Latest / Random Heathen Ramblings / Random Heathen Ramblings: S6, EP01 - From Skalds To Spirits [feat. Chris Miller]

Transcript

Random Heathen Ramblings: S6, EP01 - From Skalds To Spirits [feat. Chris Miller] · Random Heathen Ramblings

• 0:05
  Hello everyone, and welcome to the Random Heathen Ramblings
• 0:07
  podcast where we discuss all sorts of things Germanic
• 0:11
  Heathenry related. My name is Jesse and I am your
• 0:14
  host. Let's get into it.
• 0:39
  The Olivet Here workshop is dedicated to the Old ways,
• 0:43
  offering a wide selection of animist ritual supplies,
• 0:46
  divination tools, altered goods and home decor, including
• 0:50
  premium reindeer hides imported from traditional.
• 0:53
  Herders in Northern Finland, Whether you're just starting
• 0:56
  your spiritual journey or looking to expand your
• 0:58
  collection with a custom drum, we have everything you need.
• 1:02
  Visit our online store at the Olivet here.com and discover the
• 1:06
  beauty of Mountain Spirit. All right folks, welcome back to
• 1:14
  another season of the Random Heathen Ramblings podcast.
• 1:17
  This is the very first episode of season 6 and I couldn't be
• 1:20
  more excited to get this season kicked off and underway.
• 1:24
  I took a little bit of a break there at the beginning of the
• 1:26
  year just to kind of get the whole, you know, 2025 Season 5
• 1:31
  cobwebs dusted off and shaken off and then get ready to
• 1:34
  rock'n'roll here into 2025 Season 6.
• 1:39
  So we do have a really fun show lined up for us today.
• 1:42
  We have a guest that's going to be joining us here in just a
• 1:44
  moment. I will explain a little bit
• 1:46
  about that here in just a moment before we welcome them on
• 1:50
  screen. But before we get into all that,
• 1:54
  just a few housekeeping things. If you're listening to this on
• 1:58
  the Spotify platform or any of the other audio platforms that
• 2:01
  distribute this show, first of all, thank you for listening and
• 2:05
  thank you for coming back to yet another season of the show.
• 2:11
  It's greatly appreciated and it helps with the growth of this
• 2:14
  show. If you haven't yet considered
• 2:17
  becoming a patron on Patreon to be able to watch these video
• 2:21
  versions of the show, that is a great way to really help support
• 2:25
  the podcast as well. And it's almost nothing for you
• 2:27
  to do so because to gain access to the video versions of this
• 2:31
  show, all you got to do is pledge $1.00.
• 2:35
  So that $1.00 pledge gets you video access to every episode
• 2:40
  that I put out here. And that's usually 3 to 4
• 2:44
  episodes per month. So with that bonus or with that,
• 2:49
  you know, pledge, you get the bonus of getting your name and a
• 2:51
  little splash screen at the end of the of the podcast.
• 2:53
  So you're, you know, you're recognized as a Carl tier
• 2:57
  patron. And again, it's just a $1.00
• 2:59
  pledge. So you get all of that for just
• 3:02
  a dollar. If you want to pledge more, you
• 3:04
  want to, you know, join at another tier, you can visit my
• 3:07
  Patreon page, It's patreon.com/midgard Musings.
• 3:11
  And if if something else speaks to you and you want to pledge at
• 3:14
  a different level, then thank you very much.
• 3:17
  But at the very least, just pledging a dollar really helps
• 3:20
  with the growth of this podcast. And it's also helping me
• 3:24
  specifically as I look to the future of bringing this podcast
• 3:28
  on the road and to other territories.
• 3:32
  For those of you that haven't heard yet, I will be going out
• 3:36
  to Salsa Alaska, which is about I think 30 minutes or so away
• 3:39
  from Fairbanks. First time in my life ever going
• 3:43
  to Alaska to attend the Heathen Days and Pagan Nights event at
• 3:49
  the end of August slash beginning of September.
• 3:51
  So that that Labor Day weekend there is when I was invited to
• 3:57
  go to Alaska and bring the podcasts up there, maybe do some
• 4:00
  classes, attend this this three day long event on the weekend of
• 4:04
  August 30th through September 2nd or August 31st through
• 4:08
  September 2nd that that that you know, Labor Day weekend out
• 4:10
  there. So anyway, as you become a
• 4:14
  supporter of this podcast at the Carl tier or above, you're
• 4:17
  definitely helping with some of the things that I need to
• 4:19
  consider for taking this podcast on the road.
• 4:22
  New equipment, upgrades, travel, all of that sort of stuff.
• 4:28
  So yeah, it is is greatly appreciated if you so desire and
• 4:32
  wish to come on the show or, you know, join the the Patreon
• 4:39
  community in that sort of way. So today's guest is is going to
• 4:45
  be his name is Chris Miller. Chris is a heathen of, as I
• 4:50
  understand about five years or so, and we were talking a little
• 4:53
  bit offline before, before recording this, this podcast.
• 4:59
  And he, the way he put it is it was October of 2019 when he put
• 5:04
  on the hammer. So Chris again is a heathen and
• 5:07
  he's located in like I believe it's the southeastern portion of
• 5:11
  Illinois, so Champaign, IL. So for all you Midwesterners,
• 5:17
  you know, Chris is a is a heathen and I actually had a
• 5:19
  friend of his, an associate, somebody else that is part of
• 5:23
  their local heathen community up there, Land of Lincoln Heathens.
• 5:28
  So there'll be a link in the podcast show notes or
• 5:30
  description area of wherever for you to, to find their Facebook
• 5:36
  group and and connect. But they are located up there in
• 5:39
  Illinois. So we're going to hear a bit
• 5:41
  more about that from Chris. But I had one of his, I think it
• 5:45
  was it's their their chief didn't go the on the show last
• 5:49
  year. So shout out to you, Hootie.
• 5:51
  Thanks for coming on the show last season and big thanks to
• 5:54
  Chris for coming on here. So we're going to learn more
• 5:57
  about Chris and welcome him onto the show here and see what he
• 6:01
  has to say about him as a heathen in South Central,
• 6:06
  Southeastern Illinois, Champaign, IL.
• 6:10
  He works at the University of Illinois as a field scientist.
• 6:13
  So we're going to be talking about a whole bunch of things.
• 6:16
  And yeah. So without further ado, let's go
• 6:18
  ahead and welcome to the show. First time guest and long time
• 6:22
  listener, Chris Miller. There we go.
• 6:28
  Hey there, Chris, Can you hear me?
• 6:32
  All right. Hey, Jesse, thanks for having me
• 6:36
  on. Hey, man.
• 6:37
  Yes, Sir. Great, great.
• 6:39
  Yeah, glad to have you on the show.
• 6:41
  As we talked about earlier, Thank you so much for, you know,
• 6:43
  your long time support and viewership and and your interest
• 6:47
  in wanting to to come on to the show and as it turns out, kick
• 6:52
  off season 6. Appreciate you coming on here.
• 6:57
  Yeah, so it would seem happy to be here.
• 7:01
  Well, great, man. I was kind of given just a soft
• 7:04
  intro to, to everybody and telling them a little bit about
• 7:07
  you. Just, you know, you're you, you
• 7:10
  told me earlier, you, you've been in Heathen for five years.
• 7:12
  You put the hammer on in 2019, you're in Champaign, IL you're a
• 7:16
  field scientist at the University of Illinois.
• 7:18
  But if you wouldn't mind just, yeah, give a little bit of a, an
• 7:22
  introduction about yourself and what brought you to Heathenry,
• 7:26
  if you want to talk about that or anything that's really, you
• 7:28
  know, pertinent to, to what we're going to be talking about
• 7:31
  there. We got a lot of things that
• 7:32
  we're going to be talking about. We'll get into all that.
• 7:34
  But if you wouldn't mind, just introduce yourself to everybody.
• 7:39
  Yeah, of course. Well, like you said, my name is
• 7:41
  Chris Miller. I'm originally from North Texas.
• 7:44
  I'm not local to the Illinois area.
• 7:46
  I was born and raised in Fort Worth, and how I got into
• 7:50
  Heathenry is a rather long and convoluted story that always
• 7:53
  comes back to landscape, as a lot of things in my life do.
• 7:57
  I was raised Christian and I sort of fell away from all forms
• 8:02
  of spirituality in my early adolescence, you know, like I
• 8:05
  was. I was rebelling against
• 8:06
  everything that I could. And one of the easiest things to
• 8:08
  kick off is, right, a Christian upbringing.
• 8:10
  And mine was by number means strict or anything, but I just,
• 8:14
  I, I didn't want to have anything to do with any control
• 8:18
  structure or anything like that. So I, I kicked it off and I
• 8:21
  found my way back into spiritual circles in college.
• 8:25
  And I, I got back into Christianity for a while just
• 8:28
  because I figured, you know, maybe I had the wrong community,
• 8:31
  maybe I had the wrong approach. There's so many different ways
• 8:34
  to engage with Christian faith, but landscape veneration and
• 8:39
  ancestral veneration always really called to me.
• 8:42
  So I, I looked at Druidry for a while because I was living in
• 8:46
  the UK at the time and I, I thought that would be, you know,
• 8:49
  that's what people were doing over there.
• 8:51
  But I, I found my way to Heathenry through the sort of
• 8:54
  pop culture lens that a lot of people do, right.
• 8:56
  I was a big fan of Vikings and the God of War video games.
• 9:01
  And, and while I now look back on it, be like God, I didn't
• 9:04
  know anything. And you know, I ever all of this
• 9:06
  is wrong. It kind of shows you just a
• 9:10
  glimpse of something that you then have to do your own
• 9:14
  digging. So I started reading about
• 9:17
  Nordic mythology. I started reading about Nordic
• 9:20
  history and I really got sucked into the idea that there was a
• 9:25
  sort of spiritual path that kind of brings together a lot of
• 9:29
  stuff that I was already interested in and had no sort of
• 9:33
  central dogmatic control structure.
• 9:35
  And was very much focused on authentically connecting with
• 9:38
  people on a local level and connecting with other than human
• 9:42
  world on a local level as well, specifically through ancestry
• 9:46
  and landscape work. So, yeah, it all just kind of
• 9:50
  fell into place in a way that, you know, I'm, I suppose it was
• 9:52
  meant to, but I took a, you know, dipped my feet into a
• 9:57
  couple ponds, if you will, before I, before I landed here.
• 10:00
  But this has been my home for the last five years and it's
• 10:02
  been really personally fulfilling for me.
• 10:05
  That's great. That's that's quite the vibrant
• 10:08
  background that you've got there going from.
• 10:10
  First of all, you don't sound like you're from Texas, you
• 10:13
  know? Yeah, well, it's my.
• 10:15
  Grandparents are from Illinois, so yeah, I didn't, I didn't pick
• 10:19
  up the accident. Yeah, no, you definitely didn't.
• 10:22
  And you know, northern Texas, western Oklahoma, right?
• 10:25
  Like that whole Panhandle area, You, you, you can pick up on
• 10:29
  people that are native to there and you don't, you have that
• 10:31
  kind of neutral Midwestern, you know, nothing really too crazy
• 10:35
  going on. I, I, I every now and then, even
• 10:37
  though I've been living in Tennessee for going on 20 years,
• 10:40
  I don't, I, I, I more of my Northern New York accent leaks
• 10:45
  through depending on the topic that we happen to be talking
• 10:47
  about or how many drinks I've had or how emotional I've gotten
• 10:52
  about something or another, you know what I mean?
• 10:53
  So, but yeah, you said you went to the UK for a little while.
• 10:57
  Was that a? Was that like a deployment or a
• 10:59
  work detail or or what brought you over there?
• 11:02
  That's actually where I went to college.
• 11:04
  I got, I got my degree in zoology from the University of
• 11:06
  Saint Andrews, which is located in eastern Scotland.
