Latest / Random Heathen Ramblings / Random Heathen Ramblings: S6, EP18 - Why Did The Germanic Tribes Stay So Fragmented? feat. Emilia Ulf of River Pine Kindred (Part 1)

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Random Heathen Ramblings: S6, EP18 - Why Did The Germanic Tribes Stay So Fragmented? feat. Emilia Ulf of River Pine Kindred (Part 1) · 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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  All right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,
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  all over Midgard and beyond, perhaps wherever these audio and
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  Halen, welcome back to this week's episode of the podcast.
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  So glad that you're back here listening to these these
• 1:25
  ramblings. Got a guest lined up for us this
• 1:28
  week, a return guest. Always a very interesting
• 1:30
  conversation with Amelia Oh, from the River Pine Kindred and
• 1:35
  she brought with her today quite a very, quite, quite, I would
• 1:39
  say a very in depth and juicy topic to talk about.
• 1:42
  So this might this might become something of a Part 1 and 2, you
• 1:46
  know, just to help with the digestion of of such a thing.
• 1:52
  But we're going to be talking today about our understanding
• 1:56
  of, you know, what kept Germanic tribes of old from unifying, you
• 2:02
  know, creating a sort of unified state or, or, or a confederacy,
• 2:07
  if you will, or, you know, being more organized and more unified,
• 2:14
  you know, prior to Christianity spreading and, and, and, and
• 2:19
  shaking things up a bit in that area.
• 2:21
  So we're going to be talking a bit about some of the things
• 2:24
  that she was able to to find in her, you know, research and some
• 2:27
  of our shared knowledge about that type of thing.
• 2:30
  So hopefully that interests you. And if it does, be sure to share
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  social media. So without that further ado,
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  let's go ahead and welcome on to the show, Miss Amelia.
• 5:51
  Olfi Geethya over there at the River Pine Kindred.
• 5:55
  Welcome back to the show, Amelia.
• 5:57
  Thank you for having me, I appreciate it.
• 5:59
  Yeah, it's good to have you back and thanks for reaching out to
• 6:02
  talk about this topic that you had on on your mind.
• 6:05
  I guess you had it on your mind before today because obviously
• 6:08
  you had reached out to me like a week or so ago about it.
• 6:10
  But but what was the Yeah, like what was the what was the seed
• 6:16
  that got planted for you to want to look up this topic about why
• 6:20
  the Germanic tribes haven't or hadn't, you know, unified better
• 6:25
  at a period of time? Like what was what was the
• 6:28
  inspiration on on looking into that?
• 6:30
  I don't know for me, you know, I always reread over old books,
• 6:34
  you know, that we started reading in the beginning, you
• 6:36
  know, and I found that re visiting those books help
• 6:42
  refresh our minds and it plants new seeds of different things.
• 6:48
  And it really makes you think, well, you know, why did all
• 6:52
  these things happen? And you know, I guess I had a
• 6:57
  squirrel brain or whatever you want to call it because, you
• 6:59
  know, knowledge is knowledge and it comes in wisdom in its own
• 7:02
  ways. And for me, I'm always reading
• 7:06
  all the time. Like I normally read about four
• 7:08
  or five books a week on any different topic that I come
• 7:12
  across or revisit, so to speak. And it was just, it was just
• 7:17
  something that I wanted to visit myself.
• 7:19
  And I figured it was a great topic for whoever had a podcast
• 7:22
  about it. So.
• 7:24
  Hey, right. And luckily for you, you know,
• 7:27
  just somebody, you know, just just so happen to know somebody
• 7:30
  who's got a podcast. So, yeah, this is, you know,
• 7:33
  this is that's something that I've thought of a a few times in
• 7:36
  the past before, especially with, and I know you kind of go
• 7:41
  into this a little bit with what you had shared with me.
• 7:43
  But like how this this this problem or this issue with the
• 7:48
  Germanic tribes failing to really truly become united at A
• 7:53
  at a time when it would have benefited them?
• 7:56
  Like I thought about. That in, in the, in the context
• 7:59
  of people today that are, you know, pursuing, you know, either
• 8:05
  the Norse or, or, you know, Germanic side of, of Heathenry
• 8:08
  paganism and how we see some issues like that even still
• 8:13
  nowadays where, you know, that's, it's everything is so
• 8:17
  like fragmented and then and separate and everybody's kind of
• 8:21
  doing their own thing instead of, you know, finding where they
• 8:26
  can unify. You know, not to say that it's
• 8:30
  like a, a universalist approach to things, but just have more
• 8:33
  connectivity. Maybe is, is, is what I'm
• 8:35
  thinking of it. And especially as a, as a leader
• 8:42
  of, of your heathen community, I'm sure that this comes, you
• 8:45
  know, something that comes in your mind a lot because you
• 8:48
  know, you have a tribe or you have a kindred or you have a
• 8:50
  group of your people, but you're also in a sort of network of
• 8:56
  other people doing similar or same things as you are, right?
• 9:01
  Yeah, but you also got to take into consideration Texas is
• 9:04
  really big and you know, we could drive 13 hours across the
• 9:09
  state and like every other town you may go through, there may be
• 9:12
  a, a clan or a tribe or a kindred.
• 9:15
  And you know, for us there, they're more further down like
• 9:18
  into Central Texas or southern Texas areas.
• 9:22
  Like where I live at, I'm the only kindred within like a 2
• 9:26
  hour drive. And the next kindred over is
• 9:29
  Eric's kindred from the Red Guard folk.
• 9:33
  So, yeah, so it is for such a big area like, you know, or
• 9:38
  region, Texas itself is, is massive.
• 9:44
  So yeah, you can, I can, I can definitely see if you're trying
• 9:47
  to, to find other people to, to do things with the distance and
• 9:53
  and all that can be a problem. So maybe as we get into some of
• 9:56
  the billet points or some of the things that you personally
• 9:59
  observed about what's why the Germanic tribes couldn't form or
• 10:03
  didn't form a sort of unified state, we can, you know, also
• 10:09
  find those maybe comparisons in modern times.
• 10:11
  I'm sure too. That sounds good.
• 10:16
  But yeah, I was looking over. Let's see.
• 10:18
  So like one of the first things that you had submitted and I
• 10:23
  don't I don't know if these necessarily fall in like a
• 10:25
  numerical order as like the number one reason versus the
• 10:29
  next three reasons. These are all just itemized
• 10:32
  numerically with no, in no particular order, Right.
• 10:36
  Yeah. They're.
• 10:37
  Just laid out. Yeah, 'cause it's, yeah, I mean,
• 10:40
  I would say that that that's, there's, there's almost no way
• 10:43
  to really like quantify what was the number one reason why this
• 10:47
  didn't work. You probably come up with
• 10:49
  different answers, but one of the one of the first things that
• 10:51
  you that you have mentioned was the tribal fragmentation and how
• 10:58
  the Society of the Germanic people was built, you know, very
• 11:02
  heavily around the kinship model of things, you know, kinships
• 11:05
  and clans rather than a central authority, so.
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  And they also picked like, you know, whoever became the the
• 11:16
  Chieftain or, you know, in charge of everything, whoever,
• 11:21
  like if they had three sons, they didn't pick the eldest one.
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  They picked whoever was the one that was more accountable and
• 11:29
  showed strength and valor and stuff like that compared to like
• 11:33
  a lot of today's time, you know, like they divide everything out
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  between their children and stuff with how the family stuff is
• 11:40
  done, like with businesses and stuff like that.
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  But you know, for me, like, you know, they were all doing the
• 11:46
  same thing because they were all elite warriors.
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  And like, even when they went to war ban and things like that,
• 11:54
  like, you know, they had problems with their tribes and
• 11:56
  stuff, even though, you know, yeah, they worshipped very
• 12:00
  similarly. But you know, they didn't really
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  care for each other. And only time they ever really
• 12:04
  band together was when the Romans were causing a problem.
• 12:09
  And you know, the only, the only tribe that didn't have issues
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  with the Romans or the Longaboards, and that was
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  because they conformed to a lot of the Roman ways and they
• 12:25
  slowly adapted to a lot of things where the other ones
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  refused to. Yeah, there's definitely that
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  like even the like, OK, so you have the Longabards and then you
• 12:35
  also have the Franks. I mean, the Franks were one of
• 12:40
  the earlier tribes to be converted with pretty relative
• 12:46
  ease. I mean, they, the, the
• 12:48
  Charlemagne and his Frankish army were the reasons why the
• 12:55
  Saxons were defeated and conquered.
• 12:57
  The Saxons were kind of the one of the last Germanic tribes to
• 13:03
  refuse to, to convert, you know, they had all their laws taken
• 13:08
  from them and in replacement of, of Charlemagne's, you know, laws
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  and then this and that and how aggressive Charlemagne's
• 13:16
  approach was. But before, before it came to
• 13:20
  conversion by the sword, a lot of these earlier tribes did
• 13:24
  start to see the Roman influence and just agreed to, you know,
• 13:31
  pay taxes to the crown or pay taxes to the church and then
• 13:34
  have things get a little bit easier for them.
• 13:36
  I guess is is. You know which, we'll what we'll
• 13:39
  probably be getting into that too.
• 13:41
  You know the the lack of of some of the things that the Rome had
• 13:45
  at the time that was not a part of Germanic lifestyles.
• 13:50
  Yeah, because they were so nomadic and they didn't really
• 13:54
  care for anything they had because of the way that they
• 13:57
  were 'cause you think about it, they were very indigenous and
• 14:02
  living off the land. Like most of them didn't even
• 14:04
  have like beds and stuff like the Romans had.
• 14:06
  And they didn't really have like, you know, big, you know,
• 14:10
  houses like they did in Rome. They didn't have piping.
• 14:13
  Like, they didn't have a lot of the necessities because they
• 14:16
  wanted to live off the land. And they were happy with that.
• 14:20
  And, you know, until really around the time when Herman or
• 14:26
  Arminius, you know, really saw what they were doing, You know,
• 14:30
  what happened with his father dying.
• 14:31
  And it really upset him. He decided to leave the Roman
• 14:35
  Legion and, you know, to go back to his family and to try to
• 14:38
  rally all the tribes together to try and stop the Roman Legion.
• 14:43
  And, you know, yeah, they did a good job.
• 14:45
  But even when, you know, Arminius was trying to bring
• 14:50
  them together, his own people even end up killing him because
• 14:53
  they felt like he was too powerful.
• 14:56
  Yeah. Because they still wanted to be,
• 14:58
  you know, nomadic about things and just live and let live and
• 15:01
  live in their little isolated geographical areas.
• 15:04
  And they were OK with them because that was their way of
• 15:07
  life. Yep, and they also had a, They
• 15:12
  also had a their their, their lifestyle, their tradition was
• 15:18
  to have leaders over smaller sections, like smaller, there's
• 15:25
  a Saxon word for it, but it basically means like village,
• 15:29
  you know, you had your own dedicated chief, you know, or
• 15:34
  whatever of that, of that small little city state.
• 15:38
  And then once a year, this is the Saxon specifically, but you
• 15:44
  know, once a year they would, they would send for the, you
• 15:49
  know, 12 nobles of every, of every tribe.
• 15:52
  And they would meet at Marklow for, for thing.
• 15:55
  And during that, during that assembly, you know, you had
• 15:58
  representation of 3600 Saxons, you know, hitting everything
• 16:04
  from their nobility class, you know, like the Yarl or the
• 16:07
  chief, whatever tier down to, you know, the, the serfs and,
• 16:13
  and whatever. And, and that time of, of
• 16:16
  assembly was one of the things that they would do was to elect
• 16:21
  the, what was called the Theoden.
• 16:25
  So he was like the, the man of the people, the, the if they
• 16:28
  were to go to war, who would we all be?
• 16:31
  Who would? Whose banner would we be falling
• 16:33
  under? And that goes back to them
• 16:35
  pecking one of the sons that were showing valor and strength.
• 16:40
  But even the tribes like what it mentioned in Tacitus, like the
• 16:44
  tribes would still give gifts to one another is showing, you
• 16:48
  know, they have alliances in some form or fashion and to keep
• 16:51
  the peace in some sorts. But also at the same time, when
• 16:56
  it came to how they did their geographical areas, those tribes
• 17:01
  like they would divide the land out throughout the whole entire
• 17:05
  village. But you know, whoever had the
• 17:07
  highest of all the status, you know, the highest tiers of them,
• 17:11
  you know, they would have a little more land than you know,
• 17:15
  the rest of the people because they needed it for, you know,
• 17:18
  growing crops and helping. And like, they all kind of
• 17:21
  helped each other together do stuff.
• 17:25
  Yeah, I'm sure all of those who had the most of this, I mean,
• 17:29
  those are status symbols, you know.
• 17:30
  So when it came to, you know, this particular tribe having,
• 17:37
  you know, more ownership of, of a, of a thing then then the next
• 17:42
  one, I'm sure that there was definitely quarrels for who has
• 17:47
  the right to this now, right? This was given to this people
• 17:52
  under these sorts of circumstances and no sets of
• 17:55
  circumstances no longer exist because of this sort of a thing
• 17:59
  or whatever. So, you know, I'm sure they,
• 18:01
  that's a lot of the, the diplomatic or the, you know,
• 18:05
  political type things that they would have to deal with and that
• 18:08
  would cause conflict. It did mention in Tacitus is
• 18:13
  Germania, like if people weren't doing what they were supposed to
• 18:16
  do, they would lose their land and it would be given to
• 18:19
  somebody else to, you know, upkeep and everything.
• 18:22
  Yeah, so. Yeah.
• 18:25
  But you know, you still remember they were rural areas that were
• 18:29
  just undeveloped. Like they just literally lived
• 18:31
  off the land. Like, you know, indigenous
• 18:34
  people did you know, almost every indigenous tribe in the
• 18:37
  world, they live off the land, right?
• 18:39
  Like they may have, you know, tents or huts or, you know,
• 18:43
  little bitty, you know, I forgot what those turf houses are and
• 18:46
  everything like that, which I think those are mainly a nice
• 18:48
  one. But you know, you know, I said
• 18:50
  in Cassis, they most of the time slept on the floor, like they
• 18:52
  had furs and stuff like that. But, you know, it was mainly who
• 18:55
  was over the the Chieftain of that area had, you know, the
• 19:00
  biggest, you know, house. The nicest accommodations or
• 19:05
  whatever, Yeah. 'Cause it was probably used for
• 19:08
  gatherings and stuff like that for different times of the year.
• 19:12
  Yeah. Yeah, and their their whole like
• 19:15
  leadership structure was it was, it wasn't.
• 19:18
  Again, it wasn't like, you know, you pay homage to the king.
• 19:21
  It was, it was like their authority, such as it were, that
• 19:24
  they had was. Yeah.
• 19:27
  It was limited, you know. Yeah, depended on the tribes
• 19:30
  cultural values and stuff like that on, you know, the person's
• 19:34
  bravery or honoree, you know, for that Chieftain and how their
• 19:38
  loyalty of their, you know, their political system was for,
• 19:43
  you know, different areas of what they were needing for the
• 19:47
  war band, you know, and how their alliances performed and
• 19:51
  stuff like that. Yeah 'cause obviously it made
• 19:53
  sense that if you were going to war and, you know, you needed
• 19:57
  more of allies with you, then OK, Like this is we're going to
• 20:01
  we're going to play by the rules we're going to, you know, have,
• 20:05
  you know, our loyalty to whoever's been elected as the
• 20:08
  Theta and then once. Once all of that is done, we go
• 20:13
  back to our regular, regularly scheduled programming, you know,
• 20:17
  regular way of life. I'm, you know, not going to
• 20:20
  keep. He mentioned how he admired how
• 20:23
  the Germanic tribes were of how their freedoms and their marital
• 20:26
  customs were and how they raised their children, you know, to
• 20:31
  have certain virtues and how they are morally respected each
• 20:35
  other as well as the leaders of those villages and stuff like
• 20:38
  that. Because in a way, a lot of his
• 20:40
  stuff that he talked about, he boasted about them, about their
• 20:43
  valor and strength and how the, you know, the people were built
• 20:47
  with so much grit and, you know, they were proud and honorable
• 20:51
  and how so much valor for different aspects.
