As a follow-up to my recent feature piece on the subject, I’ve been doing some more research into the otherkin community. I put together what I think is a representative collection of links and info on and by otherkin. Unfortunately, the majority of the stuff out there seems to be reams of crap of LiveJournal, so it was quite a task to track down anything that we could have a useful discussion on.
Special thanks to Jason Pitzl-Waters Wildhunt Blog for actually approaching this in a smart way. Jason put together a look at how the community of pagans and wiccans are in turmoil over how to interact with or integrate the increasingly popular otherkin subculture. Jason writes:
Modern Paganism is a pretty eclectic religious grouping. Our family of faiths encompass Celtic Reconstructionists, Asatru, modern Druids, Goddess worshippers, Radical Faeries, Discordians, and Starhawk’s Reclaiming tradition. Often arguments and debate rages over who is and isn’t included under the “Pagan” (or “Heathen”) tag. Some of the more conservative elements often try to separate (or fight against) from what they see as an increasingly “fluffy” and eclectic mainstream in modern Paganism.
These types of arguments have always been what turns me off from both pagan and many occultist sub-cultures. It’s easy to get trapped in battles about individual and collective identity crises in these groups and lose sight of what’s really important. Many pagans, it seems, feel threatened now that the identities and subcultures which they pioneered over the past thirty years now are being infiltrated by a new wave of people (or not-people, as they would claim) who could very well dilute their public image even further.
Let’s face it, for all the gains they’ve made, pagans still aren’t respected in mainstream society. People have only grudgingly allowed them religious freedom, and their rights to practice according to their beliefs still are very regularly questioned. So it’s no wonder they are afraid that a bunch of teenagers claiming to be non-human mythological species is going to threaten their social standing even further.
Jason quotes from a debate on LiveJournal over this danger of paganism turning into something possibly very silly:
“So, at what point, if any, if ever, will the Pagan community finally put its collective foot down? At what point will we finally have the guts to say, “Whatever you are is ok. Whatever your delusion is is fine with us. But it isn’t what we are, take your particular flavor of nutty and get it the heck out of our religion.” In short, whatever your particular brand of psychosis may be is fine, but stop pretending it has anything to do with this religion. You’re making the rest of us look stupid.”
And Jason adds:
This tension over Otherkin points to a growing concern among modern Pagans. How inclusive should we be? Is there a limit? If not should there be? Should we even be paying attention to groups like this, when we haven’t settled relations between larger established groups like eclectic Wiccans and various reconstructionist faiths.
Though it might seem like sort of a silly subject matter on the surface, I think it actually points towards some really deep issues about not only neopaganism, but also about the future of religion in general. First off, it seems like pagans need to really address how important it was for them growing up to be able to go against the mainstream, and how important that rebellion was for them in creating their spiritual identities. From that standpoint, how different really is what otherkins are doing? Second, now that paganism has gotten at least a little cultural power, what should they do with it? Should they guard it jealously against all challengers, or should they explore how to share it with other people operating outside the normal paradigms of society?
Perhaps more importantly to most people, all kinds of questions about freedom of religious practice come up. Say otherkins or something even weirder someday form a church. At what point do we look at what somebody else says is a religious belief and say “This is just too much.” When does somebody else’s “religious belief” become too stupid or too juvenile or too weird or too confusing for us to respect it anymore? Or do we just have to sit back and extend freedom of religion/belief to any and everybody across the board regardless?
I think that as technology progresses and allows people to further blur the lines of identity, fantasy and reality, we’re going to see an explosion of weird subcultures. The internet is just going to be the beginning for connecting groups of people who share a common delusion or belief or fascination. The next ten years is going to see the birth of some seriously strange practices that will make paganism and occultism and otherkin look like nursery school games, as we push out into the far realms of what the mind can be and what human identity can turn into. We’re only just getting started on weird shit like this. May as well start understanding it now so we can have a jump on the cataclysmic/apocalyptic changes that are in store.
- END -
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16 Comments
I thought otherkin were wannabe vamp{y|i}res who wouldn’t go to a blood party. That trip is interesting to see from goth to White Wolf vampire games, to the neo-vampire movement.
-tc
“The thin line between entertainment and war”
Actually why did paganism wane in the first place? Didn’t all their Gods become fairies or something? I used to call myself a pagan because I loved the earth, nature, and the seasons and felt there is some spirit world.
