1:07:15
  feel like and I feel it's true. For me, we are Eternal.
• 1:07:19
  Which means there's there's other levels this Human
• 1:07:21
  Experience is just one of them. You know what's next?
• 1:07:24
  Well, why do you have memories of things that you've never done
• 1:07:27
  before? Exactly.
• 1:07:29
  Yeah, people call it, Deja Vu, whatever.
• 1:07:32
  You know, why do we feel like we've been places or done
• 1:07:34
  things? Why are we good at things that
• 1:07:36
  we've never literally physically done in our conscious life?
• 1:07:40
  Suddenly, you know, how to do it?
• 1:07:41
  Yeah, so weird, it could be a fact of like, you know, how
• 1:07:45
  people say old souls, you know, I believe truly that a soul goes
• 1:07:50
  through until it reaches a certain level of Consciousness
• 1:07:53
  is it realizes what it is and then, then it could send, you
• 1:07:57
  know, Lack of better word, you know.
• 1:08:00
  So we can have those multiple lives and I don't believe time
• 1:08:03
  is linear. Now, you know after this life
• 1:08:06
  you can go back into say just for example, the Viking age, you
• 1:08:09
  know what I mean? Like, but you'll have the like a
• 1:08:12
  Consciousness maturity. Yeah.
• 1:08:15
  Well in the future, you know, or whatever, right.
• 1:08:18
  And I want to say and it's been so long since I've done any sort
• 1:08:21
  of like content about this. But I'm ever doing a video on
• 1:08:24
  time about like The Heathen world view of death.
• 1:08:29
  Yeah. And and where you go life after
• 1:08:32
  death. And I remember finding something
• 1:08:33
  and I can't cite the source. So I'm a bit reluctant to say,
• 1:08:37
  but I remember finding something that that strongly suggested and
• 1:08:41
  supported that Germanic peoples were, or at least various tribes
• 1:08:47
  in the regions. Had a sensor, an understanding
• 1:08:50
  of reincarnation It also supports the overall concept of
• 1:08:59
  or log or orally. The inherited luck that we get.
• 1:09:07
  It's our ancestors have fed into the.
• 1:09:10
  Well, we are feeding into the well because we will one day
• 1:09:12
  become ancestors and the cycle goes on and on and on, you know,
• 1:09:17
  there's enough I think content. There's enough, there's enough
• 1:09:20
  Source material out there that that That's what I'm saying that
• 1:09:23
  for listening for those that are listening and watching and stuff
• 1:09:26
  to do your own research on it. And that's what I always say.
• 1:09:29
  You know, don't take our word for it, don't take my word for
• 1:09:31
  it. Do your own research, find it
• 1:09:33
  for yourself, because that's where the work is our members.
• 1:09:36
  Don't just take somebody's where you go.
• 1:09:38
  Look, go, try go practice. You know, that's, that's one big
• 1:09:42
  thing for me is you can't just say something is not true unless
• 1:09:44
  you try it. That sounds how with everything
• 1:09:47
  but you know what I mean? Yeah, no, I absolutely it's you
• 1:09:50
  know, I don't know how old you are but I mean, your LeVar
• 1:09:54
  Burton Reading Rainbow. Oh yeah, don't.
• 1:09:58
  But you don't have to take my word for it.
• 1:09:59
  He said it at the end of everything, right?
• 1:10:01
  It's, you know, he's over here on TV, you know, 30 years ago,
• 1:10:05
  whatever it was, and it was, you know, telling us a certain
• 1:10:08
  thing. And then as kids he's always
• 1:10:09
  there to knowing, but you don't have to take my word for it.
• 1:10:12
  Yeah, that's what I'm saying, don't take our word for it and
• 1:10:14
  we have like, we were talking about earlier, you know?
• 1:10:16
  Like we're, we have a platform, we have multiple platforms.
• 1:10:19
  Some of us do, We're influencing people were giving, we're
• 1:10:23
  planting those seeds. We're giving people ideas and I
• 1:10:27
  don't know about you David, but have you seen followers that you
• 1:10:32
  have? You have an audience, right?
• 1:10:34
  You have people that know your face that know who you are.
• 1:10:36
  Maybe they're coming here now. Maybe they're seeing us together
• 1:10:39
  for the first time. But have you had people reach
• 1:10:41
  out to you in some form or fashion and go man, what you
• 1:10:44
  said, what you did? What you talked about inspired
• 1:10:47
  me to do x, y, z, or do certain things.