• 11:10
  It's, it's a really great small school.
• 11:12
  And I, I went there for all four years.
• 11:14
  So it, it, it wasn't really a study abroad, but I guess it
• 11:18
  kind of was, it was abroad for me.
• 11:20
  But I, I did my whole program over there.
• 11:22
  Yeah. That's great, man.
• 11:23
  I know some people who, who so I know a guy who his wife is from
• 11:30
  England and they recently moved back there because her family,
• 11:35
  most of her family is, is located over there.
• 11:37
  And there was this feeling of a disconnect because of the
• 11:42
  distance. You know, I mean, like even in
• 11:43
  the United States, you know, a couple 1000 miles, it makes it
• 11:46
  difficult for family and relatives to stay in touch.
• 11:49
  But when you're talking a whole new, you know, another
• 11:52
  continent, another country, you know, like that makes it even
• 11:56
  more difficult. So I have a connection over in
• 11:59
  England now. Or if I, you know, ever decide I
• 12:00
  want to jump the pond and, and, and see this, this place is over
• 12:05
  there. He's like, hey, anytime you want
• 12:06
  to come, just give us an advance notice.
• 12:08
  We'll have a bed for you and we'll show you the sights.
• 12:10
  And that is something I hope to do someday.
• 12:12
  Is, is, is be able to, to see that part of the world.
• 12:15
  It's everything I've seen from a distance.
• 12:18
  Looks really beautiful. Oh yeah, I mean, it's, it's
• 12:21
  amazing. And if and if you get the chance
• 12:23
  to go to any of the old standing circles, it's, it's really worth
• 12:26
  it. I, I got to spend the, the
• 12:29
  vernal equinox inside Stonehenge, which was, which was
• 12:33
  a real shame because I wasn't Pagan at the time.
• 12:36
  It was, it was before I discovered the path.
• 12:39
  Yeah. So it was just a cool historical
• 12:41
  thing for me. But yeah, there are, there are
• 12:42
  some sites of really phenomenal power over in the British Isles
• 12:46
  and I and I, I get what you're saying about separation.
• 12:48
  It's hard. My, my partner is from Ireland
• 12:50
  and we're actually going back to visit her family tomorrow.
• 12:54
  So we're going to, we're going to make the trip.
• 12:56
  But yeah, it's it's been a while since I've been over there, so
• 13:00
  I'm excited to get back. Well, that's great man, awesome
• 13:04
  man. You know, safe travels to you
• 13:06
  and everybody to that, that's, that's making the trek.
• 13:10
  Yeah. And I hope you have a enjoyable
• 13:12
  time out there. So you, you mentioned some
• 13:15
  things that you, you, you, you have a, have a very heightened
• 13:19
  focus on within your scope of Heathenry.
• 13:23
  And you also talked about community and, and, and having
• 13:26
  that grassroots connection. I briefly talked earlier,
• 13:29
  you're, you're involved in a Group, A grassroots level group
• 13:33
  of people in the area of Illinois that you're local to
• 13:38
  Champaign, IL, right? The Land of Lincoln Heathens.
• 13:42
  Yeah, yeah. So the the group is kind of, it
• 13:45
  has two hubs, if you will. The, the sort of founding
• 13:49
  members are split between Champaign, which is where the
• 13:52
  university is and Springfield, which is our state capital about
• 13:56
  an hour and a half to the West of us.
• 13:58
  So we sort of do probably a 2 hour radius around Springfield
• 14:02
  of sort of central Illinois and far Western Indiana in terms of
• 14:07
  the the real area that we're we're kind of focused on.
• 14:10
  OK. And how long have you, so are
• 14:14
  are you part of the founding members of, of this community
• 14:18
  that that covers that radius or how long?
• 14:21
  Have you? Yes, Yeah, Yeah, we, we met.
• 14:25
  So who do you who you had on the podcast and myself, we met back
• 14:28
  in 2022. I I was looking for a heathen
• 14:33
  community right about the time that I got started with the
• 14:38
  religion at all, right. I, I practice solo for a couple
• 14:41
  months and I was like, you know what, I've been watching videos
• 14:45
  from this dude on the Internet who calls himself Eric word
• 14:48
  Weaver Shervin. And he's talking about you need
• 14:51
  to meet people where they are. And you know, if you're not
• 14:54
  going to find a community that's perfectly suited, you got to
• 14:57
  stand up and say hi, I'm here and I want people to, you know,
• 15:02
  come try this thing with me. So I was like, great.
• 15:05
  I, I live in North Texas. He is based in Tyler, which is 2
• 15:10
  hours away from me. I could totally get there.
• 15:12
  I'm going to finally get out of my own head.
• 15:14
  I'm going to go to my first park mood.
• 15:17
  And that was in March of 2020, which is when, you know, a
• 15:22
  couple things prevented people from congregating.
• 15:25
  So in in the in between, I moved up to Illinois and it was like I
• 15:29
  was right on the edge. And I was like, I was going to
• 15:32
  do it. I was going to meet people.
• 15:34
  And then I moved states. So I kind of got back into solo
• 15:37
  work. Obviously the world was closed.
• 15:39
  So it's been a lot of time in state parks and a lot of time,
• 15:43
  just like, you know, my time to feel spiritual was I would, I
• 15:46
  would go out and be in the landscape.
• 15:50
  But then, you know, I, I, I was in Eric's Facebook group and
• 15:54
  every once in awhile he does those roll call posts where
• 15:57
  he'll say, Hey, go ahead and drop your location, see if
• 15:59
  there's anybody near you in the area.
• 16:02
  And Kevin was one of those people who said, hi, I'm in
• 16:04
  Central Illinois. And I was like, Oh my God, I'm
• 16:06
  in central Illinois. So I, I reached out to him and
• 16:11
  saw that he had a group that was already active on Facebook, but
• 16:16
  they'd never done a meet up. It was very quiet, you know, had
• 16:20
  just kind of gathered cobwebs. There was, there was a bunch of
• 16:22
  excitement right at the beginning.
• 16:24
  And then it just kind of flamed out and it was, no one was
• 16:27
  really posting anything. No one was like doing much with
• 16:29
  it. He just kind of said, you know,
• 16:30
  we have this group and I joined. He got a moot set up for June of
• 16:35
  2022. And we went and sat in the park
• 16:38
  across from each other and just kind of did that like awkward
• 16:41
  conversation of like, so you like the gods?
• 16:46
  Oh, what about them apples? Anybody doings apples or?
• 16:50
  Whatever. Yeah, exactly.
• 16:52
  Just kind of like feeling each other out.
• 16:54
  But, but we, we discovered very early on and we had very similar
• 16:57
  perspectives in terms of how much we valued Hearth's
• 17:02
  sovereignty and how much we loathed orthopraxy.
• 17:07
  And just, you know, we, we got on that, you know, it would be
• 17:10
  great if we could get together and, you know, do a ritual
• 17:12
  together sometimes or something, you know, and still do our own
• 17:14
  things, but, you know, come together every once in a while.
• 17:17
  He invited me to be a moderator of the Facebook group.
• 17:21
  And then I just started belt feeding content into the void of
• 17:24
  just edit, you know, anything that I could think of that was
• 17:26
  vaguely heathen related, I would just put a little spin on it and
• 17:29
  throw it in the Facebook group. And we've been doing that for a
• 17:34
  couple years now. We've grown to 75 members, most
• 17:37
  of them do nothing, but we we do have a a couple of of solid
• 17:42
  people and we've got a a thriving myth group and a couple
• 17:46
  of us gathered for ritual pretty regularly as well.
• 17:49
  Sweet, that's great, man. I'm so glad to hear that.
• 17:51
  Yet another example of the power of social media, right?
• 17:56
  We and you know, if, if, if you're a human being in, in this
• 17:59
  day and age, I mean, social media can, can be a real
• 18:02
  cesspool of trash by and large. But every now and then, you
• 18:07
  know, you find stuff like what Eric is doing with his word
• 18:11
  Weaver productions group and some others to inspire the
• 18:17
  inspire people to connect at a deeper level than just hi, how
• 18:21
  are you? You know, from, from a distance,
• 18:23
  right? Let's find out where we are,
• 18:25
  network and, and, and stuff. So, you know, that's great.
• 18:28
  I'm glad that 'cause he was one of the ones that really helped
• 18:32
  inspire me to do the same thing here in Middle Tennessee.
• 18:35
  You know well, and you were a guest on his show and that's how
• 18:38
  I know who you are, so. Yeah, we yeah.
• 18:41
  Like I found him when I was first starting to font, you
• 18:43
  know, get into creating content on on social media.
• 18:47
  I was looking for, I don't remember what the video was, but
• 18:50
  I think, you know, it was it was one of his early videos about
• 18:54
  like Heathenry one O 1 or something.
• 18:57
  And then like we, we, we kind of connected a little bit after
• 19:01
  that. And I'm like, man, I like what
• 19:02
  this guy's doing. I like what it's about.
• 19:04
  It makes a lot of sense. And I feel like I can learn
• 19:06
  something from him, you know, And it just, it, it opened up
• 19:10
  the doors and went down some rabbit holes and crawled around
• 19:13
  a bit in some corners. And now here I am doing my own
• 19:17
  thing. But him as an inspiration, you
• 19:20
  know, and, and it's so cool to hear other stories of, of other
• 19:23
  heathens, other folks that have come across his stuff and have
• 19:25
  found inspiration as well. So, yeah, you, you have,
• 19:31
  interestingly enough, I don't know if you want to talk about a
• 19:33
  little bit your, your, you work at the University of Illinois as
• 19:36
  a field scientist. Now, when I hear that, I think,
• 19:42
  you know, somebody who's out here like taking samples of
• 19:44
  rocks and trees and dirt and sand and water or whatever.
• 19:47
  Would you mind maybe clarifying or elaborating a little bit for
• 19:52
  those of us who don't know what a field scientist does at the
• 19:56
  university or at a university? Yeah, yeah.
• 19:58
  Well, I mean, so a lot of them do exactly what you're talking
• 20:01
  about. There are a lot of a lot of
• 20:04
  people who go out there and take like hard, granular measurements
• 20:06
  like that. But I work for a private lands
• 20:09
  conservation program that is called the Conservation Reserve
• 20:13
  Enhancement Program. It's a it's a federal, state and
• 20:16
  local conservation partnership that's through the USDA mostly.
• 20:21
  And what they do is they take environmentally sensitive land
• 20:25
  that has cropping history, and they pay farmers to take that
• 20:29
  land out of production and use it for habitat restoration.
• 20:34
  And the goal is never to take entire fields.
• 20:37
  It's here in Illinois. The vast majority of our state
• 20:41
  should be underwater and it isn't because of a lot of
• 20:45
  European or Euro descendant Land Management has artificially
• 20:49
  drained all of these wetlands and swamps.
• 20:52
  You know 2/3 of our land area is supposed to be these giant
• 20:56
  watersheds that all drain towards the Mississippi.
• 20:59
  And right now, 3/4 of our land area is corner soybeans, so
• 21:05
  there's a lot of farmland that is never going to be productive.
• 21:09
  But instead of, you know, putting pipes under the earth to
• 21:13
  like, suck the moisture out and put it somewhere else, how about
• 21:17
  you take that edge of your field and you let it be a wetland.
• 21:20
  You, you let it do what it wants to do.
• 21:22
  You let it grow up in marsh grasses and trees and be useful
• 21:27
  to, you know, the human community because you're being
• 21:29
  paid to have that land as not agriculture and very beneficial
• 21:33
  to the other than human community and that you're giving
• 21:37
  your wild relations a place to live.
• 21:40
  So what I do is I step, I strap on boots and go stomp around on
• 21:43
  these restored properties and do species inventories.
