A Grove of Ashes and Aspens

Now Playing: The Solitaire by Elvenking

Dealing with loneliness as a pagan can get really weird. While one can experience this for other reasons, the loneliness that can come directly from being a pagan is another beast entirely.

Now, I’m an introvert, so I enjoy spending time by myself doing my own thing and not having to people, and I often need that from time to time to recover from being in intensive or prolonged social situations. But I’m also a bit of a web of contradictions, in that I also enjoy spending time around people I consider friends, and I enjoy spending time with other people with whom I share common interests. Where this gets really complicated is within paganism.

“But how could that possibly be complicated? You’re part of ADF, aren’t you? Just go to your nearest grove!” I hear you cry. I could, but that would require a car, which I don’t have, and a place to stay in another city, which could get really expensive. This is because I live in eastern Ontario, Canada, where the nearest grove that seems to have any sort of recent activity is in the Durham area near Oshawa, a six and a half hour drive away. There was one here in my city, but the website seems to be gone and I can’t find anything else about it. So that’s not a possibility.

On top of that, the city I’m in doesn’t have too much going on in the way of a broader pagan scene. Like, yes, there’s some spirituality stores and sporadic events, but nothing with any sort of consistency that really fits what I’m looking for.

So how do I deal with the loneliness? That’s a good question. This is where metal comes in.

In being a metalhead, I’ve generally found that being in the metal scene helps somewhat. It’s not huge, but there are others in the local metal scene who understand at least some of how it feels, and are willing to listen to me vent. It also helps that a friend of mine is a pagan and also very active in the local metal scene.

Another thing that has helped me a lot has been finding Elvenking as a band. Their music has helped me a lot with finding a sense of community I didn’t know I needed and finding that there are others who know what it feels like to be profoundly alone in the world, so much so that they have an entire song about it. (See the “Now Playing” section at the beginning of this post.) Their music solidly portrays the perspective of the individual pagan and their connection to nature, as well as the band’s own individual connection to the pagan path through their craft and their music.

Their music having that perspective is something that I find fills what has been a bit of a void in the pagan metal scene otherwise. Viking metal is great, don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of fun. However, I do have some gripes with how it’s done overall, especially in the power metal scene. So, having a band like Elvenking (and Tungsten, those guys are starting to fill a similar niche and I really like it) really helps to give a bit more of a sense of community that can help a lot with people who may want to have more community but not know where to turn.

Anyway, all that aside, I have a loose plan on potentially doing some lyrical and/or musical breakdowns of their music, but a lot of those will take a lot of time to put together and figure out how to do, so I’ll have to see where that goes. In the meantime, between Ethel having been dropped earlier this year, Damna saying on Instagram before the Alestorm tour they were opening that his parts for the new album are done, and him and Aydan saying some variation of “be prepared”, we very clearly have Reader of the Runes part 3 coming within the year or so and I’m very excited.