Latest / Random Heathen Ramblings / A Wider Web feat. Chris Miller [RHR S6, EP44]

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A Wider Web feat. Chris Miller [RHR S6, EP44] · Random Heathen Ramblings

• 0:02
  Hello everyone, and welcome to the Random Heathen Ramblings
• 0:05
  podcast where we discuss all sorts of things Germanic
• 0:08
  Heathenry related. My name is Jesse and I'm your
• 0:12
  host. Let's get into it.
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  The Elevate Here workshop is dedicated to the old ways,
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• 0:52
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  Visit ouronlinestore@thealldayhere.com
• 1:02
  and discover the beauty of Mountain Spirit.
• 1:08
  All right, everyone, welcome back to this week's episode of
• 1:11
  the Random Heathen Ramblings podcast.
• 1:12
  Thank you so much for being here, watching on Patreon, if
• 1:15
  that's your jam, or just listening on whatever platforms
• 1:18
  you've been catching this on as you go about your daily
• 1:22
  activities. This week's episode, if you guys
• 1:25
  have been, you know, keeping track of what I share on social
• 1:28
  media, what limited ones there are now it's just Patreon
• 1:30
  really. But if you have seen what the
• 1:32
  announcement of this week's podcast is earlier in the week,
• 1:37
  this is not going to be that. This is going to be a different
• 1:40
  guest with a different topic. And but don't worry because the
• 1:46
  one that I advertised for with Mr. Chris Waddell, he is going
• 1:51
  to be coming back to the to Season 7 or on Season 7, right?
• 1:55
  He'll be featured in Season 7, which is just next month.
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  So if you were looking forward to hearing or watching that
• 2:03
  episode and the topics that we were going to discuss, if
• 2:07
  they're not because it's just been rescheduled.
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  So he will be back in Season 7 more to come on that.
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  But for now and we're going to bring onto the stage another
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  returning guest. This is also Chris, but his name
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  is Chris Miller and located in the central plains of Illinois
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  or central part of Illinois. So and you got some snow up
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  there as I understand, right, Chris?
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  That we certainly did. Yep, we had 6 or 7 inches on
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  Saturday and then another two followed up on Monday.
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  So I've been shoveling. That is a respectable amount of
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  snow even for the Midwest. You know, a nice early, early
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  welcome to winter. Get that get that good cover.
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  Buddy of mine got some snow covered out in around St.
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  Charles, MO and I see all the snow on the ground and I'm over
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  here in in wet and rainy. Cold but wet and rainy Tennessee
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  just gone. So lucky.
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  I know I want snow, but. Yeah, I was in.
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  I was in North Carolina for Thanksgiving, and I drove back
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  on Saturday. So we started with, you know,
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  beautiful mountains, sunshine in the morning.
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  And then the further north and West we drove, the grayer and
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  colder it got. And then once we passed
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  Indianapolis, it was full on, you know, pretty much Blizzard
• 3:27
  conditions. So wow.
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  Yeah. Well, man, it's great to have
• 3:32
  you back on the show, and especially on such short notice.
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  I know you kind of came to the rescue, as it were this week.
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  You know, my guest had mix his days up and we're going to get
• 3:42
  him on like I was saying earlier in season 7.
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  But I kind of put a call out there just to say, hey, shot in
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  the dark. Is anybody does anybody want to
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  talk tonight? You know, do do do an impromptu
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  guest appearance. And yeah, you showed up, man.
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  And it's kind of cool what we're going to talk about today
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  because when you accepted or when you offered to come back
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  onto the show, we didn't have a, at least I didn't, you know, you
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  might have had something in your mind, but we didn't really nail
• 4:10
  it down like right away. Like I'd like to come on the
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  show and talk about this thing or that or the other, you know,
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  you were just offering yourself as a as a guest.
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  So once again, thank you for coming to the rescue and being
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  available for this. Of course, happy to do it.
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  We always have great conversations.
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  So excited to see where this one goes.
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  Yeah, for sure. I liked how the, how the topic
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  kind of came out organically through conversation because,
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  you know, I was kind of explaining to you the, the at
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  the time, I didn't know why my guest had not showed up, you
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  know, for our scheduled thing. And I got to, you know, it's,
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  it's a tendency, right? I think it's almost part of
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  human nature to sometimes, you know, think the worst or make it
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  about ourselves taking things personally, right.
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  And so, you know, there was definitely a moment in time
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  where when my guest didn't show up and I'm like, you know,
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  taking it personal out. Why couldn't you tell me what
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  was happening? What's wrong with this?
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  That right, you know, just kind of thinking that way.
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  And I was reminded and I shared this with you over our over our
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  message chat, one of the four agreements, which I'm going to
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  we're going to talk a little bit about that.
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  I know you're not in depthly familiar with them, but it was
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  like a great launching off point that we kind of thought about
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  talking about, you know, shared culture and syncretism and
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  something that maybe not all the listeners or viewers know about,
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  but something that is is an old Scandinavian term called
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  finfara. So we're going to get into that
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  and I think it's going to be pretty fun.
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  So, yeah, so the four agreements right before and and it it kind
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  of surprised me that that had not been something that came
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  across your across your desk as it were, like you hadn't heard
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  of of Don Miguel Ruiz before this, right?
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  No, no, this was, this was all new to me.
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  I, I knew the word Toltec, but I, I really haven't delved too
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  much into Central American really much of anything.
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  You know, I, I look to Indigenous wisdom a lot, but I'm
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  sort of generally looking at things that were happening in
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  the landscape that I now inhabit as, as a way to honour the sort
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  of ancestors of land that that came before me and stewarded
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  this place before it was my turn to, to be be a resident of
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  Illinois. So when I'm looking at
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  indigenous stuff, I'm generally looking at stuff from the
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  Inishinaabe and from. The the Lakota, sure, which
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  makes, I mean, I love that that's, that's part of your
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  world view. You know, that you are heathen,
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  which for those folks that are listening or or watching this,
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  you know, Chris here is a a return guest, as I mentioned
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  before, and he's an active heathen in Central Illinois.
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  Veggersletta. I've always messed up that part.
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  Wagersletta the the Rogers in plain.
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  Yes, sorry. So Wagerslepta is the name of
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  your kindred or tribe, and you serve in the capacity of what
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  was your is your Are you Chieftain Gothi?
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  I'm Chieftain. Yeah, yeah, I, I was, I was
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  originally the the skull. I was, I was our wordsmith and
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  our sort of language specialist. And then over the over the last
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  two years, I was, I was lucky enough to be appointed as the
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  new Chieftain of our community. And as of our last ritual, I
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  relinquished the title of Scald to one of our newer members who
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  is a poet in his own right and a photographer.
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  So very interested to see the way in which he records our
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  history through a modern medium but using an ancient title.
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  So that's really cool, man. So, yeah, it's to hear you talk
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  about the importance of ancestral ways of, of, you know,
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  the ancestors of the land, you know, the indigenous wisdom or
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  you know, that that ancient wisdom that is local to your
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  landscape. And, and being aware of that,
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  that's a very, I think a core heathen view to have, you know,
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  so, but as at the same time, as you mentioned before, with the
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  four agreements, and they're, and they are Toltec teachings or
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  they have roots in Toltec, which are the, you know, again, the,
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  the Central S South Central American indigenous ways.
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  You know, a, a good friend of mine who I've become like
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  brothers too, you know what I mean?
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  Like we've, we've shared in ritual together.
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  He has shared some of his Toltec wisdom and medicine with me and,
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  and several other men. And he is, he's, he's, he's,
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  he's a wonderful person and, and he's embracing his Toltec
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  traditions, you know, going back to those old ways.
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  And just real briefly before we get into more of what we're
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  going to talk about, I do, I do want to just kind of go over
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  what these 4 agreements are because I know you're not too
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  familiar with them. Somebody, the other folks that
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  are watching or listening may not be.
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  So for those that are on the, you know, Patreon platform,
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  you'll see the graphic that's up on the screen that describes
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  each of the four agreements. And I'm just going to briefly
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  kind of summarize them. And then if you ever want to do
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  your own, you know, get into it yourself and look for yourself
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  more. You can just go to, you know,
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  find it on Google or right or Amazon.
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  It's it's Don Miguel rubies. But the four agreements is is a
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  self help book that he wrote. So with the first agreement is
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  to be impeccable with your word. And the summary of that in his
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  writings are to speak with integrity, say only what you
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  mean. Avoid using the word to speak
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  against yourself or to gossip about others.
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  Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.
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  The second agreement is don't take anything personally.
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  So when I was saying before about the situation that I ran
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  into with my guest, you know, not being able to attend our
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  scheduled interview and, and taking it personally, this is
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  one of those 4 agreements that I was reminded of.
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  And with that, a summary of that is that nothing others do is
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  because of you. What others say and do is a
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  projection of their own reality, their own dream.
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  When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others,
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  you won't be the victim of needless suffering.
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  The third agreement is to don't make assumptions.
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  Find the courage to ask your to ask questions and to express
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  what you really want. Communicate with others as
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  clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and
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  drama. And with just this one
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  agreement, you can completely transform your life.
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  And then the 4th agreement is to always do your best.
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  Your best is going to change from moment to moment.
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  It will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick
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  under any circumstances, simply do your best and you will avoid
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  self judgement, self abuse and regret.
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  So if that be if that speaks to anybody, you know, again, Don
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  Miguel Ruiz, the four agreements, you can get yourself
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  a copy of it. And you know, just knowing those
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  bits of things right there. Chris, I was going to kind of
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  point it back to you and say, you know, was there anything
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  about or are there anything about the four agreements as you
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  know them to be right now that remind you of things that are
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  native to you for for, you know, a heathen world view of things?
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  Oh, I mean 100% these, these like tenants, these I guess like
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  standards to hold yourself to really do remind me it as being
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  largely in the same spirit as Hava Mall.
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  Obviously Hava Mall has a lot more than it covers, but the
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  sort of idea of holding yourself to a standard of right action
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  moderation, honesty it it, it very much seems like it it would
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  feather if, if I knew about these for longer, I'd I'd be
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  interested to dive into the text and see if there are specific
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  ways in which things would crossover.
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  But I think that the biggest one for me is don't make
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  assumptions. That to me very much has has a
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  have them all lead to it. You know, the idea that in
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  solitude we grow foolish. And if we only, you know, speak
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  with our own internal thoughts, then we go in these crazy
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  directions, right? We we drift away from reality
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  very easily because we have these pattern seeking brains.
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  We want to see things that aren't there and hear things
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  that people didn't say. By actually speaking with each
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  other, by maintaining open and clear lines of communication is
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  how we, you know, have strong relationships and harmonious
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  existence. Very key observations and I tend
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  to agree with all that, especially where you talk about,
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  right, the, the, the silence or, or the solitude.
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  I think you mentioned, you know, I've talked about this, I've
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  come to a place of, of a belief and, and I don't know if I'm
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  right or not, but it feels right.
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  Is that identifying what we're the difference between, you
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  know, silence and solitude and the void of, of or emptiness of,
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  of isolation? You know, there's, there's,
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  there's a place for solitude, I think, and there's a place to be
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  quiet and silent and still by ourselves right there.
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  It, it's part of a, a practice or it's part of a, a, a way to
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  get to know ourselves better, right?
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  To love ourselves, to respect ourselves.
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  But I've I've I've come to the conclusion that there's a
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  distinct difference between isolation and solitude.
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  Yes. Have you ever thought of it?
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  Have you ever thought of that? And and if so, like what's your
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  what's your take on that? Well, I mean, I, I think they,
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  there's that sort of like full quote that's like, it's, you can
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  be lonely in a room full of people, right?
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  You know, there, there is a, a difference between being
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  physically alone with yourself versus being, being truly
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  isolated. I, I, I, I haven't really teased
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  those two apart in my head a whole lot.
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  I do actually remember seeing you post that and I, I read
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  that. I thought that was a good post,
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  but no, I, I think you were, you were right in that solitude is
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  certainly necessary in some cases there.
