Latest / Random Heathen Ramblings / Random Heathen Ramblings: S4, EP28 - Bringing The Past Into The Present (feat. Scott Shell)

Transcript

Random Heathen Ramblings: S4, EP28 - Bringing The Past Into The Present (feat. Scott Shell) · Random Heathen Ramblings

• 0:00
  Hello everyone, and welcome to the Random Heathen Ramblings
• 0:03
  podcast, where we discuss all sorts of things Germanic
• 0:06
  Heathenry related. My name is Jesse.
• 0:09
  I am your host. Let's get into it.
• 0:32
  All right, everyone Hale and welcome back to another episode
• 0:35
  of the Random Heat and Ramblings Podcast.
• 0:38
  Thank you so much for joining me and our guest today here, who I
• 0:41
  will be introducing and bringing on here in just a moment.
• 0:45
  But before we get into our guests for today and the topic
• 0:48
  of today's episode, I do just wanna remind everybody that
• 0:52
  while you're here, if you haven't yet, please follow me on
• 0:55
  all my socials. Follow the podcast of course,
• 0:57
  there's no real social media for the podcast per se.
• 1:02
  There's the Mid Guard Musics Facebook page, Twitter,
• 1:04
  Instagram. You can subscribe to me on
• 1:06
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• 1:09
  Follow me on your podcast streaming platform of choice on
• 1:12
  Spotify, Apple, Google Podcast, Pandora, iHeartRadio, the list
• 1:17
  goes on and on. So wherever it is that you're
• 1:19
  capturing your podcast, please be sure to give me a follow.
• 1:24
  Give me a like, subscribe the whole bit.
• 1:27
  Hope you're all doing well. Hope you guys are enjoying this
• 1:30
  oppressive heat. If you're the summer type person
• 1:34
  like my sister, she is a lover of the summer and but I am not.
• 1:40
  And so if you're that, I hope that all of this hot weather
• 1:44
  that we're getting is it's something that you're able to
• 1:46
  enjoy, Yeah, we've got a really cool guest lined up for us
• 1:53
  today. I've been sharing about this and
• 1:55
  he's actually been sharing it on his social media, Facebook
• 1:59
  mainly and YouTube. So he is a doctor of all things,
• 2:08
  and a doctor of Germanic linguistics.
• 2:11
  So I'm going to be bringing in here in just a moment, Dr. Scott
• 2:15
  Shell. You might recognize him from his
• 2:19
  YouTube channel Germanic Germanic Evenry, an academic
• 2:25
  kind of channel where he goes over the linguistics side of
• 2:28
  things, mainly Germanic languages like Old Saxon, Old
• 2:34
  High German, proto, some proto, Germanic stuff.
• 2:39
  But he is not not just an academic in in Heathenry he is a
• 2:45
  practicing heathen. He is someone who we're going to
• 2:49
  be finding out today is a Saxon heathen.
• 2:54
  You know his his his angle of Heathenry is is the the lower
• 2:58
  continental European version of of of Heathenry.
• 3:03
  Whereas some other folks that you're that I've had that I've
• 3:07
  had on the show take a more of a Scandinavian approach which is
• 3:13
  kind of where the southern Germanic tribes and stuff they
• 3:17
  all move N eventually. So that's where we see things
• 3:20
  happening in the far north. But Scott is a dramatic heathen
• 3:26
  of the Saxon variety, so it's gonna be really interesting to
• 3:30
  get him on here and talk a bit about the linguistic side of
• 3:37
  things. We want to really get into some
• 3:38
  of Scott's thoughts on the pros and cons.
• 3:42
  Pros meaning like the not the pros is in the pros ETA but
• 3:45
  that's a kind of a neat play on words there.
• 3:48
  But the pros and cons of academic evenry in modern times,
• 3:53
  you know, and how we might need to consider things that we know
• 3:58
  of from the past and how it kind of shapes things going on here
• 4:03
  in the future or not in the future but here in the present.
• 4:07
  So looking forward to it's going to be fun.
• 4:09
  I think it's going to be an exciting exciting episode.
• 4:12
  So we're going to be bringing him on here in just a moment
• 4:15
  waiting for him to join our our stream or not our stream but our
• 4:21
  our platform you. So yeah, we got a filibuster.
• 4:26
  You guys Remember Me saying that on some of the shows.
• 4:28
  That's when we got to fill in the blanks.
• 4:30
  We got to fill in the spots and you know, really just just have
• 4:45
  fun with it. So while we're waiting for him
• 4:48
  to come in and talk a bit, I guess we'll just take a short
• 4:56
  commercial break. We'll hear a word from our our
• 5:01
  sponsors, so let's welcome in Scott Shell, Dr. Scott Shell,
• 5:10
  Germanic Heathen and also a Doctor of Germanic Linguistics.
• 5:17
  So let's welcome him into the show now.
• 5:21
  Hey, Jess, how are you? Hey, Hey.
• 5:23
  Welcome to the show, Scott. I'm good.
• 5:25
  How are you Sir? Yeah.
• 5:26
  No, I'm doing pretty well. Thanks for having me.
• 5:30
  Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having the time to
• 5:32
  come on here and and speak with us today.
• 5:35
  Yeah, no, it's it's a great platform to speak on too.
• 5:39
  You know, I know your your channel.
• 5:41
  I really appreciate the content that you're pushing out.
• 5:45
  You could also including everyone else can just call me
• 5:47
  Scott. I've sort of left that doctor
• 5:49
  title at the door. I'll, I'll sell it to anybody
• 5:52
  for 5 bucks actually. That's how I feel about academia
• 5:56
  right now, at least in my field. Oh yeah, definitely.
• 6:03
  You think You think the doctor thing just kind of carries a bit
• 6:05
  more of a pretentious air about it and and people might think
• 6:09
  someone way or the other. Well, it does.
• 6:11
  For some people, I mean, not for everybody.
• 6:13
  Of course I don't. You know, I I don't there.
• 6:16
  Oh my God. I've met so many people who are
• 6:18
  in my field, of course, who are pretentious.
• 6:20
  But of course I've also, I've met a couple people here and
• 6:23
  there who aren't so pretentious. I've never really.
• 6:27
  But that's not really what I'm saying.
• 6:28
  It's just that I. Although my history is in
• 6:31
  academia, I've worked in academia.
• 6:35
  I'm working at a university right now, but I'm not actually
• 6:37
  working as an academic. And the reason why is because
• 6:42
  there aren't very many jobs for us out there.
• 6:44
  And not only that, but I don't want to deal with a lot of the
• 6:48
  politics and whatnot. And that's kind of like why I'm
• 6:51
  here too, right? To talk about the academic stuff
• 6:54
  versus the the practitioner and. It's nice.
• 6:58
  So I work at a university, I'm just doing administration work.
• 7:02
  I still do publications, so I'm still an active academic.
• 7:04
  It's just that I don't work in academia.
• 7:08
  So anyway, all that being said, I I'm just, I'm closer.
• 7:13
  I guess I relate more closer to the average person than I do to
• 7:18
  your typical academic, because you know a little bit about me
• 7:23
  and my background, for example. I am the first person in my
• 7:27
  family, my immediate family, to have graduated from high school.
• 7:32
  OK, so so I I graduated from high school and then I went on,
• 7:37
  you know, and I got my bachelor's degree in German.
• 7:41
  And then I went on and got my MA and linguistics and then finally
• 7:44
  APHD in in dramatic linguistics. So I come from a background
• 7:48
  where you know. We were blue collar workers.
• 7:52
  I mean, you know, I saw my own mother change her own
• 7:55
  transmission on a Camaro, for example.
• 7:58
  So it's it's weird, right, for me because I'm not part of that
• 8:02
  pretentious world and I never really wanted to be a part of
• 8:07
  that pretentious world because I want to just kind of remember my
• 8:10
  roots and where I came from. So anyway, but yeah, I I'm still
• 8:15
  an academic in the sense that I do publications.
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  I just had a book released. Earlier this year that was based
• 8:21
  on my dissertation. It's called the application of
• 8:24
  Persing semiotics to the Elder Futar tradition.
• 8:27
  Of course it is an an academic work, but that's that's pretty
• 8:32
  much my background. You know, all kinds of, I've
• 8:35
  studied all kinds of languages. I'm more of a historical
• 8:38
  linguist. So especially in Old High
• 8:41
  German, Old Saxon and Gothic. In fact today I was just in a
• 8:46
  class. I'm teaching two classes, 1 is
• 8:48
  old Sax and then the other one's Gothic.
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  I'm doing it for free, you know, So that's that's what I'm
• 8:53
  saying. And actually it's it's more or
• 8:54
  less, especially the old Saxon one.
• 8:56
  It's more or less just for people like like you and me,
• 8:59
  just normal people. And so I'm still super engaged
• 9:02
  with all that. It's just that I can leave the
• 9:04
  academic stuff and all the politics that come up associated
• 9:07
  with it, you know, imaginary tenure and all that stuff and
• 9:11
  just throw it out the window and do my own thing the way I want
• 9:15
  to do it and then just go to work.
• 9:17
  So. You know, are you, are you
• 9:20
  teaching this, these language classes to like, do you have
• 9:23
  folks who come in that are Pagan as well even?
• 9:27
  Yeah, yeah. In fact that that was the
• 9:29
  target. Really.
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  Because I'm trying to educate the community properly.
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  You know, like I said, you before, politics check them at
• 9:39
  the door. Don't care.
• 9:40
  Left, right, whatever. Come there to teach, right?
• 9:43
  I come there to teach, you come there to learn, and we're going
• 9:45
  to just talk about linguistics and grammar and stuff like that.
• 9:47
  And so I when I reach out to these people in the heathen
• 9:50
  community, I let them know upfront, like when you come
• 9:54
  here, we're just going to be talking about linguistics, you
• 9:57
  know, or, you know, whatever that's related.
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  So but yeah, it is mostly the heathen community.
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  I did reach out to some people, like in the old city community
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  and then like the community. What was it like the Continental
• 10:10
  Dramatic Facebook group at one point?
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  And then, you know, I had them write an application and it was
• 10:17
  more or less just to see who was serious.
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  And then, yeah, yeah, everybody got in.
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  Who wrote an application? I just wanted to.
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  I know that little extra step would probably weed out people
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  who weren't so interested. Yeah.
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  Or maybe they've had interest in, you know, ulterior motives
• 10:35
  or. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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  Things that don't really line up with what you're you're trying
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  to do. And I think that you know having
• 10:40
  people out here like yourself who taking A and I wanted to
• 10:44
  talk a little bit about that you just briefly with you about you
• 10:47
  know your background where you came from versus where you kind
• 10:50
  of landed. It seems to me like and probably
• 10:53
  people listening like well that's a that's a huge like
• 10:57
  let's just jump off the exit and and drive in places we've never
• 11:01
  been before Like again hearing about your background that kind
• 11:03
  of middle class blue collar background.
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  You know the first graduate of high school in your family and
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  and and what drove you or what what kind of put you in that on
• 11:13
  that path to a higher learning or academia.
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  Well, I moved out. So the thing was, is I didn't.
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  I grew up more or less, actually, actually, really in
• 11:23
  like lower class. I grew up in Detroit and in the
• 11:26
  city of Detroit and everything around there that I was seeing,
• 11:31
  I didn't really want to be a part of.
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  And you know, whether it was all the drugs and the gangs and
• 11:36
  stuff like that, which it's funny because people don't
• 11:38
  really associate that with me at all.
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  But that's so. But that was my big motivator
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  and all the close people that I knew back then, whether they
• 11:50
  were relatives or close friends like ended up losing them to
• 11:53
  those things. And I just, I said I didn't want
• 11:57
  to be a part of any of that. So I moved out when I was 15
• 12:00
  years old and I started paying rent and stuff like that.
