AFA UPDATE

A PROJECT OF THE ASATRU FOLK ASSEMBLY

Issue 146

July 11, 2011

Contact email: afa@runestone.org

Please tell your friends about AFA Update and suggest they subscribe!
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WHERE TO FIND THE ASATRU FOLK ASSEMBLY ONLINE:

AFA website - http://runestone.org

Asatru Rising podcast - http://asatrurising.podbean.com

Our videos on You Tube - http://www.youtube.com/smcnallen

The AFA blog at - http://asatruupdate.blogspot.com

AFA MySpace at - http://www.myspace.com/asatruupdate

Follow the AFA on Twitter - http://twitter.com, username AsatruAFA.

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."

STEPHEN POLLINGTON CONFIRMED FOR AFA "MIDSUMMER IN THE SIERRAS!"

We received an email from English author Stephen Pollington, our special
guest for Midsummer. He wrote, "I have bought my travel insurance for
the trip and started to prepare the talks and powerpoint shows. They are
based on what you saw last time [at the Florida Moot several years ago]
but I have revised some of the ideas and had a few new insights..." This
is great news, not only because he's definitely "on" but because I've
seen the presentations to which he's referring, and you're going to love
them!

Another treat - Stephen is having limited copies of his very latest (as
in, "not out until later this summer") book printed here in the United
States, to save the weight and risk of bringing them across the
Atlantic. As an attendee, you'll be able to purchase them at Midsummer
and get them autographed by Stephen himself. The book title is Elder
Gods: The Otherworld of Early England - just the sort of thing to
interest AFA members.

You can visit Stephen's site at http://www.stevepollington.com to learn
more about him and his books.

If you haven't signed up for Midsummer in the Sierras 2011, go to the
AFA web site and fill out the application! You won't want to miss this year!

NEW FACEBOOK PAGE SET UP FOR "MIDSUMMER IN THE SIERRAS"

We've set up a new Facebook page for the AFA Midsummer event, and it's
already getting a lot of traffic! You can get in on the excitement by
going to Facebook and searching for "AFA Midsummer in the Sierras." (You
may find the old site still up, as well; we migrated it to the new
"groups" format and the latter is the one you want.)

Check this new page for the latest on who's coming, what's happening,
and of course more on why you should be there, yourself!

AFA CLERGY PROGRAM CHANGES HANDS!

Stefn Thorsman, who helped create the AFA's Clergy program and who has
led it since its inception, has stepped down citing personal obligations
and life-priorities. Ed Lebouthillier, long-time AFA and Clergy Board
member, will assume the role of acting Clergy coordinator.

In his letter to the AFA Board of Directors, Stefn wrote: "I'm very
proud of what's been accomplished so far with the AFA's Clergy program,
and I sincerely hope that forward progress continues and that the Clergy
program continues to grow and serve the Folk. Having the Folkbuilders
work hand in hand with the Clergy members can only benefit the Folk at
large and spread AFA inspired Heathenry across the US. I plan to remain
an AFA member and a member of the Clergy but will do so in a much less
visible capacity." His letter was signed "In kinship, honor, and
solidarity!".

Ed Lebouthillier is a highly-qualified successor. Along with Stefn and
others, he was one of the creators of the Clergy program and is renowned
for his dedication to the AFA mission and for his incisive analytical
skills.

The Clergy program has been one of the AFA's great successes. It has
created a corps of highly-qualified men and women capable of providing
religious services, giving spiritual guidance, and speaking to issues of
morals and ethics. Our Clergy have raised the standards of scholarship
and dedication for all who seek to serve the Gods and the Folk.

We sincerely thank Stefn for his tireless work and inspiration, and for
his vision, which ultimately gave birth to the program he headed for so
many years.

HAD TROUBLE WITH THE AFA ONLINE APPLICATION?

A number of you who have tried to join the AFA using the online
membership application have reported having trouble lately. We think we
have the bugs fixed - so please give it another try! If you still have
problems, please email us at afa@runestone.org!

We have been making a lot of improvements to the AFA web site over the
last few weeks, to include the membership section. As is so often the
case, progress comes at the price of glitches that have to be worked
out. Thank you for your patience!

Recent changes include new membership levels, and a monthly payment plan
- you don't have to come up with your dues in one lump sum! To learn
about this new system, and to see where your dues go, visit our front
page at http://runestone.org, then to "About the AFA," then to "Join the
AFA." Or simply go to http://tinyurl.com/6y9vfgj.

AFA MEMBERSHIP - If you like what you see here, and agree with the
Declaration of Purpose as found on our web site at http://runestone.org
...send us a membership application!

