AFA UPDATE

A PROJECT OF THE ASATRU FOLK ASSEMBLY

Issue 154

March 8, 2012

Contact email: afa@runestone.org

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The AFA mission statement: "to practice, promote, and further evolve
the religion of Asatru, thus forging it into a powerful and effective
tool for building a better world."

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...send us a membership application!

AFA NEWS

The last few weeks have seen tremendous activity in the AFA. Memberships
are rolling in, former members are returning, and capable volunteers are
stepping forward to shoulder the challenges that lie before us. As the
approaching springtime brings its sense of renewal, we have some
announcements regarding some changes in the AFA Leadership.

Firstly, we are thankful for the tireless work of Terry Armstrong, who
is retiring from his position as AFA Chief of Operations. Terry has been
a member of the Board of Directors, our past webmaster and tech-guru,
forum moderator, and has served on the Clergy Board. On the Board of
Directors of the AFA he was well known for his thoughtful responses to
the many tasks that fell across his desk. Terry determined that on his
65th Birthday he would retire from his official positions in the AFA.
That day has come and we on the Board wish him the greatest of success
and fulfillment in his retirement. Terry is still an AFA member and I am
sure we will be hearing more from him.

Terry's post will be filled by Brad Taylor-Hicks, who served as
Assistant Folkbuilder Coordinator before he became the Folkbuilder
Coordinator two years ago. Brad has traveled from his home in Florida to
Georgia, California and Oklahoma to attend AFA moots, and will continue
to serve as Folkbuilder for the AFA Deep South region. He is a member of
the AFA Clergy and Gothi of the Hraefn Wudu Kindred.

The position of Folkbuilder Coordinator will be taken over by Thorbert
Linley of Virginia. Thorbert has been serving as Assistant Folkbuilder
Coordinator and has a long history of involvement in the wider Asatru
Community. His fresh ideas and extensive knowledge have been a great aid
in restructuring the AFA in terms of regions, and his promotion to
Folkbuilder Coordinator is a natural one. We welcome Thorbert to the
Board of Directors, where his enthusiasm will be well met! Thorbert is
currently enrolled in the Clergy Program.

The Assistant Folkbuilder Coordinator position has been given to Matt
Flavel of Alaska. Matt has been an enthusiastic Folkbuilder in an
arguably difficult and isolated part of the country. Matt has traveled
for the last two midsummers to California and his loyalty to the mission
of the AFA is nothing less than inspirational. Matt is also enrolled in
the Clergy Program.

Rebecca Radcliffe of Pennsylvania has joined the AFA Clergy Board. Most
of you will recognize Rebecca's name from her outstanding work on our
youth publication, Runepebble. She leads an Asatru discussion group as
well as running The Fox's Glove, a business selling herbs, teas, soaps
and more (www.thefoxsglove.com ).

Bryan Wilton of Oklahoma has joined the Folkbuilding team. His exciting
presentation on the Heavener Runestone at last year's AFA Ostara moot in
Oklahoma was a real treat, and he will be supporting the Tharps in the
AFA Central Corridor region.

Please join me in thanking these members for their efforts and
congratulating them on their promotions into higher leadership within
the AFA community.

FROM STEVE

Asatru and the Most Heroic Age of All

When we first revived Asatru in the United States, back in the early
1970's, our focus was entirely on the Vikings. And no wonder - people
are enthralled with the vivid image of these swashbuckling pirates and
adventurers. They certainly appealed to me, as a young man in my early 20's!

Our movement has matured a lot since then, and we realize that the
Viking Age was maybe ten percent of Germanic history. It's not just
about the Norsemen; it's about Germanic tribes everywhere, and it's
about us, today, as Germanic people. Many of us, though, still long for
salt spray and cold steel in our hands, the ropes of our rigging
strumming in the Baltic breeze...and that's okay. One of the best things
about the Viking image is that it appeals to those instincts for
adventure, hardiness and courage. These values never go out of style,
and are as good today as they were a thousand years ago.

With that said, we need to avoid the mindset that pines for the lost
heroic age, whether that is seen as the era of the Vikings, the
centuries of the wandering Germanic tribes, or any other time in
history. "If only I lived back then...that was the real age for
heroism!" goes the lament. But was it? Sure, it was a dramatic time, a
period of conflict, when the historical stakes were high and bold men
and resourceful women could perform great deeds and live lives that
would resound through the centuries in the sagas...

