A lot of otherkin use past life memories to justify their identity, not all of us, but a lot of us. Even though my own memories do factor into who I am, there are three main problems with using past lives that I want to address and admit I am not immune from.
The first problem is past life memories might not be real. This is the dragon in the room, so to speak. It can be hard to verify past lives, nearly impossible if you’re thinking of a life as something else, somewhere else. This is a big problem, a lot of people use these memories as the foundation of their identity, and if that foundation isn’t real it’s unlikely that the rest of the identity is correct. A human past life you could try to verify your memories against historical information. You could see if the events you remember were recorded, or see if details like names, clothing, or how a craft was done might have been preserved somewhere. It’s not a science, nor is it perfect, but it’s better than nothing. Now, what about a past life as a tiger? You can’t really verify those memories, you could see if details of how tigers live match what you remember, but that’s about it. Now, what about a past life as a dragon on another world? How can you verify those? While there are some ways to try to verify, it’s not going to provide much in the way of evidence. Without the ability to verify these memories one can’t say if they are true or not. Now people might say “I know they’re real, they are just as real as my memories from this life, they feel just the same.” The trouble is, without getting too deeply into it, human memories suck. I think if the average person realized how much of our memories is just cobbled together by our brain trying to make sense of something they’d freak out. Memory is horribly unreliable, and easily influenced. “Sure, but I have a really good memory.” Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. A lot of us are good at remembering certain details or types of info, but the rest of the data is just your brain filling in the gaps. If you can’t reliably remember something from three months ago, why would your memories from another life be ironclad? It’s hard to deal with these thoughts, I grappled with them as I looked more into the neurobiology of memory, but the fact it makes you question these things is a good thing. Regardless, it’s a problem, if your entire otherkin identity rests on memories, then you have to address the unreliable nature of memory itself.
The next problem is that even if you can prove a past life memory, just because it’s a real memory doesn’t mean it’s what happened. There are ways to truly remember things that aren’t real. Sounds contradictory but it’s true. When it occurs in this life it’s called cryptomnesia, hidden memories. Memory is horribly fallible, and one thing that can manifest as is memory misattribution, remembering a detail, but not the source. As a kid imagine you watched a documentary on feudal Japan, over the next weeks, months, and years this documentary fades from your conscious memory, there is a good chance not only do you not remember what the documentary contained, you might even forget you watched it at all. Now imagine years down the line, as a teen, or an adult, something shakes part of that memory loose, maybe you see an image of samurai armour that was the same as one you saw on the documentary, or close enough, or you hear the name Minamoto or something. Suddenly there is a vague sense of “this is familiar” and you might even remember something more specific “Minamoto…that was the emperor wasn’t it?” and you have some visuals your memory reassembles from the documentary. Here you are remembering things, you’re remembering real things, details that are more or less correct, you’re not making it up, but it’s not a memory of something that actually happened to you. Your brain stored parts of the data and then it later gets spit out. It’s not intentional, it’s just how memories work. So you can have real memories, things you’re not making up, but they’re nonetheless not “true” memories of your life/lives. That’s just talking about this life, when you factor in similar issues across lives you have a lot of room for memory to get distorted. Think of those really hardcore fans of musicians, they have been around their star, they have committed hundreds of details about their musician’s life, they know so much about them, and are obsessed with them. There are all sorts of interests and obsessions like this, a lot of us have at least one topic that we could lecture on endlessly cause we know so much about it, even if it’s not about us. Now imagine, with all that information about the musician, and being obsessed with them, how well they remember that in their next life? Will they remember being an accountant who is in love with that musician? Or will they remember all the details about the musician they gathered in their obsession, and have their mind process their memories not as memory about the musician, but memories as the musician? This can of course apply to otherkin too. How many people do you know who love some sort of non-human creature? The friend who has a living room filled with wolf images, the friend who reads every fantasy novel about elves, the friend who collects dragon figurines. This isn’t just a modern phenomena, perhaps “easier” to indulge though. There are people who were folklorists, or perhaps they were religious or spiritual and the existence of non-human beings were a part of their life. A religious priest or monk could have had the role of performing rituals to keep specific creatures away, performing rituals to keep the monster in the forest content, so they don’t attack the village. Such a life would have the person focused on that creature, if they’re to defend against it they’d have to understand it. Now a few lives down the line they might not remember protecting the village against the monster, but they might remember everything they knew about the monster and perhaps assume that’s because the monster was them. There are so many ways that a real memory can be false, when questioning yourself about your past lives you should always try to figure out if there is another source for your memories.
The last problem with past lives is probably the most important.
You aren’t what you were.
Simple as that. Even if your memories are correct, and you have a great collection of memories that informs your identity, you aren’t your past lives. It’s not to say that past lives aren’t important, and it’s not to say that past lives won’t have an effect on you, but at the end of it all- your past life memories are someone else. This is true in several ways. You’re not the past life you had, you’re you, with a memory. Most people don’t have memories, and most people wouldn’t want them. Each life is a chance to both start new, and continue, but fixating on, or fixating as a past life memory just holds you back. Putting aside otherkin for a moment, think about past lives on Earth. In a few lives you could have been multiple genders, many different cultures, different jobs, whatever, those aren’t you. People generally don’t walk around claiming to be of a different race or culture just because of their past lives, and those that do are generally and rightfully laughed at. Could you imagine someone saying they’re a doctor, because they used to be in a past life? Those are roles, facets, pieces of experience, but they aren’t us. They can influence and shape us, but we’re not them just because we used to be. This is important to otherkin, and not everyone agrees here, but that’s their logical issue, not mine, just because you were something other than human in a past life doesn’t mean you are something other than human this life. While being otherkin may be related to our past lives, it is not reliant on them. You protest, but again, are you a doctor because you once were? Or are you a person who just had a past life as a doctor? Are you a dragon because you once were? Or are you a person who just had a past life as a dragon? Being otherkin has to be more than just a past life, otherwise what does it matter and where do we draw the line? I’ve tried not to be personal in this, but I do feel the need to use myself as an example here. I am who and what I am as a matter of soul, but I am human now, and I have been human for a very long time now, but I am not human. I probably have more past lives as a human now than I did in my original kind, but I am not human. I am not those past lives, I am what I am, my nature, the nature of otherkin to me is something deeper than memory. Now if you can be human without truly being human now, you could have been an elf without truly being an elf then, and you may have been multiple things, but they aren’t you, and to cling to them, to identify as them you do a disservice to yourself and your identity.
Past life memories are interesting, and horrible, fun, terrifying, and exciting, every emotion between and beyond those. Past life memories can be important, illuminating, and useless. One thing past life memories are not – is who you are.