adventure games poetry site info

Funny this came up, because K--- (aka digitalsidhe, aka GhostKnight/Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, as he used to go by on the lists 10+ years ago) voiced just this opinion last weekend when Cel and I were up visiting him and his wife: that all this reincarnation business isn’t what the old otherkin community used to be about. And in a way I think I sympathize: there is not one particular other life I especially have details on and can connect to, which seems to be rather a different situation than e.g. a lot of the Elenari, for instance (who almost all seem to be very specific people) — I just have this essence; I am Here Now. (I have been thinking about this lately in connection to what name I go by in the community.)

I think one could perhaps characterize the views of the Silver Elves this way as well. Not necessarily as “I am 100% genetically elven/fae!” which is indeed a highly minority view, and one that is pretty much impossible to back up (and of course is pretty much ludicrous to claim for non-humanoid kin) - but perhaps viewing it as a certain strain that can sometimes manifest itself more strongly in the pool of homo sapiens. In Tolkien’s Legendarium, for example, obviously the Quendi and Men can interbreed and have fertile offspring - which would tend to argue that they are genetically extremely close. I think “Faeidism” partakes somewhat of this idea, of a strain of Faery genetics now much diluted, perhaps, and a part of the normal human variation that can maybe no longer be picked out of the genome by science, but nonetheless more marked in some people, hence the idea of “halfbreeds” with elves or fae (also present in the Legendarium of course). modern-sidhe of course views this as the thread coming from the Nephilim. One can conceive of it physically, or as a kind of “spiritual genetics” - that different people have different threads/flavors/whatever in their energy that can make them of this faery, elven, whatever pool, rather than the “pure” human.

Another dimension on this is that I think it’s possible to think of otherkin-ness of any stripe (not just elven/fey) as a kind of “syndrome”: not related to a single gene that causes it, but emerging out of the co-existence of several factors, making it more likely that the non-human spirit or essence will choose that body (or that the brain/psyche will manifest what we call non-human identification, in the psychological view).

So tl;dr, I think there is possibly a physical component to it, at least for some people, and going at it with “I Am Fae, that’s the feeling I embody, it’s just What I Am” rather than potentially complicated “well I’m a reincarnated spirit from…” stories and histories can be quite a valid approach for some.

There is something very appealing to me in the idea of saying “This is a faery body because there’s a faery in it” - if nothing else, as an exercise in embodying magic in life.

(I miss the Here and Now list/LJ comm.)

Related, in response to a comment that if physical elves had interbred with humans, "whole demographics, if not the whole species, would be part Elf":

The whole species? Not necessarily, any more than all humans are brown-haired or blue-eyed or exactly six feet tall. The idea of a “whole demographic” (a people, a clan, a family line etc) being part elf or fae already exists. But if you mean that whatever trait or gene (or set of them) would by this time be thought of as within the range of normal for the species, then yes, I agree. Still a characteristic can manifest more strongly in some individuals or groups than others.

Back to the general otherkin information page

Back to the main otherkin page

last updated 8/31/2014