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  I don't want to make it seem like it's, it's never OK that
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  you always need to be talking to somebody, that you always need
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  to be doing something. That's a very modern idea that
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  you know, you always must be having a purpose or an action at
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  every given moment. It's perfectly valid and in fact
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  deeply necessary to at times remove yourself and just have
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  time to sit and check in with yourself sort of irrespective of
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  all the noise that's happening around you.
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  And I I think that is a very worthwhile and important thing
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  to do. You just, you shouldn't stay
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  there stewing all the time paste in your apartment.
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  And you know, if if you're constantly.
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  I think there's a quote from Bio Akoma Lafay talking about the
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  tyranny of the work, right? If you're constantly dredging up
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  shadow stuff and processing, and you're spending all of your time
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  with this deep introspection, you're not actually out in the
• 16:39
  world doing anything and making anything happen.
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  You might be at times thinking that you're doing what's really
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  deeply important and necessary, but like all things, it needs
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  moderation. It needs balance.
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  I think that the concept of balance and harmony is something
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  that I've been really leaning into recently and finding ways
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  that, you know, anything in your life can become the sole focus
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  if you let it. And it's, it's a matter of sort
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  of consciously choosing when to be open, when to be closed, when
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  to say yes, when to say no, opening yourself up to the wider
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  world and closing back and sort of holding yourself in the
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  center. There's, you know, it's, it's a
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  balancing act. Yeah, man, that's and you know
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  the balancing act. I've, I've come to learn isn't
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  so much a linear like a seesaw. It's more like, it's like a, a
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  disk, you know, and, and things can tip dynamically, like in
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  such a way where it's not, oh, it's leaning too much to the
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  left or to the right. So it's not like a set of scales
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  or a seesaw balance. It's, it's, it's more, there's
• 17:49
  more surface area to it and there's a lot more flexibility
• 17:54
  that one has to have to maintain that balance.
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  You know, it's not just forward and back and left to right, it's
• 17:58
  kind of all of it at once. And that's what spirituality
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  does. It brings us back to the center
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  of the axis. It realigns us, and it it helps
• 18:08
  smooth out that wobbling disc that'll just keep going and keep
• 18:11
  going until we intentionally return it to a center, into a
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  pillar, which is of course the linguistic root of the word AUS,
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  plural asir. Yep, Yep, yeah.
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  And, you know, thinking about it from, you know, the, the, the
• 18:28
  experience that, you know, a lot of ancient civilizations, not
• 18:33
  just dramatic and Norse people, but a lot of ancient
• 18:36
  civilizations right there, their connection with the world around
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  them and, and the ebbs and flows of seasons and the how nature is
• 18:46
  always in that ebb and flow. So it's, it's, it's seeking
• 18:50
  balance while in this constant state of imbalance.
• 18:53
  You know, it's, it's never, it's never perfectly, maybe I
• 18:57
  wouldn't say never, but it's very rare where everything just
• 18:59
  becomes so perfectly aligned where it's like, now we can
• 19:02
  stop, now we can pause. It's always in motion.
• 19:05
  And there's always things that are seeking center, you know, So
• 19:10
  it's a very, it's a fluid, very, it's very fluid thing.
• 19:12
  I see it as. Yeah, absolutely.
• 19:15
  That's dynamic equilibrium is what we call it in science.
• 19:18
  Yeah, it's the idea that things are constantly in motion, but
• 19:21
  they align to specific States and they are then nudged out of
• 19:25
  those States and nudge themselves back in through the
• 19:28
  process of new stasis. Yeah, we, we were, we were, you
• 19:35
  know, it's interesting to get the conversation really just
• 19:37
  jumping right off as we, you know, talk about the four
• 19:39
  agreements and finding the synchronicity between some of
• 19:44
  those things and what we're more familiar with.
• 19:45
  Are you more familiar with in terms of finding the connections
• 19:48
  or the the closeness with, with such things as found in the Hava
• 19:52
  Mall? You, you had mentioned to me and
• 19:56
  I mentioned it earlier in the episode, a term that you don't
• 20:01
  really see a much, I don't think sources depicting it, but it's
• 20:06
  an old Scandinavian term or old Norse term that is called
• 20:09
  Feenfara, so. Let's talk about that because I
• 20:15
  think a lot of people might not be aware of what this means.
• 20:20
  So would you like to maybe lead off with that and explain what
• 20:24
  your understanding of what it is and what we're talking about
• 20:28
  with that? Absolutely, yeah.
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  So the reason most people don't come across it is because it's
• 20:33
  not in the myths, It's not in the edits.
• 20:35
  This was a thing that mortal people did.
• 20:38
  And therefore, and it only appears probably, you know, a
• 20:41
  handful of times it's a rather obscure verb and they don't talk
• 20:46
  about it in great detail, let's say.
• 20:48
  Oh, and so, and so went finfaring.
• 20:51
  And that's really all they talk about.
• 20:54
  But finfada is an Old Norse word, which it's a compound
• 20:58
  word, the verb fada means to travel.
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  And, and you see this in a number of words even, you know,
• 21:05
  when you fare forth or you know, how are things faring with you?
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  That's where we where we get that.
• 21:10
  How are you travelling? And Finn is the same as Finland.
• 21:15
  So the word Finn does not refer to the modern people that we
• 21:19
  call the Finns, but instead to the people we now call the Sami.
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  In Old Norse they were called the Finns.
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  So Finn Fattah is travelling to visit the Sami.
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  And it was something that Nordic people did because it was
• 21:35
  understood that the Germanic peoples were largely stationary,
• 21:40
  agrarian. They obviously did travel.
• 21:44
  There is a a great legacy of seafaring and migration, but
• 21:48
  they largely lived in village life.
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  Whereas the Fins, or the the Sami, I should say, were nomadic
• 21:57
  reindeer herders. They lived in the far northern
• 22:01
  reaches of Scandinavia and still do today there.
• 22:04
  There are still a thriving population of Sami, I believe
• 22:07
  the only people living in the European continent who are
• 22:11
  classified as indigenous in the sort of modern reckoning of the
• 22:14
  word. But it was understood that the
• 22:17
  Sami, due to their way of life and their closeness with the
• 22:21
  spiritual world, were this vast storehouse of spiritual wisdom
• 22:26
  that in order to really come into your full understanding of
• 22:31
  spirit and the cosmos, you couldn't just stay in your
• 22:35
  village or you would become what is the old nurse word for
• 22:39
  hamska, which is a homish, which meant stupid.
• 22:44
  The idea that if you never left your village, if you only ever
• 22:46
  spoke to the same people, you wouldn't learn anything because
• 22:49
  you wouldn't challenge yourself. So there was this call to go
• 22:53
  outside of your culture, to go visit somebody else and learn to
• 22:57
  see through different eyes and then to bring that wisdom back
• 23:01
  home to reinforce your own spiritual path.
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  So that's what finfaring is. It's it was specifically applied
• 23:09
  to the Sami in the olden days. But nowadays heathens will apply
• 23:13
  it to learning from any non Germanic spiritual source as a
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  way of sort of creelising their culture in a non extractive way.
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  Not sort of looking at all of these others world
• 23:24
  spiritualities and and picking which ones I like.
• 23:27
  And I'm going to use that and I'm going to use that, but to
• 23:29
  approach things and to try and earnestly learn other ways of
• 23:32
  seeing the world and see where they jive with what you already
• 23:35
  believe, where they don't jive. And if either one of those is
• 23:40
  going to pull your needle in one way or the other and transform
• 23:43
  your practice. That's a great, great, great
• 23:49
  summary there. I mean, I think you, you pretty
• 23:51
  much nailed all the nailed everything right on the head
• 23:53
  there for people that never heard of it this term, but now
• 23:56
  have a great understanding of it.
• 23:57
  So good job with that. Thank you.
• 23:59
  Thank you, Doctor. Ruin Rasmussen from the Nordic
• 24:03
  Animism channel has a great video on Finn Faring as someone
• 24:06
  who himself went to Brazil to learn a condom blay in a
• 24:11
  initiatory Afro Brazilian spiritual tradition that brings
• 24:16
  in other pantheons even, and sort of swallows them up into
• 24:20
  this beautiful colorful cross cultural expression of
• 24:23
  spirituality. Yeah, I don't know if it's the
• 24:26
  same video that you're talking about, but I know he did an
• 24:28
  interview. He spoke to to A to a gentleman
• 24:32
  who is Sami and he went to he's been like 4 years in South
• 24:36
  America. Do you know that video I'm
• 24:37
  talking about? Is that the?
• 24:38
  Same. Yeah, you're Yunggo Swani.
• 24:40
  It's it's the same guy. Well, yes, it's the same
• 24:44
  academic, same process. But I think the Finnfara video,
• 24:48
  he talks to him and then he also talks about his own experience.
• 24:52
  But it is that, you know, they are both Scandinavians who
• 24:55
  travelled across the Atlantic, one of them to the literal
• 24:58
  Amazon rainforest and one of them to Brazil to to learn from
• 25:03
  other cultures. And then both have returned and
• 25:05
  integrated. Yep, Yep.
• 25:08
  And I've noticed that too with a lot of well respected academics
• 25:13
  and scholars in modern times. As you know, there's what's his
• 25:20
  name, his his his online handle is, is the eagle on the ash and
• 25:29
  his name is Joshua something I think.
• 25:32
  Yes, Joshua. Roger.
• 25:34
  Rude. Yeah, yeah, there that one.
• 25:37
  Yes, so and he's and he's documented a lot of his travels
• 25:41
  to like Southeast Asia. Yeah.
• 25:45
  He's in Thailand, yes. So very cool.
• 25:49
  Yeah. And I know some other folks, you
• 25:51
  know, who have obviously pursued a higher degree of learning and,
• 25:59
  and when it comes to like Nordic mysticism or the rooms
• 26:03
  specifically, you know, they've traveled to Iceland and they've,
• 26:06
  they've studied abroad for, for that, you know, so it's like you
• 26:11
  see a theme where, you know, people with this mind or with
• 26:17
  this, with this spirit to want to learn is, and, and preserve
• 26:21
  their own culture. Part of that preservation is to
• 26:26
  go up abroad and learn from others and see how those things
• 26:31
  are, are, are syncretic. I think.
• 26:33
  So it's interesting to kind of see that that happening in in
• 26:35
  different contexts and with different well respected people
• 26:39
  out here. Yeah, I believe it's, what is
• 26:41
  it, Stanza 57, you know, brand Kindles brand.
• 26:44
  And, you know, by having these conversations, we, we build each
• 26:48
  other up because, you know, the unfortunate reality is that for
• 26:51
  largely for the Germanic traditions as they were somewhat
• 26:54
  successfully extinguished by Christianity.
• 26:57
  But there are other places in the world where that did not
• 26:59
  happen. And there are other unbroken
• 27:01
  lineages that date back to these older ways of seeing the world.
• 27:04
  And some of us might view as more complete or, you know,
• 27:08
  less. I don't want to use the word
• 27:10
  polluted because that that sends up some, some red flags in my
• 27:13
  brain. But I guess sort of diluted and
• 27:15
  watered down. There is, I think, a desire to
• 27:20
  to to connect with these older traditions and, you know,
• 27:25
  inherit some of the wisdom that they haven't used it to breathe
• 27:28
  new life into Heathenry because it's something that we all view
• 27:32
  is really important and we want to see it thrive and survive.
• 27:37
  Yeah, the, yeah, we, I think that's the general, you know, I
• 27:39
  think you could get, you know, a dozen different heathens in the
• 27:41
  room and they would all share it in that sentiment is, is that,
• 27:44
  you know, preserving old ways or practicing old ways in modern
• 27:48
  times, right. And maybe you might have some
• 27:50
  who are more maybe academically focused or reconstructionist in
• 27:55
  their approach to things to, you know, be as authentic or as true
• 28:01
  to these what, what, whatever information we have still
• 28:04
  documented as to the way that it was done 1000 or more years ago.
• 28:11
  But that's a, that's a thing too, where, you know, I've never
• 28:15
  fully gone 100% into the reconstructionist side.
