Sevenfold Silence

In the otherkin community there's a lot of talk of where we came from and why we're the way we are (which makes sense--it's a big mystery). Sometimes people start talking about if we're here as a 'punishment', or if Earth is like purgatory, and--meaning no offense to these people--I feel like either banging my head against the wall, or offering teary hugs.

Are you here to be punished? I can't say for certain, but if you think you are you'll probably be that much more miserable, and you'll end up feeling punished. Regardless of how miserable you actually are (and if you are genuinely unhappy, I am very sorry for this), you'll become miserable if you think your existence here is pain. Moods are self-fulfilling prophecies like that.

I think that at the time of one's Awakening one goes through a certain bout of depression that's symptomatic of identity problems in general. It isn't intrinsic to the otherkin experience in general, at all--plenty of people go through it for other reasons, and I think that in time it passes. Moreover I think that a lot of people Awaken during adolescence/puberty, at which point depression and general unhappiness manifest. Whether or not you're actually here as a punishment, immediately around your Awakening might not be the right time to entertain the notion--it'll make you more unhappy than the psychological shock alone would.

In other words, it's possible--lots of things are possible, and I won't get into questions of karma, ethics, or pissing-off of godforms--but I'd hope that anyone entertaining the notion would consider other possibilities quite seriously. And--to be honest--if you are sincerely that depressed to believe that your entire existence is intended as a kind of purgatory, please at least consider going to a psychologist. The bad rap they get in the 'kin community is, in my opinion, undeserved--they are not going to lock you up, and they can help you through whatever psychological pain you are in. I promise.

It's been a long-standing goal of mine to integrate my spiritual practice into something genuinely coherent; it's got ceremonial magick, pagan (with a strong heathen streak), and otherkin elements, but I tend to keep them strongly compartmentalized and don't mix them. I'm still in favor of not mixing my ceremonial magick with my paganism, though otherkin, I think, is the closest I come to a bridge between the two. I claim a fey current, which affects how I work my magick, and how I deal with my gods.

I'm receiving a strong push from my gods right now to start doing ancestral work. I did a little genealogy this summer--all of the explicitly human kind, natch. I've got a pretty big/impressive family tree going on right now, and I'm pleased--although this does approximately fuck-all for my otherkin work. What elucidates my human ancestry, in fact, seems to muddy my fey current. My identification with elves/the fae/the sidhe/whatever I am, primarily takes the form of an energetic, symbolic, or archetypal alignment. I've received some indication (from a medium, in trance) that there might be something genetic/in the blood/from the family in there, but I don't hold that to be unconditionally true.

But somehow assembling all of these names, fleshing out this tree, learning locations and dates, all of this seems to weaken (temporarily) my connection to that fey current. I'm not sure what it is--skeptics, I think, could say that I'm looking back and seeing that there's no big mark on my family tree that says GREAT-GRANDMOTHER WAS SEELIE SIDHE but that's not really true; my connection is non-literal, and if there's any genetic predilection to this non-literal connection of course it wouldn't show up on a family tree. (Maybe in family stories, though.) IF anything it piques the curiosity: it makes me want to go further and further back (as though I'd find the connection back there!)

In the process of doing this work I've found myself called to make an ancestral altar, which I've done. One of the most interesting things about having done this and sat with it is that it serves as a mirror for the fey current and reflects it back to me. It's much calmer and more dignified of a current than I'd given it credit for. I'll have to sit with it more, evaluate it, consider it. This should balance out the mitigating effect, I think, that more everyday genealogy has.

I've known a lot of people who say they "always knew they were [an elf, a dragon, a wolf, whatever]", and honestly I'm amazingly jealous of those people. I may have always known I was different, but I smothered it and hated it and never really tried to explain it. An elf, a fairy? Too crazy for me. That burning desire you feel when you even start thinking of the fae? It burns too hot, too dangerous--reject it. Wings? Psychosomatic, wishful thinking. Ignore 'em.

So no, even though I always knew I was different I never knew what I was. And I still don't--at least, not quite. I've narrowed it down considerably but I'm still not all of the way there.

I am also a gnostic, inasmuch as I believe very firmly in knowing and learning, and that self-knowledge is the only knowledge really worth having, and all that other stuff that when I type it out looks pretty dippy. I want to know myself, fully, every nook and cranny and jot and tittle. I want the entire of my history laid out in front of me, so I know who I am.

