The Antichristian Phenomenon

Just a short story that happened to me the other day when walking to the local store to buy some food. Two girls run up to me in approximately my age (maybe a bit younger), at first I thought they were intending to ask for a road direction or another form of help; then I see one of them putting her hand into her bag and tries to find something. Second thought is, “she’s intending to sell something”, then I see her reaching out a small brown paper and looks very ashamed, with the added line: “if you want it”, as if she is trying to excuse herself from something.

At this point I realized that she is probably a member of the local Jehovah’s Witnesses church, they are sometimes rather active giving out flyers and knocking on people’s doors. She then walks away with her friend who stayed silent during the whole conversation and I look at the flyer.

Of course it’s some Watch Tower shit, let me quote (the best part is at the bottom):

“Welcome
Every week we study the Bible
Lectures about the Bible – studium in the Watch Tower
Discover how actual the Bible is and what practical worth it has in our time“

I feel like almost going there just so I can debunk everyone of their arguments. Unfortunately, I am bad quoting verses off my head, and it may make me seem less credible. I could always say something of what I’ve learnt through my anthropology studies, but all in all I think it’s rather pointless and I will probably speak to deaf ears.

My anthropology teacher gave me a very interesting angle to look at Christianity today. First of all, let me outline what my new course is about, and I will roughly translate the title of the course into English: “Worldviews, power and support”. From the title alone, I think it is pretty evident what this course is about, it will mostly deal with political and economical anthropology and how one can study these two things in a society as an anthropologist.

Then, let me outline a quote from Max Weber, a famous German who formed one of the first and well-known definitions of power:

“[P]ower is the possibility for one or for many to realize their own will in communial action, even against the resistance of others.”

Christianity then, is a huge institution both politically, economically and socially, so it is very much possible to look into the system of Christianity and come up with a conclusion about what is power, how it is used and who is using it. My teacher further eplains that the use of power is often internalized by those who who do not actually benefit from the actual practices of the one in power and he gave an example when he was doing field research in an African country whose name is probably not Zimbabwe but very close to it. His field was mostly compromized by studying an African tribe called Alyamba, but for some reason he also visited other parts of the country and thus also a school where he witnessed quite a cruel treatment of the children, not too different to how we treated our own children in school just fifty or so years ago (and in Sweden the corporal punishment of children was not banned from the Swedish national law book until as late as the 1970s, where it says that corporal punishment was allowed during certain circumstances).

He went on to explain that upon his arrival, he saw all the children of that school kneeing with bare knees (in this country all children were wearing typical uniforms, so skirs for girls and shorts for boys) on the rough pebble that constituted a majority of the campus (I understood it as some sort of pebble, I may be wrong, but it doesn’t matter much here in the terms of serving as an analogy). He was lucky being able to ask one boy what was going on and the boy replied with something such as: “We are being punished for our own sake.”  This rings a bell in me, and I think many of you understand why. It sounded an awful lot like Christianity, being punished for your own sake.  This boy further explained that this punishment happened every day so all the students would shape up and not behave as badly as they would without it, and in a very twisted way, he somehow had managed to see it as positive thing, hence it has become internalized.

My teacher then went on explaining that this is common when power is used or abused; internalizing the structure helps to maintain the current system and is often justified in this sort of manner, it is actually for our own sake we are being punished, even though from the outsider’s point of view, it is quite rediculous. A poor boy being forced to knee on sharp pebbles for gods know how long under the steaking African sun is not a very nice treatment of kids no matter how you see it and certainly does not serve any actual meaning to the boy in question. We can factually prove that this sort of treatment will not improve this boy’s or any other boys’ or girls’ behavior, and there is most likely nothing wrong with it in the first place.

It is further explained that a truly good leader will be able to mask these sort of things justifying it with reasons given above; no matter how rediculous it may seem (the Genocide, the Dark Ages anyone?). Now, what really made me start to think is to whom and why are Christians maintaining this sort of power system? Why do Christians keep insisting that they are sinners and therefore must pray or do whatever pointless ritual to cleanse themselves when God obviously is not nearby and can keep an eye on them, enforcing their behavior is so need be?

I don’t quite feel expressing that Christianity is a meme, a scheme (not to be confused with meme) or even an expression of a bunch of symbols can properly explain this. This is obviously overcourse to me right now, I simply lack the current knowledge of this sort of field to properly even theorize of what could be a cause or a reason.