• 20:57
  Yeah, you can tell that when Tacitus, whether he sees it or
• 21:00
  whether he's being told it by third party or or whatever,
• 21:05
  whether it's through his own eyes or whether it's through
• 21:07
  other reports, you can tell that there's a there's a there's a
• 21:11
  respect to it and there's no bias on his part from like what
• 21:16
  you might could raise an argument for some of the later
• 21:19
  sources being. Christian authors, you know,
• 21:22
  like they have their Christian bias that there's leaking in.
• 21:25
  Tacitus was a Pagan himself. He was a Roman Pagan but there
• 21:28
  was no bias from him to twist his story or or twist anything
• 21:35
  and and framing around Christianity's world views.
• 21:39
  And I think he mainly went back and forth, like comparison and
• 21:42
  contrast and everything. And, you know, he, he mentioned
• 21:46
  several times that the Germanic people did not like the way the
• 21:50
  Romans were. They did not care how much they
• 21:54
  had because the only main thing that they cared about was
• 21:56
  silver, not gold, silver because it was easier to barter with.
• 22:01
  And they prod their horses more than anything else besides their
• 22:06
  armor, you know, what they had? And, you know, they didn't even
• 22:09
  really have swords. They had Spears or clubs, you
• 22:12
  know. Yeah.
• 22:14
  So it showed how nomadic they were, how indigenous they were.
• 22:20
  Yeah, and a very animistic, you know, having a close
• 22:24
  relationship to the land and and the the spirits that inhabited
• 22:29
  that those spaces for sure. So I mean, I can see how this,
• 22:35
  you know, kind of touching upon that first point, you know, that
• 22:39
  fragmentation, no central body, no central authority.
• 22:43
  Where can, you know, these desperate, you know, areas like
• 22:47
  how, where, where can they rally to where can they unite if there
• 22:50
  isn't 1. And then when it is there, it's
• 22:52
  only for the four times really of war, you know, when there's a
• 22:55
  conflict. So that I can see as being a
• 22:59
  sort of key point of why they wouldn't unify.
• 23:04
  Like we're fine doing it the way we're doing it.
• 23:06
  We don't need somebody up in the central of for the capital or
• 23:10
  the, you know, some high exalted throne, you know, browbeating us
• 23:14
  and telling us what to do. And even in like the Armenian,
• 23:18
  like he like whoever the Chieftain was, I can't remember
• 23:22
  his name started with an M, but it was an Armenian Chieftain.
• 23:27
  Like he did a lot of trading and stuff with the Romans and stuff,
• 23:31
  but he still worked with his own people.
• 23:33
  But once the legion became, you know, too much and they were
• 23:37
  coming into the, what's it called starts with the Riney and
• 23:43
  the different areas. Yeah.
• 23:44
  And they were coming into all those areas, you know, then they
• 23:48
  started to gather together to talk about these issues because,
• 23:51
  you know, it's like, you know what, I may not like you, but I
• 23:54
  want to keep all that we all have.
• 23:56
  And so they, you know, rally together to go against the
• 24:00
  Romans and stuff. And, you know, in the the Black
• 24:03
  Forest of, you know, the it's a Tootenberg battle.
• 24:07
  Yeah, they did great job. But it was because of, you know,
• 24:10
  Arminius, because he originally joined the legion because his
• 24:15
  father had to give him up, because they had to give up all
• 24:18
  their first born sons to the legion as a way of keeping peace
• 24:23
  with the Romans back then. And then, you know, once his
• 24:25
  father died, as I said, he went back and everything to make
• 24:28
  things right because the Romans had killed his father.
• 24:31
  And he decided to, you know, like, this isn't going to
• 24:34
  happen. This isn't going to work because
• 24:36
  they're getting closer and closer into their geographical
• 24:40
  area because, you know, they're already geographically
• 24:42
  restricted anyway because whatever they have on their land
• 24:45
  is whatever they had. And, you know, as things were
• 24:49
  changing. And, you know, this is also a
• 24:50
  time with the migration period was slowly etching forward and
• 24:55
  the Huns were slowly making their way towards them, as well
• 24:58
  as what the Romans were doing. And all these things were coming
• 25:01
  at different angles. So they were being hit in so
• 25:03
  many different ways. And they're stuck in this
• 25:06
  geographical restriction. Yeah.
• 25:08
  And it's just it's hitting them at all different angles.
• 25:11
  And, you know, the Huns and the Romans are trying to take over
• 25:15
  large areas of where those tribes were.
• 25:19
  And it's just, it was a battle, you know, every day.
• 25:22
  And it was just chipping away at those tribes and stuff.
• 25:25
  So, you know, it's kind of like they had no choice but to fight
• 25:29
  constantly, you know, And in one of the war battles it talks
• 25:33
  about, you know, how their children and their wives were
• 25:36
  close to where the war was, you know, where they were battling
• 25:39
  that so they could hear the cries of their family and stuff
• 25:42
  like that. To empower them to fight harder,
• 25:46
  to be, you know, giving all of themselves to not let them fail
• 25:50
  because they had a family that was needing for them to win.
• 25:55
  So it was their way of motivation and stuff.
• 26:00
  I can, I mean, yeah, if I'm, if I'm, you know, out there in
• 26:04
  battle and I hear, you know, the cries of my, my wife and kids,
• 26:08
  boy, yeah, that's going to turn me into some kind of a, a force
• 26:11
  to be reckoned with for sure. But they were really hardcore
• 26:15
  on, you know, that that limited influence, you know, by Roman
• 26:20
  and stuff. You know, they didn't have
• 26:21
  roads, they didn't have public works, you know, they didn't,
• 26:25
  they didn't have running water. They used the streams.
• 26:28
  You know, they were living off the land, connecting with the
• 26:30
  land. That's what they saw.
• 26:32
  That was sacred, you know, to be nomadic, you know, to be
• 26:36
  indigenous for that area, so. Yeah, that was another one of
• 26:40
  your points, right, that lack of, of, of infrastructure and
• 26:44
  and urbanization kind of the way that Rome had had developed and,
• 26:47
  and some of those more, you know, early, early civilizations
• 26:54
  that became so famous in history.
• 26:58
  So without that, you know, you're basically.
• 27:02
  And it was like once those cities, places and all that
• 27:05
  became established, it became this like you were a stigma or
• 27:09
  look down upon if you weren't a part of that.
• 27:12
  Oh, you're one of the people that live out in the, in the
• 27:14
  bogs or you live in the, the forest.
• 27:17
  You know the. And since the Romans failed to
• 27:20
  conquer them after the defeat in the 9th century CE and
• 27:26
  everything, you know, he mentioned how Tacitus mentioned
• 27:30
  how resilient they were. And they fought for those
• 27:33
  freedoms for, you know, regardless of what the Romans
• 27:38
  were doing, because they didn't like their moral compass of how
• 27:42
  they were. And you know, you know, the
• 27:43
  Romans, they, they got around like, I'm, I'm not gonna lie.
• 27:47
  If you've read even a lot of stuff about the Romans, like
• 27:50
  they're the reason, like why syphilis is a thing, you know,
• 27:53
  like, and I know that's not really a part of this topic.
• 27:56
  The indigenous people were just like, you know, the nor, you
• 28:00
  know, the Germanic people were like, what are they doing?
• 28:04
  We might be living in the country and the whatnot, but
• 28:06
  we're at least we're not, you know, spreading diseases.
• 28:09
  Yeah. And you know.
• 28:11
  Like even, you know, when you hear about other people
• 28:13
  discovering other indigenous cultures, they would get those
• 28:17
  indigenous people sick because they carry different viruses and
• 28:21
  bacterias and stuff. Like you think about the yellow
• 28:24
  fever that came to America because of the people who
• 28:28
  visited the shores and stuff like that.
• 28:32
  Yeah. Like and I can't remember what
• 28:34
  story it I can't remember, but I don't know if it's I don't
• 28:41
  remember which Viking it was, but he visited America before
• 28:47
  Eric the red sun leaf then leasing.
• 28:51
  But there was another Viking expedition that met the
• 28:56
  indigenous people and they also got them sick.
• 28:58
  And I don't remember which one it is because it's not really
• 29:00
  mentioned very often. Like it's, it's kind of like not
• 29:03
  a popular book to read, but there was another Viking group
• 29:08
  that came to America like after after.
• 29:14
  Eric the Red. Yeah, I can't remember.
• 29:20
  I was the one I was recalling now.
• 29:23
  Eric, I know Eric the Red and Eric the Red Son did, but there
• 29:27
  was one other Viking after that, but they got them sick too.
• 29:31
  Like they all got the indigenous people sick.
• 29:34
  And so you got to think about it, you know, the Romans and
• 29:37
  stuff like that. And you know how war banned is.
• 29:40
  People do terrible things in war and they were threatening
• 29:44
  disease most likely, even though it wasn't recorded.
• 29:46
  Like those things happen. And that's why you hear a lot of
• 29:49
  people mention like if the Romans invaded somewhere, it
• 29:53
  mentions that the women would, you know, take the whole entire
• 30:01
  village out to keep the Romans from enslaving their children
• 30:05
  and taking the women as slaves for working and many other
• 30:10
  things. And you would hear about those
• 30:11
  things happening. And it's mentioned in like
• 30:14
  there's two books that it's mentioned in where it happens.
• 30:17
  And I don't remember which ones they are, but you know, it meant
• 30:21
  those things in war. And it shows how how proud, you
• 30:27
  know, those Germanic tribes were because they refused to give up
• 30:31
  for their freedoms and everything.
• 30:34
  And, you know, to go along with that and the conflicts of, you
• 30:39
  know, with what the inner tribes were dealing with from each
• 30:42
  other. And then they had to deal with
• 30:43
  the Romans. And then shortly after that,
• 30:45
  they had to deal with the Huns because of the migrants.
• 30:48
  So it's just coming all at different areas.
• 30:51
  Right. Well, I had to look it up there
• 30:54
  'cause so Leif, Leif Erikson is believed to have been the first
• 30:59
  European expedition to North America and he probably hit
• 31:04
  Newfoundland around 1000. His son Thorvald Erikson also
• 31:10
  LED an expedition to Finland or what is likely Newfoundland.
• 31:16
  So Thorvald. And then after Thorvald there
• 31:19
  was Thorfin, Karslith, Karl Karlseffen.
• 31:24
  He was led. To, to, to the north, up there
• 31:27
  to, you know, Newfoundland and all that.
• 31:30
  And then Eric the Red is known for founding the 1st 2 N
• 31:34
  settlements in Greenland. After him, there's a Bjarni,
• 31:42
  Harold Yolfson, who, according to the sagas, may have been the
• 31:46
  first European to sight North America when his ship was blown
• 31:50
  off course on a journey to Greenland.
• 31:52
  Yeah, I remember hearing that one.
• 31:55
  Yeah. But not after Eric the Red son
• 31:58
  and Eric the Reds grandson. So like I can only read and
• 32:02
  remember so much. I did, yeah.
• 32:04
  There's just so much going through this brain about Norse,
• 32:08
  Old Norse, Icelandic and, you know, just anything.
• 32:12
  And I'm just like, goodness. But, you know, it's sad that the
• 32:18
  Germanic tribes failed because, you know, they couldn't find a,
• 32:22
  a centralization point, you know, because of the Roman era
• 32:26
  and, you know, because we're all of that, you know, because they
• 32:30
  didn't have infrastructure or anything, because they wanted to
• 32:33
  be indigenous. They wanted to live off the land
• 32:36
  and be nomadic. But, you know, it just really
• 32:41
  makes you think like what happened if they would have came
• 32:45
  together, how much would that have changed for us today?
• 32:50
  And I guess if you want to, if you want to go into the now and
• 32:54
  then, 'cause it looks like we're doing pretty good.
• 32:56
  We're we're. Yeah.
• 32:57
  I mean, we can, yeah, we can. We can bounce it around 'cause I
• 32:59
  mean we've already stuck on 2 pretty, you know, older
• 33:03
  influential type things, you know, the, the, the
• 33:05
  fragmentation of the tribes plus the lack of, of infrastructure
• 33:08
  that they had. But where we can find those
• 33:12
  similarities here to struggles now in the day?
• 33:15
  Yeah. So since the ancient tribes were
• 33:19
  decentralized because they wanted to say tribes to their
• 33:22
  own customs, you see a lot of that what we have today, right?
• 33:26
  Like, yeah, we have, you know, gatherings where multiple tribes
• 33:30
  or kindreds or, you know, groups will come together and, you
• 33:34
  know, they make friendships and stuff, but they really don't
• 33:37
  join together. But I think that really has to
• 33:39
  go back to the geographical restrictions or maybe because of
• 33:42
  their customs or, you know, so different from one another,
• 33:46
  like, you know, they have different gods and goddesses
• 33:50
  they worship or, you know, their ritual structure may be
• 33:52
  different or even, you know, they may see it more of a family
• 33:58
  thing compared to a tribal thing.
• 34:00
  So and you know, we also got the different parts of, you know, a
• 34:06
  saw true forested you have. Oh yeah.
• 34:11
  Heathenry. Grassroots Heathenry.
• 34:16
  Rock a true Rick a true, Lick a true, I'm a true, you're a true
• 34:20
  everybody a true, true. That's it's all the yeah, all
• 34:22
  the different. Like even Christianity has, you
• 34:26
  know, you could be a Catholic, you could be a Baptist, you
• 34:28
  could be a Protestant, you could be Pentecostal in it.
• 34:30
  And we go, all right, well, now there's, you know, people are
• 34:33
  saying, well, I'm not going to, I'm not going to hang out with
• 34:35
  them or not talk with them because they're not the same,
• 34:38
  you know, type of heathen that I am or the type of heathen that
• 34:40
  we are. And I go, I think you should
• 34:43
  have your own customs, your own ways of doing things and if how
• 34:47
  that's framed or how that's based is it, you know, it should
• 34:52
  be, it should be organic, it should be natural.
• 34:54
  Do you want to frame your belief around, you know, a more
• 34:58
  historical reconstructionist approach or do you want to, you
• 35:02
  know, be a bit more modern and contemporary in your approaches?
• 35:07
  I mean, if it's, there's, there's like a, there's like an
• 35:11
  overarching issue. I think just over the years is,
• 35:14
  is when, when people discover paganism or, or any sort of
• 35:18
  polytheistic or halotheistic belief system where there's more
• 35:23
  than one God to, to consider or more than one spirit of body,
• 35:26
  whatever to consider is for some reason people think that because
• 35:31
  of, because it's that way, because there's all, there's so
• 35:33
  many gods and goddesses or all these spirits that somehow that
• 35:38
  converts to I can do whatever the hell I want.
• 35:41
  There's no rules, no structure, no order.
• 35:46
  And that's, that's the furthest thing I think from the truth.
• 35:49
  You know, I think that there's, there's definitely, you know,
• 35:54
  founded ways of doing things that have been retained for a
• 35:59
  very long time for a reason. And to just haphazardly discount
• 36:05
  or discredit those old ways of things just for the fact of I
• 36:09
  can do whatever I want, 'cause I'm a, you know, I'm a, I'm a
• 36:12
  Pagan now and I can do whatever I want however I want.
• 36:16
  I think people skip bases so. Yeah.
• 36:20
  One of the topics that we were talking about on the River Pine
• 36:23
  Kindred page, I asked people what would you like to learn
• 36:25
  about? And you know, I normally, you
• 36:28
  know, go through the Eddas, I go through the sagas.
