Sevenfold Silence

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'm learning Quenya :) It was a hard choice, between Quenya and Sindarin. I'm finding it very pleasant so far. Figuring out how to write in Tengwar, too, is hard, but worth it. Tengwar turns any crappy scrawl into calligraphy.

Admittedly, there are plenty more practical languages I could learn. But life is short, and Quenya is beautiful.

(further camping stories under the beltaine 2008 trip tag)

I made mention in the first camping story post to a walking stick, I think, but I didn't go into it--long story short, I went into the woods, got a branch to balance with so I wouldn't fall as I was going up and down the slopes, and ended up feeling compelled to work it over the course of my stay. I attribute that primarily to the land wights, not anything internal. Here, take this, make use of it, play with it--it's from us.

While I was doing that I felt like all of a sudden I understood the whole cold iron thing, which is one of those things I don't twig to (!) instinctively. (Admittedly, though, I was understanding it in relationship to the supernatural world in general, not in relationship to myself and my own 'kinness.) When I brought it back to camp and started messing with the branch, I was offered knives, over and over again, to work the wood. And I turned them down again and again, increasingly pettishly, increasingly repulsed. Knives weren't right. Not my knives, not anybody else's knives. Knives were hard and unyielding and cold, and with this it was between me--my own flesh and blood--and the stick I was working. I'd peel off the bark with my fingernails, heat it over the fire, but metal was cold and unnatural and wrong and I'd have none of it. This was from the forest, and damn it, it'd stay that way.

(That said, I did hand off the staff the next morning to a friend who professed interest--apparently she loved what I'd done with very literally my bare hands. I don't have need for a staff but I wasn't about to work it and cast it off into the forest--it was a gift, after all. I don't know what she'll do to it, how she'll treat it, if she'll carve off the rest of the bark or add crystals or anything. Nor do I really care--working the staff on my own, with my own personal power, was what was important.)

(further camping stories under the beltaine 2008 trip tag)

While I was out camping that weekend one of my friends officially came out to me as otherkin. So much for faedar. Since I met her a few months ago I'd been more focusing on how she reminded me of someone I knew than on any otherworldliness. The Silver Elves, though, like to say that if you reach out 'kin come--so maybe that's it? Synchronicity in the extreme. (And what's this blog, if not a way of reaching out?)

I'd been very excited for a long time about the prospect of meeting another 'kin, and imagined lengthy chats on origin stories, lots of energy games, and just a whole lot of chatter about it. Instead what I got was a very nice reserved chat, not metaphysics and ontology--we shared symptoms and Awakening stories and that was all. We might as well have been talking about sports teams.

I wouldn't call it anticlimactic per se. The whole feeling of you too, huh? that's cool. wasn't what I expected but I found it very pleasant and relaxed. It's very nice to feel like it's just a normal thing and not a big deal.

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.

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.

Kind of a long shot, but Walking the Thresholds is in a month.

I know I haven't got much of a readership right now, so this might go under the radar, but I don't suppose anyone is passing through the Midwest as they go and willing to provide a ride?

If you are, email veamoryn@gmail.com and we might-could work something out. Yes, I can chip in for gas, happily.

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.

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.