• 28:17
  I've never leaned all the way over to that, mainly because
• 28:21
  just for me, I, I, you know, I, I don't live then I, I, you
• 28:25
  know, I'm not living in, you know, the, the 9th century, you
• 28:30
  know, Denmark or Sweden or, or, you know, before and then
• 28:33
  continental dramatic lands. I'm I'm living now in the 21st
• 28:36
  century in the United States and Tennessee.
• 28:39
  Yeah, I actually think it would be illegal for me to do a
• 28:42
  traditional mule sacrifice, and I certainly don't have the money
• 28:45
  to buy a horse. So yeah, we need to be adapted
• 28:49
  to the time that we live in and the land that we inhabit.
• 28:53
  For sure, yeah. And that, you know, that kind of
• 28:55
  raises a very I don't remember where I saw this because I had
• 28:59
  posted a comment or I had made a post on my personal Facebook and
• 29:03
  I kind of shared it around to different groups on the
• 29:06
  platform, yours being one of them, the land of Lincoln
• 29:09
  heathens, where I kind of raised this question like, OK, so if
• 29:14
  you're you know, where where do you sit with this?
• 29:16
  If you claimed it to be an old ways heathen, right, You follow
• 29:19
  the old ways that the odds to do or the foreign see there or the
• 29:22
  you know whatever version of old ways right pre Christian.
• 29:29
  You know where do you arrive at when you're holy tides like if
• 29:34
  you're going to follow the old ways so so far as to keep and
• 29:38
  observe time for holy tides around the lunar solar calendars
• 29:45
  that that are are documented. You know, that, that, that
• 29:49
  predate the Julian calendar, right?
• 29:53
  When, when the, when the dramatic peoples, when they were
• 29:55
  all still keeping track of time with the cycles of the, of the
• 29:58
  moon and the sun. And the question was like, you
• 30:01
  know, well, you know, can you really call yourself old ways if
• 30:05
  you're not observing the holy tides at those recorded lunar
• 30:12
  solar dates or, or times, right. And, and instead you're, you're
• 30:16
  just, well, I'm going to celebrate you all around the
• 30:18
  solstice because that's when it's convenient.
• 30:20
  And I was maybe presenting like it as can you, can you really
• 30:24
  call yourself that? Can you really say that your old
• 30:26
  ways if you're not keeping time and then keeping the holy tides
• 30:32
  as they were kept back then? And a lot of the responses, I
• 30:35
  got one of them, which was, you know, you talk about, you know,
• 30:37
  a traditional Yule sacrifice or whatever.
• 30:39
  And it was, you know, somebody was like, well, listen, if you
• 30:42
  really want to get down to brass tacks, you're not, none of us
• 30:44
  are practicing old ways because we're not sacrificing horses,
• 30:47
  we're not eating horse meat, we're not putting blood in the
• 30:51
  sacrifice and, and, and you know, those types of things.
• 30:55
  So if you really want to get technical, none of us are
• 30:57
  technically doing old ways, Heathenry.
• 31:01
  If you, you know, and I thought, well, I can't, it's hard to
• 31:04
  argue that, you know. So how much of the old means
• 31:09
  anything in the in, in the now, right?
• 31:12
  And then what sort of limitations, whether they are
• 31:15
  ethical or otherwise, do we are we presented with when going
• 31:23
  that far back, whether it's a dramatic tradition or Toltec
• 31:27
  even or any other, you know, old pre Christian way of doing
• 31:32
  things? What, what sort of, you know,
• 31:35
  limitations or ethical considerations do we encounter
• 31:39
  in that process? I mean, I, I think it's a, it's
• 31:42
  certainly something that I beat my head against a lot because I
• 31:48
  think there is this desire, obviously to be authentic and
• 31:52
  to, because the reason a lot of people get into this, you know,
• 31:57
  spirituality at all is for ancestor veneration.
• 32:00
  It's, it's one of the main thing that sets us apart from, I mean,
• 32:04
  not all spiritual traditions. There's, there's a ton of
• 32:06
  spiritual traditions that have ancestral veneration as a
• 32:10
  component. But I think a lot of people the
• 32:13
  way that they feel that in their body is by doing the things
• 32:18
  their ancestors did, you know, walking the places that they
• 32:21
  walked and trying to learn the language they spoke and eat the
• 32:25
  foods they ate. And, you know, look at the, the
• 32:28
  year in the calendar the way they did.
• 32:30
  There's a very earnest attempt to sort of recapture some of
• 32:35
  that. But unfortunately, like we have
• 32:38
  a federal government, like we are not existing in the same
• 32:41
  context as the medieval Icelanders, right?
• 32:45
  You know, and we can talk about setting up a new thing for
• 32:48
  heathens. But you know, we're not all
• 32:50
  living on independent homesteads.
• 32:52
  We have access to the Internet. We have modern technology,
• 32:55
  modern medicine. There's there's so much of our
• 32:57
  lives that is so vastly different from theirs.
• 33:01
  But we can obviously still pick up some of the threads that that
• 33:07
  they left behind. And I think to your point about
• 33:09
  time reckoning, this was like one of the big things that
• 33:13
  struck out to me, like when I, when I first got together with
• 33:17
  what would become my tribe first, everything we did was a
• 33:22
  Freyfaxi ritual, which for those who are unfamiliar, Freyfaxi is
• 33:28
  the I. For those who are not subscribed
• 33:31
  at the Carl tier, I'm doing air quotes.
• 33:34
  Is, is the Asatru version of the Wiccan Wheel of the Year, where
• 33:41
  they didn't really have a good harvest ritual to replace the
• 33:44
  Anglo-Saxon lamas or the Celtic Lunasa, which occurs round about
• 33:50
  the 1st of August. So they said, Hey, we're going
• 33:52
  to take this first harvest ritual that's kind of grain
• 33:55
  focused and we're going to call it Fray Foxy because it's
• 33:59
  obviously about Frayer because he's the grain guy.
• 34:02
  And they just kind of invented this holiday, which, you know,
• 34:05
  again, there's, there's no shade if, if that's what you want to
• 34:07
  do. You know, I have some Celtic
• 34:09
  ancestry and I do, you know, find some value in using the
• 34:13
  year of, excuse me, the wheel of the year as a kind of anchor.
• 34:17
  But it didn't feel authentic to me.
• 34:19
  It, it, it didn't feel like what I've been reading about using
• 34:23
  the mood to mark time. So I kind of brought it before
• 34:28
  the other members of the tribe and was like, I, I'm feeling
• 34:30
  kind of compelled to make a ritual calendar because that was
• 34:34
  one of the early discussions that we had is like, well, OK,
• 34:38
  what gods do you work like, work with?
• 34:40
  What holidays do you observe? Like what we're trying to
• 34:44
  generate a shared tribal Foo. But, you know, when you start at
• 34:49
  the ground level, I was like, I, I really feel like I need to
• 34:52
  make this thing and I, I need to create this way that we reckon
• 34:57
  time that's distinct to us and honors both our modern context
• 35:01
  and our historical, you know, grounding for it.
• 35:05
  And what we landed on is using the Old Farmer's Almanac to
• 35:10
  replace the Icelandic and Germanic names for the moon.
• 35:15
  So for us, you know, it's not Hausdemann with it or, you know,
• 35:20
  it's, it's the Corn Moon. Yeah, it's it's, you know, we
• 35:23
  obviously celebrate Yule, but at its core it's also the Wolf Moon
• 35:28
  in the same way that cigar bloat is the pink moon or winter
• 35:31
  nights is the Hunter moon. Like we, we have found a way to
• 35:35
  integrate the older traditions that are handed down to us,
• 35:39
  interpreted through these sort of agrarian Euro descendant
• 35:44
  settlers that we descend from and into our modern context, who
• 35:49
  none of us are farmers, but we certainly have farmers in our
• 35:52
  family and our neighbors are. So yeah, we're finding ways to
• 35:57
  braid all that together, and it's tough but rewarding.
• 36:03
  No, it's a beautiful thing that that, that's the approach that
• 36:06
  you've, that you've, that you've found that works for you because
• 36:09
  you know, I think of how close you talk about ancestor
• 36:13
  veneration, right? I think the majority of, you
• 36:18
  know, who lives on this land in the United States are, you know,
• 36:22
  their their immediate ancestors talking about like their
• 36:25
  mother's grandparents and even great grandparents have been
• 36:30
  here for that long. They've been on this soil for
• 36:34
  that long. A lot of them, you know, sure,
• 36:36
  there's going to be people. I know several who have, you
• 36:38
  know, grandparents from Europe and other places that you know,
• 36:42
  or even sooner. But my point is, is that, you
• 36:45
  know, it seems to me that a lot of, and I've been guilty of this
• 36:50
  too, is that, you know, a lot of it when we think of ancestor
• 36:53
  veneration, where, you know, a lot of people tend to think of,
• 36:55
  you know, ancient ancestors like thousands of years ago.
• 36:58
  And I'm like, they didn't even know about us, you know what I
• 37:01
  mean? Like it, it's one of those
• 37:03
  things that you just sit back and scratch your head and wonder
• 37:05
  like, So what if you're, you know, Hawkins or or Harold
• 37:09
  Fairhares, you know, 15th great grandson.
• 37:14
  Yeah, so far back. You know, they probably probably
• 37:16
  doesn't even know who you are, per SE.
• 37:18
  Now, I'm not trying to, you know, rain on anybody's parade
• 37:22
  and maybe, you know, we can't say for sure.
• 37:25
  But my point is, is that you have ancestors and you have
• 37:27
  things that are that are so much closer to us, right?
• 37:29
  Things that are right here in our, you know, proverbial
• 37:33
  backyards, if you will, that we could, you know, take those
• 37:38
  ancient traditions, take those, take that wisdom that's either
• 37:40
  been retained or uncovered or preserved and make it something
• 37:47
  that is honoring the spirit of it, I guess, and.
• 37:51
  Yeah, and I think I come back to this with people's obsession
• 37:56
  makes it sound bad, but people's obsession with the Viking Age
• 37:59
  specifically, like, yes, it's a super cool period of history.
• 38:04
  There's so much amazing stuff that was handed down to us from
• 38:08
  that time period. But it's not like if you have
• 38:11
  Norwegian ancestry, your ancestors were, you know,
• 38:15
  authentic pure heathen. And then we skip 800 years and
• 38:21
  it's like, oh, and then we came to North Dakota.
• 38:23
  It's like, OK, come on. Like you're, you're, you're
• 38:26
  willfully missing a huge portion of your lineage because you want
• 38:30
  to write it off as Christian. Or you say, oh, you know, I'm
• 38:34
  not going to engage with that part.
• 38:36
  But there's so much amazing folklore and, you know, food
• 38:39
  culture and recipes and stuff that are not as old as the
• 38:43
  Viking Age, but are distinctly Scandinavian.
• 38:46
  And that's more of the stuff that your ancestors brought over
• 38:50
  the Atlantic with them, not so much the the stuff from, you
• 38:54
  know, over 1000 years ago. And don't get me wrong, I love
• 38:57
  the Viking Age. I got my cloak and my fibula
• 38:59
  and, you know, my drinking horns and everything.
• 39:01
  Like I, I love it. But I think people are so quick
• 39:06
  to write off everything that happened between then and now
• 39:10
  for the sake of trying to capture something that's so
• 39:13
  distant from us. And there there's, there's so
• 39:16
  much if you just if you just broaden your horizon a little
• 39:18
  bit. Yeah, yeah.
• 39:21
  I, I get to this point where I think, you know, like how, how,
• 39:27
  how we can distinguish what is what is truly authentic, you
• 39:34
  know, cross cultural influences, how we distinguish those
• 39:40
  authentic things from the like we'll say quote UN quote
• 39:44
  spiritual tourisms or superficial blending of things.
• 39:48
  You know, I put on the cloak, I put on the tunic.
• 39:49
  I wear to, you know, I wear the this, I wear that.
• 39:52
  I played the dress up that and, and then post about it online
• 39:57
  and, and maybe you know, add a, add a, add a wardrobe, a song
• 40:00
  just for good measure, you know, or something along those lines.