• 36:32
  I, you know, talk about different aspects like I just
• 36:34
  finished sticker for more and talking about, you know, the
• 36:38
  different types of rooms that she talked about when she was
• 36:41
  awoken. Yeah.
• 36:43
  And everything. And like everybody's kind of
• 36:45
  like, OK, that's cool. And then I did this post and I
• 36:48
  was like, what would you like to learn about?
• 36:50
  They were like divination magic. And I'm like the magics within
• 36:55
  you and around you, you have to find those ancestral gifts
• 36:59
  within yourself and all around you in the land spirits and the
• 37:03
  ancestors and stuff like that. Those things just, it's, it's
• 37:07
  not like buying, you know, the blue book and like getting to
• 37:10
  read about all the magical things that's in the blue book,
• 37:13
  you know? And it, it just, to me, it just
• 37:15
  doesn't work that way. You know, for me, I think it
• 37:17
  took like 5 years to really get a solid connection with
• 37:22
  understanding, you know, my ancestors and I only really
• 37:26
  connected with one, you know, it wasn't all of them all the way
• 37:29
  back to the beginning. It was just one, you know, And
• 37:32
  then, you know, sometimes like I'll get connections with
• 37:35
  different things, you know, that are kind of like messages or
• 37:38
  omens. But I think they expect instant
• 37:41
  gratification and they want to skip bases.
• 37:44
  And to me, you know, I understand like because we don't
• 37:48
  have a hardcore structure like Christianity has had for
• 37:53
  thousands of years, because they colonized everything and took
• 37:57
  over everything. So they had years, decades,
• 38:02
  centuries to cultivate, to colonize, to shift everything to
• 38:11
  what they wanted people to learn.
• 38:14
  And they used war ban and threats and, you know, scare
• 38:20
  tactics where we don't have that.
• 38:22
  We just let people learn what they want.
• 38:25
  And it's like, well, you could read the poetic, edit the pose,
• 38:28
  edit the sagas. We have some really good
• 38:30
  academic books. You know, here's some good
• 38:33
  academic books on runic stuff, you know, but to me, I think
• 38:37
  everybody just jumps to magic. Like it's just going to be
• 38:40
  instant gratification, you know, with magic, the gods, the
• 38:45
  ancestors, you know, connecting with plant magic or
• 38:49
  understanding how, you know, nature, connecting with those
• 38:53
  spirits really work. And you know, they don't want
• 38:58
  structure from what I found, not unless you're just really
• 39:00
  hardcore. Like you're just really devoted
• 39:04
  to understanding why you're connecting to the old ways and
• 39:10
  so many different things. And, you know, sometimes it
• 39:13
  takes doing things backwards to kind of, you know, slingshot you
• 39:18
  where you need to go. And then you're like, oh, wow, I
• 39:20
  wish I would have found this sooner because, you know, even
• 39:22
  when I started out in the beginning, I read a lot of the
• 39:25
  Saw true books. And I was like, man, where's the
• 39:27
  history at? Like, you're just telling you
• 39:29
  can see stuff. And like, I had to ask the right
• 39:31
  questions. And, you know, I think it's hard
• 39:34
  because when you're first starting out, you don't know the
• 39:37
  right questions to ask. You know, when you're new like
• 39:41
  that, what questions do you really ask if you don't know,
• 39:46
  you know, and it's not like, you know, you could just find a
• 39:49
  teacher everywhere you go that's going to, you know, give you,
• 39:54
  you know, little things each week to learn about and stuff.
• 39:57
  You know, you have to read the books.
• 39:59
  And as I said, there's like 150 books that would help you, but
• 40:02
  it's going to take a long time to read.
• 40:04
  And if you're not, you know, structured and, you know,
• 40:09
  divided to it, you're not really going to.
• 40:11
  To get there. But even when you know it comes
• 40:13
  to the modern kindreds or tribes or groups like if I had a nickel
• 40:19
  for every time I heard a kindred say something bad about somebody
• 40:22
  else's kindred, I'm pretty sure I'd have enough money to build a
• 40:26
  temple like. For real and.
• 40:29
  I I don't get it. It's just like they don't like
• 40:31
  what somebody else is doing or, you know, they're, they don't
• 40:35
  care for the Chieftain or whatever, or they don't like how
• 40:38
  they're, you know, the Chieftain is like the guy in charge
• 40:41
  instead of the kindred being in charge as a whole where, you
• 40:45
  know, whatever. And I'm just kind of like, so
• 40:47
  I'm gonna mind my own business because that's not my kindred.
• 40:50
  I've got mine over here. I'm not going to worry about
• 40:53
  what they're doing because they can't, they can't affect me.
• 40:55
  So yeah, it's good to know that. But like, I don't really care,
• 40:59
  you know, but I think a lot of people forget that because I
• 41:03
  think people are so busy with worrying about other people
• 41:06
  instead of worrying about, you know, their, their inner circle,
• 41:10
  you know? Oh, yeah, I've seen that happen
• 41:13
  around here like crazy. There's there's been, you know,
• 41:20
  there's been groups that are formed.
• 41:26
  And the reason why that group is formed is because previous
• 41:32
  members of the group that that group came from left, they
• 41:36
  didn't like the politics. So they didn't agree.
• 41:39
  They couldn't have come to a thing.
• 41:40
  So instead of, you know, working through it or whatever I get, I
• 41:45
  don't know, they, they, they, they decided to, to part ways
• 41:48
  and then do their own thing. And so, you know, you've got
• 41:53
  half these people that are looking for for, you know, a
• 41:56
  heathen home, we'll say, you know, somewhere that they can
• 41:59
  gather with people who are of like minds and, and, and, you
• 42:03
  know, they, you know, they look for suggestions and, you know,
• 42:06
  it's terrible when that one person who's looking for
• 42:08
  something, part of what they hear is, well, stay away from so
• 42:12
  and so's kindred because of this, that thing or the other.
• 42:15
  And then they think they're already starting off on that bad
• 42:17
  foot of, you know, murmuring and whispering are bad about people
• 42:21
  behind their backs, you know, and, and I understand that
• 42:24
  there's definitely groups out there that contain people who
• 42:28
  have done terrible things to their communities.
• 42:31
  Trust has been breached, you know, they, you know, people's
• 42:35
  privacies and, and things have been violated.
• 42:37
  And then people have have behaved very dishonorably as a,
• 42:42
  you know, in the also true in the heathen communities abroad.
• 42:45
  You know, we, I've been around long enough and, and you have to
• 42:48
  humiliate to, to see things like that where, you know, people
• 42:52
  with platforms get out here just to blast somebody else's
• 42:55
  business and. And like, there's so many trolls
• 42:59
  on Facebook. And, you know, if you think
• 43:01
  about it, back in the day, like when we were little, like
• 43:05
  little, little, like, you know, we were just born, you know, or
• 43:09
  even before we were born, you know, when we were not even
• 43:12
  thought of when we were just an egg somewhere.
• 43:16
  But you know, we had five groups that started off in the 50s and
• 43:22
  60s and those five people set up all the the structure for the
• 43:32
  left, for the right, and then we have our central.
• 43:38
  And everything in between. And then we have our grassroots
• 43:42
  heater that's everywhere. And some of us have 501 C 3,
• 43:45
  some of us don't. They don't want it, you know,
• 43:47
  and they just, you know, have their meet ups at parks and hang
• 43:49
  out. But you think about it, there's
• 43:51
  only three organizations right now that started off in the 60s
• 43:56
  and 70s. There's only three, three.
• 44:00
  That's it. And one of.
• 44:03
  Them as heathen as far as heathen things, right, Yeah.
• 44:07
  Yeah. So you have the through and the
• 44:12
  through has two buildings, I think one up north and then one
• 44:16
  in Little Rock. And then you have the temple
• 44:23
  that's in Iceland. And then we have the AFA who is
• 44:31
  on their 6th temple right now. They're just buying buildings
• 44:35
  left and right and making them into temples and towns.
• 44:39
  So, and that's all we have. But, you know, the five people
• 44:44
  who kind of got all this out here and made the structure for
• 44:48
  what we have now. And you look at what we had back
• 44:52
  then, you know, and what we have now.
• 44:56
  Yeah. Like, we have way better books
• 44:59
  than we do. Like, yeah.
• 45:02
  Like, you know, the good books are from the 1800s, you know?
• 45:06
  Well, there's there's. You know, but there is a good
• 45:09
  one today because people are getting more academic.
• 45:13
  I tell you, I mean, I, I am, I am blessed, I feel blessed to be
• 45:17
  at least around in this era because of the accessibility to
• 45:21
  knowledge and to to things that is, you know, knowledge is not
• 45:25
  something to be locked away behind, you know, some sort of
• 45:28
  elaborate scheme of obtaining it.
• 45:30
  It's there's, there's people out here that have done all of the
• 45:34
  academic legwork that are sharing and that are willing to
• 45:37
  share. It's we have.
• 45:40
  Jackson Crawford we have. Scott Show.
• 45:45
  Show and then we have Robert Sass.
• 45:48
  And we? Have many other academics that
• 45:51
  we have out there that are not well known that are like in
• 45:54
  Iceland and different places. And you know, to me, I really
• 45:57
  think it's interesting because, you know, we're so diving deep
• 46:02
  into, you know, old N old Icelandic, Germanic.
• 46:08
  But you know, if you go up north to Wisconsin, North Dakota and
• 46:13
  see how they do stuff these days, you know, they still hold
• 46:16
  on to a lot of those Scandinavian traditions, but
• 46:20
  they're so modern. And to me, it's like they had
• 46:22
  Danish centers and you know, they have, you know, Norwegian,
• 46:28
  you know, Scandinavian heritage socks and stuff like that.
• 46:31
  And, you know, they got a, they got one of those Scandinavian
• 46:33
  churches built up there that they use for the museum and
• 46:37
  stuff. And I'm like, I don't know, you
• 46:40
  know, maybe we should try to look into what they're doing up
• 46:42
  north, you know, like, maybe it would benefit us in other
• 46:45
  places, you know? Yeah, I think too, that a big
• 46:50
  reason that that might be so successful up there is because
• 46:54
  of the population of Scandinavian immigrants that
• 46:59
  settle up there. You know, that that that are
• 47:01
  there. I know where I'm from, you know,
• 47:03
  in in New York, you know, that was a lot of Dutch and German
• 47:09
  settlers, you know, that came over.
• 47:10
  They they, they, they settled because of of the familiarity of
• 47:14
  the land. It was very similar to where
• 47:15
  they came from. And I'm sure with like great.
• 47:18
  Grandmother did my great grand, my great great grandmother.
• 47:21
  They came to Fargo, ND, and then my dad's family, they're from
• 47:29
  Minnesota. Yeah, I mean, 'cause you go and
• 47:33
  you look up at like the landscape of, of, of the
• 47:38
  Dakotas, you know, the plains and you got those rolling hills
• 47:42
  and, and the, the, the aridness of the land up there looks very
• 47:47
  similar to like Norway, Iceland especially.
• 47:50
  You know, like there's maybe not the big coastal things, but
• 47:53
  there's not. The fjords.
• 47:56
  Yeah, yeah, right. Like the fjords are are
• 47:58
  definitely echoes of that are are up there.
• 48:02
  So I can see where for the Scandinavian immigrants that
• 48:08
  finding those places would be very much a call to home for
• 48:13
  them. Yeah, the area where I was
• 48:17
  raised is, you know, very much it's, it's coastal, but there's
• 48:20
  a lot of marshlands, which is very similar to like Denmark,
• 48:27
  you know, where some of my ancestors came from, very
• 48:32
  similar, you know, very hard to grow there because it's, it's
• 48:35
  all wet and, and boggy, you know.
• 48:38
  We have ponds and humidity and it's hot here.
• 48:43
  Like I feel like I'm a huffy dying in this humidity.
• 48:47
  Like you can tell my hair right now, like it rained today.
• 48:51
  Like my body is absorbing all the humidity right now and I'm
• 48:55
  sitting here like it's 71 in my house and I'm like, I'm hot.
• 48:59
  Oh man, no, I got it. I mean, during the daytime with
• 49:03
  my nieces here. I'll keep, you know, the
• 49:04
  thermostat around 70 just. And oddly enough, like we
• 49:08
  haven't, I'm, I'm sure I don't know, I'm, I'm used to like May
• 49:14
  being a kind of a wet month, but it's been oddly cool like the
• 49:20
  other day, like it didn't get out of the 70s and it got down
• 49:22
  to the 50s at night. And I'm like, this is kind of
• 49:24
  strange for her being this late in the spring, you know?
• 49:29
  It dropped down to like 68 last night because we had a storm
• 49:32
  come in and I felt the cold come through and I was like open the
• 49:36
  open the windows, yes, turn the fan off and open the windows.
• 49:42
  Like felt so good outside. But.
• 49:45
  Now it's just, you know, it just goes back to those geographical
• 49:49
  stuff, like everything's different because we're in
• 49:52
  modern times and our ancestors migrated everywhere over those,
• 49:56
  you know, centuries and stuff. And here we are.
• 50:00
  And to us, I don't know, to me, I feel like we're holding on not
• 50:05
  to the ashes of our ancestors, but to that memory that that's
• 50:13
  inside of us. And where we go from there, you
• 50:17
  know, depends on us, you know, don't get me wrong.
• 50:21
  Like I'm pretty sure that some of the stories that, you know,
• 50:23
  we share, you know, and like we talked with Eric and all these
• 50:27
  other academics and stuff like that and talk about it from real
• 50:30
  today's settings. Like maybe it's inspiring to
• 50:32
  some people. Maybe it's somebody else's
• 50:34
  inspiration to go make a kindred or, you know, to help someone,
• 50:40
  you know, build something better than what we have.
• 50:43
  Because, you know, I say all the time on River Pine, you know, it
• 50:46
  takes a village to build something great, better than
• 50:49
  what we had, which was nothing. We didn't have a tribe in
• 50:52
  Texarkana. The closest one was in
• 50:55
  Shreveport, and they're dissolved now.
• 50:58
  They were around for maybe five years and they dissolved, you
• 51:02
  know, and you know, I've notices, you know, a lot of
• 51:07
  hands change with kindreds and stuff.
• 51:10
  And you know, I'm, I'm going on my 7th year with River Pine and
• 51:15
  I feel like it's a blessing to help the community and do what I
• 51:19
  do. But at the same time, like, will
• 51:22
  River Pine ever have land one day?
• 51:26
  I don't know how many offerings I have to get to hopefully
• 51:29
  receive, you know, land one day in some form or fashion or to be
• 51:34
  able to build a temple like it would be a blessing.
• 51:37
  And I would let anyone and everyone, you know, see those
• 51:40
  things, you know, to be a part of it.
• 51:43
  But you know, as I said, you know, you think about it like
• 51:47
  the through and the AFA, it took them 20 years to get that.
• 51:51
  It may take River Climb 20 to get that too.
• 51:54
  Well, you know, there's, there's definitely something to be said
• 51:57
  for that. I mean, it didn't happen
• 51:58
  overnight. You know, it took them the years
• 52:00
  that it took them and it took it took also, I mean, if you want
• 52:08
  to just get real about it, like it took people aligning with
• 52:12
  their approach to things and supporting.
• 52:15
  It. And backing it and you look at
• 52:20
  some of the criticisms that these organizations have gotten.
• 52:23
  And I'm not here to pick sides. I'm not here to play sides
• 52:26
  because I don't care either. Or I don't care for either one
• 52:29
  of them per SE. I'm not going to align myself
• 52:31
  with either one of them just for personal reasons, you know, but
• 52:35
  one person might say, yeah, you know, the, this unification of
• 52:39
  people, it's like, well, if you think that that we're going to
• 52:42
  accomplish this through, you know, large organizations like
• 52:45
  the Truth or AAFA and that that's the answer, I think a lot
• 52:49
  of people are going to say that's not what we're looking.
