In the West, the void of not-knowing is not a fertile place, a place of stillness or potentiality. For us, it remains mostly an abyss - a place of irrationality where nothing is known for certain. In such a place there can only be darkness, chaos, and an endless descent into madness (and maybe weird new genders).
Gender Theory, Queer Theory, Riki Wilchins, 2004
Reading this paragraph, I was immediately put in mind of Paneros. E dives into the river Styx, supposedly abyssal and inescapable, and rises in touch and in love with Emself - a gender beyond genders, a meta-gender, a gender not understandable at all through any existing gender system. And I am glad to see that reflected a non-religious queer theory primer.
It also puts me in mind of Panprosdexia, who leads everyone through the darkness. it reminds me of Them specifically because of the similarities between darkness and the abyss. I had always interpreted it as “They lead people through the darkness and out the other side” but with a conceptualisation of darkness not as depression or bad situations but a fertile abyss full of things beyond what is known - perhaps Panprosdexia is also a guide to being in the beyond, beyond the system, and not simply traversing it.