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  And I had met someone who was a a Marine, and he kicked my ass.
• 12:09
  And he kind of basically was like, you know what, You know,
• 12:13
  because he went to like Lawrence Tech I think in Michigan for a
• 12:15
  bit. And he's like, I'll show you how
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  to do this, but it's going to require a lot of work.
• 12:19
  And so I just had, luckily I had some guidance from him and I
• 12:23
  just kept going. I think I I sort of defaulted to
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  want to keep going too, just because it kept me away.
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  Again, away from that community and away from thinking about
• 12:35
  those things and just focused on just learning.
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  And you know, and it was a distraction, but at the same
• 12:41
  time, of course, I wanted to really learn these things.
• 12:44
  And now, were you heathen at the time?
• 12:48
  Like, have you been heathen? Story I can talk about that for
• 12:50
  a minute. So like I was first introduced
• 12:53
  really to Heathenry when I was about 12 years old.
• 12:56
  And I'm old now. I'm 38, so I'm 12 years old and.
• 13:03
  I did practice back then too, even when I was a young teenager
• 13:07
  and everything. And then when I moved in with
• 13:09
  this guy, he sort of convinced me that it was all just trash.
• 13:13
  And he was very, very materialistic and you know,
• 13:16
  Marine, like I said, you know, And so I kind of threw it out
• 13:18
  the window. And then And then finally, I
• 13:23
  kind of came back to studying German and studying Germanic
• 13:28
  linguistics, and then I started to look into.
• 13:33
  Kind of like the the 19th century sort of dramatic ways of
• 13:37
  thinking about rooms and philosophy and stuff like that.
• 13:40
  And ironically enough I pursued that in a class that was on the
• 13:44
  Holocaust. So it.
• 13:47
  And so it's really interesting because I guess it shows you too
• 13:50
  that my instructor, she was Jewish too but she like there
• 13:54
  were no suspicions or anything like, oh, why is this white guy
• 13:57
  wanting to know about all these things?
• 13:59
  It was just purely like. Wow, this is weird and
• 14:01
  interesting. And I remember looking at these
• 14:03
  symbols when I was like 12 years old.
• 14:05
  Can I pursue this thing, you know?
• 14:07
  She said. Yeah, go ahead.
• 14:08
  So anyway, I found out that there was a Theosophical Society
• 14:11
  down the road from me, and as you know, maybe you don't, or
• 14:14
  maybe your viewers don't know. The Theosophical Society was
• 14:17
  very prevalent back then when I was studying about the rooms in
• 14:20
  like the 19th century, late 19th century.
• 14:23
  And so I went to the Theosophical Society.
• 14:26
  They said, no, you're not crazy. You can totally believe in these
• 14:29
  things and you can totally practice these things.
• 14:31
  And we're here to support you. And I was like, oh, all right.
• 14:35
  And so I just kind of hit the ground running.
• 14:37
  And I've been running ever since, you know, with these
• 14:40
  ideas. And yeah, so then I got into the
• 14:44
  Theosophical Society. I'm not a theosophist anymore.
• 14:47
  I used to be. And then?
• 14:48
  But basically, what the Theosophical Society helped me
• 14:51
  do is sort of figure out who I am as an end of what I'm
• 14:54
  supposed to do and what my interests are and what my goals
• 14:56
  are. So yeah, So then I just went on
• 15:01
  Long story short to pursue linguistics and then pursue
• 15:05
  dramatic linguistics. And then when I met my advisor,
• 15:08
  I wasn't even studying runes or anything.
• 15:10
  But she could tell that, you know, when we would talk about
• 15:13
  runic inscriptions, I would get super, like, fired up and
• 15:16
  everything. And she's like.
• 15:17
  Why are you not pursuing this? You know why are you not
• 15:19
  specializing in this? And I said, well I was told that
• 15:23
  that this was over researched and she just laughed and she
• 15:26
  goes absolutely not she's like please just just keep doing your
• 15:30
  thing. And so that's the long story
• 15:32
  actually short to where I sort of took off with that And so I'm
• 15:37
  like I felt like invincible. I'm like, I got my because I had
• 15:40
  my advisor behind me. So my advisor is also very old
• 15:47
  school. Her name was Erman Gard Rauch,
• 15:49
  which is a very Germanic name. But she was very old school, you
• 15:55
  know, in the sense that she didn't bring politics in
• 16:00
  anything. She didn't want to know your
• 16:01
  politics, she didn't want to know your religion.
• 16:03
  She didn't want to know any of that stuff.
• 16:04
  That's kind of where it what rubbed off on me, too, because I
• 16:06
  don't want to know any of that stuff.
• 16:07
  I just want to teach, you know? And so, yeah, I mean that that's
• 16:12
  kind of. You know how I got into all
• 16:15
  this? But to answer your question,
• 16:17
  started when I was 12 and I just haven't stopped.
• 16:21
  I've been able to develop certain things.
• 16:23
  You know, of course reading books by like DJ Conway when I'm
• 16:26
  12 years old, that might have been good for a 12 year old.
• 16:29
  But yeah, so the linguistics man like that's a very like the the
• 16:34
  focus on linguistics, your specialty, your area of
• 16:38
  expertise is, is linguistics. There are other people in the
• 16:42
  healing community who take an academic approach with on the
• 16:47
  focus of like anthropology or on digging things up and finding
• 16:54
  relics and stuff. Have you ever gotten into that?
• 16:58
  Yeah, really would never. Yeah, because okay.
• 17:01
  So runology is So I'm a runologist and I'm a runer.
• 17:08
  So it's there are two different things.
• 17:10
  You know, I say runologist because that's the academic term
• 17:13
  for looking at running conscriptions, you know, and
• 17:15
  analyzing them. And then I'm a runer, which is a
• 17:18
  term that my organization uses for me practicing.
• 17:21
  And so I runology is an interdisciplinary field.
• 17:25
  So it has to take, it has to take in, you know, this sort of
• 17:31
  like approach, a holistic interpretation, a holistic
• 17:34
  approach. You need to look at the
• 17:36
  archaeology. That will help inform you, will
• 17:40
  will help you inform you, sort of give an interpretation for an
• 17:43
  inscription. So yes, I've looked at the
• 17:44
  archaeology, I've looked at maybe some of the surrounding
• 17:48
  folklore even, right. Those are things that people
• 17:52
  need to look into for runic interpretation.
• 17:54
  The problem is though, is that we came from this sort of like
• 17:58
  American structuralist perspective.
• 18:01
  What that really means is that these American structuralists.
• 18:05
  Long story short, just like to focus on the phenology and the
• 18:08
  sounds and give you an interpretation.
• 18:12
  As you know, that can be problematic because they aren't
• 18:14
  taking into consideration. For example, was this written on
• 18:16
  bone? To them bone, or written on wood
• 18:21
  or written in stone are all the same thing from an operative
• 18:24
  perspective, it sure as hell isn't right.
• 18:27
  So. But those American
• 18:30
  structuralists didn't care about those things.
• 18:32
  They only wanted to analyze the language and so.
• 18:35
  I, on the other hand, and many other runologists now, are
• 18:39
  starting to try to take into consideration the entire
• 18:42
  context. In which case can be difficult
• 18:44
  because you can't be a specialist in everything you
• 18:48
  know. Yeah.
• 18:50
  Have you run into areas of or have you run into situations
• 18:55
  where people try to be the master of all when it comes to
• 18:58
  this, like taking it all and being that specialist on on all
• 19:02
  fronts and no. In fact, I see the opposite.
• 19:05
  Usually it's yeah, these people who are just like, no, I'm only
• 19:09
  a specialist in like, I was just saying phonology, which is just
• 19:13
  the study of sounds for people who don't know.
• 19:15
  And they're almost afraid to go outside of that box to look at
• 19:19
  the other things to give a sort of holistic interpretation.
• 19:23
  That's really the the usual situation.
• 19:28
  Yeah. I like that runology and and and
• 19:32
  being a runer you know like that that that that almost sounds to
• 19:35
  me like you know the the the metaphysical side of it maybe or
• 19:40
  or understanding like you say you know the difference between
• 19:43
  you know runes that were painted versus carved or or what they
• 19:47
  were carved on And and it almost makes me call to attention that
• 19:51
  that infamous stanza in the in the hovemol do you know how to
• 19:58
  all these things do you know how to paint do.
• 19:59
  You know how to write or carve, yeah.
• 20:03
  And why was it said that way? I think it's more on that side
• 20:07
  of the spectrum like it's not so.
• 20:09
  Much, Yeah. No, that's actually a really
• 20:10
  good example of saying like all of those things, sorry from sort
• 20:14
  of regurgitating what you are saying, but like all those
• 20:16
  things need to be taken into consideration when it comes to
• 20:18
  interpretation. Now with your focus on the runes
• 20:24
  and where you've landed on with that, I've been asked a lot of
• 20:28
  times from people like I get messages all the time like hey,
• 20:33
  I'm starting this business or I'm starting this venture and I
• 20:36
  wanna put this into runes. Can you give me some
• 20:41
  suggestions? And my whole thing is, well
• 20:43
  first of all which runes? I mean because we've got the
• 20:47
  elder Footh Ark, you've got the the younger Footh Ark, you've
• 20:49
  got the the Anglo-Saxon rooms. You've got medieval rooms,
• 20:52
  you've got all, you know first of all what are we talking
• 20:54
  about? Secondly are you just trying to
• 20:58
  transliterate like are you using like the name of your business
• 21:01
  and and like phonetically sounding out the name or are you
• 21:05
  trying to impart some sort of for lack of a better term, I
• 21:08
  guess magic into the into the the brand or or something like
• 21:13
  that. You know like so I guess this is
• 21:18
  kind of focusing more about like the the the practice, the the
• 21:22
  practitioner side of the rooms versus the academic side of the
• 21:24
  rooms. And then do you think that you
• 21:26
  need to have at least a base understanding of the academic
• 21:31
  side of things before you can really fully capture the the the
• 21:35
  essence of the the the practitioner or the mystical
• 21:37
  side of of the rooms? For me, yeah.
• 21:42
  For me, definitely. So, like, my approach is like
• 21:45
  5050. It's like in in the academic
• 21:49
  world, it's all objective argumentation, OK?
• 21:52
  And this sort of like subjective world without any academic
• 21:58
  foundation or objective foundation.
• 22:00
  However you want to put that, you get off in a crazy land.
• 22:03
  So I think a nice balance is appropriate for somebody who's a
• 22:07
  practitioner to. Research.
• 22:10
  Here's the thing to research it but don't be a slave to the
• 22:15
  history in a weird that that sounded really strange but I did
• 22:19
  not mean. But don't be like, yeah, it's
• 22:24
  like don't be sort of married to that.
• 22:27
  I guess you could say don't be married to the don't be so root
• 22:32
  bound. What's that like?
• 22:34
  Don't be so root bound. Yeah, exactly.
• 22:37
  But but know your stuff, you know, of course.
• 22:40
  But what I'm trying to say is that if if it's all objective
• 22:44
  and it's all objective argumentation, really you're
• 22:46
  just being an amateur academic. That's really all it is.
• 22:51
  And I only say amateur because it's the truth.
• 22:55
  I mean, look at somebody like my advisor, for example, who's an
• 22:57
  actual academic, 80 years old, and she's been doing this since
• 23:02
  who knows when. You know that's like a
• 23:03
  professional academic. So for somebody to just come
• 23:05
  along and read a few books, you know, you're really just being
• 23:07
  an amateur academic. So.
• 23:10
  But I'm trying to say so as practitioners kind of live in
• 23:15
  both worlds, test things out. Does this work?
• 23:18
  Should I knock on the stone 9 times it has this inscription to
• 23:20
  figure out what happens? Weird stuff that academics don't
• 23:23
  do, you know what I mean? So I think it's it's best to
• 23:29
  live in both worlds. So an example.
