SPEAKING WITH INTENT

This begins a series of challenges that I will present to all members of the AFA, including myself, so that we may continue to improve ourselves. The goal is to be our highest and best selves, and live in a way that demonstrates our nobility and honors our ancestors and gods. The first challenge: Speaking with Intent.

As many of you already know, I have been on a crusade (okay, maybe just a campaign) to eliminate profanity at the Hofs. Our Hofs are sacred ground, dedicated to the protection and preservation of our Gods and our Ancestors. Are those goals served by speech littered with profanity and vulgarity? If you went to a church or temple of a different faith and heard that sort of language would you be impressed with their nobility?

Profanity is defined as “showing contempt or disrespect for sacred things.” Vulgarity is “lacking culture or taste; crude, boorish.” Is this how we want to present ourselves to the world? Would your great-grandparents be impressed with your command of Low speech?

This ideal is especially true for our Folk. Our knowledge that galdr changes ourselves and our world for the better necessarily means that Low or idle speech changes the world for the worse. Every ill-intentioned swear or curse coarsens our part of the multiverse.

In addition, vulgarity has always been shunned by those of a higher mindset. Not long ago critics noted that certain comics could not work in large venues because their language was too vulgar; the change in the culture since then, only 40 or 50 years ago, represents a decay in thought and attitude. I also confirmed with a scholar of Anglo-Saxon history that the tribal Folk would not have sworn at inanimate objects, as they took their words more seriously than that.

The attack on our families, our faith, our culture, and our civilization continues with the attack on our noble ideals of self-expression. We should decide not to participate in the degradation of our Folk by speaking in a way that honors our ancestors and our Gods: with high ideals, with nobility, with intent.

Lawspeaker Allen Turnage The Runestone, October 2022