• 21:47
  I go meet trees and, you know, write down some measurements,
• 21:51
  talk about species compositions. And then I write management
• 21:55
  plans for land owners to allow them to be better stewards of
• 22:00
  the lands that they inhabit, you know, in terms of which tree
• 22:03
  species you might want to remove, which vines are a
• 22:06
  problem and which ones aren't, why some species of grasses are
• 22:09
  more ecologically valuable than others.
• 22:13
  So that's, that's kind of what I do.
• 22:15
  I, I'm a rather non traditional field scientist and that I don't
• 22:18
  write papers and I don't publish.
• 22:21
  I I help people understand their landscapes and come into like a
• 22:25
  bit more of a harmonious relationship with that
• 22:27
  landscape. Wow, that is, that is really
• 22:31
  interesting. And it, and it sounds like this,
• 22:35
  this, this industry or this, this, this field, you know,
• 22:39
  this, this profession that you found yourself in is very much
• 22:43
  in line with. So what?
• 22:45
  First of all, some of the things we're going to be talking about
• 22:47
  today, sacred ecology, landscape spirits in our relationship, but
• 22:51
  it's very heathen in its, you know, and, and it's then and
• 22:56
  then the modality that you're talking about, right?
• 22:58
  Understanding what our relationship is with the land
• 23:01
  and bringing, like you were talking about bringing the land
• 23:03
  back to its natural way, you know, allowing the things that
• 23:08
  it should have been doing all this time to, to, to, to, to
• 23:12
  revert back to and, and to return to and helping it along
• 23:17
  the way. Kind of kind of nurturing it as
• 23:19
  it were, and, and symbiotically existing, coexisting.
• 23:24
  Is that accurate? Very much so.
• 23:27
  I Yeah. No, no, you're, you're you're
• 23:28
  exactly right. I do very much view my work as
• 23:31
  spiritual, which is strange to say as a scientist, I think, or
• 23:36
  at least it is in the sort of Western cultural tradition.
• 23:39
  Eastern cultures have less of a, like a, a strong science spirit
• 23:42
  divide. But yeah, I, I, I definitely,
• 23:48
  some of my, like most, you know, sacred experiences have been
• 23:51
  while I'm at work, which is a weird thing to say.
• 23:55
  But you know, I'll, I'll, I'll Crest a hill and, you know, meet
• 23:59
  a 400 year old baroque tree and just kind of sit with the weight
• 24:03
  of that for a while in a way that I think a lot of people
• 24:06
  wouldn't. Yeah, you're, you're inspiring
• 24:10
  me to share something on camera here because I think you'll
• 24:12
  appreciate it and the audience might appreciate it a bit more
• 24:16
  than than others. Let me just, and this is, you
• 24:21
  know, I was talking earlier about people joining my Patreon
• 24:25
  and stuff. This, this is the type of stuff
• 24:26
  that you can get access to for those of you just listening.
• 24:28
  And this is the type of stuff that you can get access to when
• 24:31
  you watch what we're talking about.
• 24:33
  Because what I'm doing right now is I'm holding up a piece of
• 24:35
  wood to show Chris and to show the audience.
• 24:40
  And it might look inconsequential as just a, a, a
• 24:44
  chunk of, of timber doesn't look too, too impressive.
• 24:48
  It's very, very old and very, very crude looking.
• 24:52
  You know what I mean? But what, what, what I'm showing
• 24:55
  you here, Chris, is a piece of a Sycamore tree that is, or that,
• 25:01
  that, that grew in the town square in the, in the, in the
• 25:04
  city square of, of Murfreesboro, TN here in Middle Tennessee in
• 25:08
  this tree was dated back to the mid 1800s and it grew there and
• 25:19
  it, and it got so old and it got so, you know, as as trees do and
• 25:24
  as things do, it got so damaged right that they had to cut it
• 25:28
  down. But for over 150 years, this,
• 25:32
  this piece of, of, of life, this, this spirit existed.
• 25:36
  And I, I have a piece of it thanks to my wife.
• 25:40
  She, she got a, a large chunk of it.
• 25:42
  It's this, the piece that I just showed everybody is smaller than
• 25:46
  what it started out as. Because I, I, I crafted some
• 25:49
  pieces of, as, as gifts to, to other local heathen members of
• 25:53
  another kindred or another tribe in the area.
• 25:57
  But to spend time in craft work with items of, of, of organic
• 26:03
  nature, whether it's wood, stone or anything like that.
• 26:08
  For me, you know, like this isn't my, this is, it's not a
• 26:10
  livelihood. It's it's a hobby.
• 26:12
  But do it to craft room sets, to craft any sort of thing with it.
• 26:15
  And it put skin to, to, to material, right to, to, like you
• 26:19
  say, be in the presence of a 400 year old something or 150 year
• 26:23
  old, You know, it, it, it's like this is an ancient guardian.
• 26:29
  This, this was here before, you know, generations before I was
• 26:33
  ever here. And to share in that moment and
• 26:37
  to connect with that spirit and to respect and to honor that
• 26:40
  spirit. And one of the cool things about
• 26:42
  this particular tree is before it was cut down, you know, I, I
• 26:47
  don't want to say for sure, but I, I feel like people like you
• 26:51
  field scientists, you know, nature conservationists took
• 26:54
  samples of the tree to, to better understand its, you know,
• 26:58
  ancestry and it's, you know, things about its, its growth.
• 27:02
  And then how to maybe perhaps, you know, give other sycamores
• 27:08
  in the area a chance to, to, to, to seed and, and all these
• 27:11
  various things. But yeah, like I when you were
• 27:15
  talking about all that and, and connecting with these, 'cause
• 27:19
  they are it, it's spirit, you know, not, not a lot of people
• 27:22
  look at trees or rocks or rivers or, or, or, or earth or whatever
• 27:26
  as, as having spirit. But I feel like as a heathen,
• 27:30
  you know, we, we, we tend to have a have a, a very strong
• 27:35
  animistic view of the world wherein we recognized and
• 27:40
  acknowledged spirit in our landscape, or at least we
• 27:45
  should. Yeah, absolutely.
• 27:49
  And well, that's one of the reasons that I, I call myself
• 27:51
  Heathen as opposed to North's Pagan, because to me, Nordic
• 27:55
  paganism is the belief in the Nordic deities.
• 28:00
  But Heathenry being a subset of Nordic paganism, has a very
• 28:04
  strong animistic bend to it. It acknowledges the presence of
• 28:09
  ancestry. It acknowledges the presence of
• 28:11
  landscape and, you know, house spirits and familial lineage
• 28:16
  guardians. And like this far more
• 28:18
  interconnected and ecological mode of spirituality as as yeah,
• 28:23
  it's, it's, I think animism is the really the key that has
• 28:27
  unlocked most of my spiritual development over the time that I
• 28:32
  spent on this path is, is leaning into that side of it.
• 28:35
  Obviously the the stories of, you know, the myths and the
• 28:38
  sagas, the heroes and the deities kind of pull you into
• 28:42
  it. But when you actually start to
• 28:43
  get boots in the ground and set down roots, it really is like
• 28:46
  spiritual as opposed to define stuff that really gets me going
• 28:50
  these days. No, that's a.
• 28:53
  That's a keen observation. It's one of the things that I've
• 28:57
  lean towards talking about more so then the stories, then the
• 29:01
  gods, then our relationship with the divine, with the sacred,
• 29:04
  Because as as important as those things are, you know, how a
• 29:10
  group of people or how even an individual connects with
• 29:13
  divinity, it is is it is important.
• 29:17
  And it's probably the most popular thing that gets seen
• 29:20
  because of the sagas, because of the myths, you know, things that
• 29:23
  have been written down over the years.
• 29:26
  And you know, you hear all these cool stories about Odin and Thor
• 29:30
  and Freyr and this and that. And so like you say, it kind of
• 29:33
  pulls you in. But I, but I highly agree and
• 29:37
  suspect that that ancient heathens were more in tune with
• 29:40
  their local landscape and, and the spirits that coexist around
• 29:44
  them. And this is this is reflected in
• 29:47
  in the sagas too, Like we, we, we see plenty of examples of how
• 29:51
  important it was for the locals, the the human locals to be in
• 29:57
  good standing with the spirit of the land or the spirits of the
• 30:01
  land. It was, it was an important
• 30:04
  thing. They didn't want to upset the
• 30:05
  veytir, the whites of the land, because if they did, it was, it
• 30:09
  was bad for them. So.
• 30:12
  Yeah, pull the figurehead off your prow as you come into the
• 30:15
  harbor 'cause you're going to scare all the spirits and you're
• 30:17
  going to ruin the harvest. Yeah, there's, there's so much
• 30:20
  of it. Right.
• 30:22
  And I was also talking to another heathen who I believe
• 30:26
  is, are, are you familiar with Scott Shell, Doctor Scott Shell?
• 30:30
  I have seen his name around and I I believe I've watched him on
• 30:34
  a couple shows but never his own if he has one.
• 30:37
  Yeah, he's got a YouTube channel and it's a bit of a, a obscured
• 30:43
  name, like the it's not easy to remember.
• 30:45
  So something like Germanic Heathenry, but it's not Germanic
• 30:48
  Heathenry. It's I'll, I'll have to link it
• 30:51
  for, for those, but I have had him on the show a couple of
• 30:53
  times and he is also a, an Illinois, I believe, an Illinois
• 30:59
  resident. He's he's, he's very Saxon
• 31:03
  heathen. He is a Saxon heathen and he and
• 31:06
  he's and he's, he leans more towards like the continental
• 31:10
  Germanic side of things rather than the Norse or Scandinavian
• 31:15
  side of things. But one of the things that I
• 31:17
  remember keying in on with talking with him was how, you
• 31:24
  know, our relationship with the spirits of the land.
• 31:27
  You know, just because we're on, you know, let's say continental
• 31:32
  United State land. The spirits of the land differ
• 31:36
  from region to region. So for example, you were born or
• 31:41
  raised in, in North Texas, OK, the spirits of that land are not
• 31:46
  the same as the spirits of the land in Central Illinois.
• 31:49
  And which are might also differ from the spirits of the land in
• 31:53
  Middle Tennessee and the spirits of Appalachia or the Rocky
• 31:57
  Mountains or the Pacific Northwest or the Panhandle of
• 32:00
  Florida or this or that, right. So I was wanting to ask you in
• 32:04
  your travels, like you, you mentioned, you know, but
• 32:06
  starting off in Texas and going to the UK and coming back and
• 32:09
  settling up, settling roots or setting up roots in Illinois.
• 32:13
  Is that something that you feel is a key thing to, to, to be
• 32:18
  aware of? It's, it's, it's not this
• 32:20
  universal all spirit spirit. It's it's, it's intricate and
• 32:24
  it's unique to those the location.
• 32:28
  Absolutely. So it's it's fun that you say
• 32:32
  that they are so different between North Texas and
• 32:34
  Illinois. I do actually feel a lot of
• 32:35
  continuity between the two. The part of Texas that I'm from
• 32:38
  is like the southernmost tip of the Great Plains.
• 32:42
  And if you then, you know, follow that continuum up across,
• 32:46
  you know, the continent. I've, I've always been a big fan
• 32:50
  of prairies. Prairies have always really
• 32:52
  called to me as, as a beautiful and biodiverse ecosystem.
• 32:56
  So I actually felt right at home when I landed up here And it's,
• 33:00
  it's actually quite interesting my, my family lineage that came
• 33:04
  to the United States from Germany.
• 33:07
  They came from Saxon Eltenburg and moved to Mendota, IL, which
• 33:13
  is like an hour and a half northwest of where I live now.
• 33:18
  And my family was there for four or five generations before they
• 33:21
  moved to Chicago. And then my grandfather joined
• 33:24
  the Air Force. And then, you know, my family
• 33:26
  was everywhere. But, you know, I have, I have
• 33:30
  roots here. So it does kind of feel that,
• 33:32
  you know, it's not my direct parents.