• 1:10:48
  Have you ever have? You had that sort of response
• 1:10:51
  from Community. A daily basis.
• 1:10:56
  So I'll get three or five messages, a bit about a day.
• 1:11:00
  You know, I have So currently in my message bank, I have maybe
• 1:11:04
  300 messages, I can't reply to anybody.
• 1:11:08
  Like I used to, I can't even, like, look at them like I used
• 1:11:11
  to, but I'll get a message to five messages a day of people
• 1:11:15
  saying thank you for what you're saying.
• 1:11:17
  Wow, you really let me to A New Path or and I've been curious
• 1:11:20
  about this forever. I Can't wait to learn more.
• 1:11:23
  It's cord is specifically built for people who are new or just
• 1:11:27
  looking to meet other pagans. And then we also have The Path
• 1:11:30
  of Knowledge server which is specifically for Norse Pagan a
• 1:11:35
  statue and he 3 you know, those type of belief systems and
• 1:11:39
  that's where you can go and learn like to practice you meet
• 1:11:42
  people have been doing it for 50.
• 1:11:43
  I have a few people have been doing it for about 50 years in
• 1:11:45
  there that are Educators and this is where you come.
• 1:11:49
  You can even learn the languages we have.
• 1:11:51
  Lambdak agents, we did like, you know, we have some old Norse
• 1:11:55
  teachings that we can do. I'm not in there, I'm still
• 1:11:57
  learning but I brought Educators and other than practicing since
• 1:12:01
  they were Yeah, like their whole lives.
• 1:12:04
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that's tremendous
• 1:12:08
  not like, I'm still practicing still learning still
• 1:12:11
  experimenting, they've been doing this their whole life, you
• 1:12:15
  know, so they would probably know a little bit better, you
• 1:12:17
  know. Yeah.
• 1:12:20
  And I feel like maybe they would probably be the ones to say to
• 1:12:22
  like they're still practicing. It's almost like that's why like
• 1:12:26
  when you talk about certain doctorate Fields, you know, it's
• 1:12:34
  a practice and I thought I always thought that was a really
• 1:12:37
  interesting way of describing it.
• 1:12:39
  I've been practicing law, I've been practicing medicine for 30,
• 1:12:42
  40, 50 years, 20, however, long like damn dude.
• 1:12:45
  Like when are you going to be done?
• 1:12:46
  Practicing, it's never ends. Always practice.
• 1:12:50
  You're always a student. Always learning.
• 1:12:54
  You know, it's never Perfection. Practice doesn't make perfect.
• 1:12:57
  Practice makes Improvement. Hmm.
• 1:13:00
  Yeah. That's gonna happen.
• 1:13:04
  No, I like that you know? Because I mean here coming up on
• 1:13:07
  like I say, you know 77 yeah. Go about seven years.
• 1:13:12
  I think I'm entering my seventh year and it's hard to like again
• 1:13:16
  pinpoint like timelines of things but if I were to put a
• 1:13:18
  timeline on things, I'm in my seventh year of a being, a
• 1:13:22
  practicing Pagan and I was talking to a guy who I have been
• 1:13:28
  friends with and have been friends with for years.
• 1:13:31
  And when I first started, you know, he was A decade or more
• 1:13:36
  into his practices and and I was new and he's been kind of
• 1:13:40
  following along with me and that's cool being there as like,
• 1:13:45
  not like it, like directly tied, but just like a witness and kind
• 1:13:48
  of thing. He's like, man, I remember
• 1:13:50
  having him on this podcast, I think it was earlier this season
• 1:13:52
  or maybe last season, I have to look back at my catalog to see
• 1:13:55
  if it was season 2 or 3 but I had him on the podcast and he's
• 1:13:59
  like, dude you're kind of getting to that point now where
• 1:14:01
  you're the teacher, That you're getting into that realm of being
• 1:14:06
  a source that people look to as reliability, and that carries
• 1:14:12
  with it a huge responsibility. You know, you can't just be
• 1:14:15
  like, I read a book or two and and I know what I know and
• 1:14:19
  that's, you know, I think what a lot of content creators that are
• 1:14:24
  pagan, get into a trap of, is, I read the Hall of them all.
• 1:14:27
  Once I read the poetic Edda, or I read this book and all of a
• 1:14:30
  sudden I'm an expert on the subject.
• 1:14:31
  It's such. Such a problem to like just
• 1:14:36
  because you read the book just because you had a ritual just
• 1:14:38
  because you you know, bought your first Rune set and you read
• 1:14:41
  a book by, you know, edge with Orson, or whoever, you know what
• 1:14:45
  I mean. Like you're not the expert and
• 1:14:47
  you have no business being that voice in the community.