• 23:32
  As well as. So here we'll go into the more
• 23:35
  practical side of things because people ask me about that a lot.
• 23:38
  I'm very reserved about it, but it's just that I'm very private
• 23:42
  person when it comes to that. But as an example, let's say I
• 23:45
  wanted to work with the Saxons. Well, it's really cool, right?
• 23:48
  I study old Saxon, That's great and everything.
• 23:50
  Well, if you look at the material, it's only the gospels
• 23:54
  that you're reading. It's all Christian material.
• 23:56
  So what do we do? Throw it out.
• 23:58
  No, we don't. We learn the language and then
• 24:00
  we learn how to use the language as a tool for what we want to
• 24:03
  do. So for instance, if I know how
• 24:08
  the language works from an academic objective perspective,
• 24:11
  now I want to do this sort of thing where I want to give bloat
• 24:13
  or an offering to, let's say, a Saxon ancestor or something.
• 24:17
  Why not then rewrite the language since I know how to use
• 24:20
  it and create a song for that ancestor?
• 24:23
  It's like bam, now, now you're using the best of both worlds.
• 24:27
  And you're making a live tradition.
• 24:29
  My biggest thing is sort of like bringing the past to the
• 24:32
  present. So I guess that's what I was
• 24:33
  trying not to say earlier, not live in the past per se, but be
• 24:37
  rooted in the past and bring that past to the present.
• 24:40
  And then that to me becomes a live tradition.
• 24:43
  I like the way you say that and and I've and I've echoed that
• 24:47
  set in my own way over the years in in in the aspect of
• 24:50
  tradition, right is not the the worship of ashes it's the
• 24:54
  preservation of fire. And I've used the analogy that
• 24:58
  how is how is fire carried you know like the fire that was
• 25:02
  burning with this group of people, it it dies down it
• 25:06
  becomes a bed of coals and embers.
• 25:08
  They would carry those embers from 1 campsite to the next or
• 25:12
  one place to the next, right, and then breathe new life, add
• 25:14
  new things to it from that next place that they went to.
• 25:17
  So the fire isn't the same as it was last week, yesterday,
• 25:22
  whenever, right. It's still fire, though, and
• 25:25
  it's breathing new life, It's giving new as it's bringing that
• 25:29
  bed of ember, those bed of embers, that bed of coals into
• 25:33
  the now. And so much of what I think of
• 25:36
  people when we look at the historical documents, whether
• 25:40
  we're looking, whether we're trying to reconstruct ritual or
• 25:44
  whether we're trying to understand how these people did
• 25:47
  things at a specific time with what limited information might
• 25:49
  be out there. I think people can just have the
• 25:53
  tendency to think that because that's the way it was done 1000
• 25:57
  or more years ago, then that has to be the way.
• 25:59
  It has to be the way done now, yeah.
• 26:02
  And that's like, I don't know. I mean, if you want to do that,
• 26:07
  it's like not a not a stab at you or anything, and there's a
• 26:09
  place in time for it, but just for me personally.
• 26:14
  Like I'm very comfortable, extremely comfortable with who I
• 26:17
  am and what I believe. I have no doubts.
• 26:19
  I have no crisis of faith, anything like that.
• 26:21
  So for me, that is how I operate exactly.
• 26:25
  It has to be rude in the past and sort of brought to the
• 26:28
  present. If you're, if you're you have no
• 26:30
  foundation, what are you doing? You in a sense, using the player
• 26:33
  analogy, you're almost starting fires randomly all over in
• 26:37
  different places. So, but yeah, I mean, I get it.
• 26:43
  You know, I think you're also. Doing that, I just don't feel
• 26:46
  like it's a live tradition anymore because also it's like
• 26:50
  like the Saxons that continued the live tradition.
• 26:52
  The Anglo Saxons continued a live tradition, developed into
• 26:55
  the Anglo-Saxon tradition. And then you have the
• 26:57
  Scandinavians developing into the old Norse thinking, you
• 27:00
  know, traditions and stuff like that.
• 27:02
  So, but they're rooted, they're rooted in the past, right?
• 27:05
  They're rooted in and a lot of those old values, and then they
• 27:08
  kind of develop on their own. What works?
• 27:11
  What doesn't work? If something doesn't work, why
• 27:13
  are we still doing it? Yeah, well I was looking at that
• 27:17
  too. I think people, maybe not all my
• 27:22
  audience, but we encounter a lot of folks that have been, you've
• 27:25
  been doing this since you were on and off maybe, but you've
• 27:27
  been dedicating your life to the study of the rooms, but you've
• 27:30
  also been practicing as a key then for the majority of your
• 27:34
  life, you know, from your childhood and into your into
• 27:37
  your adult years. Me, not so much.
• 27:38
  I've got like 10 years almost now into it.
• 27:40
  But other people coming into it that think of Heathenry, they're
• 27:43
  like, it's old. It's, it's Norse Heathenry.
• 27:46
  And they use this as an umbrella term, not realizing that, well,
• 27:50
  the Norse, if you want to, you know, the Scandinavian
• 27:53
  countries, they, they picked it up from somewhere.
• 27:54
  Those, those people in the South migrated and they brought those
• 27:58
  things with them, Right. Right.
• 28:01
  Yeah, No. So they made those traditions
• 28:04
  that were their own that we almost want to like focus
• 28:07
  heavily on the, the Scandinavian side of things.
• 28:09
  Like how did the, you know, how was it done in Iceland or Norway
• 28:12
  or Denmark or Sweden and forget almost that, well, they had to
• 28:16
  get from somewhere. It came from somewhere.
• 28:18
  It came from Saxony, It came from the South, the southern
• 28:22
  regions, Right? Right.
• 28:24
  And this is where the big thing is that I don't, sorry, didn't
• 28:27
  want to interrupt you. No, no, go ahead.
• 28:29
  So this is, this is the so there is a group out there, I'm just,
• 28:34
  I'm not going to say their name, but for example they're always
• 28:36
  trying to go back to that that root, that core.
• 28:40
  They also believe, for example, that a lot of these sort of like
• 28:43
  house spirits or we might even say like Waylon for example, all
• 28:47
  were sort of at one time gods and then they were sort of
• 28:51
  lowered to these, these sort of lower beings.
• 28:54
  That's because the tendency is to want to keep going back to
• 28:58
  that primal essence. You know what I mean?
• 29:03
  The thing is, is that I, I believe more like, OK, there
• 29:07
  there are these sort of, you know, things that you reach back
• 29:09
  to these roots, but occasionally there are also localized
• 29:13
  traditions that pop up, right? And then that's how you do get
• 29:17
  your local spirits. So you know, that's the one
• 29:21
  thing I try to do too as a practitioner.
• 29:24
  Like, here's an example. I was in California for almost 8
• 29:27
  years, right? 810 years, Something like that.
• 29:29
  My practices involves, of course, being rooted in Germanic
• 29:33
  thought and belief, but I also wanted to connect to my
• 29:38
  immediate landscape. So one of the the herbs that I I
• 29:44
  used a lot was white sage. Not because it's so readily
• 29:48
  available and you can buy it on Amazon, but The thing is, is
• 29:52
  that it, it grows there naturally.
• 29:55
  And so I would try to build relationships with the localized
• 29:58
  things there as well. Now I move back to the Chicago
• 30:02
  area, right, well back to the Midwest, but like to Chicago.
• 30:07
  And I have since sort of left the white stage a little bit.
• 30:10
  I kind of use it a little bit here and there.
• 30:13
  But now I'm more focused on trying to build a relationship
• 30:16
  with. Creating certain instances from
• 30:18
  like pine resin and cedar and juniper berries and stuff like
• 30:21
  that, because that's what's here and you can build a real
• 30:25
  localized relationship with these things.
• 30:26
  But again, I'm still rooted in my dramatic.
• 30:31
  So it's a living, it's a living tradition.
• 30:34
  Yes, I've picked up and I think that comes into or.
• 30:38
  I think that touches more on the animistic side of Heathenry.
• 30:43
  Yeah, I I contest that you can't be a heathen without being at
• 30:48
  least something of an animist. Because.
• 30:52
  Of the focus on the fight about that all day.
• 30:54
  And again even if you're reviewers at all kinds of if
• 30:57
  that kind of comes down to you know what works for you in that
• 31:00
  sort of case. But I do believe that you are
• 31:03
  correct, Jesse. I mean, I I don't, I don't know
• 31:05
  if the issue, it's like I don't know if the issue is how people
• 31:09
  are defining animism. And therefore they're like, oh,
• 31:13
  they were animistic. They weren't animistic.
• 31:16
  This is not a word. Just like magic should be thrown
• 31:19
  around loosely, you know, just your solution.
• 31:23
  You know, if your solution is Googling it and using
• 31:26
  dictionary.com for your argument and what animism is, that's not
• 31:30
  very deep. Like, it's not, you know, It's
• 31:32
  like there are people, you know, whether they're sociologists or
• 31:35
  anthropologist or whatever, who write article after article
• 31:38
  after article. And what the hell does animacy
• 31:41
  mean? What is the what does it mean?
• 31:43
  Right. Is it just simply a belief in
• 31:45
  spirits? Well, yeah, if you want to be
• 31:47
  stuck in 19th century Victorian times, I mean, that's what it
• 31:51
  means. But there are other people who
• 31:54
  have come along and who have said no, Animism is building a
• 31:58
  relationship with spirits. So it's it's not even just
• 32:00
  necessarily just the belief in. So if we want to say it's
• 32:04
  building a relationship with spirits, yeah, of course.
• 32:06
  Why would anybody argue against that?
• 32:08
  Of course they were animistic. You know, I'm animistic.
• 32:11
  I do the same thing. I mean, so I guess, cuz I don't
• 32:15
  know if you've heard that on the Internet with people saying you
• 32:18
  have okay, yeah, it's just weird.
• 32:20
  Yeah, I don't. The argument can get really you
• 32:23
  can really get into the weeds with it, with people.
• 32:26
  And again, it goes back to that, like you were saying the living
• 32:30
  a living folkway, a living tradition.
• 32:32
  This is, this is the way people lived at the time.
• 32:35
  And when we talk about tradition, we talk about going
• 32:37
  back to the to the early times of of of of the Saxons or or
• 32:43
  even before who you know however far back you want to go.
• 32:45
  I mean they lived off the land, they lived with the land.
• 32:48
  It was integral to have a relationship and build a
• 32:52
  relationship and and part of that lifestyle was to engage
• 32:56
  with your regional and local like.
• 33:00
  Your representations of that? Yeah, exactly, Yeah.
• 33:02
  And I did this. Funny that we're talking about
• 33:03
  this because my my podcast last week was on the importance of
• 33:07
  Hearth Cult and how hearth cult has to be in my opinion, has to
• 33:11
  be something that if you're serious about being a heathen
• 33:15
  and and practicing heathenry that before you ever get into
• 33:19
  the the the bigger you know, dealing with the divine, the
• 33:23
  your interactions with the sacred, the gods you know first.
• 33:27
  You need to have your hearth cult established.
• 33:29
  You need to know what it is you're doing, your your
• 33:31
  practices, your the, the, the orthopraxy.
• 33:35
  It has to be established. Without that, you're gonna kind
• 33:37
  of be put in the cart ahead of the horse, yeah.
• 33:40
  Totally, totally. And everybody has, like you were
• 33:43
  saying before, you move different places, you become in
• 33:45
  tune with what's going on in that area or you want to, right?
• 33:48
  And of course you bring those things with you to say, you
• 33:52
  bring these things with you, bring your practices with you.
• 33:53
  But yes, exactly. You sort of adapt to the
• 33:56
  landscape. Yeah.
• 33:58
  So, yeah. So I wanted to.