• 33:34
  But if you go back deeper, you know, I've got ancestors who are
• 33:38
  buried in this ground, and I do feel a connection to this place
• 33:42
  in a way that I didn't expect to.
• 33:43
  I didn't expect to like Illinois nearly as much as I do.
• 33:47
  But it's so very, very true that places have different spirits to
• 33:52
  them. And I think a big part of my
• 33:56
  personal path has been learning to listen to that.
• 34:00
  Not to come in with some idea of what I want a place to be and
• 34:05
  what I want to do in a space, but to allow that space to tell
• 34:09
  me what it is and what it needs. And that requires attention that
• 34:15
  I think a lot of people don't engage with very deeply these
• 34:19
  days. Actually returning to the same
• 34:22
  place, you know, throughout the year, not just to see a snapshot
• 34:26
  of it, but to watch it move through it's cycle and watch
• 34:30
  different things bloom in different times.
• 34:32
  You know, between April and October, there are probably 20
• 34:37
  new species every week of perennial wildflower that go
• 34:42
  into flower. So you can go to the same place
• 34:45
  in a Prairie two weeks apart and it looks entirely different.
• 34:49
  And so learning to like very closely tune into a landscape
• 34:53
  and learn what it has to tell you is really important to me,
• 34:58
  both spiritually and also in my work.
• 35:00
  Because, you know, that's, that's what I do is I, I look at
• 35:03
  land and, you know, find the community, find, listen to what
• 35:08
  it needs. And then, you know, tell its
• 35:10
  stewards, Hey, I'm not going to force you to do this, but this
• 35:13
  is what the land has told me. So, you know, I'd, I think it
• 35:17
  would be happier and you would be happier and certainly the,
• 35:20
  your, your chest freezer with your deer meat in it will be
• 35:22
  much happier if you, you know, do XY and Z.
• 35:27
  Yeah, that's incredible. I, I, I hear what you're saying
• 35:31
  and I think of another like a personal reflection on what
• 35:36
  you're saying is because you're talking about how the landscape,
• 35:40
  you're returning to the landscape at different times.
• 35:42
  You're going to experience it in different ways because of like,
• 35:46
  you know, the flora and the fauna and everything that that
• 35:48
  happens or you're going to have different things happening at
• 35:50
  different times. So you're going to be returning
• 35:53
  to, for, for, I guess most right.
• 35:56
  Oh, I'm going back to the same place, but you're not seeing the
• 36:01
  same or you're not, you're not seeing it in the same way.
• 36:04
  And it reminds me of where I live being on the river.
• 36:10
  You know, I go to AI go to the river and I visit the river
• 36:14
  often, but even though I'm stepping at the same, like I'm
• 36:18
  walking down the same path and I'm going to the same spot.
• 36:21
  And I'm, you know, I could probably do it blindfolded
• 36:23
  because I've been there so many times, but I'm not experiencing
• 36:26
  the same version of the river because the river is always
• 36:29
  moving And there's this change in the ecology and it's every
• 36:33
  like from 2nd to 2nd the, the, the way that the water moves
• 36:37
  and, and trees that come down or this or that, right?
• 36:39
  There's always this ever changing environment and it, it,
• 36:46
  it makes me think of from like a spiritual aspect.
• 36:51
  You know, we, we, we talk about sometimes as, as, as living
• 36:54
  between realms or experiencing things that are a place between
• 36:58
  a place or time outside of time. Or, you know, some of these like
• 37:02
  what, what, what some might consider like mystical woo woo
• 37:05
  nonsense. But when you look at it from,
• 37:08
  from that perspective, like it, it's, it's manifesting itself
• 37:12
  in, in reality, before our very eyes, we're, we're seeing a
• 37:16
  landscape change constantly. And so it's never really truly
• 37:20
  the same place. It, it's, it's different, it,
• 37:25
  it's changing, it's evolving. And we're, and we're
• 37:27
  experiencing life in our lives. And we're, we're, we're
• 37:31
  intertwined in that whole experience, you know?
• 37:35
  Absolutely, man. There there is an ecological
• 37:38
  term that's called dynamic equilibrium that is truly to me
• 37:43
  like the singular most foundational thing that called
• 37:46
  me to either. Dynamic equilibrium is explained
• 37:50
  as the idea that things are constantly in motion and things
• 37:54
  are constantly changing, but they have a state that they tend
• 37:58
  towards and things can disrupt that.
• 38:01
  But you know, if it's not a absolutely catastrophic
• 38:05
  disruption, for instance, Ragnarok, things will reinsert
• 38:11
  themselves and things will return to their patterns of
• 38:14
  stability. Everything is constantly
• 38:16
  whirling and changing in cycles. But there is this sort of axis,
• 38:20
  there's this center point in this state of order that kind of
• 38:24
  holds it all together. And like that as the conception
• 38:28
  of what deities are in Heathenry, right?
• 38:30
  The word asir being derived from the word OSS, which means pillar
• 38:34
  as these like static foundational forces that, yeah,
• 38:39
  in on the minor scale, things are changing every day.
• 38:42
  You know, there's chaotic ups and downs and fluctuations one
• 38:46
  way and the other, but there is this deeper axis around which
• 38:50
  everything spins and everything is held in relation with
• 38:54
  everything else. So, yeah, the idea that you
• 38:57
  never step in the same river twice very much to me relates to
• 39:01
  that. And the idea that, yeah, you
• 39:02
  know, you walk out in the woods and every single day is
• 39:05
  different than the one before. But a lot of the processes are
• 39:08
  the same. You know, the Maple is still the
• 39:11
  first tree for its SAP to run when the cross the crust of the
• 39:15
  frost breaks. And, you know, the Hickory, even
• 39:18
  though it grows slowly, will always grow to be the tallest
• 39:21
  tree in its forest. So like, there are certain laws
• 39:24
  that are written in the land. There are certain things that
• 39:26
  always happen, even if the smaller scale changes, you know,
• 39:31
  sort of we get distracted by those, but they're like deeper
• 39:36
  movements and deeper resonances that kind of hold the whole
• 39:38
  thing together. Yeah, the macro versus the
• 39:41
  micro. Very much so.
• 39:43
  Yeah, have you have you had experiences with locally like
• 39:50
  people, the people in your local communities that have found
• 39:54
  themselves time weird with your, your, you know, whether it's you
• 39:58
  or, or Hootie or the, the, the people that do like your
• 40:01
  meetups, your moots, your, your rituals, you know, engaging in,
• 40:05
  you know, grassroots level type Heathenry has has this has this
• 40:12
  view influenced? The the the process in which you
• 40:17
  guys heathen. You know how?
• 40:18
  How heathen. Yeah, dude.
• 40:20
  Oh, it's it's foundational to how I heathen.
• 40:23
  Yeah. So landscape is everything for
• 40:27
  me. And I think you had an episode
• 40:30
  recently where you, you were talking about, I think
• 40:33
  Wolfmother sent you in a, a bunch of of stuff about, you
• 40:38
  know, establishing traditions and she was talking about
• 40:41
  calendar working and you were talking about calendar working.
• 40:44
  And I was like, oh, I hope he asks me about my ritual
• 40:47
  structure because yeah, I mean, it's, it's exactly that.
• 40:52
  It's the we get together every full moon if we can to do a
• 40:57
  working because I respect and appreciate that.
• 41:00
  Like textually, we see there are like 3 high bloats, right?
• 41:04
  There's there's winter nights, there's a Yule and there's cigar
• 41:06
  bloat. But to me, that doesn't feel
• 41:10
  often enough to check in when I can constantly feel the movement
• 41:15
  of spirit around me. I can constantly see as the moon
• 41:19
  waxes and wanes. I I feel the earth, you know,
• 41:23
  inhaling and exhaling like the cycles of light and darkness.
• 41:27
  It's it's a constant dance and I feel like I need more like
• 41:32
  regular and ritual establishment and just like you said, time
• 41:37
  outside of time, right, which seems like a like, like you
• 41:40
  said, a little mystical Woo woo there, but it but it is really
• 41:43
  true. You know, we can, I think if you
• 41:46
  very easily, especially in our digital modern age, you can go,
• 41:50
  you know, weeks, months without seeing the stars.
• 41:55
  You can just if you just look at your screen for your entire
• 41:59
  life, you will not notice when the first seed head of bluestem
• 42:03
  arrives for the summer. You won't see when the first
• 42:05
  leaf changes. But because of what I get to do
• 42:08
  for work, I get to do that. And I, I do feel incredibly
• 42:11
  blessed and incredibly lucky that I get to exist with
• 42:15
  landscape in this way. But yeah, our entire ritual
• 42:20
  calendar is based around the idea that every month there is a
• 42:24
  new movement in the land, and that is the presence of a new
• 42:28
  day. It will be making itself known.
• 42:30
  We're big believers in the idea of gods of limited access, right
• 42:34
  That, you know. Odin.
• 42:36
  Is always, he's always out there, he's always doing
• 42:39
  something, but he's not always at your fire.
• 42:42
  But you know, there are, there are certain deities, especially
• 42:45
  the ones that are tied to more naturalistic concepts like the
• 42:47
  Vonnier and some of the elder generations of the Assier,
• 42:51
  right? We have our ritual to Thor in
• 42:54
  March because that is when the thunderstorms arrive, and if
• 42:59
  you've ever been to the Plains during a thunderstorm, they are
• 43:02
  serious. Dude, I've been through, I've
• 43:05
  been through some hot and heavy storms driving through the the
• 43:09
  Midwest, the Great Plains that made me feel like I was, I was,
• 43:12
  I was being caught up in either the Wild Hunt or Ragnarok was
• 43:14
  happening. Like it was dicey to say the
• 43:17
  least. Yeah, absolutely.
• 43:19
  I mean, and so and so that's, I mean, that's, that's it for us,
• 43:21
  right? You know, we have the ritual to
• 43:23
  honor him when we feel his presence in the landscape,
• 43:27
  right? We have our ones that are more
• 43:30
  oriented towards agricultural deities when people are
• 43:33
  planting. We have ones that are related
• 43:35
  to, you know, deities of sunlight and threshold space
• 43:41
  during the solstice season, the equinoxes, but not the actual
• 43:45
  solstice, the equinox, whichever moon is closest to that.
• 43:49
  So yeah, I mean, it's like you, like you said, you know how we
• 43:53
  heathen is entirely that. And that was one of the things
• 43:58
  that Kevin and I actually talked about really early on is that,
• 44:02
  you know, during our first meet up, they're like, well, So what
• 44:04
  holidays do you like? Well, like you'll, OK, when do
• 44:07
  you celebrate it? It's like, well, you know, we
• 44:09
  celebrated on the winter solstice because that's when
• 44:10
  Eagle is turns out you do a little bit more reading.
• 44:14
  That's not actually when eagle is.
• 44:16
  I mean, and I'm not here to dunk on people who do solstice You'll
• 44:19
  I like solstice you'll and I, I, you know, we definitely get a
• 44:22
  lot more clicks around that time of year, but we didn't, it
• 44:29
  didn't quite feel right. The Asatru calendar that was
• 44:32
  presented to us by like, you know, the national organization.
• 44:36
  I've, I've forgotten the name, but if you like Google a saw
• 44:40
  true, you know, calendar, it'll come up with essentially the
• 44:44
  wheel of the year with a bunch of, you know, feast days that
• 44:47
  they've picked for heroes, right.
• 44:49
  And they're all, you know, connected to the the Solu year.
• 44:53
  And that's not how our historical time reckoning was
• 44:55
  done. You know, the Archidons did
• 44:57
  everything by the moon that goes all the way back to Tacitus, you
• 45:02
  know, talking about how all of the rituals and all of the
• 45:04
  things are done either beneath new or full moons.