• 40:03
  Like, Hey, look, I obviously I'm, I'm wearing a, you know,
• 40:06
  kind of an authentic looking tunic now, because that's what I
• 40:09
  like it. It's comfortable and it fits
• 40:11
  the, the vibe. But you know, I'm also not like
• 40:14
  this isn't, this isn't what makes me a heathen.
• 40:18
  It's not what makes me who I am, you know?
• 40:22
  So I think that's a good distinguishing, you know, or a
• 40:25
  way to distinguish is that, you know, if, if all you're ever
• 40:30
  worried about is the things that are so far back that really has
• 40:34
  been so watered down, you know, and you're missing, as you say,
• 40:36
  you're avoiding or, or, or disregarding more present
• 40:41
  behaviors for the sake of like you, you know, mentioned it was,
• 40:46
  you know, Christianity between then and and here and then
• 40:49
  you're missing out on a lot. But I get it.
• 40:54
  You know, I think a lot of people have a tendency to when
• 40:58
  they discover these traditions from their ancestry, you know,
• 41:02
  their whether it's Scandinavian or Germanic or what from
• 41:04
  wherever. You know, if, if you're Toltec
• 41:08
  Pagan and you have, you know, Central South American ancestors
• 41:11
  who were believing these ways and you're, and you're
• 41:14
  discovering those ways, or even even the, you know, the, the,
• 41:17
  the native, you know, the in the indigenous North American
• 41:23
  traditions, You know, whether it be some, you know, First Nations
• 41:25
  people or other smaller tribes that haven't gotten recognized
• 41:30
  on a federal level, but are still living in ways and and
• 41:34
  trying to preserve their traditions.
• 41:35
  You know, it's all very and and it's like one of the beautiful
• 41:41
  things about this, this, this exchange.
• 41:43
  You say you know the the fin Farah going about going abroad,
• 41:49
  meeting with others, learning, applying what you've learned,
• 41:52
  where it fits in your world view of things.
• 41:55
  And the next thing you know, you you start becoming more
• 41:57
  authentic because of all of these other elements.
• 42:03
  Yeah, at least that's what you agree.
• 42:06
  Well, and I, I also, I, I realized as I was sort of
• 42:08
  rambling on this, this this last one, I, I don't want it to sound
• 42:12
  like the Viking Age isn't important.
• 42:14
  It is still important to read the it's important to read the
• 42:17
  sagas, but it's it's important to do that to understand the
• 42:21
  people we came from, right and and to understand who we are
• 42:25
  sort of picking things up from. I did also want to touch, I
• 42:31
  don't know if I've, I've spoken about this before, but something
• 42:34
  that really cracked this open for me was no longer equating
• 42:39
  the word ancestor with blood, relative understanding the idea
• 42:46
  that you really have three types of ancestors.
• 42:50
  I'm, I'm sure there's others, but the way I like to think
• 42:52
  about it is the way that it was taught to me is that you have
• 42:56
  ancestors of blood, the people that you are physically,
• 43:00
  genetically descended from. And that is obviously important.
• 43:04
  And when most people hear the word ancestor, that's what
• 43:06
  they're thinking of, which totally valid.
• 43:08
  Those are very important and you should honor those.
• 43:11
  But we also have ancestors of land who are the people who came
• 43:16
  before us in the place that we live.
• 43:19
  So for me, Abraham Lincoln counts as an ancestor of land.
• 43:25
  He's a notable person who is from the area that I now
• 43:28
  inhabit. And his mark on this place is, I
• 43:32
  mean, they call it the Land of Lincoln.
• 43:34
  That is literally the name of my Facebook group.
• 43:36
  He's on our license plate. There's murals of him literally
• 43:39
  everywhere. You can't drive down the road
• 43:40
  without some historical marker. There's one in a little town,
• 43:43
  you know, 20 minutes away from here.
• 43:45
  It's like, ah, this is Tolono, Illinois.
• 43:47
  This is where Abraham Lincoln gave his last train address
• 43:50
  before he went to the US Senate. He's like, well, I'm glad they
• 43:53
  put a flag in this gas station parking lot to remind us all
• 43:56
  that that happened here. But you know, we we've got the
• 43:59
  ancestors of blood. We have the ancestors of land,
• 44:03
  which also applies to the indigenous people who stewarded
• 44:06
  this place and continue to steward this place, which is
• 44:09
  what I sort of brought up earlier.
• 44:11
  And then there's the incestors of tradition who are people who
• 44:15
  held the ideas that we now hold. And that is a really big one to
• 44:21
  start honoring, because when you break out of the idea that the
• 44:25
  only historical people that you are engaging in a relationship
• 44:29
  with are just the ones that led to you being born, you really
• 44:33
  start to realize that there is so much shared culture of
• 44:38
  humanity that is open and available and should be honored
• 44:43
  and should be fed. I come at this from the angle of
• 44:46
  herbalism, which is something that I've been getting into this
• 44:49
  year I'm in I've been enrolled in a couple of courses
• 44:54
  discussing Anglo-Saxon historical herbalism, which we
• 44:58
  use the neologism of warped cunning, which is the knowledge
• 45:02
  of medicine plants and the sources they were using for that
• 45:08
  are, you know, a lot of people are familiar with the Ninerds
• 45:12
  charm that comes from a text called the Lacununga.
• 45:17
  But there are also these Leech books, these these these healing
• 45:21
  texts that were passed down. And when you look at them, they
• 45:27
  are by no means culturally pure. These are collections of human
• 45:33
  knowledge from every wave of people that inhabited the
• 45:36
  British Isles. It gets back to the original
• 45:40
  Indo European hunter gatherers, the Celtic peoples, the Anglo
• 45:44
  Saxons, the Norse. Like there are just waves and
• 45:48
  waves of people who arrived in this place and all had something
• 45:52
  to offer to each other. And yeah, a lot of times they
• 45:55
  thought, not going to say that it was this beautiful kumbaya
• 45:58
  circle of everybody turn up in England and everyone's having a
• 46:01
  wonderful time over there. There is a conscious
• 46:04
  acknowledgement that we only have this knowledge because
• 46:09
  people shared it with each other and they found it important
• 46:12
  enough to record and write down. And if I were saying, oh, I'm
• 46:16
  only going to learn Norse herbalism, I wouldn't be able to
• 46:20
  walk out my door and work with echinacea, which is the flower
• 46:25
  of Illinois. I say, oh, sorry, that's not
• 46:28
  native to old Europe, so I'm not going to have a spiritual
• 46:31
  relationship with that plant. Or, you know, and, and I, I
• 46:35
  could go on that tangent for a long time, but it's, it's just
• 46:39
  a, it's a concrete and powerful example of the idea that we are
• 46:45
  made better when we take what we know, we share it with the
• 46:50
  world, and we allow the world to share what it knows with us.
• 46:55
  Yeah, that's, I mean it goes back to what we were talking
• 46:58
  earlier about like with this fin fairing or fin fodder, you know
• 47:01
  what I mean? Like you've got plenty examples
• 47:04
  of, let's say the Norse culture. You know, think you know,
• 47:10
  Scandinavia is a relatively small collection of countries,
• 47:15
  right? It's it's not a big area.
• 47:19
  So, you know, so much of what they attained or obtained was as
• 47:25
  a result of raiding and taking it and bringing it back or at
• 47:30
  some point in time. We definitely know, you know,
• 47:32
  that they, they, they, they worked in, you know, they, they
• 47:36
  traded with countries in the East, right?
• 47:39
  They, they, they, they engaged in pretty extensive trade,
• 47:43
  trading with like the Byzantine Empire and, you know, Eastern
• 47:49
  Europe, like for instance, the, the, the, the roofs.
• 47:52
  I mean, if the roofs play a key role in the development of, you
• 48:01
  know, or, or not the development, but the, the, the
• 48:04
  rise of the, what was it the, the Rurik dynasty, which who
• 48:08
  became, you know, the rulers of of the Kiev, the Kievan Ruse
• 48:13
  and, you know, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, like all that sections
• 48:17
  of, of, of Eastern Europe, the Irish, the Scottish, you know
• 48:23
  what I mean? Yeah.
• 48:24
  Yeah, the the Gallow glass. Yeah, it sounds a fun to
• 48:29
  remember. Yeah.
• 48:30
  The Norse gales, syncretic culture and the Normans, right.
• 48:34
  Which then, you know, circled all the way back around to
• 48:37
  England again within a week of, you know, the Vikings being
• 48:42
  driven out Stamford Bridge. It's it's, it's really amazing.
• 48:45
  There's there's so much, you know, these, these circles and
• 48:49
  cycles of, of people moving from one place to another.
• 48:52
  And it's important to realize that, yeah, you know, that
• 48:54
  happens spiritually as well. We have accounts of people
• 48:58
  taking their gods with them, casting their ancestral idols
• 49:01
  into the sea to choose where they settled and the spirits
• 49:05
  moved with them. And something I was also
• 49:08
  thinking about, we we talked yesterday about this kind of
• 49:11
  being our topic. And I was just kind of struck.
• 49:13
  Something that we have talked about in my kindred is that even
• 49:17
  our gods do this. The modern pantheon that we
• 49:23
  venerate is a combination of two kindreds who came together, 2
• 49:27
  tribes that were at war and then made peace, shared and
• 49:32
  synchronized their knowledge and then passed it down to our
• 49:35
  ancestors. So how can we claim that we
• 49:39
  follow a pure, unbroken tradition that has never been
• 49:43
  combined with anything else, when literally the most central
• 49:47
  myth about how our cosmos operates is a story of two
• 49:53
  cultures combining and being made stronger by becoming one?
• 49:58
  Yeah, yeah, I, I, I believe that that that's like a pitfall for
• 50:04
  many modern heathens, maybe newer ones too, who just, they
• 50:09
  don't think of it that way, right?
• 50:10
  Or they, they don't understand just how much intercultural
• 50:15
  contact that our ancestors had. It's woven into the lore.
• 50:22
  It's right there, like it's all there.
• 50:25
  It it really pisses off these purists and.
• 50:28
  These these folks. Who want to try and claim
• 50:30
  superiority and all that and I'm like, hey, buddy, I hate to
• 50:32
  break it to you, but you know, it would never like that.
• 50:37
  No, fortunately not. Yeah.
• 50:41
  So you know between, you know, between your own experiences and
• 50:47
  with, with just personal life, you know yourself and then how
• 50:50
  it's become woven into the, the custom of your tribe.
• 50:56
  How do you think the cultural exchange can enrich our
• 51:01
  relationships, right, with the lands, with our ancestors, the
• 51:07
  in the spirits of those things that you talked earlier about?
• 51:11
  Yeah. I mean, I, I think for me it's
• 51:15
  kind of a matter of filling in gaps.
• 51:19
  There are, there are big holes in what has been handed down to
• 51:23
  us. And you know, I think we, we
• 51:25
  were touching earlier on being, you know, kind of more like very
• 51:28
  full revival versus full reconstruction.
• 51:31
  If you were to do a truly reconstructionist approach to
• 51:34
  Heathenry, you could never pray, you could never do a ritual
• 51:39
  because those things are not historically attested in exactly
• 51:43
  the manner that they happened. You would, you have to fill in
• 51:47
  the gaps with your own personal practice and your inspiration.
• 51:52
  And for me, that is where it can be really helpful to look at
• 51:58
  other traditions. So for instance, like when we
• 52:02
  hold rituals and I'm not going to like blow up our tribal
• 52:04
  practices all over the Internet, but like something that's very
• 52:07
  important for us is anchoring the ritual in time and in space.
• 52:12
  And that's not something that any Old Norse source talks
• 52:16
  about, but it's how Lakota ceremonies start is you honor
• 52:21
  the four directions and you honor the sun and the moon.
• 52:26
  And that is something that is important, really important to
• 52:30
  us. And so looking at the idea of
• 52:33
  it's not extractive because I'm not learning the names in
• 52:37
  Lakota. I'm not putting on eagle
• 52:39
  feathers. I'm not, you know, doing the
• 52:43
  things that they do that are specific to their culture.
