User:Vashti/Otherkin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

Contents

[edit] Structure

  • Overview.
    • What are otherkin?
    • What do they believe?
    • Why do they believe it?
  • History of the subculture.
    • Pre-Internet history.
    • Early Internet history.
    • Turn of the century (boom period).
    • Decline of the subculture.

[edit] History

Although there are spiritual parallels with shamanism and totemism, the modern otherkin subculture appears to trace its roots back to the counterculture of the 1960s. Hippies and flower children, in particular, were heavily influenced by the fantasy works of J.R.R. Tolkien. [1]

One example of this influence was the rock band Tyrannosaurus Rex, whose drummer took the name Steve Peregrin Took, after a hobbit character from The Lord of the Rings. Furthermore, the short-lived magazine Gandalf's Garden, named after another Tolkien character, described the group's singer-songwriter Marc Bolan as "of elfin descent". [2] Bolan was also frequently referred to as "the Bopping Elf". [3]

Another musician of the time who used similar fantasy imagery was Donovan. In the cover notes to his 1966 LP "Sunshine Superman", he wrote "starring mr. plod in action with a daughter of the evil land of mordor." [4] In the cover notes to his 1967 LP "A Gift from a Flower to a Garden", he wrote "We shall fill their days with fairies and elves and pussys and paints, with laughter and song and the gentle influence of Mother Nature." [5]

And in underground publication International Times, better known as IT, John Peel advised readers to "go to the children's playground in Kensington Gardens and stare at the elves on the trees there". [6]

The 1970s saw a group calling themselves the Elf Queen's Daughters base themselves in the South Bay area of San Francisco, California. [7] They were also linked with Seattle, Washington. [8] They published a newsletter and focused on "bringing together female elves in celebration of ritual and magic and understanding of Fae", according to the Faeid website.[9] However, in actuality the Elf Queen's Daughters were composed of both male and female elves, although they were Goddess oriented and they referred to all their members as sister. (Silver Elves) One quote from an anonymous founder of the group indicates similar ecologically-based pagan beliefs to those common in the modern otherkin movement — "the image of the Earth being a woman with trees for her hair, rivers for her veins flowing through. That was one of the first to use the image of earth as a physical Goddess." [10]

According to the Silver Elves, the Elf Queen's Daughters had "given up the path to elfin" around 1977. However, in 2004 they wrote that they had recently encountered one of them, Loriel Lyndoreyn. Another former member, Aeona Silversong, became a priestess in the Church of All Worlds in 1993, continuing to identify as an elf. Furthermore, Circle Network News published an article on the elven star citing the group as late as 1986. The Silver Elves suggest that the Elf Queen's Daughters were adept with magic and the use of the Ouija board.

The Silver Elves are one of the more prominent groups in the modern subculture, mainly because of the Magical Elven Love Letters which they have regularly published for over twenty years. In their published compilation of these letters, they write that at the time they began to write them in 1979, "it had been nearly two years since the Elf Queen's Daughters had forsaken the dharma of the magic letters". This would indicate that the letters of the Silver Elves are a direct descendant of the newsletters released by the Elf Queen's Daughters; furthermore, the Silver Elves themselves profess to have been awakened as elves by that group.

Until the Internet became accessible, the letters were sent out by post and further distributed by their recipients, as well as being printed in various newsletters and magazines. Contact details for the Silver Elves were also listed in pagan books, such as Margot Adler's "Drawing Down The Moon" in 1979 and Laurie Cabot's "Power of the Witch" in 1989.

elven brotherhood

independent awakenings and group formation

In 1990, R'ykandar Korra'ti founded the Elfinkind Digest, an e-mail-based mailing list for "elves and interested observers". [11] At the time, her signature on Usenet was "Elfinkind Unite!" The next year, in 1991, she posted a subdued announcement to several newsgroups publicising the Digest for the first time. As of 2003, more than 2000 digests had been posted, and this mailing list is generally acknowledged as the first one. [12]

While Korra'ti had expected to find only other elves through her mailing list, she in fact discovered people with "a large number of self-identifications." [13] This was one of the first indications that there were other species identifications out there besides those of elves, and this dichotomy persists to this day in the name of one of the more popular otherkin mailing lists, elven-realities.

On 6 February 1995, the Elven Nation Manifesto was posted to Usenet. This document was interesting in several ways: firstly, although it included a real name and a postal address, as well as a partial email address, it was posted through the anonymous remailer at anon.penet.fi. Secondly, several of the common themes in the modern otherkin movement are visible in it, such as the concept that elves have something significant to contribute to the world, and mention of the "Veil to the Otherworld", or the invisible boundary between the real world and the magical world of faerie.

Since it was posted to eleven newsgroups, it also violated Usenet's crossposting etiquette, which was far more strictly observed at the time than it is today. On Usenet itself, the document was universally panned and considered to be either an troll or an attempt to frame an innocent party. However, enough people contacted the original author of the Elven Nation post in good faith for a mailing list to spin off from it. At least one person considered it to have played a part in their awakening. [14]

darkfae-l

tirnanoc/ORC

"changeling: the dreaming"

elven-realities

sidhelist founded 1998. elven-realities founded 1999 (2004-5 on Google).

