Latest / Random Heathen Ramblings / Random Heathen Ramblings: S5, EP17 - Answering The Call Of The Runes (feat. Walter McGrory)

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Random Heathen Ramblings: S5, EP17 - Answering The Call Of The Runes (feat. Walter McGrory) · Random Heathen Ramblings

• 0:01
  Hello everyone, and welcome to the Random Heathen Ramblings
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  podcast where we discuss all sorts of things Germanic
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  Heathenry related. My name is Jesse and I am your
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  Visit our online store at the alvateer.com and discover the
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  beauty of Mountain Spirit. Welcome back, everybody to this
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  week's episode of the podcast. Thanks so much for coming back
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  and seeing what we have to ramble on this week about.
• 1:13
  I'm very excited to introduce our guest this week.
• 1:16
  He comes from places overseas in Europe somewhere.
• 1:20
  We're going to find out more about him.
• 1:21
  He is an author or the author of a book called The Call of the
• 1:27
  Runes. His name is Walter Mcgrory.
• 1:30
  And we're going to be talking with Walter today about that
• 1:33
  book. What brought him to wanting to
• 1:36
  write such an extensive book on Rune knowledge there.
• 1:42
  I have a copy of it. Actually, I did a review on my
• 1:46
  YouTube channel, which if you want to watch that particular
• 1:49
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• 1:52
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  interest of you or of interest to you.
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  All right, as a quick reminder too, in terms of merch, I do
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  month on my spring store, on my merch store, there is Sacred
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  being collected and donated to The Nature Conservancy and
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  observation of Earth Day this year.
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  So whatever we can, whatever we can do, you know, I'm not
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  keeping a sense of that. All of the money that gets
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  raised in terms of profits, you know, there's, there's cost to
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  all out. But, but aside from that, I'm
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  not keeping any of the of the profits.
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  So if you want to help out The Nature Conservancy and get a
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  going to The Nature Conservancy. So I think that pretty much
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  wraps it up for me in terms of housekeeping stuff.
• 4:49
  Hope you all are doing well this week and I hope you're looking
• 4:51
  forward to the episode. Now coming up today with myself
• 4:58
  and Walter Mcgrory, We're going to talk about the runes today.
• 5:00
  And as a lot of you know, the runes are a topic that is, you
• 5:05
  know, very near and dear to my heart.
• 5:07
  So I'm, I'm looking forward to picking Walter's brain, seeing
• 5:10
  what brought him to this time of his life to write a book about
• 5:14
  the 24 Elder Futhark runes. So again, if you want to get the
• 5:18
  book yourself, links for that are going to be down below.
• 5:22
  Walter also has a YouTube channel, so all of his stuff
• 5:25
  that you can find him on is going to be LinkedIn, the show
• 5:29
  notes or description video video description of this podcast.
• 5:34
  All right, guys, let's welcome Walter in and see what we can
• 5:36
  find out about answering the call of the runes.
• 5:42
  All right, folks, we are joined here with Walter Mcgrory, who is
• 5:46
  the author of The Call of the Runes, a book that I have a copy
• 5:50
  of. Welcome to the show, Walter.
• 5:52
  Thanks for joining us. Thank you very much.
• 5:54
  I'm very happy to be here and I'm happy to talk a little bit
• 5:58
  about my book and whatever musings will will come across.
• 6:02
  I like that, yeah, Whatever musings we end up getting into,
• 6:06
  kind of a nod to the namesake of the of the channel of the show a
• 6:09
  little bit. I like that, but you are.
• 6:11
  You are located in. As I understand you're located
• 6:13
  in the Netherlands. Yes.
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  You've been there your whole life.
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  I from the sounds of it you have.
• 6:20
  Yeah, I have. I have the distinct accents of
• 6:24
  almost speaking English properly, but not quite, which
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  is distinct for most Dutch people.
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  I lived most of my life in the Netherlands.
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  I lived a year or so in China, but besides that, almost all of
• 6:38
  it was spent in the Netherlands. Yes.
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  Interesting. What brought you to China, if
• 6:41
  you don't mind me asking? That's quite a jump.
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  Yeah, it's quite a jump. Well, I'm a, I'm a religious
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  education teacher from my profession studied, you know,
• 6:53
  teacher religious education and inter religious spirituality.
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  Those are the two, the bachelor and the master that I did, so to
• 7:00
  speak. And after I taught religious
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  education for a while at a school in the Netherlands and in
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  the Netherlands, religious education is a little bit
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  difference then is in most countries they call it a
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  learning from the outside perspective.
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  So there is no, it's not a, a, a Catholicism.
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  It's not a, we're teaching you how to be a good Christian or
• 7:25
  we're teaching you how to be a good, you know, insert your
• 7:27
  religion here. But it goes over multiple
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  religions in the world, including Norse paganism, and
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  also goes across multiple philosophers and such things.
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  And after a while, I thought that I'd been studying for a
• 7:44
  very long time about religion education, but I hadn't really
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  experienced that much of it. So I decided to take two years
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  off work and use my savings to do a trip around the world to
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  see all the big Pilgrim pilgrims places in the world.
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  So I walked the Santiago to Compostela, which is a, you
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  know, a Christian, you know, pilgrimage.
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  And I went to Rome, obviously, And I went to Turkey
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  extensively. I went to Israel.
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  I went for a very short dip into Egypt.
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  But then that was suddenly civil war.
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  So that didn't really go well. And I went to India to look at,
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  you know, Hinduism and Buddhism. And I ended up in China for a
• 8:28
  while, where I stayed at a monastery for about a year.
• 8:33
  Wow. So you stayed there at the
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  monastery in China with like monks or or whatever?
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  Yeah, with Taoist monks, Taoist, Taoist monastery, this.
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  And my head was not clean shaven.
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  My head hair was much longer than it was then.
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  Because, you know, the Buddhist monasteries, they shaved their
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  heads. The Taoist monasteries, they
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  grow their hair. Out.
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  Oh wow. So if so, if you had stayed at a
• 8:58
  Buddhist temple or monastery, you would have had to adopt the.
• 9:02
  Then it was then it would have been the other, the other side.
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  Yeah, I must say it wasn't as I was there with other foreigners
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  as well. So I feel that it's a little bit
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  like it wasn't as harsh as a a regular monastery that you might
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  find higher up on the the Woodang Mountain.
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  But yeah. Wow, that must have been an
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  exciting trip and just the whole experience.
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  How many years did your journeying cover?
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  Like how many years were you going from place to place and,
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  and, and how much time did you spend kind of kind of travelling
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  around and visiting these places?
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  Yeah. So about two years, of which
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  China was the the longest bit. China was 10 months.
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  So I say a year was 10 months. You know, I walked from the
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  Netherlands to the Santiago Compostela.
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  That took me about 3 months. And that was also pretty long.
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  And all the other things I did for a month and a month and a
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  half and a place and then I. Yeah.
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  You said you walked from the Netherlands to where?
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  So this the that place you mentioned, Is it in Portugal or
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  Spain or? Spain, Yeah, yeah.
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  So that's a that's a three month journey.
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  What did you do along the way? Like how did you like did you go
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  to hotels or like what was your? I was, I was very ambitious.
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  So for the first like say month and a half, two months before I
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  reached like the more well traveled part of the route.
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  So one step back. The route to Santiago de
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  Compostela starts in many places.
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  So you know you find stickers on on light and post so you can
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  follow the road pretty easily. Where I started from my home for
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  the first day or two, I just navigated by compost to roughly
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  go towards where the the place the starting place was and I
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  brought a little tent. So every night I for most
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  nights, I just looked for a place that was a little bit
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  secluded and then I pitched my tent and then I, yeah, I kept
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  walking the next day. And then, you know, once per
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  week I went into a hotel to, you know, do my laundry and take a
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  shower and those kind of things. That's in that that is
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  ambitious, man. I got to say that's a what?
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  What? Why walk it like, you know, a
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  three month long walk? I'm guessing like if we were to
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  calculate that by car or or something, you know, that would
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  probably just be a day's drive maybe, yeah.
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  It's like a day by train, maybe, maybe two hours by airplane.
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  Yeah. So it's, that's the, the curves
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  of long distance travel. I, I like to walk.
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  I've walked extensively in Scotland as well.
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  And then sometimes you're, you know, you're walking for five
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  days and then, you know, you go back like 2 hours, 3 hours with
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  the bus. And that's, it's always a little
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  bit as hard thing. Why walk?
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  Well, part of it of that pilgrimage.
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  So I wanted to experience each pilgrimage as, as it's, you
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  know, was supposed to be envisioned by those by by the
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  culture that did it for the Santiago, it is walking now, the
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  minimum distance that you have to walk to have it count is 4
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  days, 100 kilometers. But I I went a little bit
• 12:20
  overzealous there and I did the whole thing.
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  Yeah, just a. Little yeah, I did find it very
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  meditative for me and and we're talking there a little bit about
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  paganism. I I don't know if you've ever
• 12:37
  seen the statue of some of Saint Jacob, but if he's across the
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  road, he is this this man with a long beard and that big brimmed
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  head head and The Walking staff and he's walking there.
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  And I, I envisioned that a little bit as an as an Odin
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  esque figure that I was was traveling the road with.
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  Yeah, but it's a lot of infection for a few months.
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  But I feel that was very nice. And would I ever do it in three
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  months again? I don't know.
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  But maybe I'll do it again. Like just just the last bit a
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  month, the last month from Spain.
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  Because as soon as you enter Spain, there's a lot of
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  facilities specifically for the people who do this pilgrimage.
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  So they, you know, there's, there's some very cheap hostels
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  and, and with good food to get you going again because, you
• 13:34
  know, I ate a lot of beans on a little, little campfire stove
• 13:38
  along the way. Yeah, yeah.
• 13:40
  Yeah. They stick with you and they're,
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  they're, they're good, you know, nutrients to, to keep you
• 13:44
  energized and, and stuff. So, yeah, it sounds like this,
• 13:47
  this, this pilgrimage is not, you know, unpopular.
• 13:51
  It sounds like they've got the accommodations necessary to help
• 13:55
  people that want to take that, that same journey.
