Latest / Random Heathen Ramblings / When the Land Speaks Louder Than the Lore (feat. Chris Waddell) - [RHR S7, EP03]

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When the Land Speaks Louder Than the Lore (feat. Chris Waddell) - [RHR S7, EP03] · Random Heathen Ramblings

• 0:01
  Hello everyone, and welcome to the Random Heathen Ramblings
• 0:04
  podcast where we discuss all sorts of things Germanic
• 0:08
  Heathenry related. My name is Jesse and I am your
• 0:11
  host. Let's get into it.
• 0:35
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• 0:38
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• 0:42
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• 0:45
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• 0:51
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• 0:54
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• 0:58
  Visit ouronlinestore@theallofeightyear.com
• 1:01
  and discover the beauty of Mountain spirit.
• 1:06
  Well, hail and welcome back everyone to the third episode of
• 1:10
  Season 7 here on Random Heathen Ramblings Podcast.
• 1:12
  And thank you so much for your continued support over the last
• 1:15
  seven seasons are going into YEAH and going to our seventh
• 1:19
  season. It's greatly appreciated for
• 1:21
  those of you that do watch this on Patreon.
• 1:24
  I hope you've all caught some of the recent updates that I've
• 1:27
  shared regarding the future of the tiers or levels and which
• 1:32
  you support and some of the some of the specifics that are going
• 1:36
  around that. So I'll probably be linking
• 1:37
  those those posts or whatever down in the description of the
• 1:41
  videos for you all. If in case you missed it and
• 1:43
  you're just catching this now on the on the on the podcast
• 1:46
  release date, But for those of you listening to the show on all
• 1:49
  the other audio platforms, I am getting ready to move into a new
• 1:54
  phase of my tiers of support on Patreon.
• 1:58
  So heading over to patreon.com/midgard Musings if
• 2:00
  you want to read up on the updates that are going to be
• 2:04
  coming into effect. Those things are going to be
• 2:06
  happening on March 1st. So there's still time for you
• 2:09
  guys to to read it over and then take a look and see what fits
• 2:13
  you. Of course, any questions that
• 2:15
  you have, if you want to reach out to me directly, feel free to
• 2:17
  e-mail midgardmusingstn@gmail.com.
• 2:21
  And for for that matter, if you're listening or watching
• 2:24
  this and you have not yet become a guest on the show and you'd
• 2:26
  like to be featured as a guest, either new guest or even a
• 2:30
  return guest. I know there's a lot of folks
• 2:31
  that stick around and like to come back on the show.
• 2:35
  The mailbox is open as well. Just shoot me an e-mail and I'll
• 2:38
  let you know my availability and we'll get something planned to
• 2:40
  have you appear on the show. So Speaking of which, the guest
• 2:44
  that we have on today is another return guest.
• 2:47
  It's great to be starting off Season 7 with some familiar
• 2:50
  faces, at least for those of you who have stuck around and caught
• 2:53
  the content since, you know, the last couple of seasons at least.
• 2:56
  So I'm going to welcome to the stage now another heathen up in
• 3:00
  the Delaware region of the United States.
• 3:02
  This is Chris Waddell. Welcome back to the show, Chris.
• 3:05
  Thanks for being here man. Thank you.
• 3:07
  Good, good to be there. I know man, getting ready for
• 3:11
  some are you, you guys are at Delaware.
• 3:14
  So, you know, we, we were talking a bit offline about just
• 3:16
  the, the, the crowdedness and, and everything, but you guys
• 3:18
  have have have you already gotten a, a good dose of winter
• 3:22
  yet up by you? It it hasn't been too bad.
• 3:26
  We've had a couple of cold spells and a couple light
• 3:29
  dustings of snow, but a. Few light dustings.
• 3:32
  Too far, it hasn't been too bad. But January's not over and
• 3:37
  February is approaching fast, so.
• 3:41
  For sure, man, they can, they can definitely be some, some of
• 3:44
  the more brutal months of winter.
• 3:47
  You know, we were talking, I've been telling a couple of people,
• 3:50
  you know, like for, for the authentic heathens, or I say
• 3:53
  authentic meaning, like the, the, the historically
• 3:56
  reconstructionist types where they observe the, the Luna solar
• 4:00
  calendar, you know, midwinter. That's the, the, the next
• 4:04
  midwinter bloat is, is Yule coming up here in just a couple
• 4:07
  weeks according to that reckoning.
• 4:09
  And it's going to feel, I think more like a midwinter time with
• 4:13
  the climate than than it has up, you know, last month or two.
• 4:17
  So yeah, making those preparations and gearing up for
• 4:22
  that. So.
• 4:24
  But yeah, man, it's great to have you back here.
• 4:27
  Been excited to talk with you about a couple of topics.
• 4:31
  When you, when you had reached out to me, I think it was a a
• 4:34
  month or two ago, last it was during Season 6.
• 4:38
  You had things on your mind at that time that you thought would
• 4:40
  be worth talking about. But before we get into those
• 4:45
  topics, I know people are anxious to, to get into it, as
• 4:47
  am I. Since people may not know about
• 4:50
  you or have checked out, you know, any past episodes and, and
• 4:53
  stuff. You know, I was hoping maybe if
• 4:55
  you could just kind of give us a little bit of a background,
• 4:58
  maybe describe a little bit about your heathen path and how
• 5:02
  you kind of came in to walking it.
• 5:05
  Because I remember what we talked about when you first came
• 5:08
  on the show. It was very natural, very
• 5:10
  organic, almost without a label as it were, because it was a
• 5:13
  lifestyle. So, but for those that aren't
• 5:16
  familiar, if you wouldn't mind, maybe just kind of giving us a,
• 5:19
  a background of it please. Well, I consider myself a Heath
• 5:24
  and first and foremost I think that's always been the case.
• 5:29
  Even from a very young age, it, it just always felt right.
• 5:35
  I think we talked about it last time.
• 5:36
  Even when I was a small kid, I would do things like leave
• 5:42
  offerings at oak trees and that sort of thing.
• 5:45
  And as I got older, into my teenage years, I started to
• 5:48
  study more and became acquainted with who the gods were.
• 5:53
  And it just sort of progressed from there.
• 5:55
  And I've never been anything else.
• 5:57
  I'm 55 years old. I consider myself a heathen for
• 6:00
  55 years. Yeah.
• 6:04
  And you've always, or at least for my recollection, right.
• 6:07
  You've always had a very your life has been very much in in
• 6:13
  tune with the land and and intertwined with spirit of the
• 6:16
  land, right? Yeah, I've always been very much
• 6:21
  at home outdoors and, and, and among the land and, and
• 6:26
  everything that dwells within it.
• 6:30
  I don't know, it just always felt natural to me.
• 6:33
  It was just always where I was happiest.
• 6:37
  I know some people that didn't grow up.
• 6:39
  I was lucky enough to grow up in the country where we were always
• 6:42
  surrounded by woods and rivers, and I think I was kind of
• 6:46
  blessed to be able to spend as much time as I want wanted in
• 6:51
  that environment. So it was never anything I had
• 6:54
  to do without or never anything that I was deprived of.
• 7:02
  Now, yeah, I, I kind of grew up similarly because of course,
• 7:05
  where I'm from in New York on, you know, Long Island, lot of
• 7:08
  people think when they, when, you know, at least from where I
• 7:12
  live now in Tennessee. When I first came to Tennessee
• 7:14
  and I said I'm from New York, the first thing that came to
• 7:16
  people's minds was the big city, right?
• 7:19
  New York City and sky and all that, the concrete jungle and
• 7:22
  all that. I'm like that's, that's like
• 7:24
  such a small, you know, percentage of the, the state of
• 7:29
  New York, right? And it's mostly rural, it's
• 7:32
  mostly country. It's the mountains, it's, you
• 7:34
  know, the rivers and the lakes and beautiful.
• 7:37
  But but the Long Island, you know, is even probably even
• 7:41
  catches more of that stereotypical, you know, New
• 7:44
  York City, you know, 'cause you've got Brooklyn, you've got
• 7:47
  Queens, you've got, you know, all of those major boroughs and
• 7:51
  stuff in, in, in that sort of West End of the island.
• 7:53
  But the further E you go where I'm from, I remember my parents
• 7:57
  talking about when they were kids growing up, it was mostly
• 8:01
  potato farms. It was a very agriculturally
• 8:05
  central, central, you know, space.
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  And so I grew up in that, you know, later on there really
• 8:12
  wasn't that much of it, but the echoes of that pass were still
• 8:14
  there. There were still a lot of
• 8:15
  farmland and, and the Pine Barrens and, you know, I
• 8:19
  remember growing up going to the New York to the, to the Long
• 8:22
  Island Sound, which is the body of water between the North Shore
• 8:25
  of Long Island and Connecticut, growing up in that space, you
• 8:29
  know, so, and then when we moved off the island, going up to
• 8:33
  Orange County, New York, where, you know, lower foothills of the
• 8:36
  Catskills, the Hudson Valley, you know, I, I became very much
• 8:41
  in tune with, you know, fishing and hunting and hiking and just
• 8:45
  being in nature as a kid, you know, playing and having that
• 8:49
  space. So what was interesting though,
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  is, you know, I grew up as a Christian, you know, growing,
• 8:53
  growing up with Christian worldviews and dogma and
• 8:57
  doctrine. But, but coming into Heathenry
• 9:01
  later on in my life felt so much more at home.
• 9:05
  I felt it felt so much more right.
• 9:07
  And a lot of the things that I learned about within Heathenry
• 9:11
  were things that I already grew up with.
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  They just called it something different.
• 9:13
  They, they, they, they had a different just framework around
• 9:16
  it, but I was, you know, I, I worked on a farm, I was fishing,
• 9:21
  hunting, you know, tending the land, gardening, so much of the
• 9:25
  homesteader lifestyle that is, is very heathen, you know, if
• 9:30
  you want to call it that. So I get what you're saying.
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  And and that it's I, I, I am, I do feel blessed as well to have
• 9:37
  had that past to grow up in and be exposed to that.
• 9:42
  Yeah, I noticed the more involved you are with Heathenry,
• 9:47
  the more you tend to see it and other people, even though they
• 9:50
  don't realize they're living it and experiencing it.
• 9:54
  Yeah, yeah. I guess we'll kind of see the
• 9:59
  the similarities, right or the the shared syncretism, yeah.
• 10:03
  And, and, you know, little customs and, and little things
• 10:07
  we do, the way we, we interact with the world, I think it's
• 10:12
  very much still within everyone's DNA.
• 10:16
  They just don't realize it. It's just under the surface.
• 10:23
  Gosh, I wish I could come up with a good example now, but I
• 10:26
  see it all the time. I, I look at people and I'm
• 10:28
  like, you know, you don't realize it, but you're kind of a
• 10:32
  heathen, especially among the really rural people.
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  But I think everybody in general, I think you're a lot
• 10:40
  more connected to things than you realize.
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  Even the people that actively don't consider themselves as
• 10:47
  heathens or pagans. I think ultimately we're
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  connected to to everything around us.
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  After all, everything is made of energy.
• 10:59
  We're all made of the same energy, as you know, As far as
• 11:02
  I'm concerned, that's every tree, every rock, every river.
• 11:05
  We're all made of the same stuff.
• 11:08
  Yeah, right. Yeah, man, that's a, that's a,
• 11:12
  that's a very astute thing to for you to observe.
• 11:15
  Is that the, the connection between US and nature is that
• 11:18
  we're not, you know, separate outside of one another.
• 11:22
  We are part of each other. There's that connected and the
• 11:27
  animistic nature of Heathenry. You know what I mean?
• 11:30
  Like it's, you put a label to it because it, it is, it is a label
• 11:33
  that has been placed upon the Germanic or Nordic, you know,
• 11:39
  pre Christian beliefs of, of an indigenous people, right?