...Just like today. These times, this crucial period of the early
twentieth century, is no less dramatic, no less a time of conflict. The
stakes on the gambling table of history today dwarf those of the Viking
Age or any other. How many of us understand the importance of these
decisive years? The gray power of the surveillance state looms large
throughout our ancient European homelands and the New World alike. We
European-descended folk are cut off from our spiritual heritage and
flounder, lost, in a swamp of alienation and apathy. Everywhere, our
numbers are dropping. Changes in the Earth's climate have produced a
world tottering on the edge of an environmental precipice leading to
mass extinctions - to include, perhaps, our own. This is the age that
demands heroism - not the Viking Age or the Migration Age. The heroes of
this epoch, this degenerate and desperate age, will redeem a future not
only for our own folk but for all humanity and all life on this planet.
This is the age for those who wish to overcome great odds and do great
deeds! Ragnar Lodbrok, Harald Hardrada, Sigurd the Volsung - they envy
those of us lucky enough to walk the earth at this time in history.

Will you be one to rise to the challenge? Or will you at least aid those
who do? This is the heroic age you always wanted: Seize this time!

Asatru - Why We Need to Support Indigenous Peoples

My role in the Asatru movement has, to a large extent, defined my life.
Anyone who knows me, however, knows I've done a lot of unusual things
besides Germanic religion. I went to northern India and interviewed
Tibetans who fought the Chinese. I lived with Karen guerrillas in the
jungles of Burma, fighting for their identity against a tyrannical
government. Less well known is my praise for Nigerian democracy activist
Ken Saro-Wiwa, and many other instances in which I have lent my voice to
the causes of indigenous peoples around the world.

Why should a man busily re-establishing our native Germanic faith go to
all this trouble? Why should I care what happens to Tibetans and Burmese
and Nigerians? Don't we Germanics have enough problems of our own?

As a man of European descent, and as a follower of the indigenous
European faith of Asatru, I have a spiritual obligation to care for and
defend my own heritage. Less obvious is another truth - that I should
also care about the fate of other peoples.

Ultimately, we European-descended folk are in the same boat as the
Tibetans, the Karen, and the Amazonian tribes. We're all trying to
preserve our peoples, cultures, and native religions in a world where
transnational corporations and intrusive governments work to destroy all
differences, to smooth out humanity into one featureless, deracinated
"norm-man" fit only to produce, consume, and obey. Where will our
vaunted Germanic freedom be then? What will happen to the Norse spirit,
the Faustian upward reach of the European soul, when we're all slaving
on the global plantation for the bankers and the corporate elite? Let me
tell you: These historic traits of ours will be dead. And the only way
to prevent this "death by homogenization" is to be who we are, to honor
that which makes us unique. We should do that for ourselves as
Northfolk, and we should encourage other groups to do likewise.

Someone once said of me that "Steve wants to help every ethnic group but
his own." That's not true; my own folk are closest to my heart and will
always have first claim to my loyalty and love. That is only natural and
good. But the world is not necessarily a zero-sum game, and there are
plenty of win-win solutions to our mutual problems. There will always be
competition between groups, yes. But all of us who want to preserve our
identity against the pressures of the global monoculture, regardless of
our race or culture, have a common enemy in those who would make us all
the same. If the transnationalists are to sell us Coca-Cola made in the
United States and toys made in China, they have to "modernize" us first.
Modernization is of course a two-edged sword; some aspects are
beneficial but others are designed make us abandon our ancestral ways,
pledge allegiance to the bank and the television set, and become a
"world citizen." This is as true of First-Worlders like Americans and
Germans as it is of tribal societies in the Third World, and nothing
could be more disastrous to groups who wish to retain their distinct
identity in the 21st century.

Environmental issues are a part of this struggle. Industrial development
and resource extraction do not always take into consideration the needs
of the environment and of the local peoples most directly affected. As I
write, the last forest homes of the magnificent and extremely endangered
Sumatran tiger are being sawed down to make - toilet paper! (Asia Pulp &
Paper products marketed in the US under the Paseo and Livi brand names.)
If that seems too far away to care about, don't worry; there is a long
list of less dramatic species pushed to the brink in Europe and in
America. People, too, are organisms adapted to a particular habitat;
destroy that habitat and you undermine the existence of the people
themselves.

I will gladly stand alongside those who are true to the ways of their
people and their ancestors in the face of the global juggernaut. This is
one of the great challenges of our age, and in it lies our duty to the
ancestors who gave us life as well as our descendants, who will have to
live in the world we forge. You want a heroic struggle? Don't pine for
the past - you and I are fortunate enough to live in the most heroic age
of all!

Announcing...Steve McNallen's Personal Blog!