• 13:57
  And I, I've not gone on quite as long of walks, but I do agree
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  that when you're kind of putting yourself out into nature and
• 14:06
  walking and just disconnecting a bit from the real world or, or
• 14:10
  from the everyday stuff that you deal with, that is very
• 14:14
  meditative, you know, and it brings you to a, a headspace
• 14:16
  where it allows you to think and ponder and, you know, just so
• 14:21
  many beneficial things about it. I've gone on river walks.
• 14:24
  I go in the woods, the forest, you know, I mean there's plenty
• 14:28
  of trails and stuff around here in this state that, you know,
• 14:33
  you can go on a 10 mile loop and and halfway through just be
• 14:38
  absolutely in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the
• 14:42
  mountains. Yeah, that's the beauty of the
• 14:44
  United States. Like for the Netherlands, you
• 14:47
  can have, there's nowhere that you can have that.
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  Like if you walk 5 kilometers, 4 miles in a straight line, you're
• 14:56
  hitting a road or some other form of civilization.
• 14:58
  It's like a very densely populated country.
• 15:01
  It's, that's also something that I really enjoyed because France
• 15:05
  and you know, Spain that I went through are much more open
• 15:08
  countries. And to make sure that I had a
• 15:14
  place to sleep every night, I used to get up very early.
• 15:19
  So my walking day started at about 4:00 in the morning.
• 15:22
  Especially the last part because you know, the closer you gets,
• 15:26
  the more people are on the road because as I said, only the last
• 15:29
  100 kilometers counts really. Get up at 4, start walking.
• 15:34
  It's like still somewhat dark. The sun is coming up.
• 15:38
  You're completely alone on the road for a couple of hours and
• 15:41
  then, you know, slowly people start coming in and then, you
• 15:44
  know, by midday reach my next little town and and set up shop
• 15:49
  for the last month or so when, when, when I was staying at at
• 15:53
  hostels instead of sleeping in my tent.
• 15:56
  Do you remember how many you know?
• 15:57
  How how, how many, how much distance you you covered each
• 16:00
  day? Was it on an average the same
• 16:02
  amount or did you go more or less on Sundays than others?
• 16:07
  On average, it's the the same amounts like there is sometimes
• 16:10
  where it's like, you know, I'm that, that all places are full.
• 16:15
  So you have to walk farther or, you know, you walk shorter
• 16:18
  because you hit a nice town or, but generally speaking, and now
• 16:21
  I'm, I'm a little bit struggling with my kilometers to miles
• 16:24
  conversions, but about 20 to 25 kilometers per day.
• 16:31
  But that's, that's, you know, it's less than mile, but I don't
• 16:35
  know what it is. It's about, you know, four to
• 16:38
  five hour brisk walk. Yeah, yeah.
• 16:41
  I didn't do it in four to five hours.
• 16:43
  I did AI did a, you know, 6 to 8 hour meander.
• 16:49
  Mm, hmm. Mm, hmm.
• 16:50
  Right. Did you come?
• 16:51
  Did you come across any other people doing the same thing?
• 16:54
  Oh yeah, it's a very popular walk, like the first, the first
• 16:58
  two months not, but starting, you know, from, from the, the
• 17:05
  very South of France, you you meet, you know, dozens of people
• 17:09
  and then by the time that you're in Spain, you're like the entire
• 17:14
  hostel that you're staying is meant only for pilgrims doing
• 17:17
  the route and and there's like bus loads of tourists being
• 17:21
  being flown in. So yeah, gets popular, more
• 17:25
  popular actually reached the end.
• 17:26
  So that's why I'm also a little bit happy that I did it the way
• 17:29
  that I did it. Yeah, yeah, you had more of your
• 17:32
  time to yourself for that first stretch.
• 17:34
  Yeah, that's that's really impressive, man.
• 17:37
  Thanks for thanks for sharing with us about that.
• 17:39
  I had no idea that you were such an avid, you know, I say
• 17:45
  outdoorsman, but like the type of person to just go on those
• 17:48
  those long walks and and stuff that's.
• 17:50
  Impressive. It is the longest walk by, you
• 17:52
  know, a magnitude that I've done.
• 17:54
  I've done several other walks in like, you know, the UK and and
• 17:58
  through Europe that last about a week.
• 18:00
  This was This was by far the farthest and also with the
• 18:04
  heaviest backpack in the most gear.
• 18:06
  Yep, yeah, I did AI did a a hike recently where it was just
• 18:12
  about, you know, five, 5 1/2 miles to my campsite, but it was
• 18:18
  a primitive campsite. So the only way to the campsite
• 18:21
  was you had to walk there. You couldn't, you can't reach it
• 18:25
  by like by by car, by boat. It's on there's a lake around
• 18:30
  this, this, this area, you know, So the only, the only way to get
• 18:33
  to where I was camping for the night was a five and a half mile
• 18:37
  walk, which took about four mile 4 hours.
• 18:41
  But again, with all of the stuff that you have on, you know, it
• 18:43
  was in, it was in February. So over here, you know, the
• 18:48
  nights got down into like the 20°F range, 20 to 30°F.
• 18:54
  So it was cold. So I'm like, I'm, I'm carrying,
• 18:59
  you know, sleeping bags and gear that is for cold weather.
• 19:02
  So I think all total it was about, you know, 4045 lbs worth
• 19:07
  of, of gear. And that was just the bare
• 19:09
  essentials, you know, stuff to keep me warm, a tent, some water
• 19:15
  to stay hydrated and some, some, some food, you know, to cook or,
• 19:18
  or, or to snack on or whatever. And it's, and it does, boy,
• 19:22
  like, you know, four or five miles, you know, like I say, it
• 19:25
  was 5 1/2 to get there and then five and a half the next day to
• 19:27
  leave. But just to get there that day
• 19:30
  when you reach your, when you reach the end and you're ready
• 19:32
  to like camp for the night, you're are, you are you're like
• 19:34
  wore out. Yeah, yeah, I I agree.
• 19:38
  The first days, the first days are the roughest.
• 19:41
  And it's yeah. And and the amount of stuff that
• 19:44
  you have to bring is ridiculous if you want to be
• 19:46
  self-sufficient. Like you're carrying like a
• 19:49
  third of your weight on your back, right?
• 19:52
  Which doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're walking that
• 19:55
  distance it it gets heavier the longer you go for sure.
• 19:59
  Yeah. So aside from, aside from being
• 20:05
  a, you know, a Pilgrim in a way to, to, to travel this, this
• 20:09
  path and, and visit this very important religious site or, or
• 20:13
  holy site, if you want to call it that.
• 20:16
  You also have a bit of, or, or an extensive academic
• 20:19
  background. You mentioned earlier you have a
• 20:23
  bachelor's I think, and A and A and a master's in.
• 20:26
  Yeah, of AI started out with studying religious education and
• 20:34
  that is I, I also have a bachelor in as a teacher in
• 20:38
  computer science. And that's what I do mostly now,
• 20:40
  but at that time I was mostly a teacher of religious education.
• 20:46
  So that's the, you know, 12 to 18 year olds.
• 20:51
  That's not exactly high school, but you know, around that age
• 20:56
  and then teaching philosophy and religion and then to, you know,
• 21:03
  I felt that I had to keep upgrading my knowledge.
• 21:06
  So I also started the A masters at the University for
• 21:10
  Interreligious Spirituality, which is, you know, more baggage
• 21:15
  than I really needed for a high school, but I found it very
• 21:18
  interesting. Yeah, I bet.
• 21:23
  The and and you being a Pagan yourself, you know that that
• 21:26
  tends to be of a, a niche or a focused area of religiosity.
• 21:31
  You on the other hand, instead of taking that very focused
• 21:34
  approach, decided to expand your knowledge and wisdom
• 21:38
  understanding of broader scale religion, right?
• 21:41
  Just religion and philosophy in general.
• 21:44
  Yeah, I, I find it, I find it very fascinating to see how
• 21:51
  different cultures and different people use their, you know, how,
• 21:56
  how their faiths work, what they believe and how they use it as
• 21:59
  a, a road map in their daily life.
• 22:01
  Like I find it, you know, interesting to see the, the, the
• 22:05
  comparisons, but also the big differences between the
• 22:07
  different philosophies and the different, different religions.
• 22:12
  Yeah, I've, you know, I was raised Christian.
• 22:15
  I stopped to, I stopped going to church, you know, in like my
• 22:19
  early 20s for a, for a short period of time because I was at
• 22:23
  a kind of at A, at a point in my life where I just, I wasn't
• 22:27
  really believing in these things that Christianity was, was
• 22:30
  teaching me anymore. There was, I was kind of at a
• 22:32
  point in my life where I was like, I need to find something
• 22:34
  that speaks to me. Heathen turned out to be that
• 22:38
  thing. And then, but I've, you know,
• 22:40
  I've, I've gone to many, you know, church services.
• 22:44
  I've even gone to multiple Catholic masses in different
• 22:48
  Christian denomination services. You know, I've been to Baptist,
• 22:51
  I've been to Pentecostals, I've been to Methodist, you know, so
• 22:54
  many different ones. And you know, there's, like you
• 22:57
  say, there's some like nuance to it all.
• 22:59
  You can see that there's, you know, differences in many ways,
• 23:05
  but also this kind of ultimate truth or ultimate similarity
• 23:09
  that they all share in in a lot of ways.
• 23:13
  Yeah, exactly. They're all looking, they're
• 23:17
  looking for a similar thing, but they're trying to find it in a,
• 23:21
  in a way that fits who they are. And I feel that it's important
• 23:25
  that you can find, you know, what you did, that you can find
• 23:28
  a way to, you know, engage with spirituality, to engage with the
• 23:33
  world in a way that makes sense to you, that speaks to you,
• 23:39
  while still being able to understand that that might not
• 23:42
  be the way that speaks to everybody.
• 23:45
  Because, you know, otherwise you get some some Bach math ISM for
• 23:49
  like minus the one through. And you know, that's.
• 23:52
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's got to be true to
• 23:54
  you. You know what?
• 23:55
  Find your truth. So.
• 23:57
  So when, when did the study of the runes come into play for
• 24:03
  you? You have a book called The Call
• 24:06
  of the Runes. I have a copy of it.
• 24:07
  I did a review on it my channel a while ago and it's actually
• 24:11
  one of my favorite books on the runes that I've come across.