I ‘believe’ in a magic, but just as Krishnamurti believed truth to be beyond any method or thought construct- I believe magic is an inner connection, an inner alchemy that is not brought about by a belief. A war on the ‘eclectic’ will backfire, pagans need to be pluralistic.
Pagans need to go back to simplicity- be open and keep it simple. be reasonable with elves and critical of goblins.
Hmm… I’m not hugely knowledgeable about this whole business of “otherkin”, but personally I’d view vampires as being separate from the furries and the elves and the rest. Vampires, as I see it, are usually fairly closely tied to a specific subculture (i.e. goth), which, to the best of my limited knowledge, the others aren’t.
What definition of pagan are they working under, that they can say which religions are or are not pagan? I thought the definition was polytheistic religions? Isn’t that like saying that because you don’t like some blonde you think is acting silly, she’s no longer a blonde?
It’s not as if you can define a religion as Christian just because you don’t like it and you don’t like Christians…
Regarding issues of ‘get out of my religion– you make the rest of us look bad!,’ I admit I am put in mind of many Christian friends who have voiced the desire to kick Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps, etc, out of their religion.
Personally, I am much more frightened of the megalomaniacs and dominionists than I am of the merely unusual. Liberal Christians have more to contend with in distancing themselves from the ’stupid, juvenile, and bizarre’ than pagans do, IMO. I don’t, as of this writing, consider myself to be affiliated with a specific faith (though I acknowledge this may change); if I were, however, it seems to me that I would be far more concerned with the social mainstream perceiving me as dangerous or intolerant than as goofy.
That is to say, I want to ensure the next-door neighbors know that I do not plan on recruiting their children or sacrificing their cat. As long as that issue is settled, they can go ahead and think my beliefs are a bunch of misguided hooey; I may well think the same of theirs.
The real problem with attempting to draw a ‘bullshit line’ is that it remains eternally subjective. Start a community for pagans, or for any other group, with a prohibition against unspecified ‘bullshit,’ and you quickly find that everyone has a different opinion of where exactly the line separating bullshit from non-bullshit lies. I’ve seen this repeatedly in the LJ community I (regrettably) co-maintain: one person’s absurdity is another’s routine. Those whose subjective experience is labeled ’stupid’ by another are frequently the first to turn to others and accuse them of ‘going too far,’ like the 1000-pound man accusing the 1100-pound man of being too fat. The more threatened someone feels their own position to be, the more eager they often are to lay down the line separating themselves from the unacceptably freakish. While this certainly isn’t the only reason people attempt to do so, it happens frequently enough that one starts to notice a few common trends.
As an example of the problem of where to draw the line, looking at otherkin: should one theoretically apply the ‘unacceptable’ label to all beliefs tagged with the general moniker of otherkin? The problem here is that some beliefs have been subsumed under that label which previously had no particular category– for instance, the belief that one had a past life as an animal. There are a number of otherkin who consider this an explanation for their feelings of being nonhuman, but the idea that one can incarnate as different animals is as old as, well, Hinduism.
So, from there, one has to move into different varieties of otherkin belief. You could attempt to draw the line at mythic animals, and say that only past lives as creatures known to have existed on Earth are acceptable, but that’s actually been disputed within the community itself. There’s a subgroup of people who are quite vociferous in their opposition to anyone who claims a past life as a mythical creature. One of the more common explanations, OTOH, for how one can have a past life as a dragon or gryphon or so on, is that similar creatures exist on other planets, and one can migrate between planets from life to life. Of course, alien past lives are a favored theory of many New Agers too, so one would then have to decide whether to put them behind the BS line.
From there, I suppose we could move onto considering people who claim to be in some way physically nonhuman. Admittedly, this is the one that really strains my credulity, although I’m willing to accept that some of them are accurately describing subjective experiences they had. This one is also disputed within the otherkin community, but again, the “some people are physically different from humans” idea didn’t originate recently: a number of Theosophists and New Agers take quite seriously the idea that some people have non-human ancestry. And there are a lot of pagans who’ve cribbed specific Theosophical and New Age beliefs, probably not even knowing where they originated. One might suggest that, before condemning others, they might want to examine the precedents of some of their own concepts.