The community first hit the headlines in 2001 when the Village Voice published an article on it. Entitled "Elven Like Me", it drew gentle comparisons with the antiglobalisation movement, and suggested that otherkin were antimodernist. [15]

a historical overview

shift of primary focus from mailing lists to livejournal and the real world

[edit] Medical perspectives

It has been suggested that otherkin may be suffering from schizotypal personality disorder or clinical lycanthropy.

The connection with schizotypal personality disorder has generally been drawn on the following grounds:

  • The peculiar beliefs held by otherkin are well outside of the norms for Western culture. (DSM-IV: "odd beliefs or magical thinking that influences behaviour and is inconsistent with subcultural norms").
  • Many otherkin experience the feeling of phantom wings, tail or other nonhuman body parts. (DSM-IV: "unusual perceptual experiences, including bodily illusions").

There are other interesting commonalities in particular cases - for instance, the Elenari, a subset of elf-type otherkin, are often described as having a peculiar mode of speech, which might be interpreted as a match for the "odd thinking and speech" symptom.

However, the DSM-IV goes on to list seven other symptoms, including social anxiety, social and emotional withdrawal and paranoia, and states that a minimum of five or more symptoms are required for a diagnosis of this disorder. It is worth bearing in mind that even people who are robustly mentally healthy are liable to have some personal quirks that occur in the symptom list of one or more personality disorders.

At the present time, no serious psychological studies of the otherkin subculture appear to have been made. However, in recent years schizotypy has become an increasingly popular debating tool amongst opponents of various religious or spiritual movements. Newton Joseph says "I always knew that religion and Christian Fundamentalism and Catholicism in particular are a thinking disorders." (sic) On the other hand, in a study of how schizotypy related to attitudes towards Christianity in teenagers, Joseph and Diduca found that "in some respects religiosity might be an index of psychosis proneness, in other respects it would seem that religiosity is associated with psychological well-being."

Br J Clin Psychol. 1997 Nov;36 ( Pt 4):635-8. Diduca D, Joseph S. Schizotypal traits and dimensions of religiosity.

There are again similarities with clinical lycanthropy, such as the sensation of possessing non-human attributes, but again there are important distinctions to be considered:

  • Clinical lycanthropy is defined as the delusion that one physically has become or is becoming a non-human animal; most otherkin, however, recognize their body is human but conceive that part of them, either in a mental or spiritual sense, is non-human. (A few otherkin perceive their body as human, but think that this perception is a "seeming" or illusion.)
  • While it is true that some otherkin experience mental illness, a number of otherkin carry on stable, functional lives. This raises a question whether an automatic diagnosis of otherkin as clinical lycanthropes or schizotypals would necessarily be accurate or appropriate, since clinical mental disorders are often characterized by various maladaptive behaviors.

It should be noted that those otherkin who have been diagnosed with mental illnesses or disorders rarely consider this to be relevant to their otherkin status.

[edit] References

  1. ^  Tolkien and radical ecology in the sixties. Mailing list marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu. Retrieved on April 21, 2004.
  2. ^  "Tyrannosaurus Rex", Gandalf's Garden, July 1968.
  3. ^  "From Darling Of The Underground To Dandy In The Underworld" - A Brief Bolan Biography. The Official Marc Bolan Fan Club. Retrieved on May 8, 2005.
  4. ^  Sunshine Superman. Donovan's Non-Poetic Writings. Retrieved on Error: invalid time.
  5. ^  A Gift from a Flower to a Garden. Donovan's Non-Poetic Writings. Retrieved on Error: invalid time.
  6. ^  "Obituary: John Peel", Daily Telegraph, 27 October 2004.
  7. ^  Silver Elves (2001). The Gainesville Letters. In The Magical Elven Love Letters, vol. 1, pp. 9. Silver Elves Publications; no ISBN.
  8. ^  The Druid Miscellany, pp. 2. A reformed Druid anthology. Retrieved on August 1, 1996.
  9. ^  The Elf Queen's Daughters. Are you a faeid?. Retrieved on May 4, 2005.
  10. ^  * Aeona Silversong Interview. The Electronic Foghorn. Retrieved on June 15, 1993.
  11. ^  * "Elven Like Me", Village Voice, 14 February 2001.
  • The Silver Elves (2001). The Magical Elven Love Letters, vol. 1. Silver Elves Publications. no ISBN. 
  • Adler, Margot (1979). Drawing Down The Moon: Druids, Goddess-worshippers and other pagans in America today. Viking Press. 0670283428. 
  • Cabot, Laurie (1989). Power of the Witch. Delacorte Press. 0385297866. 
  • Joseph S., Diduca D. (May 2001). "Schizotypy and religiosity in 13–18 year old school pupils". Mental Health, Religion & Culture 4: 63-69. 

---

  • The Silver Elves used to post pen-pal ads in the back of CNN. [16]
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../v/a/s/User%7EVashti_Otherkin_61e8.html"