• 34:02
  Sorry, go ahead. No, I'm sorry.
• 34:04
  I didn't mean to interrupt you. No, you're fine.
• 34:07
  I was going to the kind of the focus on today's podcast was
• 34:13
  going over the pros and cons or trying to at least nail down
• 34:16
  some some pros and cons of academic reconstruction in
• 34:19
  Heathenry. I know we we mutually partake or
• 34:24
  at least have visibility to to academic social media groups and
• 34:29
  and some of what we see like you were talking about is is so much
• 34:32
  of the what was done in the past, how far back we go and and
• 34:36
  really kind of stay in there. That to me is like one of the
• 34:39
  cons of approaching this religion, this folkway, this the
• 34:45
  spirituality however label you want to put to it.
• 34:47
  That's one of the one of the cons that can exist is that you
• 34:51
  you lose sight of the practicality, the practitioner
• 34:54
  side of it, and you become so enamored or so it's almost like
• 34:58
  this romanticized experience of the past, like it was so the way
• 35:03
  it was, you know? And yeah, why can't we do it
• 35:05
  that way, You know, you see that too.
• 35:07
  Or maybe what are some other things that you?
• 35:09
  Would say so. I can say a couple things about
• 35:11
  that. Yeah.
• 35:12
  I've seen some ridiculous claims made, for example, by some
• 35:15
  academics where it's like clearly you've never done this
• 35:18
  before. And I'm not even talking about
• 35:20
  the this sort of deeper spiritual side of, like I was
• 35:23
  saying, singing a song in Old Saxon to an ancestor, you know,
• 35:26
  I'm talking about. Have you ever picked up a hammer
• 35:29
  and a chisel and tried to carve into granite?
• 35:32
  It's really hard. You know it it's pun intended.
• 35:39
  It really is it's it's. And I have of course I've I've
• 35:41
  created multiple you know, objects like that.
• 35:43
  But The thing is, is that I didn't know how difficult it was
• 35:47
  to, for example, carve into that marble like an idiot.
• 35:50
  Why would I pick marble anyway? So it was really really hard.
• 35:55
  And my point is though is that if I'm going to practice so this
• 35:59
  is a. The sort of thing that was sort
• 36:01
  of throwing at rinologists just about a year or two ago at a
• 36:04
  conference. I said if you're going to quote,
• 36:07
  UN quote, practice carving runes, I highly suggest you
• 36:11
  don't do it on granite. You know, it's like, yeah, do
• 36:14
  something like limestone or something softer maybe.
• 36:17
  Or limestone. Or literally seriously trace the
• 36:20
  damn runes in the ground if you're trying to, you know.
• 36:23
  But I understand. Maybe they want some carving
• 36:25
  practice. But exactly but if I write. 8
• 36:30
  ensues rings in a row for practice on granite that it's
• 36:35
  just counterintuitive to me and so I can tell that a lot of
• 36:38
  these people you know they they they probably this is this is
• 36:43
  coming from the background in my blue collar background right.
• 36:45
  Just going to say it. I can tell some of these people
• 36:47
  have never even picked up a screwdriver Okay.
• 36:50
  So there's no dirt under their fingernails.
• 36:52
  They got no calluses on their hands like.
• 36:54
  Exactly. So that's one example I guess
• 36:58
  that. You know, won't ever be resolved
• 37:00
  until you try to go and do it practically, you know, And
• 37:04
  that's something that you could easily do.
• 37:07
  Another one, for example, was like the egg.
• 37:10
  Yes, stone. Somebody had suggested that
• 37:12
  they. I think it was.
• 37:13
  They had carved on that stone using some sort of wooden
• 37:16
  chisel. Yeah, go ahead and think about
• 37:20
  that one. It was like, are you kidding me?
• 37:23
  Into stone. Yeah, and but they didn't.
• 37:25
  Well, the reason why is because of the egg of stone is that it
• 37:27
  says that you're not supposed to use iron, says that it wasn't
• 37:30
  carved by an iron knife. So then what I suggested is that
• 37:34
  somebody may have used another stone to carve into it with a
• 37:37
  higher hardness, that sense. But again, it's like really
• 37:43
  wooden chisels into, I think it was like a mix some sort of
• 37:47
  granite or mic or something. I can't remember, but you
• 37:51
  clearly don't understand that the density and and and just how
• 37:54
  solid these materials are if you think that they were.
• 37:56
  No, no, of course it's the same. But yeah, I just the the
• 38:05
  academics are usually not concerned with practice though,
• 38:08
  right? They're the other extreme of
• 38:10
  objective. Everything needs to be an
• 38:12
  argument. Anything you experience
• 38:14
  subjective doesn't matter. So you know, but they're they're
• 38:18
  not practitioners. Maybe they are.
• 38:20
  I don't know. But for me, and this kind of
• 38:23
  gets to one of the the questions actually that somebody had asked
• 38:26
  for me, is it difficult to separate the two worlds?
• 38:33
  Funny enough, it's not as difficult for me to separate the
• 38:35
  two worlds as it is for somebody else to separate the two worlds
• 38:41
  thinking about me. So in other words, what I'm
• 38:43
  saying is that I. I guess I'm lucky.
• 38:47
  I don't know. I can easily, easily walk into a
• 38:50
  classroom and teach objectively. No subjective stuff you know,
• 38:55
  will come from me. Or at least I will consciously
• 38:57
  try to not do that. It's very easy.
• 39:01
  I go home. I, you know, maybe perform some
• 39:06
  sort of ritual and throw the academic rationality stuff out
• 39:10
  the window. And, you know, so my goal is
• 39:14
  something a little bit different now, but then I go back into the
• 39:17
  classroom again, Objective argumentation.
• 39:19
  So what I'm trying to say is that for me, it's actually not
• 39:22
  that hard. But for other people who are
• 39:24
  sort of judging me, which happens a lot, I can get into
• 39:27
  that in a minute. It's hard for them to understand
• 39:32
  how I can do that. And at that point, it doesn't.
• 39:35
  It's not even my problem. It becomes your problem.
• 39:37
  Like I can easily separate the two worlds.
• 39:41
  And then in my practice, bring them both together, blah blah.
• 39:43
  You can be unbiased you. Can be unbiased, or at least you
• 39:45
  can try to consciously be unbiased.
• 39:48
  Yeah, I mean cuz I just say try to be consciously unbiased cuz
• 39:50
  it's almost impossible to not conscious and biased does
• 39:53
  completely, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I mean and so.
• 40:03
  Being able to do that is is not that big of a deal for me.
• 40:08
  It's very, it's very easy. But people, like I said people
• 40:11
  again, who are academics, they're like there's no way that
• 40:13
  he can separate those two things.
• 40:14
  It's like, I clearly can, you know, it's it's, I don't know,
• 40:19
  it's really strange. Bias and agenda too I think it
• 40:22
  get get really you know people that that are I've seen examples
• 40:29
  of this happening where bias and agenda get.
• 40:32
  Leaked into what people are doing, like they're educating,
• 40:38
  they're educating. I'll say I'm gonna put that in
• 40:40
  air quotes and say it loosely, right.
• 40:41
  They're educating because there's knowledge that's being
• 40:43
  shared. And sure, it may be rooted in
• 40:49
  historical source material. So you can say that yes, you're
• 40:53
  educating, but the man like the agenda.
• 40:58
  Comes through and I'm not going to be.
• 41:02
  I'm not going to sugarcoat it like that's one of the biggest
• 41:04
  reasons I am so glad I am not in academia right now.
• 41:09
  I couldn't do it. See, that's the thing like it's
• 41:11
  and we can get into this too about the whole free thinking
• 41:14
  thing so and how I get in trouble sometimes.
• 41:18
  So please let me just talk about that for a minute too.
• 41:21
  So it's the free thinking things I I like to consider myself more
• 41:25
  of a free thinker. So if you're telling me to
• 41:29
  explain the sort of agenda, sorry, yeah.
• 41:39
  Anyway, if you're if you're trying to tell me to teach this
• 41:42
  sort of thing and there's this agenda behind it, then I'm not
• 41:46
  going to do it. I'm going to do it in in such a
• 41:50
  way to where I'm not biased and I'm a free thinker.
• 41:53
  And then I'm also going to encourage my students to be free
• 41:55
  thinkers as well. So I am not for this groupthink
• 41:59
  mentality, whether it be one side or the other.
• 42:03
  I am very much focused on the individual self exploration and
• 42:07
  and so on and so forth. But Oh yeah, so I was going to
• 42:14
  say how this sort of affected me.
• 42:18
  So an example here is I wrote my dissertation on Rinse of Magic.
• 42:23
  Now I got I went to two different conferences and two
• 42:26
  friends of mine at the time had come up to me afterwards and
• 42:30
  they're like, you're insane. Why are you talking about runes
• 42:33
  and magic? Especially since you are a
• 42:35
  practitioner and they knew and but the the irony though, here's
• 42:40
  the irony. They were also practitioners,
• 42:43
  but they're so afraid of getting ducks or just people coming
• 42:48
  after them for unwarranted reasons.
• 42:50
  Ad hominem attacks that they won't do it.
• 42:55
  They won't pursue it. So in a way, like, one of them
• 42:59
  told me that they were envious of me.
• 43:01
  It's like, well, I don't know about if envious is the right
• 43:03
  word now because I've kind of screwed myself because, you
• 43:07
  know, because these people, they think I'm crazy, you know?
• 43:10
  But like, here's another good example.
• 43:13
  When I was writing my dissertation, one of my
• 43:14
  committee members said, hey, why are you citing the source?
• 43:17
  I said because it's a good source.
• 43:18
  Yeah, but you shouldn't cite the source.
• 43:20
  Why shouldn't I cite the source? Because it's Steven Flowers.
• 43:24
  Ooh, I just said the magic name, right?
• 43:25
  So it's like, now let's not react.
• 43:29
  Let's think about it for a minute.
• 43:31
  The thing that I was citing was a dissertation called Runes and
• 43:34
  Magic from the 1980s. Now it's a valid dissertation.
• 43:38
  It's a good piece of work. I didn't cite anything from,
• 43:41
  like, you know, Llewellyn or Wiser or whatever.
• 43:43
  I'm talking about something that was published through Peter
• 43:45
  Lang. And I asked him, I said, well,
• 43:50
  this person on my committee, I said, why shouldn't I cite this?
• 43:52
  He goes because that could get you in a lot of trouble.
• 43:54
  And so why would it get me in a lot of trouble?
• 43:56
  If it's a good work, he goes, yeah, okay, it's a good source.
• 43:58
  It's a good work, good argumentation.
• 43:59
  But just beware, if you cite that people are going to come
• 44:03
  after you and I'm like this, why is this even happening?
• 44:09
  You know, it's So I went ahead and cited it.
• 44:11
  But yeah, what I was going to say about getting in trouble is
• 44:13
  it being free. A free thinker is I am the type
• 44:17
  of person to where if I go to a meeting, whether it's a
• 44:20
  conference, whether it's a heathen event, you know, left,
• 44:23
  right, I don't care if I go there and somebody says don't go
• 44:26
  talk to that person, I'm gonna go talk to that person.
• 44:31
  Yeah, yeah. It's almost like when we were
• 44:33
  kids, you know? And then your parents will tell
• 44:35
  you, well, don't do this, Don't do that.
• 44:36
  Well, what's the first thing you're gonna do?
• 44:38
  Well, yeah, I mean, I understand where you're from with that, but
• 44:41
  my mentality is there's a group of people that says you
• 44:45
  shouldn't go do this thing. So do I sort of adhere to the
• 44:48
  groupthink idea of that particular group and play it
• 44:51
  safe because I would have been safe?
