|
|
|
|
|
|
General otherkin
info | Sidhe & Faery | Other types
of 'kin | Life & majik as otherkin | Otherkin
community | Glamourbombing | Books & media | Articles & interviews | Links
w e b w e a v i n g
Directories | On changes in the community | Email discussion lists | LiveJournal and Dreamwidth | Message boards | Tumblr | IRC and other chats | Meetups and informal events | Gathers | Other events
Otherkin.net used to feature a very large directory of contacts, built up over the years since coming online in 2000. There is as yet nothing in the site's current setup that replaces it. (You can browse the member list 
, but it's not organized by location and searchable by distance in the way that the old directory was.) As an alternative, I suggest the Otherkin Directory on Dreamhart . It's not very large, but there's a way to cure that!
On AnOtherWiki, you can find various lists: supposedly active mailing lists (although anything on Yahoo Groups is defunct as of December 15, 2020, and even elsewhere "active" is probably not very accurate these days); supposedly active gathers (similarly out of date), active meetups (unfortunately mostly vampire groups), and upcoming community events that builds on the date info in individual wiki entries to make an RSS feed; and chats .
Darkfang Archive's Social category comprises lists of chats, forums, mailing lists, and other online groups. (Not everything listed is active; being an archive, part of its purpose is preserving history.)
See also the Community History section on the general otherkin info page.
Some of my thoughts on the state of the otherkin community as of 2002. Obviously this is old now, but it's funny how relevant some of it still seems to me.
A remark on conversation trends on lists and boards as they were in 2006
Jarandhel Dreamsinger's thoughts on the differences between the community ca. 2013 and about 10 years previously, and a response from Liryen Enderea
About Changes & Growth in the Therian & 'Kin Communities by Sonne
Talakestreal's musings on the "generations" of otherkin
Legends of Ourselves , on how forums and other online spaces used to be ca. late 1990s/early 2000s.
I moderate 
otherkin-haven on Dreamwidth, which has moderated membership and all posts are locked to the community. The otherkin community is a general, open community. (I am only a member there, not a mod.) The 
otherkin community on LiveJournal, which I co-moderate, was closed to new members and posting in July 2017 but remains up as an archive, with a backup mirror on Dreamwidth at otherkinarchive. (There is no administrative connection between the DW and the LJ communities named otherkin.)
otherkinnews, run by Orion Scribner, similarly was closed in December 2017 (although posting had effectively stopped in July 2016), but remains up to browse through. The posts contain both news of otherkin, therians, and vampires, and items that are not strictly about these communities but may be of interest to their members.
These LiveJournal communities have all been abandoned at least since it moved fully to Russia, if not before, but they might be of historical interest: _dark_otherkin_, humanfaeries, next_of_kin, once_winged, the_kindred, elenari, fallen_otherkin, fromthestars (for starseeds, aliens, and similar).
General audience otherkin (or otherkin & therian) boards:
Boards with a more specific focus:
Elven World
Elven, Fae, Other-Kin, Tuatha de Danann, Nature magical spirits, multi dimensional realities, Mythical beings, Love energy, Celtic mythology. Do you hear the whisper of the Elven and the Fae? Do you have the blood of Tuatha de Danann, children of the Earth, coursing through your veins?The Elfin Sisterhood
This is a place for those who are interested in the Elfin and Faerie Races. And for those who are incarnated Elfin, Faerie, Goddess whether male or female. A place to work together for the greater good.Unicorn Grove
Draconic.com
The Werelist
Boards not strictly about otherkin, but that deal with similar things and outlooks:
Shadowlore
Various of the message boards above have chat features attached to the boards; check individually for any scheduled chats.
Darkfang Archive's list of otherkin, therian, and real vampire IRC channels ; AnOtherWiki's list of chats also includes IRC listings.
Please note that I have not personally been in all the chats listed below. Caveat non-hominum.
Discord
Download a Discord client for various operating systems, or run it in a web browser, at discord.com.
- For mythic otherkind and mythically inclined therians, 18+ only. - For reincarnated, a.k.a. "spiritual", otherkind. See info post on Tumblr . - For angels, demons, fallen, and discussion of general metaphysics. Message leviakiin or wirsindkrieg on Tumblr for an invitation.- For dragons. Message azaphaer on Tumblr for an invite. - For fae, elves, witches, and other "forest kind". See info post on Tumblr .IRC
To log on to IRC networks and join #channels, you usually need an IRC client program, such as mIRC, KVirc, XChat, or the ChatZilla extension for Firefox; some channels also have a web interface or use Mibbit in a web browser.
on Tumblr.
Generally: not recommended.
First off, Tumblr has huge shortcomings when it comes to community discussion, since "reblogging" is a weak replacement for direct replies and is hard for other people to follow without special effort. Forget threaded and topically collocated conversation like in email or a message board or journal community.
