identity

Black Mirror Ritual

The following ritual is one that used to be fairly popular in the online otherkin community around the turn of the millenia. The basic idea is that the ritual is that it allows you to see your “kinself.” There are completely mundane psychological reasons as to why this ritual works, but if you believe in otherkin in a more spiritual sense you can also understand the process from that perspective.

The ritual itself is so simple it is barely worth calling a ritual in many ways.

Requirements:

Candles 4-5. Tealight candles are fine.
A mirror that you can move and position.
A room that you can completely control the lighting to make pitch black.
A cushion or chair to sit on.

Process:

Set up the seat and the mirror in such a way that you can sit relaxed while looking directly at the mirror and you can see your own reflection.

Position the candles so they do not cast light directly on your face, or are directly visible in the mirror. They can be behind you or to the side. The point is you shouldn’t be able to see the candles, only the light, and your reflection should be indirectly lit.

Light the candles, turn off all lights in the room, block light from any doors/windows/electronics. The only light should be the candles.

Sit facing the mirror and look at your reflection. Spend a few moments looking at your face. Extinguish one of the candles, and look at your reflection for a while. Extinguish another candle, and look at your reflection. You want to keep the light on your face balanced as much as possible, so don’t extinguish all the candles from one side of your body, and leave the others burning. Alternate extinguishing candles to your left and right.

The goal here is to use the minimum amount of candles to still see your reflection. It doesn’t have to be a bright or clear reflection, but you should still be able to make out the shape of your face and eyes. Once you are to that point look at the mirror again.

This is the hardest part of the ritual. Look at your face, try to look into your eyes or look between them. The hard part is for this to work you have to blink as little as possible, and not move your eyes. You do not realize how much you blink or how much you slightly shift your eyes until you’re trying not to.

As you stare at your reflection your eyes will get tired, and you’ll notice that your vision begins to blur and darken from the outside toward where you are focusing. Every time you move your eyes or blink you “reset” this process a little, so it’s important to avoid that as much as possible.

If you manage to look at your reflection in this manner long enough all your vision will fade out, so instead of looking at a mirror and your dim reflection your field of vision will be blank and dark.

While not necessary, at this point it can be helpful to try to “project” your energy or essence into the mirror. Eventually this blank vision will give away to images, most commonly reported are different faces appearing in the mirror. Otherkin often describe seeing their face as it “should” be. So elves might see another face with elven features, a therianthrope’s reflection might shift into their theriotype, otherkin who don’t know what they are but have always felt other might see something that helps them understand what they are etc.

That is all there is to this ritual. When you’re done just blink, move your eyes, and normal vision will return. You can then turn on the lights and extinguish the candle.

Obviously one should take this ritual, and the result with a grain of salt. Nonetheless it can be interesting and useful to perform this ritual, perhaps to gain insight into who and what you might be.

Looking at Otherkin from Outside

I’m not Otherkin and really not a spiritual person. Just want that out of the way. Then why the heck am I writing something about Otherkin for Otherkin.com?

I’d never even heard the word until a few years ago. My boyfriend –who I’ll call Draco cause I’m not creative- and I had been dating for maybe ten months. One night he asked if we could have a serious chat. Every girl’s dream am I right? I was worried he seemed nervous and I was afraid he was going to pull the rug out from under me.

“Babe” he says “do you know what Otherkin are?” What? No. My mind starts trying to make sense of it. Other, different or additional, kin, family. Honestly thought for a moment he was going to tell me he was married with another family. Stupid jump but in the moment it’s where I went.

“Okay well, do you believe in reincarnation?” Not sure, don’t really believe or disbelieve. Never thought about it. Life can be hard enough as is, don’t need to think about more than one.

“Okay well look at the numbers.” What? “There are more humans alive right now than ever. If reincarnation is real that means there are either new souls, or they’re coming from elsewhere.”

So he explained Otherkin. Somewhere out there in the universe, or another dimension, or history, or something, but somewhere out there are things other than human. Somehow for some reason some of those souls end up in human bodies. Then you have people who are humans but they’re also dragon souls? Or whatever they are.