• 44:53
  Sure. Or do I want to still retain my
• 44:56
  own agency and retain myself as a free thinker, go to that, talk
• 45:00
  to that person, formulate my own opinion, and then say you're
• 45:05
  you're crazy. I'm not talking to you or no, I
• 45:07
  think this person's okay, but I think we're stuck in this world
• 45:10
  now where it's just, like I said, groupthink ideas
• 45:14
  everywhere to where, you know, we should really sort of focus
• 45:18
  on ourselves as individuals especially.
• 45:20
  It's like scholars. But yeah, I mean, that's just
• 45:24
  another example. I was just, I went to go talk to
• 45:26
  this guy. People are like, you shouldn't
• 45:27
  go talk to him, but then you're guilty by association, which is
• 45:30
  totally unfair. It's totally unfair.
• 45:34
  So just because I go talk to someone because I'm curious and
• 45:38
  I want to know for myself what's going on here, that shouldn't be
• 45:42
  the case that I'm guilty by association.
• 45:44
  It does not mean that I condone nine times out of 10.
• 45:47
  I don't condone you know, situations, but.
• 45:50
  Looking at it objectively, knowledge of what's going on,
• 45:54
  yeah, yeah. And it's such a I think it's
• 45:58
  such a terrible thing that it's come to this when legitimately
• 46:02
  valid good source material is being shared and used by folks
• 46:08
  who, for whatever reason, have earned themselves a less than
• 46:12
  savory or downright shitty reputation.
• 46:14
  Because of their affiliations or things like that.
• 46:18
  And then all of a sudden, because of who said it, all of a
• 46:21
  sudden we don't want to say it. And then guess what happens?
• 46:26
  The conversation shut down. You get nowhere.
• 46:29
  There's no progress being made, right.
• 46:32
  You can't actually have a sort of rational, coherent
• 46:35
  conversation. It's it's exhausting to tell you
• 46:38
  the truth. I mean, I mean I think there's
• 46:41
  a, I wanted to tell you just one more sorry.
• 46:42
  It's related to the association thing.
• 46:44
  And I I wrote this down on my notes because I wanted to sort
• 46:46
  of prove a really good point here.
• 46:48
  So I had mentioned before that my advisor, you know, she's much
• 46:51
  older, much older, you know, old school advisor, she's in her
• 46:54
  80s. I one time went to her house to
• 46:58
  fix her computer. There was some stuff going on
• 47:00
  with it. And she actually had Ralph
• 47:06
  Bloom's books and this. Exactly.
• 47:10
  And she also had books by Stephen Flowers.
• 47:13
  And I'm like, what in the world? In today's world, it'd be like,
• 47:16
  oh, my gosh, Is she like, is she doing this stuff?
• 47:20
  Is she a practitioner? Who, What's going, What are her
• 47:22
  policies? What's saying?
• 47:23
  Yeah, she just wants to learn. She just wants to know what is
• 47:30
  out there? Why is this popular?
• 47:33
  Educate yourself, you know what I mean?
• 47:35
  And again, that gets me in trouble.
• 47:37
  You know, it's like, but to put it in perspective, what if I
• 47:42
  told you that there's a holy Bible sitting next to my bed
• 47:44
  right now? Dude, mine is still sitting in
• 47:47
  my desk. The Bible that I was, it's my
• 47:50
  great grandmother's first of all, so it's kind of an
• 47:52
  ancestral relic, if you will. So that's for that, for that,
• 47:56
  for me. It's like, I'm never gonna get
• 47:59
  rid of this. I'm always gonna.
• 48:00
  So in my case, though, it's like I'm just trying to help people
• 48:04
  understand just because you're reading things it isn't or or
• 48:08
  interacting with people or whatever, and you're just trying
• 48:10
  to learn does not mean that you're condoning behavior.
• 48:13
  You're trying to sort of like. So I I wasn't joking there
• 48:16
  actually is the New Testament. I'm reading Luke 14 right now.
• 48:19
  Why? I'm not trying to become
• 48:22
  Christian. I have no crisis of faith, like
• 48:24
  I said, but I want to be educated and I want to know
• 48:27
  these things. Why are people thinking this
• 48:29
  way? Why do Christians think this
• 48:30
  way? What's so wrong with that?
• 48:34
  Yeah, it's. And there was there was
• 48:36
  something that if you had it available I think that would be
• 48:39
  a good time to say there was because because all the things
• 48:41
  that we're talking about right now it it brings up for me at
• 48:45
  least and maybe for others that are that are absorbing this
• 48:49
  podcast right now. It it really brings up in me
• 48:51
  this aspect of the one of the one of the parts of Odin Woldin
• 48:58
  right that that that seeker of knowledge, the the the one who's
• 49:01
  just. It's always doesn't matter where
• 49:04
  or what it's from. It's it's a famous stanza for
• 49:08
  the Bundamanga saga, right? Wisdom is wisdom from wherever
• 49:11
  it comes. Or that that's a loose, Yeah,
• 49:14
  no, but they don't even pop them all from word to word.
• 49:18
  Seeking the word, that sort of thing.
• 49:20
  It's all about seeking, right? Seeking the knowledge or seeking
• 49:23
  the runes or but yeah. And you had something that he
• 49:27
  adheres to anything. It's just like he's just
• 49:29
  constantly learning. What's that?
• 49:31
  You had something that you had written in Old Saxon that was a
• 49:35
  call to Logan. I think you mentioned it to me
• 49:40
  offline. I think now, not knowing before
• 49:43
  where we could insert that into the episode.
• 49:45
  I think maybe now if you wouldn't mind.
• 49:49
  Yeah, sure, even that. So this is from, this is from
• 49:56
  actually a ritual that I created.
• 49:58
  So this could also be a good opportunity to tell your
• 50:01
  listeners, you know, I've created an entire ritual, for
• 50:05
  example, in Old Saxon. Now is it for everyone?
• 50:08
  No, because I haven't published it for the general population.
• 50:10
  And to be honest, I don't think most of the population, the
• 50:13
  general population would get it. But The thing is that I've
• 50:16
  created this entire ritual. And yes, I can give you one
• 50:20
  line. For example, it's called feeding
• 50:22
  the Germanic Flame. The ritual is itself.
• 50:25
  But yeah, the line that you're talking about is Haley at them
• 50:28
  wilderness, you see them, then water can water, then walk then.
• 50:32
  So that means hail to the followers of Woden, to those who
• 50:40
  guard or sorry, Haley, to the worthy warders of the flame.
• 50:45
  Excuse me. So let me try that again.
• 50:46
  So Haley at them, water as you see them, then water again.
• 50:49
  Water, then walk. Then So again, hail to the
• 50:52
  followers of Woden, to the worthy waters of the flame.
• 50:56
  And so that's an example too, like I said, of taking something
• 51:00
  that's objective, the language, and using it now for something
• 51:04
  in a ritual context. An academic would never do that.
• 51:07
  Why would they do? They're not interested in doing
• 51:09
  that. Yeah, and I like that.
• 51:12
  It's the worthy waters of the flame, right?
• 51:17
  And more like a calling is what I'm trying to say.
• 51:20
  Yeah, the flame being. I think something that you could
• 51:23
  look at and and it's multifaceted, right?
• 51:26
  It is illuminating. It is.
• 51:28
  It brings light obviously and and one of the one of the one of
• 51:35
  the room poems mentions that the room town or kenos kenos as the
• 51:41
  as the as the torch, right? And it's not the torch that
• 51:45
  burns down. It's the torch that illuminates
• 51:47
  and yeah, and it's only when you would find the fire that you're
• 51:50
  talking about passing along though, to the worthy protectors
• 51:54
  of the flame, you know, and I think that.
• 51:57
  I think that the the association with Walden, of course, you know
• 52:01
  for those listening that don't know, I mean Walden is just the
• 52:03
  dramatic the predate. It predates Odin, right?
• 52:07
  It's Odin became Walden became Walden Oz Walden became Odin and
• 52:10
  then as as things moved up north, right.
• 52:13
  But the the seeker of knowledge, right.
• 52:16
  And and how that that flame that torch is, is is like that
• 52:20
  physical manifestation representation?
• 52:22
  Of looking to be illuminated, looking to, looking for that
• 52:26
  information. It's not, you know, it's not the
• 52:29
  light itself, it's it's the seeking of knowledge.
• 52:31
  It's as it were and at least in that concept.
• 52:33
  So I like that it's really that simple too.
• 52:36
  And I just, I think people just, it's they confuse me and what
• 52:42
  they want my politics to be, for example.
• 52:45
  And it's like and again, I'll be clear, I have no politics.
• 52:49
  At least in in this context, I don't.
• 52:51
  I don't push any of the politics and I just want to seek the
• 52:54
  knowledge. I just want to teach and yadda
• 52:56
  yadda, you know, it's like I think it's the heathen can be
• 52:58
  done. What's that?
• 53:00
  It can be done. I mean, clearly we can.
• 53:02
  It can be. But The thing is, I think
• 53:03
  Heathenry right now is in a very, very sad state of affairs
• 53:06
  and This is why. Think about it.
• 53:10
  So the first thing that 99% of these groups ask you is what are
• 53:17
  your views on race and gender? It's the very first thing I'm
• 53:22
  not saying. It's an unimportant question.
• 53:25
  Here's what I am saying, though, depending on how you answer that
• 53:30
  question of gatekeeping, whether whatever group I'm talking
• 53:34
  about, I don't care, left or right.
• 53:36
  The point is, is that only then, when that message agrees with
• 53:41
  their mission, can you start to learn.
• 53:45
  That's my. Sadly, sadly true.
• 53:47
  It's the political agenda on any side, or just the politics in
• 53:51
  general now has become the more important focal point.
• 53:56
  That's the most important thing. Second to that is pursuing
• 54:00
  knowledge. So I feel really bad for someone
• 54:02
  who's, let's say, apolitical, especially in these contexts of
• 54:05
  religion, because they have nowhere to go.
• 54:10
  Yeah, you know. And it doesn't.
• 54:11
  I don't think it really aligns with a an archisan or ancient
• 54:16
  dramatic worldview on things. It doesn't.
• 54:18
  It. It's it's it.
• 54:20
  It reflects and it echoes a very modern and and quite honestly
• 54:26
  Christian approach to things. You know, like how to leverage
• 54:30
  your religion to control people, right?
• 54:33
  Like, Oh yeah, absolutely. It's a sad.
• 54:36
  It's a sad fact. I think we can't ignore it.
• 54:39
  You know, we have to face that reality.
• 54:42
  That's exactly what happens. You mix politics with religion.
• 54:44
  Exactly. It comes down to control.
• 54:47
  Yeah. And one of the things that you
• 54:49
  had mentioned about this, this being a free thinker and this
• 54:53
  and and how you tend to get away or or steer clear of this, you
• 54:57
  know, group mentality. One of the things that has has
• 55:01
  been a really important part for me and in my growth and
• 55:04
  Heathenry is the importance of the tribe.
• 55:08
  Of the sieb of all of these familial unit, like how the
• 55:12
  family unit has such a high importance in dramatic world
• 55:17
  views, ancient German world views.
• 55:19
  There's it's not to say that everybody has to do everything
• 55:24
  the same way in their own respective family, clans, siebs,
• 55:27
  whatever. But it's just that when we do
• 55:29
  get together, when we are assembled as a tribe, when we
• 55:31
  are. Gathering together that we have
• 55:34
  a collective through, we have a collective custom.
• 55:36
  We have these collective things that we all agree on.
• 55:39
  Yeah, definitely there should be.
• 55:43
  It's kind of like living in both worlds again.
• 55:45
  Like there should be the sort of core sort of core philosophies,
• 55:51
  core practices I guess, or at least some.
• 55:53
  Maybe not even core is really the right word, but some common
• 55:56
  philosophies, some common beliefs.