• 52:46
  And I'm not calling out to the winds in a language that is in
• 52:51
  my well, I guess I am because I'm doing it Norse.
• 52:53
  But I look at our sources and we have Northrese Sioux 3 Austria
• 52:59
  and Vestry, right? We have 4 spirits that represent
• 53:02
  the directions, and they're dwarfs, right?
• 53:04
  They're earth spirits. They're always present.
• 53:06
  Should we call to them in the in their own, you know, hidden way
• 53:10
  that more tricky like that? But we can take that idea and we
• 53:16
  can use that to fill in the gap of something that wasn't
• 53:19
  attested in our spiritual tradition, but certainly
• 53:22
  enriches it. And so, you know, we do that as
• 53:25
  part of casting a circle, right? A protective vessel for the
• 53:31
  ritual. We have a member of our tribe
• 53:32
  whose position he's our Theo Davorta, right?
• 53:35
  The guardian of the Kindred. And he is the one who goes and
• 53:39
  sets the circle and, you know, gets hammer, right?
• 53:42
  And is like, hey, we're going to like, make a container for this
• 53:46
  thing. But that's not something that
• 53:47
  anyone in any Norse saga wrote down.
• 53:51
  You know, they don't talk about, oh, how it's important to feed
• 53:55
  the spirits of the land to not distract them or so that you're
• 53:59
  not distracted by your spiritual working to create this circle
• 54:02
  against baleful energies. But tantric Buddhism talks about
• 54:06
  that. So there are ways that you can
• 54:10
  look at how other people are using their spiritual
• 54:13
  technologies, sort of take away the spiritual trappings that
• 54:18
  make or the the cultural trappings that make them
• 54:20
  specific to that cultural context and find ways to breathe
• 54:24
  life into that in the heathen way.
• 54:27
  So I think it's super important and it's definitely something
• 54:30
  that we do in order to, to make our rituals feel unique and
• 54:36
  special. And you, you know, I, I can
• 54:40
  really tell when you set a good vessel versus when we just kind
• 54:44
  of, you know, half ass our way through it and it doesn't quite
• 54:48
  have the same feeling. There are definitely individual
• 54:51
  rituals that I can pick out where the moment we finished the
• 54:55
  circle, the wind dropped to dead stillness and it had been
• 54:59
  howling the whole day. Or you could stand on the
• 55:01
  boundary of the torch line and you could hold one hand in and
• 55:05
  it was boiling hot and outside it was freezing and right on the
• 55:09
  line you didn't feel either temperature.
• 55:12
  So there are there are times where I have really felt that
• 55:17
  that practice has been heard by our spirits that we're calling
• 55:20
  to, but it's not explicitly A Norse practice.
• 55:24
  Right, That's beautiful man. Thank you for sharing a little
• 55:28
  bit of that and giving us some context to it.
• 55:31
  I've experienced similar things too, you know, 'cause I, I've,
• 55:39
  I've gone to events that are purely, you know, Norse or, or
• 55:43
  Germanic heathen or whatever, you know, I mean, so it's, but
• 55:45
  again, like with the, the framework of the ritual, you
• 55:48
  know, I've also gone to, you know, I've also been a part of
• 55:52
  Wiccan ceremonies and then I've also helped lead and write and
• 55:59
  participate in other ceremonial things that are not really
• 56:04
  singularly like associated with any sort of cultural thing.
• 56:08
  It's a little bit of a mixed bag of things.
• 56:10
  But the neat thing about it is that because of what you're
• 56:13
  doing these and the spirit of what you're doing, you when you
• 56:17
  apply it the right way, it works because that that language is
• 56:20
  universal, that, that you know, spirit recognizes spirit and
• 56:23
  there's nothing that can change that is, you know, so how the
• 56:28
  Lakota do it in their language and in their ways is, is their
• 56:31
  closed off practice or it's their tradition.
• 56:34
  But what, what you can learn from those things or what does
• 56:37
  get shared? And then you put it into the
• 56:40
  framework of something that is more what we from are familiar
• 56:44
  with, right? The the, the words and the names
• 56:46
  of of those same entities, those same spirits.
• 56:49
  Of course it's going to work. It's the same thing.
• 56:53
  You're just calling it a different name.
• 56:55
  Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
• 56:57
  And you know, and, but I mean to that, to that point and also
• 57:01
  kind of expanding on it, you know, in in other ways that that
• 57:05
  we've we've done this is like our harvest ritual, right?
• 57:08
  You know, it's we, we work with SIF obviously for, for our sort
• 57:13
  of main harvest ritual, which is round about September.
• 57:16
  Obviously it kind of fluctuates because we do Luna solar time
• 57:19
  reckoning. So it was actually early October
• 57:21
  for us this year. We're very behind because this
• 57:24
  was a leap year. We had a, we had a 13th moon in
• 57:27
  the middle of summer. So everything is way shifted
• 57:30
  back this year. All that.
• 57:33
  All this is to say when we do our corn moon ritual, we're not
• 57:36
  just working with the goddess associated with the harvest time
• 57:40
  in the Norse tradition, but we also work with the three spirits
• 57:45
  of corn, bean and squash. The three sisters of indigenous
• 57:50
  agriculture, Madamin, Miska, Desimen and Okasimen are their
• 57:54
  names in Ojibwe. But, you know, they are
• 57:59
  fantastically important spirits. And ain't nobody in Norway
• 58:04
  working a pumpkin ritual. But, you know, we're not in
• 58:07
  Norway. We're in the midway.
• 58:10
  And like, that's what people did.
• 58:12
  Like, these, these three spirits are so tied up in the human
• 58:15
  narrative. And, you know, to get back on my
• 58:18
  herbalism soapbox, there are so many plants that are so deeply
• 58:22
  invested and tied spiritually with humanity.
• 58:25
  They're like, it's important to offer to them specifically.
• 58:27
  So, you know, it wouldn't feel like a harvest ritual for us US
• 58:31
  unless we actually didn't work just with the goddess of the
• 58:34
  harvest, but with the spirits that were physically sustaining
• 58:39
  us. So we cook them, we prepare them
• 58:41
  ritually, we give thanks to them for their gifts.
• 58:44
  We renew that cycle of that relationship.
• 58:48
  And it's all under the Norse umbrella.
• 58:50
  But we're working with foods that are not from Scandinavia
• 58:55
  with that are not from Scandinavia.
• 58:57
  So. That is a way in which
• 58:59
  syncretism for me is like really empowered and improved and
• 59:06
  enhanced our way of doing things.
• 59:10
  You know, you keep talking about, you know, what you've
• 59:14
  learned and, and what you know, the, the, the Lakota, right,
• 59:17
  because of their respective, the land that you're on and, and
• 59:20
  their land. And I think we, you and I have
• 59:23
  talked about before. I know we, I'm.
• 59:25
  I'm pretty sure it's, it's you braiding sweetgrass.
• 59:29
  Yeah, it's always me. I was talking.
• 59:31
  Yeah. And so when you're talking about
• 59:35
  all this, I was reminded about in there, you have the the
• 59:41
  Hodon. I don't know how it's the right
• 59:42
  way, but the Hodonoswani Iroquois.
• 59:45
  Hodonoshoni. Hodonoshoni, thank you.
• 59:48
  Yeah, the Iroquois confederacies that that the prayer, I think
• 59:57
  you're familiar with it, but it's basically like greetings to
• 1:00:01
  the natural world, the people, the earth mother, the waters,
• 1:00:06
  the birds, the fish. And then it closes every every
• 1:00:10
  part of that prayer. It's it's, it's quite long, but
• 1:00:14
  it's, you know, now our minds are one is is is a line that
• 1:00:17
  closes each section of that of that prayer.
• 1:00:25
  And I think that's a really important distinction to, you
• 1:00:28
  know, something to to take note of is, is after acknowledging,
• 1:00:31
  after thanking each of these parts of creation.
• 1:00:38
  Now our minds are one. It goes back to what I was
• 1:00:40
  saying before. It's all this, it's universal.
• 1:00:42
  It doesn't know the difference between cultural anything.
• 1:00:46
  It's, it's when you're in line with spirit, it's you're in
• 1:00:50
  alignment and, and it doesn't matter where you're from or
• 1:00:53
  where you are, where you picked it up from.
• 1:00:55
  It's A and that's and that's why I believe it was so important to
• 1:00:58
  go Finn Faring, You know, you, you, this, this opens you up to
• 1:01:02
  see that we're not so different after all.
• 1:01:05
  Absolutely. I do this all the time with
• 1:01:08
  Hinduism. I really want to learn, learn
• 1:01:11
  more about it, but just it's such a vast and varied
• 1:01:16
  spiritual. I, I, I should not even say that
• 1:01:18
  it's one thing, right? There are so many sects.
• 1:01:21
  There are so many cults. There are so many, you know,
• 1:01:24
  ways of engaging with that spirituality.
• 1:01:26
  But every time I hear a Hindu myth, I'm like, there is a grain
• 1:01:32
  in there that is so connected to the way that we view our gods
• 1:01:37
  and the and the way that I mean, obviously there's the Indo
• 1:01:39
  European cultural connection, but the the specific stories,
• 1:01:43
  you know, when we talk about myths of serpent slaying, it's
• 1:01:47
  it's so, you know, tied in with, you know, especially sky gods
• 1:01:50
  slaying serpents, right, It's Thor and Yorman Gunder, but it's
• 1:01:54
  everywhere. Even like Aboriginal Australia
• 1:01:56
  has that there are so many of these narratives that have been
• 1:02:00
  passed down for so long. They're so deeply entrenched.
• 1:02:06
  But you know, I was, I was just listening to a podcast episode
• 1:02:08
  that was talking about Ganesha, right?
• 1:02:10
  The, the elephant head of deity that you'll, you'll see in most
• 1:02:13
  Indian restaurants because he's associated with bearing burdens
• 1:02:17
  and with moving immovable things that like one of his, I, I don't
• 1:02:23
  remember the Sanskrit for it, but but one of his like, you
• 1:02:27
  know, Kennings basically is like he with a belly so big it can
• 1:02:32
  support the universe. And it just, it instantly hit me
• 1:02:36
  as Thor, this idea that we have this broad strong God who we
• 1:02:42
  call on when we need to move things in the world.
• 1:02:45
  And when there is something in our way that is too big for us
• 1:02:49
  to handle on our own, that we invoke Thunder to clear out that
• 1:02:54
  opposing energy. And it's it's just something
• 1:02:58
  that's so, you know, it's and it's universal.
• 1:03:00
  Everyone deals with that, right? You know, we want stability.
• 1:03:04
  We want to be protected from these large things out in the
• 1:03:07
  cosmos that we can't fully wrap our minds around.
• 1:03:10
  And whether we, you know, have it as a large man with an
• 1:03:15
  elephant's head or it's a man with a red beard riding on a
• 1:03:18
  goat with a lightning hammer, you know that that call is the
• 1:03:24
  same. And I think it's beautiful that
• 1:03:26
  our respective cultures both have somebody who answers that
• 1:03:29
  call. Yeah, well, that, that reminds
• 1:03:33
  me of something that I also spoke with a couple other guests
• 1:03:37
  in this, you know, towards the end of season 6.
• 1:03:40
  Here was the connecting with your culture, right?
• 1:03:46
  And the importance of that to have a have a have an anchor
• 1:03:50
  point, right? To be rooted somewhere.
• 1:03:52
  It's it's when we're talking about cultural exchange and
• 1:03:56
  sharing things cross culturally and in the importance of that.
• 1:04:01
  And I just didn't want to I didn't want to like over over
• 1:04:06
  shadow or or take away from the importance of connecting with
• 1:04:11
  your culture, right? Having having your roots with
• 1:04:14
  your, your, you know what I mean?
• 1:04:17
  Like your heritage, your culture at with the whatever that is
• 1:04:21
  because you need that you need that route, you need that, that
• 1:04:23
  source, that that foundation to to come back to, you know, it's
• 1:04:27
  always good to come back home, right?
• 1:04:28
  The hover mall talks about that one one's own home is best.