I can’t say I understood it then. I can’t even say I understand it now. We talked about it for a long time, he had been afraid of telling me, and I got the basic idea but I didn’t get the whole picture. Why did it happen? How? How do you know you’re a dragon? What does that even mean?

By the end of the night we were fine with it. I didn’t really believe or disbelieve, but he believed, he was serious about it, and he was rational in his explanation about what he thinks it all is and what it means. His seriousness, and his well-thought out explanations convinced me it was important to him, if nothing else. Heck I’ve dated guys who aren’t Otherkin but their self-image was more bizarre and irrational than Draco being a dragon in a past life. I think “I was a dragon” seems more realistic than some of my exes and their pipedreams of fame.

He’s my dragon. I don’t always know what that means. I don’t necessarily know what I believe one way or another. I do know that sometimes he seems just bigger than his body, and sometimes when he stretches out of the corner of my eyes I might see something stretching out or flapping. I know it doesn’t matter really, because Draco is a good person, he’s doing well for himself, we’re doing well, and he is rational in his beliefs, even if they seem odd. When it all boils down, he’s a good person, and his identity doesn’t change that or affect anyone else, I don’t get why people online make a stink about Otherkin. It doesn’t affect you. He’s a good person, a great boyfriend, and apparently a Dragon.

Otherkin Mythmatch- Mythic and Literal Identities

Otherkin is definitely one of those communities where if you ask five people a question you’ll get seven answers back. We’re a community that is defined as much by our differences as our similarities. Just because we’re both otherkin doesn’t mean our identities or personalities are remotely similar beyond being “other.” The beliefs and ideas are very personal, and different people might use the same words for different things, some might understand the same thing differently. It can make it a bit confusing sometimes, but I think it’s most obvious when you really ask someone about their identity and what it means.

Ask two dragons what they mean by “dragon” and you’ll probably get different answers. One idea you’ll see pop up with a lot of kin, regardless of type, is that we’re really just using a human code as a short form for what we mean.

What I mean is when someone says “I’m an elf” they probably don’t mean the literal Lord of the Rings elf who walked out of Middle Earth, and they might not even mean literal elflike beings from Celtic or Norse mythology, but what they mean is something with that feel. When an otherkin says they are an angel, to some that is a literal belief that they are a being made in service of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god, but to others angel is more a description of some type of “heavenly” being, and may not be connected to that god, or any god in particular. So what do they mean? Well, that’s individual, but ask them what does elf or angel mean to them, they will probably give you a list of traits and to that person “elf” is a great shorthand for that list. These are traits you probably think of when you think of Tolkien’s elves, or elves for mythology. It could be the physical traits of being tall and lithe, the ears and the hair, maybe it’s a sense of connection to nature in a different way, maybe it’s an abstract feeling of magic or a sense of a culture. It’s hard to say, but somewhere in “elf”, there are enough points that matchup, that using the term “elf” as an identity inspires the right ideas, if in a vague sense.

Dragon could be a physical sensation, wings that aren’t there but still unfurl behind you when running or in the wind. It could be senses and memories of flying as a mighty beast. It could be a sense of predator impulses like on a hunt. It’s hard to say, but again, if someone says they’re a dragon, chances are the image in your head is probably closer to them than for any other easy one-word identity, that’s why it works.

It isn’t to say we aren’t, we weren’t, literally something else, just that the words we use, elf, dragon, naga, demon, wolf, insect, stone-wing, phoenix, shadow, these words might not be literally what we are, but they are the closest analog we have in human mythology. It might match perfectly, it might have areas that just don’t fit. But they’re often the best words we have. This isn’t to deny literal identities either, sometimes when someone says something like an angel, they don’t mean a being that has some resemblance to an angel, they literally mean angel as they appear in myth.

So whether or not you’re otherkin or just talking to one, trying to understand them, instead of just asking “what” someone is and leaving it at a simple one word answer, ask them what does it mean to be this thing, why do they think that’s what they are, what does the word mean. Reality doesn’t always fit into neat little boxes, our identities rarely do. Don’t mistake the names for a solid identity, the map with the territory.