For decades, I've been known as a mover and shaker in the revival of
Germanic religion. Most people know me only through my role in Asatru,
and as leader of the Asatru Folk Assembly. That's fine, but there's a
lot more to me than that. I'm a pretty complex person, and to express
that complexity I've started a personal blog where I can speak as a
private person. I want this blog to reflect who Steve McNallen really
is, the totality of the man behind the image. This is where I find my
voice - on Asatru, of course, but on much more besides.

Originally, this new blog was supposed to help readers follow the
development of my upcoming book on Asatru. It will still serve that
function. But there will be much more, as well...my thoughts on many
things ranging from the plight of indigenous peoples, to the special
issues facing men and women of European descent, to the dangers facing
all life on Earth, and anything else that crosses my mind and seems
noteworthy.

Please come by http://stephenamcnallen.com and pay a visit! If you
subscribe to my blog, you can download a free manuscript I wrote giving
three things you can do to have a better day, every day.

LINKS

OUR FOLK AND OUR CULTURE -

Across Atlantic Ice by Dennis J. Stanford and Bruce A. Bradley

This is an important new book on the peopling of the Americas, by a top
scientist and a specialist on ancient tool making! Dr. Dennis Stanford
of the Smithsonian, and paleo-point expert Bruce A. Bradley, argue that
early Europeans came to America long before the Indians came across the
Bering Land Bridge. They accomplished this feat by traveling along the
ice crescent which connected Europe to North America during the ice age.
This book is the definitive one on this subject. If Kennewick Man or any
of the other related controversies interest you, you must have this volume!

Here is the description from the Amazon page -

Who were the first humans to inhabit North America? According to the now
familiar story, mammal hunters entered the continent some 12,000 years
ago via a land bridge that spanned the Bering Sea. The presence of these
early New World people was established by distinctive stone tools
belonging to the Clovis culture. But are the Clovis tools Asian in
origin? Drawing from original archaeological analysis, paleoclimatic
research, and genetic studies, noted archaeologists Dennis J. Stanford
and Bruce A. Bradley challenge the old narrative and, in the process,
counter traditional--and often subjective--approaches to archaeological
testing for historical relatedness. The authors apply rigorous
scholarship to a hypothesis that places the technological antecedents of
Clovis in Europe and posits that the first Americans crossed the
Atlantic by boat and arrived earlier than previously thought. Supplying
archaeological and oceanographic evidence to support this assertion, the
book dismantles the old paradigm while persuasively linking Clovis
technology with the culture of the Solutrean people who occupied France
and Spain more than 20,000 years ago.

If you order it from the AFA site, at http://runestone.org, the AFA will
get a cut at no cost to you!

"Wyrd, Causality, and Providence: A Speculative Essay" by Ian McNish

Available as a free PDF (halfway down the list of free downloads).
Here's the first paragraph:

The arrival of Middle Eastern monotheism in Europe replaced a prior
proto-scientific belief in causality with the teleological concept of
Divine Providence, or the Will of God.

Ancient Greek philosophy was supplanted by a demand that men should stop
seeking to understand the nature of the causal forces at work around
them, and accept these simply as the work of an all-powerful
monotheistic God. A new, organized priestly class

demanded that men must accept the "revealed" word of their God without
question. The academy founded by Plato was ordered closed, and as Bertha
Phillpotts first showed us, even among the Germanic nations the concept
of Wyrd, which postulated an all-

pervasive causal force, was replaced by the concept of Divine
intervention or Providence. Europe entered the Dark Ages, and remained
there until the rediscovery of the empirical character of the pagan
classical scholarship made possible the Renaissance and the rise of
modern science.

http://tinyurl.com/8224df6

ENVIRONMENT AND YOU

Keystone XL pipeline opposition unites Tea Partiers and environmentalists

TransCanada has threatened to use disputed eminent domain powers to
condemn privately held land, over the owners' objections. And that's
creating unusual allies — Occupiers, Tea Partiers, environmentalists,
individualists — united to stop TransCanada from threatening water
supplies, ancient artifacts, and people's basic property rights.

http://tinyurl.com/87dw4ao

Keystone XL pipeline for export, not domestic use - will not reduce cost
of gasoline

"The dirty little secret that those pushing so urgently for building
Keystone XL don't want you to know is the tar sands oil producers are in
cahoots with Texas refineries to move the product onto the lucrative
global export market, selling it to buyers in Europe, Latin America and
China — not to you and me.

The pipeline and the toxic crude it'll carry across six states would do
absolutely nothing to shave even a penny off of the price we pay at the
pump.