Max Weber also outlines a few defintions of different types of authority, I am sure they can be meaningful in this sort of discourse but my teacher has yet to explain to us what they all mean so I will leave it for now. Maybe someone else has any ideas?

Yes, I do understand that Christians may be considered disillusional and therefore no more explanation is needed, hence, their leader (God, any priest or other religious leader?) exists but only in their minds, their punishment is primarily delivered all by themselves, but this doesn’t hold up as an explanation from an anthropological point of view. So while I definitely consider it an unserious option as an answer it’s not really what I am looking for here.

It’s interesting and I wish I could dig in it further. Maybe I can do a more proper analysis after the end of this course.

As a continuation of my other article, I decided to make a follow-up post since while people might be aware or not, Cartesian dualism is one of the primary reasons why we have modern science and consider Atheism to be an equally valid philosophy alongside religion.

To understand why, we must first look into how Descartes defined the universe, namely that of the physical and the nonphysical. Everything we can touch, see, smell, feel and taste are of the physical world, everything else not such as thoughts and ideas. Basically a dichotomy made of the abstract vs the concrete. To consider the universe physical, we must also consider it as an object made for study as we can study the physical world but we cannot study the nonphysical (according to old belief, we now know we can study the mind as proven in Psychology and similar sciences).

In science, we are to reject the nonphysical since it cannot be properly reviewed. We look at the physical world as an object, something which can be rationally understood. Not surprisingly we started to reject Christianity and the Church by the time we also started to believe in Liberalism, in personal responsibility and freedom and that every individual matters in comparison to rather seeing a group of people than a group of individuals. To understand why the development of Liberalism is important we must understand that without a Divine Creator who has laid all the rules for us to follow, the only one being able to take responsibility is oneself. Personal resonsiblity, free will and freedom are the underlying foundations of  Liberalism and Atheism too embraces this idea, since if we don’t believe in a Divine Creator and a Holy Scripture then we only have ourselves to blame for our earthly faults and we must learn how to deal with it. Our morals come from ourselves, not from a Creator Mystique. In summary, one can basically say that by the time we really started to believe in the world as an object and rejected the nonphysical during the Enlightenment Era, Liberalism and then Atheism were later to be born. It is also interesting to see that it was at this point when the church was split between Protestantism and Catholicism, the former believing more on individual responsibility than the latter, thus also rejecting ideas such as Original Sin, which claims that we are to be blamed for the faults of our ancestors, thus rather grouping people up in a huge collective than seeing them as free individuals. This strongly opposes the idea of individual freedom and personal responsibility and was easily solved with the idea of baptism. Drop your head in some holy water and voila, the Original Sin is gone.

With the help of the Enlightenment Era we would soon give birth to Industrialism and it is now science is finally is starting to seriously take a spin. Many huge scientific improvements were made around the 19th century or after that time and in fact we all got monsieur Descartes to thank, making us believe that we can actually view the world as an object. In such a sense isn’t it all also very ironical that we now are rejecting his idea of Dualism given that it was his idea of the physical world that planted the first seeds into developing modern science? Regardless, Atheism rejects anything made of the nonphysical and at least claims that if such a nonphysical world would exist, it too is a part of the physical world but not yet properly understood.

In a sense, we can actually say that the Abrahamic religions were doomed when they first introduced the concept of a soul and a nonphysical world. They in fact, planted the ideas which would later spawn Atheism since Atheism is more or less the rejection of the nonphysical, but such a concept cannot exist unless we are to believe in a physical and a nonphysical world, as later laid out and defined by Descartes.  When Christians argue that Atheism then is a necessary evil, maybe we should try to explain to them that they themselves laid the foundation for such a concept and as they continue to believe in a soul and a nonphysical world, and that they will just help Atheism to spread further as it also of course allows the belief of the opposite, which also is equally amusing when you think about it. Therefore I think it’s pretty safe to assume that Atheism will only cease to exist (as Atheism) when we have completely given up the concept of the nonphysical. I just want to clarify that this doesn’t mean that future Atheists will refuse to reject the nonphysical, but as we move more into a belief of a monistic world, then the concept of Atheism isn’t needed anymore as there is no longer a reason to reject of what we today know as a nonphysical world.