• 52:52
  That's not, that's we don't want that.
• 52:53
  Like, you know, it goes back to that whole thing of the way that
• 52:56
  the Germanic peoples governed themselves.
• 52:59
  We don't need some overarching leader authority, you know,
• 53:02
  Kingdom of, of Osseture or Kingdom of Heathenry here to, to
• 53:05
  tell us anything. You know, it's, it's, and I
• 53:10
  don't think that's what any of us really want.
• 53:11
  It's, it's, it's more of OK, if, if there's this, when people are
• 53:17
  needed, you know, like, let's just say a disaster of, of, of
• 53:20
  nature strikes, you know, you should know who your people are
• 53:23
  to go to and your people should know who to go to when they're
• 53:26
  in need. And so if you have, you know,
• 53:28
  disaster strike or something happens in an area of, of Texas
• 53:32
  or Tennessee or wherever you're located, the unification, I
• 53:37
  think the, the, the Confederacy that we're, that we're talking
• 53:40
  about is to know that there's people that can band together to
• 53:43
  help one another when shit hits the fan.
• 53:46
  It's not like we want to tell you what to do and how to do it
• 53:48
  every waking moment. Do your thing but.
• 53:51
  Let's be it's, it's kind of like 1.
• 53:54
  That enough to help one. Another North Carolina when they
• 53:58
  had that gigantic flood that came through.
• 54:01
  Yeah, from Helen. Yes.
• 54:03
  Helene, Helene, whatever. Yeah.
• 54:05
  And the Mother Grove, which is a, you know, it's a Pagan group
• 54:12
  and they've been around for 40 something years and, you know,
• 54:16
  they really don't have a temple. They have an altar and
• 54:19
  everything. And they have a food pantry and
• 54:23
  they help that whole entire community area that they're in
• 54:27
  in North Carolina. And, you know, she posts every
• 54:31
  day, you know, and does prayers and, you know, talking about
• 54:35
  what people need. And to me, she's like, she liked
• 54:38
  that Pagan grandma you never had.
• 54:41
  And she gives you inspiration and, you know, keeps you
• 54:43
  positive and stuff. And, you know, she tells
• 54:46
  everybody, you know, like, you know, we're needing gift cards,
• 54:48
  we're needing water, we're needing propane tanks.
• 54:51
  Like she's upfront and honest and tells everybody what they
• 54:54
  need. And she gives it to everybody in
• 54:56
  the community, not just pagans. She gives it to everybody.
• 55:00
  And you know, River Pine, we're inspired by that.
• 55:05
  So with us, you know, if somebody's needing help moving,
• 55:09
  we help them move. Or if they're in a financial
• 55:12
  crisis, you know, we'll take them grocery shopping.
• 55:16
  You know, we're raising money right now for the backpacks and
• 55:19
  school supplies for the kids. And we're, we're already halfway
• 55:23
  through it And, you know, we haven't even made it to August
• 55:25
  1st when we're going to distribute it out.
• 55:28
  But our story inspires other to build a better community than
• 55:33
  what we had. And you know it, you'll, we do
• 55:36
  the, you know, the jackets and the shoes and the toys and arts
• 55:40
  and crafts for kids. And, you know, we let people
• 55:42
  know up front, like almost all of our money goes to the
• 55:47
  community on helping build a better tomorrow.
• 55:50
  And, you know, I don't get paid for being a Gideon.
• 55:53
  You know, the only time I ever get paid is marrying a couple.
• 55:57
  And most of the time the money that I get is to travel back and
• 56:00
  forth. And it's gone by the time I get
• 56:02
  back home. And I don't care.
• 56:03
  You know, it's, it's inspiring to go marry somebody that you
• 56:08
  know, is in love. And, you know, they are the old
• 56:11
  ways. And it's, it's a great thing,
• 56:13
  you know, and I think that for Norse pagans and pagans in
• 56:17
  general, we're not ruled by money.
• 56:21
  Yes, money pays the bills. Money is king in the world that
• 56:24
  we live in. But we connect with the land.
• 56:28
  And, you know, yes, we have altar stuff that we have to buy
• 56:33
  and, or make or, you know, do whatever and stuff like that.
• 56:37
  You know, just like even Tacitus talked about, you know, that
• 56:41
  they would pull a branch down and cut them into slivers and,
• 56:44
  you know, do divination. Like, you know.
• 56:47
  Oh yeah. Casting lots, like.
• 56:48
  Yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they
• 56:50
  didn't have like a pop up shop for like, you know, for the
• 56:54
  Norse shop. Like, hey, we've got some lots
• 56:57
  right here. You, you want some for a
• 56:59
  shilling? Like, you know, they had to go
• 57:01
  make everything on their own. Just like a lot of us, we make a
• 57:05
  lot of stuff on our own, don't we?
• 57:06
  You make your runes yourself. You know, I make my little rune
• 57:10
  ornaments and you know, I make rune sets as well and I'll do
• 57:15
  Norse paintings of different stuff, you know, depending on
• 57:18
  what people want or whatever. And, you know, people, people
• 57:22
  even will bring like, you know, meal mares or jewelry and stuff
• 57:25
  to help raise money and stuff, you know, so we could help the
• 57:28
  community. And we see it in a lot of ways,
• 57:33
  you know, how we build those community bonds, you know, and
• 57:37
  respect each other. But you know, everybody's moral
• 57:42
  compass is different and just like those tribes back then were
• 57:45
  so different, so are we. And you know, I still don't
• 57:49
  understand why people are so obsessed with the non noble
• 57:52
  virtues because there's like over 50 virtues that are spoke
• 57:56
  of in the Eddas, the saga, the lore that breaks it all down.
• 58:00
  They're like, wait, there's more.
• 58:02
  And I'm like, yeah, Boo. I'm like, there's way more than
• 58:04
  that. You gotta you gotta dig a little
• 58:06
  deeper. Like, I'm sorry, but there is
• 58:08
  way more than that, I hate to tell you.
• 58:10
  And they're like, really, can I see your notes?
• 58:12
  And I'm like, sure. And it's actually interesting
• 58:15
  because I gave it to one of my friends so she could help with
• 58:19
  her prison outreach. And they're actually doing a a
• 58:23
  study group over it on the different, you know, virtues and
• 58:27
  stuff. And they're connecting them with
• 58:28
  different quotes from sagas and the have them all and different
• 58:33
  things like that. Yeah.
• 58:35
  And so she's gonna share it back to me when she connects all the
• 58:38
  different ones. So you know, I could read it and
• 58:41
  everything so. Is it?
• 58:43
  Is it like a prison outreach program that is designed for
• 58:46
  pagans or non denominational? It's the Appalachian Pagan
• 58:51
  Ministry up north in Ohio, I think it is.
• 58:56
  Oh, interesting. Well.
• 58:57
  It's Donna Devion. She's a really nice lady and
• 59:01
  everything. And we talked from time to time
• 59:03
  and, you know, she shares her wisdom of how paganism was, you
• 59:07
  know, back in the the 60s and 70s and she was telling me some
• 59:13
  of the stuff that's in Norse Pagan now that's made-up.
• 59:16
  And I'm like, really? I'm like, I'm like, do tell.
• 59:20
  I'm like, can I record this song?
• 59:22
  Remember it for. Later, right?
• 59:24
  You know, it's so interesting how you know what they even
• 59:28
  knew, you know, almost 50 years ago and what they do now.
• 59:33
  And, you know, to me, there's a lot of watered down stuff.
• 59:37
  You know, there's a lot of Pagan stuff and Norris Pagan stuff
• 59:39
  that's watered down, you know, and there's, you know, some of
• 59:42
  the UPG stuff is useful from somebody else's experience.
• 59:46
  But I don't know, I'm more of a historical type of gal.
• 59:49
  Like I want bags. Yeah, I've got to know where
• 59:52
  you're coming from because I get I had a really interesting like
• 59:56
  question come to me. It was a week or two ago from
• 1:00:04
  one of the local you've heard me talk about Raven Raven Moon
• 1:00:11
  Hearth, their their local Norris Pagan.
• 1:00:15
  You know, group and they're everybody's the members again,
• 1:00:18
  they're, they're spread out. You know, we got people, you
• 1:00:20
  know, north-south and all over the, you know, the area.
• 1:00:25
  But she, she's, she's one of the members wives and she's been
• 1:00:30
  involved with some of their ritual work and, and stuff.
• 1:00:34
  She said, Hey, you know, I had a question, 'cause she was
• 1:00:36
  listening to like one of the last episodes I did was about
• 1:00:39
  plant animism and the sacredness of the earth and plants and
• 1:00:43
  trees. And, and how that was, was a,
• 1:00:46
  was a key thing for the dramatic peoples.
• 1:00:48
  And some of the source material that that points to their focus
• 1:00:53
  on something with what we might consider, you know, earth
• 1:00:56
  worship or venerating the, the deifying the earth, you know,
• 1:01:01
  Mother Yord and Nerthus and this and that, right.
• 1:01:04
  Various sources. But then she said she had, I had
• 1:01:07
  a question about that came up while she was listening to that
• 1:01:11
  podcast. But she said, you know, our
• 1:01:13
  ancestors had obviously a significant spiritual
• 1:01:16
  relationship with trees. And she goes.
• 1:01:18
  But however, they were also a driving force behind the
• 1:01:22
  deforestation of Iceland. You know, talking about the,
• 1:01:25
  the, the ancestors that, that moved, that, that migrated to
• 1:01:28
  Iceland and were such a, a, a driving force to, to, to settle
• 1:01:33
  and deforest that area. She said, you know, obviously
• 1:01:36
  there's a contradiction there. And I was wondering how as
• 1:01:39
  modern heathens worshipping our ancestors and keeping in their
• 1:01:42
  traditions, what may be a good way to acknowledge and navigate
• 1:01:46
  the fact that even our ancestors both, you know, they would have,
• 1:01:50
  you know, reverence and respect to the trees, But obviously, you
• 1:01:55
  know, had to do what they did in a, in a sort of like an abusive
• 1:01:59
  way. And I thought, man, you know,
• 1:02:04
  that's a, that's a really, I had to think about that because
• 1:02:06
  that's a pretty, that's a really, you know, that's asking
• 1:02:08
  some of the hard questions. Man, that comes into my like
• 1:02:11
  expertise of when I went to college for because I do
• 1:02:15
  environmental stuff and so, you know.
• 1:02:20
  Do you have the after after hearing that, do you have, do
• 1:02:23
  you have something of a of a response to that?
• 1:02:26
  I know when it talks to Plant Magic, Troll them by Gina or
• 1:02:35
  Joanna. Yeah, Joanna.
• 1:02:37
  She wrote a book about Troll them and it talked about plant
• 1:02:41
  magic. And then Stephen Pollington had
• 1:02:44
  a book on Leechcraft and I just posted a couple other books on
• 1:02:48
  the River Pine page and I don't remember what they are cause
• 1:02:52
  I've slept in form. Yeah, troll them is a Johannes.
• 1:02:56
  Johannes. Guard.
• 1:02:57
  Guard Guardbach. Guardbeck.
• 1:03:00
  Yeah, yeah. Guardbeck or Guard, I don't
• 1:03:02
  know. But, you know, I know that they
• 1:03:07
  held on to a lot of stuff, but, you know, their stuff was
• 1:03:12
  organic. And I personally don't think
• 1:03:17
  that they really understood the environmental side of things
• 1:03:23
  because times were hard back then, right?
• 1:03:28
  Like for a child to make it past childbirth was a big deal, like
• 1:03:32
  if the mother and child lived and to even survive war ban or
• 1:03:38
  an infection from a wound. And I think, you know, because I
• 1:03:43
  know they talked about the Norse people, they had such a hard
• 1:03:46
  time getting goods and things like that.
• 1:03:48
  Like, yes, they were building stuff, but they had to leave to
• 1:03:52
  bring stuff back because it goes back to the migration thing.
• 1:03:56
  Yeah, but you know, our ancestors talked about giving
• 1:04:00
  offerings and stuff. Like they even talked about how
• 1:04:03
  they preserved some of their ancestors when they couldn't be
• 1:04:06
  buried at a certain time because of the weather.
• 1:04:09
  They would like, put them in like a hollowed out area and,
• 1:04:15
  you know, board it up and put rocks over it so the critters
• 1:04:18
  wouldn't get to it until, you know, the weather wasn't as
• 1:04:22
  harsh to have them put in a mound.
• 1:04:25
  And you know, I don't know, I don't even know who you would
• 1:04:30
  ask about that. But I don't think they really
• 1:04:32
  cared about that stuff because they recycled a lot of their
• 1:04:36
  stuff that they had 'cause they used everything.
• 1:04:39
  Yep. Nothing ever went to waste.
• 1:04:41
  And you know, I think that they would rely on omens, just like
• 1:04:46
  when Tacitus said, you know, they saw the way the birds did
• 1:04:49
  stuff for the horses moved a certain way or, you know, what
• 1:04:53
  the weather was doing to realize that, you know, maybe if they
• 1:04:56
  chop down a tree, there would be an omen, so to speak.
• 1:05:00
  That's a that's a good point. You know, like they they were
• 1:05:02
  connected to the land. Like, I'm not gonna lie, if I
• 1:05:06
  stayed off of social media for like a month and just isolate
• 1:05:10
  myself, just not being around anything, you know, all my
• 1:05:13
  little connections to, you know, different spiritual stuff, they
• 1:05:17
  start singing out to me. Like, I, you know, I I realized
• 1:05:21
  that like, once I started working with community more and
• 1:05:24
  more, yeah. Like, I didn't have very many
• 1:05:27
  visions anymore. Like I didn't have different
• 1:05:31
  connections to different things, but now I have connections to
• 1:05:34
  other things that I didn't have connections for.
• 1:05:37
  So the more isolated I was because, you know, we talked
• 1:05:39
  about that a while back. You know, people who practice
• 1:05:42
  solitary, they connect to so many different things because
• 1:05:45
  they're not distracted by all the noise compared to what we're
• 1:05:49
  around now and technology and, you know, and you know, I know
• 1:05:54
  that the Norse Magic and Belief YouTube channel he's been slowly
• 1:06:00
  working on, you know, how different frequencies help us
• 1:06:04
  connect medicine. Yeah, I saw that.
• 1:06:08
  I was like, but he's really being with techno and stuff like
• 1:06:11
  that too. So some of his stuff was like,
• 1:06:12
  oh, that's pretty neat. And other stuff was like, I'm
• 1:06:15
  sorry, I don't like the beat. I'm sorry, like, but I love what
• 1:06:19
  you're doing. Like you do a lot of great work,
• 1:06:21
  but I did. I'm not into techno, it's not my
• 1:06:24
  thing, but you could hook me up with some Ward Rana or some hell
• 1:06:27
  gone from Hinder Fell or some guildery and I could listen that
• 1:06:31
  all day long and take a good nap.
• 1:06:33
  Yeah, you know, But you know, but he's been coming out with a
• 1:06:37
  lot of good stuff here lately, you know, with some of the
• 1:06:39
  content that he's making. But he's been talking about how
• 1:06:42
  they meditated and what they connected with.
• 1:06:44
  And, you know, he was talking about the bones and the drums
• 1:06:50
  that he was talking about and how they connect with different
• 1:06:53
  frequencies. That makes sense.
• 1:06:54
  Like, you think about it, a waterfall has a frequency they
• 1:06:58
  could be relaxing to listen to or the trickling of rocks and
• 1:07:01
  things like that. And so, you know, still people
• 1:07:04
  do that. You know, they may have done
• 1:07:06
  that back in the day. And, you know, we're doing it
• 1:07:09
  now. It's just, you know, history
• 1:07:11
  repeating itself. And I, I personally believe that
• 1:07:14
  we will continue to repeat history until something really
• 1:07:21
  positive happens or we're just going to be, you know, you know,
• 1:07:26
  blue connecting with the land, you know, like animate and then
• 1:07:30
  things like that, which there's nothing wrong with any of those
• 1:07:33
  things. Yeah, No, I mean, I, I get it.