• 55:58
  And then of course, like the tribes have our own individual
• 56:01
  thing going on. You know, like, for example,
• 56:04
  there's there's one group that maybe worships Odin, let's say.
• 56:08
  The common belief is that people believe in Odin.
• 56:11
  Sure. But one group maybe treats Odin
• 56:14
  as something that they want to emulate, and then another group
• 56:17
  treats Odin as something that they want to worship.
• 56:20
  Like, I think we can work together, you know, in those in
• 56:22
  those cases, you know, But yeah, let me say something about that
• 56:26
  too. I am, you know, like I said, a
• 56:28
  free thinker. And I try not to adhere to group
• 56:30
  think. But The thing is, is that I do
• 56:32
  think and I do believe in these sort of, you know, like like
• 56:35
  families and kins and stuff like that.
• 56:38
  And because also that's that's what they practiced back then
• 56:43
  too, right. Whether it was the the Angles or
• 56:46
  the Saxons or the Bavarians or the Alemani, whatever, they all
• 56:49
  had their own tribe, right? And I have my own tribe too.
• 56:53
  I'm not just a a solitary, you know, practitioner, so, but
• 56:59
  within my group it's like we have our own sort of kin, but
• 57:03
  I'm my own person too and there's absolutely no and, and
• 57:07
  so for people also kind of joining like this Kindred and
• 57:10
  that Kindred and in this group and that group, it seems kind of
• 57:13
  weird to me because it's like, who are you loyal to?
• 57:17
  That's the biggest thing for me. Who are you loyal to and who do
• 57:22
  you owe your oaths to? And that's very real, and that's
• 57:25
  very Germanic. And it's very doable, you know,
• 57:29
  to create an entire sort of like confederation of something where
• 57:36
  we all do the same thing, that's just like that's just not me.
• 57:41
  You'll never get me an. It's such a challenge to answer
• 57:44
  questions when people come and ask like, well, how do I do
• 57:48
  this? How do I do that?
• 57:49
  It's like, well man, I could give you maybe a framework.
• 57:52
  I can, I can kind of lay something out for you that you
• 57:54
  can use to formulate something of your own.
• 57:57
  But again it goes back to this the hearth cult and our group
• 58:00
  here is, is, is very we are big on the sanctity, the sovereignty
• 58:07
  of hearth right. Your heart, your home, your
• 58:11
  customs has to be your thing. And the tribe as a as a bigger
• 58:15
  collective of different, you know, an amalgamation as aware
• 58:18
  of of the of different clans. The tribe has no say over your
• 58:22
  hearth cult. Nobody at the tribe as a whole
• 58:24
  and the leaders are going to tell you that you need to do
• 58:28
  like or that you can or can't do a certain thing.
• 58:30
  However, when we come together as a tribe, well this is how the
• 58:32
  tribe does it and you're going to, if you're going to be a part
• 58:35
  of our group, then you are going to agree that that is going to
• 58:40
  be the custom that you adopt. When we do it this way, it's a
• 58:43
  right you agree? That's kind of how I operate
• 58:46
  too, except that would say it would be the hull versus when we
• 58:50
  all get together for an event and each hall has their own, you
• 58:53
  know, individual things going on.
• 58:55
  But we also kind of still believe in the court, or we
• 58:58
  still practice the core philosophies of the group, you
• 59:01
  know? But the hall has its own own
• 59:03
  weird, idiosyncratic things going on, too.
• 59:06
  Yeah. So different names for the same
• 59:09
  site sort of thing. Yeah, exactly.
• 59:11
  We touched on it a little bit when you when you said you know
• 59:13
  you moved around you you were you were adopting certain things
• 59:17
  or you were introducing. The way to do certain things,
• 59:19
  how you interacted when you were living in California that were
• 59:22
  differently, like the the basis behind that.
• 59:25
  I guess again the framework, the, the the fundamental parts
• 59:28
  of it were the same, but there were idiosyncrasies that were
• 59:31
  different when you were in California versus when you're in
• 59:33
  the Midwest. And that's yes, that's fine.
• 59:36
  That's just, I mean that's the way it was for for the longest.
• 59:39
  I mean, the people in the South didn't do it the same way as the
• 59:42
  people in the far North, and then even then, different
• 59:45
  countries, different regions. You know, had different ways of
• 59:48
  doing things. So, yeah.
• 59:49
  And even back then too, they would, sorry, go ahead.
• 59:54
  And of course they would adopt to their landscape.
• 59:57
  You know, they're not going to be like, oh, hang on, let me go
• 59:59
  to Russia and grab this herb and I'll be right back.
• 1:00:01
  You know, it's like they're going to try to incorporate
• 1:00:04
  those things into their, their landscape.
• 1:00:05
  And that's when it becomes real. You know, when you start also
• 1:00:09
  when it becomes real, when you actually start practicing these
• 1:00:11
  things and not just talking about them.
• 1:00:13
  I practice every day. You know every single morning I
• 1:00:17
  get up I look at the sun. You know when I say hail the
• 1:00:19
  day. Hail the sun's a day.
• 1:00:21
  Hail tonight. And to her sister.
• 1:00:23
  May you look upon us with loving eyes and grant his victory in
• 1:00:25
  this day. Hail to the gods, Hail to the
• 1:00:27
  goddesses and hail to the ever giving earth.
• 1:00:31
  May you give us eloquent speech, wisdom and healing hands.
• 1:00:33
  While we live. So right from secretary from
• 1:00:35
  all, every single morning. And just by opening up your
• 1:00:39
  morning like that, making the day sacred.
• 1:00:40
  That's already doing something. And then when you go to bed, you
• 1:00:45
  know, good night to the day, good night to the Suns of day,
• 1:00:47
  good night. So it's sort of closing it out,
• 1:00:50
  you know, and that's just one little thing.
• 1:00:51
  And that's not even necessarily ritual.
• 1:00:53
  That's just OK. I'm going to make this stay
• 1:00:54
  sacred and not live in this mundane world.
• 1:00:57
  You know, just little things like.
• 1:00:59
  That I like that, yeah, that goes into I think some of the
• 1:01:02
  the pros not as in like Sonori's pros ETA, but you know we're
• 1:01:07
  talking about pros and cons of academic heat and
• 1:01:10
  reconstruction, you know, I think.
• 1:01:12
  This can this can touch on some of the the benefits or the pros
• 1:01:16
  of approaching Heathenry with an appreciation and with an
• 1:01:20
  interest to be academically inclined.
• 1:01:25
  You know you learn about these things that are the nuance that
• 1:01:29
  is shared regardless of the regions and and you you pick up
• 1:01:34
  on again commonalities and and and you can say yeah this is a I
• 1:01:39
  wouldn't have. I wouldn't have captured this
• 1:01:42
  had I not read this saga or or you know, it definitely should
• 1:01:49
  inform your practice. It just, you know, it definitely
• 1:01:52
  should inform your practice. I'm just saying don't be like I
• 1:01:54
  said earlier, you know, don't be married to her, don't be a slave
• 1:01:57
  to the history rather, But let the history inform your practice
• 1:02:03
  and you're going to keep growing.
• 1:02:04
  It's going to be an ever growing, ever living tradition,
• 1:02:09
  you know? Absolutely.
• 1:02:11
  There was a I'm going to put it up here on the screen, but for
• 1:02:17
  for people that are watching. But there was a question, I
• 1:02:19
  think it was on one of your it was on your YouTube community
• 1:02:22
  post. But the question is do you think
• 1:02:26
  that there are missing links in regards to how these traditions
• 1:02:31
  were practiced? And if so, do you believe that
• 1:02:33
  academics are dismissive of other possibilities not yet
• 1:02:38
  discovered or documented? You know, because we've learned
• 1:02:42
  so well. I know.
• 1:02:43
  Yeah, I know what you're. Saying things have changed or
• 1:02:45
  shifted in a way like oh like I think one of the probably one of
• 1:02:49
  the big ones is when bloat like when the holy tides were held
• 1:02:54
  you know the the new moon versus the full moon like these sorts
• 1:02:57
  of things. And then how much we've
• 1:02:58
  accumulated knowledge, dedicated academics who have captured
• 1:03:02
  these these details and and now all of a sudden we're we're for
• 1:03:05
  those of us that. Maybe take a more historical
• 1:03:08
  approach to when to do certain things.
• 1:03:10
  That knowledge that maybe wasn't there before has now shaped the
• 1:03:15
  way things are done. And then what do we do when or
• 1:03:18
  if new things come? Do I think that there are
• 1:03:25
  missing links in regard to Yeah, of course.
• 1:03:27
  We're never gonna know, really. I mean even if we only look at
• 1:03:30
  something that's an archaeological find or if we
• 1:03:32
  look at something that that gives us some information in
• 1:03:34
  particular stands up. So to answer the first part of
• 1:03:37
  the question, do you think there are missing links?
• 1:03:39
  Of course. I mean we're looking at things
• 1:03:41
  that were written down. We're not even dealing with,
• 1:03:43
  with real living people that we can have these conversations
• 1:03:45
  with. We are only dealing with like
• 1:03:47
  historically. It's like, you know, one, a very
• 1:03:51
  small percentage I guess is what I'm trying to say, of an entire
• 1:03:54
  reality, an entire world view, an entire velt on Chong.
• 1:03:59
  As I say in German, very small. So of course they are missing
• 1:04:02
  links, but. And if so, do you believe that
• 1:04:04
  academics are dismissive of the other possibilities?
• 1:04:06
  They don't care. The reason why is in OKI don't
• 1:04:10
  want to speak for every academic because now I'm doing the whole
• 1:04:12
  generalization thing. But from my experience from some
• 1:04:17
  of the academics I've talked to, they don't care.
• 1:04:19
  And the reason why is because again, they are way far off in
• 1:04:23
  objective land, right. So as a practitioner, like I
• 1:04:27
  said, we're both, we're subjective and we're objective.
• 1:04:31
  They don't bring in the subjective, or at least they try
• 1:04:33
  not to bring in the subjective. So if there's no objective
• 1:04:35
  evidence there for them to measure, they look at it as
• 1:04:38
  pointless and they look at it as complete conjecture and complete
• 1:04:43
  speculation. Now if you're trying to fill in
• 1:04:46
  the blanks, which some people are doing, some groups are
• 1:04:49
  doing, thank you. Mark, for example, he knows who
• 1:04:52
  he is. For example, he's actually doing
• 1:04:54
  in this group, he's trying to fill in some blanks for his
• 1:04:57
  group to use. That becomes useful then, you
• 1:05:01
  know, it's because now they're filling in the groups to make or
• 1:05:05
  sorry, filling in the blanks to make something useful and
• 1:05:07
  practical. So there's a reason to do that.
• 1:05:10
  Academics. It would just be just, you know,
• 1:05:15
  academic ramblings. Nobody cares about it.
• 1:05:17
  Yeah, it's a nice fantastical idea, but we're not going to
• 1:05:20
  take it seriously until we see an actual physical piece of
• 1:05:24
  evidence in front of us. It's I think goes back to
• 1:05:27
  purpose. Right.
• 1:05:28
  The purpose that is behind what different people do, right?
• 1:05:33
  Just because you're academically inclined and and and you are
• 1:05:37
  nothing, it's it's all objective, you know, there's no
• 1:05:40
  subjective reasoning to it. If that's your purpose, then
• 1:05:44
  that's where it applies and that's where it belongs.
• 1:05:46
  And at least the purpose is defined and we all know that.
• 1:05:51
  But again, when it comes to the the actual living practice of
• 1:05:54
  it, the doing of it. Our purpose, say our, but like
• 1:05:58
  the people that wanna blend the two, our purpose is different.
• 1:06:04
  Yeah, we're trying to get an understanding of okay.
• 1:06:11
  Well, it's a dramatic heathen folk way.