• 1:14:50
  Not to say that you can't someday be, but just at least if
• 1:14:54
  you're going to be a voice, like preface it by saying, like hey
• 1:14:57
  guys, I'm on my journey, I'm learning and share the
• 1:15:00
  knowledge. It's don't try to position
• 1:15:02
  yourself as a Eating. Part of it and I never did.
• 1:15:06
  Like I've never been like the one like, hey guys, listen to
• 1:15:08
  me. Matter of fact I've always said
• 1:15:10
  in my videos is like Kind of, like the whole of our burnt.
• 1:15:13
  Think, don't take my word for it, but here's where I'm at.
• 1:15:16
  Here's what I've found Now, find it for yourself.
• 1:15:19
  That's, that's what I, that's exactly what I do.
• 1:15:21
  So, so if you look at my page, you'll see a lot of very there's
• 1:15:26
  a lot of informational posts about paganism but they're if
• 1:15:29
  you watch them, they're very basic.
• 1:15:31
  Because what I can do is I can help people start because I've
• 1:15:37
  started and I have my practices and what what helped me get into
• 1:15:41
  it? Why?
• 1:15:43
  But I can't teach you like, you know, the the next level.
• 1:15:48
  So, you know, I can't teach you what I haven't learned, you
• 1:15:51
  know, I'm still figuring it all out and that's why I have the
• 1:15:54
  Discord setup and in my videos, wherever we're whatever, I'm
• 1:15:59
  educating, you'll see that I'll be like, hey, but for more
• 1:16:01
  information for deeper knowledge, or for Better
• 1:16:04
  Community refer to my Discord because I have real Educators on
• 1:16:08
  there who have been doing it me, I'm still learning.
• 1:16:11
  I'm still practicing. We're also practicing but it's
• 1:16:13
  just like I'm new. So I'm going to teach you what
• 1:16:16
  is work for me so far, you know? And then I do go to council, not
• 1:16:23
  that counseling but I counseled with people who are
• 1:16:25
  knowledgeable and I asked him like a man, what would be a good
• 1:16:28
  Next Step? What should I start looking
• 1:16:30
  into? What should I start learning?
• 1:16:32
  You know my big focus at the moment is runes.
• 1:16:36
  I really want to understand their their powers, you know,
• 1:16:40
  there there there You know what they mean?
• 1:16:44
  I made my own room sets. You noticed, I heard that gives
• 1:16:47
  you a little bit of a better connection to them and you know,
• 1:16:49
  I just want to practice I want to go all-in into it so that I
• 1:16:55
  can tell people. This works.
• 1:16:58
  This doesn't this works. This like for me, like I tried
• 1:17:01
  that personally didn't work for me but you can try it if you
• 1:17:03
  want, you know, I tried this and it worked, I felt this.
• 1:17:07
  I encourage you try it, you know?
• 1:17:09
  And that that's kind of how I like to teach.
• 1:17:11
  That's how I like to educate people on my path.
• 1:17:16
  Yeah, the runes are. I mean we could go, we could we
• 1:17:20
  could we could go on a whole episode of just that.
• 1:17:23
  I've got much of the I've gotten into runic studies and I'm still
• 1:17:27
  a student of the runes and have been and it wasn't it was by I
• 1:17:31
  wouldn't say it was by accident, but it was it was not of any
• 1:17:34
  sort of like conscious effort. Like I didn't wake up one day.
• 1:17:36
  Well, I take that back. I was woken up one day.
• 1:17:44
  And given the the rhinology, the study rooms to become Vicki,
• 1:17:50
  right? That that was, that was
• 1:17:51
  something that was I was literally woken up from a deep
• 1:17:53
  sleep to do that. It wasn't anything that I just
• 1:17:56
  consciously said, oh it's a Tuesday, I better start.
• 1:17:58
  And I've been a pagan for a year or two years, however, long.
• 1:18:01
  I better start learning the rooms one like that and that's
• 1:18:04
  what I've always told. People is like, you don't, you
• 1:18:06
  don't need that to be a good Pagan, right?
• 1:18:09
  Like quote-unquote. You don't need that to be a
• 1:18:13
  good. Practicing Heathen.