• 1:07:36
  Like there's a there's this really, it's a really
• 1:07:39
  interesting time if you're connected in any sort of way to,
• 1:07:43
  to these types of things. When you see this in resurgence
• 1:07:47
  of land connectedness and in the interest of people wanting to,
• 1:07:52
  you know, make and create or own or work with, you know, drums
• 1:07:56
  and frequencies and sound therapy and, and the growth of
• 1:07:59
  that. And then you see also at the
• 1:08:02
  same time kind of running parallel with that is this
• 1:08:06
  incredible growth with technology and AI and all of
• 1:08:10
  these things that you might say could pull you away from that
• 1:08:16
  animism. And I'm seeing, I'm seeing some
• 1:08:19
  of that being incorporated in tandem with the old ways.
• 1:08:23
  There's like, there's this beautiful blend of and that, and
• 1:08:26
  that's magic too, if you think about it, this advancements of a
• 1:08:30
  modern era working sort of holistically and, and
• 1:08:36
  simultaneously with these old traditions.
• 1:08:38
  And, you know, it's, it's a wild time to be present and, and to
• 1:08:42
  be in tune with all of that stuff going on.
• 1:08:44
  And then finding those delicate balances, you know, 'cause I
• 1:08:47
  like with what was asked to me about the land and how these
• 1:08:50
  people, well, you know, they, they venerate the land, but yet
• 1:08:52
  at the same time, they're, they're, they're destroying it.
• 1:08:55
  And I have to think, you know, I mean, when it, when it comes to
• 1:08:57
  a place coming in and being settled, you know, obviously,
• 1:09:02
  you know, settlement and, and claiming of space.
• 1:09:05
  Even the Icelanders, you know, they, they had a, they have a
• 1:09:08
  whole book of laws about this, you know, the Lund number book.
• 1:09:11
  They have that, that of, of the, the, the, the settlement of
• 1:09:15
  Iceland and, and, and how land was cleaned and, and, and all
• 1:09:18
  the various things that went into it.
• 1:09:20
  But then I go, you know, there's no doubt that all of the timber
• 1:09:25
  that was, you know, extracted from the land by these settlers
• 1:09:31
  was used for a wide variety of necessary things.
• 1:09:34
  They had to build ships, they had to build structures, they
• 1:09:37
  had to keep warm, you know? It was harsh times.
• 1:09:42
  It was hard. So yeah, sure, we're settling
• 1:09:44
  this place, but it isn't like we're coming in here and we're
• 1:09:46
  building 7 elevens and dollar generals and churches and
• 1:09:49
  apartment complexes. It was a different time.
• 1:09:52
  You know what I mean cars and, you know, so, you know, like
• 1:09:57
  it's just, to me, it's like there's a, there's really no way
• 1:10:01
  to answer it because like you've really stumped me on that
• 1:10:04
  because like, I do environmental work and you think about it.
• 1:10:07
  But they also used biodegradable things and they used 100% of
• 1:10:14
  everything that they made, like the indigenous people did,
• 1:10:19
  right? I yeah, they practically used
• 1:10:23
  everything. It didn't matter if they used
• 1:10:25
  rocks. Or nothing went to waste.
• 1:10:28
  Yeah, nothing went to waste. So it's like, yeah, they did
• 1:10:30
  affect the geographical area for the trees there, but at the same
• 1:10:37
  time they populated the land. It's kind of like that story
• 1:10:41
  that they were talking about that Native American woman that
• 1:10:44
  they brought back to Iceland, and almost every person has that
• 1:10:47
  woman's DNA on that island. I've heard that, yeah, I.
• 1:10:52
  Was like, hmm, I was like that's interesting, but it just shows
• 1:10:54
  how much of AA footprint something can leave.
• 1:10:57
  But also at the same time, obviously they didn't hurt it
• 1:11:01
  too bad because their temples went back to the earth.
• 1:11:07
  The trees came back because that's the life cycle of things.
• 1:11:11
  Yeah. From the lithosphere, you know,
• 1:11:16
  obviously, you know, the offerings that they made went
• 1:11:20
  back to the earth. So a gift for a gift, I guess,
• 1:11:24
  you know, like you give to the land, you get a tree, you know,
• 1:11:28
  like, I don't know, you know, just how would, how would you
• 1:11:31
  sit there and explain that? Because, you know, like, I'm a
• 1:11:35
  very historical person, but at the same time, like, you know.
• 1:11:39
  Yeah, this one kind of hit me in a way too.
• 1:11:41
  I'm like, I'm going to need to meditate on this.
• 1:11:43
  I'm going to need to think on this.
• 1:11:44
  And then I also went, and I kind of went down a different path
• 1:11:47
  with it. Not not entirely, but I also go.
• 1:11:50
  And I looked at it from an angle of saying, all right, let's say,
• 1:11:53
  you know, they they came, they settled and they did what they
• 1:11:57
  set out to do. And let's say that they got a
• 1:12:02
  bit too ambitious, maybe they got too much so that we need to
• 1:12:07
  settle, we need to expand, we need to this.
• 1:12:10
  And then maybe they took too much from the land.
• 1:12:13
  This is all theoretic. I'm not trying to make a claim
• 1:12:16
  of any sort of accuracy this, but I'm just like UPG warning
• 1:12:18
  here, guys. So like, OK, so maybe maybe that
• 1:12:21
  was a part of it. And then look at the aridness
• 1:12:25
  and the tough, like how look how tough it is to grow anything in
• 1:12:30
  Iceland. Look at the soil.
• 1:12:31
  Look at how, look at, look, look at the environment the way it
• 1:12:33
  is. It's basically, you know, few
• 1:12:35
  words and volcanoes and and all this and all and, and such.
• 1:12:39
  And, and I say to myself, hmm, maybe, maybe the actions of the
• 1:12:43
  people coming in and taking more than what was rightfully theirs.
• 1:12:47
  The land responded kinda like. I hate to use this reference,
• 1:12:51
  but remember when Floki went to Iceland on the Vikings TV show
• 1:12:56
  and everybody blamed him? I'm just saying like that's a
• 1:12:59
  good example. Right.
• 1:13:01
  You know. I don't know.
• 1:13:03
  I think, I think there's some areas of the Norse culture, like
• 1:13:12
  with what happened with the war band.
• 1:13:14
  I don't think they were ambitious enough and organized
• 1:13:17
  enough, even though they were very strong warriors because
• 1:13:21
  they were not colonized enough. I think in a way that was their
• 1:13:27
  downfall. Because you know, I was talking
• 1:13:31
  to a friend of mine. He's not really a friend to be
• 1:13:34
  on. He's an acquaintance.
• 1:13:35
  He's, he's from Lapalan. And he was talking about, you
• 1:13:39
  know, how our ancestors used to trade together.
• 1:13:44
  But he said that he had owned his ancestors.
• 1:13:47
  His culture had only been colonized for 400 years where
• 1:13:52
  ours had been colonized longer. And he was talking about, you
• 1:13:57
  know, because they, they didn't fight hard enough and they
• 1:14:01
  weren't resistant enough, it caused them to be colonized and
• 1:14:06
  they lost that culture. They lost the traditions and
• 1:14:10
  they slowly were dissolved and absorbed into Christianity.
• 1:14:15
  That happened in the Scandinavian areas.
• 1:14:17
  And he was, it's funny, you know, like he still remembers
• 1:14:20
  the stories that were told by his ancestors that they've kept
• 1:14:25
  and their traditions of what they talked about the Vikings.
• 1:14:28
  So occasionally me and him will have a story together and he'll
• 1:14:31
  teach me something. You know, it's just like we
• 1:14:33
  would learn something from somebody that is from Iceland or
• 1:14:36
  Norway or Sweden or Denmark. We would learn something
• 1:14:40
  completely different because we're from America, we're
• 1:14:43
  removed from that geographical area.
• 1:14:47
  So imagine what we would learn if we were just over there for
• 1:14:51
  like a month, you know what I mean?
• 1:14:52
  To get to see all the rune stones and the graves and the
• 1:14:56
  mound and to hear the folklore, because it's totally different.
• 1:15:00
  Like they have books over there that we can't get because
• 1:15:03
  they're not translated. Into it in English, yeah.
• 1:15:06
  And, you know, that would go back to, you know, those people
• 1:15:08
  up north, they got traditions up there that, you know, they don't
• 1:15:12
  teach. Like, don't get me wrong.
• 1:15:14
  I'm kind of sick that my grandma moved down here to Texas, you
• 1:15:18
  know, and could have been born up north.
• 1:15:20
  But, you know, here I am in Texas, dying in the heat, you
• 1:15:24
  know, trying to build something better than what I had.
• 1:15:26
  But, you know, at the same time, it's just like, it just shows
• 1:15:29
  that, you know, history kind of repeats itself.
• 1:15:32
  Our ancestors were travelers. Well, my Nana decided to travel
• 1:15:36
  to Texas. You know, it's just the cycle is
• 1:15:38
  never broken and nothing's ever, you know, centralized.
• 1:15:42
  So we're just, we're like a bunch of nomads roaming around
• 1:15:45
  and doing our thing as Norse pagans or pagans in general.
• 1:15:49
  And I really don't know if we'll ever come together.
• 1:15:52
  It would be a beautiful thing to see.
• 1:15:54
  But, you know, how would you, how would you bring a bunch of
• 1:15:58
  leaders together to want to build something better or even
• 1:16:03
  like an animism community? Like, you know, that's one
• 1:16:06
  thing. You know, we have somebody
• 1:16:07
  actually in River Pine. He is indigenous and you know,
• 1:16:12
  he is a medicine man and he plays the drums and sings and
• 1:16:16
  stuff like that. But you know, for him, he he
• 1:16:20
  does that very sparingly, you know, and I would love for him
• 1:16:24
  to do that all the time. But you know, he does a lot of
• 1:16:29
  stuff for River Pine Kindred that helps with what we do.
• 1:16:33
  And you know, River Pine, like we all help with everything, you
• 1:16:38
  know, and our, our are about 25 people.
• 1:16:40
  So we don't have time to do drum circles because we only have
• 1:16:43
  like 3 hours. So we have to do our potluck,
• 1:16:47
  our authoring, our ritual. And then we talk about our
• 1:16:50
  topic. Like, you know, sometimes we
• 1:16:52
  don't have time to do drums and things like that.
• 1:16:55
  And yeah, we have a lot of people that don't have drums.
• 1:16:57
  Like I have my drum, but my drum doesn't like it in the
• 1:17:01
  summertime. She only works in the winter
• 1:17:03
  time. And I don't know why.
• 1:17:04
  Like I need a drum specialist on.
• 1:17:06
  That one it's the, it's the humidity in the air.
• 1:17:09
  It loosens the skin just like with us, just like human skin or
• 1:17:11
  any other skin like your, your flesh expands and contracts in
• 1:17:18
  different temperatures. So in the cold it tightens up,
• 1:17:21
  which is why it sounds better in the humidity in the heat, it
• 1:17:24
  loosens up and it has a much kind of looser sound.
• 1:17:27
  So you might need a drum that is constructed for being inside of
• 1:17:34
  like a a sauna, you know, something that's constructed for
• 1:17:39
  like sweat ceremonies and stuff like that, which I know a guy, I
• 1:17:43
  know a guy galviteer.com, everybody check him out.
• 1:17:47
  I know, but you know, it's really interesting, like how
• 1:17:52
  some of us can come together, you know, well.
• 1:17:56
  Here's the thing. Heather.
• 1:17:59
  Yeah, here's the thing. Like I've, I've, I've, I'm
• 1:18:03
  still, I'm still a heathen, you know, I still keep the, my, my
• 1:18:09
  world views are, are largely informed around Germanic, my
• 1:18:12
  Germanic heathen ancestors so much as I'm able to learn.
• 1:18:16
  And one of the things that I've come to realize is, is how much
• 1:18:20
  other cultures have been shared over time.
• 1:18:27
  You talk about history and the repeating of things and whatnot.
• 1:18:31
  There's no doubt that the experiences of an ancient tribe
• 1:18:36
  at one point in one place had to have been had to have come into
• 1:18:43
  existence through the shared experiences between themselves
• 1:18:46
  and others. The the tradition didn't just
• 1:18:49
  emerge out of nowhere. They were taught or they were
• 1:18:53
  given knowledge that they were shared with in something by
• 1:18:57
  neighbors. And the the life that I've grown
• 1:19:03
  into and then the path that I've stepped onto and continue to
• 1:19:07
  walk is, is, is much more animistic in its spirit than
• 1:19:12
  heathen in its practice. You know what I'm saying?
• 1:19:15
  Like I, I definitely appreciate and, and honor my even ancestors
• 1:19:22
  through my practice, but I'm not quite so rigidly conformed to an
• 1:19:30
  idea of, of one particular place.
• 1:19:33
  Like I've had experiences with others and have shared in
• 1:19:35
  traditions with other native, you know, eastern, Eastern band,
• 1:19:41
  native cultures, Toltec cultures, Celtic, Druidic,
• 1:19:46
  various other, you know, things that don't, you know, they,
• 1:19:50
  they, they, they just were, were what was shared with me by the
• 1:19:54
  people of those cultures. And I go, man, you know, how to,
• 1:19:58
  to, to incorporate that into my spirituality and my, and my
• 1:20:01
  growth and my life has really helped me see the world through
• 1:20:07
  a different lens and, and, and seeing it as a shared
• 1:20:11
  experience, not just one person's way of doing things
• 1:20:14
  from 1 pin drop on the on the on the world.
• 1:20:18
  You know what I mean? Like every time we go to meet
• 1:20:23
  ups in Shreveport and you know, we share with different groups,
• 1:20:28
  like when we have our meetups and stuff.
• 1:20:30
  Like next month we're going to Midsummer with the ADF at the UU
• 1:20:38
  church in Shreveport. And so they're going to host it
• 1:20:41
  and we're going to witness it. And like, they do a good job of
• 1:20:44
  how they do ritual and, you know, they're very respectful
• 1:20:47
  and we all have a good time and, you know, we have a potluck and
• 1:20:50
  everything. But, you know, to me, paganism
• 1:20:54
  as a whole, like we do have things that we could teach each
• 1:20:57
  other, but at the same time, like we have these weird
• 1:21:02
  divisions of different things, you know, from the left and the
• 1:21:07
  right. And, you know, I'm in the middle
• 1:21:08
  of the road. Like, yes, there's a lot of
• 1:21:10
  stuff that I find that's traditional, that's important to
• 1:21:12
  me, that's sacred to me. But at the same time, I believe
• 1:21:16
  that everybody's welcome to experience what River Pond does
• 1:21:20
  because of the fact if, you know, there's supposed people
• 1:21:24
  that are supposed to bear witness to certain things in
• 1:21:26
  life. If that was the case, then we
• 1:21:28
  would never have what Tassis wrote about or the Arabic man
• 1:21:32
  that came across the Vikings. Yeah, even Fatlon and the ruse.
• 1:21:37
  Yeah. And see, I think that, you know,
• 1:21:39
  or what Snorri wrote about and different things like that, you
• 1:21:43
  know, or what Bevin wrote about. And, you know, there's so many
• 1:21:47
  groups that are like, oh, we want to be isolated away from
• 1:21:49
  everybody. You know, we only want these
• 1:21:52
  people. And I'm like, like, that's fine.
• 1:21:55
  But nobody will ever remember your name.
• 1:21:58
  It's kind of like that that meme on Facebook with Troy, with Brad
• 1:22:04
  Pitt talking about that violation.