If asked to draw a line myself, I think I would only caution people against following any path that results in neglect of one’s immediate, physical life in pursuit of a spiritual goal. It is possible to get excessively caught up even when something real and genuine is going on. I’ve seen people get involved in dramas of playing out past lives (both earthly and otherworldly) to such an extent that their current life suffered for it, and several of them resorted to extorting money from overly generous (or intimidated) family, friends and partners to support their lifestyle. I came dangerously close at one point to allowing myself to be drawn into such a situation. However, my gripes with them are no different from my gripes with people who refuse medical treatment for a life-threatening illness on the grounds that “God will provide” or “prayer will cure everything.” I’ve also seen perfectly earnest people who pray to animated characters and get on with the business of daily physical living. (This is, again, not as unprecedented as it may sound: in some parts of China and Taiwan, it’s traditionally been popular to pray to the Monkey King, Sun Wu-kong, who started out as a character in a 16th-century novel. Ever seen “Dragonball Z”? It’s an almost unrecognizable bastardization of the “Journey to the West” story.)
Here is how I see the issue:
Initially, Paganism did not just refer to anyone not a member of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious paths. It referred, more specifically, to people who lived in a particular part of the world (Europe) and in a certain socio-economic environ. In other words, Paganism did not, at that time, refer to our caveman ancestor nor did it refer to people following other spiritual paths, such as Buddhists, Hindus, Lakota, or Yoruba.
Eventually, society took it upon itself to make the word Pagan inclusive so as to exclude all non-Jews, non-Christians, and non-Muslims. Just because this portion of the world’s population chose to do does not mean that all other people are truly Pagan! The redefinition was an outward display of prejudice and intolerance. (For that matter, many Christians would probably consider anyone not a member of their specific church building to be a Pagan.)
I do not count as Pagans people who choose to worship UFOs, hobbits, and other beings or creatures, whether real or created. Paganism, for me, still refers to a specific corner of the world for its spiritual insight and influences. In other words, I can see the Asatruar as Pagan. I can see Wiccans as Pagan. I can see Stregharia as Paganism.
I do not consider Egyptian influenced spirituality to be Pagan, on the other hand. I have no objection to Egyptian Reconstruction and I find it to be a valid spiritual path with a great deal of beauty and insight. I just do not find it to be Pagan. Likewise, I do not consider Buddhism to be a form of Paganism nor Taoism (a path which I do have a great deal of interest in). Even though I do count myself as a follower of JudeoPagan practices, I realizes that, by my above definitions, the practice of incorporating El, Shekinah, and the Elohim in one’s pantheon is not a Pagan practice.
Likewise, I do not consider Goth to be a form of Paganism. I do not consider vampirism to be a form of Paganism. I do not consider basing a Book of Shadows on The Lord of the Rings to be a form of Paganism. They may be neopagan, but they are not specifically Pagan.
Bill
the etymology of ‘pagan’ is really interesting!
this is what i was getting at in one of my earlier posts about taboos. on the one hand, we’re perfectly willing to extend the right to sacrifice animals to practitioners of certain religions, even thought we might personally find the practice incredibly distasteful. but, what if, instead of sacrificing these animals, the worshippers in question were having sex w/them? okay, fair enough; suppose that the sexual union between animal and human was simply an element of fantasy and didn’t extend into “real life.” if we’re offended by ‘real life’ beastiality on the grounds that it constitues animal abuse, which it obviously does, would this, then, be any different than, say, illustrated (not photographed) child pornography in which no children were ‘actually’ abused? i’m honestly not saying one way or another, just asking.
my problems with ‘furries,’ as mentioned on another post, have to do with the psychosexual activities of the furries, not any kind of religious/spiritual belief. i refuse to apologize for being disgusted by the idea of sexual arousal via sonic the hedgehog. i find such a notion absurd. if, however, said person wants to start a religion around sonic the hedgehog that doesn’t involve fucking a stuffed hedgehog, that’s fine with me, i couldn’t care less. i’m not “persecuting” anyone by finding their actions really gross and funny– it’s not as though we’re witnessing furry-da-fes, here. i’m just a guy with a computer. and fwiw, yes, i’m also disgusted by non-furries who engage in similar acts. like i said, if that’s what people want to do, that’s fine with me, but i find it disgusting. sorry.
as to ‘otherkin,’ who have more of a connection with animals or dragons or fairies or what have you, i have no problem with this, personally. it just seems like a natual extension of the ‘totem animal’ idea (fwiw, my totem animal is the human).