• 45:07
  So very early on, we decided that we wanted to take a new
• 45:12
  approach to designing a ritual calendar.
• 45:15
  And fundamentally, it was connecting it to our landscape,
• 45:18
  which was the most important thing.
• 45:20
  You know, I don't want to do a charming of the plow in February
• 45:24
  because no one's using their damn plow in February, right?
• 45:27
  Right. So yeah, you know, that is
• 45:30
  really foundational. Yeah, God, you know what I mean?
• 45:35
  I'm so glad that you came on the show to talk about this and
• 45:37
  other things that we're going to get into.
• 45:39
  This is super refreshing to hear that there's people out here in
• 45:43
  the United States with a mind to respect the old traditions, the
• 45:51
  old ways of, like you say, how Tacitus documents what the
• 45:55
  Germanic tribes. They, they, they did things
• 45:59
  based around the cycle of the moon.
• 46:01
  That's where we get our word month from is, is the moon
• 46:04
  right? So to, to observe important
• 46:09
  things, whether it's, you know, have a thing or a ritual or
• 46:13
  whatever at a full or new moon is very historically heathen.
• 46:19
  It is absolutely rooted in historical heathen stuff that we
• 46:24
  know of and to make it fit into the modern day, you know,
• 46:31
  practicing old ways in modern times is kind of the thing of,
• 46:33
  of Midgard musings and, and the random heathen Rams.
• 46:35
  By practicing old ways in modern times.
• 46:38
  It I, I feel like what you're describing, Chris is like a
• 46:41
  beautiful representation of that.
• 46:45
  It's, it's calling back to these, these known old ways of,
• 46:48
  of connecting with spirit, connecting with the sacred deity
• 46:53
  and making it fit into a modern dynamic.
• 46:58
  And it sounds like from what you're saying that it, it, it
• 47:00
  was established early on with your group and it's worked.
• 47:03
  And you and you are continuing in this, in this, in this
• 47:06
  fashion, right? Like this isn't something came
• 47:09
  up with and thought of and then it fizzled out and now you're
• 47:12
  doing all Willy nilly like you. You've maintained that
• 47:15
  established way of doing things, right?
• 47:18
  Yeah, very much so. And it's, and I will say just
• 47:21
  like dynamic equilibrium, it is constantly evolving, right.
• 47:24
  You know, I will, I will be out in, you know, walking something
• 47:28
  and I'll, I'll see some tree or some bird and it will spark
• 47:32
  something. And I'm like, oh, I got to go
• 47:33
  write that down. You know, just another layer to
• 47:37
  how we are feeling the movement of what is November.
• 47:40
  Well, you know, it's, it's 30 days on the Gregorian calendar.
• 47:45
  But what is the Beaver moon? Because that's different.
• 47:49
  And what movement are you feeling in the land then?
• 47:52
  And what are we seeing? And you know, what is, you know,
• 47:55
  what is the Beaver doing? But you know, what are the owls
• 47:57
  doing? What are the voles doing?
• 47:58
  What are the flowers in my garden doing?
• 48:00
  What are the trees doing? Like all of these different
• 48:03
  communities, And if you are an animist, all of these
• 48:07
  communities of spiritual beings with their own sentience, their
• 48:11
  own agency, their own way of being in the world, how are they
• 48:15
  responding to these movements in the land?
• 48:17
  And how do we honour that? And how do we enact that?
• 48:20
  Because, you know, a lot of human cultures, that's what it
• 48:24
  means to be human. It's something that we grapple
• 48:27
  with a lot in the modern West is like, well, what's the meaning
• 48:30
  of life? It's a very adolescent question.
• 48:32
  If you come from an indigenous, you know, spiritual tradition,
• 48:37
  you know, the meaning is to offer back.
• 48:40
  Humans are the custodial species and we are those who came
• 48:43
  second. The world was fine as it was,
• 48:46
  and then humans arrived on the scene.
• 48:48
  And it's not our job to enforce what we want the world to be on
• 48:51
  the world. It's our job to listen to the
• 48:53
  world and to offer back to it is the way that I see things.
• 48:58
  Wow, Yeah, that dude, that's so, I mean, it is, it's it's so
• 49:02
  refreshing. And I hope everybody that
• 49:04
  listens and watches this really takes to heart what's being said
• 49:08
  here today because what a way to what a way to kick off Season 6.
• 49:13
  First of all, these are, these are top and, and maybe I'm being
• 49:16
  a bit biased because these are topics that are so close to my
• 49:19
  heart. So much of my individual
• 49:23
  spirituality is informed by the very things that you're so
• 49:28
  eloquently Speaking of and that you have a profession in.
• 49:31
  And it's, it's beautiful to hear you talk about it in a way that
• 49:34
  really speaks to me. But it, it, it is important for
• 49:37
  others, I think, to, to really like, listen to what Chris is
• 49:39
  saying everybody, because as, as as much as I'm never the one to
• 49:44
  say like, Hey, you, this is what you should do, You know, to be a
• 49:47
  good heathen, to be a good. This is that whatever, as much
• 49:50
  as I'm not the person to say that, I'm also here to say
• 49:54
  there's things about this that are are beneficial.
• 50:00
  Tap into it, explore this aspect of things if you haven't already
• 50:07
  and, and, and, and discover the benefits that come of it, right?
• 50:12
  It, it, it, it's natural. And, and when you tap into that
• 50:16
  and connect with that, again, not trying to control or dictate
• 50:22
  the way you want things to be done, but, but, but really
• 50:24
  connecting with the way things are in the natural landscape and
• 50:28
  in the natural world, wherever you are, 'cause I know people
• 50:31
  listen and, and, and, you know, watch this show or listen to
• 50:35
  this show, you know, outside of the continental United States,
• 50:41
  the same rules apply to wherever you are geographically.
• 50:45
  It's, it's nature's law. I, I think, right, Chris, like
• 50:47
  it. It doesn't matter whether you're
• 50:49
  in Illinois or whether you're in the United States or whether
• 50:52
  you're in in the UK or, or Scandinavia or whatever like
• 50:56
  these, these are, it's, it's kind of like this universal law
• 51:00
  or, or set of rules maybe. And that may be like making it
• 51:06
  sound a bit more dogmatic than it should be, which I'm not
• 51:08
  trying to do, but I think we understand like this is just the
• 51:11
  way nature is. It's an unspoken rule, spoken
• 51:15
  law. People get dicey around the word
• 51:18
  law, I think, but yeah, no, I you're, you're saying no, but
• 51:22
  Aboriginal Australians use that word and they mean it exactly
• 51:27
  that. Yeah, there is a law written in
• 51:28
  the land and that also exists in Nordic tradition.
• 51:31
  I I don't know how I I think you, you're quite familiar with
• 51:35
  Ruin Yarna Rasmussen, who owns the Nordic and What Exam YouTube
• 51:39
  channel. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:41
  So one of one of his videos recently was talking about the
• 51:44
  motto of a lot of like it's written on the Danish court
• 51:48
  building. It's an old Norse phrase and it
• 51:51
  says by law shall the land be built, which, you know, makes
• 51:56
  sense for, you know, when you're making a court, right.
• 51:59
  When you're building a nation, of course.
• 52:01
  Yeah, that's that's rather self-evident that, you know, a
• 52:03
  nation has laws. That's part of it.
• 52:07
  But there is a deeper meaning there.
• 52:09
  That is the land has its own law.
• 52:12
  And by aligning our society with the law of what that land is, is
• 52:18
  how we prevent that land from becoming desolate is the sort of
• 52:23
  full extension. I don't remember the old Norse
• 52:26
  so don't don't sue me. Yeah, I don't either, but it
• 52:30
  makes me think of are you familiar with Rudyard Kipling?
• 52:35
  Yes, yeah, the law of the jungle.
• 52:37
  Law of the jungle, man. The law of the jungle.
• 52:39
  Absolutely. The Law of the Jungle is, is a
• 52:41
  is a wonderful poem that I've shared and that that has been
• 52:45
  shared to me. But like the opening line of it,
• 52:49
  like the whole thing is is beautiful, but like the opening
• 52:52
  line of it, like now this is the law of the jungle as old and as
• 52:55
  true as the sky. And the wolf that shall keep it
• 52:59
  may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die as the
• 53:04
  creeper that girdles the tree trunk.
• 53:07
  The law runneth forward and back for the law for the strength of
• 53:13
  the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the
• 53:15
  pack. It, it and then it goes on and
• 53:18
  it's, it's really like, beautiful, like people listening
• 53:20
  and watching whatever, like, you know, do yourself a favor if
• 53:24
  you've never read or or researched Rudyard Kipling's The
• 53:28
  Law of the Jungle. It is good.
• 53:30
  It is. So good and it and it and it
• 53:33
  resonates especially with an animistic perspective or or or
• 53:38
  view of the world as as one might have it.
• 53:41
  And I think it's it's also really important, I think to
• 53:44
  insert here like when we're talking about animism and we're
• 53:47
  talking about, you know, existing in relationship with
• 53:50
  the landscape, it is very easy to take on this sort of like
• 53:55
  kumbaya flavor to it of like we are all one, we are all love and
• 53:59
  light. And you know, I'm going to walk
• 54:02
  out into the woods and I will broadcast my loving kindness to
• 54:05
  all creatures there and they will know not to harm me.
• 54:08
  And if that's the attitude that you take towards animistic
• 54:12
  coexistence, you're going to get eaten by a wild animal.
• 54:15
  Coexistence is not always an easy thing.
• 54:20
  And there is bloodshed, there is death, there is consumption.
• 54:25
  You know, the forest is essentially millennia of dead
• 54:29
  bodies that are piled up on top of each other.
• 54:32
  And everything in the forest wants to starve out everything
• 54:35
  else in the forest for light, with the exception of red oak
• 54:38
  trees, because they feed each other underground through my
• 54:40
  Celia. And we can get into that later
• 54:42
  because it's really cool. Oh.
• 54:43
  Man, talk about a net. You want to talk about a network
• 54:46
  and A and a podcast that that's its own.
• 54:48
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, wood wide web baby.
• 54:52
  But yeah, animism it's it's not this just like sort of peaceful,
• 54:57
  you know, everyone gets along and hold holds hands like it, it
• 55:01
  is intimate and it's sometimes, you know, it involves death.
• 55:05
  But yeah, yeah, I mean, it can be.
• 55:08
  But it's, you know, that's, that is another type of
• 55:11
  interconnection. You know, the the food that
• 55:14
  people eat, you know, everything that you put in your body came
• 55:17
  from the landscape. And that's one of the things I
• 55:19
  talk about as, you know, being a Euro descended person who lives
• 55:23
  in North America. You know, I have ancestors who
• 55:28
  lived in Norway and lived in Germany and lived in Scotland,
• 55:33
  but I don't live there. I lived in Scotland for a while.
• 55:35
  But, you know, I, I I've, I've been to Germany.
• 55:39
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 55:40
  No, I've never, I've never been to Norway.
• 55:42
  So I, I don't feel any great cultural claim to the practices
• 55:46
  that those people are doing now. You know, I am North American,
• 55:49
  you know, regardless of where my genetic ancestry comes from,
• 55:53
  every cell in my body was built by breaking down the soil and
• 55:57
  the vegetation and the animals that are from this continent
• 56:01
  like it is. It is from this land that my
• 56:03
  body has been built. So it is these spirits that I
• 56:07
  honor and that I work with. Yeah, that's important too,
• 56:12
  because again, we're talking about, you know, when we say
• 56:15
  Heathenry it is, it is a recollection of a Germanic, pre
• 56:21
  Christian, Germanic belief system.
• 56:23
  You know, heathens are, are Germanic and, and what does that
• 56:28
  mean? Well, you know, Germanic lands
• 56:30
  and, and so much of what I think happens in in is for North
• 56:35
  Americans is, is they try to put things in places where they
• 56:42
  don't belong because of the title, because of the name,
• 56:45
  because of the, whether it's the story or whatever, you know, so
• 56:50
  like, for example, you know, Vaitir or whites, like this is a
• 56:55
  these are Scandinavian, these are Germanic terms.