• 1:22:06
  It's like, well then no one, no. One will ever remember your
• 1:22:08
  name, yeah. You know, and you know, the far
• 1:22:12
  left, you know, they're fighting for so many different things and
• 1:22:15
  freedoms and stuff. And you know, people, everybody
• 1:22:17
  knows what they're doing, you know, because the through is
• 1:22:20
  really big on advocating for all different types of things, not
• 1:22:25
  just religion, but race and individuality and so many
• 1:22:30
  different things. And everybody knows what they're
• 1:22:32
  doing, just like everybody knows what the right people are doing.
• 1:22:36
  And you know, for me, I'm in the middle of the road.
• 1:22:38
  I really want what is sacred and profane to me and to do what's
• 1:22:44
  best for the community regardless of what anybody else
• 1:22:47
  is doing because, you know, it takes a village to build
• 1:22:51
  something great with a lot of people like you.
• 1:22:52
  Think about it, if I would have never met Eric, I would have
• 1:22:55
  never met you and we wouldn't be having this podcast right here
• 1:22:58
  sharing our stories and our experiences that maybe somebody
• 1:23:02
  else's survival guide and having this topic about how things were
• 1:23:07
  back then and how things are now and making people really think
• 1:23:10
  like, wow, I never thought of it that way.
• 1:23:12
  And it's like, welcome to Amelia's Ted Talk if she's read
• 1:23:16
  too many books and she's been doing this for 16 years, you
• 1:23:20
  know, yeah, Everybody's got their own thing.
• 1:23:23
  And it just shows how our ideologies are as modern
• 1:23:27
  Heathers and what we find is important to us, where you're
• 1:23:31
  more animism. And I am more modern about stuff
• 1:23:36
  because I don't get to go out in nature as much as I used to as a
• 1:23:39
  child. Like, to me, I think that when I
• 1:23:41
  was a child, I was more animism towards a lot of things.
• 1:23:45
  But because I moved to the city and, you know, I got a job where
• 1:23:51
  I couldn't go out in nature as much as I used to.
• 1:23:54
  And I'm busy with a family and, you know, busy taking care of so
• 1:23:58
  many different things in so many areas.
• 1:24:00
  Like, I don't I don't get to enjoy those things like you do.
• 1:24:03
  And that's OK. Like maybe one day when my kids
• 1:24:05
  are grown, I'll get to enjoy those things.
• 1:24:07
  Or maybe somebody will kidnap me for the weekend and I could I
• 1:24:10
  can go do that, you know. But I don't think that's today,
• 1:24:13
  you know, like I feel I still haven't seen you.
• 1:24:16
  But you know, you're talking about coming down from, you
• 1:24:19
  know, 12 feet and I'm just like, well, maybe I'll meet everybody
• 1:24:22
  one day. But, you know, we're just so
• 1:24:24
  busy with life and things happen.
• 1:24:26
  So we have to, you know, take those little things like, don't
• 1:24:29
  be wrong. Like I do get to go to the park,
• 1:24:30
  but they don't got a Creek at the park.
• 1:24:32
  And I'm pretty sure I'm not going to go out to the the
• 1:24:35
  swamps over there because there's alligators.
• 1:24:37
  Like, I don't, I don't want to win a Darwin Award.
• 1:24:39
  Like I'm good. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:41
  Try to keep certain achievements locked, you know what I mean?
• 1:24:44
  Like you don't need to, you don't need to unlock that
• 1:24:46
  achievement, But you know, and that's the beauty of it too,
• 1:24:50
  'cause I, you know, with our collective approaches or, you
• 1:24:55
  know, you doing your thing in with, with River Pine and, and
• 1:24:58
  Eric does his thing with Radgar and I'm over here in Middle
• 1:25:00
  Tennessee just kind of doing things.
• 1:25:02
  Nothing really dedicated to one set person, grouper or sect of,
• 1:25:08
  of anything. I tried that, you know what I
• 1:25:12
  mean? I tried to form something of a
• 1:25:13
  traditional way and the the need for the people around me was not
• 1:25:19
  that. And so then at what point do you
• 1:25:21
  go? All right, Well, I either, I
• 1:25:26
  either stick to my guns and I either stay with this, you know,
• 1:25:29
  rigid approach to things, or I open my mind and my heart and my
• 1:25:33
  ears and I listen to the need of the people that mean something
• 1:25:38
  and you know, that are around me and I form accordingly.
• 1:25:44
  I pivot accordingly. I become I become what is needed
• 1:25:49
  for my people and whether my people involve just my wife and
• 1:25:54
  you know that or if it means an extension of the family, you
• 1:25:59
  know, what do what are the people that I'm entrusted to?
• 1:26:04
  What do they need from me? And that's where that's where I
• 1:26:07
  had had to shift. And I think people should be
• 1:26:10
  sensitive to that voice because it's not always a very loud
• 1:26:16
  voice. It's sometimes a little, it's
• 1:26:19
  sometimes just a little poke. It's a whisper.
• 1:26:22
  It's small, it's small. You know, if you're, if you're
• 1:26:26
  too busy, if you're too noisy, if you're just trying to do it
• 1:26:28
  your way, you're going to kick that voice out every time.
• 1:26:33
  Maybe, you know. I ask people all the time and
• 1:26:36
  River Pond, I'm like, what would you like to do for next month?
• 1:26:38
  And you know, one of the kindred members like, well, I'd like to
• 1:26:41
  do a guided meditation. And I was like, that's fine.
• 1:26:44
  Just schedule it and we'll see where it fits for next month and
• 1:26:48
  we'll go from there. You know, we've done it.
• 1:26:51
  We've done guided meditations before.
• 1:26:52
  And they went really well. Like everybody enjoyed it.
• 1:26:55
  They were like, wow, I didn't, I didn't know you can get a
• 1:26:58
  connection like that. And I'm like, yeah, like you got
• 1:27:00
  to get those feet in the dirt, though.
• 1:27:02
  You can't be running around in tennis shoes that don't work
• 1:27:04
  that way. And I'm like, I never thought of
• 1:27:07
  it that way. And, you know, it's just the
• 1:27:09
  kind of it is what it is, you know, but I think modern
• 1:27:15
  paganism, like, you know, modern Norse paganism, like I'm pretty
• 1:27:22
  sure if we went out into a cemetery and meditated on some
• 1:27:25
  mounds of our, our ancestors, I'm pretty sure we'd get
• 1:27:28
  arrested. Because it's not like the
• 1:27:31
  Victorian are, you know, in the back of the Victorian era, you
• 1:27:34
  know, they would have like a, a picnic and they would clean off
• 1:27:37
  people's, you know, their ancestors graves and stuff and
• 1:27:40
  all hang out. But I'm pretty sure if we did
• 1:27:42
  that today, I'm pretty sure we'd be arrested.
• 1:27:44
  Well, you know what, too? I, it's, yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:46
  Like it's a totally different dynamic nowadays because you
• 1:27:49
  know, how, how many times do you get to see, you know, like even
• 1:27:55
  if a family has a plot, you know, in a cemetery and it's,
• 1:28:00
  you know, the, the, the, the parents, the grandparents and
• 1:28:02
  the kids, they all, they'll get to be sort of their, their final
• 1:28:07
  resting place in the ground. Is there most places you go to,
• 1:28:11
  you know, most cemeteries, it's like you've got a lot of
• 1:28:15
  families buried right on top of each other or next to one
• 1:28:19
  another. So I can't even imagine like,
• 1:28:21
  you know, just from a, from a, from a mound sitting
• 1:28:26
  perspective, like what happens if you, you know, get too loud
• 1:28:30
  at your neighbor's door, the other dead body that's next to
• 1:28:33
  you, Do they come in and or do you go over there?
• 1:28:36
  Does it become, you know, like this just uninvited party of
• 1:28:41
  like, who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?
• 1:28:44
  Kind of the thing, you know, it's a different dynamic
• 1:28:47
  nowadays. And like, you know, most of my
• 1:28:50
  family, like all of them, they're buried at the same
• 1:28:54
  family cemetery. And they're like kind of like
• 1:28:57
  lots apart from each other. Yeah, but they're in the same.
• 1:29:02
  Cemetery, right? Yeah.
• 1:29:04
  But for me, I was like, man, I personally really want to get
• 1:29:08
  cremated because, you know, I, I personally believe that the
• 1:29:12
  whole, you know, everybody having individual lots is like,
• 1:29:17
  it's a waste of land. And you think about it, you
• 1:29:20
  know, back in the day, people would just build over all that
• 1:29:22
  or just move the bodies and put them on another lot that was a
• 1:29:26
  grave area. And because they were unmarked
• 1:29:29
  or whatever, they didn't know. Yeah.
• 1:29:32
  Just like when that flood happened in Mississippi and, you
• 1:29:35
  know, the bodies started coming out from underneath the ground
• 1:29:39
  and they were having to transport them because it was in
• 1:29:41
  a flood zone, you know, and people.
• 1:29:44
  Or Louisiana, which is below sea level.
• 1:29:46
  So when you get all those things happen, you that's why the tombs
• 1:29:49
  are the, the, the where they are.
• 1:29:51
  Yeah, yeah. But I don't know, it's just like
• 1:29:54
  for me, like the population back then is not what it is now.
• 1:29:59
  Like, don't get me wrong with the pandemic changed a lot of
• 1:30:04
  that. However, for me, I I don't think
• 1:30:08
  I want to be buried like my ancestors were like, yeah, if
• 1:30:11
  it's like on my property that I have, like, you know, we have 10
• 1:30:14
  acres, like to be buried on my family's property, that's fine.
• 1:30:19
  I have no problem with my being buried on my family's property
• 1:30:23
  to keep it in the family because, you know, if your
• 1:30:25
  family continues to live on that land, it's tax free.
• 1:30:28
  You know, text but for. Me.
• 1:30:32
  For me, like I could be perfectly happy with me and my
• 1:30:34
  husband getting cremated and, you know, dividing our ashes
• 1:30:37
  together so our children can have both of us together at all
• 1:30:40
  times. I think that would be kind of,
• 1:30:43
  you know, I guess that's me being romantic or whatever to my
• 1:30:47
  kids, sentimental to my children.
• 1:30:49
  So they have both parents with them at all times.
• 1:30:52
  But you know but. In a way, that's what I'm glad
• 1:30:56
  for, that. I mean, I know it wasn't for
• 1:30:58
  those reasons, but both of my parents were cremated for
• 1:31:04
  different reasons. But I, I do, I am thankful that
• 1:31:12
  because of my world views and, and, and how I, you know, my, my
• 1:31:16
  conceptual world views of death in the afterlife and, and all of
• 1:31:19
  that. I'm, I'm, you know, there's a
• 1:31:22
  part of me that's happy to have been allowed the opportunity to
• 1:31:28
  be in possession of those remains, partial remains,
• 1:31:33
  because that's as a heathen, you know, and, and the, the, the,
• 1:31:39
  the connection that we have to our ancestors, It's we, we
• 1:31:42
  communicate or, or we have the desire to stay in touch with and
• 1:31:46
  communicate with the dead, whether we do it directly or
• 1:31:49
  whether there's a guided source, you know, some, you know, save
• 1:31:54
  work or go the, or somebody that can help us with that.
• 1:31:57
  That is a pivotal and kind of an important part of, you know,
• 1:32:01
  Germanic heathen beliefs is our, is our relationship with our
• 1:32:07
  ancestors. So having those relics, those
• 1:32:10
  remains plays I think of an important role for a lot of us.
• 1:32:14
  Yeah. And you know, another thing you
• 1:32:17
  have to think about, you know, today we have classes for
• 1:32:20
  everything like the wheels kind of already been wrote in today's
• 1:32:25
  time compared to how like, you know, the our ancestors had
• 1:32:29
  certain traditions and you know, they taught differently.
• 1:32:33
  We're now we have the Internet and all you got to do is click
• 1:32:37
  on something. If you want to learn about
• 1:32:38
  animism, you can go to Nordic Animism and go to his website
• 1:32:44
  and he has classes on them. And it's like a month long
• 1:32:46
  ordeal. And, you know, all that stuff,
• 1:32:49
  you know, and the way they taught stuff back in the day,
• 1:32:54
  you know, each individual person had a, you know, an ability, you
• 1:32:59
  know, they were good at certain things where other people
• 1:33:01
  weren't, you know? And it reminds me of the story
• 1:33:03
  of, you know, the little vulva from Erica the Red, and, you
• 1:33:08
  know, how she needed somebody to sing for her so she can do what
• 1:33:11
  she needed to do to predict and, you know, to help that village
• 1:33:16
  and stuff like that. And they found that girl that I
• 1:33:19
  don't remember she was a slave girl or what she was, but her
• 1:33:23
  foster mother taught her this old song.
• 1:33:28
  And if it wasn't for that foster mother teaching that young girl
• 1:33:33
  about that song, the vulva may have not been able to do her
• 1:33:37
  work for that village. And it just shows that it takes
• 1:33:44
  a village to build something. Yeah, that, that, that kind of
• 1:33:49
  recalls something of recent thought that I I shared.
• 1:33:53
  And it wasn't my own words. It was, it was somebody else
• 1:33:56
  that wrote it, but it was that the, the, the idea that is that
• 1:34:02
  we do not become this person or this thing, right?
• 1:34:05
  We don't become healers. We are healers, but some of us
• 1:34:10
  are still catching up to what we are, right?
• 1:34:13
  We don't become storytellers. We, we already came as such.
• 1:34:17
  We came as a carrier of the lineage of the story.
• 1:34:21
  And so that's already been there, but we just haven't yet
• 1:34:27
  come to a point of discovering that or catching up to what we
• 1:34:30
  are. And like one person who I
• 1:34:34
  commented on that gave a sort of bardic or skeldic poetic
• 1:34:42
  response to it. And it and it leaned more into
• 1:34:46
  the we are what we become because we forge those things
• 1:34:50
  like because we do those things. So like they say, I, you know, I
• 1:34:53
  forge no fate in the womb, warm, dark nor clutched runes ere the
• 1:34:58
  world heard my bark. The ash tree grows by axe and
• 1:35:04
  Gale, not by whispers of worth from a cradle tail.
• 1:35:10
  Like that's just one line of that of that person's response.
• 1:35:12
  And it goes into some of the very things like, you know, the
• 1:35:16
  skald is not born. He is carved from the cold with
• 1:35:18
  blood on the quill, and his story unfolds or untold.
• 1:35:23
  There's, there's, I still think that there is like a there,
• 1:35:33
  there's something that happens to through, through our, our
• 1:35:36
  ancestral line that is passed down through US.
• 1:35:38
  There's that memory, there's that thing that's there.
• 1:35:41
  It's our choice to visit it or to address it and to help
• 1:35:46
  cultivate or shape into existence that thing.
• 1:35:50
  But it is passed down through us.
• 1:35:54
  So it's our choice on whether we want to.
• 1:35:58
  And of that axe, we take up that pen or take up that thing or do
• 1:36:01
  whatever it is, you know, be responsible in that way.
• 1:36:04
  And you hear a lot about this generation right now.
• 1:36:08
  They're all about breaking ancestral curses and traumas.
• 1:36:14
  Generational traumas, yeah, I've seen that.
• 1:36:16
  And they talk about how, you know, they're hopefully going to
• 1:36:21
  be the one that that heals not only themselves, but the ones
• 1:36:28
  that want to heal. And the ones that choose to stay
• 1:36:32
  in the family curse, they they discard them.
• 1:36:37
  You know, and I think it's interesting because, you know,
• 1:36:41
  the way certain things are in the world, there's still things
• 1:36:44
  that, you know, our grandparents saw that was normal.
• 1:36:48
  That's not normal anymore. Like we all go to school with
• 1:36:53
  different children of many races compared to when our
• 1:36:56
  grandparents were around. And you know, women can go to
• 1:37:00
  school and learn And you know, there's there's many shifts in
• 1:37:06
  the world that's happening right now.