Already, U.S. refineries are exporting records amounts of the gasoline
they make. For the first time in 62 years, America is now a net
petroleum exporter. Valero Energy Corp., the largest U.S. exporter of
refined petroleum products, is a major lobbyist for Keystone XL. Along
with Motiva (an oil refiner jointly owned by Shell and Saudi Aramco) and
Total (a French refinery), Valero has signed secret, long-term contracts
with Keystone's owner (TransCanada Corp.) and several tar sands oil
producers to bring this crude to Port Arthur. All three have upgraded
their refineries there to process diesel for export."

Links: http://tinyurl.com/7782zv9

http://tinyurl.com/768zpq8

COMMUNITIES FOR THE FUTURE...AND NOW -

John Robb has started a new blog site dedicated to "resilient
communities." You can find it at http://resilientcommunities.com .

Some samples of his stuff: What is a Resilient Community? -

A resilient community is the path to a safe, prosperous, and vibrant
future for us, our kids, and our neighbors — despite an increasingly
chaotic world...

It's pretty clear that our situation is going to get very ugly over the
next decade and that isn't even taking into account the global pandemics
and environmental catastrophes that are lurking on the horizon...

So, what do we do? What can we do?

We take control of our future. We implement the only solution that can
give us the a safe, secure, and prosperous future. We become resilient.
We find ways to help local people, businesses, and municipalities to
PRODUCE, and that's and important word, more of what we rely upon.

Fortunately, we now have the technology and the insights required to
produce with quality and efficiency at the local level like never
before. In fact, the changes are so dramatic, they could almost qualify
as a revolution in local production.

http://tinyurl.com/77dmaup .

And this one -

Rebuilding Rich Soil with HugelKultur - http://tinyurl.com/6qjs2bm

We have a problem. Most of the land we live on (even in rural
communities) is barren. Dead. What does this mean? It means the soil
can't support life without perpetual and massive injections of imported
petro-chemical fertilizers, irrigation, and mechanical labor. Worse, it
takes years to reclaim dead soil and turn it into something productive.

A home or community with dead soil, won't help you survive an economic
winter or supply disruptions. So, here's a trick that may help out, but
you need to start earlier than latter. Living soil has a lead time.

It's a technique called Hugelkultur ...

SPACE...because there will be an Asatru of the 25th century

A thousand private spacecraft launches a year by 2019?

U.S. companies launched just five licensed commercial rockets into space
last year, but they might be able to loft nearly that many every day by
the end of the decade, a federal space official contends.

George Nield, associate administrator for commercial space exploration
at the Federal Aviation Administration, thinks it's possible to double
the number of permit-holding private launches every year for the rest of
the decade. That exponential increase would lead to 1,280 liftoffs in
2019 — an average of 3 1/2 per day.

http://tinyurl.com/85noteb

Private space industry rushes to fill job openings

The burgeoning private space industry continues to grow and based on
hiring needs, there is more growth on the horizon. Three of the leaders
representing both commercial orbital and sub-orbital missions have busy
human resource departments trying fill dozens of openings.

Scaled Composites, the company designing, building and testing Virgin
Galactic's Space Ship Two even produced a recruiting video trying to
lure engineers to the Mojave Desert. Another southern California
company, SpaceX has pages of hiring needs as the company prepares to
begin a busy launch schedule over the next several years. And industry
veteran Orbital continues to add plenty of engineers to its ranks every
month.

Amateur rocketry

Comprehensive online resource for amateur rocketry -

http://www.rocketry.org

CALENDAR

March 9 - Day of Remembrance for Olvir. Olvir was a Norwegian who
organized sacrifices to the Gods in defiance of King Olaf Tryggvason.
When Olaf caught him planning rites for the coming of spring, he killed
him. Olaf's co-conspirators were murdered, mutilated, exiled, or fined,
depending on their degree of complicity. Honor this Asatru martyr by
welcoming the Goddess of Spring on Ostara, thus proving that Olaf did
not, in the long run, succeed.

March 21 - Ostara, or Oester, or Easter. These are names of a Germanic
Goddess whose name was carried over into the Christian calendar. Praise
her on this day for the springtime and the dawn, and revel in the
rebirth of life at winter's end. Celebrate her day with bunnies, eggs,
and the other pre-Christian symbols that characterize this day. Greet
her at a sunrise service with outstretched arms.

April 9 - Day of Remembrance for Jarl Hakon of Norway. Hakon restored
the worship of our true Gods after it had been suppressed by Christian
kings. Recall his virtue by formally renouncing foreign creeds, or by
vigorously exercising your guarantees under the Bill of Rights.

Hail the Holy Ones!

Hail the AFA!

Stephen A. McNallen

Asatru Folk Assembly

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--
FFF
Dirk

Full Spectrum Praxis : ZERO STATE : http://zerostate.net