• 57:00
  The spirits of our land of, of the North American land wouldn't
• 57:05
  necessarily. And I'm not trying to limit
• 57:08
  spirit to, to, to only recognizing terms that they're,
• 57:12
  you know, words of, of a language, because I feel like
• 57:15
  some of, of that transcends spoken language.
• 57:18
  But at the same time, I also think, OK, well, you know, there
• 57:21
  at no point in time did did Vaitir ever get, you know, the
• 57:26
  the spirit of the land, spirits of the land get, get called
• 57:28
  Veytir here in North America. I don't think maybe way, way,
• 57:32
  way back when, when, when, you know, people immigrated,
• 57:34
  emigrated over here. Maybe.
• 57:36
  But but you know, recently to say, you know, Veytir like, OK,
• 57:42
  sounds cool. You know, we, we see it in some
• 57:44
  Icelandic texts, you know, or whites WIGHTS, right, a Germanic
• 57:50
  term or, or, or old English, right.
• 57:53
  That sounds great, but what is the native term for them?
• 57:58
  You know, it would be like me calling you by a name that
• 58:01
  you're not comfortable with, even though it's an older name
• 58:04
  for you, like, you know, it doesn't really fit for me, you
• 58:07
  know, and I, and I wonder with, with, with so much of our, of
• 58:10
  our, and, and this might be a nice segue into the, the skaldic
• 58:14
  aspect of things. You know, you were talking in
• 58:16
  your e-mail about, you know, skaldic poetry and the, the, the
• 58:20
  use of words of, of communicating things and, and
• 58:27
  you know, are, are, are we trying to, are, are, are we, are
• 58:33
  we using terms and are we using terminologies that, that don't
• 58:37
  really fit the landscape, you know, and, and is that maybe
• 58:40
  part of the reason why there's this disconnect for some people,
• 58:45
  you know, well, maybe you're calling them by something that
• 58:47
  they are not familiar with. So from a skaldic or a poetic
• 58:52
  angle, maybe there's this, you know, maybe there's this,
• 58:57
  there's this need to learn the language of the land and and
• 59:01
  learn the language of the locals that they're more familiar with
• 59:05
  and then and that they're more comfortable with.
• 59:08
  Just the thought that I had just randomly right now as I talk
• 59:10
  through it all, which is. Oh, no, it's a, it's a great
• 59:13
  one. And it's, it's, it's a sticky
• 59:15
  thread to start polling at because you get into very, you
• 59:18
  get into very dicey territory very quickly when you talk about
• 59:21
  being a Euro descendant person who's trying to engage with
• 59:24
  indigenous North American spiritualities.
• 59:27
  Because there's a lot of practices that are closed and
• 59:29
  there's a lot of people who just assume that indigeneity as the
• 59:34
  sort of backdrop for their own self actualization.
• 59:37
  You know, like I'm on my spiritual journey.
• 59:40
  So I would love it if you would just, you know, give me all of
• 59:43
  your sacred cultural knowledge so that I can use it.
• 59:47
  And you know, you can you can get really into some stepping on
• 59:51
  toes territory. But no, I think I think you're
• 59:54
  getting at something that is very real and it's the idea
• 59:58
  that, you know, deities and the ideas of these beings from the
• 1:00:03
  Nordic, you know, spiritual tradition.
• 1:00:05
  They're certainly place based, right?
• 1:00:08
  You know the the stories that we have of the gods and you know of
• 1:00:13
  people having ancestral burial mounds and sacred Groves.
• 1:00:17
  That they would conduct their rights in those were definitely
• 1:00:20
  localized to the Scandinavian, Germanic, you know, landscape.
• 1:00:24
  But there was also this underlying cultural idea that
• 1:00:27
  those things could move and that we carried our gods with us
• 1:00:30
  wherever we went. You know, the settlers of
• 1:00:33
  Iceland would bring the central poles of their homesteads in
• 1:00:37
  Norway. They'd cast them into the sea.
• 1:00:40
  And they would say, spirits decide where my farmstead will
• 1:00:43
  be built and they would physically bring their
• 1:00:46
  representations of their ancestry with them.
• 1:00:49
  And then they would, you know, have ceremonies of land
• 1:00:52
  claiming, which is not so much like a walk the perimeter and
• 1:00:56
  say all you spirits stay out of here because this is my area
• 1:01:00
  now. It is AI am the new steward of
• 1:01:03
  this land. Let's be in relationship.
• 1:01:06
  I'm going to, you know, start this with offerings.
• 1:01:09
  I'm going to erect my boundary and those who you know, do not
• 1:01:12
  wish I'll upon me are welcome to come, you know, eat of this
• 1:01:16
  food, be warmed by this fire. And I don't think you
• 1:01:19
  necessarily have to like I don't think I have any business
• 1:01:22
  learning Miamia to like conduct rituals in the original language
• 1:01:28
  of the historical stewards of the land that I now live in.
• 1:01:33
  But it is very important to look at what they did and why they
• 1:01:38
  did it. Like, I should not be performing
• 1:01:41
  a Sundance because, like, that is a sacred Lakota, right?
• 1:01:45
  That is, you know, their culture has like obligations that are
• 1:01:51
  part of that, you know, cultural taboos and protocols and the
• 1:01:56
  sense that, you know, what you're going to do with that
• 1:01:58
  vision that you receive is for your community and it benefits
• 1:02:01
  the people. There is an entire sort of
• 1:02:04
  architecture around that ritual technology.
• 1:02:07
  And I shouldn't do that stuff because I'm not Lakota, right?
• 1:02:10
  I'm not offering back to that community.
• 1:02:13
  I was not raised in that community.
• 1:02:15
  But what were they doing? They were doing a vision quest
• 1:02:18
  that was, at its root, founded in physical, strenuous work.
• 1:02:25
  And it was done at the hottest time of the year because the sun
• 1:02:29
  was the thing that was essentially like boiling you
• 1:02:33
  until you receive that vision. And that's something that we can
• 1:02:37
  work with, you know, hailing the four directions.
• 1:02:42
  If you're looking at Lakota tradition that has so much
• 1:02:46
  wrapped up in it, like if you look at the medicine wheel,
• 1:02:48
  there are cycles of life, cycles of land.
• 1:02:51
  There are plant teachers associated with those
• 1:02:53
  directions. There are spiritual beings
• 1:02:55
  associated with those directions.
• 1:02:57
  There are names and there are protocols for doing that.
• 1:03:00
  And I'm not trying to touch any of that stuff, but seeing the
• 1:03:03
  directions as animate beings, Nordic tradition has that.
• 1:03:07
  We've got 4 dwarves named North-south, east and West.
• 1:03:11
  The moon is, you know, a male spirit.
• 1:03:16
  The sun is a female spirit. These things that are common
• 1:03:20
  across multiple cultures. I can look at the Lakota stuff
• 1:03:24
  and say that's all very interesting.
• 1:03:26
  I'm going to put my cultural framework over that in a way
• 1:03:32
  that is not extractive and appropriative.
• 1:03:34
  I hope, right. It's appreciative if anything.
• 1:03:38
  Yeah, because there, there is that.
• 1:03:40
  Yeah, there's, and I've had these conversations too with
• 1:03:43
  people about appreciation versus, you know, appropriation,
• 1:03:48
  you know, things that have been, we can say, you know, there's,
• 1:03:54
  there's syncretism, there's nuance across various cultures.
• 1:03:57
  Like I said, you know, you can go across all 7 continents and,
• 1:04:00
  and, and see similarities and nuance to things when it comes
• 1:04:04
  to pre Christian indigenous beliefs or, or, or local Pagan
• 1:04:08
  beliefs or whatever. Like you go back far enough and
• 1:04:11
  you start to see they had a name for this thing that we call in,
• 1:04:16
  you know, Scandinavia. You know, they, they, they
• 1:04:18
  called it, you know, Odin or Thor and, and, and in, in other
• 1:04:23
  cultures and in other parts of the world, the similar spirit of
• 1:04:26
  the similar deification of an element or something was called
• 1:04:29
  something else. So yes, I, I, I, I, I feel what
• 1:04:35
  you're saying that this, you know, appreciation of it.
• 1:04:40
  It it's not trying to appropriate, it's not trying.
• 1:04:42
  You're not, you're trying to do anything that is closed off to a
• 1:04:45
  culture, closed off to a, a belief that is, that is not
• 1:04:49
  yours. You're finding the similarities,
• 1:04:51
  the, the, the, the syncretism, the nuance and living it out.
• 1:04:58
  You know, I've talked to people before how Heathenry is a, is a
• 1:05:01
  living tradition. It's a, it's a living way.
• 1:05:06
  And yeah. I don't, I don't buy sage from
• 1:05:08
  Hot Topic, but I do use smoke to clear my ritual space.
• 1:05:12
  So, you know, I'm not doing that sort of pop bundled pseudo
• 1:05:16
  indigenous, the thing that they've got going over there.
• 1:05:20
  But, you know, I, I see that's a technology that is a ritual
• 1:05:24
  technology that is employed by a lot of cultures.
• 1:05:26
  So I feel OK, you know, choosing my own plants to do it and doing
• 1:05:31
  it in my own way that I'm not, you know, I'm not hurting a
• 1:05:35
  plant that is, you know, endangered to the point where
• 1:05:38
  it's traditional stewards are having a hard time sourcing it
• 1:05:42
  because so much of it is being shipped internationally so that
• 1:05:45
  other people can use it. You know, there, there are
• 1:05:48
  problematic ways of of doing that.
• 1:05:51
  And I try to stay away from those.
• 1:05:53
  But there's a book that I think everybody who is animist should
• 1:05:57
  read, and it's called Braiding Sweetgrass by an author called
• 1:06:02
  Robin Wall Kimmerer. She's an ethnobotanist and a
• 1:06:07
  member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.
• 1:06:10
  And she has a chapter of her book that is called Becoming
• 1:06:12
  Indigenous to Place. And the idea is not to role play
• 1:06:17
  as an Indigenous person. And it is certainly not to claim
• 1:06:20
  the moniker of Indigeneity, but there is this idea of connecting
• 1:06:24
  with a landscape in a way that it matters that you are there
• 1:06:30
  and you care for that land in a way that your descendants can
• 1:06:36
  still live in that land. And it has not been sucked dry
• 1:06:39
  of all the water, oil and timber that it has.
• 1:06:43
  But it has been related with in a way that makes it last and in
• 1:06:47
  a way that is inherently respectful and honoring towards
• 1:06:51
  that lands own processes like we talked earlier.
• 1:06:54
  And that's with it, right? Like, that is the sort of
• 1:06:57
  fundamental thing that holds it all together is the land has its
• 1:07:02
  own processes and the people who stewarded this land and still
• 1:07:07
  do, right? Indigenous people are by no
• 1:07:08
  means a relic of the past, but the traditional stewards of this
• 1:07:12
  part of the country, they had a way that they did things.
• 1:07:15
  They had spirits that they honored.
• 1:07:17
  They had sacred plants that they worked with.
• 1:07:19
  And I am now someone who is charged with stewardship of this
• 1:07:23
  place through circumstance of my birth and the course of my life.
• 1:07:27
  So I can either do it in a way that honors that, or I can do it
• 1:07:31
  in a way that I said, Oh well, I want to do it this way.
• 1:07:34
  And I think that my way is better because of mine and I I
• 1:07:38
  go towards the former. I think that's a great way of,
• 1:07:42
  of doing it. I love, I love the fact that
• 1:07:45
  you're sharing all this and, and and imparting this, this
• 1:07:49
  knowledge because braiding sweetgrass again, I've I've
• 1:07:52
  heard that source being referenced in in a lot of
• 1:07:55
  different places. So to hear it here on this show
• 1:08:00
  kind of validates it's it's it's good stuff.