• 24:16
  So, So what led you to go down that particular path if you
• 24:20
  don't want to talk about that, please?
• 24:22
  I think there's two like defining moments that I remember
• 24:27
  and one of them is my own religious education teacher.
• 24:34
  And maybe that is one of the reasons that I became a
• 24:37
  religious education teacher. I had two very good ones while I
• 24:41
  was at my high school and the first one he really he he from
• 24:48
  him I learned about Norse mythology for the first time.
• 24:51
  I hadn't heard about Norse mythology before, but they're
• 24:53
  really stuck with me. Like I can still picture the
• 24:58
  pages of that chapter like I can can it's it's a it's a core
• 25:03
  memory and I don't know why that forms, but immediately called to
• 25:06
  me. And the second thing is that for
• 25:10
  a Santa Claus, which is our Dutch Santa Claus celebration
• 25:16
  and my mom, you know, or Santa Claus gave me a book on
• 25:22
  divination. And the book on divination had
• 25:24
  like all kinds of knickknacks in it, like a deck of cards and a
• 25:28
  pendulum and like, you know, whatever, but also a set of the
• 25:31
  25 plastic rooms, like the 24 basic rooms and then the blank.
• 25:37
  Weird. Room, Yeah.
• 25:39
  So, and that called to me of that set the most and I, you
• 25:44
  know, spent a lot of time reading that little books, like
• 25:48
  5 pages on the runes, if that, maybe maybe 3.
• 25:53
  And I found it very interesting that I went to do room readings
• 25:57
  for other people. And after a while I found out
• 25:59
  that there's actually more books about runes.
• 26:02
  And I've been collecting those books about runes like I always
• 26:06
  found very interesting, very good ones.
• 26:09
  I like to maybe one of my favorites is the Anna Paxson's
• 26:14
  Taking up the Rooms. It's very good, especially if
• 26:17
  you you're looking for starting a community.
• 26:21
  But from my more scholarly inclination, what I missed in
• 26:28
  those books, it's not necessarily something that you
• 26:30
  need in there to experience the rooms.
• 26:33
  But I was very curious to where this knowledge came from.
• 26:38
  Like each book said, OK, this room means this.
• 26:40
  And I was very curious, why does this room mean this?
• 26:45
  Why does everybody keep saying that?
• 26:47
  Where did they learn that? Where does it come from?
• 26:50
  I know there is no, you know, shame in sitting up in
• 26:53
  Scandinavia who's, you know, they all go to and who's telling
• 26:56
  them this? So where does it come from?
• 26:57
  And that was actually quite a difficult struggle to go through
• 27:04
  there. Like a lot of it is not that
• 27:08
  well documented. Some things are completely
• 27:14
  fabricated, like the weird thrun.
• 27:16
  It's like there is no basis for it.
• 27:18
  Somebody made it up at some point.
• 27:21
  And some references are very obscure.
• 27:24
  And I tried to hunt everything that I knew down.
• 27:27
  I tried to put a source under it and then I tried to make for the
• 27:31
  readers of the book this logical connection of look, this is what
• 27:36
  it says these we have this saga, we have this room poem, we have
• 27:41
  this runic amulets. And therefore we think that we
• 27:45
  could say that this room means this.
• 27:48
  It's always an interpretation and it's always, you know, a
• 27:50
  struggle where you engage with what you see and then try to
• 27:54
  make sense of it. Because some sources that I have
• 27:58
  are like 1000 years apart and, and 100 miles apart or hundreds
• 28:04
  of miles apart. And then you're like, OK, but
• 28:06
  the both these tribes need roughly the same thing.
• 28:10
  So probably this is what, and that's what I try to present in
• 28:14
  this book. Like this is all the information
• 28:16
  that we have. I think that that means this.
• 28:19
  But even if you don't agree with me, you would need at least know
• 28:23
  what all the information is and where you can find your own.
• 28:26
  And that was the goal of this book.
• 28:27
  Wow. Yeah, I think it was very, very
• 28:32
  thoroughly put together. And I want to just congratulate
• 28:36
  you in person for that because again, so much of, you know, now
• 28:41
  in modern times, rooms are used as a tool for divination by
• 28:46
  folks that are not just Norse Pagan, you know, or Germanic
• 28:50
  heathens. They, they, they tend to get
• 28:52
  leveraged by other spiritualities.
• 28:56
  I've come to notice. And I've seen so much stuff
• 29:00
  online or just in books even that, you know, based on what
• 29:07
  I've learned, which is a lot of, of the stuff that you've, you've
• 29:12
  included in your book, There's no, there's no like scholarly
• 29:18
  background to it. There's no historical stuff to
• 29:20
  it. They're just like basically just
• 29:21
  shooting from the hip, making things up and then putting it in
• 29:24
  a book and selling it. And people are buying this stuff
• 29:29
  and they're using this stuff and I'm going, you know, or, or
• 29:32
  they're going online and, and they're, and they're taking
• 29:34
  these things that they see online and they're, they're,
• 29:36
  they're saying that it's fact. And I'm like, how can, how you
• 29:40
  know, you can have an interpretation or you can think
• 29:42
  of something that can be use the term.
• 29:44
  A lot of times, if you've ever heard unverified personal gnosis
• 29:48
  UPG, you know, and that's OK. Like a lot of paganism is is
• 29:53
  that it's it's our own personal experiences that cannot be, you
• 29:58
  know, trace back to any sort of historically based thing.
• 30:02
  That's fine, but call it as such.
• 30:05
  You know, don't try and put out, you know, the fact like I've
• 30:08
  just seen some wacky things and you probably have to like, I
• 30:11
  don't know, like saying that, you know, Aguilas was the room
• 30:16
  for Hindahl or something. And I'm like going where, when,
• 30:19
  how like show your source. Tell me why you think that none
• 30:23
  of the rune poems suggest that nothing that that rune exists
• 30:27
  on, you know, other than the fact that his name starts with.
• 30:31
  The H. Sound, you know, but then hell,
• 30:34
  so does hell, you know, or whatever.
• 30:37
  So like, come on, like, what are you doing?
• 30:39
  Why are you doing this? And that's why I want to
• 30:41
  congratulate and thank you for the work that you put into this
• 30:43
  book because like you said, you know, you've got all the rune
• 30:47
  poems that are in existence for the runes that have a poem for
• 30:52
  it. Some of them don't.
• 30:54
  But you're also, you know, citing archaeological, you know,
• 31:01
  finds things that have been seen on amulets or bractiates or
• 31:08
  other such things. And I think that that's really
• 31:11
  important for people that are serious, you know, about
• 31:15
  learning the runes. Is it?
• 31:16
  It's more than just an alphabet. It's more than just the symbols
• 31:19
  and what they particularly mean. It's what do we know of where
• 31:23
  they appeared in in history, right Where they came from.
• 31:28
  Yeah, that is also what this book is about.
• 31:30
  And I find that very interesting because, yeah, the runes have
• 31:35
  been compartmentalized online for a lot for they are a
• 31:39
  divination tool. So you have your Oracle cards,
• 31:42
  you have your tarot cards, and you have your rooms.
• 31:44
  And those are the three ways that you can do divination.
• 31:47
  But it's not really the way that they were at least mostly used
• 31:54
  originally. And the question is, how were
• 31:57
  they experienced by the people who originally used it?
• 32:00
  And I agree with you because I have a book, and I found that
• 32:03
  funny. It's like he had a lot of, you
• 32:05
  know, things to say about the rooms.
• 32:07
  And when I tried to figure out where it all came from, it came
• 32:10
  to him in a dream by Odin. And it's like, yeah, OK, that's
• 32:13
  cool. That's good.
• 32:14
  It's even nice that you put in your book.
• 32:16
  But I would like to try and find historical evidence for what?
• 32:24
  What could that mean meant for the people who first use it?
• 32:27
  And also they would experience a hail storm, harvest cattle in a
• 32:33
  much different way than we experience those things.
• 32:35
  So it's not just what does it mean literally what is the word
• 32:40
  that represents, but what is the concept that represents for, you
• 32:44
  know, people in another time? And yeah, and, and what you said
• 32:49
  you get a lot of, like, if you would go online and you would
• 32:52
  try to find what Teresaas means, then 9 out of 10 times it means
• 32:57
  protection because it is a ruin of Thor and it is Thor's hammer.
• 33:01
  And it's all, you know, that's what you do.
• 33:03
  You want to be protected. Cover your body in Theresa's
• 33:06
  rooms. Where?
• 33:07
  In all the room poems and in the sagas and on all the amulets.
• 33:11
  It's a very negative room. It's a curse.
• 33:13
  It's like if you want to curse somebody, Theresa's that's the
• 33:16
  room to to use. Yeah.
• 33:18
  So. Yeah.
• 33:20
  Yeah, and, and it boggles my mind that that's, you know,
• 33:23
  people aren't, I don't know if it's laziness or what, but
• 33:28
  they're not taking they're, you know, they're not doing their
• 33:30
  due diligence to, to learn about the origins of the runes.
• 33:35
  And that's that's that's a dangerous thing.
• 33:37
  If you're gonna, I think, incorporate runes into your
• 33:41
  spirituality, whether you're heathen or not.
• 33:44
  I mean, it doesn't matter to me either way.
• 33:45
  But if you're going to incorporate them into your
• 33:48
  practices, then it's kind of like what it says in, you know,
• 33:52
  part of the that stanza in the Hava Mall, right.
• 33:54
  Do you know how to paint them? Do you know how to bless them?
• 33:58
  Do you know how to send them? Do you know how to sacrifice
• 34:00
  them? Do you know how to do all of
• 34:01
  these things that 'cause if you don't, you could, you know, you
• 34:07
  could be like what ended up happening in the saga of Iggio
• 34:10
  Scala Grimson, where the, the rooms that were painted or, or
• 34:14
  or carved on that whale bone made this girl sick?
• 34:17
  Yeah, because. They were.
• 34:18
  They were painted wrong. They were done wrong.
• 34:21
  Yeah. And then Egil can come in and
• 34:23
  he's the, you know, he's the Erilas, he's the rune master.
• 34:26
  He can fix it and he does. But yeah, that's like those are
• 34:31
  examples of the, the what could happen if you're careless with
• 34:35
  this or not taking them seriously enough to use them in
• 34:38
  the in the proper manner, you know?