Just a stupid thought I had right now, I blame the time of the day, or rather morning and my refusal to go to sleep. Anyway, I don’t want to sound deep, smart, or anything, just this very short article about a thought I had just now. Just that isn’t it highly ironical that Christians always go and threaten every other non-Christian as being damned in hell for eternity if we don’t believe in their god and follow their scripture? Not for the sake that we don’t believe in their hell to begin with, I know, the argument is tired and worn out already.

I have a better one, merely that if we have never known god, how can hell be anything but bad for us if hell means the “absence of god”? I mean, how can you miss something of which you never had and never been exposed to in your life? (Well, some have, but rejected it anyway so I guess it would be a relief for them too.) Nevermind the hellfire thing, it has never been proven anyway and just says “fire and brimstone” in the original, but I guess I wouldn’t mind some warmth. Rather that than freezing aye? Oh yes, I hate winter…

I r redi 2 dai!

After c0nsulting a little with Waldheri I decided to edit this post properly to make it more cohesive and actually present the problem at hand in a more focused light. This article will deal with the problem of Christianity’s belief that God is an omnipresent being and how it contradicts Descartes’ argument of the seperation of mind and body and that Christianity is in fact, not a monotheism but a pantheism.

Anyway, let’s start off in the beginning with Genesis and the creation of the Earth:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Genesis 1:1
Nowhere does it say that God made “the heavens and the earth” out of any form of matter. This passage has in turn made the assumption that there was nothing in the universe before God’s Creation, as it is a “beginning”, before God’s Creation there was nothing. Obviously God, while omnipotent, cannot make something out of matter which doesn’t exist, so let’s just ignore that for a while and assume that it is possible that God can make matter out of nothing and that he popped the Earth out from his arse (we are in fact God’s diviniely poo!) and thus, the Earth is created. Without the need of overquoting Genesis, it is made clear that God made the Earth into what it is today and that we are all a part of God’s creation:
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:27

Therefore that we can draw the conclusions that not only is the Earth immaterial but also supernatural, and that God is indeed everywhere, and in humans too:

In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God,
for whom and through whom everything exists,
should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.
Hebrew 2:10

This idea strongly disagrees with the Cartesian dualism, formed to explain the relationship of God and humans, because in Descartes’ philosophy it is not possible that the body in this case, can have a two-way relationship with the mind. But if this is not true, then it is not possible for God to be everywhere and everything and this obviously directly questions God’s omnipotence.

Now, what defines Pantheism is that there must be a force, almighty or not, present everywhere and in everything and this force should be conscious and even preferrebly, sentient. This very much agrees with the Christian God, because we are shown that God is very well possible to make demands and have emotions on his own. For example maybe the one of the most blatant examples are the 10 Commandments where God more or less demands his followers to live after these rules or they will be cast into eternal Hellfire:

1 And God spoke all these words:

2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

3 “You shall have no other gods before ^[a] me.

4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything
in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.

5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them;
for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children
for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,

6 but showing love to a thousand {generations}
of those who love me and keep my commandments.

7 “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work,

10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God.
On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter,
nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals,
nor the alien within your gates.

11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth,
the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.
Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.

13 “You shall not murder.

14 “You shall not commit adultery.

15 “You shall not steal.

16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,
or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Exodus 20:1-17

God even states himself that he is a “jealous God”, I guess we must congratulate him in his truthfulness. Now, the hardest concept to maybe grasp would be that of the universe not being physical as Descartes claims it to be. The reason I have already mentioned before, namely that if God is a supernatural force, then God is also nonphysical, and since the universe is a part of God himself, then the universe too, is of nonphysical and supernatural matter. Therefore the only conclusion can be that Descartes made a false dichotomy based upon the assumption that our universe is made out of physical matter. But, but, isn’t it made physical as in that we can touch and feel it? Yes, indeed we can, but it doesn’t matter if we assume that the physical is actually sprung out of the nonphysical and even less so if assuming the physical and the nonphysical is the same or if there is a heavy communication between the two where we cannot discern when the physical ends and the nonphysical begins. Descartes’ argument rather means that there can be no communication between and therefore even the slightest union is thus, impossible. However, as shown, there is a great flaw in his logic as presented above which he failed to see, even though he based his entire theory upon Christianity itself and its dualism. Christianity is not a dualism, it’s a monism and even more it is a pantheism and not a monotheism as has been previously believed. While certainly the idea of monotheism is supported in Pantheism too, thanks to the Trinity, it actually matters little since the focus no longer lies on the Trinity and in the existence of Jesus being God’s son. This becomes rather self-evident if we are to understand that God is omnipresent and as such, we can go even a step further and argue that Christianity actually believes us to be our own personal gods since God is indeed inside of us, and this gives us the power and will to use the God inside of us to do as what we see fit; hopefully into making our environment a little nicer to live in for others.