It is also frustrating to me as non-therian that the "otherkin" population on Tumblr is dominated by therians/"animal-kin" and by recent pop-culture fictionkin. I agree that therians can be considered a kind of otherkin in the broad sense of being non-human, and there is definitely community history of some folk moving in both circles, but it makes it hard to find the mythic types, because animal folks have always been more populous overall than mythics. I would love to see more elves, faery, and sidhe over there, or even mythfolk in general.
If you decide to wade in, the #otherkin tag mostly ranges from fluffy and useless to actively toxic, and I can't recommend it. #otherkind is better; you do still get some nonsense in there, but generally it's very low traffic, so it's not as annoying. You might also have better luck with type-specific tags like #elfkin or #faekin, but don't hold your breath.
Meetups or "mini-meets" are short in-person events typically lasting a few hours.
The general Otherkin meetup page at Meetup.com
may help you find a local group for meetups.
I am the organizer for the San Francisco Bay Area Otherkin Meetup. We started with a Meetup.com page in September 2011 and have been running continuously since then. We meet each month on alternating second Saturdays and second Sundays at locations that rotate among five regions around the Bay, to give everyone a chance to at least occasionally have one occur in a convenient location for them. In 2012-2020 we also hosted an annual special meetup at PantheaCon on Presidents' Day weekend, and tentatively plan to continue doing so at PantheaCon's successor Between the Veils when it has its first event in 2022. (This is not a "hospitality suite" and so is not listed in the official program, but you can find information on the Meetup page and we distribute flyers at the con.)
The North Houston Otherkin Meetup has been meeting since March 2009.
Faerie in Phoenix: Hope, Wonder, and Deliria is the latest incarnation of the Arizona group that used to put on the (Fireland) Phoenix Faerie Festival, a.k.a. OtherWorlds Festival. I've never been clear whether they are an otherkin group per se or just friendly to us, but maybe worth a shot.
Once we were the Phoenix Faerie, building a network of fae loving people and fae aspected beings in the arid southwest. It is in that core's memory that the meetup group's name remains. We sought to replenish ourselves and others with the wellspring of Myth, Story, Art and Community. ... We realized that there were so many other sorts of entities and otherkin out there though. ... Our festival was renamed the OtherWorlds Festival as we reached out to all the Other entities and Other possibilities. ... Let us remember. To the average person, we are all OtherFolk.
A "gather" is the otherkin answer to a convention, although much smaller (typically 10-30 attending), and is something like a spiritual retreat. They last longer than a meetup, usually 2 to 4 days including a weekend. If you know of a privately owned site in northern California that could be used for a gather, please contact me at (arethinn at eristic dot net)!
Unfortunately, even before COVID-19 screwed everything up in 2020, all the true gathers I was aware of had already become defunct. The final Kinvention North was in 2005; Company of Others and Feywood each occurred only once, in 2007 and 2011 respectively; the final MythiCalia was effectively in 2010; the final Walking the Thresholds was in 2016; the final Summer Gateways (successor to Dancing the Endless Dream) was in 2017; the final Gathering Echo (successor to the FAE Retreat) was in 2018.
So the only thing really left is the House Kheperu Gather . This is not an otherkin gather as such, but a metaphysical/energy-work event with some workshops specific to House Kheperu and vampires. However, otherkin may find something of value there. It is nomrally held annually in a hotel in Ohio in June. In 2020, they shifted the June 12-14 gather online, and will be holding a second event on December 19, 2020.
Speaking of online events...
On August 14-16, 2020, Dinocanid and some other folk from Tumblr threw an online convention on Discord called Othercon . It had much more of a "convention" than "gather" feel and, given that its attendance came mainly or entirely from Tumblr, skewed pretty strongly towards therians and fictionkin. Be those things as they may, it was highly attended (easily in excess of 300 people, possibly close to 400) and did go off without any major trainwrecks. They will be doing it again on August 13-15, 2021.
Given the success of Othercon, in September 2020 I started talking to a couple of friends about doing an event in a similar format, but with a specific focus on the "elfae spectrum": Elves, Sidhe, Fae, and Tuatha De Danann. Thus was born Shining Hearth , which will be February 26-28, 2021. We are currently in the presenter signups stage, which will be open through December 31, 2020.
Otherkin can also sometimes be found at various other kinds of festivals or conventions, such as:
in California or Anthrocon in Pennsylvania. in Georgia, or BayCon or Convolution in California. in Pennsylvania; Faerieworlds' various "Mythic Events " in Oregon, Seattle, Atlanta, and Baltimore; the Labyrinth of Jareth ball in Los Angeles; Karen Kay's faery events in the UK such as 3 Wishes Faery Fest and Avalon Faery Balls; or FaerieCon in Maryland. in California, the Pan Pagan Festival in Indiana, Lothlorien Nature Sanctuary's Elf Fest in Indiana, Starwood and WinterStar in Ohio, Pagan Spirit Gathering in Illinois, Paganicon in Minnesota, Rites of Spring in Massachusetts, Summerstar or the Fairy &
Human Relations Congress in Washington, or ConVocation in Michigan. (See these directories for even more options: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 )
Back to the main otherkin page
last updated 12/15/2020