• 1:06:15
  It's a dramatic, heathen religion.
• 1:06:17
  It obviously things were done in a way that connected these
• 1:06:20
  people to the divine and and with the the, the sacred in and
• 1:06:23
  around them, you know, the the, the localized regional spirits,
• 1:06:27
  whatever. If it was done a specific way or
• 1:06:31
  is done that way, then let's learn from that and apply it to
• 1:06:35
  us. Now in modern times like there's
• 1:06:37
  probably going to be some things I think just practically you
• 1:06:40
  know practically speaking then that's what goes back to
• 1:06:42
  practice that don't apply anymore.
• 1:06:44
  Like we're not going to be. They're not going to be holding
• 1:06:46
  nine year sacrifices like they did in Oopsola, you know what I
• 1:06:48
  mean? Like that's not a thing anymore.
• 1:06:51
  Never. You know what I mean?
• 1:06:51
  So, But but knowing like the why and the purpose and and shipping
• 1:06:57
  the purpose and maybe there's there's something that's
• 1:06:59
  reconstructed in a much better in a way that that better fits
• 1:07:04
  modern application. You know, maybe we're not
• 1:07:08
  sacrificing nine of every living thing, but we're doing something
• 1:07:11
  of that kind of reef. Replicates or or or revitalizes
• 1:07:14
  the Yeah. Wouldn't mind doing that to some
• 1:07:16
  particular people. Kidding.
• 1:07:18
  Just kidding. Totally joking.
• 1:07:22
  But. Not advocating that, right.
• 1:07:25
  So yeah, no, of course it has to be sort of reinterpreted and,
• 1:07:30
  you know, carried to the present.
• 1:07:32
  So, but yeah, that's how it becomes a living tradition
• 1:07:36
  rather than something that's just stuck in the past, you
• 1:07:40
  know? I would, I would, I would love
• 1:07:43
  that. I would love to know that the
• 1:07:45
  things that we're doing now set the standard that that may be
• 1:07:49
  that may be a harsh way of saying it but that it sets a
• 1:07:51
  tone or it sets a precedence for people after we're physically
• 1:07:54
  gone. You know because the the the
• 1:07:58
  whole tribal thing, right. Like it's for the tribe goes on
• 1:08:02
  when the people of the tribe don't that that iteration that
• 1:08:08
  that. Group should go on with the
• 1:08:11
  people, the next generations and stuff but the foundation, the
• 1:08:15
  customs, the through whatever have been there from people that
• 1:08:20
  were there before and so that's in that way.
• 1:08:21
  It's the traditions live on. No for sure.
• 1:08:25
  In fact, the hall that I belong to in California, they taught
• 1:08:31
  me. They were.
• 1:08:32
  They were older than me and they knew a lot more than I did.
• 1:08:34
  And I learned a lot from them. And so when I came to Chicago, I
• 1:08:38
  established my own hall here, and it was sort of a
• 1:08:42
  continuation of that hall. Even the name of the hall was
• 1:08:45
  more of a continuation of that hall.
• 1:08:47
  And then, yeah, of course, I would hope that maybe somebody
• 1:08:49
  from my hall would then continue on that sort of tradition and
• 1:08:53
  the values that I brought with me from the hall in California
• 1:08:56
  to here and so on and so forth. Yeah, totally.
• 1:09:02
  But yeah, there's yeah, just keep practicing.
• 1:09:07
  You know, it's all you wanted to tell people.
• 1:09:08
  It's like, it's so important just to practice, practice,
• 1:09:11
  practice, practice. Either you know, you got people
• 1:09:13
  that are usually in subjective land and they don't read
• 1:09:15
  anything, or you got people who are just the, like I said, the
• 1:09:19
  amateur academics who don't do anything at all except research.
• 1:09:26
  Yeah, it's like what good is all this knowledge do if if it's not
• 1:09:31
  being applied? Or at least looking to to have
• 1:09:34
  an application put to it. Like what what really what, what
• 1:09:37
  value does it bring. And that gets into some of the
• 1:09:40
  more of like the the dramatic world views on worth value.
• 1:09:46
  You know the the actual like stuff like that.
• 1:09:48
  You know, like we we don't, we don't.
• 1:09:51
  Just because you know everything doesn't inherently make you
• 1:09:54
  worth anything. Yeah, totally.
• 1:09:56
  And what? Are you doing with that
• 1:09:58
  everything? You don't know anything at all.
• 1:10:01
  And that's including me too. That's just the way I look at
• 1:10:04
  it. It's like the more I learn, the
• 1:10:06
  more I know or at least pursue really, that it's sort of like
• 1:10:11
  turns into fragments of just not knowing anything at all because
• 1:10:14
  it opens up so many different questions.
• 1:10:16
  So forever. You know what they say, right?
• 1:10:18
  For every question you're able to answer, it opens up 10 other
• 1:10:21
  questions you know. And I think there's that's that
• 1:10:24
  can be kind of dangerous territory because it once once
• 1:10:27
  you become so inundated with knowledge.
• 1:10:30
  That you're you're asking more questions than you're having
• 1:10:33
  answers to. I think that that can you run
• 1:10:36
  the risk of drifting away from the orthopraxic nature of
• 1:10:41
  Heathenry? Would you agree that first of
• 1:10:43
  all, Heathenry is orthopraxic? Would you, would you say that
• 1:10:48
  there is orthopraxy a part of Heathenry?
• 1:10:51
  Like, yeah, of course. I mean, we all have Tumble, you
• 1:10:54
  know, For example, I'll have tumble.
• 1:10:56
  We all bloat, you know, So yeah. And so if you get to the point
• 1:11:01
  where you're just starting to question more things and you're
• 1:11:03
  having less answers to it, I think that there's a risk that
• 1:11:08
  we start losing the orthopraxic nature of Heathenry and becoming
• 1:11:12
  all just kind of Foo Foo woo woo, Fluffy Bunny, anything and
• 1:11:17
  everything goes. And I've never had that problem.
• 1:11:20
  I see. I see what you're saying, but
• 1:11:24
  because when I'm talking about, yeah, I mean that's just the
• 1:11:27
  academic side of my brain I guess where I'm just that's
• 1:11:30
  that's how you think is an academic.
• 1:11:32
  Any good academic will tell you that.
• 1:11:35
  But I don't let that sort of take over the the subjective
• 1:11:41
  experiences I have in ritual. So for me anyway, that's not a
• 1:11:45
  problem. I can see how that can be
• 1:11:47
  confusing for some people, but again, like I said at the
• 1:11:50
  beginning of the video, I have no problem separating those two.
• 1:11:53
  Yeah, and. I don't either, essentially, you
• 1:11:56
  know? But yeah, I just tell people.
• 1:11:58
  You know, I've never called myself a Reconstructionist.
• 1:12:01
  I I appreciate and I value the the historical side of things
• 1:12:07
  and I think that there's there's a lot to learn from attempts to
• 1:12:11
  to reconstruct and and that in a way revitalize.
• 1:12:15
  I just would never put my put that.
• 1:12:18
  I would never call myself that because again, I like the
• 1:12:23
  subject. I have friends who are, you
• 1:12:24
  know, but they all say we respect each other.
• 1:12:26
  I have friends who are, we respect each other.
• 1:12:27
  They know why I do what I do. I know why they do what they do
• 1:12:30
  and you know, but we still do share some common heathen
• 1:12:33
  practices and beliefs and you know, but yeah, I was trying to
• 1:12:41
  think too, like there was a couple examples rather where I
• 1:12:46
  would get so just to to go back to the whole practicing versus
• 1:12:49
  academic thing. So just a couple more things
• 1:12:51
  here. I got funding to go to Bjorkorp
• 1:12:55
  in Sweden. It was really cool.
• 1:12:56
  I got to go see the Bjorkorp runestone.
• 1:12:59
  An academic would go there, of course, examine the runes, maybe
• 1:13:03
  transliterate, then give a rough translation, whatever, and then
• 1:13:07
  go home. I kind of did that.
• 1:13:09
  But what happened is I went there, I did all the above, went
• 1:13:13
  back at night, around 10:00 at night, perform ritual there.
• 1:13:18
  You see what I'm saying, that your academics not going to do
• 1:13:20
  that, but also the average academics going to think I'm
• 1:13:22
  crazy for saying that, but you know, whatever.
• 1:13:25
  But I mean, it's the same thing with the Thorsburg more.
• 1:13:28
  I did a video on the Thorsburg more.
• 1:13:30
  You know what's funny is that if you watch that video with the
• 1:13:32
  Thorsburg more, if any of your viewers have seen that, just
• 1:13:35
  know that I also went back there that night and also performed
• 1:13:38
  ritual. So yeah, I mean again.
• 1:13:42
  That has been so amazing. I mean, just, it was cool.
• 1:13:45
  Yeah. I mean, and it's like that's one
• 1:13:47
  of those things where you can't be.
• 1:13:48
  It's weird, right? Because I was there earlier in
• 1:13:50
  the day with my completely like sort of academic set of mine,
• 1:13:53
  right? Then I went back there at night
• 1:13:55
  with my God, which is like a staff or something, you want to
• 1:13:58
  call it a wand. Knocked us down 9 times and
• 1:14:01
  recited a verse and prodramatic and did a couple other things
• 1:14:04
  too. And so in a sense, too, that was
• 1:14:06
  also my way of franking the white who's living there too
• 1:14:12
  within the barrel and saying, look, I didn't just come here
• 1:14:15
  for a bunch of information and to take off.
• 1:14:17
  It's like, hey, I came here for a bunch of information.
• 1:14:19
  Thank you by. Also, by the way, here's a song,
• 1:14:22
  Here's some Mead that I made and so on and so forth.
• 1:14:25
  So thank you. And you know, I also left a room
• 1:14:28
  time there too, with a particular bind room on there
• 1:14:31
  and buried it. So it's that's there.
• 1:14:34
  There's another example of creating the relationship that I
• 1:14:36
  was just talking about too. So.
• 1:14:40
  One of the last things I thought I would ask, you know, for those
• 1:14:43
  that I mean you obviously you've been doing this for for a long
• 1:14:46
  time, you've got a really good command of for all intents and
• 1:14:50
  purposes dead languages. You know, like nobody speaks old
• 1:14:53
  Saxon anymore, at least in the conversational sense.
• 1:14:55
  You can incorporate it into ritual and and and some of these
• 1:14:58
  others, you know, gothic, old, high German, etcetera.
• 1:15:00
  Like you know, these are for all intents and purposes dead
• 1:15:03
  languages. Do you think that there is
• 1:15:07
  greater or lesser? Value to ritual when or when
• 1:15:15
  it's not spoken. Like I mean, I've done certain
• 1:15:17
  things where I've used like an old English bait to create
• 1:15:23
  sacred space, right? Carry a torch and call fire, and
• 1:15:25
  I've used an Old English bait to do that.
• 1:15:27
  Bad meaning prayer, right? I've done that.
• 1:15:30
  But I've also not many people that are in my tribe or in my
• 1:15:34
  circle know what the hell I'm saying.
• 1:15:37
  And I want to give value to those, to that audience, to like
• 1:15:40
  the people that I'm with, the weird that we're tying and
• 1:15:42
  exchanging and all that, the energy that we're sharing
• 1:15:44
  together. Like I don't want to give them
• 1:15:46
  an experience where they feel like I don't know what he's
• 1:15:48
  saying. I can't.
• 1:15:49
  I can't experience what he's experiencing.
• 1:15:52
  Do you think that there's having a command or no knowledge at all
• 1:15:58
  of these ancient languages lessons or enhances the
• 1:16:01
  experience? I think knowing him enhances it.
• 1:16:04
  And here's why. And if you didn't know English,
• 1:16:07
  wouldn't it be pretty difficult to go to a village in German
• 1:16:10
  Germany and converse with someone you know?