• 11:41
  They, they're typically called, you know, Norse, pagans,
• 11:44
  Germanic heathens or whatever. And, but, but the label aside,
• 11:50
  you strip it down to just the, the bare, bare bones maybe is
• 11:55
  it's, it's all animism and, and, and feeling that connection with
• 12:00
  and really, you know, it's, we're living part of that.
• 12:02
  We're not just observers, we're participants, we're caretakers,
• 12:06
  we're stewards, we're we're relatives to all of these seen
• 12:12
  and unseen, you know, forces. But yeah, that's beautiful, man.
• 12:19
  I'm going and I think more people, I don't know if you've
• 12:21
  gotten the sense of this now, especially since you have so
• 12:24
  many years of Heathenry of, of your practice.
• 12:29
  But if you've noticed that it seems lately like more people
• 12:33
  are waking up to that reality and more people are becoming
• 12:36
  aware that we're part of a bigger picture.
• 12:42
  And, and it's not just we're not just kind of observers of it
• 12:46
  anymore. We're, we're, we're actively,
• 12:51
  you know, the threads of weird that, that, that have been woven
• 12:54
  and that we, we, they're all interconnected and has a lasting
• 12:57
  effect on things, you know. Yeah, excuse me, From where I'm
• 13:04
  standing it, it seems like more people are catching on to that.
• 13:08
  I don't know if they really are or not, but it sure seems like
• 13:12
  there's an awakening of sorts coming where people are starting
• 13:17
  to understand. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure
• 13:20
  there's still plenty of people that are that are completely
• 13:23
  blind to it, but it seems to me that more people are starting to
• 13:29
  understand just the animistic side of things and the way that
• 13:37
  we're all connected and everything's connected.
• 13:39
  And I hope it continues and I hope it progresses to where
• 13:43
  everybody understands that. But there's a long way to go, of
• 13:46
  course. Yeah, you know, right.
• 13:48
  It's a it's a long game. And you, you know, you take a
• 13:50
  look at the world around you nowadays and it's hard to
• 13:52
  ignore, you know, just the things that are happening in our
• 13:56
  time and in our existence right now.
• 13:59
  It's hard to ignore that. And then neglect these thoughts,
• 14:04
  which is a topic you wanted to bring up.
• 14:07
  You know, what the future holds, you know, or what the future of
• 14:11
  for specifically Heathenry kind of looks like.
• 14:14
  So, you know, since you had brought it up in the e-mail and
• 14:18
  this was this was part of the topics that had come to your
• 14:21
  heart to to want to speak on. What do you think that means?
• 14:25
  Like what do you think, what, what is your perception, what is
• 14:31
  your view on, on the future of heat and re how you see it going
• 14:33
  forward or in what context are you looking to to kind of
• 14:38
  explore that? Well, I think people need to get
• 14:43
  to the basics of what heat and RE is.
• 14:48
  You know as well as either, you see a whole lot of people
• 14:51
  focused on biking each, You see people posting online, they're
• 14:58
  posting pictures of, you know, guys carrying bloody axes and
• 15:03
  women of goth makeup and all sorts of crazy stuff.
• 15:08
  But they're missing the point of what Heathenry is or what
• 15:12
  Germanic paganism is. Even if you don't identify as a
• 15:15
  Germanic Pagan, but from an animus perspective, I think
• 15:21
  they're kind of there's a lot of people that are missing the
• 15:23
  point. And it didn't used to bother me
• 15:25
  so bad because I thought, well, those are the people that get
• 15:27
  started. This is what what they start
• 15:30
  getting interested in and you know, they progress from there
• 15:33
  and realize what it really is. But I think people need to stop
• 15:41
  focusing on, you know, a three, 400 year period in history and
• 15:46
  start understanding what it really is.
• 15:49
  It's it's so many thousands of years older, not only older, but
• 15:55
  it's here and now. It never stopped existing, you
• 16:01
  know, heathen Reas and a period in the past.
• 16:04
  It's right here, right now, same as it was 10,000 years ago.
• 16:10
  And I think if we want to move forward, people need to
• 16:14
  understand that and focus on that and move away from, yeah, I
• 16:21
  don't know how to put it, this, this historical reenactment of a
• 16:26
  single period in time. I I think they need to get to
• 16:28
  the nuts and bolts of it if it's going to move forward.
• 16:31
  Yeah. You mean like the Viking Age or
• 16:33
  the medieval period, Late medieval period?
• 16:36
  That gets so well, you know, and it's an interesting kind of
• 16:41
  yeah, challenge maybe, if you will, because so much of the
• 16:46
  sources that we look to right, documented sources, whether it
• 16:51
  be the, the sagas or the Etas or any of the other, you know,
• 16:56
  poems from that time frame, you know, like that's where they all
• 17:00
  kind of got published around, you know, within that, like you
• 17:03
  say, you know, 3-4 hundred year period, you know, so it's like
• 17:09
  your, your, your attention when, when, when people come into
• 17:12
  Henry. And, and I'm sure you've heard
• 17:13
  this before, right? You know, you got to read, read,
• 17:15
  read the, read the Eddas, read the sagas, you know, learn your
• 17:18
  sources, blah, blah, blah. Well, that's where all the
• 17:20
  attention's getting focused is to that era of time.
• 17:24
  And so, but then what do you do with it, right?
• 17:25
  What do you do with that information?
• 17:27
  And how do you bring it into the context of, well, we're living
• 17:30
  now. We're not living in, you know,
• 17:32
  9th century Norway or, or, you know, 10th century Sweden or,
• 17:38
  you know, continental Germanic lands in the 9th century with,
• 17:42
  you know, tribes and stuff anymore.
• 17:43
  This is a different landscape. It's a different world.
• 17:47
  We've certainly as as a species, as humanity have, you know,
• 17:50
  evolved greatly. But yeah, those those core
• 17:55
  values, maybe those fundamental aspects of what kept those
• 18:01
  beliefs existing through the centuries.
• 18:04
  Yeah, I've I've kind of come full circle because I used to
• 18:09
  tell people if if you want to get started, read the others,
• 18:16
  read the sagas. Now I've, I've sort of shifted
• 18:20
  to learn and understand animism first, because by understanding
• 18:29
  animism, have an easier understanding of our
• 18:33
  relationship with the gods and understanding and the beliefs of
• 18:39
  the people whose records we have.
• 18:43
  I think you, it's much easier to understand that way of thinking
• 18:46
  if you understand animism first. That's the way I look at it now,
• 18:53
  right? And I, I don't get me wrong.
• 18:56
  I mean, obviously we need to study the historical
• 19:00
  documentation and and we need to learn what our ancestors did
• 19:04
  and, and absorb any records that we have.
• 19:07
  But I think learning animism at first is very important before
• 19:13
  you step into that. So you have a way of
• 19:15
  understanding what their thought process was in relation to that
• 19:21
  historical record. Yeah, yeah, it reminds me of
• 19:26
  some advice I I've heard from other seasoned, you know,
• 19:32
  heathens is to, you know, you have to, you have to start with
• 19:38
  your own hearth cult, your own individual cultic practices.
• 19:42
  You have to know what you're doing and why you're doing it
• 19:44
  before you can understand the rest of it or, or the bigger
• 19:47
  pick. Right.
• 19:48
  OK. Like what's your relationship
• 19:50
  with the local spirits and your ancestors before you understand
• 19:56
  the the the degree or the depth in which the the people would
• 20:00
  engage with? The divine, the holy powers
• 20:03
  outside of that local, you know, existence because so much of
• 20:10
  what I think gets overlooked within Heathenry is is the OR at
• 20:15
  least has up to maybe more recently, is that the the the
• 20:19
  the people had a living relationship with the land.
• 20:24
  It was it wasn't they weren't just I'm living on this piece of
• 20:28
  land and it's land. It's, you know, how can I have a
• 20:31
  relationship with this, the, the spirit of this land?
• 20:34
  So that way my crops are doing good, you know, and my, my
• 20:37
  cattle are, are healthy and all of these other things.
• 20:40
  My family is healthy, right? It was that understanding, it
• 20:43
  was that belief that, you know, if, if one was suffering, it was
• 20:47
  because the other was suffering. And then how do we heal this
• 20:49
  part to heal that part. So that symbiotic relationship.
• 20:54
  Oh yeah, there was a time we were, we were deeply connected
• 20:56
  to the land. Of course we depended on it,
• 20:58
  absolutely. You couldn't have one without
• 21:03
  the other. Of course.
• 21:06
  I think we've lost a little bit of that connection now.
• 21:08
  We're not as closely connected to the land itself.
• 21:11
  In modern times, you know, people shop at grocery stores.
• 21:15
  You know, they have their stuff shipped from from wherever.
• 21:18
  So they don't depend on that local land as much as they used
• 21:22
  to. They're not as connected to that
• 21:24
  land as they used to. Yeah, I agree 100%.
• 21:28
  Yeah. And you and I were talking
• 21:29
  offline before we started recording today about how our
• 21:34
  respective areas where we live in are just becoming so
• 21:37
  populated. So growth, like the growth is,
• 21:39
  is taking over the the natural resources.
• 21:44
  And yeah, we're, we're, we're, we're kind of not kind of we
• 21:49
  are, we're we're really abusing our own home.
• 21:55
  If you look at it from from a very animistic view of, you
• 21:58
  know, what the world is, you know this is our home and not
• 22:04
  being treated very well, no resources.
• 22:07
  Not at all. Yeah.
• 22:10
  And I don't know how you combat that.
• 22:11
  I mean, you know, what can you do and and and what are you
• 22:17
  going to do? Move from the area?
• 22:18
  This is when it's a place you're connected to that you grew up
• 22:21
  to, it's hard to leave that area.
• 22:23
  But when you see that land or the land you have access to
• 22:28
  shrinking more and more and you're having less and less
• 22:30
  connection with it. I honestly don't know what the
• 22:33
  answer to that is. I don't, I don't know what you
• 22:34
  should do, pull up routes and and find different sacred
• 22:39
  spaces. But but that's hard to do when
• 22:42
  you're connected that land. You know, I think you leave your
• 22:47
  energy in the space that you were, you were born and raised
• 22:51
  in. It's a hard thing to do.
• 22:53
  And I wish I had an answer for, you know, how to combat that,
• 22:57
  you know, I really don't. Yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's
• 23:01
  a, you know, to, to say to combat.
• 23:03
  It is if it's like a, you know, a fight in a way.
• 23:06
  I understand the, the term and I understand where that kind of
• 23:10
  the, the, the mentality or the spirit comes from, because it
• 23:13
  does feel like we're in a battle with these, you know, the, the
• 23:16
  people that are in authority to, to have any sort of sway, right,
• 23:21
  to have any sort of influence to keep things natural.
• 23:26
  You know, they're the ones that because it lines their pockets,
• 23:29
  You know, they're the ones that are, that are deciding to, you
• 23:33
  know, build this data center or, you know, drill here for oil or,
• 23:37
  you know, blow this, you know, hundreds of acres down for oil
• 23:42
  or water. You know what I mean?
• 23:44
  Like it's, it's just, that's all they think about is, is how it's
• 23:48
  going to make them money. And, and they don't think about
• 23:51
  it from an animistic standpoint. And, and then we're here stuck,
• 23:54
  you know, going what do we say? What do we do?
• 23:58
  What can we say, what can we do 'cause it's not just for us, you
• 24:02
  know what I mean? That's it's, it's for the
• 24:03
  future, you know, for our kids, our grandkids, our nieces and
• 24:08
  nephews and other relations. And I don't know the answer for
• 24:14
  me is not, you know, it it, it's, it's to teach what we can
• 24:18
  to our, you know, to our children, you know, to the young
• 24:23
  ones nowadays is, is to teach because that's going to be the
• 24:25
  next, that's going to be the next stage of what can be done.
• 24:30
  They're going to be in those positions to ask those
• 24:33
  questions. What can be done?
• 24:34
  Well, let's teach them now what we can do.
• 24:37
  And then to have that connection, you know, first of
• 24:39
  all, they have to, they have to feel that connection too.