• 34:41
  And that's it's it. It was fun.
• 34:43
  I've called a lot of like to get the book together.
• 34:46
  I've been in contact with a lot of museums to get their pictures
• 34:49
  and to get their interpretation. Like does this, does this thing
• 34:53
  even exist? I want to make sure that every
• 34:55
  artifact, every symbol that I have in there, at the very
• 34:59
  least, I have a sketch in there that I draw from a instance that
• 35:03
  I've seen. So I know it exists.
• 35:05
  I know it looks like this and that there is a basis for this.
• 35:11
  And you know, let's get back to it one more time.
• 35:13
  It's perfectly fine for me if you want to use runes however
• 35:17
  you want to use them, but it's a book for if you want to see or
• 35:20
  look at a very plausible way that they were used originally.
• 35:29
  How long did it take you for from start to finish to get the
• 35:32
  book, you know, published and and out there?
• 35:37
  From starting to write it to publishing it.
• 35:39
  Six years. Wow, yeah, it's it's you know,
• 35:44
  that's not six years of me were sitting behind the desk writing
• 35:47
  full time because I also had a, you know, a full time job.
• 35:51
  But yeah, it's a lot of puzzling, a lot of research to
• 35:57
  begin with. And then what took a surprising
• 36:00
  amount of time is the fact checking because, you know, I've
• 36:04
  what I said contact the museum. There's one little sprigging of
• 36:09
  information is that Everett Thorsson, he writes in one of
• 36:12
  his books and has been copied all over the Internet, that if
• 36:15
  you sit behind the Yew Tree on a hot day, then there is a
• 36:18
  professor from a Germanic university, he doesn't give a
• 36:21
  name, who said that that could cause hallucinatic effects.
• 36:25
  And I didn't know if he, you know, made-up or if he actually
• 36:29
  found that somewhere. And it took me weeks to actually
• 36:32
  found find the professor who originally said that.
• 36:35
  And even though he wasn't saying it in his role as a professor at
• 36:40
  the time, but it was an anecdote, something that he
• 36:42
  noticed while he was working in his backyard.
• 36:45
  I could finally place that back. So it's a, it's been a struggle.
• 36:49
  And then the editing that took, you know, I would say a full
• 36:55
  extra year. Like, of course, I've just been
• 36:58
  on and off writing on it, and it was a mess.
• 37:01
  And mostly my wife went through it and she was like, what the
• 37:05
  hell does this paragraph even? I have no idea.
• 37:08
  And then I was like, OK, I meant this.
• 37:10
  And then, you know, we worked through it until it was a
• 37:13
  coherent book. Wow, so your wife helped you a
• 37:16
  lot then with the editing and. Yeah, she's a native speaker.
• 37:21
  That helps. So yeah, she helped a lot with
• 37:25
  making sure that everything was was readable.
• 37:28
  And right now on YouTube, you've seen it.
• 37:32
  I'm, I'm making videos about every chapter because I had a
• 37:37
  lot of fun making the book, but I also would like this
• 37:40
  information to just be freely available.
• 37:43
  So I'm, I'm, I'm making a YouTube series in that sense.
• 37:47
  And my wife is doing a lot of the editing there as well.
• 37:50
  So she is. I just ramble into the camera
• 37:53
  for for a while and then she makes it into something coherent
• 37:57
  again. Yeah, that's great.
• 37:59
  Now, So a nice team effort there.
• 38:01
  Yeah. Oh, man, I love it.
• 38:03
  Yeah. So, you know, for folks that are
• 38:05
  listening and, you know that, watch this on my Patreon.
• 38:08
  You know, the the link to Walter's book will be linked
• 38:10
  down there, but also the link to his YouTube channel if you're
• 38:13
  curious and you just want to kind of get a taste of what the
• 38:17
  books are about. You know, Walter does again, he
• 38:19
  breaks down each of the runes in their chapters to speak about,
• 38:23
  you know, the rune poems that they're cited in any of the
• 38:27
  esoteric knowledge that we have of them, plus the historical
• 38:31
  placement of them. If if they've been on any sort
• 38:34
  of, you know, device that has been discovered through
• 38:37
  archaeological means, you know, at bractiates such so on and so
• 38:42
  forth. So I definitely encourage you
• 38:44
  guys to check all that out too. How often do you publish them?
• 38:48
  I know you're up to like what, Perthrow or something now I
• 38:50
  think. Yeah, once a week.
• 38:54
  I think I all his is coming up tomorrow.
• 39:00
  Let's say I try to bring him out every Saturday.
• 39:04
  This Saturday I haven't fully got around to it to or my wife
• 39:10
  hasn't fully got around to to editing the last bit, but I
• 39:14
  should go up tomorrow. So next week we finished the
• 39:19
  second day at and then eight more weeks and then I think I'll
• 39:22
  do one more video on how to, you know, what, what are bind runes?
• 39:29
  What are, you know, local runner and, you know, hidden runes,
• 39:34
  pruning ciphers and maybe one about ideas that we have about
• 39:40
  how rune magic might have been, you know, what the idea might
• 39:45
  have been structurally behind through magic.
• 39:49
  What do you call that? Yeah, the runology or or maybe
• 39:54
  not. Runology, yeah, I'm, I'm talking
• 39:56
  about certain structures that we keep seeing back the.
• 39:59
  Elder. The Elder suffer.
• 40:01
  Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 40:05
  And then maybe a short one about ruining divination, because even
• 40:10
  if it's the most popular, it's from a standpoint of
• 40:15
  archaeology. I have the least to say about
• 40:17
  that because you know, we have we've passed this saying that
• 40:21
  maybe rooms were used possibly, right, possibly.
• 40:26
  That's that's what we know. He he mentions that a way that
• 40:30
  people cost runes and what kind of three they cut them on and
• 40:35
  that they used symbols. He doesn't say runes because,
• 40:38
  you know, he wouldn't know and that's what we have and it's we
• 40:42
  can assume that it's runes because they have such a rich
• 40:45
  meaning. Those are carved on the thing.
• 40:47
  So it's probable that runes were used for divination.
• 40:50
  But yeah, all the archaeological evidence that we have is like 5
• 40:55
  lines from Pasitas. Right, that's interesting that
• 40:59
  you brought that up because here like I do, I've I've I started
• 41:05
  learning runes, the Elder Futhark runes just clear.
• 41:10
  I started to kind of dive into those studies maybe just a
• 41:16
  couple of years into my Heathenry.
• 41:19
  When I first discovered Heathenry and started pursuing
• 41:22
  it as a, a spirituality and a religious path.
• 41:26
  They didn't, they weren't like the, the immediately first thing
• 41:30
  that I wanted to invest time or energy learning.
• 41:35
  And I don't, and I personally feel that they're not for
• 41:37
  everybody. They're not, they're not
• 41:39
  necessarily like you don't, if, if you're a heathen or Pagan and
• 41:42
  you don't use runes or you don't have an inclination to learn the
• 41:45
  runes, that's totally fine. And, and, you know, leave it to
• 41:49
  the people that have that interest or want to pursue it
• 41:52
  and that can learn it. It's not like a requirement, but
• 41:57
  right. Yeah.
• 41:58
  So like when I first started, you know, so, and that was
• 42:01
  almost 10 years ago now. So, but I do ruin readings for
• 42:04
  people in person at certain times.
• 42:07
  You know, like if I, if there's an event or something that I'm
• 42:09
  going to, there's a, there's a local Pagan group that are very,
• 42:16
  you know, Norse dramatic in their thing.
• 42:18
  So they're, they have three public events a year and they
• 42:23
  have vendors and things that are that that show up.
• 42:25
  And quite often at those events, I will have a tent or, or a
• 42:29
  table or whatever set up for, for rune readings.
• 42:33
  And you mentioned Tacitus, Tacitus in in in that source
• 42:36
  being what little we know of runes possibly maybe being used
• 42:43
  as a form of divination by the Germanic tribes at the time.
• 42:47
  And that's, but that's my basis of how I read runes is I don't I
• 42:51
  don't spread them out like a tarot deck.
• 42:53
  I don't do anything like like that.
• 42:56
  I cast them and the readings are are dependent on a lot of you
• 43:02
  know, I don't, I don't believe in the Mercstav concept of
• 43:06
  reading runes because to me the the rune is just inherently what
• 43:11
  it means is what it means. Regardless, it would be like,
• 43:13
  well, if you write a letter A, it's still a letter A.
• 43:15
  If you write it sideways or upside down, that doesn't have
• 43:18
  meaning of it per SE to me. In my in my book, I I say that
• 43:22
  because the most famous runic symbol that we know is that, you
• 43:27
  know, the helm of awe, which is in its most basic form is for
• 43:32
  all his runes facing different directions.
• 43:35
  And if that would mean that they would, you know, be opposite
• 43:39
  meanings four times, then you would end up with a meaningless
• 43:42
  symbol. So I feel like it doesn't matter
• 43:44
  what way they're facing. I I agree with that.
• 43:47
  Yeah, and I tell people, you know, when you get readings from
• 43:51
  someone who's reading runes, right, my methodology behind it
• 43:55
  is probably not going to be exactly the same as another
• 43:58
  person's. The runes, we learn different
• 44:01
  things from them as as readers, as as Witki, as as the rune
• 44:05
  masters, right? As we learn them, as we, they
• 44:08
  speak to us and we speak to them.
• 44:10
  So there's a, and this is very much UPG guys.
• 44:12
  So for just take that into consideration.
• 44:14
  I feel that while there are meanings behind the rune symbols
• 44:18
  and there are, you know, rune poems that tell us what they are
• 44:22
  perhaps, or there's other symbols that appear on other
• 44:25
  things that we, we know that that's what it was meant to be
• 44:28
  or probably meant to, to mean there.
• 44:31
  There's still very much a relationship that's happening
• 44:33
  between the readers of the runes and the persons getting the
• 44:37
  reading. There's this sort of exchange
• 44:40
  that's taking place and there's, you know, again, my UPG is that,
• 44:45
  you know, not, not every reader is going to read Runes the same
• 44:48
  way for that. And not even the same spread I I
• 44:54
  would fully agree with you. The main way that I like to read
• 44:59
  the runes is also by costing the runes.
