Otherkin and Non-Spirituality

[Drakocxjo]

So I am mainly making this thread as a question. I have recently come to realize/accept/begin to label myself as otherkin.

Though when I was trying to learn more about the community, and what is and isn't otherkin, people tend to specify it is not spiritual alone, but commonly is spiritual. Then, they wouldn't be able to describe the experience without spiritual things.

I am not trying to say otherkinism shouldn't be spiritual, nor am I trying to look down upon spiritualism. People can have their own beliefs and connections with the world.

The only non-spiritual but decidedly otherkin thing I have seen was a youtube video about how furries and otherkin are intrinsically autistic experiences, and otherkinsim is just one way autistic peeps have come to terms with or accepted inhumanity, and othering.

Is there any more the community would like to add? I have a minor definition but I am not super familiar with the otherkin community, so I could be getting it all wrong.

[Jazzy Vidalia]

For me it's definitely spiritual. Both Jazzy and Lily are incarnations that have had other existences. We're not saying we had past lives per-se because I am not even sure if we are from this realm because we are definitely not from Earth. We do understand some people will of course think that's crazy talk but we suppose it is difficult for one to understand it without experiencing it.

Being plural as well, and having another entity within us has really made us question a lot of things. It's why we began looking into pagan and Gnostic teachings. Sometimes the answers aren't always clear and honestly, there is no shame in deriving or creating your own spiritual beliefs. Everyone always likes to treat religion and spirituality as if it were a telescope that is pointed at God who tells us things, but in reality it's more like a mirror. Your spirituality is a reflection of yourself.

The material conditions created by Late Capitalism is probably also informing a lot of our experiences. It does not strike us as coincidence that this interest in being such things seems to be growing as the world is burning all around us both figuratively and literally, our governments offer of no solutions when they aren't just killing us, and our pay affords us less and less. The institutions of religion have no answers for us because the world they were developed in. In a way, we kinda see this blossoming of spiritual thought happening alongside otherkin, furry, etc within the Left as being our solution with reckoning with the spiritual and it is completely valid. It sure beats being a trad-cath incel or a qanon cultist.

And really, it's about time something new emerged that isn't more of the same.

[Drakocxjo]

@Jazzy Vidalia

Spirituality is a form of self expression, I have no doubts about that. It's an identity, and for some folks that is hard to separate, which is likely why its so central to folk's views of otherkinism. I can't make a comment on plurality, I am just one derg making his way. Again I am not trying to invalidate spirituality <3 you are very valid.I just find it hard to relate, beyond the core concepts.

Bringing up the failures of late-stage capitalism is interesting though! I haven't really considered that, and more accepted otherkin as a left-wing thing due to the left being much more accepting of such alter-experiences than the alternative. Could Otherkinism be considered a type of escapism, do you think?

[Jazzy Vidalia]

I think it could be a bit of escapism. The pandemic seems to have brought a lot of ΘΔ out I think. But also I don't think that means it's not real. It's just now things in meatspace have shifted such that we can talk about stuff like wanting to be a dragon, a puppygirl, or whatever it is one fancies. It would actually surprise me more if boomer and silent generation didn't have these same things going on with them but just did not have the means to explore it.

We do know that we are not alone in this thinking because we can see in history, archeology, and even in myths evidence of therian and otherkin traits being normalized in society or even celebrated. Many native cultures have similar concepts that connect it to spirituality.

Maybe it is Sophia's gift, calling us to nature and reminding us we are part of it. My own experience has made me think a lot about the environment and social justice.

And heck, maybe one day I will wake up and it will happen. One can dream.

[Wester_Hare]

Drakocxjo wrote:

The only non-spiritual but decidedly otherkin thing I have seen was a
youtube video about how furries and otherkin are intrinsically autistic
experiences, and otherkinsim is just one way autistic peeps have come to
terms with or accepted inhumanity, and othering.

I (we?) have some thoughts on the overlap between autism, furry, and otherkinism but from a slightly different direction.

(Warning, this might be long and is largely based on personal hypothesising)

Back in 2014 or 2015 a study comparing brain imaging of autistic and allistic brains found something interesting:

"When they compared the brains of the controls...they found a standardised pattern of functional connectivity across each of them...But when they compared the brains of people with ASD, they couldn't find any similarities between them in terms of where functional connectivity would be typically high, and where connectivity would be low."

So we have a demographic whose brain function and connectivity all vary from "baseline human standard" in unique ways who commonly report feeling that they are something other than human even when in safe, supportive environments.

With this lens there's no need to invoke spirituality or suggest that otherkin are the result of traumatic social exclusion. Our brains just differ from "normal" to such a degree that we cannot align our sense of self with being human and so we find something we can align it with.

An article discussing the research mentioned above:
https://www.sciencealert.com/in-people- ... dy-reveals

[Drakocxjo]

Our brains just differ from "normal" to such a degree that we cannot align our sense of self with being human and so we find something we can align it with.

We are just weird little guys huh?

[Wester_Hare]

As far as I understand it, yeah

[sextutorial2]

idk i mean i wouldn't necessarily label myself otherkin/therian but i like keepin my shit in check by sayin like
yea ok i might just be some sorta animal
for a while i've stuck to this kinda kiss philosophy, if ur nonhuman ur nonhuman, that's just an invariant. if u wna dig into the metaphysics behind that state then u totally can but it's not gonna change anything per se
u are who u are :3

[basakumeak]

i had written a much longer message that seems to be somewhere in a .txt in my hard drive somewhere.

but essentially, i have heard of many different "causes", and i think these processes may all be happening and reinforcing each other to unknown individual and collective results. in a way, one of them, the idea of folk religion that isn't tied to one people but that's in practice and at the same time a closed practice tied to specific people and at the same time a loose one since there are no instructions calls attention because of how striking it is in our current society, while other things are nearly invisible. but they're all happening in a loop. where that goes i don't know.