• 24:42
  And it's a it's something I think that you brought up was,
• 24:45
  you know, would becoming so disconnected from it.
• 24:47
  It's it's a learned process. You have to kind of, you know,
• 24:53
  Oh yeah, go back to those roots. You have to relearn that, you
• 24:58
  know. Yeah, and if you have a family,
• 24:59
  if you have kids, if you have grandkids, you really need to
• 25:04
  immerse them in it from an early age.
• 25:06
  I think, yeah. Because by the time they're a
• 25:12
  little older, trying to get them interested in it, I think you're
• 25:17
  going to have a harder time. I think if you start them at a
• 25:19
  very early age, get them out in nature, out in the woods, out on
• 25:26
  the rivers, I think it's going to it's going to set the hook a
• 25:30
  little easier. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:33
  Now do you have, have you, have you been able to, to get into
• 25:37
  that with, with your own, you know, children, grandchildren,
• 25:40
  nieces, nephews, anything like. That not yet my own kids, you
• 25:45
  know, we have 2 girls. We lived in an area in Delaware
• 25:51
  that was, it was a small city so to speak, but I didn't want to
• 25:56
  raise them there. So we moved them to West
• 25:58
  Virginia and we pulled groups and moved to the country in West
• 26:01
  Virginia and we lived there for several years.
• 26:05
  And I'm really glad I got them out there because even now,
• 26:11
  which, you know, they're in their mid and late 20s, they
• 26:15
  still visit that area. They still go back.
• 26:17
  They still spend time there. You know, it's like 3 1/2 hours
• 26:20
  away. Both of them still go out there
• 26:23
  occasionally to spend time there.
• 26:25
  So I think I did it right with them.
• 26:29
  And my granddaughter is 6 now. She's just getting to that age,
• 26:34
  you know, and her father has already taken her to upstate
• 26:40
  Pennsylvania, you know, on camping trips to get out in the
• 26:42
  wilderness and stuff, which I think is great.
• 26:44
  Yeah. But I think we need to keep
• 26:47
  doing that and and keep her connected.
• 26:50
  Yes, yeah, 100% man. And, you know, I don't have, I
• 26:54
  don't have, you know, I haven't sired my own children, but I do
• 26:58
  have other relatives, you know, young children and and young
• 27:02
  adults who have kind of been woven into the fabric of my
• 27:06
  weird, my my wife's weird. And I together as, you know,
• 27:11
  kind of like step kids and and step nieces and or step nephews,
• 27:14
  you know what I mean? That sort of relationship, which
• 27:17
  still has a very important, you know, they're they're they're
• 27:22
  that's important too. I don't want people to think
• 27:24
  that, you know, just because you don't have kids of your own,
• 27:25
  that you're uncapable or incapable rather of being able
• 27:29
  to influence in this way, right? Where there's a will, there's a
• 27:36
  way. And, but also how things kind of
• 27:37
  get brought into the, into the mix, how the, how the norneer
• 27:40
  and how this, how the, how the weavers kind of interact in this
• 27:45
  way. Is that from from a very young
• 27:48
  age? Like for one example, you know,
• 27:50
  my niece, since she was in a, in a stroller, you know, she, she
• 27:54
  couldn't speak her own words. And I would go for walks down
• 27:57
  here on the Greenway and I would bring her sometimes with me when
• 28:01
  the weather was, was nice and she could be, you know,
• 28:03
  comfortable. And whatever outside is, is to
• 28:06
  bring her on the stroller or in a stroller on my walks and bring
• 28:09
  her down to where she could see the river from her stroller and
• 28:15
  get that exposure. I get that.
• 28:17
  Get her to absorb that at that moment, even though she can't
• 28:20
  necessarily interact. That's still you're sharing
• 28:23
  space, you know, and then now here recently, you know, she's
• 28:27
  she'll be 5 this year in September.
• 28:32
  And you know, when, when the, the, the chances arise that I
• 28:36
  can take her down to the river because I've got, you know, some
• 28:39
  extra, you know, produce or whatever that's gone slightly
• 28:45
  past its prime. And we want to discard of it
• 28:47
  rather than just throwing it into the trash.
• 28:49
  We bring it to the land and let the land receive it.
• 28:53
  And I, and I bring it down there and I, you know, she comes with
• 28:56
  me and I'll tell her, you know, we have to look out for our
• 28:59
  relatives that we can't see, you know, our, our, our furry
• 29:03
  relatives, our, our feathered relatives, you know what I mean?
• 29:05
  And, and put it in terms that she can understand.
• 29:09
  And then when we bring these things for them to, to have,
• 29:13
  it's, it's for their nourishment.
• 29:14
  So, and then because we're giving them a gift, we say thank
• 29:17
  you for their gifts, for their, for their songs, for their
• 29:21
  beauty, for the things that they give to us, right?
• 29:23
  And try to instill in that, that belief or that idea in that a
• 29:29
  very young age, because like you say, that's that's when that
• 29:31
  seed can be, you know, a prime place to, to plant that seed,
• 29:37
  you know. Absolutely.
• 29:40
  And it was I've. I've taken the reading stories
• 29:45
  about the gods to to my granddaughter.
• 29:48
  Yeah. And and and and.
• 29:51
  She loves the stories. You know, I noticed I have to
• 29:54
  change some of the words while I'm reading them and make it
• 29:57
  more. How do I put this?
• 30:04
  So she understands it more. Accessible to a six year old.
• 30:07
  Yeah, yeah. But.
• 30:09
  You know it. I wish somebody wrote better
• 30:13
  children books, you know? Oh, for like, yeah, for the
• 30:18
  lore, yeah. Like children versions of the
• 30:20
  lore, yeah. Yeah, 'cause it's a real pain in
• 30:25
  the ass changing the words while I'm reading them.
• 30:29
  Yeah, I don't know, there's some out there.
• 30:31
  I don't, I can't think of any authors off the top of my head,
• 30:33
  but I have seen some like they even do like illustrated
• 30:39
  publications of it to where it's it, it fits more of for the, you
• 30:43
  know, for the attention span of the young minds, you know, makes
• 30:49
  it more something that they can be interested in and and absorb.
• 30:55
  But no, that's great, man. You know, it's, and that's what
• 30:58
  hopefully more people that listen or watch this, this show
• 31:02
  understand too, 'cause you know, we are here and we are here now.
• 31:05
  And it's important to be present in what's going on now with,
• 31:10
  with the foresight, though, to know that this is I'm not, you
• 31:14
  know, I'll be I, I, I believe at least that, you know, my
• 31:18
  existence will carry on, just not in this way, not in this
• 31:23
  form, not in this format for you know what I mean?
• 31:25
  Like this has an expiration date and it's going to reach a time
• 31:28
  where, you know, it's not going to run anymore, but a part of me
• 31:33
  will continue on. So what what can I do to impart
• 31:36
  what I am now so that way in when the future comes, I'm an
• 31:40
  ancestor that is, you know, my descendants can be proud of you
• 31:44
  know, is is is how we're. We're we're made of our
• 31:48
  ancestors and I think the the greatest responsibility we have
• 31:52
  is to be the best that we can be, to pass on something better
• 31:56
  to the generations that come after us.
• 31:58
  Yeah, yeah. And to leave them in the best
• 32:02
  possible position before we go. Yeah, like in your view and and
• 32:11
  since we've been talking, I, I think I may know the answer, but
• 32:14
  I just wanted to ask you like, do you think that this is a part
• 32:18
  of what, what Heathenry should be doing more of if it wants to
• 32:23
  remain relevant and rooted rather than focusing on, you
• 32:27
  know, the stories of the gods and and stuff?
• 32:29
  Which again, part of it important, yes.
• 32:33
  But like, what are what you know?
• 32:35
  Is this something that you think should be, you know, even should
• 32:38
  be doing more of or or what are some other things that maybe you
• 32:41
  think even should be doing more of to remain rooted in that
• 32:45
  tradition, rooted in that way? Well, I think the mythology is
• 32:52
  important. I think the stories are
• 32:53
  important. But I think more than that, I
• 32:55
  think we honor, we we should understand where the thoughts
• 32:59
  and feelings behind that mythology came from.
• 33:02
  And I think we need to pass that on to our kids.
• 33:05
  And I think we can do that in a very modern way.
• 33:07
  I don't think we need to depend on the task for that.
• 33:11
  Again, you know, like I said, you know, I think we need to be
• 33:14
  the best version of ourselves and pass that on to our future
• 33:17
  generation because like I said before, everything that we are
• 33:22
  is we get from our ancestors. So we have to worry about, you
• 33:29
  know, who, who we're leaving our energy behind.
• 33:32
  Four, I think. I think that's very important
• 33:35
  for heathens to consider. And again, you know, I think,
• 33:40
  yeah, we can do that here and now.
• 33:42
  It doesn't have to be about the past.
• 33:43
  It can be about the right now and being the best version of
• 33:49
  ourselves that we can be to pass that along.
• 33:52
  I think that's very important for modern heathens to consider.
• 33:55
  And I do think they focus too much.
• 33:57
  And you know, I, I see nothing wrong with focusing on the past
• 34:01
  because of course we come from the past.
• 34:02
  Everything we are came from the past.
• 34:05
  But at the same time, I think we need to look at the present and
• 34:11
  what we can do to make things better for the future.
• 34:16
  Yeah, yeah, kind of understanding the balance of it.
• 34:20
  All right. Because I don't know, like
• 34:23
  there's, there's this overarching question.
• 34:25
  I believe that that exists with going from, you know, looking at
• 34:30
  that things that have such strong roots in the past, you
• 34:34
  know, it's Oh well, how you know, how long do you stay
• 34:37
  there? How far back do you go?
• 34:38
  How deep do you dig, you know, And then what do you, what of it
• 34:43
  do you bring forth 'cause there's, you've probably seen it
• 34:45
  too, or, or have you seen, you know, people bringing things
• 34:49
  that existed at one point in time that have no relevance to
• 34:55
  modern approaches or modern practices, But they, but they
• 34:59
  justify the, the doing of it or the acting of it as well.
• 35:02
  This is how my ancestors did it. Yeah, yeah, I understand
• 35:06
  completely. And in in a way I understand
• 35:09
  what they're saying. But I don't think there's a a
• 35:12
  line in the sand that you can draw as far as what we've
• 35:15
  learned from our ancestors. I think anything as far back as
• 35:18
  you go, as you can go is important.
• 35:24
  I don't believe in drawing that line in Sam where you say, OK,
• 35:28
  we're not going to follow any procedure that happened after
• 35:30
  this date or before this date. I don't believe in that.
• 35:36
  And I think at the core, I think the core beliefs have remained
• 35:40
  pretty stable. Some of the names have changed,
• 35:43
  even some of the gods have changed.
• 35:45
  But, and don't get me wrong, I absolutely believe in my gods.
• 35:50
  I believe that they are very real.
• 35:53
  I have my own reasons for that, but that doesn't discount
• 35:57
  anything that came before as far as I'm concerned.
• 36:02
  And I think the core beliefs of Heathenryn General were present
• 36:08
  all the way back. And that's why I say first and
• 36:11
  foremost, I mean heathen. I recognize those basic facts,
• 36:19
  basic truths, if you were about the way the world exists and how
• 36:27
  we interact with everyone and everything.
• 36:28
  And I don't think, and I think if you want to, if you could go
• 36:33
  back, you know, 3-4 thousand years and look at the way we
• 36:37
  worship the gods. We look at the way that we've
• 36:40
  performed rituals and bloats. And you wanted to do it that way
• 36:44
  or you wanted to go back 1500 years and and copy the way he
• 36:51
  did that time. I don't think either way is
• 36:53
  wrong. I think as long as his core
• 36:55
  beliefs are stable and very simple truths are still present,
• 37:00
  I don't think they're hurting anybody.
• 37:03
  And I can't disagree with anyone who takes their beliefs from a
• 37:11
  certain time period, as long as his core beliefs are still
• 37:13
  there. Right.