• 1:04:32
  And but yeah, like so much of our homes, I look around and how
• 1:04:39
  my home is decorated or how my home feels like home isn't
• 1:04:42
  because I have the same thing from the same place.
• 1:04:46
  I have things from many places, you know, and, and it's what
• 1:04:50
  makes the home so inviting to me, what makes it feel so good.
• 1:04:55
  But, but I also see a lot that is me, you know, is, is, is
• 1:04:59
  it's, it's a reflection of my MyHeritage, my culture, my
• 1:05:03
  roots. So yeah, I wanted to throw that
• 1:05:07
  in there too, just as like a another aspect to to consider
• 1:05:10
  while we're doing all this talking about going places and
• 1:05:13
  faring forth and all that, all that jazz.
• 1:05:17
  And I think, I think that's, that's what it is though, you
• 1:05:20
  know, it's, it's the intentional return is what makes it
• 1:05:24
  finfaring as opposed to just moving somewhere else.
• 1:05:29
  It's you, you go out to gather and to learn and to sharpen your
• 1:05:33
  mind and reinvigorate yourself and you get excited about all
• 1:05:36
  these new projects and all these new things.
• 1:05:38
  And then you return home and you need to do the work.
• 1:05:41
  You need to integrate, you need to find it and it braid it back
• 1:05:45
  in with what you already have. And I think that's, it's
• 1:05:48
  important to acknowledge that people have been doing this
• 1:05:51
  throughout history as far back as we can go.
• 1:05:54
  This has always been part of it. And no culture is entirely
• 1:05:58
  formed in isolation. They're, they're always, always,
• 1:06:01
  always informed by their neighbors and informed by
• 1:06:05
  different factions within that culture.
• 1:06:07
  And there is a constant, as we were talking about with nature,
• 1:06:10
  this dynamic equilibrium, you know, the animate force moves
• 1:06:14
  the exact same way. You know, the it's constantly re
• 1:06:18
  expressing, recombining, you know, turning itself into new
• 1:06:23
  expressions, new names, new places.
• 1:06:26
  And while it's important, I think to have something to latch
• 1:06:31
  onto, it's OK to realize that that's not that doesn't have to
• 1:06:34
  be one thing. There are people who are dual
• 1:06:37
  tradition. There are people that are
• 1:06:39
  eclectic. And so long as you have some
• 1:06:42
  framework with to which you return, I think you know this is
• 1:06:47
  a a worthwhile exercise and everyone would benefit from
• 1:06:50
  broadening the horizons just a little bit.
• 1:06:54
  Yeah, widening the web, you know?
• 1:06:56
  Yeah. It's a great way of putting it.
• 1:06:58
  Yeah, I like that. Yeah.
• 1:06:59
  Broadening the horizons, widening the web.
• 1:07:01
  And it's interesting 'cause I, I have a really close friend,
• 1:07:05
  Patrick. He's, he's been on the podcast a
• 1:07:07
  bunch of times. I'm sure you're, you know who
• 1:07:09
  I'm talking about. Yeah.
• 1:07:10
  And, you know, we, we can talk a lot about different things.
• 1:07:15
  And one of the things that recently came up was, you know,
• 1:07:19
  and I talked about this on the last week's episode of the
• 1:07:21
  podcast was identifying or, you know, or, or carrying a title or
• 1:07:25
  a name, you know, and then coming to a place in our lives
• 1:07:30
  that that that title or that name doesn't seem to fit, you
• 1:07:35
  know, it doesn't seem to apply anymore, you know, So, you know,
• 1:07:38
  all these years I've been Norse Pagan and now all of a sudden I
• 1:07:41
  don't feel like I'm a Norse Pagan anymore.
• 1:07:43
  Why is that? You know, what is what is that
• 1:07:46
  saying to you? And, and, and then, but what is
• 1:07:49
  something that you feel connected with, right.
• 1:07:50
  For him, it was, you know, animism and I'm like, that's
• 1:07:56
  Norse paganism too, man. Like, you know, there it's, you
• 1:07:58
  know, that's it's kind of part of the bit, if you will.
• 1:08:01
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, if you don't want
• 1:08:05
  to use the title or the name and then you just feel better
• 1:08:07
  calling yourself an animist, then then sure.
• 1:08:10
  But I mean, ultimately, like that's, you know, there was no,
• 1:08:14
  there was never names for the way that people live, you know?
• 1:08:17
  Yeah, you know, the, the, the, the pre Christian Scandinavians
• 1:08:20
  and Germanic people, they didn't call themselves anything.
• 1:08:22
  They just were who they were. Yeah, those names and stuff came
• 1:08:25
  later on. It's like, well, how do you, how
• 1:08:29
  do you translate religion in Old Norse?
• 1:08:30
  It's like, well, there isn't a word for it.
• 1:08:32
  It's what people do. Did not feel the need to draw
• 1:08:36
  the line there. It's like the the line that we
• 1:08:38
  draw between magic and medicine. Like it's, it's the same thing.
• 1:08:42
  We're just linguistically differentiating it because
• 1:08:45
  that's what people love to do. There's this idea that I come
• 1:08:49
  back to that I read about in a book called The Dawn of
• 1:08:51
  Everything by David Craber and David Wengrove.
• 1:08:55
  Fantastic book. But it's the idea of
• 1:08:58
  schismogenesis, the creation of fracture.
• 1:09:02
  And it is when people intentionally differentiate
• 1:09:06
  themselves culturally. It is historically people a lot
• 1:09:10
  of times defined culture by things that they were, but also
• 1:09:13
  very much by what they are not. You see this with like U.S.
• 1:09:17
  states like Texas and Oklahoma, no real reason.
• 1:09:22
  Or like Kentucky and West Virginia, like there's this,
• 1:09:24
  there's this deep seated beef and they have so much in common.
• 1:09:28
  But there is a river that will never be crossed.
• 1:09:31
  And like, it's, you know, are you, are you a UT fan or are you
• 1:09:34
  an A&M fan? We're going to create a huge
• 1:09:37
  squabble and sell, you know, billions of dollars of burnt
• 1:09:39
  orange and maroon merch. But there is this deep human
• 1:09:44
  need to differentiate and to label and to make distinct and
• 1:09:48
  say, oh, well, you know, this is how we do things here.
• 1:09:50
  And we're not like those people over there who do that thing.
• 1:09:53
  But there's so much that gets back to the, I mean, what, what
• 1:09:56
  the, the core shamanism movement that like Kai Faust from
• 1:10:01
  Highland is part of it's the, it is the, the stripping back of
• 1:10:04
  all cultural trappings and the, the idea that this, this there
• 1:10:11
  is this unifying principle. And it doesn't really matter
• 1:10:15
  what name you slap on it, so long as you know the gnome gets
• 1:10:18
  their porridge, they don't mind. Yeah, yeah, that's so much of
• 1:10:24
  what I've come to find. Be at peace with, you know, is
• 1:10:27
  OK. You know, a lot of my world
• 1:10:29
  viewers are, are informed by things I've learned about
• 1:10:32
  heathenry and or or Germanic pre Christian polytheism.
• 1:10:38
  But my, the way I live, how I act, how I behave, it involves
• 1:10:48
  so much more than just that one thing.
• 1:10:51
  Yeah. And it's because it's because
• 1:10:55
  I've left my comfortable little place and I've traveled and I've
• 1:10:59
  gone, you know, this, this, this thing every year that I go to up
• 1:11:03
  in North Carolina, you know, that this men's retreat, it's a,
• 1:11:06
  it's a convergence of multiple different, you know, it's not a
• 1:11:10
  heathen thing. It's not a native thing.
• 1:11:12
  It's not a Toltec thing. It's all of those together, you
• 1:11:16
  know, So there's this sharing that's taking place.
• 1:11:19
  And, and like one of the beautiful things about that,
• 1:11:21
  that retreat every year is that, you know, we're, we're going to
• 1:11:26
  this one central place, right where, where we're going to the
• 1:11:29
  mountain for fire on the mountain is what what that is,
• 1:11:33
  is called. But then, you know, it's not
• 1:11:36
  like we're just coming here to get something.
• 1:11:38
  And then we leave the mountain and we keep everything that we
• 1:11:42
  learned there. Yeah, we carry that fire back
• 1:11:45
  with us, you know, and then we share that fire because fire is
• 1:11:49
  warmth, fire is light, fire is inspiration.
• 1:11:52
  It's it's defence. It's so many things, you know,
• 1:11:54
  the, the metaphorical things that you can get into with,
• 1:11:59
  with, with fire. But the same.
• 1:12:02
  And I've never, you know, I've never, I've never applied the,
• 1:12:05
  the context of finfaring with, with that.
• 1:12:07
  To me, it's just been, you know, we're converging together and,
• 1:12:11
  and we're learning from one another and then we're taking
• 1:12:13
  that back. It's that's it.
• 1:12:15
  That's yeah, really, I think the, the, the, the heart or the
• 1:12:18
  soul of the backbone of a finfaring.
• 1:12:19
  What what that is? Absolutely.
• 1:12:23
  I mean, I think it's historically was, was a little
• 1:12:26
  bit more like you would all go together to go learn from one
• 1:12:29
  group of people. But there's no reason you can't
• 1:12:31
  say we're learning from each other and, and that is the, the
• 1:12:35
  point of the voyage. I yeah, I, I think there's,
• 1:12:39
  there's no need to make a false distinction there.
• 1:12:41
  I, I think you're absolutely describing this same type of
• 1:12:45
  thing. And I love them.
• 1:12:50
  Yeah, dude, it's, you know, I'm so glad to have been given the
• 1:12:53
  chance to, you know, something that started as a spark, you
• 1:12:59
  know, just a just a, a small thing, a small just going to
• 1:13:03
  somebody's house and visiting for the first time.
• 1:13:06
  How many, how many, how many places do we go and visit?
• 1:13:09
  And then that's all it ever is. It's a visit and you leave and
• 1:13:12
  you go on about your daily lives or whatever and nothing really
• 1:13:15
  changes. But that one time that one
• 1:13:17
  chance was the ember that sparked this whole thing that
• 1:13:22
  has made it become something that, you know, hearing men's
• 1:13:26
  stories and and hearing about what this has done for them, how
• 1:13:33
  it's helped inspire them to be better men, which then they
• 1:13:38
  share with others and others see that right.
• 1:13:40
  So there's this ripple effect that's taking place.
• 1:13:44
  I just go, man, like what a it's, it's, it's wild to sit
• 1:13:47
  and, and really give, give that space to, to realize the impact
• 1:13:55
  that it's had. And it inspires me to want to
• 1:13:57
  keep doing it, you know, and, and to really do the work
• 1:14:00
  constantly, right? Even when it gets hard, when
• 1:14:03
  it's challenging, like that's even, I think that's when it's
• 1:14:07
  more like when things get when, when things get hard, when
• 1:14:11
  things, you know, you maybe don't feel like you've been,
• 1:14:14
  you're being noticed, right? Like maybe the gods are silent
• 1:14:17
  or the spirits aren't so loud, right?
• 1:14:19
  You're not feeling this big vibration.
• 1:14:21
  I think that that's, that might be the time when things are
• 1:14:24
  about to pop off. You know, in that silence, in
• 1:14:28
  that calm, it's like, now get ready.
• 1:14:32
  Get ready to get ready for the ride.
• 1:14:34
  It's important to be able to sit there as well, because that's,
• 1:14:38
  that's very hard. I, I talked with a brother of
• 1:14:40
  mine about this someone recently.
• 1:14:42
  He, he messaged me and he said that, you know, it just, it
• 1:14:45
  wasn't, it wasn't, you know, he was clicking, you know, he was,
• 1:14:49
  he was sending these offerings and you know, he just, he wasn't
• 1:14:51
  feeling like things were flowing back the other way and he was
• 1:14:55
  feeling isolated. And you know, he was in, in his
• 1:14:58
  framing. He was like, you know, I'm doing
• 1:15:01
  something wrong. And I was like, no, you aren't.