• 1:37:08
  And so many people that are awakening not just from North
• 1:37:11
  Hagen, but as a collective and they're connecting with those
• 1:37:17
  ancestral roots and doing that root work as some people call
• 1:37:22
  it. And they're they're healing
• 1:37:25
  things that has been broken in their families for century
• 1:37:31
  almost or decades or whatever. Yeah, generationally, yeah.
• 1:37:35
  Yes. And we're, we're breaking stuff
• 1:37:40
  and picking up that glass and just sweeping it up and throwing
• 1:37:44
  it in the trash and just saying no more.
• 1:37:48
  We're going to be better than we were yesterday.
• 1:37:50
  And we are becoming someone that is going to turn into something
• 1:37:58
  beautiful or that's going to help someone else and be their
• 1:38:03
  survival guide or to inspire the world or a group or a community
• 1:38:10
  for a better tomorrow. And each and every one of our
• 1:38:14
  stories and you know, I remember how paganism was back in the day
• 1:38:19
  and you know how certain priestesses were and they had
• 1:38:23
  priest Theatis. They were rude as can be.
• 1:38:26
  And now we have all these priestesses that are humble and
• 1:38:30
  caring and they're nurturing and they don't think they're better
• 1:38:34
  than everybody else. And you don't ever hear about
• 1:38:36
  witch wars anymore like they did back in the, you know, the 80s
• 1:38:40
  and 90s. And I'm just like, what are
• 1:38:42
  y'all talking about? Like, I'm like, because I was
• 1:38:45
  hearing stories from, you know, when I first became a Pagan and
• 1:38:49
  it's so weird. And we have all these different
• 1:38:52
  light workers and Reiki masters and all these different types of
• 1:38:57
  healers in the world, and people that connect with animism in so
• 1:39:02
  many different ways. And they call them many
• 1:39:06
  different things that I'm not going to bring up because I try
• 1:39:08
  not to chuckle at some of the words that they're called.
• 1:39:11
  But anyways, the point is like, we have too many people.
• 1:39:13
  We have so many people in the world doing so many different
• 1:39:16
  spiritual things, and they're becoming something whole and
• 1:39:21
  something spiritually sound. And to me, it's interesting
• 1:39:28
  because we're changing things may be different from what our
• 1:39:33
  ancestors were way back when. Like, I'm sure we're completely
• 1:39:37
  different than our ancestors were from.
• 1:39:39
  Yeah, that at a big scale from, you know, I'm pretty sure we had
• 1:39:45
  a phone around them. They would probably stab it with
• 1:39:48
  the spear once it started flickering and vibrating.
• 1:39:50
  Some of this stuff, yeah. Yeah, Some of the stuff they'd
• 1:39:53
  be, they'd be. I mean they would be alarming
• 1:39:55
  for sure. Or we would get a spear 'cause
• 1:39:57
  we couldn't speak you. Know right?
• 1:40:00
  We'd be like help and they'd be like.
• 1:40:04
  That's funny because I've been like, I've been dabbling more
• 1:40:06
  into like the linguistic sides of things.
• 1:40:08
  And I, I asked the guy one time. I said, Hey, you know, I think
• 1:40:12
  if I were to, you know, actually trace, you know, and, and so
• 1:40:15
  much of my, my Germanic ancestry, like I have a, a, a
• 1:40:18
  plethora of knowledge about my ancestry up into when they got
• 1:40:24
  over here into the United States in like the 1600s.
• 1:40:28
  And it's kind of sparse on the European side of things.
• 1:40:32
  But I am pretty sure that I'm, I've got lineage that goes into
• 1:40:37
  like my ancestors were probably Frankish, like in that, that,
• 1:40:41
  that, that southern portion of, of, you know, Germany.
• 1:40:45
  But a, a guy asked the guy one time, I was like, Hey, you know,
• 1:40:49
  if I, if I'm learning stuff to say an old Saxon, is that too
• 1:40:53
  much of a difference between what old Frankish would have
• 1:40:56
  been like? In other words, if I'm speaking
• 1:40:59
  things in ritual and I'm using old Saxon or my Frankish answer,
• 1:41:02
  are they going to be able to, He's like, they'll, it's close
• 1:41:06
  enough that they'd be able to understand that it almost be
• 1:41:08
  like, you know, a picture like, you know, Midwestern English
• 1:41:12
  versus like Delta, Mississippi English or something.
• 1:41:15
  You know what I mean? Like they there's enough,
• 1:41:17
  there's enough similarities to get by through dialect and that
• 1:41:20
  that, that they would know, you know what you're saying?
• 1:41:23
  I said OK, got it, you know? I personally just want to learn
• 1:41:27
  Norwegian so whenever I get a chance to go to Norway like I
• 1:41:31
  won't have too many struggles. But I've been trying to learn
• 1:41:36
  Norwegian for the past two years and.
• 1:41:38
  I've heard it's kind of a difficult one of the more
• 1:41:42
  difficult. I got through.
• 1:41:45
  Languages. Learning for like 6 months and
• 1:41:49
  like I did really good and then I got busy with my college
• 1:41:52
  courses cuz I was getting ready to graduate last year.
• 1:41:56
  And so I was knuckling down and now I'm really busy with my
• 1:42:00
  career that I have doing the environmental stuff that I do.
• 1:42:05
  And so it's, it's really difficult to get on Duolingo,
• 1:42:09
  you know, and I know that's a bad example to use, but it's the
• 1:42:11
  easiest one to use, you know? I used it for like a year.
• 1:42:15
  I calmed down on some of my German and then I'm like this,
• 1:42:18
  like the app itself. I'm like, this is it's kind of
• 1:42:21
  toxic like this. This sucker is like trying to
• 1:42:23
  shame me into not jumping onto the app for the day.
• 1:42:27
  I'm like, I'm busy hoe like calm, calm down.
• 1:42:30
  You know you're gonna. Lose your XP if you don't log in
• 1:42:34
  today. And I'm like, listen, ma'am, I
• 1:42:35
  have a world that revolves around other things besides you.
• 1:42:39
  And you know, like, I think it would be cool to learn Norwegian
• 1:42:42
  and stuff. And, you know, I want to go back
• 1:42:45
  to the, the farmland that, you know, was one of my ancestors
• 1:42:49
  from the 15th century because I got mine all the way back.
• 1:42:53
  I got my Norwegian side all the way back to the 15th century on
• 1:42:57
  some random farm that I don't know where it's at.
• 1:43:00
  I tried looking on the map, but I never find it.
• 1:43:02
  And then the other part of my ancestry, which is Irish,
• 1:43:07
  because I'm, I'm half Irish and half Norwegian.
• 1:43:10
  I got it all the way back to like the 10th century by some
• 1:43:15
  dude that was like a lair in the wetlands of Galway.
• 1:43:22
  And actually he was descended from like a the Galls or
• 1:43:26
  whatever or some Norse tribe or whatever that he.
• 1:43:30
  The galls were traumatic, yeah. Yeah, well, he was.
• 1:43:33
  He was a stranger. They called him a stranger when
• 1:43:36
  he first came and he was trying to conquer land.
• 1:43:40
  But supposedly whoever the the guy was that was in charge of
• 1:43:46
  that land, he told me he was like, listen, stop fighting or
• 1:43:51
  whatever and you can marry my daughter and I'll I'll put you
• 1:43:55
  in charge of something. Just stop attacking villages.
• 1:43:59
  And I was like, and that was the story of it.
• 1:44:01
  Like I have a book on it and everything because they they
• 1:44:04
  kept really good journals And I are not Iceland in Ireland for
• 1:44:09
  some reason. I don't know why.
• 1:44:12
  Like they kept really good journals and stuff in Ireland
• 1:44:15
  and Scotland. I don't know why, but but I
• 1:44:19
  don't really connect with like the Irish side.
• 1:44:21
  The only thing that I have that's Irish is my hair.
• 1:44:24
  Like that's that's it. Like everything else, like I
• 1:44:26
  don't nothing resonates with me. Like the Dagda doesn't call to
• 1:44:30
  me the do off the day like Clawden.
• 1:44:33
  None of it like. Yeah, I mean, I'm the same way.
• 1:44:36
  Like I don't know what. Like you know none of it.
• 1:44:39
  I don't know what percentage, I think it's a smaller percentage,
• 1:44:42
  but like, that's just the other interesting part.
• 1:44:44
  It's, you know, OK, you know, your, you know, your ancestors
• 1:44:48
  are all your ancestors, you know, it's doesn't, you know,
• 1:44:52
  but I have a, a, a more pull towards the dramatic side of
• 1:44:59
  things. I don't know if it's because of
• 1:45:01
  a higher percentage wise of whatever, but I mean, half of
• 1:45:04
  my, my mother, you know, she's half German, half Italian.
• 1:45:08
  So 1/4 of me is, is, is is Italian plus the other, you
• 1:45:14
  know, 75% is made-up of Germanic and, and English blood.
• 1:45:19
  But there's also, you know, other random things too.
• 1:45:24
  If if they were in Italy, that's where the long beards were.
• 1:45:28
  The long. The Lombardi's yeah, which we
• 1:45:29
  want to hear a funny story is one of my neighbors as a kid,
• 1:45:33
  like one of my neighbor, the family that grew up so like my
• 1:45:36
  house, the the house that I grew up in on Long Island was almost
• 1:45:40
  on the corner of 1 St. and and like a main road that came
• 1:45:46
  through town. And so we were the 2nd house in
• 1:45:51
  on the street side. My neighbors that I'm about to
• 1:45:54
  tell you about were like the second house on the corner on
• 1:45:56
  that main stretch of Rd. on Roanoke Ave.
• 1:45:59
  So we were on Durier St., they were on Roanoke Ave., but they
• 1:46:02
  were diagonally across from us. And as kids they would, they
• 1:46:05
  would play with us all the time, me and my sister.
• 1:46:08
  Their last names was Lombardi. Interesting Italian.
• 1:46:13
  But the, you know, on the on the long barred side, the long beard
• 1:46:18
  side of things. Yeah, my, my great, my great
• 1:46:21
  grandparents on my, my dad's side, my dad and or actually my
• 1:46:27
  grandmother. Her mother was Forsyth, which is
• 1:46:32
  a common Norwegian last name, but my great grandfather, his
• 1:46:38
  was Torkelson, and Torkelson was originally spelled Thorkelson,
• 1:46:44
  which was felt with the POR. Yeah, back in the day he had a
• 1:46:51
  little P looking. It's not really the peace.
• 1:46:53
  Symbol. But, you know, it's the thorn,
• 1:46:54
  The, the, the sound, the thorn. Yeah.
• 1:46:57
  Yeah, yeah. But if you go back far enough on
• 1:46:59
  that genealogy thing, it was spelled that way.
• 1:47:02
  And I was like, and then right before my my great uncle passed
• 1:47:06
  away, he sent me a coat of arms that got made.
• 1:47:11
  And like, I don't know when it was made.
• 1:47:13
  It had to been made like before the 1900s.
• 1:47:17
  But on it, it had a shield and an anvil and a hammer hitting
• 1:47:22
  down on it. And then there was lightning
• 1:47:24
  bolts and then there were Briggs of like, it looked like
• 1:47:29
  mistletoe on the corners of each of them.
• 1:47:32
  And I was like, hmm, I was like, I'm going to call BA yeah, on
• 1:47:39
  their. And like, I don't know how they
• 1:47:40
  got a Crest, but for some reason they had, there was one made and
• 1:47:46
  I've got it. I've got it in my my little book
• 1:47:48
  of archives from all our genealogy stuff, because he did
• 1:47:51
  all of our genealogy work. And some of the stuff is kind of
• 1:47:55
  squirrely because you could tell he was he was fetching a little
• 1:47:59
  too far with some stuff. But he gave me that copy of that
• 1:48:04
  Crest and everything. And it had the hammer in the
• 1:48:06
  anvil with a lightning bolt. And then it had the sprig on
• 1:48:10
  each corner of the banner. And I'm like, I'm like, I'm not
• 1:48:15
  calling it a coincidence. And I'm being really skeptical
• 1:48:17
  right now because you have a lot of people there.
• 1:48:19
  Like, you know, I'm just in it from Ragnar Lothbrook.
• 1:48:21
  Like, I'm not, I'm not going to claim the Crest, but it's pretty
• 1:48:25
  low. Like it's pretty cool, but I'm
• 1:48:28
  I'm not going to tell the people about it.
• 1:48:31
  Yeah. Because animals.
• 1:48:33
  Are brought up in topics. Yeah, I mean, usually the the
• 1:48:36
  the family crests and all that stuff like that was like your
• 1:48:39
  identifier, you know, you're, you're the you, you belong to
• 1:48:43
  this clan, you belong to this family.
• 1:48:45
  And then especially among the Scots and the Gales, I think
• 1:48:48
  that was, that was a bit more of a practice.
• 1:48:53
  They, they, they knew who their allies were and stuff based
• 1:48:57
  upon. Oh, you're one of those, you
• 1:48:58
  know, you're one of the, you're one of the Thompsons.
• 1:49:01
  You're one of the Mccullers. Yeah, whatever.
• 1:49:03
  They goes back to that infighting thing that, that,
• 1:49:07
  well, I don't even think we really touched upon that.
• 1:49:09
  That might be for Part 2, the inner tribal conflicts and
• 1:49:12
  stuff. But yeah, that's pretty cool.
• 1:49:14
  But it, but I don't know, it just really makes me think and
• 1:49:16
  it really wants me to hear other people's opinions on the past
• 1:49:20
  and the present, like our ancestors and where we are now.
• 1:49:25
  It's like, can we do better than our ancestors?
• 1:49:28
  Or are we going to repeat history to prove a point?
• 1:49:32
  Because you know how like life has that, like where you repeat
• 1:49:35
  history time and time again until you get it right.
• 1:49:39
  Like are we doomed to do this also?
• 1:49:42
  Or should we be positive and hope for the best?
• 1:49:45
  Like, you know, who knows where we'll be in 10 years from now,
• 1:49:50
  20 years from now, Who knows? We Paganism may be banned in the
• 1:49:54
  world, you know, I doubt it, but you know, you might have we.
• 1:49:57
  Might have to do these things on a secret server.
• 1:49:59
  One day we might be live streaming into the into the
• 1:50:02
  Badlands. Discord with a discord?
• 1:50:05
  Yeah, or. Or, or something ironically
• 1:50:08
  right, the thing the the the platform that is used to connect
• 1:50:13
  people is called Discord. How ironic is that?
• 1:50:17
  Yeah, Discord, Discord. And then there's band.
• 1:50:20
  There's Discord, in the Discord, there's all kinds of that.
• 1:50:25
  It's a we tried the discord thing, but I don't know, I was
• 1:50:29
  kind of a grandma. Like I couldn't get all the
• 1:50:31
  settings just right for everything.
• 1:50:33
  You don't feel bad. I, I've been in there before and
• 1:50:39
  I'm like, I'll do it begrudgingly, but I'll do it
• 1:50:44
  because this is where all you people are saying that you're
• 1:50:47
  going to keep track of your things and I'm not in there
• 1:50:50
  anymore. Like I'm like, first of all,
• 1:50:52
  I'm, I'm, I've withdrawn much of my public presence in the local
• 1:50:56
  community just for my own sanity.
• 1:51:00
  It was like I, I got other things to be focused on and
• 1:51:03
  concerned about. And I'll, I'll, I'll be here as
• 1:51:07
  a resource. I'll, I'll, you know, help out
• 1:51:11
  kind of in the sidelines, but I don't want to be in the front
• 1:51:14
  line of this because then, but then so point being is that, Oh,
• 1:51:17
  everything went to discord and I'm like, you know, like, all
• 1:51:22
  right, whatever, I'll do it. And then I'm like when I, when I
• 1:51:25
  finally just said I'm, I'm, I'm stepping back.