FORMER MEMBER who just failed to renew your membership? Had something
come up that caused you to drop out? Miss us? Come on back...We're still
here for you! Send in a new application today!

VISIT THE ASATRU FOLK ASSEMBLY'S CAFE PRESS SHOP

For a long time, members have been requesting more AFA merchandise such
as mugs and shirts. To expand our offerings, we now have a Cafe Press
shop (Runestone at Cafe Press) featuring five designs and product lines.
We've come up with a delightful Midsummer graphic (Thank you, Lars, for
the inspiration!) but there are other classic designs that would be
perfect for Father's Day. Go take a look!.

Hugh of Asgard Studios will be tweaking the site, but for right now,
click on an image and you'll get the product list that goes with it. If
you want an item that's not listed, just let us know.

If you have a graphic that you'd like to "donate" to the AFA, we invite
you to send it to us for our consideration.

www.cafepress.com/AsatruFolkAssembly

EUROPEANS, WORLD-WIDE, AS INDIGENOUS PEOPLE

When we hear the phrase "indigenous people," we think of Amazon tribes,
pygmies in Africa, the Australian aborigines, and other groups around
the planet. There are probably hundreds - thousands? - of such
societies. Their plight is well-known. Indigenous peoples in Africa,
Asia, and Latin America come to our attention through television
documentaries, articles in National Geographic, and many other sources.

We automatically think of indigenous peoples as looking like the ones we
see on television - technologically primitive, living in tribal
structures, and tucked away in remote corners of the Earth. And of
course they all have dark skin. We unconsciously draw a sharp
distinction between them and ourselves. We'd never think of First World
peoples as indigenous.

But why not? Neither technology, geography, nor race have anything to do
with the definition of "indigenous" - "originating in, and
characteristic of, a particular region or country; native"

Consider all us European-descended people, for example. My ancestors
came from Germany, Ireland, England, and Scotland quite recently, where
they lived since the last ice age. According to geneticist Brian Sykes,
85% to 90% of the European genome can be traced back to the original
hunter-gatherers who migrated in as the glaciers receded. If that
doesn't make us indigenous, I don't know what does. What arguments could
there be to the contrary? That we're technologically advanced? That we
have white skin?

To deny indigenous status to the peoples of Europe would be biased at
best - and racist at worst. We are indigenous Europeans!

From our European homeland, we've migrated around the world -
especially to North America, Australia, Canada, and South Africa, with
smaller presences in almost every nation on Earth. But no matter where
we roam, we are still us: the people of Europe. We have not changed our
essence, we have only changed our location.

We must recover our sense of roots, our awareness of ourselves as a
people. Sure, we are not all of one tribe. There are the Germans, Slaves
and Celts, all of whom are descended from the Funnel Beaker People.
Below that are our modern-day nations of origin, and then come our
tribal roots, which are largely lost to us. But, notwithstanding this
diversity, we remain Europeans. Genetically and culturally, we are
sharply defined from the rest of the planet. Similarly, Native Americans
may be Lakota or Cherokee or Maidu but still identify as Native Americans.

Once we understand that we are a definable group, with roots in a
particular place since time immemorial, our perspective has to change.
We have our own unique characteristics, our own cultural heritage, our
own way-of-being in the world. Likewise, we have our own set of
closely-related native religions. The largest of these would break down
into Germanic, Celtic, and Slavic groups, but even then the similarities
are much more pronounced than the differences. Indeed, the whole point
of H.R Ellis Davidson's Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe was to
demonstrate that the Celtic and Scandinavian religions were branches of
a common European belief and practice.

Only when we realize we are a people (indeed, a collection of closely
related peoples) can modern Eurofolk know who we really are. Only then
can we heal ourselves, heal the world of which we are a part, and relate
honestly with other peoples of the Earth. Doing this, we can discover
and attain our destiny.

"Only when we realize we are a river will we stop drowning in puddles."

ASATRU SERVES LIFE!

The spirituality of Asatru demands a dedication to Life as a principle
in the universe. We are enriched when we deliberately experience this
principle in our daily lives.

Living as I do in rural northern California, I am blessed with wildlife.
A couple of days ago Sheila and I had three young bucks resting in the
front yard. A few feet away, "our" stray cat was sleeping blissfully on
the porch. A few minutes later, two turkeys strutted into the yard. Out
on the deck on the other side of the house, finches were hungrily
feasting on nyger seed. On the early-morning drive into work yesterday,
bats maneuvered above my car, escorting me down the hairpin curves to
the valley floor.

Best of all was seeing a new-born fawn, stumbling after its mother.
Patiently, she watched as it learned to negotiate the deep grass and
scamper off a log. She licked it often, transferring scent to her baby.
After a few minutes, she paused and fed it.

