Otherkin – Brief explanation
What are otherkin? Otherkin is very hard to precisely define, as it is an identity it is understood by different people in different ways. Some disagreements on the definition have been going on in the community almost since its inception.
At the most basic level otherkin is an umbrella term for people who don’t identify as wholly human on some level. Beyond that vague definition is where the disagreements arise. Many otherkin consider it a spiritual identity of sorts; their soul, or essence, or energy, isn’t human, or at least not completely. Some otherkin frame their identity in terms of psychology, that their mind is deeply connected to an archetype or level of consciousness that isn’t human. A small group of otherkin believe their identity has a physical component; their body isn’t human, often relating it to myths of changelings or stories of humans marrying inhuman beings such as elves or selkies. (And within that group most seem to believe it in terms of ancestry going back many generations, rather than having a parent who was not human.)
Like any community definition the broader explanation works, but the more you look at the definition the blurrier the edges become. Feel free to check out our longer description if you feel you need more clarification.
Otherkin – Longer explanation
What are otherkin? To restate the opening line of the brief explanation: Otherkin is very hard to precisely define, as it is an identity it is understood by different people in different ways. Some disagreements on the definition have been going on in the community since the beginning.
Otherkin are people who don’t identify as wholly human on some level. But what that means, and what level or part of self it refers to varies from person to person. This does not mean they do not recognize that they are human, but that there is something else, something other about themselves.
Despite the non-human aspect of their identity otherkin live otherwise normal lives, that is to say, there are otherkin as down-to-earth and boring as your accountant, as fun-loving as your favourite aunt, or as mystical and woo as the pagan neighbour down the street. Otherkin go to school, hold jobs, have children, volunteer, read, play video games, anything that anyone else does, otherkin do. They are still humans in a human society and their lives are more or less the same as anyone else, save the fact they identify with something other. It’s a mistake to assume that because otherkin see themselves as not wholly human that their lives would be totally different from everyone else.
If otherkin don’t think of themselves as wholly human, what’s the “other” part? Much like the definition of otherkin this can be explained broadly but is harder to define in clear detail. Essentially the “other” part of otherkin is exactly that, other than human. Some of the more prevalent kinds of otherkin include things such as animals, fae, angels, and dragons, but the community includes far more than that, as the identity is anything other.
It would seem that the majority, but not all, otherkin connect to this identity on a spiritual level. The idea is that something about them, their soul, their essence, their energy isn’t totally human. The explanations on why this is are also personal, some otherkin hold firmly to their beliefs, others are more agnostic knowing they can never definitively prove it, so focus not on the cause of the identity but their lived experience of it.
Reincarnation is general the mechanism suggested for otherkin of a spiritual bend. The idea is that souls are not limited to one species, and sometimes transmigration occurs between different species. While some Otherkin think of it in terms of past lives, that because they were something previously they are something currently, many try to take that belief a bit deeper. After all, if reincarnation is true, everyone has probably been a man and a woman, been several different races/cultures, and people are no longer those things. In these cases, the beliefs are generally either that something “carried over” for a specific reason, or that souls (or whatever term someone feels comfortable with) are of a specific species, maybe not always, but at least in some cases. In that sense, the core self remains the same throughout various incarnations. They might be wearing a human body, but that doesn’t make their soul human, for an analogy, it does not matter what clothing you wear, you are the same person.
Another common theory is that being otherkin is psychological. Now in this theory it doesn’t mean “It’s all in their head” in a mental health sense, or that thinking thoughts can make it so, but that there is something in the mind which is being “translated” as other than human. For some otherkin it’s the concept of archetypes, that there are (to oversimplify) universal patterns in the human mind and experience. In myth the same themes and images pop-up around the world: flood myths, virgin births, blind prophets, the old man on the mountain, human-animal shapeshifters, and so on. These are patterns in the human psyche, and just as some people might identify with an archetype (I’m a healer, I’m a mentor, I’m an outcast) with otherkin in this theory they believe the archetype they embody isn’t human. Their minds heavily resonate with the imagery and role of the dragon, the wild beast, the fair folk, and so on. This seems to be more prevalent with therianthropes (animal otherkin) than other subsections. Another side of the psychological theories is that their mind is more heavily connected in some way with the more primal aspects of the brain. In the Triune Brain theory of Dr. Paul D. MacLean, the brain evolved in three main stages, a reptilian brain (not actually reptilian but more animalistic), a paleomammalian (early mammalian developments), and the neomammalian brain (a section of the brain that appears in “higher order” mammals and especially humans). By having a stronger connection to these parts of the brain, they believe that they access or embody more animalistic traits.
Another theory for the nature of otherkin, though far less popular than others, is that there is a genetic component to it. Most cultures, if not every culture, have a variety of myths about inhuman beings becoming human, or vice versa, or inhuman beings that at some point mated with and had offspring with humans. Many Native American nations have stories of an animal becoming human, and clans tracing their heritage back to such an animal. In the Tanakh (Old Testament) there is a story of angels mating with humans, expanded on in the extra-Biblical Book of Enoch. In Celtic mythology the Tuatha Dé Danann (an elven type race) intermarried with the early human nobility of Ireland. In some forms of Buddhism you have nagas marrying the local nobility as well. There is a long precedence for this belief in mythology, in that regard the belief might not seem that unusual, though in the modern era of relatively cheap and quick genetic testing there has yet to be any evidence or even genetic “blips” to help substantiate this belief.
These are not the only theories held by people in the otherkin community, but would probably represent the majority of beliefs, even if some smaller details vary.