• 45:01
  And then I take away the rooms that are facing down because I
• 45:06
  can't read those. So those I take away.
• 45:09
  And then I try to see the relationship between like if
• 45:14
  2:00 rooms are touching each other very close to each other
• 45:17
  that is. But that is in no way can I say
• 45:20
  this is a hard science. And if it falls, you know, if
• 45:25
  you measure the angles exactly like this, then you know exactly
• 45:28
  what these rooms means. This is my interpretation, and I
• 45:32
  feel that you're right. It's a a conversation between
• 45:36
  you, the person you're giving the reading to, and the rooms.
• 45:39
  They are the person who you're giving the reading to gives
• 45:43
  context. The rooms give context.
• 45:46
  And you try to make a. Yeah, a.
• 45:49
  Sense of it. Yeah, How to tell the story.
• 45:51
  You try to tell the story that is in the rooms that relates to
• 45:55
  the question that's being asked. Yeah, no, I like that.
• 45:59
  You know, you mentioned the, the casting method and then that the
• 46:03
  runes that are face down that when they land that way,
• 46:06
  they're, they're not red because they're not, you can't see them.
• 46:09
  I like, I, I've heard other people that have background with
• 46:15
  runes and, and reading runes say something similar.
• 46:19
  My approach is slightly different in that there's I
• 46:22
  don't, I don't necessarily read the runes right there and then
• 46:27
  and there. They become part of the reading
• 46:29
  throughout the experience because I look at it as well,
• 46:33
  something's being concealed, something's hidden that we need
• 46:37
  to maybe peel a layer back and explore and then and try to
• 46:40
  figure out or understand, you know, like it may not be a part
• 46:42
  of the immediate thing, but it's a part of the big picture sort
• 46:45
  of thing. And maybe this is a, you know, a
• 46:49
  layer that's just hiding behind the curtain or something, you
• 46:53
  know that again, my personal layer of, of divination that I
• 46:57
  throw in there. So it's worked for me and it's
• 46:59
  worked for the people I've done it for, which by the way, I, I
• 47:02
  personally only do readings in person.
• 47:04
  Like I can't, I can't get the same experience out of it for
• 47:08
  the person if I'm doing it like this or online or anything like
• 47:12
  that. Like I personally have to be
• 47:15
  face to face with you in real time in real space to to do it.
• 47:21
  Like, no, I agree with that. It's I'm, I'm not say that I've
• 47:26
  never done a room reading for somebody online.
• 47:31
  But generally speaking, if I do a room reading for somebody,
• 47:35
  it's somebody who I'm sitting, sitting across from.
• 47:38
  Like sometimes somebody asks and if I know well then then I'm
• 47:43
  willing to do it online. But generally speaking, that's
• 47:46
  not how I do it. But yeah, there is no, we, we
• 47:50
  can use a white cloth. That's what we know.
• 47:53
  I think you use wooden ruins. I use stone ruins.
• 47:57
  So that's already not, not exactly how it's how it's
• 48:01
  written. And then yeah, it's, it's a
• 48:04
  story. It's a, it's a way that we, we
• 48:07
  use the ruins as a map to, to get a, to, to get their meaning.
• 48:12
  And I, I understand your way where you're saying, hey, the
• 48:15
  ruins that are turned it around are not yet revealed to us, but
• 48:22
  we can see what is coming. Like that's the part that's
• 48:24
  hidden. And that seems like a very clear
• 48:28
  way of interpreting that as well, instead of what I do.
• 48:31
  And I just, you know, yeah, I. Mean I'm not, I'm not saying
• 48:35
  it's yeah, again, this is all like, you know, what do we have
• 48:37
  to know about if how the runes were, were used by the Germanic
• 48:42
  tribes or by this Norse, you know, Scandinavian people.
• 48:46
  It's a lot of it's just we're making this we're trying to make
• 48:49
  sense of what information we have available.
• 48:53
  Obviously, you know, this you spent many years reading, you
• 48:56
  know, studying and and finding information.
• 48:58
  So what we come up with in a reconstructive sort of way,
• 49:03
  it's, you know, if it works, it works.
• 49:05
  You know, maybe it's a slightly different from person to person.
• 49:09
  I also like to think of when we speak of runes, right?
• 49:13
  We the etymology of that word and that it is a mystery or they
• 49:18
  are mysteries. All right.
• 49:21
  Anything particular about that that you'd like to to add to
• 49:26
  with as much work as? You do I think that is AI think
• 49:31
  that's and and I start especially for us now the ruins
• 49:37
  are a mystery because so much of the knowledge of what they might
• 49:41
  have meant is lost. I think it's also very apartment
• 49:46
  to think of where the ruins come from.
• 49:48
  Mythologically speaking. They don't come from this world.
• 49:52
  Odin pluck them from another world.
• 49:56
  And I also think that it's very fitting because of their
• 50:00
  symbolic nature. A rune does not have a if we
• 50:07
  look at the rune poems, at least it doesn't have a singular
• 50:10
  meaning. It's not just cattle fail,
• 50:13
  Theo's cattle, but it is wealth and it is gold and it is the
• 50:18
  warning of hoarding too much money.
• 50:20
  And it is, it's a very complex web of meaning.
• 50:24
  And in that case, in that way, it is a mystery.
• 50:26
  It's a It's a whole world hidden behind a single single symbol.
• 50:35
  Yeah, because it makes it, it makes it that much more of a of
• 50:40
  a complex experience when reading the runes, because it's
• 50:43
  not like we're just looking at a singular symbol and going, well,
• 50:47
  based on that symbol, we're going to read it a certain way,
• 50:49
  right? The the Fey rune and the
• 50:53
  Haggalaz rune and the now these rune might appear in a reading.
• 50:58
  All of those things combined could mean so many different
• 51:00
  things. It could mean, you know, you
• 51:03
  know, a storm is brewing and you need to protect your wealth.
• 51:07
  It could mean that the wealth that you have is going to
• 51:10
  experience turmoil and you need, you know, there's there was a
• 51:13
  need. To to you know?
• 51:14
  What I'm saying like there's so many ways to, so the context is
• 51:17
  important and that's why I feel like the runes is themselves
• 51:20
  being this just inherent mystery.
• 51:25
  It is a. Lifelong study of not just what
• 51:29
  the symbols mean through like the rune poems or or whatnot,
• 51:32
  but getting to getting through that experience and experiencing
• 51:37
  the mysteries of them through through working with them.
• 51:42
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and even a single room, if
• 51:45
  I were to ask what do I have to, what does my, how will my
• 51:51
  business venture go? And somebody I would draw a
• 51:54
  fail, I would generally say, OK, your business venture is going
• 51:57
  to go well as well. And if somebody would say,
• 52:00
  what's the biggest problem that I'm going to run on into my life
• 52:03
  and it's also failed. And I'm not saying your biggest
• 52:06
  problem in your life is that you're too wealthy.
• 52:09
  The the meaning is, is, is very dependent there on the person
• 52:14
  and the question that's being asked.
• 52:15
  So yeah, it is a it's a mystery. And and that's interpretation
• 52:20
  part is where what you're saying there's a lot of personal
• 52:25
  gnosis, gnosis in there. And that cannot be cannot be
• 52:30
  quantified. Yeah, yeah.
• 52:33
  And I'd love to see what people come up with in their own.
• 52:38
  You know, I love hearing people's UPG as long as we're
• 52:40
  clear with what that is. And you know, that giving that
• 52:42
  sort of a disclaimer about it because we're in a, we're in a
• 52:47
  time of our lives, you know, as a society, as a people, you
• 52:50
  know, we're all, we're all looking for answers to things.
• 52:53
  You know, people I think are just generally more inquisitive
• 52:55
  and they're wanting to either be given answers or, or, or given
• 53:03
  sources to find answers. So I mean, people are, are, are
• 53:09
  going to believe a lot of times in many ways, you know, in many
• 53:12
  cases, they're going to believe what they're, what they're told.
• 53:15
  And it it lay, it lays a heavy burden of responsibility on
• 53:19
  folks that are publishing work like yourself and even people
• 53:22
  like me who are putting out content you know, to always be
• 53:25
  cognizant and aware of. Back it up with what you're
• 53:28
  saying with either your sources or if it, if it, if there's no
• 53:31
  source for it, then be like, you know, this is what we know
• 53:33
  already, like kind of what you, what you've done throughout is
• 53:36
  is explain, you know, this is what we know so far.
• 53:38
  This is my. Interpretation.
• 53:40
  You know, that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, I find that very
• 53:43
  important. It's a good chunk of my
• 53:45
  introduction is like, hey, I'm going to talk in the rest of
• 53:49
  this book about this, you know, like, but to keep in mind, this
• 53:53
  is always my interpretation, but it's too cumbersome to author
• 53:57
  every line, say I think. So it's, yeah, yeah, it's, it's
• 54:03
  very important. What else is also what else?
• 54:04
  What else? Excuse me?
• 54:06
  What I also find interesting is the it's always the Elderfouth
• 54:12
  arc, right? That people want to look at.
• 54:15
  You know, you look online, you know, Nordic runes or something.
• 54:18
  It's always the Elderfouth arc. That's very interesting.
• 54:22
  You know, we, we, there's no rune poem for the Elder Futhark
• 54:25
  runes that says Chile. There's rune poems for the, the
• 54:27
  Anglo-Saxon runes of which some appear in, you know, we see in
• 54:33
  the Elder Futhark runic system. But then, you know, like the the
• 54:38
  Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems are runes that we see in
• 54:43
  the Younger Futhark system. Yeah, yeah, it's true.
• 54:47
  It's always the Elder Futhark, even though we know the least
• 54:50
  about the Elder Futhark, particularly like it's, it's
• 54:57
  very interesting. It's how it is because the food
• 55:01
  talk has has more rooms. So why not like why not go
• 55:07
  there? Have I have some extra
• 55:09
  information and nobody does it and neither did I.
• 55:14
  I also went for the elder foods work and I think that is just a
• 55:17
  convention. But you are 100% right, it's a
• 55:20
  weird convention. I understand why people wouldn't
• 55:23
  go for, you know, the younger futarc because you know, you
• 55:28
  lose, you lose a few rooms, you know, why not work with the full
• 55:31
  set of 24? But in that logic, why not work
• 55:34
  with the Futorc and, you know, gain an extra, an extra set?
