Hearth & Horn

There's nothing new or unnamed under the sun.

Genre is a grouping together of similar things: horror films, cowboy films, horror-cowboy films, and so on. And within an era or movement, a single idea might be expressed through image, cinema, literature and music - making it accessible in several different ways.

Genre is great for religion-building:

• Step one - identify a mood, feeling, lesson, value, or experience you wish to reverence through your craft.
• Step two - find an artwork evoking it.
• Step three - find out what this movement is called, and who else was creating things like it

You very swiftly build up your Reading List, and have images and words with which to populate a Commonplace Book, and to draw from in ritual.

(Like most people with ADHD, I am so easily tired that learning to automate processes is essential. See what we've done: from a single book, a genre name. From a genre name, a list of 40 books which I can then seek out one by one).

Any genre big enough will already have masterlists of recommended content; and often, articles or essays by master thinkers and researchers delving into the details, writing about your religion with a power and complexity to which you can only aspire.

Now, what I've discovered about genre is it basically only says one thing. In other words, you only really need to see one Folk Horror film to grok the principles of Fencraft which the genre evokes. But! Paganisms are experiential, not intellectual; a list of 40 folk horror films allows me to be consistently immersed in new content evoking these states. And yes, occasionally, I'll have a new idea, or a new set of phrases, to show for it.

The Reading List is a form of meditation, so a genre is a way to continually return to an idea expressed in different hands, from different angles - it's an exploration.
Genre is also a way to make religion-building a collective endeavour. Art evokes moods and responses. What one person sees in an artwork might be very different from another: and so from the outset our "sacred texts" invite conversation and different responses. Similarly, genres are huge - if I send my flock out to seek folk horror, then I no longer have control over the liturgy and canon. Anyone can watch, and contribute a recommendation, for something obscure or significant they have found. It's a way to set a unified direction for a group which is still flexible and collaborative.