• 1:15:04
  If we didn't feel that exile, we wouldn't be able to feel the
• 1:15:08
  return. You know, if we were, if we were
• 1:15:12
  conjoined with spirit 24/7, you know, we'd just be in a totally
• 1:15:17
  blissed out trance, you know, just going about our lives as
• 1:15:21
  these levitating beings of light.
• 1:15:24
  You know, we're not, we're people.
• 1:15:25
  We're out in the dirt. And you know, it's you.
• 1:15:30
  You are separate from it. And then at, you know, the peak
• 1:15:33
  of rituals in your deep offerings, you get that glimpse
• 1:15:37
  and you get that reconnection. But you need both for harmony
• 1:15:41
  and balance. You need to be able to drift
• 1:15:44
  between feeling closer and feeling further and to
• 1:15:46
  understand that in those moments where you're feeling further
• 1:15:49
  away, there will be a return and it will be powerful and
• 1:15:54
  transformative and all the other great things that we assigned
• 1:15:57
  to, to bloats. But I think a lot of people get
• 1:16:00
  stuck in that feeling that, you know, things are so hard and I'm
• 1:16:03
  just, I'm bashing my head up against this and I'm, I'm
• 1:16:07
  feeling there's no one behind me.
• 1:16:09
  You'd be able to sit with that and realize that there will be.
• 1:16:13
  Well, I wonder if it a lot of it has to do with the way that
• 1:16:17
  society has kind of informed most things nowadays.
• 1:16:22
  Everything is instant. This instant that you open your
• 1:16:25
  phone, you find something right away.
• 1:16:27
  You know, well, that ain't how it works with with spirit, with
• 1:16:31
  with the divine. You know, you're going to get
• 1:16:34
  things that come to for me example, right.
• 1:16:36
  I've had things happen to me very recently that I'm like in
• 1:16:41
  the moment of it happening, I'm, I'm, I'm just going like, what
• 1:16:45
  is this for? Why is this hat?
• 1:16:47
  Why are you doing this to me? What is, what is the point of
• 1:16:49
  all this? What am I supposed to get from
• 1:16:51
  this? Because the answer doesn't come
• 1:16:53
  to me right then. But I've learned that that's how
• 1:16:57
  it goes sometimes. Sometimes you're not going to
• 1:16:59
  get that instant response or that instant answer, but you're
• 1:17:02
  going to get the experience that you then have to give space to.
• 1:17:06
  You have to give that pause. You have to, you have to
• 1:17:09
  meditate on it. You have to let you know, go
• 1:17:12
  through all the things that that it comes with in order for the
• 1:17:15
  lesson to, to come through. And it might not even happen,
• 1:17:17
  right, You know, soon thereafter.
• 1:17:19
  It might take days or even weeks sometimes.
• 1:17:21
  You know, that's one thing that I've that I've come to to
• 1:17:26
  realize it's, you know, there's no instant gratification.
• 1:17:29
  There's no instant response to, to, to things quite often.
• 1:17:35
  And that doesn't, you know, because that happens because of
• 1:17:37
  that. That does not mean that we did
• 1:17:39
  it wrong or that we're doing something wrong or that we being
• 1:17:42
  ignored or they've abandoned us or anything.
• 1:17:45
  It's just, that's just how it goes.
• 1:17:46
  That's just the natural flow of things.
• 1:17:49
  Yeah, I mean, I, I think that's so true.
• 1:17:52
  Our, our attention spans are so blasted by, you know, all the
• 1:17:56
  flashing lights and, you know, colors and sounds that are just,
• 1:18:01
  we're, I mean, we're just swimming in it constantly.
• 1:18:06
  It's, it's taken us away from the ability to, to authentically
• 1:18:10
  connect like that. You know, I think when I, when I
• 1:18:12
  first started getting my herbal manuals, I was like, takes two
• 1:18:16
  weeks to make a tincture. Yeah, I have to, I have to cut
• 1:18:21
  an herb then I have to, I have to dry it for 45 days and then I
• 1:18:27
  have to get it together and I have to make sacred space and do
• 1:18:31
  a ritual. And then I I every day I have to
• 1:18:33
  go back and shake it again and reinfuse it and pour more of it
• 1:18:38
  into that. And you know, you're doing it
• 1:18:40
  the first couple days it's like, OK, yeah, I get it, you know,
• 1:18:43
  hail to you, O mugwort, who is called Una.
• 1:18:45
  Just going to like running through it.
• 1:18:47
  And then on that like 8th or 9th day when the moon is in the
• 1:18:53
  right phase in the lines at just the right time, when you're
• 1:18:56
  standing at the medicine altar and you feel that hit in right
• 1:18:59
  in your heart Center for the first time.
• 1:19:01
  It's like, Oh no, this was the point it it had to be slow and
• 1:19:07
  there was there was no other. There was no way to rush it
• 1:19:10
  because if I rushed it, it wouldn't mean the same thing.
• 1:19:13
  And if I wasn't doing this every day, it wouldn't be giving the
• 1:19:16
  same thing back. So I think there, I think
• 1:19:18
  there's so much to be said for being slow, being intentional
• 1:19:24
  and. Yeah, stillness, right.
• 1:19:25
  Like that's, it's, it's, it's, it's timely to, to, to hear this
• 1:19:31
  right now, 'cause there's things going on with me and some of my
• 1:19:34
  inner circle of, of people who, where we just started, you know,
• 1:19:40
  this is right, right. Beginning of December, we've got
• 1:19:43
  a month of time left before the end of the year and we're all
• 1:19:46
  kind of in this collective effort to, to do things
• 1:19:50
  inclusively, even though distance is what it is and we're
• 1:19:53
  not physically together. Is, is to, you know, have, have
• 1:19:57
  planned activities and, and things that unite us across
• 1:20:01
  distance. And one of those activities for
• 1:20:04
  for the mind is I think it's it's either the mind or the.
• 1:20:11
  Because we got different ones, you know, mind, body, spirit and
• 1:20:15
  heart. But one of them is is to, to be
• 1:20:18
  cold still. Just sit in stillness for like 5
• 1:20:23
  minutes a day or 5 minutes a week even.
• 1:20:25
  You know, just a time when you don't have your phone on, you
• 1:20:28
  don't have any music playing. You're still like you're sitting
• 1:20:32
  still. You're not tapping your foot or
• 1:20:34
  fiddling with your fingers or thinking about anything else.
• 1:20:37
  Like just that moment of stillness.
• 1:20:44
  And that's like, it's like you said, you know, with all the
• 1:20:46
  things that there are all the distractions, like that's,
• 1:20:49
  that's a challenge in itself for a lot of people.
• 1:20:52
  But we're going to get close to wrapping things up here.
• 1:20:56
  Chris, I did want to ask you if you could think of like anything
• 1:21:01
  or things maybe from like a mindset.
• 1:21:06
  What do you think that Heathenry today needs more of going
• 1:21:14
  forward and what do you think it needs less of?
• 1:21:24
  I think it needs less attachment to nationalism and identity.
• 1:21:31
  The idea that there is a group of people who's allowed to be
• 1:21:40
  heathen and there's a group of people who has earned the right
• 1:21:44
  to call themselves he, then I think we can throw that right in
• 1:21:48
  the trash. I think anyone can pick up this
• 1:21:52
  path. Like I like I talked about, the
• 1:21:55
  ancestors of tradition don't have to be related to you.
• 1:21:57
  If you feel called that. This is your spiritual home, and
• 1:22:01
  you're honoring your own ancestors of blood while still
• 1:22:05
  honoring the ancestors of tradition and the ancestors of
• 1:22:10
  land. You're good in my book.
• 1:22:15
  So yeah, the idea that there is this sort of right type of
• 1:22:18
  person to be even, and that it's only that it's a closed practice
• 1:22:25
  because it isn't. We're all working off of
• 1:22:27
  historical manuscripts and there is not one unbroken lineage that
• 1:22:31
  initiates you into Heathenry. I think what it needs more of is
• 1:22:37
  people who are willing to be open minded and to listen, that
• 1:22:43
  are people that are willing to not stop once you have read your
• 1:22:54
  first. I mean some people I guess don't
• 1:22:55
  even read the books but. True.
• 1:22:58
  That you read the ETA's, that you maybe read a couple of the
• 1:23:03
  sagas and you say, great, I know it all, I'm done.
• 1:23:07
  I can now just stay here and do my own thing forever.
• 1:23:12
  I think if we want this to grow and we want this to, you know,
• 1:23:18
  survive a couple generations, it needs to.
• 1:23:23
  The bones are there. We just need to get some meat on
• 1:23:26
  those bones. We need to be willing to have
• 1:23:29
  spiritual dialogues with people of other faiths and learn what
• 1:23:35
  we can learn from them and, you know, also learn the lessons of
• 1:23:40
  what not to do to make a good and proud name for ourselves and
• 1:23:45
  to carry ourselves proudly as he.
• 1:23:48
  There was a time in my life where, you know, I have my
• 1:23:53
  hammer on and someone say, oh, you don't like what's that?
• 1:23:55
  I was like, oh, you know, it's a it's a Viking Age thing.
• 1:23:58
  And yeah, I just. I really like history.
• 1:24:01
  And now I'm unapologetic with it.
• 1:24:04
  You know, someone else like, oh, so you are like a follower of
• 1:24:07
  the Norse religion or whatever. And I was like, yes, I am like,
• 1:24:11
  I honor those gods. I honor that heritage.
• 1:24:14
  And they didn't really know how to respond today.
• 1:24:16
  I think they thought I was going to try and deflect or do
• 1:24:19
  something was like, no, you know, this is what I believe and
• 1:24:21
  this is who I am. So we can talk about that.
• 1:24:25
  And I'm willing to teach you if you're willing to learn.
• 1:24:28
  And I'd be interested to hear what you're into.
• 1:24:30
  But yeah, anything like openness and dialogue communication,
• 1:24:35
  right? Yeah.
• 1:24:37
  What was it? Be impeccable with your word and
• 1:24:42
  always do your best. Yeah, All right.
• 1:24:45
  Yeah, always. Yeah.
• 1:24:46
  There you go, man. Wait.
• 1:24:46
  A way to weave it into the into the into the episode, right.
• 1:24:50
  Something that you hadn't heard of before.
• 1:24:51
  It like comes right back around. That's great.
• 1:24:54
  If you, if you could give advice to a heathen who maybe feels, We
• 1:24:58
  talked a little bit about this not too long ago earlier on the
• 1:25:02
  show, but like if you could give advice to heathen who who feels
• 1:25:05
  like they're stuck or stagnant in their practice, what piece of
• 1:25:10
  advice would you give to someone that feels that way?
• 1:25:15
  Yeah, I think it's, it's normal to feel and I, I felt stuck a
• 1:25:20
  couple times. So I, that's the first thing is
• 1:25:22
  you're not alone and you're probably not doing anything
• 1:25:24
  wrong. If you are feeling like you're
• 1:25:30
  not progressing anywhere, get back to the root of your
• 1:25:34
  practice and go over it with a fine tooth comb.
• 1:25:38
  Where are the things on your altar?
• 1:25:40
  Also, have you actually dusted your altar recently?
• 1:25:44
  Did you just start adding more things to it?
• 1:25:47
  And it just kind of became a little like pile of stuff?
• 1:25:50
  Because I definitely did that and I had to be like, no, I
• 1:25:53
  actually, I've got sections, got my deity section here, got my
• 1:25:56
  ancestor section, my land section over here.
• 1:25:59
  And like get back to the basics of like where do you practice?
• 1:26:03
  When do you practice? What do you do?
• 1:26:06
  Why do you do it? And go back over that stuff.
• 1:26:09
  And if any of those questions, you're like, well, it just kind
• 1:26:12
  of happened that way. Dig into it and maybe go explore
• 1:26:17
  some other ways to do it from some other traditions.