are they ‘pagan’? i don’t really think so, but since i’m not a member of a pagan community, it’s not my place to decide. i do consider myself a christian gnostic, and should someone professing to be a dragon in some way want to attend our christian gnostic church, we’d welcome them with open arms, as long as they understand that there’s not really all that much within christian gnostic doctrine that would defend their dragon-ness on a religious basis. in other words, modern paganism is probaby more sympathetic to otherkin-ness than many other paths might be.
o, that’s another thing! where do we draw the line when it comes to collective doctrine vs. individual doctrine? i mean, take modern catholicism for instance. most catholics i know are pro-choice, use birth control, and don’t believe the pope is infallible. a few hundred years ago, this would mean that no, they aren’t catholic whatsoever– they’re heretics. if you wanted to be a catholic, you had to BE A CATHOLIC, 100%. obviously, this isn’t the case any longer (in practice, not theory), and one can also choose to be episcopalian/anglican/etc.. but, it begs the question: at what point does modification of a spiritual practice actualize a new form of said practice? in other words, suppose our otherkin friends decide to become pagans, and claim to practice paganism. suppose they modify the traditional forms of paganism to fit their needs as otherkin. at what point does their spiritual practice become something new that isn’t paganism at all?
You fucking fascist! LOL.
I did think about this a bit after that Draco huy posted, I mean from my POV if someone feels a kindship with a certain animal then the thing to do would be to journey on it and if necessary do some sort of ritual to bring that relationship into being, like these dudes:
http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/176_tattoo.shtml
OK so that’s what I happen to think is “cool” - tattooing, possession. I think that’s cooler then dressing up in Disney costumes and doing a conga line through the reception lobby of a convention hall.
Buy maybe that’s expecting to much of people. Is your average middle-american highschool student who feels a strong kinship or identification with a certain animal necessarily going to travel to a 3rd world country and do a primitive animist ritual to make the identification complete? Or get initiated into some form of tribal shamanism? Maybe they’ve never even heard of that stuff, can’t get permission from their parents to travel, can’t afford it, are scared of that idea of simply aren’t interested, etc.
So maybe in the absence of any other kind of cultural context, dressing up in a disney costume and posting anime-styled illustrations of anthropomorphised video-game characters engaging in threesomes seems like the thing to do instead.
I mean, is the main problem any occultist might have with “furries” just that they aren’t as “cool” or “hardcore” asthe west-african leopard society, Thai animal-spirit shamans, etc?
Maybe its goofy and consumer-oriented instead of “authentic” but nobody ever starts off knowing what the score is… it usually takes a long period of searching and experimenting for people to find their way. And in the meantime at least they do have the courgae to be different.
I opften think the same thing of the goth subculture actually. I mean, who knows why they like to dress up like that? As far as I can see its a fashion not a spirituality. But then again maybe a fashion is all they really need to be at peace with themselves and to grow.
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who was explaining a theory that the eatern european myths of werewolves came from berzerker warrior/shamans who were possessed by wolves in battle, while vampires were originally specialized corpse-disposers (and often necromancers) whose job it was to handle bodies, bring them out of the community, bury and pray over them.
Especially in times and places where leprosy or the black plague were still a concern such a person would obviously be the object of considerable ambivalence among his fellow villagers and would probably even live in a hut on the edge of town so as not to symbolically contaminate the town with death.
Now would any teenager who is fascinated with death really want to become an undertaker or necromantic shaman in an eastern european rural village? Is that practical? such an idea would probably never even occur to them or they might have to travel halfway around the world to learn how. Maybe all they want to do is wear a cape and dance around in nightclubs to the Sisters of Mercy instead.
Wow, this has turned into a really fruitful discussion I think.
JC Jones, this is hilarious:
JP: It seems that the original meaning of pagan was more or less the same as the original meaning of villain as well. Interesting. Also, I think those questions about how does a religion change from within doctrinally are worthy of some discussions on their own.
Rev Max: lots of good points. My original reaction as well was basically one of disgust and annoyance, but now that I’ve had time to dwell on it, I really think what you’re saying here is probably pretty accurate:
It’s like, certain people have an intrinsic need for mythical/ritual stuff in their lives. And if all they’ve ever known is video games and anime, of course that is the way it’s going to be played out, because these are the images and symbols that have imprinted onto their ’spiritual circuits,’ so to speak.
I think there is a danger in it though, and it’s not sexual perversion or anything like that - but it is an inexperience with matters of spiritual depth. Without any kind of guides or reference points, everybody falters and gets mixed up. It’s only natural. Maybe the thing to do would be to extend the hand of people who are more experienced to enable people who are less experienced to get more out of it spiritually.