Was this better Waldheri? I am still waiting for your reply.

When we talk about religion, we always see it as something cultural, even as a cultural phonomenon perhaps. Religion is however quite far from it, especially when we actually talk about religion and not so much about its practices (although we will get there too). Religion is first of all a political tool. Religion is used as a banner to divide or unite people, and it has been excused as a justification in warfare many times. Religion is also secondly a socio-political identity.

However, to understand what this means, we must first understand that religion in a political context is not always as much as believing or having faith in god(s), but merely faith in something, whether it be a divine being or not. The definition of religion is:

1. A belief or faith in something
2. Rituals
3. Rules

Suddenly the word religion gains a very broad meaning, and can span more than the world religions which be invoked in our thinking when the word religion is mentioned. As such, many of our current cultural phenomena can be seen as a religion. One of those can be the animal right activist groups. To be an animal rights activist, you should first of all share a belief that animals are equal to or better than humans, rituals might involve to not eat meat or consume any product taken from dead/living animals and lastly, rules that forbid you to say, eat meat. This is all put into an overarching system and also gives the animal right activist an identity with other animal right activists by following this agenda. Thus, to truly be an animal right activist means that you actually follow a religion of sorts, in a purely political context. The only reason why you or anyone else would declare yourself an animal right activist is only to politically prove you share the idea of these typical ethics and morals mentioned (animals are of equal or above equal worth compared to humans, you follow a vegetarian diet, you do not consider any form of research conducted on animals ethically correct etc), thus, declaring yourself an animal rights activist outside a political context is useless. Obviously, the idea also unites other animal rights activists under certain organizations such as WWF but also creates a we vs them mentality, let’s say, the evil factories that pollute the rivers and seas so fish will die.

It is also very evident that religion is also more strongly envoked upon when a political identity is needed. I saw a short three-part documentary called We Are All Neighbours today, conducted by anthropologist Tone Bringa in a small village in Bosnia. 1/3 of the population was Catholic, the remaining 2/3 Muslim. It is recorded during the early 90s, (1993) and the conflict between Croatians and Muslims over Bosnia has just begun. At first, the conflict can be heard because of gunshots and shelling, but it is only in a distance and remains so for quite a while. While the villagers are worried the war will break out and soldiers will invade their village, they still don’t understand much of the basic idea of the conflict, that different ethnical groups (Croats, Serbs, Muslims) struggle to gain politcal control over a country (Bosnia). Croats, Serbs and Muslims have lived peacefully in this village for quite some time, and they don’t understand why the fuss. Sure, some of them have different faiths (Catholics vs Muslims) but they still believe in the same god. They also openly declares they don’t understand how you can attack your own neighbour for belonging to a different ethnical group. However, as the violence draws closer it eventually escalates in a bloodbath, where neighbour stands against neighbour, and eventually the Catholics kill their Muslim neighbours when the Croatian soldiers arrive (Croatia is more strongly associated with Catholicism). We can clearly see as the violence draws closer the villagers also keep more and more to themselves; Muslims to Muslims and Catholics to Catholics, despite many of them being good friends before the war begun. They often excused their own newly gained animosity with that “they might consider me a spy” or equally farfetched reasonings. In a world of paranoia however, it doesn’t seem as impossible as it would have before the war.

Here, we can clearly see how one’s religious identity becomes more important to strengthen one’s national identity (Catholics associate themselves with Croatia and support the Croatian army, Muslims the Bosnians and Serbs). Thus, religion is merely a political construct, and when you openly declare you are this or that, you also openly declare a political stance. It might not sound very rational to claim, especially if we look at something such as Atheism.

However, Atheism maybe more than anything is a political construct and many ideas in Atheism support this. First of all, there is a “belief” in science, that at least science is more superior to any other way to view the world. Science is associated with a secular society, and in turn associated with freedom of thought. Here, we can slowly see how Atheism is taking upon more and more political leanings, since freedom of thought often reconciles with freedom of speech. Atheism also often stands for many other common ideas in secular societies, such as a more social welfare model as well as Liberalism (which has partly been mentioned with freedom of speech). Religion on the other hand, is often associated with Conservatism (in a political sense but also culturally) and then that religion’s internal structure (ie rules and rituals) will decide how a Conservative society will look like.