• 1:26:20
  Find a new podcast, find a new book, find a new YouTube channel
• 1:26:24
  and just learn something. And if it has no applicability
• 1:26:28
  to you, great. The worst case scenario is you
• 1:26:32
  now just like know a cool trivia fact about on trick practice,
• 1:26:36
  which might not ever come up but is really interesting if you dig
• 1:26:40
  into it. But you know, the best case
• 1:26:43
  scenario is you will find a little nugget of something that
• 1:26:45
  will breathe a new flame into your spirit and will help carry
• 1:26:50
  you forward. For you know, it might even
• 1:26:53
  knock you on a whole different trajectory.
• 1:26:55
  And what a beautiful thing to have happen.
• 1:26:57
  Yeah, that's a, that's a great piece of advice.
• 1:27:00
  I'm glad that you said that and I'm glad that there's other
• 1:27:02
  people out here that are comfortable to say it in, on a,
• 1:27:06
  on a forum like this, you know, and, and kind of put that word
• 1:27:09
  out there because I've, I've definitely echoed that sentiment
• 1:27:11
  in my own way. You know, all the, you know, you
• 1:27:14
  might learn things and, and not all things that you learn are
• 1:27:18
  applicable. Like you say, it could just be a
• 1:27:20
  neat tidbit of, of information that you can now reflect on or,
• 1:27:24
  or, you know, you might not ever use it, but it might also be the
• 1:27:28
  thing that does really put you on the path that you're supposed
• 1:27:33
  to be on. So great, great piece of advice.
• 1:27:35
  I love it. Yeah, that's happened to me a
• 1:27:37
  few times. As you know, I'll I'll go learn
• 1:27:39
  something and I'll be like, hey guys, did you know that in, in
• 1:27:42
  this school of Buddhism, they called the earth offering the
• 1:27:45
  Bhumi pooja, which means earth offering.
• 1:27:47
  And they're like, no, I didn't know that.
• 1:27:51
  Cool, I guess. Yeah.
• 1:27:53
  Well, fair enough, not everyone is into it, but hey.
• 1:27:56
  It's kind of rare Pokémon or something, yeah.
• 1:27:58
  No, Yeah, Bhumi. Pooja, do you have any, like
• 1:28:06
  anything that you would like to share, like maybe like a a
• 1:28:09
  practical exercise that deepens or broadens, you know, your,
• 1:28:15
  your, your spiritual path or, or, or if you could, you know,
• 1:28:18
  give, give somebody one practical exercise that either
• 1:28:22
  you found helpful or somebody else has shared with you to
• 1:28:24
  deepen or, or, or broaden their path.
• 1:28:28
  You have anything like that you'd like to to impart?
• 1:28:31
  Yeah. Sure.
• 1:28:33
  There is an idea that people come back to that.
• 1:28:37
  I have my various opinions on the 9 noble virtues.
• 1:28:41
  These get propped up a lot of the time as the heathen code of
• 1:28:45
  ethics right in. You can talk about the
• 1:28:47
  historicity of it, you can talk about the people who came up
• 1:28:51
  with it and the, you know, the modern people who really lean on
• 1:28:54
  that. I don't really have a whole lot
• 1:28:55
  of time for the 9 noble virtues, but I think that having a little
• 1:29:00
  sort of succinct codex like that is not a bad thing, You know?
• 1:29:05
  I don't think the 9 noble virtues are really all that bad.
• 1:29:08
  I think some of them are very valid, but they're not
• 1:29:11
  necessarily an authentic historical practice.
• 1:29:14
  What I'd recommend that you do is go look up an author called
• 1:29:17
  James Fukilich and read about the Seven Grandfather teachings.
• 1:29:23
  This is an Anishinaabe thing from the peoples of the Great
• 1:29:26
  Lakes, which is pretty much where I live, and it covers a
• 1:29:31
  whole lot of the same territory as the 9 noble virtues.
• 1:29:35
  It is a way that you can Orient your life and your code of
• 1:29:38
  values to practice as a heathen, but to carry yourself with these
• 1:29:45
  values of wisdom, love, respect, bravery, honesty, humility and
• 1:29:51
  truth. But it is an actual shared thing
• 1:29:55
  passed down from the people who stewarded this land before we
• 1:29:58
  got here. And therefore, if you want some
• 1:30:01
  spiritual help, I think that's a good way of going about it.
• 1:30:05
  So out with the 9 noble virtues, in with the seven grandfather
• 1:30:09
  teachings. That's a a concrete example of a
• 1:30:12
  way that you can synchronize and also go support an indigenous
• 1:30:15
  author. James Bukolich has done some
• 1:30:17
  amazing work in preserving Anishinabemuin, which is the
• 1:30:22
  language of the Ojibwe, and he's just cool, dude.
• 1:30:28
  Great, love this suggestion. I'll, I'll be sure to put a link
• 1:30:32
  to that. I'm sure that you can find it on
• 1:30:33
  Amazon or any other publishing site.
• 1:30:36
  You know, I mean, you can put a link to that for the listeners
• 1:30:38
  and the viewers that they want to find it, but you got the
• 1:30:42
  information there. So Birch Bark Books based in
• 1:30:45
  Minneapolis indigenous zones. What's it called again?
• 1:30:49
  Birch bark Books. Yeah, say that three times.
• 1:30:53
  Fast. Awesome Birch bark books.
• 1:30:55
  Cool. Yeah, it's like 10 bucks in like
• 1:30:56
  80 pages. You can knock it out in an
• 1:30:58
  afternoon, but you could spend a lifetime meditating on it and
• 1:31:01
  never get to the. Bottom yeah.
• 1:31:03
  Oh, OK cool. Yeah.
• 1:31:04
  And that's that's, that's great too, that it's so much in such a
• 1:31:08
  relatively condensed or or small format to absorb it in because
• 1:31:13
  let's face it, some people, you know, you tell them to read a
• 1:31:15
  book and they're like, I got to read.
• 1:31:19
  Yeah, some of us like that. But yeah, good stuff.
• 1:31:23
  OK, If it's cool with you, I'm just going to give you some
• 1:31:27
  like, rapid fire questions. These are not really meant for
• 1:31:30
  anything too deep. I just want to like throw them
• 1:31:32
  out here. And first thing that kind of
• 1:31:35
  comes to your mind. Is that cool?
• 1:31:39
  Yeah. Hit me.
• 1:31:41
  OK, let's go with one heathen concept that more people should
• 1:31:44
  explore. Or log and its applicant.
• 1:31:50
  Not just the positive things that we've inherited, but the
• 1:31:53
  negative things that we've inherited and what we can free
• 1:31:55
  ourselves from. Love it.
• 1:32:03
  If you could revive one lost custom of Heathenry.
• 1:32:07
  And I say lost because you know, what do we know about that?
• 1:32:10
  But if you, if there's anything that you could say like, ah,
• 1:32:12
  then we could bring this back right and make it a thing.
• 1:32:15
  Now what would it be? The sacred music.
• 1:32:18
  Custom rite ceremony. The sacred music it does my head
• 1:32:22
  in that the church father said oh wow, and they were singing
• 1:32:26
  all of these crazy horny songs that are would tempt the virtue
• 1:32:29
  of good Christian folk and therefore we will not record the
• 1:32:32
  lyrics of the temple songs of Frere.
• 1:32:35
  And I think about it every day of my life.
• 1:32:40
  Bring back the horny music. Bring it back, man.
• 1:32:43
  I'm telling ya, If you, if you look at Arun Rasmussen's Nordic
• 1:32:48
  Animist year, some of those fertility hymns that they were
• 1:32:50
  even singing in Christian Scandinavia, their their body,
• 1:32:54
  let's just say that. What is the most, and I'm going
• 1:32:59
  to use air quotes heathen thing that you've done.
• 1:33:04
  I said this month, but we're only in December.
• 1:33:06
  So what's the most heathen thing that you did in November, if you
• 1:33:10
  could like, classify it as a real heathen thing to do?
• 1:33:14
  Yeah, I I gathered with my family and we drank meat
• 1:33:18
  together and had a simple meal of warm bread, baked cheese and
• 1:33:24
  Jelly that I made from scratch from a tree that I have a sacred
• 1:33:28
  relationship with on my property.
• 1:33:32
  Yep, man, that's that's my kind of heathenry right there, man.
• 1:33:36
  Love it with a half a loaf and a tipped bowl of soup.
• 1:33:40
  Have I won many a friend, Yeah. Yeah, man, definitely.
• 1:33:45
  OK, Last we got two more. If your Filia appeared as an
• 1:33:50
  animal right now, what would it be?
• 1:33:55
  I wish it were a deer. It would probably be a squirrel.
• 1:33:59
  OK, little antsy, a little high strung, little, you know, not
• 1:34:05
  indecisive. The the the runner of messages
• 1:34:08
  and the one who's always got his head down doing something, but
• 1:34:11
  would probably benefit from a bit of rest.
• 1:34:16
  Yeah, Team Ratatosker man comment down below or whatever.
• 1:34:21
  Yeah, all right. And this is again crazy, funny
• 1:34:27
  wild thing. This is like a just because
• 1:34:28
  thing. If you would rather fight one
• 1:34:33
  horse sized squirrel or 20 squirrel sized horses, which
• 1:34:39
  would you pick? Oh 20 squirrel sized horse is
• 1:34:42
  easy. I could I could kick a squirrel
• 1:34:43
  sized horse a mile. A a horse sized squirrel would
• 1:34:47
  be terrifying. Imagine that's, that's like some
• 1:34:51
  like prehistoric thing that we haven't discovered yet, like
• 1:34:53
  squirrels. You know those things that climb
• 1:34:54
  up the sound trees? They used to be a ton and a
• 1:34:57
  half. You know, like, imagine.
• 1:34:59
  Investigate the giant ground sloth.
• 1:35:02
  Yeah, yeah. Yep.
• 1:35:03
  Those were a thing. Definitely a thing.
• 1:35:08
  Well, Chris, this has been so much fun.
• 1:35:10
  I've learned a lot. And I believe that, you know,
• 1:35:14
  this is this is a great recovery episode.
• 1:35:17
  I hate to like go back to that, but for for having not had this
• 1:35:21
  on the docket and for it to be such an impromptu thing.
• 1:35:24
  We really, we really hit on some, some important things.
• 1:35:27
  So thank you for reaching out. Thank you for being available to
• 1:35:32
  talk about these things and and help make what this week's
• 1:35:36
  episode is today. So it's been great to have you
• 1:35:40
  back. It's, it's great to be back.
• 1:35:42
  I always, I always love showing up on the podcast.
• 1:35:45
  And here's to many more. Definitely, man, we'll stay in
• 1:35:48
  touch. You know, season sevens is
• 1:35:50
  around the corner. And like I said, you know, we've
• 1:35:54
  we've we've knocked around several ideas.
• 1:35:56
  I think the last planned podcast you and I had, we were talking
• 1:36:00
  about, you know, a Part 2 around that particular thing.
• 1:36:05
  So might go back into the archives, see what all that was
• 1:36:08
  about and plan something for Season 7 for you to come back
• 1:36:12
  and and we'll do a Part 2 of of that last one.
• 1:36:15
  Absolutely. Yeah, sounds good.
• 1:36:17
  All right, cool, man, all right, so we're going to wrap things
• 1:36:20
  up. Stick around for just a quick
• 1:36:23
  touch base after all of this and for everybody else that has
• 1:36:28
  tuned in and listened or watched this episode, thank you all so
• 1:36:31
  much for your support. Check out anything that's linked
• 1:36:34
  down in the if you're watching this on Patreon, anything linked
• 1:36:37
  down in the description. If you're listening to this on
• 1:36:39
  the platforms, whatever is LinkedIn, the show notes of
• 1:36:42
  interest, whether it's, you know, links to books that Chris
• 1:36:44
  was talking about or the four agreements that I talked about
• 1:36:48
  or any of these things, right, widen your webs, people.
• 1:36:51
  Don't be afraid to to go fairing and learn what you can and do
• 1:36:58
  your best. So thank you, Chris, again for
• 1:37:00
  being here and thank you all for supporting the podcast in any
• 1:37:04
  way that you do. Until we talk to each other
• 1:37:07
  again, may the gods continue to notice you and may your
• 1:37:12
  ancestors smile upon you. We'll see you in the next one.