On Otherkin

You've probably already subscribed to our RSS feed, followed us on Twitter, and joined our Facebook page. (You're so Web 2.0!)
But have you checked out our new Esoteric Book Club? First pick is Robert Anton Wilson's Quantum Psychology. Participate here!

A decidedly odd subject: Otherkin are humans who believe some aspect of themselves to be wolves, foxes, or even fae, dragons and other fantastic creatures. This differs from totemism where a connection has been forged with an external entity, instead, Otherkin identify the “Other” as some part of their being.

Otherkin are rarely taken seriously outside their subculture. UrbanDictionary.com offers some twenty definitions, but one will suffice to sum up the general sentiment:

When a mentally unstable person has not been properly hospitalized and given medication, and has come to believe they are not human, superior to others, or somehow linked to an animal/fictional being spiritually. Like most batshit crasy [sic] individuals, their shit filled minds are impossible to flush clean and will deny any aspects of being human.

If encountered in real life, quickly call the proper institution in your area, and the men in white coats will gladly give them the desperate shock treatment they need.

Otherkin: IM A DRAGON!
Rational person: No, you’re human…
Otherkin: STFU hyooman, before I burn you with my fiery breath!
Rational person: Idiot.. walks away¹

Not terribly kind, but not atypical. Lupa, in A Field Guide to Otherkin, gives a more gentle description:

[A] person who believes that, through either a non-physical or (much more rarely) physical means, s/he is not entirely human. This means that anyone who relates internally to a nonhuman species either through soul, mind, body, or energetic resonance, or who believes s/he hosts such a being in hir body/mind, is in my own definition of Otherkin.²

I know several people who self-identify as Otherkin. I’ve found it an awkward and vaguely uncomfortable subject. When friends believe they are something other than human in spirit (if not in body), how is one supposed to respond?

A close friend (fiend?) who identifies as Otherkin was initially shy about “coming out” when she first told me a few years ago. Sure, I’d been practicing magick for more than a decade at the time, and had a familiarity with psychic vampirism – and even sanguinarianism as a fetish – but this was a little different. I had some context for these ideas, but the idea of identifying with these characteristics on a literal level seemed extreme.

Recently over dinner with my friend I mentioned I was reading Lupa’s book. It had come in along with a pile of others from Immanion Press. As one might deduce from her name, Lupa considers herself a wolf therian, and, as such A Field Guide to Otherkin is written by and, primarily, for people who believe themselves to be Otherkin.

I was surprised to read the lucid, almost analytical approach taken with the subject, and that it made me feel more comfortable, finally able to ask the questions I wanted to, without resorting to something as caustic as “Why? No, seriously, why?” Lupa even acknowledges the potential that this identification may not be as concrete as it’s often presented:

The Otherkin identity is a safe haven for us to express the aspects of ourselves hat don’t fit into the everyday world but that need to have a place nonetheless. Does it really matter, in the end, if it’s all in our heads?³

I might still argue that, yes, it does matter, but perhaps things aren’t as dire as the author of the quoted UrbanDictionary.com’s definition would have it. While I still feel that identifying with Otherkin on an existential level rather than metaphoric, for example, is extreme, Lupa has done well to present a surprisingly balanced and fair view of Otherkin.

Full review of A Field Guide to Otherkin to be posted in the near future.

Edit:
The review is now available here: [cref 105].

Footnotes:

1. See UrbanDictionary.com: Otherkin. [back]
2. Lupa, A Field Guide to Otherkin, p. 26 [back]
3. Ibid, p. 30 [back]

Related posts:

1. A Field Guide to Otherkin, by Lupa
2. Plutonica.net’s half-birthday