• 55:39
  So it's a very good question. It's it's an industry thing.
• 55:44
  What is your? Oh, yeah, no, it is, it's, it's
• 55:47
  something I think about constantly.
• 55:49
  And it's, you know, do you know, 'cause sure, you know, the name
• 55:53
  of it might be Feiyu in, in Elder Futhark.
• 55:55
  But then it's, it's just, it's Fei and the younger.
• 55:59
  Same with Ulrus, right? It's their proto Germanic names,
• 56:02
  but they changed and they evolved over over time as the,
• 56:06
  as the runic systems. Did you know?
• 56:10
  They don't. Have.
• 56:11
  Meetings per SE. However, in some of the rune
• 56:13
  poems like I find interesting like like the I think, I think
• 56:20
  the Anglo-Saxon futhork rune for the cown rune canas can canas,
• 56:29
  right? Like in the rest of the the rune
• 56:31
  poems that that rune poem mentions that it is a like an
• 56:36
  ulcer. And then the the futhork the
• 56:40
  Anglo-Saxon futhor room poem mentions that it's a torch.
• 56:43
  Yeah, that's one of the most it's it's one could say that
• 56:47
  it's both heat and and fever and we can, you know, talk about
• 56:51
  that. But that is the the most tricky
• 56:53
  one. But you see the same thing for
• 56:55
  three sauce where three sauce in the Norwegian and the Islamic
• 56:58
  room poem is a troll. And then it's thorn in
• 57:02
  Anglo-Saxon. And, you know, you can say,
• 57:05
  because the room poem about the Anglo-Saxon one is about, you
• 57:07
  know, grasping a thorn and it's also harmful.
• 57:10
  And having trolls in your life is also harmful.
• 57:13
  So it's on the same theme. But you know, the one you bring
• 57:17
  up canals, the ulcer and the torch is the most, for me, at
• 57:22
  least one of the more confusing ones, because I would like to
• 57:28
  believe that there is a theme that both bring back.
• 57:34
  But and, and you know, I in, in my book, I try to say like, OK,
• 57:41
  we can see that there's maybe, you know, there's funeral pyres.
• 57:45
  There's like we can, we can, we can we can see some connections
• 57:49
  to maybe where how the leap went from being an ulcer to a torch
• 57:53
  in the same way that we might see how there's a leap from a
• 57:56
  troll to a thorn or if you know, from an elk to a swan in those
• 58:04
  kings. But yeah, the Anglo-Saxon Room
• 58:08
  poems are much different than the Norwegian and the Icelandic
• 58:12
  Room poems. And I'm also always very curious
• 58:17
  about how many versions, how many room poems might there have
• 58:21
  been, because we have three and all three, if you, you know, you
• 58:27
  go a little bit into the history, like it's like two or
• 58:31
  three times in their lives. It's like, OK, a person had them
• 58:34
  and then they, you know, copied them.
• 58:37
  And then three weeks later, the original burned away.
• 58:40
  And then it was only the copy that we still had.
• 58:42
  And then I went to a library and the library just made a copy and
• 58:45
  the library burned down. And then it's like so many
• 58:49
  things could have gone wrong, like, and it would have never
• 58:52
  reached us now and we'd have never read the Icelandic or the
• 58:55
  Norwegian or the Anglo-Saxon world poem that you can only
• 58:58
  imagine that there probably were more versions of the room poems
• 59:03
  that we just, you know, I just lost because the library that
• 59:06
  they were in was burned down or, you know, the monk that was in
• 59:10
  charge of that was just not careful and, you know.
• 59:15
  I've also been exposed to somebody who, who is or is, I
• 59:20
  mean, he's still alive, but he's he's of Icelandic descent.
• 59:23
  He was born here in America, but his he remembers being around
• 59:28
  like I think it was his great grandfather who was from Iceland
• 59:33
  and he remembers being taught by his great great grandfather a
• 59:39
  method of reading runes. That was very specific that I
• 59:44
  have not seen anywhere else. And I'm not at liberty to share
• 59:47
  the details of those things because it is a family
• 59:49
  tradition, but I thought it's worth mentioning that there is
• 59:53
  likely more of that that exists than we realize because who is
• 59:58
  who, who would get exposed to something like that and, and be
• 1:00:00
  a, and, and have the chance to speak about it.
• 1:00:04
  And, and so like that you have these family traditions, these
• 1:00:07
  these specific ways that a family would use runes to read
• 1:00:10
  'cause I think even Tacitus mentions that how the Germanic
• 1:00:13
  tribes did it. When it came time for the, for
• 1:00:17
  the thing to be read, for the lots to be cast, it was done by
• 1:00:20
  either like the priest or if it was a.
• 1:00:25
  Family. It was done by the the father.
• 1:00:27
  The the. Head of the house, you know,
• 1:00:30
  there was that tradition there too that we don't really hear a
• 1:00:33
  whole lot of, but that that backs it up.
• 1:00:36
  Here's this person from Iceland who had a a system that was very
• 1:00:41
  unique to them. And I wouldn't expect anybody
• 1:00:43
  else to use it unless it was that person's family or somebody
• 1:00:46
  that that person's family trusted to share in that
• 1:00:49
  knowledge with. No, exactly, because that's
• 1:00:52
  interesting because yeah, Tacitus sort of described as
• 1:00:55
  going to the paternal line where in a lot of the other sagas we
• 1:00:59
  see it mostly like if we have the talking about divination,
• 1:01:03
  it's mostly the maternal line. Like it's it's the that's doing
• 1:01:08
  that. Yeah, it's it's interesting.
• 1:01:12
  And but you're right, it must, I also feel it's life because, you
• 1:01:16
  know, in in your background, you have the, the Vegas via the,
• 1:01:20
  the, the runic compass. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:23
  And, you know, every time you put it on somewhere, somebody's
• 1:01:25
  going to say, ah, yeah. But that's from the 18th
• 1:01:27
  century. So that's not really it's from,
• 1:01:29
  that's true. It's a later symbol, but it's
• 1:01:32
  from a period of time where apparently this tradition was
• 1:01:36
  still going. Like surely it has evolved and
• 1:01:40
  surely, you know, things are going on, but it's not like just
• 1:01:44
  somebody who's reinventing from nothing.
• 1:01:47
  Like it's not it's, it's, it's been going for a very long time
• 1:01:51
  and only for like a few 100 years now.
• 1:01:54
  Like it seems like we've lost everything.
• 1:01:57
  But in Iceland, there's plenty of magical manuscripts,
• 1:02:01
  sometimes written, written by priests even that contain ruins
• 1:02:05
  or call upon Odin or like it's been, it's been in the nitty
• 1:02:09
  gritty, it's in in between lines in the Scandinavian countries.
• 1:02:12
  It's just been, it's been alive and in in the small places.
• 1:02:17
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. They've kept that tradition
• 1:02:20
  alive, like you say, you know, and maybe it was revived or, or
• 1:02:24
  it got more exposure at that period of time and, and became
• 1:02:28
  more popular through, you know, whatever means.
• 1:02:31
  But yeah, I've had so many people make a comment about
• 1:02:33
  this. Oh, you do realize, Yes, I
• 1:02:35
  realize that. First of all.
• 1:02:36
  Secondly, it was a gift. Like a, a friend of mine gave
• 1:02:39
  this to me back when I first started my channel and it's been
• 1:02:41
  a staple. It's, it's, it's always been
• 1:02:44
  here for as long as I've been doing content.
• 1:02:46
  So I'm like, it's a part, it's our tradition, right?
• 1:02:48
  It's the tradition here on the channel, the podcast, right.
• 1:02:51
  Like, so get over it. It's here.
• 1:02:52
  It's staying. Just, you know, don't you don't
• 1:02:55
  like it then I guess I don't know what to tell you, but yeah,
• 1:03:00
  yeah. What do you have you or have you
• 1:03:02
  ever thought of or do you have an opinion on people with, you
• 1:03:08
  know, whether it's academic backgrounds or invested interest
• 1:03:13
  to explore modern contemporary runic systems?
• 1:03:19
  For instance, I know of somebody who recently developed and I
• 1:03:24
  don't know how long it took them to develop this, but I know that
• 1:03:27
  it was a long time. Like it wasn't just something
• 1:03:29
  that they came up with overnight.
• 1:03:30
  An American Futhark for the reason of writing in like modern
• 1:03:38
  English, let's say, you know, because one of the one of the
• 1:03:42
  one of the big things that happens nowadays is people are
• 1:03:44
  using Elder Futhark runes to write modern English words and
• 1:03:51
  there's so many there's so many opinions around this.
• 1:03:54
  It's you know, you can't do that because first of all those runes
• 1:03:57
  were were were used to write in a proto Germanic language that
• 1:04:02
  predates the old Norse language. You first have to translate the
• 1:04:06
  word that you're trying to say in English into.
• 1:04:09
  An Old Norse. Bird and then, you know,
• 1:04:12
  whatever, and then you're technically should be using the
• 1:04:15
  Younger Futhark instead of the Elder because they're the runes
• 1:04:18
  that were used to write in Old Norse, etcetera, etcetera.
• 1:04:20
  I'm sure you've heard. Yeah.
• 1:04:22
  So what do you think about coming up with a contemporary
• 1:04:26
  system of American or or whatever modern day Futhark
• 1:04:29
  runes to for the purpose of not just writing modern languages in
• 1:04:36
  but also to explore their maybe magical or esoteric properties?
• 1:04:43
  I personally have no problem with that.
• 1:04:46
  And the reason for that is that if you look, we have the Elder
• 1:04:52
  Fruit arc. And the Elder Fruit Arc is not
• 1:04:54
  the only fruit arc that has been used.
• 1:04:56
  That was used for 200 years. And then somebody said, that's
• 1:05:00
  not really, that's not really what we want anymore.
• 1:05:02
  We're cutting some. This is an oversimplification,
• 1:05:05
  but slowly the system of the elder Fruit Arc, you know, grew
• 1:05:08
  out. We lost a few runes and we had
• 1:05:10
  the younger food arc system. And then after a while Latin
• 1:05:14
  came and people were like, yeah, oh, we want to we also want to
• 1:05:17
  write these Latin words and we don't have the sound sort, so
• 1:05:20
  we're just going to add some new runes to it again.