• 1:08:04
  So yeah. Oh, it's great stuff.
• 1:08:06
  I will be looking into that. I'll probably link something
• 1:08:10
  down in the show notes or or, you know, the description for
• 1:08:13
  people that that are interested just as a QikLink to to to get a
• 1:08:17
  copy of it if this interests you.
• 1:08:21
  You know, we also had a couple other things.
• 1:08:27
  And like I said, Chris, like this is this is a topic that,
• 1:08:29
  you know, I could, I could probably, I could probably fill
• 1:08:32
  half of a season of of the show with with topics like this,
• 1:08:38
  because it is. So, you know, we've been going
• 1:08:40
  for an hour and 15 minutes almost and it's been mostly
• 1:08:43
  about this. So I do, I do want to give some
• 1:08:47
  attention to another thing we haven't really dived into too
• 1:08:52
  much or delve into too much with regards to because one of the
• 1:08:59
  things that you mentioned in the in the e-mail you want you would
• 1:09:02
  be happy to talk about like Skaldak poetry, things that you
• 1:09:06
  took, I think you had a year long study of the Voluspa.
• 1:09:11
  I did. Yeah.
• 1:09:13
  And so as, as we're kind of like transitioning towards the tail
• 1:09:17
  end of the episode and and not not to diminish value of
• 1:09:20
  anything that we've already talked about, but I do want to
• 1:09:23
  see like, what was where do you come from the angle that you
• 1:09:27
  come from with, with with skaldic poetry, 'cause I have AI
• 1:09:30
  have a bit of a soft spot with with that.
• 1:09:33
  I've shared some things where I've just felt poetically
• 1:09:35
  inspired to to follow a alliterative meter of poetry in,
• 1:09:42
  in that form that we see in some of the skaldic works, skaldic
• 1:09:48
  texts. So, yeah, what was, what was,
• 1:09:51
  what was your take or or your angle on on mentioning that and,
• 1:09:54
  and and how we want to talk about it here.
• 1:09:56
  Oh, sure. Well, in my tribe that I
• 1:09:59
  practice in Vagersleta, we're we're based here in central
• 1:10:03
  Illinois. And we all have little roles
• 1:10:05
  that we assigned ourselves or sort of voted on when we were
• 1:10:09
  forming the tribe. And I got picked to be sculled.
• 1:10:15
  So that was a title that was given to me.
• 1:10:19
  And when we were all sort of looking at, you know, what is
• 1:10:23
  it, what, what do you need to do to make a heathen tribe?
• 1:10:25
  You know, we, we probably better have someone who leads ritual
• 1:10:28
  and, you know, we, we probably better have someone who's in,
• 1:10:31
  you know, in charge of this thing or in charge of that
• 1:10:33
  thing. And when we were coming into it,
• 1:10:36
  I lived in a little studio apartment in Champaign.
• 1:10:41
  So I had no ritual space that was outside my house and Hootie,
• 1:10:45
  who's our our Govi, had an actual vey at his house and
• 1:10:47
  we're like, okay, well, you know, Hootie should probably be
• 1:10:50
  Govi because I would feel really weird if I were to walk into
• 1:10:54
  somebody elses established vey and start slinging my hammer
• 1:10:58
  around and be like, Oh, well, now I'm going to lead rituals.
• 1:11:00
  So we were trying to, you know, we were trying to find a place
• 1:11:05
  for me. And I have always been really
• 1:11:07
  big into stories. I was big into musical theatre
• 1:11:11
  when I was younger and I grew up very deeply tied with the Boy
• 1:11:15
  Scouts. So campfire stories and campfire
• 1:11:19
  songs and stuff has always been just like something that's very
• 1:11:22
  important to me. So we're looking and we decided
• 1:11:26
  that it should be the role of somebody to ensure that Old
• 1:11:31
  Norse makes it into the rituals and that if we can develop
• 1:11:35
  kennings and if we can, you know, have someone who preserves
• 1:11:41
  the story of the tribe and like, you know, holds our lore of like
• 1:11:47
  our own tribal traditions as well as like mythic telling.
• 1:11:53
  Mythic telling and retelling of stories is really foundational
• 1:11:56
  to a lot of spiritualities. Like it's hard to do nowadays
• 1:11:59
  because like, you go to a bookstore and you look Norse
• 1:12:01
  myths, right? And you just get a giant tome
• 1:12:04
  and it's got them all there. But think, before all these
• 1:12:07
  stories were written down, they probably weren't just bandied
• 1:12:11
  about. Like you would be told the story
• 1:12:14
  of Thor losing his hammer and retrieving it to battle back the
• 1:12:19
  winter, probably round about the time that thunderstorms were
• 1:12:23
  starting to roll in and clear out the winter storms.
• 1:12:26
  And it would have been bound to a sacred setting.
• 1:12:29
  And, you know, you would have the oldest person in the
• 1:12:31
  village, the storyteller with that right glint in their eye,
• 1:12:35
  would be the one who could make somebody connect with that
• 1:12:37
  story. And when, you know, Loki flies
• 1:12:41
  over with the Falcon feather cloak, you would, you know, you
• 1:12:45
  hairs rise on the back of your neck and you feel that flight.
• 1:12:48
  You know, we figured we wanted that rhythmic storytelling
• 1:12:52
  aspect to be something that was part of our rituals.
• 1:12:55
  So that is my job within the tribe.
• 1:12:57
  So that's my angle that I come to skaldic poetry with is that
• 1:13:02
  speech and inspiration and poetry have always been really
• 1:13:05
  important to the Nordic tradition.
• 1:13:08
  And so when I sort of stepped into that role, that's what I
• 1:13:14
  sort of gravitated towards. And the study of Volo Spa was a
• 1:13:21
  direct outflow of that. I've been calling myself a scald
• 1:13:25
  for like a year. And I had learned, you know,
• 1:13:29
  snippets of poetry, you know, I'll we want to incorporate a
• 1:13:32
  hailing to the moon. So let me go learn this stanza
• 1:13:36
  of all of this mall that says and what is the name of the moon
• 1:13:39
  in all the realms? Well, you know, the moon, he is
• 1:13:41
  called by the gods and the OR by the giants, you know, the the
• 1:13:45
  whirling wheel in the houses of hell, but in Old Norse.
• 1:13:49
  And you know, so like someone will introduce that section of
• 1:13:53
  the ritual and then I will stand with my drum and I will chant
• 1:13:57
  out the Old Norse that calls that spirit.
• 1:14:01
  And then we do the rest of the working.
• 1:14:04
  So I've been, I've been doing that, but I didn't know any full
• 1:14:08
  poems. I knew stanzas and snippets.
• 1:14:12
  And I was like, you know, Sonori Sturluson knew all of the laws
• 1:14:15
  of Iceland in his head. And that was somebody's job
• 1:14:19
  historically to just memorize a legal code.
• 1:14:22
  And I have not done a great feat of memorization like that.
• 1:14:26
  So at winter nights IN2023I, oathed to my tribe that I would
• 1:14:31
  memorize Voloswa. And so I spent a year drilling
• 1:14:37
  that poem into my head and dissecting it word from word.
• 1:14:41
  And then it went to Nights 2024. I performed it and it took me 25
• 1:14:44
  minutes, but I did get all the way through and I only messed up
• 1:14:50
  a little bit so. That's no no poem either.
• 1:14:55
  I mean, that's no. No, no, it's 259 lines.
• 1:15:00
  Wow. Very, very, very impressive.
• 1:15:05
  I I know what it's like to so like one of the things that I, I
• 1:15:12
  I didn't oath to do it, but I committed to myself to do for a
• 1:15:18
  men's spiritual retreat that I kind of helped Co found and and
• 1:15:22
  helped lead it. It's called Fire on the mountain
• 1:15:25
  this past one. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:27
  You know, a lot of people probably have and it's been
• 1:15:29
  talked about, but like I was, I was, I, I was made Privy to a, a
• 1:15:36
  ritual that is, is, was, is, it's not necessarily closed off
• 1:15:43
  to, to anybody because I got permission from the one who
• 1:15:46
  wrote it to be able to leverage it and use it in, in, in the
• 1:15:49
  space and in the confines of the the retreat.
• 1:15:54
  But it is a, it is a ritual that is recited entirely an Old
• 1:15:57
  Saxon. And so I, I, I tasked it upon
• 1:16:04
  myself to, to, to memorize and learn the various portions of
• 1:16:09
  the ritual and speak it in Old Saxon.
• 1:16:12
  I had somebody else who was familiar with.
• 1:16:18
  So like we had an Old Saxon to English, like I gave them the,
• 1:16:22
  the English translation. So that way the people who were
• 1:16:24
  present weren't, you know, dumbfounded by this language
• 1:16:29
  that, that nobody understood. So I could recite it in Old
• 1:16:32
  Saxon and they would recite it in the, the portions that I said
• 1:16:36
  in modern English. So it was understood and, and
• 1:16:38
  recognized by everybody. But I can definitely appreciate
• 1:16:41
  what it's like to commit yourself to learning something
• 1:16:49
  that is foreign, that is, you know, whether it's in English or
• 1:16:52
  another language, but, but to commit it to memory.
• 1:16:54
  So that way you're not standing here with this like book in your
• 1:16:58
  face. And, and there, look, there were
• 1:16:59
  times that I, that I had to like, hey, you know, my, my, my
• 1:17:03
  guy over here, He's holding the book.
• 1:17:05
  And I like, you know, I had a look down to see where's my
• 1:17:09
  marker? Where's my, what am I saying?
• 1:17:10
  And then there was like, there were these other points of, of
• 1:17:15
  the ritual or of the retreat where I had to, you know, say
• 1:17:18
  things in, in, in a language that was not native to me.
• 1:17:21
  And I had to say it eloquently or, or clearly enough to, to, to
• 1:17:27
  mean something in the ritual. And I didn't have a book.
• 1:17:29
  I didn't have a point of reference.
• 1:17:32
  I, I, I respect you for for taking on that, that task and,
• 1:17:37
  and, and actually tying yourself in, in the tribe that you are,
• 1:17:40
  are, are tied to in an oath to do so.
• 1:17:44
  That is, that is a mighty thing. I'm just glad.
• 1:17:50
  I did it because the shield would have sucked.
• 1:17:53
  Well, hey, at least, you know, at least there was shield set
• 1:17:56
  because that's, that's the thing that a lot of folks don't,
• 1:17:58
  don't. Well, I don't want to say that
• 1:18:01
  they don't, but I, I, you are one of the few who I've talked
• 1:18:05
  to that understands that with oaths comes shield because what
• 1:18:11
  happens if you don't keep the oath?
• 1:18:13
  Got to, got to balance it out somehow, you know?
• 1:18:17
  And I I I think it really does just come back to, you know, the
• 1:18:21
  sort of ordeal breeds worth ethos of it.
• 1:18:27
  Anyone can call themselves anything they like, but you
• 1:18:32
  know, the ones who mean it, right.
• 1:18:34
  Anyone can hop on any online community and say hi, I'm the
• 1:18:37
  Govi of whatever the heck Kindred.
• 1:18:41
  I'm I'm making my own community. I but like, are you a Govi if
• 1:18:47
  you don't have a community who upholds you in that role and
• 1:18:51
  comes to you for spiritual guidance and stuff like that?
• 1:18:55
  You know, I felt I didn't have a lot of business calling myself a
• 1:18:59
  scald if I didn't have a significant work of scaldic
• 1:19:03
  poetry under my belt. So now I have a new party trick.
• 1:19:08
  But on a, on a deeper level, I, I really did feel this and it
• 1:19:13
  was necessary for me to put in some work to sort of earn this
• 1:19:18
  title that my, my tribe had bestowed upon me.