Of course, I am not going so far as saying it is always this way, this is merely shown to point out an example how many Atheists might actually consider themselves, and that at least in a political context, their lack of belief in a god will actually create such as strong socio-political identity that it can be considered a religion, and how the word religion in turn is merely there to express one’s raher ethical, moral and political views than actually your ideas of faith.

Since Db0 was so kind to remind me of this in his post, it was hard for me not to reply to that, especially after learning about the Seed Theory originally created by Carol Delaney and her colleague whose name escapes me right now. There is actually a reason why females are considered inferior in the Abrahamic religions. To understand this, we must first of all understand what was before Christianity and Judaism. That’s right, many pagan religions where some were cheerishing the fertility of women, since good fertility means a good harvest. Fertility of course, is the very central theme in many agricultures, and why shouldn’t they, when it’s the very thing they rely upon to survive? Looking at this further, we can also see a notion where every god of fertility in pagan religions is depicted as woman. Coincidence? I think not. Thus, fertility as a whole is more strongly connected to the female gender rather than the male one, and in addition connected to the earth since the earth can be fertile. Women then, stand for the earthly. Is there any question too why it is the female who gives birth to the world in most mythology sagas? As a quick example, we don’t need to go further than Gaia, which is probably the most well-known of all world birthgivers.

However, when the Abrahamic religions came into the picture and turned the world upside down with its monotheism, there was suddenly no room for a fertility godess. As a matter of fact, god is so divine that it is the very opposite of what is earthly. Men, who never were considered fertile in the sense as women then, were seen as closer to god. Why is that women cannot even sometimes leave their own house during their periods, or if they pray their prayers will not be reached? Periods if anything, is the very physical evidence of female’s fertility. Men, who do not have periods, and thus are not connected to the earthly are more pure, and also stands closer to the divine.

It is also noted that men not only are more divine, they are the actors, while women are merely spectators. Why is that the most romantic sex would be where the woman is passive, lying down on her back? This is a very old notion in Western society of how sex should be performed. Men once again, are the actors. This in turn refers back to god, where god created the world, not the woman. We call god the creator and god plants the seed. Men too, plant the seed in women, not only because you plant a seed into the ground but also literary, in English and many other European languages is the semen of men sometimes known as seed.

Why then is the earthly considered so bad that women’s sexuality should even become prosecuted? I cannot honestly answer, more than it seems to be an attempt to demonize pagan religions.

This is an analysis I based on Fall From Grace in Genesis:

My own tack on Fall From Grace? It’s a way to make a claim between the earthly and the divine. You see, in the Abrahamic religions and also in many pagan ones, women in particular are often considered being more “earthly”, because of their difference in fertility. This is primarily based on the fact that women can have children and have periods. This sets women further away from god, since god is divine and not earthly. Don’t you for example think it’s funny it’s Eve who ate the fruit first, not Adam? A serpent is often symbolized with cycles, notice how this seem to fit nicely with periods? Furthermore, this is probably a way for the Abrahamic religions to taint the pagan religions in where female fertility was seen as a positive thing. In paganism too, a cyclist thinking is not that uncommon. So in such a sense, the woman represents nature and paganism, which in Christianity is so far apart as you can get from god. Notice also how it is Eve who later suggested Adam to eat the fruit. Thus all the blame was to be put on Eve. Adam did nothing wrong, after all he is the man, and is closer to god. Even if he did wrong he did less wrong because he doesn’t have periods.

In addition, it is also the child who inherits the sin from its mother, not its father, further explaining that women are tainted but men are not. So frankly, I have actually no idea how some Christians could reproduce with this idea in mind. Going further to not have sex before marriage could be a part where a man who has sex with an unmarried woman will become tainted. Among gypsies, the skirt closest to the body is tainted as well, and among some Muslims women’s underwear cannot be mixed with men’s underwear during washing, or the men’s clothing will be tainted.

I would one day like to see where men’s semen is considered as tainted too, although that will probably not happen. Most often periods are also a sign with lack of body control, and to keep oneself clean and pure. This can be traced even further back from Ancient Greece where there some there were ideals a human should adhere to show dignity. One of those was to keep oneself pure. Of course, this notion too, was constructed by men for men, women were not often considered and even if they were, there were other ideals for them to follow.