• 37:15
  Yeah, because you get to look at like, you know, the all the
• 37:19
  factors, you know, how how cultures evolve over time,
• 37:22
  languages evolve, people, obviously the land, everything
• 37:26
  grows and changes, you know, so that nothing static, nothing
• 37:29
  stays the same. Even if it's a slow growth, it
• 37:33
  it's still growth and growth brings change, you know.
• 37:41
  But yeah, so like there there's a couple things that you were
• 37:43
  talking about that made me think of the one of the other, or at
• 37:46
  least the other topic or, or idea that you had mentioned.
• 37:51
  And that's, you know, you mentioned sharing ideas or, or,
• 37:56
  or sharing beliefs and having, you know, how how one people did
• 37:59
  at a certain time, how other people did at a certain time.
• 38:01
  And then in that understanding of things, you, you can't ignore
• 38:06
  the fact that not everybody at the same time, we're, we're
• 38:09
  believing the same things, even under the same roofs, right?
• 38:14
  You know, and, and, and that, that goes into the, the topic
• 38:17
  that you had thought about or you had brought up was the
• 38:21
  sharing of space with non heathens or, or people that
• 38:24
  don't necessarily identify or carry the same world views as
• 38:30
  you do. And you have a, you have a life
• 38:32
  that that would be the same, right?
• 38:34
  That you have a a heathen and Christian living situation.
• 38:39
  So did you want to talk a bit about that and then what that's
• 38:41
  been like to? Sure, I'd be happy to.
• 38:43
  Well, you know, my wife still considers herself Christian.
• 38:47
  She grew up in a, a Methodist family.
• 38:52
  And I think it's at the very early stages.
• 38:56
  I didn't speak much about my faith.
• 39:01
  You know, I sort of practiced my beliefs kind of off to the side
• 39:05
  and, and didn't expose her to much of it.
• 39:09
  And I think as bad as it sounds, that was right in the beginning
• 39:16
  because very slowly she's become more and more interested and,
• 39:23
  and wanting to share more and more.
• 39:25
  And and I say that anybody that's in one of those
• 39:28
  relationships, don't try to put down another person's religion
• 39:35
  or tell them the error of their religion or anything like that.
• 39:40
  If they are living a good life and their faith makes them
• 39:46
  comfortable and helps them live a better life, leave it at that.
• 39:51
  That being said, over the years we've come a long way.
• 39:56
  More and more when I'm making offerings, you know, she's like,
• 40:00
  OK, you want me to go out with you and to go out with me to
• 40:04
  make an offering. Celebrates the holidays with me
• 40:09
  and and gets to know more and more about my faith.
• 40:12
  And she's become comfortable with it over time to the point
• 40:17
  where now, I mean, she's even done cleansing rituals on her
• 40:22
  house. There are certain elements in
• 40:25
  our house that made her uncomfortable.
• 40:30
  Protection work on her house, which is something that's very
• 40:32
  unchristian. Again, helping me and
• 40:36
  accompanying me. We're making offerings.
• 40:40
  She still considers herself Christian, but she's now
• 40:46
  comfortable enough and understanding enough that we
• 40:50
  coexist very well. Because I think nobody pushed
• 40:54
  anything on one another from the beginning.
• 40:57
  We just sort of allowed ourselves to believe what we
• 41:00
  wanted to believe in. Slowly I got to, I got to say
• 41:03
  we've merged very well where she's completely comfortable
• 41:06
  with my beliefs. She still has her beliefs, but
• 41:11
  there's a little bit of overlap there.
• 41:12
  I mean, she's she's gotten comfortable and even helpful at
• 41:18
  times. And I think that's a way to do
• 41:22
  it. I mean, don't butt heads.
• 41:25
  If you're in a relationship with somebody that has another faith,
• 41:29
  just give them some space and help them to understand and
• 41:35
  eventually they'll look at your beliefs and realize that it's
• 41:38
  not something crazy. It's not something to fear or
• 41:45
  ridicule or or anything like that.
• 41:48
  It's a little bit of a slow openness works wonders.
• 41:56
  I mean, over the course of the years, we just come such a long
• 42:01
  way where, you know, now it's almost seamless the way we
• 42:06
  interact with each other in reference to our speech.
• 42:10
  Well, and it's been a little, I mean, is you, you've, you've,
• 42:12
  how many years have you been married?
• 42:15
  We've been married for 16 years. We started dating in high
• 42:23
  school, so we're talking about 37 years, 38 years of being
• 42:34
  together on and off. Yeah, wow, yeah, that's a long
• 42:39
  time. And you know, it's it's, you
• 42:41
  know, the longer my parents were high school sweethearts, you
• 42:44
  know, now, you know, Grant, not the same dynamic as what you're
• 42:48
  talking about. They were they were united in
• 42:51
  their religious views. They, they brought us the kids
• 42:54
  up, my sister and I up in, in, in that.
• 42:57
  But to, to, to, to see something last that could on the surface,
• 43:03
  whatever pure as, as conflicting, you know what I
• 43:06
  mean, Christian versus, you know, 'cause there's that,
• 43:09
  there's that, there's that, you know, opposition dynamic that,
• 43:14
  that people seem to drum up is, is that, well, we're, they're
• 43:17
  against us. We have to be against them.
• 43:19
  We're enemies. That idea, you know, but you've,
• 43:24
  you've lived away and you've lived a life and you can you,
• 43:26
  you say like this can work, you know, this has to be done
• 43:30
  delicately, the right way. Not every situation's going to
• 43:34
  be the same, I'm sure, just like anything else.
• 43:37
  Yeah, I'm sure it is it. And it would also, I think it
• 43:40
  would also raise the question for some heathens out here too,
• 43:43
  that because I know I've talked to other people that have
• 43:45
  similar home lives, you know, they have spouses or, or, you
• 43:51
  know, they're in a relationship with somebody who doesn't adopt
• 43:55
  the same beliefs as they do. As with as much as your wife has
• 43:59
  in your example, maintained her her own religious views or, or,
• 44:05
  you know, religious identity and also at the same time shown
• 44:10
  acceptance and even wanting to participate with some of your
• 44:15
  views. What about the flip side of
• 44:18
  that, with the, you know, the heathen that goes to church or
• 44:24
  that celebrates Christmas and all these types of things?
• 44:27
  How do you see that you know, be, you know, happening with,
• 44:32
  with, with your situation or or or with other situations
• 44:36
  perhaps? Believe it or not, I I actually
• 44:40
  offered to go to church a couple of times because despite my own
• 44:44
  beliefs, I absolutely love gospel music.
• 44:46
  I always have, yeah. Sounds odd, but.
• 44:50
  Not really nothing. I I.
• 44:52
  I I just love it, but that's always been a no.
• 44:58
  My in laws are very religious people and when they come to
• 45:04
  visit, you know, of course, you know, you know, at meals when we
• 45:09
  say we, they say grace. You know, I, I will bow my head
• 45:13
  and and you know, but as far as going to church, I wouldn't have
• 45:19
  any problem going to a Christian Church as long as they're
• 45:21
  willing to have a heathen in their church.
• 45:23
  I actually have a close friend that I went to high school with
• 45:25
  who's a minister now. And you know, I still talk to
• 45:28
  him occasionally and we got along just fine.
• 45:33
  He understands his beliefs are not my beliefs.
• 45:36
  But yeah, we got along fine. I'm not going to take communion
• 45:45
  or anything, but yeah, I think by and large I'm pretty
• 45:49
  tolerant. So I I do think it works in
• 45:51
  three ways. Yeah, no, for sure, 'cause just
• 45:55
  like, you know, just like, you know, in your situation, from
• 45:58
  what I'm hearing, you know, your wife has maintained her
• 46:00
  religious identity. She still believes what she
• 46:02
  believes in and believes she's doing it right while also
• 46:05
  supporting you as her husband and, you know, being there for
• 46:08
  you in those times. So that reciprocity, that that
• 46:11
  balance, especially in a, in a relationship situation is, I
• 46:17
  think is, is important, almost foundational to keep things
• 46:23
  going for that long. You know what I mean, 'cause if
• 46:25
  it's only about one person and not the other, it's it's out of
• 46:29
  balance, right? Yeah, yeah.
• 46:32
  Yeah, my in laws are the same too, you know, like they're,
• 46:36
  they're very, they're very old southern traditional, you know,
• 46:45
  Christian folk. And but they've always been
• 46:48
  accepting of me. They don't necessarily quite
• 46:51
  understand the depth of what I believe in, but they know it's
• 46:54
  not, you know, the God of, of the Israelites or, you know,
• 46:58
  Jesus and all that. But like, even like, so like
• 47:02
  there's I, I've talked about this before, but like right over
• 47:04
  over my shoulder here, this I gotta, it's mirrored.
• 47:08
  But this, this plaque that's kind of right over my, my
• 47:12
  shoulder here on the right, it's it's the Midgard musings double
• 47:16
  Mono's Bayen rune that's on a wooden plaque.
• 47:19
  And the, the, the, the Mono's double Bayen rune is made-up of
• 47:23
  burnt matches matchsticks that my father-in-law glued onto the
• 47:29
  plaque and made that for me for either.
• 47:33
  It was like AI think it was birthday, birthday present some
• 47:36
  years ago, because he knew like that was my brand and he he
• 47:43
  spent time crafting that for me. You know what I mean?
• 47:47
  He's done, he's done another one that is a hammer above it.
• 47:51
  I think it's out of frame, but it's, it's, it's a Mjolnir
• 47:54
  hammer. I have another one that he made
• 47:57
  with my name on it, you know, and in in in similar fashion
• 48:02
  with that reciprocity thing, because that's, that's another,
• 48:06
  we hadn't talked about it yet, but like that's a really core
• 48:08
  foundational heathen thing, maybe beyond heathen, but
• 48:12
  reciprocity, right? A gift for a gift.
• 48:15
  Yeah, those are objects of power now.
• 48:18
  Yeah, you're right 100%. And you know to to maintain that
• 48:22
  relationship and into into to to strengthen and to feed those
• 48:25
  bonds of Frith. You know, we've, I've, I've
• 48:30
  prayed with him in his way, right, the way he wants to pray.
• 48:33
  And I've, I've stood around in, in, in sovereignty with him to,
• 48:37
  to pray with him in that way, 'cause that what's, that's where
• 48:41
  his and that's where I've always maintained is, you know,
• 48:43
  whatever, whatever you call your higher powers, you know,
• 48:47
  whatever name you put to them, if you're convicted in that, and
• 48:52
  that's where your faith lies, that's where your convictions
• 48:56
  are good for you. You know, as long as it's not
• 48:59
  hurting other people and it's not, as long as it's not
• 49:02
  bringing harm to other people, I say good for you.
• 49:06
  And I had to do that with my own family because, you know, with,
• 49:09
  with them bringing up with my, with my parents, right, with
• 49:12
  them and the upbringing that I was raised in, you know, once I
• 49:15
  became Pagan, that was, that was like, that was a nail in the
• 49:20
  coffin, as they say, right? It was, they didn't want really
• 49:23
  anything to do with me until I changed or until I repented and,
• 49:28
  you know, was forgiven and all that.
• 49:31
  But I never, I think there were times maybe that I, that I was
• 49:36
  hurt, I was hurt to the point of resentment towards them for that
• 49:40
  because I didn't understand why can't you just accept me for who
• 49:42
  I am instead of what I believe in?
• 49:46
  And that did leak through into my behavior.
• 49:48
  I, you know, I was not a very honorable person, you know, in,
• 49:52
  in a lot of ways for that, for, for, for a period of time.
• 49:55
  But once I learned that, you know, they're just, they're,
• 49:58
  they're, they're staying true to what they believe in.
• 50:00
  They're, they're staying firm in their convictions.
• 50:02
  And rightly or wrongly, that's, that's strength, you know, and
• 50:05
  that's, that's a source of strength that I, that I have
• 50:08
  been, that I inherited through them, you know, so how can I,
• 50:13
  how can I leverage that? How can I use that?