• 1:51:27
  I'm, you know, at least for the time being, I'm, I'm kind of
• 1:51:30
  taking a hiatus from of all this, you know, public facing
• 1:51:34
  stuff and I'll just stick to what I do on the podcast and
• 1:51:37
  whatever. But I'm like after as soon as I
• 1:51:40
  got to like uninstall the discord app, my phone, I'm like,
• 1:51:44
  I felt like Frodo at in Mount Doom where he when the ring
• 1:51:47
  goes, it's done, it's gone. I just, I know.
• 1:51:51
  Right, I felt so. Much better.
• 1:51:55
  I know I feel like I'm on the River Pine page like all the
• 1:51:58
  time. And if I'm not posting on there,
• 1:52:02
  I'm posting on the Arklatex heathen page on different stuff
• 1:52:06
  or on other pages to, you know, because like we do get
• 1:52:10
  monetization. So like for every post that gets
• 1:52:13
  shared in it, you know, it doesn't really go viral, but
• 1:52:16
  like we get like $5 every week just about for people posting or
• 1:52:21
  sharing or doing whatever. And you know, it helps, it helps
• 1:52:24
  with donations. Like, you know, people comment
• 1:52:28
  and you know, they'll watch the real for longer than 30 seconds
• 1:52:31
  or whatever and it helps monetize.
• 1:52:34
  And then he gets sent to our little PayPal and then he gets
• 1:52:37
  sent to the checking account. You know, it's all great things.
• 1:52:40
  You know, you know their blessings in their own way.
• 1:52:42
  And you know, I'm, I'm blessed and River Pine is too, with the
• 1:52:47
  things that we have and the community that we work with.
• 1:52:51
  And, you know, and I get on to people all the time when, when
• 1:52:55
  people start stirring up drama, I'm like, listen, we got to be
• 1:52:58
  better than our, our ancestors because they didn't, they lost
• 1:53:02
  everything. And I ain't, I ain't like,
• 1:53:05
  because you know, all these, if you notice on Facebook, a lot of
• 1:53:08
  these Kindred's and a lot of these Facebook pages that have
• 1:53:11
  like Kindred related or tribal related stuff, like they just
• 1:53:16
  kind of bowed out like in 2016 or 2020 or, you know, 2023.
• 1:53:23
  And they just start bowing out. And then these people pop up and
• 1:53:26
  they're like, I'm selling Viking sheets and comforters and I'm
• 1:53:31
  like, and then one guy started a trend on one of the pages.
• 1:53:35
  So every time somebody says that they're descended from Vikings,
• 1:53:38
  they start talking about Viking suit.
• 1:53:41
  Yeah. And I'm just like, OK, But it's
• 1:53:44
  just it's more plain and nobody, like some people post historical
• 1:53:48
  stuff, you know, but it's not as as prevalent as it was before
• 1:53:52
  the pandemic. Well, I think, I think a lot of
• 1:53:56
  the useful stuff gets buried in the algorithm because like my
• 1:54:03
  community has my Facebook community specifically has like
• 1:54:07
  followers have, have gone through the roof.
• 1:54:10
  But, and this is a jab because I know not a lot of everybody's
• 1:54:13
  going to see this. The, the people who are going to
• 1:54:15
  watch this episode are going to be on my Patreon.
• 1:54:17
  But the people that listen to this, if you follow me on
• 1:54:20
  Facebook and you and you happen to follow Midgard musings
• 1:54:23
  because of some of the, the, the, the heathen humor type
• 1:54:26
  stuff that I've shared. You know, the reels that are not
• 1:54:29
  educational, but they're more just to, you know, give you a
• 1:54:31
  little chuckle or this or that. The high lung splits of the
• 1:54:35
  things where I I'll put like a crazy video with a high lung
• 1:54:37
  track or whatever. Like that's the type of stuff
• 1:54:39
  that gets people coming to my to my site, but they're not, you
• 1:54:43
  know, that's, that's just to, to throw my name out into the ether
• 1:54:49
  and be like, Hey, guess this is what I'm really doing.
• 1:54:51
  And I know a lot of you don't listen to long form content or
• 1:54:55
  whatever, But for those of you that do and, and for those of
• 1:54:57
  you that engage with like Amelia and the River Pine Kindred page
• 1:55:00
  and the groups, you know, thank you for, for your engagement.
• 1:55:03
  It, it gives us some sort of inspiration to keep things
• 1:55:06
  going. Because when we see, you know, X
• 1:55:09
  amount of hundreds or thousands of followers and then there's
• 1:55:12
  literally like 2345 a dozen reactions or comments, it's
• 1:55:17
  like, damn, like what, what? What is all this work that that
• 1:55:19
  we're putting into this going towards?
• 1:55:21
  And it's not your fault. You know what I mean?
• 1:55:23
  It's not the people's fault for for that.
• 1:55:25
  It's just the stupid algorithm and the way that the platform,
• 1:55:28
  yes. The algorithm's messed up right
• 1:55:30
  now and like, I, I just got flagged.
• 1:55:35
  Like I just got flagged. Oh.
• 1:55:36
  Yeah, this is for. More thing even.
• 1:55:38
  For it's time. No, I got flagged for every one
• 1:55:42
  of those things because like, I had blurred out her chest right
• 1:55:46
  there. Welcome to the party, Welcome to
• 1:55:48
  the party. I'm like, I'm over here and I
• 1:55:50
  get flagged every week. I was going to be penalized for
• 1:55:54
  monetization because I was showing too much chest on her.
• 1:55:59
  And I'm like, dude, that's the way the picture came.
• 1:56:01
  I even put it under a little blurry thing so it, you know,
• 1:56:04
  blurred out her goods that she was working with so I can post
• 1:56:08
  the picture so it would look pretty because it's a cigar for
• 1:56:11
  more picture, you know, the secret picture, you know, and
• 1:56:15
  then I posted all them and so they flagged me for all like, I
• 1:56:19
  don't know, it's like 10 or 12 of them.
• 1:56:22
  I was like whatever. And, you know, some of the
• 1:56:25
  stuff, you know, I could probably break it down better,
• 1:56:27
  you know, having it like every other day and make it in a
• 1:56:30
  series of things. But you know, I just try to get
• 1:56:34
  them out of the way so people could learn about that different
• 1:56:37
  aspect of that chapter instead of me bouncing all that's like,
• 1:56:42
  that's like sitting there going through the Hava Mall and you
• 1:56:46
  know, going through every other one and it takes you like 6
• 1:56:49
  months to do you. Know been there done that girl I
• 1:56:52
  I mean I did like I I founded Midgard musings off of me just
• 1:56:56
  reading 9 stanzas from the hava mall every.
• 1:56:58
  Week I was actually doom scrolling through your old
• 1:57:02
  videos off of YouTube because I was trying to share stuff for
• 1:57:07
  stuff that they were wanting on, you know, the river Pine page
• 1:57:10
  because they want to learn about divination and magic.
• 1:57:13
  And so I was going to the Ravens call and then I was going to
• 1:57:17
  yours and then I was going to the the Norse magic and beliefs.
• 1:57:22
  And so I was going back and forth between all of y'all's and
• 1:57:24
  I saw all the way back like the oldest one possible from the
• 1:57:27
  beginning. I'm like, look at that guy.
• 1:57:29
  He's come so far in this world. Like if you were to follow what
• 1:57:33
  we would have looked like all those years ago and what we look
• 1:57:36
  like now, the people that we are still becoming and growing into
• 1:57:41
  compared to where we started out in the beginning, it's just it's
• 1:57:45
  mind blowing. And you know, I didn't really do
• 1:57:48
  a lot, you know, seven years ago on the River Pine page, like I
• 1:57:51
  would post something like maybe once a month for like a holiday
• 1:57:54
  or a celebration, but I never really went into depth.
• 1:57:58
  And the people on the River Pine page especially that has been
• 1:58:04
  showing up here more since we've gotten a little bit over 1000
• 1:58:10
  followers. Like the people on there are so
• 1:58:12
  sweet and so kind. And they'll personally message
• 1:58:15
  me because, you know, they'll buy some of the merch that I
• 1:58:18
  have that, you know, I mail to them personally.
• 1:58:22
  And like I put, you know, River Pine brochures and River Pine
• 1:58:25
  stickers. And, you know, sometimes I put a
• 1:58:27
  little extra in there and I thank them and how much I
• 1:58:30
  appreciate them. And they'll message me
• 1:58:33
  personally on the, you know, the River Pine messenger and tell me
• 1:58:37
  thank you. They appreciate me and they'll
• 1:58:39
  message me and see how I'm doing.
• 1:58:41
  And they're so sweet. And I've had people all the way
• 1:58:44
  from, you know, Europe buy stuff from us, even though it costed a
• 1:58:50
  little bit more to ship to them. Like they appreciate.
• 1:58:53
  And people are so sweet and so kind.
• 1:58:56
  And, you know, not that, you know, the community that I deal
• 1:58:59
  with in person isn't that way. They're the exact same way.
• 1:59:03
  You know, everybody's just so all around good, like.
• 1:59:07
  And very rarely do I get a troll.
• 1:59:10
  Like one guy started complaining because I made an AI picture
• 1:59:13
  about what they would want to learn about.
• 1:59:15
  He's like, what's with this AI stuff?
• 1:59:16
  And I'm like, Sir, be nice. You're gonna come here and
• 1:59:21
  complain about? Yeah, it's like I have red hair.
• 1:59:24
  Leave me alone. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:59:26
  You're gonna come here and complain about that?
• 1:59:28
  Yeah, it's like, but everything else you haven't, you haven't
• 1:59:31
  even been on Facebook for like a month.
• 1:59:33
  It's like, be nice. Yeah.
• 1:59:35
  It's kind of like, what is that off of Bambi?
• 1:59:37
  It's like when he's when his mother said to Thumper, if you
• 1:59:40
  can't say nothing nice, don't say nothing at.
• 1:59:42
  All don't say nothing at all, y'all.
• 1:59:45
  This is old school and wisdom from your grandmammy and them
• 1:59:48
  from back in the 50s or whatever, you know.
• 1:59:56
  Yeah, this is a good conversation, M, and I
• 1:59:59
  appreciate you for for coming on here.
• 2:00:02
  I think there's definitely worth enough left of what you talked
• 2:00:05
  about to maybe do a Part 2 if you want to 'cause we, you know,
• 2:00:09
  we talked about, you know, the fragmentation of the tribes and
• 2:00:12
  the lack of the infrastructure and the universality and the
• 2:00:15
  little bit on the geography, you know, a little bit of the land
• 2:00:18
  and then this and that. But we still got a few other
• 2:00:20
  things left to. To to kind of dive into a bit.
• 2:00:24
  So if you'd like and want to come back, we.
• 2:00:25
  Can do a it'll probably have to be sometime at the end of next
• 2:00:29
  month because I have AI have a wedding next weekend yeah and
• 2:00:35
  the weekend after that and then I have that that that Irish
• 2:00:39
  family reunion they're really loud so I'm going to be busy for
• 2:00:42
  the next three weeks and then. Oh.
• 2:00:44
  Man, I got that Ruid gathering and then there's.
• 2:00:48
  Well, all you had to tell me was Irish family reunion.
• 2:00:50
  I'm like I got it, the month is booked, forget about it.
• 2:00:53
  Just there's a lot of potatoes. There's all potatoes.
• 2:00:59
  There's not potatoes. It's ice cream.
• 2:01:02
  Yeah. I ain't ever seen so many ice
• 2:01:04
  cream machines going all at the same time.
• 2:01:06
  Really. Oh yeah, there's banana nut and
• 2:01:09
  strawberries and cream and dreamsicle and vanilla and corn.
• 2:01:16
  They have all different flavors. They'll they'll give you the
• 2:01:20
  after eating all the different ice creams you'll get the golly
• 2:01:23
  wobbles after the stomach ache for the rest of the day and then
• 2:01:26
  you go swimming out in the heat. No.
• 2:01:28
  Oh man, that sounds like a recipe for disaster.
• 2:01:31
  Yeah. Yeah, I I normally just end up
• 2:01:32
  going kayaking and I try to avoid the ice cream cause yeah,
• 2:01:37
  going in and out of the heat and chasing kids and.
• 2:01:41
  Yeah, right. Like dairy plus dairy plus, you
• 2:01:46
  know, hot sun plus X. It'll make your stomach hurdle.
• 2:01:51
  Yeah, Plus all that activity like running around, it's like
• 2:01:54
  is this is a recipe for disaster?
• 2:01:56
  I don't think so. I think I'll just lay down in
• 2:01:58
  the shade and try not to melt in this humidity.
• 2:02:03
  I always feel like I'm dying in in this Texas summer.
• 2:02:07
  Like my face gets real red and they're like, are you OK?
• 2:02:09
  And I'm like, no, I'm swelling. Like I'm thinking about shaving
• 2:02:12
  my head. I'm just Irish like.
• 2:02:15
  I'm dying like I need to go where the land of the ice and
• 2:02:18
  snow. Yeah, yeah, Just set me on a
• 2:02:22
  block of ice. You know, I'll be all right.
• 2:02:28
  Well, this is good. I'm going to wrap this up for
• 2:02:30
  the week and then I'll I'll talk with you a bit offline here, but
• 2:02:34
  I appreciate you coming on here and thank you for being here.
• 2:02:37
  Thank you for thank you for approaching me with such AI
• 2:02:42
  mean. We rambled a good bit on on
• 2:02:44
  various things, but the the the root of the topic is, is such a
• 2:02:48
  good thing to to talk about and I feel like we can comfortably
• 2:02:51
  get into Part 2 of this, you know, in the coming month or so.
• 2:02:56
  So I hope. Everybody else enjoyed it.
• 2:02:58
  I'm sorry if I rattle too much, you know that chatty MI can't
• 2:03:01
  help it. You're just embracing yourself
• 2:03:04
  there and then that's what it's about.
• 2:03:05
  You know, like that's it's the name of the show for those of
• 2:03:08
  you that are new here, random heathen ramblings and ramblings
• 2:03:12
  of being the operative word, but it's random, it's heathen and
• 2:03:16
  and here you go. So hope you enjoyed it folks.
• 2:03:19
  If you did, you've got a number of ways to engage with this.
• 2:03:23
  So if you're watching this on Patreon, thank you again for
• 2:03:26
  your patronage Comment down below what you thought.
• 2:03:29
  If you're listening to this on Spotify, you can comment there
• 2:03:32
  too. If you're listening to this on
• 2:03:34
  any of the other podcasts, audio platforms and you have some
• 2:03:40
  thoughts that maybe the platform doesn't allow you to share or
• 2:03:42
  that I won't see because I don't have eyes everywhere.
• 2:03:45
  I am not omnipotent in that degree and I haven't figured out
• 2:03:48
  how to ascend past certain visibilities.
• 2:03:51
  But you can always reach out to meviaemailitsmidgardmusingstn@gmail.com.
• 2:03:58
  The hotline for the podcast is 615-671-9832 or just follow me
• 2:04:05
  on my socials link. Tree link is posted down below
• 2:04:07
  as well as stuff for River Pine Kindred.
• 2:04:11
  So head over to Facebook, Instagram, you know, YouTube.
• 2:04:15
  Check out some of what they're doing over there, what Amelia
• 2:04:18
  posts, very worthwhile checking out.
• 2:04:22
  And who knows, maybe through one or more connections here you're
• 2:04:26
  able to connect with some others in your area and continue the
• 2:04:30
  conversation amongst your own people, which is what we
• 2:04:33
  encourage and what we would like to see.
• 2:04:36
  So thank you, Amelia, for being here.
• 2:04:38
  I'll touch base with you here in just a second.
• 2:04:40
  But for everybody else that's tuned in and listened or watched
• 2:04:42
  today, thank you so much for your support.
• 2:04:45
  May the gods continue to notice you, and may your ancestors
• 2:04:48
  smile upon you. We'll see you in the next one
• 2:04:52
  lost to Hale.