• 1:16:14
  And so I'm not saying that you have to do that right?
• 1:16:18
  And also it's like if you did it like in your case too with doing
• 1:16:21
  that, the prayer and Old English.
• 1:16:23
  I think that's great and this is This is why.
• 1:16:25
  But I have an answer for the people who are good with
• 1:16:27
  languages and the people who aren't, So just hear me out.
• 1:16:31
  So in that case, I think it's great because the way that I
• 1:16:35
  think about it is it's like, what would it be like?
• 1:16:37
  For example, ask yourself this question, what would it be like
• 1:16:40
  to be able to converse with some ancestors of mine from 1000
• 1:16:46
  years ago? How cool would that be for them
• 1:16:48
  to at least not even converse, but at least for them to know
• 1:16:51
  what I'm saying as I'm carrying out these ritual acts?
• 1:16:55
  I think that's that's amazing, you know, to be able to do that.
• 1:16:58
  But like I said, I have an answer for both.
• 1:17:01
  So in this Old Saxon ritual that I was talking about, I speak in
• 1:17:04
  Old Saxon, obviously, and I'm doing these ritual acts.
• 1:17:09
  But I also have this, this role for someone else who is sort of
• 1:17:13
  like an ambassador. So you could think about this
• 1:17:16
  too in your own ritual practice, you know, if you'd like.
• 1:17:19
  But basically what's happening is that I am acting like the
• 1:17:23
  speaker of Old Saxon to these these people, right, This, this
• 1:17:26
  tribe. And then the ambassador then
• 1:17:29
  translates it. So you have both verses going at
• 1:17:32
  the same time, so everyone understands everything that's
• 1:17:36
  going on, so. You're not like that.
• 1:17:41
  I like that. You have like a yeah, like you
• 1:17:43
  say an ambassador. So when you're in that ritual
• 1:17:48
  mind state, and when you're addressing the audience that's
• 1:17:51
  intended to be addressed in that native language, perhaps, or
• 1:17:55
  whatever, the participants. The crowd, you know, the folks
• 1:18:00
  that are there that maybe don't know it, are still able to
• 1:18:02
  experience it in their native tongue because of the translator
• 1:18:04
  or the person. Yes.
• 1:18:05
  And exactly. If I'm saying it in English.
• 1:18:07
  And then of course, other, I use the term ritual acts.
• 1:18:09
  Right. Because it's not just the word
• 1:18:11
  which, you know, you have to use for intention and rich ritual
• 1:18:14
  purposes. But like.
• 1:18:15
  Yeah, exactly. So for example, I'm the only
• 1:18:18
  one. Well, I was the only one in my
• 1:18:21
  hall in California who could read and understand Old Saxon.
• 1:18:25
  And of course I created these magical verses in Old Sex.
• 1:18:28
  And what I mean by magical here is just alliteration, beautiful,
• 1:18:30
  alliterative poetry. And they were like, well, how
• 1:18:34
  the hell do we know what you're saying?
• 1:18:35
  And it's that's when I kind of came up with the ambassador
• 1:18:37
  role, I was like, okay, well, let's just do it like this then.
• 1:18:41
  So that way everybody's equally involved.
• 1:18:43
  Everybody's getting something out of it.
• 1:18:46
  I like that. I like that, you know, because
• 1:18:48
  maybe because I'm sure there's going to be others that that are
• 1:18:52
  listening and watching that. May have a similar dynamic where
• 1:18:55
  they have somebody who is focused on the linguistics and
• 1:18:57
  that really want to incorporate this, but at the same time don't
• 1:19:00
  want to slight alienate their own people when they're hollered
• 1:19:05
  or whatever totally. And how I would do it, it would
• 1:19:08
  be more specific is I would do a verse in a ritual act and then
• 1:19:13
  or just like a verse and then have someone else do the English
• 1:19:16
  verse and then one verse, the next verse and then the next
• 1:19:19
  verse is in English. So it's just not the whole text.
• 1:19:21
  And then the whole thing is translation.
• 1:19:23
  It's like I said, ambassador. So it's just like translating.
• 1:19:27
  Yeah, they're doing it almost in as close to real time as
• 1:19:31
  possible. Yeah.
• 1:19:32
  And we see that too. I mean the music and other forms
• 1:19:36
  of communication where I've seen concerts where even the deaf can
• 1:19:43
  be a part of the experience because they have sign
• 1:19:46
  interpreters there that are. Sharing that too.
• 1:19:50
  So I like that having that ambassador role for the group
• 1:19:53
  that that's really, I think that's you.
• 1:19:55
  Check it out. Let me know how it works for
• 1:19:56
  you. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
• 1:20:00
  Well, this has been great, Scott.
• 1:20:01
  I'm really happy that we got a chance to dive into some of
• 1:20:05
  these these things. And I hope the people that are
• 1:20:08
  on your side, you know the the folks that you brought your
• 1:20:11
  supporters here for the first time maybe found some value to
• 1:20:14
  it, enjoyed it and if they. Did so if anyone's here from my
• 1:20:17
  channel, please subscribe to Jesse's channel here on Mid
• 1:20:21
  Guard Musics. He's got great stuff, so.
• 1:20:25
  I appreciate that. And then likewise for those that
• 1:20:28
  are here. All of Scott's stuff is gonna be
• 1:20:31
  linked down in the description and shown up.
• 1:20:32
  So he does have the daily ha of them all.
• 1:20:35
  Facebook page, which I think is more focused on literally what
• 1:20:38
  that means. It's versus from the Halva Mall
• 1:20:40
  in Carolyn. What's her name?
• 1:20:43
  Carolyn Larrington, and I've been extending it more to just
• 1:20:46
  like the poetic ETA versus but it started off with Halva Mall.
• 1:20:49
  But yeah, same idea. Yeah, so he's got really good
• 1:20:52
  stuff there. It's on Facebook.
• 1:20:54
  And then he's also got his YouTube channel where you go
• 1:20:56
  more into the linguistic side of things, but some of the more
• 1:21:01
  academic it is more academic. Yeah.
• 1:21:03
  But I like your approach to it, cuz there's some good stuff on
• 1:21:06
  your channel that leans more into the practitioner side of
• 1:21:10
  things. I love your video on oaths,
• 1:21:13
  yeah. The rune stuff, you know, Like,
• 1:21:16
  I mean that's yeah, the oath is a big one for me.
• 1:21:25
  I would love to get to talk to you more about some of that side
• 1:21:28
  of stuff too if you're willing. It's same, that's probably
• 1:21:22
  another video for us down the road because yeah.
• 1:21:32
  Yeah. I mean of course the oath is is
• 1:21:35
  if you I'll leave you with this cliffhanger in your audience.
• 1:21:39
  The oath is so important that the oath was held higher than
• 1:21:42
  blood ties so and that's seen in the Hildebrons lead.
• 1:21:48
  So I'll leave you with that. But it's a it's a war where
• 1:21:50
  family member has to kill another family member because of
• 1:21:53
  an oath. So yeah.
• 1:21:57
  I would love to get more into that.
• 1:21:58
  I've done podcasts about O's. I know you did that video, so
• 1:22:01
  people want to lead. I meant Hilda Braun's lead.
• 1:22:03
  Sorry. This has been awesome, man.
• 1:22:08
  And for everybody listening and watching, we're gonna leave you
• 1:22:10
  with something special. As everybody who follows my
• 1:22:15
  stuff knows, I always give a plug at the end.
• 1:22:19
  Please check out the description for all the ways that you can
• 1:22:21
  support this podcast. Follow, like, share, subscribe.
• 1:22:24
  You know, do all of those things that the fickle algorithm God so
• 1:22:27
  and graciously demand. But I always God hates me.
• 1:22:32
  Man. They are man they.
• 1:22:34
  The bipolar would be an understatement, but the last
• 1:22:39
  thing that I always sign off with is may the gods continue to
• 1:22:42
  notice you and may your ancestors smile upon you.
• 1:22:44
  We're going to do something a little bit different today
• 1:22:46
  because Scott has been gracious enough to give me something
• 1:22:50
  earlier on that. It doesn't exactly translate to
• 1:22:52
  what I just said in English. However, it is a really, really
• 1:22:57
  powerful recitation of something in Was it Old Saxon?
• 1:23:03
  Yeah, it's an old Saxon and again, it's just another example
• 1:23:06
  of how we can bring this stuff to the present, right?
• 1:23:09
  So it's a reconstruction that I did by using the language and
• 1:23:13
  it's kind of a just a a verse that resonates with me quite a
• 1:23:17
  bit. Right.
• 1:23:19
  Well, I will turn it over to you Scott.
• 1:23:20
  Go ahead, fakla Ora fakla so samo so Farrah or the Bren.
• 1:23:25
  It samo so mocked any man. And then more than usus Kunias
• 1:23:30
  Bren it barishly go, and then Barnum that fear.
• 1:23:34
  So we Haley at an entesum, Hayma, we say, hey, little yes
• 1:23:37
  dos a torch to another torch as a token, Lights like the might
• 1:23:45
  and mane in the minds of our kin.
• 1:23:48
  Brightly within the barns burns this fire as we heal in this
• 1:23:53
  home our heroes spirits. It's beautiful, powerful.
• 1:24:00
  I love it. And thank you for sharing that
• 1:24:03
  with everybody here. You guys heard it, you guys saw
• 1:24:07
  it. So for those that maybe are more
• 1:24:09
  of a visual type person, you've got the words on screen here and
• 1:24:14
  definitely be sure to check out again all of Scott's content.
• 1:24:19
  And and follow along with him and and Scott, anything else
• 1:24:22
  that you've got going on that you want to share a plug with
• 1:24:24
  the people that are just keeping busy, man, that's about it.
• 1:24:29
  But no I do. I had it's been about a month
• 1:24:32
  since I put a video out and it's just cuz life happens.
• 1:24:35
  But just know I'm always active. You know I'm working on two
• 1:24:38
  different publications right now.
• 1:24:40
  At least one of them's going to be published in the footh arc
• 1:24:42
  journal. So you know, I'm always doing
• 1:24:46
  stuff and and I always try to engage my followers on the
• 1:24:51
  community. Yeah, that's another thing for
• 1:24:52
  your viewers too. I try to engage my followers on
• 1:24:57
  the community banner on YouTube, So we have conversations there.
• 1:25:02
  So definitely check that out because even if I don't post a
• 1:25:04
  video for a few weeks or whatever, I'm always posting
• 1:25:06
  stuff there to ask you guys questions.
• 1:25:10
  You know, what is it that you want to know?
• 1:25:11
  Or just post random pictures of like room stones and stuff like
• 1:25:14
  that so. Excellent.
• 1:25:16
  Yeah, I definitely I'll, I'll, I'll keep my eyes peeled and
• 1:25:19
  everybody that's here watching and listening and and supporting
• 1:25:22
  what I do, please do the same for Scott, give him, give him
• 1:25:24
  some of that validation on the socials.
• 1:25:27
  It's all good stuff. So thank you all.
• 1:25:30
  Yeah, it's great having you on again Scott and thank you for
• 1:25:32
  everything that you do academically and and and sharing
• 1:25:36
  some of your behind the scenes stuff, you know some of the more
• 1:25:38
  practitioner focused areas, the subjective stuff that that that
• 1:25:42
  really hits home for all of us. So it's great that we've got
• 1:25:45
  somebody here who is an academic or has academic inclinations,
• 1:25:48
  but is willing to divulge and share what they're comfortable
• 1:25:52
  with on that plane too. So we appreciate it.
• 1:25:55
  Of course. You're welcome.
• 1:25:57
  All right. Well, we will go ahead and sign
• 1:25:58
  this off everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in
• 1:26:00
  and watching. We'll see you in the next one,
• 1:26:02
  all