Writer Collin Cleary, in his soon-to-be-released book Summoning the
Gods, tells us of the importance of being in nature if we are to know
the presence of the Gods. I agree. Seek nature! Let it speak to you in
its own language. Feel the rightness of the world - and accept your role
as a guardian of the natural world around you.

We of Asatru serve life...most obviously, the life of our families and
our Folk. But in a larger sense, we serve the principle of Life itself,
and the continuation of life on this planet. It is for this that we
stand alongside the Aesir and Vanir, and against those who would
transform Earth into a desert of devastation.

WATERFALLS, RUNES, AND ASATRU IN NATURE

Once you take up Asatru, it permeates all your experience. A walk in
nature becomes a study in spirituality.

Recently, Sheila and I walked along the shore of Emerald Bay, high in
the Sierras, watching the osprey soar overhead as they circled their
nests. Their call echoed through the tall trees. The weather was warm
and the trail not short - but the waterfall at the head of the bay was
truly something to be experienced. The roar made your whole body
vibrate. Mist filled the air and dampened your clothes. It was a place
of power, not merely the mechanical energy of falling water dashing
against stone, but other energies - more subtle, but no less powerful in
their realm.

Laguz is the rune of water. Usually this is understood as a body of
water, a lake or pond or even the waters that flow to and from life.
Laguz is the salty sea of amniotic fluid that brings us to Midgard, and
the dark waters that carries the ship of the dead to the Otheworld. But
on this occasion, on the shores of Emerald Bay, laguz was the waterfall,
roaring with the power of mighty Gods, wakening those parts of us that
may have fallen asleep. Look at the stave of the rune itself; you can
see it as the falling water.

Experience nature. Experience the Gods. Do not "think about" them or
project your own images and definitions onto them. Let them speak for
themselves. Get off the road, get out of your car, get away from the
clamor of your fellow man! Feel the world. This is the way of Asatru.

ASATRU, NATURE, AND LETTING THE GODS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES!

My previous post - Waterfalls, Runes, and Asatru in Nature - got so many
comments that I decided to follow up with a quote by Edward Abbey, from
page 6 of his book Desert Solitaire. He captures exactly the concept of
letting Nature, and the Gods, speak for themselves.

The personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to
suppress in myself, to eliminate for good. I am here not only to evade
for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultual apparatus
but also to confront, immediately and directly if it's possible, the
bare bones of existence, the elemental and fundamental, the bedrock
which sustains us. I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree,
a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself,
devoid of all humanly-ascribed qualities, anti-Kantian, even the
categories of scientific descriptions. To meet God or Medusa face to
face, even if it means risking everything human in myself. I dream of a
hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a
non-human world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual,
separate. Paradox and bedrock.

Abbey was a gun-owning, beer drinking, poker playing defender of
wilderness and a man of character. He was not Asatru, but in many
respects he would have fit in very well with us. I recommend Desert
Solitaire and his other writings. Various Asatru-related archetypes have
been found luking, presumably without his conscious intent, in his tales.

LINKS - SUSTAINABILITY, ENVIRONMENT, SELF-RELIANCE

Federal Solar Tax Credit

Federal residential solar tax credit - applies to new and existing
homes. Claim up to 30% of installation costs for a new system.

http://tinyurl.com/6b7wt9c

Chickens in the Energy Descent

Thinking about raising chickens? Here's how.

http://tinyurl.com/44zenet

Farming With Nature: A Case Study of Successful Temperate Permaculture

Lots of information in this 37-minute video. If you're considering
producing your own food (good for you and good for the environment!)
here's a good place to start!

http://tinyurl.com/3kud682

An Ominous Warning on the Effects of Ocean Acidification

A new study says the ocean is acidifying ten times faster than 55
million years ago, when a mass extinction of marine life occurred.
Current changes in ocean chemistry due to the burning of fossil fuels
(carbon dioxide dissolving into the ocean produces carbonic acid) may
portend a new wave of die-offs.

Http://tinyurl.com/ygdzv4z

CALENDAR

August 9 - Day of Remembrance for King Radbod. This Frisian king ejected
Christian missionaries and upheld our ancestral faith in his land,
against great pressure. Pour a libation to the ancient Frisian Goddess
Friagabi, "Giver of Freedom" and declare yourself free from alien creeds.

Hail the Holy Ones!

Hail the AFA!

Stephen A. McNallen

Asatru Folk Assembly

VISIT OUR WEB SITE at http://www.runestone.org.

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_________

--
FFF
Dirk

http://www.neopax.com/technomage/ - My new book - Magick and Technology