• 1:05:22
  So historically speaking, there's precedent for changing
• 1:05:26
  your runic alphabet to fit the needs that you have as a society
• 1:05:32
  at that time. And if we look at the
• 1:05:37
  inscriptions that we have, it's also sometimes a hodgepodge of a
• 1:05:41
  little bit of Latin and a little bit of Norse and a little bit
• 1:05:44
  of, you know, it's not like the rooms were only used to write in
• 1:05:48
  one language and only one language.
• 1:05:51
  They were used especially at least the, the, the Futorc and
• 1:05:54
  the the younger Futarc. They were used to write several
• 1:05:58
  languages. And then also people used wildly
• 1:06:03
  different grammars and some things that we think are maybe
• 1:06:07
  random, maybe they're have a grammatical reason.
• 1:06:10
  But most bind runes just seem to be because there was not enough
• 1:06:14
  space left on the page or on on the piece of stone.
• 1:06:17
  And then it's like, ah, smoosh. And now you know, two runes is 1
• 1:06:21
  rune. So I don't think that the people
• 1:06:23
  who originally used the runes were too bothered about what
• 1:06:26
  runic alphabet you were using and if you're writing in the
• 1:06:29
  right language and if you were using exactly the right formula.
• 1:06:33
  So I don't think we should be either.
• 1:06:36
  Yeah, no, that's interesting. I don't, Yeah, I feel like we've
• 1:06:40
  probably just advanced as a, as AI say, advanced as a species,
• 1:06:44
  but, you know, we've become just much more intellectually
• 1:06:49
  advanced. Not saying people were always
• 1:06:51
  stupid, but you know what? I'm, you know what I mean?
• 1:06:53
  You know, like there's, there's more, there's more going on up
• 1:06:56
  here in this space now for for people nowadays.
• 1:06:59
  I think it's it's, it's a bit more of a complex world than it
• 1:07:02
  was in the past. So I think maybe people tend to
• 1:07:09
  just nitpick at things more than.
• 1:07:12
  Are worth. Being nitpicked at and I have to
• 1:07:16
  admit, you know, like if I see somebody writing a symbol or
• 1:07:20
  writing a sentence or not even a sentence, but a phrase or a word
• 1:07:24
  and they're trying to like use like Elder Futhark for it for,
• 1:07:29
  for a, for a period of time there.
• 1:07:31
  I was like, no, no, no, you know, you don't use the double
• 1:07:33
  rune. Like if you want to say will
• 1:07:35
  you're not going to use a Winyo, an ESA and two Lagos runes.
• 1:07:40
  No, you're just not going to do that, you know, And I don't
• 1:07:43
  know, like there's still that part of me that wants, if I see
• 1:07:46
  something like that, be like, no, don't do that.
• 1:07:49
  And then there's also a part of me like, yeah, you know,
• 1:07:53
  whatever, I guess, like. We're we're.
• 1:07:56
  Beating a dead horse here at this point, but I'm just curious
• 1:07:58
  how if this newer contemporary system would help correct those
• 1:08:05
  type of errors, you know? I'm, I'm following your page
• 1:08:08
  there because it's I wrote a book about the elder fruit arc
• 1:08:14
  and that is, you know, that there is some, some
• 1:08:17
  traditionalist, you know, a sentiment in there which is not
• 1:08:21
  logical or, or academical. And if I see somebody what you
• 1:08:28
  say spell will with a double lockhouse rune, even though I
• 1:08:32
  know that there's also examples where double, you know, rare
• 1:08:37
  examples, but examples where original texts were written with
• 1:08:41
  a double the same rune. It does exist that has happened.
• 1:08:47
  So intellectually, I feel that an American rune system is
• 1:08:54
  perfectly fine. And I would be very interested
• 1:08:56
  into, you know, understanding how it works and how it comes to
• 1:09:00
  pass. And maybe it is technically even
• 1:09:02
  better because we have different concepts that are ingrained to
• 1:09:08
  us than, you know, old Nordic people had, like, there's a lot
• 1:09:13
  of talk about fire and ice and cold winters.
• 1:09:17
  It's like, yeah, like, I'm cold winters.
• 1:09:20
  I know that's no existence. It's very, you know, traffic is
• 1:09:23
  bad. It snows real large.
• 1:09:24
  But that's about the end of my cold winter, so in their regards
• 1:09:31
  those symbols directly don't mean the same thing for me.
• 1:09:35
  So maybe it's more logical to make a new system which has
• 1:09:38
  symbols that symbolize or current maps of meaning.
• 1:09:43
  But on the other hand, oh, it feels so nice to go back and be
• 1:09:46
  like traditionally for the, you know, and I think that's
• 1:09:50
  something that old people have. You always want to call back to
• 1:09:53
  something like, yes, the good old days, then that is the
• 1:09:56
  original. That's what we want.
• 1:09:58
  And it's not a logical twinge, but it's a twinge that we all
• 1:10:01
  have. It's like we want to know how
• 1:10:03
  the ruins all the. Ruins worked, yeah.
• 1:10:06
  No nostalgia. Yeah.
• 1:10:08
  No, I think that that is also a valid observation because when
• 1:10:13
  we talk about, like you say, the good old days or, you know, the,
• 1:10:16
  you know, reminiscing, remembering a period of time
• 1:10:20
  where we feel it was simpler, it was less hassled.
• 1:10:24
  It was more, you know, as, as, you know, healthful lifestyles
• 1:10:29
  should be. You know, there's not all these
• 1:10:31
  bills and technology and all this other nonsense that exists
• 1:10:34
  now in modern times. I think maybe some of the, the
• 1:10:38
  pushback that could come from thinking of a contemporary runic
• 1:10:42
  system being created, American Futhark, if we call it that, or
• 1:10:46
  as it's called. I think that some of the
• 1:10:48
  pushback is coming from like you're, you're, you're, you're
• 1:10:53
  messing with tradition. You know, you're, you're, you're
• 1:10:55
  taking away from these, these, these, these old times and these
• 1:10:59
  old ways. And I, I think, you know, I
• 1:11:02
  don't think so. I don't, I don't think that
• 1:11:04
  that's the purpose behind what we're talking about is I think
• 1:11:08
  you, you brought up a good point that we're finding perhaps the
• 1:11:13
  things that are relative to us in our time and, and, and, you
• 1:11:17
  know, evolving or, or shifting a bit in our spirituality, right.
• 1:11:21
  So if we're using the runes that we're, you know, we're really
• 1:11:24
  not seeing how like you say, you know, those ancient people
• 1:11:28
  understood what it meant to have fire.
• 1:11:30
  You know, like that was you didn't have fire, you didn't
• 1:11:32
  have warmth, you didn't have light.
• 1:11:35
  Well, we've got all of those things out, you know, now
• 1:11:39
  without the need of creating fire.
• 1:11:42
  Yeah. So again, like there's, there's
• 1:11:46
  that traditionalist, you know, old fashioned kind of look on
• 1:11:49
  things and wanting to preserve and preserve the sanctity of of
• 1:11:53
  those, those old systems, those old ways.
• 1:11:56
  And maybe what's happening is they feel like, oh, you know,
• 1:11:59
  you're coming up with all this new stuff and it's pushing out
• 1:12:02
  those, those old ways. And I don't think again, that
• 1:12:05
  that's the purpose behind it or that's what it's doing.
• 1:12:07
  But I can see why some of the pushback would happen if if
• 1:12:10
  that's what they're thinking it's doing.
• 1:12:12
  Yeah, I think we, we, you know, circling back a little bit to
• 1:12:15
  what we're talking about in the beginning, it's fine to have
• 1:12:19
  your own, you know, personal gnosis and to, to create things
• 1:12:24
  as long as it's clear where things come from.
• 1:12:26
  Like if you can explain where you're coming from, how you've
• 1:12:30
  changed things, that's, you know, perfectly fine.
• 1:12:32
  You are trying to progress the the evolution of the rooms.
• 1:12:39
  And if it's a very good system, it'll stick because that is also
• 1:12:43
  how all the other systems started.
• 1:12:46
  Like somebody at some point made a diversion and you know, people
• 1:12:50
  were probably like, that's done, we can well, what are you doing?
• 1:12:53
  And then one system is better or more suited to the time.
• 1:12:57
  And at stakes, there's probably been other systems that have
• 1:13:00
  been like, flared up regionally for a second and then, you know,
• 1:13:04
  die down again. So only with hindsight can we
• 1:13:07
  see what was culturally valuable and what wasn't.
• 1:13:11
  And we should try to remember what we have without being like,
• 1:13:15
  ah, but only what we had was good and fully romanticizing we
• 1:13:19
  had. Well, languages do that anyway.
• 1:13:22
  I'm sure you've seen too. I mean, like, you know, you go,
• 1:13:26
  you go down the line of where we are, we'll just say modern
• 1:13:30
  English, you know, well, you know, there was old English and
• 1:13:34
  and while that's, you know, its own language, it's a Germanic
• 1:13:37
  language. And then you look at the
• 1:13:39
  progression of the Germanic language over time.
• 1:13:41
  You know, you had your, you know, your low German, your
• 1:13:43
  Middle high German, your High German, your current, you know,
• 1:13:46
  the, the language that is spoken now modern German, you know,
• 1:13:50
  like old Saxon, you know, I mean like how things progress over
• 1:13:55
  time, People change, people relocate.
• 1:13:59
  You know, there's this things aren't just stagnant and and
• 1:14:03
  there's not this stasis where people are staying put.
• 1:14:05
  So I think that that's also something to consider.
• 1:14:09
  It's all about progression and and movement.
• 1:14:14
  And so people. Don't like that some people just
• 1:14:15
  don't like being progressive. No, no, exactly.
• 1:14:19
  It's it's difficult because being progressive gives a
• 1:14:27
  certain certainty, and it's been the part of the runic debate for
• 1:14:33
  a long time. Higgs, who was one of the the
• 1:14:37
  big the person copied or had copied the the the rune poems in
• 1:14:42
  England from before the Cotton Library burned down was part of
• 1:14:45
  a big debate in England between the ancients and the moderns who
• 1:14:51
  were trying to figure out if they could distill the true
• 1:14:54
  English language by cutting out all the Germanic origins of it.