Hm, I realize I am too tired to really think more clearly about the matter right now, so I will just continue when more ideas arise. I guess I call this part 1, so if there are anything else to discuss, it will be in part 2. Maybe a more elaborate analysis of From From Grace perhaps?

This was originally posted in my last.fm journal here.

While skimming through a thread in the Intelligent Metal group, someone had posted quite an interesting thought that black metal and pagan metal (I rather refer it as folk metal as pagan metal is too much of an ambiguous term and pagan metal falls under the categories of folk and black metal in any case) are mere pastisches of lost societies. They were, in the author’s eyes, “inauthentic”.

While thinking more over the cause of this, some interesting ideas came to my mind, strongly associated when the author started to compare black and folk metal as equally fake as McDonalds, that he is indeed correct in his captivization, but it is not as easy as he puts it. Black and folk metal is is a journey to find one’s own identity, more than merely trying be a fake opposition. Is there actually in this light any question why Norway of all countries, came to be the mother of black metal? To understand this further, one must realize that Norway historically is a very new independent nation. Not until after the First World War did it manage to free itself from Swedish rule. Before that, Norway had either for a very long time been both a part of Sweden and Denmark. It is thus more than any other country one may argue, a country who for a long time had no real true national identity. Adding the sudden Americanzation which swept over the rest of the world shortly after the Second World War, no wonder Norwegians still struggle to define what is typically Norwegian! Why is it that Norway has a national day they celebrate each year (17th of May) but Swedes had to install such a national day because we previously didn’t have one?

Therefore, it can be easy to conclude that Norway in fact was the perfect home for black metal. It should not be further argued which band was the first one to release the first black metal album (some argue it was Bathory, others Venom, others once again Mayhem), nevertheless, today the Norwegian black metal scene is rather undisputed. Why then, one may ask, is it that the search of national identity has taken the expression in black metal in particular? To understand this, one must first understand the Norwegian black metal scene itself.

It can be argued whether it was Mayhem who started it, regardless, Mayhem’s place in black metal history holds a very important keyrole to develop the genre further. It should first of all be noted that Mayhem was not the first band to write about vikings, paganism and antichristianity, but one man should definitely be mentioned as a huge inspirational source in this matter: Bathory. No doubt he inspired many black metal bands which popped up during early 90s with his viking lyrics. It should also be noted that Bathory today is most commonly considered the father of folk metal as well, but more about this later.

To understand why vikings are so important in this, one must first understand that vikings are a major part in Scandinavian history. In fact, it is so deeply ingrained in our mentality that it is the very part of our national identity. Scandinavians are proud of their viking origin! There is not a single true Scandinavian who doesn’t feel a little sense of nationalism when vikings are mentioned. Despite having a bloody history, vikings formed who we are. We also know that vikings were one of the last to give in to Christianityin Europe. Here we get to an interesting topic of itself, where Christianity among other things have come to respresent the “evil commercial capitalism”. As we know, Christianity is the major religion in USA and their religion is deeply rooted in the society. Christianity thus represents the capitalism and Americanization (McDonalds do too but it would be silly to sing about how much you hate McDonalds). Faith itself, is considered to be of the color white, and in religion means “purity”. This is why white clothing is preferred during certain celebrations with Christian grounds, and why priests among other politically important figures wear white during work. Black then, is the very opposite of this, the epitome of paganism. There is of course a strong sense of irony in this as well, as despite attempting to break free of the contemporary society’s bonds, the revolt is still expressed in a language used in that society rather than actually referring to the society they are trying to mimic.

Returning back to national identity, I also find it interesting to note here that Norwegian is even preferred as the sung language in black metal. Once again the refusal to admit globalization and Americanization. Bands like Dimmu Borgir wrote all their lyrics in Norwegian in their early years, before releasing Enthroned Darkness Triumphant. In band names too, we can see a preference for Ancient German with the band Tyr. While originally from Faroe Islands, it was under a long time inhabited and controlled by vikings and even today, I think children of the Faraoe Islands must learn Danish in school. A rememberance when the islands were a part of Danish rule.