• 50:15
  How can I learn from that For good, you know and and for the
• 50:19
  right reasons. That's a very humble way of
• 50:22
  looking at it, and I applaud you for that.
• 50:26
  Well, thank you, Sir. It's, it's, it's what's, you
• 50:29
  know, a lot of a lot of time, honestly, a lot of time with,
• 50:35
  you know, in nature. I've gone on, I've gone on
• 50:37
  several very difficult nature excursions, right, to kind of
• 50:42
  really find myself into, into to, to see what my ancestors and
• 50:47
  the gods would want to teach me. But you know, I've, I put myself
• 50:49
  through the wringer to, to get to a point of that.
• 50:53
  I've, I've, I've, I've humbled myself through, through ordeal
• 50:57
  to get to a point of, of, of realizing that.
• 51:00
  And, and then to come on on a platform like this and to talk
• 51:03
  with other people about it, you know, to hopefully share that,
• 51:07
  you know, for others as well. But have you, have you ever
• 51:15
  like, have you ever come across, especially with, you know, you
• 51:18
  know, almost 2 decades well over, you know, you, you spent
• 51:21
  time with your now wife for, for almost 2 decades, but as a as,
• 51:24
  as, as a husband and wife, but you had several decades of
• 51:29
  relationship on and off, as you mentioned.
• 51:33
  Do you think that there are like misconceptions that heathens
• 51:38
  could come up with that you know about these types of
• 51:41
  relationships? You know, heathens with non
• 51:44
  heathen partners? We talked a little bit about
• 51:47
  some of them, but I was wondering if you ever had if if,
• 51:49
  if you've seen or experienced some of those with others,
• 51:52
  whether it be family or or non family members.
• 51:58
  Misconceptions on the behalf of. About the relation, like, you
• 52:03
  know, like if, if a misconceptions about the the
• 52:06
  relationship between heathens and non heathens, like, oh,
• 52:09
  it's, it's always got to be this or that, you know, and and then
• 52:13
  you're like, no, actually it does.
• 52:15
  And it can be X, you know that, that sort of thing.
• 52:18
  Well, I'd say that's a big misconception.
• 52:19
  That's just got to be either that or this or that.
• 52:24
  Like I said, if I think you're patient and you have respect for
• 52:27
  someone's beliefs and you take the time to get to know their
• 52:32
  beliefs and at the same time let them get to know your beliefs,
• 52:35
  because my wife was clueless about my beliefs.
• 52:38
  She thought it was something totally different.
• 52:39
  I mean, she thought I would be, you know, sacrificing the
• 52:43
  neighbor's cat by the light of the full moon around a fire,
• 52:45
  dancing naked or something like that.
• 52:47
  I don't know what she was thinking.
• 52:51
  Yeah. I mean, seriously.
• 52:53
  But yeah, yeah. Little I I think it's a
• 52:56
  misconception that people who are polar opposites in their
• 53:01
  spiritual beliefs can't understand each other.
• 53:04
  I think if you take the time and your patient and left him in a
• 53:11
  little out of time, I think there's no reason why you can't
• 53:17
  coexist. There's no reason why you can't
• 53:19
  understand each other. I think people can understand
• 53:21
  each other through almost anything given enough patience.
• 53:25
  I think I was lucky. I've always said my wife was a
• 53:29
  gift from the gods. She's so patient and so tolerant
• 53:36
  of my personality quirks, but she was willing to learn with an
• 53:46
  open mind. And I don't know how common that
• 53:49
  is, but I think it's a misconception that you have to
• 53:53
  butt heads if you're polar opposites spiritually.
• 53:57
  And I don't think we're a polar opposite.
• 53:58
  I don't. Yeah, the polar opposites is the
• 54:00
  wrong choice of phrase, but I think it's a misconception that
• 54:06
  they're not going to understand her.
• 54:08
  I think if you exercise trip and you are patient and you let them
• 54:24
  in and let them experience your faith and you're willing to have
• 54:32
  an open mind towards theirs, I don't think there's any reason
• 54:35
  it's, it's not possible for everyone to get along, even
• 54:39
  coexist in a relationship like that.
• 54:41
  I do think that's a misconception because I think
• 54:43
  there's a lot of people out there that would say, you know,
• 54:47
  she's a Christian, you know, she's not going to want anything
• 54:51
  to do with me. Or hell, she's a Scientologist,
• 54:56
  he's a Scientologist, whatever. I think it's a misconception
• 54:59
  that people won't understand each other.
• 55:02
  I think there's a lot more overlap than you think if you
• 55:06
  take the time to be understanding and allow them to
• 55:11
  be understanding in return. Yeah, right.
• 55:14
  Like there's no default incompatibility because titles
• 55:18
  or anything. Yeah, Yeah, I would agree with
• 55:22
  that. You know that it does take work.
• 55:24
  It does take time. How and you know, like we say,
• 55:29
  you know, not it's there's no one answer for for all
• 55:32
  situations. Do you have any thoughts,
• 55:36
  opinions, advice, whatever about the situations where it just
• 55:42
  doesn't work? Where do you go from there?
• 55:44
  What do you do? How do you, how do you manage
• 55:45
  that? How do you cope with that, you
• 55:47
  know, situation where you've, you've done everything you think
• 55:50
  I've, you know, been patient. I, you know, tried to be be
• 55:55
  accepting of their beliefs and respectful of their beliefs and
• 55:58
  I'm not getting it in return. Any any thoughts or or opinions
• 56:03
  on on the other side of that when things don't work out?
• 56:07
  Yeah, You know, and I'm sure that happens a lot too.
• 56:10
  I mean, I, I think, you know as well as I do, there are certain
• 56:12
  people that just won't bug in their beliefs and they're not
• 56:15
  going to, you know, tolerate yours.
• 56:18
  And I think when you come into that situation, and I think when
• 56:21
  you realize that's the case, get out as quickly as possible.
• 56:28
  All right, stay true to yourself.
• 56:29
  What you're what you're. Stay true to yourself, don't
• 56:32
  waste the energy on it. If you know it's not going to
• 56:35
  work, you know. It's like the old saying, if
• 56:38
  your plan doesn't work, scrap it, make another plan.
• 56:42
  Back to the drawing board. But it's true, yeah.
• 56:50
  I think especially your relationship wise, you find
• 56:52
  somebody that's absolutely not going to budget and isn't going
• 56:55
  to tolerate your beliefs and yeah, stay true to yourself and
• 57:02
  don't waste your time in a dead end situation.
• 57:05
  Back out and start over. I think I was lucky to find the
• 57:11
  right one. I don't think everybody's going
• 57:15
  to be that lucky, but I think certainly an awful lot of people
• 57:17
  can. And I think more often than not
• 57:20
  you can make things work. But if you can't, and I think if
• 57:24
  it's, it's absolutely not going to work.
• 57:27
  Get out as quickly as possible and don't waste your.
• 57:31
  Move me up. Yeah.
• 57:34
  You know, I didn't have quite, I didn't have quite this the, you
• 57:37
  know, the situation between, you know, relationship wise, but it
• 57:39
  was, it was family, you know, for me, because I was raised to
• 57:45
  believe a certain thing and in a certain way.
• 57:47
  And when I, you know, left that belief to to to pursue a
• 57:52
  different 1, something that was so, you know, antithetical, you
• 57:58
  know, the 'cause they did, they held that belief in their
• 58:01
  Christianity. As you know, even's bad, pagan's
• 58:05
  bad, you know, and, and I had, you know, I had so many of other
• 58:13
  not just my parents, but like my, you know, my uncle, you
• 58:17
  know, for a long time was, you know, letters that he would
• 58:20
  write to me or, you know, conversations that I had and
• 58:23
  text messages. And, you know, things that were
• 58:25
  just like basically, you know, telling me that, you know,
• 58:33
  you're going to burn in hell, you're going to, you know,
• 58:35
  you're, you're, you're, you're not, you're not good.
• 58:37
  This is this is wrong. And you like, I remember this
• 58:40
  one time he wrote, he wrote me a letter and, and one of the words
• 58:45
  that he, or it was either a letter or a text message, like
• 58:47
  one of the words that he, because I was, I was planning at
• 58:50
  the time to, to come up to New York for a visit.
• 58:55
  And he sent me a text message back.
• 58:57
  And, and it was, this isn't verbatim, but it was along the
• 58:59
  lines of something like, given the lengths that you have fallen
• 59:04
  into your idolatry, it would be best for you not to come up here
• 59:08
  for a visit, something along those lines.
• 59:11
  And I was like, wow, man, this is a guy that like took me
• 59:13
  camping for the first time, that took me fishing, that took me
• 59:16
  hunting, that, you know, I, you know, spent so many, so much
• 59:21
  time in my, in my developmental youth learning I'm him.
• 59:26
  And, you know, yeah, granted, it was the church and it was
• 59:29
  Christians or whatever, but then like I got, you know, I got more
• 59:33
  wise to the matter of it all. And I'm like, this isn't really
• 59:36
  Christianity more as so much as it is a cult 'cause I got to see
• 59:41
  more of the the reality of things instead of the version of
• 59:44
  the reality that that I was being fed for so long.
• 59:47
  Kind of getting that out, out of perspective from it all.
• 59:51
  And yeah, I was like, you know, wow, man, if this is how you
• 59:55
  really feel about somebody, not just somebody, but like your own
• 59:57
  kin. And then not just your own kin,
• 1:00:00
  but but the kid that you basically took under your wing
• 1:00:04
  and taught so much of the world about.
• 1:00:06
  From your worldview, from your lens, I'm so much of the way I
• 1:00:10
  am today because of him, because he influenced me that way,
• 1:00:14
  right? I, I picked up some of his
• 1:00:16
  mentality, his characteristics, his ways of doing things in my,
• 1:00:19
  in that, in that early stage of my life.
• 1:00:22
  And then here I am, you know, and you're going to just dog me
• 1:00:27
  like that and, and tell me all these hurtful and hateful
• 1:00:30
  things. Yeah, it's sad.
• 1:00:33
  Wow, you know how you how you, and that's tough, man.
• 1:00:36
  You know, a lot of people do do have the same things going on or
• 1:00:41
  similar thing going on with family members.
• 1:00:43
  You know that they're just they're ostracized, they're
• 1:00:45
  excommunicated, they're demonized in a way.
• 1:00:50
  And that's tough and it and it can make people really question
• 1:00:53
  what they're doing. Am I doing the right thing?
• 1:00:55
  Because so and so doesn't love me anymore.
• 1:00:57
  Maybe I should do what they're doing so that they will love me
• 1:01:00
  again. That's that I want to be
• 1:01:01
  accepted mentality, right? Yeah, but I imagine under those
• 1:01:07
  circumstances, it's really hard to just cut ties when it's
• 1:01:10
  family like that. And I, I, I've been lucky that I
• 1:01:15
  haven't had that situation. I mean, I have some family
• 1:01:18
  members that are probably like that.
• 1:01:19
  But, you know, by and large, I, I was really lucky my father was
• 1:01:24
  essentially A heathen, even though he didn't understand
• 1:01:28
  heathenism or, or learn about it.
• 1:01:32
  Yeah, yeah. My mother was a bit of a, you
• 1:01:35
  know, carefree spirit. Yeah, well, that's good, man.
• 1:01:42
  It would be. Really hard.
• 1:01:44
  Yeah. And it, you know, it was, it was
• 1:01:46
  hard for me to 'cause I did, I, you know, I, I, I believed in
• 1:01:49
  what I was learning in terms of the heathen path and, and
• 1:01:53
  getting closer to my dramatic roots and understanding what
• 1:01:57
  that meant and going forth in that way.
