A Grove of Ashes and Aspens

Now Playing: Gone Epoch by Elvenking

Humans trying to put things in near little boxes is nothing new; we’ve been doing it for centuries and we continue to do it to this day. In some cases, this does help us understand the world in some capacity. However. It’s so rare that anything can fully ever be put cleanly into one category, especially when it comes to social concepts such as gender, religion, and the arts.

In the world of the arts, metal is a great example of this inability to cleanly classify humans in neat little boxes. You’d think metal would be an easily defined genre, but then you see things like power metal or acoustic folk metal. Those are still metal, but they deviate pretty heavily from stereotypical heavy metal. This is doubly true for blended genres of metal, things like symphonic death metal or power/folk metal or whatever it is that Wind Rose is doing. (This is not a dig at Wind Rose, by the way, I love their music and I have a vinyl of their latest album.) While these individual categories exist, there are still bands that will heavily play with the bounds of what counts as a given subgenre, whether intentionally or not. Bending the rules and expanding on what it means to be a musician is very common in metal, and the bands that fit into these niches and blend genres are perfect examples of this. Wind Rose blends symphonic metal and power metal with elements of folk metal, creating such a unique sound that people often just refer to them as “dwarf metal” as a way to encompass everything they do, both musically and lyrically. Twilight Force blend symphonic metal with the high energy of power metal and lean into the expected fantasy themes, all the while playing up the symphonic elements backing everything, creating something that has been dubbed “adventure metal” by both band and fans. So the question remains: is it really fair to try to categorise metal into neat little boxes when pushing the bounds is so normal?

In the realm of gender, this categorisation happens constantly. Most European languages have gendered pronouns, with the Romance languages having gender in every part of the language, with even objects being considered masculine or feminine, with no easy neutral option. (English doesn’t have a particularly easy neutral option either, but at least with English, the pronoun “they” has been used as a singular for centuries already and there is precedent for a plural pronoun becoming commonly used as a singular pronoun. I’m also aware that there are languages that don’t have gendered pronouns, and I think that’s very cool.) This brings the problem of how trans and non-binary people fit in. Plenty of languages have gendered pronouns, but it’s not super common for languages with these gendered pronouns to have a gender neutral option. (Again, English is an exception here, with the use of the singular “they” that is common in many places. English also has several neopronouns that people use, and there is a sci-fi book series that I like that uses xe/xyr as the default neutral pronoun set to get around the inherently plural nature of they/them, even if the singular use has been around for centuries.) So, what to do in languages that don’t automatically come with a gender neutral third pronoun? You come up with a new one. French has seen this lately, with “iel” and “ille” being the two most commonly seen neutral pronouns, despite a lack of agreement on how to modify adjectives when these pronouns are in use. (I tend to specify that while I use iel in French, I want the adjectives to be modified in the masculine. Other people will have other ways of going about it, and it’s always good to check with the person before assuming.)

Now, religion is complicated when it comes to language. (This is the topic that spawned this entire idea, from a conversation I had with a lovely friend of mine.) While the monotheistic faiths generally keep some level of consistency, each one is still a bit of an umbrella term for all the different sects that follow the same core tenants and many of them have some pretty intense disagreements on how to go about the faith. However, that’s not what this is about, because those are at least all one religion at the core, with different ways of going about it. Paganism is an entirely different beast altogether. The reason for this is because the term “pagan” is derived from meaning along the lines of “country/villager/rustic,” and for a long time, it was used by Christians to just mean a non-Christian. In the way it’s used now, it encompasses Wicca, Germanic polytheism and all of its regional variations, Hellenic polytheism, Kemetic polytheism, and Celtic polytheism and all its variations. (I’m sure there are more, but those are the main ones I can think of right now.) So when someone says they’re a pagan, it doesn’t mean that much on its own. But the thing is, there isn’t really a much better term, since only one version otherwise has a specific term as far as I know, that being many Norse pagans and polytheists specifically referring to themselves as “Heathens” and to Norse paganism more broadly as “Heathenry.” At the core, I don’t have a problem with this, it helps provide some differentiation. (And no, I don’t care about the term “heathen” originally being a derogatory term, since that was the original usage of the term “pagan” as well and it’s a matter of reclaiming the term, in my mind.) So my question is why is it that all of these vastly different polytheistic faiths are still just all lumped together as “pagan”? Yeah, sure, it’s convenient, and I doubt it’s going to change in my lifetime, but there’s still a part of me that wants to see more differentiation between the different faiths and each one being recognised as a separate, distinct practice, the same way the monotheistic faiths are. (I’m aware that many pagans work with/worship deities from multiple traditions, but there is also historical precedent for that, from what I understand.)

The thing is, language will always have its limitations, because humans are flawed creatures. Flawed creatures can’t create a flawless system. Language can’t be perfect because the minds that made it aren’t perfect. This is more intended as food for thought, rather than critique.