That, or spike the punch with ecstasy and get a film crew in there pronto.
Yeah, I just can’t get worked up over this. So they’re otherkin? It doesn’t matter. Anyone who thinks it does needs their head examined.
Sometimes, I think people need to pursue a more apathetic life rather than a more spiritual one.
Otherkin, furries, what have yoiu, tehir activities don’t stop me from paying my bill, from living my life, from enjoying fine food or from feeling happy after finishing a project
I set out to do.
I guess I just have a very primitive ethics system; if something cannot or simply does not cause real, quantifiable harm that can reasonly proven, then, by definition, it can’t be immoral or even questionable in that sense.
Hmmm… true, I suppose… my main problem with restricting the definition to those original inhabitants is that most modern-day Pagans and Wiccans don’t, generally speaking, practice anything their ancestors would have recognized. What most of then are practicing is a mishmash of the rituals created by Gardner and Crowley. I don’t think this invalidates modern paganism as a religion– if these rituals help someone to feel closer with the Divine as they conceive of it, I consider that to be more important than their historical lineage– but Wiccans who claim to be practicing the original religion of the British Isles are buying into a modern-day historical myth.
Asatruar, and those who incorporate known Celtic gods and goddesses into their worship, are a different story. I know Tim has posted numerous thoughtful articles on polytheistic versus monotheistic psychology; I’ve always been intrigued by the reasons behind modern-day pagans’ seeming allergy to polytheism, particularly in light of the fact that all the pre-Christian European beliefs systems about which anything is known with certainty were undeniably polytheistic. I think the search for evidence of widespread worship of a Great Goddess has something more behind it than simple desire to see a female personification of the divine. There seems to be a monotheistic bias which runs even deeper than the bias favoring male authority– a desire to find or artificially inflate some ruling figure in every religious tradition, one who ultimately calls all the shots and knows exactly what is going on. I’m interested by the emergence of practices like Asatru because they indicate a few chips being made in that block.
I’ve brought this issue up a few times when debating the legality/value of fan fiction, actually. We do not, generally speaking, live in a storytelling culture; precious few of us are lucky enough to have living relatives who belonged to storytelling cultures. Out of a primal hunger for myth and symbol, kids end up turning to things like Star Wars and the Matrix, and latching onto the hero stories told by those, which are more real and immediate to them and make use of cultural symbols with which they are familiar.
But again, we don’t live in a storytelling culture; we live in a commercial culture, in which story is a commodity to be guarded jealously by its ‘creator.’ My personal take on it is that intellectual property laws, such as they are, sever myth at the root. The critics who have pointed out that the ‘heroic themes’ in popular entertainment are dealt with in hackneyed and incomplete ways are usually correct; however, by denying the audience the right to re-tell or expand upon the story, the creators forfeit the right of the story to become anything greater or more universal. I’ve always been fairly astonished by the audacity of writers/directers/etc who brag about having made use of mythical and archetypal symbols, of sending their protagonist to tour all the highlights of Joseph Campbell’s Heroic Soup Journey, and then turn to ensure that their would-be myth is preserved in a state of arrested development.
The one ‘fiction-based’ religious path I know of which has been developed to any extent is that of the Lovecraftian chaos magicians; I don’t know how widely known they are, but they are described fairly well here: http://www.techgnosis.com/lovecraft.html
Personally, I believe that anyone who would try to establish contact with Cthulhu is barking mad, for the same reason that I would consider anyone attempting to establish contact with an equivalent entity from an older tradition to be barking mad. Even presupposing that at least some entities are thoughtforms created in part or in whole from the belief of their followers, and from the emotional weight their concept carries, it’s nothing I would have the least desire to mess around with.
However, the fact that they *are* applying established magical techniques to working with Lovecraft’s creatures is something which anyone who aspires to a spiritual path based on books/games/anime would probably want to study, if they have little practical experience in any spiritual tradition.
I’ve always wondered about that as well. The thought just accourred to me that polytheism may be a reflection of the structure of the extended family (e.g., “it takes a village”) while monotheism may be… well duh… i dunno, a single-parent family? That probably wasn’t too common in ye olden days though… it may just reflect a philosophical bias in favor of the idea of seeing all traits and characteristics subsumed by one figure which may be easier to explain or conceive of somehow - perhaps mopdern-day pagans are more heavily influenced by Judeo-christianity than they realize
fucking great point!
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