• 1:02:01
  And it's been about, it's been over 10 years since I started on
• 1:02:04
  the path, right? So it's, I've, I've learned a
• 1:02:05
  lot since then. But initially, when all of this
• 1:02:09
  was happening and I was getting all that pushback, it did, it
• 1:02:12
  put a lot of that doubt in my mind, like, you know, that fear,
• 1:02:17
  that doubt that I, I don't want to upset them.
• 1:02:19
  I don't want to disappoint them, you know, but I did, I, I, I, I
• 1:02:26
  stayed true. I, I, I stayed the course as
• 1:02:29
  hard as it was along the way. And, and it wasn't because, you
• 1:02:33
  know, the, the difficulty, no, it wasn't necessarily because of
• 1:02:36
  the path. It was the opposition.
• 1:02:38
  It was the other side of it. You know, he wrote to me, my
• 1:02:42
  uncle did one time and he said, I'm sure it was like he was
• 1:02:45
  writing to me. And he was like, well, I'm sure
• 1:02:46
  that there's things about your path that you don't like to do
• 1:02:50
  'cause. And he said that in response to
• 1:02:52
  something I told him about 'cause he's like, well, why,
• 1:02:55
  why, why aren't you, why don't you hear, why don't you, why
• 1:02:58
  don't you at least following the ways that you were raised in,
• 1:03:01
  you know, and one of my responses was, you know, it
• 1:03:04
  doesn't, it doesn't fit for me. It does, I don't, it doesn't,
• 1:03:09
  there's things that I, it doesn't make sense.
• 1:03:10
  It, I don't, it, I don't like it.
• 1:03:12
  It doesn't, you know, it doesn't call to me anymore.
• 1:03:13
  It was, I was young in my heathenry.
• 1:03:16
  But you know, I was trying to come up with the, the, the
• 1:03:18
  answer that like what my heart said in it and the words that
• 1:03:21
  were coming out was that it just doesn't, it doesn't appeal to
• 1:03:24
  me. It doesn't doesn't feel right to
• 1:03:27
  which his responsibility he's like, well, then I'm sure that
• 1:03:29
  there's things that you're doing now in your current path that
• 1:03:31
  you don't like and that don't appeal to you.
• 1:03:33
  And I'm like, well, actually, no, because I'm, I feel more
• 1:03:37
  connected to to any to any and everything than I ever have
• 1:03:41
  because of this past. So I don't I don't regret bloat.
• 1:03:44
  I don't regret stumble. I don't regret the, the, the
• 1:03:47
  other things about, you know, being a heathen, that that how I
• 1:03:52
  saw it at the time. And as I'm seeing it now, you
• 1:03:55
  know, I was like, no, you're wrong.
• 1:03:57
  It's I don't feel that way. Yeah.
• 1:04:01
  It's very presumptuous to me. You can say that.
• 1:04:06
  Yeah, it's, it's hard, I know. Not necessarily we're family
• 1:04:10
  members, but certain people that I've been.
• 1:04:12
  And I felt like if I could just show them what I know somehow
• 1:04:18
  and make them understand what I understand, they would
• 1:04:22
  completely see everything different that they would
• 1:04:24
  understand completely. But you can't just take them and
• 1:04:28
  stick them in that position and make them see.
• 1:04:31
  Yeah. And it's a shame really.
• 1:04:34
  To me, Heathenry as a it's simple truth.
• 1:04:41
  You see things as they really are.
• 1:04:43
  You understand things as they truly are.
• 1:04:46
  And it's hard to argue with that truth.
• 1:04:50
  If you could just take body and stick them in front of that
• 1:04:53
  truth and point their head in that direction and go look.
• 1:04:58
  Yeah, or. Fix everything.
• 1:05:01
  Like you could take your own eyes out and give it to them.
• 1:05:03
  Like, now look through these something through my eyes.
• 1:05:07
  Like, come the come, let me, you know, walk a mile in my shoes,
• 1:05:10
  as they say. Yeah.
• 1:05:12
  Yeah. Doesn't work that way though,
• 1:05:13
  does it? No, yeah.
• 1:05:17
  You were, we were talking earlier about the, you know,
• 1:05:21
  the, the connection that, that you feel like that heathenry is,
• 1:05:25
  is, you know, the connection with the land and, and the
• 1:05:28
  interconnectedness, you know, the relationship that we have
• 1:05:30
  with the land and the spirits of the land.
• 1:05:33
  And then also the local spirits of our, our areas and our homes,
• 1:05:39
  'cause, you know, one of the things that you mentioned
• 1:05:41
  earlier was about people that become overrun by, you know,
• 1:05:46
  industry and all these things taking away the natural
• 1:05:48
  resources. So our, our spaces are becoming
• 1:05:50
  smaller. And, you know, how difficult it
• 1:05:53
  is to kind of leave or uproot and, and establish the things
• 1:05:56
  rather than to stay and nourish the roots of your, of your
• 1:05:59
  place. And this goes back to a thing
• 1:06:01
  that is very familiar to a lot of heathens when we talk about
• 1:06:04
  spirits of the land, but also spirits of the home.
• 1:06:08
  So you know, the terms land vittier and hus vittier are very
• 1:06:12
  commonplace in the heathen spaces.
• 1:06:15
  So I wanted to ask you like how do you distinguish between that
• 1:06:18
  spirits of the land and spirits of the home?
• 1:06:20
  Because I remember in your e-mail you did mention
• 1:06:22
  Hausvitir. So that's kind of where I was
• 1:06:26
  going with this. Is, is how you distinguish
• 1:06:28
  between those two entities or that or those two?
• 1:06:32
  Yeah, the distinguishes between the two you.
• 1:06:36
  Mean whether or not there's these are connected to the land
• 1:06:40
  or to the house. Yeah, like how you, Yeah, like
• 1:06:42
  what? You're you, you have land, you
• 1:06:44
  have space. And then the the the, the
• 1:06:47
  manifestation of those areas as entities or as, as yeah, as
• 1:06:54
  beings. Well, as you, as you probably
• 1:07:00
  gathered, they're pretty active in my house, not super active.
• 1:07:08
  Like, you know, there could be a couple of years go by that we
• 1:07:11
  don't see anything or hear anything and then there'll be a
• 1:07:15
  burst of activity where for a few months weird stuff happens
• 1:07:21
  or you see things that are odd. It doesn't bother me at all.
• 1:07:29
  It really bothers my wife because it creeps her out.
• 1:07:31
  She's seen some things that have really creeped her out here.
• 1:07:35
  But the strangest thing of all is I have these shadows that
• 1:07:40
  dart around the house, and they're small, which is really
• 1:07:45
  weird. And I know a town that Landis,
• 1:07:49
  but I thought I was crazy, or I thought maybe I was seeing
• 1:07:54
  anything. You turn your head and you see
• 1:07:55
  this little shadow dart across the room.
• 1:07:59
  And then one day I was talking to my wife in the kitchen and
• 1:08:03
  the cat was sitting on the kitchen floor right next to us
• 1:08:07
  and I saw this shadow dart across the kitchen and the cat
• 1:08:12
  went like this. And when I saw the cat do that,
• 1:08:16
  I was like, ah, I'm not crazy. The cat saw it too.
• 1:08:21
  But my wife blames me for the little shadows because she she's
• 1:08:26
  seen them now too. Oh yeah, because.
• 1:08:29
  As they're a product of Germanic paganism in the tone and and and
• 1:08:35
  you know. Yeah, the tone.
• 1:08:38
  Yeah, the little Yeah, White. No.
• 1:08:42
  That's that's Germanic Pagan stuff.
• 1:08:45
  You brought that here. You brought that here.
• 1:08:47
  And I've always wondered, did I? Did I bring that here?
• 1:08:53
  Or have they always been there right?
• 1:08:58
  Yes, Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a good question.
• 1:09:01
  I don't know, because we moved into this house close to 10
• 1:09:04
  years ago. It's an old farmhouse, part of
• 1:09:07
  a, a huge farm that was this whole area.
• 1:09:12
  And we've seen other things. You'll hear voices in the house
• 1:09:16
  sometimes. OK.
• 1:09:19
  You'll catch a glimpse of twice I've seen people out in the
• 1:09:22
  yard. My wife saw it.
• 1:09:28
  Dark shape of a person move from one side of the house to the
• 1:09:32
  other, things like that. I think those things are always
• 1:09:35
  here. I think those things are
• 1:09:36
  connected to the land, to this farmland, but maybe to the
• 1:09:41
  house. It's honestly, I don't know how
• 1:09:43
  to distinguish whether it's part of the land.
• 1:09:45
  I don't think these are land Vader.
• 1:09:49
  I think it's something connected to this property specifically
• 1:09:57
  when I was growing up, there was a when, when, when I think of
• 1:10:01
  the Vader, I think of there was a spring that we used to always
• 1:10:05
  go to as a kid, you know, and even well into my adult life, it
• 1:10:10
  was a freshwater spring where we grew up and lots of families
• 1:10:14
  would go to that spring and get water.
• 1:10:18
  You know, you'd swap your jugs of water and take them home.
• 1:10:22
  That's still there. I, I stop there anytime I'm in
• 1:10:25
  that area, I stop at that spring.
• 1:10:26
  I make an offering at that spring because my father told me
• 1:10:35
  more or less that there were powerful spirit there at that
• 1:10:38
  spring and to leave an offering at that spring.
• 1:10:41
  So we would leave an offering or usually a coin or something,
• 1:10:45
  usually a coin, We would make a wish at the spring.
• 1:10:48
  That's the way my dad always did it.
• 1:10:51
  That's what I associate with being the spirits of the land.
• 1:10:55
  Things it like springs or forests.
• 1:10:59
  I think I told you last time when I was a kid, there was a,
• 1:11:02
  there's a big oak tree on my grandparents property and I was
• 1:11:07
  maybe I don't know how old I was, I might have been six years
• 1:11:10
  old. But she kept this tip of saltine
• 1:11:13
  crackers. And for some unknown reason,
• 1:11:17
  nobody told me to do this, but I would get saltine crackers from
• 1:11:21
  the tin and I would go over to that oak tree and I would place
• 1:11:25
  them at the bottom of that oak tree.
• 1:11:27
  And that's what I think of when I think of the land spirits.
• 1:11:30
  But I what's here in our house, I think is directly connected
• 1:11:35
  with the house, the property of the people that were here
• 1:11:37
  before. Although I can't explain for the
• 1:11:40
  life of me. These little friggin shadows
• 1:11:43
  that are just bizarre as hell. Yeah, I don't know if I'll ever
• 1:11:48
  be able to explain that. Yeah, well, they don't seem to
• 1:11:51
  or they don't sound like from what you're describing, they
• 1:11:53
  don't sound to be malicious, right?
• 1:11:55
  Like they're not. Just the opposite and we leave
• 1:11:58
  them offering occasionally because I, I think they're
• 1:12:01
  beneficial. I think I have No Fear of them
• 1:12:04
  whatsoever. I feel comfortable with them in
• 1:12:06
  the house. Yeah.
• 1:12:09
  Yeah, I'm happy to have them here.
• 1:12:11
  They don't bother me a bit. Yeah, that's that, that seems, I
• 1:12:15
  mean, that seems like the, the, the guardians of the house, you
• 1:12:18
  know, or the guardians of that structure that, that, that, that
• 1:12:21
  abode that's very traditional to have that we have something
• 1:12:28
  similar here. But it's, it's, it's more or
• 1:12:30
  less I would say it's not tied to the structure.
• 1:12:36
  It's tied to it's, it's familial, right.
• 1:12:42
  So he would go with us, but because we're here, you know,
• 1:12:48
  it's it's it's home is here for it too, for him, for them.
• 1:12:53
  So they're kind of the the unseen caretakers, as it were.
• 1:13:02
  So yeah, that's cool. Man.
• 1:13:04
  I like, I hearing, I love hearing about the the story of
• 1:13:07
  your dad would or, you know, the advice or the wisdom your dad
• 1:13:10
  would impart to you about leaving an offering.
• 1:13:12
  There's powerful spirits here. Yeah.