• 1:14:59
  And Higgs was like, that is, you know, that's dumb.
• 1:15:01
  You can't because. But they were like, no, there is
• 1:15:04
  a, you know, divine English language and we have to try and
• 1:15:08
  find this once and perfect language.
• 1:15:10
  But that's not how language works.
• 1:15:12
  Language is a is a web of meaning that's continually
• 1:15:16
  changing and and evolving. Yeah, I mean, you go back far
• 1:15:21
  enough, if you know how heavy, how far down the rabbit hole do
• 1:15:24
  you want to go? There's there's words now that
• 1:15:27
  exist that have origins in Proto Indo European words.
• 1:15:32
  That's a long time ago, man. Like you want to talk about
• 1:15:35
  getting rid of certain, you know, words in a language?
• 1:15:37
  Well, then you're gonna have to go back, you know, a few
• 1:15:40
  millennia at least. Yeah, exactly the the Hindu
• 1:15:44
  words and I'm I'm, I might not be rum rings correctly, but this
• 1:15:48
  is how it was taught to me when I was in the university in the
• 1:15:51
  Hinduism lessons. The word Veda, which is there
• 1:15:55
  the book means to know and the Dutch word Veden also meaning to
• 1:16:01
  know comes from the same Indo Indo root proto.
• 1:16:07
  It's very, very far away, all the way here, owns our work now
• 1:16:11
  in the Netherlands and in India, you know, devolved from the same
• 1:16:15
  words, but it's completely different branch of the pop that
• 1:16:18
  English took because, you know, even though you know it, it, it
• 1:16:23
  splits. And you can see that as well
• 1:16:25
  because in English the word Fei fee, fee means money.
• 1:16:31
  And in Dutch, the word Fey means cattle, Both meanings of the Fey
• 1:16:36
  room, both coming from the same stem, but you know, in the end
• 1:16:41
  meaning something completely different because we just, you
• 1:16:43
  know, took a different side branch of the language tree.
• 1:16:46
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's still that root that
• 1:16:49
  that that's there though that you can trace it back to.
• 1:16:52
  Yeah. This is fascinating, man.
• 1:16:55
  Do you have anything else coming?
• 1:16:57
  Like I know you've you've had your book out now for I forget
• 1:17:01
  how long exactly I've had a copy of it for.
• 1:17:03
  I don't know about a year, maybe now or more, but anything.
• 1:17:08
  Else a bit over a year ago, I am, I am, I'm pondering a little
• 1:17:17
  bit I I'm now doing the the YouTube series and it'll take a
• 1:17:21
  little bit of time. There's two themes that I would
• 1:17:25
  like to write about. One of them is I would like to
• 1:17:30
  write a sort of encyclopedia. Encyclopedia, yes, the English
• 1:17:36
  words encyclopedia of Norlake mythology.
• 1:17:42
  So just go into what are the places, what are the, you know,
• 1:17:45
  which are the gods? What are what creatures?
• 1:17:49
  What do we come and what what sagas do we find them in?
• 1:17:52
  You know, what names they wouldn't have, why they have
• 1:17:55
  these names just like. So if you want to know more
• 1:17:57
  about a specific subject, you can just deep dive.
• 1:18:01
  Another thing that I would be very interested in, in writing
• 1:18:04
  about is writing about a contrast between modern day, I'm
• 1:18:12
  going to say Asturu, but modern day Northern paganism as a, as
• 1:18:16
  a, as a wife, what rituals exist?
• 1:18:19
  What do people do? How do people connect with the
• 1:18:22
  gods? You know, what's happening with
• 1:18:25
  also maybe not contrasting, but also including what
• 1:18:29
  archaeological evidence we have about how old Morse people did
• 1:18:34
  their tradition, so that you sort of have a overflow overview
• 1:18:39
  of tradition from the earliest that we know until how it's
• 1:18:45
  presents itself these days. Man, that's my yeah.
• 1:18:51
  That'd be awesome, man. But you know, there's a lot of,
• 1:18:54
  you know, ritual practices or things that exist now in the day
• 1:18:59
  that are very modern that of, you know, but they, you know,
• 1:19:02
  where'd the idea come from? One of the recent, like I had a,
• 1:19:08
  or not a post on my page, but like, I, I recently saw somebody
• 1:19:11
  post something on social media about the hammer, the sign of
• 1:19:15
  the hammer and how much it looks like the sign of the crucifix,
• 1:19:20
  you know, creating the, the, the sign of the cross.
• 1:19:23
  I should say that the Catholics do and, and, and, and how, you
• 1:19:28
  know, creating the sign of the hammer is, oh, it's a, it's a
• 1:19:30
  Christian thing. And we're like, well, the in the
• 1:19:33
  saga of Hawking the good where we hear about it being done.
• 1:19:37
  It was it was done by the king to bless a cup or a horn or
• 1:19:42
  something. But it says in the saga that,
• 1:19:45
  you know, his, his retainer had already made a blessing in the
• 1:19:48
  name of Odin. And then when the king did it,
• 1:19:51
  he's quote UN quote made the sign of the cross.
• 1:19:53
  Well, people were like, what is that?
• 1:19:55
  What are you doing? And his retainer had a kind of
• 1:19:59
  quick, quickly think and go, well, what he's actually doing,
• 1:20:01
  he's he's he's blessing this in in Thor's name and he's making
• 1:20:05
  his hammer. He's making the sign of a
• 1:20:07
  hammer, You know. Now Hawkin, yes, he was a.
• 1:20:11
  Christian King, but he wasn't always, you know, so it makes
• 1:20:15
  you wonder like, well, where did that?
• 1:20:17
  Was that definitely 100% Christian thing or was there or
• 1:20:22
  was there something maybe that dated?
• 1:20:23
  Back to the. Older times.
• 1:20:26
  Older times that you know, 'cause we know that the symbol
• 1:20:29
  of Muellner has evolved and changed over time, but it's
• 1:20:31
  always been that very long bottom short top shorthanded
• 1:20:37
  symbol from from early archaeological finds.
• 1:20:39
  So to do that to make that symbol may not necessarily be
• 1:20:45
  too far fetched to think of it having existed prior to the
• 1:20:49
  Christianity spread in the North.
• 1:20:51
  So. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:20:53
  It's it's so so that would be very fascinating to me because,
• 1:20:57
  you know, we have, we have some, some archaeological evidence and
• 1:21:01
  some sagas that offerings were made to suture to giants.
• 1:21:05
  That's something that we don't really say anymore and and just
• 1:21:09
  modern day Norse paganism also has a very wide range where yeah
• 1:21:19
  for from. So that would be very
• 1:21:22
  interesting. And those will all be probably
• 1:21:24
  multi year projects again to to get everything on board.
• 1:21:30
  And it's all that time. Yeah, I'm gonna at least finish
• 1:21:34
  my series on YouTube so everybody can find it out, find
• 1:21:39
  those. And you know, my book will stay
• 1:21:42
  available. And every now I think of
• 1:21:45
  something interesting. I'll keep posting that on my
• 1:21:47
  Facebook and my Instagram to to, you know.
• 1:21:52
  Yeah, that's right. Yeah, you do.
• 1:21:54
  You have, You have that. You have your Facebook and
• 1:21:57
  Instagram and YouTube and so yeah, for everybody that's, you
• 1:22:00
  know, listened to this episode today or is watching this, you
• 1:22:03
  know which, however you're catching this, all that
• 1:22:06
  information is going to be LinkedIn, the either description
• 1:22:09
  of the video or the show notes of the podcast.
• 1:22:11
  So if you folks on Patreon that are watching this, it'll be down
• 1:22:15
  in the description. For everybody else listening,
• 1:22:17
  check the show notes for Walter's Facebook, Instagram and
• 1:22:20
  YouTube, as well as the link to purchase his book, The Call of
• 1:22:27
  the Runes on Amazon. So all that will be down for
• 1:22:31
  you. Oh, that would be, that would be
• 1:22:34
  great. I I hope more people can be
• 1:22:36
  informed and entertained. I do too, man.
• 1:22:40
  I, I again, I really appreciate the, the work and the effort
• 1:22:43
  that you put into it. It's really, it was really nice
• 1:22:45
  to get a chance to talk with you today and learn a bit more about
• 1:22:48
  you. I mean, hearing you talk about
• 1:22:50
  that pilgrimage to, to Spain was, was fascinating.
• 1:22:53
  So you're definitely a a really interesting individual and it's
• 1:22:58
  great to get to know you a little bit more in that level.
• 1:23:01
  So yeah. Anything else that you wanted to
• 1:23:03
  to add or or say before we we we wrap this up?
• 1:23:08
  Well, I just, you know, want to thank you for the opportunity to
• 1:23:12
  have this talk. That's I think a very good talk.
• 1:23:15
  I enjoyed a lot. And yeah, so thank you very much
• 1:23:19
  for allowing me to be on your your podcast.
• 1:23:23
  Oh yeah, sure. That was absolutely my pleasure.
• 1:23:24
  I'm glad we got a chance to do it, even though the time zone
• 1:23:27
  change makes for a challenge sometimes.
• 1:23:29
  We we made it happen. So yeah, don't go anywhere real
• 1:23:33
  quick when I wrap your things up, we'll we'll touch base
• 1:23:35
  offline so I can give you clear expectations of of when this
• 1:23:38
  episode airs. So don't go anywhere.
• 1:23:42
  But for everybody else that is listening and watching to this
• 1:23:45
  today, Hope you enjoyed it. If you did show your support in
• 1:23:49
  any way that you can. My information is in the link
• 1:23:52
  tree link that's in the show notes are down there in the
• 1:23:54
  description. Follow me on all my socials.
• 1:23:57
  You can buy merchandise, become a Patreon on Patreon.
• 1:23:59
  If you want to watch these video versions of the podcast.
• 1:24:03
  It does help with all the future productions of this show.
• 1:24:07
  And check out all of Walter's stuff that you find down here or
• 1:24:10
  over there as well. Show your support in any way
• 1:24:12
  that you can. So until we talk to each other
• 1:24:15
  again, may the gods continue to notice you and may your
• 1:24:19
  ancestors smile upon you. We'll see you in the next one.