• 1:18:14
  Like that's kind of it's almost like when you know if you want
• 1:18:19
  your house built you're going to go to a carpenter if you want
• 1:18:21
  your plumbing done, right? You're going to go to a plumber,
• 1:18:24
  you're going to go to the specialist, that knows the thing
• 1:18:26
  about whatever it is to do and if that's not you and you don't
• 1:18:30
  even ready to learn it, then there's no reason that you
• 1:18:32
  should feel obligated to learn it exactly inspired and push to
• 1:18:36
  want to do it or if it's been given to you.
• 1:18:38
  And some sort of way to pursue it, then by all means,
• 1:18:43
  definitely dive And that's kind of where I fell in.
• 1:18:45
  It, was it, you know, I didn't decide it for myself.
• 1:18:49
  It was it was literally a crack like a lightning bolt.
• 1:18:52
  That just said time for you to go that route.
• 1:18:55
  That's okay, that's cool. But yeah, yeah, I feel like we
• 1:19:01
  could probably go on forever on this and and with consideration
• 1:19:04
  of time and listeners and viewers and stuff, I'm Probably
• 1:19:08
  going to tie this off right here, right now, if that's cool
• 1:19:12
  with you, because there's a lot to digest just from this
• 1:19:15
  episode, like we touched on a lot of different things.
• 1:19:17
  I think a lot of people that are maybe interested in considering
• 1:19:21
  being a content creator or an influencer on social media in
• 1:19:26
  the vein of paganism, have some things to really think about
• 1:19:28
  yeah? Yeah, better insight and thanks
• 1:19:31
  to you. Obviously, you have some
• 1:19:32
  experience because you went from you know, a day-to-day job Ali
• 1:19:37
  to being a full-time content creator.
• 1:19:41
  Yeah. And that's my goal is just to
• 1:19:42
  teach people what I've done so far.
• 1:19:45
  I'm still learning a lot, but I want people to be able to live
• 1:19:49
  their dreams, you know. And I can honestly say since
• 1:19:52
  I've hopped in the Pagan past my dreams has started coming true
• 1:19:55
  constantly and it's crazy and it's totally a yeah, sorry good.
• 1:20:01
  No, no. I was gonna say it's totally
• 1:20:02
  possible for anybody anytime. Just, the only limit is you and
• 1:20:06
  we know that You know, and especially the taking past and I
• 1:20:10
  just don't get in your own way. Keeping phone and let it guide
• 1:20:13
  you. That's the cool part and and be
• 1:20:16
  inspired and then do what's good for you.
• 1:20:19
  So I definitely appreciate your willingness to come on here and
• 1:20:23
  talk for as long as we did hang out for.
• 1:20:26
  Yeah. Definitely hang out for a bit
• 1:20:28
  when I when I sign everybody off here so we can talk a little bit
• 1:20:32
  but for everybody that is still here and listening watching
• 1:20:36
  whatever The links for David his channel, his Tick-Tock
• 1:20:42
  Instagram. It's going to be annotated in
• 1:20:44
  the show notes of the podcast, and it's going to be down in the
• 1:20:47
  description of this video. So please be sure to give him a
• 1:20:51
  follow, like, subscribe, whatever the platform is that
• 1:20:56
  calls for you to show your support of him.
• 1:20:59
  Definitely do so, yeah. So anything else, David before I
• 1:21:03
  sign everybody off, is there any parting words that you want to
• 1:21:06
  leave for? Listeners and viewers today.
• 1:21:09
  Yeah, there's something specifically, I say I try to see
• 1:21:14
  every day, it's my audience to everybody that's around, is I
• 1:21:17
  just want to remind you if nobody has said it to you in a
• 1:21:19
  while or nobody said it out loud, you are worthy.
• 1:21:22
  You are enough and you are loved, no matter what anybody
• 1:21:25
  says. And I want you to, I want
• 1:21:28
  anybody who's here. If you go with anything, just go
• 1:21:30
  away knowing those three things please.
• 1:21:33
  Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's and that's what we
• 1:21:36
  all need to hear. You know, don't don't.
• 1:21:38
  Don't let the naysayers discourage you from following
• 1:21:41
  what you feel is right, cool. So for everybody here, thank you
• 1:21:46
  so much for your support. Don't forget to check the
• 1:21:48
  description show notes for the all the ways that you can
• 1:21:51
  support this podcast and midgard.
• 1:21:53
  Musings as a whole, the lid, the link tree link is always down
• 1:21:56
  there for you to check out. So definitely do so and until we
• 1:22:00
  talk again, At the gods. Continue to notice you and your
• 1:22:04
  ancestors smile upon you. That's awesome.