• 1:13:15
  That's, that's, you know, and so much of what Heathenry is too
• 1:13:18
  is, is that regional folklore? You know what I mean?
• 1:13:22
  The Veytir, you know, in New Mexico are going to manifest
• 1:13:26
  themselves differently than they would in the rural parts of
• 1:13:28
  Delaware and West Virginia. They, you know, you have
• 1:13:31
  different landscapes, different. But it's, it's still, it's still
• 1:13:37
  the land and, and the spear of that land and how it how it
• 1:13:41
  manifests. Have you ever thought, sorry, go
• 1:13:47
  ahead. No, no, first you, you, you go
• 1:13:50
  first. OK, I was going to say, at the
• 1:13:52
  same time, there are remarkable similarities all over the world.
• 1:13:56
  For sure. The knockers go over to the
• 1:14:01
  knockers of the Tommy Knockers. Oh yeah.
• 1:14:04
  In the mind, it's strange that in Germany people would leave
• 1:14:10
  offerings at the entrance to mines for the spirits in their
• 1:14:17
  minds, and they gave descriptions of them, they said
• 1:14:19
  they were little people that lived in the mines at the same
• 1:14:24
  time. They were doing that in the
• 1:14:25
  British Isles, but strangely they were also doing that in
• 1:14:30
  South America at the same time, even though the people in South
• 1:14:34
  America had never encountered the people of Germany and
• 1:14:38
  Britain. Yeah.
• 1:14:40
  They described them as very similar beings, and they would
• 1:14:43
  again leave offerings at the entrance to these minds for
• 1:14:47
  those spirits and those minds. 2 totally different groups of
• 1:14:53
  people that had never met each other.
• 1:14:55
  Yeah, kind of makes you wonder. Now, it's a good point.
• 1:14:59
  The the nuance is, is definitely there, you know, Yeah, for sure.
• 1:15:08
  Do you have any idea or, or concept of, you know,
• 1:15:14
  relationships between the spirits that coexist, that we
• 1:15:18
  coexist with and, and what, what can happen when we neglect those
• 1:15:24
  presences or if we neglect them or, or ignore them?
• 1:15:29
  Kind of like, do you have a, do you have a concept or, or a, a
• 1:15:32
  worldview on what happens or what could happen?
• 1:15:36
  Or have you had anything happen that sort of thing that you want
• 1:15:40
  to share? I.
• 1:15:41
  Don't. And, you know, I know the
• 1:15:43
  folklore, you know, mistreat, you know, the house spirits or
• 1:15:50
  you know, the who's fader and they could turn bad.
• 1:15:55
  You know, I've heard all that folklore, but I don't have any
• 1:15:58
  personal experience. I do know there's a family
• 1:16:02
  member that lived with us in this house that had some
• 1:16:08
  problems. And when those problems were at
• 1:16:11
  their worst, the activity increased dramatically.
• 1:16:16
  Yeah. As if they were trying to warn
• 1:16:19
  us. That's what it always seemed
• 1:16:22
  like to me. But as far as mistreating them
• 1:16:26
  or missing an offering, I don't know.
• 1:16:30
  From the moment that I knew something was here, we would
• 1:16:33
  occasionally leave offering. So I don't know the negative of
• 1:16:40
  not doing that or or mistreating them in some way.
• 1:16:44
  I wish I did, but honestly I've. Well, it's kind of a good thing,
• 1:16:47
  I guess. You know, I mean that you've had
• 1:16:49
  that, that, that you've maintained that the relationship
• 1:16:53
  well in that way. You know, it's like I'm not
• 1:16:55
  trying to mess around and find out, you know what I'm saying?
• 1:17:00
  Some people maybe find themselves in that situation
• 1:17:03
  through really no, like not an intentional gesture of neglect,
• 1:17:09
  but just like I've had things happen to me.
• 1:17:12
  I'll, I'll give an example. So was it 2 weeks ago, I, I
• 1:17:23
  committed to an activity, a challenge more or less that was
• 1:17:30
  to put me in a, in a, in a, a, a walk of, of resolve.
• 1:17:34
  It was called the, the walk of resolve and it was a 10 mile
• 1:17:37
  straight walk, a hike. It could be, you know, in the
• 1:17:42
  woods, it could be on the Greenway, it could be wherever.
• 1:17:46
  But part of the conditions were to, you know, it has to be 10
• 1:17:49
  miles total. You can't break it up over a
• 1:17:52
  week. It has to be 10 miles in a day.
• 1:17:55
  And you can't be listening to, like, music or a podcast or any
• 1:17:59
  other sort of like audio distractions, like be present in
• 1:18:02
  the moment, Walk forward for 10 miles.
• 1:18:05
  And, you know, don't use your phone except for, like,
• 1:18:08
  emergencies or for contacting people if you need, you know,
• 1:18:10
  whatever, that sort of thing. OK, So I did that and I'm
• 1:18:14
  halfway through my hike. I'm just walking on the, the,
• 1:18:19
  the, the local Greenway system, which is all in total, it's
• 1:18:21
  nearly 20 miles. But I, I started at one point, I
• 1:18:25
  knew that I was gonna end at a little bit past the 10 miles.
• 1:18:29
  And I had, you know, my wife arranged to come pick me up.
• 1:18:32
  But halfway through or so, I'm walking along the, you know, the
• 1:18:36
  Greenway and it's, it's a very heavily trafficked area for
• 1:18:40
  runners, hikers, bicyclists, just people in general, you
• 1:18:44
  know, and on the side, like not even in a very remote area of
• 1:18:49
  the Greenway, just right off in the grass, I see the remains of
• 1:18:55
  a buck with a rack. Like it's like a, and I see
• 1:18:59
  antlers and spine and stuff. And I'm like, what is it?
• 1:19:02
  You know, So I walk up to it and it's mostly decayed.
• 1:19:05
  There's some bits of, of tissue that of connected the, the spine
• 1:19:09
  to the skull cap, but I was able to just separate the, the, the
• 1:19:13
  skull part from the spinal part and most of the skull had been
• 1:19:18
  busted apart and was broken. But the skull part that the, the
• 1:19:22
  skull cap with the antlers was still intact.
• 1:19:26
  And I thought, man, you know, what a, what a tremendous gift
• 1:19:29
  from the land to, for me to have come across this when there's
• 1:19:32
  literally dozens, if not hundreds people going back and
• 1:19:35
  forth in the same area all day, all week long.
• 1:19:39
  And nobody else picked it up. Nobody, nobody else saw it and
• 1:19:43
  thought it was anything of worth, right?
• 1:19:45
  I did, I see it and I took it. And I remember in my mind or out
• 1:19:50
  loud, I look out and I say, you know, I, I say, I just say thank
• 1:19:52
  you, you know, but I didn't give anything first.
• 1:19:56
  I didn't give a gift. I didn't leave a gift.
• 1:19:59
  I didn't leave any sort of physical token of appreciation.
• 1:20:04
  And it wasn't because I was intentionally like intentionally
• 1:20:07
  neglectful. I was, it was just a mishap of
• 1:20:10
  my mind. I was, I was a bit, you know,
• 1:20:14
  being a bit careless, I guess. And by the time my hike ended,
• 1:20:21
  my feet were killing me. And I got home and I had blood
• 1:20:24
  blisters on both my feet. And I go, well, the Veitier got
• 1:20:33
  their gift, you know, they, they got it whether I gave it to them
• 1:20:37
  or not. Yeah, blood for blood, right.
• 1:20:40
  I mean, it was, it was, it was life for life in a way, kind of
• 1:20:43
  a thing like, even though the deer was dead and, and, but this
• 1:20:46
  gift from the land, this gift from the, from, from spirit, as
• 1:20:49
  I saw it, demanded a gift in return and, and saying thank you
• 1:20:53
  out loud was not enough. So I kind of learned the hard
• 1:20:58
  way without, without testing, without trying.
• 1:21:00
  It was just, it was a lesson though.
• 1:21:01
  I was like, OK, well, I get it now.
• 1:21:03
  Like, and I'm always very conscious, especially on hikes
• 1:21:06
  and stuff. I'm always before I, I start the
• 1:21:08
  hike, I'm always leaving a gift usually like nuts and seeds or
• 1:21:13
  something that is organic and natural.
• 1:21:15
  That can be, you know, good for the land and, and the spirits
• 1:21:17
  that are there to benefit from this particular day, though,
• 1:21:22
  wherever my mind was, was not in that.
• 1:21:25
  And it was just kind of of hey, buddy, get right, get good, you
• 1:21:30
  know, like. They gave you a little reminder.
• 1:21:35
  Yeah, yeah. I mean it, you know, and it was
• 1:21:37
  a it was a lasting one because I couldn't walk right for a day.
• 1:21:40
  I had this blister on my foot for most of the week until it
• 1:21:43
  healed, you know? So it was this constant reminder
• 1:21:46
  of as I walk this path, literally remember the
• 1:21:52
  relationship that you share with the scene and the unseen and,
• 1:21:57
  and walk rightly, you know, so that can be something to, you
• 1:22:02
  know, I mean, that was my omen. That was my sign.
• 1:22:04
  I'm sharing it now because it I felt it was relevant to the to
• 1:22:07
  the context of what we're talking about.
• 1:22:08
  Not saying that it's the same for everybody, that everything
• 1:22:11
  that happens like that is this, this, this lesson, But there's,
• 1:22:17
  there's a little piece of something for, for people to, to
• 1:22:21
  know about with regards to this though.
• 1:22:25
  And I, I, I want to be respectful of your time.
• 1:22:28
  We've been going for almost an hour and a half, so I'd like to
• 1:22:30
  wrap it up soon. So that way I'm not taking too
• 1:22:32
  much of your, of your late night.
• 1:22:35
  We're talking about, you know, moving forth in Heathenry as you
• 1:22:37
  know, the future of it all. And you and you, you keep coming
• 1:22:39
  back to the same resonating statement of, you know, animism
• 1:22:45
  and, and our connection. So it sounds like, you know, for
• 1:22:48
  you that if Heathenry has a future worth striving for, that
• 1:22:52
  the roles of our relationships with the spirits of the home,
• 1:22:56
  the spirits of the land, whatever local spirits you want
• 1:23:00
  to put a name to, right? Do you feel like all of that has
• 1:23:05
  a central part in the advancement of Heathenry for the
• 1:23:10
  future? Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:23:17
  Yeah. I think that's, I think that's
• 1:23:19
  paramount. Yeah.
• 1:23:23
  I think we really need to focus on our connection with
• 1:23:27
  everything we share the world with.
• 1:23:31
  I think that's a big part of Heathenry.
• 1:23:34
  I don't get me wrong. I mean, I have a good focus on
• 1:23:37
  the gods as well. Yeah.
• 1:23:40
  But we, we, we don't live with the gods that we live with the
• 1:23:45
  Vader. We live with the things that
• 1:23:47
  surround us on this earth. I'm not diminishing the gods in
• 1:23:51
  any way, but I think too many times we lose focus with those
• 1:23:58
  things that we scare the earth with here.
• 1:24:02
  I think too many people neglect that.
• 1:24:04
  And I do think that is that that's the future of Heathenry.
• 1:24:07
  I do think we need to get more in touch with those things that
• 1:24:11
  we're connected to, that we're part of, we're energetically a
• 1:24:17
  part of all those things that are around us.
• 1:24:20
  And again, I think too many people are focusing on, there's
• 1:24:25
  a Larping culture and I understand why people do it.
• 1:24:30
  People are historic enthusiasts and I understand, I am too.
• 1:24:34
  You know, I love history, but I think when people focus on a
• 1:24:39
  period in history, it's one of those matters is I can't see the
• 1:24:44
  forest for the trees. You're missing the big picture
• 1:24:49
  and you're not seeing what's here and now in front of you.
• 1:24:54
  And I think that needs to change.
• 1:24:57
  I think people focus on what's real and what's here and now and
• 1:25:02
  I think that's the way for Heathenry to move forward and
• 1:25:06
  for people to start taking it seriously.