• 1:19:22
  So I, I got to memorizing and I got to drumming with my, with my
• 1:19:27
  lovely drum from Filvatir workshop.
• 1:19:30
  I'm sure they're they're plugged all over.
• 1:19:33
  They're part of the intro and and yeah, they're yeah.
• 1:19:35
  And that's that's that's great. I didn't know that you owned one
• 1:19:37
  of their works, that there's, there's some of their craft work
• 1:19:41
  in the background over here that that that people can see, but.
• 1:19:45
  Yeah, he had. He had a drum.
• 1:19:47
  I was, I was looking through him.
• 1:19:49
  And he had one that was on bison hide.
• 1:19:52
  And it depicted a spirit that represents the confluence of two
• 1:19:57
  major rivers in Illinois. And I was like.
• 1:20:00
  Where's this dude been this whole time?
• 1:20:03
  Obviously like doing it. You're right.
• 1:20:04
  Yeah. Animistic, handcrafted with
• 1:20:07
  homage, you know, local animals, local spirits.
• 1:20:10
  It was right place, right time. I bought it and it was really
• 1:20:13
  funny. I then went to his Facebook page
• 1:20:15
  and the night before I bought the drum he had a video of him
• 1:20:18
  playing it and he had the caption was felt the need to
• 1:20:22
  play this one while I still have it this interesting.
• 1:20:28
  This drum that that that you can kind of see in the background,
• 1:20:33
  that's also bison. So it's beautiful to see the
• 1:20:38
  the, the spirit of the bison being represented in different
• 1:20:43
  tribal beliefs. You know, you guys are in kind
• 1:20:46
  of the Great Plains, very, very evident with the spirit of the
• 1:20:50
  bison here in Middle Tennessee. The we, we, we got this drum for
• 1:20:54
  the tribe because of the name of the tribe, third of the folks.
• 1:20:57
  So Thor, the Thunder people and and so the bison hide resonates
• 1:21:03
  very deeply and thunderously. And so it's interesting to talk
• 1:21:08
  to another person in another region with another tribe who
• 1:21:13
  also enjoys the the spirit of the bison In, in, in their, in
• 1:21:19
  their work. Really cool.
• 1:21:21
  Yeah. And we have, we don't have a
• 1:21:23
  specific tribal patron deity, but we always say like we kind
• 1:21:27
  of joke, like Thor always shows up when we do ritual.
• 1:21:29
  We get rained on often. Like there will not be rain in
• 1:21:34
  the forecast. And then we'll do a ritual and
• 1:21:36
  then like. There he is.
• 1:21:39
  And it's like people have roofs off their jeeps and they're
• 1:21:43
  scrambling to to get, you know, get the hides out of the rain
• 1:21:47
  and all that stuff. Yeah.
• 1:21:48
  So we, we do have a really strong relationship with Thor.
• 1:21:52
  And like you said, right, Thunder power, the sort of idea
• 1:21:56
  of like pounding on the earth with bare feet, waking up the
• 1:21:59
  energy. There's there's a lot of,
• 1:22:02
  there's a lot of overlap there with with the.
• 1:22:04
  Way that we do. Things.
• 1:22:07
  Well, man, we might need to, we might need to to to figure out
• 1:22:12
  an in person meet up. You know you're not that far
• 1:22:15
  away. Man, I love it.
• 1:22:17
  I love it. I was, I was going to do shadow.
• 1:22:19
  I was going to try and come to Shadow Mood this year, but just
• 1:22:23
  sort of with the last minute shake up and the, the differing
• 1:22:26
  scaling of it from a, from a three day event down to a one
• 1:22:29
  day event. Yeah, I just, I couldn't really
• 1:22:31
  justify the, the all the travel time that it would have taken,
• 1:22:35
  especially like overnight accommodations and stuff.
• 1:22:37
  But absolutely, man, if you ever find yourself up in up in our
• 1:22:40
  neck of the woods, or the next time I find myself down in
• 1:22:42
  yours, I'd love to set something up.
• 1:22:44
  Yeah, for sure I mean, you've got you got my contact
• 1:22:47
  information, I have yours. We, we see each other's stuff on
• 1:22:51
  social media now, you know, so we're no strangers in that way.
• 1:22:56
  And, and yeah, I'm sure that if given the we've, you know, taken
• 1:23:00
  the right path and, and, and doing it the right way, what
• 1:23:04
  will be will be. And yeah, dude, this has been a
• 1:23:09
  great conversation. I think we we really covered a
• 1:23:12
  lot of bases in an hour and a half.
• 1:23:17
  And we didn't even, we didn't even get to my cool list of all
• 1:23:20
  the trees that are mentioned in Volospa.
• 1:23:21
  But I guess you'll you'll just have to invite me back for
• 1:23:23
  another episode. The coolest of all the trees?
• 1:23:26
  Which one? The Ash.
• 1:23:28
  I I mean that one. You.
• 1:23:31
  Yeah, yeah. I I'm I'm team you but for.
• 1:23:35
  Various reasons, yeah, the the, the Aquas, you know, absolutely.
• 1:23:41
  Yeah. And on, on that note, I'm going
• 1:23:44
  to leave, I'm going to leave that cliffhanger for the
• 1:23:46
  listeners and for the viewers, because that will, if you've
• 1:23:50
  made it this far in the podcast and, and you've listened or
• 1:23:53
  you've watched this far, that's a good cliffhanger to, to kind
• 1:23:56
  of, I think leave it off on and, and, and a great thing to, to
• 1:23:59
  invite you back on for a future episode in, in, yeah.
• 1:24:05
  And then in the rest of season 6, Chris, if you're, if you're
• 1:24:08
  interested, you want to come back and and dive into the the
• 1:24:12
  Aquas or you aspect, I'd love to back on to yeah, talk about it.
• 1:24:17
  Yeah, man, I mean that was that was the thing, you know, when I
• 1:24:20
  was learning Voluswa, I was tired of people not translating
• 1:24:24
  things and not taking things in ecological context.
• 1:24:27
  You know, a tree is never just a tree.
• 1:24:29
  A bird is never just a bird. They picked that one for a
• 1:24:33
  reason. So what is that reason?
• 1:24:35
  And got tired of listening to analysis of the poem by people
• 1:24:38
  who didn't believe it's religious connotations.
• 1:24:40
  So I was like, I'm going to dive into this thing for myself and
• 1:24:43
  I'm going to tear through all the weeds.
• 1:24:45
  I'm just going to start. I'm going to go word for word.
• 1:24:48
  And I think I uncovered a lot of cool like ecological groundings
• 1:24:51
  for the poem, but I'll have to wait.
• 1:24:53
  I would love to, yeah. I think that just because we've
• 1:24:56
  already exhausted an hour and a half worth of time, I feel like
• 1:24:59
  this would be a great thing to to dedicate another episode to.
• 1:25:03
  We'll be in touch about it because as a, as a person of,
• 1:25:07
  you know, I'm, I'm definitely interested to hear your take on
• 1:25:11
  it as, as a field scientist, as an ecologist, as, as somebody
• 1:25:14
  who is spiritually driven the Yew Tree.
• 1:25:17
  And then all of the things that it's known to be, you know, the
• 1:25:23
  deadliness of it, the, the, the hallucinogenic aspects of it,
• 1:25:26
  like all the various things, right, right.
• 1:25:28
  So for the listeners, for the viewers, if you're wondering
• 1:25:30
  what in the heck, stay tuned because I'm, I'm going to bring
• 1:25:32
  Chris back. We're going to talk about it.
• 1:25:34
  We're, we're going to hang from the tree.
• 1:25:35
  Maybe we'll, we'll, we'll just, we'll, we'll just leave it at
• 1:25:39
  that, you know, hang from. One night is good for me, though
• 1:25:42
  one one night's probably plenty. Yeah, we're not going to go for
• 1:25:46
  the marathon. Nine nights and nine days, no
• 1:25:48
  food, no drink, whatever. But we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll,
• 1:25:52
  we'll, yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll ride that.
• 1:25:55
  We'll ride that tree. You know, there you go.
• 1:25:58
  Just a little bit if you're interested.
• 1:26:01
  So, yeah. Cool, man.
• 1:26:03
  Thank you so much for for being here before I, before I go into
• 1:26:07
  my signing of signing off of things, any, any parting words
• 1:26:13
  or any last things that you'd like to to say to, to, to people
• 1:26:17
  that are that are catching this? Yeah.
• 1:26:20
  Don't take my word for it. Go get your feet in the dirt and
• 1:26:23
  listen to the land speak. Because if you turn your careful
• 1:26:27
  attention toward it and you return and you get to know it,
• 1:26:32
  it gets to know you, and that's going to set you up for
• 1:26:35
  everything else. You know, whatever high
• 1:26:38
  theological debates you need to have with yourself about how
• 1:26:43
  exactly you fall on each side of each spiritual issue, showing up
• 1:26:47
  for what's in your backyard is, to me, was most important.
• 1:26:50
  So go meet your local tree. Go meet your local watershed and
• 1:26:55
  get out there and do some evening.
• 1:26:59
  Wise words, my friend. Thank you for sharing.
• 1:27:02
  And don't go anywhere, Chris, because once we're done with
• 1:27:06
  this episode, I'll just I'll wrap with you for a few minutes.
• 1:27:11
  But yeah, everybody else that's listened to this episode or
• 1:27:13
  watched it, if you haven't decided that you want to become
• 1:27:16
  a Patreon on Patreon, please consider doing so.
• 1:27:19
  The link for that will be in the show notes.
• 1:27:21
  Just go to the link tree link that's posted and you'll see all
• 1:27:24
  the ways that you can support Midgard Musings, the random
• 1:27:26
  Heathen Ramblings podcast. Patreon is probably the best way
• 1:27:30
  that you can do so for just a dollar a month.
• 1:27:32
  Catch the video versions of the podcast, get a little, you know,
• 1:27:35
  in screen credit on each episode when you do so.
• 1:27:38
  And that's three to four episodes a month.
• 1:27:41
  So it's a low cost, high reward type of thing.
• 1:27:44
  Greatly appreciated. But at the very least, thank you
• 1:27:47
  so much for listening and being here for the start of season 6.
• 1:27:51
  This has been a great way to kind of launch this this this
• 1:27:55
  the season with Chris. So thank you, Chris for for
• 1:27:58
  being my guest and be sure to check out all the things that,
• 1:28:02
  you know, the the Land of Lincoln Heathens group that is
• 1:28:06
  going to be linked down below. Podcasts, show notes or
• 1:28:09
  description. If you're watching this, it'll
• 1:28:11
  be linked. Check them out.
• 1:28:13
  Maybe if you're in the central Illinois area, you guys can
• 1:28:17
  connect with those folks. They, they seem to really be on
• 1:28:20
  point with with things. So if I were up there, yeah, go
• 1:28:25
  ahead. I.
• 1:28:27
  Was going to say we don't bite and we like good beer so come
• 1:28:30
  come see us sometime. I, I, I think that that's a win,
• 1:28:33
  that's a winning combination. If I was up there, I'd be, I'd
• 1:28:36
  be, I'd be hanging out a lot. So thank you, Chris, for being
• 1:28:42
  here. We'll touch base.
• 1:28:43
  Just just just hang out for a minute.
• 1:28:44
  And for everybody else that's listened and watched, welcome to
• 1:28:47
  season 6. I hope you all enjoyed this
• 1:28:49
  episode. If you did upvote it, become a
• 1:28:51
  subscriber or patron on Patreon, you know, do all the things to
• 1:28:55
  help support in any way that you can.
• 1:28:57
  And until we talk to each other again, the gods continue to
• 1:29:01
  notice you, and may your ancestors smile upon you, and
• 1:29:04
  we'll see you in the next one.