A lot of people, I think, dismiss the otherkin self-finding thing as masturbatory, and maybe it is, and it can be--that's a topic worth exploring in a later entry. But what I'm saying is, it's hard, it's long and arduous and irritating, and it's also utterly beautiful and terrific and I wouldn't settle for less. I am a gnostic, and I believe knowledge has power and is good, and I believe in coming to terms with what you are--and that is what's led me down this path, and what's keeping me on it.

This last weekend (which is not actually this last weekend, because I keep a pretty substantial post-buffer) I went camping in the woods with a bunch of pagan friends. By day it was very warm and pleasant, and the woods were green and very inviting. Well, they usually are, but I also usually don't have time to run off and explore.

But given the choice between lazy campfire conversation and woods, I naturally (!) chose woods, and wandered off. I got given a lot of the usual warnings about poison ivy, which is really, I think, just a variant on "don't go into the woods, they're dangerous/fairies live there/you might get eaten by wolves/you might get lost". Which is really all just a variant on "don't go into the woods; you might not come out the same." And of course I didn't come out the same.

I don't really consider myself the nature-y type. I enjoy woods and soil and plants and trees and birds and mushrooms and flowers and moss and all sorts of things, and I'm not afraid of wandering off or getting lost or getting wet or anything like that. But camping is never anything my family ever really did, a garden's one of those things I think a lot about putting together but never do, and I'm very fond of heat and A/C and indoor plumbing and a roof over my head and all those pleasantries.

So I guess I'm surprised by the fact that I took to it so well. Originally I was just planning on heading out into the woods to find the landwights and make offerings (and I did both easily, thankyouverymuch). I wasn't planning on coming back for more. And more. And more. And I wasn't expecting to settle down with my back to the trees, and try to think up or remember names for all these plants I didn't know, and to think of how at home, and relaxed, and inexplicably lucky I felt, that I had the time and ability to sit down and enjoy the forest, and feel that weird creepy kinship with it--unsettling and simultaneously settling.

Before this weekend I'd never really felt elven, but something about wandering through the forest with a walking stick and investigating things, and just settling in and relaxing there, made me feel that way. The skeptic in me is loud right now--elves don't usually have wings and especially not feathered ones, three generations back your family were foresters so maybe that's what you're feeling, and who doesn't enjoy the woods on a nice day? Who knows? Wouldn't it be nice if there were a nice friendly list of symptoms to consult, or if somebody could just look at me and tell me already?

Damn it, I don't need more doubt. Maybe I'll have another look at the sidhe--they seem somewhere between elves and fae, on the big Venn diagram of feyness.

The long and short of it is, I seem to work in a "fey" curent. This doesn't mean that magically I work often with fae--in fact, quite the opposite. I love them too much to work with them in any productive way. In the presence of the fae I'm overwhelmed by love, adoration, yearning, and even a strange sort of jealousy.

No, instead I'm using "current" to describe my own energetic flavor, rather than what I seek out and work within. A lot of otherkin try very hard to justify how they feel, with things like allergies, pointed ears, affinities to animals, anecdotes about children, and the like. I don't really have any scorn toward people like that (except for those who are obviously doing it for attention and validation--they get irritating, honestly, and inhibit intelligent conversation. Elitist of me, maybe, but there you go). But it's not anything I'm really interested in doing myself. Nor am I really interested in how "I always knew..." --I always knew I was strange, different, not like others, but I also always took it for granted that I was kidding myself, and deep down inside I was a perfectly normal human being. Because in a lot of important ways I am. Take me to a doctor and they'll pronounce me a perfectly normal human being, and I know this and accept this. I'm not interested in denying my humanity--I just "know", on a deep, intuitive level, that I'm something fey.

There is, though, one thing that smacks of symptoms about me, in my eyes, and that's my phantom wings. They're large, and feathered--to the point where I've wondered briefly if I'm something more angelic, since "traditionally" fairies, elves, and other things I class as "fey" haven't got feathered wings. But I'm virtually certain--at least, at this point--that my energy "smells" fey. I've considered, for completeness, the possibility of being something angelic, but the underlying important factor of my personal, fey energy has overruled that every time.

But other than that, a fey what? (I use "fey" as an adjective, not as a race of creatures--it's just how I am.) Answer is--I don't know yet. Insufficient data. I've got evidence for fae, evidence for sidhe, evidence for elf, even evidence for peri, and those strange winged bird-women that show up along the Silk Road.

In other words, I don't know. I'm not going to know, I think, anytime soon, and while I keep an eye out I'm not digging at it and forcing it out--I've got a life to live, honestly, and while I'd like to indulge in constant psychic exercises I can't. But I'm not going to jump to any conclusions that I might regret later.