• 1:25:09
  Yeah, yeah. It's funny you mention that
• 1:25:12
  'cause I say, you know, I scroll through social media and I see
• 1:25:16
  these Facebook groups that pop up and it's always, you know,
• 1:25:20
  Viking, Norse, Pagan, something like it's always, that's the
• 1:25:23
  title of it or something along those lines.
• 1:25:25
  And they always got to have Viking in the term or in the
• 1:25:27
  title of the, or the name of the group or the page or whatever,
• 1:25:30
  right. And it's always about the gods.
• 1:25:32
  Like I saw something, I was just, I'm not even in the group.
• 1:25:34
  I just, it got thrown up in my algorithm as a suggestion.
• 1:25:37
  I wonder why as a but like the post was like, which one of the
• 1:25:42
  gods have you chosen to walk with or something like that?
• 1:25:47
  And I'm like, what? Like that's thousands of
• 1:25:55
  comments, thousands of views. Like, I'm like, you're focusing
• 1:25:58
  on not the wrong thing, but your focus shouldn't be on that so
• 1:26:04
  much as it should be on what is your hearth cult like?
• 1:26:07
  What's your relationship with the Veitier?
• 1:26:09
  What is your relationship with your ancestors?
• 1:26:11
  How are you working with your people?
• 1:26:13
  All of those things like local stuff.
• 1:26:15
  Quit looking out to, you know, beyond the realms of Midgard and
• 1:26:18
  and focus on what year. Exactly.
• 1:26:23
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 1:26:29
  I understand that's how people get in entry level 'cause they
• 1:26:35
  think it's something cool, they see something cool and they get
• 1:26:38
  attached to it. Yeah, I think that's what it is
• 1:26:43
  a lot too for, for the social media parts of it, 'cause that's
• 1:26:46
  what's going to get attention, that's what's going to get
• 1:26:49
  comments. That's what's going to and
• 1:26:50
  that's all social media is about anyway.
• 1:26:52
  It's it's not about real bonds. It's about clicks and likes and
• 1:26:56
  views and all that. Yeah.
• 1:27:00
  All right, Chris, I'm gonna move towards wrapping things up.
• 1:27:03
  And as we do so, first of all, thank you again for giving us an
• 1:27:06
  hour and a half of your time tonight to rap about this, you
• 1:27:10
  know, so for folks that listen and watch this, definitely drop
• 1:27:15
  a, a comment if you can, thanking Chris for his time
• 1:27:17
  because time is important. Time is, is valuable for all of
• 1:27:21
  us. And to share time with others
• 1:27:23
  and talk about things of, of, you know, that means something
• 1:27:25
  to us. Is, is time well spent, I
• 1:27:27
  believe. But so as we go towards wrapping
• 1:27:31
  things up, there's there's one last question before we get
• 1:27:33
  into. I have some like just kind of
• 1:27:34
  light hearted random rapid fire things.
• 1:27:37
  But before we get into that, the last thing I wanted to ask you
• 1:27:41
  was if there was one, we'll call it a virtue or, or one, you
• 1:27:49
  know, concept or something that heathens talk too much about.
• 1:27:56
  What is what is 1 in your mind that what do you think?
• 1:27:58
  1 Virtue or one concept that heathens talk too much about,
• 1:28:01
  and one that heathens don't talk enough about.
• 1:28:11
  That's a tough one. I think the one they don't talk
• 1:28:14
  about enough or practice enough is truth.
• 1:28:21
  Honesty. Truth in your belief, truth in
• 1:28:24
  your words, truth in your actions.
• 1:28:27
  I think that's, that's paramount.
• 1:28:31
  Honesty and truth and honesty. One thing they talk about too
• 1:28:37
  much. I I'd say too much focus on on
• 1:28:41
  on the past and not enough focus on the future.
• 1:28:47
  I just got to reiterate that I think they talk too much about
• 1:28:51
  history and not enough about present.
• 1:28:53
  History is important, but present is now.
• 1:28:58
  Present is what's real to to all of us.
• 1:29:04
  Absolutely it's what it's what shapes the next stage, right,
• 1:29:09
  it's it's you know, there with ERD Verdande school, right what
• 1:29:13
  what has happened already, what is happening and what shall
• 1:29:16
  happen or what is come what is coming into being.
• 1:29:19
  Yes, we we are those we are in that now into the next existence
• 1:29:25
  or even even what happened at the beginning of the podcast is
• 1:29:29
  already in the rearview mirror. You know, we can reflect.
• 1:29:34
  We can. Learn the past is important, but
• 1:29:39
  yeah, I think too much focus on the past and not enough yeah,
• 1:29:44
  focusing now. Right, right.
• 1:29:48
  All right, great answers and and great conversation, Chris,
• 1:29:51
  again, thank you so much. So again, the next few random
• 1:29:55
  rapid fire things, no right or wrong answer.
• 1:29:58
  It's just the first thing that kind of comes to your mind.
• 1:30:01
  Sagas or folklore for you sagas. All right, the what now?
• 1:30:17
  I I I just find the stock, it's more entertaining.
• 1:30:20
  Sure, yeah, lots of good ones too.
• 1:30:22
  Plenty of them. Reconstruction or living
• 1:30:26
  tradition? Living Tradition.
• 1:30:30
  OK, public ritual or private practices?
• 1:30:43
  Public ritual? Interesting.
• 1:30:45
  That might surprise some people, but public ritual on under the
• 1:30:49
  right circumstances. Yeah, no, I think, you know,
• 1:30:53
  everything has its place, you know what I mean?
• 1:30:55
  And then in in the right context and with the right application
• 1:30:59
  it can be life changing for sure.
• 1:31:01
  I guess it depends on what you mean by public.
• 1:31:05
  What's that now? So I guess it it depends on what
• 1:31:10
  you mean by public. Well, yeah, I mean, let's say,
• 1:31:13
  you know, I mean, like when I think of a public ritual or, you
• 1:31:19
  know, I mean, I'm thinking of something that's a bit more open
• 1:31:22
  than than an Invitational ceremony, you know what I mean?
• 1:31:26
  Where it's, it's, you can come and you can participate in the
• 1:31:29
  ceremonial aspect. You're just not part of the
• 1:31:31
  ritual, but you're witness to the ritual per SE.
• 1:31:35
  You know, kind of. Oh, OK.
• 1:31:37
  Yeah, yeah. Private ritual, absolutely.
• 1:31:40
  Yeah, yeah. As far as sacred spaces, are you
• 1:31:49
  more of an indoor alter kind of person or outdoor sacred Grove
• 1:31:54
  kind of guy? Outdoor, absolutely.
• 1:31:56
  For the longest time I wouldn't even have an indoor alter.
• 1:32:00
  I insisted on making my offerings outdoors.
• 1:32:05
  I I've felt that I I've changed. I do have an indoor alter now
• 1:32:09
  even though I don't use it all the time, but I'm an outdoor
• 1:32:13
  offering kind of guy. Yeah, of it, man, I appreciate
• 1:32:19
  you kind of letting us into your head a little bit into your
• 1:32:21
  heart with these answers and, and sharing that part of
• 1:32:24
  yourself with us. And hopefully, you know, I've,
• 1:32:28
  I've learned a bit too. And, and, and hearing you share,
• 1:32:31
  you know, your, your views on the future and what the, what
• 1:32:35
  the importance of our connection with the land is for the future
• 1:32:39
  of Heathenry especially. And getting into that animistic
• 1:32:43
  reality of things, you know, getting into that, that heart,
• 1:32:46
  that soul, that spirit. I'm super glad to have gotten
• 1:32:49
  the chance to talk to you about this and hope that the listeners
• 1:32:51
  and everybody that watches this enjoys it as well.
• 1:32:55
  So is there anything else that you had parting words or
• 1:32:58
  anything that you'd like to to share before we wrap this up?
• 1:33:05
  No, I don't think so. If anybody's interested, we are
• 1:33:10
  trying to put together a a book of Heathen poets by Heathen
• 1:33:17
  authors. And if anybody is interested in
• 1:33:20
  submitting work to publish works of poetry by Heathen authors,
• 1:33:28
  you can reach me at my e-mail. I can give you that e-mail if
• 1:33:31
  you'd like. Sure.
• 1:33:32
  Yeah, if you're OK with it, I'll, I'll, I'll post it in the
• 1:33:36
  show notes and in the description of the video for
• 1:33:38
  people that want to get a hold of you for that.
• 1:33:40
  Yeah. That's really cool.
• 1:33:42
  Would it be like like a like a a compilation or or a collection
• 1:33:46
  of different poetic works? Compilation of Heathen poets.
• 1:33:51
  It's something we've been trying to kick start for a couple of
• 1:33:56
  years, but I just could not get enough submissions.
• 1:34:00
  But a few people have shown interest and it looks like now
• 1:34:07
  there might be enough people interested in that we might be
• 1:34:09
  able to put something through and get something published.
• 1:34:15
  Very cool. Now just really quick as a
• 1:34:17
  question on that, while I've got you here, does does the poetry
• 1:34:20
  have to be heathen poetry? Like, does it have to have, you
• 1:34:26
  know, mentions of the gods or the spirits or or, you know,
• 1:34:28
  like is it is it absolutely all we only heathen or, or is it
• 1:34:32
  just? No there there are no
• 1:34:34
  boundaries, just just works of poetry by heathen authors.
• 1:34:39
  Doesn't necessarily need to be heathen related.
• 1:34:45
  OK, well I'm, I'm going to say it right now.
• 1:34:50
  I'd like to, I'd like to get you the, the written copies of my
• 1:34:56
  rune poems that I just, I didn't publish it like on in a book
• 1:35:02
  format, but I put it on on a video format where I'm reading
• 1:35:04
  it. So it's, it's, you know, my
• 1:35:08
  alliterative poetry for each of the 24 Elder Futhark runes.
• 1:35:13
  I do offer it as, as a document for people that want to pledge
• 1:35:18
  support and, and buy the version to, to buy it.
• 1:35:21
  You know, they can, they can buy the document, but I'd love to,
• 1:35:25
  I'd like to be a contributor to this and, and offer that as, as,
• 1:35:28
  as as a, as an option if I could.
• 1:35:31
  That would be fantastic. Sweet man.
• 1:35:34
  Cool. I'll get it over to you.
• 1:35:36
  Yeah, I'll get it over to you at some point soon.
• 1:35:39
  It'll be a, it'll be a probably a Google Drive doc, you know,
• 1:35:43
  whatever because it's going to have pages worth of text, so.
• 1:35:48
  Yeah, sounds great. All right, man, awesome.
• 1:35:51
  All right, cool. Well, don't go anywhere.
• 1:35:53
  I'm going to wrap this up here and then I'll wrap with you for
• 1:35:55
  just a couple minutes and get you on your way.
• 1:35:57
  But again, thank you very much for, you know, being here this
• 1:36:00
  week and sharing with us all of your thoughts.
• 1:36:03
  And yeah, it was great to have you.
• 1:36:07
  So thanks, Chris. Well, for everybody else that
• 1:36:12
  has stayed and listened to this episode, if you enjoyed it, and
• 1:36:15
  if you did and you want to show your support in any way, head on
• 1:36:18
  over to patreon.com/midgard Musings.
• 1:36:20
  Join at the Carl Tier. It's just a $1.00 pledge and it
• 1:36:23
  helps with the production cost of the show.
• 1:36:25
  And also check out the show notes and all the details for
• 1:36:30
  getting in touch with Chris. If you or someone you know is a
• 1:36:34
  heathen poet or has some poetry that you've been sitting on that
• 1:36:37
  you'd like to send his way, definitely get in touch with him
• 1:36:40
  for that. And thank you all so very much
• 1:36:42
  for your support. So until we talk to each other
• 1:36:44
  again, may the gods continue to notice you, and may your
• 1:36:49
  ancestors smile upon you. We'll see you in the next one.
• 1:37:55
  None.