Additionally, there is no real metalhead who never encountered the world “true”, or “tr00″, or “trve” (spelt with a Latin u) which essentially, is particularly permeated around black metal. Along with this mentality often include poor recordings, the refusal to release any other types of music than demos if any demo is released at all and the refusal to sign to big labels unless it primarly focuses on black metal only, if the band by all means must sign at all. This too, is an expression against the Americanization and capitalism. To “be true” stands for the absolute opposite of commercialism. To become commercially successful is the greatest sin in metal. In addition there is often a correlation between commercialism and poor music quality that particularly people speaking for the “trueness” argue over. Instead, rather listening to a barely listenable black metal demo is preferred. Here too, we can see a correlation between poor sound quality vs good sound quality, since commercially successful bands have better studios available and thus good sound quality means you have enough money to afford such a studio, despite that with technological improvements, even cheap sound studios can offer good quality sound today.

Finally, we have corpse painting. To dress up or use makeup is hardly unusual in metal. KISS were one of the first together with Alice Cooper. Here we can see how important shock value is to gain attention. Would people today remember Kiss and Alice Cooper would they have performed without stage makeup and flashy shows? No doubt, Mayhem managed to very early make a name about themselves with the murder of Euronymous. Varg Vikernes got into jail and the murder itself became exeggerated and rumors began to spread. Here once again, we can see the ambivalent attitude black metal has against commercialism. Would we still have the black metal we have today would this not happened? I am not so sure. Definitely more bands were to follow, and while they were not as extreme, Mayhem did set up the level of public attention a black metal band should crave through controversial means. Of course, I can see why particularly folk metal bands rather refer corpse painting as battle paint, regardless, it is pretty much the same but with different colors. Folk metal bands too, are known to dress up in true LARP style.

Folk metal, often considered to be started by Bathory, rather put a focus on entertainment value, because while we shouldn’t forget that while music is art and can express many things, in the end, it is just that, entertainment. I doubt Quorton himself took his music that seriously. It is also here the main difference between folk metal and black metal is split: folk metal does not care so much about commercialism. In fact, many folk metal bands are commercially succesful (Ensiferum, Finntroll). While the folk metal genre is dominated with Scandinavian countries here too, folk metal is not so much about catching the essence of the Scandinavian nationality (in fact, I don’t think any folk metal band takes itself too seriously) but is more interested on doing a good “show”. This too, comes from older times of metal when we have bands such as once again, Kiss, Alice Cooper, GWAR and Manowar that also put a heavy emphasis on stage appearances more than doing just music. It is thus all about entertainment. Black metal then, with it’s “trueness”, is not free to entertain in the same way as folk metal can.

Can both genres then still try to deliver the same ideas through their lyrics and musical atmosphere? I would say that black metal has in general a far more serious undertone compared to folk metal and that black metal then, actually tries to find some sort of essence using modern means (once again, noticing the irony not trying to use the way how pagans could have done it) whereas folk metal is more about entertainment. It is, in a sense, Lord of the Rings, whether it may be about vikings or elves. While the lyrics themselves may hold some historical ground they are just that, stories, and should not be taken seriously or literary.

With this text, I hope I managed to give others some insight and an interesting point on the black and and folk metal movement. While I know I focused a lot on black metal, black metal today is also a far bigger scene than folk metal currently is, and has quite a controversial history which should be explored. However, I do think I managed to explain what I consider to be the reasons why particularly black metal as a movement started at all and why it more than any other metal genre holds such strong ideological grounds. I also think it further managed to explain why black metal and not folk metal took the expressional form with national socialism (nsbm). It is quite ironical too to note that black metal more than any other metal genre too is very similar to a religion in an anthropological sense. While most people would agree that a religion requires a deity or somesuch to be worshipped, religion is not only about worship but also about rituals and rules. Black metal more than any other genre has rules what to do and not to do (wear corpsepaint, be true, release poor quality demos, write about paganism, satanism, antichristianity and vikings etc) and many of the fans are more eager to advocate these ideals than fans of other metal genres advocate theirs. We can for example right now see a huge controversy within the genre with so called unblack metal, or christian black metal. As previously explained, Christianity is the very epitome religion black metal works against; coming out as a Christian black metal band then creates a huge controversy and other artists within the genre being non-Christians will automatically reject this band, thus forcing these bands to call themselves unblack metal, not only because they do not want to be associated with the antichristianity permeated in black metal but also because they are rejected by the genre itself.

I realize this is a huge subject and definitely worth looking into more, but for now, I hope you in this gr1m trve frostb177en text found some entertainment for a while