Sevenfold Silence

Now, I am pretty much expecting a whole bunch of you to go ‘Wait a minute, goblins can be whatever we want them to be! There is no one way a thing should be! That would be RESTRICTING things and what if someone else wanted to be a goblin who wasn’t small, irritating or ugly???”. Well. Wouldn’t that sort of be like saying a horse can have six legs if you want it to, because saying they only have four legs is, like, restricting our creativity and stuff? I dunno, man, I’m just throwing this out there, you know?

(from a seriously pretty interesting post and line of conversation over at the LJ otherkin community)

That's an interesting point that froudgoblin brings up, although I don't really know how much I agree with it.

Ultimately I guess it's a question of philosophy, one of platonic forms. Or, alternately, "bad birds and better birds", to draw from a slightly different field. (A robin and an ostrich are both birds, but chances are you think the robin's a better example of a bird.)

We already accept, by virtue of living in a real world of imperfect things, that virtually nothing is a perfect example of its form. A horse is a four-legged running mammal. But Sleipnir, the eight-legged mythological horse, is still a horse. A mutant six-legged horse is still a horse. Eight Belles, the Kentucky Derby runner who broke both her legs upon crossing the finish line, couldn't run at the end before she was put down--but she was still a horse. Even though a horse is a mammal that runs.

Ultimately this is the big question of what it means to be otherkin, even bigger than "where did we come from" or "why are we here". Definitions are strange, fuzzy things. Where do they stop? Western dragons are winged scaly mythological creatures, who live in lairs and hoard gold and are secretive. Can a human being, who likes lairs and hoards shiny things and is secretive, realistically describe themselves in any sense as being a dragon? How fuzzy is the definition?

If we accept the constraint that a mutant six-legged horse isn't a horse because its external form is unhorselike, then virtually no one I know of within the otherkin community qualifies as anything special. I'm deceiving myself, because I don't have literal physical wings. The OP is deceiving herself because she's short and swarthy. Both of us are liars. Any doctor would tell us--rightly so--that we are both fully biologically human, and that's the end of that.

The otherkin movement, though, by its very nature, is based on the fact that superficiality and stereotypes and 'common wisdom' aren't the be-all end-all. If that mutant six-legged horse runs around neighing, then damn it, it's a horse. If I feel wings and a strange yearning for quiet green places and peculiar elegance, then I'm fey. If the OP feels "small, irritating, and ugly" (her wonderful, wonderful words), and connects that with a goblin-current, then the OP's a goblin. If someone else doesn't feel that, but can reasonably make a case for having a goblin-nature, then hie's a goblin, too--just a different kind.

This doesn't mean that all claims should go perfectly unquestioned. If there really isn't anything remotely goblin-like about our hypothetical wannabe, then maybe hie should step back and reconsider mightily what's up. But to risk shutting somebody out of one's phenotype, merely because they don't match the stereotype or your perceptions of it, smacks of weird hypocrisy. (Not that the OP is hypocritical.)

Hidebound checklists don't suit a subculture like ours. We don't think outside of the box; we burst violently out of the box, trample it, and bury it. Definitions are good, but they're only useful inasmuch as they're fuzzy--and denying a definition's fuzziness is, for us, a recipe for trouble.

I didn't know until I read the Field Guide that "becoming otherkin" was a controversial idea. That still seems, at least to my eyes, a little odd, particularly if we're dealing with some of the less literal interpretations of the phenomenon (energetic resonance, identification with archetypes), or if we accept walk-ins or certain theories of multiple systems as valid, or if we're adhering to certain theories of vampirism (whether psi or sanguinary). In the case of these, turning yourself otherkin--or being turned into the same--seems perfectly natural. Assume it, invite it in, have somebody else 'initiate' you.

Why you'd WANT to become otherkin, however, is beyond me. Generally, speaking as someone with no past life memories and no giant angst, I find my otherkin status to just be something I am, not really bragworthy and not really special. It's got bonuses and drawbacks. I don't know why you'd seek it out specifically.

For shits and giggles I recently took the semi-humorous You Might Be Otherkin If... quiz on otherkin.net. (I say "semi-humorous" because of the notes about how starred items "count more"...and those entries typically aren't silly or funny.) I pasted it into Word--four pages--and deleted things that didn't apply to me, adding occasional brief notes to qualify or explain. I also made note of certain things I consider 'kin traits that the test didn't deal with. I'm synesthetic, for instance.

When I got done the whole thing was three pages, nearly bleeding onto four, meaning about three-quarters of the items applied to me. That's far more than I'd expect on an initial eyeballing of the test, and a lot of them were those critical starred points. I had never done that exercise before, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have gotten such a high score when all this otherkin stuff started for me. (Which, for context, is anywhere from one to three years ago--I had stirrings three years ago, and only accepted it about a year ago.)

I don't think I inducted myself into an identity as otherkin. I do, though, think that as I've come to terms with who I am better, I've settled into the identity. In other words, I've become more demonstrably otherkin over time. This doesn't mean I'm a faker, and it doesn't mean I wasn't otherkin before--it just means that this addition to my identity has allowed me to settle down and get to know myself better. I like it this way.

One of the big "tipoffs" to being otherkin is supposed to be a particular sensitivity to and ability to manipulate raw magical energy. They don't need complex symbol sets or firm rituals to affect the world magically, in other words; their magic is intuitive and flowing. I get the impression that otherkin I class as 'fey', like fae and elves, are supposed to do this particularly well.

I'm fey and I don't. There are magical things that I do well--like astral travel, possession, and general work with entities--that I attribute at least partially to the fact that I'm otherkin. But pure energy work--particularly outside the confines of my own aura and self--is very hard to me. I have reason to believe it's because I shield myself heavily and unwittingly, and I've been working to knock those psychic barriers down, with some success. But I wouldn't pretend I'm anywhere near adept with this work yet, or that I have any natural talent for it.

So no, I don't think it's a good idea to make generalizations, like that all otherkin are prodigies with energy. Lots of otherkin aren't--maybe we shield ourselves off unconsciously, like I do. Hell, some of us don't even believe in energy--it's not intrinsic to most of the definitions of otherkin I've seen.

Not every fairy has the potential (or desire) to be a Reiki master. Nor are all Reiki masters fairies--or even most of them. To imply otherwise is to make yourself sound like Doreen Virtue, claiming that angelics get into abusive relationships more than regular people. It seems to me like a silly, broad-brush generalization, and another means by which to play "kinner-than-thou" games.

Just because you may or may not be able to do energy work easily doesn't say anything about the status of your soul. Correlation does not equal a direct correlation, much less causation.